Archive for 2013

Home Archive for 2013

Barely few weeks after the jubilation that greeted the commencement of international flights at the newly upgraded Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu; the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has made its first arrest and cocaine seizure.

The suspect, Chizoba Anselem Nwabuwa 32 year-old 400 Levels Fine and Applied Arts student was apprehended during the inward screening of passengers on an Ethiopian flight from Brazil enroute Addis-Ababa. He was found to have ingested liquid cocaine packed inside male condoms.

The head of the NDLEA at the Enugu Airport, Mr Nsikak-Abasi Udoh who confirmed the arrest said that the suspect excreted 25 wraps of a liquid that tested positive for cocaine. “The suspect excreted twenty-five (25) wraps of liquid substance. When tested with the United Nations drug testing kit, it tested positive for cocaine weighing 1.250kg. This first arrest and seizure is exciting to us because we just commenced operations” Nsikak-Abasi stated.

According to the suspect, “I am a 400 level student of Fine & Applied Arts at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State. I wanted to use the half a million naira (N500,000) they promised to pay me in developing my Art Gallery. They assured me in Brazil that authorities will not be able to detect liquid cocaine, so I was confident. Unfortunately, things have turned-out the other way. I regret my involvement in drug trafficking”. Chizoba who is single hails from Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State.

Chairman/Chief Executive of NDLEA Ahmadu Giade expressed satisfaction with the arrest. In his words, “the Agency accords high priority attention to all the airports. We shall continue to up-scale our operations at the airports and prevent drug trafficking syndicates from using the nation’s airports”.

Giade urged members of the public to pursue legitimate businesses at all times noting that a good name is far better than ill-gotten wealth. The suspect will soon be charged to court.
Source : 247ureports.com

The tales of a man was told to me, who made mating animals steadily focus on some cloured stakes. The animals thereby reproduced offsprings that bore the colour of the stakes their parents were focused on during the mating period.
Is it not dramatic how the same RULE OF SIGHT becomes practical even in the lives of animals? How much more in human domain. One of the things that shapes a man’s life and destiny is WHAT HE CONSTANTLY SEES, what his eyes engages its focal power on regularly. Little wonder, it is often said that “you can’t go farther than you can see.”
Therefore, I turn the table of discussion to you in particular. What do you allow your eyes focus on most of the times? What takes the majority of your EYE-TIME? Well, for most youths, movies do. And i keep wondering why most people never realized that whatever they have being watching has contributed somewhat and someway to their current value (If there is, anyway). Because the concept of value seems to degrade per day.
Kudos should be given to some cable TV channels. They have being able to MAGIC-ally plug some giants down on their behinds as they sit perpetually to watch things that only amuse them. These things do not drive their thought to the realities of our present age. They have therefore failed to realize how the economies of life is fast changing.
I beseech you friend, not to allow your future be controlled without caution by the unnecessary. Rather, create the tomorrow you want by planting the pictorial representation of what you want before your eyes regularly, come to think if it when your mind is most receptive. For example, early in the morning or late at night. It could be material it could be intangible. But remember your eyes need food, it would excrete the digested food to your realities. So feed it consciously with what you want it to give you.
Do you want a car? Place the replica of the exact model you want in your room or somewhere you can constantly set eyes on it. Look at it every morning and let it register strongly on your mind. You have got to take responsibility for things that pass through the gates of your body. So that you’ll drive down to your desired destiny with the necessities and not the non-entities.
-Oluwadunsin Fatuase

