Trump, Macron, Starmer, Other World Leaders Bid Final Farewell to Pope Francis

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April 27, 2025
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*Hundreds of thousands witness funeral

*How first non-European pope in almost 13 centuries requested for simple burial

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

United States President, Donald Trump; his predecessor Joe Biden; Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer and French President, Emmanuel Macron, as well as Prince William, and other world leaders from 150 nations were among the over 250,000 mourners who bid Pope Francis farewell as the leader of the Catholic church was laid to rest yesterday at a solemn funeral ceremony held at the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major, Vatican City.

Earlier, the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who was the leader of Nigeria’s delegation to the burial ceremony, paid tribute to the departed Pope, on behalf of President Bola Tinubu and the Nigerian People at the lying-in-state.
Pope Francis, who shunned much of the pomp and privilege of the papacy, had asked to be buried at Saint Mary Major Basilica, rather than in St. Peter’s, the first time a Pope would be laid to rest outside the Vatican in more than a century, a Reuters report said.

Pope Francis became the first Pope in over 120 years to be buried outside the precincts of St Peter’s Basilica.
Some other world leaders in attendance were the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was pictured locked in deep discussion with Trump earlier; President of Argentina, Javier Milei; Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and Italian President, Sergio Mattarella.

Behind these leaders were reigning sovereigns, and other delegations seated in alphabetical order in French, the official language of diplomacy, on other benches.
Also present were: German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz; European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen; Norway’s Crown Prince, Haakon and Crown Princess, Mette-Marit; Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia as well as Monaco’s Princess Charlene and Prince Albert II.

Besides, Poland President, Andrzej Duda; Dominican Republic President, Luis Abinader; Belgium’s King Philippe and Queen Mathilde; German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier; Croatian President, Zoran Milanovic; Ecuador President, Daniel Noboa; Moldova President Maia; New Zealand Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, among others also attended the event.
In addition, 250 cardinals, 400 Bishops and over 4,000 priests were at the ceremony to honour the Argentine Pope who reigned for 12 years and died at the age of 88 last Monday after suffering a stroke.

There was a loud applause as Pope Francis’ coffin was brought out of the Basilica and into the sun-filled square by 14 white-gloved pallbearers at the start of the Mass.
The crowds clapped loudly again at the end of the service when the ushers picked up the casket and tilted it slightly so that more people could see it.

After the funeral, as the great bells of St. Peter’s pealed in mourning, the coffin was placed on an open-topped popemobile and driven through the heart of Rome to St. Mary Major Basilica.
The popemobile left the Vatican from the Perugino Gate, a side entrance just yards away from the Santa Marta guesthouse where Francis had chosen to live, instead of the ornate Renaissance apartments in the papal palace.
Crowds estimated by police as numbering some 150,000 lined the 5.5-km (3.4-mile) route to St. Mary Major.
The scene resembled many popemobile rides Francis took in his 47 trips to all corners of the world.
Some in the crowd waved signs, and others threw flowers towards the casket.
They shouted “viva il papa” (long live the pope) and “ciao, Francesco” (goodbye, Francis) as the procession made its way around Rome’s ancient monuments, including the Colosseum.

Pope Francis’ death ushered in a meticulously planned period of transition, marked by ancient ritual, pomp and mourning.
Over the past three days, thousands of people filed past his open coffin, laid out before the altar of the cavernous basilica.
Choirs at the funeral sang Latin hymns, and prayers were recited in various languages, including Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic, reflecting the global reach of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church.
Many of the faithful camped out overnight to try to secure spots at the front of the crowd, while others hurried there in the early morning.

Pope Francis, the first non-European pope for almost 13 centuries, battled to reshape the Church, siding with the poor and marginalised, while challenging wealthy nations to help migrants and reverse climate change.
“Francis left everyone a wonderful testimony of humanity, of a holy life and universal fatherhood,” said a formal summary of his papacy, written in Latin, and placed next to his body.

