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My Fellow Nigerians,

 

As we mark this year's Christmas, may the love of Christ and his message of grace, hope, peace, and goodwill to humanity abide with us all.

 

Beyond the celebration and festivities of this season, Christmas reminds us to reflect on the significance of Jesus Christ's birth and his message of salvation as the Prince of Peace.

 

On this Holy Day, I wish all Christians in Nigeria and around the world a Merry Christmas. I thank God for the opportunity to serve as the leader of our great country, and I pray for peace in our land, especially among individuals of differing religious beliefs.

 

As your President, I remain committed to doing everything within my power to enshrine religious freedom in Nigeria and to protect all people of different faiths from violence.

 

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, let us also reflect on the many contributions that Christians in Nigeria, as followers of Christ, have made and continue to make toward the progress of our country.

 

The love of Christ and the message of the Gospel have inspired many Christians to care for the vulnerable and less privileged in our society. We honour those who, following the example of Jesus, work tirelessly to promote peace, harmony, and tolerance in their communities.

 

For those who bring hope and faith in the midst of despair, this season is a reminder that, despite daunting challenges, God is with us.

 

Since I assumed office in 2023, I have continually reassured Nigerians of our unyielding commitment to safeguarding the security, unity, and stability of our nation.

 

That commitment remains steadfast under God and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. All Nigerians have the right to live, worship, and pursue their aspirations in safety and dignity.

 

No one, regardless of ethnicity or belief, should be made to suffer for professing and practising his faith. The love for God and love for humanity is at the heart of all the great faiths. These shared values must continue to bind us together as one indivisible and resilient people of our blessed country.

 

Throughout the year, I have had the privilege of engaging with prominent leaders from the two major faiths in the country, particularly amid concerns about religious intolerance and insecurity. We will build on these conversations to strengthen collaboration between government and religious institutions, prevent conflict and promote peaceful coexistence.

 

As many Nigerians travel to reunite with family and loved ones during this holiday period, I urge all citizens to exercise patience and maintain discipline on the roads.

 

I wish all travellers a safe journey and a safe return to their destinations.

 

With confidence in divine providence and our collective strength, we will continue the work of building a greater Nigeria-one that future generations will be proud of.

 

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year in advance.

 

 

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR

President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces,

Federal Republic of Nigeria

December 25, 2025

 

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Nigeria’s national oil company, NNPCL is preparing to sign its largest crude-for-cash deal yet, a $4.7bn financing with Saudi Aramco that would refinance an earlier $3.3bn facility known as Project Gazelle. After two years of negotiation, the agreement promises immediate liquidity, steadier production and a temporary salve for Nigeria’s chronic dollar shortage. It also revives old questions about how far a country should mortgage tomorrow’s barrels to pay today’s bills.

 

Project Gazelle is a familiar instrument in commodity finance: a forward sale of future crude, routed through a special-purpose vehicle that raises money from banks against oil yet to be pumped. NNPC Limited sells a pre-agreed volume of crude in advance, receives dollars upfront, and repays the facility from export proceeds when the oil is eventually sold. The conservative assumptions are the point. The benchmark price is set at $65 a barrel - below recent spot prices - to cushion volatility; up to 90,000 barrels a day are earmarked to ensure repayment even if prices wobble.

 

For Nigeria, the attractions are obvious. Cash arrives quickly, helping to stabilize the naira and bolster reserves without waiting years for greenfield projects to mature. The facility also allows NNPC to prepay taxes and royalties, smoothing fiscal cash flows and signaling a measure of commercial discipline under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which recast NNPC as a limited liability company. International lenders like the structure; ratings agencies tend to tolerate it, provided volumes pledged remain modest relative to output.

 

The Aramco deal goes further by scale and symbolism. It would refinance Gazelle and add fresh money, making it NNPC’s largest crude-backed transaction to date. Supporters argue that the size still sits comfortably within Nigeria’s production envelope and that conservative pricing limits downside risk. If oil prices rise, repayment accelerates and surplus cash flows back to NNPC. In a benign market, the gazelle runs swiftly.

 

But the risks are neither theoretical nor small. Forward sales trade flexibility for certainty. Should oil prices fall decisively below the $65 benchmark for a sustained period, repayments slow, barrels remain pledged for longer, and NNPC’s discretionary cash tightens just when the macroeconomy is weakest. In an extreme slump, the company could face pressure to pledge additional volumes or refinance again -turning a liquidity bridge into a habit.

