Some officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission have been held hostage in the Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

Earlier today, supporters of the Peoples Democratic Party in Bayelsa State staged a protest in Yenagoa.

They marched towards the INEC office on Swali Road.

It was gathered that they demanded that governorship election results from Brass LGA should not be brought to the collation centre, which is the state INEC office.

In a post via the commission’s X handle on Sunday, INEC called on the police and other security operatives to investigate the situation and facilitate the release of the officials.

The post read “The unfolding situation in Brass Local Government Area.

“The commission is closely watching the situation in Brass LGA of Bayelsa State where our officials are held hostage.

“This is detrimental to credible elections. We call on the security agencies to immediately facilitate their release.”

[Punch]

The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, has said the re-election of Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, is a testament to his excellent performance during his first term.

Akpabio said this in a congratulatory letter to the Imo State Governor over his victory as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Sunday.

The Senate President who commended Governor Uzodinma for his resilience and commitment to genuine democratic practices said “Good governance has triumphed over propaganda”

Akpabio further said “Your Excellency, I wish to heartily congratulate and rejoice with you and the people of Imo State on your well-deserved re-election as the Executive Governor of Imo State. Your victory is a testimony of your excellent performance in office in the last four years.

“I must say, this victory is an affirmation by the Ndi Imo of your sterling leadership qualities and confirmation of your outstanding performance and delivery of the dividends of democracy to the people.

“It is also an indication that our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is firmly established in the South East and accepted by the good people of the region.

“ This explains why despite threats, attempted strikes and manipulated blackmail from enemies of your people, God took control.

“Therefore, on behalf of the APC family in the 10th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I congratulate you on this resounding 2nd term victory and pray for God’s wisdom to translate this victory into more tangible dividends of democracy for the good people of Imo state.”

Akpabio equally commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for refusing to give in to blackmail by conducting a free and fair election.

He said, “I commend INEC for providing a level playing field for all the candidates and for conducting transparent elections. I also commend the security agencies for keeping the troublemakers at bay and ensuring peaceful conduct during the polls.

“I urge you to be magnanimous in victory by extending your hands of fellowship to your fellow contestants and see this re-election as a renewed mandate to build on the foundations that you have already laid towards improving the lives of the people of Imo State.”

[Vanguard]

In 1968, Stanislav Andrzejewski, the former Polish soldier and prisoner-of-war, who later founded the Sociology Department at the University of Reading in England, coined the word ‘kleptocracy”, which he defined as “a system of government [that] consists precisely of the practice of selling what the law forbids to sell.” He saw in the system of Nigeria’s First Republic, “the most perfect example of a kleptocracy” in which “power rested on the ability to bribe”.

According to Andrzejewski, the defining characteristic of a kleptocracy “is that the functioning of the organs of authority is determined by the mechanisms of supply and demand rather than the laws and regulations.”

In a democracy, there are two things access to which should not be determined by the economic laws of buying and selling. One is the legitimacy of government; the other is the authority of the courts in the administration of justice. Today in Nigeria, however, the authority to govern is conferred not by the people but by the courts and, for the most part, we now know that the decision as to whom the judges decide to confer the mandate in most cases is traded, bought, and sold.

To be sure, courts always have a legitimate role in the democratic process and this was so well before Nigeria embarked on the experiment in presidential politics. The electoral process everywhere is established by law and the courts exist to interpret law. Ideally, the rules that govern elections should be determinate and determined by the courts while the outcome of elections should be indeterminate until the votes are cast. In Nigeria, however, the cone has been inverted so that the courts ensure that the rules are indeterminate, in order that the outcomes can be pre-determined.

This outcome has been achieved by judicial overreach resulting in a jurisprudence of kleptocracy. The four major landmarks in the evolution of this outcome occurred in cases arising from Anambra, Rivers, Zamfara, and Imo states.

