INDONESIA EXECUTES DRUG PEDDLERS, A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION?

Icheoku says it is not an extraordinarily cruel and unusual punishment; and provided such offenders were aware of existing laws prohibiting the conduct prior to the commission of the offense, if convicted, such criminals should be made to face prescribed penalty. The execution of those convicted drug offenders by Indonesia therefore did not breach any known laws and should be seen as purely a law enforcement action that should be respected by any law abiding society as well as their political leaders. Icheoku says the threat by Australian Prime Minister to recall his country's ambassador to Indonesia is therefore uncalled for and a rash action without any merit whatsoever. If the Prime Minister is so incensed because of the carrying out of a lawful judicial process, which was fully litigated or rather prosecuted, with various tiers of appeals duly observed and completed, what message is he sending to the underworld drug dealers, that it is okay to deal in illegal drugs and destroy another country's society just for profit motive? 

Icheoku says this is not a case where a holier than thou higher moral grounds will suffice as the  irate Prime Minister should have preached to his country men not to peddle their nefarious illegal drug trade in Indonesia, fully aware of the existing prescribed death penalty against such offense. Icheoku says what went down in Indonesia today is not comparable to the Nigeria case under then Muhammadu Buhari in 1984 when he  murdered three innocent Nigerians using a retroactive decree. Then, there was no death penalty for drug peddling on the books in Nigeria so the three Nigerians killed were not possessed with the necessarily mens rea that their action would lead to their death.  They could have stayed away as one of them confessed that if only he knew it would result to his death, he would not have engaged in the illicit trade. 

Icheoku  agrees that if anyone knowingly breaks the law,  he should face prescribed penalties including death if already preexisting the offense and vividly on the books. Icheoku also supports law enforcement of any country, especially one geared towards protecting its society from such a purely economic and financial gains crimes as drug dealing; which destroys the fabric of societies rendering many citizens hopelessly dependent addicts which in turn drastically impacts the society overall. Provided due process was strictly followed and such laws applied across the board and not selectively applied, depending on who infractured the law, it is okay and should serve as a deterrent. So what if two Australians were among those nine executed drug peddlers as they are not better or of more value than the others including those four Nigerians.  They committed a death penalty offense, they were convicted, they exhausted their rights of appeal and clemency petition and therefore should face the consequence of their action. 

But the funny thing is that the same Australia that is now throwing tantrums over its two drug dealing citizens, looks the other way without an outcry when countries like Saudi Arabia chops off peoples heads on any given Friday or China puts their own death penalty offenders to death or even America's States especially Texas, sends its own convicts to the death chambers. So what is different now or is it because it is Indonesia and they felt like they can intimidate and bully them around? Colombian Pablo Escobar was executed for drug offences, admitted his was even without trial or due process; and similarly have so many other drug dealers perished in the war against drugs particularly in Mexico. So what is the Australian Prime Minister suggesting or that Australians are too special a people to be put to death for violating another country's death penalty law.  Good enough the government in Jarkata was not easily intimidate nor caved in to the likes of Australian and the rest is now but history, having put to death those drug peddlers including two Australians, one French, four Nigerians, one Indonesian and one Brazilian. Icheoku says with four Nigerians among the executed, pundits are seriously now wondering whether Nigeria has effectively become a narco state? This conjures Bola Tinubu and Buruji Kashamu's alleged drug dealing as Icheoku wonders whether they would have lived to become a leading political player and an elected senator of the federal Republic respectively had they pried their trade in Indonesia. 

BALTIMORE MOTHER TOYA GRAHAM, NOT A CARING MOTHER?

Icheoku says if married to this Baltimore woman, would divorce her on grounds of her classless public display of child abuse, assault and battery; and will also urge her immediate arrest and prosecution. Query, if she doesn't want her son to be a Freddie Gray, did Freddie Gray's mother desire the fate suffered by her son due to no apparent fault of his but a result of brutish police who broke his spinal cord leading to his slow painful death. What indeed is this woman telling the world that Freddie Gray in any way caused his own death in the hands of the Baltimore police? Would this woman, similarly situated and grieving for the loss of her son like Freddie Gray's mother, not desire other people to stand up for her deceased son? If yes, why prevent her own son from standing up for another woman's cop-killed Freddie Gray? 

Icheoku bemoans this is not how to protect a child from harm as charity begins and should begin from home. If only she did her homework, instructing her son in the best behavioral manners, may be her son would have known how best to protest and without the need of allegedly hauling anything at a panicky police. But no, here is a failed woman, who failed in her job as a good mother and who did not raise her son well enough to know better, publicly displaying the stuff she is made of? An abusive mother pummeling her defenseless son who respectfully did not respond in like manner. Icheoku is emphatic that Toya Graham's show of shame is condemnable as unbecoming of any mother, taking the laws into her hand and publicly assaulting and battering her son in this manner. A son who was merely participating in a peoples mass action, protesting the killing of a fellow human being and an African American young male, the new endangered species of America. 

It was not an ordinary smacking but a prosecutable battery offense and the Baltimore DA should look into hauling this woman in for prosecution. It is not her place to strike her son and repeatedly, regardless; and any decent mother would have rather cajoled her son out of the protest without the need to lawlessly punch him around in the head and against laws of battery and assault. Imagine the effant-terrible this woman is probably behind closed doors if she could put up this amount of shameful display publicly and without regards to the millions of eyes trained on her. Icheoku wonders whether such behavior possibly drove away the men in her life, including the baby daddy of the very unfortunate victim of her abuse, assault and battery. 

So what if he is her only son? So what if she does not want anything to happen to him and so what if he becomes another Freddie Gray or does she think her son is better than Freddie Gray? Did Freddie Gray's mother want what happened to him happen? Icheoku asks if not her son Michael, who else does this bitchy woman want to be "out there doing that?" If every woman and mother of a child in Baltimore had smacked down their son out of the protest, how else would the killing of Freddie Gray be put in the conscience of the world or America, admitted we are gradually going numb of such killings leading to their repeat occurrences and almost on a regular basis now. Who the heck does this Baltimore woman think she is or that her son's life is more valuable than all those young black Americans marching for all their brothers killed by police thus far including the latest victim Freddie Gray? A single mother of six children and you wonder how many baby-daddies she had and what happened to all of them and where they are possibly now? 

Toya Graham conveniently denounced the violence and vandalism, but cleverly forgot it was a reaction to an action? She also choose to forget denouncing the police for killing yet another innocent unarmed African American young man in her Baltimore? Did she not understand that her son Michael sees himself as another Freddie Gray waiting to happen and was merely proactively calling attention to that fact of consequence of every black young male in America; and also the continuing police brutality and killing of young African Americans in American cities? Icheoku says instead of 'shielding a sixteen year old young man in the house so that he wont go outside,' why did she not first consider not bringing him forth into an American society that its police needlessly and randomly kills African Americans young males? Since Toya Graham admittedly 'will not do that shielding for the rest of her life,' why is Toya Graham even trying now and not allow the boy to learn how to be a survivor in the street creed of atypical black American life? Why mess him up now shielding him, only for him to later turn into a sissy-man who cannot fend for himself in the absence of a very controlling mother who publicly smacked him around? 

