The federal government has disclosed that following the report of investigation done by some committees set up by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), it will not hesitate to withdraw funds from any non-performing Centre of Excellence out of the 23 established years back.

This was disclosed by the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, in Abuja while receiving two reports of TETFund’s ad hoc committees on Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence and Operationalisation of Skills Development Special Intervention.

Mamman, who noted that the report analysed is a major policy shift in education, said government will not continue to reward indolence by giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do.

He said, “The government is encouraging our scholars to simply rise to the occasion and deliver on their scholarship, what world class scholars do; and we are not going to reward indolence. We can’t be giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do.”

On the non-performing institutions, he said: “If you were established five years ago and you are still at your infancy, you have not been able to provide modern laboratories, facilities for scholars to come and learn, we want to know why. But we don’t want to be arbitrary.

He however admitted that some of the centres have done fantastically well since inception, stating that a lot of them are doing innovations.

Earlier, the Committee on the Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence, led by Prof. Oyewale Tomori, in its report, declined to recommend any centre for upgrade.

 [DailyTrust]

Veteran journalist, Dele Momodu has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, of “misfiring” in the ongoing case against former Kogi governor, Yahaya Bello.

Momodu said the EFCC failed to do due diligence during their investigation against Bello.

Speaking during an Instagram Live, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain faulted EFCC’s claims of Bello using government funds to pay his children school fees upfront before the expiration of his tenure.

He faulted EFCC’s conduct in its attempt to prosecute Bello, stressing that the commission’s Chairman, Ola Olukoyede should have learnt from the cases of his predecessors, who he said were “booted out ignominiously”.

According to Momodu: “When they brought in the new chairman, I thought oh, you will have the benefit of learning from your predecessors.

“All of them were booted out ignominiously and if I were in the shoes of the current chairman, what I will simply do is make sure I do my job as meticulously, as professionally, as efficiently as possible. And, you will never go wrong if you obey the rule of law.

“I watched the EFCC chairman, I think either last week or the week before the last, I was almost crying because the way he went on and on..if I don’t do this… spitting fire and all.. you don’t have to do media trial.”

Asked if the EFCC was lying about Bello, Momodu said: “I have no idea, I don’t work for EFCC but from all the things that I have read, a lot of them, they misfired. That is the honest truth. They misfired. They didn’t do their due diligence.

“When you said a man took out money and paid for his children’s school fees, just as he was about to leave power, and you go and check the documents and you see that these things started happening from 2021, 2022 (laughs); I am not an illiterate.”

The EFCC had accused Bello and three others of alleged money laundering to the tune of N80.2 billion while he was governor.

Olukoyede also accused Bello of withdrawing $720,000 to pay for his children’s school fees before leaving office.

This, the former governor denied.

[DailyPost]

A fast rising actress, Damilola Omotoso, has shared how she handled randy movie directors and producers who demanded sex for roles.

She stated she lost a lot of movie roles and job opportunities for shunning the sexual advances. 

“The most common challenge I faced in the industry as a newbie was losing a lot of job opportunities because I turned down several sexual advances from those who were in charge of the movie productions.

“I had to find money and start producing my own movies and from there I got more than enough chances to showcase my skills. 

So other producers and directors started noticing me and calling me for jobs,” she stated. 

The UNILORIN Chemistry graduate, who joined the movie industry in 2015, said her love to be a thespian started from childhood. 

She explained she was nervous the first time she was featuring in a movie.

She said she appeared in the work with established actors like Muyiwa Ademola and Bimbo Oshin.

“I was extremely happy being featured for the first time, it was an opportunity for me to showcase my talent but I was also nervous because I had to work with some of our industry veterans like Muyiwa Ademola and Bimbo Oshin,” she added.

The Ekiti-born actress, writer and movie producer has since featured in several other works and produced her movies.

Mentioning the titles of her own movies she stated, ” I have been privileged to produce movies like Oju Ide, Kanranjogbon, Radehun Alapoka, Married Strangers, Hidden Venom, and.a lot more. I have also featured in a lot of movies produced by some of my colleagues.”

Talking about the movie that brought her to limelight, Omotoso believes that there are a number of them but “If based on number I believe Kanranjogbon is it.”

The sultry actress noted that stardom has not changed her routine. 

 “I rarely go out unless it’s important or for work, even before I started acting so nothing has changed much for me,” she stressed. 

Shehas an advice for the up-and-coming actors and actresses. 

 “First,I’m  still up and coming as well but I would say we shouldn’t be so desperate and lose our morals just to become a star.  

“Take your time and also make sure you’re doing something different because there a lot of people doing the same thing in the industry and the only way to stand out is to be different,” she said.

[TheNation]

The Federal Government may consider the suspension of the $56.7bn peer-to-peer cryptocurrency market after a crucial meeting between the Securities and Exchange Commission, and digital asset operators scheduled for Monday.

Nigeria’s volume of crypto transactions grew by nine per cent year-over-year to $56.7bn between July 2022 and June 2023, according to the 2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report by Chainalysis, a United States of America-based international blockchain analysis firm.

The latest move by the SEC signals a broader effort by the Federal Government to tighten regulatory oversight within the cryptocurrency space amidst growing concerns over illicit activities and the manipulation of the naira exchange rate.

Earlier this week, the Central Bank of Nigeria had stopped major fintech firms from onboarding new customers in an ongoing audit of their Know-Your-Customer process. Following the regulatory action, major fintech firms, including Opay and PalmPay, sent emails to their customers on Friday, warning them against trading in cryptocurrency or any virtual currency on their apps, and threatened to block any accounts found engaging in such activities.

The threat to block accounts has faced heavy criticism, particularly from the 33.4 million individuals actively trading cryptocurrencies; many of whom rely on cryptocurrency trading as their primary source of income.

However, Sunday PUNCH learnt that during the proposed Monday meeting, the government may choose to announce a temporary halt in the P2P crypto trading to enable it come up with a comprehensive set of rules for effective regulation of the space.

Other sources privy to the meeting said the government might choose to engage the crypto stakeholders on a new set of rules that could be deployed to better regulate the space.

They ruled out the possibility of imposing a temporary halt on P2P crypto trading. As of Sunday, details of the exact decision the government might take during or after the meeting with the crypto operators remained sketchy.

However, operators in the crypto market confirmed the meeting, saying the meeting would bother on the current development in the space. The Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee of Nigeria, in a notice posted on its X handle on Saturday, noted that the meeting had been at the instance of the new Director General of the SEC, Dr Emotimi Agama.

BICCoN said, “The newly appointed Director General of the Nigeria Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed an industry-wide meeting with the Nigeria blockchain community. The meeting will be facilitated by the Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee of Nigeria.”

Officially, the SEC has yet to confirm the Monday meeting, but sources close to the commission confirmed the meeting on Saturday. They, however, said that ‘nothing was cast in stone yet’.

In 2021, the CBN had restricted banks and other financial institutions from operating accounts for cryptocurrency service providers. However, in December 2023, the financial regulator lifted the ban and announced a reversal of the policy.

Fresh concerns emerged in February over the activities of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, on its peer-to-peer platform, such as implementing a price cap on USDT trading.

Authorities said those activities contributed to the devaluation of the naira and destabilised Nigeria’s economy.

Worried over the significant volume of transactions through Binance Nigeria, the CBN Governor, Yemi Cardoso, stated that $26bn had passed through the platform over the past year from ‘unidentified sources’.

