 On Wednesday, we saw the two factions of the Labour Party turn the presidential tribunal court into a battlefield, but on Thursday, the crisis rocking the party took a new dimension as the national chairman of the Labour Party, Gilius Aboure, and the three other national executive members announced their return. Today, we'll be discussing these developments on the breakfast this morning. We'll also be taking a look at the headlines on some of the national dailies without the press when we get joined by an analyst to look at these headlines in depth. Good morning. I am Maureen Menonweziwe. Good to have you join us again on the breakfast. And I am Justin Akademi, many thanks for being a part of the show. This morning, we trust you're doing well wherever you are. Good morning Maureen. Good morning Justin. You look bright and good. Yes, I am good. That's me being a good neighbor there trying to make your spirit feel good. Yes, I feel good already. That's the essence of, you know, a neighborliness and everything that, you know, you should know and care about the person just around you. Exactly. Our theme of the day is being a neighbor. Who is a neighbor? Are you a good neighbor? Oh, well, most people might think that when you talk about a neighborhood as it were, it's just about the people who live just by your house or something. But then it's beyond just where you live, it's about your space, you know, your neighbors or even your colleagues where you work with, you should, because you see them every other time and you guys interact in one way or the other. So you should know about the things that go on around them. You know, that's one of the things that makes you a good neighbor. Yeah, incidentally, people who, I say that repeatedly, the people you work with have also become your family. True. Because you spend a better part of your day with them every week, Monday to Friday. True. You're not a good neighbor. You know, we used to be so communal in this part of the world. It's one of the things that I believe people outside of Africa, people outside of Nigeria admire about us, but we are losing that part, that essential part of us where we knew our neighbors. You knew who lived in the building beside you, ten buildings away from you and all of that. I know their names. You knew their names. You knew their children. Exactly. Not because they drive. But lately, everyone is just into themselves. Everyone is just chasing after the bread, as it were, just trying to eke out a livelihood one way or the other. The pressures and stress of not just the country, most people are just interested in leaving very early to get that job, to get that money so they can actually tend to their immediate needs and of course that of their families. So, sometimes you'll be surprised that some people leave in a particular building, but they don't even know who stays the next lot. The next lot, which is so wrong. It's losing our values, trust me. Because, I mean, it is a common saying or used to be that nobody owns a child. The community trains a child. So you see my children on the street at the wrong time, you question them. You maybe take them back to me. I see your children vis-a-vis. I do the same thing. But today, people are afraid to talk to your neighbour's child because they don't want to be accused of which hunting or trying to hurt the child. And that boils down to the fact that so many bad things are happening today. So people have become too cautious. And you know, it's just not doing us good as human beings. Yes, I'm still talking about human beings and humanity. When we don't know our neighbours or when we don't interact with people around us, a lot of things just then happen and go under the carpet because we don't want, like you said, we don't want to be which hunted or seen as a people who just want to poke our noses in other people's business. But sometimes some children might be under some sort of abuse. Some people might be, you know, might be living in fear, but they can't really talk about it because they feel that it's not in their place to do so. Yes, it's a very critical thing you just stated. We should look out for what's going on with our neighbours. When we go to Top Trendy, we'll be talking about that. And then not relating with neighbours is also one of the things that has caused, sent a lot of people into depression. I agree. It has sent so many people. Most Nigerians, well, some Nigerians living abroad are seriously complaining. It's one of the things they miss about home. The fact that because over there, you know, it's workhouse, workhouse, except you're among the few who socialise and move around. But most of them out there just into themselves, they go to work, they go back home, they go to work. And so they miss the communal life that they enjoyed back home in Nigeria. So we just cannot afford to stop being good neighbours to one another. It's crucial to our psychological wellbeing. It is because if you are close to your neighbours, if you guys interact one way or the other, some people might tend to open up to you if they think they can trust in you. They can confide in you over times. You guys have shared things together as issues around the community. But then they might want