Admin I Wednesday, Dec.31.25
AWKA, Anambra – Renowned human rights lawyer and lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has lamented what he described as the normalisation of abnormality in Nigeria, warning that insecurity has become an accepted and entrenched feature of national life.
In a statement titled “Midweek Musing: A Year Reviewed , Nigeria’s Political Pilgrimage Through Turbulence, Policy Myopia, and the Undying Mercy of God,” Ejiofor said that it would be both intellectually dishonest and morally evasive to examine Nigeria in 2025 without placing insecurity at the forefront of national discourse.
According to him, insecurity remains the single most destructive variable in Nigeria’s political, social, and economic equation.
He noted that across the country, lives have been brutally cut short, homes destroyed, families torn apart, schools forced into silence, farms abandoned, and commercial activities strangulated. Childhood innocence, he said, has been violently interrupted, while national development has once again been deferred.
Ejiofor argued that insecurity in Nigeria is no longer an episodic or temporary crisis.
He said that it has evolved into a permanent condition of national existence, leaving deep and indelible scars on the collective memory of the people.
More troubling, he observed, is the growing audacity of those who enable violence.
According to him, the sponsors, financiers, apologists, and ideological midwives of terror,particularly across vast regions of Northern Nigeria have become increasingly emboldened, visible, vocal, and disturbingly confident.
He described as scandalous the grim reality that some of these actors are not strangers to the Nigerian state. Instead, he alleged, they include individuals who once occupied sensitive government and military positions custodians of public trust who now appear to have defected, morally if not physically, to the camp of chaos.
“One would have expected outrage,” “Instead, Nigerians were offered silence. One would have anticipated decisive action; what the nation received was equivocation.”Ejiofor stated.
Turning to the economy, Ejiofor painted a bleak picture, noting that key indicators tell an unambiguous story of widespread hardship.
Hunger, he said, has become democratised, while poverty is no longer selective.
According to him,inflation stalks households with predatory persistence, even as wages remain frozen in a different decade.
According to Ejiofor ,Nigeria in 2025 is governed not by economic empathy but by theoretical abstractions—policies seemingly crafted for academic journals rather than for markets, factories, or family kitchens.
Presiding over this grim national theatre, Ejiofor added, is a legislature that has regrettably abdicated its constitutional responsibility.
He questioned whether the National Assembly still functions as an independent arm of government or merely as an annex of the executive. Constitutionally empowered to make laws and check executive excesses, he said, the legislature in 2025 has perfected the art of rubber-stamping.
“Bills arrive. Bills pass. Questions are discouraged. Dissent is treated as heresy,” he added.
The statement reads in full:
As the curtain gently falls on the last of the 365 days that constituted the year now slipping into history, it is both fitting and necessary that we pause, not merely to reminisce, but to introspect deeply, to audit our national journey, and to interrogate the trajectory of Nigeria’s political and socio-economic development in 2025.
By a curious convergence of dogged human resilience and divine indulgence, our aspirations were not extinguished. We survived. And in Nigeria, survival itself has increasingly become a testimonial of grace.
Above all, therefore, we lift our hearts in gratitude to the Mighty Man in Battle, whose mercy triumphed where policy failed, whose providence prevailed where governance faltered, and whose grace preserved lives in a season when death stalked the land with unsettling familiarity. As we step into a new year pregnant with expectations, we do so prayerfully, hoping for unprecedented glory and uncommon accomplishment, even against all odds.
Insecurity has indeed become the normalization of abnormalities. It would be intellectually dishonest, and morally evasive, to discuss Nigeria in 2025 without foregrounding insecurity, the single most devastating variable in the national equation.
Lives were brutally truncated. Homes were shattered. Families dismembered. Schools silenced. Farms abandoned. Commerce strangulated. Childhood innocence violently interrupted. Development, once again, deferred.
Insecurity has ceased to be an episodic crisis; it has matured into a permanent feature of national life, its devastating footprints indelibly etched into the sands of our collective memory. More troubling is the audacity of its enablers. The sponsors, financiers, apologists, and ideological midwives of terror, particularly across vast swathes of Northern Nigeria, have grown emboldened, visible, vocal, and disturbingly confident.
Even more scandalous is the grim reality that some of these actors are not strangers to the state. They are individuals who once occupied sensitive government and military positions, custodians of national trust, who now appear to have defected, morally if not physically, to the camp of chaos.
One would have expected outrage. Instead, we were offered silence. One would have anticipated decisive action. What we got was equivocation.
On the economic front, the indices tell a grim and unambiguous story. Hunger has become democratised. Poverty is no longer selective. Inflation stalks households with predatory persistence, while wages remain frozen in a different decade.
Nigeria in 2025 was governed not by economic empathy, but by theoretical abstractions, policies apparently designed for economic journals, not for markets, factories, or family kitchens.
And presiding over this grim theatre is a legislature that has, regrettably, abdicated its constitutional soul.
Legislature or Annex of the Executive?
The National Assembly, constitutionally empowered to make laws and checkmate executive excesses, has in 2025 perfected the art of rubber-stamping. Bills arrive. Bills pass. Questions are discouraged. Dissent is treated as heresy.
The Tax Reform Act, scheduled to take effect in January 2026, stands as a chilling monument to this abdication. Marketed as reform, it threatens to become a fiscal guillotine, poised to decapitate struggling businesses, escalate unemployment, and send hunger to unprecedented heights.
As if this were not alarming enough, credible allegations have emerged, raised openly by a member of the House of Representatives, that the bill currently in circulation differs materially from the version actually passed by the legislature. Predictably, instead of transparency, the response has been suppression. Debate is muted. Inquiry discouraged. Accountability deferred.
While the heinous activities of Fulani jihadist groups continue to spread with the velocity of light across the length and breadth of the country, the state’s response remains lethargic, asymmetrical, and suspiciously selective.
Communities bleed. Villages vanish. Yet decisive, commensurate security action remains elusive. The impression, dangerous as it is persistent, is that some lives matter less, some regions count for less, and some crimes enjoy official amnesia.
Ironically, it took what has now been described as a “US Christmas gift” a decisive international shake-up, to disrupt the entrenched inertia and rattle the status quo. This intervention, though external, has exposed what domestic willpower failed to confront.
Across 2025, Nigerians bore the brunt of: Harsh fiscal and tax policies introduced without adequate social buffers; Subsidy removals without cushioning mechanisms; Currency instability that punished importers, manufacturers, and consumers alike; Security strategies heavy on rhetoric, light on results; and A legislature unwilling to interrogate executive power
Collectively, these policies have deepened inequality, shrunk the middle class, expanded poverty, and weakened national cohesion.
Yet, in spite of it all, we are alive.
And for that singular miracle, we return all glory to God Almighty, whose mercy sustained us when governance did not, whose grace shielded us where institutions failed, and whose hand preserved a nation wobbling on the edge of exhaustion.
As we step into this New Year, we earnestly pray for leaders with conscience and courage; policies tempered with compassion; security rooted in justice, not sentiment; and the healing of our land.
May this New Year usher in unprecedented glory, restored hope, and a rebirth of national purpose.
Amen.
