Opinion

Opinion: How DNA testing may wrongly nail your wife, by Tunde Odesola

Published

2 years ago

November 2, 2021

(First published in The PUNCH on October 25 and November 1, 2021)

For a breath of fresh air and to maintain my sanity, I’ll desist from talking about the retired General Muhammadu Buhari in this article. Also, I’ll resist talking about murderous Boko Haram, terrorist Fulani herdsmen, nationwide bandits, humongous corruption and bleeding nepotism which the Buhari regime will bequeath to the incoming Presidency in 2023, if Nigeria exists till then, luckily.

I understand why it’s not easy for Nobel laureate, Professor Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, to give up hope on his 61-year-old country, Nigeria: no parent will nurture an Abiku from infancy through childhood to adolescence, and incautiously watch the heartless child climb a pawpaw tree with vegetable stalk – without shouting gbajare!

So, I understand the patriotic zeal which, for almost 70 unbroken years, has fired Soyinka up to engage in an eternal struggle for a better Nigeria.

At a point in 1965, Soyinka justifiably held, at gunpoint, the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Ibadan, despite security presence; landed in jail over a pro-Biafra article in 1967, at another point, and escaped into exile in 1994 when he was sentenced to death by the rogue General, Sani Abacha, who was dragging Nigeria to the point of no return. Doubtless, the sagacious Soyinka had a brush with the law one time too many over his conviction.

The last time the white-mane literary icon wrote a novel, Season of Anomy, was 1973. His new novel, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, is his third, while The Interpreters written in 1965, was his debut.

It’s the mighty shame of a nation that the same themes of corruption, hypocrisy, nepotism, ignorance, blood-letting, poverty that are Soyinka’s preoccupations in his 1965 and 1973 novels, remain his motifs in his 2021 novel.

While some global issues which Soyinka spoke to in his works have changed for the better, it’s excruciatingly painful that his country, Nigeria, remains rooted to the bottomless pit of underdevelopment despite decades of his literary and social advocacy for change.

I wish I could measure the heaviness of the soul of Africa’s foremost literary figure, Soyinka, seeing his Nigeria, the Abiku, swimming in crocodile-infested pond while giant gators glide to gobble the Abiku, together with its defiance and charmed bangle-feet.

For Soyinka, appearance and reality in Nigeria are siamese even though he faults the depiction of Nigerians as ‘happiest people on earth’ in his latest work. Soyinka’s Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is a stinging irony of the sorrowful Nigerian populace described by total strangers as joyful.

However, Appearance and Reality weren’t the same for me some decades ago when I served in the National Youth Service Corps in Umuopu and Aji communities of Igbo-Eze North Local Government Council of Enugu State.

Then, I had a shapely girlfriend, whose name flirts on the periphery of memory now. I think she’s Eucharia. UK, for short. Then, I shared a top-floor two-bedroomed flat with a fellow corper, James Umor, now deceased, in a storey building owned by a traditional shrink called Enwe Nwanjo,who had a son, Emma, who had a beautiful wife, and a baby girl called Kasie. Emma and his family lived on the ground floor of the main building with us. Enwe Nwanjo had died a few years before my NYSC posting, but I still met his legend in Aji as a great healer of sick minds.

UK, an ebony beauty with a dimpled smile, lived in another apartment on the top floor with us. One night something happened.

I had just returned from a journey late in the night. And the whole compound had gone to sleep. I had come out on the verandah to have a drink and smoke a cigarette. Then I heard the bed creak in UK’s room. Sleep fled from my eyes and the hair on my head stood on end.

“But UK told me she was going to Nsukka to see her parents this weekend?” I recalled silently as I tip-toed towards her door in the dark hallway.

I peeped through the keyhole, darkness stared back at me. Then, slowly, very slowly, my mind dismantled the darkness. I saw two human forms, one lying behind the other, on the small metal bed by the curtained window…

I stayed all night on the verandah smoking and shacking whiskey as the harmattan wind froze my bones, but I kept my gaze on UK’s door while I intermittently patrolled the other louvered window to her apartment, which wasn’t in full gaze.

