Femi's Views

Africa, o Africa!

2012-01-13T18:08:00.000+01:00

“My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.” – 1Kings 12:11

For a writer, Africa is both immensely fascinating and infuriatingly repelling. The hugely blessed and beautiful continent that could enthrall so magically is equally capable of aggravating one to death. The same continent that is so full of pleasant surprises could also makes one want to pull one’s air out in anguish.
Where else on earth but Africa do people so lack consideration for their fellow human beings that they think nothing of organizing religious jamborees in the middle of the night with drums, shouts and wailings?

And should one be bold enough and dare to confront the pastor or pastoress (or prophet or prophetess) about the illegality being committed in the name of religion; one is met with incredulous stares and dubious questions of why one is against the preaching of Jesus Christ.

“No, I am not against the preaching of Jesus or anyone, but I just would like to sleep.”

“But we are worshipping god.”

“You don’t have to worship your god at ungodly hours.”

“Ah, but we can worship god at any time.”

“You most certainly can, but in the confine of your home and without disturbing my sleep. It should be possible to talk to your god without all the pantomime of noises.”

“We don’t make noise, we praise god. That is all we do.”

“With nightly drums and shouting?”

“It is written in the Bible.”

“Ah!”

There are laws in this country against noise-making after certain hours. There are laws in the land against citing of places of worship in residential areas. But it seems like, in the name of imported religions, our people can break laws as they wish and with the law-enforcement agents not doing a darn thing about it.

It looks like professing to worship any of the alien religions we have in Africa is license to break the law at will. And it also looks like people have been made to reconcile themselves into the unholy and ungodly behavior of having their sleeps truncated by shameless charlatans who pretend to stand between man and his creator.

Why can’s people get it into their heads that their freedom stop at other people’s noses? Why is it so difficult for modern Africans to know that taking other people’s feelings into consideration should form part of a good upbringing? We were brought up to respect other people’s rights. So, why can’t many people nowadays learn that it is just simple etiquette not to unduly aggravate one’s neighbours? Why is it so difficult to accept that laws are not mere suggestions, but are made to be obeyed?

And when are we in Africa going to realize that discipline is a pre-requisite for an orderly society and is the foundation of all civilizations?

African politics is another bewildering phenomenon. Callousness and insensitive does not even begin to describe our political class in Africa.

Our politicians always manage to collar large chunk of national budgets for their upkeep; no long-winded debates or party divisions there. Almost every political appointee in the land gets, apart from basic salary, free accommodation, transportation and other emoluments.

Even with all the outrageous pay and emoluments they awarded themselves, the rapacious and thoroughly avaricious political class takes absolutely no interest in solving any of the myriads of problems confronting the society.

And hefty paychecks are surely no guarantee that our politicians will stop from dipping their filthy hands into the national kitty as evidenced by the numerous scandals splashed in our media.
Without any sense of shame whatever, politicians in Ghana take pride in boasting about who between them is able to garner the largest loan.

It is only in Africa that people will beat chest in congratulations for ability to negotiate a US$3 billion loan from China, totally forgetting that modern China is just eleven years older than our dear republic.

And notwithstanding the mouth-watering pay they get, all our politicians apparently do was wage useless media war against one another - contributing their quota to unnecessarily raising the level of anxiety in the land.

At the end of their unmeritorious four-year term, these political jobbers splash themselves with ultra generous severance pay and what they term ex-gratia.

No one bother to tell the citizens what they ought to be grateful for. Little wonder that politics has become a do-or-die affair in Africa, or is it do-and-die?

Nigerian and Kenyan politicians are believed to be the highest paid in the world. While Kenya seems to be finding its way, Nigeria is clearly a failed state tottering on break-up as the Americans predicted it would in 2015.
Today in Nigeria, citizens are mouthing what is considered unthinkable just few years ago: “The soldiers must come back.”

President Goodluck Jonathan, the first Nigerian leader to brandish a Ph.D, is clearly a man totally out of his depth. He is as visionless as he is clueless and he is totally bereft of ideas.
Nigeria has never been blessed with great leadership, but Lucky Joe’s regime is such a monumental failure that it defies categorization.

Nigeria has never had it so bad. Not even at the height of the civil war did the generality of Nigerians feel as insecure and as helpless as they are today. And not since the twilight of the Gowon’s regime has the country been as rudderless as it is today.

Despite billions of naira voted for security, lives of Nigerians are being snuffed out like cheap candles.

It is sad to watch such a beautiful and once-promising country like Nigeria reduced to its present sorry state.

Until few years ago, few Nigerians would have believed it possible that their nation would become the Iraq or Afghanistan of West Africa. And until recent years, few would have believed that seemingly fun-crazed Nigerians will spawn suicide-bombers.

And while his (let’s settle for his country) is collapsing around him, Lucky Joe is fiddling. He spent his first few months pre-occupied with campaign for tenure elongation. Precious presidential time was spent canvassing that the idea that a four-year term was too short.

And whilst Boko Haram terrorists rain bombs on Nigerians, their president was rather focused on removing IMF-inspired so-called fuel subsidy.

Several civic organisations have rubbished the idea that the Nigerian government in any way subsidized fuel in the country. They have published data to show that fuel is most expensive in Nigeria among OPEC members. Their data clearly shows that the selling price at N65 per liter is way above the production cost.

Yet, while pretending to be negotiating with stake-holders, Lucky Joe announced the removal.

And the timing, good gracious!

Even were the arguments for the removal of fuel subsidy not to be so specious, the timing is simply atrocious. Does it have to be announced when Nigerians are busy trying to enjoy their New Year holidays? And does it have to be announced at a time of heightened security tension in the country?

Would a two or even four weeks delay break the economy?

Talking about breaking economy, what could be more economy-bursting than the latest budget that Lucky Joe presented?

While the Nigerian government was parroting the IMF-scripted nonsense about fuel subsidy, the Nigerian budget contained provision for the following items as published by a Nigerian paper:

• N280 million for two bullet proof Mercedes Benz saloon 600 E Guard at N140 million each

• N356.72 million for new vehicles in the presidential fleet

• 5 Mercedes Benz 350 (semi plain/partial bullet proof) at N25 million each, 10 jeeps (assorted - Range Rover, Prado and Land Cruiser) at N10 million each, and accessories for these vehicles will cost N25 million

• N57.43 million to upgrade facilities at the Presidential Villa

• N127.50 million to overhaul power generating sets

• N512.385 million to refurbish the family wing of the main residence

• N385.35 million for land reclamation at the State House Medical Centre

• N101.67 million for the rehabilitation of transformer substation in the villa

• N97.95 million for extension/expansion of State House car parks (The more SUVs and cars you accumulate the more ground you need to park them in!)

• N108 million for communication equipment at the Villa, Dodan Barracks and vice president's guest house

• N36.88 million to rehabilitate presidential/ministerial chalet at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, despite spending/budgeting N48 million for this last year

• N52.87 million to rehabilitate 10 presidential houses on Ibrahim Taiwo Street, Abuja, despite allocating/spending N101 million

• N530.57 million to rehabilitate the State House and Dodan Barracks, despite spending/allocating N628.64 million this year on the two properties

• N357.731 million for repairs and renovation of the administrative building at the Villa, despite allocating/spending N302.29 million on this last year

• N62.23 million for the rehabilitation of the banquet hall dome roof, despite allocating/spending N81 million on the roof last year

• N992.57 million for feeding the president and the vice president

So, while the elite shamelessly plead with citizens to tighten their belts, they are busy splashing the country’s wealth on their lavish lifestyles.

And Lucky Joe who told tale of going to school sans shoes to win elections, today is budgeting one billion naira to feed himself and his deputy!

Nigerians are rightly asking questions. Top of these are:
1. What has the government done with all the oil and other revenues it collected over the years?
2. And what happened to the US$41 billion dollars debt the government borrowed since its inception in 2007, having inherited zero debt from the Obasanjo governmnet?
3. Why has the foreign reserve being depleted from US$80 billion to US$33 billion and what has the money been used for?

It is difficult to argue with those that says Goodluck Jonathan is the worst ever president in Nigeria - a country that has had its share of truly appalling rulers.

Here was a man who is facing immense security challenges from the Boko Haram insurgency, but decided to add more to his problem by, literally, throwing down a gauntlet to his own people.

Luck Joe has 36 ministers and is said to have more than one hundred advisors, including one for beans and Cassava affais. Why can’t a single one of these so-called advisors tell the Bossman that removal of so-call oil subsidy will galvanise the populace like no other idiotic thing? Why can’t they tell him that it is only an insane and utterly stupid general that seek unnecessary fight while waging a major battle.

Now lucky Joe is forced to use the security people who should be confronting the menace of Boko Haram to face and beat up Nigerians protesting an ill-advised and wrongly timed provocation.
Cry the beloved country!

Happy New year to everyone.

Obasanjo Agonistes

2012-01-04T17:51:00.000+01:00

[Note: I wrote this piece in the year 2007 and, given recent happenings in Nigeria, I believe it deserves a republishing].
“Ti iya nla ba gbeni sanle, awon kekeke a ma gori eni.” – Yoruba proverb. English translation would be something like: “When a great calamity befalls a man, tiny indignities will start to pile atop.”
It is very difficult for me not to feel sorry for former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Less than a year ago, Uncle Sege, as he’s fondly called, was a master of all that he surveyed. Today, his image lay in ruins. It is as though every Nigerian needs to take a swipe at the Ota chief in order to feel better.

Sometime in 2007, I wrote a rejoinder to one Godwin Offoaro who was among the advocates of Chief Obasanjo’s elongation of his presidential term. I wrote, inter alia: “I believe that Chief Obasanjo will be doing a great disservice to himself, his family, the Yoruba race and the Nigerian nation if he should listen to the Offoaros of this world. As a born-again Christian, Chief Obasanjo is undoubtedly unaware of the fact that it is those who cry “Hossanah,” today who are going to be crying “Crucify him,” tomorrow.

I don’t know if he reads articles on the internet, but those close to Chief Obasanjo and those who truly love him should advice him to quit when his term ends. He has no business listening to people like Chief Offoaro. “

How prophetic!

Less than a year after he quit being President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is being daily lampooned by critics left and right.
Those corrupt, self-serving and envelope-chasing, shameless lot that call themselves journalists in Nigeria are using Obasanjo’s name to sell the scandal-mongering junks they call newspapers! And on the net, we have the arm-chair critics, many of them brandishing PhDs, telling bare-faced lies in order to bash Uncle Sege!

I hold no brief for Chief Obasanjo. Except for a brief encounter at the Amsterdam airport long time ago, I have never met the man.
And in all honesty, he's simply too crude for my liking. But I am outraged whenever my intelligence is assaulted. How on earth can any thinking human being claim that the Obasanjo’s regime was the worst ever in the history of Nigeria?

This is clearly an affront.

I was too young to remember regimes up to the Ironsi brief tenure. But I have being a witness to Nigeria’s governance since Gowon and I hereby challenge anyone, I repeat, anyone to come out and tell us which other government has performed better that the Obasanjo’s regime. It might be true that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed is the king. But so far as achievements are concern, no other Nigerian leader even come close to chief Obasanjo impressive records.

Chief Obasanjo is certainly no saint; no human being is. But let’s learn to give credit where it is due.
For crying out loud, the man spent eight years ruling Nigeria and brought a modicum of respectability to the country. Of course, the roads are still in terrible shape. The electricity generation and distribution systems are still in shambles and a host of other things. But Chief Obasanjo successfully tackled the telecommunication sector. He effectively reformed the banking sector. He paid off Nigeria’s debt. He left the Nigerian treasury in better shape than he met it. If every Nigerian leader has registered the same modest achievement, the country will not be in the sorry state it is today.

Below are some of the things Chief Obasanjo did and for which he deserves credit. And I ask those criticizing him to tell us which other Nigerian leader can boast of the same achievements.

Nigeria’s external debt and reserve: Chief Obasanjo inherited a looted treasury brimming only with crippling external debt. At the end of his tenure, these debts have not only been paid back, but he left a respectable (US$30+billion) reserves in the country’s external accounts. And some people are arguing that the man’s eight years tenure was wasted!

Nigeria’s international image: I do not know where these critics were living before the second coming of Chief Obasanjo. What is not in question, as any honest and honourable person will attest, is that Nigeria’s external image then was at the lowest ebb possible. Nigeria was then equated only with dictatorship and 419ers. The country lost its voices at international forum. Nigeria was a pariah state and its attempt to galvanized support for a UN seat was seen as a bad joke.

Employing Nigerian human talents: At least all his critic admits that Chief Obasanjo is a totally-detribalised Nigerian. His Yoruba critics apparently are miffed because he refused to use his presidential terms to promote a Yoruba agenda. His Hausa critics are angry because they believe that he clipped the wings of the Northern oligarchists. What is difficult to understand his where his Igbo critics are coming from?

No other Nigerian leader has given the Igbo the same high-profile appointments accorded them by Chief Obasanjo. And yet, even those Igbos who choose to praise him had to qualify their credit. Of course, Doctors Okonjo-Iweala,Oby Ezekwesili and Soludo are brainy, world class technocrats. But Nigeria would have been deprived of their huge talents had Chief Obasanjo not brought them aboard.

Telecommunication: Pre-Obasanjo’s Nigeria was in the stone sage, tele-communication-wise. Under the regime of General Abdulsalami, yours truly was arrested in Nigeria by a police constable who believed that only armed robbers and drug pushers needed mobile phone. My plea that mobile phones are common things in Ghana where I live fell on deaf ears. Today, Nigeria is numero uno in Africa in mobile telephony usage.

Reforms in the banking sector: The London-based New African magazine in its April 2008 edition has a supplementary on Nigeria. In it we read about the tremendous strides Nigerian banks are making with some of them now listed on the London Exchange. Any traveler in the West African sub-region cannot but notice the presence of Nigerian banks.

What Chief Obasanjo and his team did with the Nigerian banking sector is nothing short of revolutionary. The question is: to whom do the chief’s critics credited with this achievement?

The EFCC: On fighting corruption, there is no single Nigerian or even African leader (with the possible exception of Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings) who has fought tenaciously against corruption like Chief Obasanjo. Again, the record is clear.

Who but a child born today hasn’t heard of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission? And may we ask these critics whom they credited with setting up the EFCC?

I am not at all arguing that corruption has been entirely removed from Nigeria. What is clear is that corrupt leaders today no longer enjoy the same type of impunity they enjoyed in pre-EFCC days! And the notorious 419ers have had their operations heavily curtailed.

The EFCC recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Among its achievements, the commission claimed to have recovered cash and assets worth US$500 billion from corrupt leaders. This is very solid achievements in anyone’s book. We are entitled to ask the Obasanjo bashers why they keep hammering upon corruption under his regime and not mentioning the staggering sum recovered by his government.

I do not argue that Obasanjo is not corrupt. No, the argument here is: which Nigerian leader has fought corruption and recovered any money for the nation apart from Chief Obasanjo? This includes even the muscular despotism of General Buhari.
Even if he’s corrupt, Chief Obasanjo couldn’t have stolen upward of 500 billion dollars which still puts him on the credit side. Uncle Sege might be corrupt, or he might not. I simply have no evidence. The onus is upon those accusing him to provide evidence of his corruption. It is part of our civic responsibilities to report cases of corruption to institutions like the EFCC.

Why on earth is difficult to believe that the man could have borrowed the money for his businesses from the banks as he claimed? Which collateral is more solid than the Presidency of the nation? It might be unethical to abuse the privileges of his office, but it’d be a lesser offence than looting the commonwealth!
I thought the most successful entrepreneurs are those most able to use their connections. Case in point: a Nigerian, Dangote, is reputed to be Africa’s richest man. As far as I know, no one is accusing Alhaji Dangote of corruption.

The post-Abacha Nigeria was a disaster waiting to happen. It was a morally and financially bankrupt nation wallowing in financial debt and international opprobrium. It was a pariah state in every sense of the world. It was a nation tottering on breakup. Few Nigerians dare call it a home.

Although we have not reached the Promised Land yet, but most Nigerians I talk to today believe in the viability of the Nigerian Project. Today, many of us proudly call ourselves Nigerians. And may I please ask to whom these Obasanjo-bashers would give the credit of rescuing us from the rot to?
Even if only because he made it possible for us to call and talk to our loved ones at home with ease, we ought to salute that singular achievement!

Those of us that make it our business (most especially the analysts among us) to inform should be circumspect in getting our facts and figures right. The onus is upon us to be disciplined enough not to allow our emotions and personal grudges to becloud our sense of judgment and objectivity. We owe it to posterity to strive to set the records straights as others might be tempted to use our pieces as sources for their research. That’s my plea!

Given the vituperation directed against the person of Chief Obasanjo, I think mayhap Nigerians deserve the type of otiose leadership they have been getting over the years. Most of the so-called Nigerian analysts I read are too myopic. Most of them apparently cannot see or reason beyond their nose. This makes me wonder why they choose to become disseminators of information rather than fiction writers!

The question Nigerians have to ask themselves is whether or not a society can prosper where members see nothing good in one another. What good can come out of a country where citizens fanatically believe in rubbishing each other?

Foreign Minister’s unpardonable gaffe

2011-12-17T12:01:00.000+01:00

“The illiterate and shallow minded Negro, who can see no further than his nose is now the greatest stumbling block, in the way of the race. He tells us that we must be satisfied with our condition, and that we must not think of building up a nation of our own. He will say that we must not seek to organize ourselves racially, but we must depend on the good feelings of the other fellow for the solution to the problem that now confronts us. This is a dangerous policy, and it is my duty to warn against it. The Negro must take it upon himself to better his own condition.” – Marcus Garvey

According to a peacefmonline.com news report, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, has said his outfit cannot coerce foreign missions in Ghana to treat Ghanaians who engage their services with the necessary respect they deserve as citizens of the country.

The report was titled: “Embassies Cannot Be Forced To Respect Ghanaians – Minister.”

Here is a quote:” The Finder newspaper reported on Tuesday some inhumane conditions Ghanaians go through in their bid to acquire visa from these foreign missions. They are sometimes made to stand for long hours in fair or wet weather waiting to be attended to by officials of these embassies.

“We have handled these issues in the past, but it has always been consistent with diplomatic practices,” Alhaji Mumuni told Citi News. “We cannot order or compel, all we can do is to engage in negotiations with them. And they have been fruitful. ”

Others have questioned whether the Ghanaian Parliament was not adequately empowered to pass laws that could deal with such issues, however, the foreign affairs minister explained that diplomatic matters were handled delicately.

Alhaji Mumuni explained that some of these foreign missions enjoy some immunity underscored by certain treaty obligations making it very difficult to impose some minimum condition on them, adding that the only way to get things to change is through continuous dialogue.

He said that the surest way of dealing with the problem was “to approach these issues, as the complaints came and negotiate with the foreign embassies to achieve positive results. ”
http://news.peacefmonline.com/social/201112/84351.php?storyid=100&#commentsread

“We must realize that our greatest enemies are not those on the outside, but those in our midst. When we recognize the enemies on the outside, and do not allow them to pass. Then we have those on the inside working with us to destroy us, without our knowing.” Marcus Garvey

I have used this column to lament the government of President John Atta Mills moribund foreign policy thrusts.

It is sad to see Ghana, the country that was previously regarded as the continent’s moral compass, and one that championed African causes reduced to mere spectator as the New Imperialists ran riot on our blessed continent.

But with people like Alhaji Mumumi at the help of affairs at our ministry of foreign affairs and regional integration (whatever that’s supposed to mean), one can begin to understand why Ghana’s voice was muted in the epochal events that happened in La Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

And with the likes of Alhaji Mumuni heading the ministry that was supposed to integrate the West Africa sub-region, little wonder that there is absolutely no movement on integration despite all the noises our leaders continue to make.

No, Mr. Minister, you got it badly wrong. We do not need negotiation to tell foreigners to treat our people with respect. And it is simply wrong for you to say that “And they have been fruitful.”

No, your negotiation (whatever you meant by that) has not been fruitful as a visit to any Western Embassy in Accra will easily attest.

No, Mr. Minister, Ghanaians do not ask for the moon when they ask that they be treated with some modicum of respect by countries that decide to set up embassies here.

And it is wrong, plain wrong for people like Alhaji Mumuni to continue to think that some people are in our country to do us some favour by their presence.

It is wrong for Ministers in the Ghana government to continue to believe that they need to negotiate in order for foreign embassies to stop treating our people with impunity and abject disrespect.

I have been to several Ghanaian embassies and missions abroad, and I have seen firsthand how a poor, HIPCed, third world country like Ghana always manages to make her embassies as attractive and as comfortable as possible.

Even in the missions that are not that palatial, decent reception arrangements are always in place, as a matter of course.

This is how it should be.

It is just simple courtesy that human beings should be treated with some degree of dignity and respect. This is what westerners appear never to understand.

We know that Europe has, due to its penchant for insane wars to maintain her ill-gotten wealth, bankrupted itself, but even then Western Embassies cannot plead poverty when to come to providing basic necessities like sitting places and conveniences.

It does not cost much to erect decent reception and provide decent furniture for clients, which is what Ghanaians that go to these embassies are.

If I go to any establishment to transact business and was made to fork out over one hundred dollars, the least I expect is to be provided a seat and treated with some courtesy. I don’t know why this is too difficult for Minister Mumuni to grasp.

The Embassies charge arms and legs for the services they provide, and we ought neither to beg nor negotiate with them in order for them to provide some very basic comforts for our people.

“If white people were dependent on others, they would not be as successful as they are today. If Japan were dependent on other countries, she would not be as successful as she is today. As long as the Negro is dependent on other groups, he will remain the lowest down.” Marcus Garvey

It is saddening and equally maddening that we have people with slavish mentality like Alhaji Mumuni as ministers in this age and time.

As someone that has spent close to three decades campaigning for African self-assertion and self-confidence, I feel totally appalled and scandalised to read the pathetic message from the foreign minister.

With the type of mindless mindset Minister Mumuni displayed, I now know why we are treated shoddily and with utter contempt when we have occasions to visit Western embassies.

Our own minister, kept at our expense, see nothing wrong in western embassies making us to line up like common cattle at auction, after they have collected huge sums of (non-refundable) fees from us!

Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that our elite love their parleys at these embassies where they are piled with expensive cocktails that never fail to loosen their tongue, in order for them to betray our secrets to foreign agents; now we have a minister who see nothing wrong in foreign embassies refusing to extend to us the most elementary of courtesies.

Those among us that have travel outside our shore know that these embassies do not do the same thing in Europe. The British will not put up embassy in Paris or the Italians in Warsaw without taken into consideration that people have to sit down and use toilets.

But when it comes to Africa, anything and everything go. After all, this is Africa! And our leaders think that the only thing we can do is to continue to beg to be treated as human beings.

Alas, the minister responsible for regional integration in Ghana appears not to know what is happening in his own backyard.

Miffed by shoddy treatments meted out to its citizens, the Nigerian government recently gave foreign embassies the marching order and asked that they speed up their visa processes, and ensure that Nigerians are issued or refused their visas in 3-days.

