SAVIOUR NICODEMUS JOHN, urges all to celebrate Christmas with caution
Is Christmas not the most celebrated and popular religious festival in our today’s world? Christmas ranks higher than other religious festivals in popularity because Christians and non-Christians alike celebrate the Christmas festival. From New Delhi, India to Jakarta, Indonesia; and from Nairobi, Kenya to Melbourne, Australia, people from different races who profess religious faiths other than Christianity celebrate Christmas. And for many years, the peoples of the world have been celebrating Christmas, joyously.
But what is Christmas? Simply put, it is the commemoration and remembrance of the birthday of Jesus Christ, who is the only begotten Son of God. He paid the ransom for our sins by accepting to die on the cross for us. He is our redeemer and Messiah. So, those who exercise faith in Him will have eternal life.
Concerning His birth, we have different harmonious narrative accounts recorded in the synoptic gospel of the Bible. His nativity story has it that he was born of Immaculate Conception to parents, who belonged to lowly stations in life. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was betrothed
to Joseph, a carpenter. Both had not been sexually involved with each other when Joseph discovered that she was pregnant with a baby. So, he was contemplating putting her away when an angel of the Lord advised him against taking that course of action, telling him the reasons. He heeded the angel’s piece of advice.
During His stay on earth, Jesus propagated and spread the message of love. Love was the doctrinal base of His teachings, although He dwelt on such religious issues as forgiveness, repentance, paradise, and others. His revolutionary teachings, which his people deemed capable of upturning their ways of life, contributed majorly to His crucifixion on the cross. By His death on the cross, He paid the ransom for our sins. Now, whosoever believes in His name and obeys His command shall not perish but have eternal life.
Being a great religious personage and prophet, His birthday deserves remembering and commemorating. His phenomenal deeds, which are recorded in the new testament of the Bible, bear him out as a great religious teacher, prophet, and miracle worker. He’s a demi-god, who’s partly human and partly divine. He brought dead people back to life, converted water into wine, and calmed tempestuous sea. And his radical and revolutionary teachings have greatly influenced our way of life.
So, over the centuries, since his death on the cross, the peoples of the world have been celebrating his birthday. However, some Christian sects such as the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the Jehovah Witnesses do not commemorate his birthday on the grounds that Jesus Christ didn’t instruct us to celebrate his birthday. And, other people who do not mark Christ’s birthday aver that it was improbable that Jesus Christ was born on December 25 based on the narrative accounts of His birth, which are recorded in the Bible.
More so, legends and other lores have it that Saturnalia, a pagan festival, was Christianized into Christmas. Whether or not Jesus Christ’s exact birthday was December 25 is immaterial to us now as every December 25 is set aside for the celebration of His birthday.
Now, another Christmas is around the corner. We know that we have entered the Yuletide season when the deciduous trees start shedding their leaves. Then, our lips will become chapped. And houses near the roads will be coated with dust, which is ochre in colour, and which is the earth’s colour. When we start feeling a chill in the air, it is the unmistakable sign of the coming of Christmas.
As the Christmas day approaches, people get into a frenzy of preparation for the festival. They will buy new clothes and pairs of shoes for their children and relations. Others will have their houses dabbed with a coat of paint so as to beautify them. And people with the financial wherewithal may buy cars during the period for the celebration of Christmas.
That is how we celebrate Christmas in this part of the world. Besides the fact that it is the world’s remembrance of the birth of Christ, it is the time for mass home-coming of a people to their natal homes. Again, during the period, couples do solemnize their marital unions in churches. And, in many towns, chieftaincy titles will be bestowed and conferred on high-flying individuals, who have reached the acme in their careers and endeavours.
But sadly, the true meaning of Christmas as well as the reason for celebrating it is lost on many Christians in the Christendom. Do they know that Jesus Christ for whom they are commemorating Christmas stands for love? Instead of demonstrating acts of charity through their deeds during the Christmas period, many rich people engage in ostentatious and flamboyant display of their wealth. And during the period, young people do engage in illicit sexual concupiscence with the consequences of some school girls having unintended pregnancies. Again, during past yuletide seasons, many young people had died in unavoidable car accidents, which were caused by their drunk- driving.
