<![CDATA[GLOBAL PENTORCH - Blog]]>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:03:07 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[                                                      Syria's mangled and bruised body ]]>Sun, 04 Oct 2015 12:42:54 GMThttps://www.globalpentorch.net/blog/-syrias-mangled-and-bruised-bodyPicture
    If Syria were to be a human person, what would it be likened with the condition that it is going through? A mangled body or bruised body like that of Jesus Christ before crucifixion? Iraq went through the same experience, crucified and still waiting to resurrect and the same is applicable to Libya. If these countries aren't humans and they cannot the bruising f their bodies, the humans who are citizens of the country, the ordinary people who are caught in the cross fire and not those struggling for power and are the cause of the brushing, will feel the bruising.
    Hugo Chavez was missing in action at the last United Nations, UN, Assembly in New York, which just ended sitting. So also was Muamar Gaddaffi. The former Venezuela'n leader ranted his view about the United States, but he did not hide his regards for President Barack Obama as a saint.
   Chavez was unlucky to have been snapped away in the middle of the journey and uncertain about what would have become of him as a dictator, who have opposition,that had wanted him out like Bashir Assad. 
   Gadaffi's Libya is still struggling. The world missed Gaddaffi, missed his female security guards and missed his tent. The world knew that Gadaffi did not own up to some of the sins,which his adversaries said he committed, but unlike Cain who after he killed Abel, the Lord said no one should take vengeance against, but made him to go about with the signs of a murderer, which the Lord had put upon him.
    Gaddafi's enemies went after him like they did to Saddam Hussein. And the same way they are after Assad. The world saw Gadaffi, once the leader of his people, scurried under the  culvert on a street, after running away from his car, seeking a cover from his enemies' fire power. When he felt that underneath the culvert was no longer safe and that the culvert did not give him enough cover, he ran out like a tired rat, seeking for safety after which the fire from a gun by his own country man caught him down. 
   Since Gadaffi's passage, the trouble in Libya had not seized, just like Iraq. Syria is the third in line of the three countries, whose leaders' failure to provide for their own people and allowed their people freedom that decent humans are entitled have led to unavoidable loss and loss and loss of human lives.
     Shavez died with his opinion about America unchanged. Though Shavez's opinion did not really make America what he said he believed. Just like many other people, Shavez may have regarded President Obama highly for his anti war stance, and Obama's promise to Americans and the world to steer America away from wars. It was why most Americans voted for Obama. 
   Though Obama does not like taking America into war single-handedly without the commitment of the allies, yet he too and his allies have their hands bloodied in efforts to change the leadership in countries they perceived as better under a certain form of control and a help to the people under the tyranny of their leaders. 
   And there has always been Vladimir Putin of Russia in the opposite direction to America and her allies. If America and her allies go West, Putin will take his country towards the East. The world saw it happened in Libya, though Putin's power did not stop the allies, but Putin's signature of argument of the allies leaving chaos behind their engagement sticks. 
    The world has witnessed same happening in Iraq and Syria, another country where such engagement has lead to chaos, and the real children of satan -the Islamic state - have taken advantage of the chaos  to cause more bloodied chaos. This underscored the recent arguments between Obama and Putin at the United Nations' meeting in New York.
    Putin's Russia and Obama's America have followed their arguments with bombings in Syria, each claiming it is the Islamic State locations they have bombed. America's Secretary of State,                      Said that Russia's bombing is welcomed if the bombing truly targeted the Islamic State and not that he had systematically taken out Assad's enemies.
    There are the Assad's enemies; there are Islamic State components and there are the Western allies and there is Russia, on the ground doing battle in Syria. All of these have made Syria a battleground over Assad's leadership, some are against him and others in support of him. Yet, Assad is still in power, despite the mass opposition. Many innocent Syrians who know nothing about the stupid politics and the power struggle between Assad and his adversaries have lost their lives. Living in Syria has become equivalent to living with death. 
   America and allies are hellbent on removing Assad, and Putin is hellbent on seeing that Assad is not humiliated out of office. Now, the real problem in Syria is that it is not clear who has to be removed first: Assad or the Islamic State? The allies' pursuit in Syria has transcended Assad and it now includes the ISIS. America and allies want Assad out and at same item want ISIS too out. It has become a case of pursuing two rats. 
   President Obama said that the mistake the allies was arming Assad's enemies to go after the ISIS and to overthrow Assad, with reference to America 's position. Ha,ha,ha,ha. Does it mean that if the allied forces sees Assad, they would not do him any harm? Yet, they are not after Assad, but after the ISIS, but they want Assad in power anyway. People are asking why Assad cent play the politics of love for his country?
     By the politics of love,they mean that Assad can resign from office, put a surrogate there and asks the allied forces to go back home. Hadn't Fidel Castro put a Fidel there and retired into peace? 


