Essays

For the last few years, and especially since I have been writing public commentaries, one request that I get asked more than any other is this: we want to know about your father. We want to know about his political career. What really happened? Why did he take the positions that he took? What motivated him? Yet it has taken me a long time to bare my mind on this issue simply because I have chosen to write a detailed, comprehensive and befitting book on it sometime in the not too distant future. However, for now, I will at least attempt to answer some of these questions in this short piece. The late Chief R.A. Fani-Kayode Q.C., S.A.N., C.O.N, my father, my leader, my friend and my benefactor was one of the kindest, most decent, most civilised, most intelligent, most handsome and most charming human beings that I have ever had the pleasure of being associated with.

This was a highly educated man whose paternal grandfather was one of the most dynamic and respected Anglican priests of his day and whose father was a lawyer, a judge, a teacher and an Anglican laypreacher. This was a man who was brought up in a family with very strong Christian convictions and even stronger Victorian values. A man whose father had studied law at Cambridge University before him and who later ensured that two of his own sons (including yours truly) attended Cambridge University after he himself had been there. This was a man that got a first class law decree at Cambridge in the mid-1940s. This was a man who came top in the British Bar Examinations for the whole of the United Kingdom. This was a man who was the youngest Q.C. of this time in the whole of the British Commonwealth. This was a man who was a founding partner in the first fully indigenous law firm in Nigeria which was named "Thomas, Williams and Kayode".

A law firm in which all three partners, Bode Thomas, Rotimi Williams and Remi Fani-Kayode were all widely acknowledged as internationally-acclaimed legal geniuses. In the field of politics this was a man who played a notable and gallant role in the pre-independence struggle. This was a man who later set up the Action Group youth wing and made it into a forceful and effective political machine. This was a man who gave his all for the Action Group and yet was treated with suspicion and disdain simply because he had a mind of his own because he was rising too fast in the party and because he dared to challenge the excesses of the late Ooni of Ife, Sir Adesoji Aderemi (who happened to be a very close friend and ally of Chief Obafemi Awolowo). This was a man who, when he was rejected by the leadership of the Action Group refused to sulk and be intimidated into leaving politics (like so many others had been forced to do so before him). But rather boldly joined the opposition N.C.N.C.

Yet ironically and in my view it was from the point on that his political career really started going from strength to strength. He not only turned the whole of Ile-Ife (his constituency) to N.C.N.C. by defeating the Action Group in elections over there but he also eventually became the leader of the opposition in the West and the leader of the N.C.N.C in the Western House of Assembly. This was a man who, together with the admirable efforts of many others that came before him, ensured that the N.C.N.C held sway in many parts of Yorubaland and this was a man who stretched out his hand of friendship to Chief S.L. Akintola when the latter fell out with his leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. This was a man who faithfully and deligently served in Chief S.L. Akintola's government and kitchen cabinent, a cabinet which had in its midst some of the brightest and best minds that Africa has ever produced. A cabinet which included brilliant men like Onabamiro, Rosiji, Okunowo, Oshuntokun, Akinjide, Adeyi, Akinloye, Akerele, Olunloyo and so many others.

This was man who came within a hair's-breadth of losing his life in a vicious and relentless attempted coup d'etat which was ruthlessly executed by some misguided and demon-possessed junior army officers on January 15t, 1966. I personally witnessed much of what happened to my father at our house that night and that is indeed a remarkable story which shall be told on another day. This was a man who on January 15, 1966 and during the execution of that same attempted coup d'etat personally witnessed the tragic, cold blooded, brutal and totally unnecessary murder of his respected colleague and dear friend, Chief S.L. Akintola. This was a man who, again on January 15, was visibly shaken when he heard that Brigadier Ademulegun was not only shot in his bed by the coupists on that same night but that the so-called "soldiers" also shot to death Ademulegun's heavily pregnant wife. This was man who on January 16, 1966 witnessed the remnants of the Tafawa Balewa government refused to accept the offer of the British High Commissioner to bring in troops from Gibralter within 24 hours and not only assist in restoring law and order in the country and in helping to keep the military at bay but also in bolstering up the shattered foundations of the Balewa government. This was a man who at that very same meeting watched with incredulity as the remnants of the Balewa government turned down the British High commissioner's offer and instead bowed to General Ironsi's chilling demand that unless they agreed to his becoming the head of state he could not guarantee their personal safety. And of course the fact that General Ironsi had, in a thoroughly menacing fashion, surrounded the building in which the meeting was taking place with soldiers whilst making his "offer of protection" did not help matters: The truth is that by his ultimatum the wily general had in fact set in motion the first successful military coup in Nigerian modern history. Back to my father: this was a man who in 1967 and at the very same meeting that Chief Awolowo was made leader of the Yorubas, was made deputy leader of the Yorubas by the very same people that declared Awolowo as leader. This was a man who was then isolated and ignored by the very same Awoists who had desperately sued for peace, unity and reconciliation in Yorubaland in 1967 and immediately prior to the Nigerian Civil War.

This was a man who in 1973, went into part-time Christian Ministry and eventually became a full-time Anglican lay preacher (just like his father had been before him). This was a man who, like his close friend and law partner, Chief Sobo Sowemimo (S.A.N), was a great friend and confidant to the late head of state General Murtala Mohammed and the then Chief of Army Staff, General T.Y Danjuma. This was a man who in 1977 was one of the pioneering foundation members of what was to later transform itself into the old N.P.N. This was a man who by 1981 recognised the fact that there were some glaring internal contradictions within that same N.P.N. He recognised the fact that what had started out as a great idea and a great party was by then in danger of falling apart. He recognised the fact that unless drastic changes were made within that party's hierarchy and unless the attitude of a tiny cabal of feudalistic hegemonists that had highjacked the party quickly changed that all would not augur well in the future for either the N.P.N or for Nigeria. This was a man who in 1982 and who with great consternation heard about the locking up of a large number of very senior Ife traditional chiefs by the N.P.N-controlled federal police force (over the Modakeke crisis) and who witnessed the fact that the admirable and frantic efforts of the much-loved and present day Ooni of Ife (Oba Okunade Sijuwade) and those of the then governor of the old Oyo State, (the highly respected and irrepresible Chief Bola Ige (S.A.N) to get them released was to no avail. This was man who considered himself as being the Balogun of Ife before being an N.P.N stalwart and who consequently, upon hearing about this grave insult to his people, went back to his hometown and in a dramatic and legendary confrontation with the federal police high-command personally effected the released of the respected and much-loved traditional chiefs of Ile-Ife. And till today they not only still speak about this monumental event in Ife but some of the distinguished elders of the town such as Chief Ayo Martins still say things like we still do not know which kind of power he used to achieve this great feat that night. Needless to say it was just the power and grace of the living God.

THIS was a man who again in 1982 together with Alhaji Shehu Musa (a highly civilised and respectable man who was then the Secretary to the Federal Government), actually went to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade ( a man for whom my father had tremendous respect and affection) and told them that President Shehu Shagari was interested in the formation of a coalition government with Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the event of the NPN winning the presidential elections of 1983. And of course this was all in an attempt to engender national unity and stability and prevent a coup d'etat from eventually taking place. Interestingly, a similar offer had been made to Chief Awolowo by Sir Tafawa Balewa's NPC. Before the 1960 elections, however sadly, Chief Awolowo did not accept these overtures in good faith and the talks broke down.

This is a pity because if he had done so he may ultimately have been in a position to achieve his life-long ambition of ruling the country and Nigeria may well have been the better off for it today. But let's get back to my father: This was a man who by 1983 witnessed, at very close quarters, the sheer arrogance, viciousness and pomposity of the deeply conservative core northern caliphate and who told anyone that cared to listen about the dangerous antics and acquisitive tendencies of a small cabal of greedy ministers in the NPN government of that day. This was a man who spent Nigeria's notorious "years of the locust" (Between 1983 and 1995) literally weeping for the nation due to its hideous plight and frightening ordeal under a series of insensitive and oftentimes brutal military dictators.

This was a man who in 1993 openly opposed the annulment of the June 12 election and boldly stood up at the NRC elders caucus meeting and told them that if the north supports the annulment then there is a distinct possibility that Nigeria would cease to exist. This was a man who, at that same meeting, told the conservative north that those of them from the south that had stretched out a hand of friendship to the north since the early 1960s (and in the name of a "united Nigeria") had effectively been proved wrong by the fact that this very same north was now insisting on supporting the annulment of a free and fair election that had been won by a southerner. And worthy of mention here is the condescending response of Alhaji Lawal Kaita (a deeply conservative Fulani prince from Katsina and a former NPN governor of the old Kaduna State). He impudently asked Papa at that same meeting whether he had taken that position simply because, like Chief Abiola, he was a Yoruba man. And in answer to this impudent and disrespectful question Papa calmly replied Kaita with the following words, which were of course laced with a high degree of passion and an even higher degree of contempt: He said "it is not your fault Lawal. I did not play politics with the likes of you but rather with the likes of your father!" Yet this was a man who still believed in and loved Nigeria. This was a man that did not make one kobo out of politics but who rather spent so much money on it. This was the man that my father was and this is just a tiny glimpse into his expansive and colourful political career: A career that spanned from 1950 to 1995. Yet the truth is that politics was only a fraction of his person. And quite apart from that he was also a devout and practising Christian, a successful businessman, an academic, an intellectual and a visionary of sorts. He was a loving and kind family man who always put his wife and his children before anything else. And the truth is that there is not a day that has passed in the last five years since he was called home to glory that I have not thought about him or missed him bitterly.

But of course Nigeria and Nigerians never honour their true heroes. They would rather distort history, tell lies, indulge in deceit, worship money and engender falsehood. This is a country which takes delight in destroying its brightest and its best. This is a country which prides itself on reveling in mediocrity and literally enthroning corruption, decay, retrogression and mendacity. And of course, this is why nowadays the brightest and most educated people in Nigeria usually stay out of politics and sadly some of them even choose to do an "Andrew" and leave the country altogether. And yet who can blame them? For it is in the same light, and therefore not surprising, that even up till today the Nigerian people and successive Nigerian governments have refused to properly honour the man who successfully moved the motion for independence for the country in 1957. That man was not Chief Anthony Enahoro (his motion had been moved in 1953 and it was unsuccessful) but it was rather Remilekun Fani-Kayode. This is a historical fact that sadly appears to be very surprising to many Nigerians. Yet what we fail to appreciate is that as long as we continue to refuse to acknowledge the roles of all our past heroes (and not just a select few) this country will not go anywhere. It will just continue to wander. And it will continue to be heavily afflicted with a deep and debilitating spiritual wound. This is because God is a God of truth, righteousness, fairness and justice. This is because God never sleeps and knows the deepest and darkest thoughts that are hidden in the inner chambers and subterranean recesses of our collective minds. Yet it is my prayer that the Lord forgives and delivers us all for our glaring and inexcusable omissions. It is my prayer that the Lord heals the historical wounds and deep divisions in the political terrain of our beloved land. It is my prayer that, as a nation He will eventually see fit to lift us up where we truly belong. Yet I have no doubt that despite all we see this shall eventually be the case. And as for my beloved father, I thank God for the life that he lived every day. I thank God for the fact that he continues to live on this earth through me and through my siblings, just as one day, when I have also been called home, I shall continue to live on this earth through my own sons and through my own daughters. For as the Bible says, "The blessing of the Lord goes from generation to generation." And may God bless the wombs of the faithful mothers and virtuous wives from whom such great men have come. Merry Christmas, happy New Year and God Bless Nigeria.

________________ Ffk, 2001

Please fasten your seatbelts, sit back and patiently read this true story. You never know, you may learn something from it. I certainly did. Here we go...

Someone asked me the other day where I got the inspiration to write my poem titled "The Power of a Woman". I told him that it came from the Spirit of God and that I also drew on so many experiences that I had had with women over the last 35 years of my life and the experiences of many of my male friends too. All in all the poem, in my view, far from being an attack on womanhood was rather v charitable to them and confirmed the view, held by many, that they are extremely complex beings that need to be treated with tender love and care at all times.

Funnily enough most of my closest friends today are women: this is because I find them to be far more loyal and generally speaking much deeper, more far sighted and more discerning than men. But let me share something here that happened to me just a few years ago when I was still in government and which shocked me beyond belief. It also made me extremely wary of members of the opposite sex. A good friend of mine who was, and still is a leading and well known politician, was put in detention during President Obasanjo's administration. He was facing some very serious criminal charges (he has long since been cleared and acquitted by the courts) and he was detained in prison for many months. I was reasonably close to him at the time and I used to speak with him regularly when he was there and I did all I could to help him with his case. I also used to visit his family regularly to encourage them and do whatever I could for them.

He and his wife were very close and I always saw her as a dutiful and loyal wife. She seemed to be totally devoted to this man. Then came the shocker: one day when I went there I noticed that she seemed a little more restless and agitated than usual. She offered me some alcohol and I reminded her that I don't drink. I noticed that she was getting a little too familiar with me and she wore a flimsy gown that night. I was getting v uncomfortable and hot under the collar and told her that I had to leave. She then told me that she had prepared dinner and that she cooked it herself just for me and that she had told all the househelp to close early and the children were all away at boarding school- in short, she told me that we were completely alone in the house. At this point I protested strongly and told her that I had to leave right away. She then told me that she has something to tell me and something to give me. I asked her to go ahead: she told me that I should stop worrying about her husband and that after all how do I know that he didn't commit the said crime? She told me that he is a very harsh and wicked man and that the only reason that she was still with him was because of the children and because he had plenty of money and power.

She then broke down and wept and said that she was so unhappy in the marriage and that the only way she could be free was for him to die or to be jailed. She said that she did not want him to ever come out of detention and that that was her secret prayer. At this point there were goose pimples all over my body and a very deep fear gripped me. I sensed that I was in mortal danger and I started praying under my breath. I told her that I did not want to hear such things and that I was leaving. She then got up and ran to the front door and locked it from within. She told me that I could not go until she had given me the gift she had promised me and that she would now go upstairs to fetch it for me. At this point I had come to the conclusion that this lady was mentally unstable and I actually feared for my life. Was it a gun she wanted to bring or was the food drugged or poisoned? All sorts of things were racing through my mind. She then went upstairs and came back 5 minutes later and you know what? She was completely naked! She told me that this was the gift she had for me: her body. She told me that she had loved me from the first day she saw me and that she was ready to do anything for me there and then. I was shocked beyond belief.

I then picked up my cell phone and sent an S.O.S text to my chief security officer who, together with his team, were in the compound by the cars. Immediately they cordened off the house, brought out their weapons, rushed to the front door and started demanding to see me. They actually thought that perhaps I had been poisoned or shot or something. It was at that point that the lady relented, unlocked the door and I was saved. I left the place safely. What shocked me the most was that when the man was released I went to see them and this lady was once again playing the role of the devoted wife.
She was doting on him and showering him with love and praises, which is, of course, how it should be. She even insisted on leading the prayers thanking God over and over again for his release from detention and final acquittal. I was happy for my friend but at the same time unhappy for him. I was happy because he had been released but I was unhappy because he had no idea about the type of wife he had.

I learnt something that day: I learnt that when the bible says that “the heart of man is desperately wicked, who can know it?" that it is true. I also learnt that when Shakespeare wrote that "there is no art that can see the minds construction in the face" that he was right. And this goes both ways: men can be as deceptive as women and more often than not they are. It is just that men are not nearly as good at it and more often than not they are v obvious. You see it was not the suggestion of infidelity that shocked me the most (because that is common enough) but rather the deep-seated hatred that this woman secretly had for her husband. That is what I found frightful. And as bad as that was, I am sure that he must have brought that beast out in her by not treating her well over the years. So perhaps it is not entirely her fault. I cannot judge her or either of them (in any case who am I to judge anyone) but the moral of the tale is surely this: we must treat our wives, our girlfriends and our lovers very well indeed and then we can leave the rest to God.

We must give them a new reason to love us anew every day. We must treat them as queens so that they will love us forever and not run to another or secretly wish us dead. We must ensure that the beast does not arise in them by giving them all that they could possibly want, whether it be emotionally, spiritually, physically or financially. My friend is still with his wife and they appear to be very happy too. I am happy for them and particularly for his blissful ignorance concerning his wife's inner most thoughts. Well maybe she has changed her mind about him now and maybe she truly loves him again, I really wouldn't know and that is none of my business.

I have never spoken about that incident with that lady and I never will. Whenever we see each other we just smile and say hello: she knows that her secret is safe with me but I do pray for both her and her husband. I pray for their marriage because we are all vulnerable from time to time and we all have our moments of weakness. And neither will I ever tell anyone the names of this interesting couple. My lips are sealed forever on that and neither is it relevant. May God help us all, particularly we men, for we have no idea about just how deep and powerful and complex women can be. That is the power of a woman! And it is partly that shocking experience that led me to write the poem.

Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Today I have a series of questions to ask about the apparent fury of the Americans on the Al Megrahi issue: is such fury legitimate or justifiable? Should the Libyan intelligence agent Ali Al Megrahi (the so-called Lockerbie bomber) have been released on compassionate grounds to go and die at home by the Scottish Justice Secretary having been convicted of the bombing and having been given a life sentence? Was he really guilty of the bombing of that plane in the first place? Was there really a secret deal and would he have been released on "compassionate" grounds if Libya did not have vast oil reserves and was not now opening up to the world? Is the sense of outrage expressed by the American relatives of those that were murdered justified?

How do you explain the fact that the British relatives of those that were killed, by way of contrast to the Americans, supported the release of Al Megrahi and are of the view that he was not the one responsible for the bombing in the first place? There is a school of thought in intelligence circles that says that it was the Syrians that carried out the bombing and not the Libyans and that there was a massive cover up by the west due to the implications that the truth would have on the Middle East peace process. In that situation the fall out of Libya being held responsible was much easier to manage than that which would have ensued if the world knew that it was actually the Syrians that did it. What do you think of this? The American people seem to be very upset with the Scots over the release- is that reasonable or fair given the fact that everything was done according to due process and Scottish law? In any case should the Americans be allowed to tell the world what to do and are they now the gods of this world? Was "little" Scotland not doing the right thing by insisting on applying it's own laws and values and not debasing itself and allowing itself to be dictated to or brought down to the brutal standard of the Americans? Do the Scots not have the moral high ground here? Is the rise of state sponsored terrorism and even Islamism throughout the world not a legitimate reaction to the decadence, ungodliness, excesses, dictation, interference, injustice, wickedness and sheer evil that successive American administrations have perpetuated all over the world throughout history? In any case why should people not react in any way that they deem fit when they feel that they are being denied their rights, being threatened, being cheated, being robbed and being killed? Is one man's terrorist not another man's freedom fighter?

What about the atrocities that have been committed in the past by America, the Western powers themselves and even the state of Israel? What about the vicious bombing of Dresden in Germany, the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, the massacre of Sabra and Chatilla in Lebanon, the slaughter of over 150,000 Iraqi women and children during the air raids and bombings of Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq? Were these any better than what Al Megrahi allegedly did under the orders of Ghaddfi? The man that presided over the killings of thousands of Palestinian Muslim women and children at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla was no less a figure than the late Ariel Sharon who is a hero in both Israel and America till today and who later became the Prime Minister of Israel. Yet the Americans had no problems being allies and friends of his or of Israel up until today.

Is American blood more precious than any other blood? Are American lives more important than other lives? Has America not turned itself into the judge and jury of this world, imposing its will and insisting on determining what is right and wrong at every point in time? Who will stand up to America and tell them the truth? Who will bail the cat? Who will remind the world that it is God the Great alone, the Lord of Hosts, that judges and rules in the affairs of men and not the Americans? Who will remind the world that when you push a man or woman (or indeed a people) to the wall and you dehumanise him to a point that he does not feel that he has anything to lose or to live for anymore, that that man or woman finds it very easy to commit atrocities and to take innocent lives in the name of a greater cause and a higher power? We are all children of God and citizens of the world and should we all not have an opinion which we can legitimately voice on such issues? Must we all toe the American line day in day out?

These are indeed interesting and relevant questions: what do you think?

________________ Ffk, 2009

The greatest christian writer and philosopher that ever lived and my favourite author, C.S Lewis, once wrote that there are two schools of thought about demons amongst those that are undiscerning: firstly that they do not exist at all and secondly that they exist but that they have no power. He said that the demons themselves are equally pleased with both schools of thought and that they delight in the erroneous and naive suppositions of both the atheist and the materialist. I have read all of C.S Lewis' books but the one that struck me as being the most interesting and intellectually challenging is titled "The Screwtape Letters". I read it for the second time just the other day and I recommend it to all those that are interested as it really is an excellent, thought- provoking, intellectually- stimulating and deeply revealing compilation. It is a book that strikes a mortal blow against the devil and his crafty devices and evil ways. It does this by completely exposing the sheer deceit and subtle strategies of the enemy (satan) and the thought processes and twisted logic of those in the kingdom of darkness. It also reveals the outstanding literary skills, depth of knowledge, extraordinary insight and deep wisdom that C.S Lewis managed to acquire over the years in matters of faith, theology, philosophy and logic: qualities that were clearly bestowed upon him in large measures by the Holy Spirit.

May the Lord grant us all a great measure of these spiritual gifts and may He cause us to also make a difference in our respective generations just as C.S Lewis managed to do in his. The truth is that we must accept the fact that the devil and his demons are very real and are extremely powerful and we must resist them and their agents and disciples in every way and in every realm. We can do this only through constant prayer and keeping our faith and hope in God strong. We must also register our protest and display our contempt for the dangerous teachings and misguided views of agents of the devil like Anton La Vey (who founded the Church of Satan), Aleister Crowley (who prided himself as the world's most wicked man), Bertrand Russel (who did not believe in God) and Charles Darwin (who suggested that we all came from monkeys by propounding the theory of evolution and natural selection).

We must totally reject the baphomet philosophy and luciferian doctrine that boastfully proclaims that satan is the owner, custodian and distributor of all the knowledge, wealth and power and all other good things in this life and that it is for him to give to whom he pleases. We must resist the humanist philosophy of men like Niestche who vainly proclaimed that "God is dead" and that man himself is god and can do all things through the acquisition of power and knowledge. We must reject the perverse and evil notion that there is no God, no salvation, no heaven and no hell and that we must make our heaven or hell whilst here on earth. We must remember that the word of the Lord says "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" and that it says "the silver and gold" and "the cattle on a thousand hills" are His and "He gives them to whom He deems fit". The greatest gift that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has given to those that believe in Him is the gift of salvation: that is eternal life with Him in heaven. Let no evil philosophy, no devil, no demon and no demonically inspired and misguided man take that hope and belief from you or rob you of that glory: guard it with your life if necessary and trade it not for all the riches of the world. Our God reigns and Jesus is Lord. Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Unlike President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran, who in my view merely confirmed my suspicion that he is completely insane when he was on the same programme just a few days ago, Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya was absolutely brilliant on Larry King live today. In my view he answered the questions put to him on the Lockerbie issue and other matters v well indeed. On Lockerbie and like most of the British families who lost their loved ones on that flight, I have never believed that it was the Libyan government that brought that plane down. Why do I say so ? Because the evidence presented at the special Scottish court that sat in the Hague for the case was so tenous, circumstantial, vague and flimsy that it was clear that they were acting on orders from somewhere far above. Someone, anyone, just had to be held accountable and punished for what happened in order to appease the baying and v naive western public:it really didn't matter if that person was innocent or not. And believe me that is how world politics, international espionage, matters of state and national interest work. Truth is always the first casualty in matters which the state has an interest.

In my view the west was just looking for a scapegoat to put the blame on for what was undoubtedly a hideous and unacceptable act of state sponsored- terrorism. The belief in intelligence circles at the time (and I remember vividly b'cos I was at university in the UK at the time and I followed the matter closely) was that it was actually the Syrians that did the dirty deed but that Margaret Thatcher (who was Prime Minister at the time) decided that the world simply could not afford to know the truth. The cost and the consequences to world peace and the Middle East peace process, if the truth had come out, would just have just been too high. I fully subscribe to this theory and I have therefore never blamed the Libyans or Ghadaffi for Lockerbie. I have met Ghadaffi and I have spent days with him and have had many lively discussions with him. I have also disagreed with him on issues face to face. I have even had a meeting between himself, myself and President Umaru Yar'adua (just the three of us in a tent) alone. Though I do not subscribe to many of his views on religion and politics, I do believe that he is a great African patriot who has done more for his people than perhaps any other African leader. Most importantly he views himself as much, if not more, of an African than he does an Arab. This is in complete contrast to the likes of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who essentially sees himself as an Arab and not an African. Ghadaffi speaks Africa, talks Africa and he has consistently fought for Africa. The standard of living of the people in his country is relatively high and the economy is well managed and strong.

Most importantly and unlike Iran, Ghadaffi had the courage to abandon the development of nuclear weapons as it's own contribution to world peace. As a consequence Libya was welcomed back into the comity of nations and to the civilised world. This is one man that the west could not kill, discredit or destroy. He is tough, yet generous and forgiving and kind. Yes kind. If he were not kind he would not have been able to sit with the Americans again after Ronald Reagan bombed and killed his daughter. If he were not kind he would not have pardoned the group of European nurses that injected 400 Libyan children with the aids virus and thereby sent them to their early deaths. The nurses were convicted of this hideous crime but Ghadaffi pardoned them and let them go home. When they got home they were received as heroes and yet no one complained. What therefore is the big deal about the fact that Al Megrahi was also welcomed home to Libya after serving time? Whether anyone likes it or not Ghadaffi is one of the few leaders in the world that can walk the streets of his country safely and would in fact be hailed by the people. Castro and Mandela are also in that category but there are v few others. Quite apart from that he is more of an intellectual and more knowlegeable about world history and events than most other world leaders. He has played the west at their own game and in my view he has come out on top. I vehemently disagree with his views on Israel and Nigeria but that does not mean that I should not respect, celebrate and even admire him. He is a great man and a pride to Africa, despite all the falsehood and disinformation that the west peddles around about him. He is simply irrepressable: the quintessential African hero.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Israel has been attacked 3 times since 1948 by all the surrounding Arab countries put together and each time they crushed the Arabs. The problem is that unlike others the Jews are facing an "existential" threat: that is to say that they cannot afford to lose even once otherwise they will be wiped out completely. They are surrounded by enemies, they are hated by those around them who do not believe that they have the right to exist, they have no where else on the planet to go, they are heavily outnumbered and they are the only democracy in the Middle East. Given all this u can surely appreciate their paranoia and their deep concerns about security. They captured plenty of land from the neighbouring Arab states during these wars (which they did not start) and yet each time they gave any of it back to the Arabs (as was the case with Gaza and southern Lebanon) that land was always used as a launching pad of aggression and terror against them. Is it surprising then that they have refused to give the Golan Heights and the Sheba farms area back to the Syrians? Ahmadenijad says Iran has never attacked or been an aggressor against it's neigbours? He is being dishonest: the sheer size, strength and power of the Persian nation itself has always been a great cause of concern for the Arab gulf states and rightfully so.

Only Saddam Hussein, in the whole of Arab and Sunni muslim history, had the guts and firepower to stand up to Shiia Iran and it cost both him and the Persians dearly. Did Iran not launch a vicious, bloody and protracted war against Iraq at the end of which over one million people were killed? Is Iran not fighting a proxy war against Israel today by supporting, funding, arming and encouraging Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon? Are they not the ones that supply the katusha rockets that are fired into Israel on a daily basis? Are they not the ones that are backing, arming and supplying the deadly Shiite militia's and death squads led by Mouktar Al Sadr and others in Iraq today? Do the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and the Arab Gulf States not live in terror of Iranian expansion, aggression and power today? Why do u think that even Al Qaeda is fighting the Iranian backed Shiite militias in Iraq?

The most dangerous threat to world peace today is for that mad man (and by the way I have met him and I had the opportunity to look into his eyes and I know what I saw) to acquire nuclear weapons. It would be extremely dangerous and it would change the balance of power in the world as we know it today. I say that he is insane because firstly he has expressed the desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and secondly he has denied the incontrovertible fact that the holocaust ever took place. That is completely vicious and insensitive of him because he knows very well that it did and that 6 million Jews were gassed and burnt to death by a mad man called Hitler.

Now we have another mad man who wants to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth" and people expect the world to sit back quietly and allow them to acquire the means to do so through the procurement of nuclear weapons? That is just not happening. You may either hate the Jews or just dislike and object to the philosophy of zionism but surely they have the right to live, to exist and to have their own country? They are after all human beings as well. And please don’t get me wrong: I have condemned Israeli aggression on this wall and elsewhere on many occassions as it is often disproportionate and unnecessary. I have also expressed my utter disgust when the Jews did unforgiveable things like using the Lebanese christian militia (the famouse Christian Phalange) to openly and barbarically slaughter thousands of innocent muslim and palestinian Arabs at the refugee camps of Shatilla and Sabra but that does not give anyone the right to deny the Jewish state the right to exist. Even in Israel itself the overwhelming majority of people condemn such atrocities and many are looking for peace with the Arabs. Have we forgotten the efforts of great Jewish leaders like Yizthak Rabin who made peace with Egypt and Jordan and who was killed for it? That peace still lasts till today. Have we forgotten that Anwar Sadat of Egypt was also killed because he accepted Rabin's offer of peace? There are men of peace on both sides and they are all trying to contain their respective groups of hardliners and extremists and then some mad man wants to start off the third world war by threatening to wipe out Israel? It can never happen. Never!

________________ Ffk, 2009

Do demons exist? Good question. Do u remember that Jesus Himself spoke about them and even cast them out? So did all the prophets, disciples and apostles. Just as the Lord has angels to effect His will and purpose here on earth so the devil has demons and his whole hierarchy of forces of darkness to effect his own (see Ephesians 6). Actually demons are nothing but the fallen and corrupted angels that were cast out of heaven with Lucifer by archangel Michael as a consequence of their collective rebellion against the Living God. The bible tells us that one third of the angels sided with Lucifer and were therefore cast out with him. They all lost their glorious places in heaven and were thrown down to earth where the devil now attempted and is still attempting to set up his own kingdom. The reason you cannot see demons is because, just like God's angels, they are ministering spirits and they are therefore invisible. The good news is that they are firmly under our feet and the Lord has given us total power over them and the ability to crush them through prayer and fasting. We must not give them undue attention because they thrive on that too but we must not be ignorant of their devices. The most important thing to understand is that just like their prince the devil, they prefer people to believe that they don't exist and in the alternative they crave worship.

Have you not heard of an entity called the Prince of Persia in the Book of Daniel in the bible that fought with the angel that God sent to Daniel from heaven and held it back for 21 days? That was a very powerful demon and it is what is known as a "principality" which is a territorial spirit that sits over a nation. Believe it or not each nation has one, including Nigeria. They are the highest ranking and most powerful demons in satan's hierarchy and army and we must resist them with prayer. What about the man possessed with a legion of demons whom the Lord Himself had to deliver. Again there are millions of people that are obviously under demonic influence all over the world today and in world history (Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Ladin, Pol Pot and Genghis Khan are obvious examples) and that is why it is very important for us to pray for one another and particularly for our leaders in order to nullify such influences that seek to push them into doing the most hideous, barbaric and inexplicable things. The only thing that demons bow to, fear and respect is the name of Jesus but please make no mistake, they do exist, they do have power, they do influence, they do kill, they do steal and they do destroy. They actually enter people's bodies, possess them and then cause them to commit atrocities.

The worst thing about it is that many misguided and unfortunate souls actually invoke them through pagan and ancient rituals, use them to achieve their evil purposes and actually fellowship with them and worship them. Such people end up being their slaves and always end up being utterly destroyed by them. Just look at how Voltaire, Aleister Crowley, Anton Lavey and so many others in that category ended. Again have you heard of a play called Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe? Marlowe was a contemporary of William Shakespeare (some believe that they were one and the same person) and it is from that play that we get the word a "faustian" pact which means a pact with the devil. Dr. Faustus wrote a contract with the devil in his own blood and gave him his soul in return for all the knowledge in the world. He got all the knowledge he wanted but at the end of his life the devil sent a demon by the name of Mephistopheles to collect poor Faustus' soul in return for the vast knowledge that he had given him.

Every faith on the planet recognises the existence of these evil personalities called demons and it is precisely because of their activities and the dangers that they present to mankind that we must pray hard and continue to invoke God's Spirit, love and protection over ourselves, our loved ones and our communities every day. Thank God that Jesus "spoiled all the principalities and powers" for us and made a "public show" of them. Thank God that they are "under our feet" and that we are "joint heirs to the throne". His word says "He has given us power to tread on scorpions and serpents and all the power of the enemy and none shall by any means hurt us." So they cannot hurt us providing we pray. We just have to bind them every day and loose the power of God into our lives. Providing we do that we don’t have to dwell on them at all and there is absolutely nothing to fear. Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

You assert that Ghaddafi lacks courage and only stopped his nuclear programme out of fear of the Americans and that Ahmadinejad is not insane? I disagree. The fact of the matter is that for the better part of the last 4 decades the west and the Americans have wanted him dead or removed from office and they have tried to effect this on a number of occasions yet they have failed woefully each time. This is because he is loved deeply by his people and like Castro in Cuba, they revere him. He has done great things for Libya and he has put them on the world map as a respected and feared member of the International Community. That is no mean achievement considering the fact that Libya is such a small place with only 4 million people. You talk about threats from America and I put it to you that it is due to Americas bullying ways that they are so hated and reviled in the world till today and if they had attacked Libya as they did Iraq they could not have occupied it for long because unlike Saddam this Ghadaffi has the support of his people. Not only that, unlike Saddam's Iraq, Ghadaffi's Libya has always had reasonably good relations with all the countries that neighbour it and it has never attacked any of them. It would not have been so easy for the Americans to hold it down.

Finally I used the word "courage" in my analysis of his historic choice to drop the idea of developing nuclear weapons and I used that word wisely because it really does take immense courage and faith in God to choose the path of peace and harmony, especially when you are living in a world whose greatest powers hate you and are seeking to kill you or have u removed through a process of "regime change". The easiest thing to do in such a situation is to just keep on developing your weapons of mass destruction and just keep on arming up and just continue to feed on the fear and insecurity of the people. That is precisely what Ahmadinejad is doing in Iran and that is what Kim Jong Il is doing in North Korea today. To lay down your arms and stop developing your nuclear capabilities and instead to do the right and proper thing to enhance world peace and stability and make the planet a safer and better place is not only courageous but it also ought to be commended and encouraged and certainly not ridiculed as cowardice or demeaned as u are trying to do here. As to your assertion that Ahmadinejad is not insane I put it to you that anyone that seeks to commit the type of mass murder and genocide that this man is fantasizing about and proposing when he said that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth is clearly mentally ill. And we don’t have to wait for him to get a nuclear weapon and then attempt to carry out his sick fantasy before we say so or before we are convinced of his madness. That is the mistake that the world made with Hitler and it paid a heavy price for it: at the end of the Second World War 50 million people lay dead and nuclear weapons hardly even featured then. Can you imagine the kind of unspeakable casualties that the world would have suffered if Hitler had had nuclear weapons? Or you don't believe that Hitler would have been mad enough to use them either?

