Author: Noel Ihebuzor

Development and policy analyst with a strong interest in the arts and inclusive social change. Dabbles occasionally into poetry and literary criticism!
Posted in Politics, Prose

If good news gives you a bad headache, then you need APC

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel Ihebuzor

Rejoice with the good, celebrate the positive and come away from criticism for criticism’s sake. It is sterile and cheap – a plea for sense and moderation.

  1. The attitude of the APC leadership to the military campaigns in the North East is baffling and appears unpatriotic.
  2. APC leadership appears to rejoice at news of any reversals or loss of men/territory/weaponry by our military.
  3. Elements of this party leadership mocked and teased the military and the presidency over the debacle that was the failed cease fire.
  4. Recall that the ceasefire was conceived primarily to ease suffering and to explore solutions to the insurgency, not to score political points.
  5. The same party leadership guffawed when the attempt to purchase arms through SA failed. The weapons were to improve the operational efficiency of the military.
  6. Improving the operational efficiency of the military was meant to help the military quickly degrade the BH, not about elections.
  7. The military has now acquired new weaponry, morale is on the rise and battle tide has turned and the APC leadership is unhappy.
  8. The APC leadership now accuses the military and the presidency of politics. They claim the timing of these military gains is political.
  9. What is the APC leadership telling Nigerians? That they prefer Nigerian territory to remain under insurgent control till after the elections?
  10. That they prefer Nigerian men and women who have suffered to continue to suffer till after the elections? That they put electoral ambitions ahead of consideration of the emotional health, safety and security of Nigerians?
  11. These are the messages that the APC leadership is sending out to Nigerians, wittingly or unwittingly.
  12. Such messages are clearly unpatriotic. Please let us all rejoice with our troops who are liberating territories.
  13. Let us salute the gallantry of the military. The sacrifices they make go beyond petty politics.
  14. Certain things go beyond politics and it requires a large heart, decency, dignity and patriotism to see and appreciate such.
  15. Where good news about your country consistenlty gives you a bad headache, then something is definitely wrong – some debilitating conditions present in this way! Time to seek help as neither APC nor Codeine nor Paracetamol can provide any lasting cure.
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Essays from exile: The oporoko chronicles

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Ikhide writes again! A good read!

Ikhide R. Ikheloa's avatarPa Ikhide

for you Mrs. C!
Princess of  the Earl of Sandwich!
Your eyes are teasing me again…

I am hungry. Very hungry. And hunger drives my brain cells to a certain point of brilliance, that hell-nirvana that my adversaries, and quite a few friends, call stark raving, certified lunacy. And as always happens when hunger places my growling stomach under house arrest, I commence esoteric ruminations, thinking deeply profound thoughts, or as my detractors would say, hallucinating. I am wondering for instance, when will Chinua Achebe, the world’s greatest writer of all times, get the Nobel Prize for discovering the Internet? Achebe lives! Yes, when will that brooding god of the white man’s letters sue the United States Government for stealing his ideas about a world without boundaries? Achebe lives! It is a poorly kept secret that Chinua Achebe discovered the Internet but the white man took credit for it. Achebe…

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#Nigeria National Security Adviser “Not Very Optimistic” about #Chibok Girls

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Sambo on National security and more

Max Siollun's avatarMax Siollun’s Website

The Nigerian National Security Adviser (NSA) Lt-Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retired) was spoke at Chatham House in London last week, in much publicised comments. Although Dasuki usually keeps a low profile he spoke frankly about many issues relating to Nigeria’s upcoming elections next month and the security threat posed by Boko Haram. Highlights from the NSA’s talk and answers to questions from the audience:

  • He said that Nigeria will develop a new civil-military relations doctrine; to redefine how the military relates to the public – especially in areas where it conducts counter-insurgency operations. The military needs to move doctrinally from conventional warfare to asymmetric warfare. Nigeria has created a National Counter-Terrorism Center.
  • He admitted that there have been “historical deficits” in the military; including the fact that the last significant weapons procurement for the Nigerian military was over two decades ago.
  • He said his office will present a counter-insurgency narrative…

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Buhari’s Speech at Chatham House (Full Video and Full Text)

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

well rehearsed speech, interesting for what the speech writers included but more interesting for what they excluded!

