Showing posts with label Anambra State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anambra State. Show all posts

Friday, March 3, 2023

Letter to Peter Obi On The Presidential Election

 By Edidiong Esara 

Dear Peter,

When you threw your hat into the election ring, even I did not give you a chance. But quickly and steadily you seeped into the consciousness of Nigerians in their millions. You communicated in the language of the people, felt their pain, and came across as different from the fakeness in politicians that we are accustomed to.

*Peter Obi mobbed by admirers in Delta State 

Which other candidate dared to claim that they never stole a kobo of state funds, never used state resources for personal benefit and left a huge sum in savings rather than debt at the end of their tenure? As an opposition candidate and a potent threat to the current ruling class, the anti-corruption agencies could easily have proven you wrong if you had lied on that – as they did with your erstwhile campaign DG.

Friday, November 18, 2022

Gov Soludo’s Pettiness And Unconscionable Tactlessness

 By Robert Obioha 

 In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy. 

*Obi and Soludo
Although politicians have been tasked by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Peace Committee and other stakeholders to engage on campaign based on issues and desist from campaign of mudslinging and calumny, but every day, the polity is suffused with hate speeches, diatribes, incendiary comments, ethnic stereotyping of some leading presidential candidates all in an effort to pull some of them down. 

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

What Exactly Is Soludo’s Point?

 By Moses Ochonu 

Soludo has a right to speak his mind on Peter Obi’s candidacy and should not be gagged or subjected to a figurative ethnic lynch mob, but it is also appropriate to interrogate his words, even his motive, if there are plausible grounds to do so.


 *Soludo

So, in that spirit, let’s ask: what exactly is Soludo’s point?

That Peter Obi was wrong to invest or save Anambra state’s money as a rainy day fund as most prudent fiscal managers do? 

That Peter Obi is responsible for the depreciation of that investment, which initially yielded much return but then lost a lot of value as the Buhari economy eroded stock values, killed the stock market, and decimated the private sector? 

Investments, by their nature can go north or south, depending on the vicissitudes of the economy, both local and global. Every investor in stocks, including yours truly, knows this. 

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Buhari, Call Off Customs’ Siege On Igbo Traders

By Okey Ndibe
A few days ago, a friend sent me a video of a choir made up of members of Nigeria’s security agencies singing “Feliz Navidad,” a popular Christmas song. The rendition was entirely inspiring, a thrilling combination of rousing singing, dancing and festive atmosphere. I was moved by the sheer cheeriness of the service singers, infected by their sunniness of spirit. The high professional quality of the performers was complemented by the outstanding videography.
*Buhari
In between the Christmas lyrics, members of Nigeria’s respective service arms took turns pitching messages. A female officer informed us that the police were our friends, that its officers serve and protect with integrity, and that they make Nigeria secure. Another officer, also female, touted the Nigerian Prisons Service as reformers, keeping society crime-free. A member of the Civil Defense Corps spoke about defending the defenseless.
It was, quite simply, a soaring performance, a tour de force, indeed the best rendition of “Feliz Navidad” I have ever seen or heard—and I have listened to quite a few. I couldn’t help replaying the video several times. Each time, I found myself riveted, beguiled, awe-struck, a dupe for the wholly upbeat service messages organically interjected into one of Christmas’s most captivating anthems.
Again and again, I surrendered myself to be transported by the winsome performance. Yet, I emerged from each session with an afterglow of sadness, brought rudely down to earth by the shattering awareness that there was little concordance between the reality of life in Nigeria and the mesmerizing vista projected by the video. The video vended a beatific vision to me; yet I knew that the reality of life in Nigeria was, for the most part and for the majority of Nigerians, awful, if not hellish. The video was selling me a dummy, attempting to mask the sordidness of everyday life in my country, its enchanting performance no more than an effort to narcotize its audience, to rig reality.
That dominant sense of a discrepancy between performance and reality was reinforced for me in two recent conversations. In one, a writer friend who is an academic in Canada recounted his near-brush with death. Some assailants had cornered this guy and shot him on the leg. Terribly wounded, bleeding, he had limped away from his car to seek help. In some ways, his nightmare worsened once he found the police.
First, the police had no ambulance to drive him to a hospital. They brought him back to his car, which the armed gangsters had abandoned because it was demobilized, and got him to reactivate it. Then, instead of rushing him to the hospital, they took him to their station because Nigeria has this weird practice that hospitals should not treat anybody with a gunshot wound in the absence of a police report. Meanwhile, as the police busied themselves with observing the bizarre bureaucratic protocols of generating a report, the bleeding victim slipped in and out of consciousness, gripped by a sense of his imminent death.
No, he didn’t die in the end, in part because one of the police officers finally recognized him as a senior editor at a major newspaper. Once his quasi-privileged status was established, he was able to muster just enough strength to convince the officers – against what they said was policy – to take him to a private hospital where a relative of his was a medical chief. The drive there was harrowing, marked by a traffic gridlock that slowed the car, leaving the hapless editor bleeding profusely, racked by hideous pain.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Herdsmen And The Looming Rage

