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.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

TAM DAVID WEST SAYS, NO TO AMNESTY!

One of Icheoku's most favorite son of Niger Delta, Professor Tamuno David-West has told the Northern mullahs to go to hell and stay there until it freezes over? As far as he is concerned, President Umaru Yar'Adua can stuff his amnesty in his you know where, HIS SORRY FULANI GAUNT ARSE! His conclusion, no retreat, no surrender; the Niger Delta must be free of northern arrogance and northern exploitation!
Condemning the ill-advised feudalistic Nigeria federal government’s purported pardon to so called “repentant” militants in the Niger Delta, Professor Tam insisted that such measure will not halt belligerence in the oil-rich region; because the amnesty and the proposed mechanism to drive it would not engender enough trust and confidence in the militants, which are crucial in achieving lasting peace.
Describing the amnesty as vacuous because it failed to address the fundamental issues fuelling the agitation, Professor Tam David-West emphasised the need to internationalize the peace process, to involve all stakeholders including Britain , France and United States as well as their multinational oil companies under the supervision of the United Nations as guarantor for the peace. With such assurance, the militants will come out on their own and there will be a ceasefire for the period of negotiation and any erring side who breaks the agreement, will become the problem of the UN? Such conditionality cannot be guaranteed by the worthless Yar’Adua amnesty. Icheoku agrees with this position which we earlier canvassed in some of our opeds on the Niger Delta crisis. However our reasoning varies with that of the learned professor as we were more interested in securing a lasting deal for the people of the Niger Delta which international clout will ensure, since the northern Nigeria government never keeps its words!
Offering his opinion on President Umaru Yar'Adua, the professor said, Yar'Adua has found himself in a place he did not prepare for. He was foisted on Nigerians by Obasanjo and because of this, he makes a lot of fundamental mistakes. As Machiavelli said in his book, The Prince: “To be well advised, the prince himself should in the first place be wise; but President Umaru Yar'Adua is a tabula rasa, he is blank and receives bad advice. Continuing his salvo on Umaru Yar'Adua, Tam David said, 'here is a man (Yar'Adua) that is split between the morality of the academic and that of the politician, which regrettably does not always go together, such as when he equivocally said, “My election was not free and fair based on his academic morality and at the same time, jumping to enjoy the office based on political convenient morality? Icheoku will like to add, President Umaru Yar'Adua is also deathly sick to figure out anything helpful to Nigeria!
Firing off, the professor said, you do not compel amnesty by fixing a deadline within which it must be accepted, otherwise no deal? According to the professor, this in-built threat will sabotage the offer as no militant will surrender under such a cloud of threat? Also, the amnesty did not address the fundamental issues the militants are fighting for; since you do not cure a disease with mere diagnosis and prognosis. There must be the in-between treatment by medication and therapy where necessary to fully cure a sickness. According to the professor what the Hausa-Fulani North is doing is tantamount to a dress-rehearsal trying to masquerade 'what is for what they would rather is' in their warped minds? There is also the question of trust and confidence-building which has determined the Nigeria central government not worthy of their spoken words based on precedents? It has been all promises and no result hence why trust them again? Icheoku says, if in doubt, ask the Biafrans with the promised three Rs by another blood-sucking northern vampire, Yakubu Gowon!
Professor Tam also berated some very cowardly bastard Niger Delta intellectuals taking contracts in Abuja and selling their birth-rights for such a pittance pot of pottage! However he left the most virulent of his venom for those 'useless Northern leaders and pseudo-intellectuals' who have for so long, looked down on Niger Delta people in their writings and pronouncements over the years? According to the professor, Nigeria does not only need re-branding but has to be psychologically born-again in its relation to the Niger Delta people, for there to be a way forward out of the imbroglio? Continuing, Professor Tam David-West mentioned specifically the example of a very stupid mallam Tanko Yakassai who said Niger Delta people were a nobody and that he would send an army against us? Maitaima Sule too, said we (Niger Delta people) do not exist by his calculation, stating that only three groups of people exist in Nigeria - Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo? Siemens bribe-taker, Senator Jibril Aminu, who pretends to be a professor, said that oil had been there ( in Niger Delta) for million of years before the people came there, so technically it is a ruse to say that the oil belong to those people there? According to his crazed-out logic, God put the oil in the Niger Delta as fossils and not as a gift to the people who inhabit the terrain? Stringing Jubril Aminu out for this claim, Professor Tam admonished that Jubril Aminu forgot that there was no Nigeria millions of years ago, that Nigeria just started only in 1914 and hence by extension of his ill-logic, Nigeria, too, cannot claim ownership of the oil either? Vicerating these loony northerners, Professor Tam said were it not for some 'saner and more responsible Northerners' that serve as the glue holding 'us and them' together, may be Nigeria would have since become defunct! It was his position therefore that were oil to have been found in the North and not the Niger Delta, people like Aminu, Maitama Sule, and Yakassai would have broken away from Nigeria a very long time ago! Icheoku says, speak on Professor as you are stating just the fact which many 'cowardly bastards of Nigeria' are too afraid to mouth!
Professor Tam David-West said that it does not matter the outcome of the current military adventurism in the Niger Delta; that even if the North wins the war, they cannot win the peace, which in essence will become a mere Pyrrhic victory; they having built up a groundswell of animosity against themselves. He fired on that they cannot defeat a people fighting a moral battle, notwithstanding the infiltration of some criminal elements therein. He compared the North with Hannibal , the great Carthaginian General who always won his wars but never the peace; before finally being killed by a simple strategy known as the Fabian strategy? Hammering home his chastisement, Professor Tam David-West added, killing the militants will not solve the problem as 'Caesar dead was more powerful than Caesar alive'!

