The Nation Newspaper

Tag: allowed

  • ‘My hubby allowed another man to make love to me’

    CAN  a man allow another man to sleep with his wife in their matimonial home?

    This was the allegation made yesterday by a woman, Mrs Musilimat Olasuyi, who is seeking the dissolution of her five-year old marriage to Oluwagbemiga.

    She told an Igando Customary Court in Lagos that her husband permitted another man to sleep with her in their matrimonial home.

    The 48-year-old trader said : “It was not my fault. I did not voluntarily submit myself but the man in question charmed me to make love to me with my husband’s agreement all because of his selfish ambition’’.

    The petitioner said her husband threw her belongings out of their matrimonial home in her absence. She claimed that the over N800,000 which she kept inside some boxes were stolen in the process.

    She said: “I went to the hospital to take care of my daughter from my first marriage, who suffered from gas explosion. There, I was told that my husband came with some boys to our matrimonial home to pack all my belongings outside.

    “After some days; I came home and I discovered that all my boxes and bags had been ransacked; some were missing and my money stolen.

    “My jewellery valued at N250, 000 and the N250, 000 given to me by my son-in law to start work on his landed property close to us were missing.

    “Also, N100,000 for my customer’s cassava (garri), N250,000 being our mosque’s money kept in my custody and N30,000 my trading money got missing.’’

    Musilimat submitted a written petition to the court seeking redress and judicial actions against her husband.

    She wanted to know if it was proper for her husband to throw her property out without a court order.

    The petitioner urged the court to direct her husband to get a house for her and their only child.

    She pleaded with the court to dissolve the because she no longer loves her husband.

    Oluwagbemiga accused his wife of infidelity, saying : “My wife does not have respect for her marriage vow; she makes love to her concubine on our matrimonial bed.”

    The 55-year-old sand supplier also accused his wife of being fetish.

    “My wife is diabolical, she comes home with different charms and objects; she gave me a soap on nine consecutive times to bath with.”

    According to him, he  gave his wife a three-month  notice to vacate his house but she refused.

    He consented to the dissolution of marriage, saying the love between them had long faded.

    The court’s president, Mr Akin Akinniyi, said it was wrong for a husband to pack out his wife’s belongings from their matrimonial home.

    “It is legally wrong for a man to throw out his wife’s property. The respondent should have requested for the return of the dowry he paid on the wife from the wife’s parents. Better still, he should have sought the dissolution of the marriage at the court of law before such an action could take place.

    “The husband will be responsible for any cost of missing valuables and the wife is entitled to compensation,’’ he said.

    Akinniyi urged the couple to maintain peace and adjourned till April 26.

  • Govt allowed killings by herdsmen to fester, says Soyinka

    Govt allowed killings by herdsmen to fester, says Soyinka

    President Muhammadu Buhari is operating under a trance, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said yesterday.

    The sooner he gets out of that trance, Soyinka said, the better for the country.

    Prof. Soyinka, who spoke at a press conference on the damaging consequences of marauding herdsmen on the nation, noted the unforced errors going on in the nation.

    With the theme:  “Herdsmen and Nation:  Valentine Card or Valedictory Rites?” the dramatist gave an analogical tale of a state whose master’s insensitivity allows for the overbearing actions of his subjects.

    He lamented that mass destruction of farmlands in the most horrifying manner had become a norm, festering with the encouragement of the government’s body language.

    Soyinka described as appalling the position of the Inspector General of Police that the loss of lives in Benue State, and consequent increase in the number of internal refugees, was simply a communual clash.

    In his view, little will be achieved in security without  state police.

    “If the IG can sit in Abuja and say of an event that is happening under the jurisdiction of a governor in another state is just a communal clash when people are being slaughtered and their villages are being occupied, it shows complete alienation. Then there is  the authority of Governors who have the ultimate authority for security. It is the governor who is supposed to be the chief security officer. We are now back to authoritative voices saying indeed, state police need to be decentralised. We have been saying it and others  have been saying for a long time. We are now getting back to the commonsensical issue that the nation cannot function under a single police command,” he said.

    Acknowledging, however, that the Nigerian Army has done marvelously in degrading the capacity of the Boko-Haram insurgents, the poet-activist said “it must now turn around to face another phenomenon which is considered in some international circles deadlier than the Boko-Haram”.

    According to him, the containing efforts happening now should have begun six months as he expected the force to have immediately transferred its concentration from operations, such as Python Dance and Crocodile Smile to where the heat was.

    He said the security agencies have the responsibility to look at highly-placed people in whose interest anarchy can be fostered.

