The outlook for the year 2022 is a mixed grill with damning projections by a cross-section of experts against the backdrop of an economy already sagging under the weight of debts and other baggage, reports Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf.
Will Nigeria be poorer or better off economically in the year 2022? Harmless as this question is, the answer is not straightforward.
The devil is in the details
Global economic outlook shows signs of slow recovery from the COVID-19 Omicron variant which threatens both socioeconomic interests as well as wellbeing of people.
In Nigeria, the outlook doesn’t look any better if considered against the backdrop of higher taxes, excruciating debts, to mention just a few.
Although in the latest edition of its Nigeria Development Update, the World Bank revised Nigeria’s growth forecast to 2.7% in 2021, 2.8% in 2022 respectively, many economic watchers are not persuaded that things would ease out generally in major economic fundamentals.
Outlook for ICT
According to available information, the ICT sector will likely be supported by increased adoption of digitization and greater use of data activities caused by supply chain challenges, the lingering and related effects of COVID-19, an exchange rate depreciation, higher energy prices, and high global food prices more generally.
Inflation’s recent downward trend is expected to continue during the remainder of 2021 and in 2022 due to base-year effects, but it will stay in double digits; annual average inflation will likely stand at 15% in 2021 and a still high 12.6% in 2022, driven by several factors.
Weakening naira
There is likely further weakening of the naira due to a drawdown and utilisation of Nigeria’s IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation, and planned Eurobond issuance of US$16.2 billion approved in November 2021.
Second, the deregulation of the downstream oil sector following the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act; the Federal Government’s plans to stop subsidy payments on petroleum products by mid-2022.
Electricity tariff
Expected hikes in electricity tariffs, poses a variety of risks relating to further supply-side shocks across sectors, particularly in relation to further spikes in COVID-19 cases.
While expressing concern about the planned increase in electricity tariffs, the World Bank has warned that this will push inflation up in 2022.
In its latest Commodity Markets Outlook forecast, the World Bank indicated that prices of electricity, which peaked at 80 per cent higher this year compared to 2020, will remain high next year.
Chief Economist and Director of the World Bank’s Prospects Group Ayhan Kose said the surge in energy prices poses significant near-term risks to global inflation and, if sustained, could also weigh on growth in energy-importing countries.
The multilateral institution said the sharp rebound in commodity prices is turning out to be more pronounced than previously projected. Recent volatility in prices may complicate policy choices as countries recover from last year’s global recession, it added.
The bank projected that non-energy prices, including agriculture and metals, would decrease in 2022, following strong gains this year.
In the outgoing year, some commodity prices rose to (or exceeded) levels not seen since the spike of 2011.
The bank said natural gas and coal prices reached record highs amid supply constraints and rebounding demand for electricity, although they are expected to decline in 2022 as demand eases and supply improves.
However, additional price spikes may occur in the near-term amid very low inventories and persistent supply bottlenecks.
The bank has projected the price of a barrel of crude oil at $74 in 2022 as oil demand strengthens and reaches pre-pandemic levels.
The use of crude oil as a substitute for natural gas presents a major upside risk to the demand outlook, although higher energy prices may start to weigh on global growth.
As global growth softens and supply disruptions are resolved, metal prices are forecast to fall five per cent in 2022, after rising by an estimated 48 per cent in 2021. Following a projected 22 per cent increase in 2021, agricultural prices are expected to decline modestly next year as supply conditions improve and energy prices stabilise.
Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Prospects Group, John Baffes, said high natural gas and coal prices are impacting the production of other commodities and pose an upside risk to price forecasts.
Baffes said: “Fertilizer production has been curtailed by higher natural gas and coal prices, and higher fertilizer prices have been pushing up input costs for key food crops. The production of some metals such as aluminum and zinc has been reduced due to high energy costs as well.”
The bank said: “These will increasingly need to be from low-carbon sources, such as hydropower or nuclear power, or from new methods of storing renewable power.
“At the same time, the surge in natural gas and coal prices has made solar and wind power even more competitive as an alternative energy source. Countries can benefit from accelerating the installation of renewable energy and reducing their dependency on fossil fuels.”
The report noted that forecasts are subject to substantial risks, including adverse weather, the uneven COVID-19 recovery, the threat of more outbreaks, supply-chain disruptions, and environmental policies.
Furthermore, higher food prices, along with the recent spike in energy costs, are pushing food-price inflation up and raising food-security concerns in several developing economies.
It said the share of people living in urban areas continues to rise, these results highlight the need for urban planning to maximize the beneficial elements of cities and mitigate their negative impacts.
The bank noted that cities are at the forefront of climate change, and strategic planning particularly for transport links, can help reduce their resource consumption and, crucially, their greenhouse gas emissions.
Economy will experience boom and bust – KPMG boss, Vetiva Research
While attempting a prognosis of how the economy will fare in 2022, Olusegun Zaccheaus, Associate Director, Strategy and Economics, of KPMG Nigeria, noted that rising oil prices, production and fiscal expansion is expected to support modest recovery.
Zaccheaus who observed that the economy rebounded in Q2 2021 following a marginal y-o-y growth rate of 0.5% in Q1 2021, also averred that the recorded real GDP growth rate of 5% y-o-y in Q2 2021 was the fastest GDP quarterly growth rate witnessed since 2014, indicating that business and economic activities are heading back to pre-pandemic levels.
According to him, “The oil sector, Nigeria’s biggest fiscal revenue source, accounted for 7.4% of GDP in Q2 2021 and contracted by 12.7% y-o-y, following a 2.2% y-o-y contraction in Q1 2021. These contractions have largely impacted low oil production because of technical and operational issues that caused disruptions at key oil terminals. Nigeria’s oil production stood at 1.61 million barrels per day (mbpd) in Q2 2021, compared with 1.72 mbpd in Q1 2021 and 1.81 mbpd in Q2 2021. However, positive oil price market forecasts, along with increases in oil production quotas by OPEC+ are expected to support oil revenue and volume growth in 2022.”
The non-oil sector, which contributed around 93% of GDP in Q2 2021 and recorded a strong growth rate of 5.4% y-o-y (compared with the 0.4% year on year growth rate recorded in Q1 2021), has been the main driver of the economic pick-up. “Growth is expected to be planning to borrow more. It is unfortunate that the government is always thinking of borrowing, instead of thinking of other ways to generate revenue.
“They can ensure that public-private partnership projects are built, once operational and yielding capital, though whoever implemented it can generate their money plus interest and then the project becomes ours and we can generate revenue from those. There are projects that we can scale down until we have enough funds to implement and there are projects that can generate money on their own.”
An economist and the Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr. Muda Yusuf, said that the increasing debt profile of the government raised some sustainability concerns.
Yusuf, who is a former Director-General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “The government tends to argue that the condition is not a debt problem, but a revenue challenge. But the truth is that debt becomes a problem if the revenue base is not strong enough to service the debt sustainably. It invariably becomes a debt problem.”
Labour unrest likely
According to Comrade Chinedu Okafor, a civil rights activist, Nigerians should not foreclose labour unrest this year if the Federal Government goes ahead with some policy initiatives such as the planned removal of subsidy by February, electricity tariff hike and some other unpalatable items on the menu to be served the citizenry in the year.
Will Nigeria be poorer or better off economically in the year 2022? Harmless as this question is, the answer is not straightforward.
The devil is in the details
Global economic outlook shows signs of slow recovery from the COVID-19 Omicron variant which threatens both socioeconomic interests as well as wellbeing of people.
In Nigeria, the outlook doesn’t look any better if considered against the backdrop of higher taxes, excruciating debts, to mention just a few.
Although in the latest edition of its Nigeria Development Update, the World Bank revised Nigeria’s growth forecast to 2.7% in 2021, 2.8% in 2022 respectively, many economic watchers are not persuaded that things would ease out generally in major economic fundamentals.
The year ended the way it began. We can take one of the icons of violence; that is, Zamfara State. The state of gold and dust, of death and potential plenty, a wild, wild place on the Nigerian earth.
A few days to new year, bandits stormed and they prowled from house to house, seeking the living to be the dead. And they identified targets, fished them out and shot them dead. The lucky ones they manhandled and bundled away as kidnap victims. Women limped away with them as trophies, a district head as a prize among others whose fates in the month or even year, or even forever we may never know.
It is on that note we look at the nation in 2022 as security takes centre stage in a year that promises to be turbulent on another front: party politics. It promises to be a year of nomination more than rumination.
What will the year look like? Shall we find resolution and strategy? For the past few years, the federal government claimed it had resolution. The resolution came in the form of official prattle and rhetorical bluster. They said they had control. But bluster did not bust the enemies. There was a rhythm of silence and explosion. At one time, after the President, Muhammadu Buhari, had changed his service chiefs after relentless clamour, a sense of optimism replaced fear.
But respite came despite evidence of nothing concrete on the ground. So, the respite might just have been that the evil was at rest like murmuring fat cat and refreshing and re-strategising. Then they came in big bursts of disasters. We started to see some states in deep trouble. We saw Zamfara, and then Kaduna and then Katsina. The normal fear was Borno and Yobe corridors. But while the violence in that region seemed to normalise in routine tragedies, new vicious excitements erupted in those states.
One question that was asked at the beginning, and was never answered as the year ended, was why the federal government has not mentioned the culprits, the sponsors. Why have the lords of violence with deep pockets not fished out of their pockets of hiding places? They were obviously hiding in plain sights. The government named three groups, Jama’at Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic and
Muslim Support Group (GSIM) and ISGS. It was a charade of an announcement. If they were groups what were the names of the people behind them. Where were the arrests. The sponsors cannot behind in the pall of groups. They are humans with loads of cash.
Wealthy men by definition cannot hide. They live in splendour. They nest in mansions. They travel not alone but in retinues of glamour. Their bank accounts cannot flaunt themselves in home vaults alone. Even if they do, they are also tangible. Big bales of cash, whether in the official innards of banks or in their homes, cannot hide. So, why are these men still walking around while they are in remote corners, and they press buttons of slaughter and killings.
But the bandits did something that analysts tried to come to terms with. Were we seeing a new mutation, whereby the zealots of mayhem where now transmuting into secular plunder? Were those who swore in the name of the Almighty, those who said they did all the burning of markets, slashing of throats, shooting down of army aircraft, and the bonfire of mosques and churches, were they now forswearing their God and turning to mammon? Were we seeing the death of their spirit and the rebirth of their flesh?
So, the army of the ragtag nature had now become fodder to bandits. They joined the those who began as gold hounds and kidnappers of humans as gold dust, and they made a wild business of it. Schools became soft targets. In Niger State, in Kaduna state and Zamfara state, the boys and girls were easy pickings.
In looking to the new year as strategy, the federal government has to look for ways of either rejigging old strategies or starting with new ones. The old ones did not get much traction. One of them was the assault on cellular networks. Some northern states, including Katsina, decided to shut down the networks. They believed that once the hoodlums did not talk with each other, they could not map plans of assault. But it did not work. The violence still happened, and school children were still ferreted away. District heads still disappeared and
damsels as trophies were still falling. The strategy was counterproductive. The state also shut down certain highways, and that shut down commerce as markets were immobilised. That also did not work.
The networks had to be restored. No one knows how much was lost. There was even fear that the collapse of commerce could breed a defection from the law-abiding persons to the ranks of the hoodlums.
The state also employed an appeasement policy. Governor Aminu Masari, who had wailed in public over scarcity of policemen in the state, tried to woo the gangs with free housing and market stalls. The hoodlums couls be normalised when they lived among sane people. How naïve. They were living among the, before they left. They were making millions in single raids in their peripatetic lifestyles. A governor proposed to hem them in with little pickings. It was no temptation and the governor had to drop that.
Of course, shutting down schools was no strategy. It was a surrender. It meant that Boko Haram was achieving its philosophy. Kaduna, Niger and even Sokoto had to shut down some schools. Sokoto came with a good idea of ensuring that boarding schools operated as day schools close to the wards’ homes. This eliminated soft targets like the Chibok or Dapchi girls.
operated as day schools close to the wards’ homes. This eliminated soft targets like the Chibok or Dapchi girls. That was a good strategy but it could not be an enduring formula because boarding schools were an essential part of developing social skills and the communal spirits of education.
The federal government changed its service chiefs. They thought that was a solution. But the idea of change of service chiefs was advanced as a decision that would come with a change of strategy. We did not see much in the year. Except that the foot soldiers put more of their sweat and brawn on the line. The argument is that if the foot soldiers were fighting harder, it was because their leaders were more inspired. We saw this in the fight against Boko Haram in the northeast, and progress is believed to have happened on that front.
But a sense that where victory happened was pyrrhic has renewed the sense of despair that we have not found the formula to end the insurgency. The inflow of warriors from Islamic State also called ISWAP has complicated hopes and thinking as to how to tackle it. As the year drew to an end, rocket fired into Maiduguri, an otherwise safe haven, raising the spectre of a vulnerabilities where strength was believed to be projected.
We have always thought as a nation that spending more would overwhelm the enemies. We bought Tocarno jet fighters for the are lightweight and easy to manoeuvre and could strafe the bandits into silence. The result so far has been mixed. There is still time to find out whether we shall have joy from their skies.
One big area of hope was actually in the southwest. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state has spearheaded the Amotekun onslaught on hoodlums. His convoy collided with the men and rolled through. Many of the kidnappers have been intersected and stopped. It is a measure of will and coordination. He tackled the federal government over forest reserves with ultimatum, and it is cheerful to recall his fortitude. His actions have revealed that the problem of the region was not only herdsmen but also ritual murderers.
Even as the year ended, a place as far off as Sokoto started to moot the idea of vigilantes in the mould of Amotekun to slay the head of bandit dragon. The new year opens but few new ideas hover on the horizon. Optimism is still subdued just like a year ago.
The year 2019 shook much of the world from its slumber, as nations realised how naked, vulnerable and light their public health security and infrastructure were. Unlike other pandemics that have had very short run in duration and fatality, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have overtaken most, gaining notoriety and fueling one of the darkest eras in human history.
With the death toll only rivaled by the HIV/AIDS epidemic which has been around for the fourth decade running, the COVID-19 pandemic, in just two years, has killed 5,403,662 people globally, as at December 28, 2021, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In all, 280,119,931 people have been infected globally with the virus.
In Nigeria, the social, economic and political space has not been the same since the index case of the COVID-19 was first identified in the country in late February 2020. The “new normal” marked much of 2020 and 2021. The Federal Government put in place preventive measures to minimise physical interactions, hence limiting the spread of the virus from person to. The buzzwords were face masks, curfew, lockdown, sanitiser, social distancing, hand washing, etc.
Countries, scientists, and big pharmaceutical companies raced to produce vaccines that could potentially inoculate people and reduce the alarming death rates. Voila! The eureka moment came…COVID-19 vaccines to the rescue! Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Sputnik were few of the vaccines approved by the WHO for emergency use. In Nigeria, four vaccines received emergency use listing. They are: AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer.
However, because of the global mad-rush for countries to protect and prioritise the vaccination of their citizens, vaccine nationalism set in. The fabric of humanity seared in two as rich countries bought over most of the vaccines from the big pharmaceuticals, and hoarded them for their citizens, against the WHO’s advice. Low income countries, especially in Africa, suffered for this inhumane act. Even with their money, they could not secure sizable COVID-19 vaccines to protect their people.
What the numbers are saying
Almost fifty seven and a half percent (57.4 per cent) of the world population have already received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 9.02 billion doses have been administered globally. Sadly, while countries like China, India, United States of America, Brazil etc., have vaccinated 2.78 billion, 1.42 billion, 503.48 million, 329.01 million of their citizens respectively, only 8.3 per cent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Nigeria, like many countries in the African region, struggles with vaccinating its people for a sundry of reasons, chief among them are vaccine hesitancy and inadequate vaccines with long shelf lives.
