If I was a fly on the wall of the presidential quarters, I would whisper to President Tinubu that the streets are abuzz with the clamour for state police and that the current unitary policing system has outlived its sell-by date. 

Without doubt, one of the greatest legacies the president can gift Nigeria is a new policing architecture that guarantees the protection of lives and property for both the mighty and the lowly alike. If he fails to do that, the security situation will continue to deteriorate and, no matter whatever else his government achieves, it will just be written off as inconsequential. 

The House of Representatives has already set the ball rolling through a bill titled, “A Bill for an Act to Alter the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, to Provide for Establishment of State Police and for Related Matters (HB. 617)”. The proposed legislation was sponsored by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu alongside 14 co-sponsors.

The proponents argue that the establishment of state police forces is not merely a desirable reform but an imperative measure to address the burgeoning security challenges that threaten the nation’s collective safety. The bill envisages a transformative shift in Nigeria’s policing architecture, advocating for the decentralisation of policing powers by transferring the “Police” item from the “Exclusive Legislative List” to the “Concurrent Legislative List.” 

This strategic amendment seeks to empower states to establish and manage their police forces, thereby introducing a dual policing system intended to enhance responsiveness and accountability at the state level.

Already, some shrill voices of opposition have emanated from serving senior police officers  who frown at the idea of anyone balkanising their empire— even if that empire as presently constituted is but a pack of cards. A backward glance at history will educate nay sayers about the imperative of dismantling the current unitary system in preference for a more inclusive one. 

Separation Of Powers

An important feature of federation is devolution of powers and in any federal state, the primary responsibility for law enforcement should necessarily lie with the federating units. The police as the first line of defence for the citizens should be very close to the people as much as possible, but in Nigeria the police authority is far removed from the people and this tends to limit the effectiveness of the Nigeria Police Force.

With 371,000 officers, the Nigeria Police Force is overwhelmed, and many parts of the country lack any permanent police presence. Insurgents of different hues have seized control of some far flung territories, imposing brutal, bloody rule over the locals. In response, the military is now deployed in all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, a major distraction from its role of territorial defence. Sadly, the creation of additional combat divisions by the Nigerian Army to join the existing four has been primarily in response to internal security rather than immediate threats of external aggression. 

In the 1960s, Nigeria operated a three-tier policing system comprising federal, regional, and local police. Community policing was the order of the day. The various tiers of government allocated adequate resources to ensure that police work at their various levels was effective. I knew the policeman whose beat covered our street. He knew every resident. The easiest way a visitor could locate an address or a family was simply by asking a policeman on the beat. 

Now we have policemen who don’t know the names of the street on which their ‘toll gates’— euphemistically called check points— are located. That is why they behave like an army of occupation. Their instructions come from Abuja. The mentality is that of a force deployed to occupy the states.

While it is true that there were allegations of brutality, nepotism and double standards levelled against the local police in the First Republic, the subsequent centralisation of the force under the military government did not fare any better. Politicians abused their access to the police at that time as they do today.  

The Us Example

The USA, whose presidential system of government Nigeria adopted in 1999, offers a template for a decentralised police structure with about 18,000 police departments, federal, state, municipal, county, village, college, campus and corporate organisations. (Punch, 2018.) State Police in the USA are also known as Highway Patrol, State Highway Patrol, State Troopers, all carrying out law enforcement activities including criminal investigations across the state. They collaborate with local police (county and village) to address complicated criminal cases. 

In other words, policing in the USA involves an independent autonomous police system at different levels of governance in the country. This implies that law enforcement in the USA is decentralised and the Federal police authorities deal with violation of federal laws while states police enforce state laws (see https://socialscienceresearch.org/index.php/GJHSS/article/view/3993/8-The-Imperatives-of-State_html)

I have argued for decentralisation of the police over the years. I am firmly of the view that, the bulk of the present personnel of the police force should be transferred to their states of origin to form the core of the police service for the states while the federal government embarks on a massive recruitment drive for fresh hands to man the new federal police with a minimum entry requirement of a university degree or Higher National Diploma. 

The on-going bombing campaign by Boko Haram and the threat of renewed violence by some elements in other parts of the country clearly show that the current structure of the police force under the ‘sole administratorship’ of an inspector general who reports to the president is unworkable. Each state should have its own police force headed by a police chief who reports to the governor of the state. 

I have heard arguments about the possible misuse to which politicians could subject the state police. I think it smacks of intellectual laziness to just sit idly to parrot a cacophony of fears of the unknown instead of pooling ideas to neutralise those fears. The argument that state governors will misuse any security force under their power is fraudulent. The greatest champion of impunity and self-help in Nigeria over the years is the federal government — and no one has suggested that we should strip the federal government of the power to control forces of coercion.  

The devil is in the details. The law enabling the establishment of state police should make it difficult for governors to hijack the body for selfish political purposes. 

Mark The Boundaries

The federal police should be something like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. That organisation is saddled with the task of protecting and defending the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to enforce federal laws. It currently has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal law. The national security priorities are stated as terrorism, counter-intelligence and cybercrime while the criminal priorities are public corruption, civil rights, organized crime, white collar crime, violent crime and major thefts. We can replicate that to delineate the duties and limits of the powers of our new federal police. 

The present nomenclature of inspector general of police should be converted to Chief of the Nigerian Bureau of Investigations to head the new body. The current crop of officers and men in the police force would have to be retrained to be useful to their states of origin before they are redeployed.

Some states in Nigeria are bigger and more populous than several countries in Africa and Europe. To argue that their governors are mere children who cannot be trusted with managing their own police service is fallacious and insulting. 

Every state can afford to fund a police service if security is prioritised.

Thankfully, the House of Representatives has started the process of legislating state policing into existence. I urge President Tinubu to put the weight of his office behind the initiative because, as things stand now, we are all sitting ducks at the mercy of random merchants of terror.

NO one in a position of authority deliberately sets out to give himself a bad image. What usually happens is that aides, family members, friends, influencers, lobbyists, and those in the corridors of power deliberately or inadvertently crop up injuries or a bad image for their principals. Some do this to curry favour as they pretend to be more Catholic than the pope, crying louder than the bereaved. Others do it deliberately to feather their own nests. Still, there are those who act consciously to give their principal a bad image. They hold grudges or have axes to grind for one reason or the other. It is not everything that happens in government that the governors know something about. No man can be in more than one place at a time. The late MKO Abiola recalled that he once introduced his Foreman to his father and the old man retorted, “Mba, no man can be four-man or do the job of four men”!

Authority must be delegated – but the one who delegates has a duty to ensure that the power so delegated is not abused. Where delegated authority is abused, the one who delegates carries the can because the buck stops on his table. Anyone who abuses the power delegated to him is either whipped into line or the powers delegated to him are withdrawn. It is in this wise that I beseech Gov. BabajideSanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos state, to either whip LASTMA (Lagos State Traffic Management Authority) and VIO (Vehicle Inspection Officers) into line or withdraw/review the powers vested in them, which they have, in my view, exercised arbitrarily, thereby inflicting much pain and sorrow on Lagos vehicle owners. The way and manner these two agencies, plus their Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) counterparts, extort Lagos motorists must now come to the attention of Gov. Sanwo-Olu.

