International

By Muhammadu Sabiu 
 
Olaniyi Nasiru Ojikutu, a 39-year-old Nigerian, was convicted of participating in a multi-year romance scam and was given a sentence of nearly seven and a half years in a U.S. prison.
 
Ojikutu, a permanent resident of the US, allegedly opened roughly 25 bank accounts under his own name, a fictitious name, and the name of a shell company, through which nearly $3.4 million in fraud proceeds were moved.
 
It was revealed that Ojikutu and nine other people were charged in Operation Gold Phish, a Chicago-based sting operation that uncovered cybercrimes that preyed on senior citizens.
 
Ojikutu was charged with wire fraud in the scheme in 2019 and received an 88-month prison term on Wednesday, according to Fox32Chicago.
 
Ojikutu fled to Canada by bus after being charged, but was apprehended seven months later and turned up to American authorities in January 2020.
 
Last July, he entered a guilty plea to one count of wire fraud.
 
Social networking sites, including Facebook and Instagram, as well as the mobile dating app Match.com were used to contact scam victims.
 
Prosecutors asserted on Thursday that Ojikutu used the money obtained fraudulently for his own personal gain, including buying cars in the US and exporting them to Nigeria for resale.
 
Federal prosecutors reported that some victims suffered financial losses of several hundred thousand dollars as a result of Ojikutu’s acts.
 
 

By Muhammad Muzdaleefa

Founding leaders of nations matter. A country’s founding moment is often a make-or-mar moment in the life of the country. The trajectory on which the founding leadership sets the country, as well the power of their founding example, often defines and determines the future course of events way past the founding generation. Founding precedents tend to have an exceptional degree of endurance, because founding leaders command a kind and degree of legitimacy and license that is exceptional and which gives them and their example and precedents a special status and the propelling force of path dependency in their country’s history.

George Washington’s founding example, of not offering himself up for election again after serving two terms as (first) president of the new republic, even though nothing in the US constitution at the time imposed term limits on an incumbent president, initiated a tradition of American presidents not going beyond two terms; a tradition that remained in place until Franklin Delano Roosevelt breached it in the 1930s/40s, causing it to be restored by constitutional amendment. Additionally, the contemporary trajectory of American federalism, including the enduring fault lines in its politics, can be traced back to the Federalist/anti-Federalist split in the founding generation; between the Hamiltonian (strong federal/center) and the Jeffersonian/Madisonian (strong states) visions.

The death of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990 (then senior minister after that), has brought the usual apologists of autocratic rule in Africa out of their holes, doing what they do best: making all manner of inapt comparisons and prophecies of “what would have been” had one or the other favorite African autocrat been allowed to rule for as long as Lee Kuan Yew did. There is the implicit suggestion that similar longevity in office would have turned Lee’s African contemporaries into a Lee Kuan Yew or transformed their African states from Third World to First. It is a fanciful thought, one not borne out by the record.

First of all, Africa’s first generation of autocrats did, in fact, stay in power for very long periods. Nyerere, Kaunda, Banda, Houphouet Biogny, Mobutu, Bongo, Senghor, all were in power continuously for nearly three decades. And many current ones, including Mugabe, Museveni, and Biya have equaled or broken the record. None has managed any transformation of the Lee Kuan Yew kind, except in the opposite direction. So, the difference between Lee Kuan Yew and his African contemporaries was not just a matter of longevity in power, it was far more than that. Time itself is a value-neutral resource. It is what you do with the time you have that determines the future course of events. Africa’s autocrats did very different things with their time in power than Lee Kuan Yew did with his. They were bound to reap different results.

Second, while Lee Kuan Yew was an authoritarian leader, he was not an autocrat. It is an important distinction. Lee built and worked through institutions. He did not destroy the rule of law. Lee’s government passed and enforced draconian laws, but arbitrary and personal rule did not displace government through institutions, rules, and procedures. Lee also assembled and worked with a solid team (the first group of which is featured in the book “Lee’s Lieutenants”). His was not a one-man project; he was captain of a team. Lee’s Lieutenants brought to the table a complement of talents and abilities that Lee, as leader, effectively harnessed and synthesised into a shared vision. There was no “Lee Kuan Yewism” to which all were obliged to swear allegiance or else. And while Lee Kuan Yew did not like or think much of his opposition, he never declared a one-party state. His party contested elections and won those elections repeatedly. The franchise was not aborted. Nor were opposition parties. Absence of electoral turnover is inconsistent with competitive parliamentary politics. The Liberal Party’s overwhelming hold on power in postwar Japan is a case in point.

