Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Producer Of Popular Sitcom, "Clinic Matters" Honoured In Paris

Whitestone Cinema Ltd, producer of the popular sitcom, Clinic Matters, has been honoured with the 2012 World Quality Commitment International Star Award

The award ceremony was held in France on October 28 and 29, 2012


















CEO of Whitestone Cinema Ltd, Paul Igwe,  introducing the company to chief executives from over 52 countries @ B.I.D 
 
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Whitestone Cinema Ltd, Mr. Paul Igwe, who also directs the sitcoms, received the gold category of the award at an impressive ceremony at the Concorde La Fayette Hotel Convention Hall in Paris yesterday

Monday, October 22, 2012

Chinua Achebe’s 'There Was A Country - A Personal History Of Biafra'

– A REVIEW 
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  
At last, the world is hearing from Professor Chinua Achebe, Africa’s foremost writer, distinguished intellectual and author of the classic, Things Fall Apart, on the Nigeria-Biafra war. In a new book (There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra, New York: Penguin, 2012),  Achebe presents a detailed account of what is widely regarded as the ‘genocidal Biafran war’ prosecuted forty-two years ago in which about 3 million people (mostly, unarmed civilians, including women and children) were brutally killed.  
When you talk about genocide in Africa, most people would eagerly prefer we all look towards Rwanda or Darfur, or even the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and not Biafra which happened about twenty years earlier and which Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, professor of history and politics, in his review of Achebe’s memoir, describes as “Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century.”  

Indeed, Biafra is a problematic subject. It readily stirs up a lot of discomfort and debilitating guilt in not a few quarters as it throws up memories of grossly disreputable decisions and actions which had far-reaching, disastrous effects on too many innocent and harmless people, from which the originators and perpetrators would so much wish to distance themselves.  The genocidal Biafran war and the horrible pogrom that preceded it are, without doubt, recent occurrences (only some four decades ago), but the strong determination of their guilt-ridden perpetrators, foreign collaborators and local sympathizers, to hastily consign this monumental tragedy to pre-history and shout down anyone trying to remind the world of it has been quite overwhelming.   


But in his new book, There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra,   which TIME magazine in its August 27, 2012 edition classified as one of the twelve “most anticipated” books this fall (2012) and Newsweek (of the same date) in its “Fall Books Preview 2012 placed among the “15 Books To Read,” Achebe unwraps Biafra before the world again, letting everyone into gruesome details of wanton massacres of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and the horror of mass deaths caused by unspeakable starvation and sicknesses due mainly to the inhuman blockade zealously imposed upon Biafra by the Nigerian government, with the overwhelming support of the British government, despite  outcries from several parts of the world.  

Friday, October 19, 2012

2013 Budget Prudent And Reasonable - Okonjo-Iweala

From The Federal Ministry Of Finance
Press Release
THE PROPOSED BUDGET OF THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF FINANCE IS PRUDENT AND REASONABLE




Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
Greeting Labour Leaders

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Achebe Colloquium On Africa 2012

  Theme:
Governance, Security and Peace in Africa
      The 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa will take place on Friday and Saturday, December 7-8, 2012 at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center, Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. 















Professor Chinua Achebe Reads A Poem At
 The 2011 Achebe Colloquium On Africa

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra" [ A Review]

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.


















*Prof Chinua Achebe  
 
Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses. 

Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra" – A Review

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.






















*Prof Chinua Achebe  
 
Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses.