Texas Not A Mere Geographical Space

By Chinedu Ogoke

[Texas] “is no longer a mere geographical space”— John O’Sullivan, 1845

‘[I]n my early youth,’ as a kid, two books I won in a competition brought some locations in America so close that I could physically touch those places. The names Colorado and Colombia rang in my ears like booming sounds at a distance. The abundance of water touching down from great heights was vivid. Everything could rank with paradise. I traveled freely in my imagination. Adventure stole my heart and took me away from my shadows.

Years later, as I watched late night movies, it began to settle in that films I watched were often about Dallas. Texas then occupied a place as an abode of the unscrupulous oil magnates. I recall a Texaco (The Texas Company) filling station close to our house. Decades later, when huge oil was discovered in São Tomé and Principe, there was outrage among some of us over that country’s links with Texas, which included sudden daily commercial flights.

I discovered another America in Germany. There, America found a fantasy land where life all seemed like bowling and filling a giant plastic cup with Coca-cola at the tap while you enjoyed a discussion. I interacted with Americans, who were mostly soldiers. Every American was bound to tell me, “You know what, Shinedu, you need to visit Missouri (or Atlanta or Virginia) at some time.”

Nigeria: The Illegality Of Post-UTME

By Luke Onyekakeyah  

The confusion that has trailed the re-introduction of the post University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (post-UTME) in higher educational institutions across the country over the fees payable by candidates forced me to dig into the legality or otherwise of the test that now determines our children’s educational destiny. There should be an established law for post-UTME otherwise, it should be scrapped. The test has become so controversial and ought to be challenged in court of law.

Is there a law that established the post-UTME? I called some lawyers to get their view on the legality of the post-UTME. All the lawyers said, to the best of their knowledge, there is no known law that established the post-UTME in Nigeria.

If that is the case, why leave an illegality to rule the system and even truncate the aspirations of most candidates? Who introduced the post-UTME in the first place and for what purpose? 

Kidnappers And Ritual Killers In Lagos

By Hope Eghagha 

Kidnapping and ritual killing seem to be on the increase in Lagos and around the country. Another way to express this is that there are more reports of abductions for ritual killings these days than we used to have them. Red Cross says that it has received reports of 10,480 missing persons in Nigeria. Every other week or even day, we read reports about ‘ritualists den’ in Nigeria. Two channels, social media and personal testimonies do a better job reporting the incidents than mainstream media. 

While mainstream outlets can be controlled not to report the incidents (to give a good albeit false image of security) no one can really control reports in social media. The latter presents gory pictures of dismembered bodies. The most recent was that of a 200 level undergraduate at the University of Port Harcourt who butchered a neighbour’s seven year old daughter for ritual, removed parts of her body and attempted to dispose of the body in a garbage heap. Shocking! Horrifying!

Nigeria: A Presidency And Its Contradictions

By Musa Toyyib Olaniyi  

APC! Change! The crowds were mammoth and so was the frenzy generated by the idea of the new coalition which had as its presidential flag bearer, a man reputed to possess the talisman that will conjure out of existence, all the problems of the country.

Today, Nigeria is directly experiencing the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari which was built on great expectations. Alas, the presidency has been mired in incredible contradictions.

*Buhari 

The presidency of a nation carries its sovereignty and in most cases, come with humongous powers. In Nigeria, the presidency is a leviathan. Because the presidency is an administrative or governmental entity that surrounds the office of the president of a nation or state usually personified by a man or a woman elected for such purpose, it is usually powerful and awe-inspiring. The news making the roundabout rodents eating up the office of President Muhammadu Buhari is a new low that we never bargained for in this administration.

Sometimes, we wonder what might be going through the minds of people of power and their handlers when they do certain things. When the news filtered in, the reaction was a mixed one. The news elicits both a sort of disbelief and at the same time uproarious laughter because of its incredulity. We never thought that a time will come in this country that such lines will emanate from the governing authority. In an administration that budgets billions of naira for environmental services in the Aso Rock villa, rodents ravaging the office of the President to such an extent that major renovations become imperative is a sad development. What sorts of media handlers are these? Is mediocrity so pervasive in Nigeria that the pinnacle of power in the country is not spared the unfortunate reality?

