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OPINION: Akpabio’s Senate And A Child’s Recollection

Published

4 months ago

March 11, 2025

By Suyi Ayodele

The Nigerian senate last week found Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduagban guilty of “bringing the presiding officer and the entire senate to public opprobrium.” The “presiding officer” she brought to “public opprobrium” was no other person than the big man who delivered the judgement, Godswill Akpabio. It was a first in how not to run a trial. The most clownish of circuses will bow for Akpabio and his senate for staging that abject drama.

Because dawn met me in one of the most traditional of the Yoruba society, I always run back to the treasure trove of memory whenever I see strange things like what Akpabio’s senate did last week.

Our ancestors had a deep sense of commitment to justice devoid of personal gains. They were people with a sense of self-worth and shame. I witnessed a traditional court sitting at an early age. The story is worth telling here because of its relevance to the strangeness of this era.

I should not have been at the palace that day. Two things took me to that day’s sitting of my town’s traditional court. One was curiosity; the desire to know things that were ordinarily of no importance to my agemates then. The second was the tutelage of a cousin and mentor who ensured that I was introduced to community ‘politics’ almost in my cradle.

The court sat with the full complement of Onísè-in-Council in attendance. Oba Ojo Olúyèye Òjoyèbugiòtèwó (He who ascends the throne and uproots the tree of conspiracy) was on his throne. His Second-in-Command, Aláùn was seated. Both Kabiyesi, Onísè, and Chief Aláùn, are from the same quarters, Ònà. in my native Odo Oro Ekiti.

From Òtún Quarters, my own lineage, was the Obadòfin. Seated also from Òtún were Chief Alárà, and then Ajaùbí. They all belonged to the Iwarefa (kingmakers) group.

Osin Quarters had the late Chief Alámìrò, and Chief Obamìlà in attendance. The Elú chieftaincy title holders and the Eléégbé group were also represented. The women’s group was led by Chief Olóóbùnrin Ará. It was judgment day, and the palace was filled to the brim.

Several cases were listed on the palace cause list. The number one case, the one which led to my curiosity about coming to the palace that day, involved an older cousin, a male. He was alleged to have put one equally known town-sister in the family way. The ‘anti’ involved is from Ònà, precisely, Ilise, the unit that produces the Onísè. In essence, being from the royal quarters, the ‘anti’ is a princess.

The Onísè (the oba) was the presiding officer, the Chief Justice of the town. The place ‘court registrar’ called the cause list. The two parties stepped forward and genuflected according to their sexes. Chief Aláùn asked the complainant, the ‘anti’, to step forward further and state her case. She knelt and greeted Kabiyesi and the chiefs.

As she was about to speak, Chief Obadòfin stood up and stopped her. He turned to Kabiyesi and greeted him, calling him by his praise name, Amélilájetùotùo (he who eats the entire cow with its horns). Then he said: “Kabiyesi, you cannot sit in judgment over this matter. The girl involved is your daughter, a princess, from Ilise. Aláùn cannot also sit because the girl is also her daughter.”

There was complete silence. Chief Obadòfin continued: “I too, alongside Chief Alárà and Chief Ajaùbí, can also not sit over this matter because the boy involved is our son from Òtún. I just want to point this out.” He chanted some other Kabiyesi’s cognomen and sat down.

The oba sighed. The crowd chorused “Kabiyesi!” He turned to his chiefs and said: “Obadòfin is right. There is no partiality in the palace. Alámìrò, and Obamìlà, please take over and call us when you are through with the case.”. He got up. All the chiefs did. Kabiyesi led the way to the inner recess of the place. Chiefs Aláùn, Obadòfin, Alárà and Ajaùbi followed.

After their exit, Chief Alámìrò took over. Together with Chief Obamìlà and other palace chiefs present, the matter was decided. Before the next case was called, a chief was sent to call Kabiyesi and his other Iwarefa. They came out and Kabiyesi was briefed about how the matter was decided. The king sealed it with the pronouncement: “Let it be as it was decided.” The town chorused “Kabiyesi”, again. Then Oba Olúyèye Òjoyèbugiòtèwó continued with the remaining cases on the cause list.

