The Nation Newspaper

Category: Natural Health

  • June 12 Honours…knocks on Bayo Onanuga and Co, Alex Ibru (4)

    June 12 Honours…knocks on Bayo Onanuga and Co, Alex Ibru (4)

    The fourth instalment of this series was written along with the third, but was not published immediately after it because other questions which demanded equal and urgent attention came up. I thought it would appear only on my FACEBOOK page (at John Olufemi Kusa). For two reasons, I decided to conclude it on this page. First, some readers of this column who are not FACEBOOK patrons requested a print copy. The other is the reply to the series by Mr Kingsley Osadolor, Editor of The Guardian on Sunday, before I took my bow from The Guardian newspapers.

    When I was advised by the editorial staff of The Nation newspaper to expect Mr Osadolor’s rejoinder, I replied that he had a right of reply. I had been examining criticisms of President Bola Tinubu’s 12 June 2025 Democracy Day Awards. Many critical radio stations in Lagos spiked the awards in respect of the journalists I mentioned in the headline.

     In other informed circles, there was a division about Mr Alex Ibru. I tried to argue in his favour and reflect the divide.

     I was an insider at the Guardian, and, so, can speak about the roles I thought each person played to deserve or to not deserve the awards.

    KINGSLEY OSADOLOR

    He was a voracious reader like Mr. Debo Adesina, Deputy Editor (News) on the daily title, The Guardian and Greg Obong-Oshotse, à founding reporter. However, his penchant for uncouth language still hangs about him like weighty dross, as can be seen even in a simple rejoinder.

     Wasn’t this why he needed to be well supervised as editor?

    My presentations addressed SERIOUS QUESTIONS, which he avoided. Some of those questions were. ( 1) Did The Guardian newspaper back out against the fight for democracy after publisher ALEX Ibru joined the cabinet of despot Gen. Sani Abacha?

    (2)Under pressure from publisher Alex Ibru, did the Editors of The Guardian, led by him, go to Abuja to beg Abacha to forgive them for opposing his government and reopen the newspaper? In other words, did they bow to tyranny?

    3). Was it the front page publication by editor Kingsley Osadolor titled INSIDE ASO ROCK which he did not present to Director of Publications/Editor-in-Chief Femi Kusa for vetting which was the last straw which broke the camel’s back in Abacha’s tolerance of The Guàrdian’s opposition?

    4) If it was not this publication which càused the trouble, às editor Kingsley Osàdolor tried to make us believe in his rejoinder to the àssertion that it was, Why did he flee his home and go into hiding within a few minutes of being informed by personnel from the company’s security department that government security agents hàd taken over the company premises? If we did not know why Abacha shut The Guardian, why did Mr Osadolor go into hiding? While escaping, why did he not stop over at my residence which was about 50 meters away from his on a straight line to inform his boss, as , about what had happened? Mr Osadolor’s rejoinder gave rise to other important questions which I will address in earnest.

    Read Also: Court restores EFCC’s interim forfeiture order on Yahaya Bello’s ‘properties’

    Rather than address these questions, he went for THE PERSON, like the snake which attacks the hand which lifts its lair to expose it. What have the remarks of Emeka Izeze, Wole Agunbiade and Ogbuàgu about me got to do with the questions being unravelled?

    THE GOSSIP MILL

    Mr Osadolor gave the impression that they all often gossiped about their Editor-in-Chief.

    His intent was to paint the latter as an incompetent laughing stock. I would like to remove Mr Emeka Izeze from the gossip matrix, because he wàs, and I believe he still is, a pastor of the Deeper Life Church and, as such, should know what The Bible says about gossips and idolaters since, as a pastor, his dream is to become an inheritor of paradise after earth-life. In my view, therefore, he would not deliberately get involved in gossip as Mr Osadolor suggested. I am aware there is no leader on this earth who is not an object of gossip by rustic subordinates.

     The Guardian was filled with persons who were still at the level of gossip in their earth lives.

     I was near the News Editor’s office one day when someone in the newsroom said something about a prominent member of the Editorial Board in relation to Professor Wole Soyinka.

    Next day, the object of the gossip came to me to say he had heard what I said about him. My reply was that I was beyond such things. I could give up the speaker, but I declined to, because he would be devoured.

    When Chief Rotimi Williams was speculated dead, I invited Political Editor Akpo Esajere to my office. With two other reporters and a photographer he was to go to the home of Chief Williams under whose love and support Mr Alex Ibru grew up. Chief Williams was, through this fatherly relationship, our legal adviser at no cost to us. As speculations could be untrue, I instructed Mr Esajere to not frontally enter into the assignment. He was to park the pool car outside the gate of Chief William’s house.

    Thereafter, he was to go in to greet papa and tell him he was driving by and couldn’t pass by the king’s palace and not drop in to say “kabiyesi”. That was if he found him hail and hearty. If the old man was still on his feet, Mr Esajere was to do an interview with him not related to health for publication next day to defuse the speculation. If the matter was on the other side, he was to employ his free will and act professionally. Happily, Chief Williams was on his feet. What happened after?

    Some gossips telephoned Mrs Maiden Ibru, wife of Mr Alex Ibru, that I had upset the family of Chief Williams by breaking to him speculations in town about his health. Mrs Ibru informed her husband. Which wife would not? Mr Alex Ibru was furious. Who in his shoes would not? He spoke roughly and angrily with me. I asked Mr Esajere to explain to Mr Alex Ibru what happened.

     THE DUST SETTLED.

    This is where the conveyance of assignments through memos bring benefits. I hope Mr Osadolor is better educated about the memos his rejoinder accused me of writing when I could easily have verbally conveyed instructions.

    I will expand on this soon. Before then, please permit that I cite another example of unwholesome gossip which Mr Osadolor eulogised.

    One day, Mr Alex Ibru called me to his office to tell me the Ibos said I disliked them. I had just returned from Abeokuta where I had a meeting with the Managing Director of Ogun State Property and Investment Company (OPIC) in respect of land I was encouraging our reporters to purchase at OPIC Isheri North Estate through passbook savings account.

    I had about 14 passbooks in my French suit inner pockets. I brought out those passbooks and about nine of them belonged to Ibos. Silence fell.

    All he told me was that I should be more careful with my people. I learned later that the lie was fomented by a young Ibo woman whose life and her uncle-in- law’s I had saved from the Buhari-Idiagbon military junta by refusing in detention to disclose her as the source of the information which landed Mr Tunde Thompson, our Diplomatic Correspondent and Mr Nduka Iràbor, assistant news editor in jail for one year. The appeal I will like to make to Mr. Osadolor in respect of gossip in any work place is that while children will behave like children, elders should behave like elders. I know that many elders, irrespective of this Yoruba admonition, will ever behave like children. This is because their egos had not grown to become child-like but were still childish and there is a great difference between childlikeness and childishness.

    I do not gossip since I knew about the spiritual dangers of gossip which I may touch upon if space permits. Were I to be a gossip, Mr Lade Bonuola could have gossiped to me that my appointment as Editor of The Guardian in succession to him was on the way. It was announced at the gala party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Guardian. I was not there, but working in the office, as Deputy Editor, to co-ordinate running copies from the event for publication next day. Suddenly, my eyes fell on a copy announcing me as the new editor. I thought a mistake had been made and immediately put a reporter in a pool car to tell Mr Bonuola so at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. He sent me a confirmatory note which he signed and he returned to the office soon after.

    It was not in 1983 when The Guardian came into being that subordinates anywhere on earth began to gossip about their bosses. So, I should not be surprised if Mr. Osadolor and other subordinates of mine gossiped about me. Are all gossips true? If I may help his case with more gossip, I once led editors to a Nigerian Guild of Editors conference in Abuja. We could not easily find an aircraft to bring us back to Lagos. Our travel cash was running out. Many of us relocated to my room, to reduce hotel cost. When we returned and they cleared their travel loans, some of them made claims for the days they slept in my room. If I approved them simply because they were editors, would I not be guilty of complicity? Of course, I did the right thing, and they were unhappy. Should I expect them to not gossip about me or be frightened of their gossip? Mr. Osadolor may also like to hear this about Mr Izeze when he was editor and I was his Editor-in-Chief. We had complaints from Abeokuta by the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Ogun State that our correspondent there converted to personal use monies sourced from certain individuals for the welfare of their group. I forwarded the petition to Mr. Izeze. What did our books suggest? Anyone whose hands were soiled by such things had to go. Mr. Izeze recommended he be brought to Lagos for some time. I could overrule him, but I decided to not. A few months later, this reporter returned to Abeokuta. Weeks or so later, he was murdered at night in the house he built. Mr. Izeze and I saw his blood everywhere. We attended his funeral in Ibadan. The wailing of his extended family members touched me. I do not know how Mr. Izeze felt. Could Tunde Oladepo’s life not have been saved if he was dismissed as our books said? If I overruled Mr. Izeze, it would be said I was not allowing editors breathing space or enough leg room in matters which concerned their staff. Mr. Oladepo himself may end up giving me a bad name.

    Mr. Osadolor cannot say he was unaware of latter day ethnic politics at The Guardian from which some persons profited.

    ETHNIC PRESSURES

    I do not know if he was aware that Mr. Andy Akporugo whipped up Edo/Delta/Uhrobo sentiments against Ibos and Yorubas and trapped Mr. Alex Ibru into his game plan. When Dr. Stanley Macebuh, as Managing Director, had troubles with Mr. Alex Ibru and the board decided that he was importing and selling sugar, an activity considered to be “divided loyalty” in management, was this not thrown up as a Yoruba manipulation which knocked Ibo and Yoruba heads? Mr. Osadolor should salute the candour of his Editor-in-Chief who protected him and some other newsroom staff who, without an approval by the company, enrolled for the study of law at the University of Lagos. For three or four years, I covered their tracts. I did the same for proof readers and even approved study leave with pay for two of them . In my office, Gbenga George and the secretary will not forget this generosity. Gbenga was office assistant. Both were part time students of the Yaba College of Technology! I digressed to remind Mr. Osadolor that he had a prejudiced opinion of Mr. Femi Kusa, his Editor-in-Chief.

    IZEZE AND OSADOLOR

    I suspect where the prejudice is coming from. Mr. Alex Ibru wanted me to make Mr. Osadolor my successor as Editor of the daily title as I moved from the office of the Editor to that of the Director of Publications/Editor-in-Chief in succession to Mr. Lade Bonuola who became Managing Director in succession to Dr. Stanley Macebuh, who had to go in view of the sugar importation crisis. Mr. Ibru wanted me to recommend Mr. Osadolor as Editor. I did not know he has discussed it with Mr. Lade Bonuola whose opinion I did not know. Mr. Osadolor was from Edo State and that suited Mr. Akporugo’s politics more than Mr. Izeze, who was an Ibo. I believe Mr. Osadolor joined our system from African Guardian magazine run by Mr. Akporugo and which Mr. Ibru disbanded when it became a drain pipe on the finances of The Guardian. Mr. Ibru persuaded me to accept Mr. Osadolor as Deputy Editor to me before this time. He spoke glowingly about Mr. Osadolor, especially in view of his first class degree from the university, about which Mr. Osadolor always referred, whenever his attention was invited to a misjudgement on his part. As I always informed him in the memos he mentioned as detested by him, he forgot that some other persons, too, were first class materials. I informed him in writing, a university degree was a mere promise of ability, and that what constituted ability in the work place were EFFICIENCY and EFFECTIVENESS. These perspectives are taught, in a responsible master’s degree programme in business studies.

    Back to the MAKING OF EMEKA IZEZE EDITOR OF THE GUARDIAN. At that time my recommendation to Mr. Ibru counted more than that of Mr. Akporugo. Simply, I told Mr. Alex Ibru we had just had a rumpus and Ibo staff exit over Dr. Macebuh’s forced retirement. In the British tradition of newspapering which we adopted in Nigeria, the Editor of the Sunday title became the Editor of the Daily Title and the Deputy Editor of the daily title became the Editor of the Sunday title. This progression was disturbed in The Daily Times, and it led to its destabilisation. Mr. Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Editor of the Sunday title, had hoped to become Editor of the daily title when Chief Areoye Oyebola was dramatically removed as Editor and Mr Segun Osoba (as he then was), from outside that progression, succeeded Mr. Oyebola in August 1975 and was himself succeeded by Tony Momoh four months later. Alhaji Jose removed Mr. Oyebola from office because, as Editor, he failed to come to the office on the heels of a military coup to produce his paper. Mr. Osoba went to Alhaji Jose’s house to bring him to the office and, together, they produced the newspaper for some days. Alhaji Jose bypassed Mr. Gbolabo Ogunsanwo as well because he did not come to the office as he thought the events belonged to not the Sunday title but the daily. If my memory serves me right, the Deputy Editor of the daily title who should have become the Editor of the Sunday title became, instead, Editor of the daily title by way of double promotion. Hell was let loose, as it were, in the Daily Times, paving the way for General Olusegun Obaasnjo, then Head of State, to forcibly acquire 60 percent of the shares of the newspaper on behalf of the government.

    I told Mr Alex Ibru journalists know themselves. If they could rebel against Alhaji Babatunde Jose, a fellow journalist who was chairman of the Board and the Managing Director as well, who was Mr. Alex Ibru? Ibos left The Guardian with Dr. Stanley Macebuh. By our structure, Mr. Emeka Izeze, an Ibo, was senior to Mr. Kingsley Osadolor from Benin. If Mr. Emeka Izeze was bypassed and Mr. Osadolor was implanted, would this not be another bad signal to the Ibos?

    Mr. Alex Ibru agreed. Mr. Izeze became Editor of the daily title, and Mr. Akporugo and his ethnic jingoists lost out. I salute the courage of a member of his auxiliary troops once again. I did when he opened up to me recently, seeking forgiveness. I did not realise our problems in the newsroom often ended in the inner chambers of some native doctors! When I doubted the rendition, he confirmed that he was recruited to be the driver of the lead man who was seeking extra terrestrial powers. It was then I realised Mr. Alex Ibru could have been under a spell! I say “could”, because during our heated last telephone conversation when he spoke to each of us directors of the company, he kept shouting that he never asked Mr. Akporugo to set one ethnic group after another.

    •To be continued.

  • Energy Medicine: four thieves who can steal your psychic power (1)

    Energy Medicine: four thieves who can steal your psychic power (1)

    If you always feel run down, de-energised, and oversleep, and energy drinks, nutrition, herbs, and roots are not helping, the people who are often around you or on your mind may be draining your energy without you or them realising it! Armed  with this understanding in the 1990s, I remembered the case of one of my editors in the 1970s. His wife fell ill whenever they lived together. He would send her home for a cure by the native doctor. On the way, her symptoms will disappear! No one had a clue about what was happening. Not even the smart Princess Remi Gbadebo, from the  royal court of the Alake of Egbaland who was our office secretary. By 1990 when I read Celestine prophesy by  James Redfield, I had an idea: the radiations of my Editor and of his wife may not have been complimentary, supportive of each other, but antagonistic, one overwhelming the other, perhaps even disintegrating it. Whoever has not had about human radiations, here is a hint. Everything  which exists, mineral, rocks, trees, rivers, oceans, germs,the sun, moon and stars, even humans, broadcast their existence  to everything else. Nothing is hidden from anything.

    Dr. Hulda Regehr Clark, in her  book ,The Cure For All Diseases, explains the implications of this phenomenon for disease and health. In disease, germs are at play. They broadcast their existence through their peculiar vibration or radiation which has a peculiar frequency. Dr Clark built a unique electronic device which can generate  a wide range of frequencies.  When the frequency of the germ is known, a counter frequency which can jam or destroy it is produce in the machine.  When a sufferer from this disease holds special cables from the machine which transmits this killer frequency,  the broadcast frequency of the germ will be destroyed,  the sufferer will regain his or her health. As a proof of her genuineness, Dr Clark gave  out designs secrets of the machine. A jealous and frightened mainstream medicine branded her a fraud and silence the invention. In today’s  AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, however, a new branch of medicine, energy medicine, is showing us that Dr Clark could be right, that we humans can also invade the psychic spaces of one another to steal energe from there, just as we hack into bank accounts to steal money.

    Everything exists as a voltage of energy. Our bodies are not exemptions. If we have no problem in bouncing about, it  is because their  energy is  vibrating as it should. When energy level drops in an organ,  it may go limp, cold and sick.

    In two other discussions on this page, I will try to lift one or more veils on the human sources of energy for their bodies, including colours and how to energise water at little or no cost to provide the various organs with more energy, live, a disease and  pain-free life as much as possible.

    JAMES REDFIELD

    Wherever he is, he deserves our gratitude. In his CELESTINE PROPHESY which predicted the AGE OF ROBOTICS and ARTIFICIAL INTELLECT as successors of the POST-INDUSTRIAL AGE, Redfield classified all of us humans into four different behavioural groups in terms of how we stock up our energy levels by deliberately or inadvertently STEALING ENERGY from ourselves. These groupings are

    1. Intimidiator,

    2. Inquisitor,

    3. Aloof, and

    4. Poor me.

    These classifications are SYNDROMES, or what we  may term”characteristic” or “second nature”. Some people fall into more than one group. Many do not even realise they are hacking other persons down for their energy. In other words, they are ENERGY THIEVES without realising it. The persons energy is stolen from realise, but cannot explain it, that they always feel weak whenever they relate with certain persons.

    Intimidator

    This person is garrulous, and may resort to violence to subdue another person.  Have  the herdsmen who bear AK-47 rifles not intimidating  Benue State peoples?

    Intimidators steal your energy and, inwardly, you crumble before them, de-energised. You can find them among  husbands and wives, siblings, bosses and subordinates, friends, teachers and students, unionist e.t.c. Today’s coalition politicians probably have something in common. ..they are probably intimidators who cannot intimidate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, fell out with him, have ganged up to unseat him and, if they do,may end up consuming themselves!

