The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • The military as the curse of the nation

    The military as the curse of the nation

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    Democracy has come to stay. We will not tolerate any agent of destabilization. The years of military misadventure in politics have never carried us anywhere. It is over,”  That was Nigeria’s Chief of army staff, General Yusuf Buratai,   recently telling Nigerians amidst depressing news from theatre of war, what he thought would be music to their ears-defence of democracy.   Burantai is probably still keeping his job in spite of widespread criticism even by his Bornu state kinsmen,  by assailing the president with stories of those who may be mooning about the military  over his failure to find answer to the insecurity challenges of the country.

    Although no one can legislate against a coup but Burutai also knows the fear of a military coup is far-fetched because the difference between our past successive military regimes and the administration of PDP/APC military ‘new-breed’ politicians is only in paradigm. But all the same,  a journey through memory is imperative if only to allow our youths who know very little about the baleful legacies of the military understand  that the military is the curse of the nation.

    Democracy as a new value system had been abused  by our political elite who in the run up to independence saw it only as a ‘means to an end’. Barely two years into the democratic dispensation,  it was undermined by  NCNC and NPC coalition partners.  Dispute over the 1962/63  census result and the constitutional crisis that followed the disputed 1964 election forced the warring rivals  to approach the military for support.  That invitation was to lead to the nation being held hostage by the military  for 30 years of her 39 years of independence until the birth of the 4th republic in 1999.

    Behaving like an army of occupation, they destroyed everything they touched.  Their first  victims were their benefactors including Tafawa Balewa who as a federal minister in 1951 persuaded the British during a house debate to train fifteen Nigerian cadets annually and to set up of a military academy in Kaduna and   Ahmadu Bello, who secured more opportunities for northern youths after protesting to the imperial power that “young men presented as potential officers by leaders and emirs were being turned down as academically and medically unfit”.

    They then took on the institutions of society- our universities, rated among the best in the world, our virile press that fought the imperial powers to secure our independence ; our bureaucracy, the best in Africa and our civil society groups, they made impotent through promulgation of obnoxious decrees.

    The assault on the nation’s buoyant  economy started with Gowon’s indigenisation decree through which soldiers and their fronts seized many thriving private companies run by expatriates.  This was followed by Babangida’s commercialization policy through which public enterprises were sold to soldiers and their fronts and completed  by Obasanjo’s privitisation programme through which Nigeria’s total investments of over $100b sold to politicians at a little over $1b.

    Then finally the military turned on itself. Confronted with the complexities of our socio-political realities over which they had little control and a task for which they were ill prepared, they embarked on self-destruction. As captured by Robin Luckman who could not resist comparing them to the heroes of the Greek tragedy. “Their violent entry into politics brought the wrath of the gods”.  From Nzeogwu, through Ironsi, Murtala Mohammed, Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha,  they all came to grief.

    The nation was to become a victim of shortsighted policies of an ill-equipped military. Thus when General Gowon  in 1973 gave the Udoji Award of £350m (three hundred and fifty million pounds sterling} in form of wages hike,  his regime’s liberalization import policies provided incentive for the workers to spend  their over £200,000,000 (two hundred million pounds sterling) arrears on imported foodstuff, clothing and other consumer goods.

    While his two billion naira Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme collapsed due to lack of planning, the nation also incurred a whopping demurrage of £77,000,000 (Seventy seven million pounds sterling) from the over 400 ships which queued up in Lagos ports with 20 billion metric tonnes of cement; eight times more than the yearly capacity of the Lagos port. An investigation inquiry by Murtala Obasanjo regime found ten  of Gowon’s 12  military administrators to be men with feet of clay.

    General Obasanjo introduced ‘Operation Feed the Nation’ (OFN) in 1976.  But that did not stop food import which was £88,000,000 (Eighty eight million pounds sterling) in 1971 from going up to £528,000,000 (Five hundred and twenty eight million pounds sterling) by 1978 . Nigeria in 1972 exported 454,000 tonnes of groundnut but by 1976 under Obasanjo, we were importing palm oil and groundnut oil. Obasanjo started wasteful spending of government money on hadj when in 1977 he frittered away £100,000,000 (One hundred million pounds sterling) on Nigerian hajj operations to Mecca.

    After Obasanjo, an audit examination at the Nigerian External Telecommunications traced financial abuses back to 1978 with $53,000,000 (Fifty three million dollars) unaccounted for. The administration of the Federal Housing Scheme led to the loss of $43,000,000 (Forty three million dollars) while the renegotiations of the Jaguar jet contract saved the nation $30,000,000 (Thirty million dollars) in kickback. The board of the Federal Mortgage Bank was blamed  for “acting in concert to render the bank impotent by systematic plundering and looting of treasuries”, and for the Delta Steel Company of “stupendous fraud”. It spoke of “the siphoning of millions of naira from the National Youth Service Corps, the widespread corruption at the Abuja Capital Development Authority, the illegal export of refined petroleum products that was then costing the country over one million dollars a day”.

    But by 1988, General Babangida who literally institutionalized corruption had returned the ceased loots to their original owners while the military under him  according to General Salihu Ibrahim, a onetime Chief of Army Staff  had become “an army of anything is possible, where a small group constitutes themselves to a pressure group to the detriment of the army and their colleagues’’.

    The military under Abacha, (1994-1998) was reduced to an army of quibbling loyalty badge- wearing ‘Generals’  such as Oladipo Diya, Jeremiah Usenis, the Bamayis, Azizas, Akhigbes, Abubakars, Oyinlolas, Adisa and Olanrewajus, who had no ambition beyond self-preservation as they watched Abacha waged war against Nigerians even as he stole over $2.7bb from the central bank.

    A  presidential investigations committee on arms procurement report under  President Jonathan showed an extra-budgetary spending to the tune of N643.8 billion and an additional spending of about $2.2 billion in the foreign currency component even as better equipped Boko Haram insurgents chased soldiers from their barracks

    The full stories of the Generals that have bewitched president Buhari is yet to unfold.  What is no more a secret however is that insurgents  today routinely carry out daring raids from ‘captured;’ Zambiasa forest  with Bornu state capital increasingly coming under threat of take-over by the insurgents even as service chiefs jostled for sighting of military institutions in their villages.

    Gowon’s “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done”; Buhari’s “we have no other country but Nigeria” ; Obasanjo’s  “Nigeria must move forward in the interest of peace and stability” and Abacha’s “the Nigerian unity is not negotiable”,  ignore social justice, the basis for peace and stability, a universal truth both PDP and APC  have been unable to live up to since 1999.

