When Buhari Shamed His Megaphones

By Mike Ozehkome

It  was Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683), an English writer, who once said: “Look to your health: And if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.”

Health, it is said, is wealth. And anyone who has been ill from mere headache can relate to the travails of Mr. President in recent weeks.

*Buhari 

When the president transmitted his letter to the Senate for vacation to the United Kingdom, little did we know that the subsequent events to follow would raise much ruckus and fuss within the polity.  However, for a minute, let us all sheath our ideological swords and thank God Almighty for the president, his family and Nigerians at large, for  making it possible for the president to return alive; for it could have been, indeed,  worse.  God forbid!

Nigeria is sui generis-on a class of its own. There is hardly any country in the world that is akin to Nigeria. Our ideologies, credos, languages are multifaceted and multidimensional. Truth be told, it would be a Herculean task for any leader to placate the various interests and tendencies of this nation in one breath. This has been the major challenges of previous leaders in this nation, whether military or civilian, including Abacha, Gowon, Murtala, Shagari, Shonekan, Abdulsalam, Yardua, GEJ, OBJ, IBB, et al, however well-intentioned they might have been.

What makes a Southerner happy to be a Nigerian is quite different from what makes a Northerner happy to be a Nigerian. Sometimes, this is caused by ignorance, sometimes by the weakness of the human mind, which loves to categorise. Other times, because of the various vested interests by different groups. One fact is indisputable; uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, particularly in Nigeria, a country with about 388 ethnic groups that speak over 350 languages (Onign Otite); some say over 500.

Sometimes, we forget that our leaders are also human, with their weaknesses, foibles, strengths, fears and anxieties. It would be unfair to gloss over some great things that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) has done for Nigeria. His has been that of service to his nation, since his youth, when he was born of a Fulani family on 17th December, 1942, in Daura, Katsina State, to his father, Adamu, and mother, Zulaihat. He is the twenty-third child of his father. Buhari was raised by his mother, after his father died when he was about four years old.

Chinua Achebe At 86: A Tribute

By Dan Amor

When the celebrated and consummate novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe died on Thursday March 21, 2013 in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America at 82, his loss was mourned not only by African writers but by statesmen and citizens of the world whom one would not readily accuse of an interest in literature. What this means is that the romantic emphasis upon the human ego which is implied in the last degree of subjectivity in romantic thought brought about a characteristic motif in the twentieth-century social life-the cult of the superman, the leader, the hero, the born man of genius, who can raise himself above the common herd and lead his people to greater height of attainment than mankind had previously reached. There seems to be a commonly held view, even among literary practitioners, that Achebe was a genius- the Eagle on Iroko in the African literature forest. He was a novelist. But there are novelists and there are novelists.

*Chinua Achebe 

In fact, there were great novelists before him in the vast cosmos of comparative literature: Henry James, Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, etcetera. Yet, Achebe was a logical successor to these great men of letters in the last literary generation of the twentieth century. Prof. Abiola Irele, easily one of Africa's most distinguished literary scholars and critics, noted in his reaction to the news of Achebe's death: "My first reaction when I heard the news of Achebe's death was of sadness. I am very sad to hear the news of the death of Achebe. It is a great loss. I have known him since 1962. He was a wonderful man personally. Somehow, he was not sentimental. It was Achebe who shaped African literature and gave it a standing in the world. It is something that should be commended".

There was indeed no African writer who ever influenced the thinking of his time, either in his literary output or political interventions, more than Achebe. By working so conscientiously at the interface between indigenous and English literatures, Achebe more than any living African novelist, has cultivated the English language with superstitious veneration. No writer has conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market women should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and durable work. Achebe ventures African thought into the English language with remarkable simplicity. He detects the rich treasures of thought and diction, which still lay latent in their ore in the African traditional life. He refines them into purity and burnishes them into splendor thus fitting them for every purpose of use and magnificence.