₦airaland Forum

debosky:
Hoyte was a good servant of the club, never kicked up a fuss, even when he didn't get a run in the side, but his attitude/loyalty was top notch

I agree and wish him well in his new destination

oziomatv:
It's a pitty after backing the Nigerian army to fight against the Biafrans  now it's their turn to feel the heat.        The evil that men do live with them, hope they won't sell entire NigerDelter to MIMBO Mashers

Hmmmmmm,how ironic
This is a deft stab in the neck back by OBJ

So much for the obj & yara dull's oft mouthed mantra of citizen diplomacy
Such a shame
Really

Hi peeps
As our month fast approaches,does anyone have elaborate plans for celebration
What do y'all plan to do?
C'mon let's hear it

Moi is not gonna throw a big party,but there'll be a little somn somn here in Nigeria before I jet out
That in addition will make it easier for me to send my little birthday present to my favourite september baby on this thread cos I guess he/she resides in Nigeria.

What're y'all waiting for,have you got ur favourites,let's do so,then @ the approach of their bdays,we ask them to reach us or drop a dummy email or phone numbers thru which they can be reached (those that already posted their contact info are cool already),then we can get in touch and work out MOs of getting the gifts across to them

Gamine:
Who asked you

carry go jo

Hey u musta got me wrong
I meant you were not an Uneme babe
So cooloo cooloo temper abeg

ifyalways:
GAMINE is an Uneme babe.
Gamineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,oya show yourself here
Uneme is a tribe in Edo state that is gradually going extinct

Yep yep Ify,u're well informed
It's because of the fear of extinction that distant and not-too-distant cousins intermarry.
Not that their nauseating caste perception(though not as pronounced as the osu in the east)by some of their neighbours helps matters for them

Gamine:
LOL.

Yes yes , i am totally Hi-maintenance

so Mr Donx, what say you!!!

No Gamine,you're not

With the not-totally satisfactory new signings by AW(I'd hoped he'd spend good money to buy more established players in CB and midfield especially)
I hope we will take advantage of the fairly easy opponents we have in the early stages of the EPL

Couldn't post anything last night cos the game I saw wasn't a vintage Arsenal performance
Eventually,we did the job,I guess that's what counts

The Ribadu Question and National Values
The Horizon By Kayode Komolafe Tel & Email: 08055001974, kayodekomolafe@thisdayonline.com, 08.13.2008



