If an alien is captured in a Hollywood film, the state imprisons it to weaponise its capabilities. Nollywood does not make alien films, but our cinematic representations of contact with non-human forces regularly reflect an individual seeking money. That was how I concluded that if we ever capture an alien in this part of the world, our immediate course of action will be to make it vomit cash. Nothing detains our imagination, absorbs our attention, and conditions our relationship with our humans and non-human beings like money. We fantasise about wealth so much that our popular culture is chock-full of stories of men with magical powers conjuring cash into existence through mystical rituals. The trouble with a society like ours is that the fiction does not merely play out on the magical tube of the television; it also erupts in reality.

 The latest sensational case of money ritual homicide is that of an Enugu-based “native doctor”, Obi Obieze, caught with a 13-year-old he would have sacrificed for his schemes.  What I find rather frustrating about the conversations that attended the man’s arrest were the claims that ritual murder is a violation of the tenets by which “native doctors” are expected to abide, rather than a wholesale debunking of the idea that anyone has the power to make money through such means. It did not help that Obieze’s status as a “native doctor” also fits into the existing belief that practitioners of what we call “traditional religions” have the spiritual expertise to carry out magic such as money rituals (which is why even the practitioners of our Abrahamic religions secretly consult them).

The belief is so powerful that it sustains institutional bias against indigenous religions. Every informed person in Nigeria is aware that those who have been arrested for various atrocities include Christians and Muslims, but it is those of the indigenous religious traditions who bear most of the brunt. For instance, Anambra Governor Charles Soludo has been waging a war against the native doctors suspected of empowering dissident elements in the state by destroying their shrines. Time and space will not permit me to elaborate to Soludo that in the 20th century, the British colonial government also embarked on similar demolitions in Igboland, only to find that their clampdown on shrines counterproductively invigorated the people’s beliefs in their power.

The more we have antagonised our indigenous religions, the stronger the belief in them as repositories of mystical power has grown. There is a generation of people—including charismatic religious movements, charlatans, and a whole lot of other superstitious folks—hell-bent on sustaining beliefs in the magical power wielded by priests of indigenous religions. Their motives are not entirely driven by historical nostalgia nor by the idea that these practices offer ethical guidance for living, but simply because they cannot live without the notion that no god exists anywhere to make money appear from nowhere. That, for me, is where the problem with our cultural attitudes toward our indigenous religions lies. People are more invested in the magical possibilities that these belief systems can purportedly make happen than in the ethical values their meanings carry.

Some years ago, I was at a religious conference in Nigeria where a group of academics presented their research on why people are leaving Christianity and Islam and opting for indigenous religions. It turns out that almost everyone had converted because they were looking for a God that answers by fire, not because they wanted a religion that nudges them to higher values or morals. It is almost as if a magical transformation is the only reason our people seek God. Even our cultural industry does not help the issues. Hardly does Nollywood reflect indigenous belief systems as a source of values and meanings that can reform our social ethics. No, our Gods in our cinema are almost always a caricature.

 To restate what I have repeatedly said in this column, there is no money ritual anywhere that works. No magical (or miracle) expertise anywhere in the world can make cash come out of nothing. What is called a money ritual is mostly a manipulation of credulity. After reading virtually every interview of those arrested for money rituals and the confession statement of the ritualists in documented police reports, I reasonably arrived at the conclusion that those arrested are split into two groups: people who knowingly deceive others, and the sincerely stupid people with a flimsy understanding of the modern monetary system. Those of the former category do not expect anything to happen and merely deceive with gimmickry. The latter, on the other hand, genuinely believes the magic is possible and therefore experiments with human lives. These are the ones who admit to trying out the rituals after learning about them. While no cash appears, they still make some money through sales of human body parts and that increases their motivation to keep trying. None of them has any record of testimonies of prior success, and they are usually men whose poverty is indelibly etched onto their appearance.  They all look like their hearts would stop beating if they were ever handed a cash sum of one million in any currency. As stupid as they are, they are also the foot soldiers of a surreptitious economy of organ harvesting who hide their dealings in human body parts under the amorphous umbrella of “money rituals”.

