STATEMENT BY PAT UTOMI ON ELECTORAL REFORMS AND THE STATE OF THE NATION AT PRESS BRIEFING ON FEBRUARY 9 2026

Our nation is in deep crisis. The state of our nation is unsound and pushing dangerously to the brink. It is time for citizens, true citizens, to arise, and draw a line in the sand. Before us is collapse vs progress; life and death. We must choose life that we may live.

It is with these grave consequences in mind that I address seven crucial issues.

1. The urgent need for a MULTISTAKEHOLDER commission to review the 2023 elections

2. ⁠The establishment a consequence management committee to punish all who did wrong in the 2023 elections. Institutions emerge from such and it is widely accepted in scholarship today that the boundaries institutions establish are central to human progress.

3. ⁠The commencement of oversight reviews of the activities of the National Assembly on elections reforms

4. ⁠Directive to the Attorney General to commence prosecution of all Legislators who have frustrated the agency function of the NASS as representatives of the people, on charges of treasonable felony 

5. ⁠The immediate establishment of a commission on State Capture similar to South Africa’s Zondo commission

6. ⁠Constituting an international panel to probe the functioning of INEC, which is funded significantly by foreign donors who have to account to their taxpayers, with a view to changing operating modes, prosecuting past abusers and setting up new ways of constituting INEC membership

7. ⁠Probing the role of the judiciary in election and requesting the Nigerian Bar Association to commence a process of delisting all judges and lawyers who have played roles in the diminishing legitimacy of the judiciary because of elections; and in the decline of the idea of the rule of law in Nigeria.

I will expand on each of these. I must however warn that if these demands of the people are not immediately implemented we have to take it that the powers that be are ready for war with the Nigerian people. 

No one desires for Nigeria to be like Sudan or Somalia but if that be their choice let the courts of their conscience, the courts of history and the ultimate court from the throne room of the creator judge them according. On our part we are confident that Nigeria will rise up again.

I want today to particularly challenge the complicit middle and the stupid.

The complicit middle are those waiting to be absorbed into the rot or for their turn to do damage. They may think they are not the ones causing the problems of current wholesale corruption and insecurity but when the rage of the people and the revenge of the poor overflow into the streets, or even the guided missles from foreign powers begin to rain down from the skies, it may not be possible to separate the benign from the wicked. 

They have the option of waking up now to save themselves or be consumed by the coming fire.

Let it not be said they were not been forewarned. 

As for those whom evil has used emotion to convert to haters of people who have done them no ill, and whose unjust savaging, bring no gain and may, in fact, cause later loss, the stupid, you may be unwilling to think but you be unable to escape the wildfire. Sadly you may reap the harvest of Niemoller: I did not speak up when they came for people of other identities, when they then came for me there was no one left to speak up.

Let me now return to the people’s charter of demands.

1. The 2023 elections

I teach business for a living. Organizations that make progress are learning organizations that draw from experience to ‘fail or fall forward’ and future consequence management SOPs. 

It is not acceptable that landquake experiences when we announce outcomes of elections while people are sleeping in the way soldiers carry out coups at night are left unprobed. ….,.



THE TASK AHEAD 

Civil Society must now very intentionally focus on the repurposing civil society, rebuilding the public sphere with a return of civility to the public space and the construction of a marketplace of ideas in which rational public conversation dominates.

Deliberate talent hunts to find early, people of capacity, culture, civility and concern for the common good to be recruited while quite young and socialized into the ideology of a party from where they rise into leadership.

2. Yesterday Dr Usman Bugaje reminded us of some of the challenges of the current rot. One was the weaponization of identity. It is for me where history will the most severe on the current crop of people who weld power. Hatred of neighbor is their big weapon. Civil Society must work to he Eliot’s and ethnic nationality leaders to defuse this bomb.

3. ⁠The monetization of politics is another poison they have injected into culture we are bound to find an antidote for..

May God help us all as we strive to save Nigeria

Pat Utomi

9/2/26