There are deaths that become statistics, and there are deaths that should force a nation to interrogate itself. The tragedy at Okari Jetty in Okrika, Rivers State, belongs to the latter category.

At least 37 people reportedly died after inhaling toxic fumes while allegedly siphoning petroleum products from an illegal tapping point in the early hours of Thursday. Others were reported missing, while some who escaped suffered serious respiratory complications. The police have confirmed the deaths, although the precise casualty figure remains under investigation.

It is easy to write the headline: oil thieves die stealing petroleum products. Factually, that may describe what happened. But morally and socially, it does not tell the whole story.

Oil theft is a crime. Pipeline vandalism is dangerous. Illegal bunkering costs Nigeria enormous revenue, damages the environment, threatens legitimate economic activity and sometimes finances sophisticated criminal networks. Nothing about poverty makes stealing crude oil lawful, and nothing about deprivation makes puncturing pipelines safe.

But after condemning the crime, Nigeria must summon the courage to ask a harder question. Why are so many young people prepared to risk death stealing the resource beneath their own communities? That question does not excuse criminality. It interrogates the environment in which criminality flourishes.

For decades, the Niger Delta has carried one of Nigeria’s most painful contradictions. It produces the resource that built much of the country’s modern economy, yet many of its communities still struggle with poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation and inadequate infrastructure. Crude worth millions of dollars travels beneath soil where families struggle to escape poverty. The wealth moves. Too often, opportunity does not. That is the paradox that makes the Okrika deaths more than another story about oil theft.

These young people reportedly went onto the water in locally made boats to siphon petroleum products. They knew the activity was illegal. Surely, they also knew it was dangerous. Yet they went, and some never returned. That should disturb us. Human beings do not gamble with death unless they believe the risk is worth it.

Across the Niger Delta, illegal refining and oil theft have grown into an underground economy involving far more than desperate youths with containers and wooden boats. There are financiers, buyers, transporters and sophisticated networks, and there are people who profit enormously without ever inhaling fumes beside a pipeline. That distinction matters, because whenever tragedy occurs, it is usually those at the bottom of the chain whose bodies we count. The poor young man on the creek becomes the face of oil theft, while the wealthy beneficiaries of the illicit economy frequently remain invisible.

Nigeria’s response must therefore be twofold. First, the state must continue to protect oil infrastructure and prosecute those involved in organised theft. A country cannot surrender strategic national assets to criminal enterprise. Oil theft deprives every tier of government of revenue that should fund education, healthcare, infrastructure and development, and it devastates the environment in the same communities where it occurs.

But enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. If authorities seal one illegal tapping point while hundreds of unemployed young people still see the creeks as their only economic opportunity, another will eventually appear. Security can protect pipelines. It cannot manufacture hope. That requires governance.

For decades, enormous sums have supposedly been committed to developing the Niger Delta. There is the Niger Delta Development Commission, the Ministry responsible for regional development, the 13 per cent derivation principle, intervention programmes, oil company community development initiatives and host community provisions under the Petroleum Industry Act. Yet tragedies such as Okrika compel an uncomfortable audit of what these interventions have actually produced for ordinary people. Where has the money gone? How many young people have acquired skills capable of providing genuine alternatives to illegal bunkering? How many communities have seen the environmental restoration repeatedly promised them?

These are not questions for Abuja alone. Political leaders from the Niger Delta must answer them too: governors, local government chairmen, federal and state legislators, community leaders, development agencies, traditional institutions and oil companies. This tragedy cannot forever be explained as something done to the Niger Delta by outsiders. The region has produced powerful politicians, ministers, governors and business leaders, and it has received substantial public resources. Accountability must therefore travel in every direction.

There is another uncomfortable dimension. We must resist the temptation to dehumanise the dead because they allegedly died committing a crime. They were still human beings. Somebody’s sons. Perhaps somebody’s fathers, husbands or brothers. Their families will not mourn statistics or “suspected oil thieves”. They will mourn names. Condemning what they were doing should not stop us asking why young people keep choosing such dangerous livelihoods.

The Okrika tragedy therefore presents Nigeria with two truths that must coexist. Oil theft is criminal and must be stopped. But the socioeconomic conditions that make illegal oil activity attractive to thousands of young people must also be confronted. Choosing only one truth guarantees failure. Treat every participant merely as a criminal and another generation will replace those arrested. Treat criminality merely as poverty and oil theft will continue destroying the economy. Nigeria needs enforcement with development, accountability with opportunity, and pipeline security with human security.

Oil has flowed from the Niger Delta for decades, helping finance the Nigerian state. The tragedy is that people living closest to that wealth still risk death trying to take a fraction of it illegally. Thirty-seven reported deaths should therefore be more than another grim headline. They should be a question addressed to the Nigerian conscience. How does a country become so rich beneath the ground, yet leave some of its citizens feeling so poor above it that they are willing to gamble their lives beside a pipeline? Until we answer that question, we may secure the oil wells. But we will not have secured the people living beside them.

Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D.
A child outside the classroom today is not merely an educational statistic. He or she is a question mark hovering over Nigeria’s tomorrow. That is why the latest figures from Kano State should trouble the whole country, not just one state.
A recently released survey puts the number of out-of-school children in Kano at 875,593. Pause over that figure: eight hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and ninety-three children. That is not an education problem alone. It is a national emergency unfolding quietly in plain sight.
Nigeria already carries one of the world’s heaviest burdens of children outside formal education. UNICEF estimates that 10.5 million Nigerian children aged five to fourteen are out of school, with attendance rates particularly troubling in parts of the North.
Yet numbers have a peculiar capacity to numb us. Ten million becomes a statistic. Eight hundred thousand becomes another headline. But behind every number is a child: a boy who should be learning mathematics, a girl who should be discovering science, a child who should be reading literature, developing social skills, asking questions and imagining possibilities beyond the circumstances of his or her birth.
Instead, millions are growing up beyond the reach of the classroom, and Nigeria should be frightened by what that means.
Education is not simply about obtaining certificates. The classroom is one of society’s most important instruments for preparing children for citizenship, productivity and independence. It is where children acquire literacy and numeracy, where horizons expand, where poverty can begin to lose its hereditary character.
Take that opportunity away from millions of children and the consequences do not disappear; they merely resurface elsewhere: in unemployment, in poverty, in child marriage, in vulnerability to crime, in susceptibility to extremist recruitment, in poor health outcomes, in low productivity, and ultimately in insecurity.
The child Nigeria refuses to educate today does not vanish. We meet that child again tomorrow, only under harder circumstances.
This is why the Kano numbers should force a broader conversation. The reasons children remain outside school are complex. Poverty is undoubtedly central: for a desperately poor family, sending a child to school can compete directly with the immediate need for another pair of hands to support household survival.
But poverty is not the only explanation. Cultural attitudes play a part, as does insecurity. Schools and teachers are often inadequate. Many children are enrolled instead in Qur’anic educational systems that operate outside conventional schooling. Some girls leave school prematurely because of marriage. And some parents simply do not appreciate the transformative value of formal education.
A serious response must address all of these realities rather than imagine that building more classrooms alone will solve the problem.
There is also an uncomfortable constitutional question. Nigeria’s Constitution declares that government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy and provide free education at different levels when practicable, and the Universal Basic Education framework goes further by making basic education free and compulsory. But what does “compulsory” mean when millions of children remain outside school? A law without effective enforcement gradually becomes an aspiration rather than a guarantee.
Government has responsibilities. So do parents. A parent should not be permitted to casually deny a child basic education simply because that parent does not consider schooling important. But enforcement without addressing poverty would be equally unjust. A family cannot fairly be punished for failing to send a child to school where there is no accessible school, no teacher, no security, or where hunger makes attendance practically impossible.
Government must first make compliance realistic. That means schools within reach of communities, qualified teachers, safe classrooms, school feeding where necessary, targeted financial support for the poorest families, and special attention to the education of girls.
It also means finding a more intelligent relationship between conventional education and Qur’anic schooling in northern Nigeria. This should not become a false choice between religion and education. A child can receive religious instruction and still acquire mathematics, English, science, technology and the other skills necessary to function in a modern economy. Integration, rather than confrontation, offers the better path.
But there is a larger economic issue Nigeria cannot escape. What kind of economy are we building if millions of the children who will constitute tomorrow’s workforce cannot read, write or perform basic calculations? The global economy is moving towards artificial intelligence, automation, advanced manufacturing and digital services. Other countries are preparing their children to write software, build robots and compete in knowledge industries. Nigeria cannot seriously aspire to become a major economic power while millions of its future citizens remain outside classrooms.
Population without education is not automatically an asset. It can become a liability. Nigeria often celebrates its enormous youthful population as a demographic advantage, but a demographic dividend does not arise simply because a country has many young people. Those young people must be educated, healthy, skilled and economically productive. Otherwise, a demographic dividend can become a demographic crisis.
That is why the 875,593 children identified in Kano should not be regarded merely as Kano’s problem. They are Nigeria’s children, and the solution requires federal, state and local governments, traditional rulers, religious leaders, communities, parents and civil society working together.
We need measurable targets. How many children will return to school this year? Which communities have the highest numbers? Why are children dropping out? How many new teachers are required? What interventions are working? And who is accountable when targets are missed? We cannot keep announcing millions of out-of-school children as though we were reporting rainfall.
Every year spent outside the classroom makes recovery harder. Every child lost to illiteracy represents potential deliberately wasted.
Nigeria’s greatest resource is not beneath the ground. It is sitting in our homes, walking through our communities and playing along our streets. Oil will eventually diminish in importance. Human capital will not.
The question, therefore, is not whether Nigeria can afford to educate these children. It is whether Nigeria can afford not to. Because the children we leave outside the classroom today will inherit the country tomorrow, and the Nigeria they build will depend substantially on what we taught them when we had the chance.
Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D

There is something fundamentally wrong when citizens have to look outside their country for an assessment of how transparently their own government manages their money. That, more than the verdict itself, should trouble Nigerians about the latest Fiscal Transparency Report from the United States Department of State.