Icheoku asks if this woman is this 'intolerant and everybody knows her as such,' is she therefore not a proper and fit candidate for an anger management class or even an outright institutionalized confinement for psychotic disorder, possible evaluation and treatment? If her son's first instinct upon sighting her was to take to the hills for his dear life, shouldn't this be enough grounds for the traumatized son to be removed from such abusive mother? Why should the city of Baltimore acting through their child protective services allow this intolerable degree of child abuse to continue and continuously allow this boy to remain in such an abusive home without a protective shelter somewhere, especially without a father at home to protect him from his mother's choleric behavior? Icheoku disagrees that this is how to 'take care of a child' as an abusive mother cannot and should never be allowed to hide under the canopy of caring for a child to subject such a child to this degree of physical abuse, assault and battery. 

Icheoku maintains that this woman of Baltimore deserves to be prosecuted for assault and battery instead of the unmerited praise some apologists are giving to her for her unlawful act. Worst still she did not give her son the option to come away from the protest before flying off in her fist of fury and pummeling him on the head. If not her son, who? What if it was her son Michael that was murdered by the police, would she not want other Michaels of Baltimore standing up for him? What if it was her son that had his spinal cord severed by the police and died a painful death as a result, would she rather his death is abandoned as inconsequential and/or a none issue  event? But as far as she is concerned, it will not be her son standing up for another woman's cop-killed son? Icheoku says publicly putting up such a show of shame is despicable and condemnable and should be so treated by all without making excuses as this woman deserves to be locked away for a vagrant abuse of her son. 

Icheoku says if Martin Luther King's mother had been in the way or Malcolm X mother had slapped him around in this fashion, possibly African Americans would still have remained one fifth human beings in America? But here is Toya Graham, enjoying achieved civil rights gains by other women's sons, but who would not stand seeing her own son contribute in some way to enshrining it? Toya Graham is enjoying the fruits of other women's sons activism but would want none of that of her own son? What a shame indeed it is when some people would not want to put their skin in the game but desires the benefits of a game, which brave and courageous African Americans played and which those Baltimore young men are fighting to consolidate today. As far as Icheoku is concerned, there is nothing wrong with Toya Graham's son Michael coming of age as a young man, participating in a protest march against a police that arbitrarily and continuously kills young African American as if their lives don't matter and without consequences whatsoever. To the bitchy woman of Baltimore, Toya Graham, that publicly put out this level of show of shame, abuse, assault and battery on her son and prevented him from participating in a worthy cause of protesting police brutality including hurt and death, Icheoku says SHAME ON YOU!

APC REBUKES BUHARI OVER AIT, SAYS 1984 IS SO YESTERDAY?

Icheoku congratulates the All Peoples Congress for rising up to the occasion  and overruling its president-elect Muhammadu Buhari in his unilateral decision to reintroduce his infamous Decree 4 through the backdoor. By repudiating the ban Muhammadu Buhari placed on AIT coverage of his affairs, the APC has once again reassured Nigerians that they are prepared to put their efferent-terrible president-elect Muhammadu Buhari on a leach and prevent him from reliving his draconian 1983 to 1985 rule over Nigerians. 

Many Nigerians had feared this would be the case with the elected Muhammadu Buhari, the self-acclaimed converted democrat but who suddenly had a memory lapse that democracy comes with unabridged freedoms including freedom of speech when he banned AIT from all its affairs. But luckily enough some men with balls are still enjoying the membership of the APC and had risen up to say, not in our name and not under our watch, would the much fought for freedom Nigerians are enjoying now for the past sixteen years be allowed to be stifled by a draconian tyrant masquerading as a converted democrat. Icheoku says such action by the APC gives Nigerians reason to believe that despite their fears of Muhammad Buhari, there will be some sheriff in town to checkmate his excesses. What a light of relief at the end of the dark tunnel this development is and every Nigerian should therefore commend the APC for this bold audacity to call their president-elect to order. Icheoku stands with AIT and also for freedom for Nigerians as well as their media! Long live freedom and long live freedom watchdogs.

BOLA TINUBU IS A DRUG LORD - THE DAILY BEAST?

Icheoku says why now and why did The Daily Beast wait for the conclusion of the Nigeria presidential election to run with the story? The answer is short - America's objective to get President Jonathan out of Aso Rock and they succeeded; so the dirty laundry can now begin to be laundered? In an article by one Michael Weiss titled "Nigeria Pres' Svengali tied to Heroine" of April 27, 2015 published in 'The Daily Beast', the author pointed his searchlight on the man who made Muhammadu Buhari president, Ashiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, painting him as a drug lord at best. So Icheoku queries will the corruption crusader President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, now distance himself from the outed drug lord or at least probe Bola Tinubu's source of wealth in his acclaimed anti-corruption effort? With this expose, Icheoku asks who between Buruji Kasamu and Bola Tinubu, who is now Nigeria's world acclaimed drug baron? Your answer is as good as Icheoku; but Nigerians will keep their fingers crossed and watch what becomes of such continued association of President elect Muhammadu Buhari with a world renowned drug baron while still claiming to be an anti-corruption president.  Here now below find the said article as published in The Daily Beast:- 

'Nigerian Pres' Svengali Tied to Heroine" - article by Michael Weis, The Daily Beast April 27,2015.

"Nigeria’s election last month was celebrated as an unlikely victory for democracy in an African country with a tenuous record of free and fair representation. But the man most responsible for midwifing General Muhammed Buhari’s ballot triumph over current President Goodluck Jonathan has a spotty CV. Former Lagos provincial governor Bola Tinubu, affectionately nicknamed the Jagaban, is today seen as a shrewd if not “deeply Machiavellian” Svengali in Nigeria’s politics as well as the architect of a hugely successful anti-corruption platform. But 20 years ago he had to forfeit nearly half a million dollars to the U.S. Treasury Department after being named as an accomplice in a white heroin-trafficking and money-laundering ring that stretched from West Africa to the U.S. Midwest. 

Although his case has been bandied about the Nigerian press for years, Tinubu’s involvement in a federal drug and racketeering investigation waged jointly by the DEA, FBI, and IRS has gone unreported elsewhere, even after his ascendance to Karl Rove-like status last month. A recent gauzy Financial Times profile of him, for instance, neglected to mention that two decades ago Tinubu was identified as a bagman for two Nigerian heroin movers who operated out of Chicago and Hammond, Indiana. They were Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele, Akande’s nephew, who was exposed to law enforcement after selling white heroin first to Lee Andrew Edwards, another dealer later jailed for trying to murder a federal agent, and then to an undercover cop. 