 

There is also a domestic wrinkle. The PIA prioritizes supply to local refineries, a provision that has gained urgency with the start-up of the 650,000 bpd Dangote refinery. If significant volumes are pre-committed offshore under crude-for-loan structures, domestic refiners may cry foul. Dangote has already signaled a willingness to litigate to block future export-tied shipments that, it argues, should be offered at home first. A court fight would test the hierarchy between commercial financing contracts and statutory domestic-supply obligations; and could complicate drawdowns just as the facility comes onstream.

 

More broadly, the deal exposes Nigeria’s structural bind. Crude-backed finance can smooth cycles and buy time, but it does not fix the underlying ailments: underinvestment, theft, pipeline vandalism, and regulatory uncertainty that keep output below potential. Nor does it resolve the political temptation to spend windfalls quickly while pledging future revenues quietly. The FAQs emphasize that Gazelle’s size is small relative to national output; history suggests that such assurances erode as fiscal pressures mount.

 

Aramco’s presence adds credibility and could help standardize execution, pricing and governance. Yet the asymmetry remains. Nigeria bears price risk and delivery risk; lenders and offtakers secure collateral. The conservative benchmark mitigates default risk, but at the cost of selling insurance cheaply when markets are buoyant. If oil markets remain firm, the arrangement will look prudent: reserves steadier, production financed, repayments orderly. If prices sag, the virtues of conservatism may be tested by the arithmetic of pledged barrels and the politics of domestic supply. Gazelles are swift, not stubborn. Whether Nigeria’s latest dash across the savannah ends in safe pasture or another refinancing sprint will depend less on the elegance of the structure than on the hard work of lifting output, supplying local refineries, and resisting the urge to mortgage tomorrow twice.

 

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If the allegations now before the Nigerian public are even remotely true, then President Bola Tinubu has crossed a constitutional rubicon from aggressive governance into outright lawlessness; presiding over one of the gravest assaults on Nigeria’s constitutional order since the return to civil rule. The charge is not trivial. It is not procedural nitpicking. It is not partisan noise. It is the alleged post-passage alteration of Acts of the National Assembly; the insertion, deletion, and modification of substantive provisions in bills after lawmakers had concluded debate, voting, and passage. The post-passage alteration, deletion, falsification, or insertion of provisions into bills already passed by the National Assembly is not a procedural lapse. It is not a clerical error. It is not a difference of interpretation. It is a direct assault on the Constitution, a forgery of the sovereign will of Parliament, and a textbook violation of the separation of powers upon which the Nigerian Republic rests. In any constitutional democracy worthy of the name, this is not merely misconduct. It is an abuse of executive power of impeachment-grade severity.

 

Nigeria’s Constitution is unambiguous. Legislative power resides in the National Assembly. Once the National Assembly passes a bill, the executive has only three lawful options: assent, veto, or return it for reconsideration. There is no fourth option called executive editing. There is no constitutional gray zone; no executive editing room, no post-legislative “corrections,” no is no constitutional license or authority to smuggle in stealth amendments or new provisions in the dark corridors between passage and gazetting. Any deviation from this process is legislative fraud and governance by forgery.

 

The allegations raised by members of the House of Representatives, and now amplified by the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), point to something far more sinister than bureaucratic overreach: a deliberate subversion of parliamentary sovereignty - the conversion of executive assent into executive authorship. If verified, this conduct amounts to the executive arrogating to itself powers it does not possess, rewriting laws it did not debate, and imposing provisions Nigerians never consented to through their elected representatives. This usurpation collapses the doctrine of separation of powers into executive fiat and reduces Parliament to a ceremonial inconvenience. The gravity of the accusation cannot be overstated. A president who permits, or worse, authorizes the manipulation of laws after legislative passage is no longer executing the law. He is manufacturing it unilaterally. This is not merely illegal. It is anti-democratic.               

 

Let us be very clear here, because the Constitution demands it. Section 58 does not empower the President to rewrite laws. Section 59 does not allow aides, ministries, or faceless bureaucrats to amend legislation in transit to the Federal Gazette. Any law that differs materially from what Parliament passed is not lawfully enacted. It is a constitutional counterfeit. If this tampering is traced, directly or indirectly to the President, then the threshold of “gross misconduct” under Section 143 is not merely met; it is smashed. Gross misconduct includes violations that undermine the Constitution or threaten democratic governance. Altering Acts of Parliament after passage does both. It is legislative fraud executed with executive muscle.

