STRANGE: Two Men Die Over One Woman?

Detectives of the Oyo State Police Command are battling to unravel the mystery behind the death of two brothers one after the other and an attack on their uncle accused of killing them with a deadly anti-adultery charm, magun, laced in the bossom of his wife and that of his brother’s.
The uncle is lying critically ill in a hospital in Ibadan after irate youths attacked him following the death of the second man.
The incident happened at Jagun community near Iyana Ofa, Lagelu Local Government Area of Oyo State, a serene settlement where people whose lifestyles are closer to nature dwell. Residents are mostly farmers while others engage in one trade or the other. The youth among them are artisans.
The serenity was, however, broken towards the end of 2013 when two blood brothers, Kunmi and Adeniyi Adetokun, died, one after the other, within three days, allegedly of a local charm used to punish adulterous men, commonly referred to as magun in Yoruba.
This literally translates ‘don’t climb’ in English. But the two brothers climbed the metaphorical mountains that were too high for them. And they somersaulted down the hills, breaking their necks in the process. The occurrence, however, sparked off anger among the youth of the community, resulting in them setting ablaze the residence of the Balogun of the community, Chief Segun Oyetade, the deceased’s uncle, as he was suspected to have been responsible for the duo’s death. They also attacked him with weapons but was only saved when the youth got a hint that policemen were approaching.
The scene opened on Monday, December 2, 2013 when Kunmi reportedly died after having sex with a woman allegedly laced with magun and who was said to be his aunt-in-law. The woman was said to be his uncle’s wife.
On December 5, three days after Kunmi’s death, his younger brother, Adeniyi, was also reported to have died of unknown ailment which he battled with for a couple of weeks after allegedly sleeping with the wife of Chief Oyetade’s brother, whose name was given simply as Femi.
According to the information gathered by Saturday Tribune, Niyi was the one who fell ill first after he slumped and started vomitting blood. His brother, Kunmi, was reportedly taking care of him at a hospital at Lalupon community.
It was further learnt that Kunmi left Niyi at Lalupon and went to Jagun community where he allegedly had sex with his uncle’s wife. His own illness did not take much time before it consumed him and he died three days after it manifested. Having noticed this, Niyi reportedly opened up that he slept with Femi’s wife, which confirmed the suspicion of the villagers that he must have been hit with the deadly charm.
A member of the community described the type of magun used on Niyi as Olorere which usually takes days or weeks before killing the man who sleeps with the woman laced with such.
After Kunmi’s death, Chief Oyetade was reportedly summoned by the Baale of Jagun community, Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, who asked him about the allegation that he laced his wife with magun. The man denied and the Baale appealed to him to find the antidote so that Niyi could be healed.
The Balogun reportedly came back to the village head to demand for N4,000 which he said was the fee demanded by the herbalist who volunteered to prepare the antidote. Members of the community were said to have contributed the money but before he brought it, Niyi gave up the ghost.
Niyi’s death after his brother’s spurred the community’s anger as Chief Oyetade was also accused of sleeping with the mother of the two brothers, which prompted the question on why he should be angry that someone was having an affair with his wife or his brother’s wife, to the extent that he could aim at killing the brothers.
The anger led to the attack on him while his house was set on fire and his wife and children sent out of the community in the dead of the night.
Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, who was said to have got a hint of the youth’s plan to attack Chief Oyetade, had reportedly gone to Iyana Ofa Police Division to quickly give the information to the police but before they got back to the village, the youth had struck. As they saw the approaching policemen, they were said to have fled in different directions, leaving the injured chief to his fate.
However, Chief Oyetade, during an interview with Saturday Tribune on hospital bed where he was receiving treatment, alleged that it was the Baale who sent the youth to attack him because of a tussle between them over a piece of land.
He denied the allegation that he laced the women with magun, saying that his accusers were only trying to tarnish his image.
“What I only heard was that Niyi was sick, but I didn’t know the kind of ailment because he was living at Lalupon. Later the Baale called me and some elders, saying that my nephew, Femi, laced his wife with magun, which resulted in Niyi’s illness. I didn’t believe the allegation because Niyi had been ill for some weeks and from the story we used to hear about magun, it doesn’t take so long before being felt.
“They went further to say that I was the one who gave Femi the magun which he laced his wife with, accusing me of doing same for my wife, which led to Kunmi’s death. I exclaimed in shock, disclosing that my wife was pregnant and wondering how one would lace a pregnant woman with a charm such as magun.
“It was after this that Chief Akinpelu said he was after the wellness of Niyi, tasking me and the head of Niyi’s family, one Mr Adewale Adekambi, to go and look for the antidote. By then, Niyi was being cared for in Ibadan and it was Ibadan we went to seek the antidote. Unfortunately, Niyi died on Thursday, December 5.
I joined Niyi’s sibling, Seun and his aunt in taking the corpse away from where he died. As we wanted to take him to the cemetery, his brother said we should take him home, unknown to me that it was a trap set for me. As soon as I disembarked from the vehicle, hoodlums descended on me with sticks, pestle and cutlasses. I kept asking them of my offence and when they saw that I did not collapse, one of them struck me with an axe on the head and I fell down.
“A sympathiser called the Baale to inform him of what happened to me but before he came, I was already crawling away. A community member saw me and jeered at me, saying: ‘Where are you going? Your house and property are still going for it.’
He said the disagreement between him and Chief Akinpelu occurred when he sold his own father’s parcel of land and the Baale challenged him by saying that he did not inform him. “He has no business with the land. My brother and I agreed before the land was sold and it belonged to our father,” Chief Oyetade said.
Saturday Tribune gathered that the police detectives, led by the Divisional Police Officer, Iyana Ofa, Mrs Justina Ogunleye, took the victim to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
Chief Oyetade’s wife, Rachael, also narrated her ordeal thus: “I was invited by the Baale and he asked me about Kunmi’s death. I told him that I did not know anything about it. I also swore in the presence of the elders seated, asking if anyone of them had ever seen my nakedness. It was when I was raining curses that the Baale asked me to go.
“On Thursday, December 5, my husband travelled to Ibadan and told me he was not coming back. At about 11:00p.m., I heard a knock on my door and when I opened, I saw four men who asked me to leave with my children without picking a pin, threatening that if I delayed, they would burn us with the house.
“I slept in the bush with my children, among who was a two-year-old, and at dawn, we trekked to a town near Ibadan, from where we took a bike to Iyana-Ofa. From there, I boarded a bus to Ibadan. I tried to contact my husband but could not get him. It was later I learnt that he had been attacked.”
When contacted, the police spokesperson in Oyo State, DSP Olabisi Okuwobi-Ilobanafor, confirmed the development, disclosing that two of the suspected arsonists and attackers had been arrested. She added that the Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Indabawa, had ordered that the case be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Iyaganku, Ibadan, for further investigation.
Source: Tribune

Detectives of the Oyo State Police Command are battling to unravel the mystery behind the death of two brothers one after the other and an attack on their uncle accused of killing them with a deadly anti-adultery charm, magun, laced in the bossom of his wife and that of his brother’s.
The uncle is lying critically ill in a hospital in Ibadan after irate youths attacked him following the death of the second man.
The incident happened at Jagun community near Iyana Ofa, Lagelu Local Government Area of Oyo State, a serene settlement where people whose lifestyles are closer to nature dwell. Residents are mostly farmers while others engage in one trade or the other. The youth among them are artisans.
