Category: Health

If wishes were horses, Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and their doctor, Obinna, Obeta, would be home from London  by now, their daughter, Sonia, in tow or left  in hospital. Either genuinely or in eye or lip service, many Nigerians led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo knelt before his Lordship Jeremy Johnson, begging that he have mercy on a “Christianly” and “first offender” Ekweremadu, a lawyer and deputy Senate president of the 9th Nigerian Senate. But Mr Justice Johnson sent Ekweremadu, 60, to prison for nine years and six months, Beatrice, 56, to four years and six months and Obeta, 50, for 10 years. He cleared Sonia, 25. The Ekweremadus  tricked a 21 -year old Lagos street trader to London,  promising employment on   7000 pounds Sterling for domestic services.Their intent was to discreetly harvest one of his kidneys as replacement for Sonia’s damaged kidney in an 80,000 pounds sterling surgery at the Royal Free Hospital. Obeta, resident in the United Kingdom, introduced the young man to the hospital as a kidney donor. The Ekweremadus ran into trouble when the surgeons discovered the so-called donor did not know why he was in hpspital. In the United Kingdom, as in Nigeria and the rest of the civilised world, that is a grievious crime!

Many Nigerians are nailing the  Ekweremadus.Many others sympathise with them, not because they do not know they committed a crime. They look at the matter from the softer side of life as a temptation before which the Ekweremadu buckled as parents desperate to save the life of their  dying daughter. While not being judgemental, this column cannot agree with Obasanjo that Ekweremadu is a “christianly” first offender. For Ekweremadu has a record  of back- door ways and means. A man’s behaviour, his propensity, is inseperable from him,like his shadow. In 2015, Ekweremadu connived with Senator Bukola Saraki to undeservedly become Deputy Senate President and, thereby, deprived the ruling party of control in the 9th Nigerian Senate. Of the immorality called politics, this column commented at that time in an article titled WHATEVER IS FALSE WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE. That misdeed collapsed in 2019 with the ouster of Bukola Saraki, Ekweremadu’s  “principal-in-crime”, not only from the Senate, but also from the mainstream politics of his home and power base, Kwara State. In 2023, Ekweremadu’s penchant for backdoor deals would land him, his wife and his Nigerian doctor contractor in London in jail.

If Ekweremadu is that straight forward as Obasanjo told Mr Justice Johnson, he would not have travelled on the route he trod.He has the money and the influence to shop around the world for more than one kidney for Sonia. An 80,000 pounds Sterling  about (46.6 )million naira surgery is not what a poor man can think of, nor is a 7000 pounds sterling(4) million naira offer for the domestic services of a 21-year-old who pushes his wears in wheel barrows in the Lagos street trade. So, why would they remove the roof from a poor man’s house  to roof their own palatial home? Do they not have other children who have healthy kidneys? Who wishes to part with one of two kidneys? What if the spare and only kidney fails?

While I do not and will never support criminality, my heart softened somewhat towards the Ekweremadus when I remembered the yoruba proverb that Eni ti ko ba  ri ogun lo npe ara re lokunrin  (It is the man on whose doorep there   is no war who calls himself a man). I am  not exhonerating the Ekweremadus of crime. What I am saying  is that what we vehemently condemn in other persons may be inherent in us. How many persons do not remove the roofs on other people’s houses to roof theirs? It is all about hacking other persons down and out to make ourselves happy. It is all about breaking the command of the Almighty Creator that we are free to enjoy all the bounties he has placed in his wonderful creation for our benefit and enjoyment, provided that we do not hurt or make someone else unhappy while we do so.  Are there no women who, desirous of having their own children strike the settled homes of other women? Are there no men who no longer respect the wedding ring on a woman’s finger? Is rate of child motherhood not escalating? How many lives does a politician destroy to acquire power? What of the Accountant General who destroys the treasury to make himself and his family happy and impoverish the nation?

