GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA: FOR WHO THE BELL TOLLS NEXT.

Just five people shy of Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting incident that claimed 26 lives, the Uvalde Texas Robb elementary school mass shooting at 21 victims, now ranks among the highest grossing gun carnage in America. It is sad that such frequent blood spilling has tragically become part of our culture as a society. May the souls of the killed now rest.

25th AMENDMENT: ITS NOW ALL CRICKET.

Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi once questioned former President Donald John Trump's fitness to remain in office due to what she claimed was his declining mental capacity. Does anyone know what Madam Speaker presently thinks about the incontrovertible case which America is now saddled with? Just curious!

WHO WILL REBUILD UKRAINE?

The West should convert frozen Russian assets, both state's and oligarchs' owned, into a full seizure and set them aside for the future rebuilding of Ukraine. Like the Marshal Plan, call it the Putin Plan.

A HERO IS BORN.

I am staying put. I will not run away and abandon my people. The fight is here in Ukraine. What I need are weapons and ammunitions, not a ride out of town like former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani - President Volodymyr Zelensky.

IT IS WHAT IT IS.

"There is too much hate in America because there is too much anger in America." - Trevor Noah.

WORD!

A life without challenges is not a life lived at all. A life lived is a life that has problems, confronts problems, solves problems and then learns from problems. - Tunde Fashola.

NOW, YOU KNOW.

When fishing for love, bait with your heart and not your brain, because you cannot rationalize love. - Mark Twain.

JUST THE FACT.

In our country, you can shoot and kill a nigger, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings - Dave Chappelle

DO YOU?.

“What you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk for it." - Stuart Scheller.

HEDGE YOUR CRISIS.

Never get in bed with a woman whose problems are worse than yours. - Chicago PD.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

'The best way to keep peace is to be ready to destroy evil. If you Pearl Harbor me, I Nagasaki you.' - Ted Nugent.

OUR SHARED HUMANITY.

Empathy is at the heart of who we are as human beings. - Cardinal Matthew Kukah.

WORDS ON MARBLE.

"Birth is agony. Life is hard. Death is cruel." - Japanese pithy.

REPENT OR PERISH - POPE.

Homosexuality is a sin. It is not ordained by God, therefore same sex marriage cannot be blessed by the church - Pope Francis.

CANCEL CULTURE IS CORROSIVE.


FOR SAKE OF COUNTRY.


MAGA LIVES ON: NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER!

TWITTER IS BORING WITHOUT HIS TWEETS. #RestorePresidentTrump'sTwitterHandle.


WORD.

"If you cannot speak the truth when it matters, then nothing else you says matters.” - Tucker Carlson.

#MeToo MOVEMENT: A BAD NEWS GONE CRAZY.

"To all the women who testified, we may have different truth, but I have a great remorse for all of you. I have great remorse for all of the men and women going through this crisis right now in our country. You know, the movement started basically with me, and I think what happened, you know, I was the first example, and now there are thousands of men who are being accused and a regeneration of things that I think none of us understood. I’m not going to say these aren’t great people. I had wonderful times with these people. I’m just genuinely confused. Men are confused about this issue. We are going through this #MeToo movement crisis right now in this country." - Harvey Weinstein.


RON DELLUMS: UNAPOLOGETICALLY RADICAL.

"If it’s radical to oppose the insanity and cruelty of the Vietnam War, if it’s radical to oppose racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression, if it’s radical to want to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, and other forms of human misery, then I’m proud to be called a radical.” - Ron Vernie Dellums.


WHAT REALLY MATTERS IN LIFE - STEVE JOBS

“I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth. Memories precipitated by love is the only true riches which will follow you, accompany you, giving you strength and light to go on. The most expensive bed in the world is the sick bed. You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone to bear sickness for you. Material things lost can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost – Life. Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others.” - SJ

EVIL CANNOT BE TRULY DESTROYED.

"The threat of evil is ever present. We can contain it as long as we stay vigilant, but it can never truly be destroyed. - Lorraine Warren (Annabelle, the movie)


ONLY THE POOR WISH THEY HAD STUFF?

“I’m not that interested in material things. As long as I find a good bed that I can sleep in, that’s enough.” - Nicolas Berggruem, the homeless billionaire.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

'ABACHA NEVER STOLE, HIS GOVERNMENT DID' - OCHEREOME NNANNA.

“Nigeria is awaiting receipt from Swiss Govt. of $320 million, identified as illegally taken from Nigeria under Abacha” – Buhari @NGR President, 5:09 PM – 27 APR 2016. 

WHEN Twitter-addicted Nigerians stumbled on this posting on President Muhammadu Buhari’s Twitter handle last week, the whole Internet went abuzz, with most people expressing their dismay at Buhari’s refusal to call a spade by its correct name. Before we go on, let us try to reason out the meaning of this statement, especially against the backdrop of its nexus to our history where Abacha and Buhari’s paths crossed. It is obvious why the President or the operator of his Twitter handle chose to describe this amount (which is over N100 billion, a third of what the Federal, State Local governments shared in February 2016) as money “identified as illegally taken from Nigeria under Abacha”, rather than the usual “Abacha loot”. 

