Understandably, the Federal Government wants to give the impression that it is winning the war against terrorism. So, the authorities keep supplying information to support such a promotional picture.

The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, promoted the government’s anti-terrorism effort when he spoke recently at the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing, with the theme ‘No Money for Terror.’  The event took place in India.

A statement by his aide, Abdulmalik Suleiman, quoted the minister as saying the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) had, in 2019, “commenced an in-depth analysis of the financing of the Boko Haram group.”

” This analysis, which took almost 18 months to complete, resulted in the identification of almost 100 high-risk financiers and identified links to 10 different countries.

” Ultimately, the results of the analysis resulted in the arrest of 48 of the financiers and the ongoing prosecution of a number of them.”

Is it true that some terrorism financiers are being prosecuted in the country? The government has been criticised for delaying the prosecution of terrorism-related suspects it claims to have arrested.

For instance, the case of the 400 alleged Boko Haram financiers reported to have been arrested in April 2021 remains a puzzle as there are no signs that they are facing trial more than a year after.

Information supplied recently by the Theatre Commander of the Northeast Joint Operation, Hadin Kai, Maj. Gen. Christopher Musa, shows that arrested terrorism suspects are not tried promptly.  His representative, the Acting e Intelligence Coordinator, Col. Obinna Azuike, told reporters in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital: “A total of 886 detainees are awaiting transfer to Giwa Project in Kainji for prosecution.” The Giwa Project is in Kainji, Niger State.

It is unclear when the said detainees were arrested and how long they have been awaiting transfer for the purpose of prosecution. Also, it is unclear when they would actually be transferred for this purpose.

He said there were 1,893 suspects currently in custody at the Giwa Centre.  How many of them are standing trial?  How long after the said 886 detainees arrive at the centre will they be prosecuted?

It is not enough to announce the arrest of alleged terrorism financiers and suspected terrorists. Such announcements will never be enough.  Failure to prosecute and punish arrested insecurity enablers cannot encourage public confidence in the fight against terrorism. Ironically, it even suggests that the authorities are enabling insecurity.

For his David-before-the-ark-of-God mindless gyrations, not a few dismiss Ademola Adeleke, the new Osun governor, as Ade Dancer.

But from his infantile flexing of muscles since he took power on November 27, he may soon morph into Ade Emperor — making the most reckless of military governors turn ash with envy.

Worse: By the time he snaps out of this new intoxication, he might have fatally distracted himself.  Too bad for the long-suffering Osun folks, the ultimate losers!

Adeleke’s early recklessness is all the more thoughtless because he is locked against two formidable foes, always there: the civil servants (that not a few dub “evil” servants: they ruin you without even raising a finger!) and the traditional royal institution, ever part of the power mosaic.

To be fair, Gboyega Oyetola, the former governor, in his exit days, manifested more than his fair share of bad faith, after losing the July 16 guber election: controversial local government polls, “rushed” appointments of three royal fathers, reportedly brooking disquiet in Iree, Igbajo and Ikirun, not to talk of “last-minute” appointments of 30 permanent secretaries, among many more.

Many claim these were clear traps for the incoming Adeleke administration — a credible conjecture.  Still, if someone sets a trap for you, must you blunder into it?

Read Also: Osun Assembly dares Adeleke over council administration

Adeleke rushed in to sign “executive orders” voiding or suspending Oyetola’s executive  actions since July 17 — really?  Was Adeleke sworn into office on July 17?  Did governance stop immediately after Adeleke walloped Oyetola at the polls? If it did, how come Adeleke was sworn in on November 27 and not July 17?

How, in truth, in law and in common sense — which never is common, by the way — would Adeleke void these actions?  Simply because he, the in-coming governor, didn’t like them?  Or because he now arms himself with reckless but delusional power?

Besides, was the outgoing governor supposed to live by the whims and caprices of his successor simply because he lost at the polls, even if good conscience and governmental best practices also demand no bad faith from the out-going governor?

