Now let’s recount all the events of the past almost 24 hours read full details here 👇🏽
20 points of a 20-hour ordeal on Libyan soil …
20 Points of a 20-hour ordeal on Libyan soil
. NFF’s Director of Communications, Dr Ademola Olajire, provides a point-by-point account of how a keenly-anticipated Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match was relegated to a fiasco by Libyan federal authorities and Football Federation
1) The chartered ValueJet aircraft departed from the Victor Attah International Airport, Uyo at 11.55hours on Sunday, 13th October 2024, and landed at the Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano at 13.10hours, for the completion of immigration formalities and for the aircraft to refuel.
2) The aircraft took off from Kano at 15.18hours, for the 3 hours and 35 minutes flight to Benghazi, Libya, expecting to arrive a few minutes before 8pm Libya time.
3) Just as he was about to commence his initial approach into Benghazi, the captain (pilot) was instructed by the control tower that he could not land in Benghazi (despite having all the required landing papers and having completed all formalities before leaving Uyo and later, Kano, but should proceed to the Al-Abraq International Airport, even though the airport lacked the control navigators for landing at such hours. He complained that he was short on fuel but his words fell on deaf ears as he was told in stern manner that the directive was from ‘higher authorities.’
4) On landing at the Al-Abraq International Airport, in the small town of Labraq, at 19.50hours, it was clear that the airport was not a well-utilized facility. There were no scanning machines or the usual equipment for this service, and officials had to make do with mobile phones to scan passport data pages.
5) The delegation, which included 22 players and team officials; NFF President Alh. Ibrahim Musa Gusau; Deputy Governor of Edo State, Comrade Philip Shaibu; a couple of NFF Board members; NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi; a couple of parliamentarians; a couple of NFF Management; a couple of media representatives and; a couple of stakeholders, was shown scant respect by the airport authorities who applied curt manners and stern tones.
6) It took over one hour for the team’s luggage to roll through the carousel, despite the fact that the bags and other items had already been hauled from the aircraft immediately on arrival.
7) No official of the Libyan Football Federation was at the airport to receive the delegation, as is the best practice globally. Airport officials could not answer the simple question on where the buses that would take the delegation members back to Benghazi (where the NFF had booked hotel rooms) were.
8 ) When delegation members including the NFF President, Comrade Shaibu and Dr Sanusi attempted to venture outside the airport to ascertain if there were vehicles waiting for the team, they were stopped in the most uncouth of manners by airport security personnel.
9) Calls to the General Secretary of LFF, Mr. Abdul-Nasser by Dr Sanusi yielded no fruits as the former kept promising that the buses would arrive in ‘10 minutes’, which later became ‘two hours’, and afterwards, ‘three hours.’ Later in the evening, it was no longer possible to reach him on phone. Frustrated by this attitude, Dr Sanusi approached the security operatives to request that the team be allowed to go out and board the buses the NFF eventually hired. This request was rejected with insults. It took the intervention of the NFF dignitaries to prevent what would have escalated into a row as the NFF President himself was not spared when he heard exchange of voices between the security personnel and his General Secretary. This aggravated the tension and further frustrated the team.
10) Hour after hour, and with mounting frustration, delegation members, particularly the players, grew restless. There was no food or water provided by the LFF, or where to even procure these items, and there was no network or internet connection at the airport. These swiftly increased the level of frustration and anger.
11) At past midnight, it was learnt that there had been word from ‘higher authorities’ (Libya is a jurisdiction governed by two different administrations – a UN-recognized cabinet in Tripoli and a self-imposed team over Eastern Libya including places like Benghazi and Labraq) that the Nigeria delegation should be delayed for minimum of 10 hours at the airport for what they falsely claimed was done to their team in Nigeria. (All conversations between the NFF General Secretary and the LFF General Secretary on the match in Uyo, both written text and voices notes, are still in the NFF General Secretary’s phone)
12) The NFF team was shocked because the incident referred to in Nigeria was entirely generated by the Libyans. They informed the NFF that their contingent would be landing in Port Harcourt, and not Uyo, only two hours to the team’s arrival in Nigeria. Despite this, the NFF moved swiftly to get authorities to grant their aircraft movement permit from Port Harcourt to Uyo, but this was jettisoned as the LFF apparently did not cherish the additional fee dispatched by the charter company. They opted to travel by road, refused to use the buses hired by the NFF and instead hired their own, and disrespected advice not to travel by night. When they stuck to their guns to move by night, the NFF provided security. The NFF even provided the team training facility the day after the match and secured direct flight permit from Uyo to Benghazi for the delegation.
