By Dan Amor
Much of the significant critical issues in the Cross River State 2015 governorship contest would most likely be centred on the pedigrees of the contestants. This is much so as it is glaring that a precedent has already been set in the quality of materials the State has indubitably thrown up as governors since the beginning of the current political dispensation in 1999.
*Ochiglegor Idagbo (Legor)
Two personalities who have governed the agrarian state since then, Donald Duke and Liyel Imoke, represent a bold testimony to the emerging trend of enthroning young and brilliant people at the apogee of political leadership across the world. Talking about young , good-looking, brilliant and adequately educated people in leadership positions in government?
There is no doubt that brains and looks appear to be the unassailable clinchers these days as far as elections are concerned. In fact, the advanced democracies of the world discovered this mystery at the dusk of the twentieth century. In the United States of America, for instance, brains and looks did earn the Democratic Party a rare two-term spell under the youthful personage of the ever-voluble, hand-pumping and telegenic Oxford-trained lawyer, Bill Clinton. Even in Great Britain, the electorate, in May 1997, demonstrated a certain unabashed bias for yapper, dapper looks with all the histrionic gestures and dramatic turns of phrases, when they elected Tony Blair of the New Labour, another Oxford-trained lawyer , then 43, as Prime Minister. He was the youngest in 187 years.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Forty Days In A Trauma Ward
I have always had an unexplained dislike
for the colour red. Perhaps, it is because somewhere in my subconscious I have
associated it with danger or blood. However, in the morning of Thursday, February
23, 2006, I put on an oxblood shirt and a red-brown-black blend tie over black
trousers to go to work which I just resumed two days before.
Having only completed my National Youth Service in September of the previous year, I thought I was rather fortunate to have landed that job, considering I did not have to stay at home for long. So it was with great expectations that I commenced training on the job. I remembered praying that morning as I always do before setting out, for God’s protection.
Having only completed my National Youth Service in September of the previous year, I thought I was rather fortunate to have landed that job, considering I did not have to stay at home for long. So it was with great expectations that I commenced training on the job. I remembered praying that morning as I always do before setting out, for God’s protection.
After a rather hitch free commuting via
public transport from Ajah to Airport road where the headquarters of the
company is located, I had an exciting day at work and before the close of
business that day, I was given an invitation to attend the company’s annual
retreat which was holding at Nike Lake resort in Enugu that year. Things were
looking great! I was excited about the retreat of the following week as I had
never been to the eastern part of Nigeria before that time.
Here was I, fresh from school with a law
degree, NYSC behind me, and a promising job ahead of me. Life was good! Those
were my thoughts as I made my way back home. At Oshodi, I boarded a non-stop
bus to Ajah. Since I was the first to
get into the vehicle, I took the front seat as it usually has more room. Soon
after, a male passenger came to join me in front and I made room for him to
take the inner seat while I retained my window seat. I would never know now,
how that decision played out.
As the now filled bus made its way
towards the third mainland bridge, the ride was smooth, things looked normal.
When the driver started to ascend the bridge, at the intersection where the
road forks towards Ibadan expressway to the left
and Lagos Island to the right, he should move
towards the right and continue on the bridge. I just started to think that the
vehicle was too close to the kerb and… (I didn’t quite finish the thought) when
everything happened in surreal slow motion in my mind. The driver violently hit the kerb with the
left wheel, which made the bus travelling at about 100 km/per hour careened out
of balance, fell on my side and continued sliding on the concrete highway till
it spent its velocity and came to an abrupt halt right in the middle of the
road. Fortunately, there was no other vehicle coming behind to run us over.
The noise of the crash was deafening. The
windshield had shattered to a thousand places sending pieces of glass fiber
everywhere. Metal had squeezed, seats were pushed into each other and there was
silence for a fraction of a second before the cries, wailings, and screams
emanated from all around as if people were zoned back into the present to
confront the horrors.
Ken Saro-Wiwa: Remembering An Enigma
By Dan Amor
*Ken Saro-Wiwa
Today, Monday November 10, 2014, indubitably marks the nineteenth 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
We remember him today 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.
Monday, November 10, 2014
I Will Tell General Sani Abacha
By Dan Amor
Sunday June
8, 2014 indubitably marked the sixteenth anniversary of the death of General
Sani Abacha, Nigeria ’s most
treacherous tyrant and who ranked with Agathocles and Dionysus I of Sicily , as the greatest
dictators, not only of antiquity but of all time.
