Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno, today, signed the Bulk Purchase Agency and Assets Management and Maintenance Agency Bills recently passed by the State House of Assembly, into law.

Speaking during the Enlarged State Executive Council meeting at the EXCO Chambers, Governor Eno commended the leadership of the State House of Assembly for working to expeditiously pass the two bills.

The Bulk Purchase Bill, as the Governor has been saying, is a response by Government to the high cost of staple food items in the nation arising from some economic challenges currently being felt by Nigerians across social strata.

The Governor had stated that, “this is an intervention exercise, and the only way we can mitigate the suffering of our people, is to directly intervene. We believe the best vehicle for such intervention, was to set up an agency that will do a direct intervention in the market and get staple food items to our people at a reduced price. That is what the Bulk Purchase Agency seeks to address.

“Let me again, emphasize that this is an intervention exercise and not a permanent solution. The permanent solution is to return to the farm.

“That is why we will soon, set up an Agric Committee that will support our people with seedlings so they can return to the farm.

“This committee will work tirelessly to ultimately make our staple food items available at drastically reduced price range.

“ The second bill, seeks to create the State’s Assets Register, different and separate from Akwa Ibom State Road and Other Infrastructure Maintenance Agency, (AKROIMA) which as the name implies, is essentially for roads maintenance. We have to develop a strong maintenance culture. We can’t allow our assets to deteriorate.

“This bill also seeks to create an occupational safety department, in line with what obtains elsewhere.”

The signing of the bills was followed by a presentation of the key element of the Bulk Purchase Agency, which is the food voucher by the SSA on ICT Matters, Dr. Frank Ekpenyong.

A massive publicity on the working of this process will be further enhanced in the coming weeks.

All over the State, the people have commended and celebrated Governor Umo Eno for his people- centric initiatives, especially at this time of severe economic stress among Nigerians.

Ekerete Udoh
Chief Press Secretary to the Governor

President Bola Tinubu has approved the establishment of the Regional Coordinating Centre (RCC) of the Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa-CDC) in Nigeria.

President Tinubu is the African Union (AU) Champion for Human Resources for Health and Community Health Delivery Partnership.

The President's approval of the siting of the Centre in Abuja is part of his larger effort to convey Nigeria’s commitment to regional and global health security, while promoting local economic opportunities in the health care delivery value chain and enhancing Nigeria's and West Africa's collective capacity to respond promptly to outbreaks which is vital to the overall well-being and stability of the African continent.

The Centre will also bring with it enormous socio-economic benefits in the form of enhancing aggregate national productivity and reversing human capacity drain, even as the ability of indigenous medical professionals and scientists will be bolstered to respond adequately to old, recent, and emerging diseases, not only in Nigeria, but across the continent.

Chief Ajuri Ngelale

Special Adviser to the President

(Media & Publicity)

March 14, 2024

What does palliative mean to you? Free food items from the government? Subsidized transportation or increased in wages? While other states are distributing food items to their vulnerable and the very poor citizens and some are topping up workers’ salaries with some cash, Akwa Ibom state government is going a step further by taking healthcare to the rural communities and the lessons are instructive. For three days in February, Gov. Umo Eno arranged a huge medical outreach program in Uyo in which an open field in the metropolis was turned into a gigantic hospital and thousands of people trooped into the airconditioned tents to receive treatment for all sorts of ailments, ranging from hernia to glaucoma. Practically, every disease that afflict our people were treated for free and in the three days of the program, over 1,700 patients received attention and medications; 248 surgeries were performed, including caesarean sections; 630 eye glasses dispensed; 102 dental procedures performed and 742 eye consultations done. In all, 200 medical personnel participated.

Encouraged by its success, the government is taking the program to the other two senatorial districts. This week (March 13 – 18) is the turn of the Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district (or Ikot Ekpene Senatorial district) which has 10 LGAs while Akwa Ibom South or Eket Senatorial district (12 LGAs) will take their turn next month. Persons afflicted with hernia, cataracts, glaucoma, malaria, skin infections and all sorts of ailments are receiving attention, and instead of tents in an open field, the outreach in Ikot Ekpene is held at the general hospital and it will last for five days, two days longer than the one in Uyo. In the first two days at Ikot Ekpene, 3,000 patients have received attention and over 300 surgical procedures, including CS, were performed. I have just asked a friend whose mother is suffering from swollen legs (apparently a symptom of renal impairment) to rush the poor woman to the general hospital.

