The Lagos State Police Command has confirmed the arrest of a Benue State man, Lintex Ogale, who reportedly stabbed his girlfriend, Deborah Okwori, to death in her apartment located in the mainland area of the state.

The command’s Deputy Public Relations Officer, Babaseyi Oluseyi, confirmed this in an exclusive telephone interview with PUNCH Metro on Sunday.

It was earlier gathered from the victim’s cousin, Laff Ijuo, that the suspect and the victim’s romantic relationship had gone sour about two years ago.

Ijuo, in an interview with PUNCH Metro on Sunday, said Deborah had on several occasions reiterated her unwillingness to continue the relationship with Lintex, a decision the suspect was said to have continued to resist.

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Ijuo noted that the situation between the duo went wild on Wednesday after Lintex allegedly disguised himself as a dispatch rider to enter his estranged girlfriend’s apartment.

Ijuo said, “The victim’s name is Deborah Okwori, and the accused is Lintex Ogale. Both are from Benue State. They were dating, but Deborah ended things about two years ago. Since then, the guy has been insisting that they should reconcile, but she refused.

“He started making threats that she cannot move on with another man and that if he can’t have her, no one will. Deborah had to block him on all platforms so that she could have her peace, but he tried every means to lure her out and meet him with different phone numbers. However, she declined.

“Knowing where she lives, he gained access to the estate on Wednesday night, disguised as a dispatch rider. Her compound gate was locked, so he used another compound through the fence to gain entrance. He came along with a knife.”

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The cousin alleged that Lintex, armed with a knife, had forced his way into Deborah’s apartment before stabbing her in the stomach.

He continued that the neighbours who heard the ensuing noise stormed the scene, overpowered the suspect, and called the police.

He added, “The main door was not closed, but the net was locked. He broke the net and went in. He cut off the gas supply hose in an attempt to trigger an explosion, but that didn’t work.

“He then overpowered her and stabbed her multiple times. The cuts were so deep that her lungs were perforated. Through the neighbours, the guy was disarmed, and the police were called to pick him up.”

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Ijuo appealed to the authorities to ensure that justice is served in the matter.

“We want justice to be served accordingly. We have seen how similar cases were carried out,” he concluded.

Confirming the arrest, Oluseyi said that the matter had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation.

“I can confirm the incident involving Deborah. The suspect has been arrested, and the case has been transferred to the SCID for further investigation,” the DPRO said.

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This incident added to the number of domestic violence and assault cases involving lovers and couples alike.

The trend, which often stems from unresolved disputes and misunderstandings, often results in injuries for victims and, in some cases, death.

In January, a 22-year-old lady identified as Iyanu Adedeji allegedly stabbed her husband, Funsho Jimoh, to death in the Gbonogun area of Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.

It was learnt that the duo, who were married with two children, argued over alleged extramarital affairs, which degenerated into a scuffle.

READ ALSO:Driver Stabs Former Boss To Death In Lagos

During the scuffle, Iyanu had allegedly stabbed Funsho in the chest, leading to his death.

Similarly, in February, the Bauchi State Police Command arrested one Salamatu Danjuma, a 25-year-old resident of Nadabo village in Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area, in connection with the death of her husband.

According to the command’s Police Public Relations Officer, Ahmed Wakil, preliminary investigations revealed that the couple had been facing an ongoing domestic dispute regarding the custody of their six-year-old daughter.
(PUNCH)

By Festus Adedayo

Poor Goodluck Ebele Jonathan! Last Thursday, at the 70th birthday of his ex-Chief of Staff, Chief Mike Aiyegbeni Oghiadomhe, in Benin, Edo State, the former Nigerian president revealed the underbelly of Nigerian politics. At that event, Jonathan opened up a wound he had nursed since he lost the 2015 presidential election. It was his ordeals in the hands of political Askaris. “Politics in the Nigerian standard is about betrayals. I have witnessed a lot of betrayal during 2015 election,” he said.

