News — nigeria

Educated youth from the slums of Mumbai, India started the Dalit Panther Movement (DPM) in June 1972, inspired by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and the U.S. Black Panthers.  Dalits (“downtrodden”) are the lowest “untouchable” caste in Hinduism.  Hinduism views Dalits as sinners in their prior lives who can only redeem themselves by being good servants of the high castes.

In the 1920s Ambedkar, a Dalit who was a primary author of the Indian Constitution, tried to end Dalit oppression by giving them political power.  In writing the draft of the Indian Constitution in 1933, Ambedkar reserved a portion of all elected positions for Dalits and only Dalits could vote for these positions.  Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, a high-caste Hindu, opposed political power as a solution to Dalit oppression.  He protested Ambekdar’s work by going on a hunger strike which precipitated the slaughter of thousands of Dalits.  Afraid of more deaths, Ambedkar backed down and eliminated this provision of the Constitution.  Because of continued Hindu oppression of Dalits, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in 1956.  His conversion led to mass conversions of other Dalits to Buddhism.

Given their lack of political power, most Dalits continue to have very menial or degrading jobs such as removing human waste, dead animals, or sweeping streets.  Dalits comprise 18% of the Indian population, and they face ongoing segregation in schools and restaurants, police violence, sexual violence, and even lack access to drinking water.

DPM selected the name “Dalit Panthers,” after reading about the U.S. Black Panthers in Time magazine.  The DPM combined the work of Ambedkar with the militancy and self-defense of the Black Panthers to combat atrocities against Dalits.  DPM co-founders Namedo Dhasal, Raja Dhale, J. V. Pawar, and Arun Kamble were poets and writers.  Their anti-establishment poetry and short stories published in Dhasal’s magazine Vidroh (“Revolt”) were powerful realistic descriptions of the oppression of Dalits and their revolutionary struggles for change.  DPM also used self-defense in response to atrocities against Dalits, held election boycotts, demonstrated against the ruling Congress Party, and attacked Hindu deities to protest Dalit caste oppression.

In 1973 the DPM published their manifesto integrating Marxist capitalist exploitation with Buddhism, identifying Dalit enemies as landlords, capitalists, money-lenders and the government controlled by ruling castes.  They also expanded the term Dalits to include other oppressed peoples such as low (Scheduled) castes, neo-Buddhists, landless and poor peasants, and exploited women.  The notoriety of the DPM’s poems, short stories, and street protests led to the rapid growth of over 30 loosely organized groups of the DPM in Mumbai.

In 1974 the DPM leaders Dhasal and Dhale disagreed about having a Marxism-Buddhism ideology versus a strictly Buddhist identity.  Outside pressures on DPM included intense police surveillance and Indira Gandhi’s State of Emergency from 1975- 1977.  On March 7, 1977 Dhasal and Pawar announced the dissolution of the DPM as a result of this infighting and political repression.

DPM’s legacy is seen in Dalit literature and politics.  The writings of  PM poets and writers helped establish Dalit literature as a major literary form, and Dhasal became one of India’s leading poets.  The DPM has also had a lasting impact on Indian politics.  Shortly after the dissolution of the DPM, Kamble and other DPM leaders formed the Bharatiya Dalit Panthers (BDP) when Emergency Rule ended in March 21, 1977.  The BDP expanded across India to nearly 20 states, and was most active near the India-Nepal border and in Tamil Nadu in southern India.  In Tamil the party is known as the DPI.  It is now the major Dalit political party in Tamil fighting against Dalit oppression.

Nigeria’s Umaru Dikko was the minister of transport in the civilian government run by Shehu Shagari from 1979 until the end of 1983 when the country’s army overthrew the administration and installed Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the head of state. The new military government under Buhari jailed scores of government ministers under Shagari’s administration for corruption. Dikko, who criticized the military regime under Buhari, managed to flee to London reportedly dressed as a priest.

While in London, he continued to be an outspoken critic of the military government, which also accused him of corruption and of stealing millions of dollars from a rice distribution program he was in charge of. Dikko denied the accusations. Still, the military government labeled him as “Nigeria’s most wanted man” and devised a plan to kidnap him off the streets of London and bring him back to Nigeria to face trial.

