Philip Igawe

Husband, Son, Father, Catholic, Nigerian, Field Epidemiologist, Public Health, Global Health Security, One Health, MUFC. (Our privileges blind us.... T.O.)

[Philip Igawe @Twitbobu]

Dear Lord I tried my best today, but if I lose hope (or lose my way), please remind me that your plans for me are better than my dreams.(Plagiarised shamelessly)

[PATRIOTIC SOJA ($TSIR-MUNCHAN) @Pressman2040]

Brother, you just unlocked another memory I had buried under years of "Yes sir" and "No excuse sir." 😂

Let me tell you my own. While on training, Col MD Danja now Gen Danja was our recruit commander. We were weeks past our Drill Square Test, marching to Weapon Handling class, feeling like we had finally arrived. Chest out. Legs straight. We thought we were soldiers.

Then we heard his voice.

"Who told you you can match instead of doubling? You guys are becoming lousy. You mean you cannot double?"

Before we could process the question, the order came. Run to the ATM stand opposite Alpha Training Company. Raise your weapon on your head. And start frog jumps all the way to Weapon Handling class.

And the cruelest part? He didn't hand us over to any instructor. He supervised it himself. No escape route. No shortcuts. Just pure, undiluted "attention to detail."

Then the squad behind us saw what was happening. You know that sound. "By the front, short step, jogging begins!" Suddenly, the whole column was in motion. It was chaos. Beautiful, painful, unforgettable chaos.

So yes you run. From point A to point B. From the beginning of training. Through every drill. Past every test. Until your passing out parade day. And then, if you're lucky enough to serve, you keep running for the rest of your career.

From your first day of military training till your last day in service, one thing remains constant: RUNNING. RUNNING. RUNNING.

It is a must. It is a way of life. 🪖🏃‍♂️

But here is the lesson I carried from that day as a soldier:

That man wasn't punishing us. He was teaching us. In the military, there is no "arriving." There is no "I have made it." The moment you think you are done, that is when you become lousy. The standard never stops demanding more from you. Not on the drill square. Not in the bush. Not in the barracks. Not in life.

And this is why I respect every uniform that has survived such training. Because I know what it takes. I know the drills, the shouting, the frog jumps, the "double" that turns into a sprint. I know the nights with two hours of sleep. I know the pain.

So when I see a policeman, an NSCDC officer, a customs officer, a correctional officer I don't see a rival. I see someone who, in their own way, has also run. Maybe not my exact drills, but their own version. Their own journey. Their own scars.

Different institutions. Different training. Same Nigeria.

To Gen Danja thank you, sir. You made us who we are today. And to every uniformed personnel who woke up this morning and ran before the sun came up: I see you. Keep running.

DIFFERENT UNIFORMS. ONE NIGERIA. ONE PURPOSE. 🇳🇬

[Senior Pst Okezie James Atañi. @Onsogbu]

Nigerian Soldiers coming back from a mission recieved applause and a standing ovation from Nigerians inside the airport, thanking them for their service

This is beautiful

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Angélique Kidjo makes history for Africa with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame https://t.co/0AtIcvxUeQ

[E! News @enews]

Angélique Kidjo has officially made history as the first African artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[Thefootballslayer @FootballSlayer_]

"Hello, My name is Unai Simon, Spain's goalkeeper. Nice to meet you guys, I don't think you saw me, I was on the pitch too."😂😂

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Michelle and I had fun surprising the first group of visitors to the Obama Presidential Center on Juneteenth. Come check it out!

[Zlatan Ibrahimović @Ibra_official]

The studio will never forget

[Iran Embassy in Zimbabwe @IRANinZIMBABWE]

Not sure anyone read all of it yet. Does it have anything to do with us?

[Typical African @Joe__Bassey]

Moment: Joshua Maponga explains the absurdity of the Berlin Conference, explaining why we need to tear down these physical and mental colonial borders.

