By femi Adeniyi
The publication titled “The Interior Minister; BTO, and the Immigration Jamborees: Matters Arising” by Kunle “Wizeman” Ajayi is a troubling example of how journalism can be stripped of ethics and repurposed as a tool for agenda-setting. Rather than informing the public with balance and factual rigor, the piece advances a narrative carefully constructed to malign, distort, and provoke—not to educate or interrogate public policy with intellectual honesty.
At the core of professional journalism is objectivity, and that principle was completely abandoned in the said piece. The writer claims to be acting in the public interest, yet conveniently ignores ministers and ministries whose performances have been evidently poor or outright non-existent. Instead, he directs his attack at a minister who has been widely acknowledged by Nigerians, civil servants, and independent observers as one of the most effective performers under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope administration. This selective outrage betrays motive rather than genuine concern for governance.
More disturbing is the attempt to mischaracterise leadership as populism. The Interior Minister’s unscheduled visit to immigration offices—where he encountered delays and inefficiencies and immediately demanded corrective action—was cynically framed as “jamboree” and “drama.” This interpretation either reflects a poor understanding of executive oversight or a deliberate effort to twist accountability into spectacle. A minister who shows up unannounced, questions lapses directly, and reminds public officers of their duty to Nigerians is not engaging in theatrics; he is enforcing standards and restoring public confidence in institutions long associated with neglect and inefficiency.
The article also failed, deliberately or otherwise, to engage with verifiable facts. In just two years, the Ministry of Interior has recorded sweeping reforms across all agencies under its supervision, including the Nigerian Correctional Service, the Nigeria Immigration Service, the Federal Fire Service, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, the National Identity Management Commission, and the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board. These reforms are not cosmetic or theoretical; they have produced tangible outcomes that affect lives, improve security, and enhance service delivery.
Correctional facilities once notorious for congestion and inhumane conditions have witnessed deliberate decongestion efforts, improved feeding, infrastructure upgrades, medical recruitment, and the deployment of biometric databases and surveillance systems. In immigration, passport backlogs that had run into hundreds of thousands have been cleared, manual systems replaced with automated platforms, contactless biometrics introduced, visa processes digitised, and Nigeria’s passport security strengthened in line with global ICAO standards. Border surveillance has expanded, e-gates installed at international airports, and technological infrastructure developed to secure national data sovereignty.
The security architecture under the NSCDC has also experienced a decisive shift, particularly in combating illegal mining, protecting critical national infrastructure, strengthening railway security, and implementing school safety initiatives. The Federal Fire Service—long perceived as ineffective—has recorded improved response times, expanded operational capacity, saved trillions of naira worth of property, and embarked on structural and legal reforms aimed at modernising its mandate. At NIMC, long-standing challenges around enrollment bottlenecks, data security, and payment backlogs have been addressed through mobile enrollment expansion, system upgrades, diaspora access, and inter-agency data harmonisation.
Even within the services board, years of career stagnation and workforce demoralisation have been tackled through timely promotions, inclusive recruitment policies, enhanced training, improved welfare, and large-scale recruitment approvals. These are measurable reforms, not media hype.
The writer’s fixation on passport cost adjustments further exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the piece. It ignores global inflation, rising costs of security-grade materials, investments in digitisation, international compliance obligations, and the imperative of safeguarding national data and document integrity. Nigerians have demanded faster, safer, and globally accepted passports for decades. Delivering that level of efficiency and security in today’s world inevitably comes at a cost, and it is misleading to isolate pricing without acknowledging the infrastructure, technology, and value underpinning it.
Beyond the substance of the article, serious ethical questions arise when the personal conduct of the writer is examined. Kunle “Wizeman” Ajayi has been publicly associated with the display and circulation of campaign posters for the Governor of Ondo State. This raises fundamental concerns about journalistic neutrality. Journalism demands professional distance and non-partisanship. When a writer openly engages in partisan political activity and subsequently assumes the posture of a neutral watchdog, the credibility of his work becomes difficult to defend. In this instance, the overlap between political activism and purported public-interest commentary is neither clarified nor concealed.
Criticism remains essential in any democracy, but criticism divorced from facts becomes propaganda. Distortion does not become truth through repetition, and mockery does not erase documented achievements. Nigerians deserve journalism that informs rather than inflames, interrogates rather than manipulates, and balances critique with context.
Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo’s record is not defined by viral videos or political sentiment but by policy outcomes that have redefined institutions once synonymous with decay. Nigerians are increasingly discerning, and they can distinguish between governance driven by results and noise propelled by hidden agendas.
