SCRUPLES

Teaching Immorality In Schools

2013-05-07T07:11:00.002-07:00

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

If anyone had told me a few years ago that a time will come in Nigeria when the authorities will approve the teaching of sexual immorality as a subject in junior and secondary schools, I would have thought that the person had lost his mind. But now, before our very eyes, it is happening, and I lack words to describe the shock among many Nigerians!

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Not too long ago, I was shown the topics being treated under the subject called “Sexuality Education” or “Sex Education” which tender kids in both junior and secondary schools in Nigeria are now being forced to learn. Mere kids, some as young as ten or even nine, are put in the hands of teachers, who deploy every energy, talent and creativity to saturate their tender minds with every detail about sexual immorality and the use of contraceptives.

When I first raised alarm on this issue in my weekly column not too long ago, a concerned parent wrote me to say that the ‘Teacher’s Guide’ given to the Integrated Science teachers (who handle this subject) mandates them “to teach the children that religious teachings on issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, homosexuality, abortion and gender relations are mere opinions and myths! They are also to teach the students how to masturbate and use chemical contraceptives (designed for women in their 30s). The ‘Teachers Guide’ equally lays a big emphasis on values clarification; this empowers teenage children to decide which moral values to choose since the ones parents teach them at home are mere options.”

It is difficult to imagine that anyone outside a mental home could have the mind to design such a subject even for the children of his worst enemy! In my view, this clearly qualifies as child abuse, which, sadly, has been endorsed by the authorities. I have reasons to suspect that what some of the teachers would be giving out would be targeted more at titillating their tender victims than educating them! I can imagine how easy it would now become for a teacher who has been targeting a female student to use his creative elaboration of this subject, to get the girl so overwhelmed she would become easy meat.

I am told that there are two main reasons for the introduction of this subject in our schools. One is to empower school children with adequate knowledge about their bodies and how to “safely” indulge in pre-marital sex without falling victims to teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. The second reason is to demystify fornication, give it a positive image, as something to be cherished and enjoyed without any fear, as long as it is done “safely” and consensually. The belief is that with the age-long “superstition” built around sexual immorality which ‘stigmatizes’ it as an evil and sinful activity, some kids tend to go into it with fear and dread, and so develop psychological problems arising from the guilt they feel afterwards.

But these reasons are simply hollow and unconvincing. They are built on the assumption that in the present age, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for unmarried people to abstain from pre-marital sex. Instead of emboldening kids to behave like dogs, why not teach them to value their bodies and maintain their self-esteem by abstaining from immorality as our own parents had taught us? The difference between human beings and animals is the ability to reason and determine the consequences of actions, and then exercise discretion and self-control. Why not tell a kid the consequences of an action and use that to dissuade him from indulging in it?

Looking at the earnestness with which this policy is being pursued despite oppositions to it, one is forced to suspect that there may also be a commercial angle to it. Are we sure that substantial profit is not accruing to the initiators of this programme and their collaborators in government from the sales of the several books being written and printed on the subject? Support may equally be coming from the manufacturers of contraceptives who certainly see in this a lucrative venture to promote and sustain.

Now, how far has this subject helped in reducing teenage pregnancies and STDs in the Western nations where it has been taught, assimilated and practiced for many years now? It is a fact that these teachings have, for instance, been introduced in both the United States and Britain for many years now, but as I write now, I have before me, a BBC report saying that Britain has the highest record of teenage pregnancy in the whole of Western Europe. Also, another report has it that the United States has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the entire Western world. Again, in the United States, it is reported that new infections of HIV are still on the increase.

That naturally leads us to the contentious issue of “safe sex.” So, what is all this fetish about “safe sex” and how “safe” can sex actually be? The truth is that a lot of studies and findings have effectively punctured the dubious confidence built over the years on condom-use. We know that with an effective magnifying lens, it is easy to see that several objects, especially rubber and plastics, have tiny holes through which very minute micro organisms could pass. I read somewhere recently that “HIV virus is only 0.1 micron in size while the naturally occurring holes in a latex condom is of the order 5 to 50 microns in diameter.” So where then is the “protection” we have heard so much about if the deadly virus can indeed pass through the wall of a condom? Is this not why we have often heard reports of people contracting HIV even though they had practiced the so-called “protected sex”? This is the time to rethink all this stuff behind which some fellows have hidden to pollute the minds of kids with ruinous teachings.

Fortunately, we have one precaution that does not fail. And that is the good old abstinence, which has been proven and tested to be the only reliable protection against deadly STDs and teenage pregnancies? We must hasten to realize that what is at stake here is human life, and should not be toyed with, for whatever reasons. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand this desperation to create an immoral and ungodly society by misleading the youths? Now, if not for reasons that are less than noble and wholesome, why would Nigeria be eager to import a policy that is failing even in more advanced nations?

Okay, here is another point to ponder: HIV is 500 times smaller than spermatozoa, yet research has established that spermatozoa are able to sometimes pass through the wall of a latex condom to cause conception. Now, if this is the case, are we not by this subject leading our youths through the minefield? The example cited earlier of the worrisome rise in fresh infections of HIV in a place like the US where years of successful sex-education has achieved overwhelming attitudinal change in favour of condom-use should serve to buttress this point.

Now, with this policy in place and flourishing, where is this nation really heading to? What is the use living, if one must live like a dog?

I would, therefore, want to advise the school boy or girl reading this piece to please pause awhile and ask himself or herself what the initiators of this policy hope to achieve in his of her life by giving him or her these teachings? Such a youth should wonder how they still expect him to concentrate on his studies after they have saturated his mind with filthy teachings that only fill his mind with distractive lusts. Now, if his instructors (who are mostly parents) are encouraging him to freely indulge in sexual immorality at this early stage of his life, what type of future leader do they expect him to become? After “empowering” him to go on the rampage, wouldn’t they have succeeded in giving him a disease deadlier than even the AIDS they are presuming to save him from – which is the destruction of his moral fibre? What is the guarantee that he would be able to build a healthy family afterwards, by shunning the promiscuity that this subject is surely preparing him for, and which, as we all know, results in the proliferation of broken homes which has become the nightmare of the Western world?

It is instructive that The Guardian on Sunday, July 18, 1999, carried a report that a cross section of American college (mostly female) students are regretting the limitless freedom their parents had allowed them and have resolved to devote themselves to pursue a “no-sex” campaign. But in Nigeria in 2013, sexual immorality has been deregulated and democratized.

Right now, there appears to be some serious regret soaking the consciousness of many in the Western world, because of the moral wreck many children have become. But they are now helpless, because, it seems to have become too late, and things have gone out of hand. They now wish they never gave a perverted interpretation to freedom at some point in their history.

But poor Nigerians, we are always distinguished by our peculiar eagerness to always gobble up everything Western, no matter how rotten or destructive. Go to the people in Nollywood, and ask them why they are going so wild and immoral and the answer you will get is: That is how they do it in Hollywood. See what I mean?

But concerned Nigerian parents cannot afford to be intimidated and just watch helplessly as some fellows whose intentions are less than noble go all out to ruin their kids for them. And so, they should be able to ask: To what extent should the government interfere in people’s lives and families? Where does the government derive the authority to invade somebody’s home with ungodly teachings and inflict them on the person’s kids, just because he gave his kid to the government to educate in their schools? Shouldn’t an open and clear expression of disaffection towards this gross violation by stakeholders lead to its reappraisal and possible removal from the school curriculum?

Again, and very importantly too; most people have strongly accepted and hold very dear to their hearts the teachings they have received from the religious faith of their choice (which we as civilized people must respect) that sexual immorality which is a grievous sin against God attracts eternal damnation; and they are eager to ensure that both themselves and their kids escape this terrible doom; how then can we accommodate and respect this their belief (which is sacred to them) in this current effort to teach and encourage their children to freely indulge in fornication? Should we just dismiss and callously tear down a belief they hold so sacred and dear, and with which they have determined to successfully raise their children to become morally healthy kids? As if it does not matter?

It is time to rethink this policy and remove it from the school curriculum since it denies a large a number of people the option of choice. Many parents are not even aware that such a teaching is being generously forced down the throats of their precious children, thereby destroying all they have taught them at home.

Certainly, there are centres where some NGOs have established to propagate these pro-pre-marital sex teachings. Interested parents can take their children to those centres, while the objecting parents are spared the trauma of watching their kids being subjected to a menu they firmly believe is terribly unhealthy and ruinous. Their right to dissent must be respected.

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May 2013

Tribute To Chinua Achebe (Ikejimba; 1930-2013)

2013-05-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

By Chike Momah

[This tribute is a second revision of a piece (REFLECTIONS ON CHINUA ACHEBE) which I wrote in 2000, and revised in 2007. His passing, in the third week of March 2013, has necessitated this revision.]

Chinua Achebe was a compelling figure, straight out of a Biblical saga. He was also, rather more prosaically, a friend who was so close, he was like a brother. A few hours after his death was blazed around the world, I received a condolence call from a member of our Dallas, TX Igbo community. This friend asked me if I was sure Chinua and I did not share an umbilical cord. Another person, this time a Reverend gentleman, expressed his condolences in rather more risqué language. “Your friendship with Chinua,” he said, “reminds me of the biblical story of David and Jonathan.”

