GIVING 2007 A BLOODY NOSE

I have not been up to it these few months. Wrote nothing since September, bad example. That is because I have been up to something more interesting. I am trying to make sure I hand in my manuscript to my publishers in February. I can't tell you anything about the book just yet, but you can be sure you will be the first to know when it is out.

2007 was not such an ugly year but she had her hang-ups. Real bad hang-ups. And the version of signing off she is doing with some high profile killings by fanatics who do not know the difference between politics and religion, and worse still do not want to know. My faith does not give any excuse for killing any one, not even by accident. And I believe no other religion permits it. And the big shot upstairs that we all profess to worship does not allow for it either. How you guage the evil nature of death and killing is when you lose someone dear to you. As difficult as it is to turn away from the pains the Bhuttos must be feeling, I have to get to my topic. By the way, I lost a cousin, Anko, another cousin Eddus, an uncle Barth, and another cousin Terrisa all in 2007, Terrisa died in an auto accident on Saturday the 28th/12/07. My fair share of tragedy, don't you think?

A lot of things happened in the year 2007, some I loved (I will not bore you with those, you had some of yours too), the ones I'd like to tell you about are the things you failed to do. You may have failed to do them in the year 2007, what ever may be the reasons, that does not mean you cannot do them in 2008. Except of course if the things were meant strictly for the year 2007. In which case it would be quite silly to try doing them in 2008 and losing precious time. Let them go and don't regret them. 2008 is coming with a whole load of stuff that will interest you more than you ever imagined. Keep focused on the daily happenings and be part of the ones you can handle and that will be of some benefit to you. And if you can't be part of them then be on the lookout for the next opportunity, they will come in bounds, don't look back, take a dive. You will come out smelling like a rose and feeling good about yourself.

The trick is if you miss the object, look around where you landed, there is an alterantive lying around you, pick that up, and get about chasing the next big thing. Do not think small, you are worth more than small pickings, though added up small pickings can get to be some mega object. If you are chasing the real big thing and a small picking comes along, take it, put it in your backpack and keep chasing the main thing. Trust me I know what I am saying.

I am going to follow my own advice. Do yourself a favour, follow me. Just don't close your eyes you may miss me at a turn.

Have a great year.

abbah r. agor-agalanga

THE US DEMOCRATS' PRIMARIES

The US Democrats' Primaries is turning out to be the next real big and interestng thing. For the first time in centuries of US history the American citizenry is being asked one big question: Is America really a land of equality?

Why the question? I'll tell you. Now have a look at the two front runners of the US Democrats' Presidential candidates, Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Barak Obama. They come from the deprived and underprivileged of the citizens in America. Obama can be permitted to called a black man while Mrs. Clinton is female. None of them come from the group that has ever been penciled down for possible assention to the presidency of America. But both have come up for scutiny and the two are the front runners. That says a lot about the Democratic Party.

What the situation now begs is the possibility of either one of them becoming the Democratic Pary's nominee. Either way it will tell a lot about whether or not the land of the free is actually the land of the equals. Either one of them is okay by me. But that is not what really trips me. What gives me the thrills is the possibility of both of them ending up as the Presidential candidate and running mate. You bet the Republicans will be kept out of the white house for the next 50 years. Of course they won't like that. But I recommend that for the Democrats. Even Bush is scared stiff of that. He sounded close to it a couple of days back.

I have been watching and I think the rest of the World is watching too. I am not an American, am Nigerian but I find myself in the thick of the expectations in the Democratic Party. ordinarily I should be routing for Mr. Obama as a fellow black even though I am more comfortable with the term, a fellow human, I find myself remembering the good the Clintons did in the white house.

So just for my selfish secret yearnings if the Democrats put the two of them forward I WOULD BE STUMPED, they can't lose the election. But then America is a strange country and they put out only the image they want you to see and the ugly sneaks out quite by accident and with a lot of finger pointing afterwards.

I am watching and I think you should.

have a great day.


abbah r. agor-agalanga

ARMS RACE NEVER WENT AWAY (at least not in George Bush's U.S)

'Am trying really hard to convince myself that what I am reading in the papers from the U.S. is not what it says. Arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and compensatory arms deals with Egypt and Isreal, worth $13 billion to Egypt and $30 billion to Isreal. Great! A rerun of the cold war days. The question to ask is what is expected of these countries to do with the arms?

