Opinion

NIS Tragedy: Should Moro, Paradang Be Sacked?

Published

12 years ago

March 24, 2014

It was tragedy in many states in the country penultunate
Saturday as 19 job seekers who participated in the Nigeria Immigration Recruitment exercise died in the stampede that ensued at overcrowded venues of the exercise.
Following the unfortunate incident, the Nigeria Labour Congress, youths and some prominent Nigerians have called for the sack of the Minister of Interior, Comrade Abba Moro and the Comptroller General of Immigration, David Paradang despite President Goodluck Jonathan’s compensation for families of the deceased applicants and the hospitalised victims.
Our Chief Correspondent, Calista Ezeaku and photographer, Dele Obinna, sought the views of Port Harcourt residents on the burning issue: Hon. Samuel Yorkum (Insurance Consultant).
My advice is that people should be careful how they respond to any job advertisement especially this political era. Politicians are not reliable, especially when it comes to dealing with the public because they can do anything to get that position. I will advice job seekers to be careful. When they go for any job interview and see a very large crowd, they should withdraw from the exercise.
The president has tried to compensate the families that lost their loved ones in that stampede although that cannot bring back life. We should give him kudos for doing that but then; the applicants are to be blamed for that tragedy. When you see a large crowd in any public gathering, you should watch and be careful because if you don’t get that job, another job opportunity will come out tomorrow. You should have trust in God in whatever you are doing. When your body tells you this thing is risky, you should withdraw. But people do” gree-die,” it’s either do or die, I must be employed.
If God will give you employment, you wouldn’t suffer for it.
I think the recruitment exercise should have been handled with better tactics.
However, nobody is perfect. So I don’t think the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro and the Comptroller-General of Immigration should be sacked because of the unfortunate incident. If the incident happened because of their mistakes, any other person can make it tomorrow; does that mean people will be sacked, sacked and sacked?
So these people should not be punished but they should go back home and carry out thorough investigation on how to carry out hitch-free exercises in future.
Mr. Solomon Kalu (Applicant)
I took part in the recruitment exercise here in Port Harcourt. I sustained an injury that day. The crowd there was unimaginable. This is because there are no job opportunities in this country. The youths are wasting. It is very painful after going to school, you come out there is no job. So what happened that day was a very sad experience; lives were lost, many people were injured. It is good that the President had decided to compensate the families of those that died in the stampede. It is very painful that after sending your children to school, after investing so much, you will lose them out of some people’s negligence of their duties. And I think that Saturday’s incident should be investigated and anybody found culpable should be punished appropriately. Abba Moro and Paragang should not necessarily be sacked. There should be laid down procedures on how to conduct similar exercise in future. People that have degree, HND, OND, FSLC, WAEC certificates should have been taken to different venues instead of squeezing everybody in one place. The crowd was more than the capacity of the stadium. All the seats were occupied and people were asked to sit on the grass and write exams. Things are not done that way. There should be procedures of doing things. They should give us back the N1,000.00 we paid. I even borrowed that money and I had to pay transport fare to the bank to pay it. It is so painful that they had to extort money from jobless people. It’s very unfair.
Mr. Moses Freeman (Consultant)
The stampede is a wrong signal for the nation. It shows that leaders in Nigeria have no plans for the youths. If we are saying that youths are leaders of tomorrow, there should be a transition plan. What we are seeing today is a situation where those in authority refuse to plan. Ordinarily, in the 21st century, we are in, there is nothing wrong in this computer age to organise a test through computer arrangement. Majority of graduates today are exposed to computer, so why gathering them in a stadium, an open place to write exam. It is very wrong. I condemn it. And that is why I am equally in support o those agitating that the Comptroller General of Immigration, Paradang and the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro should be removed from their offices for lack of planning. In planning and management, you put into consideration how you get things done without much problems. This is not the first time such unfortunate incident is happening. This is the second time. So it should be discouraged. And if they are removed that will create opportunity for Nigerians to know that the leadership of Jonathan is responsive to the problems of the youths in the country.
The compensation given by Mr. President is as a result of the laxity of those in government. It is very wrong. Is it because somebody is dead in a family that you can now give employment to them? It is only a useless father who refuses to plan for the children. There is no transition plan in this country and that is the problem we have. Many people within the corridors of power today were in government from the age of twenty. Some of them refuse to allow the youths of today to have a place in government and that is the problem. The youths of today feel they are not stakeholders in this present democracy.
There should be a revolution. Not the type that will take gun or anything. It is a resolution that square pegs in round holes should be removed. Those who lack understanding of strategic planning and management of things around the country should be removed. So the youths of this country should now know that they have no stake in this country. They should sit up, plan and seek a way forward for themselves through a revolution of organised minds. The problem within the youths again is ignorance. They don’t even know their left from their right. If not, they were supposed to even reject in the first place, coming to write an examination in an open place in this modern world.
And I want to add that the money collected from the applicants should be refunded for purposes of transparency. And if possible, government should pay them more for suffering them. The emotional trauma they passed through is enough reason for government to pay. There is enough money in this country to go round. If somebody can spend N10 billion to maintain a chartered plane, a minister in this country, that N10 billion is enough for all those that participated in that exercise for suffering them as a nation.

