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Idayat Gbadamosi, an associate professor at the University of Ibadan, has written a yet-to-be-published paper on possible herbal ways of preventing the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). 

Gbadamosi, a well-published expert in ethnobotany and medicinal plants, says her publication is “targeted towards boosting the immune system to help fight the coronavirus,” clearly stating that it is “not by any means a cure for COVID-19 infection”.

The reader, who has been published in the New York Science Journal and the European Journal of Medicinal Plants, argues that “while countries such as the USA and Europe are battling with insufficient testing equipment and space, Nigerians should turn to nature and explore the benefits of medicinal plants as immune boosters and anti-infectives with a view to mitigating the spread of COVID-19 infection”.

Based on her expertise, Gbadamosi says “the prevention of infectious diseases relies on the use of botanical detoxifiers, immune-boosting remedies, natural antioxidants, plant haematinics, and spices”.

“Based on the fact that COVID-19 is a viral infection, the use of antiviral medicinal plants might be useful in its prevention and management.”

Working with the symptoms of COVID-19 infection, which includes fever, cough, body pain, flu, cold and shortness of breath, Gbadamosi proposed “plants with antimalarial effect, cough remedy, herbal analgesic, and medicinal plants” that could be useful in the prevention of the COVID-19 infection.

Recommendations include:

Botanical detoxifiers: Two botanicals that are valuable detoxifiers are Neem (Azadirachta indica) and Turmeric (Curcuma domestica). Neem is a plant best known for its ability to cleanse the skin, the liver and controls blood sugar. It is readily available in Nigeria and it has a vast array of healing properties. It gently purifies the blood and promotes healthy blood circulation.

 

Turmeric is the king of all spices with powerful antioxidant properties. It has an array of pharmacological effects in the treatment of arthritis, rheumatism, cancer, obesity, infections, etc. It contains curcuminoids and it is a free-radicals fighter. Daily consumption of turmeric could prevent many degenerative diseases. Turmeric could be made bioavailable if prepared as a powder in combination with Aframomum melegueta (Guinea pepper). 

Herbal immune boosters: Guava (Psidium guajava) leaf, mango (Mangifera indica) stem bark and leaf, lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) leaf, ginger (Zingiber officinale) rhizome, garlic (Allium sativum) bulb and cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) stem bark are immune-boosting herbs that can be prepared in powdered form or as a decoction for oral administration. Generally, spices other than pepper are rich in antioxidants, antimicrobials; they also have anticancer properties.

Research has confirmed that eating a small amount of ginger (Zingiber officinale) daily for 11 days or more can reduce muscle pain and inflammation; ginger also aids digestion. Generally spicing food up a little adds more than just flavour. Other useful spices are onions (Allium species), black pepper (Piper guineense), guinea pepper, clove (Syzygium aromaticum) and green onions (Allium ascalonicum).

As an example, an immune-boosting recipe is as follows: Prepare a decoction of powdered turmeric (125 g), ginger (20 g), garlic (2 g), guinea pepper (a pinch), clove (a pinch), black pepper (a pinch) and coconut water (5 cups) by boiling for 20 minutes. Allow the extract to cool and filter using a fine sieve. Then add lemon (4 teaspoons) and honey (teaspoons) to the extract. Drink ½ teacup of the extract before breakfast or in between meals once daily. One preparation can last for a week if refrigerated.

Natural antioxidants: Fruits and vegetables have antioxidant properties. In addition to vitamins A and C, they contain a polyphenol (quercetin) that have strong H+ donating activity. Phenolic acids generally act as antioxidants by trapping free radicals and some plant-derived compounds are better antioxidants than BHA (Butylated Hydroxyl Anisole).

Consequently, natural antioxidants may be useful in the treatment and prevention of chronic infections and diseases. Some Nigerian vegetables are bitter leaf (Vernonia amygdalina), jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius), spinach (Senecio biafrae), African lettuce (Launnaea taraxacifolia), and pumpkin plant (Telfaria occidentalis).  The message is let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.

 

Plant haematinics: Sorghum bicolor leaf (red guinea corn) and Theobroma cacao stem bark (Cacao tree) are used in combination as haematinics for the treatment of anaemia, menstrual disorder and other blood-related infections and diseases. The tonic is prepared in the form of decoction, in which the two plant materials are washed thoroughly and boiled in clean water for 20 minutes. The extract can be taken orally after food.

Antiviral botanicals: The indigenous people of Nigeria are knowledgeable in the management of viral infections. Cassia fistula (purging cassia), Phyllanthus amarus (stonebreaker), Lagenaria breviflorus (wild colocynth), Citrullus colocynthis (bitter apple) and Syzygium aromatic (clove) are used for the management and treatment of viral diseases.

Although there is a scarcity of information on scientific validation of antiviral activity of medicinal plants, information on the antiviral activity of some of the above named is available in literature. The plants are prepared as powder, decoction and infusion for therapeutic purposes.

Antimalaria and analgesic herbs: Chincona officinalis (red cinchona) stem bark, Nauclea latifolia (African peach) root, Alstonia boonei (stoolwood) root, and Morinda lucida (brimstone tree) root and leaf are used as antimalaria remedy. Chincona officinalis and other Chincona species contain quinine (hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine) and other alkaloids that are effective for the treatment of malaria fever.

The remedy is usually prepared as decoction or tincture for oral administration. Microdesmis puberula and Calliandra portoricensis (powderpuff) are used as analgesic in malaria, arthritis and rheumatism.

Herbal cough remedy: Garcinia kola (bitter kola) and Bryophyllum pinnatum (miracle leaf) are used traditionally for the treatment of cough. G. kola seeds are soaked in lemon juice in a bottle. One teaspoonful of the remedy is taken three times daily after food.

The leaves of B. pinnatum are put in hot water to make tender and squeezed. Add honey to the leaf juice and drink 100ml of the remedy two times daily after food.

Herbs for respiratory tract infections: Spondias mombin (yellow mombin), Garcinia kola, Calotropis procera (apple of Sodom), Nymphaea lotus (water lily) and Abrus precatorius (water lily) are used for the management and treatment of respiratory tract infections.

The remedies are prepared as leaf juice, infusion, decoction and traditional soup for therapeutic purposes. As an example, an infusion of bitter kola and garlic in clean water is used for the management of respiratory tract infections.

You can read the entire paper here.

 

Dr. Idayat T. Gbadamosi

Ph.D Botany, Reader

Member, UI COVID-19 Applied Studies

Ethnobotany & Economic Botany Unit

Department of Botany

University of Ibadan

Nigeria

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There is a natural mystic blowing through the air

If you listen carefully now, you’ll hear

This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last

Many more will have to suffer; many more will have to die

Don’t ask me why 

Things are not the way they used to be…

One and all, we have to face reality now…

- Bob Marley

Mystic, mystery and even a mystique the Coronavirus, otherwise called COVID – 19 is, no doubt and it is blowing through the air like the pestilence that it is. If it blossoms in its full plumule – God forbid – it may aspire to become the 11th of the already ten existing worst pandemics in world history. The Antonine plague of 165 AD which killed 5 million people was the first. Like the Coronavirus, it also sneaked into nations from abroad; first to Rome through returnee Roman soldiers coming back from Mesopotamia. It was the first experience for the world. Antonine not only wiped out the Roman army but spread to Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy. From Antonine, down to the most recent pandemic before the Coronavirus called HIV/AIDS, which has till date wiped out 36 million people from the face of the earth, like Bob Marley prophetically sang above, one and all, we have to face this reality. And further realities which the virus is provoking about who and what we are. The first and the most potent of the realities came from the church and mosque in Nigeria. The second is the social reality we face as Nigerians; the third, lessons that Providence is teaching us as we are all sequestered at home.