First, the courts granted themselves the powers of an electoral umpire to add and subtract votes in order to pick, choose, and determine who was declared winner in elections. A defining landmark in this trajectory was the decision by the Court of Appeal in March 2006 rightfully striking down the declaration of Dr. Chris Ngige in the 2003 as the governor of Anambra state. In its judgment, the Court re-computed the numbers declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and found that Peter Obi had actually won the election. On the facts, the judgment looked unimpeachable. No one could question the powers of the courts to strike down an outcome procured by electoral debauchery. What this case also did was to establish that the courts could compute electoral arithmetic with greater finality than the INEC. The courts were to exercise this power subsequently in governorship elections in Ondo, Ekiti, and Edo ostensibly to check a perception of habitual abuse of the electoral process by the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP).

Next, in October 2007, the Supreme Court determined in the case involving the governorship election in Rivers State that a person could be elected as Governor even when his name was not on the ballot. In that case, the then ruling party had arbitrarily replaced the winner of its governorship primaries with a loser in the primaries and acted in defiance of a court order. The Supreme Court struck down the substitution but, in a poorly reasoned fit of judicial pique, went further to say that a person who was not on the ballot actually won the election. To justify this, the court claimed that it was political parties alone who ran for office in Nigeria and not candidates. In so doing, the court established a dubious principle that candidates do not matter in Nigeria’s version of elective politics. Judicial kleptocracy was about to take off on a horse girdled with good intentions.

If the interventions of the courts in Anambra and then in Rivers appeared well-intentioned on the facts, the next two were evidence of courts amok. In May 2019, the Supreme Court ruled to confer the mandate to govern Zamfara State in north-west Nigeria on a man who had been hopelessly beaten into second position, losing in every local government area in the state. It held that the votes of the winning candidate were “wasted votes” because of some pre-election infraction. Now, votes are the only currency of an electoral process and a judiciary committed to upholding the people as the source of legitimacy in a democracy will not venture a jurisprudence that consigns any votes to the dust-bin but that is exactly what the Supremes ordered. So, today, Nigerian courts – many induced by material benefit – talk about “wasted votes” with undisguised glee.

Then, in January 2020, the Supreme Court nullified the election of Emeka Ihedioha as governor of Imo State, replacing him with a man who had been well beaten to fourth place in the election and substituting the computation of the INEC in that case with that of a rogue police officer who claimed to have the true results of the ballot. Miraculously, these rogue results just happened not to have been available to any other except the person for whom six Justices of the Supreme Court (none of whom was registered to vote in Imo State) cast their votes. In this decision, the Supreme Court effectively ruled that when it suits them, the courts could usurp or retrench the INEC as electoral umpire.

So, according to Nigerian courts, you can undertake an election without candidates; administer an election without INEC; and produce winners without votes. Acknowledging the extent of the resulting judicial overreach, former Vice-Chairman (north-west) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, describes Nigeria as a place in which “citizens can vote but winners are decided in the courtroom by conclaves of Judges.” In 2011, for instance, Alphonsus Igbeke who had never won an election, secured a court order returning him to the National Assembly for the third successive election cycle. On each occasion, he had worked with judges to send him to the National Assembly without any need for the votes of citizens. It was all transparent electoral kleptocracy perpetrated by judges.

The role of adjudicating election petitions has, therefore, become a very prized one in the judicial system. Judges lobby to be put on them. There, many of them indulge in trading in electoral outcomes and getting in bed with politicians and political parties.

Recent results from the election petition tribunals present a confetti of decisions that simply cannot be explained rationally except with reference to a jurisprudence of buying and selling judgments. There have been clear instances of judicial kleptocracy in Abia State, for instance.

But perhaps the state that evokes the greatest attention by far is Plateau State, where there appears to be a clear judicial design to overturn the will of the people and re-assign their mandate to candidates and parties for whom they did not vote. It could be entirely coincidental that the President of the Court of Appeal who oversees election petitions just happens also to come from the state.

