Nigeria: Terror Alert And Doubting Thomases

 By Ray Ekpu

The United States and United Kingdom embassies in Nigeria have raised the alarm over possible terror attack on facilities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Other countries have followed suit. These include Denmark, Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland and Canada. Although these countries are addressing their message to their citizens living in or visiting Nigeria, it is obvious that the message is also for the benefit of Nigerians and the federal government. 

The United States advisory says that the terrorists might target such places as government buildings, places of worship, schools, markets, shopping malls, hotels, bars, restaurants, athletic gatherings and transport terminals, facilities belonging to law enforcement agencies and international organisations. The American embassy therefore directed its non-essential staff and their family members to either leave the FCT or avoid public places. Many of the places mentioned by the embassy have been attacked by terrorists either in Abuja or elsewhere in the country so they are all potentially vulnerable. 

Whither Nigeria?

 By Odia Ofeimun

Each time it was discovered that the ship of state was foundering, without compass, and no one seemed to have a handle on how to navigate with a proper goal-orientation, the question, Whither Nigeria?, has been asked as a way of giving expression to where we are as a country, where we are going or where we should be going. Mostly, the issues have emerged from trying to think beyond the scramble by the various nationalities in the country. In a multi-ethnic society, reality tends to be resolved around levels of perception in the practice of governance.  

                *Odia Ofeimun 

I am interested in how we’ve been fixed by history, and how we’ve always managed to have so many unresolved issues, so embarrassingly many, even now, when the most intense marker of dissension in the Nigerian firmament is the Boko Haram Insurgency in the North-East which has sought many times, unsuccessfully, to declare a Caliphate over parts of the country. Take the other issue around MASSOB (Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra) and the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB). They have raised the Biafran secessionist flag contentiously and ambitiously over what used to be the Eastern Region. Successive Federal Governments have pursued them with punitive measures as if the civil war of 1967-70 did not quite come to an end. Now, look, the clouds are gathering, as fractions of the Yoruba, at home and in the Diaspora, are angling for a secessionist binge of their own, unless, as it is stressed, ethnic nationalities are allowed to become self-governing within the Nigerian Federation.