NO, WE ARE NOT RACISTS. WE JUST WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK!

Today, Tuesday December 27, 2016, a member of Trump Transition Team, Anthony Scaramucci corrected the anchor on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews as follows.

"You don't say just Trump but President Elect Trump."

This is serious. I cannot believe that a group of unrepentant racists and scaremongers who have called Barack Obama all sorts of names, anything but President Obama, will bristle that a television anchor, in the heat of a discussion, forgot to add the title President Elect whenever the name Trump is mentioned. With Birtherism and all the many obstructionist movements of the past eight years almost stripping the US presidency of all respect because the wrong person was occupying the elevated position, many had assumed that we are confronted with a new normal. What then is the hurry in appropriating imaginary respect due to to a president elect when the incumbent is still being daily treated with such disdain?

Trump’s rabid supporters will undoubtedly continue to worship at his feet. That their entitlement. However it may take the better part of his tenure for them to come to terms with the snake oil that they have just been sold. So long as he doesn't start the Third World War, we shall survive anything that he does.

The GOP leadership is something else. They wanted the White House by any means fair or foul. My favourite expression has been "Pact with the Devil." I stand by it. Now comes the hard part. It is easy to give a monkey a drink. Getting back the cup is easier said than done. That is the predicament facing Mitch McConnel, Paul Ryan and others, whether they publicly own up or not. Meanwhile the likes of Newt Gingrich are fully expired, essentially yesterday's men. Perhaps it is time to bring back the Eric Cantors and Jeff Bushes of this world to start the rudiments of a rescue mission. The US needs that. They will probably find John Kasich good company.

Did anyone hear what Carl Paladino ranted today to a newspaper about President Obama and the First Lady? He later commented that the well crafted insults were deliberate, neither a mistake nor a slip of whatever. This is another member of the Trump Transition Team. The statement was so obscene, not worth repeating here, that even the Trump Team had to immediately disown him. Is that for real? Is anybody fooled? I doubt it.

I am amazed that some people whose great grandparent, escaping famine and/or persecution, arrived in North America with not as much as a goat, now talk glibly about taking their country back. From whom?
The Native Americans?
What nonsense.

NIGERIA STILL ON THE BEATEN PATH

26 December 2016 · 

Today, December 26, 2016 is another holiday, and extension of Christmas. It is Boxing Day. Honestly I cannot explain the full import.

I am so grateful for one thing though. That is that I read the following lament by Dr Pius Adesanmi only today. . Walai, if I had read it hot off the press, it would have completely messed up my joyous Christmas spirit. We thank God for small mercies.

Eight years ago I made my first visit to Ghana in an effort to introduce the novel concept of broadband last-mile delivery over electric power lines. We had no immediate plans to see the Ghana Minister of Energy. When the issue was mooted, we were in conference with the head of Ghana Telecoms regulator. Small matter it turned out. A meeting was arranged and we found ourselves in his very unpretentious presence thirty hours later. Not in Nigeria.

It has been well documented that those who have empty heads are strangely enough not in a hurry to try to remedy the situation. Hence the average Nigerian legislator will keep quiet while Nigeria burns but will open up to vent on issues that he knows absolutely nothing about, like how to solve Nigeria's power problems.

Library, real, virtual, etc? Why bother? Whoever in this clime got ahead by being truly knowledgeable and ahead of his peers and constituents? There is a name for such people. Either troublemakers or "too-sabi." Nigeria hates such with a passion. I wonder then why we still complain when the misfits that we allow in government lead us exactly nowhere. No surprises here.

Thanks Pius for putting your observations here. Let's hope some will benefit.

TRUMP ON NUKES

In the current political climate, anyone who cites the following report, dated August 03, 2016, will be roundly derided by Trumpites as scaremongers.

Let's fast forward. What did the Donald say today, December 22nd? The US, counter to the progress achieved over the past three decades in Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, will now remove the lid and launch a full scale nuclear arms race "until the world comes to its senses.". Really? Pheew! This coming from the same man who sees nothing wrong with a nuclear arms race around the whole Pacific rim. . These are going to be very interesting times.

I wish Donald Trump has access to the papers of the Kennedy era Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, during whose tenure the concept of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, was coined. Unfortunately his historical horizon hardly goes beyond the last praise or insult he got.
God deliver us from Trump!
We can probably take care of the Chinese and Russians ourselves.

