With fifty-one months to 2025, Nigeria’s pledge to join the rest of the world to eliminate child labour and other unfair labour practices remains a huge task. The practice remains as rampant as before with little punishment, writes FRANK IKPEFAN
The 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) No. 8, Target 8.7 on decent work and economic growth commits the world to end modern slavery and child labour in all forms by 2025.
Child labour, forced labour and trafficking in persons can be found in almost all stages of supply chains in agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing, retailing, service provisions even in households and the streets.
According to the International Labour Organisation, about 25 per cent of Nigeria’s 80 million children under the age of 14 are engaged in economic activities.
The organisation said about half of this population are children exploited as child labourers and those working in hazardous situations.
According to labour experts, the involvement of children in the construction industry is majorly in the task of brick making, carrying and stacking bricks, and other construction materials.
The experts stated that children’s work in this sector often accounted for between 3-4 hours after school hours and longer during weekends and holiday periods.
Speaking at a one-day workshop on ‘Reportage of Elimination of Child Labour,’ organised by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment in Abuja on Thursday, Acting Director, Inspectorate Department of the ministry, Ajuwon Dauda, said the introduction of children into this sector is observed to begin as early as 8 years.
“These are some of the things that children are exposed to in the name of making peanuts. It affects the children psychologically, physically and socially,” Dauda said in his paper titled: Government’s intervention in the elimination of child labour delivered at the workshop.
‘43 per cent of children engage in child labour’
According to Dauda, about 43 per cent of Nigerian children between the ages of 5 – 17 years are engaged in economic activities, an indication that modern slavery and child labour is still prevalent in Nigeria.
Dauda noted that poverty remained a major driver of child labour in the country.
Other key challenges he identified included: cultural/ religious factors, poor educational system, inadequate social protection strategies, wrong perception/ ignorance of the effect of child labour and wrong or misinterpretation of the almajiri system.
“Poverty is a major driver of child labour that is why the federal government is investing heavily in Social Investment Programs so that parents can receive help and use the income to train their children,” he said.
How obsolete laws contribute to an increase in child labour and other unfair labour practices
According to Dauda, the lack of proper enforcement of the existing Labour Laws, although obsolete, in the country has contributed to child labour and other unfair labour practices. He said most of the labour laws are obsolete with little penalty for defaulters.
According to him, lack of political will and enforcement remained some of the major challenges in the fight again child labour in the country.
The director said: “Some provisions of our labour laws are obsolete. Imagine where penalties for some unfair labour practises are being pegged at N1, 000, N500 and even N5, 000 as compared to present-day realities is grossly inadequate.
“However, there have been reviews of these penalties; some of them have been raised to N500, 000, some to N1 million and some have been raised to without even the option of fine. But they are still under review process.
“We will organise a validation meeting of tripartite constituents – the Labour, the employers and the ILO and what we agree upon will be sent to the National Assembly after validation.
“The essence of the law is to serve as a deterrent. Where penalties are no more serving as deterrents there is a need for review. That is what we have done which is awaiting final validation thereafter it will be sent to the Assembly for deliberation.”
160 million kids plunged into child labour by COVID-19
According to the Deputy Director, Inspectorate Division in the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Mrs Olaolu Olaitan, an estimated 160 million children were subjected to child labour conditions as of 2020 globally.
Also, the data from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and ILO showed that child labour participation globally has increased in the last few years and that the number could rise by millions more as a result of COVID-19.
The report by the UN agencies showed that 8.4 million children were pushed into child labour over the last four years and that nine million more are at risk of a similar path by the end of 2022 as a result of COVID-19.
Mrs Olaitan, in her presentation at the workshop, described child labour as a form of exploitative work or forced labour children are subjected to the detriment of their health and normal growth.
She said a lot of children had been made to work under harmful conditions and for various reasons.
“An estimated 160 million children were subjected to child labour condition as of 2020, with nine million additional children at the risk due to impact of COVID-19,” Mrs Olaitan said.
‘More measures needed to end child labour, abuse’
While declaring the workshop open, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Mr Yerima Tarfa, said that more measures are needed to address and eliminate child labour and abuse in the country.
The permanent secretary also sought media support for the campaign against the abuse and trafficking of children in the country.
Speaking at the one-day workshop, Tarfa said Nigeria was working on achieving a significant milestone in the elimination of child labour practices.
He said child labour and other forms of modern-day slavery were issues of grave concern in the global arena on account of their dire consequences, and the persistence of those consequences through generations of families.
According to him, the role of journalists and the mass media in the campaign to prevent child labour is central in the strategy and the policies of elimination of child labour.
He said: “This workshop has become necessary because of the need to create awareness and mobilising the critical public in the fight against child labour.
“It is important to place on record that the Government of Nigeria has taken several measures aimed at reducing and eliminating child labour and changing the narrative with regards to poverty and other child labour influencing factors.
“However, despite government’s interventions and demonstrated commitment through programmes like the conditional cash transfer to poor and vulnerable Nigerians, several job creation efforts, especially through enterprise creation and MSMEs development support, homegrown school feeding programme, and several other such programmes, which have a direct or indirect impact on livelihood improvement and by extension, child labour, it is the responsibility of the press and mass media to churn out professional reportage aimed at informing the public about these programmes with respect to their impact on child labour practices
“I would like to emphasise that the role of journalists and media practitioners in the ongoing campaign to eliminate and prevent child labour is pivotal to the success of all strategies and policies for the elimination of child labour in Nigeria. Nevertheless, we must not be unmindful of the fact that our current national socio-political and economic situation, coupled with the impact of COVID- 19 are predisposing factors for increased child labour participation in our country.
“Therefore, I call on all journalists and media practitioners, whose responsibility it is to educate critical stakeholders and the general public on the negative impacts of child labour, and enlighten the public on the safety nets, as well as the school programmes designed by the government as preventative measures against child labour, to join forces with government to change the narrative and dent rising child labour participation rates. Our children are the future of this great country.”
Residents resort to primitive methods of treating ailments
Why I couldn’t make projects function as commissioner – Ex-governor’s son
Two decades ago, there was wild jubilation in Ikija, a rural community in Idi Ayunre, the headquarters of Oluyole Local Government Area, Oyo State, as one of their sons and then governor of the state, Alhaji Lam Adesina, approved the construction of a health centre and a technical school to bring development to the remote area.
Contractors were mobilized to site shortly after the projects were approved and they were completed in goodtime.
“We were excited at the speed with which the buildings were completed and looked forward to the commencement of medical and academic activities in the two buildings, believing that the twin projects would bring tremendous transformation and prosperity to our community,” a member of the community said.
Unfortunately for the people, the governor could not go on with the project before the expiration of his single term tenure. Since then, the buildings constructed with tax payers’ money have been neglected by successive governments in the state and left to rot.
The people are more pained that rather than put the buildings into use, one of Lam Adesina’s successors built another technical school not far away from the community.
The buildings designed for the technical school project sit on a large expanse of land, but they can hardly be seen from outside because they are covered by weeds while giant trees threaten the foundations of the buildings with their roots.
It actually took the people who took our correspondent on a tour of the site quite some time to clear a part of the bush before he could gain access to the premises. Walking deep into the bush with men armed with a sharp, big cutlass sent jitters down the spine of the reporter.
His fears became worse when he noticed that the okada (commercial motorcycle) rider who took him to the place had vanished.
“Gentlemen, please, I think we should go back from here. There is no point going into this thick bush with so much uncertainty,” he said in a feat of apprehension to dissuade the locals from continuing with the journey. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as the locals were determined not to lose what they considered a rare opportunity to tell the world about their pains and frustration from the abandoned projects.
“Don’t worry sir, we are almost there. We are already looking at the buildings,” one of the two escorts said as he vented his anger on the weeds on our path. Frightfully, the reporter continued the journey with his hosts, intermittently looking over his shoulders to be sure that his escorts were not out for any sinister move.
On arriving at the place, the reporter and his hosts were confronted by the sight of a long stretch of neatly built and well fortified structures that lay waste. The sight of the buildings induces tears, leaving one to wonder why any government would leave such structures to rot away.
Many of the windows and doors have fallen apart. The ceilings too have collapsed. It took one of the locals a great deal of energy and time to cut the weeds that covered the inscription on the wall of one of the buildings.
Instead of students and teachers, the buildings were hosts to reptiles of different shapes and sizes as they were seeing jumping around the whole place.
“Our concern is getting the government to take a second look at these abandoned buildings so that they can become functional. It is not good the way and manner that weeds have overgrown the whole place,” one of the locals, Muhammadu Sodiq, said.
Going down memory lane, he said: “The buildings were constructed during the period our father, the late Lam Adesina, was the governor of Oyo State. We still want it to be used for the purpose it was designated for. If this is done, it is not only the indigenes of the community that will benefit from it.
“Whenever they make the projects functional, all the indigenes of Oyo State and beyond would benefit from it. We don’t want the buildings to completely collapse or turn into a place where people of shady characters would do all manner of illicit things.”
Decrying the state of the buildings, Sodiq said: “As you can see, thick trees are already growing all over the place. The project is 20 years old and many governors have come and gone in the state without any of them making efforts to make the buildings functional.
“We don’t want to blame any government for the state of the buildings. All we can do is to plead with them to make the projects functional. “
His colleague, Alfa Musiliudeen Adeyinka, also decried the conditions of the buildings, saying: “We are praying that God will make the government see reasons to make them functional.”
If the government makes the buildings functional, he said, “the community will witness instant development. It will move from what it is at the moment to a place people from all walks of life would troop to. This would create jobs, boost commerce in the community and consequently improve our living standard.”
He also feared that if the buildings were not attended to with the urgency they deserved, “the premises may soon become a den of robbers and ritual killers. Herders were attacking people in this place before now. It was when the community resisted them that their menace reduced.”
It was a moment of relief for our correspondent as the team completed the tour of the dilapidated structures and headed back to the major road.
The okada rider, who had retreated unannounced when our correspondent walked into the bush with the locals, beamed a smile as he saw us coming.
“I came to stay with my motorcycle to prevent it from being stolen,” he said in apparent defence of his action.
Health centre building also in a shambles
Aside the abandoned technical school buildings, another building meant to serve as a health centre is also abandoned. If functional, the health centre would have made it easy for the people to access healthcare.
In its absence, the locals often have to travel long distances before they can get medical attention. This puts most of them off and makes them to resort self- medication and uncertified herbal treatment which the immediate past commissioner of health in the state said is dangerous to their health.
“That is the hospital built for us by our father. It is already overgrown with weeds. The hospitals are far from here. Not many people would be willing to spend money to go there.
“If this hospital were functional, many of us will, without persuasion, go there for medical care,” a concerned resident said.
The head of the hunters in the community, Yinusa Ahmed, said the residents of the community rely on herbs to treat their ailments and would rather feed with any money they have than spend it on transporting themselves to the hospital.
He said: “To go to Idi Ayunre where the hospital is would cost an individual at least N300. Would somebody who has not eaten since morning spend that kind of money to go to the hospital? It is bread that such a person will first think about.”
His position was supported by the chief ritualist of the community who spoke glowingly about stagnant water he said was very potent against any kind of ailment.
He said: “Going to the hospital is not our way of life. Water from the river is our medication. We use the water to treat all kinds of sicknesses including COVID-19. If you come here with COVID-19, you will be healed. It is not by our power but by the power that was used to found this community together with the powers of the deities and the river.
“Go round the village and you will not find any sick person. The river will never allow any strange sickness to enter the community. Even if the person had contracted the sickness elsewhere, once he enters here, it will not spread to any member of the community. We would rather heal him of the sickness he came with. here have had all the sicknesses in their bodies cured.”
A female member of the community, Alimotu Oladeji, said: “We use herbs to treat ourselves. I know the herbs for malaria and I also buy them.
“Orthodox medicine does not cure malaria. When you take orthodox medicine in the morning to treat malaria, by evening time, it will resurface. It is herbs that can cure malaria. I don’t even take injection.
“Even when I was still giving birth, I was not taking injection. There was a time I was pregnant and I went to the hospital. On getting to the hospital, they pierced my finger to take blood sample and I have stopped going there since then. I always give birth at home.”
The immediate past Oyo State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Bashir Bello, in an earlier reaction to our correspondent’s enquiry on the subject matter, had condemned the consumption of untreated water and uncertified herbs, warning that they have huge health implications.
Bello said: “While on one side some herbs are good, those applying it would not know the dosage, the precautions and the prerequisite conditions for taking them. Who even certifies the public health value of these herbs?
“They risk contracting all forms of water borne diseases by contracting untreated water. These include guinea worm, diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration and so many others.
“They may claim they have not been having any sickness, but you can verify that by visiting them after about six months. We don’t have issues to drag with uninformed people. The state has provided almost all that is needed.”
Why I didn’t use my influence to make project work – Ex-governor’s son
Hon Dapo Adesina, one of the sons of the late former governor Lam Adesina and former commissioner for youth and sports, has explained why he did not use his influence as a commissioner during the tenure of the late Abiola Ajimobi in the state to push for the revival of what could be described as one of his late father’s legacies.
He said: “I was neither in the Ministry of Health nor in any ministry that has to do with that. I was at some point in the Ministry of Youth and Sports and then Science and Technology. There was no way I could poke nose into that.
“Well with the massive job that was in front of me at that time, I felt that what should be more paramount was how to succeed in the ministry that I was handling at that time; not poking my nose into other ministries.”
He requested that questions about the project’s revival be directed to the incumbent administration led by Engineer Seyi Makinde.
He said: “Well I don’t think there is so much to say. I think that this question should be directed to the people who took over from him because government is a continuum. They will be in the best position to respond to this.
“One would only use the opportunity to urge the government to look into that to see if there is anything that can be done so that tax payers’ money spent on the project is not wasted.
“They should do whatever they can do about it. Like I said earlier, government is a continuum. Where one person stops, another person continues.”
Oyo govt keeps mum
The Oyo State Government was yet to respond to our enquiries about the projects at press time.
The Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr Taiwo Adisa, requested that questions be sent to him as he said he was not familiar with all the rural areas in the state.
The questions were sent as requested but he was yet to respond at the time of filing this report.
No other government official could be reached for comment as a good number of the commissioners, including that of information, had been axed in a major cabinet shake-up by Governor Makinde.
Although seven of the commissioners were reportedly returned, the Commissioner for Information, to whose desk this kind of enquiry should be directed, was not among those returned.
• Visually-impaired musicians relive ordeal • Sell off band’s buses to feed with proceeds
They took to music to ease the pains inflicted on them by circumstances they had no control over. They were able to earn a living and avoid begging. But many of these visually impaired artistes are fast losing their source of survival and consolation. With the biting economic situation in the land, some of the musical bands are disintegrating while some are forced to sell off their vehicles for food. While they long to continue with a life that kept them away from frustration and depression, they cannot help wondering if help would ever come their ways, INNOCENT DURU writes.
Realising that I was not like the other children while I was growing up, I resorted to playing my musical instrument each time I began to feel bad. No age mate of mine could boast the number of cassettes I had while growing up. My brothers and sisters bought me every good song they heard.”
That was Stanly Onyewuchi recalling how music saved him from the sorrowful path that life had put him from childhood.
Stanly had lost his sight at a tender age and with that began a life of solitude as his energy and joy of playing around with his peers fizzled away.
At regular intervals his mid flashed back to the days he jumped around with his peers unaided. And each time it dawned on him that he would not be able to do that again, tears welled up in his eyes and a feeling of sorrow overwhelmed him.
He, however, found joy in listening to music and playing musical instruments. His peers, who were in the habit of abandoning him to go playing around started coming close to listen to him and watch him play instruments with dexterity.
He went on to sharpen his skills when he was enrolled in a special school where singing was encouraged.
A move that started as a bid to check frustration later became a source of livelihood for the keyboardist when he joined JONAPWD Musical Band, a group of physical challenged artistes based in Abia State.
Like the defunct Oriental Brothers led by Sir Warrior, JONAPWD dazzled music lovers in Abia and neighbouring states in the South East.
“That is a kind of empowerment for our members. Some government officials at times invited us for events and we performed for them. At one of such events, a serving senator was told that we are blind but he did not believe it. That tells you how good the band was.
“It was only when it was time to eat and he saw that people were guiding us to take spoons and other things that he became convinced that we were blind,” he said.
Outstanding as the band was, the challenge of raising funds to acquire sound musical instruments and meet other financial obligations created a crack in their walls. Before they knew it, the crack widened and the band collapsed.
He said: “The band acquired instruments using a donation but those instruments were second hand. Now all of them have spoilt. We have made efforts to get replacements for them to no avail.
“This has resulted in many of our members joining other groups that are not mainly for people with disability. But they complain of being cheated each time they go out to play.
“They keep calling to plead that we restart the band but the problem is money. To have a complete instrument now,we will need more than a million naira.”
