Who needs an education?

Although New York Times article doesn't focus specifically on the Nigerian higher education system, the similarities across African countries in this regard are striking...overpopulated classrooms, decrepit facilities, underpaid staff, jaded students, and so on. We know the scale of the problem but what can we start to do about it? What should we be demanding of our governors in order to revamp state universities? Is the way forward simply pumping $$ into private universities and maybe establishing systems of subsidizing tuition for those who can't afford it? What about soliciting foreign funding? What role can alumni of these universities play? Let's get talking people....

Intro from my African Studies Professor:

Of interest is a report on higher education in Africa...While the comparison with the past is somewhat misplaced (yes, a system designed to enable a very small African elite to reach higher education could allocate more resources per student, but that is not relevant to the current situation) and the critique of the World Bank and IMF is understated (they not only had other priorities but actively sought to reduce allocations to higher education), the overall presentation is informative. The consequences of the deterioration of higher education institutions in most African countries are likely to burden Africa for many years.

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Africa's Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling - Lydia Polgreen

DAKAR, Senegal, May 19 Thiany Dior usually rises before dawn, tiptoeing carefully among thin foam mats laid out on the floor as she leaves the cramped dormitory room she shares with half a dozen other women. It was built for two.

In the vast auditorium at the law school at Cheikh Anta Diop University, she secures a seat two rows from the front, two hours before class. If she sat too far back, she would not hear the professors lecture over the two tinny speakers, and would be more likely to join the 70 percent who fail their first- or second-year exams at the university.

Those who arrive later perch on cinderblocks in the aisles, or strain to hear from the gallery above. By the time class starts, 2,000 young bodies crowd the room in a muffled din of shuffling paper, throat clearing and jostling. Outside, dozens of students, early arrivals for the next class, mill about noisily.

I cannot say really we are all learning, but we are trying,said Ms. Dior. We are too many students.

Africas best universities, the grand institutions that educated a revolutionary generation of nation builders and statesmen, doctors and engineers, writers and intellectuals, are collapsing. It is partly a self-inflicted crisis of mismanagement and neglect, but it is also a result of international development policies that for decades have favored basic education over higher learning even as a population explosion propels more young people than ever toward the already strained institutions.

The decrepitude is forcing the best and brightest from countries across Africa to seek their education and fortunes abroad and depriving dozens of nations of the homegrown expertise that could lift millions out of poverty.

The Commission for Africa, said in a 2005 report that African universities were in a state of crisis and were failing to produce the professionals desperately needed to develop the poorest continent. Far from being a tool of social mobility, the repository of a nation's hopes for the future, Africa's universities have instead become warehouses for a generation of young people for whom society has little use and who can expect to be just as poor as their uneducated parents.

As a result, universities across Africa have become hotbeds of discontent, occupying a dangerous place at the intersection of politics and crime. In Ivory Coast, student union leaders played a large role in stirring up xenophobia that led to civil war. In Nigeria, elite schools have been overrun by violent criminal gangs. Those gangs have hired themselves out to politicians, contributing to the deterioration of the electoral process there.

In the early days, postcolonial Africa had few institutions as venerable and fully developed as its universities. The University of Ibadan in southwest Nigeria, the intellectual home of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka, was regarded in 1960 as one of the best universities in the British Commonwealth. Makerere University in Uganda was considered the Harvard of Africa, and it trained a whole generation of postcolonial leaders, including Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.

The disarray of Africas universities did not happen by chance. In the 1960s, universities were seen as the incubator of the vanguard that would drive development in the young nations of newly liberated Africa, and postcolonial governments spent lavishly on campuses, research facilities, scholarships and salaries for academics.

But corruption and mismanagement led to the economic collapses that swept much of Africa in the 1970s, and universities were among the first institutions to suffer. As idealistic postcolonial governments gave way to more cynical and authoritarian ones, universities, with their academic freedoms, democratic tendencies and elitist airs, became a nuisance.

When the World Bank and International Monetary Fund came to bail out African governments with their economic reforms a bitter cocktail that included currency devaluation, opening of markets and privatization higher education was usually low on the list of priorities. Fighting poverty required basic skills and literacy, not doctoral students. In the mid-1980s nearly a fifth of World Banks education spending worldwide went to higher education. A decade later, it had dwindled to just 7 percent.

Meanwhile, welcome money flooded into primary and secondary education. But it set up a time bomb: as more young people got a basic education, more wanted to go to college. In 1984, just half of Senegal's children went to primary school, but 20 years later more than 90 percent do.

And more of those children have gone on to high school: Africa has the world's highest growth rate of high school attendance...

Even those lucky enough to graduate will have difficulty finding a job in their struggling economies. As few as one third of African university graduates find work, according to the Association of African Universities.

Governments and donors in some countries are starting to spend more on higher education...

Fatou Kiné Camara, a law professor, said she felt the frustration of her students as she struggled to teach a class of thousands. When the students cannot hear her over the loudspeaker, they hurl vulgar insults, a taboo in a society that prides itself on decorum and respect for elders.

They are angry, and I cannot blame them, she said. The country has nothing to offer them, and their education is worthless. It doesnt prepare them for anything.

Attempts to reduce the student population by admitting fewer students are seen as political suicide, student unions play a big role in elections, and the countrys leaders are fearful of widespread discontent among the educated youth. Senegal has created new universities in provincial capitals like Saint Louis, but few students want to attend them because they are new and untested, and the government has not forced the issue.

They fear us because we are the young, and the future belongs to us,said Babacar Sohkna, a student union leader. But where is our future? We are just waiting here for poverty.

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New York Times correspondent Lydia Polgreen is the winner of the George Polk Award for foreign reporting.

WALK THE TALK...

The idea to put up this article came in response to Pseudo-Independent's comment about hoping that the incoming administration will enforce the Public Procurement Bill. It's a great initiative in writing but will our incoming government walk the talk that the outgoing OBJ administration has been talking for the last 8 years? Reflecting on the past 8 years, do you think that the OBJ regime has put a lot more effort into lip service than actual implementation, when it comes to corruption and good governance? On the other hand, is that effort well placed in that he has at least set up the platform for the next administration to actually DO more?

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Eurasia Group Note - NIGERIA: Obasanjo's fire sale of state assets continue

Mocking its own previous sermons about corruption and good governance, Nigeria's outgoing regime late on 17 May agreed to sell a majority stake in the country's largest oil refinery, the 200,000 bpd Port Harcourt Refinery, for $561mn to a newly created company controlled by some of the ruling party's largest campaign donors. The sale comes barely a week after the government organized a hasty sale of over 40 oil blocks to similar interests. The new owners of the refinery include a company, Dangote, best known for its flour and sugar operations, another, Zenon Oil, which is a major importer of refined products, and a third, Transcorp, which is essentially insolvent and in which outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo has previously conceded that his family held some equity interests. Nigeria which consumes almost 350,000 barrels of refined product a day is unlikely curb its imports anytime soon. Nigeria's top domestic banks helped to underwrite the deal.

On another note, the sale of the Port Harcourt Refinery to the Dangote-led consortium and the previous sale of Nigeria's state-owned fixed line telephone company NITEL to Transcorp, another entity in which Obasanjo admitted to having owned significant equity, as well as the questionable sale of the country's largest hotel, Abuja Niccon Hilton, to Transcorp both raise questions about the sincerity of the country's
anti-corruption efforts. The fact that all these deals were underwritten by the country's largest banks also calls into question the business and good governance credentials of some of Nigeria's leading financial institutions.

Whether President-elect Umaru Yar'Adua takes action to reverse some of these controversial and opaque financial transactions remains to be seen. But unless he does, it is unlikely that any political settlement between him and his major political opponents, who have been completely cut out of all these deals, can't happen. On the other hand, if the supposedly stern and ethically devout Yar'Adua reverses some of these sales, he will run into political problems not only with Obasanjo, but with the country's top banks, almost all of which are exposed to these deals and could see their bad loan books affected.

All in all, these questionable financial transactions in the final days of the Obasanjo administration are a sign that the introduction of "democracy" into sub-Saharan Africa will not decrease corruption in the short term. Indeed, corruption is likely to increase in the short-term as new political parties on the continent need funds from oligarchs to run victorious campaigns, and fire sales of state-owned assets to major campaign donors is likely the only rational consequence, since
most ordinary voters on the continent are too poor to contribute to political parties.

