The Nation Newspaper

Tag: water

  • ‘Water is good for the body’

    THE intake of water is useless if it cannot get into the various body cells. A loss of 20 per cent of body water (dehydration) can lead to death.

    Not only that, as water removes waste from the body through urine and sweat, if the body does not have adequate water, the waste products can end up as a disease in the body, for example, colon cancer. Hence, it is advisable to drink eight glasses of water daily.

    A senior lecturer, Department of Health Promotion and Education, Faculty of Public Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Dr Oyewole Oyediran, stated this at a training for teachers on healthy hydration as an important component of healthy kids promotion organised by Nestle Nigeria Plc.

    Oyediran said the process of providing adequate intake of liquid, especially water to the body cells, is referred to as hydration.

    “The importance of good hydration to the body cannot be over emphasised. It transports nutrients and oxygen into the cells. It moisturises the air in the lungs and it helps with food digestion; protects vital organs; helps organs to absorb nutrients better and cools the body temperature.

    He identified signs of poor hydration to include: dark urine, either dark yellow or orange in colour. Dry lips and skin, thirst, hunger and lastly, fatigue.

    He said: “Urine is generally pale yellow when you have sufficient water intake. Dark colour or strong smell indicates that you need to drink more water. Dry looking/cracked lips may be one of the signs of poor hydration, especially if it occurs when there is no harmattan. A very dry warty skin may also indicate poor hydration.

    “The skin is the largest body organ and requires its share of water. Thirst is the most obvious sign that you are already dehydrated. It is always a good practice to drink more water when you are not thirsty, don’t wait until you’re thirsty. Most people mistake hunger for the indication to eat more, whereas, in actual fact, they may be dehydrated. Before you have your meal, grab a glass of water. Water supports the release of energy from food through digestion and absorption.”

    He identified drinking of water, beverages and other consumable liquids as ways through which the body can be hydrated.

    Oyediran said the body gets dehydrated through excessive urination, sweating through the skin and breathing through the lungs.

    The others are excessive blood loss in case of injury/accident and faeces (especially watery stool as in diarrhoea).

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Financialism : Water from an empty well (1)

    Not many us would reason that there is any difference between money and wealth. After all, the popular perception is that to be wealthy is to have lots of money. But the authors of this book, ‘Financialism: Water from an empty well’, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Brian Browne, insist that this is pure myth. Money may be the measure of wealth; it cannot be its definition. It is this conflation of money with wealth, they contend, that is responsible for the current unhealthy and even destructive transition from traditional capitalism to the reigning economic regime that they creatively christen ‘financialism’. Capitalism is a system of private ownership of the means of production and investment in creation of goods and services by the private entrepreneur for the purpose of reaping profit. Financialism on the other hand is the system of investing and speculating in money for the purpose of multiplying money for its own sake to reap mega profits. This is clearly an unorthodox book. It is suffused through and through with ‘out of the box’ thinking. Many of the views, perceptions, observations, illustrations, pontifications and prescriptions offered by the authors starkly contradict orthodox economic thinking.

    But then, the authors, the former Governor of Lagos State and the former United States Consul-General in Nigeria, confess from the outset that they are neither professional economists nor academics. Is this not a draw back for the subject they have chosen to tackle? From what well of expertise, the reader may wonder, do they then draw the intellectual offerings they proffer as solutions to current economic challenges? Such a perspective, however, obviously exaggerates the scientific status and certitude of orthodox neo-liberal economics. How do we explain, for instance, the failure of orthodox economic experts to forsee the current global financial crisis, proffer policies to prevent the catastrophe and that they appear even more helpless in helping to chart a sustainable course towards a healthier, more equitable global economy? Tinubu and Browne can, therefore, rightly claim that, not imprisoned by textbook theories or mythical ideologies, their diverse life and professional experiences enable them to examine current global economic problems from fresh, more realistic perspectives.