According to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), as at December 27, 2021, only 9,861,311 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination were reached with first dose while 4,380,239 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination were reached with second dose (fully vaccinated) across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The Federal Government laments the low vaccine uptake by Nigerians. This is against the backdrop of the new COVID-19 variant – Omicron – which is highly transmissible and can bypass the antibodies produced by COVID-19 vaccines to infect the vaccinated individual. However, the severity of the infection is low among vaccinated persons compared to the unvaccinated, even for the Delta variant. In November, government announced that about 81 per cent of deaths from COVID-19 across the country occurred among persons that were unvaccinated. Therefore, the vaccines not only protect against infection, but also ensure that there is reduced risk of hospitalisation and deaths.
On December 1, 2021,the federal government instituted “no proof of vaccination, no entry” for civil servants,as part of the effort to ensure that more eligible persons get fully vaccinated, even with the booster doses in order to achieve the 70 per cent vaccination target for 2022.
The WHO has expressed concern that many African countries may not hit the target of vaccinating even 10 per cent of their citizens by the end of 2021. It attributed this to vaccine hesitancy and vaccine inequity as well as hoarding by rich countries, which are already administering booster doses.
The outlook for the new year 2022 does not look encouraging because of the surge in COVID-19 cases during the four wave of the pandemic. Frightening is the fact that the total number of COVID-19 cases reported in the month of December 2021 alone nearly tripled the total number of confirmed cases recorded in the months of October and November combined, according to the latest epidemiological data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). This was largely caused by the festive period and the usual travels, large gatherings with utter disregard for protective measures by Nigerians.
According to the COVID-19 data obtained by The Nation, the total number of COVID-19 cases recorded in October and November 2021, were 7,141 and 2,167 respectively; combined number being 9,308 cases. However, in the month of December 2021 alone, as at December 27, 2021, a total of 24,749 confirmed COVID-19 cases were recorded, while total death toll stood at 3,027.
What experts are saying
In a chat with The Nation, Nigeria’s foremost virologist, Prof Oyewale Tomori, explained that Nigeria needs to urgently reduce its dependence on vaccine donations from countries, especially if the country is to get vaccines with a long expiry period.
He said: “The Federal Government needs to get more vaccine doses, purchased with a long expiry period, and depend less on donations. There is also the need to increase and improve public awareness on the advantages of vaccination. This effort must be persistent and widespread, using all avenues to reach the people.
“We should check our capacity and capability to deliver and vaccinate our people within a short period of time, certainly a time shorter than the period between vaccine receipt and expiry. Also, we should only accept donations we can use before the expiry date. However, the best approach is to buy your own vaccines and plan better. Even if we are now committing funds to vaccine procurement, we started a bit late, opting to stake our health security on donors.”
Concerning the country’s testing capacity for COVID-19, Prof Tomori said: “My worry is from the onset, our testing has been below par. In the last 6 months or longer, fewer than 15 states have consistently reported cases, with between 40 to 50 laboratories consistently not reporting. It is a combination of many factors, including fatigue, lack of interest, official abandonment of testing, lack of reagents and non-payment of allowances of laboratory workers.”
He explained that the country’s genomic sequencing is currently not where it should ordinarily be, with only 45 Omicron variants identified as at December 21, 2021.
“The issue centers more on a disconnect and poor coordination of genetic sequencing activities in Nigeria. This is why we are likely not to know how many Omicron positives from reports of Nigerian travellers, purportedly negative on leaving our shores, but testing positive on arrival at their destinations,” he added.
Also speaking with The Nation, the Registrar and Secretary-General of the West African Postgraduate College of Medical Laboratory Science, Dr Godswill Okara, said: “Nigeria needs to address the vaccine hesitancy by most members of the public. This requires stepping up information, enlightenment and communication (IEC) activities through all the various sources – government, non-governmental, religious, and traditional. There is the need to step down OEC activities at village and community level. By the time the village and community leaders are involved to take the message down, to let the people at the grass roots understand that there is a lot of benefits derivable by getting vaccinated, I believe that the message will sink in and more people will comply – coming forward and asking to be vaccinated.
“It is sad to notice that about one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines expired and had to be destroyed. If we continue this way, the chances of reaching 70 per cent of the population to achieve herd immunity will never be realised. Nigeria needs every assistance we can get in addition to whatever resources can be applied from within to procure vaccines. If we have a good network and a public that is willing to receive the vaccines, even the one million doses would have been utilised.
“The government needs to step up the precautionary and preventive measures and protocols. Like the Director General of the WHO said – it is not just vaccines alone, everything should be factored-in like the use of face masks, washing of hands/sanitisation of hands, social distancing, avoiding unnecessary travel and avoiding crowds. We must make sure that history should not repeat itself. We are aware that in 1918, the Spanish flu almost decimated one quarter of the population of Europe. At that time, the kind of scientific and medical advancements we have now were unknown.
“We should take advantage of the body of knowledge that has been built up as far as control and prevention of this pandemic is concerned. Everybody should make it a point of duty to cut the spread of the virus by adhering to all the non-pharmaceutical protocols. It is very disappointing that our society, with the level of information available at our disposal, people still behave as if there is no cause for alarm.”
What the Government is saying
Speaking during a television programme on NTA on Wednesday, December 29, 2021, the Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, said: “What is happening is that we are having a predicted and expected surge in cases, given the time of the year. Regardless of whether we had a new variant or not, we are expecting some uptick in disease transmission for COVID-19. This is because we are approaching the dry season when it is dusty and starts to get cold. We also have increased susceptibility to pathogens in general, including SARS-COV-2. Another thing is that in December, with significant movement of people traveling, if you have a new variant or pathogen, it provides a ripe opportunity for importation.
“Specifically for COVID-19, we have low vaccination, and people have stopped adhering to all the health and safety measures that are known to work. So, putting all of these together gives a very bad mix that has contributed to the surge in cases. That has not been helped by the emergence of this new variant, which is highly transmissible and has a shorter incubation period. Globally and in Nigeria, it is trying to take over or has taken over the Delta variant that was the last cause for alarm. What has happened with Omicron is that there is some reduction in the ability of the vaccines to prevent you from getting infection. But obviously, there is still vaccine protection against significant illness, needing hospitalisation or dying.
“The developed world rolled out their vaccination programme a lot earlier than the rest of the world. A lot has been said about vaccine equity and access. Their people have received their two doses a while back. The benefit you get from a booster is that you return antibody levels back to where they were, and increase the benefit of the vaccine. People need to get vaccinated. According to nationwide data available in November, 81 per cent of all deaths we had happened in unvaccinated people.”
Also, speaking during the NTA interview, the Chairman of the Commissioners for Health, and Commissioner of Health for Cross River State, Dr. Betta Edu, said: “The biggest issue is our behavioral attitude; people have remained adamant and they don’t want to observe all the guidelines that have been set out by the Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) to ensure that people protect themselves. It is very disturbing across states to see people gathered at big functions and events without their face masks. These behaviours have led to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
“Apart from vaccine hesitancy, the vaccines are not even available in many states. As I speak to you, in Cross River State, we have not received delivery of the Pfizer vaccine yet for booster doses. Several other states have not received the Pfizer vaccine which is actually supposed to be for these interventions.
“A lot of work is being done at the state level. There is that financial fatigue that does not let states access as much funds as they need to. The continuous response to COVID-19 will be sustainable if we can deal more with the private sector. Finally, we expect to have support from the Federal Government to be able to carry out a seamless response in the States. The NCDC should continue to supply consumables to public laboratories, and where possible the rapid diagnostic test kits. The NPHCDA should continue to support logistics to help with the vaccination process.”
While addressing the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee (NTLC) on Primary Health Care delivery, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, said: “Although our vaccination figure is still far from our target of vaccinating 112 million eligible persons for Nigeria to attain herd immunity, we have seen a significant improvement on our figures since the implementation of mass vaccination campaign. To further increase coverage and strengthen immunity against COVID-19, the PSC on COVID-19 response, in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Health and NPHCDA, has approved the administration of booster dose for persons that have completed two doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer Bio-N-Tech or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
“The booster dose is meant to strengthen immune response to COVID-19 infection. People who take booster doses have greater protection against COVID-19. To be eligible for the Pfizer Bio-N-Tech booster dose, you must be 18 years or above, and you must have received your second dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer Bio-N-Tech at least six months ago. A time interval of two months or more is required for those who received Johnson & Johnson to qualify for a booster dose. For those who received the Moderna vaccine, a booster dose of Moderna is given six months after the completion of their second dose. The administration of booster dose commenced throughout the country on 10th December 2021 and can be taken in any vaccination site free of charge.
“While we call on all eligible Nigerians to take advantage of this opportunity to get their booster doses, it is important to mention that booster doses have the approval of WHO and are already being safely administered to eligible persons in Europe and America.”
Changing the narrative through local vaccine production
Stakeholders in the health sector have continued to advocate that Nigeria needs to invest heavily in vaccines production, as lessons from COVID-19 have shown that the country cannot continue to rely on other countries for the protection of its people.
The Federal Government in October 2021, launched a new vaccine policy meant to enhance access and use of vaccines for protection of citizens from infectious diseases. Health Minister Osagie Ehanire explained that the vaccine policy would create a supportive environment for access and use of vaccines to protect citizens.
Ehanire stated that the Federal Government, in partnership with May and Baker Pharmaceutical, established the Biovaccine Nigeria Limited to encourage local vaccine manufacturing. Noting that the Government has a 45 per cent equity in the company, he explained that Biovaccine Nigeria Limited is expected to use appropriate technologies in modern vaccines production to boost local production of vaccines in Nigeria and make vaccines available to Nigerians and the entire West Africa.
2022 will feature several major sporting events highlighted by top stars. Among the biggest are Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cameroon, Winter Olympics in Beijing, UEFA Champions League Final in Russia, 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and, in between, top heavyweight bouts in boxing and UFC. Taiwo Alimi profiles the people and events that will make 2022 memorable.
FOOTBALL
2022 is loaded with the best in football, and not COVID-19 of Omicron variant will take away the shine.
Africa will light up the world with the AFCON from January 9-February 6, 2022 in Cameroon. It is Africa’s biggest football show and, amidst a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic Omicron variant, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is not short-changing itself, as fans will be allowed entry into the various stadiums, to enjoy the moments.
For about a month focus will temporarily shift from EPL to Cameroon as African stars are home to showcase their skills.
Among them are EPL top scorer Mohammed Salah, Sadio Mane and Naby Keita (Liverpool); Kelechi Iheanacho, Wilfred Ndidi, Daniel Amartey and Nampalys Mendy (Leicester);
Edouard Mendy and Hakim Ziyech (Chelsea); Thomas Partey, Nicolas Pepe and Mohammed Elneny (Arsenal); Frank Onyeka, Tarique Fosu and Julian Jeanvier (Brentford); Alex Iwobi and Jean-Philllipe Ghamin (Everton) to mention but a few.
In all, the EPL will be without 40 players and more leagues in Europe will be without key players, among them Nigeria’s top scorer, Victor Osimhen whose presence will add colour and glamour.
At country level, Nigeria’s Super Eagles are seeking a fourth title with defending champions Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Senegal, Ghana, and Cote’d’Ivoire also favoured to lift the trophy.
With expectation on players and countries riding high among fans, 2022 will start off on a high for sport across the world.
UEFA Champions League Final
In May, it will be the turn of the UEFA Champions League Final to wow the world. Billed for Krestovsky Stadium ,Saint Petersburg, Russia on May 28, 2022, it is one of the most anticipated soccer games in the world. The winners will get to play the winners of the 2021/22 UEFA Europa League in the 2022 UEFA Super Cup on August 10, 2022.
FIFA World Cup
The biggest the 2022 FIFA World Cup is left for the last quarter of the year from November 21-December 18 in Qatar.
This is number one on the list, not just because of the order the events happen, but it also happens to be probably the most anticipated sporting event of 2022. The World Cup only happens every four years, making this one more unique and more exciting. This year, the teams will play in Qatar and will be the first time the competition is played in the winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The event is usually held in June, but because of Qatar’s extreme temperatures in the Summer, it was moved to November/December. The known participating teams so far are: Qatar, Germany, Denmark, Brazil, France, Belgium, Croatia, Spain, Serbia, England, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Argentina.
Nigeria is in the final phase of qualification and that, in itself, makes 2022 exciting for the teeming fans of football in the country. Football watchers and pundits also wait with bated breathe on how far Nigeria’s new coach,Jose Peseiro, can go and how the FA will hold out leading to the next elections. Samuel Eto’o surfacing to take over Cameroon FA is already sending signal to the rest of Africa and 2022 will be decisive in the turn of events in the FAs.
Boxing
2022 heralds ‘Fight of the Era’ between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. While Fury is seeking to end his fairy comeback on a high, Joshua will need to validate himself with the contest against the Gypsy King.
The build up to the epic clash is expected to begin early in the year with Joshua vs Oleksandr Usyk . It is really important that Joshua wins this fight to get a shot at Fury to make Fury/Joshua happen. It will decide who holds the title of the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and the best of this era.
We thought the fight would happen in 2021, until Usyk beat Joshua, and American Deontay Wilder called for a second bout with Fury.
The Fury-Wilder trilogy is one debate which has been settled, at least. Yet it’s still not entirely clear where Fury goes next before retiring. Fury vs Usyk is not recommended after what the big Gypsy did to Wilder, the only fight that would draw attention and realistically rein in megabucks and colour is Fury or Joshua.
For boxing fans, the prospect of Fury and Joshua stepping through the ropes at long last is still the event to look ahead to – and 2022 will decide whether it happens or not. Many Nigerians are hoping beyond hope that it happens.
From February 4-20, Beijing, China will come alive again. After hosting the Summer Olympics 14 years ago, Beijing is back to host both the Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics in 2022. This year’s Winter Olympics will feature 15 different competitions: Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsled, Cross-country Skiing, Curling, Figure Skating, Freestyle Skiing, Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Short Track, Ski Jumping, Snowboarding, and Speed Skating.
It will be closely followed by the 2022 Winter Paralympics from March 4-13.
Beijing hosts the Winter Paralympics just a month after the Olympics. That makes it the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Paralympics. There will be six different sports: Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Cross-Country Skiing, Sled Hockey, Snowboarding, and Wheelchair Curling.
RONALDO VS MESSI
Christiano Ronaldo’s resurgence in England will continue to be hyped by the British media in 2022 and Lionel Messi is expected to shine brighter in France. It is yet to be seen whether the Argentine will be able to rally his country in the 2022 World Cup, which could be his last as a player.
2022, practically, will kick in or out these phenomenal players that have dominated world football for one decade and launch out the ones taking their boots.
• How pregnant teenager poisoned her child through the uterus • Dangers of drug abuse among Nigerian teens, young adults • Crack cocaine, gutter juice, colorado available for a token
The womb was supposed to be Princess’ safe space. Until her mother, Felicia, fed toxic nutriment to her through the womb wall. Blackcurrant juice dosed with cocaine, tramadol, rohypnol, cannabis, and codeine; then occasionally, ice (meth), was her mother’s cocktail of choice.
The victuals impacted on the growing foetus the same way a loaded rifle spits bullets to a malnourished child. But her mother couldn’t care.
At her birth at a maternity centre, in Agege, Lagos, life unfurled to Princess like the innards of a penal retreat. If her mother’s womb was hell’s kitchen, the world outside is her purgatory.
The four-year-old cut a pitiful image at first sight: her skin hung loosely on her pinched frame. Her light skin pulsed with a tangle of veins, running loosely like red-green welts across her wiry frame. They would seem hazardous to her but for the fact that they fetched food and medicine across her internal organs and nerves where they are sorely needed.