ARCHILLES HEEL

I  tried to see the travails of the Ekweremadus differently…as a parent . The children of nowadays are the archilles heels of their parents. Many children have become gods and goddesses to their parents. The first of the 10 Christian commandments says: THOU SHALL HAVE NO  OTHER gods BUT ME.  The Bible says  Jesus told Christians to remove their  right eyes if they make them commit sin. But children have become gods and goddesses, the archilles heel which make  their parents unable to think and  act straight.

Many of today’s children or parents have not heard about the archilles heel. It is the weakest point in everyone’s life. Archilles was a valiant Greek soldier in those days of  wars with Troy. In Greek mythology, the father of archilles was a formidable king, his mother an immortal nymph. She tried to make him, too, immortal. She held him by the heel and dipped his body  into a river of immortality which made all his body but the heel by which she held him immortal. Thus, the heel became the weakest point in ARCHILLES body. Archilles probably died of a poisoned arrow which struck his heel or ruptured the tibial artery.

CHILDREN

As the archilles heel of their parents, many parents cannot sleep well or think straight when they think about the sagging lives of their children. Butterflies fly in their tummies. Goose pimples grow on their skin. Their hearts sink. They are nervous, hypertensive and even become depressed! How many parents can stand upright, their leg unyielding, when they behold their children dying , and there seems to be nothing they can do about it? Such parents may end up desperate like the Ekweremadus, uprooting someone else’s roof to roof their own house!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Royal College of Surgeons in the the United kingdom warned  decades ago that a generation of children who were the  Archilles heel of their parents was already upon us. The Royal College of Surgeons even prophesied that many of today’s children would not survive their parents. In the 1990s, the WHO advised member states to legally limit  fat, sugar, salt and chemicals in foods. Many countries turned deaf ears. The WHO said many studies  conclusively revealed that many degenerative diseases, including diabetes, liver, kidney disease and cancer, had origins in these food components. One transnational soft drink company  reduced the sugar content of its product. The drink , being addictive, tasted so different that the consumers noticed the change without being told. They switched over to the substitute drink. As the rival company began to gain the upper hand in the market, the repentant or complying company threw caution to the wind and returned to the market, re-invigorated.

At that time, I was Editor of The Guardian newspaper. As a health enthusiast,I easily saw correlations between emergent health profiles and the changing Nigerian diet, especially among young persons. I tried to make The Guardian investigate this assumption. But I gave up when I discovered that the study could be elaborate and that we did not have the funding and manpower capacity for it.

I  reflected on  my youth and found I was as guilty as the young ones of that time. Journalism almost damaged my health in the 1970s. In every newsroom, you are likely to find a poster on the wall which announces… THIS IS A MAD HOUSE.  What would you say of Theo Ola, the bulky news Editor of the Daily Times then? He was angrily waiting for your copy and watching his wristwatch or the wall clock. If you came late, he could  abuse your mother, yes your mother! Could you blame him? If the paper went late and money was lost,  he could be fired. If you  challenged him of abusing your mother, he could pull his top dress, clench his huge fists and come for you. If you were intelligent, you will flee! When the madness of the newsroom was over, chief Theo Ola could seek you out, calm your nerves and invite you to the new can can, down the road off kakawa street, home at that time of the daily times.