In a 1993 court docket from the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, which The Daily Beast obtained from Sahara Reporters, a Nigeria-focused news outlet, IRS Special Agent Kevin Moss said that Akande had run the white heroin ring in the late 1980s until 1990, when he handed off the U.S arm of the business to his nephew, who had arrived in 1988. Akande then returned to Nigeria but continued to oversee the operation from abroad with the help of others at home and in the United States, including his relatives. One of the individuals identified in his cartel by Moss was Tinubu, then a Chicago State University-educated accountant working as a treasurer for Mobil Oil Nigeria Ltd, a subsidiary of energy giant Mobil Oil, which was still a few years shy of its famous merger with Exxon in 1999. 

In the biography section of his official website, Tinubu is described as having emigrated to the United States in 1975 “in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece with a heart brimming with unrelenting determination to achieve his visions.” This is certainly one way to describe his tenure stateside. 

In 1989, Moss said in an affidavit, Tinubu established an individual money market account, into which he deposited $1,000 in traveler’s checks, and a negotiable order of withdrawal account (NOW) at First Heritage Bank in Country Club Hills, Illinois. The address Tinubu gave the bank was the same as the listed headquarters of Globe-Link International, the front company owned by Akande and his relatives.

“There’s a trend of various Nigerian politicians at the highest levels involved in dodgy business deals around the world, in property and cash.”

Bank employees told Moss that Akande had personally introduced them to Tinubu in December 1989 when who also opened a joint checking account with his wife, Oluremi Tinubu, who already kept a joint account with Akande’s wife at First Heritage. Five days after the NOW account was opened, $80,000 was wired into it from a bank in Houston maintained by one of Akande’s relatives. Tinubu would later use the NOW account to buy a $10,000 Certificate of Deposit for an $8,000 car loan, listing Akande as his cousin on the application. 

At the time, Tinubu’s take home as a Mobil Oil Nigeria executive was a mere $2,400 a month and he claimed not to have any other revenue streams. Yet he still managed to deposit $661,000 into his individual money market account in 1990 and then another $1,216,500 a year later. He also opened more accounts with Citibank in its worldwide personal banking unit, transferring over half a million dollars from his First Heritage money market account into one of them in early 1991. 

Mobil Oil Nigeria told Moss that Tinubu’s role at the company never involved transferring large sums of money between banks and that it didn’t keep deposits in any institutions in the south suburbs of Chicago, where First Heritage was based. Moreover, although Tinubu moved back to Nigeria in 1983, he neglected to file U.S. income tax returns after 1984 despite having sizable, interest-generating deposits in American banks. All of this was enough to persuade a magistrate judge of the Northern District to issue seizure warrants for Tinubu’s First Heritage and Citibank accounts. Collectively, more than $1.4 million belonging to the Nigerian was confiscated. 

Tinubu gave differing accounts for his wealth to Moss. In one phone call from Nigeria, shortly after the U.S. Treasury seized his money, he admitted to wiring $100,000 to Akande’s Houston bank account and to receiving the $80,000 from Akande into his First Heritage account. Tinubu also said that apart from one other account in Fairfax, Virginia, he had no other money stashed in U.S. banks. 

Except that there were other accounts. Citibank has a worldwide banking division known as Citibank International where Tinubu stashed an additional $550,000. He also controlled an entity called Compass Finance and Investments Company Ltd., of which Akande and Agbele were directors. Still another nexus of money transfers was uncovered by federal investigators, with cash moving from First Heritage to Citibank to Citibank International, where it wound up in Tinubu’s personal accounts and in those belonging to Compass Finance and Investments. In a follow-up exchange with law enforcement officers, Tinubu changed his story. Just days after conceding that he’d sent and received money to and from Akande, he insisted that he had no financial or business dealings with Akande or Agbele.

There’s no evidence that Tinubu was ever indicted for any crime. He eventually settled with the district court, turning over $460,000 of the seized $1.4 million, with the remainder released back to him. The Beast tried repeatedly to contact Marsha McClellan, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, but was unsuccessful. 

“I’m not surprised at all,” said Virginia Comolli, a specialist on Nigeria and author of Boko Haram: Nigeria’s Islamist Insurgency. “There’s a trend of various Nigerian politicians at the highest levels involved in dodgy business deals around the world, in property and cash. Even ones who seem fairly clean turn out to have some dark histories.” The perfect case in point is Tinubu’s political project and new president-elect of Nigeria, General Muhammed Buhari, who in 1983 helped overthrow a democratically elected government in a military coup d’etat on the grounds that the government was undisciplined and corrupt. “He resorted to brutal methods, beating up people for not queuing properly and imposing limitations on the media,” Comolli said. “I think a lot of the votes Buhari got were anti-Jonathan rather than pro-Buhari.” 

But no doubt, many also came from a savvy fusion of political factions. In February 2013, Tinubu successfully merged his own influential Action Congress party with Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change, resulting in the All Progressives Congress. The marriage united Nigeria’s most populous northwest and southwest regions and the ensuing campaign was billed by Tinubu as a “commonsense revolution” against a corrupt and venal incumbency which, in its five years in power, had seen the terrorist group and newly-minted ISIS affiliate Boko Haram thrive. Buhari swept the election with 2.7 million more votes than Jonathan. 

Even before that trouncing, however, Tinubu had a relatively positive reputation in Nigeria, according to former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell. “He is widely regarded as having been a highly successful governor of Lagos state,” he said. “Together with Tinubu’s handpicked successor, Babatunde Fashola, Lagos has seen dramatic improvements in everything from practical stuff like garbage collection to the collection of taxes and the provision of public services,” Campbell told The Beast. Though even here, the ex-diplomat admits, Tinubu’s good governance has been clouded by controversy. “He established a company to do the tax collecting in return for a cut and, at one point, Tinubu and Fashola appeared to be splitting over the percentage of Tinubu’s cut.” 

Drug charges do indeed appear to be the sine qua non for Nigerian high office. The year 1993, when Tinubu’s assets were seized, was a turbulent period for Nigeria following the cancellation of a national election and the establishment of a military dictatorship. Moshood Abiola, the rightful winner of that election, was accused of narcotics trafficking according to Campbell. So too is “Prince” Buruji Kashamu from the People’s Democratic Party, who has faced extradition back to the United States since 1998. Kashamu was indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago for being the elusive “Alaji,” a globetrotting drug kingpin who smuggled heroin into O’Hare International Airport from Europe and Asia. Piper Kerman, the memoirist who inspired the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, famously worked for Alaji. Kashamu denies the charges and insists that he was purportedly a counterterrorism informant to the U.S. government before and after 9/11, and that the real trafficker was his now-deceased brother. 

