Author: Lawal AbdulSalam Olawale

 

Some Nigerians on social media platform X, have been heaping praises on Garba Abubakar, former registrar-general of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), following his sack by President Bola Tinubu.

 

On Friday, Tinubu approved the appointment of Hussani Magaji as the new director-general and CEO of CAC, thereby putting an end to Abubakar’s nearly four years in office.

 

The announcement elicited euphoric reactions in the headquarters of the CAC in Abuja on Monday where members of staff gathered to celebrate Abubakar’s exit.

 

The workers, who were seen dancing in a viral video, referred to Abubakar as a “vicious tyrant” and expressed their gratitude to the president for appointing a new registrar-general.

In a banner posted at the entrance of the agency’s headquarters, the members of staff said Abubakar would be remembered for abuse of office, high-handedness, arrogance, power drunkenness, embezzlement, and witch hunting.

 

‘HE WAS A NO-NONSENSE MAN IN OFFICE’

 

However, some Nigerians have praised Abubakar for the job he did at the CAC.

In a post on X by one Ibironke Khadeeja Quadri, Abubakar was described as a “no-nonsense man” who prohibited “business as usual” in the agency.

 

The netizen said the former registrar-general stopped the allocation of police and secret service personnel to the agency due to the retaining cost of N300 million per annum.

Another X user, Dr. Toks, said one of the sins of Abubakar was making the CAC “paperless” by “embracing technology to remove bottlenecks”.

 

Sam Amadi, director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, described Abubakar as a “professional, dignified and responsive” man who “must have disappointed those who wanted business as usual.

Recounting his time in office via an X thread post, Waziri Adio, former executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), said Abubakar was a diligent, persuasive and passionate man who implemented complex reforms at the CAC in a short time

 

 

As Western politicians line up to cheer on Israel as it starves and bombs Gaza’s civilians, it’s important to understand how we reached this point – and what it means for the future, writes Jonathan Cook.

More than a decade ago, Israel started to understand that its occupation of Gaza through siege could be to its advantage. It began transforming the tiny coastal enclave from an albatross around its neck into a valuable portfolio in the trading game of international power politics.

 

The first benefit for Israel, and its Western allies, is more discussed than the second.

 

The tiny strip of land hugging the eastern Mediterranean coast was turned into a mix of testing ground and shop window.

 

Israel could use Gaza to develop all sorts of new technologies and strategies associated with the homeland security industries burgeoning across the West, as officials there grew increasingly worried about domestic unrest, sometimes referred to as populism.

 

The siege of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, imposed by Israel in 2007 following the election of Hamas to rule the enclave, allowed for all sorts of experiments.

 

How could the population best be contained? What restrictions could be placed on their diet and lifestyle? How were networks of informers and collaborators to be recruited from afar? What effect did the population’s entrapment and repeated bombardment have on social and political relations?

And ultimately how were Gaza’s inhabitants to be kept subjugated and an uprising prevented?

 

The answers to those questions were made available to Western allies through Israel’s shopping portal. Items available included interception rocket systems, electronic sensors, surveillance systems, drones, facial recognition, automated gun towers, and much more. All tested in real-life situations in Gaza.

 

Israel’s standing took a severe dent from the fact that Palestinians managed to bypass this infrastructure of confinement last weekend – at least for a few days – with a rusty bulldozer, some hang-gliders and a sense of nothing-to-lose.

 

Which is part of the reason why Israel now needs to go back into Gaza with ground troops to show it still has the means to keep the Palestinians crushed.

 

Collective Punishment

 

Which brings us to the second purpose served by Gaza.

 

Israel’s standing took a severe dent from the fact that Palestinians managed to bypass this infrastructure of confinement last weekend – at least for a few days – with a rusty bulldozer, some hang-gliders and a sense of nothing-to-lose.

 

Which is part of the reason why Israel now needs to go back into Gaza with ground troops to show it still has the means to keep the Palestinians crushed.

 

Collective Punishment

 

Which brings us to the second purpose served by Gaza.

 

As Western states have grown increasingly unnerved by signs of popular unrest at home, they have started to think more carefully about how to sidestep the restrictions placed on them by international law.

 

The term refers to a body of laws that were formalised in the aftermath of the second world war, when both sides treated civilians on the other side of the battle lines as little more than pawns on a chessboard.

 

The aim of those drafting international law was to make it unconscionable for there to be a repeat of Nazi atrocities in Europe, as well as other crimes such as Britain’s fire bombing of German cities like Dresden or the United States’ dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be found”

 

One of the fundamentals of international law – at the heart of the Geneva Conventions – is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts of their leaders and armies.

 

Very obviously, Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be found. Even in “quiet” times, its inhabitants – one million of them children – are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care because medicines and equipment cannot be brought in; access to drinkable water; and the use of electricity for much of the day because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.

 

Israel has never made any bones of the fact that it is punishing the people of Gaza for being ruled by Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to have dispossessed the Palestinians of their homeland in 1948 and imprisoned them in overcrowded ghettos like Gaza.

 

What Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment. It is a war crime: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of every year, for 16 years.

 

And yet no one in the so-called international community seems to have noticed.

 

Rules of War Rewritten

But the trickiest legal situation – for Israel and the West – is when Israel bombs Gaza, as it is doing now, or sends in soldiers, as it soon will do.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the problem when he told the people of Gaza: “Leave now.” But, as he and Western leaders know, Gaza’s inhabitants have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the bombs. So any Israeli attack is, by definition, on the civilian population too. It is the modern equivalent of the Dresden fire bombings.

 

Israel has been working on strategies to overcome this difficulty since its first major bombardment of Gaza in late 2008, after the siege was introduced.

