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Woman arrested for maltreating step children

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The Lagos State Government has handed over a woman, Funmilayo Samson, to the police for allegedly maltreating her stepchildren on Ebuwawa Road in the Ikorodu area of the state.

Officials of the Directorate for Citizens’ Rights had on Friday rescued the children and arrested Funmilayo after a post about her alleged maltreatment of the victims went viral on social media.

In a post by the Nigerian Women Blog on Facebook, it was alleged that Funmilayo was in the habit of locking the children, aged 12, nine and three, outside the house without food and beating them, which left bruises on their bodies.

It was gathered that the father of the children, who comes home on weekends, got married to Funmilayo after the death of their mother.

When PUNCH Metro visited the area on Saturday, it was learnt that Funmilayo had earlier been apprehended when concerned neighbours reported her at the Owutu Police Station, but she was released after about two hours and she reportedly boasted that nothing could be done to her.

Funmilayo’s neighbour, Mr Olushola Oyinlola, and his wife, Lola, who narrated the ordeal of the children to our correspondent, stated that when not much changed after reporting her at the police station, a petition was written to the Lagos State Office of the Public Defender and a Facebook post was made about the alleged maltreatment of the children.

Olushola noted that everyone in the neighbourhood knew about the maltreatment of the children but no one could challenge Funmilayo due to her troublesome nature.

Narrating the children’s ordeal, Olushola said, “There is a lot of maltreatment and abuse that one cannot explain; when you see the children, you will know that they are being maltreated and there are a lot of bruises all over their bodies.

“Funmilayo is stony-hearted and no one can correct or challenge her, because she believes that she can face anybody. She would not give the children food, but whenever the husband asked the children if they had eaten, they were too scared to talk; and if they dared say that they had not eaten, she would say that they were lying.

“There was a time the couple went for a wedding in Ibadan and spent four days, leaving the children behind. They ate on the first day, but I noticed that they had not eaten on the second day and I asked the female one to go and cook for the rest, but she said she could not, because they had been warned not to touch the gas cooker or stove in the house except the electric cooker and there was no power; so, I asked them how they would cope and she said since there was no electricity, they could not eat.

“My wife and I gave them money to go and buy food and we went out, but when we came back, the eldest child told us that one of his younger ones had been running temperature and had headache since we went out; so, we gave them money to go and buy drugs. We could not give them from the ones we had at home, because their stepmother had taken us as enemies and we did not want a situation where she would say that we poisoned them or she poison the children and tell people that we did.

“The parents travelled without making provisions for them for the days they would spend; we were the ones taking care of them and when they came back, the stepmother questioned the youngest child, whom she knew would talk.

“Immediately she knew that they collected something from us, she started shouting, cursing and said that she preferred that the kids would die than for them to collect anything from anybody and she used to lock them out of the house for more than a month anytime she was leaving the house in the morning till evening; she would come back without food just because they collected something from us.

“There was a time we heard a noise from their flat but we could not come out because she would create a scene, but when I saw the female child the following day, she had a deep cut on her face and when I asked her what happened, she said the stepmother used a razor blade to cut her.

“There was a day she alleged that the kids ate from the soup inside the refrigerator and she poured grounded pepper in their eyes and locked them in the house and went out till the following day; and when she came back, she asked the female child to bring out the gas cooker, but unfortunately for the girl, she did not know that the pot of soup was on it because she could not see well and the pot fell and Funmilayo packed the stew and poured it on the girl’s face.

“When we reported the case at the Owutu Police Station, nothing came out of it; she was arrested and within two hours, she came back boasting that there was nothing anybody could do to her. So, when I saw that all efforts to rescue the children had proved abortive, I resorted to writing about their ordeal on my Facebook wall for people to see and render help.”

The Director of Public Affairs, Lagos State Ministry of Justice, Kayode Oyekanmi, confirmed the rescue of the children to our correspondent and the arrest of the stepmother, adding that the children had been put in protective custody.

“The children were rescued by the Directorate of Citizens’ Right and they are already in protective custody and the stepmother has been arrested and detained at the Owutu Police Station and she will be arraigned on Monday (today),” he stated.

Also, the state Police Public Relations Officer, Bala Elkana, confirmed the arrest of Funmilayo and the rescue of the children.

“We have rescued the kids, while the woman has been arrested and will be charged,” he told PUNCH Metro.

Source: The Punch.

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Just In: Army Chief Oluyede Storms Sokoto Over New Terrorist Group Emergence

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The Acting Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, has arrived in Sokoto for his first operational visit to the 8th Division Area of Responsibility, JomogNews Nigeria.

