The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Person

  • Person ‘first’, disability ‘second’, counsellors told

    Breaking all Barriers (BAB), an advocacy club for people with learning disabilities and special needs, is urging counsellors in schools to accord priority to individuals’ personality, before considering whether he or she has a disability.

    The club exposed the counsellors to training on sexual reproductive health rights of special needs people at Ritas Event & Suites, New Oko-Oba, Abule Egba Lagos.

    BAB is an offshoot of Festus Fajemilo Foundation (FFF), a not-for-profit body dedicated to holistic development, empowerment, awareness of sexual reproductive rights, challenges, as well as the well-being of children with disabilities in Nigeria.

    Mrs. Seyi Sanjo-Bankole, project officer of BAB, lectured the Guidance Counsellors on various ways to help persons with disabilities gain life skills training. He underscored the importance of teaching them good self-image, how to love themselves, understanding temperaments, character development and sexuality education.

    She said: “These skills ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development through education for sustainable lifestyles. It will make them make informed decisions, communicate effectively and develop the coping and self-management skills needed for a healthy and productive life.”

    Speaking of sex education Mrs. Olawuyi-Olawale, a member of the team, encouraged Guidance Counsellors to inform children with or without disabilities about their sexuality as soon as they start asking questions.

    “There’s no right or wrong time to give this information out when we come in contact with them. I always tell parents to start sex education when a child starts asking questions and learn to simplify your answers. Don’t let them get to adolescence before you teach them sex education because by that time they would have gotten wrong information from their peers. No child with or without disabilities should start his/her first period or wet dream without being informed  ways of approaching sex education; self-care, physical changes in the body for both sexes. With all these information you see them negotiating without being abused,” she said.

    In the course of the training, two facilitators, also physically-challenged, Miss Olufunke Ogunrombi and Mr. Daniel Onwe shared their experiences as persons with disabilities. They urged people to change their perception that disable individuals are helpless or a liability to the society.

    “We see them in a kind of sympathetic way. We tend to see it as punishment to a person; we make people with disability to feel uncomfortable,” said Miss Ogunrombi.

    “‘God doesn’t specifically endow some and refuse some with endowment, God has a way of compensating people and even overcompensating for whatever disadvantage the disabilities have. It is to the advantage of the society but ignorantly they shut them out because they are disabled. As far as I am concern my disability has brought me so many benefits. Disability does not stop anybody from achieving what he/she wants to achieve,”‘ said Onwe.

    Going down memory lane, Mr Afolabi Fajemilo, BAB’s project leader and FFF founder, said the NGO, established in 2006, focuses on two neurological conditions-spina bifida and hydrocephalus.

    Spina bifida is a birth defect in which a developing baby’s spinal cord fails to develop properly, while hydrocephalus is a buildup of fluid in the cavities deep within the brain.

    Fajemilo said FFF envisions a Nigeria where individuals with either of the two medical disorders can access quality health care and support.

    Fajemilo said foundation desires to train 210 senior secondary schools in Agege Local Government Area of Lagos through the Guidance Counselors.

    The representative of The Lagos State Office for Disability Affairs (LASODA), Mr Alejo Adegboyega Adeoye encouraged other guidance counselors who want to be in the project to register themselves and other children with special needs.

  • My person of the year : The electorate

    Choosing the person of the year is not an easy job. I should know because those of us in the media see it as our business to give out such award at the end of every year.  The awardee could be person or persons, or an institution, where an inanimate object is chosen. Whether the awardee is human or not, it still carries the tag : person of the year.  The person of the year need not be the most trusted man or woman or institution on earth. The main criterion in picking such a person is his impact on society in the outgoing year.

    How did he affect the society? Positively or negatively? Even, if his work negatively affected society that will not disqualify him from being named person of the year. It only shows that he did something in the outgoing year which cannot be easily forgotten. Picking the person of the year out of our 170 million population is not a walk in the park. We have many people in different walks of life who impacted on the country either for good or for ill in 2015. Who among them should be person of the year?

