He was acting in the line of duty, but I came off from my first and only encounter with him, not particularly liking him. It was in December 2016. My very good friend, maybe alter-ego, Tivlumun Nyitse and I were driving into the premises of Louis Edet House Nigeria Police Force Headquarters, (NPF-HQ), Abuja, to catch up with an appointment in the multistorey complex. Donald Ngorngor Awunah of blessed memory, who was the force public relations officer (FPRO) at the time, a mutual friend of Nyitse and I, had invited us for a morning meeting in his office. Ibrahim Kpotun Idris was the Inspector General of Police, (IGP) and he entrusted the very urbane and cosmopolitan Awunah to help cultivate a more positive public perception for the Force.

Awunah was a perfect fit for the job, a rounded Nigerian. His mother is Igbo from Delta state, and he began formal education in Ogwashi-Uku, his mother’s birthplace. He had regular conversations in fluent “Delta Igbo” with his mother. His father was Tiv from Benue, and he obtained his first degree from the University of Lagos (Unilag). He underwent the National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC) in Jos, Plateau state, and his career in the police took him around the country and beyond. He had friends around and about.

Don Awunah took every assignment very seriously. Nyitse and I are senior and experienced mass communications professionals and Awunah believed his official brief will be enriched by our insights. On a regular basis, therefore, he compelled us to come to have “coffee” in his office so we could exchange ideas. He always jocularly threatened Nyitse who shared his official accommodation, with eviction and we all had good laughs. Indeed, he received approval from his principal to have us accredited as “media consultants” to ensure seamless access to the restricted FHQ. And so on this day, we had been cleared at the various checkpoints en route the premises of the organisation when we were stopped by security personnel in plain clothes. They said they had “orders from above” to deny us admission into the complex for two hours. We wouldn’t know what was going on therein and nobody explained to us.

One of them gestured conspiratorially to a prosperously-built top cop who was pacing about in the background. Every officer in view deferred to him via a smart salute or an impulsive freeze. That top gun was Usman Alkali Baba who was an Assistant Inspector General, (AIG). I would later get to know that Baba and Awunah were indeed coursemates in the 1988 batch of police cadets, much as Awunah was at that time a Deputy Commissioner of Police, (DCP). He eventually made the rank of AIG before his unfortunate transition last year. His last brief was superintendence over the brother states of Bayelsa and Rivers.

Usman Alkali Baba was appointed Inspector General of Police, (IGP), by President Muhammadu Buhari on April 6, 2021, to replace Mohammed Abubakar Adamu. He thus became Nigeria’s 20th indigenous IGP. His appointment for me seemed routine and perfunctory. It could have passed for any regular civil service appointment to the position of permanent secretary or head of the civil service of the federation. One can’t seem to place too many appointees in this position, whose performances were markedly exceptional. Tafa Balogun, the second IGP under the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was probably the last “all action IGP” who readily comes to mind.

In the military too, Ibrahim Attahiru, of blessed memory, the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, (COAS), for example, was one recent occupant of that office who gave us some excitement and optimism about prospects for the rebirth and rediscovery of the Nigerian Army of yore. I’m glad my brother John Obasa, a retired army general, invited me to the first-anniversary memorial of Attahiru last year. He knows how passionate I was about Attahiru, much as the departed COAS and I never met. Before him, Paul Dike, arguably Nigeria’s first Air Chief Marshal, (ACM), a four-star airforce general was another top military professional I deeply admired. Dike who rose to become Chief of Defence Staff, (CDS), was an exemplary military chief. Megalopolitan, urbane, thoroughly hands-on and amiable, I followed his trajectory from the State House where, as a Group Captain, he was Commander of the Presidential Air Fleet, (PAF), all the way to the apex of his career.

I’m uninspired by President Buhari’s recent celebration of Nigeria’s military’s ascension by three places in the classification of militaries in Africa. According to him, we are now in the number four position, up from number seven before the advent of his administration in 2015. Wasn’t our military the high-flying African Numero Uno under the leadership of Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, through to Olusegun Obasanjo? It used to be said in those good old days in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Somalia, among others, that “the fear of Nigerian troops was the beginning of wisdom”. It has been suggested that Nigeria’s “air show of force” through the flypast over Banjul of Nigerian airforce jets in January 2017, compelled the intransigent Yahya Jammeh to step down from office. He had previously lost his presidential reelection, after three terms to Adama Barrow in late 2016.

Back to IGP Alkali Baba. I’ve always admired southpaws. Maybe that’s one reason I’m having a rethink about my hitherto minimal expectations of him. Former United States Presidents Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, through Works Minister, Babatunde Fashola, to my brother, namesake and silent revolutionary Babatunde Irukera of the Federal Consumer Competition and Protection Commission, (FCCPC), fit into this description. Same for my brother and diligent editor, Bolaji Afolabi, my little nephew Oluwatise Adetona-Alao, and my “granddaughter,” Jomiloju Aiyegbusi. Maybe because I’m not. IGP Alkali Baba falls into this category of special breeds and somehow I’ve begun to take an interest in his enterprise in the sanitisation of the Force. It may not be as bad, after all.

True he may be chubby-cheeked and smooth-skinned. But Alkali Baba has so far demonstrated the capacity to be independent-minded. Not for him those representations from the high and mighty seeking preferential postings and placements for their wards or candidates. You report and serve wherever it is you’ve been deployed as police personnel. He can be strict and tough and has evidently prioritised professionalism and discipline, both imperatives for a respected and respectable Force. He is cognisant of the uninspiring public perception of the Force, arising from the indiscretions and lawlessness of just a fraction of personnel in the organisation. He’s not sleeping over this reality.

The propensity of some officers towards indiscipline, misconduct and overzealousness, are regularly coming under his direct binoculars. Extortion of road users and members of the public, roughing up and manhandling of law-abiding citizens, and the penchant for bullying by some cops at the slightest provocation in certain instances, are beginning to catch his attention. Social media has been a notable enabler and Alkali Baba is taking advantage of the opportunities it offers in detecting and recalling such errant characters.

More frequently than in recent memory, the Force Headquarters plays host to erring operatives who are paraded before the cameras and summarily disciplined before the public. The rule books are diligently applied and defaulters have been dismissed from service, demoted, have their promotions delayed, or sanctioned as their offences may require. They are subsequently handed over to appropriate security agencies for appropriate interrogation and further punishment as may be necessary. Such reprimands are to serve as deterrents to potential offenders. There is no hiding place for them under the sun.

I also get a feeling that Alkali Baba is taking matters of remuneration, motivation, reward and promotion in the Force very seriously. I understand that the pay packets of officers and men enjoyed a 30% fillip last year. He is equally concerned about the appropriate placement of members of the Force as evidenced by their elevation, as and when due. There seems to be a new synergy between the Force, and the Police Service Commission, (PSC), now headed by Solomon Arase, a former IGP himself. Arase for me, holds the record of being the most accessible holder of that office. As serving IGP, he took his calls and responded to text messages. He refused to outsource his responsibilities preferring to be first to get the information for good or for not so pleasant. Issues of promotions can be quite touchy and emotional and one is glad the Alkali Baba regime is managing this. It’s heartwarming that some good friends in the system have earned their ranks under Alkali Baba’s watch. I should betray my interest here because I have good friends who have been beneficiaries at various levels.

