Lagos: The Tanker Gridlock And Leadership’s Ineptitude

By Chijioke Nelson

The continued siege by the drivers of articulated vehicles to one of the most important road networks in the country’s economic nerve center- Lagos State, is nothing short of dearth of ideas and tacit admittance by the country’s leadership at all levels. I am talking about the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway.

This road, not only serves as the country’s gateway, but also the connecting corridor to Nigeria’s boundary with the popular Cotonou Town of Benin Republic and routes for commercial vehicles heading to Togo, Ghana, among others. But more important is the fact that the road leads off to the homes of millions of residents in nearby suburbs, who work in the Island and other Mainland areas. 

Joe Igbokwe’s Unprovoked Mockery Of The Judiciary

By Ebun-olu Adegboruwa

Some few minutes ago, Mr. Joe Igbokwe posted on his Facebook wall, a comment, to the effect that the Governor of Rivers State, Mr Nyesom Wike, the latter a lawyer and a member of the Body of Benchers, bought his way through the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

I was alarmed at such open declaration, given that I’m part and parcel of the Nigerian judiciary.

Consequently, I urge all lawyers, activists and lovers of the rule of law and due process, to join me to engage Mr. Joe Igbokwe on this rather reckless utterance.

Indeed, it is the height of indignity. By my last reckoning, Mr Joe Igbokwe is still a public servant, in Lagos State, the land of opportunities, being paid thorough our sweat and labour.

How can such a person paint the entire legal system of Nigeria with such conclusion as that one could buy judgment in the Supreme Court?

Nigeria: How Not To Govern Lagos

By Abraham Ogbodo

Lagos State is very peculiar. In terms of landmass, it is the smallest state in Nigeria, measuring just about 3,345 square kilometers, which is about the size of a local government in Niger State with a landmass of 76,363 square km. But that is where the smallness of Lagos State ends. In every other index of measurement, the state is a towering giant.

It is the most populous, claiming to accommodate 25 million human beings or about 16 percent of Nigeria’s estimated population of 150 million. 

 Estimates also say that about one third of industries in Nigeria are in Lagos.

Land Use Charge: Lagos Police Warns Intending Protesters

Press Release

The attention of Lagos State Police Command has been drawn to the news making the rounds that a  group of persons under the sponsorship of  some mischief makers, and who are   masquerading as civil rights activists, intends to block the Third Mainland Bridge and  occupy some critical public infrastructures in Lagos to protest the increase in the Land Use Charge by the government of Lagos state.

Nigeria: Badoo At The Gate

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is far from reprieve for the citizens as the country lurches from one dismal failure to another. While they are still choking under the weight of an economic recession, their miserable existence has been further blighted by worsening insecurity.

Of course, it is not for nothing that the citizens loathe the country’s security agencies. It is just a way of their expressing their outrage at the incapability of the security operatives to deliver on their mandate of protecting life and property.

But in some rare moments when the security operatives exude flashes of professional brilliance and depart from the path of turning their guns on the citizens, they often get well-deserved accolades. This is why the police who have succeeded in smashing the kidnap syndicate led by Evans in Lagos have rightly been lauded for their courage and professionalism.

Yet, the praise is subdued. It is drowned in the phalanx of posers their success has triggered. Why did it take so long to get him? Why are kidnappers still on the prowl? And why are the pupils of the Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe, still being held in captivity over 40 days after their abduction?

These are questions that the security operatives are not likely to provide answers to soon. In other words, the citizens are still haunted by insecurity. This is despite that even soldiers have been heavily deployed on the streets to boost security. The House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara who was recently alarmed by this heavy deployment declared that the country was under a state of emergency in peace time. In fact, the citizens have lost confidence in the ability of the security operatives to protect them.

Ambode, CAN And The Lagos Pastor

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

A democracy fiesta which began nationwide some days ago climaxed last Monday. Lagos strove to outdo other states with its Lagos My Success Story through which it celebrated those it considered as the exemplars of its exceptionalism. But the nebulous character of the concept became a source of excoriation for the state government in so far as it neglected some people whose successes constituted the excellence of the state.

*Gov Ambode

But this is not what has imbued the memory of the past few days with an unforgettable quality. Rather, it is the fact that the period unveiled a Lady Macbeth in the Lagos State house and that while the state government was valourising democracy which privileges the will of the people, it was at the same time serving one of its residents a robust measure of authoritarianism.