I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was not flattered by the language in which the two condolences were couched. But while I gloried in the way my friendship with Chinua was perceived by these two gentlemen, two things struck me about the manner their perceptions were expressed. The reference to Chinua and I sharing an umbilical cord will be easily recognized for what it was: a humorous turn of phrase. But when the clergyman reached for his Bible in search of relational equivalences, he lighted on one of the most emotional passages in Holy Scripture: David lamenting the death of Jonathan, whose love for him, David sang, “was wonderful, passing the love of women!” The love of women? I ask you!

The clergyman’s Biblically inspired phraseology also set me thinking in an unusual direction. I thought about it for a long while, and then – eureka! – it hit me. Chinua Achebe’s story, the saga of his life, is a story of almost Biblical proportions. He rose so far above his humble birth, and above his innate humility – as a human being, a classmate in school, and a friend – that nothing about him seemed ordinary. And, amazingly, his stratospheric rise to greatness, fame and universal acclaim was, at least, twice predicted: first, in 1943, by his and my primary school Headmaster, Mr. Okongwu, as sagacious an observer of humanity as you are likely to meet; and, about a dozen years later, by Chinua himself, albeit innocently.

Chinua did not prophesy, in so many words, that he would, one day, be a great man. But, about two years BEFORE he even began to write his epochal novel (THINGS FALL APART; published in 1958), he wrote the following words to a mutual friend: “Yes, there may be many stars in the firmament, but some shine brighter than others.” My memory, at my fairly advanced age, is like a sieve but, as near as I can remember, those were his exact words. I know this because I saw and read the letter he wrote to the friend, and I was involved in the sequence of events that led to that innocent prediction. The mutual friend, I am happy to relate, also achieved considerable success, in his own right, as a novelist. Glory be!

Headmaster Okongwu’s prophecy was couched in more straightforward and unambiguous language. In 1943, as I was sweating over my preparations for the entrance examination to Government College, Umuahia (G.C.U. – a boys’ high school), along came my Headmaster. He regarded me for a moment or two, and then uttered his immortal words: “If,” he said, “you do well enough in the exam to gain admission to the school, I predict you will there meet a boy called Albert Achebe, and Albert will make the rain that will drench you!!!!!!” (This was a boy he last saw in 1940, when Chinua was ten years old.) In the upshot, I gained admission to GCU. Chinua also did, on a merit scholarship! This was in January 1944.

The rest is history. In the middle of 1944, our first year in high school, Chinua was promoted, with five other boys, to class two. First drenching! From then till his high school graduation in 1948, he was the best student in his new class. That same year, he won a merit scholarship (one of only six or seven awarded that year) to the University College, Ibadan (U.C.I.). To study MEDICINE!! U.C.I. was then the only institution for tertiary education in the country. He changed courses at the end of his freshman year, and I caught up with him one more time. This was in 1949. We both graduated, Bachelor of Arts, in the same subjects, in 1953. Throughout those four years, our professors and lecturers, again and again, let us know that Chinua was, not only the best student in the class, but also the best writer of English. He achieved the best result in our degree examination. Second drenching!!

I need not belabor the point. More drenching followed, fast and furious! Within five years of our graduation, Chinua published THINGS FALL APART. Other novels followed, and success followed hard on success. The inevitable consequence followed. Chinua, force majeure, began to shift out of my orbit. He discovered, as his friends did too, that he had been drawn onto a world stage – to all of humanity, and not just to a narrow circle of friends and admirers.

He was, as I have dared to proclaim elsewhere, the best writer of English that I think I have ever read. He is, for me, its most mellifluous exponent. If the reader disagrees with this spectacular claim, I plead that beauty is in the beholder’s eye. I speak for myself and, perhaps, for a continent. There is no writer, living or dead, who has demonstrated, in greater measure than Chinua, the ability to weave a tapestry of words taken from the Queen’s English and from the proverbs and aphorisms of his own mother tongue, Igbo.

He certainly rose above the British colonial quagmire to which our people were condemned for a century and more, to write the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Stevenson and, yes, even Conrad, with a mastery that takes the breath away. When we were reading those authors, in high school and in college, we did not think – we dared not think – that we would produce a Chinua Achebe. Later, he was to pick a bone or two with Conrad’s racially slanted writings, but that is another story!

I might have sometimes been tempted to look at Chinua, and think (again, Biblically): Is this not the carpenter’s son? But I can say, truthfully, that I never succumbed to that temptation. He bestrode my world like the colossus that he was, and I rejoiced with him as he scaled the heights of literature to its pinnacle. No, he was no mere carpenter’s son for me. During the years Chinua and I were in high school and university, my contacts with the senior Achebe were few and far between. My memory of him is, at best, very sketchy now. But Chinua’s old man was no carpenter, though I have no doubt that he was largely responsible for chiseling Chinua, in his formative years, into the exquisite product that has dazzled the world for more than half a century, since THINGS FALL APART was published in 1958.

Chinua should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize committee members are probably the only persons, on earth, who know why he was denied this recognition of his literary stature, and of his influence on more than two or three generations of African writers. And on other writers worldwide! Tony Morrison (the Nobel laureate) acknowledged Chinua as one of her main literary inspirations in writing about her own people. Chinua’s most celebrated contemporary and fellow Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate, also acknowledged Chinua as a trail-blazer. Enough said!

Chinua now belongs to the ages, his work on earth magnificently done. No one could have asked for more from even a genius of his breath-taking dimensions. Regrettably, Chinua had to live out the last twenty-three years of his life wheelchair-bound – the result of a vehicular accident in 1990. This is the reason, above all else, that my wife, Ethel and I (and Chinua’s other friends) are especially appreciative of the love and devotion of Odozi-ngwulu, his beautiful wife, Professor Dr. Christiana Achebe – Ana to Chinua himself, Christie to the rest of us! My appreciation also extends to their children, Chinelo, Ike, Chidi and Nwando, of whom one is a medical doctor, and the other three achieved doctorates in academia. Apropos of this, Ethel sometimes teasingly told Chinua he was the least educated member of his family!! I was his best-man when he married Christie, and he was godfather to my son, Chukwudi (Chidi).

His last book, THERE WAS A COUNTRY – the story of Biafra, and of man’s inhumanity to man – was like a concluding and thunderous exclamation mark on his life as a writer!! The buzz it generated has scarcely died down, as I write this.

I stand, in humility, in the shadow of his greatness and, yes, of his almost Biblical stature!!! In the language of the Bard, when comes such another?

ARLINGTON, TX
April 2013

Office Bullies

2013-04-30T08:48:00.001-07:00

By Moses Obroku

If you haven’t experienced working under a cantankerous, highly irritable, generally obnoxious boss, believe me, fate has been extremely kind to you as you have been spared one of life’s greatest trauma. To the people whose lot in life it is right now to be working with such bosses, I can only hope that something happens about that situation real soon before permanent damage is done to whatever is left of your dignity.

*Moses Obroku

And as you know too well by now, this special breed that your boss is, do not need any external stimulus for him/her to get real nasty with you. On their own, they can generate a negative energy minefield to ensure your every work day of the week is unbearable for you.

Often times, they create unnecessary tension around them at the work place. They seem to hold this twisted view that the boss has to be stern looking with this ‘don’t –joke-with me’, ‘I -am- tough’ kind of disposition; like that is when they can command respect quickly. These bosses do not realize that when subordinates work with the apprehension of being given verbal jabs indiscriminately, they end up making more mistakes as the fear of what is anticipated soon materializes.

The most amazing thing is that, these kinds of bosses almost never give a word of commendation to their subordinates, even when such subordinates have performed extremely well on the job or saved the department some embarrassment. Such achievements sadly, usually go unacknowledged. But when these same champions make little mistakes, a barrage of verbal missiles are hauled at them.

You just never know with these kinds of bosses. Whatever you do, you will end up being wrong. If you get proactive, it will be deemed you are taking decisions without authorization. If you get reactive, you will be judged for being slow or negligent. It is generally a lose -lose situation for the subordinate. If you do, you will be blamed. If you don’t, you will be blamed. These bosses are plainly double edge swords; either way they swing you will be cut to pieces. And the way they talk down on subordinates is unimaginable. Often times, they will leave the real issue on hand and start attacking your personality. They may even take it to your home or upbringing, leaving you defenseless as you swallow it whole, humiliation and all.

By the time they are done with verbally bullying you, whatever self-esteem you may have gone to work with is usually left in shreds, leaving you feeling inadequate and sorry for yourself. I have seen full grown men reduced to fervent sobs when they are being lampooned, over misunderstanding a directive.

(pix:workrelationships)

But I ask myself, is all that necessary? Why should a subordinate get walked all over just so a point can be made, when there is a more humane way of addressing the issue whilst letting that junior colleague keep his/her dignity? But why am I not surprised at the way these superiors act? That is what bullies do. They pick on you because you are regarded as the weak one. As it concerns the office, you cannot talk back because they are your superiors. If you do, it will be deemed ‘rudeness to superiors’, if not ‘insubordination’. So, latching on their corporate advantageous positions, they scream at you, rain invectives, if they think you deserve it. There is no sparing what they can say to you. They simply revel in the fact that you cannot talk back, or shouldn’t.

