GEN. MOHAMMEDU BUHARI WITH THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

General Muhammadu Buhari, an icon of unity, religious tolerance and believe in the only true and Almighty God.GEN. BUHARI WHILE VISITING THE ARCHBISHOP EXPRESSED HIS CONDEMNATION AGAINST GAY MARRIAGES. HE ALSO EXPRESSED THE NEED FOR ALL TO WORK TOGETHER FOR A PEACEFUL WORLD. Buhari is the only head of state that jailed a popular and respected Muslim cleric "Iman" for preaching violence. General Buhari has never been seen parading himself with Islamic clerics, even though he is a devout Muslim. He sees himself as father to both Muslim and Christians. General Buhari till date has staff in his office in Kaduna who are Christians. Show me a retired general, president, or even Col in the south who is a Christian but have Muslims as his personal staff. late Ojukwu before he died has none, Ekwueme has none etc. Show me a picture where General Buhari was kneeling down or went to a popular Muslim clerics for prayers or to commission a Mosque. General Buhari never commissioned a Mosque as a head of state. General Buhari is Muslim with one wife, decent and disciplined children. General Buhari is a devout Muslim, but never had any special Islamic training as a scholar. General Buhari picked a radical and popular pastor as his running mate. Which Christian has picked a popular and radical islamic preacher as a running mate. General buhari is an example of a leader that should be followed. HE IS NOT A RELIGIOUS FANATIC. FACTS SPEAKS

 — with Innocent Eboigbe Ehiz and 16 others.

African governance

OVER the past 12 years overall governance has improved in 46 African countries, accounting for 94% of the continent's population, according to the latest Ibrahim index, which scores 52 African countries (it excludes Sudan and South Sudan since they split in 2011) on the basis of four broad categories. All countries have shown improvements in the area of "human development," which measures education and health care. Yet only 20 increased their scores in the "safety and rule of law" category, which looks at the murder rate and corruption, among other things. Although cross-border clashes have declined, internal conflicts have increased since 2008. Releasing this year's index, Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese telecoms magnate who set up his foundation in 2006, appealed for an end to recent fashionable talk of pessimism versus optimism on Africa—and called instead for "Afro-realism".