We accept the apologies of highly revered Bishop David Oyedepo on his unconscionable decision to gather his flock last Sunday, in spite of government’s ordered social distancing. However, by the time the apologies came, the eyes of the world were already opened to the calamity of Nigerian religious leaders. Nigerians had hitherto been blinded for over a century. Even with the reality of the destruction of COVID-19, church leaders especially only saw a viral attack “by the devil” on their milk cow. Mosques too initially spurned the order. Congregation at places of worship must continue to be gathered so as to reify the age-long belief that the mosque and churches are the only places where God hears His people. The wells of tithes and offering were drying up in their very before. Religious leaders’ immediate reaction was dissonance to this order. While some actually spurned the order like Oyedepo, some asked for skeletal attendance of churches while many ordered flocks to meet in cells of 50 each. Their immediate haunch was that if people were successfully turned back from places of worship for some consecutive weeks, it could be the point of their liberation from the Plato Café of a century-plus hibernation in a café of darkness. Returns to headquarters must not dry up, pastors panicked in frenzied frustration. The ultimate goal of this “episcopal wisdom” didn’t take long before the congregants saw it clearly: Worship centers merely wanted to keep alive century-old manipulation of people’s minds for pecuniary needs.

COVID-19 might have thus opened a new vista in religious worshipping orthodoxy in Nigeria. Eyes of worshippers may have opened to the selfishness of Nigerian religious leaders who see them more as wares to pawn than sheep to shepherd. For more than a century now, Nigerian religious faithful had been loyal to worship centers which they were told were the only sure routes to meeting God. Today is these religious faithful’s trying time, shut at home by a raging pestilence, a work-and-chop economy that is at best panting for survival and a government too lost in its own conceit to devise a way out. It should ordinarily be the time to requite their abiding followership, a time to throw the doors of those big tabernacles and big mosques as isolation centers. In the same vein, these religious centers should pawn people’s decades of investments in tithes/offerings to offer palliatives to congregants. These are worshippers whose forebears and they themselves had invested their ten per cent earnings in those centers for over a century now. It should be time now to pay back those selfsame people by rescuing them from the jaws of Coronavirus death.   

But for flashes of pro-activeness, COVID-19 also unraveled the Nigerian government as effortlessly as the woodpecker pierces logs of woods for insects. While President Muhammadu Buhari, as usual, hibernates in his queer and taciturn cubicle, pummeling frustrated Nigerians with his artillery of silence, governors and other officials simulate positive actions by regurgitating orders already made by their colleague states. Sensational governance became the order of the day. In clear terms, COVID-19 caught many of the state governments napping. It also revealed the peremptory governance they had been running over the years. Common isolation centres were non-existent. A Nigeria that had been prone to epidemics over the years could only boast of isolation points you could count on your finger-tips. This trying time also raised the bar for some governors. Lagos’ Babajide Sanwo-Olu, hitherto profiled as laid-back and lackluster, took the shine as the people’s friend in time of distress. His novel approach to the epidemic is commendable as he was everywhere. Oyo gladly stepped into Sanwo-Olu’s erstwhile shoes as people lamented governmental absence at a time this critical. What all these reveal is the unpreparedness for office of some of Nigeria’s leaders, aside the sensationalism and glamour of political office that tickle them.

COVID-19, in some cruel manner, has also become a trope, a clarion call on, especially Nigerian political elite, to make Nigeria livable for all. Or else, we will be victims of this gulag. Trapped inside the dross they constructed as a country over the decades, we are all forced to live our choices. Hospitals have transmuted from consulting centers into mortuaries, medical equipment are as scarce as the excrement of the masquerade and medical thoroughness escaped our windows long ago. Those leaders can’t breakfast in Madrid, lunch in New York and dine in Munich today, no thanks to the global lockdown. How could they have imagined that a day would come that they cannot, at a jump into their private jets, access their world-class hospitals? An alleged friend of the Bauchi State governor who himself allegedly tested positive to the virus was said to have stormed out of the isolation center, saying “I can’t stay here!” We should ask if he ever advised his friend the governor to equip those hospitals and build more? Now, we are all lying on our beds as we laid it; both leaders and the led.

Unfortunately for Nigerian leaders, modernity has put them under very serious scrutiny. At the press of buttons of phones, Nigerians see unequal comparisons of leadership elsewhere. At this critical period, leaders of nations are offering verbal and physical succor. In Nigeria, we are afflicted with proxy leadership which is being glossed over by hired demagogues as subsisting for this trying time. Unfortunately for them and for us all, providence is blowing a strong wind to reveal their rumps. The proxy leadership erected by Buhari himself, in the person of his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, blew up in his face at the thick of the COVID-19 plague. Highly suspected to suffer challenges which have reduced his capacity to interface with the people to nil, Buhari literally relinquished governance to this unelected aide of his. In spite of this, Nigeria is still enveloped by a miasma of hopelessness while some favoured minions smile home with Nigeria’s patrimony. By afflicting Kyari with the virus that infects ordinary mortals, Providence told him in unmistakable terms that he is not different from the man on the street. He is capable of affliction, sickness and diseases like all of us. Now, even Aso Rock clinic, with billions voted but quaffed by rapacious political leaders, had no arms to embrace the Almighty Kyari. His is now sequestered in a God-knows-where. The gloat-like responses of Nigerians to this fate of Kyari’s, in the wake of his affliction by COVID-19, should therefore be expected. It is a natural reaction of a pauperized people in the hands of a rudderless and inept government.   

The world should wake up from this COVID-19 to realize that togetherness is the only way out and that, rather than bickering and mutual muzzling, there is need for global collaboration. Past recriminations among powerful leaders of the world, even as pestilences raged, only yielded multiplications of graveyards. Between 541-542, the Plague of Justinian killed 25 million people and half the population of Europe. This outbreak of the bubonic plague which afflicted the Byzantine empire and Mediterranean port cities, like it is happening in Italy today, devastated the city of Constantinople and killed an estimated 5,000 people per day. So also was a pandemic that was mischievously labelled the Black Death which occurred between 1346-1353. It ravaged Europe, Africa and Asia and was reputed to have killed between 75 to 200 million people. Like COVID-19, it also jumped continents through fleas that lived on rats.

The period 1852-1860 did not fare better. The cholera pandemic, said to be the deadliest of cholera pandemics, ravaged a 19th century world. From India where it originated, it flew to Africa, North America, Asia and Europe, killing over a million people. Equally of no lesser devastation to the world was the flu pandemic of 1889-1890, also known as the Asiatic/Russian flu which also claimed a million lives, as well as the Sixth cholera pandemic of 1910-1911 which killed over 800,000 people, as well as the 1918 flu pandemic said to have killed between 20-50 million people. In the Asian flu of 1956-1958, the world lost two million people. Having infected the people of the Chinese province of Guizhou, it flew to Singapore, Hong Kong and to the United States. The ninth pandemic, which was just a little older than the HIV/AIDS, was the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic, killed one million people and, from its first strain on July 13, 1968 in Hong Kong, within 17 days, landed in Singapore and Vietnam. Within a space of three months, The Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the United States had offered the flu a honourary citizenship.

I went into this long history of global pandemic calamities to situate the fact that rather than the daily flexing of muscles by global leaders, global citizenship requires global comradeship to combat our common vulnerability. Nigerian leaders are good examples of how not to lead. We do not see in them those qualities of leadership that made First Republic leaders earn the immortality they have in our hearts today. No selflessness, thoroughness, foresight or vision but kick-and-follow, empty leadership. Going by realities, especially as prophetically projected by Marley, that “Many more will have to suffer; many more will have to die,” there is the need for world leaders to jointly and periodically meet to proactively invest in epidemiology. More attention should also be paid to the process of emergence of leaderships, especially in Third World countries. Leadership is needed at a time like this to rise up to global challenges. Just use the Lagos State example to extrapolate a Nigerian global template and you would see why the flight of leadership is more corrosive than the spread of the Coronavirus. Nigeria is hemmed in. God forbid an implosion in the COVID-19 pandemic. Where is the leader and the leadership that can rescue Nigeria from the hands of this global scourge?

 

Imam, Dabiri and the Twitter gangs     

There are currently hot and subsisting engagements on Twitter, provoked by a man simply known as Nigeria Imam of Peace, @ImamOfpeace a few days ago. They are causing a seismic upheaval on this social media outlet. Imam has consistently tackled the Muhammadu Buhari government to its hilt, including calling for its resignation. His #BuhariResign forced Buhari out in flowing robe simulating action. In one of such, he tweeted, “Nigerians, your president is incompetent and extremely clueless; you deserve better.”