The bosses who treat their subordinates badly, ironically almost never apologize or own up to ever making mistakes. They think they are as close to perfection as mankind can get. In their delusion, even when they make shameful mistakes, they will insist they are right and their gigantic egos would prevent them from acknowledging it, let alone apologizing. They are in sync with the saying that ‘the queen can do no wrong’ and they strongly remind me of the tyrant ‘comrade Napoleon’ in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ ‘who is always right’. Otherwise, how does one explain the infallible position they always assume?

When shown very obviously embarrassing mistakes they have made by subordinates who would have used high degree of politeness in doing so, these ‘high and mighty’ managers would sometimes go on the offensive, blaming that junior colleague as the cause of that mistake or contributing to it. You need to experience this behavior to fully understand what I mean here. And when this happens, such subordinate is left with his confidence eroded and regret in doing what he thought was right.

When bosses vacillate in approbating and reprobating, demonstrating high erratic behavior in the office in dealing with people they manage, frankly, from an objective point of view, the only message they succeed in passing across is that they are borderline cases of extreme megalomania and ridiculousness.

Unfortunately, top management hardly ever knows about these behaviors, as most establishments don’t have a system of ‘feedback’ in place, where employees can make these abuses known.

While I am not a psychology major, I suspect that most bully bosses have deep seated personal health or family issues that are plaguing them. Their unsuspecting subordinates are just ready subjects to vent on, so they can feel the power once again that whatever is plaguing them is robbing them off.

Another explanation I can offer about their behavior is obsessive fear. They fear failure in carrying out their responsibilities as unit, divisional or group heads.so they drive themselves hard and subordinates twice as hard. Nobody wants to lose a position already attained for lack of performance; but I think it should not be at unbearable cost to the people that serve under them.

A boss will say, ‘we need this job done on this deadline’. After the people involved have stayed extra hours and almost killed themselves to meet up with such deadlines, to their dismay, such task that was announced as ‘so urgent’ would still be lying around the boss’ table many days afterwards. What is that? Why make me close so late and endanger me on Nigerian roads with all their attendant risks at unreasonable hours only for the so-called ‘deadline’ not to be urgent anymore?

Sometimes I feel sorry for the bosses. It must really be hard for them, balancing their top positions with family and the other myriads of issues confronting them. But I am also certain they can make their points clearly and firmly without all the drama of shouting, name calling people, and generally creating tension at work places; or even going about threatening subordinates with scoring them low during appraisals!

One thing that is not common in this part of the world now is anger management classes. Quite frankly, people managers who have a proclivity for losing their cool over small stuffs should enroll. To be sure, most bosses ought to keep having refresher courses on anger management and advanced certification on civilized conduct, before they start collapsing from stroke resulting from unnecessary tension and excess brain activity during shouting sessions with junior colleagues.

But what can be done about these hard to please bosses, or is one condemned to stomach all these insults for as long as you remain under them? I think not.

You can start by getting your act together. Step up your competence level; be at your optimum in the level of work you churn out. Do quality work. Will this keep your fault finding boss off your back? Of course not! But it will prepare you for the next step to reclaiming your dignity at your work place - which is ‘going on a diplomatic offensive’. It is taking the talk to your boss, and you must be ready to lead the charge! Martin Luther King said freedom is never given voluntarily by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. To reclaim your right to be treated like a human being, you will have to demand it.

A warning though: there is absolutely no guarantee that your boss will appreciate that kind of talk. It may not change anything. As a matter of fact, his/her behavior towards you may take a turn for the worse. You may come off this adventure vigorously battered. But you would have made the point. Your boss will discover something new about you that, you are the one who will not take the blows lying down anymore. And because you have stepped up your work, the boss will not have a reason to nail you. You will eventually get your dignity restored.

But after you have done all and the situation does not improve, do not despair. You will have to endure until you or your boss leaves that unit or establishment. Afteral, it is properly called a ‘work place’. Not a ‘social gathering’ of friends.

At the moment, I am very fortunate to have a very excellent boss. He is exceptional in how he treats people who work with him, from the drivers to the colleagues in management staff. He doesn’t bring anyone down. A very striking observation I made is the fact that, even though he jokes with everyone and tries to make the work place as lively as possible, we know not to mess with him or try to take him for granted; because, like a true scorpion, my boss can also sting with deadly consequence. I like to think office bullies can learn how to manage men and materials from him. A word is enough for the wise… let it be.

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Mr. Obroku, a legal practitioner contributed this piece to this blog from Lagos;mosesobroku@gmail.com

Who Needs Patricia Etteh’s House?

2013-04-19T11:29:00.002-07:00

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Not long after the N628 million contract scandal involving the leadership of the House of Representatives exploded in the face of Nigerians, Vanguard newspaper (August 29, 2007) carried an interview with Dino Melaye, the Chairman of the House Committee on Information and National Orientation. Mr. Melaye who has unduly advertised himself as one of the loudest supporters of the House Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Bunmi Etteh, in her current travails, had, in the course of the interview, startled Nigerians with a very loaded and overly distasteful statement that spoke volumes about the quality of minds that “make laws” for Nigerians at the nation’s Lower Legislative House.

Said Melaye: “This woman [Etteh] told us, on the floor of the House, that she’s got two boobs. That the old [House Members] can suck one while the new would suck one. Honestly speaking, we are sucking. We are enjoying the sucking. We are doing that right now.”

* Ms. Patricia Etteh

It is now several weeks since Melaye gave this interview. In the absence of any form of refutation from the beautician from Ikire and her handlers, despite the very unflattering insinuations and disquieting imagery the choice of words clearly convey, one is at liberty to conclude that Melaye may have used the exact words deployed by Madam Speaker to serve her very generous offer to House Members. If then the language of deliberations in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly has achieved such a low descent, why then should anyone be surprised that House Members could so easily provoke serious envy in motor park touts and area boys by the kind of disgraceful and self-debasing combat they enacted the other day?

Last week, the panel investigating the outrageous house renovation contract submitted its findings, and as they clearly conveyed in their report, Madam Speaker grossly abused her office in several instances and copiously lied to the panel. Calls for her resignation or impeachment, which started ringing out from several quarters before and in the course of the sitting of the panel, have become even more loud, impatient and widespread.

By their actions and utterances, what is clear is that Etteh and her supporters are blissfully unaware of the depth of public disaffection and resentment this scandal has attracted to the Speaker and her House, and so are still fighting with all their strength even after the battle had been lost and won. For her, it is all about surviving and clinging on to the privileges of an office she is pitiably ill-equipped for, despite the heavy, crippling moral burden that now go with it.

The ordinary Nigerian out there, who can neither afford even a leaking roof over his head nor one decent meal a day is seething with rage that the Speaker and her motley crowd, no matter what they call themselves, the offices they occupy, or of what use they imagine they are to Nigerians, could muster the effrontery to seek to squander such a huge amount of money just to renovate a house! What this means is that even if due process was duly followed, and provision for the renovation clearly made in the budget, this category of Nigerians would still have been calling for the head of the Speaker and her deputy for seeking to impoverish them further. Such an expenditure profile can only represent one excellent way of advertising crude insensitivity and delusion of grandeur.

Now let’s look at the matter through the eye of the ordinary Nigerian who now sees Etteh and her supporters as a gaggle of heartless fellows hell-bent on prolonging his suffering. In present-day Nigeria (2007), N2.5 million or much less (depending on who is building) can comfortably put up a three-bedroom bungalow. So, with N628 million, one would be hoping to get nothing less than 251 houses. That, to me, should constitute an estate, which would settle the accommodation problems of 251 families or more.

*Dino Melaye

In her testimony, Etteh had claimed that what was allocated for the renovation of her house was merely N238 million. Well, that amount can build an estate comprising 95 bungalows or more. Now, long-suffering Nigerians out there are asking: What makes the Speaker of the House of Representatives so special that Nigeria would use the money that could offer “comfortable” accommodation to more than 250 or even 95 Nigerians to merely renovate her house?

That is what they are insisting to know, and I will be glad if somebody could step forward to answer this. That this question has remained unanswered is worsening their pain. Indeed, this is the same country where civil servants (performing duties as important (or even more) as what the Speaker does) are being mass-sacked for daring to ask for N9,000 minimum wage.

This is the same country where it has been established that more than 70% of the citizenry live below poverty level. By the way, how much was used to build the house in the first place? Nigerians need to know. We have been treated to wild tales about beddings costing N5million, “cluster of houses” being upgraded, and a chapel and mosque being constructed, as if the Speaker’s residence is an ecumenical centre. In 1999, this same house was renovated at the cost of N5.28 million, while N2.5 million and N16 million were invested to further work on it in 2003 and 2006 (that is, last year) respectively. The nation has also been informed that the house was horribly vandalized.

By the way, where is Mr. Aminu Bello Masari, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives? Is he not aware of all the insinuations flying around, appearing to hint at the possibility that he may have horribly vandalised the house before vacating it? Even if the Idoko panel did not deem it fit to invite him to tell Nigerians in what state he had left the house, is it not necessary for him to speak up immediately to clear his name, which is being gradually rubbished by the present scandal? Or has he forgotten that silence is one way of saying that one is guilty as charged?