Wanted: A National Coalition Against Rape

By Adewale Kupoluyi

What has become a serious source of worry to many Nigerians is the dehumanising, wicked and heartless cases of rape of minors, girls, ladies and women in the country. Hardly any day passes by without cases of sexual molestation, violence and crime. Rape, the forceful canal knowledge usually of a female, is a serious calamity that can befall any female. Why is there an upsurge in rape cases in the nation?

A gory statistics, according to the Nigeria Police Force, shows that the nation recorded 1,827 rape cases in 2015; 1,959 cases in 2014; and 1,788 in 2013. Furthermore, NOIPolls, country-specific polling services in the West African region, done in partnership with Gallup, United States of America, revealed that four in 10; that is 36 per cent of adult Nigerians, claimed that most often, the alleged offenders involved in child rape were close family relatives and neighbours; amounting to 33 per cent, as almost half; amounting to 49 per cent of those that personally know a victim alleged that they were usually children between seven and 12 years old; while 78 per cent of the respondents alleged that rape cases were reported without any deliberate effort being made by the police to investigate and prosecute the culprits.

No, Don’t Re-Arrest Nnamdi Kanu

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In a seeming bid to ward off the increasing threats to the stability of the country, the government is floundering from one absurd measure to another. From deploying its security apparatuses to monitor the social media, it has moved on to rein in hate speech by proposing a bill in this regard. No much alarm should be triggered if the government luxuriates in the obliviousness of the inability of these frenzied measures to stave off the dissolution of the people’s union if it fails to reckon with more enduring and acceptable solutions that the citizens have generously proposed.

*Nnamdi Kanu

But we must not ignore the augury of a looming tragedy we are now confronted with in the government’s latest move to sustain the nation’s unity. This is the bid by the government to re-arrest the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu might have impudently breached some of the conditions for his freedom from incarceration. He might have been found rhapsodising before his hundreds of supporters and putative security personnel about his republic of unrivalled equality and thereby violating the condition that he must not be in a crowd of more than 10 people. He might be considered to have continued on the path of heating up the polity by insisting on his prising a Biafra Republic from Nigeria and securing the support of some Igbo youths who evidently swoon over the prospect of freedom from the stranglehold of their implacable tormentors. He might have been a threat to the state by declaring that no election would take place in Anambra as long as the Biafra question remains unresolved. But these apparent offences do not validate the government’s quest to re-arrest him in view of the rash of grim consequences that such a move would precipitate. 

Nigeria: Before Darkness Falls

By Julius Oweh

The one hundred and four days of President  Muhammadu Buhari’s medical sojourn abroad opened the fault lines of the nation and a clear advertisement that ours is pretending to be a nation. For those days, the ship of the nation was clearly adrift with an absentee president and a nominal acting president that could not deliver effective leadership because of some deep rooted cabals and interest group.

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

In fact, the nation was on auto pilot and the information managers did a poor job about the president’s health status. As you read this piece, Nigerians are yet to be told the nature of the president’s illness and how much the nation has spent in treating him. Therefore any talk about the buy made- in- Nigeria product campaign of the present administration is shattered by the medical tourism of the president. 

The less than seven minutes broadcast of the president, failed to address the pressing issues of the moment – restructuring and fiscal federalism. 

Furthermore, the hard stance of the president in his words `the unity of the nation is settled` is a clear indication that the president is very far from the reality of the moment. He has to climb down from the high horse and address the needs of the people especially those of the south.

Akachi Ezeigbo: Celebrating The Literary Icon

By Prisca Sam-Duru & Elizabeth Uwandu

For Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Wednesday’s reading at the University of Lagos, UNILAG, was a great honour done to her by the institution which doubles as her Alma Mater and where she retired as a lecturer. 

The monthly reading organised by the English Department of UNILAG has turned into an event lovers of literature look forward to and Prof. Ezeigbo’s session didn’t let them down as she treated guests to an outstanding performance of  a dirge for late literary icon, Buchi Emecheta, which  earned her a standing ovation.

