Sahara Reporters Latest News Today Sunday 15th March 2020
Sahara Reporters Latest News Today and headlines on some of the happenings and news trend in the Country, today 15/03/20
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Sanusi: Where Are Akalamagbo Birds, The Bullet-biters? By Festus Adedayo
The last Monday sack of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, erstwhile Emir of Kano, by the Kano State governor, Umar Ganduje, sent shock waves round the whole of Nigeria and I dare say to every nook of the world where Nigeria in issue. Though many Nigerians wear anti-shock and anti-depressant shields from the shenanigans of Nigerian governments, the world was terribly shocked by Sanusi’s sack. Perhaps, the world shouldn’t have been shocked after all: Since Ganduje surprisingly broke the lien to emerge as a second-term governor of Kano last year, he had shelled Sanusi with a ferocious artillery. At a point, billowing smoke from his artillery got really garrulously audacious, making people to suspect that the smoke was propelled from outside the shores of Kano Government House.
Thanks to the social media, the Sanusi issue has almost been totally shredded. As usual, however, the ubiquitous Peoples Democratic Party and All Progressives Congress divide coloured the various submissions. Sanusi rode on the back of the tiger, many of the analyses said. He thus should be at peace inside the animal’s stomach, shredded for breakfast and his entrails scattered inside the tiger’s belly. He paved the way for the APC calamity that befell Nigeria in 2015 in the first instance, leading to the coronation of the current non-cognitive rule by Muhammadu Buhari and sent PDP’s Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to an early exit from his clueless governance. Some even ethnicised his travails. As Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi volunteered to be the pall-bearer of a Yoruba bank, Intercontinental Bank and sent some Southern sons and daughter to the precipice of a jailhouse and a penitentiary, respectively.
Sanusi’s sack, so they reasoned, was a self-inflicted tragedy. Ruminating over it, I am reminded of a folklore of the hunter, the snake and the ground bill bird Yoruba call akalamagbo. Akalamagbo is loosely associated with the vulture and Yoruba folklores respect this bird a lot, ostensibly due to its vast intelligence and association with long life. Akalamagbo is reputed to be able to live up to fifty years on earth. The folklore goes thus: A hunter on a hunting expedition had witnessed a contest between an eagle and a snake. The eagle wanted to kill the snake and the snake, frightened, made supplications to the hunter to allow it hibernate in his stomach until the eagle’s ferocious anger subsided. The hunter allowed the snake but upon getting inside the hunter’s belly, seeing the comfort within, it refused to take its exit. Even with his profuse pleading to the snake to leave, the snake stuck to its guns. Then the hunter, in his search for intercession, met the akalamagbo and begged it to intercede.
Akalamagbo then came to the front of the hunter to mediate in the crisis. Unbeknown to it, it would soon be the bullet-biter. It enquired from the snake why it exhibited that level of ingratitude. When the snake began its submission, akalamagbo feigned inability to hear it clearly and asked the hunter to open his mouth so that the snake could peep out and the dialogue could be smoother. As the snake peeped out, the bird positioned itself to sink its notorious beak on the snake’s head and draw it out of the hunter’s stomach. Apparently over-excited, the hunter, with a small dart in his hand, also simultaneously attempted to pierce the snake’s head too but unfortunately, the dart hit the akalamagbo by the neck and till today, it carries the scar of the bullet it bit for the hunter. In this melee, the snake recoiled and withdrew into where it was hibernating. In Yoruba cosmology, this was the story of how the akalamagbo got its goiter scar and how snake-like worms reside in a human stomach.
Sanusi had, like the hunter, sheepishly invited his own calamity, so should live with the ingratitude of Buhari and Ganduje who lived inside of him. So his PDP-minded traducers reason. To the APC, Sanusi had been a stormy petrel, non-conformist, flippant snake who bit the Kano and Buhari governments periodically with his venom-soaked mouth and his sack was good riddance to his bad rubbish. Some even drew a fatalism graph with his sack: His grandfather was similarly deposed as an Emir. To the scions of the conservative North, Sanusi reincarnated the ghost of Talakawa apologist, Bala Mohammed, with his poisonous vituperations against rank establishment. Mohammed, like Sanusi, was an archetype of the socio-political genus tagged ‘radical leftists.’ Like Sanusi too, conservative by birth, but in the sixteen years he lived prior to his murder, his renown in the academia and on radio waves in Kano as the most lucid and non-conformist Nigerian leftist theorist was awesome. One of the reasons why Bala was killed was due to his ideologue leaning in the socialist Peoples’ Redemption Party (PDP) party of Abubakar Rimi. He was assassinated in Kano on July 10, 1981. For their flippant stings of a decadent status quo that had pauperized millions of Northerners for over a century, in spite of the decades of Northern rule of Nigeria, in both military and civilian regimes, capped by their reckless washing of the dirty linen of the blue blood aristocrats in the public, both Bala Mohammed and Sanusi deserved to die, either literally or metaphorically.