Even if Adeleke charges Oyetola with bad faith, will Adeleke now be accuser and judge, dispensing summary judgment in his own case, in an order driven by the rule of law?

Adeleke should stop getting ahead of himself!  The way he’s going, he’ll look back and rue how he wilfully blew his political honeymoon on useless and arid controversies.  If Oyetola indeed did anything wrong, let the new government approach the courts.

Adeleke should remember his elder brother, Isiaka, aka Serubawon, Osun’s first elected governor, who nevertheless never left any noticeable landmark.

Enough of this loud tomfoolery.  Power tantrums,  which Adeleke now throws, lead nowhere but happy perdition.

Saudi Arabia bit the dust against Poland last Saturday in the Qatar mondial after a shock defeat of Argentina five days earlier. Robert Lewandowski helped Poland to a 2-0 victory over the Green Falcons to send his side atop Group C and needing just a draw in their final group stage match against Argentina to qualify for the round of 16. Saudi Arabia are not so comfortable. They have a chance to qualify for the knockout stages only if they trounce Mexico in their final group match tomorrow.

But the peril facing the Saudi boys may be more dire. With their 2-1 win over Lionel Messi-led Argentina, said to be among the greatest World Cup upsets of all times, the Saudi players sent their countryfolk into an acute spasm of the triumph. The Argentina match was played Tuesday, 22nd November, and Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al-Saud, declared Wednesday, 23rd November a public holiday across the ‘oildom’ in celebration. It was also widely reported that he promised the players a Rolls-Royce Phantom each. Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard later denied such promise was made, but his denial sounded more like a disciplinarian’s bid to keep his players focused on matches ahead and not get distracted by celebration of what is already past.

Read Also: FIFA World Cup not for politics

Following the Argentina win, a video footage surfaced online in which the Saudi ruler was portrayed pep-talking the players for the Poland match at a private meeting. The 54-second video showed Crown Prince Salman saying he had fulfilled his promise to the players on the Argentina match and charging them to go ahead and vanquish Poland. “Now, Poland we have to fully annihilate them – annihilate, annihilate,” he said, adding: “And if we do, Wallahi, everybody will receive a skyscraper taller than Burj Khalifa. I’ll fulfil my promise.” Next is the chilling part. “But if we don’t win, (gestures at an official sitting next to him) please, eh, explain.” And here is what the official said: “If we don’t win, we have dug 11 graves for the footballers on the pitch. One of the graves is big, and the big one is for the goalkeeper. If you can’t save our country, we can’t save you, we can’t save your family, we can’t save your bets. So you gonna go inside. And the substitutes – obviously we have to take into consideration they are not playing – will become construction workers building the line… And, yeah, please win. Best of luck.”

Unless it was a photoshop masterpiece where believable visuals were superimposed with voices in perfect sync, the Saudi players are under a death threat if they fail in the World Cup trials, and they need to be saved.

Tukur Mamu was in the news again last week after the Department of State Services (DSS), on November 24, withdrew a suit filed on September 12 at the Federal High Court, Abuja, that had sought to detain him for 60 more days after his arrest. DSS’ counsel, A.M. Danlami, told Justice Nkeonye Maha that “the matter has been overtaken by events.”  He did not elaborate. “We wish to withdraw the suit,” he said.

Mamu was arrested by foreign security agents on September 6, in Cairo, Egypt, with his two wives, en route to Saudi Arabia for Umrah (lesser Hajj).  The DSS had claimed he was “on his way to Saudi Arabia for a clandestine meeting with commanders and top leaders of terrorist organisations across the globe.”  They were deported, and arrested by security operatives on arrival in Kano.  Mamu was caged, but his wives were released.

The security agency, on September 13, obtained permission from the court to further detain him for 60 days, in the first instance, pending the conclusion of its investigation.  The DSS had said his home and office in Kaduna State were searched following his repatriation to Nigeria, and “various exhibits and items to establish his complicity with terrorists were recovered.”  It also accused him of being a logistics supplier, aiding and abetting acts of terrorism, as well as terrorism financing.