Gloria Princewill (Business woman)
It’s very sad after investing on a child to have him die in such way. The government is supposed to provide jobs for the youths instead of asking all applicants to come to one particular venue for recruitment exercise only for them to have this kind of problem. It’s a sad thing. Even if the persons responsible for the unfortunate incident are sacked, the people that died have died. It’s for us to put our heads together to think of a better plan on how to tackle unemployment in the country. They should also think of better ways to organise this type of programme in future. Government should empower the youth through skill acquisition and others.
They don’t need to wait until tragedy like this happens before giving people job. Is it only when people died in circumstances like this that they wake up from their slumber? These are things they are supposed to have done before now. The ministers and what have you are just there to keep themselves good. They don’t think about the poor people. They should sit down and think of what to do because every year people are coming out from school, what are they going to do? They are just employing the people they know. Man know man is just too much in this Nigeria. That is what is killing us. You cannot find their children in that kind of place.

Mr. Jaja Gift (Civil Servant)
The way the recruitment exercise was conducted was not supposed to be. I agree that a lot of people blame the government and all that. Be that as it may be, you see, we have to be very clear about the issue. Corruption is the basic of our struggle today in Nigeria. I’m surprised that a parastatal like the Nigeria Immigration Service would conduct such an interview in a open place. This is my first time of experiencing such situation. I have been in this state when Air Force and other parastatals were conducting similar recruitment exercise. There were days for school Certificate, OND, HND, Degree holders. And when you know that your certificate falls on so, so so, day, you go. I have not seen a situation where you gather thousands of persons in one place for a test. It is surprising. I don’t even understand what is going on.
We talk about corruption. I think it is now the government has to sit up to look into the issue because I see no reason why N1,000 should be collected from each applicant, for what? I don’t understand what it means.
The president has tried by compensating the families of the dead and the hospitalised victims but it is not enough. Must somebody die before you know the situation on ground? Must somebody die before you know that this person needed this? Look at poverty all over the country and few individuals are somewhere sucking even the poor masses who have nothing doing. If it was all well in Nigeria, would we have such crowd for just an interview? And how many persons do they want?
The Minister of Interior and the Comptroller-General of Immigration should be punished. If sack is the appropriate punishment, fine. The government knows what to do to them. Government should go into details and find out why a government form should be sold to a job seeker who borrowed money to come for an interview. It is not only Moro and Paradang that should be punished. All the key officers in Immigration should be called to order and punished. They should all be brought to book. All the people that benefitted from the exploit should be brought to book.

Opinion

Man and Lessons from the Lion

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2025

The Tide

Quote:“Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth so shall he reap also (Gal 6:7)”

The lion (Panthera leo) is a large carnivorous mammal belonging to the Felidae family. Though native primarily to sub-Saharan Africa, a small population also exists in the Gir Forest of India. Known as the “king of the jungle,” lions are iconic symbols of strength, courage, and majesty. Male lions are distinguished by their prominent manes, which vary in color and size. Their tawny coats help them blend into dry grasslands and savannas. Lions are apex predators, hunting mainly large herbivores such as zebras, antelopes, and buffaloes. They have been reverred in mythology, religion, and heraldry across cultures for millennia and they continue to feature prominently in literature, film, and national symbols around the world. Irrespective of how long the strongest lion lives and reigns in the animal kingdom, it inevitably eventually loses strength, becomes vulnerable and dies, miserably. That is the unavoidable harsh reality of this animal kingdom we call our world. As it is with the lion so it is with man and all mammals.