WHO WILL DRAG BUHARI OUT OF THE TRENCH, . TELL HIM THAT THE WAR IS OVER?

Another Lone Voice Crying in the Wilderness on NNAMDI KANU:

Let's remind ourselves. The last time oldman President Buhari went on medical tourism, it had to do with his ears. If the London doctors did a good job for the millions of Naira that we plunked down on the table, then the general must hear this. He must hear the bugle blow announcing that the civil war a.k.a. the Biafra-Nigeria War ended a log time ago. His friends who are still alive should drag him kicking and screaming out of the trenches where he has been living these past 46years. It is so sad.

Sports Minister SPENDED allocated funds.

I just saw a short video clip where the Hon(?) Minister made the above statement. That immediately erased any reticence I had in widely sharing the following argument that I had with a friend earlier today. Obviously, relative mediocrity apart, the Federal Executive Council is definitely a mixed bag. Before Solomon Dalung attracted this unpleasant attention to himself, other ministers have faced or are still facing their own deserved inquisition.

My friend Ike Ezugwu had posited as follows:

" . but we should learn to trust people in authority . . to do what they consider best for us. . " Hmmmm!

MY REPLY, exerpted:
Ike Ezugwu, I beg to disagree with the first part of the above quote. Many people, myself included, do not feel inferior to those "we elected" or who forced themselves on us. That we have mostly allowed them to decide "what is best for us" explains our current national predicament. I never allow false modesty to prevent me from weighing in on issues. I am sure that I am not alone here. And when I do comment, I do so with the firm knowledge that either the people in authority are probably capable of standing toe to toe with me or as is more often the case are not even competent to open their mouths when I speak.

For example, did we or did we not elect Buhari as our president? Following your thesis we should just follow his stumbling without a whimper. It is one thing allowing your inferiors into positions of authority. It another matter altogether attributing to them superior wisdom that they obviously don't have. Why on earth should we lionise the inept only to go home and complain behind closed doors?

You would have easily deduced that I refuse to ascribe good faith to our rulers on an issue that is amenable to rational analysis. We have been led by the nose for too long.

PS: Where do the likes of Dalung fit into all this highfaluting discourse? I wonder.

WHY I ATTENDED REIGNERS BIBLE CHURCH

According to the report, "Akwa Ibom State governor, Udom Emmanuel, has explained why he attended the ill-fated Reigners Bible Church.

Emmanuel said, though some had also questioned his rationale for going to the church, but he had no regret because his presence in the church was DIVINELY ARRANGED."

Pray, when does a governor or indeed a private citizen need a justification or is it approval for going to a church or indeed a mosque? The above explanation, which is uncalled for, is the most stupid postscript to this sad story of an engineering failure made more unfortunate by the human tragedy involved. And the governor had the temerity to add the notion of The Divine Will. There is absolutely no need for that. He should stick to aleviating the pains of the bereaved and wounded while the regulators in the engineering and building industry are allowed and prodded to do a proper forensic investigation to avert future occurence.

PS: Those who have never been professionally involved in Failure Analysis, may find it difficult to understand that a structure made almost entirely of steel could be both faulty and weak. That is why the Reverend gentlemen must stay out of engineering specifications. The Synagogue was one failure too many. And now this!

RE: THE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS REASON CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR TRUMP (THAT LIBERALS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND) By Jonathon Van Maren

MY TAKE:
As the lawyers will say, it is trite to observe that the apparently simple matter of the Americans electing a president, in this case a Trump, has consequences that go beyond the wishes, needs and fears of its 300million citizens. We are all involved in this plot.

I have compared this opinion by Jonathon Van Maren with the analysis by Dr Ozodi Osuji.

Most interesting.
The strange thing is that some of these "Christians" easily differentiate between lives that are worth saving and those those that don't count. Not to mention Native Americans and other minorities. Black adult lives mean nothing to them. Very dispensable especially in the hands of the white police force. Christianity is kept as an amulet under the pillow to be retrieved only at Easter, meawhile living a life of extreme hedonism. Forget Christmas. Church? That day is spent indoor completing the commercial ritual around Christmas Gifts - the unwrapping.

Married or not, a "Christian" couple lives together for twelve years with no offsprings, indicating either miraculously perfect non-arbotive birth control OR life as serial closet abortionists, but with no stigma. America stinks, whichever way you look at it.

