As Gov Uzodinma Runs Imo State From His Back Pocket!

 By Steve Osuji

Conquered Territory, Burial Industry: It’s all quiet over there in Imo. The quiet of a conquered people. People move about sombrely, not unlike sheep. Death stalks the land quite proactively and burial ceremony is the most thriving business. The emerging economics of burials becomes avenues for one big meal and a quaff of beer in many communities. Not much more seems to go on in Imo State these days than misery, ailments, certain demise, then burials... and more burials. 

*Ihedioha and Uzodinma 

Meanwhile, our dear governor, Hope Uzodinma, seems to abide in the clouds these days. He’s grown more chubby and rosy-cheeked; his visage looking supple and lush like the tenderloins of a nubile damsel.

He's on top of his game as governor of a vassal territory. Now and then, Abuja sends him on serf errand around the southeast – an emissary to a state burial or to the more tacky task ‘managing’ difficult election. 

Travails of Citizen Ojokoh: Open letter to IGP Usman Alkali Baba

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Sir,

Let me apologise from the onset for reaching you through this medium, considering that a private, albeit, official letter may have been more ideal. But two things informed my choice of open letter. First, I don’t want the letter to be lost in transit, mislaid in the miasma of officialdom. Second, time is of the essence here.

*IGP Usman Alkali Baba

So, my hope is that even if you don’t get to read this letter first-hand, someone who did will promptly draw your attention to it. I am also aware that Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma, Executive Director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre, RULAAC, sent a petition to you on Monday, May 8, on the same issue. This letter is to reinforce the position of RULAAC on the travails of Citizen Thaddeus Ikechukwu Ojokoh in the hands of officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force, Imo State command.

Letter From Emeka Odimegwu-Ojukwu

 By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

If you had any doubts about the authenticity of this letter, let me assure you that I am still involved, very involved in all that you do, and experience in our beleaguered country, especially with the stupid wanton killings in the southeast, by unknown gunmen, the ubiquitous Fulani herdsmen, Eastern Security Network and the Buhari-government-outlawed-IPOB. And we are deeply upset hereabouts. Not even in the period preceding the 1967 conflagration did the nation witness so much brutality, hopelessness, uncertainty, and poverty. It is unbecoming of a nation so blessed with natural and human resources!

*Ojukwu 

How are you all? We know things are not rosy. The entire world is currently in a turmoil. Poverty and hunger are real. Indeed, Nigerians are coping better with the economic hardship than Europeans who have lived a life of luxury. Else, how do you account for a worker on a 30k monthly salary still paying school fees for three kids and feeding once a day and still smiling to church or the Mosque? It is not a happy thing. No, not a happy situation.

Caging A Nutcase Called Simon Ekpa

 By Ochereome Nnanna

There is a madman in Finland who has wittingly or unwittingly joined the enemies of the Igbo nation to destabilise the South-East. Reputed to be a Finnish national and an ex-soldier, the 37-year-old wears costumes depicting himself as an Igbo traditional ruler (or native doctor, as some say).

He goes on You Tube and internet radio to spew messages he believes portray him as the placeholder for the incarcerated leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu’s movement is committed to the peaceful separation of indigenous people from Nigeria through referendums.

Peter Obi Is Coming!

 By Chuks Ucheagu

Before the electioneering season, Peter Obi had been underestimated in the presidential race and called a loser. The establishment, made up of ruthless political class who do not want their boat of milking Nigeria and its future dry to be rocked by Peter the Rock, taunted him.

*Peter Obi and his wife, Margaret 

They jeered that he had no structure. The old and tired politicians averred he would come distant third. Then they and their minions mocked that he would only win on social media and end up a mere social media president.

The legacy politicians and their cronies were still living in denial when the gale of ObiDatti Movement started sweeping through the land, stirring a tsunami – ably led by the youths whose popular reality show, BBNaija, for the first time did not distract or deter. They are shocked to their bone marrows at the phenomenal accept- ability of Obi’s candidacy and the demand for his presidency by Nigerians across board. Be- cause no political movement had been this massive, spontaneous, organic and revolutionary in our recorded political experience.

The Enugu Massacre And Why Tribe Matters

By Aloy Ejimakor
The invitation admittedly extended to the Army by the Enugu State  Police Commissioner ahead of the deadly shooting at Emene was too prompt and bears stark evidence of premeditation for lethal violence against the Igbo element on the part of the Commissioner of Police.

