₦airaland Forum

I am calling on the Atheist in the house, come and present your case. Let knowledge be brought to the fore without attacking ones person.


I wish above all thing that men will come to the knowledge of the TRUTH and forsake their old ways.


Jesus Rocks!!

@Obi1kenobi, only those whose conscience is dead can tell the father whose daughter you sleep with that there is nothing wrong with his actions. I can sense your conscience judging you, hence you're trying to convince yourself that it is right. And to educate you incase you don't have a dictionary: one of the definitions of defilement is "to be the first man to have sexual intercourse with a woman, usually outside marriage"


Atheism makes no sense.

@wiegraf, 'Your religious morals' as you put it, has never changed. they are not based on my feeling cos that changes a lot, or how i see it cos i get wiser everyday. They are based on ideals higher than me. That is absolutely correct and does not have shades and shadows. And they can only be defined by a higher being. I call HIM THE MOST HIGH, cos you can go any higher. Your statement ' These days though civilized folk respect rights and try to cause as little harm/injury to other life as they can' is not correct. Men are getting more evil as the days goes by, you only need to look at the society around you to confirm it. The purpose of this thread is to educate people on the folly of Atheist and frankly i do not expect everybody to agree with me cos not all men are wise.

@Obi1kenobi, it is easy to label somebody 'cos logic obviously isn't your forte' when you can match is argument with superior logic. i won't join issues with you. You're obviously still a bachelor so i can excuse your ignorance of how fathers see their daughters with casanova (playboy, irresponsible adult, lacking morality) take your pick of my synonyms. it is diffucult to argue about morality without basing it on a standard that is outside of oneself. I fully understand your logic, but its a selfish logic that doesn't consider the consequence on others.

@obi1kenobi, Your argument about what is moral has changed into what is acceptable to 'me'. A lot of things are acceptable to people that are not acceptable to others. Since i cannot enter into you book of 'dos' and 'don'ts'. i can submit my argument based on your statement. Since pre-marital sex is moral in your books, but in the books of the fathers whose children you sleep with that is very immoral. Based on these two opposing views. who is right? the fathers whose daughters is being defiled or the guy who enjoys the defilement. Can you see the folly of your argument?

@logicboy03, your definition of evil you gave me has nothing to do with conscious action, You said anything that causes major pain or problem. And on that basis my example stand. Except of cos, your definition or notion is wrong. We've not reach the argument about the existence of God. it takes faith (belief) in the non-existence of God. infact a bigger faith in the big bang theory (it is just a theory without any shred of evidence)

@obikenobi, "i treat others the way i want to be treated" if i may paraphrase you, if your own definition is the basis upon which you draw the line of what is moral or not, throws up a lot suggestions to me. Inother word, if i steal millions of naira as a govt official and other poeple steal from me in turn. there is no problem with that cause the basis of the argument is as long others are treating me the way i treat them it's very moral (in your dictionary).

So if i can borrow from your statement, anything that cause major pain or problems is evil, then i can say: the flood that sacked people from their homes and destroy property is evil, the hurricane Sandy that hit USA and destroyed property killing some is evil. I can submit from your statement that evil is material or something that can be seen or felt. Am i correct?

Please educate me, what is your definition of evil?

@LogicBoy03, I ask you one simply question. Do you believe there is evil in the world or not?

No one is born an atheist. People choose to become atheists as much as they choose to become Christians. And no matter how strenuously some may try to deny it, atheism is a belief system. It requires faith that God does not exist.

When dialoguing with atheists, it is helpful to point out the logical problems inherent in their belief system. If you succeed in showing an atheist the natural outcome of some of his (or her) main claims and arguments, you are in a much better position to share the gospel with him. Let us consider two prime examples here.

(1) "There is no God." Some atheists categorically state that there is no God, and all atheists, by definition, believe it. And yet, this assertion is logically indefensible. A person would have to be omniscient and omnipresent to be able to say from his own pool of knowledge that there is no God. Only someone who is capable of being in all places at the same time - with a perfect knowledge of all that is in the universe - can make such a statement based on the facts. To put it another way, a person would have to be God in order to say there is no God.

This point can be forcefully emphasized by asking the atheist if he has ever visited the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Mention that the library presently contains over 70 million items (books, magazines, journals, etc.). Also point out that hundreds of thousands of these were written by scholars and specialists in the various academic fields. Then ask the following question: "What percentage of the collective knowledge recorded in the volumes in this library would you say are within your own pool of knowledge and experience?" The atheist will likely respond, "I don't know. I guess a fraction of one percent." You can then ask: "Do you think it is logically possible that God may exist in the 99.9 percent that is outside your pool of knowledge and experience?" Even if the atheist refuses to admit the possibility, you have made your point and he knows it.

(2) "I don't believe in God because there is so much evil in the world." Many atheists consider the problem of evil an airtight proof that God does not exist. They often say something like: "I know there is no God because if He existed, He never would have let Hitler murder six million Jews."

A good approach to an argument like this is to say something to this effect: "Since you brought up this issue, the burden lies on you to prove that evil actually exists in the world. So let me ask you: by what criteria do you judge some things to be evil and other things not to be evil? By what process do you distinguish evil from good?" The atheist may hedge and say: "I just know that some things are evil. It's obvious." Don't accept such an evasive answer. Insist that he tell you how he knows that some things are evil. He must be forced to face the illogical foundation of his belief system.

After he struggles with this a few moments, point out to him that it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good. Otherwise one is like a boat at sea on a cloudy night without a compass (i.e., there would be no way to distinguish north from south without the absolute reference point of the compass needle).

The infinite reference point for distinguishing good from evil can only be found in the person of God, for God alone can exhaust the definition of "absolutely good." If God does not exist, then there are no moral absolutes by which one has the right to judge something (or someone) as being evil. More specifically, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate basis to judge the crimes of Hitler. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God, rather than disproving it.

At this point, the atheist may raise the objection that if God does in fact exist, then why hasn't He dealt with the problem of evil in the world. You can disarm this objection by pointing out that God is dealing with the problem of evil, but in a progressive way. The false assumption on the part of the atheist is that God's only choice is to deal with evil all at once in a single act. God, however, is dealing with the problem of evil throughout all human history. One day in the future, Christ will return, strip power away from the wicked, and hold all men and women accountable for the things they did during their time on earth. Justice will ultimately prevail. Those who enter eternity without having trusted in Christ for salvation will understand just how effectively God has dealt with the problem of evil.

If the atheist responds that it shouldn't take all of human history for an omnipotent God to solve the problem of evil, you might respond by saying: "Ok. Let's do it your way. Hypothetically speaking, let's say that at this very moment, God declared that all evil in the world will now simply cease to exist. Every human being on the planet - present company included - would simply vanish into oblivion. Would this solution be preferable to you?"

The atheist may argue that a better solution must surely be available. He may even suggest that God could have created man in such a way that man would never sin, thus avoiding evil altogether. This idea can be countered by pointing out that such a scenario would mean that man is no longer man. He would no longer have the capacity to make choices. This scenario would require that God create robots who act only in programmed ways.

If the atheist persists and says there must be a better solution to the problem of evil, suggest a simple test. Give him about five minutes to formulate a solution to the problem of evil that (1) does not destroy human freedom, or (2) cause God to violate His nature (e.g., His attributes of absolute holiness, justice, and mercy) in some way. After five minutes, ask him what he came up with. Don't expect much of an answer.

Your goal, of course, is not simply to tear down the atheist's belief system. After demonstrating some of the logical impossibilities of his claims, share with him some of the logical evidence for redemption in Jesus Christ, and the infinite benefits that it brings. Perhaps through your witness and prayers his faith in atheism will be overturned by a newfound faith in Christ.

http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Atheism.html

NEWS
Apple lose iPhone name in Mexico, revise statement in UK
02 November, 2012 | Comments (131) | Post your comment
Tags: Apple, Samsung, iPhone, Misc
Apple's courtroom troubles cast gloomy shadow on a day that should've been remembered for the launch of the iPad mini.


Apple fought in court against Mexican telecom iFone over similarly sounding names. Arrogance or ignorance, Apple didn't have much of case there, as the iFone trademark was registered four years before the first records of the iPhone name.
So, not only have Apple lost in Mexico but iFone is now countersuing Apple for infringement claiming damages to the amount of 40% of all iPhone sales in Mexico to date. Apple will also lose the right to sell phones under the iPhone brand in Mexico. This happens just in time for the iPhone 5 scheduled launch in the country, though it’s not clear whether the iPhone 5 will be affected or the generation to follow.
The bad defeat in Mexico means Apple will have to pay loads of money but it is not the only piece of bad news. With their claim against Samsung rejected by a UK court, Apple were ordered to issue a public statement, including on their own web page, that Samsung didn’t copy Cupertino’s designs. Apple complied but it turned out the court wasn't happy with their wording and ordered it revised. Here is the latest version of the statement:
On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronics (UK) Limited's Galaxy Tablet Computers, namely the Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do not infringe Apple's Community registered design No.0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High Court is available on the following link. The judgement has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on 18th October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal's judgement is available on the following link. There is no injunction in respect of the Community registered design in force anywhere in Europe.
Finally, to make things even worse for Apple, Samsung is requesting Apple VP of Marketing Phil Schiller for questioning in court regarding Apple’s seek of ban for various Samsung products. Samsung claims Schiller’s newest written testimony includes statements that are "new or in conflict with his testimony at trial".
Apple tried to fight this, but the judge ordered Phil Schiller to make himself available for questioning before November 5th.
Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3

I have searched all over the Internet for the now famous Ifeajuna manuscript, but can't find a thing. I am beginning to wonder why Nigeria do not have an official version of her history, instead of spurious version put out by every dick and Harry.

As the controversy created by Chinua Achebe’s new book, “THERE WAS A COUNTRY”, rages, social critic and poet, Odia Ofeimun – who has been thrown in the eye of the storm because of his first reaction which sought to exonerate Pa Obafemi Awolowo, who served as Vice Chairman to the ruling body of the Nigerian government and whom Achebe accused of war crimes because of the Nigerian government’s war-time policy which allegedly led to the starving of Igbos – presents in this piece never-before-revealed perspectives. This is the first part.

The most comprehensive and almost cover-all organization of the documents of the Nigerian Civil War remains AHM Kirk-Greene’s CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN NIGERIA, A Documentary Sourcebook 1966-1970 Volume 1, and Volume 2, published by Oxford University Press London, New York and Ibadan in 1971. Volume One, according to the blurb, “describes the prelude to the war and the succession of coups from that of 15 January1966 which initially brought a military regime to power in Nigeria”.

The volume takes the story up to July 1967 when the war began. Volume Two covers July 1967 to January 1970, that is, between the beginning of hostilities, and when, as testified by the last entry in the volume, General Yakubu Gowon made a Victory broadcast, The Dawn of National Reconciliation, on January 15, 1970. No other collection of civil war documents, to my knowledge, exists that compares with these two volumes.

And none, as far as I know, has attempted to update or complement the publications so as to include or make public, other documents that are absent from Kirk-Greene’s yeoman’s job. Yet, as my title pointedly insists, there have been some truly ‘forgotten’ documents of the Nigerian Civil War which ought to be added and without which much of the history being narrated will continue to suffer gaps that empower enormous misinterpretations, if not falsehoods.

In my view, the most forgotten documents of the Nigerian civil war, which deserved to be, but were not included in the original compilation by Kirk-Greene – are two. The first is the much talked-about, but never seen, Ifeajuna Manuscript. It was written by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the leader of the January 15 1966 Coup that opened the floodgates to other untoward events leading to the civil war.

The author poured it all down in the “white hot heat” of the first few weeks after the failed adventure that ushered in the era of military regimes in Nigeria’s history. Not, as many would have wished, the story of how the five majors carried out the coup. It is more of an apologia, a statement of why they carried out the coup, and what they meant to achieve by it. It is still unpublished so many decades after it was written. The Manuscript had begun to circulate, very early, in what may now be seen as samizdat editions.

They passed from hand to hand in photocopies, in an underground career that seemed fated to last forever until 1985 when retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, after his first coming as Head of State, quoted generously from it in his biography of his friend, Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the man who, although not the leader of the coup, became its historical avatar and spokesperson. Indeed, Nzeogwu’s media interviews in the first 48 hours after the coup have remained the benchmark for praising or damning it. Ifeajuna’s testimony fell into the hands of the military authorities quite early and has been in limbo. Few Nigerians know about its existence. So many who know about it have been wondering why the manuscript has not seen the light of day.



The other document, the second most forgotten of the Nigerian Civil War, has had more luck than the Ifeajuna Manuscript. It happens to be the transcript of the famous meeting of May 6th and 7th 1967, held at Enugu, between Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Military Governor of Eastern Region, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Leader of the Yoruba and an old political opponent of the leaders of the Eastern Region. Awolowo attended the meeting at the head of a delegation of peace hunters in a bid to avert a shooting war after the pogrom against Easterners which presaged the counter-coup of July 29, 1966.

The transcripts of the meeting, never publicly known to have existed, entered public discourse formally when a speech by Chief Obafemi Awolowo delivered on the first day of the meeting was published in a book, Path to Nigerian Greatness, edited by MCK Ajuluchuku, the Director for Research and Publicity of the Unity Party of Nigeria, in 1980. The speech seemed too much of a teaser. So it remained, until it was followed by Awo on the Nigerian Civil War, edited by Bari Adedeji Salau in 1981, with a Foreword by the same MCK Ajuluchuku.

The book went beyond the bit and snippet allowed in the earlier publication by accommodating the full transcripts of the two-day meeting. Not much was made of it by the media until it went out of print. Partly for this reason and because of the limited number in circulation, the transcripts never entered recurrent discussions of the Nigerian civil war. The good thing is that, if only for the benefit of those who missed it before, the book has been reprinted. It was among twelve other books by Obafemi Awolowo re-launched by the African Press Ltd of Ibadan at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, in March 2007.

Important to note is that among other speeches made by Awolowo, before during and after, on the Nigerian Civil War, the transcripts are intact. They reveal who said what between Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his Excellency Lt. Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Sir Francis Ibiam, Chiefs Jereton Mariere, C.C. Mojekwu, JIG Onyia, Professors Eni Njoku, Samuel Aluko and Dr. Anezi Okoro, who attended the meeting. Unlike the Ifeajuna Manuscript, still in limbo, the transcripts are in respectable print and may be treated as public property or at least addressed as a feature of the public space.

I regard both documents as the most forgotten documents of the civil war because they have hardly been mentioned in public discourses in ways that recognize the gravity of their actual contents. Or better to say, they have been mentioned, only in passing, in articles written for major Nigerian newspapers and magazines since the 70s, or parried on television, but only in figurative understatements by people who, for being able to do so, have appeared highly privileged. The privilege, grounded in the fact that they remained unpublished, may have been partially debunked by the publications I have mentioned, but their impact on the discussions have not gone beyond the hyped references to them, and the innuendos and insinuations arising from secessionist propaganda during the civil war.

The core of the propaganda, which reverberated at the Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University in September, 2007, is that Awolowo promised that if the Igbos were allowed, by acts of commission or omission, to secede, he would take the Western Region out of Nigeria. In a sort of Goebellian stunt, many ex-Biafrans including high flying academics, intellectuals and publicists who should know better, write about it as if they do not know that the shooting war ended in 1970. What Awolowo is supposed to have discussed with Ojukwu before the shooting war has been turned into an issue for post-war propaganda even more unrestrained than in the days of the shooting war.

The propaganda of the war has been dutifully regurgitated by a Minister of the Federal Republic, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, twice on loan to the Federal Government of Nigerian from the World Bank, in the book, Achebe: Teacher of Light(Africa World Press, Inc,2003) co-authored with Tijan M. Sallah. They write: “The Igbos had made the secessionist move with the promise from Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Southwest that the Yoruba would follow suit. The plan was if the southeast and southwest broke away from the Nigerian federal union, the federal government would not be able to fight a war on two fronts. Awolowo, however, failed to honour his pledge, and the secession proved a nightmare for the Igbos. Awolowo in fact became the Minister of finance of the federal government during the civil war.” (p.90).

Forty years after the civil war, you would expect that some formal, academic decorum would be brought into play to sift mere folklore and propaganda from genuine history. But not so for those who do not care about the consequences of the falsehoods that they trade. They continue to pump myths that treat their own people as cannon fodder in their elite search for visibility, meal tickets and upward mobility in the Nigerian spoils system.

Rather than lower the frenzy of war-time ‘huge lies’ that were crafted for the purpose of shoring up combat morale, they increase the tempo. I mean: postwar reconstruction should normally forge the necessity for returnees from the war to accede to normal life rather than lose their everyday good sense in contemplation of events that never happened or pursuing enemies who were never there. Better, it ought to be expected, for those who must apportion blame and exact responsibility, to work at a dogged sifting of fact from fiction, relieving the innocent of life-threatening charges, in the manner of the Jews who, after the Second World War sought to establish who were responsible for the pogroms before they pressed implacable charges.

Unfortunately, 40 years does not seem to have been enough in the Nigerian case. Those who organized the pogrom are lionized as patriots by champions of the Biafran cause. Those who sought lasting answers away from blind rampage are demonized as villains. The rest of us are all left mired in the ghastly incomprehension that led to the war.

Those for whom the civil war was not a lived, but a narrated experience, are made to re-experience it as nightmare, showing how much of an effort of mind needs to be made to strip the past of sheer mush. As it happens, every such effort continues to be waylaid by the sheerness of war propaganda that has been turned into post-war authoritative history. It is often offered by participants in the war who, like Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu himself, will not give up civil war reflexes that ruined millions.

In an interview in Boston on July 9th 2001, Ojukwu told a questioner: “We’ve said this over and over again, so many times, and people don’t understand: they don’t want to actually. If you remember, I released Awolowo from jail. Even that, some people are beginning to contest as well. Awo was in jail in Calabar. Gowon knows and the whole of the federal establishment knows that at no point was Gowon in charge of the East. The East took orders from me.

