Iyabo Arinola Ifeoma Awokoya's Blog

  I have been off the social media for about two months. Many have reached out in private to find out how I have been keeping. To all my friends, frenemies, and unabashed haters, I thank you all and I reassure you that I have been keeping well.  As you are aware, Twitter suspended my account permanently! I had it coming some would say, but I actually could not care less. I had been warned that the axe would soon fall and was ready for it really. I am a stubborn person. I have been stubborn since birth, and I am not about to change in old age. One of the reasons why I have advocated for SM regulation by countries is what is playing out in the world presently. It does not make sense to leave the duty of moderating free speech to the platform that hosts the speakers. You cannot allow a third party to be the sole decider of what can be said or written. Nations of the world have different cultures, norms and ethos and no platform whether they employ citizens of all the nations of t...

A tribute to Cousin Mohammed Fawehinmi who departed planet earth in the twinkling of an eye on the 11th of August 2021. Ability in Disability I must confess that I have struggled with this call made by our God to bring Mohammed (Mo) home to himself. All my Christian instincts tell me that God did this for good because all His deeds are good and that though His ways are not our ways, He brings everything to perfection. I trust and believe, but the hurt is nevertheless deep. Mo’s death has made me so low in spirit,  and when I spoke to my daughter about my feelings, she advised that I write my thoughts down in a tribute to Mohammed and that it would help me process my emotions and find peace. So here I go. Hopefully, this piece will succour those who mourn their loved ones in this pandemic era and in particular, give comfort to those who have lost loved ones who are classified as especially vulnerable. A portrait of Mo as a child, teenager and young adult I am 8 years older than Mo. ...

A coup and a secession:  On February 23, 1966, barely a month after first coup d'etat in Nigeria which took place on the 29th of January 1966, an Army officer of Ijaw descent, who was born in Oloibiri in 1938 and was from Kaima in present day Bayelsa, named Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, declared the Niger Delta Republic (NDR) as an independent nation. He was just 27 years old and was at that time a student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka.  Adaka Boro was a radical through and through. He was a student union activist, who had once taken the Nigerian Government to court to challenge the 1963 Constitution. He trained a motley group of young men literarily behind his father’s compound and declared them as his army that would fight against the Nigerian forces and steer the NDR into independence from Nigeria. He called his ‘army’ the Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF). As was to be expected, his secession was short-lived. It lasted a mere 12 days.  Adaka Boro It is instructive t...

Theatre of the Absurd -Part 2 Marginalisation? Let us examine history. The best point to start analysing a topic is to go back in history for context. The cry of marginalisation is not a new phenomenon and this cry among the Igbo ethnicity, is a recurring lament. Permit me to say from the onset that I am a firm believer in Nigeria as a unit and I do not have enmity in any part of my bones for any ethnic group. I embrace Nigeria. That said, I am also a realist and an analyst, and I believe that if Nigeria is going to be able to move forward to greater unity and development we must speak frankly about the “who”, “what”, “where” and “when” of events in history that led us to this day and this periodic resurgence of agitations for secession. We are in a sense of déjà vu here.   The amalgamation of the three regions into one nation of 1914 The premise for the argument that we were never one nation is cited as the ‘unholy’ 1914 amalgamation of the 3 regions by the colonial masters. It ...