Opinion

Nigeria’s Next Nation-Building Agenda Begins with Trust

Published

3 months ago

July 7, 2026

By Enene Ejembi

Nigeria’s greatest challenge has never been its diversity. Our greatest development and nation-building challenge has been our inability to consistently transform that diversity into collective purpose.

One of Nigeria’s nation-building realities is that many citizens simultaneously navigate three powerful identities: ethnic identity, religious identity, and national identity. Nigeria is still a relatively young nation, and like many young societies, it is still forming a coherent sense of self. Unlike countries like Israel or Saudi Arabia or India where historical, religious, and national identities largely reinforce one another, these identities in Nigeria do not always align. They can compete for loyalty and shape how people interpret politics, institutions, and one another.

When these identities compete rather than complement each other, trust becomes fragmented and nation-building becomes more difficult. Part of our collective task is therefore to strengthen a Nigerian identity that sits comfortably alongside, rather than in opposition to, our ethnic and religious identities.

Every election, each bout of violent insecurity, and every period of economic hardship reminds us of our ethno-religious differences and exposes institutional weaknesses. Yet if we look a little deeper than the surface, every national challenge also reveals something remarkable: Nigerians continue to cooperate, innovate and endure despite extraordinary pressure. That resilience deserves closer attention.

The newly released Nigeria Social Cohesion Survey by the Africa Polling Institute provides one of the clearest evidence-based assessments of our nation’s social fabric. Its headline finding is encouraging: Nigeria’s Social Cohesion Index now stands at 48.8 percent, the highest recorded since the survey began in 2019, although still marginally below the 50 percent threshold that the Institute uses to distinguish a society with weak social cohesion from one demonstrating stronger social cohesion. More significantly, for the first time since the study commenced, more respondents identified primarily as Nigerians over their ethnic, religious or regional affiliation. This is more than an encouraging statistic; it is a nation-building milestone.

Rather than reading the survey as fourteen separate indicators, I believe it is best understood through what I call the ‘Four Questions of Nation Building’. Together, the survey’s fourteen indicators answer four fundamental questions that ultimately determine whether any nation can hold together:

Who do we believe we are? | Who do we trust? | Do our systems feel fair? | Do we believe tomorrow can be better than today?

The first question is one of identity: Who do we believe we are?

Nationhood begins when belonging expands beyond ethnicity. The finding that Nigerians increasingly identify first with the nation suggests that our shared identity may be evolving faster than our politics. Citizens appear increasingly prepared to imagine a common future even while public discourse often reinforces ethnic, religious and regional fault lines. That is an opportunity our government should not squander. A stronger national identity is not built by asking citizens to abandon their ethnic cultures. Rather, it emerges when our many identities (ethnic, religious) complement, rather than compete with, our shared national identity and citizenship.

The second question is perhaps the survey’s most consequential finding, and it concerns trust: Who do we trust?

While the index has improved, trust in many public institutions remains worryingly low. Only 28 percent of respondents expressed significant trust in the Federal Government and 23 percent in the National Assembly. By contrast, 51 percent expressed significant trust in religious leaders and 45 percent in traditional leaders.

This should not be read as an indictment alone. It should be understood as an opportunity.

Nigeria is not short of trusted institutions. We simply have not been deliberate enough about connecting the moral authority of our faith and traditional institutions with public governance, nation-building, and collective problem-solving.

During the National Social Cohesion Dialogue, I observed:

“The real question is not whether our faith and traditional institutions have influence, they do. The question is how to deepen co-creation and collaboration among our institutions – traditional, government and faith – for public trust, cohesion and nation-building.”

That recommendation was reinforced by voices across the dialogue. Representing the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Onamba noted that the consistently high trust enjoyed by religious and traditional institutions “is not news to be cheered, but an opportunity to be explored.” Likewise, traditional leaders emphasised that they remain deeply rooted in their communities, understand local priorities, and often sustain peace, mediate disputes, and deliver social support where formal government presence is limited.

The implication is clear. Nigeria’s challenge is not the absence of influence; it is the absence of intentional collaboration among those who already possess it.

