Browsing: Column

The men who struck around 5am on the new year day climbed over the gate with their ladder and ransacked the entire house. At the end of the operation, six adult male members of the family including myself were handcuffed, herded into a rickety bus and driven to the SARS Nnewi office where we were briefly detained.

In an article published on August 13 2013, in response to the “deportation” of Igbo from Lagos to the South East region, C. Don Adinuba, a prolific writer of Igbo origin, penned the following lines on those we now consider as Igbo education argonauts: “When the Great Zik of Africa returned from the United States in the 1940s with a string of degrees in diverse disciplines, he saw that the Igbo were lagging behind the Yoruba because Igboland is in the hinterland, far removed from the sea through which modernity came to our country. He did not induce in the Igbo a persecution or inferiority complex or demonise the Yoruba, but rather took far-sighted steps to make them leapfrog developmentally. He sent to the United States nine promising Igbo young men, including K. O. Mbadiwe, Nwafor Orizu, Mbonu Ojike and Okechukwu Ikejiani, for further studies, and the ‘Argonauts’ in turn, sent their family members and relatives to the US. This is the genesis of the Igbo dominance of the Nigerian community in the US. A gifted anthropologist, Zik recognized Igbo society thrives on village and town competition. He used the instrumentality of the Igbo State Union to promote the establishment of educational institutions by communities. Thus, ‘in one fantastic burst of energy’, as Chinua Achebe put it, ‘the Igbo wiped out their educational handicap’. By 1965, they had begun to compete with the Yoruba educationally. Meanwhile, Zik had recruited many village primary school teachers with a flair for writing and trained them as journalists on his West Africa Pilot. That’s how the Igbo came into journalism. Emmanuel Obiechina, the eminent professor of sociology of literature, did show in a compelling manner how this development led to the emergence of the first generation of intellectual novels and how the Igbo were in the forefront.

The NGO bill is the latest in a series of measures tightening the democratic space, and deteriorating condition of the rule of law in the country. It has been extraordinary in the past two years or so to see how the National Assembly has taken a dim view of human rights. Our lawmakers, well paid for by tax-payers’ money to make laws for the peace, order and good governance of the Federation, are using their legislative powers to limit critical voices and shrink the democratic space.

This should ordinarily be a commendable step in the right direction, especially as it reveals the fact that the National Assembly is not taken in by the explanations so far offered by the Executive on the harrowing fuel crisis, which is only just abating in a few cities, while citizens in many parts of the country continue to wallow in fuel queues and are compelled to purchase products at exorbitant rates well above government-regulated prices.

Despite the many attacks, and in spite of the countless distractions that were thrown at the 8th Senate from external forces, the focus of the Senators, their persistence on people-centered legislation, and their collective commitment to always put Nigeria and Nigerians first, allowed the Upper Chamber of Nigeria’s federal legislature to achieve various notable feats in 2017. 

A former President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy, once asserted: “It is not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Whatever the grains of his submission, wisdom in that quotation is instructive for Nigerians as it regards our reasoning, approach in choosing and maintaining leaders. The year 2018 must witness a  new psychical disposition where Nigerians must stop expecting meaning out of nothing. One can only demand for good leadership if the person voted has the capacity to deliver. From antecedents, Nigerians are known for wailing, languishing under a clueless leader, at the end, they will go out there and vote the person back. The year 2018 is another chance for Nigerians to either sail to shore or smash against rocks.

I send you warm, fraternal greetings on your hospital bed.  I am short of words, but my heart pulsated in painful strains when I heard the sad news of your unfortunate accident on a motorbike in Abuja. A pensive mood instantly engulfed me and till this very moment, my eyes are wet with tears.

The year started with the carryover of the promotion of over 10,000 officers and men of the Nigerian Prisons Service which was announced towards the twilight of 2016. This is considered as the largest since the inception of the service. Though, I was not involved, but I was affected as most of my colleagues who were promoted wore smiles and became rejuvenated to do the job whole-heartedly. This gave the rest of us hope and made us to believe that better days are here again. Inspectors of Prisons who were stagnated for more than a decade were all promoted, while those that have additional qualifications were upgraded.

The truth is that since the US Congress passed the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, (which recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital”), US presidential candidates including Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barrack Obama had made moving the US capital to Jerusalem a campaign issue. None delivered. Trump, who came to power on a wave of right wing nationalism, wanted to convince his base and the Jewish lobby that he is not all rhetoric.