By Eric Teniola
I guess it is not by accident that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, is constructing a highway between Calabar and Lagos. The construction is political, historical and economical. I will dwell on the historical aspect. It is an acknowledgement of the peaceful Calabar city and what that ancient city still means to the rest of us.
There is an old adage that says “GOD LOVES CALABAR, A LAND OF BEAUTY”. Truly the serenity of Calabar will impress anyone. The soul of a city is in its people. The people of Calabar are not lacking at all. Valued historic buildings scatter Calabar. A drive around Calabar city is a wonderful experience.
Maybe, the construction of the highways is a compensation for Calabar for not having a rail system that was first constructed in 1891 between Lagos and Ibadan under the British rule. Even when the eastern line was constructed between Port Harcourt and Maiduguri by the British later, Calabar was left out. During that colonial era, Minna, Zaria, Kaura Namoda, Jos, Kuru, Kano and many cities enjoyed rail facilities but not Calabar.
It was not until the Lagos/Calabar railway line project was conceived by the regime of president Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 with approval from the Federal Executive Council. However, the project has not seen the light of the day.
The British colonial administration moved the country’s administrative headquarters from Calabar after the Chiefs of old Calabar signed the 1884 Treaty of Protection.
The territory of old Calabar served as the first colonial government centre for the Southern Protectorate and the oil Rivers Protectorate. However, this changed in the fourteenth year of the 20th century when the administrative centre was changed to Lagos.
Lagos was the first capital of Nigeria and became the country’s first administrative centre in 1914.
Calabar is a living museum of Nigeria history.
Lagos is the first national administrative centre for the West African nation. It was declared as such during the Amalgamation Proclamation of 1914 by Sir Lord Frederick Lugard, the Governor General, after the unification of the Northern and the Southern Protectorates. The nation has had two official capitals since 1914.
On 1 January 1914, the newly appointed Governor General of Nigeria, Sir Lord Frederick Lugard, announced Lagos as the first capital city. In his speech during the Amalgamation Proclamation of 1914, Lugard declared that: “For the present, the Central Headquarters will remain at Lagos, and the Governor-General will divide his time between the Headquarters Stations of the Northern and Southern Provinces”. The evolution of the nation’s capital cities began with Nigeria’s colonisation by the British Empire. This journey started with the unification of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914 under Governor-General Sir Frederick Lugard.
Prior to the unification of the British Protectorate, Calabar now CROSS RIVERS STATE CAPITAL served as the central administrative centre for the Southern Protectorate. Before 1914, Kaduna City in Kaduna was the political capital of the Northern Protectorate.
After coming under English rule on 10 September 1884, Old Calabar was designated as the first principal city for the Southern Protectorate, the Oil River Protectorate, and the Niger Coast Protectorate.
Calabar, known initially as Akwa Akpa in the Efik language, is located in the Southeastern region of the country. It served as a significant precolonial trading port for the West African region.
In 1900, Sir Lord Frederick Lugard settled in Lokoja, making it the regional seat of government before moving the administration centre further up the Niger River to Jebba in 1902. In the same year, he moved the regional capital to Zungeru in Niger. In 1912, Lord Lugard’s quest for a more accessible and centrally located administrative centre led him to Kaduna. Although he declared Lagos as the seat of the government in 1914, he did not hide his preference for Kaduna.
When Portuguese explorers in the 15th century reached this part of the Guinea coast, they called the tribes of the area “Calabar”. These historic inhabitants were Quas, Efuts, and Efiks. Efik people migrated from the area of the Niger River to the shores of Calabar. They were fleeing civil war with their kindred and the Ibibio people.
Since the 16th century, Calabar has served as an international seaport, exporting such goods as palm oil. During the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, it became a major port for shipment of African slaves to the Americas. The Spanish maintain the Calabar designation.
Tribes around that region were taken in as slaves for slave trade. Those minority tribes were subject to slave raids by more powerful tribes or ethnic groups in the region.
