WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine expects 'record' number of drone attacks this winter, air force says

Ukraine's air force expects a record number of Russian drone attacks on its soil this winter, its spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said on Sunday, as Kyiv girds for a second winter of mass bombardment of its energy facilities.

Ihnat said that data for September showed the use by Russia of Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones would smash last year's figure.

"This autumn and winter ... is already a record in terms of the number of Shahed drones. Over 500 (were used) in September," Ihnat said in an interview on national television.

He contrasted this number with Russia's air strike campaign on Ukraine last winter, when he said about 1,000 Shahed drones were used in six months.

Attacks on energy facilites last winter damaged a significant chunk of Ukraine's power system and forced most cities to ration electricity and hot water.

Despite Ukraine bolstering its air defences, officials have warned of the risk of a repeat this winter, with the power grid still far from rebuilt after the last campaign of bombardment.

** Russian shelling kills at least two in Ukraine, say Ukraine officials

Russian forces shelled southern Kherson region and other parts of Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least two people and injuring a dozen more, Ukrainian officials said.

The general in charge of Ukraine's ground forces said troops were advancing on the eastern front in Kyiv's counteroffensive to evict Russian invaders.

The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said troops had beaten back attacks on five sectors of the 1,000-km long (600-mile) front.

Russian accounts said its forces had repelled attacks near the eastern front's focal point, Bakhmut, and farther north.

Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of Kherson region, said a man had died in Russian shelling in the northern part of the region. Prokudin had earlier reported that a dozen people were wounded in attacks on different localities.

Russian troops abandoned the city of Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

In northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Synehubov said a man had died in shelling near the Russian border.

Reuters could not verify reports from either side.

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, head of Ukraine's ground forces, said he had met troops and commanders engaged in offensive operations near Bakhmut, taken by Russian forces in May after months of battles.

"The enemy is continuing to mass its reserves," Syrskyi wrote on Telegram. "Our troops are performing their assignments with the aim of proceeding with our advance."

The General Staff, in its evening report, said Ukrainian troops had repulsed Russian attacks in five areas of the eastern front, including Bakhmut.

In the south, Ukrainian troops have been capturing clusters of villages as they drive toward the Sea of Azov to sever a land bridge created by Russian forces occupying areas of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesperson for troops in the south, told national television that Russian troops had started using older weaponry, howitzers and cannons, evidence that Ukrainian forces had been successful in knocking out enemy equipment.

"Sadly, the Russians have plenty of equipment," he said.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Military solution to Ukraine conflict unlikely – Italian defense minister

It is unlikely that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be resolved on the battlefield, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has predicted. He also revealed that Rome is considering ways to bring the two sides to the negotiating table, while continuing to arm Kiev.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera published on Sunday, Crosetto acknowledged that no matter how much Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government wants to support Ukraine indefinitely, the policy is simply not realistic. He pointed out that the hostilities there have dragged on for over a year and a half, adding that the “more time passes, the more the possibility of helping Ukraine with resources that are not unlimited decreases.” The official emphasized that this does not indicate a change in Italy’s policies but rather the finite nature of the country’s stocks.

According to the official, the “situation in Ukraine is getting worse,” with Kiev having “great difficulty in regaining lost ground,” and Moscow being unable to “conquer” the nation.

“We are witnessing the impossibility of resolving the conflict on the field,”Crosetto argued, adding that Italy was busy looking for ways to “build dialogue tables, achieve peace.” 

He concluded by claiming that if Russia prevails in Ukraine, its tanks will be rolling toward European borders, making the prospect of World War III more likely.

Late last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated that Moscow is ready for peace talks with Kiev in principle, adding, however, that it has yet to see any “serious proposal.” The diplomat dismissed Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s peace formula as a “pure ultimatum,” which Russia would never accept.

Russian officials have previously pointed out that President Zelensky effectively ruled out negotiations when he signed a decree last October prohibiting dialogue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Earlier this month, Politico reported, citing a European official, that EU member states have reached their limit in terms of weaponry they can provide to Ukraine, without compromising their own defenses.

“We cannot keep on giving from our own stockpiles,” the anonymous official told reporters.

In a separate story around the same time, the media outlet claimed that support for funding the Ukrainian government was “showing more cracks than ever,” citing the recent failure of the US Congress to allocate more aid money in its stopgap budget, as well as the election victory of former Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who vowed when he was campaigning that he’d stop assistance to Kiev.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Politico alleged that the Biden administration is looking for “creative” ways to secure further military aid for Ukraine, amid mounting opposition at home. The supposed workarounds under consideration include using the State Department’s foreign military financing program as well as a three-way swap of air-defense systems involving Poland, the media outlet claimed.

Reuters/RT

What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order? The mental imagery I have before the visit is roughly two parts Zorba the Greek to one part an episode of BBC series Holiday from the Jill Dando era: blue skies, blue sea, maybe some plate breaking in a jolly taverna. What I’m not expecting is a wall of flames rippling across a hillside next to the highway from the airport and a plume of black smoke billowing across the carriageway.

Because even a modernist villa on a hillside on the island of Aegina – a fast ferry ride from the port of Piraeus and the summer bolthole of chic Athenians – is not the sanctuary from the modern world that it might once have been. The house is where Varoufakis and his wife, landscape artist Danae Stratou, live, year round since the pandemic, but in August 2023 at the end of a summer of heatwaves and extreme weather conditions across the world, it feels more than a little apocalyptic. The sun is a dim orange orb struggling to shine through a haze of smoke while a shower of fine ash falls invisibly from the sky. A month later, two years’ worth of rain will fall in a single day in northern Greece, causing a biblical deluge and never-before-seen levels of flooding.

That the end of the world feels just a little bit nearer here than it does in some places may not be coincidental to Varoufakis’s having written a new book called Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Nor that the book comes to the conclusion that capitalism has been replaced with something even worse. Not the glorious socialist revolution that his hero Marx foresaw. Nor some new mutation of capitalism such as the one detailed by Shoshana Zuboff in her surprise 2019 bestseller, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. We’re now in servitude, Varoufakis argues, to the fiefdoms of our new global masters, Lord Zuckerberg of Facelandia and Sir Musk of the rotten borough of X.

When I arrive by taxi at the bottom of the dirt track up to his house, Varoufakis is there to meet me, folded inside a zippy red Mini. “I’m usually on my motorbike,” he says, and describes his “pristine commute” at speed via land and sea that gets him to the Greek parliament in just over an hour. It should also be mentioned that the motorbike and leather jacket didn’t hurt his image as a lefty bad boy, taking on the grey men of global capitalism. To put Varoufakis into context, he was the Greek equivalent of John McDonnell (a close friend) if Jeremy Corbyn (another close friend) had actually been voted into power and if John McDonnell had, in this scenario, been played by George Clooney.

