Members of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), which met on Thursday in Abuja have observed that hasty policies being foist on Nigerians by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has drastically increased level of poverty in the country.
The BoT, also, alleged plan by the ruling party to turn Nigeria to one party and vowed to resist such move.
The BoT expressed worry over the continued fall in the value of the Naira arising from the ill-implemented policies of the APC with attendant devastating negative effect on the economy resulting in agonizing high costs and unbearable pressure on families.
“The BoT laments that the APC is pushing Nigerians to the wall and worry that the level of poverty and anger in the polity over the suppressive rule of the APC is capable of snowballing into a serious crisis if not urgently addressed.
“The BoT observed that nation is currently in a precarious situation under the APC and Nigerians look unto the PDP for solution and direction at this time.
“The BoT assures Nigerians that despite the challenges, the PDP remains united, stronger and more determined to continue to lead to rescue our democracy and return our nation to the path of credible elections, Rule of Law, national cohesion and economic prosperity.”
Acting Chairman of the BoT, Senator Adolphus Wabara, stated this while reading a communique issued after the 75th meeting of the board.
He said, “The Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), at its 75th meeting thoroughly reviewed the State of affairs of the nation and the Party and resolved as follows:
“The BoT is resolved to take urgent steps to resists the current manifest desperation by the APC to turn Nigeria into a One-Party State.
“The BoT restates its rejection of the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in upholding the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of the February 25, 2023 Presidential election, in spite of the evidence clearly pointing to the contrary.
“The BoT is also monitoring and studying the outcome of cases in various election courts with regards to their level of adherence and respect to the Rule of Law and evidence before such court.
“The BoT commended the PDP Presidential Candidate Atiku Abubakar, for following due process of the law in his quest to retrieve the Presidential Mandate freely given to him at the February 25, 2023 Presidential election.”
Wabara expressed the board’s confidence and courage of the Supreme Court to “ultimately and decisively right the wrongs and correct the manifest errors contained in the Judgment of the PEPC in the interest of the unity, stability and corporate existence of our Country.”
He equally expressed the board’s serious concerns over what he described as the excruciating hardship, worsening insecurity and general sense of apprehension and despondency across the country “occasioned by the hasty implementation of ill-planned policies of the overtly insensitive APC administration.”
The Court of Appeal which sat in Abuja on Thursday, September 14, 2023, has stopped Ndudi Elumelu of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from stepping into the 10th National Assembly.
In a ruling on an appeal filed by the Candidate of the Labour Party, Ngozi Okoli, the Apeallate Court set aside the ruling of the National and State House of Assembly Election Tribunal, in Asaba, Delta State, which sacked Okolie and declared Elumelu winner.
Okolie was declared winner of the February 25 Election by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. He was, however, sacked by the Tribunal in favour of Elumelu.
He appealed to a higher Court and was, on Thursday, reinstated by the three-man Panel.
Elumelu was the Minority Leader in the 9th Assembly.
It’s not often that you meet Supreme Court justices, serving or retired. I first met retired Justice Sunday Akinola Akintan casually at a reception in Abuja, for my friend and radical lawyer, Yinka Olumide-Fusika, who had been admitted to the inner bar. Then, we met again about one year later, this time, through his book.
Years after his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2008, Justice Akintan wrote a book, entitled, “Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life,” which Olumide-Fusika, SAN, asked me to review. What struck me was one of Akintan’s motivations for writing the book. It was an answer to T.O.S Benson’s advice not to be buried without writing a book, which would be a waste of a life’s worth of library.
If his lordship decided to write just to remember the road he travelled and to share his odyssey, it would still have been a good book. But it was even better because in a profession where the burden of office elevates discretion almost to the oeuvre of a cult, his desire to shed light is a valuable gift.
There are a couple of rare insights in the book. One of them, which has assumed significant monstrosity over the years, is how the judiciary could not see that getting more and more involved in deciding electoral outcomes would drag it in the mud.
Or maybe the judiciary saw it but decided, with a helping hand from the inner bar, to take Oscar Wilde’s advice to overcome the problem by yielding to it. And now, it’s beyond entanglement; the Bench is enmeshed!
Over 10 hours of studiously reading a judgment which five judges of the Court of Appeal must have thought was their utmost to deliver justice still left behind a trail of disenchantment, suspicion and criticisms. Not a few, rather sadly and regrettably, still believe it was the judicial equivalent of a grudge match.
