News

Widening wealth gap mirrors poor human rights situation in U.S.

Published

4 years ago

May 23, 2022

By Zhong Sheng, People’s Daily

The consumer price index of the U.S.in March rose by 8.5% from a year ago, the fastest annual gain since December 1981, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Though the inflation rate slowed to 8.3 percent in April, it still was the highest in the recent decades.

High inflation has become a nightmare for the U.S. in the recent couple of years, making life harder for many families that are already in the grip of poverty. Some of them are even facing the hard choice between gassing up their cars and paying child care expenses. Such struggling is a mirror of the widening wealth gap in the U.S.

High inflation eats away disposable income, and low-income families in the U.S. are the primary victims.

According to statistics, the average hourly pay of American laborers rose 5.6 percent in the past 12 month, which was far lower than the current inflation rate.

The high inflation is placing prominent impacts on poor families that spend most of their income on living expenses. However, its impacts on the rich are significantly smaller. U.S. Fed governor LaelBrainard said low-income families spend 77 percent of their income on daily necessities, while the figure is only 31 percent among high-income families.

A report by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania pointed out that the high inflation will further widen the wealth gap in the U.S. this year, and the poverty rate in the country will continue rising.

The impacts from the high inflation, weighing differently on the rich and the poor in the U.S., vividly explains the same old story of the American society that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The U.S. has the biggest wealth inequality among all Western countries. Its Gini coefficient rose to 0.48 the last year, almost reaching a record high in the recent half century.

As revealed by reports of the Institute for Policy Studies, a U.S. think tank, the combined wealth of American billionaires soared 19-fold between 1990 and 2021, while over this same period, U.S. median wealth only increased 5.37 percent.

The stimulus policy that the U.S. has introduced in response to COVID-19 has led to surging government deficit and monetary inflation. The rich people are the only group that benefited from the policy.

According to Oxford Economics, the Americans on the top 20 percent of the U.S. income list saw their total fortune increase $2 trillion between March 2020 and January 2021, while the last 20 percent suffered a loss of $180 billion.

Renowned American investor Stanley Druckenmiller once criticized that the Federal Reserve is the greatest engine of inequality.

As the widening wealth gap exacerbates social inequality, the grass roots in the American society are facing more and more human rights challenges.

It’s never a coincidence that COVID-19 infections and death rates are higher among the poor people in the U.S. After the outbreak of COVID-19, tens of millions of Americans were thrown into a food crisis, and the life expectancy of the poor people was on a continuous decline.

“The neglect of poor and low-wealth people in this country during a pandemic is immoral, shocking and unjust,” said William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

When the rights to life and health of Americans are measured by wealth, “all men are created equal” is just an empty talk, and it’s just unrealistic for everyone in the country to enjoy human rights.

The failure of the U.S. economic and political systems and governance is what caused the “incurable” wealth gap in the country. As a matter of fact, the so-called American democracy has long become something that is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.

From the Occupy Wall Street in 2011 to the Harambe the gorilla’s statue standing in the way of the Charging Bull on the Wall Street the last year, the U.S. citizens have never stopped making voices of dissatisfaction against the growing polarization between the rich and the poor.

However, American politicians didn’t take any action to fill the wealth gap. On the contrary, they made policies to further widen it.

Joseph Stiglitz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001, attributed the economic inequality in the U.S. to the country’s political and economic systems. Professor Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University also said that the American politics has become an insider’s game to favor the super-rich and corporate lobbies at the expense of the overwhelming majority of citizens.

“States have the right and the duty to formulate appropriate national development policies that aim at the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population and of all individuals, on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of the benefits resulting therefrom.” This is written in the UN Declaration on the Right to Development adopted 36 years ago.

Today, the alienation of democracy in the U.S. has become a barrier for American grass roots to enjoy human rights. If the U.S. can’t get over the governance predicament, it will only see worse human rights situations.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)

News

The Most Shocking A/Court ‘Judgment’ in Nigerian History: An unfortunate precedent that should not be allowed to stand

Published

5 hours ago

November 30, 2025

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The last is yet to be heard of wide ranging ex-parte orders as this time around, the charade has moved to the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division. In the case of FBN Quest & Another vs. Nestoil & Others, the Court of Appeal’s ex parte orders are not only egregious but a chilling sign of judicial capture, smacking of dirty practices at best and corruption at worst.

