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OPINION: Reps’ Drunkard Democracy

Published

1 year ago

June 24, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

I had thought that our lawmakers in Abuja cared only for big cars, big bucks and big boobs. I never knew they also have deep love for alcohol – dry gin – and would do anything to protect it from the ravages of restrictive laws. And, because the standards of public and private morality have fallen terribly low, I feel we had better talk now before our democracy becomes synonymous with kaikai, with shekpe, ogogoro and ogwofy.

“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session…” is one very popular quote found in an 1866 New York court decision. The judge was Gideon Tucker. Given what we see daily here, I wonder how many Nigerians will say today that the judge lied.

There is this agency called NAFDAC which first barged in on our consciousness when adorable Dora Akunyili was its boss. That woman fought many wars – the one we knew she lost publicly was her long battle with cancer. May God continue to rest her beautiful soul.

The agency she nurtured is never short of wars. It was created to be constantly in the trenches. Some destinies are that wired. And, it has forever been that for NAFDAC. Because of ogogoro, the agency, this moment, faces a low-intensity battle from one of the chambers that make laws for our country.

Whether gin or jenever, spirit drink was at a time here famously called ‘fire-water.’ And, as that name predicts, uncontrolled liquor is fire, it burns the body and chars the soul.

So, on 21 May 2010, at the 63rd World Health Assembly in Geneva, the 193 member-states of the World Health Organisation adopted what they called “global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol.” Nigeria was there, it participated actively in the deliberations, and it signed, pledging its commitment to that policy. The subsequent alcohol-in-sachets ban by our government was an activation of Nigeria’s fidelity to that commitment.

On February 1, 2024, NAFDAC announced that it had started the enforcement of the ban of alcohol sold in sachet or in less than 200ml PET bottles. If that agency and, particularly, its Director General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, thought the announcement was the end of those small stuffs, they were mistaken. The agency, mid last week, told the press that it was being ‘advised’ by the House of Representatives to lift the ban. It said several meetings had been held on this between them and the lawmakers.

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Something is not clear to me here. The Green Chamber can soak itself in green bottles, our health authorities have not said it shouldn’t. The people who have crossed the river of fortune to the opulent side called the House of Representatives do not drink what NAFDAC banned. Indeed, what they drink no one dare ban. So, of all the existential problems besetting Nigerians, the priority of the National Assembly is Sapele water retailed in abject packs. Are the lawmakers in sympathy-bed with the poor drinkers or with the affluent merchants?

I am shocked that our Reps do not care that official statistics say abuse of alcohol (especially gin in small packs) accounts for 50 percent of road accidents and for 29 percent of deaths in Nigeria. I am also curious to know why a House presided over by a northern Muslim speaker will be making a strong case for easy access to strong drinks. Where the speaker hails from, alcohol sale and consumption have been illegal there since Uthman Dan Fodio’s Jihad of 1804. But NAFDAC’s press statement said the last pro-alcohol-in-sachet meeting of Thursday, June 13, 2024 was at the instance of the speaker and it held in his office with his Chief of Staff standing in for him!

Sometimes you watch drunk bus drivers and tipsy okada riders doing suicidal, homicidal spins. You see them poor and broken and you wonder how they fund their regular inebriation. The answer is in the cheap cost of alcohol in sachets and in small bottles. It is the affordability and the accessibility and the havoc it wreaks that the ban targets.

Because pure water costs more than dry gin in sachet, you can’t use cost to convince the guzzlers to stitch their throats against the burns of the fire they drink. We’ve always had alcohol abuse challenges in this country. There was a time under the British when gin functioned as convertible currency. In one instance, some unscrupulous government officials were accused of accepting gin as payment for fines. Today, there is an epidemic of drunkenness, even among children.

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“Children who drink alcohol are more likely to use drugs, get bad grades, suffer injury or death, engage in risky sexual activity, make bad decisions, and have health problems,” NAFDAC’s Director-General, Professor Adeyeye, said in February this year while explaining that the ban was focused on controlling unrestricted underage access to alcoholic drinks. She said “It is a response to the growing concerns about the health risks associated with excessive alcohol consumption, particularly among the youths who are the primary consumers of these sachet and small bottle alcoholic beverages.”

I thought lawmakers are leaders and leaders exist to protect the led from all forms of harm – including from affordable spirits.

On September 1, 2005, BBC’s Africa Live opened a discussion on whether home-brewed alcohol had a place in modern Africa. It mentioned Ogogoro in Nigeria, Umkomboti in South Africa, Nsafufuo or Muratina in Ghana and Chang’aa in Kenya. The BBC got varied and very interesting responses from across the continent. The one from Nigeria particularly interests me. One Owolabi Kayode from Nigeria told the BBC that: “In Nigeria among the lower classes, local brew has become an integral part of their every day diet. As early as 0700 in the morning you find people at the bus park taking their usual ‘shot’ as they call it. The most painful part of it all is that the bus drivers also ‘mark register’ with the sellers. Hence, I am of the opinion that it does more harm than good to the society, as these drinks cause more health problem to these folks.” You and I know that what that fellow told the BBC 19 years ago was very true then and it is truer now. If there is any variation between what was in 2005 and what is now, it is just that spirit in sachet has largely displaced local brews.

