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By Nazir Muhammad Saulawa

It has been about three years since the reconstruction project of the “Gadan Dauda” bridge began at the centre of Dadinkowa Town in Yamaltu Deba LGA, Gombe State. The project was started around 2019/2020 by the former Governor and the incumbent Senator representing Gombe Central, Alh. Danjuma Goje. He promised to address the problem of the constant water flood caused by the seasonal river, which, for over 15 years, led to the destruction of neighbouring houses and properties and eventually restricted vehicles, motorcycles and trekkers from passing through the bridge during every rainfall in the annual raining season.

In early 2020 after Sen. Goje’s intervention to rehabilitate the bridge, residents welcomed and celebrated the new development. However, it is unfortunate that the senator abandoned the project without notifying the people of the area of the reason for leaving it uncompleted. Since then, there has been no feedback from his aides or the contractor.

Moreover, after the demolition of the old one (more repairable), which people managed to repair and use for their everyday businesses, they were left with no choice but to unfollow the bridge or use its dilapidated sides to pass.

Gadan Dauda bridge is the shortcut road that people pass through, especially students of the Federal College of Horticulture, to go inside the town or merchants from different remote villages to reach Dadin Kowa Market quickly. Therefore, completing the project will ease the transportation of goods, save houses and properties and help the passers-by to go about their daily businesses without hesitation or infringement.

We appeal to Gombe State Governor, Alh. Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya and Sen. Danjuma Goje to finish the project and, if possible, build a new road for more benefits.

Nazir Muhammad Saulawa could be reached via nazzhubby@gmail.com

By Mubarak Shu’aib

Ask most people why countries break apart, and many will say that different groups sharing a single country naturally dislike and distrust one another. For example, Yugoslavia fragmented because the Serbs and Croats and then the Bosnian Muslims started to fight each other after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ethiopia recently descended into civil war because its various ethnic groups – the Tigrayans, Amharans, and those from the Sidama region- each wanted government control. So fundamental ethnic and religious differences must be the cause of all these conflicts.

Nigerians have a lot at stake in answer to this question. Our country has become increasingly divided, with ethnicity now playing a central role in debates over where the presidency should go come 2023. Could the country travail through these adversaries and polarisations?

It turns out that the differences themselves do not lead to violence. This is the finding of political scientists who have studied hundreds of ethnic conflicts worldwide. Almost all countries are multi-ethnic and religious, yet few experience crises.

For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces – influential people willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group. They provoke and harness feelings of fear as a way to lock in an ethnic constituency that will support their scramble power. These mouthpieces are often politicians seeking to gain or maintain control. Still, they can also include business elites (seeking brand loyalty), religious leaders (seeking to expand their followers), and media figures (seeking to grow their audience). 

Separate and hostile ethnic identities don’t exist in a vacuum; they need to be crafted, and these individuals rise to do just that. They’re often at a high risk of losing power or have recently lost it. Seeing another route to securing their futures, they cynically exploit divisions to try to reassert control. We see such figures on our social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook etc.). And they’re more dangerous than what we’ve been led to believe.  Experts have a term for these instigators of conflict: ethnic entrepreneurs.

The term was first used in the 1990s in Yugoslavia, but ethnic entrepreneurs have emerged many times over in all parts of the world. Though the catalyst for conflict is often ostensibly something else – the economy, freedom of religion – ethnic entrepreneurs make the fight expressly about their position and status in society. Harnessing the power of media, they work to convince citizens that they are under threat from an out-group and must band together under the entrepreneur to counter the threat. They also try to persuade those in their group, often with incendiary language, that they are superior and “deserve” to dominate. They (ethnic entrepreneurs), at rallies, symposia, places of worship and town hall meetings, cast aspersions on some ethnic and religious groups.

