As the November 11, 2023, governorship elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi states draw close, widespread and justifiable concerns continue to mount about the capacity and willingness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to organize free, credible and transparent polls to gratify the deep yearnings of the people to be allowed to exercise their constitutional right to choose their own governor. Given the very demoralizing performance posted by INEC in the last general elections earlier in the year, whose glaring evidences are showing their egregious faces at the various Election Petitions Tribunals across the country, the people have every…
Author: Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
“Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom Stopard In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it…
What luck for rulers that men do not think.” ― Adolf Hitler Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept, insensitive and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from any government. Massive infrastructural decay due to criminal neglect and regular reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth by wayward and light-fingered public officers have since lost their capacities to shock Nigerian masses. In fact, most people have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb…
As President Muhammadu Buhari prepares himself for a happy return to his comfortable country home in Daura, Katsina State, after nearly eight years in office where he posted what is widely adjudged as far below average performance, a 19-year old, tender, innocent girl named Leah Sharibu remains a hapless, pathetic, unspeakably traumatized captive of Boko Haram terrorists, obviously, under the most dehumanizing conditions. Given what has, reportedly, been the horrible experiences of young, beautiful girls like Leah who have been captured by these terrorists, one is really scared to imagine the extent of savage violations she might have been subjected to…
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye It is not surprising that the recent directive by the Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, to the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to expunge Sex Education from the basic education curriculum in Nigeria has been greeted with serious opposition from groups and persons who 0bviously derive some of benefits from the callous sexualisation of the tender minds of Nigerian pupils. I am sure that many parents and concerned persons who have heard about the minister’s directive are highly relieved and happy and hoping that no amount of pressure from these misguided interest groups will…
Now, let’s face it: there can only be one reason why the industrial action embarked upon by the teachers of Nigeria’s public universities since February 14 has been allowed to waste a whole seven months of the academic pursuit of many youths, and, indeed, their very lives. Truth is, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find the children of key members of the General Muhammadu Buhari regime in any Nigerian public university. If the reverse was the case, every effort would certainly have been deftly deployed to avert the strike, or, at least, drastically shorten its duration. And…
Many Nigerians are stuck with zero experience of what it means to live in a decently run society. Laden with a long history of mostly inept, insensitive and less-than patriotic leaders, it seems abnormal to expect any bit of improvement in their daily existence from the government. Massive infrastructural decay and regular reports of primitive accumulations of illicit wealth by light-fingered public officers have since lost their capacities to shock. In fact, most people have since adjusted their lives to perennially absorb the vicious impacts of these debilitating vices. They only extract some bit of cold comfort from continually reassuring…
Pastor William F. Kumuyi, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, easily stands out as a man of God with an unshaken resolve to please God always and undertake the divine assignment given to him with zeal, dedication, meticulousness and sense of urgency. He continues to demonstrate a clear understanding of his mission which is to win souls for Christ and teach them to embrace standard Christian living to remain at peace with God and rapturable. Pastor Kumuyi turned 81 on Monday, June 6. Although not a member of his church, I have derived illumination and edification from…
President Buhari’s regime has about a year to hit its expiration point. Perhaps, the only thing that still retains the capacity to squeeze out some smiles on a couple of faces today is the faint hope that the president might fulfill his pledge to firmly resist the deadly attraction of that poisoned fruit called “tenure elongation.” Indeed, many Nigerians are willing to take the risk of entertaining some optimism about this. Despite the blizzard of outrageous claims roughly thrown at Nigerians every other day, it has become just impossible to muster any bit of expectation that the Buhari regime might…
I have always had this lingering suspicion that apart from representing the deep-seated contempt that has come to define government’s attitude to the welfare of public sector workers, its shoddy, often, disdainful, treatment of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and its demands for improved working conditions might have been carefully conceived as a long term project to continue provoking ASUU to embark on industrial actions until it fatally hurts its case before Nigerians. The expectation, it would seem, is that as students continue to spend several months at home due to prolonged strikes, which might sometimes lengthen the…
