EFFIONG NYONG EDITORIALS

Not that the PDP government did well, but not in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine, that things could be this bad. The cost of goods and services are on the the roof tops, the insecurity is alarming , delinquent juveniles have become normal as parents have lost control, like the falcon and the falconer in the poetry of WB Yeats's "Things fall apart" as the election of 2023 beckons ,it is back to the people to choose, collect #2000 and mortgage your future and that of your children, there are 18 political parties to choose from. The two so called big political parties in cross river state , know what has been happening to the Bakasssi stabilization fund of #500million monthly collection from the federal government, since 2008,a total of #84billion at #6billion per year, and there is nothing to show for it. This same individuals are campaigning in Bakassi and other parts of the southern senatorial zone pledging and promising all manner of things, and they know they are...

We will do things differently , Emerging from the ruins of the Nigerian civil war, the government of the then South Eastern state led by UJ Esuene ,shut the  Calabar stadium and all sporting engagements at the state level were moved to the police sports ground at Otop Abasi street.  That field became our Wembley and Olympic stadium. The only other fields we had were school fields in University of Nigeria ,calabar campus, now unical, Hope Waddle ,Saint Patrick's college, WAPI had an undulating field , other grounds were in some other schools in present day Akwa Ibom state. Basketball was played at the Army Barracks ,where the soldiers decided when to allow bloody civilians to have access, Tennis was played at the calabar sports club, which was located at the place where we now have the five finger park near the Governor's lodge .  Sports association offices and camps were scattered all over the city in private residences, the government showed purpose ,vision and direction...

Because we are involved:-  It beats my imagination that we walk, run and drive past this  edifice called the state Library in the centre of  Calabar our state capital , like nothing is really wrong, we move like hypocrites looking the other way, or expecting that we'll close our eyes and the library will get  transformed by the time we open them. I was counting the university degrees of our chief executive and his deputy who is also a professor and a former vice chancellor of a university and could not but begin to argue in my head that it is probably not true that these men went to school , if they did ,do they still relate to their classmates?, if they do ,what do their classmates tell them ?   I'm still trying to think that ,is it because the library is not on the same road as the governor's office, but it is still in the same environment? Less than a kilometer radius or could it be wickedness, wickedness against who? In this era of ICT , one expected an...

The story of the African Monarchical stool , which the very people and persons who are supposed to uphold , constituted the band of those wanting to bring the revered stool to ridicule.  From the days of former Governor Donald Duke and his adventurous show of power to the immediate past Obong of Calabar, the late Edidem  Elijah Nta Henshaw to the tussles of the present leading to the supreme court ruling. We have also been witnesses to the removal from office of professor Hogan Itam as the Muri of the Efuts and the creation of the seat called "the Paramount ruler of Calabar South.  The desecration and intransigence hurts. All on the altar of political expediency and over bloated egos. In Efik ,Efut Abakpa ,Kiong and other heritable or hereditary stools we know ourselves ,and we know impostors and they know that we know them. A true son does not need any announcement , the family knows and the ancestors bear witness. It saddens my heart each time we take our sacred matters...