13) Infuriated, the NFF President reacted: “We anticipated some shocks here given the false account of what happened in Nigeria as narrated by their team captain. But we did not expect these shenanigans. What I am seeing is despicable and has no place in the game of football which is meant to foster excellent relationships among nations and bring peoples from diverse cultures, religious persuasions and economic and political interests together in an ambience of peace and joy.”
14) The NFF learnt that the Embassy of Nigeria in Tripoli had written, a fortnight earlier, to the authorities in Benghazi that they would want to welcome the Nigeria delegation on arrival. This application was said to have been rejected outright.
15) In a conscious effort to play down their frustration, anger and hunger, players and officials resorted to playing games, listening to music, chatting themselves up, scanning through the airport exit door to see if any vehicles had arrived, and generally looked forward to daybreak, which they hoped would bring much-sought-after relief.
16) Many calls were made to higher authorities in Nigeria to apprise them of the situation, and these persons all expressed fears for the safety and security of the team. These fears were real and justified given the plethora of threats thrown by the Libyans on legacy and social media in the days before and after the match in Uyo. At 2am, Captain William Ekong met the NFF President in the company of the NFF General Secretary to inform the President that the team may not be able to go ahead with the match, due to trauma, fatigue and body aches that resulted from lack of food, dehydration and very cruel and unimaginable treatment, which had led to some players falling ill.
17) The NFF repeated calls to officials of the Confederation of African Football, Nigeria’s FIFA Council Member Mr. Amaju Melvin Pinnick and higher authorities in Nigeria. It dispatched a letter to CAF in which it detailed the antics of the hosts and hoped that the continental governing body would go ahead to “punish this rare bestiality visited on the beautiful game.” It noted that the Super Eagles had traveled hoping to enjoy a great game of football but had been sorely disappointed and frustrated by the unprecedented level of hostility and poor attitude of the hosts.
18) At daybreak, Mr. Maurice Eromosele, president of the Nigerian community in Eastern Libya, arrived with words of empathy from the Ambassador of Nigeria to Libya, His Excellency Alhaji Muhammad Muhammad. He expressed shock at the treatment meted out to the Nigeria delegation, who were made to spend the entire night inside the departure lounge of the Al-Abraq Airport. He said His Excellency ordered him to get a few things for the team, and he later returned with plastic bags loaded with croissants and drinks. These served as breakfast for the team.
19) More calls were made and eventually, it was agreed by all parties that the team should not go ahead with the match, but return to Nigeria to await the decision of CAF (who were briefed in detail on the situation) with regards to the un-played match.
20) After spending many more hours waiting for the Al-Abraq airport authorities to sell fuel to refill the chartered ValueJet aircraft (which was initially proving to be some sort of robotic engineering), the Nigeria delegation departed the Al-Abraq Airport (not worth the toga of ‘international’ by any scale) at exactly 15.05hours, bound for the city of Kano, and onwards to the Federal Capital, Abuja.
PHOTO 1: Nigeria delegation members at the airport
PHOTO 2: Super Eagles players and officials milling around the departure lounge of the Al-Abraq airport
naptu2: There is a lesson in this thread, but if you search through Twitter and check the thread, you'll notice that many people have not learnt the lesson.
There are many sectors in Nigeria that are in the exclusive list in the constitution. This means that they are the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government. For a long time many people assumed that this means that state governments cannot get involved in these sectors, but that is not true.
