₦airaland Forum

Freshtruth:
This is wrong this award belongs to Benzema

Corrosiveman:
Use App

successmatters:
Because of the way Ugwuanyi and PDP messed up enugu, most people from that state has joined the Labour Party.

Peter Obi will win up to 90% of votes from this state.

Ugwuoke347:
Ugwuanyi is a fool.
A narrow-minded proud fool.
The writer is very correct in describing him as vindictive.
He is not only vindictive but also cruel and full of deceits and betrayals. I personally know people who have given him years of staunch loyalty whom he shoved aside. Such a man without honour, a dullard who can't talk like a man! An empty head and a spineless slowpoke!
He is definitely going to have his comeuppance when the time comes!
By then, he will know he does not have all the powers.

Lying some distance away from the Enugu metropolitan city is a suburb surrounded by greenery and beauty. Somewhere in this suburb is a big compound that has received more "pilgrims" in the last seven years than Mecca and Jerusalem combined. These 'pilgrims,' on the other hand, do not come to this big compound for religious reasons. They are ordinary men and women who want to save their communities or interests from the grinding cycle of neglect, or to grease their stomach infrastructures, or simply to receive one or two minted crisp papers from the generosity of one god who is sheltered by this house and ever willing, in generosity and compassion, to throw crumbs on those gathered around the big gate of his mansion.
On this particular day, somewhere in this compound, this god was seated, dazzling and bright as the day itself while some men arranged themselves in a cresent moon style about him. The day was a Saturday, and obviously a happy day for the god and his praise singers, but a sad one for these men with forlorn expressions.
A small mahogany table with some refreshment items—palmwine and colanuts conspicuously stood out from the rest—stood between these men and the god. A fat cow, pigmented black from head to toe and casting the same forlorn looks as the men who had brought it there, was tied to a giant tree just a few steps away.
From this table, each of the men picked whatever refreshment prickled their fancy and munched away at it while discussing the pressing business of the day—the same old business that had banished smiles far away from them. The cow whined now and then, as if the realisation of what was about to happen to it—the same fate that had befallen other cows brought and tied to the same spot by these same sad-wearing men—had just dawned on it.
It would have been better if this show, which appeared to be set in a third world, had been geared toward serving dramatic effects. But these aren't your typical screen actors, as seen in one of African Magic's infamously repulsive scenes, in which some African men offer prayers and appeasement with cows or other animals to some gods in order to appease whatever wrath they bear against them against a melodramatic backdrop. This is the nummb reality of the people of Imilike-people at the hands of their vindictive governor.
Imilike-Agu, an autonomous community in Enugu state, the stories alleged, was condemned to a perpetual ritual of periodic begging or 'solidarity visit and greeting,' as they christened it, after being shoved into the bottom pit of years of neglect. And to whom? Their governor, to whom they entrusted their mandate, arrogantly assumed he was a god over their destinies and fate. They were not appeasing this "god" with a fat cow in order for him to remember them in his orgy of injury time political appointments like his "Nrashi" cronies, or to create jobs for their wasting children, or to provide working health care for their failing health, or good schools to harness their wasting human resources—all of which their experience with this "god" has taught them to be a pipe dream for mere poor peasant farmers—but not to, for whatever anger this god bears against them, vindictively scheme them out from his rural road projects, the only area his administration has made a little statement.
Walking through the nook and corner of this community, one is received with feedback of years of government's neglect. Apart from two dilapidated primary schools, a neglected secondary school, a borehole, and a malaised clinic that ironically needs more the help of the community it was meant to help, everything that meets the eye points to a people who have been left to fend for themselves or perish in the depths of their acute lack of basic amenities. In the words of a vlllager, "these sorry sights are the distant relics of our blind, cult devotion to the PDP for 23 years."