Amid the crackdown, the crypto exchange ceased all naira services, including deposits, withdrawals, and trading pairs, starting in early March 2024.

In an interview with Sunday PUNCH, the Chairman of BICCoN, Lucky Uwakwe, said that the group would be seeking to reach a middle ground with the regulator, which had so far this year introduced stiffer guidelines for digital asset operators, as well as a proposed increase in the registration fees.

Ukakwe said the meeting “is for us to try and bring the industry to be compliant and remove bad actors who abuse technology, especially the concern raised by the government on those that use the technology for market manipulation of naira.

“We also hope that innovation in the industry is encouraged to enable the industry to gain more foreign inflow that will aid the current administration’s drive for foreign investment into the nation as seen in other countries such as China and the UAE, and not to stifle the industry.”

On his part, the President of Stakeholders in Blockchain Technology Association of Nigeria, Obinna Iwuno, told one of our correspondents that there was no official communication on the ban of cryptocurrency transactions from regulators. He said, “There is a whole lot going on. It is not just clear the direction as we speak, but hopefully, on Monday, we will get to have a position, “What we have done to solidify our position with the Nigerian government is that local exchanges stopped their naira services. The government raised an alarm that cryptocurrency was responsible for naira depreciation; operators stopped,” Iwuno explained.

The ‘Know Your Customer’ compliance level of fintechs has also been a source of worry for regulators. This involves verifying a customer’s identity and understanding their financial activity to prevent financial crimes, such as money laundering, terrorist financing, and fraud. According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System’s fraud watch report, fraud losses increased by 496.96 per cent over the past five years, and financial institution customers had lost N59.33bn between 2019 and 2023. 

The report read in part, “The amount lost to fraud has increased over the past five years, along with the growth of financial transactions in the digital payments sector.”

A source from one of the major fintechs in the country, who preferred anonymity, disclosed to Sunday PUNCH that the CBN was not declaring cryptocurrency illegal, but was rather focusing on addressing regulatory and identity management issues.

“Some of the expectations from the meeting would be to have a more robust and safer ecosystem that will prevent fraud, and protect the funds of customers.

“The CBN is not saying that cryptocurrency is illegal, but there have been issues surrounding regulations and identity management. Those are the grey areas that the CBN is trying to address. They don’t want a situation where people are getting into Nigerian systems to defraud others, or engage in any negative activity that could harm innocent Nigerians.

“It is more or less about finding a way to make this thing work better. Sometimes, people can simply create a virtual account, and one won’t even know who is behind the account. So, it’s really about ensuring end-to-end verification, from the first line of payment to the very end, with the account holders’ identities attached to it. I think it is necessary at this time,” the source explained.

Nigeria’s volume of crypto transactions grew by nine per cent year-over-year to $56.7bn between July 2022 and June 2023, according to the 2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report by Chainalysis. Despite Nigeria now leading in peer-to-peer exchange volume, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for only 2.3 per cent of the global cryptocurrency transaction volume between July 2022 and June 2023, making it the smallest crypto economy in the world.

In an interview with Techpoint Africa, Youssef said most of the P2P transactions did not happen on Binance or any other platform, but on social platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and ‘everywhere on the streets’.

“Most peer-to-peer (transactions) don’t happen on Binance P2P, NoOnes, or any of those other platforms. They happen on WhatsApp, Telegram, coffee shops, and everywhere on the streets. That is where most peer-to-peer is happening. I think most of that is peer-to-peer volume. They are trying to cover up too, because Nigerians are very crafty and have ways of using things for reasons other than what they were created for,” he maintained.

In March, the SEC, under the former DG, Lamido Yuguda, revealed plans to issue updated guidelines for the operations of digital assets and virtual asset service providers in the country, saying the new guidelines would ensure criminals did not gain entry into the country’s capital market.

The SEC notice, dated March 4, 2024, partly read, “The SEC has also developed a new AML/CFT/CPF onboarding manual for licensing, registration, and ongoing screening of digital and VASP beneficial owners to ensure that criminals are not registered as operators in the capital market. The SEC is ready to interface with genuine VASPs based on these clear rules and regulations.”

The SEC also proposed that for virtual (crypto) asset service providers, ‘no person or entity shall provide any virtual asset service unless registered with the Commission; a company seeking to operate as a VASP shall be incorporated and have an office in Nigeria. Its Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director or its equivalent shall be resident in Nigeria.”

When questioned about the SEC’s proposed guidelines in the crypto sector at the last Capital Market Committee meeting that he chaired, the former SEC DG said investor protection was a driving motive.

“We want to ensure that investors who decide to get involved in digital asset products are well protected. We want a platform where certain capital market functions are duly segregated. If you are an exchange, we don’t want you to also be a custodian, and such.

“Also, we are very mindful that AML/CFT considerations are very important when one is dealing with crypto assets. We want to make sure it is not money laundering or funds used to promote terrorist financing,” the former SEC DG said.

The Chief Operating Officer of Fintech Association of Nigeria, Babatunde Obrimah, told Sunday PUNCH, “I am not privy to the circulars sent to the Fintechs, and I am not aware that crypto is illegal. The meeting will put things into perspective.”

“I think the issue is that to trade, one must be licensed by the SEC. So, if one is trading without a license, then one is technically illegal. But, we should talk after the Monday meeting, instead of speculating,” he added.

In March, the SEC proposed a 400 per cent increase in crypto firm registration fees. However, checks by Sunday PUNCH, on Saturday, showed that the proposed guidelines had been deleted from the SEC’s website. It is unclear when the PDF was removed from the regulator’s website.

The proposed amendments to the rules for crypto issuers, exchanges, and custody platforms include hikes to all supervision fees. Instead of a N100,000 application fee and a N30m registration fee, the SEC proposed N300,000 with every application, N1m as a processing fee, and N150m as registration fee, with the sponsored individual fees raised to N300,000 from N100,000.

An economist, Aliyu Ilias, emphasised the need for urgency in addressing the deficiencies within the fintech ecosystem, citing the ongoing struggle of the apex bank to effectively regulate them, as illustrated by the recent case involving Binance.

Ilias argued that in the dynamic tech industry, regulatory clampdowns often led companies to exploit loopholes, stating, “Even the Know Your Customer requirement proves insufficient.”

Another industry stakeholder, who is also the founder and coordinator of Blockchain Nigeria User Group, Chuta Chimezie, expressed hope that the Monday meeting would ‘help the industry significantly, and improve the relationship between regulators and policymakers’.

“The last few months have been nothing short of wars. as the CBN keeps clamping down on P2P platforms,” he lamented.

[Punch]

Organised Labour, at the weekend, fires back at state governors, warning them against inflammatory utterances that could set the nation’s industrial space on fire over the new national minimum wage, NNMW.

It faulted the statement credited to the governors through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, that they were working on what individual states could sustainably pay.

Labour contended that the governors must work within the 37-member committee saddled with the responsibility of fashioning out a new national minimum wage for the country.

According to the Organised Labour, it is being magnanimous with N615,000 new minimum wage’ demand because, based on the socioeconomic indices on the ground, it would have demanded much higher which the governors “are more than able to pay”.

Recall that in a statement, last Thursday, by the NGF Chairman and Governor of Kwara State, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, at the end of NGF’s virtual meeting held Wednesday night, the governors said, among others, “As members of the committee, we are reviewing our individual fiscal space as State Governments and the consequential impact of various recommendations, to arrive at an improved minimum wage we can pay sustainably.

