Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old.

The longest-lived American president died on Sunday, roughly 22 months after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said.

“Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the center said on the social media platform X. It added in a statement that he died peacefully, surrounded by his family.

As reaction poured in from around the world, President Joe Biden mourned Carter’s death, saying the world lost an “extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian” and he lost a dear friend. Biden cited Carter’s work to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil and human rights, promote free and fair elections and house the homeless as an example for others.

A president from Plains

A moderate Democrat, Carter entered the 1976 presidential race as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad smile, outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer. His no-frills campaign depended on public financing, and his promise not to deceive the American people resonated after Richard Nixon’s disgrace and U.S. defeat in southeast Asia.

“If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president,” Carter repeated before narrowly beating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, who had lost popularity pardoning Nixon.

Carter governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role. His most acclaimed achievement in office was a Mideast peace deal that he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. That Camp David experience inspired the post-presidential center where Carter would establish so much of his legacy.

Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan.

Carter acknowledged in his 2020 “White House Diary” that he could be “micromanaging” and “excessively autocratic,” complicating dealings with Congress and the federal bureaucracy. He also turned a cold shoulder to Washington’s news media and lobbyists, not fully appreciating their influence on his political fortunes.

“It didn’t take us long to realize that the underestimation existed, but by that time we were not able to repair the mistake,” Carter told historians in 1982, suggesting that he had “an inherent incompatibility” with Washington insiders.

Carter insisted his overall approach was sound and that he achieved his primary objectives — to “protect our nation’s security and interests peacefully” and “enhance human rights here and abroad” — even if he fell spectacularly short of a second term.

And then, the world

Ignominious defeat, though, allowed for renewal. The Carters founded The Carter Center in 1982 as a first-of-its-kind base of operations, asserting themselves as international peacemakers and champions of democracy, public health and human rights.

“I was not interested in just building a museum or storing my White House records and memorabilia,” Carter wrote in a memoir published after his 90th birthday. “I wanted a place where we could work.”

That work included easing nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, helping to avert a U.S. invasion of Haiti and negotiating cease-fires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, The Carter Center had declared at least 113 elections in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be free or fraudulent. Recently, the center began monitoring U.S. elections as well.

Carter’s stubborn self-assuredness and even self-righteousness proved effective once he was unencumbered by the Washington order, sometimes to the point of frustrating his successors.

He went “where others are not treading,” he said, to places like Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had wandered across the border in 2010.

“I can say what I like. I can meet whom I want. I can take on projects that please me and reject the ones that don’t,” Carter said.

He announced an arms-reduction-for-aid deal with North Korea without clearing the details with Bill Clinton’s White House. He openly criticized President George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also criticized America’s approach to Israel with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” And he repeatedly countered U.S. administrations by insisting North Korea should be included in international affairs, a position that most aligned Carter with Republican President Donald Trump.

Among the center’s many public health initiatives, Carter vowed to eradicate the guinea worm parasite during his lifetime, and nearly achieved it: Cases dropped from millions in the 1980s to nearly a handful. With hardhats and hammers, the Carters also built homes with Habitat for Humanity.

The Nobel committee’s 2002 Peace Prize cites his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter should have won it alongside Sadat and Begin in 1978, the chairman added.

Carter accepted the recognition saying there was more work to be done.

“The world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place,” he said. “The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect.”

‘An epic American life’

Carter’s globetrotting took him to remote villages where he met little “Jimmy Carters,” so named by admiring parents. But he spent most of his days in the same one-story Plains house — expanded and guarded by Secret Service agents — where they lived before he became governor. He regularly taught Sunday School lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church until his mobility declined and the coronavirus pandemic raged. Those sessions drew visitors from around the world to the small sanctuary where Carter will receive his final send-off after a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral.

The common assessment that he was a better ex-president than presidentrankled Carter and his allies. His prolific post-presidency gave him a brand above politics, particularly for Americans too young to witness him in office. But Carter also lived long enough to see biographers and historians reassess his White House years more generously.

His record includes the deregulation of key industries, reduction of U.S. dependence on foreign oil, cautious management of the national debt and notable legislation on the environment, education and mental health. He focused on human rights in foreign policy, pressuring dictators to release thousands of political prisoners. He acknowledged America’s historical imperialism, pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders and relinquished control of the Panama Canal. He normalized relations with China.

“I am not nominating Jimmy Carter for a place on Mount Rushmore,” Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy director, wrote in a 2018 book.

“He was not a great president” but also not the “hapless and weak” caricature voters rejected in 1980, Eizenstat said. Rather, Carter was “good and productive” and “delivered results, many of which were realized only after he left office.”

Madeleine Albright, a national security staffer for Carter and Clinton’s secretary of state, wrote in Eizenstat’s forward that Carter was “consequential and successful” and expressed hope that “perceptions will continue to evolve” about his presidency.

“Our country was lucky to have him as our leader,” said Albright, who died in 2022.

Jonathan Alter, who penned a comprehensive Carter biography published in 2020, said in an interview that Carter should be remembered for “an epic American life” spanning from a humble start in a home with no electricity or indoor plumbing through decades on the world stage across two centuries.

“He will likely go down as one of the most misunderstood and underestimated figures in American history,” Alter told The Associated Press.

A small-town start

James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains and spent his early years in nearby Archery. His family was a minority in the mostly Black community, decades before the civil rights movement played out at the dawn of Carter’s political career.

Carter, who campaigned as a moderate on race relations but governed more progressively, talked often of the influence of his Black caregivers and playmates but also noted his advantages: His land-owning father sat atop Archery’s tenant-farming system and owned a main street grocery. His mother, Lillian, would become a staple of his political campaigns.

Seeking to broaden his world beyond Plains and its population of fewer than 1,000 — then and now — Carter won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. That same year he married Rosalynn Smith,another Plains native, a decision he considered more important than any he made as head of state. She shared his desire to see the world, sacrificing college to support his Navy career.

Carter climbed in rank to lieutenant, but then his father was diagnosed with cancer, so the submarine officer set aside his ambitions of admiralty and moved the family back to Plains. His decision angered Rosalynn, even as she dived into the peanut business alongside her husband.

Carter again failed to talk with his wife before his first run for office — he later called it “inconceivable” not to have consulted her on such major life decisions — but this time, she was on board.

“My wife is much more political,” Carter told the AP in 2021.