    Inquisitors

    Intimidators may also be inquisitors. Inquisitors find fault in whatever you do, to demean you, to make you feel you are good for nothing, to make you fear him and tremble before even his billboard image. Peter Obi is such a person. Inquisitors are not necessarily better than you are. In fact, they recognise your superiority and are merely envious of you and trying to make you lose confidence in yourself. In this regard,inquisitors  are unbalanced  people. A balanced person  will recognise that there  is  no perfect human being on earth. He or she does not condemn. There is or there are reasons why some-one does something. The balanced person salutes these persons and builds up  on them to persuade balanced persons that he has superior  cutting edge on the subject. Peter Obi does not do this. For  example, he condemned outright the President’s recent State visit to St. Lucia. For the convenience of Oppositions politics, he forgot that a door was being opened,  and that his OBIDENT folks would be the first people to invade that country for  business, to bring to Nigeria St. Lucia’s used motor vehicle tyres,second hand brassieres and undies, tooth brushes, bed sheets and clothes, among other consumables. Recently, also, Peter Obi  expressed intimidation and inquisition in his public utterances on the demolition of the property of one of his brothers at the GRA Housing Estate in Ikeja, Lagos. This set his Obident followers on a verbal rampage against not only the government of Lagos State but the Aborigines of South-Western Nigeria as well. Information Commissioner Gbenga Omotoso displayed better candour than Peter Obi, an aspirant for the Office of President, in his  calmer response to this question. On the other side of the coin, Barrister Darlington, hosted  as news analyst by Esther on Voice of  The People FM radio station in Lagos, was busy  inflaming passions that may  trigger an ethnic disturbances. On  July 03, 2025, there were similar remarks on this radio station and its sister station, NIGERIA INFO. On the latter there were such comments as Namibia will bea child’s play. On VOP, one commentator backed Darlington, saying “No country survives  two civil wars”. Against this background was the mention by a book writer and another analyst and titled 100 YEARS OF THE AMALGAMATION: WHAT HOPE FOR THE IBOS? I believe the Nigerian telecommunications watchdog does not have enough capacity to monitor such radio stations which may disturb  and push Nigeria’s delicate peace among the tribes over the  cliff through  intimidation and inquisition aimed  at galvanising  backers of their principal for the 2027 General Elections. In doing this, they do not recognise that a people intimidated on its own soil may roar, a lesson 1966 should have taught us all.

     Aloof

    This person is dangerous. He or she feigns spineless or a lack of understanding or of existential questions, or the capacity to deal with them. In indulgent love and pity, other persons rush to his or her aid. You will be shocked, however, about what you  would discover. The aloof person is a bottomless pit or  leaking basket. Whatever energy you sink into energising him or her to come upstream is never effective. It drains, rather into a pounch. In the end, you will discover you have been a slaveto this person. They abound in families. Imagine carrying on your  shoulders a sibling from the age of 18. You slaved for him or her in marriage, sent his or her children to school and,  taking a cue  from their progenitor, these children  are striving to make you  their slave and a slave of  their  children as well. What we experience in individuals, we experience also in peoples, tribes and nations. If you seriously study the subject GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE OF NIGERIA, you should easily discover who has  been carrying whom on their shoulders, and you should also  appreciate why the coalition of Opposition politicians has to come into being . When Mr Alex Ibru, Chairman and Publisher of the Guardian newspaper was shot by agents of Gen. Sanni Abacha and  he had to recuperate in England and I went to see him, he pointed out to me  from his car the home of one of the today’s Coalition leaders  in Kingston, a neighbourhood where celebrates lived. This fellow also had GULF COURSE there! He was a Minister in Nigeria. There was a young man I knew like the back of my palm  who was the Managing  Director  of a company  owned by the Honourable Minister. This acquaintance of mine once sat before this gentleman who chaired  his Ministry’s Tenders Board Committee for contracts his company bade for!  His company won the contract! Watch them… many of them are from some parts of the country which have been draining  other parts of the country since 1914… For 111 years  running!

    Read Also: New dawn for Nigeria’s secret police

    Poor me

    This fellow  is the underdog in the society. Parents protect younger children against bullying elder siblings. We are enraged when we sight soldiers beating civilian. Even in cases where they are in the wrong , we  tend to  pity and support the underdog. Thus, they are many persons who feign  or pray on their underdog status to drain   us off psychic, physical or financial energy in support of them.There are cases when some siblings throw up their alms in despair, claiming economic difficulty for inability to pay school fees or to adequately feed their families or  meet extended  family obligations and let other siblings pick the bills for them, whereas they may even more buoyant than the persons they have made their slaves.

    In  River State, Governor Similaiye inti Fubarah played the underdog in his  struggles for power against predecessor  and god father Nyeson Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory who is seen by many persons as an intimidator and an inquisitor. Wike’s  personality is so vibrant you cannot classify  him as  aloof or poor  me. Fubarah  allowing himself to be  goaded by haters of intimidation, did not permit himself to learn and to benefit from at least two lessons of proverb. In  the first proverb, history says:” a man does not remove both legs from a pair of trousers at the same time while he is standing”. The second is the  1962 Action Group( AG) political party crisis in the Western Region of Nigeria in which succeeding Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola sought to immediately efface the face and tracks of predecessor and mentor Obafemi Awolowo. The crisis caused political turmoil and such as interest, led to the  state declaration of EMERGENCY suspension of the elected  government, imposition of an administrator, the first military coup in Nigeria, Ibo killings in the Northern Region, declaration of the Independent State of BIAFRA by the Eastern Region , the Nigerian  Civil War(1966-70)…and where Nigeria and Nigerians still stand today, the forms of events changed but the contents remain constant. Fubarah may have capitulated, but I doubt if he is out, because the human FREE WILL never summit. It only steps aside under pressure!  Meanwhile, Wike is making himself and President Tinubu underdog in the unfolding coalition politics to gain our favour and sympathy, and he is already scoring high points in this. PETER OBI criticises President Tinubu for criticism sake, in  my view. He did when Wike said he spent N39 billion to renovate the International Conference Centre, ( ICC)in Abuja, which he named BOLA AHMED TINUBU INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTER. Peter Obi enjoyed applause from  the opposition for standing up against the President and Wike. Now,Wike has told us that, before the renovation, the ICC earned only N50 million every year but in only three months since the renovation it  has earned  700 million naira. That means that, in only three months,the Center has earned what it had  earned in 14 long years. This is praiseworthy.  Peter Obi had no comments. It  teaches me a story about Peter Obi, who is marketed by  his Obidient movement as having saved plenty of money in  the bank for Anambra State when he was  governor. Inadvertently, could he not have merely enriched civil servants who may have  earned handsome   commissions in finder’s fee  from the banks? How did the savings help Anambra State to grow? In Lagos, Bola Tinubu, as governor and as Wike in Abuja spent money to make Lagos to grow. Today, one plot of land in the visionary smart Atlantic city is going for about N2 billion. What in Anambra State of Peter Obi compares with this? Metro trains are running in Lagos because Lagos is spending and not saving money. Peter Obi did not give Anambra a seaport which it seriously needs.And that is why there are many people from Anambra State in the greener pastures of Lagos today! Couldn’t the money Peter Obi saved  have been joined to other funds to build a Second Niger Bridge when the old bridge was causing nightmares for travellers across the River Niger?  It makes sense, in my view, to spend money to earn much more money. However, it takes  the person who knows about how to spend money to earn much, more money to spend money. Keeping money in the bank is borrowing to it every day, if not stupid. In 1985, I bought a plot of land in Agbara, near Lagos,for N7,200 to build a house. That land is worth more than N30 million today. If I kept the money in the bank, saluting it every morning in the stupid notion that I was a rich man, rather than spending it on a more profitable errand, would I be able to buy the same plot of land today for N7,200? Also, I bought another piece of land for about 420,000 Naira in Lagos about 25 years ago. Speculators now sell this size of land in the area today for about N100 million. Attacking good money managers to upgrade the image of money savers who do not understand money or put it to good use  is a mere political game . Ultimately, it would make an underdog of the good money spender  in the  minds of deep thinkers. That is why the profile of Tinubu and Wike  may have been rising recently. The OBEDIENT movement may cause Peter Obi vote losses in the end. Despite the artificial intelligence(AI)war on Tinubu during the 2023 election campaigns, he won the polls. I wondered why he did not give up after Rauf Aregbesola said on air that Tinubu was suffering from  urinary incontinence and WETTING his clothes.Who would not believe it? Rauf could enter Tinubu’s bedroom without invitation if Mrs Tinubu was beside her husband. That was  how close they were. I called DELE ALAKE, another Tinubu close Ally to suggest that his principal give way to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. ALAKE said nothing was wrong with Bola Tinubu. Apparently, Tinubu managers did not expect OBEDIENT movement  to be hitting below the belt. Then,GODWIN EMEFIELE came up with the Central Bank cash squeeze on the economy and OBEDIENT were asking South -Easterners to bear it because “it is in our interest”. Then, President Mohammadu Buhari, helped by Bola Tinubu to power for eight years, stood beside his party Presidential candidate and his potential successor at campaign grounds encouraging every-one to “VOTE FOR YOUR CONSCIENCE”, a veiled endorsement of fellow kinsman Atiku Abubakar. Then, Bola Tinubu opened his mouth at Abeokuta campaign to say…current petroleum scarcity was targeted at his party and himself. Even at the Bauchi Stadium, did the microphone system not fail after President Buhari had addressed the rally and Bola Tinubu was to take his turn? These events made him an underdog in the hearts of Yoruba fence sitters who throw  their votes behind him. Peter Obi trying to cut the underdog image with his persistent statements that he won the 2023 Presidential election but was denied  the Victory, must probably because he is Ibo. In the days of Gani Fawehimmi, he would have been sued to court to say if the JUDICARY RIGGED THE POLLS AGAINST HIM. Peter Obi has succeeded in making South-Eastern voters  see him as an underdog who must be defended at any cost.

    POOR ME characters by design drain their sympathisers of energy. I cannot forget the OBEDIENT man who was brought-out of an AIR PEACE aircraft  few  days before Bola Ahmed  Tinubu was to be sworn in as President.  He was saying to the passengers something like…ALL OF YOU ARE HERE AND TINUBU WOULD BE SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT! Obviously, he was in depression, his energy drained up by Peter Obi’s POOR ME SYNDROME. What did he expect his fellow passengers to do? Was he expecting the  killings of  non OBEDIENT? Does Peter Obi  remember him? The outcome  of the 1979 Presidential election almost crippled my sense of balance. 

    •To be continued .

  • Weak President, strong Governors-General, 2027 peace formula

    Weak President, strong Governors-General, 2027 peace formula

    I will call a spade a spade, and not tell you a  dog is a monkey… Nigeria’s major tribes and their traditional allies are warming up for what in 2027 may  become the country’s most dangerous general elections.As usual, the aim is to politically conquer the opponent tribe and its  allies, economically subdue them and territorially absorb them. If we are not careful, Nigeria may  go the way some  countries have gone whose form and content of politics were like ours. That is why this column, after traveling on memory lanes, would like to make widow’s mite contributions to  on-going reviews of the 1999 Constitution. Some of the suggestions are that

    • An office of Govenor-General be created in each of the six geo-political regions. In the First Republic, each of the three regions had a ceremonial Governor and an Executive Premier who  was in charge of Government business. The Office of Governor-General now proposed is an Executive Office.

    • Each geopolitical region become semi independent, controlling its resources,  paying tax on their exploitation and contributing money toward maintenance of the Federal Government

    •In other words, the Federal Government will be made financially dependent on the regions and  financially unpalatable for ethnic jingoists who have always sort to capture it  and terrorise and minimise other tribes with its abundant resources.

    • If the constitution favours these suggestions, and the table turns against Federal power in favour of Regional might, national political tensions may disappear and risk of another civil war  or a break up of the country may be reduced.

    Let us not deceive ourselves… no-one  can dissolve the tribes. We did not create ourselves ,our tribes, the Earth and the Universe. The  creative will of the Almighty Creator created them all  for a spiritual purpose. We  hear always that The Sower went to sow. What he sowed were human seed grains. Some fell by the way side, some among thorns, others on rocky land  and more, still, on fertile soil. We belong to whichever our tribes are because, in His Infinite Wisdom,  that is the right soil for our spiritual purpose. Our nature determined on which soil  we were sown. We were sown as spirit seed grains to sprout, germinate, flower and fruit, growing from subconscious existence to self consciousness and, finally, to human spirit beings, the state in  which we can return to Paradise!. As an aside, this is saying not everyone in outward human form is a human being . The human being is that person whose innermost kernel has involved from spirit seed germ into the human form.Thus, all tribes of humanity are in various stages of inner maturity and should not mix, otherwise, the wolves would live with the sheep, the ruffians with the cultured! I raised animals, but not

    rabbits and cats together. That was what Lord Lugard, as Governor-General in 1914, did with the unification of about 250 tribes in a geographic space his mistress called Nigeria!

    Everywhere on earth, the tribes are not meant to mix, although they may interact. However, against  the  creative will of The Almighty  Creator, the presumption of man  that he is wiser than God and Nature, and his greed for earthly possessions have  misled him  to believe he can create a hybrid nation of dis-similar   tribe into harmonious, tranquil  homogeneous nation. In Europe, one tribe fell upon another for its resources or to impose its economy and culture. After 30 years of blood birth, they signed  on October 24, 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia which recognised sovereignty and foreign trade. Even then, the dis-similar tribes not  co-habit under  pain in emergent-nation states? They sometimes   free themselves at great cost.  The Soviet Union disolved. Ukraine and Russia are still at war. The Irish Republican  Army ( IRA) terrorised the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for some decades. Two times recently,  Scotland tried  but marginally  failed electorally to quit the union. Senegal and Gambia  quite SENEGAMBIA. The Sudan broke into two. India broke into  Pakistan (1948) Pakistan later into West Pakistan and   Bangladesh. Ethiopia broke into Eritrea and Tigris. Somalia fought a tribal genocidal war.On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into Czech Republic now called ( Czechia)and Slovakia. Iron- fist ruler President Tito held disparate Czechoslovakia together for what seems like eternity.  On  May 4, 1980, he passed, and Yugoslavia errupted into several  ethnic wars which, between 1990 and 2000s, yieded the fellowing countries… Slovenia,Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,Serbia, Montenegro, North Mecedonia and Kosovo which broke from Serbia in 2008.  Nigeria  fought a tribal civil war between 1967 and 1970.

    What I am trying to say in calling a spade a spade, and in not disguising a dog as monkey, is that any country which is not composed  in accordance with the laws of Nature is a false entity and, like every falsehood in creation, is doomed to collapse unless it is adjusted to the unchanging WILL OF GOD.  One of the LAWS OF NATURE which teaches us of the WILL OF GOD constantly remains us that …BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER. Spiritual student  and scholars of Mother Nature call it THE LAW OF ATTRACTION OF HOMOGENEOUS SPECIES.  This Law ensures that the cells of your skin are homgeneous and different to the homgeneous cells of your brain, tongue, eyes, and bones e.t.c.  In a woman, endometrial cell  which lines the uterus must not be found any way else in her  body or she would suffer from a terrible bleeding disease known as ENDOMETRIOSIS. In like manner, this is why transplanted organs are rejected by the host body.

    Read Also: Zelenskyy proposes new round of peace talks with Russia

    2027 and beyond

    The 250 or more ethnic nationalities in Nigeria have been suffering in the hands of one another since 1914. They have fought a civil war. They have arrived at the point of distrusting one another and are approaching the threshold of hatred for one another. This was evidence in the 2023 General Elections, the dust and smoke of which the politicians have not allowed to settle  and are already dimming the 2027 General Elections, the aftermath of which no one can predict. It is in this regard that I make this column my window’s mite contributions towards on-going effort to give Nigeria a new Constitution.  I am persuaded that only observance of the Laws of Nature by the new Constitution can prevent a break off of the country in future. This observance  is about the structure of power and its location.

    Unfortunately, Lord Lugard in 1914  mixed the lions with the lambs.  We can change the structure without throwing the baby out with the bath water.  That is why I have suggested a regionalisation along the six geo-political zones as semi-dependent entities within the Nigerian Federation, each governed by a Governor-General who supritends governors in their Regions. These governors will no longer have direct access to the President as the Governors-General will be the interface between the Regions and that Office.

    Weak executive  President, strong Governors-General

    Thus,  I suggest drafters of the coming Constitution do away with a powerful Executive President,introduce a powerful Governor -General in each of the six geo-political  Regions, subordinate the governors  in each region to the executive  control of the respective Governor-General and make  local governments independent  of  governors. The constitution should make the presidency  less attractive, with its powers limited to only exclusive portfolios  such as Foreign Affairs, Currency, the Armed Forces, Customs, Immigration e.t.c. The  Presidency may be limited in the concurrent portfolios to only certain or minimum national standard every region is to achieve in such area as  education, health, housing, security, agriculture, sanitation e.t.c.

    The Governor- General should become the Chief Executive of a Region.  Governor in this Region  will report to him or her. The Governor- General and the Governors  will govern their Regions as an organic  unit of the Nigerian  Federation.  Each state will not be governed in isolation of the others,as is now done,  to encourage balanced development in the region. Politicians  in search of eldorado at the Federal level and who become demoralised and dangerous to the polity when they derail  may find the music can still play for them in their own Region.

    Each region will have  absolute control over its resources and pay tax to the Federal Government in respect of their exploitation. Each of the  six regions is big enough to be a country. Israel is only 8.3 million population, United Arab Emirates 9.3 million, Ukraine 44 million. Compare them with the following states in Nigeria which belong to different Region, each of which has no fewer than five or six states…Lagos State… 21.8 million,  Kano State… 16 million. Kaduna State… 13 million, Akwa Ibom State… 4 million, Kastina State… 8 million and Sokoto State.. 4 million. Thus, each region can stand better on its own than it now does if it is powered from within itself as an organic entity than when it is indulged, pampered or divided and ruled from outside of itself. It should , therefore, fend for itself and be self governing except in subjects exclusive  to the Federal Government. This should liberate the creative energy within the region and protect it against  suffocating indulgence of Federal  pampering or vicissitudes which, in many cases, has been spoon-feeding PAUL from resources stolen  from Peter Political tension will be  defused in the Federal corridors of power.