From 1725 until 1750, roughly 17,000 enslaved Africans were sold from Calabar to European slave traders; from 1772 to 1775, the number soared to more than 62,000. Old Calabar (Duke Town) and Creek Town, 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast, were crucial towns in the trade of slaves in that era.
The first Army Barracks in Nigeria was built in Calabar in 1903. The first national newspaper in English published in Eastern Nigeria was called THE NIGERIA EASTERN MAIL, and it was first published in Calabar. On security, the first maximum security prison was built in Calabar in 1890.
Calabar holds a foundational place in Nigeria football history as the location of the country’s first recorded organized football match on June 15, 1904 at the Hope Waddell Training Institution in Calabar. Students from the Hope Waddell Training Institution played against sailors from a visiting British naval ship (frequently cited as the HMS Thistle or HMS Dwarf).
Mary Mitchelle Slessor arrived Nigeria in 1878 under the auspices of United Free Church of Scotland, now the Presbyterian Church Mission. She resided in Odukpani Local Government Area, where she vehemently fought for the abolition of the ancient custom of killing twin children and their mothers. She built herself a two-bedroom mud house with a veranda, a store and a palour. She called it a Caravan while the villagers called it “Fine Pass All”.
In 1889, a missionary carpenter, Mr. Owens, was made to put up a more permanent structure for her. The walls were made of iron sheets while the doors and windows were made of wood. The staircase leading to the first floor had 21 steps and was supported by two pillars and wooden railings. Cross River State continued with marking of the birthday of Mma Mary Slessor about a hundred years after her birth.
There are so many things to say about Calabar. No doubt the construction of the coastal highway between Lagos and Calabar serves to remind us about the importance of Calabar.
In the late nineteenth century, as European powers scrambled to consolidate territorial control in Africa, the British formalized their influence along the Niger Delta coast. In 1884, Queen Victoria signed a treaty of protection with the chiefs of Akwa Akpa (Old Calabar), enabling Britain to exercise control over the surrounding territory. Soon after, the Oil Rivers Protectorate was established in 1885 to manage trade and suppress inter-tribal conflicts in the coastal region. In 1893, this territory was renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate. Calabar was designated as the official capital of these protectorates.
Calabar’s location and commercial history underpinned its selection as headquarters. It had long been a thriving port for palm oil and other exports that were critical to British industrial needs. The transition from the slave trade to palm oil shifted economic power to local merchant houses, which then negotiated with European firms. British protection treaties signed with Efik chiefs in the 1880s facilitated smoother trade and strengthened British influence in the region. This commercial reach also fed into colonial objectives, enabling the British to tighten control over indigenous socio-economic networks.
Beyond administration, Calabar became a center for early educational and religious developments in Nigeria. Scottish missionaries established schools and churches in the mid-19th century, influencing local institutions and social reforms. For example, the Hope Waddell Training Institution, founded in 1846, became one of the earliest secondary schools in the region. Such institutions shaped local elites and contributed to the cultural synthesis that characterized colonial Calabar.
In addition to education, Calabar was the site of early colonial legislative engagement. In 1922, the British established the Legislative Council with elected members from Calabar and Lagos, marking one of the first forms of representative governance in British West Africa. This council approved budgets and enacted laws, laying important groundwork for the later political evolution of Nigeria.
Calabar’s role as the headquarters of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, the Niger Coast Protectorate, and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate positioned it as a birthplace of modern nation.
On a personal note, I feel excited any time I visit Calabar. The serenity of the ancient city excites me.
It should be noted that Nationalism and the struggle for Nigeria’s independence more or less started in Calabar when Professor Eyo Ita declared in the early struggle “This is the day of Nigeria youth. It must build a new social order, for whereas yesterday belonged to our fathers and their distant future belongs to posterity today and the immediate tomorrow are ours. We can and must shape them according to our needs and desires. The time has come when the young people of Calabar must live creatively, must build new and better homes, must bring new forms to birth in literature language, arts, music, methods and tools of industry, when they must dream of purer and juster laws and promote better health.