Not a few times have I recently gleaned reports, too, of the payments of entitlements to families of service personnel who are felled in the line of duty. This is one area the NPF needs to reform as a matter of urgency and priority. Figures often quoted as gratuities for professionals who lose their lives for the rest of us to live are ridiculous jokes, juxtaposed with existential realities. Service to the fatherland should not be rewarded with the manner of measly tokenism that retiring cops or the survivors of those who are caught in the line of fire are paid. This is one issue requiring urgent review and re-evaluation by the police authorities under the Alkali Baba regime.

Alkali Baba we understand, has been gifted a two-year extension by the president which should keep him in office till 2025. His successors, according to a new legislation will be appointed for a term of four years each. This accords the incumbent IGP ample latitude to pursue, implement and entrench multilayered reforms in the service. The Alkali regime has been commended for providing accoutrements for serving personnel, for example. I’ve visited very senior police officers at their desks, who personally furnished and equipped their offices, all the way to sanitary ware. This and a whole lot of other issues require remediation in the Force which should be initiated by a proactive IGP.

Substandard will be a mild description of the quality of official accommodation in place for our police personnel. There are frequent expositions on this subject in the media and the matter commends spontaneous action. For all their exertions in the rain and sun, on the streets and lonely highways in an era where policing is at best manual and somewhat pristine, these compatriots should retire each day to liveable homes. The same applies to operational automobiles imperative for the mobility and effectiveness of serving personnel. A sustainable template must be developed for the management of such assets which rapidly fall decrepit ever so often. Regular training, retraining and tune-ups are imperative for officers and men. These needn’t wait until there is a national emergency, an election or an invitation to participate in a foreign mission. Nigerians earnestly look forward to a holistic makeover for our police force, to enhance performance, effectiveness and acclamation at home and abroad. The ball is on your side of the field, IGP Usman Alkali Baba.

Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE)

The House of Representatives has queried the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) over 1014 projects under the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), including an e-Library project that was carried out to the tune of over N2 billion.

 The House frowned at a request by the Commission for N700 billion to ensure that 27 million Nigerian who do not currently have access to telecommunication get coverage.

 This was as the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, along with other officials appeared before the House Ad-hoc Committee investigating the failure and inability of the Commission to promote widespread availability mobile telecommunication network service throughout Nigeria as well as accruals and utilisation of funds in the USFP.

The Committee chaired by Hon Bamidele Salam, pointed out that there was no specific description of what was done in the contracts and they were captured in a manner that they would be hard to track, alleging that 80 per cent of the projects had no specific location.

 The Committee requested that the NCC should provide the specific addresses and project description and specifications for each of the contracts that were awarded and listed in the 91-page document it submitted, by 2pm today.

It noted that most of the contractors also had no addresses specified on the document.

The lawmakers also queried the Commission for unilaterally deciding how much money goes to the USPF, saying that, “There is a list of contracts awarded by the USPF since inception provided for us here, which is about 1014 various contracts on which a few observations have been made.

“There is also the submission of the annual audited report of the USPF which has been from 2007 till date, but a few years missing from the audited reports.

“A few observations have been raised out of that and I want members to let us address those issues so they can take the answers holistically.”

 The Committee has also summoned the Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, the Accountant General of the Federation, the Auditor General as well Chief Executive Officers of telecommunication companies over the issue.

They were summoned to appear before the Committee alongside the NCC on Wednesday, May 10, 2023.

Danbatta while responding said the USPF regulations stipulates that the Commission would determine the contributions from time to time.

 But the lawmakers argued that a regulation made by the NCC cannot supersede its enabling Act.

 Hon. Mark Gbillah said “The challenge is that the NCC has given itself the power to annually decide what it is going to annually allocate to USPF.

“Looking at the documents presented, administrative expenses rose from N19 million to N127 million. The expenditure on staff rose exponentially. Let me say that it is important for the NCC to let us know the premise on which you annually determine allocate the USPF or otherwise and what annual allocation they have proposed and implemented from inception till date.

“We need to know what the funds have been used for. For instance, the e-library alone you spent over N2 billion. How functional is the library based on the amount that have been allocated to them when a lot more should have been allocated in my opinion to the deployment of Base Transceiver Stations to have more coverage across the country?”

Another lawmaker queried why in 2015, despite the staff strength reducing from 48 to 45, there was an almost 100 percent increase from N434 million to N824 million.

Earlier in his response, said, “In 2013, there was a consultancy driven by the NCC to identify clusters of access gaps in the country. 207 clusters of access gaps according to that study and in these clusters of access gaps there were about 37 million Nigerians.

“Since then, through the Commission’s efforts, the number of people without access had been reduced to 27 million. What we have done to bring telecom services to people living in rural, unserved and underserved areas of this country, totalling 37 million people courtesy of the consultancy that was conducted in 2013.

“By 2019, we succeeded in reducing the clusters of access gaps to a 114 through the deployment of the necessary infrastructure needed to bring services to people living in rural, unserved and underserved areas of the country.

“This deployment of infrastructure are the base transceiver stations. I am going to give information about the base transceiver stations we have so far. This resulted in the reduction of Nigerians in those clusters from 37 million to 31 million in 2019. By 2022 we had reduced the clusters of access gaps to 97 from 207 in 2013.”

[ThisDay]

IT wasn’t surprising that His Eminence, Archbishop Emeritus of the Abuja Catholic Archdiocese, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, took his turn on the swipes that the unbridled brats of the ruling APC appear to have reserved for eminent Nigerians who are suspected not to worship at the altar of their political god. Hosted by Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, His Eminence was asked his thoughts on the political situation in the country now that “the elections have come and gone”.

The former president of the Christian Association of Nigeria responded as follows: “You started by saying that the elections have come and gone, I’m just wondering: is the election over? I am saying this because, according to the Electoral Law, the election is not over until it is over, and there are cases in court that have not been disposed of. That is why we are in an anomalous situation. We have a declared president-elect whose election is being challenged, and the courts are handling it.

I think I am entitled to take the position that I am still waiting for the courts to tell me who won the election. That is why I said we are in an anomalous situation, and I am one of those who have been saying that it doesn’t make much sense to be swearing in people when they are still in court. I know it has happened with governors, but the outcome has really not been the best of all cases.

I think we ought to review our election process; so we do have a winner who will be sworn in and whom everybody would rally around. My problem is that the whole system of our election must be properly reviewed so that it will be easier for winners to emerge according to the wishes of the people. It is a pity that it is taking longer for the court to come to its decision. It is not right to have a system that is constantly contested. We should find out why every election is being contested.” 

These opening tips of the iceberg of a 43-minute, 38-second interview, which addressed myriads of national issues, were what the hawks of the ruling party needed, like Herodias and her daughter did to John the Baptist, to literally demand that the head of the man of God be brought in on a platter for allegedly daring their own Herod.

If the opinion of a reasonable person remains the standard test of judicial inquiry to determine public opinion, only a negligible percentage of Nigerian society will see anything wrong with the thoughts just expressed by the eminent Catholic cleric. Cardinal Onaiyekan was quite mild and diplomatic in his view; several millions of his compatriots do not subscribe to the notion of a president-elect.

Most realistic and reasonable Nigerians and the world community are  actually waiting for the courts to tell them who won the election. In other words, the preponderance of reasonable opinion is that it does not make much sense to swear in people when they are still in court; in this case, a president who will be inaugurated by the oath of office administered by the Chief Justice before whose courts the election is still being contested. 

Only a negligible fraction of the population is taken in by the theories of separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary in a country where the president is the most powerful under the foisted military Constitution. Truth be told, our courts, particularly in recent times, have not fared well in the opinion of the public, especially in political cases. When the politician whose election is being questioned is in the Nigerian presidential seat, the judiciary is more in dire straits, as it is expected not only to do justice but that justice must also be seen to have been done.