At the peak of the reign of the lion, it chases, catches, devours and gulps down the remains of other animals; it leaves the crumbs for hyenas in an act of generosity. However, in time, the inevitable natural occurrence takes place. The lion succumbs to the brutal reality of the aging process. It comes face to face with the realities of life after power: It can’t hunt, can’t kill or even defend itself. It roams on limbs enfeebled by time; the roars, which naturally came effortlessly thundering through the forest proclaiming its supreme reign, now require enormous effort to achieve; even a decibel audible enough to proclaim its kingship within the immediate surroundings has become a Herculean task. At this stage, the king of the jungle routinely climbs and takes refuge on trees during the day, away from hyenas that have become the predators. It is the existential reality of this stage in its life that informed the Igbo aphorism that translates thus: “Ukwu ji agu, mgbada abiaya ugwo” meaning when the lion is enfeebled, antelopes come to demand debts.

Everything it does now is with a lot of effort until it runs out of luck. The lion is cornered by a clan of hyenas that turns into a cackle with the mocking laughing-like vocalizations that characterize hyenas. The king is nibbled at and eaten alive by those it used to leave crumbs for. The hyenas won’t even let it die before they methodically dismember it thereby subjecting the “king” to the same treatment it subjected its preys during its reign. That is retributive justice. For both lion and man, life is short and physical beauty and strength are short-lived; they are ephemeral. Restated, as it is with the lion so it is with man especially those who rise to positions of great authority and enormous power in the affairs of man; more so with those who use it with reckless abandon without caring whose ox is gored. Everyone who lives long enough will naturally become weak, very vulnerable and, at some point, helpless. Therefore, let us be humble, simple and treat our fellow human beings with respect and compassion knowing that retributive justice is an immutable natural law.

Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), the Russian philosopher and writer, who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, and a key figure in introducing Eastern spirituality to the Western world, holds that every thought and act throughout life affect other members of the human family. A crime once committed and an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall; no amount of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. While repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors, it cannot save him or others from the effects of those thoughts and actions; they will undoubtedly overtake him either in this life or in the next rebirth. Here lies the falsehood of vicarious remission of sins as touted in Abrahamic religions. The above highly spiritual deposition echoes the essence of the immutable law of nature, which applies to all, irrespective of station, location, color or creed. St. Paul admonished thus: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth so shall he reap also (Gal 6:7).

Jesus informs thus: “I come quickly with my rewards in my hands. To give unto each man according as his works shall be (Rev. 22:12). The universality of these Biblical injunctions is found in their focus on “a man” and “each man”, respectively. Again, hinging on “soweth” and “works”, both admonitions emphasize DEEDS as the basis for salvation. History is replete with accounts of conquerors who captured vast lands, subdued millions of people and acquired stupendous wealth but who, eventually, went the way of the “King of the Jungle”. Is anyone listening? Is the roaring lion, whose thunderous voice currently permeates and sends the shivers across the length and breath of this tiny little minuscule corner of our planet, listening? Egbema people say that if a man fights different people during nine consecutive market days and his opponents are guilty every time, his kinsmen call him aside and advise him not to fight again irrespective of how right he is always.

A major difference between man and the lion is that man knows when to sheathe his sword and let peace reign. Peace is priceless and development thrives only in peaceful environments.

By: Jason Osai

Opinion

Marked-Up Textbooks:A Growing Emergency

Published

1 day ago

September 22, 2025

The Tide

Quote:”Every term that passes sees more textbooks ruined, more students misled, and more families drained financially. The impact is cumulative, and irreversible in many cases”.