This incident happened over 40 years ago. The two principal parties involved in this story are alive. Oba Olúyèye Òjoyèbugiòtèwó was not the direct father of the female party. Still, because the female party is from the same quarters as the king, Oba Olúyèye Òjoyèbugiòtèwó traditionally ‘recused’ himself from the matter. All other chiefs who also had direct and indirect relationships with the respondent also stepped down from the traditional bench.

You can now see how shocked anyone familiar with the principle of checks and balances embedded in the black man’s well-ordered justice system would be at what the Senate did last week.

The black man’s judicial system was established on the tripod of fairness, equity and justice. That was long before the Romans came up with the fairness principle of Nemo judex in causa sua (no man may be a judge in his own cause).

The underpinning principle of our traditional jurisprudence is the quest to eliminate any shade of unfairness in the dispensation of justice. Civilisation began with our forebears; long before the advent of today’s ‘civilisation’.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Buhari’s Poverty Of Truth

In the story above, you will observe that only those chiefs whose judgment would not be perceived as being coloured were allowed to adjudicate in the matter. Interestingly, not even one of the chiefs mentioned above was an educated man. They were all pastoral people, the best of them was a cocoa merchant! That is the African traditional setting in its most just element. Judicial recusal is as old as humanity in Africa. Nobody teaches it; it is congenitally given!

The last two weeks have not been too rosy for the Senator Godswill Akpabio-led Senate. The Red Chamber has been in the news for the wrong reasons. The event climaxed on Thursday last week when the chamber had every opportunity to change its negative narratives to positive ones. Expectedly, the Nigerian Senate failed to seize the opportunity to redeem its battered image.

Did Senator Akpabio beat his chest after last Thursday’s plenary? Did he assemble fellow senators at the Senate President’s quarters to celebrate his victory of phallus over Virginia suppression? Did he click wine tumblers; did he exchange banters? Did he celebrate the suspension of his accuser, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan?

Last Thursday, Senate President Akpabio made nonsense of the dictum, Nemo judex in causa sua. It was another day that the Nigerian lawmakers scored a new low. The Senate proceedings of that day, after which Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan was suspended, were the worst ever since the beginning of this present political dispensation. It was the day the accused sat in judgment over his accuser! It can only happen in the Senate of Akpabio; an institution the Akwa Ibom senator has taken from its lofty height to the bottom of perfidy!

Akpoti-Uduaghan had, penultimate week, had an altercation with the senate President over the change of her seat. The Kogi Central senator attributed the change of her seat and other frosty relationships with Akpabio to the desire of the Senate President to pull her skirt. Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, on national television, accused the Senate President of sexual harassment. She followed it up with a written petition to the Senate.

The world waited for what the Senate would do. Senator Akpabio did not disappoint. He rallied his friends in the Senate and the petition was declared “dead on arrival” by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics. Then Akpoti-Uduaghan was taken before the same committee for violating the Senate Rules. The committee sent out a notice that it would decide the matter on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

Then something happened. Without any communication with other members of the committee, the chairman, Senator Nelda Imasuen of Edo South, changed the ‘trial’ date. The committee sat on Wednesday, March 5, and found the female senator guilty of all charges! The report was presented on the floor of the chamber on Thursday, March 6, and the Senate ‘approved’ all the recommendations of the Committee.

With Senator Akpabio, the man accused of sexual harassment presiding, the Senate ‘unanimously’ adopted the prayer that Akpoti-Uduaghan be suspended, her salary stopped, her office closed, and her aides and security be withdrawn. All the senators that spoke had one unkind word for Natasha! Terrible. The same Senate, which rejected Akpoti-Uduaghan’s petition on the ground that the matter was a subject of litigation before a court, went ahead to suspend the senator despite a court order that nothing should be done until the matter brought before it by Akpoti-Uduaghan was determined!

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Gambaryan’s Flower Of Thorns

I watched the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan, and my heart bled for Nigeria! I saw how the Senate sergeant-at-arm moved to evict the female senator from the chamber. I held my breath as the Kogi senator uttered the profound words: “This injustice will not be sustained”, and how someone switched off the microphone! I wonder who we are as a people. I queried how we got to this level, 26 years after we started a new democratic journey.

The Senate said before Akpoti-Uduaghan would be recalled or her six-month suspension reduced, she must tender a written apology. Funny! My mind told me that that is as good as asking the Kogi Central senator to pull her skirt and warm the bed of her traducer! Yet, Senator Akpabio sat on the judgment seat, unmoved, unperturbed!