Each of those tweets has provoked uproar among his followers, as against the legion of Buhari’s recruits littering this social media platform who attempted to tackle him. When Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairperson, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, attempted to weigh in by congratulating what she termed “Great investigative journalism” in a Buhari hireling’s previous tweet which sought to discredit Imam as a “conman,” one lady, @estherolabisi01 gave Dabiri-Erewa a smudge on her face by tweeting, “This isn’t the newscaster I always saw as my role model. Please come and take the handshake you gave me in QCY 2002.”  The ex-newscaster, @abikedabiri, who has become an unapologetic lapdog of the Buhari government on Twitter, also replied her, saying “This isn’t the proud girl I thought you would grow up to be. No morals. No values. But all will be well.”

On Twitter, it is a contest between Buhari’s paid recruits and swelling ranks of Nigerians who cannot stand how the Daura-born General has become a mere Egyptian mummy in Aso Rock, especially with his silence at critical junctures. He exhibits scant leadership feelings and contributes immensely to the literature of atrophy of good governance in Nigeria.

I’ve had hard conversations this week. “Look me in the eye,” I said to my neighbor Karen, who was spiraling to a dark place in her mind. “I make this personal promise to you — I will not let your children die from this disease.” I swallowed back a lump in my throat. Just the image of one of our kids attached to a tube was jarring. Two weeks ago our kids were having a pizza party and watching cartoons together, running back and forth between our apartments. This was before #socialdistancing was trending. Statistically, I still feel good about my promise to Karen because children do not seem to be dying from Covid-19. There are others to whom I cannot make similar promises.

A few days later, I got a text from another friend. She has asthma. “I’m just saying this because I need to say it to someone,” she wrote. She asked that if she gets sick and has a poor prognosis, to play recordings of the voice of Josie, her daughter. “I think it would bring me back,” she said. Josie is my 4-year-old’s best friend.

Today, at the hospital where I work, one of the largest in New York City, Covid-19 cases continue to climb, and there’s movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new “fever clinics” and I.C.U.s. It’s becoming an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario.

The sky is falling. I’m not afraid to say it. A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over with happiness if I’m proven wrong.

Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before. I’m a board-certified surgeon and critical care specialist who spent much of my training attending to traumas in the emergency room and doing the rounds at Harvard hospitals’ intensive care units. I’m now in my last four months of training as a pediatric surgeon in New York City. Part of my job entails waking in the middle of the night to rush to the children’s hospital to put babies on a form of life support called ECMO, a service required when a child’s lungs are failing even with maximum ventilator support. Scenarios that mimic end-stage Covid-19 are part of my job. Panic is not in my vocabulary; the emotion has been drilled out of me in nine years of training. This is different.

 

We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations. The cracks in our medical and financial systems are being splayed open like a gashing wound. No matter how this plays out, life will forever look a little different for all of us.

 

On the front lines, patients are lining up outside of our emergency rooms and clinics looking to us for answers — but we have few. Only on Friday did coronavirus testing become more readily available in New York, and the tests are still extremely limited. Right next to my office in the hospital, a lab is being repurposed with hopes of a capability to run 1,000 tests a day. But today, and likely tomorrow, even M.D.s do not have straightforward access to testing across the country. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria for testing are changing almost daily. Our health care system is mired in situational uncertainty. The leadership of our hospital is working tirelessly — but doctors on the ground are pessimistic about our surge capacity.

Making my rounds at the children’s hospital earlier this week, I saw that the boxes of gloves and other personal protective equipment were dwindling. This is a crisis for our vulnerable patients and health care workers alike. Protective equipment is only one of the places where supplies are falling short. At our large, 4,000-bed New York City hospital, we have 500 ventilators and 250 on backup reserve. If we are on track to match the scale of Covid-19 infections in Italy, then we are likely to run out of ventilators in New York. The anti-viral “treatments” we have for Covid-19 are experimental and many of them are hard to even get approved. Let me repeat. The sky is falling.

I say this not to panic anyone but to mobilize you. We need more equipment and we need it now. Specifically gloves, masks, eye protection and more ventilators. We need our technology friends to be making and testing prototypes to rig the ventilators that we do have to support more than one patient at a time. We need our labs channeling all of their efforts into combating this bug — that means vaccine research and antiviral treatment research, quickly.

We need hospitals to figure out how to nimbly and flexibly modify our existing practices to adapt to this virus and do it fast. Doctors across the globe are sharing information, protocols and strategies through social media, because our common publishing channels are too slow. Physician and surgeon mothers are coming together on Facebook groups to publish advice to parents and the public, to amplify our outrage, and to underscore the fear we feel for our most vulnerable patient populations, as well as ourselves and our families.

Please flatten the curve and stay at home, but please do not go into couch mode. Like everyone, I have moments where imagining the worst possible Covid-19 scenario steals my breath. But cowering in the dark places of our minds doesn’t help. Rather than private panic, we need public-spirited action. Those of us walking into the rooms of Covid-19-positive patients every day need you and your minds, your networks, your creative solutions, and your voices to be fighting for us. We might be the exhausted masked face trying to resuscitate you when you show up on the doorstep of our hospital. And when you do, I promise not to panic. I’ll use every ounce of my expertise to keep you alive. Please, do the same for us.

Cornelia Griggs is a mother, writer and pediatric surgery fellow in New York.

NYTime

 

THE VIRULENT TRIO, THREATENING OUR LIVES

It has been long proven that the quickest way to have your pictures on the front page of tabloids, as a commoner and without paying a dime is by commiting a very serious crime.  

The only exception to this is when you do something extraordinary, especially when you save lives in a dramatic fashion.

For the second time within the space of six years, pictures of Environmental Health Officers, EHO, graced the front pages of Newspapers in Nigeria. Not as criminals however, but as saviours of the Nation's health.

Unfortunately, both times were periods when we had outbreak of pandemic diseases. This is an indictment on the Nigeria Health sector.

First it was Ebola virus in 2014, now it is coronavirus in January 2020. In between the two we have had Lassa running the streets.

Environmental health is preventive health but it has been neglected for curative health which is celebrated by both the government and the governed.

In 2014 during the Ebola virus outbreak, some EHOs were brought to the fore to help as ad-hoc at the ports of entry.

These young guys and ladies risked their lives, even without proper health insurance to ensure that the likes of Patrick Sawyer does not come into the shores of Nigeria. They poured their heart into the work with the hope that they would at least be absorbed into the system at the end of the day. Till today, some of them were not even paid their stipends and like the proverbial handwash water, they were discarded after use by the various agencies.

Many of them weren't compensated in any way.

Here we are again today, with the outbreak of another deadly virulent disease and you know who the country wants to deploy to the ports again, EHOs?

In between Ebola and Corona, Lassa has become endemic here in Nigeria, rearing up it's ugly head every dry season to claim lives that hitherto would have been highly profitable to the Nation's productivity. This year alone, more than 30 deaths have been recorded, some of who are clinicians who work hard to save other people's lives.

All these just because we are a Nation that does not care to do the right thing at the right time.

When we had the major outbreak in 2015, Environmental Health Officers in Lagos and Ogun states expended their hard earned salaries to carry out massive deartisation exercises with huge successes recorded.

Rats running in several tens of thousands were eliminated from our various markets. Despite the reports from the media, the Various State governments didn't find it appropriate to engage services of more EHOs. They weren't concerned.

I could recall, how  one Medical officer ignorantly asked if killing of rats was the issue. I laughed and wondered what the issue would have been. Then I remembered that killing of rats will not bring money to their pockets just as drugs would do.

Hospitalisation and procurement of several facilities would yield more perquisites. And then it dawned on me! Some particular set of people feed on outbreak of diseases. They make inordinate financial gains from huge and pandemic diseases such as this. And that is why they are not supporting prevention of diseases.

What a shame! If indeed we are after the saving of lives, it's high time we refocus our health system to give room for prevention.

The nation needs to prioritize disease prevention above and over disease control.

Thank God that even as highly virulent and contagious Lassa, Ebola and Coronavirus are, simple sanitation is enough to put a stop to them.

Sanitation is cheap when compared to treatment of diseases. Sanitation saves lives and prevents loss of productive hours. If only we can be proactive. These diseases will remain huge threats to us if we continue the same way. We can't continue to act the same way and expect changes.

What should be done?