The third question is about justice: Do our systems feel fair?

Trust cannot flourish where fairness feels selective. The survey reveals that 71 percent of Nigerians believe the law does not protect everyone equally. Half of respondents continue to perceive corruption as high, while most remain dissatisfied with government efforts to combat it. These perceptions matter because social cohesion is ultimately built not only on shared identity but also on shared confidence that government institutions operate fairly and consistently.

People may tolerate hardship. They are far less willing to tolerate injustice. When citizens believe that opportunities, justice and accountability depend on connections rather than principles, social cohesion rapidly weakens. Rebuilding Nigerians’ trust therefore requires strengthening not only justice institutions but also the public’s everyday experience of those institutions.

The fourth question is perhaps the most important: Do we believe tomorrow can be better than today?

Hope is often dismissed as an emotion. It is, in fact, strategic national capital. Citizens who believe tomorrow can be better invest in education, grow businesses, participate in civic life, and foster peaceful coexistence. Nigerians who lose hope gradually disengage from public institutions, from one another and, ultimately, from the national project itself: whether through the route of ‘japa’ or through chronic apathy.

The encouraging story within this survey is not only that Nigeria’s cohesion score has improved. It is that, despite economic hardship, insecurity and political polarisation, Nigerians continue to demonstrate remarkable resilience and willingness to cooperate across ethnic and religious lines. Seventy-seven percent expressed willingness to cooperate with fellow citizens from other ethnic groups to make Nigeria more united, while 73 percent indicated willingness to participate in the political process to improve the country.

That resilience is one of Nigeria’s greatest strategic assets. The responsibility now rests with leadership to match it.

The survey leaves us with a hopeful paradox. At a time when public discourse often suggests Nigeria is becoming more divided, the evidence indicates that many Nigerians are increasingly prepared to imagine a shared future. More citizens now identify first as Nigerians. More are willing to work across ethnic lines. More still express a willingness to participate in shaping the country’s future. The challenge, therefore, is no longer whether Nigerians are capable of nation-building. The evidence suggests they are. The greater challenge is whether our institutions can become worthy of that aspiration.

Government must focus as deliberately on rebuilding public trust as it does on delivering public services, and both need to improve. Religious and traditional institutions should intentionally use their moral authority not merely to strengthen their individual communities, but to deepen our consciousness of citizenship and national belonging. Civil society, the private sector and development partners should continue creating platforms where evidence informs policy, dialogue strengthens relationships, and collaboration replaces fragmentation.

At Verbatim Virtual Solutions, our work has consistently shown that sustainable development is rarely constrained by a shortage of technical solutions. More often, progress stalls because institutions operate in silos rather than as systems, implementation is fragmented, and evidence is not translated into action. Our work is centered on helping institutions bridge these gaps by transforming knowledge into strategy, strategy into execution, and results into credible evidence that strengthens institutional performance, accountability and impact.

Ultimately, social cohesion is the presence of sufficient trust to keep building together despite our differences. The Nigeria Social Cohesion Survey is therefore more than an annual measurement exercise; it is a practical governance tool and a roadmap for nation-building. And the 2026 report suggests that Nigerians may already be more ready for the next chapter of our national journey than our institutions are.

The next chapter of nation-building depends on whether our leadership can catch up.

Enene Ejembi has over 20 years’ experience supporting governments, development partners, and institutions across Africa. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Verbatim Virtual Solutions, a strategy, communications, and knowledge management consultancy that helps governments, and development partners strengthen policy, strategy, implementation, institutional learning.

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Opinion

A Comedy of Errors of the Framework Il-literati

Published

12 hours ago

October 1, 2026

The Gleamer

By Kehinde Bamigbetan

The narrative is simple. On September 24, 2026, the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development issued a press statement on the groundbreaking signing of the Framework of Investment in the solid minerals sector by Nigeria and the United States at the Nigerian Mission in New York, United States.

The statement quoted the Honourable Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, extensively on Nigeria’s expectations and set boundaries for the conduct of the joint signatories in executing the framework.

