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Koronu people in COVID-19 Nigeria | By Festus Adedayo
Notwithstanding your awareness of how bad things have become with the people of Nigeria, if you watch the documentary Koronu – Where people don’t think, a bead of tear will roll down your cheek.
It is on YouTube. Put together by the popular, yet uncommon Ibadan, Nigeria-based broadcaster, Edmund Obilo, Koronu is a shuttle with and into the lives of a people in an area called Academy in the erstwhile capital of Western Nigeria. To put the grim picture in its true perspective, a professor friend from the University of Oxford, while sending a copy of the documentary to me, affixed a damming, yet evocative caption to it: Koronu, in Awo’s Ibadan!
The purport cannot be lost on anyone who knows that Obafemi Awolowo and his team of egg-heads, right in this selfsame Koronu’s Ibadan, with a party slogan they called Life more abundant, sat to banish poverty, lack and ignorance from, if not anywhere else, the precinct of the Western Region of Nigeria.
Koronu is a documentary that literally plots the graph of the economic descent with a very sharp-edged pencil, telling the story of how, in no mistakable lingo, life has slipped sharply right down the alley for the people. In that bassy voice, the narrator sharply tells the story of a life of abundance that has become a life of sorrow; that existence-wise, in the hands of successive governments, a people primed to be the best that life could offer have become a people whose inability to fend for themselves has turned into robots incapable of thinking.
In a nutshell, from theirs and the narrator’s accounts, Koronu is like South Africa’s District Six where, in the depiction of writers like Alex La Guma, Alf Wannenburg, James Mathews etc, life was marijuana, violence, merry and alcohol. Hopelessness and joblessness intermixed in Koronu to breed a people who confessed in the documentary that they lived by the day, engaged in no mental exercise and sauce their existence with alcohol and smoke.
Government is very far away from Koronu, except as emblem of decay of old infrastructure of ages past. It only pays Koronu visits every four years, when politicians, exploiting their demographics, need their votes.
The interesting thing is that every community in Nigeria has its own Koronu. Or put rightly, will have its own Koronu shortly; Koronu, in this wise being a metaphor for the army of Nigerian unemployed youth, faced by the hopelessness of joblessness, with a peripatetic mind and gene of adolescence which are already finding or will find an encore in violence, drug, crime and allied evils of youth desperation.
With an estimated but conservative figure pre-COVID-19 of 40 per cent unemployed, aftermath the pandemic, Nigeria will probably have 70 per cent of such.
Contemporary or existing reality tells us that we do not need a telescope or a peep into the diviner’s plate to tell us that post-COVID-19, where in Nigeria the locusts have not yet invaded, will be a breeding ground for these colonies of Koronu people. Global economists, like sorcerers that they are, have painted a morbid picture of a post-COVID-19 globe. Putting the sorcery in the mould of Armageddon, they compared what they expect to be in the frame of the Great Depression of the 1920s.
The economics behind this grim projection is not rocket science and can be accessed by anyone. The ravaging COVID-19 pandemic has ensured that factories shut down their operations for more than a month now, with its attendant job losses. In America, 22 million jobs are said to have been lost and an unprecedented 57 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits for the first time.
The GDP of China fell drastically for the first time in ages, even as governments are throwing their hands up in economic surrenders. Otherwise strong economies are projecting that they would soon hit the canvass, with hunger and famine looming large in the global horizon.
In Nigeria, the picture is grimmer and promises to be more surreal. Her economic heartbeats – Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Kano (for agricultural produces) are locked down. A friend in the agricultural sector told me that due to its inability to transport eggs to states of demand under lockdown, Oyo State poultry industry has accumulated about 150,000 crates of eggs in 7-8 days, worth about N120 million, which will be destroyed presently, with the consequences of jobs flying out through the window.
In Nigeria, rather than grapple with the economic Armageddon that will surely come, we are still battling the genetic cronyism resident in the being of our government that is said to have voted a large chunk of palliatives cash to its own people. Allegedly, government has literally deployed that selfsame accursed 95 to 5% sharing modem which the Fuhrer let slip in America at the outset of this government.
Even the palliatives are polluted by corrupt officials who allegedly hand over N20,000 to these “Poorest of the Poor,” take photo-shoots of the money with the recipients and coercively collect the money back, later handing over N5,000 to their victims. Pray, in what part of the globe, in a technological 21st century, with a government perceived to be grossly deficient in trust, do officials heave untracked and untrack-able cash to far-flung homes of people like this, without a corresponding system of accountability? Politicians and government appointees, as well as aspirants for 2023 are also exploiting COVID-19 to begin a junket of self-underscore and advertisement, with a rat race among themselves in sharing negligible tokens to the people. On these tokens, they affix almost yard-sized banners.
The foretaste of Koronu is already here with us. In states locked down by government, victims of governments in time past that didn’t think and the one at the moment that is incapable of thinking, are rebelling against the system. Because peaceful living is impossible for a starved people, the latent animalism, disorder and chaos in the Koronu people are climbing to the fore. Crime rates have quadrupled with criminals robbing in the daylight.
Rate of scavengers has reached for the zenith of the curves and very many people have turned into beggars, literally abandoning the pride of their manhood and dignity. These are the rehearsals for the sharp realities of post-COVID-19.
For a thinking government, however, all hope is not lost. It should be the time for economic wizards of whom Nigeria doesn’t have a shortfall, to converge in boardrooms or in virtual rooms to brainstorm on available oases. Thinking caps are an absolute necessity now, or else we will all be consumed by the economic epidemic and devastation to come. The consuming anger of a post- COVID-19 world economy is impervious to cronyism, is colour or race-blind; it is blind to Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba and is certainly political party-blind. It will consume agnostics, atheists, religionists as it will make mincemeat of PDP and APC. The time to start thinking is now.