  • 2020: What a horrible year

    2020: What a horrible year

    By Jide Osuntokun

    At last this horrible year is ending at midnight tonight . I can’t wait!. The news of Covid-19 did not break in Nigeria until sometime in February 2020. At that time many of us thought it was going to be a flash in the pan, but alas! We do not now know how the tragedy that is afflicting and affecting the whole world is going to end . Close to over one and a half  million  people have died in the world with most of them coming from Europe, the Americas , India and relatively few have come  from Africa. The reason why the morbidity and mortality in Africa are this low is not clear. We have heard that this may be because the demographic situation  in Africa where 60%of our population is below 25 years old, meaning we have relatively young and strong population, gives us some kind of advantage because the problem affects older people than younger people whose immune system is certainly stronger than those of the elderly. it  can also be that we in Africa are exposed to many viral diseases to the extent that we have developed  some kind of herd immunity to most of them including this new coronavirus. Whatever the explanation may be, it is obvious that we have  not suffered the kind of morbidity and mortality suffered in Europe, the United States, Brazil and India. One just hopes we won’t push our  luck too far and ignore all established preventive measures that are known to work in other parts of the world . Our religious leaders have to be careful in saying God has lifted the death of coronavirus over our heads. This may be true, but we should curtail our assembling in large numbers in cross-over services on the 31st of December so that by so doing, we don’t facilitate the spread of coronavirus. God is omnipresent and he is everywhere, including our private homes . We can pray to Him with our families at home and He who hears our private pleas  in the secret of our homes will reward us openly.

    The coronavirus pandemic has had severe and deleterious effect, not just on our health but also on our economy which in the best of times was never strong as a mono-cultural economy depending on hydrocarbons export. Things were so bad that Nigeria had to pay to store its unsold crude petroleum abroad because its market in India and China were virtually shut down . This was also at a time when humongous amount of money was being spent on unending and materially and humanly wasteful war in the northeast of Nigeria . To make matters worse, the insurgency has spread to the north-west of the country manifesting in farmers / herders mutual slaughter . The brigandage that has ensued is also prevalent in the north-central part of the country. Added to all this are the incendiary movements, which are decade-old in the oil producing Niger Delta . One kind of turmoil or the other now affects the entire southern part of the country with the cities in total disconnect with the rural countryside. All these problems have made governance extremely difficult. Road infrastructure remains unmaintained if not totally abandoned. These problems and the criminality in the ungoverned spaces of Nigeria has led to the London Financial Times sometimes in December 2020 branding us as a nation on the brink of total collapse as a “failed state.” What worse indictment can we get when perhaps the most respected medium in western capitalism brands us a near-failed state? This has sealed our fate in terms of foreign direct investment, because no foreign company is likely to venture to our shores unless we can miraculously clean our acts and restore sobriety and security to our land. This near-failed state status in which we find ourselves has had damaging effect on our profile in the international community where before now we had a strong presence, but now our influence internationally  is zero.

    To compound all these problems we have had a political leadership totally cut off from the reality of the problems of Nigeria. Many of the leaders are living large  in sumptuous and conspicuous consumption, and some of their children and children of their business associates are getting married and throwing lavish parties and celebrations while the famished many look at them in wonder, hoping to join them by hook or crook no matter what it takes and by all means necessary including banditry and kidnapping. The political structures have proved inadequate and unresponsive in tackling governance issues,  particularly such issues as overpopulation, corruption, bribery, and general malaise in the country. Yet all appeal to common sense to practice the federal constitutional grundnorm negotiated at independence has fallen on the deaf ears of those benefitting from the rotten and wretched current structure imposed on us by the military. It seems the country is bound to failure, violence or collapse unless men of good  conscience will come forth to force the leaders to change course from the edge of the precipice they are willy-nilly leading the country. What is most disappointing about the political leadership is that rather than be seized with the problems of the moment, they are focused on the question of succession to the leadership of the country in 2023. One would have expected many of them would be worried about the future of the country  rather than 2023 when a day is a long time in politics, as it is generally known. In their struggle for 2023, they are  not strategizing based on ideas or ideologies but on sterile ethnic balancing permutations. They are not talking on what they are going to do for the country, but apparently thinking of how they are going to use whatever political positions they are hankering after for their own financial self-aggrandizement.

    The intelligentsia of the country is not better. How does one explain shutting down the tertiary educational sector of the country for a whole year following unresolved industrial action and wild  cat strikes by workers. University workers, apparently unimpressed by plea of national hard times when politicians are living it, up refused to work while negotiations about salaries and better working conditions were going on. The problem really is that there are too many wishy-washy universities hurriedly established as “dividends of democracy,” with no planning about staff and funding. Professors who should have been shouting hoarse against it keep quiet when they are appointed, without merit, as vice-chancellors or promoted professors in the new universities. The end result is a watering down of the quality of education and inadequate funding, which now have to be spread to the hundreds of secondary schools masquerading as universities. The universities are also plagued by the presence of four or five trade unions in the universities, while the governments  which should legislate  all of them into one looks  helplessly on.

    Universities should also rise to the occasion of providing governments alternative ideas , knowledge for industries, and innovations that will benefit society and expand national wealth. The universities should be at the frontier of knowledge. It is a shame that none of our scientists is involved  in the research and finding solutions to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic or in the development of the vaccine against it. I know it is not their fault in a nation of misplaced priorities, where budgetary allocation to education and research is grudgingly and miserly given. Research costs money. But if in the past our researchers had demonstrated the link between research and development in a knowledge-based economy, our governments would not be nigardly  in treating researchers in budgetary allocation . If the knowledge community do not demonstrate their relevance to economic development, they will continue to be treated as the Cinderella of relations in sectoral budgetary consideration.

    It is now evident that all the things I have been discussing are related. Without knowledge, politics will remain at a pedestrian level of primitive accumulation by those in control of the levers of governmental power, who see their positions as primarily for financial self-aggrandizement. The bad governance emanating from this will redound on all other sectors because money in the country is not inexhaustible, and it is whatever is left that will be shared by the other sectors crying for financial support. Education will be neglected, Defence will have its share based on the necessity to secure those in power in their posts.  Infrastructural development will be neglected. The appurtenances of modern life like potable water, electricity, hospitals and health facilities, aviation and shipping infrastructure will not be provided. All this neglect will lead to massive job losses, which will in turn fuel internal insecurity and aggravated poverty. This has been the story of Nigeria in 2020 and one hopes we will turn the corner for good in 2021.

