The popular adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” kept crossing my mind in the run-up to the just concluded London Conference on Somalia. I wondered why a gathering focusing on a Sub Saharan African country was to be hosted by the UK government in London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be precise. I thought of keeping my musings to myself until I found that a number of people shared the same sentiments, especially my Kenyan friend Kenneth Ochieng who summed up these sentiments on his blog page which I have copied at the end of this post.

Such a global gathering to discuss the way forward out of the litany of problems plaguing Somalia, referred to by policy makers and development experts as the archetypal “failed state” is certainly a commendable and progressive step. This is especially because Somalia’s problems of collapsed state institutions, Al-Shabab terrorism, piracy and humanitarian crisis affect not just Somalia but neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia, and successfully tackling these problems requires a concerted transnational effort with the relevant stakeholders.

However, my grouse here is why this gathering heavily attended by many African Heads of States, African multilateral organizations and other world leaders was hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron in London? Understandably, the safety of dignitaries couldn’t be compromised by holding it in Somalia, thus I wondered why the confab couldn’t be hosted neither by Jonathan in Abuja or Attah Mills in Accra; nor Kibaki in Nairobi in the Horn of Africa within the vicinity of Somalia itself, nor Zuma in Johannesburg. The conference couldn’t convene in the brand new glitzy African Union Headquarters literally built from scratch and furnished by Chinese funds and labour. One could perhaps assume that a conference on the Nigerian Boko Haram insurgency group (probably the next biggest security threat in the region), would be held in some swanky conference hall in Washington D.C., New York, Berlin or Paris.

I simply wonder when African leaders would grow up, be more assertive in handling African affairs and wean themselves off international help over every thing (apparently including having our regional headquarters built for free or confabs on African security held in far away European capitals). Yet at the slightest opportunity, when it suits our African leaders, they utter populist “pan-African” rhetoric about being “dictated-to” and constrained by “imperialist” Western nations. I wonder when we are ever going to grasp the dynamics of international politics and realize that nations hardly do things for others involving massive funds on the basis of pure altruism but mainly based on what would benefit them. When would we start put our own national interests on the front burner before taking any step, in this case seizing the opportunity of such an international gathering to showcase our beautiful capital cities and improve outsiders’ perceptions of Africa for instance, and cut costs associated with funding such international travels?

With the conference over and a laudable communiqué released which inspires some hope on the future of security in Somalia, I hope our African leaders would subsequently consider being more assertive in holding such gatherings in an African country — even though the follow-up conference in June 2012 is billed to take place in Istanbul, Turkey. For one it would show our seriousness in taking charge of our destiny like other developing regions are doing and not painting the image of a helpless, dependent continent. For another it would boost the profile of the city holding such a gathering especially in the international media, and also bring in some foreign revenue to the local economy from hosting and accommodating delegates.

As I stated earlier, Kenneth Ochieng succinctly echoes my sentiments on this issue. Find below his write-up titled Listen Mr. African ‘STATESMAN’: Rants of a Troubled Pan-Africanist originally posted on his blog, Okwarohztake:

FGM in Nigeria Courtesy of Universal Health Blog

Note: I have addressed my decision to stick with the original title of this opinion piece in this blog. Thank you.

This discreditable practice

This is 2012 and I find myself writing about acts in parts of the world that belong in a museum of antiquity long before mediaeval times as types of torture that defeminise women in a manifestly atrocious cultural or traditional rite.

Female Genital Mutilation [1] (FGM) despite the international activism against it is still rife and it does take lives without consequences for the perpetrators who do it still with impunity in their quest to hold on to their Neanderthal customs.

In this case, the news [2] in Nigeria is of a 17-year old girl who fled her family home and has been declared missing having witnessed the painful and agonising death over days of her younger sister who was grievously mutilated on January the 15^th 2012.

Embracing shabby traditions

This reprehensibly irresponsible act was coordinated by her grandmother who corralled the family into participating in this rite of torture and enduring grievous bodily harm and what is almost unbelievable about this is the parties involved cannot be so matured in age to be oblivious of modern thinking.

