CHINUA ACHEBE BURIED, REST IN PEACE.

 

Icheoku says Professor Chinua Achebe's progression into eternity is now complete with his burial at his ancestral home in Ogidi Anambra State on May 23, 2013. The burial was well attended with Presidents Jonathan of Nigeria and his Ghana counterpart in attendance among other dignitaries. However Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka was conspicuously absent at the burial of a fellow literary giant leading Icheoku to query whether it is the Yoruba unforgiving propensity that conspired to force Soyinka to stay out the burial; possibly because Achebe called out their Papa Awolowo on the role he played during the Biafran genocide supervised by Yakubu Gowon in his last work "There was a country." 

Icheoku says whatever be the case, Professor Chinualumogu Achebe was uneventfully buried and what he said about and concerning Awolowo remains a truism; and as far as Icheoku is concerned, the Yoruba antagonists can stuff their anger in their you know what for crying out loud. What kind of people holds grudge against the dead simply because he memorialized the truth about the role played by their tribal lord Obafemi Awolowo during the conspiratorial Biafran genocidal war? Icheoku was around during the war, Icheoku read the book and adds that Achebe was even too respectful in what he said about Awolowo as Icheoku could have done worse were places traded. 

"There was a country" is a good book and every Nigeria should read it for an insight into what went awry and spoiled the country that once was - NIGERIA. Icheoku had an opportunity to take it to one so called Egbe Oduduwa in Diaspora legal adviser who mistook the "country" that once was for Biafra instead of Nigeria. Anyway, Icheoku says adieu Prof and thank you for the good fight.

STATE OF EMERGENCY, JONATHAN FINALLY FINDS HIS MISSING BALLS.

Icheoku says it is an action which time had since come and become long overdue and hereby congratulates President Jonathan for stepping up to the plate to do what is necessarily required of him as the chief custodian of security in the country. The unabating, metastasizing insecurity in the land does no one any good including those in the sidelines currently cheering the mayhem being visited upon the land just because Jonathan is the president, admitted he has not come to judgment. 

As with all revolutions, it is pregnant and no one knows the dimension it might eventually snowball into if left unchecked. If it is Jonathan today it might be a Haruna tomorrow and Okoronkwo the day after tomorrow or another Olayinka with other sections providing the cannon fodder for anarchy. Be that as it may, Icheoku hopes the president will allow the security forces do what is needed to get their job done and if it means shooting some people, so be it; if it means rendering to waste some neighborhoods, so be it; if it means going up against some very high-ups, let such action be welcomed provided normalcy is restored in such stricken and handicapped neighborhoods or states of the Nigerian federation. 

Like the president said and Icheoku concurs, "every Nigerian has a duty to stand firm against those who threaten the sovereign integrity of the Nigerian state; and every Nigerians' will should be strong because Nigerians' faith lies in the indivisibility of the Nigerian state." Biafra was shot down under this guise and Nigerians must now ensure that the same tenet that applied then applies today and not allow any part of the geographical entity to unravel the contraption. Icheoku says 'way to go President "I now give a damn" Jonathan.'

ABATI'S ODE TO JONATHAN, A RESPONSE.

"Yes, great minds like Abraham Lincoln, Mahtama Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Kwame Nkrumah made the world easier. Yet whatever they achieved was with plainness of approach, honesty and integrity. They were not attained with dourness and stupidity. They came out of a vibrant methodology and pragmatic visions. Jonathan lacks these qualities. Comparing the man Jonathan to these great minds is illusory and vain." - Dr Olusegun Fakoya