Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof Omololu Soyombo, has stepped down.
This followed the setting up of a Special Visitation Panel to the institution by the Federal Government on Friday.
Soyombo, in a statement, said he’s stepping down with immediate effect.
It would be recalled the Government also directed the University Senate to nominate an Acting Vice-Chancellor for the University.
Prof Soyombo said: “With this, I am stepping down, with immediate effect, as Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University.
” I wish to express my sincere appreciation to all members of staff and our dear students, the staff unions, alumni, and the general public for their wonderful support and cooperation in the past ten days since my appointment as Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University on 12th August.
“As I noted in my address to a cross-section of staff on 19th August, I accepted the offer to serve as a call to service, with the objective of restoring peace and stability in the university.”
He prayed the “peace and stability that we so much need and desire at this time be restored very quickly so that the University of Lagos can continue to march on as the University of First Choice and the Nation’s Pride.”
He urged staff and students to continue to go about their lawful activities in a peaceful manner.
*We Should Laud Passage Of CAMA & Those Behind It—Seni Adio, SAN *CAMA WIll Foster Cost Reduction & Greater Transparency On Business Climate— Dr. Jumoke Oduwole *According To Impact Assessment & Economic Indices, 2.9M Jobs To Be Created —Nnanna Ude *Inclusion Of BRIPAN In CAMA, Not To Take Advantage Of Other Professional Bodies—Toyin Bashir *Reduction In Cost Of Securities Registration, Capable Of Unlocking Values—Ozofu Ogiemudia
The NBA-SBL Webinar On Companies & Allied Matters Act, 2020 which TheNigerialawyer(TNL) monitored was held on 20th day of August, 2020, and moderated by the Vice-Chairman NBA-SBL & Lead Partner Detail Commercial Solicitors, Ayuli Jemide.
The speakers who spoke at the webinar were: Seni Adio, SAN, Chairman, NBA-SBL & Managing Partner, Copley Partners; Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, Senior Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business & Secretary, Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council(PEBEC); Alhaji Garba Abubakar, Registrar General, Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC); Ozofu Ogiemudia, Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie ; Nnanna Ude, Senior Fellow(Legislative Reform Strategy & Programme Management) NESG & CEO, Agon Continental Ltd; Toyin Bashir, Partner Banwo & Ighodalo.
The CAC Registrar, A.G Abubakar stated, “Everything about the Law, the issue of a statutory declaration; at least owners of these companies can now have the option to do statement of compliance, so lawyers can be engaged by those who can afford to do so but for those who cannot afford, it means they can register on their own directly”.
Dr. Jumoke Oduwole stated that the CAMA 2020 is tricky, but she’ll “go for the options that provide for electronic meetings, electronic transfer of shares, virtual AGMs” amongst others.
Nnanna Ude also agreed with the moderator on single shareholders limited liability companies etc. He also said it will unlock the power of innovation and enterprise from a number of young people.
Toyin Bashir, however, has two points in which she explained firstly how glad she is on the” Exemption and definition; redefinition of small companies to allow quiet a number of businesses to qualify as being a small company that take credit and not having to deploy that portion of that credit on regulatory costs.” Secondly, on “company rescue & how it is going to open up field of practice and creates a floor for lawyers who think the CAC has taken from them in terms of filing and can choose to make their area of specialist out of it.”
Ozofu Ogiemudia stated that for her, the reduction in the cost of registering securities is going to have such an impact in unlocking values to company that takes credit and not having to deploy a significant portion on regulatory cost. Also, she said company rescue.
However, it was further explained that it now cost less to borrow money, cause when the filings are done at CAC, eventually it’s the customer that pays, so, it’s expected to see more people going to the bank to borrow money at least costs.
While reacting to concerns that people are not sure about the effectiveness of the CAMA 2020, the transition provisions amongst others, the Registrar General explained that “by provision of the authentication Act, the National Assembly has to gazette it and that process is ongoing” therefore, “the Act is to come into effect immediately because there is actually no transition in the new provision “.
“The only transition may relate to issue of share capital, issued and authorized but other provisions are supposed to come into effect immediately.” He added.
Meanwhile, he further stated that “for the new legal entities like LLP and LP might not be immediate because you need an end to end electronic solution to do that but that of one-man company, issues of statement of compliance and other matters relating to new registration can happen as soon as the Law is gazetted.”
Furthermore, responding to when the Law is expected to be gazetted, he said “hopefully by the beginning of October. “We want to see if we can get this accomplished by the end of September, so that latest by 1st October, this Law should be in place. The implementation can start”
In addition, Dr.Oduwole said “it’s rightly conservative. Of course we are going to push for more quicker”.
Meanwhile, reacting to growing concerns of some NGOs that Sections 1 and 839(1) which appear to have given CAC wide powers to remove trustees and capable of being used capriciously, the RG said:
“The controversy is actually unnecessary because these provisions are consistent with best practice. Is not peculiar to Nigeria, we have similar provisions under the Charities Act of UK . In fact, our own provision is no where close to that under the Charities Act. The Charities Act provisions are more stringent.
“Section 839 has two legs to it. The first part deals with the powers of the commission to suspend trustees and the grounds upon which that suspension can be made are clearly stated.”
“CAC may suspend a trustee where there is a misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of the Association or where it is necessary or desirable to do so for the purpose of protecting the property of the Association” amongst others.
He further stated that the power is not absolute because an inquiry has to be made before such is exercised.
In addition, he said that “fundamentally, we need to understand the fact that unlike companies where the Law says if you’re carrying out your business under any name other than your full name or surname, you must register. For associations, you don’t have to register with CAC. You can run your association without registration. The language of the Law is “may” but if you agree to register and you submit yourself to regulatory oversight, then you must behave in accordance with the Law. Your action must be consistent with the Law and your Constitution.”
Furthermore, it was noted that the CAC is involving relevant stakeholders with a view to setting up a committee to look into the regulations and guidelines, “so that we come out with standard guidelines and stakeholders buying. CAC will not do it alone.”
In addition, Dr. Oduwole while sharing her thoughts from the ease of doing business perspectives, she said:
“So first of all, the objective is to reduce cost, and to make it quicker to do business and then, to lear greater transparency on our business climate.”
Therefore, she stated that the laudable provisions on virtual meetings amongst others are certainly ways of reducing costs. Also, “legal community, don’t get upset because we’re expanding the pile. We have a lot more registrations that we’re expecting. The legal work will become more sophisticated, which means more fees. So, let’s not even be upset at all about things like decoration of compliance which are really at the bottom of food chain. There is a lot more to look forward to.”
On cost reduction, “the reduction in the charges to 0.35% and also we expect that about 65% reduction in the entire regime of charges.”
Furthermore, she stated that the CAMA 2020 has laudable innovations and “I am glad to see that the whole community is responding very well to these ease of doing business provisions”, she said.
In addition, while reacting to whether there are things being put in place to fast track the implementation of the objectives of the new Act, she noted that the ease of doing business is a national project and that there is a collaboration with the States Government, National Assembly, Judiciary and several MDAs at the federal level, thus, “its a very collaborative intervention, very close partnership with organized private sector. What this means is that feedback and verification. If we don’t get validation for the project that we set in place and for the reforms that we announced, then we know we are not there.”
“The SBL and PEBEC have been working closely with NESG, with players in the FG MDAs anchored by Ministry of Justice to draft an omnibus bill, we’ve been doing it quietly for about two years now”, she said.
Similarly, she commended the 8th & 9th National Assembly for demonstrating continuity in government. Thus, she said the both have worked as a government in continuum which made the CAMA 2020 to see the light of the day.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nnanna while responding to questions about the impact of the Act on SMEs, he noted that the NESG did an economic impact assessment and it would be discovered that there is global research which suggests that when a country moves from the last quarter of doing business ranking to the first quarter, it produces a 2.3% increase in a GPD.
Therefore, it was noted that in the assessment that was done, a projection was made that in the first year, that by migrating the enterprises into the formal economy, they project “creation of about 2.3 million new jobs in the first year, additional 2.4 in the second year, another 2.9 in the third year and so these are critical economic indices that will be transformed directly simply because we have a new legislation like this.”
“Formalizing the informal economy is critical to GPD growth”, he said.
In another development, Toyin Bashir while reacting to some of the criticisms levied against Section 705(1) of CAMA 2020 which recognizes a kind of licensing regime for parts of insolvency in Nigeria.
Reacting to the controversial recognition of Business Rescue & Insolvency Practitioners Association of Nigeria (BRIPAN) by the Act. She stated that when changes are made in legislations, the first thing is to ascertain the intention of the Lawmakers and whether the practice is usual, in line with global best practices.
