*The proud winners
Contestants were drawn from
the Junior and Senior Secondary classes (JSS1-JSS3 and (SS1-SS3) to form the
two categories.
From the several students that participated in the first stage of the competition, twenty names made the top performers list. These were then invited to Lagos to write the final test which held on Saturday, May 25, 2024. Six contestants were eventually shortlisted as winners, three for each category.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
As the November 11, 2023, governorship elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi states draw close, widespread and justifiable concerns continue to mount about the capacity and willingness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to organize free, credible and transparent polls to gratify the deep yearnings of the people to be allowed to exercise their constitutional right to choose their own governor.
Given the very demoralizing performance posted by INEC in the last general elections earlier in the year, whose glaring evidences are showing their egregious faces at the various Election Petitions Tribunals across the country, the people have every reason to be very apprehensive and distrustful of INEC under the leadership of Prof Mahmood Yakubu.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
“Death is…the absence of
presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when
the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom
Stopard
In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow.
We were three young men who had a couple of months earlier been posted from Enugu to Abakaliki to work in the old Anambra State public service, and we had hired a flat in a newly erected two-storey building at the end of Water Works Road, which we shared. My flat-mate, clearly, was not familiar with Giwa’s name and work, and so had wondered why his death could elicit such a reaction from me.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” ―
Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept, insensitive and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from any government. Massive infrastructural decay due to criminal neglect and regular reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth by wayward and light-fingered public officers have since lost their capacities to shock Nigerian masses.
In fact, most people have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb the vicious impacts of these debilitating vices. They only extract some bit of cold comfort from continually reassuring themselves that they are in such a hopeless and helpless situation where these excruciating fallouts of leadership failure will remain the resilient, inseparable companions they are condemned to perpetually coexist with – which will always be there to severely hurt their country and diminish their joy, peace and fulfillment.
Those who lack personal resources to obtain some form of alleviation for themselves and their families resign themselves to fate hoping that they would be able to sustain the capacity to continue enduring these searing rewards of successive rudderless leaderships – which will remain their perpetual sources of torments.
Even the Nigerians who reside in well-ordered societies, where leaders are accountable and basic amenities are meticulously provided and maintained, once they touch down on Nigerian soil automatically adjust their minds to endure the excruciating realities of life in Nigeria. They only derive some consolation from the fact that they would soon jet out again to where sanity and orderly existence are taken for granted.
And so, when it is election season and this set of disenchanted and disoriented Nigerians are ready to vote, they do not even bother to interrogate the character, antecedents, hollow promises and other antics of the candidates having concluded that they are all the same – members of the same cult of corruption and ineptitude; rather they would seek to extract some ephemeral emotional satiation from lending their support to a candidate who shares the same ethnic or religious identity with them. At least, they can always derive some comfort (or even animation) from the fact that their “brother” or “sister” had also joined the rampaging band of locusts, and that their votes had helped to achieve that “feat” for their own people!
Some others will eagerly accept contaminated crumbs from the
tables of these same callous, thieving politicians who have cruelly
impoverished them and mortgaged the future of their children and go all out to
promote and mobilize voters and even fight for them to ensure they capture
elective offices to continue their boundless looting of the public
treasury.
Unfortunately, in Nigeria of today, the bad, shattering news is that there is hardly any green vegetation left anywhere again for the locusts to swoop on and devour! What we have all over the place are long stretches of excruciating aridity which only rewards with poverty and hardship all that are unlucky to have Nigeria as their home at this time, except the treasury looters and their accomplices.
A few months before the expiration of the Muhammadu Buhari regime, the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, told the world what most people already knew, namely, that Nigeria’s “debt service payments in the first four months of 2022 totalled N1.9trn, which was greater than its total revenue of N1.6trn, according to the 2023‑2025 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) draft presented by the Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister, Zainab Ahmed, on July 21st.”
In plain language, what we were told was that the amount being spent to service the huge debts accumulated by the Buhari regime, as a result of reckless borrowings, including the USD1.96 billion foreign loan for the construction of an undesirable rail line from Nigeria to Niger Republic, had far exceeded our country’s income, forcing Nigeria into the perilous state of compounding its debt burden by borrowing more money to service debts!