Because in 2015, at the height of the Greek debt crisis, Varoufakis was catapulted from academic obscurity to minister of finance. He said – loudly and repeatedly – that the punitive terms the banks wanted to impose on Greece would lead to catastrophic austerity. A majority of Greeks voted to back him, and for a short time his strategy of simply refusing to agree to the IMF and EU’s terms led to a tense standoff. Right until the moment prime minister Aléxis Tsípras, the man who appointed him, accepted them. Either the only possible action to prevent the country going bankrupt, or a treacherous betrayal, depending on who you choose to believe.

The Financial Times labelled Varoufakis “the most irritating man in the room” during the negotiations, so it’s not exactly a surprise to learn that Technofeudalism is a polemic, a controversialist’s take. And although in 2023 there’s nothing particularly novel or special about hating on tech – hating on Elon Musk is the only rational response to the situation in which we’ve found ourselves – nevertheless, Technofeudalism feels like an important new book.

It’s a big-picture hypothesis rooted in a historical account of how capitalism came into being that describes what is happening in terms of an epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift. In some ways, it’s a relief to have a politician – any politician – talking about this stuff. Because in Varoufakis’s telling, this isn’t just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power.

“Imagine the following scene straight out of the science fiction storybook,” he writes. “You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything looks normal. Until you begin to notice something odd. It turns out all the shops, indeed every building, belongs to a chap called Jeff. What’s more, everyone walks down different streets, and sees different stores because everything is intermediated by his algorithm… an algorithm that dances to Jeff’s tune.”

It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism. And us? We’re the serfs. “Cloud serfs”, so lacking in class consciousness that we don’t even realise that the tweeting and posting that we’re doing is actually building value in these companies.

We’re in his airy open-plan living room where his wife intermittently appears offering water, coffee and snacks and shooing away a large, enthusiastically affectionate labrador. “He’s totally in love with Yanis,” she says. Stratou and Varoufakis are a striking couple, as glamorous as their house, a cool, luminous space featuring poured concrete and big glass windows overlooking a perfect rectangle of blue pool.

“I have no issues with luxury,” he says at one point, which is just as well because the entire scene would give the Daily Mail a conniption, especially since Aegina seems to be Greece’s equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, home to a highly networked artistic and political elite. Tsípras, the former prime minister and Varoufakis’s nemesis, used to live next door. “He was on the next hill. There’s a symbolically important ravine between us,” he says.

And although Stratou is an accomplished artist, she’s also cursed with some niche internet fame. At the height of Varoufakis’s notoriety, a newspaper report claimed that she was the inspiration behind Pulp’s hit song Common People. “She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,” runs the first line; “She studied sculpture at St Martin’s College,” is the second. As Stratou did, at the same time as Jarvis Cocker was there, though she gives me a “No comment!” when I inevitably bring it up. “It’s the first thing you see when you Google my name,” she says, with irritation, and “who knows where artists find their inspiration?” though Varoufakis seems to be enjoying my line of questioning just a little too much.

Technofeudalism takes the form of a letter addressed to Varoufakis’s recently deceased father, Georgios. A Greek-Egyptian communist, he emigrated to Greece in the 1940s, in the middle of the country’s civil war, and was sentenced to five years’ “political re-education” for refusing to denounce his communism. He rose to become chairman of Greece’s biggest steel company. What Varoufakis valued most about him, he says in the book, was his father’s ability to see the “dual nature” of things.

Technofeudalism is also partly a sequel to his previous book, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, addressed to his then 11-year-old daughter Xenia, in which he tried to answer the question of why there’s so much inequality. Though even as he was writing it, he says, he felt end-of-an-era qualms about the future prospects of capitalism.

“Even before it was published in 2017, I was feeling uneasy,” he says in the first chapter of Technofeudalism. “Between finishing the manuscript and holding the published book in my hands, it felt as if it were the 1840s and I was about to publish a book on feudalism; or, even worse, like waiting for a book on Soviet central planning to see the light of day in late 1989.” Was the entire concept of capitalism already out of date, he wondered?

On the living room bookshelf, I spot a copy of Zucked by businessman Roger McNamee, one of the first investors in Facebook, who was responsible for introducing Mark Zuckerberg to Sheryl Sandberg. “That’s a great book,” says Varoufakis. I tell him that McNamee broadly agrees with his new ideas. I’d messaged a bunch of people to ask them what they would ask Varoufakis, including McNamee, and precised the book to him – that two pivotal events have transformed the global economy: 1) the privatisation of the internet by America and China’s big tech companies; and 2) western governments’ and central banks’ responses to the 2008 great financial crisis, when they unleashed a tidal wave of cash.

I read him McNamee’s reply: “I buy the basic thesis. The US kept interest rates at near zero from 2009 to 2022. This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI). This came at a time of no regulation of tech and an accepted culture in business that said executives should maximise shareholder value at expense of everything else (eg democracy, public health, public safety)… had rates been at 5% the past 14 years, I doubt very much that the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse or AI would have gotten even 10% as much funding.”

It’s pretty remarkable, I point out, that a Marxist and a venture capitalist have reached the same economic conclusions. But then there are more and more people – outside politics – trying to understand these new power structures. Shoshana Zuboff tells me that she “explicitly rejects labels like technofeudalism because technology is not the independent variable nor are we feudal serfs”. But she also says that the argument has some similarities to one of her latest papers: “In big tech we face a totalising power that in key respects disqualifies itself from being understood as capitalism, but rather as a wholly new form of governance by the few over the many.”

I ask him what his advice would be to Keir Starmer, he says: ‘He should try being honest. He should say: “You know what? Brexit was a disaster”’

When I message Mariana Mazzucato, another charismatic and influential economist, but one who, unlike Varoufakis, has been embraced by governments and financial institutions, her response suggests that some of Varoufakis’s ideas are not that new. She herself published on an adjacent concept, “algorithmic rents” (the idea that tech companies capture attention and resell it rather than creating long-term value) in 2018.

But perhaps traditional distinctions between left and right don’t make sense any more. The right, Varoufakis says, “thinks of capitalism as like a natural system, a bit like the atmosphere”. Whereas the left “think of themselves as people created by the universe in order to bring socialism over capitalism. I am telling you: you know what, you missed it. You missed it. Somebody killed capitalism. We have something worse.”

The early internet, he says, has given way to a privatised digital landscape in which gatekeepers “charge rent… The people we think of as capitalists are just a vassal class now. If you’re producing stuff now, you’re done. You’re finished. You cannot become the ruler of the world any more.”

I wonder aloud if Varoufakis’s big-picture approach stems from the fact that authoritarianism – and the radical politics it produced in his own family – is still near-history in Greece. When he was six, the secret police raided his house and arrested his father. Do you remember it, I ask. “My God, yes, you don’t forget a thing like that. For two weeks, we didn’t know where he was.” And when Varoufakis started becoming interested in politics – this was when a military junta still ruled Greece – and he was picked up by the police as a teenager, his parents were adamant: he was going to Britain.