Not all presidents have the capacity to do what former president Olusegun Obasanjo was reputed as doing: taking time to read virtually every memo sent to him, rather than consigning them to aides to handle. Also, not all administrators can do what Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa perfected as his own style of government when he was the military administrator of Lagos state. Marwa double-checked, even triple-checked, any information he received before acting on them. He had reliable friends outside of the civil service structure and government circles that he bounced information and decisions off before making up his mind. Again, not all politicians will be like Ayodele Fayose, the former governor of Ekiti State. Street-wise, man of the garb, and man of the people, Fayose hardly allowed a day to pass walking the street and mingling with ordinary people. “E pele, e pele” he would greet the people as he mingled with the hoi polloi. He was not averse to sharing his telephone numbers with the man in the street. He was also fond of putting phone calls across to ordinary people to seek first-hand information about happenings in their locality. I witnessed him bounce proposed decisions on ordinary folks or recruit them to conduct opinion surveys for him on critical issues affecting their communities.

Every leader has his own style, which differs from one leader to another. I cannot claim to know Gov. BabajideSanwo-Olu’s preferred style. Therefore, I would beseech whoever has his ears or those closer to his media advisers and image-makers than I do, to kindly bring this information to their knowledge: LASTMA and Lagos VIO, through their ingenious but oppressive activities on Lagos roads, are giving the governor a bad name. Under the guise of performing official duties, they fleece the people. Three weeks ago they almost ruined the wake of the wife of my brother-pastor: there is this place at the foot of the Mile 12 bridge while driving to Ikorodu where a conglomeration of Police, LASTMA, VIO, name it, are to be found congregating and hibernating; once an unsuspecting motorist steps on what they call the BRT lane, they swoop on the victim. No plea moves them. No condition you are in sways them. You must bribe them, and they usually demand hefty sums. If a motorist not familiar with a route mistakenly steps on BRT lane, what is wrong if you educate him/her and direct him/her to the right lane? Not these scoundrels parading as law enforcers!

It is like they have been given a target to meet by their office or they are the ones that have set a target for themselves! The woman ferrying the snacks for the wake of my friend’s wife was arrested and they demanded a bribe. She would not give. So, they kept moving her from one location to another. My friend, exasperated and sweating profusely at the other end at Ijede where the wake was to be held, called me. I began to trace these felons – common criminals in official uniforms acting under the seal and authority of the Lagos State Government. When they saw that the woman would not budge, they took her to an office in the Ojota area where she paid N70,000 and was let off the hook. She almost missed the ceremony. A few days ago, another friend who recounted the ordeal of his acquaintance in the hands of the same hounds told me that the receipts they write for offenders paying fines are usually fake and that the money often ends up in private pockets. It doesn’t get worse than that! The victims lose and the Lagos State Government loses as well. Some miscreants in uniform and their accomplices smile at the bank at the expense of both.

There is a subsisting court judgment barring VIOs from demanding the certificate of road worthiness of private vehicles. There is another restriction on the operations of FRSC officials, limiting them only to Federal roads. These brigands spurn court orders and peddle their impunity in broad daylight. But their day of reckoning may just be around the corner! Have you seen the videos of irate citizens engaging PHCN officials who come disconnecting their lines? It may soon be the turn of LASTMA, FRSC and VIO officials to begin to have their own baptism of fire. We have seen isolated cases already. It may soon become more widespread and commonplace. Lessen the people’s burden! Stop adding misery upon misery on a population already lying prostrate. When the long-suffering people of Israel told Jeroboam, who succeeded to the throne after the death of his father, King Solomon, to lessen their burden and he refused, threatening instead to make the people’s suffering doubly sore, the people scattered from following him!

Tell Sanwo-Olu and his party, APC, that another General Election will soon be here! Have they forgotten so soon how they lost the presidential election but managed to escape with the skin of their teeth in the last governorship election?  When penalties for traffic offences are insanely high, you end up aiding and abetting corruption. In the present dire economic situation, many will prefer to cut corners and save some bucks. Government loses at both ends: It loses the money it intends to make and loses as well the support and empathy of the citizens. No fine for minor traffic offence should attract the penalty of a fine higher than Five Thousand Naira (N5000). Before you compare the penalties for traffic offences in the United States and such other places (in dollar terms) with what you should replicate here, first compare the minimum wage here with the minimum wage in those other countries.

Gov. Sanwo-Olu should please withdraw the power of LASTMA to impound, arrest and impose fines on motorists. Their duty should simply be to direct traffic. When you see them crowd together at traffic lights, their main objective is for mischief. If the STOP sign (Red light) is on but they flag you on because there is no traffic on the other ends, you will be making a mistake to obey them because the installed camera will pick you as breaking the traffic light. In the next few hours, you will receive a notice on your phone that you have committed a traffic offence and should come to an office to settle your fine! But if they urge you on when the traffic light stops you and you choose to disobey them and obey the traffic light, they will swoop on you, taking fake photographs and accusing you of obstructing the free flow of traffic! Head or tail, you lose! Head or tail, they win! Have you noticed that traffic lights here do not operate as traffic lights operate elsewhere? They have tampered with them and have confused the way traffic lights normally work. This is one reason foreign countries usually advise their nationals, even those with dual nationalities, not to drive while in Nigeria.

The oppressive tendencies of LASTMA, VIO and FRSC on Lagos roads are becoming suffocating and unbearable. Something urgent should be done by the governor before citizens begin to take the law into their own hands. In this country, every layer of officials armed with guns or uniforms and licensed by the government usually results in another layer of oppression and impunity. I am beginning to reconsider my support for state policing!

The federal government has disclosed that following the report of investigation done by some committees set up by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), it will not hesitate to withdraw funds from any non-performing Centre of Excellence out of the 23 established years back.

This was disclosed by the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, in Abuja while receiving two reports of TETFund’s ad hoc committees on Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence and Operationalisation of Skills Development Special Intervention.

Mamman, who noted that the report analysed is a major policy shift in education, said government will not continue to reward indolence by giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do.

He said, “The government is encouraging our scholars to simply rise to the occasion and deliver on their scholarship, what world class scholars do; and we are not going to reward indolence. We can’t be giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do.”

On the non-performing institutions, he said: “If you were established five years ago and you are still at your infancy, you have not been able to provide modern laboratories, facilities for scholars to come and learn, we want to know why. But we don’t want to be arbitrary.

He however admitted that some of the centres have done fantastically well since inception, stating that a lot of them are doing innovations.

Earlier, the Committee on the Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence, led by Prof. Oyewale Tomori, in its report, declined to recommend any centre for upgrade.

 [DailyTrust]

Veteran journalist, Dele Momodu has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, of “misfiring” in the ongoing case against former Kogi governor, Yahaya Bello.

Momodu said the EFCC failed to do due diligence during their investigation against Bello.

Speaking during an Instagram Live, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain faulted EFCC’s claims of Bello using government funds to pay his children school fees upfront before the expiration of his tenure.

He faulted EFCC’s conduct in its attempt to prosecute Bello, stressing that the commission’s Chairman, Ola Olukoyede should have learnt from the cases of his predecessors, who he said were “booted out ignominiously”.