The girls lived in Lagos, a sprawling metropolis and had returned to their homestead for the Christmas holidays in Ijaw-land, which happens to be the place from which our current highly educated, PhD holding President hails. Though from research, this practice is not restricted to that area, it is quite pervasive and it cuts a swathe through the whole south of West-Africa and parts of Chad arcing up through Sudan and Egypt to the north and through Ethiopia and Somalia to the east and horn of Africa where the prevalence [3] is up to 95% like a plague.

Types of FGM

The WHO identifies four types of Female Genital Mutilation [1] which intensify in the incredibly macabre for each more intrusive act that could involve cauterisation; it is almost unreadable for the horror of the exercise.

Type I: removal of the clitoral hood, the skin around the clitoris, with or without partial or complete removal of the clitoris;

Type II: removal of the clitoris with partial or complete removal of the labia minora;

Type III: removal of all or part of the labia minora and labia majora, and the stitching of a seal across the vagina, leaving a small opening for the passage of urine and menstrual blood (infibulation);

Type IV: other miscellaneous acts, including cauterization of the clitoris, cutting of the vagina (gishiri cutting), and introducing corrosive substances into the vagina to tighten it.

Abattoirs of clitoral disgust

These are at best radical surgery, if tradition or custom and in some cases conflated with religion so dictates that this practice is essential, important and of the highest priority, they must be conducted under strict medical conditions probably under general anaesthetic and these village abattoirs of clitoral disgust must be razed.

The barbarity of this exercise is in the fact that seeming knowledgeable people aware of hygienic needs for surgical practice engage in the use of crude implements and unschooled hands hoping to be vindicated by long held traditions and the evidence of those who barely survived the ordeal.

It might be difficult to criminalise FGM in the many societies that practise it but all the charlatans who engage in the mutilation of genitalia outside of accredited modern medical facilities most be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and made a public example of.

Much as one will prefer that this practice be totally outlawed and completely stopped, if that is not possible, then this event must only occur in a hospital under professional supervision after extensive counselling of all parties involved.

This was murder

However, back to the case in Nigeria, the news story says the victim “suffered severe excruciating pains for days after the mutilation of her genital before her death.”

It is very likely that after the mutilation she suffered severe bleeding and the perpetrators waited too long before they took her to hospital, by which time little could be done to save her life and that medical reports indicated she died of a “Post Circumcision haemorrhage.”

She basically bled to death.

Now, one can understand the sadness that accompanies the loss of a child, a grandchild, a sister and being back at the homestead, a close relation. It would appear that death did not remove the blinkers of absurd traditions from the perpetrators that they were ready to butcher the elder sister.

One cannot put it beyond these evil people that they were afraid that their heinous acts will be exposed that they could have schemed to sacrifice two young girls on the altar of tradition in order to cover their criminal enterprise – that calls for an intervention, it is an emergency that calls for justice to be expedited so that Joy Youmgbo would not have died in vain.

Arrest, indict, prosecute

The medical evidence is there, she died of a Post-Circumcision haemorrhage, it is now for the police to go after the grandmother and all her accomplices and pursue at the minimum a charge of manslaughter against all these people.

We have to come to a point in our society where no human being stands the risk of being sacrificed with impunity and with no consequence on the altar of custom, tradition, practice, creed or any belief system and civil society is able to protect the absoluteness of the right to life and happiness without anyone being subjected to the unpalatable for the preservation of the censurably odious.

If anything, the untimely and avoidable death of Joy Youmgbo must lead to greater agitation to stop the practice of FGM in Nigeria, one death is already one too many. I can only hope that Patricia Youmgbo finds succour for her pain of loss and protection from what those demons did to her sister.

STOP FGM NOW!

Sources

[1] Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Wikipedia

[2] Girl, 17 flees home over forced circumcision | Premium Times Nigeria

[3] Prevalence of female genital mutilation by country, Wkipedia

Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty

Ever since the details of the 2012 budget were released, Nigerians have been treated to a lot of comedy and melodrama regarding the budget items. Besides the perennial lop-sidedness of our budgets with regard to the capital expenditure being less than the recurrent expenditure, a closer look has revealed that even some of the capital expenditure items are either bogus or grossly inflated.