Bola Tinubu constantly demonstrated this when he was governor. There are many things that people assumed were only reserved for the Federal Government, but his government got involved in those things. Power generation, port construction, airport construction, refinery, etc.
You see, all the state government needs to do is to bring in a private/foreign company to invest in the sector and then they need to get a license from the Federal Government. The Federal Government wants to make money and they want development, so they will go along with the project (although in some rare cases they might sabotage the project, just like the AES Barge power project in Lagos).
Some people are asking why the oil in Rivers is for Nigeria while the lithium in Kaduna is for Kaduna. Well, read this article, the chairman of the Kaduna Internal Revenue Service stated clearly that mining is on the exclusive list and the only way that Kaduna State can take part in mining lithium is to set up a mining company and get a license from the Federal Government. Has the Rivers State Government set up an oil company and applied to get mining licenses from the Federal Government?
This issue keeps coming up every time and the answer is always the same. People asked the same question when it was announced that a gold refinery was being established in Osun and the answer then was exactly the same.
regenerateman: The crude oil from the Niger Delta is sold and shared by the federating states. Why the mineral resources (gold, lithium, etc) from the North is only used by the Northerners. What an irony!
tctrills: This does nothing. Or are you expecting anything to change now you have this information? We have known about illegal mining of gold for years but nothing is done to stop it. Do you think this would be any different?
Are you arguing with a bot? Do you think it can understand you?
naptu2: This issue has been on my mind since the beginning of this coronavirus crisis and I've thought of creating this post for a while. My decision to create this post was further strengthened by a ridiculous article that I read 3 days ago (the article was actually on Nairaland's home page). The problem that I'm going to address is the issue of journalists that are out of their depths.
Journalists that are covering technical issues need to know more than the average person about such issues otherwise they would write absolute nonsense in their reports.
For example, some secondary school girls in Nigeria made an electro-magnetic dynamo as part of the Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists (JETS) Club project in 2010. The project was exhibited at a fair. I watched the television news report about the fair (this was in 2010) and it was called exactly what it was, a dynamo. However, someone (I really don't know what to call him) wrote a news report in Vanguard Newspaper and wrote that the girls "invented a fuel-less power generator". There is no such thing as a fuel-less power generator. It is impossible. That violates the first law of thermodynamics. They would have won the Nobel Prize for Physics if they had achieved such a feat.
That silly article was posted on Nairaland and Nairalanders insulted the poor girls, calling them fraudsters and saying that they had imbibed the Nigerian spirit of making fraudulent claims at such a young age. Meanwhile, neither the girls nor their teachers did anything wrong. The problem was the incompetent journalist that did not know what he was writing about.
News organisations have often had correspondents that were also experts in their fields because they recognised that those subjects required more than a layman's understanding in order to cover them properly. For example, the NTA's judicial correspondent in the 1990s was Kayode Idowu. Kayode Idowu was not only a journalist, he was also a lawyer. Their current judicial correspondent, Femi Okeowo, is also both a journalist and a lawyer. The BBC World Service's health correspondent in the late 1990s and early 2000s was also a medical doctor.
Even if you can't get a person that has multiple degrees and is qualified both as a journalist and in a technical field, you can still appoint a consultant. For example, Mr Fred Agbaje was the legal consultant to Silverbird Television and Rhythm FM in the 2000s.
But unfortunately now you have journalists that do not even know the first thing about doctor-patient confidentiality covering health issues. That's why a silly person would write an article to criticise the minister of health for not breaching confidentiality rules regarding a patient that has covid19. Remember the embarrassing video of the journalist that did not know the simple word asymptomatic, trying to ask the DG of the NCDC about asymptomatic patients?
Why are you testing SYSTEMATIC patients? Nigerian Journalist to DG @NCDCgov
The Digital Black Market: Nigeria’s illicit lithium trade uncovered
Posing as a buyer, our reporter interacted with some of the online traders and traced them to Kwara and Nasarawa states.
by Yakubu Mohammed October 11, 2024
Within three weeks this year, Oganyi Franklin made at least N7.6 million from selling illegally sourced lithium, a critical mineral needed for renewable energy transition. He often markets the materials on social media, such as Facebook and TikTok.
