A robber in Slovakia was caught by police after a woman began performing a sex act on him – delaying him long enough for officers to reach the scene.

The man, a 24-year-old Serb, had been attempting to rob a petrol station on the outskirts of Bratislava overnight on Tuesday in a report by The Daily Mail.

While trying to get money from the safe, a 36-year-old Czech woman began to perform a sex act on him, before officers found the pair half-naked on the floor.

The bizarre incident began when the man ran into the petrol station and demanded that staff hand over money in the register. The robber punched a staff member multiple times, before taking money from the cash register.

He then went to the back office, where a second member of staff was sitting, where he demanded that they open the safe.

While the safe was being opened, the first member of staff ran outside and called the police, who raced to the scene.

Meanwhile, the ‘mystery’ woman appeared and began performing a sex act on the man, delaying his escape.

In the meantime, the police turned up and were able to arrest the suspect. Officers said the man ‘put up stiff resistance’ and that ‘coercive measures were used against him’.

Noviny said it is not clear how the robber and the woman ended up in an intimate situation, and that investigation is ongoing. (guardian)

Osun Chief Judge Justice Adepele Ojo has directed all staff of court across the state to undergo the test.

She also directed that all court staff below Level 12 to work from home.

She gave the directive on the same day Osun announced the discovery of five cases of the deadly B117 strain of COVID-19

A statement by Chief Registrar, High Court, M. A Lasisi, reads: “I have the instruction of the Honourable Chief Judge, Osun State to convey to you the need to comply with the new COVID-19 Protocols just released by the State Government.

“Hence, all staff of the Judiciary below Level 12 are hereby directed to stay at, and work from home, to contain the spread of the pandemic.

“All staff affected should stop coming to work with effect from Monday, 1st February 2021. Furthermore, all staff of Osun State Judiciary should undergo the COVID-19 test immediately.

“Osun State Government is gracious enough to be conducting the tests free of charge. All courtrooms and offices where the affected officer is working should be closed down forthwith until further notice.”

Thenigerialawyer

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quietly erased her first names from son Archie’s birth certificate in an unprecedented move.

Little Archie was born on May 6, 2019, and his birth was registered 11 days later before an amendment was made on June 5.

The tot’s birth papers no longer shows ‘Rachel Meghan’ as his mum instead it reads ‘Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex’.

The unusual change occurred as rumours were growing of a rift between Harry, brother William and their partners, The Sun reports.

They claim the move is a snub to the Cambridges as all three of their children have Kate’s names on their birth certificates.

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Where governments used to seize and burn copies of newspapers that published critical stories, they now tell telecommunication companies to block the URLs of news websites.

Nigeria’s major telecommunications companies—MTN, Glo, Airtel, 9mobile, etc.—  to block access to the website of the Peoples Gazette, an up-and-coming, uncompromisingly hard-hitting, evidence-based, digital-native investigative news reporting outfit headquartered in Abuja.

The news site is reminiscent of the advocatorial, muckraking editorial temperaments of the New York-based Sahara Reporters in its earliest incarnation. Peoples Gazette has published PDFs of the illicit financial transactions of Nigeria’s morally decadent political elites and has broken several exclusive, consequential stories that have shaped national discourse. And the paper started publishing only on September 25, 2020, that is, just a little over four months ago.

Perhaps the paper’s stickiest story, from the perspectives of Aso Rock toadies, was its October 31, 2020 revelation that Professor Ibrahim Gambari, Buhari’s Chief of Staff, is too old for— and is uninterested in— the tiresome clerical drudgery and exertions his job requires and has farmed it out to his son, Bolaji Gambari, who has parlayed his unconstitutional positional surrogacy into an illegitimate political sinecure to lead a new cabal that determines who gets and who is denied government contracts.

“He has no official role and has not taken an official oath to be privy to the highly classified documents we have seen with him recently,” Peoples Gazette quoted an Aso Rock source to have said of Bolaji Gambari. Neither the older and the younger Gambari nor Buhari’s spokesmen took advantage of the opportunity the paper offered them to deny the authenticity of the story or to state their side.