And here we have a minister in the Ghanaian cabinet stupidly telling us we are powerless to do anything when Westerners in our midst continue to treat us like colonial subjects, and that our only recourse is to negotiate.

Tchaah!

“If you have no confidence in yourself, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won before you’ve started.” - Marcus Garvey.

Slavery and colonialism did much to damage our people’s psyches and reduced us to the lowest of the lows, but do we need to continue to accept insult upon indignities?

Methinks that it is high time we jettison our slave and colonial mentalities. It is time we make other people realise that we are affronted whenever our dignities are insulted.

What I know is that were Ghana to set up embassy in The Hague and fail to provide comfortable reception, the Dutch visitors there will find it unacceptable and raise a ruckus.

To begin with, I believe that we will have enough respect for the Dutch people to even dream of slighting them so.

That is all, Mr. Minister, simple respect; elementary courtesy.

And Mr. Minister, next time you go on your cocktail circuits, be reminded that power is transient.

Today due to the position you hold in government, the Western embassies treat you with false respect and high protocol; in few years when you no longer hold your current post, and have occasion to go to these embassies, you will be rudely confronted with the types of indignities your compatriots are made to go through.

Today you think that such crass disrespect can be treated only with negotiation, but by then you will rue the fact that you failed to do something when you had the power.

It is then it will dawn on you that, no, Ghanaians did not ask for the moon when they asked to be treated with simple courtesies and respect.

Nigeria: Siasia as a metaphor

2011-12-06T12:36:00.001+01:00

The recent hullabaloo surrounding the position of Nigeria's (now ex) national football coach, Samson Siasia, vividly showcases a stunning metaphor of a nation that cannot seem to get anything right.

For those who do not know the story, here is the lowdown: Samson Siasia was hired by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) as the national coach following vociferous calls by many Nigerians who clamored for an indigenous coach following a sad parade of foreign coaches -- paid hyper-salaries -- who failed to get them anywhere.

And for those not in the know, Nigerians consider football their only redeeming feature.

Football is about the only thing that binds the citizens of the vast nation of one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty-eight million (depending on who is doing the counting) souls. Having been so badly let down by a succession of very callous, shameless, unprincipled, amoral, ruthless, and corrupt leaders, Nigerians find solace only in the glories their national football team used to bring them.

And also for those not in the know, Nigeria, like most African nations, is a fiction invented by the European colonialists to satisfy their imperial ambition.

Sadly, however, post-independence leaders have failed to build a nation from the vast conglomerate of ancient national, tribal, and ethnic groups forced by colonial imperatives to live together in the same geographical space.

To be fair, there were glimmers of hope in the immediate post-colonial period when the enthusiasm of seeing the demise of foreign rules galvanized the people to aspire to prove to the world that, in the words, of Kwame Nkrumah, "the Black man is capable of managing his own affairs."

Sadly, this golden period was short-lived. Tribal jingoism colluded with political opportunism and grand larceny to set the country ablaze in a 30-month-long civil war from 1967-1970 when the Igbo people (of Eastern Nigeria) sought to secede.

Successful prosecution of the war to keep the country united also brought about a semblance of unity. This was helped by easy petro dollars that flew into government coffers and soon gave the people and their leaders the illusion of wealth and grandeur. A Nigerian president boasted in the 1970s that money was not the country's problem but how to spend it.

Like all good things that were obtained easily, the vast wealth was soon wasted mainly on consumption and white-elephant projects that contributed nothing to the nation's economic development.

The petro money was soon frittered away so much so that by the 1980s, Nigeria needed to be rescued by the Bretton Wood institutions. A punishing austerity measure wiped out the country's nascent middle class and saw the devaluation of the currency, the naira, to the point of virtual inutility.

Things fell apart for Nigeria and the people were no longer at ease.

In recent years, tribalism, political hooliganism, and virulent religious intolerance have polarized the country so badly that citizens' lives are being wasted with Old Testament abandon. Nigerians no longer feel safe except in their home regions. Not even members of the National Youth Service Corps set up to foster a sense of unity among Nigerians are immune from the senseless tribal-cum-religious slaughters.

A militant Islamic sect, so-called Boko Haram, is wreaking havoc in much of Northern Nigeria, and the federal government appears powerless to stop them. Both the UN office and police headquarters in the nation's capital, Abuja, bore the brunt of massive suicide car bombings.

readmore.

Thinking outside the box

2011-12-06T12:31:00.001+01:00

As a writer who is also a keen observer of happenstances in Africa, it is quite distressing to see how those that are in charge continue to throw up their hands in despair and continually lament the sorry state of our affairs.

Rather than sit, think and put in place policies and structures to solve problems, we see our officials turn themselves into hapless crybabies. Like mindless little children they deafen our eardrums with their cacophonous lamentations of helplessness. They keep on cataloguing for us what bedevil us without suggesting ways we can solve them. They keep behaving like we pay them to tell us what we already know rather than come up with solutions.

What are we to make of the news item on myjoyonline.com of September 23, 2011 with the title “MTTU is broken down; we have no equipment to fight road crashes – Awuni,” which I quote here: “Passengers and road users across the country must put their fate in God anytime they board any of the commercial vehicles because the country’s statutory institution tasked with the duty to police major and minor roads across the country say they have no equipment to guarantee their safety.

The head of the Police Motor Traffic Transport Unit ACP Angwubutoge Awuni at a stakeholder’s meeting in Accra on Thursday said his unit is virtually ‘dead’ because there is no equipment to work with.

The meeting was held to find lasting solution to the road carnage in the country.

From January to July 2011, a total of 1,081 people have perished in fatal road crashes across the country.

Hundreds have sustained several degrees of injuries.

The meeting was called Thursday in order for stakeholders to proffer solutions to the carnage on the country’s roads.

ACP Awuni said his outfit is completely helpless in fighting road accidents because it does not have the necessary equipments to fight the carnage on our roads.

“The national MTTU can boast of only one towing vehicle that is even broken down. So we are having problems. The resources that will assist us are not there.

“…We don’t have a single serviceable speed gun; a common speed gun that will tell us the vehicle that is running is at a greater speed than it is supposed to be going.

“…The MTTU is broken down totally as we speak now. We don’t have things that will assist us to project the things we are talking about now,” he lamented.

He was even worried that several reports which chronicled the challenges his outfit is facing has not been worked on and feared the country will only organize talkshops whilst failing to address the key challenges facing the unit.

ACP Awuni also lamented the non-existent command chain in the transport unit which makes it difficult for the necessary instructions and queries to be issued.

Transport Minister Collins Dauda in an interview with Joy News described as worrying the spate of road accidents in the country. Whilst acknowledging the frankness in the assertions of ACP Awuni, he said his outfit will do what it can to equip the MTTU.

He said his outfit is considering stringent road safety measures at lorry parks even before the vehicles will set off from their various stations. He said the vehicles will be checked at the stations before the set off. He also hinted of stiffer punishment to drivers who use mobile phones whilst driving.”

Hmm.

First to Transport Minister Collins Dauda: Sir, it is time Ministers like your good self stop telling us what your outfit is considering doing. It is time for less talk, more action. We citizens are tired of all the announced intentions that are loudly proclaim but never see the light of the day.

This is the second time this column will have a beef with the Ghana Police Force.

In a piece last year (‘The IGP and his convoy’), the column lambasted the IGP for travelling in a siren-blaring convoy while tax-paying citizens are suffocating in oppressive heat.

Let’s quote from that article: “We live in a society where things are becoming increasingly comical. The other day I was pleasantly amused, surprised and angered when I saw the head of the police, the Inspector General, in his GP1 vehicle, sirening his way through a dense traffic in Kasoa.

First, I was amused that Oga Police did not see the irony in his peculiar situation. The IGP is the head of the police force, right. The Motor Transport and Traffic Unit (MTTU) is part of the police of which Mr. IGP is the boss, right? MTTU is charged with ensuring hassle-free vehicular movements on our roads, right? How could a whole IGP missed the irony in his trying to cut corners by beating snarled-up traffic with his siren-blaring convoy?

I was angered because as I have lamented severally in this column, we are suffering in great sufferation (let’s borrow Rasta-speak here) in this country of ours mostly because people who get paid to get things done do not perform. They are not only failing to do their jobs, but rather look for ways to make it possible for them to beat and cheat the very system they are supposed to manage.
And most galling of all is that there are no checks in place to ensure that these system-bursting bigmanism does not exist. Equally infuriating is the fact that there is absolutely nothing we citizens can do about this obscene abuse of power. No matter how irate I felt about the spectacle of the IGP patently cheating the system, there is not a darn thing I could do about it. I knew it and he obviously knows that no bloody civilian will dare open his mouth.

Who born dog, indeed?

Several questions become pertinent here: Does the IGP have authorization to use siren or is our number one law enforcement agent breaking the law? If a common IGP can travel in siren-blowing convoy, what is there to stop the other service chiefs from doing the same? The heads of the navy, army, air-force, CEPS, Prisons and Forestry could also start using sirens. And what about our parliamentarians; are they not also worthy enough? And the Directors at our MDAs; are they also not worthy enough? And let’s not forget our District Chiefs Executives; they also have their apushkeleke (Ghanaian slang for ladies of easy virtues) and other part-time girl-friends to impress, don’t they?

I was surprised because there should be responsible authorities to point out to the IGP the absurdity of his blaring siren to clear way for himself in traffic. If he surrounds himself with sycophants who are not prepared to tell him some home truth, those who appoint him should do so. They should point out to him that he is being paid to ensure that citizens do not spend inordinate hours roasting in traffic hold-ups whilst is men are busy doing their thing. I didn’t say collecting bribes, did I?

No, I am not joining those calling for the IGP’s head; but I’d say that until he makes travelling on our road less nightmarish, he has no business disturbing our peace with his sirens.”

Let’s return to the present article. According to the myjoyonline report, ACP Awuni said his outfit is completely helpless in fighting road accidents because it does not have the necessary equipments to fight the carnage on our roads.

“The national MTTU can boast of only one towing vehicle that is even broken down. So we are having problems. The resources that will assist us are not there. We don’t have a single serviceable speed gun; a common speed gun that will tell us the vehicle that is running is at a greater speed than it is supposed to be going… The MTTU is broken down totally as we speak now. We don’t have things that will assist us to project the things we are talking about now.” ACP Awuni lamented.

Shame, shame!

So, ACP Awuni has absolutely no qualm at all to tell us that the whole Ghana Police Force (GPF) cannot boast a single decent auto-mechanic to fix its broken down tow-vehicle? And he has no shame whatever that all the brains at GPF cannot come up with any idea to get equipments for the service.

We are in deeper trouble than I thought possible.

We really ought to ask what type of country we live in where the whole police force cannot boast a common speed gun?

ACP Awuni probably forget to do what has become a national pastime; go around with begging bowl and ask the Chinese, the Americans, Europeans or even the Arabs to donate.
We seem to be a nation that has lost any sense of shame and one that believes that foreigners owe us a free lunch.

We are a nation that has apparently lost any capacity for critical thinking. Above that we seem like a nation that loves begging like dogs love bones!

Seriously, why do people like ACP Awuni continue to refuse to learn? With the Internet, there is little need for us to even think of re-inventing any wheel. And our officials, when it suits them, tell us that we now live in a Global Village. The question is: why don’t they learn from the village in which they are supposed to live.

Many National Police Forces have solved the problem of errant drivers and rather than keep on wailing like helpless children, ACP Awuni and his team should take some time to study how the other forces did it.

Actually, it is no rocket science at all.

Lagos in Nigeria used to be considered the World’s most lawless city as far as traffic was concerned. But today, errant driving has all but been eliminated in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

No, it was not by divine intervention and actually not by any super-human effort. A determined effort by the Governor of Lagos state backed by the imposition of stiff penalties has ensured that Lagos drivers obey traffic rules, do not stop to pick passengers outside of bus stops and, perhaps more importantly, stopped drivers and owners from parking their cars wherever fancies them.

The fear of paying hefty penalties also persuades car owners and drivers that it is unwise to allow their vehicles to break down and obstruct traffic. All these measures ensure that the once agonizing Lagos traffic has been unsnarled and citizens can breathe sigh of relief.

Lagos is not so far away from Accra and our leaders continue to pay their lip service to ECOWAS unity, so it behooves ACP Awuni to take a trip his counterparts in Lagos and see\learn how the Lagosians did it.

It is quite insulting when officials like ACP Awuni come out to insult our intelligence with the type of gratuitous statement credited to him. They should rather utililise the time they use in making speeches to brainstorm and come out with solutions. It is time to stop cataloguing the woes without coming up with any ideas or suggestions on how to solve them.

If he has no desire to go to Lagos, all the ACP has to do is to sit down awhile and crack the brains and come out with solutions.

Here I could help with some suggestions. Ok, The GPF is not a limited liability company but rather than lament and bemoan, ACP Awuni should ask his sector minister for money - grant or loan, to buy ten towing vehicles.

The police already have power to tow anything that obstructs traffic. So, all the MTTU needs to do is get into serious business of towing abandoned vehicles. I am sure with the ten vehicles and the hefty fines, they will collect, the GPF will make enough money to pay government back its money with interests in no time.

No one who has had to pay heavy fines for towed vehicle would like to repeat the experience and the words of mouth will ensure that car-owners check their vehicles properly before putting them on the road.

Should the GPF be unwilling to do this, being not entrepreneurial and all that, ACP Awuni and his people should get the sector ministry to pass appropriate legislation to involve the private sector. There is little doubt that many Ghanaians will gladly invest in the very lucrative vehicle-towing business.

A reply to Cameron

2011-11-25T17:17:00.001+01:00

Our president, John Atta Mills, is really a very polite guy. Even as he tried to give a reply to the imbecilic statement credited to the current leader of that blood-letting and blood-thirsty Isle of Iniquities that still calls itself the United (?) Kingdom, our president couched his statements in diplomatic-speak.

The shameless leader of a country that built its wretched wealth on the blood of innocent Africans, can today wake up and tell us that the so-called aid his country supposedly give to us, will be cut off unless we grant some so-called human rights to those that do not know what to do with their sexual organs.

Ah!

It might be our president’s great strength that he does not want to give unnecessary offense, but methinks offense should hastily, and without reservation, be given to those that started it.

Respect should be accorded only to those that know its value and give it back in return. I am never going to respect one that disrespect me and treat me with contempt and disdain. European leaders and scholars are not deserving of any respect from us.

It is quite simple, really.

Europeans, since the dawn of time, has never treated Africa with respect, and even with their world collapsing around them, we see no evidence that they have jettison their age-old prejudiced mentality, and shed the stupidity of their ancestors who believe that skin color confers some intelligence.

Today, even as the Portuguese prime minister is in the African nation of Angola begging for financial assistance, we still see Portuguese football fans still stupidly shouting racial abuses at Black players.

Was it not some few years ago that one advisor to Tony ‘Liar’ Blair canvassed for the re-colonisation of Africa because, according to him, we have made mess of our affairs?
I wonder where the idiot is today to tell us what he thinks we should do with Europe, that has magnificently bankrupted itself with its greediness, selfishness, mindless racism and insane militarism.

It is not in my nature to extend respect to anyone that takes it upon himself to give me unsolicited order on how to live my life.

How true that everyone has its own style!

Papa Mugabe lambasted the insolent demand by David Cameron by calling him a Satan.

"It becomes worse and satanic when you get a prime minister like Cameron saying countries that want British aid should accept homosexuality," Papa Mugabe thundered in a speech. "To come with that diabolic suggestion to our people is a stupid offer," he added for good measure.

"Do not get tempted into that (homosexuality). You are young people. If you go that direction, we will punish you severely. It is condemned by nature. It is condemned by insects and that is why I have said they are worse than pigs and dogs." Papa Mugabe added.

Papa Mugabe does not suffer fools gladly as the former CNN reporter, Amanpour, discovered to her chagrin.

So badly bruised was Christiane Amanpour in her encounter with Papa Mugabe that she will not be in any hurry for another encounter.

It is always a delight for me when I see confident African put insolent Westerners in their places the way Minister Louis Farrakhan robustly put ill-informed Mike Wallace in his place, and the ANC Youth Leader put one idiotic BBC Correspondent to shame.

Both Papa Mugabe and Louis Farrakhan, whatever their frailties as humans, are on top of their issues, so people cross them only at great perils.

Both men do not suffer from any inferiority complex that would make them cringe at the sight of bloody assassins like Cameron.

Were I in President Mills place, I know that I certainly would have handled Cameron differently.

My reply to him would have been so comprehensively robust that all the Camerons of this world would think twice before opening their dental-challenged, wretched mouths to make any demand of my country.
Methinks that the problem is that we Africans, most especially our leaders, have always been too polite to want to give offence.

It might have to do with our cultured upbringing that admonishes us not to give unduly offense to other people and to treat every human person with respect and dignity.

But as Professor Henrik Clarke warned: “The mistake our parents made and which we continue to make is that we credit Westerners with the spirituality and the humanity which they (westerners) neither claimed nor deserved.”

This exactly is what gives those blasted long-nosed, busy-bodies from Euro-America to keep thinking that the world still revolves around their collapsing world, or that they are still relevant in the global scheme of things.

Europe’s world is collapsing around it, with many European nations groaning under massive private and public debt, yet idiots like Cameron still have the audacity to give lectures, like some important potentate.

Another of our big problem is that we allow Westerners, with their very bloody history in our continent, the leeway to take high moral grounds.

This should not be so.

It beholds us to keep on reminding any Westerner that want to make it her duty to give sanctimonious lectures to us the vast crimes her ancestors committed (continue to commit) in Africa.

The latest of which is the callous murder of Muammar Qathafi.

Let us begin with some basics. The laws extant in Africa today against the sodomites, who want to call themselves some fanciful names, were put in place by the forebears of Cameron during their colonial mis-adventure in our blessed continent.

The UK boasted that it gives US35 million dollars in ‘aid’ to Ghana and tries to make a song and dance about it.

Should we not ask some pertinent questions here?

How do we quantify the vast resources British colonialists stole from Ghana during their century rapacious rape of the land?

Shall we not ask how much aid was paid to for the millions of slaves British merchants stole from Africa?

Ought we not question how cities like Liverpool, London and Bristol going to pay back the vast money they made from slavery?

Shall we not ask when the bloody Britons will send back to us the vast art works stolen from us and still today make money for the British exchequer?

Shall we not ask who is supposed to pay for all the rapine wars the slavers foisted on our societies, the consequences of which we continue to suffer today?

And should we not ask how much of looted African wealth has been deposited in British in recent years?

So a bloody irritant like Cameron can come out and insult and threaten us because his country gives a tiny percentage of funds looted from us to us as aid and we are supposed to say: “Yes, Master?”

So we have a Cameron from a country whose bloody history will shame a nation of savages giving himself the audacity to talk about human rights.

Should we not ask when in all her wretched history the UK has respected the rights of other people?

Sadly for mindless Euro-Jingoists like Cameron, and happily for the rest of us, Europe no longer rules the waves, if it is ruling anything at all! And it never will again. It was the perceptive Satre who once said that “Europe once made history; today history is being made of it!”

Which bring us to the question what exactly Europeans still really think of themselves.

A Yoruba proverb says:: “Eni ti a nwo ni awo sokun, ti o nwo ara e lawo rerin,” it means “Someone that we look upon with utter contempt, who continues to look at himself with admiration.”

Of course, Europeans, like the perpetual little children they are will continue to sing and dance to their make-up lullabies. They were there dreaming that the Asians were waiting for a Caucasians Messiah until the Asians met, overtook and passed them by. Today, not even all the vast wealth they looted from the colonies is enough to keep them afloat.

Europe no longer holds any appeal to anyone. And, as one of our prophets, Frantz Fanon, warned: “Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. Europe now lives as such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed.

Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and examples. For many among us the European model is the most inspiring. We have therefore seen in the preceding pages to what mortifying setbacks such an imitation has led us. European achievements, European techniques, and the European style ought no longer to tempt us and to throw us off our balance. When I search for the Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and the avalanche of murders.”

And should we not ask what exactly is wrong with the European high-culture that made Europeans incapable of thinking of relationships with other cultures except in terms of violence, conquest and domination?

Why can’t they learn to keep their wretched ideas confined to their blasted continent?

Mr. Cameron should tell us why sodomy is a human rights issue and polygamy is not.

I sincerely hope that come next time, our President will have the mind to tell Cameron or any other long-nosed busy-body from the West to mind his bloody business. What our president should tell Mr. Cameron next time is to go and hug the Gibraltar or drown in the Thame.

As for the threat of cut-off of aid, there should be the counter-threat of sanctioning British firms here.

Nigeria has proved that Europeans can issue only empty threats to those they think are afraid of them. The British were crawling all over Lagos when Sanni Abach sanctioned British airways. And just this week, we see the British flooding in to beg the Nigerians following a disagreement over airport slots.

We have seen those that enslaved and colonized bankrupted themselves with their egocentric ways and the insane wars they continue to fight around the world. Europe, as Fanon said, ought not to hold any appeal for us.

The news juts this morning was: “Angola Offers To Help Portugal In Tackling Financial Crisis

(RTTNews) - Oil-rich Angola had offered to help the African nation's former colonial master Portugal to cope with its ongoing financial crisis that has forced Lisbon to seek foreign bailout loans, according to Angola's state news agency Angop.”

It is time we in Africa realize that the table has turned. The time British and Europe rule the world is finally and truly over. It is time we learn to use our new strength to bolster our interests.

Till selfishness do us apart

2011-11-22T13:11:00.001+01:00

I often wonder why analysts fail to put personal selfishness on top of their list of the woes besetting us in Africa.

Recently, I was in the Bijlmer, one of the biggest suburbs of the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

Bijlmer is one of the massive housing projects built in the 1970s to provide accommodation to the growing and increasingly affluent Dutch citizens.

Bijlmer’s high-rise and low priced apartments attracted most of the immigrants that trooped to the Netherlands as migrant-workers when the Dutch economy was booming. Bijlmer is home to most of the Africans that live in the Netherland.

Few Africans will sojourn in the Netherlands without ever having a thing or two to do in the Bijlmer. It is a mini-Africa that attracts those that yearns for anything that remotely resembles the homeland they left.

Like most estates peopled with low-income earners, the Bijlmer soon developed into a vast, over-crowded ghetto with reputation for every vice known to sociologists.
One of the interesting things about the Dutch is their sense of social fairness to their less privileged fellow citizens.

Although ostensibly a capitalist nation, the Netherlands did not practice the same Jurassic economic and social policies that have blighted that class-ridden Isle of Iniquities that still call itself Great (?) Britain.

Aware that a society that fails to cater for its most vulnerable asks for serious problems, the Dutch evolved a social-democratic system whereby there is a safety net for society’s underprivileged.

They also set a minimum standard of living below which no Dutch citizen is expected to fall. A guaranteed, free and quality education ensured that every Dutch citizen got, at least, basic education for free – courtesy of the Dutch state.

Sadly, times are changing and the Netherlands is changing at such reckless pace that it seems heeded in the direction of the UK. Unsurprising, the Dutch society today suffers from some of the social afflictions that has devastated the USA and the UK.

