REELWAP

Dr Obadiah Mailafia The death of Dr. Obadiah Mailafia on September 19 touched me more deeply than I thought it would. He was an exceptionally smart, conciliatory, and gracious man who, in spite of appearances to the contrary, had no space for hate and grudges in his heart. He and I publicly clashed on at least two occasions. On both occasions, it was he, a much older person, who privately initiated reconciliation with me. Our first clash happened in 2016 at an online forum called the USAAfrica Dialogue Series where he expressed what I thought were unfair, conspiratorial, facts-free, anti-Muslim opinions. I challenged him with counter facts. Dr Farouk Kperogi Instead of responding to me on the forum, he reached out privately and admitted that said his thought-processes were probably distorted by the personal tragedies he had suffered in the hands of mass murderers who were Muslims. He shared photos of his relatives who had been murdered but assured me that he had...

(The death of the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital Gwagwalada, Abuja,  this morning came to us as a great shock. As someone who relentlessly participated in the activities of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF), his untimely death has dealt  a deadly blow on ethnic nationalities of not only the Middle Belt but the country at large. Arising from various enquiries from Nigerians over the circumstances of his death, the Forum wishes to state as follows: That Dr Mailafia arrived Abuja last Sunday September 12, 2021 from Akure and was received at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport by his wife. On arrival at home, the wife noticed he was not in the best of health conditions and seemed to be suffering from malaria. After three days of treatment without signs of improvement, he went to the CBN Hospital on Friday September 17, 2021 where he was shabily treated. It took the intervention of a senior medic w...