If for anything, the speed with which the Nelda-led Committee on Ethics dispensed with the Akpoti-Uduaghan and Akpabio matter calls for concern. How, despite the number of learned fellows in the Red Chamber, Akpabio the accused was made to preside over the case of his accuser and made the call for her punishment is a complete aberration to common sense, natural justice and fairness. It is an act that is condemnable here on earth and nauseating to the Saints in Heaven.

More importantly, the conduct of the Senate in this matter has further established Nigeria’s prime position in the comity of the despicable third nations of the world. More sadly, the Senate has, by that singular act, confirmed that the Red Chamber is a huge crime scene and an entity populated by characters without the simplest sense of what posterity holds for them!

We should therefore search no further why, despite our efforts at charting a new course for Nigeria, where every citizen will have a complete sense of protection from any infraction, we have not been able to make any meaningful progress. Truth be told, our four-legged brethren in the wild would have done better than what the Senate did last Thursday!

Could the Genevan philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) have had the Akpabio-led Senate in mind when he postulated that ‘the principles of morality are largely known to us and the righteous study of them tends to corrupt more often than edify?’ Otherwise, how, in 21st-century Nigeria, would an accused be made to sit in judgment over his accuser?

Before now, one would have thought that the worst of predators left our legislative chambers long before the Noachian flood! As the ‘yeah’ voice vote on the Akpoti-Uduaghan matter reverberates, even now, in my hearing, the only wish I have is a voyage back to our not-too-long past, the era of Oba Ojo Olúyèye Òjoyèbugiòtèwó, when justice was dispensed with every sense of morality and fairness!

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[OPINION] ADC: Death, Onikoyi And A Hunter’s Pouch

Published

5 hours ago

July 6, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

Death does not kill alone/Nor does he fight singly/He goes to war with plenty of warriors…/He sends Disease first/He sends Paralysis next/He sends Loss/He sends Curses…/Death finally comes to kill the hunter’s father/Who drinks now of heavenly water.”

The lines above are from Professor Bade Ajuwon’s, ‘Ogun’s Iremoje: A philosophy of Living and Dying’, taken from Sandra Barnes’ ‘Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New’. It is a chant (Ìrèmòje) by one Lamidi in Akeetan, Oyo, Oyo State in 1976 for Ogundele, a deceased hunter.

Ìrèmòje is Yorùbá poetic dirge sung at funerals of hunters. The bards, in total submission, acknowledge that no armour is strong enough to shield fate. They employ the imagery of the hunter’s pouch, the English man calls it the quiver, the Yoruba hunter calls it the apó. Mourning bards lament that Death kills the hunter like one without the apó. Death kills a sick Babalawo like one whose vestry isn’t full of curative barks and roots. To reinforce this, Yoruba again say that what will be the death of the hunter lurks right there inside his apó.

A strong Yorubaman from the hinterland that he is, President Bola Tinubu must have listened to countless lines of Ìrèmòje like the above. Since Wednesday when the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was launched, expropriating the wisdom in those hunters’ dirges, the Nigerian president must have realized that the firm ground upon which the giant, (Ominran) stands could suddenly become slippery, leading to his fatal fall.

The bard in the Ogundele chant above would seem to have compared the ADC warriors warring against Tinubu to Death’s strike. The launch of ADC last Wednesday may be the first battalion that Death, those who want to unseat the president, sent to warn him.

Though oxymoronic, a great man can fall to his own folly and vanity. Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, once brought out this oxymoron in his The Picture of Dorian Gray when he said, “a great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.” This Wilde saying may be the purport behind a folktale told to children in pre, colonial and even immediate post-colony of Yorubaland. It was the story of a mythical valiant warrior who, either out of excessive power or inability to realize the fault lines of his prowess, transformed into a crocodile.

Powerful and dreaded, the warrior, who had magical ability to transform into an animal, one day decided to repeat this magical wizardry. He asked that a traditional mat be brought out. As he laid on it, with a white cloth spread over him, by the time the cloth was unwrapped, he had transformed into a huge crocodile. Since, in the words of same Oscar Wilde, no man can be too careful in the choice of his enemies, the warrior’s friends immediately turned against him. Having found out that the only taboo against that animal transformation wizardry was raindrops, the warrior’s friends ganged up and decided to invoke a torrent of rain.