Also, the Excess Crude Account (ECA), Nigeria’s savings for the rainy day, which stood at $2.1 billion when Buhari became president, instead of increasing, had by June 2022 been brutally reduced to $35.7 million. By July of the same year, it plunged further down to $376,655. It would be a huge surprise to hear that as much as one cent remained by the time the Buhari regime exited power on May 29, 2023.
And so clearly at sea as to how to get Nigeria out of the sticky pit it was willfully dragged into on his watch, Buhari sought to derive revolting animation from playing the profligate big brother out there, dolling out USD$1 million to Afghanistan and approving N1.14 billion for the purchase of posh SUVs for Niger Republic to “strengthen their security operations” while the country he pretended to be ruling was scarily submerged in worsening insecurity. No wonder he threatened the other day to escape to Niger Republic if anyone disturbed him in his palatial country home in Daura, Katsina State.
For about eight months last year, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was on strike due to very poor working conditions, and hapless parents were forced to watch the unsightly and devastating spectacle of their children’s future being toyed with by insensitive politicians whose own children were mostly studying in quality schools and colleges in better managed countries of the world.
When will Nigerians realize that each time they are deluded by politicians into allowing primordial sentiments to dictate their choices during elections, that they are only empowering their sworn enemies to continue their perpetual impoverishment and continuous devaluation of their lives and those of even their unborn offspring? Shortly after the elections, the politicians they had naively adopted as their “native idols” will hurriedly converge with their “bitter opponents” of a few days ago to plan how to share the nation’s resources, thumbing their delicate noses at their so-called supporters who had foolishly cultivated lasting enmities with neighbours and friends with whom they had enjoyed many years of cordial, beneficial relationships while campaigning and even fighting to rig in their “brother” or “sister” whom they have never met and might never meet?
Until Nigerians decide that only competent and patriotic managers should be allowed to take over the leadership of Nigeria at the national, state and council levels and steer the country away from its determined path of disaster, Nigeria, already miserably broke and prostrate, will fail beyond what anyone had thought was possible in a country ruled by human beings.
By the way, how do candidates even emerge in Nigeria? Are they chosen on merit? Does anyone among their party delegates bother about their capacity and character? At the national conventions of the two faces Nigeria’s terminal affliction, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the delegates that voted to choose their presidential candidates for the 2023 elections were reportedly bought soul and body with crispy wads of US dollars – an unwholesome indulgence that unleashed further hurt on the economy. This was apart from the hundreds of millions of naira earlier squandered to purchase nomination forms and sort out other logistics.
Now, after investing all these millions of dollars and billions of naira to secure their parties’ tickets alone and then more billions to prosecute the campaigns and buy votes from willfully impoverished Nigerians who are ready and eager to sell their future to assuage their hunger, what would be the first mission of such candidates once any of them captures power? But will Nigerians learn anything from this gloomy reality and apply themselves to wisdom in future elections for their own good?
If Nigerians continue to allow themselves to be deluded every now and again by ethically bankrupt politicians to discard character and competence and vote on the basis of ethnicity or religion or both, they will all be here to continue suffering the consequences of their tragic decisions.
A new government is in town now and the cost of living has gone to the skies as poor Nigerians are asked to make sacrifices while those in power swim in obscene opulence. Since many adult Nigerians were born, every new government has asked them to tighten their belts in order to enjoy a rosy tomorrow; but can anyone point to at least one single benefit that such punitive measures inflicted on the hapless people ever brought?
What we usually see is that after sometime, things would get worse and more sacrifices would be demanded. This will continue until the particular regime quits power and the new one will come in with a reworded version of the same deceptive language: suffer today and enjoy tomorrow! A pie in the sky meant to tantalize and delude the unwary and tragically naïve people who have stubbornly refused to learn from their past mistakes!
Each time Nigerians go to the polls with the wrong reasons and vote or rig in mostly corrupt and incompetent candidates, all they have done is to help the perpetuation of the unimaginable suffering they are currently writhing under. Yet, despite this self-hurting preference, many of them still wallow in the grand illusion that a patriotic and competent administration will emerge to lighten their burdens and mitigate their sufferings. But is it not foolish to continue to plant mango trees every season and expect them to produce apples? How can a people persist in the fatal indulgence of stubbornly eating and drinking poison and yet expecting to live and flourish?
