By Tony Obiechina, Abuja

The Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Dr. Mohammed Bello Shehu has emphasized the significance of greater collaboration between RMAFC and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), to promote transparency, accountability and improved revenue mobilisation and generation in Nigeria’s extractive industries.

Dr. Shehu stated this when the NEITI Executive Secretary Hon. Musa Sarki Adar  paid him a courtesy visit at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja  on Friday.

He reaffirmed RMAFC’s commitment to deepening its longstanding partnership with NEITI.

“RMAFC is delighted to receive the Executive Secretary and his delegation. Our relationship with NEITI is longstanding, strategic and mutually beneficial. We value NEITI’s work in promoting transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s extractive sector, and we are committed to deepening this partnership,” Shehu said.

The Chairman commended NEITI for providing credible information on the operations and financial flows of the extractive industries, noting that its efforts had improved public understanding of the sector and strengthened accountability in the management of Nigeria’s natural resources.

“NEITI has earned a strong reputation through its consistent efforts to uncover facts, reconcile information and promote openness. That work is important to the country and deserves the support of all stakeholders,” he said.

The Chairman also acknowledged the support of NEITI’s international partners and expressed the hope that stakeholders would continue to strengthen the organisation’s capacity in information gathering, data verification, revenue transparency and accountability.

He assured NEITI of the Commission’s continued support and openness to collaboration in data sharing, research, revenue monitoring and policy engagement.

Shehu congratulated Hon. Musa Adar, on his appointment, described it as well deserved while expressing confidence in his ability to provide effective leadership.

“Your appointment is well deserved. You have demonstrated commitment, competence and diligence in your professional career. I am confident that you will bring these qualities to bear in your new role and lead NEITI to even greater achievements.” He said.

In his remarks, the NEITI Executive Secretary described the relationship between both institutions as a long-standing partnership built on a shared commitment to transparency, accountability and improved revenue mobilisation.

“The relationship between NEITI and RMAFC is not new. It is a partnership built over time, and we must now take it to a higher level,” Hon. Sarkin Adar said.

He highlighted RMAFC’s role in monitoring revenues accruing to the Federation Account and advising on measures to improve revenue collection and accountability, particularly in relation to Nigeria’s natural resources.

Sarkin Adar noted that reliable information on revenues generated from oil, gas and mining activities was essential for fiscal management, public accountability and informed decision-making.

He explained that NEITI’s independent reconciliation of financial and physical flows in the extractive industries provides useful data on revenues, payments, production, exports and company activities.

“NEITI’s reports can support RMAFC’s work in revenue monitoring, verification, policy analysis and the development of measures to improve revenue mobilisation,” he said.

He also highlighted Nigeria’s presence at the ongoing 2026 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) implementation under the 2023 EITI Standard, describing it as an opportunity to demonstrate measurable progress in strengthening governance across the extractive industries.

According to him, the standard’s emphasis on data reliability, systematic disclosure, transparency of revenue flows and institutional collaboration aligns closely with RMAFC’s mandate and creates opportunities for deeper cooperation.

Sarkin Adar invited RMAFC to participate in the Global EITI Conference scheduled for October 8–9, 2026, in Brussels, Belgium, where Nigeria is expected to showcase its progress in resource governance.

He called for stronger collaboration among NEITI, RMAFC and other relevant institutions in data sharing, revenue mobilisation, research, capacity building and policy dialogue.

“Our objective should be to build a more coordinated institutional framework for revenue assurance and resource governance. By working together, NEITI and RMAFC can strengthen oversight and support evidence-based policymaking,” he said.

The meeting was attended by the Secretary to the Commission, Comrade Tosin Adeyanju; some Directors and Special Advisers to the Chairman of the Commission.

By Ebuka Ukoh

Here is a critique of the Nigerian Bar Association’s decision to feature a popular social media influencer in a plenary session on insecurity, arguing that professional organisations are increasingly emphasising digital visibility and virality over substantive expertise and institutional standards.

I was initially hesitant to write this.

Then I wondered whether my hesitation was part of the problem.

The 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association is underway in Port Harcourt. On Tuesday, 25 August, one of its main plenary sessions, “Known Gun Men,” examined the legal and institutional gap that is fuelling negotiations in Nigeria.

The programme placed security leaders, lawyers, policymakers, and Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan, in the conversation. His inclusion has since divided lawyers and the wider public.