Despite his party’s general loss to the All Progressives Congress, Kashumu was elected in March as senator of the southwest Ogun state. In what appeared to be a magnanimous gesture to the winner, he took out an advertisement praising Tinubu as a role model. The Jagaban was distinctly unimpressed. He trashed the comparison in a statement signed by his media adviser, claimingthat for Kashamu “to liken himself to Bola Tinubu is for a small rut to call itself a mountain.” Tinubu instructed the “false praise singer” to go face the music in the Windy City before deigning to talk to him.

AIT BAN, DEJA VU DECREE 4 AND A SNARLING MUHAMMADU BUHARI?

Icheoku says except for those pin-head Nigerians who drank the cool-aid and bought into the snake oil that there is something like a converted democrat and that a leopard can change its spots, the news coming out of the President-elect Muhammadu Buhari's camp is not surprising to the intuitively well informed. Icheoku warned and several other people warned Nigerians but regardless, they still voted for him anyways; and now low and behold and before even being sworn in, the man known as the tyrannical despot extraordinaire of Nigeria is already beginning to show his true colors. Is Icheoku shocked, nope; because Icheoku knows that no old dog learns a new trick at such an advanced old age. 

Icheoku saw it coming, extensively warned against it but Nigerians were tone-deaf and now the unfolding drama of "I didn't say that" or "I didn't promise that" is flooding the media about campaign promises already retracted, as either never was said or cannot be magically wrought overnight? The latest of this 180 degree somersault is the pulling back on the promised freedom of the speech including freedom  of the media to thrive under his government unencumbered. Reports reaching Icheoku has it that the minders of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari has banned African International Television (AIT) from covering all functions of the president-elect going forward. Icheoku asks is this the pledge not to tamper with the media as was the case under the infamous Decree 4 or is this part of the signs of things down the pike? 

Icheoku asks what did AIT do which is not done in advanced societies or has President Barack Obama of the United States of America banned Fox News from covering the White House after the lynch-mob job they tried to do on him while running for office? Ditto the other Robert Murdock owned media empire in the United Kingdom and the hatchet job they did against Prime Minister David Cameron? But the Muhammadu Buhari Icheoku knows is not capable of taking criticism and like he did as a military junta, will similarly find a way of keeping in the cold any media house that he deems unfriendly or not capturing the news through his own eyeglasses. Muhammadu Buhari is yet to be sworn in as president and he is already unleashing his fangs, then imagine the fate which awaits Nigerians' freedom post May 29th, 2015. 

Icheoku says so what if AIT aired paid documentaries, which Muhammadu Buhari considers unfriendly, as any media would do once the price is right? So what use therefore is the acidity of the documentary if after the said documentary, Muhammadu Buhari still won the election?  So does it not show that this president-elect is merely being vindictive under the circumstances, which shows he has a heart of sulphur and never forgives? Icheoku says a more benevolent leader would have laughed off AIT as being "ineffectively useless" because despite all their best effort, he was still elected president; instead of being this petty, descending into the sewer by seeking revenge and a pound of flesh? So if Muhammadu Buhari were the outgoing President Jonathan who the kitchen sink of criticism was thrown at by the media, may be Nigeria would have since once again become one huge gulag where every voice of decent and opposition is locked away to rot. But here you have someone who claimed to be a converted democrat yet lacks the tenets of a democrat, including tolerance for criticism and opposing viewpoints. President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, Icheoku says shame on you and greater shame for your intolerance. 

It is also instructive to mention that the same president-elect have so far already recanted many of his campaign promises including his pledge to equalize the Naira to the Dollar; to stabilize world's oil market; not to probe past government as seen with the threatened probe of President Jonathan and the alleged missing $20billion NNPC oil money and now is snarling his teeth at AIT media house over some  considered anti-Buhari aired documentary during a campaign that is since over and which he won? Icheoku bemoans that at the rate he is going with "I didn't say that", may be by time he is sworn in, he would have completely and totally absolved himself of any promise he made to Nigerians during his campaign, the basis of which he was elected president?

Icheoku says one thing with taking people's freedom is that it starts in increment of one, two, three and before you know it, everyone's freedom is completely muzzled and gobbled up. If it is AIT today, tomorrow it might be Icheoku and next day Nations, the day after Sahara Reporters and the day after next NTA. So Nigerians must start now to put pressure on Muhammadu Buhari that 2015 is not 1983 and Nigerians have come way too far to succumb to his blackmail of terror and intimidation. Nigerians have enjoyed relative freedom this past sixteen years of their fledgling democracy and will not now retreat to their shells just because a freedom-denying Muhammadu Buhari is elected president of Nigeria. There can be no true democracy without freedom of the media which translates to freedom of the citizens to air their views unmolested and unmuzzled and AIT is so included. Icheoku reaffirms that freedom denied to one is freedom lost to all and therefore unequivocally condemn the ban and says that the ban on AIT from covering President-elect Muhammadu Buhari must be lifted immediately and NOW. Long live freedom in Nigeria! 

BUHARI, THE REBIRTH OF A TYRANT DICTATOR?

Icheoku says if Muhammadu Buhari could change then it means that change is indeed possible. The former mean spirited, never laughing nor smiling melancholic tyrant is now totally and completely rebranded into an amiable, laughing, funny and joke-cracking personable persona. This is good for his new image and provided the man from Daura will keep that up, it is a good change. Icheoku prays that his government succeeds in fulfilling the great expectations of Nigerians that swept him into office. Way to go Buha and as a converted democrat, may your newly transformed personality remain with you and never you ever default again back to your old self. Congratulations.  

NEPAL EARTHQUAKE DISASTER, LESSON IN NOTHINGNESS?

Icheoku says once again we are reminded what the preacher said in Ecclesiastes that vanity of vanities all is vanity and you then wonder why is mankind still killing itself trying to acquire all this and all that stuff when he does not have control over them neither of his own life. If all mankind acquire could vanish in one bleating second, what use are they anyways? Shortly are we here and shortly are we gone, gone with the wind; although in this case gone with earthquake. Icheoku asks are we here for any particular reason or are we just mere passersby, enroute to a destination but merely temporarily here as a rest-stop? 

When one reads the scripture Apocalypse and its teachings on rapture, do we see this rapture in this sudden death of people - those we know and those we don't know? People who are here now and gone the next second; people like those killed in the earthquake in Nepal, over four thousand of them? How suddenly someone would be so gone unannounced, in fleeting seconds, is but a piece of the puzzle called life. If only humanity could pause to ponder our real essence in this world, may be our endless quest for vanities would be somewhat moderated and to the point of us appreciating what is more important before they are gone forever, taken before our eyes. Icheoku says may the souls of the Nepalese dead find some solace in the Lord and may the survivors find the means to rebuild. What a lesson in fleeting nature of life.

MEDITERRANEAN BOAT PEOPLE, A NEW CRISIS FOR EUROPE?