The serenity was, however, broken towards the end of 2013 when two blood brothers, Kunmi and Adeniyi Adetokun, died, one after the other, within three days, allegedly of a local charm used to punish adulterous men, commonly referred to as magun in Yoruba.
This literally translates ‘don’t climb’ in English. But the two brothers climbed the metaphorical mountains that were too high for them. And they somersaulted down the hills, breaking their necks in the process. The occurrence, however, sparked off anger among the youth of the community, resulting in them setting ablaze the residence of the Balogun of the community, Chief Segun Oyetade, the deceased’s uncle, as he was suspected to have been responsible for the duo’s death. They also attacked him with weapons but was only saved when the youth got a hint that policemen were approaching.
The scene opened on Monday, December 2, 2013 when Kunmi reportedly died after having sex with a woman allegedly laced with magun and who was said to be his aunt-in-law. The woman was said to be his uncle’s wife.
On December 5, three days after Kunmi’s death, his younger brother, Adeniyi, was also reported to have died of unknown ailment which he battled with for a couple of weeks after allegedly sleeping with the wife of Chief Oyetade’s brother, whose name was given simply as Femi.
According to the information gathered by Saturday Tribune, Niyi was the one who fell ill first after he slumped and started vomitting blood. His brother, Kunmi, was reportedly taking care of him at a hospital at Lalupon community.
It was further learnt that Kunmi left Niyi at Lalupon and went to Jagun community where he allegedly had sex with his uncle’s wife. His own illness did not take much time before it consumed him and he died three days after it manifested. Having noticed this, Niyi reportedly opened up that he slept with Femi’s wife, which confirmed the suspicion of the villagers that he must have been hit with the deadly charm.
A member of the community described the type of magun used on Niyi as Olorere which usually takes days or weeks before killing the man who sleeps with the woman laced with such.
After Kunmi’s death, Chief Oyetade was reportedly summoned by the Baale of Jagun community, Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, who asked him about the allegation that he laced his wife with magun. The man denied and the Baale appealed to him to find the antidote so that Niyi could be healed.
The Balogun reportedly came back to the village head to demand for N4,000 which he said was the fee demanded by the herbalist who volunteered to prepare the antidote. Members of the community were said to have contributed the money but before he brought it, Niyi gave up the ghost.
Niyi’s death after his brother’s spurred the community’s anger as Chief Oyetade was also accused of sleeping with the mother of the two brothers, which prompted the question on why he should be angry that someone was having an affair with his wife or his brother’s wife, to the extent that he could aim at killing the brothers.
The anger led to the attack on him while his house was set on fire and his wife and children sent out of the community in the dead of the night.
Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, who was said to have got a hint of the youth’s plan to attack Chief Oyetade, had reportedly gone to Iyana Ofa Police Division to quickly give the information to the police but before they got back to the village, the youth had struck. As they saw the approaching policemen, they were said to have fled in different directions, leaving the injured chief to his fate.
However, Chief Oyetade, during an interview with Saturday Tribune on hospital bed where he was receiving treatment, alleged that it was the Baale who sent the youth to attack him because of a tussle between them over a piece of land.
He denied the allegation that he laced the women with magun, saying that his accusers were only trying to tarnish his image.
“What I only heard was that Niyi was sick, but I didn’t know the kind of ailment because he was living at Lalupon. Later the Baale called me and some elders, saying that my nephew, Femi, laced his wife with magun, which resulted in Niyi’s illness. I didn’t believe the allegation because Niyi had been ill for some weeks and from the story we used to hear about magun, it doesn’t take so long before being felt.
“They went further to say that I was the one who gave Femi the magun which he laced his wife with, accusing me of doing same for my wife, which led to Kunmi’s death. I exclaimed in shock, disclosing that my wife was pregnant and wondering how one would lace a pregnant woman with a charm such as magun.
“It was after this that Chief Akinpelu said he was after the wellness of Niyi, tasking me and the head of Niyi’s family, one Mr Adewale Adekambi, to go and look for the antidote. By then, Niyi was being cared for in Ibadan and it was Ibadan we went to seek the antidote. Unfortunately, Niyi died on Thursday, December 5.
I joined Niyi’s sibling, Seun and his aunt in taking the corpse away from where he died. As we wanted to take him to the cemetery, his brother said we should take him home, unknown to me that it was a trap set for me. As soon as I disembarked from the vehicle, hoodlums descended on me with sticks, pestle and cutlasses. I kept asking them of my offence and when they saw that I did not collapse, one of them struck me with an axe on the head and I fell down.
“A sympathiser called the Baale to inform him of what happened to me but before he came, I was already crawling away. A community member saw me and jeered at me, saying: ‘Where are you going? Your house and property are still going for it.’
He said the disagreement between him and Chief Akinpelu occurred when he sold his own father’s parcel of land and the Baale challenged him by saying that he did not inform him. “He has no business with the land. My brother and I agreed before the land was sold and it belonged to our father,” Chief Oyetade said.
Saturday Tribune gathered that the police detectives, led by the Divisional Police Officer, Iyana Ofa, Mrs Justina Ogunleye, took the victim to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
Chief Oyetade’s wife, Rachael, also narrated her ordeal thus: “I was invited by the Baale and he asked me about Kunmi’s death. I told him that I did not know anything about it. I also swore in the presence of the elders seated, asking if anyone of them had ever seen my nakedness. It was when I was raining curses that the Baale asked me to go.
“On Thursday, December 5, my husband travelled to Ibadan and told me he was not coming back. At about 11:00p.m., I heard a knock on my door and when I opened, I saw four men who asked me to leave with my children without picking a pin, threatening that if I delayed, they would burn us with the house.
“I slept in the bush with my children, among who was a two-year-old, and at dawn, we trekked to a town near Ibadan, from where we took a bike to Iyana-Ofa. From there, I boarded a bus to Ibadan. I tried to contact my husband but could not get him. It was later I learnt that he had been attacked.”
When contacted, the police spokesperson in Oyo State, DSP Olabisi Okuwobi-Ilobanafor, confirmed the development, disclosing that two of the suspected arsonists and attackers had been arrested. She added that the Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Indabawa, had ordered that the case be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Iyaganku, Ibadan, for further investigation.
Source: Tribune

APC CRISIS: We Have Lost Confidence - Founding Members

Two aggrieved founding members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ibrahim Shekarau and Attahiru Bafarawa have declared that they no longer have confidence in the leadership of the party.
Both chieftains are former governors of Kano and Sokoto States respectively.
The duo bared their minds on Friday, shortly after a closed-door meeting held at the residence of Attahiru Bafarawa in Sokoto.
Speaking to journalists, Shekarau opined that 90 per cent of global crises was caused by loss of confidence in leadership, wondering why no one has proof of APC membership, six months after it was registered.
According to him, the situation is contrary to the agreement plan of the original 89 members that registration would begin three months APC becomes a party.
On recent consultation across the country by some members of the merging parties which formed APC, Shekarau said, “Our consultation and discussion is centred on the way towards addressing some of the pressing issues in the party.”
Continuing, “Kano, Sokoto, Kwara, Adamawa and other states have written to the national leadership of the party concerning the injustices in the party, yet there was no response.
“We wrote again jointly and there was no response. In fact, 250 members equally wrote to the national leadership on the same issue, yet there was no response. Therefore, we are not happy that they have not taken steps to address our grievances.”
