"NIGERIA'S SQUANDERED OPPORTUNITY" - JOEL BRINKLEY

Just outside President Goodluck Jonathan's office sat 17 ambulances, just in case he or one of his aides fell ill. They were seldom if ever used.

No actual health-care facility nationwide had as many, and in fact a few still have none at all. But as soon as a Nigerian newspaper took a photo of the ambulances and published a story about them, they suddenly disappeared -- probably to an underground garage.

Jonathan is president of Nigeria, which should be among the world's most prosperous nations. After all, it produces an estimated 2.4 million barrels of oil each and every day. With oil now selling at $93.61 a barrel, that's $224 million in income daily. And yet many hospitals can't afford to buy an ambulance. The reason, in my view: Nigeria is the most corrupt nation on earth.

Sure, Transparency International lists almost three dozen states as more corrupt -- Chad, Haiti, Laos, Yemen, Cambodia and the like. But are any of those nations as wealthy as Nigeria -- taking in $81 billion annually, just from the sale of oil? No, not even one of them. So Nigeria steals and squanders more money than any other nation, making it the world's most corrupt, by that measure.

Nigerian journalist Musikilu Mojeed finds all this so discouraging.

"With its geopolitical power, economic resources and middle class," he laments, "no country (with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia and Egypt) has the power to change the course of black/African civilization like Nigeria." After all, Nigeria is Africa's most populous state -- and large, twice the size of California.

So Nigerians are living an opportunity squandered -- particularly now. Egypt is in turmoil. In just the last few days, in fact, many Egyptians have been calling for a military coup -- anything to rid the state of its widely despised Muslim Brotherhood government. And a new report by the World Economic Forum ranked Egypt the least safe and secure tourist destination among 140 tourist nations evaluated.

Egypt has lost its place as the Arab/African worlds' leader, and Saudi Arabia never had it. So for Nigeria, the time is ripe. But its leaders seem interested only in stealing the state's money to make themselves rich beyond imaging. Think about it: $81 billion a year just from the oil, while most every local government official still tells his people the nation just doesn't have enough money to fix the roads, schools or hospitals. (Roads are in such terrible shape that government officials generally travel any distance by helicopter.)

And Nigeria's people -- well, they are as mistreated as any on earth. In only nine nations -- among them Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia -- do more mothers die during childbirth. And in only 10 states, including Chad, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, is the average life expectancy lower. Right now the average Nigerian's average life span ends at 52. That may be why the median age of Nigerians is just 18.

A few months ago, the Economist Intelligence Unit published an evaluation of the best places for babies to born in 2013, given their probable welfare as children and the chance for a safe, comfortable, prosperous life. Switzerland, Australia and Norway were the top three. The United States came in at 16th, largely because "babies will inherit the large debts of the boomer generation."

Dead last: Nigeria. "It is the worst place for a baby to enter the world in 2013," the report said.

Even with all that wealth, only just over half the population has access to clean drinking water, and one-third to a toilet, UNICEF says. Two-thirds live below the poverty line. Only one child in four who contracts pneumonia is given antibiotics, and only about half the population is literate.

The CIA also cites endemic "soil degradation; rapid deforestation; urban air and water pollution." All this in a county whose gross domestic product stands at $236 billion a year, in the same league as Denmark, Chile, Israel and the United Arab Emirates -- prosperous, successful states to be envied.

Goodluck Jonathan is certainly aware of all of this. After all, taking the oath of office, he swore to "devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of Nigeria. So help me God."

Well, just last week he demonstrated who he really is and what he stands for when he pardoned a former state governor who'd been convicted of embezzling state funds and laundering the money. That pardon triggered a broad, angry uproar.

Good luck, Mr. Jonathan. It's time you were impeached.

(Joel Brinkley is the Hearst professional in residence at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former correspondent for The New York Times.)

"THE CHRISTIANITY OF GREED GOSPEL AND RELIGIOUS EXPLOITATION BOOM IN NIGERIA"

The Churches in Nigeria today that are under the banner of modernization or pentecostalism have all become heavily money minded and totally materialistic. Christianity to many Nigerians is the primary way to become quickly rich or wealthy in all ramifications. Churches are now specialists and financial consultants on how to make their members rich through the deceptive message of taking their tithes and offerings and giving them the false hope of wealth or riches in return for their sacrificial givings. 