    The year 2020 witnessed a harvest of deaths in the  top hierarchy of our public life, both at federal and state levels. May God rest their souls in peace. On a personal note, 2020 was horrible year. I lost two very close cousins and an uncle. I couldn’t because of the coronavirus pandemic attend their funerals. Quite a few academic brothers and colleagues like Professors Ladipo Akinkugbe, Tunji Oloruntimehin and Olu Longe – distinguished nephrologist, historian and computer scientist respectively – have passed on. Their loss was a great loss to their families, the global Academy and to Nigeria. May God accept their souls and rest them in the bosom of father Abraham .

    Happy new year to all my readers .

  • 2020: The year of the breach

    2020: The year of the breach

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    It was a year that even the clairvoyant could not see what it held before its coming. Usually, at the end of each year,  seers try to outdo themselves, predicting what the incoming year has in store for the world. The predictions, most times, centre around people, who are usually men of means and are in power. The practice is a carry over from  past years. The prophets were at it again last year. As 2019 rounded the corner, the world heard all sorts of predictions.

    Some of their prophecies went thus:  So and so will die in 2020. There will be earthquake in so and so place. The president of so and so country should beware to avoid losing election. They forgot that being prescient is one thing, getting it right is another.  Whether by clairvoyance, star gazing, crystal ball or divine inspiration, predicting what will happen tomorrow is a tough act.

    This is why prophets who hear from God are not too fast with their mouths. They weigh their words. They do not speak until the situation warrants it – and that to warn a stiff-necked people, as the Bible puts it.  Prophesying is a gift which does not come cheap. Unfortunately, it has been cheapened by those who see it as business. They prophesy when they have not heard from God and yet swear on the Lord’s name that it is from above. God opens our eyes and ears in different ways. We do not see and hear alike because we are differently gifted. But what one sees and hears, another may not see and hear with his eyes and ears wide open.

    The thing is those who see and hear from God or claim to do so, should  be honest and truthful in their interactions with the public. God, the Bible says, is Spirit and those who worship Him must do so in spirit and truth. But what do we have today? Liars in cassock. They deceive people and take the Lord’s name in vain. It does not end there. When they are beaten in their own game, rather than accept defeat, they try to find a way round it by colouring things to make up for their mistake. They forget that a prophet, a seer, a clairvoyant, a star gazer,  a crystal baller or whatever name they prefer to go by is human and can fail because he is not God. Only God is omniscient.

    The failure to see that 2020 will be marred by the noisome pestilence called Coronavirus should not have bothered any true man of God. A prophet can only see what the Lord shows him. Just as it happened to Elisha in the Bible. Let her alone, Elisha said to his servant, Gehazi. For her soul is vexed within her : and the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me (2 Kings 4:27). For reasons best known to the Almighty, He did not show the seers what 2020 had in store for the world. 2020, which ends today, is a year that has proved once again that there is a Super Being that rules the affairs of men and whose ways are not our ways.

    The year has shown that no matter how much man plays God, he can never be God. That Super Being will always do whatever He likes and at whatever time He chooses. 2020 is one year that the world will never forget.  Even at the passage of this generation, 2020 will still be remembered by those who come after. Most of  us were not alive during the 1918 Flu pandemic which killed 50 million people worldwide, but that year is forever etched in history. Like 1918, 2020 will remain a reference year. It will always be remembered for what it did to the world with Coronavirus otherwise known as COVID-19. The virus dominated the year and it was certain that after the first wave which wreaked havoc everywhere, resulting in a global lockdown, there will be a second cycle.

    Yet, the world was still caught flatfooted when it happened. In 1918, the deaths recorded in the second wave of the Flu pandemic were far more than those in the first cycle. This fact is known to scientists and political leaders. But what did they do to stop this deadly second wave that such pandemic is known for from hitting hard home as the world is now experiencing with COVID-19? From historical and scientific facts,  it was given that there will be a second wave. Why did the world not prepare adequately for it? It was taking for granted in many countries that there would be no second wave. That what happened between 1918 and 1920 will not happeen in 2020. It has turned out to be a costly assumption.

    So, political leaders who should support scientists in finding solution to the problem went to sleep, despite the cries of the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the looming danger. The second wave has now come, driving countries, especially in Europe and the United States (US) back to the measures they took during the first cycle to contain the spread of the virus. Why did they relax when they knew that a second wave was inevitable? Was it because less and less people were becoming infected? One thing about this pandemic is that it can be deceptive. It would appear to have lost its potency and to be on the downward spiral, only for it to make a 360 degrees turning and start attacking people with virulence all over again.

    Perhaps, the consideration for the economy and life and living is responsible for this laxity. Could the world have kept the economy locked down for eternity because of the virus? The answer, is of course,  no. But it could have got people to comply, by all means,  with the safety protocols to minimise the danger. People were allowed a free rein to do whatever they liked as governments became less serious about taming the COVID-19 monster. In the process, there was a spike in infection rate. In Nigeria, everywhere was opened up. Schools, places of worship, event centres, cinema houses and offices resumed business in the usual manner, all in the bid to recover lost ground during the lockdown. We are now seeing the consequences of putting money before life. The only voice in the wilderness became the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Even at a point, they too became tired as nobody was prepared to listen to them again.

    Then states started shutting down isolation and treatment centres, one after the other, giving the people false hope that the worst is over. It is not. They are now in a hurry to reopen those centres. COVID-19 has returned with its virulence, plucking more people at will. It is on this sad note that 2020 is ending. Why dwell on an outgoing year instead of looking at the prospects of the incoming year? One is doing this because of the kind of year 2020 is. It has been a year from the beginning to the ending that tasked humanity. Rather than learn from what happened in 1918 to address the 2020 case, the world still allowed itself to be beaten by another pandemic.

    There will be another pandemic, perhaps in another 100 years. This is not a curse. This exercise, is therefore, a call on the world to prepare for it in good time because most us alive now will no longer be around then. The world has been beaten not once, but twice by a pandemic. It should not be allowed to happen the third time.

    The ending of a thing is expected to be better than its beginning thereof. Unfortunately, this is not the case with 2020. The year has breached everything the world stands for. There is no sector that it did not touch. It left its sordid trade mark on medical, religious,  social and economic life. It is the kind of year that the world would never wish for again if it has its way. It is a year we all want to go in a hurry. If a year could be declared the year of its own year, 2020 would have won hands down. No doubt about that. May 2021 be the restorer of the breach.