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  
As a prime indicator of the failure of leadership in the country, government at all levels and public officials seem to derive some inexplicable joy from a creed that requires the neglect of problems until they deteriorate and almost defy any redemptive measures. Let the citizens protest or wail over roads that have been rendered impassable by their dilapidation that is worsened by floods and decrepit drainage systems. The government and its officials would wait. For to them, the bigger the problem, the better. If at all they intervene after the citizens’ outrage, it would only be because the problem has festered.
This official neglect was the compost for the proliferation of the Boko Haram crisis. Now, after the crisis has hobbled the North East, the government is troubling the citizens and the rest of the world with how to redevelop the region. Yet, our leaders have not learnt their lessons; they have not realised the futility of waiting for problems to fester before deploying tepid measures to solve them. The current response of the Federal Government to the danger posed to national security by Fulani herdsmen who are now on the prowl is underpinned by the same attitude of not frontally attacking national challenges as they occur.
Of course, we cannot capriciously abridge the right of Fulani herdsmen to pursue their business like other citizens. But the problem is when the pursuit of their business is a danger to the existence of other citizens and their legitimate businesses. It is the herdsmen’s predilection for blurring the distinction between their right and the right of others to their businesses that has launched them onto a path that is paved with impunity and tragedy. They ravage farmlands of other citizens in the course of grazing their cattle. Worse still, they rape women and girls. As has become rampant, a whimper of protest from those whose farmlands are destroyed provokes a ferocious response from the heavily armed herdsmen who unleash violence on them. These confrontations have led to tragic consequences: thousands are left dead and entire communities sacked and the residents rendered homeless.
But a more worrisome development is that the Federal Government has embarked on a course to legitimise the impunity of the herdsmen. Or how else do we consider the plan by the government to establish grazing reserves for the herdsmen? Already, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Audu Ogbeh to set up 50, 000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months first in the north before moving to the south. By this policy, the government would seize the land of other citizens and give it to the herdsmen. Under the auspices of the new policy, the herdsmen can now leave Daura in Katsina State and have grazing reserves funded by the citizens’ taxes in a community in Anambra State. Aside from the president’s move, there is a bill that has passed the seconding reading and waiting for the third reading to be passed into law that would empower the Federal Government to create grazing reserves for the herdsmen.
But rather than having any potential to end the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers, the approach of the government would rather aggravate them. For in the first place, no one wants a neighbour imposed on him or her. Not even the likelihood of the government paying compensation for the land acquired for the grazing areas would make farmers to accommodate unwanted and destabilising guests. And why must the host communities accept the government’s position when without a clear legal backing as it is now, the herdsmen are already causing so much havoc? If there is an official policy that legitimises their grazing in other citizens’ communities, would the herdsmen not be more audacious in wreaking havoc? And why should the government spend the citizens’ taxes on private businesses?
The position of the government shows that it does not sufficiently appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. It does not take into cognisance the need of the communities that are afflicted by the menace of herdsmen. And since it is getting clearer that the government has failed to solve the problem, we must all be alert to the possibility of the victims of herdsmen’s violence protecting themselves. In fact, but for the efforts of some leaders in the south where the herdsmen have caused so much havoc, the crisis provoked by them would have assumed graver dimensions. For instance, the anger of the south west was only assuaged when the herdsmen who kidnapped its prominent son Olu Falae were apprehended last year. But apparently, the arrest of the kidnappers is not enough deterrent as Falae’s farm was again invaded this week and his security man shot dead. But for the intervention of the leaders of Ondo State, there would have been reprisal with its attendant calamitous consequences. Indeed, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) to which the security man belonged has threatened that one major way to appease them is for the suspected killers of the security man to be apprehended or else they would retaliate.
The likelihood is fast disappearing that the citizens would forever contain their anger in the face of provocation by the herdsmen. That the patience of the much-offended farmers is running out was demonstrated in a community in Delta State where a lawmaker, policemen and community leaders went into the forest to search for the herdsmen who were destroying their farmlands and raping their women.
Instead of pursuing a tendentious policy of establishing grazing reserves for the herdsmen, the government should find a lasting solution to the issue. It is shocking that the government cannot ask itself the simple question of whether in the countries of the world known for producing beef what the government is considering is the best practice there. Nigeria is not on the list of the largest producers of beef in the world. Countries such as the United States, Brazil , China, Australia and even Libya and Gabon are not riven by conflicts over cattle like Nigeria. In these countries, there are no herdsmen who wake up every morning, strap guns on their sides and begin a mission of destroying other people’s farmlands. The governments of those countries have better things to do with their time than settling herdsmen-farmers’conflicts. In these countries, those whose business it is to breed cattle have ranches for doing this.
The government should be concerned with how to improve the standard of living of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. There is the need for the government to encourage their education. This can only be done when the herdsmen are made to settle in ranches with their families. This has an additional benefit of stopping the spread of arms. Indeed, the government must appreciate the urgency of resolving this matter without seeming to be protecting the herdsmen. This is the only way to check the looming rage of communities that have been ravaged by the herdsmen with remorseless regularity and seeming government’s complicity.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of the The Guardian where he also writes a weekly column that appears every Thursday