So why do average Nigerians let themselves be swept along this rhetoric? Perhaps surprisingly, they are often clear-eyed about ethnic entrepreneurs. They know these individuals have their agenda and are not telling the whole truth. Many Igbos did not trust, let alone love, Peter Obi, who was a running mate to Atiku Abubakar a few years earlier (2019). But they’re now willing to show support after a mounting threat to their lives, livelihoods, families, or futures. Over time, the OBidients’ rhetorics and increasing ethnic biases steadily sowed doubts. After silencing the disloyal journalists and media outlets, they plied their audiences with unrelenting messages of fear and suspicion.

These ethnic entrepreneurs are now thriving. But they emerged out of nowhere. In fact,  from the #EndSARS protesters, some of these ethnic entrepreneurs have metamorphosis into #OBIdients. Unfortunately, Mr Obi is relying on their appeals to win the presidency. Albeit with a coded language.

Religion is next. To secure the support of Evangelical leaders and their increasingly mobilised voters, the ObIdients stake more and more pro-life positions. Moral imperatives and cultural identities are now, more than ever, driving voting patterns. 

From appealing to core policy concerns and stoking anxiety where it’s not required, these ethnic entrepreneurs are using different tools to upset the country’s political atmosphere. 

They rightly do so by exacerbating issues on social media. Deborah’s murder is a case study. Twitter exploded, Facebook went mainstream, and social media became an ever-present part of our lives.

Critically, a network of these gleeful ethnic entrepreneurs realised that they could gain ratings and influence by emphasising online tension. As a result, media titans such as SAHARA Reporters, who rely on ratings and clicks, feed us increasingly polarised content.

Into this political morass stepped in Peter Obi. In his bid for power, he realised that appeals to identity could galvanise his political base.  So now, he embraced identity politics explicitly and with gusto.

Obi intuitively understood that the deep feeling of alienation among many Igbo voters could carry him to power.  Although he’s too clever to factor much into the division like other ethnic entrepreneurs, he resorted to radicalising the previous administrations he’s part of as a two-time governor of Anambra State.

Although he remained an underdog in the race, his movement is a future incentive for other ethnic entrepreneurs who are now studying his playbook and will, without a doubt, use it to try to catapult themselves into the Villa in the nearest future. They will build on the momentum, and they will do so by manufacturing threats, fomenting even more ethnic fear, and convincing Igbos that they genuinely are in the midst of an existential fight. How far will these ethnic entrepreneurs go? How far will we let them?

Mubarak Shu’aib writes from Hardawa, Misau LGA, Bauchi State, via naisabur83@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

Adamu Garba, a former presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, APC, said he is back to the ruling party. 

Mr Garba disclosed this in a post he made on Facebook on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. 

Garba argued that the combination of Bola Ahmad Tinubu and Kashim Shettima as the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the ruling party inspired his decision.

“Yes, I am fully back to APC. I could do more harm to my country, Nigeria, if I did not support a combination of a great strategist and a great tactician on a single ticket. It is BAT/Kashim that should take over all polling units in Nigeria come 2023.” Mr Garba wrote on Facebook.

Garba defected from the ruling party in May. He had cited the exorbitant price of the nomination form as his reason for leaving the APC.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

British long-distance runner Sir Mo Farah disclosed that he was not who the world knew him to be.  

Sir Mo Farah revealed that he was a victim of child trafficking and was brought into the UK illegally under the name of another child at the age of 9. He disclosed that his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin

“The truth is I’m not who you think I am,” Sir Farah said.

“Most people know me as Mo Farah, but it’s not my name, or it’s not the reality.”

According to him, the woman who flew with him to the UK told him he was being taken to live with relatives and to say his name was Mohamed as she had fake travel documents that showed his photo next to the name “Mohamed Farah”.

Sir Farah, the first British track and field athlete to win four Olympic golds, said his children motivated him to tell the truth about his past.

“I’ve been keeping it for so long; it’s been difficult because you don’t want to face it, and often my kids ask questions, ‘Dad, how come this?’ And you’ve always got an answer for everything, but you haven’t got an answer for that,” he said

Farah’s recent revelation is in sharp contrast with previous interviews he granted, in which he claimed otherwise.