However, In the midst of this generational lack of basic needs, one had a death grip on the community—the only road connecting the community to the outside world had degenerated into a death trap, a wasteland of ruins. This road, however, is more than just a road; it plays an important role in every aspect of the lives of the people of Imilike-Agu, and the people are aware of this. It is an embodiment of their struggle, which began in the colonial era and has given their history the lion's share of its flesh. Thus, the construction of this road is significant not only for its ease of mobility and realisation of their aspiration to someday have an unhindered link with the larger world, but also for its symbolic implications—a defeat of the backwardness their forefathers ignorantly chose in front of the white colonialists and given a lifeline with an ancient spell, the birth of modern civilization, and the signs of good things to come.
Motivated by their quest to rewrite this old narrative and blinded by the grating bite of their ordeal—which is understandable—they threw their pride overboard, swallowed their ego, and, amidst scorn and humiliation, reduced themselves to mere seasonal pilgrims, with cows, to their governor's home, His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the executive governor of Enugu state, for a "solidarity visit and greeting."
According to the stories, His Excellency would accept their 'offer'—cows—with open arms but never minced his words in telling them that they were wasting their time.
While the end result of these seasonal pilgrimages to the governor's house is unmistakable—His Excellency would not build their road—the reasons he offered for his blatant rejection of their appeals are the subject of numerous accounts. But one thing is clear from these accounts: His Excellency is hell-bent on settling an old score tinged with political consideration. And, to his discredit and the benefit of the federal government, his Excellency would not have the honour of being the instrument through which the ancient spell of no modern road or development for this abandoned community is to be broken.
While His Excellency was busy arrogating to himself the power of a god of who and which community his administration would perform his statutory duties for, sadly, according to his grace and goodwill, constructing roads for the few communities girding Imilike-Agu while spitefully leaving this agrarian community in the heart of these communities to perish and lick their wounds, it didn't occur to the mere mortal that thought himself a god that his vindictiveness in discharging the functions of his office was drawing the attention of the Buhari-led government at the centre through one of the illustrious sons of the soil, Engr. Dr. Marcus Ugwuanyi.
Today, with the road under construction, Imilike-Agu can proudly stick out their shoulders tall and boast of being one of the few hinterland communities in the country so vital to nation building that the federal government has taken notice! And to whom do they owe the honour? To the Federal Government and their own distinguished son, Engr. Dr. Marcus Ugwuanyi, who brutally taught the vindictive god in the Lion Building the most basic lesson of life—that no man is a god to arbitrarily decide who to freely pour his grace on and who to perish in the wasteland of neglect!
Through Dr. Marcus, the federal government has saved this community from the grinding and repeated cycle of appeasing the wrath of their governor, who also doubles as a "god," with a cow and receiving feedback of his displeasure, not at their cow, but at their mission! The days of making a pilgrimage to His Excellency's big compound with a cow and being turned back with or with no money to cover the expenses they must have incurred in greasing his (the governor's) crassly vindictive hands with a cow are over. However, what is not yet over for this community is the great day of reckoning. This agrarian community, which has paid blind obedience and cult worship to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) since the return of democracy in the country, even threatening to fine any "erring" members of the community who have dared to vote for any party other than the PDP in the past, will have the last laugh in the state's general elections in 2023.
Emotions are heightened, searing anger rages with animal strength and passion, years of humiliation and scorn still smell like new, the dark days in the web of crass neglect haunt the wounded hearts, but vengeance is to the wounded—and 2023, with its promises and perils, is not too far away to mend open wounds! The people of Imilike-Agu are agitated. 2023 appears to them to be an eternity, as does the restlessness of the strong statement they want to strike into the unguarded and meatily fleshy hearts of those who took part in the fun orgy of grinding their vulnerable souls in an open, shallow field of scorn and humiliation with their voting power on the great day of reckoning—the 2023 general elections!
Odo Christian Obinna, a student journalist, writes from the University of Ibadan.