In his homily at the Requiem Mass for Pope Francis, the Dean of the College of Cardinals recalled the highlights of his intense and prophetic 12 years of pontificate marked by his closeness to the people, “especially the least and the last amongst us”, said a statement from the Vatican.

Over 250,000 people from all walks of life poured into St. Peter’s Square and the adjacent areas yesterday morning to bid their final farewell to Pope Francis at his Requiem Mass. Over 150,00 others lined the streets of Rome as his coffin was taken in procession to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
“The Solemn and moving celebration was presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, joined by some 250 Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, priests, and consecrated religious.

“In his homily, the Dean of the College of Cardinals delved into the many highlights of his remarkable and intense 12 years of Petrine Ministry marked by his style of closeness to the people and spontaneity of his gestures until the very end, but most importantly, by his deep love for the Church which he wanted open to everyone,” the Vatican statement added.
Thanking all those present and extending his greetings to the numerous religious leaders, Heads of State, Heads of Government and Official Delegations from across the world attending the Mass, Cardinal Re noted that the outpouring witnessed in the week of mourning told a lot on how much the pontificate of Pope Francis “touched minds and hearts” of many people, not only within the Church.

Referencing the Gospel passage where Christ charged Peter with shepherding His flock, Cardinal Re remarked that “Despite his frailty and suffering towards the end, Pope Francis chose to follow this path of self-giving until the last day of his earthly life,” in which he “followed in the footsteps of his Lord, the Good Shepherd”
“The final image we have of him, which will remain etched in our memory, is that of last Sunday, Easter Sunday, when Pope Francis, despite his serious health problems, wanted to give us his blessing from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica. He then came down to this Square to greet the large crowd gathered for the Easter Mass while riding in the open-top Popemobile,” the Cardinal stressed.

He recalled how his decision to take the name Francis “immediately appeared to indicate the pastoral plan and style on which he wanted to base his pontificate, seeking inspiration from the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi.”
With his temperament and form of pastoral leadership, and through his resolute personality, said Cardinal Re, “he (the late Pope) immediately made his mark on the governance of the Church.”
“He was a Pope among the people”, with an open heart towards everyone, especially the marginalised, the least among us, but “also a Pope attentive to the signs of the times and what the Holy Spirit was awakening in the Church,” Cardinal Re remarked.

How First Non-European Pope in Almost 13 Centuries Requested for Simple Burial

Although traditionalists pushed back at his efforts to make the Church more transparent, while his pleas for an end to conflict, divisions and rampant capitalism often fell on deaf ears, the pope carried his desire for greater simplicity into his funeral, having rewritten the elaborate, book-length funeral rites used previously.
He also opted to forego a papal tradition of three interlocking caskets made of cypress, lead and oak. Instead, he was placed in a single, zinc-lined wooden coffin.

His tomb has just “Franciscus”, his name in Latin, inscribed on the top. A reproduction of the simple, iron-plated cross he used to wear around his neck hangs above the marble slab.
However, after the Pope is laid to rest, attention will now switch to who might succeed him. The secretive conclave is unlikely to begin before May 6, and might not start for several days after that, giving cardinals time to hold regular meetings beforehand to sum each other up and assess the state of the Church, beset by financial problems and ideological divisions, Reuters added.

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Kaduna Gov Says Tinubu’s Appointment of DSS Boss Yielding Great Results

*Service seizes arms stockpiles in Kaduna, Delta, Zamfara states

Kaduna,state governor, Senator Uba Sani has praised President Bola Tinubu for appointing Mr. Oluwatosin Ajayi as Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS),

saying the appointment has helped reposition the DSS to tackle the country’s security challenges.

Sani spoke in the wake of over 34 successful operations by the DSS in his state, leading to the arrest of 54 suspects, including serving security operatives, and the recovery of a large cache of arms and ammunition.