to, they might just need somebody at that particular point in time to talk to. And if there's no one to lend an ear or just to listen, like you said, depression, we just go there from depression. Who knows, some people could just end up being suicidal. Being suicidal and having to be seeing the increase in the rate of suicides lately. And another thing that has happened also is that we have replaced the usual nebulinous, yeah, nebulinous into it's become virtual now. You have associations of these and that. So neighbours now interact online as against, yes, as against talking to one another and knowing about what is going on and at least to the extent that your neighbour would want you to know. But at least there's something different between talking to someone one on one and just chatting online. Well, from the theme of the day, we'll go to top trending. And our first up trending is Sean O'Cotty, the situation with Sean O'Cotty. The secret hearing we read about, which says that the magistrate took him, he's been taken to court and that he was rushed to court by the Nigerian police for extension to detain him for four more days. These are some of the things we're hearing. We do not know how long this is going to take. But the things we keep hearing on the news over this is beginning to make us wonder what exactly is going on with that case. But I thought that he was actually granted bail on Tuesday by now that he should be home and should be able to come when he's actually needed at the police station since the investigations are going. But right now, a whole lot of things are happening. A secret meeting with secret hearing with magistrate and all of that. I wonder if that is the norm because these things should actually be in the open. There's a whole lot that is going on around that case. But then we can't really talk about it so much because, you know, it's still in court that would be subject to this as it is. So we'll just watch and see how it plays out. Different people from different quarters are beginning to add their views on it because he is a public figure and not just him. He's the son of a very, very public figure back in the days of yours. So it's not something that can just be ignored or swept under the carpet. So we'll just watch and see how it's playing out. But one of the things that is thrown up also is you're not compared how the police treat Nigerians vis-à-vis how Nigerians are beginning to treat them as exemplified by what shall we do. Even though people, we are seriously condemning what shall we do. Because ordinarily, there should be, like I said the other day, there should be a symbiotic relationship between the people and the police because they need each other to do their work. The police need information from the people that they are policing and guarded as it were. And the citizens also need to be friends as it were too. The police because if you're not friendly, there's no one relationship. Things will just go awry. All right. So we went and see how that plays out. We show Kotei and we'll move to the next top trending, which is the fact that the Federal Ministry of Works on Wednesday closed down in Jorah, a local bridge in Lagos State because of damage caused by vandals and vandals sampled with the major reinforcement elements of the road. And so there's diversion and. Advice you has been given to commuters to look for alternative routes to get their way to the island. You know, when things like this happen at the end of the day, we are the ones that suffer because when you do diversion or we root and everything, a lot of people would actually. Yes, when I saw it yesterday, I saw the picture you said. I wonder why this happened. Yes, say they say some activities of a bundle. But I wonder why people would actually vandalize you know, infrastructure that is actually meant for the good of everyone. Because if you did that just because you want to get some things and make some quick sale out of the hill, vandalism, people, your family members would be the ones and that would suffer at the end of the day. Yes, traffic has been diverted now from Ido to Ijora, a lawyer, a Papa at the intersection on the pass at Ijora, a lock bar on control flow and reconnected at the U-turn to Ijora, a lawyer or a Papa. So this is the advisory given out by the government to people. Commuters to go through that road. Look at that massive. How on earth did they excavate? Cut out a portion of this road is what I tried to wrap my head around. Yesterday I looked at the picture. Yes, it's just hard to really understand why some people would actually conceive of the idea of wanting to do such damages to public assets, to public infrastructure. I mean, what could be their reasons? Really, they want to, what they say. Marine, it's just hard to fathom, really. Yeah, it is hard to fathom. It is hard to fathom. OK, the third top trending is Anambra pregnant woman brutalizes seven-year-old nephew, 24-year-old Anambra woman, brutalizes this little girl, little boy, Sunday, his name, seven-year-old. Look at that. Look at that. Seven-year-old boy brutalized by his own aunt. The woman is actually related to his father. So she's pregnant. She's just 24 and she's able to make out this kind of wickedness on