The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars

    As all roads lead to Ado-Ekiti this weekend for everybody  that ever had anything to do with our truly remarkable school- Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which we call The School: alumni, parents, spouses, family  and the lot, it is all glory to God that He inspired some of His anointed men to plant and water what has turned out to be a truly phenomenal institution molding men and women of intellect,  not only in Ekiti, its location and primary catchment area, but all over Nigeria. Today, hundreds of Christ’s-School products are professors in all areas of study; from the Humanities to Medicine, to the professions, even to Aerospace science and are spread all over the world doing what they know best to do – banishing ignorance and expanding the frontiers of knowledge just as thousands of its alumni, as medical doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc are providing various services to humanity both at home here in Nigeria and overseas. Amongst our alumni are two of the earliest winners of the Nigerian Merit award, just as The School has produced university Vice-Chancellors and state governors – military and civilian.   Or need I say that two of Nigeria’s most celebrated professors of Neurosurgery, the late Professor Kayode Osuntokun and Professor Adelola  Adeloye cut their teeth in The School? The Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi is, for instance, a distinguished alumnus of The School just like his deputy, Professor Dupe Adelabu and the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Ganiyu Owolabi. Such is the sheer profundity of Christ’s School that a whole page of this newspaper will be infinitely inadequate to tell its story.

    Our School is so unique that not a few has  accused us of acting like a cult because whenever or wherever we ex-students  meet, irrespective of age and when exactly you  attended The School, you immediately become like uterine brothers and sisters.

    This was precisely the objective of the founding fathers.

     Archdeacon Henry Dallimore who founded The School in 1933 was clear in his mind as to what sort of education he intended and what manner of character he wanted foster among the students from the very beginning. ‘The total impact of the education to be given,’ wrote Professor Olofinboba and co in THE BUILDER, ‘was to make the individual a useful person to himself and his community’. For this reason, initial subjects taught in The School included the following outside the normal academic subjects: Tailoring, Brick-making, Plastering, Building, Carpentry for boys and Weaving and Knitting for girls. Agriculture and Cattle keeping were added in 1945, thus by many decades before, Christ’s School was already doing what today’s 6-3-3-4 and all its other newer variants had been grappling with for decades. Above all, however, the founders wanted to nurture the ‘total man’, whose entire life will be rooted in and around Christ. To amply demonstrate this, everything about the school revolved around Christ: the name, the motto, Christus Victor, just as the first two letters of the word ‘Christ’ is inscribed in Greek.

    But if Apollo (Archdeacon Dallimore) planted The School, our Paul, who watered and nurtured it to world renown is the Rev Canon Leslie Donald Mason, C.B.E, O.O.N, M.A, Dip.Th, Dip Ed, whose children we all are since he never was married. To all Christ’s School students, Canon Mason was Principal, father, counsellor, benefactor, friend, teacher, all. He ensured you never dropped out of  The School for financial reasons. He indeed paid the fees of many a student.  He knew all the students by their first names and could identify thousands by their voices.

    For a very long time, he was our doctor and dispenser as he converted one of the rooms in his hilltop house to a dispensary. A strict disciplinarian, all the same, Canon Mason was a man of simple taste and life style and so was able to handsomely impart in the students respect, simplicity, humility, honesty, loving kindness and diligence. It should therefore not be a surprise that wherever you find an old student of Christ’s School, you are face to face with a complete gentleman/lady who is ever willing to lend a helping hand, whatever the circumstances.

    In appreciation of all that Canon Mason did for us at The School, a book: The Reverend Canon Leslie Donald Mason (1908-1989): THE BUILDER, was written in his honour by the alumni association under the lead of the late Professor M.O.Olofinboba.

    He was succeeded in 1967 by Chief R.A. Ogunlade, another truly remarkable man of God who also gave his all. Indeed, he made Biology easier for us than eating very ripe banana. He was such a gifted and exprienced teacher.  An old student of The School himself, Chief Ogunlade ensured there was not the slightest diminution of all the good standards Canon Mason with whom he had worked very well had laid down. One of his key achievements was the seemingly effortless manner in which he successfully achieved the tasking merger of the Ekiti Anglican Girls’ Secondary School which was founded in 1955 by the Anglican Church, with Christ’s School; a thoroughly daunting  assignment.

    Christ’s School had been founded in 1933 as Ekiti Central School, taking students into classes V and VI and took in students from within and outside Ekiti. It moved to its present AGIDIMO HILLS site in 1936 and it was there, on a visit by the Governor-General of Nigeria in that year, that he named The School, CHRIST’S SCHOOL.

    Christ’s School has, however, also had unsavoury stories to tell. For a very long time you would think it was taboo for an old student of The School to be appointed the Principal. It was even rumoured at that time teachers of some specific subjects, like Mathematics, were being deliberately denied the school. This time, therefore, coincided with that period when a series of individuals for whom our culture, history and practices meant nothing, or principals who were, in fact, jealous of its popularity were appointed as principals over it. This was mostly during the military era but there can be no denying the fact that some principals in the same period did their very best for The School. A good example of the latter is Chief R.F Fasoranti who gave impeccable service to The School that he is still fondly remembered till today.

    Christ’s School will always remain a pace setter and its products exemplars. In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars, chosen solely on performance at the entry point examination. Today, there is hardly a university of note without some of its professors being ex-students of The School. In Medicine in particular, where it must have close to a hundred professors, if not more, Christ’s School continues to make terrific impact even in the UK, and the U.S.A, just as it has produced men and women in the professions and in the Episcopacy, especially the Anglican Communion where it has produced many Bishops.

    The 80th Anniversary, which is a mammoth home-coming for ex-students from every nook and cranny of Nigeria and the Diaspora, kicked off to a wonderful Thanksgiving service in many churches locally, and abroad on Sunday, 23 June, 2013. In my church, at the Archbishop Vining Memorial Cathedral, Oba Akinjobi Road, Ikeja, Lagos where the Lagos branch had its own thanksgiving, it was a wonderful sight-seeing  the entire congregation, not only joining us to mellifluously sing The School song, CHRIST IS OUR CORNER STONE,  but for most, who must certainly be aware and appreciative of the huge impact Christ’s School has made and continues to make, to  actually join us at the altar for the blessings.

    Friday, 28 June, 2013 will equally be awesome as the one and only, Sir Christopher Kolade, himself an old student and former Nigerian Envoy at the Court of St James’, London, takes to the rostrum to give the anniversary lecture. Saturday will be unique as we spend the day with the students and the evening, is already billed as an evening of fun at the evergreen Quadrangle where I had last been in my final year which is exactly 50 years ago this year. On Sunday, we shall return again to church to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for all He has done for us individually and collectively and, very importantly, for The School.

    All these will then come to a befitting end with The School Prayer:

    Grant O Lord

    That Christ’s School may continue

    To be a Christian School

    Not in name only

    But in deed and in truth

    For the sake of Christ

    Whose name we bear

    Amen.

  • Okon upstages Seriake in Communication Theory

    Something new always comes out of Nigeria. With its endless assortment of political oddities and oddballs, Pliny the Second would have had a lot to say about contemporary Nigeria. Ever since Paul Dickson Seriake’s famous theory of “Dem say, dem say” journalism, snooper has been inundated by complaints from some South-south internet insurgents who accuse him of being slow to congratulate the Bayelsa governor for his landmark insights.