Anyiamaka:
Enugu shine your eyes o.
Enugu is better under Chijioke Edeoga of Labour Party than under Peter Mbah of Ebeano and PDP... After the woeful failure of the past 7years, Enugu deserves better. Enugu shine your eyes ooo

gidgiddy:
Chimaroke Nnamani was one of the most brutal Governors who ever ruled a State in Nigeria

He was just a Medical Doctor based in America who returned to aspire for Senator under PDP in 1999. As fate would have it, the then PDP chieftain in Enugu State, Jim Nwobodo, decreed that Nnamani's zone should produced the next Governor and hand picked Nnamani to be the PDP candidate, getting other PDP candidates to step down for him

Not long after Nnamani won the elections, he fell out with not only Jim Nwobodo, but other political heavyweights in the State such as former Governor CC Onoh and Ugo Agballah. Nnamani the recruited his former classmates, Ike Ekweremadu and Sullivan Chime, as hatchet men as well as an Army of armed cultists, to silence all opposition.

When 16 Enugu Lawmakers, who were loyal to Jim Nwobodo, attempted to impeach Chimaroke, they were attacked, beaten black and blue, and chased out of the state. For the remainder of his first term, the Lawmakers did not return to the state.

Chimarokes reign of terror was something else. All political appointees had to swear an oath of loyalty to him in a shrine and anyone who uttered a word against him was either badly beaten or killed. The ebeano famiky was nothing but a gathering of thugs and killers loyal to the Governor

The elections that brought Chimaroke to his second term was a complete fiasco. With opposition stif against Chimarokes re-election, the election was a total gun battle with shootings everywhere and the entire thing rigged. Chimaroke became the first Governor in Nigerian history to defeat his closest rival with over a million votes in an election he completely rigged!

Its only in Nigeria that you have a terrorist like Chimaroke Nnamani still relevant in todays politics

OVB123:
2 weeks ago I was in Enugu capital and wasn't too please with what I saw at all. I think that Enugu State needs a competent leader that will lead to the state to her land of promise not the man that is behaving like a woman that is ruling the state.

One cannot open the history pages of Enugu politics, development, and growth without encountering broad pages engraved with the name of the state's former executive governor, His Excellency, Sen. Chimaroke Nnamani. His Excellency tried to wheel Enugu State onto the proper pedestal of development. Whether his attempts were worthy the efforts or not is a topic for another day. However, what is certain is that his successor, His Excellency, Barr. Sullivan Chime, did fair enough to catapult Enugu State to its current status. It is unfortunate, however, that the current fat Orba trader masquerading as an administrator has, without breaking a sweat, set the state back decades with his gross incompetence.

But the main point of this piece is not to bemoan the mistakes of the 2015 governorship elections, but to call our attention to another possible mistake, come the 2023 governorship elections in the state; a dangerous fog that is becoming a reality in Enugu politics— Chimaroke's shadow or the popular morally degenerative Ebeano dynasty is resurfacing back into our political life.
But why should anyone care about this? While Chimaroke was a relatively effective governor, his popular style of governance left every Ndi Enugu with a bitter political experience that no amount of historical revision could erase.The Ebeano dynasty, which held Enugu state in a tight, lethal grip at the start of the fourth republic or the new millennium, was marked by broken bones, spilled blood, and wasted lives. Enugu was a desolate wasteland for dissenting voices and anyone deemed a threat to the dynasty's free flourishing—a brutal coven of state-sponsored marauding hitmen, cultists, and lethal thugs.
When I was a kid, the name "Chimaroke" was a household name, not because of the name's administrative success, but because of the looming threat of death.My distant experience with the name and its operating style provided me and other children with our first political orientation, which took us many years to change—governance necessarily meant bloodshed, violence, and witch-hunting.
But, once again, why should anyone care about this? One might wonder, and rightly so, how this name has anything to do with the state's upcoming governorship elections. The face and name behind the Ebeano dynasty has reappeared, this time in the form of PDP gubernatorial candidate Barr. Peter Mba. I only know him as a cabinet member of the then-old Ebeano dynasty. As a result, making a negative claim about his ability to lead the political capital powerhouse of eastern Nigeria, Enugu state, would be treasonous.
While there is some ambiguity here, one thing is clear and should give any good student of history pause: the power behind the tunes he grooves to; the old, familiar hand playing the piper and dictating the direction his dancing feet sway to. It's the same Chimaroke who gave his name to the once-dead but now rapidly resurrecting Ebeano dynasty. The foreshadowing of what may become our reality, with the Ebeano cabal fully hijacking the state's power structures by 2023 if not checked, has already occurred. We saw this during the primaries, when the primaries were brutally hijacked and highly monetized at the last minute to pave the way for a man whose only administrative relevance if elected governor of the state will be ceremonial. Entrusting the fate of an entire state to a government that lacks a mind of its own or does not carry its name with sacrosanctic grace is always a dangerous dance towards a tragic end. It's a non-negotiable risk, a potentially self-inflicted destructive volcano.
Some of the indomie generation ecstatically yelling "ashua azumama in Enugu politics" at the emergence of Barr. Peter Mba as PDP gubernatorial candidate were most likely not born in the early 2000s, when the Ebeano dynasty ruled the roost. What sucks more is not the undiluted ignorance being peddled by this indomie generation about the old stories of uninhabitable Enugu that are about to be retold in the state by the same actors from the shadowy background, but how our indomie generation is applauding and praising the hijacking of the Peoples Democratic Party primaries in the state by Ebeano irredentists.

