Nigerians across social media are now reacting to the clip of beggars seen appealing to people on TikTok for alms.

The video, which was generated from one of the live done by the beggars, went viral on Thursday and has since then been discussed among Nigerians.

In the clip, the lead beggar who appeared to be disabled directed two others behind him who could barely walk too.

He was seen rolling on the floor and begging for gifts on the app in the Hausa Language.

However, not pleased with their action, some Nigerians have queried if someone was behind the account opening, using them to get sympathy and gifts from their unsuspecting victims.

D great Bundee, a user who tweeted on X with the handle #greatbundee, said, “Definitely a syndicate using handicaps to exploit people.”

Another user who tweeted anonymously as #Ojamzey said, “This is corporate begging.”

On X.com, a user #nanaquophie121 opined, “Top business strategy. Open a TikTok account for the disable. Let them go live and boom 60-40!”

A user on Facebook with the name Techy tech wrote, “All business Dey online now na, wetin Una Dey expect, don’t be surprise say den get manager.”

Another Facebook user, Punterian, said, “The ones that don’t need help are getting gifts, why won’t they get involved & benefit when na them be the actual beggars.”

“When they found out that the ones that don’t need help were gifted… so those who needed help had to step up,” Sperotti, a user on X, said.

“At this point, it’s clear it’s an organised crime,” Rocky Amartey said on Instagram.

[Punch]

IN a tumbling world with shifty and shifting alliances, the European Union, EU, met with its Nigerian and West African partners on Wednesday for a possible reset.

The twin meetings at the National Counter Terrorism Centre, Abuja, held under the shadows of France and United States losing military bases in the region to Russia and, claims that the two-some are in search of new bases. There are also other challenging developments such as a spike in coups, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso exiting the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, and supposed democracies, like Togo, subverting the democratic system.

The theme was about “Reducing vulnerabilities through partnerships”. A session was a stakeholders engagement on “Nigeria’s defence and security perspectives” and the second, on “Regional defence and security perspectives.”

These meetings are coming on the back of a High-Level African Counter Terrorism Meeting in Abuja a few weeks ago and on-going “Strategic Dialogue” between the EU and the Tinubu administration.

Ambassador Samuela Isopi, the Italian diplomat who is Head of the EU Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS told the May 15, 2024 meeting in Abuja: “We live in a single security theatre. What happens in one region of the world directly affects another…Crises or conflicts that emerge locally can quickly become global, with more far-reaching consequences than ever before.”

Ms Isopi who has had diplomatic experiences in Russia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina posited that: “Threats are transnational, more complex and diverse, but the nature of the threats we face is increasingly similar. Hybrid, cyber and information manipulation are now the norm everywhere.”

Major General Adamu Luka, National Coordinator of the Nigerian National Counter Terrorism Centre, NCTC, lamented that while West Africa, with diamond in Sierra Leone, gold in Ghana and oil in Nigeria, is a rich region, its people are very poor with 70 per cent below the poverty line. He said democracy demands certain expressions such as good governance and children at school. He added that while it is true that Africa has a huge youth population, the large number of out-of-school-children, constitutes a future problem. General Laka added sarcastically: “They say two heads are better than one, but two empty heads, are not.” He said there are talks about resilience but wondered if it is possible to be resilient on an empty stomach.

He traced the worsening security challenges such as that in Mali, to the overthrow of President Muamar Ghadaffi in Libya. He asked rhetorically how the EU is assisting in the fight against corruption and for good governance, adding that such challenges are recipes for terrorism.

Ambassador Pieter Leenknght, whose country, Belgium holds the rotating EU Presidency was more focused on misinformation, disinformation and the power of the press. He said the press can make threats look much bigger than they actually are, so some attention should be focused on these.

Ambassador Kalilou Traore of Cote d’Ivoire presented what he called the worst and best case scenarios. In the first, he said the coup epidemic continues; Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic finalise their withdrawal from ECOWAS with some other countries joining them; terrorism continues and ECOWAS collapsing. In the best case scenario, coups stop, democratic elections are strengthened and ECOWAS strengthens. The meeting he said, provides an opportunity to examine why things have not worked out well and how the situation can be changed. The 68-year-old diplomat advocated for the stabilisation of ECOWAS, and the polity in member countries. He added that although democracy is a process, the costs, including elections which sometimes take lives, is too high and should be checked.

Dr Cyriaque Pawomothom Agnekethom, ECOWAS Director of Peacekeeping and Regional Security, in commenting on the three countries exiting ECOWAS, said the security threat we are facing is transnational, hence no single country can succeed in fighting them off. So, ECOWAS should continue to play the central role as it is best suited to check the threats. He said those who partner with the region should favour regional leadership. Such leadership, he counselled, should be locally owned so that it does not appear it is being teleguided.

Colonel Ademola Lawal of the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, SCDDD, made an interjection to which there was no coherent response. In noting the issue of military coups in the region, he asked: what about civilian coups? He described such coups as those executed by the civilian leadership of some countries who apart from capturing executive power, also exercise legislative and judicial powers and perpetuate themselves in office.

Dr Paul Andrew Gwaza of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution argued that the trigger of insecurity are local so there is the need to localise initiatives and the ECOWAS. He said it is imperative to return to the vision of the ECOWAS of the People with focus on economic empowerment.

Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security submitted that: “It is not just ECOWAS, but the world that lacks leadership.” He said the body’s vision to move from the ECOWAS of States to the ECOWAS of the People, has stuck in “the ECOWAS of States.”

He said ECOAWS wanted to institutionalise two terms in office for the Heads of State in the region but some wanted more dialogue, so the dialogue is on-going. He added: “You are as strong as your weakest link.”