During his visit, Oluyede is expected to meet with the Sultan of Sokoto and engage with other key stakeholders within the division’s jurisdiction.

As part of the visit, the Army Chief will address troops participating in Operation Fasan Yamma, the ongoing military operation combating terrorist activities in the northwest region.

Oluyede’s arrival in Sokoto comes just three days after the Defence Headquarters confirmed the emergence of a new terror group known as ‘Lakurawa,’ which has been causing unrest in Sokoto and Kebbi states.

Five local government areas in Sokoto State have been identified as areas affected by the activities of this group.

Defence Media Operations Director, Major General Edward Buba, stated that while the Lakurawa group is contributing to the rising insecurity in the North-West, the Armed Forces of Nigeria are actively working to contain their threat and ensure stability in the region.

“Troops are confronted with a new terrorist sect in the North-West. This sect is known as Lakuwaras, the Lakuwaras are affiliated to terrorists in the Sahel particularly from Mali and Niger Republic.

“They began incursion into Northern part of Nigeria, mainly Sokoto and Kebbi states, and like I mentioned, they came in from Niger and Mali axis,” General Buba said.

He added that the new terror group emerged from Mali and the Republic of Niger after the coup that led to the breakdown of military cooperation between Nigeria and Niger.

The military also declared nine terrorists wanted for their roles in the security challenges bedevilling the nation.

 

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Obaseki Has Escaped, Whereabouts Unknown – Edo Gov-Elect, Okpebholo Alleges

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Edo State Governor-elect, Senator Monday Okpebholo has expressed concern over what he described as Godwin Obaseki’s bizarre public displays.

He claimed that Obaseki has disappeared from the state.

In a statement made available to newsmen on Sunday and signed by Godspower Inegbe, Okpebholo said Edo people are worried by Obaseki’s reckless statements and urged him to evaluate his state of mind.

The Governor-Elect in the statement raised the alarm regarding the whereabouts of Obaseki, who he claimed reportedly fled Benin City, the Edo State capital, using a disguised bus.

The statement revealed that Obaseki chased out everyone from the Government House on Friday before escaping to a yet-to-be known location more than 72 hours before his official departure from office.

The statement further noted that Obaseki is making the false claims to shift attention away from his sinister plans to leave the country through the land borders.

“As of Friday, 8th of November, the whereabouts of Obaseki is unknown. He has chased everyone out of Edo State Government House. He has abandoned governance in the State, and he is on the run.

“He has escaped through the road out of Benin. He did not pass through the airport. If he is as popular as he claims, why did he not use the airport to escape? Instead, he hired a bus and disguised while escaping from Edo State.

“Obaseki is trying to push out these narratives in order to distract the public. His antics will not work. We know his plans, and we will continue to expose his shenanigans to Edo people,” the statement read.

Obaseki, on Saturday, claimed that Senator Okpebholo did not invite him to his inauguration, slated for next Tuesday.

“According to the unpopular outgoing governor, Senator Monday Okpebholo stole the mandate freely given to him by Edo people.

“In his usual myopic mind, he wants to change the narratives and set a dangerous precedent,” Okpebholo noted in a statement.

The Governor-Elect said he won the elections convincingly and added that the tribunal will soon validate his claims.

He said Obaseki would not get away with the reckless claims.

“Obaseki will not get away with this misrepresentation. Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Governor-Elect of Edo State, won the 21st September governorship election in Edo State.

“Obaseki is still licking his wounds of defeat and is yet to accept the reality. Edo people, through the ballot, rejected the planned continuation of Obaseki’s satanic government through his glorified stooge, Asue Ighodalo,” he mocked Obaseki.

Okpebholo said Obaseki is trying to influence the outcome of the ongoing case at the tribunal by making false claims.

He said the attempt will fail like a pack of cards.

He said: “The Peoples Democratic Party is already challenging the outcome of the election in court. We are therefore worried that Obaseki is in a hurry to pre-empt the outcome of the tribunal by repeatedly making false claims.

“Unfortunately for Obaseki, his baseless claims will not stand. The Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate, Ighodalo, have no case against Senator Okpebholo. The tribunal will soon confirm that.”

He warned Obaseki to desist from making false claims and reminded him of severe consequences that may follow if he does not stop.

Senator Okpebholo reminded Obaseki that he will soon lose his immunity and will therefore be forced to face the full wrath of the law if he does not retrace his steps.

“Although Senator Okpebholo is a man of peace, we will not sit back and allow him to keep misrepresenting the true outcome of what happened on the 21st of September.

