How To Enter Sapele And Warri From Benin Now

 By Tony Afejuku

Sapele and Warri are two significantly important Nigerian cities that need no introduction, special or un-special, from the historic, realistic and imaginative imagination of this creative creator whose impression of things is often – if not always – determined by features which fit the descriptions that convey meaningfully what must be conveyed – meaningfully.

Sapele and Warri, as very many people know, are two unique cities, two uniquely nifty cities, from whichever dominant or un-dominant impressions or perspectives open to us to define the cities. Of course, the cities’ dense and denizenly denizens and brought-ups where-ever they are always have something, something beautifully beautiful, to say about them in the same way that those of Benin, the antique city, allow their imaginations and conceptions to beautify it.

Fuel Scarcity Again! Have We Not Suffered Enough?

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

The newspaper headlines are haunting, heart-jerking, painting a horrifying spectacle of the preventable pains of the long-suffering Nigerians, still stewing in the paradox of want -of refined premium motor spirit (pms)- in the midst of plenty natural deposit of crude oil resource.

If in doubt, consider some of them: ‘Petrol scarcity bites harder in Abuja, Oyo, Yobe’(-2nd March, 2021). ‘Commuters groan as fuel scarcity bites harder’ (24th Nov., 2022). ‘Fuel scarcity bites harder, cripples socio-economic activities in Kebbi (18th December, 2022). ‘Commuters trek, motorists sleep at filling stations as petrol scarcity bites harder’ (23rd January, 2023).

The People's Choice: The Story Of Goodluck

BOOK REVIEW 

(A Tribute To Our Former President At  59)

By Dan Amor

Reflection on the existing number of books on former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan might well raise doubt about the desirability of adding to them. But since research does not stand still and its more assured results often take long to reach the handbook, there may be a place for a brief account of the man described severally by different people as a leader who is humble and simple to a fault. Yet, to read Rev. Father Charles A. Imokhai's The People's Choice, his lucid account of the life and times of the former Nigerian leader, is to embark on a delightful journey.

*Dr. Jonathan cutting his birthday cake 

Segmented into four parts, the 194 page book published by AuthorHouse, United Kingdom (February 2015), circulates how gorgeously a child from a humble state did swing across the gloomy and multitudinous chasm of the Niger Delta to become President of the world's most populous black nation by divine providence. As a priest and religious thinker, who has worked for over forty-five years in Nigeria, Liberia and the United States of America in various pastoral and administrative capacities, fortified with a doctorate degree in social anthropology from the University of Columbia, USA, Father Imokhai has produced a book which will have a remarkable vogue and influence on Nigerian youth.

Like General Yakubu Gowon, former Nigerian Head of State who wrote the foreword to the book states, the book, in an easily readable format, tells the story of an ordinary farm boy's rise from his obscure village in Otuoke, Bayelsa State to the pinnacle of leadership as Number One citizen of our dear country, Nigeria. And, like he also enthuses in his foreword, The People's Choice is work in progress "because the Presidency under Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR is still unfolding." The book which incidentally does not have on its cover the picture of its focal subject, would keep the prospective reader wondering who it's talking about.

Yet on launching into the foreword, the reader is now confronted with the reality of the subject, the figure about whom has clustered the yearnings, the ideals, and the aspirations Nigerians have for themselves and their country. That symbolic Goodluck also stands between the reader and the book. Jonathan does not pretend about his humble background. We know what happened and we cannot undo that knowledge. We read The People's Choice with a different eye. The present changes the meaning of the past. We can get the record straight, as historians like to put it, but the meaning of that straightened record is inextricably involved in the meaning we also try each day to discern in the confusion of the living present.

Nigeria: Ese Oruru’s Mirror

By Okey Ndibe

I received a plaintive note last week from a young man who seemed rather shocked that I had not written about Nigeria’s scandal of the moment—the harrowing story of a 14-year old girl named Ese Rita Oruru, abducted from her home in Bayelsa State, transported to Kano by a 22-year old drifter, Yunusa (alias Yellow), who contrived her conversion to Islam and then made her his bride. My young correspondent then pleaded with me to write about the Ese matter, as if the burden of rendering whole again a world turned on its head rested with whatever I was going to say.

*Ese Oruru

The matter of Ese, even the fragment of it sketched out above, is a tragic story. But what makes the story truly, deeply tragic is far less the specific details of what happened to a solitary young woman than what the Ese Affair says about Nigeria, its institutions, its attitude to children, and the vexed subject of religion.

In short, the tragedy lies in the fact that Nigeria is a country at war with its most vulnerable, weak citizens. It is a country at war with its poor, its workers, especially those of them who are minimum wage earners, its womenfolk, especially those of them who are, in every important sense, children.

Speaking to a reporter, one of Ese’s best friends at school in Bayelsa State disclosed that her friend’s dream was to become a nurse. According to this friend, Ese excelled at math, integrated science and English. In her first interview with reporters, Ese corroborated the account of her dream. In a child-friendly society, Ese would have received encouragement to enable her to achieve her professional aspiration. But this is Nigeria, a country that’s turned into a killer of dreams, if not of the dreamers. Instead of being on her way to a nursing career, Ese, who is now five months pregnant, must become the charge of nurses as she, a mere child, prepares to bring a child into the world.

How did the young man who abducted Ese manage to pull off his crime—for crime it was—in broad daylight, without anybody, civilian or uniformed, to stop him? How was it that several adults presided over the farcical conversation of the young woman without one of them pausing to ask, one, whether she was competent to voluntarily understand said conversion and, two, whether she understood the implications of what was to follow?

In her interview, Ese described the process of her ostensible conversion. “They took me to one place. Before they took me from the house to Kura, they put me in hijab, then we went to Kura. When we got there, they went to one place, and one old man came there and he would say something and they would say I should repeat. Then I would repeat. If the man said something again, they would say I should repeat and I would repeat just like that.”

A conversion indeed, just like that!