Intolerance In The Name Of God

By TOLA ADENIYI
 There must be something in the character of the Semitic people that the three major religions emanating from their region are about the most intolerant of one another and also crudely and fiercely intolerant of other religions and faiths. It is both curious and baffling. And I believe the issue of intolerance calls for a serious study even up to PhD level. This issue of intolerance has engaged my thoughts for almost 5 decades, and each time I try to dismiss it or simplify it, it refuses to go. Being a proud Yoruba person, a Mecca Pilgrim and Jerusalem Pilgrim, member of a race that is arguably the most tolerant on planet earth, especially in matters of faith and humanism, I find it difficult to understand what on earth could have been responsible for the claim ferociously held by some people that their Supreme Deity, whoever that may be, is a JEALOUS entity. The elementary question to ask is ‘If such Supreme Being is truly supreme and superior to ALL other beings and entities, what and who should the Deity be jealous of?’ Why should it be said of that Deity that He/She/It does not tolerate flirtation with any other being? Especially so when it is believed that all other beings and matters in the entire conglomerate of Universes are subordinate to that Supreme Deity? I am inclined to believe that the Semites, that is all those who speak Semitic language, Arabs and Jews, were the most possessive human beings that were ever created. And they so possessed their wives and partners to the extent that any one found in an adulterous situation with their ‘possessions’ must be stoned to death publicly. It is logical to assume that since they believed they were created in their Maker’s image, that Maker must be a very possessive and irredeemably jealous Being! They see the mirror of themselves in their Creator! There could also be other reasons and factors. Mankind has always known that there are generally several doors and avenues that lead to destinations. But a people who for whatever reason stick to illogicality that there could only be ONE way that leads to the stomach, only one way that leads to their parents’ house would not surprise any one if they dogmatically hold to the belief that any one who does not share in that obvious illogicality must be hated, despised and condemned. The Yoruba race believes that there is only ONE Supreme Intelligence. And they hold that Supreme Essence in splendid awe. They realise that no one could ever claim or ascribe one single name to that Entity. So the Yoruba call the genderless, timeless, ageless, space less, limitless Being, ADIITU, the Inscrutable. Not a man, not a woman, and not it! The Yoruba also went further to deify [like all cultures on earth have done] any and all human beings who in their life time had exhibited exceptional prowess in any field of human endeavour and raised them to the pantheon of gods. Such gods are the deities the Yoruba celebrate [NOT WORSHIP]. The Yoruba spiritual thought is totally different from the spiritual/religious thought of the Judaic/Euro/American. The Yoruba may offer sacrifices and supplications. All religious cultures of the world do. The mode and form of the sacrifices and supplications do of course vary from culture to culture. I have dwelt this much on my background to underscore why I should be amazed that any one could be intolerant of another person’s perception of his or her understanding of the Supreme Being whom no one, repeat no one, had ever seen except through imagination and the millions of that Being’s creation, The Yoruba who celebrate Obatala will join their fellow beings who celebrate Orunmila whenever they have their festival or festivity while the adherents of the Shrouded Spirit called Egungun will join their friends to celebrate Sango. The point being made here is that we spend too much energy interpreting the African religious codes with the Judaic/Arab/Eurocentric lenses. And that is at the core of our problems as adherents of faiths we least understand, regardless of pretensions to the contrary. The world, and most particularly the African world which is suffering from third degree colonialism and imprisoned mind, must move away from the scourge of intolerance which has more or less paralysed every rational thought and move into the world of self discovery and renewal. Nobody is qualified to claim that he or she is fighting for the Christian God or the Muslim Allah or for that matter the Yoruba Olodumare. I hesitate to make a comparison between these given concepts of the Supreme Being. The history of religions that I have devoted a great deal of my time to, and my study of the creation of the IDEA of God, known to many cultures in more than a million names do not suggest to me that the Yoruba Olorun is the same Entity as the Christian God or the Muslim Allah. For starters the Yoruba Olorun does not have a goddess! And the Yoruba cannot conceive of the idea that their Olodumare has a mother! Be that as it may, the world will be a much better and much saner society if we desist from holding to the erroneous and totally baseless notion that one religion is superior to another or that one faith is the Appian Way while another faith is the slaughter house called the Express Road in Nigeria . No human culture is superior to another culture, and no culture is better than another culture. All cultures have their values and their shortcomings. And if we agree that every religious thought is culture based, there will be no sensible reason to be intolerant of any other person’s religious or spiritual persuasion. We cannot, and should not continue to run the affairs of the world with inherited prejudices. And the sad part of it all is that majority of those who profess one faith or the other are merely regurgitating what their parents or grandparents introduced them to. We have a cliché like “I am a Catholic because my parents and grand parents are!” The Creator of this beautiful world did not put in this incredible orderliness for the inheritors of the earth to unleash so much disorder and hate into it. Our Creator did not imagine that a set of people will be using religion as excuse to deny fellow human beings statehood simply on account of religious disposition. Were the Creator to be a quarter as intolerant as members of the human community, there would be no single person left on the surface of the earth. We should stop being intolerant in the name of the Supreme Being. No human person is qualified to be His/Her/Its advocate! Do not submit your happiness to the whims and caprices of others… —–Tola Adeniyi

NCN

Flying in Nigeria: Be Afraid, Very Afraid-confessions of a Pilot

Diaspora By Ekerete Udoh

The encounter was pretty fortuitous. I had gone to a have lunch at a restaurant somewhere in Ikeja GRA, and was busy doing justice to the chilled bottle of Gulder beer, while waiting for my food to be served, when the gentleman who was addressed by the friend who had accompanied him as ‘captain’ walked into the restaurant and sat right next to me.

There was a certain air of professionalism and savoir-faire about him and soon, the journalist in me- ever curious kicked in. I wanted to initiate some conversation with him- just friendly conversation. “Are you in the armed forces, since you were addressed as ‘captain’? I had asked, trying to break the ice, Displaying a willingness to also engage me, he had answered in the negative “I am an airline captain. I fly planes” he had intoned, and considering the tragedy that had occurred last week, with the crash of The Associated Airline that was conveying the corpse of the late Ondo state Governor-Dr. Olusegun Agagu to Akure, I felt a strong push to ask the captain some pertinent questions about the state of aviation given his experience as a captain and an aviator of more than 30 years as he had told me.

As most of the readers of this column would have known, I am very particular and concerned about safety and how friendly our skies are for air travel, having last year, to the glory of God, narrowly missed the Dana Air that crashed on June, 3, and my earlier experience aboard a British Airways flight from JFK, New York, to Heathrow Airport, London, in 2005 that caught fire upon take-off, but managed to make an emergency landing that was truly miraculous.