As it was…
The judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) last week in the case involving the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar; Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP); and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) in which the panel dismissed the petitions against the February 25 election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has once again put the judiciary in the spotlight.
In the midst of the outrage that followed the judgment, especially among the supporters of Abubakar and Obi, I turned, once again, to Justice Akintan’s book for help to find my way through the maelstrom. And he should know. He’s seen election petitions since 1979.
It’s a measure of how we have learnt to forget that the account of the retired justice of the Supreme Court of what happened 20 years ago reads like excerpts from today’s newspapers. If we had paid any heed then, it’s unlikely that the country would be in a place today where the outcome of virtually every election depends not on who voters choose at the ballot, but on who the courts decide.
In Reminiscences, Akintan writes that one of the two most significant things that happened to him when he returned to the Port Harcourt division on a rare second tour of duty as Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal, was dealing with matters arising from the 2003 general elections.
There was something about the 2003 election that set his hair on edge and raked his conscience over the coals of the sacred pledge he had made to himself and his family at the beginning of his career not to stain his name. Post-election litigations up and down the country were fierce and bitter.
But the one between ANPP’s presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and candidate of the PDP, Olusegun Obasanjo, after the 2003 election was so bitter and so fierce that Buhari called for nationwide protests, because he said the judiciary had been compromised.
Clear, present danger
That was only a foreshadow of what was to come. As the years went by the judiciary came under increasing strain. The stakes, for politicians, got even higher. “They exposed the judges and the entire staff of the judiciary to contacts with the politicians,” Akintan writes, “with the attendant possibility of exposing them to corruption.” What was then a possibility is now a consuming danger.
Akintan was assigned 52 petitions in Port Harcourt alone. On top of that, the President of the Court of Appeal told him he had to go to Jos for eight pending governorship election petitions, which the president of the court obviously needed a trustworthy judge to handle.
To avoid contact with litigants and their lawyers, never mind the felicity of some determined folks even thinking of sending him Sallah ram directly or by proxy as we heard in a recent case in Kano, Akintan moved his base from Port Harcourt to his home town, Idanre, Ondo State.
In spite of the severe scarcity of petrol at the time, it was from Idanre that he commuted weekly to Jos through Abuja. Even in Jos, he still could not trust his driver would not be used to get him.
“Once we arrived in the court in Jos,” he recalls, “I used to collect the car ignition key from my driver to ensure there was no breach of the car being taken into town for any reason.”
According to Akintan, by the time he retired from the Supreme Court in 2008, the system had almost been overwhelmed with politicians working hand-in-gloves with lawyers to suborn elections. Trust and confidence had become casualties.
“The position grew so wild after the 2015 elections,” he writes, “that the number of election petitions far outstripped all other cases filed in all the courts in the country. Many of the senior lawyers who had cornered the very lucrative briefs from the election petitions amassed stupendous wealth.”
Unfortunately, and in spite of the valiant efforts by a few conscientious judges still on the Bench, the cloud of suspicion has, regrettably, thickened.
Abuja special status
Apart from Akintan’s personal decision to be different, there was something else in Reminiscences that caught my attention: the judgment in Joseph Ona & another V. Diga Romani Atenda (2000), in which he played a leading role. This judgment by the Court of Appeal, in my view, addressed one of the vexatious points in Obi’s petition that a candidate must have 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja or else cannot be declared validly elected.
Until I read the summary judgment in the book, I was under the impression that Abuja residents had two heads; that apart from having a special political status, the dichotomy between “settlers” and “indigenes” was also real.
But in the judgment in the case under reference – a case of trespass, harassment, humiliation and defamation in a land dispute – which was, in fact, referred from the High Court to the Court of Appeal for determination, the court made it clear residents of the Federal Capital Territory are by no means special.
In the words of Akintan, “It is (therefore) totally illegal for any of them to claim any special right over any other Nigerian occupier of the territory.”
Conclusion of the matter
If there is no dichotomy in the status of residents, and they have no exclusive proprietary right over and above citizens anywhere in the country, how can they claim a casting vote that holds the country to ransom at elections? It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court answers this and other questions that would come before it in the Abubakar-Obi appeal.
What I hear former Supreme Court Justice Akintan say, clearly in Reminiscences, is that the fewer court-imposed candidates we have – and one might add, the less crooked the political parties, the election management body and the media – the better for the electoral system and the judiciary.
