Omicron: Nigeria makes U-turn, takes ‘diplomatic steps’ to resolve travel ban by UK, others. ByEbuka Onyeji

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that blanket travel bans would not stop the spread of the variant and could potentially discourage countries from reporting and sharing essential data on Coronavirus. The Nigerian government has said it is making efforts to ‘diplomatically’ address the travel restrictions placed on the country by the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina over the discovery of omicron variant of coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.’ Speaking during an emergency briefing by the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 on Monday night, the committee’s chairman, Boss Mustapha, hinted of possible resolution of the contradictions within the next week. He said the committee is working with relevant ministries to address the issues, saying; “While each country is entitled to put in place measures to protect its citizens, Nigeria has similar responsibilities. However, based on existing relationships, Nigeria has initiated diplomatic steps to make these countries reverse their course. This is ongoing in the interest of all parties concerned and we expect that positive results would emerge within the next one week.” The new development is contrary to the country’s earlier position pushed by some ministers and members of the national assembly, who had suggested retaliatory actions by the Nigerian government. Travel ban Nigeria and some other African nations had been hit with travel bans from western countries since the Omicron variant was first detected in Southern Africa and Hong Kong in November. The variant has since spread to at least, 57 countries worldwide. Although Canada was the first to place a travel ban on Nigeria, of more concern is the one imposed later by the UK. Nigeria became the 11th country to go on the UK’s Red List for international travel over the discovery of Omicron. All nations currently on that list are African in what has been described as “unfair and racists.” ⓘ The UK had claimed that 21 cases of Omicron recorded in England were linked to travellers from Nigeria. Nigeria’s information minister, Lai Mohammed, described as “discriminatory, unfair, punitive, indefensible, and unjust,” the UK travel ban, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, last saying it was a “travel apartheid.” Mr Muhammed’s counterpart at the aviation ministry, Hadi Sirika, on Sunday, said he had recommended that the four countries listed above should be placed on a COVID-19 “red list.” “We have given our input as aviation that it is not acceptable by us, and we recommend that those countries – Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Argentina be also put on the red list, just like they did similarly to us,” Mr Sirika said. Amid criticisms, UK High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, defended the travel ban on Nigeria, insisting it was based on science and not discriminatory. “I think I can say comfortably, it is not [discriminatory]. When the UK was the epicentre of the Alpha variant, we took some very tough measures ourselves to essentially cut ourselves off and we banned all but essential travels from the UK. “So, that was a very tough decision for us. The UK has been Red-listed in earlier stages of these variants; I think when the Delta variant took off, we were Red-listed by Austria and by France and Turkey,” she said. TEXEM But the World Health Organisation (WHO) has, however, said that blanket travel bans would not stop the spread of the variant, and could potentially discourage countries from reporting and sharing important data on Coronavirus. ⓘ U-turn Meanwhile, corroborating Mr Mustapha on Monday during the briefing, Mr Sirika said Nigeria has initiated diplomatic steps to make these countries reverse their course. “This is ongoing in the interest of all parties concerned and we expect that positive results would emerge within the next one week,” he said. Omicron Omicron was discovered in November further, pushing back hopes of the fight against the deadly pandemic, coming to an end soon. While there have been previous variants – Alpha and Delta – the discovery of Omicron seems to trigger a more political and diplomatic stance rather than that of public health concern. Nigeria joined the growing number of countries that have recorded cases of the Omicron variant also known as B.1.1.529 lineage, confirming the discovery of three additional Omicron variant cases about two weeks ago. The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Ifedayo Adetifa, who disclosed this, noted that the new cases were detected in persons with recent travel history to South Africa in November. Mr Adetifa confirmed that through the NCDC, the Nigerian government has been notified by the government of the United Kingdom (UK) of seven cases of Omicron variant detected in travellers from Nigeria. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Aviation minister said the government has escalated surveillance and control measures around the country and ramped up vaccination, including making booster shots available as part of efforts to curb the spread of Omicron.

