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OPINION: Ted Cruz’s Genocide, Blasphemy And Ida The Slave Boy

Published

3 weeks ago

October 26, 2025

Today, Nigerian leaders are busy playing the biblical couple, Ananias and Sapphira, on allegation that they abet genocide in Nigeria. They do this while being enveloped in how to rig the 2027 elections. As they do, Citizen Yahaya Sharif-Aminu is on a death row. On February 23, 2020, this then 22-year-old was arrested for posting blasphemous statements on WhatsApp against Prophet Muhammad. The Kano bigoted mob, renowned for its hyena-like thirst for flesh and blood, immediately burnt down Sharif-Aminu’s family home.

For context, Sharif-Aminu is an adherent of the Tijaniyya Sufi Islamic order. That WhatsApp message ostensibly elevated, in estimation, Ibrahim Niasse, a Tijaniyya Muslim brotherhood Imam, higher than Prophet Muhammad. Tijaniyya laud Niasse, a Senegalese cleric, for reviving the sect by spreading it across West Africa.

Under Section 382(b) of the Kano State Sharia Penal Code 2000 where he was domiciled, it is illegal for a self-professed Muslim to insult the Quran or any of the Islamic prophets. The Penal Code’s recompense for such infractions, upon conviction, is death. The twelve states of the north, predominantly Muslim, are under the suzerainty of the Sharia laws.

During trial in March 2020, Sharif-Aminu was denied legal representation and was held incommunicado. On August 10, 2020, the Hausawa Filin Hockey upper-Sharia Court sentenced him to death by hanging. His appeal for “leniency,” was spurned by the Sharia judge because, “a case of blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) is among the things that a person who made them shall not be excused.” After the sentencing, then Governor of Kano State, Abdulahi Ganduje, shocked a sane world when he said he would not hesitate to sign the execution order.

In August 2020, another boy, a minor by then, named Omar Farouq, was equally convicted for blasphemy. An allegation that he made derogatory statements to a colleague in a heated argument became his albatross. Immediately, like Sharif-Aminu, a heartless mob comprising Stone-Age-minded Almajiris, typical to Northern Nigeria, descended on his home and burnt it. Omar was eventually sentenced to a ten-year imprisonment on account of being a minor.

An appeal court ordered a retrial of Sharif-Aminu’s case which again returned a judgment of death penalty on the musician. Since January 18, 2023, the case has been before the Supreme Court. The world was riled to its nadir when, in reaction, Lamido Abba Sorondinki, counsel for the Kano State government, said, “This applicant made blasphemous statements against the Holy Prophet.. If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s decision, we will execute him publicly…Anybody that has uttered any word that touches the integrity of the holy prophet, we’ll punish him.”

Ancient wisdom of my people says that no one needed to tell apart an àtànpàkò (thumb) from the omońdinrín, (little finger). Among fingers seated on the phalanges that make up the five fingers of the hand, the thumb and little finger stand out. Apart from these two, the phalanges also comprise the index, middle and the ring fingers. So, the Yoruba say, it is the àtànpàkò that points the way forward while omońdinrín describes where to go. In the last couple of weeks, like the àtànpàkò, US Senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, seems to be pointing Nigeria to Nigerians. In bursting the bubble of the Nigerian government’s appetite for its decades-old delicious broth of hypocrisy and duplicity, Cruz might just as well have been the àtànpàkò.

The Cruz’s bursting of the bubble reminds me of an ancient tale of Ida the slave boy. Not minding his years of servitude to him, Ida’s slaveholder once got him dressed in a resplendent attire, in preparation for a celebrities’ event he was invited to. So, on arrival, the organizers took Ida to where children of invited guests sat. Not long after, the celebrant, visibly perturbed, walked up to the slaveholder and asked, “Your son should have told us his specially-prepared meal was not enough. We found out he left the exalted group of children of guests and stepped into where slaves were having their meals”. Unfazed but matter-of-factly, the slaveholder told the celebrant, “You may have thought him my son but his behaviour has revealed that he is a slave.”