After selling one batch, Mr Franklin appeared in a Facebook live video on his friend’s page on 28 February. In the video, he held some whitish stones he identified as “lithium kunzite.”
Mr Franklin, dressed in a black T-shirt and jean hat, said the minerals are “high-graded and well-sorted.”
He then panned the camera to show his warehouse among some locked shops in a marketplace where such materials are openly sold in Bani, a restive lithium trading community straddling Oyo and Kwara states.
He is not the only one involved in this illicit business, which the Nigerian government claims is costing it a huge revenue loss. From mining to trading, thousands of Nigerians and foreigners are involved in the illegal lithium trade. In 2023, the mining sector contributed less than one per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Lithium, increasingly in demand for batteries for power storage, electronics and electric vehicles, is now among the priority minerals for the Nigerian government, which is trying to better regulate the extractive sector after many years of neglect and revenue losses.
However, despite recent crackdowns, lithium is still mined illegally, and much of that occurs in Kwara and Nasarawa states, which serve as sources for online mineral vendors like Mr Franklin. Despite lithium being mined in many states across Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics does not capture its export data in the country’s official trade numbers, suggesting illicit financial flows.
A network of illegal traders
PREMIUM TIMES profiled over 20 social media handles marketing mineral resources mainly illegally sourced.
These social media handlers are members of the supply-and-demand Facebook groups such as Lithium Ore Nigeria Supply and Lithium Mining And All mineral resources in Nigeria. They often post their products, inviting interested buyers to chat with them via WhatsApp.
Posing as a buyer, our reporter interacted with some of the online traders. He subsequently traced them to Kwara and Nasarawa states, where the government had repeatedly arrested illicit miners, including Chinese nationals.
Two of the online traders — Joshfa Monday and Mohammed Dadi — directed this reporter to Kakafu village in Lade, a town in Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara State.
Messrs Monday and Dadi would later refer our reporter to their contacts in Patigi. The latter’s contact person, Usman, took our reporter on a Bajaj motorcycle to the mining village, where he saw a vast land with countless mining pits and a few labourers at the village’s entrance.
“Things are not like they used to be,” Mr Usman grumbled as he rode through the sandy road leading to Kakafu. “In the past, you would have seen trailers loaded with stones moving out of this place.”
Mr Usman said some labourers who dug the pits and “bring out the materials” have moved elsewhere, “making our market slow down.”
He would later give our reporter some samples of lithium varieties — lepidolite and kunzite — asking him to take them for a laboratory analysis “to determine the quality” before buying them in bulk.
Mr Usman told our reporter he would not need to return to Kwara. “Once the quality has been confirmed, just call me and we will talk about transporting the materials wherever you want.”
The illegal mining business was more coordinated in Bani where every corner of the restive lithium market is littered with mined minerals.
When PREMIUM TIMES contacted Adeshola Oladipupo, one of the online traders who posted the materials on his Facebook handle, he directed our reporter to Mr Franklin, whose face appeared in the video he posted on 28 February.
“[Ade]Shola was the one who posted my video on Facebook,” Mr Franklin said as he boasted of having sold more than two trucks of lithium this year. “I don’t post on Facebook, but I posted the video on my TikTok account.”
Mr Franklin said his business partner, Mr Oladipupo, “knows a little about the business and that is why he always directs people to me…”
PREMIUM TIMES’ findings showed that a lot of the minerals sold in Bani are illegally sourced from a forest between Igbeti and Soro villages around the Old Oyo National Park bordering Kwara State.
The multimillion-naira illegal business
Illegal mining and trading of lithium and other minerals is a multimillion-dollar business in Bani.
A kilogramme of lithium costs between N682 and N700, according to a market survey PREMIUM TIMES conducted in the lithium market.
“Fifty kilogrammes are contained in a bag of lithium,” one of the traders told our reporter. “It costs between N34,100 and N35,000.”