The above are a rehash of the views traded across Nigeria since Sanusi was deposed. Two separate individuals and their actions however struck me as the nuggets to hold on to in the Sanusi debacle. The first was a letter written by Atedo Peterside while the conflagration provoked by Ganduje’s unexampled rascally wield of power was still hot. Peterside is a businessman and banker, as well as founder and chief executive of the then Investment Bank and Trust Company Limited (IBTC) from 1989 until 2007 and who became the Chairman of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, from 2007 till September 2014. Last week, Peterside wrote to the CBN Governor, Emefiele to decline attendance of a CBN Consultative Roundtable slated for March 11, 2020. He was billed to be a panelist.
He wrote: “Whilst thanking (CBN) for the Invitation, I believe the correct thing for me to do is to respectfully decline to participate,” stating that, “my refusal to join you has more to do with the monumental events that took place yesterday viz the removal of the Emir of Kano from office and the release of information that purportedly seeks to exile him and restrict his movements or confine them to a little known enclave in Nassarawa State.” He had some moral preachments for an equivocating Nigerian system seeking economic growth and in another breath, stultifying moral growth: “The theme for your Roundtable Session is ‘Going for Growth.’ Rapid growth is only achieved on the back of significant investment activity. Going for growth should therefore be a holistic concept that embraces the sum total of actions and activities that we need to encourage in order to boost investor confidence, including respect of individual freedoms and the rule of law. Sadly, yesterday’s events have turned back the clock at a time when our economy is at a precipice and when we need to tell ourselves some home truths and speak truth to power in a constructive manner.” As a clincher, he had a subtle but loud moral whiplash for Emefiele, a see-no-evil-hear-no-evil man who is busy filling his tummy with proceeds of the fatal incompetence of the system: “By coincidence, the Ex-Emir of Kano is your predecessor in office at CBN. Ordinarily, he qualifies to be invited for tomorrow’s event. Did you invite him?” He nearly called Emefiele a lickspittle or what the Igbo call an efulefu.
The second nugget was Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai’s reaction to the sack of Sanusi. By the way, this writer had always singed el-Rufai’s flesh on account of his politics. While he did not verbalize his rank disappointment with the decision to depose Sanusi, he deployed what in communication is called semiotics, in two appointments he offered the deposed Emir within 24 hours. First was an offer to the board of Kaduna investment promotion agency and the second, Chancellor of the Kaduna State University. Both appointments, coming from a man who is a notable scion of the decadent Northern establishment, are noteworthy and commendable. His and Peterside’s symbolic disdain of the rascality of the marionette called Ganduje as well as the hidden but apparent persons who fiddled with the marionette’s strings to arrive at the intersection of Sanusi’s sack, point boldly at the need for us all to stand up for something in Nigeria at difficult moments. The truth is, there are hundreds of people sitting comfortably at the top, who are rankled by the audacious sack of Sanusi but for fear of losing their comfort zones, have chosen to keep sealed lips. This shows the vanishing crop of Nigerians who ever stand up for what they believe in.
If there is any positive lesson to be drawn from this Sanusi mess, it is Peterside and el-Rufai’s bold and audacious decisions to bite the bullet for their belief. Both stood to lose a lot in the hands of a venal, vindictive and blood-sucking Nigerian establishment which brooks no dalliance or allegiance to what it frowns at. Due to our flirtatious and incestuous identification with political parties which are six and half a dozen, we all have sold our souls to the dragon. No one speaks the truth in Nigeria any longer. We speak party-sauced and interests-laden truths. This is the greatest tragedy that has befallen us as a people.
Nigeria is what it is because we have all fallen into the groove of a conspiracy of silence. We are afraid to lose our comfort. Yet, no great society is made on account of her nationals speaking from both sides of their mouths or sealing their mouths with apron adhesives as an Emir is expected to do. I remember a quip from a father to his son, the latter who wondered at the conquest of evil over good. The father had enthused: “You have lived long enough in Nigeria, my son; have you ever seen good conquering evil here?” This is the Nigerian equation.
The Sanusi debacle bears all the trappings of the conquest of evil over good and a dis-advertisement for conscientious critical analysis of our decadent system. The Sanusi sack will groom more pacifists and bootlickers of the status quo. Ganduje is a poster of all that is wrong with Nigerian leadership. He doesn’t even impress anyone as possessing any cerebral quality. Whenever his name is mentioned, the American dollar flashes in the subconscious. For such a man to preside over the decapitation of a man who is unarguably the highest Northern Nigerian advertisement of mental acuity, a cerebral oasis in a mental desert, is the biggest systemic equivocation ever.
