Columns
IPOB, Military And Breath Of Fresh Air In South-East
IPOB, Military And Breath Of Fresh Air In South-East
By: Zagazola Makama
The sustained massive descent of the military on insecurity in the South-East region in recent weeks has not just brought a breath of fresh air to the terrorized Nigeria’s most-commercially-vibrant region but also delivered joyful tidings to its peoples that the ‘dreadful’ terror group tormenting them, IPOB, can be banished to the pages of history anytime, any day.
IPOB has, over the last couple of years, not only suffocated a significant section of the region’s economic activities, especially with the most devastating and unacceptable restrictions on commercial activities, but threatened its political stability as an integral component of Nigeria.
The activities of the group showed frightful signs of shaking the foundations of the country’s nation-statehood. Our nation-statehood as Nigeria has to be maintained, considering the emerging global political and economic realities.
Practically, the activities of the criminal IPOB has been unacceptably restructuring and redirecting the five-state region towards a state-within-a-state arrangement between it and the Nigerian nation, priming the region for possible cessation.
The military, therefore, with its strategic increase in deployments if troops, launched its Operation Golden Dawn. Strategically scaling up and fine-tuning the operation, the military has accurately and sharply swooped at all forms terror unleashed by IPOB on the region with every needed decisiveness and finesse.
In a dispassionate assessment, every southeasterner, who no more cowers at the threat of any IPOB militia to not only his or her commercial activities but even his or her life, now jubilantly talks of seeing light at the end of the tunnel with regard to the end of terror and related criminality.
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The flurry of fake news planted by IPOB, with which the social media is currently awash, are depressing signs of an anguishing, languishing and dying group not only suffering humiliating defeat but getting wiped out fast for the South-East to continue breathing fresh air economically and politically as a critical component of a proud and prosperous Nigeria.
For instance, IPOB has fabricated the fake news going viral in the social media that officers of Operation Golden Dawn have constituted a part of insecurity in Enugu by turning a blind eye on the activities of ‘Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen,’ arguing that Enugu State is no longer in the Hands of God.
This fake news precipitated unfortunate comments from southeasterners who are either truly ignorant or chose to be so on the mischiefs terror groups deploy to deceive people about the actual state of their strength and existence.
Lies, since time immemorial, have constituted one of the most-potent weapons of psychological war. And IPOB is deploy this weapon through the social media.
The group has conjured up the news that herdsmen killings in the South-East are organized by Nigeria government through the region’s state governors, troops and the police.
To every dispassionate southeasterner, this is everything but the truth.
The truth is troops of the Nigerian military are practically seen patrolling all the nooks and crannies of all the five hitherto IPOB-infested states day and night to pull them out of the depth of terror and all other related crimes into which they had been sinking fast.
Uncountable families across the region had lost loved ones and properties, especially in the ember months when criminals unleash terror in various forms.
In a dispassionate observation, the Operation Golden Dawn is fast restoring the golden joy of the ember months with southesterners now joining their fellow Nigerians in arrangements for a joyful Christmas, a satisfying stocktaking of the outgoing year and plans for a prosperous new year.
To every sane and well-wishing southeasterner, the viral take news all over the social media that troops of the Nigerian military are aiding terrorists is a conspiracy by criminal-minded Nigerians who have sworn to ensure that no section of the country enjoys any peace.
Their scheming towards the apocalypse of Nigeria seems ending in jeopardy considering the successes of the military in the war against insecurity and all forms of criminality designed against the country.
With the troops sustaining the tempo of their successful operations in the South-East, the more IPOB and all other criminal elements plan against the region as a critical component of a prosperous Nigeria, the faster their evil plans come to naught; and the deeper they sink into eternal frustration.
Thus, the more the South-East breathes fresh air.
***Zagazola Makama is a Counter Insurgency Expert and Security Analyst in the Lake Chad
IPOB, Military And Breath Of Fresh Air In South-East
Columns
University Courses: Marketable and Non-Marketable Courses—How True?