A good Samaritan turned armed robber/rapist, has been arrested by operatives of the Ondo State Police Command at Bolorunduro in ondo East Local Government Area of the State.
A statement on Thursday by Funmilayo Odunlami- Omisanya, Police Public Relations Officer, explained that the arrest of the suspect followed complaints of rape and armed robbery that was lodged at the station by one of his victims.
The suspect, one Johnson Joseph who posed as a good Samaritan, volunteered to help the victim where she was stranded along a farm road, but later robbed her of the sum of N102,000:00k, phone and raped her at gunpoint.
The suspect was however unlucky as he was later arrested by Police Operatives on routine patrol in the area.
During interrogation, he confessed to have robbed many people of their belongings and valuables in the past.
Four of his victims were contacted through their recovered phones from the suspect and they all identified him to have attacked and robbed them of their belongings.
A black unregistered TVS ladies motorcycle, One cut to size gun with bullets, six mobile phones and a POS machine were recoverd from him.
Police said the suspect will be charged to court after the conclusion of investigation.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has notified electricity consumers’ of the collapse of the national grid.
It’s the first time in the last 12 months that the grid has experience a total collapse, according to checks from the government agency.
Recall that the grid collapsed at different times during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The notice of the collapse had earlier been sent by electricity distribution companies, Discos, to their various customers, before it was eventually confirmed by the TCN few hours ago.
The grid, according to the notices sent by the Discos collapsed around 12 am this morning.
Speaking, Ndidi Mbah, spokesperson for TCN said efforts are ongoing to restore power.
“It is a system collapse, but we are trying to restore it,” she told The Cable.
Meanwhile, electricity consumers who spoke to the magazine, particularly cold rooms owners have started lamenting the impact of the power cut on their business.
The development will result in serious financial loss to them if the problem is not fixed on time, they said.
Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state has cried out that bandits are about to take over the state.
According to him, the activities of the bandits are gradually becoming overwhelming for the state government.
He said criminals that have been dislodged in other North East state have relocated to the state, and are now causing serious problems.
The governor spoke on Wednesday when he received the State Council of Emirs who paid him a courtesy visit to government House, appealing to the federal government not to abandon the state because it’s a ruled by the opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP.
The governor, however, vowed not to allow bandits and terrorists, fleeing from the onslaught of security forces across the country to settle in the state.
He said his government will ensure that the peace in the state is sustained, adding that lives and property will be protected.
He said that because of the Federal Government’s sustained war against bandits and terrorism in other zones of the country, the state is becoming a hiding place for the unscrupulous elements who are beginning to disturb the peace of the state.
He however said that his administration was not resting on its oars but is working hard to ensure that there is peace of lives and properties of the citizens of the state.
He explained that the state is cooperating with the federal government to ensure that full security is achieved in the state.
The governor said, “Other states are moving ahead, we have one of the largest populations in the region and so with the activities of the Federal Government in other parts of the geopolitical zones, the bandits are coming to Bauchi.
“We will have to go the extra mile to make sure we checkmate them. We are doing that but certainly, we’re getting overwhelmed and that is why we call on the Federal Government to help us and to come to our aid, to do that thing that they are doing in the north-west so that as we have always been a sanctuary of peace, we’ll maintain that status.
“The Emir of Katagum is one Emir that is known to always go out at night patrolling. I want the other emirs to emulate him and do what he is doing, not that they are not doing, but you are uncommon in terms of your own forthrightness.
“We will try to exercise restraint and patience with your district heads and with the emirs. Even if we remove or punish any member of the traditional institution, we are doing it with a lot of pain. I don’t like it but we have to do it when there is apparent disobedience to the rules of engagement of emirs, traditional rulers, and so on and so forth.
“We are just taking a minimal number to make an example out of them.
” We cannot afford to punish all the people who are transgressing, we’re just making sure that we are trying to bring remorse to put people on course but we are doing this with a lot of apology and regret. We don’t like touching the institution because that institution is the symbol of our togetherness,” he said.
He called President Bola Tinubu, not to ignore Bauchi State because it is a State governed by the opposition People’s Democratic Party just as he lamented that he said that the first railway route in the country had been abandoned by the Federal Government.
Labour Party has suffered a monumental tragedy. It’s Campaign Director in Abia State, Zachary Maduka, has been killed in his house in Uturu, Okigwe, Abia State.
