I am constrained to write you again so soon . Our sick economy ought to be receiving intensive care management. But it is at home receiving the sort of attention that street corner patent medicine dealers are noted for , and pity from passersby . Even founders of Jonathan’s TAN have passed by , mocking our helplessness , touting their Ojuelegba ‘staphylococcal’ ideas . It is true that some of those weeping, cursing and feeling bereaved, raped and bled this economy. Others have lent their sympathy to the rapists. They will spit curses at anyone who doesn’t share the folly that the rapists are saints or that we are all too evil to condemn anyone. Be that as it may, we elected you to clean up their confusion and the filth.

My confidence in the president’s ability to rein in impunity is unshaken. But my fears that he lacks the adroitness and the personnel to do a thorough job on a comatose economy is accentuated Ministers are now distancing themselves from the budget the president, in broad day light, presented to the senate. Chinewtalu Agu of the Nollywood fame would have ejaculated – “azuikpokpo”! Unlike those unplanned newborns abandoned in trash heaps in Onitsha, those days, by nervous teenage mothers running from shame and elusive fathers , too fickle to take responsibility, this orphaned baby was birthed in pomp and handshakes.

It is true traditional rulers have with the time and the wind, started abandoning bitter kolas and alligator peppers and falling for ice creams and chocolates while steadily keeping up with the Kardashians. No one foresaw what time had in store for our Pentecostal churches. Patience , contentment and abstemiousness have been excommunicated. Bliss is coveted and pastors now envy the life of Hugh Hefner. Their predilection for frivolity and controversy , their allergy to rigour, painstakingness and scholarship and their love for money and life have birthed a counterfeit Christianity. Monks must see our pastors now as self-indulgent ,self-absorbed , bottle fed infants, lacking in toilet training. And they won’t be too wrong.

In 1984 I visited Eyadema’s Togo. I was dumbfounded. Eyadema was after all an empty inconsequential vessel. The stark rurality and wretchedness of Lome and the cheerful naivety of its residents could only be surpassed by Gnassigbe’s megalomania. The national radio would pause and greet him almost hourly and would never forget to wish him well with his meals. His pictures which hung every where seemed to summon reverence from passersby. Policemen would line the routes he would travel and would herald his passage with their whistles which compelled everyone to stop and to join them in clapping furiously, waving frantically and smiling with a determination to please him.

By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo Igbos say tomorrow is pregnant. Amaechi means no one knows tomorrow. Fate doesn’t pretend not to be fickle. But we never learn. Not the here today , dead and rotting tomorrow scary finality of this earthly sojourn- we know that in all likelihood we will be eaten by worms or vultures. […]

At the peak of the campaigns, just before the elections, on one bright day, the OPC laid siege on Ikorodu road. They brandished their guns, their characteristic lawlessness, and their new fatness. They tried to force the people into knowing that president Jonathan enjoyed their support and therefore had the southwest. Many mouths were not left agape by the nakedness of that which was utterly sordid. Because ethnic militias now fight for their pockets while fighting for freedom. Pipeline contracts that had been awarded them were pragmatic for more than security reasons. After all billions were shared yet the pipelines received no respite.

Our soldiers are stretched. And when stretched minds snap rebukes are measured, condemnations muffled . They are giving it their all, fighting demons with gloves. The depravity of the other side makes any rule following seem a handicap. We knew something was amiss but we didn’t know that the billions of dollars meant for the war were this footloose. Against the asymmetry and barbarism of boko haram for whom killing and maiming is a compulsive obsession , the waywardness of the ‘boko haram dollars’ was egregious evil.

He has to abide by judicial pronouncements while he seeks judicial redress, if available. He is not permitted to hold the decision of a competent court in contempt. The president can hold a negative personal opinion about the decision of a court but he is charged by the constitution to uphold the law and promote justice. The law is what the judiciary says it is. Promotion of justice entails not just submission to court decisions but the mobilization of the citizenry to obey the courts and respect judicial pronouncements as a matter of high civic duty.

Benevolent spirits may have cracked his palm kernels but President Jonathan must have nudged them, by being effortlessly self effacing and disarmingly unambitious. The mien and disposition of a lamb amongst wolves alone may leave one with the inconsequentiality, the inconspicuousness, needed to progress untracked by envy but in Nigeria where the humble and hesitant are choked out by the nakedness of ambition and its riotousness , Jonathan was particularly fortunate .

When late Houphet Boigny made the state treasury his own , his madness allowed him transform his village of Yamoussoukro into a tourist attraction. He saw St Peters Basillica in Rome and greed couldn’t stand in his way as ego propelled him to replicate it in his home town in Cote d’ivoire. That project may be dumb but our politicians make Boigny a visionary.

“Banish the social media, dismantle the internet and confiscate their mobile phones. Isolate them, put out their lights and shut in these trouble makers and there will be peace.” “All in favour say aye” If we hesitate, with this senate, the ayes will have it. The biggest threat to the perpetuation of the enslavement of the poor majority in Nigeria by the political class is the social media.

It is good that muslims , good muslims, are drawing the line. And it’s time they did. Boko haram members are not muslims, I agree. ISIS is not Islam. And that has to be the summation because Islam is a religion of peace , therefore any interpretation of the Koran that portrays Islam as a religion whose adherents cannot coexist with people of other faiths in peace must be discarded.

When the society substitutes true spirituality with showy religiosity then conspicuous consistent sinning will abide and recourse to rigourless magical atonements will be the rule. When the tokenistic giving of alms becomes a common penance for iniquity, hypocrisy and beggarliness will be jointly promoted. And because the economic situation has become increasingly desperate even begging has become competitive . In being competitive, it became an art, creativity and imagination are now freely employed.

“Igbo enweeze” ( Igbos have no kings) pays tribute not to disunity but to the independent mindedness of Igbos and their republican spirit. Igbos rightly believed that when the community ruled itself then arbitrariness and inequality that kings epitomized would not afflict them. ‘Igbo enweeze’ therefore is the enthronement of not just consensus and equity but also industry and meritocracy. Monarchy and feudalistic structures , despite all the historical sophistication ascribed to them , enthrone not mediocrity but also servitude. But the political docility that has beset Igboland now is startling.

I am a big man, so I bark orders, talk at people, put them in their places. When I froth , they fawn . I get attention and give back indifference and insolence. That locks them into servility. I dish arbitrariness, it feels godlike. Reckless unpredictability leaves those around me nursing my moods, makes them live lives guessing my moves.