The Independent reported that Nigerian intelligence services and undercover agents (alongside several Israelis who were alleged to be members of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad) tracked Dikko to a house in west London. The joint Nigerian-Israeli team placed the former minister’s house under surveillance. An Israeli alleged former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, reportedly led the kidnap team, which included a Nigerian intelligence officer, Maj Mohammed Yusufu, and Israeli nationals Felix Abitbol and Dr. Lev-Arie Shapiro. One of the team members was to inject Dikko with an anesthetic.

On July 5, 1984, Dikko was kidnapped outside his home in London, bundled into the back of a van and locked in a large crate addressed to the Nigerian Ministry of External Affairs in the then capital city, Lagos. The kidnappers injected Dikko before laying him, unconscious, in the crate with the Israeli anesthetist by his side in the crate to keep him breathing. Barak and Abitbol were in a second crate. The two boxes were sealed. The kidnappers drove Dikko to Stansted airport to put him on a waiting Nigerian cargo plane to be flown back to Lagos.

Unknown to the kidnappers, Dikko’s secretary had witnessed the abduction. She called the police. The British government subsequently ordered customs officials at airports, ports and border crossings to be extremely observant when inspecting Nigeria-bound vessels. At Stansted, one young customs officer, Charles David Morrow, having heard about the news of a kidnapping, ordered the crates to be opened just when the Nigerian cargo plane was minutes from taking off.

“The day had gone fairly normally until about 3 pm. Then we had the handling agents come through and say that there was a cargo due to go on a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering it didn’t want it manifested,” Morrow recalled what happened to the BBC.

“I went downstairs to see who they were and what was happening. I met a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called Mr Edet. He showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo. Being ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me it was just documents and things.”

Morrow said Nigerian intelligence officials and diplomatic staff argued that the crates could not be opened as they were protected by diplomatic immunity.

Morrow knew that any cargo designated as a diplomatic bag is protected by the Vienna Convention from being opened by customs officers. Thus, he got on the phone to the British Foreign Office.”To qualify as a ‘diplomatic bag’ they clearly had to be marked with the words ‘Diplomatic Bag’ and they had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate documentation. It was fair to say they had a Nigerian diplomat – I’d seen his passport – but they didn’t have the right paperwork and they weren’t marked ‘Diplomatic Bag’,” he said.

The final decision was that the crates could be opened. Customs officers called anti-terrorist police, cordoned off the area and evacuated airport staff. They then opened the crate in the presence of the police. They found Dikko unconscious inside one of the crates. Next to him was the doctor who had injected him.

“He [Dikko] had no shirt on, he had a heart monitor on him, and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open. No shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles. The Israeli anesthetist was in there, clearly to keep him alive,” recalled Morrow.

Customs officials found the other kidnappers in the other crate. “I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs,” Dikko told the BBC a year after the incident.

At the end of the day, the Nigerian intelligence officer and the three Israelis were all convicted of the crime and sent to prison. The governments of Nigeria and Israel however denied involvement in the crime. The incident marred relations between Britain and Nigeria for two years. “The kidnap caused one of the worst-ever diplomatic crises between Britain and Nigeria,” historian Max Siollun wrote in The Independent of London in 2012. “The Nigerian high commissioner was declared persona non grata in London, and the head of Nigeria Airways narrowly escaped being arrested by British police. Diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Britain were suspended for two years.”

Dikko returned to Nigeria a decade after the incident. He later died on July 1 in London, leaving behind “two wives, 11 children and many grandchildren.”

Born in Wamba, in central Nigeria, in 1936, Dikko had studied at the University of London and worked with the BBC for some time. He was later a commissioner in the northern province of Nigeria (now Kaduna State) and the manager of the presidential campaign of his brother-in-law, Shagari.