The captain was surprisingly candid and answered all my questions without hesitation. “The state of our aviation” he had told me point-blank, “is not too encouraging. We take a lot of things for granted with  safety. We cut corners on things that demand strict compliance with what obtains elsewhere. For instance, there are some aircraft parts that may have ‘timed-out’ and need to be replaced with newer versions. We sometimes allow those parts to remain because they are still functional and the newer ones are too expensive. That should not be. The manufacturers of those aircrafts were conscious of the fact that at certain point, those parts need to be changed. I have seen maintenance being carried out on aircrafts in the open space as opposed to being done in hangers- that should not be. We skirt around vital issues of safety, and that again, should not be.”

I asked the captain if he had ever been pressured by his employers to fly an aircraft that he knew was not completely airworthy, but had to be ‘managed’ to the next destination. He looked at me for almost a minute and in a very concerned tone said “yes, I have” and added rather reassuringly that “that has stopped   over the years and as we speak, I will not jeopardize the safety of my passengers whose lives have been entrusted under my care.”

One area the captain harped on ceaselessly was the emotional and psychological state of our pilots and how that is very critical to the safety of passengers. He went ahead to illustrate that with a personal experience. “When I used to fly with one of the airlines (name withheld) and it was run by white guys, I remember coming to work one day and did not exhibit my normal exuberant self. The MD had invited me to his office and asked what the matter was, and I told him the truth that I had a little issue with my wife that morning at home and that I was ok. He looked me straight in the eye and said I should go home and resolve the issue and return to work in three days. In his considered opinion, I was not in the right emotional/ psychological state of mine to fly and the safety of the passengers was of utmost concern to him.

How many of our operators today pay such attention to the emotional state of our pilots? I am aware of the fact that some pilots in the employ of some our airlines are owed salaries for months. How do you expect a pilot who is struggling to pay his bills and meet some basic financial obligations to his family to be in the right frame of mind to fly? Someone once told me that airline business is not supposed to be run by black people, since we seem not to pay attention to critical issues in the industry. I refuse to buy into that notion, but I must confess certain things I have seen in the industry almost has forced me to think the guy may have been right. Look at even the simple issue of parking space at our airports. Do you know that pilots don’t have parking slots at airports allocated to them, as is the case elsewhere? A pilot who is scheduled to fly say at 8 am, may have already been stressed by the time he mounts the cockpit, having already circled around for minutes, looking for parking space for his car- that is if he does not have a driver. Such minor thing can impact negatively on the pilot’s state of mind.”

When asked how safe it is to fly within the Nigerian airspace, the captain was brutally frank “It is relatively safe, I must say. But you should fly those airlines that have been audited by foreign technical partners. Any airline that you see some expatriates fly with regularly, tells you that their employers and their embassies must have been satisfied with the auditing that those airline technical partners had carried out, because those partners will not compromise safety, neither will they cut corners unnecessarily. “

As the captain made his exit, I did an analysis on what he had just told me, and I became very afraid and angry. Why should safety in air  be compromised based on the need to make profit? Why would an operator willingly put an aircraft up in the sky that he knows is not airworthy? According to sources, one of the airlines whose operational license was suspended almost had a mishap because an engine packed up on a flight from Port-Harcourt to Lagos, but thank God, the second engine was able to power the plane to landing.

I hope and pray that the regulatory agencies of the industry will put the safety of passengers first over and above all other considerations. Nigerian is adopting the best practices in so many aspects of our globalized space, and these are very heartening. We must extend same to our critical sector of aviation. Air travel is considered the safest means of transportation; it should not be a scary proposition in Nigeria.

Ms. Stella Oduah, Minister of Aviation

ThisDay

Fela Kuti, Dim Ojukwu, Two men, One great Legacy

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If you can’t fix them, leave them!

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti {Img: NatGeo}

NewsRescue- It initially seems odd, that these two remarkable, great men, could leave a single, same legacy. One,- the most famous Igbo man in history, worldwide, and the other, no doubt the single most famous Yoruba name in history, for all times and worldwide. Fela is now honored in the US (which he even despised), with a popular Broadway show, ‘Fela on Broadway’.

What common legacy did these two great visionaries from Nigeria leave?- They, were crusaders of progress, of strong African determination. They saw the fine line Africans must tread to restore the continent to its position as world leaders, and when they fought to take the Nation along- Ojukwu as a prominent political General of the Nigerian post independence army and Fela also a General, but with music his weapon of choice- both men decided that if you can’t fix them, leave them.