On this page two days ago, Femi Falana examined the legal issues thrown up by the recent demotion of some police officers by the Police Service Commission. He submitted, as a lawyer, that the exercise constituted an “illegality” which should not be permitted by an administration “that claims to operate under the rule of law”. Well, it is left for Falana’s “learned friends” who may think otherwise to join issues with him on point of law.
The rest of us who are lay men in matters of law should be more interested in the moral implications of the demotion of these police officers including the former Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. In any case, there should be an organic link between the legal system and the moral and ethical foundations of a society for any meaningful discussion of how the people are governed.
To be sure, the Yar’Adua administration should not delude itself that it is lost on the popular imagination that the whole exercise of “reviewing” recent promotions in the police is a camouflage to deal with the Ribadu Question ultimately. The editor of this newspaper, Simon Kolawole, has consistently made this point in the most brilliant manner on this page. It is just that as it is now well known that the government of President George Bush in America resolved from Day One that Iraq would be invaded and Saddam Hussein would be removed from the Gulf equation, this administration knew all along that there would be an answer to the Ribadu Question one day and somehow. Forget the pretext that it is a routine matter for the Police Service Commission. In order not to give the impression that it is an isolated matter of demoting and humiliating Ribadu, the authorities have gone to the absurd extent of even insulting the memory of a dead officer, Haz Iwendi, who died in active service as Commissioner of Police. Only the authorities can explain the point they are trying to make by announcing the post-humous demotion of Iwendi in an utter disregard to the sensibilities of his grieving family. It is even more unpardonable that, like Falana argued, the same authorities did not establish any act wrongdoing on the part of the officer who died in active service, as they say. Here was a man whose remains were buried with the full of honours of a Commissioner of Police and the Inspector-General of Police was duly represented at his funeral. But that is how reckless things can go when you want to settle the Ribadu Question definitively. Those who want to rationalise this official absurdity pretend that skipping of ranks is alien to any of the services in the Nigerian military and law enforcement system. People now talk as if the officers in question were the first to be rewarded with “rapid promotions” either in the police or the armed forces.
The fundamental issues, however, transcend the legal technicalities of demotions in the police or the careers of the affected officers including Ribadu. The issues centre on the moral of the exercise, which was prompted by the act of officialdom in desperation to humiliate Ribadu. That is what should bother us more. It should bother President Yar’Adua in particular. The reason is simple. Today there is widespread lamentation in the land about the collapse in the power sector. There is outrage about the collapse of public schools. There is anguish about collapse of roads and other elements of infrastructure. There is indeed despair about the collapse in other departments of our national life including the central question of human development. That is doubtless bad news. The good news, however, is that with an administration that is focussed on action bridges, roads, schools, electricity and hospitals can be fixed in matters of a few years. That is more so if the administration is blessed with so much easy earnings from petrodollars as has been the case since the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The trouble, however, is that long after you must have fixed the material damage it may take a nation several more years to tackle the calamity of moral collapse. The damage done in the subjective sphere is by far more difficult to repair than the objective ones.
Intriguingly, the only thing President Umaru Yar’Adua has said about the lingering Ribadu Question is that issues should not be personalised; the focus should be about building institutions and that no one is indispensable. The President is damn right that no mortal is indispensable. Like any other mortal, any Nigerian entrusted with a responsibility can sleep tonight and wake no more. But the issue is not the indispensability of any individual. What we should stress is that Nigeria would be a better country if 50% of chief executives of public and private institutions display the sort of passion, commitment and honesty of purpose that Ribadu displayed as the man in charge of EFCC. If Nigeria had been blessed with a chief electoral officer like Ribadu, we would not have as many bizarre cases before the electoral tribunals as we have today. The cries for electoral reforms would be less strident. You could fault Ribadu in terms of methods, but warts and all you could not question his integrity and commitment to the national assignment he was saddled with. Even those who accused him of being selective by moving against enemies of Obasanjo could not declare those he moved against innocent. The cases are still pending in the courts. So, at best he was only guilty of not moving against all those he should have moved against. Like any other human being, Ribadu made his own mistakes and they’re plenty of them. There are, of course, ways to improve on the performance of EFCC as Azubuike Ishiekwene enunciated in his important The Trial of Nuhu Ribadu. But it is difficult to dispute that Ribadu redefined the anti-corruption campaign to the wide acclaim of Nigerians and the larger world. That is why those seek to humiliate such a gentleman are actually inflicting a moral damage on the psyche of the society while relishing that they are on a revenge mission against Ribadu. It is a symptom of a moral crisis for a society to reward Ribadu for his patriotism and commitment with the sort denigration and harassment being visited on him. By this act, the Yar’Adua administration is unwittingly giving credence to the legendary cynicism of Nigerians that their country is not worth dying for. Tragically, that would be an official stamp to a perversion of a genuine national orientation. By brutalising and persecuting Ribadu, the officialdom is only saying Nigeria is incapable of producing an authentic hero. They are saying to the young ones that the Nigerian moral desert is actually depleted of real role models in public life. They are telling the nation that the display of extraordinary courage and commitment is a crime punishable by persecution and humiliation, if not imprisonment or capital punishment. This is a recipe for a monumental moral crisis. What moral lesson is this administration teaching by humiliating an anti-corruption campaigner who submitted a bribe of millions of dollars offered him to the treasury while the alleged bribe giver is today a power broker influencing appointments? What message is this administration sending to the system by giving the room for a convicted fraudster to move against Ribadu to recover his “property”?
In many respects, the anti-corruption campaign is essentially a moral one. It is not just legal matter. But how can that campaign be enhanced when the man who redefined the campaign by his courage and commitment is now hounded helplessly like a criminal while those who have questions to answer about what they did with people’s resources are strutting the corridors of power and peddling influence? Behold, Nigeria is bedevilled not just with infrastructural collapse but more enduringly it is at the verge of moral decay. A lesson from the crisis of human civilizations is that nations rise or fall not just on the basis of physical development, but also more fundamentally on the decline of moral values. The forces that shape history are not just material, there are also moral forces underlining and defining the movement of history. Physical development cannot be in a moral vacuum. A nation cannot be said to be holistically developing when it blatantly displays a lack of sense of distinguishing between right and wrong; when there is no line drawn between decency and indecency in public life. It is certainly not a index of moral development to punish and humiliate an officer who has lifted the national spirit by showing us the possibilities of moral progress by the way he handled his assignment. It is part of this moral crisis that those who persecute Ribadu cannot come into the open to tell the nation exactly the “crimes” of this police officer.
To be fair, it is remarkable, that the Nigerian state has hardly ever lost sight of the moral dimension of governance. Even in the course of the anti-colonial struggle, the Great Zik of Africa, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, listed “moral rearmament” among the principles of the struggle. General Murtala Mohammed came up with his controversial purge of the civil service of those accused of corruption. President Shehu Shagari talked about some ‘ethical revolution”. General Muhammadu Buhari along with his able deputy, General Tunde Idiagbon, waged the War Against Indiscipline (WAI). General Ibrahim Babangida, who succeeded Buhari, saw the need to mobilise the creative energies of the people with the establishment of MAMSER and he put in charge the great mobiliser, Professor Jerry Gana to spearhead moral re-orientation. It is now hardly remembered that even General Sani Abacha, of the looting fame, constituted a plethora of panels to sanitise public institutions including the NNPC. Even those who would never see anything good in the administration of Obasanjo acknowledged that the EFCC, which he established, held the promise to fight corruption. So, virtually every Nigerian administration had its own moral agenda.
The pertinent question now is that what exactly is the moral architecture of the Yar’Adua administration? The question is urgent for an administration that is perceived to be punishing and persecuting Ribadu for giving verve to anti-corruption campaign of his predecessor. The question is imperative because those who have questions to answer in court for how they managed people’s resources are the people gloating about Ribadu’s persecution and peddling influence. They boast that they are the ones now in charge. Only a nation without values can permit this absurd state of affairs. Nigeria is too important, as the largest concentration of the black people, to lack abysmally a moral compass. The Yar’Adua administration should stop predending to be oblivious of this absurdity. The handling of the Ribadu Question is making Nigeria a laughing stock before the world
Except we permit a relapse into primitivism, no nation can be governed in a moral vacuum. That is why Yar’Adua must earnestly deal with the moral crisis that the handling of the Ribadu question portends with a sense of historic mission. If the nation can afford to wait for the Yar’Adua plan for physical development endlessly, it cannot afford the disturbing sending of signals of a moral collapse for a moment. The moral damage of such signals will be more enduring that the neglect of physical development because of the negative lessons it teaches the society. Nigeria should not be portrayed as a nation without authentic heroes and a society utterly lacking in a moral fabric. This nation must stand up for some values.