    It is also not a must that the person of the year must be wealthy. There is nothing that also says that he must be an industrialist, a politician or an academic. The person of the year could be an artisan or an house boy; what he does is not the issue but his impact on society. 2015 was not an ordinary year. It was a year we were forewarned about few years ago. Some American foreign relations experts had at a round table gazed into their crystal ball, warning that Nigeria may disintegrate in 2015 if care is not taken.

    It was not a prediction of doom per se, as some tend to see it. The experts’ submission flowed from their analysis of the Nigerian situation, especially what happens during elections. Since 2015 was an election year, they feared that if things were not well handled, the country may go up in flames. It was a timely warning because it made us to sit up. We were troubled by the prediction and it generated heated debate across the country. We called the Americans names for thinking like that, but we subconsciously resolved that their prediction will not come to pass.

    To avoid death and destruction in the 2015 elections, some eminent Nigerians led by former military head of state Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar got the two leading presidential candidates Dr Goodluck Jonathan and Gen Muhammadu Buhari to sign a peace treaty before the poll. It was all in a bid to ensure that the Americans’ prediction did not come to pass.

    For winning the March 28 election after his fourth attempt, President Buhari made history. Former President Jonathan also made history as the first sitting president to lose election and accept defeat without overheating the polity. But, the greater history maker is the electorate, which voted out the Jonathan administration. It was as if the voters knew the rot into which the Jonathan administration had thrown the country before they voted it out. Just imagine where we will be today if Jonathan had returned to power. We will still be living a lie as a country under him.

    If Jonathan had been reelected, we will not have heard about the $2.1 billion arms bazaar – the misuse of the recovered Abacha loot to oil the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) political machine and service the friends of government; we will not have heard about the illness of former Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, who turned the ministry to her fiefdom. We will not have learnt about the economy’s mismanagement by the world renowned economist, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who looked the other way while former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col Sambo Dasuki was busy playing games with our money. As minister of finance and minister of the economy, it was Okonjo-Iweala’s duty to ensure that our money was properly utilised, but she didn’t.

    Jonathan and Okonjo-Iweala kept quiet as Dasuki played Father Christmas with our commonwealth. We were saved by the electorate’s vigilance. They stood firm in voting out Jonathan so that Nigeria’s future may be better. If we had continued under Jonathan, it would have been business as usual. Alison-Madueke may not be in London today nursing her health; she would have put up a bold face as if everything is well, while sneaking out once in a while for treatment so that we will not know what ails her. I am not mocking her, but just drawing attention to the kind of game they played with our country under their watch.

    They were desperate to remain in power. This was why former First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan relocated to Rivers State for the April 11 governorship election to ensure the victory of her protege Nyesom Wike. Today, the tribunal and appeal court have annulled his election. The Supreme Court may likely nail his coffin next year. Will Mama Peace again relocate to Rivers to ensure that her boy wins? The electorate would have spoken loud and clear in the Rivers election if it had been free and fair. Their day will come next year when there will be no Mama Peace to breath down the necks of the election managers.

    For standing firm; for upholding the truth; for shunning filthy lucre; for being vigilant; for remaining honest to themselves; for saving the Nigerian project; for having the audacity to vote the way they did; for the power to see beyond the wobbly Jonathan administration,  the electorate are my person of the year. Going forward, I pray that they will not go to sleep. May 2016 be a better year for us. Happy New Year.

  • Are you a happy person?

    Are you a happy person?

    I know that most of our adults in this country think that happiness is a fat bank account, stolen or borrowed; while the youths think it is a one-way visa to the USA

    Reader, I wish I could tell you that I look exactly like the picture you are seeing right now on this page, but I cannot. What with one thing and another, I am missing a leg or arm or half a smile on this happiness project. When my eyes are not literally crossing each other’s paths trying to make sense of the many incomprehensible troubles Nigerians have a penchant for digging up for me, my mouth is in a permanent snarl of exclamation over the things they take as normal. So no, my eyes are not closed in some blissful inhalation of my inner peace and my mouth is not spread in a wide grin of satisfaction over my social condition. I am a hapless and helpless Nigerian. Indeed, my inner turmoil and outer condition have now collectively radioed in for backup: the tears, sniffles and good ol’ adult howling.