Well, Etteh is saying that we should be grateful to her for saving us N244 million by refusing to stay in a hotel. Thanks, good lady! But may I inform you that by telling Nigerians that keeping you in Abuja for only 107 days would cost them a whopping sum of N244 million, you are clearly suggesting to them that you are a luxury they can ill-afford, in fact, a dispensable burden too heavy to bear. Yes, you are also drawing unhelpful attention to the cost of maintaining the National Assembly, and by extension, inspiring questions about the desirability of Nigeria continuing to have two Legislative Houses.

*Nigeria's House Of Reps

Indeed, whatever merits and perceived benefits that made bicameral legislature attractive to Nigeria’s founding fathers is gradually being diminished by what we have come to know as “Nigerian factor”. What we have seen is that instead of the two Houses constituting moderating influences on each other, helping to refine and fine-tuning the legislative process, they appear to have rather conspired to short-change the Nigerian people. They appear to be united by only one obsession: squandermania and profligacy.

I am told that they even fund their frivolous foreign trips with state funds. The less their number, the better for the nation. So, what does Nigeria stand to lose if one House is abolished? Yes, let’s have one House, until it becomes necessary to add another one. For now, what we have is simply superfluous.

Going by Mr. Dino Melaye’s statement quoted earlier, Nigerians have every reason to worry about the quality of lawmaking that takes place on their behalf in Abuja. Can any sound legislation take place in a House where members are only interested in “sucking and enjoying?” Are we sure we are not stuck with a House that believes in nothing, stands for nothing, without any sense of history, and clearly has no plans of changing anything or achieving anything? So why should the nation continue to waste scarce resources maintaining an unwieldy House, which only idles away or engages in vulgar discourse at the nation’s expense in Abuja?

Well, whether Etteh resigns or is impeached now would hardly affect the opinion of many Nigerians about the National Assembly. Perhaps, Etteh and her House deserve each other. In it we have “honourable members” who are prepared to kill themselves with blows just to impress one woman accused of gross misconduct and abuse of office, but would not lose a sweat to fight for the welfare of those they claim to be representing in the House.

Because, we have such calibre of lawmakers, who are in the House “sucking and enjoying” and forgetting the very important assignment that brought them to Abuja, Etteh and her 'Chocolate Cream soldiers' (apologies Bernard Shaw) can afford to flaunt their contempt for public opinion. As incensed Nigerians renewed their call for Etteh’s resignation, she caused a statement to be issued last weekend which practically told Nigerians to shut up, because, as non-members of her House of “Suckers and Enjoyers”, they are not qualified to comment on a matter in which their own money is involved.

*Meanwhile A Nigerian Feeds From A Lagos Dustbin

The disdain in the statement is quite palpable: “The probe panel’s report has been laid on the table and what it contains are conclusions, not recommendations for punishment. One wonders when non-members of the House of Representatives started deciding how 360 members of the lower chambers run their affairs. What the procedure says is that the report will be debated when the House reconvenes after its two-week recess. It is therefore unfair and misleading for people to stay outside and tell 360 members of this honourable House what to do. It is like telling Nigerians that the people they elected cannot do the job.”

Well, Madam Speaker, we are sorry for daring to comment on a matter that concerns us. Very soon, your Honourable “suckling” members will return from recess, and after a another session of “sucking and enjoying”, they would tell us their verdict on the findings of the Idoko Panel. They might as well not bother. We have already realized the great mistake we made by taking them to Abuja to “enjoy and suck” on our behalf.

And that mistake is correctable. The National Assembly must urgently shed its excess weight. Every Nigerian must join the campaign to commence this process.

So, if the House Members are wise, they would quickly read the handwriting on the wall and make haste to reclaim their respectability and vindicate their relevance, before a thoroughly sickened and tired nation finds an effective way to dispense with them.
-------------------------
First published in October 2007 in the now rested Weekly column SCRUPLES which appeared on the back page of Daily Independent every Wednesday

New York Senate Passes Resolution On Chinua Achebe

2013-04-17T03:42:00.001-07:00

J1186-2013: LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION Mourning The Death Of Paramount Novelist Chinua Achebe, Founder And Pioneer Of African literature

A Nigerian National Newspaper Reports
Achebe's Passing (pix:Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye (2013))

WHEREAS, It is the sense of this Legislative Body to pay tribute to the lives of those esteemed individuals of international renown who distinguished themselves through their life's work; and
WHEREAS, Foremost novelist, Professor Chinua Achebe, died on Thursday, March 21, 2013, at the age of 82; and
WHEREAS, Born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, on November 16, 1930,
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic; he was
best known for his 1958 novel, THINGS FALL APART, selling over 12
million copies around the world, and having been translated into 50 languages,
making him the most paraphrased African writer of all time; and
WHEREAS, Raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern

Nigeria

, Chinua Achebe excelled academically and earned a scholar ship for
undergraduate studies; he became fascinated with world religions and traditional
African cultures, and began writing stories as a college student; and

Chinua Achebe

WHEREAS, After graduation, Chinua Achebe worked for the Nigerian
Broadcasting Service (NBS) and soon moved to the metropolis of
Lagos; he gained worldwide attention for THINGS FALL APART;
his later novels include: NO LONGER AT EASE (1960), ARROW OF
GOD (1964), A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (1966), and ANTHILLS OF
THE SAVANNAH (1987); and
WHEREAS, When the region of Biafra broke away from

Nigeria

in 1967,
Chinua Achebe became a supporter of Biafran independence and
acted as ambassador for the people of the new nation; the war ravaged
the populace, and as starvation and violence took its toll, he appealed
to the people of Europe and the

Americas

for assistance; and
WHEREAS, When the Nigerian government retook the region in 1970,
Chinua Achebe involved himself in political parties, but soon resigned
due to frustration over the   corruption and elitism he witnessed, thereby
deciding to devote himself to academia; he lived in the United States for
several years in the 1970s, and returned there in 1990 after a car accident
left him partially disabled; and
WHEREAS, Chinua Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society,
the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of Western and traditional
African values during and after the colonial era; his style relies heavily on the Igbo oral  tradition, and combines straightforward   narration with
representations of  folk stories, proverbs, and oratory; he also published a
number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections; and

New York Senate In Session

WHEREAS, A David and Marianna Fisher  University   Professor and

Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, Chinua Achebe worked up
until the time of his death; and
WHEREAS, New York's Bard College, with a distinguished history of
supporting Chinua Achebe's work and legacy, will continue to be a primary
home for his projects; and
WHEREAS, Professor Achebe's global significance lies not only in his talent
and recognition as a writer, but also as a critical thinker and essayist who has
written extensively on questions of the role of culture in Africa along with the
social and political significance of aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial
state in Africa; and
WHEREAS, Chinua Achebe distinguished himself in his profession and by
his sincere dedication and substantial contribution to the welfare of his
community; and
WHEREAS, Chinua Achebe's commitment to excellence, and his spirit
of humanity, carried over into all fields of enterprise, including charitable
and civic endeavors; and

With Its Recent Translation Into Persian,

Things Fall Apart Can Now Be Read In 60

Major Languages

WHEREAS, Chinua Achebe is survived by his wife, Christie, their children,
Chinelo, Ikechukwu, Chidi, and Nwando as well as his grandchildren, Chochi,
Chino, Chidera, C.J. (Chinua Jr.), Nnamdi and Zeal; and
WHEREAS, Armed with a humanistic spirit and imbued with a sense of
compassion, Chinua Achebe leaves behind a legacy which will long endure
the passage of time and will remain as a comforting memory to all he served
and befriended; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to mourn
the death of paramount novelist Chinua Achebe, founder and pioneer of
African literature; and be it further
RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be
transmitted to the family of Chinua Achebe.

------------------------

NYSenate

Refreshing!

2013-02-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye At The Very Memorable WCCRM
International Pastors Conference, January 2013

Enugu Governor Chime Returns After 140 Days

2013-02-07T02:34:00.000-08:00

Sullivan Chime

At last, the Governor of Enugu State, Mr. Sullivan Chime, is back in the country after being away for 140 days reportedly treating an undisclosed ailment. Mr. Chime arrived the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, this morning aboard a British Airways flight. Some reports say he is still in Abuja at the Enugu State Government Lodge and is expected to come into Enugu on Friday where his protracted absence has caused considerable disquiet.

Chime had left the country in September to spend what the Enugu State Government said was his accumulated leave. Initial reports said he was in India and critically ill. It was even remoured that he had passed away, a report that was strongly refuted by the Enugu State Government. Later, reports confirmed he was in a London hospital.

Visited In London By Three Nigerian Governors:

L-R: Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom), Gabriel Suswan

(Benue), Chime, and Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers)

Recently, Mr. Chime was visited by three of his colleagues, Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Gabriel Suswan of Benue State and Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State, who took a photograph with him that was widely published and circulated on the internet.

Chime had used the occasion to dismiss reports about the state his health, promising Enugu people that he would soon return to the state.

But an NGO, Save Enugu Group, was quick to dismiss the picture as “Government Magic”. Asked the group in statement: “…if Chime is as fit as shown [in that picture], what is he still doing away from his duty post for over four months?”

Sunday Onyebuchi, Deputy Governor, Enugu

State

A public affairs analyst said this morning that he hoped Chime’s return would not turn out to be akin to that of former President Umar Musa’Adua.