The Delesolu compound in Oje, Ibadan North East Local Government of Oyo State, parades this same mythical narration of their ancestry. History has it that the great grandfather of the Delesolus did almost like the warrior in the above crocodile mythology. He, too, transformed into a crocodile. Then rain began to fall on the huge animal. Unable to return to his human form as a result of the raindrops, the distressed crocodile walked helplessly into the bush and into the nearest river. He never returned. Till today, anytime a child is born into the Delesolu family, a live crocodile is placed beside the baby. In 1944, a giant crocodile was brought into the compound as a totem, a reminder to the crocodile progeny that wisdom can kill the wise.

But those who have followed the Nigerian president’s political trajectory compare him to the Onikoyi, a renowned war general in the Oyo empire who lived around the 16th to 17th centuries. So many epithets have been used to describe Tinubu, one of which is that he is a ‘Master strategist.’ Onikoyi too was. Tinubu is so politically fearsome, so they say, that he possesses a mind of his own. Describing him further, they say he is a man who, in the words of award-winning Nigerian author, Chigozie Obioma, in his The Fisherman (2015), is “not the kind of man who would dip his foot in another shoe because his own was damp; he would rather trek the earth on barefoot.”

Onikoyi held command over 1469 men who were famous for fighting to death. They never turned their backs to the enemy. Onikoyi’s war prowess was such that nobody could defeat him.

Like a whirlwind gathers dirt into its concentric circle, erstwhile Tinubu friends gathered at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Center last Wednesday. Virtually all of them were once friends and associates of the Onikoyi. From Atiku Abubakar, Nasir El-Rufai, Rauf Aregbesola, Rotimi Amaechi etc, the list is endless. It includes David Mark, a man who, as military general, derisively told Nigerians that they were banished forever to a life of impoverishment. And Judas Iscariot Aregbesola. Onikoyi, too, was betrayed by one of his friends whom he favoured severally.

Envious of his valour, other warriors attempted to cut Onikoyi to size, to no avail. They then courted this friend who they paid handsomely to trigger a fight between Onikoyi and a best friend of his. In the battle, Onikoyi killed his friend and the warrior turned into a bush rat, thereafter making the forest his home. The middle friend who betrayed him had a huge tree fall over him, killing him instantly.

Since Wednesday when the ADC unfolded, it will appear that the president and the APC have been losing the messaging war. From far away beautiful Caribbean island Sea of Saint Lucia where he and his principal were ensconced, the message of Death seemed to have hit the presidential team badly. So, Bayo Onanuga sought to remind us that the ADC is an assembly of grousers. While lifting the veil off its leaders one by one and their political sins, he even predicted their waterloo.

Onanuga needed to rewind the clip of his words to hear his own grumpy voice. Nigerians are aware already that right there in the ADC assemblage are political sinners; but, is the APC any better? If he says ADC lacks ideology, what is APC’s ideology? A minister was clearly accused of corruption, of filching billions of the people’s money in collusion with some star boys in the federal executive council. The president sacked her. Till date, she has not been tried. Corruption is said to sit in its imperial glory, just as maggots do on a decomposing meat, in Aso Rock as we speak. A cavalierly looting of Nigerian patrimony, perhaps unprecedented in Nigerian history, is the credo.

So, is political party about sainthood? If sainthood was the qualification for assembling to form a party, the crew that came into federal power in 2015 would not be there. Muhammadu Buhari was a despot who had his hands bespattered with the blood of Bartholomew Owoh, Bernard Ogedengbe and Lawal Ojuolape.

In 2023, Tinubu himself was one of the most unfit persons to be Nigeria’s president if a leader’s past was an index for voters’ consideration. I am not aware of any presidential candidate in the history of Nigeria’s electoral politics who heaved as hefty a baggage into the polls as the ex-Lagos State governor. He however got off into Aso Rock because many Nigerians believed he had the capacity to change their lives. Two years down the line, the reverse is the case. Nigerians crunch suffering as you eat crunchy nuts. All we hear are Marabout statistics of betterment whereas when we go to markets, we are faced with the tyranny of existence under a government in whose veins blood doesn’t seem to flow. So, reminding us of the past of the ADC coalition members is hogwash. It won’t wash.