    What about you, are you a happy person? I know a happy person when I see one; he/she looks exactly like the picture you are looking at. I doubt very much if your happiness quotient can be any higher than mine though: that of any blue-blooded Nigerian cannot be anything to speak of considering the many sources of our national outrage right now.

    As I am writing this, there is no electricity. I am using the backup battery thoughtfully devised by someone in another economic market whose own nation first ensured there was electricity to enable him to spend long hours researching how to make the devise that I would use in my own uneconomic market. You get my drift? Then you’re better than me. Anyway, there has not been enough electricity to fill two cups, and yet there are places, I am told, where electricity is supplied in spoonfuls, no matter that there are national, state and local governments in place charged with the affair of ensuring that electricity flows constantly. So, Nigeria’s electricity is short-circuiting my happiness line.

    On the matter of the roads, we have been given over to hissing and gnashing our teeth on account of what our fellow Nigerians have made of us, literally. Have you tried travelling on the Oyo-Ogbomoso road lately? Seriously, you will not only curse the fellow-dude who got the contract but failed to execute the dualisation of that road, you will spit at your government and all those connected with it. That road represents all roads in Nigeria that manage to slice off huge chunks of your contentment.

    Then, there is the matter of having to work for a living; children having to transport water over long distances; housekeeping monies buying less and less while responsibilities are increasing more and more, elections being delayed… Tell me now, while we are busy attending to all these, what time do we have to be happy?

    On Friday this week, the world will celebrate the international day of happiness. Don’t let us go into why and how it has come about that such a thing as happiness needs to be celebrated. To start with, I had always thought that happiness was a personal thing, a matter between one and one’s chi: if your chi smiles at you, you get happy, if it fails to smile, you just go look for somewhere to drown quietly without being a public nuisance.

    The United Nations for instance thinks otherwise. It says that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal. That means that I can now go around proclaiming this goal in the face of all my enemies, starting with the government. When the government fails to give me electricity in my house, I now have the right to wave the red flag at it and say, boo hoo, you government are standing in the way of my lawful pursuit of happiness. See you in court. Oh yes, by that UN declaration, you can now take someone to court for obstructing your path in your pursuit of happiness. Let me just check with my lawyer first…

    So far, you will agree with me that the pursuit of happiness in the Nigerian socio-politico-economic space is harrowing, if not nigh impossible. Yet, let us look at another possibility. Let us suppose for a moment that happiness can happen in spite of this cloudy space. Let us look at our governments across the board as errant children that you can’t get through to; so we must find ways of getting around them to pluck our own happiness from their tight-fisted jaws.

    This is what I mean. I know that most of our adults in this country think that happiness is a fat bank account, stolen, borrowed or begged for; and the youths think that happiness is a one-way visa to the USA. Indeed, most youths and young-at-hearts have the ants in their pants to ‘dump’ this country and make for parts unknown in search of a better life. Who can blame them? The only trouble is that what motivates most of them is often economic. They have not yet taken the trouble to get to the heart of life and find its meaning in order to know exactly what they want from it. Usually, most of us are after that special thing we can hardly name ourselves, that thing that is so elusive and difficult to pin down, the performance of which just brings out the sweat from our brows, the jump to our hearts and the tongue hanging out sideways. That is the point where our happiness hangs.

    For many of us, that tongue hangs out sideways when we are entertaining. Oh, you should just see us at the pinnacle of a successful bash, dashing here and there waiting tables on guests. For some, it is gathering children together and mentoring them. Oh man, you should see such people showing children the way to go in life. For many, it comes from constructing one edifice after another, planting houses with government money. All that matters to them is that the buildings should sprout up and sideways like magical things from Aladdin’s cave.

