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*The Tinubu pardons vs the Council of State!*

The atrocious pardons captures in painful clarity the complete national failure of leadership — the collapse of wisdom from our elders, the silence of conscience from the National Council of State, and the cowardice of those who should tell truth to power.

Nigeria’s tragedy today is not merely that we are governed by a deaf administration stumbling from one blunder to another; it is that those who once held the torch of wisdom now sit idly by, watching the darkness deepen.

I use to believe that the Council of State was once a moral compass — a sanctuary of seasoned minds whose collective voice could temper tyranny and recall leaders to their duty. Today, it resembles a relic of memory, a gathering of those who once swore oaths to defend justice but now bless its burial. How did we fall this low? How did a council meant to safeguard national morality become a committee for political sanitization?

We have reached the point where forgiveness is cheaper than accountability and mercy is dispensed without moral reasoning. When the Council of State, composed of former Presidents, Governors, Chief Justices, and other high officers, lends its name to the pardon of murderers, drug traffickers, and men who profited from the nation’s pain — then the line between justice and mockery has been erased.

This is not mercy; it is moral decay wearing a diplomatic smile. It is compassion weaponized against the victims. It is the slow death of consequence — the moment when the state tells its people that there are no boundaries left between guilt and grace, crime and comfort.

A nation cannot survive on selective morality. The same state that watches helplessly as insecurity consumes innocent lives, that cannot protect citizens from hunger, bandits, or despair, somehow finds the moral energy to pardon those who have destroyed lives, families, and futures. What message does that send to the millions of Nigerians who still struggle to obey the law? That crime pays — as long as you can wait long enough to be forgiven by a system that forgets its victims faster than it forgives their killers.

The Council of State should be a moral senate — a temple of reason, not a club of retired power brokers nursing nostalgia. Their silence and complicity reflect a deeper sickness: the absence of statesmanship. Leadership is not about longevity in office or titles collected over decades; it is about courage — the courage to say no when the nation’s conscience is at stake.

Today, truth has been replaced by timidity, wisdom by convenience, and service by self-interest. The nation bleeds, not because we lack experts, but because those who know better have chosen comfort over conviction.

So yes — this is to boldly condemn the pardons; it is a requiem for the Nigerian conscience. For when a country begins to absolve its criminals while ignoring its victims, when the voices of its elders become instruments of endorsement rather than correction, then we are not witnessing governance — we are witnessing decay dressed in ceremony.

Nigeria stands today not merely at the edge of political failure, but at the brink of moral bankruptcy. And history, as always, will ask — _where were the wise when folly became policy?_

Hf Dauda MoiSoro.