Nigeria News
Nigeria: The Gongs Of War
By Sonala Olumhense
Four men were gathered around the table, each of them reeking of power, affluence and influence.
“Gentlemen, I thank you for coming to my meeting,” President Goodluck Jonathan said. “I know the notice was short, but Patience insisted that I should call you. And Oronto agreed with her.”
Olusegun Obasanjo shuffled impatiently in his seat, tossing the bulbous left arm of his agbada over his shoulder. “This is what I don’t understand,” he said in his accustomed drawl. “Do you have to conduct the affairs of State according to the wishes of a woman?”
The other two men looked away as Jonathan’s gaze of embarrassment came around. “No, Baba, she is more than a woman. She is always right. She is more of a man. I mean, she is so intelligent she is now a Permanent Secretary.”
As Obasanjo moved to say something, Bamanga Tukur cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, the important thing is we are here, to work in the best interest of the party, to make sure we don’t lose any ground to those people who call themselves All Progressives Congress. I have promised to dribble them like Messi, hahaha…” he laughed.
Obasanjo caught him off. “I was wondering why you said that. I know you were never a soldier. But if your best weapon is a rifle, do you broadcast that to the opponent before the start of a battle?”
“But the fear of Messi…”
“Messi, my foot! Why can’t you wait until Messi has scored two or three times? Or for eight or nine years? Why did your Messi not dribble in Edo State, where we lost disastrously and a common Labour leader made our party look like Boy Scouts?”
That was when Tony Anenih began to rise to his feet. “I knew you were going to start attacking me. I know you…”
Jonathan put his hand on that of Anenih, who was sitting to his right, restraining him. Anenih sat down, but he continued to speak across the table at Obasanjo. “I knew you could not resist the temptation to…”
Obasanjo burst into laughter. “I was not even thinking about you,” he said to Anenih, gesturing towards Tukur. “I was talking to Messi here. He wants to dribble somebody, but he can barely walk without help. Come to think of you, where were you two dribblers, Maradona and Messi, when we were being disgraced in Falklands…I mean, Edo? And now you want a third term!” He had turned to Jonathan.
The three other men looked at each other; then they glared at Obasanjo. “Third term?” they said in unison.
Then, Jonathan, by himself, repeated: “Third term? You were the one who wanted third term in 1999!”
“That is not true,” Obasanjo retorted, banging on the table. “In 1999, I contested for my first term. I know people doubt whether you really have a Ph.D, but sometimes I even doubt whether you wrote your WAEC by yourself: you speak a funny English and reason like a market woman.”
“Sorry Baba, I meant in 2006,” Jonathan said, appearing to be deep in thought.
“I said, ‘Not true!’ In 2006 I merely expressed interest in the extension of my ongoing term to enable me finish some work. That was no third term. I was not going to run for another term.”
Jonathan’s brow appeared tortured by thought. He was grinding his teeth. “Okay,” he said, finally. “But what were you going to finish, Baba? I thought you had done everything. You gave contracts for roads and agriculture and defence. You set up EFCC. You helped Anenih with his N300 billion problem. I think you helped most Nigerians.”
Anenih’s eyes were blazing with anger as he looked at Jonathan, and once again he began to rise from his seat. But Obasanjo would not let him speak. “Yes,” the former President said. “I did help a lot of people in 2006, especially you. I helped you after the Joint Task Force recommended you for prosecution by the CCB for false declaration of assets. But I pre-empted that and made you Vice-President!”
“But…!!!”
“But nothing!” Obasanjo shouted. “You even recently said you are struggling to build your house in your village. All these make you look bad, and make me look terrible because when you were indicted, the evidence included choice property in Yenagoa and Abuja, as well as a lavish seven-bedroom duplex in Otuoke as far back as 2001 that we never took back from you. How can you in 2013 as President say you are struggling to build a house in the same village? Does the house include a staircase to heaven?”
“Baba, it is just a…”
“You must understand why I am angry. Last year, you said in an interview, ‘When I hear people saying corruption, corruption, I shake my head…’ Do you think I did not know you were talking about me?”
Tukur, alarmed as the meeting ran out of control, raised his hand, like a kindergarten kid about to ask a question in a noisy class. But Obasanjo ignored him.
“Look at the people you have surrounded yourself with!” he screamed, pointing at Tukur and Anenih. “People like Doyin Okupe,” he said. “You dig out relics and make them kings. Can Mr. Fix-It, who lost the election in his own hometown, Uromi, to fix a hole in his own pocket, talk less of Abuja? The man has expired, but first you make him chairman of the Port Authority, and then of the BoT. Why don’t you just make him chairman of the presidency?”
“I am the chairman of two powerful offices because the entire country trusts me and is depending on me!” Anenih said, scratching his head.
“They trust you? Name one person who trusts you…and do not mention Josephine, because I will call her right now!”
Anenih was struggling with his temper. “You cannot telephone my wife,” he grumbled, his voice dropping.
“Try me!” he challenged. “I can even call Patience from here, except that I do not understand her English. You have to admit, all of you, that in all those years it was I who made the party and the government workable and feared. But now, nobody respects us. And APC is coming for us.”
The three other men exchanged glances and spoke across the table. “We respect you, Baba,” they intoned. Of course we respect you.”
And then Anenih found fresh courage. “But you must respect us too. We are not children.”
“Yes, nobody is a child,” Jonathan said.
“Sometimes you are all worse than children,” Obasanjo said. “Chaos in the national chairman’s home State. In Bayelsa, even the president’s kinsmen are criticizing him for granting pardon to a man convicted for corruption. And then you outdo yourself by challenging the Americans and the British to a wrestling match!”
“But your own people in Ogun criticized you too,” Jonathan said. “Your daughter jumped a fence running from EFCC. You lost elections.”
“Yes. But I never scored an own goal. And my team never lost when I was on the pitch. You don’t even have an economic plan.”
“I don’t need one. I have Ngozi.”
“True, she is more than a plan, she is a miracle,” Obasanjo sneered. “Don’t forget you have Diezani too. Do you think it was by coincidence I was my own Minister for Petroleum Resources for eight years?”
Tukur took off his hat and laid it on the table. It was suddenly very hot. “Gentlemen, please let us return to the agenda for this meeting. Our great party is under serious threat.”
Anenih nodded. “And we can start to rebuild the party from this very table,” he said. “The foundation of this problem is the threat to the structure of PDP.”
Tukur nodded. “We must support the national executive,” he said. “We must allow the executive to function as the party’s most powerful body.”
“No, no, no,” Anenih said. “That is a gross misunderstanding. The national executive does as it is told by the BoT. We cannot go forward by going back. The tail does not wag the dog. The NEC and the Presidency are guided and led by the BoT.”
“Yes, that is true!” cried Mr. Jonathan, as if snapping out of a stupor, and then, “No, that is not!! As President, I am in charge.”
Obasanjo rose to his feet, gathering his papers. “What you have all said, and the mess you have made of the party, is proof of my point. Without me you are lost. I want you all to go back and re-examine whether you want to succeed or fail. And remember that failure means that some people here may well go to jail. F-A-I-L, J-A-I-L, everyone should memorize that. But I have to be in control. You have to sort out who is responsible to whom. The one at the top will answer to me in my new role as BoT Chairman Emeritus!”
.This satire was first published by Saharareporters
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
Nigeria records 55 new COVID-19 infections, total now 165,110
Military, Police Ring Abuja to Forestall Boko Haram Attack
UFC: Usman gets N584m after beating Masvidal
Insecurity: Lagos bans occupation of abandoned buildings
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