He won a state Senate seat in 1962 but wasn’t long for the General Assembly and its back-slapping, deal-cutting ways. He ran for governor in 1966 — losing to arch-segregationist Lester Maddox — and then immediately focused on the next campaign.

Carter had spoken out against church segregation as a Baptist deacon and opposed racist “Dixiecrats” as a state senator. Yet as a local school board leader in the 1950s he had not pushed to end school segregation even after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, despite his private support for integration. And in 1970, Carter ran for governor again as the more conservative Democrat against Carl Sanders, a wealthy businessman Carter mocked as “Cufflinks Carl.” Sanders never forgave him for anonymous, race-baiting flyers, which Carter disavowed.

Ultimately, Carter won his races by attracting both Black voters and culturally conservative whites. Once in office, he was more direct.

“I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he declared in his 1971 inaugural address, setting a new standard for Southern governors that landed him on the cover of Time magazine.

‘Jimmy Who?’

His statehouse initiatives included environmental protection, boosting rural education and overhauling antiquated executive branch structures. He proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the slain civil rights leader’s home state. And he decided, as he received presidential candidates in 1972, that they were no more talented than he was.

In 1974, he ran Democrats’ national campaign arm. Then he declared his own candidacy for 1976. An Atlanta newspaper responded with the headline: “Jimmy Who?”

The Carters and a “Peanut Brigade” of family members and Georgia supporters camped out in Iowa and New Hampshire, establishing both states as presidential proving grounds. His first Senate endorsement: a young first-termer from Delaware named Joe Biden.

Yet it was Carter’s ability to navigate America’s complex racial and rural politics that cemented the nomination. He swept the Deep South that November, the last Democrat to do so, as many white Southerners shifted to Republicans in response to civil rights initiatives.

A self-declared “born-again Christian,” Carter drew snickers by referring to Scripture in a Playboy magazine interview, saying he “had looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” The remarks gave Ford a new foothold and television comedians pounced — including NBC’s new “Saturday Night Live” show. But voters weary of cynicism in politics found it endearing.

Carter chose Minnesota Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale as his running mate on a “Grits and Fritz” ticket. In office, he elevated the vice presidency and the first lady’s office. Mondale’s governing partnership was a model for influential successors Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Biden. Rosalynn Carter was one of the most involved presidential spouses in history, welcomed into Cabinet meetings and huddles with lawmakers and top aides.

The Carters presided with uncommon informality: He used his nickname “Jimmy” even when taking the oath of office, carried his own luggage and tried to silence the Marine Band’s “Hail to the Chief.” They bought their clothes off the rack. Carter wore a cardigan for a White House address, urging Americans to conserve energy by turning down their thermostats. Amy, the youngest of four children, attended District of Columbia public school.

Washington’s social and media elite scorned their style. But the larger concern was that “he hated politics,” according to Eizenstat, leaving him nowhere to turn politically once economic turmoil and foreign policy challenges took their toll.

Accomplishments, and ‘malaise’

Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres of Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges. He appointed a then-record number of women and nonwhite people to federal posts. He never had a Supreme Court nomination, but he elevated civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburgto the nation’s second highest court, positioning her for a promotion in 1993. He appointed Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve chairman whose policies would help the economy boom in the 1980s — after Carter left office. He built on Nixon’s opening with China, and though he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy.

But he couldn’t immediately tame inflation or the related energy crisis.

And then came Iran.

After he admitted the exiled Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment, the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Negotiations to free the hostages broke down repeatedly ahead of the failed rescue attempt.

The same year, Carter signed SALT II, the new strategic arms treaty with Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, only to pull it back, impose trade sanctions and order a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Hoping to instill optimism, he delivered what the media dubbed his “malaise” speech, although he didn’t use that word. He declared the nation was suffering “a crisis of confidence.” By then, many Americans had lost confidence in the president, not themselves.

Carter campaigned sparingly for reelection because of the hostage crisis, instead sending Rosalynn as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him for the Democratic nomination. Carter famously said he’d “kick his ass,” but was hobbled by Kennedy as Reagan rallied a broad coalition with “make America great again” appeals and asking voters whether they were “better off than you were four years ago.”

Reagan further capitalized on Carter’s lecturing tone, eviscerating him in their lone fall debate with the quip: “There you go again.” Carter lost all but six states and Republicans rolled to a new Senate majority.

Carter successfully negotiated the hostages’ freedom after the election, but in one final, bitter turn of events, Tehran waited until hours after Carter left office to let them walk free.

‘A wonderful life’

At 56, Carter returned to Georgia with “no idea what I would do with the rest of my life.”

Four decades after launching The Carter Center, he still talked of unfinished business.

“I thought when we got into politics we would have resolved everything,” Carter told the AP in 2021. “But it’s turned out to be much more long-lasting and insidious than I had thought it was. I think in general, the world itself is much more divided than in previous years.”

Still, he affirmed what he said when he underwent treatment for a cancer diagnosis in his 10th decade of life.

“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.”

AP

Gaza captors tortured hostages, including minors, Israeli report says

Hostages held in Gaza were subjected to torture, including sexual and psychological abuse, starvation, burns and medical neglect, according to a new report by the Israeli Health Ministry that will be submitted to the United Nations this week.

The report is based on interviews with the medical and welfare teams which treated more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages, most of whom were released in late November 2023, in a brief truce between Israel and Hamas. Eight hostages were rescued by the Israeli military.

The hostages include more than 30 children and teenagers, a few of whom were found to have been bound, beaten or branded with a heated object, according to the report addressed to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and published late on Saturday.

Women reported sexual assault by the captors, including at gunpoint. Men were beaten, starved, branded, held bound in isolation and denied access to a bathroom, the report said. Some were denied treatment for injuries and medical conditions.

The report did not identify any of the hostages by name or age, to protect their privacy, but some of the descriptions matched those provided by hostages and staff that treated them in interviews with Reuters and other media and a U.N. report.

Hamas has repeatedly denied abuse of the 251 hostages abducted from Israel during its Oct. 7, 2023 assault. About half of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza are believed by Israeli authorities to still be alive.

A fresh bid to secure a Gaza ceasefire including a hostage deal has gained momentum in recent weeks, although no breakthrough has been reported as yet.

The war began with Hamas' October 2023 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's subsequent campaign against Hamas has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health officials, displaced nearly all of Gaza's population and reduced much of its territory to rubble.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

Israeli authorities are investigating allegations of abuse against Palestinian detainees arrested during the war.