The report says Nigeria failed to meet America’s minimum fiscal transparency requirements for 2025. Again. For the second consecutive year, Africa’s most populous country has fallen below the threshold Washington sets for transparency in the management and disclosure of public finances.

Ordinarily, this could provoke the familiar argument about sovereignty. Who appointed the United States examiner of Nigeria’s fiscal conduct? Those questions are legitimate, but they can also become convenient distractions. The more important question is not whether America has the right to grade Nigeria’s books. It is whether Nigerians themselves can sufficiently see, understand and interrogate how their own money is raised, allocated and spent. That is the question that matters.

The assessment was not entirely dismissive of Nigeria. It acknowledged that the Federal Government made its enacted budget and end of year report publicly available, including online, and that information on debt obligations, including major state owned enterprise debt, was available to the public. It also acknowledged the legal framework around Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund. These are important positives, but they were not enough.

The report raised concerns about whether Nigeria’s budget documents presented a complete picture of government revenues and expenditures, and whether actual figures corresponded with what had been approved. It flagged the timely publication of the executive budget proposal, questioned the independence of the supreme audit institution, and identified shortcomings in procurement disclosure. Taken together, these point to something larger than bookkeeping. They point to a transparency deficit.

The Presidency has responded. Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Media and Public Communication, cautioned against treating the American report as a comprehensive assessment of Nigeria’s public financial management system. That qualification is fair; the report measures Nigeria against criteria established for America’s own purposes and should not be elevated into an infallible judgement. The Presidency also points to ongoing reforms, including the Open Treasury initiative, debt disclosures, procurement reforms and stronger digital systems for accessing fiscal information. Those efforts deserve acknowledgement.

But here is the problem. The existence of transparency mechanisms is not the same thing as transparency. A government may publish hundreds of documents and still leave citizens unable to determine how much money was received, where it went, and who benefited from public contracts. Transparency is not measured by the volume of information government releases, but by how clearly it allows citizens to follow their money.

The national budget is not merely an accounting document. It is perhaps the most important statement of government priorities in any fiscal year. Every figure represents a choice; money allocated to one project is money unavailable for another. A billion naira spent on an administrative convenience cannot simultaneously build classrooms, equip a hospital or fund security.

That is why budget transparency is inseparable from democratic accountability. The money belongs to the people; government merely administers it. Citizens have a right to know not only what government intends to spend but what it actually spends, where revenues originate, where they go, and why approved budgets change during implementation. They should know who receives government contracts, and have access to audit institutions independent enough to interrogate those expenditures without fear or favour.

This is where the transparency conversation must move beyond rhetoric. Successive governments have announced impressive initiatives for opening the public purse: budget portals, treasury portals, procurement platforms, Freedom of Information legislation, digital payment systems. Yet controversies over opaque expenditure, duplicated projects and poorly explained fiscal decisions continue to surface. The question is no longer whether mechanisms exist, but whether they work.

There is another reason Nigeria should take fiscal transparency seriously: it has economic value. Investors care about the predictability of public finances. Creditors care about debt disclosure. Opacity carries a price; it increases suspicion, weakens investor confidence, creates opportunities for corruption, and makes difficult economic reforms harder to sell to the population.

That last point is especially important today. Nigerians have endured painful economic reforms, from higher fuel prices to higher transportation and food costs, and enormous pressure on household incomes. When government asks citizens to make sacrifices, it assumes a corresponding obligation to show it is managing those sacrifices transparently. Fiscal transparency becomes more important, not less, during periods of economic difficulty. People asked to tighten their belts are entitled to see what government is doing with its own. That is a question of trust, one of the most valuable currencies in governance.

The Presidency is right that Nigeria should not treat the U.S. Fiscal Transparency Report as the complete story of its public financial management. But neither should government use that qualification to diminish the weaknesses identified. The appropriate response is not indignation, nor defensiveness. It is improvement.

Publish budget proposals early enough for meaningful public scrutiny. Make implementation reports detailed and timely. Explain significant deviations between appropriations and actual expenditure. Strengthen the independence and capacity of the Auditor General. Make procurement contracts readily accessible. Ensure citizens can trace expenditure from appropriation to delivery, in language comprehensible not merely to accountants and economists but to the citizens whose money is being spent.

Ultimately, Nigeria does not need to become fiscally transparent because Washington demands it. It needs to become transparent because Nigerians deserve it. The true audience for government’s accounts is not the U.S. State Department; it is the Nigerian taxpayer, the market woman paying levies, the worker whose salary is taxed, the commuter paying indirectly through fuel costs. They are the shareholders of the Nigerian state, and shareholders have a right to inspect the books.

The greatest mistake government could make would be to reduce this latest report to another Nigeria versus America argument. It is not. It is about Nigeria and Nigerians. America’s assessment may be debated, its methodology questioned. But the principle cannot reasonably be disputed: public money demands public accountability.

Until Nigerians can easily follow public money from revenue to appropriation, from appropriation to expenditure, and from expenditure to tangible results, the transparency deficit will remain. Not because America says so. But because democracy demands otherwise.

Dr Lemmy Ughegbe, FIMC, CMC

Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com

WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645