“We remain committed to the process and promise that better wages will be the invariable outcome of ongoing negotiations.”

Misquoted

Reacting to the statement, Deputy President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, and President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, ASCSN, Dr Tommy Okon, told Sunday Vanguard, yesterday, that Organised Labour believed the governors were misquoted.

“They can’t say that they are working on what individual states can pay. I think the governors may be talking about what they can add to the minimum wage at the end of the day because what will be agreed upon is the baseline which nobody should pay less than”, Okon said.

“But they can pay higher than that. I think that is what they are saying.

“They cannot be telling us that they are reviewing or setting up a committee to work on what they can pay individually. Two committees cannot be working on the same issue.

“The governors are members of the tripartite committee on the New National Minimum Wage, so they cannot set up another committee or work independently from the tripartite committee set up by the Federal Government.

“Maybe the governors are talking about implementation. It is right for the governors to set up an implementation committee. They need to know their staff’s strengths and sources of funds to implement the new wage
“But to say that they are working on what individual states can pay outside the committee that the Federal Government has set up cannot be correct.

“Do not forget that the governors are members of the tripartite committee set up by the Federal Government. So, they cannot do anything outside the committee.

“If what is reported is correct or if the governors own up to the statement as reported, it is a recipe for serious industrial unrest.

“And no nation can accept that because any nation that works like will face unprecedented industrial unrest and can never grow. No nation grows amid industrial chaos.

“We think the governors will tread with caution and avoid inflammatory utterances. We still believe the statement was not from them.”

Negotiation table

On its part, Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, declined a response, saying it has made a demand before the tripartite committee on the minimum wage and whatever the governors want to say should be brought to the negotiation table since they are members of the committee on the new minimum wage.

However, an official of NLC, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Sunday Vanguard that the governors are treading on dangerous ground that could set the nation’s industrial space on fire.

“You cannot be talking about reviewing what individual state can pay sustainably outside the committee set up to look out will be the baseline or minimum”, he said. “Whatever opinion you have is what you should bring to the negotiation table. You come to the negotiation table and argue your opinion.

“We do not want to trade words with the governors because they are members.

“(But) they are treading on a dangerous ground that can set the nation’s industrial space on fire.

“We have made our demand which is a very generous one from the breakdown we released on Thursday on the N615,000 demand.
“You can see that we have been very magnanimous. Several expenses, including basic things like recharge cards, entertainment, extended family and others, are missing.

“Don’t forget that this demand was a product of questionnaires we sent out to states and local governments. We did not manufacture it.

“Again, take the issue of electricity which we allocated N20,000 a month. At the time we did it, the electricity tariff had not been adjusted by about 300 per cent. With the adjustment, it has affected nearly every other thing in terms of inflation.

“We know the governors can do much more than what we are demanding. We have passed through this road before.
“The problem with the governors is that they place their aggrandizement far above public good and workers’ welfare.

“That many former governors are facing prosecution by the nation’s anti-graft agencies, especially the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is a pointer to the fact that governors have the resources to pay much higher than our demand.”

‘How we arrived at N615, 000’

NLC had, on Thursday, given the breakdown on how Organised Labour arrived at its demand of N615,000 as the new minimum wage, and also countered the government on the commencement date for the proposed new minimum wage.

The Minister for State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, had, on Wednesday, while addressing workers at the May Day celebration in Abuja, said the new minimum wage would take effect from May 1, 2024.

But the NLC is arguing that it will take effect from April 19, 2024.

In a statement, NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said: “It has become imperative at this point that we inform Nigerians who may not have known already the foundations upon which our initial demand for a N615, 000 new National Minimum Wage is based.

“The figure was a product of a painstaking effort through which we captured the cost of living of Nigerian workers and masses in all parts of the country.

“It was essentially an outcome of independent research conducted by the NLC and TUC on the cost of meeting the primary needs of an average family around the country.

“Our research was based on a family with both parents alive and four children without the burden of having other dependents with them.

“A questionnaire was designed and sent to all the State Councils of NLC and TUC from where these questionnaires were sent to our members in all the local government areas in the country to gather the monthly cost of living for the average family as described above.

“A cursory look at the table above shows that we have deliberately removed certain elements from the basket used in calculations of this nature.

“However, it should also be noted that we have not included things like expenditure on calls and data, offerings in churches and Mosques, community dues, entertainment, savings and security etc.

“These are therefore just for the bare necessities.

”It should be noted that we arrived at this figure before the increase in electricity tariff and the recent scarcity of petrol across the nation leading to the appearance of long queues with attendant increased transport fares.

“Any figure below this amount becomes a starvation wage and condemns Nigerian workers and their families to perpetual poverty.

Commencement date

”We have to remember that the old one has expired on the 18th day of April 2024, and a new one is expected to have come into effect on the 19th day of April 2024. “However, because of the government’s inability to comply with the law that demanded negotiations for a new national minimum wage to have begun six months before the expiration of the existing one, concluding the new one has become unfortunately delayed.

”We are sure that our social partners would see our demonstration of understanding, sacrifice and reasonableness in our demands and thus accept this figure without much delay.

“We also enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to implore the government and employers to meet our demands for the sake of justice, equity and national development.”

Vanguard News Nigeria

A Nigerian couple based in the United States has been convicted of forced labour by a federal jury in New Jersey and faces 20 years imprisonment.

Isiaka Bolarinwa, 67, and Bolaji Bolarinwa, 50 — who are both US citizens were also found guilty of operating a coercive scheme to compel two victims to perform domestic labour and childcare in their home.

Speaking at the end of the trial on April 24, Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general, said the husband and wife lured the victims to the US with promises of a better life and an education but instead subjected them to hours of physical and psychological abuse.

“The defendants confiscated the victims’ passports, threatened them, degraded them, physically abused them and kept them under constant surveillance, all to coerce the victims’ labor and ruthlessly exploit them for the defendants’ own profit,” Clarke said.

“Human trafficking is a heinous crime, and this verdict should send the very clear message that the justice department will investigate and vigorously prosecute these cases to hold human traffickers accountable and bring justice to their victims.”

According to the evidence presented at trial, including the testimony of two victims, the incident happened between December 2015 and October 2016.

“Once Victim 1 arrived in the United States in December 2015, Bolaji Bolarinwa confiscated her passport and coerced her through threats of physical harm to her and her daughter, verbal abuse, isolation and constant surveillance to compel her to work every day, around the clock for nearly a year,” the court heard.

“Isiaka was aware of his wife’s threats and abusive behavior toward Victim 1 and directly benefited from Victim 1’s cooking, cleaning and childcare.

“The defendants then recruited Victim 2 to come to the United States on a student visa.

“When Victim 2 arrived in the United States in April 2016, Bolaji Bolarinwa similarly confiscated her passport and coerced her to perform household work and childcare but relied more heavily on physical abuse.

“On at least one occasion, Isiaka Bolarinwa also physically abused Vitim 2, and he was aware of his wife’s coercive, abusive behavior toward Victim 2 and directly benefited from her cleaning and childcare.”

The US department of justice (DOJ) said both victims endured the abuse until October 2016, when one of them (victim 1) summoned the courage to outcry to a professor at her college, who in turn, reported the targets to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Both defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each forced labour count and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the alien harbouring count.

The DOJ added that they will also be required to pay mandatory restitution to the victims and each faces a fine on each count of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss from the offence, whichever is greatest.

