Obasanjo Lied Against Me, Says Farida Waziri

...Threatens To Expose Him

My attention has been drawn to a number of allegations made against me by Chief Obasanjo. One of such was the alleged involvement of former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, in my appointment. While I hold the office of a Head of State, either serving or retired, in the highest esteem, I will like to put on record for the umpteenth time that this is totally unfounded, blatant lie and arrant falsehood.

Child Marriage: Ahmed Yerima And Stella Damasus Slug It Out

VIDEO

Senator Ahmed Yerima, Stella Damasus (Nollywood Actress), Professor Ishaq Akintola (Lagos State University)  and  Aminu Gamawa (Lawyer and Doctoral Candidate At Harvard University) Discuss Child Marriage On  AlJazeera 

Ahmed Yerima                                                       Stella Damasus Actress 
Nigerian Senator

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                    What A Passionate Debate...      
                       Capable  Of Drawing Tears...
                  But Wait A Minute! 

The Child-Bride In The Centre Of This Storm Is Also A Human Being With Flesh And Blood Whose Life Is Being Endangered By Callous Men In Search Of  Odious Pleasure... 
What Is Her Opinion On This?   

Professor Ishaq Akintola                                                                          

 Aminu Gamwa

         

Achebe’s Children: Africa’s Suspended Revolutions

 
      

You Are Cordially Invited To Join

WITS UNIVERSITY PRESS and the  
Mail & Guardian

on Friday 30 August 18:00 for 19:00

At the Opening event of the 4th Annual M&G Literary Festival

Achebe’s Children: Africa’s Suspended Revolutions

Adam Habib, the new vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, 
 will confront the main topic in the festival’s keynote address: South Africa’s
 suspended revolution.

Habib’s new book, South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects 
 (Wits University Press), argues that “individuals and institutions can, with
 imagination, act against the grain of a given historical moment and transform 
the options available to society”.

Habib will also participate in a discussion on Saturday 31 Aug as part of the 
M&G Literary Festival with Hlumelo Biko and Adriaan Basson
 (see below for details)

When: Friday 30 August 2013 at 18:00 for 19:00

Where: The Market Theatre
Cnr Bree and Miriam Makeba
Newtown, Johannesburg
GPS Coordinates
-26.200845,28.03256

PhotoNews: Ethiopian Airlines Commences International Flights From Enugu

A few hours ago in Enugu, South East Nigeria,  Ethiopian Airlines made history by being the first international airline to take

 off from the Akanu Ibiam  International Airport, Enugu,

thus signalling the commencement of international 

flight operations at the airport.

Time To Board

President Jonathan To Akande: Respect The Truth, Your Age And Nigeria

 PRESS RELEASE

We have noted with dismay the continuation of efforts by leaders of the opposition to promote themselves and their party through the irresponsible denigration of President Goodluck Jonathan and the exalted Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The interim national chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande sank to a new low in this regard yesterday when he rudely and falsely described President Jonathan as a “kindergarten” leader who treats national issues with levity.

Peter Obi Condemns Fashola's "Callous Act" Of Deportation

Anambra State Governor Peter Obi Writes President Goodluck Jonathan On What He Calls The "Callous Act" Of Deportation Of Other Nigerians From Lagos State By Governor Babatunde Fashola 

                                                                                                                               

(L-R) Gov Babatunde Fashola, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, 

Gov Peter Obi And Mrs. Obi At The Funeral Rites 

For Late Odumegwu Ojukwu  At Tafawa Balewa

 Square, Lagos, February, 2012.

(Pix: The Guardian)  

“Unconstitutional, Illegal And Forced Deportation of Nigerians to Anambra State From Lagos State”

I wish to respectfully bring to your due attention a very disturbing development that has vast national security and political implications.  Last September and again on 24 July 2013, the Lagos State Government contrived inexplicable reasons to round up Nigerians, whom they alleged were Anambra indigenes (most of whom the SSS report shows clearly are not fromAnambra state) and forcefully deported them to Anambra state, dumping them as it were in the commercial city of Onitsha (see attached SSS report).  

This latest callous act, in which Lagos State did not even bother to consult with Anambra State authorities, before deporting 72 persons considered to be of Igbo extraction to Anambra State, is illegal, unconstitutional and a blatant violation of the human rights of these individuals and of the Nigerian Constitution.  

On The ‘Crises’ In Rivers State!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

I just undertook a tour of some parts of Rivers State. It was amazing to discover that anyone in Rivers State who does not care to read today’s newspapers may not even be aware that the state he lives in is the same one being widely reported as presently "engulfed in great, boundless crises capable of derailing the nation's democracy."

 

Rivers State Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi

The people I saw in Rivers State were too busy undertaking their normal daily engagements, struggling to put food on their tables (like other Nigerians elsewhere) to bother about the loads of inane, self-serving exchanges by grossly over-fed, light-minded and ultra-selfish delinquents that dominate the pages of the newspapers daily.