Indeed, the excruciating pains of corruption and incompetence in leaders at all levels have no tribal marks. They do not unleash their torments with any discrimination. They viciously attack everyone irrespective of his or her place of origin, voting preference or even the tribal marks of the new misruler they have helped to enthrone.
Nigerians from Katsina, Buhari’s home state, or even the entire North that persistently gave him the loudly trumpeted twelve-million votes, can attest to this. Their region received the lion share of the boundless insecurity and excruciating poverty that distinguished Buhari’s eight-year nightmare.
*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a journalist and writer, is the author of the book, “Nigeria: Why Looting May Not Stop” (scruples2006@yahoo.com; twitter:@ugowrite)
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Nigerians are very good at crowning false heroes. Just open a Nigerian newspaper you can find near you and see how many people that are recklessly described on its pages as “credible” politicians, “honest and selfless” Nigerians, or worse, the “conscience of the nation.” You would be shocked to see the number of people that carelessly allow themselves to be associated with such superb, ennobling qualities even when they are fully aware that by their personal conducts, it might even appear as a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of those terms.
Over the years, these words and phrases have been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene and seek their redemption. I won’t in the least, therefore, be surprised to wake up tomorrow and hear that decent people in this country have begun to protest and resist any attempt to associate them with such grossly debased terms.
BOOK REVIEW
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Even after the 2023 presidential elections scheduled for next Saturday (February 25, 2023) in which Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party has received widespread acclamation as the candidate to beat, I will advise many Nigerians to still look out for Chuks Iloegbunam’s book, The Promise Of A New Era, which was presented to the public a couple of months ago in Enugu. Younger people who might one day nurse the aspiration to occupy leadership positions in Nigeria will find this book especially rewarding.
One juicy take-away from the book is the need for young people to school themselves to start very early to keep their paths clean because they have no way of knowing the amazing opportunities that might throw themselves on their laps tomorrow. Indeed, an action undertaken today by a youth which might appear very insignificant could shoot itself up tomorrow and undermine his ability to seize a very ripe opportunity to achieve an enviable elevation. This is one vital lesson Peter Obi’s life should teach many young people. Despite being the most fact-checked candidate in the presidential contest today, Obi has emerged without a dent.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
As President Muhammadu Buhari prepares himself for a happy return to his comfortable country home in Daura, Katsina State, after nearly eight years in office where he posted what is widely adjudged as far below average performance, a 19-year old, tender, innocent girl named Leah Sharibu remains a hapless, pathetic, unspeakably traumatized captive of Boko Haram terrorists, obviously, under the most dehumanizing conditions.
*Leah Sharibu
Given what has, reportedly, been the horrible experiences of young, beautiful girls like Leah who have been captured by these terrorists, one is really scared to imagine the extent of savage violations she might have been subjected to for over five years now! It is heartbreaking that she hardly gets mentioned again these days, especially, by those whose job it is to rescue and bring her home to her grieving parents and siblings!Has Nigeria woefully failed Leah Sharibu then? Has President Buhari who may have her age mates as grandchildren forgotten her? Has he given up hope of ever bringing her home again to her heartbroken parents? Will he leave her in the horrible den of terrorists as he happily retires to the comfort his home and family in Daura in the next few months?
Mrs. Tyna Mcphilips Nwachukwu is the Director General of the Mcphilips Arts and Educational Foundation which was launched in Lagos in May 2022. In this interview with Nigerian journalist and writer, UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE, Mrs. Nwachukwu speaks on the vision and objectives of the foundation, the programmes it has embarked upon so far and the grounds the foundation hopes to cover in the next couple of years...
*Mrs. Nwachukwu
When and how did the motivation to set up the Mcphilips Arts and Educational Foundation come to you?