But the Atiku ADC seems to be getting the messaging right. And Nigerians are listening to it. Though we know its members do not have any redemptive DNA and will also betray us if they ever get into government, their messaging resonates. Is life better for Nigerians now than it was in 2023? To imagine Aregbesola, whose government pauperized the poor Osun State civil servants as he paid them half salary while wasting billions of Naira on a needless airport project, now claiming that ADC is coming to “rescue the poor”! Though he is one of the greatest dis-advertisements of the ADC coalition, notorious for his dunce-like dances (ijó dìndìnrìn) and maladministration, Aregbesola asked an apt question: “Is today better than yesterday, or yesterday was better than today?”

Let suffering Nigerians answer that question. It is a question personal to them. Tinubu has spent two grim years that lacerate Nigerians. The next two years do not seem to offer any hope that life would be better. The people’s sorrow daily remarries them to God as they tend to be more religious these days. It is so bad that, in the words of Wilde, Nigerians, majority of whom are lords of language, lack words to describe their anguish and suffering.

Yet, still in the same words of Wilde, the president and his people “(fill their lives) to the very brim with a life of pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine”. It reminds me of a line in Fuji music lord, Ayinde Marshal’s song. He sang that, the Nigerian life that is so difficult and painful to chew or swallow, is same world some Nigerians at the top eat crushingly like one eating hot yam (Ayé t’énìkan ńyó je, l’àwon kan ńje súà bí eni ńje isu.)

For almost one whole week, the presidency literally relocated and hibernated in Saint Lucia, with no decipherable outcome for Nigerian people. Someday, the real fact of what took the presidency to this tiny island and the amount of the Nigerian wealth incinerated on the jamboree would be revealed. Was our wealth secretly tethered by the feet of Dionysus, Greek god of wine, pleasure and revelry, in Saint Lucia? From Saint Lucia, the presidency is junketing to Brazil for the 17th BRICS Summit. It would be its 18th country to visit in two years.

It is however too early in the day to come to a conclusion of what the coming days will be. Both the ADC and the APC are gathering missiles of war. While I agree with FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, that none of the coalition crew is competent to articulate the anger and hunger of the Nigerian people, the Tinubu government inflicts hunger on the people. In this case, both Tinubu and the coalition group are like the proverbial bedwetter who is incompetent to haggle the price of aro, used by local drycleaners to curtail urine smell. The Nigerian people are capable of articulating their anger. In 2027, it will be evil politicians against the people.

On the surface, Tinubu’s famed wizardry would win him another four years in office. He is Onikoyi reincarnate, isn’t he? However, history tells us of an Onikoyi reincarnate who died on the battlefield where three trees met overhead. His corpse was not discovered until several days after. By this time, his decomposing corpse had been mercilessly half eaten, in the words of Beier, by vultures and “child of the eagle sitting on the silk cotton tree” and “child of the hawk waiting on the camwood tree”.

The braggadocio of the APC group is getting muffled now. The voice of the fawning Senate President who said the president would win 99.5% in the 2027 votes is receding too, no thanks to the coalition. The APC, ADC and the PDP will have to deal with Nigerians’ current reality of hopelessness in the midst of plenty. And tell us why we have to vote for them again. Or else, political Death will kill the Onikoyi like a hunter who lost his apó.

News

Police Pension Scheme Violates Constitution, IHRC Tells Tinubu

Published

18 hours ago

July 5, 2025

Editor

The International Human Rights Commission, Nigeria, has thrown its weight behind the renewed push by the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, for a comprehensive reform of the Contributory Pension Scheme, as it affects retired officers of the Nigeria Police Force.

This is contained in a diplomatic memo addressed to President Bola Tinubu and titled “A Diplomatic Appeal for Police Pension Welfare Reform in Line with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

In a statement signed on Saturday by IHRC’s Head of Media and Strategic Communications, Fidelis Onakpoma, the commission said the current pension arrangement for police personnel amounts to a constitutional breach and urged the President to take urgent corrective action.

The Head of Mission, IHRC , Ambassador Duru Hezekiah, was quoted in the statement as saying, “The commission firmly supports the Inspector-General of Police’s ongoing advocacy for a just and equitable pension scheme for retired police officers.

“We call on President Tinubu to urgently address the systemic flaws in the Contributory Pension Scheme, which violate constitutional provisions guaranteeing dignity and adequate social support for public officers.”

Citing Sections 17(3)(f) and 34(1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), IHRC said the Nigerian state is legally bound to ensure the welfare and dignity of its retired officers, a responsibility it is currently failing in.