Although many members of the band were civil servants, Stanly said they could not save money to acquire musical instruments.
“The salary is not enough. Most of our members work in the local government and you know how they are being paid.
“Here in Abia State, some were owed more than six-month salaries and we are married with children.
“We have all faced our work hoping that one day we would get resources and bounce back.”
Before the group disintegrated, Stanly said, they made use of the bus that belonged to the physically challenged people in the state, which made their movement to events very easy.
“Along the line, they were involved in an auto crash while they were riding in the bus, and that compounded their woes.
“After the bus had spent about nine years at the mechanic workshop, the mechanic said the vehicle had crashed beyond repairs. We had to sell it off as scrap for a paltry sum of N130, 000.
•Upright Wonder performing
“It was during the COVID-19 lockdown that we sold it and used the money to buy foodstuffs for members.”
Like JONAPWD band, which shone like a million stars in Abia, Pains and Pleasure Band, a musical group comprising visually impaired people, hit music lovers in Lagos and neighbouring states with lovely tunes.
A post on their Facebook page shows that members of the band attended the Pacelli School for the Blind and then formed groups in University of Lagos and University of Ibadan that constituted a band of blind men who performed exceptionally. Though plagued by such challenges as transportation, equipment, accommodation and logistics, they, over the years, carved a niche for themselves, performing in different places.
But like like other vulnerable people in the society, the band has had its fair share of discrimination. Adeniran Opeyemi, a member of the group, told of how friends and families of people who invited them for shows expressed disappointment on discovering their physical conditions.
He said: “Sometimes when some lovers of our music invite us to play at social functions, their friends and relations express disappointment seeing that we are visually impaired. They would ask the host, ‘you mean you could not get better artistes than blind people to play at your party?’ It hurts. But we have learnt to accept our fate.”
The challenge was apparently compounded by the lockdown announced by the govern ment last year to check the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adeniran said: “Most of us (band members) are not having any income because when the lockdown started, we could not go for shows and we had nothing to take care of ourselves.
“A month before the lockdown was announced we had an accident with our vehicle. We spent all the money we had saved to fix the vehicle on feeding our members. We eventually sold the vehicle when there was no money to repair it.”
Pirates steal visually impaired group’s work, plunge leader into depression
The height of man’s depravity came to the fore when our correspondent met with Upright Wonder, a visually impaired gospel singer who also runs a foundation for vulnerable people.
After releasing her first album, which was an instant success, the soft spoken artiste skipped sleep and burnt the midnight oil composing songs for her second album. When she was done, she beat her chest in ecstasy feeling fulfilled that the time and energy she had spent writing the songs were worth it after all.
From the little she realised from the first album, she dashed to the studio to record the musical works. But before she knew it, pirates had laid their hands on her work, marketed it and laughed all the way to the bank.
She said: “When I released my second album, a lot of people pirated my song and started selling it at Alaba Market. That happened because I didn’t have a good marketer. I was frustrated and put a stop to music until God said I should start it all over. I lost close to a million naira in that project, and that made me depressed. This is a mental and intellectual effort.
“Apart from being challenged, I spent time and resources doing the work, and somebody just sat in a corner and pirated it to make money. That frustrated me. But I am no more depressed.”
In spite of the teething challenge that almost put paid to her music career, Upright Wonder said her involvement in music has been a blessing.
She said: “I have impacted people. A lot of people had been without joy. They didn’t have peace and didn’t know how to relate with God. But through my ministration, I have been able to reach out to them in churches and other places, and there are testimonies.
“I have two different bands—TESMI which is made up of only physically challenged people and another band from where I get resources to support the former.
“The physically challenged members feel on top of the world to be part of the band because there is nothing that is as good as doing what you know best as a physically challenged.
“They have forgotten about their problems. They are happy and comforted. That is why we have to keep them busy to move on in life.
“I started singing when I was quite young but never knew I would take it up as a career. The career took off in 2000, and in 2002 I came out with my first album.
“In 2004, I started a band called TESMI for physically challenged and vulnerable persons.”
Benjamin Ogedengbe, another visually challenged individual, has never been a victim of piracy. But he has at different times suffered one form of discrimination or the other while performing, even in churches where he expects the vulnerable to be treated with utmost regard.
Unlike the previous artistes, his band comprises sighted members.
He said: “Definitely, discrimination comes. I go to sing in some churches and when they want to introduce able bodied artistes they complement them and list their achievements. But when someone like me is to be introduced, you will hear something like ‘there is ability in disability.’ I have had to caution them against giving me such introduction.
“A friend of mine was once introduced as abirun (handicapped) in one church, and that was derogatory. It took that pastor a whole week to appeal to the conscience of my friend.
“That is part of the soft the discrimination that we get that people don’t seem to take into consideration. Why not introduce us as artistes and not with some derogatory words?”
•Mathew working with his producer
Aside his concern about not properly addressing vulnerable people, Benjamin is also worried that no record label has deemed it fit to sign any visually impaired artiste.
“You can’t go round the country today and see a record label that signed a blind musician. It pains me a whole lot that Nigerian record labels have not seen that a challenged person who is highly competent and who is worth his onions as far as music is concerned can make them earn more than they would ordinarily earn from able bodied artistes.
“My major challenge has been about getting support. Here in Nigeria, people just look at you somehow because you are visually impaired. They feel that they want to help you and as a result would not place you on the same pedestal with those without physical challenges.
“They don’t look at it from the point that one is good at what he is doing. I have performed with a lot of celebrities, but all you get are claps and no assistance.”
In Jos, Plateau State is also another group of visually impaired band that has been painting the state red with their sonorous voices and unimaginable skills.
The exploits of the band was brought to the attention of our correspondent by someone outside the state who had seen them perform.
Like their colleagues, they also are bedeviled by myriads of challenges that may force them to close shop in no distant time.
“We are having challenges getting instruments for our performances. If we have instruments, we can do better than we are doing now because we have good singers,” the Music Director, Mathew Evi, said.
“We do rent instruments and at times use those of the church where we perform. We started the band because we believe it is important for us to show our talents and bring many to Christ. We also want to use our talents to show that there is ability in disability.
“We are not being adequately rewarded but people are trying for us. So many others want to join us but the resources are not there. If there is help, we can do better.”
‘Discrimination, flair for singing made us to float music bands’
Floating a musical group was originally not on the agenda of the visually challenged young men who started JONAPWD Musical Band. Individually, they were talented and enjoyed good music, but they never saw the need to start a band.
They were, however, forced to start one after some of their members faced serial ‘insults’ from artistes they had invited to perform at their functions.
“It began after one of us wanted to do his traditional marriage. He contacted a musical band to perform on that day. He exchanged contacts with them but when he started calling them to remind them of the date, they were not answering his calls.
“He had to go to the house of the band leader but he didn’t meet him at home. He however met the wife who said he must be the one that the husband had been saying he would not perform at his wedding because he was not sure of him paying. That our member was on level 12 in the civil service then.
“Annoyed by the woman’s remarks, our member dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out the money that the band leader requested to perform at the wedding. Many of us face this discrimination.
“That was why we formed our own musical band. It was also an opportunity for us to train some of our members who are being rejected by other bands.
“It was also formed so that we could cover the events of our members. Today, some of our members have learnt how to play the keyboard. Some play for churches and some play for musical bands, and they are getting paid for it.
“We have more than 10 of our members playing keyboard in Abia State and also many who play drums. It is over five years that we went our separate ways now because we don’t have musical instruments.
“Back then, whenever we hired equipment for a show, by the time we paid for the equipment and settled the band, we would not have anything left.”
For Benjamin Ogedengbe, music is inborn. “Going to Pacealli School for the Blind also enhanced my music career. Today, everything I have has its roots in music.
“Several times I cry on stage. Music is emotional and it moves me to tears. At times when you are performing and you see the way the crowd is cheering, it can be emotional. Sometimes I wish I could see the people that are cheering me.”
He added: “I have it in mind to have my own studio where I can do digital and live recording and can always do rehearsals.
“This year I started having serious rehearsals with my band and we have been renting studios. I feel it is important to have my own studio back at home where we can rehearse at any time.
“It boils down to getting support. I don’t need the whole world to support me. All I want is just one or two people to believe in what I do. If that happens, one would be happy.
“My music has taken me to about 31 states out of the 36 in the country. I have been to Egypt and have from here ministered to the US, Germany and several other countries via digital platforms.”
‘How we lost our sights’
Had the parents of Mathew of Redemption Band listened to their kinsmen, the UNIJOS undergraduate probably would not be alive today. His father’s kinsmen had condemned him as a weird creature for being blind.
“My sight challenge started when I was in primary five. I was copying note and suddenly tears started coming out from my eyes and that began my journey to losing my sight. I was never sick and did not hurt my eyes in any way before then,” Mathew said.
He recalled that when the challenge began, his father’s kinsmen stopped seeing him as a human being.
He said: “There was a time they told my father that they had never seen this kind of thing before in their clan, wondering why I was coming with such a problem.
“I thank God that before my father died, I was already into music and he really enjoyed it. He was always finding joy in me. For me doing music is an opportunity to bring people from darkness into light.”
The sight challenge also started at a tender age for Ogendengbe. As a baby, he said, “I was considered not to be seeing with one eye. And at age one, the other sight was lost. But then my family just wanted anything that would make me happy.
“I wasn’t locked in for any reason, but they wanted me to do anything that would give me joy. That made it possible for me to be able to express myself even from childhood.”
Reliving how he lost his sight, Stanly of the JONAPWD Band said: “I lost my sight at the age of five. My parents were busy taking me from one hospital to another. In one of the hospitals, they were told it was glaucoma. I was taken to a special school for the blind thereafter. Music means everything to me.”
31m persons with disabilities denied access to budget for 20 years – Lalu
Prior to the establishment of the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, there were no provisions for the vulnerable group and issues around them in the national budget. The bill was signed into law recently by the President Muhammadu Buhari government.
The pioneer Executive Secretary, James David Lalu, in a recent interview, said the refusal of previous administrations to sign the bill into law led to the national budget side-lining 31 million PWDs.
“That is a huge number that can be gotten from bringing six states together. We are a major stakeholder in Nigeria, being the largest minority group benefiting from the national budget should not be regarded as an opportunity but a way to ensure there is equity for all.
“What we want to achieve is to make Nigeria a country that is comfortable for PWD by ending discrimination and providing adequate reporting system. We have received a lot of cases on discrimination against PWD and some involving high profile persons, so we want disciplinary measures to take its course, backed by law.
“We are working in the area of education, mass housing projects and liaising with the Federal Housing Authority and the Federal Mortgage Bank. We will encourage our community to form cooperative societies across the 36 states to be able to benefit from the national housing fund project. We need to get home because it makes life comfortable.”
He added: “Part of our intervention as well is accessibility in the transportation sector, and we are collaborating with the Ministry of Transportation. Our commitment to help in gaining quality health services for the disability community is already pulling weight with the support of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
“We are also working with relevant stakeholders to put a stop to discrimination in the airline sector. Discrimination against PWD by airlines is much as they bring unnecessary policies while boarding planes. The highest form of discrimination is denying someone access to what they can afford.”
How parents dump underage kids in Almajiri schools
Children take to begging, forced labour in face of starvation
Sometime around noon in April 2021, Salisu retreated under the shade of a mango tree to escape the scorching rays of the Sokoto sun. From a distance, he looked tired, worn. Closer, he looked starved, and his eyes nestled in their sockets, emitting a glow like dying embers.
Salisu does not know his age but his prepubescent frame detailed it between six and seven years old. The native of Zabarmawa has vague memory of home but he remembers how his parents dumped him in an Almajiri school. He is only opportune to go home during the Sallah festival.
“We are between 100 and 150 in the Almajiri school. And we recite the Quran every morning,” he said, adding that, “the Mallam doesn’t cook for us. My parents bring food, garri for me, at least every week, in a sack. We usually give it to Mallam. Sometimes, they will bring it together with pure water. I only go home during Sallah.”
Like Salisu, Adamu looked hungry. Light-complexioned with a piercing look, the 13-year-old claimed his father is a farmer and his mother, a trader. He said he was dumped in the Almajiri system at age 10.
The native of Tuluwa, in Sokoto, claimed that he and his colleagues rely on begging to survive because their Mallam hardly gives them food. When they are not out begging, they fetch water for use by their Mallam’s household.
“During the rainy season, we used to go to our Mallam’s farm. Sometimes, the rule is that if you don’t go to the farm, you won’t be given food.”
Like Salisu, Abban looked hungry at first glance. Although he was much older and looked like he was in his early 20s, he persistently complained of hunger. This sounded odd given his age and the season: it was the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan and his lamentation elicited questions concerning his observance of the fast.
In response, he said he wasn’t fasting because he hadn’t taken predawn meal (sahur).
Abban disclosed that there are about 200 boys under the tutelage of his Mallam, including him, and they survive on handouts: the clothes they wear, food they eat are donations from private individuals and NGOs.
According to Abban, the more you give your Mallam, be it food or cash earned on your begging tours, the more love you earn from him. When asked why he is not going to school despite free education, he said, “My father didn’t put me there.”
He, however, disclosed that after leaving Almajiri school, he intends to start a business and get married, or become a soldier or a security guard.
Until then, Abban, like fellow Almajirai will continue to loiter public places including filling stations, shopping malls, motor-parks, and cinemas with his bowl, to beg for leftover food and loose money.
The law on a child’s rights
Under Islamic law, child maintenance is the ultimate right of a child thus parents are responsible for providing maintenance to children and providing them with appropriate (formal and Islamic) education. Moreover, the Child’s Right Act (2003) is the law that guarantees the rights of all children in Nigeria; it is an Act that provides and seeks to protect the rights of a Nigerian child— and other related matters. However, currently, 11 states, all in northern Nigeria, are yet to domesticate the Child’s Rights Act. These children, especially Almajiri children are bearing the brunt of this inaction.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), last year, released the “2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria” report, which highlights that 40 percent of the total population, or almost 83 million people, live below the country’s poverty line of N137,430 per year.
More so, fewer than half of the children in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria attend “overcrowded government primary schools, official data from 2015 shows.
Almajiri schools help fill the gap and parents pay as little as N500 ($1.30) a month in fees.”
Issues revolving around the practice of Almajiri include child destitution, child trafficking and alms seeking.
Meeting Mallam Muhammad of “Makaranta Muhammadiya”
Mallam Muhammad is the owner of one of Almajiri schools in Sokoto, named Makaranta Muhammadiya. “I believe God will give me reward for what I’m doing,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know the number of boys in his school. “Their parents used to come to check on them sometimes. After they finish and leave here, they would go and start a business. They can only leave here if only God wishes; God is their timer,” said Muhammad.
According to him, “I have a farm but I’m not eating it with them. They will come with their own foodstuff. Government doesn’t bring food, except God. Even if you come (join us), God will give you food.”
Muhammad stated that the government does not have a stake in the Almajiri system, stressing that it is an age-long practice that has stood the test of time.
Almajiri System: A Faded Legacy
The Almajiri system of education, which dates back to the 11th century, is an Islamic school system with a long history in northern Nigeria. Under the Sokoto Caliphate, the Almajiri regime was solidified by the Islamic revolt of the 18th century. This educational system focuses on Quranic and Islamic education, with students learning a trade for a living, too. Schools were governed under the Sokoto Caliphate, and teachers reported directly to the Emir of their province.
Teachers, parents, officials, and the community as a whole raised the schools’ students. Students will farm and carry food to the school to complement the Almajiri scheme. It was a course in the region’s society and culture, similar to Western education, where students were taught the Islamic and northern Nigerian way of life.
Now, most of these children are lacking access to formal education. According to a UNICEF study in 2014, Nigeria has 9.5 million Almajiri children, accounting for 72 percent of the country’s out-of-school children. Estimates in 2019 revealed that Nigeria has between 13.2 million and 15 million out-of-school children, the majority of whom are in northern Nigeria.
On the UNICEF website, it is estimated that “In north-eastern and north-western states, 29 percent and 35 percent of Muslim children, respectively, receive Qur’anic education, which does not include basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. The government considers children attending such schools to be officially out-of-school.”
Nowadays, most of the students, known as Almajirai learn to be self reliant. And this has seen too many of them spill to the streets to beg for alms and engage in menial work. Sometimes, they are made to engage in forced labour. In 2019, the International Labor Organization revealed that nearly half of Nigerian children are enslaved.
According to the ILO, at least 43% of the country’s children are trapped in child labor, including in private businesses. Most of these children are stuck in different forms of forced labor, despite international conventions prohibiting it.
Children as divine gifts
“Children… are what they called Amana; they are a gift from God Almighty”
Reacting to the situation, Safiyyah Mohammed, a Sokoto-based lawyer and lecturer of the Department of Public Law and Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, gave a full breakdown of why the problem keeps evolving.