The motivation to set up the Mcphilips Arts and Educational Foundation came to me in the month of January 2021. On that day, my daughter just said to me, “Mom, we should continue from where my Dad stopped." I took time to think about what she said. Continuing from where my husband had stopped should mean pursuing his dreams when he was alive. My husband loved poetry. In fact, I can say that he lived poetry. He wrote poems and promoted poets and other writers. That was how the motivation came to me.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
It is not surprising that the recent directive by the Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, to the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to expunge Sex Education from the basic education curriculum in Nigeria has been greeted with serious opposition from groups and persons who 0bviously derive some of benefits from the callous sexualisation of the tender minds of Nigerian pupils.
I am sure that many parents and concerned
persons who have heard about the minister’s directive are highly relieved and
happy and hoping that no amount of pressure from these misguided interest
groups will compel the government to have a change of mind. Indeed, this is a
major move towards sanitizing our primary and secondary education curriculum and
salvaging the moral health of the younger generation which has been badly
corrupted and diseased by very pernicious teachings that can only mould them into
badly flawed characters.
When some years ago I was shown the topics covered in “Sexuality Education” or “Sex Education” which was being taught as a compulsory subject in both junior and secondary schools in Nigeria, it was shocking to see that mere kids, some as young as ten or even nine, were put in the hands of teachers, who deploy every energy, talent and creativity to saturate their tender minds with every detail about sexual immorality and the use of contraceptives.
When I first raised alarm on this issue in my now rested newspaper column, a concerned parent wrote me to say that the ‘Teacher’s Guide’ given to the Integrated Science teachers (who handled this subject) mandated them “to teach the children that religious teachings on issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, homosexuality, abortion and gender relations are mere opinions and myths! They are also to teach the students how to masturbate and use chemical contraceptives (designed for women in their 30s). The ‘Teachers Guide’ equally lays a big emphasis on values clarification; this empowers teenage children to decide which moral values to choose since the ones parents teach them at home are mere options.”
It was difficult to imagine that any normal person could have the mind to design such a subject even for the children of his worst enemy! In my view, this clearly qualifies as child abuse, which, sadly, was unabashedly endorsed by the authorities. But many Nigerian parents are highly elated today at the intervention of the Education Minister which has put an abrupt end to the whole sickening madness!
How can parents and concerned citizens smother the tormenting fears that some of the Sex Education teachers might aim to deftly deploy this subject to titillate their tender victims instead of giving them healthy education? One can imagine how easy it would be for a teacher who has been targeting a female student to use his creative elaboration of this subject, to get the girl so overwhelmed she would become easy meat.
I am told that there are two main reasons for the introduction of this subject in our schools. One is to empower school children with adequate knowledge about their bodies and how to “safely” indulge in pre-marital sex without falling victims to teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
The second reason is to demystify sexual immorality, give it a positive image as something to be cherished and enjoyed without any fear, as long as it is done “safely” and consensually. The belief is that with the age-long “superstition” built around sexual immorality which ‘stigmatizes’ it as an evil and sinful activity, some kids tend to go into it with fear and dread, and so develop psychological problems arising from the guilt they feel afterwards.
But these reasons are simply hollow and unconvincing. They are built on the assumption that in the present age, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for unmarried people to abstain from sex. And so, instead of teaching the kids to place appropriate value to their bodies and maintain their self-esteem by abstaining from sexual immorality as our own parents had taught us, they are emboldened to behave like dogs. But the difference between human beings and animals ought to be the ability to reason and determine the consequences of actions, and then exercise discretion and self-control. Why not tell a kid the consequences of an action and use that to dissuade him from indulging in it? Has that not worked for ages?
Looking at the earnestness with which this policy is being pursued despite oppositions from informed parents and other concerned parties, one is forced to suspect that there may also be some commercial angle to it. Are we sure that substantial profit is not accruing to the initiators of this programme and their collaborators in government from the sales of the several books being written and printed on the vile subject? Support may equally be coming from manufacturers of contraceptives and the well-oiled NGOs they are promoting who certainly see in Sex Education a lucrative venture to promote and sustain.