Many online traders we profiled on Facebook offered to sell the product per tonne at prices ranging from N1 million.
Mustapha Dakata, a Nasarawa-based online trader who uses his partner’s Facebook account — Hajaar Abubakar — to market varieties of lithium, pegged his price at between N600,000 and N1.1 million per tonne.
“A tonne of lithium lepidolite is N600,000,” he said. “And a tonne of lithium spodumene is around N1.1 million.”
Mr Dakata would later give a discount of N100,000 on lithium spodumene.
“We are going to sell it to Chinese people at this price,” he said, adding that the minerals are stored in a warehouse in Nasarawa.
“We don’t go to the site in Nasarawan Toto for security reasons,” Mr Dakata explained when asked if he could take our reporter to the mining site. “The labourers and the villagers transport the materials to us and we buy, sort them, and store them in the warehouse.”
Kunzite is the popular variety of lithium in Bani and a tonne goes for N680,000 or N700,000. A 12-wheel truck loads at least 30 tonnes [600 bags] of lithium valued at N20.4 million.
Most of the minerals purchased from Bani are transported to Abuja, Nasarawa or Shagamu in Ogun State, one of the traders in the lithium market, Zephaniah Jonathan, told PREMIUM TIMES.
Mr Jonathan said one would spend about N3 million transporting the materials to any of these locations.
“A truck conveying the materials from Bani to Shagamu would charge N1.5 million,” he said, adding that those who load the materials would charge N5,000 per tonne.
Among those who posted online seeking to purchase lithium were Facebook users who claimed or appeared to be Chinese and Taiwanese. PREMIUM TIMES profiled at least four of them, but none responded to our request for comments.
“I’m a buyer from China,” 元歌 — Yuan Ge — announced in a Facebook group on 7 February 2023. “I need spodumene and lepidolite… Please contact me if you have the right supply.”
His post garnered more than 20 likes and 25 comments from the network of illegal online traders.
At press time, 元歌 had not responded to messages sent via the WhatsApp line attached to his several Facebook posts.
Yuan Clint, a Taiwanese, has persistently sought to purchase varieties of lithium through several Facebook groups where such minerals are marketed. In one of the posts the Taiwanese made last year, he sought to buy kunzite, spodumene, and lepidolite, among other solid minerals.
“We are very serious and sincere buyers, interested in long-time regular buy only,” Yuan Clint, the manager of MIT Auto Tech, a Taipei-based company incorporated in 1999 in Taiwan, posted. He added that his company operates two warehouses in Niger and Ogun states.
The Taiwanese did not respond to questions when contacted via his WhatsApp line. He subsequently blocked our reporter from reaching him.
Alleged payment of revenue to Oyo and Kwara states
Several traders in Bani told our reporter that there are revenues each truck leaving the lithium market would pay to the governments of Kwara and Oyo states. According to them, no receipts were issued for these revenues.
“In Bani, you will pay N357,000,” Mr Jonathan continued. “Out of it, you will make a transfer of N330,000 as revenue [to Kwara State government] through a POS operator. You will pay N10,000 at a police station before Opa.”
However, a transfer receipt obtained from one of the traders showed a Moniepoint Microfinance Bank account belonging to one POS operator, ISSA MAITABLE RESOURCES NIGERIA Ltd, as the beneficiary, not an official government account.
Mr Jonathan added that a team of task force in the market will receive N25,000 and “thereafter issued you a pass.”
“If you are going to Ogbomoso through Igbeti Road, you’ll be given two passes. You will give one to forest guards and the other one to civil defense officers before getting to Ogbomoso,” he explained.
In March, this year, the federal Ministry of Solid Minerals Development unveiled a 2,200-strong mine marshals to fight illegal miners and all those who flout the nation’s mining laws.
The marshals were drawn from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). “With a command structure spread across the 36 states and the FCT, the mines marshal will have their command and control domiciled in the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development(MSMD), with an initial 60 operatives deployed in each state and the FCT,” the ministry had said in statement.