“A few months ago, we were calling the PDP evil, and now we are calling on the same set of people we called evil to come and join us.”
When asked whether they would defect or form a new APC, he initially refused to give a straight response, but later stated that there were no plans to leave the party as speculated in some quarters.
He also denied working for political opponents, saying that, “We are not bothered by any accusation. when you challenge a leadership, you will be accused of working for somebody. But, we are more than being a stooge.”
Source: Daily Post

BAYELSA STATE: Students Shut Down University?

Students of the Federal University located in President Goodluck Jonathan's hometown of Otuoke in Bayelsa State, on Thursday protested what they described as a hike in school fees, harsh learning environment and high-handedness of the institution’s authorities.
The students claimed that their school fees had been increased to N85,000 for their members in the Humanities, and N90, 000 for science students, questioning why the management was deviating from the objective of increasing access to university education as the government claims.
They stated that no other federal university, including those established at the same time as theirs, charged such fees.
They also cited other problems in the institution, including poor hostel accommodation as well as lack of electricity and potable water.
They described the management’s insistence that there will be no Students Union activities in the institution as ‘draconian and unacceptable’ in a democratic dispensation.
They also said that they were being constantly intimidated by soldiers drafted to guard the private hotel of Patience Jonathan, the First Lady.
The students also criticized the six-month compulsory break which the management asked them to embark on as an elongation of their stay in the university.
A female student who pleaded anonymity told SaharaReporters: "We want the school fees to be reduced to tally with other federal universities,” stressing that second year students of other universities are paying N35,000 while FUO students have to pay N85,000.
"We want the educational system to continue the way it is to enable us proceed to Year Three. We have been in Year One since 2012.  Despite the fact that we didn't join the ASUU strike, they refused to allow us to make progress.
 "They refuse to allow us to have the Student Union Government (SUG) so that we won't be able to speak out. We have been in Year One since 2012…since we gained admission into this university. Now they are asking us to go for another six months’ vacation".
The students, whose action paralyzed all activities at the institution, took to the streets of Otuoke chanting songs and condemning the leadership style of the management.  Carrying placards, they marched from the main campus to the administrative blocks of the university. They also barricaded the gates of the administrative blocks and called on the management to rethink its policies.
It was gathered that they had previously embarked on a similar protest when the soldiers beat up a student for refusing to fetch water for a soldier.
About four truckloads of policemen were drafted to the area to quell Thursday’s riots and restore peace.
In a statement, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Mobolaji Aluko, denied any increases in fees, noting that the schedule of fees currently being paid by ALL students was published on the university website (http://www.fuotuoke.edu.ng/) and communicated to students over 10 months ago.
“After operational experience with Pioneer (First Set of) students whose total fees (including accommodation) was N45,000, the University has separated accommodation fees from other fees, and made a distinction in fees between Science/Engineering students  and non-Science students,” he explained, adding that  this is standard practice in all universities worldwide.
“First-time-in-College (Freshman) fees include N18,000 of Acceptance Fee (N15,000), ID card (N1,000) and certificate verification (N2,000) charges which are paid only once in a student's university life-time, and are not paid by returning students,” he said.  “Consequently, after the first year, the differential fee between Pioneer and Non-Pioneer students in the same course is N4,000.”
The vice-chancellor also addressed the other concerns of the students.  The full text of his statement is below:
FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OTUOKE
OFFICE OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR
January 23, 2014
NOTICE TO STUDENTS
 Dear Students of Federal University Otuoke:
The concerns of students as aired in your "demonstration" earlier today are noted.  They are hereby addressed as follows:
1/  University Fees and Charges
A/ There has been no increase in fees as alleged.  The schedule of fees currently paid by ALL students was published on the University Website (http://www.fuotuoke.edu.ng/) and communicated to students over ten months ago.
B/ After operational experience with Pioneer (First Set of) students whose total fees (including accommodation) was N45,000, the University has separated accommodation fees from other fees, and made a distinction in fees between Science/Engineering students  and non-Science students.  This is standard practice in all universities worldwide.
C/ First-time-in-College (Freshman) fees include N18,000 of Acceptance Fee (N15,000), ID card (N1,000) and certificate verification (N2,000) charges which are paid only once in a student's university life-time, and are not paid by returning students.  Consequently, after the first year, the differential fee between Pioneer and Non-Pioneer students in the same course is N4,000. (see attached)
D/  These fees will remain as published for the foreseeable future.
2/  Water, Electricity and Cooking in Hostels
A/ The University is completely committed to providing university-subsidized accommodation to as many students as possible, particularly Fresh students.   This accommodation is a privilege, not a right.  Currently, all five but one of our hostels are rented at high rate.
B/  Provision of comfortable learning and bed spaces, and of reliable and adequate electricity and water in our lecture halls and hostel,  is our goal.  While quite challenging, the university will continue to strive to improve upon the current situation.  The University currently runs six diesel generators (of a total of 800 KVA), and two more are upcoming to bring the total to 1000 KVA (1 MW).  The prohibitive cost of diesel makes it incumbent to ration electricity supply.  We are committed to providing electricity in academic areas during week-day from 8 am to 8pm, and in hostels from 8 am - 10 am, and 4pm - 8pm seven days a week.  Until municipal (non-generator) electricity becomes available and reliable in Otuoke and the university environs, we can do no more.
C/  We forbid cooking in hostels due to insurance and sanitation concerns.  Catering services (upon payment by students) have been contracted out.  Students who insist on cooking are welcome to find alternative non-university accommodation
3/  University Calendar a.k.a "Merger"
Any information that students have about the merger of two sets (2nd and 3rd Sets) into one is at this time a rumor, a notion frowned upon seriously in Bayelsa State Government officialdom. Nevertheless, there is a national mandate to REGULARIZE university calendar ASAP, so that it runs Sept/October to June/July, in order to make room for July to September Summer period for Lecturers' research and rejuvenation, and student internships. This is according to global practice.  Plans to ensure this regularization are being worked out, and any information about any commitment to a particular new calendar is premature.
4/  Clearance, Registration, Fee Payment
Until you have matriculated, you are not a student of this University.  That requires that new students must be cleared, registered and must pay their fees at the earliest possible time before they assume university residency and participate extensively in university student activities.  Returning students are also urged to pay their fees and charges speedily, but classes will not be prevented until three months into the first semester, during which time instalmental fee payment is permitted.  Opportunities to apply for and receive scholarships should be taken advantage of.
5/  Responsibility
I wish to express my profound appreciation to all of those students who have behaved responsibly and eschewed any aggressive behavior or violence. Any thuggish behavior, donning of cult-like attire or face painting is un-FUO-student-like.
6/  Consultations
Our doors will always remain open for consultation.
Best wishes all, as I once again welcome you all to a new academic session.
Prof. Mobolaji E. Aluko
Vice-Chancellor
alukome@gmail.com
Source: Sahara Reporters

2014 BUDGET: Aso Rock Clinic Get More Funds Than Two Federal Teaching Hospitals?

President Jonathan and his colleagues in government are enjoying first class medical treatments while ordinary Nigerians make do with rundown hospitals with dilapidated facilities
The VIP unit of the presidential hospital will receive N705 million, while an entire teaching hospital will get about N300 million for new projects.
The federal government will this year pump more cash into constructing an elite wing of the presidential clinic in Abuja where only a few big and mighty will receive attention, a spending that dwarfs the total funds allocated by government for entire developmental projects of two federal university teaching hospitals.