Friday, December 24, 2010

NDIGBO SHALL REGAIN POLITICAL RELEVANCE IN NIGERIA, IN MY LIFETIME — By CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU

ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY DIM CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU, CHIEF GUEST OF HONOR AT THE PROFESSOR CHINUA ACHEBE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS IN NIGERIA
                                      ———————————————–
Providence, Rhode Island, 11th December 2009


TITLE:
NDIGBO SHALL REGAIN POLITICAL RELEVANCE IN NIGERIA, IN MY LIFETIME


Our host; the very distinguished; our own beloved and revered Professor Chinua Achebe, I salute you.

Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen.

I wish to begin this address by greeting everyone who has made time to attend this very important Colloquium. May the Almighty God, the God of the universe, the Omnipotent and Omniscient God, the creator of all peoples of the earth, the creator of Nigerians, the creator of Ndigbo, bless you.

My primary duty today is to welcome you to this conference being hosted by one of the very best that the creator has given to the world from the Igbo stock, a citizen of the world but who is proud to be Igbo; our very own Chinua, Chinualumogu Achebe, we your people love you.

CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU
 

We salute you today as we did over fifty years ago when you told our story in “Things Fall Apart”. It became the mother of all firsts in African Literature. We salute you today because you continue to make us proud through your values and ideals; and your commitment and courage in standing up for what is right and just in society. We hold that these are true hallmarks of Ndigbo, Nigerians and indeed all sane human beings. We jubilated and today we thank you for spurning the “national honour” to be given to you by then President Obasanjo at the height of impunity and abuse of the Anambra State Government and people. By that action of yours whatever pride was being trampled upon by the powers that be at the time was retrieved by your courage.

