Ogiri John Ogiri

The day is dark as nightfall hovers around the horizon The sky refuses to wear its usual blue colour and the field around the cathedral has gone pale with the sun smiling only in a sheepish radiance.  For a great priest of the Lord most high has gone the way of his ancestors. At the entrance to the cathedral, parishioners stand in utter disbelief wailing and lamenting in a kaleidoscope of painful emotional expressions And their minds battle with ceaseless questions streaming through their embankments. With their Catholic faces wearing mournful looks as they battle to accept the reality of his death and the painful torment of his unannounced demise,  They stare into the sky in a helpless wish that he could just drive in and say "tell your neighbour, sit down". But Fr Zion is gone to Zion The lion has departed for Zion. But who can question God? No one sure can. Why do the good go soon? Why do the lettered leaves so soon? Why do the humble bow out unannounced? Why d...

By Ogiri John Ogiri I've come face to face with real challenges before. There were times in the past that I had worried about food to eat and clothes to wear. I've gone to bed without food before.  I've taken risks before and I still take.  I travelled out of Benue State in 2003 to Kaduna State knowing no one really except a friend whose address I had to find later. He squatted me. I'm still grateful to him even in death. I went with nothing, started life with nothing but left with something.  In my first year as a student in Kaduna State, I had just one pair of shoes, two pairs of worn-out trousers and three t-shirts. It got so bad at a time, that a friend, overpowered by pity for me, bought me a t-shirt which I wore to support the few ones I had. I've had to contend with the challenge of where to live before. As a student, I've been sent out of the class before for not being able to pay my tuition fee. A close friend and course mate had ...

I see the Twitter ban as an unconsciously planned decoy to deceive and divert attentions of Nigerians away from the failure of the government to secure them. While we were engaged in the conversations on Twitter ban, did we know that armed herdsmen killed many people in Odugbeho, Ado and Igangan? This is exclusive of those being fallen almost on a daily basis by bandits' bullets in Zamfara, Kebbi , Niger, Ebony.  What a successful decoy! Yet, there are those who provide the intellectual lubricants aimed at easing the already obvious but irredeemable frictions between reason and irrationality; civility and barbarism; empathy and indifference; actions and inactions; demystified integrity and corruption; vainglory and genuine achievements; hope and despair, which have become a blanket identity for this pseudo democratic interregnum. How successful this effort will turn out in the end will depend on the sustained propaganda effort of the regime and the gullibility of many Nigerians.