Massive cuts in social programmes are impoverishing large segments of the Dutch society with attendant social consequences. It is possible today to see pockets of poverty in the Netherlands.

Of course, we are not yet talking about the poor standards we have in Africa for which we dance ourselves silly in praise of God!

Few years ago the Dutch embarked on transforming the Bijlmer. The high-rise, crime-ridden apartments were pulled down. In their places were built new, detached and pricey houses.

The down-turn is that the new apartments, unlike the previous buildings which low-income earners love so much to hire, are strictly for sale.

The Bijlmer has been totally transformed that people who, like me, visit after some years of absence, have difficulty recognizing the New Bijlmer.

Apart from the new shiny apartments, I also saw in the Bijlmer, several sport facilities scattered all over the place.

Apart from the football fields, there are gyms and facilities for weight-lifting, lawn and table tennis, gymnastic, volley and basket ball and host of other sports.

All were built in open space in the several parks that dotted the Bijlmer. They were built by the government for citizens to enjoy free of charge.

As I sat, watched and admired many of the facilities, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of sadness and anger. The sight brought the stark truth home to me that we in Africa have lots of catch up to do.

Why is it that the whole of Ghana cannot boast of a single public swimming?

In years gone by, we are noted for our sense of community and for our culture of sharing. Travellers like Ibn Batuta waxed poetic about our forebears’ honesty, sense of justice and fair-play. They talked about how secure and safe our societies were.

They spoke about how our kings abhor theft and any form of larceny. Ancient chroniclers like the Dutchman, Dapper, wrote about the beauty and cleanliness of our villages, town sand cities.

Today, travelers to our shore will only marvel at our capacity for dishonesty and our penchant for primitive acquisition. They will shake their heads at the filth in which we live. The planlessness of our towns and cities will baffle them. The noise pollution in our towns will drive them insane. The crime rate, both petty and major, will make them cringe with fear. Our inability to keep time will make their heads spin. Our vast hypocrisy (pretending to be what we are not) will confound them. The absolute disorder in our society will confuse them. The sheer indiscipline in our society will stagger any visitor to our shore. They will be bewildered by our inability to get the most basic of things right. Our penchant to take one step forward and take twenty steps backward will stun them. Only a visitor with the thickest of skins will not be staggered by our absolute lack of any sense of direction.

Am I the only one who sits and wonder what exactly is wrong with us as a people?
When and how did we manage to get it so spectacularly wrong? When and how did we manage to develop such minimalist mindsets that we take pride in the mundane and the petty that will give other people offense?

As I sat and admired what the Dutch have built for their citizens, I cannot but contrast it with what we have in our countries in Africa.

There is not a single park in the fast-growing city of Kasoa where I live. There is no recreation facility of any description. There is not even a single space that has not been sold or rented out!

Apart from Accra, Kumasi and Tema, I don’t know of any other city or town in Ghana that can boast of a public park.

In August of this year (2011), I visited the Polish capital of Warsaw. I was utterly amazed by the transformation the Polish people have been able to bring about in the twenty years since they liberated their country from the grip of Soviet communism.

So totally transformed is Poland today that it has become a full-fledged member of the European Union (EU).

Since I travelled from an EU-member country, I was not checked or controlled at the Warsaw Airport. I was accorded the privileged of an EU resident.

I saw in Warsaw a modern, clean and thriving modern city that boast all the modern amenities a major European city provide.

Warsaw, the city of two million people has well-designed, well-maintained transport system. Everything was orderly, discipline and clean. Even in the old part of town, I did not see pollution of any kind. No one blast music at high decibel to disturb neighbours and pose public nuisance.

Warsaw is a city of well-kept parks. I learnt that fully forty percent of the city was set aside for parks. The profusion of greenery makes it hard to notice that this is a city of two million inhabitants.

Warsaw boasts of forty universities and school of higher education. And we do not talk of the type of one-room mushroom ‘universities’ we boast about around here.

It is always difficult to come back home and see the low level we remain in despite all the pronouncements of our officials.

We have been independent for fifty four years, yet metal contraption (trotros) is the best we could provide our people as means of transport. Our trotro will not meet the requirements to transport cattle in the EU. We have not added a single meter to the rail system the British left behind. We have run our national airline aground through corruption and sheer ineptitude.

It galls to see how we have come to accept the poor environment in which we live as our lot. It is like we have thrown our hands up and surrender to fate.
Most of our people live in conditions that will not deem acceptable for pets in the EU.

In this time and age, many people in our dear land still build houses without toilet and bathing facilities; families still troop to the beaches and bushes to answer the call of nature.

It is in this degrading environment that we eat, sleep, play, work, love our women, give birth to our children and raise them. They grow up thinking that it is the natural order of thing.

Until they grow up, that is. Then they watch foreign TV stations. They surf the internet and interact with their mates from other lands.

They cannot help but wonder why their parents (us) sentence our brains to exile whilst other people were using theirs to build habitable environment for their children. They can see and contrast the abysmal, unplanned gigantic ghettoes we have with well-planned cities other people have built.

And, hypocritically, we pretend not to know why our children have nothing but utter contempt for us.

All over our country, spaces ear-marked for sport and recreational facilities have been sold off by visionless chiefs in cahoots with corrupt officials.

Do we expect our children whom we deprive of good lives to start to celebrate us? Do we expect to see admiration in their eyes when they discover that we have sold off their patrimony and wasted the proceeds on drink and frivolities? Do we expect them to treat us with anything but utter disdain when we bequeath absolutely nothing worthy to them?

It remains a mystery to me why there is no probe at the Lands Registry department to ascertain how officials gave approval for the sale of lands allocated for social amenities.

But then I might be asking for the moon since governments (past and present) joined in selling off public land to their cronies.

What crossed my mind as I admire the sport facilities in the Bijlmer is that were it to be in Africa, a corrupt official will ‘mis-appropriate’ (read: steal) the money.

He will then use the money to put up a massive structure in which he will install all the modern facilities money (especially stolen ones) can build. He will not forget to wall and fence off his mansion into which only the few he initiated will be invited. The visitors will hypocritically praise his acumen.

Rather than be cursed and stoned, the corrupt official who stole public money to build private edifice will become the toast of town. He will become top pal with religious and political leaders. He will get the top table at churches, functions and occasions. Envelop-chasing journalists will invent fictitious story to make him look good. Musicians will sing songs in his praise. He will be awarded bogus chieftaincy and academic titles. A National Honor will even be bestowed on him.

This is our biggest tragedy in Africa.

Tchaah!

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

2011-11-07T10:30:00.001+01:00

Africa is a writer's delight. Nowhere else in our wide world does life imitate art so splendidly like in our dear and beautiful continent. Everywhere one looks in this paradoxical continent, one is confronted with images that set the writing adrenaline running wide. That life is so tragic-comic must be among the reasons Africans go through life with all those wide smiles.

Africans have a penchant for borrowing ideas from other people and bastardizing them so badly that the inventors will have problems recognizing their inventions.

Take politics as an example: Africans are busy beating their chests proudly and loudly proclaiming how the seeds of a Western-styled political system have been nurtured in Africa, so much so that the whole continent glistens with democratic governments.

No one bothers to ask if the lot of the ordinary people have seen any qualitative improvement. No one cares that Africans continue to die needlessly in order to ensure that self-seeking politicians continue their game of fooling the people.

Recent elections in Zambia saw the people of that country waging tribal war to see that a faction of the ruling oligarchy win power. Never mind that all that the leaders in Zambia were able to achieve was to sign agreements to receive a paltry 0.6% for Zambian mineral resources.

Leaders in Nigeria continue to pantomime the same odious nonsense they have been telling the people for over half a century. The otiose elite of the country that used to call itself the "giant of Africa" saw no shame in scurrying behind a presidential palace as terrorists made it impossible to celebrate their nation's independence day at their national square.

In Liberia, Madam "World Bank" Sirleaf shamelessly broke a vow to serve for one term -- she is busy offering illogical arguments to convince Liberians why she has problems keeping a simple promise.

In Senegal, octogenarian President Wade spent long years in opposition before he won power, only to scheme to change the constitution and foist a dynasty on the people.

In opposition, Mr. Wade brandished solid pan-African credentials; in power he soon finds it necessary to join the imperialists.

In Guinea, last year's opposition leader is now the head of government and has just ordered his troops to kill people protesting against the same things that brought him to the streets just a year ago.

In Cameroun, professional President Biya has long jettisoned the constitution; he is now a president for life in all but name.

The president that spent more years in Paris than his capital, Yaoundé, is so contemptuous of his people that he does not even deign to personally campaign for votes; it is left for his minions. Sadly, the opposition in Cameroun is too fragmented to do a darn thing.

In La Côte d'Ivoire, the vicious and rapacious French are quietly enjoying their latest colonial conquest while pontificating to the world.

readmore.

While we slumber and pray

2011-11-04T16:07:00.001+01:00

When are we in Africa going to realize how far behind the other races we truly are?

When are we going to wake up, rub the slumber from our eyes, gird our loins and try to do some catch-up?

The title of an interesting story in the October 5, 2011 edition of the WIRED magazine written by Adam Mann reads: “The Plan to Bring an Asteroid to Earth.”

Here is the story in full: “Send a robot into space. Grab an asteroid. Bring it back to Earth orbit.

This may sound like a crazy plan, but it was discussed quite seriously last week by a group of scientists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology. The four-day workshop was dedicated to investigating the feasibility and requirements of capturing a near-Earth asteroid, bringing it closer to our planet and using it as a base for future manned spaceflight missions.

This is not something the scientists are imagining could be done some day off in the future. This is possible with the technology we have today and could be accomplished within a decade.

A robotic probe could anchor to an asteroid made mostly of nickel-iron with simple magnets or grab a rocky asteroid with a harpoon or specialized claws (see video below) and then push the asteroid using solar-electric propulsion. For asteroids too big for a robot to handle, a large spacecraft could fly near the object to act as a gravity tractor that deflects the asteroid’s trajectory, sending it toward Earth.
“Once you get over the initial reaction — ‘You want to do what?!’ — it actually starts to seem like a reasonable idea,” said engineer John Brophy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped organize the workshop.

In fact, many of these ideas have been on the drawing board for years as part of NASA’s planetary defense program against large space-based objects that might threaten Earth. And there’s no shortage of potential targets. NASA estimates there are 19,500 asteroids at least 330 feet wide — large enough to detect with telescopes — within 28 million miles of Earth.

Though rearranging the heavens may seem an excessive undertaking, the mission has its merits. The Obama administration already plans to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid, a mission that would coop them up in a tiny capsule for three to six months, and involve all the risks of a long deep-space voyage. Instead, robots could shoulder some of that burden by bringing an asteroid close enough for astronauts to get there in just a month.

Parking an asteroid in a gravitationally neutral spot between the Earth and the sun, known as a Lagrange point, would provide a stationary base from which to launch missions further into space. There are several advantages to this. For one, launching materials from Earth requires a lot of power, fuel, and consequently money, to get out of our planet’s deep gravity well. Resources mined from an asteroid with very little gravitational pull could be easily shuttled around the solar system.

And many asteroids have a lot to offer. Some are full of metals such as iron, which can be used to build space-based habitats while others are up to one-quarter water, which would be either used for life-support or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel. As well, asteroid regolith placed around a spaceship hull would shield it against radiation from deep space, allowing safer travel to other planets.

An asteroid could be an alternative to setting up camp on the moon, or complement a moon base with more resources for heading further out in the solar system, said engineer Louis Friedman, cofounder of the Planetary Society and another co-organizer of the Caltech workshop.

There’s also the potential for mining asteroid materials to bring back to Earth. Even a small asteroid contains roughly 30 times the amount of metals mined over all of human history, with an estimated worth of $70 trillion. And astronomers would have the chance to get a close-up look at one of the solar system’s earliest relics, generating important scientific data.

Though technically feasible, budging such a hefty target — with a mass in excess of a million tons — would not be easy.

“You’re moving the largest mother lode imaginable,” said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, cofounder of the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes.

Most asteroids are irregular chunks of rock that spin chaotically along irregular axes. Engineers would need to be absolutely certain they could control such a potentially dangerous object. “It’s the opposite of planetary defense; if you do something wrong you have a Tunguska event,” said engineer Marco Tantardini from the Planetary Society, referring to the powerful 1908 explosion above a remote Russian region thought to have been caused by a meteoroid or comet. Of course, any asteroid brought back under the proposed plan would be too small to cause a repeat of such an event.

Still, these obstacles are like catnip to engineers, who love to go over every potential difficulty in order to solve it. Actually executing the asteroid retrieval plan would help demonstrate and greatly expand mankind’s space-based engineering capabilities, said Friedman. For instance, the mission would teach engineers how to capture an uncooperative target, which could be good practice for future planetary defense missions, he added.

And if the challenges for a large asteroid seem too daunting, researchers could always start with a smaller asteroid, perhaps six to 30 feet across. Gradually larger objects could be part of a campaign where engineers learn to deal with progressively greater complications.

Last year, Brophy helped conduct a study at JPL to look at the feasibility of bringing a 6.5-foot, 22,000-pound asteroid — of which there might conceivably be millions — to the International Space Station. This mission would help astronauts and engineers learn how to process asteroid materials and ores in space.

The JPL study suggested the asteroid could be captured robotically in something as simple as a large Kevlar bag and then flown to the space station or placed in a Lagrange point. Of course, such a small object might not have the same emotional impact as a larger destination. “NASA isn’t going to want to go to something that is smaller than our spaceships,” said engineer Dan Mazanek from NASA’s Langley Research Center.

No matter the size of the asteroid, these plans would require hefty investments. Even capturing a small asteroid would consume at least a billion dollars and anything larger would be a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. Convincing taxpayers to foot such a bill could be tricky.

Considering the resources available in any asteroid, private industry might be interested in getting involved. One possible mission would be to simply execute the first part of the plan — pushing the asteroid to near-Earth orbit — and then convene a commercial competition inviting anyone who wants to develop the capabilities to reach and mine the object.

Though the undertaking might be scientifically exciting, this wouldn’t be the primary motivation. An asteroid would provide great insight into the solar system’s formation, it’s not enough to justify the expense of bringing one to Earth. Any interesting science can be done much cheaper with an unmanned robotic spacecraft, said chemist Joseph A Nuth from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.

“Ultimately, we would be developing this target in order to help move out into the solar system,” Brophy said.

Though they did not reach a consensus on all the details, the group will reconvene in January to hammer out further specifications and potentially get the interest of NASA.

In the end, many agreed that bringing an asteroid back to Earth could create an interesting destination for repeated manned missions and that the undertaking would help build up experience for future jaunts into space.”

Hmmmmm!

I spent three unforgettable weeks in the United States of America in August of this year. There are many things wrong with that country but no one will visit that country from Africa and ever be the same again.

The technical, scientific, engineering and technological accomplishment of the country is all there for all to see, and they are truly humbling, especially for people from our part of the world where people still sleep their way through life believing that goblins of the skies are coming to take care of human affairs.

The gap between us and the Americans are just too wide that we can forget about bridging it anytime soon. Not unless we can find a way for them to stop and wait for us to catch up with them.

Since it would be foolish to think that they will do it, we can forget this proposition.

The sad thing is that our leaders – political, economic, academic and religious - travel regularly to the US, and they see firsthand what human beings have been able to accomplish with sheer human ingenuity. They see all the technological accomplishments of mere mortals. They see and use all the electronic marvels created by human brains.

Bafflingly, they come back and continue with the same attitude of sheer complacency. They continue to behave like we are not too far behind and we have no need to hurry to tag along (forget catching up).

They continue to tell us stupid and insane lies about a saviour Jesus who is coming to take care of things for us.

We have leaders telling us odious lies like ‘God is in charge,’ like a god has done a darn thing for any human society.

We have blasted charlatans, attired in their lying cassocks, telling us that we need only double or triple our prayer efforts and all shall be well. We witness daily the stupid charades of prayers and retreats.

These leaders will not tell us what single human problem can be solved with adjuration to gods. They do not tell us why they don’t rely on prayers to give them the same material comfort they buy with money extorted from their ignorant congregation.

These totally shameless imposters, who pretend to stand between us and some gods, will not tell us why they live their own paradise here on earth rather than wait for it in heaven. They don’t tell us why they are never in a hurry to meet their father in heaven where everything is supposedly blissful.

So, while we are busy with our prayer camps, Holy Ghost fire, impartation retreats, anointing oil, candles, incense, prophesying, speaking in tongues and other utterly stupid abracadabra, human beings are busy thinking about how to capture an asteroids and mine its minerals!

Enuf said!

Of School Uniforms and other Jazz

2011-10-10T10:10:00.002+02:00

Femi, I think I have to reconsider my position on the death penalty.

Ah, why? You have spent a great part of your life campaigning against it. What has happened? Why the change of heart? Whom do you want to shoot and why?

I think the president's speechwriters should be shot.

What!?!

You heard me. They all should be lined up at the Teshie shooting range and dispatched to both kingdom come and kingdom uncome.

You cannot be serious! Are you talking about the speechwriters of the president of our one and only republic?

Yes, yes, and yes.

You cannot be serious. Have you heard of felony, sedition, treason...

Yes, I have heard all that, and I have also heard that the BNI (Bureau of National Investigations) guys are everywhere now ready to pounce on both real and imagined enemies of state. But I still hold that those guys and gals that so shockingly embarrassed Mother Ghana by drafting such a daft and abysmal presidential speech that our president read at the last General Assembly of the UN should all be guillotined. There should be a law against causing such national embarrassment to the republic. I am still reeling from the humiliation. I never imagined that I'd live to see my dear country reduced to such a ridiculous level whereby our president would be trumpeting sheer inanities as high national achievements. Oh Gosh! Femi, the sheer disgrace, I think I will die of mortification!

What do you find so odious about the speech? From what I gather it was well received and it was punctuated with several applauses by delegates. Do you think that the assembly would applaud it so vigorously were it deemed to be unsubstantial?

Get out there, Femi; those guys and gals the UN are programmed to applaud anything. Do they do anything apart from sip champagne and applaud like robots?

Are you not being too harsh on the world's diplomats?

I am not hard or harsh on anyone; everyone knows that diplomats are paid to laugh at whatever absurdity they hear. Anyhow, I am not here to discuss UN diplomats, I am crying my eyes out from my own personal embarrassment at our president's address to the world body.

But didn't you read what our local pundits are saying; everyone is praising the president. They consider his speech balanced, apolitical, and statesmanlike. From what I read and heard he's won kudos from several pundits. Some even suggested that he should be given the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Please, Femi, don't make me laugh. Why would any sane person suggest a Nobel Prize for such an abjectly apathetic and uninspiring speech?

Don't ask me. Ask those who praise the president's speech that you find so detestable.

readmore.

Nigeria: end of African-centred foreign policy?

2011-09-16T09:02:00.002+02:00

It is difficult to understand the logic that informed Nigeria's decision to announce their recognition of the NATO-backed rebels in Libya. Although the leaders in Abuja said that it was taken in the interests of the country, it is very difficult to see how this ill-timed, ill-advised, wrong-headed and shortsighted decision could enhance the interests of a country that likes to see itself as Africa's Numero Uno. Nigeria's hasty decision looks all the more foolish when the country's main rival, South Africa, is wisely towing the position taken by the continent's main body, the African Union.

It is sad to see the country whose past leaders have toiled to build solid Pan-African credentials reduced to a mere errand-boy of Western imperialism. A country that has worked tirelessly over the years to build solid Non-Aligned, Africa-centric foreign policy credentials, is today the tool the imperialists use to advance their interests in Africa. Nigeria spearheaded the French designs on La Côte d'Ivoire and today, the country has firmly burnished her credential as an imperialist puppet state by extending recognition to the rebels in Libya.

The decision becomes more incongruous because it was taken when the airwaves are saturated with reports of the killings of Nigerians and other black Africans by the rebels who believe that every black face is a Ghadaffi mercenary in a country where a third of the population is black! Are we to believe that the leaders in Abuja were sleeping when CNN and other Western media showed the rebels killing and maltreating Nigerians and other black Africans?

Many Africans have trooped to Ghadaffi-led Libya because it is the ONLY well-run country in the whole continent. Whilst most of them are in Libya to do menial jobs, many of these Africans are professionals who contributed to the smooth running of the Libyan economy.

To these Africans it is absolute baloney to say that Ghadaffi was anything but a saint who managed the affairs of his country rather well. Many of them are from countries whose democratically-elected governments are backed by the Western nations. They are living witnesses to the total mess that these so-called democratic leaders have wrought on their countries. They have seen how their so-called democratic politicians colluded with Western corporations to rape the resources of their countries.

Those from Nigeria have seen how the so-called elected officials have taken corruption to mind-boggling levels with all layers of governments actively involved. Nigerians are witnesses to their 400-member National Assembly collaring twenty-five percent of their national budget for themselves. They are fully aware that seventy-five percent of their national earnings goes into recurrent expenditure (paying salaries and running the machinery of a moribund government). They are aware of the feud by their top judges over corruption charges.

Nigerians know that theirs is a country where virtually nothing works. They know that they live in a country where citizens are not expected to have access to steady electricity, water, and telecommunication. They know that they live in a country where the educational infrastructure has collapsed and where reports of one hundred percent failure at examinations are commonplace. They know that they live in a country that cannot provide security for its citizens. They live in a country bedeviled by kidnapping, and now, the menace of Boko Haram.

Many Africans know all these things and they know that all the mess is taking place under a Western-styled democratic dispensation that enjoys the backing of the West. They know these things and they also know that they live in semi-colonial countries that are still firmly tied to the apron string of the West. They knew that their countries are independent in name only. They knew that the only thing that has changed is just the faces at the corridor of power -- with black replacing white in the colonial scheme of things.

Africans see all these things and they see how many of their compatriots (the lucky ones) are voting with their feet to seek the proverbial greener pasture in far-away lands including in (if the Western-media account is to be believed) mad-Ghadaffi's Libya. Many Ugandans are braving all to serve in war-ravaged Iraq.

Many Africans from the so-called democratic countries are strewn across Europe doing jobs that do not even begin to challenge their education or intelligence. The cleaning crews of most major airports in Western Europe are staffed by African immigrants as though it is Africans' lot in life to keep cleaning Europeans' mess. Many of them are drowning in Spanish and Italian waters as they desperately struggle to escape the poverty and insecurity in their democratic countries.

Those that landed in Libya had their first taste of paradise on earth. For the first time, they could live in clean and well-kept houses. They could travel on well-constructed and well-maintained roads. For the first time in their lives, they live in houses with running water and enjoy uninterrupted electricity supply. For the first time in their lives they could walk the streets without fear of armed robbers or kidnappers. For many of these Africans, Ghadaffi's Libya offered them the chance to earn a decent pay for honest toil for the first time in their lives. For the first time in their lives, these Africans could live decent lives as human beings and are supposed to live in this modern era.

readmore.