Icheoku says on a hindsight those Europeans will be regretting now why they removed Libyan strongman Moummar Gaddafi, the hitherto bulwark of their defense from being overcrowded and crowded-out of their Europe by migrant Africans and Middle Easterners.  But for their conspiracy that killed Gaddafi, they would still be enjoying their Europe free from these maddening surge in flow of human-beings, the new boat people from Africa and the Middle-east. Daily are the ports of Italian Lampedusa and Malta crowded by rescued migrants from the Mediterranean Sea, the many  who were lucky to make it as opposed to the not so lucky ones that did not make it to the ports but who perished in the sea while trying. 

Records have it that for the over two hundred and twenty thousand migrants who have survived that treacherous journey within the last year alone and made it to Europe, about three thousand five hundred migrants did not make it but perished in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.  Eight hundred and fifty migrants even died in just one weekend alone this year,  all drowned in the choppy waters of the Mediterranean, lost forever and without trace or family to mourn them. As they rest in their watery graves, Icheoku asks what is the world doing to mitigate this disaster of the new boat people from Africa and the Middle east? Except o course if their lives don't matter much like with every minority of this world to elicit immediate solution. 

Icheoku asks what is the watching world waiting for and/or doing, especially Europe, to mitigate this world's deadliest boarder crossing in the Mediterranean? At the rate these unfortunate hapless migrants, making that leap of faith journey across the Mediterranean Sea, are meeting their deaths,  even the Wildebeest of Serengeti seem to stand a better chance at survival from the African crocodiles at Moro River crossing. Even the United States of America with their southern border crisis does not seem to have it this bad; at the least the migrants coming across from America's southern border do not have this much treachery to contend with, admitted many of them similarly perish in the desert. So what can Europe honestly do to stem this tide of humans flowing in from the Mediterranean Sea? Unlike the Americans who are building a 'Great Wall of China' along their border to protect the inflow of migrants from Latin America, what indeed can these Europeans really do to keep these migrants out of the Mediterranean and their Europe. 

Could mining the waters be a solution except that Europe is not at war with these migrants who are merely escaping hardship, civil wars and persecution from their motherlands. A situation which would have been avoided had these European countries meaningfully helped them have a life in their own countries through development projects instead of of allowing their condition to deteriorate so much to looking for succor elsewhere. Icheoku agrees that Europe should look towards addressing the root causes of these desperation instead of the symptomatic reaction currently being canvassed such as destroying smugglers boats and interdicting migrants on the sea. As is always the case with such measures,  these smugglers will find a way to skit around it and desperation will always force human-beings into untoward thinking and creativity to still find another sea route into Europe. The solution is a Marshall Plan for these deprived countries and nations whose citizens constitute the bulk of these migrants, in order to help solve the underlying problems driving these migrants off the cliff of death in the Mediterranean. Icheoku adds  where repressive home governments are forcing these migrants to flee, the world especially Europe should do something to free such countries from these despots by taking military action against them where diplomacy fails. 

Icheoku is not advocating for a 'total recall' prohibition on migration or that any solution will be the 'it all that ends it all', but at least some measures could be put in place that would help ameliorate the situation and to a large  extent prevent these migrants from escaping from the frying pan of their hellish home countries into the fire that is perishing in the Mediterranean Sea. Icheoku disagrees with British Foreign Office Minister Joyce Anelay that 'search and rescue' will constitute a pull factor that encourages this perilous journey through the Mediterranean Sea. Rather it should be seen as life-saving operation and any rescued migrant should be summarily deported back to his or her home country instead of being allowed to drown in the waters. Europe should follow it up with embarking on dissemination of information campaign in these migrant countries to  discourage such migration as too dangerous, emphasizing that any caught migrant will be deported back. This way intending migrant will understand that such venture is not as rosy as is painted and will think twice before trying to take off next time. 

Icheoku believes with adequate cooperation with the governments of those migrant countries, especially Syria and Eritrea will be a more meaningful approach to starving and stemming off this migration. This will save these migrants lives as well as Europe from being over-ran by these Africans and Middle Easterners. So to German Interior Minister Thomas Maiziere, Icheoku says 'search and rescue' is not necessarily to keep those migrants in Europe, but to save them from a certain death and then they could be just shipped back to their countries of origin and let them be the voice of 'just say no to illegal migration'. They will share their sordid experience with their people and what a better way of letting the would be migrants know that it is not a rosy bed of travel than through one of their own. If not, these migrants who are already in hell in their home countries would rather risk making that leap of faith journey through the deep blue sea to see if they can peradventure make it to their proverbial heaven in Europe, in the hope for a better life. 

That many of them too often never make it, as they die in capsized boats and dinghies, shipwrecked and plunged into the waters of the Mediterranean is not a deterrent and never will be; as many of them believe they will be the lucky ones to make it or be rescued to Europe. Icheoku however finds some logic in Amnesty's Iverna McGowan position that the horrors of the Mediterranean Sea is a result of the 'push-factor' rather than the 'pull-factor' as canvassed by United Kingdom. Those migrants are desperate already, pushed by hellish conditions they are fleeing from in their own countries leading to the risky perilous journey through the Mediterranean. According to her deduction, irrespective of the fears and risks imposed by this migration, abandoning these boat-people to their certain fate of death by drowning should not be an option; and these migrants should not be allowed to die on their way to Europe, trying to escape from certain death in their home countries. 

Icheoku agrees and urges a world action to help this helpless of the world including by repatriating them back to their countries safely; but the search and rescue should go on as a humanitarian operation, regardless of some unintended consequences of possibly increasing the human trafficking because not to do so will only increase the number of victims that are interred in the watery graves of the Mediterranean Seas. What an unthinking and short-sighted Europe that traded Mummer Gaddafi for these deluge of illegal migrants. Now who is crying louder, a dead Gaddafi or an increasingly overwhelmed Europe? You guess is as good as Icheoku's but that removal of Libya's strongman was one heck of a miscalculation, similar to the removal of Saddam Hussein leading to the explosion of anarchists in the Middle East. But hey, life happens and when it does, humans can only seek to finding solutions where possible, otherwise to their faith, oh victims and same applies to the new boat people of the Mediterranean Sea. 

TINUBU KNOCKS KASHAMU OUT AND COLD, WAY TO GO !

“The days of false adulation are gone in Nigerian politics. Fake praise singers like Kashamu will find that their particular craft is no longer in vogue. During this election cycle, their practice has dramatically turned from the way things are to how things used to be. Politicians will no longer be able to change direction and loyalties as if they were changing clothes. Those in politics must know that responsibility and accountability shall now follow them. 

One can no longer walk both sides of the street at the same time. In case Kashamu has not noticed, the politics of principle defeated the politics of posturing. Kashamu may be prodigal but he is no political son of Tinubu. Kashamu’s political lineage tracks to people like Bode George and President Jonathan. He should direct his encomiums to these men who are his true role models. They need his contrived affections more than Tinubu does. 