The apprehension that those who insist that the cases be dispensed with before inauguration are promoters of an interim government is the other side of the same coin, with those seeking undue advantage in their candidate being sworn in to oversee the affairs of the nation when the process of his election is being subjected to constitutional test in court.

None of the two can lay claim to legitimacy in the opinion of reasonable people in society. The APC inadvertently recognised Onaiyekan as “a statesman who doubles as a man of God should strive to be fair to all”. His only offence is that he “didn’t say the same thing when Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, and Buhari were all sworn in as presidents when their cases were still before the courts”. 

They failed to acknowledge that Nigerian society has at least moved from the era of Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, and Buhari, when election cases could continue ad infinitum, to the era where the Constitution has been amended to peg the time for the determination of election cases. Thus, like Onaiyekan, those who reason that the processes should be exhausted before inauguration are only urging that the progress made so far be followed to its logical conclusion. After all, there is no law that says we must extend the determination of the cases beyond the inauguration. Those bemoaning the conclusion of the cases before the inauguration knew what they were doing when they deliberately sabotaged the technological devices which would have guaranteed the credibility of the election and made verification easier for the determination of disputes.  

That was why, rather than show remorse for embarrassing Nigerians and our friends, they found solace abroad, shamelessly distorting facts about the election and using their influence to misinterpret our Constitution so as to justify their motives. Nothing is more brash than the hogwash of telling the eminent clergy man that “you have chosen to single out this President-Elect @officialABAT this time around because the candidate you and your other religious brethren openly supported lost the election and you all feel humiliated and embarrassed”.

Very soon, like they did for Ayo Adebanjo and Obasanjo, they will tell the world not only that Onaiyekan is supporting Peter Obi but also find an Igbo mother or father for him to drive home their theory. Like the Cardinal, several well-meaning personalities have expressed opinions about the capacities and needs of the tribunals to end the petitions before the inauguration.

These include Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, former President of the Nigerian Bar Association; the Afenifere, and several civil society organisations. Cardinal Onaiyekan has proven a credible and courageous voice in national affairs. On several occasions, he did not spare the Obasanjo administration, especially when the notion of a third term agenda gained momentum in national discourse. Unlike these intolerant brats, at no time did OBJ or that administration descend on the Kabba Kogi State- born religious leader.  

In the course of the Channels TV interview, he actually reminded his audience thus: “If you allow me to explain why I am talking the way I am, I belong to a church that has the principle that politics is based on the whole idea that leadership is service, that politics is a noble but difficult art; not everybody should be in politics, but those who go into politics should not go thinking of their own convenience but be ready to sacrifice themselves for the common good to the glory of God”.

Continuing, he said: “Religion is an asset for the good of the people. I am a Catholic and a Cardinal, I have no apology about who I am”. May the shadow of my Lord, the Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, never grow less. By these your stripes, may our nation be healed. 

Nigeria, we hail thee.

Ebiseni is the Secretary General, Afenifere and South-West Coordinator, OBIDATTI Campaign Organisation.

“…But the Nigerian government always disappoints, and that is precisely what they are doing in Sudan…” Reuben Abati may 4,2023

Let me state upfront that I am a parent to one of the just evacuated students trapped in the war torn Sudan. His mother and me were hugely relieved when the Max Airline flight 611 from Azwan in Egypt touched down at the pilgrims wing of the Nmandi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja by 10.45am on Sunday May 7,2023.

Reuben Abati’s recent and viral treatise titled “Nigeria: Stranded in Sudan” made a compelling read, I should admit. It was a brilliant exposition on the forces and interests at play in the current internecine carnage in that beleaguered nation.

Most of his insights were astounding. He actually hit the bull’s eye. A lot of it were, however, bull, completely off mark, especially where he dismissed, in unflattering diction, the efforts of the Nigerian Government encapsulated in several agencies involved in the evacuation exercise.

He was spot on, for example, in identifying Sudan’s strategic location around the Red Sea and its “rich resources in gold and oil reserves as well as gum Arabic” as irresistible allure to these foreign master puppeteers fueling this conflict, causing loss of lives, indescribable destitution and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. 

The raison d’etre of the raging hostilities, according to Abati, and he was right, is the continued scramble for Africa by the great powers of the West.

We are witnessing a full-blown proxy war. Indeed, scholars, historians and even subjective journalists like Abati are agreed that Africa’s vast natural resources and effeminate political leadership, have made the continent vulnerable to predatory nations of the world.

At this precise moment literally tens of thousands of people are scampering across that vast arid country crossing borders into South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt and Central Africa Republic, for safety. Some of these listed countries are strife ridden!

Within seven days of the conflict, over 400 people reportedly perished in that country, which has, for long, been battling punishing sanctions, imposed by the West.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, 334,000 have been internally displaced and another 100,000 made to flee the country.

Abati queried the slow response of the authorities, comparing Nigeria’s sluggish pace with America’s rapid response in the evacuation of her citizens.

Comparing Nigeria with the US however, is otiose. Here, I should say that he demonstrated a certain degree of naiveté in international politics and in conflict situations.

The US merely rescued an estimated 70 embassy staff in a helicopter mission by its elite SEAL. An estimated 16,000 US private citizens are left to their devices.

The government said, “It was too dangerous” to get its citizens out at the time Nigeria was organizing to evacuate an estimated 3,500 citizens most of them students at no charge

There is an estimated three to five million Nigerians in Sudan. Nigeria might have being slow to start the evacuation but it has covered sufficient grounds in moving the displaced from the main theatre of war in Khartoum as he rightly expressed.
The US has a military base in neighboring Djibouti. It is less than 1,200 kilo metres to Khartoum. By air, it is two hours.

It would take almost a month for the Nigerian Navy to berth its recently acquired logistics vessel “ NNS KADA” at Port Sudan to evacuate a mere 500 citizens and spend another 26 days to return.

NNS KADA is a multi purpose warship. It is equipped with a flight deck, Roro space, cargo deck, supply store and ammunition. She is the biggest war ship in West Africa and one of the biggest on the continent. Its maiden mission to Guinea Bissau was a resounding success.

By air to Khartoum is almost five hours. It makes greater sense therefore, to fly than to ask the Navy to mobilize from Lagos to Port Sudan in moments of emergencies like the one currently in Sudan.

I am certain that Abati is aware that in the event of war, evacuation process is often anchored on airfreight. That explains why the Americans stormed Khartoum in three MH-47 Chinook helicopters from Djibouti refueling in Ethiopia and flew for three hours to evacuate 70 embassy officials!

He wondered why it was costing the sum of $30k to hire a bus from Khartoum. This is war. It is ugly. It costs money. I am not justifying the cost. I am being realistic. In war, lives are wasted needlessly. How much more money? Abati ought to know this. He was in government, after all, as the mouthpiece of the President.

He should know that war economy is different. A fundamental economic principle of demand and supply says that if demand outstrips supply, there will be shortage and prices, will rise. We see that during festivals or fuel shortages. Every festive season, transporters hike fares, commuters and travellers lament. They still go on the voyage. How much more during war?

How much more in a country suffering suffocating economic sanctions? Sudan is delinked from the global financial circle.

Besides, navigating through the arid region of Sudan is a herculean task. The desert is known to literally “swallow’ vehicles in the event of a sandstorm or a blizzard. 

