About Chinua Achebe, Nelson Mandela wrote: “There was a writer named Chinua Achebe, in whose company the prison walls fell down.” This, perhaps, was one of the writer’s most cherished tribute and praise.
Anayo Modestus Onyekwere better known by his stage name Kanayo O. Kanayo was born on this day. He is a popular Nigeria actor from Mbaise, Imo State. He is a graduate of Law from the University of Abuja.
It was on this day in history (2020), that the first coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case was confirmed in Lagos State, Nigeria
On 2nd February 2022, The Tinder Swindler, a British true-crime documentary film was released on Netflix. The film shows in chilling and heartbreaking details the dark side of meeting strangers through online dating platforms
Nigeria is a country where different tribes and religion discreetly and deeply love and admire each other but publicly castigate and hate each other. Let me give you a practical example: I traveled to my village last month and was discussing with a group of people at the market square. Behold one top retired civil servant drove pass and discussion changes. … 1st man: “This man has retired and he didn’t help any of our people to get a job”. 2nd man: “Our people can never help each other. If it Hausa and Yoruba people they will fix themselves. This is why I love Hausa people, they help themselves but our people hate themselves” Me: if Hausa and Yoruba are so good, why then do we say that they are our problem? 3rd Man: They are not our problem. We are our problem. My daughter was giving an insurance job by a Yoruba man. OK Kontinu. I accompanied a friend to buy a cow he is using for burial at the market. This man is an IPOB die hard. On arrival at the market, the first Igbo man we met told us that the last price for the cow size we pointed was 250k. My friend was provoked with that price and told me that we should proceed to Hausa man’s stand. When we met the Hausa man, he communicated by speaking Hausa language. Both of them were excited and he gave him the bigger size of the cow for 200k. My friend was excited. He told me never to buy a cow from Igbo man because they will cheat you with price. He told me to look for Hausa man whenever I want to buy meat or fruits. OK Kontinu. I recalled one of my visit to Katsina to buy a goat with a friend. We needed 100 goats but managed to get only 55. They asked us to give them money so that they will help us and complete it the next day. We gave them and started to discuss. 1st man: I love Igbo because they love themselves. They teach each other business and help their brother. 2nd man: They build big houses and accommodate all their brothers. They show us love more than our people. 3rd Man: I was in Lagos as maigaurd for one Igbo man for 20yrs. Kai walahi, the man is good to me and my children. OK. Kontinu! As a Yorubanised Igbo man in Lagos, an average Yoruba friend will tell me how lovely the Igboss are. How industrious Igbos are. How they join in development of where they live and how they easily feel at home with Igbos. This discreet admiration of each other across tribe is what make this country indivisible! !! Nigeria will be worst than Syria if the hate and bitterness you read online everyday is a true reflection of what you witness in reality. Many people are not even aware that the Shettima of Arewa youth that gave igbos quit notice in Kaduna is married to an Igbo woman ??. The minority that are suffering from ethnocentrism are negligible. Their noise cannot exceed their dry page. The field reality contrast the online vile and hatred. My duty is to harvest good people in every part of the world. Feel free to conjugate with the evil ones if that will give you mental orgasm. Okokobioko is your anchor man Stay tuned Okeke Godwin Iyke tweets @comradop
In the good old days, Nigeria’s economy was blessed with oil palm plantations in the East, groundnut pyramids in the North and Cocoa plantations in the West. The discovery of crude oil in the country in commercial quantities brought about radical changes in the economy of the nation. Agriculture and all other sectors seem to have gone into oblivion thereby making the country to be totally dependent on oil for foreign exchange earnings. The result being that Nigeria becomes an oil-driven mono economy to the extent that when crude oil “coughs,” Nigeria will shiver. To understand Nigeria’s oil sector, it’s important to look at it from the upstream and the downstream sectors. The upstream involves exploration. Government in partnership with international oil companies explore crude oil, get it, lift it and then sell. In the downstream sector, it basically involves the distribution of much of the refined products arising from crude oil. But the challenge there is the disconnect between the upstream sector and the downstream sector – given that Nigeria at the moment, do not have the facility to refine these crude oils. So, what