As the story circulated online and became the subject of frantic social media chatter, Peoples Gazette said officials from the office of the Chief of Staff to the President pleaded with them to take it down from their website. When they rebuffed the request for post-publication censorship, they were enticed with “financial offers,” which they also repulsed. Then they were subjected to “severe security pressure,” the paper said.

This month, about three months after the story came out, Gambari’s Oxford-educated adviser on electric power initiatives by the name of Lai Yahaya was fired on suspicion that it was he who leaked details of Gambari’s incompetence and nepotism to the Peoples Gazette, but the paper insisted that Yahaya was not the source of its scoop on Gambari’s shenanigans in the Presidential Villa. 

The paper’s sources said the directive to block its website from being viewed in Nigeria emanated from the office of the Chief of Staff to the President, and that it’s a retaliatory strike against it for bucking pressure to take down the unflattering story it wrote on Gambari and his son. I suspect it’s also because of its unceasingly critical stories on the grievous graft and grift in the Buhari regime.

Already, international media rights groups such as Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Paradigm Initiative, and Gatefield have condemned this targeted media strangulation of an intrepid news outlet. In the coming days, I expect more local and international pressure groups to join calls for the rescission of the blockage of Peoples Gazette’s website.

The online newspaper is gaining traction in Nigeria because it fills a void that has been created by the near absence of evidence-based investigative journalism. In a period of unaccustomed quietude and media capitulation in the face of grinding tyranny and moral putrefactions in the highest reaches of the current power structure, the Peoples Gazette has chosen to be a watchdog that not only sniffs and barks at corruption in high places but that also bites the ankles of its perpetrators.

It’s not surprising that government-appointed regulators of the telecommunications industry would pressure telephone companies to throttle or outright block traffic to a news website like that. More than that, Peoples Gazette’s current experience gives a presage for how critical media outlets in the country will be censored henceforth since most news is now read on the internet rather than on hard copies.

 If the government gets away with its blockage of this news site, there’s no telling which news website will be the next victim. That is why every journalist and every advocate of press freedom should resist it with every splash of vim and every ounce of vigour that they have.

Where governments used to seize and burn copies of newspapers that published critical stories, they now tell telecommunication companies to block the URLs of news websites. This insidious media censorship appears to have been going on surreptitiously on a small, barely perceptible scale longer than most people realise. For instance, several readers from Nigeria tell me they have a hard time accessing my blog from their phones.

 I used to wonder why that was so. I was unpersuaded by people who suggested that my website was being blocked by the government through telephone companies. I thought it made no sense to do that because many websites republish my column and the contents of my blog.

 Sometime last year, representatives of Glo and MTN denied on Twitter that my website’s URL was being blocked when people called them out. Their denials, apparently, aren’t worth much because they also denied blocking Peoples Gazette’s website even though it isn’t accessible in Nigeria.

Because of continuing complaints from my readers that they couldn’t access my blog from their phone’s internet connection, I decided to be sharing my entire column on Facebook. But readers still tell me my website is inaccessible to them when they want to read my archives. Now I know why.

It’s disgraceful that a former top diplomat and international civil servant who spent a lifetime preaching the virtues of human rights and freedom (never mind that he served Abacha and cheered the judicial mass murders of Ogoni environmental activists) would countenance—or perhaps instruct—privately owned telecommunication companies in the country to block the URL of a news site that published an accurate but unflattering report on him.

 But the blocking of the web addresses of critical news sites is dumb for at least three reasons. One, people who are determined can circumvent the blockage through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Citizens in authoritarian states do that all the time.

Two, as my own example has shown, the material the toads in government don’t want people to read on websites can be published and accessed on social media, which defeats the purpose of targeted URL blocking, unless, of course, the government will go the way of China and block Facebook and Twitter in Nigeria. Peoples Gazette now publishes its stories on Facebook and has enlisted the support of like-minded websites to republish its content.