The leadership problem in member states, from his perspective, is not ECOWAS as an institution, but the people. He cited the cases of Burkina Faso and Gambia where the people rose to change their circumstances. In response to the ECOWAS silence on Togo where President Faure Gnassingbe is perpetuating himself in power by changing the constitution into a so-called parliamentary system that would ensure his continuation in power, Musah asked rhetorically: “You talk about Togo, where are the forces in Togo?”

He regretted that apart from the big powers, “medium forces”, especially from the Middle East, are beginning to interfere in Africa.

Mr Paul Ejime, former war correspondent disagreed with Mr Musah on subversion of the constitutional process such as in Togo, saying nothing stops ECOWAS from taking a position in such a case.

Ambassador Juan Ignacio Sell of Spain, in giving a summary of the twin meetings, said the EU wants to get things right and is ready to review its past work. The meetings, he said, feed into the Schuman Security and Defence Forum of the EU and over 60 partner countries scheduled to hold from May 28-29, 2024 in Brussels.

As the Brussels Forum approaches, the question remains: For how long would African countries remain recipients of EU generosity especially when ‘there is no free lunch anywhere, not even in Freetown’?

 The Federal Government yesterday admitted that most of the electricity Distribution Companies, DisCos, in Nigeria are technically insolvent and unable to pay for invoices sent to them from the electricity market and invest in network expansion projects.

Speaking at the 8th Africa Energy Market Place 2024 in Abuja, Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, Engr. Sanusi Garba, said the poor financial state of the DisCos makes it difficult for them to raise the needed capital to invest.

Garba pointed out that the challenges facing the sector were a culmination of past inactions and missteps by those saddled with the responsibilities of managing the sector, both at policy and operational levels.

According to him, “Today when you look at distribution companies, they are clearly and technically insolvent, and you also want them to raise capital in terms of debt or equity. It’s a herculean task.

“I also want to mention that implementing the power sector reform requires powerful political will to implement decisions that impact the wider public.”

On his part, the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, said the government is working to get the distribution companies solvent and effective by unbundling their operations along state boundaries.
Adelabu insisted that the areas covered by the current DisCos are too large for them to deliver effective services to consumers.

Speaking on how the government will tackle the N1.3 trillion owed to power generation companies and the $1.3 billion debt to gas companies, the minister disclosed that President Bola Tinubu has approved a plan to liquidate the debts.

He said: “Mr. President has approved the submission made by the Minister of State Petroleum (Gas) to defray outstanding debts owed to gas supply companies by power generation companies.

‘’The payments are in two parts, the legacy debts and the current debts. For the current debt, approval has been given to pay about N130 billion from the gas stabilization fund which the Federal Ministry of Finance will pay.

“The payment of the legacy debt will be made from future royalties in exchange for incomes in the gas sub-sector which is quite satisfactory to the gas suppliers. This will allow the companies to enter into firm contracts with power generation companies.

“For the power generation companies, the debt is about N1.3 trillion and I can also tell you that we have the consent of the President to pay, on condition that the actual figures are reconciled between the government and the companies.

“This we have successfully done and it is being signed off by both parties now. The majority has signed off and we are engaging to ensure that we have 100 per cent sign-off.

“The debt will be paid in two ways, immediate cash injection and through a guaranteed debt instrument, preferably a promissory note. This assures the companies that in the next three to five years, the government is ready to defray these debts.”

On its part, the African Development Bank, AfDB, said it had so far spent over $450 million to support various power sector projects and programmes with another $1 billion planned to support the power sector reform effort by the government.

Vice President, of Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth Complex, AfDB, Dr. Kevin K. Kariuki, pointed out that with 90 million out of 600 million people in Africa without access to electricity living in Nigeria, the effectiveness of the reforms will be measured based how much of the over 13GigaWatts of installed capacity Nigeria utilizes for its development.

“The African Development Bank is acutely aware of the extent of the challenge, ranging from addressing the electricity access deficit to rehabilitating and upgrading the power system to meet a load of 20GW which is believed to be the true demand, for Nigeria’s 200 million people, hence, we must have all our hands (i.e. all stakeholders) on the deck empowered by the new Electricity Act, 2023!

“At AfDB, we put our money where our mouth is! As is manifested by the fact, we will be shortly seeking board approval for a one billion US dollars policy-based operation (PBO) with a significant energy component aimed at supporting the ongoing power sector reforms triggered by the new Electricity Act,” he stated.

How Nigeria can overcome energy crisis – Mahama, Nnaji, Obi, Kwankwaso, Duke, Ooni

Meanwhile, eminent Nigerians and leaders, including former Ghanaian President, John Mahama, yesterday, dissected Nigeria’s energy crisis and returned a grim verdict: The country has no business with epileptic electricity supply given her huge resources. They said there is a need for a state of emergency to be declared in the energy sector to address the challenges.

Those who proffered solutions to Nigeria’s energy crisis included founder and chairman of Geometric Power Group, Professor Barth Nnaji; 2023 Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Mr Peter Obi; former Cross River State Governor, Mr. Donald Duke; former Kano State Governor and 2023 Presidential Candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, Senator Musa Kwankwaso; Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi; Chairman of British Tobacco, Chief Kola Kareem; and Dr Dele Momodu among others.

They spoke at the Inaugural Dele Momodu Leadership Lecture held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Lagos.

Held as part of activities to mark the 64th birthday of Dele Momodu, publisher of The Ovation magazine, the event lived up to its billing, drawing participants across political and regional divides.

We can’t continue paying for electricity and getting darkness — Momodu

Welcoming participants, Momodu said the country’s endless energy crisis has become embarrassing and he has elected to encourage dialogue to halt the trend.