Depression, Lagos Lagoon And The Allure Of Suicide

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

Recent research reveals that about 480 million people across the world experience depression during their lifetime. According to a WHO data, by 2020, major depressive illness will be the leading cause of disability in the world for women and children. The economic cost of untreated mental illness is more than 150 billion dollars each year in the United States. Thus, if not properly addressed, depression could as well turn out to be a time bomb waiting to explode in an already troubled world.

The Medilexicon’s medical dictionary depicts depression as medical conditions that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, depression is a medical condition that often results in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. Depression is more than just a feeling of being sad or moody for a few days. Symptoms of depression include feeling sad or empty, loss of interest in favourite activities, over eating, or not wanting to eat at all, not being able to sleep or sleeping too much, fatigue, feeling of hopelessness, irritation, anxiety, guilt, aches, pains, thought of death or suicide, erratic or changed behaviour, loneliness, desperation among others.

Medically, depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest in things that the victim is ordinarily usually passionate about. It is also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression and it affects how the victim feels, thinks and behaves. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems which include finding it difficult to embark on daily activities. It can also lead to marital troubles as depression victims find it very hard adjusting to family values and ethics. Indeed, coping with the stress of family life causes more difficulties for victims of depression.

Who Murdered A Seven-Year Old Kid?

 By Fred Nwaozor 

If the news that’s currently making rounds on the social media holds water, then Wednesday, 16th November 2016 – a day that reportedly claimed the life of a 7-year-old boy owing to alleged attempted misdemeanour – was another day Nigeria, and mankind at large, would live to mourn; a day that would cease to rest until justice is duly done to wickedness; a day that would stop at nothing to ensure that humanity is separated from insanity. 

 On that fateful day that could be best described as unfortunate, the said kid was reportedly set ablaze by a so-called angry mob at a locality in Lagos State for allegedly attempting to steal ‘Garri’ from a trader’s shop. He was caught by dwellers cum passersby, brutally tortured to stupor, and therein burnt with fuel and condemned tyres. The report equally had it that, while in the hands of the monsters, he pleaded for freedom, for the umpteenth time, still the vulnerable plea fell on cancerous and deaf ears. 

Even if he was more than seven years, or involved in felony as claimed by the police, did it call for such reaction? As I sat soberly and tried to recall the news, my emotions kept burning until I ostensibly lost my senses that I could not see nor hear anything, not even the like of the horn of a moving train. Whilst in the tattered mood, my utmost worry remained that, the public kept watching the scene until the fire engulfed that helpless ‘kid’; probably they were deriving pleasure from it. Worse still, the scene was videotaped, perhaps having been considered a mere melodrama. 

Any sane and rational since takes a closer look at these two observations would begin to wonder how wicked the heart of man is, as well as in whose image he was really made of. It is even more overwhelming to realize that the police, or any other law enforcement agency, was nowhere to be found throughout the incident that lasted for over an hour. I am yet to believe that while the duration of administering the obnoxious jungle justice lingered, no bit of notice got to any security outfit within, in spite of the obvious fact that the arena in question is urban. 

Buhari And The Child That Was Set Ablaze

By Sabella Ogbobode Abidde

A boy, less than 10 years, was set ablaze in Lagos – causing an uproar and condemnation at home and abroad. Yet, President Muhammadu Buhari is silent on this gut-wrenching and barbaric incident. Dead silent! Haba, is he not a father and a grand-father? What would it take for him to address the nation – or at least issue a statement condemning this most inhumane act. 

Does this President not know that in addition to his many other roles and responsibilities, he is the sympathizer-in-chief? Does he not know that he must order the Police to immediately investigate the killing, and send condolences to the parents of the dead child? Does he not know? Or he simply doesn’t care. Showing compassion, and expressing sympathy, is part of what it means to be human and member of the civilized world. 

If this president does not show compassion in times like this, then, he forfeits his claim to respectability and morality. Not only is the President silent, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is also silent – and so is Governor Akinwunmi Ambode (in whose jurisdiction the killing took place).

Members of the clergy are also silent. What manner of a country is this? Where are our men and women of conscience? Is the leadership of the country so out of touch, so inconsiderate, so indifferent, so callous, so iniquitous and so devilish that they are not touched by the killing of a child? Are they devoid of human feeling?

If Buhari, Osinbajo and Ambode refuse to address the people and the parents of the dead child, then, Nigerians must reassess their relationship with these men. If members of the clergy fail to condemn this killing, then, we must think of them as no better than those who killed this child.