A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.

[TheCable]

There is a medication I buy for my 79-year-old mum every month. It was going for less than N10,000 per pack at this time last year. Today, it is N31,000. Although I consider it pretty expensive, I can still afford it. But each time I buy it, my heart goes to Nigerians living on the minimum wage and those surviving on pensions. How are they coping? My mum is fairly healthy for her age and uses only one prescribed medication. But what about the less privileged and less lucky Nigerians who have to treat hypertension, diabetes and organ-related ailments? How are they coping with the costs? Will they not become vulnerable to fake drugs and harmful options? Will some not simply ignore medications?

I was deep in this thought when Dr Henry Ewunonu, a physician and health advocate, asked me if TheCable — the online newspaper I founded in 2014 — would consider convening a public forum to discuss the escalating costs of medicines and medical consumables in Nigeria. He suggested that the diagnostic evaluation of the causes of escalating costs should lead to a prescription of actionable proposals by the forum. That was music to my ears. TheCable’s 10th anniversary was approaching and our mandate is “to deliver knowledge-driven journalism in the pursuit of Nigeria’s progress”. We just don’t want to be saying there is a problem — we also want to be part of providing solutions.

We immediately set sail. On first dial, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, founder & chairman, Juli Pharmacy Plc and former minister of health, graciously agreed to chair the event. Prof Ali Pate, coordinating minister of health and social welfare, instantly accepted our invitation. Dr Stella Okoli, founder of Emzor Pharmaceutical, did not respond, but we still formed a solid panel: Prof Moji Adeyeye, NAFDAC DG; Dr Uche Ojinmah, president, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA); Mrs Chisom Uchem, ES, Anambra Primary Healthcare Development Agency (APHDA); and Mr Frank Muonemeh, ES of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN).

I had plenty take-aways from the webinar, which was held on April 30. Prince Adelusi-Adeluyi set the ball rolling by pointing out how India moved from being an importer of medicines to becoming a global industrial giant in pharmaceuticals. “Industrialisation is the way,” he said, emphatically. This is more loaded than it appears. Nigeria imports about 70 percent of its drugs. Even the locally manufactured drugs rely 100 percent on imported active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). As Prof Adeyeye put it, the only thing our pharmaceutical companies don’t import is water. In one word, Nigeria relies entirely on imported medicines or APIs. We are at the mercy of the forex volality.

The dependency on imported drugs comes with several issues. The forex challenge is probably the most obvious and impactful, but there is also the cost of patent payments which contribute in no little way to the price at which patients buy drugs. Let us return to India briefly. In the 1970s, they started preparing to solve problems associated with drug importation. They came up with the revolutionary Indian Patents Act (1970) and Drug Policy (1978) which stimulated local production of generic drugs, compared to the costly Western patents. In the 1980s, India had graduated from the sick position Nigeria is today to that of a leading exporter of drugs. Vision. Tenacity of purpose.

Preparations also met opportunity. In 1984, the US enacted the Hatch-Waxman Act to facilitate the production of generic medicines. Indian companies became perhaps the biggest beneficiaries. As Prince Adelusi-Adeluyi highlighted, they are now the leading exporters of generic medicines. They supply 20 percent of global demand. More than half of the world’s vaccines are produced in India. Drugs produced in India account for about 40 percent of generics used in the US and 25 percent of medicines sold in the UK. There are over 3,000 Indian pharmaceutical companies and they earned about $25 billion from exports in 2023 alone. Industrialisation. Why can’t we seize this opportunity?

Mr Muonemeh, the voice of Nigerian drug manufacturers at the webinar, listed the obstacles they face — from various regulators to revenue-collecting agencies. Things are not always as simple as you would think they should be. You would think that government would take as priority anything that has to do with health — especially given the critical role medications play in wellbeing. Nigeria is complicated. Muonemeh pointed the myriad of obstacles faced by local producers and proposed that local production of medicines be treated as a national security issue. I agree with him. The COVID-19 experience opened the eyes of many countries to this vulnerability, but did it really open ours?

Prof Adeyeye listed a number of policy measures being adopted by NAFDAC to ease the crisis, including fast-tracking the licensing process for imported drugs in order to address shortages. She also spoke about the Five + Five (5+5) Policy which is designed to migrate imported products to local production. This policy stipulates a timeline during which an importer/manufacturer must show plans to produce locally or partner with local producers. “If we do not focus on local manufacturing, we will continue to have drug insecurity,” she said, adding that there is nothing the multinationals produce that we cannot make in Nigeria — apart from the inhalers used to manage asthma.

Local manufacturing is a long-lasting solution that should kick in at some point in the future if the right policies are adopted and implemented. Dr Ojinmah, however, wants the adoption of both short-term and long-term strategies and measures. I find his suggestion that tariffs on imported drugs be reduced very fascinating. I thought that this should be the first policy reaction of the government when prices started going through the roof. We grant waivers on many imports but medicines that save lives are not considered worthy. There is a place for revenue for government, I won’t argue against that, but have we considered the dangers of Nigerians being unable to buy life-saving drugs?

The NMA president made a number of proposals. He wants things kick-started with the declaration of a state of emergency on the health sector, which I believe is a way of saying government should pay extraordinary attention to the challenges. He wonders why there are government banks for many sectors without any for health, specifically to help the pharmaceutical industry. “Nigeria should inaugurate a health sector development bank that will have different facilities for all the health care contributors and stakeholders, such that they can go to this bank and fulfil conditions which should not be as stringent as the fund at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),” the dermatologist said.

“This will encourage pharmaceutical companies to go into production of drugs like antibiotics, anti-hypertensives and anti-diabetes. Government should reduce import levy on importation, equipment and production of these drugs to enable people bring in drugs into the country. We would be the greatest beneficiary as economic productivity will rise. Government should also bridge the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of access to medicines,” Ojinmah further suggested, while also emphasising the need for government to improve the health insurance scheme so that millions of ordinary Nigerians can have access to treatment without having to pay out of pocket.

An interesting proposal was put on the table by Mrs Chisom Uchem, the executive secretary of the Anambra Primary Health Development Agency (ASPHDA): encourage research into local herbs. The pharmacist oversees an agency that attends to medical needs at the grassroots and testifies that many people suffering from common ailments often come back to say they have used herbs and are back on their feet. Uchem wants the federal government to mandate the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) to play a lead role in that endeavour. China has done well in promoting use of herbs, even exporting them. Our own NIMR is one of the most poorly funded federal agencies.

“I’m looking at policies of government that will promote research enterprise,” Uchem said. “I’m thinking that if government will encourage clinical research, essential drugs will be affordable to the grassroots because this is the basic level of care. We can have our local brands, our local products. It will cut down on the prices of essential medicines. So, I’m thinking that amongst other things that we’ll do to cut the high cost of medication in Nigeria is that emphasis and premium should be paid on government supporting and promoting research enterprise… All of these lemon grasses, all of the guava leaves, all of the quinine, you know, this quinine, most of them are anti-malaria.” Fascinating.

I have always respected Prof Pate and I found his contributions reassuring. He said President Bola Tinubu was working on a comprehensive plan to address the issues affecting local manufacturing. He acknowledged the challenges: naira devaluation, power supply, technical know-how, supply chain and regulatory landscape. He said the government has been having a series of engagements with industry players, practitioners, and stakeholders on the escalating costs and hinted that an executive order was in the offing. While I was happy, a part of me was quietly praying fervently that MDAs will not frustrate the plan. As we know, they are always working at cross purposes. It is a Nigerian thing.