    A happy and prosperous New Year to you, dear reader. We will get there by the grace of God.

  • Deaths in the house

    Deaths in the house

    Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    THE Year 2020 is a year probably comparable to only one other year, 1918, in human history. They are comparable because of what they have in common. The pandemic, one caused by the Spanish Flu in 1918 and the other brought about by the Coronavirus, (or is it Chinese Virus?), binds both years. Shun of the pandemic, the years have their distinctive features. 2020 has been an extraordinary year for many around the globe. There is no country, group, profession or individual that does not have one thing or the other to remember the year by.

    It was an unusual year; a year of deaths, destruction, disasters, kidnapping, devastation and the other such words which the ears do not always wish to hear. The media had its own fair share of these maladies. It lost some titans of the profession in the outgoing year. With how to battle the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic the central focus globally, the death of these topnotch journalists came like a bolt out of the blue. It was the last thing those of us they left behind was expecting.

    We had thought that along with them, we will tell the story of COVID-19 long after it is gone. Here, we are, they are no more, and COVID-19 is still ravaging the world. These journalists were among the best in the profession. They made their names at different times in a trade where no one, especially those who seek your favour while still doing the job, remembers you once you are no longer useful to them. Journalism is a thankless job and this reality is harshly brought home when you no longer occupy an office that can be of benefit to people.

    Those who died might have experienced this even before their passage. They would have seen how those they thought were friends who were always knocking at their doors for one favour or the other turned their backs on them at the hour of need. Journalism is all about people, whether big or small, and their activities. A big man makes news when caught in an awkward position and a small man makes news when he does something great. These are the people journalists devote their time and energy to, day in, day out. In this regard, Bisi Lawrence aka Biz Law, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Sam Nda-Isaiah, Muyiwa Daniel and Soni Ehi-Asuelimen did their bit.

    Biz Law and Ogunsanwo were far, far ahead of my own generation. Uncle Biz Law was in a class of his own. He was a broadcasting czar who was at home writing for newspapers. Long after he left the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation as General Manager, he maintained a column in the Vanguard Newspaper in which he wrote on sports and other issues. Biz Law was a sports enthusiast. He loved writing and talking sports. He also taught those younger to him one or two things about sports writing. Little wonder young sports writers were always found in his company, willing and ready to drink from the fountain of his wisdom. He was a father figure and mentor to the end.

    Ogunsanwo was a wordsmith. The Editor of editors, he used and coined words with ease. He was no longer with theDaily Times when my generation joined that great media citadel, but we were regaled with stories of his exploits. He was larger than life, according to the tales we heard. Nothing escaped his eyes. He read everything that came before him. He was a hands on Editor who did his work with eyes for the minutest detail. Ogunsanwo was the record-breaking Editor of the Sunday Times, which circulation figure hit over 500,000 copies weekly in the early seventies. That record still stands. As a columnist, he wrote with class and panache. His column:Life with Gbolabo Ogunsanwo was a must read for the high and low.

    Another journalism great and Daily Times alumnus, writing under the pseudonym of Abdu Rauf, in a tribute, said of Editor Ogunsanwo: ”He was a celebrated columnist with a huge following. Readers waited with bated breath for his column. He was fearless; he was fierce, he was severe, yet full of wit and humour. He was impressionistic in his writings, masterly weaving words and sentences , painting pictures and employing imageries…” The writer should know because he was a witness to that  history. In this day and time that the circulation figures of newspapers have dipped, it was no mean feat that Ogunsanwo took the Sunday Times to greater heights, shooting its circulation figure to 532,916 copies from 165,000.

    My friend and brother Tunde Rahman, in his own tribute, painted the picture of Ogunsanwo as a wordsmith, recalling how the ace Editor coined the famous ”if you Daboh me, I will Tarka you” headline during the altercation between the late Joseph Tarka and the late Godwin Daboh and ”cement armada” during the congestion at the ports under the Gowon administration. Ogunsanwo was an Editor like no other and it is to his eternal credit that the doyen of modern Nigeran journalism, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose singled him, Vanguard Publisher Mr Sam Amuka-Pemu aka Uncle Sam and the late El-Hadj Alade Odunewu, out for mention in his memoirs: ”Walking a tightrope” for meeting his expectations of setting up the Sunday Times. There goes Gbolabo Ogunsanwo. When comes another in the world of the media?

    Nda-Isaiah just happened on the media scene and wrote his name in gold. He trained as a pharmacist, but shone like a thousand stars as a publisher. His paper, Leadership, which motto is: ”For God and country” was a paper that gave those in authority the goosebumps. He came into journalism as a columnist with another great paper from the north, DailyTrust. His writings were acerbic, but Nda-Isaiah was ever ready for the fallout. It is amazing that as a pharmacist he could write that well. At a time the world was beginning to appreciate his worth, death came knocking and took him away at the age of 58. What a loss!

    Like Nda-Isaiah, Daniel and Ehi-Asuelimen were of my generation. Daniel and Ehi-Asuelimen died in their early 60s. Daniel was a sports reporter of repute. Like virtually all sports reporter, he was a lover of football and was at home with Stationery Stores Football Club of Lagos. Did I hear you say ‘Up Super’ as the club was fondly known among its supporters? That did not stop him from covering other sports though. He died during an illness and has since been buried. He was an easy going guy.

    Ehi-Asuelimen was down-to-earth and unassuming. He spoke frankly and was always ready to stand by the truth. He was a reporter who knew his onions. When he was news editor with the  National Concord, we used to exchange notes about happenings on the news scene. Ehi-Asuelimen knew the media inside out, having plied his trade with some of the best newspapers and magazines around. He worked withConcord, Newswatch, The Punch and National Mirror, among other publications. He was a man-about-town. No wonder, he was a great newsman.

    For the media, these deaths hit close home. May they all find rest in the Lord’s bosom.

    • WISHING YOU, DEAR READER, A MERRY CHRISTMAS.

  • Child, boy, expendable

    Child, boy, expendable

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    IT’S still the wrong season to be a Nigerian boychild. From infancy through adulthood he is methodically ignored. Childhood is his crystal cabinet, the window into his carefree beginning when he dwelt in the body without ambivalence or fear. But puberty ends his trusting view of nature, triggering the ritual riddance of his innocence. And so begins his passage into savagery and containment.

