Does APC Deserve Another Tenure In Aso Rock?

 By Dan Onwukwe

It is not too late to begin to ask these questions: How does democracy protect itself against a ruling party that has almost ruined the country and destroyed lives and livelihoods of those it was elected to provide for their security and welfare and, yet is asking for their mandate for another tenure? Does that political party deserve your vote?

*Buhari, Tinubu and Adamu

Are you better off today than you were seven and a half years ago? Should you allow the same snake bite you twice? These questions should not be ducked. They are not rhetorical questions. At a time like this, what we need is truth simply spoken. That is why the forthcoming elections, beginning with the Presidential poll, are of critical importance. 

On The People’s Train With Peter Obi And Datti Baba-Ahmed For Nigeria’s Redemption

 By Sola Ebiseni

Our presence at the momentous OBIDATTI rally in Ibadan last Wednesday, November 21, was the ultimate evidence that we have boarded the people’s train with Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed for the redemption of our country.

*Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed 

To those who could not see beyond the conventional and are irredeemably fixated on the search for structures that have only held our nation and people hostage, let them know that the Obidient phenomenon is not a joke they thought would soon frizzle out. 

A brother and learned colleague, out of sheer love, described our move, after my initial television interviews justifying the Afenifere’s endorsement of the ObiDatti ticket, as a descent to political Golgotha. We are quick to remind him that the way to redemption is paved with torns and a burdensome cross that must be borne at Golgotha, which Nigeria must experience, willy nilly.

Is Sex Education Not Child Abuse?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

It is not surprising that the recent directive by the Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, to the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to expunge Sex Education from the basic education curriculum in Nigeria has been greeted with serious opposition from groups and persons who 0bviously derive some of benefits from the callous sexualisation of the tender minds of Nigerian pupils.

I am sure that many parents and concerned persons who have heard about the minister’s directive are highly relieved and happy and hoping that no amount of pressure from these misguided interest groups will compel the government to have a change of mind. Indeed, this is a major move towards sanitizing our primary and secondary education curriculum and salvaging the moral health of the younger generation which has been badly corrupted and diseased by very pernicious teachings that can only mould them into badly flawed characters.  

When some years ago I was shown the topics covered in “Sexuality Education” or “Sex Education” which was being taught as a compulsory subject in both junior and secondary schools in Nigeria, it was shocking to see that mere kids, some as young as ten or even nine, were put in the hands of teachers, who deploy every energy, talent and creativity to saturate their tender minds with every detail about sexual immorality and the use of contraceptives.  

When I first raised alarm on this issue in my now rested newspaper column, a concerned parent wrote me to say that the ‘Teacher’s Guide’ given to the Integrated Science teachers (who handled this subject) mandated them “to teach the children that religious teachings on issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, homosexuality, abortion and gender relations are mere opinions and myths! They are also to teach the students how to masturbate and use chemical contraceptives (designed for women in their 30s). The ‘Teachers Guide’ equally lays a big emphasis on values clarification; this empowers teenage children to decide which moral values to choose since the ones parents teach them at home are mere options.” 

It was difficult to imagine that any normal person could have the mind to design such a subject even for the children of his worst enemy! In my view, this clearly qualifies as child abuse, which, sadly, was unabashedly   endorsed by the authorities. But many Nigerian parents are highly elated today at the intervention of the Education Minister which has put an abrupt end to the whole sickening madness!   

How can parents and concerned citizens smother the tormenting fears that some of the Sex Education teachers might aim to deftly deploy this subject to titillate their tender victims instead of giving them healthy education?  One can imagine how easy it would be for a teacher who has been targeting a female student to use his creative elaboration of this subject, to get the girl so overwhelmed she would become easy meat.  

I am told that there are two main reasons for the introduction of this subject in our schools. One is to empower school children with adequate knowledge about their bodies and how to “safely” indulge in pre-marital sex without falling victims to teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.  