Jesus Christ for whom we celebrate and mark Christmas performed acts of charity during His earthly life and ministry. It behooves us to follow Christ’s examples by being our brother’s keepers during the yuletide and beyond. More so, were Jesus Christ alive today, he would not approve of people participating in bacchanalian orgies in the name of celebrating Christmas. Jesus Christ lived a chaste life, and he was not known for indulging in epicurean and hedonistic deeds.
As we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, who is our redeemer, we should reflect on his deeds and teachings. If we abide by Jesus Christ’s commands, which are captured vividly in the synoptic gospel of the Bible, we will be able to tame and rein in our proclivities for doing evil deeds. A world that is filled by people who are Christ-like in their natures will be an oasis of peace and unity.
It is an indisputable fact that the year 2020 is an annus horribilis. It has spun Covid-19 pandemic and #endsars bloody protests, causing loss of lives and limbs, and hurting our mono-economy severely. So do we have cause to celebrate 2020 Christmas by throwing bacchanalian parties and spending money extravagantly instead of engaging in sober reflection and helping the dirt-poor?
Weeks before the 2016 election, Michelle Dallochio was driving home when she had a frightening encounter with an apparent Donald Trump supporter.
A few blocks from her Las Vegas home, the 39-year-old Iraq War veteran with Pacific Islander ancestry came across an SUV stalled in the middle of the road, so she drove around the vehicle.
She said the driver proceeded to pull up beside her, roll down his window, call her a stupid b----, and tell her to go back to her own country. She is American.
While the man wasn't wearing any Trump-branded clothing, and didn't have Trump paraphernalia on his car, Dallochio said he mentioned "the wall" at one point during his tirade.
After the encounter, Dallochio said she had a talk with her husband, who is Italian, about moving abroad, telling him: "This is not the future I want."
"I already gave up so much for this country. I want to leave," she told Insider in a recent interview.
After the conversation, Dallochio and her husband moved to Los Angeles for a job they hoped would lead to more international offers. In 2019, after about a year in LA, her husband secured a job in London, where the couple moved in March 2020.
Dallochio is one of a dozen people Insider recently interviewed who said they left the US because of Trump.
The Americans, who ranged in age from 26 to 61, cited a number of reasons for their moves — from a belief that Trump had emboldened white supremacists, to fears for LGBTQ rights, to access to healthcare.
While most of the expats we spoke to left the country for purely political reasons, a few cited disturbing interactions with Trump supporters in their decision to move.
Devon Kitzo-Creed, a Black woman, said she had experienced more racism under Trump's presidency, and that life in the US had become "unbearable." She and her husband moved to Ecuador this year.
The 29-year-old doula told Insider she was returning from a job in Philadelphia early one morning in the summer of 2019, when a driver with a Trump flag on his car started tailgating her. She said the driver gave her the middle finger, and his passenger made a fist gesture out the window.
"We were going 60 mph on a residential street, but I was just so terrified and had to get away from him. I ended up running a red light so that I could get away from him," Kitzo-Creed said.
"The racism was a big reason for us leaving," she added.
Similarly, Patricia Baker, 61, cited her "rabid" Trump-supporting neighbors in Florida as a reason she moved to Austria in May 2018.
A couple who lived next door decked out their lawn with Trump signs during the 2016 election, and could often be heard raving about the president from their porch, Baker said.
The husband was "not stable at all," Baker said. About two years before the election, she said, he crashed into a mailbox on their street. Baker also knew he had at least one firearm, because she heard him shoot an alligator once.
Baker said these events made her feel "uncomfortable," adding: "I just felt like this was a person I didn't want to get on the wrong side of."
Alice Englemore, 60, was living in Ireland when Trump was elected, and said she felt a profound change when she and her family returned to the US in 2017.
"I was hearing people saying things that I wouldn't have heard before — sexist comments, racist comments — as if they were proud of saying them," Englemore said.
She recalled one incident soon after she returned to the US, when she was filling up her car at a gas station in the Bay Area of California. She said a man made a "very sexist" comment — the exact words of which she doesn't remember — and then said: "Yeah, I'm a proud deplorable."
Englemore and her husband started making plans to move to Vancouver for their retirement, but bumped up those plans during the COVID-19 outbreak.