*Abacha
It is true that the degree of
cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already
fading into the background because of the mundane and short character of the
human memory. But his timely exit ought to have been marked by Nigerians just
as the United Nations marks the end of the Second World War not only for
posterity but also as a thanksgiving to God for extricating us from such epoch
of human misery.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Nigeria: 1960 -2014
By Banji Ojewale
It is as reasonable to
represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything
that really exists by that which exists not!
–Daniel Defoe (1660– 1731)
–Daniel Defoe (1660– 1731)
A scene at
On October 1, 1960 (pix: nigeria.gov.ng)
|
Last week, I came across an elderly man (real name withheld) who told me he fled
From the way he put it, the crystal
ball literally landed him in that future. In a word, he time-travelled
into that era. It was not a salubrious trip, he said. He did not
wish to experience the reality of the years ahead.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Remembering The 'Rumble In The Jungle'
By
Banji Ojewale
Forty years ago on October 30
1974, the world was rocked by the celebrated fight between Muhammad Ali,
ex-heavyweight boxing champion of the world and George Foreman, the title
holder. The colorful Ali aptly called the bout the Rumble in the jungle because
it took place in thickly forested Zaire , now known as the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC).
Muhammad Ali
(pix: Reuters)
It was a huge, larger-than-life
affair put together by an imperial president Mobutu Sese Seko with many
unprecedented features. It was the first heavyweight championship contest in
Africa; it brought together two of the planet’s greatest pugilists; it saw
Mubutu budget more than ten million dollars to promote the show; it gave the
fighters their biggest ever earnings; finally, it offered Africa the rare
opportunity to see two of its eminent sons battle for supremacy on their own
soil. They had always been forced to do it away from “home”.
The African leader was said to
have traveled this expensive route in order to cover up for years of his corrupt
era, egregious human rights abuse and misrule, all of which pauperized the
country. He did not succeed. He failed to exploit the potential salutary public
relations of the fight to improve the lot of the people. Actually it would
appear Zaire
got the rough end of the stick, because two years later in 1976, the country
gave the international community the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Buhari And APC’s N27.5 Million Nomination Forms
Exactly two weeks ago (Thursday, October 16, 2014), the All Progressives Congress (APC) startled decent Nigerians when its national chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun, announced that the party put the cost of its expression of interest and nomination forms at the cost of N27.5 million in order “to separate the men from the boys.” Another way of saying this is: ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff!’
*Buhari
This statement which almost immediately reverberated across the nation through various blogs and television screens was widely reported in the papers the next day, Friday, October 17. As I write now (about 48 hours after it echoed in Abuja ), neither the APC nor its national chairman has even attempted to “clarify” the very unwholesome assertion or withdraw it in its entirety. This can only mean, therefore, that the party solidly stands by such an outrageous and unsettling statement by its topmost officer. What a sad, tragic development.
Now, to describe a grown man as a “boy” is to dismissively imply that he is immature, inexperienced, inadequate or, worse, irresponsible. And so, going by the statement of the APC chairman, the ability to roll out millions of naira is what qualifies somebody to be a “man” in the party. In other words, even if you are generously endowed with superlative moral, intellectual and managerial abilities, as long as you are not a multi-millionaire or have multi-millionaire friends who can throw the millions on your behalf, you are in the “progressive” thinking of the APC a mere “boy” – immature and irresponsible, and, therefore, not qualified to contest a responsible position on the platform of the party!
For a party that has unduly strained itself to persuade Nigerians that it represents a healthy alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), this is indeed a most devastating disclosure and horrendous disappointment! What this, once again, demonstrates very clearly is that whereas the APC has deployed enormous efforts to tell Nigerians how bad the PDP is, it has been most unsuccessful in its attempt to allay growing fears (and conceal the stubbornly reoccurring indications) that it is, perhaps, even worse than the PDP.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Fed Govt’s Denial Of Amnesty International Report On Use Of Torture By Nigeria Police
(pix: nairaland)
By Okechukwu Nwanguma
Reports in several Nigerian
newspapers of September 23, 2014 quoted Dr. S. S. Ameh, a senior advocate of
Nigeria (SAN) and the Chairman of the National Committee Against Torture (NCAT),
as having dismissed the recent report by Amnesty International (AI) entitled ‘Welcometo Hell-Torture and other ill-treatment in Nigeria’.
The AI’s report which documented the widespread use of torture by Nigerian Police Force, based on factual and credible evidence gathered over a period of ten years, was released on September 18, 2014.