The multiple award winning writer and author of so many books which cut across all the genres of literature including children’s literature, opened her reading with her latest short story, “Mr. President’s Change Agent” which is coming out in November. “Mr. President’s Change Agent”, narrates the story of a woman who receives her share of injustice in the hands of an unscrupulous Nigerian police officer after she refuses to give a bribe. Being afraid that she may be shot by the desperate officer, and coupled with the fact that she is already late for her appointment, she parts with the only cash she has with her after she is delayed for over an hour.

How JAMB Is Destroying Education In Nigeria

By Luke Onyekakeyah  

Two shocks in the tertiary education sector that have jolted Nigerians, once again, show how the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is geared towards ruining the future of Nigeria. It also proves the much-talked about need to scrap JAMB, which has outlived its usefulness, to allow universities admit qualified candidates.

The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu and JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede are behind this national embarrassment. Could President Muhammadu Buhari save the future of this country by reversing these retrogressive decisions? This is not the kind of change we need.

First is the appalling and disgusting slashing of university cut-off marks from an awful and lamentable 180 (45 per cent) to a deplorable and scandalous 120 (30 per cent). It is like the 180 score didn’t get Nigeria at the jugular, which the 120 is now out to accomplish. Without equivocation, these say much about the direction the country is headed. 

The second is the re-introduction of post-UTME test that was banned barely a year ago by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu. What is a post-UTME test going to achieve when failures, who scored 30 per cent, in JAMB are admitted. Is it possible for candidates who scored 30 per cent in JAMB to score 80 per cent in post-UTME test? This is most unlikely and would call for investigation if it happens.

President Buhari Still Doesn't Get It

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

After listening to President Muhammadu Buhari's three minutes, fifty-six seconds national broadcast on Monday, August 21, his first since coming back to the country from a 103-day medical tourism in the United Kingdom, I concluded that he still does not get it.

I doubt if he ever will.

*President Buhari

Prior to his speech, I was not overtly hopeful I would hear anything grand, ennobling and soul-lifting.

Yet, after a three-month absence from duty post, during which time he presumably had time for sober reflection on what ails the country of 180 million people over whose affairs he superintends, I had hoped he would have realised the need to calm frayed nerves and bring people together through moral suasion.

How wrong I was.

Nigerian Unity Is Negotiable

‘Only Restructuring Will Ensure The Unity, Peace And Development Of Nigeria’ – Southern Leaders Forum (SLF)

“President Buhari expressed dissatisfaction about comments on Nigeria (while he was away) that ‘questioned our collective existence as a nation’ and which he said has crossed the ‘red lines’. Against the background of the threat to treat hate speech as terrorism, we see a veiled threat to bare fangs and commence the criminilisation of dissenting opinions in our national discourse. Experience worldwide has shown that any attempt to deal with dissents by force usually drives it underground, which makes it much more dangerous and difficult to deal with.

“The president deployed the imagery of the late Ikemba Ojukwu to play down the demand for the renegotiation of the structure of Nigeria by saying they both agreed in Daura, in 2013, that we must remain one and united. While we agree with them, the meeting between the two of them could not have been a Sovereign National Conference whose decisions cannot be reviewed. The claim that Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable is untenable. If we are a settled nation, we would not be dealing with the crisis of nation building that are affecting us today.

President Buhari’s Illusion Versus Reality

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It should be clear by now to the citizens who are genuinely concerned about saving the country from careering into mortal catastrophes that their first task is to rescue their president. It is not a redemption from his hobbling medical condition. London doctors are equal to this task. This they have uncannily demonstrated by giving President Muhammadu Buhari a new lease of life. Now, apparently far from an afflicted president who was in dire need of the citizens’ empathy and prayer for his good health, Buhari has resumed office with so much vigour that he easily underscores his toughness by casting his expectations from the citizens in fire and brimstone.

*President Buhari in Zamfra (March 2017)

What Buhari is in urgent need of rescue from is his illusions about his fellow citizens, his country and the world. It does not matter that he claimed to be abreast of developments at home and the other parts of the world while he was away. In less than a week since his return, Buhari has shown that he is fixated on his misbegotten notions of governance that he had before his medical sojourn abroad. A graver danger is that these notions have degenerated as they have assumed a misanthropic character. Those who thought that his ill health would have sobered him up and purged him of his self-created distance from the citizens have been sorely disappointed. He has come back home to reprimand them with a sledgehammer for intolerably going errant ways while he was away. After all, in his reckoning, most of those who want a redefinition of the terms for the co-existence of the people have not been confronted with the prospect of their shedding their blood for the survival and unity of the nation.