In situations like these, once again I'll advise the government at all levels to employ Environmental Health Officers especially at the Port Health Authority to man our border posts not only during emergencies but at all times as required by the International Health Regulations.

State and Local Governments should as a matter of urgency also employ EHOs to continue to be the watch over the environment.

These diseases can be checked even before their outbreak. Our food, water, premises, air and others need continuous inspections to curb incessant pollution that can impair our health and living.

As for the practitioners, we must Iive to our calling and be proactive, doing our jobs as if our lives depend on it. Our lives actually depend on it since we do not have another planet that we live in.

Do you work with a clear conscience and in the fear of God? Citizens should note that whatever they do to the environment, will surely come back to them. Keep your environment clean, practice hand hygiene always and stay safe.

As we are in the dry season, ensure you don't have junks that can habour rats in your house. Fumigate your home as frequently as possible and please engage the services of professionals.

A word, they say, is enough for the Wise. A o ni s'oriibu o. May we never be unfortunate.

Femi Abolade | LEHO | WhatsApp +234807 427 5257

Last modified on Wednesday, 18 March 2020 02:35

There is an alternative to trying to prove your partner wrong.

As a psychologist who works with clients, issues between romantic couples often come to life in session.

Recently, a client shared how her husband is unappreciative and critical of her, which causes her to become defensive and to prove him wrong through logic and data points.

Specifically, she'll recite the multiple ways she should be appreciated and provide examples of how he is regularly critical.

Unfortunately, her attempts to prove him wrong always fail, as her defensiveness causes him, in turn, to fight even harder to prove her wrong.

This cycle repeats across many couples. The problem is that the cycle is fruitless, with each member of the couple becoming their own attorney and generating arguments as if they are dueling attorneys in a courtroom.

What happens psychologically when a couple argues ineffectively?

Each member of the couple focuses on their own ego and gets stuck in a fight-or-flight, limbic mindset in which there is theoretically one winner and one loser.

Rather than see the partner as an ally, these types of arguments and the quest to prove the other wrong forces each to see the other as an opponent.

When this win-lose dynamic gets reinforced, the effect is simple: Rather than anyone winning or feeling more understood, each member of the couple feels further isolated and frustrated.

A new book by psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brach, provides a helpful tool in understanding why a proving-wrong, bent-on-winning approach doesn't work, and provides a simple model of how to make a shift to a more kind and compassionate mindset.

Brach, in Radical Compassion (2019), talks about the importance of recognizing and allowing the feelings that come up when you're emotionally triggered by negative emotions, and pausing before reacting.

Reacting too quickly and too emotionally, I find in my clinical work, is the primary problem that continues and strengthens conflicts.

Brach explains how finding compassion and kindness for yourself in those heated moments - allowing the disappointment, noticing how badly it feels - can set the stage to actually consider the other person's feelings, too.

The approach that helps couples navigate through hurt is one of understanding and investigating, not labeling and dismissing.

Think about it this way: No one wins when everyone gets too focused on how right they are and wrong the other is.

What must happen for couples to develop a stronger, more harmonious relationship is for each to start showing more care toward their own and their partner's feelings, as irrational or unfair as their partner's behavior may appear at first. (This model, it should be noted, excludes cases of abuse or overt maltreatment).

Ultimately, it's the working through an emotional issue together that yields the sense of support that allows a couple to flourish, both as individuals and as a couple.

Psychology Today

Everyone experiences stress. Stress can be physiological (due to infection, injury, disease), or psychological (due to anxiety, conflict, threats to safety or well-being).

Psychological stress is something that we contend with every day. It has negative connotations, but we also experience stress in response to positive life events, such as getting married or starting a family, in addition to emotionally challenging events, such as the loss of a loved one, divorce or financial problems.

Being newly diagnosed or living with a chronic illness, such as kidney disease, can also be a significant source of stress.

When channeled properly, stress can serve as a positive motivator for handling life’s challenges.

However, too much or constant stress can take its toll on your health. Physical responses to stress include faster breathing and heart rate, a spike in blood pressure, dilated pupils, tense muscles and increased levels of fats and sugars in the bloodstream.

This helps the body deal with immediate dangers and crises, but over time can contribute to health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, and place you at increased risk for kidney disease.

If you already have heart or kidney disease, then the body’s reactions to stress can become more dangerous.

While it is very difficult to completely get rid of stress, here are 10 ways to reduce stress, protect your kidneys and maintain your overall health:

1. Eat healthier foods. When you’re stressed, it may be easy to just grab for the potato chips, but junk foods are typically highly processed and high in sodium and phosphorus additives which can have negative effects on the kidneys. Consider following the DASH diet which focuses on eating fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins and low-fat dairy products.

2. Limit salt and caffeine. High caffeine intake can lead to jitters and doesn’t always mix well with the physical signs of stress. Set aside the salt shaker and read nutrition labels to determine the amount of sodium in the foods and drinks you consume. Limiting salt and caffeine intake is especially important if you have high blood pressure, which is the second leading cause of kidney disease and also increases your risk for heart attack and stroke.

3. Set aside time to relax. Relaxation means something different to everyone. Carve out “me” time in your calendar to do something you find relaxing. This can include things you can do easily at home on a regular basis, such as yoga and meditation, or something that may be more of a special treat, such as taking a vacation or getting a massage.

4. Exercise regularly. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins – chemicals that have been shown to boost mood and reduce feelings of pain. Regular exercise can also help lower high blood pressure and even small amounts of physical activity have been proven to lower stress levels. Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator, lift free weights while watching TV, and park your car further from the store or get off the bus a stop early to increase your steps.

5. Reduce the amount of sugar and fat in your diet. The average American consumes almost 152 pounds of sugar each year, the equivalent of almost 3 pounds (or 6 cups!) of sugar each week. Fat is an important and necessary part of your diet, but should be limited because at 9 calories per gram, it provides nearly double the amount of calories per gram of protein or carbohydrates. This makes it a frequent weight gain culprit. If you have or are at risk for diabetes, heart or blood vessel diseases, it’s particularly important to monitor your intake.

6. Maintain a positive attitude and outlook. How you think impacts how you feel, so maintaining a positive outlook and reducing stress can play an important role in staying healthy.

7. Get plenty of sleep. A good night's sleep goes a long way. Being well rested is more important than many people realize. Did you know that studies have shown that not getting enough sleep may lead to an increased appetite and in turn, weight gain?

8. Don’t keep your feelings inside. Talk to a friend, loved one, spiritual leader, or healthcare professional. Write about how you’re feeling in a journal. When you put your problems on paper, it’s easier to think about possible solutions. Making a list can help you evaluate and prioritize what issues need to be addressed, in order to calmly tackle the causes of your stress.

9. Set goals and expectations. Try using the SMART method so that your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Trackable.

10. Listen to music. Whether slow and soothing, or beats to get you moving, listening to music (and even dancing and singing along!) can put you in less stressed mood.

Culled from National Kidney Foundation, Inc., 30 East 33rd Street, New York, NY 10016, 1-800-622-9010.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has advised Nigerians to protect themselves against the new Chinese coronavirus disease.

First identified by Chinese researchers with the pathogen behind a mysterious illness that had sickened 59 people in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in Central China, coronavirus is a group of viruses common among animals but now confirmed that it could also infect humans.

The NCDC Director-General, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, gave the advice during a public health advisory on Wednesday, saying the sypmptoms of the new coronavirus 2019nCoV appeared to cause mild to severe respiratory symptoms like cough and breathing difficulties.

He noted that “from current evidence, it appears that death is a rare outcome, mostly in patients with underlying illness.” Ihekweazu explained in the advisory that there was no specific treatment for disease caused by the novel coronavirus yet, but many of the symptoms could be treated.

He stated that “treatment is based on the patient’s clinical condition. In addition, supportive care for infected persons can be highly effective.”

The NCDC boss, who noted that the centre was currently coordinating a multisectoral technical group in assessing and managing the risk of importing the virus to Nigeria, said “NCDC is in close communication with World Health Organisation (WHO) which is closely monitoring the situation globally. “

He added that while the Port Health Services unit of Federal Ministry of Health had been placed on alert and had heightened screening measures at points of entry, Nigerians could maintain some simple hygiene measures to keep safe.

