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Tag: fake

  • 49-yr-old ‘fake’ native doctor held for robbery

    Operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) in Lagos State have arrested a ‘fake’ native doctor identified as Sunday Ogunleye for robbery.

    The suspect who resides at Number10 Ojekunle Street, Orile Agege, Lagos State, according to police sources was arrested for sponsoring phone thieves and highway robbers in Lagos.

    Ogunleye and his accomplice, Azeez  Muta, 27, were arrested following public outcry on their nefarious activities in Lagos.

    It was learnt that the suspects robbed  people with impunity because of the trust they had in the charms prepared by the native doctor before and after each operation.

    The suspects were arrested following information received by the police that the gang had been using the native doctor’s shrine in Agege to meet and plan robbery operations.

    A source revealed that a victim of the duo (name withheld) reported Muta to the police for being in possession of his stolen phone.

    Muta, according to the source confessed that it was Ogunleye’s sister identified as Bukola that sold the phone to him.

    Muta, according to the source, also told police that Ogunleye is the leader of the gang.

    ”When he took policemen to the shrine of the native doctor, Ogunleye, he denied knowing anything about Bukola. He told the police that he had not seen Bukola for four months,” said the source, who asked not to be named.

    Speaking with our correspondent, Ogunleye said: ”I am a native doctor, not a criminal doctor. I do incantation and I see vision for my clients who give me small money for my efforts. I have never been involved in armed robbery. I have no business with the stolen phone. I am not a member of any armed robbery gang. They asked me about my sister Bukola and I told them that we have not seen for the past four months.

    ‘’They searched my shrine and collected these items, head of a masquerade which we use it for oro festival, neck of the masquerade, incantation seeds, among other items. I am innocent of their allegations. I am not a greedy native doctor. At times they give me N5,000. The highest money I have collected from my client is N1,000.’

  • A season of fake prophecy

    A season of fake prophecy

    Preamble

    This is the season of fake prophecies in Nigeria, the season in which some obvious fraudsters bask in the empty euphoria of delusion. This is the season when Nigerian fraudsters give the impression that prediction and prophecy are one and the same and therefore take undue advantage of people’s ignorance to dupe them in the name of prophecy under the cover of religion.

    Whereas prediction is about imagination just as foresight is about intuition, both are evidently human while prophecy is divine.

    There is something strange about prophecy which continues to remain a puzzle to rightly guided human beings. It is like the night that is invisibly pregnant but which miraculously delivers wonders in the day. Genuine prophecy is neither by fabrication nor by pretext. Its roots are firmly planted in the rich soil of divinity and its agents were divinely chosen and called messengers of God. The last of such messengers was Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who left this earth almost 1500 years ago. Anybody whoever claimed or is claiming to be a prophet after the demise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is surely a fraudster and an agent of the Lucifer.

     

    Appointment of prophets

    Only Allah appoints prophets for an appropriate nation with an appropriate mission at an appropriate time. But this has been bastardized by self-styled ‘prophets’ of the modern world especially in Nigerian who see prophecy as an umbrella of fortune under which they can hide to mine gold and silver. Such people only sooth-tell satanic dreams to their ignorant and parochial victims who are callously milked in the name of prophecy.

     

    Wealthy prophets

    Except for King Daud (David) and his son King Sulayman (Solomon) who were divinely guided to show the world how wealth is legitimately acquired and managed, no prophet of Allah was ever stupendously rich. This can be compared with today’s situation where prophecy is measured in terms of wealth in the possession of the fraudsters who are parading themselves as prophets. Today, mere prediction has been deliberately turned into prophecy which in turn has become a major platform for preaching prosperity rather than posterity at the expense of godliness and humanitarianism.

     

    Genuine prophecy

    It is not by clandestinely predicting the number of Kings who will die in a locality in the coming year or the governors who will lose their seats to opponents or even the number of people who will lose their lives in various accidents that a person can proclaim self a prophet. Genuine prophets are known not by words of mouth alone or amount of wealth they possess but by the exemplary actions that may serve humanity in good stead for many, many centuries or even millennia after their demise. Prophets Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad (SAW) are good examples of such genuine Prophets.