Three, it’s elementary public relations that you don’t dispel a negative story by amplifying it. Blocking the URL of news websites in hopes of suppressing the uncomfortable stories they published will only give wings to those stories when news of the blockage becomes public knowledge, as has happened with the Gambari story.

Experience tells us that stories that are suppressed by the government almost always become “social stories,” that is, stories that go viral because they are voluntarily shared by users on social media platforms.

When Gambari was appointed Buhari’s Chief of Staff, I described him as “A Presidential Babysitter Who Won’t be as Powerful as Abba Kyari.” Well, it has turned out that Gambari himself needs babysitting and is being babysat by his own son. When a babysitter who has been employed to babysit an invalid person needs to be babysat by his own son, you know you have worse problems on your hands than you had anticipated.

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Journalism & Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Peoples Gazette columnist and author of Glocal English & Nigeria’s Digital – Diaspora.

Gazettengr

*Our expectations from new service chiefs, by northern govs

By Our Reporter

Kano state governor, Abdullai Umar Ganduje, has said that to halt the incessant clashes between farmers and herders, the federal government must enact a law banning movement of cattle from the north to other parts of the country.

Ganduje stated this in an interview with newsmen after a special lunch the governors on the platform of the ruling Alł Progressives Congress (APC) had with President Muhammadu Buhari in his private residence at the weekend in Daura, Katsina state.

According to the governor, having a ban on movement of herders would also address the challenge of cattle rustling.

Ganduje while responding to question on how far he had gone with the Ruga project in his state, said “we are building a Ruga settlement in Samsosua Forest, our border with Katsina and we have succeeded in curtailing the effect of banditry in that area.

So, we are building many houses, we are constructing a dam; we are establishing a Cattle Artificial insemination Centre; we are establishing veterinary clinic and already we have started building houses for herdsmen.

“My advocacy is that we should abolish the transportation or trekking of herdsmen from the northern part of Nigeria to the middle belt and to the Southern part of Nigeria.

There should be a law that will ban, otherwise we cannot control the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers and cannot control the cattle rustling which is affecting us greatly.”

On what to expect from the newly appointed Service Chiefs, he said he expects them to work closely with state governors because they (the governors) know what the people need and the black spots in their domains.

Gombe state governor, Muhammad Yahaya, also speaking on his expectations from the new Service Chiefs said “I will ask them to work hard; harder than what Mr. President might have assumed they would do because the task ahead is very challenging and I believe they will live up to expectations.”

Jigawa state governor on his part said “I think they have to listen to people in transfer of intelligence and continue to ask people to pray for them.”

Meanwhile, the Kebbi state governor has described the ongoing revalidation and registration of members of the ruling APC as an opportunity to deepen democracy, show respect for institutions of the party and sanctity of those institutions.

According to him, President Buhari, by re-validating his membership of the APC at his Sarki Yara ‘A’ Registration Centre, Bayajidda Primary School, Daura, Katsina state on Saturday, has demonstrated that he was personally leading by example to show that party’s organs and membership matter in order to deepen democracy in the country.

By Bolanle Bolawole

[email protected] 0705 263 1058

Finally, the president, retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, has changed his Service Chiefs. Giving the ex-Service Chiefs soft landing, they were said to have resigned. You can say that to the Marines! All four chose to resign the same day! Public officers hardly resign here; they stay put, well beyond their welcome. Hardly anyone leaves here when the ovation is loudest. The Nelson Mandela spirit does not reside in Nigeria’s public officers and leaders. Here, they stay put in office until they are disgraced out of it. If the ex-Service Chiefs were to behave honourably, they would have left a long time ago, especially after even the rubber-stamp National Assembly passed motion after motion asking them to leave. Nigerians across party, religious, political, and social strata demanded that they leave but they turned a deaf ear. Presidential spin doctors told us only the president could sack the Service Chiefs. As if we did not know that! But the presidential powers the nit-wits referred to were given to the president by “We, the people” and he is to exercise those powers on our behalf and at our discretion. He failed spectacularly in this wise and when, eventually, he bucked, he acted too little, too late.