According to the commission, thousands of retired police officers are living in hardship under a pension system that disregards the realities of law enforcement service.

“The Constitution mandates the state to ensure the wellbeing of retired officers, not to abandon them to a broken system.

“The current structure of the CPS as applied to the police is inadequate, unfair, and incompatible with Nigeria’s constitutional values. These officers spent their lives in service—often in the face of extreme danger—yet they retire into poverty and indignity,” the IHRC stated.

The commission’s intervention follows a high-level meeting convened by the IGP on July 1, 2025, at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.

The meeting brought together delegations from the National Association of Retired Police Officers of Nigeria, led by AIG Paul O. Ochonu (retd.), and the Coalition of CPS Retirees, led by CP Henry Njoku (retd.), to address mounting concerns over pension inadequacies.

During the meeting, Egbetokun reiterated his resolve to push for a more just and practical pension structure, describing the current system as a gross injustice.

“Our retirees deserve dignity, support, and a structure that reflects their sacrifice and service to Nigeria.

“We cannot continue to subject our heroes to a pension scheme that is clearly unfit for the nature of their work and the risks they bore,” the IG declared.

Egbetokun’s comments echoed sentiments he had expressed earlier in February during an interactive session with retired officers at the Police Resource Centre in Abuja, where he criticized the CPS as “deeply flawed and unfit for the realities of Police service.”

The IHRC amplified this concern, highlighting what it described as an unjust disparity between Police and military retirees.

While the latter are exempted from the CPS and benefit from a more suitable pension arrangement, police retirees, the commission said, continue to suffer from a scheme that fails to provide basic security in old age.

“The military has rightly been removed from the CPS because of the peculiar nature of their job. The same logic applies—if not more so—to police personnel.

“Our police officers risk their lives daily, and they deserve a pension structure that reflects that reality. Anything less is an affront to justice, equity, and national security,” said Hezekiah.

In line with Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, the IHRC urged the Presidency to act decisively in addressing the disparity and upholding the constitutional and moral obligations of the state to its law enforcement agents.

“Reforming the police pension structure is not merely a policy issue—it is a constitutional and moral obligation. We believe this government has the opportunity to right this historical wrong and restore dignity to our Police retirees,” the statement read.
(PUNCH)

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FG To Spend N17bn On Lagos Bridge Damaged By Fire

Published

18 hours ago

July 5, 2025

Editor

The Federal Government has negotiated the cost of the Iddo Bridge rehabilitation from an initial N27bn to N17bn.

The Minister of Works, Sen. Dave Umahi, made this known to journalists during an inspection of the bridge on Friday in Lagos.

He said, “Julius Berger quoted, I think, N27 billion or thereabout, but after much negotiation and discussion, we now arrived at N17 billion.”

Umahi commended Julius Berger Nig. Plc. for demonstrating a sense of cooperation under its new leadership.

He described the company as a “born-again Berger”, attributing the breakthrough in negotiation to the understanding and openness of its new managing director.

The minister reiterated the government’s commitment to prudent spending, insisting that all contractors must align with the ministry’s standards and directives.

Umahi noted that the project had been reviewed from mere rehabilitation of the burnt section to a major work.

He expressed concern over the poor condition of the bridge, blaming it on years of neglect and human abuse, including illegal occupation and collisions by heavy-duty trucks.

He said that three spans of the bridge were severely damaged by fire, which he attributed to activities of illegal occupants who had built makeshift homes under the bridge.

“They brought in chemicals, built block walls and set up homes. Then, they set up fire that burnt the bridge and damaged three spans. Now we are going to fix the bridge completely,” Umahi said.

The minister said the Iddo Bridge, now with a headroom of about 4.5 metres, had suffered significant structural damage due to continuous hits from trucks and illegal structures beneath it.

He announced that the ministry would be creating a headroom of at least 5.6 metres.

He said that the Federal Ministry of Works was committed to restoring the bridge for the safety of all Nigerians and ensuring such incidents would not occur again.

On the issue of displaced persons, the minister said that no one would be allowed to return under the bridge.

“Nobody will stay under Iddo Bridge again as long as I remain the Minister of Works.

“The lives of the people are more important,” he said.

He warned that the government would no longer tolerate any abuse of national infrastructure.
NAN