THE MARRIAGE OF ANNIE

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HAPHAZARD THOUGHT: WHAT WILL CHRIST SAY?

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Fri, 02/28/2014 - 14:59 — newsadmin

BreakingNews 28/2/2014 - Nigerian arrested for having sex with a goat in the forest

[ Masterweb Reports ] – A 20-year-old Nigerian man identified as Malam Kamisu Baranda, was arrested for having sex with a goat in Baranda forest, in Dutse Local Government Area of Jigawa State, Nigeria. He was handed over to Jigawa State Police Command by his village head for the bestiality act of which he said he sought  permission from the animal before engaging in.

Baranda was arraigned in court and the judge ordered him remanded in prison for two weeks while the case was investigated. The accused urged the court to set him free because the goat belonged to him and he sought the animal’s consent before engaging in the act. He said he had engaged in sex with animals “over 10 times” because it “satisfied his demand”, but had never previously been arrested. He said he took goats into the forest near his home to ‘avoid embarrassment’ and did not know it was an offence to have sex with them.


*Photo Caption – A goat.
 

JULY IN NSUKKA

Ice-chilled and damp

My surrounding was almost unfamiliar.

My old cardigan I wore and a cup of whisky in my throat down,

Down with hunger but to step outdoor I was afraid.

It had been raining all weeks and days.

Works abandoned in the farm

No man works under constant rain and cold

It kills with fever.

Trade was slow and unusual

Too many things are not selling out

Beers and sachet water not sold out as usual

Bread and pastry thin out

The only thriving market is usury

The market was full, muddy and slow

Traders talking in small groups ‘cause no business as usual.

They were clad in heavy wooly cloths.

Church attendance thins down

Many a church is in the open or poor shades.

Pastors mustn’t die;

They must preach door-to-door,

They should live by the gospel those that preach it,

And ‘cause of July souls mustn’t go to Hades.

Towards the end of July we saw the sun

Bright and bright

It brought life

Life to life

There were smiles

And sales

There were stories and merries

For the sun not the rain

Washes out tears.

© Osy Ugwu

31^st July, 2013.

At Nsukka

HAPHAZARD THOUGHT: NS’KKA DEJE!

By Osy Ugwu

osyugwu@gmail.com

As the year draws to the end, it is pertinent for us to look back on certain things and appraise ourselves. In this piece, we are going to look into those little things that confront us today in Nsukka that will certainly define where we’ll be tomorrow and too improve our standard of living in no mean way. Even though there were several things that pepped us up throughout the year, there were others that sapped our morale but nevertheless left us with a food of thought.

First thing first! Let’s take a cursory look into Enugu State politics. As far as now is concerned, we are first from the rear. Forget the few that are privileged to be part and parcel of the state politics. What matters is who occupies the apex position and since this political dispensation, we are yet to get there.  It appears Nsukka is jinxed. Not that we don’t have what it takes but we are engrossed in building individual political dynasty. No one wants to give way to the other and at the end we align with outside forces instead of coming together to make a head way. This has been our problem and till date we have failed to acknowledge that. And to say, our dream of becoming a state has been hampered by this our inability to form a common front.  We act like phlegmatic in face of politics. We are only powerful in local government level.

It is now a subject of small talks that Nsukka will produce the next governor of the state. The governor even openly confirmed his resolution to have an Nsukka man in the Lion Building come 2015 in the Town Hall Meeting at Nike Lake Resort on 29^th May 2013 as reported in Sun Newspaper of August 19, 2013. . This stems from what he chose to refer to as ‘zoning’ in PDP. We shouldn’t forget that power is won not given. Therefore, how are we priming ourselves to cease this opportunity given to us as we have a couple of forces with and outside PDP to contend with? A giant force stands out – a flamboyant force that demands a lot of attention.