“Okay, he is back, as they said. Let’s now see him return to his duty post, do his work visibly before the people of Enugu State, and prove to Nigerians that he is hale and hearty, and that all that have been said about the state of his health are all lies. He must also realize that he owes the Enugu people a convincing explanation on what had kept him away from the state for so long” he said.

Documentary On Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' At 55

2013-01-16T05:19:00.001-08:00

A Masterful Documentary From PBS And Annenberg Media On Things Fall Apart At 55

Chinua Achebe

http://www.learner.org/courses/worldlit/things-fall-apart/watch/

Speakers in the Video

: Anthony Appiah
Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
Dr. Appiah is the Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is also associated with the Center for African American Studies, the Programs in African Studies and Translation Studies, and the Departments of Comparative Literature and Politics. Dr. Appiah has published widely in African and African-American literary and cultural studies and served as president of the PEN American Center.

: David Damrosch

Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Dr. Damrosch is professor of comparative literature at Harvard University and the author of several books, including What Is World Literature?

: Simon Gikandi
Professor of English, Princeton University
Dr. Gikandi is professor of English at Princeton University. He graduated with a first class degree in literature from the University of Nairobi, was a British Council Scholar at the University of Edinburgh, and got his Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. His major fields of research and teaching are the anglophone literatures and cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, postcolonial Britain, the "Black Atlantic," and the African diaspora.

: Suheir Hammad
Poet
Ms. Hammad is a Palestinian-American poet, and has been featured on the television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. She was also an original cast member and writer for the show on Broadway, which later won a Tony Award. She is author of Born Palestinian, Born Black, Drops of This Story and ZaatarDiva. Ms. Hammad won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 2009.

: Francesca Harper
Choreographer
Ms. Harper is a choreographer who studied at the School of American Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet School, and The Ailey School. The Francesca Harper Project debuted in August 2005 with the sold-out premiere performance of MODO FUSION at The Ailey Citigroup Theater.

: Chuck Mike
Theater Director and Associate Professor of Theater, University of Richmond
Dr. Mike is associate professor of theater at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He is also a theater director and has worked with British playwright Biyi Bandele. Dr. Mike directed a stage production of Things Fall Apart in London. A disciple of author and playwright Wole Soyinka, he believes that theater can bring about social change.

: Osonye Tess Onwueme
Playwright and Professor of Cultural Diversity and English, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Dr. Onwueme is professor of cultural diversity and English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, as well as a playwright and poet focused on themes of social justice. In 1985, she won the Drama Prize from the Association of Nigerian Authors. As a native Nigerian, Dr. Onwueme uses her works for the theater to give voice to African women and give audiences a clearer picture of life in Africa.

: Faith Salie
Cultural Critic
Actress, journalist, commentator for CBS's Sunday Morning, and a regular on the NPR game show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Ms. Salie is a former radio show host and executive producer of Fair Game with Faith Salie. She is a Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar.

: Kurt Thometz
Bookseller and Collector
Mr. Thometz owns Jumel Books in Harlem, and is a collector and aficionado of African literature. He is the author of Life Turns Man Up and Down, an anthology of Onitsha Market Literature, a Nigerian phenomenon of the 1960s. Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, has used this work in his own teaching.
---------------------------; WATCH VIDEO HERE

Happy New Year!

2013-01-01T08:58:00.001-08:00

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New.

May the New Year usher in abundant blessings,

favours, promotions and flourishing health,

and may it bring with it the realisation

of all your dreams and aspirations, and

give you joy unspeakable.
Congratulations!

The Kidnapping of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s Mother

2012-12-31T01:44:00.000-08:00

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

No matter the very strong views many Nigerians hold about the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, it is difficult not to sympathize with her and her family on the recent kidnapping of her mother, Mrs. Kamene Okonjo, by heartless criminals. Mrs. Okonjo, 82, a retired sociology professor, is the wife of the Obi of Ogwashi-Uku in Aniocha LGA of Delta State.

Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Her

Mother, Mrs. Kamene Okonjo

The five days Mrs. Okonjo spent with her captors must have been one long traumatic period for the members of the family. Now that she has been freed and is back home, I must join several other Nigerians to congratulate the finance minister and her family on the happy end to this horrible nightmare.

It has been quite difficult to determine how exactly Mrs. Okonjo’s freedom was secured. The public has merely been treated to a cocktail of speculations even by those who ought to have the facts. Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan thinks that the kidnappers may have been panicked by the sudden, heavy presence of security agents in the area and so decided to release the woman.

“The army and police have been on their trail and a lot of raids have been done. I think because of the heat they dropped her off on the highway," Uduaghan told the BBC.

Both the governor and the police avoided direct answers to questions on whether any ransom was paid to secure the release of Mrs. Okonjo, insisting that only the family could authoritatively answer that. Mr. Uduaghan maintained that his government does not have a policy of paying ransom to kidnappers, but quickly added, however, that affected families eager to have their loved ones released have been known to engage in private negotiations with the abductors.

Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan and

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the World Bank Headquarters

in Washington DC (pix: governoruduaghan.org)

This clearly loaded answer can only further fuel speculations across the country that some ransom may have been paid before the kidnappers agreed to drop off Mrs. Okonjo on the highway in Kwale, 50 kilometres away, from where she boarded the motorcycle that took her home. It also hints strongly at the likelihood that either the police and the Delta State government were being less-than truthful or they were actually not on top of the situation.

Again, Mr. Uduaghan told the BBC: "For this one we also insisted that we would not pay any ransom [and] as a government we would not negotiate with anybody."

Now, if such a decision was made for this particular case, as the governor’s statement seems to suggest, does it then mean that in previous cases, the government had paid ransom? What does this say about the ability of government to protect precious lives and discourage crime by making it unprofitable?

Mrs. Okonjo’s son, Onyema Okonjo, has blamed her mother’s abduction on security lapse. “I think there were definitely some lapses in terms of security… the people that were supposed to have been here were not here…this gave them [the kidnappers] the opportunity to do what they wanted to do… I think it is really a sad reflection of where we are as a society,” he was quoted as saying.

President Goodluck Jonathan

Indeed, it is a very “sad reflection” of the society in which we have found ourselves.

That Mrs. Okonjo could still be easily abducted despite the overwhelming security around her (as a powerful minister’s mother and community queen) can only, most sadly, underline the crying vulnerability of most Nigerians out there. It also throws up the cold fact which government often loves to ignore, namely, that the solution to the menace of kidnapping and armed robbery is not to surround privileged people and their families with heavy security.

Rather, sincere efforts ought to be conscientiously deployed to ensure adequate security for all and, most importantly, a gradual reversal of those factors that generously water the ground for the rapid growth and spread of these criminal activities.

Now, the Finance Minister has introduced another very worrisome angle to the story. She told reporters in Abuja last week that her mother was kidnapped because of her alleged refusal to pay fuel subsidy funds to oil marketers.

“I can’t give all the details because we don’t want to compromise on-going investigations. But I can tell you one thing: My mother suffered a great deal during this ordeal…They told her that I must get on the radio and television and announce my resignation ...When she asked why, they told her it was because I did not pay Oil Subsidy money. They also said I had blocked payment of money to certain components of the SURE-P programme…These statements are, of course, not true. In the case of subsidy payments, we have been paying all marketers whose claims have been verified by the Aig-Imoukhuede Committee after going through the necessary processes…For marketers whose transactions are proven to be fraudulent, the position of the Jonathan government is also clear: we cannot and we will not pay. We will not back down on this. We will continue to stand firm,” Okonjo-Iweala declared.

The Result of Punitive Economic Policies
Dinner from the Dustbin

The minister’s statement has raised many questions across the country. From what I have heard and read so far, only an insignificant number of Nigerians are buying this story. And what they are asking is: if we agree with the minister that those who organized her mother’s abduction are those oil marketers whose claims were “proven to be fraudulent” and whose fraudulent claims the minister has vowed not to pay, why then did they release her mother?

Did the minister eventually back down? Because, from every available report, Mrs. Okonjo was released by the kidnappers and not rescued by the security agents, although, the authorities deliberately refused to make this very clear, by choosing to announce her release together with the arrest of “some prime suspects,” thus, making it seem as if the former occurred as a result of the latter. Let's all hope that the on-going investigations will unravel all the truths behind this very sad and unfortunate incident.

Well, whether her mother was rescued by security agents or through the payment of ransom (or even subsidy fund), what remains true is that Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has the status, connection and means to adequately respond to both challenges. In fact, an online platform alleged the other day that N9million ransom was paid by the Delta State government to secure Mrs. Okonjo’s freedom.

Whatever happened, however, all I can say here is that as the minister and her siblings celebrate their enormous good fortune, sincere thoughts must be spared for that poor, old woman out there who has been pinning away in the kidnappers den because her own children have neither the means nor clout to secure her freedom as promptly and effectively as the Okonjo’s did theirs.

We live in a country of acute unemployment and excruciating poverty and the Goodluck Jonathan’s government is yet to demonstrate that it is in possession of workable ideas about how the malaise could be effectively combated.

