Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State has described the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state as darkness, saying that light must always triumph over darkness.
At his swearing in today for his second term in office, Governor Dickson promised to move the state forward even as he dedicated his victory at the poll to the people of the state, assuring them that he would not play politics with the security of the state. “My victory as governor is victory for the people; this administration will continue to sustain the existing security in the state. “We must stand for good governance and light must always triumph over darkness in Bayelsa.” The governor promised to complete the ongoing airport project and empower youths in the state, adding that the airport project was 80 per cent completed and that diversification of the state’s economy will also be his priority. “In the past four years, the state has witnessed transformation and we are ready to do more. “We will consolidate and expand security in the next four years; this victory is ours and I want us to build a strong synergy to accelerate development of Bayelsa. “I must say that my government is ready to work with the Federal Government in ensuring that the issue of kidnap and oil pipeline vandalism is properly checkmated. “My advice to our people is to steer clear of encouraging or covering-up criminal acts in the state and Niger-Delta region.” [myad]
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, has said that he was doing better as Vice President of Exxon Mobil West Africa than his current position as minister, but that God directed him to accept the position for the sake of the nation’s advancement.
Kachikwu said in Abuja today that Nigeria needed help to be able to secure its future and improve on the standard of living of Nigerians. “I believe that this country needs help. I believe that it is about time we began to perform for the young and upcoming. I believe that the sheer capacity of this country is unimaginable. “I do not know of any country in the world with our population, our resources, our intellect, our flamboyance, our family nexus, everything is together. The call to public service for me was unique. “I was Vice President of Exxon Mobil West Africa and I was suddenly called to serve. “In serving, I lose a lot of money, if not at least $1 million every year by virtue of being a minister. But the thing is: I am directed by the voice of God.” According to Kachikwu, the current economic crunch in Nigeria can be surmounted with the right leadership, adding that Nigerians would not feel the impact of the challenges posed by the drop in the price of oil if government properly harnessed other natural resources. “Everything in this country is together. The only thing that is not together is leadership and in God’s name, we are bound to change that. “In every little space that you have, and in my own case petroleum, you have to make an absolute change and so I am not worried about price of oil. It can be $5 for all I care. I am worried about the direction of the industry. I am worried about changing things the way they have never done before. I am worried about creating opportunities that exist. I am worried about improving the standards of living. I am worried about encouraging opportunities in the sector. “I am worried about opening up those opportunities that have existed for years.” Kachikwu, who is also the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), called on Nigerians to embrace the new philosophy of the present administration geared towards charting a new course for the country. [myad]
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria has asked priests not to be led into believing in the God of now now, and to avoid “market place prophecies and visions, charismatic display of talents and material salvation” The President of the Conference, Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, who spoke today in Abuja during the Catholic Bishops Conference at Our Lady Queen of Nigeria Pro-Cathedral asked the priests to shun worldliness and materialism. He charged them not to succumb to the temptation of importing unwanted doctrines that would promote personality and curry favour, saying: “We must not be frightened into believing in God of ‘now, now.’
“We should emphasize the need for sober Christianity without tricks, rhetoric, fanfare and the craze for social media publicity. All priests must not compete with trendy pastors to see visions and utter prophecies because they sometimes cause psychological disposition. “We should help people to interior conversion and attitudinal change.” Kaigama called on the Christian religious leaders to admonish Christians to pray ceaselessly and evangelize through genuine witnessing and not wooing people with material things or any form of moral coercion. “We must avoid melo-dramatic displays that look like modern broad-way shows. Catholic priests should avoid flamboyant spirituality and noisy liturgy and teach the people values of internalized prayers from the heart. “The gifts of speaking in tongues, miracle and prophecies are good as long as they are genuine.” Kaigama further urged Christians to help humanity in love to conquer poverty and narrow the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. “It is only when we engage in works of mercy in favour of the needy that we can hope for a stable, peaceful and safe world.” [myad]
The Federal Government, the World Bank, European Union, and the United Nations have concluded a two-week recovery and assessment mission in the Northeastern States that is ravaged by insurgency as part of its on-going Recovery and Peace Building Assessment (RPBA) programme.
