Reflections and refractions
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. – Stephen Hawking. Something similar can be said about the greatest enemy of Nigerian development. It is not ignorance of the right pathway to sustainable development but the illusion that the pathway that we have chosen, this tired and tiring pathway that leads us nowhere is the right one.
How can a pathway that rewards mediocrity, that sacrifices excellence for quota and ultimately enthrones nepotism ever lead to development? Such a pathway only breeds indolence and an entitlement mentality plus an unjustified arrogance that always plays up whenever the less qualified are put ahead of the more qualified by the pursuit of foul, flawed and suspect social policies.
Excerpt from The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.
My thoughts?
When such moments happen, challenge your paralysis, take inertia by the throat and choke it. Never ever be an idle spectator at the unfolding spectacle of your demise. Leave that role to other stakeholders who have less at stake. Rather, choose that moment to live. Invoke your agency and combine your agency, self awareness and choice and use these as the energy to create, direct and act out a script you and the world will remember. Then, you will truly have lived and when you have left would still live on. Noel
Wise words
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. – Robert Frost
Yahoo-Yahoo is in!
Yahoo-Yahoo boys and girls have given yahoo a bad name and brand in Nigeria. They are bad news. They are scammers. They promise what they cannot deliver and what they never intended to deliver. They exploit their unsuspecting victims’ credulity. They take from their victims and run. And they feel no sense of guilt. They are amoral persons with atrophied souls and desiccated consciences. If you fall for their hollow phony lies and promises, then you are a mugu. Too bad for you. Typical ndi nwepu – they take and they run. They are like leeches – they stick on their victims and suck their blood..
Lately, public governance, politics and politicians are beginning to operate like Yahoo-yahoo. Promise but do not deliver. Politicians promise then they deny that they ever promised. The conned victim is made to look doubly foolish, someone claiming what never really transpired and someone anxious to blame innocent politicians and long suffering public servants for his/her laziness. Where is the world heading to? Who shall we believe? Who shall we turn to? Amadioha, why are you quiet? Ala, what happened to your legs and hands?
Reflection on the scriptures
Two Poems by Noel Ihebuzor
Poem 1 – What you saw
You say you saw
patterns heave and dance
you say you saw them
weave and leave
No one else says they saw
what you say you saw
just you with your diamond
periwinkle eyes
at the three quarter corner of night
when straggler angels
flee the light of the returning day
Yours was a vision
filled with emptiness
where bleached blankness
empties all other visions
hollowing vision and vision
Poem 2 – New Jungles
The jungle always
half dormant
wakes up and a new day
dawns, slowly
Sounds soon crowd out silence
prophets see dimly
but their rising voices
soon outdo agberos
In this space,
a life is worth
three sparrows
In this place,
men combine religion and region
creed with breed
in the service
of a contest fueled by need
and sustained by greed
Locked in their frenzied contest
the wrestlers have locked out sense
the present overwhelms the past
drowns the future
and yesterday’s smiles
wake up in today’s
tired sheets
Uncertain saints
self beatify, uncertain of outcomes
as uncertified foul odor
floods the present
overwhelms the air pregnant with hope
nourished by dope
while in stained corridors,
stunted elves dance and sway
waving a medley of signs and symbols
crescent, cross and stars
and I sensed I heard the moon howl
Predators now prance like Simba
the lion king
while their dibias cast
their charmed beads around legs, heads
hips, feet and heels held by hope
but fettered by dope
I Read Job to Be Reminded
This is just beautiful. My duet partner, Susan Daniels at one of her best! You can’t touch this!
It is not God I should accuse
but us:
We were not there
when You laid the foundation
when You set the cornerstone.
We are flawed
with our cracked clay feet,
unfit for keeping.
Fallen.
I read Job to understand awe:
We had no voices, yet
or throats,
when the stars sang
and the angels cried out
to learn God answers
questions
with more questions.
Worship is how we kneel
and admit it was not us
that laid the foundations,
that it is angels that shout
not us. Our brass tongues
clang discord
instead of sounding joy.
We have never ordered the morning
or shown the sunrise its place.
That smith of mountains
and mammoths
has more patience for us
than we for Him–
how we lose that path
over and over
in that hunt for things
we think we need.
We have not traveled
to the springs of the sea.
How we tear…
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A take on the ONNOGHEN Fiasco by Prof Chidi Odinkalu. Where is integrity?
Despite manifest incongruities in the official story-line concerning Buhari’s decision to remove the Chief Justice of Nigeria in Jan 2019, I was willing to suspend my disbelief & wait for govt to present evidence to support its claims of asset malfeasance in the OnnoghenTrial
When it launched its fevered campaign against the Chief Justice before the #OnnoghenTrial in the month before #NigeriaDecides2019, the govt claimed thro its hired hands that he had money running into Billions in multiple bank accounts & over 55 houses
Hired amplifiers were procured to skewer a man who could not defend himself. In the media, he was a thief, a rogue & much worse. Digital lynch mobs, many of them amplifier bots with transparent ends to serve created a mood music with a life of its own
#OnnoghenTrial
Given the opportunity to back up its claims, the govt’s case at the #OnnoghenTrial has turned out to be a despicable, venal fantasy. There were no billions, no 55 houses, no fantasy FOREX in make-believe domicillary accounts. A govt decided to make up lies against an innocent man
By way of a useful comparison based evidence from the #OnnoghenTrial, Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen, who has spent a lifetime in private legal practice & judicial public service, is much poorer than Yusuf Buhari who has just been “awarded” his #NYSC discharge certificate.
If the #OnnoghenTrial showed that the Chief Justice had anything like the assets the govt originally claimed, he’d surely have had a case to answer. Now it’s clear that was all made up, the govt has a burden to investigate & explain how it chose to mislead #Nigerians & the world
In the end, it’s difficult for the Buhari govt to escape the perception that it conspired to orchestrate #OnnoghenTrial because of personal animus towards the man related to his origins & to factors that had nothing to do with his performance on his job. Govts shd not do that.
The damage done by the buhari administration in the manner that it procured the #OnnoghenTrial will take more than a generation to address. This is more than about 1 man & his fate. If a govt can conspire to pervert institutions as it has done in this case, no one is safe!
*Professor Chidi Odinkalu*
“How do you solve a problem like Buhari?”
“How do you solve a problem like Buhari?” by Editi Effiong https://link.medium.com/KBrBIcBjeU
Reflections 