There will be time to take a deeper dive into these outcomes sometime soon. What seems evident right now is that through a series of jurisprudential manouvres over the past decade and a half, Nigeria’s courts have become places where, to hark back to Stanislav Andrzejewski, the two things that no one should sell – electoral legitimacy and judicial authority – are now bought and sold in the courts.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Johnny Drille, the Nigerian singer, has detailed how he met Rima Tahini, his wife. 

Born John Ighodaro, Drille tied the knot with Tahini, Mavin Record director of A&R and a senior associate of Kupanda Capital, on January 5, 2022.

In a recent interview, Drille revealed Tahini was not just his first girlfriend but also the first woman to hear him say ‘”I love you”.

“The first time I saw her was at one of my shows in 2018. She was sitting in the front row next to a white woman. At some point, I thought both of them were white. She is mixed race,” he said.

“So, when I was working on another show in Abuja, we got talking. We met in October and by January, I knew I was going to marry her. And I told her I was going to marry her.

“For me, it was deep conviction. A lot of people will not believe this but she was my first girlfriend. I never had a girlfriend before her. I married the first woman that I said ‘I love you’ to.”

Tahini shared a video earlier in the year to celebrate what appeared to be their first wedding anniversary.

“Exactly a year ago yesterday – the most beautiful day, and it’s been the most beautiful 1st year of marriage. I am filled with gratitude to God everyday and look forward to forever by his grace!” she wrote.

[TheCable]

LeBron James claimed 32 points and 11 rebounds as the Los Angeles Lakers ended a three-game losing streak with a 122-119 win at the Phoenix Suns.

Kevin Durant scored a game-high 38 points for Phoenix in what was both teams’ in-season tournament opener.

The Suns led 96-89 at the end of the third quarter after Durant scored nine points in a span of 71 seconds.

But the Lakers opened the fourth quarter with an 11-0 run to take the lead and ultimately held on.

After missing Wednesday’s game at Houston with a hip injury, Anthony Davis added 18 points for the Lakers, who won on the road for the first time in six tries.

Both teams now have a 4-5 record this season, with the Suns having played without Devin Booker (calf) for the seventh time in eight games.

There were a total of nine NBA games played on Friday, all part of the league’s new in-season tournament.

Luka Doncic scored 44 points on 17-of-21 shooting as the Dallas Mavericks beat the visiting Los Angeles Clippers 144-126. Kyrie Irving added 27 points for Dallas, who are now 7-2.

The Philadelphia 76ers enjoyed a seventh straight win as Joel Embiid had 33 points and 16 rebounds in a 114-106 win at the Detroit Pistons.

Jaylen Brown scored a game-high 28 points to help the Boston Celtics end a two-game losing streak with a 121-107 home win against the Brooklyn Nets, with Jayson Tatum adding 23 points.

Antetokounmpo scores 54 points but Bucks defeated by Pacers

Karl-Anthony Towns scored 29 points as the Minnesota Timberwolves came from behind for their fifth straight win, beating the San Antonio Spurs 117-110, despite 29 points from number one draft pick Victor Wembanyama.

Fred VanVleet drilled two late three-pointers as the Houston Rockets rallied from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win 104-101 at home to the New Orleans Pelicans.

Mark Williams had 21 points and a career-high 24 rebounds as the Charlotte Hornets won 124-117 at the Washington Wizards.

Elsewhere, the Sacramento Kings won claimed a 105-98 home win against the Oklahoma City Thunder while the Utah Jazz recovered to win 127-121 at the Memphis Grizzlies.

[Leadership]

The presidential bag of crucial tasks may seem to be bursting at the seams, but prioritisation and perspicacity, says the bard, make an impossible schedule lighter than could ever be imagined. Creativity in the way government business is conducted may turn out to be just what is required to quickly turn the corner and make Nigerians believe that, for once, they have a set of competent people in charge under a captain whose judgement can be trusted.

Policy Coordination

Under the immediate past administration, ministers were gifted fiefdoms which they ran as they pleased. Once appointed, a minister could be sure that he would run a four-year tenure irrespective of performance. There was no ostensible attempt to make the right hand know what the left hand was doing— which often led to pocket emperors working at cross purposes without regard to how their ego trips impacted on governance.

