Efforts to oust Rt. Hon Otelemaba Amachree, incumbent speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, have failed, and the counterfeit mace smuggled in by the five anti-Amaechi lawmakers was broken.
Huhuonline.com reported previously that armed thugs sponsored by Hon Evans Babakaya Bipialaka on Tuesday besieged the Assembly chambers with a fake mace and bloodied the majority leader of the House, Chidi Loyd.
Despite the futile effort, the Rivers State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has issued a media advisory aimed at further fanning already-scorching political flame in the State.
“The Rivers State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has congratulated new Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Evans Babakaya Bipialaka,” the statement, signed by one Barr Monday Oyenzeowu, said.
The party said that by the unanimous election of the new speaker, the state lawmakers have once again demonstrated the unity and sense of purpose that characterized the hallowed chamber before the crisis. It expressed optimism that the normal House proceedings, which had been stalled for months now due to executive interruption, will now pick up with the new House leadership.
The PDP statement also felicitated with other principal officers of the House elected alongside Rt. Hon Evans Bipialaka and wished them smooth and successful outing. The party called for law and order from all PDP faithful and the people of Rivers State, enjoining all the lawmakers to give their maximum cooperation to the new House leadership.
“It would be recalled that due to the suspension of some recalcitrant members of the State Legislature and the stalling of House proceedings, the lawmakers reconvened this morning, Tuesday July 9, 2013 to take far-reaching decisions, including the impeachment of the former Speaker, Rt. Hon Otelemaba Dan Amachree and his team to bring the legislature back to business,” the statement added.
However, Hon. Lloyd who sustained life threatening injuries is currently hospitalised at an undisclosed hospital in Port-Harcourt.
Speaker Amachree had convened a sitting of the House to allow Deputy Governor Tele Ikuru present amendments to the 2013 Appropriation Bill to the Assembly on behalf of Governor Rotimi Amaechi. After the presentation, the Assembly was enveloped in chaos.
According to Acting Press Secretary to the deputy governor, Godswill Jumbo, the deputy governor was exiting the Assembly when thugs loyal to the anti-Amaechi lawmakers thronged the Assembly complex, chanting solidarity songs in support of Hon. Evans Bipi and going on to damage the deputy governor’s car.
According to the statement, other cars in the deputy governor’s convoy were also badly damaged while some members of Ikuru’s entourage only escapes by foot.
Reacting to the crisis, Senator representing Rivers South-East in the National Assembly, Magnus Abe described the attack on Speaker Amachree and House Leader Lloyd under the watchful eyes of the police as a shame and slap on democracy.
“He has therefore charged lovers of democracy and Nigerians to not only condemn the dastard and barbaric act but resist moves being orchestrated by those under democratic oath to make the state ungovernable,” Boma Pepple, his spokesperson said.
Senator Abe was reacting to the incident in the House of Assembly today where five members on a mission to impeach House officers resulted to physical attacks, injuring the speaker, leader and other members before the House could sit formally.
“The Senate Committee Chairman on Petroleum (Downstream) wondered the kind of democracy we were practising in the country if democratic institutions and those elected to make laws cannot be protected,” the statement added.
Senator Abe maintained that plans to throw the state into anarchy will not succeed and urged well-meaning people of Rivers to stand by Governor Amaechi whom he said was being persecuted for defending the state.
Before Monday’s sitting, 27 of the 32 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly were in support of Governor Chibuike Amaechi while five were at the other end.
Trouble started during exchange of pleasantries, when Michael Chinda and Chidi Lloyd exchanged heated words to the extent that Chinda punched Lloyd. Three of the pro-Amaechi lawmakers who were overpowered in the House left, after which some thugs came into the chambers demanding to see the speaker.
Kelechi Wogu emerged with a mace that was markedly different from the usual one in the Assembly, and Evans Bipi was made Speaker Pro-tempore to superintend over the sitting. Once it began, Hon. Martins Amaehule moved a motion for the impeachment of the speaker for ineptitude. The five members present supported it.
Chinda subsequently nominated Evans Bipi as Speaker. The motion was carried by the five members and they immediately addressed the press. The three lawmakers who left earlier returned with other Amaechi loyalists and the governor himself, who invited soldiers for protection despite that Lloyd had initially written through Clerk of the House to the state’s police commissioner.
In the ensuing free-for-all between legislators on opposite sides, Assembly staff were vacated. Chidi Lloyd was caught on camera hitting Kelechi Wogu with the mace and chasing him through the hallowed chambers. Various properties in the Assembly Complex were vandalised.