For weeks, the outcry was about the amount of about N1bn allocated to the Presidency for the feeding of the families of the President and the Vice-President, in addition to N957m for miscellaneous expenses and a combined N466m for refreshment, honoraria and sitting allowances. This is just a few of the items from the full budget details, as it is filled with lot of spurious projected expenses. The full budget can be downloaded from www.budget.com.ng.

These inflations and crazy projects are not limited to the Presidency alone, but extend to almost every ministry, department and agency of the Federal Government. Almost daily since the start of this year, we have been treated with headlines screaming out the extravagance of our government, either through inflated projects or even projects whose mere existence are puzzling. It has ranged from the Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC’s) budgeting N1.5bn to ‘fumigate’ their 15-storey headquarters in Port-Harcourt, to the National Sports Commission’s N1.2million to open or ‘maintain’ a Facebook account. This is not to even mention that MDAs gradually smuggled in an extra N1trillion worth of projects, on top of the existing N4.7trillion overall budget.

This gives us an insight into how our system allows for corruption to take place within the government. When there are such inflated or vague allocations in our budget, it makes it quite easy for public officials to pocket it and claim that the said projects have been executed or said items purchased. This is even made worse by the fact that the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, which audits the entire Federal Government, is under-funded with only N300m allocation. How then can they have oversight over government spending and detect irregularities and fraud?

I have always believed that the first step to preventing corruption in our government is to close loopholes through which public funds disappear. We have to start by making sure government funds are spent on the barest necessities. Each expenditure must be justified by need and potential benefits, and it must be paid for competitively. The illusion that governments cannot go broke, and as such, can afford to continue to dish out money for projects like a lottery has to stop. It only provides the incentive for corruption. I cannot even begin to imagine the impact the monies allocated for this white-elephant and inflated projects would have if they are re-directed towards necessary social services such as education and health, or even towards infrastructure such as roads and power systems.

Even more, we have to strengthen the oversight functions of the necessary bodies. I have to commend the various Senate committees for painstakingly going through the budget proposals of the MDAs under their purview and speaking out against some of the ridiculous intended projects. But it must not stop there: they must also make sure that each of these projects is justified not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of necessity.

Also, the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation must be sufficiently empowered in terms of funding and personnel to be able to speedily and comprehensively audit the accounts of the entire Federal Government.

We also have to thank the existence of the Freedom of Information Act, which has made every detail of the budget available in a public domain, and has empowered every citizen to have knowledge of how our money is spent. We must not be silent with these facts, but must make our discomfort with this spending known. Let us apply pressure in the right places.

If we desire to stop and prevent corruption, we must make sure this system is not flawed as to allow stealing of public funds easy and even encouraging.

This budget, as it is presently, must not pass!

52 years after independence, how can it be that the nation still clamors for true leaders?  With an eventful history – 8 military heads of state, 4 civilian presidents, it beats the intellect to imagine that people still seek the ones who will provide exemplary leadership, giving heed to the voice of the people, creating an enabling and virile atmosphere for economic growth, eschewing the entanglements of corruption, nepotism and self aggrandizement.

Over the past 12 years and via the ballot box or otherwise, majority of Nigeria’s national and state leaders have been direct products of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Within the same time-frame, the nation has battled all forms of struggles and challenges, from near-perennial ethnic clashes in the middle belt to the era of militancy in the Niger-Delta creeks. Corruption had its fill as many party stalwarts evidently lived on the flamboyant lane, reveling in inexplicable riches, perhaps their rewards for actively demonstrating loyalty to the party…the ballot box knows the story.

Juxtaposing the innate cry for true national leadership, against the 12 year history of the ruling party, it seems almost logical to infer that PDP has not generated that semblance of leadership which the people seek. Will it be erroneous to then postulate that the party is incapable of producing such leaders? Are there not a few good men within? One of the going debates that characterized the 2011 elections was the concept of voting for the candidate and not the party – the political paradox of imagining the exclusivity of both entities. History seems to disprove. The over-arching practices and characteristics that have so far been evident in this party are strong enough to choke a good enough man. As we approach 2015 gradually, if the cry of the Nigerian heart will be heard, the country will require a political shift – the end of a 16 year PDP reign.