    With his formidable embonpoint, his burly and beefy frame and the bulging biceps, snooper fancies Seriake as a ferocious seriatim enforcer in the Praetorian Guard of some modern Ijaw emperor rather than as a Communication scholar, But we live in a world of scholarly surprises and it appears that the Yenagoa strongman has other fancies, Even Marshall Mcluhan, the famed Canadian Communication guru, would have applauded the insight and folksy wisdom of “Dem say dem say” journalism.

    But not so fast. In April 1989 at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, snooper partnered his friend, Stephen Ellis, formerly editor of the influential Africa Confidential and now professor African History at Leiden, Holland, to mount a seminar on Radio Trottoir or the use of pavement radio as a vehicle for rumour-mongering in Francophone Africa. It is not for nothing that the Yoruba call their old Rediffusion box, asoromagbesi, or he that talks without waiting for a reply.

    It was discovered that when people are denied access into the opaque treacheries of governance in Africa, they resort to rumour mongering. It is the invention of politics. Rumour is the integral lubricant of political abracadabra in Africa. In an interesting preface to a famous interview with General Ibrahim Babangida, the old Newswatch editors noted that apart from the coup attempts to oust him, the Minna born soldier had also survived “damaging rumours”

    But trust Okon who has no time for all this fancy stuff. According to the crazy boy, “Dem say dem say” journalism is an integral aspect of “Ngbati journalism” pioneered by the Yoruba people. When pressed further, it turned out that Okon had beaten up a Yoruba butcher at Agege market. When asked to narrate his ordeal, the man continued to sob “Ngbati, ngbati”. Okon then turned to the crowd. “You see, no be him say make I slap am well well, abi wetin be ngbati, ngbati?”.

    At the police station, the Ibo desk sergeant, after listening patiently to the “ngbati, ngbati” sobs of the butcher, promptly recorded it as a case of “when dem when dem assault.” Over to you, Dickson Seriake.

  • Babatunde Raji who?

    Babatunde Raji who?

    Seeth thou a man deligent in his work, he will stand before kings and not mean men.

    Seven years ago, only few Lagosians can claim to know Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola. Though an accomplished legal practitioner and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), serving as Chief of Staff to former Governor Bola Tinubu, the reaction of many to his nomination as the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria ( ACN) was Babatunde Raji who?

    I remember being at a media chat with some political chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria during which some journalists questioned the choice of an unknown Fashola over other known political bigwigs in the state. The leader of the group tried hard to convince them that Fashola was the best man for the job but not many were convinced.

    I was particularly swayed by a revelation by the chieftain about how Fashola had been very diligent in his duties and refused to abuse his privileged position. He cited how the power to sign Certificate of Occupancy on behalf of the Governor was vested in Fashola, yet he declined to sign those of anyone related to him on the grounds that he will be violating the principle of conflict of interest.

    Those who knew him as Chief of Staff recall how thorough he was in his assignment and how he refused to be swayed by unnecessary political considerations. Not many found it funny that Fashola always insisted on subjecting their requests to due diligence notwithstanding their political status.

    These were some of the virtues which ordinarily could be a minus in political circles but turned out to be a plus for the man who has not only sustained the good works started under the Tinubu’s administration but has justified the confidence in him.

    Perhaps a good lesson for political appointees is the fact that Fashola was busy doing his assignments instead of scheming for political positions after his boss’s exit. As he had always stated he had no political ambition since he was not a politician, but his outstanding qualities could not be ignored by Tinubu who risked being demystified if Fashola had not lived to expectations.

    Under Fashola, Lagos has remained a city of excellence and a barometer for good governance nationwide.  Infrastructural development has been massive and various policies of the government have improved the various sectors in the state.

    He has brought to government a high sense of duty and commitment that has earned him numerous commendations even from opposing political camps who have acknowledged that his performance has been outstanding given the limited resources available to him.

    As long as a policy is in the overall interest of the state, like the banning of commercial motorcycles, popularly known as Okada, Fashola has not shied from taking the necessary decision. It is to his credit that the once notorious Oshodi is now a passable route for all motorists at any time of the day unlike before when it was a den of all manners of criminals who held sway there.

    There are some parts of the state where the impact of his government still needs to be felt but that cannot detract from his accomplishments along with his commissioners and other government officials.

    In the fulfillment of his political slogan, Eko oni baje – Lagos will not deteriorate – Fashola has kept faith with Lagosians and things can only get better as he rounds up his second term in office. Such is the high rating for Fashola’s administration that political parties in the state cannot afford to present just any candidate for the next governorship election who cannot match his performance

    In commemoration of his 50th anniversary, I join others in wishing Fashola, a model of what a governor should be, a very happy birthday and more years of service to the nation.

  • The Mandela example

    The Mandela example

    Former South African President Nelson Mandela’s life has been one long drama. This last week the plot reached new heights of intensity on account of the twists and turns in his battle for life. One minute it he’s on the verge of passing, the next we get bulletins declaring he’s doing much better.

    The drama has transfixed not just his homeland but the entire world – drawing a media circus to the hospital in Pretoria where he remains a Very Important Patient.

    Such is the media interest in the story, and the jockeying for advantage to tell it better than the rival, that news outlets are pushing the boundaries as they seek to do their job. Already, a clash of perspectives has seen Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, denounce the foreign media hordes as vultures waiting to pounce on the buffalo’s carcass.

    Some others were more charitable – arguing that for the hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle whose sacrifices had the world in thrall, the media interest could not have been less. But whatever side of the divide you find yourself the common agreement is that Madiba is loved by his people.

    One wall of the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where he’s receiving treatment has been transformed into a ‘Wall of Tributes’ by the forest of flowers and messages left there by sympathisers and supporters.

    On account of what is playing out, South Africa – not noted for its embrace of religion – has suddenly discovered God in a big way. From Soweto to Pretoria prayers are being volleyed upstairs to the Almighty in the hope that He might yet dole out a few more years to the old man.

    There are not too many leaders on the face of the earth who can be spoken of in the same breath as Mandela. But that does not make him superhuman. He remains a mere mortal with typically human frailties. The difference is that he made certain choices and lived his life according principles that many merely pay lip service to.

    His sterling human and leadership qualities have brought him as close to sainthood as any living being can be. Still, being good is no guarantee that men will love you. Jesus Christ was without sin and went about doing good to all He encountered: He was killed by men for His troubles.

    That said it’s not hard to see why Mandela is so loved and popular. People see in him qualities they wish they had; they see an ideal to aspire to.

    As I read the latest stories about his state of health, I couldn’t help but compare the drooling affection being lavished on him to the flood of bile and invective regularly hurled at a succession of Nigerian leaders. It doesn’t matter how much goodwill they begin with, they always end up in the slime pit – reviled by the same people who once sang their praises.

    What is it about Mandela that causes him to have this effect on people? Granted that his life story is powerful, still there has to be more. There are many others with equally gripping biographies, but not too many are held with such reverence and fondness.

    And it is not because he all his decisions as a political leader were always popular or correct. In many instances they were downright controversial. Indeed, many in the more radical fringes of black South Africa felt that he went overboard in accommodating the white demographic in his country after Africans took over the government. Add to that the fact that after the euphoria of the collapse of Apartheid, the new African National Congress (ANC) government didn’t exactly deliver an economic Eldorado. Up till date white South Africans still control the wealth of the country.

    I think one of the things people appreciate about him is that he could have chosen the easy way and let the next man be the hero. He didn’t: he sacrificed 27 years of his years so that millions of his country men who he didn’t know from Adam could be free. He believed in something and fought for it.

    I ask myself what many of our leaders believe in. What did a Sani Abacha care about millions of ordinary Nigerians over whom he reigned uninvited? According to Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, a total of 22.5 million euro has been recovered by the government from seizures of money laundered by the late Head of State. In addition, 175 million euro was also recovered from his family following a confiscation order given by the Supreme Court of Liechtenstein.