On his X account recently, Cruz, a Republican senator, revealed the systemic contradictions of the country we call ours. Government then began running, in the Nigerian parlance, from pillar to post, to deconstruct its age-long unsavoury profile. In his post, Cruz revealed how the rest of the world is aghast at Nigeria’s national disharmony. He also alerted the world of Nigeria’s Achilles’ heel and how its leaders’ hypocrisy constitutes the nation’s vulnerability. Cruz had written: “Officials in Nigeria are ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist Jihadists.” He further remonstrated barbaric portions of the Nigerian blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria, especially provisions which “criminalize expression, behavior, or belief perceived as insulting religion.”

The statistics of Islamists’ killings in Nigeria are grim. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that Boko Haram had killed 350,000 Nigerians as at 2021. Ex-Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, in a new book, also estimated that the insurgents had massacred “no fewer than 2,700 officers and soldiers” in over 12 years.

On September 9, 2025, Cruz doubled down on this allegation by sponsoring a bill requesting the U.S. Secretary of State “to designate the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, (CPC)” while demanding it to impose appropriate sanctions, with a caveat that, “It’s time to hold those responsible accountable.” Unfavourable and potentially unsettling for countries so tagged, the CPC is an acrid wage for countries found to have engaged in or abetted “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

Pronto, as Americans say, Nigeria drifted into a self-imposed dilemma which, again, can be summarized in an ancient wisdom of a man insistent on scouring the world for who owed his late father money. In the process of this stiff-necked attempt to demonstrate financial purity, he may stumble on one who his late father owed money. Today, like a rat struggling to free self from the choke-hold of a cobra, the Nigerian government is trapped in the center of the world’s anger. Like that man seeking who owed his father money, Nigeria’s government is choked by its own vomit.

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In May, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian student of Sokoto State College of Education, faced similar gruesome fate in the hands of the cadaver-seeking mob of northern Nigeria. Her crime was an alleged comment she made in aid of her Christian faith which allegedly disparaged Islam. The mob promptly stoned her to death and then incinerated her. The police were too scared of this murderous mob to intervene. They eventually arrested two student colleagues of Deborah’s but set them free subsequently. In northern Nigeria, it is a very rare spectacle to see murderers who kill in the name of religion arrested and prosecuted.

On account of Deborah’s killing in far away Bauchi State, Rhoda Jatau, a Christian, nurse, and mother of five, escaped death by the whiskers. Her crime was sharing the video created by someone else condemning the killing of Deborah. Immediately, a mob descended on her. It destroyed her store and injured so many people in the process. Arrested on May 20, 2022 and charged for blasphemy, Jatau’s reprieve only came after global outrage, leading to her acquittal in December, 2024.

In Northern Nigeria, many people have faced such persecution, resulting in death. In June 2023, during dispute with someone near his shop, a Muslim butcher living in Sokoto, Usman Buda, had a mob accuse him of blasphemy. He got an instant mob judgment of instant death. So also was Mubarak Bala. An ex-President of the Nigerian Humanist Association and an ex-Muslim, his charge for allegedly “blasphemous” Facebook posts got him convicted by the Kano State High Court on April 5, 2022. He was then sentenced to 24 years imprisonment. Recently in Bauchi State, an Islamic cleric, Idris Abdulaziz, was also charged for blasphemy. Realizing the fate that awaited him, Abdulaziz, as my people would say, immediately paid tribute to the hare. Also in 2016, Abdulazeez Inyass, during a secret trial in Kano, was sentenced to death for blaspheming Prophet Muhammad. Also of the Tijaniya sect, his crime was saying that Sheikh Niasse “was bigger than Prophet Muhammad”.