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia not satisfied with Trump team’s proposals on Ukraine — Lavrov

Russia is not satisfied with the proposals of US President-elect Donald Trump's team to postpone Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a contingent of EU and UK peacekeepers there, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS.

"Judging by numerous leaks and Donald Trump's own interview with Time magazine on December 12, he is talking about ‘freezing’ hostilities along the line of engagement and transferring further responsibility for confronting Russia to the Europeans. We are certainly not satisfied with the proposals made by representatives of the president-elect's team to postpone Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a peacekeeping contingent of ‘UK and European forces’ in Ukraine," the top diplomat emphasized.

At the same time, Lavrov noted that Moscow has not received any official signals from the United States on the Ukrainian settlement at the moment. "Until January 20 - the date of inauguration - Donald Trump has the status of 'president-elect,' and all policy on all fronts is determined by the incumbent president and his administration. And so far, only the latter is authorized to engage with Russia on behalf of the United States. From time to time, as we are regularly informed, this happens, but there is no talk of negotiations on Ukraine in such contacts," the Russian foreign minister explained.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian plot to kill officer and a blogger

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency through the Telegram messaging application.

On the instructions of the Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen had then retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, equivalent to 1 1/2 kg of TNT and packed with ball bearings, was concealed in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.

The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was the target of the plot. Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency could not be immediately reached for comment.

Ukraine says Russia's war against it poses an existential threat to the Ukrainian state and has made clear it regards targeted killings - intended to weaken morale and punish those Kyiv regards guilty of war crimes - as legitimate.

Russia has said they amount to illegal "acts of terrorism" and accuses Ukraine of assassinating civilians such as Darya Dugina, the daughter of a nationalist ideologue, in 2022.

On Dec. 17, Ukraine's SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter. Kyiv had accused him of promoting the use of banned checmial weapons, something Moscow denies.

Donald Trump's designated Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on Dec. 18 that such killings were "not really smart" and going "a little bit too far."

Russia said that it would take revenge for the Kirillov killing.

By the time Muhammadu Buhari ran for a second presidential term in 2019, it seemed clear that the judicial process in many parts of the country had been actively co-opted in the intimidation of civic opponents of the government, both real and imagined. The case of Steven Kefas was a defining moment in that process.

Steven was a compelling activist and amplifier of the crisis of human security in Southern Kaduna under former governor, Nasir el-Rufai. For this, el-Rufai arranged his abduction from his residence in Rivers State on 8 May 2019. From there they bundled Steven into interminable detention in Kaduna, on the imagined crime of criminally defaming Cafra Caino, an acolyte of the governor who was also chair of the Kajuru Local Government Council.

For this invented crime, el-Rufai had Steven charged before a Magistrate in Kaduna, who refused him bail even when the crime was clearly a misdemeanour. Steven renewed his application for bail before the Federal High Court in Kaduna where the presiding judge, Peter Mallong, incredulously ruled that his suit was “an abuse of court process” because the Magistrate had previously refused bail. Turning judicial precedent on its head, Mallong held that the decision of the Magistrate was binding on the Federal High Court.

Gloria Ballason, who argued Steven’s case, was also my lawyer when el-Rufai sought to abduct me too in circumstances that would have been not dissimilar to what he did to Steven. On the eve of the presidential election in 2019, el-Rufai went public with claims of the massacre of scores of Fulanis in Kajuru, a community against which he appeared to have an implacable beef. The following morning, I publicly rebutted his claims. The security services were pointedly unable to support his claims.

After the 2019 elections, el-Rufai instructed my prosecution before the Magistrates Court in Kaduna on the fanciful charges of incitement and injurious falsehood. The case did not even have a charge number. The magistrate called up the case on two successive occasions and, when I did not show up, decided the time was ripe to issue a warrant for my abduction. Contrary to my entitlements under the Nigerian constitution, they did not even bother to bring the charges to my attention. It seemed as if the entire objective from the beginning was to set me up for abduction.

Informed off-record about the case by sympathetic law enforcement agents subsequently, Ballason first issued filings objecting to how the court had chosen to proceed. Thereafter, she instituted proceedings before Mallong’s Federal High Court in Kaduna against el-Rufai and the police, arising out of these facts, alleging the breach of my constitutional rights.

One year after the case was instituted, in October 2020, Mallong issued his decision. He claimed that the affidavit in support of my court processes, sworn to by a litigation clerk in the law firm of my lawyers, was incompetent because the deponent was someone other than me. It was as if he had never heard of the Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules, which allowed for what the litigation clerk did. As a result, Mallong said my case was incompetent and his court lacked jurisdiction over it. After holding that he lacked jurisdiction, however, Mallong went on to “dismiss” my case.

The judgment was manifestly crooked on the face of the record. A judge can only dismiss a case that s/he has had the opportunity to consider but a judge cannot consider a case over which s/he lacks jurisdiction. So, a judge who rules that he or she lacks jurisdiction cannot thereafter decide to dismiss the same case. That is exactly what Mallong did. Having accomplished such crookedness, he then went on to award punitive costs against me.

It was this kind of casuistic and crooked jurisprudence that emboldened el-Rufai and his ilk to routinise the persecution of Nigerian citizens by abduction under the cover of law. I was lucky. Kefas was not. Ballason’s tenacity and an international campaign eventually enabled to Steven to make bail after 162 days in pre-trial detention in Kaduna prison.

According to Steven, while he suffered prolonged pre-trial detention for an imaginary crime framed against him for being a critic of government, he witnessed kidnappers caught in the act being released without charges. Steven’s explanation is that: “What the oppressive elites do in Nigeria is that they will hire rogue lawyers to help them draft all manner of petitions to get critics and ‘enemies of the government’ abducted and locked up….”

This appears to be the perfect description for what is happening in an ongoing case involving the prosecution of Precious Eze, Olawale Olurotimi, Rowland Olonishuwa and Seun Odunlami before the Federal High Court in Lagos. The accused are all bloggers who run different platforms as citizen journalists or aggregators.

On 19 September, Country Hill, a law firm acting on behalf of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) and its CEO, Segun Agbaje, wrote a petition in which they complained against the accused for what they called “acts of cyberbullying, criminal extortions (sic) and conducts (sic) likely to cause a breach of public peace” arising reportedly from material published on their blogs about Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank). Importantly, the complaint omitted any mention of the sums that any of the suspects allegedly extorted or sought to. Subsequent investigation by the police showed clearly that upon the material being brought to their attention by intermediaries, the suspects had voluntarily pulled down the publications complained of.

