Watchman Youth Ministry Provokes Intense Bible Reading Among Youths With Lamp And Light Bible Trivia

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

***And the winner is Miss Chioma Chukwudi from Onitsha Diocese!!! 

When the Watchman Youth and Children Ministry announced in 2024 that it was unveiling a project known as the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia, not a few wondered what they really meant by that. But as it turned out, they had set up some mouth-watering prizes for the Watchman Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement (WCCRM) youths between the ages of 15 and 18 who would distinguish themselves by excelling in a quiz competition based on the Bible.

The competition would start in the various Watchman dioceses and those who emerge the top winners would come to Lagos for the final stage which would see the overall winner go home with a million naira, while the first runner-up would be given N700, 000 and the person who took the third position would get N500, 000. They would also be given a tablet (iPad) each.

And it happened just that way, igniting widespread excitement and enthusiasm among the youths (and even adults) towards the programme. The Youth Ministry was emphatic that the cash awards would be deployed to finance the academic pursuits and other forms of empowerment of these youths. It closely supervises their use to ensure that this objective is achieved. This  it meticulously ensured in the first edition of the competition the previous year and have equally sustained the practice with this second edition of the programme which ended a few months ago. The remaining five finalists go home with N150, 000 consolation prize each. 

*Lagos Diocesan Overseer, Pastor Protase Opara, and his wife, Mrs. Blessing Opara, present the N1,000, 000 cheque to the overall winner of the LLBT 2025

Between the 17^th and 30^th of August, 2025, contestants from the various dioceses were in Lagos again for the second edition of the programme. This time, they were joined by contestants from Ghana and Benin Republic. The Watchman News visited their lodging place and was impressed to hear some of them who had participated the previous year confessing that even though they did not win the star prizes, the teachings and spiritual exercises they were made to undergo at the camp affected their lives very significantly. They were so excited to be part of the programme.

An analyst told the Watchman News that he sees the programme as a major revolution in the Watchman. 

“Imagine a programme that would make the youths devour the whole Bible as if they are preparing for a very important examination. You can imagine the impact such an exercise would register on the youth’s spiritual life, even if he or she did not win any prize,” he said.

After an intense session on the final day of the competition with Mr. Val Okafor as the “Quiz Master”, Miss Chioma Chukwudi from Onitsha Diocese of the Watchman emerged the overall winner, closely followed by Miss Divine Ekpaha from Uyo Diocese and then Master Christopher Ebubechukwu from Lagos Diocese.

Mrs. Carllister Ejinkeonye, WCCRM National Youth and Children Director and Producer, Lamp and Light Bible Trivia 

A visibly impressed Diocesan Overseer of Lagos, Pastor Protase Opara, stepped forward to the podium with his wife, Mrs. Jewel Opara, to present the star prize of One Million Naira to the winner. He told the contestants that by participating in the exercise, they were all winners.

It was such a happy occasion as the winners took away their prizes cheered and celebrated by the happy audience comprising some Watchman pastors, parents of the finalists, representatives from the various dioceses and other Watchmen and supporters.

*The happy contestants pose for the camera 

The National Director of the Youth and Children Ministry and Producer of the show, Mrs. Carllister Ejinkeonye, told the Watchman News that “the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia, is a journey,” she is “very happy to embark upon.”       

According to her, “Many of our youths could be seen now as ‘walking Bibles’, studying and discussing the Scriptures, discovering things they never knew were in God's Word. In fact many of them were surprised that they could sit down to read some of the Old Testament books they had been reluctant to open before.” 

“It was glorious!” she continued. “Spiritual teachings, career and entrepreneurship seminars by professionals, guidance and counselling sessions were all arranged for them during this period with the aim of having them well prepared for the life ahead…” 

*Some officials of the  Lamp and Light Bible Trivia 2025: From Left: Pastor Innocent Ohiri, Mrs. Chinwengozi Nnabuihe-Okoro, Pastor Ethelbert Obi, Mrs. Carllister Ejinkeonye and Mr. Emmanuel Aloysius 

“It was thrilling to follow through to the end to see the winners emerge. Let's be on the lookout when the show will be aired on TV and other approved platforms…,” Mrs. Ejinkeonye said. 

According to her, “right now,” their minds are set on Season Three of the competition.” 

“The youths are excited and eagerly waiting; many have set out strategies on how to study their Bibles deeply. All the Youth Ministry is asking is for more Watchmen to buy into this vision and mission and support us to make Season Three of the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia a reality,” she said. 

*Pastor Emeka Onuchukwu, Patron and Executive Producer, Lamp and Light Bible Trivia

Mrs. Ejinkeonye thanked the General Superintendent of the Watchman, Pastor A.C. Ohanebo, for giving his blessing to the project, the Diocesan Pastors for their support and the several other Watchmen whose support and encouragement have continued to fire their resolve to sustain the programme. She also appreciated the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia team for their special dedication and hard work  that made the programme a success.   