The new can taught me to drink beer and to eat meat pies. Where was the time to leisurely sit before a meal?  Even now, conditioned by the hurly burly of those days, I still eat my meals in record time, seeing everyone else at the table as slow coaches! That’s not good for my health, I know. I am not alone. Nduka Irabor, news Editor of the Guardian, went to a nearby canteen one day before work peaked. He met Wole Agunbiade and Niyi Obaremi. He had lunch with them and bought each of them a bottle of beer. He finished his meal and his beer and returned to the news room before them. When they arrived, queries were waiting on their desks for “delaying production”. One gentleman tried to get close to me because he and my wife were classmates in a masters degree class at the University of Lagos.(He would later become a commissioner in his state). He wrote an unintelligible report for Nduka Irabor, who called him “an illiterate” . Embarrassed, he rushed to my office to complain. I calmly explained to him this had nothing to do with degrees but profession! Did he not feel the heat the day Jullyette Ukabiala, one of our star reporters, came late to the news room long after I had angrily closed the cover page, ready to be beaten next day by The Punch or The Concord? I tore her copy to shreds and threw them at her, threatening to fling the telephone box at her if she did not quickly evacuate herself from my presence. In the newsroom, editors are like military officers at war in the unending battle against deadlines. Here was Jullyette, the young woman we all called queen, a nickname given to her by Lade Bonuola, our boss. She went to Ladbone as we call Bonuola, but returned empty handed. What would a general do? Fight a war all alone without able officers? Would Bonuola produce a good quality newspaper all by himself? Could I if I put down Irabor? I was humbled, though, when Jullyette came to my office the next day and narrated her experiences to me over the past month. Our Defence Correspondent, who would later go on study leave to study for a higher degree in strategic studies at Kingston College, she had terrible encounters with the Chinese army and even fainted in a taxi which was bringing her  to the office. The driver detoured to a clinic where she got some respite before heading for the office. I sprang to my feet, and sent someone   to 118 Ogunlana Drive, Surulere, Lagos and another to  Papa Johnson, Brig. Mobolaji  Johnson’s father, on Olonode Street, Ebutte meta. Both men sold apple cider vinegar (ACV) which defeats  the Chinese army. Happily, Jullyette knew her Editor  was under newsroom pressure ,  and was  a loving, playing Editor.

DIGRESSION

Turns and twists are inevitable  comic relief in matters this serious…children of this generation not surviving their parents. I could have been gone long before now but for that High Grace which linked me at the age of 27 to the knowledge of the physical body being a priceless gift from God to enable human spirit fufil the purpose of their earthly existence. I lived in Shomolu with my grandmother and worked on Kakawa Street. I couldn’t drink Shomolu water, well water. For every meal, I drank two bottles of popular soft drinks. Each bottle had about seven cubes of sugar. In the office, I ate sandwiches or meat pies washed down with beer or soda. At parties,I went for big bottles of stout beer and wished to develop muscles. WATE-ON had not helped much. I tried egovin. To half a glass of this egg based drink, I added one tin of peak milk , some cubes of sugar and one raw egg.

My abdomen bloated. I could hardly breathe. One slice of bread balooned my abdomen to my back in search of more space. I knew I was dying. Two of my cousins (Tokunbo Otusajo and Sunmisola Oshidipe) died about then. I thought I was next in line. I couldn’t tell my father. My mother was gone when I was nine. My grandmother took me to her husband in the village. He led me to  a female herbalist. She gave herbs which were to be cooked with a type of fish. I was to talk to no one before I ate it at cock crow, and the person to cook it was to talk to no one, including me. After I ate the meal, without cleaning my mouth before, a taboo for me in those days, my nurse, who was one of the wives of Baba Alajo Shomolu, brought me a breakfast of pap and peppered stew. I was afraid to eat it. The doctors had said I had “wind”. Would I bloat up again and possibly die? I tried the meal…and was shocked that nothing happened. For lunch, she brought rice, and “swallow” for dinner. I rejoiced.

 Youth service in Uyo and Calabar brought me the knowledge of creation and the God willed creation died for the body in health and healing in sickness. When I married in 1983, my wife and I decided never to cook with MSG (monosodium glutamate) although her bossom childhood friend was one of the chief marketers. We knocked off bread, milk, sugar, margarine and butter. Herb teas replaced processed teas. We ate beef for a while. We knew that egg like milk, was loaded with chemicals and hormones and toxins from animals denied their God -given freedom to range. No one has ever cooked noodles in our cooking pots. My nostrils know the aroma but my tongue has never tasted them. I brought up my children under this dietary regimen. For their milk, Mrs Margaret Adu brought us 48 bottles of soya every week. They had a bottle each before breakfast and another before dinner. Mrs Adu was such an expert at home made soya milk, you wouldn’t know you were drinking soya. Boarding school and the exercise of free will in adult life however changed these children. Unpleasant experiences of the detours make them, like prodigal children , hunger for their robust childhood beginnings. Even at 73, I have not stopped being a diet “headmaster” of a parent. My health still experiences  vestiges of the carelessness and misadventures of youth, which  I long to protect young ones  against.