The most poignant part of his declaration deserves emphasis: ‘But let me be clear about Nigeria’s ambition. We are not here to remain a source of raw material for values that others create. Our goal is to turn potential into lasting values at home through stronger local processing, new skills, quality jobs and new opportunities for Nigerian businesses”

Witnesses at the event saw that Alake’s patriotic demand excited his guest. US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau showed excellent diplomatic camaraderie by acknowledging Nigeria’s duty to determine its priority in the Framework. He agreed that Nigeria’s demography and economy make it a regional power with huge continental responsibilities, adding that the US would support leveraging the Framework to advance Nigeria’s national interests.

Alake’s advocacy, by historical precedent and contemporary discourse, is as anti-colonial and anti-imperialist as could be. Were the country not festered by “naboobs of negativism”, it should have earned a heroic applause and hosting of red homecoming flags.

But a section of the commentariat, posing as the finest breed of the literati, had barely digested the content before invading the media- print, electronic, digital and social- with tomes and tones of desperate gobbledegook, unleashing its noxious hallucination and nightmarish schizophrenia on the reading public.

Please dismiss the adversarial calculations and manipulations of the firm of Von Batten- Montague, the official agent provocateur of perennial presidential runner and serial loser Alhaji Abubakar Atiku. Its anti-President Tinubu lobby, from waking the Chicago papers to spinning a Tinubu-Trump meeting yarn, is a voodoo ritual of making corpses walk than professional political marketing. With an unprecedented $ 1.2 million budget, Von Batten is set to plunge his principal into a predictable Waterloo.

Let us also dismiss political opponents, Tinubu haters and confessed annihilators of the ruling All Progressives Congress. Their jaundiced, atavistic rivalry to unseat a progressive administration by hook or crook, including through misinformation and disinformation, calumniating propaganda and digital savagery, already places them outside the precincts of objectivity and fair comment.

The segment of our particular concern is those who pretend to diagnose and analyse, that is, engage in what journalists call informed commentary. This genre is critical to the press because it fulfils the Fourth Estate’s role in holding the other three estates to account. Media awards organisations such as the Diamonds Awards for Media Excellence, DAME and Nigeria Media Merit Awards evaluate its quality and celebrate the expertise of its most creative wordsmiths.

The reason is simple. Informed commentary is the unrivalled forte of the literati- writers, rigorous in research and prodigious in elucidation, yet literary in stringing words that taste sweeter than salt.

The golden rule of informed commentary is sacrosanct: facts are sacred, opinions are free! To worship facts with logical reverence is the literati’s exceptional trait, the traction that delivers their ascendancy.

Unfortunately, the tragedy that befell the genre after signing the Framework is that those who violated the portals and platforms of public discourse broke the golden rule by demonstrating zero fidelity to facts.. With selfish obsession to trend and gain folowers, the “illiterati” betrays a lack of preparation and polish for public discourse. The illiterati arrogantly and lazily strut and stroll across platforms, purveying fallacies as logic and falsehood as facts.

To begin, what in global diplomatic parlance is a Framework? Four decades ago, you needed a dictionary; a decade ago, you would Google. Today, ask AI.Gemini told me: “In diplomatic parlance, a framework (often called a framework agreement, diplomatic framework, or conceptual framework) refers to a foundational structure, set of guidelines, or overarching agreement established by negotiating states to manage bilateral or multilateral relations, guide future negotiations, or address complex, long-term issues.

Rather than settling every granular detail immediately, a framework provides the architecture and rules of engagement for ongoing diplomacy.”

If only the illiterati educated themselves, they wouldn’t go gaga all over the media, infecting innocent readers, listeners, and viewers with rubbish like a $700 billion deal. They turned a contextual information about the estimated value of minerals into a transactional contract!

And this is where the comedy of errors titillates. When I told a journalist that his slug insinuating a $ 700 billion deal was a fabrication, he replied innocently that it was just a caption and that the body of the story carried the authentic information! A slug, not a caption, pegs a story, and it is indeed an egregious error that both should differ in meaning.

