Fathers As Sexual Predators

By Dan Agbese

Let’s quit feigning ignorance about this benumbingly shameful fact. A vicious form of paedophilia is rapidly creeping up on our country. Fathers have become the sexual predators of their daughters. So has the neighbour; so has the employer; and so has the admissions officer in our institutions. The cocktail of our national challenges is getting progressively more complicated. Sorry.

And so, the girl-child, the mother of our future presidents, governors, Senate presidents and 37 speakers of the federal and state legislatures and justices faces a bleak future from the sexual trauma suffered in childhood. She is condemned to carry the heavy burden of sexual shame for life. Some of the abused girl-children find it difficult to live normal lives after being so traumatised. It is horrible.

Igboland Is Not Landlocked!

By Aloy Ejimakor

It’s often said that a lie told so many times, if unchallenged, may – in course of time – begin to pass for the truth. One of such is the terrible lie, institutionally purveyed since the end of the Civil War, to the effect that Igboland is landlocked or has no access to the sea. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to debunk this lie with some simple historical and topographical evidence that are even in plain view, if you care to dig or do some physical explorations of your own.

*John Nnia Nwodo
President General, Ohaneze Ndigbo

Suffice it to say that it is a profound tragedy that entire generations of the immediate post-War Igbos never bordered to check but seemingly accepted this brazen institutional falsehood, largely intended to taunt the Igbo and put them down. A few that knew it to be false just didn’t care anymore. And that History was banned since the end of the Civil War made it worse, plus the fact that most people don’t take physical Geography that serious anymore, otherwise they would have known that Abia, Imo and Anambra States have varying short-distance paths to the Atlantic through Imo, Azumiri and Niger Rivers.

Nigeria: Wake Up, Sleeping Giant!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Tomorrow, May 29, 2020, is what used to be referred to in Nigeria as “Democracy Day,” but now it will only serve as the anniversary of President Muhammadu Buhari's regime and that of some state governors. It is usually a welcome excuse for great celebrations, chest-beating and wild claims about humongous achievements, many of which exist only in the imagination of the mostly failed leaders. 

*Nigeria Leaders: Jonathan, Obasanjo, Buhari

Even the term “Democracy Day” (which is now observed on June 12) is such an excruciating irony in a country where almost all the features that distinguish democratic societies have been brutally obliterated, leaving the populace continually trapped in destabilizing apprehension. 

There would, however, be no parties tomorrow. A hostile, dreaded   visitor called Coronavirus is town! Let’s hope, therefore, that the absence of bacchanals tomorrow will afford our leaders the conducive   atmosphere for deep, sober reflections, to determine whether they have merely added to the suffering and pain of the people or helped, even in some little way, to reduce them.             

If Nigeria is working, we will know! Those were the exact words of late Prof Chinua Achebe, Africa’s foremost writer and distinguished intellectual. In other words, the citizens do not need any bogus claims by government’s megaphones to realise that there is an improvement in their country’s economy because it will automatically translate to an enhancement in their lives.

Nigeria: Covid-19 And The Leadership Question

By DAN AMOR

For those of us who still believe in the geographical expression called Nigeria, at no other time that our country needs more fervent prayers than now. But the current situation also demands eternal vigilance and critical immediacy. Yet, the Coronavirus pandemic ravaging the human race since November 2019, more than anything else, poses a grave challenge to leaders across the world. While the COVID 19 pandemic has really revealed leaders with the sterner stuff who have shown the capacity to lead at very auspicious moments in the affairs of man, it has also exposed the soft underbelly of others who lack the capacity to walk their talk.

*Buhari 

It is now so apparent that Nigeria, my country, is a nation of experts without roots. We are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot even take a step. And when the culture has finished its work, the weak institutions handcuff the infirmity. But what is at the centre of the panic which is our national culture since we are not yet free to choose our leaders?

Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' Among The 20 Best Books Of All Time

"The books you read in your high School English class are not necessarily the best novels ever written. What makes for great literature, anyway? Some could argue that all your book needs in order to be considered “great” is leather-bound packaging and microscopic print, but the truth is, you really can’t judge a book by its cover.Instead, you have to judge it by what’s written inside. Is the story meaningful, honest, moving? Does it transport you to another time or place? When it comes to ranking the best novels ever written, we had to look for all of these things…and just because you love a certain book doesn’t mean it made our list."

READ FULL REPORT HERE 

Nigeria: How Not To Mismanage the Covid-19 Pandemic

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Even though by 2015, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had performed below the high expectations of many Nigerians and had rightly earned their rejection, I highly dreaded the disastrous possibility of Nigerians falling for the massive, overwhelming but vacuous propaganda of the All Progressives Congress (APC), backed by a formidable coalition of tragically naïve activists, intellectuals and opinion leaders, to seriously consider that the APC could by the widest stretch of the imagination, qualify as even a manageable alternative.

There was massive corruption in the PDP, but it was just impossible for me to buy the tasteless myth that the APC which was mostly made up of the very characters that gave the PDP its unwholesome image could, no matter the relentless efforts of their tireless spin doctors, qualify to be classed as something that has the slightest resemblance with a party of saints and an assemblage change agents, and that once a person moved from the PDP to the APC, the person would receive instant beatification from a band of holy angels waiting to perform that sacred assignment. This should make no sense even to a two-year old!