Photo credit: Winning side photography, Twinkle
The Kano State House of Assembly has initiated impeachment proceedings against Deputy Governor Aminu Abdussalam Gwarzo over allegations of gross misconduct, abuse of office, and breach of public trust.
The notice was presented yesterday during plenary by the Majority Leader, Lawan Hussaini Dala, who said the action follows Section 188 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Dala said the allegations stem from Abdussalam’s tenure as Commissioner for Local Government (2023–2024) and his current role as deputy governor. He accused the deputy governor of diverting funds meant for the 44 local government councils.
According to the majority leader, Abdussalam allegedly received N1.5 million monthly from each council between June 2023 and January 2024, totaling N462 million. Between February and July 2024, he allegedly collected N3.255 million monthly from each council under the guise of special assignments, amounting to N726 million.
Dala also accused the deputy governor of abuse of office, claiming he facilitated payments of N10 million from each council to NovoMed Pharmaceuticals Limited, totaling N440 million, in violation of state procurement laws.
“The misuse of official capacity to confer undue advantage constitutes abuse of power and undermines public trust,” Dala told lawmakers, adding that the allegations amount to gross misconduct under the Constitution.
The impeachment notice was reportedly endorsed by 38 lawmakers, meeting the constitutional threshold to proceed. The Speaker has acknowledged receipt, and the House is expected to serve the allegations on the deputy governor.
If approved, a panel may be constituted by the state Chief Judge to investigate the claims.
As of filing, Abdussalam had yet to respond publicly to the allegations.
The Senator representing Bayelsa West, Seriake Dickson, on Thursday announced his resignation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), declaring that he had joined the newly registered Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC).
Dickson, a former governor of Bayelsa State, made the announcement during a media briefing in Abuja, attributing his decision to what he described as irreconcilable differences within the PDP.
The lawmaker said the emergence of the NDC would strengthen Nigeria’s democratic system by providing a credible opposition platform.
According to him, the party recently received its certificate of registration from the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He said, “Last week INEC issued a certificate of registration and we now have the newest party in Nigeria known as the Nigeria Democratic Congress and our symbol is victory, the victory sign.
“So, my dear Nigerians, you now have a credible alternative opposition party known as the Nigeria Democratic Congress.”
Dickson noted that although the party’s registration took longer than expected, its eventual approval was a welcome development for the country’s democratic landscape.
“Yes, it is coming at this time. We would have wished it started some years or months back. We don’t control INEC and their processes; they delayed. We don’t also control the judiciary, but thank God it has finally arrived,” he said.
The senator also stressed that Nigeria’s democracy must not slide into a one-party system, insisting that political diversity remained vital for national stability.
“This nation cannot be a one-party state. Nigeria cannot be a one-party state. Nigeria is not designed to be a one-party state.
“We are a very diverse nation culturally, religiously and politically and that is the beauty of our country.
“So anyone or any party promoting one-party rule in Nigeria is mistaken. We build political parties and get involved in movements to access power for the good of the people, not for our personal benefit,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission recently announced the registration of two new political parties.
The parties are the Democratic Leadership Alliance and the Nigeria Democratic Congress, bringing the total number of registered political parties in Nigeria to 21.
The announcement was made by the INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, during the commission’s first quarterly consultative meeting with political party stakeholders for 2026.
According to him, the Democratic Leadership Alliance completed the required verification process, while the Nigeria Democratic Congress was registered in compliance with a Federal High Court order.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has arrested a 58-year-old alleged drug lord, Uzoma Valentine Ilomuanya, who had reportedly been on the agency’s wanted list and that of British authorities for over 15 years.
Ilomuanya was apprehended in Lagos on Monday, February 23, 2026, following what the agency described as a high-level, coordinated operation by officers of its Special Operations Unit.
The development was disclosed in a statement issued on Wednesday by the Director of Media and Advocacy of the agency, Femi Babafemi.
Babafemi said the suspect’s arrest ended a prolonged manhunt linked to his alleged involvement in drug trafficking activities across Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
According to the statement, Ilomuanya was first arrested in February 2003 in the United Kingdom and convicted for drug trafficking.
He was sentenced to nine years imprisonment but was released after serving two years following a successful appeal.
Babafemi added that the suspect was again arrested in the UK in July 2011 over drug-related offences.
He said, “He was granted administrative bail but jumped jurisdiction and fled to Nigeria.
“Typical of a recidivist, Ilomuanya was in November 2018 arrested in Nigeria by NDLEA operatives following the discovery of two clandestine methamphetamine laboratories in his Obinugwu, Orlu Local Government Area country home in Imo State and at his No. 3 Barrister Declan Uzoma Close, Lagos residence where officers recovered 77.960 kilograms of methamphetamine and extensive production equipment.
“He was subsequently charged before a Federal High Court in Lagos, after which he jumped court bail and has been on the run since then.”
Reacting to the development, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd.), described the arrest as a major breakthrough in the agency’s ongoing war against drug trafficking networks.
Marwa said the operation demonstrated the agency’s resolve to track down criminal elements regardless of how long they evade the law.
He said, “This arrest serves as a stern warning to those who think they can hide behind borders to escape justice.
“Whether you jump bail in London or set up clandestine labs in your village, the long arm of the NDLEA will eventually catch up with those who choose to undermine the health, security, and future of our nation.
“We remain committed to our international collaborations to ensure that Nigeria is not used as a sanctuary for global drug lords.”
Marwa also commended officers of the Special Operations Unit for their professionalism and persistence in tracking down the suspect.
He added that the agency would continue to strengthen intelligence-driven operations and international cooperation to dismantle drug trafficking networks operating within and beyond Nigeria.
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