Alaramma

Let me first commiserate with the families of the two Jambutu bomb blasts; the one at the new Jambutu jumu'at mosque and the ever bustling vegetable market/tipper garage. The lives and property lost are irreplaceable. The evil acts have created more orphans, more widows, to the already social problems facing the entire Northern Nigeria due to a large absent bread winners, guardians and role models. My condolences also goes to the victims of the Kano farm center carnage. Those behind it do not represent the mainstream Northern culture, religion or values. An average Northerner, whether Muslim or Christian, was not inclined to violence, or mass murder that we are witnessing today in our different communities. At what point did we turned off the good road? How did we become like this? While I was growing up in Yola, my parents and neighbors often eat together, especially dinner. Sometimes up to five parents would gather round, each with his own dinner, to eat together; there was ...

A serving State governor once ordered his followers to kill opposition members, he  somewhat said they are like cockroaches, "kill them where ever you find them". This kind of statement coming from a governor was the height of insensitivity and recklessness. A political leader, a father and a husband throwing caution to the winds is a subject of study to psychosocial students. Like the former Governor, a former minister of the Federal republic also called for a total Annihilation of Fulani tribe. He called them "tsetse flies". What do humans do to tsetse flies? I find this very distasteful! Senior citizens of the Federal republic spewing such hate speeches. Educated, well traveled, yet petty. If a Yoruba man in Lagos is caught with a human head, will you generalize that all Yoruba's are cultists? The answer is NO. But this former minister had chosen to be a degraded human being. Just like the former Governor, who is a Hausa man, the former minister, a Yorub...

HACKERS ON RAMPAGE  It is evident that my Facebook account has been hijacked. I have been trying to sign in since 4pm on Thursday but I couldn't; they have technically rendered my password ineffective. This is to let my Facebook friends know that I AM NOT THE PERSON SEEKING FOR RECHARGE CARDS FROM THEM. If for any reason someone asks for anything from you, kindly confirm first before you are misled. Internet is full of mischief makers, be warned. I seem to be helpless here. The only effort available to me right now is to tell people close to me by phone yo help post this and circulate widely so that we can stop this kind of rampage on us. Secondly, I am writing this from my blog and I will try to post it to my Facebook via the blog posts or email. I thank the wonderful people who have alerted me over this;one of such alerts is this: Good morning,for your information your Facebook account has been hacked,the hacker  is sending massages requesting for recharge cards to ...

It is my conviction that flood disaster management has been given a superficial approach in Nigeria, as the issue concerns less previlaged people. Specifically, the devastating effect of flooding hit mostly women and children at the lower income strata. If you look at settlement pattern of the front line States mostly hit by such disasters, you will find out that the richer communities live uphill, while poorer people tend to be pulled towards settlements at the fringes of towns where land is cheaper, and often dangerously close to riverbanks or water ways. Other factors that defines these settlement patterns also have to do with the desire of fishermen and farmers to move close to rivers and farmlands. But these strategic desires, good as they seemed, had turned into disasters. The raining season of 2012 came with countless horror of instant deaths due to drowning by flood waters, road wash always, submerged houses, crops and whole farmlands in some cases. The devastations wer...

Someone close to my mother asked me if I know Bindow Jibrilla? I said I don't, I have never seen him even on tv. That was before the 2015 gubernatorial elections. The way I campaigned, I persuaded voters, coarced and even moving far to threatened some of my dear friends was reasons why the person wanted to find out if I knew him. The truth was, being an APC candidate was enough for me to rigorously drum up support for him. But now I think am beginning to see the bigger picture. I am currently unemployed, but I some how contributed N56,700 during Bindow's election. I can proudly say that I am a pretty girl of Fulani extraction. So my cultural values to an extend frowns at girls of my age getting deeply involved in active politics or even canvassing for political support. But I did all that to the consternation of my siblings, and mum who thinks I have an attitude of a 'kado'; probably because I didn't grow up in Yola. I can boastfully say i swayed a lot of vo...

Nigerians are really feeling the crunch the unavailability of fuel is causing, this is whether any one voted for Jonathan or not. Although this is happening under PDP administration, with GEJ still presiding over the affairs of the country, everyone is suffering from the scarcity. Banks have reduced official working hours from 10 to 6 hours. Some GSM network providers also allegedly threatened to shut down some of their base stations, meaning there would be erratic and inadequate connection services on our mobile phones and other devices that run on such infrastructure. It’s no news that road transportation has been grounded since Friday, while there are numerous flight cancellations all due to scarcity of fuel to power both sectors. My sister in-law boarded a flight to Dubai this evening had to stop over in Ghana for aviation fuel. I was in metro plaza, situated in the central business district, all was quiet there. Law and accounting firms, travel agencies etc, were all hangi...