It is a conventional wisdom that otu onye adighi akari oha but these days, one can never tell. Otu onye has started turning into oha and oha has clownishly metamorphosed into otu onye. This is the reason Ike Ekweremadu is a flamboyant force. Many may disagree on this and ask how influential Ike is. True his name may be missing in TIMES 2013 list of 100 most influential people on earth but he is quite a name. Perhaps he used his influence to even drop his name from the list. We should not be in a haste to forget that had it been Ike and his cohorts at the National Assembly did acknowledge the updated version of the document for Adada State creation submitted, maybe by now we’ll would been declared.... Words are not enough!

I must remind you that Ike is not only the senator out there. Even among the rumoured people that have interest in contesting for the seat from Enugu North Senatorial district is a senator. Believe you me, Ike has touched a lot of lives out there and the masses will go all out to vote for him should he declare an interest in the seat. Yeah, the masses are always looking out for one who can deliver the democracy dividend to them.  This goes a long way to ask the people that have been representing us in different levels how they have used their position to bring smile on the faces of Nsukka people. This is not a question of littering the whole streets of Nsukka with eateries, hotels and beer parlours to eat and drink ourselves sick. It is not a question of how many youths you have helped to get job as taskforce in the local government but in federal level.  It is not a question of how many houses you’ve built.  It is not a question of how many times you’ve visited us in a helicopter. It is not a question of how many people you’ve used your influence to swindle. It is not a question of how helpless you made the masses look with you re-election when they didn’t vote you. It is a question of how many industries emerged in Nsukka because of you. It is a question of how many youths you gave scholarship or helped in their search for definition of self, etc. It is a question how far you’ve used the confidence the masses reposed on you to bring them access to basic things of life.

 The bottom line is that as a people, we’ve to come strong and together and form the proverbial oha that is always stronger than otu onye in order to cash in on the benevolence of Gov. Chime and other well-meaning Enugu people that want us to produce the next governor of Enugu state. We need to have a round table discussion so that we witness less posters and bills of Nsukka people clamouring for the seat and unnecessary political prostitution. Every person mustn’t lead. Even though somebody must lead but it mustn’t be you. If you lose, support the winner to make Enugu better. If you’ve been there, give others chance no matter how much you’re loved. Remember greedy people like Chris Ngige always have a fate befall them. You cannot be in power forever. Take lessons from Nelson Mandela. Think right. Think Nsukka. Think Enugu State. Ns’kka dejeenu!

ADADA STATE CREATION: LINGERING AND GRADUALLY FADING INTO A MEMORY

By Osy Ugwu

This article was first published in Shepherd newspaper November 2013 Edition

One arm of the National Assembly on Wednesday 16th March 1983 moved a motion in its order paper calling for the creation of Adada State after it was adjured to have met the criteria to be christened a state.  Thirty years later, we are yet to be a state and the possibility of becoming that seems to be a wishful thought. As for meeting up with the constitutional requirement, we have.  What made the senate recently to find all the 61 groups agitating for state, including our beloved Adada, which not only have met the constitutional provisions but remained the most consistent and the oldest agitation, is yet to be fully explained.

If my memory serves me right, it had been stories of how close we came to our dream, how we have garnered supports and how this and how that. A full basket of sickening how.  Frankly, I use to delight in such stories and occasionally I would take hold of eraser and rub it gently over Enugu State in the space provided for my state of origin on my documents and a few times wrote Adada State after Abia State on the list of states of Nigeria but the story yet deepens and looks like an endless fairy tale full of combatant men pursuing a white elephant with peerless vigour but armed with nothing other than courage.