This same Kashamu rained insults on former President Olusegun Obasanjo in a vicious campaign of calumny. Kashamu’s party, the PDP, sponsored defamatory documentaries full of lies and innuendos against me, General Muhammadu Buhari and other leaders of the APC. Please keep your peace until you make your trip to the USA as a senator-elect. Upon your return we can then have a conversation. We can then proceed with your repudiation of the PDP with a promise that you will stop corrupting and fouling the political system. I am a patriotic, law abiding Nigerian and my achievements make me world-renowned. I am a global citizen that travels freely to the USA, the United Kingdom and other nations. I associate with individuals who seek democracy and good governance for all. I do not spend time with characters whose values are at variance with societal expectations and laws governing a decent society.” - Ashiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

ALMAJIRIS, WHOSE CHILDREN ARE THEY ANYWAY?

Icheoku says one of the things that cost President Jonathan  his 2015 reelection bid was his decision to empower Northern Nigeria's vassals, the  almajiris, by trying to educate them. Suddenly trying to change an age-long, intentionally institutionalized statues-quo, which has the propensity of radically altering a class system of 'haves and have-nots' and which will adversely impact on the feudalistic overlords hold on power, is an existential threat to these overlords and they reacted to abate the source of their worries. A well calculating president would have known that he was walking a path to perdition when he moved to educate these urchins in order to enlighten and embolden them to challenge entrenched feudalistic institutions lording it over them.  

But with power, it never runs in fright; instead it fought back and the president paid for it dearly. Northern feudalistic lords, fearful that their vice-hold on power in their region is being threatened by President Jonathan's use of education to empower these almajiris, ganged up and ensured that the president was shoved out of Aso Rock?  Now mission accomplished, the future of the Goodluck Jonathan Almajiri schools is now as uncertain as it is most likely to go down the pipe-drain. Power does not yield, not so easily. These Northern power stakeholders, who cannot afford to see their 'hewers of wood and fetchers of water' rise up to question their authority and continuous hold on power, struck to ensure that their future is well secured. Today the president who wanted a brighter future for the street dwellers of Northern Nigeria has been shoved aside, a matter made worse because the same bums he was trying to help were used against him as they voted in droves for the opposition candidate and against their interest.

However, the 2015 presidential election campaign brought  this very important issue to the fore-consciousness of Nigerians. What created this social problem of millions of children roaming about the streets of Northern Nigeria without much of any parental care,  guidance and direction? Outgoing First Lady Dame Patience bravely, publicly outed this societal anomaly while campaigning in Cross River State when she said "Our people no dey born children wey dem no dey count. Our men no dey born children throway for street. We no dey like the people from that side." Translation, while Southern Nigerians are responsible parents and take care of family business of raising their children, Northern Nigerians could care less about the welfare of their children, the reason for the prevalence of these street urchins in their region. Icheoku says admittedly, truth is always bitter to the outed; who instead of addressing the observed shortcomings, always fights to cover it up.  Otherwise, query if the observation of the First Lady was not a truism because there would not have been this pandemic cases of parent-less children roaming about the North had their parents taken care of their parenting duties in the first place. 

So amplifying the First Lady's observation, Icheoku asks who are parents of these street urchins in the North, for whose emancipation through education, President Jonathan unknowing engineered his own downfall? A Northern Hausa/Fulani culture that have men busily impregnating under-age young girls and abandoning them to their fate with children they cannot themselves take care of, is rather a very repugnant and reprehensible culture that needs a total make-over and overhaul. Icheoku emphasis that it is very mean spirited and quite unflattering too for any man to impregnate a girl and abandon her with his baby, especially a hapless girl with no means of supporting herself and the baby. Why bring children into this world when you do not love them or care enough for their welfare, only to pretend that your culture allows such callousness to thrive? What type of retrogressive culture fosters this anomaly, assuming these Northern Nigeria debit-daddies are right? Icheoku says it is the same crappy cultural argument that this same people make for their sexual abuse of minor girls, many of whom are younger than twelve years old and barely old enough to be their grand daughters, when they forcibly take them into concubinage to procreate unseasonably.  

So ask yourselves Nigerians, must such inhuman treatment of these Nigerian young girls that beget these almajiris continue unchecked? If it must continue, why then must the more civilized and more responsible Southerners continue to have a shared commonalities with their Northern counterpart unrepentantly vested in their old vestiges? A people who selectively chooses what law to abide by, depending on their peculiar idiosyncrasy? Why is it that these repugnant acts are okay by them and is tolerated by other Nigerians and in this modern day Nigeria of twenty first century? Icheoku maintains that the culture that foists this almajiri problem for the entire Nigeria to bear is not a good culture. It should therefore be immediately outlawed with stiff penalties prescribed for offending fathers including possible imprisonment if they renege on their obligation to provide support for their children. Enough of this political correctness and needless sensitivities that usually look the other way while this societal menace metastasizes in the North, leading to all manners of sociological problems in the country. Icheoku is not a fan of Dame Patience, but for calling out these Northern Nigerian debit-dads, she displayed uncanny courage and a motherly true love for children and she should be commended rather than chastised. Almajiris, Icheoku asks, who are your daddies?

IGP SULEIMAN ABBA'S SACK, TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?

Icheoku says the sacking of the IGP Suleiman Abba is  too little too late since he has already mission accomplished his assignment in helping enthrone a Miyetti Allah's anointed candidate, president; a group's membership which the now former IGP similarly enjoys. Icheoku asks what took the president so long or was it the same indecisiveness that hounded his presidency throughout office and which eventually helped shove him out of office that caused the delay? Why did the president not sack the IGP when it would have mattered most, pre-election, than this post-election fire brigade approach that cannot do much to salvage an already unsalvageable presidency. The deed was already done and the genie of a lost election cannot be put back in the bottle or made whole again, not even by thousands of such firings. 

The IGP played his assigned role and today President Jonathan is on the threshold of vacating Aso Rock with President-elect Muhammadu Buhari ready to move in, so what use then is this useless sacking of the IGP now that it is indeed absolutely needless and useless and of no consequentially value? Icheoku says so what if the IGP is fired - he was an IGP now retired with full pension and benefit.  An appreciative President Muhammadu Buhari will certainly compensate him with a juicy appointment for his role in helping bring about his presidency, regardless. So query why  act now, belatedly and so late in both time and usefulness? Why create a cloud of suspicion of retribution against the IGP for not "playing ball" during the elections? Icheoku is certain that many Nigerians would be wondering what is it that cannot wait in the police force for the incoming president to address that a new IGP has to be foist now with just few weeks to an incoming administration? Except there is some damaging and threatening security report against the former IGP which the administration is not disclosing just yet, the sudden termination of IGP Suleiman Abba is rather fishy and smells of a pay back, which no decent Nigerian should support nor appreciate. 

