Nigeria: Budgeting For Abject Poverty

 By Jerry Uwah 

Nigeria’s unemployment and poverty problem has assumed catastrophic proportions. In a country with a workforce of less than 100 million people, more than 22 million are jobless. In the two years since Nigeria replaced India as the world’s headquarters of abject poverty, 15 million more have been pushed below poverty line. In fact, Nigeria manufactures six extreme poor people every minute. 

           Senate President Lawan, President Buhari, 

                            House Speaker Gbajabiamila

The result is frustration and hopelessness. The story of Solomon Okon, a porter with Havana Hospital in Lagos, who lost his job during a rationalisation exercise is a sad reminder of a nation that has lost all sense of care and protection for its citizens. 

End-SARS: The Big Picture

 By Ray Ekpu

Since 1992 when the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was established its modus operandi has been basically kill-and-go. This was during the military era where a military ruler arrogantly told Nigerians during a peaceful protest that they were trained experts in the domination of their environment.

When a leader says that to the hearing of people who carry weapons they take that message to heart. The SARS people may have fought armed robbers viciously but they also fought – and killed – many innocent persons. The reports of their atrocities which include extortion, torture and extra-judicial killings have appeared in the media regularly but it has never been manifestly clear to the public that the offending personnel are often brought to justice. Perhaps, some victims with high visibility or influential connections have had their cases pursued to a logical end.

Dele Giwa: 34 Years After His Gruesome Murder

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

“Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound”         – Tom Stopard    

                                              *Late Dele Giwa 

In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow. 

Who Wrote ‘Things Fall Apart’?

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

It all started at the local secondary school in Ndiorumbe when the literature teacher, Holy Nwankpi, asked his students: “Who wrote Things Fall Apart?”

The first student pleaded his innocence thusly: “I didn’t write it-o!”

                                                  *Uzoatu

Another student pointed an accusing finger at the denying student and screamed: “He is a liar. I know he wrote it!”

The class prefect joined the fray with these words: “I saw him when he was writing Things Fall Apart with a red biro!”

Gov Oyetola Attacked By Armed Thugs

                                              *Oyetola 

An attempt was made on the life of the Osun State Governor, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola, today, Saturday, October 17, 2020, in Oshogbo.

Celebrating The Literary World Of JP Clark

By Hope Eghagha

It is within the context of a poignant, profound and perhaps arcane ritual imagination that we encounter John Pepper Clark in his literary world as evidenced by the evocative power of his primal poetic and dramatic compositions.

          *Professor Eghagha (Right) with the late pioneer writer, 

         Professor JP Clark 

Especially so are some of the early works such as Song of a Goat through Ozidi, the ‘middle’ The Boat, The Return Home, Full Circle, Casualties and the later Remains of a Tide.

His only known work of prose the semi-autobiographical and bitingly sarcastic America their America, at once immediate in content and prophetic in thematic concern exists outside this ontology of ritual and the mythic imagination.

Zamfara And Nigeria At Crossroads

 By Yinka Odumakin

The great political philosopher and polemicist, Leon Trotsky, once talked of professor of Spring who was teaching the subject in a classroom for years. He came out one day and was face-to face with Spring but he denied it saying it must be some disorder in nature. 

           *President Buhari and Zamfara State Gov Bello Muhammad Matawalle

So it is with Nigeria that got its independence on a federal constitution with a very lean exclusive list. But the aberration of military rule with command and control bloated the exclusive list to give virtually everything to the centre stripping the federating units. The centre became too fat to be productive and the units too lean to have a healthy existence. 

Renowned Writer And Scholar, J.P. Clark, Dies At 85

 
                                         *J.P. Clark 

One of Nigeria’s pioneer writers and retired professor of Literature, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, is dead. He died Tuesday morning, October 13, 2020. He was 85. 

A statement jointly signed by Professor C. C. Clark and Mr. Ilaye Clark, for the family, revealed that Professor Clark-Bekederemo died surrounded by his immediate family. 