The second reason is to demystify sexual immorality, give it a positive image as something to be cherished and enjoyed without any fear, as long as it is done “safely” and consensually. The belief is that with the age-long “superstition” built around sexual immorality which ‘stigmatizes’ it as an evil and sinful activity, some kids tend to go into it with fear and dread, and so develop psychological problems arising from the guilt they feel afterwards.  

But these reasons are simply hollow and unconvincing. They are built on the assumption that in the present age, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for unmarried people to abstain from sex.  And so, instead of teaching the kids to place appropriate value to their bodies and maintain their self-esteem by abstaining from sexual immorality as our own parents had taught us, they are emboldened to behave like dogs. But the difference between human beings and animals ought to be the ability to reason and determine the consequences of actions, and then exercise discretion and self-control. Why not tell a kid the consequences of an action and use that to dissuade him from indulging in it? Has that not worked for ages? 

Looking at the earnestness with which this policy is being pursued despite oppositions from informed parents and other concerned parties, one is forced to suspect that there may also be some commercial angle to it. Are we sure that substantial profit is not   accruing to the initiators of this programme and their collaborators in government from the sales of the several books being written and printed on the vile subject? Support may equally be coming from manufacturers of contraceptives and the well-oiled NGOs they are promoting who certainly see in Sex Education a lucrative venture to promote and sustain. 

Now, how far has this subject helped in reducing teenage pregnancies and STDs in the Western nations where it has been taught, assimilated and practiced for many years now? It is a fact that these teachings have, for instance, been introduced in both the United States and Britain for many years now, but as I write now, I have before me, a BBC report saying that Britain has the highest record of teenage pregnancy in the whole of Western Europe. Also, another report has it that the United States has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the entire Western world. Again, in the United States, it is reported that new infections of HIV are still on the increase. 

That naturally leads us to the contentious issue of “safe sex.”  So, what is all this fetish about “safe sex” and how “safe” can sex actually be?  The truth is that a lot of studies and findings have effectively punctured the dubious confidence built over the years on condom-use.  We know that with an effective magnifying lens, it is easy to see that several objects, especially rubber and plastics, have tiny holes through which very minute micro organisms could pass.  

I read somewhere recently that the “HIV virus is only 0.1 micron in size while the naturally occurring holes in a latex condom is of the order 5 to 50 microns in diameter.”  So where then is the “protection” we have heard so much about if the deadly virus can indeed pass through the wall of  a condom? Is this not why we have often heard reports of people contracting HIV even though they had practiced the so-called “protected sex”? This is the time to rethink all this stuff behind which some fellows have hidden to pollute the minds of kids with ruinous teachings.

Fortunately, we have one precaution that does not fail. And that is the good old abstinence, which has been proven and tested to be the only reliable protection against deadly STDs and teenage pregnancies? We must hasten to realize that what is at stake here is human life, and should not be toyed with, for whatever reasons. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand this desperation to create an immoral and ungodly society by misleading the youths?  Now, if not for reasons that are less than noble and wholesome, why would Nigeria be eager to import a policy that is failing even in more advanced nations?   

Okay, here is another point to ponder: HIV is 500 times smaller than spermatozoa, yet research has established that spermatozoa are able to sometimes pass through the wall of a latex condom to cause conception. Now, if this is the case, are we not by this subject leading our youths through the minefield? The example cited earlier of the worrisome rise in fresh infections of HIV in a place like the US  where years of successful Sex Education has achieved overwhelming attitudinal change in favour of condom-use should serve to buttress this point. 

Now, with this policy in place and flourishing, where is this nation really heading to? What is the use living, if one must live like a dog? 

I would, therefore, want to advise the school boy or girl reading this piece to please pause awhile and ask himself or herself what the initiators of this policy hope to achieve in his of her life by giving him or her these teachings? Such a youth should wonder how they still expect him to concentrate on his studies after they have saturated his mind with filthy teachings that only fill his mind with distractive lusts.  

Now, if his instructors (who are mostly parents) are encouraging him to freely indulge in sexual immorality at this early stage of his life, what type of future leader do they expect him to become? After “empowering” him to go on the rampage, wouldn’t they have succeeded in giving him a disease deadlier than even the AIDS they are presuming to save him from – which is the destruction of his moral fibre?   