When the presidency now disclaimed involvement in Sanusi’s dethronement, many Nigerians pelted the Villa with sarcastic laughter. You can confirm that Buhari and his hirelings were the marionette fiddling with the dethronement strings, from a newspaper report of yesterday, which affirmed that Sanusi claimed that the process that led to his deposition as the 14th Emir of Kano, his arrest order, banishment from Kano and subsequent detention in Awe, Nasarawa State, came from the Attorney General of Kano State, Ibrahim Muktar, working in cahoots with the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami who then instructed the Department of State Services and the police to clamp him in detention. There are allegations that there was an intrusion into Villa’s filial responsibilities by the deposed Emir and such, the need to liquidate him in retaliation.
There are thus insinuations that Ganduje deposed Sanusi as propitiations to the rapacious god of the Villa which periodically demands the blood of its nemeses. Apart from meticulously proclaiming that those who administer Nigeria have dunghill in their medula oblongata, Sanusi had consistently jarred the nerves of those who fling the veneer of religion as shield for maladministration. If Islam is consistently flung as being in incestuous relationship with poverty in Northern Nigeria, as it is now, Islam would disappear from the face of the North, Sanusi counseled. Establishment cringed in pain. In Ganduje, Sanusi showed that the brain would be on an eight-year sabbatical in Kano Government House.
Now, Sanusi is back in Lagos, to his mental kin, among his brethren where he who possesses the brain is emir, the most powerful, and not he who possesses the dollar.
Oranminran, A Reactionary Idea, Is Dead!
My last week piece entitled Osun: Excavating the ruins of the Oranmiran years, provoked hidden dusts in Osun State and Nigeria as a whole. Many wondered why the shocking information therein about the monumental education ruins in the State of the Living Spring, was, according to them, just now being excavated. Some also wondered why, if the allegations were true, the Fuhrer of the ruinage should be rewarded with a ministerial position. It was thus not a surprise when architects of the ruins chose to send my friend, my namesake, Wale Adedayo, to me via his rejoinder entitled Oranminyan: A progressive idea cannot die. You would pity Mr. Adedayo as he feebly struggled to legitimize the Rauf Aregbesola calamity in Osun, hiding the ruins under the veneer of ideology.
You should excuse Adedayo on his claim that the performance-enhancing drug which Aregbesola swallowed in office was a so-called progressive ideology. He also claimed that this was the motivation for the awkwardness in character and policies of the Rauf era. While Adedayo is external to the calamity that is the Aregbesola education policies, friendship to the Fuhrer being his only link to Osun, I showed in my earlier piece how I was a victim of Rauf’s abstruse governorship.
Throughout the piece, Adedayo didn’t explain how Fakunle Comprehensive High School should be pulled down for a supermarket and how Aregbesola’s protégé should be the sole monopolist distributor of school uniforms and why the Fuhrer should owe 34 months of half salaries. I am not Adegboyega Oyetola’s mouthpiece and so cannot even attempt to defend him but everyone knows that Rauf, a despot of the first order, would brook no dissent to his destructive educational policy and not even an “ordinary” Chief of Staff dared to stand in the way of his decree.
Adedayo’s most unpardonable sin was comparing Rauf to Immortal Obafemi Awolowo and likening the dross of his eight years to the evergreen accomplishments of the avatar. I doubt if the alale ile (Owners of the Land) of Yorubaland will pardon my friend who prides himself as Babalawo, for this sacrilege. Awolowo himself would never have imagined that a day would come, even after his departure, that some arrant-minded fellow would be made to simulate his good name. I remember writing a piece entitled WAEC results: Of Awo’s mud classrooms and govs’ model greed on August 20, 2017 while Aregbesola was still basking in the insipidity of his Oranminran mis-ideology. He was my target in the piece.
In that piece, I had submitted: “Many of today’s governors are so fixated on the illicit wealth they can make from office… It is unfortunate that we need to continue to make Awolowo, who 65 years ago, administered a Region which today approximates nine states, a model of analysis. By 1952, even before the Universal Primary Education (UPE) began, Awo had come up with its blueprint. Confronted by a #10m estimate for both the UPE and the free health program, even when the projected 1954 expenditure stood at #5m, Awo first cut capital costs on school buildings and cancelled housing subsidy for civil servants. He opted for mud blocks in place of pre-fabricated block cement classrooms and budgeted capital tumbled down by 70 per cent. His critics said he was opting for ‘substandard’ buildings but by 1955 when the scheme started, 400,000 pupils turned up, contrary to his projected 175,000. Assured that the quality of teachers held the ace rather than cozy classrooms, in 1956, Awo established many Grade 3 Teacher Training Colleges and trained, between 1955 and 1958, 11,000 teachers.