She shook uncontrollably like a rag doll dumped in the path of fierce wind, from time to time – a consequence of the nerve-system damage that occurred when she suffered a shortfall of blood and oxygen, due to her mother’s cocaine-dependence, just before her birth.
Between the seizures, she grabbed some lucid spells, in which she played with bundles of clothes on her granny’s bottom shelf.
She couldn’t leave the hospital until two weeks after her birth. She was referred to the General Hospital, where she spent another one week. When she was discharged, the doctor warned that she may experience severe tremor from time to time.
The tremor is usually severe. It often strikes at the wrong time, during family gatherings, in the classroom, and on a random walk with her granny. “Many people think she is epileptic. They are mistaken. Her mother infected her with this sickness,” said Priscilla Odutoye, Princess’ grandma.
According to the 68-year-old, her daughter tried to sell her granddaughter even before she gave birth. “She was desperate. She could not tell the person who impregnated her because she had multiple sex partners. Her childhood friend told me that she was seeking buyers for the child even before she put to bed. When I heard that she intended to sell the child to a native doctor at N60, 000, I started monitoring her. To perfect her plans, she left home in her third trimester after quarrelling with me and calling me a witch. I knew it was a trick, so I told her friend to call me immediately she went into labour,” Odutoye.
When Felicia’s water broke, her mother was right beside her. “After she put to bed, she dumped her child and took off. Speaking at her clothes shop at Isale-Oja, Agege, the 68-year-old revealed that the last she had of her daughter was that she had relocated to Malaysia, leaving behind her daughter.
At age four, Princess’ trunk is too weak and she wobbles in the gait of a two-year-old. Shrouded in her infirmity, she made a gallant effort to move around. Her mien brightened and a weak smile seeped to her face as the reporter crouched to play with her. Between her smile and her gait, the four-year-old issues her straight-jacketed response to the world with all its breakable toys.
Invisible in plain sight
Princess is simply one of several minors marred by the rapture of hallucinogenic substances ingested by their mothers during pregnancy. Her mother, Felicia, reportedly took crack cocaine, gutter juice, colorado, often in combination with other drugs, during pregnancy thus making her (Princess) part of a generation of Nigerian minors unfairly branded by some as “Awon omo science students (children of science students).”
More often, they are simply called ‘omo gutter’ (gutter child) or Colorado kids. A few have severe physical deformities from which they will never recover. In others the damage can be more subtle, showing up as behavioral aberrations that may sabotage their schooling and social development.
Many of these children look and act like other kids, but their early exposure to cocaine, tramadol, rohypnol, and other psychotropic substances makes them less able to overcome negative influences like disruptive family life.
•A group of friends attempt to revive their mate who slumped after drinking a psychotropic substance
Cocaine during pregnancy
Fadekemi Oguntoyinbo, a medical doctor and paediatric health specialist said that pregnant teens, who ingest psychotropic substances, especially the ones containing cocaine, risk causing severe health problems for their babies.
According to her, cocaine is one of the most dangerous narcotics, a pregnant mother could take. Cocaine taken during pregnancy may cause the blood vessels that carry blood to the uterus and placenta to narrow (constrict), according to health experts.
Then, less oxygen and fewer nutrients reach the fetus. If pregnant women use cocaine regularly, the risk of the following is increased: miscarriage, inadequate growth of the fetus, premature detachment of the placenta (placental abruption), premature birth, and stillbirth. Such children also suffer birth defects of the brain and spinal cord, urinary tract, and bone defects.
•A nursing mother smokes marijuana while breastfeeding her infant
Their plight, no doubt, inspires pity and fear
The dimensions of the tragedy are staggering yet invisible in national data. While official estimates are hard to find, a recent study of a total of 557 pregnant women, between 15 and 48 years, revealed that the prevalence of substance abuse among the women was as high as 43.8%. That is 244 of the 557 women were taking one form of substance or the other. About 27.1% used kolanuts, chlorpheniramine 4.7%, alcohol 3.8%, diazepam 2.9%, promethazine 2.0%, cigarettes / tobacco 1.3%, phenobarbitone 1.3%, cocaine 1.1%, codeine 0.9% and marijuana 0.7%.
Other substances were piriton and chlorpheniramine 10.6% each, alcohol 8.6%, diazepam 4.5%, promethazine 2.5%, cigarettes/tobacco 2.9%, phenobarbitone 2.9%, Cocaine 2.5%, codeine 2.0%, and marijuana 1.6%.
Surprisingly, up to 22.7% of the substance users were aware of problems associated with their use in pregnancy. Yet, a significant number 22.8% assert to use of other substances in pregnancy. These drugs or medications were not stated and the reason for using them was unclear.
Teenagers, young adults hooked to hard drugs
While the plight of Princess and other children of drug-dependent teen mothers are often ignored in plain sight by the regulatory authorities, due to lack of verifiable data on their case, the prevalence of drug-dependence among teenagers and young adults has ignited worry among various societal segments in recent times.
Between 2018 and 2019, nearly 15% of Nigeria’s adult population (around 14.3 million people) reported a “considerable level” of use of psychotropic drug substances, a rate much higher than the 2016 global average of 5.6% among adults.
The survey was led by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse with technical support from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and funding from the European Union.
It showed the highest levels of drug use were recorded among people aged between 25 to 39, with cannabis being the most widely used drug. Sedatives, heroin, cocaine, and the non-medical use of prescription opioids were also noted. The survey excluded the use of tobacco and alcohol.
It also excluded teenagers like Princess’ mother, Felicia, who is trapped in the stark wilderness and rapture of dangerous highs from psychotropic substances like Colorado, Gutter Juice (Omi gota), Black Mamba, among others.
Few people would forget in a hurry, the heartrending story of Lizzy, the 26-year-old with a dependence on crack cocaine until her rescue by Dr. Tony Rapu, the founder of Freedom Foundation, an anti-drug dependence non-governmental organisation (NGO).
Lizzy said she had been taking crack cocaine and living with her captors for seven years before she was rescued by Rapu.
She explained that she developed a hankering for cocaine seven years ago while smoking weed with her boyfriend. The latter, she said, eventually revealed to her that he had been mixing her wraps with cocaine to her surprise, but it was too late as she got addicted.
•Drug dependent youths prepare a psychotropic substance
Chasing the ‘high’ into the grave
Few months after The Nation’s initial report on teenagers’ growing dependence on narcotic brews like Colorado, Pamilerin and Gutter Juice, highlighting fears of an imminent narcotics epidemic, the psychoactive substances have become rampant in several parts of Lagos and neighbouring states.
They gained prominence in the wake of hip hop artiste, Olamide’s track, Science Students. While the song got banned by regulatory authorities for glorifying drug use, and was widely condemned in conservative social circuits, it enjoyed airplay among the youth, teenagers in particular, who embraced it for its creative depiction and veneration of their addiction.
It’s hard not to panic over the prevalence of narcotics that leaves devastating marks on its victims, including death.
Kamsi, a 400 level optometry student of the Abia State University, Uturu, Abia State, jumped down from a three-storey building and died on the spot, on the evening of Saturday, June 26, 2021 evening.
The deceased student reportedly took the hard drug known as Colorado and couldn’t “contain it”. His friends locked him inside the room and went in search of garri (cassava flakes) to help him regain consciousness. Unfortunately, he went through the balcony, thinking that he was on the ground floor, and plunged, head first, down their three-storey hostel. He died instantly.
Kenneth, a drug user, died at a popular hotel in Ikorodu, after drinking a drug substance named Gutter Juice. He died shortly after being rushed to a hospital.
The deceased reportedly ingested the substance, a mixture of codeine, tramadol, cannabis, and juice.
Kenneth developed seizures shortly after consuming the drink, and he was rushed to the Ikorodu Hospital for treatment where he was pronounced dead.
His experience brings to consciousness the alarming state of widespread drug use in Nigeria.
The fears escalate at the backdrop of accessibility to the hard drug. It is evidently easy to make: an addict can cook up Colorado or Gutter Juice using ingredients bought from the local pharmacy and underworld drug den. The public sale of some of its active ingredients, codeine, tramadol, rohypnol has been banned yet they are available over the counter and in the backroom of local pharmacies, at outrageous prices.
Dealers mix blackcurrant juice with a brew including tramadol, codeine, rohypnol, Indian Hemp, and cocaine. The result—a purple liquid with pungent smell—mimics the effect of injecting high-end cocaine at a fraction of the cost.
On average, users spend N9,000 per day on cocaine. This amount is half of the national minimum wage per month. Methamphetamine users spend an average of N 4,000. Heroin is obtainable at a street price of N4, 000 but adulterated ‘rocks’ often flavoured with thinner, is available at a range between N3, 500 and N4, 000.
However, one litre of premium psychoactive juice costs N3,000 while a 50cl bottle costs N1, 500. Adolescent users often pool resources and contribute to purchasing a bottle, which they share using disposable cups at the several liquor stores across Agege, Agbado, Yaba, Ijora-Badia, Ajegunle, Fadeyi, Akala, Ajah, Lekki and other parts of Lagos Island.
Those who can afford it simply purchase a litre of the brew at the sales point, and depart for home or a more private location to consume it.
The narcotic brews are, however, available at more affordable potions, at N500 and N200, depending on their quality and the dealer.
Chasing the dragon at a severe cost
The drug-dependent pay dearly for pursuing the cheap high (known as chasing the dragon) – some dealers too. Ask Biola Iyanda, 19, who got raped in her sister’s shop soon after consuming the hard drug.
“My sister had gone home and left her bar in my care. She had these customers who often visited at night. On a Tuesday, they invited me to drink with them. The last thing I remembered was that they tried to grope me and I fell in the gutter in front of the shop. They raped me, right there in the gutter. I was rescued by members of a vigilance group, and they helped me get compensation from their parents. Each boy paid me N25, 000. I got N50, 000 as compensation and my sister banned them from her shop,” she said.
No doubt, many users totally lose their wits after consuming the hard drug. At another drug den in Amoo, Agege, The Nation observed several teenagers struck in different states of inebriation far into the night. Many were hyperactive, continually raising a ruckus over minor incidents. They laughed hard, fought hard, and partied hard.
Their intoxication varied according to their brew. A user who was identified as Esin (stallion), due to his acclaimed soccer skills, started soliloquising and laughing by himself after downing 25cl of the brew.
“That is what Pamilerin does to you,” explained Michael Babatunde, 18, a retailer of the brew. Pamilerin contains a combination of boiled cannabis, alcohol, tramadol, rohypnol and codeine. It loosens your tongue and makes you very giddy. You tend to laugh even at the driest jokes,” he said.
• A young adult flaunts his coloured tongue after drinking Colorado
Extent of drug use by geopolitical zones
There is no gainsaying many a life has been destroyed amid the bowels and drug dens, where crack cocaine and heroin are fast becoming a teen addiction and fancy addition to the now ubiquitous psychotropic potions like gutter juice, pamilerin, colorado, and so on widely accessed by youths across Lagos.
Of the regions included in the NBS and UNODC study, Lagos and Oyo in the South-West recorded a higher past-year prevalence of drug use among the southern geopolitical zones (at range 13.8 percent to 22.4 percent) compared to the northern geopolitical zones (range 10 per cent-13.6 percent).
With approximately 6.4 million people aged 15-64 residing in Lagos State, the estimated past year prevalence of any drug use in the South-West zone was established as nearly twice the national prevalence – an estimated 22.4 percent or 4.38 million people of the Lagos population aged 15-64 had used drugs in the past year.
How do hard drugs get to the streets of Lagos?
There are several ways of getting cocaine from South America to Europe via Lagos, West Africa. In the past, there had been three main hubs in West Africa for receipt and redistribution of the cocaine shipments: The northern hub, radiating from Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, The Gambia, and Senegal. The southern hub, centered on Nigeria, including Benin, Togo, and Ghana. And an eastern hub, encompassing Mali and parts of Mauritania, of particular use in receiving consignments by air.
Once in West Africa, the drugs proceed to Europe along with a number of routes. In the past, traffickers relied on large mother ships that offloaded cocaine onto the smaller coastal craft. Commercial air couriers can carry only small amounts, but their frequent use can offset this deficiency, and they also allow for great flexibility, moving drugs from any country in the region to any European destination.
Cocaine shipments can also be trafficked onward by sea or by land across the Sahara to North Africa, where they are flown to Europe in light aircraft or shuttled across the Mediterranean in go-fast boats. As with the Atlantic routes, all of these approaches are utilized in parallel, with the preferred technique and routing changing in response to law enforcement efforts.
Due to the free movement of people and goods throughout the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region, drugs are often routed through member states without the hindrances of border controls.
The drive from Lagos (Nigeria) through Cotonou (Benin) and Lome (Togo) to Accra (Ghana), for instance, is less than 500 km and can be completed in one day. Guinea- Bissau, one of the primary countries of ingress for cocaine, lacks commercial air links to the destination markets, and connections from Banjul (The Gambia) are not much better. As a result, most air couriers in the north depart from Dakar (Senegal) or Conakry (Guinea).
On arrival in Europe, the drugs may be sold to European or South American crime groups, or distributed through the extensive network of West Africans involved in retail cocaine distribution.
South American cocaine transiting West Africa, however, comes from all three source countries: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.
Setbacks in West Africa and the opportunities in Honduras after the 2009 coup led Venezuela-based traffickers to shift their attention to the US market. But if the flow from Venezuela has declined, where is West Africa getting its cocaine?
Brazil is the answer, particularly for West African- owned shipments. Brazil has long been a source for Lusophone Guinea-Bissau but it has since become a source for countries throughout the region. The amount of cocaine trafficked to and through Brazil has increased remarkably in recent years, as reflected in growing seizure statistics.
Gbenga Mabo, the Director of Operations and Investigations of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said in a recent interview that more than 80 per cent of the cocaine that comes into Nigeria comes from Brazil, through Highway 10.
He argued that because Brazil is surrounded by Peru, Bolivia, Chile and others, a lot of cocaine gets into the country, and a syndicate of Nigerians operating in Brazil smuggles the hard drug into Lagos.
Nigerians have long dominated commercial air couriering from Brazil: close to 90% of the mules arrested at the international airport in Sao Paulo report obtaining their cocaine from Nigerian groups.
According to liaison officers in Brazil, Nigerian groups organize up to 30% of the cocaine exports by ship or container from Santos, Brazil’s largest port, up from negligible levels a few years earlier. The Sao Paulo-based Nigerian groups are also responsible for a very large share of the postal shipments of cocaine leaving the country.
Amoo Kolawole, 51, for instance, got caught while trafficking cocaine from Lagos through Europe for a Nigerian syndicate. He was arrested while travelling by rail between Switzerland and France. The First Class graduate of Electrical/Electronic Engineering with a specialisation in Communications Control and Devices refused to embark on the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme on graduation and instead chose to become a drug mule.
Speaking to The Nation at his base in London, he said, “Due to my desperation to travel out, I joined a bad crew. With their help, I started trafficking cocaine. I got caught trafficking cocaine at the frontier between Switzerland and France. I got caught on a train. I was taken to a hospital and the cocaine I ingested was discovered in me after they opened my stomach. I was very lucky because some of it had spilled into my stomach. Consequently, I spent three years in a French prison.”
• A young man writhes in delirium after consuming psychoactive juice
A blizzard of seizures
Recently, the NDLEA seized a consignment of cocaine and heroin worth N30 billion at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, in Lagos. The spokesman of the agency, Jonah Achema, revealed that the drugs were seized from Onyejegbu Ifesinachi Jennifer, a 33-year-old lady, who arrived Nigeria from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
According to him, the seizure weighing 26.840 kilograms is the biggest single seizure from an individual in the past 15 years. Achema said that the drugs were seized after she was searched in line with NDLEA protocol profiling passengers “from high risk countries”.
“Field test was conducted on the recovered substances and proved positive to cocaine and weighed 26.850 kilograms. The suspect who is a hair stylist and based in Brazil was interviewed and she confessed to have agreed to smuggle the hard drug for the sum of N2m only,” said Achema.