But in absence of such smoking gun report, the decision is simply mediocre and not an executive-like; which latches on to the other point which many Nigerians had against this presidency - the indecisiveness and quisling-like decision making process of the administration whenever they make one. Therefore it will be a nice move for the president, out of office, to proceed to a business school to take a course on how to be and act like a CEO, because many of his decisions while in office lacked that executive finesse and goal-targeted objective that informs decisions.  Icheoku says no chief executive officer makes or should ever make any decision on sentiments alone, without any anticipated and intended benefit derivable therefrom. If a president is appointing a new IGP at this hour of his soon to lapse presidency, what tasks does he want the new man to help him accomplish int he police force within such a very short window? If the president wants to fire a sitting IGP at this time, what would his firing now suddenly confer on his outgoing presidency? But only Jonathan can answer to these questions, but it smacks of a very poorly articulated decision making, to say the least. 

The worst part of the calculus of the present appointment is that now both the Inspector General of Police and the Chief of Army Staff are from the same president's South-south region? Icheoku wonders what type of message of crass cronyism and nepotism is the president sending to Nigerians and at this dying hour of his outbound administration. If a new Inspector General of Police must be appointed at this hour, with just few weeks to the end of his presidency, must the new IGP also come from the same geographical zone as the president as well as the COAS? Why not appoint an IGO from the Southeast which fervently supported his aborted second term bid to at least thank them and reward them for all their sacrifice. However, Icheoku refuses to read any further ulterior motive into this sudden spring-surprise, regarding possible plans of reneging on his acceptance of defeat in the just concluded election; with now his man-friday IGP in charge, who will help quell any breakdown of law and order such his action might festoon on the land. 

Icheoku says many observers of the just concluded election agree that at least the now gone IGP Abba maintained a reasonable security throughout the country, such that there was no major noticeable or serious breakdown of law and order, either before, during and after the elections; and therefore he should rather be commended for a job well done than condemned with a sack. Icheoku also refuses to buy into MURIC's allegation that the president is "strengthening his position" with the sudden appointment of a new IGP and might dig in and refuse to vacate office? Icheoku restates that the president cannot afford to carry the full weight of an anticipating world that will descend on him, a world which have already congratulated him for his sportsmanship in conceding the election and waiting for his exit. It is rather too risky a risk and a risk not worth the presidency of Nigeria and President Jonathan is too smart to tempt his fate in this bizarre manner. 

But if he chooses otherwise and attempts such fate with such a stupid bravado, he will suffer the fate of Panama's President Noriega as US Marines will be parachuting into Aso Rock to capture him for trial and imprisonment in a US prison or waste him if that becomes inevitably necessary. Icheoku is confident that a still much young President Jonathan will find this option very unpalatable a dish to taste and will stick by his words in honor of his newly earned status as world's statesman and hand over as expected. So, what drove this sudden decision to fire IGP Suleiman Abbas and in his place appoint Edo State born IGP Solomon Arase; especially in view of the fact that the now gone IGP's retirement due date is not until March 2019? Until the presidency fully discloses its reason for the sudden decision, Icheoku alongside millions of other Nigerians will continue to express surprise while urging the government to come clean and let Nigerians into the window of their rational for the sudden decision to fire IGP Abba. In the meantime, Icheoku congratulates the new IGP Arase and prays he can build on whatever successes his predecessor recorded during his short stint as head of the Nigerian police force. 

DR ADENIRAN A. ARIYO, A HOLOCAUST DENIER WANTS NDIGBO MASSACRED?

Icheoku says not even  western education and western civilization could remove the bile in this beast; little wonder people like him makes Boko Haram's Abubakar Shekau condemn western education as dangerous? Imagine a medical doctor who has lived in the United States of America for over twenty seven years calling for the ethnic cleaning of a people merely because of their industry and patriotic vigor that see them calling every part of their country home. Yet this MD lives in another man's country but will not tolerate citizens of a country living in any part of their own country? Icheoku queries should this holocaust denier, another Adolf Hitler of our time, who has called for the massacre of Ndigbo of Nigeria, be allowed to continue practicing medicine possessed of this hateful genocidal mindset?  

Dr Adeniran Abraham Ariyo, a Dallas, Texas State, United States of America based and licensed cardiologist NPI-157851092, who works with Heart Masters Inc of 3535 West Wheatland Road, Dallas Texas, Phone numbers 972.223.0550, 903.887.9990, has called for the ethnic cleansing of Ndigbo in Nigeria. The said doctor HATE lives at 519 North Gun Barrel Ln, Str B, Gun Barrel City Texas 751556 and can also be reached with telephone number 806.780.8003. Please help Ndigbo call this holocaust denier today and tell him that Ndigbo are aware of his hateful statement to levy genocide on a people merely because of envy and that he will be hearing very soon from Ndigbo as they take their case against him to the ICC in The Hague.

XENOPHOBIAN SOUTH AFRICANS, BARBARIANS IN OUR MIDST?

Icheoku says it is a sad commentary today in South Africa that people who were saved from the petulant apartheid regime are today killing the same people who sacrificed a lot to set them free and for no reason at all? Icheoku queries what manner of a people are these South Africans that would rather pay their debt to fellow Africans in this way - lynching and killing fellow black Africans for no offense, other than simply living in their midst? Icheoku queries should other countries now single out every South African living amongst them and similarly set them ablaze in reiteration? Except that an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind, as Icheoku prays that these beastly South Africans would wake up to smell the coffee that what they are doing in their country today is simply barbaric and should not have any place of accommodation in this day and age. What a sore sight, a man being roasted alive in Nelson Mandela's South Africa just because he chose to live among them? What a very big shame indeed and it is condemnable.

MY CHILDREN ARE NOT MINE, MAKING THE CASE FOR PATERNITY TESTING - FEMI KUTI?

Icheoku says admitted certain areas of our humanity are somewhat deemed off limits for public discussion, but should this society's selective preclusion always present a bar to a forensic examination of a taboo, which everyone knows is happening in our society? Icheoku decided to finally comment on this because of the prevalent, spiraling incidences of wives and mothers continuously fooling around and getting pregnant outside their matrimonial relationships. Icheoku had always thought it was a tale by moonlight or rather exaggerated until one woman personally sort my opinion on what she should do regarding her seventeen year old son who was not biologically sired by her husband of twenty something years? According to her story, she is in a bitter divorce proceedings with her husband and she wants to strike him very hard and where it would hurt him most. To do this, she wants to go public that "their" son, whom her husband truly believed was his biological child and whom he has been doting on so much as a good caring father for seventeen years of his life, was indeed actually fathered by their neighbor? To further double-down on her soon to be ex-husband, she said she was going to elope with the neighbor, the co-husband,  who is also in the process of divorcing his own wife because of their advanced plan. Icheoku was aghast but somehow managed to reason with her to please calm down, advising her not to facilitate the husband's quick exit from this world through a sudden heart attack which such a disclosure might herald. 