According to Momodu: “When they brought in the new chairman, I thought oh, you will have the benefit of learning from your predecessors.

“All of them were booted out ignominiously and if I were in the shoes of the current chairman, what I will simply do is make sure I do my job as meticulously, as professionally, as efficiently as possible. And, you will never go wrong if you obey the rule of law.

“I watched the EFCC chairman, I think either last week or the week before the last, I was almost crying because the way he went on and on..if I don’t do this… spitting fire and all.. you don’t have to do media trial.”

Asked if the EFCC was lying about Bello, Momodu said: “I have no idea, I don’t work for EFCC but from all the things that I have read, a lot of them, they misfired. That is the honest truth. They misfired. They didn’t do their due diligence.

“When you said a man took out money and paid for his children’s school fees, just as he was about to leave power, and you go and check the documents and you see that these things started happening from 2021, 2022 (laughs); I am not an illiterate.”

The EFCC had accused Bello and three others of alleged money laundering to the tune of N80.2 billion while he was governor.

Olukoyede also accused Bello of withdrawing $720,000 to pay for his children’s school fees before leaving office.

This, the former governor denied.

[DailyPost]

The Federal Government may consider the suspension of the $56.7bn peer-to-peer cryptocurrency market after a crucial meeting between the Securities and Exchange Commission, and digital asset operators scheduled for Monday.

Nigeria’s volume of crypto transactions grew by nine per cent year-over-year to $56.7bn between July 2022 and June 2023, according to the 2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report by Chainalysis, a United States of America-based international blockchain analysis firm.

The latest move by the SEC signals a broader effort by the Federal Government to tighten regulatory oversight within the cryptocurrency space amidst growing concerns over illicit activities and the manipulation of the naira exchange rate.

Earlier this week, the Central Bank of Nigeria had stopped major fintech firms from onboarding new customers in an ongoing audit of their Know-Your-Customer process. Following the regulatory action, major fintech firms, including Opay and PalmPay, sent emails to their customers on Friday, warning them against trading in cryptocurrency or any virtual currency on their apps, and threatened to block any accounts found engaging in such activities.

The threat to block accounts has faced heavy criticism, particularly from the 33.4 million individuals actively trading cryptocurrencies; many of whom rely on cryptocurrency trading as their primary source of income.

However, Sunday PUNCH learnt that during the proposed Monday meeting, the government may choose to announce a temporary halt in the P2P crypto trading to enable it come up with a comprehensive set of rules for effective regulation of the space.

Other sources privy to the meeting said the government might choose to engage the crypto stakeholders on a new set of rules that could be deployed to better regulate the space.

They ruled out the possibility of imposing a temporary halt on P2P crypto trading. As of Sunday, details of the exact decision the government might take during or after the meeting with the crypto operators remained sketchy.

However, operators in the crypto market confirmed the meeting, saying the meeting would bother on the current development in the space. The Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee of Nigeria, in a notice posted on its X handle on Saturday, noted that the meeting had been at the instance of the new Director General of the SEC, Dr Emotimi Agama.

BICCoN said, “The newly appointed Director General of the Nigeria Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed an industry-wide meeting with the Nigeria blockchain community. The meeting will be facilitated by the Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee of Nigeria.”

Officially, the SEC has yet to confirm the Monday meeting, but sources close to the commission confirmed the meeting on Saturday. They, however, said that ‘nothing was cast in stone yet’.

In 2021, the CBN had restricted banks and other financial institutions from operating accounts for cryptocurrency service providers. However, in December 2023, the financial regulator lifted the ban and announced a reversal of the policy.

Fresh concerns emerged in February over the activities of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, on its peer-to-peer platform, such as implementing a price cap on USDT trading.

Authorities said those activities contributed to the devaluation of the naira and destabilised Nigeria’s economy.

Worried over the significant volume of transactions through Binance Nigeria, the CBN Governor, Yemi Cardoso, stated that $26bn had passed through the platform over the past year from ‘unidentified sources’.

Amid the crackdown, the crypto exchange ceased all naira services, including deposits, withdrawals, and trading pairs, starting in early March 2024.

In an interview with Sunday PUNCH, the Chairman of BICCoN, Lucky Uwakwe, said that the group would be seeking to reach a middle ground with the regulator, which had so far this year introduced stiffer guidelines for digital asset operators, as well as a proposed increase in the registration fees.

Ukakwe said the meeting “is for us to try and bring the industry to be compliant and remove bad actors who abuse technology, especially the concern raised by the government on those that use the technology for market manipulation of naira.

“We also hope that innovation in the industry is encouraged to enable the industry to gain more foreign inflow that will aid the current administration’s drive for foreign investment into the nation as seen in other countries such as China and the UAE, and not to stifle the industry.”

On his part, the President of Stakeholders in Blockchain Technology Association of Nigeria, Obinna Iwuno, told one of our correspondents that there was no official communication on the ban of cryptocurrency transactions from regulators. He said, “There is a whole lot going on. It is not just clear the direction as we speak, but hopefully, on Monday, we will get to have a position, “What we have done to solidify our position with the Nigerian government is that local exchanges stopped their naira services. The government raised an alarm that cryptocurrency was responsible for naira depreciation; operators stopped,” Iwuno explained.

The ‘Know Your Customer’ compliance level of fintechs has also been a source of worry for regulators. This involves verifying a customer’s identity and understanding their financial activity to prevent financial crimes, such as money laundering, terrorist financing, and fraud. According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System’s fraud watch report, fraud losses increased by 496.96 per cent over the past five years, and financial institution customers had lost N59.33bn between 2019 and 2023. 

The report read in part, “The amount lost to fraud has increased over the past five years, along with the growth of financial transactions in the digital payments sector.”

A source from one of the major fintechs in the country, who preferred anonymity, disclosed to Sunday PUNCH that the CBN was not declaring cryptocurrency illegal, but was rather focusing on addressing regulatory and identity management issues.

“Some of the expectations from the meeting would be to have a more robust and safer ecosystem that will prevent fraud, and protect the funds of customers.

“The CBN is not saying that cryptocurrency is illegal, but there have been issues surrounding regulations and identity management. Those are the grey areas that the CBN is trying to address. They don’t want a situation where people are getting into Nigerian systems to defraud others, or engage in any negative activity that could harm innocent Nigerians.

“It is more or less about finding a way to make this thing work better. Sometimes, people can simply create a virtual account, and one won’t even know who is behind the account. So, it’s really about ensuring end-to-end verification, from the first line of payment to the very end, with the account holders’ identities attached to it. I think it is necessary at this time,” the source explained.

Nigeria’s volume of crypto transactions grew by nine per cent year-over-year to $56.7bn between July 2022 and June 2023, according to the 2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report by Chainalysis. Despite Nigeria now leading in peer-to-peer exchange volume, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for only 2.3 per cent of the global cryptocurrency transaction volume between July 2022 and June 2023, making it the smallest crypto economy in the world.

In an interview with Techpoint Africa, Youssef said most of the P2P transactions did not happen on Binance or any other platform, but on social platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and ‘everywhere on the streets’.