She noted that in her view, the object was not to take advantage of other professional associations, she said she “struggles to find fault in such inclusion”. Also, she noted that the other relevant subsections do not only list BRIPAN as the only professional body CAC would consider. She also noted that it would be more “productive to look into the other professional associations CAC should consider and start making a case for it. “
Furthermore, the CAC RG contributed by stating that one does not have to be a member of BRIPAN, therefore, other professionals may be accredited in that line. Thus, he said “the argument does not hold water, there is no basis for that argument at all.”
In addition, Mr. Seni Adio further contributed by saying provisions such as that ought to be commended, “people should be lauding the statute and those behind the statute because what we’ve gotten through the business rescue provision.”
“A lot of these issues in terms of who is eligible, who is qualified can be done through implementing regulations by the CAC. A lot of people try to be mischievous when some of these issues are not considered from a very wholesome perspective.”
In another development, while raising the issue of independent directors under the new Act, Toyin Bashir noted that “the whole rationale for introducing independent directors was essentially to improve decision making at the board to make it more balanced.”
Speaking on Annual General Meetings and whether the new Act mandates small companies to hold same, the CAC RG said:
“I think there is a drafting error, the intention actually is those small companies are actually exempted from holding annual general meetings at all. So, small companies are actually exempted from that provision at all. It’s only private companies other than small companies that are required to hold annual general meetings. A small company does not have to hold meetings. They are exempted from audit, exempted to file financial statements with the CAC but other private companies, there may be big companies that are private like Ecobank and others. Those big private companies have to hold their meetings. What the Law is saying is can they hold it in Nigeria or outside Nigeria.”
Furthermore, speaking on the statutory declaration of Legal Practitioners in the incorporation process under the Act, he noted as follows:
“The issue of statutory declaration by Legal Practitioners is still an option. The promoters have the option to do a statement of compliance or where a Lawyer is involved in the incorporation process, he can submit a statutory declaration.”
“The accreditation remains but it will be renewable annually for a fee.” He added.
“We have so many people on the accreditation list. Some have been barred from practice, some have left the shores of Nigeria and you have other people using their own numbers to make submissions, to submit applications. Through a renewal process, it may not be one year, it maybe five years, at least you will be able to sanitize the list of accredited agents.” He further added.
Professor of Law and United Nations Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity, Professor Obiora Okafor has called on governments, universities and justice sector stakeholders to urgently grow the talent pool of international lawyers who possess high technical and specialist skills to guide Nigeria’s foreign policy responses to complex problems arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Okafor, a highly regarded professor of international human rights law and the York Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies, Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada made these remarks during an online workshop on Thursday, organized by the International Law Association (Nigerian Branch). Themed “International Law and Foreign Relations During and Post-COVID 19″, the workshop featured eminent speakers and experts, including the President of the Nigerian Branch of the ILA, Professor Fidelis Oditah, QC, SAN; Professor Damilola Olawuyi, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Afe Babalola University; Ms. Omotese Eva, Legal Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nigeria; Dr. Olufemi Elias, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and visiting professor of law at Queen Mary University London; and Yusuf Danmadami, Senior Legal Officer, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Abuja.
In his keynote remarks, Professor Okafor stated that “international law and foreign relations have tended to be shaped by crisis and international lawyers have always had, and will continue to have, an important role in re-shaping these disciplines in moments of crisis, such as the current one, induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this background, international law and lawyers will need to pay attention to certain challenges that will likely become exacerbated and heightened by and as a result of the pandemic. These include: the need for even more international solidarity to tackle global challenges which affect us all; the need for equitable access across the globe to any COVID-19 vaccine that is invented; the need to make trade, especially in agricultural produce and textiles much fairer for poorer countries; and the need to avoid the grave challenge posed to multilateralism by reactionary populism amongst others.” While urging law faculties and universities to develop specialized courses in new and emerging areas of international law, the don identified the need for greater refinement and understanding of international legal regimes that regulate debt relief; illicit financial flows; human rights; human migration and movement and poverty amelioration amongst others.
In the ensuing panel discussions, Omotese Eva noted that given the rapidly evolving nature of international law, more practical and innovative skills development courses are need at the university level to acquaint students with the skillset required for an international affairs career in a rapidly changing world. Similarly, Dr. Olufemi Elias, who is Nigeria’s nominee for the Judge of the International Court of Justice position, highlighted how international lawyers are developing innovative responses to the challenges posed by the pandemic, and then urged students and aspiring international lawyers to make the most of the wealth of resources, online databases and tools to make in routes to new and emerging areas of international law. On his part, Yusuf Danmadami of ECOWAS noted that since charity begins from home, several of the homegrown community laws, rules and guidelines developed by ECOWAS should be introduced to students at an early stage so that Africa and Africans can play much more significant roles in the development of international law.
In closing the session, the President of the Nigerian Branch of the ILA, Professor Fidelis Oditah, QC, SAN highlighted the capacity development opportunities that the ILA provides for the study, clarification and development of international law in Nigeria. According to him, “the Nigerian Branch of the ILA regularly hosts innovative lectures, seminars, conferences, and other capacity development programs that can help all stakeholders to stay up-to-date in this important field of law,” he concluded.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. A. U. Mustapha, has faulted the dis-invitation of the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Annual General Conference scheduled to hold from 26th to 29th of August, 2020.
Mustapha, in a letter, addressed to the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Paul Usoro (SAN), sighted by TheNigeriaLawyer, described the dis-invitation as “scandalous” and an affront to the Rule of Law having been done on the basis of a Petition by Open Bar Initiative without reference to the governor
Mustapha added that it would not be out of place to insinuate political motive behind the dis-invitation. He urged the NBA not to allow itself to be used as an instrument of vendetta.
Read the letter below:
21st August, 2020.
Paul Usoro, SAN Nigeria Bar Association President National Secretariat NBA House, Plot 1101 Mohammadu Buhari Way, Central Business District Abuja, F.C.T, Nigeria
Dear Sir,
RE: WITHDRAWAL OF INVITE TO MALLAM NASIR EL-RUFAI BY THE NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION
The news of the withdrawal by the Annual General Conference Planning Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, its earlier invitation to Governor NasirAhmed El-Rufai as a guest speaker in the forthcoming NBA 60th Annual General Conference was received by my humble self with rude shock and bewilderment. It is utterly scandalous to say the least. My response is principally dictated by the strange circumstance leading to and surrounding the said withdrawal of the invitation which is based on a one sided allegations contained in a petition by the so-called Open Law Initiative which was believed and acted upon by the Annual General Conference Planning Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association without any reference to Governor El-Rufai.
The decision taken by the NBA to withdraw their invitation to Governor El-Rufai on the basis of the wild and unsubstantiated allegations contained in the Open Bar Initiative Petition without any reference to the Governor is not only a naked affront on the rule of law but also a contradiction of the NBA’s motto which held itself out as the custodian, defender and guardian Angel of the rule of law in Nigeria.
The implications of this grievous decision by the NBA demonstrates a total disregard for the basic constitutional provision of fair hearing which is the foundation and bedrock of the rule of law designed for the safeguard of fundamental right and freedom in any civilised and democratic society. It therefore beats all imagination that an elitist professional body like the NBA could take a decision that negates the very essence of this fundamental constitutional provision, no matter how tempting or appealing the reason may be.
Going further, it is also instructive to note that the NBA sat down, constituted itself unto a court and adjudged Governor El-Rufai guilty of all the allegations contained in the said Petition without hearing a word from the Governor and thereafter proceeded to apply the sanction requested by the Petitioners which is a withdrawal of the invitation. What a “court?” Can this be called justice and fairness? Is this exemplary?
It would certainly not be out of place to insinuate political motives behind this unfortunate decision as the NBA as a professional body who is supposed to be in the fore front of the protection and promotion of the rule of law in Nigeria should know better than this. After all, members of the NBA Executive and Annual Conference Planning Committee as constituted can be counted among the brightest legal minds in Nigeria.
On a final note, this attitude of the Association drives home the point that our beloved country still has a long way to go. The Nigerian Bar Association is not just an Association, it is an Association that is expected to serve as the conscience of the nation. If such an Association now descends into the realm of partisanship, parochialism, unfounded hearsay and one sided justice, then the Country is lost indeed. I consider it important to advise that the Association maintains its hitherto apolitical nature. It should not lend itself a tool of vendetta in the hands of unscrupulous people who wants to use the NBA to fan the embers of discord
God bless the Nigerian Bar Association. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Modern technology and international cooperation could limit the coronavirus pandemic to less than two years, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
“Hoping we can have additional tools like a vaccine, I think we can finish it in a shorter time than the 1918 flu,” he told a news conference in Geneva, referring to the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed tens of millions of lives until 1920.