Led by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Dr. Mariam Masha, the recovery and assessment team visited Adamawa, Taraba, Gombe, Bauchi, Borno and Yobe States during which the team actively engaged with State Governors, decision-makers as well as top government functionaries, Civil Society Organizations, Private Sector players, Traditional Rulers, the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Emergency Management, Humanitarian and Relief agencies and other active partners in the recovery efforts in the affected States.
A press release by the spokesman of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Laolu Akande, said that in the course of the tour of affected areas, the team visited several camps and resettlement centres for the IDPs in the different states as well as insurgency –ravaged public institutions like hospitals, markets and military formations.
The team, according to the statement, gained firsthand knowledge of human and physical conditions in the camps and resettlement centres affording them the opportunity to empathize with the people and also reassured them of the commitment of the Buhari administration towards addressing their challenges.
In furtherance of the importance of the recovery and assessment mission, the team’s top level engagements with relevant stakeholders centred on sector recovery and needs assessment strategy in the three major components of Infrastructure and social services, peace building, stability and social cohesion as well as the economic recovery of the affected people in the six States.
The field visit by the technical and humanitarian experts from these critical global institutions primarily focused on validating the processes through which data are to be collected and how to develop internationally acceptable mechanisms to maintain contact with focal points in all the States.
It would be recalled that the Federal Government had last month unveiled this assessment programme which is a joint, high-level collaboration between the Government of Nigeria and development partners – the World Bank, EU and the UN – aimed at supporting Government in its short, medium and long term efforts towards peace building and sustainable recovery in the North East region of the country.
It is a follow up to the agreements reached with the North-East states in respect of the sector and component work plans, data collection modalities and timelines and provision of quantitative and qualitative information by the States.
This assessment will also form the pivot for planning a broad-based public sector recovery programme for the NE, as well as leverage, synchronize and inform the financing initiatives and projects of Nigeria’s development partners, civil society organizations and private sector groups and organizations. [myad]
It was not only the governor of Kaduna State, Nasiru Ahmed El-Rufai who ever had the cause to predict that corruption would fight back as President Muhammadu Buhari declared war on corruption, but also the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu as well as many others. Indeed, if there is anything which has two devastating and sharp edges, it is corruption. Experience shows that not only the corruption is widespread, across to those people we think are clean, but is also multi dimensional when it wants to fight back. Many analysts sometimes innocently appear simplistic in their postulations about corruption fight back. What they mostly concentrate on is that corrupt people would use the huge funds they corruptly accumulated to buy gullible youths and willing media practitioners to fight back the government. But, the recent happenings have added a fresh dimension to the huge capacity of corruption not only to fight back but to confuse and embarrass the government and to throw it into disarray. First, strange and unbelievable as it sounded, was the missing from the Senate, of the budget proposal which President Buhari presented to the joint session of the National Assembly late last year. Just as the dust raised by such strange occurrence was settling down, another situation arose which portrays the budget as a fraudulent document, having been injected and poisoned with “errors, ambiguities and rampant cases of padding” by yet-to-be-identified smart Nigerians who are adept in such things in the past.