    For this ruler, leadership came down to stealing enough for family members yet-unborn. Little wonder that a combination of his brutality and greed ensured that his demise was greeted, not with mass handwringing as in the case in South Africa, but by widespread jubilation by a people for whom God wrought an uncommon deliverance.

    After Mandela was swept into office by irresistible historical forces, he could have perpetuated himself in office in the manner of his next door neighbor, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. South Africans would have been only too glad to have him as life president. Instead, he did the most unexpected and dignified thing: he spent four years and passed on the baton to the next generation.

    His action was such a breath of fresh of air in a continent that is home to sit-tight rulers, that some in Nigeria began canvassing the ‘Mandela Option’ when former President Olusegun Obasanjo was in the third year of his initial term. Of course, their campaign was not born of altruism and came to nothing. Obasanjo simply showed he was no Mandela by twisting every arm in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to award him a second four-year tenure.

    Being the anti-Mandela it was no surprise that mid-way through that final term he began orchestrating a constitutional amendment that would have cleared the way for him to run a third time. By the time he left office in 2007, a man in whom many had invested so many hopes at the onset headed for retirement with his image sullied by his underhand manipulation of the system.

    The ailing ex-South African leader could have been vengeful given what he and other black leaders went through at the hands of a succession of racist white rulers. Instead he chose to spread love, compassion and inclusiveness. Today, the Rainbow Nation concept he patented is one many countries round the globe would dearly love to replicate.

    Not for him the sort of vindictiveness that we’ve seen in the ongoing feud between President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor, Rotimi Amaechi. For daring to challenge the president over the oil wells dispute between Rivers and Bayelsa States, for having the temerity to triumph at the last Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, Amaechi has been on the receiving end of an unrelenting barrage of attacks from the barrel of federal might.

    Mandela didn’t set out to make a name for himself. His actions, utterances and principles have made him larger than life. Will Nigeria ever have a leader who would come close to wiping this icon’s shoes by standing up for something? May be in some future generation.

  • Analog is to a single mirror image as digital is to a hall of mirrors: reflections (2)

    Analog is to a single mirror image as digital is to a hall of mirrors: reflections (2)

    Since it was only a few weeks ago that I asked the NEPA/PHCN service vendor whether the replacement of my old analog meter with a new digital meter could be expected to lead to better power supply and fairer and more honest assessment of charges and fees, it is perhaps premature for me to give a precise answer to that question that is based on actual experience. But I have no doubt that like me, most of the readers of this series do not expect that the new digital meter will make much of a difference, especially with regard to power supply or delivery. I will come back to this point later in this piece, but for now, I think it is instructive to give an account of how, long before my encounter with the NEPA man, I came to a rather acute awareness of this whole subject of the widespread, indeed worldwide replacement of analog technology and appliances with their digital equivalents.

    As I live and work part of the year in the United States, this event took place in that country, specifically in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Regretfully, I did not record the year, the date, though I am fairly certain that it was sometime within the last eight years. [I moved from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, to Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2006] The occurrence involved an aspect of some habits of mine that I am not particularly proud of, this being procrastination when it comes to keeping up with the routine demands of daily existence. Here is what I happened.

    For a very long time, COMCAST, my cable television provider, kept sending me regular notices and warnings to change the box-like decoder that made it possible for me to enjoy their services from the old analog version to a new digital replacement. But I procrastinated and did nothing about the notices and warnings. These notices had also advised me to replace my television set with one made specifically for digital technology, even though the notices also said that keeping my old TV set would not make reception completely impossible; only, it would be significantly inferior. This “reprieve” perhaps added fuel to the fire of my procrastination and long after the expiration of the recommended date of the changeover, I still kept using my analog decoder and TV set. I finally – and very promptly – made the transition when I visited the home of a colleague who had made the change. The difference between what he was seeing, what he was enjoying regularly as the owner of digital equipment and appliances and what I had become used to as a consumer of the services of COMCAST, our mutual services provider, was like the difference between day and night. Sound, visual clarity, color and tone, all were of infinitely superior quality in my colleague’s appliances. Dear readers and compatriots, may we never be left behind by the great, beneficial changes in life and history! [Also: may we never lack the means to make it possible for us not to be left behind!]

    To get back to my encounter with the NEPA vendor, one big issue is of course the fact that this comes almost a decade after my experience with COMCAST, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, service provider. In other words, the fruits of the digital revolution got to us in Ibadan/Nigeria almost one decade after digital it had entered the currency of common experience in the United States. Another difference is the unsurprising fact that consumers in the United States enjoy vastly superior services and rights than consumers in Nigeria. For in Nigeria, I never received any notification, any warnings that I should change from analog to digital. One day, Lukman, my neighborhood NEPA vendor, just showed up in my house and said, “Prof, I advise that you replace your analog meter with a digital one; it will cost you some money, but you will not regret the change”. Indeed, Lukman left it completely open to me whether to make the change or not as NEPA, it seemed, was perfectly content with whatever choice I made: stay with analog or change to digital. But for me, the most important difference lies well beyond the relative advantages and rights of consumerism in Nigeria and the United States and go to the fundamental issue of how technological advances in our world impact the rich and the poor nations of the planet to the detriment of the poor nations and, especially, the poor and the marginalized of those nations. Because this is a subject whose complexity demands far greater exploration than I can give in this piece, permit me to deal with only its most salient aspects.

    From my brief encounter with Lukman, I surmise that NEPA is not insisting that all its costumers make the transition from analog to digital. And I think we can take it for granted that even if it did, as long as electricity can still be delivered and its charges assessed to its millions of customers through the subsisting or old analog meters, the great majority of the customers will stay with analog meters for the simple reason that that is what they can afford. In other words, in Nigeria as in most parts of the developing world, one age, one epoch in the technological organization of services and facilities enjoyed by the populace hardly ever completely supersedes another; rather, for a long time (and perhaps even forever), different epochs coexist side by side. This observation requires a concrete illustration.

    To this day and in the homes of many of my friends from my childhood at my neighborhood in Oke-Bola, Ibadan, the TV sets you will find are not of the variety of sleek digital, flat-screen models; for the most part, they are bulky, weighty analog sets that have been around, it seems, almost forever. True enough, these analog sets do receive services from DSTV whose programming and delivery are entirely run on digital technology, but the services received are of an abysmally low quality. With a little ruefulness and without the least bit of smug self-satisfaction, I can report that these friends seem content with what they receive from DSTV through their outmoded analog TV sets. But I should also point out that when they wish to fully enjoy a crucial game involving their adopted English Premiership clubs, they come to my house and submit themselves to the delighted viewership of ultramodern, digital flat-screen television set!

    But this is not an idle chatter about relative middle class and upper middle class privileges and allurements in consumerism in our country. Beyond consumerism, beyond what I and some of my friends at Oke-Bola – most of whom, by the way, are retirees who have put in long years of meritorious and dedicated professional service to the country – enjoy or don’t enjoy through our analog or digital TV sets, the topic we have been exploring in this series goes to the heart of survival itself, either as a national community or as the human species as a whole. This is because the ongoing digital reorganization of the recoding, transmission and reception of sound and image affects virtually all areas of the production, maintenance and reinvention of human life as a sustainable and fulfilling project whose end is not and will never be in sight.