“Most peer-to-peer (transactions) don’t happen on Binance P2P, NoOnes, or any of those other platforms. They happen on WhatsApp, Telegram, coffee shops, and everywhere on the streets. That is where most peer-to-peer is happening. I think most of that is peer-to-peer volume. They are trying to cover up too, because Nigerians are very crafty and have ways of using things for reasons other than what they were created for,” he maintained.

In March, the SEC, under the former DG, Lamido Yuguda, revealed plans to issue updated guidelines for the operations of digital assets and virtual asset service providers in the country, saying the new guidelines would ensure criminals did not gain entry into the country’s capital market.

The SEC notice, dated March 4, 2024, partly read, “The SEC has also developed a new AML/CFT/CPF onboarding manual for licensing, registration, and ongoing screening of digital and VASP beneficial owners to ensure that criminals are not registered as operators in the capital market. The SEC is ready to interface with genuine VASPs based on these clear rules and regulations.”

The SEC also proposed that for virtual (crypto) asset service providers, ‘no person or entity shall provide any virtual asset service unless registered with the Commission; a company seeking to operate as a VASP shall be incorporated and have an office in Nigeria. Its Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director or its equivalent shall be resident in Nigeria.”

When questioned about the SEC’s proposed guidelines in the crypto sector at the last Capital Market Committee meeting that he chaired, the former SEC DG said investor protection was a driving motive.

“We want to ensure that investors who decide to get involved in digital asset products are well protected. We want a platform where certain capital market functions are duly segregated. If you are an exchange, we don’t want you to also be a custodian, and such.

“Also, we are very mindful that AML/CFT considerations are very important when one is dealing with crypto assets. We want to make sure it is not money laundering or funds used to promote terrorist financing,” the former SEC DG said.

The Chief Operating Officer of Fintech Association of Nigeria, Babatunde Obrimah, told Sunday PUNCH, “I am not privy to the circulars sent to the Fintechs, and I am not aware that crypto is illegal. The meeting will put things into perspective.”

“I think the issue is that to trade, one must be licensed by the SEC. So, if one is trading without a license, then one is technically illegal. But, we should talk after the Monday meeting, instead of speculating,” he added.

In March, the SEC proposed a 400 per cent increase in crypto firm registration fees. However, checks by Sunday PUNCH, on Saturday, showed that the proposed guidelines had been deleted from the SEC’s website. It is unclear when the PDF was removed from the regulator’s website.

The proposed amendments to the rules for crypto issuers, exchanges, and custody platforms include hikes to all supervision fees. Instead of a N100,000 application fee and a N30m registration fee, the SEC proposed N300,000 with every application, N1m as a processing fee, and N150m as registration fee, with the sponsored individual fees raised to N300,000 from N100,000.

An economist, Aliyu Ilias, emphasised the need for urgency in addressing the deficiencies within the fintech ecosystem, citing the ongoing struggle of the apex bank to effectively regulate them, as illustrated by the recent case involving Binance.

Ilias argued that in the dynamic tech industry, regulatory clampdowns often led companies to exploit loopholes, stating, “Even the Know Your Customer requirement proves insufficient.”

Another industry stakeholder, who is also the founder and coordinator of Blockchain Nigeria User Group, Chuta Chimezie, expressed hope that the Monday meeting would ‘help the industry significantly, and improve the relationship between regulators and policymakers’.

“The last few months have been nothing short of wars. as the CBN keeps clamping down on P2P platforms,” he lamented.

[Punch]

Organised Labour, at the weekend, fires back at state governors, warning them against inflammatory utterances that could set the nation’s industrial space on fire over the new national minimum wage, NNMW.

It faulted the statement credited to the governors through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, that they were working on what individual states could sustainably pay.

Labour contended that the governors must work within the 37-member committee saddled with the responsibility of fashioning out a new national minimum wage for the country.

According to the Organised Labour, it is being magnanimous with N615,000 new minimum wage’ demand because, based on the socioeconomic indices on the ground, it would have demanded much higher which the governors “are more than able to pay”.

Recall that in a statement, last Thursday, by the NGF Chairman and Governor of Kwara State, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, at the end of NGF’s virtual meeting held Wednesday night, the governors said, among others, “As members of the committee, we are reviewing our individual fiscal space as State Governments and the consequential impact of various recommendations, to arrive at an improved minimum wage we can pay sustainably.

“We remain committed to the process and promise that better wages will be the invariable outcome of ongoing negotiations.”

Misquoted

Reacting to the statement, Deputy President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, and President of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, ASCSN, Dr Tommy Okon, told Sunday Vanguard, yesterday, that Organised Labour believed the governors were misquoted.

“They can’t say that they are working on what individual states can pay. I think the governors may be talking about what they can add to the minimum wage at the end of the day because what will be agreed upon is the baseline which nobody should pay less than”, Okon said.

“But they can pay higher than that. I think that is what they are saying.

“They cannot be telling us that they are reviewing or setting up a committee to work on what they can pay individually. Two committees cannot be working on the same issue.

“The governors are members of the tripartite committee on the New National Minimum Wage, so they cannot set up another committee or work independently from the tripartite committee set up by the Federal Government.

“Maybe the governors are talking about implementation. It is right for the governors to set up an implementation committee. They need to know their staff’s strengths and sources of funds to implement the new wage
“But to say that they are working on what individual states can pay outside the committee that the Federal Government has set up cannot be correct.

“Do not forget that the governors are members of the tripartite committee set up by the Federal Government. So, they cannot do anything outside the committee.

“If what is reported is correct or if the governors own up to the statement as reported, it is a recipe for serious industrial unrest.

“And no nation can accept that because any nation that works like will face unprecedented industrial unrest and can never grow. No nation grows amid industrial chaos.

“We think the governors will tread with caution and avoid inflammatory utterances. We still believe the statement was not from them.”

Negotiation table

On its part, Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, declined a response, saying it has made a demand before the tripartite committee on the minimum wage and whatever the governors want to say should be brought to the negotiation table since they are members of the committee on the new minimum wage.

However, an official of NLC, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Sunday Vanguard that the governors are treading on dangerous ground that could set the nation’s industrial space on fire.

“You cannot be talking about reviewing what individual state can pay sustainably outside the committee set up to look out will be the baseline or minimum”, he said. “Whatever opinion you have is what you should bring to the negotiation table. You come to the negotiation table and argue your opinion.

“We do not want to trade words with the governors because they are members.

“(But) they are treading on a dangerous ground that can set the nation’s industrial space on fire.

“We have made our demand which is a very generous one from the breakdown we released on Thursday on the N615,000 demand.
“You can see that we have been very magnanimous. Several expenses, including basic things like recharge cards, entertainment, extended family and others, are missing.

“Don’t forget that this demand was a product of questionnaires we sent out to states and local governments. We did not manufacture it.

“Again, take the issue of electricity which we allocated N20,000 a month. At the time we did it, the electricity tariff had not been adjusted by about 300 per cent. With the adjustment, it has affected nearly every other thing in terms of inflation.

“We know the governors can do much more than what we are demanding. We have passed through this road before.
“The problem with the governors is that they place their aggrandizement far above public good and workers’ welfare.

“That many former governors are facing prosecution by the nation’s anti-graft agencies, especially the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is a pointer to the fact that governors have the resources to pay much higher than our demand.”