    It is time I think for us as Nigerians to begin to examine what brings us happiness. True, happiness around here would have been much enhanced if social amenities were present. Such things add to the quality of life. After all, it would be a good thing to be able to flip a switch and bathe the room in light, turn a tap and flood the floor with water or even drive your car and not be jolted through the roof by bad bumps and potholes the sizes of dams. It gets even better when you do not have policemen or their allies harassing the life out of you for not having some intangible thing or the other in your car on a journey at night when all you want is to just get home.

    Honestly, what one does for happiness does not matter provided it safeguards the environment, does not harm any other person and it allows one to treat others with respect. That’s not me; I got it from the happiness site. But we all need to look inside us and bring out that special thing which perhaps the world has not yet known and which may even do this country some good. I still believe that developed countries are where they are today because their people pursued their happinesses in ways that added value to the environment, one item after another. We can do that too; sure we can – one item after another. So, be a happy person; pursue your dream and change the face of Nigeria for the better. As for me, I am happiest just talking to you…

  • No reported new death of any Ebola infected person-Lagos govt

    No reported new death of any Ebola infected person-Lagos govt

    THE Lagos State Government has restated that there is no reported case of the death of any person infected with the Ebola Virus Disease at the Alimosho General Hospital, Igando or any of the other government-owned hospitals in the State.

    In a statement by the State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba, the government dispelled the rumour making the round that an Ebola infected person had died at the government- owned General Hospital in Alimosho.

    He said the State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, had addressed the issue during the last Ebola Virus Disease update press briefing, where he assured residents of the State that the hospital was safe and medically sound for patronage by people.

    Ibirogba cautioned the residents against sending panicky and unsubstantiated messages through the social media network, adding that the Ebola Virus Disease is being properly managed by the state government in collaboration with the Federal Government and other international partners.

    He further disclosed that the State has opened an Isolation Ward for the treatment of EVD infected persons where they would be adequately managed by experts in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.

    He explained that only four deaths, including the index case, have been recorded in the country since the deadly disease was imported into the country, adding that all hands are on deck to get rid of the disease.

  • ‘I’m a restless outgoing person, it works for me’

    In keeping with modern information technology, one of Nigeria’s young and stylish men, Dennis Ejiogu, is out to make a great impression on the World Wide Web. A few days ago, he stepped out on the glamour stage of Amber Creek, a top event spot on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, to launch his one-year-old online television station, ‘M-One TV’. It was a night of fun and recognition for innovative players in online business and other guests.

    Ejiogu later let our reporter into his world, saying: “I am an outgoing person who is passionate about innovation in online television in Nigeria. That is why I created M-One television.”

    Ejiogu, who once worked with an airline, is naturally a fun-loving individual, and he combines this with great business wit. So, what does this celebration mean to him?

    “I can say that as the Chief Executive Officer of Rhythm of Colours, a Nigerian media company, I am proudly Nigerian. For some time now, we specialised in packaging video contents for corporate organisations, and a little bit of photography. At present, we are having M-One Innovation Awards, in which we are recognizing corporate organisations and individuals who have been able to create exceptional forms of innovation and also create platforms for people to come together, express themselves and encourage other people in innovation business. These are people who are in technology-driven services online. That is the whole essence of M-One Innovation Awards.”

    With the online television just one year in the market, one wonders why Ejiogu embarked on such a colourful celebration. To this, he said: “We want to create a rippling effect on society. We want to pass on knowledge. At M-one TV, we want information to move easily from one generation to another. We celebrate regularly too. We did it in December when we brought corporate organizations together to say thank you. On Valentine’s Day, we did the same thing. But our focus then was on the hospitals and humanitarian care.

    “With this event, we are focusing more on technocrats to empower the Nigerian youth. The organisations that are being honoured today are those that can inspire the younger generation; those that can make the younger generation aspire to become like them and be encouraged to accomplish whatever dream they have.

    “I love my work. It is leisure to me. I love what I am doing right now. I wouldn’t do any other thing now. And the beauty of it is that most people spend more time online these days instead of watching the traditional television station.

    “Online seems to be the hub of communication now, and it is timeless. It is not restricted by border. It is unlike the cable networks. With online TV, you can be available 24/7. This is the new age and the new media. For 163 million people in Nigeria, a large percentage of that goes online on a daily basis. That is a huge traffic every day. That is why a lot of businesses are going online. That is also why more and more people and businesses are going online.”