we have is enclave economy in the upstream sector where what happens there does not in any way reflect in the economy generally. So, we just lift the (crude) oil, we send them abroad for refining and whatever happens, Nigerians do not know, and then, the price immediately changes as a result of international factors; and of course, the internal factors which also include corruption by the big players in the downstream sector. Now, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) – an agency of the government, is a regulator – regulating itself and all other players in the downstream oil sector; it is a big player in the sector in the sense that it participates in the business. It is the representative of the government that help in selling oil and then gets the revenue for the government and so, much of Nigeria’s revenue depends on it. The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) as well, is a federal government agency. It determines prices of petroleum products in the country. It also monitors and regulates the refining, supply and distribution of petroleum products. The Brouhaha: the twists and turns The PPPRA on Thursday, March 11, 2020 announced that for the month of March, a litre of petrol would sell between N209.61 and N212.61. It pegged the ex-depot price – the amount sold by fuel depot owners to marketers at N206.42, while the landing cost stands at N189.61 per litre. The NNPC – the sole importer of refined petrol, however debunked such figures. In a statement by one of its Group General Managers Kennie Obateru, he maintained that the Corporation was not contemplating any rise in the price of petrol in March. But very recently, Nigerians on Friday, March 12, 2020 woke up to the shocking news of N212.61 pump price of petrol per litre. There was immediate artificial scarcity and depot owners began to hoard petrol and some, raising their prices. This sparked outrage and it quickly impacted on the cost of goods and services making life unbearable for the people. In a twist of reaction however, the Minister of state for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva apologized to Nigerians for the discomfort and inconveniences caused by the misinformation about the hike in fuel price. Quoting him, he said, “neither me nor the President, Muhammadu Buhari had approved the increase in the retail price of petrol to N212 per litre. Irrespective of the source of information, I want to assure you that it is completely false” It took no longer, the PPPRA later deleted the post earlier published on its website. So, that was the brouhaha citizens found themselves and it reveals a case of ineffective and unreliable communication strategy by the government. There has not been very good synergy between the agencies of government – the PPPRA is saying something else, while the NNPC comes to debunk it. We see a disconnect in the activities of government. There is so much opacity in the oil pricing. Nothing is clear. Nigerians do not know what is happening in the oil sector and whether government will stick to its words going forward. Admittedly, there is absolute secrecy suggesting that it is purposeful; since those of them in leadership positions are seemingly gaining. It also suggests that government is desperate for money. Nigeria has passed the borrowing limit going by the 2009 Fiscal Act – it means we are going beyond the threshold of what we should borrow. The external (plus internal) debt is mounting and the sources for it are also shrinking to the extent that we have borrowed so much from the sources we have and instead of coming up with innovative ways of reducing cost and increasing revenue, government appear to be thinking of the escapist route of manipulating the fuel prices – the very thin thread on which every Nigerian hangs. How does the increases in fuel pump price affects the people? What are the implications? First, we see that the government is extinguishing the middle class. The poor are becoming poorer, the rich getting richer. The government is therefore, deepening poverty across the country both at household levels and at the firms. And so, Nigerians working in self-employment or paid employment experience a reduction in their disposable income. With the reduction in disposable income of individuals, not many companies will adjust the cost-of-living allowance for their workers and beyond that, even if the companies decide to have adjustment in the cost-of-living allowance, that will also impact on their bottom-line – bringing a continuous reversal of human development indices occasioned by the hike in the price of petrol. Unfortunately, we have not seen government deliver on improving electricity it stipulated in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). Electricity tariff has continued to increase and beyond the increment in tariff, Nigerians have also seen the continued inefficiency in the distribution of electricity.