What is the guarantee that he would be able to build a healthy family afterwards by shunning the promiscuity that this subject is surely preparing him for, and which, as we all know, results in the proliferation of broken homes which has become the nightmare of today’s world?    

It is instructive that The Guardian on Sunday, July 18, 1999, carried a report that a cross section of American college (mostly female) students were regretting the limitless freedom their parents had allowed them and had resolved to devote themselves to pursue a “no-sex” campaign. But in Nigeria of today, sexual immorality has been deregulated and democratized. 

But concerned Nigerian parents cannot afford to be intimidated and just watch helplessly as some fellows whose intentions are less than noble go all out to ruin their kids for them. And so, they should be able to ask: To what extent should the government interfere in people’s lives and families?  

Where does the government derive the authority to invade somebody’s home with ungodly teachings and inflict them on the person’s kids, just because he gave his kid to the government to educate in its schools? Shouldn’t an open and clear expression of disaffection towards this gross violation by stakeholders have since led to its reappraisal and possible removal from the school curriculum?  

Again, and very importantly too; most people have strongly accepted and hold very dear to their hearts the teachings they have received from the religious faith of their choice (which we as civilized people must respect) that sexual immorality which is a grievous sin against God attracts eternal damnation; and they are eager to ensure that both themselves and their kids escape this terrible doom; how then can we accommodate and respect this their belief (which is sacred to them) in this unwholesome insistence on teaching and encouraging their children to freely indulge in fornication?  Should we just dismiss and callously tear down a belief they hold so sacred and dear, and with which they have determined to successfully raise their children to become morally healthy kids? As if it does not matter?   

It is heartwarming that, at last, the Minister of Education has agreed with those of us who have continued to insist that this policy is ruinous and has ordered its removal from the school curriculum since it denies a large a number of people the option of choice. Many parents are not even aware that such a teaching is being generously forced down the throats of their precious children, thereby destroying all they have taught them at home. 

Certainly, there are centres where some NGOs have established to propagate these pro-pre-marital sex teachings. Interested parents can take their children to those centres, while the objecting parents are spared the trauma of watching their kids being subjected to a menu they firmly believe is terribly unhealthy and ruinous. Their right to dissent must be respected.   

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye is a Nigerian journalist and writer. His book, Nigeria: Why Looting May Not Stop, is available on Amazon.com (scruples2006@yahoo.com)

*First published in The NATION (of Nov 30, 2022); VANGUARD and SUN (of Dec. 1, 2022)

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The Case Against Sex Education

 

The Story Of Media Leaders In Nigeria’s Construction And Reconstruction

 By Owei Lakemfa

Nigeria was partly built by journalists who fought the British colonialists so ferociously that Frederick John Lugard, their colonial poster boy who amalgamated the country in 1914, was forced out as Governor General within five years. The media campaigns for the soul of the country went on through the colonial period and into the new century.

But the country has been very badly used, so much so that today, it is in urgent need of reconstruction. The media, as one of the main builders of the country, convened a roundtable on Saturday, November 26, 2022, to examine its part in constructing the country and what role it needs to play in reconstructing it.

To do this, the Nigeria Media Merit Award, or NMMA  convened a conclave of experts led by Emeritus Professor Michael Abiola Omolewa, an education historian and diplomat who was the 32nd President of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.

Why Adamu’s APC Is Afraid Of BVAS, E-Transmission Of Results

 By Charles Okoh

“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” – Georg C. Lichtenburg

It is no longer debatable that the only problem keeping this nation down is the problem of fixing the governance jigsaw. We have been held down by the fact that rather than a democracy where the wishes of the people reign supreme; we have practiced neo-feudalism where a few people lord it over the rest of us and dictate who gets what or into any office in the land.

Adamu

This has never been as bad and brazen since independence as they have been since the turn of the fourth republic in 1999.The result being that there has been a steady and ever-increasing level of apathy towards elections in the country.