History is a beast. It repeats itself in very ghastly details. Long before independence; in fact, long before amalgamation, the white man was torn, as our lawmakers are today, between stopping our people from destroying themselves with cheap liquor and protecting the business interest of white importers of spirit drinks.

From the last decades of the 19th century to the first two decades of the 20th, a robust campaign against the liquor trade was met with equal response by the importers. Pro-liquor government officials argue that “drink produces an amount of revenue which cannot be surrendered without a complete dislocation of finances.” The abolitionists sneered at what they called the “moral bankruptcy” of the officials. The British House of Commons took a hard stance against this drink pejoratively called ‘fire-water’ on 24 April, 1888. The 1890 Brussels Conference of the European Powers in Africa had time to also consider the matter. It banned the spread of liquor sale to “where it had not yet been established” – northern Nigeria. Lord Lugard, in a confidential memo dated 8 April, 1916 described the liquor trade as “a sterile import which does not improve the standard of life or add to the well-being and comfort of the people.” The colonial government subsequently tried all tricks to tackle the gin trade. It imposed higher import duties, it didn’t work. It ordered a reduction in the quality and ‘strength’ of the drinks; the drinkers drank heavily still. Then in January 1919, the government “prohibited the importation of spirits into Africa. This was effected in Nigeria by the Customs Tariff Ordinance (1916) of 25 March, 1919”.

I suggest that our lawmakers read Ayodeji Olukoju’s ‘Rotgut and Revenue: Fiscal Aspects of the Liquor Trade in Southern Nigeria, 1890-1919’. I drew the above from there, and from Richard M. Bird’s ‘Taxing Alcohol in Nigeria’. I also drew strength from other related sources. During his time, the white man chose the side of humanity – he took measures that disincentivized buying alcohol cheap and drinking alcohol heavy. Our current lawmakers can help protect the law by not getting our democracy drunk. They will do this by pocketing their lift-the-ban advice. It is a poisonous brew.

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INTERPOL Arrests Nigerian In Argentina Over Multi-country Romance Scam

Published

3 hours ago

October 8, 2025

Editor

A Nigerian national identified as Ikechukwu N. has been arrested in Argentina for allegedly orchestrating multiple online romance scams targeting thousands of victims across several countries, according to a statement released by INTERPOL on Tuesday.

The arrest was made under Operation Jackal, an INTERPOL-led operation focusing on West African organised criminal groups involved in cyber fraud, money laundering, and related transnational crimes.

INTERPOL announced via its official X handle that Ikechukwu’s arrest marked Argentina’s first arrest of a fugitive under a Red Notice who was simultaneously listed in the organisation’s Silver Notice database — a new project aimed at tracing and recovering criminal assets worldwide.

The statement read: “Argentine authorities have captured Nigerian national Ikechukwu N., marking the country’s first arrest of a #RedNotice fugitive who was also the subject of an INTERPOL Silver Notice. The suspect is accused of orchestrating multiple romance scams involving thousands of women, and leading an international cybercrime network.”

INTERPOL added that the arrest was jointly carried out by the Argentine Federal Police and the Airport Security Police, with assistance from the INTERPOL Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC), the Federal Intelligence Secretariat (FIS), and INTERPOL Brazil.

The Silver Notice project, piloted in January 2025, enables member countries to share intelligence on the location and recovery of illicitly acquired assets linked to transnational crime.

Although details of the victims and total financial losses remain undisclosed, the operation is part of a broader international crackdown on cyber-enabled fraud schemes traced to West African syndicates.

Nigeria has been a focal point of similar investigations. In December 2024, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) announced the arrest of 792 suspects — including foreign nationals — linked to a crypto-romance fraud ring operating from Lagos.

The syndicate reportedly targeted victims in the Americas and Europe through social media and messaging platforms, promising relationships and fake investment opportunities before defrauding them.

INTERPOL said further investigations into Ikechukwu’s activities are ongoing, with cooperation expected between Argentine authorities, Nigerian law enforcement, and other international partners involved in Operation Jackal.

Always ask who coin these words, who to benefit from such words

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Eswatini Jails 10 Africans Deported From US

Published

2 days ago

October 6, 2025

Editor

The African kingdom of Eswatini said it received and jailed 10 more deportees from the United States on Monday as part of a US scheme to expel undocumented migrants.

Eswatini took in a first group of five men in July, with Ghana, Rwanda, and South Sudan also accepting US deportees in recent months in a programme criticised by rights groups.