On the part of the government, she said, there are a lot of issues regarding implementation of policies and laws and how to ensure that parents abide by laws set out in our statutes. She said “We have the Universal Basic Education (UBE) law, which provides that children must be sent to school but then we have issues of not being able to keep track of children whether they are in school or sent to other states. So it becomes difficult.”
Safiyyah argued that “There are differences between Western and Islamic culture values,” lamenting that most of these Mallams are not thinking about the danger of setting up schools without regulations.
“We are bound to have issues because we don’t know the qualifications of most of these Mallams,” she said, adding that one of the key issues regarding the implementation of policies and laws is the attitude of citizens and attitude of individuals as it plays a major role in how the laws are being implemented and carried out.
She said, several decades ago, the way Almajirici was practiced— it was “something noble for a good cause. But the way it is practiced now, parents used it as a way to get away from their responsibilities because when you see the issue of people sending their children to faraway places without any means of income, sometimes it is a recipe for a lot of ill in the society.
“Islamic law comprehensively gives children adequate rights. Children under Islamic law are what they called Amana; they are a gift from God Almighty, so they are to be treated in the best of ways. There is nothing that justifies children being sent out for Almajirici and being made to fend for themselves at such a young age.” She expressed emphatically and authoritatively.
Work done seems futile
Zainab Yunusa, a co-convener and assistant field officer with Almajiri Child Right Initiative (ACRI) Sokoto Chapter, explained how the organisation has been implementing its mission on the eradication or reformation of Almajiri system, reiterating some difficulties on the part the state government. The ACRI is a non-governmental organization initiated by Muhammad Sabo Keana, advocating for reformation of the Almajiri system in Nigeria.
According to Yunusa, the organization has been embarking on community sensitization to concerned parents, hosting rallies and conferences, rendering services ranging from medical outreach, food, shelter among others. She revealed the organization has been working tirelessly with the ministry of women and children affairs in tracing, documenting and reintegrating the children back to their parents.
Saddened by the state government’s delayed response regarding this issue, Zainab said that, “The State government cannot be precise when it would end because it has to do with religion and culture…and many mistake it’s reformation for abolition. So, work done seems zero.”
During the course of this story, all effort to reach the state government and ministry of women and children affairs proved abortive, albeit when the Sokoto State Commissioner for Youth and Sports, Honourable Bashir Gorau, was contacted, he said he was not in the right position to respond to questions stressing that all queries should be channeled to the right authorities.
names changed to protect identity.
This Investigative Report is supported by Orodata Science.
Pandemic of ‘gang-bang’, drug dependence seize Nigerian teens
Their frantic battles with peer pressure
They are getting bolder, slipping to self-destruct – Psychologists
By Olatunji OLOLADE, Associate Editor
For Bola Akinde, watching his daughter smoke weed was like peeping into a time capsule. The image spiralled rearwards, like dismal paste-ups to his younger self.
“I experimented with weed on my 17th birthday. I lived in the school hostel and my friends urged me to try it. I stopped four months later, after our housemaster caught us smoking and I got suspended for two weeks. I vowed never to touch weed again. But my daughter, Joke, is only 14, and she is a chainsmoker. She smokes and drinks marijuana. She hosts gang-bangs.”
Since he caught his 14-year-old daughter “sucking on a claro,” – that is, smoking the butt end of a giant weed wrap – with her male cousin and twin daughters of a family friend, he has been afflicted by a strong foreboding about his child’s future.
Despite their affinity for marijuana, father and daughter are light and shade of the same fever. While Akinde quit smoking at age 17, at 14, his daughter still suffers heavy drug dependence.
Yet getting high is not her only vice. “Joke is very reckless; so reckless that she was caught pants-down letting strange boys run a train on her (gang-bang). She is just a child,” said Akinde, revealing that his daughter orchestrated and hosted the sexual activity with classmates.
“We found out that, that was the second one masterminded by her. What her mother wouldn’t dare as a teen, Joke dares recklessly. She is very reckless,” said Akinde in a wavering tenor.
Then, close to tears, he said, “Mi o to set lori omokankan ri, bawo lawon boys buruku kan se ma wa ma to set lori omo mi (I never participated in any gang-bang of someone’s else’s daughter. Why should my own daughter become the vixen of multiple gang-bangs?)”
He said, “When we queried her, she said, the first time, her friends convinced her to do it. And the second and third sessions were initiated by her. Her cousin said she did it to gain ‘street cred’ (street credibility). Now, someone will say she is acting out. Acting out what exactly?
On New Year’s eve, Joke’s mother reportedly caught her pants down with the son of her childhood friend. A 12-year-old boy. “But she (the mother) never told me about it until I caught Joke smoking weed on an unannounced and unscheduled visit to their place. Then, the mother cried that it was about time we sought spiritual help for her,” said Akinde.
The 51-year-old disclosed that although he and Joke’s mother are divorced, they maintain cordial relations for their daughter’s sake.
He said, “Yes, I experienced peer pressure too as a teenager, but there was a limit to the things I did. Yes, I smoked Igbo (weed). Yes, I took some alcohol. Heck, I had girlfriends but I didn’t have sex until I clocked 20. My daughter has been having sex since age 13,” he said, lamenting that she got deflowered while experimenting with the 14-year-old son of a former neighbour.
•Teenagers smoking marijuana at a makeshift colony established by them in Adeniji Adele Estate, Lagos Island
“That was why her mother changed apartments, because the boy’s mother became hostile, claiming Joke was a bad influence on her son…I had saved up money to send her abroad for schooling. Who knows what she would do over there? I would rather commit my money to my bar and printing business,” said Akinde.
Frustrated, the Akindes took their daughter to a white garment church in Ibadan, where she is currently been exorcised of the “demons of addiction.”
“We had to take her that far to avoid uncomfortable questions from neighbours and close relatives. They know the truth but they will still come to rub it in, showing scathing concern,” said Hannah, Joke’s mother.
Were the Akindes right to haul their daughter to a spiritualist? Tunde Allen, a teen psychologist and school counsellor stated that teenagers like Joke often times “act out of character” to get their parents attention.
“Random sex, minor or extreme drug dependence are often manifestations of deeper emotional issues. They represent a deeper cry for help. But most parents hardly hear such a child’s cry until it gets too late. The child is probably broken by her parents’ divorce. The trigger to her rebellion could be something a classmate did or said to her. It could be a line or scene from a teen movie she watched. It could be as a result of having suffered molestation. Her parents must seek urgent mental health support for her,” he said.
‘Parents need to chill’
“Kids really don’t have it easy,” argued Ruki Awosile, an aspiring writer and high school senior. The 16-year-old argued that teenagers “use drugs sometimes to catch fun.”
She said, “Most famous people, politicians and celebrities did drugs when they were young. Yet they turned out well. I have an uncle who smokes weed with coffee to unwind every night. He is married with kids and very rich, richer than my parents. They tricked me back to Nigeria from the UK. They even enrolled me in a trashy public school to teach me that life is hard.
“Yes, life is hard, for me especially. What? I must be grateful, they keep saying. Too many parents think this way.
“Parents make our lives hard. Jonzing (Using drugs) is allowed to deal with their stress. I spend every day in school and still come back home to do house chores. There is no law that says I must wash plates or sweep the floor. That is why people employ housemaids. On top of that, my father expects me to perform excellently in school. The pressure is too much. I can’t deal, abeg,” she said.
Corroborating her, Noah Idaba, 19, argued that many teenagers do drugs in order to avoid a meltdown. “Parents are in your face, everywhere. They don’t even let you watch TV when you feel like. Parents just need to chill. Yes, they pay school fees, but children too are cashing out these days. We are hustling, doing forex and other businesses. Even being a Game Boy (Yahoo Boy or internet fraudster) is good hustle. I am yet to see any parent refuse a car gift or money from a child,” he said.
Encounters with teenagers across Lagos offered interesting glimpses into their mindset. “We are using drugs, breaking rules, because we want better attention,” was the resonant refrain.
Bisi Agaba, an addiction counsellor and child psychologist, described it as indicators of the usual teen rebellion and a part of growing up. She said, “Several kids engage in anti-social behaviour; they start using hard drugs either to get their parents’ attention or avoid their attention. Parents must rethink their approach to parenting, she said.
Olumide Michael, a retired school principal, however, argued that the modern teenager is a beneficiary of excessive cuddling. He said, “My 16-year-old niece once told her mother that her life is hard because she is made to do house chores and attend to her personal needs, like fetching and heating water for her own bath, washing and ironing her own clothes.
“She lamented that her parents failed her and her siblings by being ‘too middle-class.’ Look at that entitlement mentality. In our days, such drivel would earn you a slap and thorough thrashing.”
Michael said, “When you spare the rod, you spoil the child. Teenagers need tough love. Teach your children to pray. Teach them to know God. Ultimately, prayers and constant counselling, and an occassionally good thrashing, exorcise the wildest demons from a rebellious child,” he said.
But are these enough to divest the modern teen of rebellion? In several parts of Lagos: schools, playgrounds and unchaperoned house parties, teenagers immerse daily in seething currents that flow beyond their ken and frequently sweep beyond their depth. Outright neglect by their parents and the lack of a dependable guardian and mentorship has led too many of them into chasms of misdemeanour, argued teen psychologists.
In a frantic bid to ride the tide of abstruseness characteristic of adolescence and the apathy of their parents, they shoulder each other into the quicksands of vice, oftentimes. They experiment with hard drugs, hard partying, and unsafe, random sex.
Cynthia, 14, and her 13-year-old stepsister, Ijeoma, were recently rescued from sexual indiscretion by their mother’s automobile mechanic. Their mother, Theresa Obiekwe, said but for the artisan, her daughters would have “grossly misbehaved.”
The mechanic and his apprentice reportedly caught a glimpse of both girls and four others as they filed into a bungalow behind one of his clients’ building, where he had gone to service cars.
“I was preparing to go out when my mechanic called me that he had just glimpsed my daughters around Egbeda. Cynthia is SSS1 and her younger sister is in JSS3. And their school is in Ikeja. I wondered what they were doing in Egbeda.
“He urged me to come immediately stressing that they weren’t in good company. Luckily, two of my brothers were with me. We hurried to the place and together with the mechanic and their hosts’ neighbours, we stormed the apartment. We banged on the door for 20 minutes before they opened it. They didn’t open it because they were playing loud music.
“I still can’t wrap my head around what I saw. My daughters and four other girls were strip-dancing to this lewd song while the boys, sprayed them with cash. The oldest among them all was 15 years old. After forcing them to put on their uniforms, I discovered that they didn’t put on underpants to school. ‘Marlians don’t wear pants,’ said the mechanic’s apprentice derisively, and I was completely overwhelmed by shame.
“I hauled them back home and gave them a sound beating,” she said, adding that since the shameful incident, she had been personally dropping off her daughters at school and picking them up at closing hour.
Few people would forget in a hurry, the sad case of Lizzy, who started using cocaine at age 19. She developed a hankering for the hard drug while smoking marijuana to seem cool before her boyfriend.
The latter, she said, eventually revealed to her that he had been mixing her marijuana wraps with cocaine to her surprise but it was too late as she was already dependent on the psychotropic substance.
Lizzy became hevaily dependent on crack cocaine and lived with her captors for seven years until her rescue by Dr. Tony Rapu, a pastor and founder of Freedom Foundation, an anti-drug dependence non governmental organisation (NGO).
The latter disclosed that the drug dealers and pimps fed Lizzy’s drug habit. For seven years, she loitered the streets from noon through dusk, begging for alms in the traffic along the Ikeja axis.
“At night, she resorted to commercial sex work, all in a bid to fund her drug habit. We took lizzy off the streets to begin her long journey of rehabilitation and hopefully, successful integration back to a normal and productive life,” said Rapu, soon after he rescued her from the claws of her captors in Ipodo.
Then there is 15-year-old Doyin Lawal, who started smoking weed to fit in with his high school’s hip crowd. He said, “I was at a house party, and everyone was doing drugs. My cousin offered me weed (marijuana) but I declined. Then this classmate made fun of me that I couldn’t smoke it because I was too scared that I would cough and mess myself up. His crew was always taunting my crew, fighting us. Everybody started laughing at me and to show them that I wasn’t scared, I took a drag, and I didn’t cough,” he said.
That night, Doyin smoked two wraps of marijuana to the pleasure and applause of his mates.
But his vision became blurry and he developed a nasty headache. “To calm me, I was given a cigarette with strawberry flavour and a cup of soda mixed with tramadol. After taking it, I fell asleep,” he said.
Nothing happened until midnight when he woke up to see vomit all over him and his friends. He said, “Four of us slept in the same bed at that party. I threw up all over them. They made fun of me but promised to keep my secret. It would be bad for our crew, and terrible for our rep, if our mates knew that I eventually threw up over night.”
In time, Doyin got hooked to marijuana. “Sometimes, I added ‘level’ (cocaine) to give it kick,” he said, stressing that his cousin knows a dealer who usually got them marijuana laced with cocaine.
Doyin became totally dependent on the hard drug. He soaked it in fruit punch and potions of soda and tramadol, until he hit a learning curve. Wola, his 17-year-old cousin, who taught him to smoke weed overdosed on Pamilerin, a psychotropic brew containing marijuana, cocaine, and black berry juice and almost lost his life.
The latter’s older girlfriend, a sex worker called Franca, allegedly plied him with a stronger version of the brew before engaging him in a sex romp at a hotel in Akowonjo; when Wola started convulsing, she escaped and called Doyin to get his cousin at the hotel.
Wola’s close shave with death served as a deterrent to Doyin. “I will never take ‘levels’ or Pamilerin again. I will stick to marijuana and drinks,” he said.
Even if it doesn’t amount to much. It’s a beginning.
Inside the teenage brain
For several decades teen psychologists have pondered the reasons for teenagers’ intense rebellion against constituted authorities and their parents. The whole thing remained a conundrum until Frances Jensen, Chair of the neurology department at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, United States (US), however, encountered an eureka moment in her child’s rebellion.
When Jensen’s eldest son, Andrew, reached high school, he underwent a transformation from a supposedly calm, predictable child to a complete stranger. He changed his hair color from brown to black and started wearing garish clothing. He turned into an angst-filled teenager overnight, said Jensen to an international news medium.
She wondered what happened and whether Andrew’s younger brother would undergo the same metamorphosis. So she deployed her skills as a neuroscientist to examine the situation. “I realized I had an experiment going on in my own home,” said, the author of The Teenage Brain.
That was about two decades ago, when doctors, parents, teachers and society at large, believed that teenagers act so reckless and impulsive due to raging hormones.
Advances in brain imaging, courtesy studies like Jensens’ reveal that the teenage brain has lots of plasticity, which means it can change, adapt and respond to its environment until a person’s 20s.
The brain undergoes a growth in connectivity which presents itself as white matter, and comes from a fatty substance called myelin. As the brain develops, myelin wraps itself around nerve cells’ axons—long, thin tendrils that extend from the cell and transmit information—like insulation on an electrical wire.
The process starts from the back of the brain and works its way to the front. That means the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain involved in decision-making, planning and self-control, is the last part to mature.
Thus it’s not that teens don’t have frontal- lobe capabilities but rather their signals are not getting to the back of the brain fast enough to regulate their emotions. It’s why risk-taking and impulsive behaviour are more common among teens and young adults. “This is why peer pressure rules at this time of life,” said Jensen.
Teenagers also undergo major changes in their limbic system—the area of the brain that controls emotions—at the onset of puberty, which is typically around the ages of 10 to 12. Doctors now believe that this mismatch in development of the impulse-control part of the brain and the hormone- and emotion-fueled part of the brain is what causes the risk-taking behaviours that are so common among teenagers.
This new understanding of the biology that underlies teenage rebellion can be helpful to both teenagers and their parents. Jensen stresses the importance of setting examples of appropriate emotional responses and helping young people navigate difficult situations that are increasingly common among teens and adolescents.
•Female students of Oreyo Senior Grammar School, Igbogbo in Ikorodu, seen smoking shisha in a video
The scourge of the internet
Social media networks have been declared inimical to the mental health of adolescents, according to a recent survey of almost 1,500 teens and young adults. While enhancing social bonding, social platforms have also been associated with high levels of anxiety, depression, bullying and failure.
Bullying has migrated from the playground to assume a more personal and sinister dimensions on teenagers’ phones, timelines and message inboxes. As modern technologies and social media make it easier to spread sinister information, leading to suicide ideation by troubled teenagers and outright suicide, virtual interactions have become harder for parents and teachers to monitor and control.
“As parents, we often want to protect our kids from failure or any emotional pain. But opportunities for learning from such experiences in the context of a loving and supportive family are key to helping the adolescent develop and use this ability as an adult,” advises B.J. Casey, the director of the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain Lab at Yale University.