Enter Hadiza Bala Usman, Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination. The lady holds the  ace to the potential success or failure of this government because her role is designed to be the thread that sews all the ministerial parts together. Now that the president had publicly warned ministers that the key performance indicators regarding their stewardship would be closely monitored and that those judged as performing below par would be fired, Hadiza’s hands are thus strengthened. Her success, more than any other appointee, is critical for the favourable outcome of government programmes.

A word of advice: Keep your eyes on the ball. The din from the stands is normal in the stadium of life. When in doubt, check the VAR. If confronted with a fundamental flaw of ‘force majeure’ proportions, consult the match commissioner.

Economy

Wale Edun may be a five star economist and investment banker, but this is not the best of times to be Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Things are so bad that Nigeria is toeing what some have described as the pragmatic path of encouraging those who have stashed foreign currency away to bring back such monies into the economy, no matter the sources. The rot in the Nigerian system is so deep that there is enough grime for the minister to scoop for the rest of his life if he was so minded.

“On the forbearance of cash into the formal system”, said Edun at the 29th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja, “it is a kind of amnesty for all the foreign exchange cash that is outside the banking system, even the ones that are questionable; to be brought into the official channel. This is because some of the transactions that are happening are being done in the unofficial channel. So, they are trying to see how they can bring it into the system. What is happening now is that it is not like we don’t have dollars. We have a lot of dollars in the system, but they are not active. Some of them are outside the financial system. A lot of people have dollars but they are keeping it under their beds.”

He indicated that the government may relax some of the existing forex restrictions, like the $10,000 daily cash deposit limit, and digitalise the foreign exchange market to attract more forex that will serve as a buffer for the nation’s economy.

There are indications that the government will seriously pursue its oft-stated determination to eliminate multiple taxation and increase revenue, with the inauguration of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms. What Nigerians expect is that the current free-for-all in fleecing poor Nigerians and corporate entities through all manner of taxes— many of which go directly into the pockets of touts unleashed by government officials at subnational and national levels of government— will be brought to an end.

In the days ahead, the foolproof indication of how the minister is performing will be found in the pockets of Nigerians— the value of the Naira in their pockets, what mileage their earnings achieve, and whether the country has become more business friendly in deed.

Health & Trado-Medicine

Prof Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, was greeted with an outbreak of diphtheria when he assumed office. He rose to the occasion and harnessed local human and material resources with additional help from UNICEF to put the scourge in check. In addition to addressing the challenges in the health sector and expanding the scope of health insurance, I will want to see the minister break new grounds in traditional medicine.

Over the years, as designed by colonialists, we have neglected the development of our own indigenous medicines. China and India have shown the world what can be achieved when a people believe in their own traditional resources. Today, China is the biggest producer and  exporter of medicinal plants, accounting for 30% of total world trade, followed by Korea, USA, India and Chile. China’s annual herbal drug production is worth USUS$ 48$48 billion with exports of US $3.6 billion, 70% of which are raw herbs with much less added value.

Traditional medicine is the first line of healthcare accessible to a large section of the Nigerian population, particularly in the rural areas but there is no regulatory and legislative framework, nor  is there any dialogue between traditional medicine practitioners and health personnel. So, we have failed to integrate traditional medicine into our health system.

I would like to challenge Prof Pate. For the sake of Nigeria, can you champion the establishment of a National Traditional Complementary and Alternative Medicine Development Agency?

A valuable document prepared by Dr. Olubunmi Omosehindemi advocates among other responsibilities, that such a body will be tasked with:

Developing Herbaria, Botanical Gardens, Arboreta and Nurseries Financing Traditional Medicine Research Establishing a system for Certification of Traditional Medicine Products Instituting Quality Assurance Programmes   Regulation, Monitoring and Evaluation Strategies Promoting Inter-sectoral Collaboration       Management of the Strategic Plan.