Apart from politics, in liberation struggles, betrayers and betrayals are rife. During South Africa’s apartheid era, a number of former activists, or “comrades” who formed a bulwark of resistance against white minority rule, turned coat. A sedimentation of betrayals could be found in the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) and the African National Congress (ANC’s) military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Either bought or forced through torture, “Comrades” of the struggle morphed into operatives for the Apartheid regime, squealing on their ex-comrades and acting as police agents. Many even participated in death squads against their former allies. They were then given the derogatory label of Askari. Initially a moniker for police in Swahili, ‘Askari’ stuck on Apartheid era turncoats.

My first opportunity of meeting Jonathan, the man who would be president of Nigeria, was in 2005 at Idah, (I guess) Kogi State. Ostensibly seeking ties to the apron strings of then PDP National Chairman, Dr. Ahmadu Ali, Jonathan had come to Idah for Ali’s child’s wedding ceremony. It was at the thick of the crisis of Diepreye Solomon Alamieyeseigha who was subsequently removed by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly.

The Jonathan I saw at Idah was as harmless and peaceful as the white pigeon, a mythical bird Yoruba call Adaba. The people even deified Adaba with an ancient tag which holds that if she perches on your rooftop, peace had made it its hibernation.

In Idah that day, Jonathan appeared to me as wearing the innocence of a child. He cut the visor of a man alien to the scorched-earth hearts of Nigerian politicians. Over the years however, I presumed Jonathan’s participation at the highest echelon of Nigerian politics had sufficiently scarred his heart. My assumption was predicated on an ancient saying of my people, to wit that, until you acquire the status of the elderly, you will constantly frolic with children who then stomp on you like one desecrating a sacred shrine, (B’á ò nínkàn àgbà, bí èwe l’àárí).

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Last week however, Jonathan seemed to have come of age. He wore the full plumage of Nigerian politics. The truth is that, in Nigerian politics today, at least since the First Republic, there has been a confetti of betrayals. It has got to an epidemic level, so much that trust, tired of abuse, developed wings and flew out of Nigerian politics. Politicians laugh at anyone who expresses surprise at serial betrayals among them. The situation today is that men and women of honour take a flight from it.

In the Yoruba society and in the people’s everyday life, trust and betrayal are very fundamental as well. Virtually all of their relationships are woven round trust, for cohesion, peace and societal stability. Because experience showed them that deviants exist who break the cord of trust, covenants called Ìmùlè, literally meaning ‘drinking (from) the water of the earth’ and Májèmú, whose literal translation is, ‘drinking from a calabash bowl’, are used to suborn agreements. In both agreements of Ìmùlè and Májèmú made between parties, the earth – which Yoruba Apala bard, Ayinla Omowura, in a deployment of a Hausa epithet, called, ‘gidan kowa’ – home of all – is invoked to witness and ensure abidance.

When either of the parties reneges from these covenants, the Yoruba say, Ó dalè. The one who wrongs the other is then the Òdàlè, or in translation, “betrayer of the earth”. The consequence of betrayal in Yorubaland isn’t benign. Either said during the agreement process or not, the phrase, “whosoever betrays the earth will disappear with the earth” (enit’óbá dalè, á báilè lo” is a poignant reminder that silent as the earth, the witness, may be during agreements (verbal or non-communicated) the earth is a dangerous mystical personality which reserves punishment for violation of agreements made while standing on it – “ilè ògéré af’okó ye’rí, alápò ìkà”.

In social or political relations, some deviants have however had a history of undermining the concept of trust by attempting to put a lie to land’s mystical personality. On many occasions when they did that, they have been recipients of catastrophic comeuppances. While there are so many examples in individual social relations, political examples will aptly illustrate the trust deficit which Goodluck Jonathan said was as rare as the teeth of a hen in Nigerian politics.

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Take for instance the experience of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. While the political successes of this Yoruba people’s recent ancestor have remained legendary till today, seldom is a dig done into the betrayals that dogged his political career. When he chose to vacate Western Nigeria to contest to be Nigeria’s Prime Minister, unable to secure the needed votes, one of his associates said this of him, as recorded by Awolowo himself: “I warned him when he was going to contest the Federal Elections – ‘Do not go to the Federal House, sit down like the Sardauna of Sokoto in the Northern Region, sit down like Dr. Azikiwe in the East.’ He would not listen, he wanted to become the Prime Minister. Now he has failed and since his failure the man has become insane. Since his failure, the man has become sick. So I appeal to the Prime Minister to put him in an asylum.” The man was one Chief E. O. Okunowo, representing Ijebu Central of the Western Region, at the First Republic Federal House of Representatives. You will find it on page 167 in Awolowo’s The travails of democracy and the rule of law (1987).