   
]]><![CDATA[Avoiding Debates and in Journalism?]]>Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:03:20 GMThttps://www.globalpentorch.net/blog/afraid-of-debating-and-in-journalismPicture(Courtesy:ajmacdodonaldjr.wordpress)
                     By Abiodun Giwa

I have just resumed classes in a school of Theology. I picked a newspaper of the day for reading. I read a report in which one famed journalist was accused of knowledge of the death of another famed journalst killed with a letter bomb. The famed journalist accused of knowledge of the killing and the journalist killed were bosom friends. The journalist killed was the alter-ego of the journalist accused of his friend's death. It was unbelievable that he could be so accused, and the reporter who wrote the story reported that my mother who also was the mother of the slained journalist was his source. I doubted the report. 
  In the first place, every sensible observer  of events surrounding the journalist's assassination had said it was only a government or a wealthy fellow who could muster the means to acquire a bomb to kill another. The journalist accused in the report wasn't rich and couldn't have been capable of paying for a bomb. My mother was said to have been interviewed for the story. I decided to verify the authenticity of the interview. At the time I was almost like the media liason officer for my family. I disbelieved that a formal interview of my mother was possible without my knowledge. I called my elder brother and younger sister, both whom I knew could have known of such an interview if I wasn't.They both denied knowledge of the interview. I decided to do a rejoinder to disclaim what I believed my mother didn't say, after I asked her and she told me she didn't grant any interview.
  I wrote my rejoinder and took to the magazine's office that published the story. It was a highly respected magazine and I wondered how the editors could have fallen so low in their decision to use my mother as a cannon fodder in their war against their former employers, prior to starting their own publication. Aside from their cantakerous relationship with their former employers, I being almost a media officer in the family and whom the man accused in the gutter report had said was responsible for any publication against their interest, it was imperative I made the world know that I wouldn't under any circumstance make up unverifiable story, accusing another person of murder.
  I arrived at the magazine's office. I met the editor-in-chief in the reception area. We greeted and he asked if he could help me. I told him I wanted to go upstairs to submit a repoinder to a report I found questionable. He asked for the rejoinder. And I gave it to him. He browsed through and shreded the paper. "What have you done?" I asked. I told him he had torn whatever respect I had for him as a journalist. He came after me with words. And I charged toward him with words. The next action from him was to order the security guys in the reception to bundle me out of the premises; and they did, forcing me into the rain and I was soaked. My jacked became like a heavy bag of beans on my body.
  I resolved to take my case to the other magazine's house, where the editor-in-chief whom I believed had been wrongly accused, worked. I aroused the attention of all who saw entered the building. I was taken before the editors. I explained to them what happened to me. I thought my experinece could be a source of news to them. They expressed consternation on the treatment visited on me. However, they had a reservation; they would not engage the editor who had maltreated me in a debate that will bring them inot a controversy with the editor.
   According to them, the editor who maltreated me and his subordinates had sought ways to bring them to disrepute  and wanted a controversy, which they had avoided like a leper. I walked out of the building with a question about how people could claim to be in journalism and avoiding debates and controversies? Are debates and controversies not ingredients of journalism? Can one categorize debates and controversies and choose the ones to be engaged? Yes. But is an editor's refusal a rejoinder and subjecting the dissenter to jungle justice not worthy of another editor's  question and investigation?
]]><![CDATA[Nigeria's Newswatch and Death]]>Wed, 05 Dec 2012 06:15:01 GMThttps://www.globalpentorch.net/blog/nigerias-newswatch-and-deathPicture
Dele Giwa