While the novel coronavirus can spread more easily because the world is far more interconnected than it was 100 years ago, modern technology has given humanity the tools to fight COVID-19 more effectively than the Spanish flu, Tedros said.
“So we hope to finish this pandemic in less than two years,” he said.
However, Tedros warned that “even if we do have a vaccine, it won’t end the pandemic on its own.”
Countries must not simply bank on a future vaccine but must implement known effective health measures, while people must adjust their lives to curb infections, the UN health chief stressed.
COVID-19 is believed to have originated in China late last year.
Since then, more than 22 million cases and some 780,000 associated deaths have been reported around the world, according to the WHO.
Addressing more immediate concerns among parents in many countries where new school terms are starting, senior WHO scientist Maria Van Kerkhove said that the pandemic must be fought in the communities where children and teachers live.
If the novel coronavirus is spreading rapidly through communities, it can also enter schools, she said at the press briefing.
“It is really critical that we bring outbreaks under control and transmission under control in areas where schools operate,” Van Kerkhove said, in response to a question about whether WHO recommends reopening schools as cases increase in several European countries.
Schools do not only educate, but also play a vital role in feeding children and providing social interaction, said Van Kerkhove, WHO’s chief COVID-19 scientist.
As mask requirements for young people differ by country, the WHO plans to issue guidance on face coverings for children in different age groups in the coming days.
WHO emergency operations chief Mike Ryan warned, however, that masks are just one of many tools to control the virus’ spread, and that they are not a substitute for social distancing or for a lower number of students in classes.
Van Kerkhove acknowledged that scientific knowledge is still limited about children and the transmission of the virus.
“Studies are preliminary and few,” she said.
What is known is that children of all ages can become infected, but they that they usually suffer only mild symptoms, she said. (dpa/NAN)
There were strands of gray hairs standing at attention on her head. However, neither that nor the fact that she wasn’t wearing any serious make up could diminish or dwarf the fact that Mrs. Roli Bode-George (formerly Roli Adeniyi) is a very, very beautiful woman. And still looks very good and great even at her age. A one-time popular face and bonafide member of the high society, the ravishing beauty is now the Director General of National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). At their office, on Shaw Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, on Wednesday, November 18, 2015, and during the unveiling of their latest anti-drug TV commercial, featuring some of their celebrity ambassadors, AZUH ARINZE, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, YES INTERNATIONAL! Magazine as well as one of the ambassadors couldn’t resist asking the wife of PDP top shot, Chief Bode George, a few questions. And below is the result…
How would you describe what unfolded here today? It’s a laudable achievement, both for NDLEA and the NGO, The Drug Salvation Foundation (headed by Wilson Ighodalo). I’m sure you know that we launched the master plan in June and in line with best international practices. We are telling the people that we have a balanced approach to dealing with the drug issue. We are moving from being reactive to being an intelligence – led organization. Part of our mandate is to ensure that we counsel people who are dependent on drugs and also to ensure that we do advocacy so that people don’t get into it; that it (drugs) is not enticing for people. I know that our youths are under a lot of pressure and so what we are trying to say to people here is – if you reduce the demand side by doing a lot of advocacy, then it’s not going to be lucrative for the people who are supplying the drugs. That’s one. And we are saying we have to have a balanced approach to the problem. Formerly and before the master plan, we were always on the supply side and realized that we were lacking a little bit on the demand side. So, what we have done is to step up and we give a balanced approach – equal representation, both to the demand and the supply sides. And most of the part of the demand side is to make sure that the demand for drugs is really reducing and that is to ensure that people do not use drugs or do not even abuse drugs. Because some drugs are licit, but they are abused and put into illicit use, like codeine. It’s for cough; nothing wrong with it. But the codeine inside it makes people high and sometimes students abuse it. So, what this advert has done is that we’ve got celebrities coming out to tell you, look, you can achieve things in life; achieve your goals without doing drugs. And one of the things I was happy about was that I saw people from sports, people that are doing well business-wise telling you they’ve achieved it and they’ve been drug-free and they’ve been clean and that’s a good message to send out. And it’s also a time for us to say that look, reaching people through media, social media, which NDLEA is initiating, is great. We are now on Twitter, we tweet. I’m surprised we have over a 1000 followers and we are less than one year. Also people ask us – should we do this? What should we be doing? And you will find out that it’s been very positive and we’ve gotten a lot of response. It’s not even just for those who are dependent on drugs, the drug-dependent people, but also about those who are caring alongside. Because the challenge is more on the person who is caring and sometimes they need to talk to somebody, and sometimes they need to understand that it’s not just them going through this thing. And there’s a lot of stigma. We are trying to remove the stigma. If you are using drugs, you can walk in and in our centres now, we have a lot of people who are walk-in patients, which is a step in the right direction. It shows that we are doing something right.
Other than these celebrities whom you have netted to assist with the message of say no to drugs, what other strategies are you adopting to ensure that there’s a reduction in the in-take of drugs? Well, we have what we call Unplug. It’s an educational programme where we go to schools. It’s in line with the EU…the programme is being co-ordinated by the UNIDC office in Nigeria and what we are trying to do is that we are training teachers, training people in schools to ensure that people understand and that they are educated (about drugs). The kind of programme we are doing is that we are not telling too much, but just enough to make sure that they understand the ills and to keep them away from drugs. That’s one. Then, we have what we call Drug Anonymous, which is an NDLEA initiative and that is where you can get counseling, online counseling and telephone counseling, which is free. So, you call in, but we take the cost of the counseling and that started last year. Which we celebrated during the Drug-Free Day. That’s another one and that’s where you can get counseling; not just for you. Because if you are looking for help, you can just call. You don’t have to have money, because people that are dependent on drugs, usually, it’s a very expensive habit and of course, if they need help, they can’t call. So, I just thought okay, what can we do? So, with our team, the drug demand reduction, we decided okay, let us go for something where you don’t have to pay and you can get help. That’s one. You can go online. We have online counseling as well. We are now upgrading our rehab centres.We have out-patients and we have in-patients. Not all States. But what is important is that all over Nigeria, at least in every geo-political zone, almost every State, NDLEA has an out-patient counseling centre. But we have in-house counseling too where you can come into rehab, where we ensure that you will be checked by psychiatrists and you are okay. Because we are just the counseling side and then we counsel you, we give you motivational speaking, we help you to deal with the addiction, because what I want to say, which is the most important thing, is that we should know that drug dependency is an illness. Like high blood pressure and they are managed. And what we have to do is to help them manage it. And so when you manage it, you can have a relapse. Like you have in every sickness. So, we have to make people understand that what we are trying to explain to people is that yes, when you have people, dependants-fathers, brothers, sisters, anyone that depends on you on drugs. Don’t look at them and say we helped you last year, you’ve fallen back into the situation. What is happening is that it’s a sickness, it recurs. But you have to manage it. Eventually when you keep counseling and you motivate them, they get off it and what you also have to know is that one of the most common of all drug abuses here is cannabis sativa. That’s what we know as hemp or Igbo and the truth of the matter is that it resides in a fat of the brain and anything that resides in the fat also comes out as…So, when it goes, it comes. And so they will say but he was in the rehab, we took him to rehab. Why is he back into it? It’s not that he’s back into it. It’s just that it is in the fat, it’s likely to recur and this thing is like a deformity of one part of your brain. Which people have to realize and when people realize what it is, then people will understand and they can cope more. A lot of people are not coping with their children and they are very frustrated because they don’t understand really what it entails.
You’ve not been here (NDLEA) for too long, but you seem to know too much about drugs. How did you do it? Put it this way – when I came in, I was very much of a novice. But first of all, you have got to have a passion. Having been trained by the best, I was lucky I was trained by the Americans, and then I was trained by the UNIDC in counseling skills and then I moved on from there to Train The Trainer. And I’ve always had a passion for counseling. So, I’ve always done counseling on the side. But the most important thing is that you have to build capacity. I was lucky that I had capacity built for me over a period of one year. It was very tedious because I was going from one training to the other, from learning how to shoot to law enforcement management, to drug counseling and all that. But it’s the training. First of all, you must go for training, and then in everything, outside of training, you also got to be dedicated, you got to be committed to the cause. One of the things that is happening in Nigeria is that we are not committed to the cause of the Nigerian agenda and right now, I can say that for the NDLEA people, we are committed to the cause.