This premeditation stems from the customary lack of compatriot empathy often exhibited by some Northern Muslim security chiefs and other ranks towards Igbos when it comes to law enforcement of this kind, even when the target of such enforcement is, without regard to their numbers, unarmed and nonviolent.

Enugu Massacre: Forget IPOB, They Are Ndigbo

By Aloy Ejimakor

A famous Nigerian politician once said (in spirited defense of the Yoruba) that “before I became a Nigerian, I was Yoruba”. And another one said: “We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes.”

The Yoruba has, in moderation, said his own. The Fulani has, in extremism, said his own. Let me now, as an Igbo, say my own, and here it is: Whoever takes the life of an IPOB member is taking the life of an Igbo and therefore will ultimately account to Ndigbo. It’s not a threat; it’s a fact.

Nigeria: President Buhari And The Untouchable Bandits

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

If the senate really needed unimpeachable answers to the nation’s security questions, it only demonstrated another case of its accustomed dilettantism when it summoned the acting Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu.

*Buhari 

Latching on to the platitude that the knowledge of state security matters should be the privilege of only the few in the inner sanctum of government, the senate did not publicise the outcomes of its over two hours’ meeting with Adamu. Yet, unauthorised sources have divulged what transpired at the meeting. The IGP, not unexpectedly, at the meeting blamed his inability to tackle the insecurity on paucity of funds, personnel and weapons.

Igbo Independence And Biafran Identity

By Osita Ebiem 

In this essay we will take time to clarify some areas that seem to confuse some people in the on-going Biafra separatist movement in Nigeria. Over the years, as will be expected, the move for the independence of Biafra has undergone some transformations. These changes seem to have created a sort of mixed messages in the minds of both observers and participants. So, at this point it is really important that we try to clarify some of the seemingly ambiguous aspects of the movement.

It is a fact that for some of the participants, those involved in the struggle, many are finding it difficult to come to terms and accept the obvious realities of these changes when they seem to go against some of their assumed or preconceived notions of what the struggle should be about. This is understandable. But in spite of the genuine appreciation of the position of these colleagues it will be foolish if we should ignore the prevailing obvious new realities and facts as they concern the movement. We can only ask that such individuals will be humble enough to find the sincerity and courage to acknowledge these truths and incontestable facts when they are revealed to them. 

Security Under President Buhari’s Watch

By Kolawole Anthony

The first official covenant a leader makes with the people, on the first day of official function is security of lives and property of the citizenry. It is neither negotiable nor subject to compromise under any guise.

A law abiding and peaceful nation is the panacea to uninhibited development and prosperity. It is the primary essence of governance. And the capacity of the Armed Forces anywhere in the world is gauged by its capacity and competencies to assist the President to defray internal and external aggressions against its country. But the military abdicated on this basic constitutional responsibility under the last administration.

And the consequences were quite grave. No Nigerian can agree less that Nigeria was on a precarious cliff of total breakdown of law and order, by May 2015, when President Muhammedu Buhari took the reins of office.

Nigeria was literally and practically handcuffed by subsisting, budding, consuming and persistently explosive acts of terrorism, local armed conflicts, militancy, violent separatists’ agitations, ethno-religious conflagrations and other insurrections. They did not only disturbingly assail and crippled Nigeria, but had morphed into threats to regional insecurity threats.

Burdened by an extremely weak Military, prior to the ascension of the Buhari Presidency, Nigeria replaced its peaceful soul with almost everyday violence, deaths and agonies from terrorism. Dominantly at the home front, Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) obstinately pulled the cord of disunity and disintegration of Nigeria. It went paranoid and regrettably unchallenged in the organized atrocious acts and heinous crimes against Nigerians. But Buhari has smothered the fire.

Achuzia, Biafra Spirit And South South Igbo

By Onuoha Ukeh

As a kid during the Biafra War, I did not know the major actors of the battle, which claimed more than two million Igbo. At that time, I never knew Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Yakubu Gowon, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Philip Effiong, Olusegun Obasanjo, Joe Achuzia and others, who played one role or another in the internecine war. This was expected. Little kids, in their innocence, do not know about wars.