The report stated inter alia, that “Nigeria's police and military routinely torture women, men, and children – some as young as 12 ... Across the country, the scope and severity of torture inflicted on Nigeria's women, men and children by the authorities [that are] supposed to protect them is shocking to even the most hardened human rights observer.”
It further, rightly observed that “Torture is not even a criminal offence inNigeria ’’ and urged that ‘The
country’s parliament must immediately take this long overdue step and pass a
law criminalizing torture. There is no excuse for further delay.”
The AI’s report which documented the widespread use of torture by Nigerian Police Force, based on factual and credible evidence gathered over a period of ten years, was released on September 18, 2014.
The report stated inter alia, that “Nigeria's police and military routinely torture women, men, and children – some as young as 12 ... Across the country, the scope and severity of torture inflicted on Nigeria's women, men and children by the authorities [that are] supposed to protect them is shocking to even the most hardened human rights observer.”
It further, rightly observed that “Torture is not even a criminal offence in
Monday, October 27, 2014
Tragedy Of Peter Obi’s Defection
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Peter Obi’s defection from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not surprise me.
Unlike Bianca, widow of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, I knew the former Anambra State governor was going to take that
fateful political step.
Every discerning political observer knew that despite Obi’s
protestations and despite his vow that he would quit partisan politics any day
he left APGA, he had a crush on the PDP. His body language betrayed him.
That Obi had the patience to
serve out his second term as governor on the platform of APGA was the only
surprise.
I did not want to comment on his defection until I read Bianca’s
interview in the Daily Sun and Obi’s reaction. Bianca is pained by what
she calls Obi’s “betrayal and
unimaginable breach of trust.” She is livid that Obi did not take her into
confidence.
Peter Obi receiving an award in Spain from Mrs. Bianca
Ojukwu, Nigeria's Ambassador to Spain, on December 4,
2013
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Gov Fashola, According To London Telegraph
Meet
The Man Who Tamed Nigeria 's
Most Lawless City...
By Colin Freeman
*Fashola
He famously claims to be "just doing his job". But in a land where politicians are known for doing anything but, that alone has been enough to make Babatunde Fashola, boss of the vast Nigerian city of Lagos, a very popular man.
Confounding the image of Nigerian leaders as corrupt and incompetent, the 51-year-old governor has won near-celebrity status for transforming west Africa's biggest city, cleaing up its crime-ridden slums and declaring war on corrupt police and civil servants.
Next month, he will come to London to meet business leaders and Mayor Boris Johnson's officials, wooing investors with talk of how he has spent the last seven years building new transport hubs and gleaming business parks.
Yet arguably his biggest achievement in office took place just last week, and was done without a bulldozer in sight. That was when his country was officially declared free of Ebola, which first spread to Nigeriathree months ago when Patrick Sawyer, an infected Liberian diplomat, flew into Lagos airport.
Health officials had long feared that the outbreak, which has already claimed nearly 5,000 lives elsewhere in west Africa, would reach catastrophic proportions were it to spread through Lagos. One of the largest cities in the world, it is home to an estimated 17 million people, many of them living in sprawling shanty towns that would have become vast reservoirs for infection. To make matters worse, when the outbreak first happened, medics were on strike.
Instead, Mr Fashola turned a looming disaster into a public health and PR triumph. Breaking off from a trip overseas, he took personal charge of the operation to track down and quarantine nearly 1,000 people feared to have been infected since Mr Sawyer's arrival.
Last week, what would have been a formidably complex operation in any country came to a successful end, when the World Health Organisation announced that since Nigeria had had no new cases for six weeks, it was now officially rid of the virus.
"This is a spectacular success story," said Rui Gama Vaz, a WHO spokesman, who prompted an applause when he broke the news at a press conference in Nigeria on Tuesday. "It shows that Ebola can be contained."
Friday, October 24, 2014
The 10 Most Corrupt Countries In The World
Corruption and economic turmoil often go hand-in-hand. In western nations like the United States, and in many European countries, we often see corruption come to light as the result of whistleblowers or journalistic efforts. But in many other areas of the world, however, corruption plays a major role in fostering staggering poverty and broken economic systems in a much more blatant way.
Oftentimes, specific power structures and government architectures provide an easier means for corrupt politicians, businessmen, or military officials to exploit the system. Many governments have their roots in constitutions from generations ago, and have outgrown their current systems. Many other countries are ruled by a variety of independent tribal leaders and often lack a centralized power structure with any meaningful sway.
