Category: Dele Agekameh

Deaths involving fresh graduates in Nigeria during their national youth service year may not be entirely new. But the recent harvest of deaths at some National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, orientation camps in the country has created panic and trepidation all over the place.
In fact, hardly does a service year pass by without the scheme recording some deaths. Most of the deaths usually occur through fatal accidents as the fresh graduates move from one point to another during the service year on our horrible highways. Not only this. Few years ago, no fewer than seven of them were brutally cut down in the violence that erupted in some northern states in the aftermath of the 2011 presidential election.
In the recent deaths, the first incident involved Elechi Chiyerom, a 27-year-old graduate of Ignatius Azuru University of Education, Port Harcourt. She was reported to have died from excessive bleeding and vomiting at the orientation camp in Bayelsa State. Less than 24 hours later, the nation was again confronted with another sad news. This time, the death of the duo of Ukeme Monday and Ifedolapo Oladepo, the former a male, the other, a female graduate.
The duo were first class graduates. Monday studied Petroleum Engineering at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, while Oladepo graduated in Transport Management from the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State. The two young, brilliant Nigerians passed on at the NYSC orientation camps in Zamfara and Kano states respectively.
Their deaths have, once more, called to question, the deplorable and appalling state of our country’s medical system. The three corps members all gave up the ghost within intervals of 48 hours just few hours after they allegedly took ill. If we were in a country with a responsive and responsible government, each orientation camp should have been properly equipped to take care of emergencies. It is assumed that each camp must have, at least, 10 certified doctors because before a medical graduate proceeds for internship, he or she must have secured his or her medical certificate.
In the early stages of youth service many years ago, the doctors usually go for clinical orientation in teaching hospitals prior to their NYSC orientation period. That means that for medical students, orientation was two-fold – one before the service orientation; and the other in the orientation camp. With this, the doctors had confidence to treat because of the earlier supervision they must have had at the teaching hospital. Unfortunately, those that are ready for house jobs now, are just lining up because the teaching hospitals can no longer absorb them.
Now, what is the problem with the NYSC that cannot co-opt doctors among the fresh graduates in the camps to provide effective and efficient medical services at the orientation camps under the supervision of some old hands in the profession? What is the process of certifying doctors in Nigeria today?
The training process of doctors in Nigeria was actually disrupted in 1985 by the military regime of then-Major General Muhammadu Buhari, who is now the country’s president. That was the time he sacked all doctors in government establishments and asked them to reapply. Of course, that led to the mass exodus of doctors from the country.
From that time, the post-graduate programme became disjointed. The one year exchange programme with hospitals in places like Britain, Canada, the United States and others, gradually fizzled out as nepotism and all kinds of vices set in. Back then, a country like Nigeria would pay some stipend for accommodation, maintenance and airfare for the young doctors and their families, while the host countries paid for research and training under their research grants. The death of this programme has led to a big decline in productivity among our doctors.
Take the pathetic case of Ifedolapo. When she manifested symptoms of illness, she was allegedly ignored by the NYSC officials who thought she merely feigned illness to avoid the physical drills at the camp. Then, perhaps, without a comprehensive diagnosis of her illness, an injection was administered on her. That worsened her condition. She finally died.
If the authorities said another one bled to death, did she commit an abortion? For three people to have died within a reasonable interval of time shows that there was really no adequate medical intervention available to them. This is probably why things turned out the way they did.
Again, the question is: why were the doctors at the camps not reoriented separately to enable them to handle the type of emergencies the three deaths presented? In the past, when the government unleashed young doctors in the rural areas of the country, some of them got youth service awards and other recognitions. Why has this stopped?
I spoke with a medical doctor, Dr. Olu Fatoba, who said: “It is quite surprising that the doctors in the camps could not handle normal anaphylactic reactions, which is very common. People easily react to penicillin, sulphur and others. Do they have drugs for anaphylactic reactions to drugs or injections in the camp clinics? Drugs like hydrocortisone, adrenaline (for shock) and others? Do they have the antidotes in those clinics? After Ifedolapo was treated and she reacted the way she did, what was done to ensure that she lived?”
From what I gathered, those ‘so-called doctors’ in the camps and rural areas in the northern part of the country are mostly male nurses. Since the mass exodus of Indian and other foreign doctors operating in that part of the country, the population of doctors have drastically reduced. Which hospitals were attached to the Kano and Zamfara orientation camp clinics for instance? Are there ambulances in the camps to take any patient to the nearest functional hospital? Do they have qualified senior doctors in the camps? Do they have enough drugs, drips, infusion and all that? The truth is that the camps should have been fortified with fundamental requirements to sustain people.