    Prophecy, therefore, is not to be judged by yearly predictions of fraudsters who satanically claim to be prophets. Virtually all the religious tenets and regulations in Christianity and Islam today are reflections of the prophecies of the two great men mentioned above in the past two millennia or thereabout. Both men (Jesus and Muhammad) never pretended to be able to do what they were not divinely assigned to do. They never sought wealth and thus, they had no cause to be fraudulent.

     

     Today’s fake ‘prophets’

    In contrast, however, fake prophecy today is a product which finds a large market in Nigeria for which ignorant and parochial people queue up in multitudes before fraudsters with the intention of gaining fraudulently what they are not divinely destined to gain in life. Such people only fabricate satanic dream about their future and look for fraudsters who can authenticate such dreams for them satanically to suit their wishes or to solve certain insuperable problems. Thus, in the process, they are forced to carry out satanic instructions that may eventually bring ruins to them and pave ways for those fraudsters to zoom into material fortune without any care for conscience. Most broken homes and criminal activities of Nigerians particularly corruption today are traceable to fake prophecies and insensitive display of wealth in Churches and Mosques in this country. It is evident that the ridiculously stolen amounts of public funds by public officials end up in the pockets of the Charge de Affairs of those religious sanctuaries.

     

    A prophetic warning

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had forewarned the Muslim Ummah, about 1400 years ago, against the calamity that false prophecy could bring to mankind. Addressing his companions on a particular occasion at that time, he said:

    “There will be calamity!” He repeated this three times. But rather than asking him of its cause, his Companions simply asked for the solution. They had no cause to doubt him. And he told them to look for the solution in the legacy he was leaving behind. That legacy is the rule of law contained in the Qur’an and Sunnah.

     

    The Rule of Law

    The Prophet emphasized to his Companions that nothing besides the rule of law would ever bring the needed harmony to the world. He described the Qur’an as the all-time permanent solution to the various problems of all people and concluded that only individuals, groups or nations that hold it (Qur’an) tenaciously would escape the mentioned calamity.

    The Qur’an, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), is the mirror with which to view the past retrospectively and draw a lesson from its experience. It is the effective compass with which to find the way in the hazy wilderness of the present. It is also the impeccable telescope with which to view the future and escape its dangerous satanic dragnet. In other words, the Qur’an is an everlasting prophecy recalling the occurrences of the past, serving as the guidance of the present and turning focus on the future expectations with a view to clearing the way for the pious ones.

    By asking the world to follow the rule of law in all their ways, the Prophet never aimed at rising from his grave one day to govern any particular nation or region of the world. Neither did he leave any heir behind who would inherit the governance of the world. His objective, according to the mission he bore, was for the world to be in harmony through divine guidance.

    And, it is only in the interest of mankind to uphold the rule of law for the sake of their harmonious co-existence.

    To marry according to the rule of law; to divorce, if need be, according to the rule of law; to raise families according to the rule of law; to transact businesses according to the rule of law; to play politics according to the rule of law; to give judgment according to the rule of law; to conduct elections according to the rule of law; to legislate according to the rule of law; to govern according to the rule of law, these and more are the elements of the mission preached by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and there has never been an alternative to it since his demise about one and a half millennia ago.

    Today, is there any individual, group or nation not affected positively by the rule of law in the world?

    Every aspect of life has its rule of law. We work in the day and rest in the night not by our own volition but in accordance with the natural rule of law that guide our existence as human beings. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West to obey the rule of law that controls its operations. Fishes live in water. Plants grow generically and are fed through their roots in accordance with the natural rule of law that governs them. Disharmony prevails only when deviation occurs from the rule of law. And such is often caused by human beings. Carnivores like lions, vipers and eagles never voluntarily feed on plants. Herbivores like elephants, camels and goats never feed on flesh. To force them to do otherwise, in the name of experiment, is to cause disharmony in the animal kingdom.

