6-2-2025.

The recent arrest and detention of Professor Usman Yusuf at the Kuje, Abuja Maximum Prison, smacks of muscling any voice that expresses its discontent, disgust, disbelief and dissent at the rampant poverty and hunger in Nigeria.

The Professor was the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) during the time of the administration of the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. 

He had completed his medical studies in the United States (US) and taught at the notable University of Chicago and the equally well known University of North Carolina, as a  refutable professor of Medicine he was driven by patriotism to leave his highly paying and envied job in a foreign country, and come back to Nigeria to assist in her development.

His crime was his attempt to reduce the rot which has gone very deep into the NHIS, and appeared to be increasing in leaps and bounds, for which he therefore appeared a serious threat to the interests of some powerful individuals, many of them still calling the shots in the present administration.

His ouster from the organisation and the subsequent adversities that he and the region he comes from, have been going through since then, is definitely CORRUPTION fighting back against them, with a very strong approval and support of the CORRUPT leader of the country.

Otherwise, the detention that the brilliant professor is subjected to should also be mated to the many known corrupt people in the present regime. But because they are the same people behind the ordeals who also happen to belong to the cabal of rogues, who care ONLY for themselves, their immediate family and sycophants who surround them all the time, they have the monopoly of the corruption that controls the present regime at both federal and state levels.

By the way, the latest travail has increased the popularity of the professor of haematology and oncology, as he constant visits from the society’s mighty, the high ups and the very poor 

Even former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who was the opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Presidential Candidate in the 2023 election, recently cried out that the regime of “President Tinubu is using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to fight the opposition, instead of addressing the corruption ravaging the country”. 

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar alleged that Tinubu’s regime had selectively targeted political opponents, while turning a blind eye to the corruption within its own ranks. It is his belief that “true anti-corruption fight should be transparent and impartial, but not motivated by politics”.

Also, in an indirect indictment of corruption against the present regime of President Tinubu it made in a statement recently, Oxfam Nigeria alleged that the “Wealth gap in Nigeria has reached crisis levels, with 70% of the population experiencing hunger”. 

In a report the organisation said that over 133 million people in Nigeria live in poverty, constantly surviving on little food, with women and girls disproportionately affected, while the “wealth of four billionaires Constituting $23.7 billion (US) could easily cover the whole of Lagos city in N500 notes”, adding that, Nigeria’s wealth gap is a moral and social crisis, with a few individuals amassing immense wealth.  

Professor Usman Yusuf should immediately regain his freedom from his detention, since he has not violated any laws of the land. The are thousands of compatriotic compatriots who daily regale the world with the massive CORRUPTION, poverty and hunger that have become constants in Nigeria under President Tinubu.

May God give us the courage to tell power the truth, no matter how unsavoury it may be to their liking and their supporters’s. May He also make us not to care about the consequences of doing His bidding, wherever we may find ourselves, and under whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.