“Many states with those shameful WAEC results are manned by governors who are captives of the fad of gigantic classroom structures, at the detriment of training teachers. Some of them invest in neither of the two, preferring the infectious obsession with stacking billions of naira on infrastructure. The results are scores of unnecessary dualised roads and humongous bridges from where substantial billions of naira kick-backs are funneled into governors’ ghost foreign accounts. In South West today, the rotten cake of education that is kissing the canvass is decorated with glamorous icings of roads/overhead bridges that are at best white elephant.”
Adedayo should answer the question of why Aregbesola, the “Awoist,” chose to dismantle, merge and rename many of the schools built by Awolowo. In Yorubaland, what name is given to such self-professed child who turned his father’s house into ruins? Most of the secondary schools were founded by Bola Ige. More importantly, the Awo educational policy emphasized that pupils must school within a mile radius to their parents’ homes which was why Ige established Community Secondary Schools in the old Oyo State, all of which Rauf merged with the ensuing pains of students and pupils trekking kilometers to school while the Fuhrer lasted.
It should be obvious from the above that my friend doesn’t know who a reactionary is simplicita. Of a truth, the Nigerian definition of reactionary politics was what Aregbesola foisted on the people of Osun State, contrary to the model of Awo’s education policy. I chose not to veer into the Oranminran “ideology” and the totality of the 8-year rule of a self-proclaimed ideologue which the people of Osun State can attest was a monumental catastrophe; a Lagos boy came to Osun and left a miasma of total ruins
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Festus Adedayo
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Federal University Of Agriculture Abeokuta Vice-Chancellor, Prof Felix Salako, A Rogue Administrator On Devilish Mission Against Ifemosu Michael Adewale By Tijani Adebayo
L-R: Ifemosu Michael Adewale and, Prof Felix Salako
L-R: Ifemosu Michael Adewale and, Prof Felix Salako
Never has our institution, FUNAAB, been led by a recalcitrant head whose sworn mission, it clearly seems, is to go beyond all boundaries of professionalism and due process in proving his misplaced maladministration to the general public, his theft and rogue managerial accomplice ranging from the Registrar (Dr R.A Akinola) of the institution and benefactors by deploying series of lies and concocted, baseless information in prosecuting a war of attrition against a student, whose sole crime is being in the wrong books of those in power owing to his biting criticisms of the failures of their administration and leadership.
Ifemosu Michael Adewale’s illegal expulsion and media trial has once again spotlighted the depth of unprofessionalism, rot and bureaucratic decay that has become the lot of Prof Felix Salako, R.A Akinola and it is truly alarming that a Vice-Chancellor whose display of callousness remains dangerous and unhealthy to educational growth are allowed to plunge the institution into new and unbelievable lows.
The allegations against Ifemosu Michael Adewale seemed straightforward enough until the desperation to hang the man by all means took a turn into follyville.
First, he was accused of writing an article inimical to the institution. When the public pointed out how stupid and ill-thought out such an accusation was especially because Ifemosu enjoys no cordial relationship with the Vice-Chancellor and his cohorts, the accuser, egged on by the Registrar no doubt, changed his facts and alleged that he was expelled based on insubordination, later the same registrar standing in for the VC stated in his faulty counter-affidavit that Ifemosu was expelled based on the extant rules which was quoted as “threat/violence including slapping” to favour the accuser in a matter before the court.
We all can see that the narrative was switched as if being fetched from a senile mind bent on achieving a set agenda.
For a management supposedly filled with sufficient manpower and intellectual acumen, it defies logic why the institution simply can’t reduce its accusation against Ifemosu into a coherent charge upon, which he ought to be arraigned for the adjudicatory determination of his guilt or innocence. Indeed, the only reason Ifemosu remains expelled is because his victimisation and expulsion are not based on ascertainable facts but on trumped up charges that give the management an official excuse to shop for offences against him.
We at Concerned FUNAAB Students have come to agree and show utmost solidarity with a man who dared the odds, who has written his name on the sands of time and gave himself a historical template forever.
We have received and read a lot of misinformation propagated by our useless, inept and weak student union leaders, who had pitched tent with the tyrant, Salako, and decided to nail off their own because they are afraid to dare the biggest odds. What a shameless lot they are.