Mamu, who is the publisher of Desert Herald, was said to have “used the cover of his profession as a journalist to aid both local and international terrorist groups.” The DSS alleged that he had supplied information to bandits and terrorists that escalated terrorism in the country, leading to the deaths of several security personnel in Northcentral and Northeast parts of Nigeria.  His activities, the agency said, constituted a potent threat to unity and peace in the country.

The DSS said investigation of his activities was ongoing. It is unclear if the investigation is still ongoing.  It is more than 60 days since the DSS obtained court permission to detain Mamu for 60 more days, and the agency has not obtained further permission to keep him in detention.

Before his arrest and allegations that he was a co-conspirator and terrorism enabler, he had been known as a negotiator working for the release of kidnapped victims of the terrorist train attack on the Abuja-Kaduna route on March 28.

There were 62 kidnappees, and they were released in batches, some of them following Mamu’s mediation. The negotiator was in detention when the last 23 hostages were freed on October 5, after a nightmarish six months, following the Federal Government’s intervention.

Mamu remains in detention, and has not been charged with a crime. What’s happening?

Rivers Nyesom Wike and Ebonyi’s David Umahi are two of a kind — “Mr. Project” — a moniker Wike has nevertheless annexed and won’t share his glory with anyone.

Wike does projects and makes such bedlam about it.  Umahi is the diametric opposite.

He does projects — wonderful, life-changing, all-round projects — that within an elected term, transformed his capital, once-upon-a-time dusty Abakaliki, to a near-magical model town with glittering facilities of a smart city, especially at night when Abakaliki glows as some round-the-year grotto.  In his second term, he has continued along that same path.

But Abakaliki is only glittering metaphor for such integrated, all-round Ebonyi development, perhaps never seen in the South East since the days of Michael Okpara.

Yet, Umahi is as cool as cucumber about it all.  The taste of the pudding is in the eating, seems his philosophy.  Still, see Abakaliki and die! — and that’s “Wawa” country: no oil wealth, no “secret” oil cash that Wike now hails, and supposed Igbo backwater of backwaters!

Read Also: Wike’s challenge

Long before Wike got converted to Muhammadu Buhari’s even-handedness as president, Umahi had always eulogized the president as his “father”, who had been fair to all across party lines.  That was when Umahi was in PDP and such was near-heresy.

Why earlier, Wike and Umahi had clashed. Umahi had quit PDP and Wike was betide himself with his paternalistic PDP, guardian angel racket.  But Umahi told him to behave himself: as a private citizen and trained and productive engineer, Umahi snapped, he had hit his first million in his 20s.  He was no jobber and perpetual “government pikin”.  That somewhat sealed a truce!

So, the last time they met in Port Harcourt — Umahi invited to come inaugurate one of Wike’s many projects — the pair seemed to perfectly understand each other.

Even then, Umahi wouldn’t take Wike’s partisan de-marketing of others by his stock promise of lending other parties logistic support to campaign in Rivers — whatever that means.  Was a governor supposed to bar other partisans from electioneering?

Umahi threw it all back: keep your campaign logistics support! Give me Rivers’ vote for the APC presidential candidate.  That’s the only deal I want!

For effect, Umahi claimed that he had also locked up Ebonyi for APC as Wike had wrapped up Rivers for PDP.  So, it’s entente between two equal powers with mutual benefits!  The 2023 polls will validate or disprove these claims.

Two similar men with diametrically contrasting temper!  But it’s all within the ever-pulsating drama of Nigerian politics!

Ekiti State legislature has forayed into the club of assemblies with short survival span of leaders. Last Monday, it impeached Rt. Hon. Gboyega Aribisogan as Speaker after just six days in the saddle. Seventeen lawmakers in the 25-member assembly also slammed an indefinite suspension on Aribisogan and six other lawmakers, and barred them from the vicinity of the house. It was a culling of sorts. They replaced Aribisogan with former Chief Whip, Rt. Hon. Olubunmi Adelugba

The six lawmakers axed alongside Aribisogan, who was elected Speaker on 15th November following the death of former Speaker Rt. Hon. Funminiyi Afuye in October, are Honourables Tajudeen Akingbolu, Tope Ogunleye, Ajibade Adeyemi, Adekemi Balogun, Yemisi Ayokunle and Adegoke Olajide.