For the first time in the history of this country, ministers who came to defend their budgets were disowning figures read out by the lawmakers from the document submitted by the President. The first shock came from the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, who declared to the Senate Committee on Health that the ministry’s budget read by the committee was not the one drafted by him. According to Professor Adewole, the provision of the budget before the National Assembly was in contrast with the priorities of the health sector as contained in the original budget it prepared, adding that some of the votes earmarked by the ministry for some activities had been re-distributed while some important fields had been excluded. He declared: “In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation had been moved to other areas. Some allocations made are not in keeping with our priorities. There is nothing allocated to public health and family health. Over the last two years, nothing has been done on HIV. We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee. “This was not what we submitted. We’ll submit another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget. What we submitted is not there. We have not reached that stage and we find the money there.” Even the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed openly disowned the N398 million voted for the purchase of computers for the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB). He told the Senate Committee on Information that the N398 million was strange to him, saying: “No, that is not possible. That was definitely not what was proposed. This cannot be.” This was even as an official of the ministry said that only N5 million was proposed for the item in the original budget of the NFVCB. Beyond the ministries which had denied knowledge of the new figures inserted or deleted from their original budgetary allocations, the N6.08 trillion indicated as the total figure in the entire budget did not tally with the actual figure after auditing. The figures just didn’t add up. This led the lawmakers to insist that they would require more time to clear the budget proposal of all its ambiguities, errors and false figures smuggled into it. Yes, under normal disciplinary circumstance, those who were involved in the preparation of the 2016 budget would have resigned by now or get sacked, but the circumstances are clouded in mystery so much that no one can accurately point out who is or are responsible for the embarrassing situation. We in Greenbarge Reporters believe that some saboteurs from within the system are seriously at work to embarrass the government, but we hasten to caution against looking in the wrong direction for the culprits. As a matter of fact, people in the National Assembly, either as civil servants or lawmakers, cannot be ruled out of this national shame to which Buhari government is being associated. We suggest that the government should not treat this matter with kid’s glove and, whoever is, or are found to be behind it should be summarily dealt with, as a way of sounding a huge warning that Buhari’s government is fully prepared to fight corruption from all angles and with all the powers at its disposal. The searchlight should be beamed at elites who Vice President Yemi Osinbajo complained the other day, of asking the government to go slowly with the fight against corruption. Buhari and his team should be proactive to show that the war against corruption is not the usual rhetoric that had defined similar efforts in the long past. The government should show clearly that this war in the Change environment we now operating, is deadlier than the conventional one. That is what it really required to fight corruption to the ground. [myad]
Former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), retired Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, has told the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC), that his hands are clean as far as the alleged offences committed, while he was in charge as Chief of Air Staff and later Chief of Defence Staff, are concerned. Badeh who honoured an invitation by the EFCC, to clarify certain grey areas in the ongoing investigations into alleged irregular procurements in the Armed Forces under his watch, told the Commission that as much as he is willing to assist in all facets of the investigation, he personally has nothing to hide. Dependable sources at the EFCC revealed that Chief Badeh has been under pressure from his interviewers to own up to some properties and to surrender part of his personal wealth even when nothing incriminating was found against him, all of which he declined. Chief Badeh denied having any personal interest in any of the contracts, nor deriving any personal benefits from any, as he was not offered, neither did he demand for it. The source said that the EFCC operatives were angry with the former pilot and decided to deny him bail, even as they are going ahead to charge him to court on Monday, in defiance of legal advises that there were no proofs that he had ever been compromised, throughout his tenure, either as Chief of Air Staff or the Chief of Defence Staff. The former CDS who denied ownership of the properties being linked to him, maintained that he never deliberately acted with corrupt intents in any particular purchase undertaken by the Air Force nor the Defence Headquarters, as all such activities under him showed that all purchases made did not only follow due processes, but they were duly delivered and acknowledged to have been received. According to the source, EFCC has been under pressure to embarrass Badeh even if nothing incriminating is found against, which explains why he was detained and denied bail, and may be eventually charged to court on Monday. The source hinted last week that, he is being deliberately framed up by people whose toes he may have stepped upon while in office. [myad]