Lee Kuan Yew ruled for as long as he did, in part because he did not replace Singapore’s Westminster parliamentary system with a presidential system. The title “President” apparently had no particular allure for the supremely self-confident Lee. He was happy to be a “mere” prime minister, which meant that, as long as his party continued to win a majority in parliamentary elections and he retained his own seat and leadership of the party, he was free to remain prime minister. Term limits have been traditionally associated with presidential systems, not parliamentary systems. Today, his party remains in power, even if its electoral strength has diminished over time.

Lee’s contemporaries in Africa, on the other hand, moved quickly to replace their parliamentary systems with presidential rule. It was one step on the road to autocracy. It freed them from accountability to their party, to cabinet, and to parliament. From that foundation, other blocks in the autocratic project fell into place.

There are many other ways in which Lee Kuan Yew and his African contemporaries were fundamentally different. They, like Lee, did not care much for human rights, free speech, free press, and the like. Lee Kuan Yew believed in “Asian values”, not “Western democracy”. And his African contemporaries too defended their own idiosyncratic versions of African exceptionalism. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Instructively, Lee Kuan Yew recalls telling himself, after a 1964 visit to Africa that took him to 17 countries, “I was not optimistic about Africa”. Lee said. And while in Lagos in January 1966 for the Commonwealth Heads of State conference, Lee again recalls, after observing the Nigerian government at work: “I went to bed that night convinced that they were a different people playing to a different set of rules.”

Nothing is gained, except more of the same escapism and revisionism that keeps us stuck in the counter-developmental past, by trying to cast one or the other African autocrat in the mold of a Lee Kuan Yew. We have had no Lee Kuan Yews. Not that we need or must have one. But, well, just saying!

By Muhammadu Sabiu 

A woman from New York City who was accused of trying to steal the identity of another woman by feeding poisoned cheesecake to her doppelganger was found guilty of attempted murder.

In a news release, Queens district attorney Melinda Katz stated that a jury had found 47-year-old Viktoria Nasyrova guilty of trying to kill 35-year-old Olga Tsvyk with cheesecake laced with a potent sedative in August 2016 and stealing her passport and other belongings afterwards.

The district attorney stated that Nasyrova intended to pass herself off as Tsvyk after killing her since the two women had similar looks, including dark hair and skin tones.

The attorney was quoted as saying, “The jury saw through the deception and schemes of the defendant. She laced a slice of cheesecake with a deadly drug so she could steal her unsuspecting victim’s most valuable possession, her identity. Fortunately, her victim survived, and the poison led right back to the culprit.”

According to the prosecution team, after eating the cheesecake, Tsvyk felt nauseous and passed out. Later, she was discovered practically unconscious in bed by a friend and was rushed to a hospital for treatment.

The team noted that after Tsvyk was released from the hospital and went home, she discovered that her passport, work authorization card, gold ring, and other valuables were all gone.

Nasyrova was detained after it was discovered through testing of residue from the cheesecake container that it contained phenazepam, a strong sedative.

By Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD

At 2:45 am every day, the first email at HKS comes to your inbox. HKS Daily is a catalogue of information about activities at Harvard Kennedy School. If you miss it for a day, you could miss countless opportunities about conferences, breakfast with guests, working groups, and lectures by presidents, governors, mayors and other leading policymakers from different parts of the world.

When I checked this morning, I saw an event posted by the Building State Capability Project. It was a book talk entitled “They eat our sweat: Transport labour, corruption and survival in urban Nigeria.” The theme was from the title of a book by Daniel Agbiboa, an Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University Center for African Studies. I registered immediately.

I love original research. Daniel’s work is an excellent example of that. The book, which I look forward to reading, was based on his research work at the University of Oxford, where he worked with the late pan-African scholar, Professor Abdulra’uf Mustapha. It was a research project that used participant observation to study the informal transport sector in #Lagos. As a student of public policy, this attracted my attention even more. Many policies are designed without an in-depth understanding of the social, cultural and even political implications of such policies.

A governor or minister might see the informal transport sector as a nuisance to a modern city. He might bring consultants to hurriedly analyse the problem and come up with a solution. Every person would like to see his city looking like San Francisco, Paris or Dubai. What we tend to forget is that there are thousands of lives that could suffer in our attempt to look modern. Where do we put those people who work as drivers and ‘conductors’ if we don’t have an alternative industry that will absorb them?

To understand this, Professor Daniel went to the field. He became a bus ‘conductor’ for two months, working with a driver, starting early in the morning and absorbing the difficulty that comes with such endeavour. He used his research to understand the difficulty of survival within the informal transportation sector.