What will you describe as your greatest achievement since you arrived here? What I think I will describe as my greatest achievement is…when I look at it, we’ve done quite a lot of things. But one of the things I am proud of is the fact that we were able to accomplish the blueprint from the masterplan. People were saying it was not going to be completed, we were not going to be able to launch it, but we did. That is one. And also the fact that we were able to get new standard operating procedures – SOP. Standard Operating Procedures for the agency. But my greatest achievement, I believe, is that we were the first in Africa to launch, to fight the drug war and deal with drug demand reduction from social media. So, when we went to the international conference, Nigeria was applauded as being the first to take that initiative. It was something that I had been passionate about and with my team, because everything is team work. It’s not about me, it’s about us. I will say that’s my greatest achievement, and for giving Nigeria the first in Africa to use social media to fight drugs. I mean, it was applauded at the last Crime and Drug Conference and it won first for Nigeria. It’s good that Nigeria is being showcased for doing something very good and being the first in Africa. For me, it was my best achievement in NDLEA.
What would you have loved to have sorted out by now that you’ve not been able to? Government is continuous. Right now, I think that we are a step in the right direction. There are many things that we can do, but unfortunately it’s a lot of funding. But now, we are trying to think outside the nine dots. We are trying to look for co-operation, partnership with people who we know are vetted, because you know, with drugs, people can come and partner with you and then they can be involved in drugs. So, we need to do proper public and private partnerships and also what we are trying to do is to get civil society organisations, like we’ve just done today, to partner with us. Because that way, it is easier to do the fight. What I will like to see more done is… We need a lot of international co-operations from different organisations, different governments: United States, UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, West African hub, South Africa. I will like to see more of that. I think that in line with best international practice, the best way to go is regional co-operation. And one of the things that we have said at the International Police Conference which we just came back from is that we must ensure and insist on more international co-operation. But one of the things that I look forward to, which is in line with our masterplan, is to have inter-agency co-operation. We need to move away from wasting resources and ensure that we move away from political stuff. We need to be able to join together to do things together, programmes together so that we can cut the waste in cost by duplicating efforts.
What has changed about you since your arrival at NDLEA? Not much! Not really much! I just think that I’m a different person. I think about life differently (now). Before I came into NDLEA, I had gone through quite a few challenges. So, it wasn’t coming to NDLEA; it was that a lot of things had changed me. I had gone through challenges with my daughter, and you know one thing about drug abuse, it’s not just that a child abuses drugs. Sometimes people who are professionals can actually do the wrong thing. So, drug abuse has different areas. Yes, we have drug abuse, but how about drugs that are given to people wrongly and have effects. So, I think differently; I have a different perception to life now. And then maybe also I may not be as sociable (as before), because I have to be very careful now…
(Interruption) – I was going to ask you that question – you used to be a society lady, but all of a sudden we don’t get to see you at events anymore. Why? It’s not that. When you are in a different position, you are more careful. Being a public servant; when you are doing different things, people expect different characteristics. If you are in law enforcement, it’s a different ball game all together. So, you take on the personality of that and that is what I have done. People say we don’t see you outside anymore, but that is just part of my job. I am more dedicated to the enforcement of law and ensuring that we are drug-free. And if you are going to lead, leaders must lead by example and I’ve chosen to live by that. Everything that I do, I just live by my example.
At the expiration of your tenure at NDLEA, what would you like the people you will be leaving behind to say about you? When I leave NDLEA, I would like people to say that I built a team. Because I’m a student of management; I’m doing my PhD in Management and one of the things I’ve realized is that we have a unique society. It’s law enforcement and so it’s para-military. But one of the things I want you to know is that everybody has something to contribute, everybody has a good idea and what we have to learn to do is to ensure that we do not silence the voice of the people that work under us. I want to believe that I gave voice to everybody that worked under me for them to be able to express their ideas and to put those ideas into practice and so that those ideas are achievable and they become realizable. The second thing that I want to leave behind is that I would want to leave and believe that I left the agency a better place. I want to believe that I did a lot in the area of welfare and putting the agency in better stead. The agency is an agency of integrity and I make bold to say that it’s one of the very few law enforcement agencies where there’s almost zero-corruption and I want to say that I helped to continue that fight. There are many things that I can think that I would want to be known by, but I would want to be known by the fact that there was a leader who came, said something and can be held by her word, lived by example and left the place better than she met it.
Is the NDLEA job so strenuous that you are now growing gray hairs or what? You used to look smashing and very good? And without the gray hairs… (Laughing) – No! I think as you get into more serious managerial positions, you add a little bit of gray. But also I’m above 50 years now. So, I think age also has a little bit to do with it. But you see, in life, people should also watch it. Looks are very deceptive. I’ve had a lot of gray for a long time, but sometimes when you are in law enforcement and you are working late…sometimes we leave the office 10.30, 11pm. Last week, I was here at the weekend working. You don’t even have time to dye the hair, but trust me, dye can do the trick (General laughter).
The rescission of the invitation extended to Governor Nasir El-Rufai to speak at the annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) as a consequence of sustained social media pressures from people who are discomfited by his history of intolerance and verbal terrorism against his own people will inflict tremendous violence on the governor’s psychic well-being.
You see, there is nothing El-Rufai hankers after more than the approval of the intellectual, media, and cultural elites of Nigeria’s Southwest. He lives for and basks in their plaudits and strives excessively hard to avoid inviting their disapprobation.
I had always known this, but I developed a heightened awareness of it when a fellow northern Nigerian Muslim called my attention to it in his disagreement with a social media update I wrote on August 18 about El-Rufai’s visceral anti-Southern Kaduna bigotry.
“Why does El-Rufai hate and despise the people of Southern Kaduna with such unnaturally infernal intensity?” I wrote. “He strains hard, often too hard, to be seen as ‘cosmopolitan’ when he relates with Southern Christians. Why can’t he even pretend to be prepared to get along with the people of Southern Kaduna? I don’t get it.”
My interlocutor said El-Rufai’s stone-cold derision and loathing of the people of Southern Kaduna broadly represents his attitude toward most northerners, whether they are Christian or Muslim, Hausa-Fulani or ethnic minorities. His disdain for and murderous rage toward the people of Southern Kaduna is on a par with, or even less vicious than, his attitude toward Shiites with whom he shares the same religion.
He added that El-Rufai’s contempt for the people of Southern Kaduna may be magnified by his self-conscious nurturing of the historical memory of the enslavement of the ancestors of the people of Southern Kaduna by his ancestors but that he is an equal-opportunity rhetorical pisser on everyday northern Nigerians.
El-Rufai cherishes the illusion that he is the undisputed champion of the North. He thinks he is the region’s nonpareil center fielder and regards most northerners as beneath him. The only people who humble him and whose approbation he perpetually seeks—obviously for transactional and opportunistic reasons—are the elites of Nigeria’s Southwest.
On the surface, this sounds like a cheap, conspiratorial whispering campaign until you step back and gaze at the facts. Let’s start from the obvious. El-Rufai’s Special Adviser on Media and Communication who issues press statements on his behalf is some guy called Muyiwa Adekeye, although there are scores of competent media personalities from Kaduna who can do that job.
Ordinarily, I would have applauded El-Rufai’s cosmopolitanism in appointing a “non-indigene” to be his spokesperson, but he didn’t appoint Adekeye as his spokesperson as a testament to his broadmindedness; he did so because the only constituency whose opinions of him he truly cares about are those of the elites of the Southwest, and only an Adekeye can effectively communicate his self-presentation to that constituency.
El-Rufai also has a slew of well-paid “social media influencers” as his “social media consultants” (which is a polite term for visceral and vicious social media attack dogs), all of whom are from the Southwest. He, of course, also throws a few miserly crumbs to hordes of hungry northern Nigerian social media users to defend him, but he really doesn’t care what the North, or even Kaduna State, thinks of him.
Recall, too, that the annual Kaduna Book and Arts Festival, also informally known as KABAFEST or KADAFEST, which El-Rufai finances, is largely powered by the Lagos literary elite, even though, on paper, it is supposed to be a “celebration and promotion of creatives in the Northern region of Nigeria.”
When he ventured into newspaper publishing in 2004 by founding NEXT, El-Rufai hired members of the Lagos media elite. The paper was also headquartered in Lagos, not Kaduna or Abuja. And he has a substantial financial stake in a prominent digital-native newspaper that is also run by members of the Lagos media elite.
