An Ode to Nigeria (For Country, for You and Me)
Photo by Tope A. Asokere from Pexels By Ojonugwa Yahaya. When you continually tell even the most beautiful creature… hmm maybe even more beautiful than Agbani Darego🤔…that she is ugly, in no time she may start believing and even start looking ugly… that is how dynamic nature and human psychology works. Learn to speak the right word to people, the environment you live in and the nation you call home. I will not stop holding on to this ideology of mine… that as we continue to confess negatively about Nigeria without making much effort to salvage what is left and to transform it to the nation of our dreams, she will constantly remain what we do not desire. It is not Nigeria as a geographical area that is bad or corrupt: an empty territory cannot be considered corrupt or bad. It is the humans that live in said territory that define and determine the character of the territory. So, if Nigeria is corrupt or bad, or “not homely”…it is me, you and the man next door that is corrupt and bad. Dubai isn’t what it is today due to the geographical area: after all I learnt that the territory is even a desert. It is the humans in Dubai that define Dubai that everyone – including you and I – see as a dream destination today. Think about it. Let us have a conversation. I am in love with great souls like Nike Okundaye. She is tirelessly holding and mending the broken artistic Nigerian heritage in an elegant and dynamic way. Nigeria has many heroes who do her great justice: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Kate Henshaw (an epitome of kind heartedness and courage), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (the queen of literature) Wole Soyinka (writing life on pages as if he was born with ink), Innocent Ifedaso of Innoson Motors, Allen Onyema of Air Peace, Folorunso Alakija, Mike Adenuga (master story teller! I mean…we learned to appreciate soap opera through ‘super story’) and many more. Then there are those Nigerians – including young people – who are tirelessly working in the development, economic, health, education, maritime, energy, ICT and advocacy sectors across country. With their work, they are reaching out to the underserved and hard-to-reach communities with messages of hope and provision of social amenities. Our nation has many unsung heroes! I think it is about right if we find a way to appreciate Nigeria. I know Nigeria isn’t treating anyone right but… the problem is more about the Nigerians than Nigeria as a geographical area. Yes…our reality is that we are overwhelmed and overshadowed with the many things that just aren’t working but do we fail to notice the many aspects of the positives in Nigeria? We can make the necessary sacrifices to change the narratives about Nigeria. We have the capacity to build our nation for ourselves. Let us build our country today!
Demographic Dividends Through Communication
Ramatu Ada Ochekliye presented this paper at the 7th Nigerian Annual Population Lecture Series that happened in Abuja in 2019. The theme of the series was ‘Nigeria’s Population Issues: Harnessing 21st Century Innovations to Achieve Demographic Dividends’. *** In 1758 when Carl Linnaeus introduced the term, Homo sapiens, and the rest of the world accepted it as the only human species still in existence, the ‘most advanced of the lot’, the ‘wise man’, he probably didn’t know that a new species of humans were on their way to becoming the extant species. Granted, it took a couple of centuries before this new species came into existence. And unlike the Homo sapiens that were erect, with a skull rounded at the back of their head to denote a reduction in neck muscles and straight fingers, this new species was slightly bent over, with elongated necks and crooked fingers. These new species are…you. Today, it is very common place to see most people bent over their mobile devices, scouring the internet for the latest news, juiciest stories, salacious gossip or just to share their day with their significant other, their family, friends, acquaintances or people they want to – and I hope you pardon me for doing this – shoot their shot with. All of this is made possible by the internet, and its loudest child, social media. Social media is the most commonly used mode of communication in the world’s fourth industrial revolution today. It is a sure-fire way to reach millions – and dare I say, billions – of people at the very same time. It is also very intimate, allowing you to be ensconced in a different world with just one person. I have a theory for why social media is such a powerful, albeit addictive tool, for communication. But to really explain it, we have to go all the way back to the first industrial revolution. It was a time when mechanization had just begun to gain grounds in agriculture, extraction, and transportation. Granted, a lot of these weren’t happening in Africa or even Nigeria; in fact, we were on our way to decades of colonization. But there is a link that brings us to the Nigeria that we have today. So back to my story. The first industrial revolution saw an acceleration in human and economic exchanges. However, there was a gap that was still missing; communication. People could only communicate with each other either by being in the same space as each other, writing letters, or sending out emissaries (what we would call town criers). The second revolution brought on bigger gains in industrialization across many parts of Europe, helping them solidify the gains they made prior to colonizing many countries, and setting them as world powers. During this period which ran between the late 1800s and early 1990s, the telegraph and the telephone were invented, making long distance communication a bit easier. And the era of the newspaper was born. Communication with individuals and groups of people never seemed easier. You could walk to any phone booth and call anyone or just pick up a newspaper to find out what was happening. But as good as this was, it still presented basic communication with many constraints. Then the third revolution brought on the rise of electronics with transistors and microprocessors, telecommunication and the invention of computers and maybe, birthed the digital revolution that began in the middle of the 20th century. Radios, television…big opportunities to reach millions