Nigeria News
A Personal Letter To Chinua Achebe
By Frank Opara
Dear Achebe,
It was my dream to meet you in person. Even as old age closed up on you, I still did not lose hope of a memorable meeting with you.
As an undergraduate at the University of Calabar, I once laid ‘ambush’ for you at the university’s famous annual “English and Literary Studies Symposium/Lecture” immediately I saw your name among the list of literary giants who were to grace the occasion. As it may interest you to note, I drafted a list of Igbo proverbs which I needed you to break down or translate into your unique style of English grammar that made you a famous wordsmith.
Besides, and most dear to me, it was an opportunity to have a memorable handshake and perhaps draw from your profound fountain of knowledge, and possibly engage you in a question and answer session, the way a child engages his father with innocence. That would have been a life changing experience for me! After all, the same ambush paid off for me at the same event where I had the privilege of a memorable handshake with your literary contemporaries like Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, J.P Clark, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Ken Saro-Wiwa, etc.
The first time I laid my hands on your first novel Things Fall Apart, I was engrossed with the style, choice of words and the overall simplicity of language that I felt so reluctant to let go. I am yet to read a novel that holds a reader spell bound. Subsequently, I read No Longer At Ease, Arrow of God and the list goes on.
The books simply portray you as a master story teller yet to be equalled in our lifetime. They are always new and pristine any time you pick them up to read not minding how many times you have read them. Thank you for those great works because with them generations unborn have a veritable compass to locate their past.
I like Literature. It was one of my favourite subjects in my college days. Reading your famous books ornamented my appreciation of literature to say the least. Your books led me into discovering many other African Writer’s Series books published by Heinemann like Weep Not Child by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, The Narrow Path by Elechi Amadi, etc. However, while sharing a thought with a friend over a certain issue of national interest, we slipped into a sudden reflection over your life on sighting a documentary on you on a local television station.
You may not have lived a perfect life before God, the sole arbiter of life on earth, but in our society today where it seems every man has got a price, you vehemently refused to put your conscience up for sale. Your life on earth has once again proved that what is most fulfilling in life is to live an exemplary life of integrity. All the elegies, eulogies, encomiums and ululations pouring in for you is not because of your vaunted riches either in cash stashed away in Swiss banks or property scattered across the length and breadth of the globe, but because of your moral rectitude.
Simply put, you refused to be bought because your conscience remained priceless. You are one of the few whose material possessions, if any, could not be traced to the nation’s wealth. All you possessed in material wealth came via your God given talent; your creativity and sparkling brilliance.
Right from your elementary school days where one of your mentors recognized the star that resides in your small fragile frame, you never betrayed either in logical reasoning or moral intelligence his prophetic vision, thus putting the lie to the Chinese proverb, “When men speak of the future, the gods laugh”.
Ever since your painful demise, the world and especially the literary community have continued to rue the vacuum you have left. More so, they have been buffeted by worries over who fills the big shoes you have left behind. I have chosen to be sceptical. Did you actually leave any shoes behind? Methinks you became so disappointed and disenchanted with us that you took them away.
Personally, I feel if there is anything to worry about it is how we as citizens and leaders should appropriate your exemplary life in a society that has bought the franchise to canonize rogues and reprobates as leaders; a society that has been initiated into the cult of money, obsessed with the material, and is incurably corrupt. You were not the most intelligent in a nation so blessed with quality human resources. But what stood you out were your uncommon candour and courage and your principled refusal not to ingratiate yourself to the powers that be.
I am very sure you must have heard about the debate going on ad nauseam to immortalise you by this same group who have refused to adhere to your advice on good leadership. It has got me thinking what on earth they would come up with that would supersede the monumental timeless works which has made you a global icon.
At a youthful age of 28 when most of those in that age bracket today are still ‘sagging’ their trousers, you wrote your most celebrated novel Things Fall Apart which has etched your name into the hearts of humanity. In life you rejected their tainted National Honours Award several times. In death I doubt if you are still interested because your back-to-sender body language depicts a polite NO, except if they decide to change their corrupt ways which had been your homily.
Your wisdom gave you some prophetic element very rare with mortals. You predicted the fall of the First Republic in your fourth novel, A Man of the People. Shortly after the publication of The Trouble with Nigeria, whereupon you sounded alarm bells of danger about corrupt leadership being our bane, there was a military coup that overthrew the civilian government in 1983.
One is tempted to slip into a vortex of ‘ifs’ at a quick glance of your life. Probably if not for bad leadership, you would not have been driven out of politics in your first attempt at joining Mallam Aminu Kano-led PRP. If not for bad leadership the fatal accident that nearly claimed your life could have been avoided. And if not for bad leadership, may be you would have lived longer. Who knows?
You decided to fall asleep when our leadership crisis leaves a sick feeling in the pit of everybody’s stomach. At a time you chose to release your last true life story, There was a Country, recounting in it the avoidable mistakes that led us to the bloodiest civil war ever, we are witnessing similar scenario which made the majority of your kinsmen and women and their children, daily victims of ethnic cleansing. Could all these have hastened your demise? Would you have tarried a while if there was an inkling of hope of better leadership? Maybe you felt you had exhausted all you were sent to deliver to us mortals and it was time to go?
Permit me to capture in your own words, using a popular Igbo proverb, the manner and style in which you have chosen to take your leave in Arrow of God, “The stranger will not kill his host with his visit, when he goes may he not go with a swollen back”. Well, if your ‘chi’ has invited you over to reunite with your ancestors, who are we to question Him? Go well Chinua! We will miss you!
However, enjoy our own modest way of saying thank you for what you brought for us. I trust this letter meets you well as you rest in the bosom of your creator. Ijeoma, Adieu!
•Opara is a media consultant with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Abuja.
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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.
Source: PM News
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
Nigeria records 55 new COVID-19 infections, total now 165,110
Military, Police Ring Abuja to Forestall Boko Haram Attack
UFC: Usman gets N584m after beating Masvidal
Insecurity: Lagos bans occupation of abandoned buildings
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