On Thursday, 27th November 2025, at exactly 2:00pm, Justice Yargata Nimpar delivered a ‘ruling ’ that appeared like a thief in the night, a ghost and unscheduled, the said decision came upon a Motion Ex-parte which was not heard not argued in open court, yet it surfaced, fully written, signed, stamped, and delivered as though it had lived a full life on the Court of Appeal docket.

For many Nigerians, the judiciary has again weathered the storms. Veterans of the legal system describe this episode as “a daylight heist… a judicial armed robbery without guns.”

The controversies over wide ranging ex-parte applications, it would seem, has found its way to the Court of appeal, an intermediate court with limited original jurisdiction as donated to it by statute.

In this instance, barely two weeks ago, we reported the ex-parte orders against NESTOIL and the other defendants listed in the suit before the Federal High Court which led to the transfer of the suit to another judge.

The said interim orders were vacated by effluxion of time, being that ex-parte orders last for only 14 days.

The court however ordered parties to maintain status quo and adjourned the Motion on Notice for hearing by the consent of the parties. That Motion is still pending before the Federal High Court.

It would seem that in order to frustrate that pending Motion, the Plaintiffs somehow filed a similar application to the Court of Appeal which was granted an order ex-parte directing the Lower Court not to take any further steps, including determining the pending application filed by Plaintiffs (now Appellants).

This magically resurrected, fast-tracked application seem to have been rubber-stamped at the fictional “Appeal Bench of Shadows,” as insiders have begun calling it.

A CASE THAT NEVER EXISTED — YET RECEIVED A JUDGMENT

Our Judiciary correspondent gathered that when the court’s official list for the day was released, nothing seemed amiss. No controversial cases. No unexpected hearings.

But somewhere inside the dusty chambers of bureaucracy, a secret file was already being prepared and by 2pm, a judgment carrying the signatures of an entire appeal panel had surfaced — even though none of them had appeared in open court and when the case itself had never been argued before any High Court, making an appellate ruling legally impossible.

By evening, whispers had turned into rumblings. Court workers who handled the mysterious document reported unusual instructions: No public sitting; No mention on the court list; No access to case filings; No digital record and No audio recording of proceedings. Yet an order was made retrospectively to undo a completed act! which is yet another impossibility in law, because the exparte order cannot restore what has been already executed.

“It was like dealing with a ghost file,” one clerk said. “It appeared from nowhere and disappeared into official archives as though it had always existed.”

This judgment, once delivered, spread like wildfire, with legal scholars calling it “a constitutional impossibility.” Veterans said they had never seen anything similar since the 1970s.

Enquiries from our judiciary correspondents indicate that an application can only be hinged upon a valid Notice of Appeal against a decision of a lower court before any application can be entertained at the Court of Appeal.

Further Investigations by our judiciary correspondent reveals that no such Notice of Appeal has been filed nor served on the respondents; no parties have been invited to Settle Records and no Records of Appeal have been transmitted.

One wonders the platform or upon which grounds the ex-parte order was made, observed one senior lawyer, especially as a similar pending application filed by the Appellants has been adjourned for Hearing by the Federal High Court.

Furthermore, the case at the trial court before Justice Osiagor has not been heard on its merits, which documents was placed before the appellate court and all applications before the judge has not been heard or is the court of appeal now a trial court.

A JUDICIARY AT A CROSSROADS

Public outrage rose quickly. Lawyers described the situation as “a hijacking of justice by shadowy interests.” Civil society groups demanded explanations.

A Judiciary where justice can be manufactured behind closed doors…a legal system where influence not merit, decides outcomes…and an institution tested by the weight of powerful external forces, et cetera should not be allowed to thrive.

AN ERA-DEFINING SCANDAL

This judgement will stand as one of the most dramatic challenges ever faced by Nigeria’s justice system. The shockwaves has rippled far beyond the courtroom — touching politics, business, security agencies, and public trust.