of people at the same time. Think NTA Network news where we all watched the most recent happenings in the country at 9pm daily, or the Presidential broadcast on Radio Nigeria on Workers and Independence Days yearly. But interpersonal communication still posed a problem. It had similar constraints like the first industrial revolution and if you didn’t have call units or a phone at home, you couldn’t make calls to people. Thankfully, there was another option that continued to remain relevant through all these; the letter. We still wrote to friends and families and – even pen pals that were total strangers – with our ‘golden pens from our golden baskets of love’ and responded with a ‘doxology’. And finally, we came to the fourth industrial revolution and the internet was invented. This was a major game changer for everything, but especially for how communication began to happen. Everything was faster, easier, relatively cheaper, more private yet, more able to reach even more people at the very same time. The birth of chat sites – think Yahoo messenger – revolutionized the entire way people interacted. Now, you could talk to different people from different parts of the world at the click of a keyboard. And as cyber cafés began to take over every street, access to people became even easier. Then the mobile phone was created, and all that information and interaction was brought to the tips of our fingers. So, my theory about human’s addiction to social media is not necessarily about the platforms but a salient need to communicate with people, to see and be seen, and to feel a connection to life that transcends ours. What then is the correlation between Nigeria, the industrial revolutions and social media today? Well, for starters…Nigeria really didn’t take off with the revolutions because one, Nigeria didn’t even exist as a nation during the first revolution; two, it was a collection of colonies in the second revolution; three, it gained independence as the third revolution began to give way to the fourth; and four, Nigeria is trying to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of technological advancements. What is clear however is that Nigeria picked the aspects of communication that came with each revolution and adopted it quickly. Our town criers gave way to traditional media which is gradually giving way to new media and with an estimated 15 – 20 million active users of the internet in the country, communication using social media
What Happened to Kainene?
I was sitting in the bus when a thought came into my head. ‘What happened to Kainene?’ For those who may think me crazy, let me explain who Kainene is and possibly, why she came into my head today. One of my all-time favorite persons in the world is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. From the moment a friend walked up to me and said I needed to watch a TedX Talk titled, We Should All Be Feminists, I have been enamored of her. Prior to this time, I had never heard her name and I didn’t know that she authored books. Or if I am more truthful, I didn’t read African authors at that point in my life, so I didn’t know who was in the scene. When I heard that great (GREAT) speech, I was blown away by the very essence of who she was and, I wanted to guzzle everything she had ever put out. Thankfully, not long after that, I heard one of her books – Half of a Yellow Sun – was going to be adapted into a film. I was excited! At that point, I had not read the book, and though I usually prefer books to their film adaptations, for some reason, I wanted to see the film first. So when it got out, I immersed myself in the film. I was introduced to Olanna and Kainene, twin sisters who had returned to Nigeria after studying in the United Kingdom. Through the story, we see how the lives of five people – Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene and Richard – are changed as a result of the Nigerian Civil war which happened from 1967 to 1970. This brings me to what happened to Kainene. At first, it seemed that Kainene was ‘unfazed’ with the war that was leaving a trail of death and carnage all around her. Then, seeing first hand just how brutal the war was, she put on a more humanitarian persona; which was translated in her running a refugee camp. Due to the lack of food and drugs, she decided to go into ‘enemy’ territory and trade with them for the basic necessities which her people desired. That was when she disappeared. No one knows what happened to Kainene; till today. Kainene is a reminder that so many people who lost loved ones during and after the war do not have closure. Let me explain this. If someone you love dies during a war or a crisis or an accident or anything bad that you can think of, you may possibly have a body to grieve over, or a gravesite to put in that person and the memories you shared. You can begin to heal every day and in time, their memories become less painful. Your mind tells you that you can only grieve so much before you have to stop. That is the finality that comes with death. But if they just disappear, with no hint of whether they are alive or not, you remain in a state of perpetual grief. You continuously wonder if today will be the day they walk in the door; if they would reach out; if they are held against their will; if they have eaten; what they have eaten; how they look; if they had children; if they were doing well; and every other thing that your mind can possibly fathom. If you take a cup of water, you wonder if they have water where they are. If you laugh, your mind wonders if they can laugh and torments you for daring to. Every day, every hour, every second of every year that they remain ‘unfound’, you lose a bit of yourself and your sanity because there is no closure. I once read of a story of an old woman who sat a certain couch everyday staring at the streets in front of her house. When her children asked her what she was doing, she said she was waiting to see if her brother would return home. He had been in the soldier in the civil war. She did this until her children had their own children; until her grandchildren wondered if grandma was losing her mind; until she could barely see the road in front of her house. Still…her brother never returned and the day she believed he was not going to come back, she died of a broken heart. So why did I think of what happened to Kainene? It was more about a group of other girls far, far away from Kainene’s Nsukka. I was thinking of the Chibok girls and every other person that has been kidnapped by the insurgent group, Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād, or as they are commonly called, Boko Haram. Beyond that, I was thinking of family members who had been separated by the insurgency; families who didn’t have phone numbers and couldn’t contact themselves. I thought also of internally displaced people whose loved ones were scattered about in different IDP camps, with no hope of reaching them. It made me ask myself, ‘how were these people doing?’ Kainene is a fictional character. Yet, I am constantly wondering what happened to her. Imagine the people with the real Kainenes in their lives; people searching for answers about their loved ones; people wondering what horrors said loved ones are going through; people holding hope up that one day, they would return home; and people who will die with that hope never becoming a reality. These people cannot heal because their loved ones have been separated from them without the necessary closure they need to move past the pain. Where is this all heading to? For starters, the security situation in Nigeria is becoming more severe, with daredevil abductors taking up citizens at their whim. Many of these victims will return home. Many will not. And for people like the Chibok Girls, or Leah Sharibu, or any number of women, girls and children who may have been abducted,
How Can We Help Poor(er) Women?
A Page from Tom Paulson I was heading home on November 6, 2018, when my sister called me to get her some juice. It was about 8:50pm and I was really tired. I told her I wouldn’t do it but when I got to my junction, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to get her the juice. It was as I was walking to the provisions store that I saw a woman sitting on the side of the road, with her legs spread out and her hand scratching her head. She was dressed in mis-matched Ankara clothes and she had a look of utter defeat about her. At first glanced, she looked like she had some mental problems; the kind that could not be corrected. And because of how she sat, I didn’t immediately see the children by her side. When I got closer, I saw that she had one child pressed to her body. And behind her on the staircase of the shop closest to the one I was going to, were two other children sleeping on the bare floor. They were covered in dust from rolling on the ground. It was heartbreaking to see that the children couldn’t have been older than 5. I slowed down to really look at her…and then I walked past. I concluded that she may have lost her mind and I didn’t want to be chased down for not minding my business. So, I went to the shop and got my juice. When I got out of the shop, I looked in the direction she sat and saw that she was still there. At this point, I knew that I couldn’t leave her – with those kids sleeping on the road – without doing anything. It was also at that point that I saw that there were two other children with her, bringing the total number to five. Those children, and the utter helplessness of their situation, convinced me to take the risk and walk up to her. ‘Madam, wetin happen?’ I asked in pidgin English. She looked at me and turned away. And looked at me again, as if deciding whether to talk or not. ‘I need help.’ She responded quietly. ‘Where is your house?’ I asked. She pointed in the direction I had come from. I asked again, prodding her to say more. ‘Phase 1 side.’ Those were the only words she said. And hearing that, I made my first mistake. ‘Ha ahn! Why you allow your children sleep for road like this? E no good now. See as them lie down for bare ground like this. E no good at all. Oya…stand up.’ I remember exactly what I said because I feel so ashamed of it afterwards. She looked at me as I spoke to her and I could tell that she was equally ashamed to be in that situation. She started to gather her things as I opened my purse and took out money. N500. By this time, a crowd had begun to gather, and I didn’t want to be seen giving her money. So, I quickly thrust the money in her hand and said, ‘Oya…get up and go home.’ And I walked away from the crowd that was sending blessings my way as they gathered around her. I saw some other people giving her money and one man even flagged a Keke for her and her children. The woman was on her feet at this point and that was when I saw she was pregnant; probably in her third trimester. I realized I had fucked up. I mulled over everything that happened and when I finally got home and relayed the story to my sister, she confirmed what I had been feeling. I should have done more. I had prejudged the woman ‘crazy’ before even reaching her. If I hadn’t, I would have seen that she was just a really frustrated woman who was going through a lot. I wouldn’t have waited to get into the shop before making my mind up to talk to her. And when I finally did, I let the crowd rattle me because I am not comfortable with helping people in the eye of the public. But what is worse is that, everything I had learned in the last two years about solving problems flew out of my head when faced with one. Rather than just give her money, I should have asked a few more questions after she said she needed help. What was wrong? Why was she on the road? What kind of help did she need? Did she have a job? A business? Anything? What skills did she have? Were those all her children? Did she have a home to go to? Did she have a partner? What did he do? Where was he at that moment? Was she running away from him? I know that there are even more questions that I could have asked. The answers to these questions would have better informed how I helped her rather than just giving her a little money. Knowing about the underlying issues that drove her to the road at night with five children and one on the way could have presented me the opportunity to offer her a job or begin to look for someone who could. But I gave her N500 and left. N500 which was my juice money. N500 which could solve some of her problems for that night and drive her back to the road again the next day. I am ashamed of myself and how I reacted. I wish I could go back in time and undo my reaction. I wish I had been more perceptive and patient when dealing with her. I wish I had ignored the crowd and treated her as someone with full agency, rather than some I could tell what to do. I wished I hadn’t been more focused on aesthetics rather than her humanity. Because right there is the crux of the matter! I was more concerned about how the situation looked that I did not
