The Dark Lessons From Anambra, by Boniface Ihiasota 

There are crimes that shock a society because they violate the law, and there are others that leave a deeper wound because they violate the very foundations on which society is built. The disturbing case involving a 36-year-old woman, Anulika Onyeanusia, in Onitsha, Anambra State, belongs to the latter category.

On Friday, September 11, 2026, the Anambra State Police Command confirmed Onyeanusia’s arrest after a disturbing video allegedly showed her sexually abusing a minor with sex toys. Police spokesperson, SP Tochukwu Ikenga, said operatives also rescued four children, aged two, three, six and nine, and recovered sex toys and other items believed to be relevant to the investigation. Her husband was also being questioned to establish whether he had any connection with the alleged offence.

That is what is officially established. Other reports have carried additional allegations, including claims that more than one daughter was abused and that some of the material was uploaded to a pornographic platform for money. Those claims should remain allegations until investigators establish the facts. The identities of the children should equally remain protected.

But beyond the police investigation lies a larger question: what happens to a society when the place where a child expects protection becomes the place of greatest danger?

In many Nigerian cultures, motherhood is surrounded by a moral reverence that goes beyond biology. The mother is expected to be the first teacher, protector and emotional refuge. The family home, despite its imperfections, is traditionally regarded as the child’s safest space. To sexually exploit a child within that space is therefore not merely an individual moral failure. It represents a profound betrayal of trust.

Culture, however, cannot be invoked selectively. Respect for motherhood cannot become a shield against accountability, just as the preservation of family reputation must never be placed above the protection of a child. A family that hides abuse to avoid shame does not preserve its honour; it transfers the shame to the victim and allows the violence to continue.

The psychological consequences can be devastating. A child sexually abused by a stranger may at least understand that the offender was an outsider. Abuse by a parent or trusted caregiver can destroy the child’s understanding of safety itself. Research on child sexual abuse has associated such experiences with serious psychological and social consequences, while Nigeria’s own research literature acknowledges that the true burden of child sexual abuse remains difficult to determine because many cases never reach formal institutions.

The damage can follow the child into adulthood. Shame, anxiety, depression, difficulties with trust and intimacy, distorted ideas about relationships and persistent feelings of guilt can become part of the aftermath. None of these outcomes is inevitable, and early professional intervention can make a substantial difference. That is why the police assurance that the rescued children will receive counselling, care and protection is important. Their recovery must become as important as the prosecution of whoever is responsible.

There is also a digital dimension that Nigerian society can no longer ignore. Once sexual abuse of a child is recorded and distributed online, the trauma can acquire a frightening permanence. Removing the original video does not necessarily erase copies, screenshots or private downloads. A child may therefore face the possibility of encountering evidence of her own abuse years later.

This is why Nigerians must resist the temptation to circulate such material in the name of outrage or evidence. Sharing it further can compound the victim’s exploitation. The proper response is to report it to law enforcement and relevant child-protection authorities.

Legally, Nigeria has no ambiguity about the protection owed to children. Section 32 of the Child Rights Act 2003 criminalises sexual abuse and exploitation of a child and provides for imprisonment upon conviction. The Act also establishes the best interests of the child as a paramount consideration.

The Anambra case should therefore not end with an arrest, a viral controversy and a forgotten headline. It should force families, schools, religious institutions, communities and government agencies to examine how children can disclose abuse safely, how warning signs can be recognised and how survivors can receive long-term psychological support.

A child’s childhood cannot be returned once violated. But society can still decide whether the violation becomes a life sentence of trauma or the beginning of a carefully supported journey towards healing.

The first duty of culture is to protect the vulnerable. The first duty of parenthood is to protect the child. And when either fails, silence is no longer tradition. It is complicity.

On The Sharafadeen Alli Lap Controversy, by Boniface Ihiasota

Politics is not only about manifestos, campaign promises and the ability to win elections. It is also about perception, judgment and the capacity to understand that, once a person enters public life, even seemingly ordinary actions can acquire extraordinary meaning.

That is the uncomfortable lesson from the controversy surrounding Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate in Oyo State, after a video showing a young man sitting on his lap during an interaction in Ibadan went viral on Wednesday, September 2, 2026.

The first issue that must be established is factual accuracy. Contrary to several social-media posts describing the young man as a journalist, Alli’s campaign organisation said he was a student of The Polytechnic, Ibadan who, alongside other students, had visited the politician to seek support for a programme and conduct an interview. The campaign said the room was overcrowded, there were insufficient chairs, and Alli asked one of the students to sit on his lap so the engagement could continue. It described the gesture as spontaneous and fatherly and rejected attempts to sexualise the encounter.

That clarification matters. Journalism demands that allegations be separated from facts. A viral video is evidence of what a camera captured; it is not automatically evidence of the motive behind what happened. But there is another uncomfortable truth: an explanation can remove an allegation of improper intention without necessarily removing questions about poor judgment.

For a man preparing to govern Oyo State, the question should not merely be, “Was there anything sexual about the encounter?” The more important questions are: Was the arrangement appropriate? Was it necessary? Could it have been avoided? What message did it send? And, most importantly, was it sensible for a politician of Alli’s stature to participate in such an easily misunderstood scene? The answer to those questions deserves serious reflection.