Here is where their shoddy understanding of the modern monetary system betrays them: the cash they want to conjure is an invention of modernity and therefore relatively recent. The spirits that will materialise have supposedly existed before the existence of the legal tender and should be too timeless to be involved in producing something as vulgar as money. In any case, now that the concept of money in the contemporary economy is evolving into more abstract forms due to digital technology, are those spirits also transitioning to a cashless economy, or are they still stuck on paper money?

 Our fore-parents, who originated the idioms of “money rituals”, were not speaking in the same literal language as the present-day “native doctors” who seek to replicate the magic. Their understanding of money rituals by our ancestors was borne of their observation of an emerging colonial modern economy (the slave trade, in particular), where—unlike the agrarian ones they knew intimately—offered the possibility of wealth without obvious work. Some of the contemporary “native doctors” who sacrifice a living human in their money rituals are either confused pretenders or psychopaths whose sickness has not yet been named.

Obieze, who was busted after a search team for a 13-year-old found her entombed in a sewage pit within an unfinished building used as a shrine, was obviously manipulating his clients’ psyche ink about it, knowing that a charm was produced for you from the blood of an innocent soul will do two things to any human: either drive them crazy or sear the conscience. If the latter happens, one is emboldened to the point of the daredevilry that separates great men from their ordinary counterparts. The effect of such magic is not so much supernatural as it is psychological. If you can live with yourself after taking a life, it also means you can engage in any unconscionable action for money. Your chances of making it increase, even if only marginally. And that is what the ruse of human sacrifice in money rituals is all about, not physical cash materialising out of thin air.

In his usual bluster, U.S. President Donald Trump at numerous hustings in 2024 promised to get a deal to end the fighting in Ukraine in just one day if elected president. In fact, he boasted that President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II if he was the president.

That invasion became a major escalation of the conflict between the two countries which began in February 2014 when Putin not only annexed Crimea, but also ordered Russian paramilitaries’ war in the eastern Donbas region against Ukraine’s military. But Trump was dead wrong. More than four months after his inauguration, his self-avowed goal of securing a peace deal is dead, virtually.

The U.S. President was wrong in his characterisation of the brutal war because he misread Putin from the onset, believing that the Russo-Ukrainian War was an attempt by Putin to stop Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, an intergovernmental transnational military alliance of 32 member states — 30 European and two North American.

Ukraine had always had relations with NATO dating back to the early 1990s following its declaration of independence on August 24, 1991. She subsequently joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council same year and the Partnership for Peace programme in 1994. Relations were further strengthened with the signing of the 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, which established the NATO-Ukraine Commission and further enhanced in 2009 with the Declaration to Complement the Charter, which reaffirmed the decision by NATO Leaders at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. In fact, until 2006, the Ukrainian Armed Forces worked with NATO in Iraq.

Granted, most Russian officials, including President Putin, believed it would be too risky to allow Ukraine join NATO, but that was not the reason for the invasion. Putin wilfully invaded Ukraine because he never believed it should be an independent state. The NATO spin was, therefore, a mere subterfuge, a smokescreen.

So, Trump couldn’t have stopped Putin from invading Ukraine in 2022 even if he was president because it was a premeditated action and the conditions Russia is giving for peace – Kyiv gives up big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army – bear that truth out.

According to a memorandum published by the Russia-owned Interfax news agency on June 2, Putin said a settlement of the war would require international recognition of Crimea and four other regions of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that Moscow is claiming as its own territory and Ukraine withdrawing its forces from all of them. Russia also restated its demands that Ukraine becomes a neutral country – ruling out membership of NATO, and ceases all military redeployments and limitations on the size of its armed forces, a halt to foreign provision of military aid, satellite communications and intelligence. Moscow is also insisting that Kyiv lifts martial law and holds presidential and parliamentary elections within 100 days, and Ukraine to abandon its demand for war reparations to be paid by Moscow.

Contrastingly, Ukraine is demanding a full 30-day ceasefire during which time peace negotiations can take place. Zelenskyy also said ahead of Monday’s meeting that Kyiv wants the release of all prisoners and the return of 400 Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia. The Russian delegation agreed to work on returning only 10, claiming that they were moved from war zones to protect them.