There is a truth I have come to know and accept which my SS1 government teacher eloquently denied and forced us like the animals in George Orwell’s fable, The Animal Farm to believe that all animals are equal. The truth is that there are people and people and people. The first set of people are the hoi polloi; the second set are the influential souls who can cause the people at the helm of any affair to change a cause to their favour; and the last set are the people who decide what happens, where, when and how. The last set’s personal decisions have direct bearing on the fate of a nation. Like the saying goes, if they sneeze, the whole nation catches cold. It takes the people in the two last sets to win a cause like this in a nation like ours and may be this is a fact we have glossed over.  Truly, we have fought for this for a very long time and we remained the most consistent and the oldest agitation, but things like this are not gotten through sentiments. Do you think the Niger-Delta millitants got their amnesty because this nation thinks their agitation was just or that they have cried for so long? Remember the agitation they put was not even as weighty as the one Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni compatriots launched. Nsukka has these elements and may be until they decide to join the crew we may just be engaging in a nugatory business. It matters not whose signature is there or missing. If signature is all we need now, I have a good one and I did gladly give it. If it requires going to the house, I will board a cab and get to the house, sit inside it and give it. We are forgetting something. Some house members are as important as hoi polloi. Even amongst thieves there are honour, that is to say, some thieves are without honour and therefore cannot boast of tangible contribution to their polity. May be I am wrong!

Major General Ugwuoke has submitted the right documents with the right signatories to the right place and the wrong thing happened.  “What is wrong?” He did ask but the usual “I’ll look into it” was the response. We will wait. I will wait. We have no choice. We must. But for how long?-May be ad infinitum. But we have people in the house who would have asked “Didn’t you see my signature?” Perhaps the answer would have been ridiculous. This is yet another story. Major-General Ugwuoke (retd) has waited and he with HRH (Professor) Igwe Ukpabi and Honourable James Ugwu and members of the Enugu State Committee on the Actualisation of Adada State and Adada State Movement according to Nigerian Tribune Tuesday 10^th September 2013 have in 35 paragraph affidavit deposed to averred that all the necessary procedure for the creation of state have been fulfilled by the group and yet the proposal has not been considered. The source stated too that the matter is yet to be assigned to any judge. I know somebody can cause NAS to go to where they hid the updated document and give INEC the supposed signal to conduct the referendum and when it is time for the NAS to create new states it will be easy for us to grab the yam that has been making us to lose sleep and then go to bed.

What is the problem this time around apart from the usual it did not meet up with the constitutional requirement? At any rate what Emmanuel Uzodinma  reported in Daily Post on July 7, 2013 is suggestive.  He quoted the statement of Chief Nnanwike Nwodo for Adada State Movement, which was entitled “Nsukka people put the records straight”. According to the newspaper report, Nnanwike Nwodo said in the statement “It has become obvious that some enemies of the struggle have resorted to the below-the-belt tactics to scuttle the agitation. These detractors perhaps have interest in another state agitation in South East which unfortunately could not meet constitutional requirements unlike the request for Adada State. But I think Chief James Ugwu the spokesperson for the Adada State Movement and Enugu State Committee on Actualization of Adada State thinks otherwise. May the excerpts of his interview with Starlite Newspaper on August 15, 2013 will suffice.

Question: Let us look at it this way, do you not suspect any sabotage against your proposed Adada when you consider the very fact that the chairman of the senate committee on review of the constitution, Chief Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy speaker of the house of representatives, Hon Ihedioha and the consultant led by one Amucheazi are proponents of another state to be created in the south east instead of Adada state. Do you not think that their personnel interests could cause the damage?
Answer: No, no, no! I don’t think anything like that could be imagined by these gentle men. See, they are on national assignment and therefore could not have brought their personal interests to bear.

As far as we are concerned, we requested for the creation of Adada state and as I speak with you, we have met all the constitutional requirements and the law says, ‘once you fulfill these requirements the national Assembly should order INEC to conduct a referendum and that is what we are asking for.

I do know we know the problem but to tackle it is what we are yet to do. I always hear words like lobby from the lips of politicians. If our stick and carrot method is not working let’s try lobbying method. I don’t have the practical knowledge of this but I think I have read a lot of problems on the dailies it did solve. If we are tired of trying, let us then  focus on 2015 election.