Our dirty and tattered clothing; posture that clearly reflected guilt, shame and lack of a sense of entitlement; scars and bodily disease; and sheer hunger, marked us as Others among our more fortunate working-class neighbours and colleagues … Other students and even our working-class teachers read us as ‘trailer trash’, as unworthy, laughable, and dangerous … We were … shamed and humiliated in our ragged and ill-fitting hand-me-downs, our very bodies signaling our Otherness.[1] As I read through the above quote, I remembered an experience I had as a child. I had followed my dad to the home of a Jew to do some work. It was not quite long after we arrived that I needed to relieve myself. Being in such luxurious surroundings had unsettled me. I had been perching on the edge of my chair. Afraid to move, to tip something over, or to… stain something. Finally, I had summoned the courage to express my need to relieve myself. I was not confronted with my ‘otherness’ when I gingerly turned the doorknob and saw the most sparkling toilet ever. I remember thinking how it contrasted with the black hole at home and the dark passageway that led to it. Sitting on the edge, I relieved myself and had been perplexed by the thought of not knowing how to flush. Tentatively, I had pushed a button which made a somewhat cracking sound. Petrified, I had run back to the parlour and sat down, full of trepidation and waiting to be discovered. The rush of emotions that had coursed through me; guilt, fear and shame are emotions poor people often feel. I had finally been confronted with my ‘otherness’ when I had reported myself to the housekeeper who had then checked the damage I claimed to have caused and found none. The look of relief on my face must have betrayed me because she had looked at me in pity mixed with amusement. The above quote talks about the bodies of the Poor signalling their ‘otherness’. For me, it was the emotions I felt based on her reaction that reminded me I was something different. I was poor; for that, I was dumb as well. Poverty has been defined as, ‘a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living. Poverty means that the income level from employment is so low that basic human needs can’t be met’.[2] In Nigeria, about 90 million people – roughly half Nigeria’s population – live in extreme poverty, according to estimates from the World Data Lab’s Poverty Clock. Around June 2018, Nigeria overtook India, a country with seven times its population, at the bottom of the table. Put in another context, if poor Nigerians were a country it would be more populous than Germany.[3] As gory as the above seems, it shows how integral poverty is to our society, yet in these dire economic times, the difference between the ‘poor’ and ‘non-poor’ has never been more pronounced. Unfortunately, poverty is not just characterized by financial lack; there is also a myriad of negative emotions and reactions which impact deeply on social life. Hunger, stress and ill health are not the only companions of poor people. Their lives are often marked by a kaleidoscope of struggles; they struggle to be accepted among their peers, to hide their difference from others, and to escape the stress that comes with never having enough, to find the best choice from the dearth of options they have. Poor people suffer a lack of agency policy-wise, which denies them the right to be heard, both in terms of representation and means. At the national and institutional level, they are dissected and spoken of in a manner that suggests awareness but not necessarily empathy. The stigma associated with poverty also affects people socially. Poor people often suffer a lack of confidence that most times stems from a lack of exposure, not having opportunities others have access to and also the reactions of the ‘non-poor’ as they try to get by. The pain and shame that come from being unable to go through life without being alienated, pre-judged or guilt-tripped. These routine experiences serve to discredit or denigrate the identities of those living on low incomes as being less valued members of society.[4] The pressure poor people face in social contexts to fit in results in a lot of poor people fighting to express their agency through illegal means. It is no puzzle a lot of young, poor Nigerians are turning to crime to come out of poverty. The rising number of cases of prostitution, cyber fraud and street crimes demonstrate this. Some time back, I stumbled on an article in which a suspect who had been apprehended by the police confessed to committing armed robbery. In his words, ‘I went into robbery because of the hardship. I am an OND 2 student, Computer Science, at the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, in Imo State’.[5] He represents a cross section of people who have been pushed to end the pains of not just the growling in their belly but also the lack of social acceptance. Perhaps the most impactful consequence of living in poverty is the social consequence one has to live with. The feeling of being different and the subtle accusations of being responsible for it. The stigma and inherent confusion about identity; the resultant effect which in many cases lead to strained social relationships, a lifestyle of crime and a sense of alienation. As humans, we are naturally wired to crave love, encouragement and acceptance. Daily, our eyes and ears are assaulted with tales of people who have resorted to extreme acts simply because they were denied acceptance. Menaces like suicide, homicide and the rising number of cases of depression is evident of this fact. A society which is consisted of mainly poor people would not only have malnourished children with bulging eyes but would also have
Women are targets of repression and hostility, leading a life of aloofness— silenced, subdued and restricted. Their rights are trampled upon by the masculine gender. Not that these women committed some grievous offences but it’s all because they are ‘women’.