After his abduction, he went to law school in London and was admitted to the bar. He reentered Nigerian politics in the 1990s, and before his death, he became chairman of the disciplinary committee of the People’s Democratic Party, led by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a Nigerian economist who, on March 3rd, 2021, was sworn in as the first woman and first African director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). She was also the longest serving finance minister in the government of Nigeria and has headed initiatives prioritizing the economies of low-income countries at the World Bank.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was born on June 13, 1954 in Ogwashi-Ukwu, Delta State, Nigeria. She studied at Nigeria’s oldest girls’ secondary school and traveled to the U.S. to study at Harvard University as a teenager (1973). She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor’s in economics (1976) and later earned her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1981. Since then, she has been awarded 15 honorary degrees from other institutions around the world. After receiving her doctoral degree, Okonjo-Iweala served for 25 years in the World Bank where she rose to the no. 2 position as managing director of operations. In that post she supervised development projects and portfolios in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia.

Okonjo-Iweala made history in Nigeria after being appointed the first woman and longest serving Finance Minister of Nigeria. She was first appointed by President Olusegun Obasanjo (2003-2006) and again by President Goodluck Jonathan (2011-2015). She also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between her two terms. During this time in government, Okonjo-Iweala sought to bring about reforms that increased fiscal transparency in government and reduced corruption by publishing government distributions to different departments and local offices on the finance ministry website and in newspapers. In 2005, she led negotiations with the Paris Club, an assembly of the world’s most developed nations, which led to the restructuring of 30 billion dollars of external debt owned by Nigeria as well as the outright cancellation of 18 billion dollars of debt. When Okonjo-Iweala was serving her second term under President Jonathan, she received death threats and suffered the kidnapping of her mother (who was later released by kidnappers). Despite this adversity, due to her reform programs and work as finance minister, Okonjo-Iweala is credited with helping grow the Nigerian economy, which has recently overtaken South Africa as the largest economy in Africa.

Okonjo-Iweala has written or co-written six books and has authored numerous works on development and finance. She has been featured on Forbes magazine’s 100 most powerful women in the world for four straight years and was recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Most recently, Okonjo-Iweala has been elected as the World Trade Organization’s Director General where she will be a spokesperson for the WTO and be instrumental in facilitating trade negotiations and settling disputes between member nations.

The Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War, was a three-year bloody conflict with a death toll numbering more than one million people. Having commenced seven years after Nigeria gained independence from Britain, the war began with the secession of the southeastern region of the nation on May 30, 1967, when it declared itself the independent Republic of Biafra. The ensuing battles and well-publicized human suffering prompted international outrage and intervention.

Carved out of the west of Africa by Britain without regard for preexisting ethnic, cultural and linguistic divisions, Nigeria has often experienced an uncertain peace. Following decades of ethnic tension in colonial Nigeria, political instability reached a critical mass among independent Nigeria’s three dominant ethnic groups: the Hausa-Fulani in the north, Yoruba in the southwest, and Igbo in the southeast. On January 15, 1966, the Igbo launched a coup d’état under the command of Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi in an attempt to save the country from what Igbo leaders feared would be political disintegration.

Shortly after the successful coup, widespread suspicion of Igbo domination was aroused in the north among the Hausa-Fulani Muslims, many of whom opposed independence from Britain. Similar suspicions of the Igbo junta grew in the Yoruba west, prompting a joint Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani countercoup against the Igbo six months later. Countercoup leader General Yakubu Gowon took punitive measures against the Igbo. Further anger over the murder of prominent Hausa politicians led to the massacre of scattered Igbo populations in northern Hausa-Fulani regions. This persecution triggered the move by Igbo separatists to form their own nation of Biafra the following year.

Less than two months after Biafra declared its independence, diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis fell apart. On July 6, 1967, the federal government in Lagos launched a full-scale invasion into Biafra. Expecting a quick victory, the Nigerian army surrounded and buffeted Biafra with aerial and artillery bombardment that led to large scale losses among Biafran civilians. The Nigerian Navy also established a sea blockade that denied food, medical supplies and weapons, again impacting Biafran soldiers and civilians alike.

Despite the lack of resources and international support, Biafra stood firm refusing to surrender in the face of overwhelming Nigerian military superiority. The Nigerian Army however continued to slowly take territory, and on January 15, 1970, Biafra surrendered when its military commander General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu fled to Cote d’Ivoire.