Various comments have followed the exit of the Service Chiefs. Some said the ex-Service Chiefs did try their best and can now go on a well-deserved rest. Othrs said it is time for fresh ideas and new hands, especially with the scandalously perilous state of security all over the country, not least of all the losing battle against the Boko Haram insurgency. Therefore, there are those who think the ex-Service Chiefs deserve no accolades but should, in fact, face a probe panel. Humongous sums of money have been sunk into Defence; yet, it had all amounted to money down the drains. Rather than get better under the watch of Buhari, the security situation got worse. That is the verdict of every right-thinking Nigerian, including many in government. Only a few die-hard supporters and rabid Buharists, as they are called, still mouth the gibberish that things have improved from what they used to be. Despite that the ex-Service Chiefs got extended tenure, they still failed abysmally. And they weren’t man enough to throw in the towel when the demand for them to quit became a din.

The ex-Service Chiefs served many years above their term; their failure apart, this was another reason for the public’s anger against them. The rules that set tenure limits are not arbitrary; neither were they written into our statute books by fools. It is for the good of the system as well as for the benefit of everyone. No one is indispensable. Fresh hands and new ideas help the system but when expired elements are retained in a system, it fouls up and pollutes everywhere. The entire environment becomes toxic. It is a river that flows that is clean and fit for human consumption. Stagnant rivers, like the Dead Sea, are dead in the real sense of the word – dead in ideas, dead in innovation, dead in thinking, dead in positive action, dead in integrity – dead in everything positive! That was what the Service Chiefs had become before their exit last week. It was a great disservice done to the nation by Buhari and his ex-Service Chiefs.

Some said Buhari wanted to give the Service Chiefs enough time to turn things around. I accept that argument – but with a caveat. We should not behave like the Chelsea Football Club boss, Roman Abramovich, who sacks coaches every 18 or so months. If Ole, the Manchester United coach, had been sacked earlier this season, we would not have seen him and his boys turn around the situation and sit again atop the Premier League. So, there is wisdom in giving people enough time to prove their mettle – but you must know when to draw the line. A good banker knows when to make the cash call; otherwise, bankruptcy! That Buhari could not draw the line speaks volumes of his competence as a leader and head of government. For someone who had been both military and civilian head of state and commander-in-chief, this is abject.

To the retired Service Chiefs, I must recommend Kobe Bryant, the African-American basketball hero’s immortal words: “We must quit the stage when the ovation is loudest” The Service Chiefs quit when the ovation was lowest – or, better still, when there was no ovation at all, as we witnessed in shouts of joy amongst soldiers in barracks when the news of their disengagement broke. Who, then, did you serve when even your immediate constituency said “good riddance…? Said William Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven stages” (Jacques, in “As You like it”, Act II, Scene VII). The Service Chiefs not only played their own part, they also used up the time of other men. Had they left when they should have, other officers would have had the opportunity of becoming Service Chief. And, perhaps, the story would have been different. Sitting tight in office, however, they denied others their own opportunities and thereby poisoned the system. How could they, then, have possibly garnered support from the rank-and-file or command the loyalty of fellow officers?

Little wonder, then, that soldiers were serially accused of abandoning the battlefield and of turning their back on the enemy while officers were court-martialed for cowardice; accused of acts unbecoming of their calling and of behaviour unbefitting of their ranks. In response, the men accused their bosses of starving them of weapons and arms; of saddling them with obsolete equipment; of denying them of their entitlements; and of playing monkey games with their welfare. Worse, we heard allegations of the fat-cats themselves sabotaging the war efforts, so that the flow of largesse might continue. While the shenanigans continued, the war effort suffered! Exasperated and furious, everyone cried for a change of baton – which only came a few days ago!

