Leadership and learning are indispensable _ John F. Kennedy
Lagos, Nigeria
Joined January 2013
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Prince Ononuju retweeted
1961: Nigeria was the first African nation to break diplomatic relations with France, and the day was 5 January 1961.
That was not a quiet diplomatic quarrel. That was Nigeria standing up in front of the whole world and saying, enough is enough.
France had gone into the Sahara Desert and exploded an atomic bomb, the third one, on 27 December 1960. They called it Gerboise Rouge.
Nigeria had warned them before the test. African leaders had warned them. The people had warned them. The fear was simple and real.
The harmattan wind could carry radioactive fallout south, into Nigeria and into other African countries, and poison the air, the water, the soil, and the bodies of innocent people who had never asked for any bomb.
France tested anyway.
Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa did not hide behind a statement.
On the evening of Dec. 28th 1960, The French Ambassador, Raymond Offroy, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told of the Nigerian Government's “concern” over France's explosion of an atomic bomb in the Sahara, then January 5th, 1961, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa summoned the French ambassador in Lagos, Raymond Offroy, and told him face to face that Nigeria was cutting diplomatic relations with France.
He personally handed him the letter. In that letter, Balewa spoke of the greatest resentment at the unalloyed intransigence of the French Government and the utter disregard with which that Government had treated the feelings of Nigerians on the question of atomic tests in the Sahara Desert.
Then came the part the French would never forget. The ambassador and his embassy staff were given only forty eight hours to leave Nigeria. Forty eight hours. And to make the message even sharper, Nigeria barred French planes and vessels from using Nigerian airports and ports, cancelled French transit rights through Nigeria, banned French ships from its coastal waters, and froze French assets in the country.
Think about that. This was 1961. Nigeria had only become independent on 1 October 1960. Barely three months into independence, a young African country looked one of the most powerful nations on earth in the eye and said, if you will not respect African lives, you will not enjoy African friendship.
That is why this story still matters. It was not only about a bomb in the desert. It was about dignity. It was about a new nation refusing to be treated as if its people did not matter. It was Nigeria saying that African lives are not expendable, and that no friendship is worth the silence that allows your neighbour to be poisoned.
Nigeria paid a price for that courage. Relations with France stayed broken until 1965. But history remembers who spoke first, and who acted first.
On 5 January 1961, Nigeria spoke, and Nigeria acted.
Let us never forget that this country once had the courage to stand alone for Africa.
If this history moved you, drop a comment and share it, so the next generation will know what Nigeria once stood for.
Now You Know
Prince Ononuju retweeted
"A bridge does not exist to choose sides. It exists because the sides need to connect. The moment it becomes an extension of one side, it ceases to be a bridge and becomes a barrier."
Ironically, the person who builds the bridge is often the first to be forgotten once others begin crossing it.
#BridgeParadox
Prince Ononuju retweeted
The US Midterms and the Deeper Crisis of American Political Legitimacy - My Take
The outcome of the 2026 US midterm elections reinforces a proposition I have held for some time. The rise of Trump and MAGA was never simply about one man, his personality or political ideology. It represented something more profound, a rejection of the established political and economic elites and a challenge to the institutional arrangements that have historically sustained American power.
This includes the military-industrial complex (MIC), the financial-industrial complex (FIC) and the technology-industrial complex (TIC), whose influence over public policy, capital allocation, national security and increasingly the information environment raises fundamental questions about democratic accountability.
The midterm results are, on the surface, a repudiation of Trump and the Republican establishment. However, the underlying electoral discontent suggests something more complicated. Americans remain deeply dissatisfied with the direction of their country, the cost of living, the responsiveness of their institutions and the capacity of either political party to address their concerns.
We should be careful not to interpret every vote against Trump as an endorsement of the establishment he originally challenged. Nor should we assume that a Democratic electoral victory necessarily represents renewed confidence in the traditional governing consensus.
Therein lies the paradox.
Trump successfully mobilised resentment against an establishment that many Americans believed had ceased to represent their economic and social interests. Yet gaining control of government is different from transforming the institutional structures against which that resentment was directed.