The so called prosperity gospel that entered Nigeria in the early 1980s has produced two very distinct and mixed results in that country since its introduction to the Nigerian Christian community by the visting America's prosperity pioneers and teachers as well as their Nigerian trained and mentored prosperity gospel pastors. The primary beneficiaries from this prosperity gospel or the greed message of religious exploitation are the prosperity teachers who are now super-rich. The tens of millions of their gullible, vulnerable, exploited, deceived followers and givers continue to live day in and day out in midst of hopelessness, abject or chronic poverty that prevents them from enjoying the most basic needs of life, such as a decent shelter, regular nutritional meals, transportation, health care, education, personal savings and decent clothes on their bodies.

BIBLICAL REFERENCES:
Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver - 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIV Translation). 
He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches, and he that gives to the rich, shall surely come to want - Proverbs 22:16.
For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ - 2 Corinthians 11:13.

Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself . But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out . And having food and raiment let us be therewith content . But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after , they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows - 2 Timothy 6:5-10.
Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver - 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIV Translation).

"THE QUESTIONS THAT NIGERIANS WILL NEVER ASK THEIR LEADERS"

(i) Where did David Mark, a public elected official and the Nigerian senate president get the $300,000 to buy a Ferrari car for the Nigerian singer 2Face Idibia as a wedding gift? (ii) How much did David Mark make as his employment incomes during his entire military career and as a public elected official that made it easily possible for him to doll out this expensive gift to a private Nigerian citizen?

(iii) Why should the government of Nigeria and her leaders be directly involved in the wedding expenses of a private Nigerian citizen by spending the tax payers' money to sponsor and to support the private decision of one Nigerian citizen that decided to marry? (iv) Where in the world today is this type of mismanagement of state resources by elected leaders are allowed to go on unchallenged?

(v) Did Nigerian voters elect David Mark to the senate and Godswill Akpabio as the governor of Akwa Ibom state respectively to be spending the government resources lavishly on an ordinary Nigerian citizen that decided to marry? (vi) What is the business of the government at all levels and her officials in the private marriage of one Nigerian out of the 160 million other Nigerians that this special and anointed Nigerian must be singled out for those pricey gifts from the state funds or tax payers' money?

"THE FIVE DIFFERENT CRITICS THAT COULD NOT DESTROY CHINUA ACHEBE OF NIGERIA"

(i) The first set of critics of the Chinua Achebe's last book on the Biafran war that took place in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970 have attempted to humanly exonerate the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo from the principal roles that he played in the prosecution of the Biafran war from its beginning to its final end when he was the Vice-Chairman of the then Federal Executive Council and the Finance Minister of the then Federal Military Government of Nigeria. Chief Obafemi Awolowo principally managed the Nigeria war economy.

(ii) The second set of critics tried to denounce the fact that the Biafran war was an act of genocide as conducted by the then Nigerian military government against her Igbo tribe and had tried as hard as it was humanly possible to justify the reasons why an estimated 3 million Igbos needed to die or must die in order to keep Nigeria together and intact as one nation in the name of national unity. (iii) The third set of critics were very upset with Chinua Achebe for having the courage, boldness and the audacity to reopen the old wounds of this brutal war that had refused to heal in all truth, honesty and reality since 1970 when it ended officially.

(iv) The fourth set of critics cannot truly understand the rational behind Chinua Achebe's attempt in his book to straighten out the 42-year old fabricated records and true history of this Biafran war in 2012 when Nigeria is at a major crossroad of her existence again with the menace of Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, MOSSOB, Odua, Egbesu and others. (iv) The fifth set of critics tried unsuccessfully to tarnish and to degrade the international reputation, achievements, legacies and the integrity of this erudite writer/scholar by calling him a failed, unpatriotic Nigerian, an ethnic lord of the Igbos and a frustrated academician.

"THERE WAS A COUNTRY:A PERSONAL HISTORY OF BIAFRA" - CHINUA ACHEBE

The hard truths that were exposed and supported with many valid evidences as well as the most important questions that Chinua Achebe asked all Nigerians in his last book before his death last Friday in Boston, United States have both truly divided Nigerians and the national public opinions about this war into two different camps.

The Biafran war was the worst chapter of human event in the entire history of the Nigerian nation to date. Every effort has been made since 1970 after this brutal war was officially over by every successive government in Nigeria to date including the military government that prosecuted the Biafran war to sweep the whole truth about this war under the carpet of history forever and have all attempted to rewrite the true account of this war to suit their own tribal or regional goals and the myopic national objectives of the Nigerian leaders that are neither patriotic nor nationalistic in the name of one Nigeria and national unity.