"We had two people on our block that absolutely did not believe COVID was real and were not taking any precautions. My husband was working remotely and at a certain point I just asked him, if you're working remotely could you work remotely from Vancouver?" Englemore recalled.
Rick, a man in his 40s from California, said he moved to Germany after Trump's election because he was afraid that the administration would end the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Rick is a pseudonym; he asked to speak anonymously for security reasons, but his identity is known to Insider.
Since his teenage years, Rick has suffered from irritable bowel disease, a chronic health condition that has made it hard for him to work. He's spent his adulthood going from one temp job to the next, while living with his parents to save money, and taking out massive student loans to pay for medication.
"I finally didn't have to do the weird flopping between temp jobs ... I could get consistent healthcare. I could start building some sort of foundation," he said.
But when Trump won in 2016, Rick said the thought that immediately crossed his mind was: "This guy will try to kill me."
Fearing that Republicans would end the ACA, Rick made it a priority to move to a country with a social health system, eventually settling in Germany on a freelancer visa.
Like Rick, 47-year-old Claudia Clark moved to Germany with her husband after Trump's election.
She said that while they mainly moved because of Trump's politics, her personal battle with chronic migraines was another factor.
Clark said that back in the US, her migraines were so bad that she couldn't work, but her health has drastically improved since being abroad.
Though she doesn't know for sure what caused the change, she said not having to constantly fight with her health-insurance provider over coverage could be a reason she's feeling better.
Christine, 26, also cited her brushes with the US healthcare system as a major reason she left the country a month after Trump's election in 2016. She asked that her last name be withheld to protect her security, but it is known to Insider.
Christine, who now lives in London, knows how illness could upend a life: She had a bad case of mononucleosis in 2015, and her mother, who has delusional disorder, has been hospitalized multiple times in the past.
She felt it was important to move to a country with more of a social safety net.
"Even though I earn enough money to support myself when I'm healthy, what if I'm not always healthy?" she said.
Ayla Kremen Adomat, 32, said Trump "was a huge impetus" for her and her husband's move back to his native Germany.
She said they were living in New York City before their move to Berlin, and were worried about the cost of starting a family and the less generous maternity-leave policies in the US.
"I've heard from friends in the States that for a regular birth — no complications — it can be upwards of $5,000," she said.
"I had a more complicated birth — I needed an emergency C-section and over a week stay in the hospital. I got a bill for 300 euros ($324)."
One of the expats we talked to cited fears that the Trump administration would jeopardize LGBTQ rights as a reason for his move.
Chris Good said the Trump administration's removal of a webpage dedicated to LGBTQ rights from the White House website within an hour of his taking office made it clear that the president didn't have his interests at heart.
"Even though during the campaign he had said he was going to be for LGBT rights and protections and all that, that was a dead giveaway that that was not the case obviously," Good said of the webpage being taken down.
So Good used his French citizenship to move to Europe in 2017 with his husband, both quitting their well-paying jobs at consultant firms to do so.
A few of the expats we spoke to acknowledged that it's a privilege to be able to move abroad. An international move can be costly considering flights, shipping, and visa applications — and is often an option only open to people with highly-skilled jobs.
Haylee Pearson, a 30-year-old from Gaithersburg, Maryland, who moved to Europe in 2016, explained some of the challenges.
"The process of leaving and moving to another country is a privilege. No one can just up and move to another country. It costs thousands and thousands of dollars," Pearson said.
Pearson pointed out how when she moved to Spain, and later the UK, she had to prove that she had enough money to support herself for a year.
"That's a luxury in and of itself," she said.
Some of the sources we spoke to initially made the move as students, or were able to live abroad thanks to a foreign spouse
Insider spoke to one man who followed through on a pact to move to Canada if Trump won the election, but returned a couple years later after facing challenges getting residency.
"At the time I was 53 and I was deemed older than is appealing to the Canadian government," Peter Schink, 56, said.
"I would only have so many functional years contributing to the system before I became a drain on the system."
Schink and his wife moved back to the US in February 2019, realizing how long of a road it would be towards residency.
Patricia Baker, the American in Austria, teared up as she described how the election's result made her feel like she could finally consider moving back to the US.
"I realized how much I didn't want to stay away forever," Baker said.