His words: “On the occasion of my 64th birthday, you may be wondering why I am starting a lecture series. The reason is not far-fetched. The clock is ticking, and by the grace of God, on my next birthday, I will be 65 years old and will undoubtedly be called an elder statesman. In my moment of soliloquy, I asked what next. I wrote over a thousand articles and spoke endlessly on radio and television, but not much has changed in my greatly endowed country. My verdict is that criticism alone could not do the job. I decided to reach out to our leaders, technocrats, and my fellow citizens in general.

“The next facet of my struggle would be to encourage dialogue and conversation, so I came up with the idea of a national and international lecture. My country is riddled with all the denigrating challenges of which we are all guilty.

Rather than continue to have a blame game, why can’t we end this endless energy crisis? It is the most disturbing and embarrassing thing for a Nigerian. If I want to buy any product, all I need to do is pay, and it will be delivered. So how come we paid for electricity and it cannot be delivered? That is the challenge I am throwing at our leaders today. With all our investment in electricity, it has gone up in smoke. The more we paid, the less electricity we got. It seems that electricity affects all of us; we should propose a solution to it in a non-partisan way.”

Nigeria has all it takes to advance Africa’s collective energy — Mahama

Former President Mahama of Ghana, who chaired the lecture, said the theme of the inaugural lecture: “The Politics of Energy and the Way Forward in Nigeria’’, is the most appropriate and suitable because, despite Africa’s tremendous energy resources, such as hydro, wind, and solar, the continent continues to suffer from severe energy deficit, which undermines the totality of economic growth and development.

Mahama who recalled Ghana’s energy challenges despite generating over 5,500 MW of electricity, said: “The African continent is home to about 17.8 per cent of the world’s population, of which about 600 million people are without access to electricity. And 98 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa and another 940 million people lack access to clean cooking fuels and technology. This calls for bold policies by leaders and pooling resources to achieve Sustainable Development Goal No. 7, which is access to affordable, reliable energy by the year 2030.

“Nigeria can be described as a continental economic leader and powerhouse of Africa. Nigeria has a unique opportunity and potential to achieve energy security and sufficiency for itself and the entire West African sub-region.

“Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa have to address the critical question of which energy path we intend to adopt. Are we to take the path of a wholesome transition by tapping our gas or must we adopt a customized energy transition that prioritizes climate justice, wealth creation, and inclusive growth? This is the basic question we need to answer. This is the moment Nigeria must show leadership in the global politics of energy.

I wish to call on Nigeria to lead the politics of energy resources in Africa. There’s an urgent need for Ghana and Nigeria to deepen our economic and technical cooperation in harnessing and developing our energy resources for energy security and reliability as a catalyst for industrialization for the entire sub-region. The energy sector is the foundation for economic growth, and Nigeria must take the leadership mantle to build a regional consensus that would provide a more promising future for Africa.

We need emergency in energy sector – Obi

Also speaking, Obi commended Momodu for renovating the NIIA, and providing rugs and air conditioners, and said there is a need to imbibe a maintenance culture in Nigeria.

With Ghana of about 24 million people producing over 5,500Mw of electricity and Nigeria of over 200 million people generating less, he said there is a need to declare an emergency in the energy sector and boost the supply of gas locally.
“We must declare an emergency on power. We need embedded power and the way to go is very simple, I insist on gas supply. Making Nigeria productive and pulling our people out of poverty will give more dollars than export,” he said.

Kwankwaso, Ooni, others speak

Speaking at the lecture, Kwankwaso, who recalled that he did a 35MW power project in 2015 and $43m in Kano treasury for his successor to do the transmission, urged Nigerian businessmen and women to emulate the good work of Professor Nnaji in Aba where his Aba power project is providing power to nine of the 17 local councils of Abia State. “I urge our governors to join forces and ensure we have electricity in Nigeria,” he added.

On his part, the Ooni of Ife, urged Nigerians to join forces, shun partisan considerations and collectively tackle the challenges of the country.

How Nigeria’s rejection of gas pipeline proposal from US hurt us — Duke

On his part, Duke rued Nigeria’s missed opportunities in rejecting the proposal of the United States to build a gas pipeline from the Niger-Delta that would pass through Niger Republic, Algeria to Europe in the 1980s.

His words: “The topic is very important in terms of this continent and where it is going. Nigeria has a $37 billion oil reserve. In 1985, as an intern in the US, an American lady asked me a question in a rebuking manner, asking what was wrong with Nigeria. I was about 23 years old, so I didn’t understand what she meant. She said she just come back from the White House, and she had an interview with the chief of staff, and they proposed a gas pipeline from Nigeria to Europe.

I thought it was a brilliant idea that it was going to be paid for by the Western world, but we gave a condition, and the condition was that the United States would have to pull out of South Africa. She said it was a very stupid decision, that no one gave the United States conditions. It would have made more sense if we agreed, and we would have had a lot more leverage. This is a nation that has been flaring 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas daily for over 40 years. That is equivalent to burning 25 million gallons of diesel.”

[Vangaurd]

Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, says the judiciary is the biggest threat to the nation’s democracy — and not the electoral umpire. 

Obi said this while delivering a keynote speech at the fifth memorial of late Justice Anthony Aniagolu at the Godfrey Okoye University in Enugu.

The former Anambra governor said justice in Nigeria “goes to the highest bidder” and has become “commodified”.

“While the judiciary, today, still boasts of a few outstanding judges, there is an undeniable decline in our judicial system,” he said.

“This decline poses a significant threat to the future of Nigeria. Justice is increasingly commodified, and delivered in favour of the highest bidder.