Then, another thing happened. Around 5:30am, or thereabouts, I heard a crowd of people chatting from a distance on the hazy road to our apartment. Then, some male and female students, who lived in the compound, together with a teacher, Florence Enwe, who’s the sister of Emma, and my smiling UK, burst into view. They were all coming back home from a vigil in their catholic church!

I quietly sneaked into my apartment, relieved but still curious. I heard UK’s footfalls as she climbed the stairs and I re-emerged from my apartment. She greeted me and asked smilingly, “You no dey sleep, Kopashon?” She knocked on her door. A preteen girl of about 10 years, whom she described as her sister from Nsukka, opened the door drowsily, stretching and yawning. “Tunde, see ya life,” I said to myself silently.

This is my own experience with Appearance and Reality. While Soyinka sees Nigeria for what it truly is, the Appearance I saw in Enugu Ezike was far from Reality.

What did the 178-year-old British newspaper, The Economist, see when it described the Buhari regime as incompetent, last week? Appearance or Reality? Or both? I’ve vowed not to talk about Buhari in this piece, and I wish to be faithful to my promise. I’ll leave Buhari for now and go ahead to explore DNA testing as a realm of science where results may not always be accurate.

Despite a woman’s fidelity to her man, a DNA testing could wrongly label the faithful woman a cheat if she gave birth to a chimera baby.

Unlike the generality of humanity possessing a single and distinct set of genes, chimera individuals have at least two sets of genes, which can result in a false negative result when the genetic composition of their tissue which was sampled for DNA testing is different from their reproductive tissue.

The case of American Taylor Muhl, a 37-year-old female singer, songwriter and dancer, brings into keener perspectives the issue of genetics and the probability that DNA testing could go wrong.

Though the multiple sets of genetic compositions in chimeras differ from one individual to another, in the case of Muhl, she was her own twin. This means that her embryo swallowed the twin embryo in her mother’s womb.

The fusion of the embryos could be in the gonads, testicles, abdomen, hand, transplanted parts of the body or any part of the body.

If it was in the testicles, for instance, the child fathered by the seminal fluid of the chimera individual would likely carry the gene of the other unborn, infused twin – such that DNA tests on the children produced by the chimera will prove negative.

There’s the case of another American woman, Karen Keegan, whose own children were disproved by DNA testing, until a US court ruled that the pregnancy she had at the time in question should be recorded.

Despite being video recorded at childbirth, DNA testing conducted on Keegan’s new baby also proved that she wasn’t the mother of the child.

When the blindfolded head drops on the hard floor, kpi!, like the back-kick of an angry horse, please, know that not all guillotined heads are guilty.

That is why the Yoruba say, “Ori yeye ni Imogun, t’aise lo po.” Imogun is the Yoruba Golgotha; the place of skulls, where many innocent heads have rolled down the pit of death, spurting hot blood.

If man didn’t reach for the sky at Babel, and all languages were one, I wouldn’t be saddled with the burden of translating this Yoruba proverb into English. But, it’s ok, I’ll try.

“Ori yeye ni Imogun, t’aise lo po” alerts the heedful to the limitations of human judgment and the evil that lurks in man’s heart.

I felt like going beyond the translation of the proverb into English. So, I went in search of the Araba of Osogbo, Chief Ifeyemi Elebuibon, to unravel for me the story behind the proverb.

“Once upon a time,” Elebuibon began, “Ogunda and his friend, Irosun, had an argument. Ogunda contended that many of those beheaded at Imogun are guiltless, but Irosun disagreed, saying, “Ika to ba se, l’Oba nge,” meaning: “It’s only the offending finger that the king cuts.

“So, one night, Ogunda killed an antelope in the forest. He sneaked into Irosun’s house and smeared his sleeping friend’s hands with the blood of the kill even as he sprinkled the blood on the ground, all the way to the king’s pen.

“Very early the following morning, Irosun was still sleeping when the king’s guards broke down his door and arrested him for killing the king’s antelope. Irosun pleaded his innocence, but he was dragged away, all the same, his toes barely touching the ground.

“The guillotine was the final journey for anyone that stole from the royal farm. Irosun’s fate was sealed. He must honour a date with death.