Transparency International developed a comprehensive list of the world’s most corrupt nations last year, and the countries that top the list probably won’t come as much of a surprise to many. The study ranks countries on a scale from 0 to 100, with zero being the most corrupt, and 100 being the least.
Of course, corruption comes in a variety of forms, so getting a precise gauge is difficult. But perception itself is a very strong tool, and can have a big effect on its own. If the study reveals anything, it’s that the world overall has a huge issue in terms of corrupt officials. By looking at the Corruptions Perception Index, along with the existing power structures and economic systems within each country, the picture does become a bit clearer. That’s why we dug a little deeper, examining the rankings for ourselves.
Although not among the top ten, we’ve included the United States on the list to give perspective as to where America ranks internationally in terms of corruption and economic strife. By Transparency International’s calculations and scale, the U.S. is sitting fairly pretty, although it’s common knowledge that there are definitely issues with how things are run in Washington. Other countries you might expect to see like Russia, Mexico, or Venezuela all have their places as well, and the full list of 177 nations can be viewed straight at the source from Transparency International.
Here are the most corrupt nations in the world, as ranked by Transparency International, with additional insight into the issues and factors plaguing each one.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
#30 Percent-Or-Nothing#? Not This Generation...At Least Not Yet!
By Nnaemeka Oruh
The #30PercentOrNothing# hashtag is
one of the newest to flood social media in Nigeria . From what I gathered, it
is a campaign initiated to ensure that Nigerian youths have 30% representation
in the next political dispensation. If you do not try to dig deep into it, it
appears like all other 'agitations for representation' – a noble cause.
To me however, agitations for such representation are simply proof of the agitators' weak status. For most times, they do not 'demand', they simply plead for, kowtow and ultimately make due with whatever hand-out they get. Most times, as soon as the leaders of such agitations are 'settled' the request dies down. So clearly, I am not a fan of such agitations except if they are well modelled as demands and not requests.
Ebola—Open Letter To The ECOWAS Presidents
By Chinweizu
Sundoor999@gmail.com
(21 October 2014)
As the spectre of Ebola stalks the world, people everywhere are looking accusingly at the ECOWAS presidents. Like the commandants from whose prison a jailbreak of very dangerous prisoners has just happened, they had better have a damned good explanation of the event or face court martial etc. The citizens of ECOWAS demand no less. How can these presidents allow such a thing to happen on their watch and disgrace all Africans? Aspersions of all sorts are being cast on us as incompetent to manage our countries. Africa is being demonized as this mysterious human backwater from which strange diseases emerge to afflict the whole world. Before long it will be argued that Africa should be re-colonized by the West to protect the whole world from the deadly incompetence of its corrupt black misrulers. In the meantime, the economies of ECOWAS countries are suffering. Their tourism sector has already been hit by postponement and cancellation of conferences, group tours, private visits etc. In farming villages economic activities are being disrupted as the people flee for safety. And when the entry bans being urged in the USA and elsewhere are imposed, there will also be the cost of social disruption as family members, barred from entry into America and Europe, cannot visit one another. Students back home on vacation may not be able to return to their campuses abroad, nor will importers be able to make quick trips abroad to buy and bring in goods. Emergency trips abroad for treatment of other ailments will be affected. Until the epidemic is ended, the economies of ECOWAS will be seriously hit and the economic and social coats will keep mounting. And the epidemic can’t be ended without knowing its causes and therefore the effective ways to combat them. After all, if you don’t understand it you can’t fix it. I, as a concerned ECOWAS citizen-- and I believe many other Africans would join me in this--therefore demand an emergency ECOWAS Summit on Ebola at which the ECOWAS presidents should set up a public and independent Commission of Enquiry comprising eminent international judges and jurists to investigate the event and find answers to some pertinent questions:
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Ebola: Liberian President Writes Very Touching Letter To The World
Dear
World
In just over six months, Ebola has managed to bring my country to a standstill. We have lost over 2,000 Liberians. Some are children struck down in the prime of their youth. Some were fathers, mothers, brothers or best friends. Many were brave health workers that risked their lives to save others, or simply offer victims comfort in their final moments…
In just over six months, Ebola has managed to bring my country to a standstill. We have lost over 2,000 Liberians. Some are children struck down in the prime of their youth. Some were fathers, mothers, brothers or best friends. Many were brave health workers that risked their lives to save others, or simply offer victims comfort in their final moments…
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
There is no coincidence Ebola has taken hold in three fragile states – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – all battling to overcome the effects of interconnected wars. In Liberia , our civil war ended only eleven years ago. It destroyed our public infrastructure, crushed our economy and led to an exodus of educated professionals. A country that had some 3,000 qualified doctors at the start of the war was dependent by its end on barely three dozen.