Max Siollun's avatarMax Siollun’s Website

Topic:

“Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Africa: Nigeria’s Transition”

http://newsrescue.com/watch-read-gen-buharis-full-speech-chatham-house-video-text/#axzz3SrfHu1aX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNiKgdhYcKI

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Posted in BIBLICAL EXEGESIS, Prose

Wishing you a Wonderful Valentine Day

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

14 February, A Special Day dedicated to Love, a badly needed commodity in our present day world where petty ambitions, greed, short-termism, myopia, concupiscence, materialism, commercialism, ethnicity and all forms of bigotry conspire to strangle all the vestiges of this decent emotion called LOVE in all of us, and to dessicate us and to make us hollow and hollowing men and women. A world without love celebrates the triumph of sterility, hopelessness, emotional drought, angst, social disconnect in manners that remind us of portions of TS Eliot’s “WASTELAND” or Bob Dylan’s “A hard Rain a-gonna fall” – and this is the general direction of our drift in a world now marked increasingly by impersonality, indifference, violence, anonymity and consumerism – all of this because of the death of true love

Without Love, we are thus nothing. Let us then commit today to rediscover, to reinvent, to refresh and reactivate LOVE in each of our individual lives, to show it to all around us, to share it with all we meet and to convert this world to a beautiful peaceful garden filled and blessed with LOVE, a garden in perpetual bloom and blossom, where harmony becomes the background rhythm that inspires, challenges and animates all humanity. As economists and public policy experts would tell us, LOVE is one of those items whose sharing and consumption are non-rival in nature. The quantity of LOVE in the world does not decrease the more you share it with people – rather it increases!
Share LOVE today. Happy Valentine Day……and just to remind us all what love is, here is a link line to one its best descriptions in the new testament of the Christian scriptures. I have also printed it out in full for friends who may not have internet connection. It is a beautiful passage, worth committing to memory and to be called up in each of life’s encounters . One amazing feature of love is this – Love never ends.
The Way of Love
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Beautiful passage! Now apply it! Go on, show some love today. Share some love today – I mean real love, not those narcissistic and self serving displays we often call Love. Real love involves giving “a la Mother Theresa”. It demands the control and domestication of our impulses and the recognition of the needs and interests of others. Real love involves sharing and caring. It involves the recognition of a shared humanity with others, a shared humanity which then makes us see God in the faces and needs of those around us. To love is to sacrifice. It is to give in humility and to find love and joy in so giving and helping others to grow, to self actualize, to bloom and to blossom.
Go on, share and show some love today – to your spouse, your partner, your children, your family, your neighbours, your parents, your colleagues etc.. The world will be hapier because you did.
Noel
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The Sociology of Why People Don’t Believe Science

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Dr Zuleyka Zevallos's avatarThe Other Sociologist

The Art of Knight JJ, via TumblrThe Art of Knight JJ, via Tumblr

This the story of how sociology can improve public science. I discuss the social science research explaining why some sections of the general public resist research evidence. As some of you know, I’m one of around 20 Moderators who run Science on Google+. Our Community is managed by practising scientists and our membership includes researchers as well as members of the public who are interested in science. I run the Social Science stream (along with Chris Robinson who created the Community). Our Community aims to improve the quality of science posts and public outreach, by connecting the public to real scientists. This week, we celebrated the fact that our Community has grown to 200,000 members. The Community receives numerous posts each day. We want to move discussion away from people sharing their personal opinions on “fluff” science pieces that often end…

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Buharists And Their Stockholm Syndrome – BY KENNEDY EMETULU

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

A useful read for all Buharists

Sayelba Times's avatarSayelba Times

First, let me quickly make an apology. I apologize for using the term “Buharists” to describe those invested in voting for General Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election if he is presented as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

First, let me quickly make an apology. I apologize for using the term “Buharists” to describe those invested in voting for General Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election if he is presented as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I make the apology duly noting that those who are opposed to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan and a lot of who are Buhari supporters have taken to describing those in support of Jonathan’s reelection derogatorily as “Jonathanians”, especially in social network exchanges
.

Kennedy Emetulu

I mean, it is not in doubt that if you open a Buhari supporter’s dictionary, a Jonathanian is that…

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Davis, Boko Haram, El Rufai, APC, Northern Elders vs Ihejirika

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Henry Omoregie's avatar

JONATHANS PREZZY ORTHERN ELEM

FACT: Ihejirika was NOT sacked as Chief of Army Staff. He was RETIRED after his mandatory service years elapsed just like IGP Abubakar…Danbazzau was the sacked COAS just before Ihejirika (and he – Danbazzau- was said to be unhappy about his removal) SEE ‘’ Dambazzau who was relieved from his position while attending a conference in New York and is said to have expressed anger over the way and manner he was fired. He has a long list of followers among soldiers of Northern extraction.’’ http://www.pointblanknews.com/News/os3912.html

FACT: The Boko Haram witnessed today is different from the one headed by the Late Yusuf of the Yusifiya sect, said to have been bankrolled by Ali Modu Sheriff for his political advantage… till date, whether he likes it or not, the Boko Haram ” tag” has stuck on Sheriff who a few weeks ago left the APC to PDP after 15 years in…

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