Of no less religious tyrannic proportion is a recent order by a Magistrate Court that two popular
creators, Idris Mai Wushirya and Basira Yar Guda, must, within 60 days, formalize a marriage relationship within 60 days. The two had posted series of viral videos wherein both engaged in romantic displays considered “indecent”. The Sharia courts in the north are notorious for handing down barbaric sentences of floggings, amputations and death penalty.

I went into details of all the blasphemy laws in northern Nigeria to be able to situate the fact that, let us even for a minute forget about the gauntlet of Boko Haram, the intense and barbaric censorship on freedom of religion in the north is Nigeria’s albatross. Unfortunately, Nigerian leaders abet it by their willing conscription into a tyranny of silence. Northern leaders can’t disclaim it for fear of not being rejected at the polls and Aso Rock is afraid to dabble in it for political expediency.

Blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria, which clearly violate the Nigerian constitution, are a legal relic in today’s modern world. Nigeria shares this untoward and disreputable space with six other countries – Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia – which still have the laws in their rule books. For instance, in Iran, Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, professionally known as Amir Tataloo, faced the Sharif-Aminu hell. An Iranian singer, rapper and songwriter controversial for his full body tatoo, Tataloo was also sentenced to death on January 19, 2025 for blasphemy.

The most abhorrent in all this is that northern leaders, from the Sultan to the lowest person, approve of this antediluvian blasphemy laws. Most times, what can be termed a licence-to-kill pall of silence from northern leaders hovers over the land. Amnesty International corroborated this when it said, “government officials rarely publicly condemn mob violence for blasphemy.” Ex-VP Atiku Abubakar, for instance, was appalled when his social media handler excoriated the barbaric murder of Deborah and immediately ordered it deleted. In August 2020, as governor, Ganduje, ex-APC chair currently undergoing trial for corruption, vowed to “waste no time in signing the warrant for the execution of the man who blasphemed.”

The truth is that, there is a connect between the barbaric blasphemy laws of northern Nigeria and the allegation of genocide by Ted Cruz. Having profiled Nigeria as a country that is receptive to barbarism, it fits into the trope to submit that the animalism of genocide is a Nigerian way of life.

Now, let us come to the Ted Cruz allegation. In an interview with the Fox News Digital, Cruz alleged further that over 52,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria since 2009, and over 20,000 churches and Christian schools got destroyed within this period. This rattled the Nigerian government which knew that if Cruz’s allegation carries the day, its pot of soup would go sour in America. Senate President Godswill Akpabio, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu and others defended this pot of soup. In his characteristic gruff, presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, took the usual Bolekaja route. “Senator, stop these malicious, contrived lies against my country. We do not have a religious war in my country,” he blabbered at Cruz.

But, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop Daniel Okoh, said the church “affirms, without hesitation, that many Christian communities in parts of Nigeria, especially in the North, have suffered severe attacks, loss of life, and the destruction of places of worship.”

To diffuse and defuse the controversy, the Nigerian government instigated a fact-finding mission to engage the narrative. It led to a pulling off of shroud from the face of pretentious patriot, Reno Omokri, who, as it would be revealed, lives off a life of packaging and make-believe. Having packaged the fact-finding team to Nigeria, like the man insistent on scouring the world for who owed his late father money, both Omokri and his sponsors got deconstructed. Mike Arnold, an ex Mayor of Blanco, Texas, against the bid to pull wool over the world’s eyes, confirmed that there is indeed genocide against Christians in Nigeria.

The controversy of whether there is genocide against Christians in Nigeria is not a new one. It dates back many years. For decades, many Christian communities in the North have been wiped out by terrorists, while churches and houses were razed. People were also beheaded by Jihadists. Under the Muhammadu Buhari government, the European Union gave incontrovertible evidence of the occurrence of these brutal killings. Doubtful that Buhari himself was not a member of the insurgents, he was surely acutely sympathetic to their cause.