However, the traders who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they could get their ways by bribing the security operatives charged to clamp down on their illegal business, including the NSCDC from where the mine marshals were drawn.
“At Opa village, you will pay another N750,000 revenue to the Oyo State government,” Mr Jonathan said, adding the money is paid in cash.
According to Mr Jonathan, truck drivers may need to pay up to N300,000 in bribes to highway security officers, depending on the route they take.
“If you go through Oko Olowo, you will spend about N300,000 to bribe security [operatives] on the road. But you will not spend up to that when you go through Igbeti to Ogbomoso,” he explained.
Both the Kwara and Oyo state governments refused to comment when confronted with our findings.
The Kwara State Commissioner for Solid Minerals, Afeez Alabi told PREMIUM TIMES he was just deployed to the ministry “not long time ago.”
Mr Abolore who said the ministry is fighting hard to stop illegal mining, explained that only his directors — Kunle Adimula and Isiaka Adeigbe — including the permanent secretary, Yinka Oloruko-Oba, could address the revenue claim made by the illegal traders.
He would later arrange a conference call between our reporter, the directors, and the permanent secretary.
Mr Abolore and his colleagues said they could only offer explanations if our reporter could physically meet them. They said PREMIUM TIMES will also write to the ministry before the meeting.
PREMIUM TIMES sent an FOI request to the ministry on 30 September, requesting the ministry to provide a detailed explanation within seven working days as required by the law.
“I acted on the above document the same day it was received. It was sent to the PS to be treated as appropriate,” the commissioner said in a WhatsApp chat when our reporter sent him a reminder on 7 October.
The commissioner further condemned the seven working day deadline given to the ministry to respond to the FOI request. According to him, our request “requires a thorough investigation and a fair time to report back on it. Beyond that, the FOI Act above referred to in your document comes with legal implications that require input of our MOJ. So, brandishing deadlines on the ministry may not go down well, please.”
That same day, the commissioner, during an inter-ministerial briefing in Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, disclosed that the state government is investigating [mining] revenue diversion.
“Our attention was recently brought to this disturbing issue, and we have initiated a thorough investigation. Once we have concrete information, we will make it available to the public,” Mr Alabi said.
Abiodun Oni, the director of Oyo State Mineral Development Agency could not be reached for comment. Calls placed through his lines were declined and a series of SMS and WhatsApp messages sent to him were not responded to.
The problem is improper structure — Ministry of Solid Minerals
When contacted, Segun Tomori, the media aide to the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, said the ministry is aware that the country’s resources are being plundered, but not aware of the new pattern of marketing them online.
He blamed the problem on a poor structure that is inefficient to properly regulate the mining sector.
Mr Tomori believes that the challenges would soon be curbed “with the ongoing process of amending the 2007 Minerals and Mining Act and establishing Nigeria Solid Mineral Cooperation.”
“When we have that body, it will properly supervise and guide all these things,” he said.
This story was sponsored by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) under its Just Energy Transition Minerals Challenge Project.
NOW: History is being made today in Lagos - the Red Line rail opens to passengers, running from Oyingbo to Agbado. I’m proud to be one of the passengers. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is leading the officials. When are you coming onboard?
UPDATE: Governor of Lagos State, Mr @jidesanwoolu today Flagged Off the Commercial Operations of the iconic Red Line Rail Project.
Mr Governor performed the Groundbreaking Ceremony of the Red Line Rail on the 15th April 2021
The Scheduled trip took off from the Oyingbo Station (Ebute Metta), where Mr Governor used his Cowry Card to board the train. The next stop was Yaba, then Mushin to Oshodi to Ikeja where he alighted and answered some questions from the press.
The Red Line Rail route: Oyingbo - Yaba - Mushin - Oshodi - Ikeja - Agege - Iju - Agbado
Mr Governor says, this Legacy Project is a Promise made and Promise kept.
Sports › NFF Statements About Events That Took Place In Libya by naptu2(op): 5:49am On Oct 17, 2024