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Eurasia Group is the world's leading global political risk advisory and consulting firm. They cover political, social, security and economic developments worldwide and their impact on business and financial markets on a daily basis.

What about Lagos??

This article lauds the long-overdue commencement of the Abuja Light Railway project. The writer is of the opinion that because the Lagos public transportation system is such a disaster, we need to prevent Abuja from becoming another Lagos, hence the light railway.

Ok, we're not tryin to spark any Lagos-Abuja tension here, but this article hit a nerve...WHY IS THERE A MORE URGENT NEED (IN THE EYES OF OUR GOVERNMENT) FOR A LIGHT RAILWAY IN ABUJA THAN IN LAGOS? Even if we accept the grossly inaccurate census results, Lagos' population is by far greater than that of the FCT, and so does a light railway (if indeed that's where $841 million of our reserves should be going at this time) make more sense in Abuja than anywhere else (even Lagos!)? Thoughts pls?

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THE ABUJA LIGHT RAILWAY - This Day Online

Last week, President Olusegun Obasanjo laid the foundation of the light railway system in Abuja. If properly and promptly executed, the project will provide the nation's capital the much needed back-up to road transportation.
Coming three decades after the founding of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the project is long over due. Over that period Abuja's population, both human and vehicular, has out-grown projections. This has brought strains on the available infrastructure, which has in turn resulted in adverse environmental conditions associated with over-crowding. The situation would have been even worse but for the drastic measures embarked upon by this government to redress the abuses inflicted on the Abuja Master Plan.

Initiating the light rail project to ease the movement of people and goods in the federal capital, though late, is commendable. The comment by the FCT Minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, on the occasion puts succinctly the rationale for the scheme. His words: "The importance of this ceremony is better captured when we realise that the chaotic transportation system in Lagos was one of the reasons for the re-location of the seat of government from Lagos to Abuja by the visionary leadership of the Murtala/Obasanjo regime of 1976. In accordance with the Abuja Master Plan and globally accepted norms, cities with a population of over 1.5 million people should have integrated public transportation system of which the railway is a major component."

The minister's reference to Lagos should serve as a booster to the determination of government, the contractors, financiers and indeed Abuja residents to accord the plan the prime attention it deserves. Today, despite the shifting of government machinery from Lagos, the city remains a victim of over-population- occasioned largely by the search for the proverbial greener pasture- and a perennial traffic disorder. In that atmosphere, productivity is hampered and the value of life is diminished. Only bold steps like constructing the rail can steer the present capital away from the path of becoming another Lagos.

With a projected capital of $841 million and completion date of four years, the Abuja light rail system will not only enjoy adequate funding, but will also hopefully be accorded priority by the in-coming administration. Its scope is impressive, having been designed to cover strategic locations like Garki Area 10, Central Area, Wuse Neighbourhood Centre, Jabi, Life Camp, Karmo, Gwagwa, Kubwa, National Stadium, Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport among others. Given the huge volume of commuters and vehicles that emanates from these areas, access to the proposed railway would reduce pressure on the roads appreciably and impact positively on the city's well-being and aesthetics. Ultimately, the entire country and its people stand to gain from a decent and orderly federal capital.

The administration of Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua should, therefore, ensure that the terms of the contract are honoured and well guided to achieve the desired result.

HIV/AIDS and the African female - Godswill Odeku

This article from Today's Guardian Newspaper and talks about the HIV/AIDS plight of the African female (apparently, we're an endangered species). Do you think he's overstating the effects on the African female (for example, is the stigma of AIDS greater for women)? Should more be spent on HIV/AIDS programmes specifically for women? How should our government go about prioritizing funding for HIV/AIDS amidst other problems like education, public health, the Niger Delta, etc? Thoughts please...

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WITH increasing and intense efforts at contemplating and executing interventions the world over with regards to checkmating the spread of HIV/AIDS and other pandemics such as tuberculosis, malaria, diabetes, and so on and so forth, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there exists a special group that could appropriately be referred to as an endangered species. This unique group is spread out across the African continent. You find them in all the countries that constitute the continent. They are the feminine gender represented here as the African female.

A survey of the African continent gives one a gory depiction of the tragedy the African female is subjected to by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur region in Sudan, Somalia, Congo, South Africa, Kenya and other Southern African countries are flashpoints as per the harrowing effects of this pandemic. Statistics reveal the no-win situation in which the feminine gender finds itself. Sero-prevalence rates in various countries indicate that women are more affected by HIV/AIDS.

The African female by virtue of her socio-economic situation finds herself more prone to be infected than the male. She is bothered for sex at the point of seeking employment. There is workplace sexual harassment. As a student, sex is demanded of her in the school for her to get her scores. Even in a normal heterosexual relationship, she is required to give vent to her professed love by mutual self-giving, which almost always translates into physical sexual acts. Socio-cultural practices such as female circumcision, tattooing, early marriages, and so on and so forth, expose her to infection. The above and the fact of the female genitalia being more or else a receptacle, and thus vulnerable, increases her chances of infection, including HIV/AIDS.

Infected females are hardly able to access care and support facilities and opportunities due to stigmatisation and other hiccups placed by society. On the other hand, antiretrovirals are costly and hoarded even when they are provided and subsidised by governments, international development agencies, NGOs, and so on and so forth. Illiteracy, poverty, political insensitivity, and sundry other factors coalesce to give away the African female with regards to HIV/AIDS.

Were we as a people to demonstrate some conscientiousness towards the checkmating of this pandemic, especially as it affects the women of Africa, there would be an orchestrated response in terms of providing funds for interventions, awareness creation and sensitisation, accessible care and support programmes, strategic capacity building initiatives for organisations working in this area, de-stigmatisation campaigns, enlightenment of both government officials, care-givers, NGOs and the general public. Added to this would be specialised funding for research work on unravelling a cure for this voracious pandemic.

The urgency of these conscientious interventions cannot be overflogged, as the tragedy engendered by this pandemic is critically obvious. The continent is awash with the diverse ramifications of its horrendous effects and it would imply hypocritical denial and criminal neglect of facts not to admit its reality and need for an urgent response. The response needs not be sporadic or unilateral...Corporate bodies, governments, development partners and private individuals all have a role to play to save the African female nay girl child from imminent annihilation courtesy of HIVAIDS.


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Odeku is Executive Director of Development Platform for Africa, a Port Harcourt-based non-governmental organisation working on HIV/AIDs interventions.

The Afro Beat Remembers... M.K.O.

"M.K.O. na him we want o!" A number of people have suggested MKO now, and even though we were reticent (for what we thought to be obvious reasons) to give in to their requests, we have decided to let the rest of The Afro Beat decide whether he is worth remembering and what he should be remembered for.

From Wikipedia...

Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was a Yoruba businessman, publisher and politician, though he was an accountant by training. His early career was with ITT (ironic when you consider the Fela song), whereby he later rose to the position of vice-president, Africa and Middle-east.

In the presidential elections of June 12, 1993, Abiola was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (his running mate was Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe) and overwhelmingly defeated his northern (Hausa) rival, Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention. However, the election was annulled by Ibrahim Babangida, and subsequent events led to General Sani Abacha seizing power later that year.

MKO is believed by many to have won Nigeria's freest and fairest (presidential) election ever held - June 12, 1993.

Abiola died in captivity of a heart attack on July 7, 1998. Some of his supporters claim that his death – immediately following that of his captor, Sani Abacha – was masterminded by western powers through the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to level the political playing field in Nigeria.

Moshood Kashimawo Abiola is an icon of democracy in Nigeria. He was the first Southerner to cross the political bridge by aligning otherwise opposing political forces from the North and South to form a political coalition in 1993's election. Many Southerners had earlier attempted this but without much success.

From journalist, Reuben Abati...

The annulment of the Presidential election of June 12, 1993, which Abiola had won to all intents and purposes transfigured him into a national icon for the expression of grievances and rebellion against the excesses of the military elite, and even more importantly, the limitations and disconnections at the heart of the Nigerian state. M.K.O. Abiola became at that moment, the hero of the masses.
It was a task in retrospect, for which he was hardly prepared, but he found in the task a challenge which he willingly embraced. If Abiola had wished, he could have abandoned the struggle, but he had become hostage to the popular will, to the very mandate which he insisted upon and he found himself on a lonely road where every indicator pointed in only one direction. Herein lay the substance of his heroism: His resolve that is, to turn himself into a sacrificial lamb, and thereby atone for whatever may have been his own personal excesses.