Some have said it is better late than never. They are right; if Buhari had insisted on carrying on with the ex-Service Chiefs – just as he seems to be doing with his tribesmen Fulani herdsmen – what could anyone have done? Others have said, however, that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Once Buhari decided on a change of baton, he should have, at least this once, gone the whole hog. He should have done a good job. Sadly, his leopard once again proved incapable of changing its skin. Out of four Service Chiefs, he gave two – the biggest two (Army and Navy) – to the core North while he gave the Southwest the Air Force. Where does the Chief of Defence Staff fall – a General without troops, as they say? Is it South-east or South-south or both? Buhari should have done better than this. The outgoing Service Chiefs, no straightforward Igbo; the in-coming Service Chiefs, again, no straightforward Igbo! Who did the Igbo offend?

And when was the last time a Yoruba headed the Army? Olusegun Obasanjo, in his three years plus as military head of state and eight years as civilian president, never accorded his (?) own Yoruba people the privilege. At least, Goodluck Jonathan gave his cousins, the Igbo, that privilege in Lt.-Gen. Onyeabor Azubuike Ihejirika and also appointed his own South-south persons ( Lt.-Gen. Kenneth Minimah) and then Lt.-Gen. Owoye Andrew Azazi as NSA. The last time a Yoruba headed the Army was in Lt.-Gen. Ipoola Alani Akinrinade (October 1979 – April 1980) – and for just six months! Given that the North/Muslims/Fulani are ensconced in every critical military position in the country – Minister of Defence, NSA, Police, Civil Defence, name it – Buhari should have shared the four Service Chief positions amongst the Middle Belt, South-west, South-east, and the South-south.

Now, how “new” are the new Service Chiefs, two of whom had seen action in the North-east’s theatre of war? One was removed for alleged incompetence but, today, he is back in charge. This is a clear case of the stone which the builders rejected but which has become the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22; Mathew 21:42). Can we, then, call this the Lord’s doing, which is marvellous in our sight, as Jesus posited, or is it Buhari’s doing, which is astounding all the same? A man reportedly failed a class and was removed; today, he has returned to the same class as captain of the ship! Then is the scripture fulfilled that says: “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maiden” (Proverbs 30:19). Unto these must now be added a fifth wonderment: the way Buhari makes his skewed appointments!

But note that someone who is miserable on the field of performance can be an expert in boardroom politics and in the game of lobbying. It is also a possibility that an incumbent, seeking to destroy all likely successors, may seek to destroy everyone that shows up on his radar as a likely successor. Some names were routinely mentioned as likely successors as tongues wagged the ex-Service Chiefs. One of such “likely” successors reportedly died not long ago in what was alleged by some to be mysterious circumstances. Another tragedy of our situation is that many otherwise brilliant careers may soon come to an abrupt ending with the choice of Service Chief made last week. Many officers may have to retire from service, having been by-passed for their subordinates or course mates they may consider it unsuitable for them to work with or work under. I am sure you know that in any class, students know the worth of one another. Where merit is bypassed in making appointments, expecting the best from such a system is tantamount to day-dreaming. Time and time again, we have by so doing shot ourselves in the foot.

Therefore, how “new” the new Service Chiefs are remains to be seen. Ironically, however, the kind of change they will bring about depends on how “new” and untainted they are by the corruption and incompetence of the past. More importantly, how “new” is the appointing authority and how “new” are the marching orders given to the new Service Chiefs by their Commander-in-Chief? For, like Jesus said, a servant is not greater than his master (John 12:20)! Has Buhari changed from his parochial self? Is he now more broad-minded and nationalistic? Is he no longer the patron saint of Fulani herdsmen? Has he retreated from his statement that an attack on Boko Haram is an attack on the North? Is he no longer beholden to Islamic fundamentalism? Buhari’s infamous body language had, so far, ruined the war efforts and set the country aflame all over, especially in the South. Except that changes; the change of baton by Service Chiefs will result in more of the same; in motion without movement; and in “the more you look the less you see” (apologies, Max Romeo).

Need I say more?

Festus Adedayo Ph.D

“Why do men whose brains have taken to the top seem to warehouse such brains while in romance with women, thereby making them easy prey or prisoner in-between the succulence of the female anatomy?  Are women’s brains superior to men’s and the reason why the French call them the destructive female, femmes fatale?
Whatever Aliko went through or is going through in the hands of Spikes and Lewis is the usual story that so many great men went/go through in the hands of women. It only comes in different dimensions.”

