Mrs Township SA Semi-Finalist Partners With TMPD to Drive GBV Awareness in Ga-Rankuwa, Rebecca View

Pretoria, South Africa — The fight against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is set to receive a major boost as Mrs Township South Africa 2026 semi-finalist, Nkonela Maringa, teams up with the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD) Social Crime Unit for a high-impact community awareness event in Ga-Rankuwa.

Scheduled for Sunday, 30 November 2025, the campaign aims to rally residents behind the urgent call to stand against GBV, protect women, defend children, and build a nation where safety is a basic right—not a privilege.

The awareness outreach will take place at Rebecca View, Ga-Rankuwa, from 09:00 AM to 11:00 AM, with attendees encouraged to dress in black and red in solidarity with victims and survivors of violence.

According to organisers, the event will serve as a safe platform for community engagement, education, and dialogue, while reinforcing the collective responsibility to combat violence in all its forms.

For further details or media inquiries, the public may contact:

Kgomotso Mashaba: 073 835 9328

Nkone Maringa: 072 414 3990

THE BANQUET OF BETRAYAL: HOW TINUBU TURNED DEMOCRACY INTO A DYNASTY OF DECEIT AND A NATION INTO A PRISON OF PAIN.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by saharaweeklyng.com

“From the abolition of subsidy to the devaluation of the naira; a chronicle of promises broken, lives hollowed and institutions hollowed out.”

Nigeria entered the Tinubu era in 2023 with weary hope and brittle expectations. A man who campaigned on renewal and competence promised national rebirth; instead, two years in, many Nigerians find themselves marooned on an island of austerity while corridors of power host a banquet of betrayal. This is not mere rhetoric; it is an accounting of policy choices, institutional opacity and political signals that have combined to make democracy look like a dynasty and the state feel like a cage.

The signal moment (and the beginning of the banquet) came on 29 May 2023, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared, in his inaugural address, that “the fuel subsidy is gone.” The line was short, performative and definitive; its policy tail was long and brutal. Within days, pump prices tripled in many places and transport and food costs ballooned, hitting the poorest households first and hardest. The subsidy’s removal was not a private misstep or a technical tweak: it was a public re-ordering of the social contract, executed with scant preparation for the human cost.

Economic governance under Tinubu has been characterised by shock therapy over gradualism. The naira was allowed to tumble (a policy some outside experts applaud as necessary for competitiveness) but the domestic reality has been wrenching. Between late-2023 and 2025 Nigeria’s currency slumped dramatically, inflation soared into double digits that bite into family budgets and food insecurity rose. Think tanks and international institutions concede that reforms have improved macro indicators (reserves and a more rational foreign-exchange regime) but they have been blunt: these “gains have yet to benefit all Nigerians.” In short: the economy’s scoreboard improved for investors while the scoreboard for ordinary citizens registered collapse.

Make no mistake: policy changes that correct long-standing distortions are defensible in theory. The political choice is what separates responsible reformers from rulers who rule by decree. Reforms must be sequenced, cushioned and accompanied by transparent social protections. Instead, the Tinubu administration has pursued hard-edged measures (subsidy removal, a unified exchange rate, monetary tightening) with insufficient buffers for the poor, weak social safety nets and an administrative state that oftentimes appears reactive rather than humane. The result is a country where macro stability is invoked as an argument for the very hardship that is tearing apart households and livelihoods.

Political legitimacy is the currency of democracy. Where did it go? First, by concentrating economic decisions in a narrow circle and by elevating elites to roles that feel like patronage rather than public service, the administration has fed a sense of exclusion. Second, the opacity around critical issues (from public contracts to foreign engagements) has made accountability a performative drama rather than a civic instrument. Third, when serious allegations linger (including the prolonged saga in which U.S. agencies were ordered by a court to release records related to past investigations) the Presidency’s responses have been defensive and to many citizens, evasive. The American court rulings and filings are not gossip; they are court documents and reputable reporting. Those controversies erode trust and feed the narrative that power has developed immunity to scrutiny.