Acting on this petition, nevertheless, the police promptly arrested and detained Eze and Olurotimi, both of who have been held in pre-trial custody since then. By the date you read this, each of them would have been in pre-trial custody for over 91 days. That is more than double the maximum duration of 42 days of pre-trial custody allowed by the Administration of Criminal Justice Act.

It took the police just four days to conclude investigation. Michael Abu, the chief superintendent of Police (CSP) who led the investigation into GTBank’s petition, wrote in his report of 23 September, with reference to Precious Eze and Olawale Olurotimi, that “these types of people be used as scapegoat” and recommended that they be “charged  to court for the offence (sic) of conspiracy, cyberbullying, attempt to extort money through fraudulent means and conduct likely to cause the breach of peace.”

On 14 October, the police re-arraigned them. Ten days later, the amended charges filed against them included six counts of cyberbullying and two each of conspiracy and extortion. To prosecute them, GTBank secured the “fiat” of the Inspector General of Police to instruct a high-powered team of ten lawyers, including three Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs). This is a classic example of “oppressive elites” capturing the criminal process for destructive purposes against poor citizens.

Until now, the people who orchestrate these kinds of travesties and their judicial and legal co-travelers have enjoyed earthly impunity. Judges like Mallong made this possible. The one lesson, however, of the Dele Farotimi case is that citizens now have the wherewithal to make these kinds of perversion of the legal and criminal process costly for those who orchestrate them.

In this case of Eze and Olurotimi, that should be even moreso, given that the travesty is procured at the instance of a commercial and corporate actor. We are both citizens and customers. In this dual capacity we have the muscle to resist the determined conspiracy of politicians and corporates who seek to muzzle and destroy an informed and responsible civics. It is not too late for GTBank to retrace its steps.

** Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a professor of law, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

It seems the high cost of vegetable oil has done what no culinary innovation could—turn Nigerians into air fryer enthusiasts overnight. Once considered a kitchen gadget for the “oyinbo lifestyle,” air fryers are now as common in Nigerian homes as jollof rice at a wedding.

Back in 2018, a 5-litre bottle of vegetable oil cost N2,100—practically pocket change. But fast forward to 2024, and that same bottle now goes for N22,000. For perspective, that’s the price of a decent second-hand smartphone. A 25-litre keg, which used to cost N9,500, is now between N95,000 and N105,000—enough to make anyone question their love for fried plantains.

Enter the air fryer, a modern-day hero for the broke and health-conscious alike. Nigerians, always ready to adapt, have embraced it as a budget-friendly alternative to oil-heavy frying.

Take Mrs. Chinenye Anyadike, a businesswoman who recently bought a second-hand 3.5-litre air fryer for N18,000. “Gone are the days of chasing vegetable oil prices,” she said. “Why buy 10 litres of oil for N49,000 only to use it up in three months? I’m done playing this frying game.”

Similarly, Mrs. Fatimah Arogundade, a banker, was initially skeptical. “I thought spending N45,000 on an air fryer was a waste until my friend convinced me. Now, I even get oil from the beef I air fry. Imagine that—free oil! It’s the best festive season decision I’ve ever made,” she quipped.

Even men are jumping on the air fryer train. Mr. Kolade Adepegba, a commercial driver, was persuaded to buy a fairly used one for his wife after a woman delivering two air fryers casually remarked, “Oga, do you even know how expensive vegetable oil is now?” His wife’s reaction? Pure joy—and perhaps a bit of relief that she could finally stop saving up for one.

But as with all trends, demand is driving up prices. A 3.5-litre air fryer now costs between N45,000 and N55,000, while larger models range from N65,000 to N350,000. Fairly used ones are slightly cheaper, going for N15,000 to N40,000.

Still, Nigerians are undeterred. “In this country, you have to be wise to survive,” said Anyadike. And if that wisdom comes with crispy, oil-free fried plantains, so be it.

At least 62 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea's Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.

Two people were rescued, the agency said.

The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea's transport ministry said.

The ministry did not confirm the reports of casualties.

At least 58 bodies have been recovered but that number is not final, another fire official told Reuters.

Two people were found alive and rescue operations were under way, a Muan fire official said. Yonhap news agency said three people had been rescued.

Authorities were working to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.

Video shared by local media showed the twin-engine aircraft skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flame and debris. Other photos showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.

Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying the landing gear may have malfunctioned due to a bird strike.

A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, agency News1 reported. The person's final message was, "Should I say my last words?"

Bird strike is among several theories that have not been verified, an official from the transport ministry's aviation department said, adding that the investigation was ongoing.

The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.

The plane was a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the accident, including its casualties and cause, an airline spokesperson said.

Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled, Yonhap reported.

South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mok, who was named interim leader of the country on Friday after the previous acting president was impeached amid an ongoing political crisis, ordered all-out rescue efforts, his office said.

His chief of staff convened an emergency meeting.

Reuters

Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet service provider, has announced plans to raise its subscription prices in Nigeria effective January 27. This marks the company's second attempted price adjustment in recent months.

In an email to customers, Starlink explained the increases are necessary to "continue enhancing the Starlink network and provide reliable, high-quality service across Nigeria." Under the new pricing structure, the basic subscription tier will rise from ₦38,000 to ₦75,000 monthly. The company's premium services will see even steeper increases, with mobile-regional roaming priced at ₦167,000 and mobile-global roaming at ₦717,000.

This announcement follows a similar price hike attempt in October 2023, when Starlink tried to increase its standard residential package by 97.37% (from ₦38,000 to ₦75,000) and raised hardware costs from ₦440,000 to ₦590,000. However, that increase was temporarily suspended on October 25 after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) intervened, stating that Starlink had not obtained necessary regulatory approval.

The NCC initiated pre-enforcement action against Starlink following the October price adjustment, highlighting the regulatory challenges facing telecommunications companies in Nigeria. This situation reflects a broader industry dynamic, as other Nigerian telecom operators have struggled to secure regulatory approval for their own proposed tariff increases.

New subscribers will be charged the updated rates immediately, while existing customers will see the changes reflected in their upcoming billing cycles.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Israel detains 240 Palestinians including medics after Gaza hospital raid

Israeli forces detained more than 240 Palestinians including dozens of medical staff from a north Gaza hospital they raided on Friday, including its director, according to the Health Ministry in the enclave and Israel's military.