Notwitstanding biological analysis of the rebellion and storms of the teenage years, not a few Nigerian parents vote for tough love: a more psychological and physical approach, involving using the rod, prayers and counselling.
Kennedy Adenekan, 48, argued that, “Kids have it easy these days. Yet they are more daring and driven to self-destruct. Parents experienced adolescence too. But we were more responsible. The worst I did was to engage in the so-called ‘deals.’ Back then, it was hip to say you ran a ‘deal.’ In truth, we were committing theft, and burgling our own homes.”
The architect and father of five disclosed that his friends pilfered valuables from their own homes and sold them off at a paltry fee, even though they were from wealthy homes.
“Foolishly, I emulated them. Back then, the pendulum of the old, classic analog wall clock was valuable because it was made of mercury. Goldsmiths made use of it to process gold products. At a friend’s advise, I stole the entire wall clock and took it to my friends. Together, we took it to a goldsmith and pawned it off at N2, 000. We later learnt that the goldsmith swindled us, that we ought to have sold it around N15, 000 at least.
“It was stupid of me because it was the only clock in our living room and its absence was glaring. My parents got me arrested but later released me at my grandma’s urging. I have stolen pumping machines, headlamps of cars and compressors. I pawned it all to for a paltry fee, and to my friends’ applause. I used the proceeds to buy biker boots, lumber jacks, hamburgers and face caps. It improved my street credibility as a tough guy. A homie. A big boy.
“But today, my own children scare me. My daughter wants to become a video vixen. She wants to dance in hip hop videos. I believe she would outgrow this phase. But my son, Bosun, is a lost cause. He is into Yahoo-Plus (advance fee fraud laced with voodoo).
Adenekan’s fears are probably well-founded. “At 18 years, Bosun has failed SSCE twice and won’t resit the exam,” he said.
In late February, he told the teenager to move out if he won’t stop keeping late nights. To Adenekan’s chagrin, the boy moved out the next day. “He told his mother and sisters that he would come back in August to buy me and my house. I am waiting,” said Adenekan, in the tenor of a father who knows that paternity may be borne by equanimity or regret.
•Mass cremations begin as India’s capital faces deluge of COVID-19 deaths
Palpable fear rules the camp of more than 55,000 Nigerians resident in India following the exponential spike in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 and dying from it in the Asian country.
India, home of some notable manufacturers and exporters of COVID-19 vaccines, has been recording more than 200,000 cases daily since April 15, well past its peak last year when it averaged about 93,000 cases daily. The country has consequently overtaken Brazil and other nations to become the second worst hit country globally.
Following the rate at which the pandemic was spreading, curfews were initially announced in some areas but when the plague would not abate, many states went into lockdown.
The ugly development, according to findings made by our correspondent, is making Nigerians and other Africans resident in the country to panic. And they face ugly prospects because they are not entitled to palliatives and also cannot go out to earn a living.
Malik Ali Paul, a Nigerian resident in India, said: “The major challenge now is that there has been a total lockdown for two to three weeks in Delhi, which is the capital of India, and also in Pune City of Maharashtra state, and there is no movement.
“The implementation of the directive is very, very strict. We don’t even have the ability to move out of our homes. People are always indoors, and if you need anything, it has to be brought to you.
“The whole situation is disturbing. A lot of Indians are dying like fowls. The death rate has gone up tremendously. I have some brothers here who have also gone for the COVID-19 test and came out positive.
“They just went for check-up, got tested and came out positive. As a result of that, a lot of them are scared. In all this, we thank God that there is no African that has been reported to have died of the pandemic.”
•Inside India’s Covid-19 hospital
Mrs Janefrances Fortune, who operates a restaurant in India, bemoaned the ravaging effects of the pandemic on their businesses, saying: “This COVID-19 is on the verge of disorganising our businesses and life here in India. It has not been easy for us as business owners. The number of infected people keeps increasing every day. We no longer go out the way we used to, business is very dull.”
She added: “Some of us who are with kids no longer feel safe again going out with our kids. These days, I leave my kids with their dad at home to take care of them while I run around to get things done in my shop.
“Sometimes, most of our customers prefer home delivery because they don’t also feel safe coming out to a public place. We all pray that with time, this too will pass and things will be normal again.
“We know that people back home are worried about us. They are really worried about us. But about returning home to Nigeria this time, I can’t risk that. We are also concerned about our loved ones over there. We always call to check up on them.
“The Indian government is trying their best to control it. I really commend their efforts. Indian citizens respect their government and always abide by the rules and regulations, unlike we Nigerians.”
Faustina Ebube, a Nursing student, decried the effects of the pandemic on her education.
She said: “We are only doing online classes for now. We don’t have to go to the hospital or school, and because of this, we are not doing practicals; we are only doing theories.
“But they say practice makes perfect. Without the practical aspect, you cannot learn and perfect what you have been taught.
“I am worried about my mum and my dad and siblings. People here at a point took COVID-19 for granted as if it had already gone, but it came back with so much force.
“Nigerians are putting up the same attitude. If the same thing happens in Nigeria, I don’t think the government will be able to do anything to save the people.
“In spite of the fact that the hospitals here are very big and well equipped, beds are no longer available for patients. I am really worried for my people back at home.”
Also lamenting the effects of the lockdown on the cost of living in India, Ebube said: “Prices of goods have increased because of the pandemic and it is not all the shops that are allowed to open. Only businesses that are into essential services are allowed to operate, and their prices have been very high.
“I don’t eat Indian food and have to buy things from African market to make things for myself. But most of the things are not coming again from Nigeria because of the surge in the pandemic. The ones available here are very expensive because of the increase in demand, and it is not fair to us as students here in India,
“I am not willing to return home because of the security challenges at home. The only thing that can make me want to come home is my family. Seriously, Nigeria is not safe. I have been reading the news lately. Nigeria is not safe at all.
“I am always checking up on my family to know if they are safe. If I have the power, I will do everything to take them out of Nigeria. Seriously, I am not willing to return to Nigeria.”
Fears spread
A former Public Relations Officer of All India Nigerian Students and Community Association (AINSCA), Samuel Dickson, said the COVID-19 pandemic in India has been a very horrific experience.
“We fear for our lives each passing day,” he said. “There is huge fear among Nigerians here in India. Our parents are waiting for us back home. So we fear for our lives. We have been following the guidelines in order not to contract the deadly virus.
“As things stand now in India, this second wave has spread very fast. It is spreading wide, but we keep praying that God will help the government to combat the pandemic, because they have been working tirelessly together with their researchers, doctors, scientists, including law enforcement agencies, to stem the tide.
“Here the citizens obey instructions and the law.”
Going down memory lane, he said: “In March 2020, there was a lockdown which lasted for six months before the government started relaxing it. When the second wave started, the government imposed a curfew from 10 pm to 5am.
“Later on, they introduced a fresh lockdown for 10 days starting from April 26. But when the cases kept rising in thousands, they extended the lockdown till May 2 with a probability that there may be complete lockdown subsequently. Now there are a huge number of deaths and new cases coming up every day. For me, I fear for my life, those of my friends, and others. The experience is very horrific.
“Social and economic life has not been the same again. Imagine yourself staying at home during this lockdown. We have bills to pay. This is not our fatherland. Here we live in rented apartments. We buy food and water and pay for electricity.
“It hasn’t been easy. It has been a very tough one. As Nigerians, we can no longer socialise as we used to. As it stands now, not more than 58 people are expected to be in any gathering. For now, there is no gathering of Nigerians.
“We don’t even go to church or go out for the purpose of earning livelihood. It has affected us enormously. There is a shortage of beds and oxygen because of the large number of cases they are having every day.”
Like other respondents before him, Dickson said: “There is possibly no way for us to come back home. We also fear for our families back home because of insecurity. There is also the problem of high cost of living in Nigeria, which is highly uncalled for. It stresses the citizens. It is just so frustrating for us.
“In terms of the vaccines, they are made available to everyone by the Indian government. Last year, our association gave palliatives to Africans in different states in India. The Nigeria High Commission also gave out palliatives with few individuals making contributions to that effect.”
One of the leaders of the Nigerian community in India, who identified himself simply as Bakare, said they didn’t expect what is happening in the Asian country now.
Bakare said: “This second wave of the pandemic here in India was unexpected. It is spreading like wildfire and people are dying.
“It is really affecting the Indians because of their population and because of the way they gather together during their festivals. In our own case, we have stopped going to church or mosque and even meetings.
“Our people back home are worried and we are also worried. Because of the situation back at home, we are scared of coming.
“In spite of the situation here, this place is more peaceful. Nigeria is not worth coming back to for now with the unpleasant stories we are hearing about insecurity and scarcity of food, among others.”
Nigerians shun hospitals, fear they could be injected with virus
For many Africans resident in India, particularly Nigerians, going to hospital to complain about any kind of ailment is out of it for now. Some of them fear that any African that goes to the hospital may be injected with the virus as they have grown envious that the black communities are not affected by the pandemic.
Licoln, a business man said: “We are scared of going to some hospitals because they are not happy that blacks are not contracting the virus. No black person, from my findings, has contracted it. It is just that any black person that is sick should just be careful because they can be labeled as carriers of the virus.
“Anybody that dies right now of either kidney failure or whatever, they see them as Coronavirus patients and would have their bodies cremated. It is a dicey situation. We are all at a standstill.
“We are calling on the Nigerian government to see what they can do. Our embassy is not working properly. The new ambassador that has been posted here is still in London because of the pandemic. We are just in the hands of God.”
He further said: “When the second wave started, you would see people walking on the street and falling down. The opposition party is saying that they should go on full lockdown but the prime minister is begging and asking that they should see how they can administer the vaccines which they have been selling to other parts of the world to enable their economy to thrive.
“Their economy was badly affected in 2020. Now the pandemic is growing at an alarming rate.
“Our family members and friends back at home and other places are calling to check on us. But there is no case of a black person or Nigerian contracting the virus. The Nigerian government has to look into the area of getting its citizens protected.”
Asked if he would be willing to return to the country, which has a very low record of the pandemic, Lincoln shared pictures and videos of killings and news of kidnappers asking for ransom in Nigerian with our reporter and asked: “Is this where you want us to return to? If we are asked to return home, I don’t think any Nigerian will be willing to go back.
“I have been seeing some gory pictures, some horrible videos from Nigeria. The situation in our country is so pathetic. Nigeria is not safe, my brother. People are not willing to come; I will not lie to you.”
Another respondent, Ann, also nurses the fear of being infected with the virus if she goes to any hospital over there.
“I am also scared of going to the hospital because I don’t want them to infect me with coronavirus. They restrict us from doing so many things here because we are Africans. I have financial problems because it is not easy getting money from Nigeria.”
Nigerians shun vaccines, resort to local measures
Africans in India, aside from adhering to the COVID-19 preventive protocols, are said to be depending more on local preventive measures to avoid the deadly virus.
Malik, a resident, said: “We are actually taking preventive measures as African communities here. We are always enlightening ourselves on what to do whenever we feel any symptom.
“If we decide to go to the hospital, you know what it means. We are also applying our local measures. We use dogoyaro leaves with ginger and garlic. We boil them together and consume them for prevention purposes.
“Pune City has a high rate of COVID-19 infection rate, yet they are the ones producing the vaccines. Many are actually taking the vaccines but they are still dying. I don’t think the vaccines are working.
“Meanwhile some Africans are not taking it.”
Maik added: “What we are hearing in the news is that beginning from May, they will embark on a strategic plan to make sure that everybody takes it. So many people have taken it already.
“The pandemic wiped out three Indian families in just one week in the same Pune City where the vaccine is produced. The safety of the vaccine is minus 100 per cent in my own view.
“I don’t know what the plan is now for May 1 when they will be embarking on a very serious vaccination exercise.
“Many Africans are not going to take it; I am sure of that. If that would be the case, many would just have to go back to their country.”
As part of Nigerians’ strategy for staying safe, Bakare, a leader of the Nigerian community in India, said: The elders and the executive of Nigerian communalities always caution our people against going out anyhow. We have stopped meetings in all our communities. I don’t think any African community is having problems with the pandemic. It is only the Indians that are facing it.”
Why we can’t evacuate citizens yet – FG
The Nigerian authorities said they cannot evacuate the citizens until there is a request to that effect.
The spokesman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Rahman Balogun, said: “Evacuation of Nigerians is a policy matter. You have to ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is when it is decided that Nigerians are under threat that the ministry would direct us to work out the modalities for evacuation.”
Contacted, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ferdinand Nwoye, said: “Evacuation is done on request. It is when the people there indicate that they are helpless in most cases. It is not like the federal government goes out to evacuate; we just coordinate it.
“They will pay for their tickets and, through the embassy, we profile them. I don’t think there is any request, to my knowledge.”
The demolition of Government Reservation Area (GRA) Benin homes of three frontline indigenes of Edo State while judgments were yet to be delivered on pending suits has heightened tension in the volatile state, writes South-south Bureau Chief, BISI OLANIYI.
March 23 will remain etched in the memories of frontline All Progressives’ Congress (APC) chiefs, their family members and other supporters of the party whose houses were demolished by the bulldozers rolled out by the Godwin Obaseki-led PDP government in the state.
Dr. Pius Odubu, the deputy to former National Chairman of APC Comrade Adams Oshiomhole while the latter held sway as governor; a former Secretary to Edo State Government and the member representing Owan Constituency in the House of Representatives, Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, and a sports enthusiast, Mr. Mike Itemuagbon, all had their houses demolished in an exercise that remains a shock to many residents of the city.
The government had hinted at its decision to demolish the said houses when it published the revocation of the certificates of occupancy of a list of houses in the state government-owned Observer newspaper. The selective demolition of the houses belonging to APC members, however, sparked outrage among residents who interpreted the move as sheer political vendetta because other houses belonging to PDP members in the area were spared.
Governor Obaseki had defected from APC to PDP in the build-up to the last governorship election in the state to pursue his re-election bid after failing to pick APC’s ticket over issues that bordered on his certificates.
Critics of the demolition exercise wondered why Odubu’s house located directly opposite the guest house of the current SSG, Osarodion Ogie, was demolished while Ogie neither had his Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) revoked nor had his house demolished. Two of Odubu’s younger brothers, Joseph and Progress, were said to be the occupants of the house together with their wives and children at the time it was demolished.
At the time the bulldozers began to demolish Odubu’s house, Joseph’s wife, Precious Odubu, was said to have gone to nearby Osadebe Avenue while her baby was asleep in the massive and tastefully-furnished building. Rushing back home on learning about the demolition exercise, she was said to have gone down on her knees and pleaded desperately with the law enforcement agents that accompanied the bulldozers to allow her to retrieve her baby.
While the security agents granted her permission to retrieve the infant, further pleading by Precious that they should give her 20 minutes to retrieve some valuable items in the house fell on deaf ears as she was reportedly pushed out by members of the demolition team who told her that they had Obaseki’s instruction to “crush” everything in the three affected houses.
The demolition team from Government House, Benin, accompanied by fully armed soldiers, riot policemen and personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), had gained entry into the compound through the back of the house after pulling down the high fence. Without allowing any of the occupants to remove any item from the massive building, the bulldozer immediately began to bring down the building from the back.
Recalling her ugly experience, Precious said at about 4 pm on March 23, she had noticed some strange looking soldiers, policemen and NSCDC personnel in the neighbourhood, following which she politely approached them and demanded to know their mission only for her to later discover that they were there to demolish the house and render the two families that occupied the building homeless.
Odubu’s cousin, Dennis Eribo, an engineer, who our correspondent met in the demolished house when he visited, said he was living in the building before he moved to his own house in another part of the city but had to rush down to the house to see things for himself after he was told that Obaseki’s bulldozers had moved against it.
Eribo said he noticed that more than 20 riot policemen, 10 soldiers and many personnel of NSCDC accompanied the demolition team from Government House, Benin, contrary to claims earlier made by the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Edo State Police Command, Bello Kontongs, a Superintendent of Police (SP).
Eribo said the demolished house contained fully-loaded wardrobes and expensive electronics, electrical appliances, kitchen utensils and other household items, in addition to the well furnished living rooms and bedrooms.
He said: “Dr. Pius Odubu was the deputy to
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole for eight years. Everybody knows that Comrade Oshiomhole will never freely allocate government’s plots or houses to anybody.
“Dr. Odubu, as Edo deputy governor, bid for the then deputy governor’s guest house, got approval and it was gazette. He paid and got the C of O just like Ogie (current Edo SSG) and others.
“Why will APC chieftains’ C of Os be revoked while those of the loyalists of Obaseki will be spared? Surprisingly, the alloactions were approved by Obaseki himself as the Chairman of the Economic Team in Oshiomhole’s administration for almost eight years.