From journalist, Seyi Oduyela...

I think the earlier we separate the person of Bashorun Abiola from the real issue of June 12 the better for us. June 12, to me is greater than any individual. It does not represent Bashorun Abiola, no it does not. It was a day Nigerians said SABENA- Such A Bitter Experience Never Again. But unfortunately, we have not come over it because we still mix sentiment with the truth.

(Please Note: the information presented in this section included unconfirmed allegations widely believed to be true among some Nigerians in journalism (Mr Oduyela included)...however, The Afro Beat does not claim these to be grounded in facts.

•In 1978 he was at the Constituent Assembly where he walked out because the likes of Baba Awolowo and others refused to include Sharia in the Nigerian constitution at the Federal level. It is on record that he did not sign the constitution of 1979 because of this.

•Unconfirmed reports speculate that MKO ALLEGEDLY financed and supported the coup that toppled President Shehu Shagari in 1983, as well as the bloody coup that brought Yoweri Museveni to power in Uganda.

•He became more visible during Ibrahim Babangida's 8 years of misrule. He was seen to be an astute defender of Babangida's policies until after the annulment of June 12, 1993 elections.


MKO's Legacy

In our opinion, the pivotal contribution MKO made to Nigeria was not only through his political career, but through the people he left behind.

Several of his wives and daughters are still on the scene, perpetuating his legacy through laudable humanitarian organisations.

His wife, Kudirat Abiola, was murdered during a demonstration for the release of her husband in 1996.

In her honour, his daughter Hafsat Abiola founded the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) and became a democracy activist. KIND sponsors leadership programmes for young women leaders that it hopes will be the new generation of pro-democracy and people-centred development in Nigeria.

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M.K.O. Abiola lives in the hearts of millions of Nigerian men and women for various reasons, and today, The Afro Beat Remembers his legacy...and lets YOU DECIDE.

RESPONSI-KINI?

Below are excerpts from an allAfrica.com article this week. One wonders what process of consultation with the Nigerian populace took place before these decisions were made on our behalf. For those who don't know, the Federal Executive Council is made up of the President and his Ministers. They initiate policies and programs of the FG, but how do the Ministers "figure out" what the people want/need? And though it's all gravy at the Fed level, once the $$ is in the hands of the governors, they have full control over what to spend it on, and are accountable to noone. The Fiscal Responsibility Bill would make state and local governments more accountable to the FG and ultimately to their constituencies. But it's been vetoed by the governors on the grounds that it is unconstitutional since it tampers with the states' independence.

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Barely 21 days to the end of the lifespan of this administration, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday gave provisional approval for eight additional private universities, thus bringing the total number of private and public universities in the country to eighty nine.

It also approved N21.4 billion for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve its capacity building within a three-year period beginning from next year that would ensure more focus on economic diplomacy, better communication linkage with all foreign offices, relocation of the foreign Ministry to its permanent site and improvement of office accommodation infrastructure in Nigeria's foreign offices.

The Minister of Education who said the country needed more universities to take care of the critical mass of people who require such education, gave the names of the universities as Ogbong University, Akwa Ibom State; Caleb University, Ikosi, Lagos State; Fountain University, Osogbo, Osun State; Tansian University, Umunya, Anambra State; Veritas University in the Federal Capital Territory, Wesley University of Science and Technology, Ondo State and Western University, Oghara, Delta State.

The FEC meeting that took place yesterday also approved N778.9 million contract for the supply and installation of hydrogene plant at the Egbin Power Plant in Lagos State and another N2.3 billion for the provision of inclusive education for the physically challenged and gifted children in primary and secondary schools in the country for which 5,000 teachers have been targeted and three schools at the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary levels have been selected in each State of the federation for the take-off of the programme.
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The following is taken from a research paper a friend is currently working on, (not yet available for distribution but once it is, we'll send it to you upon request).

Almost half of consolidated government spending in Nigeria, however, is carried out by sub-national governments, and accountability mechanisms at a state level are virtually non-existent. This represents the single biggest deficiency in the Nigerian value chain—huge percentages of the country’s resource revenue are transferred in lump sums to officials who spend them at will. State governors create budgets with no public or legislative oversight, and state officials spend with almost no restraints on their behavior, follow ad-hoc or nonexistent procurement regulations, and rarely report on their activities.

As the World Bank’s Lev Freinkman puts it, “The state budget process is usually a theoretical exercise.” The budget-making process is usually seen as an almost purely discretionary act by the governor. Virtually all of Nigeria’s states have legislatures controlled by the same party as the governor, who usually doubles as party chair. As such, the legislative approval process rarely represents anything more than a rubber stamp. States almost never make proposed or approved budgets publicly available, and public comment during formulation is rare. Recent federal government efforts to promote greater accountability in state-level expenditure appear unlikely to move forward, stalled by constitutional arguments that they violate Nigeria’s federal system.
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Since we cannot overhaul the process by which the FEC makes its decisions, how can we make sure our governors are spending these funds on what they are meant to? and who gets to decide what projects the $$ should go to? Should the National Assembly ammend the constitution to accomodate the Fiscal Responsibility Bill? Thoughts please...

Will Africa ever get it right? - The Economist

In the words of a fellow 'Fro, "they have shamed us o!"

The article below is from this week's edition of The Economist, and is a sort of chastisement of the African continent, using Nigeria as the scape goat. Fine, our elections were anything but "free and fair", but what do you think about this article? Is it too harsh... afterall, "democracy is a process," abi? Or is it right on the mark? And does it have the potential to 'shame' us or our leaders into action?

April 26th 2007

Nigeria's latest shameful and rigged election does not mean that all of Africa is hopeless

IF NIGERIA, Africa's most populous country, is anything to go by, the sub-Saharan continent of some 800m people may be doomed to spend another generation or so in misery. Nigeria's recent bout of elections has been a fiasco (see article).

The country is rich in resources—the United States may soon be getting a tenth of its oil from it—but most of its 140m-odd people languish in poverty. And yet their rotten leaders presume they have some kind of right, by virtue of their country's size and natural wealth, to strut the global stage as leaders of the continent. How wrong they are. Nigeria's new president, Umaru Yar'Adua, is tainted from the start. The elections at all levels should be held again—but of course they won't be. Any notion that Nigeria should be taken seriously as a continental spokesman, let alone a model, should be laughed out of court. But is Nigeria typical of Africa? And does its dismal performance as a would-be democracy cast a blight across the rest of Africa? The answer to both questions is no. Nigeria is not Africa. Over the past decade or so, the rest of the continent has on the whole been taking modest, belated but encouraging steps towards greater prosperity, security and democracy.

To be sure, there is a very long way to go. The African backdrop is still fairly bleak. Many features of this latest Nigerian farce, namely corruption and mismanagement, still scar many other parts of Africa. The post-colonial continent has hitherto been a colossal flop. The killer comparison is with Asia, where many countries suffered from the same colonial humiliations and rapacity that independent Africa customarily blamed for its early failings. According to the World Bank, real income per head in the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa between 1960 and 2005 rose on average by 25%, while it leapt 34 times faster in East Asia; countries like South Korea and Malaysia were once as poor as Ghana and Kenya. The excuse of colonialism wore out at least a generation ago—and Africans know it.

But many lessons have been learnt, even—believe it or not—in Nigeria, where the macroeconomic picture is actually not too bad. In politics, the once-predominant belief in a one-party system has faded, if not fizzled completely. Multi-party elections, though often very messy, have become far commoner.

This month the IMF's latest figures give further cause for hope. For the third year in a row, sub-Saharan African countries grew on average by around 6% and may soon hit the 7% mark predicated by the UN in its call to halve Africa's poverty rate by 2015. True, this comes on the back of high oil and other commodity prices. But non-oil African countries are recording similar rates of growth. Such figures are modest by Asian standards. But they are going the right way—and quite fast.