How can a man fight very difficult life battles, vanquish them all, be a household name in the world as a result of his handsome laurels in business, and then, all of a sudden, get picked up effortlessly on the bed by women as they do snails in farm furrows? This is the question on the lips of the world as Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, confronts his deconstruction by some self-confessed mistresses Autumn Spikes and Bea Lewis.

This Dangote costly mess on cozy beds has spiked globally, diverting riveting attention to the Kano-born business dinosaur. Lewis claimed she had been Aliko’s mistress for ten years. World’s attention then shifted from Aliko’s multiple billions, his unassuming simplicity and his world-class monstrous refinery, to the narrative of licit or illicit romance. Lewis had, in January this year, shared photographs of their tryst on her Instagram handle. An American restaurateur, she alleged that Aliko broke her heart. Using the metaphor of broken earthenware, she said the billionaire broke her fragile heart into more than a thousand fragments. Identified with the Atlanta Meal Prep, a local cuisine runner that promotes healthy dieting, Lewis began her battle with Aliko from a seemingly superficial level. Within a twinkle of an eye, after breaking this news at midnight, she had attracted to herself over 13,000 followers.
“I dated the richest black man in the world. He broke my heart into 1000 pieces. I learned more from him than any person I’ve ever met. Communicating with a billionaire daily makes you see the world differently,” she had written on Instagram.

To convince Doubting Thomases who might have controverted her claims that she was talking about same boardroom dinosaur, Aliko, Lewis shared photographs of her and Dangote in a dalliance. The lady even went a step further to share with the world what she called her derivables from the tryst.

“I became more organized and finally am able to step away from the daily kitchen operations. I learned to love without strings. Give your best without expectations. Nothing is forever. I realized a half a million-dollar restaurant project was a bad investment. I purchased two properties. I started a consistent fitness regime. Became Vegan. Obtained a profitable stock portfolio. He changed my perspective on work ethic and patience. Once my mindset changed the universe gravitated me to people that uplifted me and increased my net worth mentally and financially,” said Lewis.
Then another lady hopped on the rendezvous. Identified as Autumn Spikes, an African American, she posted a video that went viral of her and Dangote. The clip revealed Africa’s richest man lying on the same couch down by his voluptuous nemesis and a part of his buttocks shyly winking to the world.
In further public interventions by Spikes, it became obvious that the video was a mere “Statement of the Problem,” an attempt to dig a fertile ground, where to situate an ultimate plan to conveniently squeeze cash from Africa’s richest billionaire. Last Thursday, in another post from her handle, @allounda1, Spikes escalated the narrative. Therein, she alleged that Dangote had insulted her by offering a mere $15,000, as well as another $2,500 monthly to shut her mouth, so as not to turn the affair into a global love snafu. Rather than these offers, however, to keep the mess off the streets, she said she was demanding a princely sum of $5 million before she could enter a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that Dangote demanded.