University Courses: Marketable and Non-Marketable Courses—How True?
By: Balami Lazarus
Let me make it clear hereinafter that I am not against any academic course or the role of guidance and counseling for good career choice, provided that our young men and women will be guided properly. Not long ago, I visited a friend who teaches at one of the universities. It was interesting to be with him, having spent years without seeing each other.
My friend and I took time out and had a long discussion on national issues concerning our country in an attempt to proffer verbal solutions that will only end and stop as mere talks, which most Nigerians are good at doing, including this writer.
In furtherance to our discussion, I was very particular about education and how to improve the sector in terms of standards, academic excellence, and skills. I also raised the issue of corruption in the system. In the process I immediately recalled what some parents and guardians are peddling around saying: “There are marketable and non-marketable courses in our universities.
“For me, I know that for hundreds of years, universities are known to be great centers of teaching, learning,learning and research, contributing to arts, science, and technology for the purpose of national development. My friend was quick to add that “the academic corruption is perpetrated by some lecturers and students, monetarily and sexually.”
Having discussed the corruption bug. I asked the university Don if there are any courses as marketable and non-marketable courses in our universities. This one question gave the Don a good laugh. He looked at me and said, “I have spent years as a teacher in the university academic department. I have never heard of any course(s) known as marketable and non-marketable academic disciplines or any faculty/department that run such courses.
As young secondary school students aspiring to go to the university to study courses of our choices where our interest lies and looking forward to becoming either political scientists, engineers, lawyers, historians, or doctors, and so on. In this regard, we had never heard or been told by our teachers or parents that there are marketable and non-marketable academic courses. Therefore, we should study the marketable courses.
The question I always asked myself was, where are these courses? What we have in our universities are courses leading to different human endeavors. Whatever one decided to call these courses, what is obtainable today is the need to have to add skills to your academic training; employers of labor are today skills-oriented for those who are hoping to be employed.
Balami, a Publisher/Columnist, 08036779290
University Courses: Marketable and Non-Marketable Courses—How True?
Columns
With Fury of a Tempest, Alau Dam Flood
With Fury of a Tempest, Alau Dam Flood
By: Balami Lazarus
Who wants to be a millionaire? a television quiz program anchored by one Frank Idoho, which I hardly missed. I recalled a question once asked: Where is Lake Alau? In the options, there was Borno state among other states. The young man on the hot seat gave a wrong answer. I believe because Lake Alau was then not popular, unlike its cousin, Lake Chad.
Not much is known about the Lake, Alau, and the dam known and called Lake Alau Dam put together. Let me first start with the lake as a natural geographical feature, a large body of water surrounded by land. However, and to the best of my findings, there is no available written document on the history of this lake in question. But it held that the Lake was there many years traceable to the period of the Kanem- Borno Empire. While the present Alau was a small settlement that emerged during the formative years of Shehu’s dynasty from 1846 to the present day. It later grew into a village with people of Kanuri extraction.
Alau is today part of the Konduga Local Government Area of Borno state, some few kilometers away from Maiduguri city center. For the purpose of providing portable drinking water and to improve agriculture through irrigation farming and fishing, a dam was constructed by the past administration of the state from 1984 to 1986. The project was tagged as Water for Borno. Thereby, Lake Alau Dam has become part of the people’s lives, for its importance cannot be quantified.
The recent Alau Dam flood that nearly swept away the city of Maiduguri came with a raging fury of a tempest in September 2024 I will liken to one of the works of William Shakespeare—”The Tempest.”TheTempest”. That of the play was simply and deliberately raised to humble palace traitor Antonio and his co-conspirators, who ousted Duke Prospero, whom they marooned on a deserted island, leaving him to his fate. But ours came with devastating destruction and killing with ravaging effect from head to tail, which has caused unestimated damage.
