I address two governance issues, namely, the Tinted Glass Permit and the war against terrorists. This task is undertaken for your information, enlightenment, and to help burnish the image of your administration if acted upon.

First is the tinted glass matter. But let me state my conclusion before the argument. The introduction of the Tinted Glass Permit is fraudulent, illegal, and should be scrapped. The exercise affirms the assertion that dangerous precedents, if left unchecked, in other words, not nipped in the bud, will lay out the primrose path to more perfidies because they are path-dependent.

For a very long time, the harassment of motorists without a Tinted Glass Permit seemed to have been shelved, except for the occasional extortion binge of policemen mounting road blocks on our highways. Most vehicles with tinted glass are factory-fitted with plain front windows and mildly tinted back windows and windshield.

They were not improvised in Nigeria by the motorists. This is a global standard. Of course, there are a few exceptional cases of the use of sun-screening films for medical reasons and sheer fancy. The solution is a courteous request to motorists to wind down their windows. Sikena!

The previous worn reason that was adduced, and often repeated each time a new Police Inspector-General is appointed, is the need to curb insecurity. If that refrain was tenable in the past, it is now old-fashioned as security surveillance has gone beyond the simple act of preference for see-through vehicles. Therefore, the attempt to impose a Tinted Glass Permit on motorists is an adventure in sheer extortion. The president must stop it, for the sanity of the citizens, who are now fed up with the whip of misgovernance in the country.

Mr President, what I am asking you to do is within your executive powers, call the IGP Egbetokun to order before it is too late.  The trend has been that once an IGP is appointed, his/her main pre-occupation is how to secure a source for primitive accumulation. This has manifested in the whimsical change of police uniforms. It is confounding that public officials have no shame in this country.

Mr President, to conclude this section of my thoughts, let me quote the viewpoint of a person who has also adverted to this matter.  Dr Bolaji O. Akinyemi, an Apostle and President of Voice of His Word Ministries, characterised the current heist in his piece titled “Tinted Glass Permit: The police’s new cash cow in a failing economy”: “What we are witnessing is the unholy marriage between state power and institutional greed. It is the normalising of extortion as governance. It is the audacity to milk the people in broad daylight, in the name of the law…The tinted glass permit is not just a permit. It is a parable — of a government that governs with the mindset of a merchant. Of a Police Force that has perfected the art of multiplying toll gates in the lives of those it is sworn to protect.”

Before addressing the second item, first, I would like to congratulate your administration on the capture of two terrorists, namely, Mahmud Muhammad Usman, also known as “Emir of Ansaru.” And Mahmud al-Nigeri, Usman’s deputy and Chief of Staff, both of whom are leaders of a major terror group, the Ansaru. Kudos to the security forces for the collaborative efforts that led to the capture of the terrorists. Not to lose the sense of scale, the Ansaru network covers Niger and Kwara States, extending to the Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Niger Republic, with connections to foreign jihadists from Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. Besides, they have expertise in weapons handling, including the use of Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Little wonder the stream of accolades from Western capitals.

The second matter is the continuing pogrom against innocent people in the North-west, accentuated by the brutal killings and abduction of Muslim faithfuls who had gathered for dawn prayers in Malumfashi, Katsina State, on Tuesday, August 19, 2025.  At the last count, over 50 were dead, and over 60 others were reportedly abducted.  The North-west has been a new front in the pillaging of the country by terrorists. Unfortunately, the protagonists are elements of the Fulani ethnic stock dealing mortal blows against the indigenous Hausa communities.

The condolence message of the Arewa Christians and Indigenous Pastors Association (ACIPA) captures the ethnic twist to the killings. The message was to “the Hausa Muslims, entire indigenous community of Malumfashi and Katsina State, over another genocide on Tuesday, August 19, 2025”.

It is important to note that General Christopher Musa, the Chief of Defence Staff, left no one in doubt when, in a streak of honesty, he told the world that the crisis was more political than sheer terrorism, it was a war between the Fulani and the Hausa, and therefore, requires a political solution. It is the very reason for the enduring nature of the crisis and the resilience of the heavily armed killer gangs.

The inability of our security forces to vanquish them is because of the very presence of partisan elements within the security forces who are protecting the interests of their malevolent kinsmen in the killing fields of North-west.

Two major incidents, the Yelwata killings in Benue and the inability of the security forces to net Turji Bello, help to illustrate the point about the limitations of the security forces.  There were abundant Intel weeks before the killings, so detailed that where the killer gangs were quartered was revealed.  But no one made any move to neutralise them. Turji Bello, a major terrorist asset in the North-west, is known to the Intel community, but they have refused to move against him.

The contrivance is so deep that the authorities in the Niger Republic indicted the Nigerian security forces of shielding him. Perhaps, Bello is being seen by his own kinsmen as an arrow-head of the scheme to subjugate the Hausa communities in the North-west.

Mr President, to win this war against terror, there should be no sacred cows.As I pen these lines, Kwara State is gradually being occupied. Nigeria desires peace, and without it, no development is possible.
Prof. Akhaine is with the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University.