Under the proposed 2014 budget laid to the National Assembly last December, the “Construction of a VIP Wing at the State House Clinic will cost N705 million.”
That amount surpasses the government’s budgeted cost for the building of new wards (buildings), laboratories and all other developmental projects in two university teaching hospitals.
For instance, the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital and the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, have been allocated a total of N662 million for capital expenditure this year.
The two medical facilities are only part of a long list of teaching hospitals which have their capital spending this year outdone by the VIP budget, tagged in the budget as SHMC- State House Medical Clinic.
Among 17 tertiary hospitals in the nation compared with the State House clinic, University of Ilorin’s allocation of N310 million will be the least if the National Assembly approves the budget as submitted.
Other similar hospitals receive a little above N310 million, and some up to N550 million.
The only teaching hospitals with capital budgets exceeding the spending for the Aso Rock elite facility are Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, with N727 million; and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with N1.9 billion.
The skewed allocations are only the latest revelation from Nigeria’s scandalous national budget, tainted for years by spending plans that provide more funding for services available to a few powerful public officials, from the president and his ministers to federal lawmakers, while relatively little go to those that should benefit the public.
Analysts have for years criticized the allocations and have struggled to draw government’s attention for serious corrections.
“A country like Nigeria with its negative developmental indices cannot fritter away resources that are best conserved for national development,” said Ikeazor Akaraiwe of The Rule of Law Collective, a Nigerian civic platform which first raised concerns with the presidential medical spending.
In a statement to the media on Monday, the group described the 2014 budget before the National Assembly as the worst ever proposed in the nation’s history, and laid the responsibility on the finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
“It is an affront to the sensibilities of the teeming poor in our country when a budget that smacks of profligacy and utter waste is tabled before the National Assembly to be passed into law in their name,” the group said.
“This budget and the 1,820 pages in which it was written, in all likelihood, will go down in history as one of the worst budgets ever proposed. It represents a complete detachment from reality. It is a shame that this budget proposal was tabled under the watch of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. So much more was expected of her and it is disappointing that she has let this budget proposal proceed under her hand. The ultimate responsibility, though, must lie with President Goodluck Jonathan.”
The group also raised concerns with what it reflected as the lopsided allocation on military spending versus spending on the rehabilitation of ex-militants. Read their full statement here.
On Monday, in a rare admission of that possibility, the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Bright Okogu, acknowledged there were multiple errors in the new budget, but said they were “glitches” caused by the use of the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System, GIFMIS, a new budgeting tool.
He referred to the allocation of millions of naira to non-existent projects like the huge sums allocated to the Mathematical Centre, Sheda, Investment and Securities Tribunal and other agencies for fuelling and maintenance of aircraft, boats and railway equipment.
Those agencies however own no aircraft, boats or even railway equipment.
“What happened was that GIFMIS, being a new system, had some glitches that reflected in some of the provisions. It is not totally strange,” Mr. Okogu said at the presentation of the budget details on Monday, by Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala. “Many of you have read about the Obamacare and the challenges they had in actually implementing it. It is a big system, bigger than ours, but with the same features.
The State House Clinic, pointed out by the Rule of Law Collective, is not open to the public. Currently, only staff of the State House are allowed services.
But the planned wing is expected to be used to provide exclusive services to the president and his vice, and senior government leaders visiting the presidential villa.
The N705 million allocated for the VIP wing of the hospital will not be the first, as the same construction had earlier received N300 million in 2012-totaling N1billion for just that unit.
Meanwhile, upgrades, repairs and construction in the entire hospital cost at least N506 million in 2011, N401 million in 2012, and over N300 million in 2013.
Source: Premium Times

REVEALED: The Ruthless World Of Human Traffickers Part 1

Six out of 10 people who are trafficked to the West are Nigerians. PREMIUM TIMES investigative reporter, Tobore Ovuorie, was motivated by years of research into the plight of trafficked women in the country, as well as the loss of a friend, to go undercover in a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. She emerged, bruised and beaten but thankfully alive, after witnessing orgies, big money deals in jute bags, police-supervised pickpocketing, beatings and even murder. This is her story.
We are 10 at the boot camp: Adesuwa, Isoken, Lizzy, Mairo, Adamu, Ini, Tessy, Omai, Sammy and I. We have travelled together in a 14 seater bus from Lagos, hoping to arrive in Italy soon. We are eager to get to the ‘next level’ as it is called: from local prostitution to hopefully earning big bucks abroad. But first, it turns out, we have to pass through ‘training’ in this massive secluded compound guarded by armed military men, far from any other human being, somewhere in the thick bushes outside Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos. Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.
I had not expected this. We had exercised, through a risk analysis role play, in advance: my paper PREMIUM TIMES, and our partners on the project, a colleague--Reece Adanwenon-- in the Republic of Benin, and ZAM Chronicle in Amsterdam. We had put in place contacts, emergency phone numbers, safe houses, emergency money accounts. We had made transport and extraction arrangements. Ms. Reece is waiting in Cotonou, 100 kilometers to the West in neighbouring Benin, to pick me up from an agreed meeting place. But we hadn’t foreseen that there was to be another stop first: this isolated, guarded camp in the middle of nowhere. It dawns on me that we could be in big trouble.
“Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.”
Risk analysis and preparation
It had all started in Abuja, with me deciding to expose the human traffic syndicates that caused the death, through Aids, of my friend Ifuoke and countless others. As a health journalist, I had interviewed several returnees from sex traffic who had not only been encouraged to have unprotected sex, but who had also been denied health care or even to return home when they fell ill. They were now suffering from Aids, anal gonorrhea, bowel ruptures and incontinence. In the case of some of them, who hailed from conservative religious backgrounds, doctors in their home towns had denied them any treatment because they had been ‘bad’. I was also aware that powerful politicians and government and army officials, who outwardly professed religious purity, were servicing and protecting the traffickers. I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens. My PREMIUM TIMES colleagues had done undercover work before; they had warned me of the risks, but had agreed to support me in my decision to go through with it. With my colleagues, and with the help of ZAM Chronicle, we then started in earnest.
“I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens.”
Oghogho
I had advertised my wish to get to know a ‘madam’ whilst walking the streets of Lagos, dressed as a call girl. It worked. I had met Oghogho Irhiogbe, an accomplished, well-groomed graduate in her thirties (though she claimed to be only 26), and a wealthy human trafficker of note. My lucky hunch to tell her that my name was ‘Oghogho’ too had immediately warmed her to me. She told me I looked like her kid sister and from then on treated me like a favourite.
“Don’t worry about crossing borders and getting caught,” she had told me. “Immigration, customs, police, army and even foreign embassies are part of our network. You only run into trouble with them if you fail to be obedient to us.” I already knew this to be true. Two of the trafficked sex workers I had interviewed had tried to find help at Nigerian embassies in Madrid and Moscow, only to realise that the very embassy officials from whom they had sought deportation had immediately informed their pimps. They had eventually made it back to Nigeria only after they had developed visible diseases, such as AIDS-related Kaposi sarcoma.
“Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.”