    We can thus understand their contention that money is not synonymous with wealth. Money, they explain, only underpins the creation of wealth when it facilitates the production of goods and services through which employment is generated and value added to society. Speculation and investment in the limitless multiplication of money for its own sake is, for the authors, the equivalent of constructing a sky scrapper on a foundation of nothing. It is this abnormality that defines the transition from capitalism to financialism, a development that is at the root of the current ruinous financial and economic disorder enveloping most parts of our contemporary world. In his thrilling forward to the book, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, points out its central thrust with characteristic pungency: “It challenges the domination of print value over the material goods, a situation where the “virtual” or symbolic arbiter between commodities comes to take precedence and becomes not only valued and marketable for itself, but also tyrannizes over the enabling material base. The skewed world of economics needs to be challenged, a world where the umblical cord between produce and tally card was slashed when no one was looking”. Eminent African-American statesman, Reverend Jesse Jackson, makes the same observation when he notes in the second foreword that “The book reveals a profound fact: the dominant economic theory is more subjective than it is scientific”.

    The authors realize that the economy is not an enclave insulated from the influences of society and politics. Theirs is thus an endeavour in political economy. They state right from the outset that their aim is to contribute towards a better global future through the evolution of “a political economy based on an equitable creation of wealth”. Rather than being a variant of capitalism, Tinubu and Browne claim that financialism is actually an assault against the former. But then, is capitalism itself not essentially defined and motivated by human greed as epitomized by the profit motive? After all, did Adam Smith, the father of classical economics, not famously insinuate that we do not get our dinner due to the benevolence of the baker or the butcher but their pursuit of pecuniary self-interest? If selfishness, greed and the profit motive are the underlying driving motives of capitalism itself, is financialism then not only an inevitable culmination of the accumulative logic of the capitalist ethic? Is that, perhaps why Karl Marx declared sarcastically of capitalism: “Accumulate! Accumulate! That is the law and the prophets”?

    If the logic of capitalism is the maximisation of profit at all costs and the financial sector offers the best sphere for the realization of this objective, will investment including reckless speculative activity not necessarily gravitate in that direction? It is probably because of their recognition of greed as a constant factor in capitalist economic organization that the authors constantly stress throughout the book the central role of government in maintaining a sound financial system, ensuring that the financial sector sustains a viable real sector, limiting the intensity and ferocity of competition as well as acting as a pivotal economic player that promotes policies capable of fostering economic development. Not for the authors then all that neo-liberal stuff of severely limiting the economic role of the state or maximum deregulation of the economy. As they put it, “All major financial calamities are described by the lack of responsible government supervision to mitigate private avarice, easy credit, and undue optimism, leading to excessive risk-taking and spiralling asset prices”.

    As the authors demonstrate in the book, cyclical crises spurred by speculative greed are intrinsic to the capitalist model of economic management. What are their diagnoses of the root causes of this problem? What prescriptions do they have for overcoming the limitations of capitalism or what they describe as its financialist variant and ensuring that it functions in a more ethical, life-enhancing way? Are the authors involved in a well- meaning but ultimately futile effort to salvage a capitalist system that has gone utterly berserk and, from all indications, offers humanity nothing but a bleak future? Is capitalism sustainable as a model of economic organization or must we continue Karl Marx’s quest for an economic system that transcends capitalist greed and create a more just, equitable, caring and human society activated by the need of the majority rather than the greed of a few?

     

  • Water, electricity not bullets

    Water, electricity not bullets

    Here we go again. By the last count, at least four students of the Nassarawa State University, Keffi, were callously mowed down last Monday. The students had turned out in large numbers on the fateful day to protest lack of water and electricity in their campus when the students met their death. Many more who sustained varying degrees of injuries were rushed to the school clinic and other nearby hospitals for treatment.

    Unfortunately, just like many of such horrendous incidents in the past, the blame game is on. The students have alleged that their colleagues were killed by soldiers from the army’s 177 Guards Battalion based in Keffi who were drafted to the scene. But Ibrahim Attahiru, a Brigadier-General and Director, Army Public Relations, has denied this. While commenting on the incident last week, Attahiru said, “Three soldiers sustained injuries following the stones, bottles and metals thrown at them” by the rampaging students.

    Thank God that the police have not been fingered in this latest killing. Eyewitness accounts said policemen who were drafted to the scene were very persuasive in their approach but, as soon as soldiers came in, they started shooting sporadically. This, the army has denied. But the question is: while the students were hauling stones and other available missiles at the battle-ready soldiers, with what did they respond? And how were they able to dislodge the warring students and got them back to campus?

