Tag: Sunny Awhefeada

Analysis & Opinion: Who are the ‘we”?

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By Sunny Awhefeada Last Thursday, the movers and shakers of Nigerian politics gathered in Abuja, Nigeria’s corruption laden capital city for the public presentation of Brutally Frank, the autobiography of elder statesman and nonagenarian, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark. As such gatherings are wont to be, it was another opportunity for our big men to talk about Nigeria and talk down on Nigerians. The big men and women were there in full attendance and voluble agbada and crispy babanriga rubbed one another just as well laundered suits glittered in competition. Headgears…

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Education: The Mmesoma Syndrome

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By Sunny Awhefeada, So much has been said and written about the exploit of Mmesoma Ejikeme the nineteen year old girl who not only awarded herself a mark of 362 in the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, but took an entire nation of two hundred million people for a ride until the body that administered the examination, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) burst her bubble. Weeks earlier when the news of her “outstanding performance” hit the airwaves, she was toasted as an ideal child. Many a parent pulled…

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Analysis & Opinion: The Day After

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By Sunny Awhefeada My earliest memory of change of political power dates back to the first day of January of the year 1984. That was New Year day! As children we had shared in the excitement that greeted the anticipation of Christmas and New Year celebrations. The harmattan was present with its sweet harsh sometimes cold sometimes hot dry wind. The annual ritual of bush burning had taken place and residents of the vast college premises could catch glimpses of one another. We were all happy in our pastoral setting…

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Borrowing In The Peoples’ Name To Steal

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By Sunny Awhefeada   Those who run and ruin Nigeria read like rogue characters in a picaresque. Nigeria has turned out to be a sordid adventure and those who dominate our landscape are the picaros. Roguish, arrogant and bravura-like, our rulers prance about and do things that normal people will not do. Yes, those who presently rule Nigeria are not normal. Their mental constitution is made of something in the realm of the abnormal. Daily, we are confronted with a multiplicity of inanities orchestrated by government officials who are never…

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Analysis & Opinion: Political Power And The Crisis Of Morality in Nigeria

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Inherent in Nigeria’s civic space is a deep crisis of ambiguity that social scientists and philosophers need to interrogate. This crisis is multilayered, complex and obfuscating. At the core of our collective malaise is a multiplicity of factors which fanned and continues to fan the embers that enable the sustenance of the conflict which has become the source of our national ordeal. Nigerians, like most human beings, seek to secure their private space by making choices which advance their opportunities and thus consolidate their good standing.…

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Religion: For His Lordship, Bishop Anthony Ewherido

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For His Lordship, Bishop Anthony Ewherido By Sunny Awhefeada The evolution of Christianity in Urhoboland was in chequered phases. The earliest dated back to 1689 when Fr. Monteleone from Sao Tome reached the Urhobo hinterland. It was a fleeting trip whose memory remains enabled only in dim imagination. The next phase was at the turn of the 19th century when freed slaves especially of Yoruba descent spread out to propagate the gospel in places like Kokori, Ovu, Eku and Abraka. By the middle of that century, the famous Bishop Ajayi…

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Another Christmas Without A Christmas

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By Sunny Awhefeada The world is changing and it is doing so at an alarming rate much to the detriment of humanity. This is even more so and quite frightening in Nigeria. What was familiar a few years ago has become unfamiliar and the things we didn’t know only a year or two ago have come to take centre stage in our lives. Life has become so strange to the extent that we have become so baffled that we are no longer certain of anything. We now live in uncertain…

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Analysis: A Nation And The Crisis Of Governance Fatigue

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Social scientists and other critical observers of the Nigerian experience must be hard put trying to codify or put a name to what has befallen Nigeria in the last seven years. Unbeknown to many other Nigerians, the intelligentsia that is considered as the facilitator of ideas, the encoder and interpreter of our socio-historical evolution is presently huddled in a mental cul-de-sac that make rational thinking almost impossible. Inventive, creative and as many as our eggheads are, they have reached their wit’s end. They are suffering from…

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Education: My Dear Teacher, Ademola Dasylva, @ 70

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By Sunny Awhefeada   It was with mixed feelings that I received the news of Professor Ademola Omobewaji Dasylva turning seventy and retiring from active university service. Mixed feelings because I rejoice with him on his attainment of this landmark age in good health, but at the same time I look back and see how time flies and undo a lot of things. Looking back, it appears as if it was just yesterday that the then Dr. Ademola Dasylva taught my postgraduate class in the Department of English at the…

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Education: ASUU And The Reign Of Barbarians

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By Sunny Awhefeada Unfolding events in the last six or seven months only confirm that Nigeria is under the asphyxiating grip of barbarians. When Nigerians went to the polls in 2015, they unwittingly let a clan of barbarians into the seat of power and the dreary consequences are there for all to see today. Nigeria seems to be packing up. The barbarians that we let loose on ourselves have ridden roughshod over us and are now manifesting their full savagery.   We have been badly bruised, physically and psychologically and,…

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