I found myself asking a question that some will consider elitist, but which I think every serious professional institution should be willing to answer: Why this voice, on this subject, at this level? My question is whether VeryDarkMan has the right to speak about insecurity. Of course, he does. Insecurity belongs to all of us. You do not need a SAN after your specialised rate on your wall, or military stars on your shoulder, before kidnapping, terrorism, banditry, or communal violence becomes your concern. Nor should professional conferences become echo chambers populated exclusively by people with impressive titles.

Sometimes the person closest to a problem sees what the expert sitting behind a desk does not. VDM himself offered precisely this defence. He told the conference that he was not there to teach lawyers law. He said he was there to share his experience from visiting communities affected by violence and witnessing the aftermath of attacks. That perspective deserves consideration. But it does not entirely answer the question. Because the issue is not whether VDM has a perspective. The issue is why the NBA determined that his particular perspective merited a seat at a main plenary examining the legal and institutional gaps fuelling insecurity.

Those are different questions. We may have become too uncomfortable asking the second. The fairest way to assess the NBA’s decision, then, is not to ask whether VDM was important enough to share the stage. It is to ask what contribution the organisers expected him to make. If he were invited to represent the experiences of communities affected by insecurity, that is one standard. If he were invited as a public accountability advocate, that is another. If he were invited to diagnose the legal and institutional gaps fuelling insecurity, then a much higher evidentiary threshold should apply.

When did visibility become automatic expertise? When did having an audience become a sufficient qualification for every audience? When did popularity become interchangeable with relevance? These questions extend far beyond VeryDarkMan. They are concerned with what is happening to our institutions. There was a time when being invited to address a major professional gathering carried a particular meaning. The platform itself communicated something. Someone had presumably examined your body of work, professional experience, research, public service, or demonstrated knowledge and concluded that you possessed something sufficiently substantive to contribute to the subject before the room.

That did not mean every speaker needed to be an academic. Expertise comes in different forms. There is academic expertise, personal expertise, institutional expertise, community expertise, and lived experience. A woman who has survived years of displacement in a conflict-affected community might understand dimensions of insecurity that someone writing security policy from Abuja does not. A community leader who repeatedly negotiates access during violent conflict has knowledge worth hearing. A journalist who has spent years investigating terrorist financing might bring evidence unavailable to many lawyers. A researcher who has studied policing might identify institutional weaknesses hidden beneath individual incidents.

Lived experience belongs at serious tables. But lived experience must still be relevant to the question the table generalises to answer. That distinction matters. We also need to distinguish expertise from representation. A person may deserve a seat because they possess specialised knowledge. Another may deserve one because they represent an affected community whose experience experts need to hear. Both belong in serious conversations, but they do not occupy the same role. Confusing the two serves neither the expert nor the community voice.

The NBA’s session was not simply titled “Nigerians Share Their Experiences of Insecurity.” Its stated purpose was to examine “legal and institutional gaps fuelling insecurity.” That framing raises the threshold. If the conversation concerns legal gaps, who has studied them? If it concerns institutional failures, who has investigated them? If it concerns security architecture, who understands its design? If it concerns communities experiencing violence, which community voices should be represented? If lived experience is essential, whose lived experience and why? Those are legitimate curatorial questions. They are not elitist questions.

Professional institutions exist partly to make precisely those judgements. And inclusion does not relieve them of that responsibility. This is why the controversy reminds me of the NBA conference a few years ago when Portable, another enormously popular Nigerian entertainer, appeared and generated a similar debate. At the time, I largely shrugged: “Nigeria na cruise,” I thought. Perhaps I should not have. Because individual choices eventually become institutional culture. But my instinct to shrug it off was itself worth interrogating. Each invitation should stand on its own merits. The larger question is whether professional institutions are becoming increasingly willing to trade the traditional logic of expertise for the contemporary currency of visibility.

To be clear, this is not an attack on either man. Portable has built an audience. VeryDarkMan has built an extraordinary digital following and inserted himself into several national conversations. His ability to command public attention is itself worthy of study. But Ratel is not yet a security institution. Virality is not a research methodology. Followers are not citations. And a microphone does not transform experience into expertise.

The distinction matters because Nigeria desperately needs serious conversations about insecurity. People are being kidnapped. Communities have been devastated by attacks. Judicial officers themselves have faced insecurity, as VDM noted during the plenary. These are not abstract matters. They demand evidence. They demand institutional memory. They demand difficult questions about policing, intelligence, prosecution, border management, weapons flows, terrorist financing, criminal justice, inter-agency coordination, community trust, accountability, and the constitutional limits of state power.