Now, how far has this subject helped in reducing teenage pregnancies and STDs in the Western nations where it has been taught, assimilated and practiced for many years now? It is a fact that these teachings have, for instance, been introduced in both the United States and Britain for many years now, but as I write now, I have before me, a BBC report saying that Britain has the highest record of teenage pregnancy in the whole of Western Europe. Also, another report has it that the United States has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the entire Western world. Again, in the United States, it is reported that new infections of HIV are still on the increase.
That naturally leads us to the contentious issue of “safe sex.” So, what is all this fetish about “safe sex” and how “safe” can sex actually be? The truth is that a lot of studies and findings have effectively punctured the dubious confidence built over the years on condom-use. We know that with an effective magnifying lens, it is easy to see that several objects, especially rubber and plastics, have tiny holes through which very minute micro organisms could pass.
I read somewhere recently that the “HIV virus is only 0.1 micron in size while the naturally occurring holes in a latex condom is of the order 5 to 50 microns in diameter.” So where then is the “protection” we have heard so much about if the deadly virus can indeed pass through the wall of a condom? Is this not why we have often heard reports of people contracting HIV even though they had practiced the so-called “protected sex”? This is the time to rethink all this stuff behind which some fellows have hidden to pollute the minds of kids with ruinous teachings.
Fortunately, we have one precaution that does not fail. And that is the good old abstinence, which has been proven and tested to be the only reliable protection against deadly STDs and teenage pregnancies? We must hasten to realize that what is at stake here is human life, and should not be toyed with, for whatever reasons. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand this desperation to create an immoral and ungodly society by misleading the youths? Now, if not for reasons that are less than noble and wholesome, why would Nigeria be eager to import a policy that is failing even in more advanced nations?
Okay, here is another point to ponder: HIV is 500 times smaller than spermatozoa, yet research has established that spermatozoa are able to sometimes pass through the wall of a latex condom to cause conception. Now, if this is the case, are we not by this subject leading our youths through the minefield? The example cited earlier of the worrisome rise in fresh infections of HIV in a place like the US where years of successful Sex Education has achieved overwhelming attitudinal change in favour of condom-use should serve to buttress this point.
Now, with this policy in place and flourishing, where is this nation really heading to? What is the use living, if one must live like a dog?
I would, therefore, want to advise the school boy or girl reading this piece to please pause awhile and ask himself or herself what the initiators of this policy hope to achieve in his of her life by giving him or her these teachings? Such a youth should wonder how they still expect him to concentrate on his studies after they have saturated his mind with filthy teachings that only fill his mind with distractive lusts.
Now, if his instructors (who are mostly parents) are encouraging him to freely indulge in sexual immorality at this early stage of his life, what type of future leader do they expect him to become? After “empowering” him to go on the rampage, wouldn’t they have succeeded in giving him a disease deadlier than even the AIDS they are presuming to save him from – which is the destruction of his moral fibre?
What is the guarantee that he would be able to build a healthy family afterwards by shunning the promiscuity that this subject is surely preparing him for, and which, as we all know, results in the proliferation of broken homes which has become the nightmare of today’s world?
It is instructive that The Guardian on Sunday, July 18, 1999, carried a report that a cross section of American college (mostly female) students were regretting the limitless freedom their parents had allowed them and had resolved to devote themselves to pursue a “no-sex” campaign. But in Nigeria of today, sexual immorality has been deregulated and democratized.
But concerned Nigerian parents cannot afford to be intimidated and just watch helplessly as some fellows whose intentions are less than noble go all out to ruin their kids for them. And so, they should be able to ask: To what extent should the government interfere in people’s lives and families?
Where does the government derive the authority to invade somebody’s home with ungodly teachings and inflict them on the person’s kids, just because he gave his kid to the government to educate in its schools? Shouldn’t an open and clear expression of disaffection towards this gross violation by stakeholders have since led to its reappraisal and possible removal from the school curriculum?
Again, and very importantly too; most people have strongly accepted and hold very dear to their hearts the teachings they have received from the religious faith of their choice (which we as civilized people must respect) that sexual immorality which is a grievous sin against God attracts eternal damnation; and they are eager to ensure that both themselves and their kids escape this terrible doom; how then can we accommodate and respect this their belief (which is sacred to them) in this unwholesome insistence on teaching and encouraging their children to freely indulge in fornication? Should we just dismiss and callously tear down a belief they hold so sacred and dear, and with which they have determined to successfully raise their children to become morally healthy kids? As if it does not matter?