The whole world continue to look on and laugh at us as we grapple as an institution with the arduous task of protecting students from the ineptitude of egoistic power-jobbers whose constant preoccupation is the lobbying of goodwill from the corridors of power rather than the prosecution of the demands of their office by law.
Prof Felix Salako has failed his primary duties as the Vice-Chancellor of Nigeria’s foremost agricultural institution and any delay in his removal would simply deepen the rot of what his leadership brings upon our institution.
It is clear that the VC and Registrar whose gimmicks and ineptitude have tired even his circle of supporters is hoping to score a damming point to put him back in his corruption benefactors by illegally expelling and oppressing a marked critic of the management and the government. Their antics are thinly veiled and evil, and they bring nothing but reproach and shame on the institution they lead and the government that continues to implicitly ratify his actions by keeping him in office even well he has shown to the world that he is not mentally fit to be VC.
Prof Felix Salako typify the sort of men, who we must get rid of as a nation before their sycophancy strangles our institutions.
Prof Salako needs to tell the world how Ifemosu lied and could not substantiate that he (Salako) never asked the security agencies not to arrest students that are guilty of cybercrime, which summersaulted into illegal arrest of student(s) by men of the Nigeria Police Force, SARS, EFCC, NDLEA.
We have series of press releases to that effect that Salako lied against Ifemosu. A press release by Platform Times, said EFCC again invaded FUNAAB and arrested suspected Yahoo Boys, who are students. This is the link to the story “ #8221;.
AGAIN, Salako needs to tell the world how he said in his interview with FUNAAB Radio that the upgraded 19+ 4 existing Mancot buses he did in six months are still non-functional.
As we speak, there are just less than eight functional buses. We ask the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and ICPC to drastically swing into action.
Before it is too late, even as the sun continues to set on the unprofessionalism of Salako as Vice-Chancellor of FUNAAB, immediate action must be taken against his continued stay as head of the school.
Nothing short of stripping him of the powers to discontinue his selfish enterprise of self-preservation can create the opportunity to set a new course for our tertiary institution.
On Ifemosu Michael Adewale, we reiterate our warning that his expulsion and trial are politically motivated. He has been subjected to ridicule and opprobrium for running the gauntlet of acerbic criticism against a failed and corrupt management.
Our demand is simple, let him be reinstated without delay, unless his expulsion is backed by punitive action for his criticisms of the management and its retrogressive institutional policies.
We have struggled and come too far as students to surrender the sanity of our democratic institutions to the whims of a frightened VC, who dreads the days outside office when his inadequacies are no longer covered by state power. Enough is enough. Ifemosu Michael should be reinstated, Vice-Chancellor Salako must go. The sanitisation of institutional agencies is no respecter of persons and the removal of Prof Felix Salako would go a long way in shoring up the dwindling public trust and goodwill available to the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
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Tijani Adebayo
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EXCLUSIVE: Imo Governor, Uzodinma, Appoints Thug Arrested For Electoral Fraud Into State Government
Senator Hope Uzodinma
Innocent Ikpamezie was paraded in 2015 the Police
PHOTO: Ikpamezie was one of four persons arrested and paraded by the police in Abuja for electoral fraud in 2018.
Senator Hope Uzodinma
Imo State governor, Hope Uzodinma, has appointed Innocent Ikpamezie as General Manager of Owerri Capital Development Authority.
Ikpamezie was one of four persons arrested and paraded by the police in Abuja for electoral fraud in 2018.Uzodinma made the appointment after a controversial judgment by the Supreme Court brought him into office as governor of Imo State on January 14, 2020.
Findings by SaharaReporters revealed that Ikpamezie is a hardened political criminal, who has been working for Uzodinma and the All Progressives Congress for a long time to disrupt elections in their favour.
He had been working for Uzodinma since he was a senator.
Innocent Ikpamezie was paraded in 2015 by the Police for criminal conspiracy, forgery, stealing and unlawful possession of electoral materials meant for the aborted APC ward congress in Imo
Recall that in 2018, the APC held a nationwide ward congress that was marred by violence and bloodshed.
Imo State could not hold the exercise as thugs invaded the party Secretariat, disrupting the congress and carting away election materials.
Imo State governor at the time, Rochas Okorocha, accused Uzodinma and some party leaders of sponsoring the thugs to disrupt the exercise.
Weeks later, the police arrested Ikpamezie alongside three others for masterminding the disruption of the ward congress in Imo.
Former spokesperson for the Nigeria Police Force, Jimoh Moshood, while parading the four — Ikpamezie, Lawrence Archibong, Kelechi Affonne, and Joseph Martins — before the media, said they stole and hijacked some electoral materials due for ward elections in Imo State.