It's a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, in which the victims, the age-old prisoners, sing praises to their fate grabbers and hijackers on an empty stomach—and for what? For a successful trade, an auction of their common patrimony in the Lion Building by a few with the poster face of the fat Orba trader and bought by fellow masquerading merchants and expansionists.
That "ashua azumama," or people's common patrimony, has been auctioned off to the highest bidders is no longer news or a novel experience for Ndi Enugu, given that the current media governor, who is making mockery of everything good governance, emerged in a similar manner. However, What is strange is that some people seem to be genetically predisposed to reject learning from experience. These people, blinded by a confluence of sentiments, ignorance, and possibly mischief, are not only preparing to fully resurrect the Ebeano dynasty, but are also working tirelessly to repeat the 2015 error, which has trajected the state to a rapid course of retrogression and degeneration by 2023.
True, you have the right to join the depraved, merchandising lot in raising a glass to a successful auction in the Lion Building, and you are even willing to stick out your neck for the cabal trading in your common patrimony, but keep in mind that a leopard does not shed its skin. A vulture will always be a hideous, dirty-looking creature feeding on both kindred and non-kindred animal entrails in the open market, no matter how much eyewash it receives!
"Ashua azumama" in Enugu state, and the feast for the spoils is fierce. While it's tempting to jump on board and get lost in the orgy of drink baths, don't forget to ask yourself who pays. You have not only given encouraging, friendly taps on the shoulders of your violators for plundering your patrimony; you have also, for a morsel or nothing, enlisted yourself into the machinery being assembled by the Ebeano cabal to drag Enugu state to the old era of cracked bones, broken jaws, spilled blood, and wasted lives, all sponsored by the state!

bmdmix11:
the teacher may not even notice it

Nigeria has had to grapple with many issues of national proportions and consequences, but last week introduced another disturbing issue, which, while not novel to the country’s rich bank of experience, is a volcano erupting red-hot lava intermittently, one that, at a slow but steady pace, may speed up the course of self immolation the country is dangerously headed for. Somewhere in Sokoto, a young lady, full of life and hope, was gruesomely murdered in a most disturbing style. Life was knocked out of her with a determined rain of stones, then what was left of her once beautiful body was torched to ashes. Her alleged offence was blasphemy, and her executioners were not the typical state officials, but some irate, wrathful, ignorant mobs who set their hands in motion to redeem the “battered” honour of their God. And somewhere in the same Sokoto, once a peaceful state, waves of protest are erupting, not to see life wheeled into law to dish out swift justice to the deserving, but to demand unconditional release—and possibly a state apology—of their murderous comrades.

