An Open Letter To President Buhari On Police “Checkpoints”

 By Chuks Iloegbunam

Dear Mr. President,

Travelling from Lagos to Anambra State on November 9, 2019, I counted 67 “checkpoints” mostly manned by armed men of the Police Mobile Force along the 371 kilometre stretch from Sagamu to Asaba. Travelling the same route again on Thursday November 28, 2019, I counted 64 “checkpoints”. I was on each occasion behind the wheel, meaning that my calculations may have missed or added a number of “checkpoints”. 

On November 30, 2019, however, Chief Tony Onyima, a respected journalist travelling as a passenger, counted 60 checkpoints on the same tortuous stretch, noting the precise location of each and every roadblock. This means that, on average, there is a “checkpoint” every 6.28 kilometres of the way. It suggests that the notorious stretch boasts more “checkpoints” than Hanoi and Saigon combined ever did all through the 20 years of the Vietnam War. 

Ending Gender-Based Violence Is A Human Rights Imperative

 By Shobha Shukla

"There is a global epidemic of violence against women – both within conflict zones and within societies at peace –  and it is still treated as a lesser crime and lower priority," said Angelina Jolie, US actress and then-UN Ambassador for refugees more than five years ago.

With the onslaught of the pandemic and global public health emergency and cascading humanitarian crises, these words have only become even more relevant today.

The Asia Pacific region presents some very challenging development indicators for women and girls and socially excluded and marginalized populations. There are deep rooted gender inequalities and discriminatory socio-cultural norms and practices arising out of patriarchal systems and structures, and sexual and other forms of gender-based violence continues to remain pervasive in the region.

According to latest statistics, the proportion of women in Asia Pacific who have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime ranges from 15% in Bhutan, Japan, Lao PDR and Philippines to 64% in Fiji and Solomon Islands. Also 4% (in Japan) to 48% (in Papua New Guinea) of women have experienced intimate partner violence in the last 12 months.

The Ooni Of Ife At Five: A Felicitation

 By DAN AMOR

It is unbelievable that five years have passed since His Imperial Majesty, Alaiyeluwa Oba Adeyeye Enitan Babatunde Ogunwusi, Ojaja ll, the Ooni of Ife, ascended the throne of his ancestors. But it is five years of remarkable achievements, clear-headed and astute leadership, robust and ground-breaking royal interventions on the unity and peace of the Yoruba race and physical transformation of the Yoruba ancient kingdom. Kabiyesi, as you celebrate your fifth coronation anniversary, this writer rejoices with you on this joyous and auspicious occasion. 

                                          *Ooni of Ife, Oba Ogunwusi

In just five years on the throne of your fore-fathers, you have shown that you possess the missing link in the ability of the traditional institution to effect a change and leave an enduring legacy worthy of emulation for our people. Given your age, education and enlightenment, this is a generational proof of your exemplary leadership and indubitable characteristics. May you live long, Kabiyesi! 

Inside Nigeria’s Killing Fields

 By Reuben Abati

On Saturday, November 28, about 43 farmers who had gone to their farms during the current harvest season were attacked by Boko Haram terrorists. They were tied up; their hands behind their backs, one after the other their throats were slit. The United Nations puts the number of casualties at 110, not 43. Amnesty International says over 10 women and others are missing. The people of Zabarmari were so outraged they refused to bury the dead. They asked that the Governor of Borno State, Professor Baba Gana Zulum, must show up to witness the tragedy that has befallen their community. Zabarmari, in Jere Local Government Area, is about 20 kilometres out of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.

             *President Muhammadu Buhari and Chief of Army 

Staff, Tukur Buratai

Two weeks earlier, terrorists had also attacked and killed members of the community. Maiduguri and the entire Lake Chad region have remained the hotbed of terrorism in Nigeria. In September, the state Governor’s convoy was attacked by insurgents during a visit to Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad. A death toll of 30 was reported. Several policemen and soldiers posted to that axis to help combat the menace of terrorism have also fallen victim, and died in the hands of terrorists. Many have had to lay down their arms and remove their uniforms. The security situation in the North Eastern part of Nigeria is proving intractable despite the Nigerian government’s repeated assurances that the Boko Haram has been technically defeated and degraded.