“On the Day of Death, many people trooped out to Imogun, to watch how the thief’s head would tumble down the headful dumpsite, squirting blood.

“The masked hangman with bulging biceps and a razor-sharp sword curved at the tip like Go-to-hell advanced slowly towards the shackled Irosun. He stood at arm’s length and raised up his shiny sword to heaven for the swift strike that would cut off the neck bone, separating the head from the body.

“He brought down his sword impatiently as Ogunda stepped out, and told the truth. Irosun was shaken back to life, sweat and urine had soaked his clothes. Ogunda asked his friend if it was only the guilty that got punished. A shivering Irosun answered, ‘Ori yeye ni Imogun, t’aise lo po’.”

Globally, many women and men have been wrongly accused of not being the mothers and fathers to their biological children because they are chimeras.

Who should she forgive – DNA testing machine or her unbelieving husband – the woman wrongly accused of infidelity because the genotype of her child doesn’t match that of the biological father? Can she even ever forgive?

Who should he blame, DNA testing machine or his fate, the man wrongly denied the joy of fatherhood because he is a chimera?

What is chimerism?

According to the European Journal of Medical Genetics, scientificamerican.com, and healthline.com, a chimera is generally an animal or human that contains the cells of two or more individuals – that is, their bodies contain two different sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms.

Natural chimerism

Scientificamerican.com says, “One way that chimeras can happen naturally in humans is that a foetus can absorb its twin. This can occur with fraternal twins, if one embryo dies very early in pregnancy, and some of its cells are “absorbed” by the other twin. The remaining foetus will have two sets of cells, its own original set, plus the one from its twin.”

Healthline.com says microchimerism, which is another form of natural chimerism, most commonly occurs in humans when a pregnant woman absorbs a few cells from her foetus, adding that the opposite may also happen, where a foetus absorbs a few cells from its mother. “These cells may travel into the mother’s or foetus’s bloodstream and migrate to different organs,” it says.

Tetragametic chimerism

This is also a form of natural chimerism. It happens when two different sperm cells fertilise two different egg cells. Then, these cells all fuse together into one human embryo with crossed cell lines.

Artificial chimerism

“Artificial chimerism,” according to healthline.com, “occurs when a person receives a blood transfusion, stem cell transplant, or bone marrow transplant from another person and absorbs some of that person’s cells. This is called artificial chimerism.

“Artificial chimerism was more common in the past. Today, transfused blood is usually treated with radiation. This helps the transfusion or transplant recipient to better absorb the new cells without permanently incorporating them into their body.”

Cases of chimerism

In its September 2020 publication, the European Journal of Medical Genetics says human chimeras have been described for nearly 70 years by experts but the phenomenon gained public attention in the last 20 years with three high-profile media reports of coincidental findings during parentage testing.

The issue of the American woman, Karen Keegan, mentioned in the first part of this article, was a high-profile case of chimerism reported in 2002, in Boston, when genetic tests were conducted on her as she prepared to receive a kidney from any of her family members. After the tests, it was ‘discovered’ that two of Keegan’s three sons were not hers.

Another high-profile case of chimerism was that of another American, Lydia Fairchild, who had to be videoed at childbirth when genetic tests showed that she wasn’t the mother of her two sons when she applied for assistance for them from the State of Washington. She was subsequently charged with fraud. Even her third childbirth showed she wasn’t the mother of the child. After an extensive medical investigation, however, the genetic composition of her children matched a second DNA lineage found in the narrow tube that connects her vagina to her uterus.

The third reported case of chimerism was that of an unnamed 34-year-old man in California who, in 2015, failed a paternity test after the child was found to have AB blood group while both parents were A. According to an article, How a Man’s Unborn Twin Fathered His Child, published in Times magazine, the sperm that fertilised the wife’s egg belonged to the man’s unborn twin.

A June 2021 article published by The Embryo Project Encyclopedia paraphrased Policy Professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, Sheldon Krimsky, and genetics expert, Tania Simoncelli, warning in their 2012 book, Genetic Justice: DNA Databanks, Criminal Investigations, and Civil Liberties, that human chimerism could potentially upend the US court system’s reliance on DNA evidence, citing Fairchild and Keegan as case studies.

