Posted in Uncategorized

Elnathan’s song: Born into a war on a boiling Tuesday

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Ikhide does a comprehensive review insightful, teasing and appetising.

Ikhide R. Ikheloa's avatarPa Ikhide

“Let your women study,’ Sheikh said, ‘and let them vote. Let them learn how to read. The wives of Christians read and write and our wives cannot even read the Quran. There is no sin if a man accompanies his wives to go and queue up to register or to vote.”

– Born on a Tuesday, Elnathan John p116

The writer Elnathan John is something of a celebrity renegade in the African literary scene. He rules the waves on social media, this eccentric and eclectic Twitter Overlord who sits perched on an imaginary throne, dispensing carefully crafted snarky but profound tweets that throb and seethe with controlled rage and truth, tweets that often develop lives of their own in the re-tweeting and re-telling, as they utilize the magic of the multiplier effect to replicate and go viral in infinite directions. Elnathan could probably make a nice living by allowing ads on his…

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Posted in Politics, Prose

Avoiding corrupting practices in anti-corruption campaigns

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

by

Noel Ihebuzor

Anti-corruption rhetoric and dramatics are now very popular in Nigeria. I totally support campaigns to rid this country of corruption but I also insist that such campaigns must carried with the right level of professionalism, detachment, neutrality, integrity and honesty. Anything short of these is plain dishonest. Anything short of these really amounts to the continued enthronement and celebration of corruption in efforts to combat it. where anti-corruption are not neutral, detached and honest, then they are likely to abuse their powers and influences, applying inconsistent rules and procedures in their treatment of persons and agencies. Double standards also represent critical threats to anti-corruption campaigns as they throw up different evaluations and reactions for the same behaviour. Such practices, where they occur, amount to corruption!

Here are a few reflections on this subject matter.

  • Double standards are outcomes of corrupt thinking. A nation of double standards will thus remain corrupt.
  • You cannot have one set of scales for persons in one party & another for persons in the other. Such a habit results from a corrupt mind set.
  • If you practice selective hysteria for allegations of corruption against persons in one party, then your mind is gradually being corrupted.
  • If you practice selective targeting in your campaigns against corruption, then your campaign is already steeped in corruption.
  • Anti-corruption practices must be fair. They must be conducted without any trace of favoritism or fear. Fail to do these and the campaign fails
  • To be credible, anti-corruptions must be consistent, even handed and transparent. They must be devoid of all forms of double standards.
Posted in Poetry

A song to the carnage on our roads

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel Ihebuzor

Dead vehicles
death trucks, worn,

worn out carriages
running like out of breath

breathless, brakeless bulls
Dead dying traps recycled,
running, trapped on death traps
pitted, pitiless,
groves worn
bald tyres on tired bald roads
crater laden, pot bellied pot holes
weeping uneven surfaces
where contraptions,
whipped, harried and hurried
by death wishing twitching
death defying
handlers bundle
the living to early departures
leaving wails,
twisted wheels, weeping metal
and tangled weals
of sorrow behind