As well as being a passionate European and an internationalist, he’s also an anglophile who writes in English and studied at Essex University, where he joined the Communist party of Great Britain. He is credited with persuading Jeremy Corbyn to back remain in the referendum and campaigned around the country for it. And when I ask him what his advice would be to Keir Starmer, he says: “He should try to do something he’s incapable of: being honest. He should say: ‘You know what? Brexit was a disaster. I want to bring back the UK into the EU. I’m not saying that I’m going to do it any time soon. But I’m going to work toward it. In the meantime, I will make Brexit work by doing A B C and D.’” (Coincidentally, Starmer said last week that he will seek to remake the deal with the EU for closer trade ties.)

“He’s now adopting austerity. There’s no plan for the NHS to reverse the privatisation from within. You know, this is the one thing I miss about Thatcher. She was a conviction politician, right?”

I say that the closest political analogues to Varoufakis in the UK might be Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. “What?” he says.

“You’re all anti-politicians,” I say.

“The fact you have a point is a source of sorrow,” he says. “Because I’m anti-establishment. But it’s true, you have these people taking over the anti-establishment mantle in a way that is functional to the interests of the establishment. I see no difference between Orbán, the Polish government, Trump, Farage, Johnson, Mussolini.”

It formed part of his pitch to the EU at the height of the Greek debt crisis. “I told Wolfgang Schäuble [the former German finance minister]: ‘We’re both democrats. We believe in the Enlightenment.’ I said: ‘Give us austerity and we’ll turn to fascism.’ And I very much fear that is turning out to be the case.” The big winners in this year’s Greek elections were “The Spartans, they are the mutation of Golden Dawn [a banned Greek neo-Nazi party]. The Greek Solution. You only have to hear the names, right? And Niki, or Victory.”

It’s a particularly sore point. Because these parties’ gains came at the expense of Varoufakis. After his stint as finance minister, he’d set up his own party, which won nine seats in the 2019 election. This year, it lost them all. “We don’t really know what happened. We were polling at 21% among young people.” The spring has gone out of his step, he admits. He’s been holed up in Aegina since, pondering his next move. Still, even with the ash raining from the skies, it’s not a bad place to be.

This is a bracing conversation, which includes half an hour on Russia and Ukraine during which I politely disagree with everything he says. His views on the conflict are practically indistinguishable from Nigel Farage’s, rehearsing the same far right-meets-far left “horseshoe” rhetoric about doing a deal with Putin, and Crimea not really being Ukraine. But on the subject of technofeudalism, I could listen to him all day.

Xenia, his daughter, wanders in. “Are you guys still going? I’ve had three naps since you got here.” A student in Australia, she’s been taking her classes online from Aegina and has been up half the night. The breakdown of his relationship with his first wife, Australian academic Margarite Poulos, and her decision to return to Australia with Xenia was, Varoufakis has written, one of the darkest periods of his life. Meeting Stratou is what saved him from “near oblivion”.

In Technofeudalism, Varoufakis retells the story of the minotaur. It’s a myth that he returns to often. In his prescription, the minotaur is the global financial system. In the myth, the beast is eventually slain by an Athenian prince. This prince of Athens didn’t manage to bring down capitalism. But as he and Stratou walk me down to the taxi under an unnatural orange sunset, it strikes me that the beast may yet turn out to have mortally wounded itself, all on its own.

• Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis is published by Bodley Head (£22). To support the Guardian and Observerorder your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
• Yanis Varoufakis discusses Technofeudalism at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, 28 September, tickets from £15

The Guardian, UK

Matt O’Hayer estimates he’s started “about 50 businesses,” from carpet cleaning to chartering sailboats.

His biggest success came when he stopped “trying to get rich” and started a company he believed in — one with a “deeper purpose,” he says. That’s Vital Farms, which says it’s the nation’s largest producer of pasture-raised eggs.

The business works with more than 300 family farms across the country, and can process up to six million eggs per day. It brought in $362.1 million in net revenue last year, marketing itself to customers willing to pay $6 to $10— multiple times the current national average of $2.04 — for a carton of a dozen ethically produced eggs.

O’Hayer launched Vital Farms in 2007 with 20 Rhode Island Red hens on a 27-acre farm near Austin, Texas. His goal was twofold: Raise egg-laying hens in a more humane environment than was typical in the U.S., and teach other farmers to do the same.

Vital Farms, which also sells butter, is now valued at $452.17 million, after going public in 2020, and is on track to bring in $465 million in revenue this year, according to company projections.

“I think we’ve shocked a lot of the marketplace, to think that people would be willing to pay extra for eggs,” O’Hayer, 68, says, adding: “It shows that ... people really care about what they eat and where it comes from.”

Inspired by ‘conscious capitalism’

O’Hayer’s first “sizable” business, which he began at age 20, was a carpet cleaning and janitorial services company in Houston. Other ventures have included a barter exchange service, travel company and sailboat vacation charter service.

In the 1980s, he and his ex-wife bought and tried to run a small farm. Their hens, which used to live in cages, “wouldn’t move,” O’Hayer says. “They just sat around, and I had to bring food to them.”

Somewhere around the same time, in 1984, O’Hayer met Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey. The two businessmen hit it off, sparking a long friendship, says O’Hayer. And when Mackey wrote a blog post in 2006 about “conscious capitalism,” which seeks a balance between profitability and social responsibility, O’Hayer felt inspired.

He started researching business ideas with a “deeper purpose,” and found himself returning to the egg industry, where an estimated 90% of the world’s egg-producing chickens live in cages. Those are “the most tortured farm animal in the world,” O’Hayer says.

He bought the 27-acre farm in Austin for $250,000, and got to work.

From Whole Foods to 24,000 stores

It took two years for Vital Farms to turn its first operating profit. O’Hayer spent most of that time overcoming the mistakes of a novice farmer.

The company’s chickens roam across a minimum of 108 square feet of farmland each day, foraging for natural grasses and insects. That’s not enough, O’Hayer discovered: The hens required additional feed, made from corn and unprocessed soybean meal, to ensure high egg production rates.

Once you get eggs, you need to sell them. Without a customer base, Vital Farms ended up donating its eggs to a local food bank multiple times, says O’Hayer.

In 2009, the company landed its “first big customer” — Whole Foods. Over eight slow years, the grocer expanded Vital Farms from Midwest stores to the rest of the country, which O’Hayer calls a “slog.”

“The way we expanded was not through relationships, necessarily, but through the fact that our eggs were selling,” he says.

Part of the popularity stems from Vital Farms’ mission. More than three-quarters of consumers say they care about the welfare of animals raised for food, according to a 2018 survey by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

But that wasn’t the only reason consumers bought in, O’Hayer says.

“It was really the taste and flavor of the egg that really drove our sales early on,” he says. “It’s a fortunate coincidence in laying hens that when you treat them right ... it actually turns out that they lay a much better egg.”

As sales picked up, Vital Farms expanded to retailers including Albertsons, Kroger, Publix, Target and Walmart. Today, the brand appears in more than 24,000 stores nationwide.