An abiding failure of Africa is the reluctance of relatively decent leaders to club together to shame the really bad ones out of office. Zimbabwe's case is the most egregious, disgracing the countries nearby, especially South Africa, whose leaders hide behind a misguided sense of past comradeship and racial solidarity. In Nigeria's case, the African Union should waste no time in denouncing the election as fraudulent—and freezing Nigeria's incoming government out of Africa's leading councils. Alas, that is unlikely to happen. Nigeria may seem too big, its peacekeepers too badly needed, for the rest of Africa to cold-shoulder it. How can the outside world help Africa? There is no easy answer. Western countries, vital donors of aid, should make it clear they will give more help to countries whose governments are relatively clean and efficient—and hold fair elections. The latest aid-givers' consensus is to identify “good” countries, still quite a small bunch, and let them spend the cash as they see fit. Yet time and again, good guys—most recently, Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni—slip back into old despotic ways, putting aid-givers into a quandary. By punishing governments, are they not hurting the innocent poor? In the end, Africa must help itself, just as Asia has. Then the outsiders will pile in, with investment that is better than aid at creating wealth. Even into Nigeria.

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Click on 'comments' below if you'd like to say something, anything!

Introducing "The Afro Beat Remembers..."

It is our opinion that one of the many reasons why Nigerians aren't as civic minded, or for lack of a better word -can't be bothered to stand up and fight for their rights- is that our heroes (those who have had the courage to stand up against/call out injustice and wrongdoing in the public sphere, and who most times lose their lives in the struggle (Kudirat Abiola, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Alfred Rewane, to name a few)) are all too quickly forgotten...Nigerians forget too easily, or maybe we just don't remember publicly (besides the casual naming of a road here and there).

Whatever the case, this is our way of making sure WE don't forget...

An older friend suggested recently that one way of combating Nigerians' chronic short-term memory is to take out an ad in the newspaper or on the radio, and celebrate a local/national/personal hero every so often. "Let others know what they did for Nigeria and why they should be remembered...teach the new generation." Well, seeing as we don't have the financial resources/access to do that right now, we'll start the easy way...on THE AFRO BEAT. We'll call it "The Afro Beat Remembers..."

Once a week (if we can keep our act together), we'll put the spotlight on a Nigerian who deserves recognition/"remembrance" for something progressive that they've done for Nigeria. Dead or Alive, we'll remember.

Please send us any names you might have, and better still, an article, or a few words about what this person has done. This will be a forum to appreciate/recognize their achievements (specifically those relevant to Nigeria's (or their community's) progress. In any case, let's celebrate our heroes people!

P.S, It could be your mama/papa/friend's mama/baby's mama :)/a social entrepreneur you've heard is doing amazing things, whoever ...let's just celebrate the positive that's going on in the midst of the confusion and harsh reality in the country.

Are We Indecisive Or What?

Okay so after that dramatic move to a different server, we're back on good old blogger.

All posts below have been copied from the old server here. So so sorry if you left a prize-worthy comment on a post and its now been lost.

Xxx

You Decide

The 'official' INEC view of the elections - INEC - www.inecnigeria.org

The Transition Montioring Group's view - www.tmgnigeria.org

The European Union's 'Election Observation Mission' - www.eueom-ng.org

The Human Rights Watch report - www.hrw.org

The International Crisis Group report - www.crisisgroup.org

On some level, we should be flattered by all the media attention :-)

Forced To Vote

A member of the BBC News website's Nigerian voter
panel, student Donaman Atezan, 25, in Gboko in central Nigeria tells
how thugs forced him to vote for the ruling People's Democratic Party's
presidential candidate.

Less than an hour after I spoke to the BBC News
website on Saturday, relating how I had been unable to vote, my
situation changed.

I was just heading home from a friend's place when I saw
very few people (predominantly the electoral officers and thugs)
cluster around my polling unit in Adikpo.

I hurriedly rushed to the place to satisfy my curiosity
and discovered that, the said late hour election was nothing but mere
eye service as most eligible voters were not even aware of the presence
of the electoral material at this time.

The few that were aware were scared to come near since it was already dark and there was no source of light around.

The thugs were then left alone to vote and each one of
them voted over and over as many times as there were ballot papers
available.

While this was going on, I presented my voters ID card so I could too receive ballot papers.

As an unfamiliar face, the electoral officer reluctantly gave me only two of the ballot papers instead of three.

One was for the presidency and the other for the federal house of representatives.

But that of the Senate for the Zone A senatorial district of Benue was completely absent.

'Two big guys'

As I got to the ballot box with the two ballot papers to
cast my vote, two rugged-looking guys suddenly stood beside me
anxiously watching to see who I was voting for... even though the
election was said to be a secret ballot.

I had voted for an opposition party and immediately the two big guys seized it and said I shouldn't cast my vote.

One of them removed my ballot paper which was already
thumb printed and just made a bigger print in the space for the ruling
People's Democratic Party (PDP) thus rendering my ballot invalid.

Out of fear and intimidation, I asked them which party presidential candidate I should vote for.

The other guy said: "Vote the PDP, don't you want to eat?"

So was I forced to cast my vote for the PDP against my wish to escape their wrath.

This is the plight the Nigerian youth is in, no job, no
food on the table, no light, no water, no accessible roads, insecurity
and even our civic rights; we are denied from carrying out.

I only wish I had the opportunity and privilege to leave Nigeria after my graduation later this year.

I want to go to the West so as to hustle there and start a better life.

Here we, the Nigerian youth, have a very slim hope or none at all.

Election Blues

The Musings of an Awakened 'Fro

Misan:

"A member of The Beat told me yesterday in conversation, how it was UNREALISTIC to expect that politics/elections in Nigeria could hold without rigging on all sides, so go ahead and call me UNREALISTIC and A DREAMER for holding a mirror to what occurred this past weekend and calling FOUL!

Foul at INEC for squandering Lord knows how many billions in Election preparation, only to leave us with shams for "voting centres" (underneath trees), where (in Victoria Island) cement blocks had to substitute for tables, BIRO (Bic) Ink had to substitute for fingerprint ink (yes, my mama told me all this!…of course this endeavour failed and so, a voter had to go to her house to get some!); and so on.

FOUL at the political parties who sent out thugs to intimidate voters and steal ballot boxes in BROAD DAYLIGHT (I pray for a democracy where such dirty dealings at least take place in secret). Just a few accounts from PM News "Situation Report Across the Country" (full article accessible here):

Shagamu: Reports say a voter was shot in the process of casting his ballot in Shagamu.

Ekiti : The on-going election has proven to be a charade at Ife-Ekiti, where mobile policemen stormed with a stalwart of PDP. They wanted to snatch a ballot box but were resisted. The person who resisted them was shot dead. The mobile policemen and PDP agents snatched all the boxes available.

Ada, OsunState: Two AC agents were abducted while PDP agents were just thumb printing all the booklets. It was reported that this was done with the support of INEC officials because only one INEC official was posted to the booth. This female INEC staff and the only police officer there were threatened with machetes by thugs if they tried to stop them.

FOUL at the International observer mission for only being able to muster the term, "worrisome" as a description of the voting irregularities.

And FOUL at me for being able to do absolutely nothing but vent in writing.

By the end of our almost hour-long conversation, I came to see his point that democracy and fair elections can't happen in one day (or in our case, 47-years); it's a gradual process that we're going to have to stumble through a couple more times till we (hopefully) finally get it right. For now, we should be thankful that the elections (at least the first leg) took place and that we have "results". The likes of Pat Utomi, Jimi Agbaje (I don't know many politicians but I know these 2) have shown us that politics can be done in a clean manner (they might not/did not win but they've started something). Even if the next four years bring more thievery and corruption, we hope that they will also finally bring milestones that will affect the common man, and improve his quality of life. At this point, ANY change is good change."

As always, comments welcome!

The Clouds Are Gathering

The article below is quite a chilling forecast from a great literary poet, which has received all kinds of responses so far - from "what has Chinua Achebe ever done for Nigeria, other than talk/write" to "why his support for Ngige".

Rather than exhausting his energies on forcing his favourite candidates on the citizens of this country (as 'do or die' affairs), the President should have been ensuring that all necessary preparations for these elections were made, through the relevant agencies of course. Now we find ourselves 2 days to the gubernatorial elections and having public holidays forced on us so that people can travel home to vote!! We only wonder how sustainable this system is. How long before something in this delicate imbalance snaps?

As always, thoughts welcome.