Of Rats And Rodents Driving President Buhari Out Of Office

By Mike Ozekhome

It is a very shameful and disgraceful statement that emanated from the presidency to the effect that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), after a whole 105 days abroad on medical grounds, cannot work from his office because of rats and rodents. So, a whole Julius Berger, the German construction giant has to be called in to drive them away and repaint the office! This statement further derides and shames Nigeria as a country.

Why didn't the same or similar rodents pursue Olusegun Obasanjo, Umar Musa Yar'adua or Goodluck Jonathan during their presidency? For truth, there is another mini office at the villa quite different from the official residence and main office. Let PMB work from there.

Let's see our president working, not through still photo shopping. For how long will this government take the Nigerian citizens for a ride and for robots ? Who told the image makers we are as brainless as they are? Don't they know that lies have expiry date and that propaganda cannot substitute for image making?

Buhari Writes National Assembly On Resumption Of Duties

State House Press Release:

PRESIDENT BUHARI WRITES NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ON RESUMPTION OF DUTIES

In line with constitutional provision, President Muhammadu Buhari has written the National Assembly, notifying the legislature of his return to office, after returning from medical vacation in London.

President Buhari had returned to the country on Saturday, August 19, 2017, and in a letter dated August 21, 2017, he told the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, that he was resuming office.

The letter stated in part: "In compliance with Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), I write to intimate that I have resumed my functions as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with effect from Monday, 21st August, 2017, after my medical follow-up in the United Kingdom."

President Buhari had left for London on May 7, 2017, and handed the reins of government to the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, who functioned as the Acting President.

FEMI ADESINA

Special Adviser to the President

(Media and Publicity)

August 21, 2017.

Buhari, APC And 2019

By Alabi Williams  

Topics like this are going to feature prominently from now till 2019. And let it be clear from onset, that loyalists of President Muhammadu Buhari are the ones promoting this campaign. Before ordinary and innocent citizens are accused, pray they are not lynched, for being disrespectful and not allowing Buhari to enjoy his privacy regarding his fitness to continue in office now and after 2019, let it be clearly stated that it is Mr. President’s close associates that are peddling his capacity for more tasks. That only gives us, laymen something to ponder and talk about.

*Buhari and Tinubu 

 After he led some party members to visit Buhari in London, on Sunday July 23, party chairman, John Odigie Oyegun, again sounded bombastic of Buhari’s strength for 2019. Oyegun has never hidden his preference for Buhari on that subject. At every opportunity, the All Progressives Congress (APC) chief never wastes time to announce that the platform is all for Buhari, even without him asking.

Then, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu is also one of those who market Buhari’s fitness and acceptability. Upon his return from London last week, after he had a good and close-up view of his boss, who had been away for months, Garba could not help but announce that a rejuvenated Buhari was very fit for future elections. Garba told Arise News Network that Buhari is good enough to continue after this first term of four years. 

Nigeria: ASUU And Politics Of Evasion

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

No time is ever proper to resolve overarching questions of development in a polity like ours where the leaders demur at every crucial moment to grapple with the challenges of nationhood. Thus, in the hands of our leaders, what should be a laudable process of envisioning becomes travestised as a trajectory of disguising their inability to confront head-on national challenges. Or why do our leaders have the penchant for setting national goals in a time frame that is perpetually elastic? Remember? Under varied rubrics such as “Housing for all by 2000 AD” and “Vision 20:2020” our leaders have found a way of not coming to terms with national crises that would eventually haunt us or the subsequent generation.

Now, the official refrain is that this is not the best time to talk about restructuring. As they flounder for a pretext under which to avoid confronting the issues that the need for restructuring has thrown up, our leaders have not been so fortunate to think of offering the agitating citizens the anodyne of “Restructuring in 2050 AD.” For our leaders, what should presage talks about restructuring is the restoration of economic buoyancy, a goal that would remain elusive as long as our leaders continue to see their political positions as means to self-valourisation. The unimpeachable argument that the economic misery of the people was sired in the first place by the absence of a restructured polity holds no appeal to them.