“Obaseki will soon lose his immunity and if he continues to make his baseless claims, he will face the full wrath of the law very soon and he will prove his unfounded allegations when he is dragged to court,” Okpebholo warned in the statement.

Reacting to another claim by Obaseki that he was not invited to attend the inauguration slated for next Tuesday, Okpebholo described it as laughable, absurd, and questionable.

He said that since he won the election, Obaseki has employed every means to frustrate a peaceful transfer of power.

The Governor-elect noted that Obaseki has not extended any invitation to him for a meeting or a tour of the Government House.

The statement read: “Again, Obaseki also claimed that Senator Okpebholo did not invite him to the inauguration, slated for next Tuesday. This is laughable, absurd, and questionable. Since Senator Okpebholo was declared winner, Obaseki has employed every means to frustrate a peaceful transfer of power.

“As a sitting Governor, Obaseki should tell Edo people and Nigerians if he has ever invited the Governor-Elect, Senator Okpebholo to Government House for a meeting or a tour as a responsible man. Has Obaseki called Senator Okpebholo to congratulate him since he won the election?

“Obaseki should cover his face in shame, account for the billions he has misappropriated, and apologise to Edo people for under-developing the State in the last eight years.

“We urge Edo people to disregard Obaseki’s reckless statements and support the incoming administration of Senator Okpebholo to remedy the many wrongs of this government.”

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What Trump’s Comeback May Mean for Africa – Farooq A. Kperogi

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A few weeks ago, I spoke at a symposium in my university here in Georgia on the implications of the U.S. presidential election for the African diaspora.

To the bemusement of my audience (who were a mix of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris supporters), I explained the curious phenomenon of African support for Donald Trump, particularly among Nigerian and Kenyan evangelicals.

I described how a surprising number of African Christians (and, in fact, some Muslims) consider Trump “God’s chosen one,” a valiant defender of conservative religious values whom they imagine will take on global LGBTQ rights with righteous vengeance.

The audience was incredulous and struggled to reconcile Trump’s infamous moral transgressions with his appeal to African conservatives. When I explained that these supporters see Trump as a warrior against the “cultural liberalism” they believe threatens their faith, eyebrows raised.

The eyebrows raised even further when I pointed out that there are Muslims who are so disillusioned with the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel that they prayed for a Trump win even when Trump is more manifestly hawkish than Biden/Harris and so disdains Muslims that he enacted a “Muslim ban” (which actually included non-Muslims) within the first few months of his first presidency.

But here’s the crux: Donald Trump is no more interested in religious morality than he is in the theological reveries of his African fan base. He is, in truth, a transactional man, a walking paradox of deals and calculations, utterly bereft of the very spiritual or moral foundation his African supporters so naively project onto him.

Trump’s “faith” such as it is, is at best a performance, an asset to be deployed for strategic gains among America’s own conservative Christians, whom he has calculatedly courted for votes. To imagine Trump as the champion of conservative religious values is to mistake calculation for conviction and propaganda for principle.

His record speaks louder than his rhetoric. In 2015, for example, at a gathering of conservative Christians in Iowa, he openly admitted he never asks God for forgiveness, a theological anathema for any believer.

Later, on the campaign trail, he betrayed his biblical unfamiliarity, when he clumsily referred to “Two Corinthians” rather than the more common “Second Corinthians.” A slip of the tongue, perhaps, but in a subsequent interview, he tried to salvage his Christian credibility but ended up quoting a verse that doesn’t even exist: “Never bend to envy,” he offered, an adage Christians say is found nowhere in the Bible.

Even when cornered about his favorite Bible verse, he misfired by citing “an eye for an eye,” a command Jesus explicitly repudiated. These are not the errors of a deeply religious man but the floundering of someone who considers faith a tool, not a calling.

Two Trump biographers sum up his attitude to Christianity and God nicely. Timothy O’Brien, in a 2007 book titled TrumpNation: The Art of Being Donald, wrote: “Donald has never been a spiritually or religiously serious person.”

And in 2001 book titled The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire (which was revised and reissued as The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President), Gwenda Blair wrote: “He’s a transactional guy with humans, and it’s no different with God — it’s all about whatever is to his advantage with regard to his supporters, and referencing God is exactly and only that.”

Yet for all his transparent artifice, Trump has nonetheless cast a beguiling spell on certain parts of Africa and the African diaspora, who see in him a savior of conservative values.

They seem unfazed by the fact that his administration’s policies, his rhetoric, and his track record show little regard for Black humanity.