I am not saying this to disparage or begrudge the media, intellectual, and cultural elites of Southwest Nigeria but to show that El-Rufai’s politics of ethnic and religious supremacy isn’t blind and unbridled. It is carefully circumscribed. It is nurtured by his warrantless contempt for northern Nigerians and delimited by the profound inferiority complex he feels before the elites of Southwest Nigeria whose admiration he lives for.
That is precisely why his humiliation by the NBA has rankled him intensely and torn his self-esteem into shreds. The greatest gift in this saga for northern Nigerian victims of El-Rufai’s bigotry and disdain is that they now know where to go when they want to get at him.
Humans are lucky to live a hundred years. Oak trees may live a thousand; mayflies, in their adult form, a single day. But they are all alive in the same way. They are made up of cells which embody flows of energy and stores of information. Their metabolisms make use of that energy, be it from sunlight or food, to build new molecules and break down old ones, using mechanisms described in the genes they inherited and may, or may not, pass on.
It is this endlessly repeated, never quite perfect reproduction which explains why oak trees, humans, and every other plant, fungus or single-celled organism you have ever seen or felt the presence of are all alive in the same way. It is the most fundamental of all family resemblances. Go far enough up any creature’s family tree and you will find an ancestor that sits in your family tree, too. Travel further and you will find what scientists call the last universal common ancestor, luca. It was not the first living thing. But it was the one which set the template for the life that exists today.
And then there are viruses. In viruses the link between metabolism and genes that binds together all life to which you are related, from bacteria to blue whales, is broken. Viral genes have no cells, no bodies, no metabolism of their own. The tiny particles, “virions”, in which those genes come packaged—the dot-studded disks of coronaviruses, the sinister, sinuous windings of Ebola, the bacteriophages with their science-fiction landing-legs that prey on microbes—are entirely inanimate. An individual animal, or plant, embodies and maintains the restless metabolism that made it. A virion is just an arrangement of matter.
The virus is not the virion. The virus is a process, not a thing. It is truly alive only in the cells of others, a virtual organism running on borrowed hardware to produce more copies of its genome. Some bide their time, letting the cell they share the life of live on. Others immediately set about producing enough virions to split their hosts from stem to stern.
The virus has no plan or desire. The simplest purposes of the simplest life—to maintain the difference between what is inside the cell and what is outside, to move towards one chemical or away from another—are entirely beyond it. It copies itself in whatever way it does simply because it has copied itself that way before, in other cells, in other hosts.
That is why, asked whether viruses are alive, Eckard Wimmer, a chemist and biologist who works at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, offers a yes-and-no. Viruses, he says, “alternate between nonliving and living phases”. He should know. In 2002 he became the first person in the world to take an array of nonliving chemicals and build a virion from scratch—a virion which was then able to get itself reproduced by infecting cells.
The fact that viruses have only a tenuous claim to being alive, though, hardly reduces their impact on things which are indubitably so. No other biological entities are as ubiquitous, and few as consequential. The number of copies of their genes to be found on Earth is beyond astronomical. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy and a couple of trillion galaxies in the observable universe. The virions in the surface waters of any smallish sea handily outnumber all the stars in all the skies that science could ever speak of.
Back on Earth, viruses kill more living things than any other type of predator. They shape the balance of species in ecosystems ranging from those of the open ocean to that of the human bowel. They spur evolution, driving natural selection and allowing the swapping of genes.
They may have been responsible for some of the most important events in the history of life, from the appearance of complex multicellular organisms to the emergence of dna as a preferred genetic material. The legacy they have left in the human genome helps produce placentas and may shape the development of the brain. For scientists seeking to understand life’s origin, they offer a route into the past separate from the one mapped by humans, oak trees and their kin. For scientists wanting to reprogram cells and mend metabolisms they offer inspiration—and powerful tools.
II A lifestyle for genes
The idea of a last universal common ancestor provides a plausible and helpful, if incomplete, answer to where humans, oak trees and their ilk come from. There is no such answer for viruses. Being a virus is not something which provides you with a place in a vast, coherent family tree. It is more like a lifestyle—a way of being which different genes have discovered independently at different times. Some viral lineages seem to have begun quite recently. Others have roots that comfortably predate luca itself.
Disparate origins are matched by disparate architectures for information storage and retrieval. In eukaryotes—creatures, like humans, mushrooms and kelp, with complex cells—as in their simpler relatives, the bacteria and archaea, the genes that describe proteins are written in double-stranded dna. When a particular protein is to be made, the dna sequence of the relevant gene acts as a template for the creation of a complementary molecule made from another nucleic acid, rna. This messenger rna (mrna) is what the cellular machinery tasked with translating genetic information into proteins uses in order to do so.
Because they, too, need to have proteins made to their specifications, viruses also need to produce mrnas. But they are not restricted to using double-stranded dna as a template. Viruses store their genes in a number of different ways, all of which require a different mechanism to produce mrnas. In the early 1970s David Baltimore, one of the great figures of molecular biology, used these different approaches to divide the realm of viruses into seven separate classes (see diagram).
In four of these seven classes the viruses store their genes not in dna but in rna. Those of Baltimore group three use double strands of rna. In Baltimore groups four and five the rna is single-stranded; in group four the genome can be used directly as an mrna; in group five it is the template from which mrna must be made. In group six—the retroviruses, which include hiv—the viral rna is copied into dna, which then provides a template for mrnas.
Because uninfected cells only ever make rna on the basis of a dna template, rna-based viruses need distinctive molecular mechanisms those cells lack. Those mechanisms provide medicine with targets for antiviral attacks. Many drugs against hiv take aim at the system that makes dna copies of rna templates. Remdesivir (Veklury), a drug which stymies the mechanism that the simpler rna viruses use to recreate their rna genomes, was originally developed to treat hepatitis C (group four) and subsequently tried against the Ebola virus (group five). It is now being used against sars–cov-2 (group four), the covid-19 virus.
Studies of the gene for that rna-copying mechanism, rdrp, reveal just how confusing virus genealogy can be. Some viruses in groups three, four and five seem, on the basis of their rdrp-gene sequence, more closely related to members of one of the other groups than they are to all the other members of their own group. This may mean that quite closely related viruses can differ in the way they store their genomes; it may mean that the viruses concerned have swapped their rdrp genes. When two viruses infect the same cell at the same time such swaps are more or less compulsory. They are, among other things, one of the mechanisms by which viruses native to one species become able to infect another.
How do genes take on the viral lifestyle in the first place? There are two plausible mechanisms. Previously free-living creatures could give up metabolising and become parasitic, using other creatures’ cells as their reproductive stage. Alternatively genes allowed a certain amount of independence within one creature could have evolved the means to get into other creatures.
Living creatures contain various apparently independent bits of nucleic acid with an interest in reproducing themselves. The smallest, found exclusively in plants, are tiny rings of rna called viroids, just a few hundred genetic letters long. Viroids replicate by hijacking a host enzyme that normally makes mrnas. Once attached to a viroid ring, the enzyme whizzes round and round it, unable to stop, turning out a new copy of the viroid with each lap.
Viroids describe no proteins and do no good. Plasmids—somewhat larger loops of nucleic acid found in bacteria—do contain genes, and the proteins they describe can be useful to their hosts. Plasmids are sometimes, therefore, regarded as detached parts of a bacteria’s genome. But that detachment provides a degree of autonomy. Plasmids can migrate between bacterial cells, not always of the same species. When they do so they can take genetic traits such as antibiotic resistance from their old host to their new one.
Recently, some plasmids have been implicated in what looks like a progression to true virus-hood. A genetic analysis by Mart Krupovic of the Pasteur Institute suggests that the Circular Rep-Encoding Single-Strand-dna (cress–dna) viruses, which infect bacteria, evolved from plasmids. He thinks that a dna copy of the genes that another virus uses to create its virions, copied into a plasmid by chance, provided it with a way out of the cell. The analysis strongly suggests that cress–dna viruses, previously seen as a pretty closely related group, have arisen from plasmids this way on three different occasions.
Such jailbreaks have probably been going on since very early on in the history of life. As soon as they began to metabolise, the first proto-organisms would have constituted a niche in which other parasitic creatures could have lived. And biology abhors a vacuum. No niche goes unfilled if it is fillable.
It is widely believed that much of the evolutionary period between the origin of life and the advent of luca was spent in an “rna world”—one in which that versatile substance both stored information, as dna now does, and catalysed chemical reactions, as proteins now do. Set alongside the fact that some viruses use rna as a storage medium today, this strongly suggests that the first to adopt the viral lifestyle did so too. Patrick Forterre, an evolutionary biologist at the Pasteur Institute with a particular interest in viruses (and the man who first popularised the term luca) thinks that the “rna world” was not just rife with viruses. He also thinks they may have brought about its end.
