Nigeria’s Food Crisis Gets Worse, FG Confused

 By Dele Sobowale

“Drought: Kogi Govt; farmers seek divine intervention.”

“Despite harvest, food prices remain high in Taraba.”

“Food crisis may worsen as flood hits 10 states.”

“SEMA seeks govt help as drought dry up crops in four states.”

“Why grains importation won’t happen soon, by stakeholders.”

Like a sudden heavy downpour and thunderstorm, destroying everything, the trope of bad news published on Monday, August 9, 2024, by newspapers, paint a grimmer picture of Nigeria’s imminent food prices this year.

Hunters As Missing Link In Nigeria’s Security Architecture

 By Bonaventure Melah

Until Nigeria takes necessary and bold steps to commission a special security agency that is dedicated and committed to fighting crimes and criminalities that are planned and executed within and around forests, all efforts by the government towards ending heinous crimes like banditry, cattle rustling, kidnapping and others, would continue to be a mirage.

Today, Nigeria has the Police which fights and prevents crimes within cities and rural communities, the Nigeria Army which was created to protect the nation from external aggression and insurrection, the Navy to fight crimes within the nation’s territorial waters as well the Air Force to defend our air space while the NSCDC oversee national assets and work to stop pipeline, public electricity and other forms of vandalism and related crimes.

Taming The Monster Of Poverty

 By Adeze Ojukwu

The gory details of pain, anguish and hopelessness have become the calamitous lot of many Nigerians today. The cry of the masses is reverberating everywhere. From Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and Zamfara to Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Lagos, Plateau and Edo states, the stories of suffering and sorrow are the same. Poverty is the new norm for the masses. 

Latest reports published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) are frightening and disconcerting. Here is the verdict: “About 133 million Nigerians, representing about 63 percent are poor.” This has again confirmed Nigeria’s status as the world’s poverty capital of the world, surpassing India, with a massive population of over 1.4 billion. 

Nigeria’s Invincible Gunmen

 

By Jerry Uwah

Nigeria’s security crisis has taken a precarious nose-dive. Inveterate gangsters derisively tagged gunmen by the Nigerian media have practically turned the country into one huge killing field. 

Last Tuesday the gunmen killed 21 innocent people in different parts of the country. The previous day they killed 18 in one community in Anambra state. The situation in Rivers state is so deplorable that the governor had to declare a curfew. 

The strange development in the escapades of the gunmen is that they are now bold enough to take on those paid and armed to protect the society. In the last two weeks, dozens of policemen have been mowed down by the gunmen who take on police stations as cheap targets. 

Save Our Women!

By Simon Abah

This hustler brought his fiancée to the United States from Nigeria. He didn’t have the necessary papers to be in the US, he did menial jobs but through hard work he was able to save money and sent her to a nursing school, she got a job as soon as she graduated, and legalized her stay. 

(pix: africa.com)

The job as a nurse in the US put her on a pedestal higher than him and life was so good, so it seemed. She earned income higher than his shifting income and they settled down to raise six children, of course for the passport as a meal ticket for tomorrow. Then the fizz burst, they had a major disagreement, madam nurse forgot the days in Nigeria before she came to America and that the hustler even brought her there. 

The Scourge Of Air Pollution In Nigeria

By Kayode Ojewale

AIR is an important and vital requirement for life. Air sustains life, but it can also snuff out life. With air one survives and lives; with air one could also die. So it all boils down to the quality of that air. 

Every living organism requires air for growth and survival. There is no life without air. No air, no life on earth. Human beings need air to breathe because oxygen is the propeller that allows body cells to produce energy from the food we eat. The role air plays in human life cannot be overemphasized because it is the main reason for living. Air is life, life is air.

Nigeria: Senseless Killings As National Pastime

By Dan Amor

Irrational impulses are not surprising in the stress and tension that characterize a demented society. In an atmosphere of violence, reason is sometimes abandoned and humanitarian principles forgotten. The inflamed passions of the time lead men and women to commit atrocities. 

*President Buhari and Army Chief, Gen Burutai 

But the concern here is not with the psychological pathology of those who commit atrocities but rather with what has turned our nation into a slaughterhouse where human beings are daily killed with intimidating alacrity. Throughout modern history, atrocity propaganda has often mesmerized readers thousands of kilometres away from the scene of the crime. Often, the improbability of the actions described suggests that the stories were little more than fantasies concocted for diverse reasons from even more diverse sources.

Nigeria: You Can't Kill The Igbo Spirit

By Dan Amor

Multiculturalism has been the subject of cover stories of most international magazines including Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines across the world. It has sparked heated jeremiads by leading American columnists such as George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in the civilised world today- and justly so.

For whether one speaks of tensions between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights, or violent mass protests against Moscow in ethnic republics such as Armenia, or outright war between Serbs and Croats in Yugoslavia, it is clear that the clash of cultures is a worldwide problem, deeply felt, passionately expressed, always on the verge of violent explosion. Problems of this magnitude inevitably frame the discussion of multiculturalism and cultural diversity even among leading intellectuals across the world. Yet, it is unfortunate that, in Nigeria, the vexed issues of racism, nationalism and cultural identity are downplayed by our commentators and analysts because some think that they and their tribes are not directly affected.

Few commentators could have predicted that one of the issues that dominated academic and popular discourse in the final decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century- concomitant with the fall of apartheid in South Africa, communism in Russia, and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union- would be the matter of cultural pluralism in our secondary school and university curricula and its relation to the "Nigerian" national identity. Repeated experience and routine violations of the rights of minorities and the Igbo nation in Nigeria attest to the urgency of the scattered, and often confused, debates over what is variously known as cultural diversity, cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism. 