He advised Nigerians to adhere to the following measures to protect themselves:

• Wash your hands regularly with soap under running water

• Cover your mouth and nose properly with handkerchief or tissue paper when sneezing and/or coughing. You may also cough into your elbow if a handkerchief is not available.

• Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing

• Avoid self-medication, report to the nearest health facility when you experience any of the above-mentioned symptoms

• Healthcare workers should always observe standard infection prevention and control measures when attending to patients and take a travel history.

A Group named as the Builders of Nigeria has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to create solutions to work the Country as things continue to deteriorate, while more Nigerians now flee the Nation. 

The advice which was contained in an open letter to the President and signed by the Group's Project Coordinator, Mr Yinka Quadri said "life in the Country has become sordid, scorched and desolate to an average Nigerian".

The full content of the letter is shown below:.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI: JUST BEFORE THE STORM

(By Yinka Quadiri)

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Facebook I.D: New Naija Builders

Facebook Group: Builders of New Nigeria

Youtube: Builders of New Nigeria

Monday, October 21, 2019

Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Rtd.

Aso Rock Villa Federal Capital Territory Abuja

Your Excellency,

 

NIGERIA IS NOT SMILING

Please, permit me to skip the usual courtesies, pleasantries and niceties in view of the dire, desperate and extraordinary state of emergency that this country, Nigeria has found itself in recent times. It is beyond any pretense whatsoever that all is not well with the Nigerian state. To an average Nigerian at whatever corner of the country, life has become one hell of an experience as things continue to deteriorate and oscillate between the unthinkable and the unimaginable. Sadness and sorrow have completely taken over the land as life and living have become sordid, scorched and desolate, and the singular ambition of the majority of the Nigerian people both young and old is to flee the country so as to escape the encircling catastrophe.

Your Excellency sir, while you may not be held solely responsible for this threatening state failure, you may be considered responsible for intensifying the mess that has become the lot of this country. Before your second coming as a democratic leader of the Nigerian nation in 2015, everything that could possibly go wrong with any nation had gone wrong with Nigeria including a deadly civil war that left everybody vanquished and the country terribly diminished. These were the challenges that the majority of those who believed in you thought you were coming to fix.

Unfortunately, up until this very day, the leadership of the country both past and present never learnt any lesson from those internal or external experiences as bitter and gory as they were hence the sustained naked dance at the market place. All the leaders that the country has produced in the last six decades have performed well below average to the dismay and disappointment of the expectant Nigerian people. They have all contributed their own quota to this overwhelming social degeneration and general dehumanization.

While we recognize the pivotal responsibility of the president in fixing the problems confronting the country, we cannot discountenance the complicity of state governors and Local Government Chairpersons across the country for worsening the fates and fortunes of their people particularly since the advent of democracy in the last two decades.

Today, nothing is working across the entire length and breadth of the country, with things getting worse by the day. How the people have been able to adjust to these unimaginable maladies remains a mystery to global observers who expected more from the people of Nigeria if not from their leaders. The Nigerian people, unlike most other peoples of the world have demonstrated extreme tolerance and long-suffering with regards to the ruthless and self-consumed leadership that has cannibalized them through the passage of time. For about sixty years, Nigeria has been a country on a gruesome hold with the entire commonwealth obscenely appropriated by acquisitive leaders while generations of the people abashedly and unfairly wallow in abject poverty and squalor deliberately designed by the governments.

THE CURRENT DANGER

The calamity foisted on the country by questionable leadership that has lorded over the Nigerian people since independence is today compounded and complicated by a new threat that portends the kind of tragedy that would devastate humanity, stretch human imagination and scathe the sensibility of the whole world. The dimension of this current threat to the peace of the Nigerian nation is grievously ominous and it is like such that only happens once in a global era. Nigeria is currently threading carelessly on very dangerous grounds and the Federal Government under your leadership is perceived to be the sponsor and facilitator of this imminent tragedy.

While delivering your first public address on August 21, 2017, two days after returning from a three-month medical leave between May 7 and August 19, 2017, you emphasized that the unity of Nigeria was ‘settled and not negotiable’ without making any reference to your journey, your absence and without offering any update. This needless statement to say the least was pathetic and it largely represented everything that is wrong with Nigeria as a country. That comment was not only largely unfair, it was also grossly insensitive.

Unfair and insensitive because having gone for a whole of three months to access the kind of medical treatment that an average Nigerian cannot get either at home or abroad, what Nigerians deserved was a bit of understanding and consideration from the person who was under the obligation to make life better for them. A similar experience repeated itself after your son had a ghastly motorbike accident on December 26, 2017 in Abuja. After taking initial treatment, he was subsequently flown abroad for appropriate treatment because such was not available in Nigeria.

How many Nigerians can afford even the inadequate treatment in Nigeria not to mention foreign medical services? Today, after four years of your presidency, the health delivery system of the country has not improved in any significant way only for you to assault our sensibilities with your non-negotiable unity of Nigeria because you and your family are enjoying the best of life in all areas of life. It seems your professed love for Nigeria is only limited to the name and not about the people that make up the space. These are some of the evident irreconcilable challenges that you face as a leader. If you love Nigeria, you must love the people that constitute the country.

WHAT MANNER OF LOVE?

If you love Nigeria Mr. President, you will love the entire people of Nigeria without a singular exception and you must be ready to sacrifice everything for their welfare. If you love Nigeria, you must love the Ijaw people, the Ibibio people, the Anang people, the Idoma people, the Tiv people, the Igbo people, the Birom people, the Nupe people, the Kanuri people, the Hausa people, the Igede people, the Bachama people, the Ogoni people, the Edo people, the Bassa people, the Koma people and the Yoruba people including all other unmentioned ethnic groups in Nigeria. Indeed, if you truly love Nigeria, you must love every soul that belongs in this country.

It is based on this foundation of love that we expected you to have declared a state of emergency on the critical areas of security, food, health, education, economy, employment, energy and infrastructure. With the promises and expectations of your campaigns and the presidency after handover, we did not reckon you will be like other leaders across the country spanning different eras in all tiers and sectors of the society who are happy to send their families abroad for the best things of life while the majority of our people wallow in poverty, penury and pains. If you truly love the country Mr. President, you will love every child as you love your sons and daughters; you will love every woman as you love your wife and sisters; you will love every man as you love yourself and your brothers.

Up until now, Nigerians have had to live with all sorts of harsh and unpleasant lives including injustices, wickedness, shenanigans and treacheries from their leaders who do not care about anything or anyone but themselves and their families. Nigerians are longsuffering and they have demonstrated a limitlessly elastic spirit of endurance and tolerance to the hostilities and brutalities that the leadership class of which you are a prominent member has ruthlessly visited upon them from independence till date. For about six decades, nothing has worked in a sustainable way in Nigeria to the delight of all the people. It has always been different regimes of self-serving opportunists and their cronies with Nigeria moving steadily from bad to worse.

THE NEW FRIGHTENING CHALLENGE

Today however, Nigeria has entered a new frightening season and Nigerians are faced with a new challenge altogether which makes past grisly experiences look like a child’s play. It is the Era of Death, an ugly epoch of unprecedented bloodletting, inhuman brutality and horrendous barbarity against the Nigerian people both at home and in the Diaspora. It is a terrifying era of suspected villainous and beastly agenda of conquest and colonization of the majority of Nigerian peoples from the north to the south by the Fulani Nomadic Oligarchy. It is an era that is promising to substantially put our humanity to the utmost test as partakers of the human fellowship. We must decide here and now to either pass or fail this historical test. There is no third option.

We will pass this test if this dreadful supposition is false, and we would woefully fail the test if this apparent impression is not immediately corrected and the fears of Nigerian peoples put to a final rest by reversing the hostile and aggressive tendencies of the marauding assailants who seem to be invincible to our security system and have significantly invaded every part of the country.

This unsettling threat to human civilization was brought to a head by the warning given to some state governments along with a 30-day ultimatum given to the federal government by some miscreants who addressed a press conference on July 4, 2019 under the aegis of Coalition of Northern Groups which was led by one Abdul-Azeez Suleiman claiming to represent the north while speaking specifically in the interest of the Fulani nation. One wonders which north the clowns were referring to, the northwest that is being ravaged by rampaging bandits either foreign or local; the northeast that is being vanquished by the invading evil Boko Haram; or the middle belt that has been wickedly decimated by marauding herdsmen?