     

    Causes of disharmony

    The world is in disharmony today because of deliberate deviation from the rule of law by those in power. Stronger nations want to usurp or dominate weaker nations as in the case of America in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

    Governments want to enslave the governed as in the case of Nigeria since independence in 1960. It is all an evidence of dogs eating dogs in the stable of greed. Why won’t disharmony prevail?

    But Allah so much loves mankind that He does not leave them permanently in the hands of devilish predators. From time to time, Allah sends conscientious individuals either as rulers or as counselors to rescue the oppressed. That was the fortune of Nigeria when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged as President.

    His insistence on rule of law first sounded odd to some lawless elements who took such stand for granted because they never experienced rule of law in Nigeria before his coming. But that was the blessing that our country needed as a solid foundation for a strong building. Rule of law is the first sign of sanity in a society. It is an evidence of decency in a people. It is a thorn on the way of certain fraudsters who claim to be Prophets.

     

    Remembering Yar’Adua

    In beaming the light of rule of law on Nigeria, Yar’Adua was not a mere touch-bearer he also recognized the fact that one did not necessarily have to be governed by Shari’ah or canonical law to abide by the rule of law.

    What the Qur’an teaches which the Prophet emphasized is for everybody to follow the rule of law by which he or she is governed. To do this is to follow the guidance of the Qur’an or that of the Bible.

    If we had a President in Yar’Adua who could voluntarily return his annual security vote of about 2 billion naira to the national treasury because he did not see the need to pocket it as he did not see it as a personal booty; if we had a President in him who could return the federal budget to the National Assembly for amendment because he felt it was unnecessarily inflated at the expense of the populace; if we had a President in him who could promptly react positively to the cry of the people on high cost of food items in the market; if he could cause the price of cement to crash in favour of the downtrodden masses and suspend any increase on price of petrol indefinitely until his death, it was only because he had the fear of Allah at heart and strongly adhered to the rule of law. Thus with him in power it was becoming crystal clear that Nigerians were beginning to appreciate the fact that harmony was truly in sight through the rule of law. And such great gestures which had eluded this country for a long time before he became President came to add greater values to the lives of Nigerians. Rule of law is about conscience and decency of character. It marks the difference between man and beast. If Yar’Adua did not achieve anything beyond establishing the rule of law in Nigeria, that singular achievement was great enough for posterity. And what is more, he achieved much more by bringing a ray of hope to millions of Nigerians in less than two years of his leadership in a country where the sky had been dangerously cloudy before his assumption of office as President. When Yar’Adua was President, no sane person could sensibly compare sleep with death.

     

     Lost paradise

    Prophet Muhammad never spoke in a vacuum. His utterances were divinely guided. And the Qur’an confirms this thus: “He (Muhammad) never spoke out of sheer whim; his expressions are no other than inspired revelations; he is taught by the One who is mighty in power…”

    Nigerians of today have become like the Israelis of yore who after being rescued by Prophet Musa (Moses) from the scourge of Pharaoh, showed ingratitude to Allah and were thrown into the wilderness of life. Having suffered in the hands of a blind and deaf Nigerian Pharaoh for eight terrible years and having been liberated by an unexpected Musa (Moses), it only behoved conscientious people to be grateful not necessarily to that Musa (Moses) but to God who used him for this divine gesture. The sharp difference between the road to hell and the one to paradise which Nigerians experienced within the first decade of the fourth republic had shown how wonderful Allah could be in His deeds. It also confirmed the genuineness of Prophet Muhammad’s prophecy as divinely attested in Chapter 20, Verse 24 of the Qur’an thus:

    “When my guidance is revealed to you, (Muhammad) whoever follows it shall never err nor be afflicted; but he who gives no heed to My warning shall live in distress and be raised blind on the Day of Resurrection…”

    In his message to the nation on the occasion of Mawlidu-n-Nabiyy and Easter of 2008 (one year after assuming the office), President Yar’Adua appealed to Nigerians, with humility, to exercise patience with his administration saying there was blueprint for thoroughness and decency to take off governance in earnest. He neither used any abusive language that was the hall-mark of his predecessor nor did he ask Nigerians to continue to bear the unbearable while his own family lived aristocratically.