  The magazine had died with Dele. Its burial was only a matter of time. Its case was like Nigeria's case that Dele wrote about in Death of Innocence,"those who were supposed to help save it were those pillaging it." 
   Dele's partners on the magazine either had abandoned the true spirit of partnership or the spirit had abandoned them, following Dele's assassiantion and the poltics of self interest had set in. 
    It informed their position of supporting Dele's wife against the family soon after Dele's assassination than making the woman see the truth that she needed to cooperate with the family to enable the family protect Dele's interests, as the lawyers said that Dele died intestate. In supporting her, they were playing a game of fending off the family, before they will eventually toss her away, and for Dele's interest in the company to be moribund. 
   The division between the family and Dele's wife known to Ekpu, served Dele's partners Machiavellian plans. I called Dan Agbese's attention to the danger of Ekpu's position of blind support for Dele's wife. He acknowledged my act of truthfulness, and promised to call Ekpu back.
    Ekpu worked to fend off Dele's siblings, while Yemi Ogunbiyi was collecting money from where he only could tell the public, to tear the family apart and to effectively give Dele's wife the final say. One of such money was a $10,000.00 Ogunbiyi brought to the United States, opened $5000.00 account each for Dele's two children, sat their mother down and implored her to withdraw a letter she had written to a lawyer in Nigeria asking me to protect her own and children's interest on Dele's estate. Ekpu wasn''t unaware of Yemi's plan to visit the U.S for his plans. Yemi visited the Newswatch, talked  and showed off about his intention.
  Dele's childrens' mother in the U.S withdrew the letter she had sent to a lawyer for me to represent her and children's interest on Dele's estate. It led to my final withdrawal from overseeing the esate's management as a member of the family. I sent a letter to all members of the family intimating them of my decision, and that Billy- Dele's first son-being of age could join his father's wife in the management of his father's estate. I told my immediate elder brother that withdrawing was the best option opened to me, since Dele's children's mother in the US had withdrawn her letter of attorney.
    But he said he could not withdraw because he was a member of the management committee along with Dele's wife. At this point he couldn't see that he had become a rubber stamp member. His persona-non-grata's position came to light when the Newswatch invited Dele's wife and Billy to a meeting over Dele's interest in the company,  excluding him. 
   At the meeting the Newswatch partners of Dele held with Dele's wife and Billy, they were told that Dele's share in the company was represented by his professional contribution while alive. And since he was no longer alive to give his professional contribution, the wife and first son would have to look for money to cover the 15% that was Dele's share in the company. The meeting ended with the woman and her former supporters throwing unprintable words at each other. And that was about 24 years ago. 
   The same scenario is repeating itself in 2012 between Jimoh Ibrahim, the business man Dele's partners sold the company. Ibrahim paid each of them more than N50m and they all resigned their position in the company with Ibrahim having controlling shares. Ibrahim then asked a court to ban them from interfering with affairs of the company, unless they can pay enough money to cover their own shares. 
  The matter is currently in court in Nigeria, to be called again on Dec. 7, 2012. Meanwhile, Ibrahim had closed the company down. According to him, to enable a surgery for the revival and re-vitalization of the company. 
  I am watching.
   
 
]]><![CDATA[One Week of Sandy's Hell]]>Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:28:25 GMThttps://www.globalpentorch.net/blog/one-week-of-sandys-hellPicture
Sandy's evil eye prior to its landfall (Courtesy: Fox News)
   
  Dateline: New York          By Abiodun Giwa
    A week of journey to nowhere was what Hurricane Sandy brought residents in the   East Coast of the U.S. early November 2012. The first day of trouble was a Sunday. In the afternoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a Press conference announced the closing of three main tunnels in the city, closing of the subway, buses off the street, to be followed by closure of the bridges if the wind should increase to 60 miles per miles per hour. Those who left their home to work that Sunday began to think why they embarked on the venture. How would they get back home after work in the night?

   Most people who worked the afternoon shift finished work between 10.00pm -11.00pm.There was no wind and rain to signal the coming of trouble at the end of the shift. The trouble was about getting home. Some rode and paid for their cabs. Others were more fortunate with their employers paying for their cab ride home. Some on essential services had options to either sleep at work to continue the following morning or get a ride home and wait until they are needed for the employer to send a car to pick them up.

   I was home Sunday night after I arrived from work and through Monday night to Tuesday morning. School had closed. Hurricane Sandy’s noise in the wind became more audible than the Sunday night. I watched developments on the television. I was fortunate I lived in an area where I rarely had negative effect to electricity supply along with other essential services.  I didn’t open my door and windows throughout Monday, day and night. Watching the devastation wrought by Sandy on the television screen, I knew that going to work on Tuesday will be a burden. 

   I went to bed on Monday night after I witnessed Sandy’s terrific landfall. I was full of prayers for residents in coastal areas and others whose houses had been damaged by the evil wind. But the thought of how I would make it to work on Tuesday afternoon was uppermost in my mind. I thought of the disaster of missing a day of work and pay, and the negative impact it will have on my finances. I called my office as soon as I woke from sleep early Tuesday. I was asked if I was interested in coming to work. I answered in the positive. The respondent said it was alright if I could find my way, and if I couldn’t it was as well alright.