“The plots of land and houses of the APC’s chieftains were legally acquired and due process was followed. Ogie (SSG) and Edo deputy governor, Philip Shaibu, have their houses directly opposite Golf Course in the same GRA, which were acquired through the same process, but their own houses were not demolished and their C of Os were not revoked.
“Obaseki or Edo State Government ought to have notified Dr. Odubu and others of the planned demolition in order for the former deputy governor to inform his younger brothers and their families to vacate the property rather than crushing the valuable items. That was a display of pure bitterness and brazen impunity.”
Eribo also said at the time of the demolition, Progress Odubu’s wife was not at home but in her shop, only to be alerted and to quickly return home to see the huge destruction of their valuable property.
Oshiomhole’s former deputy, Odubu, who was earlier screened and cleared as chairman of the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) but was yet to be inaugurated along with other members of the board over intrigues and power play, said the action of the state government was really unfortunate and least expected because the matter was pending before a court of competent jurisdiction.
Odubu said: “I read in the Edo State Government owned Nigerian Observer newspaper in January this year that the C of O of my property situated at Dennis Osadebe Avenue in GRA, Benin City has been revoked without prior notice given to me.
“The information came to me in the afternoon of Tuesday, March 23, 2021 that my property situated at Dennis Osadebe Avenue, Benin City had been brought down by agents of Edo State Government on the directive of Governor Godwin Obaseki.
“My younger brothers and members of their families were in the house when it was brought down and they did not give them notice or allow them to remove any of their property before destroying the house.”
At the demolished residence of Ihonvbere, which was still under construction at No. 8, Omo-Osagie Avenue, beside Morshoria Residence (No. 10) and almost opposite the mansion of Austin Alegeh, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), a security man, John Wilfred, expressed surprise that only the federal lawmaker’s house was singled out for demolition in the neighbourhood.
Wilfred also said that stern looking soldiers, policemen and personnel of NSCDC accompanied the demolition team.
Ihonvbere told our reporter on the telephone that he had left Obaseki’s matter to God over the March 23 demolition of his GRA, Benin house, stressing that it was not the end of the world.
The federal lawmaker said: “The vindictive Governor Godwin Obaseki of the PDP is behind the demolition of my house in GRA, Benin City.
“My demolished house has approved building plan, while the C of O was approved by Godwin Obaseki as the Chairman of the Economic Team in the administration of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
“When Governor Obaseki suddenly revoked the C of O of my house in January this year without giving any reason, I filed a suit to challenge the decision. The case is still pending in court but Obaseki opted to demolish my house. He will not be Edo governor forever.”
Ihonvbere, an APC chieftain, also urged his supporters to remain calm in the face of provocation.
The demolished well-furnished two-bedroom bungalow of Itemuagbon, also a chieftain of APC, is located behind Odubu’s house that was pulled down, separated by a fence. The bulldozer that demolished the house had entered through the gate of the sports enthusiast’s residence.
At the time of the demolition, according to Eribo, the building was being occupied by the sports enthusiast’s personal assistant (P.A.), Mr. Sixtus Omokhagbor, who also lost all his property while Itemuagbon’s Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), a Montero Mitsubishi with registration number Lagos LSR 568 AY, would have been crushed by the demolition team but for the pleas made by the security man, whose gate-house apartment was looted by the accompanying thugs.
Omokhagbor was not at the demolished house when our correspondent visited, while his security man declined to speak. Eribo revealed that Odubu’s two younger brothers, Itemuagbon’s P.A. and their families had been rendered homeless and were not allowed to retrieve any item from the demolished houses.
The Edo State chapter of APC, in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Chris Azebamwan, condemned what it called the brazen demolition of the GRA, Benin houses of three of its frontline leaders, which it said should not be condoned in a democracy.
The main opposition party said: “The APC in Edo State condemns the wanton, unwholesome and sacrilegious demolition of the houses belonging to citizens of Edo State by Obaseki-led PDP government.
“Obaseki, about this same time last year, demolished the private property of another APC chieftain, Mr. Tony Kabaka Adun. Unchallenged, he has taken a step further all in a bid to intimidate, suppress, hound, crush and silence his perceived enemies.
“No doubt, it is part of Obaseki’s ‘Make Edo State Great Again’ agenda to regularly and willfully demolish properties belonging to perceived opponents and dissenting or critical voices in the state, in the bid to foist a siege mentality on the citizenry.”
APC in Edo also reiterated that Obaseki had earlier this year revoked the C of Os of the three demolished houses, stressing that the demolition was carried out while the cases were still in court, describing it as unacceptable and amounting to a subversion of the rule of law.
It said: “The proper thing would have been for Edo State Government to wait for the outcome of the court processes. But apparently because it knew that it was pursuing an illegal agenda, it demolished the properties.
“We urge Obaseki to perish the idea of trying to use false claims and propaganda to justify the wicked act, as such cannot hoodwink Edo people from the truth. We also reject this constant invasion of citizen’s privacy and demolition of their property, as it is not only wicked, but cowardly. It is a direct recipe for crisis in our state.
“We caution against future action in this guise, because it is borne out of hatred and political intolerance, in furtherance of the larger plot by the PDP and its administration to destroy the fabric that binds Edo people and eventually overheat the polity.
“Edo people know now that the PDP and its government are unduly hounding, harassing and demolishing property of citizens, for daring to be among compatriots at the forefront of the quest to rescue our state from misrule and strangleholds of a cabal that does not mean well for the people.”
Obaseki, through Edo SSG Ogie, however, justified the demolition of the three houses, saying that the C of O of his plot of land in GRA, Benin, was also revoked.
Ogie’s press statement was titled “Ejection of Illegal Occupants from Edo State Government Property.”
He said: “On December 21, 2020, the Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, revoked the Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) of eleven government properties within the GRA (Benin), which were allotted to former political office holders, companies and private individuals, as parting gifts on the eve of the exit of former Governor Adams Oshiomhole from office.
“One of the properties was allocated to Governor Obaseki and was also revoked.
“The property have been revoked and recovered and therefore automatically belong to the original owner, which is the Government of Edo State. Therefore, the persons occupying the said property are doing so illegally and are trespassers.
“The action taken by the Edo State Government on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, was to evict the trespassers and squatters from the property and effectively take possession of the assets. Therefore, the claims by the affected persons that their personal properties were demolished are false and baseless.”
Edo SSG also stated that one of the properties in question, according to him, to which Odubu laid claim, was actually the official lodge of the SSG, claiming that all SSGs after Oshiomhole’s administration would not have an official residence.
He said: “Some of those affected, including a former governor, have now resorted to media blackmail, when in fact they forcefully (sic) ejected senior academic staff of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) from the government property, only to convert them to their own private use.
“Contrary to insinuations that government embarked on the recovery of the property out of vendetta, the truth is that these are the only remaining property in the GRA that belong to the state government. If they are allowed to be taken over by these private individuals, it means that when government wants to embark on any project within the GRA, it will have to resort to purchasing from the open market.”
Host communities of multinational oil companies and those impacted by their activities in the core Niger Delta states of Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers are said to be experiencing unprecedented rise in death and infection rates following the pervasive pollution of their environments and residents’ consumption of contaminated water, fish and other aquatic food. Many farmers and fishermen have also lost their means of livelihood to environmental pollution, compounding the poverty level and youth restiveness in the areas, INNOCENT DURU reports.
We bury no fewer than six people weekly — Goi monarch
Breast cancer, miscarriage, early menopause hit female population
We’ve been penalising defaulting multinationals, getting compensation for communities — FG
The Sangana Beach in Bayelsa State was recently littered with different sizes of dead fishes suspected to have been killed by the pollution of the water occasioned by oil spills. The sight of dead fishes floating on the river or motionless by the sea shore invokes memories of a scene of genocide where carcasses of human bodies litter the ground.
The incident, according to the natives, who are mainly farmers and fishermen, was just one of the numerous damages and setbacks that incessant oil spills have brought to their communities.
“Our terrain is gone, totally gone. There is no fish in it again and we are suffering,” Noel Ikonikumo, Chairman, United Fishing Union of Sangana Community, told our correspondent in a tone of despondency.
“Oil spill is a serious matter. We experienced it even yesterday. I was on the sea when the spill started. Whenever the spill occurs, we would not see fish in that area again in the next 10 years. Our members have been leaving our area for other places in order to make a catch and take care of their families. There is no way the people that are fishing in the creek can cope because everywhere is contaminated.”
To dissuade people from consuming contaminated fish and contracting life threatening diseases, Noel said many communities, including Sangana, now engage town criers to go round and alert the people to the dangers.
In spite of that, he said, “some people still manage to eat the contaminated fishes because there is nothing they can do. When you eat it, you will perceive the smell of crude oil.
“Periwinkle is one other thing that is almost vanishing from our area. It is one of the things that crude oil normally kills.
“Once crude oil gets to the mangrove, it will remain there for some days before it will melt into the ground. Small crabs are no longer there again too. If this continues for the next four years, I don’t know how the fishermen would cope.”
A former Chairman of Nigerian Medical Association in the state, Dr Michael Azebi, said many of the residents had been presenting myriads of health challenges including diarrhoea, chronic skin diseases and cancer, among others, as a result of their exposure to polluted water and consumption of contaminated fishes and other sea foods.
In Rivers State, pollution of the environment together with the attendant challenges is said to have spiked the death rate, with Goi community in Gokana Local Government Area of the state the worst hit.
“Every week, we bury no fewer than six to seven persons in my area. More than five people have died today. The people who died were just between 25 and 40 years. The water we drink and the polluted environment have increased our mortality rate,” the monarch, Chief Eric Dooli, said.
Basil Nkpordee, a community leader in Ogoni, captured their plight thus: “We are living corpses because the air is polluted and the water too is polluted. We eat the fish from polluted water and we also drink the water because there is no alternative. The pollution in Ogoni is pervasive.
“Oil pollution has become a reccurring decimal in Ogoni land. The activities of oil multinationals have not changed since the late Ken Saro-Wiwa publicly denounced it.
“Many communities here in Ogoni have become environmental refugees because of pollution. One of such communities is Goi. Life is completely dead in that community.
“The presence of oil in Ogoni has brought crisis instead of development, and that is why if anybody crosses the age of 50 here, it calls for celebration.”
Corroborating Basil, Goi’s monarch, Chief Eric, said: “The mortality rate is very high. The amount of sicknesses we have been having here is enormous. We have people with rashes and respiratory problems among others.
“Recently, there was massive death of fishes in the Boni side which also affected our creeks here. Some people who were desperate to get fish to sell and sustain themselves went and packed the dead fishes. Many of the people who bought the polluted fishes and consumed them died. Those concerned are yet to address the issue.
“Many of our chiefs are young people. Look at my age. I am the head of my dynasty in the whole Gokana Kingdom. Many of the council of chiefs’ members in Gokana are small boys who inherited the thrones of their fathers because of the mortality rate caused by high intake of polluted water, food and air.
“The children too are dying in their numbers while the women are having serious miscarriages.”
Friday Mbani, one of the youth leaders in Ogoni, said: “Life expectancy is becoming very short here in Ogoni. The only thing we are always inviting people for is burial. The elderly chiefs we have are only in their 40s.”
A traditional chief in Gbaramatu Kingdom of Delta State, who doubles as the National Coordinator of Centre for Peace and Environmental Justice, Comrade Sheriff Mulade, said the same problems apply in Delta State.
“In fact, the surface of our land is destroyed. No agriculture can take place in this environment. The water body is contaminated and you cannot use it for anything.
“As Ijaw people, our means of survival is the fish and the river. Today, we cannot drink from the river or bathe with the water. It causes untimely death,” Mulade said.
He alleged that “if there is a spill in any of the multinational companies, it is the same companies that will provide logistics. They will fly National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) to Warri. The same company that caused the spill will lodge them in a hotel. They will be the one to convey them to the spill location. So, what do you expect? It is what the company wants that the environmental agency will agree to. Then the community will stand alone.”
Strange diseases hit communities
Following the enormity of the pollution in the communities, residents said they have continued to witness and lose their beloved ones to sicknesses that were hitherto not found in the areas.
“Before now, we had not experienced cancer. But today, breast cancer is the order of the day, as well as typhoid fever and malaria, all because of oil pollution,” Nkpordee, an Ogoni community leader said.
Asked about the connection between oil pollution and cancer, he said: “I earlier told you that we eat polluted fish. If you go to Goi community and you meet a fisher man that is coming from the creek and buy a fish from him, when you open the fish, you will see that there is oil in it.
•Crude oil spreading on water
“Research has shown and proved that the reason why the women have breast cancer is that they are the ones that like to eat the head of fish.
“The gill of the fish absorbs the crude oil and they find it difficult to clean the oil from the gill. Therefore, eating the fish’s head makes them to suffer cancer.
“We contacted health personnel to know why there has been pervasive cancer in the land and they told us it occurs as a result of the contaminated fish consumed by Ogoni people, especially the head of fish.
“Between 2018 and 2020, more than 20 persons died of cancer of the breast, which was so strange in Ogoniland.”
Nkpordee further said: “In Isisioke, the well that is consumed by the people contains benzene, which also causes cancer. For the fact that they don’t have alternative means to get water, they keep drinking this water and thereby contact these diseases.
“In a community called Kani in Gokana Local Government Area, there is no single oil well. But when it rains, the colour of the rain water is black. In Ogoniland before now, when it rained, we used to bathe with rain water, drink and use it for domestic purposes. But because of the high rate of pollution, rain water is no longer usable because it is black.
“Even when you place a bucket at the centre of your compound and rain falls into it directly from heaven, the colour of the water is black. It is a very pathetic situation.
“When oil came, we thought that it was oil. We never knew that it was blood, because its presence has done us more harm than good. We have lost generations of leaders because of the oil multinationals.
“It was stated in UNEP report that Isisioke should be given emergency water, but up till now, nothing has been done.”
Women and children according to Friday Mbani, an Ogoni youth leader, are more vulnerable to the health problems.
He said: “The pollution is causing many of the women to have menopausal problems. When you see a young girl, she will tell you she is not seeing her period again. I am a practitioner in the medical field, and many people bring their issues to me.
“It appears there is a conspiracy between the government and the multinational oil companies to destroy life in Ogoni land and the Niger Delta as a region.
“No wonder many of the plants and the animals that we were used to are no longer there now. It is hard to see a vulture here. Even butterfly, you can’t find it again. Many medicinal plants and trees are not there again.”
Ayiba Tonye, a fish seller in Sangana area of Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, said she and many other women had developed itchy skin from using the polluted water. The problem, according to Ayiba is called ‘sweetie’ among the people because it is enjoyable scratching it.
“Pregnant women whose pregnancies are not strong perceive the toxic smell and have miscarriages. A young girl lost her four-month-old pregnancy recently.
“It is also causing sweetie for us. Sweetie in our place is skin rash that swells and brings out water when you scratch your body. I have it on my body as I am talking to you now. I have gone to the hospital but the rash refused to go.”
Kroma County, another fish seller in the area, corroborated Ayiba’s claim.
She said: “As women, we sometimes go to the waterside to wash our body. The oil in the water causes infections for us. We do have rashes after bathing with the water.
“Whenever we have infections, we go to the chemist for medications. We don’t have access to potable water. Whenever it rains, the water would be dark and look like smoke.”
Pollution renders fishermen, farmers idle
Fishermen and farmers are said to have been badly hit by the level of pollution in the region. The land and the rivers are massively polluted, rendering the people jobless and incapable of fending for their families.
According to the Rise for Bayelsa Campaign, an online platform, about 40 million litres of oil are spilled every year across the Niger Delta.
Amnesty International in one of its reports described the Niger Delta as Africa’s most important oil-producing region and one of the most polluted places on earth.
Chief Eric of Goi Community, Rivers State, said oil spillage has had a telling effect on fishing and farming in the community. “There has been no source of livelihood again since this thing has been happening. There is nothing like fish for the fishermen to catch.
“The little they are getting now is not enough to sustain the community. They go as far as Boni and Andoni areas to look for fish. We no longer find periwinkle and oyster shell in our area.”
Asked about the effect on farmers, the monarch said: “Whatever affects the fishermen also affects the farmers. Fishing and farming are the basic things that our people depend on for their sustenance.
“The spillage has also affected the crops cultivated. The harvest is nothing to write home about. Imagine an okro seed that you plant producing one big okro on its head and that would be the end. This is what people plant and harvest for three to four months in some other places.
“Our people here don’t benefit from agricultural seeds that the federal government gives to farmers in the north. For example, fertilisers and improved seedlings were given to farmers in the north but none of such was given to our farmers.
“Majority of our people have been displaced because of all these challenges. They have migrated to other places where they can get land to farm and sustain their families. Their income has been badly affected.
“Even if the problem is addressed, the government is supposed to make the oil companies to provide alternative means of livelihood for the people.”