Video of Imo APC Crisis: Ex-senator’s aide, three others arrested
Imo APC Crisis: Ex-senator’s aide, three others arrested
WATCH VIDEO: Ikpamezie, Three Other Persons Arrested and Paraded By The Police in Abuja for Electoral Fraud in 2018
He revealed that Ikpamezie was then the Special Adviser on Electoral Matters to Uzodinma.
The ex-PPRO said electoral materials were recovered from Ikpamezie, which he claimed were given to him by Iyke Njoku, Zonal Coordinator of Owerri Municipality, on behalf of Uzodinma.
PHOTO: Ikpamezie was one of four persons arrested and paraded by the police in Abuja for electoral fraud in 2018.
Moshood went on to say that the four suspects would be charged to court for criminal conspiracy, stealing and unlawful possession of APC ward electoral materials.
However, after the public display of the suspects, nothing was heard of the matter again.
Ikpamezie and the three others were secretly released while he continued carrying out dirty jobs for Uzodinma and APC in Imo.
His latest appointment as GM of OCDA by Governor Uzodinma is in reward of his ‘illustrious’ service to the Imo helmsman.
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Tension Mounts In Taraba As Governor Ishaku Remains Unseen For Over 80 Days
There is growing tension in Taraba State at the moment following the disappearance of Governor Darius Ishaku for over 80 days.
Since leaving the state capital, Jalingo, in December 2019 and moving to Abuja without transferring power to his deputy, Ishaku had not been seen in public.
His last official outing in Jalingo was on December 19, 2019 when he presented the 2020 budget to the state’s House of Assembly.
Three days after that day, the governor left the state and has not returned since that period.
The opposition in the state believes Governor Ishaku ought to have transferred power to his deputy while leaving Taraba.
According to them, his continued stay in Abuja runs contrary to section 190 (1) of the constitution, which requires him to transmit a letter to the Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly whenever he was going to be away for long.
The governor had recently explained reasons for his public disappearance by stating that he was receiving medical treatment for a domestic accident.
However, Ishaku did not give details of the nature of the ‘domestic accident’.
Some observers believe that the governor could be critically I’ll and that was why he had been away from public glare for several weeks.
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Osinbajo Confirms Death Of Police Escort
Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, has confirmed the death of one of his police escorts.
The escort, identified as Inspector Ali Gomina, died while escorting Osinbajo to the airport on a trip to Lagos.
Sources had revealed that Gomina was knocked down by a trailer while clearing the way for Osinbajo’s motorcade.
In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, Osinbajo described the death of Gomina a sad occurrence.
He said, “With grief in our hearts, we announce the death of one of the police escort riders on the Vice President’s convoy, Inspector Ali Gomina, aged 45, who was involved in a road accident while on official duty.
“The accident occurred on the road to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.”
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Disaster Averted As Lagos Emergency Service Curtails Fire Outbreak
The swift response of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency has prevented a fire accident from razing a building in Lagos.
The fire accident, which started from a room at 12, God First Avenue, Ipaja, Ayobo, was put out on time preventing its spread to other parts of the building.
The fire outbreak was attributed to power surge, according to a statement by Nosa Okunbor, Head of Public Affairs, LASEMA.
He added that no casualty was recorded.
He said, “On getting to the scene of the incident, it was discovered that a two-storey building duplex at the above mentioned address was engulfed by fire.
“Further investigation gathered at the scene of the incident revealed that the cause of the fire was as a result of high voltage.
“The fire was curtailed and completely put out before it escalated to other parts of the building.
“No life was lost, nor injuries recorded, the only place affected by the fire in the two-storey building was the visitor’s bedroom.”
Commenting on the development, DG/CEO of LASEMA, Dr Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, urged Lagos residents to always adhere to safety precautions on electricity.
He said, “With these simple precautionary measures, electrical fires due to the restoration of power from public electricity supply after outages would be brought to the barest minimum, if not totally curtailed.”
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Amnesty Wants Justice For 640 Persons Killed After Giwa Barracks Attack By Army
Amnesty International has called on the Nigerian Government to ensure justice is served in the case of 640 recaptured detainees killed by the Army at Giwa Barracks, Maiduguri, Borno State, in 2014.
According to the global human rights group, despite repeated efforts to have the matter addressed, authorities have continued to look the other way, leaving family members of victims in pains.
In a statement on Saturday, Osai Ojigho, Director, Amnesty International Nigeria, said it was time for those behind the heinous crime to be punished.
She said, “Nigerian authorities have failed families of 640 recaptured detainees of Giwa Barracks slaughtered by soldiers exactly six years ago.
“On March 14, 2014 Boko Haram attacked Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri. They reportedly fought their way into the detention facilities and freed several hundred detainees.