But, in a response, legal professor David H. Kaye, in an article, Chimeric Criminals, published in the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology in 2013, debunks the assertion by Krimsky and Simoncelli.

Kaye, however, ‘acknowledges human chimerism should be a consideration in DNA testing, given its unknown frequency, but rejects the statement that it is a significant obstacle to its use in forensic investigation’.

Kaye also agrees that any human could display some traits of chimerism because there are numerous ways one could be considered a chimera.

Appearance and Reality are, oftentimes, at variance. When serious nations of the world are honestly fighting corruption, the Nigerian government has done everything to shield its son, DCP Abba Kyari, from facing criminal prosecution in the US for fraud.

I watched the video of Kano Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, dancing with a spurting hose as he washed a vehicle at a car wash inauguration. I think Nigerians shall soon see the launching of the babaringa with the biggest pocket in Kano.

NB: I thank Kemi Samuel, secondary schoolmate and London-based registered nurse, for sharing her knowledge on chimerism with me. God bless Kemo!

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Twitter: @tunde_odesola

Facebook: @tunde odesola

TundeOdesola.com

Opinion

Farooq Kperogi: Yahaya Bello’s EFCC comeuppance

Published

7 days ago

April 20, 2024

Trends Admin

Farooq Kperogi: Yahaya Bello’s EFCC comeuppance

I am not from Kogi State, but I have strong opinions on former Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello—as most Nigerians do. There is no doubt that few politicians in Nigeria are as universally reviled and despised as Yahaya Bello because of how he turned governance into a violent infant play, denuded it of even the faintest pretense to sanity and respectability, and developed an uncanny capacity to incite raw rage in people.

That’s why there is mass excitement in Nigeria over his current travails with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Most people see his fate as a richly deserved karmic retribution for his eight years of incompetent, anger-arousing, profligate, and terroristic governance in Kogi State, the consequences of which transcended the bounds of Kogi State.

He began his tenure as governor as the symbol of hope for youth inclusion in governance. But he soon became a byword for recklessness, malfeasance, ineptitude, incivility, and the greatest betrayer of the youth constituency. He shouldn’t have been governor—or, for that matter, anything in politics.

He had no guardrails on his tongue. Like a spoiled, over-indulged, ill-bred, and uninhibited child, he blabbered whatever inanities caught his febrile fantasies with no care for consequences. He ridiculed civil servants, and terrorized opponents with full-strength viciousness— as if he would remain the governor of his state forever.

He even nicknamed himself—or was nicknamed by his flunkies—as the “white lion.” But when the EFCC came calling, the “white lion” transmogrified into a pitifully frightened, yellow-bellied chicken. Now the white-lion-turned-chicken is fluttering and hiding like he has gone insane.

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A wanted notice has been issued for him by the EFCC, the Inspector General of Police has withdrawn all police officers assigned to guard him, and the Nigerian Immigration Service has placed him on its watchlist. I can’t wait to see him brought to justice for all the crimes he committed while he held sway as the governor of Kogi State.

In a 2022 article, I described him as an ignorant, incorrigibly petulant child who was trapped in an adult’s body, who was destroying the littlest semblance of decency left in government in Kogi State, and who thought he could democratize his infantilism nationwide by seeking to be president.

According to several Kogi State civil servants, Bello didn’t pay full salaries for most civil servants for most of his tenure as governor, yet he is being hunted by the EFCC for allegedly laundering up to 80.2 billion naira, presumably the money he should have used to pay the salaries of workers.

In less than one week after he was sworn in as Kogi State governor on January 27, 2016, according to a May 13, 2016, Premium Times’ investigation, Bello approved N250 million naira for himself as “security vote” and another N148 million to “furnish” and “renovate” his office. At that time, Kogi State workers hadn’t been paid their salaries for months.

Bello’s spokesman at the time said the raiding of the state’s treasury in the name of security was justified because Kogi had become the seedbed of crime as a result of its location.