The governor’s position came amidst the recovery by DSS operatives of scores of rifles and pump action guns and several thousand rounds of ammunition across the country.

In Delta State, DSS operatives recovered over 50 AK-47 rifles, six pump-action shotguns and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition during a covert operation in Asaba, the state capital.

The agency arrested an Itsekiri serving in the British Army (name withheld) who allegedly procured the weapons.

The seizure and arrest has drawn commendation from Ijaw communities in Egbema, Gbaramatu, Isaba, and Ogbe-Ijoh kingdoms in the Warri Federal Constituency, who appealed to the Presidency to Investigate the arms seizure. They warned that such stockpiles could lead to provocation and reignite conflict in Warri.

Security sources disclosed that the DSS command in Kaduna State arrested eight suspected bandits and 22 of their suspected informants, four gunrunners, two human traffickers, four cyber fraudsters, two vandals and 12 family members of suspected bandits.

According to the source, the command also reportedly recovered five AK-47 rifles, one GPMG, three RPGs guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunitions of various calibres, while it’s operations resulted in the rescue of 79 kidnap victims now in the custody of the state government.

Some of the arrested suspects, it was gathered, which included a security operative serving in Zamfara State, disclosed that he often steals the ammunition meant to fight bandits in Zamfara and environs and sell same to the bandits.

As at the time of his arrest, offered the source, the serving security personnel had on him 217 rounds of assorted ammunition he planned to sell for N4 million.

One suspected gunrunners told journalists in Kaduna that he was arrested with 500 rounds of live AK-47 ammunition he planned to sell for ₦1.5 million to one Suleiman in troubled Birnin Gwari town.

Another suspected gunrunner confessed that he was on his way to Katsina State to deliver 1,087 rounds of ammunition when DSS operatives nabbed him. His associate who was arrested in Futua, Katsina State, said he was to deliver 701 rounds of ammunition to Zamfara State

*Service seizes arms stockpiles in Kaduna, Delta, Zamfara states Kaduna,state governor, Senator Uba Sani has praised President Bola Tinubu for appointing Mr. Oluwatosin Ajayi as Director General of the Department

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In Defence of Truth: A Rebuttal to Kperogi’s Fiction on SDP

Stephen Adewale

Recently, my attention was irresistibly drawn to an opinion article penned by Professor Farooq Kperogi and published in a national daily on April 26, 2025. In his characteristically provocative style, Professor Kperogi, in the piece titled ‘In 2027, Tinubu Won’t Win; The Opposition Will Lose,’ presents a grim diagnosis of Nigeria’s political landscape as the nation marches towards the next general election. He contends, with cutting precision, that President Bola Tinubu’s greatest asset for 2027 is neither soaring popularity nor transformative policies, but rather the chronic disunity, provincial arrogance, and strategic naivety that plague the opposition. With a keen eye, he dissects the opposition’s vulnerabilities. With particular emphasis on the northern politicians and the recent movement into the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he asserts without evidence that the party is no more than a shadow extension of President Tinubu’s political machinery.

What truly caught my attention, and compelled this rejoinder, was the astonishingly misplaced assertion by Professor Kperogi, who referred to the SDP as “Tinubu’s spare car.” I was sorely tempted to dismiss his ignorance as just another example of armchair punditry, the specialty of writers who live comfortably outside Nigeria’s borders, cobbling together grand conclusions from snippets of newspaper gossip. In my quest for the “evidence” behind his bold claim, I diligently read through his column, only to discover that his solitary reference was a 2022 Business Day publication, which merely speculated that Tinubu might have opened backdoor discussions with the SDP in case his primary ambitions faltered. No hard facts, no insider confirmations, just recycled social media chatter dressed up as insight. With such flimsy scaffolding propping up his argument, it is clear that Farooq was not building a case but merely echoing the street-level rumour mill with academic flourish.