Now, how could Gowon have released Awolowo who was in Calabar? Because the fact that I released him, it created quite a lot of rapport between Awo and myself, and I know that before he went back to Ikenne, I set up a hotline between Ikenne and my bedroom in Enugu. He tried, like an elder statesman to find a solution. Awolowo is a funny one. Don’t forget that the political purpose of the coup, the Ifeajuna coup that began all this, was to hand power over to Awo. We young men respect him a great deal. He was a hero. I thought he was a hero and certainly I received him when I was governor.

We talked and he was very vehement when he saw our complaints and he said that if the Igbos were forced out by Nigeria that he would take the Yorubas out also. I don’t know what anybody makes of that statement but it is simple. Whether he did or didn’t , it is too late. There is nothing you can do about it. So, he said this and I must have made some appropriate responses too. But it didn’t quite work out the way that we both thought. Awolowo, evidently, had a constant review of the Yoruba situation and took different path. That’s it. I don’t blame him for it. I have never done”.

This was quoted in Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo’s article, reporting the Okigbo International Conference, on page 102 of The GUARDIAN, Monday, October 1, 2007. Quite an interesting one for anyone who wishes to appreciate the folkloric dimensions that mis-led many who listened to Radio Biafra or have followed the post-war attempts to win the war in retrospect instead of preparing the survivors, on both sides of the war, to confront the reality that mauled them and could maul them again unless they shape up.

Against Ojukwu’s self-expiatory remarks, it is of interest to read Hilary Njoku, the head of the Biafran army at the start of the war. In his war memoirs, A tragedy without heroes, he declares that the meeting between Obafemi Awolowo and Ojukwu had nothing to do with the decision to announce secession. Njoku writes that: “…most progressive Nigerians, even before him, saw ‘Biafra’ as a movement, an egalitarian philosophy to put Nigeria in order, a Nigeria where no tribe is considered superior to the others forever…….

It was the same Biafran spirit which led Chief Awolowo to declare publicly that if the Eastern Region was pushed out of Nigeria, then the Western Region would follow suit. When Ojukwu moved too fast recklessly in his ostrich strategy, the same Chief Awolowo led a delegation of Western and some Midwestern leaders to Enugu on 6th May, 1967 and pleaded with Ojukwu not to secede, reminding him that the Western Region was not militarily ready to follow suit in view of the weaknesses of the Western Command of the Nigerian Army and the dominant position of the Northern troops in the West. Ojukwu turned a deaf ear to this advice maybe because of his wrong concept”.(p.141)

Anyone wishing to, or refusing to, take Ojukwu’s word for it may do worse than read what I am calling the forgotten documents. I am of the view that there are immovable grounds for refusing to take Ojukwu’s word on faith. Or, may be, faith would be excusable if one has not read the transcripts of the Enugu meeting in addition to the mileage of information provided by many post-civil war narrations since Alexander A. Madiebo’s opener, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War. What seems to be unknown to hagiographers of the civil war is that the meeting about which they have told so much was actually documented.

The transcripts of the meeting are no longer secrets. They have been in the open for more three decades, providing a basis for recasting the seduction of the propaganda which pictured the meeting as a secret one with participants being the only ones who could vouch for what was or was not said. Arguably, dependence on sheer memory, living in a folklorist’s paradise, may well have enabled all and sundry to feel free to mis-describe what transpired, to build an industry of deliberate falsification, leaving common everyday information to be whispered about as to their earth-shaking impact, as if a loud comment on them would bring the sky down. Indeed, it can be imagined how the old propaganda lines about what happened at the Enugu meeting helped to shore up morale on the secessionist side during the civil war while, on the Federal side, absolute silence or ‘rogue’ mis-use and abuse of their supposed truth-value, powered official indifference, somersaults and snide reviews, in speech and action.

Since there are many on both sides of the civil war who have had rationales for not letting the whole truth survive, it may be seen as quite convenient to have found a man like Awolowo, too much of a thorn in the flesh of many, as a necessary scapegoat. It explains why no proper history of the Nigerian Civil War is to be found which looks with dispassion at the issues and without contrived gaps. Few, without the benefit of the light that the two forgotten documents bring to bear on the issues, have been able to interrogate the purveyors of the falsehoods – the big men who did not know the truth but have had to say something authoritative about it; or those who know it but have had reasons, personal and public, for not vouchsafing it.

Besides, there exists a gaggle of revisionists and post-war hackers who do not want the truth to be known because it hurts their pride as inheritors of the falsehoods. They prefer, through a brazen parroting of unfounded folklore, to swindle generations that, as a result, have become unavailable for the building of genuine nation-sense that can accommodate all Nigerians. So over-powering has been their impact that logically impossible and groundless historical scenarios, deserving of contempt by all rational people, are trussed up and served as staple. I believe that given such poor historical accounting, the benign, intelligent, form of amnesia that, after a civil war, helps people to deal with the reality, has been repressed by voluble folklore.


Odia Ofeimun

Therefore, let me make a clean breast of it: my one great rationale for wanting to see the documents ‘outed’ is to help shore up nation-sense among Nigerians by rupturing the culture of falsehoods and silences that have exercised undue hegemony over the issues. I take it as part of a necessary revolt against all the shenanigans of national coyness and the culture of unspoken taboos that have beclouded and ruined national discourse. What primes this revolt is, first and foremost, the thought of what could have happened if the forgotten documents had seen the light of day at the right time.

How easy, for instance, would it have been to stamp the January 15, 1966 Coup as being merely an Igbo Coup if it was known that the original five majors who planned and executed it were minded to release Awolowo from Calabar Prison and to make him their leader – as the Ifeajuna Manuscript vouchsafed in the first few weeks of the coup before the testimonies that came after? What factors - ethnic frigidity, ideological insipidity or plain sloppy dithering could it have been that frustrated the coup-maker’s idealistic exercise since they were not even pushing for direct seizure of power? I concede that knowing this may not have completely erased the ethnic and regionalist motivations and overlays grafted by later events.

But it could have slowed down the wild harmattan fire of dissension that soon engulfed the initial salutary reception of the coup. Were the truth known early enough, it could have obviated many of the sad and untoward insinuations, and the grisly events to which they led, before during and since the civil war. At the worst, it could have changed, if not the course of Nigeria’s history, at least, the manner of assessing that history and therefore the tendency for much civic behaviour to derive from mere myths and fictional engagements.