These "Christians" will cheat on their taxes, keeping back money that should be applied to solving social problems. They vote against local and statewide propositions to provide more extensive mass transit, lest it allows poor and unwanted types into their neighbourhoods. Hence inability to get cheaply to work and back sustains the vicious cycle of poverty. These folks lavish love and money on their dogs but are resentful when a minority takes a walk in their neighbourhood. Remember Zimmerman. I am sure he is a Christian. If such specimens are Christians, then I am most probably Shinto.

I am amazed that the writer Vam Maren found it necessary to acknowledge that Donald Trump, who apparently "doesn't care much for religion or abortion issues", may turn out to be quite a gamble. That's thoughtlessness. The very future of the world as we know it may hinge on that faux pax. The Republican party had ample opportunity to chart the path to a much more rational candidate, a real adult, without the obcene baggage that Trump still carries with him. All this talk about "our better angels" must be strange to them.

If Hilary Clinton is actually as unpopular as she has been potrayed, then a Mitt Romney or John Kasich would have been able to beat her hands down. We would not have had to deal with this cliffhanger with the Russian hacks thrown in.

But no, the GOP chose to go down the path it did in an inexplicable readiness to sign a pact with the devil. Oh, the many things bad people do in the name of Christ. Verily, verily, I say that He will deny many of us come judgment day.

CIA DIRECTOR UNDER FIRE FOR LEAKING FINDINGS TO NY TIMES & W POST

John Brennan is under fire for a reason that runs counter to the current popular demand for openness in governance. The US is struggling to put behind it the matter of supposedly Russian hack into the DNC and the surprise election win by Donald Trump. Most people, with the exception of a few diehard Republicans, are prepared to go to any extent to "connect all the dots."

Did Brennan keep Congress in the dark while lavishly briefing The New York Times and others? And so they want his head. It probably didn't mattered since Trump claimed that the CIA was f**ked up anyway and didn't know what was going on. The worst aspect of the tragedy was that what limited information the GOP controlled Congress received was hardly ever acted upon. They sat on it in the bizarre fear that something sinister could crop up to upturn Trump’s inauguration, a most unlikely event in every scenario.

Come January 2017, Republican members of Congress may take the step of ensuring the "safety" of US intelligence operations by
1) relocating to Moscow, and
2) contracting out future CIA spooking activities to the KGB.

That should settle the dispute for good. And put Obama and the crazy Dems finally in their place.

The North Carolinans have taught us what you can do with a legislative majority, haven't they? For that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Sports Minister SPENDED allocated funds.

I just saw a short video clip where the Hon(?) Minister made the above statement. That immediately erased any reticence I had in widely sharing the following argument that I had with a friend earlier today. Obviously, relative mediocrity apart, the Federal Executive Council is definitely a mixed bag. Before Solomon Dalung attracted this unpleasant attention to himself, other ministers have faced or are still facing their own deserved inquisition.

My friend Ike Ezugwu had posited as follows:

" . but we should learn to trust people in authority . . to do what they consider best for us. . " Hmmmm!

MY REPLY, exerpted:
Ike Ezugwu, I beg to disagree with the first part of the above quote. Many people, myself included, do not feel inferior to those "we elected" or who forced themselves on us. That we have mostly allowed them to decide "what is best for us" explains our current national predicament. I never allow false modesty to prevent me from weighing in on issues. I am sure that I am not alone here. And when I do comment, I do so with the firm knowledge that either the people in authority are probably capable of standing toe to toe with me or as is more often the case are not even competent to open their mouths when I speak.

For example, did we or did we not elect Buhari as our president? Following your thesis we should just follow his stumbling without a whimper. It is one thing allowing your inferiors into positions of authority. It another matter altogether attributing to them superior wisdom that they obviously don't have. Why on earth should we lionise the inept only to go home and complain behind closed doors?

You would have easily deduced that I refuse to ascribe good faith to our rulers on an issue that is amenable to rational analysis. We have been led by the nose for too long.

PS: Where do the likes of Dalung fit into all this highfaluting discourse? I wonder.

WHY I ATTENDED REIGNERS BIBLE CHURCH

WHY I ATTENDED REIGNERS BIBLE CHURCH

According to the report, "Akwa Ibom State governor, Udom Emmanuel, has explained why he attended the ill-fated Reigners Bible Church.