A customized gold wristwatch Sen.David Mark presented to President Goodluck

ISIS has been mounting pressure on the city of Ramadi, 70 miles West of Baghdad, several months before its final capture on Sunday. Even before that, another major town of Mosul in the Northern Iraq was captured. Elite army units like the Swat force and the Golden division suffered terrible defeat and were seen running away leaving behind heavy military equipments .These events have completely left the world gasping for an answer, for the casualties are in thousands. Mutilated bodies of women and children littered the roadsides, fleeing refugees poured out in total daze as to what has really gone wrong? The international community has allegedly denied any help from Iran and the Shia militias. The rivalry between Kurds, Shia and the Sunnis is as sinister as bloody as can be. Significant part of the human population is engrossed in one struggle or the other, staining the landscape with blood and anguish in its trail. In Nigeria, there is no official figure of people killed by the not...

‘It’s impossible to win, unless you are very lucky’, wrote Linda Tirado in an essay “Why Poor People Stay Poor” (author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America). This cannot be far from the truth, in most of the books I read about how to make money, most authors suck in inspirations from their background, the catch is most of them are either rich or making money. You hardly get a book like that from a very poor person telling you why he’s still poor. Now how can poor people, I mean real poor person, make money? Most writers agree however that people become poor because they are ‘unstable’. Tirado argued that ‘it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable’. Rich people can be unstable too; does that status deny them from making money? Being unstable is a form of poverty. You just wouldn’t get anything done; the constrain, inability, lack of confidence, skills, requisite knowledge, lack of focus due to hunger or happiness all these ar...

President Goodluck Jonathan's men would like us to believe that his call to Mohammadu Buhari conceding defeat has made him a hero. They tried to push up his status and launder his image to that of a super statesman. But in real terms, the actions and body-language of the President has given him away. It was obvious he had lost out in the 2015 election even before the hero-like phone call. Congratulating an opponent in a contest is a world wide practice, doing so in Nigeria should not have been a new thing unless the looser is being uncivilized. It is within President Goodluck's power to appoint and sack, but his recent sojourn and frenzy in sacking and appointing people into various positions at the tail end of his administration portrays him in a very bad light. Firstly,  it shows those men he removed from office had refused to do his bidding during the election. Secondly, it is widely believed that he is doing so to create problems for the in-coming government. But wh...

Minister ta ‘motion of urgent public importance’ the House of Representative debated the burning issue of fuel subsidy. Mr Karimi Sunday, who moved the motion, argued that subsidy must immediately be expunged, arguing that fuel subsidy has so far did not fulfil the purpose it was meant for. Similarly, the Senate has passed the 2015 Budget without the provision for fuel subsidy.   Two weeks ago there was no one single petrol station that was selling the product within the Federal capital; motorist resorted to buying at the hands of ‘black market ‘operators at N300 per litre. The situation lasted for days with queues as long as 2-3 kilometres long; disappointed drivers lamented and complained in despondency about their plight. What is intriguing is that fuel has been selling at the cost of N120 - N140 in petrol stations across the North East with no Government regulators to their rescue. Remember that President Goodluck has reviewed the pump price from N97 to N87 shortly before...

 St Valentine was beaten to death and the corpse was left to rot on the street. Yet people all over the world celebrate this absurdity every middle of February by sending out gifts to one another.  Some others express their feelings through various ways apart from sending gifts.  Mine was a curious package I got from a political party here in Adamawa State. I still can not exactly explain what it is meant for, I therefore termed it a valentine gift.  I would like to say that the gift is very insulting to me. I am still mulling over how to properly 'receive' it. Usually I do not allow such things to pass, but I have a strength in the saying that 'patience is a virtue'.  Politics is a curious thing. It is teaching me to be strong, assertive, focus and be very clear, to be firm as well as flexible. Believe me it has taught me to be a man of my words, it has taught me to guard my integrity; what I have learnt in a large dos e is most politicians are si...

"Every day becomes a tomorrow, I believe our tomorrow is now. Let's hold onto our future starting today .  We are young, strong, determined and have a long future ahead of us. Do not be deterred by the Government's trickery to weaken and divide us. Some older politicians also lie and deceive us; their integrity is shallow, their words empty. Do not trust them anymore.  Politics determines our economy, our social system. It determines who gets what, when and how. I therefore urge our youths to get involve actively and peacefully in the current political process so that we can say who Govern over us, so that we can strongly demand what kind of jobs we want and we can design a better policy that can cater for our aged parents, our pregnant wives and our dear children.

Now that the popular Ge. Buhari has come out clean of the certificate saga, not that it really mattered anyway, the president who claims to be a Ph D holder should also release his doctoral thesis, as a gesture of courtesy. Buhari has also named some few of his colleagues who are prominent citizens of the country. What has since caught the public attention is the loud absence of president Goodluck Jonathan's colleagues during his doctoral days. Nobody seemed to know who his classmates were. Nigerians are demanding to know who supervised his thesis? A professor in University of Abuja (name withheld) argued that since the President is claiming superiority in certificate and knowledge, "he should be magnanimous to present his class work for Nigerians to analyse ". it has been very clear that the PDP and it's presidential candidate lacked anything important to tell Nigerians than to continue to bring up lame excuses to discredit the opposition figure. They have be...