Query, which man would not swoon and immediately give up the ghost, prior brief illness or no prior brief illness, upon such traumatic shock of hearing that your son, in whom you are well pleased to continue your gene propagation, is indeed not carrying your genetic mapping code? Please just show Icheoku such a man and Icheoku would readily show you several women who will be happy to learn of their husbands' love-children, especially those who happen to be sons and senior to these wives' own first sons? Further, a woman once confided to Icheoku that it is only a woman who indeed knows who the actual father of her children is; adding in support that so many children do not often belong to their so called father and husband of their mother. Even some study put the figure of such children born to the other guy while still married to this guy to close to 37%? The case of the "doubtful sire" it is called, which William Shakespeare equally acknowledged in "The Taming of the Shrew", wherein Pendant was asked by Vincentio if he was the father of Lucentio? He replied "Ay (yes) sir, so his mother says, if I may believe her?" 

This is a universally acknowledged regularly occurring happenstance, which has always been around ever since the concept of marriage began, with wives, unlucky in love at home, engaging in outside dalliances resulting in pregnancies? And playing a devil's advocate, it is arguable that the biblical story of Mary, mother of Jesus, was such a similarly impregnated outside her marital home wife    of Joseph, admitted by the Holy Spirit with blessings from On High?  A phenomenon hitherto thought to be restricted to very loose societies, is increasingly becoming a common happening in more closely nit societies, including Igboland, where such is greatly frowned at and particularly considered a taboo. There was this case of this Igbo chief who flew her pregnant wife abroad for delivery and died of heart attack when the wife popped out a slanted-eyes Chinese looking child. According to the story, the Igbo business man had some Chinese expatriates working for him in his factory and  then you may fill up the rest of the story. Icheoku also once came across this wife who successfully convinced her husband that their sun-tanned skin, curly haired Lebanese-Arab looking baby boy, looks like her maternal uncle's great grandfather - a fable she fabricated just to cover her sin of infidelity.  

The other day Icheoku tuned in to a television paternity-test show, The Maury Show, where a woman, confused as to which one of her two current boyfriends is the father of her seven months old child, brought two of them for a paternity test. To the chagrin of many in the audience and those who tuned in including Icheoku, the DNA test determined that none of the two men she brought  to the show fathered her child; and you begin to wonder what is indeed going on with some women. So the question becomes should men insist on biologically testing their supposed children for their paternity before acknowledging them as their children or should the sleeping dog be allowed to lay, since what one does not know does not usually hurt? But with due respect to whatever position people might be comfortable with taking, Icheoku would like to know if what is deemed mine is indeed actually mine; otherwise why bother? Luckily enough, there are companies now providing paternity testing in Nigeria, so it makes it easier now for any doubtful father to take that step and free his soul of such a burden of suspicion and avoid being the only one who does not know what the whole town is gossiping about? 

Kanye West, in 'Gold Digger,' rapped about this recurring decimal in societies, where women mislead men into believing that the child they are taking care of is their own biological child when the contrary is the truth. Not too long ago Femi Kuti discovered that some of his "children", from his wife of many years, are indeed not his biological children. So what should a man faced with this tragic experience or who is simply suspicious that his child might not afterall be his, do, many would ask? The answer seems to be to be like Femi Kuti, when in doubt, insist that the child gets tested for paternity. But whether a child is a child as some people would rather have it, should not apply especially when such was deceitfully procured. It should not be a case of letting a sleeping dog to lay down because of unforeseeable consequences in form of possible reiteration by such an outed and shamed wife; otherwise how does any man ensure that his gene is being truly passed on? 

Icheoku asks how else would genealogy be maintained if this practice is allowed to fester and go on unchallenged and unchecked? How else can this poisoned practice be checked or even completely eradicated if not through a frontal attack with the weapon of science. It  is not only a deadly betrayal which in some cultures, results in the man's instant death once he eats such wife's prepared meal, but is also a sin against both God and humanity. A married woman prancing around while in her matrimonial home is tragic promiscuity, moreso when a pregnancy results from the illicit behavior. It would be a different case where a man cannot produce or shoots only blanks and a smart woman, not wanting to deflate the man's ego, goes into an overdrive seeking a child for him; and in some cases with the man's blessing? But where this is not the case, and the man is virile enough to get his wife pregnant and have previously in the past gotten her pregnant and had babies with her, such perfidy should be an unforgiven abomination. Icheoku asks how could any woman from a good home ever put herself in such a dizzying love triangle, resulting in a child with another man  and deceitfully passing off such illegitimate child to her live-in husband as his own? Adopting or even fostering a child is one thing and it is good help to both the child and the society at large; but stealthily and subtly smuggling another man's child home is another thing all together. Any child could be a child in that circumstance, but not when the man has no problem manufacturing his own direct biological offspring. 

Icheoku asks are you a Femi Kuti or a Femi Kuti's wife in this case and are those children you think that are yours, indeed really yours; or are they children of your neighbor or your wife's boss? Are you just a "muuguu" being used and merely playing a role of a father to some bastards, who unbeknownst to you, were the fruits of your wife's secret liaisons? Have you considered your options faced with such circumstance? And for all those women guilty of this immoral mortal deception, have you considered coming out clean to confess to your husband or do you plan to defend your actions before God on judgment day and what would you plead in defense? Would you rather die with such guilt feeling and living through the hell of a guilty heart and wondering if ever your sins will catch up with you? In any event, is there really anything to negotiate or discuss following your being discovered? And for those men who are victims of their wives' induced fathering of another man's child, what are your options and have you thought about it lately? Anyway, whatever works for any individual out there but some of this insanity ought to and should  stop. 

But for all those men who are brave enough to brace the issue, just follow the rule of the thumb approach. If you suspect that "your" child is not behaving like someone you sired or have no physical resemblance whatsoever with your family and you also have the heart to take whatever the result might yield, then for the life of Icheoku, please get him or her tested for paternity. Instead of unknowingly playing a role of a father while not being the actual father or suspects that your wife may not have yielded your own engineered offspring, why not follow the example of Femi Kuti and clear the fog of doubt or suspicion? If they prove to be genuinely yours, then love your wife the more and spoil her with good gifts to honor her decency and respect for your marital rights to father your children through her. If not, then do the needful or suffer the humiliation of knowing that you were shortchanged badly by the woman you call wife and mother of your children. But the call is yours to make but please do not ever blame Icheoku for any unbearable fall out therefrom resulting. Like Femi Kuti, refuse to be beguiled into fathering children that are not yours, not sired, adopted or fostered by you; and courageously tell her they are not yours and politely give them back to her for a return to sender.