President Buhari’s Disappointing Broadcast

By Ebun-olu Adegboruwa

Reading through the presidential broadcast, however, one cannot but express a sense of utter disappointment. This is a president who virtually sneaked out of Nigeria, who breached his own self-declaration of transparency, by keeping Nigerians in the dark for over 100 days, and in that process grinding the wheel of progress of the nation.

President Buhari 

Notwithstanding that the president took Nigerians for granted, he was not impeached, but rather Nigerians were offering prayers for his recovery, daily, only for him to return with a language of combat and insult, describing his own citizens as "irresponsible elements"!

There must just be something about the All Progressive Congress (APC) ruling government that detests truth and consistency. Whilst the president was away, his Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinabajo, translated our freedom of expression into hate speeches and terrorism and here is the president, few days thereafter, piling up hatred and animosity upon Nigerians, who are simply demanding restructuring, true federalism and dialogue, asking the president and his party, to fulfill their campaign promises.

BREAKING NEWS: President Buhari Returns To Nigeria

Pix:Sunday Aghaeze/State House

After 103 days in London receiving medical attention for an undisclosed ailment, President Muhammadu Buhari arrived Abuja today at about 4.35 pm. 

He was received at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport by a Federal Government delegation led by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo. Prof Osinbajo has functioned as Acting President while Buhari was away in London.

For the past few days, a group of activists had protested in Abuja demanding that Buhari should either return to Nigeria or resign from office. 

The protesters were attacked by an angry mob sympathetic to President Buhari when they carried their protest to the popular Wuse Market in Abuja. 

But a pro-Buhari group who organised a counter-protest receive protection from the police. The attack on the anti-Buhari protesters has received widespread condemnation.  

The Ozubulu Catastrophe And Governor Obiano’s Deft Hand

By Chuks Iloegbunam 

When news of the terrible development hit the Awka seat of power early that morning, many scenarios taxed the imagination. Nothing of the sort had previously happened in Igbo history. There was a bizarre angle to it, of course, that was of tremendous import: Anambra State, reputed to be an oasis of safety and security, peace and placidity in tumultuous Nigeria had taken a vicious bang on the jugular. 

*Gov Willie Obiano

Who had done the violent action? To what end? Since it is often the case that “when it hits, it reverberates,” was the impunity set to spread? These were some of the questions Governor Willie Obiano tried to think through while, at the same time, receiving Security and Intelligence debriefing. Taking little time, the Governor’s convoy negotiated the 48 kilometres from Awka to Ozubulu, and hit the scene of the bloodbath. 

Armed with both the truth of what had happened and the spins sprouting in the social media, Governor Obiano inspected the carnage inside the St. Philips Catholic Church, Amakwa, Ozubulu. Twelve congregants whose only “offence” was attending the 6am mass to worship their God had been brutally massacred in an orgy of gunfire. Eighteen others sustained gunshot wounds, some of them life threatening. 

Getting President Buhari Out Of Their Lives!

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

A spectre of more protests against the continued stay of President Muhammadu Buhari in office hangs over the nation as the façade over his health status comes crashing down. In February this year, the government through its coercive security apparatuses was able to stop famous singer Innocent Idibia popularly known as Tuface from leading a protest against the poor governance that has blighted the citizens’ existence under the current government. Just as the government failed to stop the protest which took place without Tuface then, the prospect now of easily squelching the citizens’ expressions of their disenchantment with it is non-existent.

*President Buhari 

The citizens who are increasingly becoming disillusioned with the government of Buhari have refused to accept all governmental platitudes and intimidation. They have again taken to the streets to protest against Buhari. They are unequivocal about their grouse: Buhari should come back from London and effectively assume the reins of office or simply resign.

The citizens might have delayed these protests while hoping that governance and developments around the health of the president would take a turn for the better. But government officials have kept tantalising the citizens with the return of Buhari. But shortly after the excitement over the assurance of his return fizzles out, there is despondency as the citizens realise that they have been swindled again.