The tiny southern African nation agreed in May to accept up to 160 deportees in exchange for $5.1 million to “build its border and migration management capacity”, according to a deal signed with the United States and seen by AFP.

Its correctional services department said in a statement Monday it “confirms the arrival of ten (10) third country nationals from the United States of America”.

It did not give details but said they had been “securely accommodated in one of the country’s correctional facilities” and the government would “facilitate their orderly repatriation”.

A US-based attorney representing some of the deportees said the new group included “three Vietnamese, one Filipino, one Cambodian”.

The lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, represents two of the Vietnamese nationals who arrived Monday.

“One of my clients … tried to assert a reasonable fear of harm being deported to Eswatini, but ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) ignored him and put him on the plane anyways,” he told AFP.

He also represents a Vietnamese and a Laotian who were part of the first group which also included nationals from Cuba, Jamaica and Yemen.

– ‘Legal black hole’ –

The deal that Eswatini signed with the United States on May 14 says that the US deportees may include third country nationals “with criminal backgrounds and/or who are designated suspected terrorists”.

Washington said the first group of men had been convicted of crimes in the United States, including child rape and murder, but their lawyers told AFP that all five had long finished serving their sentences.

Eswatini jailed them in its maximum security Matsapha Correctional Centre which is notorious for holding political prisoners and for overcrowding.

One of them, a 62-year-old Jamaican who had reportedly completed a sentence for murder in the United States, was sent back to his country around two weeks ago.

Nguyen said Eswatini was a “legal black hole” and the deportees were denied legal counsel.

His two clients had been detained since mid-July without a charge, he said.

“I cannot call them. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access,” he told AFP.

Lawyers and civil society groups in Eswatini have gone to court to challenge the legality of the detentions.

A local lawyer on Friday won a court ruling allowing him to visit the four men still detained, but the government immediately appealed, suspending the ruling.

US President Donald Trump has overseen a drastic expansion of the practice of deporting people to countries other than their nation of origin, notably by sending hundreds to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

But rights experts have warned the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to nations where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.

Human Rights Watch last month urged African governments to refuse to accept US deportees and to terminate deals already in effect, saying they violated global rights law.

Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland and landlocked by neighbours South Africa and Mozambique, has been led by King Mswati III since 1986 and his government has been accused of human rights violations.

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Russian Strikes Kill Five In Ukraine, Cause Power Outages

Published

3 days ago

October 5, 2025

Editor

Russian strikes Sunday on Ukraine killed five people and badly damaged energy infrastructure, temporarily severing power supplies to tens of thousands and prompting neighbouring Poland put ground defence on high alert.

Russia has stepped up strikes on energy networks, increasing fears Moscow would resume its widespread campaign of attacks on power facilities, which have plunged millions into darkness in past winters.

Russian forces fired 496 drones and 53 missiles at Ukraine, the majority of which were shot down, according to the Ukrainian air force.

“Sadly, five people were killed. My sincere condolences to everyone who lost loved ones to this terror,” Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Strikes killed four people near Lviv, which lies in western Ukraine and is hundreds of kilometers from the front line, and has been largely spared the attacks that have hit cities further east.

“Near Lviv, an entire family of four was killed in their home, including a teenage girl,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.

Emergency services released photos showing firefighters battling flames in a destroyed building, and helping elderly residents to safety.
Attacks also killed one person in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and wounded people near the eastern front, local authorities said.
“Russians once again targeted our infrastructure -– everything that ensures normal life for our people,” Zelensky said.

The strikes cut power to over 110,000 subscribers across several regions, Ukraine’s emergency services said, with the hardest hit being Zaporizhzhia.

– ‘Gas, heat and light’ –
Overnight, more than 73,000 people in Zaporizhzhia were left without electricity, regional head Ivan Fedorov said, though power had been partially restored by the afternoon.

Ukraine’s state-run gas company Naftogaz network also reported damage to its network.
“These maniacal terrorist strikes are aimed solely at one thing — depriving Ukrainians of gas, heat, and light,” Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi said in a statement.

The Russian army said it launched an attack “against enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine and gas and energy infrastructure facilities that ensured their operation.”

Russian attacks have also rattled Ukraine’s European allies after a spate of alleged Russian airspace violations into Europe.

NATO boosted its defences along its eastern borders throughout the month as it accused Moscow of testing the alliance’s air defences with drone incursions into several members and by flying military jets in Estonian airspace.

Overnight Poland’s armed forces said on X that they had mobilised planes and put ground defences on high alert to secure the country’s airspace, especially in areas close to Ukraine.

Ukraine also said Russia was intensifying a campaign of air strikes on its railway network in an attempt to isolate frontline communities ahead of winter.

Russia launched drones at two passenger trains in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region on Saturday, killing one person and wounding dozens, according to Ukrainian officials.