— António Guterres, Secretary -General
On the Occasion of Nelson Mandela International Day

Today, we honour the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela — a towering figure of peace, reconciliation, justice, and human rights.

This year’s theme reminds us that Madiba was also a clear-eyed champion of poverty eradication and equality.

He knew that ending poverty is not an act of charity.
It’s an act of justice.

And a duty that belongs to us all.

We live in a world where inequality is becoming entrenched.

Where wealth accrues disproportionally for a lucky few — while many struggle to afford basic needs like food, water, shelter and education.

And where years of poverty-fighting progress have been stalled by conflict, economic shocks and climate disasters.

Like Madiba, we can all play a part in building fair economies and inclusive societies.
By investing in decent work, universal health coverage, quality education and social protection systems.

By scaling-up financing and reforming the international financial architecture, so developing countries get the funds and debt relief they need.

And by building economies rooted in renewable energy — for people and planet.
I have always been inspired by Madiba’s life and belief that when people stand together, nothing is impossible.

The future is in our hands.

Today and every day, let’s carry forward Mandela’s vision of a just, inclusive, equal and peaceful world.

By Olu Fasan

Twice in recent presidential election cycles, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former one-term president, allowed speculations to spread like wildfire that he would seek the presidency again. But twice, without as much as a whimper, the speculations fizzled out into thin air like a puff of wind. Recently, Jonathan issued an angry rebuttal to an allegation that he was offered N500bn to run against Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, to split the South-South votes. But such allegations only arose because of the cowardly manner Jonathan has pursued what’s truly his ambition to become Nigeria’s president again after failing to secure a second term in 2015, the only incumbent president, so far, to suffer that fate.

Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, former President Jonathan told supporters who urged him to run again: “The political process is ongoing. Just watch out!” Later, a group of pastoralists and Almajirai reportedly bought Jonathan APC’s N100mn nomination forms. Then, he held a long closed-door meeting with APC’s then national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, presumably to see if the party would field him as its candidate. Leaving aside that it was APC that dislodged him from the presidency in 2015, Jonathan’s overture to the party was utterly naïve as the party would have to pick him over Bola Tinubu, APC’s co-founder, who strongly believed it was his turn to be president (“Emi lokan”), given he “made” Muhammadu Buhari president in 2015. Well, Jonathan abandoned his not-too-subtle, yet craven, attempt to join the race.

Fast forward to 2026, a year before the 2027 presidential poll. Speculations were rife again that Jonathan would run for the presidency. Earlier in October 2025, Professor Jerry Gana, a PDP chieftain and former information minister, said: “I can confirm that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will contest the presidential election in 2027 as PDP candidate.” Jonathan did nothing to dissociate himself from Gana’s claim. Instead, he held closed-door meetings with some party leaders, including Senator David Mark, the national chairman of the African Democratic Congress, ADC. On May 7 this year, when a group of supporters called on Jonathan at his Abuja Office and urged him to run, he said: “Presidential race is not a computer game. But I heard you. And I will consult widely.” Then, a few weeks later, a faction of the PDP, led by Tanimu Turaki, nominated Jonathan as its presidential candidate by proxy, sending his “Certificate of Return” through Fred Agbedi, a Jonathan ally.

Of course, a certificate of return from the Turaki-led faction of the PDP is worth nothing if the faction’s legal status is still in doubt, as it is. The Supreme Court verdict in April this year created more ambiguity than clarity. While the court nullified the Ibadan convention that produced the Turaki-led national working committee of the PDP, it also upheld the earlier suspension of the key members that form the leadership of the faction backed by Nyesom Wike, indicating that those members lacked any standing to constitute the party’s NWC. Thus, technically, neither the Turaki-led faction nor the Wike-backed group is PDP’s recognised leadership. However, INEC, allegedly under Wike’s overbearing influence, has sided with his faction, recognising the faction’s NWC as PDP’s bona fide leadership on its website. So, the Turaki faction’s nomination of Jonathan as its presidential candidate is, without a Supreme Court verdict favouring the faction, purely academic.

But where does Jonathan himself stand? Well, he wants to be president again. Surely, he would like to emulate his good friend John Mahama of Ghana, who, after being defeated for re-election, returned to office for a non-consecutive second term. Needless to mention Donald Trump who also came back to power after a defeat. Truth is, Jonathan is still licking the wounds of his 2015 defeat and would like to redeem his bruised image. But he’s not Mahama and certainly not Trump, both of whom courageously took their destinies in the hands and drove the process leading to their comeback. Some would say Nigeria is not Ghana or the US. True, but it’s more about personality than national culture. After all, the same Nigeria produced the likes of Tinubu, whose philosophy, for good or bad, is “Who dares wins”!

Now, let’s be clear. Jonathan could legitimately have said he would stay out of partisan politics and not run for the presidency again. But that’s not what he’s been saying. Rather, he’s been telling people: “I’m not ruling out running, but I want to consult widely.” But do Nigerians, especially those who are invested in him, not deserve to know the outcome of the consultations? Or was Jonathan just stringing people along? Was he simply enjoying the buzz of being discussed as a likely presidential contender, knowing there’s no substance to it? Or how do we reconcile Jonathan’s purported consultations and closed-door meetings with his wife’s categorical statement that they would never return to Aso Rock?

In May last year, Patience Jonathan said: “I’m not going back to the villa, if you call me, I will not go.” She added that she would campaign “vigorously” for President Tinubu’s re-election, saying it would be a betrayal not to support Tinubu’s re-election, given how the Tinubus supported the Jonathans when they were in power. Except President Jonathan wanted to defy his wife, which most would consider very unlikely, he should have been equally categorical about not running for the presidency. But Jonathan’s public silence yet behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings fuelled speculations that he was keen to enter the race. He either lacks the courage to admit the truth and lance the boil on his so-called ambition, or he simply enjoys the attention the speculations gave him. Either way, it’s the trivialisation of politics; serious politicians elsewhere are more forthright about their politics and political aspirations.

