The New Leadership

The leader of the coup against General Yakubu Gowon is an erratic, vainglorious, impetuous, corrupt, vindictive, intelligent, articulate, daring Hausa. Brigadier MURTALA MUHAMMED was a prime force in the Nigerian coup of July, 1966, which brought GOWON to power, and is one of the two principal plotters against GOWON for the past two years. He commanded a division during the Nigerian civil war, was involved in the only documented cases of genocide, won one important battle, and thereafter coasted for upwards of two years until GOWON finally removed him from command and placed him in charge of Army signals, a position which he held until last month, though he combined his military role with the civilian position of Commissioner (Minister) of Communications from July, 1973, until the coup.
ENJOY

Fellow Feeling

Under good government, poverty is shameful; under bad government, wealth is shameful.
—Confucius

The true life is absent.
—Arthur Rimbaud

Why Reform and Transform?

Let us begin by listing a series of negative factors: the unbridled lust for profits; the deterioration of solid bonds of fellow feeling; the hyper-bureaucratization of both public and private administration; the intensity of cutthroat competition as fair trade degenerates under market pressures; the dominance of quantity over quality; the toxic nature of consumer culture that drives us to purchase products that possess illusory benefits at best; the sharp decline in the quality of food produced by industrialized agriculture and stockbreeding; the helplessness of consumers and small- and medium-scale manufacturers; a citizenry that is increasingly brainwashed and fragmented.

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What Ojukwu told me before, during and after the war —Sam Aluko

For those who want to understand Ojukwu and Nigeria, this interview might be of help.
"I will say that I was very close to him till his death. Immediately, he became governor of the former Eastern Region, when I was a senior lecturer in Economics in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he called me the third day he became governor. He said he wanted to come and see me in my university. I never met him before. How can the military governor come and see me? I said no. I told him I would come and see him, instead. I told the person he sent that he should tell the governor that I was the one who should come and see him and not him coming to see me. That was on January 20, 1966."

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Irish priest resigns over sexual abuse

This priest has got some conscience among priests working in Nigeria. Poor guy.

"Nigeria is not left out of the wave of child sexual abuse sweeping across the Catholic Church worldwide, as a serving Irish Bishop and Archbishop of Benin City, Richard Burke, yesterday resigned over child sexual abuse he allegedly committed while serving as a priest in the Warri Diocese.

According to the Irish Catholic website, the Pope accepted the resignation of the Tipperary-born Archbishop, on Monday, saying “the reason for his resignation was his failure to observe his vow of celibacy.”"
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Why did the FT pull Amnesty's Shell ad?

Just why did the Financial Times pull our Shell advert so late?

I'd find it hard to believe that Shell lent on them. Did the Financial Times get cold feet about upsetting this British blue-chip company? Who knows, but there are many out there who are suggesting something stinks about this – and it is not just the air that the people of the Niger Delta are forced to breathe. Certainly, by pulling the ad at 4.58pm on Monday, with Shell's AGM taking place at the Barbican in central London on Tuesday, the timing was awkward for Amnesty.
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Ending the Slavery Blame-Game

Henry Louis Gates undertakes a keen analysis of African's moral culpability in the Trans Atlantic slave trade: Here's an example of what could get a morally conscious African thinking:
How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

ENJOY the rest of the essay.