*Achuzia

However, I will never forget the day my parents took my siblings and I into the bush, as we fled from the federal troops, who entered our community in Item, Bende Local Government Area of the present-day Abia State. That faithful early morning, we started hearing the sound of explosive artillery or shelling from a distance into the Item area. The sound of “Kpo, kpo, kpo, kpo” rent the air. Another shooting sound that always followed was “dum.”

Lai Mohammed Says US Non-Recognition Of IPOB As A Terrorist Group Is Unfortunate

Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed, said in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview in London on Wednesday that the refusal of the United States’ government to classify the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist organization was “very unfortunate”.

*Lai Mohammed 

“That’s very unfortunate because if countries decide to pick and choose which organizations are terrorists and which are not, bearing in mind that terrorism has no boundaries, I think what we should do is, every country should work together to ensure that terrorism does not strive,” Mr. Mohammed told the BBC.

Illegality Of Nnamdi Kanu’s House Arrest By The Army

By Femi Falana

No doubt, the federal government of Nigeria has the duty to maintain law and order in the country. But it is the duty which cannot be carried out outside the ambit of the law of the land. Last weekend, armed troops invaded Abia in Abia state to deal with the alleged threat of Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) to destabilize the country. It was reported yesterday that the troops have taken over the family house of Mr Kanu and put him under house arrest. I wish to submit, without any fear of contradiction, that the deployment of armed troops in Abia state and the house arrest of Mr. Kanu are illegal and unconstitutional on the following grounds:

*Nnamdi Kanu 

(1) By virtue of section 215 (3) of the Constitution the Nigeria Police Force has been conferred with the exclusive power to maintain law and order and secure public safety and public order in the country.

(2) Having filed an application in the Federal High Court for the re-arrest and detention of Mr. Kanu for allegedly breaching the conditions attached to his bail the federal government ought not to have presented the trial judge with a fait accompli by resorting to self help in the circumstance.

(3) Although the President is empowered by virtue of section 217(2) of the Constitution to deploy the armed forces for the "suppression of insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore law order" he cannot exercise the power until there is an insurrection or civil disturbance which cannot be contained by the police.

VIDEO 

Operation Python Dance Is Illegal 

- Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa 

Nigeria: Pythons Need Not Dance In South-East

By Paul Onomuakpokpo 

Although there is a myriad of indicators of the failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, there is one that sticks out like a sore thumb. It is the inability of the government to effectively grapple with the challenge of making right choices in a manner that negates the social imagination that it is incapable of listening and ever doing what is appropriate. This incapacity has found expression in a brazen defiance of good proposals from the citizens to set governance on an even keel.

*President Buhari with the Service Chiefs

Or how do we explain the fact that despite the warnings from prominent citizens, the Federal Government has made good its threat to crush agitators in the south-east? But the government must not fantasize about its triumph over an already oppressed people. It should rather stop its troops in their tracks since the outcome of their misguided expedition in that part of the country would not only conflict with genuine efforts to bring peace to the region, it would aggravate the mutual distrust among people of different parts of the country.

Nigeria: When The Python Danced On A Barb-Wired Fence

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

The recent onslaught by the Nigerian military on Nnamdi Kanu’s country home in Abia State under the curious code name “Operation Python Dance” has once again demonstrated the naivety, ineptitude and insensitivity of the current Buhari administration on dealing with the incandescent ethnic nationalism that has ripped Nigeria apart in the past couple of years. Why this government or any other group in this country or outside would think that solution to the present impasse in Nigeria could be resolved through the barrel of the gun beats my imagination.

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*President Buhari and Chief of Army Staff Burutai

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I have always maintained that Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPoB) is not a threat to Nigeria. Rather IPoB and its leaders represent the manifestation of a beleaguered people desperate for freedom. What Nnamdi Kanu has succeeded in doing is to gnaw at the conscience of the world to call attention to the plight of his people and the need to give the Igbo a better deal in Nigeria. And here I must say that Kanu is not alone in this feeling and factual knowledge of the truth that Ndigbo have become an endangered species in Nigeria.