In homes across Nigeria, a silent but damaging practice is taking root, one that threatens the academic future of millions of children in primary and secondary schools. The act seems harmless on the surface. Older siblings completing their homework directly inside their school textbooks. But this seemingly minor convenience is creating a dangerous ripple effect. It’s a quiet academic crisis that has now become a source of distress to countless parents, a stumbling block for students, and a ticking time bomb for the education system. What used to be a normal practice—siblings reusing textbooks year after year to ease the financial burden on families—has now turned into a nightmare. The textbooks passed down from one child to another are no longer clean, usable, or even educational. Instead, they are filled with written answers, classwork, and hastily jotted notes, making it nearly impossible for younger children to engage meaningfully with the content.

For many families, especially those living on minimum wage or below, buying new textbooks every school year is simply not an option. In Nigeria’s public schools, where education is meant to be “free,” the cost of textbooks still falls heavily on the shoulders of parents. Textbook reuse within families has long been a cost-saving strategy, but that strategy is failing fast. Marked-up textbooks don’t just present a cosmetic problem—they sabotage the very essence of learning. Younger siblings are now handed materials that have already been “solved.” They are discouraged from thinking critically, because the answers are already there, inked across the margins. In some cases, these children simply copy the answers, assuming they’re correct. In other cases, they skip lessons because the mess inside the book makes learning impossible.

Teachers, already stretched thin by overpopulated classrooms and insufficient materials, now have to deal with students who cannot follow along because their textbooks are rendered useless. The result? Classroom gaps widen, performance suffers, and students lose confidence. The situation is even more dire in rural and low-income urban areas where textbooks are shared not only among siblings but also between neighbors and classmates. A single defaced textbook can mislead multiple students. The damage multiplies. Consider the experience of the Musa family in Kaduna. With four children in public school, they rely heavily on hand-me-down books. Their youngest son, Hassan, recently failed a mathematics test not because he didn’t study, but because the textbook he used was filled with incorrect, scribbled answers from an older brother. “We didn’t realize until the damage was done,” said Mrs. Musa. “Now we have to spend money we don’t have to get new textbooks.”

It’s not just an inconvenience it’s criminal negligence. When students are forced to rely on damaged or misleading learning materials, their right to quality education is fundamentally violated. Parents who struggle to provide for their children now face another burden: replacing textbooks that should have lasted for years. This practice must stop immediately. The Federal Ministry of Education cannot continue to overlook this creeping crisis. Urgent directives must be issued to all primary and secondary schools across the country: homework and assignments must never be executed inside textbooks. This should become a standing rule, enforced at every level. There should be nationwide awareness campaigns involving Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), school boards, local government education offices, and the media. Families must be educated on the long-term damage of using textbooks for assignments.

Students should be taught, from the earliest stages, that textbooks are reference materials not notebooks. To aid enforcement, schools should conduct textbook audits at the beginning and end of every term. Teachers should examine textbooks for signs of misuse and educate both students and parents on proper usage. Penalties for repeated violations must be considered not to punish, but to drive home the seriousness of the issue. Furthermore, the Ministry must consider subsidizing the production and distribution of standardized exercise books, which can be used for classwork and homework. If students have ample writing materials, the temptation to write in textbooks diminishes. Publishers also have a role to play. Textbooks could come with detachable worksheets or companion workbooks, separating practice materials from the core text.

Digital textbook solutions—where affordable should be encouraged in urban areas, to allow more families access to reusable content. But technology is not a silver bullet. In rural communities, the solution must still center on preserving the lifespan of print textbooks. Ministries of education at the state level must integrate textbook maintenance into their basic education policies, alongside infrastructure, teacher training, and curriculum development. This issue speaks to something bigger than books. It exposes how fragile the support systems around education have become. If Nigeria is to meet its targets for literacy, school enrollment, and youth development, it must address not only the big problems but also these smaller, dangerous oversights that quietly poison the learning process.There is no time to waste. Every term that passes sees more textbooks ruined, more students misled, and more families drained financially. The impact is cumulative, and irreversible in many cases.