another person's child. Her own blood. Her own blood, yeah. He's as much as much as just like his own, her own son. I mean, it's your brother's son and your mother. Whatever the boy or the child could have done. Look at him. I mean, it doesn't warrant all of this mistreatment, this brutality. He's just a child and the trauma that he's going to go with for, you know, the next couple of years will just be so powerful. Look at her, look at the pregnant woman. We saw a similar thing play out on the 12th of May. This very, this is a few days ago. We saw another case of a nine-year-old girl, her name, Edema. She looked exactly the same way Sunday's look in her eyes covered because of the brutality. She was hit with pestle, all manner of bruises on her body. That's the same thing we've seen on Sunday. The Ministry of Women and Social Welfare in Anambra State responded when neighbors out of concern, they saw this boy Sunday and took him to the ministry. The ministry immediately went into action and arrested the woman. That was the same thing that also happened in the case of Edema. Edema with all the bruises. I mean, when you look at the pictures, you wonder how? How does a human being do this to a child? Our humanity will seem to have lost the essence of being humans in the first place. But another thing you want to ask yourself is the parents that release their seven-year-old, their nine-year-old to anybody. If how do you do that? How do you send a seven-year-old child who has a fully matured? You know, when I saw Edema's case, I thought, oh, this is quite unfortunate, perhaps her parents are no longer living. And then I read the full story and I saw that her parents were alive and that they said they had actually given the child over to the woman to assist her because she just gave birth to a set of twins. OK. What do you expect a nine-year-old to do? To assist someone who just gave birth. That one is also a child trying to assist another child. How does it work? And the thing that this woman is pregnant and that she's actually doing this brutality on a seven-year-old. But has she ever thought about the child that she is carrying in her own womb? What happens if someone else deeds exactly the same you know, mistreatment that she is given to this child? How would she really feel? What happened to motherliness? What happened to motherhood? She is supposed to be an expectant. I don't know if she's had any child before now, but she's expectant. So she should understand these little things. I think the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare in Anambra State will have to stand up and make sure that there's a law that prohibits children going to live with any family other than their parents. Most times you hear that it's poverty, the parents cannot really take care of the children. If you can't take care of the children, why bring up so many children in the first place? Those are just the issues. They got to do that. And it's so unfortunate that we see and hear of all these stories over and over again. It's not new, though, it's social media that's helping us to see and hear all of this. It's just so unfortunate that women and men in Nigeria seem to think that when somebody comes to live under your roof, that that person becomes an animal to be treated as such. Instead of being responsible and being a father and a mother to that child, you then turn yourself into some sort of monster. You see situations where, like you said, a family situation, a man and a wife, they have kids and they brought their maybe their nephew or some sort of help. And they now tend to treat the helper as some slave, like someone playing second fiddle. The children go to better schools and the so-called helper. You know, doesn't even go to school in the first place. In the case of Idema, she never she has not been enrolled into any kind of school and she was nine years old. She's nine years already. She's been like three or four. Yeah. Yeah. And so on the on the ninth of May, we also read of a couple who were taken to court for raping, assaulting and raping the 19 year old girl living with them. It's also in the news. So at night, the woman would take her husband to go rip the girl living under them. Both of them were actually involved in that. A lot of perversion going on today, Justin, is just so mind-boggling. And so those who are saddled with the responsibility of protecting minors, in this case of 19, she's 19. Well, she's an adult, so. But those who are saddled with the responsibility of taking care of minors, these ministries, Ministry of Women Affairs and Social, whatever, they should make sure that they begin to go out to monitor these homes. They should. Yeah. They should. And for children, for people who can already take care of their children as was, they go to these ministries of government and maybe have their children placed in foster homes so that they can get better treatment than getting this sort of brutality on their kids. It's just some harrowing experience, really. Yeah, it's something that the society needs to really look into. While you're watching the breakfast, it is the Friday Flex edition. And we'll be back to take a look at the headlines on some of the national dailies. Stay with us.