Nigeria is a funny country. Every day, people gather in their thousands in places all over the country, but when you look around, you hardly notice any ambulance in sight. Many churches in Nigeria that are usually filled to the brim by worshippers do not have emergency programmes in place to take care of emergencies. What were the emergency arrangements put in place in the church which recently collapsed in Uyo? Let us look back at the immigration recruitment deaths. The country recorded such a very high casualty figure because no emergency precautions were put in place for the exercise.
It is good to note that the federal government has ordered the corpses of the dead corps members to be exhumed for proper post-mortem examination. However, one does not need rocket science to know that post-mortem done on an exhumed body, cannot be as conclusive as that of a fresh body. Sad enough, no government official has physically gone to Osogbo, Osun State, to speak with the family of Ifedolapo, all this while. This is fuelling speculations that the government-ordered probe might just be a smokescreen after all.
It is doubtful if doctors who have been licensed could not perform their chores well if adequate drugs and equipment were available. At any rate, the deaths should be looked into thoroughly to avoid wasting our talented and vibrant youths in such a careless manner.
The latest mishap at the NYSC orientation camps has again reignited the call that the entire programme should be scrapped altogether. I disagree with those who hold this view. In its simplest form, the programme has enabled people who hitherto would not have ventured outside their immediate environment to go out to other places. That is one of the positive impacts of the programme. This is good for the unity of the country.
Therefore, the programme should not be cancelled. Rather, the over bloated cost of governance in the country should be brought down to enable the government to make enough money available for the NYSC programme to meet its mandate.

For many months, there was procrastination. Then, suddenly, a bombshell. On Thursday, last week, many Nigerians were shocked to the marrow when the Senate declined to confirm the appointment of Ibrahim Magu as substantive chairman of the country’s premier anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. The vague reason the upper legislative chamber gave for this unpopular action was that its verdict was based on a security report forwarded to it by the Department of State Security, DSS.
Magu replaced Ibrahim Lamorde as acting chairman of the EFCC on Monday, November 9, 2015. In July, eight months after he mounted the saddle in acting capacity, Yemi Osinbajo, Vice-President, who was then acting for his principal, Muhammadu Buhari, sent his name to the Senate for confirmation as substantive chairman. At that time, Buhari was out of the country on a short vacation. Unfortunately, after a lot of dilly-dallying spanning over six months, the Senate has finally rejected the nomination by citing a spurious “security report”.
The news of Magu’s rejection by the Senate was received by many Nigerians with shock particularly in view of the recent successes recorded by the nation’s anti-graft agency under his leadership. Recall that Magu succeeded Lamorde, after Lamorde was unceremoniously eased out of the system through a relentless opposition mounted against him by some faceless members of the National Assembly. Now, the same cabal is up in arms against Magu.
The truth of the matter is that Magu comes across as an independent-minded individual who is very uncompromising and can never be manipulated by any one however highly placed or close to him. Shortly after Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer chairman of the commission, was eased out of office by the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua, his replacement, Farida Waziri, launched a war of attrition on those she considered to have worked closely with Ribadu. Subsequently, the duo of Lamorde and Magu, who were serving police officers on secondment to the commission, were redeployed. Both officers were humiliated. Magu had his home ransacked by EFCC operatives on the orders of Waziri. Not only this, he was also locked up over some allegation of being in possession of official documents in his house. He was later released from detention, promoted to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police and posted to the Special Fraud Unit of the Police.
By the time Lamorde was brought back to the commission in 2011, he wrote to the police authorities to redeploy Magu back to the commission. Various forces rose against this move. It took a titanic fight to get him back on board. In fact, it took the personal intervention of Goodluck Jonathan, the former president, who gave an order that he should be released by the police to go back to the EFCC.
Magu, therefore, is not new to controversy. As a pioneer investigator in EFCC, he had stepped on many sensitive toes. As the commission’s head of the Economic Governance Unit, EGU, he made several enemies. He was the brain behind high profile investigations carried out by the EFCC. Some of the investigations he spearheaded include, the role of Bukola Saraki, former Governor of Kwara State and the incumbent Senate President, in the collapse of Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria, SGBN, of which the Saraki dynasty of Ilorin, are major stakeholders. He also investigated Peter Odili, the former Governor of Rivers State and James Ibori, former Governor of Delta State, who was later convicted for money laundering in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, attempts made in the recent past by some members of this tribe of powerful Nigerians to prevail on Magu to tread softly and overlook some of the corruption cases involving high net worth individuals, had met with stiff resistance by him. That pattern of defiance has always been his stock-in-trade since he joined the EFCC. For instance, when he was investigating the affairs of the defunct SGBN, he was said to have come across a certain amount of money allegedly released to the matriarch of the Saraki dynasty. As a tough investigator that he is, Magu was said to have insisted that Saraki’s mother must physically come forward to defend herself. All efforts to persuade him to rescind the order proved abortive as he stood his ground. At the end, the old woman buckled and appeared for interrogation. That is one episode the incumbent Senate President might not forget in a hurry.