 

The implications are staggering. Investors rely on statutory certainty. Citizens rely on the predictability of law. Courts rely on the integrity of enacted texts. When laws become fluid documents, rewritten behind closed doors after parliamentary approval, the rule of law becomes a farce and governance degenerates into administrative improvisation. Even more disturbing is the arrogance implied by such an act. It signals an executive that no longer sees itself as bound by process, but entitled to outcomes. It reflects a mindset where legality is negotiable, Parliament is subordinate, and constitutional checks are treated as irritants rather than guardrails. Tinubu was not elected to be a legislative ventriloquist. He was sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution; not to annotate it after hours.

The National Assembly now stands at a crossroads. It can either defend its institutional sovereignty or confirm its own irrelevance. A comprehensive, transparent investigation is not optional. If discrepancies exist between bills passed and laws gazetted, those responsible must be identified, sanctioned, and prosecuted. If the trail leads to the Presidency, impeachment is not extremism; it is constitutional duty.

Equally urgent is the immediate suspension of the disputed tax laws. No democracy enforces laws whose legal parentage is in question. To do so would compound illegality with coercion.

 

This is not just about tax policy. It is about constitutional survival. A government that edits laws after passage is not governing; it is falsifying. And a President who tolerates or authorizes such conduct places himself above the law he swore to uphold. Nigeria has endured many abuses of power. It must not normalize this one. If the Constitution is to mean anything beyond ceremonial prose, then this moment must be met with firmness, clarity, and courage. Because when the executive starts rewriting laws in secret, democracy is no longer bent. It is broken

 

Mr. President must be reminded: the authority of his office does not place him above the law. It binds him more tightly to it. Power does not excuse illegality; it magnifies it. A president who tolerates the falsification of laws invites constitutional anarchy and legitimizes lawlessness at every level of the state.

Nigeria has endured enough executive contempt for institutions. It has paid too high a price for the casual vandalism of due process. This moment demands clarity, courage, and constitutional fidelity, not denial, delay, or diversion. The question before the nation is stark: will Nigeria remain a republic governed by laws passed in daylight, or slide into a system where laws are rewritten in shadows? History will not be kind to those who choose silence over the Constitution.

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I was going to launch a campaign for President Tinubu to sack the minister of petroleum until I remembered that the petroleum portfolio is firmly under the belt of the selfsame Excellency to whom I was going to direct my appeal.

 

There had been too much opaqueness, too many befuddling— obviously unpatriotic— decisions taken by the regulators of the oil industry in the recent past. All the government-owned refineries had been deliberately sabotaged over the years with billions of dollars flushed down the drain under the guise of turnaround maintenance. Nigeria became a net importer of refined petroleum products until Dangote Refinery came on board.

 

And then, the so-called Nigerian factor set in. Middlemen who had been making a fortune at the expense of the people since the successful grounding of the government-owned refineries insisted on continuing the sleaze. They insisted on acting as a bridge between Dangote and the consumer. Their greedy cut was going to be more than the refinery itself was making per litre— all at the expense of the consumer.

 

To force Dangote’s hand, the marketers, with the backing of their allies in the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, continued importing petrol to undermine Dangote Refinery. Talk about importing coal in Enugu!

 

Aliko Dangote was riled.

 

It was Dangote’s first foray into the testy windstorm of whistleblowing— and what a hurricane it has unleashed. The usually taciturn Dangote, Africa’s richest and biggest employer of labour, apparently refused to stand akimbo while his $20 billion investment in the continent’s biggest petroleum refinery goes bust. He would not watch idly as Nigeria’s generational disease, corruption, which has eaten up the destinies of millions of people and is poised to continue to stall every developmental effort, destroys his investment.

 

He hit the media racetrack firing on all cylinders! First, he accused the NMDPRA of economic sabotage. He denounced them for continuing to issue import licences for petroleum products, thereby frustrating domestic refiners and entrenching dependence on imports. He alleged that the NMDPRA was colluding with international traders and oil importers to the detriment of local operators.

 

He called out the chief executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, Engr Farouk Ahmed. The man had been living above his legitimate earnings, alleged Dangote. The business mogul alleged that Ahmed’s children attend secondary schools in Switzerland at costs running into several millions of dollars. The full details are quite scandalous and eye-popping!