    At its most elemental level, the digital revolution involves listening to and looking at nature, at the universe and at ourselves and recording and transmitting what we find at infinitely more efficient and valuable levels than analog technology had ever been remotely capable of achieving and consummating. Medicine is definitely one of the greatest beneficiaries of the digital revolution where, among other things, imaging technologies that were unthinkable only a decade ago now enable us to look at, record and transmit the most intimate processes going on in the innermost recesses of the cells within our bodies. The whole field of R&D, of research and development, is another big beneficiary of digitality: research projects and hypotheses that could not have been conceived, let alone accomplished a decade ago are now routinely fashioned in virtually all the disciplines of the natural sciences. As I am not a professional scientist, I can only talk about what I have been told and what I have read concerning the work of some of my scientific colleagues. Some of their projects are so unprecedented that it sometimes appears to me, with my background in the arts and the humanities, that some of my colleagues in the sciences are peering at and listening to the very heart of existence itself. Other areas where the displacement of analog technological processes by digitality is causing epochal shifts include food production; the production of new drugs and medications; and the study of the heavens and the oceans in their depths and vastnesses.

    But how is this unprecedented digital revolution impacting the life chances, the present and future prospects of the masses of ordinary women and men, both in our part of the world and in the world at large? To go back to the opening question in this series, it is extremely doubtful that any truly beneficial changes in power supply and delivery will redound to our benefit with the coming of digital meters to Nigeria. And more generally, who really thinks that by itself alone, the digital revolution will significantly affect the endemic crises of security and community that we face as a nation?

    One can wax lyrical about the achievements and benefits of digital technology, instruments and appliances, but ultimately it all boils down to that question. For us in Nigeria in particular, it is difficult not to be worried that the digital revolution has come not to relieve, but to spread a mystifying, talismanic cloud over the challenges and dilemmas of existence in the new millennium. Far from moving closer to a semi-advanced scientific and technological power, it seems we are becoming more and transfixed by and mired in superstition, sterile religiosity and facile, self-serving irredentist attachments. This leads me to wonder whether or not digitality is a fertile breeding ground for these deeply disturbing psychic and spiritual states of many of our peoples at the present time. For to think of digitality in its essence in our present social and historical context is to think of the accumulated effect on the mass consciousness of cameras that don’t use film; recorders that don’t use magnetic tapes; and cell phones that are not only “wireless” but are also unlimited in the uses to which they can be put (camera; calculator; clock; radio; torchlight; and miniature television screen). Absent from this symptomatic list are microscopic imaging devices that weigh less than one ounce and travel with the blood stream over the whole terrain of our internal organs; measuring instruments that are calibrated in billionths of meters and seconds; and tracking instruments whose objects are not airplanes, ships, cars or persons but totally imperceptible motions of sonic, visual and virtual waves.

    As I am not a Luddite, I celebrate these instruments, devices and accomplishments of the digital revolution, but as I am Nigerian, I wait for the day when they will take their places side by side with cell phones, digital cameras and recorders as the fruits of the supersession of analog technology. Let that day come soon – on the waves of secular hope and faith.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Two men of Africa

    Two men of Africa

    Heroes come too rarely yet pass so quickly

    If only the plow fields of human endeavor obeyed the rules governing physical objects. The sun rises and sets. Day turns to night to return to day once more. We literally set our clocks by this constant rhythm. Such is not the case in the affairs of man. The passage of a person of greatness does not guarantee another shall rise in his stead. The only certainty accompanying the passage man is that the man shall be forever gone. Who may fill the vacuum is a matter of hope and conjecture, not of certitude. Sometimes light is replaced by light, sometime by darkness. Sometimes it is replaced by nothing at all.

    Nelson Mandela lies in the hospital. He has been in this position many times in recent years. Although eventually discharged, each convalescence weakened him, meaning the next visit would come quicker than the one it followed. Slowly, the decline has brought us to the current point. This time something seems different. Something funereal lingers.

    The media pictures the situation as Mandela clinging to life. This is false. It is not Mandela holding to life. It is us desperately clinging to Mandela. We refuse to let him go. We are too frightened to allow him to be mortal even at this frail point in his life. We have turned him into a monument and seek to once more confine him in this edifice we have created of him. He is more legend than human; we subconsciously hope the greatness of his past will somehow redeem our future missteps.

    Debate whether the family should allow him to pass quietly or deploy the finest medical practitioners to keep him alive, even in a reduced state, misses the point. You don’t allow this rare individual to pass quietly into history. The family is emotionally and morally obligated to fight like soldiers to keep him with us as long as possible. As painful as this slow walk to the exit may seem, they have no other alternative. They must fight for him as he had fought for all of us. To some, this struggle is futile because no one cheats Death. Yet, for that very reason they must struggle against the impossible. In so doing, they give a fitting tribute to their beloved.

    No public figure in the past fifty years has ever personified the best aspirations of a nation and mankind than Mandela. Usually, when the world proclaims a man “the father of his nation,” we sheepishly glance about because we the statement to be hyperbole. When that term is applied to Mandela, it is not an exaggeration. It is an understatement.

    History records that Nelson Mandela became president of the South Africa on 1994. This is factually true but inaccurate. In a more profound way, Madiba was destined to become president of non-apartheid, democratic South Africa the moment he was sentenced to Robben Island. On that isolated rock, Mandela found his better self. Thrust into a predicament that would have embittered most personalities and warped many minds, Mandela managed to groom himself for the great task at hand. He is that rare figure who can have a daily encounter with inhumanity yet emerge the better for it.

    His foes sent Mandela to prison so that they might be rid of him. Instead, they had enrolled him in a unique school of governance and tolerance. Being that school’s valedictorian, Mandela would be the only plausible choice to lead South Africa from a cruel, rigid night into a hopeful but uncertain dawn. As such, his captives were more complicit in dismantling their racist state than they care to admit. Time and time again, upon the submerged stones of condign irony, human progress traverses the waters and tides of backwardness to reach a safer place on a more placid shore.

    Not since President Lincoln steered America through its moment of truth, the Civil War, has a single person carried a nation on his back as had Nelson Mandela when he ferried South Africa from racial cataclysm to a better, if still imperfect, future. For America, an assassin’s bullet took Lincoln from the scene as the nation turned from war to the tasks of reconciliation and reconstruction. Because of Lincoln’s absence, reconstruction did not take place as it should have. After Lincoln’s interment, no hero arose to continue in his footsteps. At a critical juncture, the nation was placed in the custody of leaders of lesser mettle and more selfish interests. Post-war reconstruction and the integration of former slaves into society were impaired. It took another century of pain and struggle for Blacks to attain a status unfettered by legalized racial discrimination.

    Mandela’s historic task was as steep as Lincoln’s, in some ways similar, in some ways different. The latter had to prevent a divided nation from splintering apart over the issue of race. He had to begin integrating the newly freed minority into a wounded but healing nation. On the other hand, Mandela had to keep a tense nation from sliding into violent insurrection. Presiding over the transfer of political power from a brutal minority regime, he had to assure this powerful minority that its legitimate interests would be protected. He also had to assure the suppressed majority that a new reality had truly been set forth. Yet he asked this majority to exercise patience in not pressing too hard, too fast for radical socio-economic change.

    His primary task was to keep intact the new architecture of power. He had to prove Black leadership was sufficiently disciplined and sane to effectively govern the nation without grounding its relatively sophisticated, if grossly unequal, political economy. Keeping the nation intact and creating a political culture of tolerance and compromise are the obelisks marking the accomplishments of this man.

