Chimera.

GEJ and co need to read the constitution as Reno Omokri keeps crowing on Twitter!

So are groups of people from the Niger Delta going to be discriminated against, and prevented from associating and moving around the Federal Republic Of Nigeria?

Nigerian Constitution - Fundamental Rights:

Fundamental Rights

33. Right to life.
34. Right to dignity of human persons.
35. Right to personal liberty.
36. Right to fair hearing.
37. Right to private and family life.
38. Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
39. Right to freedom of expression and the press.
40. Right to peaceful assembly and association.
41. Right to freedom of movement.
42. Right to freedom from discrimination.

Source: http://www.nigeria-law.org/ConstitutionOfTheFederalRepublicOfNigeria.htm

The audience may have been wider than Boko Haram,

Gbawe:

My brother, God bless you OOO !!! They say we are "bitter" messengers. Can they at least inspect and comment on the message as reponsible citizens awake to their civic duties? The fact is that this is happening too much lately and the NPF is now being used to deny Nigerians their fundamental rights. those who speak here attacking me simply have no adult concept of how it could you or me tomorrow !!! Go to other Nigerian forums and discussion blogs, you will see they have varied and balanced perspectives . It is only nairaland many will prefer attacking and witchhunting individuals instead of facing the serious issue under discussion .

I am Voodoo Doll of NairaLand and I endorse this message!

Interesting development, Obviously organised as the Police stayed away,

I'm not sure they would have marched in Lagos with AK47s without incident though.  But all this people chanting and daring Boko Haram is not funny.  If Boko Haram hits Lagos, it is innocent Northerners who are probably more Lagosians than anything else that will be hurt.  With Northerners retaliating up North. - I suppose we will then all count our dead after that.

Armed Nigeria militia marches through largest city

By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press – 3 hours ago 

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The armed militia marched unstopped through Nigeria's largest city, firing shotguns and rifles in the air in what they called a protest against a radical Muslim sect responsible for killings across the oil-rich country.

The demonstration Thursday by members of the Oodua People's Congress highlighted the growing sense of insecurity and widening distrust among Nigeria's more than 160 million people and its major ethnic groups. Men armed with shotguns, rifles and machetes freely roamed the streets of Lagos without a sign of police, while passers-by shouted that their region of Nigeria should be protected — rather than the country as a whole.

"We don't want them to fight here in our Lagos because Lagos is for everybody, not for Yoruba alone, but for everybody," said Chief Orebiyi Ebenezer, a militia leader. "We need peace here in Lagos."

The Oodua People's Congress is a militia made up of Nigeria's Yoruba ethnic group, which dominates the country's southwest. The party takes its name from Oduduwa, the ancestor of the Yoruba race, and formed after military ruler Ibrahim Babangida annulled a presidential election in 1993 that many believe a wealthy Yoruba businessman won.

The group evolved into a quasi-political organization and likely receives the implicit support of major politicians in the region, though its members have been implicated in political violence and thuggery. Rumors abound in Nigeria's southwest that the group maintains a stockpile of firearms in a country where those weapons are strictly regulated by law, if not practice.

Those rumors appeared true as about 100 armed members riding in minibuses and marching by foot came into Lagos on Thursday, home to 15 million people. They fired long rifles and locally made shotguns into the air, unstopped by police as they ended up at Teslim Balogun Stadium, which hosted FIFA's Under-17 World Cup in 2009.

Leke Akintayo, a militia leader, said their protest was a show of force against Boko Haram, a Muslim sect in Nigeria's northeast that has killed at least 388 people this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The group also claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria's capital Abuja as part of its campaign for the implementation of strict Shariah law across the nation.

[b]"We OPC, we still exist," Akintayo said. "They should not fall (under) our hand. ,  This is our father's land."
He added: "We are going to retaliate if there is any bomb blast hitting any place. We are ready for them. Anytime, any moment."
[/b]How the group would retaliate remains unclear, but Lagos remains a melting pot city for Nigeria's more than 250 ethnic groups. At risk would be those belonging to the Hausa Fulani ethnic group, Muslims who dominate the country's north.