While lamenting the damage that oil spills do to their fishing equipment, the Chairman of United Fishing Union of Sangana Community, Bayelsa, Noel, said they had been forced to go into the ocean in search of fish since they no longer get fishes to catch in the creeks and swamps.
“If the spill affects your fishing equipment, then it means they are gone forever. We always have to buy another one each time such a problem occurs.
“Unfortunately for us, fishing equipment has become very expensive. We always have to apply for loan to get money to buy new equipment, but it is always not certain the application for loan will succeed.
“We are crying to the oil companies to make sure they give us compensation or assist us to upgrade our fishing materials so that we can go deep into the sea. If you have a low powered engine, you cannot make a good catch.
“Our efforts to reach out to the oil companies are fruitless. We have written series of letters to government bodies without any response.”
The immediate past paramount ruler of Kalaba community, ayelsa State, Chief Roman Joe Orukali, regretted that the exploration of oil in the land has badly affected their farming and fishing business.
He said: “Several spills have occurred in our environment and they were not cleaned up, and when flood occurs, it carries these crude materials to our farms and cause serious damage to them and our fishing areas.
“The produce this time is nothing to write home about. In those days when oil pollution had not been much in the environment, we were producing a lot of food and even taking them to the market. But this time around, the produce are so small.
“The same thing applies to the fishes too. Some of our people no longer go into fishing in some areas because some of the swamps have been destroyed and there is no way to carry out fishing activity.
“When we no longer carry our produce to the market, definitely our income reduces. We find it difficult to even sponsor some of our children in school because the income is no longer there.”
The visibly disturbed chief further said: “Some of the fishes die inside the river and when the environment is no longer conducive for the fishes to live, they have to look for a place that is convenient for them.
“I know of a place where the spill occurred around my community in 2012 and till now, if you kill fish there and eat it, it will seem as if you are drinking crude oil. We thank God that we also have a running creek from where we manage to get fish to eat, but the catch is not as it used to be because of the pollution in our environment.
“We need assistance from all the multinational companies and even the government.”
Women who sell fish to augment the income of their husbands also decried the development in the community.
“When our men return from fishing, we would buy from them and resell to strangers. That has been what gives us the income that we use to train our children. Two of my children are in the university.
“The business is not what it used to be because of the spillage. The fishes are dying in the river as if the end of the world is approaching. If you take the fish home to cook and eat, you are sure to have sickness.
“Some of the dead fishes would already be rotten when they float on the water with maggot coming out from their heads. If you take it home to cook, you will find crude oil flowing inside them. If you eat it, you will contract sickness.
“The government takes our oil and we are suffering here with our children,” Ayiba Tonye, of Sangana Community, Bayelsa State, said.
Ayiba’s kinswoman, Kroma County, also lamented that the spillage does not allow them to get fish.
County said: “The fish you would sometimes see in the river would be floating, meaning that they have died. When you even manage to bring it home, you would not be able to eat it because the smell of fuel will be all over it.
“My husband is a fisherman but he doesn’t catch fish so well again. At times, they will buy fuel inside canoe with the little money they have, hoping that they would catch fish and make money after selling it, but at the end of the day, they return home without catching anything.
“This spillage is causing us untold hardship. Everywhere you go, there is no fish. Before now, we used to have fish in excess. I used to buy and sell fish, but now I don’t get a good number of fish to buy.
“I now sell provision, but people hardly buy provision if they don’t catch fish. Once there is no fish, business crumbles. We are not government workers and dot no get salaries. When they catch large quantity of fish everybody feels happy and goes out of their ways to buy things.
“It is fishing that we are living on. To pay the children’s school fees is even a problem.”
Economic setback fuelling youth restiveness
The menace of oil spills and the attendant economic effects on the people is said to be partly responsible for the escalation of violence in the Niger Delta.
A youth leader in Ogoni, Friday Mbani, said because of the poor living standard in the communities, “you will find communal clashes, conflicts everywhere.
“As we are talking now, if the community is aware that I am talking about oil issue, they will think somebody has given me money, and if you don’t manage the situation very well, it will turn into something else.
“This is why you will be hearing that Ogoni is a violent region. We are not actually violent.”
Benjamin Warder, a former youth leader in lkarama area of Bayelsa State, shared Friday’s line of thought. “Of course, the Niger Delta people are farmers and fishermen. Our farm lands and rivers have been degraded and polluted. Oil pollution has affected us economically.
“White collar jobs are not easily seen and found here. Whatever affects the community affects the youths also. It has a general effect on the society. This increases the crime rate in the society.
“For me as a youth leader, I have been advocating that the government and the multi- national oil companies should look into engaging the youths in skill development and craft development, so that everyone could be meaningfully engaged and not wait for white collar jobs. But some of those advocacies have not yielded any benefits for now.”
Bemoaning the negative impact of oil spill in Bayelsa and the Niger Delta at large, renowned environmentalist, Morris Allagoa, noted that crude oil has a very toxic effect on the environment. “If you pour crude oil in a well grassed area and you come back after a week, you will see all the grass dying. If it spills on a river, you would see the fishes and even the crocodiles and snails dying because of the chemical composition of crude oil. It is very, very inimical to the environment in terms of denying the people their means of livelihood.”
He further said: “When lakes or swamps where people are supposed to make money from are affected by crude oil, the fishes would all die. Those that will survive will find ways to migrate from that environment.
“That is how it even happens on the sea. That is how it denies the fishermen, fisher women and farmers of their livelihoods. It also denies them of their good health.
“Some of them come down with different types of sicknesses. Respiratory problem is more rampant. We are also denied of potable water.
“The people’s only source of water is the river or the rain water, but these have been affected by gas flaring.”
Residents present myriads of mild, chronic sicknesses —Medical expert
A former chairman of Nigeria Medical Association, Bayelsa State chapter, Dr Michael Azebi, in an interview with our correspondent, noted that there is great relationship between oil exploration and exploitation and certain health challenges suffered by the people in the Niger
Delta, particularly in the oil bearing communities, who have direct impact of the effects of oil pollution.
He said: “Crude oil is mainly hydrocarbon, and when hydrocarbons get in contact with the land, it depletes the nutrients so the land won’t be fertile. You can’t really plant things. It also pollutes the ground water as well as the surface water.
“Because of the level of poverty in these environments, people depend on the surface water and the few that can afford to sink boreholes don’t have the means of treating them. They only filter the water for their daily consumption.
“Without proper treatment, even the water that is sourced from borehole is still within the level of water that has been polluted by the hydrocarbon that pollute the land. Either through the surface water where you can actually see the oil floating or the shallow boreholes sunk by individuals, the people get water that is polluted, which invariably affects them.”
“The immediate effect, according to Azebi, is that some of them have infections like diarrhoea. “Those who bathe with the water with the oil floating in it have allergic skin infections. Some of them have chronic skin infections with the skin looking like that of crocodile. It comes with one itchy complaint or the other. “We also know that hydrocarbon is not bio-degradable, so, somehow, it gets into the system.
“We have also seen cases where people living in this environment tend to have chronic illnesses, and one of them is respiratory tract infections. Some have developed chronic bronchitis, some have developed asthma conditions.
‘Even for those who don’t have asthma running in their families, you see them developing asthma at an age they are not expected to develop it. So, we have asthmatic diseases, bronchitis which are inflation of the lungs, as well as other chronic conditions that have led to cancer of the lungs in people who are not known to be active or passive smokers.”
Continuing, he said: “We have also seen some congenital abnormalities in some children that are delivered by people who are resident in the oil bearing communities. The effects of hydrocarbon is very, very massive in the environment.
“The other one that we know is as a direct effect of gas flaring. The hydrocarbon that gets into the air is converted to acid when the rain falls. So we have what is called acid rain.
“Poor people who manage to buy corrugated iron sheets to build their houses don’t enjoy them for long. As it rains for two or three seasons, all the roofing sheets will turn brown and begin to rust.
“Because of scarcity of water, people collect rain water. But the rain water they collect for consumption is polluted because hydrocarbons are massive in the atmosphere and any particulate matter in the atmosphere does not disappear into the atmosphere; it will come back when it rains, and that will also pollute the water we drink.
“When the river is polluted, every of its content is also polluted. Apart from the fact you can hardly see fish in our rivers, the few that survive and are caught have every trace of oil pollution in them.
“When you remove the gills, you will see oil in them. When you wash them and boil, you will also see oil floating in the water you use to wash them before cooking.
“The main content of crude oil is hydrocarbon. If you consume hydrocarbon, since it is not bio-degradable, it finds its way into your cells and it is a big problem on ground.”
He submitted that the multinational companies know about the problems but “because we have a system where the government does not care about the citizens, we have them work unchallenged.
“The few times the indigenes have tried to take the law into their hands, it is the same government that sends the police and soldiers to disperse them.
“When you look at what happens in civilised countries like America when similar things happen, they go to the extent of getting adequate compensation. But it is not the same here.
“That women in the environment develop breast cancer is true because of the fact that the pollution we get from hydrocarbon can get into the cells. Transformation of cells when there is pollution of hydrocarbon can lead to skin cancer, and breast is one of the appendages, so it can also lead to breast cancer.”
We’ve been penalising defaulting multinationals, getting compensation for communities —FG
The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) says it has always responded promptly to complaints of oil spills in the Niger Delta region and penalised defaulting polluters.
The Director Oil Spill Assessment Department, Olubunmi Akindele, said: “Oil spill response is a process that starts with notification, and having received the notification, it is expected to be followed with joint investigation which includes the host community or communities impacted.
“At the stage of joint investigation, we identify the cause, and if we find the cause to be third party, there is no compensation but there will be clean-up. Most of the clean-ups were done by engaging the communities and the sites.
“We do a lot in making sure that it is done in good time to put the environment back to use. We have been receiving public complaints and have been resolving them.
“If the spill is caused by the company through negligence, we go about doing damage assessment after which the communities are entitled to compensation. After evaluation, there is monetary compensation.
“Sometimes, some oil companies even provide relief materials for the communities, but we have always insisted on fair and adequate compensation.”
He dismissed allegations by Mulade that multinationals provide logistics for NOSDRA.
“Anybody can say anything; it is for you to verify. Investigation is always done jointly with the participation of the community. Everybody decides and agrees that the spill is caused by an oil company or vandals.
“The person who alleges must prove it. If he doesn’t, then it is a little more of frustration. We are cock sure that our staff don’t get engaged in these things you are talking about.”
Reacting to complaints by the communities that it takes a long time before they can do meaningful business after an oil spill, Akindele said: “When a place is contaminated, the responsibility of the polluter is to restore the impacted site. After recovery, they can go back to their businesses.
“Are those places not re-polluted by the communities? Sometimes they don’t allow for clean-up. Sometimes we have to intervene to allow for the intervention of the polluter. It doesn’t have to be.
“If you re-pollute by way of doing illegal refining or vandalisation, the place would not recover, it would be re-polluted.
“The lifeline for recovery is about six years. After the place has been remediated, you need to leave it for natural attenuation. If the natural attenuation is not allowed, the place would not recover.
“There should be awareness campaign in this regard. The incident is not on the person who broke pipeline or illegal refining but on the community at large that suffers damage to natural resources, impacted environment.”
On what the agency does to polluters who fail to clean the spill, he said: “We have penalised oil companies that defaulted in the past. For instance, if they don’t report spills, we sanction them, and if they fail to pay, we will go and enforce our directive.
Specifically, we have succeeded in bringing old APPMC into compliance by so doing. There is a company we sanctioned and we are in appeal court in Benin now.
“We are always taking steps to make sure that they comply. But that is not our ultimate goal. We make sure that they voluntarily comply without forcing them.
“There is a platform by which we engage them to sensitize them on early reporting of spill and adequate clean-up. If they don’t clean up, we ask them to go back.”
Tracking hard drugs to Lagos from international highways
Meet the policeman who takes his six-year-old twin sons to crack joint
This is the dream of a Lagos crack dealer: to see the sun rise daily in its silvery splendour while the city stirs to hustle and thrill seekers pursue a new kind of “jonzing.”
His name is Kola but “customers” call him O’ngbana. At 49, O’ngbana swaggers through Ipodo like a cocky prince of the barrio. Amid the shanty in Ikeja, Lagos, he made a killing everyday until COVID-19 struck, dwindling patronage to a trickle.
Business is at a scary low. A dribble here, a trickle there, makes O’ngbana very worried. “People don’t have money to eat let alone smoke crack (adulterated cocaine). But I have my loyal customers. Come rain or shine, they will always show up,” he said, and forlornly recalled the glory days of his hustle, when he made as much as N10, 000 in a day and about N50, 000 in a week, dealing crack and Indian Hemp.
Before the pandemic, O’ngbana enjoyed cozy patronage as “students, teenagers commercial sex workers, street urchins, police officers and soldiers” thronged his stall for their daily fix. “Patronage often increased around midnight, especially on weekends, when customers (persons with drug dependence) sought me out,” he said.
Proudly asserting his dominance in the seedy settlement, he led me down a rough tract into an alley, explaining how to locate him on a week day and a weekend. We walked down Ipodo’s dingy streets into a decrepit shed built as an outcrop from a begrimed bungalow.
Outside, a smothering stench clung to the air, like a warning through the maze of heads and bloodshot eyes, burning holes into our frames. Inside, a stunning stash of drugs — crack cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, authentic cannabis and its clones shimmered atop a wooden table. The hard drugs are designed to mimic the effects of Schedule I and II substances like unadulterated cocaine, heroin and amphetamines — and every single one of them is illegal.
At the extreme left of the joint, a buxom girl crushed rocks of crack and ecstasy pills into a fine powder. Skillfully, she mixed them with cannabis and dusted the powder with a plastic spoon into jars containing psychotropic brews including omi gota (Gutter Juice), colorado, pamilerin.
The owner of the lab, Ralph, who recognised me from a previous encounter at O’ngbana’s stall, approached me with a smile. He was eager to transact a prospective business venture – though fictive – with me. He relished the idea of supplying N80, 000 worth of crack and heroin for a supposed bachelor’s eve party for my best friend. “I will be expecting you,” he enthused as we departed his den.
It was enlightening to watch Ralph work. He presided over his den with studious attention. Nothing evaded him. Within the five minutes that we spent in his den, he sold N38, 000 worth of hard drugs.
O’ngbana revealed, that, having conducted due diligence on me, Ralph concluded that I wasn’t a cop hence his acceptance of my patronage. “Everybody here is wary of new faces. Nobody wants trouble from undercover drug police,” said O’ngbana.
But for all his street smarts, O’ngbana has been reduced to just a middle man, a dispensable fragment of the Ipodo drug trafficking network. “The pandemic has ruined everything. I have lost the high level contacts that I struggled to build in the past four years. But I will get out of this place soon,” he said, vowing to join the big league in Europe and South America.
Until then, the 49-year-old would focus on getting by and staying alive. To achieve this, he keeps a mane of menacing wit and killer instinct to lionise his feeble frame against the street elements.
It’s a necessary performance of will cum survival in Ipodo, a neighbourhood brimming with drug dealers, cutthroat rivals, unforgiving henchmen, suicidal customers and corrupt law enforcers.
“These days, I have resorted to hooking customers up with dealers. This barely fetches me N3, 000 in a week,” he said, stressing that the most sensible thing he had done in recent times, was to use his earnings to acquire an “oloso” (commercial sex hawker), whom he apprenticed to a madame and Ralph, a crack dealer. Her name is Happiness and she is 14-years-old.
“I have invested over N30, 000 on her. But she is a fast learner. My friend, who is her boss said she has brought in more clients than bonafide members of his crew and the freelancers he employs to deal drugs,” said O’ngbana.
There is no gainsaying Happiness has learned to play her part; the blithesome sheaf of spunk and baby fat exchanges sex for money while simultaneously dealing crack cocaine and heroin to some of her customers.
A drug dealer mixes gutter juice with cocaine purchased in Ipodo
At our first encounter, she sashayed, flailing like a rag doll bound in an extremely tight camisole and undersized skirt. Happiness hustled like a street-wise cougar. Striking a pose outside KO’s Gardens, a brothel, she canvassed for male customers promising to fulfill every fantasy and its fruits.
Soon after she emerged from her room with a customer, she sidled beside a a middle-aged man sipping beer at a table by the brothel’s entrance. Happiness sat beside him teasing him with a smile.
Sparse dialogue, crushing banality, you simply dismiss the likelihood of anything happening until she leaned in and reached for his member, tracing her fingers along its length “in search of the cap.”
Seguing from street pidgin to neat English, she said, “Na street sense na,” she said, bragging that no man could refuse her “magic fingers” and teen-hellcat poise.
“Some men are sick like that,” she segued to neater English. “Many of my customers pick me because I am a small girl and I am very good. But I know what I am doing. I hope to make enough money to buy my freedom and set up a small business,” she said.