This development came on the heels of a similar one recorded two days earlier at the same airport, when a red left-over luggage containing whitish powdery substances were discovered neatly concealed and sewn inside five children duvets.
Field test was carried out on the exhibits which proved they are cocaine weighing 8.400 Kilograms, with a street value of over N7bn. The NDLEA subsequently arrested suspects Abubakar Aliyu, Emmanuel Iyke Aniebonam, Onwurah Kelvin, while trying to retrieve the drugs on behalf of one Ikechukwu Eze.
Hard drug economics
As the prices paid for illicit drugs, and the profits to be made from them, are far higher in Europe and the US than in West Africa, large-scale traffickers generally seek to ship illicit drugs through the region to the international markets. However, in some cases, low-level drug traffickers are paid in kind and lack the resources or networks to move the drugs across borders. Consequently, they flood the local market with illicit drugs, contributing to the growth in domestic consumption rates.
A spike in heroin and cocaine production since 2016 is the likely explanation for the increase in the volumes of each drug type transiting through Lagos and other parts of West Africa.
Following rudimentary economics of supply and demand, the increased supply of cocaine and heroin to the domestic markets in the region has led to falling prices and easier accessibility to hard drugs.
For instance, in 2017, the price for one ‘hit’ of heroin or crack cocaine, was just over US$2.16
On average, cocaine users reported spending N 6,300 NGN (or 20 USD) per day on cocaine (N 7,000 by women or 22 USD spent per day). This amount is nearly half of the national minimum wage per month. Similarly, methamphetamine users spent an average of N 4,000 (or USD 13) per day. The growing sophistication of drug-trafficking groups generally continues to outstrip the investigatory capacity of law-enforcement authorities. This has led a number of players in the international community involved in tackling the regional drug trade, together with members of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the police force, to predict that the situation will get worse before it gets better.
• A young adult writhes in discomfort after drinking Colorado in Lekki, Lagos
Taming the dragon
Recently, the Medical Director (MD) of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital (FNPH), Yaba, Dr. Oluwayemi Ogun, raised the alarm over the increasing prevalence of drug abused induced mental disorders among children, adolescent and adult Nigerians saying over 150 new cases are admitted at the hospital and its Child and Adolescent Centre, Oshodi Annexe every week.
Reacting to teen addiction to psychotropic substances, she said, in an exclusive interview with The Nation, that: “Codeine, cocaine, Indian Hemp, Tramadol and Rohypnol are seriously dangerous to health the way they are abused.”
She said, “There is a need for a lot of counselling and education of the youths. They must be made to understand that taking psychotropic substances would have adverse effects on them and possibly wreck their lives. Since the lockdown, the number of people taking drugs has sky-rocketed. Many of them ended up as our patients at the psychiatric hospital. Troubled teenagers especially must understand that the good times are made, not sniffed, drunk or smoked.”
The senior psychiatrist urged parents, schools, and religious groups to complement the government’s efforts at combating the trend. “ We must act fast before this thing engulfs us… Many resort to hard drugs to escape their daily problems, to forget their battles with unemployment, poverty, and so on. But hard drugs do not take away problems, they add to the problems and compound them for users,” she said.
Priscilla Benjamin-Olaoye, a mental health expert, stated that hard drugs only offer a temporary sensation. Once the drug wears off, individuals put themselves at risk of developing a dependence as they try to reach the same high and avoid withdrawals.
Should parents resort to spiritual homes or visit orthodox psychiatric hospitals?
Benjamin-Olaoye argued that although the first assumption to make is that drug addiction is a spiritual problem, substance abuse is actually a chronic relapsing disorder, leading to mental and behavioural challenges.
Arguably, a spiritual problem, she stressed, is one in which the individual has no control over, but “in this case, substance abuse is one which the individual behaves themselves into.”
You cannot pray yourself out of what you behaved yourself into, she argued, urging parents to implement a healthy balance of both. She said, “Don’t focus on the spiritual aspect, while the emotional needs of the child is left unmet.”
Children of drug-dependent parents, like Princess, no doubt suffer a slew of unmet needs. The desire to be loved and pampered by their birth mother. The need for a father figure in their lives and the capacity to live their lives free of health defects.
This minute, social media is rife with imagery of teenagers and young adults trapped in the dangerous rapture of hallucinogenic substances. A good many of them, after downing Colorado or Gutter Juice, lose all inhibitions and start to writhe in a blanket of extreme poses – their theatrics are often self-harming and suicidal.
The situation requires urgent government intervention, argued Philomena Okon, an addiction counsellor, and social health worker.
“Government health departments and law enforcement agencies must work together to curtail the prevalence of hard drugs on the streets. Dealers must be arrested and prosecuted with severe penalties and teen users, in particular, must be given required rehabilitative support.”
In the meantime, several teenagers and young adults will troop to the nearest drug den to purchase their daily or hourly fix of ‘high.’ Under the influence of psychotropic substances, Kamsi, a 400 level Optometry student of the Abia State University, Uturu, jumped down from a three-storey building and died on the spot, on the evening of Saturday, June 26, 2021 evening. Under the influence, Felicia, 16, dumped Princess, her newborn, deserting her child and home for an undisclosed destination. Yet these aren’t half as bad as the story gets.
How mismanagement, corruption killed Nigeria’s coal enterprise
All kinds of things drifted with the tide wastes to flood the mine: weeds, driftwood, animal cadaver, tadpoles, frogs, and a lot yet unidentifiable in the deep of the mine. Outside, it took time to hear what the earth seemed to be saying. With the wind nudging them, the trees too. You cannot put into words why the forest should have a voice.
The crickets chirped like old ghosts from under a green buoy; the eerie wind peeled back the greenery to reveal multiple sand graves and what is still left. Far down the pipe running into the mine, above the quicksand, there was a rat eating out of something, a bat cadaver perhaps thus littering the mine with the bones of yet another ghost. There seemed to be too many ghosts in the mine. The ghosts of things that were: a lamp, a signpost, a dead bat?
The ghosts of men and their endeavours in time of youth. Then the sand shifted with water as if to wipe once more, footprints of the forgotten miners. The dark thickened to cover the light paths of their shiny headlamps, and the crickets’ chirp added weight to the wind, accenting the wreck the mine had become.
Everything merged as one to bemoan the death of a Nigerian dream. This is the story of a generation of mine workers. It is the narrative of Simon Asogwa, among others.
•Asogwa… Blinded by coal fragments in the mine pit
The first time I met Asogwa was in 2009. He was 75 years old and embittered. On that picturesque day, he received me with a casual flourish in his carpentry workshop at the Iva Valley coal miners’ settlement, in Enugu.
Shaving on a plank of wood, in his makeshift shop, the 75-year-old cursed the fate that rendered him impoverished and hopeless in his twilight.
Nonetheless, he committed to his task with conquering immersion, all the thwarted longings of his life rippling through his feeble but determined arms.
“Things have gotten really bad here. We have been abandoned completely by the government,” said Asogwa.
His mien was hard, and his gaze intense but unflagging. His smile was haunting, like that of a broken man, making the rest of him a soiled, greying background.
The next time I saw Asogwa was in 2015 and his situation hadn’t improved.
At The Nation’s next encounter with him in December 2020, he had gone completely blind. Now 87, Asogwa lives forsaken by the enterprise that he served so diligently in his youth.
While working in the mines, he developed a sight problem, after coal debris entered his eyes, and subsequently blinded him. “I worked in the mine for 24 years. It was a very terrible experience that only those of us who worked inside the mine can recount,” he said.
Asogwa, like so many of his peers, watched, helplessly, the decline of the once vibrant Iva Valley colliery. Ensconced between the Forest Hills and the Iva Valley Camps 1 and 2, many treasured their employment at the mine and residency in the settlement presumed to be one of the choicest residential areas in Enugu.
And the glorious era petered out
That glorious epoch has petered out. Iva Valley is now a ghost town. The spectre of the moribund mine cast a dark pall across the expanse of the once vibrant colliery. The ghost of totally bankrupt businesses, like Nkiruka Ukaga’s bankrupt provisions store.
“Since the mine stopped functioning, everything started to die gradually. Most businesses are dead and we petty traders can barely survive. That is because the few people who patronise us can only buy on credit,” Ukaga said, bemoaning the death of her petty trade.
Then there is the spectre of spunk and faded youth, twin affliction of the hapless miners. Amid the chill of disillusionment, however, hovers a more grotesque spectre, the ghosts of 21 miners: fathers, husbands, sons, breadwinners, that fell to a hail of bullets on November 18, 1949, at the district’s troubled colliery.
Their memory haunts Iva Valley even as you read. Seventy-two years since their massacre, their chilling howls echo through seven decades, like a falsetto of savage deaths. All those pierced torsos, skin slivers, bone splinters, and bullet fragments swimming in bleeding wounds, jabber back like darksome memories of doom and death.
Massacre at the colliery
Asogwa, 86, recollected with grief, the tragic fate of the 21 miners brutally hacked to death by the colonial police led by Captain F. S. Phillip, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP). According to the former miner and father of nine, the slain miners had gathered to protest deplorable working conditions. Prior to their massacre, there had been cases of physical abuse.
In one instance, on September 2, 1945, to be precise, Okwudili Ojiyi, a coal miners’ union leader, was slapped by a British manager called Yates, for reporting an assault case. On November 1, 1949, the frosty relationship between the workers and management aggravated when the latter rejected demands for the payment of rostering, the upgrading of the mine hewers to artisans, and the payment of housing and travel allowances. The workers then began a ‘go-slow’ strike action.
The management consequently sacked over 50 of the miners. Fearing that the strike was part of the growing nationalist agitation for self-rule, the management also decided to move out explosives from the mines on November 18, 1949. Those of the Obwetti mines were easily removed, but that of Iva Valley was not because the workers refused to assist the management to do so. The Fitzgerald Commission, which the colonialists were forced to set up to investigate the massacre, discovered that the miners objected to the removal of the explosives because they feared that once the explosives were removed, nothing stood in the way of the management from shutting down the mine.
As the crisis festered, a Briton and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Captain F.S. Philip, came to the mine to assist in the removal of the explosives with two other British officers and 75 armed local policemen. But while the workers protested, colonial officer, Phillip, saw only menace. The miners’ chatter, singing, and fraternising appeared threatening to him.
In that crucial moment, the racialised figure of the “African worker” emerged in the imagination of Phillip and his fellow British officers and fused with the stereotype of the “primitive native.” To Captain Phillip, these were not industrial men conducting a protest but savage, hysterical natives, doing “dangerous dances,” screeching unintelligible noises, poised to attack.
At about 1:30 pm, Captain Phillip became worried about the numbers and the mood of the crowd. They seemed to be “pouring” out of the mines by the hundreds. In many ways, the Captain appeared ensnarled by the protesters, many of whom tied red pieces of cloth to their miners’ helmets, wrists, or knees, as a mark of solidarity. As the minutes passed, the men began to sing hymns and songs of solidarity: “We are all one!” But the Captain only heard a “tremendous howling and screeching noise going on” to which several men danced in a “dangerous” way. After ordering his men to shoot, Philip himself aimed his revolver immediately at a miner in front of him. In a second, he shot Sunday Anyasado, a hewer, in the mouth.
Anyasado was the first to fall dead. He was from Mbieri, Owerri, and he was a young man, recently married, who had come to Enugu to earn a living. He probably did not hear the warning shots as he danced, nor did he expect that the police would fire. But Philip aimed his revolver at him and shot him in the mouth, killing him instantly. Phillip then shot Livinus Okechukwuma, a machine operator from Ohi, Owerri, killing him as well. Hearing the noise, Okafor Ageni, an Udi tub man, ventured out of the mine and asked “Anything wrong?” A bullet killed him on the spot.
By the time the mayhem subsided, 21 miners had been shot dead. Spent canisters and bullets littered the earth around the slain miners like glow worms and slugs. The deceased’s relatives wanted them back but with their mutilated souls intact. The dead, of course, had no more will to live. They were dead.
Thus Sunday Anyasodo, the hewer from Obazu Mbezi; Levinus Okechukwuma, the machine operator from Ohi, Owerri; Okafor Ageni, an Udi tub man; Moses, the machine operator from Umuohoho; Simeon, the machine operator from Mbutu; Nnaji, the hewer from Ndibara Amaimo; Nwahu, the engine driver from Amuzi Bende and 15 others who lost their lives in the twilight of 1949 protesting deplorable working conditions at the colliery have since become a miniature of urban legend in Iva Valley miners’ Camps One and Two.
Today, they roam languidly above the evening altars and door sills of random homes, where their sad fates fade away in the minds of impoverished families and friends. The latter have little use for the scraps and bits of painful memories that they have become perhaps.
Ruins of the Iva Valley Colliery
Hell’s kitchen
But Asogwa can never forget the sad story of the 21 miners because it is intricately entwined with his life and the tragic colliery. From his perch amid the pale streets and gaunt valley, the 87-year-old bemoaned the death of the enterprise by which he proved his mettle as a man.
His passion deepened on the night of November 18, 1949, when Enugu jolted to the macabre execution of the defenceless miners by the colonial police, killing 21 and injuring 51. The slain miners were canonised as ‘martyrs,’ the people’s heroes who gave their lives protesting poor work conditions. Although his adolescent mind barely understood the magnitude of the tragedy, on that night, Asogwa resolved to become a miner that he too might become a hero – but a living hero.
In 1953, Asogwa secured a job as a hewer at the mine, in his late 20s, thus finally living his dream. He said, “I lived comfortably, earning £100 monthly for working at the mine. Life was easier then because the money was enough for me to get by and cater to my family’s needs. I even made decent savings but that was not to last. Our government and the colliery management mismanaged the mine. And when we discovered oil, they abandoned it totally.”
Recalling his experience as a mine worker, he said, “When you enter the mine, you will not know whether it is day or night. Before we entered the mine, they would shoot the coal. Afterwards, we would enter and start breaking it. It was in the course of breaking the coal that the debris entered my eyes. I went to the hospital and got treated. I was thereafter posted outside the mine.
“The eye problem later resurfaced. I went to all the available hospitals to no avail. I eventually lost my sight. Nobody assisted in footing my medical bills. It is the little we had that we were using to go from one hospital to the other. Now we are facing serious hardship. We have no means of survival. Many miners had their legs amputated after the mines collapsed,” he said.
The best way the government could have rewarded mineworkers like Asogwa, was to pay them their benefits, argued Bernard Nnaji, Chairman of the ex-professional coal miners association, Enugu chapter.
Nnaji said it was heartbreaking that the people who worked in the coal industry must plead to be paid their entitlements. He said, “It’s very heartbreaking that the 21 miners that died in 1949 were killed over their agitations for salary increase. They died without realizing their objective.” It’s still the same story today, he argued, stressing that people who worked in the coal industry regret ever working for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Joseph Ozuka, worked as a driver at the mine and he also blamed excessive mismanagement and misappropriation of colliery funds for the collapse of mine operations.
“They stopped paying us salaries for three years and nine months until they disengaged us. Now, many of us can barely survive. The closure of the mine has left us jobless and impoverished. Many have died. Our children have all migrated to look for greener pastures elsewhere,” said Ozuka.
Boniface Onwudinjo, was paid less than 30 percent of his gratuity with a promise to complete the rest later by the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), a promise that was never fulfilled. Onwudinjo lamented that several ex-miners have died waiting endlessly for their entitlements and miners’ families have been devastated by lack of access to their retirement benefits.
“Some of our colleagues are dying because they can’t raise enough money to buy essential medications. I’m different because God blessed me with children who have been very supportive and taking care of me. There are people who have no children or those who married very late. Their case is quite pathetic because they can’t access good food and medical care due to poverty,” he said.
