Icheoku says watched President Barack Hussein Obama's last presidential interview on CBS 60 Minutes and overall, it was a good interview. He was composed and self assured as usual and for most part the interview went on very well. However, Icheoku was taken aback by the president's evasiveness and refusal to answer categorically why he drew a redline in the sand for Syria's Bashir Assad and did nothing to enforce it when he crossed it. The interviewer Steve Kroft did not ask the president about Libya and Moummar Gaddafi and why he needed to have him killed after the former Libyan strongman has somewhat made a turn around, becoming a better world leader cum citizen.
Icheoku expected such life changing event as the killing of Gaddafi to have factored into Mr Kroft questioning on foreign policy but it did not come up. Icheoku says no one can count Obama's many foreign policy blunders without factoring in the killing of Gaddafi. A man who gave up his nuclear weaponry program; paid compensation for the Lockerbie plane bombing; handed over two of his security operatives that were fingered in the bombing who were prosecuted and jailed; apologized, opened up his country's vast reserves of oil to Western oil companies and came to New York to call for a new beginning; he also called Obama his son and son of Africa; yet Obama's government agreed it was the right thing to do to kill him leading to the disaster in Europe with migration as well as the unending crisis in Libya and the Middle-east.
Also Nigeria was under the threat of terrorism from the Boko Haram Islamists sect, killing the people and laying to waste a large swath of the country. The then Nigeria President Jonathan Goodluck made every effort for Obama to sell Nigeria weapons with which to fight those terrorists but Obama refused, hiding under lame excuse that Nigeria's military's human rights records was below par. Meanwhile the same Obama's government was supplying Saudi Arabia and other less disciplined governments throughout the world with weapons, but would not sell to Nigeria under a Christian president, Jonathan Goodluck. Of the three issues that forced Icheoku to abandon the ship of support of Obama, only the Syrian redline in the sand made it in the interview and the answer Obama gave was not a satisfactory one either. It is unfortunate that the president for the umpteenth time refused to take responsibility for his miscalculations in Syria and went to great length to avoid answering why he did not follow it up with enforcement. He was completely evasive and defensive and simply put, refused to answer the question why he did not react when Assad crossed his drawn redline.
The things Icheoku took away from the interview include the president's admission that there is severity of partisanship in American politics and that it does not allow for any meaningful movement towards solving the peoples problems. Further that the thing America has going for it despite the gridlock in Washington DC which has almost risen to the level of near dysfunctional, is that America for most part, from states to counties to cities, still functions very well. The president also said that Trump was an exceptional change candidate whose campaign was unconventional, almost free styling; yet he won convincingly and probably might introduce his unique style into governance, but whether it will work or serve him well, the president did not say. Continuing the president agreed with Steve Kroft that Trump ran an improvised campaign but that improvised governing might be an impossible task. Icheoku says regardless, what the president said or did not say is now immaterial; it doesn't matter anymore. Paraphrasing Hillary Clinton, Icheoku says what difference does it make at this time anyway. His opinion is now no longer relevant, it is now flushed into history and before this time next week we shall have a new president named Donald John Trump who will Make America Great Again. So long President Obama; hello and welcome President Donald John Trump.
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Christy 'Apena' Essien-Igbokwe , the wife of Jegede Shokoya of the New Masquerade and Nigeria's lady of songs is dead; she was 51years old. Although her family claimed that "brief Illness" killed her like so many Nigerians; Icheoku retorts that it was most likely AKwa Ibom voodoo and remote control that was used to arrest her. It is on record that she had fallen out with the governor of her native Akwa Ibiom State and have been having a relentless war for political turf with the governor? So who knows whether she was sacrificed to Ekpe cult or even Alusi-Okija as an offal; afterall African science is still very much alive and portent. May her soul rest in peace.
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