To say this, I admit, is to make a very big claim! It suggests that the problems of nation-building in Nigeria would have been either solved, ameliorated or their nature changed rather dramatically if these documents had come alive when they were most needed. This claim curry’s sensation. It casts me, who can make it, in rather un-fanciful light in the sense of putting an onerous responsibility on me to explain how come the manuscripts were not made public when they should have had the implied impact. And what role I have played in their seeing or not seeing the light of day!

This was actually what was demanded by a writer in The Sun newspapers in 2007 who argued that only I had claimed in public to know about the existence of the Ifeajuna manuscript and only President Olusegun Obasanjo by quoting generously from it in his book , Nzeogwu, had proved that he, among the well-placed, knew about and could rely on the document. The writer had threatened that if President Obasanjo would not release the documents, I owed a responsibility to do so.

I wish to be upfront with it: that what has been known about the documents in Nigeria’s public space largely surfaced as a result of decisions I had taken at one time or the other. As Bari Salau points out in his own preface to Awo on the Nigerian civil war, I was active in turning the Enugu transcripts into public property. I should add that I was later responsible for the outings that the Ifeajuna Manuscript had, whether in Obasanjo’s book or in newspaper wrangles in the past two decades.

Almost ritually, I drew attention to the forgotten documents in my newspaper columns as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the now defunct Tempo magazine and in interviews granted to other print media and television houses. During the struggle over the annulment of the June 12 1993 elections, I placed enormous weight on the evidence of the manuscripts in attempting to correct some of what I regarded as the fictions of Nigeria’s history. All the while, I found myself in a quandary however because I based my arguments on documents that were not public property.

They were like mystery documents that I seemed to be pulling out of my fez cap to mesmerize those who were not as privileged as I was. All the effort I had made did not appear sufficient or proficient enough to relieve me of the obligation to complete the circle of their full conversion into public property. It has been quite bothersome to see that the issues they contain remain ever heated and on the boil.

They are issues that have stood in the way of due and necessary cooperation between Nigerians from different parts of the country. I happen to know that in some quarters, merely to mention knowledge of the existence of the documents is viewed as raking and scratching the wounds of the civil war. It is a preference, it seems, for the murky half-truths and out-rightly contrived lies, much of them horrid residues of war propaganda, that have mauled our public space and ruined civic projects so irremediably since the war. Yet so insistent are the issues, so inexorable in everyday political discussions, so decisive in the sentiments expressed across regional and ethnic lines, that to continue to let them fester in limbo is to be guilty of something close to intellectual treason.

To meet the challenge of the propaganda, it has become necessary, in my view, to provide a natural history of the documents, first, as a performance in genealogies, to audit the processes through which the documents passed in order to arrive at where they are. I consider this important so that those who may wish to dispute their veracity can do so with fuller knowledge of their odyssey. I am minded to distinguish between offending the sensitivities of those who shore up the myth of we never make mistakes, and others who simply wish for bygones to be bygones. As against bygoners, I think a country is unfortunate and ill-served when it carries a pernicious history on her back that has been garnished by rumour peddlers and fiction-mongers who may or may not derive any benefits from traducing the truth but have been too committed to a line that makes looking the truth in the face unappealing

. To keep silent, or to shelve a corrective, in the face of such traducers, is almost churlish. It is certainly not enough to break the silence by outing the forgotten documents. The way to begin to discharge the responsibility is to narrate how I came to know about and have followed the career of the two documents.

To begin with, it was in Ruth First’s book, Barrel of a Gun, that I first encountered hints about the existence of the Ifeajuna Manuscript. Ruth First was one of the most daring of the instant historians who took on the writing of post-independence Africa as the continent began to be mauled by those whom Ali Mazrui would describe as the militariat and who operated on an ethic that Wole Soyinka has described as the divine right of the gun.

She, who was so determined to uncover the roots of the violence that was overtaking African politics, was fated to die later through a parcel bomb sent by dirty jobbers of her native Apartheid South Africa. Her narrative took on the insidious goings on behind the scenes in several coups across Africa at a time when the issues, participants and sites were still hazy. It was like looking ahead to a future that a free South Africa needed to avoid. In a way, it prepared me to pay attention to the footnote to line 16 of JP Clark’s poem, ‘Return Home’ in his collection, Casualties, published in 1970. In the footnote, JP wrote: “A number of papers.

Major Ifeajuna left with me on the night of our arrival at Ikeja the manuscript of his account of the coup, which after due editing was rejected by the publishers as early as May 1966 because it was a nut without the kernel”. This footnote made him post-facto accessory to the coup as he could have been charged by one later-day military dictator down the road. But how did the manuscripts get to be handed over to JP? Which publishers rejected the manuscript? This was left to the grind of the rumour mill for decades.

Nothing more authoritative on what happened came from JP Clark until twenty years later when in his Nigerian National Order of Merit Award lecture of December 5, 2001, serialized in the Guardian between 10th and 14th December 2001, he filled in a few more gaps. He said: “My main encounter with the military , however, was played off stage many years before that.

In Casualties, my account in poetry of the Nigerian Civil War, so much misunderstood by my Ibo readers and their friends in quotes, I said at the time that I came so close to the events of 15 January 1966 that I was taken in for interrogation. Shinkafi was the officer, all professional, but very polite. Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna had given me his account of the coup to edit and arrange publication. The authorities thought I had it then in my custody”. JP does not quite say how the authorities knew. Or show that they knew where he kept it.

My first inkling of what happened, regarding the Ifeajuna Manuscript, came to me as a result of a quirk in my biography that made me write a poem, The Poet Lied, which pitched me into the maw of an unwitting controversy on the wrong side of JP Clark. The Poet Lied, was part-response to the Nigerian crisis and civil war dealing with a segment of the political class, all those, including writers, politicians, religious leaders and soldiers - who were in a position to change the images and symbols by which we interpreted our lives but who flunked their roles during the civil war. JP Clark was riled by the poetic imputations, convinced that, as the poet agrees but not the poem, he was the one, or among the ones, satirized. He importuned my publishers, also his own publishers, Longman UK, to withdraw the collection from the market.