If I remember well the cause of all the warring going on in the Arab world and the middle east is the sale of arms by both the U.S. and the then U.S.S.R. The U.S. claimed it was in the interest of the world to arm the Iraqis against the Iranians, then she thought it was in her interest to arm the Talibans against the U.S.S.R incursion into Afganistan. And then it became necessary to arm the Isrealis against the threat from the Arab world. It has now become necessary to arm some Arabs against another set of Arabs. The underlying factor being that the arms will be used to kill fellow humans, most of them children, a good percentage of them women, another good percentage innocent men looking for means of livelihood for themselves and their family.

The motive? Monetary profit. And who is the biggest beneficiary? The U.S. Granted it is only a puny minority of the U.S. population, but a dangerous minority.

One little bit that bothers me is why the U.S. thinks she is in the best position to decide whether or not people should kill one another and who should be killed at a particular time and place. What if the U.S. seeing the perculiar advantage she has in having a strong say in world affairs took the other option of making friends and creating bridges of understanding among nations rather than arming them against each other? I understand there is little money in this peace option but I know as a fact that American citizens are also being killed by the weapons sold to these countries or given to them by way of grant or aid as she wants to describe it. You don't aid a man when you give him a gun. You're abetting the murder of one or more persons or even the person you've given the gun to.

Americans have a gun culture but why can't you see this as a barbaric culture? Look at what it does to the kids on the streets and elementary or grade schools in America. Wake up! the world is not as dangerous as you're making it look just for the sake of profit in money. It is possible you may never live long enough to spend the money. If there is peace the world over there is no limit to the money that can be made.

Let us for once drop the need for bullet proof vests and jeeps, the need to hire assassins or body guards. Let us explore the possiblity of making friends among nations, it surely will bring long lasting prosperity and all the talk about terrorism will be a forgotten issue. I believe the terrorists want a good life too and will readily give in their guns to have a good family with whom they could sit on the lawn outside their home on weekends.

I love my family and i have a very stong feeling every other person does as well.

The arms deals? let us put them away. They are killer contracts. Improve the lot of humans don't kill the human race. Roaches might inherit the planet. A nightmare of a thought but that is what we are encouraging.

Keep pressing for no arms among humans.

abbah r. agor-agalanga

THE US SENATE DEMOCRATS COMING TO LIFE

We in the other parts of the world have all along known what the problem with the American involvement in Iraqi affairs was about. Cheap oil and money. The democrats in the US Senate may have known it all along too because I believe some of the Senators have what it takes in them but may be never had the numbers necessary to overturn those steps taken that have made the average American appear like a war monger. When the American people finally spoke through their votes the senators certainly got the message.

Fine and good the bill was blocked but the mere fact that the effort was mad is commendable . And I am certain a little adjustment to the bill will see it sailing through at the next attempt. The basic fact is that most republicans have made serious money from the war. They are easily the biggest manufacturers of armaments. They are also in controll of the oil industry. So put these together and you will have a clearer picture of what I am saying. The down side of it is that innocent people on both sides had to lose their lives before the situation becomes clear to everyone except George Bush and his friends.

I have to look only through the window in my house to see what is being done wrong in far flung places like Iraq. Kids run around kicking a dusty football and teenagers acting funny in the nooks, ordinary things Iraqis don't dare. They are humans like you and I.

The real enemy is, if may say so, Al qaeda, and basically they do not have their base anywhere in Iraq. it is well known that they are in bed with good friends of America, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan is even better off in the scheme of things. She is making an effort to rid herself of them but the Saudis? Cosy as ever.

Bush, face your enemies and let innocent people get about their lives.

'am just going to see if my kids are okay. I would want them to live in a better world.

Have a nice weekend.

abbah r. agor-agalanga

TONY BLAIR STOPS BLARING

Not too long ago Mr. Blair bowed out of office. not with that much pomp as you would think the American president would or for that matter the Nigerian president. He went with a wimper so faint you could have missed it on the 9 o'clock news. But that is how it should go. Particularly for someone who staked his political carreer on the preempted decision of a president not known for soundness of mind.

Tony had it all. Or so it seemed and Baby Leo did not mind the idea either, you know all that smooshing and pampering at Downing Street, a street that probably has the highest number of bootlickers in Europe, sorry next to the equivalent street in Rome, Italy. But he, Tony threw it all away. Come to think of it getting the job of British prime minister is no easy task. It is actually easier to lose the job. In Britain all it takes to kick a prime minister out is the queen's ears (not her hubby's they are a little outsized), she then whispers to a few MPs who whisper to a few party big shots and you are either out on the street with your reviewed resume or the party loses her seat at elections. Clean and tidy. And the beat goes on.