    Having a man like him at the helm of affairs while he was alive was a special blessing of Allah which Nigerians only came to realize after his demise. And shortly after his demise, that reality became a lost paradise. The Qur’anic verse quoted above must always be a reference point for all decent, law-abiding people. From all indications during his tenure, there was a sign of light at the end of our tunnel as a nation. A serious assessment of the governing style in Nigeria since 1999 will surely reveal that with the demise of President Yar’Adua, a template of governance in Nigeria has been lost. For both the rulers and the ruled to rediscover that template, the only panacea for Nigeria’s plight, especially in a situation where ordinary feeding has become a luxury, is the rule of law. Anything contrary may only pave the country’s way to waterloo. For politicians, professionals and artisans to rely on fake prophesy in the name of religion, as now prevalent in Nigeria, is to cling desperately to a sinking straw. Those who did it in the past are now part of the debris of a dormant history. The fraudsters of today who are parading themselves as ‘Prophets’ will surely not be different those of the past who have now been consigned to a permanent historical oblivion. Let those who have ears heed this axiomatic warning. Materialism is a mere vanity which has a limited time.

    “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is in their hearts. If He seeks to afflict them with a misfortune, no one else can ward it off. Besides Him, there is no protector (for any rational being).” Q.13:11. God save Nigeria from the evil antics of fraudsters wearing religious robes!

  • Police arraign fake Customs officer

    A 36-year-old man, Tunde Adewole, has been arraigned by the police at an Ado-Ekiti Chief Magistrates’ Court, Ekiti State, for allegedly posing as an officer of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).

    He is standing trial for alleged forgery and fraud.

    Police prosecutor Johnson Okunade told the court that the defendant and others at large committed the offence on June 20, about 1000hrs, at Egbewa Street, Ado-Ekiti.

    He alleged that the accused and others at large committed felony to wit impersonation by presenting himself as a Customs officer.

    Okunade alleged that the accused and others at large forged Customs papers for a Lexus ES 359 vehicle.

    He added that the accused and others at large obtained money under false pretence by collecting N850,000 from  Aniyikaye Olumide, promising to issue him a genuine Customs paper for his Lexus ES 350 vehicle, which he failed to do.

    According to him, the offences contravene sections 108 (2), 467 and 419 of the Criminal Code Laws of Ekiti State 2012.

    The defendant pleaded not guilty.

    His lawyer, Mr. Chris Omokhafe, urged the court to grant him bail, promising that he will not jump bail.

    The Chief Magistrate, Mr. Adesoji Adegboye, granted the defendant bail at N400,000 with two sureties having verifiable addresses.

    He adjourned the case till January 26 for hearing.

  • One in 10 drugs sold in developing countries fake, says WHO

    One in 10 drugs sold in developing countries fake, says WHO

    The World Health Organisation (WHO ) has said that one in 10 drugs sold in developing countries is fake or substandard.

    This has led to tens of thousands of deaths, many of them of African children given ineffective treatments for pneumonia and malaria.

    In a major review of the problem, the WHO described bogus drugs were a growing threat as increased pharmaceutical trade, including Internet sales, open the door to sometimes toxic products.

    Some pharmacists in Africa, for example, say that they are compelled to buy from the cheapest but not necessarily the safest suppliers to compete with illegal street traders.

    Fake drugs could contain incorrect doses, wrong ingredients or no active ingredients at all.

    At the same time, a worrying number of authorised medicines fail to meet quality standards because of improper storage and other issues.

    The scale of the problem is hard to quantify precisely, but a WHO pooled analysis of 100 studies from 2007 to 2016, covering more than 48,000 samples, showed 10.5 per cent of drugs in low and middle-income countries to be fake or substandard.

    With pharmaceutical sales in such countries running at nearly $300 billion a year, this implies that trade in fake medicines is a 30 billion dollar-business.

