🇳🇬 Where it's never fun and games
This issue is dedicated to Itunu Babalola, a Nigerian woman who died this week after spending 2 years in an Ivorian prison for a crime she did not commit.
In this issue
How the Government failed Nigerians this week
Nigeria removed from list of countries with religious oppression?
Inflation: numbers vs reality
Nigerian government failing citizens
1. EndSars
In October last year, the Lagos state government inaugurated a judicial panel to investigate what happened at the Lekki Toll Gate. This week, the panel's investigation confirmed that the Military did indeed kill peaceful protesters.
The panel submitted 2 reports: a consolidated report on police independent brutality cases and The Lekki Tollgate attack.
On the Lekki attack: The panel confirmed that there was a protest at the toll gate on the day of the incident (October 20) and that it was largely peaceful until the army arrived
They also confirmed that the Nigerian Military killed, injured or assaulted at least 48 peaceful protesters.
Recall: The Federal Government, Lagos State governor, Army and Police at separate times had insisted no one was killed in the attack
The panel also found evidence of attempts to conceal the evidence: soldiers hiding people's bodies in vans, sending threats to people who managed to escape and victims being trailed and stalked for days after the incident.
Some of the panel's recommendations:
"That October 20 of every year, the day is made a "Toll-Free Day" at the Lekki Toll Gate as long as the tollgate exists".
"All officers of the Nigerian Army that were deployed to the Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020, should be made to face appropriate disciplinary action, stripped of their status, and dismissed as they are not fit and proper to serve in any public or security service of the nation".
What we still don’t know: why the military shot at protesters; If the panel intends to investigate the equally horrific massacre in Mushin, which happened a day before Lekki
Related report: 7 months after unveiling, Lagos security officials have yet to use body-worn cameras.
More EndSars mindfuck: remember the camcorder minister of works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, discovered at the Toll Gate during a random inspection?
Speaking with Arise TV on Sunday, Fashola said he doesn’t know where it is. He said he handed it to the Lagos government, and it's no longer his problem. His part is done.
2. Wrongfully convicted Nigerian, Itunu Babalola, dies in Ivorian prison
Itunu was allegedly framed for human trafficking by Ivorian police officers in 2019 after she reported that her house in Bondoukou, Cote d’Ivoire, had been robbed.
According to a letter Itunu reportedly sent to the Nigerian Government: She had lived in Cote d’Ivoire for a year when a man robbed her home. The man turned out to be related to an Ivorian police officer.
They offered N100,000 to drop the case, but she refused, demanding that they either return what was stolen or pay back the estimated value (N300,000)
Days later, she was accused of kidnapping a little girl for human trafficking and threatened with prison if she didn’t drop the suit against the thief. She didn’t. A trafficking lawsuit was filed against her, and in 2019, a court sentenced her to 20 years in prison.
Her father says he spoke to 3 Nigerian government officials, including Abike Dabiri, who promised that the Nigerian Government would get her out before December this year.
But on November 15, 21-year-old Itunu died in a Cote d’Ivoire prison
The Federal Government claimed before she died, they had filed an appeal and were waiting to start the process in the Court of Appeal in Abidjan. The FG also says they have demanded that the Ivorian Government investigate her death.
3. Insecurity
This week in terrorism.
Sokoto, Kaduna and some other states shut down telecoms to fight terrorism. But terrorists have reportedly found a way around it: walkie talkies.
Premium Times reports that terrorists in Katsina are using Radio Frequency Walkie Talkie Transceivers to surpass the telecoms shutdown in the state, the state government has said.
But the Government also insists that the terrorist attacks in the state are reducing. They said that they have arrested over 700 suspected bandits between March and now, 85 of whom are under investigation and over 300 under prosecution.
Premium Times reports that insecurity has worsened
Premium Times compiled media reports and found that from documented terrorist attacks in the last week, at least 72 people have died. 12 have been identified as security personnel.
At least 45 were killed in Sokoto, 11 in Taraba, 3 soldiers were killed in an ISWAP attack in Borno.
In Zamfara, over 100 terrorists attacked the residents because they couldn't pay terrorist tax.
Residents report that a tax of N3 million was forcefully imposed on them, and they were given 2 weeks to pay.
When they couldn't get the money quickly enough (they raised N600,000), the terrorists brutalised them, kidnapped 6 people, raided their homes, raped women and stole their property.
This week in ransom demands by terrorists.
Kidnappers abducted 4 persons in Tegina, Niger State. An official told Premium Times that the attackers called relatives of the victims of the latest incident on Wednesday and demanded a ransom of N150 million for their release.
Similarly, the Nigerian Guardian reports that abductors of 14 Zaria Local Council workers in Kaduna State contacted individual families to demand a ransom of up to N100m for each person.