I was at a friend's house last night and when it was 9pm I told him to switch on the TV so we can watch the NTA News. " am sorry, I don't watch NTA, it's all about Goodluck's lame achievements" I said 'but would you at least allow me?' "Not in my house! " he bluntly told me " PDP and Goodluck not in my house please".  I respected his stand so I turned to other news platforms, this time on my phone.  Why I wrote all this is because I have been trying to reach him since 7am and his mobile is not going through. I became worried.  Thank God I have his wife's number. What she told me shocked me down to my bones!  "My husband has flushed his SIM down the toilet because when he checked his balance there was PDP advert on it"  It's shocking, hilarious but it has really agitated me. The SIM that he has been using for about 13 years now, PDP advert has made him threw it away.  God, how far can the PDP h...

I was bored this week end, for lack of anything to read, I went to peruse through my University papers. It helped to dust off those cobwebs, but I was amazed to be reminded at the sources of power which listed information as one of it. This means if one has vital information it gives one power, strength, or an advantage to make wise decision or even to create a formidable change in respect of that field of information gotten.               Majority of our country men and women do not have information about their country or how it is governed. Most of us do not have access to those activities that influenced, for instance, the bench mark for our minimum wage. Why and how did the Government arrived at the N18,000:00 minimum wage as against the wealth the country produces? Or how come it placed the basic monthly salary of a Senator at N2,484,245.50? According to The Economist, per annum income of a Nigeria's legislator is whopping $2,183,685.00 as agai...

In present Nigeria, one would not end a healthy political discussions with persons from the South-South of the Country, without them accusing that the North, or what they amusingly called the Hausa-Fulani, of having 'born to rule syndrome '. Most times, I try to educate them that the 'rulership 'of Nigeria is open to any tribe to partake. The failure of others to rule the Country whether by a barrel of gun or ballot must never be construed as a syndrome to always be the preferred candidates. Before one becomes a leader in Nigeria, the person must have undergone process of acceptance within the ethnic, religious, and political fabric that makes up the Country at that material time. And even within the military establishment. It is therefore laughable for some one to accuse the Hausa- Fulani of born to rule syndrome. Perhaps why we often come tops as preferred choice has been our excellent leadership qualities, inherent knowledge of issues affecting our country. Not a...

 I feel strong about this, Me and you, like any other mortal, not excluding Buhari and Jonathan, have our not so printable pasts. My thesis is NOT that Buhari is the awaited Messiah who will take all our pains and sorrows away and establish all living and unborn citizens on 'Easy Street' of Nigeria forever. Rather, my point IS THAT the ruling party (PDP) has stayed in power for one and a half decade without any commensurate achievement. Similarly, Jonathan has been in power for six out of those 15 years of PDP administration or maladministration as the case maybe. Now he wants another four years to get 10 years of GEJ administration or maladministration as the case maybe. Yet, insecurity, corruption, and poverty remain the lot of the masses. Therefore, all I'm essentially canvassing is a democratic change of the party at the centre to any other available option so that perchance, Nigeria will gradually become a better place for us all. My political-philosophy is...

As the PDP Loses the Majority to the APC in the House of Representatives, the change movement soars. Yes, yesterday the APC emerged as the Political Party with majority of members in the House of Representatives, the first by an opposition party since 1999. Following this development, the APC overtakes the PDP as the dominant party in the House. The new distribution shows: APC (179) PDP (162) other parties (19). The House has 360 members. Countrymen and women it is NOW one down (The House of Reps), two more (The Presidency and the Senate ) to go at the Federal level. CHANGE BECKONS. Truth cannot be hidden as Nigerians increasingly abandons the rotten house called the PDP. May God Bless Nigeria. Prof. Chris Nwaokobia Jnr. Pin:7F35E1F5 Twitter@CHRISNWAOKOBIA Twitter@CNWAOKOBIAJNR Please join CHANGE AMBASSADORS OF NIGERIA...Yes We CAN, on Facebook. Pls Re-bc.

We may not be as famous as some of the other Gubernatorial aspirants. Neither do we have bags of money to share as some seem to have. We definitely do not sit on the same table with 'godfathers' that make things happen out of nothing. These could be a disadvantage to those who insist on doing things the way every one seems to be doing, or to those who do no want to upset the status quo.  6 + 3 = 9 but so does 5+4. The way you do things isn't always the only way to do them. What these means is we have a different approach to getting the required votes from those who count most; the teeming voters of our dear State who right now also are in need of different ideas to better their lives.  We are giving them hope for a better future, courage that all youths and women can be what they choose to be in life, sharing the prosperity to areas that matter most: this is some aspect of our message in Mega Progressive People's Party. Join us!

I am a Muslim. You are a Christian. Which ever religion you practice, we must not be enemies. I know you don't hate me because am a Muslim. I will never hate you because you are non-Muslim. What we need is to understand our differences so that we can deal with our common enemies.  We have mutual enemies; poverty, unemployment, insecurity, lack of functional health care services, falling standard of education, poor road infrastructure, lack of clean drinking water, lack of respect for each other, lack of community cohesion. What we lack in Adamaw state are too numerous to ignore. Let's unite in the face of our challenges, let's come together to re - direct our future. Let's bring out the best in all of us, let's allow the shinning stars guide us into a better society with respect for the dignity of the human person.  Yes we believe! Vote for the new face, new ideas, new innovations that beings in hope, courage and prosperity - Mega Progressive People...