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  • Why I backed out of illegal oil bunkering – ex-militant leader Amagbein

    Why I backed out of illegal oil bunkering – ex-militant leader Amagbein

    • Says Niger Delta’s problems self-inflicted

    Ex-militant leader and self-styled General, Endurance Amagbein a.k.a. Adaka Boro the Second, tells MIKE ODIEGWU why he gave up his illegal bunkering business and became a crusader against oil theft in the Niger Delta. He also identifies some major players in the illegal bunkering business empire and recommends permanent solutions to the economic sabotage, among other issues.

    At what age did you join the arms struggle in the Niger Delta and why?

    I, General Endurance Amagbein, Adaka Boro the Second, have been a Niger Delta agitator for over 24 years in the creeks of the Niger Delta. I have traversed the entire Niger Delta in the name of agitating and struggling for the betterment of life and development of the people of the Niger Delta and its region. I am among those that got involved in the Niger Delta armed struggle at a tender age, being in the struggle for over 24 years from a barrack boy to the rank of a commander under the leadership of other generals. It made me to have a vast experience in the Niger Delta and today, I am a general with followers cutting across the entire Niger Delta area.

    I am one person that is still pained for the underdevelopment experienced in the Niger Delta after accepting the amnesty programme. Despite all the promises that were made during the amnesty programme, 14 years after, we are still where we are. As an individual, I am very worried. I know as an agitator we were expecting that at this point in time, the Niger Delta would have become the Niger Delta of our dream, but that did not come to play. That is why some of us are still within the creeks to see how the needed development, employment and empowerment can come to the people of the Niger Delta.

     You were said to have once engaged in illegal oil bunkering. Why did you toe such a dangerous path?

    Niger Delta is the oil and gas epicentre of Nigeria. In the Nigerian system that we are operating today, in the oil and gas industry, it is the federal government that controls virtually everything while the landlords, who are the rightful owners of the oil rich area, are completely sidelined and they feel marginalised by the IOCs and the Federal Government.

    The people of Niger Delta do not feel a sense of belonging in the oil and gas industries operating in the region. That is one the reason why some of us find ourselves in this arms struggle. However, the major oil theft taking place is the corporate theft being carried out by those from NNPC and the politicians because the vessels of crude oil that they take from Nigeria to the off OPEC market is more than what the people of the Niger Delta are taking in the name of illegal bunkering.

    Although after the amnesty we believed that development would come to the people and living standard of our people would improve, but that did not happen. So the people drastically keyed into bunkering and oil theft in the Niger Delta as means of survival.

    Some persons used the wealth they got from the illegal bunkering to empower themselves. I am not an exception. I also found myself in the illegal bunkering activities, but more of my resources went into community development, human development, youth empowerment and other community-related services. As an individual, I was believing that keying into illegal bunkering would solve the entire Niger Delta problem. But I have come to realize that, that is not the answer or solution to the problems facing the people of the Niger Delta.

    Are you still involved in such illegal activities now?

    I have come to agreement with people of thought and wisdom that illegal bunkering should come to an end. With zero oil theft, revenue generation will increase, and if the revenue is put into use in the right channels, it will get to the people as it will be used for the development of the Niger Delta region. I think the people of the Niger Delta will protect these oil and gas facilities with their lives.

    As we speak, oil theft and illegal bunkering have caused more damage and disaster in terms of environmental pollution in the Niger Delta than what we thought would be the benefits from the illegal bunkering. That is why I have come to agreement and many others that we have to eradicate oil theft and illegal bunkering in the

    Niger Delta region in order for the federal and state governments, host communities to have revenues that can be used for the development, empowerment of our Niger Delta region and Nigeria at large.

    How far can pipeline surveillance contract solve this problem of illegal oil bunkering?

    Today pipelines surveillance contracts are being awarded to individuals by IOCs and even NNPC. It is advisable that they engage the rightful people that are vast with happenings in their various areas in order to have effective results. Let them not play politics with such contracts because the outcome has a lot to do with revenue generation and development and as well youth empowerment.

     Over time, some of these contracts have been having political undertones and the needed results are not achieved. Some of us have been fighting against illegal bunkering with our personal resources when we realised the negative impact this illegal bunkering is having on our people and the environment.

    If you come to my area, you would attest that illegal bunkering, to an extent, is a thing of the past as a result of the effort I am putting to achieve a good result. Although there is pressure everywhere, my resolve has made it impossible, and today my area is becoming free from illegal bunkering. Hence, the locals from the oil communities should be engaged in form of pipelines surveillance contracts and should be awarded to individuals from the area as focal person. By doing so, the needed results will be achieved.

    What do you think the people of the Niger Delta stand to benefit if oil theft and illegal bunkering is eradicated in the region? 

    Oil theft as everybody knows in Nigeria is to an extent an organised crime. What the people of the Niger Delta are doing, that is illegal bunkering and all the rest, is less than one per cent of what those in position of trust are taking, particularly those in NNPC. What they are taking from the Niger Delta and from the Federal Government in the name of off OPEC racketing is huge. Why am I saying so, there is a market called off OPEC Market where those in NNPC and the oil companies, the main players, take our crude to sell. That means they are not giving account of those particular products. These are the real oil thieves. Nigeria as a country that hardly enforces regulatory laws in the oil industry has given room for defaulting industry players in the oil and gas industry to go scot-free.

    I am not in a position to fight them, but it is good that we tell the people. That is why we don’t want the little that our people are taking to be used as reference point. We don’t want the narrative that because the people of the Niger Delta are into illegal bunkering and oil theft, that is why the production rate is reducing. This is all falsehood. That is why you see that I am coming out to take the bull by the horn to singlehandedly see that oil theft, illegal bunkering come to an end in the Niger Delta.

    If oil theft and illegal bunkering comes to an end, I believe that the modular refinery that the Federal Government has promised the people of the Niger Delta can be fast-tracked, and that will lead to employment, improvement in economic activities and at the same time increase the living standard of the people of the Niger Delta. And if the production level increases, definitely it will lead to revenue increase, which will make more money available for the national coffers for distribution and invariably states will receive more money to execute developmental projects 

    Thirdly, I believe as an individual that the PIA Act has made provision for funds for the host communities, which will contribute to the development of our communities in the region. And I believe that if oil theft is eradicated, crude oil production is bound to shore up, and as Niger Deltans, we can ask for upward review of the derivation percent to states and host communities from the paltry 3% to 10 to 20% which will lead to further development. 

    And the refineries in question that are supposed to be working in the Niger Delta with high resources and revenue, definitely the Federal Government will have resources that will be injected into the refineries to work optimally. And I believe that is what everybody wants. 

    How do you view the laws regulating the oil industry, especially as they relate to the oil-bearing communities?

    What the people of the Niger Delta and we that have been in the arms struggle are asking look into the laws that are guiding the oil and gas sector. The regulatory bodies, empower them to be completely independent so that they can enforce the laws that will bring immediate change and development to the people of the Niger Delta.

    What is your take on modular and Dangote refineries. Can they address the challenges of petroleum products? 

    Now that subsidy has been removed, I believe that all the refineries will definitely become functional. I also understand that getting the crude to refine is giving some of them challenges because the locations where some of the refineries are sited are not actually oil producing areas. So to get the pipeline that will supply crude oil for refining is challenging.

    The one our brother, Azikel is building in Bayelsa State, I believe he needs the support of the federal and state governments. He is an individual, and when it comes to building a modular refinery, it is capital intensive. He has the foresight, he really wants to bring it on stream, but the willingness of the state and federal governments to partner with him to bring the project to limelight is crucial, because when completed, it will create employment opportunities for our teeming youths and also lead to economic boom. I want the state government, as a matter of urgency, to look into it. That of Dangote, I believe that the crude line where it is placed is very far from the Niger Delta, and that is why it is having those little hiccups. You know, when those pipes are constructed to those places, it will become functional. I don’t know or think that there is any security threat to their activities. That is why we are still calling on the Federal Government to grant the people of the Niger Delta more licences, especially Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers and the Arugbo part of Ondo State where there are many pipelines. They are major producers of oil and gas, so that the people will be taken off the street and that will give them the audacity to protect the critical national assets because it will put food on their tables.

    Do you support the removal of petroleum subsidy?

    I have advised Nigerians before this time on subsidy related matters; that they should give Mr. President some time because he has good intentions for Nigerians. This subsidy removal issue is an issue that is long overdue. You know in 2012 or thereabout when then President Goodluck Jonathan wanted to end this same subsidy regime, Nigerians protested, including the present President. At that time the money used for subsidy was less. But today subsidy is consuming trillions of naira. I know that those who protested against Jonathan’s move at that time did so purely for political reasons. That is what we are suffering today.

    But Mr. President has taken the bull by the horn to remove the hydra-headed monster called petroleum subsidy. Let us support him and definitely I am certain that the long time benefits of subsidy removal will overweigh the short term pains because the sector has been fully deregulated, which will bring in independent players. This means that we are going to have more private refineries that will definitely create employment opportunities for the unemployed and product availability will be enhanced which will return the country to the golden era of exporting petroleum products.

    What we need is economic independence and in order for us to get economic independence, we have to be more productive and take the economy on the part of industralization in our day to day activities. So I believe that Nigerians will give President Tinubu the opportunity and some time to set things right and impact positively on the lives of the people.

    Do you think the governors, federal and state lawmakers and other political appointees from the region are doing enough to touch lives?

    Lawmakers that ought to be standing firm for the region in terms of lawmaking have decided not to speak on issues that have to do with the Niger Delta people. Look at the PIA Act, the Hoscom fund ought to be 10%, the upper and the lower chambers agreed to 5% but at the end of the day, it was 3% that was passed. That was a time when we had our own brother as Minister of Petroleum who was very influential.  But the interest of the IOCs was the interest that was protected against the people of the Niger Delta. That is what is playing out even at the state level. Money meant for development is carted away. At the end of the day, it is EFCC that will go and harvest all of them. It is very painful.

    Look at the NDDC, it has become a political arena where the ruling party at the centre directs them and uses the funds meant for development just for political related activities instead of focusing on the key objectives of the commission. That is why you see that day in day out we are backward. We are retrogressing in terms of development, manpower, and industrialization. That is where we found ourselves and those are some the things that pain us.

    That is why as an individual, I don’t blame those from the North, Yoruba, Hausa or Igbo for our  predicament and underdevelopment. It is a self-inflicted problem, and until we look inward, we can never get it right.

    That is how it is. So it is sad. My appeal to our leaders is for them to use resources no matter how little for the benefit of all. That is why we are fighting for upward review of this same resources. Like the 13% derivation is long overdue for review to at least 50%. That is the only way the people in the region will understand that we are stakeholders of the oil and gas activities that are happening in the region, so that we can protect the facilities with all our blood for the benefit of all.

    But when you take our own and give us paltry 13% in the name of derivation, while people are harvesting gold in the North and they are taking all home, and you want us to keep quiet? They come to the Niger Delta drill all the oil, make a funny map survey plan and come and tell us that it is one man from the North that own it. It is very appalling. What we want is one Nigeria, Niger Delta that is development oriented, peaceful, business friendly. So we are calling on our leaders to focus more on development of the region than politics, and our people are going to enjoy the dividends of democracy.

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    What kind of leader are you expecting in Bayelsa State on November 11

    I am not a politician or a party person. I am just the people’s General and what we want as a people in Bayelsa State is progress and a state that is prosperous and other states will envy. As a General, I have said it before and will keep saying it again;  it is only when political season comes like this that you see all the political gladiators running helter skelter, trying to brainwash and seeing how they can buy votes for their own personal political gain. At this juncture, I am calling on all Bayelsans to be law-abiding, peaceful and should not allow politicians to use them as political thugs or as tools to cause crisis. They should be mindful. Let them engage politicians based on their manifestos and see those that have genuine interest in the development and growth of the state and make their choice.

    Every person that is contesting the election is a Bayelsan. So I don’t have any preferred candidate and will not say that my followers should support a particular candidate or party, because I am not a party man. That has always been my stand. My advice to Bayelsans is to look into the manifestos of the various governorship candidates and take the one they believe will bring peace, security, development, youth empowerment, human capital development and signature infrastructural development to our communities.