Maintaining standards

O’Hayer’s goal was always to partner with other farms: More eggs means higher sales.

It also creates a challenge. A lot of farms don’t meet Vital Farms’ specifications for humane conditions, from animal welfare and safety requirements to geographical features like tree coverage, a lack of standing water and outdoor grazing space.

Those factors are expensive, and Vital Farms has to convince farmers that the costs are worthwhile.

“We work really hard on the front end of a relationship with a farmer to help make sure that that farmer ... is going to be less prone to maybe taking the kind of shortcut that results in an animal not being treated as as we would like it to be,” says Russell Diez-Canseco, who took over as Vital Farms CEO from O’Hayer in 2019.

Vital Farms’ eggs are labeled “Certified Humane” by animal welfare nonprofit Humane Farm Animal Care, and it’s among the brands recommended by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

It’s also being sued by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and a group of consumers, who say Vital Farms’ ethical and humane branding is misleading. The lawsuit centers around industry-standard practices like trimming chickens’ beaks to ensure they don’t harm one another, and obtaining chicks from hatcheries that kill male chicks because they don’t lay eggs.

“The truth is that no matter what eggs you’re buying, [there] are some ways in which we would like to see producing those products be made better in some way,” Diez-Canseco says. “We face the same dilemma as any other egg producer does. Those are certainly not things we shy away from talking about, but they’re not things that the industry has come up with a very different alternative for today.”

Room to grow in a $14 billion market

Vital Farms’ annual sales have nearly quadrupled since first topping $100 million in 2018, outpacing every other pasture-raised egg brand in the country, according to the company.

That still only accounts for “maybe, 5% or 6% of U.S. retail sales of eggs,” Diez-Canseco says. The market’s biggest competitor, Cal-Maine — which sells under brands like Eggland’s Best and Land O’Lakes — brought in more than $3.1 billion in 2022 sales.

In total, the U.S. eggs market is valued at nearly $14 billion, according to a Research and Markets report published in July. Nearly 40% of egg production in the U.S. is controlled by a small group of large competitors, with Vital Farms not even among the top five.

That makes Vital Farms “still very much the startup in that space,” says Diez-Canseco. Still, his company’s internal projections say it’ll bring in more than $1 billion in annual net revenue by 2027.

That’ll depend on convincing more farmers to spend on humane conditions, and more people to buy relatively expensive eggs.

“Our purpose is to improve the lives of people, animals and the planet through food,” says Diez-Canseco. “And there are a lot more people and a lot more animals and a lot more land in this country in front of us.”

CNBC

Proscribed Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) says it is ready to negotiate with the federal government over a peaceful separation of Biafra from Nigeria.

IPOB is asking for a United Nations supervised referendum to extricate Biafra from Nigeria.

Emma Powerful, IPOB spokesperson, announced the development in a statement on Saturday.

Powerful said the agitation for a Biafra nation under IPOB began in 2012 without violence or criminality.

He said IPOB has lost over 5,000 members and property worth over $1 billion as a result of the extreme use of force by Nigeria’s security agencies.

“We the global family and movement of IPOB wish to reiterate once again that IPOB remains peaceful and open for negotiations and dialogue on peaceful exit of Biafra from Nigeria through a UN supervised Referendum,” the statement reads.

“IPOB’s peaceful agitation for Biafra Independence started in 2012. Never has IPOB been associated with violence or criminality in all our years of rallies and protests.

“Nevertheless, Federal Government, through its security forces, has levied war against IPOB.

“Our members have been brutally attacked while on peaceful protest by the Nigeria security forces at many locations in Biafra Land.

“As a result of these unwarranted attacks, many IPOB members have been murdered in cold blood, some have been permanently handicapped, some forcefully taken away by the security forces whereas some are still illegally detained in various detention facilities across Nigeria.

“Many IPOB members and sympathisers have had their houses and businesses burnt by the Nigeria security forces.

“IPOB has lost over 5,000 members with properties worth over $1bn as a result of the extreme use of force from the Nigeria Security Forces.

“Irrespective of all the provocations, IPOB has never retaliated nor have we taken up arms against the Nigerian State.”

Powerful added that IPOB has always advocated for a peaceful separation through dialogue.

“IPOB stands for peace. We stand for dialogue, and we stand for discussions. The cardinal rule under which IPOB was formed is to lead the way to a peaceful separation of Biafra from Nigeria,” the statement reads.

“Biafra and Nigeria are two different nations.

“The events from 1948 to 2023 have shown that it is practically impossible for Biafra and Nigeria to coexist as one nation.

“IPOB has been calling on the Nigeria State for discussions on a peaceful referendum date, but the Nigeria State always returns the peaceful call with violent suppression.

“We have always maintained that self-determination is our inalienable right according to the UN laws.”

The Cable

Nigeria’s available power generation capacity has plunged by 2,324 megawatts due to deteriorating plants/units’ capacities and poor maintenance caused by liquidity challenges, among others, the Federal Government has said.

It stated that though the country’s installed power generation capacity increased marginally, the quantum of available power crashed by over 2,300MW between 2015 and 2022.

Muhammadu Buhari was Nigeria’s president during the period under review. Former President Buhari took over from Goodluck Jonathan who built the power capacity to the level bequeathed in 2015.

An analysis of the latest 2022 Electricity Market Competition Report by The PUNCH on Friday, showed that the country’s available power capacity dropped from 6,401MW in 2015 to 4,059MW in 2022.

The report, which was put together by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, an agency of the Federal Government, read in part, “The installed capacity in NESI (Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry) grew by 7.95 per cent, from 12,132MW as of December 2015 to 13,097MW as at December 2022.

“During the same period, however, the average available capacity decreased by 2,324MW, from 6,401MW recorded in 2015 to 4,059MW in 2022.

“This is due to deteriorating plants/units’ capacities, poor maintenance due to liquidity challenge and access to forex (foreign exchange), non-binding contracts and delay payment, and introduction of stringent regulatory measure against wrong declaration.”

The power sector regulator, however, stated that “it is also noteworthy to mention that during the period, Gbarain National Integrated Power Project was out of operation till date. The non-availability of this plant may have also overstated the reduction in available capacity linked to the old plants.”

Meanwhile, the report stated that the installed and generation capacities of the power plants connected to the grid had continued to increase from 2015 when the power generation companies were handed over to private investors.

The NERC stated, “As at December 2022, 28 power plants were operational in NESI. The high number of generation plants and the opportunities created by various regulations allowing Discos (distribution companies) and large consumers to contract bilaterally and supported by the proposed exit of Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading company from the market, have somewhat improved the level of competition in that segment of the value chain.”

A total of 28 private and government-owned power generation plants were operational and on the grid as of December 2022, it stated.

It added that “This does not include several embedded generators licensed by the commission and currently operating in NESI. Only eight of the grid-connected generation plants owned by the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited are yet to be privatized.”

The NDPHC is a special-purpose vehicle owned by the three tiers of government and created for the implementation of the National Integrated Power Projects.