Again your hasty and naive assessment of Ahmadinejad's mental state reminds me of Neville Chamberlaine's (the former British Prime Ministers) erroneous assessment of Adolf Hitler just before the second world war started: he said that Hitler could be trusted to honour his word not to attack any more of it's neighbouring countries and that there would be "peace in our time". That grave miscalculation and monumental blunder and Chamberlaine's inability and cowardly refusal to see and discern the evil and insanity that was in Hitler and publically identify it for what it was cost the world dearly. If Hitler had been stopped on time and if his obvious insanity had been acknowledged early enough the world would not have had to experience the most bitter, brutal and vicious conflict in the history of humanity which was the second world war. People like you are making the same mistake as Chamberlaine did then when you refuse to see and acknowledge the madness and inherent evil that stalks the President of Iran. And on top of it all he confirms his strange and unstable delusional state by consistently proclaiming that there was no holocaust and that 6 million Jews were never gassed and burnt to death in Nazi Germany. The man is clearly as mad as a hatter. He is a certified nutcase and a threat to world peace and stability and it is people like you that encourage such madness by not saying it as it is.

________________ Ffk, 2009

I will give you a short answer as to why christians love Israel and will always stand by them regardless of the fact that they not only killed our Lord Jesus Christ but that they have also rejected Him as the Messiah which we know Him to be. It is because the Holy bible specifically requires us to do so and tells us that "He who blesses Israel is blessed and He who curses Israel is cursed". Christianity came out of Judaism and the new testament of the bible(which is where chrisianity was established and where Jesus revealed Himself) is a fulfilment of the prophecies and promises of the old . The old testament is essentially Jewish religious history and that is where christianity (the Judeo-Christian faith) came from. Both the christian and the Jew came from Isaac, the promise child of Abraham because Isaac was a Jew and christianity evolved from Judaism. Jesus who was a Jew and was also killed by the Jews specifically enjoined His disciples to carry the good news (the gospel) of His message that He was the son of God to the gentiles because the Jews, from whom He came and to whom He was initially sent had rejected Him. The disciples not only did this but they did it very well. Apostle Paul particularly spread the good news to the gentiles and from there christianity became the largest and most formidable force in the world till today.

In order to understand why christians will always love and support the Jews and the state of Israel despite the fact that they rejected Jesus, you also need to know a little more about our faith. We are taught to love and accept not just those who agree with our faith but also those who hate us and reject us. Jesus died and sacrificed Himself for everyone including the Jews and His word makes it clear that through the ages He has and He always will have a soft spot for them because He was sent to them first even before He came to the gentiles. This deep and unconditional love and understanding is called agape love: it means that we must learn to love even the most unlovable things and people. It means that even when they hurt us, abuse us, reject us and even kill us we must still love them because that is what Jesus did. That special place that the Jews had in Jesus' heart is the same special place that is in the hearts of every true christian for them. We share a common ancestry in not just Abraham but also Isaac, our Lord came from them and had a special place for them in His heart even though they rejected Him and He specifcally urged us to bless and protect them. They are indeed a special people before God and the christian's umbilical chord to them is spiritual, emotional, historical, deep, unbreakable and eternal. The killing of 6 million Jews by Hitler made it imperative for the world to return them to the land that God's Holy bible tells us that he gave to them as their promise land forever. They were returned there(because they were there in the first place) and Jerusalem(which is the city of David) is not just their capital but also the spiritual capital of all christians. So the bond is strong. Even though christians have persecuted Jews for centuries this should not be so: that is the influence of the devil and he does it because He knows that God loves them so much.

Do you know that the bible tells us that God has assigned Archangel Michael himself to watch over Israel? The bible calls them a "stiff necked people" and it says that though they would suffer for quite some time(which they did more than any other) God would give them back that land that He had promised to their forefathers and that they had originally occupied from the time of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Joseph and Moses. He promised that it would be a land flowing with milk and honey and that He would subdue all their enemies around them and that they would flourish and excel until the return of Messiah at the battle of Armageddon. That is why the state of Israel can never be defeated. It came by God's prophecy and it is defended by His promise and His word. Islam came into the world only 600 years after christianity. The muslims derived from the line of Abraham's son Ishmael but not the line of Isaac, the promise child. The bible tells us that Ishmael's mother was Hagar and Isaac's mother was Sarah. It was Sarah son, Isaac, that the Jews, the Christians and the Messiah Himself came from. Therein lies our bond with our Jewish brothers. They may despise our faith and reject our Lord but we will never stop loving them.

________________ Ffk, 2009

QUESTION

I had tremendous respect for the Obasanjo adminitration and I regarded it as having had in it's ranks some of the brightest and best young minds that Nigeria has ever known. I have also prayed for Nigeria in the past but I think that your poem titled "God Defend Nigeria", which was apparantly written in commemaration of the 49th year independence anniversary of Nigeria, was inappropriate and misplaced. This is because I do not believe that we can achieve anything just by praying alone and I am tired of just praying and hoping. I regard such counsel from you as nothing more than stupid optimism and religious hypnotism and cliche. We need to forget about prayer and take firm action instead. I expected more from you than this sort of reductionist and archaic proposition. Why do we need to always talk about prayer? Haven't we prayed and cried enough for this country all these years? I do not believe that the answer to Nigeria's problems lie in simply and endless hoping and praying for the country. What is your position on this sir?

 

ANSWER

Thank you for your comments. The fact that u have actually prayed for Nigeria, albeit in the past, at least gives me some relief and cause for cheer. The irony is that the last administration, which I served and which you spoke so highly of, rested it's very foundation and it's ability to perform in God and in prayer. I can testify to that. Again the year before I was redeployed to Aviation, when planes were mysteriously dropping from the sky (5 crashes in one year) and when people were scared to fly, it was hard work coupled with PRAYER and FAITH, that reversed that evil cycle and stopped the planes from crashing. The church, the watchers, the intercessors and many men and women of God rose to the occassion and were deeply involved in what was essentially a spiritual conflict. They were in fasting and prayer both night and day and of course God heard us and honoured His word: He broke the jinx, nullified the spell and stopped the crashes. That is what prayer can do. You need to understand that the countries that are advanced today originally had their root and foundation in God and at some point in their various histories went through periods of massive revival having experienced immense suffering. When one third of all the people in Europe dropped dead as a consequence of the black death(bubonic plague) in the Middle Ages they did not stop praying or turn their back on God. They held on to their faith, called on God, received a word from Him and the evil cycle stopped. When the pilgrim fathers founded America they prayed her into greatness and made God her foundation: that is why she is what she is today. Prayer and faith is the key to all things, coupled with hard work, an understanding of the times and hope.

When 20 million people were killed in the first world war and 50 million were slaughtered in the second, it was prayer and faith in God that enabled the world to survive it and move on to build a better world. It was prayer that pulled down the Berlin wall and destroyed the evil and godless empire of Soviet communism. It was prayer, faith in God and the ability of good men, filled with the Holy Spirit, to rise up and say NO, that destroyed the evil that was Hitler and Nazi Germany and the vicious and racist system of government in apartheid South Africa. The book of Job teaches us that oftentimes God allows the devil to touch us in order to test our faith in Him. Yet He can change our fortunes in the twinkle of an eye, either for good or for bad: that is His perogative and His nature. He can make a promise and honour it at once or wait 400 years to do so, as was the case with the children of Israel when they were in exile in Egypt. That is what makes Him God. The most imp thing to appreciate is that through good or bad, through night or day, whether as individuals or nations, He is with us every step of the way, He loves us deeply and He is eagerly waiting to see our reactions to our various challenges and circumstances. His word says "the righteous shall live by faith" and that is, indeed, the cornerstone of the christian faith: total faith in God and trusting Him to deliver us and help us in our time of need. Now that does not mean that we should do nothing else . That does not mean that we should not, at the same time, work hard, fight hard and shout loudly to make our country a better place. After all the bible says "faith without works is dead" which means u must work hard at the same time as u are exercising ur faith, otherwise u will fail. What it means is that whatever we are doing we must do it with prayer: in fact it is that prayer that will guarantee the success of the venture. This is not "reductionist" and neither is it "stupid optimism" or "religious hypnotism or cliche". Rather it is our strength and our hope for a better tomorrow: it actually works and will do so for Nigeria no matter how bad things appear to be today. In any case u cannot be an optimist and be stupid: that is literally a contradiction in terms but that is a discussion for another day.

Finally I want you to consider the words of Queen Victoria which she spoke at the height and power of the British empire and in the days when Britain was truly "Great Britain". She said "I do not fear the armies of Scotland but I fear the prayers of John Knox". That is deep wisdom. You see prayer delivers the captives, heals the brokenhearted, brings tyrants to their knees and causes kings to weep and tremble: it shapes the destiny of nations. There is still hope for Nigeria as long as we pray. Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

QUESTION:

Why are we suffering so much in this life and in Nigeria? Is it God that is punishing us for our sins? Is God the source of all this evil that we see in our lives? Just look at all that is happening? The best are crucified, tormented and persecuted whilst the wicked are celebrated and exalted. Our leaders are a plague and an affliction with dark hearts and the followership are ignorant ingrates and traitors. Why is God punishing us like this? Why has He forsaken us? Why has He visited so much evil on us? Each day is a struggle- there is so much sadness, failure and sorrow in this land.

In Nigeria when someone is good he must be punished and when he is bad he must be rewarded. That is our record. Why has God afflicted us like this? Why all this evil, poverty, failure, injustice, persecution, shame, pain, cruelty and wickedness? Is He not a God of love? Why does He allow this evil to thrive in our lives and our nation? We are a sick nation with a sick President. A nation of monkeys governed by monkeys. A nation where the sons of slaves ride around on horseback and the sons of kings walk around barefoot. This is evil. Is it because of our sins that God has visited all this on us? Look at our quality of life and all our challenges? Is God the source of all this evil? Please help to explain because many are in despair.

ANSWER:

God is certainly a God of love and not a God of evil. It is our enemy and adversary the devil that punishes for he alone comes to kill, to steal and to destroy. He brings evil, sorrow, discord, fear, poverty, want, failure, death and shame wherever he goes. God is not the source of any of these terrible things. Rather He brings life and He is full of grace, compassion, love and mercy. He allows these things to happen to us and to our nation only because He has given us the power to deal with them ourselves and the grace to come through them all and have a great testimony at the end of it all. His word says "the righteous shall live by faith" and that "He has given us power to tread on scorpions and serpents and all the power of the enemy and none shall by any means hurt us". That is why if only we can believe, stand firm and not allow such challenges to cause us to derail or despair, we shall always be victorious at the end of the day and His promises for our lives shall surely come to pass.

As regards sin, we thank God that there is no condemnation for those of us that are in Christ. He shed His blood and He paid the price. Once we have confessed and truly repented of our wrongdoings the power of sin and death is completely broken in our lives. He has bought us eternal life through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ and His resurrection and ascension. All we need to do is to claim it and just believe. That blood brings grace and mercy and it cleanses away ALL our sins. So the source of the pain that you are feeling, and that we are all feeling, is not God but rather the devil, our collective enemy. And thank God that we have and that we will always overcome him by the blood of the lamb and the testimonies of our lips.

God loves you very much and He is with you and not against you. You are not a loser but a winner. You shall certainly overcome. Just continue to believe and to do good. And believe and pray for our fatherland Nigeria too: one day things will change in this country and that is God's promise. Be rest assured that our Father in heaven has a plan for Nigeria too. It is that assurance from God that we are all holding on to: that is our hope and that is our strength. He will surely deliver us one day and the yoke of the devil and his children, the Amalekites and the Midianites, over our nation shall be broken forever. I assure you that these vicious oppressors and Egyptians that we see today, the time is coming when "we shall see them no more".

So fear not and despair not: just hold on, just watch and just pray and you will see the salvation of the Lord in this land. The accusers will soon become the accused and the oppressors will soon become the oppressed. Despite all the evil, false accusations, wickedness, treachery, injustice, persecution, marginalisation, brutality, callousness, greed, bloodshed, hatred, idolatary and deceit that we see around us and in this nation, we must continue to do good and stand firm. We must continue to exalt fairness and righteousness and we must continue to love and see the best in even those that hate us and that seek to destroy our lives, our future and our country. God will deliver and in the end He will make ALL things beautiful in our land and in our lives. The Lord has spoken it and so it shall be. May God continue to be with us all and may He give us strength even in these difficult and lonely times. It is well. Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

I leave that for you to judge but let me tell you I do not fear anything, whether it be persecution, misrepresentation or even death. I passed that stage long ago. As long as Jesus is on the throne I fear nothing. I served my country as honestly and diligently as I could. My team and I worked extremely hard and gave four years of our lives to Nigeria working night and day at great risk to our lives and families. If some people somewhere hate Obasanjo and hate us for working for him and defending him then that is their problem not mine. I have absolutely nothing against Yar'adua's Government, a government that I, Nasir El Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Akin Oshuntokun, Uba Sanni and many others helped to install, but let the God of all that is, He that is more than able, He that sees and knows all and from whom nothing is hidden, the God of all flesh, the God that sits above the circles of the earth and who rules in the affairs of men, let Him be the judge between us all. Let Him tell you if we are being persecuted or not and if so let Him tell you why and who by because nothing is hidden from Him.

In any case even if we are being persecuted what is the big deal because others have been persecuted before us and some have survived it and others have not, so what is the big deal? Was Obasanjo not persecuted before he became President? Was our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ Himself not persecuted before His ascension? Have others like Shehu Musa Yar'adua (the President's own older brother and a man that I loved and respected) and Moshood Abiola (a man whose only crime it was to have won an election fair and square) and so many others not been persecuted, locked up and even killed before us? So what is the big deal? Honestly I don't lose sleep over such matters because nothing can happen to me unless God allows it and God always has His plan and His purpose for everything. Everything has its time and season but the assurance we have from our God when facing such difficult times and challenges is that "this too shall pass". I have absolute faith in God and I know that I will not die until my work on earth is done and I cannot be destroyed by anyone because God is with me. Another thing is certain, I chose to remain in Nigeria through all this and no one can ever chase me away or make me leave the land of my forefathers and the nation and people that I love so much. I will live in Nigeria and I will die in Nigeria because she belongs to us all.

________________ Ffk, 2009

One of the greatest and most respected modern historians that ever lived, an Englander by the name of Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper of Oxford University, once contemptously (and in my humble opinion arrogantly, ignorantly and unfairly) described the history of black Africa as being "darkness, nothing but darkness". As if that were not bad enough there was another even more indicting contribution from a famouse and wealthy Arab slave trader (who lived in the 18th century) and whose name was Mehtma Mohammed.

He captured and purchased his slaves mainly from what is now West Africa and he transported them through the Sudan to the Arab world and to the Middle East where they spent the rest of their short and brutish lives as slaves. Mehtma Mohammed said the following about the black African - "these black creatures were born to be in perpetual servitude and were ordained by God to be our slaves forever. They are lazy, greedy, stupid, godless, dirty and most important of all they are cowards. When u put the whip to them and hard they line up and will do anything for u. They and their African brothers who sell them to us have no sense of collective purpose and they think nothing of killing and selling their own kinsmen for a pittance. They have no god and they have no interest in dying for or fighting for anything which is outside their daily feeding. They are docile, lazy, dirty and stupid and that is why I have made so much money from selling them. The most gratifying thing is that even if one of the group shows signs of any potential or hope of being able to be a great leader to the others, they are the ones that will expose him, report him and destroy him just for a few morsels from my table. They present no danger to us. They are as harmless and fearful as puppies and they only growl like dogs at each other and to no-one else. We will shame them, trade them, own them and rule over them forever." Painful and harsh words? Indeed.

These are highly contemptuos, disrespectful and despicable submissions coming from an evil, dark and ignorant soul, but it tells u how many of our detractors view us, even up till today, even if they cannot afford to say so openly. And we must also accept the fact that oftentimes our own behaviour confirms these negative stereotypes. The truth is that we take pleasure in persecuting, shaming, killing and destroying one another, we enjoy pulling down our brightest and our best, we willfully and consciously promote and celebrate compromise and mediocrity and we are simply not prepared to fight and die for any worthwhile cause or principle, even when it is in our interest so to do.

That is the difference between us and those from other parts of the world. They are ready to pay any price for a better and safer tomorrow for their children but we are not. They will always insist on the best, on enforcing their rights, on jealously guarding their civil liberties, on resisting evil, on fighting persecution and injustice and on preserving the integrity of their civil institutions whilst we are not. Instead we are prepared to settle for anything, compromise with anything and take anything from anyone or any institution. If we wish to progress we must change our attitude, we must discard this slavish mindset and thereby put to shame our detractors and enemies. We must be ready to stand up and insist on our rights and we must be ready to pay the supreme price whilst doing so if that is what is required.

We must dig deep and find the required strength and courage and we must, as a people, rise up to where we belong and become what God wants us to be: a great, beautiful, free, prosperous, educated, respected and strong people. We are no less than that and that is our due. To establish and confirm the glory of our continent and to bring honour, self-respect and dignity to every African: that surely is the challenge of our time. May God help us to achieve this in our generation and may He put the Mehtma Ali's and Hugh Trevor Roper's of this world to utter shame.

God bless Nigeria.

God bless Africa.

________________ Ffk, 2009

I have a word for my Islamist friend. Let me put it to you from the outset that you do not in any way represent the great faith of Islam. As a matter of fact I do not believe that islamists and islamic fundamentalists are Muslims at all, just as I don’t believe that Hitler was a christian. I have read your extremely provocative and unduly aggressive comments about Christians, moderate Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, western education, the west, Africa and the state of Israel and I would strongly suggest that you keep such disjointed verbiage and proselytising hype for an Islamist website and not try to sell it to us here. I am sorry to say this but you are obviously confused and deluded: you say that the Arabs defeated the Roman empire and of course this never happened. Most of what you said, with due respect, is pure distortion, disinformation and falsehood which those that think like you regularly feed themselves with to make themselves feel better about their sorry plight today and the obvious challenges that they are facing in a modern world. You say the Persians were never defeated? You are wrong. Alexander the Great certainly taught them a lesson or two didn't he? He completely subdued them, conquered them and took away their land, their chattels, their dignity and their wives and children.

You talk about the great Arab warrior and leader Salahudeen and his great conquests and victories in Jerusalem and throughout the Middle East and I agree with you that he was a truly remarkable and humane man and he was a formidable and effective adversary. But what about the great victories of King Richard the Lionheart in Palestine, the fortitude of the Knights Templars, the capturing of Jerusalem and the total slaughter of all those in that great city when the crusaders took the place (which was totally uncivilised, unacceptable and barbaric )? I can give you a list of similar acts of barbarity committed by the Islamists against their own moderate fellow Muslims, Christians and Jews over the centuries but that is not the point here. You talk about the defeat of the Soviets by the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Well was it not the Christian west that armed them, encouraged them, organised them and supported them through Pakistan against Soviet aggression or do u think that their clubs, camels and spears alone did the job? In any case the Soviets were communists and were therefore godless but when faced with a well equipped and praying modern western army, as they are today, not only were the Taliban government completely and utterly routed but the Taliban themselves are now on the run living in little caves on the border with Pakistan. What glory or victory lies in that? I thank God that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, whether it be in India, Pakistan, the Gulf states, Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, Nigeria and so on and so forth are decent, civilised and disciplined people who do not indulge in the sort of silly and childish historical revisionism that u are attempting to do here and who do not have Islamist and fundamentalist tendencies that u clearly harbour. They also mostly live in secular states (e.g. India, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, Algeria, Nigeria etc.) which I happen to believe is the very best thing. You say Islam is a religion of peace and I agree with you wholeheartedly but the extreemist and lunatic fringe of Islam which believes in slaughtering innocent people including women and children and which is led and represented by the likes of Osama Bin Ladin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, F.I.S, Boko Haram, the Taliban and other Islamist groups and leaders, continue to misrepresent true Islam and they are giving it a bad name in exactly the same way that Adolf Hitler gave Christianity a bad name when he gassed and burnt alive 6 million Jews. Such extremists and madmen surely have no place in the civilised world regardless of their justifications. This is most regrettable but it is the truth and the way you are talking here I suspect that you are one of them. Are you sure that you are allowed to even have any communication and discussions let alone debates with "infidels" like us? Please stop getting so excited and stop trying to pass off pure falsehood as history. And history or no history, Israel is the power of the Middle East today and no country in the world let alone a corrupt, divided and theocratic Iran can touch them and get away with it. As I said earlier this is because the God of Heaven, Jehovah Himself is with them and He will never forsake them.

Again your assertion that Israel killed 6 million Palestinians is not only mendacious and blatant falsehood but it is also a brazen lie. Even the most right wing of all the political parties in Israel have accepted the fact that Palestine, as a separate state, is something that must be accepted, hence the two state solution has been adopted by all the Jews and all the moderate Arabs. There are over 1 million Arabs peacefully and happily living in Israel and there are even Arabs in the Israeli parliament and successive cabinets so one wonders what are u talking about? I really do fail to see or appreciate your point here. The state of Israel has made a lasting peace with Jordan and Egypt and it is more or less on reasonably good terms with Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West Bank. The truth is that the better part of the Arab world is trying to work at making peace with Israel and both sides have accepted that the other has the right to exist and to live in peace and with security. The problem, as always, is the lunatic fringe of the Arab world such as the Sunni Islamist and Hamas- controlled government in Gaza, the Shia Islamist and Hezbollah- controlled region of southern Lebanon, the baathist and Arab nationalist controlled government of Syria and of course the Persians themselves who are bankrolling, openly arming and actively supporting all these extremist movements, terrorist governments and fundamentalist hardliners. They do not even believe that the Jewish state has the right to exist or that the Jews have the right to live. So what makes them any different to Hitler? And then of course there is Sunni Islamist Al Qaeda which does not just believe in wiping out Israel but in also islamising the whole world.

The most amazing thing is that all these extremist groups hate the moderate and reasonable muslim Arab population just as much as they hate the Jews. They actually regard them as sell outs. It is these extremists that are the problem of the world today and their champions in the international arena are firstly Osama Bin Laden and a close second is Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. As regards your assertion that Iran and Israel would just eliminate one another if a conflict were to erupt between them, please wake up from your inglorious and self-induced slumber: Israel has the knowhow, the power and the capability to flatten the whole of Iran totally in the space of 24 hours. Every single Iranian city has a nuclear warhead pointed and homed in on it as we speak and those cities would cease to exist at the touch of a button. And the Jews can do this with or without the Americans. Iran has absolutely no military capability to take on Israel even in a conventional war let alone a nuclear one. It is only the international community and world public opinion that is restraining them from being far more violent and aggressive against the Arabs and the Persians. All the Arabs and the Iranians put together cannot defeat Israel militarily- make no mistake about that. The Arabs have tried it in the past and they have failed and they will always fail because God is with the state of Israel and He guards them jealously. It really is as simple as that. The only way forward is for all sides to sue for peace and to stop indulging in vain and fanciful fantasies about blowing the state of Israel off the surface of the earth. Can you imagine the sheer horror that would be unleashed on the world if one of these extreme terrorist groups or if Ahmadenijad’s Iran got its hands on a nuclear weapon and actually decided to use it?

________________ Ffk, 2009

According to an interesting survey recently conducted by CNN the population of the Muslims in the world is now just over 1.6 billion. The survey also showed that there are 3 times the number of Muslims in Asia than there are in the Middle East. Again it showed that only 18% of the Muslims in the world live in the Middle East. This survey clearly shows the power and appeal of Islam and proves the assertion that Islam is a global religion which is second only to Christianity in terms of numbers. Christianity has about 2.5 billion adherents worldwide. We must do everything in our power to foster good relations between these two great monotheic faiths of Christianity and Islam because the greatest challenge facing the world today is the deterioration of relations and obvious misconceptions and misunderstandings that have taken place between the adherents of these two faiths since the aftermath of 9:11. Once we can build bridges between the two and get rid of these misconceptions the world will certainly be a better and safer place for us all. In this respect Nigeria is not only a shining example but she is also something of a role model to the rest of the world. Why? Because we have the largest population of both Muslims and Christians on the African continent living within our borders and both living peacefully side by side. We have well over 50 million Muslims and well over 50 million Christians in Nigeria, not only peacefully living with one another but also, in most communities, they are fully integrated. This is truly a blessing and a source of tremendous strength for us all and in this respect we have proved something to the rest of the world: that people of different faiths can live together peacefully if they try hard enough and if they are ready to treat each other with mutual respect, dignity, decency, sensitivity and understanding. In this respect we have managed to achieve what very few other countries have managed to do and for this reason I am v proud of Nigeria and I am proud to be a Nigerian.

QUESTION
But why is Islam such a bloodthirsty and aggressive religion? The Muslims are always killing and attacking Christians and Jews and yet we Christians never kill and attack them. That is why we are so uncomfortable with them- they like blood. Why are they like that?

ANSWER
Thanks but you are completely wrong: Islam is not a religion of bloodshed any more than Christianity or Judaism is and I will tell you why I say so. There are some historical facts that I will share with you here which have never ceased to amaze me and which disprove your assertion and theory about Muslims. In as much as some non- Muslims like to describe Islam as being an extremist and bloodthirsty religion, they are wrong. That is just stereotyping and the mistake that we often make is that we equate the vicious and unacceptable acts of a few misguided Islamic fundamentalists as being representative of the desires and thinking of most Muslims and this is simply not true. Islamic fundamentalists and Islamists who no doubt certainly do things that are bloodthirsty, extreme and irrational only represent a tiny percentage of Muslims throughout the world (7%) and it could be argued that this small percentage are not even true Muslims at all. Again they are as hostile and violent to the ordinary moderate and mainstream Muslim population as they are to non-muslims.

The truth is that one of the greatest acts of compassion in human history was carried out by not only a Muslim but a great Muslim warrior and king by the name of Salahudeen(or Saladin as he was known in Europe). At the same time what I would describe as the two most wicked and barbaric acts of human history were both perpetuated by so-called Christians: the first was the gassing to death of 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler who was actively supported by the Pope and the catholic church at the time and the other was carried out by "Christian" America when she dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war and thereby slaughtered close to a million Japanese men, women and children in one fell swoop. And the truth is that the bombing of the two cities was totally and completely unnecessary because the Japanese were already on their knees and the war had already virtually been won. The truth is that the Americans simply wanted to test their weapons of mass destruction and at the same time they wanted to send the communist leadership of the Soviet Union (Stalin) a strong message of warning that if pushed to the wall and in the event of a later confrontation between the two of them, they (the Americans) had the political will to use nuclear weapons if forced to do so. Generations of Japanese, till today, are still suffering deformities etc as a consequence of the dropping of those two atomic bombs and this is the only time in human history that such evil weapons have ever been used.

Now to Salahudeen and the Muslims. During the time of the crusades in the middle ages the "Christian" crusaders from Europe laid siege and eventually took the city of Jerusalem. After doing so they slaughtered every single Muslim man, woman and child that they found in the city. The streets of Jerusalem apparently "flowed day and night with Muslim blood" for days after the city was taken and "the cries of the innocents as they were being slaughtered could be heard for miles around". This was one of the most brutal acts of mass murder carried out in human history and the truth is that, again, it was totally unnecessary. The crusaders simply had an insatiable blood lust and at that time a bloodthirsty and vicious leadership (quite unlike in King Richard the Lionheart's time). After that they appointed a Christian king in Jerusalem and they ruled there for a hundred years. Then came Salahudeen from Syria. He gathered a massive Muslim army and they marched on Jerusalem. The thinking then was that this was the time to retake the city and avenge the massacre of the Muslim innocents which had been carried out by the Christian crusaders 100 years earlier. Salahudeen took Jerusalem after a v long siege but what did he then do? Rather than allow the Muslim armies to avenge the earlier massacre, he not only spared the Christian population but he also granted them safe passage out of the city. That was compassion and kindness and it came from one of the most devout yet tolerant Muslims that has ever lived and that history has ever known. Salahudeen proved to the world that Islam is not a religion of evil and bloodthirsty men but rather it is as accommodating and compassionate a faith as any other when properly practised. I think that we should all bear this in mind when we make our comments about Islam.

QUESTION
The bible tells us that the Arabs and Muslims are descended from Ishmael and that they are the children of Hagar. It says that they were born in the desert and that they were destined to always be aggressive and hostile to all those around them. Is this why they like killing and bombing people? Is that why they are so aggressive and hostile to others?

ANSWER
I am very familiar with the biblical accounts that you have referred to here and the scriptures that you are alluding to but the truth is that we Christians have committed as many atrocities and displayed as much aggression in world history and in the name of our religion as anyone else. And of course we have perpetrated these horrific acts against one another and against non-christians too including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews. Hitler was a Christian but he did not represent me or you when he was committing his atrocities. Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim but he does not represent my Muslim friend Aliyu when he says he wants to kill every non Muslim and Islamise the world. The Serbian Christians that butchered and slaughtered Muslim women and children in Bosnia and Kosovo did not represent me as a Christian and neither did the Christian militia in Lebanon when they butchered the Muslim women and children in the refugee camps of Shatilla and Sabra. Boko Haram did not represent Bala who is my Muslim friend and neither did the Turkish Muslims that wiped out 1.5 million Christian Armenians and displaced three quarters of the population of the Armenian nation at the end of the first world war represent my Muslim brother Uba Sanni when they were doing so. My point is that human beings of all faiths can be essentially cruel and wicked and they will use religion to justify all manner of atrocities. Just look at what happened in Irish and English history between the protestant English and the catholic Irish over the last 500 years and particularly in the time of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Again the whole concept of the secular state had to be introduced into Europe and the Christian world in order to protect people from the brutal excesses, killings and persecutions of particularly the church and particularly the Catholic Church. Do you remember the atrocities that were committed by the Spanish Inquistion and the Jesuit order? Please don't get me wrong because I can also catalogue a long list of atrocities that were committed by Muslims throughout world history as well both against their own fellow Muslims and against non Muslims too (for example look at what the Islamist Algerian FIS militia did to their own moderate Muslim brothers throughout the 90's or at what the Janjaweed Arab Muslims of the Sudan are doing to their own black African Muslims brothers in Darfur) but such behaviour is a human failing borne out of bigotry, fear and ignorance and it is not meant to be encouraged or accepted by any of the great monotheic faiths of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. And neither is it peculiar to one faith. In any case the bible tells us that we must love others and treat them as we would ourselves regardless of their faith and it also says that "for God so loved THE WORLD that He gave His only begotten son". God's love extends to the whole of humanity and not just to those of us that are Christians. Jesus died for us all, including the Muslims and Jews and He provided us with a choice: it is now left for us as individuals to decide which path we want to tread in terms of our choice of faith and whether we wish to accept Him as our Lord and our Saviour or not. But the most important point to appreciate is that we have far more in common with each other as Christians and Muslims than differences. Our common humanity alone should bring us closer together and our respective faiths and reverence for one almighty and ever-loving God should bind us together in love rather than divide us.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Women are a precious gift from God but there are some things that all men need to know. Women are by far the deeper and more powerful of the two sexes. No matter how strong a man thinks he is, he is like butter in the hands of a woman that he loves. It is only a woman that can carry a child for nine months and raise that child to adulthood and yet until the day that that woman dies only she will know the real father of that child. Women are more discerning than men, more calculating, more thoughtful, more spiritual, more loyal, and more disciplined and they can handle emotional pain and psychological torture far better than men. A woman can suffer trauma, deprivation, shame, sheer cruelty and beatings from a man and still stay with him simply for the sake of the children. A woman can do anything and take anything for, or from, a man that she truly loves. A woman can be the most vicious and dangerous of all God's creatures when she is hurt and scorned and when her love is not returned.

A woman in a position of power can be a dangerous thing because more often than not she is motivated by emotion and not reason or logic. If wars were to be fought by women they would never end. The greatest weapon that the devil has in his armoury are the daughters of Jezebel and Dalilah, those beautiful yet evil seducers whose mission in life is to destroy men that are called to greatness by God. The greatest weapon that God has in his arsenal are the daughters of Zion, those beautiful, wise, prayerful, discerning, prudent, patient, kind, loyal women who are faithful unto death and who are the enforcers and guardians of God's purpose in the lives of men.

A woman can kill a man that she has lived with all her life, simply because he never returned her love and a woman can kill for or die for a man who loves her and stands by her through thick and thin. If you are rich, pretend that you are poor to a woman and you will know her true nature. If you are poor, pretend that you are rich to a woman and you will know what she is really after. A woman that abandons a man when he is going through difficulties is not worth taking back when those challenges have been overcome. Beware of a woman's love, for at the slightest hurt, it can turn to hate. Women gossip and talk, yet a woman keeps deeper secrets than any man.

When a woman says "no" she actually means "maybe" and when she says "maybe" she actually means "yes". A woman that betrays or seeks to destroy, ridicule or shame her husband or lover destroys and diminishes her own spirit and wounds her own soul; not only is she not worthy of being loved by any, but she is not the material for a man of destiny, she is not of the stuff that true women are made. A great king with a great army can overrun nations and yet can be mastered and overwhelmed by the mere touch and whisperings of a loving woman. The love of Helen of Troy caused the launch of a thousand ships and the love of any woman can cause a man to slaughter. Women are a gift from God to men, but like all gifts they must be pampered, loved and given all your attention otherwise they begin to look elsewhere for such nourishment and care. Out of every specie of animal ever created by God, it is always the female gender of that animal that is the most vicious and dangerous and yet it is also the female of that specie that protects and raises the offspring in loving care.

You cannot police a woman or really know her movements for she can be the greatest deceiver: if she really wants to play, she will go ahead and play and no matter the efforts that her man makes, it is only by divine intervention that he will ever know. A woman is moved by touch whilst a man is moved by sight. A woman will die for her children and guard her home with all she has. A woman craves for security and commitment above all else and without these two she cannot truly be happy. A woman gives, a woman takes, a woman laughs, a woman cries, yet through all this only she alone knows what is really in her heart. A woman can heave and moan in the throes of orgasmic passion, yet deep down she feels nothing at all but pity and contempt for the lover that she is deceiving. A woman can lie still and say she feels nothing yet her heart trembles and races and her senses come alive and quiver deeply just at the sound and by the touch of the man that she truly desires. That is a woman for you: they can be a snare or a blessing. They can bring joy or pain. They can wound or they can heal. They are a beautiful contradiction of love and hate and we men simply cannot live without them.

A woman can only appreciate a man after she has been with another. A woman will make you feel that you are in charge yet with sweet words and with guile and cunning she silently controls everything and everyone around you. Women are the shield, the defender and the foundation of the home. Even as the man is the head, the woman is the neck without which it would fall. The greatest mistake that any man could ever make is to underestimate or treat with levity the power of a woman. For it is only a dullard or a fool that could honestly believe that he can confine a woman to having babies and to simply cooking in the kitchen. A woman is irrepressable, unbeatable,unfathomable, irresistable and unknowable and my advice to every man is to cherish her, to love her and to grant her, her hearts deepest desires. That is the secret to a woman's heart and what more is there to say, other than for us to admit that the woman is the true hero of our lives and to simply agree that we must appease and worship them and do all we can to keep those pretty smiles on their beautiful yet dangerous faces.

________________ Ffk, 2009

The warrior is noble and strong. His resolve is firm and his commitment is total. His is to kill, to shed blood and to be killed. His is to die for his king and for a worthy cause. His is to protect and lay down his life for his faith, his nation, his people and his loved ones. What manner of men are these whose spirit speak of such valour and nobility?

