Thursday Column with Mohammed Adamu
REST ON KYARI, THE QUINTESSENTIAL LOYAL AIDE
“….few presidential Aides in the corridors of Aso Rock power have been the victims of fiercer denunciation than President Buhari’s one-of-a-kind Chief Of Staff, the late Abba Kyari of blessed memory. He was assailed by treacherous political insiders who were not content with holding the short end of the governance stick even as he was assailed also by opposition political outsiders who were nostalgic about their decadently corrupt golden past time. He was assailed by self-aggrandizing revisionists bent on an inordinate reordering of the subsisting geo-political and socio-economic order of things even as he was assailed also by dissolutely terrorizing irredentists who chanted secessionist tunes and beat the drums of war in the guise of diligent pursuit of geo-ethnic self-determination. Kyari was assailed for being loyal to his Principal, even as he was most bitterly assailed for availing himself as his Commander-In-Chief’s indefatigable body armor –taking the shots from both enemy and friendly fires. Needless to say that he died an honorable death in the line of duty”. – ‘Kyari’s Lincoln’s Height’ (II) (April/30/20)
DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES MUST NOT AID ATHEISM TO BE SECULAR
“Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights encourages nation states to adopt legislative measures against “any advocacy of national racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”. And what can be more obvious than the fact that any advocacy of religious hatred will necessarily constitute incitement to violence? Until recently with the combative rise of atheism in opposition to blasphemy laws, most countries had in their penal systems laws expressly against blasphemy; reason being that there is a clear jurisprudential raison-d’être leading to the conviction that any advocacy, of a religious or anti-religious nature, “if it has the tendency to lead to breach of peace”, it should be legislated against….. Let’s face it, the easiest way to stop overzealous people of faith from taking laws into their hands is when the law itself is made their avenging angel whenever what they hold sacred is profaned. People of faith must not inadvertently advance the cause of atheism by a mutually-self destructing rivalry that helps neither Caesar nor God”. –‘Atheism And The Rise Of Irreligion’ (II) (May/13/20)
BILL GATES’ ‘DREAM-VACCINE’
“At the risk of lending credence to the genuine or unfounded fear by apocalypticists, of an end-time ‘mark of the beast’, Bill Gates -even as he has severally denied a depopulation agenda- at least he has admitted being concerned about controlling global population. Plus he has not denied the vision of a digitally certified members of the humans species by some kind of ‘global ID’, funded as the ‘Gates ID2020’. This is not only intended to digitally certify, but ultimately track and control the world’s population. Welcome to George Orwell’s prophetic novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’. Many worry that no matter the altruistic benevolence of Gates’ intention about population control it still should worry the world that a few largely irreligious so called defenders of the human race arrogate the power to remote-control humanity. Although they do not believe the ‘conspiracy theory’ that Gates’ dream-vaccine is the ultimate ‘mark of the beast itself’, they believe that it is the prelude to the eventual ‘chipping’ of individuals not only for the purpose of tracking but more worrisomely for what a concerned American Pastor referred to as ‘mood and mind altering’”. –‘Bill Gates’ Poisoned Chalice’ (II) May 27/20
ON THE AFRO-AMERICAN: TO SING OR TO SWING
“For the Afro-American it has never been about Floyd really; it has always been about the seizing of rare but opportune moments, at any point in time, to send a clear and unambiguous message to the racist white American, that ‘enough is enough’. That after four hundred years of ‘turning the other cheek’ the scripture by now must’ve been fulfilled, and it is time to let go on singing ‘we shall overcome’, and be prepared to do some ‘swinging’! Like the Jewish rallying call against the humiliation on the ‘Massada’, there is always a time to say ‘Never Again!’” – ‘Not About Floyd’ –June/25/20
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
“In a democracy people should dissent without dissension. They should be able to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Politicians getting agitated over democratic schisms is as primitive as the anxiety of unscientific man had once been over the natural phenomenon of lunar eclipse -it is to fret over nature sorting itself. It is to worry over what you cannot help… And this mentality –of fretting over nothing- also defines our attitude to democratic litigation. We worry over going to court to resolve even persistently system-harming issues. We would rather bicker and bicker –feeding the media with the logs and twigs to heat up the system by driving controversy. The existence of courts whereby democratic dissent and disagreements are to be resolved is a primordial provision of the democratic process. Democratic actors –rather than shy away from litigation- must maximally avail the judicial process if our democracy is to grow past it teething nascency into its wisdom tooth. Whenever it becomes necessary we must litigate to resolve dissent before it degenerates into dissension, or to reconcile disagreers before they become disagreeable. And if the courts are tardy or unjust, we must demand from them a return to the path of timeous justice”. -‘A Knee On The Neck Of Democracy’ (July/02/20)
KEYAMO’S BAPTISM OF FIRE
“….it appears that since the exit of Aminu Wali and Ita-Giwa, this executive Department for Legislative Liaison has virtually lost all its groove, with virtually all three presidents after Obasanjo (Yaradua, Goodluck and now Buhari) no longer paying heed to it…. The secret of executive success at the legislative arena does not only lie in the creation of an Executive Department for Legislative Liaison, or the presence of a single channel of executive-legislature communication, or the appointment of a skilled political-cum-legislative expert, or maybe even his ability and readiness to deploy the most effective executive lobby initiative at the legislative arena; but rather success lies most importantly in the readiness of all executive foot soldiers (namely political appointees of the President heading MDAs) to submit to the superintendence of this office, the Department for Legislative Liaison, and to be rightly guided by it whenever they have issues of concern at the legislature”. -‘Keyamo And The State Of Executive-Legislature Rapport’ (23/07/20)
TY’S MISPRIMED SAKABULAS
“….then came the story of Nigeria’s former Defense Minister, Lt. Gen. T Y Danjuma -on the offensive. Again. And although in fairness to those whose ethnic jugular the retired General has now grabbed (namely the late Aguyi Ironsi’s wife), sometimes even I do get the feeling that this uniquely esprit-de-riche General called TY often amazes as much as he disgusts. He comes across as one whose mind occasionally gets sequestrated by the demons of our post Civil war history; and given the regularity of these demonic attacks, it appears you can now hardly tell when this lord of the ‘Taraba manor’ is compos mentis or when he has gone completely kolomental. With a cavalierly self-righteous disposition typical of him, TY tends to forget, always, that the Civil War had long ended and that the geo-ethnic ‘bad belle’ that it has left with us is no longer fought with arms and ammunitions. Every time a whiff of imagined tea-cup storm blows across, a war-wary TY goes for the gun. A sense of still being in the trenches dodging ogbunigwes and preemptively striking at phantom objects of his wanton imagination, appears to have gotten the better of TY’s twilight days. His nostalgia for the opportunistic cavalry charges of the sixties when vulnerable hors de combats lay at the mercy of his jackboots, is becoming nauseatingly legendary, as the man now enjoys being the casus belli rather than the source for the much needed peace-time healing that the nation craves”. – ‘Danjuma And Azunna: A Tale Of Two Insanities’ (Aug/06/20)
To be concluded…