    Soyinka added: “Why colonies were brought in to complicate things, I do not know. Ranches; that’s the word used everywhere. There is no organized illegal force that does not sooner or later spin up. Are these internally generated or are they being launhed by individuals who in their interest the nation must be in a state of anarchy? We sometimes talk about corruption but we don’t understand how far corruption goes. When you think of the amount being stolen in this country, enough funds illegal fund to destabilise the country. We might end up discovering that some of these people profit from ensuring there is chaos from Maiduguri to Lagos.”

    Speaking on restructuring, Soyinka said: “Sooner or later, people will recognise the fact it’s not broken record they are listening to, it’s their hearing that is impaired. In other words, we have been shouting restructuring, now its inevitability has always been stressed. The internal relationship of the units of this country be decentralised. And anytime you talk about restructuring, you hear this gibberish that the sovereignty of this country will not be compromised. Who is talking about sovereignty? We are saying the internal components of the country needed to be addressed … We must decentralise governance.”

    Asked what he would tell President Buhari if he met him, the Nobel laureate said: “I would say: Mr President, I think you are under a trance. “The sooner he gets out of it the better. So many unforced errors are going on,” he added.

    Prof. Soyinka cited Buhari’s recall of the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, after he was suspended for alleged graft by Minister of Health Isaac Adewole, as a recent example of the unforced errors that have characterised the administration.

  • Bullying not allowed

    Even by his account of what happened, Dino Melaye, the Senator representing Kogi West, further exposed how his conduct did not help matters. He was reacting to public criticism of his reported wild behaviour during a Senate executive session to discuss the ongoing trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki and Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu who are accused of forgery by the Federal Government.

    Melaye told reporters at the National Assembly that he was stating his own side of the story to counter “misinformation in the public sphere” about how he allegedly threatened to beat up Senator Oluremi Tinubu (Lagos State Central) during the closed-door meeting.

    Melaye said: “When I stood up and I made my submissions that day in the Senate, all I did was to pacify my colleagues and asked that the case in court be withdrawn because already there is a resolution of the Senate that the rules of the Senate were not forged and since there was a resolution of the Senate that the rules of the Senate were not forged, then, I said, all those who have gone to court should go and withdraw their names from court and that if at the end of the day there were  those who refused to withdraw their names from the court we should penalise them by suspending them. I said that.” He added:  “But I did not use any insolent, abusive, degrading or mannerless language…”  Is that so? Maybe Melaye didn’t understand the effect of his words.

    To be fair, Melaye quoted himself faithfully, perhaps thinking that what he claimed to have said made sense. But did his words make sense? How can any sensible individual argue that a so-called resolution by the Senate should be regarded as the final word on a matter that is beyond what the Senate thinks or what it wants the public to think? A case of forgery against the Senate’s leadership is not strictly an internal matter and cannot be seen as such.

    Certainly, Melaye spoke unreasonably when he tried to give an order that the senators who had taken the matter to court should withdraw from the case, or else, face suspension. His thinking was unbecoming, particularly considering his position as a senator. Indeed, he was talking rubbish!

    So, if someone, in response, allegedly described him as a “thug” in view of his bullying conduct, was that description off the mark?  Also, if someone, in response, allegedly called him a “dog”, doesn’t that depiction fit the bill?

  • ‘Suntai should be allowed to take a dignified exit from power’ 

    ‘Suntai should be allowed to take a dignified exit from power’ 

    MARY WILSON, a public affairs commentator and medical doctor in the United States, in this piece, argues that Taraba State Governor Danbaba Suntai deserves his rest outside of power.

    No greater disservice could have been done to Governor Danbaba Suntai than the poorly choreographed, C-rated movie of his return to work than what we saw at the weekend. First, let me commend the wife for a job well done. She must have been through emotional hell and back on account of the man’s air accident and of course the touch-and-go health crisis for a while. From Jalingo to Abuja to Germany and then the USA, Mrs Suntai ought to be commended. Any woman, who has been through the hell of caring for a terminally or critically ill spouse, will be able to identify with this woman. The emotional toll is beyond description. The fear, the uncertainty, the trauma of watching one’s husband slip in and out of coma is not what anyone should trivialise. I am sure Mrs Turai Yar’ Adua knows what I am talking about.

    It throws a woman into grief, fear of the unknown, pain of loss.  Stages of grief are not what any sane or normal human being wants to deal with. I went through it five years ago when my husband was in stage 4 of congenital heart failure. I got stuck in stage 2, stage  of denial. Even when I knew that we were counting down, when ejection fraction was less than 20 per cent, I still refused to accept it was over. I tried to play God. I was not willing to accept the inevitable. And guess what, I practise medicine in the best part of the world. It was just human!