The difference between dna and rna is not large: just a small change to one of the “letters” used to store genetic information and a minor modification to the backbone to which these letters are stuck. And dna is a more stable molecule in which to store lots of information. But that is in part because dna is inert. An rna-world organism which rewrote its genes into dna would cripple its metabolism, because to do so would be to lose the catalytic properties its rna provided.
An rna-world virus, having no metabolism of its own to undermine, would have had no such constraints if shifting to dna offered an advantage. Dr Forterre suggests that this advantage may have lain in dna’s imperviousness to attack. Host organisms today have all sorts of mechanisms for cutting up viral nucleic acids they don’t like the look of—mechanisms which biotechnologists have been borrowing since the 1970s, most recently in the form of tools based on a bacterial defence called crispr. There is no reason to imagine that the rna-world predecessors of today’s cells did not have similar shears at their disposal. And a virus that made the leap to dna would have been impervious to their blades.
Genes and the mechanisms they describe pass between viruses and hosts, as between viruses and viruses, all the time. Once some viruses had evolved ways of writing and copying dna, their hosts would have been able to purloin them in order to make back-up copies of their rna molecules. And so what began as a way of protecting viral genomes would have become the way life stores all its genes—except for those of some recalcitrant, contrary viruses.
III The scythes of the seas
It is a general principle in biology that, although in terms of individual numbers herbivores outnumber carnivores, in terms of the number of species carnivores outnumber herbivores. Viruses, however, outnumber everything else in every way possible.
This makes sense. Though viruses can induce host behaviours that help them spread—such as coughing—an inert virion boasts no behaviour of its own that helps it stalk its prey. It infects only that which it comes into contact with. This is a clear invitation to flood the zone. In 1999 Roger Hendrix, a virologist, suggested that a good rule of thumb might be ten virions for every living individual creature (the overwhelming majority of which are single-celled bacteria and archaea). Estimates of the number of such creatures on the planet come out in the region of 1029-1030. If the whole Earth were broken up into pebbles, and each of those pebbles smashed into tens of thousands of specks of grit, you would still have fewer pieces of grit than the world has virions. Measurements, as opposed to estimates, produce numbers almost as arresting. A litre of seawater may contain more than 100bn virions; a kilogram of dried soil perhaps a trillion.
Metagenomics, a part of biology that looks at all the nucleic acid in a given sample to get a sense of the range of life forms within it, reveals that these tiny throngs are highly diverse. A metagenomic analysis of two surveys of ocean life, the Tara Oceans and Malaspina missions, by Ahmed Zayed of Ohio State University, found evidence of 200,000 different species of virus. These diverse species play an enormous role in the ecology of the oceans.
A litre of seawater may contain 100bn virions; a kilogram of dried soil perhaps a trillion
On land, most of the photosynthesis which provides the biomass and energy needed for life takes place in plants. In the oceans, it is overwhelmingly the business of various sorts of bacteria and algae collectively known as phytoplankton. These creatures reproduce at a terrific rate, and viruses kill them at a terrific rate, too. According to work by Curtis Suttle of the University of British Columbia, bacterial phytoplankton typically last less than a week before being killed by viruses.
This increases the overall productivity of the oceans by helping bacteria recycle organic matter (it is easier for one cell to use the contents of another if a virus helpfully lets them free). It also goes some way towards explaining what the great mid-20th-century ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson called “the paradox of the plankton”. Given the limited nature of the resources that single-celled plankton need, you would expect a few species particularly well adapted to their use to dominate the ecosystem. Instead, the plankton display great variety. This may well be because whenever a particular form of plankton becomes dominant, its viruses expand with it, gnawing away at its comparative success.
It is also possible that this endless dance of death between viruses and microbes sets the stage for one of evolution’s great leaps forward. Many forms of single-celled plankton have molecular mechanisms that allow them to kill themselves. They are presumably used when one cell’s sacrifice allows its sister cells—which are genetically identical—to survive. One circumstance in which such sacrifice seems to make sense is when a cell is attacked by a virus. If the infected cell can kill itself quickly (a process called apoptosis) it can limit the number of virions the virus is able to make. This lessens the chances that other related cells nearby will die. Some bacteria have been shown to use this strategy; many other microbes are suspected of it.
There is another situation where self-sacrifice is becoming conduct for a cell: when it is part of a multicellular organism. As such organisms grow, cells that were once useful to them become redundant; they have to be got rid of. Eugene Koonin of America’s National Institutes of Health and his colleagues have explored the idea that virus-thwarting self-sacrifice and complexity-permitting self-sacrifice may be related, with the latter descended from the former. Dr Koonin’s model also suggests that the closer the cells are clustered together, the more likely this act of self-sacrifice is to have beneficial consequences.
For such profound propinquity, move from the free-flowing oceans to the more structured world of soil, where potential self-sacrificers can nestle next to each other. Its structure makes soil harder to sift for genes than water is. But last year Mary Firestone of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues used metagenomics to count 3,884 new viral species in a patch of Californian grassland. That is undoubtedly an underestimate of the total diversity; their technique could see only viruses with rna genomes, thus missing, among other things, most bacteriophages.
Metagenomics can also be applied to biological samples, such as bat guano in which it picks up viruses from both the bats and their food. But for the most part the finding of animal viruses requires more specific sampling. Over the course of the 2010s predict, an American-government project aimed at finding animal viruses, gathered over 160,000 animal and human tissue samples from 35 countries and discovered 949 novel viruses.
The people who put together predict now have grander plans. They want a Global Virome Project to track down all the viruses native to the world’s 7,400 species of mammals and waterfowl—the reservoirs most likely to harbour viruses capable of making the leap into human beings. In accordance with the more-predator-species-than-prey rule they expect such an effort would find about 1.5m viruses, of which around 700,000 might be able to infect humans. A planning meeting in 2018 suggested that such an undertaking might take ten years and cost $4bn. It looked like a lot of money then. Today those arguing for a system that can provide advance warning of the next pandemic make it sound pretty cheap.
IV Leaving their mark
The toll which viruses have exacted throughout history suggests that they have left their mark on the human genome: things that kill people off in large numbers are powerful agents of natural selection. In 2016 David Enard, then at Stanford University and now at the University of Arizona, made a stab at showing just how much of the genome had been thus affected.
He and his colleagues started by identifying almost 10,000 proteins that seemed to be produced in all the mammals that had had their genomes sequenced up to that point. They then made a painstaking search of the scientific literature looking for proteins that had been shown to interact with viruses in some way or other. About 1,300 of the 10,000 turned up. About one in five of these proteins was connected to the immune system, and thus could be seen as having a professional interest in viral interaction. The others appeared to be proteins which the virus made use of in its attack on the host. The two cell-surface proteins that sars–cov-2 uses to make contact with its target cells and inveigle its way into them would fit into this category.
The researchers then compared the human versions of the genes for their 10,000 proteins with those in other mammals, and applied a statistical technique that distinguishes changes that have no real impact from the sort of changes which natural selection finds helpful and thus tries to keep. Genes for virus-associated proteins turned out to be evolutionary hotspots: 30% of all the adaptive change was seen in the genes for the 13% of the proteins which interacted with viruses. As quickly as viruses learn to recognise and subvert such proteins, hosts must learn to modify them.
A couple of years later, working with Dmitri Petrov at Stanford, Dr Enard showed that modern humans have borrowed some of these evolutionary responses to viruses from their nearest relatives. Around 2-3% of the dna in an average European genome has Neanderthal origins, a result of interbreeding 50,000 to 30,000 years ago. For these genes to have persisted they must be doing something useful—otherwise natural selection would have removed them. Dr Enard and Dr Petrov found that a disproportionate number described virus-interacting proteins; of the bequests humans received from their now vanished relatives, ways to stay ahead of viruses seem to have been among the most important.
Viruses do not just shape the human genome through natural selection, though. They also insert themselves into it. At least a twelfth of the dna in the human genome is derived from viruses; by some measures the total could be as high as a quarter.
Retroviruses like hiv are called retro because they do things backwards. Where cellular organisms make their rna from dna templates, retroviruses do the reverse, making dna copies of their rna genomes. The host cell obligingly makes these copies into double-stranded dna which can be stitched into its own genome. If this happens in a cell destined to give rise to eggs or sperm, the viral genes are passed from parent to offspring, and on down the generations. Such integrated viral sequences, known as endogenous retroviruses (ervs), account for 8% of the human genome.