Oghogho Irhiogbe had been luckier. She owned four luxury cars, two houses in Edo State, and was busy completing the building of a third house near the Warri airport in Delta State. Others I had met through my initial ‘call girl’ exploits were clearly on their way to riches, too. Priye was set to go back to the Netherlands, where she worked before, to become a ‘madam’. Ivie and Precious were quite happy to go back to Italy. Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Forza Speciale
It is on the windy Sunday evening of October 6 that I make my first contact with the outer ring of this mafia. A big party with VIPs is on the cards; the kind of party an ordinary girl, or rather ‘product’, as we are called by traffickers, is not usually invited to. But I am currently on a fortune ride: Oghogho’s favourite. Additionally, I have been classified as ‘Special Forces’, or ‘Forza Speciale’ as my new contacts say, borrowing the Italian term. It’s a rule of thumb, I understand, that a syndicate subjects girls to classification through a check on their nude bodies and I, too – in the company of some male and female judges, headed by a trafficker called Auntie Precious – had been checked. I had received the highest classification. “This means that you don’t have to walk the streets. You can be an escort for important clients,” Auntie Precious had told me in a soft, congratulatory tone. The ones of ‘lesser’ classification were referred to as Forza Strada, the Road Force.
The party is held at a gorgeous residence along the Aguiyi Ironsi Way in Maitama, Abuja. This is designed to be a festive end to a great day, in which we went to church, hung out at the choicest places in town, shopped and got dressed in a suite at the Abuja power citadel, meeting point of the elite, the Transcorp Hilton.
“The ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is.”
It is more like an orgy. Male and female strippers entertain guests, drugs abound, alcohol is everywhere in unrestrained flow; there is romping in the open. Also, big bags of money are changing hands. Barely an hour after we arrive, Oghogho receives a big jute bag, which is delivered from another room. As we walk out and she puts the money in the boot of her car, she smiles at me. “Don’t worry; very soon, you’ll get to receive dividend.” This ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is. “When you come on board fully, you’ll know.”
A retired army colonel from the Abacha era sees to it that we are not disturbed. “He has top connections and sees to a smooth flow of the business,” Oghogho tells me.
Pickpocketing training
How ‘top’ these connections are, I find when I am taken with a group of girls to be trained in pickpocketing. We, a group of ten ‘products’, are placed at various crowded bus stops in the suburb of Ikorodu, where we must ‘practice’ under the guard of two army officers, a policeman as well as a number of male ‘trainers’. The policeman doesn’t even bother to cover his name badge: Babatunde Ajala, it reads.
The general operation is supervised by Mama Caro, popularly called Mama C, a 50-something, light-complexioned, busty woman. Her deputy is a Madam Eno. Mama C has told us that pickpocketing is a crucial skill for the Forza Speciale: we will need to be able to pick valuables from clients. She adds that the pickings are added to the girls earnings, so we will be able to pay off our debts – commonly called ‘meeting our targets’ – in a short time.
When I perform dismally, Eno rains abuses on me.  We are all to stay at the bus stop until I pick an item from somebody. It is already 11 PM. Tired, hungry and angry with me, Adesuwa, Isoken and the policeman guarding my group pick some extra pockets and hand me the items, so that I can show them to Eno.
“ We practice pickpocketing under the guard of two army officers and a policeman”
The next day, the bumpy journey to the ‘training camp’ appears endless. My fellow ‘products’ are snoozing and I battle to stay awake, wondering if we are tired or drugged. I note the bus moving off the main road somewhere around Odogunyan, into thick bushes, almost a forest. We stop at a compound guarded by armed military men. As my fellow ‘products’ wake up, it is clear that they think we are still in Lagos.
New names and indenture
The next day starts with strip tease and lap dance training after breakfast, and thereafter poise and etiquette. Five other girls have arrived in the meantime. They are all graduates, leaving for Italy fully aware of what they are to do there. “If I get caught by local police, I will just tell them I was trafficked against my will,” one of them, Gbemi, says light-heartedly. “I don’t think oyinbo (white man) will believe Mama C if she says that I am there voluntarily.”
I receive a crash course in pedicure and manicure because I am so bad at pickpocketing. “You'll be utilizing these skills at my wellness centre in Italy,” Mama C says, after scolding me for being lazy and testing her patience. “You will be working on only men whilst wearing sexy dresses. That will enable you to attract customers.”
“Mama C makes us sign a statement that we have willingly embarked on the journey”
Later, Mama C makes everyone sign a statement that they have willingly embarked on the journey and that they are to return certain sums as professional fees to her. No girl is given a copy of what she has signed and the amount varies inexplicably: while Isoken signs up for a debt of US $100,000, I will have only US $70,000 to pay. We are told that we will receive new passports with false names and even false nationalities in Cotonou. I am to become a Kenyan, Mairo South African, and so on. “I have boys in the Benin immigration office,” boasts Mama C.
Horror
A just-arrived traditional ‘doctor’ then puts us through rites that involve checking the horoscope of each girl as well as collecting some of her blood, fingernails, hair and pubic hair. He then picks out four of us as ‘problematic’ and says we will bring ‘bad luck’. Either he is really clairvoyant or he is a professional security operative who has run background checks on us, because he is right about at least three of the four. Two of us have had unfortunate earlier experiences involving deportation back to Nigeria and are possibly known to the authorities in Europe. I am number three.
What happens next is like a horror movie.
As we ‘unlucky’ four, are standing aside, Mama C talks with five well-dressed, classy, influential-looking visitors. The issue is a ‘package’ that Mama C has promised them and that she hasn’t been able to deliver. The woman points at me, but Mama C refuses and for unexplained reasons Adesuwa and Omai are selected. We all witness, screaming and trying to hide in corners, as they are grabbed and beheaded with machetes in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. The mafia that holds us is into organ traffic, too.
“We all witness Adesuwa and Omai being beheaded in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. ”
With all of us trembling and crying, I and the other three ‘unsuitable’ ones are herded into a separate room. Mama C comes later to take me to yet another room for questioning. Angry beyond measure, she whips me all night, telling me to yield information on the ‘forces’ protecting me. “You are going nowhere,” she keeps shouting. “I have invested too much in you!”
Clearing the ‘spirit’
The next morning Mama C eats her breakfast while I starve: I have last eaten the previous morning. When she finished, and whilst the ‘approved products’ leave for Cotonou, Benin, to commence their journey to Italy, Mama C takes us four ‘unsuitables’ to visit three new, different ‘doctors’: one in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, the second in rural Sango Ota village and the third in remote Abeokuta in Ogun State. She clearly believes in traditional ‘medicine’ and is desperate to find a treatment for the ‘demons’ we are said to carry.
The first two ‘doctors’ agree with the first one that I am bad news, but the third, after roughly cutting off most of my hair, declares me free from the ‘spirit’. The ‘evil spirits’ in the other three girls, meanwhile, have been ‘beaten out of them’ with dry whips. Back at the camp the first ‘doctor’ rages at Mama C for approving me, insisting that the ‘doctor’ who ‘freed me from the spirit’ is a fraud. “This girl will bring about your downfall! You will end up in jail!” I am all the more convinced that he possesses not supernatural powers, but certain information. The syndicates are well-connected and someone may have told him that I am not who I say I am. The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.
“The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.”
Meanwhile, new ‘products’ have arrived to pass through the rites that night. The whole camp is again in the grip of fear as chilling screams indicate that some of the new arrivals – two girls and a young man, I learned later – are also murdered.