The precarious situation of the Igbo in Nigeria has been worsened in an age of clash of civilizations when the forces of radical Islam are on collision course with western civilization. Like I have always pointed out, Boko Haram is a philosophy anchored on the rejection by Islam of anything western especially its religion and education. Apart from this warped religious inspired hatred of western civilization, Islam is anti-democratic and does not support the republicanism and gregariousness for which unencumbered societies like the Igbo are known for. Unlike western liberal democracy, Islam does not admit of question on its foundational principles; it regards Christians and Jews as “people of the Book” that must be destroyed at all level. The religion advocates the plundering of the riches of the “infidels”, slashing their throats and binding them as slaves and also compelling them to pay the “zakat”.

No, Don’t Re-Arrest Nnamdi Kanu

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In a seeming bid to ward off the increasing threats to the stability of the country, the government is floundering from one absurd measure to another. From deploying its security apparatuses to monitor the social media, it has moved on to rein in hate speech by proposing a bill in this regard. No much alarm should be triggered if the government luxuriates in the obliviousness of the inability of these frenzied measures to stave off the dissolution of the people’s union if it fails to reckon with more enduring and acceptable solutions that the citizens have generously proposed.

*Nnamdi Kanu

But we must not ignore the augury of a looming tragedy we are now confronted with in the government’s latest move to sustain the nation’s unity. This is the bid by the government to re-arrest the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu might have impudently breached some of the conditions for his freedom from incarceration. He might have been found rhapsodising before his hundreds of supporters and putative security personnel about his republic of unrivalled equality and thereby violating the condition that he must not be in a crowd of more than 10 people. He might be considered to have continued on the path of heating up the polity by insisting on his prising a Biafra Republic from Nigeria and securing the support of some Igbo youths who evidently swoon over the prospect of freedom from the stranglehold of their implacable tormentors. He might have been a threat to the state by declaring that no election would take place in Anambra as long as the Biafra question remains unresolved. But these apparent offences do not validate the government’s quest to re-arrest him in view of the rash of grim consequences that such a move would precipitate. 

Nigeria: Before Darkness Falls

By Julius Oweh

The one hundred and four days of President  Muhammadu Buhari’s medical sojourn abroad opened the fault lines of the nation and a clear advertisement that ours is pretending to be a nation. For those days, the ship of the nation was clearly adrift with an absentee president and a nominal acting president that could not deliver effective leadership because of some deep rooted cabals and interest group.

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

In fact, the nation was on auto pilot and the information managers did a poor job about the president’s health status. As you read this piece, Nigerians are yet to be told the nature of the president’s illness and how much the nation has spent in treating him. Therefore any talk about the buy made- in- Nigeria product campaign of the present administration is shattered by the medical tourism of the president. 

The less than seven minutes broadcast of the president, failed to address the pressing issues of the moment – restructuring and fiscal federalism. 

Furthermore, the hard stance of the president in his words `the unity of the nation is settled` is a clear indication that the president is very far from the reality of the moment. He has to climb down from the high horse and address the needs of the people especially those of the south.

President Buhari’s Illusion Versus Reality

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It should be clear by now to the citizens who are genuinely concerned about saving the country from careering into mortal catastrophes that their first task is to rescue their president. It is not a redemption from his hobbling medical condition. London doctors are equal to this task. This they have uncannily demonstrated by giving President Muhammadu Buhari a new lease of life. Now, apparently far from an afflicted president who was in dire need of the citizens’ empathy and prayer for his good health, Buhari has resumed office with so much vigour that he easily underscores his toughness by casting his expectations from the citizens in fire and brimstone.

*President Buhari in Zamfra (March 2017)

What Buhari is in urgent need of rescue from is his illusions about his fellow citizens, his country and the world. It does not matter that he claimed to be abreast of developments at home and the other parts of the world while he was away. In less than a week since his return, Buhari has shown that he is fixated on his misbegotten notions of governance that he had before his medical sojourn abroad. A graver danger is that these notions have degenerated as they have assumed a misanthropic character. Those who thought that his ill health would have sobered him up and purged him of his self-created distance from the citizens have been sorely disappointed. He has come back home to reprimand them with a sledgehammer for intolerably going errant ways while he was away. After all, in his reckoning, most of those who want a redefinition of the terms for the co-existence of the people have not been confronted with the prospect of their shedding their blood for the survival and unity of the nation.