This is another example of the way the same viral trick can be discovered a number of times. Many bacteriophages are also able to stitch copies of their genome into their host’s dna, staying dormant, or “temperate”, for generations. If the cell is doing well and reproducing regularly, this quiescence is a good way for the viral genes to make more copies of themselves. When a virus senses that its easy ride may be coming to an end, though—for example, if the cell it is in shows signs of stress—it will abandon ship. What was latent becomes “lytic” as the viral genes produce a sufficient number of virions to tear the host apart.
Though some of their genes are associated with cancers, in humans ervs do not burst back into action in later generations. Instead they have proved useful resources of genetic novelty. In the most celebrated example, at least ten different mammalian lineages make use of a retroviral gene for one of their most distinctively mammalian activities: building a placenta.
The placenta is a unique organ because it requires cells from the mother and the fetus to work together in order to pass oxygen and sustenance in one direction and carbon dioxide and waste in the other. One way this intimacy is achieved safely is through the creation of a tissue in which the membranes between cells are broken down to form a continuous sheet of cellular material.
The protein that allows new cells to merge themselves with this layer, syncytin-1, was originally used by retroviruses to join the external membranes of their virions to the external membranes of cells, thus gaining entry for the viral proteins and nucleic acids. Not only have different sorts of mammals co-opted this membrane-merging trick—other creatures have made use of it, too. The mabuya, a long-tailed skink which unusually for a lizard nurtures its young within its body, employs a retroviral syncytin protein to produce a mammalian-looking placenta. The most recent shared ancestor of mabuyas and mammals died out 80m years before the first dinosaur saw the light of day, but both have found the same way to make use of the viral gene.
You put your line-1 in, you take your line-1 out
This is not the only way that animals make use of their ervs. Evidence has begun to accumulate that genetic sequences derived from ervs are quite frequently used to regulate the activity of genes of more conventional origin. In particular, rna molecules transcribed from an erv called herv-k play a crucial role in providing the stem cells found in embryos with their “pluripotency”—the ability to create specialised daughter cells of various different types. Unfortunately, when expressed in adults herv-k can also be responsible for cancers of the testes.
As well as containing lots of semi-decrepit retroviruses that can be stripped for parts, the human genome also holds a great many copies of a “retrotransposon” called line-1. This a piece of dna with a surprisingly virus-like way of life; it is thought by some biologists to have, like ervs, a viral origin. In its full form, line-1 is a 6,000-letter sequence of dna which describes a “reverse transcriptase” of the sort that retroviruses use to make dna from their rna genomes. When line-1 is transcribed into an mrna and that mrna subsequently translated to make proteins, the reverse transcriptase thus created immediately sets to work on the mrna used to create it, using it as the template for a new piece of dna which is then inserted back into the genome. That new piece of dna is in principle identical to the piece that acted as the mrna’s original template. The line-1 element has made a copy of itself.
In the 100m years or so that this has been going on in humans and the species from which they are descended the line-1 element has managed to pepper the genome with a staggering 500,000 copies of itself. All told, 17% of the human genome is taken up by these copies—twice as much as by the ervs.
Most of the copies are severely truncated and incapable of copying themselves further. But some still have the knack, and this capability may be being put to good use. Fred Gage and his colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in San Diego, argue that line-1 elements have an important role in the development of the brain. In 2005 Dr Gage discovered that in mouse embryos—specifically, in the brains of those embryos—about 3,000 line-1 elements are still able to operate as retrotransposons, putting new copies of themselves into the genome of a cell and thus of all its descendants.
Brains develop through proliferation followed by pruning. First, nerve cells multiply pell-mell; then the cell-suicide process that makes complex life possible prunes them back in a way that looks a lot like natural selection. Dr Gage suspects that the movement of line-1 transposons provides the variety in the cell population needed for this selection process. Choosing between cells with line-1 in different places, he thinks, could be a key part of the process from which the eventual neural architecture emerges. What is true in mice is, as he showed in 2009, true in humans, too. He is currently developing a technique for looking at the process in detail by comparing, post mortem, the genomes of different brain cells from single individuals to see if their line-1 patterns vary in the ways that his theory would predict.
V Promised lands
Human evolution may have used viral genes to make big-brained live-born life possible; but viral evolution has used them to kill off those big brains on a scale that is easily forgotten. Compare the toll to that of war. In the 20th century, the bloodiest in human history, somewhere between 100m and 200m people died as a result of warfare. The number killed by measles was somewhere in the same range; the number who died of influenza probably towards the top of it; and the number killed by smallpox—300m-500m—well beyond it. That is why the eradication of smallpox from the wild, achieved in 1979 by a globally co-ordinated set of vaccination campaigns, stands as one of the all-time-great humanitarian triumphs.
Other eradications should eventually follow. Even in their absence, vaccination has led to a steep decline in viral deaths. But viruses against which there is no vaccine, either because they are very new, like sars–cov-2, or peculiarly sneaky, like hiv, can still kill millions.
Reducing those tolls is a vital aim both for research and for public-health policy. Understandably, a far lower priority is put on the benefits that viruses can bring. This is mostly because they are as yet much less dramatic. They are also much less well understood.
The viruses most prevalent in the human body are not those which infect human cells. They are those which infect the bacteria that live on the body’s surfaces, internal and external. The average human “microbiome” harbours perhaps 100trn of these bacteria. And where there are bacteria, there are bacteriophages shaping their population.
The microbiome is vital for good health; when it goes wrong it can mess up a lot else. Gut bacteria seem to have a role in maintaining, and possibly also causing, obesity in the well-fed and, conversely, in tipping the poorly fed into a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. Ill-regulated gut bacteria have also been linked, if not always conclusively, with diabetes, heart disease, cancers, depression and autism. In light of all this, the question “who guards the bacterial guardians?” is starting to be asked.
The viruses that prey on the bacteria are an obvious answer. Because the health of their host’s host—the possessor of the gut they find themselves in—matters to these phages, they have an interest in keeping the microbiome balanced. Unbalanced microbiomes allow pathogens to get a foothold. This may explain a curious detail of a therapy now being used as a treatment of last resort against Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes life-threatening dysentery. The therapy in question uses a transfusion of faecal matter, with its attendant microbes, from a healthy individual to reboot the patient’s microbiome. Such transplants, it appears, are more likely to succeed if their phage population is particularly diverse.
Medicine is a very long way from being able to use phages to fine-tune the microbiome. But if a way of doing so is found, it will not in itself be a revolution. Attempts to use phages to promote human health go back to their discovery in 1917, by Félix d’Hérelle, a French microbiologist, though those early attempts at therapy were not looking to restore balance and harmony. On the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, doctors simply treated bacterial infections with phages thought likely to kill the bacteria.
The arrival of antibiotics saw phage therapy abandoned in most places, though it persisted in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Various biotechnology companies think they may now be able to revive the tradition—and make it more effective. One option is to remove the bits of the viral genome that let phages settle down to a temperate life in a bacterial genome, leaving them no option but to keep on killing. Another is to write their genes in ways that avoid the defences with which bacteria slice up foreign dna.
The hope is that phage therapy will become a backup in difficult cases, such as infection with antibiotic-resistant bugs. There have been a couple of well-publicised one-off successes outside phage therapy’s post-Soviet homelands. In 2016 Tom Patterson, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, was successfully treated for an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection with specially selected (but un-engineered) phages. In 2018 Graham Hatfull of the University of Pittsburgh used a mixture of phages, some engineered so as to be incapable of temperance, to treat a 16-year-old British girl who had a bad bacterial infection after a lung transplant. Clinical trials are now getting under way for phage treatments aimed at urinary-tract infections caused by Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus infections that can lead to sepsis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections that cause complications in people who have cystic fibrosis.
Viruses which attack bacteria are not the only ones genetic engineers have their eyes on. Engineered viruses are of increasing interest to vaccine-makers, to cancer researchers and to those who want to treat diseases by either adding new genes to the genome or disabling faulty ones. If you want to get a gene into a specific type of cell, a virion that recognises something about such cells may often prove a good tool.
The vaccine used to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past two years was made by engineering Indiana vesiculovirus, which infects humans but cannot reproduce in them, so that it expresses a protein found on the surface of the Ebola virus; thus primed, the immune system responds to Ebola much more effectively. The World Health Organisation’s current list of 29 covid-19 vaccines in clinical trials features six versions of other viruses engineered to look a bit like sars-cov-2. one is based on a strain of measles that has long been used as a vaccine against that disease.