   I began to think of how I was going to find my way to work. I went to the bathroom early with the aim of getting out early to walk the distance I can walk to get to work. Between the time I was in the bathroom and got back to check my phone, my boss had called. I immediately placed a return call. “Where have you been, Giwa? Always be by your phone when there is an emergency. Do you want to come to work?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “Alright, a car will be coming to pick you up. Just stay close to your phone.” he admonished.

   It was a promise fulfilled. I found myself at work. But returning became a problem on the first most difficult night of commute in the three difficult days of leaving home to go to work and uncertain of how to make it back home. On this Tuesday night a colleague who had his van dropped me off at the tip of Manhattan’s end of the Brooklyn-bridge, and waited for me to get a cab before he drove off.  I paid $20.00 for a ride home. I don’t go to work on Wednesdays. I waited till Thursday night when partial train services had been restored to Brooklyn end of the bridge from my area of residence, and shuttle buses available for a ride into the city. 

   I took a shuttle bus from Barclays Center and dropped off at Delancey and Bowery on the East side. My destination was on the West side. I flagged a cab to avoid arriving work late. It costs $10.00.  I visualized that most part of downtown Manhattan was in darkness. The following morning on a Friday, I left work and wasn’t sure where I was going. I stepped out and headed toward a Chase bank nearby to check my balance and get some money. The service at the bank was off due to lack of electricity. I walked another four blocks close to the city hall to another branch of the bank, it too had no service.  

    Alternatively, I checked on the R train station, the train wasn’t working. I flagged down a cab, rode across the bridge and paid $10.00 to Jay Street. I cut short the cost by choosing to get off at Jay Street, instead of the Atlantic Train Station I had bargained with the operator.  I dashed into the subway at Borough Hall for a ride to my destination.

    Coming back to work on Friday night, I went for a shuttle bus at Jay Street, instead of Barclays Center, having been told the earlier night that the shuttle buses at Barclays Center traveled only through the East side, and for  West side I needed a bus from Jay street. The direction was a fluke. I took a bus from Jay Street, but the bus went East side like the night before. Rather than taking a cab, I walk the street to my destination .The entire downtown, after crossing the Broadway and Spring Street to West Street, was in darkness. It was dreadful. It was a type of darkness worse than the type I had witnessed in backward African villages, where they had numerous flickers of light from oil lamps. Such flickers were absent here. 

   I didn’t plan to walk thirty minutes to work a week before that night. It was a situation forced on me by circumstance beyond my control. I was luckier than those who lost electricity for days and had to live a life in the centuries past, for days. Luckier than those who lost jobs or homes, and some others who unfortunately either lost their lives or relatives. It was one week of hell that people here in the Tri-State  were forced into circumstances, which people in disadvantaged countries experience on daily basis as a normal lifestyle.

  



]]><![CDATA[19 October 1986, an Unforgettable Day in My Life]]>Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:04:43 GMThttps://www.globalpentorch.net/blog/19-october-1986-an-unforgettable-day-of-my-lifePicture
DELE GIWA (Courtesy: Babajide Giwa, Nigeria)
             By Abiodun Giwa
 