BREAKING: Nigeria, 10 others taken off UK’s Omicron red list

All 11 countries will be taken off England’s travel red list from 04:00 GMT on Wednesday, the health secretary announces But testing measures – a pre-arrival negative test and then another PCR test after arrival – remain in place for all travellers Deputy PM Dominic Raab earlier said people in England will be able to spend Christmas in a way they could not last year because of Plan B restrictions MPs are debating the new measures in the Commons today, with a big Tory rebellion expected over Covid passes for some venues In Scotland, people have been asked to limit socialising to three households at a time in the run-up to Christmas More than half a million people booked booster jabs on Monday and long queues are forming again at some vaccination centres on Tuesday A top South African doctor says the country is mainly seeing “mild disease” and intensive care units are not overwhelmed Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting is speaking in the Commons, and opens by saying sincere beliefs are held on all sides, but he hopes the debate on Plan B measures can be worthy of Parliament. He criticises the comparison by one Tory MP of Covid passes to Nazi Germany’s policies, saying: “We are not living in the 1930s and the secretary of state and his team are not Nazis.” Streeting says the health secretary has a responsibility to protect our NHS and calls the measures “a necessary response to the Omicron threat”. But he says that confronting the challenges of this winter has been made much harder because we went into the pandemic with record waiting lists, 100,000 unfilled vacancies in the NHS and shortages of care staff. Sajid Javid has told MPs he is seeking “urgent advice” about people currently in quarantine hotels being permitted to leave early. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw asks the health secretary if the government will now release people in isolation in quarantine hotels, given that all 11 African countries are to be removed from the red list. Javid says: “I am told that the practice in the past has been requiring them to complete their quarantine period. However, I do understand the importance of that. “I have asked for urgent advice about what this means and I hope to act very quickly on just that.” The health secretary has set out in Parliament the rationale for ending the travel red list, saying that as the new variant is spreading in the UK, travel restrictions are “now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad”. The decision means England will no longer require hotel quarantine for travellers from Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Travel rules are set by the four nations of the UK independently, but the other nations’ governments often follow proposals from Westminster.

"STRUCK OUT": Fiona Onasanya

Fiona Onasanya, is a Nigerian, although she never lived in any part of the country. She was born & raised in the UK. She would go on to become a lawyer & a Member of Parliament (MP) in Britain🇳🇬🇬🇧 Her ultimate ambition was anything but ordinary: To become the first black female Prime Minister of her country of birth👸🏻 As things stand, that dream has suffered an abortion, triggered by the eclampsia of zero integrity.😔 The failed delivery started shortly after 10pm on 24 July 2017, when her car was caught on CCTV camera clocking 41mph on the Causeway of Thorney, Cambridgeshire. That area is a 30mph zone. 🚦 Upon investigation, she told the Police that she wasn't the person behind the wheels on the said night. She insisted that it was her brother, Festus Onasanya who was the driver. 💁🏼‍♂️❌ The former Labour MP who rose to the position of party whip, it was found, had connnived with her brother to name one Aleks Antipow, her sibling's former lodger as the driver. Unfortunately, that alibi wasn't water tight. Antipow was with his parents in Russia, 1,800 miles away, at the time of this fateful driving.🙆🏼‍♂️ This string of lies would become the undoing of Onasanya, who was a former commercial property lawyer. At the Old Bailey trial, she was found guilty and jailed for 3 months for perverting the course of Justice, as lying is deemed.🏴‍☠️ Neither did her brother escape the long arm of the law as he bagged 10 months behind bars for making himself available for conspiracy.➿ Promptly, the Labour Party launched a successful recall proceeding & deposed her as an MP for Peterborough.📛 You would have thought she had suffered enough for lying- a routine misdeed for many. But in that event, that wasn't the opinion of the British legal profession umpire! The Solicitors Tribunal held a disciplinary hearing on Onasanya, for lying to evade consequences of speed limit breach. Seemingly remorseless, she arrived the hearing with her mother where she held on to her browbeaten line that she was innocent.💔 In the face of her insistence, the tribunal took the view that she had failed to act with integrity, that she acted dishonestly & failed to maintain the trust the public placed in her♌ The Chair of the 3 member panel, which sat in Central London, Edward Nally summed up the matter this way: "As a parliamentarian makes the law, so a solicitor must uphold the law and rule of law and sadly in this case Ms Onasanya has failed in those duties. We must strike off Onasanya from the roll of solicitors".⚖️ With those words, Onasanya who qualified as a lawyer in November 2015 & worked in the lucrative area of commercial property law before becoming an MP in June 2017, will now seek gainful employment in any profession where integrity is not a critical qualification♐ Lying is an unpassable wrongdoing. This is the message spelt out clearly by the Onasanya experience. On the other hand, the everyday Nigerian might wonder what the big deal is about lying let alone about the speed with which a car was driven. Some others might even ask in sarcasm, 'was anyone killed by the speed?' There goes the mindset that sets integrity alight🙅🏼‍♂️ MSD Reminds U to Act Leaderly & insist that in any event, the standard for leaders, as captured by the solicitors' panel, is MATCHLESS INTEGRITY! EVERYTHING RISES & FALLS ON LEADERSHIP! FOR THOSE WHO DEFEND LIES, THIS IS THEIR FATE IN SANE SOCIETIES.