‘How we arrived at N615, 000’

NLC had, on Thursday, given the breakdown on how Organised Labour arrived at its demand of N615,000 as the new minimum wage, and also countered the government on the commencement date for the proposed new minimum wage.

The Minister for State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, had, on Wednesday, while addressing workers at the May Day celebration in Abuja, said the new minimum wage would take effect from May 1, 2024.

But the NLC is arguing that it will take effect from April 19, 2024.

In a statement, NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said: “It has become imperative at this point that we inform Nigerians who may not have known already the foundations upon which our initial demand for a N615, 000 new National Minimum Wage is based.

“The figure was a product of a painstaking effort through which we captured the cost of living of Nigerian workers and masses in all parts of the country.

“It was essentially an outcome of independent research conducted by the NLC and TUC on the cost of meeting the primary needs of an average family around the country.

“Our research was based on a family with both parents alive and four children without the burden of having other dependents with them.

“A questionnaire was designed and sent to all the State Councils of NLC and TUC from where these questionnaires were sent to our members in all the local government areas in the country to gather the monthly cost of living for the average family as described above.

“A cursory look at the table above shows that we have deliberately removed certain elements from the basket used in calculations of this nature.

“However, it should also be noted that we have not included things like expenditure on calls and data, offerings in churches and Mosques, community dues, entertainment, savings and security etc.

“These are therefore just for the bare necessities.

”It should be noted that we arrived at this figure before the increase in electricity tariff and the recent scarcity of petrol across the nation leading to the appearance of long queues with attendant increased transport fares.

“Any figure below this amount becomes a starvation wage and condemns Nigerian workers and their families to perpetual poverty.

Commencement date

”We have to remember that the old one has expired on the 18th day of April 2024, and a new one is expected to have come into effect on the 19th day of April 2024. “However, because of the government’s inability to comply with the law that demanded negotiations for a new national minimum wage to have begun six months before the expiration of the existing one, concluding the new one has become unfortunately delayed.

”We are sure that our social partners would see our demonstration of understanding, sacrifice and reasonableness in our demands and thus accept this figure without much delay.

“We also enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to implore the government and employers to meet our demands for the sake of justice, equity and national development.”

Vanguard News Nigeria

A Nigerian couple based in the United States has been convicted of forced labour by a federal jury in New Jersey and faces 20 years imprisonment.

Isiaka Bolarinwa, 67, and Bolaji Bolarinwa, 50 — who are both US citizens were also found guilty of operating a coercive scheme to compel two victims to perform domestic labour and childcare in their home.

Speaking at the end of the trial on April 24, Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general, said the husband and wife lured the victims to the US with promises of a better life and an education but instead subjected them to hours of physical and psychological abuse.

“The defendants confiscated the victims’ passports, threatened them, degraded them, physically abused them and kept them under constant surveillance, all to coerce the victims’ labor and ruthlessly exploit them for the defendants’ own profit,” Clarke said.

“Human trafficking is a heinous crime, and this verdict should send the very clear message that the justice department will investigate and vigorously prosecute these cases to hold human traffickers accountable and bring justice to their victims.”

According to the evidence presented at trial, including the testimony of two victims, the incident happened between December 2015 and October 2016.

“Once Victim 1 arrived in the United States in December 2015, Bolaji Bolarinwa confiscated her passport and coerced her through threats of physical harm to her and her daughter, verbal abuse, isolation and constant surveillance to compel her to work every day, around the clock for nearly a year,” the court heard.

“Isiaka was aware of his wife’s threats and abusive behavior toward Victim 1 and directly benefited from Victim 1’s cooking, cleaning and childcare.

“The defendants then recruited Victim 2 to come to the United States on a student visa.

“When Victim 2 arrived in the United States in April 2016, Bolaji Bolarinwa similarly confiscated her passport and coerced her to perform household work and childcare but relied more heavily on physical abuse.

“On at least one occasion, Isiaka Bolarinwa also physically abused Vitim 2, and he was aware of his wife’s coercive, abusive behavior toward Victim 2 and directly benefited from her cleaning and childcare.”

The US department of justice (DOJ) said both victims endured the abuse until October 2016, when one of them (victim 1) summoned the courage to outcry to a professor at her college, who in turn, reported the targets to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Both defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each forced labour count and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the alien harbouring count.

The DOJ added that they will also be required to pay mandatory restitution to the victims and each faces a fine on each count of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss from the offence, whichever is greatest.

A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.

[TheCable]

There is a medication I buy for my 79-year-old mum every month. It was going for less than N10,000 per pack at this time last year. Today, it is N31,000. Although I consider it pretty expensive, I can still afford it. But each time I buy it, my heart goes to Nigerians living on the minimum wage and those surviving on pensions. How are they coping? My mum is fairly healthy for her age and uses only one prescribed medication. But what about the less privileged and less lucky Nigerians who have to treat hypertension, diabetes and organ-related ailments? How are they coping with the costs? Will they not become vulnerable to fake drugs and harmful options? Will some not simply ignore medications?

I was deep in this thought when Dr Henry Ewunonu, a physician and health advocate, asked me if TheCable — the online newspaper I founded in 2014 — would consider convening a public forum to discuss the escalating costs of medicines and medical consumables in Nigeria. He suggested that the diagnostic evaluation of the causes of escalating costs should lead to a prescription of actionable proposals by the forum. That was music to my ears. TheCable’s 10th anniversary was approaching and our mandate is “to deliver knowledge-driven journalism in the pursuit of Nigeria’s progress”. We just don’t want to be saying there is a problem — we also want to be part of providing solutions.

We immediately set sail. On first dial, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, founder & chairman, Juli Pharmacy Plc and former minister of health, graciously agreed to chair the event. Prof Ali Pate, coordinating minister of health and social welfare, instantly accepted our invitation. Dr Stella Okoli, founder of Emzor Pharmaceutical, did not respond, but we still formed a solid panel: Prof Moji Adeyeye, NAFDAC DG; Dr Uche Ojinmah, president, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA); Mrs Chisom Uchem, ES, Anambra Primary Healthcare Development Agency (APHDA); and Mr Frank Muonemeh, ES of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN).

I had plenty take-aways from the webinar, which was held on April 30. Prince Adelusi-Adeluyi set the ball rolling by pointing out how India moved from being an importer of medicines to becoming a global industrial giant in pharmaceuticals. “Industrialisation is the way,” he said, emphatically. This is more loaded than it appears. Nigeria imports about 70 percent of its drugs. Even the locally manufactured drugs rely 100 percent on imported active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). As Prof Adeyeye put it, the only thing our pharmaceutical companies don’t import is water. In one word, Nigeria relies entirely on imported medicines or APIs. We are at the mercy of the forex volality.

The dependency on imported drugs comes with several issues. The forex challenge is probably the most obvious and impactful, but there is also the cost of patent payments which contribute in no little way to the price at which patients buy drugs. Let us return to India briefly. In the 1970s, they started preparing to solve problems associated with drug importation. They came up with the revolutionary Indian Patents Act (1970) and Drug Policy (1978) which stimulated local production of generic drugs, compared to the costly Western patents. In the 1980s, India had graduated from the sick position Nigeria is today to that of a leading exporter of drugs. Vision. Tenacity of purpose.