He provided a critique to those who use CPI to evaluate countries as corrupt when ordinary people in those countries have completely different realities. “Informal transport not only provides a sector for examining corruption, but also a prism through which to interrogate the binary framing of formality/informality and understandings of the borders (or lack thereof) between the two.” Says Daniela Schofield in a review of the book published on the blog of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Takeaway: Developing public policy needs in-depth thinking and proper planning. Building infrastructure is only one part of the story. Managing the effect of policies on people is a much harder task.

Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD, is a candidate for a Mid-Career Master’s in Public Administration at Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government. He can be reached via mjyushau@yahoo.com.

By Muhammadu Sabiu 

Over 1,200 people were killed, and nearly 3,000 were injured when an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale rocked Turkey and Syria.

Local media stated that the earthquake occurred close to the border between the two countries.

Millions of people in the two affected countries, including Israel and Lebanon, were startled from their beds, according to a Monday report by the New York Times.

The Aleppo, Hama, Tartus, and Latakia districts have so far reported 237 casualties, according to the Syrian Health Ministry.

Lebanon and Cyprus were also affected by the strong earthquake that struck at 4:17 a.m. near the Turkish city of Gaziantep at a depth of 17.9 km.

The 10 cities of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Malatya, Sanliurfa, Adana, Diyarbakir, and Kilis were reportedly damaged, according to a statement to the media by Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.

The Minister said at least 23 fatalities were recorded in the Malatya province, which is northeast of Gaziantep, while 17 fatalities were reported in Sanliurfa, which is in the east, and the remaining fatalities were reported in Diyarbakir and Osmaniye.

According to Xinhua news agency Ahmad Damiriyeh, Syria’s Deputy Minister of Health, general emergency preparations have been implemented for the affected districts, and private institutions have been instructed to accept all injured patients.

By Uzair Adam Imam

Darul Erkam Foundation has fully sponsored three indigenous students of Kano state for undergraduate studies in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Aliyu Yusuf, the Director Public Enlightenment, Ministry of Education Kano State, disclosed this in a statement Friday.

Yusuf said the youths were sponsored following their outstanding performance in the just concluded Reading Competition of the Biography of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

He added in the statement, “The 3 sponsored students are Muhammad Nasiru Dantiye from Asal College, Fadima Musa Haruna from Kuntau Academy and Al-Amin Sani from Governor’s college.

“In addition to their sponsorship, Muhammad Nasiru Dantiye, who emerged as the overall winner of the reading competition, got a Prize of N700,000 and a Trophy, Fatima Musa Haruna received N650,000 and a Trophy for emerging in the 2nd position, while Al-Amin Sani who emerged the 3rd position received N600,000 and a Trophy.

“Speaking during the presentation of the awards at the coronation Hall of the state government House, Kano, the Commissioner of Education, Rt Hon. Ya’u Abdullahi Yan’shana expressed gratitude to Darul-Erkam Foundation for the kind gesture.

“The Commissioner noted with great pleasure the various humanitarian activities been rendered not only in Kano but in other states by the Darul-Erkam Foundation, saying only Allah the most gracious can reward them.

“Rt. Hon Yan’shana said he was much happier than any one of you here because this achievement has been recorded during my stewardship as the Commissioner of Education” 

“While congratulating the sponsored students for the height they have attained, he urged them to be good ambassadors of the state and their parents when they found themselves in Istanbul.

“To other participants of the reading competition who also revised different consolation prizes and medals, the Commissioner said they should not be reluctant as more opportunities are coming to their way, stressing that all of them should put into practice what they have read in the Biography of our Noble Prophet.

“In their separate remarks, the Chairmen of Murat Huda Vendigar Vafki Foundation and that of Darul-Erkam Foundation disclosed that the reading competition was part of the Humanitarian activities of the foundations aimed at boosting the reading culture of the participants as well as inculcating the practices of the life of the Prophet Muhammad SAW in their day to day activities.

“During the award presentations, all the participants were given a medal and cash prizes ranging from N5,000 to N200,000 depending on their performance,” the statement concluded.

By Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD

On Friday, I spent the early morning hours participating in a boot camp on negotiation. It was part of the effort of Professor Rand Wentworth to build the capacity of his students in negotiation. The boot camp was facilitated by Monica Giannone.

Immediately after the boot camp ended at 12 pm, my friend Alibek Nurbekov and I proceeded to the Friday prayer. As I was about to enter the prayer hall, Dr Khalil Abdur-Rashid was also arriving. Dr Khalil is the Muslim Chaplain at Harvard University and teaches courses at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Divinity School.