May the sleep and happiness of those directly responsible for the death of that innocent child be disturbed. May their lives be forever haunted.

Those who stood by — hands folded or askance, laughing, jeering and deriving joy from the barbarism — are also guilty of the crime. Law enforcement officers and elders who should have saved our child, but who watched without attempting to exhibit their humanity, are also as guilty as those who directly administered death.

Ndigbo, Time To Think Eastwards!

By Clement Udegbe

The new plan by Governor Ambode of Lagos is to either force Igbos to go and start buying lands in Badagry, Ikorodu, Epe and other areas in the hinter lands, build houses and markets to develop those areas, or go back to the South East as Governor Fashola told them to do after the deportation of Igbos in 2013. The risk in this new plan is best captured by an Igbo proverb that says when a child starts planning to eat plenty fresh vegetable, the vegetable also plans how to give the child diarrhoea. No one, including the owners of Lagos, can say what Lagos will look like without Igbos, or what Igbos will do if they have to be forced to relocate.

 However, some Igbo traders may foolishly rush to those areas and start fresh struggles to own land and develop them, thereby repeating the same mistake they made after the civil war. These ones will always see themselves as wiser than the rest. They are the ones who often boast to themselves that they spent huge sums of money just to sand fill some deep swampy areas in Ojo, Abule Egba,Okota, Ejigbo areas, etc, before building. They forget that the cost of sand filling alone would have given them three mansions or more in their dry Igbo land. An Igbo proverb says that wisdom is like a hand bag: you pick up yours as you go about your affairs. But it appears many Igbos forget theirs in their villages with respect to Nigeria! They have this mind set, attributable to after effects of the civil war, to settle outside their state, no matter how close.

For example, Igbos strangely prefer to go and buy lands, build and live in Asaba and its environs, and commute to their markets stalls and shops in Onitsha, while neglecting all that vast good land from Ogbaru, to Aguleri and their environs. Many Igbo buy swamps from Port Harcourt, Elele, etc, in Rivers State and develop them, while neglecting the solid land around Owerri and Aba. They prefer to congregate again the same place where they lost abandoned properties after the civil war. The Imo State Governor is not ashamed of the craters that have rendered the Imo portion of the Portharcourt – Owerri Road   impassable since he came to power over five years ago. Similarly, his Anambra counterpart looks the other way as his people suffer untold hardship traversing just between Awka and Enugu, a distance of less than 80 kilometres. The governors of Enugu and Ebonyi have also failed to do the needful about the failed portions of their link roads.

Only God knows what the people of Ebonyi go through daily to link up with other parts of Igbo land, and Nigeria in general. Igbos participate and invest in huge sea port development programmes in neighbouring states, while neglecting the vast ocean front they have in Azumini area in Abia State. Indeed it is baffling why Igbos have failed or refused to develop their   own zone with the same zeal they put in other zones. While no Igbo man has made it to the list of the world richest, it is obvious that there are factors militating against them as a people. And until they wake up and address these factors, they will continue to run from pillar to post whenever their host governments sneeze! This is why the new Ambode plan against Ndigbo in Lagos is a welcome development. Perhaps it will make them to begin to think differently and to reconsider their ways in Nigeria. It will help them to rediscover that Igbo spirit that existed in the days of Zik of Africa, Dr. Michael Okpara, Dr. Akanu Ibiam and a host of other Igbo patriots who worked assiduously with other patriots from the South West and the South South to create the Nigeria that the Military and their political friends have worked equally hard to undermine since 1966, barely six years after our independence.

 It will perhaps make Igbos realise that no matter how long the crocodile remains in the water, it can never become a mangrove tree. No matter how long they may live in Yorubaland, Tivland or Hausaland, they will remain Igbo people. And until something fundamentally revolutionary happens, Nigeria, as I see it, cannot do without ethnicity and religion. I pray that a new movement that will not be polluted by these two cancers presently killing Nigeria will start someday. The Ambode plan is not fair and kind, and Igbos must take it seriously to avoid the enslavement it implies. The Holy Bible, which over 80 percent of Igbos believe in, declares that affliction shall not arise a second time against the righteous. And given the obvious religious agenda of the ruling APC, Igbos must find ways to re-engineer their own society and reduce the Pull Him Down Syndrome among themselves. The Lagos State government has not hidden its dislike for Igbos.