Once in office, an anti-establishment movement becomes responsible for governing within those same structures. It must reconcile the expectations of its supporters with the realities of economic management, corporate influence, fiscal constraints, national security and international obligations.
The protest movement becomes the government, and the government eventually becomes the object of protest.
The more consequential issue, therefore, is not whether MAGA survives Trump. Political movements built around grievances that predate their leaders rarely disappear simply because those leaders leave the stage.
The central question is whether the movement can evolve beyond personal allegiance into a coherent governing philosophy, supported by institutions, capable leadership and a credible economic settlement.
MAGA is not necessarily a unified ideological project. Its coalition contains competing perspectives on trade, immigration, fiscal policy, corporate power, America's international obligations and the appropriate role of government. Trump's personal authority has helped accommodate these contradictions without necessarily resolving them.
What happens when that authority is no longer the organising principle?⁷
The Democrats face a related challenge. Winning elections on the strength of public dissatisfaction with Trump is not the same as securing a durable mandate for an alternative political and economic settlement. Opposition can produce electoral victories without necessarily producing a governing consensus.
This brings me to what I consider the defining issue.
How does America govern effectively in a post-Trump era without an established centre of gravity?
That centre need not be the traditional political centre. Indeed, the erosion of confidence in established institutions suggests that simply restoring the old arrangements may be insufficient.
A credible alternative would require a renewed settlement around economic opportunity, institutional accountability, the distribution of wealth and power, technological governance and America's role in a changing global order.
1/2
Prince Ononuju retweeted
That Is Not Faith.
"Dress and act like your miracle before it happens". Oh really. You are having delay in childbirth and you are told to go and buy baby things and keep, to talk like a woman with a baby already, in other words, act your miracle. That, my dear sister is not faith and it has no effect on the occurrence of miracle.
You are poor, you can't afford to travel from Kubwa to Maitama every Sunday for worship in a porsche church without emptying your pocket, but you do it anyway because you have to act your miracle. That is not faith.
A poor man behaving like a rich man in anticipation of becoming rich is not fait. That's why broke people who come to beg for money will, always say " Please lend me 5k I'm too rich now". They were forbidden by their prophets to say 'I'm broke or poor' because they have to talk and act their miracle before it happens. That is not faith.
The woman with the issue of blood didn't act like she didn't have it before Jesus healed her. Blind Bartimaeus didn't act like he could see before Jesus cured him. Peter's mother in law didn't act like she was healthy before Jesus healed her. The list continues.
Miracles don't come by you acting like they are there. This is how many of you get scammed and initiated into the brotherhood and sisterhood of delusional believers. Motivational speeches can be good when they are, the Gospel is not motivational speech.
Faith means being calm, fine and okay while waiting on God for any miracle. It means putting up stoically and refusing to be miserable as long as that situation lasts. Faith means refusing to give up on God no matter what.
Faith for miracle is not a drama of pretending to be who you are not, pretending to have what you don't have yet. Most importantly, there is no formula for miracles. Una no dey ever hear word.
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Political Parties Must Have Alternative Results To Challenge INEC - Agbakoba
Political parties have a responsibility to challenge INEC’s results, but they often wait for the commission to deliver them. With structures across the 176 polling units, parties should be able to obtain authenticated results within hours rather than depend on INEC in court. If INEC knows it is being monitored and that political parties are compiling alternative credible results, it will be more careful.
Dr Olisa Agbakoba
Senior Advocate of Nigeria
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Debunking the Phantom Debts and Ecological Loan Fallacy
My attention has been drawn to trending claims by the Anambra State Government that my administration left behind inherited debts, including a ₦2 billion ecological loan, contractor liabilities, and unpaid salaries, gratuities, and pensions. This is completely false.
We systematically liquidated historical gratuities and arrears dating back several years, amounting to over ₦35 billion. At the point of handover, the state owed nothing in salaries, gratuities, or pensions, nor did we owe anything to any contractor for projects duly executed and certified.