The Health Ministry said it was concerned for the wellbeing of Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, as some staff freed by the Israeli military late on Friday said he had been beaten up by soldiers.

The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a command centre for Hamas military operations and those arrested were suspected militants. It said Abu Safiya had been taken for questioning as he was suspected of being a Hamas operative.

On Friday, Hamas dismissed Israel's assertion that its fighters had operated from the hospital throughout the 15-month-old Gaza war, saying no fighters had been in the hospital. The group had not yet commented on the 240 arrests.

In its statement on Saturday, Hamas urged the U.N. and relevant international agencies to intervene urgently to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza and supply them.

The group also called for U.N. observers to be sent to medical facilities in Gaza to refute the Israeli allegations that they were being used for military purposes.

The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X.

"WHO is appalled by yesterday’s raid. The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on North Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk," it said.

Some patients were evacuated from Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Other patients and staff were taken to other medical facilities.

MUCH OF NORTHERN GAZA RAZED AND EMPTIED BY ISRAELI FORCES

The Israeli military said 350 patients and medical personnel had been evacuated prior to the Kamal Adwan operation, while another 95 had been evacuated to the Indonesian Hospital during the operation, in coordination with local health authorities.

Separately, the Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli strikes across the enclave had killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, at least nine of them in a house in Maghazi camp in central Gaza.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes and fatalities.

In the past few months, Israeli forces have pushed people out and razed much of the area around the northern Gaza towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.

Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing by depopulating those areas to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it is doing this, saying it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in the areas.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had begun operating overnight against targets in the Beit Hanoun area, adding that "troops are enabling civilians still in the area to move away for their own safety".

It then ordered residents to leave and head towards southern parts of the Strip, saying rockets had been fired from the area.

It said two rockets fired from north Gaza, including one towards Jerusalem, had been intercepted.

Israel's campaign against Hamas, which previously controlled Gaza, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

The war was triggered by Hamas' attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says it struck drone depot in Russia's Oryol region

Ukraine said on Saturday it had struck a storage and maintenance depot for long-range Shahed drones in Russia's Oryol region, adding that this had "significantly reduced" Russia's ability to launch mass drone attacks on Ukraine.

Ukraine military's general staff said in a statement on Telegram the attack took place on Thursday and was conducted by Ukraine's air force.

"As a result of the strike, a depot for storage, maintenance and repair of Shahed kamikaze drones, made of several protected concrete structures, was destroyed," it said.

"This military operation has significantly reduced the enemy's potential in terms of conducting air raids of strike drones on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure."

Moscow has not made any comment on the attack.

Russia has regularly launched missile and drone attacks on Ukraine throughout its 34-month invasion.

For the past several months, Moscow has launched near-daily barrages of dozens of drones at Ukraine, hoping to damage its infrastructure and wear down air defences leaving them less able to shoot down missiles.

Ukraine's air force said earlier on Saturday it had downed 15 out of 16 drones launched by Russia overnight, with the other one disappearing from radars.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia says battlegroups North, Dnepr cause Ukraine to lose up to 160 troops over past day

The Ukrainian army lost more than 160 servicemen, three radio-electronic warfare stations and a field ammunition depot as a result of operations by the battlegroups North and Dnepr, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily bulletin of the special military operation.

Here are the details of this and other combat actions that happened over the past day, according to the bulletin.

Battlegroups North and Dnepr

"Units of the battlegroup North struck manpower and equipment of Ukraine’s mechanized and motorized infantry brigades, a territorial defense brigade and formations of foreign mercenaries near Volchansk, Liptsy, Slatino and Neskuchnoye in the Kharkov Region. Ukraine lost more than 80 servicemen, a car, and two 122-mm D-30 howitzers. Two electronic warfare stations and a field ammunition depot were also destroyed," the ministry said.

Units of the battlegroup Dnepr struck manpower and equipment of Ukraine’s mechanized brigade and two territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian army near the settlements of Antonovka, Pridneprovskoye, Nikolskoye and Veletenskoye in the Kherson Region. Kiev lost more than 80 servicemen, two vehicles, a 152-millimeter D-20 gun and a radio-electronic warfare unit.

Battlegroup West

"Battlegroup West units improved their frontline positions and inflicted damage on manpower and equipment of a mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian army and two territorial defense brigades in areas near the settlements of Zapadnoye, Dvurechnaya and Ivanovka in the Kharkov Region, Torskoye and Yampol in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Makeyevka in the Lugansk People’s Republic. They repelled two counterattacks by Ukrainian armed formations," the ministry said.

The Ukrainian army’s losses in that frontline area over the past 24 hours totaled more than 440 personnel, a Bucephalus armored personnel carrier and a US-made M113 troop carrier, an Iveco armored combat vehicle and a 105mm Melara howitzer of Italian manufacture, eight motor vehicles, a US-made 155mm M198 howitzer, a 152mm D-20 howitzer and two 122mm D-30 howitzers.

In addition, Russian forces destroyed two Zakhist and Anklav-N electronic warfare stations and two field ammunition depots of the Ukrainian army, it said.

Battlegroup South

"Units of Battlegroup South have strengthened positions, striking forces of Ukrainian mechanized and air mobile brigades, as well as two territorial defense brigades in the settlements of Belogorovka, Uspenovka, Chasov Yar, and Kurakhovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian armed forces lost up to 260 servicemen," the ministry said.

The ministry added that the enemy also lost a US-made M113 armored personnel carrier and an electronic warfare system.

Battlegroup Center

"Units of the battlegroup Center continued advancing deep into the enemy’s defenses and inflicted losses in manpower and materiel on Ukraine’s three mechanized and one jaeger brigades, one brigade of the marines, a territorial defense brigade, a brigade of the national guard and an assault brigade of the national police of Ukraine in the areas of Krasnoarmeysk, Petrovka, Shcherbinovka, Dzerzhinsk, Shevchenko, Novoolenovka and Novotroitskoye of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Twelve Ukrainian counterattacks were repulsed," the ministry said.

The enemy lost up to 450 servicemen, two tanks, including Leopard of German manufacture, three infantry fighting vehicles, including US-made Bradley, four armored personnel carriers, including two US-made M113 and British-made Spartan, two armored fighting vehicles, four vehicles, 203-mm self-propelled artillery piece Pion, 152-mm gun D-20 and US-made 105-mm howitzer M101.

