The opinion piece by one “Elu Moses” (published in The Punch Newspaper of June 16, 2026) is a masterclass in what skilled propagandists call the “noble cause substitution”. You take a nakedly commercial interest, in this case, the protection of a specific foreign operator’s revenue stream from regulatory oversight, and you dress it in the language of national development, investment climate, and economic patriotism. You invoke the President’s name. You warn of catastrophe. You gesture towards abstract billions. And you hope that nobody notices the man behind the curtain.
Nigerians should notice. Because the curtain, in this instance, is remarkably thin.
Let us begin with what the Moses piece conspicuously fails to tell us. It does not tell us which specific foreign enterprise is so vital to Nigeria’s digital future that it must be shielded from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. It does not tell us how many Nigerians this enterprise employs. It does not tell us what taxes it pays to the Nigeria Revenue Service. It does not tell us what physical infrastructure it has built on Nigerian soil. It does not tell us what knowledge it has transferred to Nigerian engineers and technologists. It does not tell us what its profit margins look like, where those profits are domiciled, or what percentage of the value it extracts from Nigerian consumers is reinvested in Nigeria.
