A Story around Mama Dawes by Reuben Abati

Teachers are the most important persons in anyone's life. Teachers teach us everything that we know. They inspire us. They leave their imprints, almost like genetic imprints in our lives, and those imprints survive forever. They come in different shapes. The teachers in the classrooms, the ones we meet in our life-long journey of searching and probing. The ones who cross our paths and leave indelible marks.

       Even more importantly, the ones that do not carry dusters and chalks but whose lives redefine ours, changing us for better, for real. They write and we read their words and thoughts, or we even just hear about them and their works, and we are recruited as disciples for as long as we live. They could be formal teachers or village elders, raconteurs, musicians, dancers, grandmothers and grandfathers or writers and scientists, but they change us all the same, because the truth is that as we grow, we contend with a multiplicity of influences, and we get influenced, re-born, re-made.  

       All teachers inspire us with words, with methods, with what they say and what they do, and in the process, they help the world to forge ahead, they extend traditions and thoughts, and even if they never get the rewards that they deserve, they remain unforgettable all the same because teaching is one of the most divine of all professions. This then is a tribute to all teachers, all those illuminated souls who give, and nurture, so that others may grow. What has triggered these ruminations is the report of the death in the United Kingdom, this week, of Carol Dawes, a Jamaican-Nigerian mother, teacher, scholar and great influencer, at 84. Nigerian students of the dramatic arts in the 80s and 90s will remember Mama Dawes fondly, particularly her students and colleagues at the Universities of Port Harcourt, Ife and Calabar, and indeed everyone who was privileged to encounter her.

NDLEA arrests suspect with N75m worth of cocaine

The Cross River State Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has arrested a suspect, Kelechi Amaka, with 6.3kg of cocaine valued at N75m.

Amaka, an Imo State indegene based in Cameroon, was arrested at the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority Jetty in Calabar on her way from Cameroon.

Parading the suspect at the office of the NDLEA in Calabar, the state Commander of the agency, Mr. Kayode Adeniyi, said the drugs were concealed in six factory sealed ladies hand bags and kept in a leather box.

Immigration officers batter UNICAL lecturer

A lecturer in the Department of Business Management, University of Calabar, Mr. Okon Effiong Ekpenyong, has lost four teeth after he was allegedly brutalised by some officials of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Cross River State command, for traffic offence.

Ekpenyong, who narrated his ordeal to PUNCH Metro on Thursday, said his vehicle developed a minor fault on Bassey Oqua Street in Calabar, near the NIS headquarters. He said after fixing it, he was leaving the area when the officials accosted and assaulted him, saying he made a U-turn at an unauthorised point.

Mother clings to moving vehicle to rescue child

 A brave mother, Mrs Priscilla Ekpenyong, on Friday damned the consequences by clinging to a moving vehicle in order to rescue her nine-month-old child, Emmanuella, from the hands of fleeing abductors.

The abductors had  pushed the 23-year-old woman out of the moving vehicle, but she held on to her daughter and was dragged on the tarred road for some distance before the kidnapping was aborted by security operatives.

Abati shares good old picture

WayBackThen: Me & my pal Clement Gbemudu. Matriculation Day 1981, UNICAL. Notice Camera on my Hand. I've been Media since. Live your Dreams! Have a great weekend.

Reuben Abati & Clement Gbemudu

Bakassi belongs to Nigeria – Fresh facts reveal

LAGOS — Fresh  facts have emerged, showing that the disputed Bakassi peninsula which the International Court of Justice, ICJ, ceded to Cameroon, actually belongs to Nigeria.
Vanguard gathered that the jurists at ICJ might  have been misled by the legal teams of Cameroon and Nigeria, who did not show vital information that clearly placed Bakassi as a territory within the geographical, political and administrative jurisdiction and control of Nigeria, contrary to the October 10, 2002, verdict which awarded the sovereignty of the peninsula to Cameroon.


International relations experts, renowned historians, researchers and politicians told Vanguard in Lagos, last week, that contrary to the claims by the Cameroon and Nigerian legal teams that the first legal treaty on the Land and Maritime borders between Nigerian and Cameroon was the 1913 Anglo-German treaty, it was discovered that the limits of the Land and maritime boundaries between both countries went as far back as 1811 when the British made the treaty that went from the Lake Chad region down to the Atlantic ocean through the Rio Del Rey Estuary.