Buhari’s Unholy Romance With Niger Republic

 By Ochereome Nnanna

President Muhammadu Buhari’s romance with Niger Republic has become an affront to the national interest of Nigeria. When he was sworn-in as an elected president in 2015, he went to Mamadou Issoufou’s presidential palace in Niamey, Niger Republic, to celebrate. They gave him the reception of a conquering Fulani warlord: a white horse and sword. 

         *President Buhari with Mahamadou Issoufou 

of Niger Republic 

I found that curious. How can a Nigerian leader celebrate his electoral victory in a foreign country and not Daura, his supposed hometown in Nigeria? The answer has since been provided through Buhari’s policy actions in the past five plus years. We have since learnt that Buhari is a first-generation Nigerian whose father, Ardo Adamu Buhari, a duck seller, had migrated from Niger, settled in Nigeria and married a Nigerian woman, Zulaihat. 

Making Nigeria Work Again

 By DAN AMOR

There is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria. So is crime. The country is constantly on the boil. The atmosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apathy and desperation. 

                                                                  *Buhari 

There is no more thermometer to measure the degree of frustration and desperation in the land than the long closure of our tertiary institutions, especially our universities due to strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) since the past eight months. 

Is President Buhari From Niger Republic?

 By Reno Omokri

Any follower of Nigeria’s federal budget since May 29, 2015, may be forgiven if they thought that Nigeria, under President Buhari, had performed a Hitler-style Anschluss, and had annexed Niger Republic as part of Nigeria, because of Buhari’s huge spending (of Nigeria’s money), to improve infrastructure in Niger Republic.

                                                           *Buhari

While Seme Border-Badagry express road, the only road currently linking Nigeria to other West African coastal nations, remains in ruins and looks as if it has been bombed, Buhari had spent huge resources developing road networks between Nigeria and Niger Republic.

On February 26, 2020, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced that the government had awarded a contract for the construction of two roads from Sokoto and Jigawa States up to Niger Republic, at the cost of $81 million dollars.

Scorpions And Frogs Of Nigeria

 

By Yinka Odumakin

 I was talking of how comprehensive incompetence of some of our compatriots who lack ability to lead is doing much damage to this country and may sentence it to death if we don’t reset quickly. 

The wonder in the piece was the likely dangers we face with those who went to hold a sectional meeting in Kaduna and still had the shameless gut to be mouthing “indivisibility” and other words they don’t know the meaning. The apartheid gathering had in attendance all Arewa big men holding federal appointments. I mentioned that those who attended that meeting and sanctioned it would do other million things wrong and would not see anything wrong with them because they can’t just see it because they are narrow and have no regard for others. 

We had yet to put that behind us when news filtered in that the Federal Government which had shut the Western borders with other Western countries had opened them for northern businessman, Alhaji Aliko Dangote. The action sparked rage in the country. I particularly noticed the forthrightness of Mr Atedo Peterside in condemning the largely inconsiderate action that shows disregard for other businesses that have been dealt a deadly blow for several months. Ghanaians who have been taking it up against Nigerians in that country can now see what the government is doing to Nigerians. 

Ken Saro-Wiwa: 25 Years After

 By Dan Amor

Today, Tuesday November 10, 2020, indubitably marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragic and shocking death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. By his death, the Sani Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts. As a student of Nigerian history, and of the literature of the Nigerian Civil War, I am adequately aware that Ken Saro-Wiwa, against the backdrop of our multicultural complexities allegedly worked against his own region during the War, the consequences of which he would have regretted even in his grave. 