The news of Maduka’s gruesome murder was broken on Wednesday, September 13, 2023 by a local medium, All Facts Newspaper.
He was not only killed, Maduka was beheaded, and his head taken away by those who committed the atrocity.
Popular as Power Zac, he was the Campaign Director of LP in Uturu, Isikwuato LGA, during the 2023 General Elections. He was also the Campaign Director of Amobi Ogah, Honourable Member of the House of Representatives Isiukwuato/Umunneochi Federal Constituency.
No reason has been adduced for the horrendous act, but Maduka, a grassroots politician, was one of those in his community involved in the fight against criminal acts, especially, kidnapping which is rampant in the area.
The Abia Police Command is yet to issue a statement on the incident at the time of filing this story.
Edo State Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, is facing the worst public humiliation of his political life. A basket is being woven around him. The daggers are out. The killers are lurking just by the corner. And the vultures are circling around him. They are waiting for his political carcass.
In the past few weeks, the youthful Shaibu has been fighting the battle for his political life. He is fighting to remain relevant. He is fighting not to be dumped in a political dustbin. The man whose hand is directing Shaibu’s fall is his Principal, Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki. Obaseki is a man reputed to take no prisoners in a war; a man who is comfortable in the midst of war. Check the list of those he has fearlessly “tangoed” with in the past three years. Adams Oshiomhole. Oba of Benin. Nyesom Wike. And now Shaibu.
Shaibu is a former Students Union President, and so prefixes his name with Comrade. A former political godson of “a bigger Comrade”, Oshiomhole, former President NLC, Shaibu learnt from Adams to, most times, wear ill-tailored and ill-fitting pair of khaki trousers and short-sleeved shirt of same material and colour. That is to fit the bill of a Comrade. But Shaibu quite did not learn from Oshiomhole that Obaseki is neither a respecter of Comrades nor of khaki. Obaseki knows that “khaki no be leather”. So he deals with it as what it is – an ordinary piece of cloth. That was how he dealt with Oshiomhole when Oshiomhole stabbed him. And, he is bent on dealing same way with Shaibu.
But here is the difference.
In Oshiomhole’s case, even though the scar is still there, Oshiomhole had the luck of getting out of the gulag. He is now a Senator of the Federal Republic, and a friend of the President. That may not be Shaibu’s fate.
So, who will save Shaibu? Whose friend would he be?
A few days ago, he tried to save himself by rallying a number of very respectable people, including Clergymen, to bring him out of the dustbin of history he is about to be thrown into. They did, or so they thought, which made Shaibu walk back on his earlier decision of seeking legal action.
Edo State Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu.
Suspecting, strongly, that there were plans by Governor Obaseki and the House of Assembly to impeach him, he approached a Federal High Court Abuja for protection. He got it. Obaseki chided him, and denied there were any impeachment plans against his Deputy. But not true. Proof: Thereafter, Obaseki went after Shaibu in full force.
He began by inflicting on his Deputy of seven years a public humiliation. During a Thanksgiving Service to mark the anniversary of the creation of Edo State, Shaibu stood up from the obscure place he sat and made to access the Governor. Ordinarily, he should have sat close to the Governor, perhaps, a couple of seats away from him. But no. Then, he made one of the greatest mistakes of his life. Shaibu decided to go and greet his boss. And Obaseki bared his fangs. In the full glare of the public, a few steps away from the Governor and his wife, a security personnel blocked Shaibu from accessing the Governor. As Shaibu suffered that humiliation, Governor Obaseki and his wife looked on. Unperturbed. I wonder if Shaibu’s wife was present to watch her husband’s belittling. Must have been tough for her.
Political watchers and those who know Obaseki agree that by the time he finishes dealing with his Deputy, Shaibu will not only be finished politically, almost, he would forget the prefix before his name – Comrade. As I write, Shaibu is not only fighting to remain relevant in a Government he is number two in hierarchy, he is, also fighting to convince Nigerians that he is not a common thief. More on this later.
What is the story? How did the elder-junior brother relationship between Obaseki and Shaibu deteriorate to the level where Shaibu no longer has access to his Principal; where a security personnel would publicly stop him from walking up to the Governor to greet him; where a door will be slammed against his face; where he will be evicted from the office of the Deputy Governor, domiciled inside Government House Benin, to an obscure building outside Government House; where he was stripped of his Media Aides?