Alli is not an ordinary private citizen. He is a serving senator representing Oyo South and, since his unveiling on July 2, 2026, the APC’s candidate for the 2027 Oyo governorship election. The party unveiled him alongside his running mate, Adesoji Adedeji, in Ibadan as it began efforts to reclaim the state. With that position comes a higher burden of judgment.

Public officials are constantly photographed, recorded and interpreted. In the age of smartphones, a few seconds can be removed from an hour-long engagement and circulated to millions of people without context. That reality makes discretion an essential political skill.

There is therefore something fundamentally wrong with the argument that because the act was supposedly innocent, there is nothing to discuss. Intent and perception are two different things. A public figure may have no improper intention and still make an avoidable judgment that creates an entirely unnecessary controversy.

The young man’s own position also deserves consideration. The available footage has prompted debate about whether he appeared comfortable with the arrangement. We should not claim to know his feelings merely from facial expressions or a short clip. But precisely because his comfort cannot be established from the footage, a politician in a position of authority should ordinarily err on the side of maintaining clear personal and professional boundaries.

There is also a lesson for the media. Some platforms immediately labelled the young man a “journalist”, while subsequent reports and the candidate’s campaign identified him as a student. That discrepancy demonstrates the danger of social-media journalism driven by speed rather than verification. A sensational headline may generate clicks, but it can also unfairly damage reputations.

At the same time, the media must not become so afraid of controversy that legitimate questions are dismissed as political blackmail. Alli’s campaign is entitled to defend him. Critics are equally entitled to question the wisdom of the encounter. The mature position lies between both extremes.

There is no responsible basis, from the available evidence, to assign a sexual motive to Alli or the student. But neither should Nigerians be told that they must suspend their judgment simply because the candidate says the incident was innocent.

For those of us observing Nigerian politics from the Diaspora, this episode is a reminder of a broader challenge: Nigeria needs public officials who understand not only power, but restraint.

The 2027 Oyo governorship contest should ultimately be about roads, jobs, education, healthcare, security, agriculture, investment and the competence to manage public resources. Alli and his opponents will have ample opportunity to explain their visions for the state. But before the campaigns become a battle of manifestos, politicians must understand something elementary about modern public life: the camera never forgets.

A candidate who wants the confidence of millions must learn to ask, before every public gesture: “How will this look to the people I seek to lead?”

Like Ant, Like AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, by Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman 

There is something deceptive about the ant. Put it beside a lion and it looks almost insignificant. Put it beside an elephant and it virtually disappears. It has no roar, no intimidating physique, no majestic stride and certainly no dramatic entrance. Yet the ant survives. More than that, it organises, adapts, carries burdens several times its body weight and, when confronted by obstacles, rarely wastes time fighting the obstacle head-on. It finds another route.

That, to my mind, is perhaps the most revealing metaphor for understanding the political career of Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. This is not an attempt to turn the governor into a political saint. He is not one. Neither is it an argument that he has won every political battle. He has not. His administration and political conduct have attracted criticisms, some of them legitimate, and his political camp has suffered setbacks. But there is one feature of his political journey that is difficult to ignore: AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has repeatedly been underestimated.

Those who dismissed him as merely a wealthy businessman entering a political arena dominated by established political structures have had to revise their calculations more than once. The journey began in earnest in 2018 when he emerged as the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate for the 2019 election. It was hardly an ordinary political contest. Kwara had for decades been associated with the political influence of the Saraki family, and the 2019 election was shaping up to be a battle over whether that influence would continue to determine the direction of the state.

AbdulRazaq entered that contest as the candidate of a growing opposition movement that had adopted the slogan “O To Ge” — enough is enough. On March 9, 2019, the slogan acquired electoral meaning when AbdulRazaq defeated the PDP candidate, Razak Atunwa, by a huge margin. AbdulRazaq secured 331,546 votes against Atunwa’s 114,754 and, remarkably, won in all 16 local government areas of the state.

That was not simply an election victory. It was the collapse of a political arrangement that many people had considered almost impossible to dislodge. AbdulRazaq became the beneficiary and symbol of that political revolution. But winning power is one thing. Keeping it is another.

The coalition that produced the 2019 victory contained powerful personalities and competing interests. Among the people who eventually found themselves on the opposite side of the governor was Lai Mohammed, the former Information and Culture Minister and one of the most influential figures in the Kwara APC. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, who had served as chairman of the state APC, also became involved in the internal struggle over the control and direction of the party. Gbemisola Saraki, another important political figure from the Saraki political family, was similarly associated with the factional disputes that emerged within the party. The disagreements were sometimes bitter and very public.

The internal crisis produced accusations, counter-accusations, rival tendencies and arguments over who truly controlled the party structure. At different points, it looked as though the internal issues could become more dangerous to AbdulRazaq than the opposition outside the APC. But the governor survived.

Also, on January 2, 2020, the Kwara State Government demolished the property known as Ile Arugbo, which was associated with the late Dr Olusola Saraki. The government argued that the property stood on land that had been illegally allocated and had been earmarked for government use. The Saraki family rejected the government’s position and challenged the action in court. The dispute became far larger than a disagreement over property.