A retired soldier who served in a peacekeeping operation in Sudan educated me on the tough terrain.

According to him, a trip that normally lasts a day or two in Nigeria may take weeks in Sudan unless you are accustomed to navigating that landscape. Vehicular travel is risky. Apart from hostile natural elements, there are all manner of criminal elements dotting the landscape

The bus evacuating my son from Khartoum to Waidi Halfa got stuck in the sand and they had to dig it out wasting 10 hours in the process. Desert scorpions stung some of the volunteers in the effort to liberate the vehicle.

It was an indescribable feeling therefore,to have your kid home after days of anxiety as you daily come face-to-face with grisly details of a terrible sojourn and a misguided military action.

My son was just 7 months shy of bagging an MBBS at the Sudan International University in Khartoum. 

He would turn 22 in October, the month he would have written his final examination. Now, he faces an uncertain educational future. 

I witnessed, first hand, the supreme efforts put up by the federal government of Nigeria through its various agencies involved in the evacuation process. 

Several WhatsApp platforms united jumpy parents, nervous government officials, edgy students and curious journalists for the common purpose of sharing information on the debacle rocking Sudan presently.

One of such platforms was actually set up by the Nigeria Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) chaired by Mrs Abike Dabiri Erewa. 

Again, I witnessed, first hand, the grit of Dabiri Erewa. She was running from pillar to post answering questions, attending to inquiries, making occasional television appearances explaining and elucidating to largely unimpressed citizens.

She demonstrated an unusual grace in handling cantankerous parents and fabricators of fake stories. She shrugged off personal insults and waltzed through the thick wall of cynicism with the elegance of a ballerina. 

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa scored big with most parents in that group. I am one.

She constantly assured and reassured us even though some of us made the extra efforts to seek alternative sources of information. 

As a reporter myself, I was in touch with the foreign affairs minister, a calm technocrat, getting across to some officials at Nigerian embassies in Sudan and Cairo that I know personally.

My son too, being a students leader, was in constant communication with NEMA officials at the border with Egypt and embassy officials in Cairo before they were airlifted in the wee hours of Sunday 

I share totally Abati’s position on Egypt. I am of the considered opinion that we should have made it clear to that country what their action represented-hostility!• This experience is an eye opener. It dawned on me that NIDCOM is a spectator in the current rescue effort.

Statutorily, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management is the one calling the shots, funding the evacuation efforts and taking care of logistics.• And of course, the philanthropic gestures of industrial and aviation giants Aliko Dangote, Peace Air, Max and Azman airlines.

The airlines offered for free to lift stranded citizens in Sudan. They all walked their talk. Dangote offered the whopping sum of 100k to each returnee.

Corporate Nigeria demonstrated by the kind acts of these good spirited Nigerians that at critical moments, Nigerians would join hands together to compliment government efforts. Abati should borrow a leaf.

“Think impact rather than positions and titles” were the words of my great mentor to me.

In today’s fast-paced world, we are often driven by the need to succeed, which is not a bad thing. The drive for success, however, is quickly measured by certain standards – such as certifications, positions, titles, awards, recognition and so on (I am yet to know who set those standards, if you do find him or her, do let me know). Undoubtedly, these yardsticks could be a representation of the countless hours of hard work we put in to achieve our career goals.

Success in the workplace is a multifaceted concept that encompasses more than just achieving your goals or earning awards. As someone who has received recognition in my career – like being named one of the top 100 career women in Nigeria, and winning the Positive Role Model Award – I understand the importance of looking beyond these external markers of success. In times when I am not receiving an award or getting a certification, I have had to ask myself whether I still consider myself successful. And it’s a yes from me. More recently, I’ve been asking myself how I can prepare myself for greater relevance.

Success, in any career, is multifaceted, ever-evolving and never really a destination as often conceived. Success looks like finding fulfilment and satisfaction in what you do. It is best to identify what success means to you as an individual. For me, one of my definitions of success is growth. Growth in the navigation of the professional landscape, building relationships with colleagues and relevant global networks and adapting to changing circumstances. While accomplishments are essential, they are just one piece of the puzzle – milestones that we reach on the way to success.

Career success is not a linear path, and there is no one-size-fits-all definition. Success in the workplace is a combination of various factors, which includes your personal growth as an individual. How then, can one become more driven for success rather than for accomplishment?

Think Impact

I observed that from the biographies of many people I consider successful, their famous titles and positions came when they pursued a life of impact, seeking to make a positive change. Dr Ola Brown, the founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, is an example. Her passion for improving access to healthcare in Africa has saved lives and earned her several global recognitions in the process, including the conferment of Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) rank. When you are able to recognize the kind of impact you want to make, it will guide the kind of projects you want to be part of, the associations you want to keep and your resilience.

Be growth driven

The growth mindset is recognizing that it is you versus you, and the end game is to always be a better version of yourself. Sometimes growth isn’t about getting a higher paycheck or position, sometimes growth looks like adapting to change or stepping out of one’s comfort zone. Having a growth mindset helps you recognize that there is more and propels you to step out of your comfort zone and embrace new challenges. Think success, think growth.

Continuous Learning

According to research, successful people attribute their achievements to continuous learning. This may not be surprising in a world that is constantly evolving and rapidly changing. But here’s the thing, learning isn’t just about getting a degree or certification, as many think. Learning is a mindset, a way of acquiring new values/skills, and a willingness to embrace new ideas and perspectives. In fact, the most successful people understand that there is always more to learn, no matter how many accolades they may have to their name, recognising that accomplishments are milestones in a lifelong journey of growth and development. It is even more important not to lose the yearning to learn when we are faced with challenges and setbacks, sometimes, the most significant successes come from there. So, are you ready to unlock your full potential by making continuous learning a lifelong pursuit?

Understanding that career success is multifaceted is essential. Success is not just about what you achieve; it’s about who you become along the way.

About five years ago, the Federal Government of Nigeria and China entered into a currency exchange agreement. The transaction, which was valued at Renminbi (RMB) 16 billion or N720 billion was aimed at providing adequate local currency liquidity to Nigerian and Chinese industrialists and other businesses, thereby, reducing difficulties encountered in the search for the United States Dollar. The swap was also designed to improve the speed, convenience and volume of transactions between the two countries.

But the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which superintend the Central Bank of Nigeria have colluded with the Central Bank of Nigeria to frustrate the currency swap. The purpose of the economic sabotage is to promote the dominance of the United States Dollar in Nigeria. Even though Nigeria has since become an important source of oil and petroleum for China’s rapidly growing economy, the Federal Government has continued to demand for payment in Dollar instead of Naira.

While other nations are making arrangements to promote their local currencies the Federal Government has continued to dollarise the Nigerian economy. Just recently, the Kenyan Government signed an agreement with Saudi Aramco to supply fuel and diesel for the next six months, while Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) will deliver three cargoes of super petrol every month. The deal permits local oil companies to pay for oil imported on credit through a government-to-government deal in Shillings to ease pressure on the local currency. Before the deal, Kenya was paying $500 million for the importation of petroleum products per month.

In the same vein, Russia has pursuant to an agreement with China started to make payments for gas supplies to China in Yuan and Roubles instead of US dollars. In the same vein, Indian customers have paid for most Russian oil in non-dollar currencies, including the United Arab Emirates Dirham and more recently the Russian Rouble.

However, it is public knowledge that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have concluded plans to launch a new international currency to be used for cross-border trade by the member nations. Ahead of the August summit of the BRICS scheduled to hold in South Africa, a total of 24 nations are now looking to build a strategic alliance that will challenge the US dollar’s decades-long role as the world’s reserve currency. The 24 nations include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Indonesia and a couple of African countries.