‘’The success is amazing and the government is thinking of organizing the outreach more frequently’’, Dr. Emmanuel John, the personal physician to the governor told me. But why didn’t these people go to hospitals, the government-owned health facilities, all along? Were they waiting for this outreach program? Did they know that it was coming? I asked Dr. John. His answer is instructive. They kept away from hospital because of cost. ‘’You will be surprised to learn that even a N2,000 bill can scare away our people from hospitals’’, he said, adding, ‘’the governor is very concerned about the welfare of our people in the rural areas and he knows about their limited capacity to bear financial burdens, no matter how minor they are, and so he came up with the idea of this outreach which is essentially taking free healthcare to the people’’.

Although Akwa Ibom government is planning to increase the frequency of the program, the most sustainable system of providing healthcare to the people lies in compulsory health insurance scheme. Nigeria has had health insurance since the Obasanjo administration introduced it over 20 years ago, but the coverage has been too low – just about three percent of the population is covered. In the whole of Africa, it is only Rwanda that has a coverage of up to 90%. Said Dr. John: ‘’We need to make health insurance compulsory in Nigeria so that the working class in the country can bear the burdens of the weak and the elderly members of the population’’. I agree. If, for example, 200,000 people in the state contribute N2,000 each in a month, that would fetch N400 million. This is more than enough to cater for the health needs of every sick person for the month. This is a matter for the National Economic Council and the Nigerian Governors Forum to take a keen look at.

There are some lessons to take away from the success of the Akwa Ibom medical outreach. Number one: Our people are so poor that even the thought of a N2,000 medical bill can prevent them from seeking help in government-owned hospitals. The previous administration spent huge resources to renovate and re-equip general hospitals in many LGAs and the incumbent administration is revamping the primary health centers, yet our people do not go there for treatment.

Another lesson is that distribution of rice and food items is not the only way of providing palliatives to the people. Quite often, we hear of governments distributing foodstuffs to ameliorate the cost-of-living crisis in the country. But unknown government officials, more of their citizens are dying of common preventable and curable diseases than of hunger. These people are so poor that they do not even know where to seek help for their ailments. So, while the governors are in Abuja looking for money to provide food palliatives, their citizens are dying of common infections. Truly, humans require food as much as they need medical care to live.

This program may cost Akwa Ibom government up to N300 million or more, in my estimation. Today, a surgical procedure, whether for hernia or appendicitis, even in a government hospital, costs up to N300,000! Whatever the total cost will be, it is worth it. This is the time to cater for the hapless and the helpless amongst us. I commend the governor. Akwa Ibom State is not for the political class alone! To create a more enduring system, I urge the governor to make a law for a compulsory health insurance scheme in which every working person, including the self-employed, will contribute to a pool that would fund medical care for all, especially the weakest segments of the population.

Hon. Minister of Agriculture and Food Security,

Hon. Minister of Budget and National Planning

Hon. Minister of State, Agriculture and Food Security

Permanent Secretary,

Distinguished Colleagues,

 Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Morning,

1. It is with great honour and enthusiasm that I stand before you today to address a matter of paramount importance that not only aligns with the core objectives of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security but also resonates deeply with the livelihoods of all Nigerians - the escalating cost of food.
2. As we are all well aware, Hon. Minister, the Central Bank of Nigeria significantly emphasises maintaining price stability as one of its primary mandates. Food prices are a crucial component of inflation, especially considering that a substantial portion of household expenditure in Nigeria is allocated towards food and non-alcoholic beverages. This reinforces the critical need to address food inflation as a pivotal aspect of managing overall headline inflation rates. While the CBN has been implementing comprehensive measures to curb inflation, it is evident that in the short term, inflationary pressures may persist, predominantly driven by escalating food prices.
3. This is precisely why we convene today - to strengthen our collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture to mitigate the surge in food prices. In alignment with our strategic shift towards focusing on our fundamental mandate, the CBN has veered away from direct quasi-fiscal interventions and transitioned towards leveraging conventional monetary policy tools for executing monetary policies effectively. In this light, we aim to extend our support and foster closer ties with Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) with the mandate and expertise to undertake these critical initiatives. Consequently, we aim to enhance our partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, bolstering your endeavours to enhance food productivity and security, ultimately curbing food inflation and fortifying our pursuit of price stability.
4. In pursuit of these shared goals, we are delighted to announce the allocation of 2.15 million bags of fertiliser, valued at over 100 billion naira, which we humbly hand over to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. This contribution from the Central Bank aims to amplify food production capabilities and foster price stabilization within the agricultural sector.
5. My team and I reiterate our unwavering commitment to prioritising price stability and instilling confidence in the Nigerian economy by upholding consumer price stability and ensuring a balanced foreign exchange market. Despite the prevailing challenges posed by inflation and currency depreciation, we remain resolute in our determination to surmount these obstacles. While transient inflationary pressures may persist, we anticipate substantial alleviation by the third quarter of 2024, coupled with diminished exchange rate strains. Our resolve lies in implementing policies that cultivate a resilient macroeconomic environment and enhance the welfare of all Nigerians.
6. I extend my heartfelt gratitude for your collaboration, Honorable Minister. Together, we embark on a journey to fortify food security, foster economic stability, and uplift the prosperity of our nation.
7. Thank you.