Ndigbo, Time To Reconsider Your Ways

By Clement Udegbe

A Yoruba proverb says that one does not keep silent when something bad is going on because a house does not burn and fill the eyes with sleep. I have been having sleepless nights because bad things are going on between the Igbos and their Yoruba brothers in Nigeria. And it troubles the hearts of those who love the peace and friendliness that once existed between these two tribes in Nigeria since after the civil war, which politicians for their very selfish reasons are determined to kill.

In the University of Ife (Now, Obafemi Awolowo University) in the 1970s, we did everything together with Yorubas, from football, student unionism, entertainment, etc. Of particular reference was in the Palmwine Drinkers Club, where they referred to themselves   as “carried fellows”, and non-members like me, as bearing very long tails, irrespective of tribe or circumstances of birth.

We enjoyed our differences and the unity that followed it all. They called us “Okoro”, “Aje okuta ma imu omi “, meaning: one who eats stones without drinking water. We called them “Ndi Ofe Nmanu”, meaning: people who eat too much red palm oil. Competition was healthy among us and you got what you deserved. For example, you could drive your ‘campus bus’, or ‘bush meat’ whether she is from Gbagan, Calabar, or any part of the globe, without qualms. Please get explanations from any ex-Ife around you. 

We were all simply Nigerians, and have remained largely so. I did my Operation Feed the Nation as a student in Iperu, a town in Ogun State and my National Service in Lagos. I love Yorubas, and my friends among them love me too. When I started work in 1981, two Yorubas who touched my life in an uncommon way were Chiefs Adeniran Ogunsanya and Harold Shodipo, both of blessed memory. They were completely detribalized men, proud of   their Igbo counterparts in politics.

Chief Ogunsanya proved to me how he loved Dr, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and he actually introduced me to Zik in 1984. A Yoruba Chief and Elder introduced me, an Igbo man, to Owelle Ndigbo. That was those good old days. I keep wondering what   those pan-Nigerian founding fathers of Yoruba land would have done with what is happening today between Igbos and Yorubas in the politics of Lagos State. So many things have started going wrong on between Igbos and Yorubas  that  things are now speedily falling apart. The foundation for Igbo bashing and phobia may have been laid during the tenure of Chief Bola Tinubu as the Governor of Lagos State.

That was when all Igbo core business areas began to be targeted for closure at the least provocation. Alaba International Market in Ojo LGA, the Auto Market at Berger Bus-stop near Mile 2 and the Ladipo Motor Parts Market in Mushin LGA were closed at different times and reopened after a governor from Igbo land came to plead. Former Governor Babatunde Fashola broke the pot and spilled the beans when he deported Igbos in 2013. It was a highly spiritual action which many did not understand. The message was clear –  Igbos are visitors and can be deported in spite of their investments in Lagos State. In 2014, a group of Obas and Chiefs in Ondo State denigrated the Eze Ndigbo title and called for its ban in Ondo State.

Nailing Lagos Land Grabbers

By Banji Ojewale

Some years ago, well known African Philosophy teacher, 80-yearld old Professor Sophie Bosede Oluwole told the world about her anguishing experience at the hands of indigenous land speculators (land grabbers) popularly called omo-onile. She said she had bought a land in Lagos several years earlier. Trouble came when she wanted to develop it.

Her account: "I bought my land 18 years ago. A fellow, who was six years old at the time now comes to me, saying his brother did not give him his own share of the money. I can't understand whether he wanted to take his own share in the womb...Somebody would come and say 'I was not around when you bought the land, pay me my own share.'"

*Governor Ambode of Lagos State

Mamalawo as Professor Oluwole is fondly referred to, lived to tell the story. She was fortunate, unlike others who had more macabre encounters with the omo-onile. Some have been maimed for life. Others have died. Several more have been traumatized after having their land seized and resold without a kobo for compensation. Many more are locked in a cycle of unending court cases over trespass on their land that is taking forever to settle.

Governments that have tolerated these vampires called omo-onile have violated the constitution that says government should protect life and property.

So when last week Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos moved in to roll out a law nailing the nefarious activities of the miscreants, he met not only a popular demand, but also he adhered to the fundamental essence of government. He has continued to receive deafening applause for his action.

The instrument, known as Lagos State Property Protection Law, will make the menace of land grabbing in Lagos a criminal act and a thing of the past. It stipulates a 21-year jail term for convicts. Ambode said: "The need for the law followed the fact that one of the issues that discouraged and hindered the ease of doing business in Lagos in the past had always been the menace of land grabbing." He noted that a lot of would-be property owners encountered untold harassment from the exploitative land grabbers, declaring that the law now marked the end of the road for such people.