One thing is clear: This is the kind of judicial earthquake that rewrites history, shakes institutions, and forces a nation to confront the truths it fears the most. Our judicial correspondences were able to get an incline of the ex-parte orders made by the Court of Appeal as follows:

AN ORDER of interim restorative injunction reversing all steps taken by the Respondents and/or persons purporting to act on the instructions of the Respondents and which steps or actions were taken pursuant to the order of the Federal High Court coram Osiagor, J made on the 20th day of November 2025 pending the hearing and determination of the Appellants’ Motion on Notice filed on the 26th day of November 2025.
AN ORDER of interim injunction restraining the Respondents, their agents, servants, affiliates, and privies from interfering with and interrupting the Receiver/Manager in the performance of his duties pending the hearing and determination of the Appellants’ Motion on Notice filed on 26th November 2025.
AN ORDER staying further proceedings at the lower court pending the hearing and determination of the Appellants’ Motion on Notice filed on the 26th November 2025.

A SHOCKING DEPARTURE FROM JUDICIAL NORMS

Therefore, the Lagos Court of Appeal’s decision to grant ex parte orders in FBN Quest & Another vs. Nestoil & Others stunned the legal community as ex-parte rulings are meant for rare emergencies and hardly exercised by appellate courts. By acting without hearing both sides, while the matter was already before the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal has undermined the principle of natural justice and distorted its own role.

NIGERIAN IMAGE AT RISK

At a time when Nigeria is striving to reposition its global reputation, this case sends the wrong message. It portrays the country as one where courts can be hijacked by private interests, where fairness is discarded, and where corruption lurks behind judicial robes. For investors and international partners, it reinforces damaging stereotypes of weak institutions and compromised justice.

AN URGENT CALL FOR INVESTIGATION

These orders are not just irregular — they are evidence of judicial capture. They must be investigated urgently. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, the National Judicial Council, the President of the Court of Appeal and the Nigerian Bar Association cannot remain silent. If appellate courts become arenas for ex-parte adventures, Nigeria’s justice system risks collapse under the weight of manipulation.

CLOSING NOTE

The Court of Appeal’s conduct in FBN Quest & Another vs. Nestoil & Others is more than a misstep, it is a warning sign of judicial capture. If Nigeria is serious about restoring its image and strengthening democracy, this case must be investigated, accountability enforced, and reforms implemented. Anything less would be an abdication of the judiciary’s sacred duty to uphold justice. We must not allow that to happen.
A very Senior lawyer emphasize that the exparte order of the court of appeal lagos division in Nestoil has the possibility of eroding administrative control of Heads of superior Court from assigning or re assigning matters within their respective courts. Furthermore both the President of the Court of Appeal and the Chief Justice of Nigeria may not have the authority to disband a panel and re- constitute another panel over any matter in their respective courts. This decision is a total anarchy to the judiciary and urgent steps must be taken to vacate the strange Court of appeal exparte order.

The conduct of the court of appeal justices is not excusable anywhere in the world and it’s indeed has brought the court of Appeal justices who constituted the panel to ridicule

News

Pius Akutah’s Alleged Fraud at Nigerian Shippers Council Uncovered

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

milcah

Investigations by Nigerian Concord Newspaper reveal that the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Mr. Pius Akutah, has allegedly misappropriated public funds for a lavish lifestyle.

According to our findings, within months of assuming office, Akutah allegedly purchased a bulletproof SUV valued at approximately N850 million. In addition, he is reported to have acquired over twenty exotic SUVs for use as a convoy.

Akutah is also said to have acquired multiple high-value properties, including three in Abuja’s Maitama and Asokoro districts worth over N2 billion, and two in Lagos’ Banana Island valued at N1.8 billion. These acquisitions appear far beyond the scope of his official salary and allowances.

Further investigation suggests that Akutah may be using public funds to support political ambitions, including allegedly grooming militants across 23 local government areas in Benue State for a potential 2027 gubernatorial bid.

Staff of the Shippers Council reportedly claim that Akutah frequently accesses the council’s treasury without proper authorization. Some insiders have indicated that a petition will soon be filed with the EFCC, ICPC, and the Presidency to report his alleged misconduct.