Olayemi Cardoso

Governor

We are the CONSCIENCE OF YORUBA NATION GROUP an affiliate of Afenifere.

In regards to the recent instruction of our president of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to the state Governors to provide land for grazing to herders in attempt to curtail the incessant Farmer Herders Crisis that is ravaging the country. Members of COYN hereby reject this proposition of PBAT on this subject. Grazing zones as a proposal to combat the farmers herders crisis has proved ineffective in the middle belt of the country. Benue state banned open grazing and provided ranches yet the crisis in Benue has continued. In Plataeu State and Nasarawa, lands were donated by the President Buhari administration but this did not stop the continued Farmers -Herders clashes. Southern Kaduna is another example of cases of failure of the grazing reserves: they have the longest record since the 1960 grazing reserve act where the former Northern region let the herders lease land for grazing, the reserve land subsequently becoming disputed land, leading to further conflicts till today and continued killings in the region.

We are also dismayed that the President did not recommend any investigation into the offending herders who are interfering with agricultural practices in affected regions such as the South West of Nigeria. As the chief law enforcement officer of the country, we urge the president to look into farm security initiatives for farmers whose lives are endangered everyday by herders who are often armed and has been confrontational in their encounters with farmers, leading to their murdering of many farmers in cold blood. We propose that the president set up a committee to investigate the causes of the incessant farmers -herders crisis and why existing remedies in other regions of the country with adequate land mass for ranching has failed. Mandating State Governors to give land as grazing zone appears to be a repeat of same ineffective strategies that have plagued the country since 1960s.

We urge the State Governments of the Southwest to double their efforts in Animal husbandry to meet the demands of the citizens.

COYN continues to believe in the unity of Nigeria under a federal system based on equity and fairness.

We also believe in the capacity of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to solve the problems bedevilling Nigeria.

Otunba Adekolejo Kole Omololu. 
Conveiner.

Lionel Messi built on his 13th minute assist to Luis Suarez, netting a stupendous finish for the Herons just 15 minutes later.

After a 2-2 draw in the first leg that saw Inter Miami seize an away goals advantage, the Herons came out firing on home turf in the second leg on Wednesday night.

The Herons opened the scoring just eight minutes in, with Suarez providing the goal on a Messi assist.

Just 15 minutes later, though, Messi got one of his own, firing home a feed from Diego Gomez to make the score 2-0.

The Argentine’s brilliant first half set the tone for the Herons, shooting them to a 3-1 victory (5-3 aggregate) over NSC.

Now, they’re off to the quarterfinals of the tournament.

The CONCACAF Champions League is Inter Miami’s first crack at a trophy this season, having won the club’s first-ever piece of silverware last season in the Leagues Cup.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the tournament gives Miami a chance to qualify for the Club World Cup, where they can match up against some of the world’s best.

Following Wednesday’s cup match, the Herons will be back in action this weekend as they return to MLS play. They’ll play host to D.C. United on Saturday as they look to bounce back from a frustrating defeat to CF Montreal.

As for the Champions Cup, Inter Miami will play the winner of FC Cincinnati and CF Monterrey Thursday evening, in the next round of the tournament.