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The Clouds Are Gathering - by Chinua Achebe

President Olusegun Obasanjo has taken Nigeria as low as she has ever gone. This will surprise foreign "friends" of Nigeria who may believe the myth that Obasanjo has been fighting to end corruption in the country and to bring democracy to its citizens. Nigerians know better. I am one of those too young/too ignorant to google or ask my elders what OBJ did during his first regime other than hand over power to  a civilian government, but I can't feign the same ignorance for what he's done (and events that have occured) over the past 8 years.  The  run-up to the elections has been such a mess that I have to ask how a president who has  been able to achieve oh-so-much under his regime could have failed to ensure that the past 18 months were spent on preparing for the most important elections the country has seen

President Obasanjo has had the opportunity to rule Nigeria for three years (1976-79) as an unelected military dictator and later for two terms of eight years as a retired general/civilian (1999-2007). People don't exactly remember what Obasanjo did in his first civilian incarnation. His second coming, however, was a different matter. He unfolded a gigantic scheme for staying in power beyond his tenure. He set up agencies with long titles like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent National Electoral Commission. It soon became clear, however, that these devices were not intended to curb the crimes they enumerated but to go after people who disagree with the President, especially on his desire to extend his tenure.

Perhaps the strangest of these events took place in my own state, Anambra, where a governor was kidnapped by a criminal gang who claimed that they had "fixed" the election and earned the right to receive the state budgetary allocation. Whatever the merit of this bizarre story the governor refused to turn over the allocation to these thieves and began to spend it on building roads and bridges which nobody had done in decades. He began to pay pension to retired civil servants who had not been paid in years. Anambra state was transformed overnight. No where else in Nigeria had such a change happened. Governor Ngige became the people's governor.

 One would have thought that our anti-corruption president, Chief Obasanjo, would have embraced Governor Ngige as a fellow fighter against corruption. But no. The fellows demanding the state revenue were Obasanjo's friends who in anger set about burning down and destroying state property while the Police stood at a distance, watching.

 I have told this story again although we all know it. I am retelling it because as it goes with Anambra, so will it go with Nigeria....

 I must congratulate the Judiciary on the tough battle many of its members are waging for the soul of Nigeria. The Senate came ever so close to snatching Nigeria out of the fire, and then…  That was a historic moment lost. What a pity!

Introducing...

Nneka

Making huge waves in Europe with her soulful music (often of a political nature).

For more, visit her space on myspace.

We. The People.

Twenty years ago, Dele Olojede was in Nigeria, a reporter for the independent national Concord newspaper, whose editor spent two weeks in detention without explanation from the government. He became one of the founding writers at Newswatch magazine, whose editor, Dele Giwa, was killed by a pipe bomb in 1986—"by military intelligence".

In April 2005, Olojede, by this time a former editor of Newsday, was named
co-winner of the Pulitzer prize for international reporting, becoming the first African to win journalism's highest honour.

In October 2005, he spoke at the NLNG Grand Award Night, in Lagos...

"A debilitating lack of self-confidence, I think, characterizes today’s Nigerian, having seen his country go down the tubes whilst in the custody of rapacious rulers, and with his own active connivance or apathy. This condition sometimes manifests itself in a prickly defensiveness. I often have friends of mine lapse into such grand statements as, “that’s because you don’t live here,” as an all-purpose dismissal of an argument whose uncomfortable truths they cannot logically avoid. It is manifested in the irrational xenophobia exhibited by many against, for example, South Africans doing business successfully in Nigeria.

But this defensiveness cannot conceal the facts of Nigeria’s condition today. By all objective measures, the country is far poorer-- $350 billion in oil revenues later—than it was 40 years ago. Its moral foundations have cracked wide open, a society whose core values matter far less today than they did four decades ago. Its schools and hospitals 40 years ago were far superior to its schools and hospitals today. Its bureaucracy was more meritorious and far more efficient than it is today. Its elite was far more self-sacrificing, certainly, than today’s elite, whose behavioral patterns bear striking resemblance, if I may be direct, to a swarm of locusts. Nigeria in 1960, as we all know by now, was ahead on the development curve than Singapore or Malaysia or the Philippines or South Korea. Nigeria’s life expectancy has fallen—FALLEN!!— a full decade since the early 1970s, to just 43 years, according to the latest edition of the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures these things. What this means is that I have already lived longer at my age than the average citizen of this nation can fairly be expected to live. The average Nigerian now lives only half as long as the average Chinese or Japanese. We have become a poster child worldwide for fraud and corruption. We are clearly traveling down an escalator that is going up...

.... The necessity of creating a true Commonwealth in our country cannot be overstated. And its legitimacy is conditional on the citizens having come together to devise the rules of engagement. We can already see one of the most appalling consequences of an imposed constitution, one that places a class of politicians above the law of the land and basically grants them blanket immunity, even when they brazenly steal the family silver. To place anyone above the law is to debase the law itself, and invite the creation of a locust culture, where the swarm of the political elite is engaged only in plundering as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and for as long as possible...

... The good society [which we seek] will be built, as it has been built elsewhere, by men and women who act, who take it upon themselves to sacrifice a little bit of their individual pursuits for the common good. The new society will be built by teachers who teach, doctors who actually treat, lawyers who fight for justice and the rule of law, bureaucrats who manage efficiently the commonwealth all the while resisting the lure of the easy money, leaders who actually lead, and do not expect that a criminal is worthy of being protected from the law by some perverted notion of executive immunity. And yes, this good society will in large part be built by citizens who understand and accept the responsibilities of citizenship...

... After years of corrosive military dictatorships and their attendant caprice, as well as the general dissolution and greed of a thieving political class, the Nigerian today feels so battered and bruised that he appears to have lost all sense of how to be a citizen. I have been following with some interest a simple but important exercise by the Ministry of Finance, which uncharacteristically for a Nigerian government agency actually is promoting transparency. The ministry periodically publishes in the newspapers a complete list of revenues allotted from the federation account to every single state and local government throughout the country. So if you live in, say, Isukwato-Okigwe local government area of Abia State, you can tell from the newspapers that your local government received 500 million naira last month for the administration of its affairs. The question that faces us is, how many residents actually take the trouble to demand that their councilors account for how the money was spent? Did it go toward fixing the broken windows in local schools? Or paving the rutted neighborhood roads? Or reactivating a long dormant waterworks? Or purchasing supplies for the local health dispensary? My guess is that many citizens do not bother, thus signaling their leaders that they do not have to be accountable at all.

The same is true in virtually every important respect. Most parents do not get involved in their children’s schools or hold teachers and school administrators accountable for the proper education of their children. They ask not why our highways are death traps. They witness fellow citizens illegally expropriating public property for private use and they consider it normal, or at least acceptable. They appear to believe, in fact, that rulers have an entirely free hand to do anything whatever, including commit grievous crimes and recognize no difference between public funds and their private spending. The rulers—we must of necessity avoid the term leader, which connotes purpose and service—have naturally taken as much liberty as the citizens are willing to give them, and then some.

The citizen has become praise singer and court jester, obsequious, slavish, bowing only to wealth and position. We have become Fela’s parody of the “government chicken boy.” Our praise singing culture has reached new depths of perversion, with music extolling the supremacy of anyone with money no matter how accumulated, with newspapers and magazines dedicated only to the chronicling of the comings and goings of the elite, with our so-called kings and paramount chiefs bestowing chieftaincy titles on anyone ready to pay-- with such feverish abandon, in fact, that one of our big men apparently has more than 600 of them! The age of Simply Mr., which The Guardian newspaper so valiantly sought to champion more than 20 years ago, has passed into oblivion. We forget that the number of chieftaincy titles we acquire does not in any way equate living the good and useful life. To quote Aristotle, “honor seems to depend on those who confer it rather than on him who receives it, whereas our guess is that the good is a man’s own possession
which cannot easily be taken away from him.”

We are ruled no longer by poorly educated men with guns, but the Nigerian remains wary of his freedom. To paraphrase Rousseau, freedom is like a lovely meal of pounded yam and edikai-ekong, but very difficult to digest. That the citizen in Nigeria today lives in relative freedom does not mean he knows what to do with it. In fact, one often gets the impression that many Nigerians would rather not be free, scared as they are of freedom’s responsibilities. They grumble and complain about the flagrant inequities and outright robbery that unfold daily in full view, and they shrug and hope for some divine intervention, and fail to act to shape their own destiny.

I have been looking out of the window in hopes of catching sight of this divine intervention, but perhaps my sight is poor. There is no cavalry out there riding to our rescue, ladies and gentlemen. We must face the cold hard fact that the world owes us nothing, and those who are not prepared to function in it will fall farther behind and become slaves to other races of men. It is neither fair nor unfair; it is just the way it is. As the line goes in the Merchant of Venice, “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano…”

The task before us, then, is not only simply to reform our political system, but fundamentally to learn how to be citizens all over again...