    The human toll is enormous, according to a team from the University of Edinburgh, which was commissioned by the WHO to study the impact of fake drugs.

    They calculated that up to 72,000 deaths from childhood pneumonia could be attributed to the use of antibiotics with reduced activity, increasing to 169,000 deaths if drugs had no activity.

    Poor-quality drugs also add to the danger of antibiotic resistance, threatening to undermine the power of life-saving medicines in future.

    Another group from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that 116,000 additional deaths from malaria could be caused each year by bad anti-malarials in sub-Saharan Africa.

    “Substandard and falsified medicines particularly affect the most vulnerable communities,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus.

    “This is unacceptable.”

    Since 2013 the WHO has received 1,500 reports of fake and low-quality products, with anti-malarials and antibiotics the most commonly reported categories.

    However, the problem extends to everything from cancer drugs to contraceptive pills.

    Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 42 per cent of all the reports.

  • Fake doctors

    Fake doctors

    •Could this be evidence of lax monitoring and control?

    Nigeria needs about 237,000 doctors to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation but has only about 35,000. That is; instead of WHO’s recommendation of one doctor to 600 patients, Nigeria has a ratio of one doctor to 6,000 patients. Coming from the Head of the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Department, University of Abuja, Professor Titus Ibekwe, we can take this as the gospel truth, and it is most discomfiting.

    We wonder in what area of life the country has met global standards, considering that even in terms of policing, it has far less number of policemen than she required. Given the doctor-patient ratio, it is obvious that the country has an acute shortage of medical doctors.

    This is probably part of what some people have exploited to set up illegal hospitals where they carry out nefarious medical services, including surgeries. Although, as with many other places without standards, or with lax regulatory activities, Nigeria also parades a lot of fake journalists, fake lawyers, etc., but the medical profession is the last place to condone fake doctors because it deals essentially with human lives.

    This danger was exemplified by the arrest of one fake medical doctor on November 3 by policemen from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State. The arrest followed a report on the activities of fake doctors by the Oyo State Task Force on Private Health Facilities in Ibadan. The task force officials, acting on a tip-off, went to the hospital at about 11.00 a.m. and found five patients on admission. The fake doctor had performed surgical operations on two of them for fibroid and appendicitis.

    This is confounding in the sense that it was the third time that the fake doctor would be arrested. He had been arrested in 2008 and 2010, for medical malpractices and for training quack nurses. According to the chairman of the task force, Dr Adebisi Ayoola: “We were at the hospital on routine investigation, and we found he was still doing the same thing which he had been cautioned against in the past. This time around, what we found was an eyesore. There were five patients on admission in the hospital, and out of the five, two had been operated upon.”

    The shocker: “There was a woman who said she was referred to the hospital for fibroid. When we examined her, we found out that the fibroid was still intact, even after the surgery, meaning that what he did was just to open up the woman and close her back.”

    Perhaps nothing could be more callous. The task force chairman continued: “Another woman had also been there for the past few months with fracture of the right thigh bone. This is beyond his capacity to handle. There is no single qualified nurse in the hospital; this means that he was actually training auxiliary nurses.”

    We wonder, just as Dr Ayoola did, how many unlucky patients would have died in the hands of this fake doctor. The tragedy becomes compounded when it is realised that there are many such people out there gambling with people’s lives. Just last year, one Julius Afolabi, the self-acclaimed Medical Director of Adeolu Afolabi Clinic and Maternity Home in the Abule-Iroko area of Ota, Ogun State, was also arrested by the police, after failing to successfully carry out a fibroid operation for which he had allegedly been paid N200,000.

    Anyone with respect for the sanctity of human lives must be worried about the activities of these callous characters. It beats our imagination that just anyone can set up a clinic or hospital and be operating, sometimes for years before being apprehended. What are the regulatory agencies doing? In the particular case of the fake doctor in Ibadan, how was he able to return to ‘practice’ after being arrested twice? Could some people have been compromised along the line of duty? Nigerians deserve answers to these questions, and probably more.