The NERC further stated that while it had continued to provide direction and regulatory guidance to address the challenges in NESI, the daily average generation had continued to grow.

“The daily average generation of 3,892MWh/h recorded in 2022 was 9.42 per cent more than the daily average generation of 3,557MWh/h recorded in 2015,” it stated.

But electricity consumers condemned the 9.42 per cent rise in average power generation recorded during the period of seven years, describing it as abysmally low.

The National Secretary, Nigeria Electricity Consumer Advocacy Network, Uket Obonga, said, “Can you say that is an improvement? If you had that kind of growth for seven years, which on average is about 1.3 per cent annual growth, would you say it is good? It is abysmally low!”

He added, “There is no serious growth there. It is about 1.3 per cent annual growth and this has been so for the past 10 years. In fact, since 2010 till about February or March this year, the annual growth in the power sector is about 1.1 per cent.

“So there is nothing to celebrate about that. It is not something remarkable. Our demand for electricity far outweighs that quantum of power generated during the period that was reviewed by NERC.”

Punch/NewsScroll

Director General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mustapha Ahmed, has said that the recent release of water from the Cameroon Lagdo dam will cause more flood disasters downstream Nigerian states.

The states to be affected are Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi, Anambra, Edo, Delta and Bayelsa, with Adamawa already affected.

Speaking on Saturday in Abuja during an emergency meeting with stakeholders in reaction to the flood disaster that affected Adamawa State from October 4, he said NEMA was alerted to the sudden increased inundation of riparian communities and farmlands along the banks of River Niger in Adamawa, Taraba and Benue states in the past 48 hours.

“Situation reports from Adamawa State confirms the upsurge of floodwaters along the flood plains of River Benue. The situation is expected to be replicated in downstream states of Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa Kogi, Anambra, Edo. Delta and Bayelsa as the River Benue joins River Niger and flows to the Atlantic Ocean through the Niger Delta,” he said.

He said the sudden situation was attributed to the rapid release of waters from Lagdo Dam in the Republic of Cameroon, adding that it had resulted in the displacement of residents of the affected communities.

He said croplands and valuable infrastructure were at risk of getting washed away by flood waters.

Ahmed said, “As a result of the unfolding situation, I want to use this opportunity to alert authorities of state and local governments along rivers Niger and Benue basin areas to immediately activate their emergency response plans to avert potential damage and losses that will arise due to inundation of communities by flood waters.”

“Furthermore, we are expecting to receive updates from the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) NIMET, NEMA Operations Office in Yola Adamawa state and from State Emergency Agencies of the frontline states to keep on updating you on the situation as it unfolds.”

He said the dashboard of the agency indicated that this year’s flood scenario had affected 159,157 persons, resulted in the loss of 28 persons and the displacement of 48,168 individuals across 13 states int the country.

Daily Trust

Over one million Nigerians have lost their jobs under the N-Power programme of the Federal Government following the indefinite suspension of the scheme by the government.

The N-Power programme was established by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari to address youth unemployment as beneficiaries were paid N30,000 monthly stipend.

It is a component of the National Social Investment Programme put in place by the previous administration through the on-boarding of 1.5 million unemployed Nigerian youths (mostly graduates), providing capacity building, targeted tenured employment and structured of-boarding unto various career paths.

In February this year, figures obtained from the Humanitarian ministry in Abuja indicated that the programme had enrolled 200,000 youths in Batch A; 300,000 in Batch B; 510,000 in Batch C1; and 490,000 in Batch C2.

Although the number of beneficiaries who had exited the scheme could not be confirmed at the time of filing this report, it was gathered that virtually all enrolees in batches C1 and C2 were still enrolled in the scheme, representing about one million persons.

Many N-Power beneficiaries teach in primary schools across the country.

But on Saturday, the Federal Government announced the indefinite suspension of the programme and vowed to investigate the funds spent on the scheme.

Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, announced the indefinite suspension of the programme during a live interview on TVC News.

Edu said the programme had been marred by irregularities, adding that the government had launched an investigation into the utilisation of funds since the inception of the scheme.

She added that some of the beneficiaries of the programme were not found in their places of assignment, yet they were receiving monthly stipends.

Edu also stated that some of the N-Power beneficiaries ought to have exited the programme in 2022, but were still on the payroll.

She said, “We must go back to look into N-Power and understand what the problems are; so we will basically suspend the programme for now until we are done with proper investigation into the utilisation of funds by the N-Power programme.

“We want to know how many people are basically on the programme right now; how many people are owed and the amount they are owed. We are totally restructuring N-Power and expanding it.

“There are lots going on. We met people who were supposed to have exited the programme since last year and they are still claiming that they are teaching.

“Sometimes, we contact the schools or the places where they are working and they are not there. They are not working, yet they keep claiming that they are being owed eight or nine months’ stipends. About 80 per cent of them are not working, yet they are claiming salaries.”

Previous investigations

The N-Power scheme has been marred by irregularities as the humanitarian ministry had in a response to an enquiry by The PUNCH in December 2022 detailed how some of its officials were being investigated.

In the response, which was signed by the immediate past Permanent Secretary, Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, the ministry said it was aware of publications regarding ongoing investigations in relation to fraud allegations in the programme.

It said, “We wish to state as follows: the ministry has deployed a well-rounded mechanism for the selection of eligible beneficiaries from across the country and this has been in place since the inception of the programme.

“Working with our service provider, programme beneficiaries are on-boarded, trained and deployed to pre-selected places of primary assignment.

“When it came to our notice that there might have been sharp practices by some personnel of the payment service provider involved in the payment processes of the beneficiaries, the matter was immediately referred to the ICPC for a thorough investigation.

“We are aware that certain persons have consequently been invited for interrogation as part of the ongoing investigations.”

The former permanent secretary said the ministry had carried out thorough reinforcement of its systems to eliminate all anomalies and prevent similar occurrences in the future.

He added, “To this end, we are in close collaboration with the ICPC to support the successful determination of the investigation.

“The public may wish to note that in a bid to ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation of the N-Power and other National Social Investment Programmes, namely the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme and the Conditional Cash Transfer, the ministry has over time involved other government MDAs, security agencies and Civil Society Organisations in monitoring and compliance checks across the 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory.

“We want to assure all N-Power beneficiaries of the Federal Government’s continued commitment to the programme and the subsequent exit/of-boarding channels activated.”

The ministry had also urged all programme beneficiaries to continue to apply themselves to their utmost at their places of primary assignment.

“All monthly stipends will continue to be paid in line with programme expectations,” the ministry had stated.

It also called “on members of the public to come forward with information on any irregularities noticed in the implementation of the National Social Investment programme” through some email channels and phone numbers at the time.

Punch

Hamas militants broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and rampaged through nearby Israeli communities, killing at least 250 people and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise attack during a major Jewish holiday Saturday. Israel responded with strikes in Gaza that killed 232 and signaled more as its prime minister said the country is at war and vowed to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.