    My final advice is let the political players play by the rules and not use hate speeches that will cause unrest and crises. And they should not use politics to cause communal crises. Let us be focused and steadfast, and let us campaign based on the manifestos that will convince the people and get their votes to govern the people.

  • Telcos explore renewables to lower cost, cut carbon emission

    Telcos explore renewables to lower cost, cut carbon emission

    Hit by the suffocating cost of energy, which accounts for between 40 and 50 per cent of their Operating Expenditure (OPEX), telecom operators have turned to alternative energy sources to power their infrastructure, especially Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) and ultimately, lower their cost of operation and reduce carbon emission. However, much as their investments in technologies such as renewable energy could be the tonic to fast-track Nigeria’s Net Zero transition, they are not without challenges. LUCAS AJANAKU reports.

    Telecom operators appear to be in dire straits, no thanks to the ever-increasing energy cost. The Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo never misses any opportunity to raise the alarm over the rising cost of doing business in the country and the need to adjust end-user tariffs to reflect this cruel reality.

     But, Adebayo seemed to have won a new convert in the person of the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Prof. Garba Dambatta on this issue.

    At a public function in Lagos, the chief telecom sector regulator openly admitted that the operators were indeed, going through rough times.

     “For the first time, the operators are posting losses,” Prof. Dambatta quipped, adding that he has drawn the attention of the Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani to the development with a view to possibly implement a marginal tariff hike.

     The prevailing high energy cost is taking a huge toll on the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

    For instance, available records show that energy cost accounts for between 40 and 50 per cent of MNOs’ Operating Expenditure (OPEX), with the industry regulator NCC indicating, in its 2022 Subscriber/Network Data Annual Report, that telecom operators’ energy cost increased from N1,658,235,000,000 in 2021 to N1,996,659,000,000 at the end of last year.

     The report, which was prepared by NCC’s Policy Competition and Economic Analysis Department, and accessed by The Nation said the figure indicated an increase of 20.41 per cent from the figure reported in 2021.

    The Commission’s data also showed that as of December last year, the total number of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) owned by MNOs increased to 127, 294 from 114,412 in December 2021 across the country; representing an increase of 11.25 per cent from the previous year.

     As a result of the comatose state of the power sector which makes the 24 electricity generating companies (GenCos) hardly supply 4,000 megawatts (Mw) to the national grid, MNOs, like other businesses, have to rely wholly on fossil fuels as a major energy source while public power supply remains a backup.

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     Now, the snag is that the fossil fuel used to fire these BTS is mostly Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), otherwise known as diesel. The average retail price paid by consumers for AGO increased by 2.60 per cent on a year-on-year basis from a lower cost of N774. 38 per litre recorded in the corresponding month of last year to a higher cost of N794. 48 per litre in July 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report.

     The price is even projected to hit N867 per litre in Lagos State and N875 in the Southwest region in the foreseeable future, a situation, oil marketers, acting under the aegis of the Major Oil Marketers’ Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) blame on fluctuations on the product’s ex-depot prices.

    The Head of Operations, ALTON, Gbolahan Awonuga said the rising cost of AGO remained a major concern for the MNOs which consume no fewer than 40 million litres per month.

     This has pushed telecom operators into panic mode, forcing them to turn to alternative energy sources to remain in business by investing hugely in technologies such as renewable energy, and in doing so the MNOs may have, inadvertently taken the driver’s seat of Nigeria’s Net- Zero transition, which essentially targets to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions.

     For instance, with a market leadership that boasts 84, 663, 653 subscribers, representing 38. 52 per cent market share, MTN Nigeria has since thrown its hat in the search for alternative energy sources.

     The MNO said it is investing in clean energy technologies as part of its efforts to get around the choking cost of energy to run its operations and also reduce emissions, thereby contributing to helping Nigeria achieve its net-zero commitments.

     In its 2023 Climate Change Report, the ICT company shared insights into how it is partnering with renewable energy, Independent Power Producer (IPP) programme to deploy a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) power plan to supply both its corporate office, MTN Plaza and main data centre in Ikoyi Lagos.

     MTN said, for instance, that its use of three 1.1 megawatt (Mw) gas generators has significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions and lowered energy costs by more than N570 million.

     That’s not all. MTN Nigeria has also installed motion light sensors in buildings and switching centres to optimise power consumption. In addition, it installed a 56-kilowatt proof-of-concept solar project, delivering more than 4, 000 kilowatt hours of clean electricity each month.

     The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola put the company’s investments in this direction in perspective when he said: “Our commitment to Nigeria goes beyond connectivity. We recognise the environmental challenges our country faces, and we’re dedicated to being part of the solution. Our investments in sustainable energy and infrastructure are not just good for business; they’re essential for the future of Nigeria.”

     The Nation learnt that MTN Nigeria’s Net-Zero emissions target is part of MTN Group’s Project Zero, which focuses on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions across its footprints, thus enhancing operational efficiency.

    The company aims to do this by reducing energy usage, substituting non-green energy sources and investing in certified climate protection projects with high environmental and social standards to offset the emissions that cannot be avoided.

    In order not to be left behind in the race to cut costs and achieve Net-Zero objectives across its operations, Airtel Nigeria announced a deal with WATT Renewable Corporation (WATT) to power parts of its operation via renewables.

     The Director of Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Airtel Nigeria, Femi Adeniran said the involvement of Airtel Nigeria with WATT was limited to only 30 sites as a proof of concept (PoC) of WATT’s Energy-as-a-Service offering. Of the 30 sites inaugurated, 18 are currently up and running.

     He added that it was not a nationwide contract with WATT Renewable Corporation.

     “Airtel Nigeria is, indeed, committed to its sustainability goals and continues to pursue its Net-Zero objectives across its operations. As we progress in our path towards achieving these, we will keep the public updated,” he said, insisting that the company did not award a contract to WATT to deliver over 32megawatt (Mw) installed capacity of solar PV and storage across 600 cell sites across Nigeria.

    Telecom operator, 9Mobile is also not left out in the race for alternative energy sources designed to lower the cost of operation and at the same time reduce carbon emissions.

     Despite having 12.8 million subscribers, representing 6.18 per cent market share, which makes it the smallest MNO, the Manager of Field Operations, 9Mobile, Okechukwu Nzeduba lamented that energy cost, maintenance and other associated costs account for 86 per cent of the company’s network OPEX.

     Nzeduba, who spoke at a roundtable with the academia, industry and other stakeholders organised by the NCC in Lagos said getting a clean AGO has been a herculean task; noting that it is also expensive to run the generators on fake or off-spec diesel.

     According to him, fossil fuel costs are so high, even as he added that people didn’t know that household cooking gas, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) could be used to power generators until the government removed fuel subsidies.

     At the said roundtable, operators, experts and other stakeholders in the telecoms sector lamented the lack of access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria and the huge cost of powering telecommunication base stations with diesel.

     According to them, investing in renewable energy would help telecom operators to save costs. They identified some of the clean energy sources operators could invest in to power their base stations including solar, hydro and wind turbines.

     Prof. Danbatta said unequivocally that alternative clean energy would address the paucity of energy in the telecoms sector. According to him, the telecom sector, like many other sectors, has a significant role to play in transitioning to a sustainable energy future.

     The NCC boss, who was represented by the Executive Commissioner of Technical Services at the NCC, Ubale Maska emphasised that the Commission’s goal was to safeguard the environment for consumers and other users of telecom services while also contributing to the achievement of net-zero emissions.

     Net-zero emissions are achieved when more carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere each year than is emitted.

     According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the term net zero applies to a situation where global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are in balance with emissions reductions.

     At net zero, carbon dioxide emissions are still generated, but an equal amount of carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere as it is released into it, resulting in an increase in net emissions. Reaching net zero on a global scale is a central part of efforts to prevent global warming exceeding the 1.5C climate target.

     According to the WEF, global action to combat climate change has prompted a wave of national commitments to reach net zero. The US and many others are targeting 2050, with countries such as China and India decades later.

     For instance, the Manager of Power Planning, MTN Nigeria, Gideon Shedrack said renewable energy is part of the company’s carbon emission strategy targeting net zero by 2040.

     He said although the company planned to extend its deployment to all of its operations, the cost of switching to alternative energy is high, adding that space constraint was another issue to contend with.

     Shedrack also lamented that there are hardly any good batteries in the market. According to him, the battery design life span is supposed to be between 10 and 15 years, but temperature shortens the battery life span to only three years. He insisted that batteries remained a major challenge to the success of the switching and achieving net-zero emission.

     Nzeduba of 9Mobile could not agree less. He said the theft of batteries and vandalism remained daunting challenges.

     According to him, some people have discovered that batteries could be used to provide lighting to their homes and have, accordingly, resorted to stealing or vandalising the same. Besides, solar panels, he said, must be cleaned once or twice a year. He, however, urged the NCC on the regulation of batteries.

     While noting that investment in renewable energy as an alternative to the prevailing high energy cost is, indeed, capital-intensive, the 9Mobile chief, however, admitted that Return on Investment (RoI) in the long- term makes it a worthwhile venture.

     Apparently, to cut costs, he said the MNO is currently limiting its renewables to the provision of electricity to outdoors such as switches. According to him, hybrids play an important role in BTS but limit batteries to site solutions that don’t require a high volume of electricity. 9Mobile, he also said, is veering off from providing passive services to third parties. He urged the NCC to look toward the passive provision of infrastructure too to help the industry.

     It has been estimated that about a third of the world’s population has unreliable power supplies —or no access to electricity at all.

     For Nigeria, the stats are really frightening as the country has the lowest access to electricity globally with about 92 million people out of the country’s 200 million population lacking access to power.

     Power paralysis has remained a perennial problem in the country, stifling industrial growth, limiting business expansion and profitability and fuelling rural and urban unemployment. The problem has manifested through unstable supply and lack of access to the grid, a reason for the establishment of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) in 2005 with the sole aim of taking electricity to the rural and unserved communities.

     According to the Energy Progress Report 2022 released by Tracking SDG 7, Nigeria’s 92 million population without electricity was followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 72 million, Ethiopia’s 56 million and Pakistan’s 54 million access deficits.

     The report was produced in conjunction with the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency, the United Nations Statistics Division, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    The report, which covered the year 2020, noted that access to electricity in Nigeria remained poor because electrification provision failed to keep pace with the population explosion. This was in contrast with Kenya and Uganda’s fastest progress in electrification due to their annualised increases of more than three per cent points between 2010 and 2020.

     “The 20 countries with the largest access deficits were home to 76 per cent of the global population living without access to electricity (or 560 million people) in 2020. Most of the top 20 deficit countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    “The largest unserved populations are in Nigeria (92 million people), the Democratic Republic of Congo (72 million) and Ethiopia (56 million). The gains in the electrified population outpaced population growth in Ethiopia between 2010 and 2020; the same cannot be said of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, where electrification advances failed to keep pace with population growth.”

     The report noted that between 2010 and 2020, electrification proceeded slowly in Nigeria but that as population growth outpaced gains in access, the number of people without electricity grew by three million a year. It attributed this to fragility, underdevelopment and conflict.

     With the rising number of phone users, BTS have to be powered by such means as diesel-driven generators.

     However, as diesel prices rise and network infrastructure spreads to more remote areas, other alternatives are required, not only in order to save money, but also to help combat climate change.

     Worried by the rising cost of diesel, in September 2008, the GSM Association (GSMA) launched a programme called Green Power for Mobile to promote the use of renewable energy sources by the mobile phone industry.

     Its goal was to see 118, 000 new and existing off-grid base stations powered in this way by 2012. It said this would save up to 2.5 billion litres of diesel a year cut annual greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 6.8 million tons and give a boost to the provision of mobile phone services in places that cannot yet use them.

     GSMA carried out a survey of operators, vendors, green power suppliers and financiers to evaluate the market and technical landscape. Its report, published in March 2009, said of the estimated 300, 000 BTS that will be built in developing countries up to the end of 2012, some 75,000 will not be connected to electricity supply grids. It pointed out that extending the grid to such sites would be enormously expensive. Reliability is another problem, in both rural and urban areas.