Mrs. Kamene Okonjo

In fact, we ought to have been counting ourselves extremely blessed that we have as our chief economic manager, a brilliant, Harvard and World Bank-minted expert in the person of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, yet the economic policies being formulated and implemented in this country, despite being always wrapped in glittering foils, have only compounded the nation’s woes, effectively ensuring that we are perennially mired in such a primitive and dangerous society where poverty and despair reign with utmost impunity and life is more and more worthless. What we appear stuck with is a government perpetually groping for direction, always appearing blank and frustratingly confused about how to navigate the country into even some modest economic sunshine.

Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, largely seen as the bold face of the World Bank/IMF policies for Africa, has most zealously championed controversial policies that have rankled the populace. Prominent among them is her insistence on mass retrenchment of workers as a solution to Nigeria’s economic problems, in a country with an incredibly high unemployment rate. It was from her that many Nigerians first heard such spine-chilling phrases like “right-sizing” and “down-sizing” in the civil service – phrases that always unleash fear, dread and panic everywhere.

She is also a passionate advocate of the removal of subsidy on fuel (READ: increase in the price of petrol) – something many regard as phantom since government has repeatedly failed to convincingly prove its existence. And despite this determination to pile more hardship on an already overstretched populace through punitive policies that only compound the country’s already very bad economic problems, public officers obscenely cart away duly approved jumbo salaries and ridiculously inflated allowances right under finance minister’s nose. I am yet to hear Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala suggest the “right-sizing” or “down-sizing” of the multitudes of aides (many of them with overlapping functions) idling away at our expense at the presidency or even the slightest reduction of their unspeakably inflated salaries and allowances.

The Hooded Face of Terror: Is The Government

Overwhelmed?

And to make matters worse, and clearly underline the gross insensitivity, prodigality and anti-growth mindset that inspire polices and plans at the presidency, President Goodluck Jonathan is spending billions of naira on food at Aso Rock and the construction of a new, more tasteful presidential banquet hall and “more befitting” residence for the vice president even when the current residence is still very cosy and palatial. Yet this is a country where many people are not able to afford one healthy meal a day, and some have even gone as far as feeding from putrid dustbins just to prolong their miserable existence.

Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala should allow her recent experience to acquaint her with the awareness that punitive policies apart from traumatizing their traditional targets, that is, the people, also produce horrible consequences that have ways of returning to haunt even their very chief architects. Granted, criminally-minded people would always take to crime no matter the situation, yet it remains very difficult to divorce the unspeakable hardship in the country from the growing menace of robbery and kidnapping.

Also, the unrestrained looting of the public wealth which usually transforms public officers into overnight millionaires, and the penchant by these financially empowered fellows to obscenely flaunt their new-found wealth before Nigeria in the midst of excruciating poverty in a land where over 80% of the citizenry live below poverty level can only provoke the deprived outside the corridors into crime. Little wonder kidnapped public officers and their relatives hardly attract any sympathy and prayers from the populace.

Wake Up, Sirs! There's Danger in the Land

(pix: nigeriaonline)

It is time for President Jonathan and his team to demonstrate convincingly that indeed some efforts are really being made to fix this country. Power supply, for instance, despite the billions of dollars it has gulped, remains abysmally poor, thereby shooting up the cost of doing business in Nigeria. This continues to force the closure of businesses, kill the dreams of young entrepreneurs and swell the rank of the unemployed, many of who resort to violent crimes as a means of survival, thereby, compounding the country’s insecurity problems.

It is to be hoped that Nigerian public officers would hasten to learn from their colleagues recent experience that it is impossible to labour to create a dangerous country and expect to be insulated from its often far-reaching consequences.

This is wishing Mrs. Okonjo a most pleasant recovery from the trauma she had just passed through.

------------------------

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The Return of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

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2012 Chinua Achebe Colloquium On Africa Communique

2012-12-23T10:54:00.005-08:00

Being The Communiqué Issued At The End Of The Chinua Achebe Colloquium On Africa (December 7-9, 2012) At Brown University, Providence, U.S.A.

The fourth edition of the Chinua Achebe Colloquium on Africa convened by Nigerian novelist and humanist Chinua Achebe, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies, was held at Brown University on December 7-8, 2012, at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts.

With its theme as “Governance, Security and Peace in Africa,” the 2012 colloquium attracted leading experts from academia, business, non-governmental organizations, and governments from Africa, Europe and the United States. The Colloquium was well-attended by delegates who actively participated in two days of intense deliberation and exchange of ideas on the importance of strengthening democracy and peace on the African continent. The Colloquium featured panel discussions which highlighted the complex security issues that confront African nations, security challenges surrounding the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, homegrown terrorism, and the persistence of ethno-religious insurgency. The colloquium noted that these were serious concerns that challenge the establishment of institutions and principles of good governance on the continent.

Highlights of the Colloquium included four keynote addresses by Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for the promotion of good governance in Africa; Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, the executive governor of Lagos State, Nigeria; General Carter F. Ham, Commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), based in Stuttgart, Germany; Ambassador Bisa Williams, U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Niger; Professor Emma Rothschild of Harvard University, and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, South African anti-Apartheid activist and former managing director of the World Bank.

The Colloquium acknowledges the fact that the main driver of conflict in Africa is poverty originating from the failure of leadership and governance. Among the resolutions advanced at the Colloquium are:

Chinua Achebe

1. The Colloquium urges governments in Africa and bold private initiatives to work to grow additional, dedicated indigenous investment and entrepreneurial groups rather than depend largely on foreign aid. To paraphrase one of the keynote speakers, foreign aid is morphine; what is really needed in Africa is a dedicated and thorough operation to remove debilitating poverty that robs the people of their dignity and makes them vulnerable to the manipulation of corrupt, self-serving, and divisive leaders and warlords.

2. The Colloquium calls on Africans at home and in the Diaspora, as well as members of the international community, to promote good governance in Africa by acknowledging the outstanding examples of remarkable African leaders such as Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former president of Mozambique, Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires, former president of Cape Verde, and Festus Gontebanye Mogae, former president of Botswana. The Colloquium encourages African ruling parties in particular to respect three essentials to democratic governance: an independent and credible election system, viable and vibrant political opposition, and free and rigorous civil society engagement in politics.

3. The Colloquium reviewed the strategic role of the United States Africa Command, AFRCOM, in relation to the role of African peacekeepers, and the success of the African Union Mission in certain flashpoints on the continent such as Somalia, Sudan, and Mali. The Colloquium welcomed the participation of AFRICOM Commander, General Carter Ham, in passionate debates on the role of the United States in African security, within an intellectual space dominated by scholars and diplomats from Africa. The Colloquium acknowledges the idea of ‘partnership’ between African states and the international community to maintain peace and democratic governance. However, the Colloquium believes that the international community should be wary of the unintended consequences of military support, such as training and arming ambitious elements and war mongers who disrupt democratic regimes and the rule of law in parts of the continent. More resources should be committed, instead, to developing education, technology, health care, agriculture, and basic infrastructure. The Colloquium recognizes AFRICOM’s efforts to collaborate with African governments in their fight against terror groups on the continent in particular, but cautions that any US military activities in Africa must be restrained, must reinforce African government efforts to seek peaceable solutions to their conflicts, must support democratic development, and should be sufficiently transparent and responsive to African civil society review and feedback.

Lagos-State Governor Babatunde Fashola

4. The Colloquium recognizes the teeming youth and children of Africa as the hope for a new cultural politics and for the development of the continent. The Colloquium encourages African governments to create opportunities for citizens, especially the youth, to freely express themselves. By ensuring openness in governance, transparency, and increasing social spaces for young people to participate in the democratic process, African leaders could create a more conducive environment for politically negotiated settlements of conflict through dialogue instead of through arms. In thinking of mediation and resolution of conflicts, African leaders should not forget African traditional peacemaking as exemplified by the elders in Ethiopia.

5. The Colloquium highlights the valuable and continuing roles of women in all African communities and countries and calls on all African governments to enhance and institutionally empower more women in leadership and government. The Colloquium agrees that the case-study of Moroccan feminism and Islamism presents a unique opportunity to interrogate the tremendous role that women played in both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts in terms of a “movement moment”; the Colloquium further supports the view that such an exposition represents an example of the Islamisation of the women’s movement in these countries, and urges scholars and policy makers to look more deeply at these trends.

6. The Colloquium recognizes that the vestiges of race and racism do indeed continue to impact the progress that is being made in modern-day southern Africa. Race was the fault-line of the 20th century and will continue to be for some time to come, particularly in countries such as Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe. This is manifested by the structures of the economies of these countries and the roles played by multinational companies. While the Colloquium acknowledges the injustices of the past created by race and racism, it is important for the current post-independence and liberation struggle heroes to take responsibility for their own shortcomings in addressing issues of economic disparity, inequity and good governance. At the same time however, there are still residual issues to be dealt with that were largely papered over by post-independence settlements, for example, the trauma that liberation fighters went through in their struggles against colonialism. The Colloquium recommends that the next steps therefore are:

a) Acknowledge the past and move on to deal with current issues

b) Focus on dealing with residual trauma in these societies

c) Citizen engagement to hold leaders accountable for good governance.

Christina Paxson President, Brown University

7. The Colloquium notes that the history of violence and wars in all countries is often contested, and calls for adequate attention to be paid to the task of preserving the continent’s memory. The Colloquium therefore encourages relevant institutions and authorities on the continent as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to address this issue comprehensively by investing in, and promoting research and archiving of Africa’s history and cultural production. UNESCO and international donors could partner with one university in each of Africa’s five subregions in a pilot project to spur the development of research networks on this matter across the continent.