The situation was certainly different in 1909 when coal was discovered in Enugu by a team of British geological explorers led by Albert Kitson. The exploitation of the hydrocarbon did not start until 1915 in Ogbete after the then British colonial government and several Udi warrant chiefs led by the Onyeama of Eke signed an agreement for its exploitation.
Among the major coalfields were those in Amansiodo, Ezinmo, Iva Valley, Inyi, Onyeama, Obwetti, and Ogbette all in Enugu State.
The great decline
The Ogbete mine operations and others in the country were merged into a new corporation in 1950: the Nigerian Coal Corporation (NCC). The NCC was tasked with exploiting coal resources and held a monopoly on coal and coke mining, production, and sales until 1999.
According to the NCC, coal can be found in 22 states of the federation. Like other parts of the world, it is the oldest commercial fuel, dating from 1915 in Nigeria, when 24,000 tons were produced. Production peaked at around one million tons in 1959, before declining to the current insignificant level.
Nigeria’s coal industry suffered a terrible blow when oil was discovered. Until then, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) was the largest consumer of coal in the country. However, after the discovery of oil, the NRC began to replace its coal-powered locomotives with diesel-powered engines, while the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) now Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) began converting its power generation equipment from coal to diesel and gas, thus robbing the burgeoning coal industry crucial patronage.
The civil war also impacted coal production negatively as many mines were abandoned during the conflict. The closure of the Oji River coal-fired power station after the civil war similarly affected the fortunes of coal in the country. After the war, production never completely recovered and coal production levels became erratic as the sector was unable to return to the peak production achieved in the 1950s.
Nevertheless, Nigeria’s coal reserve is still large. According to the NCC, coal is available in about 22 coalfields spread over 13 States in Nigeria. The proven coal reserves are about 639 million metric tonnes while the inferred reserves are about 2.75 billion metric tonnes.
If fully revitalised, the coal industry could fetch up to N5 billion in export earnings.
Why coal died
The NCC coal venture was hastily conceived and badly executed, according to Banji Oyelaran Oyeyinka, Senior Special Adviser on Industrialization to the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and former Professor, United Nations University, Institute for New Technologies. According to him, the firm and its supervisory government agencies did not originate explicit strategies to acquire, assimilate, and adapt technology. Increased productivity seemed to be the major reason for the acquisition; the acquisition of technological capability did not seem important. Thus the entire transfer process was jeopardised.
The NCC, he argued, thought of the transfer process as being simply a matter of transporting a piece of hardware from Poland to Nigeria. But Nigeria ended up with a white elephant.
The firm did not conduct any pre-feasibility activity or detailed studies. Consequently, it failed to consider structural limitations which later created bottlenecks in the operation.
There was no systematic search for alternative suppliers. No competitive tenders were requested. There was, therefore, no basis for negotiating either the technology package or the price. In the end, NCC ended up with a system that was technically unsuitable and inappropriate for the Nigerian environment, and it cost three times the world market price.
The geological problems were also very severe. Very little was known about the characteristics and nature of the mine waters, the constraints the fault patterns would have on the long wall layout, or the roof and floor pressures. One consequence was an excessive weight on the powered roof supports along the face line. The undulating seam floor made it impossible to establish a definite gathering ground for mine water. This posed severe problems to longwall operations and also created excessively acidic mine waters. Within two months of operation, the Polish pumps began to break down as a result of the excess acid in the water. The pumps were made of cast iron and not easily repaired.
The operations also suffered considerably from inadequate transportation. Railway wagons needed to evacuate the coal were in very short supply, and the resulting dumping of coal created blockages in the coal bunkers. Nominal production targets could not be met, and what was produced could not find its way to the consumer. Power supply was inadequate, and outages were more the rule than the exception. The estimated production loss resulting from power outages alone was about 21, 000 tons in 215 hours. Power outages also created severe flooding problems because the pumps were inoperative most of the time, said Oyeyinka.
Soon, the major handicaps of the coal industry in Nigeria dovetailed to the prohibitive cost of production due to outdated and overstaffed mining operations.
Coal miners working at the defunct mine in Enugu
Privatisation and other false starts
In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo attempted to privatize the coal industry alongside other national assets thus ridding the NCC of its monopoly in the sector. The government planned to sell 40 percent to private investors and 20 percent to the Nigerian public while retaining 40 percent.
However, by 2004, the technical committee inaugurated for the scheme had not issued its report even as the NCC careened towards bankruptcy. To raise funds, it began selling off some of its assets to pay off mounting debts, including salaries owed its staff.
In 2013, Nigeria, under the leadership of Goodluck Jonathan, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with the HTG/Pacific Energy Company Limited, with technical partnership with Chinese experts, for a $3.7 billion coal-to-power project. The project was designed to power a 1,200 megawatts plant to be built in Enugu, using coal from the Ezima mine. The impact of the initiative is yet to be felt.
In 2015, President Buhari, during his election campaign, pledged to revive the coal industry, and that the abundant coal deposits in Enugu would be harnessed to grow the Nigerian economy and also generate employment opportunities for Nigerian youths.
Specifically, he said that coal deposits would be used to revamp the Oji River Power Station which generated electricity for the defunct Eastern Region and has the capacity of generating the nation’s 30 percent energy needs. Six years later, he is yet to fulfill his promise.
The privatisation exercise quickened the cannibalisation of equipment and properties of the NCC, according to aggrieved ex-miners. The latter subsequently petitioned President Buhari over the non-settlement of their arrears estimated at over N315 million, and corrupt monetization of NCC buildings through a consultancy firm, among other allegations.
The workers claimed that the “BPE and their agents sold off heavy plants and machinery of the NCC at very ridiculous prices and declared peanuts to the BPE and even the lands too. This is a clear case of corruption.”
The paradox of importing coal from South Africa
Few years ago, a move by major industrialists and electricity-generating companies to import coal from South Africa to augment industrial power generation reopened the debate on the abandoned 2.75 billion tonnes coal deposits in Enugu and other parts of the country. Dangote Cement Plc placed an initial order of 30,000 tonnes of coal from South Africa to power its 60-megawatts plants, with another 30 megawatts generating facility on standby. The company had reportedly slated $250 million for power generating conversion, which would involve the establishment of three plants at Dangote Cement’s facilities at Obajana in Kogi State; Gboko in Benue State; and Ibeshe in Ogun State.
Importing coal from South Africa or elsewhere, no doubt underscored the unfortunate contradictions of Nigeria, a nation massively endowed with the mineral resource, capable of generating electricity for the country for the next 20 to 30 years, according to former Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo.
Cashing in on a $790.6bn industry
The market size, measured by revenue, of the Global Coal Mining industry, is $790.6bn in 2021, according to global industry statistics. As Nigeria grapples with its power supply crisis, experts have said that the country can effectively generate up to 53,900 megawatts (MW) of electricity by 2030.
Despite spending N1.8 trillion on the power sector since 2015, there has not been any significant improvement in electricity supply.
The Head of Department, Petroleum Geology and Environmental Geology, University of Ibadan, Prof. Olugbenga Ehinola, noted in a recent interview that academic research has revealed that coal could generate 9.9%, 13.8%, 15.3%, and 15.6% of Nigeria’s electricity in 2015, 2020, 2025 and 2030, respectively.
Alternatively, he said coal could generate 1,200MW, 4,400MW, 15,400MW, and 53,900MW of electricity by 2015, 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively.
Ehinola stated that Nigerian coal, which was mostly produced in Enugu and Kogi states, was mostly used as fuel for coal-powered electricity plants, coal-fired locomotives, and cement production.
Sculptural monument to the 21 miners killed by colonial police in 1949
The way out
Matthias Offodile, geoscientist and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mecon Geology and Engineering Services suggested that the government spends more money on exploration. “The gap has been created between the geological survey agency, which is supposed to prepare geological maps and development of mineral occurrences which would have been announced all over the place. Those gaps need to be filled. Now that they have closed the NMC, it is either they go back to the geological survey agency and set up a strong economic geology department, which they had in the early days of the Geological Survey of Nigeria. The duty of the economic geology department should be to pick up minerals from the discovery stage and make detailed feasibility studies, package and make it attractive to an investor. An investor has no business going to do basic work. Nobody has the money to throw away in the bush. It is only when this has been packaged and found to be economically viable that you can sell it to an investor who can now say whether he is interested in the report or not. These minerals cannot be said to be economic until they are explored and developed to an investment level,” he said.
No doubt, it would take more than a few drastic measures to resuscitate the nation’s coal industry and rekindle the hopes of coal miners in the country, especially the retrenched miners of Iva Valley among other mining camps in Enugu. Disenchanted, they scrounge through each day in resignation.
Many have let go of hope, that they might suffer fewer disappointments. According to Asogwa, “We have lost our jobs, our comfort, and our benefits. We have lost hope. We are wasting away in poverty. What more does the government want us to give up?”
Who knows, they may never have to lose their lives to become “heroes” or “martyrs” like Sunday Anyasodo, the hewer from Obazu Mbezi; Levinus Okechukwuma, the machine operator from Ohi, Owerri; Okafor Ageni, an Udi tub man; Moses, the machine operator from Umuohoho; Simeon, the machine operator from Mbutu; Nnaji, the hewer from Ndibara Amaimo; Nwahu, the engine driver from Amuzi Bende and 15 others, who lost their lives in the twilight of 1949 protesting deplorable working conditions at the Iva Valley colliery.
It’s seven decades since their ‘martyrdom’ and the situation is no better.
Memories of their exploits diminish into a grave of nostalgic sternness as the mines remain shut down.
Echoes of the “good old days” are fast diminishing in the hearts of pioneer miners, like Asogwa. The 87-year-old and his peers have learnt to cringe from the chimera of protracted hope, their quiet despair shimmering like a crystalline mirror to the troubled wraiths of dreams gone awry and their mates, who died fighting for unpaid benefits.
The ghostlike pitch of their dissent resonates the contrived tragedy that rendered Enugu’s coal mines shadows of their prosperous past; with the wind pulsing eerily through Iva Valley, the sharply delineated gray of neglect enshrouds the shanties that were once home to thousands of workers sauntering in, and emptying out, on shifts, at the mine pits.
This imagery envelops the senses and catapults a random visitor into the desolate ambiance of the miners’ camp. The vignettes are infinitely diverse yet somewhat depressing – a spirited cash cow has been stifled to a cadaver.
• Very little has changed since the protest – Respondents
• It’s harder to protect people who want to kill you – Police
• How protesters burned Wills, Codicils in court archives
Monday, August 16, 2021, around 5.16 am, Adekunle Razaq stepped out of his home in Obawole, Iju, Lagos, in a rush for an early Chemistry class at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). At 5.52 am, he was “jail bound.”
A zealous police sergeant had found him “guilty” of a serious crime and pronounced him fit for the cell.
“He stopped us and requested for my cousin’s vehicle papers. When he discovered that the papers were complete, he glowered at me and requested for my identity card. I didn’t have it with me but I told him I had an electronic copy of it. As I scrolled through my phone to show him, he grabbed it from me and started going through my phone,” said Razaq.
Rifling through the phone, the policeman soon found supposedly incriminating evidence against the 18-year-old, a website allegedly frequented by Yahoo Boys (internet fraudsters) seeking dates with older, foreign women.
The policeman seized the phone, ignoring the teenager’s protest that he had no right to pore through his phone or seize it. He labelled Razaq a “notorious Yahoo Boy” and commandeered their vehicle to his police post in Ogudu.
There, he hurled the teenager out of the car and marched him into the station. “You are in very big trouble. You are going straight to jail!” said the officer.
Flustered, the second year student of Chemistry at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), pleaded with the policeman, stressing that he wasn’t an internet fraudster. But the latter was impervious to his plea. Determinedly, he commandeered their vehicle and guided it to their station in Ogudu.
There, the 18-year-old was extorted of the sum of N5, 000, leaving him with a paltry N1, 500 to last him for the month. Things were tight at home and he was only able to scrounge N6,500 as his pocket money. But parting with N5,000 out of the money seemed more reasonable than daring the police officers, whose menacing ardour instilled fear into him. It beat getting locked up in a police cell and having trumped up charges levelled against him, said the 18-year-old.
Razaq was lucky, no doubt. In 1993, Ayotunde Adesola, a graduate in computer science from the University of Lagos, was picked off the street by operatives of the defunct Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS), and accused of being in a local gang. In an attempt to make him confess, officers poured irritant powder on his face while beating him, the Lagos-based Civil Liberties Organization reported. During this era, General Sani Abacha ruled the country with an iron fist, crushing protests and opposition activists.
Still the same old story
About one year after hundreds of Nigerians took to the streets to protest misconduct and unfair treatment by the police, officers of the Nigeria Police are still found wanting in their engagement with the public.
For instance, Monsurat Ojuade, 18, was killed around 1 pm, on Friday, September 11, after bullet fired by a trigger-happy police sergeant, Sgt. Samuel Phillips, hit her in her family compound in Lagos.
The teenager was hit by a stray bullet, while a team of detectives from the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, wnet to effect the arrest of a robbery suspect in Ijeshatedo area of the State.
Although, concerted efforts were made to save Ojuade, she died on the way to the hospital.
While the Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, regretted the incident, describing it as avoidable incident, the culprit, Sgt. Phillips, has since been dismissed from the force and detained for trial.
“This, it is believed, will serve as a deterrent to others who do not act professionally in the course of their duties,” said police spokesperson, Ajisebutu Adekunle, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP).
But while the police accepted blame for Ojuade’s death, it contended accusations of its complicity in the killing of Jumoke, 25, who was allegedly hit by a stray bullet on Saturday, July 3, while police officers tried to disperse the crowd, during a rally by Yoruba Nation agitators, at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park at Ojota. She reportedly died on the spot.
The first of four children while operatives dispatched to the venue reportedly fired gunshots, tear gas canisters and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators and journalists shortly after the rally took off.
Jumoke was reported to be displaying drinks at her boss’ shop in a compound close to the rally ground when security men chased some agitators into the premises amid shootings.
She was said to have been hit by a stray bullet, which ripped through her stomach and left a deep hole. Her corpse was later taken away in a police van.
The police, however, denied responsibility, saying its officers never fired a “single live bullet” at the rally.
“The said corpse was found wrapped and abandoned at a distance, far from Ojota venue of the rally, behind MRS Filling Station, inward Maryland, on the other side of the venue, with dried blood stains suggesting that the corpse is not fresh…After a close look at the corpse, a wound suspectedly sustained from a sharp object was seen on it,” the police had said in a statement.
Crisis birthed by fake news
In October, a video that appeared to show an unprovoked killing by a SARS officer went viral, kicking off a wave of social media protests and live demonstrations. Thousands of Nigerians, mostly youths, trooped to the streets to protest years of unfair treatment by the police. The video that triggered the protests was recorded and shared on social media on October 3, 2020, by one Prince Nicholas. Nicholas, while driving from Ughelli to a wedding party in Warri, Delta State, reportedly saw the police toss out a young man from their patrol truck and recorded the incident from a distance.
“They don kill the boy o. Safe Delta Ughelli. The boy don die o,” he said while chasing after the police vehicle belonging to the Operation Safe Delta unit of the Delta State Police Command.
Nicholas posted the video on social media, and went on to the wedding party where he later got word that the victim did not die. He deleted the video from his Facebook the next day, on October 4, posting an update that the victim did not die. But he was no longer in control of the narrative.
When that video was shared on Twitter late on October 3, some falsely twitted that the operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) shot the young man to death.
At the backdrop of widespread outrage against the police, Festus Keyamo, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, sought to clarify the misinformation on October 4, announcing that the young man, Joshua Ambrose, was not dead, and that the SARS unit wasn’t involved. The police claimed the victim jumped out of the vehicle himself, after he had been arrested, but he said that he was pushed by the police officers. Keyamo promised that the conduct of the officers would be investigated, but stressed that the video online misrepresented facts.