Or face dire consequences! It was in the course of negotiating with the publishers, between the UK office and the Nigerian branch, how not to withdraw the manuscript from the market that I ran into stories of how one manuscript proffered by JP Clark had brought so much trouble to them two decades earlier. From bits and snippets in informal conversations, here and there, I got to know more about the Ifeajuna Manuscript which JP Clark sent to them to publish.

As I gathered, the Longman office in Nigeria had sent the manuscript to Longman UK where it was seen as being too hot to handle. The multi-national, doing good business in Nigeria, did not want to antagonize a military dictatorship that had just come to power. The UK office therefore sent the manuscript to the Nigerian High commission office in London to find out if the manuscript would pass something of a civility test.

QUESTIONS: Which book did Achebe write which captured all but a coup, of all that was happening wrongly in the country during the First Republic? Was Nnamdi Azikiwe sounded out by Igbo officers on the possibility of carrying out a coup in 1964, two years before the January 1966 coup? What was the plan of the coup makers of 1966 for Awolowo? Was Awolowo privy to what the eventual coup makers planned to do with him? What was so important about the Emmanuel Ifeajuna manuscript that Olusegun Obasanjo wanted to get to read it? There are many questions but the ones above are dealt with in the next part of this series


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/10/the-achebe-controversy-awolowo-and-the-forgotten-documents-of-the-civil-war-by-odia-ofeimun/

@Milito, it certainly is not a bad idea. But you need to work the PR thing with either the oil producing companies or better still with DPR, cos if there is any dispute of env'tal impart, DPR can recommended an acceptable company to the IOCs

@Milito & Brainwave, The 'E' part of the HSE is still very relevant in Nigeria, But most of the jobs for env'tal specalists are not from the big IOCs. the reason is that the env'tal impact of oil exploration can only be done by independent company sanction by DPR. Even communities are becoming wiser now and are exploying this companies to assess the impact in their community cos the data can be used to sue for damages against this oil companies. I've seen some of this law suit backed by env'tal studies claiming for damages running into billions of naira. and there very few env'tal specialists in nigeria.

i almost forgot this thread is still alive.

It's even more interesting to note that he got his certificates after becoming successfully. some many people judge the quality of a man by his paper certificate in nigeria.

A leaked report into Nigeria's oil and gas industry has revealed the extent of mismanagement and corruption that is costing billions of dollars each year.

The report, seen by the BBC, was commissioned by the oil minister in the wake of this year's fuel protests to probe the financial side of the sector.

It says $29bn (£18bn) was lost in the last decade in an apparent price-fixing scam involving the sale of natural gas.

It also calculated the treasury loses $6bn a year because of oil theft.

Nigeria is one of the world's biggest oil producers but most of its people remain mired in poverty.

Continue reading the main story
Missing billions revealed this year
$400bn - estimated amount of Nigeria's oil revenue stolen or misspent since independence in 1960 - World Bank's ex-vice-president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili said in August
$6.8bn - the amount a fuel subsidy scam has cost Nigeria over the last two years - a parliamentary report said in April
$29bn - the amount lost by the treasury in the last decade in an apparent gas price-fixing scam - leaked Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report in Octoberr
$6bn - the amount the treasury loses a year because of oil theft - leaked Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report in October
Nigeria's president 'must act over fuel scam'
Will Africa ever benefit from its natural resources?

The Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report is one of several commissioned by the government - and follows an outcry after a parliamentary investigation uncovered a massive multi-billion fuel subsidy scam.

That had been set up after angry nationwide protests in January when the government tried to remove a fuel subsidy.

Earlier this week, a campaign was launched to clean up Nigeria's oil sector.

It was led by Patrick Dele Cole, a politician from the oil-rich Niger Delta region, who said that 90% of the stolen oil was refined in eastern Europe and Singapore.

The BBC's Will Ross in Lagos says this leaked report exposes the extent of the rot in Nigeria's oil and gas industry - all the way from the awarding of contracts to the sale of refined products.

It is staggering just how much money the people of Nigeria appear to be missing out on, he says.

Nigeria's Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke declined to comment on the specifics of the probe but said a report compiled from several committees set up earlier in the year to investigate the oil and gas sector was in its final stages and would be presented to the president soon.

'Total overhaul'

The Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, headed by former anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu, revealed in its report that losses of revenue to the treasury over apparent gas price-fixing involved dealings between Total, Eni and Shell and government officials.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

Will Ross

BBC News, Lagos

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This latest damning indictment of the oil sector points out that Nigeria is the world's only major oil producer that sells 100% of its crude to private commodity traders, rather than directly to refineries, paving the way for potential fraud. So the entire system needs to be changed in order clean up the industry.

If there is any good news here, it is this: At least light is being shone on a sector which has for decades been kept deliberately opaque.

Some will commend President Goodluck Jonathan for showing a desire to expose the rot, but he will ultimately be judged on whether vital reforms are ever made.

It is known that stolen money from the opaque oil and gas sector play a vital role in funding Nigeria's political patronage system.

The report does not suggest the companies broke the law but called for measures to be put in place to ensure all transactions are more transparent.

It said that oil and gas companies owe the treasury more than $3bn in royalties.

For the period 2005 to 2011, it said $566m was owed in signature bonuses - the fees a company is supposed to pay up front for the right to exploit an oil block.

The report looked at the issue of discretionary licences which companies do not have to bid for.

Between 2008 and 2011 it found the Nigerian government had handed out seven discretionary licences, from which $183m in signature bonuses had not been paid.

A Shell spokesman said the company would not comment as it had not yet seen the report.

Our correspondent says it is well known that oil theft is a major problem in Nigeria, but the report says it may be reaching emergency levels as 250,000 barrels of crude oil could be being stolen every day - 10% of annual production.

The leaked report said that small-scale "pilfering" had been "endemic since at least the late 1990s", but it also said it had heard allegations about thefts from crude export terminals, tank farms, refinery storage tanks, jetties and ports.

"Submissions to the Task Force alleged that officials and private actors disguise theft through manipulation of meters and shipping documents," the report said.

"Yet there is also evidence that members of the security forces condone and, in some cases, profit from theft. The void in effective security likewise appears to increasingly hand over control of coastal and inland waterways to undesirable elements."