In the last few years, Liberia was bouncing back. We realized there was a long way to go, but the future was looking bright. Now Ebola threatens to erase that hard work. Our economy was set to be larger and stronger this year, offering more jobs to Liberians and raising living standards. Ebola is not just a health crisis – across West Africa, a generation of young people risk being lost to an economic catastrophe as harvests are missed, markets are shut and borders are closed.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Jonathan Welcomes W.H.O. Declaration Of Nigeria As Ebola-Free
Press Release
President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan welcomes today’s declaration
by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Nigeria is now officially
Ebola-free after 42 days without any incidence of the Ebola Virus
Disease.
*Jonathan
President Jonathan dedicates the
certification to the many patriotic health workers, volunteers and ordinary
Nigerians who worked tirelessly, some of them paying the ultimate price, to
stop the deadly virus in its track after it entered the country in July this
year.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
PDP Faults Buhari's Claims On State Of The Nation
Press Release
PDP Welcomes Buhari To Presidential Race Faults His Claims
On State Of The Nation
The Peoples Democratic Party is pleased to welcome to the 2015 presidential contest, the former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari who declared his intention today, Wednesday, October 15, 2014.
*Buhari
While we congratulate and wish him well in his ambition, we have noted some distortions and misrepresentation of facts in his speech and consequently wish to put the record straight.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Waiting For Pastor W.F. Kumuyi
By Banji Ojewale
The people ofKumasi in Ghana did not wait for too long for the much anticipated visit of Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi from Nigeria .
In 1973, Kumuyi had been used by God to set up a Bible Study Group that had radicalized Christianity in a country just crawling from an internecine civil war. The Ghanaians were themselves passing through stormy times, tossed for several years by billows of military regimes.
The people of
In 1973, Kumuyi had been used by God to set up a Bible Study Group that had radicalized Christianity in a country just crawling from an internecine civil war. The Ghanaians were themselves passing through stormy times, tossed for several years by billows of military regimes.
In 1979, Kumuyi was invited to lead a crusade in the second
biggest city in Ghana , the
country whose military rulers played the peace maker as Nigeria stood
inexorably on the cusp of war.
Was Kumuyi coming with scars of conflict? Was his message
going to be relevant to the people of Ghana who were also writhing under
the boots of the soldiers? If what his Bible Study Group was offering was
healing the wounds inflicted by 30 months of a carnivorous war in only a few
years of its existence, let him come and wave the “magic wand” in Ghana too.
The Ghanaians were thinking right. The people needed a
healing- spiritual and physical- at the touch of something new, something
fresh, something not born of the jaded prescription that had worsened their
condition day after day. Those who invited the young Nigerian evangelist (only
in his late 30s) to Kumasi accepted the man
whose group has since blossomed to become the Deeper Life
Bible Church
with stable and dignified presence all over the world.
That trip to the land of the Golden Stool and home of
popular football club Asante Kotoko has been notched as a reference point in
church history in Ghana .
Annalists of developments within DLBC have hailed the event as the beginning of
the international reach of the church.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Terrorism: Jonathan Meets With Presidents Of Four Neighbouring Countries
Rep of Cameroon President, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo'o,
Presidents Thomas Boni Yayi (Benin),Goodluck Jonathan
(Nigeria), Mahamadou Issoufou (Niger) and Idriss
Deby (Chad) at a one day summit
on terrorism in Niamey,
October 7, 2014 (pix:abc.net.au)
President Goodluck Jonathan met yesterday with the Heads of State and Government of four neighbouring countries, namely, Chad, Niger, Benin Republic and Cameroon to " review ongoing collaboration against terrorism and agree on further joint action to curb terrorism and insurgency within and across their national boundaries." The meeting took place in Niamey, the capital of Niger Republic.
A statement after the meeting said the "heads of state regrets the persistence of Boko Haram Islamic sect's atrocious acts of terror on people and security forces in Nigeria and other neighbouring countries," and pledged to pull resources to adequately respond to the challenge of terrorism.
President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger Republic was quoted as saying that the four nations require "a common strategy and a common operating concept to improve and put together our intelligence capacities and our capacities on the ground (to fight Boko Haram)."
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