Haylee Pearson said Biden's win opened up a conversation with her Spanish partner about possibly living in the US one day.
"It's something that he's been really apprehensive to commit to ... just living in a country where he would be seen as a second-class citizen," she said.
But the majority of the emigrants Insider interviewed said they had no immediate plans to move back to the US.
George Feil, who moved to Canada in March 2017, said he's more worried than ever about America's future.
He said he found it concerning that more than 73 million Americans voted for Trump this year — the most for any Republican in history.
"I think there's a civil war brewing, to be honest," Feil said. Some fringe right-wing groups and personalities have floated ideas of a conservative secession in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, for others, moving abroad has provided the perspective to see the US differently.
Claudia Clark, who moved to Germany, said that for "many years" she had felt like a stranger in her own country, and doesn't "think of going back as an option."
"My values aren't aligned with the Americans," Clark said. "The 'I don't want to pay more taxes so people can have healthcare' or 'I don't want to pay more taxes so that the schools are better.' That mentality is just not me."
Dallochio, the woman who was harassed in Las Vegas before the 2016 election, said her first priority is her family's safety. She said that since moving to London, she has felt a lot safer, and like her ethnicity is not as important.
Two contradictory images and news feeds recently competed for this reporter’s attention.
The first was a ceremonial outing in the North East displaying rows of ‘repentant’ Boko Haram combatants in neat government uniforms.
They were being admitted into an amnesty programme to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into normal social life.
The second is a mammoth procession of angry citizens in the streets of Enugu. They were protesting the killing of over twenty unarmed ostensible IPOB sympathizers by security forces.
The killings were a reprisal for the earlier death of two security men following a needless altercation with IPOB members.
The Boko Haram is a ceremony of beneficent national forgiveness and reward for those who have levied war against the fatherland but have now ‘repented’.
The Enugu spectacle is yet another outrage against a tradition of vicious bloody repression of citizens for merely exercising the right to remember a sad patch of our national history.
The latter marks Nigeria out as one of the rare places in the world where gatherings in commemoration of a people’s past is criminalized to the extent of meriting summary group death sentence without trial.
I am neither a Boko Haram zealot nor an IPOB enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination.
I have an allergy to all movements that question the sovereign sanctity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Therefore, I remain a devoted federalist Nigerian until someone convinces me that the unity and value of Nigeria has become either an impossible mission or a futile endeavor.
Even then, my patriotic optimism is often baffled by the Nigerian definition of justice and equity.
For instance, I am trying to make sense of the assessment scale of our security establishment.
It takes some uncanny expertise to determine what type of threat to national security qualifies for point blank shooting of unarmed marchers and which qualifies for federally funded amnesty for dangerous armed criminals and patented terrorists.
In the public mind, however, there is now a swarm of nagging and urgent questions about the recurrent Biafra killings and protests competing for answers.
They include the following:
How come that after over fifty years of the end of the Nigerian Civil War and the formal surrender of Biafra, the memory and nostalgia for Biafra remains so active as to still torment the Nigerian state? If Biafra has remained alive and perennially resurgent as to constitute a permanent national security threat and nightmare,
how come that no Nigerian government has tried to find out why and to engage that faction in any form of dialogue?
Why are the IPOB members not being allowed a window to vent and ‘repent’ from their devotion to Biafra in order to qualify for federally funded amnesty as is being applied to calm other areas of dark clouds in the nation? Why has there been no ‘hearts and minds’ programme to convince pro-Biafra sympathizers that a united Nigeria is better than the Biafra option?
Ultimately, why has there not been any mention of an amnesty programme for IPOB members as a way of degrading the Biafra spring and addressing the neglect and undisguised marginalization of the South East and its immediate geo strategic neighbourhood?
It is no longer important whom the Nigerian state decides to brand a ‘terrorist organization’ or which bandit squads our state and federal governments decide to cuddle, hug or appease with troves of cash.
The right of the state to brand its perceived adversaries by whatever nomenclature it chooses is an area where politics, disinformation and security myth making meet and mix.
Obviously, something curious has emerged from Nigeria’s current internal security strategies.
Between amnesty and rehabilitation for repentant Boko Haram militants and the repeated ‘bullets for protests’ approach to the IPOB and pro-Biafra threat, we have the two contradictory faces of Nigeria’s current internal security doctrine.