The majority squad moved against Aribisogan and the gang of six for allegedly blocking the passage of the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Bill, among other offences. Before the big stick was wielded on Monday, the house had raised an ad hoc investigative panel, which found the former Speaker and company culpable of stalling the supplementary bill’s passage. Other charges plied suggested the election of Aribisogan as Speaker last week wasn’t as unanimous as thought. For instance, the investigative panel said it found the six lawmakers guilty of unparliamentary conduct that included causing disaffection, tension and apprehension among assembly members whose votes were not allowed to count in the 15th November poll, and that they compromised the security of lawmakers and assembly staff by allegedly importing hoodlums armed with dangerous weapons into the gallery and chambers of the complex. The panel thus recommended Aribisogan’s impeachment and suspension along with the six in the report it submitted to the house Monday.

The former Speaker apparently knew what was coming and mounted preemptive media campaign, in which he called out former Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi as masterminding plans to remove him. Speaking on a Channels Television programme on Sunday, he alleged that the former governor had camped seven lawmakers in an Ado-Ekiti guest house to plot his impeachment. “The majority of members voted for me, but few of them who felt perhaps I did not follow the directive of the former governor thought they would make the state ungovernable for even the new administration,” he said. Fayemi has since issued a statement to dissociate himself from upheavals in the house, which he termed internal affairs.

It isn’t so clear what Fayemi stands to gain from a change in assembly leadership after having been succeeded by Ekiti State Governor Biodun Oyebanji on 16th September. When the axe fell Monday, anyway, 17 and not seven lawmakers moved against Aribisogan. It was doom foreseen but not avertable.

“In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states,” according to the latest National Multidimensional Poverty Index Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on November 17.

The report also said: “Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than clean energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.”

The data is based on a survey conducted from November 2021 to February 2022, and which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

The survey was conducted by the NBS, the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). This underlines the reliability of the findings.

The report said 133 million Nigerians were multidimensionally poor. This figure represents 63 percent of the country’s population of more than 200 million.  Three out of five Nigerians live in poverty, according to the report.

The survey found that multidimensional poverty “is higher in rural areas, where 72 percent of people are poor, compared to 42 percent of people in urban areas.” Also, the report said 65 percent of poor people – 86 million – live in the North, while 35 percent – nearly 47 million – live in the South.

The findings are extremely bad news. At the beginning of this year, there was bad news that the number of poor Nigerians had increased to 91 million. The World Bank had estimated that an additional one million people were pushed into poverty in Nigeria from June to November 2021.

The poverty figure had jumped from 83 million, the number of poor Nigerians according to the NBS in May 2020. This number was from its 2019 report on poverty and inequality in Nigeria.

The latest picture of the poverty level in the country calls into question the anti-poverty efforts of the Federal Government. Notably, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his national address following the 2020 #EndSARS protests and the resulting anarchy, had boasted that “No Nigerian government in the past has methodically and seriously approached poverty-alleviation like we have done.”

Also, in September 2020, when Buhari inaugurated a National Steering Committee to oversee the development of the ‘Nigeria Agenda 2050 and Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP),’ he mentioned the objective of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty “within the next 10 years.”

But the poverty figure keeps rising. Too many Nigerians are too poor. The authorities have a duty to find solutions to mass poverty in the country.

Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, goes Ola Rotimi’s highly comical satire.  Were it not so tragic, and were Russia’s blunder into Ukraine to be framed by a playwright, (s)he probably would have written the play, Their Czar Has Gone Mad Again!

Nothing but comical madness could explain this brainless invasion, rationalized by not a few as might is right.  Well, might hasn’t exactly worked for Russia and shame-faced President Vladimir Putin here!