    It would have been too much to ask even this remarkable man to have overseen the needed reconfiguration of South Africa’s political economy. The black majority still wallows in depravation and cut itself on poverty. Many townships are nothing but aliases for ghettoes; they teem with the young, wretched and disenfranchised. If the current situation persists, the previous racial apartheid will transform into a socio-economic apartheid, pitting white and black elites against the pedestrian bulk. On the surface, things have changed because racial discrimination has been restrained. However, it will still be apartheid. As such, it will blight the nation and the people will eventually reject its imposition. Whether this is done with reason and in peace or with the rush and sweep of a violent, desperate hand depends on the political leadership. Thus far, those who have come after Mandela look much smaller than the work fate has given them.

    To his credit, Mandel laid the foundation for this difficult work. The impending tragedy of South Africa is that it was not Mandela’s historic mission to do this work yet he might be the only one at present who could. This is one reason the people cling to his life as if it is their own. While the reformative task is rarely discussed in public because it disturbs the myth of racial harmony, most South Africans realize they must soon confront this truth lest it confront them at a moment and in conditions less benign than what now exist.

    However, they are unsure they can do the difficult job in a way that will not undo the good work already achieved. They hold to Mandela in the futile hope that as long as he lives, things can remain peacefully as they are. As long as he is here, they feel the nation will not have to confront this historic imperative or that somehow he will guide them pass the rough thicket as he has done before. One cannot blame them for this belief. Any people in their position would reason the same way even if it amounts to reasoning against reason itself.

    Against this backdrop, President Obama begins his visit to three African nations. That President Obama, America’s first Black president, now visits South Africa as its first Black president begins to fade is a poignant moment. Some hope it is more than coincidence. Like the physical world’s abhorrence of a vacuum, somehow Mandela may pass the mantle of greatness to Obama. This would be nice for it has the ingredients of epic legend. Even though their precise histories and cultures differ greatly, the two nations are kindred in that both grappled with long-standing white-against-black legalized discrimination.

    In becoming the first Black American president, Obama’s rise was more meteoric and much less taxing than what Mandela endured. Compared to Mandela harsh odyssey, Obama waltzed into the White House. Yet, in some ways, Obama’s task was tougher. He was a minority candidate in a nation where the majority still gazes in suspicion at dark skin. In the end, Mandela had numbers supporting him. Obama had good fortune and the political dexterity of a masterful campaigner. Yet, campaigning is different than governance. Excellent campaigning elevates a man to a position of responsibility. Ability, character and statesmanship will determine whether he becomes a hero or a cipher.

    As Africa prepares itself for the departure of a genuine hero, it welcomes a Black leader who must decide whether he works for posterity or for the interests of the powerful. At the beginning of his presidency, I predicted President Obama would change American policy toward Africa, giving it a more enlightened hue. I was half right. He changed American policy. It got smaller, except for the one aspect that did not need to expand. America’s military presence in Africa has grown under this President while its humanitarian and diplomatic engagement has atrophied.

    His approach to Africa does not suffer an intellectual deficient. His problem remains psychological. Toward all things Black, he maintains a public indifference. That he is Black is no secret. It is part of his calling card and appeal. Yet, because he recoils from the thought of being accused of racial favoritism by conservative political elements in America, he purposely shortchanges those who support him the most. It is a strange phenomenon. In his defense, some will say he copies Mandela by assuring American Whites a Black man can manage the nation efficiently. Superficially, there is similarity but the vast differences of both nations make the comparison a thin one. In South Africa, the bulk of the political system was given in one fell swoop to a Black majority. The question then became would the majority push their once brutal overlords into the sea in an eruption of harsh justice and retribution. Mandela answered “no.” The masses endorsed him.

    With decent future leadership, he knew demographics favored the people over the long term. He did not need to push things. Time and prudence would do what political rashness could not.

    Obama is still a minority political figure. Although President, he does not control the political system. It controls him. Black Americans are as peripheral as ever; their plight worsens by the year. Time works against them. There is no real possibility of them supplanting the preferred position of the White population. Black America does not need time. It needs emergency help of the fist order. Those Whites who warn of a Black uprising know their warning to be counterfeit. Their reward is notoriety, and access to that ready and large constituency of racists. These antics fit into the tradition of America’s racial politics. They are also intended to frighten Obama. Thus far, they have been more successful at scaring the man than progressives, black and white, have been in emboldening him.

    As America’s first Black president, Obama has to be concerned with the dynamics of stupid racism; however, he errors in elevating those dynamics to the position of high policy. These are base sentiments that he must treat as real but also as the base things they are. In effect, he must seek a better balance between assuaging the unfounded but deep fears of racism with meeting the legitimate, suppressed aspirations of minority America and with Africa.

    He did not strike this balance in this current Africa trip. The visit has a travelogue quality about it. He is not visiting Africa as a policy imperative as much as he is going to popular tourist destinations.

    Had he wanted a truly landmark Africa visit ushering in a breakthrough American policy, there are other nations he could have visited. Libya was not on the itinerary. America warred to oust the strongman, claiming the fight was to liberate the people. Now, the place is a maelstrom. Democracy and prosperity are not readily had. It seems western concern stopped at removing Qaddafi and has not continued toward the welfare of the people. Day by day, more Libyans reminisce about Qaddafi. If things continue as they are, some people will disinter the man’s bones, figuring his ghost will be a better leader than the current group hoisted upon them.

    The President could have focused on the Congo. This nation is vital to the true development of the continent. But many interests converge to keep it the prostrate, sick man of Africa. UN military deployments in the country are too small to end the anomie. Congo’s smaller neighbors are close American allies. These nations fear becoming Congo’s satellites should the nation rise from the pit. Thus, they keep it submerged. To control this large nation, they must keep it poor and fractured. In exchange for maintaining this negative political power, these American allies forfeit the economic well-being of the entire region.

    Without the Congo as the driving force, the regional economy cannot grow beyond its smaller self. However, this does not stop these nations from conniving with western corporations to confiscate the Congo’s immense mineral wealth for a pittance, again leaving the nation poor and supine. Thus, the peace arrangement sponsored by America which effectively leaves these neighbors in control of the eastern Congo’s fate is artifice. They will continue to bleed the nation. Still, what is good for these smaller states is inimical for Africa as a whole.

    Due to the lack of courage and statesmanship, the smaller game takes precedent over the large objective. President Obama also could have visited the continent’s most populous nation, Nigeria, with its myriad potential and challenges. But the nation is too complex for the superficiality that describes this tour.

    In the end, it is good President Obama came to Africa at this time when all eyes are focused South Africa and its father, Nelson Mandela. Somewhere deep in his soul there must part of this son of Africa that would like to learn the deeper lessons of Mandela’s greatness and not just finish his presidency as an establishment, mainstream American politician in chocolate face. The great gift of Mandela was to convince the majority not to exert itself against a minority that had wronged it. Will Obama attempt to convince the American majority to treat more equitably the minority it has aggrieved? Will he actually lead the western world to give a better economic deal to the African continent the West has brusquely exploited? If he can muster the courage, he may still be the hero all hoped for. If not, then we must hang on to Mandela as long as possible because we will surely miss him when his time to depart eventually falls due.

    08060340285 (sms only)

     

  • Visa bond: Before casting the first stone

    Visa bond: Before casting the first stone

    Nigerian leaders should fix their country instead of blaming Britain for protecting its own interest

    Last Sunday, I had taken on Mr David Cameron, the British Prime Minister on this same page when he said that Britain plans to consult with its Nigerian counterpart to ensure that the anti same-sex bill passed by the National Assembly does not become law. I had said then that Mr Cameron and Britain should not turn Nigeria into Sodom and Gomorrah; and that we have values that run counter to what the Britons want us to embrace. In short, I had referred to them as interlopers. Then, I did not know I would have a return match this early.