[Leadership]

 A civic organisation focused on the Nigerian budget and public data, BudgIT, has thrown its weight behind suspended Senator Abdul Ningi on a N3.7 trillion gap in the 2024 budget presented to the National Assembly.

 The Director and co-founder of BudgIT, Seun Onigbinde, made this known during an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday, stressing that Ningi was right if he posited that there was no detailed allocation for N3.7 trillion in the 2024 budget. 

Ningi, representing Bauchi Central senatorial district was suspended on Tuesday by the Senate, over the allegations that two versions of the 2024 budget were passed at the National Assembly. The senator said he stood by his story and also said there was nowhere he said two versions of the budget were being implemented.

The senator from Bauchi, who was also the Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), alleged that the budget was padded by N3.7 trillion and that the North has been neglected under the administration of President Bola Tinubu. On the floor of the Senate, the Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Olamilekan Adeola (APC, Ogun West) on Tuesday moved a motion on breach of privilege and after heated debate by senators, Ningi was suspended for three months.

 ‘Ningi was right’

But reacting yesterday, the BudgIT Director, Onigbinde, stressed that Ningi was right for positing that there was no detailed allocation for N3.7 trillion in the 2024 budget.

 Onigbinde said the allocations of the National Assembly, National Judicial Council (NJC), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and others do not carry a detailed breakdown. 

He added that the people have the right to know how the funds earmarked for the aforementioned agencies were being spent.

“Around N2 trillion of the budget presented by the president is the government-owned enterprises budget. So, if Senator Ningi says there is a N25 trillion budget, yes, that is the MDA’s budget. It’s different from the government-owned enterprises budget which was now added. 

“It is factual that he said that, but it doesn’t mean that we are running two concurrent budgets. There is a different conversation that those projects should be detailed. TETFUND should not just get an allocation. 

“What are you spending the money on? INEC is collecting a huge chunk of funds but there are no public details about what the funds are used for, the same thing with NJC, even the National Assembly. “In the current budget, the National Assembly gave a very broad summary of its allocations but there are no detailed allocations on a granular level that everybody can interrogate.

 “These are transparency issues and if you put all these together, that is around N3.5 trillion to N3.7 trillion. So, if that is what he (Ningi) wants to interrogate, there are components of the budget where there is no breakdown. That is very factual. 

“But the National Assembly needs to push back. We need a breakdown. What is NJC spending money on? We give more money to the NJC and say take it arbitrarily. What are they spending that money on? There should be a detailed breakdown to the public. On that point, Senator Ningi is right but to look as if we are running parallel budgets, that is not right.” He said. Contacted by Daily Trust yesterday to shed more light on their finding, Onigbinde said “Ningi’s allegation of budget padding was partly true. “From my fact-checking of Ningi’s statement, we found some parts to be untrue, and we found some parts to be true.

“The only part that we found to be true is that some of the items that were statutory transfers and Government Owned Enterprises (GOEs) do not have a breakdown. “The bigger picture here is about insertion into the budget. Around 7,474 projects worth N2.2 trillion were added to the budget. I think that’s where the bigger problem is.”

But efforts to get the Senate spokesman, Yemi Adaramodu, to comment on the latest development proved abortive, as he neither answered his phone calls nor responded to an SMS sent to him. Senator Adaramodu had explained on Tuesday that the N3.7 trillion alleged to have not been traceable to any project or location was for agencies of government “on first line charge.”

 The Senate Spokesman said, “They include the Public Complaints Commission, INEC, UBEC, TETFUND, and many others. So, the money was not padded. They are allocations of agencies of government that have to take first line charge.”

However, Dataphyte, a research and data analytics organisation, said there was no evidence of padding in the 2024 budget. 

 “What we can confirm is that the 2024 Appropriation Act approved an aggregate expenditure of 28.78 trillion naira, and the figures add up,” Mr Oluseyi Olufemi, the Insight Lead, Dataphyte, told Daily Trust yesterday.

We stand by Ningi – Bauchi gov 

Meanwhile, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State has declared that the state government is behind Senator Ningi.

 Speaking during the state’s cabinet meeting at the Government House in Bauchi yesterday, Mohammed said, “Yesterday (Tuesday), I was very sad the Senate suspended one of our best from Bauchi for saying the truth, for standing up to be the beacon of the truth. “Equally I don’t know what we will do but we will discuss privately to see what we can do to support him because I support whatever he is doing and that is our best position especially if what he is saying is the truth.” The governor, however, called on all relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate the matter rather than suspending the senator.