Such ethnic-based violence remains all too common in Nigeria. Since the nation became a democracy in 1999, tens of thousands have died in communal violence that cuts across religious and ethnic lines, but often takes root in political or economic issues.
Different groups in Nigeria's south have claimed they would fight Boko Haram if the government fails to stop the group, including militants in the country's oil-rich and restive Niger Delta. However, Thursday's march represented the first time a militia took the street armed to display and threaten using force to end the violence.

That threat mixed with theater at one point as one man holding a pump-action shotgun walked by journalists and said in Yoruba: "Should we shoot it for you?" He racked a shell into the shotgun and fired as he walked down the busy street filled with uniformed school children trying to get home.

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hHht6wYW4gGjdVctS3cVWtJmtVQg?docId=685e9eb0b0cb4d57a2d588432fa16a9e

Ribadu, Ribadu, Ribadu,

Have you been misquoted or do you really believe Boko Haram is simply "Change we can believe in"?

Boko Haram Are Rebels Who Want Change-Ribadu


Former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, has described Boko Haram as rebels who are fighting for a change in governance.

Ribadu who was also the presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the 2011 elections said that the world is gradually moving ahead and Nigeria should not be allowed to go down by acts of extremists.
“The emerging suicide bombers are rebels who are telling the nation that things are not right. So, it is time for us to wake up. This is the truth and the reality.”

“We have kept on talking about the likes of Sardauna of Sokoto, Tafawa Balewa and the rest of them because they did good job, they taught you people who are today our fathers and they left you with the responsibility to continue with the good work, some of you indeed carried it and did it very well.”


“We have learnt from you and we believe it is also our challenge today to continue with what you people have started,” he added.

“Today, it is a modern world. Today it is a different world. It is not the world of 1950s or 1960s; things have changed. Please, let us take note of that. Let us understand that this world we are talking about today is a different one.”


“We have new challenges, modern things, difficulties that require modern and new approach and solutions. This generation of young Northerners are asking for opportunity and chance for them to also play their own role, listen to them and give them chance,” Ribadu charged.


Source: http://pointblanknews.com/new/exclusive/3219-boko-harama-are-rebels-who-want-change-ribadu.html

Well, the perpetrators and their co-planners will only get three years in jail if caught. Human life is cheap in Nigeria as testified by our rulers behaviour.

God look after us all, as it appears that there are no Angels left in Nigeria.

lol

Kedụ

So who's winning so far? An interesting development.

In my opinion, the powers that be at the centre seem to be afraid of Nigeria breaking up.

State police may lead to regional armies that could challenge the Army.  The Army does not like being challenged and wants to be able to topple civilian administrations whenever it feels like it.

Imagine state police being in force with a regional charismatic leader in charge of a zone.  Arms could be imported under the "state police" excuse/licence with training carried out surreptitiously. Any army man that wants to plot a coup will have to add another dimension.  His work would be doubled as all of a sudden the police force go from a "known" factor to an unknown quantum.

In addition to the above elections at the local government and state level could be harder to conduct as local champions may resist change.

State police will mean: Today it is LASTMA/KIA but tomorrow who knows!

^^^^^^

Best of luck and may you reap the rewards of your hard work.

Keep your Nairaland family informed of your progress, Hopefully we will get to toast your success or at least make you Nairaland's Business Person of 2015!!!

@ Slimyem,

This is Nigeria.  Make friends with the hospital staff, bring them gifts. Smile at them, ask them friendly questions.  Ask after their health.  - All things you should not have to do but, at least your family member may have a better chance.

I have been in private hospitals, where the same staff member cleaning the toilet will wear a nurses uniform and walk into the operating theatre.  I have seen private hospital rooms where I had to clean the room and bath after a nurse claimed to have cleaned it. But you laugh with them, ask them nice questions until your family member leaves.  The hospitals I am talking about are top hospitals in Lagos where people pay serious money.