The workload on my table made Dr. Reuben Abati’s treatise on the issue of Valentine Day celebration to first hit the news stand before mine. In other words, I had started composing a similar opinion three days ago though with slight difference, the difference being that the Valentine conception has come to be one of those colonial mentalities that is still dominating our lives. Valentine is being celebrated as an old time established cult-like system; a kind of an annual festival that must be observed with gusto. Like Dr. Abati said, couples; legal and illegal ones, fall over each other to display love, affection, romance and all such mind burgling relationships or interactions as if after the Day, such interactions would disappear, only to resurface the following year, on the same day. Illegal couples, like so-called boyfriend and girlfriend, particularly amongst students, take the opportunity of this day to freely indulge in romance, affection and above all, sexual relations, to the extent that many of such interactions result in unwanted pregnancies, abortions, unpleasant consequences and even death. For this year in Abuja, for example, some health related None Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organization (CSO) have distributed hundreds of condoms to people, especially the youths, ahead of today’s observance of the Valentine Day. As a matter of fact, whatever good intention the distribution of condoms might connote, the issue that comes to mind by the mere mention of condom is that people were being prepared for sex festival and sex orgies without limit. When you distribute condoms to the people, particularly to youths who are not married, what are you implying? Are you asking the beneficiaries of the condom gift to go and drop them in the soak-away or keep them in their boxes or display the condoms as articles of beauty in their rooms? Knowing how adventurous the youths of nowadays are, they are bound to go into serious business of sex, sex and more sex with all its negative consequences. I mean, just imagine you coming back home and finding a condom in the pocket of your 20 year old son: what would be your immediate reaction or thought? And for the Valentine, it really makes no sense that a day is elected in the whole of a year for couples across the world to simultaneously show love and affection to each other. What happens to the remaining 364 or 365 days in a particular year? And what is Valentine? Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, originated as a Western Christian liturgical feast day to honour one or more early saints, named Valentinus, and is recognized as a significant cultural and commercial celebration in many regions around the world. According to Wikipedia, a popular hagiographical account indicates how Saint Valentine was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. According to legend, during his imprisonment, Saint Valentine healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius, and before his execution, he wrote her a letter titled: “Your Valentine” as a farewell. The day first became associated with romantic love within the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards, known as “valentines.” In Europe, Saint Valentine’s Keys are given to lovers “as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver’s heart” as well as to children, in order to ward off epilepsy, called Saint Valentine’s Malady. Saint Valentine’s Day is an official feast day in the Anglican Communion as well as in the Lutheran Church. Many parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day, albeit on July 6 and July 30, the former date in honour of the Roman presbyter Saint Valentine, and the latter date in honour of Hieromartyr Valentine, the Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni). Is it weighty enough for the people in the world to resort to all the later day orgies on February 14, simply on account of the fact that Saint Valentine was killed by Roman Empire because of his display of love and or that Saint Valentine finally wrote a love letter to the daughter of the Emperor before his execution?
There are thousands of similar cases or deeper cases of love mishaps locally that are worth celebrating, if we are to place our love and affection on the basis of how another couple endures the love or promotes it, like Saint Valentine. Two cases would suffice. There was this man in Zaria, Kaduna state, who had a near fatal accident four days after he married to a beautiful lady. For four months that he was bed-ridden in the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, the wife, who had never had any good time with him after the wedding, took care of him, including disposing his excrete, urine and even feeding him manually. Eventually, the man died. Secondly, yours sincerely had wanted to marry a young lady when she was just 18 years. For one reason or the other, there was separation. Yet, ten years later, certain circumstance still brought us together when she was 28 years. Again, after some months, another circumstance made the separation possible. And yet again, when she was 45, we met and finally got married. That is to say that we finally married after 30 years of staccato relationship. Isn’t this enough to be instituted as an annual celebration, for all the lovers across the world? I agree of course, the idea of couples celebrating wedding anniversary, which of course is an individualistic thing. This is more sensible than the lumping up of certain celebration that is more of celebration of fornication, illegality and promiscuity universally in general, and domestically within Nigeria in particular, especially hiding under it to commit all sort of sexual escapades. Celebrating the display of love by single man in history, even with his name as the symbol of such celebration makes it look like, at best, cultism and at worst, ignoramus all of which translate into madness or childishness. It is, perhaps, for this reason or other nauseating reasons that Iran has just banned the celebration of the Valentine Day. And for the rest of the world, there is need to have a rethink with a view to redefining love and affection which according to Dr. Abati, should not be all about physical interactions, such as sex, touch, kiss and or talk. I therefore recommend the antidote Abati offered, and for all times throughout the year, and not on the so-called Valentine Day. [myad]
It is that time of the year again in the month of February, when there is so much talk and excitement about romance and love, all in preparation for that special day dedicated to love, romance and dalliance, this very day, Valentine’s Day. The romantic propaganda can be really oppressive. In the past few days for example, GSM service providers have insisted that the only ring tone that fits this season is the one that forces you to think of romance, just in case you may have forgotten. I didn’t solicit for the ringtone, but I got it all the same and I have had to listen to it, on other people’s lines, and I guess it doesn’t come free.