                                                       *Ken Saro-Wiwa 

But I write of him today not as a politician but as a literary man and environmental rights activist. We remember him because, for this writer, as for most disinterested Nigerians, Ken Saro-Wiwa lives alternatively as an inspirational spirit, and a haunting one at that. Now, as always, Nigerians who care still hear Ken's steps on the polluted land of his ancestors. They still see the monstrous flares from poisonous gas stacks, and still remember his symbolic pipe. Now, as always, passionate Nigerians will remember and hear the gleeful blast of the Ogoni song, the song Ken sang at his peril. Yet, only the initiated can see the Ogoni national flag flutter cautiously in the saddened clouds of a proud land. But all can hear his name in the fluttering of the Eagle's wing. 

D. O. Fagunwa And His Overbearing 'Helpers': A Novelist's Predicament

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Whenever the full history of Nigerian literature is written, Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa (popularly known as D.O. Fagunwa), the Yoruba language novelist, will certainly occupy his rightful place as one of its pioneers. Although literate in the English language, Fagunwa chose to put his indigenous language in the limelight by employing it in the writing of his novels which not only enjoyed wide readership among the Yoruba-reading population of the then Western Nigeria, but also attracted critical response from both Yoruba and non-Yoruba scholars.

                                         *D.O. Fagunwa

Given Fagunwa's education and exposure, it may be unfair to draw the conclusion that he was blissfully unaware of the limitations he was imposing on himself in terms of readership and critical appreciation when he chose to write in Yoruba. What seems more likely the case is that he was willing to sacrifice on the altar of cultural and linguistic nationalism the fame he would certainly have gained beyond his ethnic block and the hefty financial reward that would have come rolling to his doorstep had he chosen English as his medium of expression.

According to Professor Ayo Bamgbose, although “Fagunwa…was quite familiar with certain works in English literature, including translations of stories from Greek mythology...two possibilities were open to him. He could use his knowledge of English literature to produce a European type of novel…or he could create something of his own, drawing his inspiration from traditional material. It was the latter course that Fagunwa chose. Fagunwa based his novels on the tradition of the Yoruba folk-tale (Bamgbose, 1974).”

Nigeria: Slippery Pathway Called Political Correctness

 By Dianam Peresuo Dakolo

Among citizens with undying commitment to peaceful coexistence, social harmony and cohesion, political correctness is something of a religion: words or actions with the slightest tinge of antipathy or antagonism are anathema, to be avoided at all costs, so the polity is free of threat(s) to its stability. Desirable as such a predisposition could be, citizens need to appreciate that cost-benefit analysis is a key principle for any type of enterprise. Some illustration of how hurtful political correctness could be to a society should not be out of place here.

                                        *Jonathan, Obasanjo, Buhari 

The human and material resources that have been consumed by the insurgency in the North East are incalculable. Brilliant and courageous military officers and others of the rank and file have all perished and continue to be wasted till date; a hundred plus schoolgirls from Chibok have yet to be recovered from the world's deadliest death cult known as Boko Haram, and, of course, the hundreds of billions of naira that have gone into counter-insurgency operations translate into humongous opportunity cost for the country.  Now, do Nigerians not know those behind Boko Haram? Naming names and demanding decisive action on the part of the authorities goes against the grain where political correctness is something of an ethos.

Nigeria: Situational Tribalists And A Naïve Populace

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

I have said it so several times that when Nigerian politicians converge to map out plans for acquiring power, which, in most cases, practically translates to securing unlimited access to unearned wealth, they do not usually remember that they came from different ethnic blocks. At such gatherings, they will all think alike, talk with one voice and even look and laugh alike. They will speak the same language.

Indeed, illicit accumulation and all forms of corrupt activities do not have tribal marks. The colour of graft is the same any day, no matter who is involved.

At such times, the masses are hardly remembered. They do not matter at all. Everybody is preoccupied with the much he or she would be able to accumulate and cart away for his personal luxury and that of his family and cronies.