[PATRIOTIC SOJA ($TSIR-MUNCHAN) @Pressman2040]

🇳🇬🪖❤️Don't expect me to hate Nigeria because you hate Nigeria. Hate is not a communicable disease. Suffer your disease alone.

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

MIND-BLOWING: THE 10 TOP REAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF TRUMP AND HEGSETH IN IRAN

1. The Strait of Hormuz was open
- Now it’s blocked by two militaries

2. Iran had no nukes
- Now every nation knows it needs nukes

3. Iranians were divided, with some favoring and some opposing the US and Israel
- Now Iranians are united against the US and Israel

4. US military bases had pretended to be assets
- Now they’ve been exposed as liabilities

5. Murdering an entire govt was considered a very bad thing
- Now it’s fine, the US set a precedent for everyone

6. The Gulf states pretended to be loyal to the global family of Islam, not US/Israel
- Now everyone knows the opposite is true

7. The “allies” thought the US valued them
- Now they know the US is destroying them

8. US citizens used to spend nothing on Iran
- Now they’re bleeding US$30 billion on that country

9. Peace negotiations used to be sacrosanct
- Now we know the US says its okay to kill negotiators

10. The world suspected the US was a murderous rogue regime
-
Now
we
know
it’s
true.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

This is embarrassing, Delete it, President ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ - unless you want everyone to think you’ve lost your marbles.

[Senator Shehu Sani @ShehuSani]

I have seen the footage of the protest against Nigerians in South Africa.I have heard the bad things they say about our people and our https://t.co/r3OplCJOha can’t blame them.They love their country with all its flaws.Whatever they are saying about us are negative things they first heard from us.When Trump called you a disgraced country,you applauded him.When Trump insulted their country,they rejected the insult and defended their country.Who on Earth would like to host a people who agreed that they are a disgraced people?

[JJ. Omojuwa @Omojuwa]

Minister Yusuf Tuggar will resign his appointment today to contest the Bauchi gubernatorial position. A number of ministers in the same position have been developing cold feet, he is going for it.

- He worked without ambassadors for the 2.5 years he was minister. Found away around it. Strengthened a number of bilateral relationships despite that.

- Helped to articulate Nigeria’s foreign policy. The 4Ds Agenda.

- Regional Partnership for Democracy re-established Nigeria’s convening power.

- The Ministry was quite responsive at moving Nigerians out of conflict zones. Solid alignment with NIDCOM here.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Charles Adegbite Beecroft🇳🇬🇳🇬❤️ @cabeecroft23]

Has it occurred to you that maybe these guys took a cue from you as regards the way you behave? On the norms, they are all usually decent and exhibit a high level of decorum. Rarely will you see them be unnecessarily rude and petulant. So they believe, since they do it to them, let me take the liberty of existing "protocol " from Nigeria circus media show.

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

How is this real life?

[OgbeniWale @Horlawey]

5 years of resilience in NE Nigeria → finally saying goodbye. Not easy, but necessary.
Here's to peace, progress, and places that feel like home again. Alhamdulillah for the journey y #LeavingNE #FreshStart

[Festus Keyamo, SAN, CON, FCIArb (UK) @fkeyamo]

It is amusing to see how some journalists and core opposition characters, posing as ‘activists’, continually express their own deep-seated biases as the wishes of ‘the Nigerian people’. How and where did they aggregate the views of ‘the Nigerian people’?

Perhaps, by ‘the Nigerian people’, they are referring to those usual suspects who gather at the entrance of the National Assembly and pose for cameras; or the 15 Senators who voted against the majority of 94 Senators; or the less that 25 Rep members who walked out on the majority of over 300 Rep members; or those vocal few who hop from one TV station to the next everyday; or those who gather under the comment section on social media and vent their spleen - just how did they aggregate the views of ‘the Nigerian people’?

Nigerians should be alert as we enter an election season. Some journalists and almost every so-called ‘neutral’ commentator or activist you see or hear in the media are all working for one interest or the other; they just don’t have the guts to come out with their full chest to openly support the political party or candidate for which or whom they are working.