3 comments:

  1. Amnesty International yesterday said President Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty to Niger Delta militants will fail, because previous human rights violations in the country have not been addressed.


    The group said tackling the issues of environmental and social abuses arising from the operations of oil companies in Nigeria would mean more to the people of the region than the amnesty package.

    Speaking at a press conference in Abuja yesterday, a researcher in Amnesty International, Audrey Gaugharan said the "Joint Task Force [JTF] should be held accountable to the various forms of human rights abuses in the region and the government should treat the causes and not the symptoms of the problem. I don’t think the Amnesty would work."

    The group called the situation in the Niger Delta a "human rights tragedy," saying that the people of the Niger Delta have seen their human rights abused by oil companies that their government cannot or will not hold to account.

    "The Niger Delta provides a stark example of the lack of accountability of a government to its people, and of multinational companies’ almost total lack of accountability when it comes to the impact of their operations on human rights," said Gaughran, head of business and human rights and co-author of a major new report, Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta, released yesterday at a press conference in Abuja.

    "People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with and wash in polluted water. They eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins – if they are lucky enough to be able to still find fish. The land they farm on is being destroyed. After oil spills the air they breathe smells of oil, gas and other pollutants. People complain of breathing problems and skin lesions and yet neither the government nor the oil companies monitor the human impacts of oil pollution.

    "The human rights impact of pollution in the Niger Delta is greatly under-reported. The majority of people in the Niger Delta depend on the natural environment for their food and livelihood, particularly through agriculture and fisheries.

    "The Nigerian government is aware of the risks that oil-related pollution poses for human rights, but has failed to take measures to ensure those rights are not harmed. Despite the widespread pollution of the Niger Delta’s land, rivers and creeks – and the many complaints from people living in the region - we could find almost no government data on the impact on humans of any aspect of oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

    "The Nigerian government is failing in its obligation to respect and protect the rights of people in the Niger Delta to food, water, health and livelihood. Some oil companies, for their part, have taken advantage of this government failure, and have shown a shocking disregard for the human impact of their activities.

    "A government’s failure to protect the human rights of its people does not absolve companies from responsibility for their actions. Oil companies such as Shell are not free to ignore the consequences of their actions just because the government has failed to hold them to account. The international standard is not ‘whatever a company can get away with’ - there are international standards for oil industry operations, and in relation to environmental and social impacts that oil companies in the Niger Delta are very well aware of.

    "Despite its public claims to be a socially and environmentally responsible corporation, Shell continues to directly harm human rights through its failure to adequately prevent and mitigate pollution and environmental damage in the Niger Delta,"said Gaughran.

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  2. Muslim leaders urge FG on Niger Delta
    Latest news
    Written by Zakariyya Adaramola, Lagos
    The Federal Government has been cautioned on the need to quickly address the core issues that led to militancy in the Niger Delta rather than celebrating amnesty.

    Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Dr. AbdulLateef Adegbite, National Missioner, Ansar-Ud-deen Society of Nigeria, Sheikh AbdurRahman Ahmad and the Lagos State coordinator of Conference of Islamic Organisations, Mallam Abdullahi Shuaib noted that it was not just enough to give amnesty but that core issues should be addressed.

    They however described the Federal Government’s amnesty for the Niger-Delta militants as a step in the right direction.

    Speaking at a 2-day conference of imams and scholars,the leaders urged the Federal Government to meet the demands of the people of the Niger Delta.

    Dr.Adegbite urged the government to as a matter of urgency address the issue of resource control. He said 18 percent revenue was not adequate, urging the government to make it 25 percent and later 50 percent.

    Sheikh Ahmad enjoined Nigerians to give government a chance to see how the amnesty would turn out. While urging Nigerians to support the process, Ahmad asserted that a peaceful Niger-Delta would lead to a peaceful Nigeria .

    Shuaib said the rejection of the olive oil by the Movements for Emancipation of Niger-Delta (MEND) was likely to prolong the suffering of the people.

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  3. Uwazuruike Launches Biafra Passport
    Written by Ebere Uzoukwa, Owerri
    Wednesday, 01 July 2009 01:39
    As part of activities to mark the tenth anniversary of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), September 13, 2009 the leader and founder of the group, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, yesterday, launched an international passport for the United States of Biafra.

    Addressing a well-attended meeting of MASSOB members at his freedom house in Okwe, Onuimo LGA, Imo State , Chief Uwazuruike said the need the Biafran passport arose following requests by Igbos in the diaspora to use Biafran rather than Nigerian passport.

    Uwazuruike, who had just returned from an overseas trip, said he was inundated with requests by Igbos in South Africa and London for the passport.

    Sequel to that, arrangements were made and copies of the passport printed in a foreign country which he said falls within international standard.

    While presenting the passport to his followers and journalists, the MASSOB leader appointed one Ambrose Anyaso as the Director of Passport Authority of MASSOB.

    Uwazuruike, however charged his members to always use the passport whenever they are traveling to cities outside Igbo territory believed to be Nigerian State , pointing out that the passport authority will work out appropriate modalities for the issuance of the passport to all members.

    The MASSOB leader also disclosed that the organisation's Satellite Television will soon be on air as arrangements to that effect had been concluded.

    Commenting on the amnesty granted by the Federal Government to Niger Delta militants, he said President Yar'Adua had no basis for that action.

    According to him, amnesty should only come in when guilt has been determined.

    He enjoined the people of Niger Delta to fight for the Sovereign State of the Niger Delta and assert full control of their resources

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