PDP asks Akpabio to step aside

 The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked Senate President Godswill Akpabio to immediately step aside and allow an independent investigation into the “allegation that a staggering N3.7 trillion was discreetly inserted into the 2024 budget for alleged non-existent projects.”

 PDP also demanded that Senator Akpabio immediately report to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over the pending case of “alleged looting of N108 billion belonging to the people of Akwa Ibom State under his watch as governor”.

Debo Ologunagba, National Publicity Secretary of the party, in a statement, said the Senate president should also speak to Nigerians on the “reported N86 billion contract scam in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) during his tenure as the minister of Niger Delta Affairs.”

Ologunagba said, “We ask, why the APC leadership in the Senate not referred the matter to the appropriate Senate standing committee for an open investigation in line with the extant rules of the Senate? What is the APC Senate leadership afraid of and what is it hiding from Nigerians?

 “It is even more absurd that instead of recusing himself, the Senate president sat as a judge in the matter; a situation that can bring the institution of the Senate to further public disrepute.”

Suspension didn’t address budget padding allegation – Obi 

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in last year’s election, Mr Peter Obi has said that the suspension of Senator Abdul Ningi by the Senate has not addressed vital issues emanating from his allegation of the 2024 budget padding. Obi, in a post on his X handle yesterday, asked senators to disclose to Nigerians the exact amounts allocated to them for constituency projects for appropriate monitoring of implementation by the public. “And if indeed the report from BudgIT is true, that there is about N3.7trn without any detailed project allocations, I strongly urge the Senate to do more detailed work of channelling these funds into the critical areas of development – education, health and pulling people out of poverty, which will in turn, minimise the criminality we are facing today.”

Ningi’s suspension attack on freedom of expression – CISLAC 

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)/Transparency International in Nigeria (TI-Nigeria) also queried the “undemocratic action and questionable decision by the leadership of the Senate to suspend Ningi over the 2024 budget padding controversy.”

The Executive Director of CISLAC/TI-Nigeria, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, said on Wednesday in Abuja that it is unacceptable that the suspension was initiated against Ningi for expressing his constitutionally guaranteed concerns and observations on the 2024 budget at this critical moment when the nation is deeply soaked in socio-economic and financial crisis. 

He said that the unjust suspension of a senator who represents an entire senatorial district is similar to a public demonstration of an unguarded culture of silencing, insensitivity, disrespect and marginalisation of the people and dictatorship. Also, Comrade Ibrahim M. Zikirullahi, Executive Director, Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED), demanded for forensic audit of allocation for constituency projects. He also demanded Senator Abdul Ningi’s immediate reinstatement.

“The Senate leadership made major attempts to undercut Senator Ningi’s charges and swiftly suspended him without conducting a thorough inquiry to check the veracity of his claims. He commended Senators Ningi and Jarigbe for their courage in speaking out against corruption and theft of public resources in the Nigerian Senate.

“Furthermore, we’ve discovered that members in both the Senate and the House of Representatives have developed new methods to sneak fake projects into the budget, making it impossible to monitor.

“This has occurred since the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) collaborated with selected Civil Society Organizations, including CHRICED, to monitor constituency projects across the country, exposing the fraudulent practices of several federal and state legislators.

“One such strategy adopted by them is to insert useless and frivolous empowerment initiatives that are virtually hard to track down and do not fulfil the constituents’ concerns. We saw in the 2024 budget that a lot of projects with billions of Naira earmarked to them had no locations or specifics,” he said. 

 [DailyTrust]

The journey to Kuriga in southern Kaduna, North-west Nigeria, did not start with the kidnap of 287 students last week. In the early 1990s a neighbouring town, Zango Kataf, was the boiling point. 

About a decade later, the beast of sectarian violence, which had reared its head in Kaduna, surfaced several hundreds of miles away in two major places that have become the epicentres of insurgency: Borno and Yobe States, both in the North-east.

Even though misery travelled southwards aided by Mohammed Yusuf, the itinerant extremist Muslim preacher in Yobe whose activities heightened the rise of extremism in the early 2000s, Yusuf did not entirely pave the way for the mass kidnap in Kuriga last week. 