The Ribadu Question and National Values
The Horizon By Kayode Komolafe Tel & Email: 08055001974, kayodekomolafe@thisdayonline.com, 08.13.2008



On this page two days ago, Femi Falana examined the legal issues thrown up by the recent demotion of some police officers by the Police Service Commission. He submitted, as a lawyer, that the exercise constituted an “illegality” which should not be permitted by an administration “that claims to operate under the rule of law”. Well, it is left for Falana’s “learned friends” who may think otherwise to join issues with him on point of law.
The rest of us who are lay men in matters of law should be more interested in the moral implications of the demotion of these police officers including the former Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. In any case, there should be an organic link between the legal system and the moral and ethical foundations of a society for any meaningful discussion of how the people are governed.
To be sure, the Yar’Adua administration should not delude itself that it is lost on the popular imagination that the whole exercise of “reviewing” recent promotions in the police is a camouflage to deal with the Ribadu Question ultimately. The editor of this newspaper, Simon Kolawole, has consistently made this point in the most brilliant manner on this page. It is just that as it is now well known that the government of President George Bush in America resolved from Day One that Iraq would be invaded and Saddam Hussein would be removed from the Gulf equation, this administration knew all along that there would be an answer to the Ribadu Question one day and somehow. Forget the pretext that it is a routine matter for the Police Service Commission. In order not to give the impression that it is an isolated matter of demoting and humiliating Ribadu, the authorities have gone to the absurd extent of even insulting the memory of a dead officer, Haz Iwendi, who died in active service as Commissioner of Police. Only the authorities can explain the point they are trying to make by announcing the post-humous demotion of Iwendi in an utter disregard to the sensibilities of his grieving family. It is even more unpardonable that, like Falana argued, the same authorities did not establish any act wrongdoing on the part of the officer who died in active service, as they say. Here was a man whose remains were buried with the full of honours of a Commissioner of Police and the Inspector-General of Police was duly represented at his funeral. But that is how reckless things can go when you want to settle the Ribadu Question definitively. Those who want to rationalise this official absurdity pretend that skipping of ranks is alien to any of the services in the Nigerian military and law enforcement system. People now talk as if the officers in question were the first to be rewarded with “rapid promotions” either in the police or the armed forces.
The fundamental issues, however, transcend the legal technicalities of demotions in the police or the careers of the affected officers including Ribadu. The issues centre on the moral of the exercise, which was prompted by the act of officialdom in desperation to humiliate Ribadu. That is what should bother us more. It should bother President Yar’Adua in particular. The reason is simple. Today there is widespread lamentation in the land about the collapse in the power sector. There is outrage about the collapse of public schools. There is anguish about collapse of roads and other elements of infrastructure. There is indeed despair about the collapse in other departments of our national life including the central question of human development. That is doubtless bad news. The good news, however, is that with an administration that is focussed on action bridges, roads, schools, electricity and hospitals can be fixed in matters of a few years. That is more so if the administration is blessed with so much easy earnings from petrodollars as has been the case since the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The trouble, however, is that long after you must have fixed the material damage it may take a nation several more years to tackle the calamity of moral collapse. The damage done in the subjective sphere is by far more difficult to repair than the objective ones.
Intriguingly, the only thing President Umaru Yar’Adua has said about the lingering Ribadu Question is that issues should not be personalised; the focus should be about building institutions and that no one is indispensable. The President is damn right that no mortal is indispensable. Like any other mortal, any Nigerian entrusted with a responsibility can sleep tonight and wake no more. But the issue is not the indispensability of any individual. What we should stress is that Nigeria would be a better country if 50% of chief executives of public and private institutions display the sort of passion, commitment and honesty of purpose that Ribadu displayed as the man in charge of EFCC. If Nigeria had been blessed with a chief electoral officer like Ribadu, we would not have as many bizarre cases before the electoral tribunals as we have today. The cries for electoral reforms would be less strident. You could fault Ribadu in terms of methods, but warts and all you could not question his integrity and commitment to the national assignment he was saddled with. Even those who accused him of being selective by moving against enemies of Obasanjo could not declare those he moved against innocent. The cases are still pending in the courts. So, at best he was only guilty of not moving against all those he should have moved against. Like any other human being, Ribadu made his own mistakes and they’re plenty of them. There are, of course, ways to improve on the performance of EFCC as Azubuike Ishiekwene enunciated in his important The Trial of Nuhu Ribadu. But it