In all of these scourges and killings perpetrated against the majority of the people of the north by people from the north or even aliens, what did the Fulani leadership do to sympathize and assuage the sufferings and suspicions of their compatriots? Nothing! It is the same people of the south that have been sympathizing and rallying round the besieged and terrorized majority people of the north.

Apart from the Fulani people, particularly of the nomadic stock who seem to be having fun, the rest of the northern people from all the nineteen states are living in extreme and unrelieved misery. Across the entire Nigerian nation and also beyond, it seems to be the Fulani people that are at war with every other group.

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF EVIDENT DISCRIMINATION

Looking back at history, it is evident that this agenda has been subtly pursued through many of the policies implemented by different governments often led by Fulani people and seeming Fulani apologists. It is now that a lot of government actions hitherto thought insignificant are making sense. For instance, on what ground should Arabic be written on Nigeria’s paper currencies and what logic can possibly support such extreme impunity? Why should the legend on the Nigerian Army emblem be in Arabic? What is the sense of Federal Character policy that subordinates better qualifications to inferior ones because of place of origin instead of building the capacity of all Nigerians from everywhere to meet global standards?

Is it not a collective indictment on all leaders in Nigeria that there is such a retrogressive policy that gives priority to a candidate who scores 20% over another that scores 80% because the candidate with the lower score is from a so-called educationally disadvantaged state instead of strengthening the education of the disadvantaged states? How did Nigeria get this low by putting mediocrity over meritocracy and why did all our leaders across all the geopolitical zones allow this aberration to be considered in the first place and perpetuated eventually?

Why should the Fulani herdsmen be allowed to bear military grade weapons like AK 47 while the generality of the Nigerian people are forbidden from doing same? Are we not all entitled to equal access to security? These policies and practices are not only short of justice and merit; they are also bereft of common sense and must therefore be discontinued forthwith.

When the Niger Delta agitation was pacified and the Biafra restlessness was ruthlessly confronted, it beats any human imagination that massive and extensive killings across the country can go on without any major intervention by the government in the form of stern reprimands, arrests and prosecutions where necessary despite the open confessions and identities of some of the culprits. It is unfortunate that until now, the rampaging killers across the country have not been dissuaded from their dastardly criminalities in any way. Rather, there are concerted efforts that seemingly urge them on.

On Tuesday, June 6, 2017, some groups from the North addressed a press conference at the Arewa House in Kaduna. The simple and direct message of the press conference was the decision to give all the Igbo and other southeastern people that are living in the Northern part of Nigeria an ultimatum to quit every part of the North by the 1st of October of that year. This mandate was according to the coalition informed by the persistent agitation by some Igbo for the breakaway of their ethnic group from the rest of Nigeria to form an independent and sovereign country of their own to be known as the Republic of Biafra. Despite the known identities of these rabble rousers nothing was done to discourage the continuing instigation of chaos and the breaching of the sovereignty of Nigeria through explosive and inciting statements.

In similar manner, another group called Arewa Youths Forum came out boldly on August 15, of same year to warn the political leaders from the South-West against plotting to take over power from the North in 2019. The group led by one Gambo Ibrahim Gujungu vowed that the North will resist attempts to remove President Buhari from power in the 2019 elections implying that they will not accept the democratic decision of the Nigerian people if not in their favour. Again, these people are known and they were not cautioned, they were not reprimanded and they were not prosecuted.

In a more brazen dimension after the January 1, 2018 attack on five communities in the Guma and Logo Local Government Areas of the state in which over 20 persons were murdered, Garos Gololo, the Chairman of the Benue State Chapter of another group calling itself Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) in an interview with BBC reiterated the herders’ position. He insinuated that the killings were in retaliation for the death of 207 cows and theft of another 1,000 by some people in the state. This fellow is not a spirit, and he was not known to have been reprimanded for this effrontery.

The instances are endless where some recalcitrant Fulani youths and elders supported by some Fulani leaders and tolerated by governments go about threatening fellow Nigerians simply because the rest of the country have been accommodating. In a seeming effort to hide the identity of these attackers, the government insisted that the marauding herdsmen were not Nigerians as if identity or origin is a defense or justification for the destruction of lives and properties.

In an extremely abnormal case that defies all logic, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai claimed to have paid and compensated the assailants that were killing the people of his state on the pretext that the payment would discourage further attacks on the people. Should any compassionate leader be compensating such horrid barbarity and for how long would he continue to pay ransom for the lives of his people? Similarly in an unbelievable manner, the Katsina State Governor, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari on Thursday, August 29, 2019 held talks with representatives of bandits terrorizing the state supposedly with a view to finding a permanent solution.

As if this state surrender which is forcing governments in Nigeria to recognize, respect and compensate criminality was not bad enough, the spokesman of the President, Mr. Femi Adesina appeared on national television to warn Nigerian people to surrender their lands to the Fulani herdsmen and their cattle rather than get killed. That was a grossly shameful, insensitive and open encouragement of the onslaught against the very people that the government was established to protect. When you illegally, forcefully and aggressively take over people’s land, what life is left in them? Is Mr. Femi Adesina ignorant of the fact that in Africa, land is the foundation and sustenance of life and communal dignity?

SUSPECTED PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT

Mr. President, your government has evidently been extraordinarily gentle in dealing with all the numerous Fulani misdemeanors and criminalities that are destroying the country across all the geopolitical zones. We hear of amnesty for those who kill, maim and rape for no just reason. We have not seen an all-out war declared against those ferociously and violently overrunning the country. And we hear of plans to disarm peaceful members of the society who are only intent on protecting themselves. Is this not the time a caring government should be arming its vulnerable citizens in the face of an insurmountable and growing wholesale anarchy?

But what we hear are stories of Billions of naira largesse payed by the government to further the interests of these suspected and self-confessed attackers. We hear of a radio station to be specifically built for Fulani herdsmen and for their exclusive language and use. We hear of plans to deliberately integrate the military into the cattle business by attaching cattle rearing to barracks with the unimaginable claim by the military to have sent officers and men abroad to learn how to manage cattle ranches. Also not too long ago, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) through the Commandant General openly declared its plan to deploy its officers and men to protect and secure cattle and cattle colonies wherever they occur across the country. This is happening in a country where human lives are utterly unsafe and insecure.

It is equally astonishing that just less than the five years of your administration; your government has introduced five schemes to cater especially to the interest of the Fulani herdsmen alone. It all started with the Grazing Routes which was followed with the Grazing Reserve and the Nigerian people rejected these plans vehemently. This idea was further repackaged as the Cattle Colony that was also not acceptable nor accepted by the people. The Ruga Settlement was introduced clandestinely to the angst and chagrin of Nigerians concurrently with the latest one called National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) – all these for the Fulani herders that are most likely less than 5% of the Nigerian population. This is patently unfair Mr. President.

The suspicion of the supremacist agenda of the nomadic oligarchy bordering on conquest and colonization, and championed by some crude Fulani revisionists has been reinforced by the irritating statement of Abdul-Azeez and his co-travelers. Regrettably, this inglorious journey of perdition has been left unchallenged and unchastised by the federal government and other Fulani leaders… And this is one provocation too many. Nigerians across the entire country including the middle belt, the northeast and the northwest are tired of this offensive arrogance of some uncultured and over-pampered mischief-makers who are hell-bent on giving Mr. President a bad name and are determined to destroy our great country. Enough is enough of this impudent and provocative indiscretion. It shall no longer be tolerated or condoned.

Rather than continue to fan the embers of needless hostility, what is expected of responsible and patriotic citizens is concerted commitment to support the President to rescue Nigeria from becoming a failed state and transform Nigeria from a poorly rated third world country to at least second world if not a first world country. But today unlike any time before, the majority of Nigerians have lost hope in the viability of Nigeria and those of us who remain committed to the Nigeria Project are beginning to sound like broken records while we are understandably regarded as treacherous traitors, betrayers of our people and haters of our heritage. It is these ethnic rabble rousers and the continuing degeneration and growing insecurity in the country that have further reinforced this unfortunate perspective of an impending revolution and not the Revolution Now campaign and its youthful proponents who are justifiably feeling largely shortchanged by the society.