The GSM companies are making money selling Valentine messages. And that is the point: the frenzy over Valentine’s Day is commercial, capitalistic, and it is of course, global. In the United States, even the White House is not left out, with the First Lady composing a poem for President Barack Obama on this special occasion. It is all mushy, lovey-dovey stuff. The eventual beneficiaries are the business outfits that produce printing cards, shirts, chocolates, cakes, the restaurants that will probably remain open till Feb. 15, not to talk of the companies that will benefit from the many phone calls, e-mails and text messages.
Sometimes, I find Valentine’s Day a bit suffocating, feminist, and discriminatory. This year’s celebration falls on a Sunday, otherwise it would also have been observed in schools including nursery and kindergarten schools. On a school day, all the pupils would have been instructed to dress up in red colour and to bring gifts for their friends. The children are innocent but their teachers, especially in the private schools, initiate them into this annual ritual. Last year, there was so much red colour blinding the eyes on the streets. I also saw old men and women, even widows, joining the celebration, refusing to be left out of their share of the love in the air. And later in the day of course, the restaurants usually take over and the ultimate show of chivalry is for a man to be seen taking his Valentine for candle-lit dinner, or to go on his knees and pop the question, or to exchange wedding vows on this special day.
It is as if this is the only day meant for love, and the flow of affection is generally understood around here to be from man to woman. The emphasis is not even on pure, unadulterated love; but physical romance. In everything there is a suggestion among the younger generation that a Valentine’s Day expression of love is the truest form of affection, which it is not. The overwhelming focus on purchasing power as a measure of love and affection makes it worse. This has resulted in some commentators lamenting that given the economic austerity in the land, Valentine’s Day this year may not be as exciting, because as the common saying goes, “there can be no romance without finance!”. In the past, a poem or a letter or a bouquet of flowers would do, but I hear, not anymore. Our new age Nigerian ladies no longer read love letters, nor are they interested in poetry- those forced rhymes and sweet nothings meant to make the heart flutter don’t seem to work anymore.
These days, I have heard such comments as: “we have not received salary, how man go take do Valentine?” and I have seen a cartoon in which a husband tells his wife that they will be better off spending the whole day in church! It is perhaps more advisable to celebrate Agape, church love than to dig a hole in the pocket and tell stories that touch the heart later.
I am not against anyone celebrating love, but the desperation, the heartache and the sheer anxiety that now attends Valentine’s Day is a bit over the top. People should not have to borrow or rob a bank to prove that they love a woman. And this whole thing about romantic love is curious. In any relationship at all, physical love is not enough. It takes a lot more to build relationships.
It should be possible to spend Valentine’s Day with family members, friends, and other members of the community. And you shouldn’t have to wear red as if you are going to a Sango shrine, or appear like a masquerade, before anyone knows that you want to celebrate love. How about a visit to the motherless babies’ home, or the prisons, hospitals, or a visit to the cemetery to remember your departed loved ones. Or quality time spent at home with the children or phone calls to old time friends to wish them well. Love should not be measured in loud decibels of a one-day excitement; it should be a value, extended in all kinds of relationships.
This is one lesson the excitable young crowd, that is going to troop out to the clubs and restaurants today, must learn, and which they will learn. They should ask the older generation. I doubt if there are many married men and women out there who are still having butterflies in their stomachs as they did many years ago, over a certain unknown St. Valentine. Real life teaches hard lessons. The older generation would have learnt that love grows, and it fades, and it is better as a life-long experience, while romantic love is just one of many other kinds of love, including self-love, and this thing called love is not necessarily in real life, exactly as the Holy Book says it should be.
It is only in the Bible that love exists in such fantasy form as described in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease, where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” In real life, love is proud, boastful, easily angered, expensive, self-seeking, vengeful…imagine the kind of atrocities that have been committed in the name of love!
As we mark this year’s Valentine’s Day, I think of the quality of love in our community, and it is sad that there is a damning scarcity of it. Those who will observe the Valentine ritual, and may forget the subject of love by tomorrow morning, are in the majority: they claim to be good men and women, but they are not their brother’s keepers. They include young girls who will never be allowed to marry young men from other ethnic groups because of the deep-seated suspicions that have divided Nigerian communities into primordial camps of hate. We have parents, teachers, leaders and priests, who promote division rather than unity. We are a community of broken dreams and shattered hopes. Hypocrisy has become a virtue. Some of the young people change their partners every Valentine season, collecting Valentine gifts like they are striving to build a museum of romantic encounters. Many of those who will profess love today do not even know what it means.