Consider the ancient Spartans and the Roman warriors of old. Consider the fearsome Vikings who believed that it was a curse to die a peaceful death and that the only way to heaven was to die violently and heroically in fearsome battle. Consider the greatest of all warriors that ever lived, the noble and gallant Achilles. Consider Alexander the great who conquered the world with his sword. Consider King David, the greatest of all the kings of Israel, who was a man of blood and war and yet whom God so loved and who loved God more than any other. Consider Davids "strongmen" who stood with him through thick and thin and who fought for and protected him to the very end. Consider their gallant captain, the mighty Joab and the others, Abishai, Asahel, Eleazer, the Tachomonite, Shammah, Benaiah, Eliam, Igal and Uriah the Hittite. These were David's men: all great and valient men of war whose courage was legendary and whose loyalty to their God and their king was unflinching and unquestionable.

Consider Shaka the Zulu, Beowulf the Nordic king and William Wallace the liberator of Scotland. Consider King Henry the fifth of England who routed the French at the battle of Agincourt even though he was outnumbered by fifty to one. Consider Julius Caesar who came, who saw and who conquered. Consider the great Herecles who was a descendant of the mighty Hercules himself. Consider Samson, who slew a troop with the jaw bone of an ass and yet who fell at the touch of a woman.

Consider Gideon who slew the Midianites, Jeptha who sacrificed his own daughter, Joshua who brought down the walls of Jericho and Jehu, who drove his chariot like a madman and who slew the witch Jezebel at Jezreel and, in fulfilment of prophecy, ensured that the dogs ate her flesh and licked her blood. Consider those that laid down their lives for our great and noble christian faith: Paul of Tarsus, the greatest of all the apostles, who brought the glorious gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the gentiles. Peter the disciple, who became the rock on whom the Church of God was built. Matthew, Mark, John, Isaiah, Daniel, Samuel, Abraham, Jacob, Elisha and all the other disciples and prophets of old. For martyrs and heroes that lived and died for God are also gallant warriors who feared not death and who stood firm to the end in defence of their faith.

Consider George Washington who led his troops into battle and whose battle cry was "victory or death". Consider the charge of the light brigade, the sheer courage and discipline of the famouse 600, at the battle of Balaclava. Consider General Lee at the battle of Gettysberg, Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Nasby, Admiral Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar, General Adekunle at the battle of Ore and General Obasanjo at the surrender of Biafra. Consider Generals Marshal, Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur in the bloodiest battles of the second world war. Consider Marshal Zhukov at the siege of Leningrad and his courageous exploits at the battle of Moscow. Consider Field Marshal Montgomery at the battle of El Alamein, General De Gaulle at the siege of Paris and General Chiang Kai-Shek in the war against Japan. Consider Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Peter the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Usman Dan Fodio, Salahudeen the Compassionate, Hannibal of Carthage, Leonides of Sparta and Hector of Troy. Consider the gallant Amazons, Queen Boudica of East Anglia, Queen Amina of Zaria, Queen Moremi of Ife and Yaa Asantewaa, the Queen mother of the Ashanti Kingdom. Consider Generals Foche and Hague at the battle of the Somme. Consider General Custer at the battle of the Little Big Horn. Consider the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo and consider the great Napolean in his fury, in his glory and in his power at the battle of Marengo.

Had these great men and women all not stood their ground and had they all not played their role in our collective history, where would we all be today? They sacrificed their today so that we may have a better tomorrow. They lived and died for the sake of others and asked for only one thing in return: that their names should live forever and that we should never forget their noble deeds and worthy sacrifices. And we must not forget, nay we dare not forget, for as another great and inspiring soul by the name of Martin Luther King once said "if a man is not ready to die for something then he is not worthy of living for anything". The warrior is prepared to die for his cause. That is what makes him so noble and that is why he will always have a special place in our hearts.

May the spirit of the warrior and selfless courage fill us all and, like the true warriors that we are meant to be, when death comes may the Lord give us the strength and boldness to fearlessly look at it in the face and treat it with the contempt and disdain that it deserves, knowing that it has lost its sting and knowing that, by the power of Christ Jesus, it has been conquered and crushed forever.

And when death comes, as come it must for all, let us be men and let us die a good death, not cringing and crying like puppies, but like true warriors, fighting to the bitter end. For it is never for the warrior to ask the why: it is only for the warrior to do or die. The warrior does not vanish into the night, the warrior will not go down without a fight.

________________ Ffk, 2009

What is this world coming to? Firstly the French Culture Minister, Mitterand, admits to sleeping with boys and openly encourages paedophiles by saying that he gets excited and sexually aroused when he enters a room filled with young Thai boys. He actually wrote all that in his book. He also said that he does not believe that the famouse film producer Roman Polanski should be arrested and prosecuted after he raped a 13 year old girl a number of years ago. This is a minister in the French government talking and the French President Nicholas Sarkozy has still not condemned him for it or sacked him. Again the President of the United States of America Barrack Obama is now appeasing and making concessions to the massive homosexual community in his country and is even prepared to repeal the act that defines a traditional marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In other words Obama is opening up the door for gay marriages. This level of liberalism, sexual immorality and sheer decadence is not only repugnant but it is also unchristian and ungodly. And I believe that it will soon attract God's wrath upon America and the west if not the entire world. Even President Obama's newly- appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands is openly gay and now the American President is also lifting all restrictions and limitations on gays serving openly in the U.S military.

It is no wonder that many are of the view that the west is slowly dying. It has lost all sense of decency and restraint and those with reprobate and shameless minds have taken over governance there. It is slowly turning into a Sodom and Gomorrah where anything goes. This is simply ungodly and totally unacceptable by any standard. Thank God that the real Christians, the political conservatives and particularly the evangelicals are fighting against this demonic trend in the west but it seems to me that they are fighting a losing battle. As a matter of fact they have already lost the war. Morally speaking the west is beyond redemption. I am utterly disgusted by this disgraceful course of events and I believe that if we insist on giving gays rights then we should also give rights to paedophiles and those that indulge in bestiality. The whole thing is just disgusting and unnatural. May God insulate and protect Nigeria from such evil. The truth is that the endtimes are really here. God help us all.

And why is Barrack Hussein Obama allowing such things to happen in America? Well I believe that I may have the answer to that. You see I have taken the time to study Obama's core beliefs in detail. This man is a classical new age, liberal and essentially humanist thinker. He is going to end up weakening and ultimately destroying America because he supports everything that I as an evangelical and conservative Christian completely rejects. Essentialy he does not accept or espouse the Christian ethos as you and I do. As a matter of fact he and those that think like him have absolutely no fear of God or what God stands for. They believe in a god that says anything goes as long as everyone is happy. He believes in abortion, stem cell research, gay rights, a passive foreign policy laced with appeasment, big government spending, religious ecumenism, same sex marriage and most important of all he seeks to water down and destroy what are essentially the core Christian values that built up America and made it what it is today, such as the concept of the family and the fact that a marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman.

As a black man and an African I am proud of the fact that Obama is the President of America and that he won the Nobel Peace Prize but at the same time I am deeply ashamed of what he is doing to America in terms of it's moral values and liberalism. Oprah Winfrey and her demonic and deviant religious philosophies (which she stubbornly and erroneously claims are Christian philosophies but which in fact are gnostic and mystical new age ones) also plays a major role in his life and agenda(she refers to him as "the one") and believe me spiritually there is a lot more to Obama than meets the eye. This is especially so when he speaks to a large gathering and when he is in a debate. He clearly has the power to mesmerize and cast spells when he addresses crowds, rather like Hitler did. He has cast his spell over America and the world and the source of that power and that "gift" is certainly not God. Do you think his winning the Nobel Peace Prize was just an ordinary thing that happened by chance? It most certainly was not. And neither was his extraordinary and inexplicable rise to power. There is a strange and dark force at work here. The Nobel committee themselves did not know why they did it and neither can they justify it or explain it to themselves, let alone to the world, up till now: something just came over them and that something is an extension, an emissary and a juxtaposition of the spirit of the Anti-Christ which actually thrives, flourishes and resides in old Europe today.

The world is now moving in another direction and it cannot be stopped because it is prophetic. Nothing can stop it because it has been written and God has allowed it. All that is happening today has been predicted accurately and prophesied in the book of Revelations in the Holy Bible. Those of you that are students and scholars of eschatology will know what I am talking about. So nothing that is happening should surprise us. Even the Muslims have sensed this great evil that is rising in the west and they know that it's ultimate objective is to destroy the very concept of any higher power like God, remove the whole idea of religion from the world and then ultimately enthrone man himself as the god of the earth ,to be worshipped by all and sundry. And that man will be the son of perdition himself, the Anti- Christ. That is why Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise because they are also trying to resist this rising evil, just as we are, in order to preserve their way of life, their values and their faìth. We are indeed in the end times and Obama is just a precursor. He is simply paving the way for the real beast that will eventually emerge as the undisputed leader of a new and all powerful federal Europe and the most powerful man that this world has or will ever know: that man is again, the son of satan, the anti-christ himself whose number will be 666.

There is one more assertion that is worth considering here and that is the erroneous impression that some misguided individuals have that some of the ancient, primitive and secret cults that are flourishing in some parts of Nigeria somehow constitute part of the new age movement which is now flourishing in Europe and America. Proponents of this assertion cite the existence of such cults as evidence of the fact that the new age is alive and well in Nigeria. Not only is this not true but to equate the Ogboni cult and the Rosicrutian order with the new age movement betrays a complete misunderstanding of what the new age is and reflects a complete underestimation of just how dangerous it can be. I would suggest, and strongly too, that the proponents of this naive assertion go and look up the definition of the new age movement before jumping to any conclusions. They can either google it or look it up in a good dictionary. It is not every form of paganism or manifestation of ignorance and idolatry that qualifies to have the new age label attached to it. Ogboni, Rosicrusians and the Ifa oracle etc are a primitive joke and an unsophisticated fringe practice when compared to the new age movement.

The new age, which seeks to usher in the freethinking age of aquarius is a lot more than sorcery and much bigger than any secret cult. It is deeply luciferian in nature and it has it's own fixed philosophy and global objectives. It is far more dangerous and corrupting than some little fast dying village cult like the ogbonis. Yes they are all evil and they are all anti-christ but the new age is far more subtle and far more dangerous than the others. It is not just a religion or cult but rather it is an illicit and thouroughly demonic way of life which essentialy involves varying degrees of pure satanism, spiritism, divination, ritual homosexual sex, the invocation and conjuring up of demons through group sex and licentious orgies, the worship of "mother" earth, communication with and guidance from star beings, space aliens and u.f.o's, pure magic, crystal gazing, the invocation and use of spirit guides, numerology and finally it espouses the humanist philosophies of the late '60's which essentially says that we ourselves "are gods". It also espouses a political ethos that basically says anything goes and anything is allowed as long as everyone is happy and prosperous and as long as the earth and air is clean and free of global warming. It's prophets and prophetesses are many but some of the more prominent are people like Benjamin Creme, Lord Maitreya (who uses occultic power to raise people from the dead and who lives in Rome), Shirley Maclain, Oprah Winfrey, Uri Gella, Al Gore and so many others. It is much bigger than the mere fetish activities that we see in Nigeria and it seeks to take over nations and continents and not just people. It seeks to change the course of world events and presents a direct challenge to the authencity of all monotheic faiths and even to the very existence of God. It's origins are in celtic magic and eastern mysticism and certainly not in child- like and relatively primordial cults like Ogboni, the Rosicrusians, Abdul Rashin or Ifa. The new age movement is far more dangerous than that. It is the vehicle by which the anti-christ shall conquer and rule the world. We thank God that his rule shall only be temporary(the bible tells that he will rule for only seven years). We thank God for the coming "rapture" and for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who we know shall soon return in His full power and glory . We thank God that He will utterly destroy the anti-christ and that He will grant us final victory over him at the battle of Armageddon. We thank God for His Holy Word, His promise and for the scriptures, for they cannot be broken. Ultimately and despite all we see we need not fear for the final victory is ours. The Lord has already sealed it and the end of the anti-christ and all those who choose to stand with him has already been determined. Glory be to God. Shalom.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Most Nigerians believe that it was Chief Anthony Enahoro that moved the motion for Nigeria's independence but this is simply not true.Unfortunately most of our people, including those in high places, know no better because they have refused to do their homework and check the records. Let me explain to you what actually happened and who did what. Chief Anthony Enahoro attempted to move the motion for Nigeria's independence in Parliament in 1953 and by that motion he argued that Nigeria should be granted her independence in 1956. However his motion failed and it was rejected by Parliament and the British authorities. In 1957 Chief S.L. Akintola tried to move the motion for Nigeria's independence in Parliament again but again it failed and it was rejected by Parliament and the British authorities. The motion was not successfully moved in Parliament until 1958 and that was done by my father Chief Remilekun Fani- Kayode. His motion argued that we should be granted independence on April 2nd 1960 and it was accepted and passed by Parliament and the British. Sir Tafawa Balewa and Raymond Njoku also played a major role and made a slight amendment to my fathers original 1958 motion in 1959 which was also accepted. The amendment was just a minor one and what it said was that we should be granted independence not on April 2 1960 as originally agreed but rather on Oct 1st 1960 instead. It was just a delay of a few months. It was accepted and passed. For details of all this please read my interview on Pointblanknews.com which has been reproduced on my website(under the independence day interview column) and again you can go to the lineage page of my website and you will get all the facts. For docuementry evidence and literary sources to prove what I am saying here you can read the famouse book by the American writer and historian Richard L. Sklar (who is the leading authority and historian on the politics of the '50's and '60's in Nigeria). The book is titled "Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent Nation." You can google it and read page 269. You can also read Professor Sanya Onabamiro's book titled "Perspectives On Nigeria's History" to get the facts. He corroborates Sklar's assertions and they were both there to witness it and they use Hansard as their references.

Finally anyone that is really interested and is still in doubt should read Hansard (which is the official docuement that contains the minutes of all the discussions and arguements that took place in parliament in those days). You can get this at the old British Colonial Office library or in the archives of the National Assembly and Parliament in Nigeria. Let me repeat the facts here: the motion for Nigeria's independence was succesfully moved by my father and accepted by Parliament and the British in July 1958. By that motion Parliament agreed and demanded (and it was accepted by the British authorities) that we would be granted our independence on April 2nd 1960. However one year later in 1959 Sir Tafawa Balewa moved a motion in Parliament for a slight amendment to my father's original 1958 motion and he moved that the month of independence should be shifted from April 2nd, as originally agreed in the 1958 motion, to Oct. 1st of the same year instead. Balewa's motion was seconded by Raymond Njoku and it was accepted by Parliament and by the British. That is how we got Oct Ist 1960 as our date of independence. Many people erroneously believe that it was Enahoro that did this but they are wrong and the records are there to prove it. Enahoro did play a major role by setting off the process and by at least trying to move it in 1953 but it was rejected by the north and the British as being too early and in fact the northern NPC members of Parliament staged a walk out when Enahoro tried it. This led to a lot of trouble in the country, a lot of tension between the north and the south and those troubles resulted directly in the infamouse and terrible Kano riots. It is a great pity that most Nigerians do not know all this, do not read widely and do not know the truth about their own history. It is also sad that Chief Enahoro will continue to take credit over all these years for something that he knew that he never did. Well that is Nigeria for you. Thanks for the question and we must take every opportunity to tell the world the truth and set the record straight. A people that do not know their own history certainly do not have a future.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Unlike many others I do not believe that the world will come to an end on December 21st 2012. However what worries me a little is that most of the major events that were ever prophesied about or spoken of by the ancient Mayan calender of thousands of years ago and again that were later prophesied and written about by the famouse astrologer and seer Nostradamus have all come to pass. This includes both World Wars 1 and 2, the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, the rise of Napolean Bonaparte and so many other major world events and rulers. They have both also spoken about a terrible event that will occure on this planet on December 21, 2012. Yet despite that for me the most compelling aspect of all this is the fact that what we in christian circles call the "end times" where earthquakes, tsunamis, wars and rumours of war together with earth changing climate changes and so on and so forth will and indeed are already taking place before our very eyes. We are now undoubtedly in that period and literally anything can happen. The bible tells us that the end times or "end of days" will preceede the rapture, the rise of the anti-christ and the final coming of the Messiah and a lot of terrible things will happen during that period.

A study of the book of Revelations clearly shows us that the anti-christ himself will be a homosexual political leader that will emerge as the President of a new and very powerful European super state which will not only be the most powerful nation on the planet by that time but will also be the most powerful nation and empire that the world has ever known. It also talks about the Arabs of the Middle East, Russia (Magog), Persia and China together with a number of other powerful nations all of whom will eventually side with the antichrist and eventually attack and attempt to wipe out the State of Israel. Then will come the final battle and the mother of all battles- the battle of Armageddon- where the bible tells us that the Lord Himself will appear from the skies with the Hosts of Heaven and the dead in Christ and the antichrist and his world armies will be crushed, defeated and destroyed forever. This is prophetic and it is all going to happen sometime in the future but only the Lord Himself knows the exact day and time. Yet in all of this I just have one question: where is the United States of America in all this and where will she be by that time? America is not in any way mentioned or referred to in any of the endtime scriptures. She seems to have either completely disappeared or, at the very best, diminished into a minor power which is not even worthy of any mention in the book of Revelations. Could it be that something terrible had happened to America by that time that had literally caused her, or at least part of her, to have disappeared from the face of the earth? And before anyone thinks that this is a little far-fetched there is a precedent for this: there was once an ancient continent called Atlantis and the fact of the matter is that one day, thousands of years ago, something happened and it just disappeared without trace into the sea.

Archaelogical and anthropological evidence of the existence of Atlantis has been discovered on numerous occassions over the years and the fact that it once existed is irrefutable. Again could anyone have predicted or anticipated the kind of giant tsunamis and hurricaines that we are seeing and witnessing today on this planet just a few decades ago? What about the effect of global warming on the planet and particularly the polar caps? Could anyone have predicted that? Could the melting of those massive ice caps as a result of global warming be the cause of whatever may happen on that day? Worst still could it be a successful nuclear terrorist attack on America by a terrorist group or a rogue state? Could that thing, whatever it might be, take place on Dec. 21, 2012? I really don't know what the answers are but all this is indeed food for thought. One thing I do believe however is that no responsible government would want people to know the truth if there was indeed any semblence or iota of truth in all this or if anything was really coming on that day because they would want to avoid panic and the spreading of mass hysteria and fear. Remember how the American government denied the alien Roswell landings in the 1950's? That should be a pointer to the attitude of governments when it comes to such matters.

________________ Ffk, 2009

Today (26th of November) is Thanksgiving Day in America and we rejoice and felicitate with our American and American- based friends. And it is no wonder that the United States is truly blessed by God. A nation, which from the very start, set a day aside as a day of national thanksgiving to the Most High God and to the Ancient of Days cannot possibly go wrong. The pilgrim fathers laid a solid christian foundation for America right from the outset and they were followed by great men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln who later built a great nation on that great foundation. George Washington once said "you cannot rule without God and the bible" and of course he was right. That is indeed the secret to America's success and that is her strength and spiritual foundation: a nation that was built up from and prayed into existence by the pilgrim fathers and the word of God. Since then and hundreds of years later America has clearly drifted from God and moved away from the original vision of it's founding fathers. There is no doubt that the solid spiritual foundation that the pilgrim fathers once laid has suffered a deep crack. Something has gone terribly wrong. For example in America today homosexuality is a constitutional right, men can marry men and women can marry women.

In America today hundreds of thousands of innocent children are murdered and sacrificed every day to the demon god called Molech in the name of "a womans right to choose" and clinical abortion. In America today satanic temples are constructed and established and the devil is openly worshipped and reverred. In America today prayer has been banned from public schools and all manner of idolatory, spiritual harlotry, licentiousness, sexual immorality and utter evil thrive in the name of a permissive society, the new age religion and secularism. This is a sad indictment of what America has turned into today and a total negation of the original vision of the pilgrim fathers. However despite this obvious degeneration of values and despite the fact that she is now slowly turning her back on the God that made her into what she is today, America is still blessed in every way and is still dearly loved by God. She still remains the "land of the brave and the home of the free". And whatever mistakes that the people and the leadership of America may have made in the recent past at least they have not forgotten to honour the God of Heaven on Thanksgiving Day. That much they continue to do and it is to be encouraged and commended. As a matter of fact every nation on earth should take a cue from that and do the same. Happy Thanksgiving Day to all our friends and kith and kin in America. Have a great day, God bless you all and God bless America.

________________ Ffk, 2009

The word of God is immutable and unassailable and He is faithful to keep it to the very end. If I know nothing else, this I know to be true. I know that scripture cannot be broken and that whether we live or die tomorrow is in the hands of God alone. I also know that injustice and deceit can never last and that persecution only fuels dissent. There comes a time in the life of a man when he must be a man and stand up and speak the truth, even where others are too timid and intimidated to do so. And he must do this in the knowledge that whatever the price that he may have to pay, whether it be assassination, arrest, detention, harassment, persecution, prosecution or utter destruction, he is ready to pay that price and take the glory and the honour that goes with it. By the grace of God I have today reached that point and I will bare my mind to the sickly tyrant freely. And after I have had my say I shall gallantly take my stand and with faith proclaim: let the demons of hell be invoked and conjured up and let them come forth and do their very worse, for they shall not pass and neither shall they prevail. For the word of God says "if thou shalt say in thine heart, these nations are more than I, how can I dispossess them? Thou shalt not be afraid of them but shall well remember what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all of Egypt. The great temptations which thine eyes saw and the signs and the wonders, and the mighty hand and the stretched out arm, whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out. So shall the Lord thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid..... thou shalt not be affrighted at them, for the Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible." And so it shall be as I stand on these holy words and boldly proclaim, o wicked tyrant, I stand and I fight against you. I stand and I fight in the name of the Living God. I stand and I fight in the name of Harrow and Cambridge. I stand and I fight in the name of Kelly and London. I stand and I fight as the son of my father. I stand and I fight as a proud and strong African. I stand and I fight as a resilient and irresistible Nigerian. I stand and I fight as a man of courage. I stand and I fight as a beautiful and irrepressible black man. I stand and I fight as a man of faith, a Christian who knows that his God is mighty and can never be defeated. We are what we believe ourselves to be. I am unbeatable, irrepressible and indestructible. I am a covenant child of the Living God, a prince of the Faith and a son of the Kingdom. My head may be bloodied but it is not bowed. I do not know the meaning of fear and I have learnt to master the affliction of pain. I do not flinch.

I stand and I fight with my whole being: with my body, with my spirit and with my soul. I stand and I fight to win and not to lose. I stand and I fight, tall and proud and by the power of the God that I serve, I shall always prevail. I stand and I fight because children of Israel are never alone. I stand and I fight because all tyrants must be resisted. I stand and I fight because God's word says "He shall cut off the spirit of princes" and “He is terrible to the kings of the earth". And so to King Ahab the sickly tyrant, I have just this to say: you can detain me, you can malign me, you can arrest me and you can misrepresent me. You can persecute me, you can subjugate me, you can lie about me and you can scatter my household and my loved ones. You can villify me, you can torment me, you can jeer at me and you can mock me. You can sack my associates, you can query my loyalists and you can cause my friends to flee the land. U can humiliate those who stand for me, you can pour scorn on those who love me, you can threaten those who speak for me and you can bribe those who work for me. You can plan, you can scheme, you can assign and you can direct and delegate destruction at my doorsteps and at my gates. You can intimidate and torment and you can use your kingly power to abuse and to destroy. You can make our destruction your eighth point agenda and you can commission your minions to ensure that it is perfected. You can do all these things yet ultimately you will fail because, like all beastly tyrants, you have forgotten the power of God in all your subterranean wickedness and in all your sinister schemes. Holding on to power at all costs? That is nothing new, Saul tried it and failed. Agag tried it and failed. Herod tried it and failed. Pharaoh tried it and failed. Sennacherub tried it and failed. Athalia tried it and failed. Nebudchadnezzar tried it and failed. Ahab tried it and failed. Haman tried it and failed. Omri tried it and failed and so did Nero and Caligula and Jezebel and countless others. For the God that stopped them is still alive and continues to rule in the affairs of men and He alone forges the destiny of nations. And in all this know one thing: that you cannot break me, you cannot kill me, you cannot defeat me and you cannot destroy me. This is because I am anointed for greatness and I am truly blessed by He who sits above the circles of the earth and by He who created all that is. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places and yea I have a goodly heritage. My future has been established and decreed by the oracles of God. It has been inscribed in the stars and it has been written in the books of heaven. It cannot be altered or aborted by you or your invocations and spells and your wicked ways. And yet perhaps you should know another: that your end has already been decreed by the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and it is only a matter of time before it suddenly comes. For my soul stands defiant against you. I defy you with all my being. My contempt for you is resounding, for you are nothing but sickness and weakness and failure and deceit and emptiness. You are nothing but the darkness that seeks the darkness, both you and the Amalekite foundation from which you come.

My God has spoken and on His word I stand. My spirit is lifted and it is filled with joy and strength. I stand and I fight because my victory is assured. I stand and I fight because I despise the shame. I stand and I fight because there is a greater tomorrow.. I stand and I fight because I will never bow before this beastly and deceitful tyrant. I stand and I fight because like Macbeth I must fight "until the flesh be hacked from my bones". I stand and I fight because I am who I am. I stand and I fight because I am a son of the great "I Am, That I Am". I stand and I fight because my God is "a man of war". I stand and I fight because you cannot kill a man that is already dead. I stand and I fight because I have a lioness, a daughter of Zion, who proudly stands by my side. I stand and I fight because the Lord has steeled my body, my spirit and my soul. I stand and I fight because the fewer the number, the greater the share of honour. I stand and I fight because King David stood and fought, and Gideon and Joshua and Jehu that went before him. So let the sickly tyrant rant and rave. Let him do his very worse. Let him, like Nero, play his fiddle whilst Rome burns and let him make merry in his wickedness and inglorious ways.

Let him punish the father of the nation for giving him power. Let him plot and plan both night and day. Let him invoke strange spirits, consult the stars, torture, detain, defame, destroy, charge, frame, kill and maim. Let him bomb and burn and kill his 20 million. Let him bribe the militants of the Niger-Delta and let him offer them a plagued and unsustainable amnesty. Let him "cry havoc" and let slip the horrific dogs of war. Let him break and let him crush the very spirit of the people. Let him enslave the whole of our nation and cower us all into silence and submission. Let him enshrine the words "there is none besides me" into the federal constitution. Let him turn us into cowards and quislings, let him plunge us into darkness and let him bewitch our feeble souls. Yet in all his treacheries and schemings let him know one thing, that we are not shaken and neither are we moved. For even if he were to carve up our flesh and send our dismembered limbs to the four corners of the kingdom, our God is able to put us back together again and give us life, even more abundant. And even if he can kill our weak and worldly bodies, he cannot break our spirits and neither can he take our souls. For if our God can move mountains who and what is he? If our God be for us, what can he possibly do? Our God's word says "who is he that sayest a thing and it cometh to pass when the Lord God of Hosts has commanded it not?" It says "who is he that lays a charge before God's elect, is it not Christ that justifies?" It says "whose report will you believe and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" It says "who can separate us from the love of the Lord?" and that "nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us".

We stand and we fight because we are indeed "more than conquerors". We stand and we fight because tin pot tyrants come and go: they are a dime a dozen, soon to be forgotten. We stand and we fight because heroes and martyrs, even if they fall in their course, will always live forever. We stand and we fight because we serve a mighty God who never fails and who will never leave us or forsake us. We stand and we fight knowing that the victory is ours. We stand and we fight for our honour, for our nation, for our women and for our children. We stand and we fight with courage, strength, defiance and joy knowing that though weeping may tarry in the night, “joy comes in the morning".

We stand and we fight because His word says "once has it been spoken and twice have we heard that all power belongs to God and the heavens do rule in the affairs of men". We stand and we fight because we have no other choice, for good will always triumph over evil and light will always overcome the darkness in the end. We stand and we fight because we fear not death, we fear not the tyrant and we fear not his gods and idols. We stand and we fight because our God will always love us and through Him and by Him our salvation is secure. We stand and we fight because we have been prepared for war. We stand and we fight because the Lord is our defence and the Holy One of Israel is our king and our God. We stand and we fight because His word boldly asks, "who is this uncircumcised Phillistine that has chosen to defy the armies of the Living God?" We stand and we fight because He goes on to affirm that "I have found David my servant and with my holy oil have I anointed him". We stand and we fight because His holy word proclaims "who art thou o mountain before Zerrubabel? Thou shalt be made a plain".

We stand and we fight because we wax strong in battle. We stand and we fight because we cannot be defeated. We stand and we fight because we are not in the hands of men but rather we are under the power of God. We stand and we fight because He is our shield, He is our glory and the lifter of our heads. We stand and we fight because He will "pour out His wrath upon the heathen that have not known Him and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon His name." Of this I am sure, that our Lord will make them like a wheel and as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire, so will He persecute them with His tempest and make them afraid with His storm. He will fill their faces with shame, that they may seek His name night and day. He will let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea He will let them be put to shame and perish that men may know that He, whose name alone is Jehova, is the most high over all the earth. So let it be and so it is and yet until then, we stand and we fight, we stand and we fight, we stand and we fight.

________________ Ffk, 2009

I am now convinced more than ever before that Nigeria is a nation that is today suffering from God's wrath and judgement. The things that are happening at the highest level of governance in this country today are beyond human reasoning, human comprehension or human understanding. They are simply irrational and downright dangerous. Our leaders today are playing Russian roulette with the destiny of Nigeria. And not only are they playing it but they are also playing it blindfolded. Quite apart from this administration's ruthless inclinations and it's sheer desperation to silence, persecute and intimidate all it's real and perceived enemies, we also have a very sick President who not only refuses to resign but who also refuses to hand over power to his Vice President pending the time that he recovers from his fast deteriorating health (if he ever does). This surely is the classical case of a comedy of errors except for the fact that no one is laughing and that it is fast turning into a tragic nightmare. If Nigeria goes on like this for much longer without a strong, functioning and functional President and with no one to act for or stand in for him, then we are not only playing with fire but we are also toying with a situation in which literally anything can happen including the most frightful, the most brutal, the most inconceivable and the most undesirable. If we continue to drift in this nebulous and unpredictable power vacuum then it is only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and a massive conflagration of monuemental proportions overwhelms and consummes the entire country.

Again if the President dies today that will not help the situation but rather it will only make matters worse and there will be even more tension and potential for trouble. This is because there are some zealots around him who erroneously believe that under no circumstances should a southerner like the Vice President be allowed to come to power for at least another six years in this country even where the constitution stipulates and demands that in the event of Mr. President being in anyway incapacitated the the VP must take over from him. Given the attitude of these zealots it follows that if anything should happen to President Umaru Yar'adua it is at that point that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan should fear the most for his life. Again even if the President wanted to do the right thing and resign the question would then be would the hawks around him allow him to do so? Would they not rather keep him there by any means possible even if he is comatose and on a life support machine in order for their tiny cabal of unelected officials to continue to rule the country and wield all the power as they are doing today? Would Goodluck Jonathan be safe in this scenario either given the intransigence and disposition of some of these desperate hardliners and hawks? For the record my position is that the President should resign and hand over to his Vice. That is what the constitution prescribes in a situation like this and that is what anyone that wishes to put the nation's interest before his own should do. We need to pray for President Yar'adua too: that he should continue to live but that he should also cultivate the decency and patriotism to quietly go back to Katsina for the next few years and take care of his fast failing health. He owes himself, his family and his nation that much. We also need to pray for Vice President Jonathan's safety and security and specifically ask God to give him the courage and strength to stand up, stand firm and prepare for his moment in history. It is time for us to face down those that suggest that regional, ethnic and religious considerations should supercede and be placed above the constitution of the land simply because of an archaic, outdated and mundane concept called rotational power or zoning which is not known to the Nigerian constitution. Finally and most importantly we need to pray to God to lift His judgement over our nation and have mercy on us all. That is the only thing that can get us out of this potentially explosive mess: a mess that, if not handled carefully, could set Nigeria back by 10 to 20 years.

________________ Ffk, 2010

A new form of government is slowly being introduced to the world by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The test run for this new, innovative and unique system of government was introduced to the world from a sick bed in a Saudi Arabian hospital two months ago by Nigeria's ailing President Umaru Musa Yar'adua and he will soon establish it and make it fully operational when he returns back to Nigeria to his newly-built, designer and specialist ground floor hospital bed (with state of the art and modern life saving and sustaining machines et al) in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja. This system of government is called "corpsocracy" and it allows for the country to be ruled by a leader who is half dead, who is on a life support machine, who is in a coma, who is permanently on a kidney dialysis machine or who is suffering from dementia and chronic heart and liver failure. Under this new system of government the leader does not ever have to leave his bed, he does not have to speak to his people, he does not have to sign or approve any memos or treaties, he does not have to abide by the constitution, he does not have to lead the military, he does not have to give day to day directives on the economy, foreign policy and the running of his government and he does not have to see or be seen by his ministers and staff, let alone the Nigerian people that he is leading. All he has to do to sustain his mandate and to continue to legitimately and lawfully lead the country is to ensure that he maintains a weak pulse whilst he is in his vegetative state and to ensure that his wife indulges in the deepest form of black magic, necromancy and coprophilia on his behalf on a day to day basis. As long as he is still breathing and even if he is not concious, he can continue to rule and lead the people even where he is physically and mentally unfit to do so and even where he is nothing but a living corpse. And just in case he ever feels like speaking to the people, a faint one minute drawl, preferably in his native hausa language, is all that is required of him and even that can be to the BBC hausa service and certainly not to any Nigerian media house or medium. In the event of war being declared on the country there is no cause for alarm because under this system his wife will have the sole responsibility and exclusive right to command the Nigerian army, lead them into battle and defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity. And whilst she is doing that his ever faithful ministers can handle the onerous and all important task of receiving and making tea for the President's numerous mallams, prayer warriors and mourners in the Presidential Villa and they will also be charged with the additional and vital responsibility of changing Mr. President's diapers and pampers everyday, washing his private parts and supervising the changing of his bed sheets and the cleaning of his bedroom at least once every 3 hours.

As for running the government, that will be left in the able hands of a tiny cabal of provincial villagers, family members and Special Advisors who had never travelled out of Katsina state, let alone Nigeria, before 2007. And the best part of it all is this: there is absolutely no role to play or any need for a Vice President under this new system because once the President dies completely his wife will automatically take over and assume full power. Is this not a great achievement: our very own version of democracy? I am so proud to be a Nigerian today. And instead of wasting our time complaining we should just keep quiet and pray for our President to get better and return from the land of the dead-after all anyone can fall sick at any time and all that is happening to us as a nation today is simply the "will of God". That is how God wants it so who are we to question or resist His will? This is our own form of democracy and all true patriots should just accept it. In any case this new system of government quite apart from showing the world how brilliant and innovative we are as a people, really does provide great hope for the future of our country. Someone should go and tell President Obama that Nigeria has now come of age and that he is not the only one that has brought the concept of "change that we can believe in" and "yes we can" to the world of politics and governance. Nigeria's version of "yes we can" is known as "corpsocracy" and this can be accurately defined as "the rulership of the living by the dead". This is Nigeria's own unique contribution to the world of global politics and the age old and historical debate about the competing systems of governance in today's unipolar world.

________________ Ffk, 2010

Our very own Pharaoh returns to Nigeria after 3 months of not being seen by anyone except his wife.......a hearty congratulations to the corpsocratists. I am indeed very happy for them. They seem to be getting their way once again and of course it is the Nigerian people that will suffer for it. But the questions remain....has President Umaru Yar'adua learnt the lessons that the biblical Pharaoh refused to learn? Is he ready to change and let God's people go or has his heart been hardened beyond redemption? Is he ready to desist from his evil and wicked ways? Has he lost his legendary appetite for pettiness and vengeance? Can anything good ever come out of a real Pharaoh? Can they ever or have they ever ended well? And as regards his health is he now 100 per cent fit to rule our nation? I doubt it very much.