Government and terrorist PR
The Nigerian Government refuses to identify the "high profile Nigerians" sponsoring terrorism, but they have no problem criticizing anyone who attempts to guess
Last week, The Minister of Information and Culture (who might as well be the President's media assistant at this point) criticised US nonprofit Global Advocates for Terrorism Eradication (GATE) for claims that some Nigerian government officials are among the terrorist sponsors.
The minister said the fact that GATE, in making its absurd allegation, “relied on the words of a thoroughly discredited, fake-news-peddling former Nigerian Navy intelligence officer” has shown the hollowness of its allegation.
Recall: in August, former Navy Commodore Kunle Olawunmi told Channels that he knows for a fact that some Nigerian govt officials are behind terrorism and that they’re the reason the Military hasn't canned terrorism.
Bandits PR and Media manager Sheikh Gumi's latest suggestion: the Nigerian Government should build schools and other basic amenities for Fulani herders to help stop attacks
Gumi said Nigeria should reallocate money for military material to bandit rehabilitation— schools and teachers, etc.
In the past, Gumi has acted as an intermediary between the Nigerian govt and bandits: Taking ransom money from the Military to bandits hideouts, passing messages across etc.
Not sure whose payroll he is on, but a job is a job, eh?
4. Everyday Nigerian struggles
Market tyranny
This week, Traders in Oyingbo Market Complex in Lagos on Wednesday protested the closure of their shops. The protesters were seen with banners that said, “Folashade Tinubu Ojo, Ahmed Tinubu’s daughter, leave Oyingbo Market alone".
According to the traders, the President of the Association of Commodity Market Women and Men of Nigeria, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, closed their stores because some shops were selling clothes in unclean environments.
The Oyingbo traders say she had their goods seized and requested N5 million to release them.
This isn’t her first rodeo. In 2019, she reportedly imposed taxes on computer village traders without any previous conversations or constitutional reasons but was later overruled by a Lagos court.
Folashade Tinubu-Ojo is the daughter of President-aspirant and former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu.
Pls, vote.
Numbers vs reality
According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s inflation rate fell for the seventh consecutive month in October to 15.99 per cent from 16.63 per cent recorded a month earlier.
But the World Bank says more Nigerians live below the poverty line and household and food security under threat.
Trigger warning: Death caused by negligence
Punch reports that 4 construction workers have been confirmed dead in the 2-storey building that collapsed in Flour Mills Estate, Magbon in Badagry, Lagos. According to residents, the building was a bungalow the owners recently built another deck on.
5 people reportedly died, and many were injured after a petrol tanker fell and burst into flames on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State said the contractor handling the Lagos-Ibadan expressway would be held accountable for not providing safety signs despite recurring casualties.
The Government this week
FG has raised the price of pre-paid meters: single-phase meters now cost N58,661.69 (previously N44,896.17), and three-phase meters are now N109,684.36 (prev. N82,855.19) (TheCable)
The Federal Government has launched a portal to sell completed houses under the National Housing Programme (NHP). To be eligible, applicants must have a passport photograph, tax clearance, payslip, and means of identification. Interested? Read more about it here.
The House of Representatives has passed for second reading a bill seeking to make it compulsory for the Federal Government to provide free health care services for children in Nigeria (Punch). However, it still needs to be debated, cleared and signed by the President.
Drama in Anambra Elections drama
The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Anambra, Andy Uba, says he will challenge the victory of Chukwuma Soludo at the court (The Cable)
Soludo, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, secured 112,229 votes to defeat his two major rivals — Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who got 53,807 votes, and Andy Uba of APC, who secured 43,285 votes.
Uba, defeated at his LGA, maintained that he could not have lost in areas where the APGA ward chairmen defected to APC.
Uba is going to challenge it because he can't believe it
Crazy tins are 'appening
For some reason, Nigeria has been removed from the US' religious violators list.
The US had in 2020 placed Nigeria and six other countries on its special watch list of states that had engaged in or tolerated severe violation of religious freedom. Nigeria was removed from the list this year.
Recall that Mubarak Bala, an avowed atheist from a Muslim family in Kano, was arrested for his beliefs and is now missing, and we're literally in the middle of religion-motivated terrorism
Other news
FG says it enrolled 924,590 out of school children (GuardianNg)
Nigerian Military foil ISWAP attack on Damboa camp (Leadership)
Buhari signs climate change bill into law (Premium Times)
According to Buhari, Nigerians abroad are successful because they get "good education" in Nigeria (TheCable)
NDLEA intercepts N4.9 billion of heroin: https://www.thecable.ng/ndlea-intercepts-n4-9bn-heroin-cocaine-at-lagos-airport-seaport
Mr Sanwo-Olu explains Lagos needs $15 billion for infrastructure (Premium Times)
Lack of forex threatens Nigeria's investment in 5G (Guardian NG)
special report on widows of Nigerian soldiers (Premium Times)
Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has appointed his son, Babajide, as the Director-General, Performance and Project Implementation Monitoring Unit of the state (Punch)