“Amnesty International received credible evidence that as the military regained control, more than 600 people, mostly unarmed recaptured detainees, were extra-judicially executed in various locations across Maiduguri.
“We have repeatedly called on Nigerian authorities to initiate independent and effective investigations to ensure that those behind the massacre that happened six years ago face justice.
“Despite repeated promises by the present government and establishing various committees to investigate the killings, not a single person has been held responsible or brought to justice for the mass killings that is among the most horrific incidents perpetrated by the military in the ongoing conflict in the North-East.
“The fact that not a single person has been brought to justice for the Giwa Barracks massacre shows lack of genuine commitment to protecting human rights and a deliberate attempt to shield human rights violators from facing justice.
“Families of victims have been keenly waiting for justice in the last six years, and their wait is only getting longer and strengthening an already pervasive culture of impunity within the Nigerian military.
“Nigeria authorities must show genuine commitment to the rule of law by ensuring accountability and justice for all victims.
“Above all, perpetrators of the Giwa Barracks massacre must not escape justice.”
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EXPOSED: Despite Being Among Top Football Leagues In Africa, Nigerian Premier Division Venues Lack Hand Sanitisers, Others To Protect Players, Fans From Coronavirus
The last few days have been tough periods for sports around the world. Since the global pandemic – Coronavirus – took an even deadlier dimension, ravaging households and entire communities across dozens of countries around the world, a growing number of sporting events have been cancelled while scores more have been allowed to go ahead in completely empty venues. This is in an attempt to reduce the spread of the ruthless virus that has killed more than 4,000 persons in over 70 countries.
For instance, on Thursday the National Basketball Association in the United States announced that all matches will be suspended until further notice, after Utah Jazz player, Rudy Gobert, tested positive to the virus.
Shortly afterwards, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer both in the United States, announced the stoppage of their respective seasons due to the outbreak and spread of Coronavirus.
In Europe where football is almost like a tradition and in fact a religion, the virus has caused unprecedented damage, forcing major matches to be staged in empty venues and in some occasions completely suspended.
On Friday, the Union of European Football Association suspended all Champions League and Europa League matches billed for next week over the Coronavirus outbreak.
On the same day, the English Premier League suspended all fixtures until April 4 after Arsenal Football Club manager, Mikel Arteta, and Chelsea winger, Callum Hudson-Odoi, both tested positive to Coronavirus.
Despite the attendant loss in revenue for sports federations and professional clubs in places where games had been played behind closed doors and or suspended, authorities had placed public safety ahead of every other consideration.
In Nigeria, the deadly virus was detected after an Italian imported it into the country on February 24, 2020.
The man, who arrived the country aboard a Turkish Airlines flight, visited Ogun and Lagos and had contact with several persons, increasing the possibility of a further spread of the virus in the country.
Though health authorities have been working to ensure Coronavirus does not spread further in Nigeria, the fears remain valid.
During visits to some Nigerian Premier Leagues match venues last weekend by SaharaReporters correspondents to ascertain the level of precautionary measures being put in place to protect players, coaching staff and fans against the virus and other transmittable diseases, it was observed that basic protective items like hand sanitisers, hand wash, nose masks were all missing, exposing everyone at such venues to danger of being infected with all kinds of diseases.
For example, during a visit to the Agege Stadium in Lagos where the fixture between MFM FC and Enugu Rangers was played on Sunday evening, it was observed that there was no preventive measure in place at the stadium to protect players, officials and fans of both clubs.
This laxity can be observed right from the main gate of the stadium as visitors to the sports arena walked into the place without sanitising their hands or protecting themselves in any way.
Officials searched fans trooping into the stadium with bare hands, exposing themselves and even visitors to all kinds of germs and transmittable diseases.
PHOTONEWS: Exposed: Despite Being Among Top Football Leagues In Africa, Nigerian Premier Division Venues Lack Hand Sanitisers, Others To Protect Players, Fans From Coronavirus
At the ticket section stationed outside the stadium, it was also observed that sale attendants lacked protective gears and went about their assignments as usual without recourse to the deadly virus currently ravaging many parts of the world especially places where people gathered in large numbers.
Speaking with SaharaReporters shortly after the match between MFM FC and Enugu Rangers, Akinola Oriyomi, Manager of Agege Stadium, said that the absence of hand sanitisers at the venue was because the government was yet to provide it.
“My work is to make the stadium clean and I am doing that.
“About hand sanitisers, I don’t think it’s my work to provide them to the stadium for spectators.
“I’m a civil servant, I can’t use my money to buy hand sanitisers for people coming into the stadium.
“The government has to provide it, when they do, it would be made available for spectators to use.”