...The Americans have this wonderful preamble to their constitution, a statement of their ambitions as a nation. Its phrasing is elegant and soaring. It rallies the citizens around a common purpose. “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” That’s right, a more perfect union, a recognition that the task of improvement is never concluded, that a society must constantly strive towards the goal of insuring the common good.

Are we the people here gathered, pledged to end the culture of greed and avarice that we have allowed to grow, like cancer, on our nation’s soul?

Are we the people here assembled ready to take charge of our own destiny, set our shoulders against that boulder, and start the hard tasking of rolling it uphill?

We the people, are we pledged to forsake purely personal advantage and hedonism, and seek ye first the common good?

We the people, are we prepared to work tirelessly for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Are we, the people, willing to set ourselves high standards, rather than constantly seeking the lowest common denominator? Are we willing to create the republic of ambition?"

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The full article is attached below. It touches on everything - the loss of our ancient society premised on honour, the absence of trust, the impact of an illegitimate government, the misuse of religious faith, the erasure of the past and all its lessons, poverty and its destructive characteristics. If you're unable to download the attachment, you can click here.

The Black Rock

Monday, Dec. 05, 1960 - Time Magazine Cover Story

At five minutes before nine the warning bell clanged, and the chattering parliamentarians in the lobby began to file into the House to take their seats. Precisely on the hour, a voice raised the traditional cry "Mistah Speakah," and the legislators froze as a bemedaled attendant solemnly descended the nine red-carpeted steps into the well of the House and laid a golden mace on the table separating the government front benches from those of the opposition. After a prayer calling down God's protection on the nation and Queen Elizabeth II, the Speaker, in his English-accented English, called "Odah, odah," and the debate began. Scarcely had it got into full swing when a proud, ascetic figure strolled slowly toward the government bench and all eyes converged on the ebony face of Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, O.B.E., K.B.E., C.B.E., LL.D., Prime Minister of Nigeria.


Along with its echoes of Britain's Westminster, the legislature over which Sir Abubakar presided last week had some of the flavor of a Pan-African Congress. On its benches tall, haughty Hausas, splendidly robed in green and scarlet, sat amongst volatile Ibos draped in white and azure gowns. Across the aisle were Yoruba tribesmen wrapped in gold, yellow and orange with little porkpie beanies on their heads. Between them, they constituted one of the world's noisiest


Parliaments. Each speaker was greeted with cries of "Heah, heah" from his friends and derisory shouts of "Sit down, you wretched fool" from his foes; from the rostrum came the perennial plea for "Odah, odah!" But somehow, through the din, the nation's problems got discussed and decided.


In the hurly-burly of 1960's African avalanche of freedom, Nigeria's impressive demonstration of democracy's workability in Africa is too often overlooked. Next-to-newest of the 18 nations to win independence this year, Nigeria entered the world community without noisy birthpangs or ominous warnings of its determination to avenge ancient wrongs. Since moderation and common sense are not the stuff that headlines are made of, the world's eyes


slid past Nigeria to focus worriedly on the imperialistic elbowings of Ghana's Nkrumah, on the heedless plunge into Marxism taken by Guinea's Sékou Touré and above all, on the bloody chaos in the Congo.


In the long run, the most important and enduring face of Africa might well prove to be that presented by Nigeria. Where so many of its neighbors have shaken off colonialism only to sink into strongman rule. Nigeria not only preaches but practices the dignity of the individual. And where such other islands of order in Africa as Liberia. Togo and the former French Congo lack the size and power to overbalance thrusting Ghana and Guinea (combined population:


8,665,000), the Federation of Nigeria stands a giant among Lilliputians; last October, when Nigeria's 40 million people got their independence, the free population of Black Africa jumped 50%. Backed by such numbers, Nigeria's sober voice urging the steady, cautious way to prosperity and national greatness seems destined to exert ever-rising influence in emergent Africa.


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The article goes on to discuss the backgrounds of some of the key players at the time – Tafawa Balewa, Nnamdi Azikiwe etc. The rest of it can be found here. It is worth reading in full as it provides brilliant insight into the context of our independence and the attitudes and aspirations of the ‘60s.

Do we still have the potential to get to "prosperity and national greatness"? Or is it much too late now? What do we think?

Suffering and Smiling

The music of Fela Anikulapo Kuti is rarely heard on the radio in Nigeria. Everyone is in a possession of a CD or two of his, but to listen to his music, you've got to go out of your way to look for it.

Suffering and Smiling is a documentary about the movement started by Fela, and continued by Femi. Its about the passion of a gifted family for the betterment of a country that refuses to give them access to its radio waves, and is literally falling to pieces around them. On stage, they are alive, fearless and awe-inspiring. Off stage, they are persecuted, at times taken for granted, but nonetheless fiercely dedicated.

In Suffering and Smiling, we see with alarming clarity, how dire the situation in Nigeria is, and just how consuming the depression that stems from the hopelessness of it all, can be. Desperation was the common thread uniting our country’s people. In churches they cried out, screamed and begged God for change. In the Shrine, they got high, drunk and violent, clutching like animals at the fleeting opportunity for an escape from their despair. In the Niger Delta, they spoke with the bitterness of decades of lost livelihoods and unbearable impoverishment.

We knew Fela had a message (many messages in fact). We knew the powers that be had refused to listen to that message, and had ultimately regarded it as contrary to national security. We knew his mother was thrown out of a window, and that he was arrested and tortured repeatedly. What we didn’t know, was the instrumental role played by our current (and hopefully outgoing) President in the relentless vendetta against him. Neither did we know how unreceptive the Nigerians many of us interact with were to the message he intended for their benefit.

When Misan and I started The Afro Beat, Jeremy was very quick to send us an email of encouragement. In his mini eulogy on the greatness of Fela, he touched on something that we had honestly never noticed. For many Nigerians, Fela was, and still is, an embarrassment, a no-go area. It doesn’t matter to them that his music touched and gave hope to the man on the street. And it certainly doesn’t matter to them that his passion for his beliefs was greater than his concerns for his life and his safety. These are the very people that the commentators we've featured on The Afro Beat blog so far, have spoken out against - the passive observers who see Nigeria as a disgrace, a failed experiment not worth salvaging. These are the people who don’t challenge wrongdoing when they see it, but instead focus all their energy on simply getting from A to B. These are the people who are so worn out and despondent, that they turn a blind eye to the extreme poverty and inhumane conditions in which so many of their countrymen are condemned to fester and rot.

The Afro Beat admittedly hasn’t gone very far towards achieving much at the moment. Like everyone else, Misan and I have so much going on in our lives that sometimes it can be incredibly easy to forget to log on to The Afro Beat. Trying to cater to the interests of such a diverse audience, and at the same time stay true to the core of The Afro Beat, has indeed been very difficult. Trying to do this, especially when it has become clear that interest in the project is waning, has been even more difficult.

Motivated by Suffering and Smiling, and its depiction of true dedication in the face of extreme oppression and opposition, we’ve decided to open up The Afro Beat. It is no longer a movement that will require membership of any sort, simply because such a requirement is a barrier to progress. At the same time, obviously we’ve got to be careful about unpatriotic or separatist input over which we would have no control, and which could potentially get us into a lot of trouble. But it’s a risk worth taking if only to spark a few fires in the minds of others like ourselves who want to work out a role for The Afro Beat, its members and this generation in the alleviation of Nigeria’s unending crisis.

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Suffering and Smiling is showing next on Wednesday 28th March at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, London, as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Click here for more information. The footage shown at the start of this post is an independent video from YouTube and is not part of the Suffering and Smiling film.

"A Rumour that shook the nation" by Reuben Abati

Ok, so with April only a few weeks away, this (extracted) article is ever-so-relevant and raises a couple of issues: Why is Yar'Adua (and more importantly, OBJ) so desperately trying to downplay his health problems? Should the health of a (THE) presidential candidate be a deciding factor on whether he should win the presidency? Why has OBJ made his campaign a "do or die affair"? Reading this article made me wonder why our politicians are allowed to utter such silly (for lack of a better polite word) statements/untruths...is it that they think we're stupid, or because they know we don't have the guts to call them out on their ignorance? I really wonder...

