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, May 20, 2020

CORONAVIRUS: DEMOLITION OF HOTELS, GOVERNOR WIKE WENT TOO FAR.

"The problem with assessing political candidates is that you never really know what they are like until they get hold of power and by then it is already too late. The decent ones wield power with restraint and humility. They understand the limits of their own wisdom, human wisdom. They also understand the inevitability of unintended consequences which are the rule. They know that they will not be in charge forever so they thread lightly. But the bad ones, they go crazy and the more power they get the crazier they go. Power is the drug they have been searching for. It is why they went into politics in the first place, not to help you or their fellow citizens or to improve the society, but to fill the empty space inside themselves. These are profoundly damaged people." - Carlson Tucker, FoxNews. 

With those words, FoxNews Tucker Carlson succinctly captured Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State Nigeria, the absurdity of his manner of governance, particularly his recent demolition of some hotels in the State which he governs simply because their operators were in violation of his coronavirus inspired shelter in place order. ICHEOKU says this is brazen as there is no justification whatsoever for demolishing peoples business premises based on such a flimsy excuse that they did not obey his executive order on coronavirus quarantine. Such an extreme measure was unnecessary as there were other more rational and reasonable alternative measures, which the governor could have applied to achieve the same purpose of punishing and deterring those who were not compliant to his shelter in place order. 

The Governor could have fined them, sealed off the hotel premises until further notice, suspended or even revoked their operating business licenses and permits; or totally ban them from ever engaging in hotel business in Rivers State. Any of these penalties would have sufficiently punished those violators, short of demolishing their business premises. But for the governor to take bulldozers to the hotels which are helping to ameliorate the acute unemployment crisis in Nigeria, particularly in his Rivers State, through job creation, was rather an unmitigated disaster gone too far. Did the governor even think through his action before levying its execution? Did he think about the workers employed by the hotels, regardless of their number, who earned their living working there but who now have no jobs to return to when his shutdown is eventually lifted. These people will now rejoin the burgeoning unemployed population and with it, their dependents, who they hitherto supported could become destitute. 

Governor Wike is a fella who ICHEOKU has no admiration for, principally because of the manner and style of his governance. He is supposedly a lawyer but doesn't behave like someone who understands how law works. He has no regard to the rule of law otherwise he would have taken those breakers of his order to court and let the judge determine their guilt and then mete out necessary punishment to them accordingly. He has no regard to basic principles of civility and the time honored tenet of due process. In the matter under discussion, he was the legislature, the judge and the executioner and you ask yourself is there any other better way to describe a despot? His behavior is not civilized; he lacks decorum and decency; he is thuggish and roguish; he is braggadocios; he is boastful; he is arrogant; he has neither empathy nor sympathy; he is dictatorial and brutish; and he is somewhat ruthlessly very mean. He possibly have killed people and looks like someone who is tormented by some inner demons. 

What if those people who were found on the hotel premises were on extended stay or are permanent residents therein? What if those people were observing their shelter in place in the hotels? What if the operators were using the opportunity of the lockdown to carry out some needed maintenance and general repairs or do some renovations? What if they were relatives of the operator and staying therein on the premises. In fact, it does not and should not even matter what they were doing on the premises, all ICHEOKU is saying is that the punishment does not fit the crime. It was rather too draconic and drastic to demolish the hotels because of an alleged crime of violating a no movement order imposed by the governor on the State as a result of coronavirus and therefore repugnant. Why demolish hotels, business investments which created jobs and were bringing revenue to the State from taxes, liquor licenses and business permit fees just because of violation of no movement order? 

In short, there is nothing to understand here as the rational for the demolitions, irrespective of the shelter in place order which was violated. Why scare away future investors that their investments in the State are not safe and could be so cavalierly destroyed. Such a despotic quick to action is why investment in Nigeria is always a risky proposition or did Governor Wike not factor in that those hotels could be some people's lifetime savings and only investment income. El Rufai carried out similar demolitions when he was Minister of the FCT and now Nyesom Wike is repeating same as Governor of Rivers State. What got the better part of him or was it just a power tripping display, the original power show as Fela Anikulapo Kuti would call it. Why did the governor not think through the ramifications before he sent in those bulldozers? Education make people to weigh things before they act on them or was his own education so useless that it precludes common sensical logical deductions. 

ICHEOKU says it was a thoughtless action which the governor put in place to demonstrate that he is the lord and manor of and in Rivers State. But like other fellow reprehensible and revulsive governors before him throughout Nigeria, Governor Nyesom Wike too shall one day cease to be a governor and he will see how quickly he will morph into irrelevance. The same Rivers State's former Governor Rotimi Amaechi was once as despotic to the extent that he shutdown the courts in Rivers State for nearly one year without a care in the world about lawyers who earn their living through the courts and the thousands of litigants who had cases and controversies to adjudicate. But he did it anyway because he can and had the power to do whatever he liked, but today even visiting Rivers State is not an easy task for Rotimi Amaechi as he has since become a persona non grata there. 

Unfortunately, it appears that Governor Wike did not learn any lesson from Rotimi Amaechi's fate. He was supposedly democratically elected, but he does not behave like a democrat nor cares enough about the people to be compassionate. There are so many other lawless misbehaviors associated with this fella in the past, but the demolition of these hotels just because some people there violated his order to quarantine is the height of his arbitrariness. It is incomprehensible, to is reprehensible, it is heartless, it is inexcusable and it is as wicked as sin. What manner of a man behaves in this way. Even if he was on drugs or was totally inebriated, why would he allow himself to be completely so overwhelmed beyond rationality to succumb to the temptation of demolishing the hotels based on a violation so trifle that fine would have sufficiently atoned for it. 

It is sad and it is pitiful. Were Nigeria a rule of law abiding society, the owners of the hotels would have the courts restore them to their status quo ante through award of punitive damages against Rivers State government and Governor Nyesom Wike. Even Michigan State Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam were not this horrible, admitted they equally went too far in enforcing their respective States' shelter in place orders. Governor Nyesom Wike was one of those people who accused President Muhammadu Buhari of being a dictator  and not acting like a democratic president and you wonder what separates him from Buhari or any other jackboot dictator. If he could demolish people's business premises on a whim and without according them due process rights just because they violated an order to shelter in place, imagine what he would do were he the president and commander in chief of the armed forces. 

So what if they broke his order, where was his notice of the violation to them? Where was his cease and desist order to them? Where was his fine and where was his order sealing off the premises until further notice or even an order of revocation of operating licenses and business permits. Why didn't he even arrest them and detain them until they sign an undertaking not to operate the hotels again until the shutdown is lifted. What was he trying to prove by taking bulldozers to the hotels which provide revenue and employment to the State. The punishment does not suit the crime. It was unreasonably too harsh and excessively punitive. ICHEOKU says will not accept any explanation in justification because none made sense nor will ever make sense. Simply put, Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike was wrong in demolishing the hotels and should immediately apologize for his misdeed and pay compensation to the owners and operators of the hotels for the wrong done to them.

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