 Welcome back. Our second major conversation for today is going to be, of course, moving to the story of Itunoo Babalala, a really sad story that we shared yesterday morning on the breakfast. We're speaking this morning with David Hunde, who, of course, has been, you know, on the forefront of this case and, you know, done all he possibly could, I believe, to bring her back home. Good morning, David. Thanks for joining us. Good morning. Thanks for having me. All right. In the interest of time, we're going to go straight to, you know, just a brief, you know, summary of what the case is about and your challenge with the Nigerian response. All right. So, essentially, back in March, when I first wrote this story, Itunoo Babalala had been in a prison cell in Wanda Ku, in the north-eastern agriculture coast since 2019, basically for a crime that she did not commit. She went to the police and called the world to report a burglary of her apartment, and she ended up getting set up for an offense that was completely plucked out of the air, picked out of this type of human trafficking. The reason this was done, usually when the Ivorian police wanted to set up a foreigner to the crime, so as to extort money from them, they came to favor the crime of human trafficking because under Ivorian law, the path of evidence is very low, and the statutory, the mandatory minimum sentence, I believe, is 10 years at least. So she was convicted on the sole testimony of an 80-year-old child that she had never met before, testimony which was contradicted in several places. But all the conversional statements she was forced to sign was written in French because proceedings were carried out in French. The public defender lawyer saying to her was French-speaking, sentences were delivered in French, everything was done in French, and she was not a French speaker. She showed what I raised in the back of Junie Moussa every post in the search of the so-called unabasture. So she ended up in prison for 20 years. After two suicide attempts, she had 10 years knocked off the sentence, so she was supposed to be there for 10 years. In March, she was able to reach out to me through an intermediary, and the story came to my attention, and I put it out there. So as far back as March 15, I believe it was, they had no responses from different organizations within the Nigerian government. The Nigerians with the Aspera Commission specifically made come, and its chair, Abigay Dabiri, had both responded on social media at the time, stating that they are organizing a fact-finding mission to go to the court to confirm that all the details in this case were true, which they actually did, and they went there, and they confirmed this thing, and they put out a statement saying so, that they had confirmed that this girl is innocent, that the supposed offense that she was convicted for was completely nonsensical and absurd, that they were going to do everything they could to get her out of prison and bring her back home. So that was in March. April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and now in November, that's eight months, and they did absolutely nothing. So on Sunday, basically, I think it was around 2 p.m. Nigerian time on Sunday, when someone contacted me on Facebook, a complete stranger, to tell me that, to ask me, are you the journalist that wrote the story of Becky Ball, which was the alias that she was known as in Côte d'Ivoire? I say yes, I'm the one, it's their problem, but it says yes, she's unconscious, basically, she's been transferred to the hospital in Abisham, and the hospital authorities are looking for parents contact details, because it's looking as if she's not going to make it. So, and then the person sent me pictures and videos of my condition, and she was in a catheteric state, she was completely unresponsive, literally bad, so I put out a final, like, Hail Mary, hit and hope of social media, to try and embarrass the Nigerian Embassy in Côte d'Ivoire and the amnesty come, and I think that we need to take some sort of action, like, for eight months, you've been putting out statements of the public saying that you're doing this, that you have done absolutely nothing, she has still been in the same cell all this while, nothing has changed. So now, she's about to die, so can you please finally do something? And then I myself was running around, trying to make some progress, trying to organize the fundraiser, trying to figure out how to get Bonnier Cross to hang. It's actually very complicated to translate, which is, you know, surprising. So, in the midst of all of that, then a friend who was right there with her in the hospital room, then sent me a voice note crying and said, it's okay, we can, we can stop making notes, she just died. So, yeah, that was how the entire story ended, she died, which was left around devices, after all the statements that were made by public servants and Nigerian government institutions, they did absolutely nothing, and she died, and that was the end of that, and then after she died, and then I put the story out there again that, yeah, she's dead, fine, and I hope all of you are happy now. Then it became an issue of, it became a competition for hope and cover their own backside, so, you know, what may come then, the very next day, within three days I was put out to press release, basically saying it's not our fault, then I began every series of TV appearances, also saying it's not my fault, then Nigerian embassies, they also released the press release, saying the impression of the same thing, it's not our fault, so it's nobody's fault, it's probably even it's a new source, yeah, that's the only person at fault, Nigerian government isn't to blame, it's nobody's fault, nobody was responsible for anything, it was nobody's job to get her out, it's just if you're Nigerian, you're on your own. Abikari always says that the commission got to find out about five months ago, and then they also involved them, that the Nigerian government got involved, got a