It is heartwarming that, at last, the Minister of Education has agreed with those of us who have continued to insist that this policy is ruinous and has ordered its removal from the school curriculum since it denies a large a number of people the option of choice. Many parents are not even aware that such a teaching is being generously forced down the throats of their precious children, thereby destroying all they have taught them at home.
Certainly, there are centres where some NGOs have established to propagate these pro-pre-marital sex teachings. Interested parents can take their children to those centres, while the objecting parents are spared the trauma of watching their kids being subjected to a menu they firmly believe is terribly unhealthy and ruinous. Their right to dissent must be respected.
*Ugochukwu
Ejinkeonye is a Nigerian journalist and writer. His book, Nigeria: Why
Looting May Not Stop, is available on Amazon.com (scruples2006@yahoo.com)
*First published in The NATION (of Nov 30, 2022); VANGUARD and SUN (of Dec. 1, 2022)
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Now, let’s face it: there can only be one reason why the industrial action embarked upon by the teachers of Nigeria’s public universities since February 14 has been allowed to waste a whole seven months of the academic pursuit of many youths, and, indeed, their very lives. Truth is, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find the children of key members of the General Muhammadu Buhari regime in any Nigerian public university.
If the reverse was the case, every effort would certainly have been deftly deployed to avert the strike, or, at least, drastically shorten its duration.
And because the children of the ruling elite are far removed from the avoidable lingering crisis distorting and mortgaging the future of hapless Nigerian youths, the Neros at Nigeria’s seat of power are merely looking at the problem with cold, callous detachment.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept, insensitive and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from the government. Massive infrastructural decay and regular reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth by light-fingered public officers have since lost their capacities to shock.
In fact, most people
have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb the vicious impacts of these
debilitating vices. They only extract some bit of cold comfort from continually
reassuring themselves that they are in such a hopeless and helpless situation where
these excruciating fallouts of leadership failure will remain the resilient, inseparable
companions they are condemned to perpetually coexist with – which will always
be there to hurt their country and diminish their joy, peace and fulfillment.
Those who lack the
resources to obtain some form of alleviations resign themselves to fate hoping that
they would be able to sustain the capacity to continue enduring these searing rewards
of successive wayward and rudderless leaderships – which will remain their
perpetual sources of torments.
Even the Nigerians who reside in well-ordered societies, where leaders are accountable and basic amenities are meticulously provided and maintained, once they touch down on Nigerian soil automatically adjust their minds to endure the excruciating realities of life in Nigeria. They only derive some consolation from the fact that they would soon jet out again to where sanity and orderly existence are taken for granted.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Pastor William F. Kumuyi, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, easily stands out as a man of God with an unshaken resolve to please God always and undertake the divine assignment given to him with zeal, dedication, meticulousness and sense of urgency.
He continues to demonstrate a clear
understanding of his mission which is to win souls for Christ and teach them to
embrace standard Christian living to remain at peace with God and rapturable.
Pastor Kumuyi turned 81 on Monday, June 6.
Although not a member of his church, I have derived illumination and edification from his recorded messages, books and attitude to God’s work. The internet has now made many of his messages accessible – both the old, timeless ones and the more recent ones.
Despite the blizzard of outrageous claims
roughly thrown at Nigerians every other day, it has become just impossible to
muster any bit of expectation that the Buhari regime might still be able to
shock Nigerians with any edifying impact on their lives before it
exits.
Perhaps, the only reassuring feeling out there emanates from the palpable wish that the days and months might develop wings and fly away so fast so that with brightened faces and deep relief, Nigerians can happily embrace and congratulate one another that, eventually, the nightmare is over.
The relief alone will be highly therapeutic, in fact, capable of increasing many lifespans.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
I have always had this lingering suspicion that apart from representing the deep-seated contempt that has come to define government’s attitude to the welfare of public sector workers, its shoddy, often, disdainful, treatment of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and its demands for improved working conditions might have been carefully conceived as a long term project to continue provoking ASUU to embark on industrial actions until it fatally hurts its case before Nigerians.