If you do agidi for them, you may win the agidi but hurt your family member.

New earth-like planet discovered by NASA spacecraft

http://www.space.com/12915-habitable-alien-planet-hd-85512b-super-earth.html

More than 50 new alien planets — including one so-called super-Earth that could potentially support life — have been discovered by an exoplanet-hunting telescope from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

@ Katsumoto.

Your posts are very interesting. Would you and (fellow historians like you) mind opening a reference thread where people can read up on Nigeria's pre and near independence history?

Funny how things that can make the lives of everyday Nigerians better never actually get implemented. Just promises, promises,

But cassava bread, fuel subsidy removal, gay lynching laws etc are passed and approved with immediate effect!

Arab Spring possible in Nigeria, says Obasanjo

Nigeria faces unrest, unless jobs are provided for youths, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said.
According to him, the unrest that happened in the Arab world this year is likely here, if there is disconnect between the government and the people.
Obasanjo spoke yesterday in Abeokuta at a workshop entitled: “Economic diversification and revenue generation”, organised by the government of Ogun State in conjunction with the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).
Obasanjo also canvassed for the diversification of the revenue base from oil.
According to him, the mass civil protests against governments in Arab nations (Arab Spring) happened because there was a “disconnect” between the “economic growth” and “employment generation” in those countries.
He advised the government to pay attention to “agriculture and agric-business as tools for employment generation” for the growing army of the unemployed.
Obasanjo said: “It doesn’t matter which way you look at it today. People are now talking of Arab Spring. Some people will say, ‘Is Egypt not developing?’ On economic scale, after South Africa, it is Egypt in Africa. Has Libya not got resources?
“At one time with a population of about five million, Libya was producing as much oil as Nigeria was producing. But there was still discontent because, yes, in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it may be growing well, but in terms of employment generation, there is disconnect.
“That is one of the elements that led to the Arab Spring. There are others, but let me take this one that is relevant to our discussion today. If this is the case, agriculture and agricultural business is important.”
The former President urged financial institutions, large scale farmers, small and medium scale farmers, researchers, retailers and distributors and governments to get involved in agric-business and agriculture to create jobs and food to enhance “national security and stability”.
He said: “We have been sharing resources from one commodity, which is oil. The only thing left is for us to be drinking oil, but we have it intoxicating us. We have been using oil as a means of uniting the country, developing and ensuring peace as well as the stability of the country.”
Obasanjo underscored the importance of exploring the four areas of generating revenue at both state and federal levels.
He said Nigeria’s population is large enough to satisfy the basic needs of the country if the four areas could be effectively explored.
“The commitment and passion for what people do matters in whatever success they want to achieve.
“No other means alone can give us food, except agriculture, and without food, there is no life. The population is increasing on a daily basis and we cannot do without food.
“We must first of all satisfy our need for food security and take it as a serious business in revenue generation and allocation.”
Mr Elias Mbam, the RMAFC Chairman, said the workshop is to enlighten stakeholders on alternative means of generating revenue.
Mbam said the commission is determined to sensitise the three tiers of government to shift focus from oil to other avenues of generating wealth.
Director-General, Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) Otunba Olusegun Runsewe described the workshop as timely and of utmost importance.
Runsewe said the nation will generate more resources from tourism, if the sector is well integrated into the national economy.
He reiterated NTDC’s determination to use cultural festivals as veritable means of generating funds and development.

Source:http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/28791-arab-spring-possible-in-nigeria-says-obasanjo.html

Hammock

Crashing

What want?

Thanks, keep the updates coming if you can and best of luck.

Why are the pictures of Obudu Cattle Ranch always devoid of people, or is it just the pictures?

^^^^

Interesting, so does the "training" count as part of your equity cash prize?

What happens if you are unable to attend the training because you have a business to run?

Ahmadu Bello was a tribalist. That much is backed by that video.

Nothing wrong with being "pro-your people -merit permitted" but to do so at the extent of pushing or pulling other people down is wrong!