    But here I am, and so soon, taking sides with the Britons today. Reports that Britain is planning a scheme that will force visitors from 18 years and above from Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Ghana whose nationals are deemed to pose a “high risk” of immigration abuse, to provide a cash bond of three thousand pound sterling ($4,600; 3,500 euros) (about N750,000) before they can enter Britain have sent the Nigerian elite throwing brickbats at the British authorities. The scheme, according to The Sunday Times newspaper which broke the news, will take effect in November and covers a six-month visit visa. The weekly paper said the move by Home Secretary Theresa May is designed to show that Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party is serious about cutting immigration and abuses of the system. Cameron wants annual net migration down below 100,000 by 2015.

    May was quoted as saying that “This is the next step in making sure our immigration system is more selective, bringing down net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands while still welcoming the brightest and the best to Britain”. She added: “In the long run we’re interested in a system of bonds that deters overstaying and recovers costs if a foreign national has used our public services.” A Home Office official said the six countries highlighted were those with “the most significant risk of abuse”. Now, this is something that is still in the works; and many of our elites are already losing sleep. They cannot even wait for the policy to take off before taking on the British authorities.

    Well, unlike my position last week, that I did not see how our rejection of same-sex marriage could have affected Britain to make that country’s prime minister see in that decision a need to seek a change of position by the Federal Government, today, I say unambiguously that Britain is right in taking whatever measures it deems fit to protect its interest. If we do not know what our interest is, not to talk of how to protect it, we should not blame another country that is fastidious about its. As a matter of fact, my position is strengthened every minute by the fact that none of those who have criticised the proposed scheme has adduced any genuine reason why Cameron should not restrict the number of people coming into Britain, despite that country’s own serious economic challenges. Even the Federal Government that has also threatened to retaliate measure-for-measure has not given any convincing reason on how the proposed measure will affect it or affect Nigerians. The best everyone criticising the British has said is that the proposed measure is ‘discriminatory’. For God’ s sake, what does that mean? I don’t know how something that is only ‘discriminatory’ can jeopardise the interest of Nigerians or that of their government. It is a say-nothing reason that we are adducing.

    If you ask how many people are in a particular street anywhere here, it is unlikely you’ll get anything close to the appropriate number. This has been the way we run our own lives; unfortunately, this is not how things are done in better organised countries. At any time, they want to know how many people enter their country and how many people leave, at least for the purposes of planning. Here, we plan in a vacuum and because we fail to plan, or because we plan blindly, we keep experiencing a situation whereby we march forward to the past. Do we want Britain to become the way we are? A jungle where everything goes?

    If you like, you may brand me an unpatriotic citizen for taking this position; I have no apologies for that. But, before those who might want to cast the first stone at me do, they should sincerely ask themselves whether we would have been where we are today if successive governments in the country had been patriotic. When I was a child, I had relatives who travelled to Britain then and they never went with the intention of staying there permanently. They either went to study or they went on holiday; and they were always eager to return to Nigeria. I remember some of our musicians sang about the cold in London and about how and why our students who went there must face their studies in spite of the cold. One of such songs was ‘Ilu Oyinbo dara, ore mi o dun pupo’, etc.,(UK is good, my friend it is a sweet place, etc). Sweet as the UK was then, our people never went there with the intention of staying. As a matter of fact, even if they wanted to stay put there, there was another song to remind them about home, sweet home, where there is never a place like (Ile o labo sinmi oko)’.

    So, what is it that is now making Nigerians flee from their country to go stay and die abroad? In the good old days that I am talking about, the University of Ibadan, for instance, was recognised as a standard university worldwide. Our most sought-after universities can no longer find space among the first 1,600 in the world, according to the January 2012 report of Webometrics, a world tertiary education ranking institutions organisation, Those who ran the universities and other institutions aground are the ones now shouting that Britain should not ‘discriminate’ against Nigerians, even when that country has made it clear that Nigeria is one of the countries with. “the most significant risk of abuse” of British immigration laws. And this is a thing we all know.

    If you are in doubt, listen to Ambassador Patrick Olusola Onadipe, Deputy Chief of Mission in the Nigerian Embassy in China: “But I hope we will not be overwhelmed because a lot of Nigerians coming here have no business here, if I have to be very frank. This is because when they come they are misinformed.

    “A lot of them probably think they will get jobs here. But when they get here, there is no job. So, they don’t want to return home.

    “Less than 10 per cent of them have visible means of income; others don’t. So, they resort to anti-social activities, like pushing drugs, doing 419, yahoo-yahoo, Internet fraud, armed robbery, rape and even murder.” That is straight from the horse’s mouth and that is the way it is all over the world. Nigerian prostitutes are now hot cakes in Russia. That is how bad things have gone in the country.

    Rather than wish other countries should descend to our depth, we should aspire to their heights. If Nigeria feels sufficiently strong about the proposed British measure, it should reciprocate measure-for-measure when it takes off because I do not think the British should back down on this since it touches on their very soul. Let the legislators crying foul legislate truly for good governance; let the judiciary adjudicate professionally and let the government govern responsibly, such that 16 would not be greater than 19 in a simple arithmetic. When we all do our bit, Nigerians would find little cause to travel abroad in search of greener pasture. And whatever the British do with their immigration laws would not be our headache.

  • Go ahead and have a good day!

    I recently read an article that identified four things that workers in Australia and New Zealand say will make them have a “good” day. According to research conducted by RedBalloon For Corporate, a company that focuses on wellness in the workplace, research respondents say the following are important factors that influence their perception of the kind of day they are having.

    1. More praise

    2. Better Managers

    3. More time with friends and family

    4. Greater trust

    I found this quite interesting and was thinking about the different places I have worked and indeed my current team. I wondered how many of my teammates had a “good” day yesterday or are even having a “good” day today? It was while I was reflecting that a BIG question popped into my mind. Who is responsible for making sure I have a “good” day at work? Is it my employer? My manager? Or me?

    My curiosity led me to carry out my own mini-survey and ask ten people who they felt was most influential in determining whether they had a good or bad day. My test subjects included one of my colleagues, three customers at executive and mid-manager levels, two exercise boot-campers, a front-desk person at a leading technology company, two fellow travelers on an international flight and a university lecturer. This is what they had to say:

    · Six of my subjects believe they are responsible for ensuring they have a good day at work. Their reasons include being well prepared for the task of the day, not taking “No” for an answer with customers and demanding results from colleagues and direct reports.

    · Threeof my subjects believe that having a good day depends on the “environment”, a combination of their manager and the organization. Their reasons include having the right tools available at the right time to accomplish their tasks for the day, minimal interruptions and distractions from their managers, colleagues and customers, as well as the ability to complete a few tasks before the end of the day.

    · One subject firmly believes that it is his manager’s responsibility to ensure that everyone in theteam has a good day. According to him, the manager’s attitude and leadership has a major impact on the morale of the team. This subject was of the opinion that daily challenges with customers or colleagues are easier to manage if one has an understanding manager with a positive attitude and supportive leadership style.

    In my opinion, it takes all the factors discussed above to have a good day at work. However, the responsibility to make the most of one’s day lies primarily with the individual. YOU. If you are interested in greatly increasing the number of good days you have each week, try the following:

    1. Plan Your Week In Advance:A day is too short to plan. Unexpected obligations and emergencies have a way of creeping into our daily schedule. Weekly planning is more strategic and gives you a larger window of opportunity to move and renegotiate priorities and commitments across multiple days for optimum achievement of goals. Also, planning the week in advance gives you the opportunity to proactively include in your daily schedule those things that contribute to your having a good day such as time with family, watching a football game, catching up with an old friend, resting, reading etc.