The incompetence of the security services mixed with rampant poverty in parts of the North and the opportunism of the elite in the region helped in no small way to recruit the bands of misguided and rogue elements that have become a national plague.

That band, mixed with insurgents drifting southward from the Sahel, has been showing up as banditry in some areas, cattle rustling in other areas, and violent extremism elsewhere. In the process, hundreds have been killed, while Borno and Yobe have become Africa’s largest camps of internally displaced persons.

Kidnapping is the latest franchise. It shocked the world when over 200 girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok and 58 boys killed inside their school dormitory in Buni Yadi, Yobe State. But since then, Amnesty International has documented 13 abductions in Nigerian schools. 

Within 10 days last week, over 500 persons, mostly children, were taken hostage in different states and in separate attacks on IDP camps and schools. 

Days after 200 persons were kidnapped from an IDP camp in Borno State, a school in Kaduna State was the next hunting ground. Two-hundred and eighty-seven students and pupils, with some staff, from the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) Primary School, Kuriga in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State were kidnapped during the school’s morning assembly. 

Politicians, who shed crocodile tears for a living, visit crime scenes like Kuriga twice in their lifetime. They visit unfailingly during election campaigns and then grudgingly – more for the camera – at a time of grief, like this. Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, for example, was in Kuriga on Thursday, shortly after the students were kidnapped. 

It was not a normal visit, like you would visit folks in your neigbourhood who had just suffered a loss. Kuriga or Birnin Gwari, another dangerous neighbouring town, has not been a normal place for years. Four years ago, for example, an NGO, WANEP, reported that 140 persons were abducted and 84 killed by bandits in Birnin Gwari. 

Governor Sani’s visit

Eyewitnesses said on his visit to Kuriga, Governor Sani was prepared as if he was going to a warfront. Only one print journalist and a few others from broadcast stations, chosen by the Government House, were embedded in the governor’s convoy on that trip. Which means with telecommunications cut off, reports from there are second- third- or perhaps, fourth-hand accounts.

Residents of Chikun Local Government, with an estimated population of 550,000, have tried to get used to living under terror. Left largely on their own without government or security, they have accepted the authority of bandits and terrorists. These criminal gangs extort money from residents from N70,000 to N100,000 to have access to their farms. Those in Kidandan, Galadimawa Kerawa, Sabon Layi, Sabon Birni and Ruma whose names may not show on your Google map, are also affected.

Yet, these folks might even consider themselves lucky, if luck means paying through your nose to reach your farm. According to news reports, those in other local governments such as Igabi and Giwa, have abandoned their farms to terrorists. Other communities in Kaduna currently under siege are Kaura, Kajuru, and Zango Kataf.

Toll gates of Kuriga

Apart from tolling the farms for cash, illegal miners, using small fry, have also deployed their billing machines. They squeeze farm owners to give up their lands for peanuts, which they then mine for minerals. It’s a criminal enterprise that has been on for years. Like most criminal gangs, the ones in Kuriga have developed their own codes, fees, levies and commissions. 

The decision of these syndicates to turn from extorting farmers and stripping their lands of mineral deposits to kidnapping students for ransom is an indication that kidnapping is paying more. That’s not a surprise. The Africa Report quoted SBM Intelligence that gunmen kidnapped at least 3,620 people across Nigeria between July 2022 and June 2023, with a ransom demand totalling over N5billion. 

What is the government doing about it? And I’m not talking about the state alone; I’m also talking about politicians in Kaduna and Abuja elected to represent these communities. Where, for example, is Jesse David, who represents this distressed community in the State House of Assembly? 

And where is Shehu Balarabe, who represents Birnin Gwari/Gwari Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives? How did they find their way to their constituency during the election campaign but have lost their way back when their people need them most?

Where is the Federal Government, which controls the army, the air force, the police and the state services? How are kidnappers or bandits or terrorists able to mobilise and seize 287 students and teachers from their school in daylight in Kuriga, about 20 minutes’ drive from Birnin Gwari that is supposed to have a military base? 

Imagine, for a moment, the logistics involved in moving 287 persons, most of them children. From infographics published by LEADERSHIP the day after, it would take 144 motorcycles or 57 cars or 21 buses or five 4.8 Embraer-145 planes, to move that number of people. 