Blaming Cruz for claiming that the Nigerian government ignores and “even (facilitates) the mass murder of Christians by Islamist Jihadists” runs against the grain of available facts. Like Ida the slave boy, Nigeria revealed to the world its true colour. Pushed to the wall to explode, in January 2012, then president Goodluck Jonathan admitted that there were Boko Haram sympathizers in his government. Earlier in November 2011, a Nigerian senator was charged for alleged links to the Boko Haram Islamist militants. Said Marilyn Ogar, DSS’ then spokeswoman, the organization’s arrest “confirms the service’s position that some of the Boko Haram extremists have political patronage and sponsorship”.

Also in May 2019, former president Olusegun Obasanjo admitted that the Boko Haram insurgency was religious in colour. Earlier in 2012, ex-Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, also claimed that there was a “systematic ethnic and religious cleansing” in Nigeria.

While the Nigerian government has blindly remonstrated Cruz’s claim, Professor Ebenezer Obadare, Nigerian-American academic and Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the American Council on Foreign Relations, in a piece entitled The government of Nigeria V Sen Ted Cruz, would seem to have successfully fitted together the jigsaw of why and who Boko Haram kills in its genocide. He asked the Nigerian government to first seek to understand the raison d’être of Boko Haram’s strikes. Once Aso Rock does this, he counsels, it would do less of this barren attempt to disclaim a globally known truth.

Rather than engage in driving away its own shadows, unveiling what Boko Haram represents would make the Tinubu government effectively face its reality. And the reality is that, though Boko Haram attacks Christians and Muslims too, its polytheist (the belief in or worship of more than one god) strikes make it look like it is religion-blind. The truth however is that the insurgents are after Christians and their “accomplices” in Islamic regalia.

“From Boko Haram’s perspective, there is no difference between mainstream Muslims and Christians: they are all ‘polytheists’ who suffer from a common affliction: ‘unbelief’” (of Islam) – my addition – Obadare wrote.

Instead of government spending Nigeria’s scarce resources on religious leaders and asking them to defend the indefensible, knowledge of the above fact could wake it up from its slumber. Government is also said to spend on foreign lobbyists, asking them to help it make the corpse of this genocide allegation walk. However, Prof Obadare’s take on the insurgency should get Aso Rock to be alive to the truth: Boko Haram’s genocide is against Nigerian Christians, even if its strikes stray to mainstream Islamic faith adherents.

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OPINION: Aso Rock And Kitoye Ajasa’s Lickspittle Press

Published

2 hours ago

November 16, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

President Bola Tinubu did the unexpected last Wednesday. He attended the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) Conference 2025. It was the very first for any Nigerian president. Quite absurdly, the watchdog, the Nigerian press, willingly moved into the tiger’s buba – the lair – for deliberation on its welfare. Ayinla Ade-Gaitor, the Iganna, Ìwájòwà LGA of Oyo State-born Apala musician of the 1970s/80s fame, equally wondered at this quixotic equation. My compatriots, can a tiger and a dog cohabitate in the same lair? – “K’ájá ó dúró, k’ékùn ó dúró, ńjé yíó seé se, èyin alárá wa?” Ade-Gaitor asked in his melodious Iganna-flavoured voice.

But at the 21st NGE Annual Conference (ANEC) 2025 held in its lair – the Aso Rock State House Conference Centre in Abuja – the tiger and the dog became so giddy after clinking wine glasses, so much that they both shared titivating embraces. They had both been soused to their eyeballs. When it was time for the tiger to speak, clanking its incisors menacingly and magisterially, with recent blood dripping from its lips and caked blood stuck round its nose, this strange incest reminded me of Sir Kitoye Ajasa.

Ajasa (1866 – 1937) was a Nigerian lawyer from the Saro family migrants of Dahomey, present-day Benin Republic. He was however conservative, pacifist and a lackey of the colonial authorities. While the likes of Herbert Macaulay fell out with the British rulers over their insistence that British rule was self-serving and a little in the interest of the natives, Ajasa thought otherwise. He believed that national progress could only be made if Africans were subservient to and cloned European ideas and institutions. He was an apologist of the British government, believing that criticising it was counter-productive. His reasoning was that, grovelling before white-haired, long-nosed, pink-skinned men who called themselves salvationists, was the guarantee for development.