It was the same situation in Akure, Ondo State, when SaharaReporters visited the stadium in the city to observe the match between Sunshine stars of Akure and Abia Warriors last Sunday evening.
Management of the Akure Stadium failed to put precautionary measures in place to protect both players and spectators against Coronavirus during the encounter as observed by our correspondent.
At the front of the two gates leading into the stadium, it was observed that no hand sanitiser was put place while other safety measures to prevent spectators from contracting the disease were also absent.
A military personnel stationed at the gate of the stadium was seen checking pockets and bags of fans entering the stadium to watch the match with bare hands.
At the ticketing office of the stadium, it was also observed that the attendants were not protected nor guided by any safety kits as some of them even shook hands freely with fans going in to watch the match – thus increasing the chances of the spread of the deadly virus.
Our correspondent also noticed that no ambulance or other medical equipment where in place to attend to emergency cases inside the stadium in case any such situation.
The situation was not also different at the swimming pool section of the stadium where children were seen swimming and playing around without any precautionary measure in place.
Like in other sections of the facility visited, there are no hand sanitisers, hand wash and nose masks in place at this area.
The rot at the Akure Stadium was further confirmed when our correspondent visited the toilets and bathrooms inside the facility.
Apart from the offensive odour permeating that section of the sports arena, the presence of maggots and other crawling creatures spoke volumes of how unhygienic the facility was – the perfect ground for transmittable diseases like Coronavirus.
An official in the stadium, who spoke with SaharaReporters, said although the authorities of the facility were aware of the spread of the virus, they were not ready at ensuring it does not find its way into the state.
“The stadium is really crowded and we hardly know who is who but there is no protective measures in place.
“God forbid that Coronavirus comes to this place, only God knows how many people would be infected because there is nothing to protect them here,” the official said.
It was the same scenario at the other match venues of the Nigerian Premier League visited by SaharaReporters correspondent on Sunday.
At some venues, basic items like first aid boxes were non-existed while ambulances to ferry players, officials and fans to hospital for treatment in case of medical emergencies were missing.
Interestingly, Nigeria’s Premier League is ranked 57th strongest national league in the world as at 2019 by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics.
It is the seventh strongest league in Africa behind those of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Angola, South Africa and Zambia.
The Nigeria Football Federation appears helpless about the situation, sadly, raising fears of a disaster in case of further spread of the virus in the country.
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BREAKING: Sanusi On Way Out Of Nasarawa Community Where He Was Banished To
Sanusi’s Luggage
Following an order of the Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday ordering the release from house arrest of deposed Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, the ex-monarch is now on his way out of the Awe tow in Nasarawa State where he had been held up.
His exit from the community comes shortly after a visit by Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, on Friday.
Kano State Executive Council approved Sanusi’s dethronement at a special sitting held on Monday.
Sanusi’s Luggage
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Since coming on the throne, Sanusi, who rose to become governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank as a professional, has always spoken out against harmful traditions and practices in the North, often times drawing the ire of elites in the region.
It is not clear yet where the former Emir of Kano is headed.
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Alleged $2.1m Fraud: Court Dismisses Ex-NIHS Boss, Femi Thomas, No Case Application
The Federal High Court in Lagos on Friday dismissed the no-case submission filed by a former Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, Dr Femi Thomas, in response to the $2.2m fraud charges filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The court, in a ruling by Justice Ayokunle Faji, said the prosecution had made out a prima facie case against Thomas, warranting him to offer an explanation.
The judge held, “The testimonies of the first prosecution witness suggests that the first defendant gave the sum of $2.198m to him to change into naira through his wife, as the evidence shows that the transactions in counts four and five of the charge sheet did not pass through a financial institution. More so, the amount involved is beyond N5m obtainable by law and I therefore hold that the defendant has a case to answer.”
The judge fixed March 30 for Thomas to open his defence.
Thomas, a two-term Commissioner for Health in Ekiti State, is standing trial alongside one Kabiru Sidi, a bureau de change operator.
The EFCC alleged that Thomas conspired with his wife, Funmi, to make cash payment of $2.2m to one Mr Ibitoye John Bamidele, at their House 20, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos.
Sidi was alleged to have lied to an EFCC investigator, Afeez Mustapha, that he was owner of the $2.2m that Thomas and his wife transacted with.
EFCC prosecutor, Ekene Iheanacho, said the two defendants acted contrary to sections 18(2)(b), 1(a) and 39(2)(b) of the EFCC (Establishment) Act 2004.
Iheanacho said they were liable to be punished under sections 16(2)(b) and 39 (2)(c) of the same Act.
But the defendants pleaded not guilty.
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