For many people, Ile Arugbo became a physical symbol of the struggle between the political past and the present in Kwara. It was impossible to discuss the demolition without discussing the larger confrontation between the political establishment associated with the Saraki family and the new order represented by AbdulRazaq. Yet again, AbdulRazaq endured. Perhaps that is where the ant analogy becomes useful.

The ant does not defeat the elephant by pretending to be an elephant. It survives because it understands its limitations. It moves differently. It relies on persistence, organisation and patience. When one route is blocked, it looks for another.

AbdulRazaq’s political career has displayed something similar. He has not always responded to political pressure by attempting to overpower it. Sometimes he has simply waited for the political terrain to change.

The 2023 election was perhaps the clearest demonstration of that political dexterity. By then, the O To Ge coalition had lost much of the unity that characterised its 2019 campaign. Politicians who had once stood together against the Saraki establishment had moved in different directions. Some remained in the APC, some joined other parties and others developed independent political ambitions. Ordinarily, that should have presented the incumbent with a formidable problem. It did not.

Interestingly, on March 18, 2023, AbdulRazaq was re-elected with 273,424 votes, defeating the PDP candidate, Yaman Abdullahi, who scored 155,490 votes. The governor was declared winner in all 16 local government areas.

The significance of that election goes beyond the numbers because in 2019, AbdulRazaq had ridden a powerful anti-establishment wave to Government House. In 2023, he had to defend an administration whose honeymoon was long over, against an opposition that believed the fragmentation of the O To Ge coalition had created an opportunity. He still won.

That victory also demonstrated something else about AbdulRazaq’s political style. He has shown an ability to accommodate people who were previously on the other side of the political fence when circumstances change.

Politics is not a marriage ceremony, they say. There are no vows that prevent yesterday’s opponent from becoming tomorrow’s ally. That reality has become particularly relevant in the build-up to 2027. One of the most interesting names in the unfolding political drama is Senator Saliu Mustapha.

Mustapha was not always an opponent of AbdulRazaq. He was part of the APC establishment and supported the governor’s re-election in 2023. Today, the two men are political adversaries.

The senator has left the APC and emerged as the PDP candidate for Kwara Central for his re-election bid, the same seat that AbdulRazaq is seeking after leaving the Government House.

Mustapha has already expressed confidence that he will defeat the governor on election day, even declaring that the victory would come before 1pm. Such confidence is perfectly normal in politics. Every candidate must believe he can win. But confidence is not a substitute for votes, and 2027 will surely be decided by the electorate.

As it stands, hovering over the entire contest is the name of Bukola Saraki, who once occupied the seat both Mustapha and AbdulRazaq are jostling to get. No serious examination of Kwara politics can simply write Saraki out of the story. Whatever one’s opinion of him may be, his political influence and historical role in the state remain too significant to ignore.

The man who helped lead the political revolt that displaced the Saraki establishment in 2019 is now seeking election in Kwara Central, the same senatorial district that Saraki once represented. Saraki, meanwhile, has returned to active political engagement in the state and has been involved in efforts to rebuild the PDP ahead of 2027. It is therefore tempting to describe 2027 as a simple rematch between old enemies.

The 2027 election will test that contest in an entirely new way. In 2019, AbdulRazaq was the challenger riding a popular wave against an entrenched political establishment. In 2023, he was an incumbent defending his record. In 2027, he will be a departing governor asking voters to give him another platform from which to continue influencing the politics of the state. The electorate will have legitimate questions.

They will ask what his administration achieved. They will judge his record on infrastructure, education, healthcare, workers’ welfare, rural development, youth opportunities and other matters that directly affect their lives.

His opponents will remind voters about the APC crisis. They will point to the defection of Saliu Mustapha. They will invoke Saraki. They will argue that the coalition that brought AbdulRazaq to power has fractured beyond repair.

AbdulRazaq’s response will ultimately have to be more than political arithmetic. He will need to convince voters that his relevance deserves another chapter. And if his political history is any guide, he may not do it by shouting louder than his opponents. He may simply continue moving. That is why the ant is such a fitting metaphor.

The ant is not impressive because of its size. Its strength lies elsewhere. It understands that persistence can defeat intimidation, that organisation can compensate for weakness and that patience can sometimes achieve what aggression cannot.

AbdulRazaq’s political career since 2018 has offered several examples of that principle. He entered the political arena as an unlikely challenger and helped dismantle a political order that had dominated Kwara for decades. He survived bitter disagreements with former allies. He weathered the Ile Arugbo controversy. He defeated the opposition again in 2023 despite the fragmentation of the political coalition that produced his first victory. And now, as his governorship approaches its constitutional end, he is preparing for another electoral battle.

He may not be the lion in the Kwara political jungle. He has never needed to be. He has behaved more like the ant: small enough to be underestimated, patient enough to endure, organised enough to survive and persistent enough to keep moving when others assume the journey has ended. Whether he will win in 2027 remains unknown.

Alabidun is an Abuja-based media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com