The governor left and the 27 lawmakers loyal to him sat while Deputy Governor Ikuru presented an amendment to the state’s 2013 budget, after which the House adjourned indefinitely. By this time, the governor had left the assembly.
Evans Bipi who was elected Speaker by his faction claimed that 15 members voted to impeach the speaker. He claimed that 25 members were present but eyewitnesses said otherwise.
Narrating his account of the incident, Majority leader Lloyd said;
“Well, yesterday Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Otelema Dan Amachree directed that the House be reconvened to consider an amendment to the 2013 appropriation law, which the governor had communicated to him via a letter; and as if Mr. Speaker saw what was going to happen today, he wrote a letter through the Clerk of the House to the Commissioner of Police to provide security for today’s sitting and he also wrote to the commander of 2 Amphibious Brigade who doubles as the head of the internal JTF.”
He said that when the lawmakers got to work on Tuesday morning, they were surprised to notice heavy presence of policemen, and erroneously thought it was in response to the speaker’s request.
“Shortly thereafter, I noticed that the five anti-Amaechi members were discussing in clusters and calling on their boys to come in. Initially, the policemen were searching everybody who would come into the premises. I had to even come down at the gate and trek into the premises. So after a while, we learnt that there were phone calls and the commissioner of police personally called the unit, the man in charge to allow everybody in.
“We went in as members who have not seen ourselves for sometime because of the crisis in the state. I was on my seat, without provocation. Hon. Evans Bipi came to me in the full glare of everybody on camera and started raining punches on me. As his leader, I did not react because I felt that it is something we could settle. Whatever it is, maybe I didn’t greet him also. So he continued. The speaker intervened and said, ‘what’s happening?’
“Then he reached out for the tripod that stands the camera, used it freely on me — himself and Michael Okechukwu Chinda. They flogged me to their satisfaction, I didn’t just utter a word until Hon. Ihunwo graciously asked me to run for my dear life because they have brought people with guns and of course when I looked at the gallery they were shouting ‘Who is the Chidi Lloyd? Who is the Chidi Lloyd.’
So at that point, I’m sure somebody may have reached out to the governor of the state who came in with his own security because these other policemen were there standing helplessly, watching what was going on. So he came and rescued members out of the place.
“Then after a while we heard that they had sat, that they were meeting, they were trying to meet; they had procured a fake mace to the House. So we went back and I took the mace where they were sitting, then I sustained injury as a result of the violence by Michael Chinda and Evans Bipi.
“So while I was in the hospital the speaker and other members of the House sat and heard the amendment that the governor sent was presented on his behalf by the deputy governor. Now these amendments are that the governor said he was just seeking for us to enable him take care of certain unforeseen events such as flood and all that. That is why we went to work for the state only to be dealt with in the manner that they have dealt with us. I want to use this opportunity, while in the hospital here; I have received phone calls of threat to my life and to members of my family.
“Incidentally, I’m so helpless. I don’t know who to run to. I can’t go to the commissioner of police because he is already in the arena; he’s already on the other side. I’m appealing to well-meaning Nigerians to pray for me and my family. That is the last hope we have resorted to and that we also urge the National Assembly, the senate president and the speaker of the House of Reps not to turn the other way on the events of Rivers State.
“This could lead to something that we cannot imagine. It had happened in Anambra State, people were laughing. Today, it is Rivers State; nobody knows the next state it would be. If we are practising democracy, let us please for crying out loud play by the rules. Nigerians should pray for me and come to our aid. The state is under siege. You can’t even vouch for the safety of the governor. The people are getting more bashed on a daily basis.”
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The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has offered whistleblowers between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of recovered stolen Nigerian assets held abroad for information that leads to their recovery.
Olukoyede disclosed this on Wednesday while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.
According to him, the ability of EFCC operatives to trace assets, cooperation from the judiciary and access to credible intelligence have played important roles in the commission’s success in securing non-conviction-based forfeiture orders.
He also described the EFCC as having some of the best investigators in the world and stressed the importance of protecting and encouraging whistleblowers.
He said anyone with credible information about stolen Nigerian assets taken or hidden anywhere in the world could receive between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of the recovered assets as an incentive, with payment made after the recovery.
Olukoyede further revealed that the EFCC had forfeited cash and assets worth more than $500 million to the Federal Government within the past three years.
He cited several cases involving the recovery and forfeiture of assets, including cases linked to a former Chairman of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a former Attorney-General of the Federation.