“Oghogho, I wonder what actually brought you here. I never expected a girl like you to venture into this,” says one of Mama C’s errand boys, as he enters the room I had again been locked in later that night with a plate of food. He seems well disposed to me. “You found and returned my Blackberry that I lost during one of the pickpocketing training sessions,” he explains. I had not realised the escort whose phone I found had been this boy; then, he had worn a cap pressed deep into his eyes. “Other girls would just have kept my phone,” he says. “You don’t belong here. I keep wondering what level of poverty has made you endanger yourself. You don't deserve this.”
The plate of food is all I need to get my strength back. We are to travel the following morning.
Escape
As we are about to leave, I lose my phone to the army officer. Searching all of us, he has taken Isoken’s phone already and she has pointed at me to divert attention from herself, saying I had a phone too. He takes mine at gunpoint. I can only thank the heavens that it is dead. I had been upset because it didn’t charge the previous night, but the fact that it won’t switch on is my second lucky break: it has a lot of pictures and conversations I have recorded in the camp. The disadvantage of losing my phone is that I can’t contact our colleague Reece, who is to help me once I get to Cotonou. I also can't communicate with my editors back in Nigeria.
All along the road leading up to the border, police and customs officers wave and greet Madam Eno and our head of operations, Mr James. Nigerian Immigrations and Customs officers also greet us warmly at the border post itself, whilst enquiring if there is anything in it for them today.
“Welcome, Madam! How have sales been?”
Eno: “Not much.”
“But your batch was allowed entry yesterday, so why claim you haven't been making sales? “
Eno: “We are not the owner of yesterday's batch of girls. We own these ones in this bus.”
“Haaa! You want to play a smart one? Not to worry, your boss will sort all this out with us.”
The officers then wave the minibus through without any form of documentation.
The original plan was for me to go with the transport as far as Cotonou, the capital of our neighbouring country Benin. But I don’t want to stretch it any longer. The border is usually very crowded and I plan to escape as soon as we are there. It works. Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I run. Merging with the crowd, I take my top off – I have another top under it – and cover my head with a scarf. The army officer is following me, looking for me. I dive into a store and lose him.
“Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I ran.”
I travel the twenty kilometres from the border motor park to Cotonou by minibus taxi. Colleague Reece – alerted by a phone call the driver helps make to her to ensure that she will be there to pay him – will wait for me there. Upon arrival, I see a woman I recognise from her Facebook photo. “Reece?” “Tobore!” She cries and holds out her arms to catch me. "I am safe."
Six out of 10 people who are trafficked to the West are Nigerians. PREMIUM TIMES investigative reporter, Tobore Ovuorie, was motivated by years of research into the plight of trafficked women in the country, as well as the loss of a friend, to go undercover in a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. She emerged, bruised and beaten but thankfully alive, after witnessing orgies, big money deals in jute bags, police-supervised pickpocketing, beatings and even murder. This is her story.
We are 10 at the boot camp: Adesuwa, Isoken, Lizzy, Mairo, Adamu, Ini, Tessy, Omai, Sammy and I. We have travelled together in a 14 seater bus from Lagos, hoping to arrive in Italy soon. We are eager to get to the ‘next level’ as it is called: from local prostitution to hopefully earning big bucks abroad. But first, it turns out, we have to pass through ‘training’ in this massive secluded compound guarded by armed military men, far from any other human being, somewhere in the thick bushes outside Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos. Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.
I had not expected this. We had exercised, through a risk analysis role play, in advance: my paper PREMIUM TIMES, and our partners on the project, a colleague–Reece Adanwenon– in the Republic of Benin, and ZAM Chronicle in Amsterdam. We had put in place contacts, emergency phone numbers, safe houses, emergency money accounts. We had made transport and extraction arrangements. Ms. Reece is waiting in Cotonou, 100 kilometers to the West in neighbouring Benin, to pick me up from an agreed meeting place. But we hadn’t foreseen that there was to be another stop first: this isolated, guarded camp in the middle of nowhere. It dawns on me that we could be in big trouble.
“Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.”
Risk analysis and preparation
It had all started in Abuja, with me deciding to expose the human traffic syndicates that caused the death, through Aids, of my friend Ifuoke and countless others. As a health journalist, I had interviewed several returnees from sex traffic who had not only been encouraged to have unprotected sex, but who had also been denied health care or even to return home when they fell ill. They were now suffering from Aids, anal gonorrhea, bowel ruptures and incontinence. In the case of some of them, who hailed from conservative religious backgrounds, doctors in their home towns had denied them any treatment because they had been ‘bad’. I was also aware that powerful politicians and government and army officials, who outwardly professed religious purity, were servicing and protecting the traffickers.I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens. My PREMIUM TIMES colleagues had done undercover work before; they had warned me of the risks, but had agreed to support me in my decision to go through with it. With my colleagues, and with the help of ZAM Chronicle, we then started in earnest.
“I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens.”
Oghogho
I had advertised my wish to get to know a ‘madam’ whilst walking the streets of Lagos, dressed as a call girl.It worked. I had met Oghogho Irhiogbe, an accomplished, well-groomed graduate in her thirties (though she claimed to be only 26), and a wealthy human trafficker of note. My lucky hunch to tell her that my name was ‘Oghogho’ too had immediately warmed her to me. She told me I looked like her kid sister and from then on treated me like a favourite.
“Don’t worry about crossing borders and getting caught,” she had told me. “Immigration, customs, police, army and even foreign embassies are part of our network. You only run into trouble with them if you fail to be obedient to us.” I already knew this to be true. Two of the trafficked sex workers I had interviewed had tried to find help at Nigerian embassies in Madrid and Moscow, only to realise that the very embassy officials from whom they had sought deportation had immediately informed their pimps. They had eventually made it back to Nigeria only after they had developed visible diseases, such as AIDS-related Kaposi sarcoma.
“Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.”
Oghogho Irhiogbe had been luckier. She owned four luxury cars, two houses in Edo State, and was busy completing the building of a third house near the Warri airport in Delta State. Others I had met through my initial ‘call girl’ exploits were clearly on their way to riches, too. Priye was set to go back to the Netherlands, where she worked before, to become a ‘madam’. Ivie and Precious were quite happy to go back to Italy. Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Forza Speciale
It is on the windy Sunday evening of October 6 that I make my first contact with the outer ring of this mafia. A big party with VIPs is on the cards; the kind of party an ordinary girl, or rather ‘product’, as we are called by traffickers, is not usually invited to. But I am currently on a fortune ride: Oghogho’s favourite. Additionally, I have been classified as ‘Special Forces’, or ‘Forza Speciale’ as my new contacts say, borrowing the Italian term. It’s a rule of thumb, I understand, that a syndicate subjects girls to classification through a check on their nude bodies and I, too – in the company of some male and female judges, headed by a trafficker called Auntie Precious – had been checked. I had received the highest classification. “This means that you don’t have to walk the streets. You can be an escort for important clients,” Auntie Precious had told me in a soft, congratulatory tone. The ones of ‘lesser’ classification were referred to as Forza Strada, the Road Force.
The party is held at a gorgeous residence along the Aguiyi Ironsi Way in Maitama, Abuja. This is designed to be a festive end to a great day, in which we went to church, hung out at the choicest places in town, shopped and got dressed in a suite at the Abuja power citadel, meeting point of the elite, the Transcorp Hilton.
“The ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is.”
It is more like an orgy. Male and female strippers entertain guests, drugs abound, alcohol is everywhere in unrestrained flow; there is romping in the open. Also, big bags of money are changing hands. Barely an hour after we arrive, Oghogho receives a big jute bag, which is delivered from another room. As we walk out and she puts the money in the boot of her car, she smiles at me. “Don’t worry; very soon, you’ll get to receive dividend.” This ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is. “When you come on board fully, you’ll know.”