     As alternatives to diesel, GSMA analysed the viability of other sources of power for mobile base stations: solar, wind, biodiesel, pico-hydro (very small hydroelectric systems) and fuel cells.

     On solar power, GSMA noted that there is often an abundance of sunlight in rural areas of developing countries, and this, together with the increasing availability of solar equipment and its relatively low running cost, makes solar power a popular choice for sites that need up to 2 kW of power. Solar solutions are less economically attractive for larger sites, the report said, but it foresees that the price of installing solar power is likely to fall in the coming years.

     Another alternative is wind. The equipment to trap wind energy is cheaper than for solar-powered stations that have standard load requirements.

     GSMA then estimated the costs to be between 10 and 11 US cents per kWh to produce electricity at small wind-powered stations. A study by the American Wind Energy Association projected it to drop to 7 US cents within five years.

     However, wind power is only viable in such areas as coastal and mountainous regions, where wind blows sufficiently strongly and frequently. In other places, hybrid solutions may be used that combine wind and solar power.

     Biodiesel fuel (derived from vegetable oils or animal fats) can be used as a direct replacement for conventional diesel in base station generators, but it is not necessarily a universal solution. Among the factors that must be considered are local access to supplies of biodiesel, and how its production could affect agriculture.

     Similarly, fuel cells or batteries are mainly used as backup electricity supplies for base stations that have limited power requirements. So far, the commercial viability of using fuel cells as the prime power source has not been greatly tested.

  • Blind herbalist defrauds 86-yr-old woman of N19m, sleeps with her daughter, granddaughter

    Blind herbalist defrauds 86-yr-old woman of N19m, sleeps with her daughter, granddaughter

    • I collected only N5m, her daughter an accomplice, lover, says accused

    An 86-year-old woman is currently battling to retrieve N19 million from a blind herbalist who allegedly defrauded her under the pretext of healing her child and making money rituals for her, reports Head of Investigation Desk, KUNLE AKINRINADE.

    The desperate attempt of an aged woman to prevent death from snatching her children has landed her in trouble. The 86-year-old woman identified simply as Madam Alimot had 15 children, but they were snatched by death one after the other until she was left with only three.

    When one of the remaining children was also hit by a strange illness last year, the octogenarian woman began a frantic search for healing. In the process, she stumbled on a weekly programme on a popular radio station based in Ogun State, where a blind herbalist was advertised as a man with mystical powers to heal the sick and see visions about people’s life problems.

    Consequently, Madam Alimot, who lives in Mowe area of Ogun State, visited the herbalist, Owolabi Adefemi a.k.a. Ojunu after taking down the his phone number and address, at his home in Ogijo, another community in Ogun State, for a solution to the sickness that had seized her daughter.

    Unknown to her, she had walked into the dragnet of a fraudster. Adefemi was said to have told the woman that death was hovering around her household and could only be averted through an atonement requiring a sacrifice with a cow.

    The desperate woman promptly provided the amount requested for the sacrifice, setting off a chain of subsequent requests for additional money for unexpected sacrifices that gulped a princely N19 million.

    By the time the scales fell off from the eyes of the woman and her children, she had sold her two buildings while her daughter and granddaughter had warmed the herbalist’s bed several times.

    The homeless aged woman and her children are now left to cry for justice and a refund of the money the herbalist allegedly defrauded them of.

    She said she had noticed that rather than giving her a concoction for the treatment of her daughter’s illness, the herbalist kept saying he could make her rich after making some sacrifice with cows and other expensive items.

    Alimot said: “He said we were taking the big cow to Agbara and later changed it to Mowo area of Badagry.

    “We were asked to enter the house with our back to the door, and we saw a well-built young man on the floor. He said the cow we gave him money to buy had turned into a man.

    “He asked me to pray on the young man’s body and stab him to death but I declined. They took our photographs and I challenged him to take our photograph at the scene while I held the knife in my hand.

    “We were shown plenty of cash of different denominations stuffed in a sack.

    “Babalawo Ojunu (Owolabi Adefemi) and one old man called Agbaakin, who we met in the building, then said that we could not take the money because we did not come with the third person. We left the place without the money.

    “When we went back to him, he also did not give us the money. Instead, he said the money would just appear in my house with at night.

    ” Later, he said a monarch in Ile-Ife, Osun State  had summoned him over my matter and that a sum of N2 million was needed to pacify the monarch.

    “We ended up paying him the sum of N5 million on that day, but he never gave me any charm for my sick child and the child has not died contrary to what he said to cajole me to sell my houses and give him the proceeds of the sale.

    “I sold the house I had built with N9 million for N5 million and gave him the money. I also sold another house and gave him the money, totalling about N19 million.

    “I want to collect my money from Owolabi Adefemi a.k.a. Ojunu and Nigerians should help me because I don’t have anywhere to call home anymore.

    “I have also developed high blood pressure, among other complications, as a result of this predicament of mine.

    “My drugs cost N15,000 and I don’t even have money to buy the drugs as I speak.” 

    One of Madam Alimot’s children, Bose, said: “I want to plead with Nigerians to help me beg Owolabi Adefemi a.k.a. Ojunu, a herbalist, to leave us alone, because my mother is dying right now.

    “He has been collecting huge sums of money from my mother and my mother is panicking now.

    “He cajoled my mother to sell two houses and collected the proceeds from the sale of the buildings, yet he has not let go of her.

    “My mother was contemplating suicide and we have been begging her not to kill herself.

    “I did not know him before until my mother gave the phone to him and he told me that I should follow her to Badagry for a certain propitiation.

    “When we got to Mowo area of Badagry, he told us that we would need to buy a cow that cost N280,000 and an additional N38,000 for transporting the cow to the place where the atonement against death would be made.

    “He said that failure to do that would result in multiple deaths in our family. 

    “That day, he took me into a dingy house and asked me to enter the house with my back to the door.

    “On entering the place, I saw an old man there who asked me to pray in front of a deity, but I refused.

    “He collected the N38,000 meant for transporting the cow from me and we left.

    “When we returned to the place again, the old man I saw in the house led us to the back of the building where we saw a well-built man lying helplessly on the floor.

    “I asked why the cow was not brought there but he said it was the cow that had turned into the helpless man on the floor and that it was begging not to be slaughtered for the sacrifice meant to avert my mother’s death.

    “I was just laughing at his response, and I started shouting blood of Jesus Christ.

    “He then gave me a knife to kill the man, saying that a picture of the scene would be taken twice.

    “When I refused to take the knife from him, he shouted at my mother who was then visibly shaken when she was asked to hold the knife and pose with the ‘cow’ for a photograph, and she was photographed twice.

    “He collected the sum of N3.8 million. I gathered the money from various sources including someone in my neighbourhood and cooperative society. Yet he kept disturbing me, saying that I have to come to pay him another N1.5 million as the balance of the total sum before they would unveil something I don’t understand.

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    “I warned my mother to stop giving the man money because I sensed that he was a fraudster.  But my mother disagreed with me, saying that the man only wanted to help her out of her child’s ill-health.

    “The matter has scattered our family as other relatives assumed that I was the one that collected the money realised from the sale of one of her buildings. They did not know that my own money was also included in the amount collected by the herbalist.

    “I remember that I personally transferred the money paid for the purchase of one of her houses to her, which she in turn paid to the herbalist.

    “She later sold the house she was living for N5 million and gave it to the herbalist.

    “My mother has nowhere to live now. He cannot stay with me because my apartment is too small to accommodate both of us.

    “Besides, I am a widow struggling to make ends meet because I don’t live on a salary.”

    Bose explained further that Adefemi cajoled her mother and also lured her to bed after he had scammed them of millions of naira.

    “He actually asked my mother to sell her house. He claimed that there was something in the house that was buried underneath the foundation, and that a cow costing N350,000 would be needed to remove the evil substance from the house.

    “He said that he would personally come to my mother’s house to remove the evil item buried in the house by unknown persons. He however changed his mind and asked my mother and my aunt to come over to Badagry where the sacrifice would be carried out.

    “He said the item was buried inside a big pot under the building and that he could invoke the item to come out of the ground where it was buried.

    “He once asked me to come on a particular day and he took me into his office where a strange creature was humming. He paid for my transportation when I told him I had no money to transport myself to and from his house.

    “He later said that we would go to Badagry together and I told him that I had no money to transport myself there.

    “He said that three strange birds costing N750,000 each would be needed to offer additional sacrifices.

    “He told my mother to sell a three-bedroom bungalow in the Mowe area of Ogun State. The building is located on a one-and-a-half plot of land.

    “I did not know anything about it and did not collect from the proceeds. The entire money was given to the herbalist.

    “I lived in Ikorodu for 13 years and I did not know this herbalist called Ojunu. My mother said that he had been hearing about the herbalist lately on the radio and how he had been handling several spiritual afflictions despite the fact that he was blind.

    “At a point, he told me that if there would be a permanent solution to my mother’s sickness, he would have to have an affair with me.

    “I initially turned down the proposal, but he said that there was not nothing he could do if I was not ready to date him. I later acceded to his request and he made love to me in the hotel and in his house.

    “He also said that he saw a vision and cajoled me to bring my daughter who is in her 20s to come for spiritual cleansing, and he slept with her too.

    “He collected a total N19 million from my mother between December 2022 and April 2023.

    “I asked my mother to tell me the purpose for selling her properties and giving the money to Baba Ojunu but she wouldn’t talk.

    “Baba Ojunu later warned us against telling anyone about what transpired between my mother and him as well as my love affair with him, threatening that we would lose our lives if we did not heed his warning.

    “In fact, he made me take several oaths with him and warned me of dire consequences if I told anyone about what transpired between us.

    “My mother has no house to live in now and my aunt is also now indebted to his employers and others.

    “Baba Ojunu had no car before we started giving him money, but along the line, he bought two cars: a Toyota Forerunner Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and a sports car with Ojunu 1 on the  number plates.

    “We later learnt that one of his sons took the car away and plunged it into a river.

    “He bought plots of land from various persons from the money he collected from us.

    “His first wife, Mama Niyi, was the one that told us that he defrauded us when he used police to arrest her son who stole his car.

    “We went to his house that day to plead with him to refund the money he collected from my mother when his first wife, Mama Niyi, confronted him for arresting his son, saying ‘You arrested my son for taking a car you bought from the money you scammed Bose (me) and her mother…. you (Ojunu) are a thief.’”

    Explaining his complicity in the matter, the embattled herbalist described Bose as his accomplice in the matter.

    Adefemi said: “Mama came to me in September 2022 for a cure to diabetes. We all know that diabetes has no permanent cure.

    “She explained to me that she had spent all her money on seeking treatment for the illness and that she wanted to do money rituals.

    “I told her that I could not do money rituals for her and that I could only invoke a spirit to fetch her money from a public vault. I told her that she risks jail term if she is found to be the brains behind the spirit that would fetch the money for her.’’

    Adefemi said that Bose actually connived with him to defraud her mother, alleging that she was paid 10 per cent on every payment made by her aged mother.

    He said: “Mama Alimot paid for the production of a cabinet to save the money. She paid me N350,000 that day and I gave her daughter Bose part of the money before taking her to a hotel where I made love to her same day.

    “Bose was the one that was giving me information whenever Mama had money, and I would work on the old woman to collect more money from her.

    “For example, she told me that her mother had just collected her share of the sale of a landed property running into millions of naira. He asked me to work on her mother to collect part of the money and I did.

    “Her mother even gave her N800,000 from the  money to give to me. I gave Bose her own share of the money.

    “Whenever Bose was broke, she would call me and ask me for money and I usually gave her.

    “My wife did not know that I slept with Bose. I gave Bose part of the money in bits like N5000 or N8,000.

    “She (Bose) recently told me that her mother was sick and I asked her mother to provide a big cow that would be sacrificed to avert her death.

    “She gave me money for the cow and bought a new knife as directed. I told Mama that the cow had turned into a young man and that he had to kill the young man if indeed she wanted to be free from sickness.