Gun battles continued well after nightfall, and militants held hostages in standoffs in two towns. Militants occupied a police station in a third town, where Israeli forces struggled until Sunday morning to finally reclaim the building. An Israeli military spokesperson said Sunday morning that the hostage situations had been “resolved,” but did not say whether all the hostages had been rescued alive.

Twenty-four hours after the start of the Hamas attack, the Israeli military had still not given an all-clear. In some towns, civilians’ bodies lay where they had encountered advancing gunmen. At least nine people gunned down at a bus shelter in the town of Sderot were laid out on stretchers on the street, their bags still on the curb nearby. One woman, screaming, embraced the body of a family member sprawled under a sheet next to a toppled motorcycle.

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza intensified after nightfall, flattening residential buildings in giant explosions, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. Israeli forces fired a warning just before.

At least 232 people in the Gaza Strip were killed and 1,700 wounded in Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Israeli media, citing rescue service officials, said at least 250 people were killed and 1,500 wounded in Saturday’s attack, making it the deadliest in Israel in decades. Hamas fighters took an unknown number of civilians and soldiers captive into Gaza.

The conflict threatened to escalate with Israel’s vows of retaliation.

In a televised address Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military will use all of its strength to destroy Hamas’ capabilities. “All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins,” he added.

“Get out of there now,” he told Gaza residents, who have no way to leave the tiny, overcrowded Mediterranean territory.

Overnight, the Israeli military issued warnings in Arabic to communities near the border with Israel to leave their homes for areas deeper inside the tiny enclave.

Gaza’s 2.3 million people have endured a border blockade, enforced to varying degrees by Israel and Egypt, since Hamas militants seized control in 2007.

Previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers brought widespread death and destruction in Gaza and days of rocket fire on Israeli towns. The situation is potentially more volatile now, with Israel’s far-right government stung by the security breach and with Palestinians in despair over a never-ending occupation in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza.

The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing Gaza, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast.

In an amateur video, hundreds of terrified young people who had been dancing at a rave fled for their lives after Hamas militants entered the area and began firing at them.

Among those killed Saturday was Col. Jonathan Steinberg, a senior officer who commanded the Israeli military’s Nahal Brigade, a prominent infantry unit.

Before daybreak Sunday, militants fired more rockets from Gaza, hitting a hospital in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon, said senior hospital official Tal Bergman. Video provided by Barzilai Medical Center showed a large hole punched into a wall and chunks of debris scattered on the ground of what appeared to be an empty room and a hallway. The military said patients had been evacuated from Barzilai before the strike.

School was canceled across Israel.

Around 3 a.m., a loudspeaker atop a mosque in Gaza City blared a stark warning to residents of nearby apartment buildings: Evacuate immediately. Just minutes later, an Israeli airstrike reduced one nearby five-story building to ashes.

After one Israeli strike, a Hamas rocket barrage hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said.

The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, said the assault was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza, and a series of recent incidents that have brought Israeli-Palestinian tensions to a fever pitch.

Over the past year, Israel’s far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there, and tensions have flared around the Al-Aqsa mosque, a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

“Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message. He said the attack was only the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” and called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight.

The Hamas incursion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, aiming to take back Israeli-occupied territories.

Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government and military over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.

Asked by reporters how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, replied, “That’s a good question.”

The abduction of Israeli civilians and soldiers also raised a particularly thorny issue for Israel, which has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home. Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in its prisons. Hecht confirmed that a “substantial” number of Israelis were abducted Saturday.

Associated Press photos showed an elderly Israeli woman being brought into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle. AP journalists saw four people taken from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, including two women.

In Gaza, a black jeep pulled to a stop and, when the rear door opened, a young woman stumbled out, bleeding from the head and with her hands tied behind her back. A man waving a gun in the air grabbed her by the hair and pushed her into the vehicle’s back seat.

Thailand’s government said that two of its citizens may have been abducted, though the Israeli government could not immediately confirm the details.

Thousands of Thai citizens work in Israel, many of them in the agriculture sector. Israeli TV reported that workers from the Philippines were also among the captives.

Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has put the country’s air force on standby to evacuate its citizens if needed.

A major question now was whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. Netanyahu vowed that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” But, he warned, “This war will take time. It will be difficult.”

Israel’s military was bringing four divisions of troops as well as tanks to the Gaza border, joining 31 battalions already in the area, a spokesperson said.

Hamas said it had planned for a potentially long fight. “We are prepared for all options, including all-out war,” the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, told Al-Jazeera TV. “We are ready to do whatever is necessary for the dignity and freedom of our people.”

In Gaza, much of the population was thrown into darkness after nightfall as electrical supplies from Israel — which supplies almost all the territories’ power — were cut off. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel would stop supplying electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.

U.S. President Joe Biden said from the White House that he had spoken with Netanyahu to say the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the U.S. about normalizing relations with Israel, called on both sides to exercise restraint. The kingdom said it had repeatedly warned about the danger of “the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation (and) the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group congratulated Hamas, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.

The attack comes at a time of historic division within Israel over Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators into the streets and prompted hundreds of military reservists to avoid volunteer duty — turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness.

Palestinians demonstrated in towns and cities around the West Bank on Saturday night. Palestinian health officials said Israeli fire killed five there, but gave few details.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Biden mulls asking $100 billion check for Ukraine – Telegraph

US President Joe Biden is reportedly plotting a potential “one-and-done”Ukraine aid request that would be so big that he wouldn’t need to seek any more funding approvals from Congress until after the 2024 election, The Telegraph has reported on Saturday. 

The new Ukraine aid request could be as large as $100 billion, enough to avoid continued legislative controversies that could hinder Biden’s re-election bid next year, the British newspaper said, citing people familiar with the White House discussions. Such a proposal would dwarf the $24 billion funding request that US House lawmakers stripped out of the stopgap spending bill that they passed last week to avert a government shutdown.

“The big package idea is firmly supported by many throughout the administration,” the newspaper’s source said. “Supporters of Ukraine want this to be a one-and-done, big bill, and then not have to deal with it until after the next election.”

Biden’s administration is scrambling to find temporary ways to keep the money and weapons flowing to Kiev, supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces, until a major aid bill is passed by Congress. For instance, a US State Department grant program could reportedly be tapped to provide about $650 million in funding. The White House officials were quoted by the media as saying that only a few weeks remain before a potential lapse in Ukraine funding, which they have warned could have devastating consequences on the battlefield.

Republican lawmakers have become increasingly critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy, with some arguing that massive aid to Kiev is only prolonging the bloody conflict at the expense of bigger domestic priorities. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of his leadership post earlier this week, the first such congressional ouster in US history, reportedly after some of his fellow Republicans heard that he had promised Biden a separate Ukraine aid bill to be approved after passing the stopgap funding measure.