Battlegroup East

The units of the group improved their tactical position and struck four Ukrainian brigades in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

"Servicemen of the basttlegroup repulsed a counterattack of an enemy assault group. Ukraine lost up to 160 servicemen, four vehicles, a 155-mm Bogdana self-propelled gun, a 122-mm Gvozdika self-propelled vehicle, a 122-mm D-30 howitzer and a UK-made 105-mm L-119 howitzer," the ministry said.

Air Force and air defenses

"Operational/tactical aircraft, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops and artillery of the Russian groups of forces struck the infrastructure of a military airfield and a petroleum, oils, and lubricants warehouse of the Ukrainian army," the ministry said.

During the last 24-hour period, Russian forces inflicted damage on Ukrainian manpower and military hardware in 148 areas, the ministry specified.

"Air defense capabilities shot down three rockets of the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system and 104 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, including 57 outside the area of the special military operation," the ministry said.

Tally of destroyed equipment

Since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed a total of 650 Ukrainian warplanes, 283 helicopters, 38,752 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 surface-to-air missile systems, 20,072 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,504 multiple launch rocket systems, 20,058 field artillery guns and mortars and 29,603 special military motor vehicles.

Reuters/Tass

In my piece of last week, I made a tangential reference to the place of African magic in modern matters. It was in the discussion of the calamity that befell Nigeria a few days to Christmas. Ibadan, the capital city of the Yoruba, had taken a sizeable chunk of the tragedy. Thirty five persons, the bulk of whom were kids, had been trampled to death in a stampede. The dead and a crowd estimated to be about ten thousand, had heeded invitation to attend a funfair where freebies, which included the sum of N5000, would be shared per attendee. Three persons were arrested and charged before an Ibadan Magistrate court on account of the deaths. They were Naomi Silekunola, an ex-Queen of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja I1; Oriyomi Hamzat, a popular radio owner and presenter and principal of the school that served as venue for the event.

Since the Queen’s somersault from the pinnacle of grace to the nadir of sharing smelly, dingy cell with ordinary criminals in the Agodi Correctional Centre, subtle, muffled and repressed thoughts have variously been expressed about what could have transpired. Questions asked range from, could there be a causal link between the fate of ex-Queen Naomi and her abandoned Queendom? Or, is it a reinforcement of the historical Yoruba wise-saying of fatalism, which says that, among the innumerable beheaded skulls quartered in Mògún, the ones belonging to unjustly beheaded ones were many (Orí yéye ní Mògún, ìpín àìsè l’ó pò)?

The truth is, as products of their past, many Africans still reason with the mindset of their genes. Over a century after the white man and Arabs brought Christianity and Islam to Africa, though they substantially succeeded in fumigating Africa’s mindset of magic and occult practices, they left a hugely syncretic Africa. Like Gabriel Okara painted in his poem, Piano and Drums, Africa carries its piano - a symbol of the Whiteman’s modernity - with his right hand, and holds fervently to his drum - symbolizing traditional Africa - with his left. In a world where science is king and defines every stratum of our existence, there is a great push towards voiding the power of metaphysics, the foundation upon which the drum, which Africa holds tightly by its left hand, rests.

In a December 2021 Instagram post, Naomi unilaterally announced her divorce from the Ooni. After “bless(ing) the Lord almighty for His faithfulness in the last three years of my marriage,” Naomi revealed that she “endure(d).. to make (the marriage) work” as she, “many times… smiled through the struggle.” Finally, the Queen revealed that she was “moving on,” stating that, “today, I announce the beginning of a new dawn and the close of a chapter. Today, I am a mother to God’s unique gift. I am no longer a slave to my thoughts of perfection. I, at this moment, announce that I shall no longer be referred to as wife to the Ooni of Ife or as Queen of Ile-Ife but as the Queen of the people and mother of my adorable prince.” Were the gods of Ile-Ife happy at that gloat over their king? Since then, she had indeed moved on. Once in a while, she advertised her sultry beauty on the social media and her Christianity. It was akin to the conquest smile of a conquistador. It was believed that the decision of the Ooni to embark on a serial acquisition of wives thereafter was a response to the subtle disgrace he suffered in the hands of a wife who divorced him on the social media.

Today, Africa scarcely sees with the eye of Africa but with the eye of western science, data and computer. So, the question is, is there any science to African magic? Or put differently, is there magic? Is there sorcery? Can our forefathers, whose systems of beliefs were woven round this corpus of knowledge of incantations, magic, sorcery, and the synergy between spirit and man for many centuries, be said to be ignoramuses? These were the same people who were credited with the great arts and science of carvings and bronze. The Benin Bronze sculptures, brilliantly and elaborately chiseled from metal and woods, became ornaments that white colonialists stole and kept in antiquities. Cast in plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, ornaments, pieces of royal regalia, they adorned western museums until rescued and returned to Africa. The Nok people, now known to inhabit the northern and central part of Nigeria, existed from roughly 900 BCE to 200 CE. In their science and arts, they worked on iron to make terracotta sculptures. In the Alaafin palace of Oyo, a drainage system built over a century, exists which till today, drains rainfall in a twinkle of an eye, no matter its volume.

As brilliant as our forefathers were, they also engaged in the barbaric practices of human sacrifices, cannibalism, witchcraft and money rituals. They believed in the centrality of spiritual beings and relationship with the spirit world. This spirit world was believed by them to be responsible for happiness, protection, material wealth and health. They also believed that any dislocation from the spirit world led to sickness, barrenness, death, among others. It was probably why they engaged in human rituals. A scholar once explained that, in human body parts rituals, the soul of the sacrificed victim is sent on an errand to the supra-physical realm. There, the soul engages in the laborious exercise of harvesting wealth for the usage of the victimiser. In 1970s Nigeria, parents sternly warned their wards to avoid being alone in desolate places. It was the period when that caustic-mouthed Yoruba Apala songster, Late Fatai Olowonyo, released the vinyl that bore that iconic track entitled L’áyée Gbómogbómo (In this world of kidnappers). Padding the song up with his rhythmic acoustic guitar sound that literally sent dancers into gymnastic fits, Olowonyo warned, especially the young ones, to avoid lone-walking as kidnappers luxuriated in lonely places. When they grabbed their victims, he warned, such victims honked like trapped mice. “L’áyé gbómo-gbómo, ìwo nìkàn má se dá rìn mó, bí wón bá kì ó mó'lè l’ábé àgbàdo, wàá sì má dún fín ín  bí omo eku…” he sang. 