This trend to reject neo- liberal orthodoxy policy formulation is captured by the South Korean development economist of the Univerdity of London, Ha-Joon Chang, in his recent book, _“Edible Economics”_ as follows: “The rejection of the neo-liberal Washington Consensus policies has been less visible in other parts of the developing world, such as Asia and Africa. In Asia, it was mainly because the countries in the region had not followed the Washington Consensus policies in the first place as rigidly as did the Latin American countries. Their generally good economic performance has meant that relatively few Asian countries have had to borrow heavily from the Washington institutions, making it less necessary for them to adopt neo-liberal policies.”

Moreover, many Asian countries have had a less ideological approach to economic policies, so, even when they adopted neo-liberal policies, those policies were usually not implemented in their extreme forms, as they were in Latin America. The African countries, even though they have suffered even more than did the Latin American countries from the Washington Consensus policies, have found it more difficult to openly reject them, given their greater dependence the Washington institutions for financing. Even so, in the last decade or so, there has been an increasing recognition across the African continent of the need for a much more active role for the state than what is recommended by the Washington Consensus.”

The point at issue is that the Nigerian state henceforth should be more active in given a pro-people direction in the political economy. Nigeria should also take a lead in the execution of the African Union (AU)’s project of African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which took effect two years ago. The country should strive for the benefits of promoting trade at such a regional level as an alternative to the increasing dollarisation of a vulnerable economy.

So, instead of the failed redesign of the Naira the federal government should take urgent steps to save the Naira by renewing the currency swap between Nigeria and China. Furthermore, similar agreements should be undertaken with other friendly nations so that Nigeria can pay for imports in Naira. In particular, buyers of Nigeria’s crude oil and natural gas should henceforth be made to pay in Naira. At the same, the federal government should join forces with the BRICS to promote a new international currency. This is in line with section 19(e) of the Constitution, which has imposed a duty on the Government of Nigeria to promote “a just world economic order.”

Femi Falana SAN.

In Port-Harcourt, Rivers state, last week as a guest of Governor Nyesom Wike, President-elect, Bola Tinubu, promised to fight corruption. To delink judicial officers’ minds from corruption, Tinubu’s blueprint of fighting this goblin, he said, would be to incentivise judicial officers.

“You don’t expect your judges to live in squalor, to operate in squalor, and dispense justice in squalor. This is part of the changes that are necessary. We must fight corruption but we must definitely look at the other side of the coin. If you don’t want your judges to be corrupt, you got to pay attention to their welfare. You don’t want them to operate in hazardous conditions,” he said.

Corruption has a long history in Nigeria, with some scholars submitting that it is buried deep down the skin of Africans. Indeed, one of the Africanist scholars whose commendable works tried to locate the connection between the African and corruption, late Stephen Ellis, found out that “bribery and corruption were rooted in (African) social networks and moral conventions”.

By 1970, however, as the Nigerian civil war was reaching its denouement, it had become obvious to the Nigerian military rulers that if the menace of corruption – with its twin nuance of kick-back and armed robbery – was not confronted headlong, the country was headed for ruins.

That generation of Nigerians deployed, among others, popular music to combat the evils of corruption, stealing, and robbery. Most of Nigeria’s famous musicians of the post-independence era keyed into this crusading and earned their stripes through social and political commentaries. One of them was Ilorin, Kwara state-born Salawu Woro Idofian. Salawu apparently hailed from Idofian in Ifelodun local government of the state. While Cameroonian-Nigerian highlife musician of a Nigerian mother and a Cameroonian father, Nico Mbarga, struck the soft cord of many by eulogizing motherhood with his blockbuster vinyl Sweet Mother, Yoruba Sakara music deity, Kelani Yesufu, alias Kelly, among many other social thematic concerns, intervened on the social menace that the near-epidemic which the venereal disease, gonorrhea, called atosi in his native homeland, was causing among young boys and girls of the era.

As the pandemic soared, sufferers of its painful jab on their penile part rationalised the affliction as a popular disease that only the famous could contract. In that song he entitled ‘Atosi Atogbe’, Kelani deconstructed this widely held impression and submitted, via this fluidly racing track, that gonorrhea could never be a disease of the famous – “gbajumo”. How could a disease that causes so much pain and turmoil within the male genitalia, with the patient who was, most times, reaping the harvest of his libidinal rascality and thus forced to swallow several discomforting concoctions, be an affliction of the famous? he asked.

To combat armed robbery, in 1970, the military government enacted a decree which made the crime punishable by the firing squad. On April 26, 1971, the first public execution of an armed robber took place. Armed robbery was so rampant that, by 1976, 400 such executions had taken place between its commencement and the end of the civil war. The rate of executions was so frightening, especially with the realisation that the southern part of the country recorded the highest figure of 338 executions in 1984 alone.

Salawu Woro Idofian’s genre of popular music was Apala. Almost sharing the same cadence and pattern of singing with the mellifluous voice of Epe, Lagos state-born Ligali Mukaiba who sang a similar variety of music, Idofian stood in his own right. He was widely credited with having made those public executions of armed robbers the thematic preoccupation of his music. As he dramatised these harvests of executions, you would almost feel the pain, agony, and sense of finality that the robbers felt as they were matched to the stakes.

One such song from Idofian was his 1971 album entitled ‘K’ehin S’okun‘ – literally translated to mean Execution by the Sea. April 24, 1971, the song goes, was the D-day of the execution of some condemned robbers. It was a Saturday and the crowd that gathered at the bar beach was massive. To Idofian, the public execution could be explained in the context of propitiation. Nigeria had offered the bodies of the condemned robbers to the goddess of the sea called Olokun in exchange for her concession to spare the lives of the righteous. Since creation, the Olokun had never had such a bounty of human flesh for the celebration of her annual festivity in the belly of the sea. However, this Saturday, the Olokun was lucky as three robbers’ bodies were offered to her by the military government, in lieu of her ceaseless swallowing of innocent citizens who strayed to its beach. This, Idofian, in that song, expressed thus – “Ni’jo alaye ti daye, eti Olokun o gba ore ri; a’i pa’niyan kale si eti okun pe ko ri’un mu sodun ri; ni’jo Satide, o s’ori re, a ti f’omo jaguda meta rubo si okun ko ye gbe wa l’omo mo; jaguda kekeke to nt’owo b’apo la o fi bo’ya alaro”.

The condemned robbers had been found guilty by the Armed Robbery and Firearms Tribunal for having robbed an Alhaja in the Surulere area of Lagos. Williams Oyasima and Joseph Ilogbo were the robbers in that brutal encounter. Babatunde Folorunso, Idofian’s narration continued, had robbed a man of his car and Ten pounds. As ricochets of bullets tore through the bodies of these robbers, their heads lost their hold and bowed in magisterial surrender. Brutal epilogue of promising lives, Idofian warned, awaited parents who condoned stealing by stealth by their wards: “Nigba t’ota at’etu ndun mo barawo lara, won nsori ko… omo yin o s’agbafo, o nk’aso wo’lu, ki le ti lo ma ri?”