The mere thought of this creates shivers in the national spine. The remoteness of its possibility further justifies. For an organization with such successful demonstrations of organic growth, its tentacles stretched far across the nation and its machinery oiled with pockets as deep as the national treasury, the end of its era seems a big wish. Nonetheless, the ruling party’s entry point was the ballot box. If there will be an exit, it will be via the same.

The biggest and most prominent political rival/opposition is the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and perhaps followed by the  emerging Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). These parties were simply unable to defeat the PDP in the 2011 polls. They lacked the national spread, financial backbone and advantage of the incumbent. This has not changed or has it? The ACN has achieved a good deal of organic growth but is nowhere near the PDP. CPC is still in its budding phase. Will these rival parties again rely on organic growth to achieve a 3 year feat posing them as individual threats to the incumbent in 2015? Failure is almost a guaranteed result.

Even in the marketplace, where a company cannot successfully compete by organic growth, it begins to seek mergers and possible acquisitions as a strategy for inorganic growth. To guarantee an end to the PDP era in 2015, and possibly, the emergence of true leadership, the rivals must meet at the square of discussion, to establish a merger of sorts. A similar attempt was made prior to the 2011 presidential elections with the parties having to answer the age-old question – Compete or Cooperate? Continuously choosing to compete, pits both parties against each other, leaving them with little individual gain. Where they chose to cooperate, the consolidated gain surpasses the individual payoffs from competition.

While the rival parties are not void of corruption and their peculiarities, they provide certainly less tainted platforms for the rise and emergence of that representation of true leadership which the nation yearns for. With CPC’s strength of integrity, and ACN’s substantial national reach, a bigger umbrella is birthed for other smaller political units to join forces. In the process, egos will have to step aside for credibility, age for accountability and favoritism for the people’s will. Mergers are typically accompanied by a restructuring of top management positions. True leadership surpasses personalities.

True leadership is exemplary, honest, credible and just. True leadership is resolute and thorough, doggedly challenging the status quo, creating innovative paths to a better future. True leadership does not deny issues but focuses rather on providing solutions.True leadership surrounds itself with a pool of applicable knowledge. It eschews cluelessness.  True leadership is prudent and accountable in both financial and non-financial dealings. True leadership is not fixated on the past nor devotedly consumed in the present. True leadership creates a future for its own.

Where are the true leaders?

The columnist this month is Amy McKie.

Often times in our lives various events converge to cause us to question our knowledge and the knowledge readily available to us. After a bad relationship I wanted to ensure that I didn’t harbour any resentment or negative stereotypes of the country, and so I wanted to search out more information. For me, information always means books. This led me on a year-long project immersing myself in Nigerian literature in which I learned a lot, some of which I’d like to share here.

Nigerian literature is expanding in global popularity (thanks to writers in diaspora such as Okarafor, Adichie, and Cole and writers within Nigeria such as Dibia, Shoneyin, Uyim, and others) and into different genres (science fiction, mystery, fantasy, romance, historical fiction). A new and growing publishing eco-system (including publishers Farafina and Cassava Republic) is assembling itself around emerging literary talents. The key characteristic of this body of work is that it is growing and changing much faster than that of any other country, in my opinion.

Unlike with many countries around the world where the publishing industry is nonexistent, it is easy to source an almost unlimited amount of Nigerian literature in both print and digital. While much of this work has been self-published, the fact that publishing companies exist and are growing is a great sign. Nigerian literature (in diaspora) is frequently stocked and shelved at bookstores, and eBook distributors stock both traditional and self-published writers of Nigerian literature. The benefits are immense – more works of Nigerian literature are available, more works are read and more are being written.

While I’ve yet to visit the country myself, the best of these books transport me as a reader around the country, showing off the many facets of the country that the media will never show me. They highlight and celebrate the various cultures and peoples, sometimes peppering in local slang and food to give the books more flavor. The remarkable people writing these stories, who often come with science or business degrees, for example, also put a different flavor into their works than the traditional Arts graduate. These books are doing the country a huge service by showing that it isn’t all negative, as the media often reports, but that people live, laugh, love, cry, fight, and die just like anywhere else.