Stephen Hawking the legendary physicist once said “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious” I love vacations. The sun, the sandy beaches and the other fun stuff. But there is another part of my vacation that I equally cherish. It is the serenity of early mornings and the tranquillity of late nights. The quietude presents a time of solitude. A period for reflection and meditation. It awakens my curiosity and the longing to learn more and more and more… I am Cmoni, an entrepreneur, adventurer and aspiring writer. I was born in the most populous black nation. A country blessed with enormous human and material resources yet unable to fulfil its potential. A common problem in the developing world. Nigeria has a teeming youth population. The UN projects, about 70% of Nigerian youths to be under 30, many of whom are uneducated. But I’ve been lucky, graduating in my 20s and currently pursuing a 3rd degree in Ireland. Historically, governments have played a dominant role in funding tertiary education because of the need to bridge the gap created by departing expatriate workers in the wake of independence from colonial masters. The exigency to train a group of professionals was well appreciated; thus in the 70s the Nigerian government abolished school fees in tertiary institutions and took up the task of funding them. With the attendant oil boom in the same period, it wasn’t a difficult task. The future looked bright. This precipitated an increase in the demand for higher education, which in turn led to additional universities, colleges and polytechnics. However, a combination of factors including a geometric increase in student population posed a problem. Successive governments struggled to fund tertiary education leading to a gradual decline in the standard of education. But there is a solution. Much of the world has been reshaped by the internet and e-Learning. No nation should be caught in the paradox of spiralling costs and a declining standard of education at a time when information is more accessible than ever. Therefore, the task of improving literacy and knowledge acquisition should be a collective priority for countries like Nigeria. But how can we do this? What will be the strategy? What tools, processes, techniques and methods should be deployed? Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web said that the web is about connecting humanity. Knowledge is increasingly acquired outside the traditional institution environment especially through the internet. The best way to start is to pick a domain of one’s own. That was how cmonionline.com was conceptualised in 2017. I wanted to elicit discourse by publishing my opinion on topical issues thereby creating an online version of Habermas’ Public Sphere. I wrote on varying sociopolitical issues. I discovered that the more I published the more I improved not just in my writing but also in technological skills like WordPress, web and graphic design. But then if you want to walk fast you walk alone but if you want to go far you walk together. What better way to learn than together? So in 2020, I started a weekly essay competition. The idea was to build a community of readers, writers and thinkers. I also created the #CmonionlineSundayPuzzle, a weekly exercise of puzzles, riddles and brain teasers. We have fun learning new stuff and in both activities, winners are always rewarded with prizes as tokens of encouragement. So far we have published over 500 essays from about 50 different writers. With support from friends, we have paid out over N2 million in cash prizes. We also have a growing audience with a combined social media following of over 10,000. But most importantly we started a journey together. We are set to elevate. We will create more digital communities of practice, tribes and classes for activities of interest. The free distribution of knowledge and peer review will form the crucible of our growth. Together we will develop portfolios, modules and learning outcomes using varying research methods and strategies. We will utilise the opportunities offered by digital tools such as zoom, teams and slack in the process. We will also collaborate with leading global knowledge providers like Coursera, LinkedIn, skillshare and others. So visit cmonionline.com and be part of a learning community where you reward your intellect and pocket!
The way he rallied to ensure that I flew buttressed a belief I’ve always held that goodwill will often open doors where money cannot.
“This is unacceptable, how can you subject people to this kind of torture all in the name of National ID card? And you are all here collecting N500 and N1000 from poor travellers who don’t have a national ID card.” ~Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum. Last week, Governor Babagana Zulum was forced to express his displeasure at the misconduct of security operatives along the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway where thousands of travellers were stranded at a checkpoint while the soldiers and police officers extorted hapless commuters. The reactions to the tweet I read were even more disheartening. Hassan M Kabir tweeting @Hassan_m_kabeer narrated his own experience as he replied that “I have witnessed same along Maiduguri-Dikwa-Gamboru road where Soldiers and Immigrations torture and collect money(500) from travellers that don’t have National I.D card and collect 1000 from foreigners that have int’l passports with visas too. While another person @MBMAMMAN1 stated that “ In Baga ( lake Chad area) soldiers have displaced civilians and become middlemen in the business of smoke fish where they make huge profits. These soldiers will never wish to see the end of Boko Haram”. Sad tales which have become all too familiar among Nigerians. Never mind that the entire North-East zone is conflict-ridden, it has also turned into a major source of filthy lucre for many politicians, government workers and civil society organisations. Some Nigerians just couldn’t care less about the situation, their corrupt practice must be carried on regardless. And the biggest culprits are police officers. Ours