On the contrary, greater force, casting Ukraine President Volodymir Zelenskky as some David facing down the Putin Goliath, has cooked Russia a hot, sizzling but humble pie. Putin blundered into a well-laid NATO trap!

But instead of facing up to its shame — that would be politically suicidal though for Putin — Russia has dug in in its infamy, bringing further disgrace to itself.

Read Also: Germany is arguing with itself over Ukraine

Strongman Putin deluded himself he would run over Kyiv in a few days, capture Zelenskky for a shameful parade on the streets of Moscow, and implant a puppet, even more pliant than Belarus, in Ukraine — a fatal dream that has turned quick cold harsh!

First, on April 14, Russia lost Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet and veteran of many Russian naval triumphs.  That Moscow sank (Moskva is Russian for Moscow) was earliest signal yet that Putin’s crazed imperialist dreams might just be sinking.  But he and his henchmen were slow in thinking, hard of hearing and hazy of sight.

Then, after initial battle victories that saw it grab land and capture Kherson — the lone regional capital it corralled in nine months of a misguided campaign — it has since been suffering near-irreversible reverses.  Now, Ukraine has won back Kherson, to Russia’s eternal shame.

But each time Russian troops are legitimately routed on the battle fronts, Russian generals order missiles and bombs be rained on civilian areas, deep behind the front.

Right now, Putin glories in raining such missiles on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, so much so that with the dawn of winter, millions of Ukraine folks would have no heaters to warm up their homes, no basic electricity to light up, no energy to pump pipe-borne water.

It’s the making of Putin’s Russia: a bristling outlaw and terror state, ready to go to any savage length to glory in its unfettered outlawry.

But in there, Putin himself is trapped as a hermit in Russia; and pariah outside its shores.  What a classic primer in self-ruin and woe to country!

There’s a way fate enacts a cruel irony that could make you eat your own vomit. It is to that effect a local axiom says your cooked yam could make you dip your fingers in red oil – that is, when you soup the yam with oil for eating. And that would be despite your grandstands about aversion to oil stain.

Ask former United States President Donald Trump, and he might be grappling within himself yet what it means to be family with a country he once publicly disdained as a ‘shithole.’ His daughter, Tiffany Trump, tied the nuptial knot last weekend with her fiancé, Michael Boulos, who is Nigerian-bred though of Lebanese and French descent. Boulos is said to have moved at very young age to Nigeria, where his parents’ businesses are based. He was raised in Lagos and once attended the American International School in the megapolis. He is the son of Massad, the Chief Executive Officer of SCOA Nigeria, and his mother, Sarah, is said to have pioneered the Society for the Performing Arts in Nigeria.

Michael was studying project management at City University of London in 2018 when he met Tiffany, a law student at Georgetown, while she was on vacation in Mykonos, Greece, with Lindsay Lohan. They got formally engaged on 19th January, 2021 at the Rose Garden of the White House – few hours to the end of Trump’s tenure as the POTUS (President of the United States). The wedding took place last Saturday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, having the ex-president and his wife, Melania, in attendance. The dress code was, of course, fully Western – with Michael donning a black tuxedo and male guests as well as Trump also sporting black tuxedos and bow tie. The ladies were in dazzling designs and colours of dresses. But trust the Nigerian signature not to be missing on such an event. There were many other guests in purely Nigerian attires maximizing photo opps with the former US president.

And this was the same Trump who, early in 2018, sweepingly tar-brushed African nations and latin American states of Haiti and El Salvador as “shithole countries” during a parley on immigration at the White House. He had been an arc-xenophobe, and Nigeria was one of the countries he particularly had issues with. In December 2017, The New York Times reported on an immigration meeting held in June, where Trump reportedly remonstrated 40,000 visas issued to Nigerians because once they have seen the U.S., they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa. As he savoured Tiffany’s big day last week, it perhaps crossed his mind that he is now family with ‘shithole’ people. Small world!