“It is public knowledge that Kogi State has been contending with serious security breach for the past 10 years,” he said. “As a result of the location of the state as gateway to many states of the federation, the state drifted into a criminal hotbed. Also, years of gross maladministration and blinding embezzlement has left the youth bare, exposing them to all sorts of criminal activities to survive. Kogi became a haven of robbers and kidnappers.”

That was the start, which most people ignored. Everything went downhill from there. The man didn’t even pretend to govern.

In 2020 when COVID-19 raged and most people were caught in a complex web of uncertainties and anxieties about the new infectious disease, Bello chose to become a abhorrent, ignorant conspiracist and the conduit for all sorts of wild, crazed, dangerous, fringe chatter about the disease.

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Yet, although he openly questioned the existence of COVID-19, he fed fat on it like the vampire that he is. The Premium Times of March 26, 2021, reported that Bello spent 90 million naira in 2020 to purchase COVID-19-tracking software that cost only 30 million naira.

“The software, approved by a COVID-19 sceptic, Governor Yahaya Bello, was for tracking coronavirus cases in the state,” Premium Times reported. “However, the software is no longer functioning as the developers said they had a contract to host it for only one year.”

It’s impossible to chronicle Bello’s in-your-face financial malfeasance in a newspaper column. Not even a book-length narrative is sufficient to do justice to how much Bello financially bled and sucked the blood of Kogi State.

The man’s daring electoral terrorism is another issue that has earned him well-deserved loathing in Nigeria. This is a man who commanded his toadies to dig deep ditches on roads (that were built with billions of naira) just to stop voters from a part of the state he knew won’t vote for his candidate from being able to cast their votes.

According to Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, at the time the senatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for Kogi central, “We woke up this morning to the news that Yahaya Bello has instructed the excavation of all access roads to my hometown. My hometown is cut off from Obangede community; it is also cut off from Eika. And right now, I am in front of another road which was just excavated, thereby cutting me out of travelling out of my hometown.

“What this means is INEC would not be able to [access] certain communities, especially my hometown. What this also means is if Yahaya Bello and his APC goons decide to attack me and the good people of Kogi central in Ihima community, it will be impossible for the DPO to get across to this place. That means I, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, my fellow candidates, and supporters are trapped. We have no way out because Yahaya Bello has dug gullies.”

This is a vile and detestable vermin who should never have been allowed to get anywhere close to governance, much less be a governor. He is an excellent specimen of how not to be a governor—or, in fact, a human. I have not the littlest drop of sympathy for him.

Given the peculiarities of the Nigerian political environment, it seems likely that he is in trouble with the EFCC only because he has fallen out of favor with the president or his henchmen. I honestly don’t care.

More than anything, though, Bello’s troubles exemplify the transience of power and the imperative for humility when you wield it.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian newspaper columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Farooq Kperogi: Yahaya Bello’s EFCC comeuppance

Opinion

Bobrisky, Cubana Chief Priest and Indabosky Bahose

Published

1 week ago

April 19, 2024

Trends Admin

Tunde Odesola

Bobrisky, Cubana Chief Priest and Indabosky Bahose

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, April 19, 2024)

Abido Shaker! Life is a widening gyre where women fear cockroaches, cockroaches fear cocks, cocks fear men, and men fear women. A few years ago, Chukwemeka Cyril Ohanaemere was an ordinary name in Nigeria until fakery kissed bombast and vainglory took materialism to bed, birthing ‘The Lion Himself’, ‘The War’. ‘The Fight’, ‘Dabus Kabash’, ‘The Indabosky Bahose’.

Ohanaemere, the unlettered Anambra indigene, more famous for his comic displays than his cleric claims, also calls himself ‘The Liquid Metal’, which is another name for mercury. Ohanaemere aka Odumeje doesn’t call himself ‘The Liquid Metal’ because he understands that mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. He calls himself ‘The Liquid Metal’ because of the fancy the name carries.