    We have been told by the army that hoodlums and cultists had hijacked the protest and caused mayhem before the soldiers and other security agents were called in to quell the protest. As more revelations are made in the coming days, I am quite sure the story line will change again and again. Then we’ll be told that some of the students actually carried arms during the protest. And to support this allegation, a cache of arms seized from armed robbers since God knows when, will be displayed for people to see. Such is the nature of cover-ups often employed by security agents to nail people at all costs.

    Yes, the students could have destroyed some of the institution’s property or even public property during the course of the protest. This, in itself, is bad enough. Students cannot be protesting against lack of water and electricity and at the same time, destroying or vandalising many other infrastructure on campus or turn the heat on unsuspecting members of the public. Ordinarily, it doesn’t add up at all.

    Government property or any other public property is the people’s property and, as such, should be protected at all times. Huge sums of money are involved in putting these structures in place. With inflation and the downward trend in world economy vis-à-vis the nation’s economy, it costs a fortune nowadays to replace these infrastructures or property. That is why there must be care and caution even in the face of extreme provocation, denial or lack of facilities in view of the dwindling government revenue earnings which have affected the nation’s expenditure or spending power in recent times.

    I am aware that there are a few students who hide under this ‘Aluta’ of a thing to ventilate their anger unnecessarily on the society by going to the extreme. They hide under such protests to cause destruction. This will not do us any good. Now, some students who were sent to school with hard-earned money by their parents will be sent home in coffins. But then, when are we going to get over these incessant and perennial senseless killings of our youths in their prime?

    The appalling security situation in the country has not helped matters. Mind you, Nassarawa State is a contiguous state to the killing fields of Plateau State where deadly clashes have led to the death of hundreds of people, including scores of security agents, in the last few years. Even though there are occasional lull in the orgy of violence and wanton destruction of lives and property in that part of the country, the ugly situation has often had its collateral effects on many of the adjoining states of Nassarawa, Benue, Niger, and even the Federal Capital Territory, to name a few.

    The foot soldiers of these troublemakers are the hoi polloi in the society who have not been adequately catered for in terms of feeding, housing and other basic necessities of life. They live in abject poverty, deprivation, wants and disease. Life, to them, is meaningless, nasty, ‘short and brutish’. That is why they would take up arms in the name of hoodlums and hijack an otherwise peaceful protest by students.

    But it would appear that the soldiers who were hastily drafted to quell the protest must have used maximum force on the protesters. In the first place, it was wrong to have called in the army to quell an ordinary protest by defenceless students. The students themselves attested to the fact that the policemen who first accosted them were persuasive in their approach but the whole configuration changed when soldiers appeared on the scene. And soldiers, by their training, speak only one language: force.

    So, in essence, those who should take responsibility for this mindless massacre are not the soldiers who pulled the trigger that sent the students to their early graves, but the university authorities who brought them into the fray. It is also possible that the troops’ commanders may not have followed the rule of engagement to the letter.

    What is evident in the latest sad story of Nassarawa University is that those in positions of authority in this country may have totally lost confidence in the police and their ability to deal with all these protests especially by students. That was probably why the school’s authorities quickly called in the army to do what a well-trained police force could have done. Internal security is the business of the police and other agencies. The army or military, as the case may be, should only be called in as a last resort if the police cannot cope.

    I will agree with those who might want to say that protests in Nigeria may not be the same thing as protests in other countries like Britain, the United States of America, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal or even Egypt and other places. We have seen a lot of protests in these countries in the last two years often instigated by harsh economic realities as it happened in Britain, Greece, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria or bad governance in Egypt. At least, far less people have been killed especially in Egypt where the protests have often turned bloody and almost uncontrollable.

    It is true that in Nigeria, many of these protests are often infiltrated by armed hoodlums who convert the protests to personal gains. Many of the security agents too, treat their fellowmen with disdain, contempt and extreme brutality even in matters that require tact, wisdom and experience to handle. With such ruthlessness often exhibited by our security agents, sometimes on innocent Nigerians who are made to suffer unjustly, and or even extorted in the process, it then becomes a natural phenomenon that the average Nigerian, rightly or wrongly, harbours some certain degree of hatred for our security agents. All this must change in order for us to achieve some modicum of decency in our daily lives.