But this is not the worst of this national worry. It’s the grating silence looming large, this time not in Sokoto state, but over the country at large. Religious and political leaders who have always lent their loudest voices to issues perceived as threats to them and their cycles, whether real or imagined, have suddenly gone mute silent. Those who, in the heat of things, hastily and briskly jumped to condemn the dastard act at the remote outpost of civilization—may be while besotted with alcoholic liquor—hurriedly, in the same quick manner as their condemnations came, deleted, rescinded, and dissociated themselves from their own words. Nonetheless, hidden among the walls of this grating silence, which is easily discernible by any sane-minded person, is a tacit approval of this dastard act.

Deborah’s gruesome murder, nor the ones before her case, nor the ones to come after her in the future, is never the evil rearing its ugly head every now and then, but this grating silence from those who ought to speak out against this evil. Without putting too fine a spin on it, Nigeria was and is the end of Deborah, those before her and those who will come after her. When those who ought to speak out because there are certain people leaning on them for proper direction choose the path of silence, a subtly silent nod of approval, they are inviting blood-thirsty folks to feast and quench their blood lust upon this table deliciously set for them under the cloak of religion. As one fine old proverb says, a child given a nod to steal by his father breaks the door! She was not so much a victim of religious intolerance as she was a victim of weaponized ignorance that was allowed to grow unchecked by a culture of meaningful silence.

Agreeing silence, one may also call it, but speaking louder in action and climaxing into an unnegotiable finality. According to captain Jamil Abubakar, a son-in-law of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and son of former Nigeria’s police chief, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, in a series of social media posts, “The punishment for blasphemy is death! in most religions, including Christianity. Respect people’s religion. It’s simple!” The tones are simple but non-negotiable, and so is the leaning of this agreeing silence by those who need only to utter no more than a syllable to sweep off this ignorance veiled in religious tunics.

But the shocking reality we have is a grating silence stamping life onto ignorance, which is readily used as a weaponized tool for bestially lustful gratification by willing hands. Ignorance has become a tool dissipated into the gratification of bestially carnal lust thanks to this culture of agreeing silence prevailing among the majority of the northern elite. Confirmed cases of this ignorance being weaponized to quench blood lust abound. Ignorance is now weaponized by some folks to mark certain people as societal ills for brutal cleansing. The only string that needs to be pulled by these folks is to play the blasphemy card and watch ignorant mobs swiftly respond to this tug at their “uncompromising red line,” in the words of Adamu Garba, a northern Nigerian youth politician and technocrat.

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Nonetheless, come rain or sunshine, the ritual of agreeing silence must be observed with a devoted passion. It makes no difference that this ignorance is developing a thick head and unyielding flesh, dangerously spiralling out of control—or that these elite who have sworn the oath of silent monks are blind to see this potential future emerging and looming large above their heads. A future may emerge in which this weaponized ignorance not only throws Nigeria into scathing tumults and casts what remains of her laboured unity into an air of unease certainty, but also returns home to roost, to the homes of those who nurtured it into monstrosity with their agreeing silence. The omen is already here, staring at us. We saw it in how the rioting ignorant mobsters were able to breach the perimeters of the palace of the Sultan of Sokoto, who, as a result, had to flee his palace, armed security operatives forming a tight girdle around him. Sultan’s only “blasphemy” was condemning the brutal murder of Deborah Yakubu, an act which was strange to these ignorant mobsters and upset the inviolable “truth” they had acquired over years and nurtured into a towering pyramid-like structure by a culture of agreeing silence. Today it’s Deborah and the Sultan of Sokoto. Tomorrow, it could be any of our “silent monks” who dares as much as to condemn the actions of this raving, out-of-control mob in an attempt to salvage the sliver of the country’s unity that has been stretched to breaking point by the tumult caused by the actions of these ignorant mobs.

I’m not saying that a brazen act of insult to any person’s religion or God should be condoned or responded to with kid gloves. In fact, no person having unhindered access to his or her faculties should be given a friendly pat on the back for going out of his/her way to disparage any religion, whether his/her own or that of another man. The deed, although done, a lot better was to be expected of the dead. Being herself a northerner, she could not have laid claim to ignorance as to the character of her people; northerners though arguably the most accommodating people in Nigeria, they, particularly their Muslim community, are more vulnerable on the point of religion; their religion being their total way of life, any sort of insult to it and their prophet lands with shattering force, borrowing Adamu Garba’s words again, on their “uncompromising red line.”