As if to confirm the widely held belief in Kyiv that Putin has no genuine interest in peace, despite Moscow’s participation in the US-brokered talks in Istanbul, Turkey, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and prime minister now serving as the deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday that the talks “are not meant to achieve a compromise peace based on some imaginary and unrealistic conditions invented by others, but rather to secure our swift victory and the complete destruction” of Zelenskyy’s government.

Of course, these demands are non-starters for Ukrainians, who insist that acquiescing to Russia’s conditionalities is tantamount to surrender, a point reemphasized by the Ukrainian ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Ivan Kholostenko, in an exclusive interview with TheNiche on Wednesday: “The document Russia presented during the second Istanbul meeting did not show any meaningful evolution. Despite promising the United States to bring more constructive proposals, Russia returned with the same outdated ultimatums and maximalist demands that mirror its positions from 2022. There was no flexibility, no realism, and no genuine will to move toward peace. This demonstrates how disconnected the Russian leadership remains from both the needs of the Ukrainian people and the broader international consensus.”

Accepting such terms, Kholostenko said, will “amount to surrender, legitimisation of aggression, and a green light for further expansionism.” Ukraine “has consistently made it clear that peace must be just, durable, and based on international law. Capitulation is not an option, nor would it bring lasting stability to the region or the world.”

So, the negotiations which lasted barely an hour failed; the reason why the international community must be worried. Moscow’s hope of securing swift victory and the complete destruction of Zelenskyy’s government has become forlorn. Three years into a war Putin thought would end in just two weeks, Russia has made no substantial progress. Its hitherto fabled military capabilities has been exposed as grossly overrated and ineffectual when it mattered most.

But therein lies the danger. A frustrated, deflated and highly embarrassed Russia may resort to the use of nuclear arsenal in its desperation, more so as Ukraine continues to display a strategic edge as exemplified in its attack on Russian nuclear-capable long-range bomber planes at airfields in Siberia and the far north of the country on Sunday when it launched 117 drones in an operation codenamed “Spiderweb” deep inside Russia and thousands of miles from the front lines.

Western military analysts described the strikes as audacious. And it was. When the dust settled after the drone attack on airfields stretching from Siberia in the east to Murmansk in the north, 41 Russian warplanes, about one-third of its strategic bomber fleet, were reportedly destroyed causing over $7 billion in damage.

But war is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The Russo-Ukrainian War is no exception. It has brought about immeasurable loss of human lives, both military personnel and innocent civilians. The destruction of infrastructure and resources is staggering.

A study published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said almost 1.4 million troops – nearly one million Russians and close to 400,000 Ukrainians – have been killed or wounded since the war of attrition began. “No Soviet or Russian war since World War II has even come close… in terms of fatality rate,” the study said. Besides, Russia has reportedly lost nearly 11,000 tanks and almost 23,000 armoured infantry vehicles since the war began. Today, the United Nations is predicting that Ukraine’s reconstruction may cost $486 billion — roughly two and a half times her GDP.

Yet, despite these humongous losses – human and material – at the beginning of 2025, the Russian military controlled only about 18 per cent of Ukraine’s territory. All through 2024, it added only 1,500 square miles, which amounts to less than one per cent of Ukraine. Now, military experts aver that Ukraine’s ability to hold out as long as it has and launch offensive operations in Russia, as it did last Sunday, has punctured the global image of Russia’s military might.

Now, a bolstered Zelenskyy is talking tough. On Tuesday, two days after the blistering attacks on Russian airfields, he said Ukraine will neither surrender nor give in to any ultimatums, even as he affirmed that: “But we do not want to fight, we do not want to demonstrate our strength – we demonstrate it because the enemy does not want to stop.”

And he is correct. Neither he nor Ukraine started this “war of blame.” Putin is the aggressor and this aggression started with the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This is Putin’s war and it will stop today if the man who started the war by invading another sovereign country decides to put an end to the madness.

In case he fails to appreciate the precariousness of the situation and the futility in his aggression, his friend, the ultimate deal maker, Donald Trump, should help in nudging him to genuine truce rather than threatening that the U.S. is ready to walk away from its mediation efforts unless the two sides demonstrate progress towards a deal. That is no way to make a deal.

The news last week that the Federal Government is seemingly finalising plans to put the Digital Switchover (DSO) on an accelerator that can immediately take it to about 10 million people, was very elevating and, for me, it marks a good turn for the Tinubu administration.