During this civil war, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people died daily in Biafra from starvation as a result of the naval blockade. The international reaction to the military conflict helped define how the world now views and responds to similar crises.

Oṣogbo pronounced Oshogbo is a Yoruba town that is sometimes referred to as the heart of Nigerian art culture. Its art history cannot stand without the Mbari Mbayo, a club that was established for African writers, artists, and musicians in Ibadan before its concept was transferred to Oshogbo.

It all started with Jewish German scholar and entrepreneur Ulli Beier. After moving to Nigeria with his Austrian artist wife Susanne Wenger, the two wanted to break the already existing gap between Whites and Nigerians.

Beier made a conscious effort to know the Nigerian cultural environment and founded the ‘Black Orpheus’ magazine in Ibadan in 1957. It soon gained an international market and was patronized by writers and poets both local and international, with Yoruba text translations available.

Wenger, after separating from her husband Beier, formed a circle of artists known as the “New Sacred Art.” She took on the project of rebuilding the Osun Holy Grove in 1960 and became a custodian, nurturing and preserving the place. Today, that area is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.

Beier, having founded the first Mbari Club in Ibadan in 1961, held art exhibitions to showcase the works of locals. It was during one such exhibition that he met dramatist and composer Duro Ladipo who converted his father’s house to open Oshogbo’s own Mbari Mbayo club. (Mbari was an Igbo word for creation).

Oshogbo was then a city of 250,000 people, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Ibadan. Ladipo transformed his father’s house into an art gallery and theatre where he produced his plays. In order for the club to appeal to the locals in Oshogbo, Ladipo constantly made references to Yoruba mythology, drumming, dance, and poetry and soon developed a kind of Yoruba opera, according to one account.

The Oshogbo club evolved so much so that it did not only cater to artists and intellectuals but the everyday people in the community as well. Beier and Ladipo, with their ‘Oshogbo school’ in the 1960s, nurtured unemployed primary-school dropouts into fine artists whose works were a true blend of the foreign influences and their Oshogbo traditions. They created fresh and sophisticated art.

The Mbari Mbayo club in Oshogbo became a home where their works would be on display, a move which helped the local art scene to thrive and appeal to international markets.

This movement birthed some of Oshogbo’s greatest artists, including Rufus Ogundele, Adbisi Fabunmi, and Prince Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki, popularly known as Twins Seven-Seven, whose work is influenced by traditional Yoruba mythology and culture, and gods.

Ogundele’s works are a fine blend of the European artist’s influence and traditional Yoruba culture. The power of Ogun, the Yoruba orisha of war, fire, and iron, is a theme that flows through his works.

Fabunmi was a member of the Duro Ladipo ensemble. Be it his yarn paintings or city prints, Fabunmi’s works almost always had the city of Oshogbo as his theme and the Yoruba sculpture effects were also evident in his work.

Today, Oshogbo’s art history is intertwined with the Osogbo Holy Grave, scholar and entrepreneur Beier, Wnger also known as the ‘living goddess’ and dramatist Ladipo.

A photo of a Nigerian-American family has gone viral on LinkedIn after it was posted by one of them earlier this month. It was in commemoration of World Siblings day and Dr. Chinyere Okpaleke decided to share the picture of her siblings who all practice medicine.

The picture is the epitome of Black Excellence; that explains why it earned the admiration of almost 170,000 people on the professional networking platform, with about 6000 comments.

The Okpaleke is a family of nine — six girls, their brother, and parents. They are: Lillian Okpaleke, M.D., Okway Okpaleke, M.D., Chinelo Okpaleke, P.A., Nkiru Osefo, M.D., Ifeoma Okpaleke, N.P., Queenate Okpaleke, N.P. and Chinyere Okpaleke.

Their father, Andrew Okpaleke, M.D., is a retired physician of internal medicine who was in the practice for more than 30 years and their mother, Celina Okpaleke, P.A., has been in the field for over 20 years.

Their parents’ profession had an influence on them and their choice of career which they do not regret. Being immigrants from Nigeria, they made a lot of sacrifices for their families to succeed and have the right foundation to thrive. “We are Nigerian, so we have that cultural background of my parents being immigrants and basically sacrificing coming here for a better life,” Chinyere Okpaleke told Good Morning America. “Their idea of wanting us to succeed came across in how they raised us.”