8. The Colloquium celebrates the exponential growth of the artistic expressions of African youth via creative writing, music, film, and theatrical performances inside Africa and all over the world, and calls on African governments to demonstrate greater commitment to supporting the creative enterprise of African youth.

Mohammed Ibrahim of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation

9. The Colloquium calls on African governments to develop a Diaspora Engagement Plan to promote more robust ways of harvesting and leveraging the rich and diverse experience of Africans in the Diaspora.

10. The Colloquium notes Prof. Achebe’s particular commitment to Nigeria, and in that regard raises specific concerns that the current terrorist attacks and other increasing acts of violence across Nigeria reflect deeper socio-political inequities and pathologies. The Colloquium recognizes in particular the significance of Prof. Achebe's recent book on Biafra (There Was A Country) and the much-needed debate that it has sparked, not only about the war, but about the scars it left on southeastern Nigerians (and the areas which constituted the Republic of Biafra) that remain unaddressed 45 years after the start of the war in 1967. The Colloquium notes that these scars also have detrimental effects on the entire country.

Achebe's 'There Was A Country' Discussed At The House Of Commons

2012-12-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

Chinua Achebe's There Was A Country: Reflections from the Nigerian Diaspora

DATE: Monday 10 December 2012

TIME: 6.00-9.00pm

VENUE: Committee Room 8, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

(Please allow for at least 15 minutes to clear security when you arrive)

Chinua Achebe's recently published memoirs, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, have controversially reopened discussions on Nigeria's past – especially the events leading up to the first coup and the aftermath of the Biafran War. These events have had a profound impact on Nigeria and continue to critically impact developments across the country today.

Chinua Achebe

This event aims to bring Nigerians together to debate the key legacies from the coup and civil war in the context of Nigeria's present realities and future trajectory, and hopes to explore how the coup and war have:

adversely affected peacebuilding and state-building across Nigeria (with reference to reconciliation, integration and equality)?

shaped the relationship between the Nigerian State and ordinary Nigerians?

influenced broader understanding of how to tackle the deep and growing levels of economic and social inequality polarising Nigeria?

affected access to justice, transparency and accountability as well as tackling state impunity in Nigeria?Chair: Chi Onwurah MP, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science & Digital Infrastructure

Speakers:

Donu Kogbara, Print and broadcast journalist and Board Member, Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority

Dipo Salimonu, Eirenicon Africa and founding partner of Ateriba Limited

Onyekachi Wambu, Director Policy and Engagement, African Foundation for Development (AFFORD)

Dr Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u, Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics, Northumbria University

There are a limited number of places so if you would like to attend, please RSVP by email to: events@fpc.org.uk

Download the report (170 kilobyte PDF)

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RELATED POST

Chinua Achebe’s 'There Was a Country - A Personal History of Biafra'- A REVIEW

2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa (December 7 and 8, 2012)

2012-11-15T02:27:00.000-08:00

Governance, Security and Peace in Africa

The 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa at Brown University will focus on several crucial issues that are impacting the continent and the world, including the security situation throughout northern, central, and eastern Africa, ethno-religious insurgency and regime change in West Africa, and peace-building efforts taking place in southern Africa. The colloquium will be held Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7-8, 2012, at Brown University and will be available live online.

Chinua Achebe (pix: Mike Cohea/Brown University)

The 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa, convened by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies, will be held at Brown University on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7-8, 2012, in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. Sessions will be carried online at brown.edu/web/livestream/
The Achebe Colloquium on Africa brings together an international group of scholars, officials from African governments, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and other organizations for two days of intense deliberation and exchange of ideas on the importance of strengthening democracy and peace on the African continent. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required as space is limited.
This year’s colloquium, titled “Governance, Security and Peace in Africa,” will focus on several key issues that are defining political and economic developments in Africa and the world. Panel discussions will highlight the security issues that challenge the establishment of institutions and principles of good governance on the continent. Invited panelists will discuss the complex security issues confronting African nations, security challenges surrounding the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, piracy and terrorism, and the continuance of ethnic and religious conflict.

Mo Ibrahim

Distinguished keynote speakers for the 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa include Ambassador Dhanojak Obongo, deputy head of mission for the Republic of South Sudan to the United States; Mohamed Ibrahim, founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former managing director of the World Bank; Shehu Sani, Nigerian activist, playwright, author, and the president of Civil Rights congress; Bisa Williams, U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Niger; and Johnny Moloto, deputy chief of mission for the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa in the United States.
In addition, novelist, activist, and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, and singer, poet, and lyricist Nneka will participate in the deliberations.

This will be Brown’s fourth annual Achebe Colloquium on Africa. The 2011 colloquium explored several challenges facing the region, including the Arab Spring and the crisis in Darfur. The 2010 colloquium focused attention on three African nations — Rwanda, Congo, and Nigeria — and the crucial issues impacting the countries, the continent, and the world. The inaugural 2009 colloquium addressed the problems and prospects of the 2010 Nigerian elections.

This year»s colloquium schedule and other details are available online at www.brown.edu/conference/achebe-colloquium/.

Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.

All those planning to attend must register. Registration is free and can be done through the website below:
http://brown.edu/conference/achebe-colloquium/registration-0

Courtney Coelho
News Officer (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences)
Office of Media Relations
Brown University
401-863-7287
401-863-2476
http://news.brown.edu
Email enquiries should be addressed to: achebecolloquium@brown.edu

Plagiarism: Dike’s Suit Against Two UNIPORT Professors For January 15

2012-11-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

A Federal High Court (FHC) sitting in Port Harcourt has fixed for January 15, 2013, hearing on the case of alleged of plagiarism instituted against Professors Steve O. Tamuno and Needorn Richard Sorle of the Department of Economics, University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), by a Nigerian-born United States-based professor, Victor Dike.

*Dike

Dike who is of the School of Engineering & Technology, National University (Sacramento Center), Sacramento, California, accused the two UNIPORT professors of violating his intellectual property rights.

When the case came up for mention before Justice L. Akanbi of the Federal High Court 1, Port Harcourt, on June 12, 2012, both Professors Tamuno and Sorle were absent in court. Justice Akanbi then gave an order that the defendants be served with notice of the next hearing date which he fixed for November 6, 2012.

But on November 6, the defendants still failed to appear in court. Consequently, the plaintiff through his lawful Attorney, Onyinye Obiaju, moved the court through an ex-parte application for the 2nd defendant who has been evading service to be served by substituted means to wit: pasting the court processes at his last known office address.

This application was granted and the court made an order for the 2nd defendant to be served by pasting. The court also ordered that both parties be served with hearing notice for the next adjourned date of 15th of January 2013.

The court equally ordered that the plaintiff should be ready on the next adjourned date to do his case, that is, to call all his witnesses.

Dike had dragged Tamuno and Sorle to court (Suit No. FHC/PH/CS/154/2012) for allegedly plagiarizing his work. In the statement of claim signed by his counsel, E.U. Chinedum Esq., Dike avers that he is the original author of the article: “Corruption in Nigeria: A New Paradigm for Effective Control” published in the AFRICAN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, and later republished in the NIGERIA ECONOMIC SUMMIT GROUP (NESG) – Economic Indicators (2003) July-September 2003, Volume 9, No.3 (p.32-45), under a new title, “Corruption in Nigeria: Understanding and Managing the Challenges.” This article, he claims, was copied verbatim by the defendants and published as their own work in the JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT VOLUME 6 NO 1, JUNE, 2008, under the heading, “Corruption and Economic Growth: A Survey of Three Institutions In Nigeria,” without properly acknowledging him as the original author.

(universitiesnews)

Although in a letter entitled “Alleged Case of Plagiarism” dated January 21, 2012, the first defendant (Steve O. Tamuno) on behalf of himself and the second defendant (Needorn Richard Sorle) apologized to Dike for copying his work without properly acknowledging him, the plaintiff was not satisfied with that apology as the defendants had failed to retract the same article from the internet as demanded by him. Moreover, the plaintiff avers that his credibility has been called to serious question as his articles are no longer regarded highly by readers since their discovery that the very opinions he expressed have also been rendered verbatim ad literatim in the work of another person. Due to this incident, he claims, readers who had held him high esteem before now are beginning to doubt whether he is indeed the author of articles ascribed to him. This has caused him undue embarrassment, pain and stress.

So, he is seeking an order of the court restraining the defendants from citing the publications as their original work and another order mandating them to retract immediately the said article from the public and the University of Port Harcourt website.

He also wants the court to mandate the defendants to send him a written apology which must also be published in at least one national newspaper and in addition pay him the sum of N27 million as damages and the cost of the suit.

Dike is also in court with the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, for alleged plagiarism. On Monday April 23, 2012, a Federal High Court in Abuja, gave orders that the CBN governor be served with a writ of summons filed by Dike who had alleged that Sanusi had breached his copyright by copying his work without acknowledging him in two convocation lectures he (Sanusi) delivered at the Igbinedion University, Okada, and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi.
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PhotoNews: Barack And Michelle Obama As A Young Couple

2012-11-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

...The Winning Picture?