NSUKKA: A MILE TO THE DREAM CITY

                                              By Osy Ugwu

This article was first published in shepherd newspapaper 0ctober 2013

A close look at this town that births a greater chunk of human capital in Nigeria reveals a town well-planned and perhaps laid on a solid foundation. To be fair, it is organized a kind of, therefore it is supposed to be taken lesson from and not the other way round. By a priori conjecture, it has seen good governance in the recent times. This is evident in the way the master plan of this city has been executed, at least to a laudable extent.  

Without meaning to dive into recounting of the achievements of the past administrations, I must note with some pride that the short but intense romance this town had with Hon.Onyema Idoko and the one it still having with the successor, Barr. Tony Ugwu has culminated into myriads of development. These two men have successfully decongested the Ogige Market, giving rise to Ikpa Commodity Market, Ultra-modern Park under construction at Aku Road and Building Materials’ Market adjacent to the Industrial site. There are others such as the new abattoir to reduce health risk to the traders and rebuilding of the market stalls into standard and better stalls to curtail fire hazards. The old Park has been German-floored and too many other good things time and space wouldn’t permit me to recall here. Especially space. I won’t forget some of them like the floor of Private Park and some ‘green-painted sticks with 60watt bulb atop’ christened solar streetlight that were done by some people to save face. Anyway, those selling akara and roasting oka are enjoying them in the evenings. No thanks to them for thinking us unfit to have better streetlights.

Irrespective of the aforementioned achievements, we still have a mile to arrive at our destination. Yes, for a couple of reasons. I must note that what makes a city is not the quantity of infrastructures but the quality of minds of the inhabitants for which such infrastructures are meant for. And this quality of mind is instilled into the inhabitants through government apparatus which itself must have been disciplined. Such must include the Taskforce, Police, Civil Defense, etc. Especially Taskforce as it concerns a locality. The Nsukka taskforce have demonstrated to all and sundry that they are ‘touts’ as people use to tag them. These people are seriously entangled in sheer incivility, brandishing power with ignorance. This is where our beloved city fails.Their  I have witnessed many a structure die unused. This is because people whose job it is to direct others take lessons from Onitsha touts and forget that here is Hill city, the home of the academics and things here are supposed to be done in the proper decorum. Most agonizing is that most of them do not show concern on the area of their job description that does not put them in the position of gratifying themselves.

In a few years to come, the pedestrian bridge at the Ogige Market will clock 10 years and without been used. I have not seen them beat or harass anybody who crossed the road without using the pedestrian bridge. Is it not their work to direct the people to use them until they became accustomed to it? At any rate, it is still useful: those selling fruits and news-paper there keep their tables there.

 I must commend the Civil Defense Corps. Without them the pedestrian bridge in front of Catholic Cathedral will suffer the same fate as the one at the Old Park.

Believe you me, this mile can be short or long depending on our docility to values.

I could remember in those days when sanitary officers, may be, equivalent to today’s ESWAMA officials come around our sub-urban home here in Nsukka to check the health of our compounds especially toilet but today you see house with its sewer terminating at the main road and yet nobody asks questions about them. Today, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Eswama ignore wastes in the cans the government provided for the populace to dispose wastes and shift to charging and collecting irrelevant fees. They even do radio ads for the masses to pay their Eswama fee while wastes are dumped everywhere and unattended to. Whenever it occurs to them to pack the refuse at the Old Park, they will do it at rush hour, causing traffic congestion. The structure of their administration is poor: energetic youths go about collecting fees while old men strength has taken leave of do the ‘jaki’ work. The other day, I sighted two stern-looking local government officials approach my landlord with papers in their hands. I shouted almost immediately “that serves him right”. I thought they came to fine my landlord for allowing our compound turn swampy and eventually green. But I was wrong. They posted a court-injunction inviting us to court for owing house rate. But I cannot recall vividly the amount. Anyway, that is another story for another day.