    In just one year, Dennis Ejiogu’s business is doing well and already showing signs of good things to come. But it all started with an idea he held on to tenaciously.

    “I have always had a burden to make things easier for people. I recall that one day, I was in heavy traffic and I wanted to rush home to watch my favourite programme on television. But I couldn’t beat the traffic and I had no access to television there.

    “Also, I recall being abroad and I wanted to watch my favourite local programme on television but I couldn’t. I’ve had cases where I needed to get information about something but I couldn’t. So, I thought what if I could create a platform where information and entertainment could be combined online, which could be accessible from anywhere on the globe, regardless of where anyone could be.

    “The beauty of this is that you could be anywhere and still be able to access information and entertainment without relying on cable network or being stalled by lack of electricity or the like. So, we try to fulfill that opportunity where you can access your needed infotainment through M-One TV.”

    “Right on your phone, you can access our seven channels. It’s a fantastic idea. There are channels on fashion, lifestyle, comedy and inspiration. The whole essence is that we are out to see how we can bring the new media closer to people through online entertainment.”

    Ejiogu is thankful for his background, which he believes has contributed to his versatility. “When I was quite young, between the age of 10 and 11, I wanted to work with an airline. So, when I finished from the University of Lagos where I studied Russian Language, I had already done a bit of studies in German language and was speaking five languages. I got a job in an airline. There, I enjoyed myself and travelled around the world. It was fun, and I knew that the next stage of my life would be media. I wanted so much to do media.”

    “With the experiences that I have gathered around the world, I started looking for where to showcase it. It is these experiences that I am now implementing in this new media called M-One TV. Through M-One TV, you get to see people around the world and they accept you. This media allows you to interact and many people will find out that all around the world, the human being remains the same, regardless of the colour, race or tribe.

    “Deep inside, we are the same. This is the message that we are carrying across with the television station. We want people from all around the world to discover that we are all the same; that the man next to you or in another country is just the same as you.

    “We are doing 70 per cent Nigerian content. So, we are concentrating on the rich cultural background that Nigeria is so blessed with. There are some programmes that focus, for instance, on how to make adire, which is fantastic. A lot of youths in Nigeria are no more in touch with our traditional values. M-One is a call to us to re-awaken this essential nature of ours.

    “Take for instance the talking drum; we have a channel that focuses on enlightenment on these cultural aspects of the Nigerian. We are connecting with our culture, but more importantly, we are portraying our culture positively to the world.”

    But with all the social networks interplaying online, where does M-One TV fit in? We asked.

    “The thing is that we are forming a community of people online. We synergise. There are marketing, trading and other kinds of relationship going on online. Simply speaking, we are synergising with all these to promote ourselves and, more importantly, to add value to our people and their lifestyle.

    “Yes, the online television it’s a year old, but Rhythm of Colours, the organisation that owns the television, has been on for quite a while now. However, M-One has come to stay. It has been a wonderful journey. The response has been great. A lot of youths out there are glued to us, looking up to fantastic creativity from us. I may be wrong, but the statistics seems to be that 70% of people from 30 and below are most often on the net. That is a huge population. If you have that number of people on the net, I think it is important to provide a platform to reach out to them.”

    As a creative person, Ejiogu admits that he gets easily bored. “So, I am always looking out to doing new things. I believe that the only constant thing is change itself. I have a passion to take Nigeria to the world and bring the rest of the world to Nigeria. We have so much to offer to over 160 million people: so much to showcase to the rest of the world from Nigeria.”

    As a budding entrepreneur, youthful Ejiogu complains about the factors that seem to make the businesses environment hostile. “I must confess to you that it has not been easy doing business in Nigeria, with so many limiting factors. But one thing that I have learnt is don’t just do business because of the money that you want to make, do the business for which you have passion. The money will come when you have set it up and things are in their proper places. That is when you introduce the business angle to it. From such vantage point, the business develops and the money roles in. So, I started with a passion of how to make life easier for people, get information and pass it unto people easily.”