Pastor Emeka Onuchukwu doubles as the patron of the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia Project and the Executive Producer Lamp and Light Bible Trivia Show. He told Watchman News that his interest in the project was motivated by the awareness that “the greatest gift to the world is light” and that the “Word of God is the Light of the world.” 

*Paul Igwe, Director, Lamp and Light Bible Trivia 

“I believe that as we make our children to study God's Word, we are establishing them in the light. Surely their path in life will be bright. They will prosper in all their ways. This is my conviction for supporting the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia. Let there be light!” he said. 

Also, speaking to the Watchman News, Mr. Paul Igwe who directed the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia averred that the show has remained “a powerful and engaging tool for spiritual growth, especially among the youth.” According to him, it “combines fun, learning and healthy competition to deepen Biblical knowledge, encourages the retention of the Scriptures in the memory of these youths” and “builds confidence and love for the Word of God in a generation that needs strong spiritual foundations.” 

*Quiz Master, Mr. Val Okafor, with the three top winners 

Watchman News also reached out to Pastor Ethelbert Obi, the Project Coordinator of the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia. He is of the view that the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia is reawakening the interest of youth in the Bible and godliness and redirecting their interest from the world back to God. 

“Planning the show,” he said   “started in October 2023 and the first season was aired in 2024 with great success…” According to him, “lives have been transformed, youths have been financially empowered, and, most importantly, their knowledge of the Bible has deepened,” as a result of participating in the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia.

*Pastor Sunday Balogun, Training Supervisor  

In a review of the two editions of  Lamp and Light Bible Trivia held so far (published here), an assistant project coordinator and associate producer of the show, Mrs. Chinwengozi  Nnabuihe-Okoro, stated that the term, Lamp and Light, was “taken from Psalm 119:105.”

“Watching that light shine through the competitive spirit of our community has been a true privilege,” she said. 

She added that the show “has evolved into a cornerstone of our participants’ spiritual engagements, proving that the study of Scriptures can be as exhilarating as it is transformative.” 

*Cross section of the audience at the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia 2025

Pastor Sunday Balogun, a training supervisor of the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia is happy to report that the last two editions “witnessed a tremendous success as lives have been greatly transformed in the Bible Camps held [for the participating] youths] in the last two years. 

According to Pastor Balogun, it was indeed encouraging that teens “left the camps with eyes off the trophy but glued to the Scriptures." "

So many wept bitterly”, not because they were evicted and so could not clinch any prize, “but for missing the Scripture fellowship due to the intense spiritual hunger the camp had achieved in them," he said. 

*Another section of the attentive audience 

Despite looming challenges, the organizers are poised to execute an even more successful show with the "Season 3" of the Lamp and Light Bible Trivia. They are confident that given the resounding impact of the two editions held so far, more people would be eager to invest in this project that is aimed at achieving the spiritual reclamation of the youths in this fast decaying age and deepening of emphasis on the eternal Word of God as a great panacea to the many debilitating challenges many people, especially, the younger generation, is grappling with. 

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a journalist and writer, contributed this story to the Watchman News (scruples2006@yahoo.com)

Politicians As Nigeria’s Worst Headache!

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, let’s face it. Despite all the empty (and, often, very exasperating) noise about being driven by patriotism and “desire to serve my people” that usually saturates the atmosphere at each election season, a careful, conscientious search on the political terrain can only yield about less than one percent (and one is being really generous here) of aspirants motivated solely by genuine desire to improve the lives of the citizenry and make society a better place. 

For the majority, the sole incentive is the golden opportunity politics offers them to gain access to government coffers and cart away as much free money as they could possibly grab before their tenures elapse. This is just the raw, plain truth – a simple case of organized banditry! Indeed, every politician in Nigeria is fully aware that most Nigerians know this. But they always bank on what I would like to refer to as the “collaborative passivity” of the citizenry. 

Nigeria: When INEC Assumes The Role Of Kingmaker!

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Well-meaning Nigerians are relieved that the misconceived bill which sought to impose “a maximum of six months imprisonment or a fine of no more than N100,000” on any Nigerian of voting age who refuses to vote “in all National and State Elections” which surprisingly scaled Second Reading at the House of Representatives recently has been withdrawn. Even the House Speaker, Mr. Abbas Tajudeen, who sponsored the controversial bill easily achieved the realization that it was poorly thought-out and hastened to withdraw it. Indeed, the widespread outrage the bill provoked was duly justified.

How can anyone sit in the comfort of the House chambers and attempt enacting a law that makes voting mandatory without first finding out the factors that watered the growing apathy towards voting? Indeed, there were several informed Nigerians who were ready to go to jail than allow any law to force them to vote.   