SEVERAL DEATHS TOO MANY

At the height of this breakdown is the conscienceless murder of the daughter of the Yoruba leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti on July 12, 2019. The lame retractions that Mrs. Funke Olakunrin was killed by armed robbers or some other hoodlums, is neither consoling nor reassuring. At least the sad incident speaks very clearly and audibly to the despicable insecurity in the country and it is a clear message to the Yoruba people that is duly and fully understood.

Sometimes in August of 2018, there was a report that at least 30 Nigerian soldiers died in combat with Boko Haram jihadists who overran a military base in the northeast near the border with Niger Republic. And just recently, Nigerian Army also confirmed that it lost two officers and three soldiers in the attack launched against troops by Boko Haram in Yobe State on Wednesday, July 17, 2019. All these are not cheery news. Indeed, they are scary news. If our military and security operatives are becoming easy targets of this stateless, ragtag bunch of ruffians, then something is not right because we know that our security men and women are parts of the best in the world if they were well managed, coordinated and catered for. Our officers and men are gallant indeed. It is leadership that must do the right thing for our security sector. Nigeria will never become another Afghanistan under any circumstance.

Democracy is also under unprecedented threats as of today in Nigeria and it is only God’s grace that has so far sustained the country. Everything that is undermining the survival and developmental growth of democracy, freedom, justice, equity and fairness must be done away with. This is the second greatest task that must be accomplished by the leadership of Nigeria now. Strengthened democracy and collective prosperity are the minimum requirements for the survival and unity of Nigeria and not any verbal declaration of the indivisibility of the country. The only condition that can keep Nigeria one is for the President to visibly cater to the interest of all and not a part. These discriminatory treatments will neither work nor reinforce the declarations of Mr. President to be a father to all.

In actual fact, current global practices are not supportive of the various government cattle plans in any way which is further fueling the suspicion of a hidden agenda, a fear which the President must strive to allay if Nigeria must remain one, with peace restored to the land. It is high time the President looked into the virulent allegation of nepotism with the intention to diffusing the negative feeling. The government should also begin to look at the critical sectors of the society including power, petroleum, infrastructures and economy, and integrate every ethnic group into its holistic development plan.

Almost every area of Nigeria’s national life has completely collapsed as things are getting worse. Apart from the less than 10% of the population in Nigeria made up those who have access to public coffers, outright criminals and a very few lucky ones, the rest of the Nigerian people are pauperized and impoverished, and are living in sub-human conditions. It is your primary duty and those of all your close personal and professional aides and allies to not only change this situation in perspective, but also in reality. There is an urgent need to commence full and unrelenting development across the entire nooks and crannies of the country to assuage the bitterness and anger of the people who feel that the Fulani people are determined to subjugate, dispossess and enslave the rest of the Nigerian people.

THE OMINOUS CLOUDS

Once again Mr. President, in the chequered life of this beleaguered country, the ominous clouds have gathered and it is threatening a hugely disastrous downpour that would cause a flood across the entire African continent that would sweep away the fragile civilization and flimsy progress that the black humanity has been able to attain. As the President and father of the nation, you have the preeminent responsibility to avert this looming catastrophe. If you summon the courage to be a true statesman and rise up now to this thoroughly challenging and distressful situation, you may not only still be able to redeem your name and legacy, you may still also be able to save the entire country and continent from the threatening colossal but needless apocalypse the magnitude that promises to be very rare in the annals of human history.

So far Your Excellency, you have ostensibly failed with regards to this expectation and worse still, you appear to be a vigorous party in this ensuing national imbroglio. Today in the court of public opinion, you stand accused of passive complicity, if not of active collaboration in the unholy agenda of conquest and colonization driven with the gruesome ongoing genocide that is promising to tear this country asunder and undo it. It is disheartening that rather than focus on these very serious problems, it is cattle business that has taken the whole of your attention and the devotion of your government.

Thank God for the matured composure of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Yoruba nation, and of all the other ethnic groups in the country who have been pacifying the younger and hot-blooded generations who are totally outraged by the prevalent political, social and economic oppression, suppression, repression and subjugation of the vast majority of the Nigerian nation by a few oligarchs. This is no longer acceptable and it is no longer tolerable. This is not a religious issue; it is simply more like one small group internationally inspired to enslave the rest. I am of no doubt whatsoever that the rest of the Nigerian people will not allow this to happen, whatever the cost. Any imaginary attempt by any one group or the look of it, to dominate the others shall be vehemently, unequivocally and defiantly resisted.

It is my hope and expectation that this wild but growing assumption is not the case and that it remains a figment of the imagination of its proponents. Mr. President Sir, you, the people working with you and any other person or group who might have been playing with such thought should know that this is an outrageous, unrealistic and illusory venture that would leave nothing but devastating and debilitating destruction in its wake. It is therefore not in the interest of anyone to harbor such archaic, anachronistic and monstrous intention. Indeed, the contemplation of it alone can be equally as catastrophic and disastrous as its implementation. It is therefore exceedingly important and imperative for you and your team Mr. President, to find a way to quickly douse the kindling spark of resentment before it becomes a conflagration that would consume all and sundry. I led a group to the north for several weeks last year and the fear is real and the tension is palpable. The time to act is now. Tomorrow is definitely too late.

THE RECOMMENDATIONS

In good faith, my advice to you, your inner circle and all those who love you is for you all, to quickly and collectively rise up to engage in the following recommendations:

1. Declare a State-of-Emergency on Development in Nigeria and begin the tedious task of building the country through active, impactful and integrated development masterplan that carries every group along.

2. Correct past anomalies including skewed policies, programs, projects and appointments that tend to favor one ethnic group over and above the others.

3. Initiate an extensive process of reconciliation and forgiveness among all Nigerians particularly with and between those who are feeling aggrieved including individuals and ethnic nationalities.

4. Build on the principle of collective love where all will have a sense of brotherhood and togetherness.

5. Become a father to all and demonstrate equal affection to all and sundry.

THE COUNTER ULTIMATUM

In concluding Mr. President, I wish to make it crystal and explicitly clear on behalf of the organizations I lead, and the entire Nigerian people that the exuberant carelessness and excessive indiscretions of some of your people led by Abdul-Azeez Suleiman and his kind have become completely intolerable and it shall no longer be tolerated. Because we are convinced that you cannot be part of their ridiculous and inglorious circus, we are hereby requesting you to use your good offices to call them to order and mandate them to tender a public apology to the Nigerian people for the effrontery of the ultimatum they gave, failure after which you should direct that legal actions should be taken against them. Nobody has the right to threaten other Nigerians; it is direct invitation of anarchy.

If either of these two suggestions mentioned above is not adopted and executed within thirty days of the release of this publication (I.e. Wednesday, November 20, 2019), we shall be forced to decisively demonstrate our resolve not necessarily against Mr. President, but definitely against the inchoate minds that issued the cheeky ultimatum in the following ways:

1. The respite enjoyed by the inciters shall be construed as an endorsement and a confirmation that the supremacist fear of conquest and colonization is real and the president is not particularly averse to it

2. We shall make a comprehensive representation to the National Assembly to commence serious inquiry into this combustible arrogance of these agents provocateurs who Mr. President is not seemingly willing to openly correct and reprimand for whatever reason

3. We shall also initiate litigation in the appropriate court of law against these incendiary statements, hate speeches and inciting representations that are threatening the unity and stability of the country

4. We shall commence immediate and aggressive local and international advocacy exposing general leadership failure in the country

5. Your government shall be held responsible for every life lost and every property destroyed henceforth due to the unbridled activities of the Fulani militias and marauding bandits

6. We shall initiate Free-Gun Law litigation at the judicial level, and a bill at the legislative level to augment the efforts of the security agencies who are too stretched and in need of support

7. We shall propose a bill to the National Assembly for one-year compulsory full military training for all Nigerians below thirty years of age and voluntary security training for Nigerians above thirty years of age from the date of commencement of the enabling law

8. Agitation and action for the consideration, adoption and implementation of the Reports of the 2014 Constitutional Conference as sine qua non to the continuous existence of Nigeria through all legal and appropriate means shall be relentlessly pursued

9. All necessary democratic instruments shall be deployed by the Nigerian people, youths, professionals and other stakeholders to ensure that the negligible minority is not allowed to manipulate, intimidate, frustrate and overrun the substantial majority

10. We shall inspire the activation of all available constitutional processes of enthroning and birthing the New Nigeria as visualized in the New Nigeria Dream

Mr. President, elections are over and even the election tribunal has ruled in your favour howbeit. It is therefore now time for serious work. So that your time and tenure may be remembered for good, let us pray to God to grant you the required courage and capacity to take the right decisions and work for the peace, prosperity and progress of Nigeria which some of us have been, and are still visibly and irrevocably committed to.

