Author: Editor
Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia It was an outpouring of goodwill messages, Thursday evening, as Ikengaonline, the media arm of Africa Centre for Transparency was formally unveiled. Eminent personalities from all walks of life, including Nigerians in the diaspora, joined in the virtual launch as a legal luminary, Chief Mike Ahamba, formally presented the online media platform. Professor Okey Ndibe in a keynote speech, noted that the South-East had remained under reported since the return of democracy in 1999. This, according to him, was because most media organisations are concentrated in the South-West and the northern part of the country. Ndibe regretted…
Dave Chukwuji …he stirred; waking up from an abyss so deep it had no form. Reality was still a few miles out, he reached out, grabbing at lights dangling in front of him like carrots before a panting donkey. Slowly he began to crawl out of the abyss. The smell of burning flesh assailed him. The crackle of burning cables and fume of fuel suffused his senses. Somewhere in the recesses of his subconscious mind the smell stirred him and he began the audacious climb from the abyss to the burning cavernous hold of the plane. As soon as…
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu Like the elder brother I never I had, Dambudzo Marechera, I left my House of Hunger in a hurry. All I knew was that I was leaving the city for good, abandoning the bright lights and big city of Lagos for the dust and darkness of my rural hometown of Alanso. I was aiming after anonymity, dying to dissolve into the nothingness of poverty. Much to my surprise I ran into a bedlam. Democracy or the talk of it happened to be all the rage. It was as though the town dam had burst as a…
By Azu Ishiekwene One week before Hollywood, Nigeria hosted a different kind of Oscar moment. At the swearing-in ceremony of Charles Soludo, former Governor of the Central Bank and new governor of the most commercially significant southeast state, the wife of the outgoing governor, Ebele Obiano, staged an unusual drama. Ebele, Nigeria’s modest answer to Kenya’s tempestuous Lucy Kibaki, floated across the dais to where Bianca Ojukwu, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Spain, was sitting to mockingly question what she was doing at the ceremony after years of being a thorn in the government’s side. What followed wasn’t as pretty as Ebele’s butterfly-sleeved pink…
Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia Senior Advocate of Nigeria and legal luminary, Chief Mike Ahamba, has called for the exposure of those behind bandits that are wreaking havoc in parts of the country. Chief Ahamba made the call while formally unveiling Ikengaonline, the media arm of African Centre for Transparency (ACT). He regretted that no media organisation in the country has been courageous enough to expose the sponsors of banditry and terrorism chocking Nigeria to death. The senior lawyer commended the publishers of Ikengaonline for the laudable initiative, and charged the online media platform to focus more on investigative journalism if it…
Our Reporter, Abuja WomenAid Collective (WACOL) has joined hands with Ford Foundation in a move to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in Anambra State. The group on Wednesday, at Don Ritz Hotel Awka, commenced a two-day Women’s Rights Advocacy and Leadership Training of 50/50 Action Women for the elimination of violence against women and girls in Anambra State. The training is said to be aimed at enhancing the capacity and advocacy skills of community women leaders and advocates, for the promotion as well as the protection of women’s rights in their respective communities. After the…
I spoke to Dr Chinelo’s father. We have a mutual friend. He is in pain. He told me that he did his NYSC in Kaduna in 1982. He had fond memories of Kaduna before this descent to chaos. He doesn’t know how to get to Kaduna. Airlines are cancelling flights, train from Abuja is not an option, the road to Kaduna is under the control of bandits. I told him Nigeria did not happen to you. Bad governance did. It was in Nigeria that Igbos who returned to the North after the war got the rents their neighbours collected on…
“As long as my Ikenga is active, I can wrestle in the land of the spirits” – Igbo proverb In precolonial Nigeria, the Igbo administrative unit was some sort of a quasi-democratic republican system of government. It was a system deeply rooted in the people and guaranteed equality among its citizens, as opposed to a feudal system where a king lorded over his subjects in an empire. The Igbo society at the time could be described as acephalous, operating a system devoid of centralization. Village by village rule fostered participatory democracy based on strong traditional values and beliefs. Every…
Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia Governor Nasir El-Rufai, of Kaduna State, Wednesday, blasted the Nigerian military for failing to prevent the attack by terrorists on Abuja-Kaduna bound passenger train on Monday that claimed the lives of no fewer than eight out of the 970 passengers on board while scores of others were wounded and abducted by the terrorists. El-Rufai, who said he was “frustrated and helpless”, alleged that the military knew the location of the bandits behind genocidal attacks in parts of the state but for reasons only known to it, had refused to bomb their hideouts. The aggrieved governor queried the…
Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia In an apparent move to douse the nationwide anger over the crashing out of the Super Eagles in this year’s World Cup competition in Qatar following their 1-1 draw with the Black Stars of Ghana, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, has apologised to Nigerians as well as the Federal Government over the poor performance of the national team. NFF General Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi, regretted that Super Eagles failed to qualify despite the enormous support by both the Government and Nigerians. Sanusi in a statement obtained by Ikengaonline, Wednesday, regretted that the hope of Nigerians who thronged…