The goal is to promote the appropriate use of traditional medicine and to encourage the integration of traditional medicine into mainstream healthcare service system. Imagine the impact this would have on the poorest of the poor in our rural communities!

Roads

One of the biggest scandals in Nigeria right now is the state of the major highways all over the country— in spite of billions of dollars rumoured to have been spent in the last 10 years. It’s a national shame. All the six geopolitical zones are badly affected.

Many Nigerians have invested a lot of hope in the professional engineer who now runs the ministry of works, Engr, Dave Umahi. His job demands technical knowledge and brutal frankness, both of which he has since deployed. He is bringing new ideas to the table. The rotten system is resisting. He should borrow the fairly used pieces of advice I gifted Hadiza Bala Usman above.

Agriculture

The agricultural sector contributed 23 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first half of 2022. Sen. Abubakar Kyari, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security has a chance to exponentially improve that performance if the possibilities in mechanised crop production, poultry, cattle ranching etc are pursued with vigour.

This is not about grammar but verifiable deliverables. In talking about our search for meaning in Nigeria and its possibilities, let me quote the local wit: I’m so hungry I could eat a dictionary.

There is a pristine approach to governance. Performance-operated. And result oriented. The Tinubu administration’s perspective to governance is one that focalises the people and prioritises service delivery above notional niceties and officialese. It is an approach that demands clinical methodism in addressing institutional ills, rigour, discipline, efficiency, and most importantly, results.

The recent Cabinet Retreat was a utility-mine. It offered the territory for ideation, iteration, and actioning of government plans, policies, and programmes. It also offered room for the articulation of a clear and unambiguous path for the administration and Nigeria in the coming months and years. It was a confluence of will, purpose, strategy, and action.

The priority design of the administration was redefined and encapsulated as: 1. Reform the economy to deliver sustained inclusive growth. 2. Strengthen national security for peace and prosperity. 3. Boost agriculture to achieve food security. 4. Unlock energy and natural resources for sustainable development. 5. Enhance infrastructure and transportation as enablers of growth. 6. Focus on education, health, and social investment as essential pillars of development. 7. Accelerate diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing & innovation, and 8. Improve governance for effective service delivery.

A few outcomes from the event are the signing of performance bonds by all ministers; the initiation of clear-cut delivery channels for the objectives of the administration at strategic cellular and multi-cellular levels; emphasis on data as the lifeblood of governance; activation of impact assessment systems, as well as other salient components of effective governance.

The policy recommendations are ‘’Reform tariff structure to enable trade while still supporting domestic production; incorporate more equity financing rather than debt financing for fiscal operations; ensure the annual budget is aligned with strategic priorities; review the implication of forward contracts on the economy; set up a steering committee to review the issues around the national single window; intensify efforts to block revenue leakages in the police force; engage with governors to strengthen security at local government levels while addressing issues of autonomy and governance; have a collaborative and collective approach at the state level to address security challenges, in collaboration with the federal government; develop and facilitate effective information gathering and sharing mechanisms between and among states, communities, and the federal government; prioritise the clean-up of Ogoni communities; utilise technology to increase agricultural yield; intensify efforts to erect the green wall to stop desert encroachment in northern Nigeria; intensify efforts to reduce post-harvest losses by driving investments into storage and value addition.’’

Other recommendations are ‘’Embark on efforts to check coastal erosion; enhance dry-season farming and promote commercial livestock farming; unlock energy and natural resources for sustainable development; develop a 10-year plan to increase power generation capacity in line with the country’s needs; set up a super grid in line with the nation’s generation targets and create semi-autonomous regional grids; overhaul the structure and coverage of the distribution companies; revitalise a roadmap for the steel industry; revive power plant projects that have been previously paused, including the Ajaokuta Steel plant; engage with OPEC to increase Nigeria’s crude oil production quota; drive investments into the upstream petroleum sector, with clear targets while making provisions for sanctions for non-performance and inefficiencies; open up the sports sector for business by attracting infrastructure, incentives, and investments; accelerate the attainment of universal health coverage; foster grassroots efforts to prevent and mitigate humanitarian crises, and improve governance for effective service delivery, and invest in technology to save cost, time, and reduce corruption.’’