Preparations also met opportunity. In 1984, the US enacted the Hatch-Waxman Act to facilitate the production of generic medicines. Indian companies became perhaps the biggest beneficiaries. As Prince Adelusi-Adeluyi highlighted, they are now the leading exporters of generic medicines. They supply 20 percent of global demand. More than half of the world’s vaccines are produced in India. Drugs produced in India account for about 40 percent of generics used in the US and 25 percent of medicines sold in the UK. There are over 3,000 Indian pharmaceutical companies and they earned about $25 billion from exports in 2023 alone. Industrialisation. Why can’t we seize this opportunity?

Mr Muonemeh, the voice of Nigerian drug manufacturers at the webinar, listed the obstacles they face — from various regulators to revenue-collecting agencies. Things are not always as simple as you would think they should be. You would think that government would take as priority anything that has to do with health — especially given the critical role medications play in wellbeing. Nigeria is complicated. Muonemeh pointed the myriad of obstacles faced by local producers and proposed that local production of medicines be treated as a national security issue. I agree with him. The COVID-19 experience opened the eyes of many countries to this vulnerability, but did it really open ours?

Prof Adeyeye listed a number of policy measures being adopted by NAFDAC to ease the crisis, including fast-tracking the licensing process for imported drugs in order to address shortages. She also spoke about the Five + Five (5+5) Policy which is designed to migrate imported products to local production. This policy stipulates a timeline during which an importer/manufacturer must show plans to produce locally or partner with local producers. “If we do not focus on local manufacturing, we will continue to have drug insecurity,” she said, adding that there is nothing the multinationals produce that we cannot make in Nigeria — apart from the inhalers used to manage asthma.

Local manufacturing is a long-lasting solution that should kick in at some point in the future if the right policies are adopted and implemented. Dr Ojinmah, however, wants the adoption of both short-term and long-term strategies and measures. I find his suggestion that tariffs on imported drugs be reduced very fascinating. I thought that this should be the first policy reaction of the government when prices started going through the roof. We grant waivers on many imports but medicines that save lives are not considered worthy. There is a place for revenue for government, I won’t argue against that, but have we considered the dangers of Nigerians being unable to buy life-saving drugs?

The NMA president made a number of proposals. He wants things kick-started with the declaration of a state of emergency on the health sector, which I believe is a way of saying government should pay extraordinary attention to the challenges. He wonders why there are government banks for many sectors without any for health, specifically to help the pharmaceutical industry. “Nigeria should inaugurate a health sector development bank that will have different facilities for all the health care contributors and stakeholders, such that they can go to this bank and fulfil conditions which should not be as stringent as the fund at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),” the dermatologist said.

“This will encourage pharmaceutical companies to go into production of drugs like antibiotics, anti-hypertensives and anti-diabetes. Government should reduce import levy on importation, equipment and production of these drugs to enable people bring in drugs into the country. We would be the greatest beneficiary as economic productivity will rise. Government should also bridge the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of access to medicines,” Ojinmah further suggested, while also emphasising the need for government to improve the health insurance scheme so that millions of ordinary Nigerians can have access to treatment without having to pay out of pocket.

An interesting proposal was put on the table by Mrs Chisom Uchem, the executive secretary of the Anambra Primary Health Development Agency (ASPHDA): encourage research into local herbs. The pharmacist oversees an agency that attends to medical needs at the grassroots and testifies that many people suffering from common ailments often come back to say they have used herbs and are back on their feet. Uchem wants the federal government to mandate the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) to play a lead role in that endeavour. China has done well in promoting use of herbs, even exporting them. Our own NIMR is one of the most poorly funded federal agencies.

“I’m looking at policies of government that will promote research enterprise,” Uchem said. “I’m thinking that if government will encourage clinical research, essential drugs will be affordable to the grassroots because this is the basic level of care. We can have our local brands, our local products. It will cut down on the prices of essential medicines. So, I’m thinking that amongst other things that we’ll do to cut the high cost of medication in Nigeria is that emphasis and premium should be paid on government supporting and promoting research enterprise… All of these lemon grasses, all of the guava leaves, all of the quinine, you know, this quinine, most of them are anti-malaria.” Fascinating.

I have always respected Prof Pate and I found his contributions reassuring. He said President Bola Tinubu was working on a comprehensive plan to address the issues affecting local manufacturing. He acknowledged the challenges: naira devaluation, power supply, technical know-how, supply chain and regulatory landscape. He said the government has been having a series of engagements with industry players, practitioners, and stakeholders on the escalating costs and hinted that an executive order was in the offing. While I was happy, a part of me was quietly praying fervently that MDAs will not frustrate the plan. As we know, they are always working at cross purposes. It is a Nigerian thing.

There were so many take-aways to curate and synthesize. TheCable plans to produce a comprehensive report and send to the appropriate authorities in the lawmaking, policy and regulatory chain as its modest contribution to the discourse on improving the state of the nation’s health care. One theme that rings through contributions is “medicine security”. We need to ramp up local manufacturing with tenacity. Who knows, we may even become net exporters. Didn’t India do it? It took vision and tenacity of purpose. In Nigeria, we are not short of good ideas. What we need is honest commitment to them. Implementation is where the devil always shows up in the details.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

WAGE WAR

On Tuesday, federal government announced a pay rise of between 25 and 35 percent for its civil servants across salary structures. This has been rejected by the labour unions. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is insisting on a minimum of N615,000/month — more than 20 times higher the current N30,000. I think we can have a scientific solution to this perennial controversy over the minimum wage. There should be a mechanism agreed by all parties involved. Can we have certain benchmarks to create this mechanism? The simplest one that comes to my head straightaway is a proportional relationship between the wage and inflation rate. That can minimise the rift. Hopefully.

EFCC’S BELLOW

Nigerians have been treated to a spectacular face-off between the EFCC and Mr Yahaya Bello, former Kogi governor — quite similar to what they saw between the commission and Mr Ayo Fayose, former Ekiti governor, as well as Owelle Rochas Okorocha, former Imo governor, in recent years. Bello, who has mindboggling allegations lined up against him, needs to be a man and turn himself in. He can run but he can’t hide. It is a matter of time before he is captured. But am I the only one thinking the EFCC chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede, went overboard with his press conference and threats? He needs to be calming down. I think this media drama is too much and not good for the commission. Caution.

BY CHOICE

The publicity-crazy Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has threatened to review the subscription rates announced by Multichoice for its DStv and GOtv packages. The FCCPC did not review the FX rate when it fell from N460/$ to N1400/$. Those guys don’t know that rights for foreign contents, such as the English Premier League, are paid for in FX. The FCCPC did not review Band A tariff when it was tripled despite power poor supply. They didn’t review the prices of life-saving drugs. But we hear “monopoly” when it comes to Multichoice. Is Pay TV a fundamental human right? Or are we just obsessed with South African businesses? Bullies.

NO COMMENT

You must have heard about the “housing estate” under the Dolphin estate bridge,  Lagos. Each room was either 10×10 or 10×12 and the tenants were paying N250,000 per annum, according to Mr Tokunbo Wahab, commissioner for environment and water resources. There were no amenities such as power and water.  Lagos state officials have made a public show of how they cracked down on the squatters and arrested some of them. Somehow, they do not know that the joke is on them. There is a serious housing crisis in Lagos state and what officials should be showcasing is what they are doing to address the issue, but they were busy shaming hapless squatters who were being exploited. Sad.