    The Governor-General may appoint half of the carbinet members of each state, while the Governor will appoint the other. The House of Assembly will confirm them. The governor of a state would be like the Deputy Governor-General in that state, implementing the regions programmes as they concern his or state. For example,  Lagos State in the South-West Region is known for developing rail transportation.  The Governor-General of the South -West Region, in agreement with Governors of the Region, may develop a rail transportation programme for the entire region which all the governors must fund. If there are states which cannot finance their share of the project, and Lagos State can take it up, Lagos State can own that share of the project, earn from it and pay rent on the land over which the rail tracks are lain. Already, this type of cooperation is happening underground. Lagos State is short of land for Agriculture, but it  has money for huge plantation farms which it is letting from other states on co-operative farming agreement. The Governor-General and the Governors of  a region, working together, will produce yearly  budget of the region and implement it. There will be other fine details of the law which cannot be addressed but through collective wisdom of the Constitution makers.

    The foregoing  ideas came to me in the light of firestorms which outcome of  the 2023 General Elections have been unable to consume and which have continued to wax stronger in readiness for the 2027 General Elections. My thoughts took me down memory lanes. The tribes clashed. The military sent the politicians away. The military convulsed and convulsed until a terrible civil war came upon the land after terrible tribal killings in the North.  The military reluctantly  gave way after the war, only to return to power and to again retreat from it. Each time they  had returned, their excuse had been that the politicians overheated the political  temperature, mismanaged the country, created poverty and caused bigger tribal divisions.

    FORMS change, but their contents hardly do. The Nigerian form has changed several times, but has the content on each changed?

    The Hausa- Fulani tribe  was trying to politically conquer other tribes, for self preservation. The Yorubas arguably the most advanced  by Western education standards was building an import- substitution economy which did not tolerate Hausa-Fulani Feudalism and mediocrity. The Ibos were boisterous in trade and commerce and most inclined toward an import economy. The Hausa-Fulani held the government to control the Yorubas and the Ibos.To dislodge the Hausa-Fulani from power, and Ibo led military coup backed by some Yoruba officers took place on January 16, 1966. Their plan was to kill  national politicians of all tribes and take over power to modernise the country and economy. Unfortunately, Ibo politicians were spared. The Hausa-Fulani retaliated with genocidal Ibo killings in the North. Ibos fled homeward  and declared a country, BIAFRA, independent of Nigeria.  A civil war followed in which hundreds of thousands of soldiers died on both sides. Ibos lost the war through tactical military errors aimed at territorial expansion into Yorubaland. In the Nigeria politics of today heading toward 2027, nothing has changed.The Ibos are bitter that they have not been given the opportunity for one of them to become EXECUTIVE PRESIDENT. That was their goal in the 1966 coup. They may have gotten a way with but for their rejoicing  over the killing of  Hausa-Fulani leader Ahmadu Bello while Ibo leaders were walking free and tall. Nothing has changed. While the Hausa-Fulani are grieving over the sudden death of Mohammadu Buhari, their leader in recent years,  and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Yoruba, has been busy beautifying him, many Ibo commentaries on  traditional and social  media have been denigrating the departed. Will the Hausa-Fulani make an Ibo President in such circumstances?  Rabiu Kwankwaso, from Kano, capital of Hausa land, and a politician less intolerant than of Ibo  vigour and potential  domination than the pacifist Buhari is making moves for an alliance before  2027 with President Tinubu, a Yoruba. This was after  overtures by Peter Obi, the most visible Ibo leader for now, failed to persuade Kwankwaso to be his  Vice Presidential running mate in the 2027 election. Any-one who watched the 2023 election  video interview of  Kashim Shettima, now Vice President, by Senator Ibikunle Amosu, former Governor of Ogun State and Buhari’s political disciple, may know where Kwankwaso’s gravitation towards Tinubu may led the North in the next election. Shettima said in that interview that the North preferred Kwankwaso to the politically pacifist Buhari. It was possible Buhari was harsh  on the  Ibos, forgetting he was their President as well, because they  massively rejected him in the 2023 polls.  If the Hausa-Fulani cannot trust the Ibos with power and they cannot trust the Yorubas as well, only goodness knows where the country is heading.  The Hausa-Fulani do not have the vigour and the business accumen of the Ibos in business and commerce, so their economy will be easily run-over. A Yoruba as President will not treat the Hausa-Fulani as sacred cows. He would try to be a President of all the tribes, as Tinubu is trying to do. Two years of his presidency are  already inconvincing the Hausa-Fulani   whose primary occupation is government and power over the national economy. The Yorubas want a free country where their intellectual prowess can flower. They and the Ibos have not been seeing eye to eye since Dr Nnamdi  Azikiwe betrayed their political trust and try to make the Ibos politically conquer them.  This story goes back to the days when Nigerians were trying to end British colonial  rule. The Yorubas were at the forefront of the struggle. Herbert Maculay, a Yoruba, formed the National Council of Nigerian Citizen and the Cameroons (NCNC). It took this political party on a nation wide tour, fell ill and died. The other Yorubas in the party invited  the Ghana-based Dr Azikiwe  to return home and lead the party because they consider him a good orator for the job. Dr Azikiwe took the job. Ibos flooded the NCNC. The party won the next elections in Yorubaland and in Ibo land and  the  Northern Peoples Congress ( NPC) won in the North. Rather than become Premier of the Ibo-dominated Eastern Region, Dr Azikiwe insisted  on becoming Premier of the Yoruba-dominated Western Region, a move which rejected Adeleke Adedoyin, a Yoruba, and would have made the Yorubas to replace British colonialism which they were fighting with Ibo colonialism.

    This tribal conflict persists till today with more ferociousness. The Ibos  will feel psychically vanquished if Peter Obi does not become President in 2027. The Hausa-Fulani may not tolerate another four  years Yoruba Presidency. Meanwhile, they have encouraged Sahel Fulani  migration into Nigeria to swell their population. They are in almost every forest, village, street corners in towns and cities. It is as though they are a standing army waiting for zero hour order. Even before Buhari left office, the Fulani pressed for a new national census.  He gave the money for it but couldn’t get it done. President Tinubu has been under pressure to blow the whistle. The Hausa- Fulani, most cunning tribe in Nigeria, are building up numerical superiority for 2027 elections. The Ibos believe in  herd instinct voting. The Yoruba voting population is depleted by Japa Sydrome and folks are pressing for overseas voting. Guns are everywhere in unauthorised hands. I will call a spade a spade…there is fire on the roof, and gas is licking everywhere indoor and outdoor!

    What can we do? My suggestion is that  we manage the fears of the tribes of conquest, domination and appropriation by other tribes  to reduce conflicts among them to  nonflammable  proportions.

  • June 12 honours… knocks on Bayo Onanuga & Co, Alex Ibru (3)

    June 12 honours… knocks on Bayo Onanuga & Co, Alex Ibru (3)

    The curtain falls today, 17 July 2025, on JUNE 12 HONOURS… KNOCKS ON BAYO ONANUGA & CO, ALEX IBRU, a three-part series begun on 03 July 2025 and continued on 10 July 2025. As it was suggested in the second part of the series, this one may be entitled… A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN. The series appears in the context of wether BAYO ONANUGA, (CON), Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Owei Lakemfa (CON), Kayode Komolafe (CON) and Mr Alex Ibru (CON), Chairman of the Board of THE GUARDIAN newspaper and its Publisher, deserved places given to them by the President on the 12 June 2025 DEMOCRACY HONOURS ROLL. Onanuga, Lakemfa and Komolafe were members of the editorial staff of THE GUARDIAN when I was either The Editor or the Director of Publications/ Editor in- Chief. Mr Alex Ibru was Chairman of the Board of Directors and Publisher of the newspaper. There were no doubts in the Press, especially among fellow Journalists, that Honours were misplaced in respect of two other GUARDIAN men, Dr Olatunji Dare, Chairman of the Editorial Board cum Editorial Page Editor, and Dr Edwin Madunagu, Editorial Board member. I wondered why another member of the Board, Sully Abu, did not make the roll. As for Mr Alex Ibru, there was a division within the Guardian and in the Pro-Democracy groups about whether he deserved the honour. In the last edition, I tried to figure out why he made the list, suggesting, as well, why some of the objectors thought he did not belong to the ranks of the heros and heroines. Their arguments center on what may be termed …A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN.

    “ A BATTLE” in this context implies that there may have been many “battles for The soul of The GUARDIAN… WHAT THE GUARDIAN STANDS FOR”. As much as it was possible, the founding Editors of this newspaper which from its first day on the news-stand easily became THE FLAGSHIP OF THE NIGERIAN PRESS couched what the newspaper was to represent in FOUR simple Words… CONSCIENCE, NURTURED BY TRUTH. It was a powerful SPIRITUAL statement which many of them, though prolific writers, perceived or conceptulised only at the material or INTELLECTUAL level. It was an extract from a statement by UTHMAN DAN FODIO, leader of the JIHADIST movement which stormed Northern Nigeria in February 1804 and captured several Hausa Kingdoms, including Kebbi, Kastina, Kano e.t.c in a few years before heading for Yorubaland in the South-Western region but was halted at Oshogbo and Ilorin. Ilorin fell later because of a palace coup of the defending army general against his own people. DAN FODIO had said “ Conscience IS AN OPEN WOUND…ONLY TRUTH CAN HEAL IT!

    “ A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN” was set against whether the LIGHT seeking guardian of the nation’s soul should capitulate to a DARKNESS-invoking Gen. Sanni Abacha.Two words stood out as STAFF and TORSH for those editorial warriors against guns and bombs who had not permitted fear of the beast or dragon and consideration of bread and butter to dim, darken or entomb their CONSCIENCE and the RECOGNITION OF TRUTH. Of course, these two words were CONSCIENCE and TRUTH.

    “A BATTLE” presupposes that there were many “battles” to refocus The Guardian on “ CONSCIENCE” and “TRUTH”.The trouble, always, was that all of us, being different persons, had naturally different understanding and views of these words, while, understandably, they meant nothing at all to some others. I speak for myself, Femi Kusa, and I like to believe, Lade Bonuola, Managing Director. He and I came to THE GUARDIAN from spiritual backgrounds. These backgrounds recognised the purpose of human existence on Earth was to honour the Almighty Creator Who Graciously granted human kind blessings of conscious existence for UNCONDITIONAL FULFILMENT OF HIS WILL. Do we not in THE LORD’S PRAYER pledge that…THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN after beseeching Him that… “ THY KINGDOM COME”? On Earth, we are a trioka of SPIRIT, SOUL and EARTH BODY. We earth men and earth women are human spirits developed from spirits kernels or sparks from out of the Radiations of GOD, THE LIGHT. In our wandering through the Universe and Earth to develop our spirit kernels and become human beings for re-admission to Paradise, our origin, we acquired covering of those spheres of existence which, together with the Spirit kernels, many persons call THE SOUL. With the earth convering on earth, we become EARTH- MEN and EARTH-WOMEN. On earth, we are not disconnected from our Paradise. Through a A LONG CHAIN from here, SPIRIT GUIDES and HELPERS often mistakenly called GUARDIAN ANGEL always speaks to our spirits on earth. We called their voice “our inner voice” or Conscience or those “ first impressions” about anything which we know is always right. The intellect is the earthly tool of the human spirit which fashions the messages or the inner voice of the spirit to earthly activities which nurture and protect us.

    Read Also: Buhari’s death a major loss to Nigeria, Africa, says Shettima 

    The trouble with many earth-men and earth-women is that they have submitted the thrones of their spirits, the Temples of God in them, to the earthly-intellect which, bound to earthly confines of time and space, does not recognise Paradise and God. Isnt this why we are admonished that …GOD IS SPIRIT, WHOEVER WILL WORSHIP HIM MUST WORSHIP HIM IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH? The battle of THE GUARDIAN against Gen. Abacha was waged in the Light of conscience and Truth against the Darkness and Its minions.

    From Daily Times

    Lade Bonuola and I came to the GUARDIAN from THE DAILY TIMES, which became professionally derilict after Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, as Military Head of State, irreverently took it over from its private owners and used it to fester needs of his government. Professionalism was going out of the window. Some journalists, especially those who were God fearing, were bound, stagnated in their careers, demoted or fired. Lade Bonuola was demoted. He went to court, but the case was toppled. Mr Martin Iroabuchi who was made to succeed the principled Prince Tony Momoh submitted for vetting by persons unknown to the newspaper reports I edited, their headlines and my page designs. I would give him fake dumies and copies and send the originals to the works. The News Editor, Felix Odiari, who ought to not have access to my work as Production Editor, would complain to Iroabuchi. By next morning, I would see in the paper reports I did not vet for publication. Martin Iroabuchi belonged to the M.K.O. Abiola’s version of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) while Odiari belonged to the Umaru Dikko segment of the party. The Chief Reporter, Odafe (formerly James) Othohiwa, belonged to Bamanga Tukur’s group. An Advertisement professional was brought in to manage Editorial personnel! The Daily Times newspaper had become a drunken newspaper. Political money freely flowed in the newsroom. This was not a question of “brown envelopes”. When reportorial agents of the politicians returned to the office from their beats, they brazenly deposited money on the desks of reporters and Editors who were willing collaborators.

    However, just when the Darkness thought it had held us down, light shone through the dark veils. Some newspapers accused Olorogun Michael Ibru’s company of importing some expired products. The family denied the claims, but did not receive fair hearing in the Press. So, Mr Alex Ibru decided to set up a newspaper. His goal was a light weight newspaper, something like a gossip channels, with which the Ibru family could always defend itself. He did not back gain for a top ranking QUALITY NEWSPAPER which his dream, modulated by other dreams brought about for Nigeria. He reached out to his senior at Ibadan Grammar School, who was brought to the Daily Times as a sole administrator by Gen. Obasanjo. That IGS senior was Dr Dele Cole who brought along to Daily Times his friend, Dr Stanley Macebuh. Both were not journalists. Along the line, My first editor, Chief Segun Osoba, got into the picture. Our professional relationships were good. He had wanted me after youth service in 1978 to edit his Abeokuta- based newspaper, THE MACHETE. He called Lade Bonuola to the Guardian, and Lade Bonuola called me to be his deputy. We were happy to go, promising that we would teach Daily Times a professional lesson. It was then still “the biggest daily sale” newspaper “ South of the Sahara”, as it branded itself. The lesson was to professionally overtake it on circulation and advertisements. We achieved our dreams in a few years, and Daily Times became a newspaper carcass. My pre-debut duty for THE GUARDIAN was to develop an editorial reporting strategy that would immediately make us the market leader. The second task was to make it the most successful in advertising and circulation income. Allied to this was the responsibility to train young men and women who had never seen the inside of a newspaper house to become first-rate reporters within three months of their employment. Those young men and women who slept several days on their desks in the office with us their bosses may now know where we were coming from and “ WHAT THE GUARDIAN STAND FOR” which was expressly stated in writing…it holds allegiance to no person, group, tribe, religion, government e.t.c but defend only, THE TRUTH always. In the matter of THE GUARDIAN’s reactions and responses to Gen. Abacha, did the newspaper become decadent like the DAILY TIMES or nearly so?This is why A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN trailed President Tinubu’s inclusion of Mr Alex Ibru in the 12 June 2025 DEMORACY HONOURS ROLL.

    Abacha, Alex Ibru And The Guardian

    (The third part of these series continues from where the curtain dropped on the second part i.e Mr Alex Ibru proposing that Femi Kusa take over Lade Bonuola’s job as Managing Director because he disagreed that THE GUARDIAN Editors go to beg Gen. Abacha for opposing him. Femi Kusa rejected the offer. Mr Alex Ibru howled on Femi Kusa, accusing him of ingratitude for making him Editor against all odds. Femi Kusa retorted that he did not beg to become Editor and that, in any case, he inherited a newspaper about 7 million naira in the red which he turned around in the first year of his Editorship, posting more than 10 million naira profit. THE STORY OF THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GUARDIAN continues…).

    Mr Alex Ibru knew that the first five years of THE GUARDIAN (1983-1988) were unprofitable years, according to the books. In my view on becoming Editor in 1988, that was because the Guardian was”too hard”or “ too academic”. What I did was an UPBUILDING. I destroyed or pulled down nothing which existed, except to move the OPINION PAGES, which were the two center pages inward, thereby subordinating them to pull-outs targeted at the business communities. The newspaper is a social institution, no doubt, but can it survive without money? Besides, news comes before OPINION. It is on the basis of NEWS that COMMENTS are made. That means NEWS is the PROGENITOR of OPINION. Isn’t this why a newspaper is called a newspaper and not an opinion paper? I always discussed my plans with Mr Alex Ibru, and, in fairness to him, he gave me 100 percent approvals. My plans was to make every day a unique day for the business community by giving them their own newspaper within THE GUARDIAN . This made THE GUARDIAN to become the FIRST COMPARMENTALISED NEWSPAPER in Nigeria, beginning with PROPERTY on Monday, EXECUTIVE JOBS and MANAGEMENT on Tuesdays, FINANCE on Wednesday, NATURAL HEALTH on Thurdays with ELIZABETH KAFARU COLUMN. There were other subjects on Fridays and Saturday. I even gave Mr Alex Ibru a blue print for the next ten years in which every day of the week would have more than two or three market niches. That period was the begining of the employment and editorial training of professionals for our various editorial niches. PAUL OKUNNOLA came from Ife with a Master’s degree in Architecture to man the PROPERTY pages on Monday. Two of his five-member team included Timiyin, an estate management graduate and a quantity surveying graduate. I could summon FRED AGBAJE, a Barrister, under thirty minutes notice to the office for a front-page analysis on a major news-break. His wife, also, a Barrister, came to fight me in the office, alleging that I was exploiting the skills of her husband to grow THE GUARDIAN. But the tables soon turned, and she came on her knees full on the ground, to apologise. That was when FRED AGBAJE did the analysis on why SAVANNAH BANK Lost the case in CHRIS AJILO Vs SAVANNAH BANK, an epic case then. CHRIS AJILO borrowed money from SAVANNAH BANK , using his property as COLLATERAL. When he could not pay, SAVANNAH BANK tried to take possession of the property. CHRIS AJILO went to court, saying the COLLATERAl did not have THE GOVERNOR’S CONSENT! Indeed, all landed property to be used as collateral must have the GOVERNOR’S CONSENT. SAVANNAH BANK was CARELESS and, so, lost the case. This analysis gave FRED AGBAJE visibility abroad, and some companies begun to invite him abroad for consultation. His wife was bowled over and came to recognise that NOT EVERYTHING was MONEY. This much and more I demonstrated to Mr Alex Ibru, and couldn’t understand why he could think I had no gut because I was passionate with my work, arriving the office early by 11.am and leaving later at about 14 or 15 hours later at about 2a.m, long after he had been with his wife and family!