Late entry:

Hall of Fame:
Patience Goodluck : For standing by her man despite her lack of diction and single handedly destroying opposition slogans with her Umblella

Hall of Shame:
Patience Goodluck : For destroying the english language, running ahead of her husband when disembarking from planes in foreign lands and refusing to learn English or speak in her native tongue despite being in national prominence for at least 5 years now.

My Biafran Eyes
By Okey Ndibe August 2007

Source: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/386/my_biafran_eyes_1/#.Ttuo5X2fbUQ.facebook


My first glimpse into the horror and beauty that lurk uneasily in the human heart came in the late 1960s courtesy of the Biafran War. Biafra was the name assumed by the seceding southern section of Nigeria. The war was preceded—in some ways precipitated—by the massacre of southeastern (mostly Christian) Igbo living in the predominantly northern parts of Nigeria.
Thinking back, I am amazed that war’s terrifying images have since taken on a somewhat muted quality. It requires sustained effort to recall the dread, the pangs of hunger, the crackle of gunfire that once made my heart pound. It all now seems an unthreatening fog.
~~~
As Nigeria hurtled towards war, my parents faced a difficult decision: to flee, or stay put. We lived in Yola, a sleepy, dusty town whose streets teemed with Muslims in flowing white babariga gowns. My father was then a postal clerk; my mother a teacher. In the end, my father insisted that Mother take us, their four children, and escape to safety in Amawbia, my father’s natal town. Mother pleaded with him to come away as well, but he would not budge. He was a federal civil servant, and the federal government had ordered all its employees to remain at their posts.

The area’s Muslim leader arrived at the spot. Uninfected by the malignant thirst for blood, he vowed that no innocent person would be dealt death on his watch.

My mother didn’t cope well in Amawbia. In the absence of my father, she was a wispy and wilted figure. She despaired of ever seeing her husband alive again. Our relatives made gallant efforts to shield her, but news about the indiscriminate killings in the north still filtered to her. She lost her appetite. Day and night, she lay in bed in a kind of listless, paralyzing grief. She was given to bouts of impulsive, silent weeping.
Then one blazing afternoon, unheralded, my father materialized in Amawbia, stole back into our lives as if from the land of death itself.
“Eliza o! Eliza o!” a relative sang. “Get up! Your husband is back!”
At first, my mother feared that the returnee was some ghost come to mock her anguish. But, raising her head, she glimpsed a man who—for all the unaccustomed gauntness of his physique—was unquestionably the man she’d married. With a swiftness and energy that belied her enervation, she bolted up and dashed for him.
We would learn that my father’s decision to stay in Yola nearly cost him his life. He was at work when one day a mob arrived. Armed with cudgels, machetes and guns, they sang songs that curdled the blood. My father and his colleagues—many of them Igbo Christians—shut themselves inside the office. Huddled in a corner, they shook uncontrollably, reduced to frenzied prayers. One determined push and their assailants would have breached the barricades, poached and minced them, and made a bonfire of their bodies.
The Lamido of Adamawa, the area’s Muslim leader, arrived at the spot just in the nick. A man uninfected by the malignant thirst for blood, he vowed that no innocent person would be dealt death on his watch. He scolded the mob and shooed them away. Then he guided my father and his cowering colleagues into waiting vehicles and spirited them to the safety of his palace. In a couple of weeks, the wave of killings cooled off and the Lamido secured my father and the other quarry on the last ship to leave for the southeast.
~~~
Air raids became a terrifying staple of our lives. Nigerian military jets stole into our air space, then strafed with abandon. They flew low and at a furious speed. The ramp of their engines shook buildings and made the very earth quake.
“Cover! Everybody take cover!” the adults shouted and we’d scurry towards a huddle of banana trees or the nearest brush and lay face down.
Sometimes the jets dumped their deadly explosives on markets as surprised buyers and sellers dashed higgledy-piggledy. Sometimes the bombs detonated in houses. Sometimes it was cars trapped in traffic that were sprayed. In the aftermath, the cars became mangled metal, singed beyond recognition, the people in them charred to a horrid blackness. From our hiding spots, frozen with fright, we watched as the bombs tumbled from the sky, hideous metallic eggs shat by mammoth mindless birds.
