Top Stories
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
Residents of the Hotoro area of Kano were thrown into panic after a woman allegedly set her co-wife and two children ablaze in a late-night domestic attack.
The incident occurred on Monday night in the Mai Allo area of Hotoro, leaving four persons with varying degrees of burns.
The victims — a 28-year-old woman and her two children aged seven and three — are currently receiving treatment at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Dala and Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital.
Their father, who reportedly sustained injuries while attempting to rescue the victims from the inferno, is also undergoing treatment.
A relative of the family informed that they received a distress call around 3am informing them that the woman, her husband and the children had been set ablaze.
According to the source, the victim had spent less than two weeks in her matrimonial home before the attack occurred.
“She is about 28 years old. The children are from her previous marriage. They are stepchildren to the husband, who works as a tricycle rider,” the relative added.
Residents of the area described the incident as horrifying and called on security agencies to ensure justice was served.
“We are shocked by what happened. This kind of violence has no place in our community,” a resident said.
The suspect has since been taken into custody at the Mariri Police Division.
As of the time of filing this report, the Kano State Police Command had yet to issue an official statement on the incident.
Crime & Court
UNIBEN killing: Edo security squad arrests 12 suspected cultists, seals initiation centres
Security operatives in Edo State have arrested 12 suspected cultists and sealed two apartments allegedly used as initiation centres during coordinated raids across parts of Benin City following the killing of a young man near the gate of the University of Benin.
The operation, code-named “Operation Flush Out Cultists and Kidnappers,” was carried out by the state’s Special Security Squad after the killing recorded on Sunday, May 10, 2026.
The development was disclosed in a statement issued on Tuesday by the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Monday Okpebholo, Patrick Ebojele.
According to the statement, the Chief Security Officer and Principal Security Officer to the governor led the raids conducted in Ekosodin, Isihor, Old Road off S&T Barracks, Airport Road, 19th Street Ugbowo, Ogba-Evbuodia and Evbuomore Quarters, all in Benin City.
Spokesman for the security squad, Noah Idemudia, alleged that some youth leaders within communities in the state were aiding violent crimes and harbouring criminal elements.
He said intelligence reports indicated that sophisticated weapons used in deadly attacks were often traced to communities across the state.
“Reports reaching us indicate that some persons are allegedly harbouring criminals. Intelligence reports also suggest that sophisticated weapons used in deadly attacks on citizens are allegedly sourced from communities.
“The governor is warning community leaders to maintain peace in their various communities and ensure that no unlicensed weapons are found in their possession, as they will be held liable and treated as criminals,” Idemudia said.
He, however, clarified that the 12 suspects arrested were not directly linked to the killing near the university gate.
According to him, the suspects were allegedly identified as members of different cult groups after security operatives reportedly discovered symbols, signs and other incriminating materials on them during the raids.
Idemudia added that the suspects had been handed over to the Anti-Cultism Unit of the Nigeria Police Force for profiling and further investigation.
Speaking on the properties sealed during the operation, he said one of the apartments was allegedly being used as a cult initiation centre.
He explained that operatives came under attack while attempting to arrest suspects at the location, forcing authorities to seal the premises and invite the property owner for questioning.
He added that another apartment raided allegedly contained shrines and fetish items scattered across several rooms, which investigators suspect were being used for initiation into different confraternities.
According to him, the owner of the property had also been invited for questioning by security agencies.
“The governor has warned those sponsoring cultism and violent killings in the state to desist immediately.
“Anyone found aiding criminality in Edo State will face the full weight of the law, as the state will no longer be conducive for criminal elements,” Idemudia added.
He also warned against unlawful gatherings, alleging that some cult groups were planning anniversary celebrations across the state.
A Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday convicted and sentenced former Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman, to a cumulative 75 years imprisonment in absentia over a ₦33.8bn money laundering scandal linked to the Zungeru and Mambilla hydroelectric power projects.
The trial judge, Justice James Omotosho, found Mamman guilty on all 12 counts bordering on conspiracy and money laundering filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The judge ruled that the prison terms would run consecutively, bringing the total sentence to 75 years.
Justice Omotosho held that Mamman deliberately absented himself from court on the day of judgment and during the previous adjourned sitting in a bid to frustrate the administration of justice.
He agreed with counsel for the EFCC, Rotimi Oyedepo (SAN), that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 empowered the court to proceed with sentencing despite the defendant’s absence.
The court consequently sentenced the former minister to seven years imprisonment each on Counts 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 without an option of fine.
Mamman was also sentenced to three years imprisonment on Count 4 with an option of a ₦10m fine, and two years imprisonment on Count 5 without an option of fine.
Justice Omotosho further ordered that the sentence would commence from the date of Mamman’s arrest since he was convicted in absentia.
The judge directed security agencies within and outside Nigeria, including Interpol, to arrest the convict wherever he is found and hand him over to the Nigerian Correctional Service to serve his jail term.
The court also ordered the final forfeiture of two Abuja properties linked to the former minister, alongside various sums recovered in different currencies by anti-graft agencies.
In addition, the court ordered Mamman to refund the outstanding balance from the ₦22bn already traced to the Zungeru and Mambilla hydroelectric power projects out of the ₦33.8bn allegedly diverted.
The conviction followed a lengthy trial instituted by the EFCC, which accused Mamman of conspiring with ministry officials and private companies to divert funds earmarked for the two power projects.
Mamman was arraigned on July 11, 2024 on a 12-count charge and pleaded not guilty.
During the trial, the EFCC called 17 witnesses and tendered 43 exhibits to support its case.
Following the close of the prosecution’s case, the former minister filed a no-case submission on November 19, 2025, contending that the EFCC had failed to establish sufficient evidence against him.
However, Justice Omotosho, in a ruling delivered on December 11, 2025, dismissed the application and held that the prosecution had established a prima facie case requiring the defendant to open his defence.
The matter was subsequently adjourned for continuation of defence before Wednesday’s judgment brought the proceedings to a close.
The case, regarded as one of the most significant corruption convictions in recent years, stemmed from Mamman’s arrest and detention by the EFCC on May 10, 2021.
-
Politics1 day ago2027: APC Perfects Consensus Strategy for Oyo
-
Politics3 days ago2027: Oyo APC Set for Credible Direct Primaries, Says Alake Adeyemo
-
News1 week agoTCN plans power outage in Ibadan over substation maintenance
-
Crime & Court13 hours agoUNIBEN killing: Edo security squad arrests 12 suspected cultists, seals initiation centres