    I was glad I talked down on MONEY. He flared up. Mr Ososame counselled that we go for lunch and return when we were calm. During lunch, Mr Alex Ibru was anything but calmer. He called Nick IDUWE and told him that , on resumption of the meeting, he would make ANDY AKPORUGO Managing Director of THE GUARDIAN. I do not wish to talk about ANDY AKPORUGO except to say that Lade Bonuola got Mr Alex Ibru to rehabilitate him at The Guardian, reporting to me as senior foreign correspondent, after he was excused from the DAILY TIMES where he was our senior, but not our boss.

    When AKPORUGO disliked reporting to his professional junior (by age in the trade and not by achievements), he approached Mr Alex Ibru who carved out AFRICAN GUARDIAN MAGAZINE for him to compete with NEWS WATCH, AFRICAN CONCORD, TELL, NEWS BREED Magazines and PRESIDENT magazines. African Guardian drained financial resources of THE GUARDIAN, and Mr Alex Ibru asked Andy Akporugo to go. His Editors and reporters sourced from THE GUARDIAN had been resigning. Lade Bonuola again played with fire, literally speaking, when he persuaded Mr Alex Ibru to find something for Andy AKPORUGO to do in his office to avoid backlashes in the village because they were cousins. Andy AKPORUGO, who always described himself as a STUDENT OF POWER, used this opportunity to literally set The Guardian on ethnic fire, often acting in the name of Mr Alex Ibru or of the “ family” interests without Mr Alex Ibru’s authorisation. He would rouse Urhobo members of staff to wonder if they ever saw a Yoruba company in which an Urhobo was Managing Director. He accused me of YORUBALISING the newsroom. Three times or so, Mr Alex Ibru called for staff audit around their ethnic origins. The results showed that Ibos took slightly more than half of the slots while Yorubas and Urhobos shared the rest. Nevertheless, Andy Akporugo had increasingly taken possession of Mr Alex Ibru, members of the Executive Board who were privy to my last conversion with Mr Alex Ibru following his receipt of my letter of retirement which was followed days after by that of Lade Bonuola. I told him Andy AKPORUGO was the problem of The GUARDIAN. Did he not once tell Dr Tunji Dare that Mr Alex Ibru sent him to demand that Dr. Dare relinquish one of his offices… Chairman of The Editorial Board and Editorial Page Editor? Did Dr Dare not almost respond untill Lade Bonuola gave him assurances only he, the Managing Director, could make such a demand on the instruction of the Publisher? This was the man Mr Ibru wanted to succeed Lade Bonuola as Managing Director simply because he thought the Guardian was sympathetic to HUMAN RIGHTS and NADECO. I have profiled the foregoing event to paint a picture to presage a picture of what eventually happened when we reconvened from lunch … and when we met in Abuja with ABACHA days after.

    • The remainder of these three-part article will be published in a fuller version of this one on my facebook page @ John Olufemi Kusa.

  • June 12 honours… knocks on Bayo Onanuga & Co, Alex Ibru (1)

    June 12 honours… knocks on Bayo Onanuga & Co, Alex Ibru (1)

    When an elephant dies, all kinds of the butcher’s knife emerge. It takes a lion heart to face the long knives in battle and to survive them. How many persons can easily overcome the tide when, individually, they cook for their country and all citizens respond to the gesture, each one with his or her own meal deposited at one’s door-step. You would discover that, however wise and meticulous you thought you were, there is no way your ways and means would be pleasing and acceptable to every-one. It was, therefore, not surprising to person like me that pathological critics of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu saw no value in many of the persons he gave Nigeria’s National Honours on Democracy Day JUNE 12,  2025. Even journalists, especially on always critical Lagos Radio stations such as Voice of The People (VOP) , Mainland Radio and Nigeria INFO rejected the honours for fellow Journalists Bayo Onanuga, Owei Lakenfa and Kayode Komolafe. If you didn’t know their professional trajectory well enough, they all came from The Guardian newspaper in its hey days as the Flagship of the Nigerian Press. So were two others on the Honour list…Dr. Olatunji Dare and Dr Edwin Madunagu,both members of The Guardian Editorial Board. Dr Dare succeeded Dr Stanley Macebuh as Chairman of the Editorial Board in addition to his lower line Editor title of Editorial Page Editor. I wondered why Sully Abu, also a radical member of the Editorial Board, was not ranked with them, and Mr Alex Ibru, Chairman of the Guardian and its Publisher, was in the same train with strange bedfellows Dr Dare and Dr Madunagu. I will explain this in the second article on this subject. Now, I will state that, after Gen. Sanni Abacha shut the Guardian for one year, and Mr Alex Ibru got some editors to agree to follow him to Abuja to apologise to Gen. Abacha for whatever wrongs the newspaper may have done him, Dr Dare, Dr Madunagu and Sully Abu immediately re-signed their appointments. They couldn’t attened a meeting to apologise to a despotic murderer for their criticisms of his savagery. Mr Alex Ibru accused Yoruba Editors at The Guardian of collaboration with NADECO, the pro-democracy resistance group, to fight Abacha in whose government he was a Minister and, in turn, make Abacha threaten financial fortune of Ibru family laboriously built up. Their exit left Managing Director Lade Bonuola and his Deputy, Femi Kusa, Director of Publication/Editor-in-Chief, to clear up the mess Mr Alex Ibru had swirled up against Yoruba people and their own persons as prodical professionals and business destroyers. Mr Alex Ibru summoned a Board meeting to press Lade Bonuola and Femi Kusa to agree to an apology. Lade Bonuola rejected the suggestion. Mr Alex Ibru asked him to resign his appointment. Lade Bonuola did. A divide-and- rule Maverick, Mr Alex Ibru appointed Femi Kusa Managing Director in succession to Lade Bonuola. Femi Kusa rejected the appointment outright, and tendered his resignation from the Board and the Company. Emotion run riot. I will explain later how peace was restored by a compromise which rejected apology to Abacha,and how Mr Alex Ibru went behinde the line to smuggle into the meeting Oba- Festus Adesanoye, then Osemawe of Ondo, to apologise to Abacha for whatever sins the draconian General thought the Guardian committed against him.

    Accordingly, some commentators rejected the presence of Mr Alex Ibru on the Honours List. I, too, shrugged my shoulders, although I seemed to agree half -way through the arguments. I align myself with the President that Bayo Onanuga, Owei Lakenfa and Kayode  Komolafe deserved the honours conferred on them. I agree with critics who say many people who deserve the honours are still left out. This is understandable and must have been strategic. The annulment of Chief Moshood Kasimawo Abiola’s election was originally resisted by all regions of Nigeria. In the twinkle of an eye, the Northern Region backed out. Even Chief Abiola’s running-mate, Alhaji Babangana Kingibe, withdrew from their electoral ticket. Soon after, the Eastern Region followed the Northern Region, abandoning the Western Region with the annulment albatross. Thus, the Yorubas of the Western Region were left alone in the struggle for Democracy. If President Tinubu loaded the Democracy Honours List with everyone who deserved to be on it, there would be far too many Yorubas on it that he would be accused of Yorubalising the victory of democracy over Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and his cohorts.

    Bayo Onanuga, Owei Lakenfa and Kayode Komolafe

    I have two reasons for saying they deserved the honour.

    1. At different times in the sojourn of these gentlemen in the newsroom of the Guardian newspaper, I was either their Editor or Editor-in-Chief. I knew them all to be rebels against feudalism and untidiness in human affairs. By rebels, I mean they were all FIGHTERS AGAINST DARKNESS. My definition of darkness here does not encompass the darkness which, in spiritual parlance,is Lucifer,but limited to His minions, those men and women who are His servants on earth and elsewhere in the universe, who would not allow the flourish of human virtues and nobility. In every wa, they bring sufferance. Only human souls who instinctively or intuitively devote themselves to ENNOBLE humanity can selflessly confront them and their master. This is one of the battles of journalism.

    Read Also: ADC coalition a desperate alliance of failed politicians – Tinubu Media Force

    I recuited these gentlemen into the Guardian newsroom, which served as preparatory ground for their “rebel” work later in life, including the battles against Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Ernest Shonekan and Gen. Sanni Abacha, which brought about Jun 12 as Democracy Day. As Secretary-General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors( NGE), I would be proud of Bayo Onanuga, after he left the Guardian, when he got wind of how I resisted Military President Babangida and he wanted to scream the encounter to the end of the earth. Only a rebel against what had become pathological norm in his profession would dare to confront a powerful General who had taught he could make anything to happen in Nigeria. It took a great deal of effort to persuade Bayo Onanuga to let go …that they would be another day, another opportunity, to challenge incongruence in authority.

    It was always difficult to find a smile on the face of Bayo Onanuga. What was there to smile about in the rotteness every where?,he always seemed to be asking. He was a Sub- Editor, and impacted his nature on his work. He was always restless, like Duro Onabule, his relation , who was Editor of Chief M.K.O Abiola’s National Concord newspaper before his boss “donated” him as Chief Press Secretary to his supposed friend, military President Ibrahim Gbadamosi Babangida. An editor’s job is an onerous one. The sanity and well being of his fellow country men and women, the young and the old, the healthy and infirm, lie squarely on his or her shoulders. So does the well-being of the staff of the company who may number 500, fewer or more. Add these to the investment which , these days, may run into billions of Naira. The editor must let the rebels be, without giving them free reign. For “rebel”journalists, it is “fight, fight and fight”all the way. A good editor will moderate the rebel Journalist without necessary killing his or her fighting spirit. I believe Bayo Onanuga enjoyed work with me in this regard.

    Owei Lakenfa was another kettle of fish, jovial, smiling, laughing ,bouncing and restless, but no less “dangerous” than Bayo Onanuga when he came to fighting anachronism and social dung hills., Owei Lakenfa was a spirit, soul and body a Labour Union warrior in the newsroom. To moderate him,I set up a counterpart reporting system for the other side of the coin …management.An editor who fails to do this may become unbalanced…, lose the market and the budget, become unable to pay salaries and he or she may be fired. Yet, he or she need the Owei Lakenfa’s of this world to earn respect from all players in the economy. Why he as not become President of the Nigerian Labour Congress( NLC) I do not know. I wasn’t surprised that he gave his energy to the June 12  Strugglewhen the Nigerian Labour Congress no longer contained it. The Guardian couldn’t contain it either and, so, he had to leave. That, I believe,was when the newspaper,good on the outside, was inadequate in -house in terms of staff welfare. The staff did not know of the efforts of the Executive Directors to, literally speaking, squeeze water out of stone from the proprietors that would improve their conditions of service. The Executive Directors could not be blamed for the seeming slowliness of the proprietors in this regard. Many of us were pure journalists or advertisement persons. Even our first Executive Editor and later Managing Director, Dr Stanley Macebuh, was an academic and writer, with no experience in business management. Our challenge when the Guardian was on the drawing board was how to make it the best written newspaper in English speaking Africa, if not on earth. We had sleepless nights on how to beat the Daily Times from where most of us came, The Punch and the National Concord. We employed reporters who had never worked on a newspaper. Most of them wrote trash. Alone, Oyinlade Bonuola, the Associate Editor, and I, Femi Kusa,then the Assistant Editor, re-wrote for the first year of the newspaper all the news stories, apart from surpervising the features and other pages. We resumed work at about 10 a.m and closed at about 3a.m, giving 17 hours of our day to office work. There was no time to think of anything else. I learned that we ran on back loans guaranteed by Mr Alex Ibru.Our admin and personnel departments were to have sorted out the conditions of service. They did not. The Labour Union, driven by Owei Lakenfa and Kayode Komolafe( a.k.a KK) could not stomach it. They had a good case in which the executive directors believed. However, where do Executive Directors openly align with junior staff to directly wage war on Proprietors? Nevertheless, we adopted their grievances for a working paper to hammer out something with the proprietors. A turning point came about 1988, five years after the debut of the newspaper, when, according to a trading report, the company was said to have lost about seven million naira. The proprietors ordered salaries cut by about 25 per cent across the board. Owei Lakenfa and his group could not stomach this on top of the high demands on their time, energy and talents …their lives. The proprietors got all the departments to debate the proposed cut, and subject them to a “YES” or “NO” vote. The editorial department, led by Owei Lakenfa, threw out the pay cut, but it was defeated by other departments with their combined superior vote. The outcome was messy. Any reporter who came to work but filed no reports was fired, and test candidates on the employment wait list were immediately employed to replace them. Owei Lakenfa honourably left the Guardian. I missed him because, despite his fiery stance on union matters, he was a radiant, noble person. You may accuse him and his group of youthful exuberance, label them as birds of passage which abandon a broken tree branch and the endangered mother tree for personal safety and wellness, but they made good points. They were through with sanguine and melancholy blood temperaments and were deeply seeped in the choleric, their spirit having ridden on their generative power and connected with the material world in which they discovered ugly forms against which they battled.

    Kayode Komolafe was one foot in Labour and unionism, and another in socialism and communism. Mathematican Dr Edwin Madunagu, who, like him, is a 2025 June 12 Democracy Hero, was his socialism/ communism mentor and soul mate. He was so soft spoken and easy going you wouldn’t immediately recognise he was an unrepentant communist, even after the Berlin Wall was scrapped to bring freedom and humanity to East Germans, and I returned to the newsroom from a visit to that country with crumbs of the bricks as momentos.

    Today, I will tell Owei Lakenfa and Kayode Komolafe something they did not know about their Editor and Mr Alex Ibru. Rumour mongers with anti-Yoruba sentiments brewed lies that Mr Ibru gave “hand-outs” to Directors to keep the wage bill down. This was to discredit Lade Bonuola and Femi Kusa for a take-over by other nationalities. I was appointed Editor in March 1988 at the same time as Emeka Izeze was appointed Editor of the Sunday title and Mitchel Obi( now a Ph.D.), was appointed Editor of the Guardian Express, the afternoon paper. For 12 months after this appointment, none of us earned an extra Kobo above our pre-promotion pay. We were told the company lost 7 million Naira the previous business year. I thought the general outlook and perception of the paper carved by Dr. Stanley Macebuh, an academic, was responsible for this. As I told Mr Ibru, the newspaper was not only a social institution but big business as well. It cost more money to set up a newspaper then than it cost to set up a bank. I asked Mr Ibru if we could budget the salaries we wanted to earn in the newsroom, and if he would permit this if we hit or even exceeded it. He probably saw the proposal as an unachievable joke. Nevertheless, he agreed. Within six months, we turned the loss into profit and made more money. My colleague and I set to work, supported by him, and we made the Guardian the first compartmetalised newspaper in Nigeria, connecting it to various markets such as Property or Real Estate, Information Technology, Alternative Medicine Community and Executive Jobs and Management among others. It is on this stucture that The Guardian continue to financially thrive till today. Mr Ibru kept to his word. Three times in one year for about three years, we had general pay rises. However, Condition of Service were nothing to write home about by the time I retired from the Board in 1999, because Mr Ibru thought my colleagues and I were Pro-NADECO journalists. I will address this soon. I wish to recognise, nevertheless, his good naturedness in accepting my proposal that we finance from the surplus profits (1) 45 plots of land at OPIC Isheri North for 45 members of staff who had been working for five years (2) About nine hectares of land (or more than 100 plots of land) at Opic Isheri North for the Guardian to build staff quarters (3)one plot of land for each Director at Opic Isheri North (4) School Scholarships for children of Junior staff which Dr Tunji Dare was to manage.

    Some staff who were not covered by the plan were bitter. So, I encouraged information by junior staff of a Guardian Co-operative Society to which, unusually for the Director, I belonged in the spirit of espirit de corps. That co-operative Society yielded a Guardian Housing Estate in Matogun,an Ogun State community near Lagos State in which willing members were assigned land to build houses. Thus, Matogun counter balanced Isheri North, which I suspect has not yielded a Guardian Staff Housing Estate . (4) To the credit of the proprietors, they also accepted the proposal that the company pay for the staff land purchases in Isheri North and charges for the various Certificates of Occupancy ( C OF O)…and instalmentally deduct the debits from the salaries of allottees.(5) Additionally, it was agreed that the Editorial department would be entitled to five per cent of its surplus budget on the Monday Edition to host quarterly luncheons for the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers ( NIESV) which saturated that edition with Real Estate Advertisement. That package created symbiotic blessings for both the Guardian and the NIESV. It offered the NIESV its own newspaper, as it were every Monday, within the Guardian newspaper, a new trend in Nigerian journalism. It brought increased and effective customer traffic and prosperity to the NIESV. For the Guardian newspaper, it increased readership, raised advertisement traffic from about four pages every Monday to about 25 pages.

    The foregoing was one side of the coin of the Guardian. Bayo Onanuga, Owei Lakenfa and Kayode Komolafe may have left the Guardian when a new day began to dawn for the staff. However, their imprints cannot be extricated from what was to become the biggest pay package in the newspaper industry at that time, a salute to their courage and the inputs they unofficially made to the working paper aforementioned. There is an other side of every coin. The Guardian of my days had its own share of it.