And serious claims demand serious evidence. That became particularly apparent during the plenary itself. VDM made broad allegations concerning corruption within security institutions and alleged links between insecurity and political or financial interests. Military representatives challenged him to substantiate sweeping claims rather than generalise about entire institutions. Independent reporting on the session likewise noted that several of his allegations were presented without supporting evidence during the discussion. That exchange unintentionally demonstrated why speaker selection matters.

A main plenary at a professional conference should do more than generate provocative statements. It should advance knowledge, clarify problems, interrogate evidence, and leave the audience understanding something they did not understand before. Weeks later, its arguments should still be strong enough to be examined, challenged, cited, and developed further.

That is the standard I remember associating with major NBA conversations. Speeches travelled beyond the conference hall because the ideas deserved further interrogation. Commentaries followed. Lawyers debated propositions. Scholars responded. Arguments entered the national conversation because there was intellectual substance to wrestle with.

That may be what worries me most. Nigeria is living through an age in which attention itself has become currency. Institutions compete with TikTok. Universities compete with influencers. Newspapers compete with Twitter. Professional associations compete with algorithms. Institutions now operate within an attention economy that rewards engagement, virality, and reach. The temptation to select speakers who attract attention is therefore understandable. But professional institutions should resist confusing reach with contribution.

There is value in bringing popular voices into professional spaces. A person with millions of followers might help translate an important conversation to audiences that professional institutions struggle to reach. But if reach is the reason for an invitation, say so. If lived experience is the qualification, define it. If community representation is the objective, explain why the selected individual represents the relevant community. If expertise is required, demand expertise. Institutions should know what kind of knowledge they are placing on their platforms and why.

Otherwise, we risk teaching young Nigerians a dangerous lesson. We tell them to study. Develop expertise. Spend years mastering a field. Conduct research. Build professional competence. Gather evidence. Publish. Serve. Learn. Then, when the country’s most consequential conversations arrive, we sometimes have the microphone to whoever commands the largest digital audience.

What exactly are we teaching them? The question is not whether a person without formal credentials deserves a microphone. Many of the most important voices in public life have emerged outside formal institutions. The question is whether we still care about the relationship between the subject being discussed and the knowledge, experience, or perspective of the person we ask to discuss it.

This is bigger than VDM. Tomorrow, another viral personality will emerge. The algorithms will crown someone else. The question for the NBA, universities, professional associations, governments, media organisations, and every institution responsible for shaping serious national conversations is whether they will follow the algorithm or exercise judgment.

Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between elitism and populism. Experts should not monopolise knowledge. Ordinary citizens should not be excluded from rooms where decisions affecting their lives are discussed. Professional institutions should hear the street. But hearing the street does not require abandoning standards. Invite victims. Invite community leaders. Invite activists. Invite journalists. Invite young people. Invite unconventional voices.

Then match each voice to the question it is equipped to illuminate. That is inclusion with intentionality. And perhaps there is a challenge here for the legal profession itself.

If Nigerians increasingly turn to social media personalities rather than lawyers, researchers, journalists, civil society organisations, or public institutions to expose injustice, professional institutions should ask why. The problem may not be that VDM entered the room. The more uncomfortable question is what vacuum existed for him to fill.

And professionals should resist laughing too quickly. If a citizen with a smartphone has become more trusted by millions of Nigerians seeking redress than some institutions staffed by trained professionals, the embarrassment does not belong exclusively to the citizen with a smartphone. Our institutions must ask what they stopped doing, or what citizens believe they stopped doing, that created the market for alternative arbiters of justice. Why do millions of Nigerians believe an influencer will amplify their complaint faster than an institution? Why does viral outrage sometimes appear more effective than formal grievance mechanisms? Why do people increasingly take cases to social media before taking them to systems supposedly designed to deliver redress?

Those questions deserve their own plenary. So perhaps I was wrong to ask only, “How did VDM get into that room?” The better question is this: What does the NBA believe he brought to it? What does his presence tell us about the changing relationship between expertise and influence? What does his popularity tell professionals about the public’s declining confidence in traditional institutions? And how do we democratise important conversations without diluting the standards that make those conversations worth having?

I do not have all the answers. What do I know? I am only a commentator.

But commentary still allows us to ask whether every person with a microphone should automatically be given another. Because popularity is not automatic relevance. Visibility is not automatic expertise. And inclusion, however necessary, does not absolve serious institutions of the responsibility to know why a particular voice belongs in a particular room.