There were so many take-aways to curate and synthesize. TheCable plans to produce a comprehensive report and send to the appropriate authorities in the lawmaking, policy and regulatory chain as its modest contribution to the discourse on improving the state of the nation’s health care. One theme that rings through contributions is “medicine security”. We need to ramp up local manufacturing with tenacity. Who knows, we may even become net exporters. Didn’t India do it? It took vision and tenacity of purpose. In Nigeria, we are not short of good ideas. What we need is honest commitment to them. Implementation is where the devil always shows up in the details.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

WAGE WAR

On Tuesday, federal government announced a pay rise of between 25 and 35 percent for its civil servants across salary structures. This has been rejected by the labour unions. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is insisting on a minimum of N615,000/month — more than 20 times higher the current N30,000. I think we can have a scientific solution to this perennial controversy over the minimum wage. There should be a mechanism agreed by all parties involved. Can we have certain benchmarks to create this mechanism? The simplest one that comes to my head straightaway is a proportional relationship between the wage and inflation rate. That can minimise the rift. Hopefully.

EFCC’S BELLOW

Nigerians have been treated to a spectacular face-off between the EFCC and Mr Yahaya Bello, former Kogi governor — quite similar to what they saw between the commission and Mr Ayo Fayose, former Ekiti governor, as well as Owelle Rochas Okorocha, former Imo governor, in recent years. Bello, who has mindboggling allegations lined up against him, needs to be a man and turn himself in. He can run but he can’t hide. It is a matter of time before he is captured. But am I the only one thinking the EFCC chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede, went overboard with his press conference and threats? He needs to be calming down. I think this media drama is too much and not good for the commission. Caution.

BY CHOICE

The publicity-crazy Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has threatened to review the subscription rates announced by Multichoice for its DStv and GOtv packages. The FCCPC did not review the FX rate when it fell from N460/$ to N1400/$. Those guys don’t know that rights for foreign contents, such as the English Premier League, are paid for in FX. The FCCPC did not review Band A tariff when it was tripled despite power poor supply. They didn’t review the prices of life-saving drugs. But we hear “monopoly” when it comes to Multichoice. Is Pay TV a fundamental human right? Or are we just obsessed with South African businesses? Bullies.

NO COMMENT

You must have heard about the “housing estate” under the Dolphin estate bridge,  Lagos. Each room was either 10×10 or 10×12 and the tenants were paying N250,000 per annum, according to Mr Tokunbo Wahab, commissioner for environment and water resources. There were no amenities such as power and water.  Lagos state officials have made a public show of how they cracked down on the squatters and arrested some of them. Somehow, they do not know that the joke is on them. There is a serious housing crisis in Lagos state and what officials should be showcasing is what they are doing to address the issue, but they were busy shaming hapless squatters who were being exploited. Sad.

I really do wonder whether those great patriots that fought a long and bloody war against 

British colonial rule and founded the United States of America (US) in 1776 like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and so many others envisaged what has happened to their beloved country today? 

I wonder whether the Pilgrim Fathers and great and wise men of old who, by faith in the Living God, left the Old World, crossed the Atlantic ocean in hazardous conditions and went to the New to establish a new beginning and build a new nation founded on freedom, equality, the fear of God and solid good old fashioned Christian virtues and values, would believe what the beloved nation they toiled, prayed for, established and worked so hard to build has turned into today? 

Would they not all be turning in their graves?

A nation that was once referred to by both friend and foe as the “land of the free and the home of the brave” is now neither free nor brave. 

A mighty nation that delivered itself from its own internal prejudices, contradictions and demons by fighting a brutal civil war to free the slaves and that presented a great hope for those that dreamt of a world where all men and women could have equal opportunities, regardless of class, history, color, race or creed, has now lost its sense of decency, equity, honor and morality and turned into a corrupt, power drunk, morally bankrupt, blood-lusting, war-loving, terror-funding, egocentric and idiosyncratic collection of self-serving, self-seeking, cowardly and deluded individuals who serve the interests of not their own people but that of AIPAC, the Jewish lobby and the State of Israel. 

A rich and powerful nation of over 300 million people that delivered the world from evil in both the First and Second World Wars, that defeated and dismantled the curse of Soviet Communism, that entrenched democracy throughout much of the world and that literally rules the waves today as the greatest super power in the history of humanity in a unipolar world, is now nothing but the lap dog of little Israel? 

It seems so hard to believe. Yet true it is!

Like Lucifer fell from heaven, so you, O mighty America, has fallen from grace! 

I weep for you. 

Apart from your internal decay where the family system has been destroyed and traditional religious beliefs have been replaced by humanism and a godless philosophy in which the Lord is no longer revered, where men marry men, where abortions are encouraged, where homosexuality is adored, where Satanism is practised, where money is worshipped, where God has been banned from the schools and indeed every sphere of human endeavour and where the establishment of a New World Order is your ultimate objective, you have also, with the help of your servile and fawning vassals like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland and others, debased and destroyed the fortunes and vision of many countries with your reckless and self-serving foreign policy and your insatiable thirst for power and world domination. 

The number are legion but to mention a few, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and a number of others stand out. 

You have literally left each of them in rubbles and turned them into a shell of their former selves simply because you insisted on misleading them, controlling them and imposing your values and will on them. 

You are also attempting to undermine and destroy Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Pakistan, India, South Africa, the Arab Gulf States, Brazil, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Guinea, Egypt, Algeria and many others. 

You wish to exploit them, enslave them, milk them, destroy them, bend them to your will and turn them into your pliant little acolytes and colonies but, thankfully so far, you have failed. 

Slave master

 Yet what exposes your monstrous, dark, evil and gluttonous degeneration more than anything else is the way in which you nurture, protect, feed, arm and support your little baby Israel and how that baby has now become your slave master!

You quiver and bow at her every command and you seek to justify and rationalise her barbaric behaviour even when she operates what is undoubtedly a racist apartheid state and seeks to exterminate and occupy ALL the land of those she considers to be a lesser people with a lesser faith from a lesser nation like the Palestinians. 

For the last seven months, the entire world has witnessed with shock the way and manner in which you have not only allowed but openly encouraged her to commit mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, violating every rule and norm of international law and subjecting the Palestinian people to a modern day holocaust. 

This is unacceptable and you have as much blood on your hands as a consequence of your shameless complicity as the Israelis themselves. 

The truth is they could not and would not have dared to indulge in this monstrous and cruel display of depravity and in this bloodfest and killing spree without your tacit approval and support. 

This is bad enough but the worst aspect of it all is that when the world boils in anger, weeps and wails and attempts to bring your baby to justice for her wanton and willful display of utter madness whether at the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, you bare your ugly fangs and growl like a wounded lion and you boldly tell us that we should know and MUST accept that your little Israel and the fascist right wing white and non-semitic European colonial settlers and Zionists that own and lead her are God’s chosen people, are above the law and are entitled to do ANYTHING they deem fit, including wiping out the Palestinians! 

This disposition and open endorsement of pure and unadulterated evil is nauseating and sickening and it is a graphic reflection of the unconscionable beast that you have now become. 

 No fear of God

 You do not fear God, you do not fear world opinion, you do not fear even those from your own nation that are protesting your madness and you do not fear your conscience! 