    2. Take Time To Stop And Reflect:This can make the difference in how your day turns out. It is easy to get stuck in getting tactical tasks completed that you lose sight of your ultimate goals and subordinate the important to the urgent. The time required for this can be a few minutes or during the lunch hour. Stopping to reflect not only gives you the opportunity to course-correct in the present, it also helps you to identify lessons that can be used to convert future days into good days.

    3. Acknowledge The Contributions Of Others: Success in the work place is increasingly becoming more dependent on one’s ability to collaborate effectively with others. Investing in the success of others and positively impacting their chances of having a good day, tends to make them more invested in your success and more willing to contribute positively to your day. Acknowledging how the support provided by others contributes to the achievement of tasks or goals promotes good will in the team and will usually lead to the acknowledgement or praise of your work and contributions as well.

    The above three tips work together to increase your chance of having a good day every day. Planning enables you to identify who to collaborate with for success and stopping to reflect enables you to identify who and what to acknowledge as part of your success. Other factors contribute to having a good day, however, taking responsibility is the first and most important step.

  • Being the butt of the world’s joke is nothing to laugh at

    Once again, dear reader, we have come to that point on our road on this page when we must ask ourselves three necessary questions: where are we coming from, where are we going, and where on earth please can one get the cheapest fish to buy? I am dead serious on this. The doctors have told us perpetually till they are hoarse of voice and mind (mostly mind) that the older we get, the more we should scamper around to eat fish rather than meat. I mean, how on earth anyone can recommend fish over meat just to prolong his life a few miserable years beats me. What exactly is the point of cutting out sweet cakes, beef, pounded yam, jelly, syrup, caramel, eba, etc. when those are the very stuff that life is made of, when you can get them that is? I guess the doctors know a few things the rest of us don’t but I know someone who decided to cut those things off even before the doctors reached him, and I swear laughter went out of his hard palate when those things walked off his plate. I sincerely hope you see the connection somewhere there. So, for now, I am still squaring up, chinning up, flexing down and jigging around in preparation for the D-day: the day of the Fish.

    There is one day that has come though: the day of the joke. Tomorrow, July 1, is World Jokes Day. Now, I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to sit around on that day telling jokes? Is it that we should celebrate jokes as nature’s way of compensating for the massive pain built into our world, or to celebrate the jokester as the one with the hardest job of all? Come on, he has to make us laugh against our human nature and better sense, when we know better than to laugh in the face of so much provocation.

    My Encarta defines the word ‘joke’ as a funny story, a cause of amusement or something that is inadequate. I know I have regaled you on end with funny stories on this column, and I dare anybody to say that those stories were not funny. (Silence). I thought so. Thank you for your great silence; it will be recorded as a plus for you in heaven (Blessed are the silent when confronted by threats…).

    I do love funny stories, and I will go to great lengths to get them just for you: I listen when people talk, I buy good stories for free, and even if I have to make them up sometimes, what matters it? The important thing is that you my reader gets served with a tantalising dish of funny stuff each week to help you swallow Jonathan’s weekly diet of bitter pills. Poor man; I know he does not mean to be mean to us, giving us all these bitter pills, but what can he do, when we have given him this funny farm of a country to run?! Either him, you or me, but one of us must run amok, and am I glad it’s not me.

    There is no end of the things capable of making us all run amok in this country. When you consider that armed robbers are better armed and possibly more resilient than the police system here, it’s enough to make you hold your hair and go running round and round the room in circles. When you remember that this country exports crude oil in millions and millions of barrels but imports refined oil in spite of the fact that there are enough refineries to fill up Christopher Columbus and Sinbad’s ships ten thousand times each day for ever, you just want to scream. Yep, we have our eyes right behind our heads all right. Then, when you remember that we live in a country where the states are governed by people who are under the tight leash of their godfathers, you know the joke is on us the governed, literally, because it gives them a huge laugh.

    Honestly though, writing funny stories and being surrounded by so many things that cause endless amusement are nothing compared to some things being laughably inadequate. I have said it before and I dare to repeat it now but our national intelligence is laughably inadequate. It explains many things really. Let’s begin with our national focus. It can only be lack of intelligence that constantly tells us as a nation not to focus our attention on building a better country for our tomorrow but to fritter our today away in our own frivolous living.

    Just imagine. Our transport system is a joke; there is none, just us as a people making do as much as we can. So, we have trailers doing the work of aeroplanes and trains, cars doing the work of trains and cars, trains doing the work of cars, motorcycles doing the work of buses, and buses doing the work of bicycles and … I hope you are as confused as I am cause there’s no making it out. Let me do my Italian imitation: But- er, you already know– er, it is all one big- er joke- er around here. When I go out, I hop on anything that comes to hand, err to foot, err to… whatever.

    If you think our transport system is a joke, take a look at the electricity system. It is a huger joke (pardon the bad language) because we have national leaders whose sense of humour has taken the strange turn of making us all buy the generator sets they import into the country to make themselves rich. So, so clownish. There are ringside seats in this comedic club but they are occupied by actors who are enjoying the show, while the spectators are up there on the stage writhing in the pain of deprivation – no electricity in the morning, noon or night.

    As if that were not enough, we have leaders, men and women, doing the dance macabre in front of the nation as they gorge themselves to the eyeballs on national funds. But that’s funny, because you see, I am confident that what they think they have got all tucked away into their stomachs and noses and eyes, the doctors will soon be culling out. Someone said once that Egyptian and Indian hospitals are filled with serving Nigerian leaders who have quietly gone underground for one illness or the other. That is so sad. Do we have to wait for this kind of nonsense before we come to our real sense? There is our own Mandela there whose focus in life has been to give into the system, not take out of it, and see how old he is. More importantly, with so much clout in the world, the man is in a national hospital in SA, not in a hospi-tel in Saudi Arabia, America, Germany, India or Egypt frittering away more of the nation’s funds. He is not making his nation the butt of the world’s joke. No, that’s the job of Nigerians, to be the butt of the world’s joke.

    Unfortunately for us, we cannot afford to sit around telling jokes on World Jokes Day. We can only afford to sit and mope on our singular misfortune of being forced to take part in this Dance of Clowns. It’s an opera. No, it does not end in a pun like all good jokes; it ends in an enigma. Like all endings, however, changes can be made, provided we see through the tunnel and quickly make amends.

  • The Syrian rebels or the Syrian Beasts?

    The Syrian rebels or the Syrian Beasts?

    In an article titled ‘’On A False Premise- U.S. Looks To G8 Summit For Consensus Over Libya’’, the American journalist Shawn Helton of the ’21st Century Wire’ wrote the following-

    ‘’Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser to President Obama declared thursday that the Syrian Army had used sarin gas on it’s own people. These claims have been unsubstantiated. Just one month ago Carla Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that it was the rebel forces inside Syria that had in fact used chemical weapons. The U.N.’s findings were supported by medical staff and victims after a recent chemical attack. So why the sudden rush to judgement? Is the White House ‘’highly confident’’ of the chemical weapons narrative because it provides easier access into Syria and to it’s oil and gas reserves?’’

    This is indeed the question of the century when it comes to the crisis in Syria.