The human price is measurable. The IMF and other multilateral institutions have repeatedly warned that while reform has stabilised some macro variables, poverty and food insecurity remain painfully high. Recent IMF reporting estimated that poverty continues to afflict a huge share of Nigerians and cautioned that “gains have yet to benefit all Nigerians.” In practice, this means more families skipping meals, more children out of school and more skilled workers looking outward for escape. Democracy, when it no longer delivers basic livelihoods, becomes a hollow ritual.

Yet the language of “reform” has served convenient political ends. It has been wielded as a shield for tellingly concentrated appointments, for reshuffles that redistribute influence rather than lift capacity, and for a style of governing that prizes headline sovereign-debt wins and investor feel-good stories while everyday Nigerians drown in the rising cost of living. Sahara, Reuters, AP and other outlets documented the government’s managerial re-organs (a new economic council and emergency taskforces) but also recorded the public anger: strikes, protests and palpable frustration that has occasionally spilled into violence and arrests. Governance cannot be judged only by bond markets; it must be judged by how it protects the vulnerable.

If we are to name the disease, let us call it what it is: a politics of elite consolidation that borrows the language of reform but advances the interests of the few. The dynasty is not a royal family by blood, but a recurring pattern; a revolving door in which political survival is secured by alliances with moneyed interests and by the manufacture of consent via technocratic rhetoric. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens condition their lives on unpredictable policy swings: the sudden removal of subsidies, abrupt currency realignments and fiscal choices that transfer risk from the state to households. The “banquet” is thus two tables: one for the elites who dine on patronage and gates to capital and another for the mass of the people who pay the bill.

What must Nigerians and their friends around the world demand? First, transparency: publish procurement details, fiscal retentions and revenue accounts in machine-readable form. Second, social cushioning: targeted cash transfers, food programmes and a durable plan to tackle the immediate pain of inflation. Third, genuine institutional reform: strengthen anti-corruption institutions, fortify the judiciary’s independence and ensure electoral bodies are beyond partisan capture. Fourth, open dialogue: a government that truly consults broad civic actors will reduce the temptation to govern by executive fiat.

It is still possible to repair the damage to turn reforms into broad-based recovery rather than elite enrichment. The IMF and leading policy institutes have signalled the route: pair macro stabilisation with social protection; raise revenues equitably rather than squeeze the poor and rebuild trust through accountability. If these steps are not taken, the dynasty will calcify and the prison of pain will become permanent.

In the end, the choice is stark and moral. Democracy cannot survive as a brand for the few; it must be a shared project. The banquet of betrayal must end. Else we will have traded a republic for a regime that calls itself a government and anoint a dynasty that calls itself reform. Nigerians deserve better and history will not forget who served the people and who served only themselves.

THE RUBBER STAMP REPUBLIC:
How Akpabio’s Senate Is Risking Nigeria’s Constitutional Balance and Why Adams Oshiomhole’s Rebuke Matters.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com

There are moments when a single sentence on the floor of the Senate does more than scold; it indicts. When Senator Adams Oshiomhole (a former national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress and a man familiar with the corridors of power) rose to tell the Senate, “I am not a rubber-stamp senator,” he did not merely defend his dignity. He tore at the gossamer veil that has been draped over the relationship between Nigeria’s legislature and the executive: a relationship fast drifting from healthy cooperation into dangerous subservience. Oshiomhole’s public rebuke of Senate President Godswill Akpabio is not theatre. It is a red flag; one that deserves urgent national attention.

The charge is simple, brutal and constitutional in its implications: bills are being “PASSED LIKE WATER,” rushed through without meaningful scrutiny, with little or no recorded debate on their merits, implications or fiscal consequences. Where the National Assembly was designed by the 1999 Constitution to act as a check on the executive (to scrutinize appointments, investigate maladministration, examine budgets and secure accountability) the spectacle of rapid, transactional lawmaking substitutes speed for substance and convenience for duty. In recent weeks and months Nigerians have watched executive proposals and packages move through the chambers with unusual haste; critics argue this pattern has become more frequent under the leadership of the 10th Senate.