Complicit in Mob Justice
Armed African MobImage: Otago Daily Times The news of a ‘7 year old boy’ gruesomely tortured and burned to death for stealing Garri broke yesterday (November 16, 2016) when a user on Twitter, @Adeyanjudeji, tweeted pictures about it and Linda Ikeji carried it on her blog. In a matter of hours, a video had surfaced to join the pictures and though I didn’t watch it, the pictures were enough to show people standing by as this little boy was beaten up, draped with a tyre and set ablaze; all by a mob of men and women frothing at the mouth with supposedly righteous indignation. It was later discovered that he was a full grown man as opposed to the little boy that was originally reported. This is not the first time mob ‘justice’ has happened in Nigeria or Africa even. In fact, this is one of the many instances that have been in the news so far this year. Children, adults, groups and even whole communities are set upon by mobs and burned to ground; with wanton disregard for human life and humanity. There are all sorts of mob murderers in the country (and continent) and they can be classified into the following; 1. The Religious Zealots: These ones are the deeply uneducated yet easily offended members of a religious group. They are machete-happy and cannot wait to cut down and burn any and every one who dares blaspheme their precious gods. They are found in Traditional religion, Christianity and Islam. Depending on where you are in the country, you don’t want to be caught by these men. In Central African Republic, it is almost common place to hear of Christian mobs beating and killing Muslims. In Nigeria, we are still reeling from the mob killings in Zamfara, Niger, Abuja and Kano by Muslim Zealots. I wrote extensively about this in my post, ‘Attacking Christians?’ In fact, killers of Bridget Agbahime were just released by the Kano State Attorney General few days go. 2. The ‘Crime Reduction’ Killers: These groups are always on ground to deliver jungle justice to anyone who steals; whether that theft is money or Garri. Do you remember the gruesome Ejigbo pepper incident where a woman and her daughters were stripped down and rubbed with alligator pepper mixed with gin for allegedly stealing pepper? With the culprits even going as far inserting this mixture in the women’s vaginas and using sticks to ‘stir’ it in? Or the gruesome killing of four buys in what has been called the ALUU4 killings? Or the many cases of alleged thieves been beaten and burned to death across the country? In their view, killing these ‘thieves’ serves as a deterrent for others and in a way, a strike back at the number of terrible robbery attacks they themselves have had to face. 3. The Foreigners-Are-Taking-Our-Jobs-So-We-Must-Be-Xenophobic Lot: This is especially true for South Africa where citizens of the country targeted and killed immigrants and visitors for allegedly taking their jobs. From Johannesburg to Soweto, these rampaging crowds went about beating and killing fellow Africans in one of the worst xenophobic attacks in recent time. No one was brought to justice and even the South African Zulu king, Godwill Zwelithi, is still enjoying himself in his kingdom, even though his hateful speech about foreigners stirred the xenophobic attacks and his silence intensified it. 4. The Politicians-With-Authority-Over-The-Police-And-Military Killers: Many governments in Africa are directlyresponsible for the deaths of their citizens through organized mob action. Look at what is happening in Nigeria. Murdering herdsmen go on rampage in many towns across the country and almost nothing is ever done. Southern Kaduna is still broiling from the 31 people that were just killed two days ago. Many residents of Benue, Jos, Ekiti, Enugu and Taraba are still mourning the loss of their relatives. And what does the government do? Almost nothing! The government is complicit in the deaths of these Nigerians. On the other hand, bandits go into communities in Northern Nigeria (Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina) and kill at will. Cultists in the Southern part of the country (Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Rivers etc) act like nothing can be done to them. And what happens? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! All we have are a group of elected officials who always ask for understanding when these acts occur. When these killings begin to affect them or people like them, you then see a show of force. Even more so is the direct killings of Shiite Muslims by the government’s mob; the army. Hundreds of Shiites have been killed and hastily buried because they are dissenting voices from what is popular and accepted as the norm. And even though I do not agree with the beliefs of the Shiites, I do not think it is an excuse to kill them. People who protest peacefully are set upon by angry crowds and killed in the very glare of the army. You begin to wonder which minority is next on the list. 5. You And I: Oh you didn’t know? We are all complicit in these murders! You and I are part of the problem. We contribute to the mob killings by being silent. Oh yes! We stand and watch when people are killed and we even take out our phones for our favorite pastime; recording the moment. If there are no pictures, it didn’t happen right? We talk about it in anger on social media, spewing all manner of self-righteous indignation at the horrific way someone was killed and when it stops being a trending topic, we forget about it until the next incident happens. We come out en masse for rallies to protest increase in fuel price hike but we don’t do the same to demand that our government protects the lives of EVERY NIGERIAN AND AFRICAN. Well, who really cares about Nigerian (or African) lives? After all, it doesn’t affect us now, does it? We share pictures and videos of gruesome killings in our moment of shame and then we move
The Foreign Certificate Syndrome