The Dutch and the attack on Libya

2011-08-28T00:13:00.002+02:00

"Colonialism and imperialism have not paid their score when they withdraw their flags and their police forces from our territories. For centuries the capitalists have behaved in the underdeveloped world like nothing more than war criminals. Deportations, massacres, forced labor and slavery have been the main methods used by capitalism to increase its wealth, its gold or diamond reserves, and to establish its power." (Frantz Fanon, 'The Wretched of The Earth.' Grove Press, Inc. New York. p. 101).

Like many Africans in Europe, I am completely baffled by the latest Western neo-colonial project in Africa.

Here we are, deluding ourselves that the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-5 was a long distant, almost forgotten memory, the likes of which will never happen again.

We were rudely shocked that, despite all the agonies, the vast violence, massive despoliation of human and material lives, the wholesale massacres, the gnashing of teeth and the gross racism caused by the Europeans in our continent, very little, if anything, has changed.

The mentalities of the inheritors of those immense crimes still retain the essential elements of their forebears.

The more we look the less we understand.

Among the questions that constantly baffle our minds is why Europeans extend so much energies and efforts in trying to export commodities that are sorely lacking in their own societies?

Many of us grew up in Africa with European missionaries who drummed into our heads such lofty injunctions like, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us”; “Love your enemies”; “Turn the other cheek.”

Of course, our civics classes were full of those nice definitions the Europeans put in our school syllabuses like “democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people,” and the other blah, blahs.

We received our first cultural jolt when we come to Europe and see people who are total opposite of what they preached to us. We see a total disconnect between rhetoric and deeds. It is as though in the West, people, especially leaders and scholars, don’t mean what they say. It appears that words do not function than mere rhetoric.

We never see any European nation forgiven anyone that transgressed against it. In Europe, loving your neighbor continues to exist in peoples’ imaginations. And heaven forbid a European nation to turn any cheek when assaulted – enemies; real or imagined must be obliterated!

The insane War on Terror the West fights across the world remains a prime example.
We see the vast hypocrisy of the Western world in the elevation of the Mandiba, Nelson Mandela, to an iconic figure by a people that would consider him a wimp if he rules in any of their countries.

It says a lot about the duplicity of the West that they elevate Mandela to sainthood whilst they keep on electing war-mongers as rulers.

Like most Europeans, the Dutch suffer from gross historical amnesia. That is the only reason we can adduce for a people that should bury their collective heads in shame, gallivanting around the world, self-promoting themselves as champions of freedom, human rights and democracy.

More than any Europeans, the Dutch should be the last to even ever consider launching an attack on Africa under any pretense or circumstance.

Given the vileness, the peculiar nastiness and the virulent nature of their brand of racism, Dutch people should be the most sensitive Europeans to the sensibilities of Africans.

If only for the terrible apartheid system they brought to Africa, the Dutch should be ultra-sensitive to not injuring our feelings.

The Dutch were, by many measures, simply the most bestial of the despoilers of our beautiful continent.

I write this with the authority of the knowledge of the depravity of the Belgians, the British, the Danes, the French and not forgetting the Portuguese.

Beginning with slavery, the Dutch led the way both in the quantity of their loot (per head) and the cruelty of their slavers.

These are some of the things we read from history:

"The Dutch share in the slave-trade was large: in fact, in the seventeenth century, it was the largest. The Dutch West India Company had various settlements on the African coast, and millions of slaves were ferried from there, especially during the time of Dutch occupation of Brazil. In the twelve years (1637-48) they transported no less than 23,163 slaves from Elmina and Loanda, for an amount of 6, 714, 423 guilders and 60 cents, (the Dutch were very precise!) They bought slaves from the Congo for 40 to 50 guilders and sold them in Brazil for 200 to 800 guilders. Certainly a worthwhile business." (J.W. Schulte Nordholt, 'The People that Walk in Darkness.' Ballantine Books, New York).
"The Dutch had established themselves in Berbice in 1624. During the years 1624 to 1763 they were the cruelest of slave masters. The Dutch slave code was much harsher than the Spanish code (the savagery of the Dutch code is shown by one provision of calculated cruelty: the burning alive of mutinous slaves over a slow fire). The Dutch had no institution comparable to the Spanish audiencia, a tribunal which included four judges. The ruthlessness of the Dutch created the situation that came to a climax in the Berbice slave rebellion." (“Marcus Garvey and the vision of Africa,” edited by John Henrik Clarke).

The cruelty of the Dutch was again on display in the colonization of Africa. Is it any co-incidence that the Dutch possession in Africa, the Boer republic of South Africa was the cruelest, the most dogmatic and lasted the longest?

And let it not be forgotten that the Dutch even pressed their god into service in their cruel enterprise in our continent. The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) consistently provided the apartheid regime with spiritual succuor and with Biblical support to the heinous crimes the Boers perpetrated against Africans.

Many of those that came forward at the Truth Commission cited the church as the spiritual inspiration for their gruesome work in support of the former apartheid regime.

It was not until 1992 that the DRC finally acknowledged apartheid as a sin and confessed to great wrongs in the past, and said the Church was guilty of spiritual and structural injustices under apartheid. Of course no mention was made of making amends for past wrong-doings.

Two figures that helped the most in the despoliation of Africa and the dehumanization of Africans happened to be born in the Netherlands. Both Jan Van Riebeeck (the pirate that founded the Dutch colony in South Africa) and Henrik Frensch Verwoerd, apartheid’s chief theoretician, were Dutch citizens born in the Netherlands.

It galls to no end then to see that the Dutch become enthusiastic partners in the West re-colonisation project in Libya.

Like they did in Iraq, the Western alliance hid behind a UN resolution to effect their plan for a regime change in Libya.

The objective, as it is emerging, was a recolonisation enterprise that would put Libya’s vast oil reserves under the control of the west. The plan was, like the Iraq venture, to remove Qaddafi, install a puppet regime and start to suck the blood out of their newly-acquired territory.

With several members of the NATO alliance announcing the sending of ‘military advisors,’ money and equipment to the Libyan rebels, in clear breach of UNSC Resolution 1973, the mask has finally been revealed of the true intentions in the reconquering of Libya.

The Dutch wasted no time in joining the colonial assault on Libya, just like they did in their mis-adventure in Afghanistan. The allure of juicy contracts is just too much their piratical instincts to ignore.

As a long-time resident in the Netherlands, the idea of the Dutch going to fight for the rights of Africans seem particularly incongruous, baffling and grossly insulting.

What exactly do the Dutch care about African life?

Despite its reputation as a ‘tolerant’ country, the Netherlands remain among the worst racist countries in Europe. Dutch politics regularly throw up rabidly racist politicians who never hide their desires to keep their nation as white as their snow – we can mention Jan Maat, Aad Kosto, Rita Verdonk and now the peroxide-bleached blonde irritant, Geert Wilders.

In the Netherlands, Non-Europeans are simply totally marginalized with ZERO visibility in any aspect of national life.

Despite Dutch politicians railing against being swamped by non-Europeans, there is not a single non-white person in any position of importance in the whole of the Netherlands. Football used to be one area where blacks used to dominate, but this has been effectively ended following an outcry.

The people that gave the world apartheid have even managed to coin other words that firmly and succinctly expressed their racist mindsets – Allochtone which refers to non-natives (read black) and Autochtone (read white).

These administrative constructs were, like apartheid, designed keep people apart and keep the blacks firmly in their place – at the lowest-rungs of the social, economic and political ladder.

Today, non-Europeans must produce a Certificate of Fluency in Dutch language and culture before they get a renewal of their residence permits.

All of these from the same people that exported their language to South Africa, and killed hundreds of Africans in attempt to imposed their language on the Africans.

In order to help me organise my thoughts on the Dutch government intervention in Libya, I sent a list of questions to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague.

The reply, pure asinine, reveals the depth of contempt to which the Dutch truly hold us as Africans.

The spokesman at the Ministry, Mr. Aad Meijer, even found it useful to deign to teach me some rules of basic journalism.

I simply cannot imagine a European journalist receiving the same mindless answers to his inquiries.

This is the exchange:

Dear Mr. Akomolafe,

See below for our answers to your questions. Please be so kind to quote them as 'says a spokesman of the ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Kind regards,

Aad Meijer
Press Information

1. What is the official Dutch government position on the situation in Libya?

Ans: The Dutch government is very concerned about the situation in Libya. It condemns the use of force by Qaddafi against peaceful demonstrators, his own people. In doing so it considers Qaddafi to have lost his legitimacy. Qaddafi should step down and give space to a negotiated inclusive political solution by all of the Libyan people with respect for human rights, minorities and the rule of law.

2. One of the prerogatives of states is that they hold monopoly on the instruments of violence within their territory. No country will permit an armed-uprising; is a new precedent not being set by the Western Powers in supporting an armed group in Libya? What is the Dutch government’s position on supporting armed rebellion in other countries?

Ans: The NATO mission Unified Protector is mandated by UN resolution 1973 to protect the Libyan population from attacks by the Libyan authorities. The Netherlands supports this goal and contributes to the protection of the Libyan population.

3. Although UNSC Resolution 1973, specifically, did not authorised action to violate the sovereignty of Libya in the name of human rights, nor action in support of the anti-government rebels nor “regime-change” in Libya, today some Western governments (UK, France and the USA) openly called for “regime change,” and have announced plans to send ‘military advisors’ to aid the Libyan “pro-democracy forces.” What is the position of the Dutch government on regime change in Libya?

Ans: I refer to our answer under 1.

4. There appears to be a stalemate in Libya, what exactly is the outcome envisioned by the Dutch government in Libya?

Ans: I refer to our answer under 1.

5. How feasible is the desire of the West to impose democracy and Human Rights by military violence and where should we draw the line?

Ans: The military actions undertaken by NATO and several countries in the region as mandated by the United Nations seek to uphold Security Council resolution 1973. As such the military actions should be limited to protecting the civilian population of Libya against the use of force by the Libyan authorities.

6.What is the response of the Dutch government to the charges by some African commentators that the attacked smacked of double-standards - given the fact that numerous resolutions of the United Nations remain unenforced by the Western Powers? You can see a long list here: http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel

Ans: The implementation of Security Council resolutions is an obligation of all members of the United Nations. The Netherlands believes that first and foremost countries in the region share a responsibility to implement these decisions. Where possible the Netherlands seeks to support such efforts either bilaterally or through the European Union.

7. Given the fact that Libya is, at least, geographically in Africa, why did the Western powers decided to ignore the publicly-stated position of the African Union (AU) condemning any military solution to the crises in Libya?

Ans: The Netherlands believes that the crisis in Libya will not be solved through military means alone and calls for a political process. It welcomes all diplomatic efforts, including those of the African Union to broker a political solution and underlines the importance of international coordination of initiatives. In order for a political process to come to fruition the Netherlands believes that a real cessation of hostilities and pull back from beleaguered cities is required.

8. Why is the West ever so eager to employ military force in non-western people\nations, rather than use its considerable powers to compel antagonists to the Conference Table, like providing them with non-lethal (good offices) means to resolve their differences?

Ans: The Netherlands believes that diplomatic efforts are essential to achieve a solution.

9. And what would be the response of the Dutch government to accusations that Africa is being re-colonised. This being derived from the fact that the Western powers continue to hold meetings in European capitals (London, Paris, Berlin) to decide the future of an African country, Libya, which brings back to memory the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-5?

Ans: The Netherlands believes that the future of Libya should only be decided upon by the Libyan people itself. It stresses that the conferences on Libya do in no way purport to providing the Libyan people with an outside political solution. The conferences but serve as an international focal and coordination point to ensure effective international support to the Libyan people

10. How would the Dutch government react to accusations that the West is trying to counter China’s incursions to Africa. Cited as example is one of the leaks from the Wikileaks’ memos, where we read the following: “1.(C/NF) Summary: Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) renegotiated the terms of its production sharing agreements with France's Total and its partners in Libya (Germany's Wintershall and Norway's StatoilHydro), adjusting the existing stand-alone contracts to bring them into compliance with the Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA) rubric. The renegotiation of Total's contract is of a piece with the NOC's effort to renegotiate existing contracts to increase the Libya's share of crude oil production... the renegotiated agreements could adversely impact his revenue stream. End Summary.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/libya-wikileaks/8294570/FRENCH-TOTAL-LED-CONSORTIUMS-ACCEPT-LOWER-PRODUCTION-SHARES-IN-LIBYA.html

Ans: The Dutch government does not comment on the content of documents released by Wikileaks.

11.What would be the response of the Dutch government to another concern of Africans, especially those who live in Europe, why countries like France and the Netherlands which continue to treat them with impunity, would want to assume high moral grounds on Human Rights and Democracy in Africa? You can see an example of the treatment of African women and children in France here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZGK33rkk6E

Ans: The Dutch government does not comment on the internal affairs of other states. All residents of the Netherlands enjoy equal rights and obligations under Dutch law.

12. It was a Dutch man Hugo Grotius who, in his seminal work, titled De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (Of the Laws of War and Peace) published in 1623, wrote: “Throughout the Christian world, I observed a lack of restraint in relation to war, such as even barbarous races should be ashamed of; I observed that men rush to arms for slight causes, or no cause at all, and that when arms have once been taken up there is no longer any respect for law, divine or human; it is as if, in accordance with a general decree, frenzy had openly been let loose for the committing of all crimes. Confronted with such utter ruthlessness many men, who are the very furthest from being bad men, have come to the point of forbidding all use of arms to the Christian, whose rule of conduct above everything else comprises the duty of loving all men.”

13: Today, we look at Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and see that not much has changed since 1623. Can we look forward to a time that the west will, in the words of the Christian Bible, turn its sword into plowshare and attain to resolve conflicts through peaceful means rather than on wholesale military violence?

Ans: The Dutch government seeks to end conflict by peaceful means. The promotion of international rule of law is part of its constitution.

It’s difficult for me to imagine what Mr Aad Meijer ate or drunk before he sent his moronic reply. I expected a half-decent attempt to produce some bureaucratic smoke but certainly not these imbecilic answers.

That “All residents of the Netherlands enjoy equal rights and obligations under Dutch law,” is a tale I believe Mr. Aad should tell to the Dutch marines when they return from their colonial killing enterprise in Libya.

Surprising Europe - Review and Interview

2011-07-04T04:10:00.002+02:00

Film Review & Interview

Surprising Europe: The life and times of Ssuuna Golooba, directed by Rogier Kappers and produced by Jongens van de Wit, the Netherlands -- 70 mn documentary and 9-part TV series, 2011. http://www.surprisingeurope.com/

The history of humanity is also the story about migration. In the final analysis, we are all migrants. Central to my Yoruba people's philosophy on human migration are two of their proverbs. One is Omi ni eniyan; the second, Ibi ti aye ba gbeni de, la npe layede.

The first means that human beings are like water that flows wherever it can find its level. The second one means that it is where destination leads us that we call home.

It is probably the knowledge of these proverbs that informed many Africans to migrate to Europe to seek the proverbial green pasture. The natural instinct of every animal is to look for wherever the grass is greener. Europe, in recent history, emptied as much as a third of her population to other climes when the going got tough. It therefore remains incomprehensible to many African immigrants in Europe, why the continent that has benefited so much from migration, remains the most hostile to them.

Several thousand Africans have moved and settled in Europe. Some of them managed to build lives that are far better than what they left behind. But for the majority of these migrants, it has been tales of harrowing disappointments. For many of these profoundly disappointed Africans it is always a case of: "Had I known?"

Many of them had well-paying jobs in their countries with middle-class lifestyles and expectations. But human ambitions being what they are, they wanted more.

Images from Western media like BBC World and CNN are beamed into their living rooms, with commentators constantly harping on "rich" Western countries with out-of-this-world GNP, GDP, and other statistics that paint pictures of a paradisiacal West. The same media portrays Africa as a hopeless, war-torn, famine-overwhelmed, dictators-ridden continent that is forever begging to feed its lazy citizens.

Hollywood also lends hand with movies that show the bold and the beautiful who, with no apparent means of livelihood, tool around town in kilometer-long limousines, wining and dining the whole day with no apparent care in the world. Images are shown of people putting plastic cards into walls from which money gushes out. Ah, white people are magicians!

There are also the new missionaries on the block, those kind-hearted NGO folks who drive around in big 4-wheel-drive jeeps, hold endless conferences, and talk themselves silly on how to end poverty in Africa.

African immigrants who come on holidays and start spending money like it's going out of fashion also do not help matters.

These are the images Africans are bombarded with and who does not like better things? Determined to get his share of the wealth of Europe, the African quits his job, and sells whatever properties he had accumulated over his toiling years. Some sell the family jewels, houses, and even the farm. Occasionally, loans are contracted to embark on the journey to a supposed El Dorado.

Arriving in Europe, the immigrant is thrown into a severe culture shock from which he hardly ever recovers. The illusion that Europeans are nice and welcoming is the first to go.

In many parts of Africa, especially in the villages, total strangers are mostly welcome with huge smiles and a desire to help. The immigrant's first contact with Europe is with stony-faced immigration officers with the countenance of a wolfhound and the friendliness of a Gestapo. The confounded immigrant wonders what has happened to all those Europeans he saw in Africa with smiles pasted on their faces, as they trample around the continent looking for places to develop.

When he's finally admitted into the country after a bruising encounter at the port of entry, the senses of the poor immigrant are further assaulted when he finds out that he needed more than his expensive visa to even begin to settle down.

First, the small question of accommodation needs to be settled, and it becomes a major production when he's asked to produce a residence permit without which he cannot get legal accommodation. Our bewildered immigrant, who had a spacious apartment in his native land, is forced to make do with sleeping in other people's corridor.

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Namibian Land time-bomb

2011-07-01T14:41:00.003+02:00

This piece was published in the Letter to the Editor section of the Pan African magazine, New African, July 2011 edition.

Kindly permit me space for this letter in reaction to your story: “The Trouble with Namibia,” NA June 2011, pp4- 44.

I must first thank you guys at the New African magazine for bringing us pertinent information about our beautiful continent.

I consider myself a little bit knowledgeable about African affairs, but your report on Namibia left me totally flummoxed.

I was (until I read your piece) a great admirer of former President Sam Nujoma whom I considered a great Liberation leader. I honestly thought he was more than populous beard and fiery revolutionary rhetoric until I read the type of agreement he signed in the name of independence.

Little wonder that these agreements are forever shrouded in great mystery.

We can contrast what happened in the colonies in Africa with what transpired after the second European Civil war when Germany was made to regurgitate everything she stole from her European colonies and also paid compensation. In Africa, they think that we should be satisfied with a flag and some wretched smiles!

With the editor’s permission, I shared an extract on my Facebook wall, and the flurry of traffic I received was rather gratifying, as they greatly opened my eyes to the happenings in that beautiful but sadly racially-stratified land.

I can only express my shock and sadness as I read the lamentations of many Namibians about how their people lost all during the German invasions and how, up till today, young German boys prevent them from visiting their ancestral graves to pay homage!

Fortunately, at least for me, this is not a situation we experienced in West Africa.

Having stayed in Europe where I did not see a single African owning even one square inch of European land, I cannot imagine how I will react to Europeans fencing hundred upon hundred square kilometers of my people’s land in the name of private property.

It is very sad and troubling to read the depth of pent-up anger among my Namibian Facebook contacts. In my humble opinion, the correct question to ask now is to whom are we doing a favour by pretending that all is jolly and well in Namibia? Truth has a way of emerging however hard they try to suppress it, and however long, injustices have ways of blowing up in the face of its perpetrators.

Do the Western agencies, organisations and governments that perpetrated and abetted this gross injustice hope that it will last forever? Do they really believe that Namibians will somehow just forget about their ancestral lands? Doesn’t Zimbabwe provide ample evidence on what will happen when we bury our heads in the sand and pretend not to understand that historic injustices need to be rectified?

Your report quoted a 'SWAPO intellectual' talking about the incapacity of the government to act. I got hold of the Namibian Constitution and I found these relevant sections the Namibian government could use to get its land back from the absentee landlords.

Article 16: Property

(1) All persons shall have the right in any part on Namibia to acquire, own and dispose of all forms of immovable and movable property individually or in association with others and to bequeath their property to their heirs or legatees: provided that Parliament may be legislation prohibit or regulate as it deems expedient the right to acquire property by persons who are not Namibian citizens.

(2) The State or a competent body or organ authorised by law may expropriate property in the public interest subject to the payment of just compensation, in accordance with requirements and procedures to be determined by Act of Parliament.

There is no government anywhere that can claim impotence when it comes to overriding public interests. If the new elite in Namibia will have the political will, I think they can do a lot to help their own people.

Laws are made by men and could be undone by man. Section 16:2 of the Namibian constitution empowers the government to act. If the occupiers refuse to play ball, the government, through parliament CAN and SHOULD enact legislation confiscate the land and pay the same compensation the land-owners claim that they paid.

Interview with Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings

2011-06-23T22:21:00.003+02:00

Amsterdam (22 May 2011)

Ghana’s former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings is one of the two leading members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDC) who have challenged incumbent President John Atta Mills for the party’s presidential slot for the 2012 elections.

Following a protracted internecine battle, Ghana’s ruling party announced that the party’s Congress will take place on 8 July 2011 at the Brong Ahafo capital, Sunyani. Although the congress will discuss other matters, election of the presidential candidate tops the list.

Former President John Jerry Rawlings, a man known for expressing his mind on national and international issues, however vexatious, led the attack on the leadership style of his chosen successor.

According to Mr. Rawlings, a former military strongman later turned civilian president, the performance of the Mills government betrays the hopes and the aspirations of party’s supporters, who worked assiduously to ensure that the party scraped a razor-thin victory in the 2008 elections – the margin of victory was just 40,000 votes!

President Rawlings partisans gave as example of incompetence the string of judicial defeats the Mills government has suffered, including the famous fiasco in the Ya-Na murder and the throwing out of all the corrupt cases the government has initiated against officials of the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

The rising cost of living, widespread corruption and the deteriorating state of water and electricity provision in the country are also cited as examples of the ineptitude of the Mills’ government.

President Mills supporters countered that his collegiate and non-combative leadership style is the best to build consensus and foster in a country that is highly polarized along ethnic religious and political lines. They argued further that rather than go on wholesale prosecution of former officials, they believe that their energies is best utilise to implement what they call their Better Ghana Agenda.

The quarrel, which was rumored for several months, finally blew open. Party supporters pitched camps with either Rawlings or Mills. Bitter accusations and insults were freely traded by NDC cadres who less than three years ago pride themselves as a united family of Akatosomanians (meaning?).

Ghanaians are not amused to watch their ruling party in such open disarray. They feel short-changed that a ruling party could expend so much energy in internal bickering whilst national problems cry for attention. They also worried about investors’ confidence in their fragile economy.

Attempts to reconcile the warring parties apparently failed as Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang- Rawlings resigned her Vice-Chairmanship position in the party, and went on to pick the presidential nomination form on 3 May 2011.

Three days later, President Mills partisans supporters pulled out all the stops as they escorted their candidate to the NDC office to pick his own form.
Traffic in the capital, Accra, was snarled up for hours as the president’s supporters turned the occasion into one giant street party.

