When Numbers Become Political Mirrors

I finally had the leisure this weekend to read, one after another, the essays that followed the Catholic Bishops’ visit to the Presidential Villa. I read Temitope Ajayi, Sunday Dare, Bayo Onanuga and Sam Omatseye, not as a partisan seeking ammunition, but as a Nigerian interested in how power explains itself when challenged. The sequence was revealing: four pieces, one political weather system, and an oddly similar instinct, defend first; interrogate later.
The dispute is simple enough. The Catholic Bishops visited President Bola Tinubu, presented their assessment of Nigeria’s condition, and Cardinal John Onaiyekan later discussed the encounter publicly. That became the spark. What foll...