    I retired from the Board of the Guardian in 1999. Till this day, I have no records of my compulsory contributions backed by the company’s contribution paid into my National Provident Fund ( NPF) Account. The little I have saved up there according to Stanbic IBTC records, came from Daily Times where I worked for 12 years and interest on the savings. It amounted to a mere 109,000 Naira about two years ago. Even this, I couldn’t access irespective of my voter card and national ID identifications, because I couldn’t present my letter of employment of 8 March 1971 at the Daily Times.

    •NEXT WEEK: Democracy Hero MR ALEX IBRU

  • Barrister Jideofor crosses line to sickle cell medicines

    Barrister Jideofor crosses line to sickle cell medicines

    It would appear that the chicken of Barrister Jideofor Uwachia is coming home to roost. Coming home to roost does not mean that he is returning to Nigeria from Canada where he has worked in the public service for more than 30 years. What is probably coming home to roost about him is a 200 page book with about 1,000 citations he has written on Sickle CellI disease. When I say the book has about 1,000 citations, it means it is densely packed with information from the experts in Sickcell disease research, markets and industry.

    Chinasa Elizabeth Anyaeche, who worked with me in The Comet newspaper of the late 1990s, introduced Barrister Uwachia to me on March 12, 2025. She came with him all the way from Port Harcourt to, among other intentions, break to me the news of the coming book. I was not surprised that she still possessed that “long nose for news”, the second nature of every good journalist, to know that such a book will be of serious interest to me and the sickle cell community of Nigeria which must number millions of challenged persons, their families, friends, caregivers, doctors, nurses and pharmacists who look after them. On this book, Barrister Uwachia worked harder than he would have done were he to publish it in Nigeria because of the more stringent demands of the community in which he lived. He could not just write a book on Cures for the crises of sickle cell challenged community without validating his claims with accepted published medicines of caregivers or physicians who had gone before him or were still in the service of their society. This was what led to about 1,000 citations! Barrister Uwachia did not just set about writing this book simply because he liked to write a book. If that was his intent, he probably would write tofollow lawyers who work with him especially in Nigeria and in Canada about his experiences as a Nigerian lawyer in the public service of Canada for about 40 years. The love of his first child, a male, now aged 30, prompted him into this venture. The young Uwachia was Sickle Cell challenged. When his father and mother, a Caribbean, found that hospital medicines were not helping him well as they wanted, they turned to herbal medicines for help. The young Uwachia rebounded in radiant health and lives a buoyant life as a thirty-year- old today, says his father.

    READ ALSO: PDP to INEC: Tell us our secretary!

    I believe it is from this diary of event in the cause of managing a son’s health with plant medicine that Barrister Uwachia wrote this book. He told me he had not thought of a title for it, but he had come to see me to ask me to write the foreward. Why I said the chicken may have come home to roost was that I had nothing from Barrister Uwachia despite a questionnaire I sent to him a few days after the March 12 meeting. Then, unexpectedly in May 2025, I received a Whatsapp post from my guest of the Indian Almond Tree and citation beneath it. The post is reproduce below….

    “Indian almond plant is one of the best plants for sickle cell patient’s (SS). It has strong anti- sickling effect which prevents frequent crisis. Lowers risk of anemia, improve blood flow and prevent pain. Two tablespoonful of dry powder leaf does the magic”.

    The Indians like to name nature’s foods and health bounties after themselves as if these things do not exist elsewhere. That was how Goose Berry became Indian gooseberry, known more in India as Amalaki or Amla. Almond trees grows not only in India but also in Nigeria. Both may have slightly different characteristics which are the peculiarities of plant or tree species. Thus, the Indian species is named Terminalia Catapa. Nevertheless, both belong to the Tropical Almond family which botanists say is different from the “true” or Almond trees. However, all Almonds have been found to be useful to human health. In Nigeria, we call the Almond tree either fruit tree or umbrella tree. Many people eat the fruit and throw away the seed.In The villages, children break the seed and eat the kernel. In other countries, a fabulous milk is made from the kernel. This kernel is a rich source of vitamins, minerals, protein, anti-oxidants, fiber and other nutrients.

    In the kernel, there is a good presence of vitamin E, magnesium, and potassium. Its monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are believed to lower LDL (the bad cholesterol) and, thereby, reduce the risk of heart disease.Its antioxidants are reported good for oxidative stress and heart health. The riboflavin and L-carnitine find use in cognitive( brain) function and may reduce the risk of age-related cognitive decline, including memory loss and dementia. Besides, Riboflavin stimulate energy production, cell function and growth.Calcium and magnesium, present in it, are well known for their functions in healthy bones.

    The leaves are anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, heart friendly because it battles the bad cholesterol ( Low Density Lipoprotein..LDL), promote digestion, is kind to the kidneys and beneficial for brain function, among other benefits. The fruit has great values as well. The seeds kernel makes a beautiful milk, as I said earlier, which is said to be close to the configuration of mother’s milk.

    I did not know much about the Almond tree when I lived at 39 Emina Crescent, off Toyin Street, Lagos, for about nine years from 1999. On the grounds was a well branched Almond tree which grew higher than the roof of the storey building. I suspected, though, it should be rich in iron because the leaves reddened before they fell off the tree. They constituted a nuisance on the grounds, and I had to sweep them off every morning. This was a great exercise for me. Just when I would have swept the ground clean of the leaves, sweating and preparing to go and have a bath, the tree would shed another load of leaves which made the ground again appear unkempt. It always appeared as though the tree was playing games with me! I may get angry and sweep again, and, again, the leaves would fall all over. In retrospect, I believe nature beings which tended the tree may have been trying to engage me in conversations and open my eyes and heart to the great treasure I was ignorant of. I thought of grinding the leaves to powder and experimenting with it as an ingredient in animal feed, especially for chicken and pigs. I could not eat the fruits because birds pecked many of them before they fell. I could have broken the seeds and eaten the kernel or made milk of them. The leaves gave me a lot of compost which , in turn, gave me about 100 heads of lemongrass which my neighbours came to harvest for use as anti-malaria tea. I also had about a dozen of pawpaw trees which gave me fruity breakfast and dinner, pawpaw leaves for consumption with lunch alongside the black seeds of pawpaw for digestive enzymes and enzymes defence against intestinal germs. Thanks to the Internet, we now know almond leaves can purify water, soften hard water, provide feed for fish, poultry animals and even snails! What a great asset I lost at 39 Emina Crescent.

    I felt bad when I learned after relocating from this resident that the tree was felled to make way for something else. I imagined how they nature beings which tended it over the years could feel…sad. That is how those in the front gate area of the ORTHOPEDIC HOSPITAL at IGBOBI,in LAGOS, must be feeling now. As a Higher School Certificate (HSC) student of IGBOBI COLLEGE between 1969 and 1970, I always made my way out of the boarding house with some of my friends to hunt for Almonds in this hospital. A sprawling football field and a sports field were surrounded or, shall I say, decorated with Almond trees. Now, I am told more than three quarters of those trees have given way to concrete buildings! How destructive of the works of Mother Nature do we humans often get!

    My prayer,after I heard the Ogbobi hospital story, was that Harmony Estate on Adeniji Jones Avenue, Ikeja, would not assault the almond tree in front of their entrance gate. So do I wish for the almond trees which are probably on the foreground of your grandfather’s houses in the village where, as children, you gathered in the evenings like the likes of Mr Daniel Emu, now 85 or 86 to listen to moon light tales of Creationtold by the elders.

    Back to Barrister Uwachia

    I hope that Barrister Uwachia will not take long before he delivers to the sickle cell community his 200 page book. I told him his reasoning about the cause of the sickle cell was weird, going by today’s understanding of this challenge, and that I had a different idea. He believed the cause was AcidosisC, and that the sickle cell could reverse to normalcy if the body pH could become alkaline. Acidosis and alkalinity belong to the realms of the new biology of health championed from the last year of the last century by researchers and health commentators as Dr Roger Moore who wrote The pH miracle. This book argues that diseases arise when blood and tissue pH fall below 7.0 on a pH SCALE of 0-14 in which 7.364 eliminates germs and diseases. This is a state of body biochemistry that may be difficult for many persons to achieve because their nutrition is still about 80% cooked or processed foods and is often less than 20percent raw,whereas the World Health Organisation, re-assessing humanity’s state of health,has been suggesting 80 per cent raw food and about 20 percent cooked or processed food on the dinning table.

    They are several other hurdles Barrister Uwachia hypothesis would have to scale,in my view, to become easily acceptable by the health community. Many persons still eat bread, white or wheat, boiled, fried or scrambled egg, fried foods, noodles,canned milk and Sardines, corn beef, corn flakes, Quaker oat, boiled rice, beans, yam e.t.c, all acid forming. It is true almost every-one from age 40 onward has to grapple with one disease or another linked to the diet, but many Africans especially Nigerians are needlessly challenged by these diseases.

    Barrister Uwachia is a Rasta, but I am not. However, we delved into discussions of astral, ethereal and spiritual nature. I am Genotype AS. I do not know the genotype of my parents or of my siblings, but I know we have had no SS case in the family. I am aware, also, of AS couples who never had SS children. I have a high school classmate whose four children are. So devastated has he become that he no longer believes in the existence of an Almighty Creator, despite admonitions by many of us his friends. From this perspective, I told Barrister Uwachia each one of us is a human spirit resident on earth in an earth body, that each one of us made his or her own earth body and, accordingly, the blood type which nurtures that body. In this regard, the body and the blood type are fashioned after our individual nature, and diet may not have much to do with the sickling of the red blood cells. New recognition about formation of the blood shows that the foetus does not produce or circulate his own blood until about the middle of pregnancy when the first kicks of the baby are felt by the mother. This is the time the incarnating soul is said to take possession of the growing body and establish foetal circulation. It is also now known that blood circulation ceases at physical dead when the incarnated soul leaves the body and no longer powers the blood or the body. So, the spirit which, together with various bodies from other sphere of existence which envelope it is known as the SOUL, must have a great influence on blood formation and type. By this, I did not discountenance all the great-studies that have been done on this subject. What I meant by “ we” is that “we” earth-men and women are the living essence called MAN and are collectively known as humanity. When we have to make an appearance on earth, we have to cover ourselves in the material of the earth, that is dust, hence our physical or dust bodies which return to dust when we most leave the earth. Each of us has a different nature to the other. Our nature depends on the totality of how we have been living our existence in our wonderings in the wide and deep vales of the material world. Sickled red blood cells suggests, in my view, a soul that is SICKLED or sickling, close up or closing up. In the justice of the Almighty Creator, the earth’s body which would cloak every soul on earth during his or her sojourn here must be fashioned for him or her in accordance with his or her nature. Those of us who are Christians can make good sense out of this statement from the biblical statement that… “I KNEW THE BEFORE I FORM THEE IN THY MOTHER’S WOMB”. There will be no time today to elaborate on this point. Suffice it to say, however, that our fingerprints, like the designs of our palms,are different from person to person and that, even in the same person, the marks on one palm are different from those on the other, one indicating crucial questions in a previous earth life, the other showing karmic trajectories of the present one.

    Barrister Uwachia and I kept these matters hanging until he would present his book. Nevertheless, I hinted at how the sickle cell disease community has been coping in Nigeria. On page 78 of his book, TESTED HERBAL FORMULAS, ( translated into Portuguese, Spanish and Yoruba) FATAI A. ALADE-BAMGBALA mentions a case study which involves a named cousin of his. He said the man was always in and out of hospital with sickle cell crises until he took over his treatment. What he gave him were… ALMOND LEAF POWDER ADDED TO CORN PAP for breakfast everyday. FATAI BAMGBALA says that, at the time of the publication of the book in 2003, his patient had known no sickle cell disease crises for two years! Other therapies are multifarious and may involve the fellowing steps

    •The detoxification of the patient, to reduce microbial load, free radicals, de-oxygenation, toxin, pressure, e.t.c

    •Strengthening of the liver with plant medicine such as MILK THISTLE and JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE to protect the organs against BILIRUBIN pressure, and the use of DAMATOCOCUS DANIELI or moi moi leaf tea to repair any damage.Thomatocucus Danieli is the leaf in which MOIN-MOIN( Yoruba) and AGIDI( Ibo) for EKO in Yoruba are cooked. We also use CARQUEJA to clear the liver and to terminate inflamation and pain.

    • Bone Marrow Meal is given to strengthen the bone marrow. Sickle cells have about half the life span of normal cells, so this put pressure on the bone marrow to make new cells under increase workload. Anti-sickling medicines are given as well. Vitamin E is one of them. This is the natural form d-alpha tocopherol, not dl- alpha tocopherol. Even then, MIXED tocopherol and MIXED tocotrienol are better. Palm fruit provides them in natural and mixed forms. Kyolic aged Garlic,a powerful garlic blends is useful to prevent sickling, protect the cells with anti-oxidants, kill pathogens which may disturb the cells, reduce blood sugar and cholesterol levels, among other benefits. If Kyolic is expensive, GARLINGIN may compensate. It is a blend of black seed oil, ginger oil and garlic oil. They are more helps recipes in nature’s treasure trove

    •Cell life extenders are not missing in the protocol. These include anti-oxidants whose job are to donate themselves to free radicals which may thereby protect the naturally weak sickle cells and boost immunity. Antioxidants such as COQ10 and its stronger form UBIQUINOL provide energy while others raise values of scavengers and destroyers of singlet oxygen oppressors

    • Oxygenation is also crucial. The oxygen carrying potential of the sickle cell is poor. So, oxygen by-pass are often tried in the forms of drinks and capsules which supply oxygen. In this category, is the POWDER or LIQUID Chlorophyll. It bears the same structure as hemoglobin the oxygen carrying red pigment in the red blood cells. This structure is CARBON- HYDROGEN- NITROGEN and OXYGEN. In hemoglobin, the mineraI IRON holds them together. In Chlorophyll, the mineral Magnesium hold them together. Thus, a CHLOROPHY ll drink RECHARGES the blood, which simply replaces Magnesium with iron in the matrix. As Chlorophyll is the green pigment of plants, wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of us can add more greens to the diet?

    Thanks, Barrister Uwachia for keeping interest in your book alive. I pray the chicken quickly come home to roost…

  • Free milk in Ekiti schools… Lessons from Pottenger’s cats

    Free milk in Ekiti schools… Lessons from Pottenger’s cats

    Ekiti State school children and their parents must still be discussing their gains from CHILDREN’S DAY 2025. WHY NOT? The Federal Government promised to restore free lunch for primary school children, and the state government said it would back it with free lunch milk. The federal lunch pack may include poultry egg or beef. Many parents and children lovers are clapping for Federal Government and Ekiti State Government. The Nigerian milk industry will rejoice as well. Here is a huge market for it, at last. For some time, the milk industry has been running expensive advertisement in the mass media which links milk consumption by children with mental acuity, improved physical endurance and robust health. However, the results of Professor Pottenger’s experiment do not agree with this nutrition claims. As a natural nutrition advocate, I am concerned about feeding children with pasteurised or canned cow’s milk because, unknown to many persons, it may make the girls aggressive, the boys docile, impact them with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which can make them to become inattentive, academic weaklings, apart from predisposing them later in life to bone degeneration, fertility problems and shortened life spans, among several other health dangers not easily associated with milk consumption. 

    Thanks to Professor Francis Pottenger Jr, a doctor and researcher who opened the eyes of humanity to these possibilities. Over ten years, he carried out a study with 900 cats on the effect of cooked food and raw food on health, behaviour, fertility and longevity of cats.

    Immediately I heard of this study about 30 years ago and l checked the findings, I erased from my diet such things as milk, poultry egg, poultry chicken and turkey, nake sugars, bread and fried foods… and got my children off them as a dutiful parent before they went to boarding school.

    I discovered more of the problems which milk consumption may contribute to health challenges from several nutrition studies especially the one now popularly called Professor Pottenger’s Cats. Off the cuff, I can say that cow’s milk can cause ATTENTION DEFICIT and HYPER ACTIVITY Disorder (ADHD) which is widespread among school children, and SCATTER BRAIN syndrome among some adults. To start with, cows milk is DENSE MILK. That mean it is milk which Mother Nature designed for a huge animal that would walk on the day its is born. Mother Nature is so wise that the design milk of a different nutritional consistency for a human baby that would require between nine months and one year to walk. Doesn’t this immediately suggest they could be something wrong in feeding infants and children with cow’s milk? If the cow’s milk industry encourages us to ignore this idea,what of the fact that cow’s milk is an acidic substance which causes ACIDOSIS in the body. In THE NEW BIOLOGY OF HEALTH, it is no longer news that acid-forming foods acidify the body, harm it and may even kill it with diseases. Germs grow in acidic environment, inject their toxins and other wastes into it, thereby causing the eliminating or excretory organs and immune system to overwork themselves. Is the way not paved to sickness and death when they crumble? On the pH SCALE, cow’s milk is slightly Acidic at between 6.4 and 6.8 depending on several factors, while egg Albumen, slightly Alkaline, is between 7.6 and 8.0 and the yolk is 6.0 to 6.5, whereas the body achieve radiant health on 7.364 on the 0-14 pH Scale of which 7.0 is the MEDIAN. Getting the body pH to journey from 6.0 pH to 7.364 is no mean dietary, medical and hydration tasks. So, why do we indulge in acidifying the body?