Instead we will now experience yet another season of insufferable insolence, incompetence, deceit, arrogance, viciousness and persecution of all his real and perceived enemies. And of course Nigerians will clap and cheer for him and they will bend over backwards to congratulate him for ''getting better'' and for ''returning home safely''. That is the average Nigerian for you.....so kind, so forgiving, so quick to forget and so unable to learn from the lessons of history, they cower and tremble before whoever is in power and they despise those that have the courage to speak the truth and to speak their minds. To them the trauma and disgrace, not to mention the constitutional crisis, that the nation has been put through in the last few months by Umaru, his wife and his little cabal counts for nothing. The bitter truth is that if our ailing President had any integrity left, now that he is back home, he would firstly apologise to the nation for going awol without explanation and without properly handing over to his deputy and he would secondly resign from office on health grounds and go home to Katsina to quietly recuperate and allow the country to breath again and move on.

It would be better for him to do that and it would be better for Nigeria too. But of course Umaru will do no such thing. Instead he will continue to rule the nation in his ill-health, in his incompetence and in his wickedness and he will continue to do so until he goes so far, harms so many and destroys the country to such an extent that God,in His infinate wisdom and mercy, finally decides that enough is enough and that it is time for His final judgement to be inflicted on him. That is when we will see the hand of God and that is when our Pharaoh will finally go through the ''Red Sea experience''....an experience from which no mortal returns. Until then may God help and protect Nigeria from this exceptionally wicked man and his wife, from this monstrous situation and from this bizarre and shameful cycle of shame, ineptitude and calamity that has befallen our nation.

________________ Ffk, 2010

My dear compatriots, it is with the greatest sadness that I must tell you this morning that since yesterday a great evil has gripped our beloved nation Nigeria. This is perhaps the greatest evil and challenge that we have ever had to face since gaining our independence from the British in 1960. Our Acting President, Dr.Goodluck Jonathan, was asked yesterday to report to the the First Lady of Nigeria Turai Yar'Adua for a briefing and for further directives as regards the rulership of our beloved country. This has never happened before in our history and no First Lady in Nigeria has ever dared to even attempt such a thing. The truth is this that Turai ''the Jezebel'' Yar'Adua has finally become the de facto Head of State and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This is not only unacceptable but it is also evil and ungodly. And of course it has no constitutional basis whatsoever.To make matters worse the the First Lady is barely educated. The truth is that it is time for us to rise up and resist this tyranny.

For the sake of our children and our children's children, this is the time to stand up, to stand firm and to speak out. And we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated or to be cowered and overwhelmed by them, despite their vast powers, their evil intentions and their boastful threats. This is where our faith kicks in and our God will show Himself mighty. This is where we must remember that for every Jezebel there is a Jehu and that that that Jehu will eventually bring deliverance, hope and redemption to the land. Just read your bible and find out. May God raise our own Jehu in Nigeria and may He cause him to exact the most brutal form of judgement, vengeance and wrath on this wretched and power drunk witch that has chosen to bind, to plague and to blight our beloved nation with her insatiable lust for power and wealth and her evil charms and sorceries. I call on the Daughters of Zion to rise up in prayer against her now and I call on our men to be men and to do whatever it is that they have to do to frustrate and shatter the crafty devices of this agent of darkness and this wicked Daughter of Babylon called Turai Yar'Adua. We must all resist this evil. We must all stand against this tyranny. We must all join our hands together to save Nigeria.

________________ Ffk, 2010

“Our independence from Spanish domination did not put us beyond the reach of madness. General Antonio López de Santana, three times dictator of Mexico, held a magnificent funeral for the right leg he had lost in the so-called Pastry War. General Gabriel García Moreno ruled Ecuador for sixteen years as an absolute monarch; at his wake, the corpse was seated on the presidential chair, decked out in full-dress uniform and a protective layer of medals. General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the theosophical despot of El Salvador who had thirty thousand peasants slaughtered in a savage massacre, invented a pendulum to detect poison in his food, and had streetlamps draped in red paper to defeat an epidemic of scarlet fever.”

I quote Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer, extensively because when I first read those words a few years ago, I almost wanted to believe he was carving the meat of fact too close to fiction in his Nobel lecture. Today, what is unraveling in Nigeria has banished such ignorant thoughts from my head. The above is what he referred to as Latin America’s “outsized reality”. Marquez was trying to quietly refute what Western interpreters of his fictionalised reality are quick to tag “Magical Realism”. Critics think Marquez’s supernatural and surreal weaving of Latin America’s craziness was solely based on the writer’s deranged imagination.

Another chronicler of the Latin America’s weird lives is Alejo Carpentier. In his book The Kingdom of This World, vacillating between history and “fantasy”, he came up with the coinage “Lo real maravilloso” loosely translated, “the real marvelous” to which he added: “But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?” I learnt a major part of Haiti’s history through Carpentier.

For the two Latin American writers above, nature and man have created for them what Western literary critic may want to term magical realism.

Nigerians have experienced Lo real maravilloso before, but this new one is outsized . Our odd days have dawned in my wake and I am scrambling to understand the reality behind this magical madness. I am struggling to find an entry into the story of how a first lady with a barely alive president has wrapped an entire country of more than 150 million people round her fingers and is flying us carelessly like a plastic kite.

Three nights ago, we Nigerians began to witness our own bizarre reality. Just when we thought the plot had thickened and couldn’t get worse, the author of our country’s new destiny stuck a knife in it and twisted it some more. We were left scrambling for interpretations. The country had the look of chickens in disarray at the sight of a hawk. And yes, there is a hawk in our national coop right now and her name is Turai.

Our tattered nation has become a one woman’s show, a desperate housewife with a few maniacal kleptomaniacs who are clearly intoxicated by the powder of power. They are striking matches carelessly at the base of a gunpowder keg. Our first lady has turned to a kid that suddenly discovers his father’s shot gun, killed a few rabbits with it and now thinks his playmates are also game.

Our unelected first lady, the star of our new curfew, dragged her gravely ill husband to a Saudi hopital, holding tightly to power, and now she has dragged him back again like a wicked priest seizing the villagers’ god and invoking its spirit willy-nilly.

We are in the dark here people. Our Mama Doc has turned Abuja into a night market; she is a nocturnal snake whose dangerous head cannot be ascertained. And our assemblymen, whose insatiable thirst for mega wealth are clapping for her and urging her on by not stopping the shenanigans. What voodoo power is hoodwinking our security apparatus and wielding it like a machete in a mad man’s grip? What juju is haunting our frightened democracy?

We Nigerians have been tamed like circus lions; we are enslaved and chained to this woman’s wrapper. We only protest in beer parlours and safe office cubicles, waiting for God to send us another poisoned apple to save us. The masses have been pauperized to the extent that all they care about is a loaf of bread and seek a place under bridges to lay their heads. The marauders in Abuja have dehumanised majority of Nigerians; this is why even protest organizers have to pay hungry people to participate in protests.

Until every voice rises from the valleys of Enugu, until every foot marches down from the Plateaus , and every clenched fist shoots towards our fading sun in the Niger Delta, until every cattle rearer in Sokoto downs his butcher knife and refuses to bring meat to the fools’ tables, until Balogun market women drop their baskets, until every single Nigerian wherever they may be, declares viciously that not under their watch will a non-elected individual march us all to an execution ground in a non-lighted runway, we will continue to be a sorry sore state, soon to become a stinking corpse that no one wants to touch. And my people, this is our solitude.

________________ VE, 2010

Be it known unto you O wicked rulers of Nigeria, that we are not careful to answer you in the matter of your blatant misrule. We shall not bow to your evil and corrupt standards and systems, your sad caricature of the sacred duty of governance; your perverse justice and heinous logic; neither do we desire your jaundiced morsels of ill-gotten wealth! We shall not condone the desolate wasteland you conspire to enslave us to; no, we shall not keep silent in the face of your wantonness!!

For God is able to deliver us out of your mangled and gnarled hands, polluted by the blood of innocents, and twisted with the practice of iniquity!! Yea, He is well able to deliver us out of the fiery furnace of the living hell that you would make of our great nation, and to deliver our nation out of your wicked clutches.

But even if He chooses not to in His sovereign will, be it known unto you indeed, O brood of vipers, yea vampires, legislooters and executhieves, full of all cunning and mischief, that we shall not bow down at the altar of your lies, nor worship at your shrine of indignity; yea we shall not lay prostrate before your gods, nor yearn after your images of mammon, of gold, and vain delusions!! For it is better to die as a Prince than to live a hundred years as a slave of wickedness. Yea, it is better to die with honor and dignity in the cause of Justice and Liberty, than to live as a bondman in the tents of captivity!! Away with all of you; the whole lump is leavened, and your assemblies and covens send forth a putrid stink, even the stench of a vile and a despicable odor, the smell of death, of deceit, and the reeking of decay!!

There is not a one among you who will defend the cause of the fatherless, and plead the right of them who have suffered damage at the hands of your puppeteers!! You have stolen our mandate, you have betrayed our trust, you have denied the truth, and you have lived a lie. Yea, woe unto you that call evil good, and good evil, that sit back in comfort whilst an evil wind blows; woe unto you that smile by day, and suck blood by night; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; yea, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter; who justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from them!

Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so shall your root be devoured, for the anger of the LORD is kindled against you!! Yea, we declare you judged in the Name of the LORD!! We say give us back our country, you congregation of robbers, you thieves and liars; you sons and daughters of all that is vile; give us back our country; HOW DARE YOU?! Are we as dogs unto you, or as dead men?! GIVE US BACK OUR COUNTRY WE SAY; THE LORD REBUKE YOU!!!!!

PROVERBS 29:1-2
1 HE, THAT BEING OFTEN REPROVED HARDENETH HIS NECK, SHALL SUDDENLY BE DESTROYED, AND THAT WITHOUT REMEDY.
2 WHEN THE RIGHTEOUS ARE IN AUTHORITY, THE PEOPLE REJOICE: BUT WHEN THE WICKED BEARETH RULE, THE PEOPLE MOURN.

________________ NE, 2010

The tragedy of Nigeria is the tragedy of fear. When the Nigerian catastrophe is dissected, stripped, and laid bare at its roots, the ultimate cause is the fear of death. Every Nigerian mourning the plight of the nation, and yearning for the dawn of a New Nigeria must acknowledge the solemn, grave and terrible truth that the tree of freedom, yea true, lasting, enduring freedom and justice, can only be watered by the blood of martyrs. Yea, freedom is purchased with the currency of blood; this is our collective Nigerian tragedy, a nation of fearful cowards, unwilling to pay the price for the redemption of their land! No where in history have mere words, good intentions, and half-measures produced the tree of liberty. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love!!” There has to be a people prepared to pay the ultimate price in pursuit of freedom, justice, and equity. Jesus Christ in Christian theology was the supreme example of this spiritual law.

The question then becomes, “is the pursuit of freedom and justice in Nigeria a cause worthy of death?” And I aver that the answer for every righteous Nigerian is a resounding “YES!!” Those who hide behind the veil of righteousness, separation of church and state, and the pursuit of more ‘noble and eternal’ causes, must acknowledge that by Divine providence alone, they have been born as citizens of Nigeria. Therefore, in God’s great agenda and plan, YOU are His first line of defense in the battle against the forces of evil and wickedness in the country of your origin. We cannot be busy about much spiritual work, while evil and wickedness reign unchecked in the realm. His word says “Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven”. Moses was sent by God to proclaim to the evil despot Pharaoh: “Let my people go, that they may serve me”! The people of God cannot serve God with joy and gladness, and enjoy in the case of Christians, the fullness of the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice on Earth, as long as they continue under slavery and bondage to wicked and corrupt cabals. “You are my battle-axe and weapons of war” declares the LORD. We are the enforcers of God’s sovereign Kingdom, and of His will for freedom, equity, equality, liberty, and justice upon the Earth. Who else will set the people free?

The blood of millions of Nigerians, the victims and casualties of our tragic plight, is on the hands of the self-avowed champions of righteousness in the land. Their death, misfortunes and suffering are as much the result of the active evil of the corrupt and wicked ‘rulers’, as they are of the complacency, fear, and complicity of the righteous in the land. It is time for all Nigerians who desire a better future for our nation, our children, and generations of Nigerians yet unborn to repent of this evil, and rise up with one voice with the cry: “Give us liberty, give us our great and blessed Nigeria, or give us death”!!! Let the zeal of the LORD establish it!!.

________________ NE, 2010

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks..

Separately, Rudd angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote:
'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians. '

'This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom'

'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!'

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.'

'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.'

'If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted'

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6.

________________ KR, 2010

Majek Fashek, one of Nigeria’s most famous Reggae stars, once sang that a living dog is greater than a dead lion. In one of the Nigerian literature books I read in school, either “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe or “The Concubine” by Elechi Amadi, a character once stated that sometimes we stand in the houses of cowards to see the ruins of where the brave man once lived. Also, there was once an African Jew of Canaanite descent called Yeshua (corrupted by Europeans to Jesus), who stated in John 11:25 in the Bible that he who believe in him (truth) will live even though he dies. Despite the fact that I celebrate and adore African parables, proverbs, and folklore, there seem to be a contradiction between the ancient African wisdom and our modern philosophies mentioned above. While the first two proverbs teach that wisdom surpasses strength for survival and longevity, the later suggests to me that courage based on truth is the wisdom by which we attain longevity even after death.

Majek’s parable suggests that a dead lion is gone and no longer has any impact in the world despite all his strength and glory, while a weak dog who is still living can still raise his puppies and live for tomorrow. It also seems that one of our literature giants agree with this line of reasoning. The parable in the book insinuated that it is sometimes better to live long, keep your house, and raise your children than to be brave, dead, and defeated. A closer look at the third parable by Yeshua, who happens to be the Messiah of Christians, is basically saying the opposite. This African Jew teaches that it is the courage for truth based on the wisdom of understanding the value of truth that leads to longevity even in death or temporary defeat.

The dog and the coward are the same while the lion and the brave are one. It is true that the dogs and the cowards are alive in their mansions and raising their children, while the lion and the brave maybe dead or imprisoned, but why are people still watching where the brave once lived after so many years of departure? Despite the fact that the dogs lived on in silence and compliance, can he choose his leaders fairly? Does he have more rights on his own land than foreigners? Can his mansion be taken from him or his children with the collaboration of the Judge with his enemies? Of what value is the life of his puppies if he lived in fear of speaking all his life? In other words, dogs and cowards may live a long life in silence, but it is ultimately an unfilled life.

On the other hand, when even a dead lion is seen at the middle of a road, that entire location will be on a stand-still. No one will have the courage to come close to investigate if the lion is dead, injured, or sleeping out of fear of becoming the victim, except it is your duty to do so with expert training. People will have no other choice but to keep their distance in meaningless locations to see the meaningful location where the king of the beast lies in death. The lion is a brave and truthful beast. It is what it is no matter what. He does not pretend to eat vegetables just to please you. He never pretends that he no longer likes meat so that his cubs can live a life that is not meant for them just to see another day. Instead, if the meat (animal) is too big, he teams up with his lionesses to bring it down in broad daylight and invite the cubs from their hiding to join in the feast afterwards. It is because of this honesty and courage for truth to all that he is not only revered even in death, but his descendants as well. Many lions have long passed away, but people still revere their lionesses and their cubs because they know that they will always stand for the truth (their nature) no matter what. This means that if you put the courage for truth based on the understanding of its undying value above the fear of losing a paycheck, losing a contract, losing your title or status, losing the election, losing payback or bribe, losing favors or connections, and losing your life, you and your children will always get whatever you want even in death eternally (for generations).

Nigeria tends to be a nation of dogs and cowards. They claim not to care about whatever the government is doing as long as they can feed their children, send them to some schools, and collect foreign currency from Western Union. They are very quick to support an illiterate Alhaji, a corrupt General, a visionless Mallam, or a sycophant Chief just for a small token at the expense of their children’s future. They are fond of building castles where other dogs go stand to see where the lions once lived. They want the lions to fight and die for them, so that they can laugh at him later and call him stupid, thereby multiplying the bondage and suffering of their own children. Instead of praying to be a lion or standing by the lions for the future success and benefit of their children, they tell their children to remain a meaningless dog just to live, see, and hope for a better tomorrow they never fought for. Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, was without a President for almost 3 months and its citizens were scared to act out the truth about an acting President until a woman minister, Dora Akunyili, courageously stood for truth and within hours, Nigeria was set in the righteous path of truth again.

As for the Nigerian Super Eagles, just as the lion is the king of the beast, so the eagle is the king of birds. We must live in truth and the understanding of its values. It took great Nigerian soccer players from the past to steer Nigeria into a soccer loving nation with tons of soccer stars playing all over the world. It will also take great Nigerian coaches today to make Nigeria a soccer coaching nation for the entire world and their professional leagues to hire from. Amodu has qualified Nigeria twice for the FIFA World Cup, Keshi has qualified Nigeria and Togo to the FIFA World Cup, Siasia has given us glory in the Olympics and the Under 20. So why are Nigerians and the NFF still acting like dogs in need of a foreign master? Please let Amodu and any of these men go to FIFA 2010 World Cup in victory or defeat to start inspiring our children towards a greater coaching career and the need to improve the Nigerian Professional Football League.

________________ EA, 2010

The great Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by an American journalist what he thought of 'Western civilisation'. The Mahatma quietly replied that he wished such a thing existed. Similarly, I would say that the idea of 'One North' would be an interesting idea - if such a thing ever existed.

The recent Jos crisis has punctured the legal fiction called 'One North'. The idea that the North is one big happy family with a common identity and single collective future is not only patently fallacious; it is based on dangerous hypocrisy and make-believe. If it ever existed at all, it is now a divided house; a broken calabash. It is a delusion that would not go away because it suits the interests of both the Muslim North and their deluded counterparts in the Middle Belt who are obsessed with enhancing their bargaining clout within Nigeria's competitive ethno-regionalism. In reality, it is a dude cheque in political terms; a marriage of convenience that died a long time ago, although the couple are still going through the motions.

It is crucially important that we come to terms with the honest truth; recognising our differences and learning how we might live side-by-side in mutual respect and tolerance. The Muslim North has a heritage rooted in the traditions of Jihad and the Caliphate. The Christian Middle Belt has an identity anchored on Christianity and resistance. The peoples of the Middle Belt are what they are today because they were never conquered by Jihad and never subscribed to enslavement by the Caliphate and its feudal powers. The fact that we all speak the Hausa language is neither here nor there.

There are always two sides to any story, of course. According to the Muslim narrative, Northerners are the heirs to an illustrious heritage rooted in Jihad and the Caliphate. They belong to a global Muslim Ummah in which the Nigerian branch is one of the largest on the African continent. They have had a tradition of learning and rulership that is probably unequalled in the annals of the Western Sudan. The British colonialists subjugated the North in a manner that benefitted Christians and Western imperialist interests, blocking the southward march of Islam. In the light of the global Islamic resurgence, the traditions of Jihad have to be reinvented to meet the needs of the twenty-first century. Western secularism and materialism have shown themselves to be highly discredited. Muslims have had to be vigilant in defending their honour and their values from assault by Western imperialism as represented by the twin evils of Zionism and American neoconservative reaction. Muslims must assert their identity wherever they are. Believing themselves to constitute an overall numerical majority in Nigeria, they do not see why they should not have a free hand to remake the country in their own image.

And because the predominantly Christian South has historically dominated the economy and financial and banking system, access to political power is the only trump-card that Muslims really have. Once in power, they must use that opportunity to defend the Northern Islamic interest, however defined. They see nothing amiss in dominating all strategic ministries and departments of government from finance to planning, economy, the armed forces and petroleum. In none of the far Northern States are Christians accorded equal status with their Muslim counterparts. As a matter of fact, most churches are barely tolerated - they are in fact seen as being more of a menace than anything else. Aggressive proselytising by some Pentecostal groups has been seen as a source of irritation, if not provocation. Shari'a law was partly initiated as counter to the growing missionary threat. The Almajiri system is nurtured as a potential army to be deployed when Christians need to be 'taught a lesson'. And when the 'lesson' is being taught, the victim is expected to 'turn the other cheek' according to what their holy Book supposedly teaches. And if they choose to retaliate, it is 'genocide'.

The peoples of the Christian Middle Belt see things differently. They believe they have always endeavoured to live in harmony with their Muslim neighbours, although it is doubtful if the Muslims feel the same goodwill towards them. The persecution of Christians and the torching of churches has become an annual ritual in most northern states since the 1980s. Christians in the far North would tell you that they live in dread of what may erupt at the slightest provocation. They would insist that they have never been the aggressors in any confrontation with Muslims. A poor illiterate Igbo woman might use a stray piece of paper with Arabic writing to wipe her hands, and all hell could break lose. Or it might be cartoons from distant Denmark, a place that most ordinary Christians and Muslims cannot find on a map. Many of these attacks are random in character and are mostly unprovoked. Even more ominous is the fact that they often occur with the tacit knowledge if not connivance, of some of the most influential elements within the North.

These days, especially here in Switzerland where I currently live and in much of the Western world, there is a relentless stream of Islamophobia that demonises Muslims in a manner that no decent intellectual would accept. The irrational fear of Islam is as contemptible as any insults on the person of the Prophet (PBH) and on the religious observances of Muslims. We all know that ordinary Muslims are for the most part decent and law-abiding people. As a matter of historical record, the world intellectual community owes a debt to the great Muslim thinkers of the past who have made such impressive contributions to fields of learning as diverse as chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and the historical sciences.

But the ideal of the Islamic Enlightenment is one thing; violent fanaticism is quite another. The Muslim world today is being held hostage by a small band of violent murderers who are hiding behind the banner of Global Jihad; an illiberal horde committed to the use of violence and terror as instruments in the pursuit of unlimited ambitions. It is a new form of fascism that encourages total contempt for human life.

The Middle Belt has been at the receiving end of Global Jihad for more than a decade now, with impetus from revolutionary explosions in Iran, war in Afghanistan and Islamist Madrassas in Pakistan, Yemen and Sudan. Earlier on, we had the Islamisation policies of the Sardauna which were fiercely resisted. Some of our chiefs were under pressure to convert at pains of demotion. During the military era, many Christian Middle Belt officers were compelled to convert or lose promotion. Those who remained defiant were hounded out through premature retirement or unfavourable postings. Those, like the Biblical Esau, who sold their souls for a mesh of pottage, were soon to realise that, as latter-day converts, they occupied a lower and suspect status in the order of things.

Even today, under the current democratic dispensation, army postings, despite impassioned denials in certain quarters, are being reshaped in accordance with the whims and caprices of Northern hegemony. Several Middle Belt officers have been quietly retired for no just cause. The kind of blatant abuse that is allegedly taking place has not been seen since the dark days of military tyrant Ibrahim Babangida. The questionable role of people like Army Chief General Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau and Major-General Saleh Maina, Commanding Officer, 3 Division, during the recent Jos crisis leaves much to be desired. They certainly have shown themselves to be untrustworthy as far as the people of the Plateau and indeed the Middle Belt are concerned. It is also instructive that just before the outbreak of violence, a mysterious order came from Abuja to transfer all Plateau indigenes in the Nigerian Police Force out of the State. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a malicious move.

The attempt to subjugate and humiliate the peoples of the Middle Belt is nothing new. Our northern Pharaohs had always ensured that the region was always marginalised in terms of location of industries and development projects. When it comes to representation at the Federal centre, the region always plays second fiddle to the Muslim North in the scheme of things. Today, you are unlikely to find anyone from the Middle Belt holding a senior cabinet position in any important department of government.

The same applies to educational opportunities. If your parents gave you a Christian sounding-name, the authorities at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria are most unlikely to admit you into professional courses like medicine, pharmacy and engineering. And it does not matter how many distinctions you have in WAEC or JAMB. A young, charismatic and gifted scientist - and winner of the LNG Prize for Science - has been denied the headship of Ahmadu Bello University even though his profile dwarfs that of all his rivals for the post. His only 'deficiency' is that he is not a Muslim. His wife and children were recently kidnapped, while his sisters and extended family have come under extreme harassment, all with the aim of discouraging him from standing for the Vice-Chancellorship. The contempt of the Muslim North for Middle Belt Christians knows no bounds.

Northern leaders continue to pay lip-service to 'One North', but we know that their definition does not include us. Middle Belt leaders are largely to blame for pandering to this empty, nauseating charade. They have lost the vision bequeathed to us by such heroes as Joseph Sarwuan Tarka, Jolly Tanko Yusuf, Rev. David Lot and Patrick Dokotri. And we have all but forgotten the arduous sacrifices they made so that our people would have a more dignified future.

Clearly, the calabash is broken. Instead of trying to mend it, now is the time for the Middle Belt to look to forging alternative strategic alliances, especially with the South-South. It is foolhardy to persist in the illusion of 'One North' when we are getting absolutely nothing out of it. The Middle Belt has enough manpower, land and natural resources to stand on its own. With our rich and fertile soils, the region can feed the whole of Nigeria with food. Jos Plateau alone can feed the whole of West Africa with potatoes and vegetables.

The ultimate truth is that the Middle Belt does not need the far North. Rather, it is the far North that needs the Middle Belt. And when the next national crisis comes, we must make it abundantly clear to the Muslim North that they are on their own. Never again will the natural valour of the Middle Belt peoples be exploited in the service of a lie.

It is about time somebody saw through this humbug before it is too late. The Sardauna, whom latter-day hagiographers are praising to the high heavens, was the man who started the tradition of 'homosexually-centred' rulership which people like late Major Gideon Orkar once railed against. Although he picked a few people from the Middle Belt whom he favoured with offices and largesse, the Sardauna pursued a systematic policy of subjugation of our people. He had never concealed his millennial ambition to "dip the Koran into the sea". And it is clear that he was prepared to ride on top of the bones of our ancestors in his quest to reach the Atlantic.

Plateau people have never forgotten the fact that the Sardauna, in connivance with the perfidious British, had carefully laid out a plan to move all Jos indigenes from their ancestral homeland to the present Mararaban Jema'a area. He wanted to turn over the lush and green pastures of the Plateau to his own Fulani cattle-grazing kinsmen. The departing colonialists were prepared to support him because they wanted to maintain some influence in the corridors of northern power after independence. It is important to underline this point as the factor why Plateau people are so edgy when it comes to the matter of land.

It is also vital to bear in mind that the so-called 'settler-indigene problem' was neither invented by, nor is it unique to, Plateau State. In the far North, Hausa-Fulani Christians are among the most persecuted people in the world. They are never accorded equal status among the people they live with. In the civil service they are often passed over when it comes to promotion, while in political appointments they are generally ignored. It is unthinkable that anyone with a name such as Bishara John Goni could ever dream of contesting in a local government election in Kano, Zamfara or Sokoto. If this is the case elsewhere, why are Plateau people being singled out for demonisation for not voting for anyone other their own in Jos North Local Government, which also happens to be the abode of their most powerful paramount ruler, the Gbong Gwom Jos? What gives the Hausa-Fulani the right to impose themselves through the instrumentalities of terror and violence in a land that historically is not theirs?

Ideally, of course, we would all prefer to live in a country where citizenship is defined strictly in accordance with legal domicile rather than primordial ancestry. This is the universal standard for federalist constitutional democracies like the United States, Canada and Australia. Unfortunately, our country is still a long way away from that ideal. Plateau State cannot be made the villain for a problem that afflicts our entire Federation.

What all this boils down to is that we must look elsewhere in seeking the explanatory variables for the persistence of violence and instability on the Plateau. We are led, inevitably, to the question of religion and Jihad.

Those who are saying that the recent crisis has nothing to do with religion need to have their heads examined by a consultant neuropsychiatric surgeon. It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that one of the most virulent Muslim Brotherhoods has its base in Jos, with known links to Iran, Sudan and Libya. The Jihadists have been waging a relentless war against our people for the sole purpose of taking over our land and spreading their bankrupt ideology.

If the crisis had nothing to do with religion, why did they choose Sunday, a day of worship for all Christians, to launch their violent attacks? Why did they go into a church to massacre women and children at prayer as police commissioner Greg Anyanting reported, for which some are calling for his head? Throughout the years, the pattern has been to target churches and pastors. During the last decade alone, more than 30 pastors have been killed. What would have become of our country if Christians, for example, had gone about massacring Muslims during prayers in mosques, and what if 30 Imams lost their lives in the process?

The whole world needs to know about the satanic script from which these Jihadists have been operating. During September 2001, in a well planned and coordinated attack, Muslim groups burned down churches and private homes in Jos in a frenzy of killing and looting. Thousands of Christians were slaughtered while many were burned while worshipping in their churches. In December of the same year, the same hoodlums launched yet another attack, killing, looting and destroying property.

In June 2002, the Jihadists attacked Christians in Yelwa, Shendam, Wase, Barakin Ladi, Vom and Miango, again, killing people in their hundreds, burning down homes and churches. On September 11 of the same year, as if to commemorate the cowardly plane attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Islamic hoodlums exploded a bomb at the Church of Christ in Laranto, Jos, causing a major structural damage to the building. In the following month, hundreds of Christians were killed when an Islamic mob in collaboration with mercenaries from Chad and Niger Republic, attacked the town of Fajul, burning churches and homes, killing innocent people and raping women. In December of the same year, they launched yet another assault on churches and Christian homes. Notable among the casualties were the Reverend Bitrus Manjang, his son, daughter-in-law and their six-month old child. How holy, indeed, is the precious blood of the martyrs!

In March 2003, thousands of Jihad warriors launched an attack on Kadarko, a town in Wase Local Government Area, shouting "Allahu Akbar"; killing Christians and burning down homes and churches. In April, they attacked the Berom village of Wereng, near Vom, killing, burning, looting and raping. In February 2004, some 80 Christian men, women and children who had sought refuge in a church in Langtang were massacred in cold blood.

The United Nations and the World Council of Churches have been carefully documenting these wanton atrocities. All these point to a systematic pattern of killings that one could characterise as a policy of 'genocidal Jihad'. The aim is to maim, destroy and pillage. What they cannot have, they must destroy; leaving behind a scotched earth of ruins, ashes and dead bodies.

Why the Plateau, one might ask. I think our latter-day marauding hordes are aware of the status of Jos as the 'holy Jerusalem' of the Middle Belt; the seat of Christian evangelical missionary activities in Nigeria. They are also envious of this blessed land which has a climate and a terrain like no other. Mambilla and Obudu may be equally beautiful, but they are remote. Plateau is centrally located and easily accessible; a strategic confluence for business, commerce and tourism. Through violence and terror, they are hell-bent on appropriating what is not theirs. Nobody could determine to bring such ruination to a land if that land were truly his.

What we are up against is nothing less than religious war. It is a war against a latter-day Genghis Khan who knows only how to kill, maim, rape and destroy. We would always wonder what kind of god they serve: What kind of god could that be that purportedly gives rewards to those who rape and slaughter defenceless women and children at church services?

Some of us have read the highly jaundiced articles by people like Mohammed Haruna and Adamu Adamu, the propagandists for Jihad within the Daily Trust group of newspapers. We have a fair idea of how much they were paid to write atrocious lies with the pathetic objective of overheating the polity and unleashing chaos to discredit Acting President Goodluck Jonathan. They are a disgrace to the journalism profession. Adamu, for example, declares that Plateau people are 'jealous' of the Hausa-Fulani who have been 'successful' in business and who have a natural flair for leadership. He also insinuates that Plateau people - and by extension the peoples of the Middle Belt - are suffering from an 'inferiority complex'. The word 'genocide' was being bandied about by these ignorant non-lawyers.

Why would Plateau people become jealous of people to whom they have leased their own land to grow tomatoes and vegetables? Is it the idle moneychangers at Hill Station that they are jealous of or the people selling rickety old tokunbo cars smuggled from Belgium? Who are these nondescript Hausa-Fulani 'businessmen' that Plateau people are so envious of? Was it Plateau people that burnt down the Jos ultra-modern market - a market that was bringing good money into the State's Treasury? Who, indeed, is jealous of whom?

As for the allegation of 'inferiority complex', the likes of Adamu and Haruna forget that the Middle Belt was the seat of one of the great civilisations of Black Africa - the Nok Civilisation -- that covered Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Bauchi and Gombe. They had sophisticated iron smelting industries at the same time as did the ancient Greeks. Need we mention the Kwararafa Jukuns who controlled the ultimate levers of power in Hausaland for the better part of two centuries?

Middle Belt peoples have borne more than their fair share of sacrifices to keep this country together. In peace as in war, there are few to equal the likes of Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, Domkat Bali, Gibson Sanda Jallo and several others. Our people are known to be God-fearing, chivalrous, accommodating and patriotic. Those who have married our women have found them to be virtuous and hardworking. We are the heart of Nigeria. This country would not have continued to exist as a corporate entity were it not for the sacrifices made by our people.

If anybody should feel inferior, it is not Plateau people, and certainly not the denizens of the Middle Belt. It is the shameless Jihadists who have been killing, maiming and raping defenceless women and children who are truly inferior.

About the alleged leadership gifts of the Hausa-Fulani, we have heard this tiresome fairy-tale before, not least from the 'homosexually-centred' orifices of Maitama Sule. Who are these 'great leaders' that we don't know of? Is it the ineffectual Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the barely literate school teacher whose lack of sagacity and imagination brought ruination to our First Republic? Is it the chronic gambler and bank robber, Murtala Mohammed? Did he not gamble away an entire division at Asaba during the civil war? And did he not confess to robbing the Central Bank of Nigeria vaults in Benin City during the operations to recapture the Mid-West? What about the chain-smoking Shehu Shagari, whom Gowon once described as the laziest minister he had ever come across? Was Shagari not a monumental disaster as President?

Or is the claim to leadership derived from the records of the 'evil genius' of Minna Hilltop Castle? Can we begin even to contemplate the moral and material havoc that this destructive man has bequeathed our benighted nation? Was it not our 'Maradona' who institutionalised corruption and state-sponsored assassination as official policy? And why does this man hate Plateau people so much? Why does the outbreak of violence tend to coincide with his nocturnal visits to Jos? Why does he poke his finger so boldly on the body Christ?

We need not say anything about his ignoble successor, the military Sultan called General Sani Abacha.

Then we have the pathetic Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, a man whose youthful excesses by way of alcohol and abuse of hard drugs have finally caught up with him. From a human point of view, we sympathise with him over his illness and we wish him quick recovery. But is it true that he was once confined to a psychiatric asylum? Did his elder brother Shehu not discourage him from politics on account of his inherent character defects? It is pretty obvious that Umaru has squandered all the goodwill that ushered him into power, proving to be an ineffectual wimp. Having ascended the Presidency, he astonished everyone -- friends and foes alike -- by proceeding into a deadly slumber as was his wont in Katsina, leaving the administration in the hands of his devious wife and ravenous Fulani kinsmen.

On the 25th September 1918, Lord Lugard wrote to his colleague Walter H. Lang: "The Hausa-Fulani has no ideals, no ambitions save such as sensual in character. He is a fatalist, spendthrift and a gambler. He is gravely immoral and is seriously diseased that he is a menace to any community to which he seeks to attach himself". So much for the gift of 'natural leadership'! Please, Adamu Adamu, tell us something we don't know, instead of peddling rubbish that insults our intelligence.

