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Showing posts from September, 2011
WHERE IS OUR COMMUNITY SPIRIT? Thinking back to when I was a child, growing up in Nigeria, it’s heart-wrenching to see how things have deteriorated in my beloved nation of Nigeria. As children we looked forward to the monthly times of the night when the moon was in full bloom; we went out to play, boys and girls together. Sometimes we had ‘grandma’ Theresa Onwenafa Nkemchor my great uncle’s wife and a prolific folk story teller entertain us with moonlight tales. It was a time when my grandmother did not have to worry that we were out late playing with our female and male cousins and friends. She did not have to worry that we could be raped. It was an era when rape was a taboo and gang-raping not heard of. When young mothers wanted to go to the farm or stream to fetch some water, they made loose sand dunes and sat their babies there and merely informed their neighbours that the babies were outside. These neighbours did not use the babies for rituals; they played with them, washed th
OF POISONED BEANS AND DEATH NUMBERS... Nigeria is in a dire situation. Our leaders, both political and religious have brainwashed us to the point that we can no more differentiate between pranks and reality. Our politicians tell us that our problems are Northerners and Moslems; we swallow it wholesale even though it’s clear for all to see that the average Northerner is worse off than the average Southerner. (This is largely because southern women are freer to access education and participate in trading and industry thereby contributing immensely to the education of their children, an opportunity the average Northern woman lacks). So they tell us what the solution would be. A southern Christian President! We all swallowed it whole forgetting that each time a northerner had been in power, he had had the active participation and collaboration of, wait a minute, yes, Southern Christians! The only difference between North and south, in my humble and myopic opinion is that while northern