The ₦2 billion ecological fund in question was released barely three months before the end of my tenure for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis. Despite pressure to spend the money, I refused, insisting that it should be left for my successor because government is a continuum and the funds were tied to a specific project.
The money was therefore left 100 per cent intact in First Bank, in Account No. 2018779464, with a balance of over ₦2.13 billion.
It is important to stress that funds tied to specific projects or set aside for particular purposes were not even included in the over ₦75 billion in savings we left behind.
If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning. -PO
Prince Ononuju retweeted
I can't explain it, but it seems your fortune changes based on your location. That is why a moving man meets his luck. Keep moving and don't be static. When you find your place, consolidate. A word is too much for the wise.
Prince Ononuju retweeted
“If you look at what is happening today in Nigeria, where professors are now aiding illiterates to rig elections, where our lawmakers have removed forgery as an offence in electoral matters, [where] our SANs are defending forgery... we have a crisis, and above all, our judges are singing, ‘on your mandate we stand'." — Peter Obi
Prince Ononuju retweeted
By Making Excuses for Unverified Certificates, We Are Planting Poison in the Soul of Our Society
A nation that tolerates unverified academic credentials at any level of leadership, regardless of who is involved, risks destroying the very standards upon which a society is built. The issue is not about an individual. It is about standards, accountability, and the values we choose to pass on to the next generation.
We cannot continue to excuse blurred, missing, questionable, or unverified credentials simply because they belong to someone we support. The process through which people attain positions of responsibility matters greatly. How we get into leadership is as important as what we do with leadership.
If we normalise the abandonment of basic verification today, tomorrow we may have professors who never attended a university, doctors who never studied medicine, and judges who never studied law.
That is the dangerous precedent we must never allow. Nigeria cannot sacrifice its future on the altar of today's transactional politics. We must build a society where truth is not partisan, standards are not negotiable, and accountability applies equally to everyone.
History will judge us not only by those we defended, but by the principles we were willing to defend. We must choose truth over convenience, standards over sentiments, and the future over political expediency.
A New Nigeria is possible, but only if we are willing to do the right thing, even when it is inconvenient. -PO
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Every day, Nigeria sets money on fire. Literally.
Oil companies burn off the natural gas that rises with crude oil, a practice called flaring, because capturing it is treated as too much trouble.
In 2025 alone, Nigeria flared about 323 billion cubic feet of gas.
That wasted gas could have generated more than 32,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, in a country where millions still live in darkness and survive on generators.
Estimates of the yearly loss run from around 1 billion dollars into several billion once you count the lost power, the carbon, and the missed revenue.
Sit with the absurdity.
A nation starved of electricity is burning, into the open sky, the very fuel that could light it.
The gas is not the problem. The waste is.
Capture what you currently flare, and you power homes, factories and jobs with something you were literally throwing away.
Prince Ononuju retweeted
I’m still stunned lowkey. Do you know how much you have to look down on yourself that you are asking about what is the economic value of your language?
You prize money more than your own existence?
Pig logic. Absolutely bereft of wisdom or self awareness.
It’s like those people who have children as an economic strategy. There’s just two steps between that and selling people into slavery.
Reducing the things that define human life and existence to commodities. Mammon dey learn.
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Religious rulers need bad governance for them to be able to sell cheap miracles.
Political rulers need religious rulers to help keep the people subdued so they cannot make demands on the political rulers.
It is a symbiotic relationship!
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Dangote was adjusting his fuel price in real time when it was rallying but now dragging feet to adjust now that’s it’s on a downward spiral. If you like keep kissing the ass of these billionaires who are doing all they possibly can to impoverish you. A lot of you kuku no get sense.
Prince Ononuju retweeted
Profitability is not a guarantee that people must keep their jobs" — Babajide Duroshola, ( @Babajiide ) Managing Director, M-KOPA.
Watch episode 20 of Headlines by TechCabal on our YouTube channel : youtu.be/SK6-byee8hkhttps://… to catch up on our conversation with Babajide regarding the recent tech layoffs and so much more.
You can also listen wherever you get your podcasts by searching for “Headlines by TechCabal”.
This episode is sponsored by Zoho.
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