I really do wonder whether those great patriots that fought a long and bloody war against 

British colonial rule and founded the United States of America (US) in 1776 like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and so many others envisaged what has happened to their beloved country today? 

I wonder whether the Pilgrim Fathers and great and wise men of old who, by faith in the Living God, left the Old World, crossed the Atlantic ocean in hazardous conditions and went to the New to establish a new beginning and build a new nation founded on freedom, equality, the fear of God and solid good old fashioned Christian virtues and values, would believe what the beloved nation they toiled, prayed for, established and worked so hard to build has turned into today? 

Would they not all be turning in their graves?

A nation that was once referred to by both friend and foe as the “land of the free and the home of the brave” is now neither free nor brave. 

A mighty nation that delivered itself from its own internal prejudices, contradictions and demons by fighting a brutal civil war to free the slaves and that presented a great hope for those that dreamt of a world where all men and women could have equal opportunities, regardless of class, history, color, race or creed, has now lost its sense of decency, equity, honor and morality and turned into a corrupt, power drunk, morally bankrupt, blood-lusting, war-loving, terror-funding, egocentric and idiosyncratic collection of self-serving, self-seeking, cowardly and deluded individuals who serve the interests of not their own people but that of AIPAC, the Jewish lobby and the State of Israel. 

A rich and powerful nation of over 300 million people that delivered the world from evil in both the First and Second World Wars, that defeated and dismantled the curse of Soviet Communism, that entrenched democracy throughout much of the world and that literally rules the waves today as the greatest super power in the history of humanity in a unipolar world, is now nothing but the lap dog of little Israel? 

It seems so hard to believe. Yet true it is!

Like Lucifer fell from heaven, so you, O mighty America, has fallen from grace! 

I weep for you. 

Apart from your internal decay where the family system has been destroyed and traditional religious beliefs have been replaced by humanism and a godless philosophy in which the Lord is no longer revered, where men marry men, where abortions are encouraged, where homosexuality is adored, where Satanism is practised, where money is worshipped, where God has been banned from the schools and indeed every sphere of human endeavour and where the establishment of a New World Order is your ultimate objective, you have also, with the help of your servile and fawning vassals like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland and others, debased and destroyed the fortunes and vision of many countries with your reckless and self-serving foreign policy and your insatiable thirst for power and world domination. 

The number are legion but to mention a few, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and a number of others stand out. 

You have literally left each of them in rubbles and turned them into a shell of their former selves simply because you insisted on misleading them, controlling them and imposing your values and will on them. 

You are also attempting to undermine and destroy Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Pakistan, India, South Africa, the Arab Gulf States, Brazil, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Guinea, Egypt, Algeria and many others. 

You wish to exploit them, enslave them, milk them, destroy them, bend them to your will and turn them into your pliant little acolytes and colonies but, thankfully so far, you have failed. 

Slave master

 Yet what exposes your monstrous, dark, evil and gluttonous degeneration more than anything else is the way in which you nurture, protect, feed, arm and support your little baby Israel and how that baby has now become your slave master!

You quiver and bow at her every command and you seek to justify and rationalise her barbaric behaviour even when she operates what is undoubtedly a racist apartheid state and seeks to exterminate and occupy ALL the land of those she considers to be a lesser people with a lesser faith from a lesser nation like the Palestinians. 

For the last seven months, the entire world has witnessed with shock the way and manner in which you have not only allowed but openly encouraged her to commit mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, violating every rule and norm of international law and subjecting the Palestinian people to a modern day holocaust. 

This is unacceptable and you have as much blood on your hands as a consequence of your shameless complicity as the Israelis themselves. 

The truth is they could not and would not have dared to indulge in this monstrous and cruel display of depravity and in this bloodfest and killing spree without your tacit approval and support. 

This is bad enough but the worst aspect of it all is that when the world boils in anger, weeps and wails and attempts to bring your baby to justice for her wanton and willful display of utter madness whether at the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, you bare your ugly fangs and growl like a wounded lion and you boldly tell us that we should know and MUST accept that your little Israel and the fascist right wing white and non-semitic European colonial settlers and Zionists that own and lead her are God’s chosen people, are above the law and are entitled to do ANYTHING they deem fit, including wiping out the Palestinians! 

This disposition and open endorsement of pure and unadulterated evil is nauseating and sickening and it is a graphic reflection of the unconscionable beast that you have now become. 

 No fear of God

 You do not fear God, you do not fear world opinion, you do not fear even those from your own nation that are protesting your madness and you do not fear your conscience! 

The only thing you fear is your Lord and master Israel! 

I am constrained to ask, who on earth has bewitched you and which invocations and spells of occult sorcery from the ancient Kabbala did the Jews invoke to capture and bind your spirit and soul and to make you behave in this slavish manner? 

You are no longer the mighty giant that we once knew and revered but rather you are now what the Nigerian people would describe as a “woman wrappa” to your beloved Israel. 

At the mention of her name your strength fails you, your knees bend, your heart beats faster, your soul melts, your emotions overwhelm you and you bow, genuflect, crawl and quiver before her like a young man before his first love. 

 Arrest warrant

 Truly this is Satan’s work: you can no longer control your own will, you have been cursed, charmed and reduced to nothing and you are under a powerful spell.

I cry for you! 

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague issues a warrant of arrest for other world leaders you rejoice but when they consider issuing the same for @netanyahu, the Israeli PM, you wet your pants, soil your diapers & threaten brimstone & fire! 

Through one of your jittery officials at the State Department you went as far as to proclaim that ”the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israeli officials” and, therefore, has no right to even issue any arrest warrant on Netanyahu. 

Putin

  You forget that you were amongst those who clapped the loudest when a similar and active arrest warrant was issued on Russian President Vladimer Putin. 

For that you believed that the ICC acted within its powers and in fact did a great job yet you believe it is “unacceptable” for them to issue such a warrant on Bibi Netanyahu. 

Your hypocrisy and double standards beggars belief!

Again, you have just passed a law which violates your own Constitution, known as the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which outright bans free speech & which seeks to jail anyone that opposes, condemns or criticises the Jews, the Zionists or the State of Israel or that accuses them of being a racist, apartheid state or of committing genocide in Gaza or at any other place or time in their long 5000 year history including during the days of the Holy Bible! 

Your Congress just voted to make it ILLEGAL to compare Israel’s genocidal actions to Nazi Germany and they have effectively banned the Holy Bible in a supposedly “Christian” nation.

Is this not evidence of a diseased mind? 

To be clear, the new law makes it illegal to criticise, protest against or boycott Israel.

It also makes it ILLEGAL to preach or quote the portions of the GOSPEL & the Holy Bible where the countless & horrendous atrocities that were committed by the Jews against other nations thousands of years ago were listed!

The House of Representatives just voted to make preaching the FULL GOSPEL of the Christian faith ILLEGAL in America! 

Let that sink in!

Megatron_ron captured it well when he wrote the following on X:  ”The US House has passed an Act that totally bans speaking and protesting against Israel. “Even if you preach parts of the Bible that clearly states the days the Jews killed Christ you will be arrested.