In a viral video, 41-year-old Odumeje boasted to some fans about his numerous spiritual powers that he hasn’t used yet, saying, “…Indabosky Bahose is power, Lebadusi Prelamande is power, Abido Shaker is power, Dabus Kabash is power, Lipase Parrel is power, Gandukah Gandusah is power; those powers, I have not touched them, I’ve never used them, I’m still on Indabosky Bahose!” All na wash (in Nyesome Wike’s voice)

Odumeje’s gung-ho powers are like the sands of the beach. When angry, he can make people go deaf and dumb because he’s the ‘Warlord’, which he pronounces as ‘Worrod’. In 2022, however, when the men of the Anambra State Environmental Task Force pulled down his illegal church in Onitsha, the all-conquering God that Odumeje serves refused to rescue him. Odumeje’s God was probably snoring when the officials of the environmental task force rained slaps on him and kicked him around like a graven image.

Because of their unique adaptability nature, the female gender deserves the ‘Liquid Metal’ title much more than the jester of Onitsha. But the female gender shouldn’t undermine their flexibility and overlook a worrisome development that the case of popular cross-dresser, Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye, presents.

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Ever since Okuneye aka Bobrisky confessed before a Federal High Court in Lagos, to possessing a cock, the calm in the women’s rights community nationwide has been disturbing.

By his confession, it’s not out of place to imply that Bobrisky had seen the nakedness of women in public restrooms. In this light, I had expected Nigerian women’s rights advocacy groups to test the (in)elasticity of our laws by pressing against Bobrisky charges such as invasion capable of causing breach of law and order, intrusion of privacy, and potential sexual threat against children and women, among others. Or, how else can you explain the dangers posed when a man in a woman’s clothing uses the same restroom with unsuspecting females?

In the US, a man or woman who wishes to change their sex must first live the gender they want to change to for a year before undergoing sex-change surgery. They must also undergo a series of psychological and psychotherapy care before they can change their gender. This is to test their resolve.

Both Odumeje and Bobrisky are the creations of a society whose gaping vacuum for icons has been filled by Mammon-seeking pranksters. They are the products of a crippling economy and morally shattered nation unfurling as Paradise Lost. This is why you see the millions of Nigerians seeking guidance from yeyebrities, who themselves are lacking-thought broken spirits.

Many see the prosecution and conviction of Bobrisky for naira mutilation as scapegoating, coupled with the ongoing prosecution of a former shoemaker, Pascal Okechukwukwu aka Cubana Chief Priest, for the same offence. The position of people who hold this belief can’t be impeached because scapegoating, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is ‘a goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he is sent into the wilderness…’. This is the same reason why the Yoruba say the fellow on whose head the community coconut is broken won’t wait to partake in it, ‘eniti won fi ori re fo agbon, ko ni duro je ni be’.

It was former President Goodluck Jonathan who defined the lack of shoes as an index of poverty. I don’t know whether to categorise shoemaking as a mirror reflecting poverty or affluence. But a background search describes Odumeje as a hustler who ‘had his humble days as a struggling leather designer on the streets of buzzing and busy Onitsha City in Anambra State’. I’m not unaware that the dazzle in razzmatazz can polish a shoemaker into a leather designer on the streets of Onitsha. Cubana Chief Priest wasn’t ashamed to reveal life on the streets of Aba, Abia State, as a shoemaker.

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Valid questions are being raised as to the parameters used in singling out Bobrisky and Cubana Chief Priest for prosecution when the children of former President Muhammadu Buhari and their powerful guests ‘sprayed’ and trampled on naira during the wedding of Hanan, one of Buhari’s daughters. I’ll offer free consultation here: the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission can pin the prosecution of the two citizens on their serial abuse of the naira, but for Christ’s sake, Nigerians need an explanation on why a musician like Wasiu Ayinde, who was garlanded by an Ogun State monarch, Oba Kolawole Sowemimo, with taped naira notes, is left of the EFCC hook. Sowemimi, who’s the Olu of Owode, was suspended by the Ogun State Council of Traditional Rulers but Wasiu was not even questioned by the EFCC for his consistent abuse of the naira. Is it because Ayinde is the bard of the ruling All Progressives Congress? For the integrity of its brand, the EFCC should explain lest the crackdown be seen as a witch-hunt.