Forget the rented crowds! If you ask me: the "war" in Rivers State exists only in the minds of (and among) these misguided combatants fighting to out-smart each other in the endless desperation to corner Nigerian resources to themselves and impoverish the masses the more – the same masses they claim to be fighting for.

Nigeria, Kill Corruption Before It Kills You!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

It has since become common knowledge which enjoys widespread acceptance that any day Nigeria is able to make up its mind to end its obscene and ruinous romance with the stubborn monster called “Corruption”, this country will automatically witness the kind of prosperity no one had thought was possible in these parts. Just imagine the amount of public funds reportedly (and un-reportedly) being stolen and squandered daily under various guises by too many public officers and their accomplices, and the great transformation that would happen to public infrastructure and the lives of the citizenry if this organized banditry can at least be reduced by fifty percent!  

 A Victim Of Corruption (pix by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye) 

Now, is this monster divorceable? Of course, yes. But are there any signs that anyone in the corridors of power is genuinely interested in ending the strong grip it maintains on the very soul of this country? That is the problem. It is sheer foolishness to expect many of them to willingly block the very hole from which great goodies also flow to them just because some other persons are also benefiting from there. No, you can neither fight corruption with soiled hands nor retain monopoly of it! It spreads like cancer. And the whole thing appears now to have been so horribly compounded by the emergence and successful empowerment of a very formidable class whose sustenance and longevity solely depend on its ability to continue sustaining the culture of corruption and bleeding the country pale.

Children's Day, My Day

I really appreciate the outpouring of good wishes from friends today - May God bless you all. I am a man born on Children's Day! So, spare a thought for the plight of the Nigerian child, and, please, do something to make a child happy today. God bless you -- Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

 The Man At Seven...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Man Today...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Now, As I Was Saying ...

http://www.modernghana.com/author/UgochukwuEjinkeonye 

 

Teaching Sexual Immorality In Nigerian Schools!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

If anyone had told me a few years ago that a time will come in Nigeria when the authorities will approve the teaching of sexual immorality as a subject in junior and secondary schools, I would have thought that the person had lost his mind. But now, before our very eyes, it is happening, and I lack words to describe the shock among many Nigerians! 

Not too long ago, I was shown the topics being treated under the subject called “Sexuality Education” or “Sex Education” which tender kids in both junior and secondary schools in Nigeria are now being forced to learn.  Mere kids, some as young as ten or even nine, are 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 weekly column not too long ago, a concerned parent wrote me to say that the ‘Teacher’s Guide’ given to the Integrated Science teachers (who handle this subject) mandates 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 is difficult to imagine that anyone outside a mental home 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, has been endorsed by the authorities.  

I have reasons to suspect that what some of the teachers would be giving out would be targeted more at titillating their tender victims than educating them!  I can imagine how easy it would now become 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. 

Tribute To Chinua Achebe (Ikejimba; 1930-2013)

By Chike Momah 

[This tribute is a second revision of a piece (REFLECTIONS ON CHINUA ACHEBE) which I wrote in 2000, and revised in 2007. His passing, in the third week of March 2013, has necessitated this revision.]     

Chinua Achebe was a compelling figure, straight out of a Biblical saga. He was also, rather more prosaically, a friend who was so close, he was like a brother. A few hours after his death was blazed around the world, I received a condolence call from a member of our Dallas, TX Igbo community. This friend asked me if I was sure Chinua and I did not share an umbilical cord. Another person, this time a Reverend gentleman, expressed his condolences in rather more risqué language. “Your friendship with Chinua,” he said, “reminds me of the biblical story of David and Jonathan.”

I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was not flattered by the language in which the two condolences were couched. But while I gloried in the way my friendship with Chinua was perceived by these two gentlemen, two things struck me about the manner their perceptions were expressed.

Office Bullies

By Moses Obroku

If you haven’t experienced working under a cantankerous, highly irritable, generally obnoxious boss, believe me, fate has been extremely kind to you as you have been spared one of life’s greatest trauma. To the people whose lot in life it is right now to be working with such bosses, I can only hope that something happens about that situation real soon before permanent damage is done to whatever is left of your dignity.

*Moses Obroku

And as you know too well by now, this special breed that your boss is, do not need any external stimulus for him/her to get real nasty with you. On their own, they can generate a negative energy minefield to ensure your every work day of the week is unbearable for you.

Often times, they create unnecessary tension around them at the work place. They seem to hold this twisted view that the boss has to be stern looking with this ‘don’t –joke-with me’, ‘I -am- tough’ kind of disposition; like that is when they can command respect quickly. These bosses do not realize that when subordinates work with the apprehension of being given verbal jabs indiscriminately, they end up making more mistakes as the fear of what is anticipated soon materializes.

Who Needs Patricia Etteh’s House?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
Not long after the N628 million contract scandal involving the leadership of the House of Representatives exploded in the face of Nigerians, Vanguard newspaper (August 29, 2007) carried an interview with Dino Melaye, the Chairman of the House Committee on Information and National Orientation. Mr. Melaye who has unduly advertised himself as one of the loudest supporters of the House Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Bunmi Etteh, in her current travails, had, in the course of the interview, startled Nigerians with a very loaded and overly distasteful statement that spoke volumes about the quality of minds that “make laws” for Nigerians at the nation’s Lower Legislative House.