In the U.S, kicking the president out? Boy! you sure have some home work. First you get the world press, no kidding. You have to whip up this sentiment about how glorified the white house is and has been for a couple of centuries. Then you go through the dance of educating the press who already know where you are heading, about the importance of the U.S in the committy of nations on the globe, such that if the president of the U.S should sneeze, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia (excluding al Kaida, they don't give a damn), Egypt, Nigeria, Japan, China (they really don't catch fright they are too many, strength in number), India (working hard on their numbers), and even down yonder Australia should catch cold. Never mind the strength of the blast of sneeze that might be required.

When you are certain that the world pressmen and women have gotten the message and are placed in a good enough mental state to deliver the message to the citizenry with enough venorm, then you drop your voice a little and get the press to crane their necks cocking their ears real hard to hear you, you drop the over-hiped scandal, the bombshell. Uhm, be sure it has to do with sex or it will not work. If it has to do with people's children getting killed for no reason it won't work. If it has to do with war it won't work. Remember war is money to some of the bigshots at the white house.

This is just day one. On day two, keep it alive the other networks have not caught on. move away from Washington at this time so that you can be accessed by other networks who do not have the means to send their reporters to Washington where you might have had your world press conference or what ever name you choose to call. The Sex Cluster Bomb Scandal might be a good name for the scandal. Catchy. Now you are set to give speaches on morality never mind that you have nine children from fifteen women without ever proposing to even one of them and not even knowing where the children are or how they are coping with life. You are hot. There are some movie deals on the line so don't tune off.

You can live the rest to the U.S senate and the House of Representatives. Go home and watch tv. Do not attempt to believe what the experts say of your disclosure, they will contradict themselves long before you know it. some one will show up claiming to have a phd in the scandal. Go and hire a solicitor, get a cheap one or you will be going back to Harlem more broke than you came out. Remeber this is the end of your role. Don't ever imagine anything more than you have gotten. Keep in mind that George Bush can't get impeached for killing people's children beause it has nothing to do with sex.

You are now famous, get to your bankers.

Have a nice day.

abbah r. agor-agalanga

BUSH IN A THICKET

I've tried very hard to keep Mr. George Bush out of my mind but it has been very difficult. Not because I am very fond of him. Far from it. I leave that entirely to the American people who elected him, though I have a strong feeling they are fed up with him. I finally found out why he is stuck in my mind. He reminds me of this elementary school bully whose dad had drilled it into his head that he comes from a family of very brave men and women who never run away from a fight. And as a fact should be either the cause of the fight or at the centre of the actual fight. The dad never told him how to win the fight or how not to get in unnecessary fights.

Regrettably, in the case of Mr. Bush, he gets others to do his fighting for him and worse still to die for him. And he is not even at the scene to egg or cheer them on. He hides under presidential cover. One thing I cannot understand though is his inability to to grasp the reality on the ground- that the Iraqis do not see him as a liberator that he thinks he is. Even though the thought of liberating Iraq was not the main reason for his invasion of the Iraqi people's home. This popped up when his theory of the Iraqi government harbouring weapons of mass destruction fell flat. It is a good thing that he now has to contend with the new congress and the American people's sudden realisation that he invaded Iraq for no good reason. He also has to contend with the morale of the men on the gound in Iraq. Knowing Mr. Bush as much as we all do it is vain to imagine that he understands any of these issues. The men and women on the ground, the Iraqis who want to rebuild their country, the Americans, the British and all other nationales who are collectively trying to rearrange things with the hope that the country will get back on its feet are all infected with low morale. The dead do not have such luxury.

I have never believed in resoloving misunderstandings, disagreements, arguments, conflicts and any other form of difference in opinion through violence. violence is just a timid way of settling scores that leave more scores to be settled. There is no just war. War is primitive and portrays humans in their worst state. Someone please educate Mr. Bush on this. Let that be.

