By Ekunode Ayomipo Jolaoluwa

A claim circulating online alleging that the mother and sister of a notorious bandit kingpin were sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for aiding terrorism activities has continued to generate public interest and reactions.

A review of the claim shows that Nigeria’s security agencies and judicial authorities have, in recent years, intensified efforts to dismantle criminal networks by targeting not only suspected bandits and terrorists but also individuals accused of providing logistical, financial or operational support to such groups. This approach forms part of broader efforts to curb insecurity across affected regions of the country.

However, despite the widespread circulation of the claim, available information does not provide sufficient evidence to independently confirm that the individuals depicted in the image were convicted and sentenced to a combined 40-year jail term for terrorism-related offences. No official court documents, statements from relevant authorities, or verifiable judicial records were readily available to substantiate the specific details presented in the image.

The absence of key information, including the identities of the accused persons, the location of the trial, the date of conviction, and the court that allegedly handed down the sentence, makes it difficult to establish the authenticity of the claim. Such details are critical in verifying reports of criminal convictions, particularly in cases involving terrorism and national security.

Experts in media verification advise that claims relating to criminal prosecutions should be supported by official records and credible sources before being accepted as factual. Without such supporting evidence, there remains a possibility that the information may have been presented without adequate context or may be inaccurate.

While the Nigerian government has maintained a firm stance against terrorism, banditry and related crimes, and courts have handed down significant penalties in proven cases, the specific claim regarding the alleged conviction of a bandit kingpin’s mother and sister could not be independently verified at the time of this review.

At a landmark two-day summit in Abuja, Africa’s fastest-growing diagnostics chain unveiled a hub-and-spoke franchise model promising a bold target of 500 Points of Care across Nigeria in next 3 years.                           

Nigeria is losing more than one million citizens every year — not to untreatable disease, but to a healthcare system that cannot tell patients what is wrong with them in time. That is the stark figure Shalina Diagnostics placed before an audience of pharmacists, doctors, clinic operators, and investors gathered this week in Abuja for the company’s inaugural Franchise Partners Meet.

The event, spanning two days at the nation’s capital, marked the most public and ambitious statement yet from a company that three years ago set out to do what no pan-African private operator has managed: build a standardised, affordable, technology-backed chain of diagnostic laboratories across Nigeria, and eventually across the continent.

Speaking to delegates, Shalina Diagnostics CEO Mr. Nalin Singla framed the problem in three simple facts: there are not enough labs; the premium chains that do exist are priced out of reach for the common man; and local labs lack the trust, the consistency, and the fast turnaround that patients and clinicians depend on.

“One million-plus Nigerians die every year due to lack of quality and timely testing. This is a problem the market cannot ignore.”

– Abbas Virji, MD, Shalina Healthcare

The company’s answer is a hub-and-spoke model it based on 3 pillars : Quality, Affordability, Availability. Under the model, franchise partners operate small patient-facing collection centres and labs, gathering samples which are then processed at Shalina’s central reference laboratories equipped with advanced diagnostic technology. Results are returned electronically with agreed turnaround times.

Shalina Healthcare Managing Director Mr. Abbas Virji, who first conceived the diagnostics arm after COVID-19 exposed the country’s testing deficit, told the summit that the network effect of scale is the key to making affordability sustainable. “By having more collection points and more scale, we can achieve lower prices for testing. The power of the community coming together, having one system — that is how we solve this.”

A BUSINESS CASE BUILT FOR ENTREPRENEURS 

For aspiring franchise partners, the numbers Shalina presented were designed to dispel the notion that healthcare is an expensive sector to enter. A collection centre can pay back within three months and a full-service satellite lab achieves payback within six months, with the potential to scale as the network grows.

“You bring the location. We bring the lab. That is the entire model.”

• Nalin Singla, CEO, Shalina Diagnostics

A 27-YEAR LEGACY THAT COMMANDS TRUST 

Shalina Diagnostics does not arrive in Nigeria as an unknown quantity. Shalina Diagnostics is a company launched by Shalina Healthcare, a group that has been manufacturing and distributing medicines across Africa for more than four decades, operating in 18 countries with 108 distribution depots on the continent. In Nigeria alone, the parent company has been present for 27 years, touching the lives of 40% Nigerians through 17,000 healthcare professionals, running a one-billion-tablet factory in Lagos, and more than 150 products registered with NAFDAC. The diagnostics business, now three years old, already has over 30 locations in 4 countries.

Ms. Opeyemi Akinyele, Managing Director of Shalina Healthcare Nigeria, told the summit that the diagnostics expansion is a natural extension of a mission the company has pursued since 1999. “We are anchored in three pillars — Quality, Affordability, Availability — and we are committed to delivering better health outcomes for every Nigerian.”

The company counts household names among its Nigerian pharmaceutical brands — Shal’Artem, Ibucap, Germol, Epiderm — and has  earned the trust of the Pharmaceutical council of Nigeria and the Nigerian Medical Association, while the manufacturing facility has earned the commendation of NAFDAC & The House Committee onAIDS, TB and Malaria (ATM). That institutional credibility, the company argues, is something no start-up franchise competitor can replicate.