 

President Tinubu has quickly accepted the resignation of Farouk Ahmed and his colleague, Gbenga Komolafe of the NUPRC. They are to be replaced by Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as CEO of NUPRC and Engr. Saidu Mohammed as CEO of NMDPRA, subject to the confirmation of the Senate. The two agencies, NUPRC and NMDPRA, have the statutory responsibility of ensuring compliance with petroleum laws, regulations, and guidelines in the upstream and downstream, respectively.

 

Now, this is not an issue of knocking a man when he is already down. This is a matter of accountability. If the Nigerian government truly wants to be taken seriously about its anti-corruption campaign, here is an opportunity to demonstrate openness. Aliko Dangote has, through his lawyer, Ogwu Onoja, SAN, submitted a petition to the ICPC, calling for Ahmed’s arrest, investigation, and prosecution. Let the law take its course without further delay!

 

 Soft Landing?

 

The well-known lawyer, Olisa Agbakoba, Senior Partner, OAL Energy and Natural Resource Practice Group, wondered why Nigeria, with a $20 billion refinery, one of the world’s largest, would continue importing petroleum products. He finds it appalling that whereas a private investor has built the refining capacity that Nigeria desperately needs, he still faces systematic undermining from the very regulatory authority whose mandate is to support such investments.

 

There are already misgivings being expressed as to whether the quick disengagement of Farouk was a soft landing device.  Was he pushed or did he jump? It wouldn’t matter either way, as long as the allegations made by Dangote are scrupulously investigated.

 

For so long, many of us have encountered our own version of ‘salaried oil sheiks’ on international airlines and marvelled at how some of them booked their entire families into business or first class cabins while some of us, veteran breadwinners in our own right, wondered at the partiality of the deity that cracked their providential kernels.

 

We have got used to people living above their means. In fact, the society is so complacent that, in some quarters, anyone who refuses to take unfair advantage of his position in any government agency is considered a fool, accursed, or both.

 

Fighting corruption is a difficult and dangerous undertaking in Nigeria. We have already travelled an appreciable distance on the road to perdition. Imagine, several groups had started warming up to drum up public support for Farouk Ahmed before he was suddenly separated from his job.

 

In a fit of phenomenal illogic, the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN) says that Dangote’s allegations against the leadership of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), can deter potential foreign investors! Isn’t it preposterous that those who are ganging up against a local refinery claim to be doing so to encourage foreign investment?

 

And then they did the typically Nigerian thing: they passed a vote of confidence on Farouk Ahmed and his team. Chroniclers have taken journalistic note of who stood where when the bugle of patriotism sounded. Let Farouk Ahmed have his day in court.

 

 Endemic Corruption

 

Corruption is a systemic problem in Nigeria, a country that has reportedly lost over $400 billion to cankerworm since its independence in 1960.  The country has witnessed numerous high-profile corruption cases across various administrations since the return to democracy in 1999, reflecting the persistent challenge the country faces in combating this menace, despite the establishment of the EFCC and ICPC.

 

A few high-profile cases have been successfully prosecuted in the past. Many people remember the fall of another Farouk (Lawan) who was tripped by oily sleaze and was subsequently jailed several years ago.

 

However, the cemetery of conveniently abandoned cases bears witness to our reluctance to conclusively pursue corruption cases to the end. What’s the outcome of the Halliburton Bribery Scandal (1990s-2000s), Pension Reform Task Team Fraud (Abdulrasheed Maina accused of embezzling over $5.6 million meant for pensioners), Arms Deal Scandal (Dasukigate), Petroleum Subsidy Fraud, and the Power Sector Privatisation suspected fraud?

 

What about the NDDC Contract Scams: Police Service Commission (PSC) Scam involving over N150 million for election-related training;  Excess Crude Account illegal withdrawals; Missing NLNG Dividends: Stolen Crude Oil (2009-2012), NEITI case alleging that 60 million barrels of oil, valued at $13.7 billion, were stolen under the watch of the NNPC between 2009 and 2012; Chinese Loan Diversion involving the Ministry of finance; N1.9 billion Ebola Fight Fund Diversion; Babachir Lawal’s Grass-Cutting Scandal; etc?

 

May Dangotequake beget other quakes and may we find the courage to prosecute all of them conclusively!

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