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NIGERIA is surely an interesting country. Wednesday, March 7 would go down in history as a very important moment in Nigeria's preparations for the April 2007 elections and for a rather curious reason. It was the day when a rumour, taken off the wings of what seemed like a truthful report in the news media assumed a life of its own, and was soon stretched most imaginatively by the Nigerian public, into something dramatic, nationalistic, and for the moment, demonstrating the power of the spoken word, and also, the people's anxieties about the character of Nigerian politics.

The health of the PDP Presidential candidate, Umar Yar'Adua, the outgoing Governor of Katsina State, Obasanjo's anointed successor, was the issue of the day. The newspapers had reported, on page one, that the gentleman whose health had been a subject of much speculation and analysis had slumped suddenly on Tuesday and had to be rushed into an air ambulance to Germany. There was a kind of death-wish in nearly all the reports, both spoken and written. The Nation newspaper went a step further by asking the question: "If...who steps in?" You can fill in the gaps.

One of the major ironies of the 2007 electoral process has been the decision of the PDP to choose as its Presidential flagbearer, a man with a record of ill-health, problematic kidneys and what Alhaji Muhammad Balarabe is quoted as having described as "some ailments". The PDP leadership, President Obasanjo and Yar'Adua himself have been in a state of denial about Yar'Adua's health but what transpired on Wednesday clearly indicated that his medical state is bound to affect the fortunes of the PDP in the coming elections and if he emerges as President, in spite of the people's fears, Nigeria may end up in a long or short season of doubt and anxiety.

It is important to underline the reactions of Nigerian to the news of Yar'Adua's sudden collapse. Before noon, the country had been littered with all kinds of experts on the nature of the human kidney, instant medical doctors who offered free opinion about how delicate the kidneys are. There were different versions of how the man slumped and how he was rushed out of the country. He sneezed. He inhaled dust. He could not breathe properly. Only Ojo Maduekwe, the Secretary of the PDP insisted that the man had only travelled for a "routine medical check up". But how routine?

By noon, the word started going round: "Yar'Adua is dead".

"You see what Obasanjo has done to Nigeria", a friend declared.

"What has Obasanjo got to do with this? I had said defensively, out of mischief of course.

"Everything", the other fellow said. "He knows that Yar'Adua is not medically fit and yet he wants to impose him as President. This is the third term agenda through the back door."

"How?"

"Can't you see? There is a clause in the Electoral Act which allows government to postpone the elections indefinitely in the event of the death of any of the Presidential candidates."

"But that is not as straightforward as it seems. The 1999 Constitution is superior to the Electoral Act. Under the Constitution, President Obasanjo and other elected representatives have a four-year tenure. That tenure expires on May 29."

"The Constitution can be amended"

"And who will do that?"

"The National Assembly"

"They wouldn't dare. We, the people will resist such a move."

The Yar'Adua incident brought out a part of the Nigerian character: our love of rumour, our imaginativeness, and the malicious character of Nigerian politics. Any attempt to preach that people should be cautious and not kill a man before he really dies was met with the retort that "in this country there is no smoke without fire". When the evening papers hit the streets, they added more fuel to the speculations. Breaking News, published by the Daily Independent, announced that Adamu Muazu and Babangida were already being considered as replacement for Yar'Adua.

Why is Yar'Adua's health so important to Nigerians? I think there was first a feeling of disappointment, a sudden realisation that both the President and Yar'Adua himself might have been lying to Nigerians. When questions were first raised about Yar'Adua's health, the President had played the role of a medical doctor by certifying him fit for the job. "I know all about Umar's ailment" he said "and it has disappeared since 2001. It was a miracle. So those calling him a sick man are the ones who are sick. After all, only God can tell who is sick or not. I wonder how somebody can open his mouth and say that a human being created by God is a sick man." In the light of current revelations, the President has to come up with new explanations. At least we now know that medical doctors can tell when a man is sick and that a sick man is simply a sick man. This is not a matter for politicking.

The second leg of the politics of Yar'Adua's illness is the Obasanjo factor; no one seems to understand why President Obasanjo is so passionate about a man who is widely regarded as medically unfit for the job. Questions: what does Obasanjo want? Why would he insist on giving Nigerians a President with health problems? It is not the people that are playing God, it is the President. He has been the chief campaigner for Yar'Adua's candidacy. He allows him to use the Presidential jet, and he says making Yar'Adua President is a "do or die affair" But when will the President draw the line between friendship/loyalty and the nation's interest? The only saving grace is that the people have a choice in this matter. In the April elections, the Nigerian people have a duty to look at every candidate dispassionately and make an informed choice. Do they want a President who can stand stress or a President whose kidney is a subject of close monitoring by German doctors?

President Obasanjo had tried to save the situation by Wednesday evening. He was at a political rally and he put a call through to Umar Yar'Adua in Germany.

"Umar, how are you? What is your message for Nigerians?"

"I am alive and well. It is a false alarm", Yar'Adua declared.

It was a farcical show. The President may have allayed our fears about the life of the Presidential aspirant, but he again confirmed the people's worst fears: that the PDP Presidential candidate is not the best of health. Is he now campaigning from Germany? The PDP must bring its season of denial about the health of its flagbearer to an end. The obsession with Yar'Adua's ill-health is becoming an irritable distraction. We should be discussing Yar'Adua's ideas about national development. We are not doing that, we are talking about his kidney and skin. We want to know what he and the PDP are planning to do about power supply, education, the health sector and so on, but what are we discussing (?): whether Yar Adua can breathe properly or not. This is not fair.

It is however sad and a comment on the status of healthcare in Nigeria, that the Presidential candidate of the ruling party had to be rushed to Germany before he could be sure of quality medical attention. If our hospitals were better equipped, if all the money voted for the health sector in the past eight years had been well spent, there would be no need for Nigerian leaders to seek help in other countries.

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Reuben Abati is Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Guardian Newspaper. Since 1999 he has written two weekly columns in The Guardian and is now one of the most prolific and respected newspaper columnists in Nigeria today.

The full article can be found at The Nigerian Village Square

"What is an Afropolitan?" by Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu

The writer charts the rise of the "Afropolitan" - internationally mobile, young people of African descent, making their mark on the world. In her mind, we are not citizens, but rather "Africans of the world". Having just returned from a spectacular international conference in the Middle East where I met people from countries I barely knew existed, I am refreshingly aware of how crossed and blurred boundaries between geographies and cultures have become today. Where does the young African fit in all this? What is our new Legacy? Are we too busy "defining our identify" that we forget the motherland (i know tonnes of pp hate this term but i think it's appropriate in this context) and the problems that need solving?

An excellent read on what it means to be a new-generation transnational/ transatlantic African, which I'm sure most of us can relate to....ENJOY!!

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It’s moments to midnight on Thursday night at Medicine Bar in London. Zak, boy-genius DJ, is spinning a Fela Kuti remix. The little downstairs dancefloor swells with smiling, sweating men and women fusing hip-hop dance moves with a funky sort of djembe. The women show off enormous afros, tiny t-shirts, gaps in teeth; the men those incredible torsos unique to and common on African coastlines. The whole scene speaks of the Cultural Hybrid: kente cloth worn over low-waisted jeans; ‘African Lady’ over Ludacris bass lines; London meets Lagos meets Durban meets Dakar. Even the DJ is an ethnic fusion: Nigerian and Romanian; fair, fearless leader; bobbing his head as the crowd reacts to a sample of ‘Sweet Mother’.

Were you to ask any of these beautiful, brown-skinned people that basic question – ‘where are you from?’ – you’d get no single answer from a single smiling dancer. This one lives in London but was raised in Toronto and born in Accra; that one works in Lagos but grew up in Houston, Texas. ‘Home’ for this lot is many things: where their parents are from; where they go for vacation; where they went to school; where they see old friends; where they live (or live this year). Like so many African young people working and living in cities around the globe, they belong to no single geography, but feel at home in many.


They (read: we) are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants, coming soon or collected already at a law firm/chem lab/jazz lounge near you. You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss; others merely cultural mutts: American accent, European affect, African ethos. Most of us are multilingual: in addition to English and a Romantic or two, we understand some indigenous tongue and speak a few urban vernaculars. There is at least one place on The African Continent to which we tie our sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city (Ibadan), or an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s the G8 city or two (or three) that we know like the backs of our hands, and the various institutions that know us for our famed focus. We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.