A retired army colonel from the Abacha era sees to it that we are not disturbed. “He has top connections and sees to a smooth flow of the business,” Oghogho tells me.
Pickpocketing training
How ‘top’ these connections are, I find when I am taken with a group of girls to be trained in pickpocketing. We, a group of ten ‘products’, are placed at various crowded bus stops in the suburb of Ikorodu, where we must ‘practice’ under the guard of two army officers, a policeman as well as a number of male ‘trainers’. The policeman doesn’t even bother to cover his name badge: Babatunde Ajala, it reads.
The general operation is supervised by Mama Caro, popularly called Mama C, a 50-something, light-complexioned, busty woman. Her deputy is a Madam Eno. Mama C has told us that pickpocketing is a crucial skill for the Forza Speciale: we will need to be able to pick valuables from clients. She adds that the pickings are added to the girls earnings, so we will be able to pay off our debts– commonly called ‘meeting our targets’ – in a short time.
When I perform dismally, Eno rains abuses on me.  We are all to stay at the bus stop until I pick an item from somebody. It is already 11 PM.Tired, hungry and angry with me, Adesuwa, Isoken and the policeman guarding my group pick some extra pockets and hand me the items, so that I can show them to Eno.
“ We practice pickpocketing under the guard of two army officers and a policeman”
The next day, the bumpy journey to the ‘training camp’ appears endless. My fellow ‘products’ are snoozing and I battle to stay awake, wondering if we are tired or drugged. I note the bus moving off the main road somewhere around Odogunyan, into thick bushes, almost a forest.We stop at a compound guarded by armed military men. As my fellow ‘products’ wake up, it is clear that they think we are still in Lagos.
New names and indenture
The next day starts with strip tease and lap dance training after breakfast, and thereafter poise and etiquette. Five other girls have arrived in the meantime. They are all graduates, leaving for Italy fully aware of what they are to do there. “If I get caught by local police, I will just tell them I was trafficked against my will,” one of them, Gbemi, says light-heartedly. “I don’t think oyinbo (white man) will believe Mama C if she says that I am there voluntarily.”
I receive a crash course in pedicure and manicure because I am so bad at pickpocketing. “You’ll be utilizing these skills at my wellness centre in Italy,” Mama C says, after scolding me for being lazy and testing her patience. “You will be working on only men whilst wearing sexy dresses. That will enable you to attract customers.”
“Mama C makes us sign a statement that we have willingly embarked on the journey”
Later, Mama C makes everyone sign a statement that they have willingly embarked on the journey and that they are to return certain sums as professional fees to her. No girl is given a copy of what she has signed and the amount varies inexplicably: while Isoken signs up for a debt of US $100,000, I will have only US $70,000 to pay. We are told that we will receive new passports with false names and even false nationalities in Cotonou. I am to become a Kenyan, Mairo South African, and so on. “I have boys in the Benin immigration office,” boasts Mama C.
Horror
A just-arrived traditional ‘doctor’ then puts us through rites that involve checking the horoscope of each girl as well as collecting some of her blood, fingernails, hair and pubic hair. He then picks out four of us as ‘problematic’ and says we will bring ‘bad luck’. Either he is really clairvoyant or he is a professional security operative who has run background checks on us, because he is right about at least three of the four. Two of us have had unfortunate earlier experiences involving deportation back to Nigeria and are possibly known to the authorities in Europe. I am number three.
What happens next is like a horror movie.
As we ‘unlucky’ four, are standing aside, Mama C talks with five well-dressed, classy, influential-looking visitors.The issue is a ‘package’ that Mama C has promised them and that she hasn’t been able to deliver. The woman points at me, but Mama C refuses and for unexplained reasons Adesuwa and Omai are selected. We all witness, screaming and trying to hide in corners, as they are grabbed and beheaded with machetes in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. The mafia that holds us is into organ traffic, too.
“We all witness Adesuwa and Omai being beheaded in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. ”
With all of us trembling and crying, I and the other three ‘unsuitable’ ones are herded into a separate room. Mama C comes later to take me to yet another room for questioning. Angry beyond measure, she whips me all night, telling me to yield information on the ‘forces’ protecting me. “You are going nowhere,” she keeps shouting. “I have invested too much in you!”
Clearing the ‘spirit’
The next morning Mama C eats her breakfast while I starve: I have last eaten the previous morning. When she finished, and whilst the ‘approved products’ leave for Cotonou, Benin, to commence their journey to Italy, Mama C takes us four ‘unsuitables’ to visit three new, different ‘doctors’: one in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, the second in rural Sango Ota village and the third in remote Abeokuta in Ogun State. She clearly believes in traditional ‘medicine’ and is desperate to find a treatment for the ‘demons’ we are said to carry.
The first two ‘doctors’ agree with the first one that I am bad news, but the third, after roughly cutting off most of my hair, declares me free from the ‘spirit’. The ‘evil spirits’ in the other three girls, meanwhile, have been ‘beaten out of them’ with dry whips. Back at the camp the first ‘doctor’ rages at Mama C for approving me, insisting that the ‘doctor’ who ‘freed me from the spirit’ is a fraud. “This girl will bring about your downfall! You will end up in jail!” I am all the more convinced that he possesses not supernatural powers, but certain information.The syndicates are well-connected and someone may have told him that I am not who I say I am. The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.
“The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.”
Meanwhile, new ‘products’ have arrived to pass through the rites that night. The whole camp is again in the grip of fear as chilling screams indicate that some of the new arrivals – two girls and a young man, I learned later – are also murdered.
“Oghogho, I wonder what actually brought you here. I never expected a girl like you to venture into this,” says one of Mama C’s errand boys, as he enters the room I had again been locked in later that night with a plate of food.He seems well disposed to me. “You found and returned my Blackberry that I lost during one of the pickpocketing training sessions,” he explains. I had not realised the escort whose phone I found had been this boy; then, he had worn a cap pressed deep into his eyes. “Other girls would just have kept my phone,” he says. “You don’t belong here.I keep wondering what level of poverty has made you endanger yourself. You don’t deserve this.”
The plate of food is all I need to get my strength back. We are to travel the following morning.
Escape
As we are about to leave, I lose my phone to the army officer. Searching all of us, he has taken Isoken’s phone already and she has pointed at me to divert attention from herself, saying I had a phone too. He takes mine at gunpoint.I can only thank the heavens that it is dead. I had been upset because it didn’t charge the previous night, but the fact that it won’t switch on is my second lucky break: it has a lot of pictures and conversations I have recorded in the camp. The disadvantage of losing my phone is that I can’t contact our colleague Reece, who is to help me once I get to Cotonou. I also can’t communicate with my editors back in Nigeria.
All along the road leading up to the border, police and customs officers wave and greet Madam Eno and our head of operations, Mr James. Nigerian Immigrations and Customs officers also greet us warmly at the border post itself, whilst enquiring if there is anything in it for them today.
“Welcome, Madam! How have sales been?”
Eno: “Not much.”
“But your batch was allowed entry yesterday, so why claim you haven’t been making sales? “
Eno: “We are not the owner of yesterday’s batch of girls. We own these ones in this bus.”
“Haaa!You want to play a smart one? Not to worry, your boss will sort all this out with us.”