Lawyer, law teacher, social commentator and film maker, Sam Kargbo is many things to many people. Although a regular TV guest on many topical issues and a newspaper columnist, Kargbo carries about his life with utmost modesty. He loves his beautiful wife from Akwa Ibom State and adores his mentors with a passion. He is the maker of Blood Diamonds, arguably one of the highest budget films in Nollywood, the Nigerian Home Video Industry. Yet, he insists film making is just an avenue for him to pass his message across to a target audience. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (February 2005), he talks…
“Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom Stopard In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it…
The best value sincere friends and associates of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, can inject in his career now would be to ensure that he schools himself to always speak sparingly and recognise the need to regularly deploy more time and effort to benefit from informed legal inputs before responding to very serious issues. The office he occupies is such an important and strategic one whose submissions on legal controversies Nigerians can confidently rely upon. It is always very disheartening whenever his interventions on very weighty national affairs are easily faulted by Nigerians, including even…
When on December 7, 2019, news broke that Reinhard Bonnke, the German-born, world-renowned evangelist, whose gospel crusades in many African cities drew multitudes and led many people to make definite decisions to give their lives to Jesus Christ, had died in Florida, the world saw another example of what could rightly be described, by Biblical standards, as a successful ministry. He was 79. The most important item in Bonnke’s life’s history (despite his great and marvelous achievements in the Lord’s Vineyard as a soul-winner) is that, although, he was the son of a gospel minister, he had a definite testimony…
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…
Nigerians are fond of turning very serious matters, even ones threatening the very life of their country, into objects of jokes and laughter. And so, as President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption posturing and grandstanding which have for some years now been on life-support finally breathed it’s last and was wheeled out for burial (without an autopsy), and the loud attempt by some shameless pretenders to clean up the cesspit of corruption called the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) degenerates into a public trial of the National Assembly, Minister of Niger Delta and the remorseless (mis)managers of affairs at the NDDC, instead…
One of the most worrisome developments in today’s Nigeria is what appears like a firm resolve by the Muhammadu Buhari regime to continue circulating the very distressing impression that it does not know how to solve the endless aggression being unleashed in different parts of the country by Fulani herdsmen who move and operate as if there are no laws in the land capable of containing the menace of troublesome people. The soft targets of these herders are usually harmless and toiling farmers whom they gruesomely slaughter in their farms, and innocent villagers, whose homes, according to reports, they invade…
“One life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.”—Dele Giwa (Nigerian Journalist assassinated in 1986) After five whole years of seeking admission into the institution of higher learning, Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa was eventually admitted to read Microbiology at the University of Benin. Obviously a very serious student, she was in no mood to joke with her studies, probably, after considering how long it took her to secure the admission. So, she would always go to the serene environment of her Church when worshippers were not around to read her books. The Church environment should…
Even though by 2015, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had performed below the high expectations of many Nigerians and had rightly earned their rejection, I highly dreaded the disastrous possibility of Nigerians falling for the massive, overwhelming but vacuous propaganda of the All Progressives Congress (APC), backed by a formidable coalition of tragically naïve activists, intellectuals and opinion leaders, to seriously consider that the APC could by the widest stretch of the imagination, qualify as even a manageable alternative. There was massive corruption in the PDP, but it was just impossible for me to buy the tasteless myth that…
How exactly is the lockdown helping to halt the spread of coronavirus in Nigeria? Or put another way, how is the Buhari regime which announced the lockdown in three locations, Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), ensuring that the measure unleashed is at least achieving a reasonable percentage of the purpose for which it was declared? Has there been any thorough audit of the exercise? Who is also undertaking such an assessment in the various states that are equally on lockdown? What is the level of compliance at the various places and what percentage of the anticipated gains…
The New Year is almost here with us. And as Nigerians try to survive the harrowing ordeal which living in their country has become and remain painfully stuck with a regime that neither offers them any hope nor guarantees their freedom; as they count the days in the hope that the months and years would run faster to bring them quickly to a happy of end their nightmare, they should try and muster the strength to remember that a 15-year old, tender, innocent girl called Leah Sharibu remains a hapless, pathetic, traumatized captive of Boko Haram, obviously, under the most…