This disdain was palpable during his last tenure, and his recent rallies have done nothing to dispel it. Take, for instance, his unfounded claim during the first and only presidential debate that Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs, a baseless assertion that isn’t just false but revelatory: it reveals a mind committed to degrading Blackness wherever he sees it.

There’s a dark and disheartening history here. Trump’s disdain for Black people isn’t new, nor has it emerged from thin air. His bigotry is old news, woven through an embroidery of disparaging comments, discriminatory practices, and racially motivated policies dating back decades.

In 1973, the Department of Justice sued Trump for refusing to rent apartments to Black families, citing his blatant violation of the Fair Housing Act. He fought the case before reluctantly signing an agreement to stop his racist practices.

His remarks afterward? He railed that the government was forcing him to rent to “welfare recipients,” the vile code by which he aligned poverty with Blackness. The sentiment was clear: in his mind, Black people didn’t belong, and it was his duty to keep them out.

Such is Trump’s enduring perspective, made all the more alarming by his political ascendance. The implications of his return for Africa are both direct and symbolic. During his previous presidency, Trump cut aid programs that many African countries rely on and dismissed African immigrants as a detriment to American society.

His rhetoric went beyond mere words; his policies made a statement, a policy posture that informed his supporters, shaped the broader narrative around Black immigration, and foreshadowed his now-infamous “shithole countries” comment in 2018.

When Trump disparaged Haiti, Nigeria, and other Black-majority nations in favor of immigration from Norway, it wasn’t just a one-off gaffe; it was a worldview rooted in negrophobic disdain.

In truth, Trump has never reckoned with the humanity of Black people. Even before his “shithole countries” remark, he lambasted a Black accountant in 1991, citing “laziness as a trait in Blacks.”

Years later, during his 2016 campaign, he praised Ann Coulter’s venomously xenophobic book, which decried the arrival of Nigerians in the United States as a criminal invasion.

His decision to block the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian-American, to lead the World Trade Organization in 2020, was yet another evidence to his disregard for Black excellence—American citizenship or no.

This is not a man whose opinions have been shaped by reasoned disagreement but by ingrained prejudice and an unwavering belief that Black lives, both within and outside of America, are lesser. Such a man at the helm of one of the world’s most powerful nations isn’t just a potential diplomatic nightmare; it’s a moral catastrophe for those who value the dignity of human life.

For Africa, the implications of a Trump resurgence are manifold. His approach to immigration alone could lead to increased restrictions on Africans seeking opportunity or refuge in the United States.

His contempt for Africans doesn’t only taint those who seek to immigrate but extends to those who remain. His willingness to denigrate entire nations with his vile language reinforces a global view of Africa as “the other,” a place he deemed too backward to deserve respect or dignify.

But Trump’s leadership affects more than just immigration.

His previous administration gutted health programs that African nations relied on to tackle AIDS, malaria, and other epidemics. His withdrawal from multilateral agreements and climate initiatives destabilized African countries that disproportionately suffer from the effects of global warming and benefit the least from its economic causes.

Africa is neither immune to nor shielded from Trump’s reign.

From economic pressures to ideological disrespect, his contempt manifests as policies that undermine progress and sow the seeds of isolationism.

For Africans, Trump’s victory isn’t just a foreign policy issue; it’s a personal affront. It’s a slap in the face to the millions of Africans who know America as a country that historically symbolized freedom, opportunity, and hope.

Africa’s bond with the United States transcends politics; it is the memory of independence movements supported by the promise of democracy, the aspiration for economic opportunity, and the reverence for cultural exchange. Trump’s worldview, with its utter disregard for Black humanity, threatens to erode this bond, leaving in its wake a continent left to question its ties with the West.

The challenge before Africa is to use this moment as an opportunity for unity and self-determination.

Trump’s contempt is an ugly mirror, a stark reminder that Africa cannot rely on foreign validation. Leaders and citizens alike must demand dignity, both in their interactions with the United States and in their own national narratives.

The message should be clear: Africa is neither a pawn nor a supplicant. It is a continent rich in resources, diversity, and human potential, undeserving of the scorn Trump so freely dispenses.

Trump’s victory may symbolize a return to darkness, but it is also an opportunity to galvanize resilience. Africa need not waste energy on a man who cannot see beyond his prejudice; instead, it should look to the future with resolve.

Africa’s destiny lies not in the hands of a foreign leader, and certainly not in one so blind to its humanity. Let his disdain be a rallying cry, not for despair, but for Africa to rise on its own terms.

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