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, July 10, 2011

'SOUTH-SUDAN INDEPENDENCE, OUR TURN WILL COME - an article by E.C. Ejiogu, PhD.

Like some of you, I have read today with mixed feelings of envy and glee, about the emergence of Africa’s newest state in south Sudan.  What the world just witnessed in that part of Africa is the outcome of decades of hard work by the distinct nationalities and groups that inhabit it, to achieve self determination from a unitary contraption that masquerades as a state.  Each of the several media reports on the event that I have read so far includes testimonies from joyful ordinary citizens of the new state who recounted their agonies and the incalculable toll in blood and treasure that the struggle took on them and their society.  I haven’t read anywhere about anyone amongst them who said that the outcome of their struggle is not worth the trouble and hardship they went through to throw off the yoke of oppression that unitary Sudan represented in the lives. 

No two quests for self determination are the same.  My attempts to contrast south Sudan’s struggle for self determination with the on-going desire and quest by us, the Igbo to achieve our own freedom from the unjust contraption called Nigeria, which exists and acts true to type, reaffirms the evident truism that the immediate assertion encapsulates.  We have fought and lost a war in our quest to achieve the same feat as the inhabitants of south Sudan.  I blame our defeat in that war partly on the schizophrenic character of the leadership that guided its prosecution.  However, even in defeat, aspects of our experience fighting that war constitute proof of our ability to run a modern state.  It gladdens my heart even further when I remember that leaders of the Nigeria project lack similar ability.  Granted that nothing shames them, Igbo accomplishments for the duration of the war— while were subjected to a chocking blockade, we refined our own petroleum, fabricated some of our own functional battle hardware, compounded some of our won effective pharmaceutical products without external assistance—are enough to shame them especially when it is evident that Nigeria under their hold, has proven itself incapable of achieving similar feats.  When I look at the failures of a united Nigeria, the Republic of Biafra, which will rise again, is proof that the wealth of nation is its intellectual property. 


The late Chief Anthony Enahoro once told me that the current century, which he aptly called the Century for Nationalities, will witness the achievement of self determination through statehood by most of the world’s distinct nationalities, especially those of them that were carved into aberrant supra-national states by external intervention. There is wisdom and logic in Chief Enahoro’s prediction.  Some of the events that have unfolded so far in the British Isle, where the British are being compelled by hard facts of history to continuously loosen their imperial shackles on the Irish, and the Scots have given credence to the Oldman’s prediction, which was part of his analytical responses to some of the incisive questions I often asked him in those days.  Although it is too early for anyone to predict the direction of the uprisings that began this spring in the Arab and Muslim world, it is only a moronic cynic who will make bold to assert that the peoples involved haven’t carved a unique path to self determination on the sandy and dusty lands in that part of the world.


Closer home, some of us join the resilient inhabitants of south Sudan to herald the birth of their new state.  Nothing trumps history and the justice it ultimately holds for victims of the political oppression and injustice.  At the flag lowering/raising event that marked the sunset of unitary state control and the birth of a new state in south Sudan yesterday, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the man who went to great length in his use of illegal violence to perpetuate the absurdity similar to the unity that has been used in the Nigeria project to dehumanize the Igbo especially, to hold inhabitants of south Sudan down, admitted defeat.  He was quoted to have said in a New York Times story that:  “Sudan’s unity would have been better,” but “I convinced myself that unity shouldn’t be through war.”  Are his likes all over the continent who sustain unity through violence and dehumanization listening? 

Notwithstanding that Igbo quest for self determination is yet to attain the status of a struggle, it still encapsulates all necessary ingredients for an outcome similar to what just dawned in south Sudan.  There is no iota of doubt in my mind that our own turn will come.  Time will prove me right on that. 

E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist. He is the author of The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria, published in March by UK-based Ashgate Publishing Ltd

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