I first came in contact with the epistemological body of knowledge of African magic in my pre-teen years. I lived with my parents in a town called Ikirun, in today’s Osun State. There was this highly dreaded spiritualist called Baba Iyanda Aladokun. It was not possible to live in Ikirun without a sniff of the whiff of Aladokun’s spiritual prowess. His magical powers were legendary. For seven years, boy Aladokun was said to have been declared missing, allegedly carried away by whirlwind called Àjà, only to surface thereafter. His known specialty was in the spiritual healing of mentally-challenged patients. He was my late father’s older friend. My father and I frequented his house almost every Saturday. Aladokun’s house was usually filled to the brim with all manner of patients. Dark, pot-bellied and most times wearing agbádá, Baba Aladokun sat cupped up in a corner of his herbal hospice, welcoming oncoming people afar off with his cryptic, “e wèé” - greetings which a pre-teen boy like me smothered the urge to laugh at. Many of the patients were brought to his herbal sanatorium from several lands away. Some were Igbo as well. When his patients were in the twilight of recuperating, Aladokun loaned them to farmers like my father to work on their farms for fees. The farmers in turn gave him reports of the perceived level of the patients’ sanity. On the farm, armed with cutlasses and hoes, my father would ask that we gave the recuperating patients some distance, lest they return to status quo ante and feasted their weapons on us. My father however engaged them in dialogues which were most times intelligible.

My father told me the story of how one of Aladokun’s daughters’ pregnancy was once disowned by the man who impregnated her. The case was taken to the Ikirun police station. Aladokun appeared  where his daughter and the man were, with the police. He promptly, with the sign of his hand, inter-placed the baby from his daughter’s stomach into the man’s. The man immediately appeared with an advanced pregnancy. There and then, he held his daughter’s hand, headed home with her and told the police he had no case against the man any longer. On another occasion, he had asked his daughter to go buy soft drinks for waiting guests. Uncomfortable with her long stay getting  the drinks purchased, Aladokun merely fiddled with the wind and on his palms were the soft drinks which he placed before the guests. The daughter merely came back and handed him the remainder of the money.

A few years after, Baba Aladokun was embroiled in allegation of human body parts rituals. The police criminal investigation department (CID) had received reports that the herbalist had veered into human body parts rituals. A female police detective who pretended to be mentally deranged was seconded to his sanatorium. In the course of simulating mental derangement, she reportedly witnessed the herbalist pounding the body of a newly born baby in a mortar which was then garnished with black soap and other accoutrements. Baba Aladokun was subsequently arrested, remanded in the Ilesa prisons and later released for want of evidence. I remember my father used to go pay him visits in the prison. Not long after, specifically in 1984, one of the old herbalist’s mentally ill patients suddenly ran amok and beheaded him right inside his sanatorium.

African kings, no matter their erstwhile religious backgrounds, are believed to be beneficiaries and inheritors of a system of African medicine, sorcery, magic and witchcraftcy which dates centuries. The late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, once let me into some of the details. For instance, a traditional DNA system exists in the Oyo palace which ensured that bastards cannot be brought into the palace as princes and princesses. In the palaces of many Yoruba towns are believed to be headquartered witches whose powers help the monarchy to fight its battles. This is most times unsolicited. Ile-Ife is said to parade several deities whose priests, at cock-crow, as custom, are expected to rain curses on the Ooni’s enemies and bless those who wish him well. Many people, however, believe that all these are a mythic system that has kept palaces fortified from invaders and evildoers.

So, when a 31-year old woman, who set out to favour the less-privileged in a fun-fair, suddenly landed in one of the most notoriously famous prisons around, a few days after this noble effort, to what do we put that: happenstance, fate; normal encounter of man or spiritual recompense for openly disgracing a foremost king in Yorubaland on the social media? At the wake of the calamity, the Ooni palace masterfully disconnected the monarchy from her travails, de-linked her and her action from the palace, while subtly empathizing with her. It was the last laugh of a scorned husband.

Some people have also argued that the fates of Naomi and Oriyomi Hamzat can be compared to the  historical Yoruba wise-saying that depicts fatalism. It is a philosophical school which subjugates all actions, events and occurrences to fate or destiny. The history behind the wise-saying is that, in ancient days, Mògún was where persons accused of committing heinous crimes were incarcerated. Once the King was persuaded of their guilt, he ordered their beheading right inside Mògún, which makes the prison a place where hordes of skulls were kept. However, many of them were victims of petty conspiracies who never committed the crime they were accused of. 

So, the saying goes that, of the innumerable heads quartered in Mògún, the ones belonging to unjustly beheaded ones were many (Orí yéye ní Mògún, ìpín àìsè l’ó pò). Today, prisons across the world are Mògún which house just persons unjustly incarcerated. Many have also died unjustifiably, either from the supple hands of the law or the coarse brunt of lawlessness. On June 16, 1944, for instance, 14-year old George Stinney, was executed in the electric chair of Columbia, America. He was accused of having killed two white girls who earlier approached him and his sister while playing in their yard to ask where they could find flowers. The bodies of the girls were later found the following morning. Seventy years after, a South Carlina judge held that Stinney could not have murdered the two girls. He vacated the conviction. So, are Queen Naomi and Hamzat victims of this ancient fatalism?

As we approach the New Year, I pray we will not be victims of an unjust world; now, in the new year and all through our sojourn on this divide.

Nigerians in Súàrá Sòbó bus

I have been asked severally what my opinion was on last week’s presidential media chat. First, I must commend the presidency for hosting the chat, though belatedly after 19 months of holding back. When the people hear directly from their leaders and not from third parties they didn’t elect, it affords them opportunity of psycho-analyzing the man at the helm of affairs, match his gestures with policies and project what the leadership’s future strides will be.

It was also gladsome to see the president radiating warmth, confidence and mastery of his craft. He appeared to have learned the ropes of a limitless presidential powers. He must have warmed himself up to the behemoth powers at his disposal, next to God’s. You could see this as he exuded confidence in himself and his office. Unlike the pre-and early Bola Tinubu presidency optics we had, the president appeared physically stable and in better health. I was glad to see stability as he raised his hands in gesticulation. We thank God for presidential health mercies.

