Tag: Prof. Sunny Awhefeada

For The Good Of Our Future By Sunny Awhefeada

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   I have in the last sixteen years been a willing pupil, or better put student, to my children, their friends, playmates and schoolmates. The experience has been a big learning curve that has been more rewarding than all the formal education I have acquired. Bringing up children is beyond being an act. It is also an art which mutates as there is no exact formula, but nuances which are determined by situations. Parents, most if not all, look forward to moments of great expectations and bliss…

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They Have Given Up On Us By Sunny Awhefeada

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By Sunny Awhefeada Elementary social studies taught us that the essence of government was the welfare and security of the people. Government is that entity to whom the people surrender their freedom in exchange for protection. Before Western political thought birthed social contract as a concept, Africans if not people everywhere, had lived in organized societies and their lives were regulated, functional and fulfilled. People everywhere had their lore and mores before the imperial intrusion. The presence of an African civilization thousands of years ago attests to the socio-economic cum…

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The Coming of Day-By Sunny Awhefeada

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   The Ghanaian Yao Egblewogbe’s poem “The Coming of Day” speaks to the African predicament with a remarkable sense of irony. The imagery of day signifies hope and relief from the horrors of the night and colonialism was night in the configuration of the African experience. Those who led the anti-colonial struggle promised the people dawn and day. Egblewogbe’s country’s leading nationalist, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, told Africans to “seek ye first the political kingdom and every other thing will be added onto you”. In the course of…

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Hard Times By Sunny Awhefeada

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Hard Times, published in 1854, is the title of the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, the English novelist. Like most of Dickens’ novels, Hard Times is a searing indictment of a corrosive and morally atrophied society on the brink of disaster. Set in Victorian England, which was touted as a prosperous epoch, the novel reframes the socio-economic turmoil that undermined the entire fabric of the English society of that time. The reality of what was configured as prosperity was acute deprivation and hunger for the common…

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Make Dis Government Kill Us Make Everybodi Rest

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   It has become trite to reiterate that the primary objective of government is the security and welfare of the people. This cliché which is taken for granted all over the world appears to be alien to the Nigerian context even though it is enshrined in our constitution. Since we observe every regulation in the breach and go against the grain in all that we do, government has become the people’s most inveterate antagonist in Nigeria. The people have come to see government as an adversary and…

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Analysis: A Bumpy Ride And Half A Loaf

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Part of what conditioned our growing up years, in my part of the world, was street wisdom obtained by association with our age mates and those older. A significant aspect of street lore was the apt use of language to describe phenomena and evade or ameliorate problems and sanctions. We picked up words and expressions which enriched our minds on a daily basis. Some of them were wholesome while others were anchored on mischief and meant only for our ears and not that of those older…

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Samson Edema And The Quest For A “New Dawn

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By Sunny Awhefeada The literature curriculum that my generation of undergraduates was taught at the University of Benin, it was the same in other Nigerian universities then, was a hybrid of English and African oeuvres. There were occasional attempts at studying European Literatures in Translation, but the bulk of what we studied was English and African Literatures. One of the courses that left a lasting impact in our impressionable minds was “Twentieth Century British Literature” which in some other curricular was dubbed “Modernist Literature” or “Modern Literature”. The course, never…

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The Many Gains Of Subsidy Removal

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Nigeria has over the years evolved the character of a country where things are perpetually in reverse gear. Our country is now largely defined by punishingly unenviable indices which are easily manifested in our perennial underdevelopment. The last forty years have been characterized by disruptive hiccups and deadly spasms and only God is able to explain why Nigeria has not tipped over. Each time the nation totters to the cusp, a deus ex machina often intervenes to redirect her affairs. But how much longer can this…

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A DELSU Valentine Experience

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  By Sunny Awhefeada, For many years, until this year, St. Valentine’s Day represented for some of us a day set aside to observe a myth tied to Western tendency of indoctrination. It was never on the card for some of us. Our consciousness of it began from our secondary school days and it peaked during our university years. The day always came and went for us without any fuss. I recall the St. Valentine’s Day of 1996 fell into one of the two days we hosted the inimitable poet,…

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Analysis & Opinion: In Times Like This

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Nigeria must rank the highest in terms of paradoxical manifestations in all the indices of development ever known to humanity. Nigeria is big, but small. Yes, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu who announced the nation’s first military coup one chilly harmattan dawn in January 1966 accused the political leaders of making Nigeria look “big for nothing”. Nigeria is rich, but poor. Nigeria has vast arable land, but her people are among the hungriest in the world. Nigeria has a brilliant populace, perhaps among the best endowed in the…

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