There are three burning issues that call for deep reflection at this time. The first is: Should former President Goodluck Jonathan throw his signature hat into the ring to battle his way back to the Villa in 2027? Whether he is warming up and rehearsing for the battle royal would seem to have left the realm of speculation even though his wife is not keen. There are pointers to this longing. But his wife has said she does not see herself in the Villa any more. In other words, not at Aso Rock wearing the headgear stamped with the glittering label of Nigeria’s First Lady. Those familiar with this column know its position on the abundance of power at the disposal of uncorrupted womanhood. If Mrs. Patience Jonathan says she does not see herself at Aso Rock again, forget it. A determined but uncorrupted woman does not lose a battle without grave consequences. Her weapon is her intuition and connection with the Light Realms. I will come back to this presently.
The second is the issue of tinted glasses. In April the police high command said cars with tinted glasses would no longer be allowed thenceforth on the roads without police permit. The requirement finally took effect last week Tuesday, 2 October 2025, amidst serious controversies and after a postponement. The day it was taking effect coincidentally fell on a day Nigerians were returning from what could be described as an extended weekend for the Independence Anniversary celebrations — which for some was a short period for reflection. The police said they were implementing a Decree (now an Act) promulgated in 1991 by the General Ibrahim Babangida administration. That law expressly forbade vehicles with tinted windows, as well as front and back wind screens not plain enough to make people in them visible. A breach of the law would attract a fine of N2,000, a heavy sum of money at the time, or a jail term of six months. The decree did not attract attention at the time because vehicles with tinted glasses were rare. Even in 2013 when the police first dusted the legislative book, not many knew there was any such law. Again, in 2016, the police sought to implement the law. It was not much of a success. But this year, the situation is different. For a great many, dusting it up came as a rude shock, largely because of the harsh economic situation. The law became noticeable and it is being fiercely resisted with the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) leadership in the forefront. Nigerians see it as a revenue generating ploy by the police and as an added tax burden for a people reeling under crushing high inflation and all manner of taxation and levies. The Guardian has put what it would fetch into the police kitty at N19 billion in a year. And the permit is also henceforth to be collected yearly.
The police did not state any reason for the enforcement of tinted glasses permit. The citizens themselves reading the thoughts of the police hierarchy are hazarding a guess: That it is help in the seemingly intractable mounting security challenge in the land. While the reason may be plausible the argument is defeated by the fact that where the challenge is untrammeled and worrisome, there is hardly any presence of vehicles with tinted glasses. The terrorists and bandits use only motorcycles and ramshackle vehicles. They arrive in communities they invade in long columns of motorcycles, according to accounts by traumatized members of rural communities. Not one car is seen. Motorcycles are the veritable means of transportation in every part of the country, including cities.
Of course, in fairness, some cars are completely covered in very dark colours — windows, and windscreens. Such vehicles present obscene, suspicious and frightening spectacles. Tinted vehicles are factory fitted, imported or manufactured or assembled. All the police need do is to stop the suspicious ones totally tinted on the road and ask that the driver wind down the glasses to see those in the vehicle, and may even search them. What will reduce the workload for the police is to ask that the tinted driver’s window side and the passenger’s as well as the windscreens be changed and made plain, leaving only the back seats covered. Since vehicles with tainted glasses are prevalent now all over the world, there is very little Nigeria can do to stem their inflow into Nigerian market. Those being manufactured within our shores — Nord by Ajayi Joshua Oluwatobi; those by Lanre Shittu, Nnoson in Nnewi owned by Innocent Chukwuma; Toyota by Elizade (Michael Ade Ojo) and Dona producing KIA will need to be patronized more. It is then suggestions can be made to the local manufacturers on what our peculiar circumstances require. It is objectionable that the tinted glass permit is a yearly requirement. It is odd that a permit given to a vehicle and all the attendant processes will be repeated for the same vehicle every year. The ownership has not changed; the police authority signatures are of the police authority. On deep reflection and second thoughts, the police high command themselves will find the exercise is extortionist. It should be thrown out of the window, not suspended which is the case after pressure from the NBA.
Ultimately, what a majority of Nigerians have seen as the most compelling curb to escalating security challenges is the establishment of State Police. Governors’ Forum, stakeholders, respectable leaders of thought and the media have all clamored unceasingly for this panacea. Those to bring about the establishment of this tier of policing are living shielded in impregnable fortresses and at no cost to them. So, the foot-dragging and unfeeling continue, giving no inkling of when the obstinacy will terminate. The police themselves have long recognized the imperative of another tier of policing for a large and disparate country as Nigeria such that as far back as 2003 they sent some of their men to Britain to train in community policing.
Is Babangida’s voice not weighty enough to move the legislators to action or Obasanjo’s. The North, thought to be reticent for a long time has thrown its weight behind the establishment of state police. Former Head of State, Ibrahim Babangida said in 2022, speaking on the subject of restructuring, and I have quoted him several times because of the profundity of his thoughts: “Added to this desire is the need to commence the process of having state police across the states of the Federation. The initial fears of state governors misusing men and officers of state police have become increasingly eliminated with renewed vigour in citizens’ participation and confidence to interrogate power: We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilization to leave us behind. We must as a people with one destiny and common agenda, take decisions for the sake of posterity in our shared commitment to launch our country on the path of development and growth. Policing has become sophisticated that we cannot to operate our old methods and expect different results. On another occasion, he had said that the fears of misuse by governors are unfounded and exaggerated. He would know.
At the security summit organized by the Senate in the Buhari years, the then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said: ‘The nature of our security challenges is complex. Securing Nigeria’s over 923, 768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires a continual re-engineering of our security architecture and strategies. We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing methods are the way to go’.