The antics of the Jihadists have been familiar to us since the days of the Sardauna. Their trademark is deceit. Through the abuse of 'geopolitical zoning', they have ensured that whenever any opportunity arises for the North, it will always go to a Northern Muslim. Their definition of the North does not include us. While Christians are the majority in Nasarawa, Kaduna, Niger and Adamawa, they have never ruled those states. Because of their 'success' in subjugating our people, the Jihadists are frustrated that they cannot take over the Plateau, oblivious of the fact that they are a settler minority of less than 5 percent.

In pursuit of their selfish ends, they invented a fictitious tribe called 'Jasawa', whom Judge Niki Tobi describes as the militant wing of the Jihadists. They have sought to demonise Jonah David Jang, a successful former military Governor of two states; a trusted leader of his people and a compassionate theologian and pastor. Realising that their claim is absurd, they are turning the whole thing on the Berom as the alleged perpetrators of 'genocide' against supposedly 'defenceless' Muslims. They overlook the little detail about Yoruba Muslims who have been living in Jos with no problems for the better part of a century. So have been the Igbos, Efiks and others. They cannot convincingly explain why, having lived peacefully with everybody for so long, the Berom, Afizere and Jarawa would suddenly wake up one morning and single out the Hausa-Fulani for 'genocide'.

The over 300-page report by Judge Bola Ajibola on the Plateau crisis has come out recently. In that report Ajibola unequivocally fingers the Hausa-Fulani as the main source of the unrest on the Plateau. He also points out areas where governance could have done a better job, indicating the necessary institutional reforms that the Jang administration must put in place to strengthen law and order. A jurist of world repute, Chief Ajibola is nobody's fool. A devout Muslim, no-one can accuse him of bias. An oracle of the law has spoken. Let those who are strangers to law, justice and truth continue in their self-delusions and diabolical wickedness.

If a man comes and defecates in your compound, Okonkwo tells us in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the manly thing to do is to take a stick and break his head. If the Jihadists expect people to lie back and relax while they kill, rape and maim their women and children, then they must be jokers.

One thing that is clear from this saga is that the Islamic fascists do not cherish human life the way normal people do. While we believe in the ways of love, they believe in violence and the rule of fear. Force being the sole language they understand, we must be prepared to give as much as we receive. As an international lawyer, I know of no jurisprudence in the Law of Nations that says if a man approaches your home at night with a submachine gun, you should warmly invite him in with chocolates and roses. While the Federal Government which controls the police and the army fails to defend our people, we are left with no option than to defend ourselves. And if disproportionate force is what is needed to dissuade the Jihadists, then disproportionate force it must be.

Nobody could have done a greater disservice to the image of Islam than these marauding hoodlums. They have only succeeded in making us defiant and contemptuous of everything they stand for. Until now, we did not know that these people are as corrosive as sulphuric acid and that we truly have nothing in common. It is also clear that they have absolutely nothing of value to offer anybody. Is it their polygamy and the abject lack of family values? Is it the rampant divorce? Is it the widespread child abuse leading to the dreadful disease of vesico-vaginal fistula? Is it the 'dan daudu' mentality? Is it the culture of begging? Or is it their habitual cant and chicanery? And how does it come about that even the land becomes a desert once they lay their hands on it? Are they not labouring under a curse?

Nobody should be in doubt: we read the enemy well, suffering no illusions about the extent to which he can go to achieve his ends. We know how his mind works and how he operates - his terror antics, the mischief, the surprise element, the monkey tricks and the traitorous dissimulation. We also know that no atrocity is beneath him. Even as I write, he is still going about like a roaring lion in remote Plateau villages, killing and maiming and raping. We know that he is really a coward who cannot face the music when push comes to shove.

Of course, violence can never be the ultimate. The Bible urges us to seek peace and to pursue it. Muslims, too, are children of God. None of us enjoys taking the life of any child of God. But there is a time for war and a time for peace. God the Son is a God of love; but the God of Joshua and Aron is also a flaming fire. There comes a time when you must stop praying and act; when you must defend your family, your children, and your land. Such, alas, are the times in which we live.

The Jihadists always have somewhere else to go to; we have nowhere to go, hemmed in as we are in the geometrical centre of the Nigerian Federation. With all manner of imported arms and mercenaries arrayed against us, and with military chieftains who leave us in no doubt as to where they stand, it is Jehovah nissi alone that will defend us.

And if some of us should fall, the Angel of the Lord will fight for us. Our children will rush forth to meet the enemy at the gates with horns and trumpets of victory. Wherever death shall meet us, it will be welcome, to echo Ernesto Che Guevera. Our battle cry will reach out to others who will take up the Libyan arms left by the retreating enemy. And the Shekinah glory of our God shall never depart from our Beaulah Land.

________________ BJG, 2010

In matters of leadership, governance and power one thing is clear: procrastination and weakness attracts insubordination, contempt and aggression. As the leader, in order to sustain your authority and in order to ward off rivals and adversaries you have to show strength and courage at all times and you have to consolidate your position and your authority quickly and without any hesitation. Again you have to forge your own alliances, put in place your own team and make your own new friends.

Most important of all you must not betray any fear of the old order and you must not allow any remnants or traces of their menacing prescence to in any way intimidate you. It is not good enough and it is downright dangerous to place your hope in a team and in a system that you inherited from your predecessor in office. By all means take the best and most reliable minds from that team and system and add them to yours......but you must create your own team and you must establish your own authority. Anything else will attract danger for both you and those that have stood by you. Anything less will simply lead to conflict, division, strife and disaster. Power is never freely given......it is taken. And once taken it must be guarded jealously and with all diligence and ruthlessness.

________________ Ffk, 2010

Yesterday, 3rd of March 2010, would perhaps go down in memory as the day Nigeria was condemned as a nation. Condemned, not by the nefarious acts of armed robbers, thieving policemen or scam mongers; but condemned by the perfidy of the people who - by design, choice or fraud - happen to be the rulers of the country.

Leadership is always not about taking pleasant decisions, neither is it about taking easy decisions. Even amoral leaders recognise the need to take decisions which may not be pleasant, but which are necessary for the survival of the group being led. In a country like Nigeria where a gangrenous rot has bedevilled the country for the past five decades, the importance of strong leadership cannot be over-emphasised.

It is pointless recounting the events of the past 100 days where a faceless, shadowy group led by a poorly educated and barely enlightened housewife and the chief "maiguard" of the president, has held a nation of 140-odd million people and its president hostage. So amorphous is this "group" that the only name attributed to it in the mainstream press is "the Cabal".

From rather early on in this macabre soap opera, it has been clear to the man on the streets and to every intelligent and objective observer that the best course of action - (in the interest of the nation and in the long-term self-preservation interests of the civilian political class) would have been to compel the President to resign his post or impeach him. The impeachment of a president is not a pleasant task, particularly one that is ill, but to paraphrase Dr. Condoleeza Rice, the immediate past Secretary of State for the United States, the Presidency is more important than the president. In light of the embarrassment that the nation and its citizens have been subjected to, the time has been long due to sacrifice the blush of an ailing president for the progress of the nation.

Yet, the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) pussy-footed whilst a man, who in my opinion is the most uncouth individual to ever grace the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, used every means he could lay his hand on to undermine the then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, as well as come up with some of the most repugnant interpretations to the constitution of Nigeria. The quantum of cowardice in the "un-hallowed" chambers of the EXCOF can be gauged by the fact that none of the members of the EXCOF - including the Yar'Adua / Turai protagonists - had spoken to the president since his hurried evacuation from Nigeria in November 2009.

For the Legislative arms, I find it utterly shameful that whilst the axe of impeachment was wielded over former President Obasanjo's head repeatedly for less damaging actions, the absence of the president alongside the loquacious and repulsive utterances of the previous AGF could not spur the Representatives or Senators to take a decisive step to halt the downward spiral of the ship of state. Instead there was a steroid-fuelled urge to pass a supplementary bill, which was spuriously signed from near the Great Beyond by an ailing President, whose last conscious memory was perhaps being sedated for a flight out of Nigeria.

One perhaps ought to be thankful for the confluence of events which led to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan being declared the Acting President and the subsequent hurried re-importation of an unconscious Umar Yar'Adua back to Nigeria, ostensibly to checkmate the supposedly growing influence of Dr. Jonathan. Since then, I have had to question if indeed there was any reason to be thankful in the first instance. Yar'Adua's body's return (I use this term quite deliberately, because no elected official or accredited journalist has seen the president) has turned to be an albatross for the Cabal, but for the same reasons of gaping gutlessness, the Senate has not had the inclination to summon any of the known faces of the Cabal to provide visual evidence of Yar'Adua's presence in Nigeria or his state of health.

In one of the most reprehensible acts of nation destruction, the House of Representatives, led by a man I consider to be the biggest generational reprobate of them all, called for the resignation of Dr. Dora Akunyili, the Minister of Information and Communication. For all of this woman's faults as being part of the EXCOF that hoodwinked the nation for more than 2 months, selling us dummies about Yar'Adua's well-being, she has for the past 30 days or more been screaming at the top of her voice for the EXCOF to do what is moral and curtail the influence of this shadowy cabal by declaring the President incapacitated. One may fault her actions along so many lines, but it is hard to dispute that she is perhaps the only redeeming quality in a putrid government as we have it today. The call by the House of Reps is one that is as baffling as it is disgusting.

I would not want to dwell on the 30-odd demons in human form who govern the various states and their own call for Dr. Akunyili's head for "over-heating the polity". These are, in my opinion, spastic individuals who have not proved capable of governing their respective states intelligently. From their spokesman who made a fool of himself on a CNN program whilst displaying the "grandeur" of the Bayelsa state government house to the governor of the President's state of origin, I can safely say none has displayed leadership qualities worthy of mention.

The biggest damp squib of them all, perhaps is Dr. Jonathan himself. When power devolves to you by accident, one of the first things that ought to be done is consolidate your hold on power. Do this, or else those displaced from power, or those with a stronger sense of entitlement will come back and stab you in the back - and I mean that physically. In one fell swoop, he has had the opportunity to wrest control from this spectre called the Cabal, as well as ingratiate himself (rightly or wrongly) into the thirsty memory of Nigerians as the one who finally broke the hold of a faceless, but rapacious lot on the throats of the citizenry. Yet, by not forcing a vote for incapacitation of the president yesterday, he has gone into the midst of his enemies blindfolded and handed daggers to them, whilst he walks ahead of them, believing he is leading them.

Over the past 100 days, crimes have been committed against the nation and its citizens, from David Edevbie's flight to Jeddah to sign a supplementary budget to the deployment of troops to the International Airport in Abuja without the C-in-C's knowledge, as well as the deducible, if not provable emptying of the nation's coffers. These offences are screaming to be acknowledged; they are shouting to be judged.

One thing I know for sure - there is time for retribution ahead; either from the Cabal or from the restive denizens of the country.

________________ TF, 2010

A prophetic reminder, encouragement, and solemn charge from the great beyond and the here and now to ALL Nigerians EVERYWHERE:

“. . .If you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live. You may be thirty-six years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house. So you refuse to take the stand.

WELL, YOU MAY GO ON AND LIVE UNTIL YOU ARE EIGHTY, BUT YOU ARE JUST AS DEAD AT THIRTY-SIX AS YOU WOULD BE AT EIGHTY.
And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
YOU DIED WHEN YOU REFUSED TO STAND UP FOR RIGHT. YOU DIED WHEN YOU REFUSED TO STAND UP FOR TRUTH. YOU DIED WHEN YOU REFUSED TO STAND UP FOR JUSTICE….”

--Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) – Sermon/Speech “BUT IF NOT”

"I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT NONVIOLENCE WILL WORK MIRACLES OVERNIGHT. WHEN THE UNDERPRIVILEGED DEMAND FREEDOM, THE PRIVILEGED FIRST REACT WITH BITTERNESS AND RESISTANCE. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the initial response is the same. So the nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.”

--Martin Luther King Jr. - "PILGRIMAGE TO NON-VIOLENCE"

"I AM CONVINCED THAT LOVE IS THE MOST DURABLE POWER IN THE WORLD. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. TO RETURN HATE FOR HATE DOES NOTHING BUT INTENSIFY THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL IN THE UNIVERSE. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love."

--Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

“We can no longer afford to confuse peaceability with passivity. Authentic peace is no more passive than war. Like war, it calls for discipline and intelligence and strength of character, though it calls also for higher principles and aims. If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we [would] prepare for war.”

--Wendell Berry (born 1934), American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer.

"The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy."

--Martin Luther King, Jr., January 1965

Fellow Nigerian, stand up NOW and be counted; stand up TALL, lest you fall; speak up NOW for Truth and Justice, or forever hold your peace!

“Towards a New Nigeria – Yes We Can, and Yes We MUST!!"
Aluta Continua; Victoria Acerta!!

________________ NE, 2010

The act of terrorism is in itself an age-long instrument that is being used by man to score ideological, religious or even political goals. Terrorism in itself is not the sole preserve of a class, clan, religion or race, as anyone can be a terrorist. Popes and Khalifahs, as well as Atheist have in the past exerted terror on the people. Children and old men alike have used this apparatus to satiate the mysteries of their souls.
However, global terrorism assumed a new definition after the September 11, 2001 attack by the Al Qaeda group on the United States of America. Terrorism according to America, now has a religion, a race and an appearance. Unfortunately for us, Nigeria is now being listed as one of the apparitions of terrorism.

It is true that we are a country known for joyful mien in the face of so much tribulation and wretchedness, but this is not to say that we do not have tormentors among us who are a great threat to the international community. I do assert that we have amidst us terrorists who pose significant threat to the global community as much as they do to us, for while we were laughing in our miserable state, we left the door opened and the lizard crept in.

In November 2002, Nigeria was scheduled to host the Miss World beauty pageant; coming barely a year after Agbani Darego won the priced crown as the first black person to do so. It should ordinarily have been something of joy for all Nigerians, but riots by Islamic fundamentalists in Kaduna and Zamfara left over 200 civilians dead, as well as a death threat (fatwa) issued to Isioma Daniel, a reporter with ThisDay by the then deputy governor of Zamfara State for good measure, sending out terrifying messages to the world about Nigeria. This was beamed to the rest of the world to see. America and its allies watched it.

In 2003, the world’s most famous terrorist personage, Osama Bin Ladin, allegedly declared that Nigeria was ‘ripe’ for a Jihad or a holy war, according to reports monitored on Reuters on May 10, of the same year. It wasn’t long after the denounced Saudi prince declared this infamous statement, that we started noticing upspring of clandestine religious groups in the North, joining their misguided “freedom-fighting” brothers in the south that capitalise on their oil-business as excuse for their brigandage.

In September 2007, the American Embassy, through its consular in Nigeria, stated that the country was under threat of being turned into a terrorist haven by Islamic fundamentalists. This advice was ignored by the federal government of Nigeria, who had always treated religious violence in the past with acute levity. About the same period also, the country started noticing the offshoot of several Islamic fundamentalist groups in the Northern part, especially in Zamfara, Bauchi, Kano, Yobe, Katsina, Kebbi, and Jigawa states. The notorious Hisbah, Boko Haram, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, Al Sunna Wal Jamma, the Zamfara State Vigilante Service (ZSVS) and the Al Qaeda all set up camps and operating sites in these states.

In November 2007, 5 suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were arrested by Nigerian security forces and arraigned a month later (VOA, December 9, 2007). That is about the last we have heard of that incident, as no conviction was ever made and there is no known record of any Nigerian tried and convicted for any terrorist act. America was listening and watching, while we continued in our folly.

In 2008, the then Inspector General of Police of the Nigeria Police Force, Mike Okiro, informed Nigerians that based on intelligence reports gathered, the country would soon to be a major threshold of Al Qaeda. This was a one-off statement that was neither followed up nor investigated afterwards, and as quickly as his words came out, they vanished. Nigerians jollied about and ignored the severity of the hushed-up report of the IG. The Americans in their usual manner watched and made notes.

What probably must have irked America and its allies in these episodes was the placidity and flaccidity displayed by the Nigerian government in the face of all these carnages. While all these Northern chaoses went unabated, another form of terrorism was being wrought in the southern part of the country by the conceited self-styled “freedom-fighters” cum terrorists from the lower Delta region. The mono-product economy of the country took a big hit from the activities of these brigands. Several oil installations were blown up, foreign companies were sent packing from the region; expatriates were kidnapped for ransom; unlucky ones were killed during “blow-up” operations. Nigerian citizens were also not spared in this assault, as many lost their lives, women were raped and others went away to camps with Russian toys losing their innocence. America quietly issued a warning to its citizens to leave that area, while they took note of that awful event. Nigerians continued smiling in our folly! The manner and attitude with which the federal government addressed the Niger-Delta crisis really leaves one baffled. Does the federal government claim ignorance of the fact that the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and several other Niger Delta armed groups are listed on the United Nations list of terrorist organisations?

The legislative arm has to pass a bill that prescribes a maximum term of life imprisonment for any one found to have links with any terrorist organisation. There should be a zero tolerance henceforth for any militancy activity by any sectional group within the country; all unregistered religious sectional groups should be disbanded immediately. The country should be made uninhabitable for terrorist organisations, and that implies tackling head on the high level of illiteracy that makes several unemployed youths fall easy prey to these terrorist organisations. A registered fact about terrorist organisations is the fact that they never recruit anyone against their consent. So in boosting their evil workforce they have to brainwash the recruits first, and they easily do this through their religious schools. Henceforth, all states within the federation of Nigeria must remain secular in their operations; and this implies that all religious schools should be disbanded and the constitution of the education made secular. This must be enforced by the Ministry of Education through a task force that should be set-up for this purpose. Religion should be reserved for the churches, mosques, shrines, enclaves or whatever gathering the worshippers deem necessary to convey their message to whatever Supreme Being they adore. Religion should be separated from the school system.

Our borders, especially on the North-East side of the country are extremely porous. Nigeriens stroll in and out of Nigeria as if it is part of their country. The country is like a mini-United Nations. The government has spoken several times about shoring up the borders of the country, but talk is all they ever do these days. There should be strict enforcement of border laws henceforth and the issue of illegal immigrants inside our borders should be addressed with the seriousness it demands, not the charade of deporting Dan Foster! We must act fast, or be seen to be acting, so that the world would see our seriousness and treat us more respectably; in so doing we should be taken off that ignominious list.

________________ AS, 2010

Between Marriage and DivorceYesterday, the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, suggested the partition of Nigeria into two states, Christian South with capital in Lagos and Muslim North with capital in Abuja. I listened to reactions of Nigerians from both sides of the faith-divide. Nobody supported the him. The call was dismissed by commentators as arising from his ignorance of the religious configuration of the country. That was not the first time Qaddafi was making such suggestions. And every time he suggests so, he is rebuffed by both Muslims and Christians.Nigerians may differ with Qaddafi on the basis, but not on the idea of, partitioning the country. So many people have mooted the idea that the country be broken into smaller independent units mainly along regional or ethnic lines. A ware, or "let's go apart", was a popular slogan in Hausa dominated areas of the North after the 1965 coup.The Biafrans practically seceded and were reunited into the country only after a bloody civil war that lasted three years. The a ware doctrine was to resurface among some Hausa/Fulani intelligentsia almost forty years later in reaction to their perceived marginalisation by Obasanjo in 1999. Dr. Suleiman Kumo of blessed memory delivered a paper at Arewa House, Kaduna, in 2000, suggesting the partitioning of the country into six geo-political zones. Kumo was not alone. I have met many northerners who nurse the same idea.Among the elite of another large ethnic group - the Yoruba - come additional voices of separation. Their 'restructuring' campaign through a sovereign national conference as convened in some neighbouring Francophone countries became amplified by the June 12 saga. The nation got some respite from the cacophony of that agitation only after it bribed their ethnic group with a Yoruba President for eight straight years.Now, more than ever before, many intellectuals from the Niger Delta region, whose predecessors have been advocates of one Nigeria in the sixties in order to avoid Igbo discrimination in Biafra, have found their voice, thanks to our over-dependence on oil, freedom of expression, a global atmosphere that is less tolerant of domination and more amenable to human rights, and, more than anything else, the evident deterioration of their environment due to oil activities which was not so evident, say, forty years ago. We may need another bribe, perhaps, to settle their agitation too, something that is virtually at hand, if the country would so decide.

It seems that what cannot be won through common sense and debate can be won through accommodation at Aso Rock. It will not be surprising if an elected President in the near future, in 2011 or 2015, will be a product of this calculation.I have realised that corporate Nigeria has been like a marriage. Every time there is a problem with or against a section of our population, the aggrieved party become agitated and put the separation or divorce card on the table. A ware, Biafra, June 12 and militant Niger Delta all represent the same expression of resent when a wrong was committed. Divorce has happened in several such marriages, I must concede. In fact many nations are children of secessions from bigger nations, in many cases through bitter experience of war and rancour. There are some still in the process of breaking away. Even in the United States, the union is less than perfect. To complicate matters, the marriage of Nigeria is confounded by the multitude of its partners. It is one of the most polygamous ever recorded in nature. Father Nigeria has over 350 wives.However, even a casual look at the situation will show that these agitations are based more on primordial sentiments and selfish interests of the very elite that create and sustain our prevailing problems. The major tribes have been selfish in their agitation. The native Igbo,Yoruba and Northwest Hausa can count on their tribal continuity in many states of the federation. It was possible given the reigning philosophies of past centuries to base nationhood on tribe but that concept is increasingly becoming repugnant from the middle of the 20th century with the bitter consequences of racist interpretation of the human phenomenon. If you say you want to break away from someone it is because you cannot tolerate him, to put it mildly, or you hate him.

How can intellectuals presumed to be refined by education, among them renowned professors, fail to extricate themselves from the clutches of primordial tribal sentiments? How can they fail to see the human in man, judging him by his character first before the secondary attribute of tribe?The advocates of separation realise that tribe is too rudimentary a word in the context of contemporary humanitarian relations. So they use the term "ethnic nationality", an ambiguous phrase that could mean not only a tribe but also race, religion, and so on, depending on the nature of your target of classification. Ethnicity, moreover, is very elastic. Since Waber, it is seen largely as a political construct used to wrestle power or resources from a target group. Its band, unlike that of tribe or race, can be narrowed or broadened depending on the domain of power or resource that it is recruited to capture. For example, the word Hausa/Fulani is a child of Biafran ingenuity and it is today considered one ethnic group by those opposed to their political position whether in the southern or northern part of the country. Hausa, widely speaking, is used by southerners to mean anybody who is native of the defunct North, regardless of whether he is Berom or Fulani, Hausa or Kanuri, Christian or Muslim. On the other hand, the Hausa regard any native of the defunct East as Inyamiri (Nyem miri), regardless of whether he is Edo, Ijaw or Igbo, just as he considers anyone living in the defunct Western region as Yoruba. These classifications, erroneous and fluid as they may seem, could be very lethal in times of crisis. A pastor from a minority tribe in the North was once killed during a reprisal attack in the East, regardless of his Christian identity; he was labelled 'Hausa'. The same would happen to an Ijaw in the North. I have brought the above examples to illustrate that ethnicity is too ambiguous a word to use. Instead, what the advocates of partition or restructuring actually mean is tribe.Beside the conceptual repugnance of segregating people based on tribe, the selfishness of the major tribes is easily seen in their disregard for the fate of the 347 smaller tribes. The difference between Babur and Gwoza in a nation of small tribes in the Northeast could just be as big as the difference between Hausa and Igbo in today's Nigeria, if not wider. Why would advocates of restructuring lump them together or think that their difficulties will not affect us in a world that is increasingly becoming smaller? In many "ethnic nations", members of these tribes will live as minorities, second class citizens. Take the defunct Biafra that included many parts of the Niger Delta for example. Would the South-South zone of today willingly belong to a new Biafra? If the Deltan tribes agree, what will be their status other than second class citizens? So what would make their condition better than their present one in a larger Nigeria. Or would the new Biafra be a landlocked country exclusively for Igbo, leaving the Deltans to form their separate nation? All these are impossibilities, honestly speaking.

I consider it myopic when people ascribe our setbacks as a nation to our the tribal or religious differences. Which of the tribes has monopoly over the corruption that is essentially the reason behind our poor leadership? Is the Hausa any better than an Igbo, Itsekiri or Yoruba when working as a civil servant in INEC or the Presidency? Is a corrupt official restrained by his ethnic identity or even religion as he conspires with Nigerians from other tribes to loot the treasury or when he rigs elections for his party? How do we think then that restructuring Nigeria along ethnic lines will change anything? Would the Igbo civil servant in Biafra suddenly attain a high moral altitude and stop corrupt practices simply because he is in Biafra? Will the governor of Sokoto State in a restructured Nigeria automatically become God-conscious and conduct free and fair local government elections in a newly founded sultanate?Some would point to the neutralising factor of our ethnic multiplicity. This too is a misconception. I am ready to concede that ethnic pluralism does pose difficulties in governance because of the manner politicians exploit it to their advantage. These difficulties, however, are simply the same challenges which leaders of other nations are battling with. India has over 1400 tribes that are non-intelligible to one another. It covers an area several times bigger than Nigeria. Its population is over a billion. It, too, is confronted with the ills of poverty, corruption, illiteracy, etc. When there is ethnic crisis, which happens more often than in Nigeria, the number of deaths are in several hundreds, sometimes thousands. Yet, its intellectuals do not immediately jump to the conclusion that the 1400 'ethnic nationalities' cannot co-exist. Instead, they apply themselves to discovering how they will overcome the problems of poverty, corruption and underdevelopment. Through that effort they are able to run free and fair elections and significantly improve their fortunes in science and technology. In Africa, whenever we are confronted with a problem, we load it on our neighbour, instead, accusing him in the most unjustifiable manner. We can even hack him to death before he knows anything, regardless of whether he is a child learning in a school or rearing his cattle in the fields, an innocent commoner selling yams on the street or a learned person parting knowledge to our children. What is most baffling is how our tribesmen or members of our faith would immediately come to our aid, concealing our actions and accusing the victim of our barbarism.

This is a station of shame, not pride.In two previous articles, I added my voice to the restructuring advocacy because I thought if all others are indeed unhappy with the marriage, so let it be divorced. Seven years later, my stand now is categorical: we the elite can give this country something better than throwing the divorce card on the table any time there is a conflict in our marriage. We can give it our willingness to make it successful. Once that idea is settled in our minds, all the requisites for a sustainable marriage will follow.A willing mind will be ready to understand that difficulties will always abound but it is our collective responsibility to overcome them. A willing mind will abandon the garbage of ethnicity and adorn itself with the understanding that ethnic homogeneity does not automatically translate into to social harmony. Somalis are one people, same race, same language, same religion, same sect. Yet, they represent the best specimen of anarchy on the globe today, worse than afghanistan. On the other hand, the most prosperous country in the world, the United States of America, is heterogenous to the core.A willing mind will automatically improve its mental health by imbibing tolerance, that habit that enables us see people first as humans before considering their identity of race, tribe or faith. It enables us to accord them respect for their ideas and persons even when such ideas contradict ours. It allows our faculty to reason first before it condemns, putting the substance before the person. Tolerance will also enables us to accord people their due rights, natural and constitutional, as humans: the right to life, property and dignity, except what could be duly taken from them by law, no matter how difficult are the times.Intolerance is a sign of mental illness and I am disappointed to say that it is pervasive among us. It is propagated daily in places of worship, in newspapers and now on the internet. When I wrote Yar'adua, The Final Days, for example, all was good with the article in the eyes of some readers except the advice I innocently gave, based on my knowledge about the dredging of Niger Delta as at the time I wrote the piece, that Goodluck should try and avoid controversial decisions especially in these early days of his presidency. When you read the comments posted by such readers on Sahara Reporters you will find abusive words and generalisations like "Bastard", "Northerners are arrogant", etc, simply because of that advice. And in reaction to my last article, Dogo Nahauwa, the comments were so uncouth that I simply declared them laughable. One of them wrote that if he has the chance he will kill me simply because I gave what I consider to be a balanced view of what is happening on the Plateau. Any competent social psychologist will this attitude as a sign of mental sickness, not civilisation. We may adjudge these habits as insignificant but the harm they are causing to our progress is considerable. With every hate speech that we post, we are reducing the chances of understanding and propagating rancour in the minds of fellow Nigerians. It is difficult to find a country whose citizens engage in abusive generalisations as Nigerians. Northerners are this, southerners are that; Igbo is this, Hausa is that, all coming from educated people who are supposed to be vanguards of our unity and progress.

Finally, willingness strengthens our sight such that we see the advantages of togetherness and foresee the disadvantages, if not the pains, of separation. The market is a potent example to cite. Nigeria is a nation of 150 million people. Produce anything and it will instantly vanish into its households without any tariff, visa, and so on. The palm oil we consume in my village is brought from Calabar and it is excellent. And so are other products products produced in the South, agricultural and industrial. From various parts of the North are transported other agricultural products like root crops, grains, vegetables and livestock. This is an economic integration that could have come only at high cost and many inconveniences. The freedom of movement and the right to live anywhere in the country allows the millions of Igbo traders and contractors to escape the overpopulated southeast and establish businesses and homes in the less prosperous North and in the southwest, especially Lagos. Other ethnic groups benefit in the same, though less conspicuous, way. By now, Biafra would have been chocking with overpopulation; and it is doubtful if its economic prospects would have been better than it is in larger Nigeria. I can be disputed only on basis of theory.Politically, our ethnic plurality enriches the constitution of our governments in such a way that everybody feels carried along. The horse-trading that goes along with any election and the constitutional provision of 2/3 of the votes in 2/3 of the state of the federation allows for the peg of unity to be hammered into the soil almost every community. If it were not for the corruption that perverted the mind of our political class, we would have achieved enviable heights in democracy. Socially, a multiethnic society allows the advantage of variety of interactions, with people from various groups displaying various cultures, manners and dispositions. A divided Nigeria will be boring with monotony of same language, faith, culture, outlook and geography.I would like to see our elite waking up to our responsibilities by taking all the necessary measures for the growth of a healthy nation. Let us graduate into being Nigerians, as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi once put it recently, abandoning the regional sentiments and acrimonies that preoccupied the minds of our predecessors. We can decide to turn the energy we are presently wasting in breeding hate into fostering mutual understanding, technological progress and economic prosperity in a society that will be characterised by good governance and democratic values. Instead of being slaves to a yesterday that failed us, we can be partners of a today that will usher in a better tomorrow for our children.That future may start now if you, the reader, opens your heart to all Nigerians irrespective of their ethnic or religious identity; then a smile on your face wherever you meet them; then a warm greeting; then an effort to understand their point of view at the same time you persuasively put yours across, if you must differ; then cooperating with them in various ways to bring about the change in leadership that will pursue good governance for our collective benefit. I find it hypocritical to load everything on bad leadership when we are not willing to pay our civic dues as individuals. These are the measures, small and big, that will make our marriage work. It is the path followed by those nations that willingly made it.In conclusion, my appeal may be dismissed by the ethnocentric as naive and praised as patriotic by the nationalist. No matter the manner in which it is received, I am walking away from the keyboard convinced, like Lord Lugard a century ago, that we are better off together than apart and that our differences, no matter how numerous, are not so insoluble to warrant a divorce as propounded by Qaddafi and other advocates of partition.

________________ AT, 2010

A mighty wind blew night and day. It stole the oak tree's leaves away. Then snapped its boughs and pulled its bark Until the oak was tired and stark. But still the oak tree held its ground While other trees fell all around. The weary wind gave up and spoke,
"How can you still be standing, Oak?" The oak teee said, "I know that you can break each branch of mine in two, Carry every leaf away, Shake my limbs, and make me sway, But I have roots stretched in the earth, growing stronger since my birth. You'll never touch them, for you see, they are the deepest part of me. Until today, I wasn't sure of just how much I could endure. But now I've found, with thanks to you, I'm stronger than I ever knew."
Especially now, try to remember that you're stronger than any challenges you or those close to you encounter or any disappointment life will bring.

________________ NON, 2010

Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, has an interesting antidote to the frequent religious riots in Nigeria: break the country into two – something like the Islamic Republic of Northern Nigeria and Christian Republic of Southern Nigeria. In his own calculations, this is the ultimate recipe for peace and stability. There would be no more religious riots and burning of places of worship. We would live apart happily ever after. Hindus and Muslims used to have a similar problem in India, Ghaddafi reminded us, until it was split in two with the creation of Pakistan for Muslims in 1947. Many Nigerians have reacted angrily to his suggestion. Senate President David Mark, a Northern Christian, described Ghaddafi as “a mad man”. The House of Representatives wants Nigeria to sever diplomatic ties with Libya in protest. The Federal Government has recalled the Nigerian ambassador to Libya “for consultations” – obviously over Ghaddafi’s pronouncement.


On the other hand, not everyone is disgusted. Many Nigerians, especially Southerners, are backing the proposal. The "Hausa people" are the problem of Nigeria, they argue, and Nigeria would be better off without them. Their argument goes thus: until the country is divided into North and South, Nigeria will never make progress. It is the North that is “dragging us back”. After all, it is the South that is sustaining the North through oil. The argument goes on and on and on and on.


The responses to Ghaddafi’s proposal have been largely off the point. What is the issue? The Libyan leader said Nigeria should be divided into Muslim and Christian units. He didn’t say it should be divided into North and South or Hausa and “others”. But read and listen to the responses and you start hearing things about “Hausa”, “Yoruba”, “Igbo”, “Niger Delta”, “oil”, etc etc. We are involved in what students of logic call “mistaken argument”. One thing you will easily notice about public debate in Nigeria is the way issues are jumbled up. This usually derives from a combination of intolerance, ignorance, primordial sentiments and mischief, interjected with foul language, eventually producing no reasonable discourse and no reasonable outcome. We end up confusing issues, unable to make head or tail of debates. You just have to worry about the quality of public debate in Nigeria.


Now, is it practically possible to divide Nigeria into Muslim and Christian units? I would rather examine that than choose to be overwhelmed with hysteria. Ghaddafi’s suggestion is obviously a product of widespread ignorance – the ignorance and the myth about “Muslim North” and “Christian South”. I, therefore, do not blame him. Really, there is a global misconception about the very complex ethno-religious structure of Nigeria. When the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said recently that power would remain in the North, the foreign press reported that the party said the next President must be a Muslim! The BBC said power is rotated between Muslims and Christian in Nigeria. Such ignorance was exposed by a Southern Muslim's victory in the 1993 presidential election (MKO Abiola). Yakubu Gowon, a Northern Christian, was military head of state for nine years! So much for "Muslim North" and "Christian South".


At a private dinner with an Asian ambassador recently, THISDAY executives took turns to introduce themselves. "I'm Yusuph Olaniyonu," the Sunday Editor said. "You're Muslim. So you're from the North?" the ambassador asked. The MD of Leaders & Co introduced himself: "I'm Deji Mustapha." The ambassador said the same thing. On both counts, the ambassador applied the misconceived template for Nigeria. On both counts, he was wrong.


Many outsiders think it is as simple as classifying one part of the country Muslim and the other part Christian. How would Ghaddafi’s proposal resolve the Jos crisis, for instance? Jos is indeed a test case for the advocates of balkanisation of Nigeria. The massacres are not about North and South. How many Igbos and Yorubas were killed in the latest mayhem in Dogo Nahawa and other villages? It was strictly between Fulanis and Beroms – two Northern ethnic groups. So how would Ghaddafi’s proposal handle that?