We must secure bare living first before we can think of luxuries of life. Calabar is a land of beauty. Nigeria is a land of beauty. Our sons and daughters must reveal its concealed beauties through the use of pencil and colour. Calabarian youth, like the knights of old, and like the militants’ youths of modern Russia, who volunteer to save their society at all cost, must pledge themselves completely to the cause of emancipating Calabar. The love of Calabar must consume us. The zeal for her emancipation must be our food and drink. We are either Calabarians or nothing. To the degree in which Calabar is saved to that degree shall we be saved.
Our God is He who cares for our homes, our womanhood, our childhood, the moral manhood of our race, our economic welfare, our health, and our political freedom. Who respects the beauty of the black man no less than he is interested in other races of mankind. This God speaks to us through the fruits of our land, through the animals that inhabit it, through the love and fellowship of our darling mothers and friends. He is the God of Nigeria, her abiding genius, her sustaining power. The youth must realise that it is serving His cause through the activities of its movement. It must realise that the whole of Nigeria is of supreme value before God, and that its creative work is part of the vast plan of the Divine Converser of our values”.
By building this highway, I am sure President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is appreciating the people of the South South and their leaders. The emergency of President Goodluck Jonathan GCFR on 6 May 2010, the establishment of NDDC, the Ministry of Niger Delta and the Amnesty Programme is not enough compensation for the people of South South region.
No doubt that region has contributed a lot to the modern-day Nigeria. Their leaders too, some of who are alive while some deceased, have served to make this country a great one. I think we owe them a debt of gratitude. I don’t think we can compensate them enough for their services. I will name a few at the risk of offending many.
We have Professor Eyo Ita ((1903–1972), Earnest Sesei Ikoli (1893-1960), Dr Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995), Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro (September 10, 1938- 9 May 1968), Chief Edwin Clarke (May 25, 1927 – February 17, 2025), Chief Eyo Ita Esua (1901-1973), Dr Clement Isong (April 20, 1920- 29 May 2000), Dr. Joseph Wayas GCON (21 May 1941 – 30 November 2021), Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro ( (22 July 1923 – 15 December 2010), Chief Godswill Akpabio (63) GCON, Chief Artur Edwin Prest (1906-1976) and Sir Festus Okotie-Eboh (18 July 1912 – 15 January 1966).
Others are Former President Goodluck Jonathan (68) GCFR, Chief Ufot Ekaette (17 April 1939- 25 September 2019), Chief Allison Akene Ayida (June 16, 1930- October 12, 2018), King Jaja of Opobo (1821-1891), Chief Douglas, Amanyanabo of Opobo (1915-1980), Professor Horatio Oritsejolomi Thomas (1917-1979), Dr. Udo Udoma (21 June 1917 – 2 February 1998), Chief Humphrey Omo-Osagie (1896-1977), Chief Michael Ani (30 November 1917 – 18 December 1985), Sir Dennis Osadebay (29 June 1911 — 26 December 1994), Dr. Okoi Arikpo (20 September 1916- 26 October 1995), Chief Wenike Opurum Briggs (10 March 1918 – 21 April 1987), Chief Harold Dappa-Biriye (26 September 1920-2005),Chief Louis Orok Edet (1914–1979), Chief Margaret Ekpo and many others.
Let us take a look at some of them.
Professor Eyo Ita ((1903–1972) was the founder of the Nigeria Youth League Movement. He was born in Calabar. He had his education at Duke Town School and then to Calabar’s famous Hope Waddell Training Institute. After teaching at the Baptist Academy, Obanikoro, Lagos, (1926-1928), he went to the USA where he studied at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, majoring in religions and education. He later read for BA in Canada. On his return in 1933, he became active as an educationist, a pamphleteer, and a nationalist who believed strongly in a role for Nigeria’s youth.