To achieve this persuasion, Ajasa became a newspaper founder. Of course, his Nigerian Pioneer newspaper, founded in 1914, the year of Nigeria’s birth, invited so much reproach. He deliberately founded it as counterpoise to the radical Lagos Weekly Record newspaper of John Payne Jackson that was a thorn in the flesh of the colonialists. Ajasa’s brand of journalism frowned upon anti-government polemics as other papers of the time did. In return, the people of Lagos extremely distrusted it. In 1923, Ajasa wrote that his newspaper “existed in order to interpret thoroughly and accurately the Government to the people and the people to the Government”. In fact, he was a known confidant of Sir Frederick Lugard, the colonial Governor-General, and the general belief was that the Lugard government funded his Nigerian Pioneer newspaper. In its stories and editorial comments, the newspaper provided staunch support for the colonial government’s measures and cynically attacked people and organizations that were thorns in the flesh of government.

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To demonstrate their opprobrium for Ajasa’s leaflet, the Nigerian Pioneer newspaper, the people scoffed at it on the newsstand. To Ajasa’s contemporaries, his lickspittling was bothersome. They could not fathom his boot-licking attitude and openly disdained his Nigerian Pioneer as “the guardian angel of an oligarchy of reactionaries”.

Ajasa’s newspaper itself became more or less the unofficial bulletin of the colonial government. It publicly mocked nationalists who fought for development and in a particular case, in the 1916 Lagos water rate protest against the colonial government, Ajasa labeled agitators like Macaulay ‘radicals.’ In 1921, with the help of Alimotu Pelewura, leader of Lagos Women’s Association, the powerful market women’s group, who at her death in 1951, was succeeded by Abibatu Mogaji, Macaulay again led a major protest on this agitation. To Ajasa, the colonized natives must fully adopt European ideas and institutions as expressway to national progress. He was in the Nigerian parliament till 1933 and shortly after 1937 when he died, the Nigerian Pioneer died.

So, when on Wednesday, President Tinubu urged the Nigerian media to “report boldly, but do so truthfully; critique government policy but do so with knowledge and fairness. Your aim must never be to tear down, but to help build a better society,” my mind told me that that fluid and racy speech was for the klieg. In actual fact, the president wanted Kitoye Ajasa-reincarnates for journalists, an Ajitóoba-phlegm-eater – media conscripts who would blind their eyes to government’s wobbly feet at national parade. Just as Kitoye Ajasa did for Frederick Lugard and the British colonial lords.

Since Lugard, the Kitoye Adisa-kind press had always been the preference of governments thereafter. Ever since the establishment of the Nigerian Daily Times on June 1, 1926 and even prior, the Nigerian press and Nigerians themselves had always been thirsty for adversarial journalism as a weapon of combating the colonial government. Since then, the Nigerian media’s treatment of news became binary: it was either they were for the people against government, or against the people, but in romance with government, like Kitoye Ajasa’s.

Since the Muhammadu Buhari government, the Nigerian media has operated under a very precarious situation. Its first blow was economic. As Eze Anaba, the editors’ president said, the Nigerian democracy, resilient through the ages, is currently under the bayonet of “insecurity, economic hardship, misinformation, and declining public trust in institutions, (as well as) government officials’ intolerance, sometimes, to freedom of the press.” The gravamen of Anaba’s speech can be found in his quip that “editors must therefore defend the sanctity of truth, insist on transparency, and hold power to account — not as adversaries of government, but as constructive partners in the pursuit of national progress.”

