Reporting News and opinions
Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed: "Last year, my nephew was kidnapped. That's my late sister's son, along with three other people. They went to a farm they had hired... and they were kidnapped just a few miles between Kaduna on the way to Kachia.
In most functional societies, those quaint places where governments occasionally remember they exist to serve rather than to frustrate, when a citizen submits an application requiring official action, a few basic courtesies are observed. An acknowledgment. A request for missing documents if needed. Perhaps even a timeline, however optimistic. The machinery of state, however rusty, at least coughs to confirm it has received your papers.
This is not an isolated comedy of errors. It is a textbook illustration of the black holes deliberately engineered into Nigeria’s public finance architecture opaque pockets that swallow money, evade legislative eyes, and render executives unaccountable. The Bodija tranche is merely one shiny pebble in a vast, dark galaxy of special interventions, contingency advances, service-wide votes, ecological funds, security “emergency” deductions, and other discretionary vehicles that allow the executive to move (or park) billions with minimal sunlight.
To the rank-and-file Biafran soldiers and civilians, he was "Hannibal" a fearless, bulletproof folk hero who rushed toward the frontlines when trained officers hesitated. To the regular Biafran High Command men who had formal military training in the Nigerian Army before the 1967 secession he was a loose cannon, a publicity hound, and an absolute nightmare of a disciplinarian.
Get the Loan. (This is the easy part). Preferably a large, multi-billion naira sum from a struggling bank. Use your political clout as collateral – it’s worth more than anything tangible!