He formed the Nigeria Youth League Movement, which had little effective existence at first. After spending some time at Ogbomoso, where he taught but also wrote pamphlets and press articles, he returned in 1938 to Calabar, where a National Institute had been founded by local educated people, and he became its head. Then he started his own West AFRICAN People’s Institute, an educational institution for which he became famous. It had a press which published his works: The Assurance of Freedom (1949), Crusade for Freedom (1949), The Revolt of the Liberal Spirit in Nigeria (1949), Sterile Truths and Fertile Lies (1949), Two Vital Fronts in Nigeria’s Advancement (1949), National Youth Renaissance (undated), Theory of Social Symbiosis (1951), etc.
Chief Eyo Ita was a leading member of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) after its foundation in 1944, and was elected to the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly in 1951on the party’s ticket. In 1948 he became the first National Vice-President of the NCNC. After elections in 1951, which the NCNC won in the Eastern Region, he became Minister for Natural Resources and Leader of Government Business for the Region. A year later there was a crisis within the NCNC, in January 1953, the nine NCNC ministers in the East resigned, but Chief Ita and five others withdrew their resignations, and stayed as ministers despite a hostile House of Assembly, until new elections in the same year installed a government under the NCNC leader, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Before that, Chief Eyo Ita had formed a National Independence Party (NIP) with Dr. E.U. Udoma and Jaja Wachukwu. Later in 1953 the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers (COR) movement was founded to call for separation of the non-Ibo minorities from the Eastern Region, and Chief Ita was one of the leading figures for some years. Later his NIP joined the United National Party (UNP) of Alvan Ikoku to form the National Independence Party.
In 1959 he announced he was leaving the COR movement, and returned to the NCNC. The “professor” as he was called, was not prominent in politics thereafter. After independence he devoted his time to developing and improving his school.
Chief Ernest Sesei Ikoli (1893-1960) was born on 25 March 1893 in Rivers State. He was the son of an illustrious merchant who traded on the coast of south-east Nigeria. His mother was among the first women from the Niger Delta to receive Western education. He had his education at the Bonny Primary School and then Kings College in Lagos, where he was one of the foundation students on its opening in 1909; later he taught there, becoming assistant Mathematics master in 1913.
After resigning from Kings’ College in 1919, he went to journalism as editorial assistant at the Lagos Weekly Record under the editorship of Thomas Horatio Jackson, who had taken over from his father John Payne Jackson who founded the paper in 1889. After two years with the Record, Ikoli founded his own newspaper, the African Messenger, in 1921. He remained its editor and proprietor until 1926 when he was appointed the first editor of the newly founded DAILY TIMES, whose first editorial he wrote on 1 June 1926.
The previous year the Daily Times had taken over Ikoli’s African Messenger. In 1928 he left the Daily Times to found THE NIGERIAN DAILY until 1931 when it ceased publication.
Chief Ernest Ikoli also took part in politics in Lagos, starting as secretary of the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey. In 1934, he, Vaughn, H.O. Davies and others became the leaders of the new Lagos Youth Movement (NYM), which in 1938 was renamed the Nigerian Youth Movement and came under the leadership of Dr. D.K. Abayomi. Three years later he was elected to the Legislative Council in Lagos, in a bitterly contested election in which he was opposed by Samuel Akinsanya (who later became the Odemo of Ishara). He was elected President of the NMY in 1943.
Meanwhile from 1938 to 1944 he edited another newspaper, THE DAILY SERVICE, the NYM organ, with Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. Chief Ikoli was re-elected to the Legislative Council as an Independent in 1946, because of the disqualification of his opponent; in 1947 he decided not to seek re-election again.
While Chief Ikoli’s active political life was short-lived, he is remembered by his former political colleagues as a former political colleague as a foremost politician with a determined mind. One of these, a former political opponent who became a prominent traditional ruler, Oba Samuel Akinsanya, Odemo of Ishara, said of him in the first yearly Ernest Ikoli Memorial Lecture inaugurated by the Sunday Times of Nigeria in 1979: “I worked together with Ernest Ikoli for many years. We did many things together. We fought many things together. And I cannot remember any political agitation or representation to the colonial government in those days with which Chief Ikoli was not associated. In fact, he would one of the foremost leaders.”
On 21 October 1960, three weeks after Nigeria became independent, Chief Ernest Ikoli died and was widely mourned.