Textbooks are an essential part of the learning ecosystem. When they are misused, the entire structure begins to crack. What we’re witnessing is not just careless behavior, but a systemic failure to protect educational tools. Let us be clear: a child should never be punished academically because their sibling did math homework on the same page two years earlier. That is not just unjust—it’s unacceptable. Nigeria’s promise to provide quality education for all must include a guarantee that learning materials are used properly, preserved, and accessible to every student, regardless of birth order or economic background.It is time for a national textbook integrity policy a written commitment to stop this damaging habit and restore dignity to our learning environments. Let this policy be loud, binding, and immediate.Parents must be reminded of their responsibility to provide exercise books. Schools must be empowered to enforce textbook rules. State and federal governments must invest in campaigns, materials, and monitoring systems.

If we wait longer, more children will lose their educational footing—not because they didn’t try, but because the tools they were given were already broken. The handwriting is on the wall literally. It’s time to stop writing in the books and start writing the future we want for Nigerian education.

By: King Onunwor

Opinion

Humanity and Sun Worship

Published

2 weeks ago

September 8, 2025

The Tide

Quote:”In this, the solar messiah lives on—not confined to any one culture or doctrine, but as a timeless symbol of humanity’s deepest longing for light, life, and liberation”.

From when man became conscious of his environment and began to gaze into the velvety night skies for answers to the mystery and bewilderment of his existence, his imaginative sensibilities took his thoughts in every conceivable and inconceivable direction. His observations of the visible cosmos informed speculations and conjectures that birthed beliefs. Naturally, this differed from community to community and reflected the peculiarities of peoples across the ethnocultural mosaic of humanity. Obviously, the most visible sky body that impacted and still impacts man’s everyday life is the sun. Stealthily, it sneaks up from the eastern horizon without a sound and chases away the dread of cold and darkness of the night, warms the body and provides illumination for man’s daily survivalist activities until darkness sets in and swallows it at the west end of the horizon. With time, man realised the positive effect of the sun on animals and crops, man’s source of sustainability. Thus commenced the belief in the sun as the giver and sustainer of life, hence sun worship across the world. What a benevolent mysterious entity in the clouds! What a worshipful entity! Beliefs are imbibed through acculturation and insipid indoctrination handed down from antiquity through customs, tradition, folkways and more. Generally, beliefs are accepted as given, without question; so, they are based on delusions and illusions. Confronted with facts, beliefs are either discarded or morphed into knowledge inforrmed by education, empiricism and science; most beliefs yield to new knowledge just as theories respond when confronted by facts in the Hegelian tradition. . For instance, it was believed that planet earth is flat until Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) committed what was considered “heresy” by contending that it is spherical. On the orders of the Holy See, Galileo was tied to the stake until he recanted.

Eventually, science proved otherwise, thereby jettisoning the old belief and vindicating Galileo. Today, the spherical essence of the earth is elementary Geography. Hosea says that “my people suffer because of lack of knowledge”. Also, man is admonished to “ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. These two Biblical injunctions categorically nudge man towards Gnosticism, which is, succinctly stated, knowledge. It therefore behoves humanity to consistently and persistently seek knowledge towards improving the human condition, and attaining atonement (at-one-ment) with God (whoever or whatever He, She, They or It is). A study of major world religions shows that from Horus of Egyptian mythology to Jesus of Christian theology, there were numerous messianic figures whose epic share instructive commonalities with that of Jesus; incidentally, these figures preexisted Jesus with the minimum of five centuries. A chronology of these religious figures is as follows: Horus (Egypt, 3000BC), Attis (Greek, 1200BC), Mithra (Persia, 1200BC), Krishna (India, 900BC) and Dionysus, (Greek, 500BC). The commonalities in the epics are that they were (1) of mysterious birth (born of virgin), (2) born on December 25, (3) visited at birth by three star-guided wisemen/kings, (4) survived infanticide, (5) child prodigy at twelve, (6) had twelve followers, (7) known by the same gestural names such as “Lord of Lords”, “Prince of Peace”, “Savior” etc., (8) performed wondrous works, and ((9) killed, buried and resurrected on the third day. Specifically speaking, an incisive look at the above phenomenon shows that the epic of Jesus is a replica of Horus who was baptised by Anup the Baptizer (John the Baptist?) at the age of thirty years, raised El-Azur-us (Lazarus?) and had the same sobriquets: “The way, the truth, the light”, “the Messiah”, “God’s anointed son”, “Son of Man”, “the good shepherd”, “lamb of God”, “the Word”, “the morning star” and “the light of the world”.