There are, of course, growing pains for Nigerian literature. It can often finds itself plagued by the same representation issues which inundate the media in North America, and sometimes it is easy to see the works aimed directly to a market of North American and European readers, as simple words and phrases are fully explained. This can make it difficult, as a reader who has never stepped foot in the country, to get a fully rounded picture of life. Rather than seeing the full range of expressions and lives instead this prescribed view that often seems chosen because it sells better gives a view that Nigeria itself is dominated by famine (outside of the rich, of course), war, and corruption.

We often see the rich overrepresented, as stories seem to be told more often from their point of view. This is an issue that plagues our cultural offerings in Canada and the United States as well, and I think does a huge disservice to a large portion of the population. By cutting such a large percentage out of the cultural offerings the literature is, as above, giving a distorted view. It implies that only the rich have stories worth telling, and only the rich truly live. When reading Nigerian literature especially, and knowing the gap between the rich and the poor and the high levels of poverty, it reinforces the stereotypes often seen in North American media that Nigeria is a country of corruption.

We also see in this literature the disregard that characters can show for those whom they see as beneath them or undeserving. As a woman, too, I am sometimes frustrated by the ways sexual violence can play such a large role in the works and how it is sometimes even legitimized (though this is an issue in literature the world over). Discussions online about the topic of representations and of what stories sell can be lively, entertaining, and educating.

Just some of Amy's books.

There’s also the issue of quality. The large numbers of Nigerian works streaming into print and digital channels make it more difficult to catch individual errors. Some of the eBooks on the market are peppered with grammar and spelling mistakes that can frustrate the average English reader. In my mind the single biggest challenge facing the growing collection of works is how to ensure high quality for these works, which will be a challenge both in terms of pricing and in terms of availability of services.

Despite the growing pains shown, as more publishers and editing services become available throughout the country I expect only better and better things from this collection of work. The high level of quality of most of the books, and the fantastic stories contained therein, usually make up for the occasional read which contains frustrating amounts of grammar or spelling errors, it just means that sometimes extra research is needed to select the best works. In my mind, there’s no better time to be reading Nigerian literature. It is wondrous landscape, imbued with the love of country each author seems to have, and growing faster than it can digest. Find a non-stereotypical work of Nigerian literature now, turn the page, and ascend the first sentence and the second and so on until you come face to face with yourself.

Amy McKie blogs here and tweets here.

Nigeria - Courtesy of Wikipedia

Touching the untouchable

This is probably one of the most difficult issues to raise in Nigeria but one that requires objective and intellectual engagement more than anything else.

The systems that we have adopted that are inimical to progress and development and a good deal of them need to be abrogated, probably proscribed, in some cases strictly regulated and brought under the purview of the civil authorities so as to eliminate the bias and the sentiment that tolerates abuse.

The Time magazine published an article last weekend about Nigeria [1] and what jumped out at me was the Tweet posted that was used to bring footfall to the story.

I wept

 “Sometimes they fight dogs for food.”

I guessed things were bad in Nigeria with the poverty, health and security situations but not this bad that children will be jostling with dogs for food with the risk of getting bitten and all the attendant issues that might follow like contracting rabies and much else.

There are serious humanitarian and child welfare issues that need to be addressed with urgency, if only those who matter can allow themselves to be moved with compassion above all else.

In the wrong place

The first paragraph alone presents a setting that is almost primitive and it is mediaeval; beyond the religious accoutrements on the walls is the sad story of a very ill boy of 15 with his younger brother nursing him, if there was anything he could do in the situation apart from providing comfort by his presence.

A child in the 21^st Century ill with malaria and typhoid fever should be in hospital being tended by modern medicine with the hope for recovery. The story is he had not eaten since the night before and the only hope for food was from leftovers in a neighbouring house.

The unwritten part of this travesty is if the sick were going hungry, there is no telling what will be the case of the nominally healthy and if the many were going hungry you can imagine after scrapping with dogs with the scratching and bites it will take the unusual milk of human kindness for that food to be given to the weak.

Where is our heart for the children?

The plight of children in Nigeria is a serious one and we need to put away many of the preconceived notions built on long held views to deal with what is both shameful and disgraceful – no creed or doctrine can be seen to condone or tolerate this, talk less of revel in this unconscionable evil masquerading as schooling for some higher purpose.

There should be no reason for children with living parents to live the existence of those deprived of love, of care, of consideration and the basic elements of food, health, good education and access to opportunity that many others take for granted.