“Whenever democracy is discussed, fingers point to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the problem. But INEC is not the problem, instead, the judiciary is. The judiciary is the biggest threat to Nigeria. If our judiciary is effective, our businesses will thrive.

“When the rule of law is compromised, the most vulnerable members of society are disproportionately affected, and the fabric of our society begins to fray. The integrity of our institutions, the protection of human rights, and the stability of our nation are all jeopardised.

“The rule of law is the highest intangible and most valuable asset of any society, and we must work tirelessly to protect and preserve it. We must prioritise the pursuit of justice above all else.

“I emphasised the urgent need to revitalise our judicial system by safeguarding its independence and promoting the values of character, competence, capability, compassion, and integrity among our jurists, as well as within our political leadership.

“By doing so, we can ensure justice and fairness prevail as we endeavour to build a better Nigeria for all.

“Nigeria has become a country where anything goes. There is no rule of law, there is almost no judiciary. Everybody could be pushed down because there is no rule of law.

“Because the judiciary has become commercialised and depends on how much one pays, it has become difficult to get true justice in the judiciary.

“At any point in time where the judiciary is not working, the society suffers.”

Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) won the 2023 presidential election with 8,794,726 votes; Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second with 6,984,520 votes; while Obi polled third with 6,101,533 votes.

Obi and Abubakar challenged Tinubu’s election all the way to the supreme court.

On October 26, 2023, the apex court dismissed the appeals of Abubakar and Obi and affirmed Tinubu as president.

[TheCable]

‘For the modern Yoruba intelligentsia, Ifa is the index of Yoruba wisdom and cultural excellence”-Robin Horton 

Epega classifies into three groups, those interested in Ifa. 1) Professionals (Ifa priests and diviners. 2) Ifa Devotees-Worshipers. 3) Philosophers-wisdom and knowledge seekers 

‘Founded on the beliefs of the earliest Yoruba, Ifa was systematised during the Oduduwa Era. It is regarded as the repository of Yoruba traditional body of knowledge embracing history, philosophy, medicine and folklore”, So says Jacob Olupona ( Professor of divinity at Havard University). Wande Abimbọla added, It is our own encyclopaedia which is held orally. It is a testimony to the fact that the human brain can retain a lot of information without having to write anything. It was no surprise to learn about the severity and the protracted nature of the training required to get certified as Ifa priest. It consists of a pre initiation training which takes anything between ten and twenty years and another five years of post initiation training. But without olodumare, from whom all else emanated, there would have been no Orunmila and Ifa.

Olodumare is the unique, omnipotent and omniscient creator. Directly ranking under him is the Trinity of Qrunmila-Obatala-Exu. ‘Below this trinity are the other Orixa representing natural forces or spiritual ideas. Some are wrathful like Ogun, Xọngo, Xopono, A won Iyami (witches) says Abosede Emmanuel. Obatala is said to be at the top of this trinity symbolising the Yoruba adage that a tripod ensures stability and order (adiro meta kii da obe nu). In order to acquire this philosophical stability ‘man is taught by Ifa to observe the ethical rectitude of Obatala, to allow for the unpredictable element in life, represented by Esu and to approach problems with the wisdom of Orunmila’. It is from Obatala that the Yoruba derived the role ideation and perception of themselves as urbane, mature, gentled-natured people. (Bolaji Idowu).

Ifa is a victim, first and foremost, of colonialism and its inherent requirement to delegitimize the precolonial history of Africa. Jean-Paul Sartre calls it ‘the sinister strategy of erasing native identities in which the aim is to supplant Indigenous culture with the colonisers own, leaving the population in a vacuum of identity’. It is a measure of the success of this delegitimization that it was with considerable reluctance that I ultimately decided to enter it as a fit and proper subject of public communication beyond the rarefied precincts of academe. 

Now let us proceed with the most contentious of the lot, Esu. Orunmila is his closest friend and confidante who is distinguished for his habit to routinely mock himself and his friend. In a broadside at his friend, he said those of you going to request Esu to bless you with a house, have you forgotten that Esu himself has no house and lives permanently on the streets?.

The original damage to the reputation and locus standi of Esu was inflicted by the mischaracterization of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther in his mistranslation of the Bible to Yoruba language. In his relative ignorance and religious fervour, he wrongly equated the Biblical Satan with Esu.The tragedy of Crowther’s life was the racist refusal of the Anglican communion religious establishment to accept his elevation to the Bishopric. If Christianity was all virtue as he believes, he would not have suffered this rude awakening. 

That said, you have to understand the  context within which Crowther was operating. First, unless he was an initiate, his knowledge and understanding of  Esu was essentially limited. It is in the nature of those days that premium is placed on opacity and secrecy in contraposition to the universality of knowledge and information culture that we subsequently  inherited. Esu”is the neutral locus between good and evil as moral categories” and finds metaphorical analogy as ‘Inspector General of police who reports regularly to olodumare on the deeds of the divinities and men, everyone lives in dread of him lest he takes bad reports to Olodumare”.(Idowu). 

Èṣù láàlú does not have an English name just the way Ṣàngó, Ògún, Ọbàtálá, Ọ̀ṣun and others don’t have an English name. Èṣù is Èṣù! He is only a Messenger who delivers whatever messages he is sent,  be it positive or negative. Eṣù láàlú does not have all those bad features ascribed to the Biblical Satan. People should therefore stop judging Yorùbá Traditions, Customs, Beliefs and Spirituality as “Sinful”, in the Judeo-Christian  biblical sense. 