At the core of these developmental elements are delivery, performance, and results. These are the oxygenating concomitants of the Cabinet Retreat. It was in the full consciousness of delivering service to the people, that the Results Delivery Unit was created. It is all about service to the Nigerian people. It is all about performance and results. Fewer words, but deeper actions. Deeper thinking, and better planning. Better planning, and finer policies. Finer polices, perfect finish, and excellent delivery.

There is obviously a shift from the status quo. Public officials are reminded that they are servants of the people, and not their sovereign, and must submit to transparency and accountability. The business of governance is now done with corporate-sector discipline; goal-oriented, performance-driven, and with clear targets. There is fiscal discipline, a surfeit of patriotism, and competence in the management of government business.

The urgency of the moment is clearly in front view, and the enormity of the responsibility fully cognised, hence the dispatch and alacrity in the careful articulation and execution of redemptive measures. It is all about the people for this administration.

Nigerians are the anchor of the government. They come first in policy design, plan, and programme orchestration, as well as implementation. It has never been about class, or native complexion, but about the Nigerian. It is about every Nigerian doing his bit to build the nation; the Nigerian plying his trade in the marketplace; those providing services in different sectors; the professionals, the artisans, the teachers, the students – all across the strata. The leadership is attuned to them.

It is in the appreciation of the people as the fulcrum of government and to engender citizens’ participation in governance, that the directive on the activation of the Presidential Delivery Tracker was issued.

By this directive, Nigerians have been given the rightful opportunity; the carte blanche to track and report on the implementation of federal government projects and services across the country.

By this directive, power is in the hands of Nigerians to hold to account, to demand, to appraise, and praise where necessary.

By this directive, Nigerians are a part of the governing process; they have a deciding power.

By this directive, transparency and accountability is deepened.

It is all about the people. The Presidential Delivery Tracker will allow Nigerians to track the implementation of federal projects and services across the country. It is the people, their prerogative.

A statement by Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is worth sharing. The Prime Minister said inter alia: ‘’People’s participation is the essence of good governance’’, ‘’while transparency reduces corruption; good governance goes beyond transparency in achieving openness. Openness means involving the stakeholders in decision-making; transparency is the right to information while openness is the right to participation.’’

Evidently, Nigerians have been given the open sesame to participate in governance. They are in government.

It is all about the people.

More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli armed forces in Gaza since 7 October, nearly half of them children, according to the most recent report by spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health Dr Ashraf Al-Qudra. Over 25,000 others have been injured, with thousands still buried under the rubble. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks have begun to encircle Gaza City, whose population was 600,000 a month ago but whose neighborhoods are now largely vacant due to the desperate flight of its inhabitants to Gaza’s southern shelters and due to Israel’s killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians in their homes. Israel has cut off the city and begun to raid it, going door to door to bring the terror of the occupation from the skies to the streets. Those who await these raids in their homes might whisper the poem of Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008), which is addressed to the Israeli soldier ready to kick down the door of a Palestinian home:

You there, by the threshold of our door,

come in and drink Arabic coffee with us

(you may feel that you are human like us)

You there, by the threshold of our door,

get out of our mornings

so that we may be assured that

we are humans like you

When Israeli soldiers begin going door to door there will be no time for coffee, not only because there is no coffee or water left, but because Israeli soldiers have been told that Palestinians are not human. They have been told, instead, that Palestinians are terrorists and animals. In the eyes of the occupying forces, the only treatment Palestinians deserve is to be assaulted, shot, killed, and eradicated. A hunger for genocide and ethnic cleansing colors senior Israeli officials’ statements and has influenced their conduct in this war. Talk of civilian casualties is brushed off, and so are calls for a ceasefire. The spokesperson of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) James Elder said of this situation: ‘Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else’.