is difficult to dispute that Ribadu redefined the anti-corruption campaign to the wide acclaim of Nigerians and the larger world. That is why those seek to humiliate such a gentleman are actually inflicting a moral damage on the psyche of the society while relishing that they are on a revenge mission against Ribadu. It is a symptom of a moral crisis for a society to reward Ribadu for his patriotism and commitment with the sort denigration and harassment being visited on him. By this act, the Yar’Adua administration is unwittingly giving credence to the legendary cynicism of Nigerians that their country is not worth dying for. Tragically, that would be an official stamp to a perversion of a genuine national orientation. By brutalising and persecuting Ribadu, the officialdom is only saying Nigeria is incapable of producing an authentic hero. They are saying to the young ones that the Nigerian moral desert is actually depleted of real role models in public life. They are telling the nation that the display of extraordinary courage and commitment is a crime punishable by persecution and humiliation, if not imprisonment or capital punishment. This is a recipe for a monumental moral crisis. What moral lesson is this administration teaching by humiliating an anti-corruption campaigner who submitted a bribe of millions of dollars offered him to the treasury while the alleged bribe giver is today a power broker influencing appointments? What message is this administration sending to the system by giving the room for a convicted fraudster to move against Ribadu to recover his “property”?
In many respects, the anti-corruption campaign is essentially a moral one. It is not just legal matter. But how can that campaign be enhanced when the man who redefined the campaign by his courage and commitment is now hounded helplessly like a criminal while those who have questions to answer about what they did with people’s resources are strutting the corridors of power and peddling influence? Behold, Nigeria is bedevilled not just with infrastructural collapse but more enduringly it is at the verge of moral decay. A lesson from the crisis of human civilizations is that nations rise or fall not just on the basis of physical development, but also more fundamentally on the decline of moral values. The forces that shape history are not just material, there are also moral forces underlining and defining the movement of history. Physical development cannot be in a moral vacuum. A nation cannot be said to be holistically developing when it blatantly displays a lack of sense of distinguishing between right and wrong; when there is no line drawn between decency and indecency in public life. It is certainly not a index of moral development to punish and humiliate an officer who has lifted the national spirit by showing us the possibilities of moral progress by the way he handled his assignment. It is part of this moral crisis that those who persecute Ribadu cannot come into the open to tell the nation exactly the “crimes” of this police officer.
To be fair, it is remarkable, that the Nigerian state has hardly ever lost sight of the moral dimension of governance. Even in the course of the anti-colonial struggle, the Great Zik of Africa, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, listed “moral rearmament” among the principles of the struggle. General Murtala Mohammed came up with his controversial purge of the civil service of those accused of corruption. President Shehu Shagari talked about some ‘ethical revolution”. General Muhammadu Buhari along with his able deputy, General Tunde Idiagbon, waged the War Against Indiscipline (WAI). General Ibrahim Babangida, who succeeded Buhari, saw the need to mobilise the creative energies of the people with the establishment of MAMSER and he put in charge the great mobiliser, Professor Jerry Gana to spearhead moral re-orientation. It is now hardly remembered that even General Sani Abacha, of the looting fame, constituted a plethora of panels to sanitise public institutions including the NNPC. Even those who would never see anything good in the administration of Obasanjo acknowledged that the EFCC, which he established, held the promise to fight corruption. So, virtually every Nigerian administration had its own moral agenda.
The pertinent question now is that what exactly is the moral architecture of the Yar’Adua administration? The question is urgent for an administration that is perceived to be punishing and persecuting Ribadu for giving verve to anti-corruption campaign of his predecessor. The question is imperative because those who have questions to answer in court for how they managed people’s resources are the people gloating about Ribadu’s persecution and peddling influence. They boast that they are the ones now in charge. Only a nation without values can permit this absurd state of affairs. Nigeria is too important, as the largest concentration of the black people, to lack abysmally a moral compass. The Yar’Adua administration should stop predending to be oblivious of this absurdity. The handling of the Ribadu Question is making Nigeria a laughing stock before the world
Except we permit a relapse into primitivism, no nation can be governed in a moral vacuum. That is why Yar’Adua must earnestly deal with the moral crisis that the handling of the Ribadu question portends with a sense of historic mission. If the nation can afford to wait for the Yar’Adua plan for physical development endlessly, it cannot afford the disturbing sending of signals of a moral collapse for a moment. The moral damage of such signals will be more enduring that the neglect of physical development because of the negative lessons it teaches the society. Nigeria should not be portrayed as a nation without authentic heroes and a society utterly lacking in a moral fabric. This nation must stand up for some values.