Since the menace of armed robbery went full throttle in the immediate post-petrodollar Nigeria of the early 1970s, it has grown further into becoming a social pandemic today. Rivaling it as another menace that spreads like the metastasis of cancer, the way armed robbery has, is corruption. The spirit of acquisitiveness, the centrality and preferencing that wealth enjoys today in Nigeria is mind-boggling. This spirit has pounced upon the heart of virtually all Nigerians. Mammon today enjoys a pride of place as the reigning god of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Mammon didn’t get here in a day. Its reign began with the fad of bribery which was common in private and government offices in pre and post-colonial Nigeria. Polish-British sociologist, Stanislav Andreski, who lived in Ibadan in the 1960s, saw the menace and coined the word “kleptocracy” for its description. This variant of corruption so galled the coupists of 1966, led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who held the back of his tongue for its perpetrators, who he labeled ten-percenters. This appellation was gotten from the tradition of demanding 10% kickbacks from every government contract. Today, Nzeogwu would turn in his grave to find out that awarded contracts running into billions of Naira are most times not executed at all and their total proceeds pocketed. In cases where they are executed at all, heavy shellacking of bribery and kickbacks ensure that they are so peremptorily and haphazardly executed. The result is that the projects last only in the now.

Last week in Port-Harcourt, Tinubu woke up the ghost of judicial corruption, an albatross that hovers over Nigeria like the Swords of Damocles. If the Nigerian democracy suffers spiritual legitimacy, the Nigerian judiciary is complicit. By the way, some scholars have reasoned that the lack of legitimacy, of perverted electoral justice, may be why Nigeria is this stunted and stymied.

In theory, we all know that the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary and the courts underpin the Nigerian legal system. This fundamental principle is predicated on the belief that the courts are independent as an organ of government. Embedded in this assumption is the philosophy of the centrality of the judiciary. This is what the concept of justice and the rule of law in Nigeria are based upon. With the role of the judiciary as central to the global concept of justice, built in and implicated in it is the need to maintain the pride of place of judicial ethics.

There is no doubt that since its inception in 1999 till now, the National Judicial Council (NJC) has brought some measure of sanity into judicial practice in general and operations of judicial officers in particular. However, there are still a lot of patent doubts about the impartiality of Nigerian judicial officers. There are flying allegations of judges’ availability to lend themselves to the whims of politicians. There have also been cogent and seemingly irrefutable allegations that the top echelon of judicial offices in Nigeria are not totally insulated from the activities and the personal caprices of politicians. The influence of money in the determination of cases is also high.

One very potent case to back this up is the recent controversy on the Supreme Court judgment affirming the victory of Senate President Ahmed Lawan as the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the senatorial contest for Yobe north. In a majority judgment, the apex court allowed the appeal filed by the APC against Bashir Machina’s candidature. The court had pronounced Lawan victorious against Machina simply because it held that, where there is an allegation of fraud, it should not be commenced by an originating summons. Arguments are weighty to back up Machina’s allegations. However, legal technicalities prevailed. While technicalities cannot be discountenanced in law, fastidious sticking to them, at the expense of substantive arguments, can continue to impugn the judiciary, especially when decided cases have spoken vehemently on the need to face substantive matters of law and urging judicial officers not to be bound wholesale by technicalities. Though perceptions may not be real and could be misleading after all, conversely, perception is everything, especially when these judicial officers are dealing with Nigerians who are not abreast of the rules of technicalities.

To combat this pandemic of corruption in the judiciary, Tinubu’s submission to tackle the epidemic is through what he called “the right incentives.” It will seem that Tinubu was just being simplistic, or at worst minimalist in his conception of judicial corruption. It is laughable that his proffer to deal with the octopodal dragons of judicial corruption is merely to throw money and comfort at judicial officers. This definitely cannot work. First is that, corrupt Nigerians today have not succeeded in drawing a line on when enough is actually enough. They amass sickening wealth that fails logic and common sense. So, if you incentivize judges, it is enough to deter them from corruption? Tinubu is apparently seeking judicial officers who live in a sequestered world, pampered so well that they are insulated from the vermin of corruption, away from the rest of the world. This can only exist in a dream world.

Tinubu’s intervention in corruption provoked cynicism in the Nigerian media on the second day of his Rivers State epistle. Newspapers that led their next-day editions with that thrust did so out of an amalgam of mockery and cynicism. Whether real or imagined, global perception is that a Tinubu presidency would battle everything but corruption. His pedigree is that of an insider-outsider in the sewage of corruption. Only during the week, the Premium Times reported the linkage of the president-elect with twenty high net-worth properties in the United Kingdom, which allegedly belong to him and his close associates and which were mostly acquired when Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State. As we match into May 29, the day of the inauguration of the new president, Nigeria will be transiting from the general perception (which is very likely unreal) of an austere and incorruptible president who is passing the baton of power, to another general perception of a robustly corrupt president (which is likely real). While the former perception didn’t keep corruption at bay in Nigeria, the latter perception may likely make the atmosphere free for corruption to luxuriate, flower, and flourish.

What can keep corruption at bay in Nigeria is leadership by example which Nigeria may not have from May 29. In spite of the general global perception that Nigerians cavort with maggots in the sewage, a stern leadership that is ready to make an example of malefactors will scare corrupt people off their perfidy. That leadership must advertise itself as ready to throw anyone, including itself, under the bus if it is caught having saturnalia with corruption. It does not appear to me that in Tinubu’s presidency, Nigeria will have this. Only a few days ago, Bloomberg reported that Tinubu’s son, Oluwaseyi, is the main shareholder in Aranda Overseas Corporation, an offshore company that bought a controversial US$10.8 million U.K. property in 2017. In the two reported damaging stories, mum was the word from Bourdillon.

If you now compare these two stories with how Nigerian petty thieves get jailed for minor offenses such as shoplifting and larceny, an empire will seem to be on the verge of being constructed for corruption to reign in at least the next four years. It is comparable to the Yoruba conception of injustice and unfairness. This was aptly depicted in a short fable that talks of a sick hired hand who is disdained for his temerity to fall sick, in comparison with a sick son of the taskmaster who is pleaded with to sip a broth of peppery soup – Ojojo nse iwofa, won ni alakori gbe’se e de; bo ba s’omo olowo, won a ni ko roju f’ata s’enu.

In my estimation, corruption will no longer strike Nicodemusly in Nigeria in the next four years, either in the judiciary or in Nigeria in general. This is because the vultures that will surround power will fertilise the ground for corruption to luxuriate. The corruption to come will share the same template with the legion demons in that famous story of the Madman of Gadarene, told in the three synoptic gospels of the bible. This story is about a demon-possessed madman with a thousand maddening spirits. When the mad spirits were commanded out of him, they begged to be sent, not out of the country, but into a herd of swine. If corruption played under the cover in the last few years under Buhari, going forward, swine with a similar demonic spirit of corruption will be openly possessed by that spirit in years to come. They will however not perish in the sea like the swine of Gadarene.

I have witnessed many elections since 1979 and I can say without any equivocation that the 2023 election was the best, the most free and fair, the most transparent.
Those who are pillorying the election and INEC, the electoral umpire are simply saying so because the outcome of the election, especially the presidential election did not match their expectation.

May God forgive them, especially the men in cassocks, who in their hallucination, had prophesied victory for their favourite candidate, claiming it was a message from God.
It must be clear to Nigerians that those clerics were not in any conclave with the Almighty God. Their prediction was their personal desires, which went unfulfilled by God.
God surely has other plans for our country and instead chose a man, who has the best leadership pedigree and espouses the best vision to pilot our affairs from 29 May.
Man indeed proposes, God disposes.