“In response to campus anti-Israel protests, the House is rushing to vote on a new bill, HR 6090.

“This new Bill would officially define “Antisemitism”, so the Federal Government can sue, prosecute, or sanction more people, businesses, and universities for supposed violations of civil rights law.

“This Bill would make it illegal to compare Israeli policies to Nazi policies. It would make it illegal to describe Israel as racist. It would make it illegal to accuse an American citizen of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States”.

Is this not sad and amazing? 

Is it not a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions? 

Does it not make your blood boil and your skin crawl?

Are we not entering the Orwellian world that the British author George Orwell wrote about and predicted in his celebrated book many decades ago and that the writer and great visionary and intellectual @davidicke often refers to today? 

Is America, a once great country that exalted justice, freedom and righteousness, not turned into a big fat turd that is now in the process of flushing herself down the Israeli toilet!

 ‘United States of Zion’

 Surely she can no longer be referred to as the ‘United States of America’ but rather the ‘United States of Zion!’

On his part @Jakeshieldsajj, a highly respected American public affairs commentator and social media influencer, wrote the following on X: ”In the past two weeks, Congress has made anti-semitism illegal, demanded that anti-Israel protesters must be arrested, banned TikTok at Israel’s request, given $100 billion to Israel and Ukraine for war, approved warrantless spying on Americans, approved $3.5 billion aid for illegal immigrants and done nothing for the American people! It’s become clear they are not here to serve us.”

Jake has spoken the bitter truth. 

Perhaps the most asinine and chilling contribution of all came from American Senator Ted Cruz, a one-time presidential aspirant, a ranking Senator and a man who, up until recently, I had immense respect for. 

He said, “I condemn NOTHING that the Israelis are doing!”

Is this not evidence of mental illness! 

People are slaughtering thousands of children on a monthly basis with weapons supplied by the American taxpayer which you as a Senator approved in your budget and you say you cannot condemn it? 

Does that not make Cruz and those that think like him accomplices in the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? 

People like him should tell me why I should condemn Hamas for what they did on October 7th if he refuses to condemn the Jews for the 1948 Nakba in which they murdered almost one million Palestinians! 

They should tell me why I should condemn Hamas if they refuse to condemn the Israeli Army for the 2024 genocide in Gaza in which 40,000 civilians have been murdered in seven months and still counting?

Again Senator Cruz and indeed the entire American Congress claim that the phrase which the pro-Palestinian protesters and forces have come to regard as their signature tune and battle cry which boldly proclaims that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” connotes the intention of the Palestinians to eliminate every single Jew in Israel yet they fail to apply the same standard, connotation and sinister intention when the Zionists themselves use the same slogan in respect of the same land and when they scream “from the river to the sea, Israel shall have sovereignty”. 

 Double standards

 Permit me to ask, why the double standards? 

When the Palestinians say it you claim that they want to kill every Jew in the nation but when the Jews say it you claim that they have no evil intentions for the Palestinians! 

Is this not another example of the self-serving, infantile and puerile reasoning that most Americans and Europeans suffer from and have been afflicted with when it comes to the Gaza issue and does it not prove the fact that, as far as the majority of Americans are concerned, the Palestinians do not have the right to exist or to be treated like human beings whilst the Jews are treated like gods? 

Is this fair? Is it rational? Does it make sense?

The Jews constitute only 2% of the American population and yet they have been singled out for such preferential treatment and protection whilst the State of Israel, a distant nation of only 9 million people, has been accorded the special status of being “God’s chosen people” and well above the law and is entitled to commit the most grievous and heinous acts of genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing and mass murder without criticism or consequence.

All this you have done for a people and a nation which comprises of a deluded and sociopathic horde of genocidal psychopaths that not only murdered Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, that not only wiped out the Amalekites 5000 years ago, that not ethnically cleansed the Midianites 4000 years ago, that not only exterminated the Agagites 3000 years ago, that not only butchered 1 million Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948, that not only eliminated millions of Arabs all over the Middle East in the last 75 years but that has also killed 40,000 innocent and defenceless civilians, including 20,000 children, in the last seven months in Gaza and are set to kill even more in Raffa!

Is this not madness? Pray tell us, I ask again, who has bewitched you? 

I say woe unto you! 

Your awesome power and mind-boggling wealth has driven you insane and far from God! 

From being perceived as the leader of the free world you can now be best described as the fawning and pliant pit bull terrier of the Zionist state and the world’s leading genocide supporter and enabler! 

The truth is that there can be no defence or justification for anyone or any nation, no matter how rich and powerful, that supports a country of genocidal maniacs and psychopathic child killers. 

The Zionist state of Israel is the greatest evil that we have seen since Nazi Germany. 

 Apartheid entity

 It is a vicious, savage, bloodthirsty, racist, apartheid entity that is led by a group of desperate and deluded European settlers and land grabbing colonialists and that has lost its right to exist.

The sooner it is wiped off the face of the earth the better!

Yet for America there is still hope and that hope lies in people like the Christian protesters who barricaded themselves at the cafeteria of the American Congress last week and who said that, as long as the people of Gaza could not eat, they would not allow the members of the House to enter the cafeteria to eat! 

Again that hope lies in the courageous and gallant students, lecturers and academics who have demonstrated their commitment to justice, decency and humanity by vigorously protesting in university campuses all over the country. 

As a former American presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, rightly said those young demonstrators are “out there for the right reasons!

“They are out there not because they are pro-Hamas. They are out there because they are outraged by what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza!”

Sanders is right and permit me to add that those protesting students are indeed the saving grace of America. 

Despite the fact that they have been subjected to the most brutal repression by the security forces who have raided the campuses injuring many in an attempt to disperse them and in spite of the fact that as at the time of writing this piece over 2000 of them have been arrested and detained in various police stations across the nation, they continue to come out in their thousands and stand for the people of Gaza. 

They represent America’s pride and joy and the brightest and best of American youth and they are now all fired up and are marching the streets and university campuses for the Palestinians!  

This is a truly remarkable moment in world history and it represents a seismic and monumental shift in the perception, hearts and minds of the younger people in a nation that has been in the pocket and under the control of the Jews and the Zionists since the end of World War 11. 

Permit me to end this contribution with the following: Nothing symbolises the renewed hope that we are witnessing more than the beautiful and moving words of Professor Rashid Khalidi, who has been a Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at New York’s Columbia University for the last 22 years. 

In an inspiring address to the students and in a speech that will reverberate throughout history he said, inter alia, the following: ”This is about a genocide being carried on with American money and with American weapons, against a people enduring generations of occupation. The students of Columbia fought against the Vietnam war when I was a student here many years ago. We protested against that war then and today we honor the memories of those who took part in that great struggle by doing the same for the Palestinians and the people of Gaza!”

May God guide and protect them all and may He grant the people of Gaza and Palestine victory! 

•Femi Fani-Kayode, the Sadaukin Shinkafi and the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, is a lawyer, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism and a former Minister of Aviation.

City FM is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Programme: CITY TALKS WITH REUBEN ABATI

Time: 12:00pm

Topic: "The Challenge of Fuel Scarcity"

Date: 4th May, 2024

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