Mr. Bush has failed at the war front. Let us get him back to the admission of this fact so that he can see that now is the time to fold in his tail and flee or retreat, any which way he likes to call it. My dog, Raymond, does that all the time and we still think he is a good dog, we all love him and laugh it off when he does it. The truth is that Mr. Bush is in a thicket, he can't go forward but he can retreat. Tell him to get people's children out of harm's way and in thesame move save the lives of the Iraqi children. And let the Iraqis rebuild their lives. But if he insists let him pick up a rifle and head towards Bahgdad, I am certain he will have a lot to defend himself from. On the records he is not exactly a brave man. If my memory serves me well there was a time he wiggled his way out of a war, lay low in the National Guards until it all blew over and then snuck back to his "regular brave guy" life with his little secret tucked away some place in his memory. Typical bully approach. Running from Iraq won't be strange to him, what do you think?

It would not be such a pain if he was a success at the home front. you get what I mean? And it would not be so bad if he did not drag a few nice guys down with him. Tony Blair became Tony Blur overnight just for hanging around him. Talk of bad company, mom did warn you against them didn't she, Tony?

Sorry to go a bit personal but no war was ever caused or started by an A+ person. They, A+ persons, have always had inteligent ways of resolving issues. We should be cautious about who we elect into offices. Serious offices that is.

You have a great day and don't let yourself get caught in a thicket.

abbah r. agor-agalanga

DEMOCRACY TAKING ROOT IN NIGERIA

If you have been watching developments in Nigeria recently you will notice that we have somehow managed to elect a new president. The method used may not be very conventional but we do have a new president. for a while we did consider a street protest but by the time we had listened and heard his inaugural speech we had a change of heart and are ready to give him a chance to prove his worth. He sounded a lot humbler than we expected. We Nigerians are not very fond of arogant people (that is why we could not get along with mr. Obasanjo) but have a lot of regard for humble people and if the new president keeps to that humble attitude he wil win our hearts for keeps. so long as does not stay beyond his term as president

Back to the main business of what we expect of our president. we do not ask much just that he makes the lives of the Nigerians on the street better off. he creates jobs or creates the opportunities for the citizenry. we are a very resourceful and creative people and will snap up whatever chances there are. we are also very accommodating, may be to a fault.

To the rest of the world we are stereotyped as a lazy, crooked, swindling lot of people. This is far from the truth. We are as hard working as any group of people. we have had it a little bad because of a small percentage of the population that has gone overboard with their crooked tendencies. we are taking care of them now and in a couple of years all that will be history. if you think i am being over ambitious just ask anyone you know that has been to Nigeria or has come into contact with a Nigerian in his workplace any where in the world and he or she will tell you we have the brains to beat any other. when we mean to do anything we get it done any which way.

The president has taken a few positive steps that tend to give him some credibility. For instance he has opened up dialogue with the Niger delta youths, he has invited the opposition parties to a parley with the hope of including them in his cabinet, he has promised to serve and lead by example. In his native Katsina State where he was governor for two terms he has left the treasury bouyant and put the state economy on a sound footing. That is an encouraging sign.

I am not doing an image laundering job, i have never met him, i did not work in his campaign organisation and neither am i his image maker. I am only interested in what you think about my country, one of the best places in the world to live in, and thought if i told you the truth of what is happening in my country you might have a clearer picture.

Do please let me have your comments. I have an open mind so do not worry how i will feel if your comment is negative. Ask any question about my country that you want and I will do my best to give the real facts on the ground.

have a great time.

abbah r. agor-agalanga.

on my mind today

i've been trying to figure out what it is that makes the human such a heartless animal that he thinks the best way to be comfortable with himself is to hurt other humans. i have had the chance to observe other animals fight each other to a blody mess but even as a human being i could understand it was from such rivalry of sorts. i saw two cocks (roosters) get in a bad fight. but i looked around and saw it was over one hen just standing bye. the couls not talk it over, or one would not give in to the other. or better still one has formed the habit of not chatting up a lady (hen) until he saw the particular rooster out trying out his luck.

but with humans we pride ourselves as the animal with probably the highest i.q. why then can't we just see that if we sat down to talk we actually could get rid of what ever the greivances are or at least resolve them. well, if this turns out to be a little too difficult considering that we have wars on already, and the wars will still create room for splinter wars, then let us look to science to shelf the creation of destructive weaponry and concentrate on the regrowth of human tissues for replacement of lost limbs, improvement of the general standard of living of humans, easy access to medicare, all such things as may make life so much more worthwhile that the life of the individual becomes more and more precious. i think the temptation to just go all out and destroy life will be cortailed and with time wiped out.

abbah r. agor-agalanga