By Ambali Abdulkabeer

I understand Dino Melaye is a serial political clown who doesn’t deserve much attention. Yet there’s a need to say a few words about his recent cringe-worthy video targeted at Peter Obi.

In the viral video, Dino argued that Nigeria’s problem is beyond cutting governance costs. He said that with all confidence. Ignorant.

Nigeria is what it is today due to a lack of financial prudence in the political firmament. For instance, a report emerged that President Muhammadu Buhari travelled 11 times in five months. However, if you carefully research the trips facilitated with the country’s hard-earned money, you may discover that not all the trips would demand the President and his needless entourage.

Ahmed Lawan, the President of the Senate, in a lecture titled ‘The Legislature, Legislative Mandate and People – The Reality and the Public Perception’ and presented during the First Distinguished Parliamentarians Lecture Series organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies last year, clarified the salaries of members of the National Assembly.

“The total salary of a member of the Senate is about N1.5m while that of the House of Representatives is about N1.3m.

“The average office running cost for a senator is about N13m while that of a member of the House of Representatives is N8m”, Lawan said in the robust paper.

When calculated, the N13m office running cost for a senator amounts to N52m per annum, while the N8m for a member of the House of Representatives amounts to N32m in a year.

Plus salary, this means that each Senator goes home with 70 million and House of Reps member with 47.6 million annually.

Don’t let us talk about the salaries and allowances of the President, Vice President, Ministers and others. A waste of time!

Then the big question is, how much does a diligent civil servant get annually, or even in his entire 35 years in service? You can answer that!

And don’t forget this country is abysmally run through heavy loans upon loans. So if any country in the world must cut governance costs to attend to its multifarious crises, it should be Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with Dino canvassing support for Atiku Abubakar. But to say that the only solution now is the unity of Nigeria is problematic. It’s even self-delusion to tip a former vice president as the best man for the job! If we are united (which I think it’s untenable given our slapdash approach to leadership), the country needs people who are genuinely financially prudent to survive. Not these endlessly grasping ‘agbada men’ carting away its resources.

It must also be said that whether or not Peter Obi is manageable for the country at the moment, Nigerians have the liberty to decide in 2023. It would be fair, however, to remind us that our country needs a better future.

The Danish poet and social critic Soren Kierkegaard was right when he said, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” So while they should embrace the fact that the country needs a genuine president, Nigerians should not be fooled into believing cutting governance costs isn’t a solution.

Ambali Abdulkabeer writes from Ilorin. He can be reached via abdulkabeerambali@gmail.com.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The Africa Heath Budget Network (AHBN) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to redouble efforts in determining to achieve the Family Planning (FP).

Dr. Aminu Magashi Garba, the AHBN Coordinator, made the call in a statement Monday to commemorate the World Population Day of 2022.

He added that the government should also make family planning information, commodities and services available and accessible to all.

He stated that these places should be provided especially in hard-to-reach areas, adding that, “this will curb teenage pregnancy significantly.”

As Nigeria has the largest population in Africa, the Federal Government was reportedly launched the 2030 FP commitment in March 2022, in Abuja.

The Daily Reality gathered that the federal government intents were, “by the end of 2030, Nigeria envisions a country where everyone including adolescents, young people, populations affected by crisis and other vulnerable populations are able to make informed choices, have equitable and affordable access to quality family planning and participate as equals in society’s development.”

Magashi further called on the federal government to maximize its bulging youthful population by improving on the quality of and access to education.

He added that, “The issue of recurrent strike action in the education sector such as the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) should be addressed once and for all.

“The youth should also be empowered and given the relevant skills to enable them contribute in resolving national challenges.

“We call on the government to also make family planning information, commodities and services available and accessible to all, especially those in hard-to-reach areas – this will curb teenage pregnancy significantly.

“The Federal and state governments should take the issues of the provision of family planning commodities serious by ensuring its availability free of charge in all government clinics across the country.