In June of this year, the Paris Poetry Market invited the Cuban poet Nancy Morejón to be its 2023 honorary president. Just before the event, the organizers of the poetry festival canceled this honor, saying that they were responding to ‘pressures’ and ‘rumors’. The Cuban foreign ministry condemned this cancellation as part of the ‘siege of fascist hatred of Cuban culture’, another kind of blockade. Here is Nancy Morejón’s Réquiem para la mano izquierda (‘Requiem for the Left Hand’), as if in conversation with the humaneness of Darwish’s poetry and with the rhythms of the Cuban musician Marta Valdés (to whom this poem is dedicated):

On a map, you could trace all the lines

horizontal, vertical, diagonal

from the Greenwich meridian to the Gulf of Mexico

that more or less

belong to our peculiarity

There are also big, big, big maps

in your imagination

and endless globes of the Earth,

Marta

But today I suspect that the tiniest, most minute map

sketched on school notebook paper

would be big enough to fit all of history

All of it

Now to my very strong and unequivocal points, for those that would take time to read my admonition, you would be tempted to think that I am blaming Israelis, or about to enter the terror politics of Hamas, these are not my forte, I am not here to postulating on who is right and why Hamas attacked and what happened many years ago, or Zionists movement or the genocide or what happened in 1947 or 1840.

So, what am I talking about, I am talking to Nigerians who are praying for Gaza, I am laughing at Nigerians who are more Israelis than Nigerian, I am laughing at Nigerians at the Senate who are asking both warring parties in the Middle East to a ceasefire.

I am laughing because gunmen are kidnapping in Abuja, I mean Abuja, but it is laughable that there has been a drop, not because the security has improved but the truth is that no one has ransom to pay.

We forget that there are plenty of communities out there in the federal capital territory that remind you of Gaza. There is no light, no portable water, and the data network is almost unavailable.

Have you gone to the bank lately, the place is empty, bankers are chatting, and there is cash to count, let me not mention the bank, but be assured the ATM booth is empty because the banks are putting in cash and depositors are not making deposits.

We are in our own Gaza; parents cannot pay school fees and tuition. Before I look like I am ranting, this is it, the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria is a deeply complex and protracted situation marked by widespread suffering and challenges affecting the population living in the three regions.

Take my beloved Plateau state, or Zamfara, Katsina, or Imo and Anambra continues to experience recurring conflicts between all kinds, militia, separatists, and state actors, kidnapping bands, and all kinds of groups, leading to widespread destruction of infrastructure, homes, and public services. The ongoing cycles of violence exacerbate the humanitarian situation.

We have been asked to tighten our belts while those in power expand their waist! But I know that there is an economic strain laced with high unemployment, particularly among the youth, stifling economic development, and making it challenging for Nigerians to breathe.

We are not different from Gaza, as the healthcare system in Nigeria faces significant challenges from the japa phenomenon to the sapa reality. Limited or lack of access to medical supplies, and infrastructure deficits, contribute to inadequate healthcare services.

Did I tell you that I laugh because the water and sanitation issues such as severe water and sanitation problems, with the water supply heavily contaminated are child’s play in many communities in Africa’s giant? This poses significant health risks, contributing to the prevalence of waterborne diseases. And you wonder what is the task of the office of the minister for Water Resources (sic).

Have you taken note of Lagos’s population density, it is a mega city, the home for many city boys like me, but we suffer overcrowded living conditions, and we are not at war yet. You ask, where is the master plan for many Nigerian cities?

While we are quick to pray for Gaza, and France and pray for everywhere, after all, we are one of the most prayerful nations in the world, let me remind us as I laugh that the impact, the trauma, the psychosocial realities of our times as a result of prolonged exposure to conflict, displacement, and economic hardship in many communities in the North East will come to hunt and haunt us, especially children and young persons’ being exposed to our self-inflicted wars.