Oba of Benin lauds Buhari over return of artefacts By Gabriel Enogholase

OBA of Benin, Omo N’Oba Ewuare 11, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for ordering the Nigerian High Commissioner to Britain to immediately return some of the Benin artworks, which were recently returned by Jesus College, Cambridge and University of Aberdeen, Scotland to the Palace of Oba of Benin. The president’s directive to return the Benin bronzes to the ancient palace of the Oba of Benin was made known by the Secretary of Benin Traditional Council, Frank Irabor, in a statement, yesterday. He disclosed that the handing over of the returned artefacts would take place at the Oba place on December 13, 2021, by 11 a.m. He explained that the event would also be used to mark the 5th anniversary of Oba Ewaure 11 on his ascension to the throne of his forebears, which was shifted in honour of late Captain Hosa Okunbo. He said: “The general public is, hereby, invited to join his royal majesty in receiving the Benin bronze cast of Okpa ‘Cockerel’ and Benin bronze burst of an Oba both from Jesus College, Cambridge, England and University of Aberdeen, Scotland. “His royal majesty Benin royal family and the good people of Edo State thank the president for this directive. “This further shows that the Federal Government is the only constitutional authority to receive in custody Benin bronzes and other artefacts before being sent to their original owner, the Oba of Benin, which were recently repatriated from Jesus College, Cambridge and University of Aberdeen, Scotland to the palace of Oba of Benin.”

Reviewed: What Britain Did to Nigeria by Max Siollun. By Paddy Kehoe

Historian Max Siollun asks three questions in his fascinating new study: Why did Britain come to Nigeria? What did Britain do to Nigeria? And how did the local people react to British presence? The answers are absorbing. It is, to say the least, a complex story, but Siollun gets to the heart of it, offering a cogent analysis of the development of slavery and the lucrative trade in rubber, in palm oil as well as the livestock and cereals industries and the wholesale exploitation involved. He also pays attention to the Christian missionary endeavour which was particularly challenging when it began in Nigeria. Islam, for instance, did not require polygamous people to jeopardise their family lives by divorcing. Conversion to Christianity was markedly more difficult than vice versa. Rivalries and tensions between the various exploiting forces, and the deeper-rooted tensions between the different ethnic groups are integral and fundamental aspects of the story. Slavery existed before the arrival of the Europeans, and the more enterprising could make notable progress in their lives and careers, albeit against terrible odds. One of the leading chiefs in Southern Nigeria was Jaja of Opobo, a slave who eventually became one of the most powerful figures in his region. Many of the emirs who ruled northern Nigeria were the sons of slave women. The first British ships to reach the land that would later be named Nigeria were led by one Captain Windham. He arrived in the Bight of Benin in 1553. He was taken aback to say the least when he learned that interaction between the Portuguese and the people of Benin was so advanced that the oba or king of Benin actually spoke Portuguese. The Nigerian capitol city Lagos Windham remained in Nigeria, but he and many expedition members subsequently died from illness or excessive drinking. Only forty of the original 140 members of his expedition survived to make the return journey to Britain. The colonisers were often violent marauders who worked their slaves literally to death. Shootings, hangings, rape, floggings and torture were commonplace. The Royal Niger Company, which was most influential between 1885 and 1914, had in its employ at one point a certain Captain Christian. He once detained a native woman, stripped her and covered her body in tar. There seemed little appreciation of the effect such appalling treatment had on the natives, writes Siollun in one of his characteristically understated sentences. The theme of resistance to the British is accorded three chapters alone. The country became independent in 1960, after which the British Empire part-shrank by fifty per cent and African's independent population doubled. In the near future, the historian confidently predicts that Nigeria will become the country with the third-largest English-speaking population in the world. The country at that point will have more English speakers and Christians than the UK, the very country which exported the English language and Christianity to Nigeria in the first instance. A BBC journalist once asked a school headteacher in the Nigerian town of Hadejia the following question in 2010: Would he wish that the British had stayed? He replied as follows: 'Yes, it would have been better.’ He added, moreover, that he would not mind if the British would ‘come back again’ to rule Nigeria. The background to how answers such as this one came to seem reasonable - and indeed very different answers to the same question - are investigated with skill and erudition by Max Siollun in this compelling work which runs to just over 370 pages, with maps, illustrations and photographs.