He wasn’t alone. Unable to resist the temptation to attract readers with the big figure, a few journalists

took the figure out of context, giving the impression that Nigeria signed away all her minerals.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Delivering the keynote address at the just-concluded annual conference of the Guild of Editors, His Royal Majesty Nnaemeka Achebe, the Obi of Onitsha, counselled:

“In the old order, being first was honour. In this new order, being first with a lie dressed as news is a betrayal of public trust, however unintentional.” Wouldn’t it be refreshing to read the corrigenda of such media organisations tomorrow? I am sure all of us who still believe in the credibility of the media will be glad.

But the most notorious are content creators who latched on this ignorance to excite their followers. Their ad hominem fallacy leaves the subject of the Framework and tries to turn Alake’s professional pedigree in mass communications into a liability. They tried in vain to cast a character out of sync with his working environment.

Such impressions contradict the evidence.Such erroneous misunderstanding of public administration conveniently forgets the crucial role of the bureaucracy as the permanent technical corps of government. Alake is professionally supported by a permanent secretary, Engr Yusuf Yabo; directors-generals of agencies such as the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, Prof Segun Ige; the Nigerian Mining Cadastral Office, Engr Simon Nkom; the Council of Mining Engineers, Professor Opafunsho; and the Executive Secretary of Solid Minerals Development Fund, Hajiya Fatima Shinkafi. Besides, well-groomed aides tracking the strategic implementation of policies, a layer of competent directors who have honed their skills and expertise over three decades are at his beck and call.

With this array of intellectuals, governance is collaborative. Files are referred to specialised departments for interrogation, implementation and decisions are taken based on sound logic and verifiable facts.

Beyond the popular aphorism that journalists are jack of all trades and masters of all because of their professional exposure to all matters of public interest, Alake holds the extraordinary distinction of strategic communications and innovation, crisis management, and visionary leadership.

His political role is to accomplish the manifesto of the All Progressives Congress as encapsulated in President Tinubu’ Renewed Hope Agenda, cascaded to the Ministry as the Seven Point Agenda. In three years, he has delivered key agenda items, including establishing the Nigeria Solid Minerals Company and the Mining Marshals, increasing the registration of artisanal co-operatives, and raising revenues from N6 billion in 2023 to N70 billion this year.

The minister is most passionate about value addition, based on his determination to reverse the colonial baggage of unequal exchange. His advocacy inspired mining ministers in Africa to set up the Africa Minerals Strategy Group and earned him and Nigeria the pioneer chairmanship of that group.

The critics did not only confuse ministerial portfolio with technical consultancy, by presenting the Framework as a kind of sell-out, they display unpardonable ignorance of four decades of Nigeria’s pro-foreign-investor conversation. The Structural Adjustment Programme launched this policy in 1987 and codified it in privatisation and commercialisation laws. This policy guarantees full repatriation of profits to foreign investors and set up free trade zones as tax havens.

The beauty of our mining laws is that they have not thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Illiteracy is not just the inability to read; it also includes the laziness to employ that skill to gather intelligence for public discourse.

The ignorant illiterate have not bothered to read the regulatory regime that the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007 and Regulations 2011 impose on mining companies. They don’t know that no foreigner can legitimately and legally hold a small-scale licence, an exclusive preserve of Nigerian citizens. They don’t know that the traditional authority or landowner must write a letter of consent before a prospective miner can obtain a licence over the area. Such built-in guarantees are beyond the conception and imagination of the illiterate, rendering their competition to outdo each other in poking fingers at the framework a grandiloquent exercise in cerebral vacuity.

Alake has enforced the mining laws to sanitise the sector and promote value addition. With his directive compelling all mining licence applicants to submit local processing plans, the value-addition policy has gained traction and attracted over $3 billion in three years. Lithium concentrates and gold refineries are springing up; the era of pit to port will end soon as raw minerals without value addition can no longer pass through Customs.

As we move into the campaigns for general elections, more controversies are providing opportunities for robust debates. Democracy needs enlightened discourses, not an aggressive parade of ignorance. The lesson from the Framework controversy is the need to understand what we reject even more than what we accept.

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