Picture From: The Evolllution Have you noticed that many companies in Nigeria today ask that prospective employees have at least a Masters Degree from a foreign institution? This has led many Nigerians to do all they canto go abroad and get a certificate. This means that Nigeria currently spends over $2 billion (N400 billion) annually as capital flight on education abroad as revealed by The Chairman, Senate Committee on Tertiary Institution and Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Senator Binta Masi. (Vanguard Nigeria Newspaper, February 10, 2016) Is it fair that Nigerians who school in the country are discriminated against based on the type of certificate they have? What needs to be done to solve this problem? Watch more in the link below. THE FOREIGN CERTIFICATE SYNDROME Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos on burning African issues.
What This Recession Means
President Muhammadu Buhari,Nigeria’s PresidentCredit: Nairametrics There is a recession in Nigeria. I am not even going to pretend that I understand all the dynamics of the current state of Nigeria nor am I going to explain what some of the economic terms I will be using are. In truth, many Nigerians do not care about or understand what all of those words mean. This piece will attempt to explain what this recession means for Nigerians in the middle and lower class demographics. I started walking on this road when this woman, let us call her Mama Success, came to my house. I have known Mama Success for close to ten years now. Mama Success barely has any formal education and is a petty trader. She is married to a mechanic and they have three children. Since I have known her, she has always been in the lower demographic, struggling daily to keep her family. She sells whatever is in season. When there is tomatoes, she sells that. If it is groundnut, that is what she sells. As at the time of this post, she was shuttling between hawking cooked corn and boiled groundnuts. I had not seen her in two, maybe three, years and when she came to my house, we spent time catching up. She had been in my place barely 30 minutes when she started complaining bitterly about the state of the economy. ‘Ramat, you know I eat corn only because it is cheap but now, even that corn is expensive oh!’ That was how she launched into her tirade. She told me that corn that she used to buy for ₦50/tier had gone up to ₦220/tier. She talked about Garri – Nigeria’s ‘food for the poor’ as many people call it – and the price increase was shocking. I listened to her moan about all manner of things and what really broke me was when she spoke of her first son. She obviously couldn’t send him to school on what she earned but somehow, a benefactor took up his education and sent him to one of the Unity Schools. Her joy was short lived when barely two years in, the government proposed an increase of about 300% on school fees, asking that parents pay ₦75,000 from what used to be ₦20,000. The benefactor announced that he could no longer pay Success’s fees and wished them well in their endeavors. Mama Success worries about her children’s education and she worries that they may end up like their father and her; illiterate, poor, unhappy. When she left my house, her complaints stayed with me. I kept thinking about her and her children and other families like them. So I decided to do some recce myself. I went to the market a couple of times to get a sense of the price of things. Here is a list of the price of a couple of things in the market. Vegetables are cheap but that may be because this is rainy reason. The list above is just so we can get a semblance of things. I used small measures and not wholesale measures so you can see how hard things are. People who have steady incomes and even basic salaries are feeling the brunt of this recession. Every additional ₦10 is something someone in the lower class feels deeply. But the thing is, it is not just people in the lower class complaining. Nigerians categorized as ‘middle class’ are unhappy too. They might not feel the bite as much as people in the lower class, but they are feeling it. This brings me to the next point; employment or the lack of it. Millions of Nigerians want to work but there are no viable jobs. Okay, let me be fair. There are jobs but in most cases, they are just not worth it. Companies across board no longer give full employment. Everyone one is toting the magical word: internship. This means that companies can’t afford to pay people commensurate salaries but since they still want their jobs done, they hire people for the barest minimum with promises of full employment after about six months. I have been to a couple of interviews where prospective employers want you to do a ₦200,000 job for nothing more than ₦50,000. And because there aren’t that many plush jobs readily available, people take these slavery internships and hope that things get better for them. I don’t even want to mention clothes and transportation because in the light of other things, they seem trivial. Anyone who has been buying fuel, paying for public transport or buying clothes knows that things are a bit more expensive than they were last year. The news is filled with companies downsizing and even salaries being slashed. This is coupled with the fact that some parastatals and state governments cannot even pay salaries. What does this all mean? This means that even with the hike in the price of things, fewer and fewer people have the purchasing power to get basic necessities. As a result, the markets aren’t as full as they used to be. I spent time talking to market men and women, okada riders and bus drivers, petty traders, hawkers, masons, tailors and small food vendors and the general feeling amongst them is ‘the country is hard.’ That Nigerians are suffering because of the policies of this government, or the lack thereof, is no longer news. What is however surprising is the government’s callous dismissal of the suffering of Nigerians. Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, said that the ‘recession in Nigeria is exaggerated’. Exaggerated? EXAGGERATED?! I want him to tell that to Mama Success as she reduces her daily meals from two to one. I want him to tell that to the okada rider who is worried about school fees for his children. I want him to tell that to the civil servant who is earning minimum wage and
Attacking Christians?