And yet we are a religious society and all the religions teach love as an important virtue and value. But I doubt if anyone listens. Even the religious leaders are guilty. One so-called 50-year old Pastor Amakiri has just been accused of raping a 12-year old child. He saw a vision that he needed a “holy massage” to be administered by a young girl between the ages of 12-15, on his “badly aching waist.” He has children at home between the ages of 6 and 14, and he could have sought medical help. Only God knows how many other lives this particular Pastor has damaged with false visions and cruel opportunism. Our schools should teach love, but was it not in a Nigerian school that a student once slaughtered a teacher in broad daylight?
And was it not from a school that innocent young girls were carted away and abducted? Parents should help teach love too, but many parents are too busy monitoring that bank alert that will make them breathe easier. Marriage should nurture love, but was it not in Ibadan the other day that a young, married lady, drove a knife into her husband’s neck wounding him mortally because he had a child outside wedlock. And elsewhere in this same country, another married woman reportedly butchered her husband’s manhood, into two, because he was caught with another woman.
Yes, it is Valentine’s Day but it is the Devil that rules the heart of many. Pastor Amakiri has been quoted saying “Don’t blame the Devil, I did it.” Of course, you did it, and are we supposed to clap for you? The Devil has never been convicted in any court of law for committing a crime. Think also of the usual stories about the shenanigans of governance and the oddities of public life. The list is endless, providing a sobering backdrop to all the ebb and flow of Valentine spirit. People are taught the idea of love by the ritual of Valentine’s Day, but that is never enough for building relationships and a strong community of citizens. We need a society built on much deeper friendships and values.
This is perhaps partly why there have been anti-Valentine’s Day protests in India and Pakistan, where its celebration is said to be “against religious and cultural norms.” I don’t think a day will ever come when the Nigerian authorities will ban anyone from having a day of fun, even licentious fun, for those who are so predisposed. But if you must indulge in ribaldry, remember it is nonetheless a day for loving not dying, and that promoting love, friendship, good citizenship, and unity as shared communal values is important. And if you are pro-Valentine and nobody remembers to send you a cake, a message, or a card, since there is this general expectation that everyone should celebrate Valentine, don’t despair, it is better to be loved everyday, than once. As for me, I’ll spend the day with family and friends. [myad]
Former Special adviser on Media and Publicity to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Dr. Reuben Abati, has vowed not to speak ill of the present government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Abati, who spoke to THE BRIIEF online, said that he took an oath of office to protect the President of Nigeria, saying: “no matter how inviting the subject is…I’m not going to comment on Government. You see, the kind of job that I did, I took an oath of office to defend the President and the government of Nigeria.
“I would not have defended one government and then I will start talking bad about another President. I cannot do that. In the oath, they won’t put the name of the President you are swearing to defend.”
Dr. Abati was asked to speak on what has come to be termed as “budget mafia” believed to have bedeviled the 2016 Appropriation Bill as was submitted by President Buhari.
abati responded by saying that he had no comment, he had no idea, and he had nothing to say.
“If you have been following my writings, you will notice that I haven’t been commenting directly on government issues, I’m not going to say anything.”
The former Presidential Special Adviser admitted that the issue is quite inviting but still managed to suppress the urge to comment.