A subject-matter I bandy around a lot is the concept of autochthony. (Autochthony is the belief or claim that a group of people are indigenous to a particular land or region). So when we commend autochthony, we are saying that a state should derive from the indigenous society and that to the extent it does not, is the extent to which it will likely fail. For instance there was not a prior Nigerian society from which the Nigerian state originated and that it is the extent of this deviation that Nigeria has failed. On the other hand, a potential Yoruba state would have fulfilled the sociological requirement of autochthony because there is a prior indigenous Yoruba society from which it has evolved. It is in this respect that we talk of continuity and discontinuity. So there is state-society continuity in a potential Yoruba state which is lacking in the Nigerian state. To put it in the words of Chief Obafemi Awolowo “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English,’ ‘Welsh,’ or ‘French.’ The word ‘Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not”

It is with regard to the Nigerian state-society discontinuity that I theorised that there is a psycho-cultural disconnect between the governing mores of the indigenous societies comprising Nigeria (on one hand) and the British-begotten values of the colonial legacy baby- the Nigerian state (on another). In many respects, you can no more psychically separate a European from Christianity than separate a Yoruba from the Yoruba cosmological order.This notion taps from Carl Jung’s analytical concept of the collective unconscious and the subconscious retention and transfer of collective institutional memory. Alexander Roob describes the phenomenon as “accumulated wisdom of the past” “a rich world of images which has etched itself into the memory of modern man, despite the fact that it is not available in public collections”

Flowing from the above is, as deterrence, for the Yoruba, the consequences of breaching his oath of office is more effectively conveyed by Ogun, the implacable Yoruba god of restitution than the Bible and Koran. To quote a Nigerian correspondent “They say when (It is said that if) you want an African to tell the truth, make the African swear to an indigenous divinity—not to the Bible or the Quran”. Pastor Tunde Bakare recalls, ‘To bring conclusiveness to the allegation, they called an ailala priest, with esoteric insight into how to catch a thief. He recited some incantations over a cup of water and asked everyone to drink from it. “Anyone who drinks this water and has stolen the money will die from a gunshot wound ” he warned. They all drank…Years later, Bayo, my nephew, who had stolen the money,  had gotten married and was a successful auto repair technician. One day, while testing one of the vehicles he had repaired, assassins who had been sent after the owner of the car, shot at him, mistaking him for the owner. Unfortunately, Bayo died..”.

The bad and good news is that while Ifa has travelled all over the world, Yoruba people, who are the real owners are ignorant about it because somebody brainwashed them.’There are white people who are now Babalawo and some of them have private jets from the practice.“ In New York, there are more than 2000 Babalawos and in Miami, there are more than 100,000. Some of them own banks and function in the legislative house. There are thousands of them in Cuba and other countries.”

The irony is that as African indigenous religion was steadily losing legitimacy and acceptance at home, a contrary trend ensued in the diaspora especially in South America where ‘African descendants in Brazil adopted the Yoruba religious culture (as Afro-Brazilian) and built an all embracing African identity around its universal character’. Could this be what Orunmila meant when he declared that ‘Ifa o le parun. Atelewo la ba ila, a o mo eniti o ko” (Ifa cannot lapse into extinction. The marks we bear on our palms, do we know how it got there?)

The trademark of Orunmila is a self-deprecating acknowledgement of his fallibility. We find a lot of this in his deference to Ori, the God of destiny. Here we go. “Ko si Orisha ti dani gbe lehin Ori eni ( no orisha can bless you without the concurrence and consent of your Ori). When his never-do-well, ward (Akapo) reported him to olodumare for not helping him to succeed in life. Orunmila explained to God that he had done all he could for Akapo but his Ori did not concur hence the futility of his intercession. On another occasion, he taunted “nigbati Ori n gbe ni, nibo ni orisha wa, e ba je ka fi orisha sile, ka bọ Ori eni ( when Ori was blessing you, where were the orishas, you had better forgo the orisha and worship your Ori). In their collective dread of Sango and self-mockery he said “orisha ti Sango o ba le mu, ere lo mo sa (whichever orisha that Sango cannot deal with, must be a good sprinter). Ipin ja ju oogun, ori je ju ewe lo (Ori supersedes any other spiritual intervention) Oogun lo ni ojo iponju, Ori loni ojo gbogbo (ifa may help alleviate momentary adversities, ori is the eternal guarantor of a fulfilled existence)

If the responsibility is accepted, the task is cut out for the Yoruba intelligentsia to take up the inevitable challenge of fostering the widening of the boundaries of ifa ownership through a programmatic iteration of its thematic and pedagogical emphasis on morality. Rationality demands that you need to understand precisely what is it you are running away from before taking to your heels otherwise you will ab initio be running blind. Let me now leave you with a prayer from Orunmila. Ihoho larin wa aiye, edumare ma je rin Ihoho pada sorun. Ekun lasun wa aiye, edumare ma je ki asunkun pada sorun. Inu eje la to waiye, edumare ma je ka to inu eje pada sorun (we were born naked, may we not return to heaven in nakedness. We were crying on arrival at earth, may we not return to heaven crying. We were delivered in blood, may it please edumare that we do not return in the midst of blood)

The attention of the Governor of Ekiti State, Mr Biodun Oyebanji has been drawn to a misleading report by Sahara Reporters on his trip to the United States. 

There would have been no need to respond to the misleading report, because the itinerary of the Governor was well publicized before he embarked on the trip. However, this response is being made for the sake of the reading public who might be hoodwinked by the highly misleading report. 

It is on record that the itinerary of the Governor was made public through a statement signed his Special Adviser on Media, Yinka Oyebode on May 5, 2024. 

The statement, which was circulated in both the traditional and social media, indicated that Governor Oyebanji would, during the trip, participate in the 2024 US-Africa Business Summit in Dallas and the nineteenth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF19) in New- York. The statement also indicated that the Governor was scheduled to hold talks with critical stakeholders, business leaders and development partners in furtherance of the shared prosperity agenda of the administration, before returning to the country. 