Quite recently too, some presidential aides were said to have approached Magu for the purpose of seeking a soft landing for Abdullahi Dikko, the former boss of the Nigerian Customs Service, who was being investigated and had, in fact, been declared wanted at the time. The arrangement was that Dikko will be prevailed upon to appear before the EFCC to make a statement, but that he should not be detained. But contrary to this supposed gentleman’s agreement, as soon as Dikko showed up at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, he was promptly detained. It was there and then the former Customs boss pledged to refund the sum of N1 billion to the coffers of the Federal Government, which he has allegedly fulfilled.
However, the major undoing of Magu, may have been his poor interpersonal relationship. Those close to him say he does not have friends and those who are somehow close to him, cannot, in any way, benefit anything from him or influence him. In the wake of the scandal involving the slush funds used for the 2015 elections, Magu was said to have confided in some of his aides that if Nuhu Ribadu, his former boss, was named in the scandal, he will not hesitate to move against him and lock him up. Ribadu had contested election for governor of Adamawa, his home state, in the 2015 governorship elections on the platform of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP. That was vintage Magu. He is a no-nonsense investigator who is ready to step on toes, however sensitive they are, to wage the anti-corruption war.
To many, the so-called report of the DSS is nothing than an attempt to rubbish Magu by calling a dog a bad name to hang it. This is because that report has largely turned out to be a figment of the imagination of the authors. Therefore, Magu’s rejection by the Senate is nothing more than a carefully orchestrated scheme by those who are afraid of him becoming substantive chairman of the EFCC. Within this group of scare-mongers are prominent senators, past and serving governors, chief executives of parastatals, agencies and blue-chip companies who believe that the fear of Magu is the beginning of wisdom.
A pertinent question is: “Why would a government appointee, in this case, Lawal Daura, the head of the DSS, write such a damaging report on a government nominee? Certainly, there is more to this rejection than meets the eye. What this means is that all is not well with Buhari and his anti-corruption war. If the President is really committed to fighting the endemic corruption that has eaten deep into the fabric of the nation, it is obviously a man like Magu that the president needs to wage the war to a conclusive conclusion. Now, the same president is sitting back while his government’s nominee is being slandered and rubbished by those who are afraid of their shadows.
The blackmail in the Senate over this confirmation issue is like “if you confirm Magu, be prepared to go to jail”. This is simply because some of those who are standing against the confirmation are Nigerians who are known to be neck-deep as instigators of the misfortune that has ruined the country and continues to threaten Nigerians like the Ebola virus. Magu’s case symbolises the frustration, agony and anguish of being a rare upright person in a country that is seriously infested and bedevilled by corrupt, evil and satanic-minded individuals.
May God deliver us from the iron grip of vampires and wolves, masquerading as our leaders!

Recently, the Department of State Security, DSS, carried out unprecedented arrests of some judges of superior courts in the country. This Gestapo-style operation attracted both uproar and applauds, but the question nobody is asking is: To what end?
Subsequent releases of correspondence between the DSS and the National Judicial Council, NJC, prior to the arrests, show that the NJC was aware of the DSS’ investigation into some judges and had taken steps in the preceding months, pursuant to petitions and notice from the DSS. Those steps culminated in the recommendation of, at least, one of the judges for compulsory retirement, even before the raids. Apparently, not being satisfied and irritated by the NJC’s insistence on procedure, the DSS or whoever was pulling the strings behind the scenes, jumped the gun and moved to recover some sums of money.
The reaction of the NJC to the arrests should not come as a surprise to anyone, as the judiciary was practically under siege in the hours it took to complete that operation. Even from an objective standpoint, the lack of sensitivity and the brashness of the action is clear; there were far better approaches to dealing with the issue if, indeed, it was an honest effort at unearthing judicial wantonness and corruption at the highest level.