Chinyere, called Dr. Chi by her patients, is a family medicine hospitalist living in Houston. She said if she had the choice of choosing between her family and that of the Kardashians, she will choose hers a million times over because she is proud of what they do; saving lives.

“If I had to choose between The Okpaleke’s Vs The Kardashian’s… I would choose US every single time.”

“I know our parents and ancestors are beyond proud! We are exactly what their sacrifices were meant for! All glory to God,” she added.

The siblings believe the photo they posted on National Siblings Day will give hope to little ones that have big dreams to pursue them. “I’ve had someone say they printed it out and they have it on their refrigerator so their children can see it as motivation,” Dr. Chi said. “It’s very touching. I’m happy that we’re able to shed some light in today’s world.”

Uzoma Dozie is the founder of Sparkle, a Nigerian-based online platform that uses technology to build a community of retailers in Nigeria. In other words, he is using technology to build the retail market in Nigeria and Africa.

The platform, which was launched in 2019, employs artificial intelligence to help users make sound business decisions. It is also to reach out to those in the informal economy with the sole aim of bringing them into the formal economy so as to ensure financial inclusion using the tool of choice – a mobile phone.

Sparkle is not a bank, neither is it a fintech platform in the traditional sense, Dozie explains in an interview with Forbes, although it provides financial services through technology.

“Why? Because we know that our customers are on mobile – they are digital natives and digital aliens,” Dozie says. “They are building their e-commerce sites on their mobile phones, they are connecting with their customers [current and potential] on social, via mobile, they may already be trying to do their banking via their mobile phones. Mobile-first, second, third. So we have built Sparkle as a wrap-around to service their business requirements.”

Sparkle offers an array of services such as flexible payments, savings, and analytics via its Android and iOS mobile applications. The platform allows users to track daily, weekly, and monthly spending patterns, with detailed breakdown by category. One of its features, Sparkle Stash, is PiggyVest-esque as it lets users save towards specific goals, according to TechinAfrica.

Before starting his own venture, Dozie was the last Group Managing Director (MD) of Diamond Bank, Nigeria. As MD, he oversaw the growth of the Retail Banking arm of Diamond Bank to 18 million customers and also supervised the successful merger with Access Bank in April 2019, making the new institution Africa’s largest bank with 29 million customers, according to Forbes.

Apart from playing a lead role in the banking sector, he was equally active in the new media space. He hosted a tech-focused show called TechTurks where he interviewed leading entrepreneurs. He was also in charge of the angel investment and mentorship platform, Black-Knights.

Dozie says Sparkle is using the retail model that he used while serving as MD of Diamond Bank but focusing on a different market segment and also exploring ways to scale and support the unbanked and financially excluded in Nigeria.

“It’s an exciting time for retail in Nigeria, and Sparkle is amassing a tribe of like-minded people, self-starters, and problem solvers who are dedicated to using their talents to power the digital transformation of the financial industry. It is by no means a quick-fix solution, but we are committed to solving the unique and complex, changing needs of the Nigerian market,” he says.

Dazies says he has always been fascinated by technology and how to leverage it for change in the finance and business sector to ensure inclusion. He said it did not come as a surprise to him when he moved from the world of traditional banking to start Sparkle, after overseeing Diamond Bank’s incredible growth.

“This is why I decided not to sit back and lurk around boardrooms after I completed the Diamond Bank and Access Bank merger – I wanted to build on my 30+ years of banking and industry experience, combine it with my love and fascination of technology, and build a digital-first business from the bottom up,” he says.

On its website, Sparkle says it has transaction volume amounting to over $16 million, deposits to the tune of over $1 million, and a customer base of over 20,000.

Geopolitics in Africa is largely couched in the policymaking spirit of the South-South cooperative ideology. It is a poor continent despite the potentials for wealth that can change the balance of power on the globe. Africans interact transnationally over this shared sense of overcoming the poverty and misery that afflict their people, as well as standing up to the bullishness of Euro-American dominance.