  He was loved by all who knew him. He loved humanity and was full of life. As a consummate journalist and writer, he sacrificed his comfort and held governments accountable. 
   Some Nigerians thought it was why he was assassinated in cold blood on the day that I would never forget, the day my life came to a temporary halt, when a bomb was delivered to him in the house.
  Investigation into his death has been handled the same way issues are treated in Nigeria, pursuing the shadow, leaving reality in the cloud, and matters unresolved. 
   One major achievement in the sand of time in his professional life, apart from being a fine writer and fearless reporter was that he rallied his colleagues and made MKO Abiola, the publisher dropped out of politics, enhanced their professional credence and the newspapers' position in the market. Ironically, some of these colleagues later conspired against him, told Abiola a tale he hated about the finest journalist in his employment, but which he wanted to hear set a barrier between him and the publisher. After Dele's assassination, the publisher stepped back into politics, the vomit he had abandoned with Dele's advise,vied for the presidency and won. But the military guys disallowed him from assuming power for a reason they didn't disclose. He fought for the power, and was resultantly consumed.
The Bomb
  Back to my unforgettable day that my brother was given a letter bomb. The envelope the bomb was concealed reportedly had the country's Coats of Arms, and the name of the military president of Nigeria as the sender. It was saying that the government of Nigeria, with the approval of the military president masterminded the assassination. I couldn't believe that Nigeria had arrived at a juncture when a government would kill its own citizen who had committed no crime and boldly declare it was responsible. It had never damned on me that it was possible for a government to have done what not only damaged its image, but gave the head of state away as a murderer. I couldn't believe it and watched as a spectator, investigations that led nowhere.
  I knew my brother's trouble began with the publisher who kicked him from the editorship of his Sunday paper,  because he said my brother took his girlfriend. The ugly matter between Dele and Abiola was worsened by tale bearers in the persons of Duro Onabule, Frank Shyngle and Sina Adedipe, whose evil messages to the publisher against my brother  in connection with the woman completely made the publisher my brother's lifetime sworn enemy. My brother and the woman got married irrespective of the publisher's claim on her; abandoned the publisher and his paper and began (along with three other professional colleagues) a magazine called NEWSWATCH. 
   My brother was assassinated less than two years after he left the Concord Press, without reconciliation between him and Abiola. 
    Halilu Akilu head of Directorate of Military Intelligence invited Dele for questioning over allegations that he planned to ferment a socialist revolution, that he was involved in gun running and wanted to employ Alex Ogugbuaja-who had problem with his employers. Dele denied the first two allegations, and said that whoever gave government such information against him wanted him dead. His reaction was informed by the fact that a senior military officer in the State Security Service, SSS, had called his house at night a week before the time, and told him that someone had given deadly information against him to the government, and he should move to render them harmless. 
  A week after the senior officer called his house and gave him the information that someone had given the government a deadly information against him, Dele received an invitation for interrogation from the Directorate of Military Intelligence; upon which he visited the head of the DMI's office accompanied by RayEkpu, his deputy. There was an altercation between Dele and Akilu, over Dele's exhibition of sense of outrage about the deadly allegations made against him. There were interactions between DMI and Dele's house by Akilu, who said he wanted to tell Dele the matter of the allegations against him had been closed. The following weekend a bomb was delivered to Dele's house that claimed his life.   
  What Nigeria investigators weren't told was who gave government the evil information against DELE. Ray Ekpu, Dele's deputy who Dele called the night the officer gave him the information didn't mention it in any of his statements in the press. Like other deluge number of journalists in Abiola's employment at the time Abiola kicked Dele over the woman's affair, Ekpu also didn't mention there was any problem between Abiola and Dele. If Ekpu didn't mention this, how could one have expected Doyin Abiola who was editor-in-chief of Concord Press, and other journalists who worked under her to speak out?  
  BEFORE THE TROUBLE
  Eight months before his assassination, before he got an invitation from the Military Intelligence, I had sent him a letter (co-signed with my immediate elder brother), intimated him about developments around his home and the need for him to be vigilant, to avoid becoming a victim of untimely death, as such would be too disastrous for our mother, his children, and (us) his siblings. He investigated the ssues in the letter, and found his wife an arrowhead and interrogated her. He told me in his office in what became our last intimate discussion that if he should end the marriage, people would say he was incapable of managing a home.
  The fact that I sent him the letter with someone in the family he questioned having the knowledge about my warnngs to him before the assassination marked the beginning of my own trouble.
   Gani Fawehinmi, a lawyer Dele had visited, whom he told about his trouble on his way back from DMI the day he was interrogated by Akilu over the deadly allegations against him wasn't without the knowledge of the crisis in the family, and my experience after the assassination. Although the chamber had invited the family to assist in the setting up of an estate without fees,I brought the issues in the family to the lawyers attention. Fawehinmi objected to what he described as cold relationship between Dele's mother and his wife. He decided to intervene, but Dele's wife worked against the lawyer's intention. The lawyer asked why she failed to show up for a meeting they both agreed uopn with Dele's mother, she kept mum. The lawyer nonetheless moved ahead with management of Dele's estate. Along the line Dele's wife  accused the chamber of supporting a wish to have me represent the family for protection of Dele's interest in the Newswatch. The chamber resultatly pulled out of the estate management to maintain its neutrality.
 One major reason I raised the issue in the family before the lawyers in the chamber was to bring Fawehinmi's attention to a need that as much as he was investigating the military based on its interrogation of Dele, the deadly allegations brought against him, the DMI contacts with Dele's home and Dele's request for the lawyer to save his life before the assassination, there was  also a need to investigate the family and Dele's private life before his problem with the military. But only the lawyer's chamber could explain why Fawehinmi (now deceased) chose the military and the former head of state, Ibrahim Babangida, as his only target in the investigations. The result what seemed like Babangida's blockade of investigations targeted against him and his government. The public wasn't  áware that Babangida's best friend in the person of Abiola also had a tango with Dele that needed investigation upon Dele's assassiantion.


 
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