One is the selective deployment of the compassionate face of the state to readmit errant citizens who are willing to renounce violence and insurgency to embrace normal life.
The other is the deployment of the coercive jackboot of the state to beat down dissident unarmed citizens in a bid to enforce a pax Nigeriana at the expense of basic citizenship rights.
Obviously, the former approach, the amnesty strategy, has proved more effective than the jackboot approach in dousing some of our more recent troublesome internal security challenges.
Since the rise of intense militancy in the Niger Delta, amnesty has emerged as a distinct and effective strategy for containing potent threats to national security.
In Nigeria’s peculiar case, amnesty is the recourse of a nation in existential crisis. Fifty years after the end of the civil war,
the national order on which a new Nigeria was created in 1970 has virtually collapsed. The all powerful federal behemoth of the 1970s and 1980s is everywhere assailed.
The forces against national order are forces championing causes that are antagonistic to the ‘One Nigeria’ dictum of the war years.
These forces range from regional political rabble rousers to ethno –nationalist militias.
Add sectarian fundamentalists and insurgents, outright organized crime syndicates and roving anarchist common thieves. Most of them have managed to acquire incredible firepower, sometimes enough to effectively challenge the coercive capacity of the state.
Matched in force and sometimes outgunned by audacious competing factions, a vastly weakened federal security and war machine has been forced to seek accommodation with some of the factions, hence the amnesty recourse.
The picture is a bit more complex. The sudden emergence of humungous wealth in unexpected hands has de-mystified the state.
There are now individual citizens and groups of citizens who are arguably richer than some of our sovereign entities. The ability of such non -state actors to raise private armies to counter the state has been openly demonstrated by agents like Tompolo and similar wealthy warlords.
Big guns and uniforms are no longer the exclusive preserve of governments nor do they frighten people as before.
At election times, individual politicians have been known to import military grade weapons and clone large amounts of service uniforms for their thugs to match the official security outfits.
At the height of the Niger Delta militancy, for instance, the various war lords and gangster chieftains in the Niger Delta region assumed various military titles from ‘General’ to ‘Field Marshall’ and once openly introduced themselves as such at a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan in Aso Rock.
This virtual balance of terror between the state and its competitors has given rise to negotiations between our sovereigns and armed outlaws. We have seen negotiations between governors and bandits in states like Katsina and Zamfara. There have also been a series of talks between the federal government and Boko Haram mostly through third party sovereign proxies like Chad and even Switzerland.
Of late, there have been legal engagements between the federal custodians of national order and regional interrogators of that order as in the recent legal tussle between the Attorney General of the Federation and the governors of the South Western states over the legitimacy of the regional security outfit, Amotekun.
The nature of the competing challenges to hegemonic Nigeria differ in places. The Niger Delta militancy was a struggle for economic justice, environmental responsibility, social justice and greater political inclusiveness.
Though it presented a direct military challenge to the federal government mostly in a sensitive place, the solution could not possibly be solely military.
The introduction of the Amnesty Programme was a creative solution. It was designed to empower the youth of the region with skills, education, start up capital and therefore a future of hope and some fulfillment.
It would also deprive the war lords and terror merchants of the foot soldiers to foment more trouble. Call it creative appeasement but it has worked fairly well in reducing militancy in the region to negligible levels.
With Boko Haram, we are in a different terrain. Boko Haram is a mix of sectarian fundamentalism, faith based insurgency, doctrinal revolt against the secular Nigerian state and its Judeo-Christian Western ethos.
In some sense, the Boko Haram revolt is a civilizational contestation (‘Western education is evil’). It has also graduated into a political challenge of the Islamic orthodoxy of the hegemony status quo in the northern parts of the country.
Most importantly, Boko Haram has emerged as a veritable challenge to the territorial integrity of Nigeria.
The group attempted establishing a Caliphates in the hitherto less governed spaces in the border regions between Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroun. The Boko Haram insurgency has been an open declaration of war against the federal state.
That war has lasted over a decade and is far from over. The Nigerian Civil War lasted just two and half years!
The adoption of the amnesty strategy in the case of Boko Haram is somewhat troublesome. The insurgency has not ended.