The Biden administration won’t decide on whether to propose a one-and-done aid package for Ukraine until after a new House speaker is elected, possibly next week, according to The Telegraph’s report. Getting a $100 billion bill passed might require the president to make concessions to conservative Republicans on such issues as illegal immigration.

US Representative Lauren Boebert, one of the Republicans who have been critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy, suggested in an interview on Friday that the new House speaker might have to pledge opposition to passing more funding for Kiev. She noted that a majority of Republicans in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted against a $300 million Ukraine aid bill last week.

“For the first time, we saw that Ukraine funding alone does not have a majority of the majority’s support,” Boebert told US podcast host Steve Bannon. “Any speaker has to recognize that and not allow more funding for Ukraine to come to the floor. We are absolutely tired of spending it.” 

Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion. The Pentagon warned last week that it had exhausted “nearly all available security-assistance funding for Ukraine.” 

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

One civilian killed in Ukrainian shelling of Russia's Belgorod region, governor says

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region said on Saturday that one civilian had been killed in the village of Urazovo, near the Ukrainian border, as a result of Ukrainian shelling.

Russian air defence systems downed three Ukrainian missiles over the region, he said earlier.

Attacks on regions of Russia adjoining Ukraine have become an almost daily occurrence in the last few months.

Kyiv does not typically claim responsibility for attacks on targets inside Russia.

** Russia hits Odesa grain facility in overnight missile strike

Russian forces carried out an overnight missile strike on Ukraine's southern Odesa region, damaging port infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities said early on Saturday.

Governor Oleh Kiper said four people were wounded in the strike, which hit a boarding house and a portside grain facility. He did not specify where the attack took place.

Ukraine's military said the strike involved supersonic Onyx missiles fired from Russian-occupied Crimea.

Russian forces have carried out regular missile and drone strikes on port infrastructure in recent weeks, making it difficult for major grain producer Ukraine to export its products.

Moscow quit a deal in mid-July that had enabled Black Sea grain shipments and helped combat a global food crisis.

RT/Reuters

Who is the man who today sits atop the presidency of Nigeria? What is his name? Who are his parents? Who are his childhood friends? What was his childhood like? What primary school did he attend? Where did he attend secondary school? Or, the university? Is he a criminal? Is he a serial forger? On account of the above, can we trust him? Can he be trusted with the destinies of over 200 million Nigerians? Can the rest of the world trust him as the embodiment of Nigeria?

Last year, I wrote about the history of certificate forgeries and identity theft in Nigeria which is about a century old. In the 1940s, with the colonial government underscoring the essence of certificates, the ingenuity of Nigerians as fabulists, concoctionists and fraudsters assumed frightening notoriety. On the social plane, one such character who the colonialists made an example of his academic fraudulence was a Prince Modupe, known also as Modupe Paris and David Modupe. Modupe lived in America under a number of fantastic disguises. In 1935, he claimed to have graduated from the Jesuit College, Oxford. When some Nigerians did an Atiku Abubakar inquisition into this fabulous claim, Oxford University denied having any name of such variant in its records. In March, 1947, Modupe appeared in San Francisco, claiming that he was “His Royal Highness Prince Modupe of Dubrica.” Seven months later, in the same San Francisco, he claimed that he was the “Crown Prince of Nigeria.” His soul mate in confidence trickery was another Nigerian by the name of Prince Peter Eket Inyang Udo, who lived in America and Britain for about 17 years. The colonial government had him in its records for his dubious commercial claims.

At the political level, the highest in ranking among politicians of colonial and immediate post-colonial Nigeria who made dubious claims about their academic attainments was a man called Okechukwu Ikejiani. A strong member of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and a major acolyte of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ikejiani was appointed by the Federal Government, of which Zik was president, as the Pro-Chancellor of the Ibadan University College. A visiting University of Toronto scholar was said to have raised issues with the Doctor of Science (DSc.) degree which Ikejiani flaunted. Ikejiani was later appointed chairman of the Nigerian Railways Corporation, an appointment which immediately erupted in chaos. Calls were made for Ikejiani’s sack for misrepresentation of his attainment. While he was certified to have earned a medical degree as a doctor from the University of Toronto, Ikejiani’s claim to a DSc. degree was later found to have been false.

So many of such characters have lived and survived under false identities due to the Nigerian misconception that certificates define a man. Many of these rogues have been celebrated as national mascots, and today, it looks as though being a bona fide crook is a passport into and, indeed, one of the criteria of eligibility to Nigerian heroism. This fakery is also fueled by a conspiracy of silence in Nigeria. Many who fake certificates work in critical sectors and their fraud is known by many, without any whistle-blowing, thereby enabling them to inflict their fraud on the people. They then continually harvest victims of their concocted identities in the process.

In Austrian, British philosopher, Karl Popper’s Open society and its enemies, critical questions on the identities of our leaders appear as the oil that greases the engine of democracy. In the book, Popper made a strong defence of the open society which democracy represents and attacked its enemies who want a close society. Popper’s book is regarded as one of the most important books of the 20th century and “an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy.” In it, he argued that by not asking fundamental questions that help to reinforce free speech and good governance, we are abetting “the intellectual origins of totalitarianism.”

So when Atiku Abubakar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the last Nigerian presidential election, approached an American court to mandate the Chicago State University (CSU) to release details of Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu’s academic records, he was merely obeying the Popper injunctions and fulfilling the requirements of an open society. You may not like Atiku; he may not represent your ideal activist seeking purity in Nigeria’s democratic space; you may even conveniently tag him a meddlesome interloper; he may be suffocating under the legal jargon where he is currently subsumed, as someone on a fishing expedition, but the truth is, Abubakar’s courageous effort in approaching CSU for the truth will invariably lead to the strengthening of the health of Nigeria’s democracy. And Atiku would not be the first, nor the last. It is forgers and identity thieves who should amend their ways.

When Yoruba elders take a deep breath and say, “Ogede nbaje, e l’o npon,” they have taken a peep into their binoculars and sensed tragedy. “Ogede nbaje…”, literally translated, is an impending rot in the banana/plantain that is selfishly interpreted as a fruit at the thick of ripening. In such circumstance, elders have seen otherwise good people attempting to excuse or rationalize evil. They know that the end will not bode well for society. And the kingpins involved are otherwise respected and respectable. 

“Ogede nbaje…” is an aphorism where a binary view is made of an indisputably straightforward issue. If you see the banana/plantain as ripening when it is in fact rotten, you are in cahoots with the devil to disrupt existence. The wise-saying is an explanation of the calamity that lies ahead when society becomes victim in the hands of those who see the pleasure of today and not the challenge of tomorrow.

In 1999, Nigerians were unanimous in seeing a rotten banana/plantain, rather than an inviting fruit. The country had just entered the current Fourth Republic. The Nigerian press was at the vanguard of that fight. It did not call the emerging rotten fruit of the banana/plantain a ripening beauty. The press called it by its real name. At the time, that press was still bursting at its seams with the residue of its activism against military dictatorship. The press seemed to have sworn to prevent impurity from having a place to hibernate in Nigeria’s hard-earned democratic governance. That press fought against colonial government. So, in a cover story it did in February, 1999, TheNews 

magazine burst the bubble of Fourth Republic’s maiden Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, a young man who epitomized the energy and verve of youth that was needed to kick-start the Nigerian democratic Turbo engine.