Our mental health services are limited, I know this for a certain, thus exacerbating the long-term consequences of our crisis. I have left out loads of the lamentations, I am not a pessimist, I am a cautious optimist, I believe in Nigeria, and I am irrevocably committed to her, and the sheer will of her people to get it right when least expected will help us rise, Gaza, Palestine, or Israel—May Nigeria win

—

Nigeria says it sees “immediate” multi-billion-dollar investment flows from Saudi Arabia after it signed an agreement with the kingdom to establish a business council that could see the middle eastern nation funding several sectors of the West African country, including agriculture, oil and gas, energy, telecommunications and technologies.

The two nations agreed to reestablish a Nigeria-Saudi Arabia Business Council initially proposed in 2019 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz that was esisted by the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari. 

Read more: Saudi Arabia Says It Plans $25 Billion in African Investments

“We expect to see significant investment flow immediately,” Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, Nigeria’s minister of budget and economic planning said in an interview in Riyadh after a business round-table between the officials of Saudi and Nigeria.

Through the council, the kingdom plans to replicates several of investments made in India, Indonesia, and Pakistan in Nigeria that could be worth several billion dollars, the minister said without giving exact figures of the expected inflows. Several companies, including the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co, have made commitments to close several deals in Nigeria by end of the year, according to Bagudu. Nigeria’s minister of agriculture met with his Saudi counterpart and Salic executives. 

“They told us that they are in the process of making additional investment decisions in Nigeria, which they hope to close before the end of the year,” the minister said.

Last week, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia made a series of investment and cooperation deals, including a pledge by the Saudi government to invest in the revamping of Nigeria’s oil refineries and provide financial support to sustain the government’s foreign-exchange reforms.

Earlier, the oil rich middle eastern country said on Saturday it is finalizing investment plans within a week that will see the officials of the kingdom closing several deals when they visit Nigeria by the end of December.

“We know you are ready for business, so we do not want to come to Nigeria for any exploratory discussion. We are coming for implementation, it’s an action visit. It will be to sign and begin delivery on all agreements,” Saudi Kahlid El-Falih, Arabia’s trade and investment minister told Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu during the business round-table.

[Bloomberg]

The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.

The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold Sept. 26, a precise date the agency said to take with a grain of salt.

The United Nations estimated the number was passed 10 months earlier, having declared Nov. 22, 2022, the 'Day of 8 Billion,' the Census Bureau pointed out in a statement.

The discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently - or not at all. Many lack systems to record births and deaths. Some of the most populous countries, such as India and Nigeria, haven't conducted censuses in over a decade, according to the bureau.

While world population growth remains brisk, growing from 6 billion to 8 billion since the turn of the millennium, the rate has slowed since doubling between 1960 and 2000.

People living to older ages account for much of the recent increase. The global median age, now 32, has been rising in a trend expected to continue toward 39 in 2060.

Countries such as Canada have been aging with declining older-age mortality, while countries such as Nigeria have seen dramatic declines in deaths of children under 5.

Fertility rates, or the rate of births per woman of childbearing age, are meanwhile declining, falling below replacement level in much of the world and contributing to a more than 50-year trend, on average, of slimmer increases in population growth.

The minimum number of such births necessary to replace both the father and mother for neutral world population is 2.1, demographers say. Almost three-quarters of people now live in countries with fertility rates around or below that level.

Countries with fertility rates around replacement level include India, Tunisia and Argentina.

About 15% of people live in places with fertility rates below replacement level. Countries with low fertility rates include Brazil, Mexico, the U.S. and Sweden, while those with very low fertility rates include China, South Korea and Spain.

Israel, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea rank among countries with higher-than-replacement fertility rates of up to 5. Such countries have almost one-quarter of the world's population.

Only about 4% of the world's population lives in countries with fertility rates above 5. All are in Africa.

Global fertility rates are projected to decline at least through 2060, with no country projected to have a rate higher than 4 by then, according to the bureau.

[southkoreanews]