Achebe's book on the Biafran war was his biggest personal legacy that was based on the first class account from one of the major actors on the Biafra's side of this deadly war. The book asked the most important questions about this war that were never asked before at the national and international levels except the use of the common phrase "No Victor and No Vanguished". This book also serves as a national warning to the present Nigerian nation that has never learned any vital lesson of life to date from her brutal and past history.

Chinua Achebe is now gone and the Nigerian nation that he truly loved as a patriot and a nationalist is now facing the likely possibility of this destructive event been repeated again in our lifetime in a nation that is passing through the same similar events of the 1960s that gave birth to the Biafran war when the true wound of this Biafra war has not truly healed in all honesty and reality in 2013 in Nigeria.

"THINGS FALL APART AUTHOR CHINUA ACHEBE DEAD AT 82" - ASSOCIATED PRESS

 Chinua Achebe, the internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident who gave literary birth to modern Africa with “Things Fall Apart” and continued for decades to rewrite and reclaim the history of his native country, has died. He was 82. Achebe died following a brief illness, said his agent, Andrew Wylie. “He was also a beloved husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an inspiration to all who knew him,” Wylie said. His eminence worldwide was rivaled only by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and a handful of others. Achebe was a moral and literary model for countless Africans and a profound influence on such American writers as Morrison, Ha Jin and Junot Diaz.

As a Nigerian, Achebe lived through and helped define revolutionary change in his country, from independence to dictatorship to the disastrous war between Nigeria and the breakaway country of Biafra in the late 1960s. He knew both the prestige of serving on government commissions and the fear of being declared an enemy of the state. He spent much of his adult life in the United States, but never stopped calling for democracy in Nigeria or resisting literary honors from a government he refused to accept.

His public life began in his mid-20s. He was a resident of London when he completed his handwritten manuscript for “Things Fall Apart,” a short novel about a Nigerian tribesman’s downfall at the hands of British colonialists. Turned down by several publishers, the book was finally accepted by Heinemann and released in 1958 with a first printing of 2,000. Its initial review in The New York Times ran less than 500 words, but the novel soon became among the most important books of the 20th century, a universally acknowledged starting point for postcolonial, indigenous African fiction, the prophetic union of British letters and African oral culture.

“It would be impossible to say how ‘Things Fall Apart’ influenced African writing,” the African scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah once observed. “It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians. Achebe didn’t only play the game, he invented it.” “Things Fall Apart” has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe also was a forceful critic of Western literature about Africa, especially Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” standard reading for millions, but in Achebe’s opinion, a defining example of how even a great Western mind could reduce a foreign civilization to barbarism and menace.

“Now, I grew up among very eloquent elders. In the village, or even in the church, which my father made sure we attended, there were eloquent speakers. So if you reduce that eloquence which I encountered to eight words … it’s going to be very different,” Achebe told The Associated Press in 2008. “You know that it’s going to be a battle to turn it around, to say to people, ‘That’s not the way my people respond in this situation, by unintelligible grunts, and so on; they would speak.’ And it is that speech that I knew I wanted to be written down.”

His first novel was intended as a trilogy and the author continued its story in “A Man of the People” and “Arrow of God.” He also wrote short stories, poems, children’s stories and a political satire, “The Anthills of Savannah,” a 1987 release that was the last full-length fiction to come out in his lifetime. Wheelchair bound in his latter years, he would cite his physical problems and displacement from home as stifling to his imaginative powers.

Achebe never did win the Nobel Prize, which many believed he deserved, but in 2007 he did receive the Man Booker International Prize, a $120,000 honor for lifetime achievement. Achebe, paralyzed from the waist down since a 1990 auto accident, lived for years in a cottage built for him on the campus of Bard College, a leading liberal arts school north of New York City where he was a faculty member. He joined Brown University in 2009 as a professor of languages and literature.

Achebe, a native of Ogidi, Nigeria, regarded his life as a bartering between conflicting cultures. He spoke of the “two types of music” running through his mind— Ibo legends and the prose of Dickens. He was also exposed to different faiths. His father worked in a local missionary and was among the first in their village to convert to Christianity. In Achebe’s memoir “There Was a Country,” he wrote that his “whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension between the Christian religion” of his parents and the “retreating, older religion” of his ancestors. He would observe the conflicts between his father and great uncle and ponder “the essence, the meaning, the worldview of both religions.”