Our clergymen, not satisfied with the divine and INEC verdict have been all out disparaging the election. The latest of them was Cardinal John Onaiyekan of the Catholic Church.
News reports said the Octogenarian claimed that the election was rigged. He accused some unidentified people of masterminding the rigging and claimed that God knows those riggers.

To Onaiyekan, the alleged machination of ‘those riggers’ made impossible the manifestation of the ‘people’s will’ in the outcome announced by INEC.
This lie, nay a malicious propaganda, has been told repeatedly by the opposition parties and their supporters since 1 March when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was declared as President-elect.
The lie has been sold abroad to people who do not have a first-hand information on how INEC conducted the poll.
The lie is simply vicious. It must stop. It is a lie for which the purveyors, no matter their status, ought to earn the wrath of God on earth and in heaven. It is not true.
Without holding brief for INEC, which has filed its defence at the Tribunal, which begins sitting on 8 May, I repeat again that the 2023 election was the best since the return to democracy in 1999. It was miles ahead of the heavily compromised 2007 election conducted by President Olusegun Obasanjo, wherein the beneficiary of the electoral heist, Umaru Yar’Adua apologised for the embarrassment. Yar’Adua atoned for Obasanjo’s sin by setting up the Justice Uwais Commission to sanitise our election process.
Since then, our elections have gotten better, election cycle after election cycle.

The introduction of BVAS made a significant difference and made the 2023 election, the most technologically driven poll ever conducted in our country. And the best. BVAS made it impossible for parties to record outlandish numbers in their strongholds. It ensured that only the accredited voters voted. INEC deserves praise not ridicule.
All the critics of INEC, on account of the non-transmission of the results recorded at the 176,000 polling units are purely doing so for mischief. The criticism is most misplaced as the so-called result transmission was additional to what happened at the polling unit. It is superfluous.

In the presidential and National Assembly elections, all polling units tallied votes cast and each party polling agent was given a copy of Form EC8.
Collation of polling unit results was done at the ward level and from there to the council level and then the state level. Political parties usually know how they fared in the election by the time votes are tallied at ward or council level.

Parties do not need to wait for INEC upload of polling unit results on its portal to know the entire result of the election. They do not also need to wait for the results announced at the Abuja Collation Centre. In 2015, President Goodluck Jonathan conceded to President Muhammad Buhari before INEC’s announcement, because he and his agents had the figures from all the states. He conceded because he knew the election was already lost to Buhari.

In a development that is extremely strange to our politics, the Labour Party and the PDP initially sponsored calls for an interim government. When that did not get traction, they mounted vicious attacks on INEC for not uploading the results on time, using this lapse to vilify an election that was the best in our country. It’s like condemning your bank for not printing a receipt for a credit payment, when the money is already sitting pretty in your account and you have received the alert.
The Labour Party and the PDP and their surrogates, some of them lawyers, clerics and some ethnic groups have also mounted desperate campaign for the postponement of the inauguration of the President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu on 29 May.

Some other groups, including the leading labour and partisan unions, the NLC and TUC, in league with some equally partisan civil society organisations are blackmailing the judges that will handle the petitions against Tinubu’e election.
We have never had such post-poll desperation, except this time that we have a Peter Obi on the ballot and an Atiku that is cocksure he has lost his last chance to gun for the nation’s No. 1 seat.

Since 1999, every election held has always been disputed by losers. The winners are allowed to be sworn in, while litigation goes on. This was the case in all elections. This is also the trend in the states.

This has been the convention. It was the convention when Labour Party Vice presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed became a senator, representing Kaduna North in 2011 under the platform of Congress for Progressive Change. His challenger went to court. Baba-Ahmed’s victory was upturned, after some months, when he had been sworn in as senator.
We cannot change the convention now because some people believe that the men who came second and third in the poll, are pursuing cases in court.
They should exercise patience for the judiciary to decide whether they have any strong case to invalidate Tinubu’s victory. The judiciary has always supported litigants when they have ‘substantial’ proof that they were rigged out of an election.
As the tribunal begins sitting today, let Labour and its senior partner, the PDP stop further blackmail of the judiciary. Enough is Enough.

The one who hasn’t been hit by war calls himself a man (Eni ìjà ò bá níí pe ‘ra è l’ókùnrin). The word for ‘fight’ in Yoruba is ‘ija’; but ‘ija’ is much more than ‘fight’. It means battle; it is also war. If you’ve never been caught up in or overtaken by war, it is possible you yell and tell the world that you are more manly than man. But, there is really no ‘man’ anywhere. In luster and bravery, people rise and fall in the battle of life. That is one big lesson in the Ike Ekweremadu tragedy. He is not the first wealthy man to die in the backyard of the wretched; he won’t be the last. In this world, in all lands and across oceans, from the Atlantic through the Pacific to the Arctic, the Indian to the Antarctic, everyone is fighting a battle; visible for some, invisible for many.

A judge in London declared on Friday that Ekweremadu’s conviction and sentencing for an attempt at organ harvesting represented “a significant fall from grace.” What does that mean?
Ekweremadu was a council chairman in 1997; he was a private-practice lawyer in 1998/99 who wanted again to be a local government chairman; he lost that council election bid but was made Chief of Staff by Governor Chimaroke Nnamani in June 1999. His unrelenting stars fought hard and soon convinced Governor Nnamani to carry him further upstairs. He was made the Secretary to the Enugu State Government. He got that big post but his chi was still not done with him. In 2003, re-elected Governor Nnamani thought it was time for his Ike Ekweremadu to play in the Abuja big boys’ league. The all-powerful governor proceeded to make Ekweremadu senator to represent Enugu West. Since then, Ekweremadu has remained a senator of the Federal Republic. He will be there till June 2023, even in absentia. The UK judge’s fall-from-grace statement was very heavy. It was a reminder that everything achieved since 1999 by Ekweremadu did not matter again. The judge was right. Ike is in jail in a foreign land and will remain there for the equivalent of two of his five terms in the Senate.

There is no permanent victor in life. People rise, people fall; some in defeat at the battlefield; some in victory at the home front. Remember that there was a Senate president called Evan(s) Enwerem. He was temperate and restrained in behaviour but he still saw war and fell. There was another called Chuba Okadigbo, the one who called the great Zik a “ranting ant” twenty years earlier. He too became Senate president, saw war and fell. Adolphus Wabara was another solemn Senate president who met his own war and fell in battle. These great people fell in tragic succession, then Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, in April 2005, stepped in. He thought Ekweremadu should become Senate president. He moved from Enugu to Abuja; from the Villa to Apo to everywhere, he walked and crawled for Ike’s sake but senators and their Senate were unanimous: they wanted another Nnamani called Ken as their leader. Ken made it; Ekweremadu lost in that bid but he survived all his victorious brothers to remain perpetually in that house of power. Ike Ekweremadu’s contemporaries, like feckless dew on afternoon leaves, evaporated long ago. The man kept rising and riding high. He even rose to become deputy Senate president for many years while his benefactor, Chimaroke, sat in that same Senate as a floor member. Ike will be ending his twenty-year reign in the Senate next month on the floor, inside the opposite of freedom.