“I’m no longer SA Media, but when you take an oath, its binding. My own understanding as they do it in America is that, that oath does not end; it does not expire.” [myad]
A 95 year old Hajiya Fati Koko, popularly called Maitalla Tara who donated N1 Million to the campaign activities of President Muhammadu Buhari last year is dead, even as the President expressed sadness over her death. Hajiya Koko was said to have waited nine hours in Kebbi early last year, to donate the amount to Buhari as the then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Hajiya Koko, while offering virtually her life’s savings to candidate Buhari then had said that she admired his honesty, discipline and stand for truth. The President, in a statement today by his special adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, described her as “a woman with a good heart, who stood by her convictions and gave sacrificially.” President Buhari commended Hayiya Koko’s conviction and sacrificial giving, even as he asked Nigerians to learn vital lessons from her life. “She gave practically all she had towards our campaign. Though well advanced in age, she still believed a new Nigeria was possible and followed her conviction with action. What generosity of spirit and what tenacious faith in her mother land. Nigerians, old and young, have a lot to learn from her.” The President condoled with the family and relations of the deceased and asked them to take solace in the fact that their matriarch lived to a ripe old age, “and she saw the beginning of the change she had long yearned for. The onus is now on all of us to ensure that the change gets entrenched and solidified for even generations yet unborn to benefit from.” Buhari also sympathized with the governor and people of Kebbi State, whom he said, will miss the sterling qualities of Hajiya Koko, but added that the life of Hajiya Koko will serve as a standard to emulate in the service of God, humanity and country. “May Allah grant her soul repose in Al-jannah,” the President prayed. [myad]
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Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State has described the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state as darkness, saying that light must always triumph over darkness.
When Love Isn’t Enough, By Reuben Abati
It is that time of the year again in the month of February, when there is so much talk and excitement about romance and love, all in preparation for that special day dedicated to love, romance and dalliance, this very day, Valentine’s Day. The romantic propaganda can be really oppressive. In the past few days for example, GSM service providers have insisted that the only ring tone that fits this season is the one that forces you to think of romance, just in case you may have forgotten. I didn’t solicit for the ringtone, but I got it all the same and I have had to listen to it, on other people’s lines, and I guess it doesn’t come free.
The GSM companies are making money selling Valentine messages. And that is the point: the frenzy over Valentine’s Day is commercial, capitalistic, and it is of course, global. In the United States, even the White House is not left out, with the First Lady composing a poem for President Barack Obama on this special occasion. It is all mushy, lovey-dovey stuff. The eventual beneficiaries are the business outfits that produce printing cards, shirts, chocolates, cakes, the restaurants that will probably remain open till Feb. 15, not to talk of the companies that will benefit from the many phone calls, e-mails and text messages.
Sometimes, I find Valentine’s Day a bit suffocating, feminist, and discriminatory. This year’s celebration falls on a Sunday, otherwise it would also have been observed in schools including nursery and kindergarten schools. On a school day, all the pupils would have been instructed to dress up in red colour and to bring gifts for their friends. The children are innocent but their teachers, especially in the private schools, initiate them into this annual ritual. Last year, there was so much red colour blinding the eyes on the streets. I also saw old men and women, even widows, joining the celebration, refusing to be left out of their share of the love in the air. And later in the day of course, the restaurants usually take over and the ultimate show of chivalry is for a man to be seen taking his Valentine for candle-lit dinner, or to go on his knees and pop the question, or to exchange wedding vows on this special day.
It is as if this is the only day meant for love, and the flow of affection is generally understood around here to be from man to woman. The emphasis is not even on pure, unadulterated love; but physical romance. In everything there is a suggestion among the younger generation that a Valentine’s Day expression of love is the truest form of affection, which it is not. The overwhelming focus on purchasing power as a measure of love and affection makes it worse. This has resulted in some commentators lamenting that given the economic austerity in the land, Valentine’s Day this year may not be as exciting, because as the common saying goes, “there can be no romance without finance!”. In the past, a poem or a letter or a bouquet of flowers would do, but I hear, not anymore. Our new age Nigerian ladies no longer read love letters, nor are they interested in poetry- those forced rhymes and sweet nothings meant to make the heart flutter don’t seem to work anymore.
These days, I have heard such comments as: “we have not received salary, how man go take do Valentine?” and I have seen a cartoon in which a husband tells his wife that they will be better off spending the whole day in church! It is perhaps more advisable to celebrate Agape, church love than to dig a hole in the pocket and tell stories that touch the heart later.
I am not against anyone celebrating love, but the desperation, the heartache and the sheer anxiety that now attends Valentine’s Day is a bit over the top. People should not have to borrow or rob a bank to prove that they love a woman. And this whole thing about romantic love is curious. In any relationship at all, physical love is not enough. It takes a lot more to build relationships.