The EFCC chairman explained that the commission is legally empowered to seek the forfeiture of suspected proceeds of crime by applying to the High Court for an order. He said the process is similar to procedures used in countries such as Australia and Canada.
Olukoyede also recalled a case involving an aircraft allegedly acquired by an individual who was accused of receiving about $30 million in bribes in connection with a power project. He said the aircraft was forfeited about three months ago and had subsequently been added to the presidential air fleet.
He also referred to a property containing about 753 housing units that was forfeited from a former CBN governor, against whom the EFCC has filed criminal charges in three courts.
Speaking about the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, Olukoyede said the EFCC opened an investigation following allegations of abuse of office. He claimed that investigators traced about 57 properties to Malami and that approximately 48 of them had been forfeited.
The EFCC chairman further mentioned the forfeiture of a private university allegedly linked to a director in the Federal Ministry of Health. According to him, the official voluntarily surrendered the property following the commission’s investigation.
Olukoyede said the measures demonstrate the importance of asset tracing, international cooperation, credible intelligence and whistleblower protection in the fight against financial crime and the recovery of stolen public assets.
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has raised concerns over the growing volume of imported petrol entering Nigeria, warning that it could be forced to export more of its own production if the trend continues.
The refinery said imported Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) made up roughly 43 per cent of the petrol supplied to the Nigerian market in July. It argued that the development was creating serious difficulties for a domestic refinery with the capacity to produce enough fuel for the country.
Dangote Refinery explained that it has maintained sizeable petrol reserves since commencing operations to ensure that consumers across Nigeria have access to a reliable supply. Keeping those reserves, it noted, requires substantial expenditure on storage, transportation and working capital.
However, the refinery said the continued granting of import licences without adequate information about expected import volumes has made it increasingly difficult to determine how much petrol should be produced and stored for the local market.
The company said holding large quantities of petrol becomes financially burdensome when there is no certainty about how much imported fuel will compete for the same market. It therefore considers exporting surplus stocks a more commercially viable option than allowing them to remain in storage indefinitely.
According to the refinery, increased exports in recent months should not be interpreted as evidence that Nigeria lacks sufficient refining capacity. Instead, the exports are being driven by excess stock resulting from unpredictable import volumes.
Dangote Refinery maintained that it remains fully committed to supplying the Nigerian market and has the capacity to meet or surpass the country's petrol requirements. It said its decision to export surplus products was aimed at managing inventory efficiently and avoiding unnecessary storage and financing expenses.
The refinery also warned that market disruptions caused by excessive imports could make it harder for domestic refiners to accurately predict demand. Any resulting supply problems, it said, should not automatically be blamed on local refineries.
It urged regulators and other industry stakeholders to improve transparency around petrol imports and strengthen coordination within the downstream petroleum market.
The company argued that policies that give greater support to domestic refining would help Nigeria reduce its dependence on imported fuel, conserve foreign exchange, strengthen energy security and maximise the economic benefits of investments in local refining infrastructure.
Dangote Refinery said it remains prepared to supply the country but stressed that a more predictable and transparent market environment is necessary for efficient production and inventory management.
Business
In The Spotlight
A group of heartless carpetbaggers have captured the Nigerian state, and it appears that they, their biological and political descendants, will hold the levers of government and access to Nigeria’s commonwealth for a long time to come.
When you consider news reports of how previous and current state actors steal public funds, buy choice properties in the toniest districts of Nigeria’s major cities, acquire private jets, and even establish private universities, you wonder if some people have more than two heads, to adopt a Yoruba phrase.
Either because of an inability to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of Nigerian citizens, or by intention, the political elite have kept the people poor, causing them to depend on the largeness of heart of the same elite to meet their existential needs.
That explains why poor, downtrodden, and unconnected Nigerians eagerly collect crumbs of measly N5,000, rice, gari and whatever else the politicians offer to obtain their election votes or acquiescence after rigging the elections.
When watching an economically disadvantaged individual tell a politician who is seeking to become a legislator the good news that his wife just had a new baby, and he needed to prepare for the naming ceremony, it felt like the oppressed poor were enabling his oppressor to further oppress him.
It was like the classic case of Stockholm syndrome, of victims collaborating with their “captors” to cement the oppressive stranglehold that they already had over the state and the commonwealth of the nation, thus unwittingly arresting their own future development.
A running mate to a former governorship candidate in a Southwestern state hilariously regaled Nigerians with the story of how constituents would have raided all the alcoholic drinks in his refrigerator in the early hours of the morning, even before he woke from the hectic campaign tour of the previous day.