“Sheikh Khalil, welcome back from Umrah,” I said as he made his way into the prayer hall.

“Good to see you, Jameel. I need to talk to you after the prayer,” he said, and I nodded in agreement.

Dr Khalil led a group of students and other members of the Harvard Community to participate in Umrah, the lesser Muslim pilgrimage, where Muslims visit Makkah and perform the Umrah rites. They also visit Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) mosque in Madina and other historical places in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I came to know about the Harvard Umrah trip during the welcome orientation for students led by Dr Khalil last year at the beginning of the fall semester. He announced that some donors had provided scholarships for Muslim students to attend the pilgrimage, and he played a video for us on the experience in 2019 when they went on a similar voyage. Many students pledged to join the group for the trip in January.

Organising trips to different countries is a common tradition at Harvard University during the January break. Many trips were organised to Brazil, Singapore, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and more. The Harvard chaplaincy also utilised the break to organise the Umrah from 4th-14th January 2023.

Quoting Dr Khalil, The Harvard Crimson reported that “a generous donation from a graduate of Harvard Business School and a parent of two current Harvard undergraduates allowed the University to offer the trip at no cost to first-generation, low-income Muslim students. The donation for this year’s trip reportedly totalled approximately $100,000.”

As the Friday prayer finished, I waited patiently for Dr Khalil. As he came out, he asked me to walk towards his car. He brought a gift from the car and handed it to me. “This is a gift from the Umrah.” His wife Samia, who is also the female Muslim Chaplain, said, “it is a little gift for your girls.”

I thanked them in appreciation and headed home to enjoy the rest of the evening with my family. You can find the full story on the Harvard Umrah trip entitled “Spiritually Stimulating: Harvard Students Embarked on First Umrah Trip in Four Years.” (https://lnkd.in/et_dEBer).

Takeaway: Spiritual well-being is important in helping students to have a balanced educational experience.

Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD, is a candidate for a Mid-Career Master’s in Public Administration at Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government. He can be reached via mjyushau@yahoo.com.

By Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel

Consumer goods giant, Unilever has today announced the appointment of Hein Schumacher as the new Chief Executive Officer of the British multinational company. In its press release, the company said Schumacher emerged as the CEO following “an extensive, global search process”.

He will begin as CEO of Unilever on 1st July, 2023, succeeding Alan Jope who in September 2022 announced his intention to retire from Unilever after serving as CEO for about four years.

Hein Schumacher is currently the CEO of Dutch multinational dairy company, Royal FrieslandCampina. He is “a business leader with an excellent track record across multiple leading companies in the consumer goods industry”, the company said in the press release.

“As CEO of Royal FrieslandCampina, an €11bn turnover business operating in over 40 countries, he has delivered significant portfolio and organisation change as part of transforming it into a more focused, growth-driven and sustainable business”, it continued.

As Unilever CEO, Hein Schumacher will receive annual fixed pay of €1.85m, be eligible to receive annual bonus and Performance Share Plan awards, and relocation support, all in line with Unilever’s existing remuneration policy.

While welcoming Hein onboard, Unilever’s Chairman, Nils Andersen said: “We are delighted to welcome Hein as our new Chief Executive, after an extensive, global search process. Hein is a dynamic, values-driven business leader who has a diverse background of experiences and an excellent track record of delivery in the global consumer goods industry”.

Hein holds a Masters degree in Political Science and International Relations from University of Amsterdam. Unilever is one of the leading suppliers of food, home, Beauty and Wellbeing and Personal Care products in Nigeria.

They manufacture household brands like Close-Up toothpaste, Royco and Knorr Seasoning powders, Omo and Sunlight detergents and Pears baby oil.

By Muhammadu Sabiu 

Recently, Barcelona president Joan Laporta insisted that it was best to allow Lionel Messi to depart the team.

Recall Messi ended his 21-year at Barcelona in 2021 when he departed Camp Nou.

Following the termination of his contract, the Argentina captain left Barcelona as a free agent.

Messi’s sad departure from the Catalan giants was prompted by a dire financial crisis the team was experiencing.

According to Goal, Barca’s president said, “I had to put Barca ahead of the greatest player in football history.

“In those moments of financial ruin, I could not retain him. I think it was the best for the club. Right now, he is a PSG player, and I prefer not to talk about him.”

According to a BBC report, the formed old Pope died in the early hours of today. “He led the Catholic Church for fewer than eight years until, in 2013, he became the first Pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.

Benedict spent his final years at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery within the walls of the Vatican where he passed away at 09:34 (08:34 GMT) on Saturday.

His successor Pope Francis will lead the funeral on 5 January.”