For instance, in the 2019 presidential elections that secured President Muhammadu Buhari, his second term, only 34.75 percent of registered voters actually voted in elections, according data released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Rising Cases Of Suicide

 By Ifeanyichukwu Mmoh  

There has been a sudden rise in the incidences of suicide lately, to the extent that there is now a sort of panic feelings that has left many wondering who the next victim could be. Although, suicide is not entirely novel, its sudden prevalence – in my opinion – is due largely to the neglect of certain important facts of our physical health, namely our mental health.

To begin with, suicide – according to the World Health Organization – is a conscious and premeditated attempt by a person to take their own life. Suicide doesn’t just happen. In fact, what we see as suicide is only the end of a complicated process of emotional deterioration that started from unhappiness. Yes, suicide begins with unhappiness. And the state of unhappiness can be triggered by either the loss of a loved one, the loss of a breakthrough opportunity; or because of delay in getting married or due to a prolonged wait for conception.

AW Free Foundation, FactSpace West Africa Train Togolese Journalists On Fact-Checking

 PRESS RELEASE

Accra, Ghana (November 25, 2022) - AW Free Foundation in partnership with FactSpace West Africa have trained Togolese journalists on fact-checking techniques and tools.

The workshop was held in the Togolese capital, Lome, on November 22 as part of AW Free Foundation's media development initiative to impart knowledge of best practices to help improve media systems.

The journalists were taken through the fact-checking processes including identifying claims; verification of information; presentation of facts; diversification of sources and putting together fact-check reports among others.

The Executive Director of AW Free Foundation, Emmanuel Agbenonwossi said: “Francophone Africa has its own peculiar challenges which provide a fertile ground for the production and consumption of fake news.

Kumuyi In Ogoniland: A Crusade With A Golden Touch

 By Israel Mkpaoro and Banji Ojewale

Ancient Greece had a mythological king with a golden touch. The tale is that whatever King Midas handled became gold. It was a power he was said to have requested from a god. Midas enjoyed this boon until it threatened his sanity and humanity. He couldn’t eat food nor drink water because all turned into gold when he touched them. 

*Pastor Kumuyi in Ogoniland

The situation became tragic when, upon hugging his daughter, she was changed into a lifeless golden image. The monarch was sad. You can’t celebrate a possession that denies you life. Midas’ sea of gold was devoid of the true joy that should come with wealth.

But in our day, we have in our midst Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, a servant of Heaven who preaches that God’s abundant blessings come without any accompanying sorrow experienced by a king. This is what we see repeatedly at Kumuyi’s outreaches, which we have come to know as Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK. 

South West’s Forest Of A Thousand Demons

 By Festus Adedayo

From my personal ranking of their tragic imports, three events which occurred in the last week constitute leading narratives of where we are today. They are, one, the siege laid to Southwest Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan expressway by kidnappers and the suicidal plunge to death of an operative of Nigeria’s secret police, known as the Department of State Services (DSS), into the Lagos lagoon. 

The third was a video clip posted by Tolu Ogunlesi, Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Digital and New Media, in a Twitter post where details of what Buhari discussed with the British monarch, King Charles III, the aftermath of his visit to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, were released. 

We Need Change Of Tactics In The Anti-Graft War

 By Dan Agbese

It would be uncharitable to suggest that successive Nigerian leaders have spoken from both sides of the mouth in tackling corruption in the land. Dem don try. It would be naïve, of course, for anyone to suggest that the longest running war in the land has either been won or there are prospects it will sooner than later. The fact is that corruption is at an all-time high. President Muhammadu Buhari is unable to kill it. It is killing Nigeria.

There is a need to change tactics in prosecuting the anti-graft war for purposes of obtaining better results. Corruption will not end but it should be possible not to make it a way of life in the country. We have used probe panels to unearth the corrupt in our public services; the landed and other properties of the guilty were confiscated to deny them the right to enjoy the fruits of their corruption. But the corruption grows stronger.