I have always believed in, and respected the rights of every human being, as I expect my rights to be respected. Though I treat all basic human rights as the same, I am partial to the rights to life, freedom, dignity of person and freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression. I believe in the fundamental principle that my rights should not impinge on another’s and vice versa. You can imagine why the list I am about to make is seriously bugging me. 1. BRIDGET AGBAHEME: Bridget was a 47 year old Igbo woman living in Kano who was attacked in front of her shop in Kofar Wambai, beaten to death and paraded around the streets. Bridget was married to Pastor Mike Agbaheme, who is a senior Pastor with Deeper Life Bible Church. She was a mother of one. This happened on June 2, 2016. Her offense: allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad 2. REVEREND JOSEPH ZACHARIAH KURAH: was a 47 year old senior cleric with Evangelical Church of West Africa or ECWA as it is popularly called. He was killed by two people in Obi Local Government area of Nassarawa state. He was on his way to inspect a roofing project when he was killed. The chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Nassarawa state chapter, said the Reverend was attacked and dismembered, with his two hands cut off so he could bleed to death. The date of this incident? June 30, 2016. His offense: unknown 3. FRANCIS EMMANUEL: is a 41 year old carpenter who works in Kakuri, Kaduna state. He went to buy wood and on his return, bought food to eat. As soon as he started eating, some hoodlums approached him and asked if he was a Muslim or Christian. He did not respond. Another asked why he was eating during Ramadan. He said he was not a Muslim. That statement was greeted with a slap. This was followed by being pounced on and stabbed multiple times. His Offense: eating during Ramadan. 4. EUNICE OLAWALE: was a 42 year old deaconess with the Redeemed Christian Church of GOD, Kubwa, Abuja. She was married to a senior Pastor of the same church and had a routine of setting off in the morning to preach to her community; in what was called ‘Morning Cry’. She told her husband she had been threatened around a mosque one day and after promising to be cautious, she went out on the 10th day of July, 2016, at about 5: 30am. She never returned home. Her body was found with her throat slit and her head resting on the Bible she used to preach. She was a mother of 7 children. Her offense: preaching in her community. 5. THREE PEOPLE: The Independent Nigeria reported that three men in Niger state were, like the case of Bridget, accused of blaspheming against Islam and were summarily executed by their self-appointed judge, jury and executioner. Their names were not released, hence the broad category. Their offense: allegedly blaspheming against Islam. 6. CATHOLIC CHURCH ATTACK: the most recent attack happened on the 16th of July, 2016. Thisday Newspaper reported that a group of Muslim youth attacked St. Philips Catholic Parish,Baki Iku, close to Zuma rock in Niger state. It was also reported that the security men and resident Seminarian were beaten to a pulp and women who had gone for prayers were chased away. Properties of the church were destroyed and the community was in shock. This attack reportedly happened after the Juma’at prayers. The youth reportedly said Friday was their day of prayer and that the Christians only had one day to pray, which is Sunday. The church’s offense: praying on a Friday All these incidents happened in the space of less than two months. Taken individually, they can be seen as unrelated and unconnected but looking at them as a whole, one cannot help but see the connection between these events; radical ideology. When you add the recent killing in Benue, Jos and Taraba from herdsmen, the connection seem clearer. In most of these cases, the attackers have called themselves Muslims and have based their actions on what they have interpreted from the Qur’an. Some might even call it righteous indignation at a perceived slight to Islam and her tenets but is that reason enough to take the lives of people and destroy properties? And in such gruesome manner? It is disheartening to see the continual wanton disregard for human life on the guise of upholding religious beliefs. Each person is entitled to hold whatever belief they choose to have, without fear of repercussion from those who do not share their beliefs. The extrajudicial ways these cases have been handled makes me wonder if there was no better way to handle the situation. If the people above had blasphemed against Islam in one way or another, couldn’t they have been taken to court? And if the conventional courts were not good enough, couldn’t they have been taken to a Sharia court? The problem is, with every case of jungle justice, just few of the killers are caught and the majority would continue live their lives, waiting for the next perceived offense to unleash their inner hulks and kill another person. This then brings back the question of whether the lives of Christians, especially Christians in Northern Nigeria, are considered less human. Governor Nasir ElRufai of Kaduna state was quick to respond to the attack on Francis Emmanuel, saying that the state wouldn’t tolerate religious intolerance of any form. I applaud his resolve to protecting the lives of citizens of his state and that is something worth emulating. The Supreme Council for Sharia, Kaduna state chapter, also responded by saying it was un-Islamic to attack people for not fasting. Nationally, the President reacted to some of the killings but is that enough? Is there more the president should be doing? My belief
Fuel Subsidy Removal: Worsening Nigerian Lives?