The only result of the action of the DSS now is that it has played into the media’s appetite for sensationalism at the cost of rubbishing the independence of the judiciary. It has further injured public confidence in the court system and most regrettably, it has put the judiciary on the defensive. This could have been avoided if the DSS had continued to work with the NJC to find diplomatic ways to respond to perceived resistance. Furthermore, an understanding of the workings of the judiciary as an entire arm of government and not a mere agency, for instance, would have benefited the architects of the raid.
Departing from the extensive arguments that have been made on far lesser issues of concern at this time such as when arrests can be made and under what law, the question of why the DSS has become an anti-corruption agency needs to be addressed. At a time when oil pipelines are being destroyed, costing us huge revenue we can scarcely spare and the single Boko Haram threat has become a double threat under two factions, this is hardly a DSS priority.
According to Section 2 (3) of the Security Agencies Act, CAP N74, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, the aim of the DSS is the prevention and detection of crimes against the internal security of the country as well as protection of non-military classified matters concerning the internal security of the country. Therefore, arresting judges for acts that are purported to have been concluded and in relation only to personal financial matters at the point of arrest, cannot fall under this description. While sub-section (3) (c) of that section puts the DSS under the direction of the National Assembly or President, it must also relate to national security; and of a pressing nature, one would imagine.
Nigerians are aware that sections of the judiciary have been compromised and that there is need to clean up what should be a most revered arm of government. Just a few weeks before the DSS raids, this column ran a series on the rot in the judiciary, emphasising the corrupting influence of money bags, many of whom are members of the executive and legislature, on the integrity of judges and on justice in our courts. In the third and final instalment of that series, particular warning was given about refraining from adopting gung-ho tactics in fighting corruption within the judiciary. Using the law against the interpreters of the law, especially at the highest level, is a delicate matter that should not be approached rashly; but alas, this is exactly what the DSS has done.
After the raids, the DSS released a list of sums of money recovered, like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, usually does. What it did not tell us categorically is where the monies came from, who the bribing parties were, when or how the bribe took place and all that. All it has told us is that it found money in the home of judges, which, by itself, is not a crime. There is no crime in any law called ‘corruption’. Corruption is merely a moral slant that can lead to committing a financial crime, for instance, and crimes need to be proven.
To prove money laundering or bribery, more fact and evidence is needed than just the fact that money was found in judges’ houses. In 2012, the same security agency, operating then as the State Security Service, obtained video and audio of bribery taking place in real time and handed it to the EFCC as it was a financial matter. Surely, we all remember Farouk Lawan’s case, but that is a discussion for another day. Now that the DSS has constituted itself into a ‘financial misconduct bureau’, will it also try and convict the judges?
The argument of the NJC is not without merit. The DSS and in fact, any agency should not willy-nilly invite sitting judges at their whim and cast aspersions on their integrity without very good cause and without going through proper channels. Petitions are filed indiscriminately and if a judge is to report to any and all government agencies that get a petition, then no court will ever sit. If the NJC, constituted of the best legal minds in the land, does not find merit to a petition, it behoves upon an agency to gather more facts that will be enough for the council to take action so he/she can be fully available for investigation and possible prosecution without casting aspersion on the sanctity of the judiciary. Notably, the NJC never questioned the investigation by the DSS and not some more suited agency.
Mind you, the arrested judges will be taken to the same courts whose heads constitute the NJC and if there is no more substance than is already available at present, then the result will be the same, except if the DSS and the presidency plan to try the arrested judges in Ghana, which was referred to in a “Presidential Legal Review” rebutting the NJC reaction. It will then mean that the eroding of our democracy, the piercing of the sanctity of the judiciary and the ridicule of government processes in the court of public opinion would have been in vain.
If the presidency really wanted to emulate more advanced democracies, it ought to know that to prosecute a person who has mastery of the law, one needs to be clinical and it is best to catch them in the act and only move at a point where there is no more room for denial. In the same “Presidential Legal Review”, it cited the cases of arrest of judges in the US and other countries saying it is nothing new. Willie Singletary, a former Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge in the US was arrested in 2013 after a video of him demanding bribe was obtained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, – a meticulous sting operation for a judge of such a low court. Already, Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, has written to the CJN claiming money was planted in his house and if a justice of the Supreme Court already has a defence, given the shoddy nature of this operation, one can only imagine the outcome of trial.
Painted in any light, the DSS has set a bad precedent that is leading to chaos in the court rooms. Already, indiscriminate petitions against judges are being forwarded to the DSS on a daily basis in its ‘surplus role’ as an anti-corruption agency and judges are recusing themselves based on this fact alone, with good reason. The sooner these consequences sink in, the better for President Muhammadu Buhari and his errant minions.