    I sincerely believe that what happened to the four unfortunate students of Nassarawa University is avoidable. The onus now is on our security agents to go back to the drawing board and map out new strategies to deal with the public, especially protesting students, so as to put a permanent end to this recurring human carnage in the name of quelling riots. The students too and indeed, all Nigerians, must strive at all times to be law-abiding, while the security agents should also operate within the ambit of the law. We cannot continue to waste our young, vibrant ones needlessly like this. After all, what the students asked for is water and electricity, not bullets and deaths!

  • Six ways to drink more water

    THERE are a variety of reasons to drink plenty of water each day. Adequate water intake prevents dehydration, cleans out the body, and promotes healing processes. Follow the steps below to make sure you’re getting enough of this most basic necessity.

    For the meal, it will help you to prevent overeating and obesity. Eat slowly, drink water and you will get satisfied with less food. But as with everything, be careful and don’t overdo it. Drinking too much water can be toxic, so exercise moderation. Water is not a substitute for food, and you can indeed cause severe health issues if you drink too much water daily, including severe heart and endocrine system problems.

     

    1. Measure your daily intake of water. Do this for a few days. If you find that you’re drinking less than the recommended quantity, keep a glass or cup of water next to you whenever you’ll be sitting down for a long time, such as when you’re at your desk at work. Drink from it regularly as you’re working

     

    2. Add lemons or limes to your water. This makes it taste better and makes you want to drink more of it. Be careful not to make it too sour; just a splash of sourness should do the trick. Cucumber slices can also be added to a glass of water. Some mint leaves can be added to a pitcher of water which should be allowed to sit overnight. These are cheap alternatives to the bottled flavored water. If you do choose bottled flavored water, check the ingredients, as these are likely closer in form to lemon- or limeade than they are to water.

     

    3. Eat water rich foods, such as fruits like watermelon, which is 92% water by weight. Blend up some seedless fresh watermelon flesh with some ice and place a few sprigs of mint (optional) – one of the most refreshing drinks, especially for the summertime. Cranberry juice is also another option, and has a bitter taste. Patients suffering from urinary infection caused by insufficient intake of water should drink cranberry juice and eat watermelon if not plain water every day. A tomato is 95% water. An egg is about 74% water.

     

    4. Keep water cool if it tastes better for you. Keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator at home. Add ice or freeze water in a sports bottle before taking it with you, it will eventually melt and stay cold. Bear in mind that cold water takes energy for your body to regulate the temperature, and does burn some calories. Room temperature water is better if you’re dehydrated. Your body can absorb the room temperature water immediately, instead of the body having to raise the temperature of the water first in order to process it.

     

    5. Climate can drastically change how much water you need. On hot days that require you to be outside, you should drink more water to counteract the fluids you lose when you sweat. This not only keeps your body hydrated, it can prevent heat-related illness. Just as important is consuming enough fluids in cold & wet conditions. Inadequate water intake affects the brain’s function first, which can become very dangerous.

     

    6. Purchase a bottle the size of your water goal. Purchase a water bottle that holds the amount of water you wish to drink each day, or use a combination of 1-liter and half-liter bottles. Try to drink the water slowly throughout the day. This will allow you to easily see how much water you are consuming. However, cheating is not a helpful idea – if you don’t drink all the water you intended to, don’t try to chug it at the end of the day.

  • A nation under water

    A nation under water

    It was perhaps just as well that the Federal Government declared several weeks ago that Nigeria’s 52nd independence anniversary would be observed, again, on a “low key.”

    Nigeria is celebrating its National Day literally under water. “Low key” doesn’t get lower than that.

    Those of a decidedly malignant disposition, whom we shall always have among us, may even see the whole thing – the encircling waters and the objects drifting listlessly in the deluge – as an apt metaphor for the national condition.

    From the parched Sahel in the grip of the furiously retreating Sahara desert to the mangrove swamps of the Atlantic, a vast swathe of Nigeria is under water. Swollen by record rainfall and by water said to have been released from dams in neighbouring Cameroun to avoid a looming disaster, Nigeria’s major rivers, the Niger and the Benue, rage as never before, swallowing up houses and washing away bridges and roads and farmlands, sparing nothing in their ravenous wake.