Buhari Women, Poverty And Budget Padding

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Two stories broke in the last one week that tend to amplify the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari’s goal of running Nigeria completely aground continues apace even as his administration, on the home stretch, and its vuvuzelas, continue to play the ostrich.

*Farouq and Buhari

First, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, disclosed on November 17, that 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor. That represents about 63 per cent of the estimated population of about 218 million people.

Ordinarily, this information shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that Nigeria had adorned the infamous ‘World Poverty Capital’ badge since 2018. World Bank data had shown since 2016 that four in every ten Nigerians live below the poverty line of $1.9 per day. Two years later, the country was declared world’s poverty capital by the Brookings Institution, knocking off India from the inglorious perch.

Tinubu As President? Buhari Must Really Hate Nigeria!

 By Olu Fasan

Ahead of the 1993 presidential election, General Ibrahim Babangida, the then military head of state, made a profound statement. He said: “I don’t know who will succeed me, but I know who will not.” Sadly, that statement panned out with the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Yet, in principle, it was a perfectly reasonable statement. 

*Buhari and Tinubu

Here’s why. If General Babangida had damaging intelligence on MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the election, an intelligence that could bring international shame on Nigeria, he had a duty to stop him from running for president. 

Babangida’s eternal mistake, assuming he had such intelligence, was to allow Abiola to run, encourage Nigerians to vote and then annul the election. But there was nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know who will succeed me, but I know who will not,” provided it was in the national interest. Of course, in a democracy, a president cannot simply say: “I know who will not succeed me.” But a president should signal a nation’s values.

The Case Against Sex Education

 By Sonny Ekwowusi

Last week, a group of pro-choice NGOs staged a protest against the Hon. Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu for directing the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to expunge the current immoral sex education taught in Nigerian schools from the school curriculum.

Worried about the immoral content of sex education curriculum in Nigeria and the wrong method deployed in using it to corrupt impressionable secondary school and primary school pupils most of whom are in the age bracket of 5-14 years, the Hon. Minister had directed last week that the immoral sex education should be removed from the school curriculum and that the teaching of sex education should be left in the hands of parents who are the primary educators of their children and religious institutions which are the custodians of morals of young people. 

No To Sex Education In Schools

 By Scholar Elo

I read Mr. Adelowo Adebumiti’s article entitled: ‘‘Why sex education is key to reducing gender-based violence’’ (The Guardian, Thursday, October 29, 2020) with great delight. Great delight because I am a teenager myself and very conversant with the subject matter. First, I must say that the writer’s interest on sex education is quite laudable.

However, the inclusion of a sex education for teens in primary school will not stem the tide of gender based violence in Nigeria. Sex education has been included in the secondary school curriculum in the last couple of years yet the inclusion hasn’t reduced gender-based violence in our schools. So, why include it now in primary school curriculum for pre-teen and teens?

Why Sex Education Should Be Left For Parents

 By Ifeoma George-Ufot

I’m not used to writing rejoinders to things I read about but I couldn’t keep quiet after reading the open letter to the Honorable Minister for Education by Mrs Bisi Fayemi. Unlike you, I was elated, overjoyed and felt vindicated when I learnt that the Honorable Minister has directed the NERDC to remove sex education from the basic education curriculum.

For a long enough time we have had a minister who says that the true teachers of this sensitive topic are the parents and this should be applauded. You cited the story of 13-year-old Tanwa who was pregnant for her neighbour due to her ignorance. While I sympathize with the teenage Tanwa who is forced to become a mother so early, your placing the blame squarely on her ignorance rather than on the paedophile adult doesn’t make a case for your position.

Buhari, APC: Stop This Hubris!

 By Tony Eluemunor

Why this brazen contempt for any opposing viewpoint. What has made Nigerians known to be the most vociferous critics on Moth­er Earth to lose all convictions?