It has not been called off or defeated. Mr. Shekau, the terrorist gang leader, has assumed a curious immortality that has defied forensic science or even plain honest common sense.
A man is either dead or alive. Dead men do not make propaganda videos!
Above all, the Boko Haram insurgency is part of an international terrorists movement that is now headquartered throughout the Sahel, having been expelled from most of the Middle East and the fringes of Europe.
Globally, the standard procedure for extracting penitence from jihadist fundamentalists is a de-radicalization programme followed by careful monitoring and rehabilitation before amnesty.
In Nigeria, the amnesty strategy has also become an instrument for the distribution of national wealth, opportunities and patronage to places of previous neglect and marginalization.
Such appeasement has taken the form of re-direction of opportunities, the establishment of novel government institutions and the allocation of emergency funds to address perceived injustices and denials.
In the case of the Niger Delta, the amnesty package has included the creation of the Federal Amnesty Programme,
the NDDC, the Ministry of the Niger Delta as top ups to the existing 13% derivation revenue allocation to states in the region. Taken together, these gestures translate into a quantum of resources funneled to the region in the service of equity and justice.
In the North East which is the theatre of the Boko Haram insurgency, a similar massive infusion of resources has taken place over the last decade.
A presidential committee of some of our most wealthy citizens has been empanelled with a mandate to raise and allocate funds for the alleviation of the more dire humanitarian consequences of the Boko Haram war.
Massive humanitarian assistance has flowed in from different contries and major international organisations in aid of the victims. A North East Development Commission, modeled after the NDDC but with a mandate to rescue, rehabilitate and develop the region has been established.
In dealing with the pro-Biafra movements as an internal security challenge, therefore, it is curious that the Nigerian state has been less than even handed. By branding IPOB a terrorist organization and resorting to shooting its members whenever and wherever they gather,
government admitted that the pro-Biafra threat is a credible security challenge of no less a magnitude than either Boko Haram or Niger Delta militancy.
However, live bullets and teargas have not nearly removed the attraction of secessionist thinking among the pro-Biafra groups. The nomenclature you use to describe an adversarial group of citizens does not diminish the nation’s responsibility to those citizens as of right.
And on the scale of transgressions, there is nothing in the conduct of the pro-Biafra groups that disqualifies them from experiencing the compassionate embrace of the state through amnesty as being implemented in both the Niger Delta and now the North East.
I agree that the activities of the pro-Biafra movements sometimes disturb the peace. Once in a year, they declare some markets closed in memory of their war dead. Their rallies can sometimes turn unruly and intimidating.
They fly the expired flags of Biafra which evokes sad memories in some.
On memorial occasions, Biafra freedom songs are sung by an ageing breed of warriors in twilight reminiscences of a dying heroism.
Their separatist message makes many edgy and reminds the older generations of their days as emergency soldiers, refugees or war destitutes.
IPOB operates a radio station that abuses people with big titles and self importance.
A few times in the recent past, their diaspora wings have gone the unusual mile of slapping or flogging high Nigerian officials visiting foreign lands.
Their diaspora demonstrations muddle up the photo opportunities of dignitaries sent abroad to decorate our sad tales elegant language.
But in spite of these excusable transgressions, the IPOB gang remain dissidents with an ancient cause and some sense of limits.
They do not throw IEDs around street corners. They do not have or deploy suicide bombers nor abduct young school girls. They do not kidnap expatriate workers or blow up gas or oil pipelines. They hardly return fire against those who shoot their unarmed members for sport either.
The pro-Biafra people only have a consistent message to Nigeria: “Treat us fairly and justly as Nigerian citizens lest we face the road to Biafra!”.
Nigeria urgently needs to think again. More than five years of force and intimidation have not quite dissuaded people in the South East from yearning for Biafra as an alternative reality because of a feeling of exclusion from the Nigerian gala.
Not even the special security operations –“Operation Python Dance” etc. have yielded any dividend that is beneficial to the furtherance of the business of Nigeria.
This approach has instead further alienated the region and deepened the psychology of victimhood and sense of “otherness”, It is time to explore the route of compassion with something that has worked for other unhqppy place in our land.
An amnesty programme and a regional development commission targeted at the needs of the South East is perhaps the most sensible road untraveled.
