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.

Showing posts with label nigeria is a small country to have additional states. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nigeria is a small country to have additional states. Show all posts

Thursday, November 6, 2008

NIGERIA, SAY NO TO FURTHER STATES CREATION!

Nigerians must cease this moment to take back their country and say no to further balkanization. States creation is not the development they need and clamour for. It is not viable, it is very divisive and continuously put more distance between families, friends and colleagues. Some of the existing states does not even have any meaningful geographical entity with sustainable source of water supply, agricultural land, and areas for future developments; yet these corrupt politicians who do not even have any mandate nor were elected in the first place, are hoofing and puffing about gerrymandering and balkanizing Nigeria, looking to create private fiefdoms where they can become the Lord of the manor. Icheoku asks, aside of Lagos State, Rivers State and may be Kano State, which other state in Nigeria can, truly speaking, exist or thrive on its own, independent of the cap-in hand monthly allocations from Abuja?

Imagine, from Lagos through Benin to Calabar there are over twelve state capitals within a land mass distance of less than one thousand (1000) miles. When juxtaposed with a state like California in the United States of America, which is about nine (900)hundred miles in length, from north to south, then the frivolity of this states creation exercise in Nigeria becomes manifests. What are they creating? What land-mass is being divided up here? A state like Enugu State with its less than four million population can easily fit into the city of Houston, Texas! A State like Gombe has more cattle and goats than human-beings which makes one to wonder aloud, the reasonableness of this effort. Between Asaba, Awka, Enugu and Abakiliki are four state capitals within less than three hundred miles radius? What is wrong with these Nigerian supposed political and military elites that they do not prioritize their activities? Or is this state creation a mere wedge-issue to distract Nigerians from holding their supposed "leaders" accountable for their democratic dividends? Maybe another avenue to loot the treasury - a nation of pirates and bandits in power?

Imagine the duplicity of bureaucracy and the cost of developing respective state infrastructures and needed manpower to run every new state. In 1979 Jim Nwobodo, governor of then Anambra State ran a wonderful government administering the area now balkanized into Enugu State, Anambra State and Ebonyi State which now, will require three Jim Nwobodos with three of his bureaucracies and manpower to still run the same area? Whether much changes in development has been recorded as a result of this new delineation is yet to be determined. Is this sub-divisions really necessary after-all?

What manner of development does Nigerians really want, spending scarce resources to pay for unnecessary bureaucracy when they could have been dispensed with? This blogger remembers fist-hand, the dislocation of families occasioned by useless state creations whereby a wife is forced out of the civil service of her state of birth because she was married to a man previously of the same state but who has been forced into another state. What is the use, one may ask? Icheoku would rather these non-viable states are merged and instead, additional local government areas created for administrative convenience only. Nigeria is a small country to have as many states as thirty-five talk-less of additional states. When one travels up to the desert northern part of the country, it becomes easily manifest that empty expanse of wretched earth and few donkeys are constituted into states with a few human-beings running them. It is apparent that no state in Nigeria is truly self-sustaining and this defeats whatever rationality bandied around for creating more. Why then create more of these pan-handling states to scramble for the withering Federal 'oil' purse? Icheoku says that it is merely for selfish reasons wherein anyone who feels marginalized from an existing state starts clamouring for his own area of influence; and like a big fish in a small pond continues this noisy agitation until some private acres of land are carved out for him as his own state where he plays the emperor who can do no wrong.

What Nigerians need is a consolidation of regional states into mega-cities just like Lagos State wherein majority of Nigerians live and call home. So if the Lagos experiment is working, Icheoku asks, why not replicate same in the east and in the north? Maybe an additional mega city Kano and a mega-city Enugu will suffice and then who needs a state? Japan, Canada and France are some of the advanced economies that do not have states but mere administrative prefectures. If only Nigeria can bring together all these independent resources being piece-mealed to each mushroom state into one huge purse and invest same in these mega-cities. With about twenty (20) million people each in these cities (Mexico-city has about 25million people) Nigeria will become a more viable place to invest as these consolidated populations can sustain industries, markets, companies and other related investments and truly become dependent on Internally Generated Revenue. Also the logistics of building an industry in Nnewi and trucking the finished product to Sokoto on non-existent roads will be a thing of the past as the product market and its manufacture will be within the same proximity. When 25million people pay their taxes including sales-taxes, the government revenue will be sufficient. Also it will make for easier management and accountability.

Icheoku calls on Nigerians to resist this proliferation of unnecessary states because they are not viable, they are wasteful and does not in any way speed up development. They are duplicitous and creates a chasm between families, friends and colleagues. Majority of these mushroom states do not have any stable, predictable and sustainable source of revenue. To this effect therefore Icheoku commends the remarks made by Umaru Yar'Adua that states and local governments should intensify their drives for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and de-emphasize their current over dependence on allocations from the monthly Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC).

This clarion call by Abuja, that States and Local Governments should hence forth depend less on the monthly FAAC allocations and intensify their IGR drives, will only be meaningful where the states are viable or endowed with resources they can harness or tap into? Where can a state like Yobe or Jigawa derive their viability from where they constitute mere parched desert wastelands?

In summation therefore, Icheoku calls on the people of Nigeria to please stop this madness of states creation. It is not the answer to the myriad of problems facing Nigerians, majority of whom already have been living together in Lagos since Independence in 1960. What Nigeria needs now are few additional mega-states with enough population and well developed infrastructures that will be self-sustaining. Therefore, SAY NO TO FURTHER STATES CREATION IN NIGERIA!