Awo’s closest political allies plotted his political ruin and death. They sent him to jail and gloated about the loss of his first son. Their plan was for him not to return from the Calabar prison. During the second republic, the stench of betrayal did not abate. Some of his closest allies had even begun angling to run for presidency in the proposed 1987 election.

Chief Ayo Rosiji, Awolowo’s main lieutenant and one of the founders of the Action Group, also gave him the Julius Caesar’s Brutus stab. This brilliant engineer and lawyer resigned his position as Publicity Secretary of the Action Group and ported to the opposition party. Rosijiit was who told his biographer, Australia-born historian, Dr. Nina Mba, in the biography, Man With Vision, of another betrayal that could have assumed Nigeria-wide shock. According to Mba, Rosiji told her that sometime in late 1958, Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, was about to betray his political godfather, Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Writes Mba, “According to Rosiji,… Balewa confided in him that he was fed up with being prime minister and of being harassed by the Sardauna, and that he was thinking of resigning.” Rosiji said he then attempted to convince Balewa to, rather than dump Bello and return to his teaching job as he threatened, join Awolowo’s Action Group. While Balewa thought that was an outlandish suggestion, Rosiji asked him to “think about it.”

S. L.Akintola is another. Till today, the reason for the schism between him and Awolowo remains mythic. While Chief Bola Ige, in his People, politics and politicians of Nigeria (1995) said the reason was trust deficit as Awolowo “(left) in charge of his base a deputy and Premier whom he did not quite trust and who was not his choice,” some scholars like Bill Dudley and EghosaOsaghae said it was ideological differences.

In Jonathan’s lamentation of betrayal in Nigerian politics, there is however the need to draw a line between the wickedness of godfatherism and self-liberation of godsons cloaked as betrayals. As I wrote in the piece, “His Excellency the godfather” (June 24, 2018) what is termed political betrayal in 4th Republic Nigerian politics is actually godfatherism gone sour. In 2003 Anambra State for instance, Chris Uba, the barely literate but stupendously wealthy businessman, exposed the destructive phenomenon. He had financed the election of Chris Ngige to be governor, pulling him by the nape of his trousers to the Okija shrine to swear by an oath of abidance. When it was time to start drawing from his “investment,” Ngige reneged, details of which became a global embarrassment to Nigerian politics.

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After the 2007 handover to lackeys by the 1999 governors set, the cookies began to crumble. Some of the cookies were immediate while many took longer time. In Lagos’ Bola Tinubu and the trio of Raji Fashola, AkinwumiAmbode and JideSanwo-Olu, what many earlier saw was a matrimony worthy of an example. Tinubu continued to reap the dividends of his ‘investments’ in his handpicked successors. He determines the political barometer of Lagos politics and holds the lids of its finance. Not until the re-election campaign of Fashola and Ambode and Sanwo-Olu’s alleged cash gift to Tinubu’s political enemies did the cracks begin to be noticeable. Tinubu himself is said to parade a graveyard of those who betrayed him.

In many other states subsequently, the matrimony became a bedlam almost immediately. In Enugu, for instance, Sullivan Chime was still a governor-elect when he started to undo all that his mentor and godfather did. Orji Kalu suffered same fate in Abia, where his erstwhile Chief of Staff, T. A. Orji eventually emerged governor. Orji spent his years in government firing ballistic missiles at Kalu who had spent billions of state funds to skew the process in his favour. This ‘betrayal’ has since then been replicated in virtually all the states, with anointed godsons, having mutated to become godfathers themselves, attempting to foist their own godsons too as successors. In Anambra, Peter Obi, while shopping for a godson, walked into the supposedly sane banking hall as he searched for an urbane, corporate world executive. He got Willie Obiano, a mirthless character. Less than a year after, the strange, somber-looking Obiano transmuted from the gentleman who couldn’t hurt a fly into a stone-hearted political pall-bearer who strenuously attempted to preside over Obi’s political funeral. It was same story in Kano State where Umar Ganduje, erstwhile Rabiu Kwankwaso’s lickspittle, became a hydra who sought to swallow his ex-boss.