The story, which has been in gestation but only broke last week, is the fruit of a relationship between the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and NigComSat which have both agreed to deploy their available capacity and resources to resolve the DSO impasse.

The NBC which is the nation’s broadcast regulator is the arrowhead of DSO implementation in Nigeria (migration from analogue to digital television broadcasting), while NigComSat is charged with providing satellite capacity for the nation and beyond, and has a satellite, NigComSat – 1R in the geostationary orbit. However, the story of DSO in Nigeria has not been very inspiring, resulting in the nation missing the ITU implementation targets twice. Before this development, the process was in hibernation, giving the impression that Nigeria cannot even implement a simple process.  Simple?

For us, everything is nearly like rocket science. But details of information released May 29, 2025, by both organisations are very uplifting and can stir any soul. Titled, NBC and NigComSat Unveil Nigeria’s Satellite-Driven Digital Switchover: “The Big Picture,” it says, “In a bold move to redefine Nigeria’s digital future, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd (NigComSat) have launched The Big Picture – a revolutionary upgrade to the country’s Digital Switchover (DSO) strategy.”

Highlights of The Big Picture include: Satellite Over Terrestrial – no towers, NigComSat-1R to beam Direct-to-Home signals across Nigeria instantly; Immediate Access – Over 10 million Nigerian households with satellite-ready TVs or DVB-S2 set-top boxes can access 100+ Free-to-Air television channels; Hybrid Smart Boxes, which combine satellite channels with streaming apps; and Content for All – 40 percent of all channels slots are reserved for independent and regional producers.

The proposition fascinates to no end. It means that a nation whose entertainment sector is booming across the world, will have more of her contents on digital TV. It means more job for Nollywood and an auspicious opportunity to saloon it’s abundant talents; it means ordinary folks can have access to digital contents; and it also means more channels for Nigerians to ventilate their spleen on the state of the nation sans freedom of speech.

But every story has a flipside and this is needed for the understanding of the unfolding picture in the broadcast industry. The broadcast channels in the country are run on frequencies allocated to broadcast operators by the NBC. It was so in other parts of the world, although the story has gradually changed as a majority have completed their switchover.

It is often said that frequencies are a scarce resource which are managed from the global platform of the ITU. Since both TV and Telecommunications can use the same frequencies, and frequencies are a scarce resource, mind you, the thinking of the ITU in 2006, was for broadcast channels to move operations to digital platforms that could accommodate as many channels as imagination can guess. The movement will free up their frequencies for telecom operations; this will impact on broadband service deployment and cost of service acquisition.

While about nine countries in Africa, including Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have completed the switchover, the process in Nigeria has been so convoluted and too woollen to pass a transparency test. That was until last week; or is it?

An industry source told this writer that the satellite option is very attractive and should be encouraged. Afterall, Morocco did it by taking about 90 percent of their switchover through satellite while the remaining 10 percent was terrestrial, perhaps because of their terrain. The source suggested that Nigeria can also adopt the hybrid approach of terrestrial deployment in the core cities while using satellite in remote areas, more because of pervasive insecurity than mountainous terrains. The satellite option may escalate the process of harvesting the digital dividends.

But another source which is more in the hardware area in the switchover ecosystem, pointed out that the protocol of the switchover is based on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and not Direct-to-Home (DTH) which has existed in Nigeria since the coming of M-Net, and then Multichoice before being joined by Startimes. DTT relies on towers/masts unlike DTH which is space inclined.

The source observed that the proposition which looks beautiful doesn’t seem to accommodate previous history of the process and the stakeholders involved in it.

Let’s interrupt the above thought. For the DSO to take off in Nigeria, the NBC licensed ITS and Pinnacle as signal carriers for broadcasters, while a number of companies were also licensed to manufacture set-top boxes (STBs) that will convert digital signals for the use of anologue television. The STB prevents analogue TV sets from being junked!

Investors were encouraged to come into the industry. While Pinnacle, for instance, paid over N600m for a carrier license (don’t ask me how much ITS, which is linked to NTA paid, just like NITEL and GSM license – they always don’t pay), the STB manufacturers shelled out N50m each to become pioneer players in the switchover process.