According to reports, the story is simple. Shaibu dared say he would vie for the office of the Governor in 2024. He dared dream to succeed Obaseki on the expiration of the Governor’s term in office. He dared dream big. He dared have an ambition. Big mistake.
Shaibu was the President of the Students Union Government in his days in the University. He may have been a good SUG President But he is not a good student of history. I may even add that he is not a good politician too. Otherwise, Shaibu should have known that by aspiring to succeed Obaseki, he has committed a cardinal sin. In Nigeria, Deputy Governors, even Vice Presidents are doomed if try to move a step further than where they are. Their “‘Ogas” see it as disrespectful. They see it as, perhaps, ”this guy wants to compete with me.”
So, they begin to find faults, throw obstacles, once their tenure is ending. Look at it. President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Even though the Vice Presidents yearned to succeed their Presidents, it stopped at that – yearning. They were not encouraged to, let me not so allowed to.
The case of Deputy Governors is even worse. They are meant to be anonymous. Their names are hardly heard or known outside their immediate environment. In deed, a number of people, even in their States, hardly know the names of the Deputy Governors. The Governors so overwhelm them that they feel small, and look small before them. They are to be seen, not heard.
Nobody has been able to explain why. But that is the norm. It is an unwritten rule. They usually prefer somebody else to succeed them. Some people say it is, perhaps, because they think their Deputies know too much. Or because they treated their Deputies so bad that if allowed to succeed them, they would pay them back in their own coins. So, any ambitious Deputy is dealt with immediately. He could be impeached. The Governor does not need any reason to do so. He only orders the Speaker of the House of Assembly to get “the boys” and impeach the Deputy Governor. It’s that easy. Where a Deputy Governor succeeds his boss, something must have gone wrong.
Years ago at the Protocol Lounge of the local wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, I met Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, just after he left office as the Governor of Kano State. Without knowing the undercurrent, I congratulated him for allowing his Deputy, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, to succeed him in office. Big mistake on my part. When I later learnt Ganduje literally snatched it (by force) from Kwankwaso, and left him with no choice, l asked myself: “who send you sef”? I was lucky the man did not hiss at me in response. When Ganduje began to deal with Kwankwaso, to the extent of literally banning him from entering Kano, it was no surprise.
Perhaps, the Kwankwaso/Ganduje experience is why Governors never allow their Deputies to succeed them. It was the same with Engr. Dave Umahi, immediate past Governor of Ebonyi State, now Works Minister, and his Governor, Martin Elechi. Umahi, Elechi’s Deputy, snatched it from him. Elechi wanted somebody else – a former Minister for Health. For years, their relationship was not cordial. Elechi quit the Peoples Democratic Party because of Umahi. Now, Umahi has joined him there.
As the Governor of Lagos State, President Tinubu did away with three, or was it four Deputy Governors. I forget. As the Governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha had three Deputy Governors impeached, and a Secretary to the State Government sacked, all because he felt each of them had the ambition to succeed him in office.
In Enugu State, then Governor Sullivan Chime had his Deputy Governor, Sunday Onyebuchi impeaced for having a poultry within Government House – the Deputy Governor’s own premises. When asked why, Chime, with a wave of the hand said “We just replaced a bad plug.” And, one can go on on. These guys wake up to hear that their staff have either been withdrawn or sacked by their Principals – without the courtesy of informing them before that.
Problem is, no Deputy Governor has had the guts to quit office on his/her own over the humiliation some of them suffer in the hands of some Governors.
Otherwise, after the public humiliation of being blocked by a Security personnel from getting close to the Governor, Shaibu should have quit office. He should have known he has been stripped of every political power.
Not a few people blame the Constitution for the fate of Deputy Governors. They are of the view that the Constitution neither protected their office, nor gave them the teeth to bite. It left them empty, powerless, and stripped of their liver.
Every conciliatory moves made by Deputy Governor Shaibu’s to appease his boss has been like pouring water into a basket. His public statement where he said he had withdrawn the case he instituted in Court to prevent his speculated impeachment has not worked. He thanked the very highly placed individuals who helped smoothen his path again (or so he thought) with his Governor who he fondly calls his elder brother. That has not worked. Nor has his many pledges of absolute loyalty to the Governor worked. Instead, things are getting worse. The rope around Shaibu’s neck is tightening. And the political vultures are waiting for his political carcass. He knows.