In the thick of the fanfare of return to democratic governance, on February 16, 1999, the magazine’s investigative journalism revealed that Buhari was an identity thief. Born January 3, 1970, Buhari swore on oath that he was born in 1963. This he did to escape the provision of section 65(1) of the constitution. That law stipulated that anyone gunning for this office must be 30 years old. On his claim to have been an alumnus of the prestigious University of Toronto in Canada, TheNews put a lie to the claim. Not only didn’t Buhari attend Toronto, he never attended any known university. The Speaker’s claim to have observed the National Youth Service at a Standard Construction Company in Kano was also defoliated and found to be untrue. When confronted with these serial allegations of fraud, Buhari at first fumed, threatening to sue the magazine for libel. However, confronted with irrefutable evidence which showed that his shrew had escaped, with only peels of its tail left in his hands, on July 23, 1999, Buhari owned up to the binge of forgeries. Weeping profusely, he pleaded, “I apologize to you. I apologize to the nation. I apologize to my family and friends for all the distress I have caused them. I was misled in error by a zeal to serve the nation, I hope the nation will forgive me and give me the opportunity to serve again.”

In tow, the press felled the big elephants of similar identity and certificate forgers in the room. Senate President Evan(s) Enwerem fell, having been alleged to have forged his identity. With the same vigour which completed a cycle of peering searchlights round the tripod of Nigeria, Tinubu, then governor of Lagos State, also got caught in the puddle. Tinubu, like Salisu Buhari, had multiple of allegations hanging on his neck, ranging from identity theft, forgeries to perjury. Three of the schools he swore on oath as having attended were found to be outright forgeries. From St. John’s School, Aroloya; Government College, Ibadan to University of Chicago, the press effectively tar-brushed him.

About 23 years after the Nigerian press mounted that Olympian height and became a pride of the profession for dismantling houses moulded with dross, its has become the case of the proverbial “Ogede nbaje…” For instance, Bayo Onanuga, Editor-in-Chief of that investigative journalism magazine, TheNews who spearheaded that brilliant Salisu Buhari revelation has today become enmeshed in that systemic rot, feeding even fatter than and becoming indistinguishable from the maggots in the Nigerian political sewers. In a tweet he did last Thursday on the recent inquisition into Tinubu’s alleged forgeries, Onanuga said that any attempt at drilling into the president’s certificates was “an infantile obsession” and “a display of utter desperation,” as well as “a calculated attempt to shamelessly whip up public sentiments.” The man whose medium reached out to Toronto to authenticate Salisu Buhari’s certificate said a similar expedition today was a “purposeless judicial voyage,” and a “needless negative exposure of Nigeria and the institution of the presidency in (a) foreign land.” Was exposing Buhari’s forgery a voyage different from today's Tinubu's? Salisu Buhari was Nigeria's number four when the press unclad him in the market square. By the time he woke up, cloths thrown at his Omoye was unable to save her as she had walked naked into the market square.

“Ogede nbaje…” Indeed, the Onanuga banana/plantain is already bringing out maggots. At its prime, a ripe banana lures all with its fair complexioned beauty. It is enticing and exciting. Everyone wishes to have a bite of it. However, the reality is that, at that ripening state, the banana/plantain is at its autumn. It is exhausting its glow and biding its time to enter the next state of disintegration. All of a sudden, that beautiful, inviting and captivating fruit begins to lose its colour and savour. Dark patches appear on its trunk, disfiguring the otherwise beauty that myopia or greed hid from the eyes awhile ago. Tanning, sallow shades take over the fruit. The beautiful coat loses its drape and the tasteful fruit turns into a sour bite. Rottenness takes it over. In forecasting the unfavourable outcome that will ultimately be the lot of the ephemeral beauty of the banana/plantain, Yoruba elders use this allegory of the banana/plantain to warn against equating the luxuriant beauty of today with an enduring pride of tomorrow.

That courageous Nigerian press of 1999 which called politicians’ banana/plantain a rotten fruit is today celebrating the same fruit’s vanishing beauty. If you do a content analysis of the press’ reportage of that shameful inquisition into Nigeria in Chicago last week, you would notice that the fruit has turned full throttle in its rot. Apart from courageous reports on the social media that belled the cat, the traditional press was like a cat that tucked its tail behind its bum. It was on sabbatical, either self-imposed or a result of huge financial compromise from serial forgers and identity thieves.

The Atiku Abubakar voyage to Chicago in search of the true colour of Nigeria’s president, Tinubu, has confirmed that Nigeria is in a more serious mess than she may think. When a people arrive at a straightforward road but assume it is an intersection where three footpaths meet, they provoke elders to see calamity ahead. How could anyone have imagined that a day would come when political convenience, ethnicity and willful desire not to rock the boat would make Nigerians moralize forgery? And debate whether underhand cyclostyling of a certificate was forgery or legitimate?

Nigeria was on trial last week in the United States of America. No, Tinubu was not on trial. Nigeria was the one who presented a simultaneously attended 1970 Cambridge GCE A-Level result and a school certificate from a Government College, Lagos that was non-existent as at the time of graduation. This is because Tinubu today embodies Nigeria. As if that was not tragic enough, responses to the deposition in America last week reveal that truth has different colours and texture in Nigeria. Those who showed open disgust and disdain for evil a while ago have suddenly wrapped a shawl of tarpaulin round themselves. Yoruba, whose forefathers and fathers denounced Ikejiani, Salisu Buhari and other serial forgers have suddenly lost their voices. Professors say it does not matter. Scholars say, “but the man is churning our great policies!” The question to ask is, can our university’s vice chancellors bail Tinubu out by coming out to announce to graduates of their universities who can't find their degree certificates to start using their individual office computers to design and print replacements of the lost “diplomas”? It will help Tinubu and his spin doctors to silence puritanical critics!  

The Chicago saga is very lean on law but very robust on morality. What the Supreme Court says about the matter is very minute in representation to the totality of our being as Nigeria and Nigerians. No issue is as important in Nigeria today as the potential incineration of our national integrity that the certificate issue portends. Not even the tumbling Naira, nor the excruciating economy is as important as the Chicago saga. If we do not succeed in convincing ourselves and the rest of the world that we do not have a serial forger in Aso Rock, we are done for. Tinubu too must help us by personally addressing this thick web of claims of his dubiety.

For us in the media, we must be very ashamed of ourselves. The Nigerian press which unearthed Salisu Buhari is almost dead today. Replacing this big media elephant in the room is a young man called David Hundeyin who is now a representation of all we have lost. I can see elders heave a deep sigh and mutter that indeed, “Ogede nbaje, e l’o npon!”