The said dominance goes back centuries ago to slavery and colonization. All but two African countries were colonized and sub-Sahara bore the worst brunt of this. There is also the problem of racism on the global scale by which Africans continue to suffer from badly-taught reasons for racial and ethnic differences. Overall, Africans are willing to support each other, especially in opposition to non-continent-based nations. Thus support may be slow and even lack financial benefits but it is there.

Transnational relationships among certain pairs of African countries can be described as frenemies. These are relationships that are friendly although either side recognizes long-standing tensions and the bases for these. Three of these frenemies have been described here.

Ghana and Nigeria

This is most probably the most notable frenemy situation on the African continent. It is virtually impossible to go anywhere on the continent where it is not known that Ghanaians and Nigerians have a kind of relationship that is part love and part hate. The two are most often rated as the biggest West African economies, two English-speaking countries and that in itself brings a competitive edge.

This competitiveness shows itself in sports – soccer being the most popular sport in either country – where the eagerness to bag bragging rights can get both tensed among athletes and fans. There is also the famous jollof rice battles where Ghanaians and Nigerians compete over who makes the best tasting version of that dish. Music and international trade are not spared this competitiveness too.

There is an often unexplored historical cause for this relationship with a theory suggesting that Ghana, as the first sub-Saharan country to win independence, became a sort of model figure for Nigerians. But as Nigeria grew in population and wealth, the relationship moved from mentor-mentee to a clash of who is bigger and better at whatever.

Rwanda and Burundi

Rwanda and Burundi have a decent relationship that is often maintained over the fact they share borders and ethnic groups. There are groups that can be found in both countries, a consequence of colonial demarcations so that ethnic groups did not form nations. The Hutu ethnic group, for instance, is the largest ethnic group in Rwanda and Burundi, contributing up to 80% of the populations in either country.

Nationalism or better, national loyalty, divides these people, however. An attack on the jet carrying Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira among others on April 6, 1994, sparked the violence that is the Rwandan genocide which resulted in the mass killing of over 800,000 people, most of them from the minority Tutsi ethnic group. The massacre happened in less than four months.

Burundians were not part of the war although Hutu and Tutsi people in that country chose sides. But in terms of their national loyalty, Burundians often remind themselves that their president was killed as result of Rwandan local politics. This reminder has been known to cause a fraught relationship at times.

Morocco and Algeria

Morocco and Algeria have the kind of relationship that has not necessarily gotten bad or violent but that is marked with resignation to stop trying to make it better. This relationship started well because Morocco was the most explicitly supportive regional friend Algerians had during the Algerian War of Independence against France. Morocco provided ammunition, money and a base to Algerian rebel forces.

But when Morocco decided to make Western Sahara a part of its kingdom, things went sour. Algeria perceived this move as an imperialist tactic on the part of Morocco to force submission from other Maghrebian nations. Algeria chose to support the Polisario Front, the pro-independence military movement in Western Sahara, against Morocco. Algiers has been supportive of Polisario for more than 30 years.

Morocco has also been accused of funding instability in Algeria, during the latter’s civil war. Morocco denies all of these accusations and has been unwilling to let go of Western Sahara. Both countries maintain an embassy in the other’s capital and sometimes cooperate against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.

A noticeably pregnant Nigerian woman has nabbed a Taekwondo gold medal at the ongoing biennial National Sports Festival. Aminat Idrees trained for months before the multi-sport event and she was not going to let her current condition stop her from participating in the event after being cleared by her doctor.

Footage of the 26-year-old beautifully executing different combat techniques in Poomsae, the non-combat form of Taekwondo, was shared on Twitter. Idrees won gold for the Mixed Poomsae category and took home medals from other Poomsae categories.

As part of Team Lagos, and this being the first time the team won gold, Idrees was one of the leading medalists at the sports festival. Apart from winning gold in the Mixed Poomsae category, she also took home silver in the female team Poomsae category and won an individual bronze medal in the same category.

Idrees said being able to participate in the competition was a “privilege.” “It’s such a privilege for me. I just decided to give it a try after training a couple of times… It feels really good,” she said.

“Before I got pregnant, I have always enjoyed the training, so it didn’t seem different with pregnancy,” Idrees added.