 

A unit in its attorney general’s office was charged with finding ways to rewrite the rules of war in Israel’s favour.

 

At the time, the unit was concerned that Israel would be criticised for blowing up a police graduation ceremony in Gaza, killing many young cadets. Police are civilians in international law, not soldiers, and therefore not a legitimate target. Israeli lawyers were also worried that Israel had destroyed government offices, the infrastructure of Gaza’s civilian administration.

 

Israel’s concerns seem quaint now – a sign of how far it has already shifted the dial on international law. For some time, anyone connected with Hamas, however tangentially, is considered a legitimate target, not just by Israel but by every Western government.

 

“If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it”

Western officials have joined Israel in treating Hamas as simply a terrorist organisation, ignoring that it is also a government with people doing humdrum tasks like making sure bins are collected and schools kept open.

Or as Orna Ben-Naftali, a law faculty dean, told the Haaretz newspaper back in 2009: “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head.”

Back at that time, David Reisner, who had previously headed the unit, explained Israel’s philosophy to Haaretz: “What we are seeing now is a revision of international law. If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it.

“The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.”

Israel’s meddling to change international law goes back many decades.

Referring to Israel’s attack on Iraq’s fledgling nuclear reactor in 1981, an act of war condemned by the U.N. Security Council, Reisner said: “The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defence. International law progresses through violations.”

He added that his team had travelled to the U.S. four times in 2001 to persuade U.S. officials of Israel’s ever-more flexible interpretation of international law towards subjugating Palestinians.

“Had it not been for those four planes [journeys to the U.S.], I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale,” he said.

Those redefinitions of the rules of war proved invaluable when the U.S. chose to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘Human Animals’

The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) has announced that Adeyemi Adepoju has been reinstated as the postmaster general of the agency.

 

On Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu relieved Adepoju from his role and appointed Tola Odeyemi as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of NIPOST.

 

The announcement made by Ajuri Ngelale, presidential spokesperson, was part of the leadership shuffle implemented for agencies and parastatals under the ministry of communications, innovations and digital economy.

 

However, in a new statement published on NIPOST’s official X account on Saturday, the agency said the president had reinstated Adepoju.

The statement said Adepoju was reinstated “due to his exceptional leadership and performance”.

 

“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (GCFR) has reinstated Rt. Honorable Adeyemi Sunday Adepoju as the Postmaster General of the Federation & CEO of the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) due to his exceptional leadership and performance,” the statement reads.

 

“Sunday Adepoju conveyed his appreciation to the President and other key supporters.

He pledged to redouble his efforts to elevate NIPOST into a world-class digital postal service & align his vision with that of the Federal Ministry of Communication, Innovation & Digital Economy in contributing significantly to Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

 

“This reinstatement is a testament to Adepoju’s leadership skills and unwavering commitment to service. Nigerians can anticipate enhanced value & quality services from NIPOST, an agency dedicated to providing efficient, reliable, and effective postal services across the nation through a network of over 3000 post offices, offering a wide range of services including mailing, logistics, courier, and financial services.”

 

A video of Adepoju in a jubilatory mood over the purported reinstatement has since surfaced on social media.

 

In the video, he is seen arriving in a sport utility vehicle (SUV) into what looks like a NIPOST premises where he was acknowledging cheers from a jubilating crowd.

However, the presidency has yet to release an official statement confirming the reinstatement of Adepoju as the postmaster general of NIPOST.

 

Ngalale was not immediately available when contacted by TheCable for clarification on the development as calls to his mobile phone did not go through while messages sent failed to deliver

Bosun Tijani, the minister of communications, innovation and digital economy, has announced the launch of a programme to empower Nigerians with technology skills.

 

Tijani, in a social media post on Friday, said the federal government intends to train three million technical talents (3MTT) by 2025 with the initiative.

 

Tijani said the programme would create a pipeline of technical talent across Nigeria to help the ministry achieve its aim of making the country a net exporter of talent.

 

According to the minister, the 3MTT would also contribute to the growth of the digital economy, and create employment for an unspecified number of trainers.

In the first phase of the programme, Tijani said, 30,000 tech talents across Nigeria will be trained in the next three months.

 

He noted that the scheme is not limited to the youths, as persons above 45 years can also apply.

 

In a statement on the website of the programme, the ministry said interested organisations that want to provide trainers are required to download the document via this portal.

 

The federal government said participants will learn software development, UI/UX design, data analysis and visualisation, quality assurance, product management, data science, animation, AI/machine learning, cybersecurity, game development, cloud computing and dev ops.

 

“The training is hybrid, meaning that it combines online and in-person components. While the majority of the training can be done remotely, there are aspects that will require in-person training,” the ministry said in the statement.

 

The government said financial support, covering the cost of training, will be provided for the first phase.

President Bola Tinubu announced the appointment of the new governing and management team of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) for a renewable term of four years. The most unusual appointment was that of the Chairman of the FERMA Board, Engr. Imam Ibrahim Kashim Imam, and 25-year-old first-class Mechanical Engineering graduate from Brighton University.

 

Born on the 27th of December, 1998, Engr. Imam had shown promise from a young age. He had pursued his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at Brighton University, where he graduated with first-class honors. His academic prowess continued as he pursued an MSc with honors at the same University. He completed his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in August 2022.

 

Prior to his appointment, he served as a special assistant to Dave Umahi, the minister of works.

His Father, Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, is a Nigerian Politician. He ran for Borno state governor as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in 2003 and 2007, losing to Ali Modu Sheriff from the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) both times.

 

FERMA is an agency of the Federal Government which is concerned with road construction, improvement and connectivity between the States of Nigeria. It is to efficiently and effectively monitor and administer road maintenance with the objective of keeping all federal roads in good and safe conditions. The agency is under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Work.