In what would look like a systematic but gradual decimation of the Nigerian press, governments have since 1999 corroded its powers. The ostensible aim is to ensure that the Nigerian press barks but bites seldom. For those who can recall, the battle to wean Nigeria of military rule was largely fought on the pages of its newspapers. The press literally yielded its space for democracy activists to make use of it for their campaign for democracy. In the process, many journalists were sacrificed. Many were jailed and maimed. Bagauda Kaltho of The News signposted the clan of journalists who paid the ultimate price, in anticipation of liberty for Nigerians today. The newspaper press was so formidable that both Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha had to roll out tanks to extinguish its irritating flame. At the end of the day, the Nigerian press was largely responsible for the rout of military rule in Nigeria and its replacement with civil rule.

By 1999 when Nigeria returned power to civilians, the Nigerian newspaper press was still blistering. Its armaments were still potent and practitioners retained their energy which seemed to be bursting at its seams. Not long after the commencement of the Fourth Republic, the newspaper press made public examples of the carried-over rots of Nigeria’s governmental dysfunctionality. One after the other, even at a time when its tools were analogue, the press made mincemeat of public officers who, as it was later revealed, were evil doppelgängers of what they claimed to be in public. Salisu Buhari, the young Kano State legislator, who became Speaker of the House of Representatives, had his bubble burst. So also did Evan Enwerem. But for his street craftiness, the man who is the Nigerian president today would have been drowned by that hyper-ventilating press energy of the early 4th Republic.

The press of this period’s investigative acumen was top-notch and it could compete with any newspaper press anywhere in the world. My haunch is that, alarmed by the enormous power at its disposal and the system-purifying but dirty people-destroying powers within its grips, governments since 1999, either deliberately or otherwise, perfected plans to castrate the deadly watchdog of the Nigerian press. Today, they have made a huge success of this engagement. The success is such that, the wily politicians in agbada, babariga and Ishiagu can thump their individual chests that the battle to rid the Nigerian governance space of the irritancy of the Nigerian press, which the military, with their tanks and artillery, couldn’t achieve in decades, were effortlessly executed by them.

Today, the Nigerian newspaper press has been so mercilessly drubbed that it is barely existing. Gradually, an underground and sustained shellacking was waged on it and what is left is its decimated carcass. Many of Nigeria’s erstwhile matador press houses, where the warriors who fought military rule to a standstill operated from, are desecrated and abandoned. Their print-runs are caricatures of those noble eras when they proudly bore the tag “mass” in their media operations. Governments after governments since 1999 would seem to have deliberately jerked up costs of running newspapers to the league of what you needed to procure nukes. The newsroom has emaciated so terribly that you would imagine it was afflicted by a weight-pining cancer.

Last Wednesday, I reckon that the tiger was happy that the watchdog had been finally castrated, can bark and cannot bite. It lay prostrate by its feet with a begging bowl. All those ills that plague the Nigerian media today, itemized by Anaba, the League’s president, are physical manifestations of a conquered press whose conquest is a product of gradual decimation. The graveyard of the print media is luxuriant with lofty memories.

Thanks to the broadcast and social media which have both taken over the “mass” in print journalism’s erstwhile “mass media” pedigree. But for them, the Nigerian press would have today been a totally conquered battlefield. The watchdog must have entered the tiger’s lair last Wednesday, believing that the tiger’s smiles approximated its love for it. Truth be told, in the eyes of its newly acquired tiger friend, the press is a gourmet meal it has prepared for the dining table. Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin’s talented bard, once explained the danger in that emergency dalliance. “Adìye òpìpí” is the Yoruba name for a featherless hen which, in stature and outlook, bears striking resemblance to a hawk. The bard warned this hawk-lookalike hen to be wary of its newfound friendship with this carnivore, lest its entrails end in the belly of the raptor. Perhaps deceived that, being a media owner himself, like Odolaye’s òpìpí hen, the president is one of them, the Nigerian press, like this mistaken hen, would realize its folly too late when its flesh ends inside the hawk’s belly.