Mr. President, please do not mistake this
piece for an attack on your person because it
is not. Neither would I want you to see me as
one of those attention-seeking people because
I am not. Of course, Sir, I am also not the
son of any governor, senator, local
government chairman or any political office
holder, otherwise, I would have no business
writing such an open letter to you because it
is against my family’s ethics to ‘talk while
eating’. I am the voice of one crying in the
wilderness of educational misery, saying,
“Prepare the way for either a future of
political stability and economic boom or
prepare for worse than what religious
extremists are meting out to our country
now”.
As I write on this sultry day, I am completely
at a loss to know what to make of my future
from here. If this were just the case, it would,
probably, be an insignificant reason to go on
the rampage with the sword of the pen. But, I
write on behalf of the millions of dreams that
are getting squashed by the day as the total
shut-down of our universities persists. I write
on behalf of the future of the several
hundreds of thousands who have been
privileged, amidst the stiff competition for
admission, to grasp tertiary education but
may end up worse than their disadvantaged
counterparts, since they may never finish,
much less finish on schedule their educational
pursuits. The handwriting on the wall, clearly
now, more than ever before foretells a
dangerous twist to the continuing imbroglio
between your administration and the
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). I
do not know if the public keeps the date as
much as we do but it is well over 65 days
already and I cannot help but wonder if
anyone really cares what becomes of our
street-wandering undergraduates. If I had a
next life, I hope to never be a Nigerian or be
born with a silver spoon because the poor are
really just ‘on their own’ as long as our
government is concerned. Mr President, in
three simple words, “We are tired”. We, the
students in the federal universities, are always
at the receiving end of every impasse between
ASUU and the government and all I can ask
for now is that you and your think tank
reconsider your stand on the matter. We can
only bear this much!
I am not ASUU’s spokesman but it is only
logical that I expect your administration to
honour the 2009 agreement with the Union so
normalcy can return to our campuses and of
course, our disenchanted academic lives.
Personally, I have spent more years than is
required to have my first and second degrees
and yet I am grappling to take a Bachelor’s
degree out of an institution that only recently
had an internal strike because you would have
our name ‘rebranded’. Mr President, every
day this strike continues, more dreams die
and more future riff -raff are born. It is my
firm belief that children still do bear the sins
of their fathers and even when you are no
more, posterity will remember your
progenitors for good or ill based on how you
handle this national educational crisis we
suffer now. It goes without saying that for 14
years that your party has held sway over the
affairs of this nation, we cannot boast of a
Nigerian university (not a single one) amongst
the first 2000 in the world. This is more than
enough reason to release the requisite fund
for the upgrade of our educational
infrastructure as well as the welfare of the
future’s moulders. It will only be emphatic to
say that we can get out of our educational
system as much as we invest in it and though
investment in educational is long term, it is
also long-rewarding. Your administration will
only be breeding poor intellectuals, who will,
in turn, produce another generation of
mediocre graduates and in 10 years, what do
we have, sir? A national carnage! Our unborn
children are in jeopardy of being societal
scum even before their conception. But you
can change all of this!
The greatest weapon of mass destruction is to
put a teacher who knows nothing before the
students. This will be the case if your
administration does not honour the 2009
agreement with ASUU such that lecturers’
welfare gets taken care of.
Mr President, the one second of your time
which I asked for is almost up but I am
optimistic that if you give utmost diligence to
putting an end to the incessant strikes that
have been plaguing our tertiary educational
system as much as you do to security matters
or party issues and conventions, we would not
be where we are today: struggling to maintain
peace in our land.
I reiterate my advice, sir. Honour the 2009
agreement with ASUU so we may return to our
lecture rooms and pick up the pieces of our
scattered semesters. So I can round off my
first degree programme and go on to
patriotically serve my fatherland. So, I can
focus on growing my baby company to
maturity and provide jobs for the teeming
unemployed youths. So, I can get married,
give my mother her first grandchild and keep
my late father’s name as his only son. So, I
can fulfil my dreams of helping young people
reach the zenith of their potential through my
writing, public speaking and role-modelling.
Mr President, help me and my fellow
undergraduates live decent lives even if our
parents are not among the top one per cent
who squander our national earnings in the
name of political office holders. Would you do
this for me, for us, for Nigeria’s future? I
hope you do. Thank you, sir, for giving me a
second of your time.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has
said it is continuing its nationwide strike on
the advice of university students.
In a telephone interview with SUNDAY PUNCH,
the President of the union, Dr. Isa Fagge, said
students were tired of the incessant industrial
actions by the university lecturers due to the
Federal Government’s failure to implement the
agreement it had with ASUU since 2009.
Fagge said the union had decided to heed the
advice of the students to continue the strike
until the Federal Government fully
implemented the agreement.
“Our students have come out to say they
don’t want us to call off the strike until the
Federal Government answers us, because they
don’t want us to call off now and later we go
back to strike again. So, we are heeding the
advice of our students,” he said.
On the complaint by the Federal Government
that it lacked the funds to implement the
agreement, Fagge said it was not all about
money, noting that government did not need
funds to start implementing some parts of the
agreement.
“There are issues and agreement they can
implement without money. Why don’t they
begin with those ones?” he asked.
He added that it was unfortunate that the
government had pulled out of dialogue with
ASUU, stating that the union would not be
intimidated.
He said, “Now, government has pulled out of
the dialogue. We thought we were the ones
going on strike, but now government has also
gone on strike.”
Last Thursday, university students under the
auspices of the National Association of
Nigerian Students reportedly staged a
peaceful protest in Ado-Ekiti and flayed the
Federal Government for failing to honour the
agreement it had with ASUU since 2009.
The students, who were from public
universities, threatened to disrupt activities of
private universities, adding that the
government was not bothered about their
plight because children of government
officials were studying either in private
universities or studying overseas.
The university lecturers began an indefinite
strike on July 1 and have been demanding full
implementation of the agreement ASUU had
with the Federal Government in 2009, which
among other things include the UNESCO-
recommended 26 per cent budgetary
allocation for education. However, the
government said it could not implement the
agreement, and is seeking re-negotiation.
The Federal Government, last Wednesday,
accused ASUU of being unrealistic by
continuing its nationwide strike and asked it
to rethink its demands, considering other
commitments government has.
The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku,
who gave government’s position on the strike
when he briefed journalists at the end of the
weekly meeting of the Federal Executive
Council, said apart from security, education
was one of the sectors the government had
expended a lot of money on.