Highlights of the Governor’s engagements in the US are regularly communicated to the people of the state through media reports. These include his panel presentations, engagements with business leaders and development partners as well as the signing of the multi billion naira 100,000 hectares cassava farm with CAVISTA Holdings. The engagements continue till his return date. 

In line with the transparency and accountability policy of the administration, all local and international engagements and trips of the Governor have always been made public. And this current one is not an exception. 

It is on record that the current US trip of the Governor is the first outside the Continent since assuming office on October 16, 2022. The first trip outside the country was a UNDP sponsored induction programme for Governors held in Kigali; followed by the Afrexim Meeting in Cairo, where the state got a very significant infrastructure support from the bank. 

We urge Sahara Reporters to always conduct proper checks before going to the press. A call to the media office of the Governor or a click on the internet would have provided the needed information on the trip as well as outlined activities and prevented the news organization from publishing an obviously misleading and mischievous report.

 

Signed 

Yinka Oyebode

Special Adviser (Media) to the Governor, Ekiti State.

My Saturday column was anchored on a viral soundbite from 2019 of Bola Tinubu saying, “If we reduce the purchasing power of the people, we can further slow down the economy. Let’s widen the tax net. Those who are not paying now, even if it is inclusive of Bola Tinubu, let the net get bigger and we take in more taxes, and that is what we must do in the country."

He did utter those words, but the context was intentionally distorted with intent to deceive. Ironically, it was a previously fervent Tinubu supporter who has now become one of his severest critics who called my attention on Saturday to the fact that the soundbite intentionally cut out the preceding and subsequent statements Tinubu made, which made it clear that he wasn’t asking for citizens’ purchasing power to be weakened and for the economy to be slowed down. 

On the contrary, he was actually advocating the opposite of that, which is ironic because he appears to be doing exactly what he counseled against—sort of like his contradictory attitudes on petrol subsidies when he wasn’t in government and when he is now in government.

Well, here’s the full quotation which political opponents who popularized the soundbite (and misled some of us) deliberately left out:

“The global economy faces a stiff headwind [due to] factors not [of] our making…. Consumer spending is slipping…. And this is where I will stop and appeal to Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President, and his team.

“Put a huge question mark on any increase on VAT, please. If we reduce the purchasing power of the people, we can further slow down the economy. 

“Let’s widen the tax net. Those who are not paying now, if it is inclusive of Bola Tinubu, let the net get bigger and we take in more taxes, and that is what we must do in the country, instead of additional layers of taxes. For now, I’ll stop there.”

He obviously didn’t have a great choice of words, but Tinubu was actually advising the Buhari administration not to increase VAT (as he is proposing to do now) because it will reduce the purchasing power of the people and slow down the economy.

In my column, I found it incredulous that he would say that. I wrote: “So, many people, including me, concluded that Tinubu merely slipped up. What he meant to say was inconsistent with what he actually said.”

Two things made the propagandistic soundbite believable. One, although Tinubu was addressing former Vice President Osinbajo, he used the first-person plural “we” even though he wasn’t officially in government (which may be justified because he saw himself as a part of the government—never mind that he distanced himself from it during the election).

Two, in the nearly one year he has been in power, his signature economic policies have done no more than reduce the people’s purchasing power, slow down the economy, and widen the tax net.

All said, I believe that at all times we must admit the truth even if it’s against us, embarrasses us, weakens our argument, or causes us to be hated or ridiculed. That's my personal philosophy.

The truth is that the viral 2019 soundbite that inspired my column is decontextualized and manipulated. I apologize for unknowingly validating it. 

Nonetheless, my analysis of the strangulating economic policies of the Tinubu administration, which he advised Buhari against, stands.

 I am glad that he has seen reason to reverse the cybersecurity tax, according to today's Punch. I hope other reversals of injurious economic policies will follow. All we want is a better deal for our people.

I was chatting with a friend last week, who, mid-speech, redirected our conversation to the situation in the Middle East. She wanted to know what the mood in the US was. Over 6,000 miles away in Nigeria from where she was calling, she didn’t quite trust the media accounts. Since I was visiting the US, she thought I might have a better reading of the pulse.

Her call coincided with the decision by Israeli President, Benjamin Netanyahu, to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, in spite of warnings about compounding the current humanitarian disaster in Gaza where over 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, not counting bodies still under the rubble.

No one is sure how many more dead would be counted before Netanyahu finds the last Hamas, but is there still a chance – just one chance – that the dog in this deadly hunt will hear the hunter’s restraining whistle? Is the US unable or unwilling or both unable and unwilling to call Netanyahu to stop?

Calling America

I told the caller that the honest answer was I don’t know. The mood on US campuses was clear. Students from Columbia to Yale and from Harvard to New York and University of Texas at Austin, pitched tents outside for days in running battles with the police to demand an end to the war. They wanted the Biden administration to call Netanyahu to order. 

There were counter-protests, alright, but the overwhelming majority of students across US college campuses made their voices loud and clear: Israel had gone too far in avenging October 7. 

That was the mood on the campuses. 

It wasn’t very different on the streets, too. You could say that is to be expected. Two of three cab drivers I used were persons with Arab roots who wore their grief on their sleeves. 

They were not all Hamas sympathisers; just ordinary folks who might still have remained in Palestine under better leadership, but in whose eyes the worst Palestine leaders now look like saints, thanks to Israel’s ruthless war in Gaza. But you don’t have to be Arab or Jew or Greek to ask, who can stop Netanyahu? You just have to be human to see that if two wrongs don’t make a right, a third only compounds it.

