•Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, and President Bola Tinubu / State House Photo

The traditional ruler of Ibadan, Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, has expressed support for President Bola Tinubu’s leadership, but warned that insecurity remains Nigeria’s most urgent national challenge.

The Olubadan was hosted today by President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

The visit, which took place less than four months after Ladoja’s installation as the 44th Olubadan, was the monarch’s first official meeting with the president since he ascended the throne.

It also came a day after Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde was received by Tinubu at the State House.

Oba Ladoja told President Tinubu that farmers are increasingly afraid to go to their farms, describing the spread of insecurity as a growing threat to livelihoods and food security, including in southern Nigeria.

While praising the President’s track record and governance style, the Monarch stressed that restoring safety, improving healthcare, and addressing food shortages must remain top priorities.

He, however expresses hope that current reforms will deliver tangible results by 2031.

Before he ascended the Olubadan throne, Ladoja served as the Governor of Oyo State between May 2003 and January 2006 under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Oba Ladoja became Olubadan in September 2025 following the death of his predecessor, Oba Owolabi Olakulehin, who died in July after a short reign.

His emergence followed Ibadan’s traditional succession arrangement, which rotates the stool between the civil (Egbe Agba) and military (Balogun) lines. Olakulehin hailed from the Balogun line, making Ladoja’s succession from the civil line consistent with established custom.

Before he became the Olubadan, Ladoja occupied the position of Otun Olubadan, a role he assumed in August 2024 and which placed him next in line to the throne.

The House of Representatives Minority Caucus said that its investigation has confirmed that the tax federal government’s tax reform laws were altered after they had been passed by the National Assembly.

“This is a clear case of the Executive undermining legislative powers by illegally altering an already passed law to drag more taxpayers into the net,” the Cacus said, warning that the actions amount to a direct assault on the constitutional authority of the National Assembly and a threat to democratic governance.

In an interim report, released on Friday the Cacus, under the leadership of Kingsley Chinda, said that it set up a 7-man Fact-finding Committee on January 2nd “to get to the root of the scandal” after public outrage over allegations of discrepancies in the passed and gazetted tax.

The ad-hoc committee set up by the caucus is independent of the committee set up by the House leadership.

It is led by Afam Victor Ogene. Other members of the committee include Aliyu Garu – Bauchi, Stanley Adedeji – Oyo, Ibe Osonwa – Abia, Hon. Marie Ebikake – Bayelsa, MB Shehu Fagge – Kano and Gaza Gbefwi Jonathan – Nasarawa.

The Cacus said that as part of its investigations, it’s Ad-hoc committee compared the Certified True Copies of the Acts released officially by the House of Representatives as directed by the Speaker, with the already gazetted version already in circulation before the alarm was raised by the House, and confirmed that there were some alterations as alleged by Dasuki on the floor of the House of Representatives, especially in the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025;

The Cacus also confirmed that there were three different versions of the documents in circulation, particularly the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025.

According to the interim report by the caucus, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act (NTAA), 2025, has a number of discrepancies from the version passed by the National Assembly and the version earlier published in the official gazette. These discrepancies are obvious, going by the released Certified True Copies (CTCs) by the House referenced earlier.

..i. Section 29(1): On Reporting Thresholds: While the NASS Certified version provided for a tax compliance reporting threshold of N50 million for individuals and N100 million for companies, the gazetted version lowered the reporting thresholds for individuals to (N25 million from N50 million) and (N100 million from N250 million) for companies.

ii. Section 41: Introducing new subsections (8) and (9) prescribing a mandatory 20% Deposit for Appeals:The gazetted version introduced new subsections 41(8) and 41(9), which required taxpayers to deposit 20% of the disputed tax amount as a condition for appealing Tax Appeal Tribunal (TAT) decisions to the High Court.

These sections were not in the authentic version passed by NASS.

The national grid collapsed on Friday for the first time in 2026.

The system failure occurred around 1 pm, when load allocation to all electricity distribution companies (DisCos) fell to zero.

Data obtained from the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) showed that power generation dropped to zero megawatts (MW), leading to a total shutdown of electricity supply across the country.

A review of the national distribution load profile at the time of the incident indicated that all DisCos — including Abuja, Eko, Benin, Enugu, Ibadan, Ikeja, Jos, Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Yola — recorded zero load, confirming a nationwide outage.

The collapse came shortly after grid operators reported strong electricity demand in major urban centres.

Before the system failure, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company was receiving about 639 MW, while Ikeja Electric drew approximately 630 MW, reflecting what officials described as robust demand across key cities.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which manages the national grid, had yet to disclose the cause of the collapse as of the time of filing this report.