    Density and acidosis are not the only dangers to health in the consumption of cow’s milk. Of serious threats as well are the anti-health products which are present in processed and unprocessed cow’s milk. To start with, shall we wonder what we would make of a human woman whose breasts produce milk all the days of her life, even when she is not pregnant or breast-feeding? Instinctively, we sense that something is wrong with that woman. However,, why do we not sense abnormality in a cow that is producing milk all of its life or of a hen that is laying egg every day or every other day! Why this abnormalities have arisen is because the cow is FORCED to produce milk and the hen is FORCED to lay egg. Anything that is forced to happen is not natural and can, therefore, not bear good fruits. What forced the cow and the hen to be abnormally productive is a set of chemical called HORMONES which are injected into them to quicken or “fast forward “ activities of their reproductive systems. The most dominant is ESTROGEN. This hormone is present in humans, more in the female than in the male. Thus, ESTROGEN is what makes a woman womanly while another dominant hormone in the male, TESTOSTERONE, from the testes, is what gives men their manly peculiarities. There are other hormones in men and women which COUNTER BALANCE these hormones. Thus, we cannot clap for the milk industry that is giving us more estrogen on cow’s milk or the poultry industry that is doing the same for us in the poultry egg and in the poultry chicken flesh and poultry turkey flesh. One of the bad aspects of dairy milk and poultry egg and chicken is that the ESTROGEN they feed these animals with or inject into their bodies is CHEMICAL ESTROGEN. Worse still is the overload of ESTROGEN in the bodies of boys and girls, men and women who comsume lots of cow’s milk and lots of poultry egg and chicken. In girls, it can cause PREMATURE PUBERTY, in which a girl of nine or 10 years may develop adult-like breasts and begin to menstruate. In such girls, the HORMONAL BALANCE may spike ESTROGEN level. This may cause an abnormal elevation of another hormone called PROLACTIN. When this comes in tow, PROLACTIN shut down the ovaries and OVULATION STOPS. Naturally, it is PROLACTIN that the brain sends to the ovaries to stop egg production in a monthly cycle once pregnancy is confirmed,to prevent a second pregnancy occuring alongside the established one. Thus, when ESTROGEN has broken its limits in the hormonal matrix, and it brings up prolactin in tow and ovulation stops (annovulation), the NIPPLES may begin to produce secretions, pregnancy or not. Many adults women go through this menacing experience without realising that their problems may have come from cow’s milk or poultry egg and chicken flesh, unless their doctors are nutrition conscious and remember to educate them accordingly.

    A woman’s problems is not limited to the foregoing. She may develop PRE-MENSTRUAL SYNDROME, sensitive breasts, breasts tumours or even breast cancer, and uterine challenges such as endometriosis, uterine fibroids, menstrual muscle cramps and allied experiences. These challenges are not confined to adult women. Girls, too, experience them. In the 1980s, a primary school teacher in Shomolu, Lagos, informed me that one of the pupils in her school developed breast cancer! She died!

    As for boys and men, there have been clinical presentations in which ESTROGEN levels exceeded their boundaries. Men so afflicted experience low sperm count and other sperm problems. As for boys, they may suffer from stunted genitalia and flabby muscles.

    All of these are an aside. Where I am heading is, ADAHD and Professor Pottenger’s cats. Before I head there, however, I would like to make a confession.

    CONFESSION

    I was a cow milk and poultry egg boy at school and as a young man until, PROVIDENCE helped me out of them. Back in school, my favourite cow’s milk was CONDENSED MILK. The first child of my parents in the second generation of literate parents, I was raised on OSTER MILK. Nevertheless, I grew up thin, for my age irrespective of quarterly de-worming at the West African Drugs Company in Ibadan. In school, I tried to help myself out on WATE-ON, a fat building formula purchased with my pocket money. By the time I turned 21 and began work on THE DAILY TIMES newspaper as a trainee sub-editor in 1971, I thought I needed to broaden by chest, grow taller and grow biceps, to have more manly appearance. So, I DEVOLVED, I would say, into more egg and milk. My favourite formula was a quarter table glass of ECGOVIN, an egg and alcohol food supplement into which I dissolved one or two raw eggs and emptied a cane of cow’s milk! It was a terrible time in my life. I developed such bloating in the stomach and intestine that couldn’t eat more than one slice of bread without feeling like vomiting and developing shortness of breath.The job, too, did not help matters. It was so pressure and dealine bound, as it still is today and may ever be, that I was confined to meals of meat pie and soft drinks. In the end, I was taken to my maternal grandfather, who helped me out as I thought death was approaching. Incidentally, two of my cousins died at that time, and I had thought I was next in line. Stupid me, I did not ask for the healing formula which I suspect may have included ELECTRIC FISH ( Eja ojiji r:rdmm, in Yoruba). Had I, would I have taken a salaries job for the rest of my life? These experiences, journalism and travel in Europe and in the United State,would exposed me to how the milk, poultry chicken and egg industries were damaging human health in the crave for money and covering its tracks with beautiful advertisements. I was privileged once to visit in the Netherlands the international factory of a popular cow milk brand sold worldwide. I saw how the company collected fresh cow’s milk from cow farmers every day in milk tankers, emptied it into huge tanks into which some preservatives were poured. The milk could be there for months before it was piped to the production lines, boiled, embalmed with preservatives, canned and packaged for shipping. That was in the days of ignorant. I drank of this milk and thought it was better than any milk brand I even brought back home large packages of cheese. Thus, the milk we drank in Nigeria may have been stored for years!

    ADHD

    Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is one of the reasons many children are not doing well at school and preservatives colouring and flavours in foods are cornerstones of these wide-spread problems. It makes some children unable to concentrate on school work for more than ten minutes. Do not forget that the cow is given many antibiotic and anti-viral injection and several hormones which end up as residues in the milk. Remember the same happens to egg. I mention egg because it is likely to feature in the Fedral Government school lunch programme which may help poultry farmers to sell their eggs and to protect jobs on the farms. When we break an egg and the yolk is very yellow, we are happy. We have no reason to not be, all things being equal. The yellow yolk signals the presence of BETA CAROTENE, a precusor of VITAMIN A which we need for many reasons, including healthy vision, skin and robust immunity. But, alas, what forms the yellow in poultry egg is not always Beta Carotene. This memeber of Beta carotenoid family comes from green plants which free ranging chicken eat. Chickens in the cages have no access to green plants. As the poultry farmer cannot afford natural beta carotene supplementation of chicken diet , they resort to a yellow DYE, a man-made chemical substance which give the yolk a superb yellow colour but is dangerous to health because it can cause cancer. Such chemical substances predispose children to ADHD, irritability, depression, low brain output e.t.c.

    Read Also: Fed Govt targets milk production of 1.4MT in five years

    POTTENGER’S CATS

    Earlier, I mentioned the experiments called Professor Pottenger’s Cat over 10 years with 900 cats to determine whether raw meat or cooked meat or raw milk or pasteurised milk was better for cat health and, by extrapolation, for human health. In the fellowing words, published in price-pottenger.org, Stephanie Cold, one of several reviewers of the project, provides us his summary of the 1932-1942 experiments under the title THE 10-YEARS POTTENGER’S CAT STUDY.

      The 10-Year Pottenger Cat Study:

    “In the 1930s, Dr. Francis Marion Pottenger, Jr., a physician in Monrovia, California, worked at the Pottenger Sanatorium and Clinic, a center founded by his father and two uncles, that specialized in tuberculosis (TB). Pottenger hypothesized that tuberculosis was caused by deficiencies in the adrenal gland, and he used cats in the process of standardizing the potency of the adrenal extracts with which he was treating patients. Pottenger fed cats both cooked and raw meat. To his astonishment, he observed very different health outcomes. Out of curiosity, Pottenger began a ten-year study focused on variations in the diets of cats. The variables in his experiments included either raw milk versus cooked or raw meat versus cooked. Throughout the entire study and four generations of cats, Pottenger diligently recorded his observations of the health, weight, calcium and phosphorus levels, skeletal structures, and dispositions of the cats. The differences were quite striking. (Pottenger)

    In short, the cats subsisting on the raw products (in the first experiment raw meat and in the second experiment raw milk), maintained excellent health. Mother cats carried their babies to full-term, birthed approximately five kittens to a litter, and experienced no difficulty in nursing. The kittens had consistent skeletal structure and no dental issues or infections. Conversely, the health of cats fed cooked meat and cooked milk quickly declined. Even within three months of a transition from a raw to cooked diet, dental infections often arose. Mother cats had difficulty carrying offspring full-term, and suffered from increased miscarriages and raised infant mortality rates. Mother cats were often too weak to nurse, and some died in labour. Kittens were born with varying skeletal structures and weaker bones, and were prone to infections, allergies, and respiratory illnesses.

    The degenerative health of the cats on cooked meat/cooked milk diets continued and appeared to be passed from generation to generation. After several generations of degeneration, Pottenger attempted to test the potential “regeneration” of health by means of replacing a cooked diet with a raw one. He found that this was indeed possible, though minor health problems did persist even into the third generation. (Pottenger)”.

    Please read more about POTTENGER’S CATS on the internet …and pass the word on.

    GROUNDNUT WITH PEEL

    If egg and pasteurised milk are not good for school lunch, what are? I would go for groundnut with the peel on, and for cocoa powder. Both are nutritious and energy providers as is shown in many experiements….

    Groundnuts are:

    • A good source of protein, fat and oil

    • Rich in fiber

    •  Good source of vitamins E and B3, magnesium, and potassium

    • Brown peel contains antioxidants and polyphenols.

    It is not suggested here that school lunch groundnuts be procured from roadside vendors. The government may source from producers certified to operate under Good Manufacturing Practices( GMP)

    • Cocoa Powder is High in flavonoids, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties

    • It may improve blood flow and boost brain function

    • It is rich in polyphenols which may curb high blood pressure and high cholesterol level

    • It may lower risk of heart attack and stroke .

    Unsweetened cocoa is better than cocoa sweetened with nake sugar. For school children, their cocoa food supplement may be sweetened with date sugar, which is nutritional, or tiger nut milk powder, another great one.

    The groundnuts with their peels on and the cocoa powder should be vacuum-packed in sachets for easier and hygienic handling. School children should be educated about the health benefits of groundnuts and cocoa powder.

    COCOA POWER

    We all take cocoa for granted becaus a prophet “has no value in his own land”. In the world market right now, it is selling more than the proverbial”hot cake”. In the late 1960, and early 1970s Yaba bus-stop in Lagos had a design different to today’s. There were food or nacks kiosks everywhere. One of the fastest-selling items there was COCOA BREAD made by Emmanuel Odumosu a.k.a JESUS OF OYINGBO. Cocoa is a highly nutritious and anti- oxidant gift of mother Nature as many studies continue to reveal.

    I discarded poultry egg,flesh and milk from my diet about thirty years ago and believe I have been better off without them. Mary Ann Shear and Charlotte Meschede in their book HEALTHY KIDS, a well-celebrated book in South Africa, where the co-authors come from, have several remedies they suggests will protect the health of our children if we take them off milk and egg.

    It should be processed and sorted in certified facilities and served in seal vacuum-sealed packages, like sachet powder milk which should take a bow from the school meal.The cocoa powder should be similarly treated and UNSWEETENED.

    With Professor Pottenger name ringing in our ears and POTTENGER’S CATS staring at us, hands up anyone who will votes for milk and egg from today.

  • Marriage: yes, Ayodele Eyitayo, one plus one can never be one!

    Marriage: yes, Ayodele Eyitayo, one plus one can never be one!

    Often, if not always, we fight a health problem only on the surface, whereas we achieve better results when we dig it up from the root. Hypertension, insomnia, depression and even breast cancer are such problems that may originate from souring or deteriorating  marriage, separation and divorce. When I am told  of a woman under stress which may be linked to the behaviour  of her marriage, I suggest that a reflex zone therapy (RZT) test on the back of the palm be carried out as established by  Devendra Vora in his book, HEALTH IN YOUR HANDS. Often, there is a sharp pain where the gentle palpation is done. Many women wrench their hands free from the hold  of the therapist. Once, I saw a woman break out in sweat as if water was spread or poured over her. Some women become warmer, suggesting that, suddenly, a blockage in their etheric energy circulation had been broken or removed.  It is advisable that such women see their doctors to rule out any possibility of any undercurrent in their breast. Doctors who are unaware of this therapy will do anything but gently massage the trouble away.

    We are talking about the collapse of LOVE between two persons with many of the health challenges which may fellow it. We are talking about the collapse of love, true or fabricated, between two persons. The breast and the heart lie in the FOURTH energy CHAKRA from where the organs in this region  receive  spiritual energy, if you like, from  the indwelling BREATH OF LIFE, that is you and  I. What I am saying is that when we are grievously saddened by love gone awry, we, the breath of life in our clay bodies, transmit the lifelessness within to our clay bodies. The health problems, which many persons, men and women, encounter when their marriages are no longer the bed of roses they wanted them to be, would not arise if they knew that they own no one and no one owns them, that each party is free to go his or her way when he or she likes to. Only emotional reasons bind or bond one person to another when the love union collapses.

    This column was encouraged by the attack  Mr. AYODELE EMMANUEL  EYITAYO (alias THE MOST BLESSED MAN on radio) delivered recently in one of his sermons on what he considered, and I agree with him, on the wrong conception in Christianity that… a MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, a  WOMAN SHALL LEAVE HER FATHER AND MOTHER, AND  BOTH SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.

    One flesh? I always wonder whenever I hear this pronouncement at a wedding ceremony: Two souls, and not two human bodies,  are uniting, not FUSING or MERGING, and the priest is talking of one flesh! Erroneously, this has led many persons, especially women, to rewrite the principles of arithmetic and say ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS TO ONE. When one party dies, and the other does not follow him or her into the grave is when we know how wrong and foolish this sentiment is.

    AYODELE EYITAYO who likes to be  called THE MOST BLESSED MAN is a rebellions radio presenter and Christian preacher in the manner he does his work. I deem him a rebel because his style, departing  from norm,  is unique to him. Behind the SMA 104.7 FM radio microphone, the mass media do not appear to be to  him what, educationally and professionally,we are taught they were … battle machinery to propagate and  defend self and environment, not a battle ground or playground for psychic wars. So,  I always thought irredentist Ibo warrior Barrister Darlington could create trouble for him as Chief M.K.O Abiola’s political war on Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his romance with the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) did to the National Concord group of newspapers in their cultural and political environment. Luckily,  for Eyitayo, providence has ridden him of Barrister Darlington who has found his rightful place on an irredentist pro-Ibo programme on VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (VOP)radio station in Lagos. However, I doubt if Ayodele Eyitayo will be able to re-cIoak himself since one part of him is across the Niger. Sometimes, I catch Ayodele  Eyitayo behind the pulpit running around and about in Orthodox English Language, pidgin English and Yoruba Language. His sermon which I review below, caught my fancy because it was one of those expressions  of spirit in which he did not permit himself to be fettered  by Christian dogmas that are often at variance with the  great Truths of Life. Can you  guess what Ayodele Eyitayo broke down in the simple mathematics  of ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS TWO? Christian theology and dogmas say this ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS ONE!  In other words,  Ayodele Eyitayo is taking on the church and its many dogmatic priests. I am on his side. The battle ground is one of the engagements of adult men and women which has crippled the  happiness of many, and  made them sick in mind and body.

    Read Also: Nigeria, UNICEF partner to train 20m youths in digital skills by 2030

    American surgeon Norman Shealy and journalist and  psychic Carolyn Myss confirm it in their energy medicine practice which culminated in their epic book, THE CREATION OF HEALTH. In this book, we see clinical evidence of breast cancer healed or cured without surgery or drugs. The therapy simply recognised that ONE PLUS ONE  EQUALED TWO. Hitherto, the patients had long been taught at home, Sunday school and priests behind the pulpit that ONE PLUS ONE  EQUALS ONE!

     Mathematically, the notion that ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS ONE had misled husbands to try to encroach on the BEING of their  wives and induced the wives  to do likewise. Any attempt to amalgamate the two spiritual forces in this equation is UNNATURAL and  cannot work. Such efforts must be centuries old, and the Bible itself reports, though not directly, how they came to naught. Certainly, Abraham and Sarah could not have been one flesh when Abigail came into their equation. Wasn’t Abraham unfair to Abigail and his son by her, Ishmael, giving to them as a gift by the Almighty Creator, when he sent them away from home to please Sarah and her son? If Ishmael was a bastard child, as many Christians say today, are they blaming the Creator of LIFE whose wisdom  provided the gift? Did ISAAC and REBECCA act as “one flesh” or one spirit” when Rebecca tricked Isaac, her husband, to bless the more beloved by her of their two sons, JACOB, in the place of ESAU, her husband’s favourite? Did DELILAH act in tandem with SAMSON when she gave his prized secret out to his enemies? Did BARSHEBA not do to URIAH?

    In his epic, old book, THE PROPHET, author GIBRAN shared a valuable thought with us when he says… husbands and WIVES CAN DRINK TOGETHER, BUT NOT FROM THE SAME  CUP. When I read those lines on MARRIAGE in 1990s, I recalled how I proposed marriage to the woman who became my wife on her 25th birthday. She brought out a bottle of wine which she served in two   glasses, not one. Really, we drank together, but not from the same cup!

    We have another insight from the book HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT STRESS. The author says that, in marriage, two human souls who have been wondering about in the material world, seeking perfection of their essence, come together this time to share their earth-life. Both are distinct entities and different to the other in different dimensions. This book suggests that marriage should not be seen as a   MERGER, but a UNION,which may be loosened and aborted whereas a MERGER is FUSION. He illustrates a union  with two circles striving towards each other.  In one illustration, they are distant. In another, they make contact at the edges. In yet another both may ingress about 18 or 20 per cent into each other. This overlapping space is the COMMON GROUND or common interest areas both are prepared to yield and should strive to develop relationships in. Every-one safeguards his or her psychic or inner space not yield it. And this is why neither a husband nor a wife reveals EVERYTHING about himself or about herself to the other.

    Surgeon Norman Sheally and Carolyn Myss show  in THE CREATION OF HEALTH that either party in a marriage may develop EMOTIONAL STRESS and PAIN when, for them, the attempt to build a UNIFIED life in marriage become  illusive. In their practise of energy medicine, they found that the most easily affected organs of the body are in the SECOND and  FOURTH CHAKRA energy zones during relationship snags or snaps, separation or divorce. For a woman, second chakra organs include reproductive organs, kidneys, bladder, abdomen, lower back. The FOURTH CHARKRA includes heart, lung, circulatory system, centre of the chest e t.c  The fourth chakra organ, principally, are the heart, breasts, although the lungs. Where one party suppresses the FREE WILL of another in an attempt to POSSESS him or her, and the underdog wishes to be free but cannot throw off the yoke, THROAT problems may develop in the FIFTH CHAKRA zone. Happily, these challenges, including breast cancer, are reported to resolve easily where the victims are successfully helped to recognise they blocked energy flow to the organs through hatred and projection of  negative emotions to the persons they  wished to absorb but cannot.