Ndi Anambra salute you. Thank you. Ndigbo and well-meaning Nigerians salute you for standing tall at the time. More importantly the Igbo soul yearns for more Chinua Achebes, clear thinkers, lucid writers, men of courage, crusaders against injustice, true sons and daughters of their fathers. Today I say to you, dear Chinua that you are a true son of Ogidi, Anambra, Ndigbo, Nigeria and the world. As you wrote more than fifty years ago, “the body of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu” on behalf of Ndigbo salutes you. Deme, Deme-Deme.


Professor Chinua Achebe: Conference Convener

The founding fathers of Nigeria won for us after a bitter struggle with our colonial masters the right to be governed by leaders of OUR OWN CHOICE. Today we must apologize to our founding fathers for our inadequacies, for our lack of courage, indeed for our cowardice which made it possible for us to lose this right to be governed by leaders of our own choice via massive electoral malpractices. This situation just cannot continue. We as Nigerians must resolve today, not tomorrow, to conduct free, fair and credible elections. We cannot afford to fail in this all-important task. And we shall not fail. For it is true that no violence, indeed nothing can stop a people once they have decided to win back their rights. Therefore I say to this Colloquium today that our collective future in Nigeria as one nation under God, lies in our collective resolve to organize free, fair and credible elections.


Let this, our resolve, be impregnable. Let us face the matter of free and fair elections in Nigeria with the same fervor and courage as our founding fathers faced the struggle for Nigeria’s independence. It is that serious; for the future and well-being of our nation depends  on this.  As we seek to accomplish this mission, we must, as a people, be determined to deal ruthlessly with any who obstruct the genuine will of the people.  Such people who benefit from electoral malpractices and the political instability which follow in their wake, must be decisively and summarily dealt with. 

In the words of Pandit Nehru, the late Prime Minister of India, “a moment comes but rarely in history when we step out of the old, into the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed, finds expression.”  The struggle for free and fair elections in Nigeria, which I prescribe at this colloquium today, cannot be avoided.  It should be regarded as an irreversible mission of national retrieval and rejuvenation.  It shall be the last struggle of true and genuine Nigerian patriots to save the fatherland and propel it to greater heights.

Chinua Achebe And Wole Soyinka --Kongi was there too


Let me warn that throughout history, struggles have never been for the faint-hearted.  As we know, struggle by its very nature entails suffering and sacrifice.  However, we also know that suffering breeds character, and character breeds faith, and in the end faith always prevails.  Consequently, we shall embark on this mission to exorcise Nigerian politics of the demons of electoral malpractices, which have stood before Nigeria and greatness, knowing that our future as a nation depends on it.  It will not be easy. 

But it has to be won in the Anambra State Governorship elections on February 6th, 2010, and in the nation-wide general elections in 2011.  God being our strength, and with aggressive vigilance of citizens in “community policing” of their votes/mandate, we shall achieve the objective of free and fair elections in Nigeria.


I wish to continue this address by affirming my personal resolve and commitment that Ndigbo shall regain political relevance in Nigeria, in my lifetime.  I am a Nigerian.  But I am also an Igbo.  It is my being Igbo that guarantees my Nigerian-ness as long as I live.  Consequently, my Nigerian-ness shall not be at the expense of my Igbo-ness.  The Nigerian nation must therefore work for all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.  This is the challenge, the key part of which is nation-wide free and fair elections.

Good Governance Will Ensure No One Searches For Dinner In A Lagos Dustbin



Back to Ndigbo.  They are the most peripatetic ethnic group in Nigeria.  In the words of another great writer, Professor Emmanuel Obiechina, who is well-known to our host, “Ndigbo forgot that they also had a farm of their own to tend and spent their youth and vigor working on other people’s farms whilst their own was overgrown with weeds.”  Now, the weeds have taken over and Ndigbo must engage in two struggles simultaneously – to rid their own farms of weeds while insisting on free and fair elections throughout Nigeria.  It is like jumping over two hurdles, vertically stacked. 

Compounding the Igbo predicament are the after-effects of their post civil war political and economic emasculation by the Federal Government of Nigeria.  Their shrill cries of marginalization were ignored by others and by the Nigerian Government, and they have come to terms with the reality of their present position in Nigeria.  But we Ndigbo will never give up.  It is not in our character to succumb to inequity.  Being a very major ethnic group in Nigeria, we will not accept our present marginalized status as permanent and we shall continue to seek and struggle for justice, fairness and equity in the Nigerian politics.