is a police force that has been labelled the most corrupt institution in the country. A 2019 survey by SERAP revealed among other things that “a bribe is paid in 54 per cent of interactions with the police”. With a 63 per cent probability that an average Nigerian is asked to pay a bribe on each interaction with the police. Putting it starkly, two out of three persons are likely to part with money on any dealings with the police. Ordinary Nigerians attempting to make precarious ends meet as petty traders, commercial vehicle drivers are accosted on a daily basis by armed police officers who demand bribes from them. These daylight robberies are mostly perpetrated at illegal checkpoints littered along our roads. This unchecked menace is such that the average Nigerian especially the mobile young men anticipate a raw deal from the police each day. As one who has a life injury from police brutality, I sometimes skip armed robbers but never forget to include protection against “bad policemen” in my prayers whenever I hit the highway. Oh Yes, because the probability of meeting bad policemen on the highway is a certainty. Many of us have been pulled over at a police checkpoint for driving in a car considered too fanciful by a police officer. You can be arrested for owning a smartphone, a laptop or for your hairstyle, hell you can even be pulled over for having a beautiful partner on the passenger’s seat. It is unfathomable that in 2020 a police officer could raise a weapon because of a fifty naira bribe but it is still a daily occurrence and we only get to read about the ones that turned tragic. Nigerians on the streets can tell you that the social media narrative and reactions to these illegalities are somewhat a simplified, perhaps even oversimplified representation of a deeper problem because truth be told, our policemen commit murder daily. A trip to any Special Anti-Robbery Squad headquarters will leave you shaken by the palpable atmosphere of visceral pain, torture and horror. Successive IGPs assume duties with a maiden announcement on the abolition of illegal checkpoints yet these national eyesores remain along our highways. Over the yuletide, many people posted updates on the number of checkpoints between Lagos and Onitsha. Some counted 40, others 50 and even 60 but none less than 40. That works out to about one checkpoint per 15 kilometres even though a lot of these checkpoints are ridiculously located within a kilometre of each other. Of particular note is the Benin axis where members of the SARS have gained international notoriety for abducting commuters at gunpoint and extorting huge sums from them. Countless incidents have been exposed with shocking revelations that some of these rogue officers have pos machines on the highway. A few times the police have been forced to act. However, informing Nigerians through informal tweets that an incident is being investigated is not enough. There is practically no punishment for errant officers as we rarely hear of any prosecution except for the few cases that gained national attention. Nigerians want them prosecuted and punished accordingly. Undoubtedly our police force is understaffed, undertrained and definitely ill-equipped to handle the pressure of securing 200m lives. Nevertheless, this institutional dysfunction has not prevented them from establishing an elaborate and organised hierarchy of corruption via unrecorded ‘returns’. I wonder who trained them in virtual bookkeeping and cloud computing. An ex-police officer once told me that reforming the police should start with the police college where cadets are informally coached in methods of intimidation and extortion. You can see that we are dealing with an inveterate problem here. At the peak of the public outcry against police brutality in August 2018, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo ordered the reformation of SARS. Yet almost 2 years on all these directives have amounted to nothing. This situation cannot and should not continue deteriorating. Some have argued that the crime rate on our roads dropped because of the presence of policemen. But this is very much debatable, as we cannot point to any statistics that support this claim. What’s more, our roads are rarely devoid of roadblocks so how can we possibly make a valid evaluation of the crime rates? While there are innumerable postulations on how best to reform the police little emphasis have been placed on advocacy which is a crucial ingredient in this battle. Many of the bad officers who besmirch the image of the police are emboldened by
cross-dressing does not have a social, cultural, and religious acceptance in Nigeria. The lifestyle is completely at variance with the moral standard of the Nigerian society. There is a need to utilize the important tool of the media to properly sensitize and educate our youths on our values as a country.
Global corporations are looking for workers with “productive capacities” that can be used in manufacturing, science and technology-intensive sectors, as well as information technologies.
In conclusion, it is important to realize the reasons why the education of our generation warrants more investment. Malcolm X once said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it”. Our future as a country is largely tied to our much we are willing to do to improve education in our country. The more resources, as well as attention, we give to the education of the children and youths can determine if Nigeria fails as a country in the new decade; unable to present its acclaimed leaders of tommorow to the global front.
It is not by magic that we have remained one. It is not that we‘ve had the best leadership or the most responsible citizenry. It is simply down to two reasons; our unflinching resilience and the conflicting sociocultural hegemonies among the tripartite pillars, power blocs that usually find a balance in the twilight of each administration. But we can do better. Our destiny as a nation cannot be eternally immersed in four-year election cycles. New paradigms must be evolved in our political order.
This will close in 13 seconds