Yet, I chose to respond, because as someone who stood firmly in the trenches during the 2023 general election, working hand in glove with the leadership of the SDP and Prince Adewole Adebayo himself, it would be a grave disservice to let Farooq’s false accusations go unchallenged. To stay silent would be to allow the sweat, sacrifices and sleepless nights of those who genuinely toiled to build the party, and who continue to labour relentlessly to make the SDP a formidable, rescuing force for Nigeria, be casually erased by the careless flourish of a professor’s pen especially one who, frankly, ought to know better. If such reckless narratives are left to stand, truth itself risks being buried under the rubble of falsehood, merely because it was inked with academic authority.

This tired old argument about the SDP being a stooge for Tinubu has been hawked around since 2022, but like all bad merchandise, it has never stood the test of truth. To set the record straight: SDP’s presidential primary was concluded before the APC even managed to choose its standardbearer. At that time, mischief-makers spun wild tales that Prince Adewole Adebayo would miraculously step down for Tinubu, an event that, unsurprisingly, only ever happened in the fertile imaginations of rumour peddlers. Throughout the campaign, we marched boldly on the high road of principle, and neither Prince Adebayo nor the SDP leadership ever stooped to compromise.

When that prediction collapsed like a house of wet cardboard, the charlatans quickly rebranded their fables, claiming that after the election, Adebayo and the SDP leaders would rush into APC’s warm embrace or scramble for federal appointments as a “thank you” gift from Tinubu. Yet here we are, three April later, and not a single such betrayal has occurred. Today, while leaders of other “opposition” parties still parade around with their security details, SDP leaders had their protection stripped away, hardly the royal treatment one would expect for so-called “stooges”. If loyalty to principle is now seen as betrayal, then perhaps it’s the slanderers, not the slandered, who owe Nigeria an explanation.

Since President Tinubu was sworn into office in May 2023, the lone, unyielding voice consistently echoing through TV screens, radio waves, and newspaper reports with sharp, constructive criticism has been none other than Prince Adewole Adebayo, the 2023 presidential candidate of the SDP. It is no exaggeration to say that the very reason SDP remains on the lips of Nigerians today as a credible force capable of unseating the All Progressives Congress (APC) is because of the tireless, and daily principled interventions of the party. I challenge Professor Farooq to name one, just one other candidate or party from the 2023 race who has matched the SDP’s stamina in challenging Tinubu’s retrogressive policies or proposing sensible alternatives. The silence will be deafening.

It is increasingly disheartening that each time I turn to the musings of some of our so-called enlightened columnists, I am met not with insight, but with disappointment. Take, for instance, Professor Farooq’s latest masterpiece of imagination, where he boldly declares, “Northern opposition politicians like Nasir El-Rufai also don’t seem to realise that the Social Democratic Party (SDP) they have embraced as the vehicle to displace Tinubu is, in fact, Tinubu’s spare car.” That a Professor of his stature could toss around “in fact” while peddling nothing more than a figment of his own creative mind is, quite frankly, the stuff of tragic comedy.

It seems the good professor has conveniently forgotten that Mallam El-Rufai was not just a card-carrying member of the APC in 2023, but a central figure in the kitchen cabinet that midwifed President Tinubu’s emergence. El-Rufai had front-row access to all the political backroom deals: he knew exactly who the collaborators were, who played double games, and who stood their ground. That he has now chosen to align himself with the SDP is, if anything, a ringing endorsement of the party’s authenticity as a genuine opposition force. How Professor Farooq imagines that El-Rufai, with all his insider knowledge, would blindly leap into the arms of a “stooge party” is a riddle that defies logic. Even more amusing is the idea that the professor fancies himself better informed about Nigeria’s political back alleys than El-Rufai, a man who has swum in the very waters he theorises about from afar, is a claim so bold it deserves its own chapter in the annals of creative writing.