“This can be achieved by the payment of counterpart funding and the provision of funds for logistics by all tiers of governments,” the statement added.

By Muhammad Sabiu

A husband in Misau town of Misau Local Government Area in Bauchi State, Ismail Ahmad Misau, has recounted his worst ordeal involving an ill-qualified doctor at Misau General Hospital. The doctor performed an unsuccessful post-partum surgery on Mr Ahmad’s wife without the husband’s or her family’s consent.

The wife, Khadija Muhammad, was admitted to Misau Town Maternity, after which she was referred to Misau General Hospital on July 4.

Speaking to The Daily Reality, Mr Ahmad lamented that he had found himself in a state of misery since then, adding that things are only worsening as his wife has been in a coma for about one week.

“After she was taken to the ward room, I was instructed to get out. Also, the person taking care of her was asked to move to the laboratory. Khadija was left alone in the room. Afterwards, as we sat down, we heard a cleaner shouting, asking where her caregiver was. We entered and found that Khadija had fallen from the bed in a coma. She was then quickly given an eclampsia injection.

The unprofessional doctor injured my baby—husband

“At 10 am, I was called from the hospital. We were asked to get some drugs. We did as instructed. After one hour, drugs were again needed. I was still asked to get drugs for the third time. On my way, I got a call that she had delivered a baby, but not by herself.

A doctor checked her and found that her unborn baby had died, so she could not deliver it. So, the doctor used a metallic object to eject the baby forcefully. Unfortunately, in trying to remove it, the baby got injured in the face, hand and leg. However, it later mysteriously turned out that the baby did not pass on, contrary to the doctor’s claim.”

Khadija’s life is at risk

“Khadija had been bleeding since then. I was told that she needed a blood transfusion. She first consumed two bags, two bags again, and another one afterwards. Still, the bleeding did not stop. The doctor then administered Tranexamic Acid (1 ample). Unfortunately, it wasn’t available in the whole of Misau. Before I returned to the hospital, I was told that the doctor had taken her into the operation room because, according to him, her womb had developed some issues (either cut or damaged). Therefore, the womb had to be stitched or completely removed before the bleeding could stop. Otherwise, she could die at any moment, according to him.

“On arrival at the hospital, I stopped and asked him why he would perform the surgery without scanning. He still answered that further delay could lead to my wife’s death. I still asked what he had discovered after the surgery. He said the womb was fine and that he had sorted the problem he found. After she was relocated to another unit, it took him about 40 minutes to attend to her again despite her acute condition. She had to be put on an oxygen mask.

“Since then, she has not been urinating because, as claimed by the doctor, she has developed a kidney problem,” Mr Ahmad recounted.

A 7-man delegation arrived in Misau

After subsequent development, the victim’s husband told The Daily Reality that on Wednesday, a 7-man team of doctors from the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital visited the Misau hospital. Three of them checked Khadija and instructed that she be referred to the Federal Medical Center Azare.

“After taking her to Azare, she was taken to the Intensive Care Unit, after which we narrated all that transpired to the personnel in charge. And they documented it.

“They really showed their outrage due to what happened at the Misau hospital. They lamented that incompetence and recklessness had affected the treatment in Misau,” Mr Ahmad added.

This incident has caused a lot of tension in the Misau metropolis as some angry young men attempted to beat up the embattled, suspended doctor, who is also the Chief Medical Director of the hospital.

“People complain about his unprofessionalism”—insider

According to a worker at Misau General Hospital that spoke to the Daily Reality, the ill-qualified doctor was unprofessional and was not supposed to be at the hospital.

The source, who pleaded anonymity, told our reporter that this was not the first time the man’s unprofessionalism caused problems and difficulties for patients after surgery.

He said, “sometimes people come with lots of complaints after surgery. His unprofessionalism is almost known to everyone.”