Nigeria: Tomorrow Is Dying!

By Ayodele Adio

Northern elders and the elite class have been quite vocal in the last couple of years, giving a louder voice to national issues, particularly that which affects their region. However, the sad reality is that they have focused on issues that  massage the ego of the elite class and deepen the pockets of a selected few turning a blind eye on the more threatening issues eating up the region.

President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

The dominant lexicon, Revenue allocation, as to who gets a better share from the national purse seems to take a sizable share of their mind thereby ignoring the bigger elephant in the room. If increase in allocation translates to better distribution of wealth across the social strata and an improved living standard of the average northerner, then they stand on holy ground but the evidence proves otherwise. The lack of regional purpose, poorly articulated vision, an incoherent strategy and a continuous mismanagement of resources is the cradle upon which the parlous situation of today’s north was bred.

The huge textile industries in Kano and Kaduna that employed thousands of young northerners gradually slid into extinction without any of our leaders attempting to thrown in a rescue rope. There is no doubt that the north is home to the richest man in Africa and a couple of other billionaires, what  logical explanation could one then give to the widespread poverty of the larger populace rather than the earlier assertion on the north’s focus on building strong individuals at the expense of stronger communities.

 It is this widening gap between the rich and poor that has gradually metamorphosed to the insecurity we are experiencing today. How could we not have known that economic repression breeds strife and contempt. The north is today making the headline for all the wrong things. The challenges in the north and its opportunities  are tied to a single yet critical word, Education. It is the level of awareness of a people, their skills and cerebral sophistication that determine the kind of community they build. There is a strong relationship between education and economic prosperity. When Egypt became the centre for global education, she consequently became an economic world power.

This trend extended to Greece, Rome, Britain and today the United States where seven of the top ten universities in the world are resident. The north accounts for the highest rate of illiteracy in the country, way below the national average and worst ratios  for girl child education in the country. The national demographic and health survey puts the illiteracy rate for women at 21% in the north west compare to a national rate of 50%, the 10 states with the highest number of girls out of secondary school are also found in the north.

Our Fulani And Herdsmen Of Mayhem

By Ifeanyi Izeze

How can we live peaceably together as a people by continuously telling ourselves lies? Abi, it has now become our lifestyle in this country to always rationalize obvious aberrations. For how long can we as a people afford to continue like this?

The increasing sophistication and clinical coordination of the group of mindless attackers we call "Fulani herdsmen" or "cattle rearers" that have meted chained terror to our people in different parts of the country is mind-boggling and embarrassing. To think that what is happening in the North-Central and now in virtually every other part of the country is a mere conflict for grazing rights would only amount to naivety at best, because it is now without a doubt that an evil wind is blowing and no section of the country is spared.

The question to ask is: why is it that these so-called “Fulani herdsmen” always take our security operatives off-guard? They always finish their dastardly acts before the arrival of our counter-terrorism security forces. Haba! And instead of sitting together to marshal out a coordinated approach to address this challenge, managers of our security apparatuses give us the impression that some of them may be privy to these conspiracies against our people.

How do you explain the recent incident in Agatu Local Government Area of Benue State, where Fulani herdsmen, backed by mercenary fighters (as already confirmed), invaded several communities, killing more than 500 natives because they were cautioned to stop taking their cows into people’s farms?

Surprisingly, since the revelation that what we have been calling our cattle rearers were actually well-trained mercenaries in the act of causing mayhem, the government has not instituted any serious mechanism to unravel the real identity of these contract fighters.

Buhari And APC’s N27.5 Million Nomination Forms

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Exactly two weeks ago (Thursday, October 16, 2014), the All Progressives Congress (APC) startled decent Nigerians when its national chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun, announced that the party put the cost of its expression of interest and nomination forms at the cost of N27.5 million in order “to separate the men from the boys.” Another way of saying this is: ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff!’

*Buhari

This statement which almost immediately reverberated across the nation through various blogs and television screens was widely reported in the papers the next day, Friday, October 17. As I write now (about 48 hours after it echoed in Abuja ), neither the APC nor its national chairman has even attempted to “clarify” the very unwholesome assertion or withdraw it in its entirety. This can only mean, therefore, that the party solidly stands by such an outrageous and unsettling statement by its topmost officer. What a sad, tragic development.

Now, to describe a grown man as a “boy” is to dismissively imply that he is immature, inexperienced, inadequate or, worse, irresponsible. And so, going by the statement of the APC chairman, the ability to roll out millions of naira is what qualifies somebody to be a “man” in the party. In other words, even if you are generously endowed with superlative moral, intellectual and managerial   abilities, as long as you are not a multi-millionaire or have multi-millionaire friends who can throw the millions on your behalf, you are in the “progressive” thinking of the APC a mere “boy” – immature and irresponsible, and, therefore, not qualified to contest a responsible position on the platform of the party! 

For a party that has unduly strained itself to persuade Nigerians that it represents a healthy alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), this is indeed a most devastating disclosure and horrendous disappointment! What this, once again, demonstrates very clearly is that whereas the APC has deployed enormous efforts to tell Nigerians how bad the PDP is, it has been most unsuccessful in its attempt to allay growing fears (and conceal the stubbornly reoccurring indications) that it is, perhaps, even worse than the PDP.