lawyer to appeal the case, and they had started, you know, the process of appealing before they got the sad news that Itunoo's actually dead. You said that the Nigerian government didn't do anything. So I'm not sure what Abikari's mathematical ability is, especially, but if she says she only became a lawyer five months ago, well, I'm looking at the trees from her, dated March 15, 2021, as far as I understand, from March to November, it's eight weeks months, she's just going to work for at least eight months. So I'm sure why she came on to me to tell that kind of lie, it's so easy to verify, it's right there on a trigger handle, anyone can go there and verify this for themselves. And during these eight months, all she and Itunoo are doing is coming out and putting out statements from time to time. Oh, they're hiring a lawyer, they're doing this, they're doing that. Meanwhile, in their communication with the family, what they kept on saying was there's no money, there's no money. We're trying to hire a lawyer but there's no money. And essentially trying to get the family, very, very, like, this sport-struggling family by Hidibada, trying to get them to somehow come up with one billion naira, or was it two billion naira to pay for a lawyer? Where were they going to get that kind of money from? So I'm not sure what she means when she says that they did not do anything. And I'm not going to have it because this lady has died finally. So I think now that the outponder everybody was hoping for hasn't happened and the worst outcome possible has happened, she's dead. I think it's insulting to her memory now to still come out and they try and remove responsibility from who is actually responsible, right? I became that very, is responsible, is responsible. And they failed, they did not do their job. And now they're coming around, they're coming out with statements and telling lies, even trying to infer that somehow this was Hidibada's fault, that oh, you know, it was the very difficult case and the fact that she is an alias made it more difficult than it would have been, which is not true, because they were right from the beginning that she had an alias and what the alias was. And that oh, somehow the road trip from Abidjan to Bondu was supposedly four hours, such a big deal. Wow. I remember that I read, you know, that line where they made emphasis on the four hours. You know, like it was such a huge sacrifice that they had to drive four hours. And I personally was shocked, you know, that this is the huge sacrifice, the massive sacrifice that Nikom has made that it drove four hours. I saw it in the statement and I was shocked. She also even made... I was stunned, actually, that they had to make that statement, that there is a four-hour road. And so what? Just during the interview she granted recently, she also made mention of the fact that, you know, where she actually lived was really, really far and they made all of that effort. And at some point, you also need to find out the fact that, you know, which maybe she was involved in child trafficking and what have you. David. Just like David has actually mentioned. But I'll allow you, you know, to go ahead. David, I want to, you know, as... Is it to this case, you know, another example of Nigeria's... The Nigerian state's reaction to the value of the Nigerian life here in Nigeria or in any other part of the world, or those in diaspora also? Or is this just a failure of need come as a body? It's both. It's the continuation of the regular posturing of the Nigerian state. Clearly, as I mentioned elsewhere yesterday, the Nigerian state does not think of itself primarily as an institution whose job is to protect and protect and further the interests of Nigerian people. It doesn't see itself as that. The Nigerian state sees itself as an institution whose job is to pay itself salary and to make money. And it just so happens that, you know, if the way to do that is to, you know, is to occupy an office. Supposedly, you know, on paper, it is to help Nigeria as well. So be it. But in practice, it's not going to do anything. And need come is just an extension of that. But why was need come created in the first place? There's a Ministry of Foreign Affairs already. Right? And then you have this MDA, which is supposed to be under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but which is now competing with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So there's always this uncertainty about who is able to import. So I remember, I think it was last year when a lady from Canada State, I think her name was Zainab Ali, was arrested in Saudi Arabia with abuse of cocaine in her possession, drugs in her possession. I know what the Saudi law states regarding people who do traffic drugs into the country. And the Nigerian states moved heaven and earth to make sure that this lady was out within four months. Right? And I'm going to come back to that later. But what I'm making here is that when she came back, then you then had a big head of every and Geoffrey, who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, involved in this very embarrassing public cat fight for who was supposed to get credit for freeing this girl from Saudi Customs. So you had need come going against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So really, that alone just tells you that it's all about the cloud chasing. It's all about who gets public accredited for something. It's not really about doing the work. It's not really about protecting the interests of Nigerians. It's just about, you know, putting out statements, looking good wherever possible, getting paid your salaries and ester codes and whatever. And the one in Nigerian cities genuinely needs help in a position like that of Israel. You then get, I mean, get a bridge pay a constant time with family that there is no money. And how much is money for one millionaire? It's one millionaire. It's fantastic some of money for any kind of Nigerian government institution to raise, even at local