Governor Henry Dickson, at his time in the saddle in Bayelsa State, corroborating what Osinbajo said, went on to argue that the prevailing security situation and the need for an effective response to the challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. In the heat of the debate, the then Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, first spoke on security vote: ‘You say what do we do with it? Without mincing words, I can’t speak for others, but I also get feedback from other states in my capacity as chairman of the Governors’ Forum. There are hardly any of these institutions that you are talking about that we do not fund. We fund the police. Quote me. State governors fund the police more than the Federal Government. We buy them vehicles. We pay them allowances. In some cases we even buy ammunition, of course under authority. And if we do engage our Military in aid to civil authority which you will find actually in 36 states in this country, we fund it’.
Former NBA President, Joseph Daodu said in strikingly disarming simplicity that state police is for law and order. The Sultan of Sokoto has called for the establishment of state police. The Bishop of Sokoto, Bishop Kukah has done the same, indeed, with strident vehemence of a cleric that he is, draping his call with his accustomed scholarship wrapped in ecclesiastical touch.
If governors do all Fayemi listed indicating that for a long time the governors have been roaring to go, why foot dragging on the state police? What I am getting at is that what the Inspector-General of Police, Dr. Kayode Egbetokun, need concentrate his attention on is strengthening the consensus that the nation has forged that the only way to go is the establishment of State Police and begin to think of operational border guidelines for both the Nigeria Police Force and State Police when the latter eventually takes its place in the maintenance of law and order everywhere. Further evidence of that consensus is the 2014 National Conference Report which had strongly recommended state and community policing. The establishment of state police will not be tantamount to the abolition of the Nigeria Police, after all. Swaths of Nigerian land have been left at the mercy of terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and all sorts – the agents of Darkness for too long!
The Aso Rock Fascination for Goodluck Jonathan
There is now no doubt any longer that Jonathan wants to try his luck again, fixing his gaze at the possibility of returning to the Villa come 2027. Everyone is the name he bears. No name is an accident. When a person asks what’s in a name, the answer should ring out loud: It is everything. In all and for all activities we draw the power of God the Almighty Creator expressed in radiation threads. It is such that there is no vacuum, there are no gaps. It is a mesh of radiations. We draw and use the power as we may choose through our free will. There is a multitude of unseen beings, loyal servants of the Most High, the Creator. For the use of that power, for thinking, for speaking and for actions, of course, we are accountable. These also crystallize into forms woven by the beings who take on every action, every speech, as well as thoughts which are actions, and weave them into forms which constitute our carpet of fate, including the parents and the name we bear. Our activities today lead to the name we will inexorably bear tomorrow. Every baby in the womb whispers the name it would bear to its mother or who is open to receive it in the family or from someone far away.
We are told about every man: “Every stirring of his spirit, every weaving of his soul, every action of his body, and every word he utters automatically and unconsciously ties ever new threads to the existing ones, attaching them, connecting one with the other, and interweaving them. The human being forms and forms, and even thereby forms in advance the earth-name which he must bear in his next life on earth, and which he will inevitably bear because the threads of his own weaving surely and unswervingly lead him to it”.
Jonathan first dared to live his name albeit unconsciously when he became deputy to Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. The governor was impeached following a charge of gross misconduct bordering on misappropriation and fraud. Jonathan succeeded him on 9 December 2005. When Umaru Yar’Adua was looking for a deputy, a vice presidential candidate, he settled for Jonathan. Half-way through his term of four years, Yar’Adua passed away. Jonathan succeeded him through a doctrine of necessity. He was defeated as President in 2015 by Muhammadu Buhari. He retired to his village from where notable international organisations beckoned to him to run one errand or the other. In his time Nigeria boasted of the largest economy in Africa. He built schools for almaijiri in the North to uplift the children of the poor in the region. He organised a highly successful National Conference seen as a luminous ray of light and hope in Nigeria’s dark tunnel. What raised him real high in the estimation of the world was his decency and courage both nationally and internationally was in conceding defeat to his political rival for the Villa, Buhari even before the counting of the votes was concluded. He saw the signs of his defeat and called Buhari that he was throwing in the towel with a statesman’s high-minded and enthralling pronouncement that his ambition was not worth the shedding of blood of his fellowmen. His action was unprecedented.
But then, he was seen by many as clueless on the myriad of problems afflicting the country, weak and incompetent. The country was raven with unprecedented level of corruption. The national resources became a bazaar. Many made away with billions from the public till. The country was turned upside down under his watch with insecurity. School children were abducted in hundreds from their dormitories, what he himself, as he is wont to in his candour, described as a permanent stain on his name. And Nigerians began to yearn for delivery.
What crystal ball has he looked into that has told him that another streak of Goodluck is on the way to him? What is the constellation of stars saying that triggered him to begin to warm up and rehearse – that there are prospects of another go at the Presidency, that no matter the obstacles, like Donald Trump, he would surprise the world. Efforts are being made through the courts to disqualify him in the argument that no one can be sworn in whether as governor or president more than twice. The judge was persuaded by the argument that he only succeeded Yar’Adua and not through election to the Presidency. When attention was drawn to the amendment to the provision of the constitution, the judge said: “I declare that the provision of 137 sub-section 3 of the Constitution acquired the force of law with effect from 7th June, 2018, and as such does not have a retrospective application”. The constitution is being put to test again in Abuja. From an intellectual dissection of his daring towards the Presidency, I would say, what goodluck magic is he going to invoke against Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is well known as a formidable candidate and fighter and one with an undoubted crowd pulling power. See the spate of defections.
And so I dare say, Dear Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, please, you left when the ovation was loudest. Don’t over stretch your luck. But then, what does man know! Every man is the name he bears!!