So, who does the US listen to and why does it matter in the war in Gaza? In politico-speak those who move the hand that moves the most powerful country in the world are called the “military-industrial complex.” 

Who’s the Complex?

This is how Meta AI defines it: “The military-industrial complex (MIC) refers to the interconnected network of relationships between the military, defense contractors, and the federal government. It involves the collaboration and cooperation between these entities to produce and profit from military weapons, equipment and services.

“The term was first used by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961, where he warned of the potential dangers of an unchecked alliance between the military, defence contractors and politicians.”

If there’s anyone who ought to know that a threesome involving the military, defence contractors and politicians can hardly end in any good, it was Eisenhower. He was on two of the three sides; and Dick Cheney who became Vice President decades later, was on the last two – defence contractor and politician. 

Eisenhower led two of the most consequential military campaigns in the Second World War, before he later became president.

This Complex is not large. In number terms, it would be a tiny fraction of the number of college students who besieged dozens of campuses last week, calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Statistics in 2009 suggested that it includes around 1,100 lobbyists who represent about 400 clients from the defence sector, mostly companies that make losses from peace.  

Size matters not

But you would be mistaken to judge its influence by its size. Although it accounted for about three percent of the US GDP two years ago, these folks famous mostly for their notorious exploits, with strong ties to the Jewish lobby, have been linked with nearly every bad thing from the overthrow and murder of radical Chilean president Salvadore Allende Gossens to the Vietnam War and from the Iran-Contra Affair to Gulf War I & II. 

As bad things go, the last one was the baddest. This Complex instigated the US invasion of Iraq in spite of all evidence to the contrary. It made up its own convenient evidence, bomb after bomb, as hundreds of lives were destroyed and centuries of civilisation in Mesopotamia was pillaged and ruined.

After the war, one of the last surviving White House peaceniks, Barack Obama, said, in a declassified document: “ISIS (Islamic State), is a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion, which is an example of unintended consequences – which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.” Unfortunately, even Obama the Dove shot before aiming in Libya.

In the Middle East, the Complex has President Biden by the balls. That was what I told the caller from Nigeria. It doesn’t matter what the students are saying on college campuses or what the cab drivers think; the Complex has Biden by the balls. And what a hold they have on him and on anyone in the White House in an election year! The Complex has got Israel’s back. Biden is damned if he calls out Netanyahu. Damned if he doesn’t. 

Owners of America

That’s what I told the caller. The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria have a profound way of saying it that is lacking in the English language: “Ana enwe obodo enwe!” A town is owned and the owners call the shots. It’s a hard thing to say, even harder, perhaps, to accept. Because the logic of accepting that the Complex owns America and has its ear, is to deny the agency of actors within the system who may hold different, even stridently opposing views.

But think of it this way: why would America, a beacon of the rule of law, conveniently hide under its non-signatory status to ICJ to allow Israel to continue bombarding Gaza in spite of warnings by the court and the UN of an impending humanitarian catastrophe? Why would Biden, who regretted voting for the War in Iraq, and who as President, has prioritised diplomacy, become so impotent over Gaza? It’s the Complex, folks! They’ve got him by the balls in an election year!

And Netanyahu knows this, as does large sections of the Western media largely controlled by vested interests in the Middle East conflict. Netanyahu knows that Israel’s invincibility is an American yarn. The students said that much in their placards and graffiti last week, but who’s listening? 

Certainly not Biden, who along with his British ally, Rishi Sunak, scrambled military assets to defend Israel on April 15, when Iran launched what might otherwise have been a devastating retaliatory attack on Israel? The yarn of Israel’s invincibility, largely overplayed in the Western media, continues to feed the war. For how long? How many more lives before enough is enough?

What price, peace?

On the whole, the world is in a far more peaceful place today than it was in the 20^th century when millions of people died from senseless, bloody conflicts over ego and territory. Yet, it has taken bloody hard work to bring us here, where prosperity is not only measured by the Complex’s profit from wars, but also by how many ordinary folks around the world have bread on their table and milk for their babies.

Now, it seems like from South Sudan to Yemen and from the meat grinder in Ukraine to Gaza, the world is adrift again, one war at a time, as America defies the voices of its own children.

Someone must stop, listen and act. If not Biden, then who?

 

After alleging his life and family were in danger, FirstNews editor, Segun Olatunji, walked out on his job and the messy situation of Nigeria’s state security agents going feral on him. Their actions were not out of character. When a situation embarrasses one of the country’s many self-important “big men,” violence is always their resort. In this case, the big man with a punctured ego is the president’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila. FirstNews had written an unflattering story bordering on corruption and abuse of office about him, a civic action that turned out to be a mistake on the part of journalists who took the fact of Nigeria’s democracy as self-evident. For now, one cannot definitively state whether the case peaked with the editor’s resignation.

Some military men were said to have arrested Olatunji from his Lagos home. According to Olatunji’s narration of accounts, they arrested his wife and used her as bait to get to him. They (officers of the Army, Air Force and Defence Intelligence Agency!) burst into his home, bundled him into a van parked outside his house, and whisked him away. They blindfolded him and transported him to Abuja in a military helicopter. They also detained and tortured him. When confronted, they at first denied their involvement in his arrest. It was thanks to a sustained media campaign that Olatunji was later released. It probably helped too that the FirstNews management also apologised to Gbajabiamila stating that their report contained “falsehoods and fabricated stories handed out to us as facts by a misleading source.” Trouble is, in situations like this, you never know what constitutes a genuine apology and what was obtained under duress.