Emmanuel said, though some had also questioned his rationale for going to the church, but he had no regret because his presence in the church was DIVINELY ARRANGED."

Pray, when does a governor or indeed a private citizen need a justification or is it approval for going to a church or indeed a mosque? The above explanation, which is uncalled for, is the most stupid postscript to this sad story of an engineering failure made more unfortunate by the human tragedy involved. And the governor had the temerity to add the notion of The Divine Will. There is absolutely no need for that. He should stick to aleviating the pains of the bereaved and wounded while the regulators in the engineering and building industry are allowed and prodded to do a proper forensic investigation to avert future occurence.

PS: Those who have never been professionally involved in Failure Analysis, may find it difficult to understand that a structure made almost entirely of steel could be both faulty and weak. That is why the Reverend gentlemen must stay out of engineering specifications. The Synagogue was one failure too many. And now this!

RE: THE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS REASON CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR TRUMP (THAT LIBERALS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND) By Jonathon Van Maren

MY TAKE:

As the lawyers will say, it is trite to observe that the apparently simple matter of the Americans electing a president, in this case a Trump, has consequences that go beyond the wishes, needs and fears of its 300million citizens. We are all involved in this plot.

I have compared this opinion by Jonathon Van Maren with the analysis by Dr Ozodi Osuji.

Most interesting. 
The strange thing is that some of these "Christians" easily differentiate between lives that are worth saving and those those that don't count. Not to mention Native Americans and other minorities. Black adult lives mean nothing to them. Very dispensable especially in the hands of the white police force. Christianity is kept as an amulet under the pillow to be retrieved only at Easter, meawhile living a life of extreme hedonism. Forget Christmas. Church? That day is spent indoor completing the commercial ritual around Christmas Gifts - the unwrapping.

Married or not, a "Christian" couple lives together for twelve years with no offsprings, indicating either miraculously perfect non-arbotive birth control OR life as serial closet abortionists, but with no stigma. America stinks, whichever way you look at it.

These "Christians" will cheat on their taxes, keeping back money that should be applied to solving social problems. They vote against local and statewide propositions to provide more extensive mass transit, lest it allows poor and unwanted types into their neighbourhoods. Hence inability to get cheaply to work and back sustains the vicious cycle of poverty. These folks lavish love and money on their dogs but are resentful when a minority takes a walk in their neighbourhood. Remember Zimmerman. I am sure he is a Christian. If such specimens are Christians, then I am most probably Shinto.

I am amazed that the writer Vam Maren found it necessary to acknowledge that Donald Trump, who apparently "doesn't care much for religion or abortion issues", may turn out to be quite a gamble. That's thoughtlessness. The very future of the world as we know it may hinge on that faux pax. The Republican party had ample opportunity to chart the path to a much more rational candidate, a real adult, without the obcene baggage that Trump still carries with him. All this talk about "our better angels" must be strange to them.

If Hilary Clinton is actually as unpopular as she has been potrayed, then a Mitt Romney or John Kasich would have been able to beat her hands down. We would not have had to deal with this cliffhanger with the Russian hacks thrown in.

But no, the GOP chose to go down the path it did in an inexplicable readiness to sign a pact with the devil. Oh, the many things bad people do in the name of Christ. Verily, verily, I say that He will deny many of us come judgment day.

CIA DIRECTOR UNDER FIRE FOR LEAKING FINDINGS TO NY TIMES & W POST.

John Brennan is under fire for a reason that runs counter to the current popular demand for openness in governance. The US is struggling to put behind it the matter of supposedly Russian hack into the DNC and the surprise election win by Donald Trump. Most people, with the exception of a few diehard Republicans, are prepared to go to any extent to "connect all the dots."

Did Brennan keep Congress in the dark while lavishly briefing The New York Times and others? And so they want his head. It probably didn't mattered since Trump claimed that the CIA was f**ked up anyway and didn't know what was going on. The worst aspect of the tragedy was that what limited information the GOP controlled Congress received was hardly ever acted upon. They sat on it in the bizarre fear that something sinister could crop up to upturn Trump’s inauguration, a most unlikely event in every scenario.

Come January 2017, Republican members of Congress may take the step of ensuring the "safety" of US intelligence operations by 
1) relocating to Moscow, and 
2) contracting out future CIA spooking activities to the KGB.

That should settle the dispute for good. And put Obama and the crazy Dems finally in their place.

