Tag: Sunny Awhefeada

Analysis &Opinion: Is This Another Season Of Omen For Africa

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By Sunny Awhefeada, J. P. Clark in one of his poems “Seasons of Omens” poetizes Nigeria’s first military coup which occurred on 15th January 1966. Deploying metaphors to adumbrate the tense political situation that led to that tragic episode in Nigerian history, Clark uses the tropes of parallelism and refrain to underscore the poem’s thematic preoccupation in the line, “Then came the five hunters” as well as the clincher “Then the five hunters struck”.   Observers of Nigerian history do not need the literary critic’s exposition to understand that the…

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News Features: Let Us Rescue Our Africa?

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  By Sunny Awhefeada There is a video that has been making the rounds. It has been forwarded to me again and again to the extent that I have lost count of how many times I have received it. Part of the message contained in the video by a White speaker to a European audience reads, “sub-Saharan Africa has been fundamental to the global prosperity of the advanced countries and Africa has a role to play as a raw material producer. We will not allow sub-Saharan Africa to escape that.…

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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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