    “Mama did not kill anybody. I was the one that set her up just to create fear in her by photographing the scene where I asked them to kill the young man I lied was the cow. I actually collected N350,000 three times for the cows.

    “I only defrauded Mama of over N5 million for seven months (September 2022 to March 2023) and not N19 million. The house Mama sold was where she lived in the Mowe area of Ogun State.

    “From the money I collected from Bose’s mother, I was also sharing  to my first wife, Mama Niyi, until I arrested my son, Niyi, who stole my Toyota Camry car, television set and generator, hence, Niyi’s mother publicly exposed me for using police to arrest her son.’’

    “I used to deceive them that a spirit was talking with Mama about her predicament. What Mama did not know  is that I was the one faking the voice of an old woman to deceive her. However, Bose and I spent the money together and I am telling the truth.

    “I am treating high concentration of sugar in my body and I spend over N10,000 on treatment on a weekly basis.

    “If I had money-making charms, I would have done it for myself and become rich before doing it for others.

    “I can only promise to refund Mama’s N800,000 and they would have to give me time to raise the money because I am broke at the moment.’’

  • Mohammadi’s Nobel Peace Prize and Iran’s historic clash

    Mohammadi’s Nobel Peace Prize and Iran’s historic clash

    • By Soheil Ashrafi

    The winner of 2023’s Nobel Peace Prize is Narges Mohammadi from Iran. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising for those who follow the news of the women’s rights movement in Iran, local in its geographic scope yet global in influence. A movement that is very much alive and creative under the influence of figureheads like Narges. The prize captures the efforts and sacrifices of the generations of women for freedom and human rights whom Narges symbolises and represents in her relentless campaigns outside and inside of prison.

    The Nobel Peace Prize’s bestowal unfolds in the light of the first anniversary of the movement of “Woman, Life, Freedom” commemorated in Iran and around the world. The movement also referred to by many as the Mahsa Revolution was stimulated by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurd, in police custody in Tehran. Mahsa was arrested by morality police outside a subway station in Tehran under the pretext of what is described by officials as wearing a “loose hijab” – and thereby not fully complying with the rules. Triggered by Mahsa’s tragic death, Iranians from every walk of life entered upon a fateful confrontation with the Islamic Regime over their lifestyle and freedom.

    Contrary to being commonly characterised as a religious norm, the mandatory hijab is an entirely political apparatus, serving as a symbol of an Islamic “absolute society” that is to be reigned by the Velayat-e-Faqih (a Shia Islamist system of governance). Totalitarian systems, be they secular or theocratic, have no choice but to reinvent society. This is a lifetime project for them to which they spare no effort to resolutely commit themselves. This is an exercise of sheer power for ideological agendas, but above all, and often overlooked, for justification of their rule. Legitimacy and public acceptance must be manufactured where the state ideology and society part ways.

    In order for an outsider to better understand the political history of the mandatory hijab and the struggle for freedom in Iran currently defined by women’s freedom-seeking acts in defiance of the mandatory hijab, a closer look at the evolution of the 1979 Islamic Revolution over the years can offer important insights.

    Besides the rule of law, legitimacy as a democratic foundation of power entered political discourse in Iran during the Constitutional Revolution in 1905. Ever since, despite all political upheavals and transitions and conflicting views and agendas by political parties and groups, legitimacy has been construed as the fundamental basis of rule in the country. In the background of legitimacy as the reflection of the will of the majority in power, the overthrow of the Shah took place in 1979.  In a chaotic turn of events, the victorious Revolution spearheaded by Ruhollah Khomeini with the support of Islamist hard-liners and opportunistic allies of various political persuasions assumed a transformation in identity that caught many off guard.

    Following the Revolution, a power vacuum was plugged by a fierce anti-Western Islamic sentiment – which had its roots in literature and public discourses as far back as the US-UK sponsored coup in 1953. The ideology of Islam as a political regime seeded the formation of an ‘Islamic Republic’ and Khomeini was soon designated as the ‘Imam’, the ‘Supreme Leader’ of the Revolution. After the death of Khomeini in 1989 and the rise of Ali Khamenei to power as his successor, the Revolution underwent yet another major transformation.

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    From the perspective of the constitution and the doctrine of the Velayat-e-Faqih, the new Supreme Leader was evidently short of legitimacy even though the concept was long since made devoid of its true meaning. The lack of legitimacy was admitted by Khamenei himself in a speech at the Assembly of Experts to the effect that his appointment would not be respected and accepted by the political clergy and elite due to his lesser clerical rank and title. To redeem himself, however, Khamenei devoted resolute efforts to devise and implement a strategy which was to be dawn on observers only much later. He gradually yet uncompromisingly reduced Khomeini’s politicised Islam to the Supreme Leader’s cult and rule. This was pursued in tandem with radicalising and expanding the Revolution’s ideology and values through the notion of the “Absolute Velayat-e-Faqih” for which an absolute society of faith and martyrdom must also have been manufactured.

    Khamenei’s lack of legitimacy would entail profound consequences for him and Iran. He was intent on building a parallel, absolute, society where his rule would stand above doubts, appearing unquestionably legitimate and total for the people. The doubtful, unfaithful, treacherous society must be portrayed as vermin and subjected to brutal prosecution and eradication, while the absolute society is to be promoted and orchestrated to advance the agenda of the “Absolute Velayat-e-Faqih”. While the society of dissidence must be wiped off, the clannish absolute society is to be elevated to the status of the real people of Iran, the “real multitude”.

    In the new political climate, in the fashion of a messianic and cultish leader, the Supreme Leader thus would embody a divine figure who carries the wisdom and onus to safeguard the state from the decadence and sordidness of the Wester lifestyle. For him the state is a concept to be reframed for mobilising the public to materialise the theology of martyrdom and liberation. As equally important as the military and intelligence powers of the regime is a symbolic apparatus to propagate and perpetuate the Supreme Leader’s position and the anti-Western edifice at core he stands for.

    The symbolic apparatus articulates the Islamic lifestyle in which the hijab takes centre stage. Every woman carries the mark of an austere patriarchal life based on which the Supreme Leader ultimately holds his title and position (and by extension the entire Regime). Khamenei is legitimised as a clerical leader only in an Islamic society where women are instrumentalised to continuously bestow legitimacy on his rule. Mandatory hijabs function beyond an Islamic norm or restriction, rather serving as a ubiquitous manifestation of an Islamic lifestyle, of the absolute society.

    Mandatory hijabs will never be forsaken under Khamenei’s rule. It continuously affirms to the hardliners, and to the outside world, that Iran is an Islamic state and therefore headed by a religious Supreme Leader – namely, Ali Khamenei. The legitimacy of Khamenei hinges on the perpetuation of the mandatory hijab. In a society where women enjoy civic freedoms including freedom of dress a religious leader would be an anachronism. The fall of the hijab will thus be fatal, and concurrent, to the fall of the ayatollah.

    The Woman, Life, Freedom revolution in Iran marks a crescendo of ongoing conflicts between “free” and “absolute” societies – between Islamic and liberal lifestyles – that has been smouldering for decades. In the wake of 1979’s Revolution, Islamic lifestyle came to the fore and was later aggressively and indiscriminately forced upon the entire society. Yet, simultaneously, over the decades a growing awareness of human rights and culture of defiance and resistance have shifted the balance in favour of liberal, progressive leanings.

    Women appearing without headscarves in public are more than irate protests, they embody a collective agency abrogating the absolute power and rule of the Supreme Leader and an Islamic state. “Woman, Life, Freedom” is all that the Supreme Leader is not, exhibiting a profound chasm between two mutually exclusive discourses, one can exist only by vanquishing the other. It is only a matter of time before the rising tide of the liberal vision and hope for new life will wash the Islamic order away in Iran.

    •This article was originally published in www.e-ir.info

  • Concerns as ‘Almajiri’ children flood Lagos suburbs

    Concerns as ‘Almajiri’ children flood Lagos suburbs

    Kid beggars shun school, roam major roads, eateries for alms 

    They could pose serious threat to their host, says Security expert

    Sanwo-Olu, northern govs must find ways to address menace -Yaradua varsity don

    From Lagos mainland to even the highbrow parts of the Island, they loiter around major roads, streets and eateries, begging for alms and at times left over food. These almajiri children are out of school and have no plans to acquire skills in any vocation. INNOCENT DURU examines the implications of these for the pliable children, Lagos State which hosts them and the country at large.

    Hauwa, a 13-year-old girl from Funtua, Katsina State begs for alms on LASU\Isheri Road without any form of deformity or disability.

    Although enrolment in public school is free in Lagos State, neither Hauwa nor her parents have thought it wise to exploit the opportunity and acquire basic education. The young, ignorant girl is simply enamoured with alms begging; the craft she grew up into.

    “I was not going to school in Katsina and have also not been going to school since we came to Lagos,” she said in response to a question from our correspondent.

    “I come out every day to beg for alms,” she added as she sat on the walkway between the road.

    “What I get on a daily basis varies. People give me whatever they deem fit and I collect it.

    “At times, I make  up to N1,000 a day. At other times, it could be more or less.”

    Besides the issue of education, it has also not crossed Hauwa’s mind to acquire skills in any vocation.  In fact, the mention of learning a trade appeared to be alien to her.

    “Work?” she echoed, looking  confused as she shook her head.

    To make the point clearer to Hauwa, our correspondent began listing skills like tailoring and hair dressing. But before he could land, Hauwa shook her head vigorously, saying that she had not given it a thought and had no plans for such.

    Many of Hauwa’s age mates who are in school are either rounding off their junior secondary school or just beginning their senior secondary education. Those who are into vocational training would have acquired one skill or the other that would help them to have a meaningful means of livelihood and add value to the society. This is not to talk about the  impact that children in that age bracket in a developed world like China would have been making on the society.

    But as it is, Hauwa is visionless and rudderless. The road is her classroom and begging her only skill. Many  young people in her mould are said to have grown up to also have children who grew up taking after their parents who lived on begging for alms. It is almost certain that she will end up like that if nothing drastic is done about it.

    Incidentally, she is not alone in this. Hordes of her peers and others far below her age flock major roads and streets of metropolitan Lagos, singing songs laced with prayers to get money from passers-by, many of whom are easily swayed by anything woven around religion.

    Aminat, a 10-year-old, also does not have any formal education or skill. Right from her mother’s womb, she had been exposed to begging, and that remains her only vocation till date.

    “I beg passersby or motorists for alms when there is traffic. Some people give me money while some don’t. Some play with me for some time asking me to sing for them before giving me money,” she said through an interpreter.

    “I don’t go to school,” she added, beaming a smile that revealed her ignorance about the importance of education.   “My father is begging up there while my mother is begging down there,” she added as if to prove how skillful they are in the art of begging.

    Some younger kids seen around could also hardly express themselves and often rely on sign language to communicate their message before going ahead to express themselves in a few words.

    Folding her fist and raising it towards her mouth, one of the kids of about five years moved to hold a passer-by’s hand.

    “Oga, I beg, give me money. God go bless you,” she said in Pidgin as she trailed her target.

    Checks around major roads revealed that some of the grown up boys have moved from begging into other activities. Many of them now run after motorists in traffic armed with sticks wrapped with foam and  buckets filled with soapy water. They  use this to wipe the windscreens of vehicles with the aim of getting compensated by the drivers or vehicle owners.

    “Some drivers give me N100 or more while some don’t even give anything. Some of them get angry when we want to clean their windscreens but we don’t allow that to deter us.” he said.

    His partner shouted ‘ba turenci’ (I don’t understand English) as our correspondent made to approach him for comments.

    When his colleagues translated our correspondent’s question about going to school to him, he snapped back saying, “Ba makaranta (no school)” as he dashed off with his tools to look for a client.

    Worries about kid beggars’ future

    An Arewa motorcycle operator, Taheer, who spoke with our correspondent, expressed surprise that beggars are allowed to operate on major Lagos roads. He also disagreed with the use of the term ‘almajiri’ for the out of school children.

    He said: “They are not almajiri. Almajiri children go to school but these ones don’t. So there is no basis for calling them almajiri.