As they say, the divide between confidence and arrogance, much as it is as long as the Zambezi River, could be paper-thin as well. Though clothed in a cloak of confidence, the Tinubu I saw in that interview wore arrogance on his lapel. Beneath that, you could see a God mentality. I didn’t hear anywhere throughout the interview where the president accepted that he was human, capable of frailties and wrongs. I saw King Herod and the clowns of power shouting “This is the voice of God, not man!” The tax bills were chiselled straight from the stone plate of Moses, he seemed to have said. They are irreversible. And to the north which thought it had him by the balls, like the man who knows tomorrow, the president proclaimed that he would live till 2027, go through the presidential election and win. He would not probe military top brass whose fat stomachs and fat epaulettes are euphemisms for the toads of wars - apologies to Eddie Iroh - which they have become from filching Nigeria’s wealth in an endless war. He didn’t err when, pounced upon by the Herodian spirit, he pronounced that “subsidy was gone,” he said. While Nigerians die in droves from hunger, the president literally clinked wine glasses for being the greatest reformist in human history.

When I heard the president compare his reform to a woman going through the pangs of labour - “and the child may die” - but at the end of the birth, everybody is happy, the mentality that drives the president came out vividly to me like the first flick of a movie in a dark cinema. I saw a heart scarred and scorched like the sand dunes of the desert. I didn’t see blood flowing through the veins at all. Immediately I understood. The political furnace has forged in the smithy a stone statue devoid of feelings.  

Nigeria of the 1950s and early 1960s had very many interesting personalities. Western Region had its fair share of such. One of them was a man named Súàrá Sòbó (Sobo pronounced as ‘Sorbor’). He was a prominent transporter who held the transportation industry of the time by its jugular. An Ibadan man of the Òópó 'Yéosà clan who lived in an area now known as Ring Road, Súàrá Sòbó was wealthy and had a fleet of lorries in his pool. As a trade logo, Súàrá Sòbó’s lorries always had monkeys chained to their entrance, which excited and attracted passengers to them. However, his lorries soon acquired a very unflattering typecast. Any passenger who boarded them was literally embarking on a journey that had no certain time or terminal point of disembarkment as the lorry could be arrested for having no particulars, and the inappropriate conducts of the drivers and conductors, which led to road accidents, were legendary. The otherwise pleasurable ride with a monkey on board to marvel at its close resemblance of man could turn awry. It thus became a peculiar refrain in the Western Region to say a man had entered Súàrá Sòbó’s lorry, an equivalent of today’s One Chance lingo among youth. Odolaye Aremu, then Ibadan-based, Ilorin-born dadakúàdà musician, once sang of the untimely passage of Súàrá Sòbó, years after. At a celebration in his house, said Odolaye, Súàrá Sòbó had hosted the crème de la crème of Ibadan, where roast mutton and turkey flesh were feasted upon. People were shocked when, six days later, Súàrá Sòbó’s sudden death was announced to the world.

As I stood up from watching the interview, I shook my head languidly. I was sorry for us. All I saw were 200 million Nigerians sequestered inside the Súàrá Sòbó bus. We must pray that the Herodian spirit which pounced on Olusegun Obasanjo doesn’t repeat its tragic pounce on Mr. President. If it does, Tinubu would have a third term and more, becoming an Hastings Kamuzu Banda at the drop of a hat. And nothing would happen.

One year after for Aketi and Aiyedatiwa

Last Friday was the first anniversary of the passage of Rotimi Akeredolu, ex-Ondo State governor. It was also the first anniversary of his successor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, in office. We thus must be grateful to Aiyedatiwa for immortalizing Akeredolu, famously known as Aketi that same day. Aketi was an ecumenical spirit - borrowing from Wole Soyinka’s burial oration for Bola Ige. Aside naming a court after Aketi, Aiyedatiwa organized a lecture in the former NBA president’s remembrance. Stubbornly courageous, Aketi cared not whose ox got gored while he spoke his mind. You could be president or an emperor; Aketi brought out the muck in your eye, in your very before. I once wrote against his government’s 

stoppage of an ancient traditional festival in Akure, the state capital and asked him why he didn’t do same to the Igogo festival in his Owo country home. He had just lost his mother and I called thereafter to commiserate with him but he used the occasion to spank me. He told me I was talking nonsense and tutored me on what he called the security implication of allowing the festival. Till he died, his sobriquet for me was “Akure l’o kan” - it is the turn of Akure. Not minding him being my elderly friend, I didn’t support his governorship. I supported his opponent who was my kinsman. And he knew. But Aketi was indeed a great man.

Though the people of the state capital believed he preferenced his Owo home in infrastructure more than the state capital and that he disdained Akure and its monarchy, Aketi had some quite ambitious projects earmarked for the capital. Unfortunately, he couldn’t complete them.

When last week, one of Aiyedatiwa’s aides, Kikelomo Isijola, took to the media, on the anniversary of the governor’s first year in office, to commend him for some infrastructural projects she claimed her boss had pulled through, she received barbs severally from people who saw her effort as whitewashing a dirty boulder. Many people hold that, in the last 25 years of democratic governance, Ondo State has been extremely unlucky in the hands of its governors. Except under Olusegun Agagu and Olusegun Mimiko where the state received infrastructural lifting, the state is generally perceived to be backward development-wise. While the state collects one of the hugest federal revenues as an oil-producing state, its capital city is one of the most underdeveloped in the Southwest. Ado-Ekiti, which became capital about three decades ago, is rated far more developed than Akure.

During his swearing-in, Aiyedatiwa promised to complete the projects left by Aketi. One of these is the Oda-Ijoka dualization project in Akure, The uncompleted projects, according to Aiyedatiwa, would receive urgent attention. He specifically mentioned Oba Osupa–Oluwatuyi–Ijoka (Akure) dualization, completion of Oda dual carriage (Akure), completion of Akure flyover (Onyearugbulem-Shagari-Irese), construction of 15.89km selected roads in Ondo township among many others. A year after, none of them has been completed. Even Isijola claimed the projects are 60% completed, many of them almost six years after. The state football team has been playing its home matches in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, due to the infrastructural horror that the state’s stadium is. The internal roads in Akure are in impassable conditions with no modern developmental strides befitting of a state capital in the city.

If it is reckoned that, were Aketi to be alive, his joint ticket with Aiyedatiwa would expire in two months’ time for another government to take over, those projects would automatically have been abandoned projects.

Aiyedatiwa should make the people of Ondo State joyful as he vividly was immediately he heard of the passage of his boss. Office goes beyond the grandeur surrounding it; it entails responsibility and working for the people.