Interestingly, there are no legal or constitutional barriers to Jonathan seeking the presidency again. In 2015, a Court of Appeal held that a 2018 constitutional amendment that prevents any president or governor from being sworn in a third time could not apply retroactively to Jonathan; in 2023, a Federal High Court in Yenegoa followed the Court of Appeal ruling and dismissed a suit seeking to ban Jonathan from joining that year’s presidential race; and in May this year, a Federal High Court in Abuja confirmed, based on the previous rulings, that Jonathan was eligible to run for the presidency in 2027. So, the only obstacles to Jonathan running for the presidency next year are political and personal, not legal or constitutional!

But in politics, Jonathan is not a fighter. Yet, thanks mostly to godfatherism, serendipity and happenstance, he has held six high political offices that, put together, no other Nigerian has occupied: deputy governor; acting governor; governor; vice-president, acting president; president! Of course, Jonathan ran for president in his own right in 2011 but under the shadows of godfathers like former President Obasanjo. The only time Jonathan attempted to be his own man was when he allegedly breached a “gentleman’s agreement” not to run in 2015 and did so. He lost that election. However, in his memoirs The Transition Hours, Jonathan blamed President Barack Obama for his defeat, saying Obama was determined to remove him from office. “They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the elections.” Jonathan effectively accused the American government of regime change. But why did he not speak out at the time? In a world where Iran is defying America, where Ukraine is fighting Russia to a standstill, Jonathan gave the impression that Nigeria under his leadership would simply cave in to superpower threat and bullying.

But as it was with geopolitics, so it is with domestic politics. Jonathan is extremely weak. His phlegmatism is not a virtue; it’s a weakness bordering on cowardice! Just as well that, after 2027, his name will never again come up as a likely candidate in any presidential election in Nigeria! Good riddance to an utter distraction!

*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.

By Ken Harries Esq

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others,” observed Jonathan Swift. Every generation encounters leaders who solve today’s problems, but far fewer produce leaders who design tomorrow’s possibilities. The true measure of visionary leadership lies in the ability to recognise opportunities long before they become obvious, to imagine possibilities where others see only limitations, and to lay foundations whose full significance may not be appreciated until years later.

History’s greatest builders are remembered not merely for the projects they completed, but for the future they envisioned before anyone else believed it was possible.

The true measure of visionary leadership lies not in the number of projects conceived, but in the ability to understand how seemingly unrelated sectors of the economy can reinforce one another to produce lasting prosperity. That was the deeper story behind Senator Godswill Akpabio’s presentation at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba in April 2012.

Many remember the address for its most celebrated proposal—the Ibom Deep Seaport. Yet the speech revealed something far more profound: a philosophy of development that viewed infrastructure not as isolated monuments, but as interconnected instruments of economic prosperity and social transformation.

That philosophy permeated virtually every aspect of the presentation. It was evident in aviation. At a time when aircraft maintenance in Nigeria depended almost entirely on foreign facilities, Akpabio announced plans for what he described as West Africa’s first Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility alongside the Akwa Ibom International Airport. Once again, the objective was not merely to construct another public facility. It was to retain within Nigeria the economic value, technical expertise, and skilled employment that routinely left the country whenever aircraft were serviced abroad.

Long before expressions such as local value addition, industrial self-reliance, and reducing capital flight became part of mainstream policy discussions across Africa, those ideas had already found practical expression in the development strategy he articulated in Asaba.

Even his brief remarks on state policing now possess remarkable contemporary relevance. Years before today’s broad national consensus that Nigeria’s security architecture requires fundamental reform, he argued that governors could not reasonably be held fully accountable for security while operational control remained centralised. Over time, national debate has steadily moved closer to the position he advanced.

Vision, however, should never be mistaken for perfection. Every transformative project encounters obstacles—financing constraints, regulatory hurdles, political transitions, implementation delays, and public controversy. The Ibom Deep Seaport has experienced each of these realities. When Governor Udom Emmanuel renamed the project from the Ibaka Deep Seaport to the Ibom Deep Seaport, many perceived the change as accompanying a relocation of the proposed site from Ibaka in Mbo Local Government Area to a coastal location in Ibeno Local Government Area. Government maintained that the final location emerged from rigorous technical evaluation, but the episode illustrated how even the most carefully conceived projects can become entangled in local sensitivities and competing interests.

Yet the endurance of the underlying idea is precisely what makes the original vision remarkable. Governments changed. Political actors came and went. Debates arose and subsided. But the central economic concept endured. The Federal Executive Council approved the project’s business case in 2015, and successive administrations have continued to advance it under the Ibom Deep Seaport name. Good ideas possess a resilience that often outlives the administrations that first conceive them.

Therein lies perhaps the greatest lesson of the Asaba address. Vision is not measured by how loudly it is proclaimed, but by how far ahead it sees. History’s greatest builders were rarely those who merely responded to the demands of their own generation and time. They were those who imagined opportunities others could not yet see and laid foundations whose full value would only be appreciated years later.

Nigeria’s development story will ultimately belong not only to those who completed great projects, but also to those who first conceived them. The true legacy of public leadership is not merely the structures that rise from the ground, but the ideas that continue to shape a nation’s future long after the speeches have ended and the applause has faded. Judged by that standard, the Akpabio’s Asaba address remains an enduring lesson in visionary leadership.

Ken Harries Esq is an Abuja based development Communication Strategist