    “Many of them were born here and not in the north. When I came here, I was really surprised to see that they are allowed to beg on the expressway. You can’t find beggars on expressways in many parts of the north.

    “My feeling is that the Lagos State Government does not want to drive them away because they may be accused of tribalism.

    “The challenge here is that when any of them commits a crime, he will run to the north.  Go to places like Alaba Rago, Agege and see what some of them are turning into.”

    Our correspondent, who had an encounter with some of the kids at an eatery, reports that they milled around the place looking very dirty with rashes on the faces and heads of some of them. People dump all manner of leftover food on them as if they are less human, all in the name of helping them. The manner they run after vehicles for money also puts them in grave danger.

    Writing on his Facebook page, veteran journalist, Lanre Idowu, shared his experience with one of the kids in a piece he titled ‘The Girl at the Traffic Lights’

    The post reads: “Our eagerness to get home quickly and welcome the New Year with hymns and prayers was halted by the traffic lights at the junction of Adeola Odeku and Akin Adesola streets on Victoria Island. Time was 21.45 hours.

    “The car windows were wound up. As we waited for the green light to continue the journey, a young girl moved close to the driver’s side, soliciting.

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    “Involuntarily, I moved my mask to cover my nose and mouth even with the car windows closed. Our guest was not deterred. ‘Sorry Daddy,’ she pleaded. I pretended to not see her, so I kept my eyes fixed on the traffic lights, monitoring her with the corner of my left eye.”

    Idowu, fearing that the stranger could be working for some criminal minded persons, said: “You never know with this people, I thought. They come with all tricks in the book to set you up for a sucker punch and I wasn’t falling for it in these dying hours of 2021.

    “But the girl, probably no more than seven, wasn’t done yet. ‘God will promotion you,’ she declared. ‘Your children children go better well well.’

    Continuing, Idowu said: “As I pondered on her quaint expressions and started to look for loose Naira notes near the joystick, the green light came on, and I moved the car in the direction of home, unable to help the girl.

    “Thereafter, the traffic was light and nothing stood in our way until we got home twenty minutes after. What kept playing over in my mind was the girl’s eleven-word prayer. “God go promotion you. Your children children go better well well.”

    “Her opening apology of ‘Sorry Daddy’ indicates her sensitivity to disturbing my peace in the comfort of my space. The import of her prayer, ‘God go promotion you’ was that God would uplift me. I would enjoy an improvement in my circumstances.

    “Since I looked old enough to be a father and indeed a grandfather, her last statement was a prayer for my children and grandchildren; that things would go well for them.

    “Nowhere did she outrightly ask me for alms, even as there was no denying her intention. Her approach subtly employed prayer, hoping that I would do the needful.

    “As I headed home, I couldn’t help remembering the approach of girls of her age in another era, armed with the beggar’s bowl, moving in bands of twos, threes, and fours, soliciting with songs.”

    Involuntarily, he said, “I started humming one. ‘Ba bi Allah, tori Olorun ba bi Allah, e bun mi toro, ba bi Allah. Asiri abo.’

    “Ba bi Allah was a more direct plea for alms; a call for help with the persuasive appeal of music. It was a song rendered by itinerant beggars moving from home to home in the Lagos of the 1960s where traffic lights were not common sight. Appealing to our common humanity, it asked in the name of God for alms, indeed the odd three pence.

    “Then and now, street begging remains a reminder of the poverty in the land and the unfinished work of deploying state and private resources to ridding the land of poverty enveloped, in this instance, in idle begging.

    “It is a reminder that our people’s needs are largely rudimentary—food to keep body and soul together. It is what our politicians exploit to buy votes and underdevelop the land. It is what conscienceless leaders in secular and religious groups utilise to take advantage of the weak.”

    Beyond the relatively sane and safe precincts of Victoria Island where the praying girl operated on 31st December 2021, Lanre Idowu said “many like her are exposed to grave dangers of being exploited in the name of begging to douse the hunger in their stomachs and those of their parents who usually lurk in the background.”

    Don x-rays implications of menace

    Dissecting the implications of the rising number of almajiri kids in Lagos State, a lecturer with the Umaru Musa Yaradua University, Dr Bala Abdullahi Husaini, who specialises in International Relations, Defence and Security, said “the implications of that may not be far-fetched from the nature and the consequences that will come back to the host community.

    “These children were not properly trained and brought up. Anybody who is not properly trained, whatsoever social vices that is deemed fit for him will automatically be accepted by him. That has future consequences on the population of Lagos, and peaceful co-existence in Lagos. 

    “The level of security in Lagos will also be affected and that has an implication over the whole plan in Lagos State, and this also speaks of the non-challant attitude of our people especially from the north, which is not going to augur well for the north and Lagosians and Nigeria in general.

    “If care is not taken, for the future now, you should expect to plan for the worst because  these people can constitute some groups of nuisance despite the nature of Lagos and the social vices it has. This is another problem that is coming.

    “Lagos already has its own problem that  it is struggling to solve and here comes another problem that will also disturb the whole activity in the near future.”

    Asked about the implications of not going to school or learning vocational skills, DR Husaini said: “When you are not educated and not properly brought up, there is going to be a serious problem, and that serious problem could also affect the economy, political and cultural structure of Lagos. This will not only affect Lagos but the north as well.

    “Some of them when they commit an offence or are found wanting, they will definitely escape, and their safe haven will be in the north here because that is where they were known.

    “The implication is that there will be an influx of crime from Lagos to the north and from the north to Lagos, because this is somebody that is well known and well groomed here in the north with the culture, with the norms and with the tradition whatsoever.

    “He went down to Lagos and is trained with the norms and values of Lagosians. Once he commits an offence, you know he has now gained an experience, he will transfer that same experience in the event where he wants to run away from the constituted authorities there. He will run down to the north with the same character, the same habit and the same social vices that are uncalled for.

    “When he comes here, he may likely train others with those bad experiences of Lagos he has got. This is what I call “transfer of crime.”

    Kid beggars not targets of kidnappers

    Dr Husaini went on to dismiss fears that the children could become victims of kidnapping, saying: “Ritualists don’t use these children. It is one of the criteria being given to the ritualists. They are not to present anyhow person. If they have been using them, believe you me, you will not see anyone of them anymore.

    “If ritualists pick victims at random, nobody will be there as almajiri because all the ones out there will have been used by now.”

    He added: “Those children coming from the north, most of them, their parents don’t know their whereabouts. Most of them were influenced by some very useless and hopeless individuals to make ends meet.

    “I facilitated a programme regarding the repatriation of a boy from Liberia. He was originally from Katsina. He was taken from Katsina to Kano for an Islamic education and their school got burnt and the boy became affected.

    “Someone  saw him and lured him to Lagos and from Lagos to Liberia. You could see the influence. Whatever the child does, he does so at the influence of somebody.  They don’t have that thinking by themselves.  Somebody must have initiated them into it. It is a sort of child trafficking that is done in a modernised way.”

    Why it’s difficult to control population explosion

    Noting that the large size of families among the people is a causative factor for poverty and street begging, Dr Husaini said:  “The aspect of population explosion is a no go area because you can’t control it. It is cultural, religious and political.

    “Those states in the southern part of the country  are yearning for derivation and the only thing that can get that for them is by having population. Baby factories are more than you can imagine in the southern part.

    “In the north here, the issue is so much attached to religion and culture. They say the more children you have, the wealthier you are likely to become. You will find somebody with four wives and 20, 30, 40 children.

    “In the southern part, you don’t find such. You only find one wife and  some side chics. The side chics could be as many as you can have and not all the side chics have children for the man. So we can’t control the population among those people.

    “The only way you can control the population is when you are providing everything for the people. Access to health in Nigeria is not free. Education is not free. Basic social amenities are not free. When you don’t give those things free, who are you to tell me the number of children I should give birth to?

    “It is only when you give all these free that you can say that anybody that gives birth above X number will not get all those benefits. That is when you can have some measures regarding that.

    “As long as you don’t provide for them, you cannot control their population because of politics, religion and culture.”

    Sanwo-Olu, north’s governors should address problem

    Proffering solution to the menace, Dr Husaini said: “The earlier the governors at their own level decide and address the issue, the better for them. The Lagos State governor and his northern counterparts will have to find ways of addressing the problem. They should do that at their own level.

    “There should be proper sensitization, proper community awareness and implication of this. Let them know, let them hear and let them think what will happen.

    “Let the governors collaborate. If the Lagos government can decide to evacuate all of them, when they come here (north), people from Katsina will also decide to go, people from Sokoto will also decide to go. 

    “Let there be a synergy, a collaboration between the governors from the north and the south. Let them understand where each one of them is coming from so that the earlier they draw the line to address this collectively, the better for all of them.”

    Ruling out fears that tribal sentiments may be attached to the move, the erudite lecturer said: “If the governors meet and discuss, it will be fine by all and sundry. Media houses will capture that and that will also form part of the sensitization programme that the concerned governors will do to their people.  So the issue that they will chase northerners from the south will not happen. It will only happen when the sensitization is too low. When the sensitisation is at the higher level and continuously being carried out by all and sundry, the issue will automatically be erased.”

    Officials of the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development was yet to respond to our message on what it is doing to address the menace as at the time of filing this report.

  • Women Affairs Minister, Uju Kennedy: I’m always eager to cook for my husband

    Women Affairs Minister, Uju Kennedy: I’m always eager to cook for my husband

    • Says ‘he’s my first baby’
    • Vows to turn women folk into men

    The Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, unveils her plans for the womenfolk in this interview with Assistant Editor JIDE BABALOLA. She also reveals her strategy for keeping up with her matrimonial responsibilities in spite of her busy schedule.

    I‘m on mission to turn womenfolk into men

    Mark my words, I’ll make impact full change in six months

    My husband is my first baby

    What are your plans for the Nigerian women in the context of the renewed hope agenda of the Tinubu administration?

    As Minister for Women Affairs, I am here to mobilise and teach women how to become more focused and determined such that when they step out of their homes, they become lions. We don’t want mere lionesses anymore. When you are at home, you should be a mother to your children and even to your husband. But when you step out of the home, that is when you go to work for your livelihood or in roles to protect your family or the nation, you must act like a man!

    I am introducing a different and sustainable way of women empowerment. We are saying no to handouts from donors. We have been doing handouts for over two decades but what have we achieved?

    Rather, things were getting worse. For instance, female genital mutilation expanded from five to nine states. They can hold their monies instead of giving us handouts, and we will manage ourselves.

    But there is prevailing poverty; a problem that developed over the past few decades before the current administration came in. Obviously, things can’t be changed overnight…

    Who told you that? Even if it is not going to be overnight, we are going to make real, impactful change in six months. Mark my words! When I was campaigning as the only female presidential aspirant, I said so, and here now, I am saying it now that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has given me the chance to be Minister of Women Affairs; that within six months of our administration’s efforts, things will change.

    Now, we have a President that will use strategic thinking and experience to make people-focused change possible. Nigeria is blessed and the narrative of how things are being done must change. Without collecting handouts from donors, we can still survive and make things happen.

    In this ministry, I do not need too much to make impact because, firstly, I will not tolerate inflation of contracts. It is one of the things that is killing us in this country. Something that could be done with N100, they will tell you that it is one million. When we spend that way and deprive ourselves of other projects that the expenditure can fund, where does it lead us? Nowhere! So, no inflation of contracts here, so that we can have enough to invest on women empowerment towards the economic growth of the nation.

    How would you empower the women?

    I have asked them that those that have village meetings with firm rules and regulations should let us turn them into cooperatives. We will empower them with production machines such that each will produce what they are good at or use raw materials within their easy reach. Women groups in some parts of the north can do production of tomato sauce, onion powder, rice packaging and so on.

    In the East, I have said that they can go for items like toothpick, cotton buds and so on. But some people were wondering why the minister is telling our people about producing mere toothpicks. How myopic can we be? Nigeria imports toothpick; is that not a shame? We import cotton buds, sanitary pads and other things for which we have raw materials to produce in this country. We can even fabricate some of these machines at the cost of N350, 000, two million or some other costs that are affordable to this ministry.