Quite some money have gone into the process. The Nigerian government, in demonstration of good faith, may have put in about N50bn while the other players – Pinnacle, ITS and the STB manufacturers,  may also have invested another N20bn in equipment or platform installations and manufacturing, according to industry sources. There are hundreds of thousands of STBs in warehouses across the country. The other day, a voice called this writer from up north to complain that his investment in the distribution of STBs has ruined his life! The past cannot just be interred and papered over with the fantasy of beautiful ideas.

Back to the story, there are complaints from different stakeholders in the ecosystem  that they have hardly had any interaction with their regulator or even the other party involved in The Big Picture.

There are always stakeholders in an ecosystem. I will want to observe that the stakeholders in the DSO process are: the government, regulator, industry – broadcasters, signal carriers, STB manufacturers, and the viewers which have been aptly identified in The Big Picture as households, with 10 million projected in the first instance. There is an addition – NigComSat! To be frank, the households are powerless in the process until the big boys have sorted out themselves.

I will want to suggest here that the regulator should play more with the stakeholders because a regulator without stakeholders is like a general without troops or a king without chiefs or people. The stakeholders must be embedded in the dreams of the regulator.

A former regulator (there are so many of them because there was churn in leadership at a time) suggested that to avoid a disconnect and unnecessary acrimonies in the DSO process, the regulator may need to properly engage the STB manufacturers in ccnversation to determine their technology capacity, financial exposure and even the amount of goods they have in their warehouses, in order to find an intervention that can assuage all parties.

“It is important that they are taken into consideration because they have made sizeable investments,” the source counselled.

Charles Ebuebu, Director-General of the NBC says: “We’re not just digitizing TV. We’re redefining access, storytelling and how Nigerians connect.”

That sounds like  good music that can titillate any ear. However, here is my final observation. NBC is a regulator and cannot be involved in the day-to-day running of a broadcast platform. NigComSat is a satellite service provider that should be more into transponder leasing, among other services. NigComSat is not a last mile service provider. It’s attempts to do last mile services in the past created a lot of disaffections in ancillary sectors. Just like a guy carrying an elephant on his head and attempting to sell cricket meat!

Who will run The Big Picture platform? The razzle-dazzle idea may deserve more intentionality by the promoters and more scrutiny by relevant stakeholders, because it is quite easy for investment in broadcasting, including entertainment, to go kaput. History does not lie.

In a nation where hardly a single day passes without tragedy, it can be overwhelming for public officials to respond to all the bad news. From a vehicular accident claiming no fewer than 22 athletes returning from a national sports festival to almost 200 fatalities and dozens of others believed to have been swept away by devastating floods, it has been a period of mourning in Nigeria. Even at that, the official silence to the trending video of how CSP Baba Ali Muhammad was brutally murdered by street urchins is very telling on the value we place on the life of those we expect to protect us. 

Before I proceed, let me state that crime fighting is a risky enterprise all over the world. For instance, according to the website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 47 law enforcement officers were murdered in the first eight months of last year. “Firearms were used in 76.6 percent of the felonious deaths occurring in 2024. Among officers killed with firearms, four are confirmed to have been wearing body armour,” the FBI report reveals. “The leading circumstances surrounding the officers’ felonious deaths were related to investigative/enforcement (16), unprovoked attacks (8), and ambushes (entrapment/premeditation) (6).”

However, what is different in the case of Nigeria is the growing rate at which criminals are targeting our law enforcement officers for extermination without fear. Not to mention the way we treat our policemen—alive or dead. That is not the case elsewhere. In March this year, President Donald Trump called for a mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted of killing an American law enforcement officer. After signing an executive order that would make the death penalty mandatory in such cases, Trump called on Congress to ensure it becomes a permanent law. He also honoured the widow of NYPD Officer, Jonathan Diller, who was shot during a traffic stop in March 2023. Meanwhile, I am yet to see a presidential response to the mob killing of the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) for Rano in Kano State.

I once referenced the response by Vivek Tulja, a satellite communication expert, to a question on why criminals, including members of the Mafia, avoid killing policemen unless they are cornered. “If you happen to kill a cop, you are best off using the last bullet in your magazine on yourself,” Tulja concluded. That appears not be the case in Nigeria given how the Rano DPO was executed in a most brutal manner by a mob not even afraid to record their own bestial action.