    His staff who tried to shield him from arrest before he was located in his hideout in the hospital should also be arrested and interrogated. They are probably in the illegality together. But beyond all these, there is need for the public to be aware of how to detect fake hospitals. The government should also make healthcare accessible and affordable if we are to stop the activities of these quacks.

  • WHO, NAFDAC partner on eradicating fake drugs

    WHO, NAFDAC partner on eradicating fake drugs

    The Federal Government has introduced drug Coordinated Wholesale Centres (CWCs) to check the menace of fake and falsified medical products in the country even as it warned that by end of December next year, all open drug markets will be shut.

    Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole stated this in Lagos during a stakeholders workshop organised by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    The workshop was themed, “The prevention, detection and response of substandard and falsified medical products.”

    Prof Adewole said the new measures were designed to allow drugs to be sourced directly from the importers or manufacturers down to the end users instead of buying drugs from the open drug markets.

    According to him, the federal Ministry of Health had already developed National Drug Distribution Guidelines, NDDG, in 2012 to address the unsatisfactory chaotic drug distribution system of the country.

    He said coordinated wholesale centres to accommodate open market medicines sellers have been approved and are being developed in Lagos, Onitsha, Aba and Kano and CWCs will commence operation by January 1st 2019. Adewole observed that medicine is an important component of healthcare delivery service and without the infusion of medicines; the health care service delivery system of a nation is sterile.

    Prof Adewole said: “A good-quality medicine supply system is essential for healthcare delivery. There is a special need to prevent therapeutic drug falsification in order to safeguard against health and maintain trust in healthcare system. The overall scale of trading in medicine and the resultant harm done to global health has not been adequately accessed.”

    Acting Director-General of NAFDAC, Mr. Ademola Mogbojuri, said the public health implications of substandard and falsified medical products are dire and this includes treatment failure, high treatment cost, development of resistance, loss of confidence in the healthcare providers and healthcare system and may ultimately, result in fatality and death.”

    Mr. Mogbojuri raised the alarm that the problem of faking has become a serious threat to global public health. He added that the fight against this nefarious act requires sustained action by both governmental and non governmental bodies. “Single and isolated interventions cannot address the issue of substandard falsified medical products. I call for coordinated actions with international organisations to reduce to the barest minimum the incidence of the ugly menace.”

    The Acting Director-General said WHO established member states mechanism on substandard, spurious falsely labeled, falsified and counterfeit medical products following its resolution 65:19 in May, 2012 to promote public health, and access to affordable, safe, efficacious and quality medical product, across the globe.

    Declaring the workshop open, the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode who noted that the number of lives lost as a result of substandard medical product in the market was alarming blamed the unacceptable situation to weakness of regulatory bodies charged with the responsibility of nipping the act in the bud.

    Ambode said the capacity building workshop on prevention, detection and response to substandard and falsified medical products would improve the effectiveness of measures that have been put in place to achieve these objectives.

    He said: “It is important to emphasise that this fight must be holistic in terms of participation by all relevant government agencies including custom service standard organisation of Nigeria and the Nigeria police among others.

    ”Our efforts must also focus on identifying the sources of these products with a view to ensuring that they do not find their way into the market.”

     

  • Fake drugs

    Fake drugs

    • NAFDAC deserves commendation for ts efforts in checking the trend

    Prior to the establishment of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) in 1993, adulterated and counterfeit drugs had become a major problem in the country. Indeed, it was so serious that some African countries like Ghana and Sierra Leone banned the sale of drugs, foods and beverages produced in Nigeria.

    An incident in 1989 was particularly instructive: over 150 children died after being administered Paracetamol syrup containing diethylene glycol.

    Although fake and counterfeit drugs, foods, beverages and even cosmetics have not been eradicated in the country, the agency has put up a good fight against their producers and importers, with varying degrees of success. It would appear that NAFDAC recorded its most significant successes during the tenure of Dora Akunyili, a pharmacist and pharmacologist, who was at the helm from 2001 to 2008.