    If we can produce these things, we can supply our hotels, corporate bodies and homes. It takes drops of water to fill a bucket, and these kinds of business fill up a bucket eventually. So I am very much interested in it.

    What about the issue of infant and maternal mortality, which are big developmental challenges?

    My dear brother, the kind of economic empowerment that I am talking about is not just about encouraging production; it is also about building women’s self-confidence. This can totally solve the problem of infant and maternal mortality. When a woman is empowered and making money through our partnership with the Ministry of Trade and Investment, traders associations, foreign bodies and exporters, by the time we do all that and these cooperatives are sharing out money to all the women who are involved, we will significantly reduce situations where a woman dies because she lacked money to go to the hospital or buy needed medications.

    That way, we will not only add to the quality of life for women and children but also add to the quality of life for men. Many men also die out of frustration because they carry all the burden. But when we empower women, we would be saving a lot of lives.

    Estimates indicate that Nigeria currently has about eight million out-of-school girls and there are many related problems like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriage…

    With regard to FGM, we are arranging for mobile courts. They’ve been working on this for close to two decades but its prevalence rose from five states to nine states. It is not as if our people and the donors have not been working hard, but they have been using a wrong method. You can’t ask people to stop certain things without enforcing the rule of the law. Punishments like going to jail or paying fines can be good deterrents.

    But can you do such without first empowering them? No. You have to empower them first, then you educate them. You don’t do these things without getting the mobile courts ready or else, it’ll go down the drain like it has always been; spending all the money on advocacy and achieving nothing.

    This time around, we will do things differently. We will use the local languages that they understand. We will use their own people to talk to them. Let them use their own cultural ways to transmit to them. Whether you have access to radio or television, you can still get a town crier who can reach people in some villages at the time they have retired home and let them know too that erring leads to fines or sanctions and that there is justice in the whole issue.

    Will such sanctions also apply to issues like out-of-school girls and child marriage?

    Let me land on this… We are also going to encourage whistleblowers so that more people can talk when some people do those things again after we had done empowerment, sensitization and introduction of mobile courts. By the time a few face justice, many will run away from the crime of FGM.

    Now, regarding the issues of out-of-school children, the empowerment of women, who are the mothers of these children, will drastically bring down the percentage of children that are out of school, because when most of these women are not doing anything that is economically productive, the men are overloaded with burdens. When we equally empower the women, we give the woman a voice to assert that ‘No, my daughters should go to school, and if you don’t want to pay, I’ll pay’. So, it will equally reduce the number of out-of-school children and early child marriage.

    Vocation is part of what will help us curb early child marriage. I am applying to the Ministry of Education to enable us have a day to focus more on vocational education in our secondary schools. When a child comes out of secondary school with vocational skills, you build up her self-confidence and enable her to start off. By the time they have such power, who would force them into child marriage? And remember, if you had already empowered her mum, the mother will support her and both of them will stand against child marriage.

    In parts of the country, culture and tradition plays a role in perpetuating child marriage. We must note too that it has been very difficult to get some states, especially in the north, to buy into the Child Rights Act. How do you hope to address such a complicated problem?

    Thank you. Our northern brothers and elders are sensible human beings, and I believe that the success of many things depend on the approach. When you know somebody, the person becomes your friend. We intend to approach the challenges in a different way because we are sure that we can get listening ears. We are going to approach them in ways that they understand and carry them along on this issue.

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    Don’t be surprised if it becomes necessary for me to go to Sokoto, have a meeting with all the Sarkis and kneel down to talk to them about out-of-school children, child marriage and other challenges, I will explain to them, and I will directly find out what they need and desire most and I will encourage that donors do it for them, get them to be happy and motivated to help us look into what we are saying and how to get it done. I am assuring you that they have good hearts and they will listen to us if we approach them by doing things right in their own way.

    Over the years, on individual and collective levels as well as from governance perspective, we seem to have a poor attitude towards mental health. Even in situations of post-partum depression where a woman does something nasty to her new-born baby, she is taken to police cell rather than given psychiatric care…

    But some people do such things out of sheer wickedness. So, how do you go about it? It’s just like the Calabar case: if you say that you were sexually abused and they just sack the man, does it solve the problem? It doesn’t. Another person would say at the most, they’ll sack me, and still do the same thing.

    Sometimes, you have to do serious medical and general investigation that also covers the person’s past. If not, some will commit crimes and come out with claims of having mental challenge. It happens in some foreign countries.

    But the fact remains that we do not give much attention to mental health issues in Nigeria…

    You are right, and it will be looked into. But I want you to note that Nigeria and overseas environment are not the same. Out there, a lot of them are generally going mental because life is too good for them (laughs). So, they end up getting in all sorts of things. And at times, they get frustrated with just the bills. Many of us here do not understand what they sometimes go through over there. If you don’t work for just one week, you could end up on the streets and without a home, and nobody cares. Lots of them are sick in some different ways but have no way of going to hospitals. Some end up living on alcohol or some other intoxicants so that they can keep living on illusions.

    However, in most African countries, including Nigeria, what mostly frustrates us is poverty. Most of the people with mental ill health, possibly about 70 per cent, if you change their lives, economically empower them and make them lead better lives, things would change. Not when they sit down and keep hearing about billions when they can’t afford one thousand naira. Such situation is enough to send someone crazy. When your mother is dying of illness and both you and her cannot afford common malaria drugs, you will begin to wonder what you are living for. Out of desperation, some of them start taking drugs or just start having mental illness due to pressures.

    So, if we sort these things the way this administration is eager to address it, those who want to go to start economic ventures or go to school can access loans, improve themselves and be able to repay such loans and then aspire to buy houses, cars and such other aspirations. Madness go go!

    It is amazing that while you were in school as a 21-year-old, you confronted a lecturer on sexual harassment and won…

    Exactly! This has been me. I have always had that self-confidence and I never fear anybody. I only respect people.

    So, how did you become a politician and how does your husband cope with the peculiar pressure of a politician’s life and schedules?

    I have a friend as my husband – my best friend who supports me in anything in which he feels that I will do well, and that by getting involved, I will make a mark – an impact that can spread across and impact many lives. He has always supported me as my friend and he likes being with me all the time. But he sacrifices part of it for the nation because he knows that the nation needs help from every home, especially with the new President that is eager to take this country to a higher level despite so many odds. Mr. President needs all patriots. He needs all of us to actualise his people-focused agenda. That is how my husband understands the need to sacrifice part of the time to be with me, to enable me do this work.

    As to the issue of being a politician, I joined politics solely to help positively change the narratives so that people’s lives will be positively impacted. Apart from that, I do not get involved in any other thing that many politicians do.

    I was there when you came into the venue at the International Conference Centre where APC presidential aspirants were collecting nomination forms. Nobody seemed to see you as having any chance to be where you are now but you proved them wrong…

    Yes, they did not want to see me, but I forced them to look and recognise me. Some of the men did not want to believe me until they saw my payment slip for the nomination form that I came to collect. That is where the issue of lack of fear comes in. Respect people; don’t fear them. I remember one man who was saying that in a race with the likes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the then Vice President, you have the guts? You can imagine. Why won’t I have the guts? 

    So, what lesson do you think that your experience in political arena offer the current generation of young Nigerian women?

    It is that they should look at themselves as lions. When I was having meetings with them, I told them not to see me as just any other woman but as a lion for our cause. I told them that we are all fighting for the same cause and that when you keep looking at yourself as the weaker sex, you should only become the weaker sex when you are with your husband. For you to build your home there must be peace. There is a neck and there is a head. The men are the head while we are the neck. We are the ones carrying you people.

    What do you love doing when you are not in the office?

    What I love doing when I’m not in the office? You won’t believe it!

    First and foremost, when I’m not in the office, I’m looking forward to spending time with my husband. You will not believe it, and I don’t know how to explain it. He is my main, main first baby.

    That is the first thing I look forward to. Then, I love to cook for him personally. There is no day I don’t prepare something for him, even if it is only spaghetti. That is why I always come to work early. By 8am or 8.30am, I’m here, and by 5 pm, I must have rounded off what I’m doing and I go home to make some food for my husband and my children. I have a cook but I have these special meals that I usually do and some of them don’t take long to get prepared and ready. I bring out the food, serve and we eat together and gist.

    If it is dancing, I dance. Spending time with my husband and spending time with my children is the major thing I do when I’m not working in the office. Of course, there is also the charity work. When I close from this office today, I’ll be going to see one Mary who is at the Federal Road Safety Corps Hospital with some serious injuries. She never knew me, but I am going to surprise her and also pay the bills. When I go home, this sort of thing helps me to have joy in my home. When you do such things, there is something it does to your life. That is what many rich people do not understand. Share your money with others in need and it will bring great joy into your life. I do that and I have joy.

    My children have never seen me quarrel with my husband. What for? All it takes is “I’m sorry” for quarrel not to come up. And what does saying sorry cost you, what does it do to you? Will it kill you? It will not! I have peace, I have a good home and I am happy. Touching lives enhances my peace and my happiness in my home.

  • Why foreign hospitals prefer Ghanaian doctors, nurses to Nigerians’ -Ex-UK varsity don

    Why foreign hospitals prefer Ghanaian doctors, nurses to Nigerians’ -Ex-UK varsity don

    The Director, Comfort Eduserve Limited, Babatunde Olawore, lives in both Nigeria and the United Kingdom. A teacher at the University of Portsmouth until he resigned some months ago, he supports students in Nigeria through his Comfort Eduserve Limited to study in the United Kingdom, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. In this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI, he talks about living and studying outside Nigeria, his fears about the standard of education in the country, and why the ‘japa’ syndrome may not abate any time soon. Excerpts.

    It has become a fad for many Nigerian parents to send their children abroad to study. What could be responsible for this?

    I don’t want to say that there are factors responsible for sending people abroad. We know the state of education in Nigeria.

    One of the reasons I went to study abroad was to have an international exposure. I wanted to see how things were done differently in other climes. I wanted to meet different people from different countries, which is part of learning.

    For most people, it is because of the quality of education. For example in the UK, it is called experience-based teaching and learning.

    In Nigeria, you just go to school, cram, write exams, pour, and get your degree. In the UK for example, they teach you what you will be doing in life. If you are a nurse, they teach you how to be a good nurse. If you are an engineer, you have a lot of equipment; they teach you how to use them. You use them while studying.

    You are not only focusing on give me the theory perspective, let me cram it. Let me write the exam and I have to write what the lecturers copy out or give to me. No! You are there to build experience. They call it capability- knowledge, skill, and experience. There, it is more of experience-based teaching and learning than the lectures we do in Nigeria.

    People want their children to have that experience. I have seen many parents who have businesses here and they want their children to have the experience of learning abroad. So whatever they can gain to do whatever they want them to do, to have competence in it, they will be able to do it better.

    In Nigeria most of the time, we are more concerned about the qualifications. We do not have the requisite skills, experience, and knowledge that add value to any person who wants to employ them. That is one of the factors.

    Some might want to do it because of the number of years people use to study. For example, you can get enrolled in any university in Nigeria and you might say a five-year programme, but you don’t know when you will finish because of lecturers’ strikes or other problems in the society. In the UK for example, they will tell you when you will start and when you will complete your studies, and it will not change. Their three years are three years. I have done that and I have many students who have done that too.

    Some people want their children to go abroad, finish within a possible short time, and then get into work. Some people like to live abroad; they want to see what is happening elsewhere. They have heard a lot of stories about the so-called paradise, though on many occasions it is not always like that. But some see it as a class thing, and when they finish, they get a good job.

    Organisations in Nigeria tend to value foreign certificates. If someone is coming from Portsmouth, Oxford or Cambridge, organisations in Nigeria prefer to give them a job not only because they can do it better, they have the skill, but because they believe they have exposure and they can add value to them.

    Talking about Nigerian employers preferring graduates with foreign degrees, do you think this is a good development?

    All over the world, including developed countries like Canada, the US, and Australia, for example, I studied in the UK. Many Canadian citizens are studying in the UK, and most universities in the UK have what you call a study abroad programme. You study for one year in the UK, you study for another two years in Canada, and they call it Erasmus. Many Americans are studying in the UK. Many UK students are studying in America. It all depends on individuals’ choices.