The jets tipped in the direction of our home and released a load. The awful boom of explosives deafened us. My stomach heaved; I was certain that our home had been hit.
One day, my siblings and I were out fetching firewood when an air strike began. We threw down our bundles of wood and cowered on the ground, gaping up. The jets tipped in the direction of our home and released a load. The awful boom of explosives deafened us. My stomach heaved; I was certain that our home had been hit. I pictured my parents in the rumble of smashed concrete and steel. We lay still until the staccato gunfire of Biafran soldiers startled the air, a futile gesture to repel the jets. Then we walked home in a daze, my legs rubbery, and found that the bombs had missed our home, but only narrowly. They had detonated at a nearby school.
~~~
At each temporary place of refuge, my parents tried to secure a small farmland. They sowed yam and cocoyam and also grew a variety of vegetables. We, the children, scrounged around for anything that was edible, relishing foods that in less stressful times would have made us retch.
One of my older cousins was good at making catapults, which we used to hunt lizards. We roasted them over fires of wood and dried brush and savored their soft meat. My cousin also set traps for rats. When his traps caught a squirrel or a rabbit, we felt providentially favored. Occasionally he would kill a tiny bird or two, and we would all stake out a claim on a piece of its meat.
While my family was constantly beset by hunger, we knew many others who had it worse. Biafra teemed with malnourished kids afflicted with kwashiorkor that gave them the forlorn air of the walking dead. Their hair was thin and discolored, heads big, eyes sunken, necks thin and scrawny, their skin wrinkly and sallow, stomachs distended, legs spindly.
As they ransacked the house, they kept my father closely in view. Then they took him away.
Like other Biafrans, we depended on food and medicines donated by such international agencies as Catholic Relief and the Red Cross. Sometimes I accompanied my parents on trips to relief centers. The food queues, which snaked for what seemed like miles—a crush of men, women, children—offered less food than frustration as there was never enough to go round. One day, I saw a man crumble to the ground. Other men surrounded his limp body. As they removed him, my parents blocked my sight, an effete attempt to shield me from a tragedy I had already fully witnessed.
Some unscrupulous officers of the beleaguered Biafra diverted food to their homes. Bags of rice, beans and other foods, marked with a donor agency’s insignia, were not uncommon in markets. The betrayal pained my father. He railed by signing and distributing a petition against the Biafran officials who hoarded relief food or sold it for profit.


The petition drew the ire of the censured officials; the signatories were categorized as saboteurs. To be tagged a saboteur in Biafra was to be branded with a capital crime. A roundup was ordered. One afternoon, some grave-looking men arrived at our home. They snooped all over the house. They turned things over. They pulled out papers and pored over them, brows crinkled half in consternation, half in concentration. As they ransacked the house, they kept my father closely in view. Then they took him away.
Father was detained for several weeks. I don’t remember that our mother ever explained his absence. It was as if my father had died. And yet, since his disappearance was unspoken, it was as if he hadn’t.
Then one day, as quietly as he had exited, my father returned. For the first—and I believe last—time, I saw my father with a hirsute face. A man of steady habits, he shaved everyday of his adult life. His beard both fascinated and frightened me. It was as if my real father had been taken away and a different man had returned to us.
This image of my father so haunted me that, for many years afterwards, I flirted with the idea that I had dreamed it. It was only ten years ago, shortly after my father’s death, that I broached the subject with my mother. Yes, she confirmed, my father had been arrested during the war. And, yes, he’d come back wearing an unaccustomed beard.
~~~
Father owned a small transistor radio. It became the link between our war-torn space and the rest of the world. Every morning, as he shaved, my father tuned the radio to the British Broadcasting Corporation, which gave a more or less objective account of Biafra’s dwindling fortunes. It reported Biafra’s reverses, lost strongholds and captured soldiers as well as interviews with gloating Nigerian officials. Sometimes a Biafran official came on to refute accounts of lost ground and vow the Biafrans’ resolve to fight to the finish.