The political elite have practically cornered the Nigerian state for themselves, children, tribesmen and acolytes, and have devised a way to admit only those that they have found to be loyal, or pliable, into their rank of oppressors.
The oppression of the citizens of Nigeria is easily accomplished because of the high illiteracy level amongst the poor masses. The use of the weapon of illiteracy is more evident in Northern Nigeria, whose political leaders somehow turn a blind eye to the illiteracy and underdevelopment of their people.
In 2024, UNICEF revealed that out of Nigeria’s 18.3 million out-of-school children, about 12.1 million, or 66 per cent, were resident in the Northwest and Northeast regions. Yet, instead of expanding educational facilities and opportunities, some Northern governors are arranging mass weddings for children who are hardly out of their teen years.
And this is not to deny the weaponisation of illiteracy even in Obafemi Awolowo’s Western Region, which is regarded as the Athens of Nigeria, after its pre-Independence head start of free, universal and compulsory primary school education.
As if he had a premonition that Nigeria’s so-called democrats would eventually compromise education, to the detriment of the lowest and marginalised masses, that Karl Marx described as the “lumpen proletariat”, French political thinker Montesquieu argued a long time ago that “It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required.”
Western Nigeria’s free education scheme was gradually abandoned from the days of the Second Republic when some Yoruba members of President Shehu Shagari’s political party knocked it off its bottom with the argument that “qualitative” education was better than “free” education.
It is more than a shame that a free, universal and compulsory primary school education scheme was abandoned under President Shagari, who not only was a trained teacher, but had a career as a teacher before his political career.
Awolowo had warned Nigeria’s political elite with the following quip: “The children of the poor that you failed to educate will not let your children sleep peacefully.” The insecurity that currently occurs in nearly every part of Nigeria only drives Awolowo’s point home.
Probably the realm of the Nigerian republic that has been most complicit with the carpetbagger political elite is the media, whose members either serve the elites as press secretaries who kill media brushfires, or editors who either run planted stories, or spike stories that the politicians do not want published.
The media is so compromised that it can hardly perform those responsibilities assigned to it by Section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution, which are to “be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in (Chapter II of the Constitution) and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.”
Some apologists have argued on behalf of the media that the political elite have so run the economy aground that the media, which can only thrive as commercial enterprises within Nigeria’s quasi-capitalist economy, cannot stay afloat, especially with the devastating inroads that the digital media are making into their audience, advertising revenue and profit.
The absence of regional economies, the argument goes, prevents the emergence of regional newspapers that can thrive on advertising revenues from regional companies, the way it obtains in the economies of North America and Western Europe. Many Nigerian newspapers, that are essentially regional, often pretend to be national to receive advertising revenue from companies whose market is national.
Two other collaborators of the political elite are the election management agencies and the judiciary at both the national and sub-national levels of government. The conspiracy between these agencies and the political elite is almost like that of Siamese twins conjoined by the belly button.
After the election management agencies may have deliberately bungled (especially) governorship and legislative house elections, and declared false reports, the losers, who felt that they won the election, would then approach the temple of justice, with significant financial inducement to ask for justice(?).
From that point on, the justice that both contestants hope to corruptly obtain could swing according to the heft of the naira in the Ghana-must-go bag that they will be hauling into the chambers of the denizens of the corrupted judiciary.
Thus, the “award” of electoral justice is “a matter of cash”, to quote Basi, the protagonist of “Basi & Co”, the television sitcom produced by environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who himself was denied justice from the judiciary that served the regime of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most notorious military dictator.
In Nigeria, the lines of separation of powers that demarcate the duties of the three arms of government –the legislative, executive and judiciary– and the checks and balances that empower each arm to check the others have become almost irredeemably blurred.
As legislators use constituency projects as a ploy to carry out the functions of the executive, the president issues executive orders that are essentially legislative in nature. Though the judiciary does not perform the duties of the other arms, it fails to check them as it indulgently winks at their excesses.
If those who are regarded as Nigeria’s political elite really know what is in their enlightened self-interest and would like to protect the future of their descendants from what Thomas Hobbes described as a short, brutish and nasty existence, they will use their current privilege to correct the evil they have done to Nigerians.
They must urgently redeem the future before it delivers violence against their children.
By Lekan Sote
In The Spotlight
Lagos alone is worth more than Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda and Mauritius combined.
Let that sink in.
With an economy of N41.17tn — about $102bn in 2021 — Lagos State dwarfed the entire gross domestic products of four countries. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa sit on oil wealth that funds nations. Ogun, Anambra and Imo churn out goods, services and commerce that would make small economies jealous.