The Ughelli incident triggered pent up dissent against the SARS unit into angst, leading to protests in a couple of states and Abuja. In Ughelli, the catalyst to the unrest, police corporal, Etaga Stanley, was killed at a protest in Ughelli on October 8 for allegedly shooting a young protester in the leg.
Later that night, the police harassment of peaceful protesters demonstrating overnight at the Lagos House of Assembly fueled more public interest, and the #EndSARS campaign entered its full-blown nationwide phase.
Among the protesters’ five core demands is to increase police salary so that they are adequately compensated for protecting lives and property of citizens. However, not a few citizens doubted the possibility of that happening amid the COVID-19 crisis and the economic stagnancy it imposed.
On October 20, at the peak of the protest, soldiers fired on crowds of protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos thus escalating the situation.
‘Retweet aggressively!’
While the social media proved useful to the cause of the protesters, it soon became a repository of misinformation and channel for spreading fake news.
Several random photos of alleged victims of #EndSARS crisis, some of them reportedly murdered, were promptly refuted by the alleged deceased who came out to say they were still alive.
Spreaders of such misinformaton on Twitter were known to urge other users of the platform and share and ‘Retweet aggressively” such misinformation.
For instance, a random picture of a man carrying a body wrapped in bloodstained Nigerian flag was circulated as one of the casualties of the Lekki toll gate shooting but it was promptly refuted with explanation that it was actually the still shot of a drama presentation by corp members.
Another random photo of a young woman crying during a demonstration in Enugu went viral after someone had claimed on Twitter that police killed three of her brothers in one day.
The woman involved, Ugwu Blessing Ugochukwu, subsequently refuted it as a lie that had nothing to do with her, said Samson Toromade, a journalist. Another false claim that was widely shared on social media at the time said protesters holding the Nigerian flag would be immune from being attacked by security forces.
This claim was tragically proven to be false when Nigerian Army troops fired on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on October 20, the event that effectively marked the end of the street demonstrations.
Numerous social media posts also falsely claimed that the United Nations (UN) would be compelled to stage an intervention in Nigeria if the people protested for more than 30 days.
An analysis by Dubawa, a fact-checking outfit, found that social media users, celebrities, and influencers were the source of 83% of disinformation and misinformation regarding the #EndSARS protests, and Twitter was the major platform used to spread them.
Beginning of the end…
Since it was created in 1992 to combat armed robbery and other violent crimes, officers of the unit have been accused as serial perpetrators of harassment, extortion, torture, and extra-judicial murder.
But before it attained notoriety for human rights violation and extrajudicial killings, SARS fought violent crimes including armed robbery and kidnapping. The group evolved over time from a special outfit created by different state commands to address specific violent crime such as armed robbery, kidnapping, communal violence and religious violence. In each state, SARS was under the criminal investigations department of the police command. The Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) had a nationwide mandate and was under the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) Abuja. The unit’s lack of respect for human rights that led to its proscription by Nigeria’s incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.
At the time of SARS’ creation, armed robbery was rampant in cities like Lagos. In 1992, the Superintendent of Police, Simeon Danladi Midenda, was tasked with forming a unit that would operate independently and surreptitiously in order to ambush robbers. (A separate but similar anti-robbery force had been created in 1984.)
“The secret behind the successes of the original SARS was its facelessness and its mode of operation,” Midenda told a Lagos-based newspaper, in 2017. “We operated in plain clothes and used plain vehicles that could not be associated with security or any government agency.”
Midenda says that SARS did have some early successes in capturing armed bandits. But reports of success were soon accompanied by reports of abuse of power.
In 1993, Ayotunde Adesola, a graduate in computer science from the University of Lagos, was picked off the street by SARS and accused of being in a local gang. In an attempt to make him confess, officers poured irritant powder on his face while beating him, the Lagos-based Civil Liberties Organization reported. During this era, General Sani Abacha ruled the country with an iron fist, crushing protests and opposition activists; he was accused of many violations and abuses by global human rights organizations.
A pattern soon emerged of SARS extorting civilians or detaining and torturing them into giving confessions.
In 1995, two university students, Bola Afilaka and Ayodele Adejuyibe, were shot and killed after Afilaka refused to stop his car at a checkpoint. In 1999, a man died in SARS custody after days of interrogation and abuse from officers who accused him of stealing a car, according to the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO). Journalists were frequently targeted, with their homes raided and families harassed in the middle of the night.
At Abacha’s demise in 1998, SARS grew in aggression and power. Majority of the victims of torture in SARS custody were poor and unable to hire legal representatives.
War against cybercrime
In the early 2000s, as cybercrime became more common in Nigeria, SARS devoted its energy to finding the perpetrators—but, rather than investigating crimes digitally, SARS officers began profiling people on the street, openly harassing and extorting those they deemed suspicious, especially young men with laptops.
In December 2014, police authorities launched a human rights manual prohibiting the torture and other ill-treatment of detainees.
Supported by international donors and civil society groups in Nigeria, the manual was adopted for use in all police training colleges as part of the police reform and to address concerns about police misconduct. However, in practice, SARS had failed to implement the recommendations within the manual. A Complaint Response Unit (CRU) was set up by the Inspector General of Police (IGP) in November 2015 to address public complaints against the police. In the first and second quarters of 2016, the CRU reported that they had received 1,960 complaints, including 143 against officers from SARS.
As organizations continued to speak out, so did Nigeria’s citizens, who began mobilizing on social media. In 2017, #EndSARS began trending, with hundreds of people sharing stories of abuse, and assault. That December, the inspector general of the Nigeria Police Force bowed to the pressure, announcing plans to reorganize the team, prosecute cases of human rights abuses and spearhead a better training program for recruits.
The same month, President Buhari signed into law the Anti-Torture Act, which criminalized torture with barely any impact. In 2018, Nigerian vice president Yemi Osinbajo demanded that the police restructured SARS once again, ban stop-and-search raids, and require officers to wear uniforms with full identification. A federal human-rights desk was also created to address violations. Following the announcement, police spokesperson Moshood Jimoh told The Nation that the police had “fully complied with the directives for the overhaul and reformation of SARS.”
But between January 2017 and May 2020, at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions by SARS officers were documented by civil society groups.
Past #EndSARS campaigns had forced authorities to announce reforms, but those reforms didn’t change much. But on October 11, then-Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, announced that SARS would no longer exist as a unit of the Nigeria Police Force. It was a long-overdue victory for the public, but one that was ironically incited by an atrocity that SARS was not directly responsible for.
What’s it like to be a police officer in Nigeria today? Most policemen would tell you that their morale is low. There is no gainsaying the #EndSARS protest and the mayhem triggered in its wake has strained relations between the police and the public. Speaking with The Nation, several officers – who pleaded anonymity – admitted that they have become less passionate about their work.
“Our morale is very low. Extremely low. Nobody bothered to ask of our own side to the story. Yes, there are bad eggs in the police but don’t we have bad eggs in every profession? We have bad doctors, teachers, engineers, accountants, civil servants, journalists and even our religious men…Every day, we deal with dangerous criminals among the public. But na police be everybody’s problem. Now, that they have killed policemen. Let them begin to protect themselves,” he said.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu, speaking through the Police Spokesman, Frank Mba, stated that, “available reports show that twenty-two (22) police personnel were extra-judicially killed by some rampaging protesters and scores injured during the protests. Many of the injured personnel are in life threatening conditions at the hospitals.”
He added that “two hundred and five (205) police stations and formations, including other critical private and public infrastructure, were also damaged by a section of the protesters.
“Despite these unprovoked attacks, our police officers never resorted to use of unlawful force or shooting at the protesters,” Mba said, even as civil society chide the police for excessive display of aggression and use of force on the #EndSARS protesters.
Human rights organizations blame the police for escalating the protests soon after it was hijacked by armed thugs, leading to the deaths of at least 70 civilians.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu, speaking through the Police Spokesman, Frank Mba, stated that, “available reports show that twenty-two (22) police personnel were extra-judicially killed by some rampaging protesters and scores injured during the protests. Many of the injured personnel are in life threatening conditions at the hospitals.”
He added that “two hundred and five (205) police stations and formations, including other critical private and public infrastructure, were also damaged by a section of the protesters.
“Despite these unprovoked attacks, our police officers never resorted to use of unlawful force or shooting at the protesters,” Mba said, even as civil society chide the police for excessive display of aggression and use of force on the #EndSARS protesters.
Untold casualties of #EndSARS
In the melee, a lot of property got destroyed. The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) disclosed that Nigeria lost more than N700 billion in economic value in 14 days of the #EndSARS protests.
However, nobody envisaged that the chaos birthed more devastating results. For instance, several Nigerians whose Wills/Codicils were kept in the chambers of the Lagos High Court must deal with the hard truth that their legal documents have been burnt to ashes by the #EndSARS protesters.
A business magnate, names withheld, recently revealed that the legal documents including Wills/Codicils kept in the chambers of the Lagos High Court were burnt by the #EndSARS protesters. He discovered this when he approached the Lagos High Court in order to update his Will. But rather than do his bidding, the Lagos State Judiciary issued him a letter stating that the legal document specifying how his property should be shared in the event of his demise, was non-existent.
The letter, signed by a probate at the Igbosere judicial department, stated that the client’s Codicil, lodged with the court on January 8, 2020, had been irretrievably destroyed in the fire incident that engulfed the court.
At the backdrop of this revelation, the state judiciary has been struggling to contain an imminent blowback over the incident as several clients of the court have been trooping to its premises, horrified about the likely consequences of the incident.
Many fret and wonder what would have become of their loved ones and property, had they died not knowing that the valuable documents they kept with the court are no longer retrievable.
Police-Public relations: so far, so good
There is no gainsaying little improvement has manifested in police-public relations since the #EndSARS protests. But what does this mean day to day, about a year after the protests in Lagos and other states altered the way many Nigerians think about the police?
The answer resonates in beer parlour gossip, station-house interactions and interviews; the nub of it all is summed up in the words of one police sergeant: “It’s harder to police and protect people who want to kill you.”
His lamentation attains deeper context with the fate of late Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Kazeem Abonde, who was killed on September 23 this year, in Ajao Estate, when he led operatives to implement the Lagos government’s ban of okada riders.
The motorcycle operators fought back, burnt police vehicles and chased away the personnel. But Abonde was isolated, allowing the attackers the chance to strike. The CSP, whose head was smashed, died in a pool of blood before emergency services reached him.
Hoodlums burn Aba police station
The Centre for Social and Economic Rights (CSER) condemned the murder in strong terms and demanded a thorough enquiry.
Abonde was reportedly preparing to retire from active service in 2022. Having bagged a law degree, he planned to open a law firm after he retired.
Lagos governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, assured that the perpetrators will face justice, stressing that: “Citizens who take the law into their own hands are promoters of jungle justice, which will not be allowed to take root in our dear Lagos.”
And for about a week in September, in Agege, Lagos, teen confraternities engaged each other in a gruesome turf battle, destroying property and raping women old enough to be their mother – most especially around the newly built Pen Cinema bridge.
One such gang member enthused to The Nation that he and his crew have finally understood what it takes to defeat the police. “We will simply rush at them in large numbers. They can’t kill us all. Their bullets can only take down one or two at once before we pounce on them. They know this and they fear us,” said the 16-year-old who admitted that the strategy worked for them during the #EndSARS protests.
Confrontations are more numerous, and when the blood is up, so is the risk of the very thing everyone is trying to avoid–in the tattered, volatile neighborhoods to which hardly anyone, until recently paid as little attention as possible.
So much distrust in the air
Although the SARS unit has been disbanded, police officers still conduct random stop and search operations with impunity.
“I have been stopped twice in a week for spotting tinted hair. The second time, a police corporal called me a Yahoo girl and threatened to take me to the cell where hardened criminals will rape me as my punishment for resisting his attempt to arrest me. All my vehicle documents were intact. But he wanted to arrest me for tinting my hair and displaying a tatoo on my arm. He accused me of indecent exposure. Yeah, it’s still that bad,” said Yetunde Benjamin, an Ipaja, Lagos-based IT specialist.
Benjamin said the police corporal let her go when she and her friends started recording the whole incident, threatening to post it on social media.
Since the #EndSARS protest, a lot of policing has been done by citizen journalists aim to curtail the excesses of corrupt law enforcers by policing the police. Many of such videos go viral on the social media.
But police see the viral videos unlike everyone else. Oftentimes, they watch them differently. “It’s a problem of context. Many of the videos shared hardly reflect the true situation. It has become a bullying tactic by lawless members of the public. It makes our work even more difficult when such videos are posted with inaccurate portrayal of the goings-on at the time they were made,” said a senior officer at the Lagos police command.
Once they are posted online, most of those videos become vulnerable to misinterpretation by mischief makers wishing to cause bad blood between the citizenry and the police, he said.
For several police officers, the main beef with the videos that make the rounds on social media, triggering outrage, is that they begin long after the police engage with alleged lawbreakers or “persons of interest.”
Viewers see the tussle around the arrest but almost never what the cops see: the behavior that summoned them to the scene in the first place and what transpired in the minutes before the crowds gathered and the cell phones came out, many officers argued.
NEC approves compensation to victims
Following its receipt of reports from judicial panels regarding EndSARS protests set up in 28 States across the country and in the FCT, the National Economic Council (NEC) has approved the payment of compensation to victims.
This, NEC said, should be done with each State, in collaboration with the Federal Government, establishing the modalities for the settlement of all monetary compensations awarded by the panels.
Members of the council also advised those planning protests to mark the anniversary of the #ENDSARS to reconsider the option in view of “current security situation across the country and the possibility of such protests being hijacked by armed hoodlums and other opportunistic criminals to cause mayhem at such protest events and venues.”
NEC also recommended that persons recruited into arms-bearing security agencies should undergo psychiatric evaluations and drug tests before enlistment and periodically after enlistment to ensure that the personnel are psychologically fit to carry live weapons and to identify behavioural tendencies that may require psycho-social interventions.
The next three days, October 20 to be precise, will be the first anniversary of the Lekki toll gate shooting, and culmination of the protests that broke out on October 3 last year.
The ugly incident, which marked a sudden turn of the once-peaceful #EndSARS protest, into a nationwide violence that led to the destruction of properties worth millions of Naira, remains a sore point in Nigeria’s recent history.
At the backdrop of reports of planned protests to mark its anniversary, however, the police have vowed to use every legitimate means to stop the proposed protest even as concerned citizens urge caution in handling the situation lest it degenerates into violence.
How Boko Haram bred a generation of kids as gunfighters
Trauma, miseries of life as an ex-child insurgent
A great deal of their injuries aren’t physical – Psychiatrists
The thing about a gun: its easy for a child to get trapped in the sickle curve of its blind trigger. Yakubu, 10, is a testament. Since he learned to squeeze his first trigger, he’s been enamoured with the gun. His weapon of choice, the Russian Kalashnikov, AK-47 rifle. It didn’t matter that it was the deadliest gun in the world. He was only too ecstatic to wield it. Armed with the gun, he hushed boys to sleep with bullets in Sambisa. He shot hot lead into their parents in Baga. He watched blood drip through their perforated innards to soak the bleached sands of Kalabalge. He abducted peasant girls and housewives too. The 10-year-old dispersed corpses into Borno’s scorched earth. But he “did it all to survive.”
“If I didn’t do those things, they would have killed me,” he said, explaining his ordeal as a former captive and combatant of the Boko Haram (BH) terrorist group. Now 16, Yakubu regrets his membership of Boko Haram.
His life would probably pan out differently had he escaped the clutches of the insurgents, when they laid seige to his village, in Gwoza, in July 2016. That sad incident put paid to his childhood and his dreams of attaining soccer renown.