Reacting to the uncanny commonalities in the multiplicity of theological posturing across religions, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) opined that “the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun”. Again, it is worrisome that the disciples of Jesus and virtually all biblical characters bear English names rather than Jewish or Palestinian names. Given this and the fact that they do not bear Roman names since Palestine was under Roman imperialism at the time, is telltale of strong English influence in the Christian scripture; this view is furthered by the fact that Shakespeare is carefully and craftily obfuscated in Psalm. With the above, a thawed mind would certainly agree with Paine who, in rejecting the doctrines of institutional religion, averred that “my country is the world and to do good is my religion”. Obviously, the epic of these messianic figures is a reenactment of the same old astro-theological account of the sun’s annual journey on the equinox, the Winter Solstice. Undoubtedly, from Horus to Jesus, man has been neck deep in the practice of sun worship. The multiplicity of belief systems with broad philosophical diversities and sometimes contradictory and conflicting tenets impress the individual with discerning mind that humanity is groping in the dark with each religious group claiming to be the right way. Perhaps, this informed the averment of Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka thus: “I am not a Christian or Muslim; neither am I an Atheist. I am a humanist; I believe in Humanism”; this is an echo of Thomas Paine. B From the falcon-eyed Horus of ancient Egypt to the crucified and risen Christ of Christianity, the motif of the solar savior has echoed across civilizations as a profound symbol of renewal, hope, and cosmic order.

Each figure—whether Mithras emerging from the rock, Dionysus reborn from death, Krishna revealing divine light, or Zoroaster proclaiming truth against darkness—embodies a facet of the sun’s eternal cycle: birth, death, and resurrection. These stories are not merely religious doctrines but reflections of a deeper mythological and psychological archetype rooted in the human experience of nature, time, and the search for meaning. The sun, in its rising and setting, becomes a metaphor for life’s cyclical nature, and the messiah—a figure who overcomes death to bring light—becomes the vessel for humanity’s spiritual aspirations. While the names, cultures, and theologies may differ, the archetypal solar messiah remains constant: a divine figure who brings order out of chaos, light out of darkness, and life out of death. Recognizing these shared motifs does not diminish the unique identities of these traditions; rather, it reveals a universal spiritual grammar through which humans, across time and space, have sought to express the inexpressible.

The eternal return of the solar savior is not just a religious myth—it is a mirror of the enduring human hope that after every night comes dawn, after every fall comes rising, and after every death, a possibility of rebirth. In this, the solar messiah lives on—not confined to any one culture or doctrine, but as a timeless symbol of humanity’s deepest longing for light, life, and liberation. The spirituality of the Torah, Bhagavad Gita, the Holy Bible, the Noble Quran and literature of other religions is absolutely in no doubt; they are indubitably, Books of Life. However, man must study them with his intellect switched on in order to discard the numerous fairytales and authorial biases. This thawed state of mind enables the true seeker to burrow beneath the narratives and unearth the deep meanings that are obfuscated in allegories, parables, metaphors and other “dark sayings”.

Humanity should realise that regardless of geology and ideology, we share the same biology; therefore, we should jettison the mind control beliefs in vicarious remission of sins, the promise of multiple voluptuous virgins etc. and work towards the brotherhood of man. Imagine a world without the divisive and destructive doctrines of institutional religion; where there is nothing to kill or die for; a world where people do to others as they wish others do unto them; where humanity returns to pre-Babelian linguistic singularity or communicates by telepathy; a world that eschews greed and men look out for each others’ need; a world in which global cohesion is such that the races (Black, Red, Yellow, and White) coalesce into one colour and humanity becomes a race of tan. Utopian? It is realizable if only man embraces the consciousness of the Divine, devoid of the man-made doctrines of institutional religion. That would be the Biblical Land of Canaan and St. Augustine’s City of God, which is governed by King Solomon’s “the righteous” and Plato’s “philosopher king”.

By: Jason Osai