The investigation showed that 40% of refined products - either refined in Nigeria or imported - currently being channelled through state-owned pipelines are lost to theft and sabotage.

Mr Ribadu's investigation calls for a total overhaul of the industry with an oil sector transparency law requiring all companies to report all payments and publish all contracts and licences.

The Task Force also wants a special financial crimes unit to be established specifically for the oil and gas sector.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20081268

Success is not triggered by chance — Coscharis

An interview with Dr. Cosmas Maduka is like a lecture in Harvard business school — very rich, engaging and quite inspiring. Though not as big in size as he was four years ago, he reveals how he achieved his weight loss. That, he would talk about as the interview progresses.

To have built a conglomerate like Coscharis (established in 1982) meant hardwork, determination and resilience. “It meant having a drive and a passion to succeed,” he starts.

“When you want to succeed in life, you must have an allergy to failure. I did. I lost my father at the age of four and we had only our mother trying her best to raise us. We experienced poverty and I started hawking at the age of six. By the age of seven, I had learnt how to climb and cut palm tree for elderly women and I charged them three pence. I became a breadwinner at an early age. All along, I had a passion to make a difference. I brought the money home to my mother and when she could not cope, she sent me to live with my grandparents. From there, my uncle took me to Lagos to be an apprentice. His spare parts shop was at Ebute-Meta. I slept in the shop and I recall some children mocking me on their way to school. They laughed at me for sleeping in the shop but I told myself that I would be better than them in the next six years.

“There was no formal education, but I went to school up to elementary 3. Though not enough, I tried to do some research and find out how I could take some parts from a Volkswagen car and fix into a Honda. I was always curious to know which automobile parts could work on another brand. For three years, I worked tirelessly with my uncle and he opened a branch in Jos. I went there to manage it, he opened another one in Sokoto, I was there and I became a born again Christian,” he recalls.

The Coscharis Group has the franchise of over eight automobile brands and also sells automobile spare parts. Other subsidiaries exist too— Coscharis Technology, Coscharis Foods and Beverages, Coscharis Medicals and Coscharis Agro-Allied. The Nnewi, Anambra-born businessman would not forget the experience that saw him breaking loose from apprenticeship to being an entrepreneur. He reminisces: “My uncle opened another branch in Nnewi, again, I moved there and I became a new personality entirely. Then, I was just 14 years old but I had been involved in certain sins—I watched pornography, smoked, and drank. So, imagine my repentance when I discovered the truth. I was going to church and didn’t open the shop. When he discovered that I was leaving his shop unattended to, he disengaged me with just N200! This was a man I served for seven years without any contractual agreement and I never stole his money once. I told him as I collected the money, ‘five years from now, you would be amazed at what God would do with this N200.’

“So, I teamed up with my brother, who passed Standard Six, to establish a company called, Maduka Brothers but some months after, we differed in ideologies and parted ways. We didn’t make enough money but I had N316 and someone gave me his shop for free. So, I started there and came to Lagos to buy crash bars, went back to the East and sold everything. The same night, I travelled back, bought more and made some money. I bought a motorcycle.”

Dreams die hard. Maduka was a dreamer (he remains one anyway). His is a story of visions and dreams. “One day,” he recalls. “I had gone to Lagos to buy my goods when I passed through the AG Leventis building in Oyingbo. I said to the man walking with me, ‘One day, I will build something like this.’ He looked at me and wondered if it was the boy sleeping in a shop talking like this. I have always believed that whenever you have a goal, you work towards it. Many young people don’t have dreams and they don’t have destinations. A destination is where you are going and not shifting from the path. In fact, when I got money to build a house, I didn’t build in Ajegunle like my people did. Instead, I built Coscharis Plaza (my first building in Lagos) on Adeola Odeku, Victoria Island. I was a tenant when I built that house.”

The father of five (four boys and a girl) would always tell you that his sufferings would not make him expose his children (his first-born is 25) to any luxury. “It’s laughable that some parents throw money at their children,” he observes. After graduation, my sons wanted to join the company but I opposed it. I told them to work elsewhere and get the experience. In fact, the first just got a car because I refused giving him any car until he finished his post-graduate studies and got a job. I have always told them that you don’t need sense to spend money; it’s making it that requires sense. They see me as too strict but I don’t think so. My idea of life is not what happens to you but what happens in you. I didn’t have any formal education but I have been to Harvard for courses. I read books and I don’t watch television at all. As a matter of fact, there is no television set in our home. I raised my kids not having a TV and I encourage them, including my wife, to read newspapers.”

He would always talk about his wife, Charity. Maduka recalls: “I got married at the age of 19, had my first car at the age of 21 and also my first son. I met her in the church and we have been married for 34 years now. Then, her brothers opposed the union but I had confidence in myself and so did she.”

Back to the days of small beginnings in his business, Maduka remembers relocating to Lagos from Nnewi. “I teamed up with a friend and we established a company called Cosdave. By 1982, we parted ways and I started afresh with Coscharis, which was coined from my name, Cosmas and my wife’s, Charity. We started the automobile business, became employers of labour and by 1992, we made enough money to set up a branch in Ghana. Then, another one came up in Gabon and Ivory Coast.”

At this juncture, he talks about his weight loss success. “Now, I feel like a 19-year-old boy,” Maduka, who will be 54 on his next birthday, says amidst laughter. “I was fat. In fact, I had pains. So, I watched what and how I ate. I also did a lot of exercises (I still do). I walk a lot and I also ride on my power bike. I come from a family of riders— my mother, my sisters and grandparents had ‘okadas’. When I lost weight, I was excited. The only disadvantage was that I could not wear some of my designer suits again. Really, I love wearing suits.”

Any advice for entrepreneurs? He says, “Success is not an event, it’s a process. It is not a product of chance, it is characterised by dream and visions, which when you nurture, becomes a reality. Go for your dreams.”

Apple painted themselves into a corner with the third-generation iPad, which they insisted on calling just the "new iPad". So what happens when you replace that iPad with a newer one? Do you call it the "very new iPad"? That's the problem that Apple have with the fourth-generation iPad or as we will call it.. the Apple iPad 4.