    It however seems the agency is coming alive again, especially with the string of successes it has recorded in recent times in fighting fake and counterfeit drugs. It has also heightened the tempo of its surveillance with a view to getting those behind the heinous crime arrested and prosecuted.

    Perhaps the latest of such efforts is its intention to prosecute 60 firms that allegedly faked its registration numbers. Mrs. Yetunde Oluremi Oni, the agency’s acting director-general told newsmen that the suspected fakers were arrested following intelligence report by NAFDAC’s Pharmacovigilance and Post-Marketing Surveillance Directorate on a facility suspected to be producing a herbal medicine with fake NAFDAC registration number.

    Oni, who spoke through the director, investigation and enforcement, Mr. Kingsley Ejiofor, said: “During interrogation, one of the suspects arrested in the company claimed that the product was duly registered with NAFDAC and even tendered registration certificate to the investigators. But further investigation revealed that the NAFDAC registration certificate was fake.

    One Mr. Yahaya, in collaboration with two others, Mr. Abubakar Ibrahim a.k.a Lamido and Idris Adamu (prime suspect) were allegedly involved in the shady business. “Adamu, based in Sokoto, was said to have designed the NAFDAC certificate using a computer, printed and way billed it to Mr. Abubakar Ibrahim, a.k.a Lamido, in Kaduna, who filled all necessary information and signed. He further confessed to have received N100, 000.00 from the N150, 000.00 given by the client”. Oni said further investigation was ongoing and that the case would be prosecuted.

    This is serious. It is bad for consumers of the products; it is bad for NAFDAC and it is bad even for the legitimate owners of the forged registration numbers.

    Given the widespread nature of the illegal business outfits, NAFDAC deserves commendations for swooping on the criminals who do not mind to make money by serving others what may well be  poison in the name of drugs, foods or cosmetics. The agency has been making stunning discoveries all over the country, particularly in recent times, from Lagos to Edo, Delta, Kaduna and Sokoto states, to mention a few.

    NAFDAC should intensify the monitoring not only of fake drugs and other items produced locally but also keep tabs on imported ones. This is much more so because some heartless importers have gone to the extent of instructing drug manufacturers in some countries to lower the standards of the drugs and other products that they import. The effect, especially on drugs, is that it reduces their potency, with little impact on patients on whom they are administered.

    We cannot tell how many innocent people have fallen victims as a result of these inhuman and ungodly activities of the unscrupulous Nigerians involved in these rackets. Their activities have to be reduced to the barest minimum if not eradicated. NAFDAC’s responsibility in bringing this about is quite huge and we call on the government to give it the necessary support in the interest of all Nigerians. We are not happy that the agency’s workers are currently on strike over welfare matters. The Federal Ministry of Health should find a way of resolving the issues so that they can return to their duty posts immediately. The kind of service they render is not one that allows for prolonged absence at work.

  • Fake Oba of Lagos charged with N15m fraud

    A 27-year-old man, Salami Oluwatobi Peter, who allegedly claimed to be Oba Osuolale Akiolu, the Oba of Lagos, was yesterday brought before an Ebute-Meta Magistrates’ Court for an alleged N15 million fraud.

    Peter was arraigned by the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Panti-Yaba, before Chief Magistrate A. O. Ajibade on a four count charge bordering on conspiracy and obtaining under false pretence.

    Prosecuting Inspector Adebayo Oladele told the court that the defendant and others now at large, committed the offence sometime in the month of August, 2016.

    He said they conspired and fraudulently obtained N15 million from the complainant, Moriselade Ajoke, under the pretence of assisting her to procure a slot in the proposed Lekki Free Trade Zone Airport Investment.

    Peter was also alleged to have falsely presented himself to the complainant as the Oba of Lagos, Oba Osuolale Akiolu, “who is entrusted with the said proposed Lekki Airport Investment.”

    According to the prosecutor, the offences are contrary to and punishable under sections 409, 312, and 380(1) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015.

    The defendant pleaded not guilty.

    Defence counsel, Bright Eboigbe, applied for his bail “on the most liberal terms.”