By the numbers, Nigeria’s states are giants.
But walk the streets of Lagos, and you will still find mothers cooking with firewood. Drive through Port Harcourt, and you will see communities drinking water polluted by the same oil that makes the state’s GDP glow. Visit Umuahia, Abeokuta, or Minna and ask the average trader what “trillion-naira economy” means to her dinner table.
The answer is: nothing.
That viral video telling you “10 Nigerian states are richer than countries” is both true and a lie. True, because the 2021 BudgIT figures don’t lie — Lagos at N41.17trn, Rivers at N7.96trn, and so on. A lie, because those numbers are GDP, not prosperity. They measure how much economic activity happens _in_ a place, not how much of it reaches the people who live there.
A country with $7,778 GDP per capita, like Botswana, will still feed its citizens better than a state with $102bn in total output but $2,058 per capita, like Nigeria. A state can host a port, an oil rig, and a tech hub, yet fail to build a hospital that works.
So, the real question isn’t “Which state is bigger than which country?”
The real question, and the one our governors should lose sleep over, is this: When your economy is bigger than a nation, why are your people still living like they have nothing?
In this edition of The Bottomline, we follow the money from GDP to the gutter — and ask why Nigeria’s trillion-naira states have not become trillion-naira lives.
The viral numbers are not new. They were lifted straight from BudgIT’s 2022 State of States report and reflected 2021 estimates: Lagos at N41.17tn, followed by Rivers at N7.96tn, Akwa Ibom at N7.77tn, Imo at N7.68tn, Delta at N6.19tn, Anambra at N5.14tn, Ondo at N5.10tn, Ogun at N5.03tn, Bayelsa at N4.63tn and Niger at N4.58tn.
The trick is in the timing. To pitch those 2021 figures against 2025 country GDPs is statistical fraud. Nigeria has since rebased. The NBS moved the base year from 2010 to 2019, and the whole map shifted. Lagos itself has moved on: its 2025 _Lagos Economic Development Update_ puts the state at N43.06tn in 2023, with forecasts of N54.77tn for 2024 and N66.47tn for 2025. Those are projections, not fresh NBS post-rebasing observations, but they tell you the direction: up.
There is no debate that Lagos is Nigeria’s economic engine. From a colonial port to federal capital until 1991, it never lost momentum. Today, trade, manufacturing, ports, telecoms, tech, entertainment, real estate and finance all cluster in just 3,345 square kilometres. Compare that footprint to Botswana’s 581,730 sq km, Namibia’s 825,615 sq km, Rwanda’s 26,338 sq km, and Mauritius’ 2,040 sq km. Yet in 2021, Lagos’ $102 billion economy was several times larger than Botswana’s $19.9bn, Namibia’s $15.1bn, Rwanda’s $16.4bn, and Mauritius’ $16.2bn, according to 2025 World Bank figures.
That comparison is legitimate. The conclusion people draw from it is not.
GDP tells you how much value was produced in a territory. It does not tell you who owns it, who earns it, or whether the roads work, the lights stay on, or the hospital has drugs.
A state can run a trillion-naira economy and still have mothers boiling water on firewood. A country can have a smaller GDP and deliver a better life. Look at the per capita numbers: Botswana at $7,778, Namibia at $5,309, Mauritius at $11,819. Nigeria sits at about $2,058. Even Rwanda, at just $773 per capita, has pushed its $3-a-day poverty rate down to 38.6 per cent — proof that size is not destiny.
The oil states expose the fraud most brutally. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa rank high because petroleum inflates their GDP. But oil wealth does not flow into state coffers in equal measure, and it certainly does not flow into household wallets. BudgIT’s own fiscal sustainability index proves this. In 2022, Rivers topped overall fiscal performance despite Lagos having the biggest economy. A big economy without revenue discipline, jobs, and services is just a billboard.
Nigeria does not have a GDP problem. We have a translation problem.
We have pockets of enormous economic power. Lagos. Rivers. Akwa Ibom. Ogun. Anambra. Delta. The output is real. What is missing is the bridge between that output and ordinary life.
Until economic activity creates real jobs, until IGR rises and addiction to federal allocation falls, until infrastructure supports production instead of strangling it, those trillion-naira figures will remain a cruel joke.
So let the video go viral. Let Lagos be “bigger than Botswana”.
But governors, commissioners, and citizens should ask only one question:
If my state can outproduce a country, why can’t it out-deliver a decent life for the people who call it home?
Until we answer that, we are not rich. We are just big.
By Raphael Mbamalu