In recent days, I have had revealing exchanges with Mr Tunji Alapini, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, regarding this tragedy. “That an officer of the law left his home for the office and ended up being gruesomely murdered in a ‘sane’ society is beyond imagination,” said Alapini who admitted shedding tears after watching the gory video. “I am not in full picture of the incident that made those criminals believe they have a right to take the life of an officer on legitimate duty, but from the aftermath of the Police Interim Investigation report, the mob massacred the DPO because a suspect allegedly died in the cell at his station.”

While advocating that the culprits (most of whom have been arrested by the police) be made to bear “the full consequences of their action,” Alapini also expressed concern about the lack of outrage from critical stakeholders in our country on the tragic incident. “While the Police cried out about what happened to the unfortunate officer, there was a deafening silence from the Governor of Kano State, traditional rulers, National Assembly members etc. It is almost as if the lives of our police and military personnel don’t matter. And that is both concerning and saddening.”

I share Alapini’s sentiment. As the principal custodian of peace, order and security in a constitutional democracy, no institution is arguably more important than the police. But so abused is this law enforcement authority in Nigeria that both the government and society seem not to care about their personnel. Yet, given the strategic relationship between the well-being of the police and the security of citizens, we neglect this critical institution to our own peril. 

I have in the past recounted the October 2011 statement by a police officer’s wife at the Obalende barracks in Lagos which revealed the indignities to which their families had been exposed. It may be worth repeating at a time like this. “We have been suffering in silence. These barracks are like a refugee camp. We have no toilet facilities, no pipe-borne water and no electricity, and we are now being threatened by floods and reptiles,” the woman told the visiting Police Affairs Minister, Caleb Olubolade. “We live a little above animals. We are like sub-human beings here. This is a place of death; the mosquitoes here don’t surrender to insecticides…”

How do we expect the personnel of a Police force whose families live like ‘sub-human beings’ to perform optimally? Yes, I have written several columns on the excesses of the police, but we should also be fair. If the life of a divisional police officer could be taken by a mob in such a gruesome manner and authorities in Nigeria move on as if nothing happened, what justification do we have to hold them accountable when they misbehave?

Alapini suggests that the Rano Police station be named after the deceased CSP. I agree. But I also hope those in authorities can understand that the manner in whichthe life of the Rano DPO was taken is a direct assault on social order and a grave threat to the foundation of any functioning society. And there must be severe consequences, if only to serve as a deterrence to others that when you kill a policeman in Nigeria, you are digging your own grave. It must never happen again!

Health of the President
Last Thursday, former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor in charge of economic policy, Kingsley Obiora, sent me an interesting message, followed by two lengthy posts. First, the message: “I asked two AI-powered search engines to comment on ‘Power, Politics and Death’ by Olusegun Adeniyi and ‘Original Sin’ by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and see if there are any similarities. Below are the responses from Elon Musk’s Grok and Sam Altman’s ChatGPT.”

The first forwarded post by Kingsley was the response he received from Grok. “To address the query, I’ll compare the behaviors of key actors in Power, Politics and Death by Olusegun Adeniyi and Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, focusing on their actions, motivations, and the consequences as depicted in the books.” Both works, according to Grok, “delve into political intrigue, leadership challenges, and the handling of crises, offering a lens to examine how key figures navigate power, secrecy, and public perception.” 

In both books, Grok continues, “key actors exhibited hubris by overestimating their ability to control outcomes and denying the reality of their leader’s incapacitation. This led to catastrophic political consequences—Nigeria’s constitutional crisis and the U.S. Democrats’ electoral defeat.” But Grok also admits that while there are striking similarities, contexts differ in the two countries: “Nigeria’s political system in Power, Politics and Death was marked by weaker institutions, allowing personalities to dominate over constitutional norms. In contrast, Original Sin operates in the U.S.’s more structured democratic system, where the cover-up faced greater scrutiny due to media and electoral pressures.” On the outcomes, “Yar’Adua’s death resolved the crisis by forcing a transition to Jonathan, whereas Biden’s withdrawal led to Kamala Harris’s candidacy, which still failed to prevent Trump’s victory, highlighting different stakes and timelines.”