The list is endless. The most recent is the stench of the Nyesom Wike-SiminalayiFubara ‘betrayal’ claim in Rivers State. In all these however, a few have remained true to their predecessors, like the Kogi State governor. This is regardless of the predecessor’s betrayal of the people of his state.

The chestnut I’m pulling out of the fire today is that, from the Goodluck Jonathan betrayal story of last Thursday, you cannot get a morality tale in which the lines between heroes and villains are clearly drawn. Jonathan himself betrayed some political appendages when he went into bed with Tinubu in the 2015 elections. Tinubu the godfather also betrayed his party’s presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, for Jonathan. Ribadu, as a result, won only Osun state for his ACN party. The morality of judging who is the betrayer between a godfather and godson becomes even dud when you ask whether the money used to finance those elections that birthed “the betrayers” were not stolen wealth of the people. In which case, the people’s prayer is that, like the “eni” – the dew that hangs on leaves by bush-part sidewalks in the morning – the amity of the godfather and godson must never last beyond sunrise.

The dilemma of this surfeit of betrayals is however that, unless Nigerian politics becomes an engagement of honesty, trust, truth and fidelity, decent people will continue to flee from it. In all the betrayals, the grand betrayal I see is the one against the Nigerian people whose lives have backtracked in 26 years of the 4th Republic.

The National Leadership of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) on Sunday distanced itself from a strike called by the Western Zone of the association.

The Western Zone had said it was backing the Petroleum Tanker Drivers’ opposition to Dangote acquiring trucks to transport its products to users.

The Western Zone in a press statement signed by its Chairman and Acting Secretary, Basorun Joseph Akanni and Mr. Adeleke Adeoye, said Dangote’s intention contravenes the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), and urged its members to begin a strike on Monday.

But a statement by the National Ex-Officio, Douglas Iyike on behalf of the National Executive Council (NEC) of IPMAN, urged its members to disregard the strike.

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He added that what Dangote plans to do would free the drivers from multiple and choking levies they are forced to pay by petroleum tanker drivers.

He also said that the action of Dangote was supported by the PIA.

Iyike said: “I am refuting this story as the Former chairman of IPMAN Benin Depot and presently the National Ex-Officio of IPMAN.

“That IPMAN National Executive Council NEC under the leadership of Alahji Maigandi Shittima is not aware of such action preconceived by the IPMAN Western Zone to make such a pronouncement of IPMAN Western Zone going on strike by Monday.

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“And as you would know the PIA bill has given the room for any individual to own a refinery in the country and have your own trucks to distribute your products and even build petrol stations if you choose to where your products can be dispense to the general public , so Dangote has not done any harm but good to we marketers and to the general public.

“Howbeit, I want to state unequivocally that the IPMAN western zone has no impetus to call for any strike has it lack the constitutional powers to do so as it is only the National Executive Council of IPMAN that has the reserved right to do so and not the zone or any Depot and the western zone should also by this statement take into cognizance that they are not on their they are under the NEC of IPMAN according to the IPMAN constitution of 2009 as amended and as such cannot take any decision of any kind of strike or demonstration regarding the interest of marketers without the approval of the National Executive Council of IPMAN.

“We advise esteemed marketers to go with their normal day to day business.”

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Iyike said that the Dangote Refinery is a good development for creation of jobs to the citizens of this country and also a good development to the marketers who could no longer afford to buy petroleum products in their various stations outlets.

He said the development would make marketers get products on credit bases and pay the balance after sales “which will help marketers to bounce back to business.”

“IPMAN nationwide is solidly behind Dangote Refinery and we will not allow few individuals to truncate this development in the downstream industry and the level of enormous levies on marketers before getting their products to their stations outlet will be a thing of the past.”