“I was insultingly offered 15k and 2,500 a month to sign an NDA but I declined, I gained legal counsel in which we countered his offer. Mind you his first initial offer wasn’t disclosed in the terms of his proposed NDA. Therefore I was pressured and influenced to sign which was already a violation of his own NDA,” said Spikes.
An acclaimed British professor was once quoted to have said that all the libraries in the world put together do not smell as sweetly as the scent of a woman’s groin. Is this why great men in the world put their greatness in the scabbard when engaged in appropriate or inappropriate relationships with women? Perhaps this is why men, on sighting women, engage in actions they would otherwise never have if they were in possession of their senses? So, is there a mechanism in the man-woman interface that is filled with unspoken and even unknown mesmerism and chemistry? What is it about women that the greatest of all men crumble at the sight and feel of their allure? Why do men whose brains have taken to the top seem to warehouse such brains while in romance with women, thereby making them easy prey or prisoner in-between the succulence of the female anatomy?  Are women’s brains superior to men’s and the reason why the French call them the destructive female, femmes fatale?
Whatever Aliko went through or is going through in the hands of Spikes and Lewis is the usual story that so many great men went/go through in the hands of women. It only comes in different dimensions. Gaius Julius Caesar, Roman General and statesman, reputed to be a major force who played critical roles in the demise of the Roman Republic, as well as the rise of the Roman Empire, also could not resist the thighs of Cleopatra. Daughter of Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra became the Pharaoh after her father’s demise. She was reputed to be a very beautiful woman and specifically described as “a woman of surpassing beauty” with a “charming voice” by Cassius. More than this, Cleopatra was a diplomat imbued with great intellectual prowess, a mathematician and was noted to be astounding for her ability to speak nine languages. At first sight, Cleopatra ogled and desired the Great Caesar and was determined to get him. One day, she organized for a cruise on the Nile River to be undertaken by her and Caesar, in her posh royal barge. By the time they both returned to Alexandria, Cleopatra was pregnant with Caesar’s child who was later named Caesarion.
The narrative of the biblical man of valour Samson, plucked off his prowess by Delilah like a chicken, has been an example over the centuries used to exemplify how powerful men in history are easily captured by women. It is said that women are men’s easiest weak link through which they can be captured and emasculated.

In my quest for an understanding of the dissembling role women played in the lives of powerful men in African history, I spoke with the Iku Baba Yeye, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi yesterday. Alaafin took his time to narrate to me the story of that infamous man in Old Oyo Empire, notorious for unbridled wickedness, Bashorun Gaa. Though I had always cited this story to back up earlier submissions, I couldn’t resist retelling the Alaafin’s variant of it. In it, Gaa was captured through a young lady called Agbonin, though not directly through his libidinous craving.
Being the Old Oyo Empire’s prime minister and lord marshal in the 16th century, Gaa stood in that position from 1750–1774 and oversaw the reigns of four Alaafins of Oyo, even contributing to the death of three of them. Gaa’s military prowess and mastery of the geography of war gave the Empire all-round conquests in wars Oyo fought during this period. As head of the Oyo Mesi (the Oyo council of Kingmakers) he held awesome powers, especially taking into cognizance the fact that the Alaafins he was their Prime Minister were tyrannical. He also acquired so much power during the period. He was said to be so powerful that he could turn to any animal of his choice. More than these, however, Gaa’s talismanic fetish powers and prowess befuddled his sense of reasoning, which made a classical tyrant of him.
He was equally accused of instigating criminal activities in the empire, aiding, abetting and serving as a cover-up for crimes traced to members of his household, as well as serial killings his sons and the head of his slaves were notorious for committing. Power drunk, Bashorun Gaa became uncontrollable, even to Alaafin Abiodun Adegorolu (Adegoolu) who reigned from 770–1789. Adegoolu’s reign was remarkable in Oyo’s history as that of prosperity. The wealth of the nation was so humongous that women gleefully sang of how, during his reign, they offhandedly sewed costly velveteen cloth materials. Coming after the empire’s subjugation of neighbouring Dahomey, Adegoolu brought about economic expansion to his domain and rejected every entreaty to plough the wealth of the empire made from the Dahomey trade into military expansionism. He also collaborated with European merchants of the coast through his policy of peaceful trade with them. This path necessitated the weakening of the empire’s army, conversely strengthened Gaa who was amassing an army and eventually posed a huge challenge to Abiodun’s successor, Alaafin Aole who had to contend with revolts from within the empire.
Gaa hijacked and diverted all the apparatuses of political machinery and power of Oyo kingdom to himself, including all the homage, tributaries which constituted the material paraphernalia of benefits that the Alaafin was entitled to by culture and history. If Alaafin Abiodun allowed these excesses of his Prime Minister, who was so powerful that he had over 500 aides and a palace of his own, he was bound to lose the de facto power to administer the empire.