    The G8 is meeting in Northern Ireland on 17th June 2013 in an attempt to agree on what to do concerning the Syrian civil war. The world is watching with deep concern as the conflict widens and different countries are beginning to take different sides. I urge the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and Hezbollah to stand firmly against the reckless adventurism of the Americans, the British, the French, the Saudis and the Turks in Syria. To arm the Syrian islamists and rebels, the majority of whom hate ethnic minorities, secularists, moderate muslims and christians and who kill those that do not share their narrow and primitive world view is utter madness. Bashir Al Assad will NEVER be removed by force and the secular state of Syria where ethnic minorities and those who share other faiths are protected will never fall. The British, the French, the Americans and their allies will not achieve their objectives in this conflict despite all their lies and disinformation about what Al Assad is supposed to have done and is supposed to be doing.

    I do not believe for one minute that Al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people- rather I believe that it is the rebels, armed by the western powers, the Turks and the Saudis, that are doing so to those that are supporting Al Assad. For once the world must not be fooled with lies and they must stand up against the traditional bullies of the world, those that believe in regime change and those that destabilise and destroy the nations of others for economic and pecuniary gain.

    I do not blame Al Assad for the 90,000 people that have been killed in Syria since this conflict began but instead I blame the western powers, their allies and the Syrian rebels who are actually arming encouraging and funding Al Qaeda islamist fighters to lead the fight in the battle against Al Assad. How Barak Obama can stomach the stench of those that slit the throats of so-called ‘’unbelivers’’ and commit these atrocities and actually fund and support them I don’t know.

    Yesterday it was Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Today it is Syria. Tomorrow it will be Lebanon and Iran. After they have finished with the Middle East they will take the battle to the gates of Russia and China. And of course one day it will be the Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia. Their lust for power and determination to control the entire world is insatiable and it has no end. It is time for people to wake up and stop being taken in by their evil lies and disinformation which is being churned out on a daily basis by the international news networks which they control. It is time for the world to wake up and say “enough is enough”. It is time for the truth to prevail.

    Oh Lord Jesus return soon and save this world from the evil of those that seek to rule it and wipe out your counsel in the name of the devil. These people are the natural enemies of all believers whether they be christian, jewish or muslim. They do not believe in God. They believe in the power of the devil, the gods of the New Age, the usage of money, brute force, murder, disinformation, lies and deceit. They are the agents of the Illuminati who seek to establish a one world government and a new world order where no monotheic religion and no faith has any relevance and where the Living God is relegated to the background and is described as a powerless relic of history.

    It is the duty of every believer, whether christian, muslim or jewish, to resist their evil and their desire to control and dominate the world and its resources. May God open the eyes of the people of the world to their evil and to their sheer callousness and greed. Satan works through them and he seeks to enslave us all by empowering and enthroning them. They have all the power, all the armies, all the money, all the media houses, all the international television networks, all the satellite and space-based spying systems and all the sophisticated telecommunication networks. They control virtually everything on the earth. Yet we have God, who never sleeps and who has never lost a battle.

    In the end His counsel alone will stand, His will shall be done, His purpose shall be established and His name will be glorified. Even if they kill half the world’s population in their evil quest, at the end of the day the righteous shall be vindicated and the truth shall prevail because God is with us. I weep when I see the innocents that are slaughtered on a daily basis in Syria. I cry when I see children being beheaded and blown apart and when I see the bodies of women being mutilated. I groan when I see deranged and callous men doing the will of America and destroying their own beautiful country and heritage for no just cause. I shudder when I see so-called rebels hacking their compatriots to pieces and eating their hearts and organs with joy.

    Vladimir Putin’s words to David Cameron during their joint press conference at 10 Downing Street after a meeting on 16th June are instructive. He said ‘’I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras. Is it them you want to supply with weapons?’’. These are wise words indeed and a legitimate question. We should all take a little time out to ponder on them. Another interesting contribution came from the respected American war hero General Wesley Clark who was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe during the Kosovo war. He said that America had drawn up plans to invade Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran as far back as 2001 just a few days after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. It follows that what we are witnessing in Syria today is a script that was written many years ago and which is being effected with ruthless determination and clinical precision. No matter how long it takes and regardless of the cost in terms of loss of civilian lives and the shedding of innocent blood those that believe that it is their manifest duty and destiny to rule and dominate the entire world are determined to effect their sinister purpose and evil agenda and bring Syria down to her knees. This, surely, is not only a travesty of justice but it also a tragedy of monuemental proportions.

    Yet the American-made Shakespearean tragedies of the Middle East just keep on unfolding. Let us go back a little. According to George Galloway, the utterly irrepressable, exceptionally intelligent and deeply courageous British Member of Parliament for Bradford, no less than one million Iraqi people, mainly women and children, died as a direct consequence of the economic sanctions and the ‘’oil for food’’ programme that the west imposed on Iraq when Saddam Hussein was still in power. Yet it didn’t stop there. When Iraq was eventually invaded and Baghdad was carpet-bombed by George W. Bush’s and Tony Blair’s ‘’coalition of the willing’’ in 2003 no less than 150,000 Iraqi civilians, again mainly women and children, were slaughtered like flies within the space of just a few days. What a terrible price that had to be paid for the sheer mess that we have in Iraq today where the minority sunni muslims are waging an all out jihad against the majority shia. That is the kind of carnage, confusion and mayhem that America and her allies are spreading all over the Middle East and it appears that Syria is in the process of being consummed by it and of sparking off a major regional conflict which is drawing in many other countries. This beleagured nation has been turned into a blood-soaked arena and a blood-drenched theater for a proxy war which is bound to spread to the neighbouring Arab countries. What an utter shame.

    Yet like David Icke, Naom Chomsky, Alex Jones, Norman G. Finkelstein, George Galloway and millions of other deep thinkers and great minds from all over the world I stand with the Syrian people and the legitimate government of their sovereign and independant state at this difficult time. I believe that no matter what the agents of satan say or do God shall defend their noble cause and He shall vindicate them and deliver them from the evil that stalks the world and that seeks to take control of their land.

    Permit me to end this contribution with some interesting questions that were put by Yele Odofin Bello, who is a Nigerian Canadian and who has captured the mood of the moment rather well. He wrote, ‘’why would the west arm rebels in Syria against a recognised government whilst they did the exact opposite in Colombia and Sri Lanka? Who decides what is evil and what is not? And what yardstick do we use to make these determinations? Why should Iran stay on the sideline when the Saudis and other despotic Arab regimes support rebels in this conflict? I still maintain that objective journalism died in 2007. The BBC, CNN and other western media houses continue to claim that Al Assad has ‘killed over 92,000 of his own people’. Does it mean that all those casualties were rebels and civilians? Why is the western press so eager to marginalise the Syrian Army by referring to them as ‘regime forces’ or ‘Assad forces’?’’ The answers to these pertinent and insightful questions are self-evident.

    Thankfully there are a number of inflluential voices in the west and particularly in the United Kingdom that are also of the view that arming the Syrian rebels would be a fatal mistake. Boris Johnson, the flamboyant Mayor of London, is one of those voices. He said ‘’arming the Syrian rebels would be disasterous because Britain would be pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’’. He also warned David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, that he ‘’should not use Syria as an arena for muscle-flexing’’ and that ‘’any weapons sent to the rebels could end up in the hands of Al Qaeda’’. This is wise counsel from a deeply concerned Tory party colleague and the Prime Minister would do well to accept it. Other British leaders that have voiced their opposition and expressed deep concerns about supplying arms to the rebels include Dr. John Sentamu (the Archbishop of York), Lord Dannat (the former head of the British Armed Forces), Julian Lewis (a leading backbench Tory MP) and Nick Clegg (the Deputy Prime Minister). Let us hope that these saner voices prevail in what is turning out to be a deeply disturbing narrative. God bless the people of the Syrian Arab Republic.