Then followed a spectacle that would have brought tears of joy to the faces of die-hard communists of the old Soviet Union: In a performance broadcasted live on Ghana national television for six (6) hours, ministers of state and party hacks took turns to pledge fidelity to President Mills with many using the opportunity to castigate their party’s Founder, former president John Jerry Rawlings.

It was an unedifying spectacle and an expensive one at that. The GTV bill for the jamboree alone was reported to have cost GH₵18,000.

Nana Konadu was recently in Amsterdam to address a conference held on 21st May 2011 by the Amsterdam branch of the NDC dubbed ‘Ghana’s National Interest First.’

Femi Akomolafe met with her (on 22 May, 2011) to find out, among other things, the reasons for her seeking her party’s presidential mantle. Here is extract from the interview.

1. Thank you Nana for taking time from your busy schedule to talk with us. Can you tell us something about yourself?

Ans: I am Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, Ghana’s former First Lady and, hopefully, the next president of the republic of Ghana. I was born in the Ashanti Region of Ghana into a part of the very large Asante Royal family. It is a very extensive family.

2. In which part of Ghana did you grow up?

Ans: I grew up in various parts of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. My father worked with the United African Company (UAC) and he was constantly on the move. Naturally, we went along with him.

3. Given such an almost nomadic life, what type of upbringing did you have?

Ans: Ah! It was not such a nomadic as we stay a while in the places my father was posted. It was like we will stay a few years in a place, and then he will get posted again. To their credit, my parents did their very possible best to create normalcy in our family. I had the best parenting a child could ever hope for. And you must also remember that in almost all the places we lived, there were always sizable Ashanti communities, so it was not altogether totally alien environment. I felt no cultural alienation because there are always people around with whom I could relate.

4. What are some of the things you remember from your youth?

Ans: I remember quite a lot. I remember that our house was always full of people. My parents are always taking care of different kinds of people all the time – both family members and total strangers. Being relatively well-off entails a lot of social responsibility in our culture. At any given time, my parents were paying the school fees of several people, taken care of hospital bills of indigents, those sorts of things. My parents cannot stand the sight of suffering people. Of course, that imbued in us deep sense of empathy with the down-trodden. My parents made us realize that it was purely the circumstance of birth that made our own privileged position possible. It was a lesson you don’t forget.

5. You are a wife and mother; tell us something about your family life?

Ans: I have a very close family. I have a loving and a caring husband and we have children all of whom we love very dearly. I tried to create the same caring family I grew up in – loving, caring and with deep sense of responsibility and social justice. We care and we share.

6. Of course, you are the wife of the famous JJ. Your husband is many things to many people; what sort of husband and father is he?

In short a great man. It is difficult not to love my husband once you got to know him. He is a man with the deepest sense of social justice. He relates easily to people because he does not believe or care about all the things that divide people – ethnicity or tribalism. He is a totally detribalized person. He cares very deeply, perhaps too deeply about the common people. He’s also very unpretentious and is the most unmaterialistic person you can ever find. It gives me great joy when I travel across Ghana and see the tremendous affection the ordinary people have for him. Ask yourself, how many leaders in Africa, in the world, have the same touch with common people. He is equally well loved across Africa; wherever we go, the common people relate very well with him.

7. You and your husband seem to be very close, can you tell us the areas where you have differences of opinions and how you resolve them.

Ans: You don’t expect me to come and wash my family dirty linen in public (laughs). But seriously, Femi, we do have our differences but we discuss them like matured adults and we reach compromises. On the family level, he has ideas about how to bring the children up and I have mine. We sit down, consider the interests of the children and based our decisions on what we think is the best for them. On the political level, we share a lot in common. Ideologically, we are both appalled by the level of poverty we see around us and we always like to do something about it. We believe that people should be at the center of any development, be it social, economic or political.

8. Apart from your husband whom you obviously adore, which other people have inspired you; who are your role models?

Ans: My parents had the profoundest influence on me. I drew my inspiration from them. I remain grateful for the upbringing they gave me.

9. Your husband has the distinction of being Ghana’s longest-serving head of state, what to you are his most important legacies?

Ans: I don’t feel like blowing my husband’s trumpets; but his record in office clearly speaks volume for themselves. The best way to judge him is to compare the Ghana he met in 1978 and the Ghana he left in the year 2000. We should judge leaders by their accomplishments and on this, in fairness, he did very well. Whatever our political disagreements, people should not forget that in 1978, Ghana was a collapsed state; a laughing stock. By the time he left in 2000, the country has rebounded. Of course not all the problems were solved, but Ghana has regained its lost luster and Ghanaians were once again proud of their country. The economy has been transformed beyond recognition. Gone were the empty shelves, the unpaid workers, the queues for essentials, including for agbelemo (cassava dough). My husband left a Ghana that was consistently adjudged the least corrupt in West Africa. Those are very important legacies.

10. After almost twenty years in power, your husband is retired but appears not to be tired. He continues to make what many consider incendiary statements on national issues. Why do you think that he finds retirement a difficult thing to deal with like, say, former President Kufuor?

Ans: Of course, quiet retirement would have been the easy option. But you must try to recognize and appreciate the tremendous efforts invested in bringing the nation back from the brink. It was a titanic struggle and no one who participated would like the country to slide back into those bad old days. That explains why he occasionally voices his concerns. Naturally, because of the way he relates to the ordinary people, they came to him to voice their concerns about the direction the country is going, and he tries to articulate these frustrations. Initially he tried to use the party’s internal communication systems to voice his concerns, but no one listened to him.

That explains why he went public. If some things in the country are going terribly wrong, we do no one a favor by burying our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise. The country will pay very dearly if we do not collectively let our leaders know the true position of things. We have come a long way, and we should do our best not to allow the situation deteriorate to the bad old days.

11. Let’s move to your own politics; you recently announced your candidacy for your party, the National Democratic Party (NDC), presidential slot. To many people, this is an aberration. The question is why are you challenging an incumbent president who represents your own party?

Ans: Femi, this is among the most difficult decisions I ever took. We have to begin by understanding that in our system of government, people vote for political parties and not individuals. Since people are elected on the platforms of their parties, it is only right that they remain faithful to the party’s ideals and guiding philosophy.
Our party, the great National Democratic Congress (NDC) came from a social democratic tradition. Our philosophy is guided by a desire to represent the down-trodden and ensure that citizens are not deprived of a reasonable life because of the circumstances of their birth. You also have to note that the NDC came from a revolutionary background, so we frown heavily on corruption in both party and state affairs.

The people of Ghana voted for the NDC based on the programmes we presented to them. We promised to effect a recognizable change in the governance of the country. We promised to fight corruption among other things. The people trusted us and we should try not to betray that sacred trust.

It became quite clear soon after our party narrowly won the 2008 elections that the new leaders were deviating from the party’s core principles. We tried all possible best to solve them using the party’s internal organs. This was not possible. I thought I could help the party by contesting and winning one of the Vice-presidential slots, but unfortunately, party executives continue to be marginalized. Party matters were left unattended and there is a great deal of despondency among our rank and file. Every attempt to thrash out the intra-party disputes was thwarted.

For the first time in the history of this country, members of the ruling party were defecting to opposition party. Something has to be done.

12. There is also the question of dynastic rule being impose in Ghana. How would you counter this?

Ans: This question ought not to arise because I am standing on my own merits. I am touting my own accomplishments. I should be judged on my own merits.

13.Whichever spin we try to put on it, the internecine warfare is not a good advertisement for your party. Elections are less than two years away, do you think that you will manage to patch things up or is the NDC on self-destruct mode?

Ans: Sorry, but I don’t like that self-destruct word you used. The NDC was built on the foundation of trust, accountability, probity and social justice. These are principled ideals to which we expect members to adhere. The NDC is for all those that subscribe to its philosophy and believe in its publicly espoused ideals.

14. Politics in Ghana, or in Africa I should say, have been reduced to gutter levels where insults are freely traded, are you going to do things differently? What are the issues you are going to address in your campaign?

Ans: The politics of insults is alien to the NDC culture because we have always seen ourselves as a united family where every member is treated with the utmost respect. I have not traded insult with anyone and I am not going to do it. The issues at stake are far bigger than individual egos; they concern the fundamental values of our party and of our nation.

There is a great despondency not only in the party but across the country. We got elected because we promised people that we are going to do things differently; that we are going to stop the corruption and provide them with amenities to make decent living possible.

The people have not seen any improvement in their lives and there is massive corruption all over the place. As I speak to you, Accra is experiencing acute water shortages and the electricity situation has worsened. Our party members are bitterly complaining about the direction the party and the country is taking and no one listen to them. The party structure has collapsed from the constituency to the national level. Officials and ministers are today calling the foot-soldiers that got us elected nuisance.

15. We have a woman elected in Liberia; do you think that Ghana is prepared and ready for a woman president?

Ans: And why not, Femi?

16. Unlike Liberia, Ghana has a sizable Muslim population some of whom believe, rightly or wrongly, that women should not be leaders. How do you address their concern?

Ans: I honestly don’t believe that the issue of gender is something that should agitate us in this age and time. Islamic countries like Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan have all elected or appointed women into high positions, so why are we debating my gender in Ghana?

17. Apart from the gender card and the famous Rawlings name, what is Nana Konadu bringing to the table?

Ans: I am bringing my vast experience to the table (laugh). Femi, I have a track record that no Ghanaian politician, male or female, can match. No president or

Minister have visited more places in Ghana that me. I have been to every nook and corner of Ghana. Through our movement, we have directly impacted the lives of several Ghanaians than any other organization. Through thick and thin, we struggled against all odds to empower women throughout the land. I have had several occasions to meet and share ideas with the best brains in the world.

The President John Jerry Rawlings name is definitely big; but Nana Konadu is a woman of substance on her own.

18. Across Africa, people have become disillusioned because of the many unkempt promises by their politicians, what are you going to do differently?
Ans: Again, I will answer that our track records clearly shows that we could be different. Do you know what; wherever I go in Africa, people come to express their appreciation to how we managed to transform Ghana for the better.

We did it before and we clearly can do it again. I am not claiming exclusive credit for my husband and me, but we managed to assemble the best available brains in the country to help deliver quality services to the people.

We also make Ghanaians part of the development agenda. You see, part of the problem I see in Africa is that leaders sit in the capital cities and make big pronouncements about development. I think this is wrong – leaders should go to the people and get them involved in whatever developmental project is being implemented Any development plan that fails to carry the people along is bound to fail.

You don’t sit in Accra and plan projects for Walewale. No, you have to go the people of Walewale and sit down with them to draw up the plan. That is the only way you can bring the people on board. And once you fail to get them on board and make them part of the project, you will never get their full support. Of course, they will come and clap when you come around but they won’t feel that they are part of it. Don’t plan over people’s head.

19. Naturally, you are going to the Congress with the hope of winning, but in case you lose, would it be possible for you to make a volte face and ask your supporters to support a man you deemed and have called incompetent?

Ans: I don’t like hypothetical questions. But you should know that the easiest thing for me would have been to stay aloof and join the Chorus boys.

20. And in case you win, do you expect president Mills partisans to support you?

Ans: Again, I don’t see this as a personality contest. I expect loyal party members to support whoever emerges as the candidate.

21. Let’s suppose that you win your party’s congress and the national elections, what type of Nana Konadu presidency should we look forward to?

A presidency, in which Ghanaians will, once again, be very proud. A presidency that will fight corruption, ensure accountability and probity at every level of government. Mine will be a presidency that trusts Ghanaians enough to carry them along in all its developmental efforts. My presidency will strive to ensure that no child’s future is jeopardise by the circumstance of her birth. Mine will be a presidency that will promote and ensure social justice.

On Party And National Interests

2011-06-06T00:50:00.001+02:00

We in Africa lend great credence to the saying that new converts make the worst zealots. We appear to do nothing but take foreign ideas we barely understood, copy them blindly, use and abuse them, and turn ourselves into grotesque caricatures. Little wonder we are the laughing stock of the world.

Let us take this Christianity thing as an example. Starving Europeans, escaping hunger, left their desolate, god-forsaken icy abodes to invade our land. They brought with them their brand of religion and the book they claim their god wrote for them. Although we find their notion of god at variance with our own conception, they managed to persuade some of our folks to embrace their faith.

After much struggle, political agitation, and open warfare, the Europeans finally left for their shores.

Fifty some years later, a European visiting our land will barely recognize the Christianity that our people practice as the same one that he introduced to us.

In his country, the European knows that people go to church only on Sundays. And on that day, they spend only about one hour in service and go back to their homes until the following Sunday. Even on that day of worship, the churches in Europe are quiet, the service a somber affair to afford people the opportunity to commune silently and directly with their god.

A European that went to the streets of Europe to make noise about his god would be deemed insane and consigned to a lunatic asylum. No European, in his right senses, would disturb his neighbor because he wants to praise his god.

The European will be confounded to see that in Africa we practically live in churches nowadays. There is a church of one description or the other in every square meter of Africa.

African Christians believe that national laws are of no significance when it comes to worshipping their new god. Laws on not establishing churches in residential areas are flouted with impunity. Ordinances against street worship or conducting religious services in public transport are broken with abandon. Church services in Africa have become giant noise-making affairs where laws and orders are broken willfully as men and women profess their version of piety.

Christianity is everywhere on our beloved continent -- in the churches, homes, streets, markets, farms. No place is spared in the new business of Christian evangelism sweeping across Africa.

No bus leaves a station until a Christian prayer is said. Shouts of "Thank you, Jesus," fill the air as planes touch down on our tarmacs. Today, no state occasion takes place until a Christian priest invokes the blessings of his god.

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Miss Ghana 20xx

2011-05-29T00:12:00.000+02:00

It was a hot, very hot and breezeless November noon. The great African sun hung in the cloudless sky as though in great anger. Its needlelike rays cut through the atmosphere with effortless ease to sear my skin. It was hot, very hot. I perspired intensely. The air was balmy; there was no breeze - the leaves were stilled as though in great mourning. It was one of those hot, windless afternoons when the heavens seem prepared to choke lives out of terrestrial mortals.

I sat at my usual spot, nursing a cold larger. By this time of the day, the No 1 Spot at Osu is just waking up to life. Clientele were coming and going in ones and twos. A well-graffittied bus disgorged a horde of European tourists. They must have traveled long distances for they were dirty, unkempt, shaggy and waggy. The seats of their trousers, mostly jeans, were browned from grime from far and wide. The men wore week-old beards and the women among them were disheveled, their hair hung on them without style. They giggled loudly, animatedly as though sharing a great joke.

The blue car raced up to the parking lot, Accra dust following in its wake. It screeched to a dramatic stop, millimeters away from the plank barriers. The driver was either showing-off or s\he knew his\her onions well. The door flew open, and a tall, bony lady scrambled out and melodramatically kicked the door shut. She raced to the bar, her populous hair, made up in the style of Whitney Houston when drug has not ravaged her life, flying. From the bar, she collected a glass of what looked like, from where I was sitting, Campari or Mandigo and a bottle of Soda. She made straight for the empty seat beside mine, the hard soles of her shoes abrading the dry ground. The scent of her expensive perfume wafted into my nostril - it had the fragrance of cherries.

"Can I take the seat?" She purred, looking at my face directly while pointing to the empty chair.

“You may." I replied, meeting her very steady gaze.

"Thank you." She crooned. She sat down, taking time to brush the seats of her dress. She mixed her drinks and took a long draught. Placing the glass down, she breathed very deeply, Yoga-style, and apparently felt better. She swept her populous hair back in a deliberate, almost sensuous movement. Although, she cannot exactly be described as crunchingly beautiful, she's nice looking and looked well polished. In the parlance of the fashion-industry, I think she'll be called a sophisticate. She has a slender, almost delicate physique, very flat buttocks, and a long face. Her small breasts were straining against the tight, chic dress she wore.

“Feeling better?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

“Wow!” She intoned. “I had a thirst that would kill a donkey. Sorry, that phrase is overused, but I cannot come up with a better one.” She pouted her mouth, eye-lashes flashing. She was really over-made-up. Her face was like a rainbow - painted in different colors and shades. And I will be damned if she’s wasn’t flirting very openly.

“Nice wagon.” I said pointing to the car.

She smiled shyly, “Thank you. It’s a prize.” She added as an afterthought.

My interest in the lady was re-kindled. I gaped at her anew. I beckoned to a passing waiter pointing to my empty glass. He gave me a chauvinistic stare and went to an Arab, beefy and hairy like a pig. I ignored the slight.

“A Prize?” I wondered.

She smiled another of her airline-hostess smiles. “Miss Ghana.” She proclaimed watching my face for the inevitable shock.

I kept my face straight, “To what do I owe the privilege of hosting the most beautiful woman in Ghana?”

If she wasn’t so over-processed, the smile would have been Epicurean. “Point of correction, or of order as they say, you’re not hosting me. I paid for my own drink,” She accused, “Secondly, I do not believe in throwing my weight around.” She found herself witty and laughed.

The 007 driving style. The false smiles. The make-up that will fill the faces of many street-walkers, and she doesn’t believe in throwing her weight around. I decided to aggravate her.

“How does it feel to be the most beautiful damsel in Ghana?”

Another skittish smile. A dab at her psychedelic face. “By HIS grace, it is now handleable (sic). It was difficult to cope at the beginning. What with all the attentions! The press, the journalists, the TV lights, the dinner parties, the charity balls, the various visits to this and that do, the family pressures, the peer jealousies, the bad-wishers, the hanger-ons, the loafers who would like to take to take advantage. Not to mention the uncountable Valentines. The beginning was really, really difficult. Thank God, it is now copeable (sic). I can go on, but I will only bore you. I guess you’ve better things to do than listen to the wailing of a Beauty Queen. ”

“Try me.” I urged her on.

She called a passing waitress. My companion was either not well-known or not a regular, the service girl gave an insolent look before ambling to our table. Her tray held in front of her, she hovered over us like an Ijesa debt-collector. She ordered Campari and Soda. The steward was still engaged with the Arab. I asked the service-girl to bring a drink for me. I offered to pay, my table-mate refused, “Let’s go Dutch: You pay yours, I pay mine.”

“How did you get into the Beauty business?”

She laughed. “You made it sound so, how should I put it, lewd?”

“I’m sorry, but my English vocabulary is rather limited. Were you a professional model?”

“My God, no! I was, sorry, I am a student.”

“A student!” I was genuinely shocked.

“You may it sounds so awful. Yes, I was a student. Pedagogy and Child-Psychology. I came into the, I guess I’ve to borrow your expression, ‘Beauty Business’ by accident. I just entered for the fun of it. Imagine my astonishment when I was selected. The biggest trouble now is how to go back to the campus and become an ordinary student again. My term is almost over.”

“Are you regretting it?”

“Hell, no. Sorry, I guess that it is rather un-lady, rude thing to say. No, I don’t regret it one bit. I am having great fun. It has been a tremendous pleasure.” She took her drink from the waitress, mixed and took a sip.

“Pleasure, “ I repeated. ‘Are you happy? There is a big difference between happiness and pleasure.”

“And I thought I was the pedagogue, or should I say the Pedantic.” She found humor in her sarcasm.”

“Beauty doesn’t last forever; knowledge is eternal.”

“You are a nut case.” She seemed genuinely horror-stricken by my presence.

“How so?”

“Most men would be dreaming about how to jump into bed with me, here you are philosophizing about my future. Your concern for my welfare is appreciated, really. You don’t imagine I get to where I am without been able to take care of myself, do you?”

She’s a good actress. No one watching us would imagine her volcanic eruptions. She kept her voice low, her arms swaying as though emphasizing important points.

“There’s more to life than horizontal jogging, aka sex. No, I am not imagining anything. I am just wondering why an intelligent woman will throw away a chance to get a good education for the transient pleasure of pretending to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana.”

She looked as though I’d slapped her. “Pretending.” She cried. “I am not pretending. I won it fair and square.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“I won’t cry.”

“Do you honestly believe yourself to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana. Pretense aside.”

“Pretense,“ she howled like an affronted Imam. “Why do you think that I am pretending? There was a contest and the experts say that I am the most beautiful girl. What have you got against that?”

“The experts,” I sneered. “What makes them the experts?”

“You seemed to be a supreme cynic. If they are not experts, how do they get into conducting the show. How do they get on TV and the newspapers. God, I won the contest fair and square. How dare you?”

“Getting on the TV or into the papers does not an expert make. What qualifies your experts to judge beauty - a most subjective thing in the world? What conceited egos moved your experts to declaring themselves the Solomons of Beauty Contests?”

“Why are you trying to aggravate me? If you are a woman, I’d say that you’re jealous.”

“Aggravating you is not what is on my mind. The whole system stinks, that’s what is getting my goat. See,” I bellowed, shaking with Yoruba emotions. “What’s exacerbating me is the whole gamut called Miss Ghana Show. Don’t take it personal, my dear. I have nothing against you personally. I am grinding an ax against those stupid jackets-and-ties with their moribund colonial mentality. Those who are perpetually under the tutelage of the Aryan Masters. Those who will sell their souls for dollars. Those dirty old men who runs the show are the people vexing me. Dirty old men who should be in bed with their wives staying up night to watch, admire and pass judgments on the legs and buttocks of girls young enough to be their grand-daughters. They and those cultural imperialists, those grinning Aryan bastards whose White Supremacists heads are filled with the notion that any stupid European idea should be universalized. Those colonial tricksters hell-bent on polluting the world with Euro-junks. I blame you not, my dear. You are just a victim, like the rest of us.

“Look,” I cried. Of course, she was looking. “It is not enough for the European to mis-educate us, he has to tell us who our gods are. He has taken it upon himself to lecture us on what political, economic and social systems are good for us. He now has taken over the function of determining for us what our notion of beauty should be. As in everything, the clever Aryan has chosen an image that best approximate himself. Our Jesus must be white. Our socio-political system must be Western. Look at you, the whiteman has decreed that our Beauty Queens must be those who look anything but Africans. You have bleached your skin, your figure is skeletal, you’ve got no backyard - to use our street expression. In fact, were you a fossil, no archaeologist will classify you a Black woman. And on your head has been placed the crown of our Beauty Queen. And your head is swelling with vain-pride. Instead of staying with your studies, you abandoned it to turn yourself into a whore. Whoring with the high and the mighty. What future do you see for yourself, ask those who had gone before you? Of course, they have to justify themselves, the rogues. They have to justify the gigantic fraud they call Miss Ghana Show. They threw you a car, made you attend endless parties, get you into radio stations, put you on the TV, made you smile like a cheap whore and your head is swaying with vanity. Why don’t you look around you? When it comes to beauty, I mean real beauty, however biased our opinions might be, do you think that you can hold a candle to the waitress over there?“ I asked, pointing to the girl who served us drink. The service girl saw us looking at her, said something silently and looked down.

Miss Ghana was astounded. Her face burned with fury. “Perhaps, your daughter or your girl-friend lost the contest. That’s the only thing that could explain your unbridled antagonism. I thought I was with a gentleman. Fancy the put-downs. I didn’t sit down with you in order to allow myself to be insulted like some street-walker. I am not a trollop.”