Ending The SARS Mentality In Nigeria

By Ayo Baje

You bowing, you crying 

You, dying like that one day without knowing why 

You, struggling, you watching over another’s rest 

You, looking no longer with laughter in your eyes 

You my brother, your face full of fear and suffering 

Stand up, and shout No!”  

– David Diop  

The recent protests against gross human rights violations, through the use of brutal force and extra-judicial killings of defenceless citizens by operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) across many states of the country underscores the anomaly of a political leadership that deploys force and fiat under a democratic dispensation.

Nigeria: Still A Paradox At 60

 By Dan Amor

Nigeria is a beautiful edifice built with bricks of contradictions. Somewhere between the idea and the reality hovers a huge geographical abstraction that beguiles the imagination. Situated at the Eastern end of the Gulf of Guinea, between the 4th and the 14th Parallels, Nigeria occupies a total area of 923,768 square kilometres, slightly more than the combined areas of France and Germany. 

From Lagos in the South-west to Maiduguri in the North-east is the distance between London and Warsaw. Its population estimated at about 200 million, exceeds the combined population of all other countries in the West African sub-region of the Sahara. Endowed with enormous wealth, a dynamic population and an enviable talent for political compromise, Nigeria stood out in the 1960s as the potential leader of Africa, a continent in dire need of guidance. 

Nigeria @ 60: Our Leaders Have Failed The Founding Fathers

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

To fight against untruth and falsehood,

…to fight for our memory;

for our memory of what things were like –

that is the task of the artist.

A people who no longer remembers

has lost its history and its soul.

–     Alekzander Solzhentsyn 

With trillions of revenue in Naira, mostly from crude oil sales, agricultural exports, solid minerals, sundry taxes including Value Added Tax (VAT), from the ‘60s till date, it is a crying shame that Nigeria is currently the world capital of extreme poverty! And that it still parades some of the most disturbing and dismal figures in the Human Development Index (HDI) across the globe. 

*Awolowo, Azikiwe, Balewa 

According to Oxfam Report, between 1960 and 2005, about $20 trillion was stolen from the treasury by public office holders. This amount is larger than the GDP of United States in 2012 (about $18 trillion).The Report goes further to state in categorical terms that the combined wealth of Nigeria’s five richest men, put at $29.9 billion could end extreme poverty at a national level. Yet, more than 112 million people are living in poverty in Nigeria, while the country’s richest man would have to spend $1 million (N386 Million) every day for 42 years to exhaust his fortune! So, what does this mean to you and yours truly? 

America In Coma!

 By Theodore Dzeble

 “The American president was the quintessential repository of stately virtue, democracy, legitimacy, wealth, elegance, majesty, and freedom! Like the women of Jerusalem who cast down their garments on the highways for Christ’s motorcade, American presidents before Trump enjoyed such audacity of praise that even the angels coveted!”

*President Trump

Since 1788 when the Constitution of the United States of America was adopted (it was the very first formal blueprint of modern democracy), America’s democratic governance, (albeit unfolding in stages) became the city on the hill that inspired all leaders and nation-states. America was the dream everyone wanted to experience.

Is Nigeria A Mistake?

By Julius Oweh  

Of the three prominent early Nigerian na​tionalists, it was perhaps Nnamdi Azikiwe, the great Zik of Africa and a mentor to Kwame Nkrumah who believed in the unity and corporate existence of the nation. The other two, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo at one time or the other expressed their reservations about the unity and oneness of the country. It is on record that Ahmadu Bello described the 1914 amalgamation as a mistake, while Awolowo described Nigeria as a mere geographical expression. 

*Buhari 

At the height of constitutional conferences that paved way for the nation‘s independence, Bello was quoted as saying about  the north ‘we are not going to be part of Nigeria again‘. The most powerful politician of the north at that time only had a change of mind when Awolowo explained the concept of federalism to the Premier of northern region.   I am embarking on this political voyage so that you can truly understand the situation and why after sixty years of independence, despite the abundant human and material resources, Nigeria is still the butt of dirty diplomatic jokes around the globe.