The only thing you fear is your Lord and master Israel! 

I am constrained to ask, who on earth has bewitched you and which invocations and spells of occult sorcery from the ancient Kabbala did the Jews invoke to capture and bind your spirit and soul and to make you behave in this slavish manner? 

You are no longer the mighty giant that we once knew and revered but rather you are now what the Nigerian people would describe as a “woman wrappa” to your beloved Israel. 

At the mention of her name your strength fails you, your knees bend, your heart beats faster, your soul melts, your emotions overwhelm you and you bow, genuflect, crawl and quiver before her like a young man before his first love. 

 Arrest warrant

 Truly this is Satan’s work: you can no longer control your own will, you have been cursed, charmed and reduced to nothing and you are under a powerful spell.

I cry for you! 

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague issues a warrant of arrest for other world leaders you rejoice but when they consider issuing the same for @netanyahu, the Israeli PM, you wet your pants, soil your diapers & threaten brimstone & fire! 

Through one of your jittery officials at the State Department you went as far as to proclaim that ”the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israeli officials” and, therefore, has no right to even issue any arrest warrant on Netanyahu. 

Putin

  You forget that you were amongst those who clapped the loudest when a similar and active arrest warrant was issued on Russian President Vladimer Putin. 

For that you believed that the ICC acted within its powers and in fact did a great job yet you believe it is “unacceptable” for them to issue such a warrant on Bibi Netanyahu. 

Your hypocrisy and double standards beggars belief!

Again, you have just passed a law which violates your own Constitution, known as the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which outright bans free speech & which seeks to jail anyone that opposes, condemns or criticises the Jews, the Zionists or the State of Israel or that accuses them of being a racist, apartheid state or of committing genocide in Gaza or at any other place or time in their long 5000 year history including during the days of the Holy Bible! 

Your Congress just voted to make it ILLEGAL to compare Israel’s genocidal actions to Nazi Germany and they have effectively banned the Holy Bible in a supposedly “Christian” nation.

Is this not evidence of a diseased mind? 

To be clear, the new law makes it illegal to criticise, protest against or boycott Israel.

It also makes it ILLEGAL to preach or quote the portions of the GOSPEL & the Holy Bible where the countless & horrendous atrocities that were committed by the Jews against other nations thousands of years ago were listed!

The House of Representatives just voted to make preaching the FULL GOSPEL of the Christian faith ILLEGAL in America! 

Let that sink in!

Megatron_ron captured it well when he wrote the following on X:  ”The US House has passed an Act that totally bans speaking and protesting against Israel. “Even if you preach parts of the Bible that clearly states the days the Jews killed Christ you will be arrested.

“In response to campus anti-Israel protests, the House is rushing to vote on a new bill, HR 6090.

“This new Bill would officially define “Antisemitism”, so the Federal Government can sue, prosecute, or sanction more people, businesses, and universities for supposed violations of civil rights law.

“This Bill would make it illegal to compare Israeli policies to Nazi policies. It would make it illegal to describe Israel as racist. It would make it illegal to accuse an American citizen of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States”.

Is this not sad and amazing? 

Is it not a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions? 

Does it not make your blood boil and your skin crawl?

Are we not entering the Orwellian world that the British author George Orwell wrote about and predicted in his celebrated book many decades ago and that the writer and great visionary and intellectual @davidicke often refers to today? 

Is America, a once great country that exalted justice, freedom and righteousness, not turned into a big fat turd that is now in the process of flushing herself down the Israeli toilet!

 ‘United States of Zion’

 Surely she can no longer be referred to as the ‘United States of America’ but rather the ‘United States of Zion!’

On his part @Jakeshieldsajj, a highly respected American public affairs commentator and social media influencer, wrote the following on X: ”In the past two weeks, Congress has made anti-semitism illegal, demanded that anti-Israel protesters must be arrested, banned TikTok at Israel’s request, given $100 billion to Israel and Ukraine for war, approved warrantless spying on Americans, approved $3.5 billion aid for illegal immigrants and done nothing for the American people! It’s become clear they are not here to serve us.”

Jake has spoken the bitter truth. 

Perhaps the most asinine and chilling contribution of all came from American Senator Ted Cruz, a one-time presidential aspirant, a ranking Senator and a man who, up until recently, I had immense respect for. 

He said, “I condemn NOTHING that the Israelis are doing!”

Is this not evidence of mental illness! 

People are slaughtering thousands of children on a monthly basis with weapons supplied by the American taxpayer which you as a Senator approved in your budget and you say you cannot condemn it? 

Does that not make Cruz and those that think like him accomplices in the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? 

People like him should tell me why I should condemn Hamas for what they did on October 7th if he refuses to condemn the Jews for the 1948 Nakba in which they murdered almost one million Palestinians! 

They should tell me why I should condemn Hamas if they refuse to condemn the Israeli Army for the 2024 genocide in Gaza in which 40,000 civilians have been murdered in seven months and still counting?

Again Senator Cruz and indeed the entire American Congress claim that the phrase which the pro-Palestinian protesters and forces have come to regard as their signature tune and battle cry which boldly proclaims that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” connotes the intention of the Palestinians to eliminate every single Jew in Israel yet they fail to apply the same standard, connotation and sinister intention when the Zionists themselves use the same slogan in respect of the same land and when they scream “from the river to the sea, Israel shall have sovereignty”. 

 Double standards

 Permit me to ask, why the double standards? 

When the Palestinians say it you claim that they want to kill every Jew in the nation but when the Jews say it you claim that they have no evil intentions for the Palestinians! 

Is this not another example of the self-serving, infantile and puerile reasoning that most Americans and Europeans suffer from and have been afflicted with when it comes to the Gaza issue and does it not prove the fact that, as far as the majority of Americans are concerned, the Palestinians do not have the right to exist or to be treated like human beings whilst the Jews are treated like gods? 

Is this fair? Is it rational? Does it make sense?

The Jews constitute only 2% of the American population and yet they have been singled out for such preferential treatment and protection whilst the State of Israel, a distant nation of only 9 million people, has been accorded the special status of being “God’s chosen people” and well above the law and is entitled to commit the most grievous and heinous acts of genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing and mass murder without criticism or consequence.

All this you have done for a people and a nation which comprises of a deluded and sociopathic horde of genocidal psychopaths that not only murdered Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, that not only wiped out the Amalekites 5000 years ago, that not ethnically cleansed the Midianites 4000 years ago, that not only exterminated the Agagites 3000 years ago, that not only butchered 1 million Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948, that not only eliminated millions of Arabs all over the Middle East in the last 75 years but that has also killed 40,000 innocent and defenceless civilians, including 20,000 children, in the last seven months in Gaza and are set to kill even more in Raffa!

Is this not madness? Pray tell us, I ask again, who has bewitched you? 

I say woe unto you! 

Your awesome power and mind-boggling wealth has driven you insane and far from God! 

From being perceived as the leader of the free world you can now be best described as the fawning and pliant pit bull terrier of the Zionist state and the world’s leading genocide supporter and enabler! 

The truth is that there can be no defence or justification for anyone or any nation, no matter how rich and powerful, that supports a country of genocidal maniacs and psychopathic child killers. 

The Zionist state of Israel is the greatest evil that we have seen since Nazi Germany. 

 Apartheid entity

 It is a vicious, savage, bloodthirsty, racist, apartheid entity that is led by a group of desperate and deluded European settlers and land grabbing colonialists and that has lost its right to exist.