In the introduction to my book, “Nigeria:Why Looting May Not Stop,” I maintained that corruption became very monstrous in Nigeria “when public office gradually ceased to be a platform for rendering selfless service and transformed into the easiest route to criminal accumulation of wealth. And the law, too, became increasingly very weak in the face of the overwhelming sleaze. Since then, generations of public officers have passed through this route, looting the country blind with utmost impunity and quitting office into incredible abundance, without any fear of anyone ever prying into the clearly unearned wealth they flaunt with revolting fanfare…”

Nigeria: Budgeting For Abject Poverty

 By Jerry Uwah 

Nigeria’s unemployment and poverty problem has assumed catastrophic proportions. In a country with a workforce of less than 100 million people, more than 22 million are jobless. In the two years since Nigeria replaced India as the world’s headquarters of abject poverty, 15 million more have been pushed below poverty line. In fact, Nigeria manufactures six extreme poor people every minute. 

           Senate President Lawan, President Buhari, 

                            House Speaker Gbajabiamila

The result is frustration and hopelessness. The story of Solomon Okon, a porter with Havana Hospital in Lagos, who lost his job during a rationalisation exercise is a sad reminder of a nation that has lost all sense of care and protection for its citizens. 

End-SARS: The Big Picture

 By Ray Ekpu

Since 1992 when the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was established its modus operandi has been basically kill-and-go. This was during the military era where a military ruler arrogantly told Nigerians during a peaceful protest that they were trained experts in the domination of their environment.

When a leader says that to the hearing of people who carry weapons they take that message to heart. The SARS people may have fought armed robbers viciously but they also fought – and killed – many innocent persons. The reports of their atrocities which include extortion, torture and extra-judicial killings have appeared in the media regularly but it has never been manifestly clear to the public that the offending personnel are often brought to justice. Perhaps, some victims with high visibility or influential connections have had their cases pursued to a logical end.

Dele Giwa: 34 Years After His Gruesome Murder

 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    

                                              *Late Dele Giwa 

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. 

Who Wrote ‘Things Fall Apart’?

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

It all started at the local secondary school in Ndiorumbe when the literature teacher, Holy Nwankpi, asked his students: “Who wrote Things Fall Apart?”

The first student pleaded his innocence thusly: “I didn’t write it-o!”

                                                  *Uzoatu

Another student pointed an accusing finger at the denying student and screamed: “He is a liar. I know he wrote it!”

The class prefect joined the fray with these words: “I saw him when he was writing Things Fall Apart with a red biro!”

Gov Oyetola Attacked By Armed Thugs

                                              *Oyetola 

An attempt was made on the life of the Osun State Governor, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola, today, Saturday, October 17, 2020, in Oshogbo.

Celebrating The Literary World Of JP Clark

By Hope Eghagha

It is within the context of a poignant, profound and perhaps arcane ritual imagination that we encounter John Pepper Clark in his literary world as evidenced by the evocative power of his primal poetic and dramatic compositions.

          *Professor Eghagha (Right) with the late pioneer writer, 

         Professor JP Clark 

Especially so are some of the early works such as Song of a Goat through Ozidi, the ‘middle’ The Boat, The Return Home, Full Circle, Casualties and the later Remains of a Tide.

His only known work of prose the semi-autobiographical and bitingly sarcastic America their America, at once immediate in content and prophetic in thematic concern exists outside this ontology of ritual and the mythic imagination.

Zamfara And Nigeria At Crossroads

 By Yinka Odumakin

The great political philosopher and polemicist, Leon Trotsky, once talked of professor of Spring who was teaching the subject in a classroom for years. He came out one day and was face-to face with Spring but he denied it saying it must be some disorder in nature. 

           *President Buhari and Zamfara State Gov Bello Muhammad Matawalle

So it is with Nigeria that got its independence on a federal constitution with a very lean exclusive list. But the aberration of military rule with command and control bloated the exclusive list to give virtually everything to the centre stripping the federating units. The centre became too fat to be productive and the units too lean to have a healthy existence. 

Renowned Writer And Scholar, J.P. Clark, Dies At 85

 
                                         *J.P. Clark 

One of Nigeria’s pioneer writers and retired professor of Literature, John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, is dead. He died Tuesday morning, October 13, 2020. He was 85. 

A statement jointly signed by Professor C. C. Clark and Mr. Ilaye Clark, for the family, revealed that Professor Clark-Bekederemo died surrounded by his immediate family.