Emancipate yourselves

Bob Marley song and quote

If you can not take Nigeria along, drag it out of its desire to be a carcass, a colonial tool and toy, wrapped up in all the colonial twines of decadence, greed, corruption, enmity, divisionism and destruction; you must free yourself from it. In airplanes, we are advised to first put on our mask, before trying to assist other passengers, and this was their very principle and legacy.

Ojukwu carved out his region, a region of people he knew would listen and take Nigeria the direction he had envisioned it should go as proper African- and not just- but also world leaders. He carved off Biafra republic and gave his people independence from the baggage that was Nigeria. His Nation had discipline, peace, recognition of the sense of communal belonging, appreciation for themselves and love of their Nation.

Fela carved out and gave his people an independent Nation- Kalakuta republic. An independent Nation within that baggage that was Nigeria. His people had respect for law and order, patriotism, a sense of communal living and belonging and true loyalty and pride to the Kalakuta republic. Traits missing in the larger Nigeria.

Within these two Nations, both pragmatic men at last had a chance to self determine and direct the ship in a sensible direction, away from the decadence and chaos of colonization, away from continued slavery and servitude to the whims and wishes of the colonial master, away from the hate, greed, tribalism and animality that was inherited from the divide-and-conquer and exploit weapon of colonization.

Related: Vanguard- It’s distortion of history to refer to Ojukwu as Igbo leader – Opeyemi

Ikemba Dim Ojukwu

At independence, Ojukwu had said that at last he saw a chance for Nigeria. He saw a bright future of greatness, being freed of the bondage’s of the European. He could see a bright light ahead, and ‘he tiptoed’ on ‘his mark’, to demonstrate how he thought Nigeria and its new leadership were ready to sprint forward to greatness. To his dismay, year after year after independence, he realized he was the only one who had that vision. Everyone else was sleeping. Myopic, vision-less and in a deep retrogressive slumber. And when he recognized that no one was ready to take Africa where it should go, in 1967 Dim Ojukwu liberated Biafra. {Watch Video at 3.01 as Ojukwu declares this: http://youtu.be/J3ReFoFp0Gs } The Biafra civil war was so unique in world history, 30 months of war that ‘Doctors without borders’ was established due to the needs of this unique struggle.

Both Nations destroyed by Obasanjo

Fela described the predicament of Nigeria thus- that in a country that is blind, and that has only a single eye. This single eye, they borrowed from the colonial master, and this eye, this single eye is only a photocopy of an eye borrowed from the colonial master, that is passed around to see by all citizens of Nigeria. He, Fela, had two original, pure African eyes, which he used to see. Fela fought to take people along. He sang prophetic songs- still just coming to pass, self determination songs, revolution songs, but few listened. He was attacked, his republic razed, his mother murdered by the longest serving president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, coincidentally the same individual, the army commander at the time, that destroyed Ojukwu’s Biafra. But Fela maintained independence for his people.

Politics

Both patriots, as Ojukwu in his last statement of how he wished to be remembered described himself, recognized at a point that- if the ‘hopeless’ democratic system was what had to be contended with to make change, then they will lead by example and fight with this tool to show the masses that no way is too senseless and no system too impossible to breech in order to make change. Both visionaries vied for presidency, but lost, because the masses are ‘lost’.

Related- Democracy Fails Africa

Legacy of Love

The legacy’s of Fela and Ojukwu teach us one thing among many- That we should never give up our quest to save our people, but most importantly, that we must start that process by saving ourselves. To love others, we must first establish and love ourselves. If we are drowning, how do we pull the rest continent up? We must first carve out a region of sanity, a region of sense, or moral discipline and uprightness for ourselves. Biafra republic was Ojukwu’s attempt, and Kalakuta republic was Fela’s. Regions they could contain and control and determine. For us, we may start with ourselves, first ensuring we ourselves are sensible, sane, reasonable and emancipated. Then we move ahead to liberate our families, communities and so on. Not out of hate for others, further than our immediate republics, but as a means to show an example of what sanity looks like, and then ultimately as a means to assist those other regions and the greater Nation and continent, to rise, safe and secure from the fangs of the evil that is intricately wound up in the fiber of our post-colonial existence.