Until then, Happiness will serve as a sex slave to O’ngbana because he “saved” her from the streets and took good care of her. For instance, at her arrival in Ipodo, he introduced her to a madame who gave her “hustle clothing” (skimpy wears) for free. He also negotiated on her behalf, an arrangement whereby she was exempted from paying the mandatory N3, 000 daily rent of the tiny room where she sleeps with customers for money.
O’ngbana’s relationship with her is, however, guided by street wisdom. He knows he could only sell a rock of crack once to a customer or hook the latter up with a dealer for a paltry commission – and that is subject to drug demand and availability.
But he profits off Happiness multiple times a day, by pimping her off to different customers, seven or eight times a day.
A small rock of adulterated cocaine aka crack sells at N500 to N1, 000. But O’ngbana pimps Happiness to customers at N1, 500 per romp – often called three or five minute ‘short time.’
Together with O’ngbana, the 14-year-old oils the wheels, and powers the chug chug of Ipodo’s narcotics sales engine and sex trafficking network. But teacher and student, pimp and sex worker, are mere fragments of the menacing underworld that controls and feeds Lagosians’ lust for hard drugs.
At our first encounter, Happiness confidently laid her hands on me, stating, “Come, let me blow your mind.” At our second encounter, she suggested that we doped on gbana (crack cocaine) promising to “bless” me with heavenly delight. “I will take you to celestial heights,” she said.
Asides hustling on the street and luring men into her dingy bed at KO’s Garden, a brothel, Happiness sells hard drugs to some of her customers. Sometimes, when business is hard, she requests a split in the cost of her sexual services, taking N1, 000 cash and between N500 to N1, 000 worth of crack. Officially, she declares N1, 500 as her earning on each customer, “But I often make more than that. Some pay me N2, 000, N3, 000. When I see complete mugu, I collect N5, 000 for short-time,” she said.
Invisible in plain sight
Happiness is simply one of several youths trapped in the rapture of hallucinogenic substances but ignored in plain sight by regulatory authorities. Between 2018 and 2019, nearly 15% of Nigeria’s adult population (around 14.3 million people) reported a “considerable level” of use of psychotropic drug substances, a rate much higher than the 2016 global average of 5.6% among adults.
The survey was led by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse with technical support from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and funding from the European Union.
It showed the highest levels of drug use was recorded among people aged between 25 to 39, with cannabis being the most widely used drug. Sedatives, heroin, cocaine and the non-medical use of prescription opioids were also noted. The survey excluded the use of tobacoo and alcohol.
It also excluded teenagers like Happiness mired in the stark wilderness of prostitution and the dangerous highs of crack cocaine.
Crack cocaine seized by the NDLEA
Few people would forget in a hurry, the heartrending story of Lizzy, the 26-year-old with a dependence on crack cocaine until her rescue by Dr. Tony Rapu, the founder of Freedom Foundation, an anti-drug dependence non governmental organisation (NGO).
Lizzy said she had been taking crack cocaine and living with her captors for seven years before she was rescued by Rapu.
She explained that she developed a hankering for cocaine seven years ago, while smoking weed with her boyfriend. The latter, she said, eventually revealed to her that he had been mixing her wraps with cocaine to her surprise, but it was too late as she got addicted.
Extent of drug use by geopolitical zones
There is no gainsaying many a life has been destroyed amid the bowels and drug dens of Ipodo, where crack cocaine and heroin are fast becoming a teen addiction and a fancy addition to the now ubiquitous psychotropic potions like gutter juice, pamilerin, colorado and so on widely accessed by youths across Lagos.
Of the regions included in the NBS and UNODC study, Lagos and Oyo in the South-West recorded a higher past-year prevalence of drug use among the southern geopolitical zones (at range 13.8 per cent to 22.4 per cent) compared to the northern geopolitical zones (range 10 per cent-13.6 per cent).
With approximately 6.4 million people aged 15-64 residing in Lagos State, the estimated past year prevalence of any drug use in South-West zone was established as nearly twice the national prevalence – an estimated 22.4 per cent or 4.38 million people of the Lagos population aged 15-64 had used drugs in the past year.
How do hard drugs get to the streets of Lagos?
There are several ways of getting cocaine from South America to Europe via Lagos, West Africa. In the past, there had been three main hubs in West Africa for receipt and redistribution of the cocaine shipments: The northern hub, radiating from Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, The Gambia, and Senegal. The southern hub, centered on Nigeria, including Benin, Togo, and Ghana. And an eastern hub, encompassing Mali and parts of Mauritania, of particular use in receiving consignments by air.
Once in West Africa, the drugs proceed to Europe along a number of routes. In the past, traffickers relied on large mother ships that offloaded cocaine onto smaller coastal craft. Commercial air couriers can carry only small amounts, but their frequent use can offset this deficiency, and they also allow for great flexibility, moving drugs from any country in the region to any European destination.
Cocaine shipments can also be trafficked onward by sea or by land across the Sahara to North Africa, where they are flown to Europe in light aircraft or shuttled across the Mediterranean in go-fast boats. As with the Atlantic routes, all of these approaches are utilized in parallel, with the preferred technique and routing changing in response to law enforcement efforts.
Due to the free movement of people and goods throughout the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region, drugs are often routed through member states without the hindrances of border controls.
The drive from Lagos (Nigeria) through Cotonou (Benin) and Lome (Togo) to Accra (Ghana), for instance, is less than 500 km and can be completed in one day. Guinea- Bissau, one of the primary countries of ingress for cocaine, lacks commercial air links to the destination markets, and connections from Banjul (The Gambia) are not much better. As a result, most air couriers in the north depart from Dakar (Senegal) or Conakry (Guinea).
•Sachets of Cannabis available at N100 each in Ipodo
On arrival in Europe, the drugs may be sold to European or South American crime groups, or distributed through the extensive network of West Africans involved in retail cocaine distribution.
South American cocaine transiting West Africa, however, comes from all three source countries: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.
Setbacks in West Africa and the opportunities in Honduras after the 2009 coup led Venezuela-based traffickers to shift their attention to the US market. But if the flow from Venezuela has declined, where is West Africa getting its cocaine?
Brazil may be the answer, particularly for West African- owned shipments. Brazil has long been a source for Lusophone Guinea-Bissau but it has since become a source for countries throughout the region. The amount of cocaine trafficked to and through Brazil has increased remarkably in recent years, as reflected in growing seizure statistics.
Gbenga Mabo, the Director of Operations and Investigations of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said in a recent interview that more than 80 per cent of the cocaine that comes into Nigeria comes from Brazil, through Highway 10.
He argued that because Brazil is surrounded by Peru, Bolivia, Chile and others, a lot of cocaine gets into the country, and a syndicate of Nigerians operating in Brazil smuggles the hard drug into Lagos.
Nigerians have long dominated commercial air couriering from Brazil: close to 90% of the mules arrested at the international airport in Sao Paulo report obtaining their cocaine from Nigerian groups.
According to liaison officers in Brazil, Nigerian groups organize up to 30% of the cocaine exports by ship or container from Santos, Brazil’s largest port, up from negligible levels a few years earlier. The Sao Paulo-based Nigerian groups are also responsible for a very large share of the postal shipments of cocaine leaving the country.
Amoo Kolawole, 51, for instance, got caught while trafficking cocaine from Lagos through Europe for a Nigerian syndicate. He was arrested while travelling by rail between Switzerland and France. The First Class graduate of Electrical/Electronic Engineering with a specialisation in Communications Control and Devices refused to embark on the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme on graduation and instead chose to become a drug mule.
Speaking to The Nation at his base in London, he said, “Due to my desperation to travel out, I joined a bad crew. With their help, I started trafficking cocaine. I got caught trafficking cocaine at the frontier between Switzerland and France. I got caught on a train. I was taken to a hospital and the cocaine I ingested was discovered in me after they opened my stomach. I was very lucky because some of it had spilled into my stomach. Consequently, I spent three years in a French prison.”
A blizzard of seizures
Recently, the NDLEA seized a consignment of cocaine and heroin worth N30 billion at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, in Lagos. The spokesman of the agency, Jonah Achema, revealed that the drugs were seized from Onyejegbu Ifesinachi Jennifer, a 33-year-old lady, who arrived Nigeria from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
According to him, the seizure weighing 26.840 kilograms is the biggest single seizure from an individual in the past 15 years. Achema said that the drugs were seized after she was searched in line with NDLEA protocol profiling passengers “from high risk countries”.
•These capsules of cocaine were seized from a smuggler by the NDLEA at the Airport
“Field test was conducted on the recovered substances and proved positive to cocaine and weighed 26.850 kilograms. The suspect who is a hair stylist and based in Brazil was interviewed and she confessed to have agreed to smuggle the hard drug for the sum of N2m only,” said Achema.
This development came on the heels of a similar one recorded two days earlier at the same airport, on January 25, 2021 when a red left-over luggage was declared to the NDLEA operatives as a left over at the E-Arrival hall after the inward clearance of passengers on Ethiopian airline.
Based on information on the luggage tag, the luggage arrived Nigeria from Sao Paulo, Brazil, a destination classified as high-risk country going by records and trends of arrest and seizures.
Subsequently, the NDLEA arrested suspects Abubakar Aliyu, Emmanuel Iyke Aniebonam, Onwurah Kelvin, while trying to retrieve the drugs on behalf of one Ikechukwu Eze.
The detained bag, which was opened in the presence all the three suspects, reportedly contained whitish powdery substances were discovered neatly concealed and sewn inside five children duvets.
Field test was carried out on the exhibits which proved they are cocaine weighing 8.400 Kilograms, with a street value of over N7bn.
Hard drug economics
As the prices paid for illicit drugs, and the profits to be made from them, are far higher in Europe and the US than in West Africa, large-scale traffickers generally seek to ship illicit drugs through the region to the international markets. However, in some cases low-level drug traffickers are paid in kind and lack the resources or networks to move the drugs across borders. Consequently, they flood the local market with illicit drugs, contributing to the growth in domestic consumption rates.
A spike in heroin and cocaine production since 2016 is the likely explanation for the increase in the volumes of each drug type transiting through Lagos and other parts of West Africa.
Following rudimentary economics of supply and demand, the increased supply of cocaine and heroin to the domestic markets in the region has led to falling prices and easier accessibility to the hard drugs.
For instance, in 2017, the price for one ‘hit’ of heroin or crack cocaine, was just over US$2.16
On average, cocaine users reported spending N 6,300 NGN (or 20 USD) per day on cocaine (N 7,000 by women or 22 USD spent per day). This amount is nearly half of the national minimum wage per month. Similarly methamphetamine users spent an average of N 4,000 (or USD 13) per day. The growing sophistication of drug-trafficking groups generally continues to outstrip the investigatory capacity of law-enforcement authorities. This has led a number of players in the international community involved in tackling the regional drug trade, together with members of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the police force, to predict that the situation will get worse before it gets better.
Taming the dragon
Recently, the Medical Director (MD) of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital (FNPH), Yaba, Dr. Oluwayemi Ogun, raised the alarm over increasing prevalence of drug abused induced mental disorders among children, adolescent and adult Nigerians saying over 150 new cases are admitted at the hospital and its Child and Adolescent Centre, Oshodi Annexe every week.
Reacting to teen addiction to psychotropic substances, she said, in an exclusive interview with The Nation, that: “Codeine, cocaine, Indian Hemp, Tramadol and Rohypnol are seriously dangerous to health the way they are abused.”
She said, “There is need for a lot of counselling and education of the youths. They must be made to understand that taking psychotropic substances would have adverse effects on them and possibly wreck their lives. Since the lockdown, the number of people taking drugs has sky-rocketed. Many of them ended up as our patients at the psychiatric hospital. Troubled teenagers especially must understand that the good times are made, not sniffed, drunk or smoked.”
The senior psychiatrist urged parents, schools and religious groups to complement government’s efforts at combating the trend. “ We must act fast before this thing engulfs us… Many resort to hard drugs to escape their daily problems, to forget their battles with unemployment, poverty and so on. But hard drugs do not take away problems, they add to the problems and compound them for users,” she said.
Priscilla Benjamin-Olaoye, a mental health expert, stated that hard drugs only offer a temporary sensation. Once the drug wears off, individuals put themselves at risk of developing a dependence as they try to reach the same high and avoid withdrawals.
Should parents resort to spiritual homes or visit orthodox psychiatric hospitals?
Benjamin-Olaoye argued that although the first assumption to make is that drug addiction is a spiritual problem, substance abuse is actually a chronic relapsing disorder, leading to mental and behavioural challenges.
Arguably, a spiritual problem, she stressed, is one in which the individual has no control over, but “in this case, substance abuse is one which the individual behaves themselves into.”
You cannot pray yourself out of what you behaved yourself into, she argued, urging parents to implement a healthy balance of both. She said, “Don’t focus on the spiritual aspect, while the emotional needs of the child is left unmet.”
Priscilla-Olaoye could save her homily for parents like Corporal Martins. A random trip to Ipodo unfurled with confounding imagery of the Nigerian police officer. Through the muck and mayhem of the drug den, the fair-complexioned man engaged O’ngbana, among others, in a heated argument.
•This rock of crack cocaine costs N1,000 in Ipodo
Martins, a self-confessed cannabis lover cut a curious picture lounging at a makeshift bar cum drug den with his twin sons. Although the latter are barely six-years old, he argued that he had done nothing wrong by bringing them to the drug den.
“It’s better I expose them to what I do. What’s the big deal about it? They can’t beat me. And I would rather they find out from me that I smoke ganja (cannabis) and not from someone else,” he said.
“Na only cigarette I no dey smoke again but I dey take ganja. If I dey work, I dey take ganja (I don’t smoke cigarette but I smoke cannabis. When I am at work, I smoke cannabis)” he stressed.
Martins dismissed warnings that bringing his five and six-year-old sons to the drug den might wreak dangerous influence on them arguing, “Why should I hide my vices from them while I train them? They will be the one to train me when I age,” he said to wild applause.
Captive in Ipodo
In Ipodo, everything whim merges as one, and a vileness runs through it all. The Ikeja suburb is a constellation of people prowling various phases of drug dependence.
Residents call it Lagos city’s open sore, a colony of society’s rejects steamy with lust and searing on the psyche like a blood-bursting blister.
Within and around the drug den subsists a thriving market, the shrill blare of passing vehicles, noise from the music shops, the natters and wild altercation of thrill seekers occasionally spoiling for a fight spurred by the infinite of tang of marijuana, ecstasy, crack cocaine and heroin.
Amid the chaos, Happiness makes a living as a sex slave and drug dealer, on the watch of a fierce madame, Ralph and O’ngbana.
A radiant captive in a dingy brothel, the 14-year-old sheds her innocence in the warrens of Ipodo. She sleeps with seven to eight men daily. Sometimes 10. Even so, she would not sleep at night. “Menacing, ill-smelling patrons” bang on her door, intruding her private space, to ravage her paling body, under her madame and O’ngbana’s eagle eyes, till the wee hours of the morning.
Speaking with The Nation, her voice occasionally flailed, leaving on the wind, a tinge of fatigue. To survive, she must strip to her bare flesh and work her supple behind to the bones, according to her patrons’ lustful wishes.
Her hidden graces unclothed, men old enough to be her father drool to her door, day and night, to maul and harvest womanly fruits from her girly frame. To survive their ravage, she cradles dreams of freedom and fairer tomorrow. These days, all that’s left are a mop of faith and a grain of will in her arid body. She is just 14.
Amid denial by the state government that there are no refugees from Yewa North and Imeko-Afon local government areas in Benin Republic, KUNLE AKINRINADE‘s visit to the francophone nation revealed that there are more than 5,000 Nigerians from villages in Ogun State taking refuge in Igana, Egelu, Pobe and Gbogo communities in the neighbouring country following attacks and killings by marauding herdsmen.
Refugees desperate to return home, say we have no food, clothes
Senate intervenes, asks FG to repatriate displaced residents
The expressions on their faces were clear indications that all was not well with them at their internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camp in Pobe area of neighbouring Benin Republic. Sullen, sad and pensive, they intermittently chorused their plight amid assurances by a delegation of Benin Republic government and humanitarian agencies which visited the IDP camp to assure them that their wellbeing was a top priority.
The visit of the francophone country’s government officials on Saturday, March 6 coincided with the visit of some fact finding officials of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Ogun State Chapter, a few days after the distraught crowd of Nigerians who fled their homes in Yewa North and Imeko-Afon areas of Ogun State arrived in the French-speaking country, following bloody attacks by herdsmen.
They had deserted their villages, namely Asa, Ibeku, Oha, Igbooro, Moro, Agbon-Ojodu, Isuku, Igbo-Oko, Iyana MetaIselu, Isuku Ohunbe, and others, to avoid being killed by the rampaging herdsmen.
“We were forced to migrate to this place (Benin Republic) due to the attacks on our villages in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen,” a spokesperson of the Nigerian refugees, Ademola Oye, told the Beninese delegation.
