“Indiscipline pervades our life so completely that one may be justified in calling it the condition par excellence of contemporary Nigerian society”- Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria.  Prof. Chinua Achebe, literary giant, celebrated author, humanist and patriot par excellence, who was buried yesterday, was Nigeria’s gift to Africa, and indeed, the world. Like most people, I first encountered Achebe through his numerous books before I met him in person. I shall return to the unforgettable encounter with him four years ago. Anywhere you go around the world, there are certain things about Nigeria that feature prominently in conversations with…

Depending On How You Look At It; I Dealt A Death Blow On Igbos Or Offered Them The Opportunity To Change  Ozodi Osuji  I do not have mail from Nigerian Internet forums come to my email address. If and when I want to take a peek at what is going on at those forums I go to their websites. Generally, I do that about once a week. Nevertheless, some folks send their letters to my mail box. Thus, throughout last week some folks kept sending to me mail talking about me, calling me whatever name that fits the callers. Like…

As most Nigerians would like to get over the irrepressible Boko Haram pest, a nightmarish for the Jonathan administration, the declaration of the State of Emergency in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe States by President Goodluck Jonathan, against the wish of the Nigerian Governors Forum, is a welcome development. Enquiry mind want to know why sparing Gombe, Bauchi, Kano, Plateau, Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa States as security issue that has been a 'dry fish bone' on Jonathan's administration since May 2011.  Is it a design to block the infiltration of terrorists through the Nigerian Borders: Cameroun, Chad, and Niger? Mockingly, these Border…

This essay tries to educate Igbo Internet warriors who do not understand Igbo culture but pretend to do so; specifically, those who do not understand what the name Osuji means. Throughout much of human history there is no instance where a person persuaded deluded persons to give up their delusional beliefs. Delusion is desire to change reality and make it as one wants it to be. If something is black and a deluded person wants it to be white he would simply say so and ask you to accept his psychotic interpretation of reality and if you refuse to go…

There is this natural tendency to despair in the rot called Nigeria even when one lives in this paradise of misgovernance in fits and bursts. However, despair is exactly what the rulers of Nigeria want us to feel, and we must not give them such pleasures. Despair has succeeded in driving millions, miles away from the shores of our land even as these locusts multiplied their plan of destruction on the helpless souls left behind. But in the midst of despair, is it still possible to see hope? I dare to think so. Nigeria is a paradise of misgovernance but…

Igbos are always looking  into your personal life and if they see what to them seem like weak points in it they immediately pounce on them, exploit them and use them to try blackmailing you and or bringing you down. They never struggle to build people up but always want to bring people down. They harp on what to them seems your negative side and hope that in doing so they would persuade you to embrace their deluded goals or else they take you down. They talk boldly about you as if they know that what they are talking about…

Rookie psychotherapists perceiving the devastation paranoid characters leave in their wake are tempted to blame them; seasoned psychotherapists learn that paranoia is a mental disorder and that the sick need to be understood and helped to become healed and not blamed for the negative behaviors they exhibit. This paper says that we should not blame Igbo paranoid persons but try to understand them and help them overcome their mental disorder; their paranoia causes too much social problems for them and for other people and therefore they have to be helped to overcome it for society’s good. One Should Not Blame…

Society is composed of people.  We know that where two or more people live together, given their individual differences and values there must be law that delineates how they behave towards one another. Without laws people living together would trespass on each other’s rights and since those trespassed on don’t like it the result would be conflict and war. Thomas Hobbes, in his seminal book, Leviathan, said that in nature folks warred with each other, with the strong trying to use the weak to make their living and a bunch of the weak reacting with efforts to protect their rights.…

“There is nothing exclusive in the term unity; unity for Nigeria holds out the best chance for progress when that unity is a unity of purpose rather than the present hollow approach to unity for sake of unity. For unity to be meaningful, it has to be creative, not the unity of Jonah in the whale but the unity of holy matrimony. The first can only lead to defecation, the second to procreation”. – Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. I have just finished work on a new book titled Nigeria is Negotiable. Its release is scheduled to coincide with the 20th anniversary…