Any country of the world where the press and government are cosseted in such an amorous and adulterous relationship as we saw in Aso Rock last Wednesday has unilaterally tossed good governance out of its window. It reminds me of a paraphrase of a famous quote by US Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black. Black wrote: “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.” But, when the press deliberately hands itself over to government, what then happens?

The Nigerian press today lives in The Wailers’ archetypal concrete jungle. In this jungle, though there are no physical chains around its feet, it is not free. Three young Jamaican boys, which included Bob Marley, had in 1973, in their ‘Catch A Fire’ album, sang about the melancholic life of a wanderer which the Nigerian press found itself living today. Glory lost, barely living and now captive in the hands of the state, those young Jamaican boys’ melancholy is a fitting description of today›s press.

The only way the Nigerian media can play its rightful role in the success of democracy, especially the success of the Tinubu government, isn’t by sucking up to people in power or being their lapdog. A century after Kitoye Ajasa played his groveling role to Lugard and British colonialists, history hasn’t forgotten him. It reserves a place for him till today. What will it say about us tomorrow?

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Edo Dep. Gov. Idahosa Inducted, Bestowed With Rotary Premium Award

Published

13 hours ago

November 15, 2025

Editor

The Edo State deputy governor, Hon. Dennis Idahosa, has been bestowed with the Rotary Premium Award by the Benin Metropolitan Rotary Club, District 9141 in recognition of his humanitarian disposition.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Friday Aghedo, the deputy governor was accorded this recognition when the humanitarian organization visited his office to induct him into the club

Idahosa expressed appreciation for the recognition and promised to continue to contribute his best for the betterment of the society and humanity.

“When I was growing up, my prayer to God, was Bless me so that I will be a blessing to the world,” he stated.

REAS ALSO:Okpebholo, Idahosa Bag UNIBEN Distinguished Service, Leadership Awards

He noted that the recognition was in no doubt, a call for higher responsibilities.

Rotary President, Hon. Elizabeth Ativie who gave reasons for the award and investiture, maintained that the induction was based on Idahosa’s humanitarian disposition which is in line with Rotary Club’s doctrine of service above self, humanitarian and community.

“This is a reflection of where your heart is,” she told Idahosa.

The Assistant District Governor of the Club, (AG) Samson Olayiwola of Zone 20, D 9141, later decorated Idahosa with the “Rotarian pin,” the recognized logo of the Rotary Club worldwide.

This was in addition to the presentation of a certificate of membership and embroidered with a sash that uniquely identifies Idahosa as a member of the “RC Benin Metropolitan District.”

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Doctors’ Strike Continues As NARD Demands Fair Deal, Better Pay

Published

14 hours ago

November 15, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has called on the Federal Government to immediately conclude a long-delayed Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), as their indefinite strike entered its 15th day on Saturday.

It also demanded a review of the outdated Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS).

In a statement posted on X on Saturday, the union said: “Dear Nigerians, Doctors Deserve a Fair Deal! For long we’ve waited for a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), a simple, written promise that ensures fairness, clear work terms, and proper pay. But the government keeps delaying, while doctors face rising costs and crumbling morale.

“We demand the immediate conclusion of the CBA and review of the outdated CONMESS salary structure.”

The strike, which began earlier this month, has affected 91 hospitals nationwide, including federal teaching hospitals, specialist institutions, and federal medical centres, disrupting medical services across the country.

NARD said the union’s 19-point demand list is reasonable and necessary for the welfare of doctors and patients.

The list includes the payment of arrears under the CONMESS salary structure, disbursement of the 2025 Medical Residency Training Fund, prompt payment of specialist allowances, recognition of postgraduate qualifications, and improved working conditions.

The union stressed that these measures are essential to sustain doctors and maintain a functional healthcare system.

President Bola Tinubu has also directed the Ministry of Health to immediately resolve the strike, noting that the government is addressing the doctors’ demands.

Despite the directive, NARD said delays in finalising the CBA and reviewing salaries have continued to demoralise doctors, many of whom face rising living costs while providing critical medical services.