Then Alaafin Abiodun and close-knit members of his inner cabinet devised a way of neutralizing Bashorun Gaa. The Alaafin’s daughter, Agbonin, an itinerant kola nut hawker, was selected as the bait and eventually went into martyrdom to castrate Gaa. Agbonin sold this particular variant of kola called gbanja, with its multiple faces. Knowing that she could not have immediate access to Gaa, the kola nuts she hawked were soaked in potion and the immediate target was Gaa’s closest aide and indeed, his Chief of Staff, called Gbagi. Gbagi and Gaa were both steeped in metaphysical explorations. They went together to seek spiritual powers. It was said that every of those powers acquired by Gaa, Gbagi duplicated. Those potions were in turn tested on various animals to ascertain their efficacy. As she hawked the kola by Gaa’s palace one day, Gbagi invited her in and was mesmerized by her beauty.
A friendship was thus struck between them and of course, purchase of the gbanja which, unbeknown to him, was for him to inexplicably desire Agbonin. To try the efficacy of the potion, Agbonin was instructed to distance self from Gaa’s palace for a while and by the time she returned, it was obvious from his utterances that Gbagi was already starved of her presence. So on this day, as he got engaged with Agbonin, Gaa had made futile attempts to get across to Gbagi from the inner court of the palace and was forced to saunter to the front of the palace. A bitter exchange then began. Other aides who couldn’t stand the Chief of Staff’s prowess then revealed that he was having an amorous relationship with Gaa’s enemy – Alaafin Abiodun’s daughter. Furious, he called Gbagi all manner of names and threatened to behead him. The latter called his bluff. As Gaa made to enter his palace, Gbagi hit him with a talismanic paralysis belt called onde which instantly paralyzed him. Agbonin was killed immediately as a reprisal by palace courtiers and as Gbagi ran to Alaafin Abiodun’s palace to ask that the Bashorun be immediately captured, one other aide shot him dead. Gaa was reportedly incinerated alive by loyalists of the Alaafin, as a way of ensuring the non-reincarnation of his wickedness. Another variant of the Gaa’s capture is however a bit different. It says that the Prime Minister was looking for an antelope for ritual sacrifice and when Agboin came hawking kola nuts and told him her name, which in Yoruba translates into antelope, he wickedly asked her to be murdered in place of the animal.
I told this longish story and the preceding ones to establish how women are usually the albatrosses of great men in history. A celebrated Juju musician of post-war Nigeria, Ayinde Bakare, was reported to have been a victim of this age-long libidinous trap. Having gone for a gig at the Lagos Island area on October 1, 1972, while on the bandstand, a woman was said to have been positioned at a vantage point, even as she winked coquettishly at the Juju maestro to arrest his attention. Bakare momentarily halted the musical session and walked the backstage to meet the woman. He was never seen alive thereafter. Policemen retrieved his body days after from the lagoon and gave him and other bodies a mass burial. The ‘Bakare’ mark on his hand was what reminded a policeman who took particular notice of the incision when a report was made by his family at the police station, that the famous musician was one of the mass-buried bodies. Bakare was subsequently exhumed after twenty days and given a proper burial by his colleagues, Ebenezer Obey, IK Dairo, Sunny Ade, Adeolu Akinsanya and others.
Today, as it has been since the beginning of creation, women have remained the most poisonous bait deployed to whittle down the power of men. It is more efficacious if such a man has a burningly incontrollable libido. Women have been used to destroy empires, huge conglomerates and even homes. It was that same power that Spikes and Lewis apparently used on the richest man in black Africa. It is said that every man who has blood flowing in his groins cannot resist the incandescent flame of the libido and that when that candle is burning, the brain goes into hibernation mode.

Aliko Dangote is carrying his own cross of libido with Spikes and Lewis. He sure needs the same famous, celebrated brains that culminated in his financial wizardry and legendary business success now. It may not be outlandish to say that, like every man who had fallen prey to a  woman’s bait before him, that famous cerebrum was in abeyance while the escapades were glowing. To get out of these entanglements, he needs the same brains that made him the first in Africa. Now, as Africa’s most accomplished business mogul tries to extricate himself from his libidinous maze, who is the next victim? (newspotng)