However, I will not dwell on what was done and what was not done by the dead because, like Florence Chukwu, an English teacher in Bauchi state gruesomely murdered in 2006, like Mrs. Christiana Oluwatoyin, a female teacher in Government Secondary School, Gombe, murdered by a mob in 2007, like Bridget Patience Agbahime murdered by a mob in 2016, like many other cases before them, Yakubu Deborah was a victim of ignorance systematically allowed to grow by a culture of silence. Like the voice belting into the gloomy air that day, “I killed her. I burnt her. You can see the matchbox I used in setting her ablaze here,” with energetic excitement, hunger, lust, and bare bestiality, like the voice in this decades-old silence, they are all a confluence of one point: the late Deborah and her unfortunate sisters and brothers in death met an end deserving their capital offence—blasphemy—and it does not matter how this end was dished out—none of them deserved the benefits of a proper hearing.

All in all, the hypocrisy is on one Nigeria that is brazenly wheeled out of the way at will, as well as the voices behind this agreeing silence. One Nigeria has become a convenience mantra lauded for its rich lyricism and shoved down the dusty docket of neglect depending on which side the scale of convenience tilts. We are talking about the one Nigeria mantra, the highly harped celestial-ordained one, secular Nigeria, where, at this moment, one group can brazenly come out or cower behind talking silence to push for standards that should apply to and be attended to by only the community of people those standards are made for to be mindlessly extended to all people irrespective of their religious leanings, creeds, tribes, and other markers of our diversity, and the next moment is at the forefront of a crusade for one, secular Nigeria! And anyone—anyone at all—caught in this net widely cast about, a brutal, roadside judgment hurriedly fixed with impunity by equally a roadside constituted court should be meted out on.

It goes without saying that we are wheeling life into the soul of a dangerous precedent. Whether we like it or not, whether we tell ourselves the truth or not, this culture of agreeing silence is a dangerous one that should give every right-thinking Nigerian more worry than the brazen display of ignorance ironically witnessed in an enlightened academic environment because it has the potential to crack into endless possibilities of chaos and anarchy in the future. It’s a fertile ground upon which every group in the country can take life from, insist on any sort of standards its wide imagination can conceive, brazenly threaten fire and brimstone if things are not done according to its standards, while all the while, the constitution we gave ourselves on the common understanding to surrender our different sentiments as diverse peoples to a one Nigeria is pushed further back, relegated to the dark corridors.

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It needs no art of divination nor complex analytic exercise to come to terms with the reality of our unity. The string that has laboriously held the much-emphasized unity of Nigeria is not the threat of war, guttural rumbles of military action, persuasive and bare force of law, but the restraints exercised by each of the country’s various groups in the face of stark, naked provocation. But history has taught mankind, in the most harshest of ways, of the perils of stretching one’s luck too far. How long can these groups maintain this position without stirring up the muck? Let the perilous dance towards dangerous waters continue. We may one day come to that breaking point where we will have no other option than to form one orchestra with the late Saraduana of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, to belt out his remark of yesteryear: the mistake of 1914 amalgamation.

About the writer.
Odo Christian Obinna writes from the University of Ibadan where he is pursuing a degree in law.

They can be transported over
long distances, cross frontiers and create
regional and global environmental problems.

Stanchem029:
Ekwusigo Grammar school >:

Afonjakid:
You are from orba ?

mkpurumma090:
Ututu Oma Odogwu

Enugu state college of education

mkpurumma090:
Eziokwum o!!

Government house press media came to my School for like two months ago for Students to shower praises to that anumanu (animal), those that came was like what do you expect us to say cause nothing good is coming from what we have think,they said we should form anything and say, Students was like give us money for it to be done they was like no payment for them doing it so how do we expect them to share money to us
Students just catapult themselves from there, saying U guys are not serious with your camouflaging game and misleading people...