Dr Clement Isong (April 20, 1920- 29 May 2000) was the second Nigerian to be Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. Dr. Isong was brilliant, industrious and highly talented who excelled in various fields. He was a teacher, banker, economist, administrator and politician.
He was born on 20th April, 1920 in Eket, Akwa Ibom State to Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Isonguyo.
He attended University College, Ibadan, Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, USA and Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science where he obtained Ph.D. in Economics.
Dr. Isong taught Economics in University of Ibadan. He joined Central Bank of Nigeria as Secretary and later became Director of Research. He was seconded to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an adviser in the African department.
Dr. Isong served as the Governor of the CBN from 1967 to 1975 at a critical time in the history of Nigeria. After retirement, he joined politics. He was elected the first civilian Governor of Cross River State from 1979 to 1983. Having contributed to the growth of Nigeria, Dr. Isong was honoured with Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (CFR) in 1982. He died on 29th May, 2000.
Dr. Clement Isong’s portrait appears on the N1000 Note.
Sir Dennis Chukude Osadebay (29 June 1911 — 26 December 1994) was a former premier of the now defunct Mid-Western Region of Nigeria, which now comprises Edo State and Delta State. He was one of the pioneering Nigerian poets who wrote in English.
As a politician, he was said to have detest for party politics and tried to form unbiased opinions on important matters of the period. He was also a leader of the movement to create a Mid-Western region during the Nigerian First Republic.
Chief Osadebay was born in Asaba, Delta State, to parents of mixed cultural backgrounds. He attended Asaba Government School at Asaba, the Sacred Heart School in Calabar and Hope Waddell Training Institute. He joined the labour force in 1930 as a customs officer working in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar. He subsequently went to England to study Law during the 1940s. It was while studying that he started publishing poetic verses. He was then known as a newspaper poet, as most of his writings were published in the West African Pilot and a few other newspapers.
In his writings, Chief Osadebay used both his personal life and public events as inspiration. In Africa Sings, a collection of poems, he delved into themes from a personal point of view, such as a sullen poem written about his 25th birthday and the coming of middle age. However, his best work in the volume were poems written from an impersonal viewpoint. In his adventurous poem “black man troubles”, he used pidgin English to lament the status of black Africans in colonial Africa and injustice in the society. His poems were also notable for faithfully representing modern poetic rhythm.
Chief Osadebay was one of the founding members of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in 1944. He left the country to read law a few years later. After, completing his studies, he returned to Nigeria and established a law practice in Aba and was also made the legal adviser of the NCNC. In 1951, he contested and won a seat on the Western Region House of Assembly, which was dominated by the rival Action Group (AG). He soon became the leader of opposition in the region from 1954 to 1956 but gave the mantle to Adegoke Adelabu in 1956. After the death of Adegoke Adelabu, he took on his familiar oppositional role in 1958. In 1960, he became the Speaker in the Western Region and upon the creation of the Mid-Western Region in 1963, became the pioneer premier of the newly created region.
Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh (18 July 1912 – 15 January 1966) was the finance minister of Nigeria from 1957 to 1966 during the administration of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.
He was born on 18 July 1912 in a town along the Benin River in Niger Delta. He was educated at the Sapele Baptist School, and after a year as a municipal clerk taught for several years. He joined the Bata Shoe Company in 1935 as a clerk. Through private study and determination, he qualified in 1942 as an accountant and was later appointed Chief Clerk in Lagos. He went on to become a deputy manager of the Sapele branch of the Bata Shoe Company which then sent him to Czechoslovakia, where he studied for and obtained diplomas in business administration and chiropody. He was in that country at the time of the communist coup d’etat of 1948.
On his return to Nigeria, he resolved to go into business on his own. He became a timber and rubber merchant and opened a chain of schools and enterprises with which he laid the foundations for his own personal fortune. He entered politics in 1951 when he was elected to the Western Region House of Assembly. He had already been chosen the first secretary of the Warri National Union and was secretary-general of the Itsekiri National Society. He moved to the Federal House of Representatives in 1954 as the member for the Warri division and in the same year became the national treasure of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC; the party later changed its name to the National Council of Nigerian Citizens).