    Dennis Ejiogu maybe fun loving and outgoing, but he cares for his family. “I am an outgoing person; a restless person. I like trying out new things. Though I may not have done sky diving, I thought about doing it once, but when I remembered my mum, I changed my mind. I don’t believe that one should be chained to one thing in life. I am always looking out to do things that will change me and move me to the next stage of life.

    “My family is close to me. I love my family. I have two children, a boy and a girl, and a wonderful wife who is so supportive. I wouldn’t have asked for anyone else. She has such great values.”

  • Person of the year The Nigerian “Refugee”

    Person of the year The Nigerian “Refugee”

    IT was a year of trinity, even from the beginning. It began with three evils: a subsidy removal, a fuel hike and, in consequence, a paralysis. As the nation shut down, strikes rumbled in Lagos and some other fragile areas and people stayed at home and President Jonathan swaggered with intransigence, we thought the year would be redefined only by another trinity: a fuel crisis, an angry people and a stubborn president.

    But in-between came another trio: water, wind and fire. But the last became the first. Boko Haram struck not once, not twice but many times even though they fell ominously silent during the strikes in January. It was as though they bowed to the first trinity. In a foul and macabre feast, the strikes swept from Borno to Abuja to Kaduna to Kogi like a display of blood and death. Its register was fire: bombs, guns and knives. Another trinity.

    It happened all year long. Soldiers died, police fled, worshippers fainted, defied and died, a security chief first complained in public and later lost his job, a president retreated inside Aso Rock. But mostly people were displaced. Southern governors sought the return of their “people.” Ethnic rhetoric inflamed more ethnic rhetoric. But mostly people fled. Markets became skeletal, churches wary and pastors invoking deity before a shrinking followership. Those born in the north, and those who had relocated there for business and those who had no other ways of life than the ones they knew either in Kano or Maiduguri or Sokoto, were stunned between stark choices: fight, wait to die or flee. Another awful trinity.

    It was a time that tested the unity of the country. Northern governors sought answers, held meetings, appealed and cajoled, but could not do what was necessary: stop the menace. The silence of southern leaders was as ominous as those who banged the doors for a national conference. It raised questions about state police, integrity of security budget and above all, the competence of a president who reacted to the news of carnage with another trinity: surrender, nonchalance – he left for Brazil after one of them – and bluster.

    In the midst of this was the combination of water and wind. Nigeria, just like the malice of Hurricane Sandy in the United States, saw flood. It came not only in the south, not only in east, not only in the west, not only in the north. It was fury without borders.

    In a bizarre replay of Boko Haram, houses fell, only not by fire. People fled their homes. Villages and homesteads vanished in watery tombs. It had no respect for the high and mighty, for the jalopy or cocky limousines. They were huddled in camps. In the camps, women delivered babies, men and women made love, old and young played and fought, scrambled for food rations, slept in makeshift beds. Fishes swam where families sat for dinner, hippopotamuses became threats before they inspired feasts. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan risked life paddling a canoe in a symbolic gesture to the displaced.

    While water, wind and fire raged, the other trinity inflicted their own damages: jobs were lost, subsidy thieves exposed and companies closed, another shrill trinity.

    At bottom, many Nigerians were out of joint, and had to find refuge in places other than where they had comfort. “Something startles where I thought I was safest,” wrote Caribbean writer George Lamming. They became, in a strange irony, refugees at home. Those who fled the north have never found comfort at home in the south. Home was where trouble was. Flood sacked people who never returned to the home as they knew it. It was a case of alienation in body and in spirit. Subsidy-related jobs became as fragile as the homes swept off by flood.

    The refugee, often a term for those who flee their home countries for another, has come to define our year, except that these persons did not find refuge at home. The technical term is internally displaced persons, a wordy and inelegant term. They suffered all the indignities of the year: hunger, joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, bigotry, elemental fury, disenfranchisement and death. In a year of suffering, they embodied the worst.

    For these reasons, The Nation editors have picked the Nigerian “refugee” is our person of the year.