Feigning obliviousness, I always planted myself within earshot, then monitored my father’s face, hungry to gauge his response, the key to decoding the news. But his countenance remained inscrutable. Because he monitored the BBC while shaving, it was impossible to tell whether winces or tightening were from the scrape of a blade or the turn of the war.
At the end of the BBC broadcasts, my father twisted the knob to Radio Biafra, and then his emotions came on full display. Between interludes of martial music and heady war songs, the official mouthpiece gave exaggerated reports of the exploits of Biafran forces. They spoke about enemy soldiers “flushed out” or “wiped out” by gallant Biafran troops, of Nigerian soldiers surrendering. When an African country granted diplomatic recognition to Biafra, the development was described in superlative terms, sold as the beginning of a welter of such recognitions from powerful nations around the globe. “Yes! Yes!” my father would exclaim, buoyed by the diet of propaganda. How he must have detested it when the BBC disabused him, painted a patina of grey over Radio Biafra’s glossy canvas.
~~~
In January 1970, after enduring the 30-month siege, which claimed close to two million lives on both sides, Biafra buckled. We had emerged as part of the lucky, the undead. But though the war was over, I could intuit from my parents’ mien that the future was forbidden. It looked every bit as uncertain and ghastly as the past.


Our last refugee camp abutted a makeshift barrack for the victorious Nigerian army. Once each day, Nigerian soldiers distributed relief material—used clothes and blankets, tinned food, powdery milk, flour, oats, beans, rice, such like. There was never enough food or clothing to go around, which meant that brawn and grit decided who got food and who starved. Knuckles and elbows were thrown. Children, the elderly, the feeble did not fare well in the food scuffles. My father was the sole member of our family who stood a chance. On good days, he squeaked out a few supplies; on bad days, he returned empty handed. On foodless nights, we found it impossible to work up enthusiasm about the cessation of war. Then, the cry of “Happy survival!” with which refugees greeted one another sounded hollow, a cruel joke.




Despite the hazards, we, the children, daily thronged the food lines. We operated around the edges hoping that our doleful expressions would invite pity. Too young to grasp the bleakness, we did not know that pity, like sympathy, was a scarce commodity when people were famished.
One day I ventured to the food queue and stood a safe distance away watching the mayhem, silently praying that somebody might stir with pity and invite me to sneak into the front. As I daydreamed, a woman beckoned to me. I shyly went to her. She was beautiful and her face held a wide, warm smile.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Okey,” I volunteered, averting my eyes.
“Look at me,” she said gently. I looked up, shivering. “I like your eyes.” She paused, and I looked away again. “Will you be my husband?”
Almost ten at the time, I was aware of the woman’s beauty, and also of a vague stirring inside me. Seized by a mixture of flattery, shame and shyness, I used bare toes to scratch patterns on the ground.
“Do you want some food?” she asked.
I answered with the sheerest of nods.
“Wait here.”
She went off. My heart pounded as I awaited her return, at once expectant and afraid. Back in a few minutes, she handed me a plastic bag filled with beans and a few canned tomatoes. I wanted to say my thanks, but my voice was choked. “Here,” she said. “Open your hand.” She dropped ten shillings onto my palm.
Too young to grasp the bleakness, we did not know that pity, like sympathy, was a scarce commodity when people were famished.
I ran to our tent, flush with exhilaration. As I handed the food and coin to my astonished parents, I breathlessly told them about my strange benefactor, though I never said a word about her comments on my eyes or her playful marriage proposal. The woman had given us enough food to last for two or three days. The ten shillings was the first post-war Nigerian coin my family owned. In a way, we’d taken a step towards becoming once again “Nigerian.” She’d also made me aware that my eyes were beautiful, despite their having seen so much ugliness.
~~~
Each day, streams of men set out and trekked many miles to their hometowns. They were reconnoiterers, eager to assess the state of life to which they and their families would eventually return. They returned with blistered feet and harrowing stories.