NIGERIA, We Hail Thee

My commitment, because I am seriously involved, is to work with all well-meaning Nigerians to bring about the Nigerian society as promised by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  When this happens, and all glass ceilings and other unwholesome practices designed to keep Ndigbo, or any other ethnic groups in Nigeria marginalized are dismantled, I shall feel fulfilled.  When this happens, Ndigbo shall regain their political and economic relevance in a fair, just and egalitarian Nigerian society.  This remains my mission. 

It is my commitment to Ndigbo.  It is my commitment to Nigeria, Africa and the world.  And it shall happen in my lifetime.  Not after.  This is both my desire and a promise.  I therefore urge this generation of Ndigbo, especially the youths, to gird their loins to safeguard their votes in the coming elections as to elect leaders of our choice.  We shall either achieve this in the February 6th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections and 2011 General elections in Nigeria or forever hang our heads in shame as a failed generation.  Let us not be intimidated by coercive forces of Government.  The mandate belongs to us collectively, and not to government.  As for me, I cannot be intimidated, and I know that together we shall triumph.

Let me hasten to add that some of the glass ceilings have begun to disappear with some recent appointments by the Federal Government of Nigeria.  This gives me hope that previous water tight exclusion of Ndigbo from key national positions is being positively addressed.  One hopes that these positive developments shall be sustained as we continue to sustain the Government that follows.

However, over and above these tokens of de-marginalization, is the central and fundamental issue of electoral reform and the eradication of electoral malpractices in the Nigerian system.  This is at the root of continued marginalization of various groups in Nigeria.  For example, it is no secret that Governorship aspirants of the few Igbo State in Nigeria (the Igbo geopolitical zone has fewer states than the other geopolitical zones ) strive to be endorsed from outside Igboland.  When such a Governorship aspirant gets “elected”, “imposed” or “appointed” as Governor of an Igbo State, he remains loyal and accountable not to the electorate in Igboland, but to the godfathers outside Igboland that endorsed, “imposed” or “appointed” them.

This modern-day enslavement of Igbo politics must end.  And I worry as I see the same scenario about to be re-enacted with the February 6th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections.  And I say, God forbid.  Chukwu ekwena.  Already, there are invasions of Anambra State by political heavyweights from outside of the State seeking to foist their preferred “Governors” on Ndi Anambra.  Before then , there was an attempt to politically castrate the political organization – the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which I lead and which currently enjoys the mandate of the people of Anambra State.  That attempt failed.   And the incumbent Governor remains the APGA candidate for the February 6th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship Elections.  Let me assure all gathered here, and the entire people of Nigeria, that I shall be physically out there in the field to ensure that the mandate of Ndi Anambra is not stolen again.  We shall meet the invaders in the field.

Worst Hit By Bad Leadership

A curious observer may ask, “Why Anambra?”  The answer is there – Anambra State was chosen in the best-forgotten days of “garrison politics” in Nigeria as the entry point for the emasculation and enslavement of Igbo politics.  But like Horatio, APGA stands firm at the gate, refusing to yield.  In case we have forgotten, Anambra State was the only state in Nigeria where an incumbent Governor was denied a chance to seek re-election by his political party, in 2003.  In case we have also forgotten, Anambra State was where the political party which I lead, the APGA, won elections in 2003 but the elected Governor was not allowed to exercise the mandate freely given by the people because of scandalous electoral fraud that became a national shame. 

 The courts declared APGA as the winner of the election – the legal process taking the better part of three years.  Also, it is only in Anambra State where there have been five “Governors” – one elected Governor and others, in the same period.  The other States in Nigeria have had one or at most two Governors.  It is in Anambra State that no Governor has served two terms of office.  And finally, lest we have forgotten, it was the crass impunity and political happenings in Anambra State that incensed our host, Professor Chinua Achebe, to reject publicly with an admonition, a national honour richly deserved by him, but coming from a Presidential hand that was heavily soiled in the Anambra political mess.