God bless Nigeria and God bless Nigerians.

Yinka Quadiri

Project Coordinator

21/10/19

BUILDERS OF NEW NIGERIA

ÌYÀYÍTÓ OMOLÚÀBÍ

(BNN SOUTHWEST OPERATIONS)

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The President of the Senate

The Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives

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Last modified on Thursday, 31 October 2019 07:38

In a memo by the Presidency to Mr Babatunde Fowler, Executive Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the revenue boss was asked to explain why “actual collections for the period between 2016 and 2018 were significantly worse than what was collected between 2012 and 2014.”

The memo also sought explanations for why actual revenue collections were consistently lower than projections in the three years under reference.

Fowler was appointed to the position in August 2015.

For the discrepancies between targets and actual collections, the numbers are N5.008 trillion actual collection against the N3.64 trillion targeted for 2012; N4.806 trillion actual collection against the target of N4.469 trillion for 2013; and N4.715 trillion against the N4.086 trillion targeted for 2014.

These give a total N14.529 trillion actual collection against N12.195 targeted for the three-year period. The extra N2.334 trillion represents 19 percent excess collection over projection for the period.

Under Fowler, actual collection in 2016 was N3.3 trillion against N4.2 trillion targeted; in 2017 it was N4.0 trillion actual against N4.8 trillion targeted; while in 2018, it was N5.3 trillion actual against N6.7 trillion targeted.

The N12.6 trillion collected contrasts with the N15.7 trillion targeted for the full three years under Fowler.

This represents 19.7 percent shortfall of target set for the 3-year period. In the 15-year period of 2000 to 2014, It was only in 2006 that failure to meet or surpass target occurred, despite the zigzag movement of GDP growth rates in that long period.

In gross terms, what Fowler collected between 2016 and 2018 was N1.869 trillion short of what was collected in the corresponding three years of 2012 - 2104.

In real term - that is, controlling for inflation - Fowler’s actual collection of N12.6 trillion is worth only N7.2 trillion in 2014, if we discount 13 percent average annual inflation rate from 2018 back to 2014.

It was for this dismal performance that the Presidency must have written to Fowler.

The parameters for assessing performance, to be sure, should be three: gross amounts actually collected, real value of actual collection (controlling for inflation), and target revenue set for the comparative periods.

In the three parameters, Fowler failed spectacularly. What was Fowler’s excuse for this failure?

Low crude oil prices, the brief period of recession, and low GDP growth rates after recession.

To start with, revenue targets are not set arbitrarily, but based on measurable indices as projected crude oil prices, GDP growth rate, inflation rate, Naira exchange rates, etc.

Targets are also not set and handed to FIRS by some external authorities, but arrived at in collaborative work between Federal Ministry of Finance and FIRS on the basis of the measurable indices cited above.

For Fowler to now seek to rationalise his failure on the basis of low crude oil prices and reduced GDP growth rates, both of which had been factored into the relatively low targets set for him, is to be clever by half.

When ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo assumed office in 1999, he met crude oil prices that went as low $12 per barrel.

Yet, actual revenue collections consistently exceeded targeted revenue in his 8-year presidency, except in 2006. In the same period, GDP growth rates were sluggish.

Since Fowler mentioned the fact of lower crude oil receipts in the period under him vis-a-vis 2012-2014, it is important that we disaggregate that also.

If, for instance, crude oil sold on the average of $100 per barrel in the period 2012-2014, while it sold for half of that in the corresponding period of 2016-2018, with the percentage royalty from the gross crude oil prices paid to Nigerian government kept constant, then, certainly the Petroleum Income Tax (PIT) paid to FIRS would be roughly half of what it used to be.

But between 2014 and 2018, Naira was devalued from N160 to N306 to $1. Since FIRS is paid in Naira and its collections denominated in the same Naira, what was lost in reduced oil prices and sometimes reduced crude oil quantities was compensated for by the more Naira volumes collected for lower dollar volumes.

Whatever gross shortfall that might still remain (I doubt if any should) should be made up for in the expansion of the base from the 10 million tax payers Fowler inherited to the reported 20 million under him.

Even if the new addition to the tax base paid only 30 percent of the extant amount paid by those inherited, the results posted by Fowler would and should have been far better.

In another defense of his performance, Fowler pointed out that non-oil taxes such as VAT, capital gain tax, stamp duties, etc, increased consistently on his watch. Good. But how did those other taxes increase steadily under the same inclement GDP and macroeconomic conditions that Fowler cited as his undoing? See the contradiction? So, if the macroeconomic circumstances cited by Fowler as cause of his gross underperformance are not the culprits, what then is the cause?

In a news report by The Sun newspaper of August 26, 2019, many cases of corruption reported by key staff of FIRS were cited. While I do not have means of getting foolproof evidence of those allegations, but those of us who knew the goings-on in Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) under Fowler and subsequently, as well as the Barracuda of a godfather who nominated him to the post, were certain that Nigeria would get the short end of the stick under him at the FIRS.

Fowler is too much of an establishment person, a social circle constant, to make any transformative contributions in FIRS.

Did anyone one hear of any prominent player in the private sector prosecuted for tax fraud under Fowler? Dogs don’t eat dogs! For a touted wizkid brought in time of crisis to make a fundamental difference in the revenue profile of the country to cite the same crisis that warranted his appointment in the first place as reason for non-performance is fraudulent and an insult to public intelligence.

Professor Ishaq Oloyede met a JAMB where his predecessor had been making a yearly remittance to the Federal Government of N3 million. In the first year of his tenure, he remitted N7.8 billion. Even after slashing the examination fee paid by JAMB candidates, and greatly improving both the processes and quality of the examination, Oloyede still remitted more than N5 billion after the last examination.

We’re also aware of the transformation Dr Dada is making at the Federal Medical Centre, Ebute Meta, Lagos with the same inherited staff and allocated resources. These competent and honest Nigerians, to cite just two of them, are operating under the same harsh socio-economic environment that Fowler is crying about.

I close by asking the Presidency to beam its searchlights on other revenue generating agencies as the Nigeria Customs Service, NPA, NIMASA, Immigration, among others.

A lot of incompetence and heists will be uncovered in them also. This is absolutely necessary given the alarm sounded by the Federal Government that the country is faced with the threat of a terrible fiscal crisis.

* Kawonise, a former Commissioner for Information and Orientation in Ogun state, is Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of NewsScroll newspaper

Hackers have now turned their criminal activities to WhatsApp Accounts with the aim of using the contacts of the owners to defraud innocent victims, and also used the hacked contacts to disseminate fake news and information across the globe.

Penpushing reports that, the modus operandi of the fraudsters is to change the phone number of the original owners, replaced with their own numbers and change identity of the owners, and thereafter exploit people on the list of the owners on the contacts.

The investigations conducted by Penpushing revealed that, number of innocent users of the WhatsApp have fallen victims of these fraudsters who contacted their friends and family members for dubious assistance.

The news medium further reports that, the hackers also used the opportunity to embark on fake business transactions with innocent victims in the number of the WhatsApp groups, while one of the discovered fraudsters was noticed to be using mobile number 08161721730 for the illegal operations.

However, to prevent these fraudsters, users should take the following steps through their mobile phones: *Go to the : on your right handside*, *Select settings on your WhatsApp*,*Click on Account*, *Click on Two- step verification*, *Enter pin* (6 digits pin you will remember), Confirm your pin, *Input your email address* (Valid Email address), Confirm your email and save.

With these steps, if anybody, particularly suspected hackers attempt to operate to change identity of the owner, WhatsApp will ask for the Two-step verification and without it the account won't open.

Penpushing

Last modified on Saturday, 17 August 2019 12:53