It should be possible to spend Valentine’s Day with family members, friends, and other members of the community. And you shouldn’t have to wear red as if you are going to a Sango shrine, or appear like a masquerade, before anyone knows that you want to celebrate love. How about a visit to the motherless babies’ home, or the prisons, hospitals, or a visit to the cemetery to remember your departed loved ones. Or quality time spent at home with the children or phone calls to old time friends to wish them well. Love should not be measured in loud decibels of a one-day excitement; it should be a value, extended in all kinds of relationships.
This is one lesson the excitable young crowd, that is going to troop out to the clubs and restaurants today, must learn, and which they will learn. They should ask the older generation. I doubt if there are many married men and women out there who are still having butterflies in their stomachs as they did many years ago, over a certain unknown St. Valentine. Real life teaches hard lessons. The older generation would have learnt that love grows, and it fades, and it is better as a life-long experience, while romantic love is just one of many other kinds of love, including self-love, and this thing called love is not necessarily in real life, exactly as the Holy Book says it should be.
It is only in the Bible that love exists in such fantasy form as described in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease, where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” In real life, love is proud, boastful, easily angered, expensive, self-seeking, vengeful…imagine the kind of atrocities that have been committed in the name of love!
As we mark this year’s Valentine’s Day, I think of the quality of love in our community, and it is sad that there is a damning scarcity of it. Those who will observe the Valentine ritual, and may forget the subject of love by tomorrow morning, are in the majority: they claim to be good men and women, but they are not their brother’s keepers. They include young girls who will never be allowed to marry young men from other ethnic groups because of the deep-seated suspicions that have divided Nigerian communities into primordial camps of hate. We have parents, teachers, leaders and priests, who promote division rather than unity. We are a community of broken dreams and shattered hopes. Hypocrisy has become a virtue. Some of the young people change their partners every Valentine season, collecting Valentine gifts like they are striving to build a museum of romantic encounters. Many of those who will profess love today do not even know what it means.
And yet we are a religious society and all the religions teach love as an important virtue and value. But I doubt if anyone listens. Even the religious leaders are guilty. One so-called 50-year old Pastor Amakiri has just been accused of raping a 12-year old child. He saw a vision that he needed a “holy massage” to be administered by a young girl between the ages of 12-15, on his “badly aching waist.” He has children at home between the ages of 6 and 14, and he could have sought medical help. Only God knows how many other lives this particular Pastor has damaged with false visions and cruel opportunism. Our schools should teach love, but was it not in a Nigerian school that a student once slaughtered a teacher in broad daylight?
And was it not from a school that innocent young girls were carted away and abducted? Parents should help teach love too, but many parents are too busy monitoring that bank alert that will make them breathe easier. Marriage should nurture love, but was it not in Ibadan the other day that a young, married lady, drove a knife into her husband’s neck wounding him mortally because he had a child outside wedlock. And elsewhere in this same country, another married woman reportedly butchered her husband’s manhood, into two, because he was caught with another woman.
Yes, it is Valentine’s Day but it is the Devil that rules the heart of many. Pastor Amakiri has been quoted saying “Don’t blame the Devil, I did it.” Of course, you did it, and are we supposed to clap for you? The Devil has never been convicted in any court of law for committing a crime. Think also of the usual stories about the shenanigans of governance and the oddities of public life. The list is endless, providing a sobering backdrop to all the ebb and flow of Valentine spirit. People are taught the idea of love by the ritual of Valentine’s Day, but that is never enough for building relationships and a strong community of citizens. We need a society built on much deeper friendships and values.
This is perhaps partly why there have been anti-Valentine’s Day protests in India and Pakistan, where its celebration is said to be “against religious and cultural norms.” I don’t think a day will ever come when the Nigerian authorities will ban anyone from having a day of fun, even licentious fun, for those who are so predisposed. But if you must indulge in ribaldry, remember it is nonetheless a day for loving not dying, and that promoting love, friendship, good citizenship, and unity as shared communal values is important. And if you are pro-Valentine and nobody remembers to send you a cake, a message, or a card, since there is this general expectation that everyone should celebrate Valentine, don’t despair, it is better to be loved everyday, than once. As for me, I’ll spend the day with family and friends. [myad]