SONIA

I pray  Sonia receives all the help she needs. Guilt feelings over the plight of her parents may compound her  problems and theirs. Tragedies such as this brings families together. She should live to make them happy because they went down to make her live. I employ her case as an index of the health misfortunes or impending health calamities of many young persons who may not survive their parents. Many of such children consume too much junk food. There is a 15-year-old somewhere in Fagba area of Lagos who is battling with cancer of the blood! Young persons in their20s or 30s are dying of colon cancer. Last year, a mother extracted a worm from the breast wound of a girl barely 15. This worm survived in saline solution over three days! A girl in youth service tested positive to nephritis and kidney cysts, exactly what killed her father. Many young women take oral thrush and vaginal candidiasis with kid gloves, unknown to them that they are signals of burgeoning candida colonies in their bodies caused by sugar overload. Sonia’s diet may have contributed to her kidney challenge. There is hardly a Life Force in junk food. It is loaded instead with free radicals, toxins, chemicals, heavy metals etc. It has no minerals,vitamins, antioxidants, proteins etc. It is a load of carbohydrate without chromium and an invitation to diabetes. It makes the assaulted organs grow weak and die installmentally. That is why many young people hooked on sugar and junk food may become brain fogged, hyperactive and scatter brains. They may bloat up, suggesting that the heart and the kidneys are becoming weak. The intestine is often damaged. Infact, the Royal college of surgeons said…DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INTESTINE. Every parent should discourage junk food at home and should never tire of focusing the family, however old and independent the children may be on The Ceation of the diet The Creator gave to mankind to nurture their bodies in health and to nurse it in sickness.

We stand again for the upteenth time before a picture of a hopefully-better Nigeria glittering in the horizon and beckoning on us. It will not come to us. We have to go to it. This picture is of the Nigeria of our dreams, of Nigeria as it could be. Because they all thought they were all-wise, military president Ibrahim Gbadamoshi Babangida (IBB), like his civilian successors, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and, lately, Muhammadu Buhari, failed to lead this nation to the promised Land. They all ran their shows with small kitchen cabinets which soon overpowered them and consumed whatever energy and vision they thought they had. Like Pilate’s wife, Aisha Buhari warned her husband of the do-gooders. But he silenced her and threw her into” the kitchen and the other room”. I hope that president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as president, will learn from the mistakes of his predecessors. If he does not, Nigerian nightmares, such as poverty, mass unemployment, psychosomatic diseases and untimely deaths will continue to flourish.

 Mistakes 

One of the mistakes of Tinubu’s predecessors was that they failed to have a 360 degrees handle on each of Nigeria’s major menacing problems and possible solutions to them. Thus, government was conducted on “fire brigade basis”, always plodding in the dark and never really emerging fully from a dark tunnel.

 In my view, obtaining a 360 degrees handle on national questions is best done through presidential commissions. This column advised President Buhari of this. But he may be forgiven if he paid not much attention to it because his health got the better part of him in the early days of his administration. Vice President  Yemi Oshibajo would hàve helped him. But, as First Lady Aisha Buhari said, before she took her bow from the State House and hibernated in Dubai, a powerful “mafia” had hijacked the president. Even Bola Ahmed TInubu, who helped the president to power, was locked out. It must have taken “village intelligence” and political sagacity  for Tinubu to have refrained from voicing public opposition to some failings of the Buhari administration at that time and  during the political campaigns on which, vicariously, he was caught in the Buhari cob webs.