It is incumbent on the elite and the intellectuals of communities where these activities thrive to excoriate the system in totality, condemning the perpetrators and offering progressive steps to child welfare must take priority along with adequate resources to redress the situation.

An unsure future

The more one reads into the article, it is evident that this is an emergency. Children hundreds of miles from their homes in squalid surroundings and unregulated institutions that portend to offer the kids a future though none of which is evident from the training or the activities they are forced to indulge in to keep body and soul together.

Begging in the streets, no matter how palatable the promoters try to make it is a low esteem complex that reaffirms a state of destitution, a lack of opportunity and a pliable mob that could be conscripted into nefarious activities of unscrupulous lords.

Besides, these people, children and by all standards citizens of Nigeria for the failings of their families, their communities and their governments are easy prey for all sorts of abuse from the basic withdrawal of support through physical abuse and the absence of essential care to sexual abuse and possibly murder which can happen with impunity; they all need to have their rights championed and asserted by all well-meaning people throughout Nigeria and beyond.

We need to talk

For a country so great and resourceful, it is a shame and disgrace that our children live in these conditions from day to day and there is no telling how many more in the name of evidently bad traditions have lost their minds and lives to untold destitution and the indifference that has made this evil an untouchable minefield.

It is time to talk about these matters, some practices need to be outlawed, others proscribed, some institutions need to be regulated by unbiased secular authorities, there is no doubt that some sacred cows will need to be butchered without mercy and the conditions in these environments must be raised to meet standards of boarding schools that provide proper meals, a strict curriculum, vocational training and proper inspection regimes.

Children should not be on the streets begging and proprietors should be held responsible for ensuring that when their wards are externally graded, they are within the aptitude and abilities of their peers in other public institutions.

We have deferred too long to systems that offer no functional development in our communities, regardless of our persuasions, service still matters and there is dignity in labour but that requires we train up children to be productive members of their communities at first and hopefully to the nation at large.

Source

[1] Nigeria’s Abandoned Youth: Are They Potential Recruits for Militants?

Consequently, informed estimates for domestic price movement this year ranged from between 200 basis points (a basis point being a hundredth of a percentage point) to 500 basis points. On the street though, there was a sense of prices rising by as much as a 100% for basic food and related household items as soon as the “subsidy” was removed, and even after its adjustment in response to concerted pressure from the street. Not surprisingly, therefore, we all looked to the official inflation figures for January to tell us how much of an impact the “subsidy” removal had.

In the event, the truth lay somewhere in the middle of the various estimates. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, owing to “partial removal of the subsidy on the Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) that pushed up prices of many food and non-food items as a result of the increase in transportation costs”, the composite consumer price index rose by 230 basis points (year-on-year) from 10.3% in December last year to 12.6% in January this year. Thus, of the two shibboleths that adorned the fuel subsidy debate, the inflation figures lay at least one quietly in its grave: the petrol price does matter for this economy.

Now, whether the push effect of rising fuel prices is a temporary blip or a long-tailed event remains to be seen over the current plan period. Nonetheless, it is in this sense going to be important for how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) responds at the next meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC – its rate-setting committee) in March. At its first meeting this year the MPC had adopted a “wait and see” approach.

Having “seen”, do we “wait” further?

A lot on the CBN’s side would depend on how quickly the central government is able to implement its planned movement to a treasury single account model. If this happens rapidly, then the resulting withdrawal of public sector funds from commercial banks will have as much effect on liquidity in the market as a hike in the policy rate.

The problem, though, is that this administration is notoriously short on execution effectiveness.

Still, this will not stop the central bank from hoping for a deux ex machina. My sense is that having tightened rapaciously last year, the apex bank may have lost its appetite for further tightening. Besides, with the debt-to-GDP ratio nearing 30%, and a lot of this domestic, tighter monetary conditions would only push up the debt service cost; making the finance minister’s job that much harder.

Something very interesting shows up when comparing this alternative measure of economic activity to official GDP data. The graph below plots GDP and the light intensity index from 1992 to 2009. The graph speaks for itself.