An unconfirmed report on Tuesday, September 12, said Shaibu has moved out of his official quarters. This comes days after he was moved out of the Deputy Governors office within Government House to a not-quite dignified office outside it.
Sooner than later, if Shaibu does not soak his Chaplet in holy water, he could hear his impeachment bell. And one of the reasons would be a big scandal. Here is what.
An Edo State Politician/ business man has accused Shaibu of stealing his wrist watch worth 250,000 USD. In a petition to the Inspector General of Police, Dr Kayode Egbetokun, this man said he caught Shaibu, red-handed, at a function in the USA, wearing the wrist watch which, he claims, one of Shaibu’s Police details siezed from him when the Deputy Governor attempted to plant a gun on him.
I don’t know if Shaibu has responded. If not, it is in his own interest to tell his own side of the story. Did he attempt to plant a gun on an innocent person? Did he steal the man’s wrist watch as he alleges? If Obaseki and the House of Assembly decide to impeach him, and add the alleged theft to one of the offences, the sh*t will finally hit the roof. And there will be no redemption. That will be bad for a young man who still has a long political future before him. Sad.
… No husband, no children! A 95-year-old woman narrates how her father prevented her from getting married, bearing children
If there is a singular wish 95-year-old, Susanna Nwachukwu from Owerri, Imo state, craves for in her next life, it would be to be a rebellious and stubborn girl, one who will not obey or listen to her father’s instructions.
Growing up, had Susanna been a stubborn young girl and disobeyed her father, she would have probably eloped with any of her many suitors and would have today been a proud great-grandmother. But at 95, Susanna does not have children talk more of grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And this is because she was never married.
She was not married not because in her prime, she lacked suitors. According to her, suitors came in droves from far and wide but her Catholic zealot father insisted his daughter must marry a Catholic.
However, unfortunately for Susanna, none of her suitors was a Catholic except a Cameroonian “but my father turned him down. He said Cameroon was too far”
Narrating the heart-wrenching story of how her father aborted her dream of getting married and of having children in an interview she granted to a blogger, NELOJOSH, the 95 old woman explained that she obeyed her father because during “our time, you dare not disobey your parents; it’s whatever they asked you to do that you would do”
Still very articulate, witty, and agile at her age, Susanna who spoke in Igbo language and occasionally interjected English, said she was born on the 27th November 1927.
According to her, she worked with Shell for about 9 years and with Emekuku Hospital for 21 years.
With a glint of regret and resignation to fate visible on her face, the 95-year-old spinster said: “I was in standard four when suitors started coming for me. They came from everywhere, including Cameroon but my father refused. He said they were not Catholics.
“My father was a prominent, staunch Catholic in those days. The Cameroonian was a Catholic but my father said Cameroon was too far.
“My father was stubborn and strict. During my time, you dare not disobey your parents; you do whatever they ask you to do.
“All my siblings were lucky to get Catholic suitors and wives”
She disclosed that her parents gave birth to eight of them and that she is the second child. However, only she and her younger sister are still alive.
On whether she regrets her father’s action, Susanna answered in the affirmative: “I regret my father’s action, his action is painful but what can I do? I can’t kill myself. If I was married and had children, wouldn’t be suffering today. But I have put all the pains and agony of not being married or not having children behind me; I’m now waiting for my death”
A suspect, Yusuf Anas, has been arrested by the officers of Zone 17 of the Nigeria Police force for impersonation and stealing.
Ana, described as a police deserter, is reported to be still wearing in uniform with which he was duping unsuspected members of the public.
A statement by the Nigeria Police Force, Zone 17 Akure, on Wednesday, stated that one Yusuf Anas is in custody over an alleged case of impersonation and stealing.
The statement by the zone’s spokesman, Akeem Adeoye explained that “Anas claimed to have enlisted into the Nigeria Police Force as a Constable in 2016 and had served in Sokoto and Lagos, before he was declared a deserter and subsequently dismissed.
“On the 8th of May 2023, the suspect, who was still parading himself as an Officer, dressed in uniform went to purchase a Techno-Spark10 handset valued at N102,000 from a phone shop. After collecting the said phone he generated a fake bank transfer to the seller.
“The crime was later reported via a petition to the office of the Assistant Inspector General of Police, Zone 17 and the suspect was subsequently arrested through viable intelligence gathering.
“The suspect, in the course of interrogation, confessed to have committed the crime. He will be charged to court and prosecuted accordingly.”