The North Carolinans have taught us what you can do with a legislative majority, haven't they? For that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Michael Moore, filmmaker, begs Donald Trump to attend Security Briefings !

YOU THINK THAT THIS IS A UNITED STATES HEADACHE? . THINK AGAIN. 
Many young Americans who never heard the words Iwo Jima, Saipan, Borneo or even knew that Japan, (wherever that was), had an Emperor, fought a brutal war and gave up their lives in a dispute they could never have understood.

Clearly what you do not know or understand can kill you. It is not unlikely for Trump to be severely tested just after his inauguration. Nobody, I mean no nation, is immune from the worst possible global outcomes of a potential strategic misstep by a President Trump. Not Mongolia. Not Central African Republic. 
This is not an American problem.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/michael-moore-donald-trump_…

RE: WHERE IS THE COMMITTEE ON "FULANI" HERDSMEN'S MURDEROUS IMPUNITY ? ?

I must state that the university teacher and frequent commentor on national issues, Dr Ik Muo has again got me going on this topic. We thank God that Chief Olu Falae is still alive. He cannot but be committed to the final resolution of this man made problem.

If this menace was checkmated in far away Agatuland, Sen David Mark's strange silence notwithstanding, we would not have had to address the massacre at Nimbo and other places further down south.

Now can anyone explain to me what business the Inspector General of Police has with the committee just mentioned? Police in any guise does not make policy. They endeavour to implement policies made by civil society. That is when they do not take sides and join the fray as is usual in this polity. It is up to us to take our powers back. That includes firing the top cop who begins to imagine that he is bigger than we his employers. We have our work set out for us. The abiding chase for daily bread does not exonerate us from delivering on our responsibilities. Take away IPOB and many of our countrymen cannot imagine any other serious matter worth agitating for or against. However when they get home, their wives and children will not hear "one" for them as they rave and rant in front of the television. Everyman is a lion in his home!

It must be obvious that announcing the formation of the so-called committee was meant to be a master stroke of PR. Convince the populace that a president who has been hard of hearing has finally deigned to look in their direction. That should calm them down for a while. Committee on "Fulani" herdsmen? Which committee? . That's it folks!

There are enough laws in our books to take care of all classifications of violent criminal activity. Even the extant provisions concerning self-defence is being deliberately undermined by a combination of all the state apparatus of coersion. Victims are prevented by the authorities from defending themselves. It is a fact of life that fear of one's potential victim often provides a vital input in the balance of terror. . Si vis pacem, bellum pera!

Why should anyone bother to go to Yazidi-land, Rwanda or South Sudan, for illustrations of genocide? Nigerians are living that reality right now. That being the case, what will a committee set up by a complicit party, consisting of the Federal Government, the Nigerian Army, Police and DSS, do? Meanwhile the Legislature slumbers on. Lord have mercy.

I dare say that the activities of the "Fulani" herdsmen can be brought to a brutal halt in a forthnight if and when the government decides to do the right thing.

One other possibility is when the masses take up arms against both the herdsmen AND the government. I cannot imagine anyone who would want this horrible outcome. Instead of negotiating our way out of the current morass, the country will then go to pieces. The damage will not be collateral but direct. Do we want to prevent that?

Our future is entirely up to us.

IS THE NORTH FEEDING FAT ON NIGERIA?

Funny that Prof Ogunleye does not seem to have a first name. There are so many professors in that part of the world that I would very much love to know who I am dealing with.

It has been quite tedious following the presentation of revenue data by Ogunleye. I am reluctant to take him on point by point since I disagree with most of what he wrote. Hence I will fast-forward and answer the primary question that he posed, "Who said the North is feeding fat on Nigeria?"

I do. 
I have to make one clarification though. The North is feeding BUT NOT GETTING ANY FATTER. The North looks like a bedraggled poor cousin. This is neither acceptable nor safe. Hence the emergence of Boko-Haram.

Some individuals are fat, but they do not constitute the North. The impoverished, uneducated, marginalized, abandoned northern masses cannot by any stretch be described as fat. They have not been prepared to benefit from the rightly touted investments by the likes of Dangote. Why are a majority of his investments outside the North? That is a true disaster.

Prof Ogunleye should advise us regarding which states can survive on their own without the injection of petroleum funds derived from the Niger Delta. Apart from Lagos State.