Photo Credit: INVESTORS KING(www.investorsking.com) For a while now, I have deliberately ignored commenting on the happenings in our country because one cannot speak against this government without being labelled ‘pro-Jonathan’, ‘pro-PDP’ or ‘anti-Buhari’. I know that this government needs time to get her foot firmly planted but refusing to see anything wrong with some of her policies – or the lack of it – is just wrong. Today however, it is important that I break my silence. The Minister of Petroleum (State), Ibe Kachikwu, announced that fuel subsidy had been removed and the new pump price of petrol would now range from ₦135 to ₦145; with ₦145 as the price cap/ceiling. This is, by simple calculation, a 67% increase from the official pre-fuel-subsidy-removal price of ₦86.50. In the last 2 to 4 months leading to this removal, Nigerians had to battle fuel scarcity and annoyingly long queues at filling stations. As anyone who has had to endure such queues, you know that the wait was dreary, stifling and a complete waste of time. Even at that, there was no guarantee that we would get fuel at the stipulated price. I remember being on a queue for 4 hours as my friend tried to get fuel. After the long hours of wait, my friend got the fuel and had to sneak ₦500 to the fuel pump attendant so she could get fuel for her generator. Even more than the long queues were the consequent effect of the fuel scarcity; THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING WENT UP! The price of food, clothes, fees and taxes, and transportation went up. The things one could spend ₦1000 on gradually became fewer and fewer. I felt the pinch more with transportation. I do not drive so I have to use public transport to get me where I want to go. The transport fares in Lagos that were already too high, got higher still. My daily transport of ₦700 went up to about ₦1200; more than 71% increase. This may be comfortable for a person with a steady, high income but as I didn’t have a job or business at the time, it was a big bite on me. Even among friends who had what I would deem ‘plush’ jobs, the complaint about the increased cost of transportation was bitter. With this fuel subsidy removal, thus increase in fuel price, I believe that life will get progressively harder. Oh! The logic behind the removal is stellar as explained below; · Nigeria CANNOT afford to pay fuel subsidies now; · Competition would probably bring the price of fuel down; · More people will be able to get into the business of refined oil, thus removing the case of the cabals; · Channeling the money that would have been used for subsidy into renovating our refineries and producing our own oil needs; · Improving other sectors of the economy with the subsidy money and; · Eventually cutting down on fuel imports when we have our refineries up and running. But the timing is poor! Many Nigerians are literally groaning under the current hardship we are facing. Just as Nigeria cannot afford to continue to pay these subsidies, Nigerians CANNOT afford this current policy! Already, fuel stations are beginning to hoard the product with the prospect of selling at higher prices. This means that transportation fares WILL go up again! Food prices will follow suit and soon enough, EVERYTHING will be more expensive. If this fuel subsidy removal came at a time when basic salaries were manageable, many Nigerians would not grunt under the burden that is about to get heavier. But no; salaries are poor! How will Nigerians survive this? And for those of us who have no viable jobs…do I even need to ask? One doesn’t need to be ‘pro-Jonathan’ or ‘pro-PDP’ to see and SAY that though the long term effects of this removal would probably be great, the current effects will be damning on most Nigerians. What then are we to do?