The officers then wave the minibus through without any form of documentation.
The original plan was for me to go with the transport as far as Cotonou, the capital of our neighbouring country Benin. But I don’t want to stretch it any longer. The border is usually very crowded and I plan to escape as soon as we are there. It works. Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I run. Merging with the crowd, I take my top off – I have another top under it – and cover my head with a scarf. The army officer is following me, looking for me. I dive into a store and lose him.
“Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I ran.”
I travel the twenty kilometres from the border motor park to Cotonou by minibus taxi.Colleague Reece – alerted by a phone call the driver helps make to her to ensure that she will be there to pay him – will wait for me there. Upon arrival, I see a woman I recognise from her Facebook photo. “Reece?”“Tobore!” She cries and holds out her arms to catch me. “I am safe.”
Click here to read part 2.
Source: Premium Times

SURE-P FRAUD: Uduaghan Blackmailed Council Chairmen?

Several local government transition committee chairmen in Delta State have told SaharaReporters that Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan pressured them as well as their colleagues to retreat from their allegation that the governor had used the Subsidy Re-investment Program (SURE-P) funds meant for the councils to trade with banks.
SaharaReporters had reported exclusively that the state’s 25 transition committee chairmen had accused Mr. Uduaghan of depositing SURE-P funds with banks in order to earn huge interest payments that the governor reportedly kept for himself.
Infuriated by the report, Mr. Uduaghan mounted severe pressure on the chairmen, demanding that they give him a clean bill of health or face mass firing, according to some of the council chairmen.
Speaking earlier to our correspondent, some of the chairmen disclosed that there was unnecessary delay in the release of SURE-P funds. They also stated that the governor often failed to release the funds for use in designated projects. “He usually deposits the funds into some banks for several months to yield interest that we believe he then pockets,” said one of the chairmen.
“The Federal Government releases the funds every month along with every other allocation accruing to the local and state governments. As soon as the allocations get to the state, the governor releases them to the councils though with massive deductions. But the SURE-P funds he lodges into an unknown bank account to yield bountiful interest for several months. And when releasing the funds at last, the interest goes straight into his private pockets. This has been going on since the SURE-P came to be,” one of the council chairmen alleged. He insisted that the interest accruing on the deposits should go to local government councils, not to the state governor.
The council chairmen stated that they had not had any respite since SaharaReporters published the original report. “His Excellency Governor Uduaghan has continued to mount overbearing pressure on us to give him a clean bill of health or have the councils dissolved,” said a chairman. He added that the governor stipulated that the chairmen call a press conference to deny our reports or risk being fired.
“For fear of been sacked, the chairmen, who are already divided among themselves, immediately concluded plans to address a press conference to save the governor’s face.” Two sources said several chairmen were reluctant to do the governor’s bidding until Mr. Uduaghan mounted a harder pressure accompanied by threats.
A press conference was supposed to be held last Wednesday, but could not hold due to disagreement among the chairmen, an impeccable source stated.
Last Thursday, a few of the council chairmen, led by the chairman of Patani council area, Chris Ekiyor, who claimed to be representing the twenty-five council chairmen, exonerated Mr. Uduaghan of charges that he was trading with SURE-P funds.
Addressing a press conference in Asaba last Thursday, Mr. Ekiyor described the SURE-P implementation in Delta State as the best in the country. He alleged that many Deltans had benefited from Mr. Uduaghan’s “structured release of SURE-P funds,” adding that the funds had led to human capital development programs by the 25 LGAs where many Deltans benefited including physically challenged persons.
“It is therefore a rude shock to us by some purported media reports in the internet that some council chairmen are accusing the Governor of trading with Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Program (SURE-P) funds.”
Even though Mr. Ekiyor acknowledged that the SURE-P funds were not released monthly, he stated that the transition chairmen were happy with the mode of release, adding that it made more funds available.
He denied that Governor Uduaghan tampers with the allocation to the local governments, arguing that the governor, instead, augments LGA allocations with half a billion naira each month to enable the councils to meet up with the payment of primary school teachers’ salaries. He described the allegation of the governor’s massive deductions from the councils’ allocations as a cheap and wicked lie.
Mr. Ekiyor failed to answer reporters’ requests to give a break down of how the primary school teachers’ salaries are paid as well as the monthly allocations and the SURE-P funds received so far since inception.
Visibly nervous, Mr. Ekiyor was flanked at the press conference by thirteen out of the twenty-five council chairmen. Mr. Ekiyor could not explain why the press statement was unsigned.
One of the absent chairmen told SaharaReporters that some of his colleagues decided to resist the governor’s pressure. “Since we have already exposed the secret [of the governor’s use of SURE-P funds to receive interest rates from banks], we know we will be sacked even if we reverse ourselves.”
He pointed out that the absence of many council chairmen from Mr. Ekiyor’s press conference meant that the later was not speaking truthfully or with conviction.
A source close to the governor told SaharaReporters that Mr. Uduaghan had decided to go ahead with the dissolution of the transitional councils after pressuring a faction of them to reverse themselves on the matter of SURE-P funds.
Last Thursday, Mr. Uduaghan reacted angrily to accusations that he was filching SURE-P funds. He warned that, unless the names of the chairmen who made the allegation were revealed, he would have no option than to dissolve the councils. He also challenged the council chairmen to come forward with details of any unknown accounts where the SURE-P funds were allegedly kept. He alleged that the SURE-P funds had created a series of crises in the councils because of mismanagement.
Source: Sahara Reporters

EFCC RELEASE: How Oil Marketer Defrauded FG

An investigative officer with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Abdullahi Mohammed, has told a Lagos State High Court, sitting in Ikeja, how an oil marketer, Rowaye Jubril, and his company, Brila Energy Ltd, collected money from the Federal Government’s petroleum support fund without supplying fuel.
Testifying at the resumed sitting of the court in the case yesterday before Justice Lateefat Okunnu, Mohammed claimed that Jubril did not import the petroleum product for which he collected N963.7 million subsidy payment from the Federal Government.
The EFCC has dragged Jubril and his company; Brila Energy Ltd to court for allegedly obtaining money for the purported importation of 13,500 metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).
While being led in evidence by counsel to the EFCC, Mr. Seidu Atteh, the witness told the court that he was part of the special team which investigated the fraud in the Petroleum Support Fund (PSF) scheme.
According to Mohammed, the investigations carried out by his team discovered that Jubril did not import the products as he had claimed to the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).
He said the defendant actually obtained the products from other vessels within Nigeria, which did not permit him to collect any subsidy from the government.
“The defendant claimed that there was a ship-to-ship transfer of the product between the mother vessel, MT Overseas Lima and the first daughter vessel, MT Delphina.
“According to him, the said transfer took place between January 26 and 27, 2011 at off-shore Cotonou in Benin Republic.
“However, our investigations showed that MT Overseas Lima was not in West African coast during that period hence, it was impossible for the transfer to have taken place,” Abdullahi told the court.
He said with the discovery, the EFCC wrote to Daddo Maritime, owners of the second daughter vessel, MT Danni 1, which brought the 13,000 metric tonnes of PMS to Obat Jetty in Lagos.
He said the company’s documents showed that the defendant used MT Danni to obtain the products from various ships.
While also being cross-examined by Jubril’s counsel, Mr. Kola Kolade, the EFCC witness insisted that the subsidy payment was fraudulently obtained. Further trial continues today.
Source: The Sun