He was appointed Federal Minister of Labour in 1955. He became Finance Minister in 1957 combining with his duty as leader of the NCNC parliamentary party in the Federal House.
Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh was a man of influence and power, with considerable financial strength and know-how. He retained the important Finance portfolio until the fall of Nigeria’s first civilian administration.
Professor Horatio Oritshejolomi Thomas (1917-1979), was an eminent surgeon, university teacher and administrator He combined a brilliant medical career with headship of Nigeria’s two major universities. He specialised in facial reconstructive and plastic surgery. He trained as an assistant to the renowned Sir Archibald MacIndoe in this discipline.
Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was born in 1917 in Sapele, where his family-owned rubber plantations. He was educated at Methodist Boys’ High School in Lagos and Birmingham University in England, where he read medicine. He was the pioneer provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Lagos, as well as the first Nigerian to be admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
For a while, from the time he completed his studies until 1948, he worked as a lecturer in Anatomy at Birmingham University as well as a surgeon in various British hospitals.
Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas returned to Nigeria in 1949, to become a member of the pioneering staff of University College, Ibadan, that was just beginning to function under a special relationship with the University of London. At that time there was a growing in Nigeria to create institutions of higher learning, both to meet individual aspirations and national manpower needs and to enable university degrees to be granted in the country. The new University of Ibadan, though short of adequate facilities, provided the basis for that development.
Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas, who taught surgery at the university, was one of the intakes of its fifteen staff members.
In 1953, he returned to Britain for specialist course in plastic surgery at East Grinstead, Sussex. He returned home in the mid-1950s before the new teaching hospital of the University moved to its permanent site at Agodi in Ibadan. He worked there until the University became an autonomous institution in 1962, rising to become one of its leading heads of department and respected academic staff.
In 1962, when the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and the College of Medicine was established by the Federal Government, Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was made head of its department of Surgery. Soon he became head of the College of Medicine, first as Dean of the Medical School and Chairman of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Board of Management and later Provost of the College of Medicine.
During his seven years’ headship of the College, he served for a while as acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. He remained head of the College of Medicine for seven years, reverting to his earlier position of head of department in 1969.
In 1972, Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas was appointed Vice Chancellor of the country’s premier university, Ibadan, whose development owes much to the contributions of the generation of distinguished scholars like himself. Professor Oritshejolomi Thomas held that office until he retired in 1975.
Chief Edwin Clarke (May 25, 1927 – February 17, 2025) attended primary and secondary schools at Effurun, Okrika and Afugbene before completing further studies at the Government Teacher Training College, which later became Delta State University, Abraka. Thereafter, Clark worked briefly as a schoolteacher before travelling to the United Kingdom to earn a law degree.
He worked with the administrations of the military governor Samuel Ogbemudia and head of state, General Yakubu Gowon GCFR between 1966 and 1975. In 1966, he was a member of an advisory committee to the military governor of the Mid-Western Region, David Ejoor and was appointed Federal Commissioner of Information in 1975.
Chief Clark’s involvement in the political process began during the pre-independence period when he was elected as Councillor for Bomadi in 1953. Clark later joined National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC).
He was later appointed Midwestern Commissioner of Education and later, Finance from 1966 to 1975.
During the second republic, he was a member of the national executive committee of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and the treasurer of the party in Bendel State (now, in part, Delta State and previously the Mid-Western Region province). In 1983, he was an elected senator for three months at the twilight of the Shagari administration.
Beginning in 1996, Chief Clark was a self-described leader of the Ijaw nation. He supported the Ijaw ethnic group in Delta State during an ethnic crisis in Warri and led Ijaw leadership delegations to meet political leaders.
Chief Edwin Clark was the founder of Edwin Clark University which was established in 2015.
In 2016, Chief Clark founded the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) along with other leaders. The organization’s stated objective is “to dialogue with stakeholders and lobby for increased attention and implementation of restructuring, development and security policies by the Government of Nigeria.