Yet, for the umpteenth time since 2014, children were kidnapped in their numbers by bandits who still managed to plan, coordinate and execute this evil in an area supposedly cut-off from communications. How, for Christ’s sake, did that happen?

A trillion naira industry?

Just as shocking for me has been the near total absence of outrage outside Kuriga. It’s this kind of eye-rolling, not-our-business kind of attitude that has brought us where we are: where what shocked the world 10 years ago in Chibok even spawning demonstrations and hashtags, appears incapable of moving the dial today, in spite of its scale and audacity.

Apart the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR), and South Sudan, where the savagery of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led to 100,000 deaths, and the abductions of 60,000 to 100,000 children and the displacement of millions, only few countries have witnessed the scale of criminality that Nigeria has witnessed in what is supposed to be peace time.    

It reminds me of Mexico in 2014. That year, also the year of the Chibok Girls, 43 students were kidnapped by a drug cartel and years of agonising search yielded no clues. Until last year, when long after the students had been murdered, investigations revealed that government officials were employees of the cartel. 

According to the New York Times, text messages exchanged between the cartel and government officials even found that first responders on the crime scene were on the cartel’s payroll! Which partly explains why it took so long to unravel the crime.

It’s heart-wrenching to think that even though we’re told that Kuriga and other affected parts have been cut off from communications, we still hear of the criminals asking for ransom and issuing threats! 

It may be far-fetched to assume official complicity in Kuriga. It’s foolish, however, to think that kidnapping became a trillion-naira industry without support from outside the gangs. Until we thoroughly investigate the kidnappers’ support system and expose and punish the kingpins, we’re wasting time. 

Who knows where this is going to happen next?

Azu Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP. 

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has said the firm recorded 9,000 infractions on oil pipelines in one year.

Kyari stated this yesterday when the House of Representatives Special Committee on Oil Theft visited the NNPCL headquarters in Abuja on oversight functions.

According to him, from 2022 till date, the NNPCL had deactivated 6,465 illegal refineries. It has also removed 4,876 of the 5,570 illegal connections to pipelines.

He added: “Some of the infractions we see are unbelievable. We are not able to deal with it. When you remove one connection, the next day in the same location, someone will replace it.

“It is obvious that crude oil theft is almost an end-to-end issue in Nigeria; it is very obvious that everyone is involved. In most of these locations, they are less than a 100 meters from the settlement. Some are even less than a 100 meters from the local government headquarters.”

Kyari said the key issue was insecurity, and that NNPCL moved to curtail pipeline vandalism by incorporating all security agencies into a single platform, including private security.

According to him, no country surrenders the protection of such critical assets, which are the source of income, to non-state actors.

Exactly one month to this day in 2014, Nigeria became the subject of international interest when 276 students of Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram. The brazenness and the novelty of the Chibok incident turned many Nigerians into conspiracy theorists. In those days, the All Progressives Congress/Congress for Progressive Change was the so-called opposition, and they really dug a spear into former President Goodluck Jonathan’s side. Bola Tinubu was the leader of the APC. Then Borno governor, Kashim Shettima, could not devise enough ways to stitch up the Jonathan administration over Chibok.

Reading through the old media reports recently and seeing the allegations against the Jonathan administration by people like Tinubu (and even his wife) and Shettima, it is striking how much they politicised that unfortunate incident.

A decade after Chibok, Tinubu is president; Shettima is his vice, and another 300 or so school children plus their teachers have been kidnapped in Gada, Sokoto State, and Kurija in Kaduna State. In fact, over 400 Nigerians have been reportedly abducted within a week. I wonder if the Tinubus and Shettima think of the irony of fate that underlines these serial abductions. Everything they said about Jonathan and his inept handling of the Chibok abductions can now be said about them.

Speaking on the recent incident, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, noted that some fifth-column elements were at work. Media reports quoted him saying, “Across the North, we understand that some of the sub-regional geopolitical forces that are currently at play are actively conspiring against the stability of Nigeria.” While I appreciate Ngelale’s candour—and in terms of self-comportment, he is head, shoulders, and even ankle above his classless predecessors who turned the management of the presidency into a bolekaja affair—his bag of tricks is pretty old.