“The herdsmen have killed many of our people. Many have lost their lives as a result of the attacks by the herders and many people are still migrating from Agbon-Ojodu, Asa, Ibeku and other villages as a result of the attacks by herdsmen.
“We fled to this country because the Fulani herdsmen were killing people anyhow. They are moving from one village to another killing people, hence we were scared and we have migrated to this place because we feared for our lives,” Oye added.
A number of expectant women who fled with their family members were forced into early labour. Five of them who were delivered of babies at different primary health centres in the neighbouring country are currently being catered to by authorities of the country.
One of them, Foluke Kambi, was forced into early labour after she ran for her dear life when herdsmen raided her village, Asa. She was delivered of a baby boy penultimate Saturday at a public clinic in the Igana District.
Recalling how she escaped death by a whisker, Kanmbi said: “The Fulani herdsmen attacked my village, Asa and Owode-Ketu and other villages in Nigeria. They killed many people but I managed to escape with my family and went through a bush path to get to Igana in Benin (Republic).
“I left my village alongside many others and came to Egelu where we slept inside a store and others slept inside a mosque.
“I went into early labour as a result of the forcible migration and long hours of trekking. I was eventually delivered of a baby boy this morning.
“I am well taken care of at this hospital courtesy of the government of Benin Republic, and my baby is hale and hearty too.
“I want our government in Nigeria to provide enough security for our villages so that we can return home and continue our farming activities.”
Sorrow, tears of other refugees
One of the refugees at Igana, Mariam Olabisi, recalled that she joined others to run for her safety on a night some herdsmen raided Asa village.
Olabisi, a mother of five, said she was lucky to have fled with her children as some villagers who were caught unawares were killed alongside their family members.
She said: “Some herdsmen forced us to abandon our home when they stormed our Asa village and shot some people dead while several others were hacked to death.
“The herdsmen also razed several buildings and vehicles, including motorbikes belonging to residents.”
It was learnt that Olabisi’s husband had gone in search of food at the time our correspondent arrived the refugee camp.
“My husband is not around now,” she said. “He has gone out to look for food for us.
“Like other refugees, we are hungry and we can barely feed ourselves, hence several men would leave the camp in the morning and sneak back into our farmlands in Nigeria to see what they could get for us to eat at the risk of their lives.
“We are calling on the Ogun State Government not to abandon us to our fate. The government should be kind enough to relocate us to our village and provide adequate security for us.
“Back in our village, we are farmers and we were not struggling to feed. But now, feeding has become a major problem for us. We are tired of living here. We want to go back home. Tell the government to help us.”
Another villager, Madam Ewunmi, who said she was tired of living as a refugee, said: “I am a farmer in Asa, but I can no longer farm because of herdsmen’s attacks which forced us to run to Igana in Benin Republic.
“However, I am tired of staying here because life has been tough, especially with regards to feeding. I want to go back to Nigeria.”
Olabisi’s eldest son, Monday, a 12-year-old primary four pupil, said the situation had taken a toll on his education as he could no longer go to school.
He said: “I don’t like what we are going through here at all. I was in primary four at the public elementary school when we were chased out of our village by herdsmen who attacked us and killed several villagers.
“It is almost one month since we ran to this country for safety and life has been tough for our family. I want the Ogun State Government to help us return to our ancestral community.”
Speaking at his palace, the monarch of Egeluland in Benin Republic where the IDP camp at Igana is located, Oba Adio AbdulWahab, said the influx of the Nigerian refugees was worrisome.
He said: “In the night of February 14, 2021, villagers in neigbouring Asa, Ibeku, Agbon-Ojodu, Igbooro, Seke Aje, Moro, Iselu and Isuku were in their beds when they were attacked by herdsmen who shot sporadically and killed a man and burnt his body, hence the villagers ran across the border to my domain for safety, and this community was flooded that night by the displaced Nigerians.
“My people and I then accommodated them and sheltered them. Over 200 of them slept on the foyer of my palace here while others slept in a mosque built for me by my subjects and numerous others slept in a public school over there.
“Their number kept growing and we had to inform our government and local council areas and a temporary camp was established for them after two weeks of staying in this community.
“Several agencies of government in Benin Republic crossed the border to the troubled villages in Nigeria and took photographs of the scenes of the attacks and they have submitted their report to the Beninese authorities.
“As a result of their report, the Benin government and their development partners have decided to build a permanent camp to accommodate people from Nigeria who are victims of perennial attacks by herdsmen.”
Scary statistics
No fewer than 2,539 persons were reportedly killed and 253 others kidnapped between 2017 and May 2, 2020, in 654 attacks, carried out by herdsmen in various parts of Nigeria.
The figure, according to José Luis Bazán, an independent researcher and analyst based in Brussels, Belgium, was based on the compilation of news reports published on vicious attacks by herdsmen.
The report titled ‘Working Document — Fulani Militias’ Terror: Compilation of News (2017-2020),’ revealed scary statistics of vicious attacks, deaths, and kidnappings by the herdsmen.
Also, the Global Terrorist Index 2019 published by the Institute for Economics and Peace attributed the increase in terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa to Fulani extremists.
The report reads in part: “In 2018, Fulani extremists were responsible for the majority of terror-related deaths in Nigeria (1,158 fatalities), with an increase by 261 and 308 per cent respectively from the prior year.
“Fulani attacks were armed assaults (200 out of 297 attacks) against civilians (84 per cent of the attacks).
“In 2017, there were 99 attacks resulting in the killing of 202 people while 12 were kidnapped. In 2018, the attacks intensified, rising to 245, resulting in 1,478 deaths.”
The number of those kidnapped during that period rose to 29. Last year, 169 attacks, 524 killings, and three kidnappings were reported.
In 2020 as of May 2, according to the report, there were 141 attacks, 335 people killed, and 137 kidnapped.
Several villagers in Yewa North and Imeko-Afon council areas of Ogun State had lost their lives to perennial attacks by herdsmen who forcibly graze farmlands and destroyed cash crops.
In February this year, 28 villagers were killed by herdsmen within one week, hence, the villagers fled to neighbouring Benin Republic for refuge.
Nigerien herders repatriated home from Benin
The Nation gathered that some herdsmen who also fled to the francophone state in the wake of reprisals were repatriated to their home country, Niger Republic, by the interior and public security ministry of Benin Republic.
A government source in Benin Republic told our correspondent that the repatriation was carried out after diligent profiling of the displaced herders to ascertain their true nationality.
“We currently have about 5,000 Nigerian refugees at the IDP camps in our country. They were displaced by herdsmen who attacked their villages in the neighbouring Yewa area of Ogun State in Nigeria.
Out of the figure, we were able to identify some of the herdsmen displaced from Nigerian villages to be nationals of Niger Republic, and about 100 of them at Pobe refugee camp have since been sent back to their country, while others identified to be Nigerian Fulani herdsmen are the ones allowed to stay in some of the camps here,” said the sources who spoke in confidence because he was not permitted to speak on official matters.
However, The Nation spoke with other identified local herdsmen who were taking refuge in various parts of the country.
At Gbogo, a Benin community about one hour’s drive from Oja Odan town in Nigeria, a popular Nigerian herdsman, Alhaji Abubakar Bakare a.k.a. Larondo, who was taking refugee with his family in the community, lamented that life had become hellish for him and his family members there. Bakare, a native of Kwara State who settled in Oja Odan more than four decades ago, resided in Ago Fulani area of Oja Odan until he was chased away by indigenes of the community who carried out reprisals in the wake of attacks by herdsmen on villages in the area.
He told The Nation that he fled to Benin Republic on February 13, 2021 after his nine houses were razed by irate youths who also killed more than 100 cattle belonging to him and stole a sum of N3 million he kept in his bedroom
“My nine houses were razed by irate youths of Oja Odan who stormed my abode in Ebute and Ago Fulani, looted my house and took away the sum of N3 million and also killed the over 100 cows I was breeding.
“Two of my family members—my senior brother and younger brother’s wife—were also killed in the attack. I fled here with more than 50 members of my family, including my five wives, children, grandchildren, my brothers and their wives and children as well.
“However, it’s been difficult living here because we are hungry; there is no food to eat and no clothe to wear. We are still wearing the same clothe since we fled our home in Nigeria and it’s been pretty tough coping with life here.”
Bakare urged both the federal and state authorities to intervene and restore law and order so he could return to the country and continue living in his Ago Fulani home.
“Apart from restoring us back to our Nigerian home, we are calling on both the federal and state authorities to come to our aid and rescue us from hopelessness. At the moment, we need food and we need clothe and shelter too,” he said.
The Nation had exclusively reported that villagers in the two local government areas had fled to neighbouring communities in Benin Republic following the killing of about 28 villagers by herdsmen in one week.
The report titled ‘Herdsmen crisis: Residents flee Ogun villages, head for the Benin Republic’, was published on February 20, 2021.
Some of the villages attacked by the armed herders include Ateru, Moro, Ologun, Agbon-Ojodu, Asa, Igbota, Ogunba-Aiyetoro, Oke-Odo, Ibore, Gbokoto, Iselu, Ijale, Ohunbe, Igbeme, Owode-Ketu, Igan-Alade, Lashilo, Oja Odan, Ijoun, Ateru, Moro, Ologun, Iyana Meta, Igbooro, Egbeda and Kuse, and Oha, where they killed residents and destroyed cash crops.
In a swift reaction, the state government had refuted the report that residents affected by the attack of herdsmen in Yewa North and Imeko Afon Local Government Areas were now seeking refuge in neighbouring Benin Republic. The Chairman, Ogun State Peace Keeping Committee on Farmers/Herders Conflict, Hon. Kayode Oladele, made the remarks at the meeting of the committee held in Abeokuta.
He said that those reportedly moving to Benin Republic were not actual inhabitants of the communities but those who came from the neighbouring country to lease farmlands in the area.
Oladele had said: “There was a publication that Yewa farmers are now refugees in Benin Republic. That has no iota of truth. Yewa, being a border community, also plays host to other people from our sisters and brothers on the other side of the border that is on the side of the Republic of Benin.
“We have the Hohori and some Egun who come from time to time to lease farmland in Yewaland, live with us and they have been doing that for years. So, when the problem and conflict started, the natural thing is for them to return to their home country.
“Therefore, many of the people that you are seeing are not actually the original indigenes of Yewa; they are the people from the other side of the border, who because of the crisis have moved to their country.
“So, it is not as if Yewa people have relocated. We don’t have a refugee crisis in Yewa.”
The Nation’s report was however confirmed by the state chapter of the Red Cross, which issued a statement urging a drastic intervention by the state authorities.
The Executive Branch Secretary of the Ogun State chapter of the Nigeria Red Cross, Oluwole Aboyade, said his team had visited some of the troubled areas – Igbooro, Asa, Moro, Ibeku and Agbon-Ojodu, noting that many residents had deserted their homes to seek refuge in Benin Republic.
He said: “What I saw there alongside my team, I will term it a very serious disaster. The people have deserted their homes and they now sleep in Benin Republic. You can imagine people leaving Nigeria to seek protection in another country. The situation is more than pathetic.”
Aboyade said his recent visit to the refugees in IDP camps in Benin Republic revealed that they were living in pathetic conditions.
He said the Red Cross, as a humanitarian organization, would seek assistance from Nigerians to help in bringing succour to the residents of the affected Yewa communities.
Aboyade said: “The nature of our job is humanitarian agency established by an Act of Parliament of 1960 to take care of vulnerable ones either as victims of herdsmen attack, banditry, disasters, epidemic and health challenges. In all of these, we responded to any challenges that affect human lives.
“Our concern is to raise awareness about the plight of the residents of the communities. In the course of our assessment, we found that a number of people were hacked to death, including minors, and we even saw the place where victims of the crisis were buried. Hence we decided to visit the refugees in Benin Republic.
“Although we know that the state government had provided some food items as palliatives for the villagers, I think they need more than that.
“Yesterday, I shed tears when we visited the villages in the Benin Republic to see the victims taking refuge there. My team met with the monarch of Egelu Kingdom where our people fled to, and they were well treated.
“We also met with the councillor of Igana who took us around where the people were being sheltered, including the hospital where some of the women were delivered of new babies.
“One of them, who is a native of Asa village, said she fled into the country after the village was attacked by herdsmen in the night and went subsequently into forced labour.
“She said she was taken care of and that she didn’t pay a dime for delivering her baby at the hospital.
“Some non-governmental organisations in the francophone state had also given the victims food, clothes and other items to take care of themselves, but the items could not go round.
“However, there is no place like home, and that is the reason these people want to come back home provided the government would guarantee their security so they can continue with their farming endeavor.
“They need water in their villages and that should be provided for them because they have to travel several kilometers to get filthy water from a village stream. Hence, we are calling on well-meaning Nigerians to come to the aid of these people.
“We are not a political organisation and we are not against the state government. Rather, all we want is for the plight of these people to be given urgent attention by concerned authori ties.
“The government of Benin is even planning to construct a building for Nigerian victims of herdsmen attacks which have become perennial in recent times.
“We have seen that Governor Dapo Abiodun has put in place some initiatives to cater to the welfare of the villagers, but the intervention is not enough and this is the reason we are urging the government to do more.
“And this goes for both state and federal lawmakers representing the affected areas because these are the people they would still approach for votes when an election beckons.”
The state government however insisted that residents were not fleeing to Benin Republic to seek refuge.
Speaking on a live cable television programme on Plus TV Africa monitored by our correspondent, the Special Adviser on Media and Public Communications to Ogun State Governor, Pastor Remmy Hassan, said those who were moving to Benin went there to reunite with their kinsmen.
Hassan said: “In the border areas of Ogun State, there is a kind of ethnic identity that transcends the border. In other words, we have some group of people who also have their kinsmen across the border and they have a way of crossing the border to have one thing or the other to do across the divide depending on the convenience.
“If we say that someone is having a refugee status, the question is according to the United Nation’s standard, are they willing or unable to return to their home? I don’t think any of these is their case.
“Besides, if the nation they are alleged to have sought refugee (sic) has not in any way gotten across to us to say that they are holding any of our citizens refuge (sic). So, the fact that these people have reasons to have their kinsmen across the border and stay put with their kinsmen following a flash of crisis shouldn’t be taken as anyone seeking refuge in a foreign land.”
An official report sighted by our correspondent revealed that the Mayor of Pobe Munici pal in Benin Republic, Simon Adebayo Dinan, had visited the IDP camp at Igana with other government agencies on February 18 to mobilise relief packages for the refugees.
The report reads: “It was this February 18, 2021, in the Igana District, a locality stormed by these refugees. The Mayor was there with a delegation from the National Agency for Protection under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior and Public Security.
“This follows a series of correspondence that the Mayor, Simon Adebayo Dinan, sent expressly to the prefecture of Pobe, the National Agency for Civil Protection, the Beninese Agency for Integrated Management of Border Spaces, the World Food Programme, the UNICEF, Care Benin-Togo, the Republican Police, the departmental directorates of health and social services, etc.”
The Senate intervenes
Meanwhile, the upper chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate, has asked the federal government to repatriate displaced residents of Ogun State who are seeking refuge in Benin Republic after attacks on their communities by suspected herdsmen.
The resolution followed a motion sponsored by Tolu Odebiyi, the senator representing Ogun West, on Wednesday March 11, 2021.
“Many communities, namely (but not limited to) Asa, Oho Agbooro, Moro, Ibeku and Agbon Ojodu, were affected by the criminal activities of these suspected herdsmen,” he said.
“The countless attacks by these criminal elements have forced many residents of these areas to desert and relocate to a refugee camp in the Pobe area of Benin Republic in search of safety, with many of them forced to live in very unfavourable conditions in refugee camps.
“The state government alone cannot be left with the onerous task of resettling these displaced citizens, hence the need for support from the federal government to effectively return the affected citizens back to their various communities.
“If the Benin Republic that is a neighbour to Nigeria could accommodate Nigerians, give them food and set up a refugee camp for them, Nigeria needs to positively step up on how we treat our citizens who are victims of an internally induced crisis.”
The senate also urged the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the humanitarian affairs ministry, and the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) to provide relief for the affected persons.
The motion was adopted after it was put to a voice vote by Senate President Ahmad Lawan.
“My husband is a fisherman but he doesn’t catch fish so well again. At times, they will buy fuel inside canoe with the little money they have, hoping that they would catch fish and make money after selling it, but at the end of the day, they return home without catching anything.
In a swift reaction, the state government had refuted the report that residents affected by the attack of herdsmen in Yewa North and Imeko Afon Local Government Areas were now seeking refuge in neighbouring Benin Republic. The Chairman, Ogun State Peace Keeping Committee on Farmers/Herders Conflict, Hon. Kayode Oladele, made the remarks at the meeting of the committee held in Abeokuta.