Boko Haram: Gunning for a Religious War
Soldier with missiles.Image: Reuters The insurgency in the North Eastern part of Nigeria has left thousands dead and millions displaced from their homes. If you are reading this, you know that the punch you felt at the onset of the insurgency is sadly lacking today. This is because the reports of attacks are almost daily now, with Borno, Yobe and parts of Adamawa taking the brunt of the attacks. Yes, the attacks have spread from the North East to other states like Kano, Kaduna, Niger and Jos and even the capital city, Abuja, but none of these states have had to deal with the sheer loss of lives and displacement of people as the North Eastern states of Nigeria have. Now, I have been following the news about the insurgency; not only because it saddens me to see people murdered in cold blood and my role as a would-be journalist, but also because I live in the North East. You cannot imagine the thought that goes through my head every single time I hear of an invasion, ambush, attack or bombing. I know my family, friends and loved ones aren’t really keen on my being in the North East so I know that they worry when they hear the stories coming from this region. After the bomb blast in Yola yesterday (October 23, 2015), I came home to several missed calls from my family wondering if I was okay. I had to call my mother, grandmother, sisters and friends to assure them of my safety. It was while I was doing this that something struck me. ‘BOKO HARAM MILITANTS SEEM TO BE GUNNING FOR A RELIGIOUS WAR IN THE COUNTRY’ I pursued this thought for a bit and imagined that I was finally becoming a conspiracy theorist. The thought wouldn’t leave me, no matter how hard I tried to shake it off. It even followed me to my dreams. I decided to do some research about it and my research is lending more and more credence to the theory. Let me explain what I have been thinking. When Goodluck Jonathan was President of Nigeria, the Boko haram sect became bigger, more ruthless, much more daring and inhumane in their insurgency. Many people expressed what they thought was the Boko Haram ideology. At first, it seemed like they wanted to prevent formal education as postulated by Western countries. Then it seemed like they wanted to prevent any thing that looked like the West; religion (in this case Christianity), government institutions, the security forces and the general capitalist ideology that the country was tilting towards. It was no surprise then that the United Nations building, prisons, police headquarters, schools, markets, parks, government buildings and churches were attacked. While most people expressed shock at the attacks, it really didn’t touch people until places of worship (churches) started taking the brunt of the attack. People were mortified that the sect would dare to go to ‘houses of GOD’ to perpetuate their heinous blood-lust. The number of attacks on churches increased such that people waited every Sunday to hear which church had been attacked where. Here are a few examples of such reports as chronicled by Wikipedia. 1. December 25, 2011 – 41 people were killed by Boko Haram militant attacks and shootings at churches in Madalla, Jos, Gakada and Damaturu. This marked the beginning of attacks in churches; 2. January 5-6, 2012 – 37 Christians were targeted and killed by the Boko Haram militia; 3. April 8, 2012 – 38 people were killed following a bombing at a church in Kaduna; 4. June 17, 2012 – 19 people were murdered following bomb attacks at three churches in Kaduna. The bombings in Kaduna stretched already terse nerves between Muslims and Christians in the state; 5. August 7, 2012 – Deeper Life church shooting; 19 people were killed when Boko Haram gunmen raided a church in Kogi state. This lead to reprisal attacks the following day, resulting in the death of two soldiers and one Muslim; 6. December 25, 2012 – 27 Christians were killed in Maiduguri and Potiskum by suspected Boko Haram Militants; 7. December 28, 2012 – another 15 Christians were murdered in the villages of Musari by unknown gunmen thought to be Boko Haram; 8. January 31, 2014 – 11 Christians were killed in Chakawa by Boko Haram; 9. February 14, 2014 – while many people were celebrating Valentine’s Day, the Borno Massacre happened. In that massacre, 121 Christian villagers were killed by Boko Haram in Konduga, Borno state; 10. February 15, 2014 – a day after that horrible massacre, 90 more Christians were killed in Gwosa by Boko Haram. In that same attack, it was reported that 9 soldiers also lost their lives; 11. June 2, 2014 – the Gwosa Massacre, where 200 (mostly Christian villagers) were killed, happened in Borno state. The attack was attributed to the Boko Haram sect. Nigerians rescued from the clutches of Boko HaramImage: Anglican Cable Network Nigeria In comparison, the numbers of mosques attacked while Goodluck Jonathan was president were far fewer than the number of churches attacked. These attacks were; 1. August 12, 2013 – in an attack in a Maiduguri mosque, 56 people were killed; 2. November 3, 2014 – a double suicide bombing in Yobe state left 15 Shiites dead; 3. November 28, 2014 – a bleak day indeed for many Muslim faithful, especially friend and families of the 120 Muslims killed during suicide bombings and gun attacks. The people killed were followers of the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II and they were killed at the Kano mosque where the Emir prays; 4. February 1, 2014 – a suicide bomber killed five people outside a mosque in Gombe. So it seemed like the insurgents were targeting people who shared the same religious belief as the incumbent President. This, I believe, was to push the president to do something irrational, like choose sides and order the killing of those who didn’t share his faith. Many Christians cried out