Growing up, Yakubu dreamed of playing professional soccer. He yearned to play for El Kanemi Warriors of Borno, and afterwards, English Premiership’s Chelsea FC. He clung to his dreams even when quick with monsters.
At school and on the sandy pitches of Gwoza, he was fondly admired as a ‘standing 10,’ a skillful midfielder, who teased the passion and shrieks of many a soccer lover by his aplomb.
The future seemed rosy, gilt-edged, until the sad incidence of his abduction.
On that fateful day, the boy died in Yakubu, so did his spunk and promise as a soccer maestro.
Boko Haram stormed his village and burned his home. They shot his parents in the head, and stabbed his brother in the neck killing them. Then they whisked him, his brother’s wife and six of his childhood friends to their enclave in Sambisa forest, he said.
There, they forcibly conscripted him and his friends as child combatants. He said, “Few days later, they transfered us to Shababu Ummah, in the Chikungudu forest, in Kalabalge. There, we spent four months learning to use daggers, swords and machine guns.”
And Yakubu knows his guns. He knows when and how to shoot to merely wound flesh and bone. He knows when to crack the cranium, and go for the kill, delivering the headshot.
Sometimes, the casualty hits too close to home, like when he aimed his rifle at his best friends, Idrissu, 11, and Ilyasu, 13.
“They stole dried fish and tried to escape. They were my childhood friends but I was their leader. I was told to punish them. So, I shot them in the head,” he said.
Asides the two that he shot in the head, four of his remaining friends, Abdullahi, 10, Bashir, 12, Salihu, nine, and Hassan, 13, were killed during encounters with the Nigerian Army.
Shooting his childhood friends in the head; hardly anyone ever gets past that, let alone a child. But Yakubu shrugged off the incident, describing it as two out of his 22 kills. Keeping count was an ego thing. “The more people you kill, the more you are reverred,” he said.
At the Chikungudu bootcamp, Yakubu grew insentient. Perhaps because his captors taught him to use captives as target practice.
He said, “One day, when they (BH fighters) returned from a mission, they lined up their hostages before us and asked us to kill them. They said they were strengthening us to become men. That day, I killed six people.
“Two days later, my trainer told me, Yakubu, my god daughter is turning four today, you will kill four people. I thought he was joking but he thrust an AK-47 in my hands, and held another gun to my head, threatening to kill me if I refused to execute the hostages lined up before me. Instantly, I killed four of them.”
One week later, Yakubu gunned down four men while on a mission in Monguno. At that point, there was no turning back. “I enjoyed firing the rifle like they did in the movies,” he said, adding that their commanders made them binge on hard drugs including Tramol (A variant of Tramadol), LSD, cannabis, and codeine before and after they embarked on missions.
Ball in a pitch of thorns
In time, Yakubu settled into his new life, evolving from apprehension to a sort of understanding: that his childhood dreams, like a punctured ball, had deflated in a pitch of thorns. Thus he embraced life as an insurgent.
There was no time for regret: the power he felt squeezing the trigger and watching life depart his victims, filled him with blood lust. It kept him fiending for the ‘respect’ and applause of fellow child combatants, he said.
Due to his dexterity with the gun, he rose through the ranks at the boot camp and was tasked with the ‘honour’ of training about 120 boys including minors as young as four years old.
“I taught them to dissemble and couple assault rifles. I also taught them to shoot guns,” he said.
Yakubu got swept away by the thrill of life as a Boko Haram gun fighter until his squad got overrun by the Nigerian Army en route a mission in Gwoza.
“We suffered heavy casualities. I was the only one that survived the assault,” he said, adding that he was eventually arrested at a military checkpoint while trying to trek from Gwoza to Maiduguri.
“One of our girls (former sex captives) who got rescued by the army pointed me out to the soldiers. I was lucky they didn’t kill me,” he said.
Life as a village ‘serpent’
Upon his arrest, Yakubu was enrolled in the Nigerian Army’s deradicalisation programme tagged, “Operation Safe Corridor,” graduating as one of its early beneficiaries. He has supposedly “been rehabilitated and reintegrated” into society, according to military authorities.
But even though he has quit the battle field he faces a new battle with the demons within.
“Sometimes, I dream that I am in Chikungudu forest training boys. I dream that the army are chasing me…I pray for forgiveness. Everytime,” said Yakubu.
•A little boy draws an assault rifle on a wall in Yobe Photo credit: Bulama Bukarti
Laraba, his grandma and only guardian, disclosed that, “Since he (Yakubu) returned from the forest, he has been a shadow of himself. He keeps to himself a lot, and lashes out explosively at the slightest irritation.”
She said, “One day, he threatened to beat me up because I told him to stop smoking Indian Hemp because it made him ravenous, which is bad, because always have tiny rations of food to share. He threw his plate of food at me in a rage. Instantly, his eyes became glazed, bloodshot. He started trembling so hard. I couldn’t recognise him anymore. Ever since, I have become very afraid of him.”
Laraba does not know what her grandson had been through. She doesn’t know what he had done or how deeply he dug into the trenches of mayhem, to earn the trust and applause of Boko Haram’s rank and file.
“I don’t wish to know anything. Whatever he did belongs to the past. I am simply glad he is free. I lost my husband and three sons, including Yakubu’s father, to Boko Haram. Thank God Yakubu is back,” she said.
Even so, the 81-year-old lives wary of her grandson. “I am scared of losing him. Sometimes, he barks out orders in his sleep. He screams and threatens to kill people while sleeping,” she said.
More worrisome is Yakubu’s penchant for chanting Boko Haram anthems even when visitors are around. “It’s scary and embarassing when he does that…Some neighbours visit simply to get kernel for gossip. They call him ‘serpent’ behind my back. One of them boldly told me to either poison him or let him go before he kills me but he is my grandson, and I love him,” said Laraba.
Yakubu, however, insisted that “it doesn’t mean anything” that he occasionally sings Boko Haram’s anthems. “I am home now,” he said.
But for how long? Many former child soldiers, like him, return home physically but emotionally, they remain attached to Boko Haram, argued Mabel Sanusi, a clinical psychiatrist and specialist in war time trauma.
According to her, a lot of former child soldiers have been prematurely discharged by military authorities. “Many of them have not been appropriately weaned of the bigotries and violence fed to them by Boko Haram. They were abducted at ages as young as four, and violently thrust into a world of carnage, where they were forced to play the roles of killers and abusers. This went on for a period of at least five years in most cases.
“The fact that they were perpetrators doesn’t mean they weren’t traumatised. How do you release such boys into society without giving them adequate treatment? It’s wrong and very dangerous for us all,” she said, warning of the likelihood of a high rate of recidivism among supposedly rehabilitated ex-Boko Haram child combatants.
Deradicalisation not working – Gov. Zulum
Recall that Borno governor, Babagana Zulum, recently sounded the alarm that the deradicalisation of repentant Boko Haram members is not working. The military launched Operation Safe Corridor, in 2016, to deradicalise and rehabilitate ex-Boko Haram members. The aim was to reintegrate repentant Boko Haram members into society. More than 500 ex-insurgents have already completed the programme.
But while speaking at the North-East Governors’ Forum few weeks ago, Zulum warned that the initiative must be reviewed because some of the ex-Boko Haram members only come to spy on communities and then return to join the group.
He said, “It has been confirmed that the concept of deradicalisation or Safe Corridor is not working as expected. Quite often, those who have passed through the Safe Corridor initiative, or have been deradicalised, usually go back and rejoin the terror group after carefully studying the various security arrangements in their host communities, during the reintegration process.
“In addition, the host communities where the reintegration process is going on usually resent the presence of Boko Haram terrorists, even if they have been deradicalised, because of the despicable and atrocious activities they have committed in the past,” he said, stressing that the main goals of the deradicalisation initiative are not being achieved.
The governor advised that the best option is to immediately prosecute the insurgents in accordance with the terrorism Act, adding that ex-members, who were forcibly recruited but have been rescued or have escaped from the group, should be the ones to undergo the deradicalisation.
Boy, invisible in plain sight
While the world focused on Boko Haram’s mass abduction of women and girls, the terrorist group was stealing an even greater number of boys. Over 10,000 boys were abducted by the group and trained in boot camps in forest hide-outs and abandoned villages, according to government officials and the Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based advocacy group.
Yakubu is just one of at least 10,000 children and teenagers abducted by the group since its campaign of terror across the northeast and the Lake Chad Basin began in 2009.
With no formal database for the missing, it’s impossible to know how many boys like him, have escaped Boko Haram captivity since the group laid seige to northeastern Nigeria.
They have killed more than 5,000 people including children, and they have left almost double that number with serious injuries and disabilities.
“A great deal of the injuries aren’t physical. Too many among them have been traumatised. They have PTSD,” said Balkis Mohammed, a social worker and child psychologist in Maiduguri, Borno State.
Corroborating her, Maryam Bello, a volunteer social worker in Yobe State stated that the northeast is littered with childen and teenagers traumatised by an extreme cycle of violence. “Many of are living in denial. Many are not even aware that they need treatment. And the few, who are lucky to access mental health care live at very great risk of suffering a relapse, due to the persistent warfare wracking the region and its severe consequences,” she said.
According to Kyla Storry, a Mental Health Activity Manager with the Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), “The situation remains extremely worrying. This longterm crisis – which affects more than 60,000 people in Gwoza and as many as 1.8 million people across Borno state – prevents most people from imagining a future for themselves and causes great psychological distress. As long as the crisis lasts, the need for mental health support will continue to grow. It’s crucial that mental healthcare is available to children and adults living in this situation.”
Ten-year-old Abubakr is undoubtedly one of the lucky few to enjoy mental health intervention, following his ordeal as a Boko Haram captive. He was abducted by Boko Haram in Gwoza, at the tender age of five. Abubakr lived with the armed group for five years but he found his way back home, with injuries. On his return, he was admitted to the MSF clinic where he underwent surgical treatment.
Soon after his return, he began to exhibit signs of psychological distress suggesting that he was traumatised by his five-year captivity. But after he started attending sessions with Maryam, an MSF counsellor, he gradually came out of his shell. In time he learned to accommodate intervention and warmed up to others. These days, he has found a knack for drawing and playing football.
The same could hardly be said for Yau Damina, who was abducted from Potiskum at age 14 by Boko Haram. Damina spent five months in Boko Haram’s boot camps, training to become a combatant. In five months, he developed deadly skills. For instance, he killed five men in the blink of an eye, because they disrespected and killed his team leader.
“I killed them because they disrespected and killed my team leader,” he said, in an exclusive chat with The Nation. Damina was eventually arrested at a wedding ceremony in his grandfather’s village.
He regrets his past atrocities. He has no hobbies, no dreams, and he has no hopes for the future. He is simply content living in military detention.
Like Damina, Ali Mustapha was kidnapped at age 14, in Marte, by Boko Haram.
He was subsequently held in captivity at the Chikungudu forest, in Kalabalge.
and trained as a combatant for three years.
•Boko Haram child combatants in a gun drill at a forest hideout
He said, “I have killed about 13 people in separate locations. The first time I killed, I killed five hostages in Chikungudu forest. They later came with three other people and forced me to kill them. I also killed five people in a village called Burssari.”
Mustapha said that “more than 500 children” his age, including younger ones, were conscripted as child soldiers in Chikungudu.
“They spat on us and refused to give us food whenever we dithered in doing what they asked of us. Sometimes, they kill dissenters,” he said, adding that at Chikungudu, their leader was Umar from the Mamman Nur faction of Boko Haram.
Mustapha was, eventually, intercepted by security operatives, while on espionage in Maiduguri. He was arrested at the Bakassi IDP camp after refugees identified him as a member of Boko Haram. He said he was sent to spy on likely soft targets at Baga Road, the Monday and Custom Markets in Maiduguri.
A work in progress
While the army’s deradicalisation programe has been described as a work in progress, it is still one of the most advanced efforts to de-radicalise terror suspects. One critical component of the programme is the rehabilitation of extremists in prison through religious reeducation, vocational training and psychological counseling.
Idris Mahmud-Abdoullahi, a Borno-based Islamic cleric and social psychologist, said, while the initiative is commendable, it is too early to determine the accuracy of any estimate of recidivism, particularly since there has not been enough time to study long-term effects of the de-radicalisation programme.
The programme initially focused only on inmates who were not directly involved in terrorist attacks but it later included radicalised detainees arrested in Sambisa Forest and repatriated from prisons of neighbouring countries.
The actual locations of the de-radicalisation centres are hidden from the public. “This is for security reasons,” revealed a senior military officer in the programme, adding that there are plans to expand its scope to include detainees’ families, in joint counseling sessions, to mitigate the likelihood of stigmatisation.
The healing
Fiona Lovatt, founder, Children of Borno (COB), a haven for orphaned children and other vulnerable IDPs argued that the government and must pay good mind to the kids’ healing process.
She said, “We don’t know what has been fed into their minds but it is clearly not the Quran because the Holy Quran is a healing balm for those who have suffered or are suffering. I have seen in Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the camps, such high faith; that they can sit in the squalor and hunger and poverty that they are dealing with and say ‘Alhmadulillah! Praise God, I am alive. My children are alive. I have lived another day.
“It’s wrong to say, they have been radicalised; they have been brutalised. So, we know there’s drugs involved. We know there’s violence involved. We know there’s emotional blackmail. Most of these kids have to kill or be killed. This is not some ideology. This is just some raw, gut torture. It is the sort of things Nazi did to train their soldiers. These are mind control techniques that has nothing to do with any religion,” she said.
•Boko Haram child combatants undergo ideological brainwashing
In Lovatt’s perspective, it’s just an abject failure of society to care for those children. She said, “We must take care of children in need. I have seen children who have experienced the worst killings rise above their trauma to paint beautiful pictures. I have seen such children tend their own gardens, grow their own vegetables and learn two new languages. I have seen passion ignite in them and watch them yearn to become engineers, doctors, teachers when they grow up. I have seen such children heal in my home,” she said.
‘Shaytan has whispered into their hearts’
Yet for so many boys, disaffection is the most feasible rationalisation for Boko Haram’s appeal. Many of the group’s child combatants have little formal education. They live in straitened circumstances, surviving by menial jobs on the fringes of urban and rustic north.
You see them smiling and pleading for alms but deep down, they are very angry. And Boko Haram offers them a corrupted creed as platform to vent.
Eventually, they are goaded to believe that they are a crucial part of a great cause. A worthy movement geared to topple the government of the infidels.
“They misinterpret the Holy Quran and use it to justify the senseless murders they commit. Shaytan has whispered into their hearts,” argued Sheikh Mahmud Abdullah, an Islamic scholar and cleric.
There is no gainsaying Boko Haram’s creed of violence and wanton genocide is resonant among brainwashed minors. The compelling nature of the grievances articulated, and the pervasiveness of poverty justifies the group’s rationale for employing violence to express their grievances.
What are the group’s grievances? A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, according to experts, is also a source of widespread dissatisfaction towards politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement.
These sentiments may be found in greater depths and concentration in the north than elsewhere in the country, argued James Forest, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, United States of America.
Boko Haram and its sponsors, of course, cash in on the situation; they manipulate the sentiments of the northern youth in recruiting them as soldiers. They lure them with food, money and a passport to paradise; they tell them that their religion is under threat.
Redemption walk
If you ask Yakubu, Damina, Abubakr, among others, they would tell you that life as an ex-child insurgent is markedly tragic, harsh. Its hard to settle into their new lives. They have to relearn the old ways of communal life and humaneness.
But while they pick their way through the jagged horror of their past, will their hearts and memories retract the terror they visited on their innocent victims? Will the latter forgive?
As the antiterrorism war intensifies in Nigeria’s northeast, Boko Haram replenishes its ranks with a steady stream of boy combatants, moving child abductees cum combatants through neighbourhoods and forests, using military trucks and passenger vans to boot camps holding more than 1,000 boys on the watch of adolescent trainers.