The organizers of the National Sports Festival taking place in Edo State were elated by her performance and described her win as “inspiring”. However, some Twitter users criticized her for endangering the life of her unborn child.

One user said, “If you are seeing this and you going about how strong a woman is, you are a fool The organizers that allowed this to happen are mad The woman herself is mad and she needs someone to tell her What in f**s name is she trying to prove There is breaking the barrier and then stupidity.”

Another said, “This rather Sickening than Inspiring.”

But some jumped to her defense and attempted to explain the category of sport in which she participated in. Idrees explained she got clearance from her doctor as well as the organizing body of the games which certified her fit to participate in the sport. 

She told CNN that many people have a misconception about the sport, adding that this is the right time to educate people on Taekwondo. “Taekwondo has two branches: the combat sport and Poomsae — which is a form of exercise…just displaying the hand and leg techniques in Taekwondo. I participated in the Poomsae event,” she said.

A Nigerian-born physician who has worked in four continents — Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America — is being honored as one of the top physicians in the U.S. Professor Iyalla Elvis Peterside was named among recipients of America’s Best Physicians 2021 award by the U.S. National Consumer Advisory Board and Todaysbestphysician.com.

Professor Peterside is known for his outstanding work in Pediatrics and Neonatology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical school.

He has worked as a consultant for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, considered one of the best children’s hospitals in the world. The decorated professor specializes in Neonatal Apnea, Neonatal Brain Injury, Neonatal ECMO, Neonatal Surgery, Nosocomial Infections, and Ventilation of the Neonate. His works have previously been recognized by professional associations in the U.S. and institutions where he has worked.

According to the children’s hospital in Philadelphia, his areas of interest are care of complex neonatal patients and infection control with emphasis on catheter-related bloodstream infections. He is an expert on the use of ECMO to treat critically ill patients in respiratory and cardiac failure.

Professor Peterside graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1985 where he had his medical training and then went on to train in pediatrics, pediatric surgery, and neonatology at the Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in Manchester, England, and The Bolton General Hospital in Bolton, England.

From there he attended the Brooklyn Medical Center in New York for further training and completed a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Nigeria.

Peterside is an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and has published two papers in conjunction with other doctors in his field — “Periocular ulcerative dermatitis associated with gentamicin ointment prophylaxis in newborns” and “Pilot trial to compare tolerance of chlorhexidine gluconate to povidone-iodine antisepsis for central venous catheter placement in neonates.”

Peterside is one of the many Nigerians excelling in the U.S. Nigerians are the most highly educated of all groups in the U.S. — 61 percent hold at least a bachelors degree compared with 31 percent of the total foreign-born population and 32 percent of the U.S.-born population, according to 2017 data from the Migration Policy Institute.

The 2016 American Community Survey also found that among Nigerian-American professionals, 45 percent work in education services with several others being professors at some of the top universities. Nigerian Americans are also increasingly entering into entrepreneurship and building tech companies in the U.S. In the medical field, you will find them there too; as they continue to abandon their home country to work in American hospitals for better pay and working conditions.

Despite racism and discrimination, Nigerian-Americans have not stopped excelling in the United States, as they are currently one of the country’s most successful immigrant communities, with a median household income of $62,351, compared to $57,617 nationally, as of 2015.

The over 376,000 Nigerian-American population has also produced some of the ‘firsts’ in America, including forensic pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu, who was the first to discover and publish on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in American football players, and Pearlena Igbokwe, the first woman of African descent to head a major U.S. TV studio.

Apart from traditional careers like doctors, lawyers and engineers, Nigerian-Americans are also doing tremendously well in entertainment, sports and the culinary arts. Nigerian chef Tunde Wey in New Orleans made the news when he used food to highlight racial wealth inequality in America.

So how did Nigerians get to U.S. in their numbers, and how are they outshining citizens from their host country?

After the Biafra war in the 1960s in Nigeria, many students were given scholarships by the Nigerian government to pursue higher studies in the States. These students performed well and furthered their education before becoming professionals in their various fields. They valued education and passed this on to their children, and the result is what is being observed now.