Senate President Akpabio has predictably pushed back. He insists the National Assembly is not a “RUBBER STAMP” and that collaboration with the executive is not the same as capitulation; he has argued that co-operation, when properly managed, produces results for citizens. That defence matters (the legislature is not, and must not become, an adversary of reform for its own sake) but rhetoric cannot substitute for records. When the public sees an avalanche of bills moving in lockstep with executive timetables, and when senior senators themselves stand and object to the process, the perception of erosion becomes a political reality.

Why does this matter beyond partisan point-scoring? Because the health of Nigeria’s democracy depends on functional checks and balances. A rubber-stamp legislature undermines three critical safeguards: oversight of the executive, the protection of minority interests and the rigorous vetting of appointments and policies that affect billions of naira and the lives of millions. Scholars who study legislatures warn that when parliaments abdicate oversight, governance becomes less transparent and more corruptible; policy errors are more likely to persist because there is no robust forum to challenge assumptions or demand evidence. The literature on “rubber-stamp” legislatures (including detailed academic reviews of the National Assembly’s oversight function) shows that weak oversight is not merely a political embarrassment, it has real consequences for accountability, public finance and security.

Look at the facts on the ground. Over the past year the National Assembly has entertained sweeping constitutional amendment packages and a rolling procession of executive bills that critics say were given hurried consideration. Independent media tracking and civil-society guides to legislative oversight have documented that while committees sometimes perform their duties, plenary sessions (where the public record is made) show a worrying willingness to clear matters rapidly without full debate. The result: citizens and civil society are deprived of the opportunity to interrogate policy choices and to hold lawmakers to account. That is not democratic oversight; it is managerial convenience.

Oshiomhole’s rebuke also carries an internal sting: it came from within the governing party. When a senior party stalwart publicly accuses the chamber led by his party colleague of turning itself into a rubber stamp, it suggests fracture lines; not merely disagreements about procedure, but tensions over the very independence of the legislative arm. The symbolism is stark: if the Senate bows too readily to the executive, party structures will likewise be perceived as instruments of consolidation rather than forums of democratic contestation. That perception corrodes public trust in all institutions.

What must be done? First, the Senate must publish and enforce rules that guarantee adequate time for debate, full committee scrutiny and public input before any bill is read into law. Transparency is an antiseptic to slippage into clientelism. Second, senators should restore the practice of substantive plenary debate; not performative monologues, but documented interrogations that place ministers, appointees and policy proposals under the public microscope. Third, civil society, the media and professional bodies must keep score: regular, public scorecards on committee activity, attendance, report adoption and oversight visits will create an objective record that citizens can use to demand standards. Finally, the executive must accept that leadership in a presidential democracy is not the same as unchecked rule; genuine partnership respects institutional autonomy. Useful models and guides already exist (from local think-tanks and international parliamentary practice) on how oversight is supposed to work.

The warning signs are not hypothetical. Case studies from across Nigeria’s recent history show that when legislatures fail to exercise oversight, poor contracting, budget padding and unchecked patronage follow. A strong, independent National Assembly is the single best institutional hedge against the centralisation of power and the decay of public finance. Conversely, a legislature that feeds at the table of the executive without asking inconvenient questions accelerates governance failure. The stakes are national: budgets, appointments, security strategy and the integrity of electoral laws. A rubber-stamp Senate is not a political curiosity; it is institutional rot.

This editorial is not naive about the real-world politics of governing. Cooperation between the arms of government is necessary. But co-operation must be distinct from acquiescence. When senior members of the Senate (elected to represent diverse constituencies and to protect the public purse) declare themselves unwilling to be mere endorsers of executive will, the chamber should welcome that spirit as a reminder of its constitutional duty, not punish it as inconvenient dissent. Oshiomhole’s words should have been a summons to conscience, not a flashpoint.

In the end, the choice facing Nigeria’s lawmakers is straightforward: to be guardians of the constitution or to be managers of the president’s agenda. The difference is not cosmetic. Guardians probe, challenge, demand answers and if necessary, refuse. Managers placate, rubber-stamp and expedite. For the survival of Nigeria’s fragile democratic gains, the Senate must choose the harder path; the path of parliamentary independence, rigorous oversight, and public accountability. If it fails, the country will not merely misgovern; it will outsource its democracy. And that is a cost no nation can afford.

George Omagbemi Sylvester is a political analyst and columnist. Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com