    They give opportunities to people to decide where they want to study, where they want to live, and what they want to study. Sometimes courses take people to study elsewhere. For me, it is not a bad thing. Since the formation of Nigeria, people have studied abroad, and they have come back and added value to Nigeria. Even now, when a student is completing an application form to study in the UK, they would ask you, what would you do after you finish your studies? What they want to hear is that “I would go back to my country and add value to the society.” 

    But it is just that some people feel after their studies they want to stay in the UK. That is where the problems are now. This is a result of many factors, including insecurity, lack of social amenities, and also lack of good jobs. If you finish in a UK university, you can get an offer of 6,000 pounds per year, and when you get to Nigeria you get N200,000, definitely, there will be a difference in what you can afford.

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    Though that is not straightforward, there is what they call purchasing power parity, which is what a pound can buy in the UK, and what it can buy in Nigeria. If I want to eat breakfast in the UK, I will spend 10 pounds. That is about N9,500 here but, I have taken five people to a top eatery in Ibadan, we did not spend up to that and we had good meals. There are lots of things that can make people go and study abroad. But I can see a lot of people have a passion for the country and after their studies, they want to come back to Nigeria and work.

    Most of the time the jobs are not there. But with the way you are talking, degrees in Nigeria would in the near future be worth nothing. Nigerian graduates won’t be able to compete. Most multinational companies prefer graduates with foreign degrees…

    Even now, 99 per cent of Nigerian graduates cannot compete with international qualifications. I have vast experience in education. I studied here. I did OND, HND, PGD, Masters1, Masters 2. In my set, I had the best Master’s project while at a Nigerian university. I applied to another university in Ontario, Canada for another Master’s and they asked me for a sample of what I did before. I said with excitement that in my thesis, I scored 75 per cent from the University of Ibadan. They assessed everything and they got back to me that it was substandard. They said when they assessed my thesis it was below expectations.

    Even now, Nigerian graduates are struggling with foreign qualifications. I’m not talking about Ukrainian certificates; I’m not talking about Russian certificates. I’m talking about studying in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Irelands, in the UK, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in the US and other Western countries. You cannot equate what they have there with what we have. They focus more on employability; they focus more on the theoretical aspect.

    A computer scientist or somebody who has a degree in Computer Science here does not even know how to do some things related to computers.  But when they go abroad, they are exposed to a lot of things.

    What makes that so is there is a lot of support from the academia. If you taught me in class and I’m not clear with what you said, I can book an appointment with the lecturer. You are allowed to do that. If you give me an assignment that I will submit at the end of the month, I can get a draft and say, “Please help me check this. Am I in line?” The lecturer will comment and say “look at this area, look at that area.” They want you to learn through that. And mostly, they don’t write exams; they do coursework. They give you a lot of support.

    One thing I know is that if you go to the University of Ibadan library, you will still see 1959 textbooks there. In my own university (University of Portsmouth), every five years, they turn out books from the library and get new ones there, and you have access to millions of academic papers, quality papers with high impact factor. As a student in the corner of your room, just google and put University of Portsmouth library. Every book will be assigned to you, and you can read them online.

    Talking about not being able to compete, most Nigerian graduates, especially those in the medical fields, excel when they go abroad.

    I will disagree with you. I’ve been staying abroad since 2011. They accept Ghanaian nurses more than Nigerian nurses. They prefer Zimbabwean qualifications to Nigerians’. Ask anybody who is living abroad.

    There, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has a standard. Many Nigerians are struggling to pass the IELTS. Many organisations in the UK go to the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh to go bring in nurses than Nigeria. I can tell you anywhere; you can verify it. And they accept more Ghanaian qualifications than Nigerian qualifications when it comes to medical practitioners.

    All over the world, especially in the developed world, they need medical personnel because, Britons, for example, most of them love management and finance. They don’t normally like medical areas, which is why they take people who are medically inclined all over the world. If you count the number of nurses from Nigeria in the UK to the number of nurses from Zimbabwe, it is half.

    We are not saying we are doing badly, but there are lots of things our government should put in place to shore up our academic qualifications. It is better to have experience in Nigeria and try elsewhere. I have done that.

    What is the way out?

    The way out is a bit complex.

    One, universities need to do a lot of things. Parents, government and students have a lot of roles to play. I will take it from my parents. When I was growing up I remember reading a Yoruba book written by J.F. Odunjo where I read about the virtue of hard work. In the book I read,  ‘Ise ni ogun ise, mura si ise ore mi…’ In summary, what that means is that hard work is a virtue. Unfortunately, the virtue of hard work has been eroded in our society. People are cheating even at the common entrance now. Go to unity schools, whenever they want to do the exams, parents drive their children to the exam centre to cheat; likewise in secondary schools. Imagine students will have an exam in an hour’s time, they will be playing football.

    When I was growing up, churches in my village would advise us not to read too much so that we wouldn’t run mad. This is because people spent time preparing ahead. They wanted to read and become something in life. But now in Nigeria, the majority wants to cheat, and teachers are also involved.

    Cheating has reduced the value placed on our education. If you see people with As and Bs, less than one per cent of that population did it themselves. The value of hard work has been eroded. I was in UI sometimes, and the slogan among the students was ‘Education is a scam’. They will tell you that after this education what will you get? Yahoo Yahoo (Internet fraud) is more viable. What they are telling you is why are you investing in studying hard? At the end of the day, it doesn’t determine who you are in the future. It is only in Nigeria I hear that.

  • HIV-positive Boko Haram survivors face fresh stigma in Borno IDP Camps

    HIV-positive Boko Haram survivors face fresh stigma in Borno IDP Camps

    In this report, GRACE OBIKE paints the picture of the horrors women living with HIV/AIDS are faced with in IDP camps in Borno State

    After the Boko Haram attack on Dar-el Jamal, Bama Local Government Area (LGA), Borno State in 2013, Fatima Bulama, a 30-year-old woman, and her husband, Abdullahi Ahmed, made the difficult decision to flee to the safety of the Muna Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Maiduguri. They brought their five children with them.

    However, Fatima’s life took an unexpected turn within the confines of the camp. Her once-loving husband found himself a girlfriend and contemplated marrying her as a second wife but changed his mind at the last moment. Fatima was initially relieved to have Abdullahi back to herself, but her joy was short-lived. Abdullahi fell seriously ill but only sought medical attention with his best friend.

    Tragically, he passed away without disclosing the cause of his illness. Fatima refrained from prying into the matter until his funeral, which was held the same day according to Islamic rites, when the best friend shockingly revealed to the gathered crowd that Abdullahi had succumbed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and issued a warning for everyone to be cautious.

    This revelation marked the beginning of Fatima’s trouble. She found herself ostracised by the community in the camp. Friends distanced themselves, her children were forbidden from playing with others or approaching their homes, and she was instructed to stay away from communal areas and the shanties of fellow camp residents. Consequently, she was compelled to confine her children to their one-room shack for weeks without venturing outside.

    Less than two months after her husband’s death, one of her sons stepped out and got into a fight with another child. While she was cooking inside their room, the camp secretary Mallam Ali approached her and demanded that Fatima should gather her belongings and vacate the camp immediately.

    Fatima questioned his authority to expel her and her children from a government-established camp and reported to the chairman of the camp, who explained to her that it was for the safety of the entire camp, as other residents were not willing to continue to live in the same camp with individuals like Fatima and her children who are threats to their well-being.

    Without allowing Fatima to finish cooking, the chairman forcibly ejected her, along with her underage children and their belongings, with no regard for the fact that her eldest child was just thirteen years old at the time.

    Fatima’s ordeal in the Muna camp is not an isolated incident among individuals livng with HIV in this region. Discrimination against women based on their health status remains common within the internally displaced persons (IDP) communities in northeastern Nigeria, despite legal prohibitions against such behaviour.

    A common but negative trend

    Sadiya Muhammed, a 35-year-old mother of four, found herself in a similar situation and like Fatima, she was expelled from the camp. Sadiya now resides in the Muna Kumburi informal camp, living under an assumed identity. Not only does she conceal her true identity, Sadiya also pretends to be of Hausa ethnicity rather than her actual Shua Arab background in order to avoid any connection to the Sadiya with HIV who used to reside in the Muna camp. This  highlights the profound stigmatisation faced by women living with HIV in these communities.

    The camp communities find justification for the expulsion in a way that makes it difficult for the victims to get support even from the relatives.

    Sadiya’s situation is particularly complex. While she faced discrimination and eviction from the Muna camp primarily due to her HIV status, she was also accused of sexual exploitation of recruiting young girls within the camp for sexual activities involving male visitors at her residence. Sadiya denies these accusations. This multifaceted situation underscores the challenges faced by individuals like her, who are unfairly stigmatised and accused, making their quest for justice and support even more challenging.

    As a result of this stigmatisation, many women in IDP camps have become so good at keeping the details of their health conditions secret.

    Hauwa Abubakar, a 32-year-old mother of five, lives peacefully at the now informal Dalori camp, as many other camps have closed after residents were encouraged to return to their communities. At her camp, Hauwa and some individuals living with HIV have managed to keep their status a secret even from their own children.

    “When we need to get our medications, we simply inform others at the camp that we are going somewhere, and luckily, we receive medications that last for four to six months,” Hauwa explained. “Even when we return, we hide them in a place where no one, including our children, can find them.”

    Hauwa, now remarried to another person living with the virus whom she met at the hospital, contracted HIV from her first husband. Unknown to her and her co-wives, he was a fervent member of Boko Haram until the military reclaimed Bama from the insurgents. He fled with his three wives and children into the Sambisa Forest, where he fell ill. After numerous treatments for what they believed to be malaria, he was finally diagnosed with HIV.  All three wives tested positive.

    Since her husband’s demise in Sambisa and her subsequent return to Bama in 2014 followed by illness and resettlement in Maiduguri, first at the Bakassi camp and later Dalori, Fatima has lived in constant fear of exposure. She has taken every precaution to conceal her status, influenced by the harrowing stories of discrimination faced by fellow patients who were exposed.

    The acting village head of one of the communities within the Muna IDP camp, Nakil Ahmadu, attributes the discrimination faced by these women to the virus infection.  Ahmadu acknowledged that most women known to have the virus are ostracised from the community.

    While he personally claims not to have expelled anyone known to be living with HIV from his part of the camp, he admitted that some other communities within the camp have done so. He did not see anything wrong with these actions, placing the blame for the virus’s spread within the camp squarely on the women.

    “Let me clarify something: as far as I’m concerned, in our camp, no man has HIV. It’s only the women. We know most of them and we avoid them.

    “They may pretend to be innocent, but they wear trousers and t-shirts, go into town for prostitution, and return with HIV, expecting us to accept them? No way.

    “We won’t interact with them or allow them near us. Do you want us to contract the virus? We will only welcome them back when they recover. It’s not our fault that they engage in prostitution,”

    Sadly most of the people that we spoke to at the Muna IDP camp, including the women leader of the camp, Faumata Audu, share his belief, although Audu insisted that women in the camp only prostitute as a result of hunger.

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     “Well you can’t blame us for worrying about ourselves. We don’t want to be infected because we touch and interact with them,” she said.

    Coordinating Case Manager and Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) at the Maiduguri State Specialist Hospital (MSSH), Mshelia James, said that discrimination against HIV-positive individuals extends beyond the camps and affects patients living within communities as well.

    Mshelia highlighted the case of a patient (name withheld) who remarried shortly after her husband’s death. She discovered she had contracted the virus from her late husband, who had not disclosed his HIV status before his death. Her second husband now treats her with disdain, pushing her clothes away with sticks, preventing her from coming near him, or sharing utensils. Recently, he even expelled her from their home.

    How does the camp know of people’s status?

    Mshelia informed us that after visiting camps to test for people living with the virus, the hospital does not report back to the leadership with the results. She said they call patients privately and only break the news to them after confirming that such patients are alone and free to speak because they understand the trauma patients living with the virus face within their communities and try to avoid them.