THE SCIENCE CASE: WHY DIAGNOSTICS CANNOT WAIT 

The clinical argument for the summit was made by Dr. S.A. Sani, Associate Professor of Surgery and Consultant Surgeon at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, who laid out in unambiguous terms why access to diagnostics is not a luxury but a prerequisite for modern medicine. “Diagnostics affect approximately 70 percent of all healthcare decision-making,” Dr. Sani told delegates. “They guide prevention, screening, treatment, and monitoring. Without them, clinicians are flying blind.”

Article contributed by Vincent Ikuomola, a health correspondent based in Abuja

Photo: From left: Chief Operating Officer Shalina Diagnostics, Mr. Gaurav Bahl, MD Shalina Healthcare Nigeria, Opeyemi Akinyele, Global Head Commercial, Shalina Diagnostics, Jayant Rajani, Group Managing Director, Shalina Healthcare, Mr. Abbas Virji, Chief Executive Officer Shalina Diagnostics, Mr. Nalin Singla and Country Head, Shalina Diagnostics, Manoj Walia, during the day 2 of Shalina Diagnostics Franchisee meeting in Abuja Tuesday Photo

By Comrade Ibrahim Garba Wala (IG Wala)

The Handshake Movement has watched with a mix of amusement and deep patriotic concern the frantic, desperate, and legally hollow theatrical display performed today at the Federal High Court, Abuja, presided over by Justice Peter Lifu.

Let it be known to the perpetrators of this palace script, the underground puppet masters, and the anxious Nigerian public: this is not a judgment; it is a political hatchet job dressed in judicial robes, and its bubble is already burst.

1. Stripping the Mask.
The Fingerprints of the Office of the Chief of Staff
We in The Handshake Movement do not speak in parables. We deal in hard truth and intelligence. The so-called “National Forum of Former Legislators” who initiated this suit are not independent actors driven by constitutional purism. They are political mercenaries, specifically assembled from the network of individuals who served and worked closely with the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who today commands the office of the Chief of Staff to the President.

The strategy was simple but clumsy: use a shadow proxy group to establish plausible deniability for the presidency, while deploying the weight of the state to strangulate the political space. To make this collusion even more laughable, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, an official who is supposed to represent the entire federation, bizarrely abandoned all pretenses of neutrality in April and joined the matter as a plaintiff.

This is a textbook institutional gang-up. It is a manufactured, state-sponsored ambush designed to eliminate the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and other viable opposition platforms because the ruling elite is terrified of a fair contest in 2027.

2. The Legal Absurdity and Judicial Contempt!
To the legal mind, today’s pronouncement is a house of cards built on shifting sand. It completely collapses under the weight of two undeniable facts:

A. Overriding the Constitutional Regulator.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the only body legally empowered to register and evaluate political parties, filed an explicit counter-affidavit stating under oath that the ADC has met all constitutional thresholds, broken no laws, and that no basis for deregistration exists. For a trial judge to ignore the regulator’s own submission in favor of a proxy group’s political sentiments is an extraordinary judicial overreach.

B. Defying the Superior Court.
More egregiously, Justice Peter Lifu was fully aware of a subsisting order of the Court of Appeal issued on May 22, 2026, directing a strict stay of proceedings on this very matter. By choosing to flagrantly bypass an active directive from a superior court to rush out this verdict, the judge has engaged in a form of institutional rascality that undermines the entire hierarchy of the Nigerian judiciary.

3. The Panicked Subversion of a Failing Regime.
We must ask ourselves: Why the panic?
Why the desperation to wipe viable alternatives off the ballot right after they have successfully concluded their primaries and fields?

The answer lies in the streets of Nigeria. The incumbent administration is facing a massive, irreversible crisis of legitimacy. Having failed completely to secure the lives of our citizens from rampant insecurity, and having plunged millions of families into unprecedented, crushing economic hardship and starvation, the ruling party knows it cannot face the Nigerian electorate in 2027 on the merit of performance.
Because they cannot convince the voters, they have resorted to trying to choose the voters’ options for them. This judgment is a desperate attempt to manufacture a civilian dictatorship by judicial decree. They want to hand a second term to the incumbent without a contest.

Our Unshakeable Position: The Bubble is Burst.
The Handshake Movement warns those who are playing with this political fire to cease and desist immediately. Nigeria belongs to its citizens, not to the whims, caprices, and survival instincts of a panicked cabal operating from the corridors of power.

1. To the Judiciary.
We are immediately petitioning the National Judicial Council (NJC). A judge who actively disregards an appellate court’s stay of proceedings order cannot be allowed to bring the entire legal institution into disrepute for partisan convenience.

2. To our Candidates, Mobilisers, and Millions of Citizens.
Remain completely calm, resolute, and focused. This judgment is legally dead on arrival. The moment the appeal is entered and an immediate Stay of Execution is filed, this desperate ambush is frozen. Do not halt your campaigns. Do not slow down your grassroots structures.

3. To the Oppressors.
You have miscalculated. By trying to bury the opposition through backdoor maneuvering, you have only succeeded in unmasking your desperation and uniting the democratic forces of this country against you.

The ADC and the coalition of progressive movements will be on the ballot in 2027. Democracy cannot, and will not, be strangled in Nigeria.

Comrade Ibrahim Garba Wala (IG Wala) is the Lead Advocate, The Handshake Movement