For much of his life, he had a sense that he was a person of special gifts who was part of an historic generation. Achebe was so avid a reader as a young man that his nickname was “Dictionary.” At Government College, Umuahia, he read Shakespeare, Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jonathan Swift among others. He placed his name alongside an extraordinary range of alumni — government and artistic leaders from Jaja Wachukwa, a future ambassador to the United Nations; to future Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka; Achebe’s future wife (and mother of their four children) Christine Okoli; and the poet Christopher Okigbo, a close friend of Achebe’s who was killed during the Biafra war.

After graduating from the University College of Ibadan, in 1953, Achebe was a radio producer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corp., then moved to London and worked at the British Broadcasting Corp. He was writing stories in college and called “Things Fall Apart” an act of “atonement” for what he says was the abandonment of traditional culture. The book’s title was taken from poet William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” which includes the widely quoted line, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

His novel was nearly lost before ever seen by the public. When Achebe finished his manuscript, he sent it to a London typing service, which misplaced the package and left it lying in an office for months. The proposed book was received coolly by London publishers, who doubted the appeal of fiction from Africa. Finally, an educational adviser at Heinemann who had recently traveled to west Africa had a look and declared: “This is the best novel I have read since the war.”

The opening sentence was as simple, declarative and revolutionary as a line out of Hemingway: “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.” Africans, Achebe had announced, had their own history, their own celebrities and reputations. In mockery of all the Western books about Africa, Achebe ended with a colonial official observing Okonkwo’s fate and imagining the book he will write: “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.” Achebe’s novel was the opening of a long argument on his country’s behalf.

“Literature is always badly served when an author’s artistic insight yields to stereotype and malice,” Achebe said during a 1998 lecture at Harvard University that cited Joyce Cary’s “Mister Johnson” as a special offender. “And it becomes doubly offensive when such a work is arrogantly proffered to you as your story. Some people may wonder if, perhaps, we were not too touchy, if we were not oversensitive. We really were not.”

Achebe could be just as critical of his own country. The novels “A Man of the People” and “No Longer at Ease” were stories of corruption and collapse that anticipated the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 and the years of mismanagement that followed. He not only supported Biafra’s independence, but was a government envoy and a member of a committee that was to write up the new and short-lived country’s constitution. He would flee from Nigeria and return many times and in 2004 refused the country’s second-highest award, the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic, in protest over conditions under President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay,” he said in an open letter to the president, referring to allegations of corruption and lawlessness in Achebe’s southeastern home state of Anambra. “A small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. … I had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples.”

Besides his own writing, Achebe served for years as editor of Heinemann’s “African Writer Series,” which published works by Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Biko and others. He also edited numerous anthologies of African stories, poems and essays. In “There Was a Country,” he considered the role of the modern African writer. “What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue,” he wrote. “A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories — prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.” - The Associated Press (AP) writer Jon Gambrell in London contributed to this report.

"THE SIX MAJOR QUESTIONS THAT CHINUA ACHEBE ASKED NIGERIANS IN HIS LAST BOOK"

Below are the last six key questions that Chinua Achebe asked all Nigerians in his last book that he published in 2012 before his death few months ago this year. The late Chinua Achebe in his last book titled "There Was A Country:A Personal History of Biafra"  that was published in 2012 that I presently owned a personal copy of the book. I have also read this book personally from its front cover to its back cover. In that book the late Chinua Achebe asked the boldest, the hardest, the most controversial and the toughest questions about Nigeria and the Biafra war that took place almost 50 years ago, but remained the worst human event in the Nigeria's history to date as a nation.

The fundamental questions that this literary giant asked all Nigerians are as follow:(i) Was the Biafran war not an act of genocide against the Igbo tribe from all the available and valid evidences today? (ii) Were Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo not both equally guilty of genocide against the Igbos in the ways and in the manners that they both used to prosecute this brutal war, through the use of economic blockage and the food starvation that led to the preventable physical deaths of about 2-3 million of those defenseless Igbo children, women and the non-combatant men?

(iii) Has Nigeria as a nation ever truly learned any vital historical lessons from this brutal past so that history does not repeat itself again in our lifetime? (iv) Are the present events in Nigeria today not very similar to those events of the 1960s that gave birth to the Biafran war? (v) Why is the Biafran war and its most important lessons kept away from the public, the young Nigerians today and are never taught in any of our public educational systems? (vi) Why did all the successive governments in Nigeria since the end of this deadly war to date have all attempted to suppress the information about this war, to manipulate the true account of history about this war, to distort the historical importance of this terrible war in Nigeria that wiped out more that 10% of the Igbo population at that time who were the lost members of the future generation the Igbo tribe?