    Chief Magistrate Ajibade granted him N2 million bail with two sureties in the like sum.

    She ordered that the defendant be remanded in prisons custody pending the fulfilment of his bail terms and adjourned till October 16, for trial.

  • ‘Report of Tinubu’s new plane is fake’

    ‘Report of Tinubu’s new plane is fake’

    THE Media Office of former Lagos State Governor and All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has refuted reports that he has purchased a new plane.

    A statement by the former governor’s Special Assistant Ademola Oshodi described the report as “fake news’.

    The statement reads: “The THISDAY story of Sunday, July 23, 2017 claiming Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has recently purchased a new airplane is symptomatic of what happens when a publication divorces itself from any pretence of objective and impartial reportage. This is what happens when a newspaper becomes a mercenary tool for partisan designs.

    “THISDAY has a partisan axe to grind and it seeks to grind that axe against someone like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu because that is what the paymasters of THISDAY demand of it.

    “So eager to be seen as loyal to the whims of its paymasters, THISDAY stands disloyal to the very truth it professes to publish. Rather than practise journalism, this publication now specialises in peddling rumour and manufacturing fake scandal. One of the paper’s favourite excursions into fiction is to publish any and all things false about Bola Tinubu. Why THISDAY has such animus against Tinubu only the paper can answer. That such irrational hatred exists cannot be controverted.

    “THISDAY published a story that Tinubu purchased a new plane. The story was replete with pictures as if to authenticate the report. There is only one slight problem. The story is false and the pictures are doctored.

    “Asiwaju Tinubu has not purchased a new plane.  He is currently using the same plane he has used for over a decade now. This is the same plane that was used during the elections of 2011 and more recently in 2015 to help the APC campaign to victory, much to the everlasting chagrin of THISDAY and those whose wishes it caters to. If THISDAY would have done even a cursory check of the photos it published, it would have noticed the pictures reveal spaces with different interiors. They would have easily seen Tinubu’s picture was super-imposed onto a space he has not been.

    “This is sensational, shoddy and false. In the rush to embarrass Tinubu, THISDAY bares itself as a mill of rumour and falsehood.  It is THISDAY that should be embarrassed not Tinubu. Had THISDAY done any investigation at all and had it even a brief acquaintance with the truth and the etiquette of proper journalism, it would not have published the false report.

    “To clear the record, Tinubu has not bought a new plane. A simple investigation would have revealed the correct situation. But these merchants of fake news are more interested in attacking perceived enemies than in enlightening the public as should be the call of a newspaper.

    “This is journalism that is not journalism. We send this message in hope that THISDAY will find some respect for the norms of the profession it claims to practice. While this hope is probably too optimistic given the newspaper’s track record, we shall continue to pray and hope that they turn to the truth and quit their romance with blatant rumour and outright falsity.”

     

  • Fake lawyer jailed two and a half years

    A man, Emmanuel Ojo, has been sentenced to two and a half years for parading himself as a lawyer.

    He was not given an option of fine.

    The 52-year old man, who was apprehended by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Oyo State branch and arraigned at the Magistrates’ Court 2, Iyaganku, Ibadan on March 27, was caught while appearing as a lawyer in the court.

    He pleaded guilty to the two-count charge.

    Ojo was arraigned for conspiracy, impersonation and announcing himself as a lawyer.

    Delivering judgement, the Magistrate, Mrs. Abiola Richard, sentenced the accused to 30 months imprisonment without an option of fine.

    The prosecutor, Mr. Sunday Ogunremi, said the accused and others at large, between 2010 and 2017, at Mobolaji Law Chambers, 1, Winners Way, Basorun, Ibadan, conspired to impersonate as lawyers.

    He recalled that on March 27, the accused announced himself as a counsel and held brief in a case, but was later found to be an impersonator.

    The prosecutor said the offences contravened Section 516 and 484 Code Cap 38, Vol. II, Laws of Oyo State of Nigeria 2000.

    The accused was later moved to Agodi Prisons where he will serve his term.