I was undaunted. My Yoruba blood, incensed by the burning heat and the haughty Beauty Queen, was boiling with rage. I met her gaze with gaze, matched her anger with anger. I was angered by her supercilious manners and was determined to provoke her further. “Me, jealous” I cried. The waitress cut the drift that things were not all jolly with us and ambled closer. She needed some gist to make the gossip circuits. I said nothing to discourage her. “I cherish intelligence far above good looks. I will not be caught dead with a woman stupid enough to participate in that vapid pageant. I will not have a daughter who feels herself justified by some dirty old men. No daughter of mine will expose herself to such public ridicule for the sake of being declared a Beauty by some lubricious, moronic old-men, however long their ties. No daughter of mine will dress up in those filthy, flimsy rags and sauntered up and down, shaking her ass like a low-priced quean to be admire by some mindless, unprincipled, amoral, wanton, coarse, unconscionable sugar-daddies who has lost all claims to human decency. No daughter of mine will have a need for the stamp of approval from some low-keyed, depraved, immoral parent who have time for such debauched, decadent affairs. No offspring of mine will have time for ancient sexual-perverts. I will not sire a daughter who will choose prostitution over a good education. I will have no daughter who will have such low-opinion of herself that what some morally-bankrupt and spiritually-decadent old men think will count for anything with her. I’d like to be the proud father of a daughter who knows that what is in her head is worth more than good looks. You know what is getting my goat?” I asked Miss Ghana.

She gave me a withering look, threw a dirty look at the waitress who ambulated away quietly. “I thought you were never going to stop your insults.”

“What’s is irksome is that otherwise intelligent ladies like yourself, on whom parents and society has expended so much energies, financial and otherwise, should allow themselves to be bamboozled by cheap vain-glories and all the show-biz glitters to abandon their studies. Once again, the whiteman has succeeded in turning Africans into a caricature of himself. Have you read ‘Soul on Ice?’

Miss Ghana pouted her mouth, “No. Why?”

“I was just reminded of what Eldridge Cleaver wrote about the white man and his woman. The white man is launching an assault to turn our women into what he’s made of his own woman.”

“And that is?”

“According to Cleaver, ‘The white man has turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot and place her on a pedestal.’”

Killing Osama, Again!

2011-05-23T07:17:00.002+02:00

Hello...

Hello, yes. Who is calling?

Hello. Femi, wake up, are you still asleep?

Yes, can't you see what time it is? Why shouldn't I be asleep?

Ah, my friend, get up. How can you sleep at a time like this?

What happened, what time like this are we talking about?

You can't be serious, Femi. Don't tell me you can sleep at a momentous, historic time like this. I am dying of pure excitement. I could die now and go straight to heaven and feel very fulfilled. Femi, this is too good to be true. What! Don't tell me that you've not heard the good tiding?

Don't tell me that you woke me up to peddle your version of piety. Let me get back to my sleep. Some of us have to earn our daily bread.

Come on, man. Turn your TV on and see and hear the glorious news.

What, Jesus came back?

Don't be blasphemous, my friend. They got him!

Whom did they get? Who got whom?

Turn on the TV, Femi, and stop asking silly questions. CNN, BBC, FOX, al-Jazeera, Deutche Welle, France, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso, every television station in the world is running live commentaries, and you're sleeping. I am lucky that I have this satellite thing; I am switching channels like crazy.

I don't have a television, I told you that several times.

Yeah, I forgot you live your hermitic lifestyle. Now you have missed the biggest news of the century.

Come on, tell me now. They got whom?

It is now you want to know? American Special Forces have got their man...and in Pakistan, of all places.

I thought they always got their man. Whom did they get this time around?

Don't be daft, my friend. Who have they spent the past ten years searching for? Who is the world's Terrorist Numero Uno?

I would say Tony Blair or George Bush, Jr. Now, we can add King Sarkozy and maybe Emperor Obama.

You really think that this is funny or that it's time for wise-cracking?

No, I am not wise-cracking; those guys top my list of wanted terrorists.

Who cares about your puny and insignificant list? Who cares about any list you care to draw up?

So, now that you have managed to disturb my sleep, can you tell me what all the excitement is about?

Osama bin Laden is dead. He has been killed in Pakistan. He was killed in "Operation Geronimo" by the US SEALs in Abbottabad, near Islamabad.

Says who?

The news circulated for hours but now we have heard from the horse's mouth. President Obama just gave a speech at the White House. He has confirmed the deed. Wow, the man is good. The delivery was flawless. A real Commander in Chief! Do you know what Geronimo means?

How would I know and why should I care?

Geronimo is a Chiricahua Apache leader who resisted the US government policy to consolidate his people on reservations and led series of raids against Mexican and American settlements in the Southwest. Ah, I Googled it up, my friend.

Hmmmm.

For your information, the terrorist leader was killed in a lavish mansion near a huge military base. Americans are good, terribly good. We need their type of "can-do" spirit in Africa. Wow!

Hmmmm.

Is that all you have to say, hmmmm? Are you not going to join in the huge celebration? The world has seen the end of a mass murderer! Crowds have gathered and they are dancing around the White House and all the streets of America. America feels tall and proud as it rightly should. This is a good time to be an American.

Hmmmm.

Come on, Femi; learn to give credit where it is due. I know you don't like America, but at least on this occasion they did the world a tremendous good.

Hmmmm.

Why all the hmmmms, Femi?

I was just wondering how many times you can kill a man...

readmore.

The Mills Gambit

2011-05-20T09:48:00.003+02:00

‎"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent." – Nicole Rae Lewis

“If you bite the hands that feed you, you will go hungry.” – African proverb.

The supreme military strategist, Tsun tzu, gave this advice: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

It is not an advice the president, Professor John Atta Mills, seems to have ever heard. Whatever his other attributes, no one can accuse the president of being a consummate politico, a decisive leader, a brilliant political Strategist or even a Tactician.

It is said that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything. It is pretty difficult to know what president Mills stands for. Two and half years into his presidency, the professor has not come out to boldly articulate his vision for his nation or his party.

The president looks increasingly like a man who is just swimming with the current.
Not being able to able to rise above the common hoipoloi is not the hallmark of a true leader.

Whatever one says about presidents President John Jerry Rawlings and President John Kufuor, they are decisive leaders. It is difficult to imagine either man crying himself hoarse to collect his party’s nomination paper. It is equally difficult to imagine someone having the temerity to challenge them for supremacy in the party they led. The image of an Executive President hectoring Customs and Excise officials is also not very re-assuring.

If our good-natured, humble, god-fearing president commands no respect within his own political party, how does he hope to be respected in the country at large?

The honest truth is that the president is being badly served by those close to him and has his ears. Increasingly president Mills behave and look more like the former Nigerian President, Shehu Shagari.

Like Professor Mills, Shagari was touted as a humble, god-fearing and deeply religious man. Whilst all these could be useful attributes in someone aspiring to a position in the priesthood, they are hardly sufficient in the rough and tumble, shark-infested world of modern politics where it is all about barracuda eating the small fishes.

It is not the ideal; it just happens to be that way.

The problem with Shehu Shagari, and also increasingly with president Mills, is that both are men of very little vision or competence in public administration, and very sadly they surrounded themselves with sycophantic advisers, who refused to tell them unalloyed truth. Both are not leaders who could galvanise men into greater heights.
In countries like the US with very strong national institutions, bumblers like Bush jr. can ramble their ways through their eight years term, but a country like Ghana needs a confident, decisive, inspired and inspiring leader. It needs a leader with both passion and vision.

President Mills ill-articulated Better Ghana Agenda contains no vision to move the country forward and not even his most partisan supporter can accuse the president of being a passionate man.

Like President Mills, Shagari advisers also confused meaningless perambulations for great momentum. While the lots of Nigerians sank into the abyss, Shagari traveled around the world and embarked of sod-cutting and other exercises that should not at all engage presidential attentions.

To cap it, Shagari officials were insanely corrupt. Whilst Shagari pontificated about good governance and a fight against corruption, his officials looted the treasury to extent that left Nigerians stupefied. Many Nigerians danced on the streets when General Buhari and co terminated the kleptomaniac rule of Shagari on 31, December 1993.

President Mills cannot claim to be unaware of the monumental rot that is taking place under his watch. He shouldn’t just glibly dismiss the allegations, some of them well-documented, of corruptions against his officials.

President Mills, luckily, is not likely to meet Shagari’s fate; he nevertheless faces challenges of almost cosmic proportions.

On July 8, his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will organize a congress to its elect officials and presidential candidate for the 2011 elections.

This is serious business which also represents a gross slap in the face for Professor Mills. His is the ruling party and to have someone within the party challenging his candidacy is serious indictment on his type of leadership.

Whatever the outcome on 8 July, 2011 NDC elections, president Mills is not going to come out smelling like roses. It is for the president a situation of head he loses, tail he cannot win?

Although national elections are still more than a year away and that a day is eternity in politics, but by allowing the situation within his party to deteriorate to the extent that he was openly challenged leaves open several questions about competence, judgments and a serious question mark on the president’s political astuteness.

An astute politician is one with good radar to detect potential troubles and nip them in the bud before they turn to calamity. This was not the case with President John Atta Mills.

Everyone knew that all is not well within the NDC, and for the president to have left it unattended leaves serious question mark on his political judgment.

Surrounding himself with sycophantic ‘yes-men’ also reveals the president as a man with deep character flaw. Men with self-confidence hardly have time for feeble-minded palace jesters.

Whatever we think of him, President John Jerry Rawlings is a titan of both the Ghanaian and NDC political landscape. To have conspired to marginalized and antagonized such a man rather than seek ways to accommodate and massage his ego leaves the president’s political judgment open to serious questions.

There is no way that President Mills will come out of the congress looking good. And should he emerge victorious, it will be a pyrrhic victory as the Friend of Nana Konadu agyemang-Rawling (FONKAR) faction in his party is sufficiently aggrieved to sabotage his re-election efforts.

All these are sweet music to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

For the FONKAR group, the president has committed the gravest sins in politics: betrayal and ingratitude. Their belief that the president was ‘Rawlings –made,’ was valid as far as they are concerned. And to have him treat their hero with such huge disdain and ridicule is a sacrilege the President John Jerry Rawlings partisans are not likely to forget in a hurry.

The spectacle of the president deploying the likes of Ablakwa to flay President John Jerry Rawlings is enough to send the FONKAR group ballistic and rumours are already rife that the group would leave the NDC should the president wins.

Not to be discounted is the perceived marginalisation of the ‘foot soldiers’ that helped the NDC prosecute the electioneering war.

The foot soldiers consider the president and his team a bunch of ingrates. The insults rained upon them by member of the government and threats to ‘deal’ with them are sufficient to move the foot soldiers to thwart the president’s ambitions.

There are also those within the NDC that believe that the monumental corruption in the Mills administration has betrayed the core principles of their party. They are not likely to be moved by from their position that their party needs a change in its leadership.

For all these factions within the NDC, nothing but a massive purge of their party will do after the congress. We might see enough blood-letting on 8 July 2011 to make Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives look like a child’s play.

Then there is the big question of why? Why did president Atta Mills allowed the situation in his party descend to this gutter level? Why didn’t the elders of the party use internal party structures to help stabilized the situation before it got out of hand?

It would have helped if the president has come out openly to fight the Rawlingses and state his case against them robustly and clearly.

This would have endeared him greatly to a large section of the populace who are fed up with the Rawlingses and would love to see a courageous president that is proving to be his own man.

But, alas, the President refused to show his face. He allowed political charlatans and opportunists like Ablakwa, Haruna Iddrisu, Boateng and his other minions to do his dirty works for him.

The question is: which of these stomach politicians count for anything in Ghana politics? Who born dog, indeed!

When it matters the most, President Mills refused to come out swinging and this leaves him open to ridicule as a coward. Little wonder the cartoonist had field day caricaturing him as a mindless child.

With the authority of his office as the Executive President, the president is invested with awesome power and authority to firmly stamp his authority on the nation and, especially, on his party. He’s the leader of the party, for crying out loud!

President Mills failed to do so and his advisors thought the best way to sell him is to have him travel across the land cutting sods here and there like a common mason!
The presidential time should be more productively deployed than having him cutting sod for bore-holes, toilets and eateries at universities.

A president can be excused if he’s shown cutting sods for large-scale agricultural project, big industries but lavatories, ah - that’s not something that should engage the attention of even a minister!

In July last year, I wrote a piece entitled, ‘President John Jerry Rawlings is getting his comeuppance,” http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com/2010/07/rawlings-is-getting-his-comeuppance.html.

Here is an excerpt: “Post mortem: Every patriotic of Ghana should be concerned about the inner wrangling in the ruling party. No, it has nothing to do with whether or not we support one faction or the other. Self-interest makes it imperative for us to show our concerns. As the party entrusted with running the affairs of our nation, it is our concern to know what is going on.

President Mills is a human being and according to biologists the first concern of any organism is self-preservation. Whatever he professes Professor Mills is a politician, period. He cannot pretend not to be concerned about his re-election. This concern will, of course, translate into ensuring that he uses some of his time on tackling the problems besetting his party. He knows that he cannot launch a new party and hope to win the next election. It is also inconceivable that he will join the NPP or any other party. So, he‘s stuck with his NDC party. Given the formidable opposition of the Rawlingses (they won quite a sizable chunk of the party executive posts contested at Tamale), they cannot be discounted.

All these mean that our president will be a very worried man, indeed. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that any time our president spends on intra-party squabbling is time that could have been put into productive use in solving some of the problems facing our nation.

This precisely is the President Mills Dilemma.

How did President Mills get himself into this fine mess? It’s difficult to imagine President Rawlings or even President Kufuor facing the same problem in their parties.
Unlike President Mills, both men do not come across as one whose authority is open to questioning. Methinks that is the hallmark of a true leader.

Leaving the Young Turks (Rawlings ‘greedy bastards’) in his party to fight his battle for him also portrays the president as a coward.

So what are the options open to him? Methinks that he should come out boldly and confront the problem head-on. He should let one and all know where he stood on any of the issues confronting his leadership style and the way forward for the party. He has the whole authority of his office to back him up; it is time he uses it. These are not the times to be meek; these are occasions for decisiveness.

It is said that if you do not stand for something, you will fall for everything. As things stood, no one knows where our president stood. He needs to come out candidly and forcefully to declare his stand. Anything less would not jell.

Alas, I am not his advisor!

President Mills Comedy of Errors

2011-05-20T07:44:00.002+02:00

Were President Atta Mills to know what is good for him, he will fire all his advisers.

The sad truth is that the good professor does not appear to have been the recipient of good advice from those that are close to him.

The president’s advisors have done little but badly mis-advised him and this has led to the high office of the presidency been reduced to a huge joke. It is a crying shame.

There have been too many unnecessary gaffes and faux pas that should normally not have reached the presidency, but which the president has had to deal with. The presidency appears increasingly to function more and more like a fire service department than being an effective, proactive and dynamic institution.

The current crises engulfing the ruling party, the National Democratic Party, NDC, is just the latest unnecessary national embarrassment to a president whose appointed (well-remunerated) aides lack the capacity to shield their chief.

The president must also share in the blame. There is a saying that: “Show me your friend and I‘ll know the type of person you are.”

The type of company you keep, says a lot about your character.

The question ought to be asked why any intelligent man would surround himself with an incompetent crew. The president’s appointed crew was of such low caliber that it was promptly and appropriately dubbed Team B. What are men like ET Mensah doing in any modern cabinet? Even the president’s men joke about it like it was a laughing matter.

Ok, they are Team B, but at the level of the presidency, where ponderous decisions that affect the destiny of the nation are crafted and implemented, a country deserves to choose the best available brains. Ghana has a large pool of highly competent professionals so the president must give an answer why he chose to go for low-grade aides.

We would never know whether the president's own inadequate psychological make-up makes him uncomfortable with talented professionals.

The depth of the incompetence of president Mills’ men was laid bare for the whole world in that unsavory public masturbation the public was treated to on 5 May 2011.

Whoever advised the president to block traffic, inconvenient the people he pledged to serve and have the state-owned GTV run live commentary of his going to pick his party’s nomination paper, deserve a tremendous kick in the ass. Whoever dreamt that asinine plot up deserve an immediate sack.

What an un-presidential farce! What a mindless abuse of state (even party or private) resources on a useless enterprise that does nothing to elevate the politics of the nation, or enhance the office of the president.

What an unedifying spectacle to see the president of a nation that aspires to become middle-Income in five years reduced to blocking traffic, having his police, soldiers and security details manhandle people, all because of he wants to appear strong in his party’s internecine war?

Sorry, but that was a very unedifying spectacle! I didn’t see a strong president; I saw a charade, a circus.

Some things just do not appear right no matter how much gloss we paste over them. Does a president, in two and half years of his four-year term, need to self-flagellate himself before the public in order to secure the loyalty of his party members?

It is inconceivable to imagine former President John Jerry (JJ) Rawlings been reduced to the level of puppetry president Atta Mills exhibited on May 5!

It is doubtful if anyone in his party would have dared challenged JJ, to begin with. Whatever accusation we might tar him with, president Rawlings simply has the gravitas to firmly stamp his authority on his party that leaves no one in doubt of who is in charge.

We also witnessed how former President John Kufuor firmly and robustly stamped his authority on his party when voices of dissension arose. A chairman and a secretary-general were casualties when they crossed the Gentle Giant.

That is the mark of true leader.

Among the qualities necessary in leadership are boldness and decisiveness. It is said that a ship cannot afford to have two captains, and it is equally clear that two chefs cannot coexist peacefully in a kitchen.

Mr. Machiavelli rightly informed us that it is better for a Prince to be feared than loved. Maybe it is time someone lend President Mills a copy of The Prince.

Our elders have many wise sayings to support the position that a good leader must show strong and decisive leadership attributes; one of them is that two rams cannot drink from the same bowl.

There are enough warnings about the rumblings in the NDC that the only surprise is why the president left thing to degenerate to the gutter level without doing a darn thing about it.

Political survival instincts alone should have informed the president to stamp his authority on the party as soon a she was elected. His political antennae should have long picked up the threat posed by former President John Jerry Rawlings’ and his gang, he should have either reined or roped them in.

For whatever reason, President Mills did not do this, he is today reaping the harvest of his indecisiveness and the country is the worse off for it.

Expensive presidential time that should have been utilized to address the nation’s myriads of problems is now devoted to solving inter-party bickering.

President Mills appears like a leader who is afraid to rock the boat, and want to sit on the fence and be liked by all and sundry. This is not good enough. Leadership is not a popularity contest.

In the management of human affairs, there will be occasions when the whip needs to be swung and heads cracked; a leader should not shy away from doing so.

Human interests being what they are, it is simply impossible to please all the people all the time. It should not be the leader’s job to be Mr. Nice Guy. At the end of the day, it is results that count. It is through their achievements that leaders are judged.

What are we supposed to think of a president who needs to drag party and state officials from their duty posts to come and pledge allegiance to him on national television? C’mon, we are not in the Soviet era? Why should a leader need public declaration of fidelity from his appointees?

This was a badly scripted act that did little to enhance the president’s stature! President Atta Mills needs to do more. He needs to sit up and raise the bar of his performance. Whether or not he wins the party’s nomination, the president needs to crack the whip. He needs to change the perception that he’s an effeminate and indecisive leader with no mind of his own.

Who needs the sycophantic declaration of political jobbers? Mr. President should start to credit us with some intelligence. By dragooning his cabinet and party hacks to swear public allegiance to him, the president more than declared that all is not well.

Public declarations of support for a president are disgusting sight to which we should not be treated. Those are not what we want to see and they are not what we should be seeing from our Executive President.

We are not interested in the president’s ruckus with his party members. A wise man does not bring his family palaver to the public square. The president should solve his party’s problem at his own time; his time with us should be spent on addressing our pressing national issues.

We have enough brain to know that political jobbers owe their bread and butter to the president, and will do anything and everything to ensure that their positions are not threatened, so what exactly is Mr. President telling us?

Was he hoping to surprise us that his ministers support him publicly? I just cannot get the message the president’s handlers tried to send to us.

It is indeed sad to see the governance of Ghana reduced to such spectacle. 5 May 2011 mark a new low in the political life of the nation. All these bring us to my biggest beef with president Mills.

The president’s handlers never lose any opportunity to remind us about his academic accomplishments. A professor at twenty something, they keep on telling us.

The question is thus beggared why a professor who get elected to lead his country appear so bereft of great ideas on how to move his nation forward in giant leaps and bounds. What is the point in brandishing one’s intellectual pedigree if it is not to think big?

More importantly, why would an intellectual giant surround himself with mental Lilliputians who are incapable of generating any useful ideas or raise the level of any intellectual debate?

A great mind will surround himself only with like-minded people and will have no time for lickspittles and sycophantic hanger-ons.

Truth be told, President Mills have not enunciated any big and bold action plan into which we can sink our teeth.

Did the president handlers expect us to be enthused by the sight of Ghana’s Chief Executive cutting sods for KVIP toilets and canteens in universities?

We expected our president to cut sods for giant industrial, scientific and agricultural projects, not one that takes great pride in cutting tapes for primary and secondary schools.

We have many public and private universities in the country. We also have lots of town planners, surveyors and architects, yet we cannot fathom how to build affordable and decent houses for our people. Our president is reduced to a mere sod-cutter and we are expected vibrate with happiness and gratitude.

The job of our president is to utilize the human resources of the land to improve our lives. It is duty to think and dream big and make us part of his big ideas.

Alas, the people that surround our Chief of State cannot fathom the need to raise the standard. They are contended to trumpet the building of KVIPs as solid achievements for their over-flogged Better Ghana Agenda!

I sometime try to imagine what type of brains some of our officials are endowed with! Rather than think of how to build houses with toilets, they are thinking in terms of public toilet in the year 2011 and beat their chests in triumph!

Why on earth should our people in this age and time still build houses without toilets? That should be question to agitate our minds.

Again we are told that Mr. President sleeps and breathe with the gods, and we often see him parleying often with priests.

But why can’t he find the time to call the scientists and engineers in the land and gave them very SPECIFIC NATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS to solve within a specific time frame?

Let us take electricity as example of a major problem that requires bold leadership. Despite lots of noises, we still cannot generate and distribute enough electricity for domestic and industrial needs.

But for the foresight of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana Inc. would have grounded to a halt by now. The Akosombo Dam built by the Osagyefo continues to sustain us.

The Osagyefo also established the university that today bears his name at Kumasi. It is a university of science and technology and was set up to help with the nation’s quests for scientific and technological breakthrough.

Sadly, not much has been achieved as we continue to import all our technical needs. We can take solar lantern as an example of a specific problem we can set our minds to solve within few months. KNUST should be given a marching order to develop and get affordable solar lantern on the GH market within two years.

Another example is the dirty waterways in the nation’s capital, Accra. Legon should be tasked with coming up with solution that will breathe life into the dead waterways. The water can become arteries for transportation, agriculture and pure leisure.

Those who argue about how we are going to get the money should ask themselves where other people get theirs. They can also ask what could be done with all the money the telecomm companies waste on their useless jamborees or what we waste on parties.