Professor Kperogi took the metaphorical analogy used by Prince Adebayo and twisted it into something far more dramatic than it ever was. He quotes Prince Adebayo as saying: “As for the coalition, we’re listening to them. What we don’t want to be—we don’t want to be a get-away car for a conspiracy and robbery we did not plan. So, if you planned something somewhere and you want to use the SDP as a get-away car, that’s not available.” But instead of grasping the clear meaning, the professor seemingly put on the robes of omniscience and wrongly claimed that Adebayo was referring to Mallam El-Rufai. It’s almost as though Kperogi believes he’s in Adebayo’s head, when in reality, Prince Adebayo was speaking directly to opposition leaders who thought forming a coalition for the sake of defeating President Tinubu would be a magic bullet. What Adebayo was saying, in no uncertain terms, is that such coalitions should be built on genuine national interests, not on the shaky sands of selfish political manoeuvring.

Let’s take a quick stroll down the memory lane to 2015. The opposition parties coalesced under the APC banner, not to fix Nigeria’s problems, but to oust President Goodluck Jonathan. The result? They succeeded in removing the Peoples Democracy Party (PDP), but the policies that followed were indistinguishable from those they had once opposed. Ten years later, under the APC-led government, is Nigeria any better off? Absolutely not. So, Adebayo’s caution to the current crop of opposition leaders is simple: don’t make the same mistakes the opposition leaders made on the road to 2015. Yet, in Professor Kperogi’s view, this perfectly rational advice becomes some grand conspiracy, conveniently ignoring the bigger picture. It’s almost as if he’s turned a metaphor about caution into a melodramatic soap opera.

And this has always been the position of SDP. Our intervention as an opposition party is to emphasise that SDP’s trenchant opposition to the APC and the President Tinubu Administration is principally about bad policies and poor governance instead of personal hatred or grievances. The continuous admonition to the political class is to build a coalition of the people for the people on issues about the people rather than personal grievances of the politicians. That way, the people will buy into the coalition.

However, Kperogi’s lamentation about the opposition’s chronic disunity and how they might yet, through a breathtaking display of selfishness, stumble and bicker their way into political irrelevance rings with painful truth. Those disillusioned opposition leaders should wear this criticism as a gauntlet thrown at their feet and rise to the challenge to prove him wrong.

Regrettably, the professor’s accusation of the SDP being President Tinubu’s “spare car” is not just wrong, it is a spectacular historical blunder. It’s almost as if, in his bid to deliver what he deems an informed opinion, Prof. Kperogi found himself driving down the winding road of misinformation, swerving past truth and crashing into the wreckage of baseless allegations. His decision to label the only active opposition party committed to building a genuine coalition as a “spare car” for Tinubu is not only inaccurate, it’s a tragic disservice to the very idea of informed commentary.

In his attempt to decry the fragmentation of the opposition, Kperogi somehow managed to splinter his own credibility. He is so focused on sowing division that he inadvertently undermines the effort of the SDP leaders, who have been tirelessly working to unite well-meaning Nigerians. These are individuals who aren’t simply fixated on toppling the ruling party, but on bringing true, people-oriented leadership who actually care about the citizens they govern to power.

By publishing these groundless accusations, Prof. Kperogi has not just done a disservice to himself, he has also done a grave injustice to the Nigerian people, who deserve a truthful, honest assessment of their political landscape. It is not just a misstep, it is a fall from intellectual grace, where the rush to present an opinion has tragically replaced the pursuit of truth. So, while Kperogi’s column may be seen by some as an exercise in free speech, it is indeed an example of how a simple question of ‘what do we really know?’ can often be drowned out by the loud roar of assumptions and conjecture. Let us hope, for his sake and for the country’s, that future contributions aim for a bit more precision and a lot less political fiction.

* Mr. Adewale, former Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Ondo State, writes from the Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife

Stephen Adewale Recently, my attention was irresistibly drawn to an opinion article penned by Professor Farooq Kperogi and published in a national daily on April 26, 2025. In his characteristically

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