    Fate, dancing like a maiden, entices him by its pirouettes; trapping him like a bird, she keeps him in her museum of mortal specimens. She is Omphale with her male domestics or Iwapele seducing Akara Ogun with her garland of goodies and the forbidden room. But unlike Akara Ogun, puberty ushers the Nigerian male into her forbidden chamber too early. He wouldn’t abstain until her demise. Consequently, he suffers the blistering baptism of burning truth. Growing up is never easy. Puberty is his savage space thus this minute, he is the minor suffering sexual assault from paedophile mother, father, sister, teacher, and guardian.

    He is the abducted schoolboy of Kankara, Katsina State, grabbed alongside 343 others and hurled through the valley of death until his rescue by shady actors in the deathly arena of Nigerian politics.

    He is the two-year-old victim of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 67-year-old father of four, who sodomised him to fulfill an urge. He is the nine-year-old victim of Nonso Onyeje, 42, who subjected him to anal rape on the altar of God Delight City Church, in Achali Ibusa, Delta State.

    He is the 14-year-old victim of Kabiru Abdullahi, 40, who sodomised him to fulfill an urge. He is 16-year-old Anthony, sexual assault victim of Jesus Intervention Household Ministry’s General Overseer (GO), Reverend Ezuma Chizemdere, who reportedly raped him and 14 other teenage boys until he (Anthony) tested positive for HIV.

    Sexual initiation thus becomes his razed temple of sex, from which the faithful disperse into the gendered wilderness. Having been repeatedly ignored by the slew of NGO-sponsored sexual awareness education and messages, he emerges from puberty’s temple with strange notions of sex and gender relations. A product of violent sexual abuse and corruption by random sources, he emerges a rapist, a paedophile, a sexual aggressor driven on diets of victimhood.

    Growing up, he feels a strange sense of emptiness: his life begins to feel like a fictional theme park. He dreams of bliss by imitating the lives of others, precisely more privileged peers. So doing, he models his existence like a theme park built around facets of the lives of others. How can he attain a wholesome life?

    Slugging it through the vicissitudes of life in Nigeria, his life assumes the flurry of a caricature; its lucid dreamscapes and obscure vistas forces him to question what being a man really is – or, more precisely, what it is worth.

    From childhood through adulthood, he learns to buy his way into security, into value, into innocence, and the highly expensive gated simplicity denied millions of Nigerians.

    While the odds favour him, he must learn to display unconscionable apathy towards the fate of the people trapped outside thinking they were not smart enough and thus undeserving of his gated paradise.

    Adulthood beckons with curious entrapments: money, work, power, acclaim, carnal lust, love, and renown. It seldom ends well when he yields to temptations of the modern world. His tragedy subsists in the male paradigm of rise and fall, affluence and poverty, power and weakness, health and sickness, love and hate, life and death.

    His life unfurls to shadowy inference. Traditional manhood rites are picaresque, feel-good narratives of his becoming, he would find. In contrast, a man’s life is fraught with challenges. There is neither certainty nor sense of an ending.

    His narrative is borne of pain and detection, and his life, a perpetual struggle to hide what he cannot control. Ultimately, he struggles to ignore his mistakes in plain sight.

    This year, he is the President who couldn’t divest his soul of the bitterness of nepotism and arrogance, the crookedness of ethnicity and clannishness. Heck, he couldn’t even control his flippant aides and handlers.

    He is the governor whose definition of service translates to tyranny over the citizenry and plunder of our commonwealth. He was the occult lawmaker extending his ‘reign’ by setting sail on an ocean of electorate blood.

    He is the courtier flaunting nimbleness and eloquence to entertain and goad all into complacence even as you read. A persuasive actor, he makes large deposits of religious and ethnic bigotries into our emotional bank accounts. When he withdraws, he does so to our disadvantage and the advantage of his ‘principals’ and ‘clients.’

    He is the smiley face of the corporate state that hijacked the government. He is the lobbyist, social and political influencer by whose antics bad leadership and corporations actualise their callous plots.

    Like Castiglione’s courtier, he wears face powder to deceive us as a currency-activated journalist and columnist. He is the slick disputant and sophist who masks brilliantly, the evils of corporate state in a garland of lies of beautiful English.

    He is the elite technocrat, politician and academic manipulating information and statistics to project illusions of growth and prosperity. He is the intellectual thug who weaponises the government instrument of consumer price index (CPI) into persuasive propaganda.

    He is the revered economist whose ‘genius’ keeps the official inflation rates low and substitutes on behalf of government, basic products we once tracked to check for inflation, with ones that do not rise very much in price while keeping the cost-of-living increases tied to the CPI artificially low. Thus the disconnect between reality and what we are told.

    In his search for a more promising future, he has grown from the 10-year-old wielding plastic rifles and swords to mow armies of imaginary monsters and hostile cornstalks into the smart-aleck intolerant of his spitting child image.

    Finally, he understands, that the swords in his hands were never real and if he could go back in time, he would escape the wilderness of manhood.

    He enters the magic castle of his Nigerian nightmare the same way the hunter enters the forest in Fagunwa’s literary masterpiece, Ogboju ode ninu igbo irunmale, and emerges from its eerie iridescence, only to re-enter it as a disgruntled senior citizen for whom twilight dawns unpromisingly.

    Eventually, the magic wears off while the news breaks to the boychild that the life he dreamed of as a 10-year-old is unattainable by unimaginable leaps. Ultimately, he would find that it’s the same grind through various stages of manhood.

    This year is far spent and he approaches 2021 trying to unravel and understand, the interminable woes that make Nigeria uninhabitable for him.

    Scorned, villified, neglected, he becomes the reason for the failure of every social, political, and economic redemption programme.

    He is the thinker, the planner, and executor, the pathologist, and undertaker of every progressive, inspiring social panacea. He is the theorist and pragmatist; the seed, the shoot, and the weed. He is the fig that lets down the leaf; the hand that nurtures and smothers.

    He is the performer in the period of youth, the star that got dimmed in the middle of his scene because he failed to leave while the ovation was loudest.

