Izuu's Turn

I have this friend that I am very fond of He is a Nigerian; a good one at that! One day, recently, he told me that the reason Insurgency is thriving in his part of the country, Is because there is still sympathy for the rebels. He told me about his mother And her sympathy for what is going on But he ascribed her predilection to her lack of Western education! I laughed and quickly told him something... Something I haven't thought about till I said it . My heart goes out to these innocent girls Who have been forcefully abducted for what we don 't know! My heart goes out also to the innumerable innocent Citizens of this land who have died from bombs, Bullets, assassinations, decapitations, etc As I reminisce on these unpleasan t thoughts I am also forced to remember countles s Nigerians Especially, people of Igbo extraction Who have been variously targe t ed and killed In different parts of northern Nigeria in times past Every...

I congratulate the entire Roman Catholic faithfuls, friends and country people on the "emergence" of two brand new saints: St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII. E no easy! Already, they are being bombarded with prayer requests from all over the world! But... not "but" because it looks as if I am going to say something blasphemous against this highly auspicious religious moment for over one billion Catholic faithfuls worldwide. I can't trivialise the faith, belief and confidence of fellow believers. I am just surprised that people are quick to embrace new saints, yet they don't strive to live their own lives in saintly pattern. You want a saint to pray for you, but you quickly forget that if saints had lived the way you are now living, there will be no saint to pray for anyone. Sainthood is good. It's received by living Godly life. I am one of those that believe that there are more saints dead and alive than the church has recognised. ...

Culled from The Punch April 21, 2014 by Tolu Ogunlesi Two weeks ago, a young Nigerian, Yusuf Onimisi, vanished from Twitter, days after posting photos he took, with his phone, of soldiers mobilised in the wake of the attempted jailbreak at the Directorate of State Security headquarters in Abuja. Expectedly, the news filtered online in no time. A group of social-media-savvy persons started a loud campaign alleging that the DSS was responsible for his disappearance. There were rumours he had been beaten and possibly even killed. The DSS, thinking this was still 1994, at first refused to comment on the matter. Eventually, in the face of immense local and international pressure – mostly driven online – released him. While it is difficult to justify the wisdom of live-tweeting a military operation like that (especially when your access is made possible only by the fact that you work very close to the highly-sensitive Presidential Villa grounds), it is even more diff...

Copied from the Facebook wall of Professor Pius Adesanmi We must repeat this point: there can be no possible excuse or justification for stupidity on the part of those who have read the big books and whose minds have been humanized by the best thinkers in the Humanities. Such people in our public life cannot expect to be assessed like Evans Bipi or Ayodele Fayose. That is why I devoted two column installments to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's "shiki shiki ma mi owo de" philosophy in the exercise of his duties as CBN governor. Now, take your time and read this profile of another mind that has read the proper books and is now behaving extremely stupidly: ============================================ Kayode Fayemi is a former Director of the Centre for Democracy & Development, a research and training institution dedicated to the study and promotion of democratic development, peace-building and human security in Africa. Prior to his establishment of the Centre, h...