    For four days, the national capital was cut off from traffic from much of the South, portions of the road linking Lokoja with Abuja having been washed away. Lokoja itself, like many other cities caught up in the floods, evoked scenes of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which our own Poet Laureate Niyi Osundare has memorialised for the ages in epic verse.

    Some 130 persons, most likely a gross undercount, have been reported killed in the floods. At least as many are missing. The number of displaced persons has to be in the millions, and damage to private property must be reckoned in trillions of Naira.

    Given just the dilatoriness, the studied evasion with which Nigerian insurance companies typically handle claims, those who lost their homes and property to the flood cannot rest easy that help is forthcoming. And here I am talking of those who took the trouble and expense to buy insurance cover, or were corralled to do so by a mortgage institution.

    Most of the victims probably do not fall in this category and are entirely on their own. With the sluggish economy and rising cost of everything, and the predilection of the mercantile class for profiting from the misfortunes of others, a good many of them are not going to be in a position any time soon to repair or rebuild their homes.

    The fortunate among the millions of displaced persons will be housed in camps for months if not years, and the rest will have to fend for themselves as best they can

    The National Assembly has not met in emergency session to deliberate on legislative measures to cope with what is without question the greatest natural disaster to have struck Nigeria in recent memory.

    Perhaps its members are waiting for President Goodluck Jonathan to propose a supplementary budget. But what stops a private member from proposing an appropriate bill and shepherding it through the legislature in readiness for the President for assent?

    As for Dr Jonathan, he was half a world away, in New York, addressing the United Nations General Assembly and trying once again to charm those elusive foreign investors into coming to Nigeria to seek their fortunes as the flood waters rose steadily, turned entire cities into flotillas, and cut off Abuja from the south-western part of the country.

    The churlish would say that he should not have travelled out at all, or should have headed back as soon as he was made aware of the enormousness of the unfolding catastrophe. But it may well be that his aides never told him how dire the situation had become so as not to distract him from making the most of a moment on the world’s stage that comes only once a year.

    Besides, the vice president, cabinet ministers and officials Specialised agencies and a sprawling were on hand to deal with any emergencies. And, to his great credit, Dr Jonathan took time off his hectic schedule in New York to direct the designated ministers and officials to take charge. If they did not rise up to the occasion, it cannot be the President’s fault.

    But, wearing another hat, the President is also griever and consoler-in-chief; he sets the mood of the nation in times of rejoicing as well as in times of calamity. It would have been a gesture of enormous significance if, on his return from the United States, he had visited some of the beleaguered communities offering words of sympathy and assuring them that his Administration would do all its power to bring them succour.

    In politics, perception is almost everything. Dr Jonathan needed to be perceived as a President who cared, who feels their pain, and is firmly resolved to translate his concern into practical relief measures. Such a gesture could have bridged somewhat the widening gulf between the general public and his Administration.

    In this respect, time is still on his side, even if not on the side of the beleaguered, who will no doubt see it as a fresh disappointment that their privations rated just four perfunctory sentences in his National Day broadcast.

    It will no doubt be remarked that it was foreign contractors who made the national capital accessible by road from the South-west some four days after a stretch of the Lokoja-Abuja highway was washed away by flood waters.

    And it will be asked: Where were the indigenous contractors? Where, for that matter, were all the hardware that the government relief agencies ought to have stockpiled all these years – rescue vehicles and river craft especially. Where are the mobile emergency health centres? Where are the emergency water-treatment plants? Where was the emergency communication system?

    It will be asked even more insistently: Why was there so little preparation for a disaster so clearly foretold?

    Meanwhile, the Jonathan Administration will have to shed its preoccupation with fringe issues and devote all its energies to coping with this unfolding tragedy. The Weather Bureau says the worst may still lie ahead. This means designing comprehensive measures to deal with the present emergency and proactive measures to contain the coming one.

    I am thinking of food and shelter for the displaced; of schooling arrangements for children, and of their general safety.

    I am thinking of the vast farmlands now under water, and the harvest now lost, and the livestock that perished; the food shortage that is sure to follow, and the high prices everyone will have to pay for a piece of whatever is available.

    At a time like this, the usual posturing will simply not do. It will have to yield to fast-paced, coordinated and sustained action designed to bring relief urgently to communities of the beleaguered across the nation.