If you have been following the stories around you, you will know that it is not only the Ekweremadus who are in trouble and fighting a bewildering war. In the Ekweremadu case, every Nigerian is a casualty; including the asylum-seeking David who told the white man that his Nigeria is now one hell that no longer offers him security. The young man apparently wants to stay forever in that beautiful country where the sun never sets. Now, what is in a name? ‘Ike’ is the Igbo word for strength. The young ‘nobody’ who captured Ike, the strongman, is named David (full name: David Nwamini Ukpo). There is a David in the Bible who, with tentative fingers, slew both lion and bear, added mighty Goliath to his victims and proceeded to have permanent residency in the heart of God. Someone also said that if the David in the Ekweremadu story is an Izzi-Igbo man from Ebonyi State, his Nwamini name will mean Child-born-while-it-is-raining – a child of blessing. Whatever he is, he is one young hunter who has killed an elephant with his hat. He has his eyes on permanent residency in King Charles’s country. Like the biblical David, the odds are on his side.

But this case has got Nigerians, as usual, very divided. I can see three groups: the first group condemns Ekweremadu; it says Ike is a wicked and selfish big man who wanted to use a poor boy as a sacrifice to keep his own daughter alive. The second group sees the matter this way: How do you console a farmer who throws his cutlass at a rabbit, rabbit escapes, cutlass can’t be found? That is a very bad situation but it is not as bad as that of a hunter who has a big snail for supper but abortively uses it as stone to kill a bird. Bird escapes; snail escapes; hunter is empty-handed. This second group sympathizes with Ekweremadu and his family and prays that his daughter gets well; that they do not lose everything like the hunter in the above story. The third group is aghast that Nigerians and the world are hypocritical, pretentious in their reaction to this Ekweremadu/David guy’s matter. They are surprised at the drama all around as if this attempt at illegal organ harvesting is the index case.

Ekweremadu’s nemesis, David, has told his Lagos-to-UK story and the court believed him. Was it an isolated case? I don’t think many Nigerians think so. The unimaginable happens here so tragically regularly; and they are seen as quite normal. There must have been tens of other criminal harvest sessions (seasons) that have gone undetected or detected but not punished. Many more may be happening as we argue and contend over Ekweremadu and his judgement. On July 4, 2020, the newspaper I edit published a deep report on organ harvesting business in Lagos. I reproduce part of that report here: For the initiated, a ‘life giver’ in Katangua market, Lagos, is one who is into organ-harvesting business; a donor that has sold one of his two kidneys to a patient that required a kidney transplant. They are in their numbers in the market, Saturday Tribune was told. At Katangua, also known as ‘supermarket’, traders sell virtually all human needs. They sell shirts, trousers, blazers, jackets, shoes, cars, and food items; they also sell human kidneys, according to an informant, Ogor (not real name). All these come at affordable prices. Human kidney, according to Ogor, sells for between N750,000 and N1million, depending on the bargaining power of the ‘donor’. Obviously out of breath and exhausted, Ogor laid his body on a stall to get some fresh air with a few of his wares hanging loosely on his hands when Saturday Tribune walked up to him, having been linked up by a contact. Katangua is mostly known for Okrika but Ogor claimed that those who know the inner workings of the market know where the real money is. He was introduced to the deal. He said: “The guy who introduced me narrated to me how he sold his kidney and invested the money in his Okrika business. He also narrated how many traders in the market had gone through a similar process to expand their earnings. At first, I was nervous but when I thought about what lay ahead of me and the fact that there was nobody to lean on, I summoned courage. I later got to know the guy as Paul. He was an agent working for an organ vendor whom I later got to know as Obinna (real name). They both had sold their kidneys, too. Paul took me to Obinna’s house where we had a lengthy discussion. He told me I would be paid N850,000 after the whole exercise. He took me to a diagnostic centre in Oshodi (name withheld) where my kidneys were checked and certified healthy.

“I also got to know that Obinna had someone he worked for but I never got to meet him throughout the processing. He contacted someone in India and my travel documents and medical reports were ready within a short period. I was prepared to embark on a journey to sell my kidney to an unknown person in order to add value to my life. I never knew I was on the path of destruction. Obinna instructed me that if the doctors in India asked me any question, I should tell them that I didn’t understand the English language. And true to his instructions, doctors at the hospital in New Delhi asked many questions. They asked me if I was forced to donate my kidney. They asked if I would like to change my mind; they asked other questions. After the questioning session, a young black Nigerian woman was brought in. She lives in India. I was told she would act as my wife and she signed some documents on my behalf. We took pictures together and the doctors recorded us with their camera and after this, they embarked on the surgery to remove one of my kidneys. After the surgery, I spent about five months in India to recuperate before I returned to Lagos.

“Truly, I was not forced to sell my kidney but I did it out of poverty and hunger. I regret every step I took on that journey because I have been feeling unwell since I came back from India. When I started having health challenges, I went in search of Obinna at his residence but I was told that he had moved out of the place. He is still in Katangua where he sells Okrika to deceive the people. He lured innocent young Nigerians into the organ selling business. In fact, he has made many young traders in Katangua sell their kidneys, giving them little. Just walk round the market and ask to see their stomachs, you will be surprised at the cut marks you will see on them.” The (then) image maker of the state police command, Bala Elkana, in his reaction said what the traders did was “a punishable offence. It is against the human trafficking law in Nigeria.” End of story. Read again and come to your own judgement. There is nothing the desperately poor are not willing to sell; nothing is too sacred for the desperate rich to buy. The poorer people get, the more frantically stupid they become to escape poverty. It is the same when the rich and comfortable are in distress. They throw money at the problem; they do what the world takes to be silly, stupid things. Does this tell you anything about Ekweremadu? May God save us from desperate situations.

Human organs fail but modern medicine has said failure needn’t be fatal. Transplantation has evolved as a viable remedy to organ failure. But, are there no legal ways of getting these parts? If there is none, pioneers in this field, from Joseph E. Murray to Alexis Carrell and Thomas E. Starzl and others, home and abroad, would have laboured in vain. The truth is, there are lawful ways of doing it; the problem is with the rich; they avoid taking personal risks; they always cut corners.

Apart from the two gentlemen and a lady jailed in the UK on Friday in that David Nwamini case, who else was involved in that particular matter? We may never know. The depth of dark business is always deep. How entrenched is the ‘business’? Even the United Nations appears perplexed, without a clue yet. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) reported in August 2022 that its flagship 2020 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons “indicated an increasing prevalence of reported cases of trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal (TIP for OR).” It added, however, that “existing barriers to reporting suggest that the full scale of this phenomenon is not yet known.” We may never know who else does this business, who has done it and who may do it despite the global odium in the Ekweremadu case. Do the buyers and sellers know that what they do is bad? “People sell their souls in such small quantities – a seemingly trivial compromise here, a rationalization of a minor evil there – that they don’t realize what they’re doing until it is too late” (Mike Klepper). How much really is the cost of evil? In August 2020, The Sun of UK published the story of a Malaysian reportedly involved in organ trafficking. He did his dark business by luring what the paper described as “poverty-stricken victims from around the world” to sell their organs. That is what he does for a living, and he boasted to the UK paper that he had masterminded 45 illicit kidney sales with more than 100 potential sellers on the queue. “They’re all serious. Nobody wants to sell their kidney if there is no financial problem,” the man told The Sun. The newspaper said the man initially charged its undercover reporters a fee of £55,000 for supplying a kidney and an additional £65,000 for payment to the clinic. They haggled and the man dropped the total fee to £85,000. How did he do it without his evil finding him out? The man who operated from Manila, Philippines, explained to the reporters that “in Manila, cash is king. Money talks.” Remove Manila in that boast and put Nigeria there; you will be very correct. Here, the rich buy everything; they buy anybody; the poor sell anything, from body to soul. The country is cash-and-carry. It will remain so until we bite the bullet and make a fresh start.