He added that the quack doctor had been transferred to another hospital long ago. But, to the dismay of anyone in the hospital, he refused to accept the transfer. You know politics has roamed this system too, and the guy was said to have a political godfather.

What he did was entirely unethical

Asked whether the unprofessional doctor was ethically right when he did surgery on Ahmad’s wife without his consent, the doctor said it was entirely unethical.

He said, “What he did was wrong. One should not perform any surgery without the consent of the patient’s relatives.

All attempts by our reporters to hear from the management proved abortive.

At a time when ignorance reigns 

When human’s soul lost its sense

Amidst Banu Hashim emerged a light

Which illuminations light the earth 

He led the Beduins on the right path

To save them from God’s wrath 

He was sent to the whole of humanity

To be the doctor of the heart and mind

I envy the cloud above his head 

Which followed and gave him shade

I envy the disciples that learnt from him

They learnt the Qur’an directly from him

I envy the soldiers that went on Jihad

For if I were there, I would work hard

I envy the eye that stared at his face 

It’s the most handsome of the Human race

I envy the she-camel that led his Mi’irage

For it was very great a voyage

I envy the spider that sprong its web

Which appeared to the foes as a cobweb

I envy the cup that gave him drink

For it fed his tongue, the truthful ink

I envy those that smelled his scent 

For his body emanated smell; fragrant

I envy the pot that cooked him food

Not excluding the recipes and firewood

He is Muhammad, the chosen one

He is Ahmad; the praised one

Those are the few I can mention

For his blessings have no dimension

Written by

Hussain Abdullahi,

©Avicenna

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The family of late Nigerian artiste, Olanrewaju Fasasi, popularly known as Sound Sultan, has released an album of the late artiste posthumously.

According to the family, he was working on the album before he passed away.

“We are having the one-year remembrance of Sound Sultan, iconic Nigerian singer and we are having his official listening party for the album, Reality CHQ. This was the album Sound Sultan was working on before he answered the call of the Almighty. This is a very special project.” The late artiste’s brother, Baba Dee, said in a video he posted.

Sound Sultan reportedly died of throat cancer in the United States of America on Sunday, July 11, 2021, and was buried there in line with Islamic teachings.

By Muhammad Sabiu

The Borno State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), under the leadership of Bishop Mohammed Naga, has expressed its joy over the emergence of a former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, as Bola Tinubu’s running mate in the 2023 presidential election.

Recall that Mr Tinubu announced Kashim yesterday as his prospective vice president if the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerges victorious in the next year’s election.

Reacting to the development in a statement, Bishop Naga described Kashim as an unbigoted person, stressing that “those who are not from Borno State may not know, but you and I know better.”

His statement reads, “Gov. Shettima, in the history of Borno State, is the only Governor that has sponsored the highest number of Christian Pilgrims every year since 2011.

“I am speaking boldly without fear or favour because as CAN Chairman, I don’t receive salary or kobo from the Government or any institution, but the facts need to be told.

“For example, when Gwoza people were driven from their ancestral homes, they fled to Maiduguri, and the Governor personally came to CAN Centre in Jerusalem ward two times in June and July 2014. He gave N10 million for their upkeep at first instance, but the victims weren’t many. By the end of October 2014, the IDPs from Gwoza increased to 42,000 in that camp alone. Governor Shettima came again and gave another N10 million.

“He also gave an additional N5 million to Christians from Borno who fled to Cameroon to be returned home.

“Sincerely speaking, as a Christian and a preacher, absolutely, I have nothing to fear about Asiwaju’s picking a Muslim as his running mate because he is not a religious bigot, and I am happy he has made his mind known to the public in the person of his preferred running mate.

“Seeing another presidential candidate applauding him is a plus for him and supporters of Asiwaju. Congratulations to the awaiting president and vice president.”

However, the coming of a Muslim-Muslim ticket from the APC has caused a lot of reactions, with several social media-based activists vigorously kicking against it, citing the sensitive religious atmosphere of the Nigerian society as their reason for resistance.