level, much less federal level. But somehow, you know, it's not their problem. You know, so if you should sort yourselves out, where the government, our job is to enjoy ourselves and to be in office, to be in power. That's what we're here for. We're here for the trappings of power, the appearance of authority, the form of office, but not the substance, not the responsibility, not the work. All right, David, and just before we coast it down, at what point do you think the Nigerian government should have intervened in the case of itinuba Balola? Right from the very start, when this all deal of power started, the first institutions reached out to was the Nigerian embassy in Kotevoa. And the Nigerian embassy, again, in keeping with the posturing of the Nigerian government, basically made no effort whatsoever to try to resolve the situation, try to help us. What we were more interested in was how to milk her money. So first of all, they gave her wrong information. They told her that they can't help her because she wasn't in Kotevoa with a passport, with a valid passport, with Nigerian passport. So she's going to need to give them $400,000 to procure in Nigerian passport for her. First of all, that information was wrong because, as we know, everyone is an ECOAS member of state as is Nigeria. As long as you can prove that you are in Nigerian cities, nobody in the ECOAS region can be classified as an illegal migrant or an illegal resident. It's not true. They gave her that false information specifically so that they could extract money from her. More than 10 times the face value of the Nigerian passport as a 2019. And then bear in mind that all in actual, because I've spoken to you about this, all she actually needed was something called a concealant card to prove her citizenship, to prove her identity. And that's supposed to be issued free of charge. And instead, Nigerian embassy in Ibupu was trying to extract $400,000 from her because that's what the Nigerian government would exploit, Nigerian people to exploit some citizens. So right from the start, she reached out and the Nigerian government at that point to that point intervened but that made this whole problem go away from the start. They didn't. And she spent the best part of two years going back and forth with them, trying to negotiate, trying to fix it in-house. And also, very nicely, she didn't want to like, sell her family name. She didn't want people back home to know that you know, it didn't mobilize in prison. So she was there trying to solve it quietly before eventually she realized that these people are not in prison. So let me see if I can reach out to what she did in March. And then after that story came out, then the Nigerian government gave God's, God's interest, God's decided to return it to be active because there was a grand swell of publicity. And as soon as the publicity, the temporary spots of publicity died, the interest went too. And that was that. And then now that she has died, they are just waiting for the publicity around this to go away as well so that everybody will move on. That's what she said. And of course we should also quickly mention that we had sent a message to Abike Dabiri to of course share her side of the story. But you know there was no actual response. And of course we will bring her in if we get a response from her, she replied with a press release instead. David, what happens next and what steps are going to be taken, you know, moving forward? So first of all the most important things to get to this body back send back to Nigeria. We turn to Nigeria so that I can look at her one last time and give her a fitting burial. I actually, I'm actually in the process of putting together a fundraiser for her dad. So if anyone is to go to my Twitter handle, my pinned tweet, the first tweet you see is the fundraiser. The account is his personal account. His bank account I think is his women account. So essentially the purpose of that is that they are not going to pay to have the body sent to Nigeria. So either she be buried and only must be cut before you know, like nobody, she was like, like nobody treated her like real life in her life or he would have to pay to have a body sent to Nigeria. Obviously she doesn't have a month so for that two days ago he was in conversation with Abigail Dabiri and she basically she would sort out the process of getting the body sent back to Nigeria she would do it but in return he would have to stop speaking to the media he would have to stop talking to the press so essentially she was trying to use his daughter's body as if any chip to make him do what she wanted. So I I got very angry when I heard that I actually recorded an updated conversation without his consent even though he was not supposed to do that but I was angry enough to do that and he gets this this this body cut it off ourselves let's completely remove the Nigerian government's relevance in this situation if Abigail Dabiri doesn't want to help let her come and eat her health we can do this ourselves so that's the current situation now we're trying to crowd the fund so if you go to my hand let's add David on Twitter the first thing you see is the fund the fund raise I say the accounting say I know that so that you should details this so that's that's currently what we're doing. Alright David Hundein thank you so much I always enjoy speaking with you sadly we never speak on happy stories it's always some tragedy or the other but thank you very much for your time this morning and we look forward to talking to you again. Thank you Alright and of course that is the story of Itunoo Baba Lola we also spoke with Renu Oduala earlier and of course Mr Addition who's a lead council to the NTS protesters this is where we wrap up the program this morning if you missed out remember where to catch up on social media platforms it's at Plasti via Africa on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube as well do you not forget to have a great day I am Messi Boko and I am Osaogi Obawan