 Commissions

The incoming president may design a totally new roadmap for Nigeria with a presidential commission for each national question, and a presidential review commission which will help him to review the performances of his ministers every quarter. Presidential commissions will examine over a time frame problems facing Nigeria in their respective sectors and provide solutions to them. The president can formulate the solutions into an agenda which the ministers will be obliged to implement. A Presidential review commission will monitor implementation of the agenda. Ministers who fall below par over two consecutive quarters will be shown the door. Gone would be the days ministers bungled and bungled but still kept their jobs. This project will cost money, no doubt. The critics will even wonder if it will not sideline the National Assembly. The critics can be told handsome handshaskes between ministers and law makers crippled oversight functions of the assembly. If they didn’t, how come the Armed Forces couldn’t fight terrorist ,bandits and insurgents until recently when they were re-armed and motivated? How come huge investments in electricity generation and supply haven’t yielded commensurate dividends? How come crude oil is stolen in the oil fields and foreigners are illegally mining and exporting gold?

 Fortunately for  him, Tinubu is never afraid of spending money. He spends money to make more money than he spends. That is the story of Lagos State for eight years and of the legacy which he left behind and has continued to make Lagos State the Leader State in Nigeria. If, for example, he throws money at a presidential commission on energy, poverty,and through that Nigeria can produce more energy than it needs and export the rest, would that not be better than stoçkpling money for the purpose of befooling the electorate four years after with savings  and savings and savings which added no value to Nigeria’s family, social, commercial and industrial well being? The experts would meet, dust the problems up and suggest solutions. We are informed that perfection comes in the union of ideas. When every national question is on the table, face up, and addressed as such, there is transparency.Do we not remember that darkness has no hiding place in the light?

Shonekan

On November 27, 1996, military despot General Sanni Abacha made former UAC Nigeria chairman Ernest Shonekan, chairman of a 250-member vision 2010 committee to tell  him how Nigeria  can become a world power  in 14 years( 2010). The  committee sub divided itself into 13 work groups, each group charting a route out of a huge, dark tunnel. But many of them were neither original thinkers and players in the sectors they tried to design road maps for. 27 years after the committee’s inauguration and 13 years after 2010, Nigeria still wallows and grows in the dark.The vision 2020 was rowdy and dabbled into subjects in which many of its members had neither intuitive nor intellectual competence. What he ought to have done was to make the experts tell the nation what they need to bring Nigeria at par with expert sectors in countries which had the mastery of expertise in various sectors.This time around, there could be Presidential commissions for security, agriculture, education, energy,transportation, forestry, health, telecommunications, manufacturing, youth, social welfare, policing, drug abuse, solid minerals. etc.

Civil Servants

Proceeding with these templates, the civil service will be purely civil or public service. Nigeria will have a goal in every sector and a vision, always, of such a grand develop skills and objectives to achieve that goal. Chief Awolowo did it in the Western Region. That is why the South West region today is the most developed of Nigeria’s six geo-political regions. Never mind that Olusegun Obasanjo, as both military and civilian president, came from the South West. This region does not accept him as its leader and did not back him up. He did not believe in Chief Awolowo and other South West leaders, and he has continued to work against them.

    The President

 A president should not be afraid of brainstorming for ideas through presidential commissions. Working through the commissions makes him humble himself before the nation as running an open and inclusive administration, as a person who acknowledges thereby that he is not Mr Know all. He does not have to fear that the government will be highjacked from him. Power is not his. It derives from the people, he is a servant of as a gift from their Creator to Whom all Powers belong. It is recognised, though, that being the one entrusted with power for four years,he cannot abdicate power as he cannot also misuse it. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was on top of this game. He was knowledgeable and visionary. He once told us he was not better than any of us, irrespective of the accolades we all showered on him. He said the difference between him and us was that , when we were under the blue and red light of club houses at night, he was contemplating the problems of the land and finding solutions to them.

So, working through a commission, Chief Awolowo was not like a lamb in the slaughter house, naive or uninformed or prone to being misled.

He always knew where he was heading, and only wanted the bare bones or the skeleton fleshed up for him. This was what the  likes of  Prof Oluwasanmi and Professor Sam  Aluko  did for him with the pounds, shillings, and pennies from cocoa sales.

