If you're tired, drop everything and rest.
Oluwatosin is nursing his longest writer's block yet.
By the time you’re reading this newsletter, Oluwatosin will be at a film festival binging on okay to great African cinema.
This newsletter is listening to Trevor Noah tell a joke about flying while African during the Ebola crisis.
Lifehack: Remember to cry in bulk. You can't cry one by one. That's just not efficient.
Sowore is still in prison.
If the government refuses to heed a court ruling, what is the worst that will happen? Well, we wait and see.
In 2014, the then Presidential aspirant - Muhammadu Buhari and members of the now ruling APC organised a Revolution match/protest against bad governance in Nigeria. Looking at the Nigerian rights to free speech and expression as well as the right to freedom of association, the protest happened. In the end, Nigerians were riled up enough for the incumbent Federal government of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to lose his reelection campaign. But these days, protests against this Federal government are seen as “disturbing the peace” or “treasonous”.
Despite fulfilling his bail conditions, the DSS, Nigeria’s Secret Police have twice blocked a bailiff of the Federal High Court in Abuja from effecting a fresh service of the court order for the release of Omowole Sowore.
Sowore had been arrested and held since the 3rd of August.
Justice Taiwo, on the 8th of August, granted an application by the DSS permitting the security agency to keep the former presidential candidate for 45 days.
The 45 days period expired on Saturday, but barely 24 hours to the expiration of the 45-day detention order, the Attorney-General of the Federation’s office filed charges of treasonable felony, cybercrime offences and money laundering against him before the Federal High Court in Abuja.
On Tuesday, following an application by his lawyer, Justice Taiwo ordered Sowore’s release pending his arraignment in court with a submission of his passport as the sole condition for his bail.
Sent to learn the Quran, Nigerian children are kept in jail [?]
In Kaduna, over 300 students in an Islamic student have been rescued from jail-like conditions. Reuters first broke the news on Friday and since then, the Nigerian police has been trying to find the families of hundreds of boys and men freed from the school where some had been kept in chains, sexually abused and tortured.
Islamic schools in Nigeria and even in West Africa have long been dogged by allegations of abuse and reports that some children were forced to beg on the streets of northern Nigerian cities. Islamic schools known as Almajiris are common across the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria with parents often leaving their children in its boarding facilities.
More than a dozen, including 10 children, were taken to hospital on Saturday. All the adults were in critical condition, with one vomiting blood. “We did not know that they would be put to this kind of harsh condition,” one parent told Reuters.
The staggering number of out-of-school children had forced the Goodluck Jonathan Federal government to establish about 200 Almajiri schools across the north. Earlier this year, the federal government of Muhammadu Buhari, said it planned to eventually ban the schools, but would not do so immediately.
Go Home! You have desecrated the Holy Book!
Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara has sent all staff of Shattima Model Primary School, Gusau, on an indefinite suspension following the alleged desecration of the Holy Qur’an in the school.
The News Agency of Nigeria reported that pages of the Holy Qur’an were discovered in the sewage of the school. The governor directed the deployment of three additional security guards to all public primary schools in the state capital.
2 + 2 will always equal Agbalumo when you’re the President of Nigeria
It is the United Nations General Assembly and the President of Nigeria is called to the stage. Nigeria is no longer the giant of Africa or a power adjacent country. A few people scramble out of the room, so, the room is looking a little empty. But, this is not a Nigerian church where the cameramen pick sleepers or empty chairs during the service. No, this is the UN. We are told the room is filled. So, it is filled.
President Buhari steps onto the podium to answer a question and address the assembly. He is asked - what are your plans for the growing youth population? [I’m paraphrasing dears]
Then, my President speaks.
MY PRESIDENT GIVES A SPEECH ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.
And everybody in the administration tweets and eventually deletes the video. But, it’s there, on the internet. Somewhere, everywhere.
Except, this is not the first time a gaffe like this is happening. At this point, Nigeria is on autopilot. The autopilot is also drunk or like my car, faulty at this moment.
If you’re a non-profit in the Nigerian North East, you’re aiding terrorism
The Nigerian Army on Wednesday morning sealed off the Maiduguri office of the Mercy Corps an NGO working out of the war-torn Nigerian North East. This came just barely a week after the army blacklisted Action Against Hunger.
Last December it temporarily banned UNICEF operations, claiming the agency spied for Boko Haram terrorists. With the Nigerian government lagging in catering to displaced citizens, the gap has increasingly been filled by various NGOs working across health, sanitation, food aid as well as skills training and support. The statement by the Nigeria Army said that UNICEF was “training selected persons” to sabotage counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts.
Historically, Nigeria has been known to use food as a weapon of warfare. But some of the humanitarian groups’ practices, including providing food aid to camps of displaced people, allegedly without discrimination, somewhat contradict the army’s tactics.
There’s also the theory that the activities of the NGOs in the region reveal not only highlight the scale of impact of the insurgency but also the humanitarian shortcomings of the government. Nigeria’s government accused the United Nations and its agencies of exaggerating the scale of an imminent famine in the northeast in 2016 despite corroborative evidence from groups active in the region.
More than 27,000 people have been killed in the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria since 2009 and 1.8 million are still homeless.
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