Izuu's Turn

By Pius Adesanmi Copied from this ever-truthful professor! Crawling gradually back into Nigeriana after a busy week, I hear with one ear that the mental carburetor of the average career Jonathanian has been overheating this weekend because of some incident involving their spiritual leader at OAU. I have to read up on that and return with my two and a half kobo later. I also hear that Nigeria's former Foreign Affairs Minister, Gbenga Ashiru, has died in a hospital in South Africa. I am sorry to hear this news. Whatever you may think of him and his political choices and affiliations, he was a fine Nigerian technocrat. However, I am not sorry to hear that he died in a hospital in South Africa. We are getting to a point where the only criterion that the WHO will use in gauging the development of a country's healthcare sector is the data on members of Nigeria's rulership who go there to die. Your hospitals will be deemed underdeveloped only if there is no kn...

After watching the grand opening of Governor Akpabio-led administration's stadium at Uyo, certain questions began to jostle for prominence in my mind. My ind immediately went straight to Governor Akpabio's next door neighbour at Abia. Uyo is just about an hour drive from Aba and if someone happens to drive to the opening yesterday through Aba, one will think he just emerged from pre-historic to a digital society. I have come to conclusion that the problem with a good number of Nigerian politicians is not political party affiliation but the absence or presence of one item - shame. The difference between Akpabio and Orji is not party since both belong to the ruling PDP. What I think is that one has shame and the other has none. If Orji is blessed with the virtue of possessing an iota of shame, he would have resigned a long time again and allowed better people to run the affairs of his state. Aba is a complete eye-sore and it is in an oil-producing state. Other south eastern gover...

Assuming air is a commodity like water, found in different quantities at different locations. In a country like mine, how would it be distributed? There will surely be serious shortage because even with a dam, Water is not sufficient, Electricity is epileptic Fish is inabundant But flooding is most welcome Environmental degradation is rampant And huge sums of money, by way of visible abracadabra, disappear into private purses, pockets and personal possessions. We are a people who take pleasure in lack amidst plenty Assuming air is fuel, gas, kerosene or any of the derivatives we have in abundance In a land like ours, how much of it can an individual have? Of course, we have dysfunctional refineries In God's Name, how does one build, not just one referinery, but many of them With huge sums of money, only for every one of them to break down To the point of no "mmekwatalism?" All we get is stories, always from reliable sources on conditions of anonymity And I ask, what is wr...

Many things have been written and documented about the ten-year administration of Professor Abdullahi Mahadi at the Gombe State University, Gombe. People who know him more than I do and those who met him even before I was born have variously eulogized this great manager of people and resources. I have never met him one-on-one, but having worked under him in the past six years, I wish to say a few words to mark the end of his tenure at Gombe State University, Gombe. I joined Gombe State University in 2008. By that time, the University has existed for four years. I still remember the first time I walked through the gates of this great institution to attend my interview. I was shocked to see a well-planned environment that beat all my expectations hands-down. I am aware of how new universities in my country are: run-down facilitates, make-shift everything, and run-down uncompleted/on-going projects which may never be completed. With this kind of inchoate milieu, it is very improbable...

I've been away from here for quite a while. Reason: don't actually know. Maybe it's brain fatigue. Or the numerous trips I've been making recently from my kitchen, to the living room and all the other rooms in the "new house" as my older soon will call it. So much has happened also since the last time I was here. As much as I try not to see the news channels I always find myself scrolling back to Al Jazeera, Euronews and CNN. I don't know whether my mind has been remotely paired with bad news - wars in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan. Then Ebola in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and over a thousand dead already. Then, in the spirit of negative black comradeship, Patrick Sawyer decided to invent the deadly disease to my dear country. Since then, so much has happened! From bitter kola, to salt solution and while the whole world is waiting for the American Zmapp, our honorable Minister for Health tells us we are royals who must use precious ornaments - in came ...

The dog is known for eating faeces in our climes. But there is no how it will end its enterprise and the goat will go and brush its teeth on its behalf. Likewise, no one take Panadol for another person's headache. Incidentally, not Nigerians. We sabi take Panadol for another person's headache even when we have severe diarrhea ourselves! The war between Israel and Gaza has been hyped and reported variously by the global media, of course with their usual side takings. The West, CNN especially, with its pro-Israel stance demonizes Gaza and it's people by highlighting the missiles which are undeniably being launched into Israel while downplaying the casualties on the other side. What I call the Muslim media, on the other hand, epitomized by the Iranian Press TV, suddenly becomes the voice of Gaza by emphasizing the heavy civilian casualties in Gaza and downplaying the military prowess of Hamas thereby making it look as if the people of Gaza (sometimes portraying them as 100% Mu...

By Femi Aribisala (on June 03, 2014 at 12:22 am) Note: This is not my write-up. I can't match the eloquence of the writer. I can't help agreeing with him either - Izuu  I was fifteen years old when the civil war broke out in Nigeria.  Although we were living in Ibadan in the South-west at the time, my sympathies were totally and unequivocally with the Igbos.  When a people have been so brutally butchered by their countrymen as happened to the Igbos, I felt they had no choice but to insist on leaving the country.  Therefore, I understood why the Biafrans went to war and what they were fighting for.  But I could not, for the life of me, understand what those on the federal side were fighting for.  Why would anybody fight for Nigeria? I lost a first-cousin fighting on the federal side during the civil war.  I wish I could have found out first-hand from him why he gave his life “to keep Nigeria one.”  Did he really believe in Nigeria?  I doub...