The sooner it is wiped off the face of the earth the better!

Yet for America there is still hope and that hope lies in people like the Christian protesters who barricaded themselves at the cafeteria of the American Congress last week and who said that, as long as the people of Gaza could not eat, they would not allow the members of the House to enter the cafeteria to eat! 

Again that hope lies in the courageous and gallant students, lecturers and academics who have demonstrated their commitment to justice, decency and humanity by vigorously protesting in university campuses all over the country. 

As a former American presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, rightly said those young demonstrators are “out there for the right reasons!

“They are out there not because they are pro-Hamas. They are out there because they are outraged by what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza!”

Sanders is right and permit me to add that those protesting students are indeed the saving grace of America. 

Despite the fact that they have been subjected to the most brutal repression by the security forces who have raided the campuses injuring many in an attempt to disperse them and in spite of the fact that as at the time of writing this piece over 2000 of them have been arrested and detained in various police stations across the nation, they continue to come out in their thousands and stand for the people of Gaza. 

They represent America’s pride and joy and the brightest and best of American youth and they are now all fired up and are marching the streets and university campuses for the Palestinians!  

This is a truly remarkable moment in world history and it represents a seismic and monumental shift in the perception, hearts and minds of the younger people in a nation that has been in the pocket and under the control of the Jews and the Zionists since the end of World War 11. 

Permit me to end this contribution with the following: Nothing symbolises the renewed hope that we are witnessing more than the beautiful and moving words of Professor Rashid Khalidi, who has been a Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at New York’s Columbia University for the last 22 years. 

In an inspiring address to the students and in a speech that will reverberate throughout history he said, inter alia, the following: ”This is about a genocide being carried on with American money and with American weapons, against a people enduring generations of occupation. The students of Columbia fought against the Vietnam war when I was a student here many years ago. We protested against that war then and today we honor the memories of those who took part in that great struggle by doing the same for the Palestinians and the people of Gaza!”

May God guide and protect them all and may He grant the people of Gaza and Palestine victory! 

•Femi Fani-Kayode, the Sadaukin Shinkafi and the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, is a lawyer, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism and a former Minister of Aviation.

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Date: 4th May, 2024

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Among the responses to last week’s column on Bobrisky was the surprise by one of the readers that there is so much difference between man and woman beyond the physical and the physiological. In the physical, the most obvious being in the reproductive features. A reader asked: “You mean there is so much that is disparate in the total make-up of women and that of men beyond the obvious?” From this reaction, one can see why we all encore the sing-song: What a man can do, a woman can do, indeed, even better”. We say this with such gusto and without reflection largely because we do not know enough about ourselves. From the enlightenment available on earth in these times, we can see there is so much we do not know about ourselves.

The ignorance has led man for centuries to wrongly conclude that woman is the weaker sex whereas man is only stronger, woman is the more powerful as she is closer to Nature and therewith the more connected with the power of the Almighty Creator, than man is. This is because she bears a peculiar endowment that makes her the bridge between the power of the Creator and man. The abundance of spiritual power she carries is lacking in man. Her special attributes enable her to draw virtues from On High which she uses to beautify and ennoble her community. By constituting the bridge, and mediator of sustained power, she forms the support, holding the balance in the family.
According to the ordinance of the Creator, with her intuition manifesting in the sharpness of her sixth sense the woman it is to make decisions and the man to execute them. This places the man in a situation that he is the more visible while the woman is quiet and gentle. All that has been altered by men as well as by women who, when their attention to their gifts is drawn, dismiss the hint as patronising. Once the bridge that the woman is collapses and the ordinance of the Creator is set aside, the world must be upside, a situation we can all witness has overtaken the entire world today. In the confusion, not a few women want to be men and quite a number of men are driven to wish to be women, as is the case with Bobrisky. Not only did Idris Okuneye express the wish to be a woman, he took practical steps to actualise his dream. He flew down to Dubai and went under the knives to transform himself into a woman.

With the intensification of thoughts in that direction by either the men or women their souls get distorted. The question may predictably be asked: How? Thoughts that we generate go out in radiation threads. The ethereal threads are woven into forms by invisible servants of the Most High that are called nature beings by those who are aware of their activities. They man the loom of life and weave forms in accordance with the content of the thoughts. These beings who are also called forces of nature set to work where procreation has taken place. From a single cell, as the body of the child develops, other cells begin to precipitate, differentiating as it were from one another to form different and individual organs of the body, such as the heart, the lung, the liver and kidney. At work are the said nature beings; they regulate them. Out of the cells are also formed the brain, the solar plexus and the lymphatic system concerned with corpuses.

They first construct the person’s astral body, the prototype of the garment the soul in the last wrapping puts on close to the earthly plane called World of Gross Matter. It is the astral design that the forming of the body in the womb of an expectant mother eventually follows. Indeed, we learn that it is part of lost knowledge to the modern man that for every child’s body developing in the womb, there is an astral model, that is to say a model of finer material invisible to the physical eye on which the gross material earthly body is formed. The astral prototype body takes account of the threads of fate of the waiting soul, its credit and debit balance. It is after the nature beings who attend to such matters have fashioned the astral form that the fertilized egg begins to divide, forming tissues and organs, systems and so on I referred to earlier. It is in their working that bodies are woven correspondent with what a person had wished for himself and his deserved karmic harvest. It should be made plain that soul is consisted of fine coverings around the spirit. It is these wrappings with the spirit as the core that make the spirit to be known as soul. It is, therefore, the soul that can be distorted and not the spirit which bears the burden of wrong volition. The choice of the spirit to be either man or woman upon setting out at the beginning on its journey to the earth even in its state as an unconscious spirit germ in quest of development in the school that the earth is, cannot be altered. It is a choice made for its entire existence.

It cannot, therefore, be for nothing that we are admonished to be wary of the thoughts we stimulate and send out. Speeches also take on forms. We live in a wonderful world, in the world of thoughts. All around us is a surge of activities. Even when we do not utter a word, all is living and active around us. Researchers who pre-occupy themselves with the study have revealed that thoughts have contents and they contain energy and measurable energy for that matter. Thoughts outflowing from us have no barriers and can be active, influencing at the other end of the world. They move from the physical to the unseen reaches of the Beyond where they take on form to uplift us and adorn us with beauty and nobleness of effulgent dignity, or drag down its authors to menacing demonic entities.

Back to the enquiry about the difference between man and woman beyond the obvious physical features, I feel obliged to recall my earlier publication on who woman is, captioned “The Mystery of Woman”, for those who might have missed it when it was published in 2017 and to refresh memories of those of us who might have seen it. As I said at the time, we can have a glimpse of the mystery of woman and her roles from what science seeks to elucidate despite its limitations. Science teaches us that two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen unite to give us water in the same way that sodium and chlorine, both splitting of a species, unite to form sodium chloride, the common table salt. I am not talking about the denatured salt but the typical one gotten from Himalaya Rocks or from the bed of the sea.
As I sought to explain, man and woman, like hydrogen and oxygen, are split species, each party seeking complementarity for balance and harmonious swinging. For batteries in our vehicles to work we have positive and negative charges. What science has validated is a union of elements to give fuller value of existence. Since the same law pervades and governs the universe, man and woman also being split species—man factor, positive and woman factor, negative—they drift as if by a pull, towards each other for a union in their search for complementarity. Spirit is magnetic. But why is it that it is the woman that pulls the man? That goes to give us a glimpse into what a woman is, a glimpse of which last week intrigued the enquirer. The woman does the pulling because she is endowed with richer spiritual make-up and everyone can feel the pervasive influence around him. In her power, and the man encircled in her grip, she gets the man to do whatever she wants!