*Buhari 

Please dear reader, if you were not in Mars during a period of petrol scarcity when the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Par­ty (PDP) administration held sway in Nigeria, you would have noticed the cascading of rambunctious criticism both Jonathan and the PDP faced – and rightly too. They had failed to make the refineries work maximally even as corruption trailed the pet­rol importation regime of that era. Apart from the trenchant criticism, all sorts of activists took to the streets to protest the belittling of Nigeria; an oil-producing country that was made to be importing petrol for local con­sumption just because she could not get her petrol refineries to work optimally.

A Lagos Beggar And Other Absurdities

 By Chris Anyokwu 

There she was on a typically busy highway clutching a doll swaddled delicately in finery and passing it off as a bundle of joy heartrendingly exposed at dawn of life to the coarser aspects of human society: the unbridgeable class divide between the haves and the have-nots.  

Some Lagosians, habitually or customarily empathetic, were moved to dole out some money on account of the “adorable baby”, knowing that millions of people the world over are childless; some ready to give an arm and a leg to have a baby of their own even a deformed one.  They always need a child to call their own; a child that would address them as “Dad” and “Mom”.  And as a result of this, some desperate couples go out of their way to adopt a child from orphanages and motherless babies’ homes.

Adapting To Climate Change In Africa

 By Felix Oladeji

Africa is at a tipping point. With temperatures rising higher than the rest of the world and an increase in the occurrence of droughts, floods and other natural disasters, the people, economy and ecosystems of Africa are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. An early pilot initiative for climate change adaptation has provided important lessons, data and insights.

Taking these pilot initiatives to scale will require increased capacity and collaborative management approaches, improved engagement with the private sector, empowering actions that engage women and youth, capacity development to improve climate governance, and a holistic approach that looks at climate change not as a series of linear challenges, but as a systematic challenge that requires transformational shifts, innovative thinking and bold action.

Why Nigeria Is Stuck In Underdevelopment

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

If you ask anyone on the street what is Nigeria’s number one problem, he would most likely say corruption. The refrain on corruption is so profound that no one has taken time to ask why there is such abrasive corruption. The reasons behind corruption are known but not addressed. They are totally downplayed. Truth is that corruption is merely an effect. The cause is ignored. Chasing the effect and leaving the cause, as in this case, is senseless. It is like pruning a tree, which would blossom once again after a short while. The only way to effectively kill a tree is to uproot it.

Even if you cut it down, shoots could sprout from the stump showing that the tree is still alive though in a smaller dimension.

To deal with corruption would require a blunt attack on the roots. Nigeria’s corruption is systemic meaning that it is entrenched. A faulty system is responsible. The system is where the problem lies. There are deliberate gaps left in the system that have blended with the body and soul of Nigeria that can’t easily be rooted out. Vested interest would rather shed blood to ensure that the gaps remain untouched. But not until those gaps are closed, Nigeria’s underdevelopment quagmire would persist.

Soludo’s Bile Against Obi Unwarranted

 By Charles Okoh

Whoever advised Governor Chukwuma Soludo on the path he has taken in his unwarranted attack on the former governor of the state and presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has obviously and totally misled him. If anything, his reaction was so infantile and lacking tact.

*Obi and Soludo 

What would Soludo say was the reason he went overboard and spewed all those bile when he is not contesting the position of the president? Between Obi and APGA’s Prof. Peter Umeadi, who realistically has a better chance?

After all said and done, Soludo ended up projecting the candidacy of both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), than he has done for his party’s candidate (Umeadi).

Letter To Chukwuma Soludo

 By Amanze Obi

I had thought that I would give you a little more time before inquiring into your stewardship as the governor of Anambra State. But your recent outburst about the Peter Obi presidential bid has dragged me out earlier than I wanted.

*Soludo

When your long quest for the governorship of Anambra State materialized in November, 2021, I was elated. I felt happy for you, for Anambra State and for Nigeria. I was particularly happy that the intellectual community to which I belong has got a breather through your emergence as governor.

You are certainly not the first intellectual to rise to an exalted governance position in Nigeria.

Detribalised Nigerian Does Not Exist; It Never Did!