Some of these funny proposals are based on a lack of appreciation of the complex nature of the country. It is not just outsiders who make the mistake – Nigerians do so all the time. To the unenlightened Southerner, the North is another word for “Muslim” and “Hausa”. To be a Northerner is to be a Hausa Muslim. To the Southerner, Hausa is Fulani and Fulani is Hausa. Kanuri is Hausa. Bachama is Hausa. If you tell a typical Southerner you are from Kwara or Adamawa or Kaduna, automatically you are classified as “Hausa”. I once overheard a Kanuri politician protest vehemently when my journalist colleagues called him Hausa. If a journalist does not know the difference between Kanuri and Hausa – and we are supposed to be active participants in public debate – then we are in real trouble intellectually.


At least 12 of the 19 Northern states have significant “indigenous” Christian population: Adamawa, Benue, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau and Taraba. And at least five of these states are predominantly Christian. You have Christians scattered all over the North. How do you gather them together to form a country? Are you going to create new communities, build new houses and provide new ancestral environments for them in the South? On the other hand, you have the South-west equally spilt between Muslims and Christians. The Yoruba ethnic nationality is a case study on its own. In the same family, you can have Muslims and Christians. It is not uncommon for the husband, a Muslim, to drive his wife to the church on Sunday, drop her off and come back to pick her after service. In the same home, you will find children of the same parents practising different faiths.

How does Ghaddafi want to explain that?
Ghaddafi’s proposal is flawed, need I say? It is going to be geographically and socio-politically cumbersome to break Nigeria into Muslim and Christian. Ghaddafi forgot to add that in India, Muslims and Hindus are still fighting long after Pakistan was excised. He also forgot to add that Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971, despite Islam binding them together. The Nigerian supporters of Ghaddafi have also not explained to us how the two-state proposal will resolve the recent communal killings in Benue and Ebonyi. Or how it would have prevented Ife/Modakeke, Ogbe-Ijoh and Tiv/Junkun wars. Or the Umuleri/Aguleri carnage. Meanwhile, how do you separate Yoruba along religious lines? Are you going to move the Yoruba Muslims to the North? What happens to Auchi Muslims? Will they relocate to Kano or Jigawa?


Obviously, I strongly believe Nigerians can live together in “peace and unity” based on my observations and concrete evidence gathered over the years. I believe the things that bind us together are more than the things that separate us. I believe that accommodation and tolerance will help reduce our conflicts. I believe that justice and fair play will make us stronger. But if Nigerians decide to go their separate ways, how is that my problem? If breaking up will stop treasury looting, if breaking up will make governors and council chairmen build more roads and hospitals, if breaking up will allow free and fair elections at all levels, if breaking up will provide 24-hour electricity, who am I to suggest otherwise?


It's always amazing how we try to reduce our problems to a matter of religion and ethnicity. Agreed, these are real problems. There is too much ethno-religious cleaving and less emphasis on integration. These are real, real problems. But I am more bothered about the things that magnify our differences: politicking, ignorance and intolerance – which are ever so often fed by economic tensions and the buccaneering, manipulative elite from all ethnic groups without exception. The intelligentsia is, unfortunately, complicit. The ordinary people are the victims. They are hungry and exploited. The politicians will rather give them cutlasses than cutlery. When somebody is hungry and desperate, it is all too easy to whip up sectional sentiments in him or her.

Clearly, Ghaddafi is ignorant about the nature of Nigeria. Things are more complicated than they appear.

________________ SK, 2010

THE RECENT CALL FOR THE SEPERATION OF THE COLONIAL AMALGAM OF 1914 CALLED THE NIGERIAN - STATE, INTO TWO SEPERATE INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES OF MUSLIM DOMINATED NORTH AND CHRISTIAN / MUSLIM MIXED CCOUNTRY OF THE SOUTH, MIGHT HAVE NOT BEEN A BIG SURPRISE TO MANY KEEN OBSERVER OF THE OF EVENTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM AND MORE ESPECIALLY AS IT RELATES TO MOHAMMAR GHADAFFI AS AN INTERNATIONAL ACTOR SINCE HIS 1959 ASSUMPTION OF POWER IN THE ARAB / MUSLIM COUNTRY OF LIBYA.

MOHAMMAR GHADAFFI AS AN INTERNATIONAL ACTOR, HAD / HAVE OVER THE YEARS DEFINED HIS OWN LEADERSHIP OF THE AFRICAN NATION OF LIBYA BASED ON HIS PERSONALITY ( CULT OF PERSONALITY ) AND OFTEN IRRATIONAL STATEMENTS AND POSITIONS ON ISSUES WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA.HENCE, HIS NEVER BEING TAKEN SERIOUS BY MANY OBSERVERS OF EVENTS AT THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE. ACCEPTING GHADAFFI FOR WHAT HE WAS / IS, BUT THE CONDEMNATIONS THAT FOLLOWED HIS CANDID ADVICE THAT THE PROJECT OF THE NIGERIAN NATION - STATE SHOULD BE DISCONTINUED NEEDS NOT ARISE TO A SERIOUS MINDED PEOPLE IN THIS NATION - STATE CALLED NIGERIA. THE IMPERIALISTIC BERLIN CONFERENCE OF 1885 / 1886 LED BY CHANCELLOR OTTHO VON BISMARCK OF GERMANY, LED TO THE PARTITIONING OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AMONG THE IMPERIAL POWERS OF EUROPE AND EVENTUAL AMALGAMATION OF DIFFERENT AFRICAN NATIONS INTO SEPERATE NATION - STATES UNDER ONE COLONIAL LORD OR THE OTHER , WITH NIGERIAN OWN AMALGAMATION COMING INTO EFFECT IN 1914 THROUGH LORD LUGARD OF GREAT BRITAIN.

THE AMALGAMATED NIGERIAN NATION - STATE THAT BECAME INDEPENDENT OCT 1ST 1960, HAD BEEN AND STILL A CLASSICAL CASE OF FAILURE OF FORCED MARRIAGE AMONG THE DIFFERENT ETHNIC COMPONENETS THAT MADE UP THE FEDERATION. WE ALL HAVE BEEN / BEING LIVING WITNESSES TO THE DOMINATION OF THE FEDERATION BY THE HAUSA / FULANI ETHNIC GROUP OVER THE OTHERS AND DOMINATION OF THE MAJORITY ETHNIC GROUPS OVER THE MINORITY GROUPS, SYSTEM FAILURE , CORRUPTION, THE CIVIL WAR, CAPITAL FLIGHT, ANNULMENT OF JUNE 12 ELECTION AND DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF JONATHAN GOOD LUCK TO ASSUME FULL PRESIDENTIAL POWERS BECAUSE OF THE IMCAPACITATION OF HIS BOSS YAR ADUA, ARM INSURRECTIONS, ETHNIC / RELIGIOUS CRISES E.T.C. ALL THESE ARE VITAL FEATURES OF A FAILED STATE THAT NIGERIA HAD COME TO BE ADDRESSED AS EITHER WE LIKE IT OR WE DO NOT.

THE NIERIAN NATION - STATE HAVE THE OPTIONS OF GOING THE WAY OF YUGOSLAVIA, LIBERIA, SOMALIA, SUDAN E.T.C THROUGH ANOTHER CIVIL WAR OR PEACEFULLY THROUGH THE WAY OF THE EX SOVIET REPUBLICS, FORMER FEDERATION OF SENEGAMBIA AND OTHER FORMER FEDERATIONS THAT PARTED WAYS PEACEFULLY. THE BRITISH IMPERIAL POWER KNEW THAT THE ABOUT TO BE INDEPENDENT COLONY OF INDIA, HAD PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC RELATIONS BASED ON THEIR HISTORY, HENCE THE WISE DECISION TO SEPERATE IT INTO THE MUSLIM PAKISTAN AND HINDU DOMINATED INDIA IN 1947 AND DESPITE THIS THERE IS STILL THE CONFLICTS OVER THE STATUS OR OWNERSHIP OF KASHMIR TILL TODAY. IT IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON FOR THERE TO BE ETHNIC, NATIONALISTIC AND RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES IN ANY MULTI- LINGUA AND MULTI RELIGIOUS NATION - STATE, BUT THE EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENT NATURE OF THE MECHANISM PUT IN PLACE BY EACH NATION TO ADDRESS SUCH DIFFERENCES WILL DETERMINE IF SUCH NATION - STATE WILL WILL COLLAPSE OR NOT. BRITAIN OUR COLONIAL MASTER IS MADE UP OF THE IRISH, ENGLISH , SCOT AND WELSH, THE UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN WAS FORMED IN 1707 AFTER THE SCOTISH NATION WAS MERGED WITH THE REST OF BRITISH NATIONS OF IRELAND, WALES AND ENGLAND.THEY HAVE BEING LIVING AS A PEACEFUL AND ONE OF THE MOST DEVELOPED NATIONS IN THE WORLD BASICALLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEING ABLE TO MANAGE THEIR DIFFERENCES VERY WELL.BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE THEIR OWN DIFFERENCES OR FRICTIONS AND TO ADDRESS THESE, THE IRISH REPUBLIC WAS GRANTED INDEPENDENCE IN 1921 OR 22 AFTER ABOUT 796 YEARS OF BRITISH RULE, THOUGH EXCLUDING THE NORTHERN IRELAND THAT REMAINS PART OF THE UNITED KINGDOM TILL TODAY AND FEW YEARS AGO THE SCOTISH PARLIAMENT WAS GIVEN THE POWER ( BASED ON THE CONCEPT OF DEVOLUTION OF POWER )TO MAKE SOME LAWS AND POLICIES AFFECTING THE SCOTISH NATION. CANADA MY HOME COUNTRY, IS ANOTHER CLASSICAL EXAMPLE OF AN EFFECTIVE AND EFFECIENT MULTI CULTURAL NATION - STATE. THOUGH THE LAND NATURALLY BELONGS TO THE NATIVES THAT WE CALL ''THE FIRST NATIONS'' THE BRITSH AND FRENCH SETTLERS THAT LAID THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN DAY CANADA HAD THROUGH THEIR EXPERIENCES IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING FROM BRITAIN AND FRANCE THEIR ANCESTRAL HOMES, HAD / HAVE BEEN / BEING ABLE TO FASHION OUT GOOD MECHANISMS TO ADDRESS THE ISSUES OF ETHNIC MINORITIES AND MULTI-CULTURALISM, ESPECIALLY AS IT CONCERNS THE FIRST NATION. THERE HAVE BEEN TWO REFERENDIA CARRIED OUT IN THE 1960'S AND 1993, BECAUSE OF THE INDEPENDENT AGITATIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS, MOSTLY BASED IN THE QUEBEC PROVINCE. THESE NOTWITHSTANDING, THE CANADIAN FEDERATION HAD PUT IN PLACE OVER THE YEARS THE MODALITIES FOR ASSURING THE MINORITIES, OF NO FEAR OF DOMINATION AND OVER THE YEAR WE HAVE BEING HAVING FRENCH CANADIAN PRIME MINISTERS ALSO. COMING BACK TO THE MESSAGE OF LIBYIAN LEADER GHADAFFI, ALOT OF PEOPLE HAVE CONDEMNED AND CALLED MOHAMMAR GHADAFFI ALL SORT OF NEGATIVE NAMES BECAUSE OF HIS CALL FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE NIGERIAN FEDERATION, BUT LET US SEPERATE THE MESSAGE FROM THE MESSENGER. DO WE NEED AN ANGEL TO TELL US THAT THE FORCED MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE CALLED NIGERIAN FEDERATION IS NOT WORKING ? WHERE THE NORTHER NIGERIANS BELIEVE THAT THEY WERE BORN TO RULE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WHOLE FEDERATION AND HAVE BEEN /BEING ABLE TO DO THAT THROUGH ''THE SELECTIVE CHARADE'' CALLED ELECTION AND THROUGH VARIOUS MILITARY COUPS UNDER THE GUYS OF RESCUING THE NATION FROM COLLAPSING.
THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD, EITHER WE CALL FOR A SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE AND ADDRESS VARIOUS ISSUES OF DIFFERENCES AND FIND EQUITABLE MANNERS OF COMPENSATING THE PEOPLE OF NIGER - DELTA FOR THE LONG YEARS OF NEGLECT AND SUFFERINGS THAT THEY HAVE EXPERIENCED, GIVING THE FACTS THAT THEY ARE THE GEEZE THAT LAY THE GOLDEN EGG THAT SUSTAIN OUR NATION FOR A LONG TIME OR WE WILL JUST BE POSTPOSING THE EVIL DAYS AHEAD OF US AND WE MUST BE SUFFERING FROM ''COLLECTIVE AMNESIA'' IF WE FAIL TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND LEARN FROM OTHER FAILED STATE OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION, SENEGAMBIA AND YUGOSLAVIA E.T.C . THOSE WHO MADE PEACEFUL CHANGES IMPOSSIBLE MUST BE READY FOR THE ALTERNATIVE. I JUST PRAY THAT WE WILL NOT COME TO REALISE THAT AT THE END OF THE DAY , GHADAFFI ''THE MESSENGER MAY BE IRRATIONAL TO A LOT OF US, BUT THE RATIONALITY BEHIND HIS MESSAGE CAN NEVER BE QUESTIONED.

________________ FOD, 2010

Permit my exercise in tautology to state for the umpteenth time and as we all know that Africa has been mostly stagnant if not receding and also has been plagued over the years with political and socio-economic mishaps; poor governance, poverty, illiteracy, underdeveloped and undeveloped in some areas and volatility in many areas. Over the years many scholars have deduced that our problems are as a result of the inhumane effects of slavery and colonisation. Slavery ended in the 1800s while colonisation for the better part ended in the 1960/70s. This is around 30-40years of independence and still Africa stands at a distant far compared with other colonised parts of the world.

So why is Africa still majorly stagnant and un/underdeveloped?

Let me take you back to first independent African nation- Ghana and to the book of its great men if not the greatest Kwame Nkrumah titled: *Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism. At the time he published this book, Nkrumah was the President of Ghana. One year later he would be deposed by a military coup that was supported by the American CIA. The name of Nkrumah's book is a variation on Lenin's own study of imperialism written 50 years before and named Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

He explained to us in great detail how the West especially the US was responding to the successes of national liberation movements like the one he led in Ghana, by shifting their tactics from colonialism to neo-colonialism: "Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags" and "claims that it is 'giving' independence to its former subjects, to be followed by 'aid' for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism."

He mentioned that the Neo-colonial powers pursue their agenda through the United Nations through two UN agencies they established after the WW2 and that they fully control without any pretext of democracy, namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF): "Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to be known as ‘multilateral aid’ through international organisations: the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction and Development (known as the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association are examples, all, significantly, having U.S. capital as their major backing. These agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans."

Neocolonialism as did colonialism provides immense profits for the colonialist in both cases. He mentioned how western monopolies control the prices of goods by lowering the prices and siphoning some $41 billion in profits from 1951 to 1961... Furthermore they profited and still do from high rates of interest: "while capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six developing countries between 1956 and 1962, it is estimated that interest and profit alone extracted on this sum from the debtor countries amounted to more than £15,000 million."

He also mentions the following about their inhumane ways of exploitation "There are conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, to lower trade barriers in favour of the donor country’s goods and capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of such funds a majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and military. So-called ‘invisible trade’ furnishes the Western monopolies with yet another means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean shipping is controlled by the imperialist countries ... As for insurance payments; in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavourable balance in Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 million."
From his Analysis, Neo-colonial exploitation "operates not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.”

He furthermore explains in detail how the mass media, Hollywood, the US Peace corps, religion, the US information agency and a host of others are all engaged in Neo-colonialism.

On Holly wood he vividly describes, "Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments."

On Mass media he said "While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!" As we would remember that not only until June 2003 was Nelson Mandela taken off the United states terrorist list!

“Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it; it means exploitation without redress... Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries. The temporary success of this policy can be seen in the ever widening gap between the richer and the poorer nations of the world. But the internal contradictions and conflicts of neo-colonialism make it certain that it cannot endure as a permanent world policy.’’ said Nkrumah

The same has been well detailed in Dori Borrelli’s speech 214; **Neocolonialism in Jamaica: History, practices, and resistance (4/25/02).

“The imposition of structural adjustment programs in the Third World since the 1970s has been characterized as a war against the poor, a process of [neo] recolonization” (Turner, 1994: 37). This statement is particularly applicable to the country of Jamaica. The island has been susceptible to a variety of neocolonial acts including the presence of multinational corporations, structural adjustment programs, and loan organizations that have sucked Jamaica’s economy dry.’’

“Stephanie Black’s documentary “Life and Debt” reveals much about the current situation in Jamaica and the long-lasting effects of the IMF loan. Poverty and crime are unacceptably high. Farmers are unable to compete with the international market. Imported food and goods are cheaper than locally produced goods and food. Even for those who are employed life can be terrible. As a result of the establishment of the Free Trade Zone, women are exploited and subjected to sweatshop conditions. The free zone is located in Jamaica but owned by multinational corporations such as Hanes and other American clothing companies that operate worldwide. These goods never step foot onto true Jamaican soil. Wages are low and offer no guarantees. When production becomes too expensive or can be done more cheaply somewhere else, by someone else, the companies get up and leave, often without even paying the Jamaican workers. In sum, this is an incredible film and in many instances excruciatingly truthful. With the documentary Black makes a very necessary statement about the impact that debt and foreign loan have on Jamaican society. (Black: 2001)”

These are historical and real cases of the effects of the neo-colonialist policies of the West on the developing/underdeveloped world.

Now to come back to the Nigerian tale, we are no different from these neo-colonies, we as well are a neo-colony. Our economy has been crumbled by the World Bank, IMF loans; the West has supported our various corrupt leaders from corrupt military dictators to corrupt politicians, supplied weapons and trainings for the massacre of the innocent in the Niger-delta, promoted repression and poverty and even at some times supported coups and assassinations like they did in Ecuador and Panama to mention a very few.

These have been peripheral of the West’s Imperialist and neo-colonial agenda and actions. A couple of months back Barack Obama was elected as the President of the US, majority of Africans rejoiced and celebrated like he was been inaugurated at the President for Africa. For a while I could understand their joy of being black and having a black man president of the US, but that is where it should all end! People took it further expecting a miracle from him to save Africa, to speak to his African/black brothers to change and rule with dignity and decency. They were wrong and have fooled themselves building castles in the air.

Obama, like any other US president represents the same neo-colonial US, which is out to dominate the world either by guns or debt! He drives the same agenda of exploitation, repression and self interest which has built and sustained the US economy and state. For those that thought he was a Jesus reincarnate, for those who thought he was sent to save us, for those who thought he and the west owed us or still owe us something, I say: Wake up from your slumbers! They owe us noting!

I read an article by Sabella Abidde O. (A Nigerian Living in U.S.A) titled ''What Does the World Owe Africa?'' In which he vividly mentions “. I am not sold on foreign intervention in Africa’s domestic affairs, but this is one of those times when the West must work in concert with the people of Africa to effect changes. For instance, London, Paris, and the White House know the right people and the right groups to work with in order to effect these changes. Until now, they have principally collaborated, cooperated, and coordinated their efforts with parasites and leeches.”

Then he, naively further states that “What’s to be done by the West? A series of steps needs to be taken: (1) Deny African elites and ruling class funds and any kind of investments in western nations, (2) Deny African leaders, along with their proxies and family members, medical treatment in hospitals in the West; (3) Deny the children of these leaders form accessing learning in Western learning institutions; (4) except for meetings at such places as the United Nations, decline all visa applications by African leaders, access Western courts so African leaders can be sued when war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed.”

Firstly, numbers 2 and 3 are simply against human rights. You can't deny anyone an access to medical care or education on any grounds even if they are convicted criminals!

What the writer of the above quoted text has failed to understand is that these neo-colonial powers are the main one gaining from our economic, political and social slavery. On what basis should they give up this strong position they hold? Why would they do it? Remember colonialism as much as the world powers then knew it was inhumane and evil still they held onto it for as long as they could until various revolutions started occurring all around the colonies, and the new world power US was ready to take over from tem as neo-colonialists. That was only when they started giving up their strong holds. The West fought and died to keep us under colonialism, why would they walk away freely from this new neo-colonialist position they have now?

Of course they know the groups to work with for growth and development, but would they ever do that? Would that profit them? Wouldn’t that reduce their grip one various economies and nations? Do you think they want that? We need to understand fully the forces that are working against us and then we can proffer proper solutions.

Also, I read Sola Salako’s “Open Letter to President Obama on General IBB and Nigerian Elections in 2011” In which she pleads with Obama not to endorse/support an ex general (Ibrahim Babangida) in the next presidential elections in 2011.

After reading this article, I felt cheap, sold and made inferior to be a Nigerian. How in the world would someone degrade herself and her country as to plead a foreign power not to support candidate. Who cares if the US supports a candidate? I don’t! Isn't it up to the Nigerian populace to decide on whom to vote for? Or does the US support for a candidate determine the elections in Nigeria? When did Nigeria become the 52nd state of the US? (as Israel is already the 51st). This is a real shame for we Nigerians and Africans, we all claim to be educated, free and independent but still our mentality and reasoning beggars belief. It loudly spells out “Mental Slavery” and as Haile Selassie I and Bob Marley said we need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, because none but ourselves can free our minds.

Also she mentioned “IBB(Ibrahim Babangida) represents everything you (Obama) do not: Despair, Tired Hands, Status quo, Establishment, Dictatorship, Corruption, Lack of Vision, Lack of Integrity and Accountability, Unfairness, Same old, same old as you Americans would say.”

Then I ask if the Obama administration is supporting a candidate with the qualities she has described then how on earth doesn’t he represent what Obama represents? Don’t they say “show me your friends and I’ll know who you are” If Babangida represents all these qualities she mentioned and he is being backed by the Obama regime, then it simply shows that Obama and his regime also represent this qualities. Well let me point out this clearly to you: Yes they do! The US represents all these same qualities you have mentioned!

She further states ''A nod in Gov Donald Duke, Babatunde Fashola or even Dr Pat Utomi, El Rufai or Nuhu Ribadu would get the electoral system buzzing with excitement in no time. That would rekindle the fire of nationalism in the young like you did their American counterparts in 2009."

She is expecting a nod from the US in the right direction to create a buzz of excitement and rekindle the fire of nationalism in the youth. How on earth! This is such a shame! I for one as a youth don’t need a nod from anybody to rekindle my nationalism or buzzing, this is just a case of modern day slavery where the slaves consults the master for his blessings before he does anything or waits at the masters table to eat the crumbs that fall off. This kind of statements would make the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevara, Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Murtala Muhammed, Haile Selassie I, Gani Fawehinmi, Fela Kuti, Agostinho Neto, Sékou Touré, Julius Nyerere, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Amílcar Cabralto to mention a few cringe with disgust in their graves. How long shall it take Africans, Nigerians to learn? When would we evolve and rightfully become the heirs of the world’s revolutions?

It’s these kinds of statements that made Che Guevara conclude that"Africa has a long way to go before it reaches real revolutionary maturity,"

The message of change should be directed to the Nigerian populace; Nigerians themselves must understand what change is, learn it and decide if they are ready for it. The people must be empowered and educated. That’s the first step. As Che Guevara said "The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated." We need to fully educate ourselves and others to build a worthwhile revolution. Nigerians don’t need the US or any other country to back any candidate for us to know whether we would vote for the candidate or not. We Nigerians have to take up this challenge as our integrity, dignity, intelligence and sanity have been tested and called to action by such statements. Over the years we have shown our laxity and lackadaisical attitude towards our leadership and future. It’s time we take the bull by the horn. “No Nation can liberate another” – Haile Selassie I We have to liberate ourselves!

I personally don’t see why Nigerians should be bothered if the US or any other country supports men like Babangida because I know I will never vote for them! Even if the heavens support men of that calibre I would still not vote for them “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.” -Che Guevara and Me.

Nigerians should be ready to wage a war with their votes at the booths, voices and marches if their votes are stolen and even with their lives, as Jose Marti said “It’s better to die standing, than to live on your knees.” We need to fight for our own true independence, taking back our country from these corrupt politicians and elite and all other agents of imperialism and neo-colonialism.

Hasta el dia que la gente dicen acerca de nosotros que ***“Porque esta gran humanidad ha dicho ¡Basta! y ha echado a andar. Y su marcha, de gigantes, ya no se detendrá hasta conquistar la verdadera independencia, por la que ya han muerto más de una vez inútilmente, morirán por su única, verdadera e irrenunciable independencia.

Todo eso, esta disposición nueva de un continente, de Africa y el pais Nigeria está plasmada y resumida en el grito que, día a día, nuestras masas proclaman como expresión irrefutable de su decisión de lucha, paralizando la mano armada del invasor. Proclama que cuenta con la comprensión y el apoyo de todos los pueblos del mundo

Esa proclama es: ¡Patria o muerte!

Until the day when it is said of us that “For this great humanity has said "enough" and has started to move forward. And their march, the march of giants, cannot stop, will not stop until they have conquered their true independence, for which many have already died, and not uselessly, they will die for their never-to-be-renounced, their only true independence."

This new will of a whole continent, Africa and nation Nigeria shows itself in the cry proclaimed daily by our masses as the irrefutable expression of their decision to fight, to grasp and deter the armed hand of the invader. It is a cry that has the understanding and support of all the working class and youth of the world.”

That cry is: "Our country or death." – Che Guevara; paraphrased by me.

In the long run, Neo-colonialism like colonialism before it would be defeated!
The world owes us nothing, we owe ourselves everything!

Hasta La Victoria Siempre!




*Notes on Kwame Nkrumah taken from Nkrumah:. Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism, 1965
**Notes on Neo-colonialism in Jamaica taken from Neocolonialism in Jamaica:History, practices, and resistance Dori Borrelli Speech 214 4/25/02
***Paragraph from Che Guevara taken from Discurso del Comandante Che Guevara ante la ONU 1964.

________________ TAA, 2010

THE ATTEMPT by a 23-year-old Nigerian man to explode a bomb on a Detroit-bound airplane has become the excuse for a return to some of the worst "war on terror" hysteria of the post-September 11 period.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on December 25, apparently with the components of an explosive device hidden in his underwear. As the plane approached Detroit, he tried to set it off. Passengers and crew members subdued Abdulmutallab and put out the fire he started before the explosives detonated.

Immediately, the mainstream media shifted into overdrive. "Terrorism experts" filled hours of airtime on cable TV news networks with speculation about an al-Qaeda connection, based on reports that Abdulmutallab had traveled to Yemen in August to go to language school, and instead devoted himself to studying Islam at a mosque with a radical reputation.

All the more reason, according to the "war on terror" cheerleaders, for systematic racial profiling of Muslims and Arabs; the use of torture against Abdulmutallab and any other suspect; and immediate military retaliation against Yemen, which is now, we're told, the hub of al-Qaeda's operations.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint denounced the Obama administration's "soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo--these things are not going to appease the terrorists." Terrorizer-in-chief Dick Cheney scrambled to a microphone to pronounce, "[W]e are at war, and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe."

The White House and Democrats in Congress responded by doing somersaults to look tough. Obama returned from his vacation in Hawaii with promises that he would "get to the bottom" of why the bomb plot wasn't foiled before it happened. Rep. Jane Harman, a top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, declared that the administration should review plans to release innocent Yemeni detainees from the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay.

But the bipartisan panic--in response to a primitive bomb plot that thankfully was thwarted by the plane's passengers--only seems to grow more crazed as the days pass.

Over the weekend, retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney appeared on Fox News to propose that authorities strip-search every 18- to 28-year-old Muslim man who boards an airplane, within the U.S. or traveling to it. "And if we don't do that," McInerney said, "there's a very high probability we're going to lose an airplane."

The Fox anchor did manage to reply, "That's a bit strong"--but only because, she said, "That's just not going to go over, not in this country."

You could listen to Fox and the other news networks for hours and never hear a single person deviate from the unspoken assumption--that terrorist acts are committed only by young Muslim men.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THERE WAS something else missing from the mainstream media coverage of the bomb plot--any real discussion of the actions of a far better organized force than al-Qaeda, with much greater resources and the capacity for violence on an incomparably vast scale.

In other words, the U.S. military.

"From what I can gather," wrote Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, "the principal New Year's wish of our media class is that we will bomb and occupy more Muslim countries in 2010, and that nobody in any of those countries will try to bring any violence to us in return. What a truly bizarre expectation."

As Greenwald points out, the U.S. "war on terror" is being fought not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but increasingly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, with Predator drone air strikes and covert and not-so-covert operations. Add to these five countries actively in the U.S. crosshairs the actions of America's Middle East watchdog, Israel, in threatening death and destruction across the Middle East and continually causing them against Palestinians. Then there's the ongoing U.S. saber-rattling against Iran and Washington's support for authoritarian Arab regimes like Egypt.

Every atrocity and act of repression carried out in these occupations or operations or interventions deepens bitterness and hatred toward the U.S. among people who most likely had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. As Greenwald wrote:

[W]e are constantly delivering death to the Muslim world. We do not see it very much, but they certainly do. Again, independent of justification, what do we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and bomb Muslim countries, and arm and enable others to do so? Isn't it obvious that our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims--subjected to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim civilians at our hands, even if unintended--to want to return the violence?

Just look at the bloodthirsty sentiments unleashed among Americans even from a failed terrorist attempt [on Christmas Day]. What sentiments do we think we're unleashing from a decade-long (and continuing and increasing) multi-front "war" in the Muslim war?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE SCAREMONGERS didn't wait around before renewing their war cries against al-Qaeda. But a week and a half after the bomb plot failed, there wasn't even that much hard evidence of Abdulmutallab's ties to al-Qaeda.

In his weekend radio address, Barack Obama said: "We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group--al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula--trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America."

The only statement of fact there is that Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen. The phrase "it appears" signals that what follows is guesswork.

In fact, the best information about Abdulmutallab was available to U.S. officials before the 23-year-old got on a plane to the U.S. Abdulmutallab's father, a retired banker, contacted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to say that his son had cut off contact during his extended stay in Yemen. He told two CIA agents that his son had been drawn to "extreme religious views," and one of his last text messages read: "You should just forget about me, I'm never coming back."

Abdulmutallab's name was added to a broad watch list, but not to a more specific one where he might have been flagged when he bought a plane ticket to the U.S.--for cash--in mid-December.

Even assuming that Abdulmutallab did contact the faction of al-Qaeda centered in Yemen, it's not a high-tech operation with big resources--or even many members. Estimates of the size of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen seemed to expand in press reports as the days went on to as high as 200. But that's still a tiny fraction of Yemen's population of 23.6 million.

Compared to the vast conspiracies spun out by "terrorism experts" on the news shows, Abdulmutallab's bomb plot was crude. It required no coordination or collaboration, even to the level of the September 11 attacks--just some basic supplies available in most countries in the world, including the U.S., and the luck to evade detection by airport security.

"The real strength of al-Qaeda," wrote Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn, "is not that it can 'train' a fanatical Nigerian student to sew explosives into his underpants, but that it can provoke an exaggerated U.S. response to every botched attack."

The Obama administration is running to form with its frantic measures to increase security and stepped-up plans for military operations in Yemen. This is another aspect of the "war on terror"--partnering with repressive regimes in the name of fighting violence and intolerance.

The government of Yemen is notoriously corrupt and brutal. It is one of the few countries in the world with a record of executions to rival the U.S., and one where the CIA rendition program sent detainees to be tortured by an allied regime. Yemeni military forces have been happy to collaborate with U.S. "war on terror" operations, especially when this furthers the government's ongoing campaigns against opposition groups in the north and secessionists in the south.

But Obama says he's "made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them."

The U.S. gave Yemen $67 million for training and support as part of the Pentagon's counterterrorism program last year--only the Pakistani government received more. And according to Gen. David Petraeus, who was sent by Obama to Yemen to meet with government officials last week, that figure will more than double in 2010, to around $150 million, as long as Congress approves.

What will these massive sums accomplish, besides add to the body count in the "war on terror" and the Yemeni government's own war on its opponents? Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's own father provided the U.S. government with all the information it needed to stop the bomb plot, and that went unheeded.

The truth is that "war on terror" isn't about keeping Americans or anyone else safe from violence. On the contrary, it has made the world a far more dangerous place.

When political leaders demand ever-greater repressive measures in the name of security, they are taking a politically convenient path to avoid being labeled "soft" on terrorism. But there's a deeper purpose--to legitimize the use of government repression and shred more of our rights.

The scaremongering has an effect, too. According to a Rasmussen poll, 58 percent of people say Abdulmutallab should be subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture to get him to reveal more information. This is the legacy of a concerted campaign by the political and media establishment to whip up hostility toward Arabs and Muslims, while keeping the crimes committed by the U.S. government in the Middle East hidden.

If Barack Obama or anyone else in the U.S. government cared about real safety and security, they would stop the air strikes in Yemen, end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan now, offer reparations for America's war on Muslims and the Middle East, and promote democracy and civil liberties at home and around the world as the only guarantees against tyranny and oppression.

The latest terror scare is being used to do the opposite. The right-wing wants to stampede U.S. citizens into surrendering more of their civil liberties and endorsing another military foray in the Middle East--and liberals like Barack Obama are eager to go along. We can't let U.S. politics be hijacked by those who cynically use every terrorist attempt to clamp down on our rights and get a green light for war.

________________ AM, 2010

Exactly 20 years ago to the day, on April 22nd 1990, Major Gideon Orkar of the Nigerian Army and a few of his colleagues attempted to carry out a very daring and bloody coup d'etat against the government of President Ibrahim Babangida. The coup was initially successful, the plotters held the country for almost 24 hours and President Babangida was almost killed in the ferocious and bloody encounter that ensued. As a matter of fact he had to be smuggled out of Dodan Barracks, with his family, through the secret underground tunnels that had been constructed there just a few months earlier. Those tunnels and the quick intervention and support of the Nigerian State Security Service (S.S.S) are the two things that saved Babangida's life that day. Meanwhile his ADC, Lt. Col. U.K. Bello and a large number of other officers and military personnel on both sides of the divide were killed in the terrible battle that took place for most of that day and night in the centre of Lagos and specifically at Dodan Barracks and the Obalende area. As a consequence of the fact that the plotters almost succeeded in their attempt and almost killed President Babangida, the seat of government was quickly rushed to Abuja from Lagos even though Abuja was barely ready at that time. The following is a copy of the coup speech that Orkar delivered to millions of Nigerians that day after successfully storming and capturing Radio Nigeria with his men. The question is this.......would Nigeria have been better off today if Major Orkar and his team had succeeded in their endeavours or would we have been worse off?




APRIL 1990 COUP D'ETAT SPEECH

"Fellow Nigerian Citizens,

On behalf of the patriotic and well-meaning peoples of the Middle Belt and the southern parts of this country, I , Major Gideon Orkar, wish to happily inform you of the successful ousting of the dictatorial, corrupt, drug baronish, evil man, deceitful, homo-sexually-centered, prodigalistic, un-patriotic administration of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. We have equally commenced their trials for unabated corruption, mismanagement of national economy, the murders of Dele Giwa, Major-General Mamman Vasta, with other officers as there was no attempted coup but mere intentions that were yet to materialise and other human rights violations.


