As 2025 draws to a close, the Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has declared that Nigeria’s most profound challenge over the past year was not economic policy or security pressures, but what it described as a deep crisis of patriotism.
In a year-end review, the party said 2025 marked a defining moment for the nation, one that demanded difficult but unavoidable reforms.
The party’s spokesman, Seye Oladejo, disclosed this on Wednesday through a statement made available to newsmen.
According to him, President Bola Tinubu, deliberately chose a hard path by confronting decades of economic distortions, fiscal indiscipline and governance failures that previous administrations either ignored or sustained.
Oladejo argued that the reforms implemented by the Tinubu administration were not cosmetic, but structural, targeting entrenched interests, rent-seeking networks and political actors who had long benefited from systemic inefficiencies. It noted that such sweeping changes were bound to attract resistance.
However, he maintained that much of the opposition witnessed in 2025 went beyond constructive criticism. It accused sections of the political class of deliberately exploiting temporary hardship, spreading fear and portraying Nigeria as a failed state, both locally and internationally, in pursuit of narrow political ambitions.
“What Nigeria faced in 2025 was not merely an economic or security challenge, but a crisis of patriotism,” Oladejo stated
He described the period as one in which opposition politics became, in its view, openly invested in national failure, with every reform opposed, every sacrifice ridiculed and every difficulty exaggerated for political gain.
Despite what Oladejo called organised resistance and sustained disinformation, the Lagos APC Spokesman stated that Nigeria showed signs of resilience. It pointed to early indicators of economic reordering, efforts to block fiscal leakages, renewed investor interest, progress on critical infrastructure and intensified security interventions as evidence that the reforms were beginning to yield results.
He stressed that these outcomes were achieved not because the journey was easy, but because leadership remained firm in the face of pressure, intimidation and political attacks.
According to Oladejo, true patriotism is revealed during moments of national difficulty, not comfort. It warned that history would distinguish between genuine dissent and deliberate sabotage, and between constructive criticism and what it termed “political arson.”
The Lagos APC Spokesman noted that Nigeria cannot be rebuilt by individuals or groups who profit from national distress or hope for the country’s downfall. It urged Nigerians to choose between supporting reform, resilience and collective responsibility, or aligning with resistance and regression.
He expressed confidence that Nigeria would ultimately emerge stronger, insisting that patriotism—though tested and bruised—would prevail over what it described as perfidy and political opportunism.