Bola Tinubu appears like Chief Awolowo to be tough  going. Politically, he has crossed a forest of hinderances Chief Awolowo did not cross. He has given a hint that he would name his ministers within one month. It took Buhari six months to do this in 2015 and two months in 2019. If TInubu accepts the idea of Presidential commissions, they may have long life spans, advising the government about any divergence from goal, reconciling differences as exigencies may dictate and developing new agendas for the future.

Igbo, Kanu

What I am not certain of is if Bola Tinubu would like to tackle the Igbo and Nnamdi Kanu questions through third parties such as a presidential commission or personally, and if he would like to do this within one month. I believe it is better for him to do this personally and within one month while the 10th National Assembly is settling down and before the ministers take their seats. The political sea and ocean are calmer at this time. He may presage a visit to Igboland with a visit to Catholic Archbishop Kukah , a leading critic of his muslim-muslum ticket. From a visit to Archbishop Kukah, a president Tinubu may head for Igboland, to the state of Nnamdi Kanu, Anambra. Should he go with Kanu? Oh yes. But under cover. Security people know what that means. He would return with Kanu to Aso rock or to Lagos the next day. And, while speculations are at their peak, he would discreetly send Kanu back to Kenya and, from there,  back to England. This should help to open up the South-East for a resolution of the Igbo question. Fences will have to be mended with anti Igbo forces who want Kanu and the Igbos to carry the cans of endsars youth revolt which almost entombed Nigeria.

 The Police

This is where Iam headed. I do not like soldiers always called in to resolve civil disturbances such as kidnapping, terrorism and banditry. The police force is capable of resolving them if it is well trained, armed and motivated. The military should be hidden from the view of other nations, so they are not easily sized up. My father was a colonial policeman (1945-1979), so I should know what Iam talking about as someone who grew up in police barracks for 28 years. Police training nowadays is too short and there are fewer refresher courses. Police barracks are dirty. I doubt if there are weekly barracks inspection anymore. Discipline has sagged. Some smoke Indian hemp in their uniforms amidst hoodlums in street  joints. In my days as a barracks resident, police wives were not permitted to sell items such as toiletries, milk or sugar and tea at home. They  ran  rented shops outside the barracks. Their husbands were investigated for how the investment came about. The mess or the canteens, one for officers  the other for other ranks, were the official business houses. But what do you find in police barracks nowadays? Pepper soup joints frequented by the big boys of society the police should keep under watch!

Tinubu’s Promise

During the campaigns, Bola Tinubu said Nigeria needed about two million policemen . But some people quickly shut him up while others apologised for a slip of tongue, saying that he meant a smaller number. In my view, we should be looking at about five million policemen. We need not worry about financing. The system will be self financing.

I proceed from the lessons we should learn from mother nature. The average adult human body has about 100 trillion cells. Cells of the immune system are comparable in cell mass to those of the liver and of the brain. Immune deficiency implies disease or death. Nigeria is “diseased” because of policing deficiency. It is doubtful if we have more than 500,000 policemen to police 200 million citizens. That is about one policeman to about 400 citizens. That was why the police force was literally liquidated by the endsars youth revolt, irrespective of their arms. Given Nigeria’s insecurity experiences today, we need young men and women for policing in the following areas

1) REGULAR POLICE

2) FOREST POLICE

3). HIGHWAY POLICE

4).NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE

5).AIRPORT POLICE

6). SEA POLICE

7). TRAFFIC POLICE.

THE GENERAL POLICE will remain in charge of offices in police stations, more of which require upgrading,-and will attend to general police duties.