They are believed to be special and have unique and spiritual capabilities like the gift of healing, extreme intelligence and physical strength. Known as Dada from Yoruba culture in Nigeria, these children are born with naturally matted or locked hair.

The hair is similar to dreadlocks and is difficult to comb but the difference here is that Dada is more predestined and not by choice. Local people believe that their strength and overall good health are tied to their hair and it must therefore not be tempered with or groomed.

The Igbos of Nigeria call them “Elena” translated to mean “Child King”, a name given to them largely due to the nature of their hair which is likened to a crown and also because of the belief of toughness such children possess.

Dada children are known to be very fragile and must be taken good care of especially in their formative years. The Igbos observe many traditional rules when dealing with a Dada. For instance, it is believed that when the hair of a Dada child is combed or cut, the child would fall very sick and could even die.

Apart from the mother of a dada, no other person must touch the hair of these children. If any other person mistakenly touches the hair, he or she must give money to the child or tie a cowry to their locks to prevent them from falling ill. Traditional Nigerian families further believe that their Dada children are gods and offer them to the shrine.

The chief priest now decides their fate. Some do not touch their hair and serve in the shrine for the rest of their lives and even take over from the chief priest when he dies. Others have their hair shaved off.  Most of them have their hair shaved off before puberty or adulthood. Shaving a Dada's hair must, however, be accompanied with a special ritual which is usually performed by the chief priest presiding over the child. After the ritual is performed, the hair of the Dada is collected into a pot of water containing special herbs and kept by the parents of the child. The potion can be used as medicine in case the child falls ill. It is believed that a child who doesn’t go through this ritual would die within three days after the shaving.

In recent times, Christian parents would rather have a Catholic priest to do the shaving. It is believed, particularly, among Igbo communities that Dada children are the reincarnations of deities and other great men and women, hence such children often lived in isolation. The trend is now changing as with the advent of modernization, many of them are now being largely accepted into mainstream societies. Families are also increasingly locking the hair of their children and hence it is generally hard to even distinguish a natural born Dada and a made one.

To counter the stereotypical nature of art history, Nigerian-American artist Adebunmi Gbadebo uses Black hair from people from the African Diaspora to create her art pieces.

She feels it is about time to make art pieces rooted in the Black culture so people who look like her would find their place in art history as well.

Gbadebo chose to use Black human hair instead of traditional art materials because of the history and ancestry that is embedded in a single strand. “…And that strand connects us back to the continent, to Africa,” she told BBC.

She said she wanted all to see Black human hair as something powerful that needs to be respected, as something that should take up space in ‘traditional’ art galleries.

Her journey began in the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she decided to use Black human hair “as a medium to depict her art on canvas”, BBC reported.

Gbadebo, born in New Jersey and based in Newark, sourced Black human hair from her local community barbershops and those in Nigeria and Morocco as well. At times, people who had heard about her quest to utilize Black human hair in her works voluntarily mail her their hair, she said.

According to her, the local barbershops and people’s homes became her art store and they trusted her enough to give a piece of their hair to her to immortalize in her art pieces.

“Dada” was the first piece Gbadebo created with hair. “I have sewn hair to canvas, and I hand sew most of my work. The needle replaces my brush and instantly, the process became more involved allowing me to pierce through surfaces to insert “nappy” hair,” she said.

“The needle also slows the process and reflects that of a hairdresser or a mother working on her child’s head that rests in between her thighs. I am looking for ways to integrate genealogies of the diaspora with critical discourse through my use of hair!” she added.

Gbadebo recently deliberately combined Black hair, cotton, rice paper, and different shades of blue for her exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York. A Dilemma of Inheritance focuses on her True Blue portraits which were inspired by the testimony of journalist and author Ta-Neshi Coates at a reparations hearing. “We recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance, and the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.”

Coates’ words inspired Gbadebo’s exhibition. She said of the origins of the works: “As an artist, I’m confronting my relationship with the Gbadebocolor blue, Indigo, and materials cotton and rice in the context of their origins as commodities born of violence and enslavement,” said Gbadebo. “I’m interested in the whole system that produced these materials and how its memory has been treated.”