The flood was not because of the heavy rainfall experienced last season but from the overflow of the dam and subsequent breakoff of its decks. My last visit to Lake Alau Dam with some friends was years back. What was observed and saw were obsolete facilities that were outdated, old, and weakly decked. There was nothing to show that the dam is being cared for. But while growing up in Zaria as kids, we were so used to seeing Kubani and the University (ABU) dams being opened up to let out large quantities of water to avoid overflow and flooding. Has Alau Dam ever experienced that? Has it been dredged?
Therefore, the 13-man committee led by Mr. Liman Gana Mustapha, a professional town planner, may wish to consider these questions as an inroad to finding a lasting solution to the flood matter.
Balami, a Publisher/Columnist. 08036779290
With Fury of a Tempest, Alau Dam Flood
Columns
The Rise and Fall of Garkida, a Social Decline
The Rise and Fall of Garkida, a Social Decline
By: Balami Lazarus
In my recent visit to see my aged mother in Shaffa, a small rural town. In a chat with some of my peers, Garkida came up, and one of us immediately informed the group that the town is socially dredged. I made some findings, and you may wish to agree. I believed students of history my generation were once taught about the rise and fall of great empires, kingdoms, rulers, warriors, and other historical events during our secondary school days. In the cause of those lessons, our imaginations were always taken far to other lands.
We never thought that someday there would be a fall or decline of our own, which could be a town, village, or settlement, but never like the fall of the known historical empires/kingdoms of Oyo, Jukun, Fante/Ashante, Kanem-Borno, Songhai, etc. To rise is a difficult task in life or in the course of growth, be it individual, town, or city. But to fall is easy. Garkida has rose and fallen, or, to say, declined socially. Once a bubbling rural town in Buraland, being in Gombi Local Government Area of Adamawa State has nose-dived from the social ladder.
As a historian, I will not subscribe to the use of the term fall; it will defile my histo-journalistic sense of reasoning because Garkida is a proper noun and is there real. So it will rather go well with me and perhaps some readers of this essay to accept Declined as a better use of historical language for the purpose of this work. I am not a native of Garkida and have never lived there, but it was the home of my cousins and nieces long before now.
As a young man, I had it well with friends when the town was in her social chemistry and apogee. In spite of her decline, the arrears in our kitty, notwithstanding the flow of time, are the mutual friendship, an indelible mark in our social life. I remember clearly as a holiday-maker with my grandmother at Shaffa, Garkida was the in-thing in our youthful days because of the mass social activities that used to take place there.
There were social interactions with friends and relatives from different places, parties of all kinds—a social front burner. And to most of my peers, it was the center of today’s mobile social handle—Facebook, where you meet and make new friends. That was Garkida for us. As a rural town, it flourished with glamour, elegance, and pride, triggered by the social engineering of Who is Who? The creme de la creme of her sons and daughters who made nane in their vocations or professions that promoted and spread the name of Garkida as social lighthouse.
It was the abode of top military brass in the ranks of generals. Her businessmen once made the town tick as a cluster of has. It was the nerve of vogue and socialites in Buraland. There was declined in this capacity. Historically, Garkida came to the limelight and appeared on the colonial map of Nigeria in 1923, when the white Christian missionaries of CBN/EYN first settled there and made it their home on the 17th March of the aforementioned year. The beginning of her social mobility started in the 1970s, through the 1980s, to the dawn of the 1990s, her zenith.
I doff my hat for the united daughters of Garkida; credit goes to them; their exposures, taste, beauty, love, elegance, sophistication, unity of purpose, and social agrandisement made them wives of husbands of men from far and near who are of different walks of life. The women of Garkida were a central force, once the venus de milo of the town before its social decline. I cannot conclude this article without appreciating the fact that Garkida was the center of learning and vocational training and once the hold of good and efficient healthcare services in Buraland and its neighbors. Today, Garkida is no longer in the vantage position.
Balami, a Publisher/Columnist, 08036779290.
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