Consequently, my firm resolve this time, with the political party to which I belong (i.e. the APGA), is to undertake a state-wide, grassroots community-based campaign and mobilization of Ndi Anambra against electoral malpractices in the February 6th Governorship elections.  We insist that the votes of the people must count.  We insist that the votes shall be counted, recorded and announced at the various polling centers throughout Anambra State.  The people must elect a Governor of their choice.  Ndi Anambra shall not be dictated to from outside – not from Abia, nor from any other geopolitical zone.  Ndi Anambra will not succumb to intimidation.   The invading forces of politicians must retreat from Anambra State.  The state has bled enough.  The hemorrhage must stop.

  Let the February 6th, 2010 Anambra State Governorship elections be canvassed by Anambra people, for the people, so that families and communities shall see the faces of traitors and saboteurs among their own.  In the end, let the TRUE WINNER of the elections govern.  My party, APGA, and I will always respect the will of the people.  That is what gives meaning to my life.  When this happens, that is, when the people of Anambra State effectively resist electoral fraud and ensure that the choice of the people emerges as Governor, I will retire.  As I retire, I expect that other Igbo States and the Nigerian nation will do what has to be done to exorcise the demons of electoral malpractices from the 2011 general elections in the country to ensure that these also become free and fair.


Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for listening.  I thank our host, Professor Chinua Achebe, who in his work titled “The Trouble with Nigeria” diagnosed our national malaise as the absence of effective leadership, for showing effective leadership by convening this conference.  May God bless him and his family.  May God bless Ndigbo.  May God bless Nigeria.

Monday, December 13, 2010

The Clouds Are Gathering, Says Chinua Achebe

"President Olusegun Obasanjo has taken Nigeria as low as she has ever gone. This will surprise foreign “friends” of Nigeria who may believe the myth that Obasanjo has been fighting to end corruption in the country and to bring democracy to its citizens. Nigerians know better.   

"President Obasanjo has had the opportunity to rule Nigeria for three years (1976-79) as an unelected military dictator and later for two terms of eight years as a retired general/civilian (1999-2007). People don’t exactly remember what Obasanjo did in his first civilian incarnation. His second coming, however, was a different matter. He unfolded a gigantic scheme for staying in power beyond his tenure. He set up agencies with long titles like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent National Electoral Commission. It soon became clear, however, that these devices were not intended to curb the crimes they enumerated but to go after people who disagree with the President, especially on his desire to extend his tenure. 


Chinua Achebe


"Perhaps the strangest of these events took place in my own state, Anambra, where a governor was kidnapped by a criminal gang who claimed that they had “fixed” the election and earned the right to receive the state budgetary allocation. Whatever the merit of this bizarre story the governor refused to turn over the allocation to these thieves and began to spend it on building roads and bridges which nobody had done in decades. He began to pay pension to retired civil servants who had not been paid in years. Anambra state was transformed overnight. No where else in Nigeria had such a change happened. Governor Ngige became the people’s governor.   

"One would have thought that our anti-corruption president, Chief Obasanjo, would have embraced Governor Ngige as a fellow fighter against corruption. But no. The fellows demanding the state revenue were Obasanjo’s friends who in anger set about burning down and destroying state property while the Police stood at a distance, watching.  

"I have told this story again although we all know it. I am retelling it because as it goes with Anambra, so will it go with Nigeria.  

"As Nigeria gets ready for the election of Governors, Anambra State is in a quandary. President Obasanjo’s hatchet man for elections is determined that only one candidate will be allowed to run in the state and has gone ahead to disqualify everybody else so that the President’s favourite man will be alone in the field. If this plan goes through, it would amount to nothing less than the disenfranchisement of the people of Anambra State. 

"I must congratulate the Judiciary on the tough battle many of its members are waging for the soul of Nigeria. The Senate came ever so close to snatching Nigeria out of the fire, and then…  That was a historic moment lost. What a pity!" 

 Chinua Achebe
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA
March 31, 200
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