Said Melaye: “This woman [Etteh] told us, on the floor of the House, that she’s got two boobs. That the old [House Members] can suck one while the new would suck one. Honestly speaking, we are sucking. We are enjoying the sucking. We are doing that right now.”

New York Senate Passes Resolution On Chinua Achebe

J1186-2013: LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION Mourning The Death Of Paramount Novelist Chinua Achebe, Founder And Pioneer Of African literature

 

 A Nigerian National Newspaper Reports
Achebe's Passing (pix:Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye (2013))
 
WHEREAS, It is the sense of this Legislative Body to pay tribute to the lives of those esteemed individuals of international renown who distinguished themselves through their life's work; and
WHEREAS, Foremost novelist, Professor Chinua Achebe, died on Thursday, March 21, 2013, at the age of 82; and 
WHEREAS, Born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, on November 16, 1930,
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic; he was
best known for his 1958 novel, THINGS FALL APART, selling over 12 
million copies around the world, and having been translated into 50 languages, 
 making him the most paraphrased African writer of all time; and

Achebe Bestrides Generations And Geographies - Ngugi

Chinua Achebe’s Passing Marks The Beginning Of The End Of An Epoch In African Writing 

By Ngugi wa Thiong'o 

Chinua Achebe

I first met Chinua Achebe in 1961 at Makerere, Kampala. His novel, Things Fall Apart, had come out two years before. I was then a second year student, the author of just one story, Mugumo, published in Penpoint, the literary magazine of the English Department. At my request, he looked at the story and made some encouraging remarks.

My next encounter was more dramatic, on my part at least, and would affect my life and literary career profoundly. It was at the now famous 1962 conference of writers of English expression.

Achebe was among a long line of literary luminaries that included Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Eski’a Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane. The East African contingent consisted of Grace Ogot, Jonathan Kariara, John Nagenda and I. My invitation was on the strength of my short stories published in Penpoint and in Transition.

But what most attracted me was not my being invited there as ‘writer’ but the fact that I would be able to show Achebe the manuscript of my second novel, what would later become Weep Not, Child. It was very generous of him to agree to look at it because, as I would learn later, he was working on his novel, Arrow of God. Because of that and his involvement in the conference, he could not read the whole manuscript, but he read enough to give some useful suggestions.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

More important, he talked about it to his publisher, William Heinemann, represented at the conference by June Milne, who expressed an interest in the work. Weep Not, Child would later be published by Heinemann and the paperback by Heinemann Education Publishers, the fourth in the now famous African Writers series of which Achebe was the Editorial Adviser.

I was working with the Nation newspapers when Weep Not, Child came out. It was April 1964, and Kenya was proud to have its first modern novel in English by a Kenyan African.

Or so I thought, for the novel was well published in the Kenyan newspapers, the Sunday Nation even carrying my interview by de Villiers, one of its senior features writers.

I assumed that every educated Kenyan would have heard about the novel. I was woken to reality when I entered a club, the most frequented by the new African elite at the time, who all greeted me as their Kenyan author of Things Fall Apart.

Years later, at Achebe’s 70th birthday celebrations at Bard College attended by Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka among others, I told this story of how Achebe’s name had haunted my life. When Soyinka’s turn to speak came, he said I had taken the story from his mouth: He had been similarly mistaken for Achebe.

The fact is Achebe became synonymous with the Heinemann African Writers Series and African writing as a whole. There’s hardly any African writer of my generation who has not been mistaken for Achebe.

I have had a few of such encounters. The last such was in 2010 at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport. Mukoma, the author of Nairobi Heat, and I had been invited for the Kwani? festival whose theme was inter-generational dialogue.

As he and I walked towards the immigration desk, a man came towards me. His hands were literally trembling as he identified himself as a professor of literature from Zambia.

“Excuse me Mr Achebe, somebody pointed you out to me. I have long wanted to meet you.”

“No, no I am not the one,” I said, “but here is Mr Achebe,” I added pointing at my son.

I thought the obvious youth of my son would tell him that I was being facetious. But no, our professor grabbed Mukoma’s hands grateful that he had at last shaken hands with his hero.

 The case of mistaken identity as late as 2010 shows how Achebe had become a mythical figure, and rightly so. He was the single most important figure in the development of modern African literature as writer, editor and quite simply a human being.

His novel, Things Fall Apart, the most widely read novel in the history of African literature since its publication in 1958 became an inspiring model. As the general editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, he had a hand in the emergence of many other writers and their publication.

As a person, he embodied wisdom that comes from a commitment to the middle way between extremes and, of course, courage in the face of personal tragedy!

Achebe bestrides generations and geographies.

Every country in Africa claims him as their own. Some sayings in his novels are quoted frequently as proverbs that contain universal wisdom. His passing marks the beginning of the end of an epoch.

 -----------------------

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a creative writer and distinguished professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.

--Africa Review