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.

Friday, July 4, 2014

VANDALIZATION OF BRT BUSES, UNACCEPTABLE UTTER MADNESS.

Icheoku says provided the Nigerian army is guilty as alleged that some of their soldiers went on rampage, vandalizing public transportation buses, just because one of them was mowed down by a bus while illegally riding his bicycle on a lane exclusively reserved for such buses, their action is condemnable and simply unacceptable. Icheoku asks what was the soldier doing riding his bicycle on such a busy highway as Ikorodu road, especially on a lane strictly reserved for those rapid transit buses (BRT)? If true, then it is yet another display of crass indiscipline, wantonness, egregiousness and lawlessness by the often ill-trained Nigerian "unknown" soldiers, whose penchant to go cuckoo on the slightest provocation is legendary. Icheoku says it is completely incomprehensible for these soldiers to go on rampage, destroying public transportation equipment and infrastructures, simply because one of their possibly 'DRUNKEN' colleague, seemingly chose to commit suicide using a BRT bus; otherwise what was he doing in such an exclusive rapid transit bus lane in the first place? By the same token, if a train kills someone on a rail track, whose fault is it anyway?

It is only in uncivilized brutish enclaves that men and women trained, equipped and paid to protect and defend the territorial integrity of a country, often viciously turn around against the same people that make their existence possible. In advanced civilized societies, the only place and time you see soldiers is on television news coverage when they are returning from or shipping out on deployments, during such National holidays when they are participating in parades and on other seldom occasions when they are receiving honors or burying one of their killed in action (KIA). You do not see soldiers on the streets getting rascally or in "MAMMY MARKETS" getting drunk or in 'Mosalashi Yaba burning Kalakuta Republic' or now on 'Ikorodu road burning BRT buses' or at any other place for that matter that is not within their confined barracks, which is often zoned off to 'bloody' civilians. Speaking in equivalence, such occurrence as this BRT brigandage is alien and completely none existence, admitted that once in a while, an incensed soldier can snap, pick up a gun and kill his colleagues or family members and then sometimes self in a murder suicide? This could be explained away as a mental illness of that particular soldier BUT Icheoku refuses to accept that an entire army of a country is probably afflicted with unsound mind due to the frequency of occurrence of such outlandish misbehavior by the Nigerian army.

The BRT buses destruction by the Nigerian army will go a long way in further damaging the image of a country that is already very far below stellar; added to the Boko Haram madness particularly their Chibok girls 'alleged' abduction that is continually spewing very corrosive sulfuric volcanic ash upon it. icheoku asks which tourist or investor would pick such a country as a priority go to place for a visit or investment? Humanity like to be safe or at least have a sense or feeling of it, otherwise no one would want to even visit America because of gun violence, but at least you know and feel the authorities are making effort to stop it or solve it when it happens. Most times, appearance rather than reality is key; and at present, Nigeria certainly appears to be a very unsafe place for anyone to be. 

With one crisis after another, Boko Haram this Boko Haram that and some school girls being kidnapped etc; and in an Internet age when one does not need a Nigerian Information Minister Maku to spew his peculiar facts about the condition in Nigeria, Icheoku wonders whose interest all these disturbances are really serving? Icheoku says Nigeria could sure use some break from all these nightmarish daily incidences and so, this further stain on its image at this time of great tribulation and challenges was certainly uncalled for and was also avoidable. But whether the authorities would do something to find and arrest these miscreant soldiers and punish them accordingly, the jury is still out. icheoku says our safest bet is that instead, the authorities will use the cover of "UNKNOWN SOLDIERS" to allow them to escape from justice. 

Icheoku laments that the impunity of these khaki wearing department of the Nigerian society was foist on Nigerians by the Alusi (deity) of Ota, Olusegun Obasanjo, who in 1977 destroyed Fela's Kalakuta Republic, killing Mrs Ransome Kuti in the process and later dismissed the carnage as 'Unknown Soldiers' act? Regrettably, for Nigerians, if it is not them that is impacted directly by an action, it does not matter; and today, the BRT which was not even in existence during Fela's persecution by Obasanjo, is now at the receiving end of the same Nigerian soldiers' fury. Since that Obasanjo's infamy of 1977, it has been one abuse after another, one wantonness after another by the Nigerian army against the people of Nigeria; with some of them stealing governance through coup de tats (Buhari and Babangida), to murdering innocent civilians including Dele Giwa, Bartholomeo Owo, Bernard Ogedengbe, Segun Lawal, Ken Saro Wiwa and most recently a Police DPO and his deputy in Ikorodu Lagos. Simply put, the Nigerian soldier has brought so much sorrow, blood and tears to many Nigerians that one begins to wonder if there is indeed any real use for their existence and whether they actually do add value to the Nigerian society?

Icheoku wonders what manner of men these guys are and what sort of training they actually receive and further, whether they are from another planet; because were they Nigerians, they cannot continuously be committing such hateful crimes against their fellow citizens and their properties? It is quite unfortunate that the BRT which every Lagosian applauds Governor Fashola for, could be so vandalized by the Nigerian army. Icheoku wishes that all of these soldiers in Lagos as well as other cities in Nigeria could be shipped away from the cities to places like Sambisa Forest, Bakassi, Kaura Namoda etc because army formations do not belong in the cities. Military formations throughout civilized world are NOT located in cities but in such far away secluded places where they can freely be the armed men they choose to be. They remain there, train there and wait to be deployed as security needs arises and periodically get some days off to visit the cities if they earned it. The military have a separate existence or world of their own and the Nigerian military should not be an exception to the rule by stationing them within city limits. Such their removal and separation from the main society greatly reduces frictions between them and the civilian population; and thus help in reducing the frequency of such outcomes as was witnessed on Ikorodu Road Lagos today. But unfortunately, icheoku forgets that preaching to a 'deaf and dumb' society, led by a timid government that refuses to learn how things are done better or could be improved upon, is often an effort in futility. 

Anyway, what an unfortunate BUT otherwise avoidable destruction of public properties by the Nigerian army it was. Icheoku hopes that Governor Fashola will throw enough tantrums and stir overbearing dust over the incident that Abuja is forced to do something to get the army authorities to pay for the damage done and also punish their petulant errant soldiers that perpetrated such untoward breach of the peace. OR could it possibly be that these perpetrators are Boko Haram members and/or sympathizers trying to provoke Lagosians into a confrontation? Icheoku says what happened on Ikorodu road today is crazy-madness and unacceptable, no matter the prism with which it is viewed. However, if according to the army version of the incident, Lagos Area Boys took advantage of the accident involving their soldier and carried out the vandalization, then Icheoku apologize; but maintains that such rampage is not beyond the usual repertoire of the Nigerian army. Only a thorough investigation would unravel what actually happened and Icheoku calls for one. 

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