A friend told me something few years back that still leaves my head reeling: He said we should remain grateful to our forebears because without them he cannot imagine what we would have done with our lives. He gave examples of the cutlass, hoe and the mortar\pestle. He said without formal schooling, our ancestors invented those useful things. Thousands of years later and with many universities, polytechnics, SSS, JSS, we have not improved upon any of them.

Why can't we also dream BIG?

2011-05-17T15:00:00.003+02:00

Why can't we also dream BIG?

"The future belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Anon

For some unfathomable reasons while I enjoy producing TV programmes, I seldom sit behind a television. Yesterday was different; I actually sat down and watch two TV programmes for close to five hours.

National Geographic is one of the channels available to Cable television subscribers in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, and the programmes were ‘Big, bigger, biggest,’ the other was ‘Building the future.’

The programmes show how human beings compete to build the tallest buildings, the largest dams, the biggest wheels and that sort of things. They were very engrossing and well-produced programmes – otherwise it won’t have consumed five hours of your truly.

What struck me the most was that none of the projects was in Africa; none of them was conceived by Africans.

From the Cape to Cairo, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, no African nation is thinking big; none is engaged in any big idea. In none of Africa’s 53 countries are the people mobilized to solve one of the myriads of problems confronting the people.

The pungent question that immediately agitated my mind was: why can’t we Africans also dream big? What exactly is it with us that our minds are not also agitated to build big things. Why are we no longer participating at the highest levels of science and engineering? Why do our cities lack eye-pleasing parks; fountains, swimming pools, libraries, monuments and other imprints of our passing through this life?

Our ancestors left their huge imprints in the sands of history. We have their Pyramids in Sudan and Egypt to attest that they did great things. What are we leaving behind?

If it’s true that the future belongs to those that believe in the beauty of their dreams, why are we Africans not also dreaming big? We are we not following our dreams? Why are we not agitated to leave behind solid legacies of achievements? Why are those leading us not mobilizing us to aim higher? Why our lives still consume by the mundane, the inanities, the senseless and mind-boggling pettiness.

Let’s get something straight: I am not in any way advocating that we copy European’s path of irrational development, or that we pursue the mindless rat race of the West, or turn our habitats into concrete jungles like they did in Europe. But there are some very basics things in our lives that our intellect should challenge us to improve.

Most part of Africa enjoy all-year round sunshine, why then do most Africans lack access to cheap solar energies. Why can't all the universities and polytechnics in Africa come up with dirt cheap solar lanterns for our people? Why can't any leader in Africa simply determine that enough is enough and give a challenge to African scientist to come up with a solution. Why are all the rich people in Africa uninterested in solving a single problem?

Mr. Mo Ibrahim generously give a grant to encourage good governance in Africa, why can't other African businessmen emulate him and start encouraging science and technology on our continent?

Over fifty years of self-government, there is no reason whatever why our folks still live in houses without water, light and, wait for this, bathroom and toilet.

It should be a national shame to us when we see families trooping to thick forest, braving snakes, in order to answer nature’s call. We should bury our heads in shame when we see our women folks squatting by the roadside to do their thing. And why do we not die of embarrassment when we see our beautiful beaches continue to be defaced by human faeces? What type of brain do we possess when people can still, in this age and time, build houses without toilet facility?

The sad part is that it wasn’t like this few years back. Then houses are supposed to be equipped with a toilet facility, however primitive. There are health inspectors in their khaki khaki and pilt helmets that goes around every week to ensure that the ordinances on health are complied with.

Sadly, we have jettisoned this very good idea.

There is also the question of our inability to feed ourselves. Our leaders, without a sense of shame or irony, keep telling us that we are spending about US$600 million to import rice.

Now, rice is really a very simple plant to grow and harvest. It takes between 3 to 6 months from planting to harvesting. And with modern methods, it can be grown virtually everywhere in our beautiful country. And what we have in some abundance is arable land, especially in the north and the Accra plains, where rice can easily be cultivated. We also happen to have another critical ingredient in abundance: dirt cheap labour.

Any intelligent leadership would have married these two together to make us a world leader in rice production.

But sadly, our elite, slaves to their masters at the IMF and the World Bank, continue to short-change us.

While our youth cry out for employment, we continue to use our hard-earned income to keep American and Asian rice farmers in business. We are doing the same for Italian and EU tomato farmers. We are doing it for Brazilian and Argentine beef and chicken farmers.

Our leaders, like mindless obedient children, continue to follow the instructions of their masters in London, Paris and Washington.

Just few years ago, the IMF admitted that three decades of their diktat ruined our economy, yet today our leaders are asking for more of the same.

It is sad really when we see that those who are today embracing the IMF were the same guys who just few years back (when they were in opposition) were loudly vociferating against the Bretton Woods institutions!

What is truly terribly galling is that western countries continue to pursue policies that are contrary to what their institutions are prescribing for us. Do our leaders follow the news and current affairs at all? When their own economies crashed, we saw all western countries frantically printing money or borrowing huge sums to keep their economies afloat and their people in work. Yet IMF and World Bank officials have the audacity to come and tell us to remove subsidy to our distressed economy, and our leaders are not putting a fatwa on them or calling upon us to lynch them!

From the Greece, through Portugal, through Spain, France, the UK, to the US, the whole capitalist economy is in tatters. Capitalism is truly discredited and western nations have intervened massively to shore up the casino economies that unbridled capitalism created, yet our leaders continue to listen to western officials giving us lectures!

Can’t we be original, for once? Can we think original thoughts?

Some time ago, it was announced that there were plans to create a Dry Dock port at Ghana’s second city, Kumasi. The question is why Dry Dock? The distance between Accra and Kumasi is 270 km or 168miles. Why cannot our minds conceive of a large canal to link the Garden City to the Atlantic?

If human beings were able to link the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal (a daunting engineering feat by any standard), why can’t we be able to build an ordinary water channel?

More than four hundred years ago, the Dutch people conquered their lands from the sea, and they successfully build large canals to enable them move up and down their below-the-sea-level country. They successfully connect many large rivers to the sea. And some few years back, they successfully created a brand new province, Flevoland, from the sea.

Again we have the human resources, but we lack the imagination. Those leading us are too pre-occupied with little silly things to think on grand scale. They lack the minds to dream big ideas and challenge us to accomplish them. They continue to think low scale, as though the creator forgot to adequately equip them in the brain department. They continue to operate as though rest of the world is still waiting for us. A president of our dear land, a former professor, happily commissioned public toilets and expect us to dance for joy!

Iran has successfully mastered nuclear and space technology; China will soon be sending a Chinese to the moon and the Indians are leading the world in software engineering, and our president is calling on us to pray and fast!

Our president is asking for a national day of prayer. He conveniently forgot to tell us what all our prayers all over the years have accomplished for us. He disingenuously forgot to tell us which country on earth has solved a single problem by praying.

Actually methinks that we should be affronted by that type of talk from anyone ruling us. No one campaigned on the premise that we would require heavenly intercessions to solve our basic problem.

Our parliamentarians each took US$50,000 as car load without bending their knees in supplication to a god. That is addition to generous salaries and allowances they are receiving.

Our ministers continue to enjoy good salaries, emoluments and other freebies without offering prayers. We do not see our officials offering prayers when they are looting our treasury or selling off our national assets to their friends in the West. Why on earth do they then need prayers to provide basic services for us?

Basics things like water and electricity are no longer considered hard-to-master Rocket Science, yet they continue to pose serious challenges to those ruling us.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are individual Africans brilliant enough to participate at the highest summit at NASA, the ESA and other hallowed institutions. So, we know that it has nothing to do with race or color.

What is easily noticeable is that whilst individually we might excel, collectively we continue to flounder. We can also easily see this wherever we go in this beautiful continent of us. We have individuals who are brilliant enough to perform well and run their own companies competently, but in our national life, everything is still topsy-turvy. We have the incredible situation recently whereby the company providing water for the our capital city had to go all the way to South Africa to look for an engineer who could help them fix a broken down plant.

The news has died down and we have forgotten it until next time when we encounter the same problem. This, sadly, continue to be the way we run our national affairs. No one was fired for the water corporation fiasco. No queried was issued to anyone over the national embarrassment. No effort was expended to ensure that the same thing will not happen again. Few days later, like little children, we have moved to other things.
Let’s take a look at the perennial flood causing havoc in our national capital, Accra. Like acting some macabre rituals, our leaders yearly troop to our Alajo and Asylum Down and Sahara and the other numerous ghettos sandwiched within our nation’s chief city. There, our leaders will look their grimiest, make the same sanctimonious, ritualistic promises and depart with their expensive motorcade (foreign made, of course). End of story.

I saw President Rawlings during his long years sympathizing with flood victims in Accra. President Kufuor followed exactly the same script and President Mills have also started doing the same thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing will be done to put proper structure in place to ensure that the same flood does not happen the following year. Maybe our leaders are afraid that it’d spoil the macabre fun they thought we are enjoying with their visits.

Our lives continue to be consume by politics, religion and gossip.

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors built high culture in Axum; they build pyramids in Sudan and in Egypt; they built the great Zimbabwean walls, yet today we cannot mobilize to feed and, clothe and decently house ourselves.

It is a crying shame.

African Albinos: a threatened specie

2011-05-04T13:20:00.002+02:00

This article was published in the February 2010 edition of the New African Magazine.

No one can accuse Africans of not being very funny creatures. Travel the length the breadth of this very fantastically beautiful and hugely blessed continent and you will notice how people of the European Stock (apologies to Baffour Ankomah) continue to be treated with huge respect.

In Nigeria, children will be seen running after the scaliest of European wags screaming, ‘Oyinbo, oyinbo.’ In Ghana where a European face will open any door, they are called ‘Obroni,’ with great affection. In Eastern and Southern Africa, the very complimentary appellation is ‘Mzungu.’

By a very curious but yet unfathomable logic, whilst Africans continue to worship human beings with white skins that came from Europe; the same people continue to kill human beings with white skins if they happen to be Africans.

Lamentably, in this globalized age of internet and things, there are still people whose prejudices against Albinos are as long as your arm. Some of the myths concocted by these jaundiced and totally bigoted people include such nonsense that:

I. Albinos do not die but only vanish after some stage of their lives.
II. Albinos can see only at night.
III. Albinos do not attend nature’s call on Friday.
IV. When Albinos whistle ants do not sleep in night.
V. Albinos are born only when there is a failure in an attempt to abort a baby.
VI. Albinos will become blind halfway through life.

It matters little that these are purely jejune nonsense. Albinos do not vanish; no one does. And certainly not all albinos are photophobic.

Were Albinos in Africa to be facing only irrational bigotry that, in itself, would have been serious enough. But they are still being used for totally absurd rituals.

Africa is indeed a place of mind-bogging contradictions. Africa is a place where someone will go through the rigors a university education, follow a rigorous scientific training, acquire all the degrees available yet will believe that tying a talisman to a waist is protection against car accident. It is a place where people still believe that nature is governed by supernatural forces that could be appease by bathing in olive oil and dancing senseless at ‘prayer retreats.’

In a recent election rerun in Ekiti State of Nigeria, people resorted to the chanting of incantations and the display of charms and amulets. Ironically, almost every family in Ekiti state boasts a PhD degree holder and the state’s motto is: “Fountain of Knowledge,”

This writer incurred the ire of many Ghanaians when last year he told off a Ghanaian pastor who had gone to the Akosombo dam to invoke the power of the almighty to send down the rain. In an article in The Mirror (Ghana), I wrote that the sciences of rain are too well known to require the intervention of some goblins in the sky. May people called for my head.

In this age and time when the luminous light of science is revealing nature’s darkest secrets, many in our dear continent still believe that spilling Albinos’ blood will yield better crop, guarantee business success, help in passing examinations, help in winning elections, drive off evil spirits and help to gain financial success. Sadly many people are still willing to perform the same rituals their ancestors in Egypt were performing eons ago.

Few years ago, some people in Tanzania decided that the fastest and surest way to instant prosperity is by using parts from Albinoid people. What started as a prank in the Northern part of the country soon spread like wide fire until it engulfed the whole nation. The numbers rose dramatically as rumors spread of the efficacy of potent of juju concocted with Albino blood and body parts.

Today Albinos in Tanzania have to take refuge in camps which is the only place they feel safe.

Early this year Bukuruwa a sleepy town in Ghana’s Eastern Region shot to national prominence when its chief announce that the safety of Albinos living in his domain can no longer be guaranteed because their god had issue with Albinos some three hundred years ago.

In many parts of Ghana (and Africa), Albinos are still seen as outcast. So entrenched are superstitious beliefs in many parts of the country that many people believe that the spate of accidents ravaging the country can be stayed by the sacrifice of Albinos. There are two reported cases of Albino killing at Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo region of the country. And recently it was alleged that Albinos were sacrificed to win elections in the December 2008 elections. Figures are difficult to come by, but the Society of Albinos-Ghana (SOA-G) believes that many Albinos are being senselessly killed across the land for ritual sacrifices.

The president of the SOA-G, Mr. John David Tuu Yawanah, in an interview with New Africa opined that its member face giant societal stigmatization that make their lives very miserable and pose direct threat to their lives.

The insults and humiliations Albinos face in Ghana are many. People call them all sorts of names, the favorite being ‘oflijato,’ meaning ‘borrowed skin ‘ in the Akan language. Albinos are openly discriminated against. The Bukuwura chief that made the threat has so far received no sanction whatever even though his condemnable and actionable utterances clearly breached the Ghanaian Constitution which forbids discrimination on any ground whatsoever.

Even though the nature of albinism makes working in the open African sun difficult enough, but then few employers will even consider them for any sort of employment to begin with. The Department of Social Welfare responsible for catering to the disabled also stubbornly refuses to recognize their peculiar disabilities.

Albinism is simply a defect in the body production of the melanin. Melanin is the substance responsible for giving color (pigment) to our skin, hair, and eyes. It is found in both human being and animals. In plants, the lack of melanin (chlorophyll) results in the plant’s inability to produce photosynthesis necessary for it sustenance and survival. Though some authors have sought to link melanin with, among other things, intelligence and spiritually, there’s no scientific basis whatever to support such bogus claims.

“Albinism (from Latin albus, "white", also called achromia, achromasia, or achromatosis) is a form of hypopigmentary congenital disorder, characterized by a partial (in hypomelanism, also known as hypomelanosis) or total (amelanism or amelanosis) lack of melanin pigment in the eyes, skin and hair, or more rarely in the eyes alone.” Wikipedia.

According to the website of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH), “The word “albinism” refers to a group of inherited conditions. People with albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair. They have inherited altered genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin. One person in 17,000 in the U.S.A. has some type of albinism. Albinism affects people from all races. Most children with albinism are born to parents who have normal hair and eye color for their ethnic backgrounds. Sometimes people do not recognize that they have albinism.“

And according to MedinePlus Medical Encyclopaedia, “There are two main types of albinism:

• Type 1 albinism is caused by defects that affect production of the pigment, melanin.
• Type 2 albinism is due to a defect in the "P" gene. People with this type have slight coloring at birth.

The killing of Albinos might have a direct link with the new craze in much of Africa whereby people, especially the young ones, want to get rich quickly without working for it.

They seem to be following the script in the movie: Get Rich or Die Trying. Their only desire in life is an unbridled primitive accumulation of material things. In Ghana where it’s known as SAKAWA, children as young as 18 have abandoned schools and are resorting to every form of magic which they believe will guarantee them instant wealth. There have been many reports of young people dying or going mad under very mysterious circumstances after undergoing very nasty rituals.

It is sad that much of Africa’s hallowed customs and cultures are being daily bastardized. In years gone by, no one in our societies dared displayed a wealth of unknown source. In those days, a parent will question a child who brought any strange object to the house. Nowadays no one seems to have much respect for hard-work, honesty and integrity.

In years past, many weird rituals were performed in many traditional African societies. These include the killing of twins who were believed to be aberrant of nature. Gladly, enlightenment has all but banished but few of these misguided beliefs.

The killings of human beings with any form of deformity ought to be strongly condemned. We Africans need to properly educate ourselves that we have to join the rest of humanity in embracing science and technology even as we strive to maintain our cultural integrity. Our opinion leaders owe it a duty to help in educating the people that it’s high time we jettison ancient ideas that are as irrational as they are anachronistic. There is no antidote to poverty alleviation but good education, hard work, clever management of our immense resources and learning to live within our means. It’s a fantastic pseudo-science that crop yield could be increased by spilling blood, any blood. Better irrigation systems will yield better harvest than all the body parts of all the Albinos in our dear continent.

The Interview

Femi Akomolafe interview with Mr. John David Tuu Yawanah, President of Society of Albino – Ghana

Q: What motivated you to set up the Society of Albino – Ghana?

A: I was a lecturer at the Political Science department of the University of Ghana, Legon before I took it upon myself to take up the cause of the people with albinism. Our daily lives are suffocated with unbridled prejudices and discriminations even from people who should know better. Imagine that I, at the very summit of academia, is daily subjected to very revolting indignities. What then about the ordinary Albino who is a virtual nobody?

Q. Your society recently called a press conference to protest the Bukuruwa issue whereby the chief called for the ostracization of Albinos, what has been the reaction so far?

A: Sorry to say, not much was achieved. We got a few mention in the papers – buried deep in the hard-to-locate crannies. The radios also played it for a minute or so and it was all forgotten. Sadly, we have not had a reaction from the government or any of the state institutions. We are talking fundamental human rights here! We are supposedly a republic of law and order, how on earth can any person, no matter how highly placed, virtually called for the killing of another human being with those in authority not reacting at all? We have petitioned as high as the presidency with absolutely no one minding us.

Q: Your society operates under the umbrella of the Ghana federation of the Disabled, why is that?

A: Funnily, people do not think of Albinos as physically-challenged to use that politically-correct word. But the truth is that we suffer from a host of ailments of which seven different forms of cancer are prime examples. We also have serious problems with our eye sights. Think of it this way, we are the only disabled people who cannot organize a protest march. We simply cannot walk in the harsh African sun lest we suffer severe burnt. So, we have to suffer in silence or organize press conferences that are poorly attended and under-reported.

Q. Do you get any help from the government or any organization, internal or external?

A: Unfortunately not. The society is being funded solely by my personal resources and the resources of a few of our members with the wherewithal to help. I have a BMW workshop that generates a small income which I use to fund most of the activities of the society. The government refuses to see our conditions as demanding special treatment. I was recently in Malawi and there they have special Albino units in some of their hospitals manned by people with albinism. In contrast to Ghana where we have had cases where doctors and nurses refused to treat Albinos. Being a NGO we are supposed to be tax-exempted, but as I am talking to you now, I have a consignment of creams donated to our society by a benevolent outsider rotten at the Tema port. The reason is that we do not have the money to clear them from the port. And of course such creams are too expensive to be purchased locally.

Q. What have you been doing to publicize the plight of Albinos in Ghana and to educate the people of Ghana about what albinism exactly is?

A: Publicity, my brother, cost money, tons of it. Sadly the newspapers here are all into sports and politics with scant coverage of health or social issues. We have had sympathetic media people like Blakk Rasta who has taken up our cause. We do our best to issue press release and speak at forums but what do we do when editors decide to bury our stories deep inside their papers? I have approached the radio and TV stations for help in publicizing our plights, but they are all demanding huge sums that we simply do not have.

Q: How about the churches and other religious body?

A: Sad to say but we have scored zilch on that front also since the demise of Dr. Apostle Okey Ntimi of the Pentecost Church. Among all the religious leaders, he was our sole indefatigable champion. Since his death no other religious leader has deemed it fit or necessary to help us. This in a way is very strange. They are there preaching about a God that created all of us, yet they tacitly sanction the discrimination against some of the creator’s creature? I don’t know how to square that.

Q: How about your own immediate family, do you suffer discrimination from them as well?

A: From my nuclear family, I’ll say no. We are a family of eight. Both my parents are carriers and among the children half are Albino and the other three are not. So there’s no problem there, but even member of my extended family openly taunt me. I waged a battle before I could marry my wife. Her aunt was so hostile that on the occasions that she caught us together she threw water on us. Sadly she died in a car crash where she had gone to recruit her sister (my mother-in-law) in her cause to stop our marriage. Some of her family member even brought military policemen to come and threaten me. Up till today, there are still family houses where my wife is a persona non grata. My wife is not an Albino and our children are also not but the children are carriers. That means that should they marry other carriers, their offspring will suffer from albinism.

Q: And among your friends and colleagues?

A: The discrimination is both overt and covert. Many of my friends openly show prejudices without even realizing it. I was once in the company of a friend when he met one of his friends and asked for some money. His friend retorted that he was a fool to be asking him for money when he was walking with money. It means that we Albinos are good potions for money-making juju. People have openly threatened to send me to where I shall never return. And law enforcement officers have also publicly called me names.

Q: How do you feel when you see Africans embracing Europeans on the streets and treat Albinos like vermin?

A: I have traveled the length and breadth of Africa one thing I noticed is that we Africans have serious inferiority-complex problem. We worship everything as long as it does not remind us of our Africaness. I have some books where it was said that Europeans are Albinos Africans casted away in years past. I don’t know how far that theory is true or not, but I want people, especially Africans, to know is that we are also children of God. One of the rhymes we were taught in primary school is: To laugh at infirmity or deformity is enormity.’ How do we then grow up saddled with all these excess baggage of absolutely nonsensical prejudices and bigotry? If one accepts God as possessing infinite wisdom, it does not add up to condemn one of his creations. HIV/AIDS is a dreadful and easily contagious illness, albinism is not infectious. Albinism is hereditary and cannot be transmitted by blood transfusion or any vector. How then do we explain the situation whereby we Albinos are considered as the lowest forms of life?

Q: Have you considered internationalizing your plight? For example international stars like the Malian singer, Salif Keita, and the reggae superstar Yelloman are Albinos, have you solicited their help?

A: I am the Chairman of the pan-African organization for Albinos. We try to coordinate our activities at the African continent level. I have travel all over Africa to compare notes and share experience with my brothers and sisters across the continent. No, I have not contacted stars like Salif Keita and Yellowman simply because I do not have the links to them.

Q: And your message to the reader of this magazine?

A: My plea is that we Albinos suffer enough as it were and people should not compound our woes. We did not choose to suffer from albinism. We have no choice but to accept our fate, but people should realize that since no one knows tomorrow, they should be more sensitive to the ways and manners they relate to people with any form of deformity. We welcome any help that will alleviate our woes and enable members of our society or any disabled person to live a fulfilled life. We are all sojourners on mother earth and we ought to treat one another with respect, solidarity and dignity. It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do!

The Attack On Libya: A Commentary

2011-05-02T16:51:00.002+02:00

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not."
—Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc

It was the great Simón Bolívar who said: "The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."

As a citizen of the world it's becoming increasingly difficult for me not to think that the gods destined the West to plague the rest of mankind.

I have often wondered what it'd be like to be a citizen of a Western nation. What does it feel like to belong in a society that has such scant regard for human lives, and one that has such fickle understanding of basic human relationships?