The National Guard already in its formative stage is disbanded with immediate effect. Decrees Number 2 and 46 are hereby abrogated. We wish to emphasise that this is not just another coup but a well conceived, planned and executed revolution for the marginalised, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and the south with a view to freeing ourselves and children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonisation by a clique of this country.
Our history is replete with numerous and uncontrollable instances of callous and insensitive dominatory repressive intrigues by those who think it is their birthright to dominate till eternity the political and economic privileges of this great country to the exclusion of the people of the Middle Belt and the south.
They have almost succeeded in subjugating the Middle Belt and making them voiceless and now extending same to the south.
It is our unflinching belief that this quest for domination, oppression and marginalisation is against the wish of God and therefore, must be resisted with the vehemence.
Anything that has a beginning must have an end. It will also suffice here to state that all Nigerians without skeleton in their cupboards need not to be afraid of this change. However, those with skeleton in their cupboards have all reasons to fear, because the time of reckoning has come.
For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state the three primary reasons why we have decided to oust the satanic Babangida administration. The reasons are as follows:

(a) To stop Babangida’s desire to cunningly, install himself as Nigeria’s life president at all costs and by so doing, retard the progress of this country for life. In order to be able to achieve this undesirable goals of his, he has evidently started destroying those groups and sections he perceived as being able to question his desires.
Examples of groups already neutralised, pitched against one another or completely destroyed are:
(1) The Sokoto caliphate by installing an unwanted Sultan to cause division within the hitherto strong Sokoto caliphate.
(2) The destruction of the peoples of Plateau State, especially the Lantang people, as a balancing force in the body politics of this country.
(3) The buying of the press by generous monetary favours and the usage of State Security Service, SSS, as a tool of terror.
(4) The intent to cow the students by the promulgation of the draconian decree Number 47.
(5) The cowing of the university teaching and non-teaching staff by an intended massive purge, using the 150 million dollar loan as the necessitating factor.
(6) Deliberately withholding funds to the armed forces to make them ineffective and also crowning his diabolical scheme through the intended retrenchment of more than half of the members of the armed forces.


Other pointers that give credence to his desire to become a life president against the wishes of the people are:
(1) His appointment of himself as a minister of defense, his putting under his direct control the SSS, his deliberate manipulation of the transition programme, his introduction of inconceivable, unrealistic and impossible political options, his recent fraternisation with other African leaders that have installed themselves as life presidents and his dogged determination to create a secret force called the national guard, independent of the armed forces and the police which will be answerable to himself alone, both operationally and administratively.
It is our strong view that this kind of dictatorial desire of Babangida is unacceptable to Nigerians of the 1990’s, and, therefore, must be resisted by all.
Another major reason for the change is the need to stop intrigues, domination and internal colonisation of the Nigerian state by the so-called chosen few. This, in our view, has been and is still responsible for 90 percent of the problems of Nigerians.
This indeed has been the major clog in our wheel of progress.
This clique has an unabated penchant for domination and unrivalled fostering of mediocrity and outright detest for accountability, all put together have been our undoing as a nation.
This will ever remain our threat if not checked immediately. It is strongly believed that without the intrigues perpetrated by this clique and misrule, Nigeria will have in all ways achieved developmental virtues comparable to those in Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, India, and even Japan.
Evidence, therefore, this cancerous dominance has as a factor constituted by a major and unpardonable clog in the wheel of progress of the Nigerian state. (Sic) It is suffice to mention a few distasteful intrigues engineered by this group of Nigerians in recent past. These are:
(1) The shabby and dishonourable treatment meted on the longest serving Nigerian general in the person of General Domkat Bali, who in actual fact had given credibility to the Babangida administration.
(2) The wholesale hijacking of Babangida’s administration by the all powerful clique.
(3) The disgraceful and inexplicable removal of Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, Professor Tam David-West, Mr. Aret Adams and so on from office.
(4) The now-pervasive and on-going retrenchment of Middle Belt and southerners from public offices and their instant replacement by the favoured class and their stooges.
(5) The deliberate disruption of the educational culture and retarding its place to suit the favoured class to the detriment of other educational minded parts of this country.
(6) The deliberate impoverishment of the peoples from the Middle Belt and the south, making them working ghosts and feeding on the formulae of 0-1-1- or 0-0-0 while the aristocratic class and their stooges are living in absolute affluence on a daily basis without working for it.
(7) Other countless examples of the exploitative, oppressive, dirty games of intrigues of its class, where people and stooges that can best be described by the fact that even though they contribute very little economically to the well being of Nigeria, they have over the years served and presided over the supposedly national wealth derived in the main from the Middle Belt and the southern part of this country, while the people from these parts of the country have been completely deprived from benefiting from the resources given to them by God.
(8) The third reason for the change is the need to lay a strong egalitarian foundation for the real democratic take off of the Nigerian state or states as they circumstances may dictate.
In the light of all the above and in recognition of the negativeness of the aforementioned aristocratic factor, the overall progress of the Nigerian state a temporary decision to excise the following states namely, Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano and Bauchi states from the Federal Republic of Nigeria comes into effect immediately until the following conditions are met.


The conditions to be met to necessitate the re-absorption of the aforementioned states are as following:
(a) To install the rightful heir to the Sultanate, Alhaji Maccido, who is the people’s choice.
(b) To send a delegation led by the real and recognised Sultan Alhaji Maccido to the federal government to vouch that the feudalistic and aristocratic quest for domination and operation will be a thing of the past and will never be practised in any part of the Nigeria state.
By the same token, all citizens of the five states already mentioned are temporarily suspended from all public and private offices in Middle Belt and southern parts of this country until the mentioned conditions above are met.
They are also required to move back to their various states within one week from today. They will, however, be allowed to return and joint the Federal Republic of Nigeria when the stipulated conditions are met.
In the same vein, all citizens of the Middle Belt and the south are required to come back to their various states pending when the so-called all-in-all Nigerians meet the conditions that will ensure a united Nigeria. A word is enough for the wise.
This exercise will not be complete without purging corrupt public officials and recovering their ill-gotten wealth, since the days of the oil boom till date. Even in these hard times, when Nigerians are dying from hunger, trekking many miles to work for lack of transportation, a few other Nigerians with complete impunity are living in unbelievable affluence both inside and outside the country.
We are extremely determined to recover all ill-gotten wealth back to the public treasury for the use of the masses of our people. You are all advised to remain calm as there is no cause for alarm. We are fully in control of the situation as directed by God. All airports, seaports and borders are closed forthwith.
The former Armed Forces Ruling Council is now disbanded and replaced with National Ruling Council to be chaired by the head of state with other members being a civilian vice-head of state, service chiefs, inspector general of police, one representative each from NLC, NUJ, NBA, and NANS.


A curfew is hereby imposed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. until further notice. All members of the armed forces and the police forces are hereby confined to their respective barracks.
All unlawful and criminal acts by those attempting to cause chaos will be ruthlessly crushed. Be warned as we are prepared at all costs to defend the new order.
All radio stations are hereby advised to hook on permanently to the national network programme until further notice.

Long live all true patriots of this great country of ours. May God and Allah through his bountiful mercies bless us all."

Source: Dawodu.com

________________ Ffk, 2010

As times and seasons change, so do the thoughts of mortals and lesser men. Yesterday's heroes become today's villains and today's villains become tomorrow's heroes. Men worship the powerful and mighty and those that have been blessed with good fortune yet they despise and pour scorn and contempt on those that have fallen by the wayside and those that appear to have no future and no tomorrow. Yet the bible says "rejoice not my enemy that I have fallen, for I shall rise again". It says "if the princes of this world had known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory". It says "who is he that sayest a thing and it cometh to pass when the Lord God of Hosts has commanded it not?" It says "who can lay a charge before God's elect?Is it not Christ that justifies?". What people think of others or what men call "reputation" means nothing before God. For He looks at the heart of a man and He alone knows whether that man is truly good or evil. And once He has determined to do so He will lift up that man no matter how far he has fallen and no matter how bad his "reputation" is or once was. If this were not so Saul ,the greatest persecutor and killer of believers, would not have become Paul, the greatest of all the christian Apostles. If this were not so David the murderer and adulterer and the young boy who was only fit to look after the sheep would not have become the greatest of all the Kings of Israel and "a man after God's heart," If this were not so Moses, the murderer, would not have become the father of Israel and the great Prophet of God that confronted and overcame Pharaoh, that parted the Red sea and that led the children of Israel into the Promise land. If this were not so Jacob, the thief and crooked deceiver, would not have been re-named Israel the great and would not have been a man so blessed, so loved and so favoured by the Living God. If this were not so Abraham, the liar and doubter of God's promise, would not have become the father of faith and the father of many nations.

A man with the greatest and best reputation may fall and be brought down by God tomorrow and a man with the worst reputation may rise up and be lifted up by God the very next day. It follows that one should not place too much value or reliance on "good fortune" and a "good reputation" or on the wonderful things that men say and think about you lest you may be taken by surprise when your circumstances change and your "good fortune" suddenly flies away and the very same people that you once believed loved you and who graciously bestowed on u such a "good reputation" begin to criticise, condemn, hate, persecute, villify, demonise and write u off. And by the same token NEVER underestimate or write-off another man no matter how much ill-luck fate appears to have brought his way and no matter how bad or hideous his reputation may appear to be because God may choose to suddenly restore him, favour him, use him and cause him to rule or have power over you, your family or your nation one day. Finally if you want to understand human psychology and mob mentality and if you really want to appreciate just how fickle men and women can be when it comes to loving someone one minute and hating them the next, or hating someone one minute and loving them the next, find the time to read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and consider the behaviour of the Roman mob after they heard Mark Anthony's great and passionate speech.

A clear understanding of such "mob mentality" is deep wisdom indeed and with that you will learn never to trust men with their ephemeral, vain, self-serving, self-indulgent and temporary sentiments and expressions of love and hate. For like the Roman mob they often change like the wind and that without warning. That is why the bible says "cursed is the man that relies on the arm of flesh" and I would go a step further by saying "troubled is the man that worries about what other men think or say about him". It is what God thinks and says about you that matters and He alone knows the future and end of each and everyone of us. He alone sees our hearts. He alone lifts up and pulls down. He alone has the power to turn beggars into kings and to turn kings into beggars. He alone determines the seasons of life and He alone understands the deep wisdom that is captured in these few words.....that both good and bad times always eventually come to an end and that, like the flowing river and the sands of time, everyone and everything has it's time and it's season. God alone is constant. God alone is true.

________________ Ffk, 2010

According to Sheik Ishaq Akintola, the leader of a well-known Nigerian islamic organisation called MURIC, no less than one million muslims intend to march to Abuja and storm the National Assembly in order to register their strong protest against the "persecution" of Senator Ahmed Sanni, the Yerima of Bakura and the man who introduced criminal sharia law into northern Nigeria when he was governor of Zamfara state approximately ten years ago. Akintola and his MURIC claim that there is absolutely nothing new and nothiing wrong with the 50 year old senator having carnal knowledge of a 13 year old Egyptian girl after paying one hundred thousand dollars "for her" to her parents in Cairo. Apparantly the senator was so delighted with his latest acquisition and he so enjoyed the services that she provided that he then smuggled her into Nigeria where he promptly and secretly "married" her in an Abuja mosque.


However unfortunately for Senator Ahmed Sanni the matter soon became public knowledge and it sparked off a deep sense of disgust and outrage against him throughout the country and indeed throughout the world. The government of Egypt, the girls country of origin,which is a predominently muslim country was so appauled by this whole matter that they were forced to issue a public statement on it. They said that any form of sex with children and any such purported "marriage" to a child is strictly prohibited under their laws and would attract a very severe punishment. This of course explains why Ahmed Sanni could not have "married" his child bride in Egypt and why he had to smuggle her to Nigeria to do so. Thankfully the Nigerian Senate, the House of Representatives and the relevant security agencies in Nigeria are all presently investigating these very serious allegations and are all probing this shameless and disgusting paedophile for his obsession with, and deep addiction to, child sex. I call it an addiction because I am reliably informed that Ahmed Sanni's last "wife" was a 15 year old child whom he promptly divorced after defiling.


In my view this whole sordid affair throws up a number of issues and raises a lot of fundamental questions about the type of country we are living in. For me the most important questions are, firstly, whether ANY faith, including the great faith of islam, actually allows such aberrant behaviour and secondly whether personal or religious laws that clearly conflict with and violate the civil code and criminal laws of the land should be allowed to stand? Does Ishaq Akintola have a point when he claims that any undue criticism, investigation, condemnation or attack on Ahmed Sanni and his insatiable appetite for young girls is an attack on islam and the islamic way of life? Or is this just a ridiculous and irresponsible attempt by Akintola, Sanni and their supporters to simply justify their personal perversions and their sheer moral depravity before the entire world? When they seek to defend such acts on religious grounds are they not misrepresenting and maligning the values of their own islamic faith in a terrible way? Are they not inadvertantly bringing their own islamic faith into opprobium and disrepute? Are Akintola, Ahmed Sanni and their supporters not simply attempting to USE their own selfish and ridiculous interpretation of islam to defend the indefensible? Does paedophilia not violate the moral values, laws and strictures of EVERY monotheic faith, including that of Islam? Is having sex with children not completely ungodly and utterly evil? Does it not utterly destroy that child's life and wreck her spiritually, physically, psychologically and emotionally? Will no one speak up for the girl-child in this matter or fight for her rights? For me these are just some of the questions that we, as Nigerians, need to answer and need to answer quickly. And how we as answer them will certainly define us and tell the world the type of people we are. I am not a muslim but I am a believer in God and I refuse to accept the disgraceful notion that islam or any other great faith allows for and even encourages paedophilia. The muslims, like we christians and the jews, are believers in one God and we worship that God in spirit and in truth. That God that we love so much and that loves us too is holy and pure. He would NEVER condone such depravity and wickedness and no matter what the Ishaq Akintola's or Yerima's of this world would have us believe, I know that those that are the true adherents of the islamic faith are far better than that.

________________ Ffk, 2010

Julius Malema, the President of the Youth League of the South African ruling party, the African National Congress, has become a topic of heated discussion throughout the capitals of the world today mainly due to his deep hatred of the white South African Afrikaneer population and for his resurrection of an old ANC war song that was very popular amongst black South Africans during the days of the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule. The song openly calls for the mass murder of the white population in South Africa, and is indeed titled, "Kill The Boer". The "boer", which in Afrikaans means "farmer", is the name by which the white indigenous population of South Africa are known. The reason for Malema's deep-seated anger and openly racist disposition is that 20 years after the fall of apartheid in South Africa the majority of those that belong to the working class black population in that country are, according to him, "still suffering" and "have not enjoyed the benefits of South Africa's vast gold, diamond, platinum and other mineral resources". There is no doubt that Malema is right when he says that up until today it is indeed the white boers that still control both the economy and industrial and agricultural production in South Africa whilst the quality of life and the standard of living of the majority of the working class black population in the rural and urban areas and in the notorious townships and shanty towns is slowly getting worse by the day. Few can successfully dispute the legitimacy of that assertion and, in my view, it is indeed a very real problem that needs to be addressed very quickly and in a responsible, effective,equitable and reasonable manner.

However the solution surely cannot be found in Malema's disgraceful and retrogressive proposition that the white indigenous population of South Africa should have all their farms and industries nationalised by the government and that the entire boer community should be subjected to mass murder and genocide. My view is that it is completely unacceptable for anyone in this day and age to be openly calling for the killing of anyone else and to be inciting the population to commit ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. The truth is that I am utterly disgusted with Malema and for me he represents nothing less than the evil face of extreemism and the lunatic wing of South African politics. He is not only a racist with a deeply malevolent spirit and bad aura but he is also an extreemly dangerous young man who, if not checked and put in his place in time, may end up igniting a terrible fire in the beautiful rainbow nation that South Africa has now become, which would eventually lead to a very bloody and prolonged civil war. In my view Julius Malema is everything that Nelson Mandela is not and I sincerely hope that Jacob Zuma, the South African President, will eventually call this angry, young, wild and impatient hot-head to order before his influence and power grows and before he becomes completely uncontrollable. Directing him to change the words of the song from "KILL the boer" to "KISS the boer" is a good first step but it is surely not enough. The ANC and Zuma would do well to go a step further and remove him as the Youth League leader and to expel him from the party. Racism and incitement to kill others on racial grounds, whether it is white against black or black against white, has no place in the world today and it must not be tolerated in any shape or form. South Africa is a beautiful nation which has been blessed by God with wonderful, hard-working and productive people. Quite apart from that she is also a great source of pride to Africa. Malema and those that think like him must not be allowed to destroy her or to blight her future. God bless Africa.

________________ Ffk, 2010

“Religion makes sense to those who have lost the power of reason” – Voltaire (1694-1778)

This quote from the 18th century French philosopher readily came to mind as I read the puerile casuistry and inane rationalizations deployed by Nigerian Muslim propagandists in defence of Senator Ahmed Yerima’s abominable paedophillia – another needless embarrassment that further tarnishes our already battered image in the committee of nations. It is remarkable how otherwise intelligent people surrender their common sense, reason and good conscience to the bad example set by a morally depraved Arab psychopath 14 centuries ago, all because they are scared stiff of the vindictive Allah’s illusory torture chamber - hellfire. Even supposedly enlightened Muslims like Daily Trust’s Mohammed Haruna who should know better just don’t get it, as he lapses into the stale worn-out sophistry that paedophilia and marital age restrictions are Western constructs. Ahmed Yerima himself justifies his paedophillia on the grounds of constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. In this asinine casuistry he is supported by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria which after a recent meeting in Kaduna warned NAPTIP to desist from harassing the Zamfara senator since section 35 of our constitution guarantees religious freedom.

Hearing the paedophile senator and his Islamist supporters tell it, one might think that screwing little girls is a religious obligation incumbent on male Muslims, which Ahmed Sani is being wrongfully denied. Yet Egypt, the Muslim Arab nation of his child bride prohibits child marriage. Religious freedom like other rights is not without limits, and cannot be exercised at the expense of another person's rights. Otherwise those whose “religion” demand human sacrifice would be free to indulge in their savagery. Muslims would also be free to raid (Ghazawa), plunder, rape and enslave non-Muslims as their prophet and his marauding gang did 14 centuries ago. Thus Ahmed Sani’s religious “right” cannot be at the expense of his 13 year old bride who obviously isn’t mature enough to have meaningfully consented to the impending sexual child abuse, with its attendant risk of VVF (vesico-vaginal fistula). Here in the Islamist north VVF has ruined the lives of thousands of underage wives who are abandoned by their pedophile “husbands” as these unfortunate girls stink of urine. What about the rights of the shabbily treated 15 year old ex-2nd wife who was sacked as our paedophile senator traded upwards for the racially superior Arab bride from Allah’s chosen race? Smacks of racism and inferiority complex if you ask me. Did Sani pay fifteen million of his embezzled naira ($100,000) as dowry for any of his substandard Nigerian wives as he did for the Arab girl? There must be something about screwing Arab toto. In the male chauvinist sex club that is Islam, only the “rights” of Muslim men matters. Women and girls are little more than disposable sex chattel for the sexual gratification of Muslim men, hence the Quran declares: "Women are your fields, go (men) into your fields as you please" - Quran 2:223

Accordingly, Islam liberally caters for male sexual promiscuity in the form of polygamy (Q 4:3), unlimited slave concubines (Q 23:1-6, 79:29-30) and Islamic prostitution (Mut’a) Q 4:24. The “religion of piss” further empowers Muslim men with easy divorce so they can easily discard and replace older wives (Quran 4:20) as Ahmed Sani did with his sacked 2nd wife. To sack any wife, all a Muslim man needs do is say, text or e-mail “I divorce you” three times and the unfortunate woman/girl is automatically sent packing. No court process, child custody or alimony negotiation required.

According to the Quran and Hadith, the sexual joyride for Muslim men continues in Islamic heaven where they are provided with virgins (Q 44:54, 78:33, 55:56, 56:36 etc). "As for the righteous (Muslims)...We (Allah) shall wed them to beautiful virgins with lustrous eyes" - Quran 44:51-54 "The righteous (Muslims) they shall triumph...Theirs shall be voluptous women" - Quran 78:31-33. In Al-Jannah - Islam’s brothel heaven - each Muslim man shall have a minimum of 72 of these celestial whores: ‘The prophet of Allah (Mohammed) said: "The least reward for the people of paradise is 80,000 servants and 72 wives"’ - Al-Tirmidhi 2562, 2687. While there are numerous Quranic verses and Hadiths about virgins & houris for Muslim men in Al-Jannah brothel, there’s no mention anywhere in Islamic scriptures of virile hunks for Muslimahs (Muslim women) who get to heaven. This is not at all surprising given that “prophet” Mohammed informed us that most Muslimahs won’t make it to heaven as they are destined for hellfire: ‘Allah’s apostle (Mohammed) said; "Among the inmates of Heaven women will be the minority"’ - Sahih Muslim 36:6600. "I (Mohammed) have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-Fire are women...as they are ungrateful to their husbands and they are deficient in intelligence" - Sahih Bukhari 2:18:161; 7:62:125, 1:6:301.

Consequently I am baffled about a recent report of a rent-a-crowd demonstration by Zamfara women in Gusau supporting their pedophile senator. That demonstration was an exercise in futility as Allah has already decided their fate and destined them for hellfire as per Mohammed’s own prophecy. It is disheartening and pathetic that Muslim women who should be at the forefront of the struggle to protect their daughters from lecherous perverts like Ahmed Sani, actually demonstrated in support of paedophilic child abuse. Voltaire was indeed right when he stated – “Religion makes sense to those who have lost the power of reason”. The major crux of Muslim support for Yerima’s pedophillia is that “prophet” Mohammed also had a child bride: “The Prophet (Mohammed) married Aisha when she was six years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old” – Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64, 88; 5:55:236 Mo’ was 53 years old when he sexually assaulted 9 year old Aisha who was young enough to be his grand-daughter. And since the Quran in Surah Al-Ahzab (Q 33:21) enjoins Muslims to emulate the prophet wannabe, then pedophilia is alright. To better appreciate the absurdity of Mo’ as Islam’s exemplary paragon of virtue (Uswa hasana) whom all Muslims should emulate, some of his other sexual perversions are hereby exposed. The sex-crazed Muslim prophet reportedly had marathon sex orgies with all his numerous wives every day and night:

"The prophet (Mohammed) used to have sex with all his wives at a go during the day and at night, and he had eleven wives" I asked Anas, "Had the Prophet the strength for it?" Anas replied, "We used to say that the Prophet was given the strength of thirty men."- Sahih Bukhari 1:5:268, 7:62:6. With such revolting sexual debauchery, there’s little doubt Mo’ must have spread venereal diseases among his numerous wives. Little wonder Aisha, his child bride was infertile as the pre-pubertal vaginna is more vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections. Mo’ also snatched his stepson’s wife, Zainab bint Jash after chancing upon her half naked: “One day Muhammad went out looking for Zayd (his stepson). There was a covering of haircloth over the doorway, but the wind had lifted the covering so that the doorway was uncovered. Zaynab was in her chamber undressed, and lust for her entered the heart of the Prophet. After that Allah made her unattractive to Zayd (her husband).” - Tabari VIII:4 To cut short the long story, Zayd his stepson divorced his wife for amorous Mo’ to marry: “And when Zayd divorced his wife, we (Allah) gave her to you (Mohammed) in marriage” – Quran 33:37. Incidentally, the said daughter-in-law, was also Mo’s first cousin, making his vile misconduct double incest. Because of this abomination, Mo’ abolished the humane practice of adoption by which pre-Islamic Arabs catered for orphans. Then there was Mo’s scandalous sexcapade with Maryam, the maid of one of his wives – Hafsat. This scandal - which was luridly documented by Tabari and Ibn Sa’d (9th century Islamic scholars) – caused so much uproar among Mo’s wives that the prophet wannabe took to his heels and fled his home for a whole month.

Not to forget the blank cheque the philandering “prophet” wrote for himself in his Quran to freely womanize: “Prophet (Mohammed), we have made lawful to you your wives, female slaves/war captives, daughters of your paternal and maternal uncles, daughters of your paternal and maternal aunts, any believing woman who ‘offers’ herself to you”…Q 33:50. Accordingly, several of Mo’s wives – Safiyya, Juwariyya, Rayhanna - were forcibly married captive women whose husbands and male relatives had usually been massacred by Mo’ and his fellow brigands during raids (Ghazawa) and attacks on non-Muslims. With a depraved sexual predator like Mo’ as moral compass for Muslims, it’s no surprise the Ahmed Sani’s of this world have a warped notion right and wrong. It’s also no surprise that the Muslim world is so backward vis-à-vis we infidels.

________________ NB, 2010

Teekay, that piece that was written by Nafata Bamaguje is extreemly vicious and very insulting to muslims, their prophet and their faith. And I also think that these types of generallisations and futile attempts to discredit men and women of any and every faith and ridicule them is most unfortunate. I can show you passages in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible that will also shock you in terms of their content. Some of those passages encourage genocide and mass murder and others commend the killing of unbelievers in a ''righteous war'' and the stoning of women for adultry. Now no christian, except those that are clearly insane like Adolf Hitler, would actually try to do these things in this day and age in the name of their faith. Such behaviour is indicative of the failing of the men and women that indulge in it themselves and does not in any way reflect on the religious faith which they claim to profess or in whose name they claim to be doing it. Osama Bin Ladin, for example claimed that he was acting in the name of Allah and the Koran when he killed 3000 plus innocent civilians on 9-11, but that does not mean that it was true. He did it for his own reasons and not as a consequence of his faith. He only tried to then use his faith to justify his barbarous actions. This is nothing new. Tim Mcveigh, the infamouse Oklahoma Bomber did the same thing in the name of christianity and attempted to justify it with the bible. These 2 men have one thing in common....they are both mentally unstable and are as dangerous to themselves and their faith as they are to the rest of the world. It is in the same light that I see Yerima. And to those that take the more outdated provisions of the Koran, the Torah and the Bible and who read such verses out of context and then attempt to apply them in a literal sense in this modern age I have just this to say.......there are also provisions in all of those three holy books that call for the display of compassion, kindness, sensitivity and love for our fellow human beings and which clearly overule and outlaw anything or any activity that is outside of that tiny prism of decency and humanity. And just before you claim that only men of faith commit such terrible atrocities and that it is their religious faith and blind belief in a non-existent and impotent god that drives them to do such things, let me remind you that Stalin, who was perhaps the greatest and most godless unbeliever and atheist of them all also killed his fair share of fellow human beings.....I think that it was just a few million at the last count, all in the name of the communist state and all for the sake of the ''peoples revolution''. And of course there was also Pol Pot, his Khmer Rouge and his ''killing fields'' in Cambodia. He was another godless ''comrade'' that slaugtered an entire population and generation of his own compatriots all in an attempt to establish his Marxist utopia.

From this it is clear that Insane acts, depravity and disgusting disgusting and unacceptable dispositions of any shape or form, including mass murder and paedophilia, are clearly not the exclusive preserve of men of faith, whether they be christians, muslims or jews. So what is my point? It is simply that Yerima's disgraceful behaviour and paedophilic tendencies are only indicative of his own failings and depravity as a human being and does NOT reflect the custom and practice of 99 per cent of the billions of muslims that are all over the world today. Outside of that tiny one per cent which Yerima clearly belongs to, most muslims in the world today have rejected those provisions of the Koran which Nafata has quoted and they refuse to live or accept a way of life which encourages the feeding of little girls to old men as a staple diet for their sexual gratification. I am also aware of the fact that child sex and paedophilia in any shape or form is a crime in virtually every muslim country in the world today and in countries that have massive muslim populations. I can give India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, U.A.E, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen and so many others as good examples. Are Yerima and the relatively few misguided and deluded Nigerian muslims that support him and his ''paedophilia forever'' agenda like Sheik Akintola, MURIC, The Sharia Council of Nigeria and a handful of others better muslims than those in all these countries? The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Nigeria and the Sultan of Sokoto, who are the authentic leaders of the large islamic population that we have in this country, have refused to endorse Yerima's criminal behaviour and neither are they paedophiles or lovers of child sex so what is the issue here? The fact of the matter is that not only is this disgusting habit and primitive inclination completely illegal under the Nigerian constitution and under our local laws but also that those are using their faith in an attempt to justify or satisfy their carnal and bestial instincts have already failed and are as despised and opposed by the overwhelming majority of Nigerian muslims as they are by non-muslims. Aliyu Gajo has condemned paedophilia on facebook many times and he is a practising muslim. So how do those that claim that islam encourages and defends child sex explain that? The question is whether Aliu Gajo is a good muslim or not. And the answer to the question is that he is not only a good muslim but he is also a far better muslim and a greater ambassador of the Islamic faith than the Yerimas of this world because he refuses to break the law of the land and he refuses to use his faith in to justify breaking those laws. The easiest thing to do in the world is to go into any of the holy books, focus on the more outrageous and outdated provisions that are in them and then try to justify your criminal and irresponsible actions with those provisions. That is all that Yerima is doing and I daresay that he is as much of a true muslim as Hitler was a true christian. The truth is that neither of the two of them represents any of those two great faiths. They are both imposters, charlartans, conmen and frauds who are hiding behind their respective religions to in order to commit the worst type of atrocities against their fellow men. May God save us all from such men.

________________ Ffk, 2010

FFK...Well, nice to resume healthy conversations with you.

You have made some very interesting points up there.

1. Definitely the Yerimas, Hitlers, Stalins, don't represent the entire majority they claim to do on a religious ground anyway.....

And before I go on, a little look back at Nafata's article, Well from what I read and understood, It was a persons research into the practices of a religion not only through the actions of its people, but also the so called "holy book" which we are all made to believe it's the word of some god or the other. Therein, she made some huge revelations an claims, which I actually verified and crosschecked and posted as comments on the note. Overall, she was spot on with her article, she might have gone a step further to attack this religion, but based on her quotes and facts, she surely can't be blamed. Now, you mentioned that there are some archaic, barbaric and irrational actions in both the Bible and Koran( and other "words of god") So the question is, if you as a believer denounce these actions and practices based on your own rationality and reasoning, then how on earth do you depend on the same book to still teach you things? or believe that it was inspired by some god? I have read through the bible (fully) and Koran (some) and its quite shocking the things you will find in them. if we as rational beings have the ability to know that some of the practices, teachings and even the actions of the gods and prophets in there are unheard of, barbaric and inhumane, then how can we ever still believe in those books. If these holy books can actually be wrong, misguiding, outrageous as we have established in some parts on here. Then can we still refer to them as holy? If we can also establish that even the gods were wrong and irrational in their actions, can we still call them gods??

If god actually said something, supported it and clamoured for it, and after a while ordinary men can reason and fault that and make a better society, then what does that say of the so called gods? Just imagine if the entire practices recorded in all these holy books were still in use, if man was still ruled for the majority by religion, what would this world be? with their messages of ethnic cleansing, child marriages, mass murder, etc!!! You mentioned Osama et al, well I would say that can they be blamed? When their various gods also did the same and its still recorded in the same "holy books" that are read till date in houses of worship and taught to children and adults alike? Have their gods or religious leaders come out to categorically say that their god or its prophets were wrong at some point in the past, or at least they made a mistake?? You that have been able to see these faults and irrationality in these so called holy books and can speak about it, is in the very very few minority, I would say!!! Which is why I question all religion and their practices, their god and his/her/its actions! Because, if the gods and their people carried out actions they preach in their holy books (actions they got away when there wasn't any laws) They sure would be arrested, tried and jailed. Imagine Mohammed decided to marry a 9yo girl in Saudi Arabia today what would happen?? Would he be given a pass as the prophet of god? or would he be arrested and tried? Which it why I say, the more humans develop, they more they would see the fallacy underlining this false theories of a god/religion and start questioning it! So it beats the hell outta me, If top religious nations can frown at pedophilia now, what was practiced by their greatest messenger of god, then why still follow any idea from that book? Anytime I look at these things Yerima, Hitler, Osama,Oklahoma bomber etc.. As much as I detest these men and their actions, I can't blame, scold, show my anger to them lesser/more than I would do at any religion, as their actions are clearly rooted or have been practiced in their religions!! Imagine if these things weren't actually practiced, taught, or god inspired in the "holy books". Imagine if there wasn't any religion?? What would have been their excuses?? We might never know, but the fact for sure is that many barbaric, inhumane actions in this world wouldn't have ever been!!!

________________ TAA, 2010

Teekay, On several occasion, we have argued on the issue of God and religion, and you have not been able to answer my questions. I am surprised you continue to consider your arguments as rational when the arguments put forward by Atheist lack scientific foundation. Many people believed in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the past centuries... See More, but modern scientist made serious discoveries that disapproved the theory and rendered it invalid . Modern scientist discovered the "miracle of design and order" in the universe which is one of the clear proofs that an intelligent being is responsible for our lives. Atheist are in a serious crisis today because the theory of Evolution that is based on speculation and imagination have been rendered illogical and unscientific. So, unless you tell us how life started on this earth , it is unfair to regard your beliefs as rational. Sorry I forgot, you answered my questions in our previous debates: You told me that you believe one day, science will make discovery to support your claims. Well, I have no problem with that, its your choice- you can continue to wait. My argument is this : since you dont have the answer at the moment, please stop parading your ideas as "rational", "logical" etc. We are the ones who will speak and boast because we have the answers to all your problems, even though you turn a blind eye to it without good reason.

On Nafata's issue, the problem is that I have not read the article to the end because it contains malice. I untagged my self on the note because it is full of hate and misconception. What you dont realize is that she has quoted so many verses out of context. Please bring all the verses here and I will give you the context. On the issue of Yarima's marriage to a minor, though I will never marry a minor, but I tried to defend him in the past because of the hatred directed towards, not Yarima, but Islam. This is exactly what Nafata has done- hiding under Yarima's case to spread falsehood about Islam. Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth today and what you dont realize is that, the more you spread false information abt it, the more you are making the followers stronger. And this is simply because they are aware that what you are saying is false. Mary, the mother of Jesus christ (pbuh), gave birth to her son when she was a teenager (I need some body to tell me the exact age). It is evil to try to condemn her because it is the will of God. Moreover, the marriage of prophet Muhammad (saw) to Aisha was not motivated by sex and even if it was, we will never have problem with it because it is God's will. It is true he married her at the of 9, but we are not allowed to imitate him in some certain things. For example; He married 11 wives and we are restricted to four. This is because the prophet married wives to establish family ties and consolidate/promote Islam at the time. He married his first wife, Khadeeja, even though she was 15 years older than him. The truth is that it is waste of time and energy to condemn the actions of God's messengers who have billions of supporters in the world. You have been telling me that he forged the book, and in our previous debates, I challenged you to do the same thing and see how many followers you will have. It is not my challenge, its Qur'anic. This is what it says: "And if you are in doubt as to which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a Sura ( Chapter, Book) like it, and call on your helpers, besides Allah, if you are truthful". (Qur'an 2:23). Unless you do the same thing and succeed, your argument will never be regarded. At the moment, you have failed to do it, and Allah warned you of the consequences of failure, thus : " But if ye cannot do it- and of a surety ye cannot- then fear the Fire whose fuel is men and stones- which is prepared for those who reject Faith"... Qur'an (2:24). I am aware that you are socialist who reside in Cuba and you are struggle for social revolution. Muhammad (saw) brought about a revolution that changed the history of the world, and he succeeded because he is a messenger of God. Before, he went to exile to Madina, he challenged the gods and system of the idol worshipers. Can you go back to Nigeria and do the same thing? Please go there and tell them that the system must be scrapped because of the corruption it promotes. I am sure you will never do that because you dont have the guts. But do u know that Shi'as in Nigeria challenged the constitution during the Abacha regime and as the result, many of them lost their lives? The point is that Atheist are weaker than believers by any this measure. Let me relate to you an interesting history of the prophet (Peace and mercy of God be upon him). When he began to preach the word of God in Makkah, the idol worshipers tried to bribe him to give up the message, and when he refused, they changed tactics. The prophet told his uncle; "Oh uncle! Should they place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left, so as to make me renounce this mission, I shall not do so. I will never give it up; either it will please God to make it triumph or I shall perish in it. I want neither wealth nor power. God has commissioned me as a warner to humanity. I deliver His Message to you. Should you accept it, you shall have felicity in this life and eternal bliss in the life Hereafter. Should you reject the Word of God, surely God will decide between you and me. Among his teachings, one of the things that angered the Idol worshipers was when he told them that the black slaves and their masters were equal in the sight of God. He asked the pagan Arabs to stop killing their female children, thus; "When the sun is folded up;"

"And when the stars darken

. And when the mountains shall be set in motion.