It is the same power that uplifts her to the heights that presses her down to the depth when she falls. This, it is said, can be likened to the tragedy of a woman dropping from a 25-storey building and the man from the ground floor. While that of the woman can better be imagined than witnessed, the man merely bruises his knees, suffers some pains and he gets up. Such is the gap. Who then is woman? That Nature distinguishes a woman from a man is not a biological accident. The nature of each gender is a reflection of what each carries inside. The science of radiations has proved, at least, that every tangibility is a coarse manifestation of finer essence. In other words, the outward physical differentiation of man and woman merely reflects what must be substantial differences in the nature of their core, their being, their nature and their roles. Is it not instructive to note that, simply from the differences in words which in any case express meaning, woman cannot be the same as man? For that reason, also, the roles of a woman must have a purpose distinguishable from those of man and subversion or abandonment of which can bring only grave consequences. Neither man nor woman created himself or herself. As such neither created and assigned the roles, implying that the gender question goes beyond the wish or will of man or woman. For her roles, the woman is tender, fine, gentle, sensitive and perceptive. The man on the other hand is dense, rugged, coarse and aggressive.

Contrary to the widely held notion and conception in modern times, women are not men, not just in biological differences or connotation, but in the nature of the gender of each group of the human family. Similarly, contrary to generally-held belief, especially in modern times, it is not society that assigns roles to woman or man, but Nature. In most mobile creatures, we see male and female. And in plants to which I once drew attention, each part has its own roles which are akin to the different roles the genders of human race perform. The root of a plant, for example, is coarse, like man and like him provides the materials, the ingredients and water for the plant’s sustenance. The leaves, because of their fine and tender nature, prepare them to feed the whole, to nourish the whole, to beautify the whole. The leaves, because of their finer nature, collect rays of the sun which provides energy. They also collect carbon dioxide and turn them into oxygen through photosynthesis. These are fine activities. Fine as a woman’s caring and tending. But the root battles with tough, coarse, not fine activity; with rocks under the ground while at the same time, together with the stem, protects the leaves, the delicate part of a plant.
As I already stated in the foregoing men are closer to Nature than men are. This is as a result of her inner make-up which contains a part of higher spiritual essence which is lacking in men. With the higher spiritual make-up, she is put in a situation that she is a firm link and channel of radiations and influences from higher and purer Light Realm, that is Paradise. She is thus blessed with richer intuitive and perceptive faculties to sense the Will of God at all times and in every situation so that she can guide. She is put in the position to readily distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil. Thus in women are converged the rays of love and the rays of purity. Woman, therefore, becomes the storehouse of power. Standing half a step higher than man, she is able to absorb the rays of power and mediate them to the dense man, thus passing strength to him for use in his coarse activity. Man senses some power emanating from woman, and he feels drawn to protect this inexplicable treasure. He also feels overwhelmed by woman. Man has encountered this overwhelming power in nature but has been unable to relate it to the nature of female species in whatever form in all levels of being. I said this much last week, which I sense must have prompted the response to last week’s column.

It is obvious that deliberately Nature has endowed woman with a finer essence which her body mirrors so that in the ensuing homogeneity with the finer and purer currents of life she may easily link up with these forces, and absorbing them, mediate strength to her menfolk, who being coarse and alien to these forces, cannot reach out to them on their own. On the other hand, the studier man is to reciprocate, for balance, with her protection and sustenance through the facility of his own coarser gifts. Where either forsakes its role and duty to the other, this structure inevitably collapses. Could the distress in the world today not have arisen from such imbalance in the weaving of the human species?

Through her sharp sixth sense, she is able to sense dangers readily even before they approach, and she alerts the man who gets ready to ward them off. She is able to notice fine spots in a child as well as anything untoward in his dress or his breathing, or even notice cobwebs or water on the floor or on the table which man in his obtuseness may not see readily if he sees it at all. With the gift of effortlessly knowing right from wrong, her sense of judgment is striking, direct and correct. She is in a position to guide her husband in business, who his business partners should be, in government his ministers, and senior functionaries.
In love and care, she can be absorbed in the care of others, her husband and children to the exclusion of her own comfort. In selfless love, she throws herself on the right of right with absolute disregard to personal consequences. To know a woman is when her child faces a threat of danger. Like mother hen she will throw herself completely into the danger with total disregard for her own safety, regardless of her level of education, her exposure or social standing. The leading role of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti cannot be easily forgotten in the history of Abeokuta or in the defence of her son, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
The woman is a life-long educator, the teacher, a moulder of character, the guide and the pace-setter. She begins to educate her offspring from cradle, indeed, from the womb until they are old enough to go their own way. Even then there is still a tie! Where she does it well there is no anxiety in life for her family or the entire community. If she sets the right agenda and tone, her society will not go astray but prosper. Where a woman stands aright, the society has ennobling and uplifting practices and cultures. In the Elizabethan Age, through the instrumentality of Queen Elizabeth 1 (the First), Great Britain reached the zenith of her cultural flourish; and at the time of Queen Victoria, it was the age of etiquette, propriety and prosperity.
Soothing words from a woman have healed wounds and ended hostilities between nations in the same way nations, communities have fought wars over woman. Cultured men instinctively open doors for women and heads turn in gatherings at their approach, paying homage. Indeed, men begin to adjust their ties, their dresses to appear to be correct and approved by the woman who may not even be aware of the fuss over her. Before an upright woman, a man must bow—whoever he may be.

If women have fallen and become oppressed, it is a consequence of lack of understanding of who women are and the perversion of their own roles. So is it that women divert their energies to wrong and harmful pursuits such as footballing, weight lifting, wrestling, crane driving, emulating men, excessive intellectual cultivation there is imbalance between the brains, the frontal known as cerebrum and the hind brain cerebellum. The hind brain is the spiritually receptive part. Thus with the paralysis of the hind brain, the over cultivation constrains, indeed, blocks the outflowing of the prompting of the intuition. There is the craving by women for political power whether as president, governor or minister manifesting today in cries for affirmative action. That is, to place women in governmental power and kindred executive activities which distort a woman’s nature, steeling it and thus causing imbalance in the order of life. By moving to a different sphere of activity, her volition changes and the womanly nature accordingly becomes dulled…the bridge breaks and the natural structure collapses. Evidence of the creaking or collapsing structure which serious-minded people may wish to ponder is the gynaecological difficulties more and more women encounter today. Do we wonder? Once the volition changes and the fine womanly radiations turn coarse, why will the reproductive system, the hormonal orchestra, no longer maintain radiations or response as they should.

When a river deviates from its course, it ends up forming a stagnant lake, giving its environment filth and fouled air. Eventually it dries up, unable to reach its destination, its goal for development. Nature has abandoned women to the disobedience of the laws that stipulate their roles. The penalty for this includes confusion in homes, in the society, in the world at large, in individuals and in failure of men to achieve enduring really great things. The penalty shows in the abandonment of children on refuse dumps, on the streets and rail lines. It shows in the emergence of child soldiers and the unbelievable aberrations we are all witnessing. It shows in brutalised man and lack of respect for women by men and for men by women!