Viruses engineered to engender immunity against pathogens, to kill cancer cells or to encourage the immune system to attack them, or to deliver needed genes to faulty cells all seem likely to find their way into health care. Other engineered viruses are more worrying. One way to understand how viruses spread and kill is to try and make particularly virulent ones. In 2005, for example, Terrence Tumpey of America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and his colleagues tried to understand the deadliness of the influenza virus responsible for the pandemic of 1918-20 by taking a more benign strain, adding what seemed to be distinctive about the deadlier one and trying out the result on mice. It was every bit as deadly as the original, wholly natural version had been.
The use of engineered pathogens as weapons of war is of dubious utility, completely illegal and repugnant to almost all
Because such “gain of function” research could, if ill-conceived or poorly implemented, do terrible damage, it requires careful monitoring. And although the use of engineered pathogens as weapons of war is of dubious utility—such weapons are hard to aim and hard to stand down, and it is not easy to know how much damage they have done—as well as being completely illegal and repugnant to almost all, such possibilities will and should remain a matter of global concern.
Information which, for billions of years, has only ever come into its own within infected cells can now be inspected on computer screens and rewritten at will. The power that brings is sobering. It marks a change in the history of both viruses and people—a change which is perhaps as important as any of those made by modern biology. It is constraining a small part of the viral world in a way which, so far, has been to people’s benefit. It is revealing that world’s further reaches in a way which cannot but engender awe. ■
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub
To underscore that the withdrawal of the invitation to Kaduna Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai as a speaker at its Annual General Conference was not withdrawn on ethnic or religious basis, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), said even senior lawyers from the North, who share the same Muslim faith with the governor, were part of the decision.
In fact, not a single Muslim endorsed the governor’s invitation, as only three members of its National Executive Committee (NEC), two Southerners and the third, a Christian cleric backed the suggestion to retain him as a speaker at the 60th Annual General Conference (AGC), according to NBA President Paul Usoro.
Bowing to pressure from a groundswell of its membership, citing his alleged violation of human rights, disrespect to court orders and handling of the killings in Southern Kaduna, the association had announced the withdrawal of el-Rufai’s participation in the event on Thursday evening,.
The event scheduled to hold between August 26 and 29 with the theme: Step forward is expected to host Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), as dignitaries, while the speakers, include, Rivers Governor Nyesom Wike; former Anambra Governor Peter Obi and a cleric, Tunde Bakare; former minister Oby Ezekwesili and immediate past ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, Salamatu Suleiman.
Incensed at the inclusion of el-Rufai in the session entitled Who is a Nigerian? …A Debate on National Identity, lawyers at the top and bottom echelon of the profession latched on a petition launched by Usani Odum to kick against the move.
In a statement, entitled: Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) 2020 Annual General Conference’s National Executive Committee (NEC’s) decision to disinvite His Excellency Mallam Nasir el-Rufai as a speaker in a panel session, Usoro said the NEC did not want to burden the conference with the controversy rather than finding the governor culpable of any wrongdoing.
He said: “This morning (August 21), I have had telephone discussions with the Director-General of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, Mr. Asishana Okauru, on the issue and have tendered through him, to HE Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, my sincere apologies and regrets for any unintended embarrassment that he may have been caused by the NBA NEC’s decision.
“I followed up our telephone discussions with the attached letter which explains the circumstances of the decision by NEC. The letter has been sent to Mr. Okauru, both in hard and soft copies. It is apropos that l reproduce in this Release, paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 of the letter for ease of reference by our members:
“ln concluding, I must clarify two critical issues. First, NEC’s decision yesterday had no ethnic or religious coloration or connotation howsoever and whatsoever. In discussing the issue at NBC, nobody talked about religion or ethnicity.
“As I recall, there were no more than 3 (three) advocates for retaining the invitation of the NBA to HE Nasir El Rufai (not including me) and two of these three gentlemen are from the South of Nigeria and one is a reverend gentleman. Conversely, some of those who spoke against his attendance share the same faith with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and some others come from the Northern part of Nigeria.
“The second point that I must clarify is that NBA NEC, by its decision was not passing any judgment on Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. NBA NEC is not in a position to pass such judgments without having all the facts and hearing from all the sides and it dld not set out to pass any such Judgment.
“NEC merely made a judgment that it was not in the best interest of the Association to be engulfed in the controversy that trailed the invitation of Mallam el-Rufai for the Conference and that it was best if the safety valve of dis-inviting the Governor was applied.
“Indeed, NEC did not howsoever or at all discuss the substance of the issues that have been raised against the Governor by the different groups and persons who clamored for his being dis-invited and there was very considerable clamor in that regard. I perhaps need to mention that, prior to the NEC meeting I had personally taken urgent and strident steps, working with the TCCP, to douse the clamor, but we had no success.
“I truly would appreciate your bringing this letter to the attention not just of HE Nasir e1 Rufai but also to all the other members of the esteemed Nigerian Governors’ Forum and in particular, the Chairman of the Forum, HE (Dr) Kayode Fayemi.
“Please, assure Their Excellencies that the Nigerian Bar Association holds all our Governors, including HE Nasir e1 Rufai, in the highest esteem and would do nothing intentionally to embarrass them collectively or individually. ‘Once again, I offer my sincere and deepest apologies and regrets for the unintended embarrassment that may have been caused to HE Nasir el Rufai by the afore-referenced decision of the NBA NEC and would appreciate your passing on my regrets and apologies to him personally.”
Dwelling on the need to douse the “ethnic and religious passions that seem to have been inflamed amongst our members by the NEC decision,” he said he had received several messages from lawyers that attributed ethnic and religious considerations to the decision.
“That is not correct and is very far from the truth. Neither the NBA nor NEC belongs to any religious or ethnic group. We are lawyers and professionals dedicated to the ideals and the promotion and preservation of the Rule of Law and we belong to one indivisible family of the NBA.”
Usoro also rebutted claims that the NEC infringed el-Rufai’s right to fair hearing before withdrawing the invitation.
He said: “No, it did not. As I point out in my letter, neither the NBA nor NEC set out to sit in judgment against Mallam e1 Rufai and even from that prism, the principle of fair hearing does not apply.
“None of the persons or parties who are opposed to the invitation of Mallam el Rufai to the AGC has been offered the NBA or AGC platform to advocate or propogate their viewpoints and positions and so, the principle of not hearing the other side does not arise…
“I implore all our members to please not view this issue howsoever from an ethnic or religious perspective. Those were not the issues considered by NEC yesterday.”
The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has described the decision of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) to drop Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai from list of dignitaries pencilled to speak at the association’s annual conference as ‘ill-advised’.
The NBA had removed the name of El-Rufai from the list of speakers over protest from some lawyers who had threatened to boycott the event.
The lawyers cited El-Rufai disregard for rule of law for their protest. They said the governor’s creeds and disposition runs counter to what the association stands for.
But reacting to the development, MURIC in a statement on Friday by its director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, asked lawyers from northern part of the country to boycott the conference slated for next week.
Akinola described NBA’s action as parochial, myopic and jejune.
“MURIC calls on all lawyers from the North to boycott NBA’s AGC in protest against this open declaration of war on Northern Kaduna. Every little action of injustice must spark a reaction if tyranny is to be stopped in the world,” Akintola said.
“NBA has crossed the red line in human relations and conflict management. No single lawyer from the North should participate in the AGC either as a resource person or as a participant unless NBA rescinds its decision to drop El-Rufai from the list of speakers. Injury to one is injury to all.
Akintola said by dropping El-Rufai, NBA has declared war on the other side in the Southern Kaduna crisis and has lost a golden chance to be part of the solution to the conflict, adding that the association has further been elected to be part of the problem.
He said, “The fact that NBA took the ill-advised step on account of a petition written by a group, Open Bar Initiative whose main fear is expressed as ‘One can be sure that he will also use the given platform to advance his conflated narrative, designed to deceive and confuse the nation on the real causes of the killings’ exposes NBA’s impatience, intolerance and self-conceit.
“Is it not better to hear him out than to lock him out? Is it not better to jaw-jaw than to war-war? The departure of the ambassador, they say, is the beginning of war.
“Was it not Jane Goodall who said, ‘Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right’? Change cannot come through rejection and exclusion.
“How justifiable is NBA’s decision to exclude Governor El-Rufai from the virtual conference when people like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of Odi and Zaki Biam fame and Governor Nyesom Wike are among the speakers? Who bulldozed the hotels of innocent people despite court orders? Who visited unspeakable violence on political opponents? Should NBA hobnob with people linked to genocide and undemocratic practices? So why demonise El-Rufai where killers of innocent people and enemies of democracy are idolised?”
Our site uses cookies. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you direct Law and Society Magazine to store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Statement: cookie policyACCEPTREJECT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