It isn’t hard to trace our genealogy. Starting in the 60’s, the young, gifted and broke left Africa in pursuit of higher education and happiness abroad. A study conducted in 1999 estimated that between 1960 and 1975 around 27,000 highly skilled Africans left the Continent for the West. Between 1975 and 1984, the number shot to 40,000 and then doubled again by 1987, representing about 30% of Africa’s highly skilled manpower. Unsurprisingly, the most popular destinations for these emigrants included Canada, Britain, and the United States; but Cold War politics produced unlikely scholarship opportunities in Eastern Bloc countries like Poland, as well.

Some three decades later this scattered tribe of pharmacists, physicists, physicians (and the odd polygamist) has set up camp around the globe. The caricatures are familiar. The Nigerian physics professor with faux-Coogi sweater; the Kenyan marathonist with long legs and rolled r’s; the heavyset Gambian braiding hair in a house that smells of burnt Kanekalon. Even those unacquainted with synthetic extensions can conjure an image of the African immigrant with only the slightest of pop culture promptings: Eddie Murphy’s ‘Hello, Barbar.’ But somewhere between the 1988 release of Coming to America and the 2001 crowning of a Nigerian Miss World, the general image of young Africans in the West transmorphed from goofy to gorgeous. Leaving off the painful question of cultural condescenscion in that beloved film, one wonders what happened in the years between Prince Akeem and Queen Agbani?

One answer is: adolescence. The Africans that left Africa between 1960 and 1975 had children, and most overseas. Some of us were bred on African shores then shipped to the West for higher education; others born in much colder climates and sent home for cultural re-indoctrination. Either way, we spent the 80’s chasing after accolades, eating fufu at family parties, and listening to adults argue politics. By the turn of the century (the recent one), we were matching our parents in number of degrees, and/or achieving things our ‘people’ in the grand sense only dreamed of. This new demographic – dispersed across Brixton, Bethesda, Boston, Berlin – has come of age in the 21st century, redefining what it means to be African. Where our parents sought safety in traditional professions like doctoring, lawyering, banking, engineering, we are branching into fields like media, politics, music, venture capital, design. Nor are we shy about expressing our African influences (such as they are) in our work. Artists such as Keziah Jones, novelist Chimamanda Achidie – all exemplify what Trace editor, Claude Gruzintsky, calls the ‘21st century African.’

What distinguishes this lot and its like (in the West and at home) is a willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honor what is wonderful, unique. Rather than essentialising the geographical entity, we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity; to honor the intellectual and spiritual legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures.

For us, being African must mean something. The media’s portrayals (war, hunger) won’t do. Neither will the New World trope of bumbling, blue-black doctor. Most of us grew up aware of ‘being from’ a blighted place, of having last names from countries which are linked to lack, corruption. Few of us escaped those nasty ‘booty-scratcher’ epithets, and fewer still that sense of shame when visting paternal villages. Whether we were ashamed of ourselves for not knowing more about our parents’ culture, or ashamed of that culture for not being more ‘advanced’ can be unclear. What is manifest is the extent to which the modern adolescent African is tasked to forge a sense of self from wildly disparate sources. You’d never know it looking at those dapper lawyers in global firms, but most were once supremely self-conscious of being so ‘in between’. Brown-skinned without a bedrock sense of ‘blackness,’ on the one hand; and often teased by African family members for ‘acting white’ on the other – the baby-Afropolitan can get what I call ‘lost in transnation’.

Ultimately, the Afropolitan must form an identity along at least three dimensions: national, racial, cultural – with subtle tensions in between. While our parents can claim one country as home, we must define our relationship to the places we live; how British or American we are (or act) is in part a matter of affect. Often unconsciously, and over time, we choose which bits of a national identity (from passport to pronunciation) we internalize as central to our personalities. So, too, the way we see our race – whether black or biracial or none of the above – is a question of politics, rather than pigment; not all of us claim to be black. Often this relates to the way we were raised, whether proximate to other brown people (e.g. black Americans) or removed.

Then there is that deep abyss of Culture, ill-defined at best. One must decide what comprises ‘African culture’ beyond pepper soup and filial piety. The project can be utterly baffling – whether one lives in an African country or not. But the process is enriching, in that it expands one’s basic perspective on nation and selfhood. If nothing else, the Afropolitan knows that nothing is neatly black or white; that to ‘be’ anything is a matter of being sure of who you are uniquely. To ‘be’ Nigerian is to belong to a passionate nation; to be Yoruba, to be heir to a spiritual depth; to be American, to ascribe to a cultural breadth; to be British, to pass customs quickly. That is, this is what it means for me – and that is the Afropolitan privilege. The acceptance of complexity common to most African cultures is not lost on her prodigals. Without that intrinsically multi-dimensional thinking, we could not make sense of ourselves.

And if it all sounds a little self-congratulatory, a little ‘aren’t-we-the-coolest-damn-people-on-earth?’ – I say: yes it is, necessarily. It is high time the African stood up. There is nothing perfect in this formulation; for all our Adjayes and Achidies, there is a brain drain back home. Most Afropolitans could serve Africa better in Africa than at Medicine Bar on Thursdays. To be fair, a fair number of African professionals are returning; and there is consciousness among the ones who remain, an acute awareness among this brood of too-cool-for-schools that there’s work to be done. There are those among us who wonder to the point of weeping: where next, Africa? When will the scattered tribes return? When will the talent repatriate? What lifestyles await young professionals at home? How to invest in Africa’s future? The prospects can seem grim at times. The answers aren’t forthcoming. But if there was ever a group who could figure it out, it is this one, unafraid of the questions.

This is Dr Alban by the way, remember "It's my Life!"

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Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu is a Nigerian-Ghanaian writer based in New York City. This article was written in 2005 for The LIP magazine.

The full article can be found at The LIP website.

Scarecrows and Slave Traders: BIAFRA

From what I've gathered, this video clip is of a group of Biafran Nationalists (MASSOB it seems) staging a very noisy protest, at an event chaired by the Nigerian Information Minister - Frank Nweke, against the arrest of some of its members.

Biola sent us the clip on his very first day as a member of The Afro Beat people! Thank you B-Eazy!! Lol... Sorry if I messed up your stage name :-P

I'd assumed that Biafran-ism died along with the disastrous Civil War. The video clip and the excerpts below, from the Voice of Biafra International (VOBI), addressed to the Women of Biafra in October 2002, suggest that that assumption was rather naive.

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Women of Biafra we salute you.

... We have been telling you that many of the so called Igbo, Ibibio, Ijaw, Ogoja, Ogoni, Annang, Ishan, Isoko, Tiv politicians, leaders, and traditional rulers are nothing but slave traders who are in the process of selling you and your children into slavery to Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba oligarchs. Some of you may have thought that it was a joke. But this document goes to show that our warning to you, the people of Biafra is not an exaggeration. Please take these warnings very seriously because we have been privileged to get information that you will never lay your hands on....

... We wish to restate once again that your salvation and the salvation of your children and your families are in your hands. Women of Biafra you have work to do. Your so-called leaders whether in Annang, Ibibio, Igbo, Tiv, Ijaw, Isoko, Ishan, Itsekiri, Ogoni or Ogoja are fake deceitful people. They don’t care about you. Once they collect their money, they will hand you over as slaves to the Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba feudalists. If you doubt it answer these questions. When Odi was sacked by Obasanjo and over 1000 people were killed how many of your leaders challenged Obasanjo? When more than 1000 people were roasted alive at Jesse and Abubakar insulted the memory of the dead by calling them criminals, what did your leaders say? When Umuechem was destroyed by Abacha, what did the leaders say? When Choba was attacked what did your leaders say? When Nigerian police and army killed several dozen members of MASSOB what did your leaders say? When Obasanjo ordered the killing of hundreds of people at Zaki Biam and other towns how many leaders opened their mouths? Now that Obasanjo is dismantling Bakassi, the security outfit that has made life livable in Abia and Anambra what have your leaders said? You see, they are really not leaders, they are slave traders....

.... The men must now formulate their own answer to the inhuman treatment we have been suffering at the hands of Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba oligarchs. The time to act is now not next year. May God bless you all and the Republic Of Biafra .

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How big a threat are these Biafran Nationalists to the continuity of a unified Nigeria? Does anyone even know what their grievance is? Or why they are being arrested and tortured as they claim?