Had a fulfilled day

Hi everyone

Ubpeters:
I believe its such a disgrace for those of us from the "land of fulfilled promises" that one of our respected sons would be involved in a mephistophelean

No no no, no be mephistophelean activity,somebody hold the guy for work for occult level,turn the guy to mugu
Seriously to think that one man can appropriate 1billion naira of an agency's funds without some other officers counter-signing speaks volumes of the rot in the system

[flash=200,200][/flash]

blacksta:
checks and balances for where . You want to ruin the life of an average Nigerian. Please carry that kind of talk elsewhere

How tragic

deeteeneey:
okay

Anytime

SAM MILLA:
Siasia knows what he is doing.

He always does  

@ deeteeneey,

Are you sure you aint the one in the wrong section?or you just need a reason to hop on this thread feel free sist,it's all good,there's much love in the house;even for visitors.

For the record;

*You go to the politics section and see that I'd posted it there before sort of cc_ing this thread(compare the times of post)
*We the cool peeps of September do share important info on this thread,so don't sweat it

GO NIGERIA

[flash=200,200][/flash]

I hope my 1000th post will definitely be here too

@ Seanwillex

How remarkable that your very first post on nairaland is on this thread
We're indeed pleased and honoured
I take it u're fairly new to Nland,so do well to read through the previous pages of this thread to really bring urself up to speed
Your Sept 28 bmates on this thread thus far are Kunle75,Hardknocks are brodipo

What will they think of next

@ poster

methinks this matter is true-life

Well did you lose shape or lose your game or does he have erectile dysfunction
Search yourself and see what you lost or did not lose
I don't think he's having an affair,but he just might if you don't remedy the situation
Best of luck