    So, in a way, I empathise with Mrs Suntai. However, that is where it ends. I was not and still not the spouse of a high profile public official, so when my spouse finally slipped away while I was not looking, I calmly walked away without playing Hercules. In my case, I walked into the Emergency room with a heart rate of more than 180/min. I ended up in ICU a few days later. I was inconsolable. I was afraid of being alone. I was distraught beyond words.

    So, when I saw pictures of Suntai as he de-planed in Abuja, I knew someone was being mischievous, insane and indecent. The pictures of him as he alighted from the plane did more damage to him than whatever they meant to achieve. For four years, I was a trauma person. I cared for those boys from the fields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and those demons were awakened as I saw Suntai. His gaze into space, his look of a deer in a headlight, showed a man who was struggling with post-traumatic brain injury (PTBI)  The fact that he needed two to three people to coordinate his gait was a damning evidence against him, evidence that he was not ready to be a state chief executive.

    So, what is Post TBI? They are symptoms patients experience for weeks, months, years at times; post traumatic brain injury is secondary to brain injury. Simple. Some of these symptoms may have manifested, others will present over the years.  Post-TBI causes a variety of symptoms beginning with cognitive deficiency as we saw in Suntai in Abuja. His handler was obviously whispering to him, as he de-planed, trying to re- orient him as to where he was. The man was definitely not cognizant of his location. He stared into space, he looked surprised, and he had the look of a deer in a headlight. He was wondering where he was. He exhibited cognitive deficit. Indeed, if compelled to do more, he would not have been able to do so. Indeed, his wave was something that must have been practised severally while in rehab in preparation for the charade that they put up in Abuja. These people could not go lower than that even if they tried.

    PTBI will present with sudden irritability, mood swings, sudden outburst of speech, sometimes inappropriate, memory loss, disjointed speech. Hopefully, this man, who is obviously not part of this caper, will not be subjected to public humiliation while his handlers are trying to prove a sick macabre point. He will be thoroughly embarrassed in public and will make him slide into deeper depression which is one of the signs of PTBI.

    Mood swing, fatigue, seizure, incontinence of bladder and bowel is not uncommon in PTBI. Seizure, both grand and petit may present. Perceptual motor disorder, somatosensory disorder is not uncommon in PTBI patients. No matter how we may want to slice it, this man has no capacity to occupy the office of governor any  longer. His pictures on arrival in Nigeria totally nailed him. Unfortunately, there is no established cure for PTBI. There are treatments to alleviate some of the effects of PTBI. Because they are not able to articulate their own needs or symptoms, medicine has a tough time managing them sometimes. PTBI patients suffer confusion, they are tongue tied as Suntai is presenting. Because, the public does not have access to his medical profile, we can only safe guess that he is in the sub acute stage of his TBI. His neurologic presentation, gait, albeit unsteady and ocular motor presentation amongst other things, are the parameters used for putting him in the sub acute stage of PTBI.

    Because of his extended hospital stay, it is obvious he suffered severe closed diffuse axonal injury. Symptomatology associated with such injuries was what we saw on his return drama to Nigeria. Needed rest, isolation from his welcoming crowd, close gait and speech monitoring indicated ataxia,(movement disorder) speech disorder ( fluent and non fluent)  which his handlers were trying to hide, Aphasia which he no doubt suffers will certainly prevent him from addressing his State House of Assembly and was why he did not address the press nor take questions from them at the airport. I feel like screaming stop this mess at his handlers.

    The way it is, this man is being manipulated. He is like a puppet on a string manipulated by evil puppeteers. The right thing to do is to leave him alone to conclude or rather continue with his medical therapy. He has made history as a governor and until the end of the world, his name will be  in our history books as being the governor of Taraba State at one time. There is no need forcing this unwilling, unconscious horse to the stream. Being alert with poor neuro score is not enough criterion to manage a state as the chief executive. Hopefully, that will register with Prof. Jerry Gana.   Suntai has no capacity or capability to rule a state anymore. It is painful, it is difficult, but it is the truth. His handlers and the  evil people in the PDP can deny it all they like, but that is the truth.

    It has nothing to do with politics. It does not matter who rules the state. What matters is probity. We have obviously not learnt anything from the Yar’ Adua debacle. It is only in Nigeria where people are free to be off shore governors and presidents. The crude nature with which we lust for power is beyond human comprehension. Power belongs to God alone, and it is given to people to hold  in sacred trust. Nothing more. But because access to power translates to grand scale theft of public funds in Nigeria, it becomes a do-or-die affair. Suntai should be allowed to take a dignified exit from power for his sake, that of his family and most of all Taraba State.