By Chidi Odinkalu

In 1989, academics, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, published to great acclaim their study of the evolution of the diverse dialects of English language from different empires. Their title was The Empire Writes Back. The book shows how various outposts of the empire took ownership of the language and adapted its grammar and usage.

*Odinkalu 

Few outposts from Empire have been as prolific in this enterprise as Nigeria. Conceived as somewhat of an illegitimate offspring in the ménage à trois between Sir George Taubman Goldie; his mistress, Flora Shaw; and his successor in propinquity to her, Frederick Lugard, Nigeria became a colonial experiment in the Tower of Babel.

A national anthem composed in 1959, one year before independence which occurred in 1960, acknowledged this reality in the third line of its first stanza, reminding the world of the aspiration to create a country even “though tribe and tongue may differ.” The anthem itself invited citizens to “hail” the country in antiquarian, biblical third person, symbolising a relationship with the country that was fractured from origin. Never mind that the hailing was to be done in the borrowed language of a foreign country.

Power And Politics Of The Written Word: The Legend of Chinua Achebe

Keynote Address - 2022 Chinua Achebe Literary Festival and Memorial Lecture, Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at Prof Kenneth Dike Central E-Library, Awka, Anambra State 

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Chinua Achebe lived in glory as the one-man institution who conquered the world for Mother Africa, and the great Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongo, put it in these words: “Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him as their own.” 

On November 16, 1930, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born to a teacher-cum-evangelist father of the Anglican Communion in the town of Nnobi, near his hometown of Ogidi, in present-day Anambra State.

Floods: As Poverty Exacerbates Household Vulnerability

 By Victor Okeke

This year’s tail-end rains in Nigeria have been marked by devastating floods. At least 600 people have died and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. Heavy rains combined with poor urban planning have made parts of Nigeria more susceptible to flooding. Evidence has shown that women, the poor, and uneducated are most vulnerable to floods.

Gender, poverty, and education are interrelated and they have indirect effects on vulnerability in flood disasters. Around the River Niger Bridge which joins Lagos to Onitsha and the rest of eastern Nigeria, sizable portions of surrounding communities have been submerged under water, crippling economic activity for many small traders and farmers.

Presidential Leadership In A Time Of Crisis

 By Stanley Ekpa

Since we are faced with complex climate crises, regional wars and sovereign existential challenges in many countries around the world, it is only natural to start this conversation with my condolences to the victims of flood, insecurity and other crises in Nigeria and other parts of the world, particularly in Seoul, Ukraine and Somalia. In the entire history of the world, the world has never existed without challenges. At every phase of human history, leadership is required to change the world: authentic, visionary, assertive, creative, transformative, sincere and disruptive leaders are required to fix and forge their societies forward.

*Buhari 

At the peak of public leadership is presidential leadership, either a prime minister, a president, or a monarch, every nation looks up to the head of state to provide hope, optimism and shared-social possibilities. To lead a country in a time of chaos and complex crisis, the head of a state requires more than just the desire to lead. It requires the trusted ability to simplify complex conversations; take tough decisions; embody firm convictions of patriotism and act decisively in national interest; showcase the wisdom of insights, the audacity of foresights and creative commitment to bold visions.

Corruption: Nemesis Ripens What Our Hands Have Sown

 By Emmanuel Okoroafor

Corruption has woven itself into the tapestry of the Nigeria narrative such that it has become the eternal plague of this most populous African country. For decades, this malady in its various manifestations – embezzling, backhandedness, kickbacks, internet fraud, thievery and all what not – have defined us more than our characters, capabilities and accomplishments. It is so bad that even one United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister had the cheeks to brand us “fantastically corrupt.”

For a country touted as the giant of Africa, the tragic flaw of corruption has whittled down Nigeria’s goliath stature to that of a Lilliputian. Today, it has become the gangrene eating away our corporate structure, the poison oozing from every pore of our collective body and the bile in our cup of wine. What is worse, even the younger generation has gradually bought into the corruption franchise. It is now fashionable to hear young people say, “If I get there (public position), I go chop (embezzle) my own.” Which means “if you can’t beat them, then join them.”