Amawbia was less than 40 miles away. By bus, the trip was easy, but there were few buses and my parents couldn’t afford the fare anyway. One day a man who’d traveled there came to our tent to share what he’d seen. His was a narrative of woes, except in one detail: My parents’ home, the man reported, was intact. He believed that an officer of the Nigerian army had used my parents’ home as his private lodgings. My parents’ joy was checked only by their informer’s account of his own misfortunes. He’d found his own home destroyed. Eavesdropping on his report, I imagined our home as a mythical island of order and wholesomeness ringed by overgrown copse and shattered houses.
The next day my father trekked home. He wanted to confirm what he’d heard and to arrange for our return. But when he got back, my mother let out a shriek then shook her head in quiet sobs. My father arrived in Amawbia to a shocking sight. Our house had been razed; the fire still smoldered, a testament to its recentness. As my father stood and gazed in stupefaction, the truth dawned on him: Some envious returnee, no doubt intent on equalizing misery, had torched it. War had brought out the worst in someone.
My parents had absorbed the shock of other losses. There was the death of a beloved grandaunt to sickness and of a distant cousin to gunshot in the battlefield. There was the impairment of another cousin who lost a hand. There was the loss of irreplaceable photographs, among them the images of my grandparents and of my father as a soldier in Burma during WWII. There was the loss of documents, including copies of my father’s letters (a man of compulsive fastidiousness, my father had a life-long habit of keeping copies of every letter he wrote). But this loss of our home cut to the quick because it was inflicted not by the detested Nigerian soldier but by one of our own. By somebody who would remain anonymous but who might come around later to exchange pleasantries with us, even to bemoan with us the scars left by war.
~~~
At war’s end, the Nigerian government offered 20 pounds to each Biafran adult. We used part of the sum to pay the fare for our trip home. I was shaken at the sight of our house: The concrete walls stood sturdily, covered with soot, but the collapsed roof left a gaping hole. Blackened zinc lay all about the floor. We squatted for a few days at the makeshift abode of my father’s cousins. Helped by several relatives, my father nailed back some of the zinc over half of the roof. Then we moved in.

This loss of our home cut to the quick because it was inflicted not by the detested Nigerian soldier but by one of our own.
The roof leaked whenever it rained. At night, rain fell on our mats, compelling us to move from one spot to another. In the day, shafts of sunlight pierced through the holes. But it was in that disheveled home that we began to piece our lives together again. We began to put behind us the terrors we had just emerged from. We started learning what it means to repair an inhuman wound, what it takes to go from here to there.

In time, my father was absorbed back into the postal service. My mother returned to teaching. We went back to school. The school building had taken a direct hit, so classes were kept in the open air. Even so, our desire to learn remained strong. At the teacher’s prompting, we rent the air, shouted the alphabet and yelled multiplication tables.

If the deadline was 2 weeks ago, how could they possibly have finished reading sooo many business plans.

Which company / companies were mobilsed to assess sooo many business plans. I am a natural cynic but maybe I am wrong.

Interesting list.

What is most interesting to me is the diversity of the names; that is Mr or Ms X from ethnic group Y but lives in area Z.

I did not partake in it but curious to know how it is going.

HALL OF FAME
CHINUA ACHEBE = For standing for and sticking to his principles when he rejected the National Merit award for the second time

Discussed on Nairaland: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-802649.0.html


HALL OF SHAME
Dr Reuben Abati = Former Senior Guardian executive, government critic and now GEJ's mouthpiece;

The shameful act is "selling out" although some may beg to differ.

Discussed on Nairaland: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-757453.0.html

Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN!) Second Stage Qualifiers

The Federal Government of Nigeria is delighted to announce that entry for the first stage of the YouWiN programme closed on November 25th,
2011, and the following candidates have been selected on merit to advance to the second stage of the competition. They will all be provided
with training in entrepreneurship at various locations across the 6 Geo-Political Zones: 

http://www.fmf.gov.ng/youwin/YouWINSecondRound.pdf

This doesn't bode well.