The South East happens to be the easiest place to derive value for resources spent on a federally funded amnesty and special development scheme.
This place is the natural ecology of self- driven entrepreneurship and wealth multiplication.
Therefore, an amnesty programme with a strong entrepreneurial assistance component is likely to dissuade many youth from seeking salvation in a Biafra that is not quite in sight.
Such a programme will give access to the millions of youth in the South East to capital as an entitlement in return for loyalty to Nigeria.
Nigeria’s abiding moral obligation to the memory of Biafra has become like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, forever restless, forever roaming and recurrent.
The Japanese born British writer and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, Kasuo Ishiguro, poses the abiding question in terms which ought to haunt leaders of moral conscience in today’s Nigeria:
‘Can stable, free nations really be built on foundations of willful amnesia and frustrated justice?’
Arsenal legend, Paul Merson has said that he can’t make a case for Mikel Arteta’s side beating Chelsea when both teams clash in the Premier League on Boxing Day at Emirates Stadium.
Merson also slammed Arsenal star, Willian, describing the Brazilian as ‘shocking’ and a shadow of his former self.
Arsenal head to the game after losing 4-1 to Manchester City in the Carabao Cup quarter-final on Tuesday.
“I cannot make a case for Arteta’s side,” Merson told Sky Sports.
“You would be shocked if Arsenal won [against Chelsea], and that’s where this has got to. That can’t be right.
“I can’t even make a case for Arsenal winning. I watched them against Southampton, and I was thinking how many Arsenal players would get into the Saints team.
“Burnley went to the Emirates and fancied it, Wolves went there and experimented! They played four at the back which they never did before.
“Of course, confidence isn’t great at Arsenal, and that can play a major part.”
He added, “He’s been shocking. I am a big fan of Willian, and at Chelsea he was unbelievable.
“At times, he was unplayable, but he is a shadow of his former self, and I don’t know what it is.
“He’s the only one you can ask, and again it must come down to confidence. I am not sure he will play.
“He’s had enough chances to play, more than the other younger players.
“Arsenal’s big-name players haven’t been performing over the past six weeks or so, and this is the problem Arteta has been having.
“[Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang scored the other day, but he’s not really look like scoring.
“His body language hasn’t been great, Nicolas Pepe is not even starting all the time, and Willian just looks like he’s being carried.”
Paris Saint-Germain forward, Kylian Mbappe, has paid tribute to manager, Thomas Tuchel, after he was sacked by the club on Thursday.
Mbappe thanked Tuchel for writing a wonderful part of PSG’s history, adding that nobody will forget the German’s time in charge at the Le Parc des Princes.
recalls that PSG sacked Tuchel on Thursday following the club’s 4-0 win over Racing Strasbourg on Wednesday.
Tuchel won four domestic trophies last season and led PSG to the Champions League final where they lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich.
The 47-year-old is set to be replaced by former Tottenham Hotspur manager, Mauricio Pochettino.
Reacting, Mbappe, who had a fiery touchline bust-up with Tuchel during PSG’s clash with Montpellier in February 2020, wrote on Instagram: “It is sadly the law of football.
“Nobody will forget your time here.
“You wrote a wonderful part of the club’s history, and I say to you thank you, coach.”
Suspected Boko Haram insurgents have attacked Garkida, a town in Gombi Local Government Area of Adamawa State.
This is the second time this year that the insurgents would be invading the historic town after a similar attack in February.
The insurgents were, Thursday night, said to have launched the fresh attack by entering Garkida through Gada Uku bridge in 13 Hilux jeeps.
A source said the insurgents ransacked many stores in the town and made away with food stuffs, but that they had been chased out by security operatives.
“They burnt down a vehicle while the Air Force Jets destroyed 3 of their jeeps before they moved out of the town but it was almost six hours of sporadic gunshots before they left with foodstuffs,” the source said.
Another inside account stated that hunters and vigilantes had mobilized and kept vigil all through Wednesday in Garkida town after an intelligence report indicated that Boko Haram might attack the town.
According to the account, “when they (Boko Haram) did not show up yesterday, the team dispersed today about 4pm. Long after the hunters had gone, the Boko Haram groups moved into the town of Garkida and right now all hell has been let loose.”