The expectation, it would seem, is that as students continue to spend several months at home due to prolonged strikes, which might sometimes lengthen the duration of their academic programmes, parents and other stakeholders who bear the brunt of these constant disruptions will gradually review their sympathy for the teachers and begin to confront them as the problem instead of the government whose continuous reneging on agreements it freely entered into with ASUU created the mess in the first place.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Recently, I visited Imo
State and was on the Orlu-Owerri road. It is heartwarming that the road is
being rehabilitated because in August when I used it on my way to a wedding, it
was in such a dilapidated state.
But, sadly, the insensitivity of the firm handling the reconstruction work is turning what is otherwise a laudable project into a traumatic experience for the people. The dust that envelopes that road all day is so thick that even though most vehicles switch on their headlights on bright afternoons, it is still very difficult for drivers to see oncoming vehicles just a few meters away.
And because of this
thick cloud of dust, the motorists practically “drive blind”. One wonders what
it is usually like driving at night when the dust and darkness merge to
compound the situation. I shudder to imagine the implications of this.
But this is not even the really scary part of the story.
Lawyer, law teacher, social commentator and film maker, Sam Kargbo is many things to many people. Although a regular TV guest on many topical issues and a newspaper columnist, Kargbo carries about his life with utmost modesty. He loves his beautiful wife from Akwa Ibom State and adores his mentors with a passion. He is the maker of Blood Diamonds, arguably one of the highest budget films in Nollywood, the Nigerian Home Video Industry. Yet, he insists film making is just an avenue for him to pass his message across to a target audience. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (February 2005), he talks about his involvement in film making and the bold efforts of private investors that have taken the good image of Nigeria across continents.
Excerpts:
*Sam Kargbo
Most people are familiar with Sam Kargbo the lawyer, not the
script writer and film producer, at what point did this other side of you come
up?
Yes, I studied law. But I have been doing many other things, and as lawyers would say, legal things for that matter. I have always been a heckler and proactive person. I don’t sit on the fence on matters. I like emptying my chest and putting my money where my mouth is. I realise that one stands in a better position to understand things when one is involved. I have been writing ever since my secondary school days. I have written short stories for radio presentation. I was one of the earlier contributors to the His and Hers (or something like that ) on Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC) in 1991. I had a teacher called John Agetua who encouraged me to take writing seriously but I disappointed him when I veered off to study law. He wanted me to study English Language. Am sure he was the one that influenced people like Nnamdi Okosieme (of Independent) to study English and Literature. I followed the advice of another teacher, Mrs. Lambert Aikhion-Bare, who was equally close to me, to study law. But even at that all my colleagues at the University of Benin knew me more for my writing potentials than for my law studies. I am also a very outgoing person. My social life is, to be honest, very complex. My circle of friends cut across all classes. But I have my preference for artists. That was why people like T.J. Cole, Mike Nliam and Abay Esho of Safari could convince me to invest in movies. To cut cost and perhaps to simplify matters, I decided to write the first story I was to shoot. I wrote the screen play and Teco Benson, who directed it for me, gave it to one Bat Hills, a banker, to edit it, and he did it overnight. Blood Diamonds came out very well but I can assure you I am a better writer now and my next effort in screen play would be better than Blood Diamonds. Many people have asked me to screen play for them but I can’t afford to add that to my busy chores. For now, I will confine myself to writing my movies.
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
“Death is…the
absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see,
and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom
Stopard
In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow.
We were three young men who had a couple of months earlier been posted from Enugu to Abakaliki to work in the old Anambra State public service, and we had hired a flat in a newly erected two-storey building at the end of Water Works Road, which we shared. My flat-mate, clearly, was not familiar with Giwa’s name and work, and so had wondered why his death could elicit such a reaction from me.
But later that day, as he interacted with people, he realised that Giwa’s death was such big news, and by the next couple of days, he had become an expert on Giwa and his truncated life and career. Across the country, Giwa’s brutal death dominated the news not just because of the pride of place he occupied in Nigerian journalism practice, but more because of the totally novel way his killers had chosen to end his life.