Back in Chikungudu, said Mustapha, it was normal to see 10-year-old boys romanticise raiding villages, killing traditional chiefs and taking over their wives and daughters.
But when there is no activity. “We get restless and occasionally pick fights among ourselves. The fights get deadly at times,” said Damina, who confessed to killing five fellow child combatants for disrespecting and killing his leader.
Such is the tenor of life in the Sambisa and Chikungudu forest bootcamps, where prepubescent boys are mauled into killers by impatient adult commanders and adolescent trainers.
At their arrest or rescue, they find it harder reintegrating into normal life. Home becomes a strange, hostile space. Yakubu’s neighbours, for instance, call him ‘serpent.’
And in July 2020, some Borno communities protested the reintegration of “repentant Boko Haram members” among them; they asked the federal government to relocate the boys to the presidential villa, in Aso Rock, Abuja.
At the backdrop of it all, several ex-child insurgents must battle the demons within for control of their lives. If they are not consumed by the ravages of PTSD or society’s engine of enforced peace and punishing inertia, the rumours, judgmental stares of their relatives, and neighbourhood hostility, ultimately push them back unto the famished paths of mayhem.
There are many inescapably tormented by the intense dialogue of the conflicting personae trapped within their consciousness.
The present is marred by nightmares from their past. Yakubu, for instance, claimed he is okay and “back home now” but every night, he steals back to Chikungudu forest in his sleep. There, he orders recruits as young as four years to dissemble and couple AK-47s in the blink of an eye.
He is home physically but mentally, he is still living in the forest, raiding townships and dodging Nigerian Army bullets.
So engrossed is he with his innate demons that he neither sees the divinations of hope nor the possibility of rebirth.
The National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) Garment Factory in Anambra State boasts of over 15,000 production capacity of khaki suits, plain vests and shorts each. EMMA ELEKWA reports that it is contributing to the economic growth of not only the state but that of the nation.
Advocators of the scrapping of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme over growing wave of insecurity as well as those who argue that the scheme had outlived its relevance especially in recent times may likely have a change of mind, particularly after visiting the garment factory of the scheme in Anambra State.
The factory located inside the State Polytechnics in Mgbakwu, Awka North Local Government Area of the state which boasts of over 15,000 production capacity of khaki suits, plain vests and shorts each, have continued to contribute to the economic growth of not only the state but that of the nation at large.
With the engagement of no fewer than 100 workforces, comprising corps members, NYSC staff and other skilled workers, mostly drawn from within the community, the factory has also increased the standard of living of the people of the area, as well as boosted the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of both the state and federal governments.
•Onifade
Commissioned in July 2002, the garment factory, which is one of the two factories in the country, is not only into the production of corps members attires but also serves as a training centre for Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurial Development (SAED) where both corps members and unemployed youths are empowered with different skills.
The factory, regrettably, had not fully maximised its potentials party due to lack of adequate machines and manpower. The facility had reportedly suffered this under-utilisation challenge until the recent deployment of one of the Assistant Inspectors from the NYSC Directorate, Mr Joshua Onifade to resuscitate it.
Onifade said his deployment followed the decision of the Director-General of the scheme, Brig.-Gen. Ibrahim Shuaibu to ensure the factory was resuscitated in line with his fifth policy thrust of reinvigorating the NYSC ventures, skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development programme in the scheme for greater achievements.
He expressed joy over the unprecedented positive change the factory had recorded since his assumption of office barely five months ago, attributing it to the injection of both machines and manpower.
He said: “The DG said he had to scout for a long time for who would assist him actualise his policy thrust. I could remember the time he sent me on an inspection of the activities here. I also went to Mina, Niger state and later sent him my report. I didn’t know he observed all I did. So one day he called and said I’ll be going to work in the factory. He said I’m in the best position for the job, in addition to my experience as a procurement officer. So who am I to say no to my DG?
“The production level of the factory was nothing to write home about when I took over. I met 18 sewing machines, 12 functional but old. I decided to ensure the 7 in critical condition were repaired. Again, I said, if actually, we’re to achieve the mandate of the DG, I must go out of my way to do more. I had to get back to him for support. That he did and still doing.
“Within a space of 5 months, I was able to increase the number of machines from 18 to 41. We have two types: interlocks and straight sewing machines. We bought more of them. Those that were down, including the buttonhole machine, I fixed all. Our production capacity was boasted.
“Before my resumption, they were majorly outsourcing from existing contractors. When I came, I saw it as an aberration because it’s more or less working for the contractors. We were running at deficits after making statutory deductions from the government. That was why we decided to make use of what we have.
“The production was about 2000. But presently, we have 15,000 capacity of khaki suits, 15,000 plain vests, 15,000 PE shorts. The only item I didn’t want to involve myself in is the crested vest because it’s done manually and it’s costlier to produce.
“Until I get a screen printing machine with the capacity of producing 1,200 per day, we will not commence the production. Then, it will be massive. For now, we’re concentrating on the plain vest. We’re not also producing jungle boots, caps, belts and tennis because we don’t have the machines. But all of that are in the pipeline. By the time these become stabilised, we’ll go into that.
“Initially, our members of staff in government payroll were just 10. We relied on tailors from outside. We employed them whenever we needed their services because there was no job. But on assumption, I requested the State Coordinator to give me corps members with fair knowledge of fashion designing and painting who we could train.
“He posted 11 of them, six female and five male and I rented an apartment for them within the neighbourhood. He just posted another corps member to me yesterday, making it 12. Besides, I said if we must increase our production capacity, we needed more tailors. So I had to engage more than 41 tailors who we pay wages to boost their morale to handle the 41 machines on the ground.
“We have a cutter who is a professional. We also have a staff assisting him. But we need more cutters who we can train because their work is very important. The one on government payroll is getting old and will soon retire. So we need to have a succession plan. Presently, I’m talking with the people in the community, especially those with school certificate to join us so they can eke their living here.
“I’ve also met with the Rector of the State Polytechnics who’s coincidentally our neighbour, appealing to her that we would like to engage her students. She obliged to give us some indigent students who we can engage and assist to pay their fees from the proceeds they make. They’re here with us. All in line with the policy thrust of the NYSC.”
On how long it takes to produce the 15,000, Onifade said: “Within 6weeks, we produce the 15,000 each of the 3 items simultaneously. If it’s replicated, we’re expecting to have over 60,000 production capacity of the 3 items, khaki suits, plain white and PE each in a year. That will come to a total of 180,000 pieces annually.
“We supply the items directly to the central store at the headquarters from where they would be distributed to corps members across the country. Presently we have corps members in camp. Another batch is expected to be deployed in May, July and November/December.
“I’m working for NYSC which is invariably working for the government. Whatever profit accruable from the proceeds is paid into TSA, thereby boosting the IGR of the scheme and economy of government.
“The community where the factory is located is already feeling the impact. Over 40 women working with us fall back to the community and you can imagine the multiplier effect, directly or indirectly. The same goes with the 41 tailors. If you put all the manpower together, we have close to 100 workers on our payroll. All these increase the standard of living of the people. That’s what NYSC is doing over 47 years ago of its existence, particularly under the able leadership of the current DG.
“Some of the corps members we engaged decided to stay back after service. You know leaving service without anything to do is a fundamental problem in the country which can be frustrating. That’s why NYSC is going further to engage youths to ensure they can live anywhere in the country. For example, I have a corps member from Edo state and another from Nasarawa state. They’re all working here. They’ve mingled with the community so much that it’s likely they may decide to stay back. By large, the unemployment rate is drastically reduced. The skills we’re teaching them here are what they convert to employment.”
The Manager listed the various sections of the factory to include the store where the finished products, as well as raw materials, were packed, the SAED training section, printing section, among others. He further revealed that all materials in the factory were locally sourced in line with the local content of the federal government to boost the economy and create employment for the teeming youths.
“You can imagine the impact on the local manufacturers of the fabrics, as well as button and tread. There are already made market for them. No material here is imported. All are locally sourced from Lagos, Onitsha, Aba and other parts of the country. The money still circulates. You can imagine the millions being invested in the production of these materials,” he added.
Reacting to the challenges facing the factory, Onifade highlighted funds, power and roof leakage as major impediments confronting the growth of the factory.
He said, “Our challenges are enormous, finance is a major one. But God has been faithful. We’re approaching it in various ways. But we don’t want to take the loan, which I see as killing, with due apologies to the bankers. We rather collaborate with spirited individuals, corporate bodies. I’ve approached some into garment factories. Most of them have shown willingness to support.
“This collaboration doesn’t necessarily involve money. For me, all I want are materials, fabrics and other sewing materials. We just agree on the formula for profit sharing. All these definitely will be approved by the headquarters. But at our local level, some of our colleagues have keyed in to what we’re doing as they see it as saving against their retirement.
“Another major challenge here is power supply. When I came here, we were not connected to the national grid. I had to insist on our being connected and made the EEDC management and we got it connected. So far, we enjoy their services within the period they provide light. But you know how epileptic it can be. But we make sure we maximize those few periods they give us light, including midnights. Like last night, they worked till 4 am when the light went off before they went back home. Yet, they’re back this morning. In the interim, we make use of two domestic generating sets at a time, to be able to substitute power. But we need a 35 KVA soundproof generating set, will to power all of our machines and other gadgets. Though I have also informed the DG and he promised to help.”
Comparing the factory with that of Minna, Niger state, the Manager said: “I’m making them wake up from their slumber and run. Thank God my colleague there is not only understanding but well experienced. I brief him from time to time and he takes our advice seriously. He’s doing well. For me, it’s a healthy competition.”
He also described his transition from Abuja to the state as divine, saying he had found joy and fulfilment working in the state.
The NYSC Coordinator in the state, Kehinde Aremu, had during a recent visit to the factory, expressed satisfaction with the level of transformation going on at the factory.
He commended the Factory Manager for the proactive measures he took which has resulted in an increase in production output.
Almost no day passes without one abduction being recorded on the Kaduna-Abuja highway. In this special report, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) speaks to experts on how to address the malaise.
In recent times, Kaduna-Abuja highway of more than 200 kilometres as a gateway to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has been in the news for notoriety in kidnapping, banditry and robbery, among others, observers note.
They observe further that due to poor road network that has allowed this development, travelling on the highway has become a nightmare to motorists.
Serving state and federal lawmakers, foreign expatriates, high-profile persons and a former minister, have been reported kidnapped on this highway.
Concerned residents of FCT have, on many occasions, expressed concern about frequent incidences of kidnapping among other security challenges in FCT which they observe as a strange development.
•Acting IGP Alkali Baba
Some of the residents suspect that since FCT is bordered by states where kidnapping is rampant — in the north by Kaduna State, South-East by Nasarawa State, South-West by Kogi and in the West by Niger — kidnapping activities are possibly slurring into the territory from the neighbouring states.
But Mrs Mariam Jaiyeoba, a resident of FCT, notes that whether or not the bandits and kidnappers infiltrate FCT via border communities, the response ought to be the way forward to check kidnapping and other security challenges in FCT.
In apparent response to Jaiyeoba, Mr Joshua Ibiloye, a Deputy Commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), said that terrorism and kidnapping, which were not known in Nigeria in the past, had now become rampant, even in FCT.
Speaking on behalf of Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola at a security meeting in Abuja, he observed that security agencies must work together to win the war against kidnapping and other crimes.
“Fight against insurgency and kidnapping is asymmetric warfare where those engaged in them do not respect or comply with international laws of engagement. They kill women, children and the aged.
“We are all at risk, thus, there is need for synergy, we can’t win in such war unless and until security agencies synergise effectively and improve on intelligence gathering and sharing. We should be proactive than reactive.
“Also, security agencies need to win the trust of the people through advocacy; at times, citizens do not trust security agencies, thus we need to win their trust to make us do better,’’ he said.
He also suggested that there was need to end proliferation of light weapons across the country to minimise or eliminate crimes.
Similarly, the NSCDC says it has deployed military trained personnel to combat kidnappers and guarantee security.
Mr Ahmed Audi, Commandant-General of the defence corps, said that the personnel deployed were trained to combat asymmetric warfare, assuring Nigerians of the corps’ capacity to check insecurity.
However, the Police Command in FCT says it has stepped up its operations to stimulate aggressive fight against kidnapping and banditry in the territory.
ASP Mariam Yusuf, FCT Police Public Relations Officer, said due to intensified fight against kidnapping, the command had in recent time arrested many suspected kidnappers, including six kidnapping suspects in Apo, FCT.
Yusuf said the suspects were arrested following credible intelligence report, indicating that they had abducted three persons.
She said the suspects were arrested by police operatives on routine patrol, while attempting to relocate one of their victims.
She said further investigations led to successful rescue of two other victims who identified the suspects as kidnappers.
In another instance, Yusuf noted that children between the ages of two years to 13 years were taken from their parents by suspected traffickers in February in Lapai, Niger, with the pretext of providing them education.
She said investigation revealed that the traffickers distributed the children to different people, noting that the suspects would be arraigned in court after investigation.
She also said that the command had deployed covert and overt crime fighting strategies to strengthen security across the FCT, especially in areas with cumbersome terrain.
Yusuf said that the command was working closely with sister security agencies, key stakeholders and community leaders to rid the FCT of criminal elements.
She called on residents to remain calm and law-abiding, enjoining them to report suspicious persons or activities around their vicinity to the nearest police division via any of the FCT Police Command Control numbers: 08032003913, 08061581938, 07057337653 and 08028940883.
As part of efforts at ridding the FCT of kidnapping and other security challenges, the Nigeria Police say the force secured the release of Mr John Makama, father of Bwari Area Council Chairman, Mr John Gabaya, and two others who were kidnapped on February 2 in FCT.
Divisional Police Officer in charge of Bwari Police Station, Mr Biodun Makanjuola, said that Gabaya and the other captives were released but he could not ascertain whether or not any ransom was paid by the family members.
Makanjuola said that Makama was released alongside two other family members unhurt and had since returned to their home in Tokolo village in Bwari.
He also said that four persons were earlier arrested in connection with the crime and were kept in custody.
Similarly, following rising cases of abduction in the Federal Capital Territory, the Nigeria Police in February, deployed 150 operatives, including riot policemen and special forces in Abuja.
The police believe that the personnel will beef up security in the nation’s capital described as the target of kidnappers recently.
The police also assure the public that the deployment will strengthen security, dismantle and dislodge all criminal hideouts, especially kidnappers’ camps within the FCT.
Giving the residents of FCT further assurance of safety, Mr Abdullahi Candido, the Chairman, Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), said that his administration established a community policing security outfit known as the AMAC Marshals.
He said that the security outfit that has been working with NSCDC was established to argument the efforts of the conventional security to protect lives and property of residents.
But Mrs Kemi Okenyodo, a governance, security and gender expert, believes that ransom payment has made abductions lucrative for criminal gangs.
“The decision on payment of ransom should be reviewed. What are the best steps to take in preventing the abductions so we avoid the payment of ransom’’, she asked.
Sharing similar sentiments, analysts note that the adverse effects of kidnapping in the country have become worrisome.
According to them, state governments must review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles as such a policy has the potential to backfire with disastrous consequences.
They, nonetheless, suggest ways to prevent kidnapping, including stopping routine movement and avoiding discussion on family members and money matters in public.
Among other precautions, they advise to do proper checks before employing workers and to avoid flamboyant lifestyle; never to reveal too much about oneself and family members via social media.
According to them, getting too close to a stranger could be dangerous and letting someone know our whereabouts would help in avoiding kidnapping.
They advise further never to reveal addresses and places you frequent on social media as kidnappers rely on such information.
All in all, security experts advise that whenever we notice any threat of kidnap around us, we must attract the attention of people around by screaming or shouting until people gather around to rescue.