     

  • The kidnapping business in Nigeria

    The kidnapping business in Nigeria

    By Jide Osuntokun

    The kidnapping business in Nigeria started almost one and half decades ago and people tended to dismiss it as a business peculiar to the southeastern part of the country  not knowing it would soon become a national pastime .The coming of the malady to Lagos soon got the attention of the press in the celebrated trial of one Chukwudumeme or Chuwudubem  Onwumadike alias Evans who  conspired to kidnap one Donatus Duru on February 14th 2017 at Ilupeju Lagos and then freed him after collecting a ransom of  223;000 Euros which is about N112,000000 (one hundred and twelve million Naira) which is a huge amount in any currency. This was one of several cases of kidnapping and murders he organized from his operation centre in one of the suburbs of Lagos. The trial has gone on since then until a rumored report that he was sentenced to death by a Lagos high court on August the 18th of 2020 which has turned to be fake news . The important thing to note is that the man has led a gang of kidnappers and murderers since 2013 operating from the Southeastern part of the country until he shifted his base to Lagos. The notoriety of this case and the way series of five Defence counsels have dragged on the case with one adjournment after another and fruitless argument of a no case submission have led people to feel there will be no adequate punishment for the crimes the man was charged with and people have consequently become inured to the phenomenon of kidnapping. This has now spread to the entire southern part of the country perhaps because kidnappers were emboldened by the rather tepid reaction by the judiciary and officers of the law to the seriousness of the crime of kidnapping. The huge amount people were being forced to pay to secure the lives or freedom of loved ones proved a magnet of attraction for young and unemployed people who formed gangs or acted solo in the business of kidnapping. Even some students got involved. We handled a case in my previous university before I finally retired when a boy friend told his girlfriend to hide in an hotel and got someone to phone us that our student had been kidnapped. The parents were immediately alerted and our institution’s management was running from one police post to another. Eventually the parents of the girl parted with five million naira demanded  by the “ kidnappers “ It was when the money was dropped at the appointed place that the boy was caught and he immediately said it was a joint enterprise between him and his girlfriend . The father of the girl felt humiliated by his own child and we simply expelled the girl involved. What shocked me was how quiet and well behaved the girl had been before she fell in love! I am telling this lived experience to show the perversity and prevalence of the malady and crime of kidnapping.

    What became a crime that was initially domiciled in the Southern part of the country has now metastasized into a national disease now mainly carried out by gangs of dispossessed Fulani Nomads roaming the rural space of both the north and the southern parts of the country. Some of these Fulani, on losing their cows to rustlers or their grazing grounds to the ever expanding urban settlements, take to brigandage. Initially this was happening in Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna states but has now spread to all parts of the north and some parts of the south where cow rustling has become a phenomenon. Others have of course joined in what seems a lucrative business. We have had several instances where people are kidnapped and millions are demanded from relatives but after serious negotiations the demand is reduced and once the money is paid the victim is released after suffering several sleepless days in the kidnappers’ den usually in the bush. This was the case with a professor of medicine of Obafemi University whose car was intercepted shortly after Asejire dam on his way to Ife from Lagos where he had gone to present a paper in a conference. Chief Olu Falae former Secretary to the Federal government had the unenviable experience of being kidnapped by Fulani nomads on his farm and spirited to a bush on the Owo- Benin road and was not released until appropriate ransom was apparently paid. The most dangerous aspect of the kidnapping phenomenon is its possible ethnic exploitation. This was the case in Katsina, Kaduna and Zamfara where kidnappings became manifestations of ethnic hatred apart from its economic dimension between Hausa and Fulani. In the South Yoruba and Igbo and others see kidnapping especially by Fulani nomads as part of the warped political structure of the country where some people seem to be treated as sacred cows when they commit crimes. They come to this conclusion because Fulani criminals seem to go unpunished. In some cases there are allegations of police refusing to take criminal complaints against them as seriously as the cases demand. The result of this is the accentuation of ethnic differences which have led to violence in a few instances.

    The forests both in the north and the south have become refuge for criminals and the Fulani who over the centuries have known their ways through these forests in grazing their cows and moving them from the north to the south use this knowledge to their advantage in criminal activities. This is why as soon as people are kidnapped they are immediately spirited to the forests which serve as prisons for their unfortunate victims .The forests generally are ungoverned spaces unlike in colonial and immediate colonial times when forest guards maintained some presence in them and gave at least the impression of government’s presence unlike now when they seem to be no man’s land and nature abhors a vacuum. It now seems these forests have become sometimes the redoubt of criminals whether the brigands terrorizing Nigeria or the Boko haram terrorists who have declared war on Nigeria.

    Recently a Science boarding school of 800 pupils was invaded in Kankara in Katsina state by motorcycles riding terrorists. Some of the students apparently fled on hearing gun shots in the night but about three hundred and thirty three students were led to captivity in Zamfara forest several kilometers away from Kankara. Boko haram claimed they were responsible for it, but it is more likely to be the handiwork of pastoral Fulani who are locked in economic struggles with Hausa farmers and who have visited violence on each other over the last decade without a viable solution found to the cause of friction which centres around grazing land and destruction of farm lands and attendant mutual violence and rustling of cows belonging to the Fulani . The  assumption of most observers is that the operation in Kankara falls into the same pattern of violence and kidnapping arising from economic deprivation and the ready money that could be made from kidnapping. It is not clear if any money was paid to the criminals who invaded the Science School in Kankara but my guess is that money changed hands before the children were released. I believe the villagers who must have seen hundreds of children trekking and sandwiched between their captors on motor cycles knew what was happening and just decided to keep quiet out of fear and that it was not of their business. The transactional nature of this particular kidnapping is very revealing. The moment ransom was paid the victims were released compared with the Boko haram kidnapping where victims were usually kept for years particularly if they were girls and women.

    The solution to all this is that punishment has never been sure and swift to punish kidnappers including those who committed murder in the process of kidnapping. Kidnapping must not be seen as a paying profession. When they are caught they should be made to lose whatever money or property that can be traced to them and their accomplices and when murder is committed the kidnappers have to be sentenced to death.

    The question of securing the farms of peasants and the cows of Fulani must be looked into. It is when Fulani cows are taken from them by rustlers that they take to brigandage. The same happens to peasants who lose their lands and take to kidnapping for economic sustenance

    The question of grazing land which the pastoral Fulani have taken their cows to feed and which is being lost to the urban spread needs to be solved. Perhaps a total review of the way cows are bred needs to be done. Instead of the open grazing, ranching provides an alternative. Secondly government should invest in the improvements of the Fulani herds to increase meat yield and consequent revenue for the Fulani herdsmen.

    Nigeria needs to tighten the borders and impose some kind of nationality demands for the wandering Fulani who do not seem to respect national territorial borders and are essentially oblivious of the requirements of national law. This May have to be done within the context of ECOWAS and our neighbors in Chad and  the Cameroons and even The Central African Republic ( CAR) where Fulanis go and come from without paying much attention to national borders and laws . Whatever we do we must effectively occupy our space because effective occupation is the first rule of national sovereignty.