     MARRIAGES MADE HEAVEN

     Is it, thereby, there are no MARRIAGES MADE IN HEAVEN or that  marriages cannot be BEDS OF ROSES? Oh No.  In fact,  marriages are meant  to be  made in  Heaven. However, MADE IN HEAVEN does  not mean that a certain authority  randomly selects couples and dispatches them to the earth.  There may be some grains of  truth, though, in the sensing that some persons may affiliate over there for marriages on earth. Some persons may even be bonded for  earth marriages by  Karma or their uptake of  joint tasks on earth . Can  two friendly siblings with inconclusive businesses on earth  not return  as husband and wife?  May a man called to bring a monumental change to the ways and means of men on earth not come with a woman who would keep the home front for him and support his guidance from above? As there are thousands and one possibilities, as we say, I would not like to give more examples. However, you would venture that, among persons on earth who are meeting for the first time in their entire existence, it is possible to contract MARRIAGES MADE IN HEAVEN in which both parties unite but still remain separate. That is saying such marriages did not need to have been contracted in Heaven and merely formalised on earth. What a MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN simply means is that each spouse brought COMPLEMENTARY ATTRIBUTES or VALUES to the UNION. No one  party is ever complete on his or her own. What is lacking in one person is brought by the other to make the union  COMPLEMENTARY, that is BALANCED or  STABLE. This is in keeping with THE LAW OF BALANCE which  upholds the entire Universe. It is a Law of Nature which man did not  create and cannot do anything about. Even the gigantic  Universe obeys THE LAWS OF BALANCE, otherwise all the Cosmic bodies would be falling out of place and colliding and offering no possibility for human existence as we observe it today.

    As BALANCE or  EQUILIBRUM in everything is THE WILL of THE Almighty Creator, they pervade everything which exists. Electrical charges are balanced in the clothes you wear, otherwise you would not be able to touch them.  Our solar system would have collapsed  upon us if it wasn’t  balanced. We observe colour riot in our dressing if the colours are not balanced. What about our meals? Too much salt or too much oil or too much bitters  or sweets put us off. Goods and services  we purchase must  march  the payment we make  for  them, otherwise we would protest. All system of the human body work in the sense of balance to  provide radiant health.  Imagine the lungs not providing enough oxygen or the endocrine system not  balancing their  hormones, especially in the monthly cycles of women or in the burning of blood sugar? What happens when the kidneys are failing or the brain cannot easily shut down its  operations at night for us to have restful  sleep? We can go on and on. Please, permit only one more example.  Researchers  who are investigating why life  spans are short or long have come to terms with FREE RADICALS and ANTI- OXIDANTS. Free radicals are  UNBALANCED molecules, antioxidants are BALANCED MOLECLES. If  the BALANCE between  free radicals  and  antioxidants ever tips in favour of the former, rapid aging and various diseases would ensue.

    BALANCE IN MARRIAGE

    Human existence on earth  has a specific purpose. Marriage is not that purpose. The Lord Jesus said marriage does not take place in Heaven. On earth, it serves two   basic purposes. One, and the more important is to support fulfilment of the purpose of existence. The second, is not even for propagation of the human race as many persons imagine, but to help immature human souls come to the earth and  strive for spiritual  maturity.  We are  reminded of this in the Bible verse…I KNEW THEE BEFORE I FORMED  THEE IN THY MOTHER’S WOMB. Without  becoming spiritually mature  we cannot return  to our  home in  Paradise, to that Garden of Eden from where we  came here millennia ago, and may become LOST IN THE JUDGEMENT. In marriage, each spouse is expected to help  the other  to perfect  his spirit  for the return journey home. Unfortunately, many couples are unaware of this. They see marriage as only an institution in which they can respectably have children and become parents. They never ask themselves  whether it is  the number of children they have or the perfection of their spirits that would  open  the gate of  Paradise for them. The MARRIAGE MADE IN  HEAVEN, and that would be BEDS OF ROSES, are those in which one party supports the other in that union with virtues he or she does not possess but which she or he possesses to make husband and wife COMPLETE, that is BALANCED, to pursue that JOINT TASK, whether they have children or not, of fulfilling the purpose of their existence on earth. In that fulfilment, they become self-conscious, recognise THE WILL OF GOD and UNCONDITIONALLY FULFILL IT, ennobling their environment. That is when their inner core, their  BEING or EGO or ESSENCE, the LIVING part of the earth-man and earth-woman EVOLVES INTO THE HUMAN FORM and can be called a HUMAN BEING! Hitherto, we are all human spirits (…they that worship HIM must worship Him in SPIRIT and TRUTH ). The spirit is a kernel, subconscious. The BEING is conscious, alive and living. It is when the mango  seed or kernel becomes  a mango  tree, flowering and fruiting that it becomes fully valuable. We humans are not different. When priests talk of “those who  God has joined together”, it is those BALANCED couples whose marriages are founded on God-willed foundation, not those who marry because it is a fashion to marry, or those  who seek the opposite gender merely for physical surrender approved by society, or those who seek comfort from bills or merely want to become parents without even the least appreciation of what parenting involves. It should be noted as well that a marriage once made in Heaven  may become irregular and collapse on the way if, meanwhile, the parties  have become strangers to each other. THE LAW OF MOTION, another Law of Nature, governs our lives. Everything must  be on the move, it decrees. That is why our lungs move, our bowels move, and our hearts beat.  The clouds move. Rivers and streams oceans and seas flow. We are born and die in the flesh. If two parties in a  marriage strive upward but at different momentum, a gap  soon occurs in their union. Where one is mobile and the other is stagnant or moving downward, a gap may grow into a gulf. In this case they are no longer suited, spiritually speaking, to be husband and wife. The sooner that union is terminated the better for the striving and living one. We are advised… IF THY RIGHT EYE CAUSE YOU TO STUMBLE, REMOVE IT. I do not doubt that there could be  immeasurable blessings in trying to,  or actually redeeming a person self-willed  towards perdition or inadvertently moving thereto. The receiving party should know the risks involved. Lot did not “look back” when his wife did, as they fled burning Sodom and Gomorrah.  At earthly demise, no  husband follows a departed wife into the grave during interment of her earthly remains. No wife does the same. As Ayodele Eyitayo recognised, we are two souls united in marriage, we remain two in marriage and never merge or fuse to become one!

  • By-pass electricity, runaway plant medicine prices, Nigeria first

    By-pass electricity, runaway plant medicine prices, Nigeria first

    What has bypass electricity and “Nigeria First”, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s new slogan, got to do with the prices of plant medicines that are so high that even apostles of natural medicine cannot afford them? What can Nigeria First do about it?

    I am not speaking in parables when I talk about by-pass electricity, rising prices of food supplements and “Nigeria First”. For two weeks running, importers of food supplements for the Nigerianmarket have been falling over one another, as it were, and trailing one another’s footsteps to announce new and unbelievable prices. Even Nigerian or semi Nigerian companies which have been capitalising on the high prices of foreign products have begun to also raise their prices. I am a “family member”, so to say, in some of these companies. That means I regularly patronise them because I know the value of natural food supplements, and I have been adding them to my meals for more than thirty-five years. As a testimonial, I have not been to hospital, except to the opthalmologist, nor have I had to run any medical test nor use any pharmaceutical drugs for any health challege in the last thirty-years. So, you may imagine how raw I felt when I received the first notices of price hikes about two weeks ago from three of the companies which stock some of my favorite food supplements. Below, I mention some of the products and their new prices in retailer stores. They are designed for consumption within one month.

    1. Spirulina Capsules…N36,000, 2. Coral Calcium…N106,000, 3. Leaky Defence Incontinence…B68,000, 4. Asthma Breath Free…N68,000, 5.Neurobooster…N40,000, 6. Coq10…N69,000, 7. Evening Prime Rose Oil…N89,000, 8. Milkthistle…N79,000 9, Daily Build…N68,000 e.t.c.

    Please note that these are shelf prices which may have rocketed from soaring company prices by between 25%-30% to recoup the overheads of retailers.

    We cannot blame anyone for this. Minimum wage has gone up. Prices must bear the burden. The economy is fraught with fraud. Prices must absorb the wastage. The cost of doing business is high. If NAFDAC charges up to five million to license a single product for market appearance over one or two years, shelf prices will have to reflect it. Electricity cost is rising by the day. Importing and retailing companies use electricity in their offices, but they are over billed. The electricity producing company sells electricity to the electricity transmission company. The transmission companies sell electricity to the electricity distribution company ( DISCos). The DISCos sell electricity to all of us electricity users in homes, offices, schools, cold rooms, food stores, factories e.t.c. However, not all of us pay for electricity and that is one of the major causes of escalating shelf prices in the natural medicine market.

    READ ALSO: Oloyede: Beyond the glitch

    Disco marketers and pole men, that is the technical staff, of the DISCos sell electricity to official customers of the DISCos and to their own private customers. The electricity they sell to their own customers is called ByPass Electricity, because the cable connection, the supply to the customers and the returns by-pass the DISCos for the private pockets of the marketers and pool men. This by-pass income is mountainous.

    When the DISCos do not have enough returns to settle the bills with the electricity transmitting company and the electricity producing company, they share the shortfall and their expected profit among law-abiding or straight forward customers. We all call such electricity bills “crazy bills”. We demand meters, but we are not given. When the government comes to our rescue by importing meters and compelling the DISCos to give us, they grudgingly do so but not before they had engineered the meters to run and to read faster than they should. On top of that, they raise the tariff. And, once again, prices escalate.

    To underscore the challenges this has created in the plant medicine industry and market, we only need to be advised on the prescriptions of Dr. Robert Atkins for two common diseases in Nigeria…Hypertension and Diabetes, and then deduce the monthly cost of treating them from the new prices of some of his prescription. Dr. Atkins was a renowned orthodox medical practitioner in the United States, and one of the first generation of doctors in that country who recognised the dangerous side effects some pharmaceutical drugs posed to health and began to explore the safer and better healing potentials of natural medicines.

    For Hypertension and Diabetes, his prescriptions, offered free in his book, Dr. Atkins Vita Nutrient Solution and sub titled…Nature’s Answer to Drugs, include but are not limited to the following remedies. He classifies these remedies as “essential “ and “moderately essential”. My report below excludes the daily dosages he assigns to them.

    Hypertension (Essential)

    Magnesium, CoQ10, L-carnitine,Taurine, Vitamin E , Vitamin C, Essential Oils formulas, Mixed Tocotrienols, Chromium, Pantethine, Natural-source Beta-carotene, Ginkgo Biloba extracts, Hawthorn and B complex

    Moderately (Essential)

    Garlic, Bromelain, Gamma Oryzanol, Acety L- carnitine, Selenium, Vitamin B, Folic Acids, Quercetin, Lipoic Acids, Grape Seed/Pycnogenol, Calcium, Cayenne and Coleus Forskohlii

    Diabetes

    Dr Atkins classify diabetes under Blood Sugar Imbalance Diabetes and Hypoglycemia

    Essential

    Chromium, Zinc, Magnesium, Lipoic Acids, CoQ10, Biotin, Essential Oils, Selenium and B6.

    Moderately (Essential)

    Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Carnitine, Vitamin A, Siberian Ginseng, Manganese, Mixed Fibre Blend, Calcium, Licorice, Curcuminoids and Copper Sebacate.

    Dr. Atkins wrote: “When your objective is to elevate blood sugar to normal levels or reduce your dosage of antidiabetes medication, the following list should prove helpful… Chromium, Lipoic Acids, CoQ10, Biotin, Inositol, Zinc, Niacinamide and DHEA

    Moderately (Essential)

    Fenugreek, Taurine, Folic Acids, Benefical Bacteria, Lysine, Milk Thistle, Garlic and Calcium”.

    If we go by the new retail prices above, Hypertension or Diabetes good medicine may cost about N200,000 every month for an average of three or four good medicines for the ailment. In Hypertension, for example, my first four favourite or herbal medicines are Hawthorn Berries, CoQ10, Vitamin E (Mixed Tocopherols and Mixed Tocotrinols), Magnesium. There is no space here for me to explain the chemistry of their actions. However, as for the tocopherol and tocotrinols, I obtain them dietarily from boiled palmfruit. If the budget permits me, I may add mega dosage Vitamin B Complex, Vitamin E and Omega-3 Fatty Acids. As for blood sugar balance, my preferences nowadays are wholesome diet with raw, edible leaves and small plants such as pawpaw leaf, nettle, chanka piedra, ressurection plants, vervain, oregano, scent leaf, bitter leaf, and karella (ejirin in Yoruba), among others. A diabetic may grow all of these in his or her home garden.

    What is going on? Everyone is asking. Nigeria Info 99.3 FM radio station in Lagos, asked this question last week, giving me the idea for this column. The presenter was Marian. In my view, her presentation was unbalanced, almost, as always, inciting something often like The government versus the rest of us… What are we doing? Why are we docile?

    In this mood last week, she played a 2023 clip of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s campaign promises on electricity supply if he became President. Tinubu’s bottomline was that, as President, if he did not provide electricity 24 hours a day year round, and he could not explain why, no one should vote for him in 2027. Many callers on the programme berated the President. I hold no brief for him. He has said no one should pity him. However, journalism is all about holding the balance in the society. Hasn’t Marian heard about Bypass Electricity? I wondered! Could she not educate her listeners and callers?

    A Solution

    Bypass Electricity is pervasive. I understand the fine is N1 million and that marketers and pole men who discover it take about N100,000 and look the other way. A solution of the problem is a meticulously planned crackdown using honest task forces. Housing estates and other residential neighbourhoods may be targeted and ransacked at different times. So can markets, offices, factories e.t.c. It is a pity Nigeria’s property market has not been digitalised and private sector workers do not declare their assets when they are employed. Were these in place, it should be easier to handle DISCo marketers and pole men.

    Meanwhile, their activities have put the natural medicines market in jeopardy and is hurting the health of many Nigerians who sustain their health on nutritional food supplements.

    If today’s shalf prices are beyond my reach, what will tomorrow’s be? Could I be shocked any more when my step mother said she was now buying her choice Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar with mother for almost N50,000. That is even when you see a bottle on the shelf. Last week, someone published in my health chat group, Kusa Green Pastures Herbs useful information on Lycopene for prostate gland health. Many men were excited and bombarded me with questions about where they could get it to buy. I knew they were on a wild goose chase. In the best of times, Lycopene hardly came to the market as a single product. In several men’s virility formulas, it came combined with such other prostate gland health nutrients as Stingy Nettle Root, African Black Ant extracts, Saw Palmetto Berries, Pumpkin Seeds, Zinc, Vitamin E and Omega-3 Fatty Acids, among others.

    One of the previous regular stockists of Lycopene told me she tried to import one kilogramme powder of Lycopene recently but gave it up when she received a bill of about $450. Next, she ordered one kilogramme of Tomato Paste extracts which offers good amounts of Lycopene, but the powder caked and no one would buy it. Apparently, her supplier may have been watching costs and did not protect the powder with anti-caking agents which may be unnatural ingredients, anyway. One other source of Lycopene last week was a product offered to Nigeria by now Ghana-based PURE Company in its product named Daily Build. This product is now going for about N60,0000. It is a compendium of about 60 or more nutrients of which Lycopene was just one infitesimal part. So, it offered no appeal to the Lycopene enquirers.

    They realise they could obtain a lot of Lycopene from their house back garden by growing tomatoes in sacs or plastic buckets. You do not get Lycopene from tomato by eating it raw or consuming it in juice form but by cooking it. Cooking breaks the cell wall to enable it release a maximum yield of Lycopene. Raw tomato gives plenty of Vitamin C. In the days when tomato was cheap, I ate no fewer than four every day with a meal…corn pap, rice, beans, yam porridge, two parboiled tomatoes for their Lycopene and two raw ones for Vitamin C. The parboiled tomato is sweet, almost sugary!.

    The mother of one of my former health food store acquaintances passed about two weeks ago of Hypertension-related causes. She must have bottled it up for years, and went over to her daughter’s when death approached. The doctor advised about six laboratory tests. There was hardly money for any. Two days later, a stroke paralysed the old woman’s right arm and right leg. Still, there was no money for the hospital or any of those tests. Being a fresh stroke, the young woman gave her mother some Jobelyn Capsules, as it had been reported in some studies that this blood formula could help. The following day, this old woman rose to her feet. There was jubilation. Some money was found for a test. The creatine and urea levels were abnormally high. The kidney may have been impaired or damaged. Two days later, she passed. Could her life have been extended if the prices or food supplements had been avoidable and the economy was not fraught with business misbehaviour?

    Nigeria First

    Earlier, I wondered what “Nigeria First” had to with all of this. A lot, indeed. “Nigeria First” is the new slogan of President Tinubu, after “Renewed Hope Agenda”. In Nigeria First, ctizens are encouraged to make Nigerian products their preferences over foreign ones. The Nigerian plant medicine industry visualised Nigeria First before the President. For months, this column has been reporting local efforts which are struggling to compete with and to displace foreign products that were becoming very expensive and unavoidable. Please recall the presentation on this page of the Bayelsa State-based Millenium Nature Pathway (MILNAPATH) and, later, of Edible Herbs.

    Before I proceed, I would like to say MILNAPATH, Edible Herbs and other local efforts are personal victory for me and others like me who midwifed network marketing of nutritional supplements in the 1990s. At that time, our critics said I was using The Guardian newspapper on which I was Director of Publications and Editor-in-Chief to promote influx of foreign plant medicines. They were not persuaded that the influx would open their eye to better ways of plant medicine packaging and marketing. We have been proven right. Jobelyn and other medicines came up in the twinkle of am eye. So did Carrot beauty product. Can we forget Friends of Nature? Many persons in my generstion still owe their health to Mrs. Elizabeth Kafaru. Who is a Catholic who has not heard of Pax Herbal Centre of Rev. Father AnselmAdodo? For years now, Fr. Adodo has been running a natural medicines hospital at the GRA in Ikeja, Lagos. These are offshoots of our “Nigeria First” efforts of those days.