Several commentators have already addressed the issue of the journalist’s abduction. What I am curious about is the role of Gbajabiamila in all of these. Is he satisfied with the outcome? Is this how he is going to be resolving issues going forward? Notably, he was silent all through the saga (or maybe I just never came across his statement on the issue). However, we are Nigerians enough to know that the state agents would not deploy that much resources to arrest a single journalist if they were not acting on “orders from above.” The fact that he was publicly silent does not absolve his fangs of this venom.

As you might know, Gbajabiamilia is a trained lawyer with many years of practice in the United States. Yes, his career was blighted by professional misconduct but he was still a practitioner. Back home in Nigeria, he cut his political teeth by working among the breed of activists/intellectuals whose perpetual claims on the public never surpass their glorious days of challenging military despots. It is consequential of how we (mis-)attribute our freedom from autocratic government to these people that someone like Gbajabiamila eventually rose to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In short, Gbajabiamila is a man whose professional career and political credentials have been defined by the law—the rule of law, advocacy against an unruly order, and the making of the law.

So, why would a man like that fight supposed libel/slander through means that repudiate the law? Why did he abjure the path of pursuing a civil case and instead opt for the very “Gestapo” military techniques that negate the ethos of Nigeria as a democratic society? I am genuinely curious if, at any time during Olatunji’s saga, Gbajabiamila was struck by the irony of a lawyer/lawmaker defending his supposed integrity using brute despotic tactics. Is this not another instance of Nigeria as the quintessential Orwellian animal farm?

There are many disasters in Nigeria today, and Olatunji’s abduction illustrates some of them: those who boast they fought for democracy were never fully convinced of democracy’s true potential; those presently vested with power do not believe in the country enough to let us attain our true potential. At every turn, and every opportunity they get, they subvert our chances of becoming the nation where “peace and justice shall reign.” As it turns out, even the man who has worked with the law all his life does not even believe in the law enough to let the law take its course. He could have gotten FirstNews to apologise if he had filed a civil case in the court, won, and the judge ordered a retraction. Instead, he took a shortcut. For a country where insecurity is perpetually rife, security agents sure wasted resources to make a spectacle of the vindictiveness of self-vindication.

When you read the FirstNews report that triggered the abduction, what you see is a case of losing a needle and invoking Sango to help retrieve it. Ultimately, the expenditure of summoning a wrathful God will outweigh the value of what was initially lost. Like millions of Nigerians, I never even heard of FirstNews until the arrest of their editor. I had to go dig up the story online, and there it was: a wishy-washy and gossipy report that lacked substance. If there was any truth to that account, it was buried deep down in the shallowness of that reporting.

You look at the article now gleefully republished on the internet and wonder, what is it about this tripe that triggered the autocratic instincts of a lawyer, lawmaker, former Speaker, and Chief of Staff to the President? It really does not take much for people with really small feathers to have them ruffled. Then you look at the whole situation again and it suddenly gets clearer why Nigeria is in a state of administrative mess: our leaders are not busy enough. Those who are tasked with carrying the elephant of national responsibilities on their heads are obsessed with using their toes to dig up crickets in the soil of Nigeria’s decaying media institutions.

Meanwhile, by descending on Olatunji so high-handedly, reasonable people are left wondering why anyone would move a muscle over something so forgettable. It had to have triggered something in a seared conscience. While we will never know the truth of what happened, the overreaction suggests that there must be a raging fire underneath the wispy smoke of FirstNews’ report.

Olatunji’s story is yet another lesson for Nigerians who accede when government officials advocate more social media regulation. Now you can see that when people like Gbajabiamila go around whipping up a moral panic around social media, claiming social media is a menace that must be regulated, what they are actually doing is putting themselves beyond incrimination when they take certain extrajudicial actions like abducting and torturing a journalist. What they are trying to achieve by disseminating such glaring nonsense is a situation where they can justify themselves when they express their own unregulated power. Do not be beguiled, the real menace to society is those unaccountable to no one and who will observe no limits in their expression of coercive force.

Nigeria is a place where virtually everyone with a modicum of power does not hesitate to rain down abuses by using state-invested power, and here is another frightening instance. What is far more annoying is how the same state security agents who cannot protect us against crime, terrorism, banditry, and all sorts somehow always have enough resources to salvage the ego of the big man who is apparently too soft-skinned to take public criticism. For Nigerian soldiers who make videos to complain they fight Boko Haram and bandits without sufficient resources to fly a non-violent “offender” in a military helicopter shows an abject lack of seriousness in their organisation. But that imprudence is the nature of our democracy. There are never enough resources to do any public good, but they somehow manage to privatise the little that exists to assuage the feelings of puny gods who want their feelings worshipped.

A teenager who went missing in 1998 was found alive over the weekend in the cellar of his alleged kidnapper’s home — just 300 feet from his family’s residence in Algeria.

Omar Bin Omran was rescued Sunday from the house of his longtime captor after he went missing on his way to vocational school some 26 years ago, according to Algerian media reports.

Omar, now 45 and with a beard, was saved from the basement below his neighbor’s hay-covered floor in some sort of sheep pen, a video showing the confused-looking detainee posted on social media shows

His alleged abductor, a 61-year-old man who lived alone, was taken into custody, according to the Djelfa Attorney General’s Office.

Investigators were reportedly tipped off by the victim’s family after the suspect’s brother suggested his sibling was involved in the kidnapping in a social media post while the pair were fighting over inheritance.

The National Gendarmerie then re-opened the investigation and searched the man’s home until they discovered a trapdoor hidden underneath hay on the floor.

They found Omar behind the door, the prosecutors said.

Omar was taken to a medical center for treatment — both physical and psychological, while the unnamed suspect will go to trial for the “heinous crime,” the attorney general’s office said.

The teen’s alleged abductor has also been accused of killing his dog — seen in photos with him the year he went missing, according to Algerian news reports.