When DSS Runs Amok In Calabar

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is immaterial whether this column’s warning just last Thursday that the Department of State Services (DSS) is on the prowl and it needs to be reined in was an act of serendipity. What matters is that the warning is increasingly becoming a frightening reality. We need not look far for the ominous signs of the cluelessness of the government mutating into dictatorship. If the trouble were only that the government has become clueless about managing the economy and snatching the citizens from the cauldron of poverty, we would not bother. But the government has repeatedly demonstrated its apparent antipathy towards the people by assaulting them.

We need not explore the unceasing cases of police brutality. These are familiar. They are apparently provoked by the citizens’ refusal to oblige police officers with the bribes they demand. We need not also be reminded of the military’s maiming and killing of Shittes and IPOB members. There was the official justification of such mowing down of citizens under the rubric of squelching threats to the peace and order in the polity. But we are deservedly outraged at the impunity of security operatives when their attacks on the citizens are not provoked by the latter’s actions which conflict with the presumed interest of the state and the collective good. And this happens in an atmosphere of democracy where the dignity of the citizens ought to be privileged. 

In October last year, an easy-going Joseph Izu, a footballer with Shooting Stars of Ibadan was killed by soldiers in Rivers State. Last month, Alex Ochienu, a pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God was assaulted by two soldiers in Abuja for refusing to heed their cruel command to frog-jump.

There was also the case last month of a Nollywood actress and movie producer Jewel Infinity who was travelling from Port Harcourt to Onitsha. When she got to a checkpoint, a soldier said that she was gossiping about him. He did not accept the lady’s protestation of innocence that she was only engaged in a friendly debate with a fellow passenger in the vehicle in which they were travelling. The soldier demanded that the actress should knee down and apologise. Her refusal to do this was met with beating with wood and rod. 

The unprovoked brutality being meted out to the citizens by security operatives is in tandem with their reading of the body language of President Muhammadu Buhari. It is clear that Buhari either tacitly or directly endorses this brutality. This was why he approved the DSS raid of the homes of the justices of the Supreme Court over the allegations of corruption.

The Mindless Slaughter Of Innocent Nigerians

By Kenechukwu Obiezu

Renowned international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International’s recently released a report damningly found that Nigeria’s security agencies had systematically and extra-judicially gunned down one hundred and fifty members of the Indigenous  People of Biafra (IPOB), whose leader remains incarcerated,  in defiance of multiple orders for his bail by national and international courts, and by a government which  poorly continues to disguise its monumental discomfort with  the rule of law.

Nigeria’s   descent into a land of many and geographically-diverse killing fields has been steady decades now. President after President beginning with Olusegun Obasanjo under who  security agencies fell on Choba, Rivers State and Zaki Biam in Benue State, to the current administration which let loose security agencies in Anambra State, Kaduna State and in other states to crush supposed secession attempts by the IPOB and an alleged terrorist group in the  IMN, have cited threats to the national security and sovereign integrity of the country to justify repeated  ruthless deployment of force  done with scant regards to human rights, the rule of law and the rules of engagement.

Most gullible and impressionable  Nigerians increasingly afraid for their lives and security in a country of mounting insecurity and scandalous corruption have allowed themselves to be swayed by the government’s well–prepared propaganda and party lines into believing that all those whose blood have flowed were indeed terrorists whose places in the supposedly sane society of Nigeria had become untenable and highly dangerous. Add the rampaging killings by the terrorist Boko Haram sect and criminal Fulani herdsmen to the equation plus the government’s anemic and even comedic response and reaction thereto and you have a witch’s brew of mindless slaughter of innocent Nigerians.  President Muhammadu Buhari has   done little to help calm the frazzled nerves of   Nigerians and international human rights monitors who have remained alarmed at the killing sprees of security agencies in Nigeria.

Indeed, some of his  comments  issued in defiance to groups alleging marginalization  have, a posteriori,  been interpreted by overzealous security agencies as war cries rising from the highest office of the land against those who seek to tear asunder Nigeria’s internal security and render the giant of Africa ‘the Afghanistan of Africa.’  The results are bloody and scrawled in red.

From the beginning of time, most human societies have affirmed directly and indirectly the sanctity of human life. Even those who believed and propounded killings and human sacrifices in satisfaction of religious and sundry obligations   saw differently with time.
The United Nations Charter   which is the  foundational charter of  the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization, was  signed in San Francisco, United States, on  June 26,1945 by 50 of the 51 original member countries. Nigeria later appended its signature and became a member.