Ukoh, a PhD student and coauthor of Built By The Ancestors, writes from his base in New York, the United States.

By Raphael Atuu, Abuja

The Federal Ministry of Livestock Development has empowered 100 women and youths in Adamawa State with livestock starter assets and inputs as part of Federal Government efforts to promote inclusive participation, enterprise development and sustainable livelihoods in the livestock sector.

At the empowerment programme in Adamawa State, the Honourable Minister of Livestock Development, Hon.

Idi Mukhtar Maiha, said the initiative was designed to bring more women and young people into the livestock value chain and equip them with the means to establish and grow sustainable livestock enterprises.

The Minister explained that, each of the 100 beneficiaries received a heifer or young bull, in addition to starter inputs comprising bags of concentrate feed, mineral salt lick and dewormers.

According to him, the intervention is part of the Federal Government’s livestock transformation agenda under the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu, with a focus on engaging young people in productive ventures and creating opportunities for them to become small and medium-scale livestock producers.

He stressed that the Ministry’s intervention would go beyond the initial distribution of livestock, noting that all beneficiaries had been properly documented, while their locations and registration details were captured to facilitate effective monitoring, extension support and access to animal health services.

Maiha explained that continuous follow-up would ensure that the animals were properly managed, adequately protected and allowed to attain reproductive age rather than being sold prematurely.

He further disclosed that the Ministry plans to introduce artificial insemination for the beneficiary animals, particularly the heifers, to improve their genetic quality, reproductive performance and overall productivity.

The Minister said the intervention would support various livestock enterprises, including cattle rearing, fattening and dairy production, while providing beneficiaries with the opportunity to expand their businesses and improve their livelihoods over time.

He also announced that the programme would promote the concept of “Passing the Gift,” under which offspring produced by beneficiary animals would subsequently be transferred to other members of the community. He said the approach would extend the benefits of the intervention, increase community participation and create a sustainable cycle of empowerment.

The Minister further explained that the programme would establish an ecosystem around livestock production by encouraging young people to venture into commercial pasture cultivation.

He noted that this would enable livestock owners to purchase pasture from young pasture farmers, thereby creating additional employment and business opportunities while reducing overdependence on open grazing.

Maiha disclosed that the Adamawa intervention represented the first tranche of a programme that would be replicated in other parts of the country. He noted that a similar intervention had already been undertaken in Jigawa State, with plans to extend the initiative to Jos and other locations.

He said the ultimate objective was to develop the beneficiaries into viable livestock entrepreneurs capable of contributing significantly to food security, employment generation, economic growth and the transformation of Nigeria’s livestock sector.

A total of 100 beneficiaries, comprising 50 females and 50 males, benefited from the empowerment programme.

In his remarks, the Adamawa State Coordinator, Dr. Hassan W. Danbaki, who was represented by Mr. Sunday, Senior Animal Health and Husbandry Technology, welcomed the Honourable Minister, government officials, participants, beneficiaries and other guests to the programme.

He said the empowerment programme was a Federal Government initiative implemented through the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development and the Department of Livestock Extension to provide women and youths with livestock startup assets and the necessary inputs to establish sustainable enterprises.

He expressed appreciation to the Honourable Minister for his presence and support and invited him to deliver his remarks and flag off the distribution of the livestock and accompanying inputs.

Speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries, Mohammed Ibrahim expressed appreciation to the Federal Government and the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, noting that the intervention had provided beneficiaries with an opportunity to own cattle and improve their economic wellbeing.

Another beneficiary, Muhammad Mudi Bogirado, described the intervention as a significant opportunity to address unemployment among young people in the Northeast.

 He assured that the beneficiaries would put the livestock to productive use through cattle rearing and other related activities to improve their livelihoods.

Naliba Iframu, a female beneficiary, expressed excitement over the intervention, saying livestock rearing had always been her aspiration. She said the support had provided her with an opportunity to turn her interest in animal husbandry into a productive enterprise that would benefit her family and community.

Among the dignitaries at the event were the Honourable Commissioner, Ministry of Livestock and Agricultural Development, Adamawa State, Hon. Usman Lamorde; National Coordinator, EL-PRES, Dr. Sanusi Abubakar; technical officials from the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development; officials of L-PRES at the national and Adamawa State levels; beneficiaries, participants and members of the press.

The Federal Ministry of Livestock Development reaffirmed its commitment to expanding opportunities for women and youths to participate meaningfully in the livestock value chain while providing beneficiaries with sustained extension, animal health and technical support to ensure the success and sustainability of the programme.