  • State impotence and crisis of legitimacy

    State impotence and crisis of legitimacy

    Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    AS if to demonstrate the limit of state power especially when a government is facing crisis of legitimacy, the abductors of 344 students of Government Science Secondary School (GSSS), Kankara, Katsina State chose the period of president Buhari’s visit to his Katsina state to perpetrate their crime. It is however a big relief that all the 344 students abducted on 11 December have now been released. And success has many fathers, it has been celebration ever since. The military through John Enenche, the Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, and Ahmed Jibrin, former Director, Military Intelligence took credit for the recue claiming they applied both  ‘kinetic and non-kinetic approaches were used to ensure all the boys were rescued unhurt”.

    Governors of Zamfara and Katsina states have also been celebrating. Masari told Radio Deutsche Welle, DW that MACABAN negotiated with the bandits to get the schoolboys released  while  Governor Matawalle of Zanfara told DAILY NIGERIAN, that he used repentant bandits and leadership of Miyetti Allah to identify those behind the abduction, and “When we established contact with them, I persuaded them to release them unharmed. And so they did. This is not the first time we facilitated the release of our people without payment of ransom. What we do is to extend olive branch to them because they also want to live in peace.”

    The high point of the celebration of the two governors and the military spokesmen was a joint photograph of a bandit holding an AK47 assault rifle, hemmed in between a senior military officer and Katsina Governor Masari . For those who may still be wondering if this was not one more evidence of absence of legitimacy, the attack , coming four days after, on  emir of Kaura Namoda, Alhaji Sanusi Muhammad Asha traveling back to Zamfara State from Abuja during which eight of his convoy members  including  the emir’s driver, two palace guards, three police escorts and one traditional title holder were killed  must have driven the truth home  while the celebrating governors, the military and the federal government continue to live in denial.

    And when does a government lose its legitimacy?  Aristotle in his ‘Politics’ believed it “depends on distributive justice-the proper allocation of rewards according to merit”. Distributive injustice, according to him only brings government instability.  Zanfara whose forest haboured the Katsina rescued 344 students was one of the old Hausa city-states like Kano, Katsina, Gobir, Kabi and Zazzau. It has been under the reign of minority with the indigenous majority Hausas treated as slaves since Uthman Dan fodio Jihad of 18004-1808 which changed the political landscape of the north. What began as localised disputes in Zanfara between migrating herders and maginalised farmers who have to pay tax to plough their land  was to degenerate into a major extreme violence, including abductions and mass killings,

    Unfortunately the natural instinct of those with power without legitimacy is to resort to force which only prolongs nightmare of people instead of resolving crisis of nation building. The first response to Killings in Zanfara in 2018 was the stationing of a full battalion of Special Forces in the State. It was followed by the launching of “Operation Maximum Safety” with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”.

    There was also the “Joint Intervention Team of about 1000 police personnel comprised of seven mobile police force units headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, and conventional policemen.

    The air force was not left out. Its Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, disclosed the air force was also launching its own Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of “three surveillance patrol helicopters and crew members to coordinate the operation to completely rout-out all armed bandits from Zamfara and other contiguous states”.

    The Emir of Bungudu, Alhaji Hassan Attahiru insisted killings by bandits were not abating despite the military operations against the criminals. It was perhaps for this reason that the then Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, met with the expanded executive council of the northern traditional rulers at the Arewa House in Kaduna State where he directed the traditional rulers to start “community policing in your various domains so that more information about criminal elements can be obtained in real time.”

    But the hegemonic power in the north has always opposed community policing for fear of empowering the serfs. If there was going to be any community policing, it must be that financed and controlled by the federal government.

    This is therefore the simple answer to Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) Secretary-General, Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu’s last week  lamentations:  “how can one explain the movement of the bandits in their hundreds on motor cycles without being detected? What happens to intelligence gathering that this heinous plan was not uncovered before it was hatched? How comes the bandits took their time, gather the school boys, heaped them on bikes and whisked them away without being rounded up by the security agencies”?

    Miyetti Allah, an interested party and the warring political leaders have the answers. Governor Masari of Katsina and his Zanfara counterpart who attributed the recue to the help of Miyetti Allah who negotiated with the bandits and secured their release as well as the other warring politicians have the answer. Accused by APC of sponsoring the abduction, Zanfara state governor said “I find it insulting that the APC is accusing me of sponsoring bandits in my own state. We all are living witnesses to the fact that during APC’s tenure, Zamfara State was adjudged as a colony of banditry in the whole world”, adding. “We are not claiming that insecurity has totally been eliminated in Zamfara but it is on record that terror attacks have reduced drastically in the state in less than two years than APC’s unfortunate eight years when people were running away from the state.”

    Of course “there are lapses in Nigeria’s security architecture that need to be urgently and seriously addressed”, as observed by Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu, Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) Secretary-General last week. But he is not the first Nigerian to make that observation.  Most Nigerian stakes holders have called attention to these lapses in the last five years of Buhari APC administration.  But those in power in the north and currently benefiting from such lapses are only interested in presiding over an empire of slaves.

    Zanfara state with a population of three million, has 23 hospitals with 23 doctors, 300 public primary schools manned by a single teacher each while many others in remote rural communities, are not that lucky as they have no teachers” according to Hon Murtala Adamu Jangebe, the state Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB)’s Executive Chairman. Yet this is a state where lives of subsistence farmers who paid to till their own land is threatened and a state whose resources in form of gold deposit until recent government belated banning of illegal mining has only led to harvest of death of over 5000 people in Maru Local Government in 2016 in Zamfara bloody gold miners’ war of ex-generals and politicians.

    Unfortunately, winning election with 15m popular votes or deployment of awesome power of the state as we have now seen cannot resolve crisis of legitimacy. The only antidote is justice-the principle that people receive that which they deserve.

     

     

     

  • PERSON OF THE YEAR: Health Workers

    PERSON OF THE YEAR: Health Workers

    By Olatunji Ololade, Associate Editor

    The year, 2020, unfurled like a wild canyon swallowing preeminent and ordinary Nigerians. No thanks to the deadly coronavirus aka COVID-19. But a recap of 2020 would be incomplete without acknowledging the gallantry of Nigeria’s health workers, many of whom lost their lives battling the pandemic on the frontline.

    Their work is fraught with peril; they tangle with death and disease and in gruesome but barely acknowledged cadences, news of the fallen filter out to public domain.

    Some health professionals have died battling to contain the coronavirus. The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) of Nigeria, disclosed that about 14 doctors have died of COVID-19.

    And in June, the Director-General (DG) of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) stated that over 800 Nigerian health workers had contracted the coronavirus since the first case was confirmed in February.