HIGHWAY POLICE fascinates me. It is because we do not have them that kidnappers abduct travellers into the forests. This special police force will govern all highways in the country. They will be different from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) , a traffic police on the highways at best. I imagine about 200,000 vehicles travel everyday on the lagos-Ibadan expressway and about the same number on the Lagos- Badagry expressway. Lately, we have been hearing of kidnappings on these roads, as we do hear on the Shagamu-Ijebu-Ode-Benin Road. If every vehicle on the Lagos- Ibadan expressway pays about N200 for highway policing, it will provide #(200,000 x 200 )which equals N40 million naira everyday or 1.2 billion naira every month. Of this conservative toll, N200 million may be reserved for road maintainance, while N800 million goes to the highway police and N200 million is kept in reserve. We were promised police patrol and security on this road when it was commissioned by the Obasanjo military administration in August 1978. Today, N200 per vehicle is incomparable with the lives of the occupants of that vehicle. We can replicate what we do on Lagos-Ibadan expressway nationwide, especially for Abuja  Kaduna expressway.

Forest Policing is as important as policing towns and cities. It is because the forests were ignored the hoodlums, kidnappers, terrorists and bandits took them over. Why can huge farms not grow out of them as this column has been canvassing? States which wish to re settle Nigerian (not foreign) normadic cattle rearers in ranches can do this . Big businesses will spring up in the forest towns. Canning companies will be there. So will be sellers of feed for the cows. Schools and hospitals and restaurants as well as recreational centers  will come. The forest police will be there. Residents and companies will pay policing  taxes. As I suggested in 2015 and 2019, Nigeria can produce billions of rabbits from the forests every months. I witnessed such a forest activity in Senegal in 2006. There were no jobs for young persons. Women were prostituting.  Vivian Wade, french wife of president Abdoulaye Wade, took idle women to  forests  hostels . They grew cucumbers, cabbage, tubers, fruits, vegetables consumed in Senegal and  France, earnings fabulous incomes  and periodically holidaying in town. We neglected our own forests. As nature abhors a vaccum, ignoble persons took them over and are menacing us. Aren’t we at fault?

NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE is a big deal. Regular police are overstretched and under equipped and sluggishly respond to emergencies. The neighbourhood police will have good records about many residents. Today, the street junctions and corners are dens of drug sellers and users because policing is not effective there. China fought two opium wars, the first from 1839 to 1842 with Great Britain and from 1856-1860 against Britain France and the United States. The Europeans were dumping opium, a narcotic drug, on China for money, and China was trying to shut its ports. Today, we rely only on the NDLEA to fight drug trafficking in Nigeria. The NDLEA is  doing a good job under brig Buba Marwa (rtd). But it will appear largely limited to airports and seaports. Codeine and tramadol and other narcotics from India and other countries still find their ways to Nigerian neighbourhoods . What about the street corners and road junctions where telephone recharge card businesses are camoflague businesses for selling drugs of all kinds, including those binding in biscuits, sweets,  body sprays, drinks, chewing gumes, Laundary soaps? The neighbourhood police can mark out the drug dens for the NDLEA which can then carry out location sweeps. But is the NDLEA well staffed for this policing task? Prison expansion, like the setting up of the rehabilitation centers, may be in the forests, will have to go hand in hand with this drive. The inmates of rehab centers may be trained in all sorts of skills in the food chain, to help Nigeria expand farm yield and banish food poverty.

PORT POLICING must be stepped up. Guns and other contraband  are flooding in. Sea Ports are growing in number. Lekki has come up. Badagry is coming up. Bola Tinubu promised Akwa Ibom a sea Port. Port Harcourt would want its own. Calabar and warri are beckoning. So has been Ilaje in Bariga, Lagos, since the 1962 political crisis in Western region upset chief Awolowo’s plan to make it a sea port. Every state is struggling to have its own airport. Will there be no need to police them?

TRAFFIC POLICING grows with population growth and population movements. Rail transportation is growing . We have witnessed assaults on trains. Abroad, there is police present at boarding stations and on the trains while Artificial Intelligence monitors the tracks

Conclusion

For want of space, I would like to conclude here this interesting subject. For me, the son of a policeman (Samuel Adebayo Kusa NO 7053), employing five million persons into the various police forces will drastically reduce unemployment, address youth restiveness, make the population more secure, reduce food poverty and prevent the involvement of the military in menial security matters which may distract them from their expert preoccupation , which is war against external aggressors.