After a lengthy disquisition of various aspects of the two books, Grok concluded: “The key actors in both Power, Politics and Death and Original Sin exhibit remarkably similar behaviors: concealing their leader’s health issues, prioritizing loyalty over public interest, manipulating political processes, displaying hubris, and being influenced by family dynamics. These actions reflect a universal tendency among political elites to cling to power, even at the cost of transparency and democratic integrity. In both cases, the consequences were severe—a constitutional crisis in Nigeria and an electoral disaster for U.S. Democrats—underscoring the dangers of such behaviors in leadership.”

The second post was what ChatGPT had to say on both books, which is remarkably similar. “Power, Politics and Death by Olusegun Adeniyi and Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, though centered on different political landscapes—Nigeria and the United States respectively—both delve into the inner workings of presidential administrations during times of crisis. A comparative analysis reveals notable similarities in the behaviors of key actors in these narratives,” ChatGPT wrote.After also comparing different aspects of the books, ChatGPT concluded: “In summary, both books shed light on the complexities of political leadership during health crises, emphasizing how inner circles can influence decisions, manipulate information, and impact national stability. The parallels between the two administrations underscore the universal challenges of governance, transparency, and the human elements that shape political narratives.”

Reading through the posts by Grok and ChatGBT, I marveled at the incredible power of AI and the future of the knowledge industry. But the message from Kingsley also prompted me to get the book, ‘Original Sin (President Biden’s Decline, It’s Coverup, and his disastrous choice to run again’ which I read on the long flight from Boston to San Francisco enroute Dallas last Saturday. The Biden book has, of course, elicited several reactions. Even the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, waded in. “I think anybody looking again at the videos and photo evidence of Joe Biden with … a little bit of common sense can see that this was a clear coverup,” Leavitt responded to a question on revelations from the book. “And Jill Biden was certainly complicit in that coverup.”

I agree that both books are similar in subject. But they diverge on thrust. The Biden book is about shielding an incumbent presidentseeking a second term from the eyes of a public whose confidence is likely to be shaken by greater knowledge of his physical and mental state. In a way, it is also about protecting the institution of the US presidency from perceptions that could imperil orderly transition. In the case ofYar’Adua, it is about sustaining a power incumbency during a crisis necessitated by ill health. In both books, what comes out clearly is the uncharted territory of how to deal with presidential health confidence in an accountable manner without exposing the principal to public ridicule.

Perhaps because I was a participant observer in the narrative contained in the Yar’Adua book, I have sympathy for Mrs Jill Biden and MessrsMike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed and Hunter Biden—members of what was described by the authors as the ‘Politburo’—the Nigerian version of the ‘Cabal’. From my own experience, the assumption that people around a leader with health challenges are there only to preserve their own power and privileges is not necessarily true. Some may simply be helpless after weighing several factors on a problem over which they have no control.

While this is an issue for another day, the ultimate lesson—which is evident in both ‘Original Sin’ and ‘Power, Politics and Death’—is the challenge that comes with the illness of a national leader. For those close to such a leader and the country over which he presides.

The Ghost of June 12

‘Combining the techniques of a diarist, reporter and commentator, Olusegun Adeniyi reports the events as they unfolded under the late General Sani Abacha, he allows the actors of that drama to speak in their own words, he constructs the narrative in a chronological sequence and guides us to the climactic and sudden end of the Abacha misadventure. He provides strong entertainment in recording the statements of those willing agents of dictatorship who handed over the initiative to Abacha, but who ironically today are occupying positions of authority as democrats. The author mentions their names directly and confronts us with the fickleness of the human mind and the dangers of the personal factor in Nigerian politics…the characters in his account are either villains or charlatans, democrats or political mercenaries, men of principles or hired thugs. Without calling anyone names, he allows their deeds to place a judgment of history upon their heads…’

The foregoing, written by Dr Reuben Abati, is from the Foreword to ‘The Last 100 Days of Abacha’, first published in August 2005, but now part of the coming book, ‘The Ghost of June 12’. Meanwhile, I have received several messages on whether there will be a public presentation of the book. There will not be any such formal ceremony. But the book will be available for readers across the country from Monday, June 16. For pre-order, those interested should contact www.rhbooks.com.ng or Call/WhatsApp: +2349092158968; +2348028287089.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com