    Co-incidentally, both MILNAPATH and Edible Herbs, grandchildren offshoots of those efforts, launched new products into the market last week. That reaches health challenges in mental acuity, vision, pain, malaria and typhoid fever, digestion, arthritis, Female reproductive health needs, male reproductive health matters, blood circulation and hypertension, diabetes e.t.c. The field is widening.

    Edible Herbs has about 40 or 50 products now, including the currently roaring Sagbadewe Bath Soap. Sagbadewe Soap and Sagbadewe Syrup are made wholly from Nigerian ingredients. In Yoruba Language, Sagbadewe means anti-aging or age reversing. The ingredients of Sagbadewe Soap are transdermally invaginated into the body through nerves endings in the skin. The soap, should, therefore, be benefical in reflex zoon therapy of the foot and, especially, in pedicure, as all organs of the body are believed by reflex zoon therapists to be connected to the feet through nerves endings. Stimulating these nerves endings, therefore, awaken from slumber various organs that are “sleepy” and inefficient. The primary target of the ingredients is the Central Nervous System ( CNS) which is anything but calm in many persons. Thus, Sagbadewe Soap is indicated for pain, restful sleep, calm composure outside sleep, apart from cleaning skin blemishes, healing atlethe’s foot and stopping convulsion, among several other benefits.

    Another local company I am watching is coming up. It has many products in the market already. However, its toothpaste has put me off. I try some of these products before I announce them. My favourite toothpaste for years have been the Chlorophy -based one from EDMARK, which has been out of business for some years due to a court case, and the Aloe vera-based one from Forever Living Products (FLP). Both being not readily accessible, I have been using my own formulation for about two years. Last month, a distributor from a new company introduced me to a toothpaste. In my opinion, too, high sounding claims were made. I was not disappointed. I stopped using the product after about three days because I suspected Morphine to be one of its ingredients. Was this why it was claimed that it would block tooth pain and cause cavities to fill up on their own? I wondered! Morphine is opium derived, and used in hospitals when other pain relief medications seem not to work. It can be a dangerous medication as it may affect the brain. Could it not kill an exposed tooth nerve and, thereby, give a sense of well-being, whereas, when the tooth pulp is dead, microforms take it over, sometimes warranting root canal surgeries which are expensive?

    The long and short of it is that, irrespective of Bypass Electricity, Nigeria First was already fruiting in the local plant medicine community long before the President saw the vision. What the sector needs are machines. About three years ago, I thought of freeze-drying internationally well researched medicinal plants which grow luxuriantly in Nigeria but which we import from Europe and China every day. The cheapest freeze drying machine in the United Kingdom cost about 5 million Pounds Sterling. Who, in old age, would take a loan for that in a country where the ease of doing business is internationally poorly rated, where fraud is rife, where electricity is so expensive because marketers and pole men have constituted themselves into a new mafia in the energy sector, selling their company’s electricity to unscrupulous consumers, milking law-abiding consumers and walking free because it is not easy to go after them?

  • Pope Francis, influenza, pneumonia and breathing problems

    Pope Francis, influenza, pneumonia and breathing problems

    We will all remember him in different ways. His departure, caused by pneumonia, will always make me to remember my maternal grandmother, an influenza and pneumonia freak who did not mind a poisonous medicine for as long as it would protect her against these two dangerous breathing diseases. Can anyone blame her? She was born in 1909 and only a few years old when a major outbreak of influenza in Nigeria killed her father. Her mother was pregnant. In those days, there were no scan machine to foretell how many babies were coming or  their gender or if the baby in the womb was well positioned. My grandma was Sarah Kehinde Olunaike, of Isonyin, near Ijebu-Ode. She was  a twin, and about seven years, an older sister of Alphaeus Taiwo Olunaike, the now celebranted “Baba Alajo Shomolu” who was the first in a set of triplets who would become younger sibling of my grandmother. She had an older half sibling called Elijah. Their mother shocked Isonyin  community with the birth of the triplets! Where was a father to look after Elijah, the twins and, now, the triplets?  So, the elderly men  in the family buried alive the last to come, sparing Taiwo and Kehinde. My grandmother grieved… and went at sunset to exhume the baby. Alas, she found a corpse!

    Memories of these events tormented her till she passed at 69.  In Nigeria, this one was associated with the underground tasting in the Sahara Desert by France of dangerous bombs.

    Many people died again of breathing difficulties. Everyone must then have developed his or her escape route models. My grandmother’s terrified me, even as a Highter  School Certificate (HSC) holder of Igbobi College in 1969, literate enough to know from the label of her favourite medicine that it was contra-indicated for oral or internal use.

    Influenza, also called flu, and pneumonia, like asthma, bronchitis and sundry other conditions, inhibit inflow and outflow of air into the human body, causing oxygen deficits which, in turn, cause other ailments and may even kill brain cells. My grandmother’s recipe against them all was a popular proprietary medication for strains, muscle pull or congestion within tissues called  Sloane’s Liniment. It was a congestion dispersant and a  circulation mover meant, strictly, as per the label, for external use only. My grandmother was a defiant woman in this regard. She dispensed Sloane’s in a table spoon and placed a cube of sugar in it. The sugar absorbed the Sloane’s, and chewed it and then washed everything down with a glass of water. My brother, Architect Tunji Kusa, confirmed to me this week that she gave him and her other grandchildren this medication. They lived in 12, Odunukan Street, a swampy area of Abule Ijesha were the floor and walls of a house were often moist during rainy seasons, and children often went down with cold, pneumonia and convulsion, sometimes dying.  I must confess that I took this recipe from her a few times whenever  I experienced chest pains or aches, and I remembered those stories of those who had gone  by, as Pope Francis has now gone, yielding to pneumonia. More dreadful did this disease sound then to me because it was one of the diseases my Health Science class studied for West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) in 1968.

    In the last 15 years  or so, I have been acquainted with several persons taken away by pneumonia. One of them was an elder cousin of mine. Another was a gentleman in Surulere, Lagos, who was in his eighties, like Pope Francis. He  walked unheeded  into the hospital for an evaluation of his breathing concerns and ended up with an oxygen device in his nose. What I have discovered in many hospital treatments of pneumonia which involved the use of oxygen masks was that there were different treatments for the poor and for the rich. My cousin, like this gentleman, and other patients who are ignorant of this are admitted into the general ward. Others who can afford Intensive Care Unit (ICU) wards are admitted there. The oxygen mask in the general ward is antagonistic of the comfort and wellbeing of the  patient.

     My cousin pulled out her mask, saying she preferred to die. The gentleman did likewise. His daughter, very devoted to her parents, have not forgiven herself till this day for her ignorance, although she is in her sixties.

    Sloane’s liniment

    I began to pay serious attention to Sloane’s Liniment  in 1980  when my grandmother developed a lump in the right breast which turned out to be cancerous, and she died. I wondered  if this liniment had a hand in her death or if the culprit was a taste enchancer I which just hit the market and she sold and consumed. There was not much information in those days, but, today,  Sloane’s may stand discharged, if not acquitted.

    An internet source says of Sloane’s…

    “Sloane’s Liniment is a topical pain relief medication. It is applied to the skin to relieve muscle or joint pain caused by strains, sprains, arthritis, bruising, or backaches. The active ingredient is usually capsaicin, which is derived from chilli peppers”.

    The user is advised to…

    “Avoid contact with eyes, mouth, or sensitive areas and to wash hands thoroughly after application”.

    Regarding its toxicity, an internet  source  says…

    “Ingesting Sloane’s Liniment can cause severe symptoms due to its active ingredient, capsaicin. Possible effects include:

    Severe burning sensation in the mouth, throat, or digestive tract,  nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, or diarrhea, coughing, difficulty breathing, or wheezing”.

    Now, we know that Sloane’s  is derived from chilli pepper and, so, should not be overdone on the skin. I sometimes take 100 units of cayenne pepper or  grains of alligator pepper also called Grains of Paradise along with herbal medication for any  part of my body I am tending. These may be supplements for the brain, Edible Eye Care for vision or Edible Prostate Care, supported with Garlic Gin, oil extracts of garlic, ginger and black seed. The pepper supports circulation and delivery. Sometimes, pepper gluttony is the experience in the anus. On such occasions,   I wonder what may have taken place in the kidney  or if the blood became too thin and was escaping from the blood vessels with dire consequences.

    Influenza

    This disease is caused by influenza viruses..A, B and C, and is generally known as a “Flu”. The infection causes cough, fever, stuffy or running nose, sore throat, muscle and body aches, respiratory troubles, including pneumonia. The disease kills more persons under five years old and over 65. Also  susceptible  are persons with weak immunity or underlying diseases such as diabetes, heart and lungs disease, bronchitis, bronchiectasis. Also troublesome  can  be Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome( ARDS) and, of course, opportunitic agents such as bacteria and fungi.

    This disease is contagious and easily contracted through droplets of infection or cough or contact with infected hands or personal effects.

    Remedies

    The flu is largely a cold  climate problem, and this may be  why  it caught Nigerians off their guards when it struck our warm climate country. The flu sometimes strikes some persons during the rain or wet season with its semblance of cold. Whatever it is, there are now some remedies against it, irrespective of belied that   viruses are untouchable by pharmaceuticals. What can Mother Nature not vanquish?

    To start with, we must return to the new biology of health. It teaches us about microzyma. This is a microrganism in every cell, plant, animal or human. It is neutral and inactive when the cell is alkaline at about 7.34 pH. below 7.0 pH,  microzyma devolves first into bacteria,then viruses and, later, fungi or mold. Only reversal to alkalinity may, therefore, vanquish viruses, including those of influenza.

    Read Also: Pope Francis: A quintessential religious and secular leader

    Lime juice

    It taste acidic at  pH below 4.0, but yields alkaline salts after metabolism. So do lemon Juice. As an acidic citrus fruit with a high Vitamin C and Citric  Acid content, lime Juice has been shown to disrupt the  molecular structures of viruses, thereby preventing their replication and survival. Asians eat lots of lime leaves in soups and foods. We hardly  do in Nigeria. Only  few persons here  are aware of the medicinal benefits of  lime peel and orange peel. Both are anti-inflammatory, rich in flavonoids and limonenes for boosting immunity. Aren’t inflamation and immune deficiency  some of the troubles which aid or support Influenza? Some studies have shown that lime leaves are, therapeutically, important  as lime peel and the juice. When my house back garden is filled up, i planted lime trees in the front  house flower pots. Some rascals stole the limes. I laugh! They do not know I planted them only for their leaves. I dice fruit, peel and leaves in a large fask, a gift to me from my sister, Mrs Yemisi Amaku, and her husband, Michael. I remember them whenever I  pour myself  a glass, to go with a meal or drink in the dead of the night when I rise  to wee.

    Zinc

    It is an  immune booster, as is evident in the use of Zinc Lozenges against sore throat, and support for the thymus gland to produce more fighter T-4 cells. It is also reported to inhibit virus replication, especially when taken in early stages of flu. There are about 250 health benefits of zinc which cannot be listed here.

    We have all heard about Vitamin C and immunity, of how 500mg per day may double immune count, of how larger dosages have been used  to neutalise snake bite poisons, and of how Dr Linus Paulin, who won the Nobel Prize two times for his work on Vitamin C, recommends between 3,000-6,000mg  every day for therapies while  Orthodox medicine raises alarms and prefers  only  60mg.

    Echinaca extracts  are popular in Europe for colds and other uses. It is believed to be immune  boosting and anti inflamatory.

    Garlic, the poor man’s Penicelin, according to Russians, has undergone such transformation  in the hands of Kyolic proprietary blend that makes it about 50 times  more  powerful  than the natural variety. Thus, when I think  of Garlic,  Kyolic Garlic is my first choice. They  are about 20 brands of Kyolic, each targeted at a particular health problem. So, we have Kyolic for effective and efficient blood circulation ( Kyolic Circulation),Kyolic immune for immune boosting (Kyolic Immune), and such others as Kyolic Heart support, Kyolic Cardio.Vascular, Kyolic Stress and Fatigue, Kyolic Probiotics e.t.c. What they Kyolic people do is that,having achieved a spectacular garlic proprietary brand they call KYOLIC, they complex it  to the  best  researched  and welll known ingredients useful for particular ailments. Thus, Kyolic Circulation comes with Kyolic, Cayenne pepper, hawthorn berries and Vitamin E.

    Pneumonia

    This is a wise terrain of respiratory system misconducts the end of which even expert physicians may not know as the frontiers of knowledge in  medicine keep expanding. Nevertheless, it is known  that the average human has about  300 million air sacs in two lungs which are affected in varying degrees by pneumonia. The air sacs, called Aveoli, are moist Chambers through which oxygen in the air we  inhale is absorbed and sent  into the bloodstream for use by all cells in the body. The alveoli also facilitate the absorbtion and excretion of carbon dioxide in the spent air  we exhale.  In pneumonia, there is a build-up of fluid in these air sacs which makes absorbtion of  oxygen and excretion of carbon dioxide difficult. Without enough oxygen in the body, we  becomes the de-energised, weak and may begin to die instalmentally. Thinking may become sluggish and cognition  impaired. The  breath may become  rapid in efforts to procure more oxygen and to eliminate carbon dioxide build-ups. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of the metabolic process which produced energy and is, therefore, a poison of sorts.

    In the days of my grandmother, knowledge of what was happening in the body of a Pneumonic persons was scanty. In their ignorance, they attributed pneumonia to COLD in the system and sought to dispense it in various ways. Although some persons like my grandmother went to the extreme with remedies such as sloan’s liniment, almost every aging or aged persons had a plastic hot water bottle at the ready. This was filled with boiling water, capped and lain on the side of the chest where discomfort was felt. I have one made in England. I emphasis the country of manufacture  because it is better quality than China- made brands found everywhere today which easily give way in the neck region and is, thus, a waste of  money! Medical  science is on the trail of the ldea of a COLD orgin in attempts to link Hypothyroidism or under-active thyroid gland with this condition and such others as Congestive Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), for example. Indeed, cold impacts sluggishness, accumulations, weakness and other infarctions. Thus, the use of Potassium Iode remedies for the condition is often  suggested. However, studies which link hypothyroidism to pneumonia are few and inconclusive.

    Today, it is widely acknowledged that a weak immune system and some underlying ailments may pave the way for pneumonia onset.  On the fertile grounds then come bacteria, viruses and fungi of all sorts. Their ranks may also be enlarged by environmental pollutants, de-oxygenated environment e.t.c.  A woman in her thirties I watched over from her respiratory system challenged through health education is a case study here. She lived in a single room tenancy, cooked in this room, rid this room with chemicals mosquitoe sprays, and went to bed every night with an only window locked to protect her  privacy. She was on Ventoline when I became acquainted  with her. She coughed as though infected by  tuberculosis, and could not stand a drop of rain water on her body without sneezing, wheezing and coughing. The Ventoline was sometimes too strong for her, almost arresting her breathing. Today, she has reversed all of these on herbal remedies and even  liked to plant  yam heads in the garden during rainfall!

    Herbal remedies

    Oxygen inhalation through the oxygen masks is still popular in hospitals during emergencies. The Nigerian market tried  oxygen tablets for a while but gave it up on account of their scarcity and cost. The Vogue now is  the Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber. This is like a box in which someone is locked up to absorb oxygen through the nose, eyes, ears and skin.

    Since pathogens and their toxins are involved, causing inflamation especially, they have to be dealt with. The remedies suggested for  influenza may help as well. A hydra-headed situation is going on here, though. So, bigger punches may be required. Barberine-containing herbs such as Golden Seal Root are indispensable because they spare no germ.  Mango seed kernel is also wonderful in eliminating  becteria , fungi and viruses. I learned from  H.K. Bakru’s foods that heal that Indian women use it as contraceptive. They massage the powder  deep in their bodies before intercourse. The  powder kills Sperm Cells.  If it does, what else would it not kill, I reasoned.? So, it has helped  many  women with seemingly incurable vaginosis, Candidiasis and other vaginal challenges. Interestingly, some women now use it as tea or add it to their meals in the understanding that it may help them to shrink or eliminate uterine fibroids. This is against the background that surgically removed uterine fibroids are regrowing because one of the  underlying root causes, Microbials infections, was not address by these surgeries.

    Garlic, Kyolic and Garli Gin were  mentioned earlier. The  oils of garlic, ginger, Black seed  and super strength Oregano helped me recover from COVID 19 impact. My experiences are shared on facebook ( at John Olufemi Kusa) under the title COVID-19:  look alike symptom join the lexicon. Medicinal oils are fabulous healers even in log jams. Have  you not experience a key which would not turn in the lock suddenly do  after it is dabbed with oil?  Why do we grease machines and protect motor vehicle engines with engine oils?

    In pneumonia and COPD, there are many  lock jams in the respiratory system. There is inflamation, mucoid blockages, debris blockages,fluid  invasion of air passages, narrowing of air passages by  constracted nerves which do not relax.  In the book anoint yourself with oils, the importance of oils as medicine is well driven  home. In Christian scriptures, we learn of how Mary and Martha always massaged  the tired feet of the Lord Jesus with oils. And Prophet Mohammed? May the Peace of Allah be upon him where ever he is. He taught us about  Black seed and  promegranate oils! We should not wait until Pneumonia or COPD or other respiratory system challenged strike before we add these gifts of Nature to our diet. Our environments is filled with pollutants. We inhale smoke when our neighbour starts his or her car in the mornings or fills electricity generator tank. We inhale smoke in traffic. Do we know what the dust everywhere, including in our homes, is laden with? Many of us do not exercise. It is said we do not use more than 40 percent of our lung capacity. Any  part of the body not exercised weakens and  dies. These are some of the predisposing conditions in influenza, pneumonia, COPD and cold. Good bye, Pope Francis.