Fela on Broadway, show by Jay Z Carter, Will Smith, Jada etc

NewsRescue

Bush's blocked artery was potentially life-threatening

Linda CarrollNBC News contributor

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Video: Getting regular checkups is important — even for those who are already active and asymptomatic, such as former president George W. Bush. Exercise alone isn’t a guarantee against developing heart disease, and doctors need to make sure blood pressure, blood sugar and blood cholesterol are regularly monitored and checked. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

George W. Bush was one of the most athletic U.S. presidents -- jogging, clearing brush on his Texas ranch and an avid mountain biker. But his recent heart problems were a lot more serious than previously thought, according to NBC News. 

What was described at the time as a routine procedure -- a blocked artery was found during a physical exam at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas -- was potentially life-threatening, according to a report in the National Journal Monday. 

Bush's doctors ordered a CT angiogram, which revealed a serious blockage in one of his coronary arteries.

At his doctor's recommendation, Bush agreed to have a stent placed to open the blockage. A stent is a metal scaffolding placed into an artery narrowed by cholesterol plaque. It restores blood flow and prevents a heart attack.

While Bush’s situation was more dangerous than reported, the presence of a heavily blocked artery doesn't mean he was at risk of an immediate heart attack, say doctors who were not involved in the former president's care.

“You can get along very well with some tight narrowings,” said Dr. Jeff Brinker, an interventional radiologist and a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine. 

When blockages develop over time, our bodies can fashion their own kinds of coronary artery bypasses, Brinker said. Other nearby blood vessels form connections that take on some of the workload of the blocked artery. Often, when a patient gets a stent you’ll see those connections almost instantly disappear, Brinker said.

The presence of a major blockage "doesn’t mean you are going to drop dead or have a heart attack the next day,” said Dr. Howard Hermann, a professor of medicine and director of interventional cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “There are other factors that go into the decision of whether to put a stent in, including where the blockage is, how fast it developed, whether there were symptoms, what the stress test showed and others.”

Still, it’s possible that while Bush may not have reported any problems before the stress test, he may have had subtle symptoms. It’s not uncommon for patients, after a diagnosis, to recognize they were having symptoms, Hermann said. “In retrospect they may have thought it was a muscle pull or heartburn, or they may have started slowing done without realizing they were doing it to prevent symptoms,” he added. 

And even though Bush was physically fit, doctors say years of unhealthy food choices can lead to heart disease. "Exercise is not a guarantee against developing heart disease," said Dr. Chet Rihal, Mayo Clinic. "Therefore it is very important to keep in touch with our doctors to make sure our blood pressure, blood sugar and blood cholesterol are regularly monitored and checked."

NBCNews

Why Yoruba Shouldn’t Be Called A Tribe But A Nation….

By: Chief Femi Fani-Kayode

One of the most unfortunate aspects of not being properly educated is the fact that those that suffer from that affliction often accept everything that their slave and colonial masters and ethnic overlords tell them and, without thinking, they swallow the fables and labels hook, line and sinker.

CHIEF Femi Fani-Kayode

When a supposedly educated person insists on labelling a nation of highly advanced people, who have existed for thousands of years as a distinct race, who have had their own empires, who are the most educationally and culturally advanced on the African continent, who have a singe language with approximately 20 different dialects within them, who have contributed more to the industrial, commercial and intellectual growth of Nigeria than any other, who have a rich and illustrious history and heritage which few in Africa can match, who number at least 50 million in Nigeria alone and who constitute the largest number of African people living in the diaspora on earth, whose people have spread all over the world and have strong historical, cultural, religious and ethnic roots in Benin Republic, Ghana, Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, America, the U.K. and many other places, whose people have settled into and legitimately lay claim to Ilorin, Kaaba and other parts of northern Nigeria, whose offspring and progenitor established many kingdoms including the Bini Kingdom, whose pantheon of gods and traditional religion of ifa is respected and practiced in many parts of the world, whose historical, philosophical, religious and cultural contributions to Ancient Egypt are well known and well documented, whose level of sophistication and exposure to the knowledge of western education is second to none and whose sense of liberalism, justice, decency, hospitality and fairness is not understood, appreciated or reciprocated by any other ethnic group or nationality in Nigeria and so much more and that supposedly educated person still insists on calling such people, despite their sheer numbers and their homogenous geographical setting, a mere “tribe” then you know that that person is truly ignorant.

You may call others a tribe if u so choose but not the Yoruba.

We number as many people as almost the whole of the UK or France and far many more than three quarters of the countries on the European continent and our history dates back as far as that of the Celts, Normans, the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons.

NewsRescue