Strike’ll be indefinite, won’t end until all agreements are fulfilled – ASUU. by Adeyinka Adedipe and Ikenna Obianeri

ASUU President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke The Academic Staff Union of Universities, Owerri Zone, has threatened a total showdown with the Federal Government over the non-implementation of the 2009 agreement. The union said during a press conference at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, on Monday that it would embark on an indefinite strike as “the magnanimity of ASUU that resulted in various MOUs and MOAs arising from the 2009 agreement has been spurned by the Federal Government.” Leaders of the union from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State University, Owerri, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam and Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, were in attendance. Addressing journalists, the ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Mr Uzo Onyebinama, explained that some lecturers are being owed as much as 10 months’ salary. “As we speak now, the Federal Government is in arrears of major components of the agreement, and that includes funding for the revitalization of public universities, earned academic allowances, and the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement. “The consequences of the Federal Government’s refusal to implement the 2009 agreement is that the union has resolved to go on an indefinite strike any moment and once it begins, it will not stop until all agreements are fulfilled.” Also, ASUU Benin Zone, has said the impending strike by the nation’s university lecturers is a last resort to draw government attention to their plights and not to derail academic activities. The zonal Coordinator of the Benin Zone ASUU, Prof. Fred Esumeh, stated this in Benin, Edo State. Esumeh said, “Strike is less frequent in the western world because their governments act. But here in Nigeria, you have to go on strike frequently before government can act.” The zonal coordinator, who described members’ remuneration as slave wage, demanded a new condition of service. He said, “The Nigerian universities are no longer attractive to foreign lecturers, including those from neighbouring countries. “This is due to the prevailing slave wage where the highest ranked professor earns less than a thousand dollars monthly.” PUNCH.

Nigeria's Chief Of Defence Staff, Irabor Asks 50 Military Generals To Quit Service. BY SAHARAREPORTERS

The officers cut across the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigerian Army and the Nigerian Navy; around 25 of the senior officers are in the army. The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Leo Irabor has ordered 50 Generals in the Nigerian military to tender their resignation with immediate effect. According to Daily Post, the officers cut across the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigerian Army and the Nigerian Navy; around 25 of the senior officers are in the army. An impeccable source stated that Irabor gave the directive at the Defence Headquarters in Abuja on Monday. At a 2pm meeting, the CDS thanked them for their service and told all present that it was high time they left office. But the Course 36 Generals still had more than three years before their retirement. “They are about 50; two of them in the Army will retire in 2022, while the rest have about three and half years left in service”, the source revealed. Another source wondered why the Armed Forces were eager to ease out scores of capable and experienced hands at a time the country is battling insecurity. Ironically, Irabor recently intervened in the 2016 forceful retirement of 38 Nigerian Army officers via a letter (Ref. No. CDS/8/A) to the Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, a retired Major-General. They were asked to go in June 2016, an action described as arbitrary by those affected, security personnel, experts and Nigerians. Till date, the military and the federal government are yet to comply with extant court judgments ordering the officers’ reabsorption. In January 2020, Justice Rukiya Hasstrup at National Industrial Court in Abuja faulted the Army decision and directed their reinstatement. In May 2020, Justice Edith Agbakoba approved that contempt of court charge is filed against the military chiefs for failing to comply with a valid order.