QueensPrince

Former Presidential Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Gooduck Jonathan has written an open letter to the embattled leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra ( IPOB ), Nnamdi Kanu . We have never met. I only know you by reputation and I have had cause in the last year to write on your activities within the public arena and offer my own views about you, your persona, and your interventions in the Nigerian debate. I sincerely hope you would get to read this letter wherever you may be, that is assuming you are still alive. Your father’s house was recently invaded by the Nigerian military (surprised you don’t have a house of your own!). We were later told that you simply disappeared into thin air, along with your parents. The murderous Operation Python Dance II that was unleashed on Igboland by the Federal Government of Nigeria has since become a subject of national interest. Many people have proclaimed that you have been killed, abducted and that many members of you...

Operation code-names have been an important part of military operations since the Germans first applied them in World War 1 but it may be said that the recent (or ongoing?) controversial military exercise in the South Eastern part of Nigeria codenamed Operation Python Dance II is the first major incident in Nigerian military history to draw attention to this seemingly routine aspect of military operations worldwide. An operational code name requires creativity, it is meant to be a cover up, hide the real intentions of the operation, achieve a public relation stunt if possible, and ease communication and strategic documentation within the military hierarchy. The Nigerian military has never been so clever in coming up with operation code names: many of them are dead give-aways (Operation Lafiya Dole, Operation Pulo Shield, Operation Maximum Safety, Operation Crackdown) or so stupidly incongruous they evoke instant suspicion (Operation Python Dance, Operation Crocodile Smile). Pythons do...

 This is about Stephen Nyitse, the young man who on the day of the coronation of the new Tor Tiv managed to beat security and went straight to where the king’s coronation seat, stool, throne had been placed and sat on it. We are told this caused a stir, and not a few in the crowd must have shouted: “abomination!”, Even the President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Benue branch, Bishop Mike Angou considered Nyitse’s action sacrilegious. He went to the seat, to anoint and rededicate it. Bishop Angou’s intervention obviously was meant to cast out whatever demons Nyitse must have inflicted on the already consecrated kingship throne. It is possible also that the ordinary people in attendance and the chiefs of Tivland interpreted it as a bad omen. Africans including the educated live in a world of spirits, demons and magic. Every act or gesture among them, is considered spiritual or religious. The other side of it has to do with social hierarchy and customs. Our social life ...