Word Monger

If Nigeria were to be a man, he would live in a one room wooden ramshackle in Gbondu waterfront in Port Harcourt, with no toilet, no ventilation, in a mud-filled and garbage littered pedestals that can not take even bicycle. Yet he would have a satellite dish hanging over his roof of rusty metal sheets and a hummer jeep parked out on the streets. A weird mixture of poverty and affluence is what you see all around you, under the bridge at Ojuelegba, you see families so poor even beggars call them poor. They can neither feed nor afford the rent of a single room even in the slums of Ajegunle. Their children, some of school age, roam the streets begging for alms in the heavy traffic, running after flashy luxury cars, often wound-up and driven by people living in high-brew areas such as Ikoyi and Lekki. This unhealthy cacophony of extreme poverty and flamboyance in our towns and cities all around the country is infuriating at the least, and can be attribut...

Nigerians from all parts of the country, across sectoral, cultural, religious and political divides are strongly against any form of separation or division of the federation. The scares of the Odumegwu Ojukwu led Biafra civil war is still very fresh in our memory. Insinuations recently by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi calling for a split of Nigerian into Christian south and Muslim north was largely seen as repulsive and condemnable. Federal government’s spontaneous reaction and recall of the Ambassador to Libya Alhaji Aliu Mohammed, was supported by both Christian and Muslim leaders. Obviously, Nigerians want to remain as one indivisible entity. However, there are calls for a sovereign national conference to bring about a truly federal constitution. Nigeria is regarded by a school of thought as a mere ‘geographical expression” of the British Colonial masters, brought about by the amalgamation of the north and south when leadership was conceded to the Muslim north under ...

It is a pity and indeed shameful that Bayelsans are busy fighting themselves while other States are pursing development with all vigour. The same thing happened during the Awolowo - cocoa era. While Awo was busy developing the West, other regions were busy engaging in political wrangling. Let us be wise and stop fighting. We should concentrate and seek ways of developing Bayelsa State. Presently, States like Lagos, Aqua Ibom, Cross Rivers, Enugu and some others are focused and are busy developing their towns and cities, and here we are busy fighting. The time will come again in future as it is now, when we have to give account of what we did with the resources available to us now. As usual with Nigerians, then, shall we again start putting the blame on the federal government? We have every opportunity now to move our people forward in the political, economical and fiscal arenas. I really pity us, because, I hear all kinds of degradating comments about how "we like en...