Mr. President, welcome back from St Lucia and the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro. I hope you made the most of the international engagement in ways that will benefit the well-being of our beloved country.

Today, I address three related governance issues. First is the slow death of Lagos State, with its rapid metamorphosis into a dustbin. Two is the allegation that you have become a hermit in the villa by being inaccessible to your ministers and close allies who ought to guide you in the routine governance of the country. And three, the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu.

On the first issue, my question is: Is Lagos working? In the last two months, I have had the opportunity to traverse much of Lagos, from the mainland to Victoria Island and Lekki, the spectacle that confronted me was appalling and frightening. As I write, nothing has changed. The pyramids of rubbish adorning Lagos reminds one of the situation in 1999 Lagos, when you took over the leadership of Lagos State, and you were yet to have a hang on the affairs of the state.

I recall that during that period our very independent media portrayed you as wearing oversised shoes left behind by Brigadier Buba Marwa, the Military Administrator of Lagos State who was your predecessor. You overcame it and soon found a solution for the timely disposal of waste in Lagos. Fashiola would improve on it with a complementary city beautification scheme.

It is quite unfortunate that despite the huge resources accruing to the state, the state government has been unable to carry out the routine of keeping the state clean. What is happening? Is Lagos Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) and its affiliate contractors asleep? Is anybody still running Lagos? How do we account for the paralysis? Mr President, since the state is your primary constituency, maybe you can quietly call the governor, who claims to run the affairs of the state, to order.

Mr. President, amidst the regrouping of opposition forces, their allegations against you, are weighty. I sincerely think you need to wake up from your slumber. The most profound is that you have insulated yourself from your cabinet. So bad, that it is alleged that some of your ministers have had to pay their way through to you. It is alleged that in the Federal Executive Council meetings, no form of policy debate goes on and everything is rubber-stamped.

This taken together means that you probably run a one-man show. In sum, you have become an emperor. This is partly a justification for the defection and the rallying of social forces to unseat you in 2027. I hope this is false. On the contrary, Mr President, it is never too late to amend your ways and run an inclusive government. Please stop living in your own reality but rather Nigeria’s. And as I advised in my last instalment, bring in the best human resources that the country has got to govern. The laughter around you is not genuine; it is merely sycophantic, cloaking the reality of things. I can tell you that many APC members are also waiting in the wings while watching the tide.

On Nnamdi Kanu, I begin by saying that Nigeria’s unity is negotiable. Nation-building is an unfinished business. And many nations have decoupled before our very eyes.

Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and Sudan. These countries have re-invented themselves. Some have engrossed provisions on succession in their grundnorm. The singular crime of Nnamdi Kanu is that he was agitating for the creation of the Biafra Republic based on the right to self-determination, thereby inciting violence.

The Igbo nation is not the only nationality in Nigeria that wants out of a badly governed country. It is the task of the government to govern well and encourage a sense of patriotism, the repressive turn of the power that be and sundry odious policies can only engender separatist impulses. Based on natural rights and international law, people have the right to self-determination and cannot be alienated from them.

The United Nations Article 1(2) states in clear terms one of its objectives, namely: “To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace…” With the U.S. and NATO’s intervention in the Balkan, the right to self-determination was given a more simplistic interpretation, that is, if a people want to separate from another country, it should simply do so without any condition. It was applied to Kosovo. It is my considered opinion that the Right of Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has been rudely violated by his abduction from another country.

The judicial authorities in the alien country have pronounced the illegality of his abduction from Kenya in ways indicative of Kenya and Nigeria’s complicity in the gross violation of human rights and international terrorism. For emphasis, Justice E.C. Mwita of a Kenyan High Court in Nairobi ruled that the abduction, detention and rendition of Kanu to Nigeria about four years ago were unlawful and illegal and fined the Kenyan government 10 million Kenyan shillings in compensatory damages to Kanu. It is time to let Kanu go and promptly enter into dialogue with him and IPOB and strike a new deal to strengthen our country’s unity.
Prof Akhaine is a professor of Political Science at the Lagos State University.