And when the seas boil over,
And when the souls are reunited ,

AND WHEN THE GIRL-CHILD BURIED ALIVE IS ASKED FOR WHAT SIN SHE WAS SLAIN "...Quran 81 verses 1-9. The prophet brought about a revolution by telling the pagans that women have a right of inheritance (find out when women were giving the right in the West). Moreover, he gave Zainab, a member of the Arab's most prestigious tribe a hand in marriage to a slave, Zaid. She and her relatives protested in the begining and the Qura'nic verse came down as follows : "It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path". Is there any revolution that is stronger and more beautiful than that (A slave's marriage to a member of an Aristocratic class)?. Anyway, Zainab married him, but in todays world, Arabs of such status will never marry people with lower social status . In his last sermon, he says: " Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.... An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action". Finally please stop criticizing the prophet ignorantly. I urge you to learn more about his revolution and when you that, trust me, you will revert to Islam. I wish you the best. Thanks.

________________ AG, 2010

I have dedicated my life to Africa, I love Africa and I am very proud to be an African but the truth is this: that, generally speaking, Africans do not love themselves or love their own. Our continent, as beautiful and blessed with human and mineral resources as she is, is plagued with more bitterness, frustration, envy, hatred of self, hatred of others, backbiting, wickedness, deceit and evil than any other that I know. If he or she sees anything good in his brother or sister the African's first instinct is to diminish it and destroy it. Other than that he attempts to play it down, ridicule it and discredit it. We kill and destroy our brightest and our best, we sacrifice the future of our children and we choose to believe the very worst about one another, about our future and about our past. And that is precisely why we are so far behind everyone else. Have you ever asked yourself how many Africans really know their own history, where they are coming from and whether they know anything about the great and noble heritage that was bestowed upon them by their forefathers and fallen heroes? A man will give his life for his people and his community in Africa and he will be killed by the powers that be for it and yet within 5 to 10 years after that noble act of sacrifice and martydom not only is he forgotten and despised but his name will not even be mentioned in the classrooms for future generations to learn about him or to acknowledge or appreciate the great sacrifice that he has made for his country. The list of those that have been treated in this way is endless: Gamal Nasser, Thomas Sankara, Samora Machel, Anwar Sadat, Patrice Lumumba, Tunde Idiagbon, Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Chris Okigbo, Steve Biko, Kwame Nkrumah, Ken Saro-Wiwa, M.K.O Abiola, Kudirat Abiola, Shehu Musa Yar'adua, Dele Giwa, Alfred Rewane, Isaac Adaka Boro, Bola Ige, Joe Slovo, Chris Hani, Murtala Mohammed, S.L. Akintola, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Baguda Kaltho and so many others. I could go on and on. Every single one of them long gone, yet none given their proper dues or the respect that they deserve and neither are they given a place in the pantheon of world greats. And then the soul -searching questions begin.

How do you explain the fact that this is the only continent in the world that has very few first-class world historians? And yet if we know nothing about our glorious and illustrious past or if we continously distort it with subjective, self-serving, dishonest and inaccurate embellishments or the usual fancy far-flung tales and ancient folk-lore, how can we possibly expect to build a greater future for our people? For example in Africa your enemies have no history and memories of them are not only annihillated and erased from the human psyche and public records but their descendants must be ridiculed, scorned and treated with contempt from generation to generation. That is our way. The question that then comes to mind is this: can we possibly gain anything from a past that we refuse to learn anything about and that we habitually distort ? Are we not condemed to repeating it's mistakes if we continue to glibly ignore it and refuse to dig deep and learn from it like those from other climes continuously do? Yet we pray for and often talk about an "African Rennaissance". And we glibly tell the world that "Africa's time has come". But can there be a renaissance without us first changing our mindset? Can our time come without us first changing our ways and the way we perceive and treat one another? The truth is that none of these things can happen until we turn to our hearts to God, love our neighbours as we do ourselves, acknowledge and imbue the spirit and power of unconditional love and at at least attempt to completely renew our minds. Until we rid ourselves of the evil cancer of ''the hater'' in Africa we are not going anywhere and we will not achieve our full potentials.

Now you may resent me me for writing this but sadly this is the bitter truth. And it is only when we accept such home truths about ourselves and resolve to re-dedicate ourselves to God, to commit ourselves to one another and to join hands and change our sordid ways that we can rise up to where we belong in the comity of nations and that we can truly achieve our God-given potentials. It is only then that Africa can truly shake the world and that the African Renaissance can truly begin. May God help us and may He deliver us from one another. God bless Africa.

________________ DJA, 2010

I have dedicated my life to Africa, I love Africa and I am very proud to be an African but the truth is this: that, generally speaking, Africans do not love themselves or love their own. Our continent, as beautiful and blessed with human and mineral resources as she is, is plagued with more bitterness, frustration, envy, hatred of self, hatred of others, backbiting, wickedness, deceit and evil than any other that I know. If he or she sees anything good in his brother or sister the African's first instinct is to diminish it and destroy it. Other than that he attempts to play it down, ridicule it and discredit it. We kill and destroy our brightest and our best, we sacrifice the future of our children and we choose to believe the very worst about one another, about our future and about our past. And that is precisely why we are so far behind everyone else. Have you ever asked yourself how many Africans really know their own history, where they are coming from and whether they know anything about the great and noble heritage that was bestowed upon them by their forefathers and fallen heroes? A man will give his life for his people and his community in Africa and he will be killed by the powers that be for it and yet within 5 to 10 years after that noble act of sacrifice and martydom not only is he forgotten and despised but his name will not even be mentioned in the classrooms for future generations to learn about him or to acknowledge or appreciate the great sacrifice that he has made for his country. The list of those that have been treated in this way is endless: Gamal Nasser, Thomas Sankara, Samora Machel, Anwar Sadat, Patrice Lumumba, Tunde Idiagbon, Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Chris Okigbo, Steve Biko, Kwame Nkrumah, Ken Saro-Wiwa, M.K.O Abiola, Kudirat Abiola, Shehu Musa Yar'adua, Dele Giwa, Alfred Rewane, Isaac Adaka Boro, Bola Ige, Joe Slovo, Chris Hani, Murtala Mohammed, S.L. Akintola, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Baguda Kaltho and so many others. I could go on and on. Every single one of them long gone, yet none given their proper dues or the respect that they deserve and neither are they given a place in the pantheon of world greats. And then the soul -searching questions begin.

How do you explain the fact that this is the only continent in the world that has very few first-class world historians? And yet if we know nothing about our glorious and illustrious past or if we continously distort it with subjective, self-serving, dishonest and inaccurate embellishments or the usual fancy far-flung tales and ancient folk-lore, how can we possibly expect to build a greater future for our people? For example in Africa your enemies have no history and memories of them are not only annihillated and erased from the human psyche and public records but their descendants must be ridiculed, scorned and treated with contempt from generation to generation. That is our way. The question that then comes to mind is this: can we possibly gain anything from a past that we refuse to learn anything about and that we habitually distort ? Are we not condemed to repeating it's mistakes if we continue to glibly ignore it and refuse to dig deep and learn from it like those from other climes continuously do? Yet we pray for and often talk about an "African Rennaissance". And we glibly tell the world that "Africa's time has come". But can there be a renaissance without us first changing our mindset? Can our time come without us first changing our ways and the way we perceive and treat one another? The truth is that none of these things can happen until we turn to our hearts to God, love our neighbours as we do ourselves, acknowledge and imbue the spirit and power of unconditional love and at at least attempt to completely renew our minds. Until we rid ourselves of the evil cancer of ''the hater'' in Africa we are not going anywhere and we will not achieve our full potentials.

Now you may resent me me for writing this but sadly this is the bitter truth. And it is only when we accept such home truths about ourselves and resolve to re-dedicate ourselves to God, to commit ourselves to one another and to join hands and change our sordid ways that we can rise up to where we belong in the comity of nations and that we can truly achieve our God-given potentials. It is only then that Africa can truly shake the world and that the African Renaissance can truly begin. May God help us and may He deliver us from one another. God bless Africa.

________________ Ffk, 2010

Is El Rufai Fighting for Political Relevance? A Rejoinder

I usually do not respond to articles, especially of Ike Ugwu’s sort, because I think that a lot of what is written about certain individuals in Nigeria is gibberish, and I do not intend to be bundled into that bandwagon. The propensity to eat up our heroes is the bathos of our times, and it appears that is what Ike, perhaps inadvertently, is promoting by his rather visceral article and his conclusions on Mr. Nasir El Rufai.

Let me premise this by confessing that, unlike Fani Kayode, I have little admiration for Olusegun Obasanjo even as I think he worked with many brilliants minds in Nigeria. OBJ capped a plethora of governance errors with inordinate ambition, which ruined his presidency. I would however not take away from OBJ his penchant for surrounding himself with reform-minded individuals. We can debate that some of these talented Nigerians experienced apostasy along the way, lost their minds and remade themselves in the image of Baba himself. It may be argued that at some point, some of OBJ’s allies (Kayode included) sounded in the media as though the agenda was more to promote OBJ the person in a laudatory fashion rather than the programmes of the administration. We saw a loyalty to Baba when we needed a loyalty to ideology. OBJ did not equate the administration; indeed, he derailed from many lofty programmes designed by some of Nigeria’s best brains. However, consider Okonjo Iweala, El Rufai, Fani Kayode, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Nuhu Ribadu, Dora Akunyili, Charles Soludo, Oluyemi Adeniyi, and others in one administration as opposed to the group, many of who are alarmingly incompetent, assembled by Yar Adua.

The OBJ reformists were appointed based on competence (not politics), and they provided more purposeful stewardship than the politicians nominated by the different states. We witnessed the transformation of Abuja; we saw dynamism in our foreign affairs; we saw how Iweala rescued Nigeria from the debt burden; we witnessed a frontal assault on corruption; and we saw a Minister of Aviation who actually fought for Nigerians. All these must be instructive.

Kayode has revealed the intense succession battle in the twilight of the OBJ administration between what he referred to as the intellectuals and the politicians. It was indeed a battle between the reformists and the conservatives; those who thought Nigeria must change and those who felt things had to remain as they were. Not unexpected, as Fani revealed, OBJ succumbed to the will of the hardcore politicians and chose Yar Adua exactly as he did in 1979 when he handed power to an incompetent Shehu Shagari.

Kayode and co can be thankful to OBJ for inviting them to public service, but they ought to condemn the manner in which he torpedoed a glorious moment to set Nigeria on the path to irreversible greatness. OBJ needed to have pushed for an El Rufai presidency, and Nigeria might never have been the same again. No, he preferred Yar Adua only as a tactic to liquidate Atiku Abubakar politically. I find it curious that Kayode, Rufai, Ribadu and others expected Yar Adua to kiss them on both cheeks. As history has shown, OBJ’s reformists did not only lose out politically, they almost nearly lost their lives.

I think the EFCC case against Rufai is nonsense. There is no argument it is a Yar Adua machination. It is inconceivable that the apostle of corruption, James Ibori, became the de facto Vice President in the Yar Adua’s government while people like Ribadu, Rufai and others were chased out of their motherland.

The reality about the Nigerian situation, sadly, is that public perception of individuals in government is not always shaped by the amount of good they do. Like in all less sophisticated societies, people are excited by sensation and influenced by propaganda. Stories of gung-ho, Gestapo tactics, and of buying choice properties in Dubai have been woven around Ribadu. Rufai is said to have allocated plots of land to his friends and family. Kayode is said to be corrupt. Nigerians love these stories, more to demonstrate frustrations with the status quo.

For demolishing houses belonging to some of the most influential Nigerians in order to save the Abuja master-plan, it would be foolish not to expect a ferocious fight-back by the lawless moneybags. I think that Rufai gave meaning to governance, and to the expression of the law not being a respecter of status. He demonstrated that if there is a will things can work in Nigeria. He showed it is possible for public servants to plan properly and implement efficiently, and for the Nigerian people to get rewards for the natural resources they own and the taxes they pay. He might have made mistakes, but who doesn’t?

I commend Rufai’s participation in the blogosphere - the social networking communities - especially Facebook. Obama uses it to great effect. I follow Tony Blair, John McCain and others on twitter. Rufai’s blogs provide robust and unadulterated insights into the inner workings of his mind. The more I read them the more I see him as a highly detribalized Nigerian. Often, Rufai canvasses that Nigeria needs rulers based on not a so-called ill-conceived zoning arrangement but on competence. He is asking Nigerians of different tribes, religions and geographical regions to forge friendships and consider how they can contribute to Nigeria. Rufai desires a Nigeria of our dreams, where equality, peace and justice will reign. People like Rufai give me hope that Nigeria will rise, that anytime from now, brothers from minority states such as Edo State (where I come from and have been told we could never rise to rule Nigeria) from the North, East, West, and South will unite under one indivisible Nigeria, with a common purpose and a common destiny. In other societies, those who have helped advance society’s cause are the true heroes, not the moneybags and the thieving politicians who continue to prey on the society using the instrument of ill-gotten power and wealth.

What we need do as Nigerians is not to let this opportunity slip. The first step is to protect and promote our heroes – and they are very few. We should encourage the Rufais, Kayodes, Nuhus, Iwealas, Dukes, Utomis to commit more to our beloved country. “The labour of our hero’s past must never be in vain…” so goes a line in our anthem. The next elections are a litmus test.

________________ KLI, 2010

It is no longer news that 150 distinguished leaders and elders from the northern region of Nigeria met last week and insisted that power must be zoned back to the north by next year and warned President Goodluck Jonathan and any other southern aspirant that may be interested in running for the Presidency not to do. They insist that the Presidency was zoned to the north through the auspices of an earlier agreement with President Obasanjo and that this agreement must not, under any circumstances, be tampered with by anyone. It is fair to note at this point that Obasanjo has denied that such an agreement was ever entered into and he maintains that it is the constitutional right of every Nigerian to run for that exalted office at any time that they choose to do so. The northern leaders are however having none of that and they concluded their statement by saying that this ''zoning'' arrangement and principle must be honoured and maintained and they have threatened that if this is not done and they do not have their way it would have dire implications and consequences for democracy in Nigeria and the stability of the country. My position on this current and burning issue is as follows. I say a big No to zoning and big YES to justice, equity, honesty, fairness and true democracy.

I believe that we should allow anyone from ANY part of the country who wishes to contest for any elective postion, including the Presidency, to go ahead and do so. My view is that this nation cannot be bound or held down by some unwritten, unconfirmed, underhand, invisible, outdated, antedelluvian, subterrannean and hotly disputed so-called ''gentleman's agreement'' which was purportedly entered into by a handful of faceless people from just one of the poltical parties which does not even have the backing of the Nigerian constitution. And neither can the aspirations, the will, the ambitions, the desires and the aspirations of over 150 million Nigerian people, from both north and south, be supressed, ignored, downplayed and thwarted by a tiny regional cabal of former public office holders and civil servants who claim to be speaking for the whole of the north but who, in actual fact, are only speaking for themselves.

In the 50 years since we gained our independence from the British in 1960 the north has ruled the country for 38 years whilst the south has only ruled it for 11 years and 9 months. And in all those 50 years NO son or daughter of the Niger-Delta area had EVER ruled the country before until the divine hand of God and providence brought President Goodluck Jonathan to the throne just a few months ago. And now a handful of people from the north are demanding that he should not run next year and that he should step down and simply ensure that another northerner succeedes him. I believe that this is most unfair and I believe that that same divine hand that guided and lead Jonathan to where he is today will, through the voices, the votes and the freely expressed will of the people of Nigeria see him through and give him the victory should he decide to run for the Presidency next year. He will certainly have my support and my vote if he runs. The days of gaining political power by a base and dangerous appeal to primordial and ethnic sentiments and retrogressive and anachronistic means and mechanisms like ''zoning'' are long over. This is 2010 and not 1999.......let all those that are interested in running for political office enter the field and get into the fray and at the end of the day let the best man win. That is democracy. As for the 150 ''leaders'' of the north, as far as I am concerned they are best ignored.

________________ Ffk, 2010

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo deserves to be lauded for his judicious attempts to rid the country off corruption by thinking it through to establish the two anti graft agencies- Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC). Without mincing facts the Nigerian fourth Republic would eternally be remembered for this great brainchild of OBJ. To some political analysts and critics alike, the organizations were set up specifically by Obasanjo to witch-hunt and silence those in opposition who are never the friends of the President or those suspected to have ‘‘fall-out’’ with the Presidency, others also believed that the organizations have helped to redeem the image of the country especially in the international community. We are all aware that before now the West giants never agreed that anything good could ever come out of Africa especially Nigeria except deceptions, kidnapping, corruption, restiveness, sectarian violence, electoral fraud etc, but now their negative perceptions about Nigeria have reduced precipitously.

Statistics however revealed that all the high profile cases investigated and handled by the anti graft bodies which bother on corruption and abuse of office during Obasanjo’s tenure were clearly within the confines of rule of law, and those accused were actually guilty of the offences leveled against them. Be that as it may, the government of late Umaru Yar’Adua was equally appraised by several political stakeholders and some shocking facts were discovered after much critical analysis by them. It is an open knowledge that there were high degrees of bias, witch-hunting, arm-twisting, foot-dragging etc in Yar’Adua government over sensitive cases of corruption involving many political office holders. One of such cases was how the case of former Delta State Governor corruption charges was handled Chief James Ibori and the roles played by former Attorney-General (Michael Aondoakaa) and the men of the bench. Apart from these, Nigerians are still yet to be relieved by the dramatic and unceremonious removal of former EFCC boss, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu simply because while he was discharging his constitutionally assigned roles he had serious encounter with people like Ayo Fayose, Bola Tinubu, Tafa Balogun, Joshua Dariye, Atiku Abubakar, James Ibori who was believed to have spent billions of naira during Yar’Adua’s pre-election period. It is a public knowledge that men of rare distinctions and honour like Chief Femi Fani-Kayode (former Aviation Minister) and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai (former FCT Minister) suffered intimidation, humiliation, incaseration, brutality etc simply because they served their motherland meritoriously during Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime. I need to state clearly that the intention of these revelations was never designed to speak foul of our dead President Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua (may his soul rest in peace).

However, Nigeria public be ware that it is most uncharitable and unfair in my unbiased and dispassionate opinion that the case between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Chief Femi Fani-Kayode would be twisted in the public domain with the vicious and callous intention to malign and tarnish the image of an innocent man who gave his best while serving his country. I can remember vividly that in July 2008 the EFCC accused Chief Femi Fani-Kayode of squandering 19.5 billion naira Aviation Intervention Fund and when it was clear that there was absolutely no evidence to sustain that charge and the fact is that he has not only left 7.2 billion Naira in the Aviation Intervention Fund account but that he was actually the one that investigated and exposed the fraud that the 6.5 billion Naira Safe Tower Project money had gone missing from the Aviation Intervention Fund before he became Minister, they dropped all the charges against him for lack of substance and merit.

For posterity, the case of witch-hunting which was targeted against Chief Femi Fani-Kayode became empirically clear when EFCC under the current leadership of Farida Waziri was said to be acting on ‘‘order from above’’ (orders from late Yar’Adua) and broke into his personal bank account and subsequently calculated all the financial in-flow (lodgment & withdrawal) that had been turned over in that said account, including his monthly salary as a government minister and all his financial transactions even before he came into government. The anti-graft further round-figured the amount to Two hundred and fifty million naira (N250,000,000.00) and spuriously made the unsuspecting Nigerian public, the media and the international observers to believe that he was "laundering money"; and Chief Fani Kayode was later charged on offences bothering on "money laundering" in 2008, December. EFCC claimed that every single deposit that he made into his personal account that was up to 500,000 naira or more over the few years before and in the few months after he became a Minister constituted one count of money laundering each. But EFCC or no Courts of competent jurisdiction have alleged that the money in question was stolen from anywhere and neither have they said that it comes from any illicit source and Fani-Kayode has not been charged for stealing N250 million contrary to what was being erroneously peddled in some print and electronic media. But it is wicked, ridiculous, subjective and very unfair of EFCC to trample on someone’s good name and openly label him ‘‘money launderer’’ simply because monies to the tune of N500,000 naira were deposited into his personal account, even as there are documentary evidences to show that the deposited amounts which are presently used as ‘count charges’ in the Courts were lodged to the said account before Fani-Kayode got appointment from Federal Government.


I perceive a big flaw on the part of Nigeria judicial system in the sense that the Court of Appeal in Lagos (in May 27, 2009) could in its wisdom set aside the judgment of Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the Federal High Court in Lagos and held that computer-generated statement of account of the former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, was admissible as exhibit, and could deliver a judgment on such an high profile case with such magnitude of impunity. It is most unbelievable to see that judgment was given within 5 minutes, and no reason whatsoever was given as to how and why the Court of Appeal came to its misty and confusing decision because it did not even read out the contents or give the counsels of both sides’ copies of its ruling. I however subscribed to the idea that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter to act on this sensitive case which the appellate Court has vehemently treated with levity. Whatever Justice Galinje reasons are, no one in the bar and bench could possibly tell when the judgment was delivered. It should be on record once again that the Supreme Court ruling which the appellate court have sought to overturn is the 1975 case of Yusufu v. ABC which was presided over by no less a distinguished personality than the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Atanda Fatayi- Williams who actually read the ruling of the Supreme Court himself on that occasion. In this country, based on the principle of precedence and "stare decisis," it is only the Supreme Court that has the power and the right to overturn or overrule it's own previous decisions on any matter and certainly not the Court of Appeal or any other lower Court. It is either that or the legislature or National Assembly alone that can change the existing law by amending the relevant act which in this case is the Evidence Act.

People should cautiously note that I am not Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s fan, neither am I Festus Keyamo’s (counsel to EFCC) fan, but I respect the duo a lot and I am proud to have them as true compatriots. I am a medical doctor in Bristol, England, and I enjoy what I am doing but I have been following this case meticulously, since 2008 and I believe justice needs to prevail in Nigeria as we are not running a ‘‘Banana Republic’’ and neither are we under colonial rule, there are processes to be followed in law and those processes must be followed without fear or favour, we should not allow the international community to always laugh at us all the time, because they are following this case with keen interest. It will be unwise of anybody for some political reasons to try and discredit or pooh-pooh Chief Femi Fani-Kayode through some disgruntled elements in EFCC or any other body or agency such that his People’s Democratic Party and his people back home in Osun State may not want to show support for his governorship bid in 2011- those with such vicious intentions should bury their heads in shame, because Osun State needs development and Femi Fani-Kayode is still the only identifiable best man for the job, Osun State Governor. The man has created a niche for himself for all to see even as he superlatively and creditably served as special adviser to the former President, Culture Minister and Aviation minister; I believe truth shall eventually prevail and Nigeria will no longer be hoodwinked about this over-publicized matter. Those who are championing campaign of calumny against Fani Kayode in a bid to stall his political ambitions have not only failed but have openly showed that the gentleman has better pedigree and credentials than them are they are already intimidated and jittery about the momentum he is gathering everyday from the people of Osun State.

Meanwhile, I urge the Supreme Court to give accelerated verdict to this case without waste of time and clear the good name of Chief Femi Fani-Kayode and as well rescue the judiciary from the current mess the appellate Court has dragged it to. It is high time Nigerians stopped to celebrate morons and people of no value and character who wear so much desperation for political positions they don’t merit, by God’s grace they shall never rule Osun State. Moreover, the world have abundantly noticed the roles played by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Sijuade Okunade Olubuse 2, in making the State to witness sanity and progress; this effort has been greatly identified in his choice of Chief Femi Fani-Kayode to be the next Governor of the state (Osun State). Our prayer for him in diaspora is that God will continue to protect and spare his life, he will continue to live and witness Osun State as it prospers under the leadership of Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, and the killers of Chief Bola Ige and their agents will never taste power in Osun State, they should also know that the blood of the dead (Bola Ige) is still screaming for vengeance from the graveyard and the ‘‘Living Spring’’ (Osun) will surely judge them harshly in no time.

Kunle is a social critic and resident of United Kingdom, adekunlehughes@yahoo.com.

________________ AH, 2010

History Of An Obsessed, Sadistic Man - Page 2 of 2

COMMENT

It should be noted here that Adolf Hitler was born of a poor family, failed in his search for a meaningful profession, was kicked out of school and received no education, and jailed. He never had a friend. And yet with such a dismal start he was able to have such an influence on people that he became Chancellor of Germany and received millions of ovations from his supportive nation. The purpose of this comment is that he had everything going for him and after "arriving" he seemingly developed another personality. Maybe it was in him all along. Obviously this sinister personality would eventually erupt. Hitler developed a major obsession. He was obsessed with his own self, and could not suppress his desire to murder Jews. His hatred of Jews had been there all along. He was now in a position to become a very dangerous man. His most dangerous obsession affecting the entire world was his plans to rebuild Germany’s military might. It was time to begin his huge armament plans for Germany.

THE GESTAPO AND THE JEWS

In 1935 Hitler’s Gestapo started a major wave of assaults, vandalism, and boycotts against German Jews. Hitler’s predictions in his Mein Kampf were coming true. He was now violating the Versailles treaty by reoccupying the Rhineland and proceeding with his plans for the huge military buildup. He passed a law making the Jews liable for any problems with the German economy, and with the German people. It is a known fact that he was suffering from stomach pains and eczema in 36 and 37.

HITLER’S PLANS FOR WAR

In 1937 he ordered an immense expansion of all parts of the military to be ready for war, and if necessary against all countries.

BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

THE HOLOCAUST

One concept of his social policies was that of racial hygiene. He ordered death to any group he considered "unworthy of life." The first victims were children with any physical disability. His action, with help from occupied countries systematically killed between 11 and 14 million people, including 6 million Jews in concentration camps, ghettos. There were mass executions, and many were gassed to death, or died of starvation and disease while working as slaves. Along with the Jews, any political opponent or resistance group, homosexuals, physically handicapped, mentally retarded, prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and psychiatric patients to name only a few, were all killed. Hitler had full knowledge of the death camps, and spent much time trying to figure out how he could speed up the mass executions.

READY FOR WAR

Hitler’s plans to conquer the world were just getting started. He advised his military to be ready for war with Britain and France. WWII was now a certainty, but Hitler overlooked what would amount to another mistake. Germany had no oil, it had to be imported along with other critical raw materials. By cutting off these supplies Germany could be defeated. He had a 10 million man army, thousands of aircraft, hundreds of tanks, submarines, thousands of big guns. It would not be easy to beat such a vast and well trained army. In spite of the worldwide aggression and horrible killing of millions, Time Magazine named him "Man of the Year" for 1938. His problems with other countries were increasing, as was his political popularity in Germany. In 1939 he approved the "Z" plan which called for a gigantic expansion program for the German navy, intended to crush the Royal Navy. In 1939 he again ordered all disabled infants born in Germany to be killed, including those with mental conditions. Once again he pushed for the death of any disabled adults. He demanded the complete annihilation of the entire Jewish race.

HITLER AND MUSSOLINE, JUNE 1940
START OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Hitler had an obsessive fear of an early death and had a feeling he did not have long to accomplish his diabolical plans of death. Starting with the invasion of Poland, Germany invaded Denmark, Norway, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Hitler was on his way to his planned world domination.

HITLER 1942 SPEECH AGAINST ROOSEVELT
ANOTHER HUGE MISTAKE

On 22 June 1941, 3 million German troops attacked the Soviet Union, opening up another front which would eventually cause the complete destruction of Germany. Hitler claimed that this was a preventive war to impede a Soviet attack. When asked what to do with the Russian Jews he replied "kill them."

WAR DECLARED ON THE U.S.

Hitler declared war on the U.S. four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As his judgment became more erratic his real lack of ability became obvious. He was losing battle after battle as he lost his entire 6th Army in Stalingrad. He deliberately refused to allow them to retreat, and said they would stay until the last shot was fired. And so they did, and suffered a colossal defeat at the hands of the Russians. The Russians steadily forced Hitler’s troops to retreat along the Eastern front. Next came "Operation Overlord" which landed allied forces in France. Defeat was inevitable. An attempt on his life failed, and in retaliation he executed 5,000 of his own men by slow strangulation with a wire.

DEFEAT OF GERMANY

As the Red Army drove the Germans back, American air raids increasing, and the Western Allied advancing, Hitler realized the war was over. He was warned to flee to Bavaria, but he was determined to either live or die in his bunker in Germany. Massive Soviet units were rapidly advancing toward the bunker. He launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders. He was informed that on 28 April Mussolini was savagely murdered. With the Soviets just outside his bunker, Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the head while biting on a cyanide capsule. Soviet archives stated the bodies of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels and his six children, General Hans Kreb were reportedly doused with gasoline and set afire. Hitler’s dogs were secretly buried in Brandenburg, an explosive end to Hitler’s desire to conquer the world.

EVA BRAUN
HITLER’S HEALTH

The real purpose of this story concerning Hitler’s life was written because virtually all of the hundreds of books about him are based on speculation of his health. Numerous psychologists have all written the same thing: A diagnosis of his so called conditions prompted large volumes mostly to elevate their own prestige, and nearly all without any proof, only speculation and hearsay. This article was researched and is truthful to the best of my knowledge. Therefore due to the speculation I can only assume that most of the writings are strictly a matter of opinion without any proof. Hitler was reported to have had skin lesions, irritable bowl syndrome, irregular heart beat, Parkinson’s Disease, syphilis, Asperger syndrome, constipation, and an addiction to methamphetamines. He had eczema on his legs, and both eardrums were ruptured as a result of the plot on his life in 1944. This is only a short list of over 25 reported. What is known is that he had major problems with his teeth. His personal dentist Hugo Blaschke stated he applied a large dental bridge to his upper jaw, and later surgically cut off part of the bridge due to a gum infection. Another somewhat humorous claim was that he had only one testicle. He also complained of stomach pains, and had a non cancerous polyp removed from his throat. As debated as Hitler’s physical medical issues may be, his mental health is a minefield of theories and speculation. Such were supposed problems of the evil psychopath.

FINAL ANALYSIS

The only complimentary acts was that he was a great animal lover, protesting animal slaughter. He was often pictured with his German shepherd. He was a non smoker and promoted anti-smoking campaigns throughout Germany. Hitler made many military mistakes, the two most important were his neglect of the Atomic program, and his opening a second front by attacking Russia. The question of whether he was a madman is apparent. We can agree that he came from a poor family and had no education. He was obsessed with his own self, also a huge obsession with the military. He loved Germany, and became a most influential and dynamic speaker. Millions admired him. He never listened to his military leaders and made most of the crucial decisions on his own. By making mistake after mistake he finally brought down the entire country.

Researched by website historian Wayland Mayo .

________________ WM, 2010

As I was saying last week, Nigeria is at the precipice again and our reckless leaders have started to beat their war drums anew. Yet, according to the wisdom of the ancients, the dog who must get lost would never heed the hunter’s call. It is not too different from the famous quote: “He who the gods want to destroy, they first make mad”, and to adapt the title of Ola Rotimi’s play, Our Politicians Have Gone Mad Again.

It is sad that nothing moves the average Nigerian politician. All he cares about is self. Ego is his opium. Most of those who claim to be our leaders are worse than Lucifer. Their ideology is premised on Lucifer’s attitude in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, that “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven”.

Every Nigerian president wants to reign in Nigeria’s “vicious archipelago” as long as he remains in power. None believes in one Nigeria. Even those you expect to be more intelligent revert to their foolish ethnic cocoons as soon as power-sharing is involved. Some of the most vociferous proponents of the controversial “zoning arrangement” are people you would never have associated with such backwardness.

Some of them even went to some of the best schools in the world but have allowed themselves to be turned into stark illiterates by Nigerian politics. For them, life begins and ends with the attainment of power. It is amazing how they tend to play god with transient power. They always forget that power must ultimately serve the purpose of giving succour to the ordinary man. When that fails, the reward is anarchy.

I had the privilege of sitting with Ghana’s Junior Jesus, former President Jerry John Rawlings, several years back, as he poured out his heart like never before to a team from Ovation International. The historic encounter lasted a total of 18 hours spanning a period of five staggered days. It was a resounding revelation.

President Rawlings was happy and sad to tell us the story of a revolution that led to the bloodbath and cleansing of a once odoriferous political climate in Ghana. Depending on which side of the sharp divide you belong, it is generally accepted that this unfortunate saga ironically contributed to the success story of Ghana today.

Once upon a time, the story of Ghana was a sorry tale of woes, of human deprivation, of hunger and poverty, of diseases and squalor, of incompetent and reckless leaders, and so on. Ghanaians scattered in every direction, and spilled especially into Nigerian cities like locusts. At that time, Nigeria was the godfather of Africa, and the country had too much money to the extent that the people didn’t know what to do with it. Our profligate leaders lived like oil sheikhs and embarked on all manner of elephantine projects. They closed down exclusive shops on Bond Street and in Knightsbridge London. They dined in the choicest restaurants of Mayfair, and flew to Las Vegas to blow some good money in the world’s most famous casinos.

Then our Ghanaian visitors watched in utter bewilderment as we wasted our resources like true prodigals. They were ready to do any menial jobs available. And for those left behind at home, life was hell. Only the rich had access to the common needs of man. Everything had to be rationed to people who had to endure some atrocious queues.

This was how Rawlings described the horrendous situation: “Painful things happened. But it was not unexpected especially in 1979. How soldiers were beating people up. Yes I didn’t like that at all but it was a lesser evil. What do I mean, when Acheampong was in office, the things that led to the explosion, the hoarding that was going on, some of the belittling things, pharmacy shops that should be selling baby milk, instead, scooped the milk in plastic and sold them on the streets. Ghanaians could not afford these things. Ghana was becoming like the Onitsha market (in Nigeria). Antibiotics, tablets were being sold by these women at such exorbitant prices. A lot has happened.

“We used to have UTC and Kingsway. Ordinary people couldn’t go there, they went to kiosks, and they went to the markets, because they couldn’t go to these big shops. Today, we have built a country where prices are relatively the same anywhere you go in Ghana. They saw the market women as the exploiters and hoarders. It was an explosion, a hurricane. No, I do not regret anything, because at that time there was a problem and sacrifices had to be made to solve the problem.”

It was in the middle of that conflagration that the Shehu Shagari government chose to pour petrol into the Ghanaian fire by asking her citizens without relevant immigration papers to vacate Nigeria in a jiffy. It was a time for national sacrifice, according to President Rawlings: “We all rose as a nation. It was not the time to be head of state sitting up there. It became quite clear that we all had to dig in. Some of our secretaries, etc, wore overalls, it became evident that nobody was enjoying for you to slave.
“We all had to make sacrifices. It was the humiliation, the whipping through their return through Eyadema’s country (Togo) that was terrible. If that was designed to destabilise us, it failed. Shagari (Nigerian president who asked