Instead of picking on Bobrisky for naira abuse, numerous online videos of Bobrisky showing Bobrisky claiming to be a woman and having boyfriends abound. Her nickname name, ‘Mummy of Lagos’, points at homosexual allegations trailing her. In an online video, Bobrisky said, “If you dump me, na another man go kari me. Do you get what I’m saying? If you dump me, if you think you’re done with me, na another man wey dey cherish me, wey wan nack me, go kari me.”

On account of this video alone, and in the light of his confession before a court, to being a man, Bobrisky is guilty of the anti-homosexual laws of the country. Also, the EFCC should know the dangers inherent in leaving Bobrisky’s five million online followers, mostly youths, to manipulation and indoctrination.

If Nigeria had laws against homosexuality, the country should man up to defend the laws and stop hiding behind the naira-spraying fingers of Bobrisky – US position on homosexuality notwithstanding. Nigeria and the US both need each other. The ‘not guilty’ plea of Cubana Chief Priest is expected to expand the frontiers of the laws against naira abuse, and I wait to see how the case unfolds. C-o-u-r-t!

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola

Bobrisky, Cubana Chief Priest and Indabosky Bahose

Opinion

The real reason government went after Bobrisky – Reno Omokri

Published

1 week ago

April 16, 2024

Trends Admin

Idris Okuneye, better known as Bobrisky

The real reason government went after Bobrisky – Reno Omokri

What happened with Bobrisky just shows you the savviness of Nigeria compared to other nations and the intellectual response to governing on display by the current administration.

The Nigerian government obviously wanted to clamp down on the trending cross-dressing culture in Nigeria. But the government was also aware of the fact that any direct move in that regard would earn it the whip of the Western powers.

And being that our economy is only just improving after eight years of General Buhari’s wasteful locust years, Nigeria could not place itself in the position that Ghana now is.

On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, Ghana’s parliament passed legislation cracking down on LGBTQ rights, of which a significant aspect of that law addresses the issue of cross-dressing.

Perhaps the most powerful bloc in liberal America and the UK is the LGBTQ community, and their pushback against Ghana was quick and with a stick. The alacrity of response was not treated with temerity in Ghana. Within days, it was announced that if the Ghanaian President signed that law, the World Bank would have to reconsider a $3.8 billion loan to Ghana.

That announcement made the Ghanaian President turn blind, as Nana Akufo-Addo was quoted as saying that he had not yet seen the law on his desk, therefore, he could not sign it.

Three months after its passage, President Nana Akufo-Addo still has not seen the law. Maybe JAMB sent a Nigerian snake to eat the law!

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In case you ever wondered why President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron moved against then-President Jonathan and, in an unprecedented manner, worked against his re-election in 2015, do note that it was because, on Monday, January 13, 2014, Dr. Jonathan signed a law criminalising same-sex relationships and its appurtenances.

General Buhari’s handlers were competent. They immediately hired the same guy advising both Obama and the LGBTQ movement in America-David Axelrod. They passed the word that if Buhari were supported to be President by the Western powers, he would frustrate the anti gay marriage las that their enemy, Jonathan, signed.

In my book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years, I provide proof of this.

So, the Tinubu administration was in a dilemma. How to deal with Bobrisky for being a cross-dresser but not to make it about his being a cross-dresser. And this is where you have to respect the subtlety of the Tinubu administration. They found a way, a creative genius way.

Bobrisky violated a law against the abuse of the Naira. That is why a first-time offender committed an offence that even government officials engaged in during Buhari’s son’s wedding, and, despite pleading guilty, was sentenced to six months in prison.

In fact, there is more video evidence of Naira abuse via spraying at the wedding of no less a person than Abdul Aziz Malami, the son of Abubakar Malami (SAN), Nigeria’s Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

And the scapegoating of Bobrisky has worked. Since his arrest, have you seen any of his ‘colleagues’ prancing about?

We used to see them almost daily on blogs and social media. The traditional media, too, could not have enough of them. They got the memo. They have run for cover since Chairwoman answered to the gender of male in court, when asked to state ‘her’ gender.

The Tinubu administration has just shown that there are more ways than one to skin a cat. And you can choose a way that will not bring you negative attention.

Now, cross-dressing will be on the wane, and Nigeria will not suffer any economic sanctions or diplomatic repercussions, as has happened to Uganda and Hungary.