The answer is simple. Buhari, long before he was elected president, stubbornly insisted that Abacha “never stole”, and that he was not corrupt. “Illegally taken from Nigeria” is a ploy to sidestep the word: “stolen”. “Under Abacha” portrays it as if other people, not Abacha himself, committed the “illegality” without Abacha’s knowledge. Some unknown individuals were taking money from Nigeria and lodging it in Abacha’s Swiss bank accounts? For what purpose? Perhaps, they knew that our economy would be in trouble in the future and decided to “save” for this rainy day for us? If that is what President Buhari wants to say, let him say so openly, so that we all will join him in congratulating the Abacha family for the sacrifices their patriarch made for Nigeria. 

In the past sixteen years, series of sums of money in foreign currency have been brought back from Western countries, especially Switzerland, where former military Head of State, the late General Sani Abacha stashed funds which he looted from the Nigerian treasury. These monies have always been called “Abacha loot”. Abacha is the only former ruler boldly ascribed, even in official circles, to have “stolen” or “looted” our public funds. He certainly was not the only one who did so. And most of us believe that he was probably not the biggest looter. Then, how come it is only his loots that are being “identified” and repatriated? Is it because he is dead? If he were still alive like most of his fellow former rulers, would there be any such thing as “Abacha loot”? 

I doubt it, since his predecessors and successors who probably took more have never even been officially accused or made to return their own “loots”. In fact, one of them majestically struts over the landscape calling other people corrupt without justifying his own obvious affluence after his long stint in the Presidency. Are we a nation of cowards and dastards, mobbing Abacha and his estate simply because he is dead? More questions: if Abacha had not arrested, tried and jailed General Olusegun Obasanjo for his part in the 1995 coup attempt to unseat him, would Obasanjo have launched the campaign to recover Abacha loot? 

If Abacha had not died and he played a role in the election of Obasanjo as President in 1999 as Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Theophilus Danjuma and their civilian Northern cohorts had done, would Obasanjo have started the campaign to retrieve the Abacha loot? Still more questions: if Buhari had been the one elected as the civilian president of Nigeria in 1999, would he even be talking about receiving money from Swiss Government “illegally taken away” under his regime since he maintains, against all concrete evidence, that Abacha never stole our money? 

So, is it only when a person deals with us and dies that he becomes corrupt, but when he treats us nicely (as Abacha did to Buhari) he becomes a “saint”? If Abacha had not rehabilitated Buhari after being jailed by Babangida; If Abacha had not appointed him as the Executive Chairman of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), where he was given unlimited powers to spend billions of Naira between 1996 and 1998, would Buhari have stuck out his neck for him and say he was not corrupt? Is this the mentality we take with us in fighting corruption, making sure that those who helped us are regarded as clean, while those who wronged us are pursued with a single-minded quest to retrieve their loot and sent to jail? Is this our national standard for integrity? 

How are we sure that retired Col. Ja’afaru Isa, a close Buhari acolyte who was reluctantly arrested, briefly detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,EFCC, and released after a couple of days for allegedly returning part of his share of Col. Sambo Dasuki’s bonanza, actually returned anything? Everybody calls President Buhari a “man of integrity”, in spite of certain things we read and hear which do not add up to conclusively justify that branding. Buhari made his declared assets public. But he never disclosed their financial worth, nor did he let us know where they could be found as late President Umaru Yar’Adua voluntarily did. He never followed Yar’ Adua’s exemplary footsteps of including the assets of his wife. 

And from the look of things, ever-smiling Madam Aisha Buhari is very well-to-do, what with her reported donation of N135 million to displaced persons in Adamawa during the campaigns last year, which has not been denied. I still cannot reconcile the fact that Buhari, as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) had to borrow N25 million from banks to pay for his form in October, 2014 when his wife could so easily have given it to him from her own resources. There were even some reports that Buhari was once ejected from his “rented” mansion, No 11, Queen Elizabeth Drive, Asokoro, Abuja in 2012. That report was never debunked. Elaborate efforts have always been made to brand Buhari as a retired general who lived on his military pension before he became elected President. 

Yet, when he became President and the foreign exchange crunch set in, he told parents who have their children in foreign schools that they should look for forex wherever they could find it as the Federal Government could no longer afford to provide it. When reminded that he had his own children in foreign schools, he simply retorted: “I can afford it”. These conflicting signals about our President and his true mindset on corruption as well as his real standing financially, is being noticed, and nobody is a dummy. Even the younger generation of Nigerians are watching, reading and taking note of this confusion and wondering what “integrity” actually means here in Nigeria. It is not only the youth that are confused. I am certainly no longer a youth, but I am confused!

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