Chinua Achebe, Nobel Prize And African Literature

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

March 21 was here again recently. On this particular day in 2013, Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals took his last breath in Boston, Massachusetts, mourned and celebrated by his teeming readers, critics and divers people across the globe on whom his work and life had significantly impacted in various ways. I have decided to use this period to examine some of the important discussions that have continued to circulate around Achebe, his work and African literature which appear to have even gained considerable weight since his demise and have also distinguished themselves by the largely tantalizing distortions, half-truths and deliberate misinformation that have been carefully injected into them.

*Achebe 

This service is for the benefit of students, younger professors and scholars   who were yet to be admitted into the African literary household when some of the events stoking these discussions took place and who are innocently gobbling up the horribly deficient accounts being fed them by those who either do not have any better grasp of those aspects of the African literary history themselves or are on a deliberate mission to distribute misleading concoctions.

It seems so natural to commence with Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Literature Prize given that discussions on it have stubbornly refused to go away even after over a decade of Achebe’s passing.

*Achebe and the Nobel Politics  

By 1986, it was very obvious that the Swedish Academy which annually selects the recipients of the Nobel Literature Prize had decided to bring it to Africa. But to actualize this, they did something that viciously affected the credibility of that year’s prize. They summoned African writers to Stockholm to discuss African Literature before them. While several African writers including the illustrious Wole Soyinka who won the prize that year trooped to Sweden to attend the conference which held from 11-17 April, 1986, Chinua Achebe thought that such an event was not worth his time.

In his message to the Nobel Committee rejecting their invitation, Achebe wrote:

“I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.

“The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.

“…I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace…” (See “Ikejemba: He Had in Him the Elements So Mixed” by Professor Michael Thelwell, Usaafrica dialogue google groups).

One wonders what the astounded Nobel Committee members must have whispered to each other after receiving this letter.

OJUKWU: Exile, Diplomacy And Survival (Book Review)

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Volumes have been said and written about the Nigeria/Biafra War: the pre-war hostilities that degenerated into the pogroms that eventually provoked the mass exodus of Eastern Nigerians from several parts of the country to the East; the secession of the people of the East to create a separate entity for themselves where they felt they could take charge of their own security and dignity as humans; the war that followed and the gallant efforts by the Easterners to pick the bits and pieces of their lives and survive the devastating effects of the bitter war.

But despite the very huge body of historical (and fictional) works that have accumulated on the war from Nigerian writers, foreign observers and journalists, a key aspect of the story continues to be conspicuously missing. The leader of the defeated republic, Biafra, left the country for Ivory Coast few days to the end of the war in January 1970 and remained there as an exile for twelve years before returning to a hero’s welcome in 1982 following the unconditional pardon granted him by the Shagari government.

Naturally, there have been intense yearnings by many people to be updated on the developments that marked those years between the end of the war in 1970 and Ojukwu’s return from the Cote d’Iviore in 1982. What were the things that occupied the Biafran leader in exile? What were his plans for Nigeria for which several meetings were held in Cote d’Iviore, Ghana, Nigeria and some European cities? Who were the Nigerians that visited him several times in Cote d’Ivoire and how were their trips arranged to ensure that the security operatives of the Yakubu Gowon’s regime which were keenly interested in him and his activities in exile were not aware?  How did he build the very formidable network of trusted contacts, friends, loyal and dutiful associates and aides that facilitated his ability to easily send and receive messages to and from Nigeria and  know almost every significant event that occurred in Nigeria within the shortest time – in fact, even before many people in Nigeria got to know?            

Accomplished electronic and print media journalist, eminent writer and public relations expert, Kanayo Esinulo “who worked at General Ojukwu’s State House…” in Biafra and followed him “to Cote d’Iviore and served as one of his closest aides all through his years of exile” has finally bowed to pressure from friends, colleagues, journalists, scholars and diverse interested parties, to write a book that admirably fills that gap.

WYEP Concludes National Essay Competition, Rewards Winners

*The proud winners

The Watchman Youth Education Programme (WYEP) recently concluded a national essay competition in Lagos.  Six winners emerged in the senior and junior categories. The excited finalists received their prices amidst applauses from fellow youths and some adults who had gathered on Children’s Day, May 27, 2024, at the Watchman Fellowship Hall, 7c Fatiregun Street/Raimi Oladimeji, Ebute Metta, Lagos, to witness the event.  

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.

Saturday’s Governorship Elections In Nigeria And The Credibility Of The Electoral Commission

 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.

*Oti and Yakubu: Tale of two professors 

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.

Dele Giwa: 37 Years After The Gruesome Murder Of This Celebrated Journalist

 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. 

*Dele Giwa 

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. 

Who Will Tell Nigerians That Misgovernment Distributes Its Pains Without Discrimination?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” ― Adolf Hitler

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. 

*Buhari and Tinubu 

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)

 

Does Nigeria Have A Living Conscience?

 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. 

*Chinua Achebe 

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.

Promise Of A New Era: Peter Obi Unmasked

 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.

Will Buhari Go Without Rescuing Leah Sharibu?

 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? 

I See ‘Mcphilips Arts And Educational Foundation’ Achieving Global Recognition – Mrs. Nwachukwu

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.