    Bulama Ruma’idu Abubakar, leader of residents from Guna Ward, Marte Local Government Area (LGA) living at the Muna camp corroborates Mshelia’s account of things. He said when the people that wanted to screen for the virus visited the camp, they had met with the Bulama’s and explained their intentions. The Bulama’s in turn convinced their communities to cooperate and after they finished and left, they never returned or contacted the Bulama’s on their findings.

    On his part, Ahmadu explained that the hospital did not have to return to reveal the results for the camp to figure things out for themselves. It turned out that after the hospital put the call across to the people they found to be positive within the camp in private, some of the carriers met some leaders for assistance for transport to enable them get to the hospital while some others met together within the camp and left for the hospital in a group.

    This sparked a series of gossip within the camp as people figured out what was going on and began avoiding them.

    HIV/AIDS in Nigeria 

    The 2019 Nigeria National HIV/AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey data estimated that 1.9 million Nigerians were living with HIV and AIDS. By 2019 Nigeria had recorded 74,000 new HIV infections, and 51,000 AIDS-related deaths with 1.7 million people on antiretroviral treatment. As at the time of publication, The Nation tried to look for a more recent data but could not find any.

    The Federal Government of Nigeria says it is making all efforts towards the attainment of the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 95-95-95 targets which is that 95% of people with HIV will know their status, 95% of people with HIV who know their status will be on treatment and 95% of people with HIV on treatment will be virally suppressed by 2025 in order to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

    The Society for Family Health (SFH) says it is making efforts to ensure Nigeria meets the said target in Borno State.

    State coordinator SFH in Borno, Dr. Timothy Babah, said SFH is currently implementing the Key Population Community HIV Services for Action and Response 2 (SFH-KP-CARE-2) project in Borno State.

    The project currently operating in four Local Government Areas of Maiduguri, Jere, Biu, and Konduga is aimed at increasing the demand for and access to comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, and care services for Key Populations (Female Sex Workers (FSW), People Who Inject Drugs (PWID), Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) and the Transgender (TG) people.

    “So far, SFH KPCARE2 Project in Borno state has served KPs, their sexual partners, social network, and children inclusive with HIV Testing Services (HTS_TST) on the 1st 95 by deploying various HIV Testing Modalities such as HIV Self Testing (HIVST) for hard-to-reach areas, Index Client Testing (ICT), Social Network Testing (SNT), Genealogy Testing for the children of KPs and Intensive Outreaches at KP hotspots within the state to optimise the testing coverage.” 

    With all of these efforts being put in place to curb the spread of the virus, the question is does this stop the discrimination that women face within their communities? 

    Site enhancement officer, MSSH (Maiduguri State Specialist Hospital), Honesty Iwenya, explained that the hospital assists 3,412 patients living with the virus to access treatment within the facility with IDPs accounting for 415. He said at present, the number of IDPs has reduced to 115 due to the relocation of the IDPs to their various LGAs.

    However, despite efforts to prevent discrimination against HIV-infected women, Iwenya said most patients still experience discrimination.  He explained that discrimination arises because certain community members lack a proper understanding of the virus.

    He added that their interactions with patients revealed that some individuals who are aware of someone’s HIV status inadvertently and unknowingly share this information, causing others to avoid those individuals.

    Does the law allow discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria?

    Nigeria law forbids any form of discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. Former President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2014 signed the anti-discrimination bill into law that protects the rights and dignity of people living with HIV. The HIV/AIDS Anti-Discrimination Act 2014 makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on their HIV status. It also prohibits any employer, individual or organisation from requiring a person to take an HIV test as a precondition for employment or access to services. Despite the enactment of the law, many believe that the law is a mere paper tiger that roars but does not bite.

    An analysis carried out by the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) in 2013, which unfortunately seems to be the latest, showed that about half of Nigerians still exhibited stigmatising attitudes against People Living with HIV (PLHIV).  This discriminatory behavior was notably associated with factors such as younger age, urban residence, limited formal education, and economic vulnerability.

    The study also showed that stigmatising behaviour was worst against women and was a reflection of the subsisting power imbalance that exists in patriarchal societies such as Nigeria. 

    Society for Family Health (SFH) Borno said although the Anti-Stigma Bill has been passed into law in Borno State, stigmatisation is still considered a major barrier, as there are still pockets of stigma and discrimination targeted at persons living with the virus, especially at the IDP camps, workplace settings, schools, and so on. 

    This may be attributed to socio-cultural practices, beliefs, and negative attitudes towards people living with the virus which stems from misconceptions about the disease amongst others, SFH said. 

    How Borno State deals with the problem

    Representative of the Monitoring and Evaluation team of the Borno State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS & Malaria (BOSACAM) who work on the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (PMTCT),  Saraya Danladi, told us that before her agency carries out screenings in communities and camps, they always ensure they create awareness of the virus to the leadership and its people, but unfortunately in Borno State, most of the people discriminating against people living with HIV/AIDS are illiterates, especially those living within the different camps. 

    She said they always have difficulties convincing people to visit facilities within the camp to collect their medications because they are always worried that people would see them and tell on them.

    She said: “When I worked with the Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results (SOML-PforR) at the Teacher’s village camp, we realised that some people simply resumed in front of our clinics every day just so see those going in so as to go spread the news. So most of our patients refused to visit the clinic and we had to take their medications to them in secret.” 

    Saraya  explained that they educate women living with HIV that this is not the end of life 

    “We realise that those discriminating against the carriers of the virus are just ignorant,” she said.

    •This report was produced with the support of the Women Radio Centre through the MacArthur Foundation.

  • Aftermath of The Nation report: Police set to reopen probe of murder suspects freed by court

    Aftermath of The Nation report: Police set to reopen probe of murder suspects freed by court

    Weeks after The Nation published an exclusive story on how the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) of Lagos State Ministry of Justice misled a Yaba Magistrate’s Court to free suspected killers of a mobile police personnel, Sergeant Edison Fulman, and 13 workers of a private real estate firm in Etegbin, a coastal community in Ojo Local Government Area of Lagos State, the police are set to reinvestigate the suspects.

    Seargeant Fulman and 16 other policemen were drafted from the Zone 2 Police headquarters to Etegbin to maintain law and order following a court judgment on a disputed landed property.

    The workers, Ganiyu Ogunbakinde; Olamide; Omoakin; Jamiu Adegoke; Azeez; Oloye; Akeem; Taiwo; Dayo, Wasiu, Olamide Akinromola; Jamiu Adegoke, and Emmanuel, were said to have been abducted by hoodlums following a court judgment that validated one Adeoku as the owner of some hectares of land in Etegbin community. The victims were allegedly marched to a remote location in the riverine town where they were allegedly killed while their bodies were dumped in the Lagoon around the community.

    The story – ‘How DPP report misled court to set murder suspects free’, published on August 19, 2023, exposed how the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of the Lagos State Ministry of Justice issued a piece of legal advice wherein the suspects, Sabitu Anafiu; Sarafadeen Saka; Festus Onifade; Moses Adeola; Sakiru Lamidi; Moshood Ayepe, Lateef Oluwaseyi; Omoowo Rafiu; Omoowo Gafar; Onyeka Ibekwe and Jimoh Seliu, who were charged to court for murder, were exonerated and asked to be freed by the magistrate’s court.

    In the exclusive story published after about 10-month-long investigation, an MTN phone number (08034587089) was cited by the DPP’s legal advice as belonging to one ‘Major’ which it described as the real culprits that should be arrested and prosecuted by the police. However, an investigation using statements written by the suspect(s) at the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Alagbon, Lagos, a report of police investigation, and undercover findings by our correspondent proved that the phone number actually belongs to the leading suspect.

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    The report also exposed the identity of one Mohammed with  9mobile  telephone number 09084543031 who was also mentioned as another prominent suspect as Seriki Mohmed. The story also mentioned the inability of the police to revisit the matter.

    It was learnt that an outraged property mogul, Chief Moruf Owonla, who was inspired by the report had lodged complaints to the police authorities, asking for a revisit of the case.

    A petition written by Owonla, who lost about 13 employees of his real estate firm was approved by the Office of the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, for re-investigation.

    The petition read in part: “The ring leader SABITU ANAFIU  aka MAJOR with the phone number 03034537039 was indeed arrested with his statement taken but was dropped via manipulation and scheming in power play to play safe in fraudulent judicial practices and in line with the Page 7, paragraph 4 of the legal advice which stated that the Nigeria Police should carry out a discreet Investigation to unravel the identities of the said “Major and Mohammed and their culpability in the attack in Etegbin Community on the 14 February 2022 which led to the death of Sgt. Edison Fulman and Eleven (11) Members of my Site workers in cold blood.

    “These assailants were indeed known to us all and I am ready to provide the police with the necessary assistance and support to get to the root of this evil so that the death of the innocents will not be in vain and or swept under the carpet so that the culprits will be made to face the full wrath of the law in order to serve as a veritable deterrent to others.”

  • Alayabiagba Market shutdown: Leaders, traders appeal for reopening

    Alayabiagba Market shutdown: Leaders, traders appeal for reopening

    • Say they’ll comply with all sanitation rules

    Traders at the Alayabiagba market, Ajegunle, recently closed down by the Lagos State government over improper waste disposal and other environmental infractions, have appealed to the Lagos State government to reopen the market, stating that they have taken necessary actions to improve their environment and also comply with all environmental rules and procedures.

    The traders, led by their market head, Baba-oja, Alhaji Lateef Nda Ibrahim, specially implored the Lagos State Government, the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) to have pity on them and reopen the market for commercial activities.

    He also said they have taken necessary actions, including decision to relocate the waste bin from the roadside to a place at the back of the market.

    Notably, Alhaji Ibrahim said: “Although we have taken responsibility and are moving the bin from the Coca-cola area where it is currently situated to the back of the market by the waterside, it is important to point out that we have little control over its present location that caused us this shutdown. The current location is about 100meters from our market and all the communities here, including the nearby Navy Barracks, the entire Alayabiagba community, Layinka and environs all use this same bin.

    “To make sure incidents like this didn’t happen, we employed personnel to police the place, and would you believe that on several occasions, the naval ratings have beaten them up, to the extent that some of them lost their teeth.

    “Aside removing the bin from its present location, one of our plans to permanently solve this problem is to purchase a waste evacuation vehicle that will be attached to LAWMA, which will roam the market at least twice a day, to evacuate the refuse. That way, there won’t be any issue of refuse spilling over. We have also requested for one more bin to serve us better, as this market is too big for one bin.”

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    The Baba-oja, who also doubles as the Baba Oja of the entire Ajeromi Ifelodun Local Government, also expressed fears that the people in the area may continue to dump refuse at the site when the bin is eventually removed.

    “I hope the government will not blame us if that happens, as our control is only on the traders within the market. As you can see, our market is clean.”

    Lending her voice, the woman leader, Iya-Oja Alhaja Jemilat Adeyemi, said traders in the market are being punished for sins of the whole community, arguing that the refuse that caused the shutdown were dumped between Sunday and Monday morning by the entire communities in the area and not traders in the market.

    That notwithstanding, she appealed for leniency, stating that all will be done to put things right.

    “The day they came to close the market was on Monday, which means the refuse were dumped by the entire community, the Alayabiagba community, Nosamu, Baale, Orodu; we even hear that the whole Alayabiagba community has no single PSP servicing them. Even that Monday, it was Baba oja that called LAWMA to come and evacuate the bin, seeing that it was full and spilling, and within minutes, it was full again. Please help us appeal to the governor to reopen the market; we will follow all their procedures.”

    Leaders of the Sand Sellers Association in the market, Mrs Justina Taiwo Shoko and Prince Wale Ojo also called on the governor to temper justice with mercy and open the market, stating that the traders are suffering from the closure. They pledged that they would henceforth take sanitation efforts more seriously.

    “As you can see, we are yielding some of the space we use in selling sand for them to put the bin. Our only prayer is how the refuse would not spill into the canal at the back; because that could spell another problem from the waterways managers. By and large, the best way out is to have an evacuation vehicle.” Mrs Shoko said.