I know what you are thinking. This probably has something to do with the NEPA situation. Comparing the light intensity index with data on net electricity generation in Nigeria from the Energy Information Administration show that this falling economic activity is not really about electricity. There is a relatively large improvement in electricity generation from about 2000 with no effect on economic activity.The light intensity index also takes into account other sources of night light that are not associated with NEPA. Light from private generators and even kerosene lanterns. This implies that NEPA alone is not responsible for the falling light intensity numbers.

Interesting stuff. If this light intensity index is actually a good measure of economic activity then those poverty numbers released last week actually make sense.

Many years ago, while I was in college, I was given an assignment that required me to write an essay about my speech community. The purpose was to expose the idiosyncratic words I shared among my family and friends, words that we either created or adopted. Under my impression, those who could come up with interesting words were bound to ace the paper. Sitting in front of a blank screen for hours on end, the assignment proved to be a pain. What kind of words did my professor expect me to expose? The temptation to create words was strong but not until I thought of a more honest approach: Pidgin English. I was convinced that this form of English would impress my professor and wrote a paper full of words that I hardly spoke myself. This brings me to my point, without a native language or mastery of Pidgin English (our cherished vernacular) Accent #1 has no reference point, no rhythmic foundation — so to speak.

Around the same time, I met an African American woman who was surprised that I only spoke English. She pointed out that my accent was probably a result of listening to people whose English was influenced by their mother tongue. As crazy as her reasoning sounded, it was a light bulb moment for me because it gave me insight as to why I sounded the way I did. It was possibly a result of listening and replicating those who have a reference point (i.e.  a different mother tongue from English). So it made sense when, a few years later, accent #2 was in full fledge: a result of years of listening to Americans and inevitably shedding the less celebrated accent #1. And when I moved to other western countries, the ability to code switch became effortless. Accent #1 only came on during conversations with family and sometimes sounded like a new thing altogether. I found that (or perhaps falsely believed) that accent #1 was not easily embraced on foreign shores and it made sense to ditch the process of explaining why English was the only language I spoke by sounding like I was from a country that claimed English as its sole mother tongue.

But the story doesn’t end there. When I moved to Lagos, a magical thing happened. Accent #1 re-emerged. Over the years, accent #2 became second nature but accent #1 has gradually become my preferred choice; further confusing those who might have known me during high school when I switched up accent #1 for no reason in particular (it was in the late 90s and I was reinventing myself). I like to think that this magical thing is more than how I choose to sound and more about who I am choosing to become. I am, as I have stated in the past articles, not without flaw: a Nigerian without tribal ties, with a tapered love for my country but most importantly I believe I am developing a voice within that sounds like what it ought to.

This week, I present to you Kudirat, the short story by Ayodele Olofintuade in which the writer takes us to the world of sex, power and politics. A purely imagined presentation no less, than say Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street, we catch an often retold glimpse into motivations, thoughts and little complexities. Ayodele is not new to social intervention. Her first children’s book Eno’s Story takes on the insanity of the witch-hunting culture in South-South Nigeria. I recommend the book for reading in every primary school all over the country. An equally fascinating meeting of cultures takes place in Anja Choon’s Why Atide is Talking to a Coin.

The poetry portal of this LitMag has so far delighted me. From Benson Eluma visceral take on Obscurity which highlights a certain stoic pain, to his note to Claire in which the mischief of rebellion meets the curiosity of affection. Kolade Ajayi’s three poems remind me of the workshop materials that I came across during evening sessions at the Ibadan Poetry Club: lyrical, personal, and experimental. There is also a review of Teju Cole’s Open City in which Adebiyi Adesolape brings his lexical dexterity to bear on a task that demanded the depth of perception as well as a full-vested understanding of all the dimensions of the novel’s premise. It makes for fascinating reading.

This week, I present to you two new works of poetry. Dami Ajayi’s Romansidar Skits poke around the boundaries of soliloquy. A poet talks his way around the complexities of his own mind and curiosities. Tosin Gbogi is the second poet debuting this week. In his four poems, he takes on politics through short bursts of words in which syllable beats push into memory questions and ideas as much as does the barely hidden intent of the writer. If poetry is the food of thought, write on. Enjoy the offerings.

And so this week begins. For these and the other work so far published the NT LitMag, click here. Send all submissions to litmag@nigerianstalk.org, and follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/ntlitmag