The rather clumsy name that Apple have given to this device is the "iPad with Retina display" which still sounds rather like the iPad 3. But then, the differences between the third-generation and fourth-generation iPads are pretty straightforward.

There are two significant changes. Apple have replaced the A5 processor in the previous model with a version of the A6 processor found in the iPhone 5. The A6 has proven itself to be a blisteringly fast processor, and it really is twice as fast as the A5. On a big-screen high-definition device such as the iPad, that extra processing power is going to be very useful when it comes to processor intensive applications.

The second change is the addition of the new Lightning port, as found on the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. This will be a great boost in encourage third parties to support the Lightning port, and this should help to standardize accessories for future iOS devices.

Briefly, the rest of the specifications include a 9.7" 1536 x 2048 pixel "retina" display, there's a 5 megapixel camera on the back (plus a 1.2 megapixel one on the front), WiFi and UMTS/LTE support, iOS6 and the cellular version also has GPS and GLONASS positioning system support, which is all pretty much the same as the iPad 3.



The iPad 4 will sell for the same price as the iPad 3, starting at $499 for the WiFi-only 16GB version and going up $829 for the WiFi and cellular 64GB version. In other countries, you can expect the iPad 4 to seamlessly replace the previous generation when retailers switch over stocks.

Consumers should exercise some care when buying iPad while the stock changeover is taking place. There are very few obvious differences between the third and fourth generation models apart from the size of the connector at the bottom of the tablet. Apple say that the fourth-generation WiFi-only iPad should start to be available from November

http://www.mobilegazette.com/apple-ipad-4-12x10x23.htm

I'd forgotten i posted this, reading it still makes me feel sad!

It is interesting to note how mindless, gullible people who don't have a voice and nobody will ever listened to criticize an importance person in our society based on mere sensationalism. Somebody once said 'A critic knows the way but can't drive'. Come to think of it, I am not surprise cos most NLers are young adults with little or no life experience, who thinks their little opinion is the correct one. I laugh in Urhobo....

Please Where can I find an auto car jack and air compressor in Port harcourt?

Any ideas anyone?

Please house, Where Can I Get An Auto Car Jack & Air Compressor In Port Harcourt?

Some Windows 8 laptops and PCs could end up running more Android apps than ones written for Microsoft's software.

Gadgets built around chips made by AMD will come optimised to run the Android apps.

A collaboration between AMD and software firm Bluestacks lets the devices run the 500,000 apps more usually found on Android phones.

By contrast, Microsoft reportedly only has a few thousand apps written specifically for Windows 8 at launch.

The Android apps will be available on Windows 8 devices via AMD's AppZone player. Inside this is code from Bluestacks that acts as a wrapper around the mobile phone programs so they can run on desktops, laptops and tablets.

AMD has made changes to the core code that runs its processors and graphics cards to ensure apps built for the small screens on mobile phones look good and run well on larger displays.

Store war

The deal means future AMD-based gadgets will ship with the AppZone player installed, letting users get at apps such as Fruit Ninja and Flipboard that they know from their phone.

The player also lets users synchronise their apps across both a PC and an Android phone or tablet. AMD has about a 25% share of the market for desktop computers.

As Windows 8 has been developed to work well with portable devices such as tablets, Microsoft has been working to create an ecosystem of apps for the operating system. However, some reports suggest that a month prior to the launch of Windows 8 there are only about 2,000 apps available for it in Microsoft's Windows Store.

Bluestacks' Android-running software also works on Intel-powered devices, including Macs, but typically has to be installed after a gadget has been bought and booted up.

Bluestacks is also talking to other PC makers to get its software installed as PCs are put together in a factory.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19756734

Well, you didn't give me much to help you with. forex is a high risk base biz, your money can be wiped in a couple of weeks and you can also make money from it too. Above all else u need to invest in ur education, I mean biz wise. You must remember that bonds are low risk and low profit, and you cannot meet ur daily financial needs trading on them but ur money is save. For us to work out a biz plan, u ve to be fully involve in this. What needs can you find in the area where you live or work isan important question u need to answer. Or is the kind of biz you're looking for is the type that you can do on the side while you continue ur day job? If you must do a biz that meet ur daily financial needs your emotions must not be involved. I am yet to see an online forex trader that can live on his profit here in nija except our aboki brothers that trade on physical forex. There are lots of biz ideas i can suggest, but I need to know what you are willing to handle and is profitable. That is the reason I asked, what need can you SEE where you live or work?

...Continues, Number one thing to note in any biz is: You must be able to see where the profit and risk will be coming from before you start the biz, that means you have done your home work. Or you may burn you fingers. Another advise to note is. Don't invest all your money on any good ideas, even if it sound appealing due to the promised profit margins. The first thing you need to develop as well as look for profit is, MONEY MANAGEMENT & BIZ DECISION MAKING SKILLS. Well you guess right (all in caps). That is why our igbo chaps learn the tricks of a biz b4 going at it themselves. there is no circumventing this process if you must do biz. Will continue later...

It is ammazing that most people want the OP to give them his money, when he is only looking for a 'good biz' ideas for himself. @OP, i've several questions for you? What kind of biz will interest you? what need can you find in the area where you live or work? How much time do you have to devote to grow ur biz? How committed are you to make a biz work? this questions will help me in directing you to a biz you may like. Or best still you can invest in Govt bonds that are low risk and of course low profits, if you are really concern abt low risk investment.

The gas itself cost around N1800, that is R134a.

I'm interested, what is the asking price?

[/quote]Not allowing the business centreswithin government secretariats is even a gold mine for you getting a shop spAce just some few steps outside the gate of such places.

Don't forget people will always need to fill out one form or photocopy another while having dealins in such places.

If there's no place within the secretariate to do such, they will always be forced to come out for your service.

All the best.


Gee, Acidtalk thanks. That did not even occur to me. I will embark on this search ASAP. Am also getting encouraged the more, seeing all these people interested in running their lives just like i am.

[quote]

@ yamakuza.
Erm erm, hotels. lets see now, those places are attractive, especially if they are high-end hotels. problem is: likelihood of low business traffic in spots like that. But thanks still. And pls do not hesitate to share if you have something. thanks again.