What does it feel like to belong in a place where friendship fizzles away at the flick of fingers and allegiances are not even skin deep?

I know all about Lord Palmerston's assertion that "There are no permanent allies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests," and I have read George Orwell's classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four. But how would I feel to be led by people whom I see kissing somebody today and raining bombs on him tomorrow?

I really don't know.

I lived in the West and still visit occasionally, but the place remains as incomprehensible to me as though it exists in another planetary system. The mentality of the leadership/scholarship of the Western world remains enigmatic to me. And when you thought you have seen it all, they come up with a whopper that dwarfs everything you considered insane about them.

I was old enough to remember the Iran-Iraq war where, as is usual in any trouble spot in our wide world, the West took sides. They supported a rather nasty customer because they were still peeved by their loss in Iran -- like the country belonged to them. They goaded Saddam Hussein to spend a great part of his national income to buy their arms. They gleefully sold the dictator all he needed to give himself the illusion of grandeur.

A few years later, Saddam had an issue with the West's latest paramour, the rulers of British-invented Kuwait. With dizzying speed, the West changed sides. With alacrity, they assembled the coalition that raced with dispatch to destroy the weapons they sold to their erstwhile puppet.

Jules Henry wrote one very excellent essay I read during my school days. It was titled: "Social and Psychological Preparation for War," which was originally published in The Dialectics of Liberation (Penguin, 1968).

Mr. Henry informed us of the reason why it is very easy for the United States to wage wars at the drop of a hat, so to speak. He wrote:

It is clear, therefore, that in preparation for modern war an interdependent world political economy has within it sufficient conflicts of interest to make all nations potential enemies to all others. One of the "evolutionary achievements" of modern culture has been to make the idea that "anybody can be my enemy at any time" acceptable. A consequence of the definition of the enemy as part of one's own social system is a psychological predisposition to accept almost any nation at all as inimical when the government chooses to so define it.
I have on my computer system pictures of "democratic" leaders like Britain's Tony Blair, King Sarkozy, and Emperor Barack Obama meeting with and shaking the hands of Muammar Qaddafi. I also have pictures of Berlusconi kissing Qaddafi's hand.

That this same man, who today has been successfully morphed into an ogre, received warm embraces from many Western leaders is easily forgotten by Western pundits.

Today, without any compunction, without even batting an eyelid, Western leaders are falling over themselves to condemn the man whom they were welcoming like a bosom friend just a few months ago. Today, their planes are raining bombs on the North African nation.

They needed him then and he knew it. Having bankrupted themselves in fighting their insane wars, and to bolster their insatiable and gluttonous lifestyles, they needed infusions of raw cash, which Qaddafi happens to have in abundance.

readmore.

Questions for Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs on Libya

2011-04-21T09:34:00.001+02:00

Questions for the Dutch Foreign Minister on the Dutch involvement on the attack on Libya.

Dear Mr. Meijer,

Greetings.

I am writing a story on the NATO attack on Libya and would like to get some information on the Dutch policy vis-à-vis Libya. I will appreciate an early reply.
Specifically, I have the following questions:

1. What is the official Dutch government position on the situation in Libya?

2. One of the prerogatives of states is that they hold monopoly on the instruments of violence within their territory. No country will permit an armed-uprising; is a new precedent not being set by the Western Powers in supporting an armed group in Libya? What is the Dutch government’s position on supporting armed rebellion in other countries?

3. Although UNSC Resolution 1973, specifically, did not authorised action to violate the sovereignty of Libya in the name of human rights, nor action in support of the anti-government rebels nor “regime-change” in Libya, today some Western governments (UK, France and the USA) openly called for “regime change,” and have announced plans to send ‘military advisors’ to aid the Libyan “pro-democracy forces.” What is the position of the Dutch government on regime change in Libya?

4. There appears to be a stalemate in Libya, what exactly is the outcome envisioned by the Dutch government in Libya?

5. How feasible is the desire of the West to impose democracy and Human Rights by military violence and where should we draw the line?

6. What is the response of the Dutch government to the charges by some African commentators that the attacked smacked of double-standards - given the fact that numerous resolutions of the United Nations remain unenforced by the Western Powers? You can see a long list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel

7. Given the fact that Libya is, at least, geographically in Africa, why did the Western powers decided to ignore the publicly-stated position of the African Union (AU) condemning any military solution to the crises in Libya?

8. Why is the West ever so eager to employ military force in non-western people\nations, rather than use its considerable powers to compel antagonists to the Conference Table, like providing them with non-lethal (good offices) means to resolve their differences?

9. And what would be the response of the Dutch government to accusations that Africa is being re-colonised. This being derived from the fact that the Western powers continue to hold meetings in European capitals (London, Paris, Berlin) to decide the future of an African country, Libya, which brings back to memory the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-5?

10. How would the Dutch government react to accusations that the West is trying to counter China’s incursions to Africa. Cited as example is one of the leaks from the Wikileaks’ memos, where we read the following: “1.(C/NF) Summary: Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) renegotiated the terms of its production sharing agreements with France's Total and its partners in Libya (Germany's Wintershall and Norway's StatoilHydro), adjusting the existing stand-alone contracts to bring them into compliance with the Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA) rubric. The renegotiation of Total's contract is of a piece with the NOC's effort to renegotiate existing contracts to increase the Libya's share of crude oil production... the renegotiated agreements could adversely impact his revenue stream. End Summary.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/libya-wikileaks/8294570/FRENCH-TOTAL-LED-CONSORTIUMS-ACCEPT-LOWER-PRODUCTION-SHARES-IN-LIBYA.html

11. What would be the response of the Dutch government to another concern of Africans, especially those who live in Europe, why countries like France and the Netherlands which continue to treat them with impunity, would want to assume high moral grounds on Human Rights and Democracy in Africa? You can see an example of the treatment of African women and children in France here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZGK33rkk6E

12. It was a Dutch man Hugo Grotius who, in his seminal work, titled De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (Of the Laws of War and Peace) published in 1623, wrote: “Throughout the Christian world, I observed a lack of restraint in relation to war, such as even barbarous races should be ashamed of; I observed that men rush to arms for slight causes, or no cause at all, and that when arms have once been taken up there is no longer any respect for law, divine or human; it is as if, in accordance with a general decree, frenzy had openly been let loose for the committing of all crimes. Confronted with such utter ruthlessness many men, who are the very furthest from being bad men, have come to the point of forbidding all use of arms to the Christian, whose rule of conduct above everything else comprises the duty of loving all men.”

Today, we look at Iraq, Afghanistan, La Cote d’ivoire and Libya, and see that not much has changed since 1623. Can we look forward to a time that the west will, in the words of the Christian Bible, turn its sword into plowshare and attain to resolve conflicts through peaceful means rather than on wholesale military violence?

All best,

Femi Akomolafe

Nigeria: Another Do-or-Die Election in the offing?

2011-04-11T05:57:00.004+02:00

As they prepare to vote in the 9 April 2011 elections, the prayer on the lips of most Nigerians is that the political earthquakes that toppled the governments in Tunisia and Egypt and is threatening the 42-year old regime of Beloved Brother Leader Qaddafi in Libya, should extend to their much mis-governed land and sweep the otiose elite into a giant seismic dustbin.

We should try to understand their prayer. Few nations in history have been so badly led astray by their leaders like Nigeria. It is equally difficult to imagine another country that has regressed so badly as this West African nation of some one hundred and fifty million souls. And one will have to search far and wide to come across a more insensitive, totally uncaring and corrupt politicians like the shameless lot that continues to grace the Nigerian political scene.

Many (some will say most) Nigerian politicians are not only thieves, but they have absolutely no shame at all. They have elevated corruption to such level that Nigerians are no longer awed or shocked by news of corrupt practices in high and low places. Corruption has become the norm; almost a culture.

One could hardly read a newspaper in Nigeria without coming across mind-boggling cases of corruption here and there. One top politician was recently in the news for organizing a Thanksgiving service in a church after he was released from jail on corrupt practice. Among the societal bigwigs that joined in the celebration was former president Olusegun Obasanjo who reportedly danced himself silly at the church. The public outcry caused Obasanjo to issue a mind-bending statement that he was ‘tricked’ into attending the service. Obasanjo is an elderly Yoruba – a people that once put great premium on honesty and good-conduct.

Ironically, Obasanjo was the president who, during his tenure, made a big song and dance about fighting corruption. He was also the leader that set up the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). So baffled was the head of the EFCC, Madam Waziri Farida, by the audacity of Nigerian politicians and civil servants to loot the commonwealth that she suggested psychiatric treatment for them.

So, Nigerians appear to be waiting (and praying) for the spark that will ignite a Tunisian-like revolution in their land. The April poll might provide the incendiary device.

Compared to Nigeria, the North African countries where people took to the streets in millions to protest were pure paradise on earth.

Infrastructure-wise both Tunisia and Egypt are light years ahead of the country that, until few years ago, used to boast of being the’ Giant of Africa.’

Life is both short and brutish in today’s Nigeria. Armed robbery is on the increase and although it has somewhat reduced, kidnapping remains a fertile occupation for restless youth who see no other prospect in life. And to compound the security woes, bomb blasts are going off in several parts of the country with the corrupt-ridden and inefficient security agencies reduced to scratching their heads and issuing empty bombast.

As that were not enough, religious dimensions have been added to the pot-pourri of problems besetting the country.

After looting their state’s treasury, almost all the governors of the Northern states tried to appease their people by throwing religion into their faces. Contrary to the spirit and letter of the Nigerian constitution, these governors went ahead and introduced Islamic Sharia laws in their domain. Today, emboldened Islamic fundamentalists are clamoring that Sharia be extended all over the constitutionally-secular federation.

Moslem fundamentalists have wrought mayhem in several Northern states as they strive to impose their fire-brand version of Islam. They have been joined by fellow religionists from neighboring countries to wreaked havoc across Northern Nigeria. Today life in the once-peaceful and serene city of Jos has been ruined by religious and inter-ethnic strife.

For many Igbos, it is déjà vu all over again as, once again, they are made to receive and bury dead relations whose only crime was to sojourn in other parts of what is supposed to be their fatherland. The Pan-Yoruba militant organization, Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), was also sufficiently miffed by the killings of Yorubas in the North that it issued statements re-instating its call for a break-away Odua Republic.

On the economic front, Nigerians are also bemoaning their fate as their standards of living continue to plummet. The national infrastructures are also collapsing with road arteries becoming huge national embarrassments, despite colossal amount been voted for their maintenance and rehabilitation. And despite huge sums being voted, at least on paper, the nation’s electricity generation and distribution system remain epileptic.

In today’s Nigeria, about the only lucrative business in town apart from criminal activities seem to be politics. So debased is the societal value that today many Nigerians join politics not to try and make a difference but rather to partake in the free-for-all looting of public funds.

It is difficult to blame them though when politics pay far more than any other profession. For example, the Chairman of a local government council (the equivalent of the District Chief Executive in Ghana) earns more than a university professor, and he has a fleet of cars at his disposal. His wife also receives a salary and a car. Nigerian lawmakers are believe to be the highest pay in the world with the President of the Nigerian Senate earning as much as four times the salary of the President of the United States of America.

No one talk of ideology anymore in Nigerian politics. The result is that the nation’s twenty one registered parties are distinguishable only by the personalities rather than any ideological differentiation. Politicians cross carpet with abandon dragging their foot-soldiers along with them. Politics has been reduced to mere noise generation. It has become a farcical game whereby politicians mouth nonsense which no one expects them to keep.

The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which claims to be Africa’s largest political organization is a motley collection of very strange bed-fellows. Given the rancorous manner it ruthlessly prosecute its congress, no one can accuse the party of been an epitome of democracy and Nigerians will scoff at the very idea that the PDP has any feeling for the hoi-poloi.

On its website http://www.peoplesdemocraticparty.net, the PDP boasts that it will:
• make fundamental break with past mistakes in order to realize the optimum potentials of the Country;
• build a qualitatively better society based on the principles of democracy, human rights and social justice under the rule of law;
• be committed to;
• restructuring Nigeria in the spirit of true federalism and responsible tiers of government, so as to achieve a just and equitable society;
• Resolving such fundamental issues as proper devolution of powers between the three tiers of government;

Close to twelve years at the helm, Nigerians rightly wondered what the PDP has done to fundamentally break with past mistakes; what it has done to restructure the country to devolve power between the three tiers of government. In fact, only a die-hard PDP supporter will be able to mention a single thing the party has achieved.

If Nigerians expected the twelve years of PDP mal-administration to galvanise the opposition to coalesce and provide a united front, they were to be sorely disappointed. But they need not be as the political class has, over the years provided ample proof that they are mere political jobbers looking for where their bread will receive the most butter.

Nigerians even have a name for their special brand of politicians – they call them ‘chop-I-chop.’ Little wonder that the nation remains bogged down in cesspit of corruption.

Today, the so-called opposition (largely made up of disgruntled PDPers and other carpet-baggers) offer the long-suffering people of Nigeria no clear alternative to the reprobate PDP.

Sadly for Nigerians, rather for the opposition to present a united front to confront the PDP, they have allowed their selfish interests to becloud their sense of good judgment. No fewer than eighteen (yes, 18) candidates have been approved by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to contest the April poll.

Nigerians believe that most of the candidates are mere reckless opportunists jostling for relevance so that their perfidious acts could be rewarded with a ministerial, ambassadorial or other juicy posts which is passport to good living in a country where politics is the only gainful game in town.

It has been known to happen. The calculation is simple: it’d be difficult for any of the candidates to win outright in the clouded first round which leaves the ‘also-rans’ to declare for the candidate with the best chance with their ‘teeming’ supporters.

That is after they must have made the customary noises about rigging and threatening fire and brimstone, plus all the necessary shakara that’s necessary to increase their nuisance value and boost their chances of getting a post.

Nigerians certainly deserved a lot better than the current sorry motley collection of politicians. Part of the problem was the political system the country chose to operate. Post-independence Nigeria started life with a parliamentary system of government. However, its fragility was believed partly responsible for the collapse of the First Republic when the Army struck on January 15, 1966.

Naturally, the military ran a highly centralised government and this must informed their decision to opt for American-styled Executive Presidency when they took their leave.

It was the inimitable Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah who defined Western-styled democracy as competition between oligarchies. Whatever its advantages, Executive Presidency is a political system that is inherently expensive to run and manage.

Only few Nigerians have the bag loads of raw cash necessary to prosecute and win elections even at the local government level. Anyone thinking of pursuing elective post at any level needs vast war chest. This has created the chance for those with serious money to start the very lucrative business of sponsoring candidates to high office. So-called God-fathers have stepped in. In order to protect their investment, these money-bags also have army of foot-soldiers (mostly unemployed youth) they can deploy to snatch ballot boxes, beat up or killed opponents and do everything to ensure that sponsored candidates ’win’ elections.’ That explain why in Nigeria some politicians can tell electorates that ‘whether you vote for me or not, I’ll win the election.’

In return the god-fathers want to have some of their men appointed to choice ministries and other parastatals in addition to being awarded juicy government contracts.

God-fatherism has now become part of the country’s political establishment. Many state governors have been made and marred by these entrepreneurs who expected good returns on their ‘investments.’ The result is government that is held hostage and paralysed by its beholden not to electors but to a cabal of very ruthless, faceless individuals who control all levers of government. This has transformed the very art of governance into a do-or-die affair and make it possible for the Nigerian landscape to resemble a gigantic recycling plant with the same, tired, old and ugly faces putting up appearances all the time.

The hijacking and subsequent bastardisation of the body politics make the task of organizing credible elections quite onerous, if not impossible. It is difficult to imagine how the nation hopes to organize credible elections without a radical reformation of the rotten electoral system.

Until there is a fundamental re-jiggering of the extant system, Nigerians should not hope to see any change anytime soon.

Given the abysmal performance of the ruling PDP, nothing would have made better sense than for the opposition politicians to rally behind a single candidate to confront the PDP behemoth. No one expect the PDP not to attempt to rig the forthcoming elections, but even the party of the Apostles of do-or-die politics would have a hard time convincing Nigerians that they cleanly defeat a united front. After twelve years in power, the PDP have a lot on convincing to do to make Nigeria believe that the party has anything new to offer.

Unlike in the 1999 and 2003 elections when the Opposition presented a united front, today incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan goes into battle against a clearly divided opposition. Self-seeking and opportunistic opposition leaders bicker among themselves rather than confront the PDP.

As political scientist and commentator, Prof. Dickson Usoren, opines “an easy passage has been inadvertently packaged for the PDP and its candidate by the caliber of presidential candidates of other parties.”

It’d have been palatable were the opposition to be divided on ideological lines, but no, the motley collections that got registered as political party are oriented towards their leaders who, invariably are also the chief sponsors.

And since ideology has no discernible relevance in the nation’s polity, Nigerians are not convinced that the opposition parties offer them anything new or that they are better than the PDP they are fighting to replace. To many Nigerians, the so-called opposition parties are just the other side of a bad coin.

Although overcrowded, serious money put the April presidential contest as a straight fight between incumbent and PDP candidate Goodluck Jonathan, and the All Nigeria’s Peopels Party (ANPP) candidate, former military strongman, General Mohammadu Buhari. Very interestingly, it pities the country geographic South against the North; and, in a country where religion is a matter of life and death, Christianity against Islam.

PDP - Goodluck Jonathan
Much has been written about President Goodluck Jonathan fairy tale foray into Nigeria’s politics and the April polls offer him the opportunity to prove his mettle. It will the president’s first attempt to win any election on his own merit. Until now, he was always someone’s deputy before providence intervened to catapult him to the number one position. He was a deputy governor in his oil-rich Bayelsa State when his boss DSP Alameseigha was impeached for corrupt practice. Goodluck stepped into the governorship seat automatically.

It was from there that he was plucked to partner with the late President Musa Yar’Adua in the 2007 elections. A sickly Yar’Adua died in May 2010 and Goodluck Jonathan became Nigeria’s substantive president, again without any effort on his part.

His almost one year in office has been most unremarkable. No one has any clue what the president stands for. Although he claims to be hip and maintains a Facebook presence, he has failed to articulate properly what vision he has for the country outside of his party’s dry mantra. A leaked memo published by Wikileaks tells of a man of grave self-doubt, unsure of himself and one who honestly confessed his inexperience.

The president has also been severely criticized for his management of the economy and the deteriorating security situation in the country.

While there is no doubt that he will win handily in his South-South geographic area, the president will have a herculean task to sell himself in the other parts of Nigeria. His bruising battle in the primaries of his PDP party leaves a lot of bitter rancor which are still festering. Although he won the primary handily, few weeks to the poll, his main opponent, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, is still in the courts pursuing a case against his loss.

Also, the influential Northern political elite, which believes that the president cheated by even putting himself up, contrary to their party’s zonal agreement, are still visibly angry and have not come out to endorse him.

Despite his handlers touting him as Nigeria’s first Ph.D holding president, he recently revealed that he still has yet to master the fundamentals of politicking. He committed a major faux pas when, in his campaign tour of the Yoruba West, he called on his party faithful to wrest power from whom he described as ‘rascals.’

This un-presidential outburst naturally did not go down well with the Yoruba governors, two of who recently have their mandates restored to them by the courts after protracted legal battles. They translated the president saying as insult on their parents. Insulting someone’s parent is not a small crime in Yorubaland.

The Igbos are placed in the unenviable position of making a difficult, almost impossible choice. Culturally they are closest to Jonathan’s Ijaw people, but theirs remain a choice that requires Solomonic wisdom.

Since they fought and lost the Biafran war, they have suffered gross marginalization and no Igbo has had a shot at the presidency. Their calculation is that one of them should become president after the 2015 elections. Its actualization is every Igbo over-riding concern and it is proving not to be an easy one.

By the zoning arrangement of the PDP, a Southerner cannot succeed Goodluck Jonathan. This effectively rules out the Igbos contesting the 2015 elections under the aegis of the PDP.

Thus, the dilemma facing the Igbos remains: If they support Goodluck Jonathan and he wins, they can kiss their 2015 presidential ambition goodbye. And if they choose not to support their kinsman, they risk being accused of perfidy, which will come to haunt them in years to come as people will perceive them as treacherous and unreliable.
CPC - Mohammadu Buhari
Since he overthrew the government of President Shehu Shagari in the December 1983 coup, General Mohammadu Buhari has being a recurrent feature of the Nigerian political scene. A retired General who refused to get tired, General Buhari has become an almost serial Presidential candidate. He contested and lost the 2003 and 2007 elections. Undaunted he doggedly litigated his loss also to no avail.

Although his 20 month reign was characterized by massive human right abuses, few will write the stern disciplinarian off lightly.

On the plus side, Buhari has one or two things going for him: First, he comes from the North, a fact that still counts for a lot in Nigeria’s political equation. Also, as of the time of writing, the PDP has not successfully healed the internal rift occasioned by the party’s primary, and the grapevine is rife with rumours of the Northern political elite rallying behind the Daura-born General, in order to scuttle Goodluck Jonathan’s ambition, and ensure that the presidency comes back to the North.

No one can accuse the Northern Establishment of not knowing how to prosecute its political agenda, and this must be giving the president’s handlers some headache. Were the North to present a united front in the person of General Buhari, it’ll dramatically alter all permutations, despite the boast by Vice-President Sambo’s boast that Buhari is a spent force.

Many Nigerians believe that Buhari is the only politicians that can help sanitise the nation’s body polity. He’s generally seen as an incorruptible and highly disciplined person. He has also shrewdly selected a Yoruba running mate, and has pledged to support an Igbo candidate in 2015.

On the flip side, many Nigerians still remember life under Buhari which was characterized mainly by high-handedness and application of laws retroactively. Many, especially in the South, consider him a tribal as well as a religious bigot. His rule saw many Northern politicians escaping his dragnets whilst many Southerners were carted into jails. Many Yorubas will not easily forgive him for the humiliation he visited on many prominent Yorubas especially the late Papa Ajasin.

Many Nigerians still bear huge grudges against the former military ruler. Among them is Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, who felt so affronted by Buhari’s candidature that he wrote a trenchant 10-point reasons why Nigerians should not vote for Buhari.

Soyinka railed: “The grounds on which General Buhari is being promoted as the alternative choice are not only shaky, but pitifully naive. History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of memory, but to operate as guides to the future. Of course, we know that human beings change. What the claims of personality change or transformation impose on us is a rigorous inspection of the evidence, not wishful speculation or behind-the-scenes assurances. Public offence, crimes against a polity, must be answered in the public space, not in caucuses of bargaining. In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the sheerest prospect of change. On the contrary, all evident suggests that this is one individual who remains convinced that this is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot call to order. Buhari – need one remind anyone - was one of the generals who treated a Commission of Enquiry, the Oputa Panel, with unconcealed disdain. Like Babangida and Abdusalami, he refused to put in appearance even though complaints that were tabled against him involved a career of gross abuses of power and blatant assault on the fundamental human rights of the Nigerian citizenry.”

Vintage Soyinka, come April 11 2011, Nigerians will have the chance to prove Soyinka right or wrong.