Ten years after Chibok and with unabated kidnaps throughout the country, Ngelale is still stuck on the propagandist’s spiel of “out-of-power northern Nigeria wants to make the country ungovernable for the southern president.” Like the rest of the Nigerian political class, he too blames abstract forces for our national issues. Nigeria is a place where “unknown soldiers” kill and despoil in broad daylight. Snakes and monkeys eat money, “cabals and deities,” the “elites of the elites” with “deep pockets” rob the country of funds for fuel subsidies. Electricity is unstable because some “demons” constantly toy with its functions. The problems that beset the country always have no face, no name, and therefore inapprehensible. We have heard all these tall tales before. Ngelale needs a new game.

To be clear, the issue here is not that professional politicians took advantage of the Chibok abductions to make the Jonathan administration look bad. What they did is what politicians everywhere do: amplify every failing and misstep of your opponent. The APC that unseated the Peoples Democratic Power from power might be amoral, but their actions are still consistent with the character of high-stakes politics.

Anyway, as I said, the politicisation of the Chibok abduction is not how the chickens can be said to have come home to roost for the APC. What rankles is that a whole decade after Chibok, despite abductions having become a normative evil, our government still has not fashioned a better response to these sad incidents. While Jonathan’s shortcomings in responding to the Chibok kidnappings can be chalked down to the novelty of Chibok, Tinubu/Shettima has no excuse. Yet, what can their administration say they have done any better than Jonathan who did not see Chibok coming? Yes, the president ordered security agencies to find those children but every Nigerian by now knows the efficacy value of such “orders.”

And here is where the trouble lies: if the present administration has not demonstrated better insight into a situation that has now become predictable, what guarantee exists that there will not be more of these incidents? The kidnappers are part of Nigeria’s social and political culture, and their choice to make a resounding impact by serially invading three schools over a mere few days cannot be separated from their observations of how entirely chaotic and dysfunctional the Tinubu administration has been. A government that cannot get basic things together in everyday administrative management is one whose resolve will be tested. Unfortunately, the kidnaps are one of the relatively easiest ways to go head-to-head with an administration that does not yet quite know what governance means and still get heftily paid while at it.

And why are the police infantilising the courts?

Thursday last week, the Nigeria Police Force released a press statement on the Chioma Egodi vs. Eric Umeofia case. Since this column was published just hours before the police bombast, I am compelled to raise a few issues with the press release. First, I am curious to know if they ran that waffle of a statement by a lawyer (or anyone with even basic knowledge of the law) before putting it out. Or, was it just one man who cranked out his prejudices on an angry typewriter? If they had consulted before publishing, they would perhaps have been reliably informed that public investment in a case involving two Nigerians and the judicial system is not tantamount to a “manipulation of public sentiment.”

Second, the police claimed to be “deeply worried” that people are crowdfunding for the woman’s legal expenses, and that that might influence legal proceedings. If you are ever in doubt that the police have taken sides on this issue and are using the instruments of the state to run the errands of one man who happens to have a lot of power (aka money), that statement should convince you. Otherwise, why should the police care how the case is decided? Why is it their place to be “deeply worried” that the courts will be influenced by public investment in the issue when they are supposedly neutral arbiters?

People crowdfund their legal expenses all the time and anywhere in the world. When we ordinary members of the public give toward the legal expense of someone else, we signify our moral investment in the judicial process. The law allows us to hold such opinions, and the police cannot strip us of them. Saying that the courts will be moved to take a decision one way or another because of public opinion infantilises the court. They are in fact alleging that the judges base their judgment on extrajudicial means. If they believe the court is too fickle to decide this case rationally, why file the case with them in the first place? During the presidential election tribunal, the judges told us they are unmoved by social media commentary, so why are the police panicking?

As Nigerians under a democratic rule that guarantees freedom of thought/conscience, we fully reserve the right to comment on an issue of collective interest and even donate our money toward it. Why should it bother the police that what Egodi’s supporters are doing will influence the court any more than Umeofia’s supporters? Notice that the police press statement was silent about the latter’s social media antics.

I said it last week and I will say it again: the police are playing a villainous role in this Egodi vs Umeofia case. If they truly believed their own stated claims that this case is about “upholding the rule of law,” then they should stand down. Their aggression toward Egodi and her family suggests they have an extrajudicial interest in this case. If truly there is a democracy in Nigeria, then we should have certain rights. And if those rights will be abridged because one man somewhere cannot take criticism, let it be on record that the courts-not the police-took that injurious decision.