    “We have had 812 health care workers infected, they are not just numbers, 29 of these work for NCDC, they are people I know, they have families, wives, and children,” he said.

    For the survivors, however, each new day dawns with fresh challenges of inadequate medical supplies, crowded facilities, marathon shifts, and lack of protective gear or Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

    Coping with the pandemic in a country of about 200 million people with an overstretched and underfunded healthcare system poses a challenge to health workers, no doubt.

    Read Also: Experts lament impact of COVID-19 on psychiatric illnesses

    At the outbreak of the coronavirus, Nigeria hoped to beat it and reduce casualties by instituting lock-downs, encouraging social distancing and good personal hygiene.

    But while these measures seemed practicable in containing the pandemic among the populace, they weren’t enough protection for the country’s health workers; many suffer physical and mental exhaustion, separation from family, and the agony of losing patients and colleagues. Many have also contracted the disease.

    In late July, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that over 10,000 healthcare workers in Africa had tested positive for COVID-19, raising fears about the ability of a country like Nigeria, which only has four doctors per 10, 000 people – according to WHO estimates – to successfully control a pandemic that has overwhelmed even better-resourced health systems of Europe and America. In the United States, the ratio is 26 doctors per 10,000 people and 28 in the United Kingdom.

    As the pressure increased on key health facilities across the country, so too did the risk of infection for health professionals.

    Doctors manage infectious diseases like the COVID-19 as part of their daily routine but are only guaranteed a monthly hazard allowance of N5,000.

    Following the threat of another doctors’ strike over the lack of protection for health workers, the government agreed, in June, to provide each worker on the frontline with two-month hazard pay.

    In late July, the government claimed to have spent N15.8 billion ($42 million) hazard pay even as health workers lament the lack of health insurance for those who fall sick or die in the line of duty whereas their counterparts in neighbouring Ghana enjoy a US$4,322 health insurance coverage in the occurrence of illness or death in the fight against COVID-19.

    Even so, Nigeria’s health professionals remain committed to the fight against COVID-19.

    Moved by their exploits on the frontline, Lagos governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, recently honoured 10 health personnel describing them as the “heroes of the season.”

    He said, “We will never forget your toil and the risk you are bearing during these very unusual times in our history.” The beneficiaries include an ambulance driver, a security man, a lab scientist, a nurse, a virologist, and medical doctors.

    Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, has remained the epicentre of the pandemic since its outbreak. In the coastal city, health workers have been in the centre of the storm, working with limited resources to save as many lives as possible, while putting their own lives at risk.

  • PHILANTHROPIST OF THE YEAR: CACOVID

    PHILANTHROPIST OF THE YEAR: CACOVID

    The Coronavirus pandemic disrupted not only businesses,  but also life and living. To cushion its effect on the nation, the Central Bank and some public spirited individuals and organisations formed the Coalition of Private Sector Against COVID-19 (CACOVID), reports Lawal Ogienagbon.                 

    Their nation’s keeper

    I is a child of circumstance. The Coalition of Private Sector Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) was created to fight the deadly virus, cater to the needs of the sick and provide succour for the poor and vulnerable. The private sector driven initiative enjoys the support of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Centre of Disease Control (NCDC) and World Health Organisation (WHO). CACOVID was formed to meet the exigencies of the time. As the novel Coronavirus disrupted lives and businesses globally, it became the body to ensure normalcy in the midst of the ensuing confusion at home.

    CACOVID went the extra mile to meet public needs. As scores of people caught the virus in the early stages of the pandemic, it fell on the coalition to help out. It had enormous resources at its disposal, but the challenges were daunting. There were no well equipped hospitals or isolation centres for the sick so as to avoid the spreading of the virus. With the financial muscle of its members, putting these structures in place was its first major assignment. It ran against time to get them ready, just as  people were testing positive for COVID-19 at a fast rate

    CACOVID pooled resources across industries to provide technical and operational support for the fight against the virus. Announcing the birth of CACOVID early in April, the CBN Govermor Godwin Emefiele said it was set up after a series of consultation and engagement with stakeholders in the private sector on the need to support government to whittle down the impact of the virus on the economy. He added: “The Federal Government has made giant strides in the fight but it is clear that the private sector needs to step in, and support efforts already being made”. The giants of industry backed CACOVID. Aliko Dangote, Rabiu Samad, Femi Otedola, Tony Elumelu, Herbert Wigwe, among others,  all gave to the cause.

    Read Also: CACOVID plans to empower youths, businesses

    CACOVID spent N4.2billion on building 39 fully equipped isolation centres in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It procured medical equipment such as polymerise chain reaction (PCR) test kits for N9billion. In all, it realised N39,646,100,039 in donations and spent N43,272,562,831, overshooting its accounts by N3,626,462,792.

    The most tasking of its duty was the provision of palliative for the poor and vulnerable during the lockdown when businesses and offices were shut. CACOVID worked with the states and FCT to get food across to these people. The lockdown was a harsh period in the life of the downtrodden, but respite came from CACOVID, which spent N28,767,590,517 to provide food for 1.7million households, which is equivalent to eight million Nigerians. Many of these food items, which were yet to be shared during the #ENDSARS Protests in October, were looted from warehouses across the country by hoodlums who hijacked the demonstrations.

    CACOVID plans to spend N100billion on renovating and equipping police stations and formations that were also destroyed by the hoodlums.

  • The Nation’s Ololade wins migration reporting awards

    The Nation’s Ololade wins migration reporting awards

    The Nation’s Associate Editor and investigative journalist, Olatunji Ololade, has won the maiden edition of the 2020 Migration Reporter Competition.

    An initiative of International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UN Migration, the grand finale and awards ceremony was held at the Bolton White Hotel conference hall in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Friday, December 18, and it saw Ololade beating Punch Newspaper’s Jesusegun Alagbe and Olaleye Aluko to the grand prize of the Print Category. TV360’s Oyinkan Adekunle won first place in the awards’ broadcast category.

    Ololade won by his investigative series: 21st century slaves, which mirrors the frightening plight of Nigeria’s underage girls and women sold into bonded slavery and sex servitude abroad. For the story, Ololade scoured brothels and sex camps in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, in an undercover investigation of the West African sex trafficking network.

    The same story was a finalist for the 2020 Kurt Schork International Journalism Awards and nominated for the most remunerative journalism prize, the prestigious Fetisov Journalism Awards (FJA), in the Outstanding Investigative Reporting category.

    Ololade’s recent win brings his tally of local and international awards to 30.