In the morning of Tuesday, November 6, 2012, the day for the United States Presidential election, a very moving photograph of President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as a young couple was posted on the facebook page of Michelle Obama.

The picture was accompanied by this equally moving caption: "She voted for him for the same reason she married him - his character. Cast your ballot for President Obama today."

The photo, according to the Telegraph "attracted over 250,000 'likes' from viewers in seven hours and thousands of comments." It may have equally attracted a sizable number of votes to President Obama.

Producer Of Popular Sitcom, "Clinic Matters" Honoured In Paris

2012-10-30T03:17:00.001-07:00

Whitestone Cinema Ltd, producers of the very popular sitcoms, Clinic Matters and The Benjamins has been honoured with the 2012 World Quality Commitment International Star Award holding in France on October 28 and 29, 2012.

CEO of Whitestone Cinema Ltd, Paul Igwe,
Introducing the Company to Chief Executives
from over 52 Countries @ B.I.D

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Whitestone Cinema Ltd, Mr. Paul Igwe, who also directs the sitcoms, received the gold category of the award at an impressive ceremony at the Concorde La Fayette Hotel Convention Hall in Paris yesterday.

This recognition, according to the organizers of the event, “is based on the criteria of the QC100 quality model, implemented in over 100 countries, and will be sponsored by ImarPress with 26 publications.”

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Igwe with the Award

At the ceremony, “business leaders will present their companies for an international audience and will participate in conferences regarding quality case studies in companies in search of quality and excellence”, the organizers said in a statement.”

Mr. Igwe, a graduate of the Pan African University, Lagos, has directed a number of movies before introducing his television sitcoms which which now enjoy wide viewership in Africa and across the world.
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Watch an Episode of Clinic Matters Here

Chinua Achebe’s 'There Was a Country - A Personal History of Biafra'

2012-10-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

A Review By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

At last, the world is hearing from Professor Chinua Achebe, Africa’s foremost novelist, distinguished intellectual and author of the classic, Things Fall Apart, on the Nigeria-Biafra war. In a new book (There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra, New York: Penguin, 2012), Achebe presents a detailed account of what is widely regarded as the ‘genocidal Biafran war’ prosecuted forty-two years ago in which about 3 million people (mostly, unarmed civilians, including women and children) were brutally killed.

When you talk about genocide in Africa, most people would eagerly prefer we all look towards Rwanda or Darfur, or even the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and not Biafra which happened about twenty years earlier and which Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, professor of history and politics, in his review of Achebe’s memoir, describes as “Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century.”

Indeed, Biafra is a problematic subject. It readily stirs up a lot of discomfort and debilitating guilt in not a few quarters as it throws up memories of grossly disreputable decisions and actions with far-reaching, disastrous consequences, from which the originators and perpetrators would so much wish to distance themselves. The genocidal Biafran war is, without doubt, a recent occurrence (only four decades ago), but the strong determination of its guilt-ridden perpetrators, their foreign collaborators and local sympathizers, to hastily consign this monumental tragedy to pre-history and shout down anyone trying to remind the world of it has been quite overwhelming.

But in his new book, There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra, which TIME magazine in its August 27, 2012 edition classified as one of the twelve “most anticipated” books this fall (2012) and Newsweek (of the same date) in its “Fall Books Preview 2012” placed among the “15 Books To Read,” Achebe unwraps Biafra before the world again, letting everyone into gruesome details of wanton massacres of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and the horror of mass deaths caused by unspeakable starvations and sicknesses due mainly to the inhuman blockade zealously imposed upon Biafra by the Nigerian government, with the overwhelming support of the British government, despite outcries from several parts of the world.

Chinua Achebe

Like Achebe has argued in an earlier work, there is, indeed, greater danger in choosing not to remember and suppressing ugly history, because we lose the redemptive opportunity of allowing the high costs of past mistakes, the mortification that comes from regular encounters with the unpleasant consequences of unedifying decisions and indecent actions, to moderate the choices we make today and the actions we undertake. Indeed, forgetting emboldens men to unleash far worse horrors with greater impunity having at the back of their minds that they live in a society that has learnt to easily forget, where actions, no matter how hideous, attract little or no retribution. And Nigeria, like Achebe has long observed, which is “always prone to self-deception, stands in great need of reminders” (Morning Yet on Creation Day, London: Heinemann, 1975, p. xiii)

Achebe has a long history of forthrightness, so those expecting appealingly embellished, “politically correct” tales about Biafra in his memoir should be prepared for a huge disappointment. The Biafra he presents is one that comes with all the gory, scary details of her moment of grievous torments. In Achebe’s earlier novels, several lectures, interviews and essays we see a throbbing insistence that Africa’s colonizers must realize the extent of damage caused by their misadventure in Africa and so should take adequate responsibility. In the later novels, he focuses on the succeeding African leaders whose failure of character and leadership successfully enthroned the crippling mediocrity and corruption that have compounded the continent’s woes.

In this new book, Achebe shows how Nigeria’s inability or unwillingness to learn from her history of clearly avoidable tragedies have continued to sink her deeper in muddy waters of underdevelopment, and how the unrepentant stance of the leading protagonists in the country’s monumental crises and failures continues to ensure that Nigeria perennially wallows in the same old, costly mistakes.

The incidents Achebe recounts in his memoir are ones he witnessed at very close quarters, some of which he personally experienced, and was almost consumed in. The bombing and sudden reduction of his house in Enugu to rubbles, and how his family miraculously escaped death because they had left for Ogidi a few hours earlier to see Achebe’s sick mother is one of the most touching of Achebe’s experiences during the pogroms and the war that followed.

Wole Soyinka: His Gallant Peace Effort Landed

Him In Prison

Achebe commences with the story of his growing up, how he developed early interest in reading, worked hard and earned excellent grades at school. At Government College, Umuahia, where he made a number of interesting friends, notably, the great poet, Christopher Okigbo (who receives generous mention in the book) Achebe graduated with five distinctions and one credit. And as he got set to leave Umuahia, the colonial government built the University College, Ibadan (UCI), in whose national entrance examination, he “came in first or second in the country” and won “what was called a ‘major’ scholarship” (Achebe, 2012: 27). Government College, Umuahia, was so proud of his achievement that for several years “they put a big sign announcing [his] performance…” (p.27).

Achebe would soon secure a job in broadcasting in 1954 after his graduation from the UCI. Before the mass killings of Easterners residing in Northern and Western Nigeria in the mid-sixties which forced Achebe and his family to escape from Lagos where his job had taken him to and where he had risen to become the NBC’s director of external broadcasting, he had captured international attention with the publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in June 1958 which sent an unmistakable signal to the rest of the world that Africans were capable of producing serious literature which can hold its own in the global literary scene. (With its recent translation into Persian, Things Fall Apart now exists in 60 world languages and has sold over 12 million copies, making it the most widely read and translated African novel, and its author Africa’s best known writer).

Three other novels were to follow which firmly established Achebe's reputation as a master of his art, a writer with a distinct voice, style and story, showing the light to many other aspiring writers. The accounts of how Achebe and some other Easterners mentioned in the book excelled in their careers through hard work and determination without seeking to first pull anyone down or out would inspire serious questions in most readers on the justification for the overwhelming resentment towards Easterners for merely occupying senior positions in the various establishments which they had worked hard to earn.

Paul Amber sees it this way: “It was not long before the educational and economic progress of the Igbos led to their becoming the major sources of administrators, technicians, and civil servants for the country, occupying senior positions out of proportion to their numbers… [and] this led to the accusations of an Igbo monopoly of essential services…” (Quoted in Achebe, 2012: 74-5). One can only imagine what Nigeria would have become today if this situation was seen in a positive light and allowed to serve as motivation to many youths instead of the mass resentment it bred which eventually snowballed into the disastrous shortcut of mass eliminations and mass replacements that gradually dragged Nigeria into the horrible mess in which it is trapped today.

Achebe writes on the January 1966 coup which he says had initially elicited widespread celebrations due to the unpopularity of the very corrupt and grossly inept civilian regime that was overthrown. But there was so much anxiety in the land due to paucity of information. People were eager to find out what had happened here and there. Sadly, this non-availability of information soon gave room to dangerous rumours which culminated in the suggestion that the coup was “in fact a sinister plot by the ambitious Igbos of the East to seize control of Nigeria.” The fact that a greater number of Igbo officers had participated in the coup helped to reinforce this impression. And so “before long many people were persuaded that their spontaneous jubilations in January had been a mistake.” (Achebe, 2012: 66). And this provided the excuse, or rather, the long-sought opportunity, to translate into physical violence the bitter feelings long bottled up against the Igbos. The counter-coup of July 1966, still widely referred to as a “revenge coup” was the signal required to start hunting down the Igbos in the North and later in the West and slaughtering them like fowls. “There seemed to be lust for revenge, which meant an excuse for Nigerians to take out their resentment on the Igbos who led the nation in virtually every sector – politics, education, commerce, and the arts” (Achebe, 2012: 66-7).

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu

On August 25, 1968, while the Biafra-Nigeria war raged, Achebe told participants at a political science seminar at the Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda:

“The story of the massacre of thousands of innocent Eastern Nigerians need not be told here. But a few salient features should be recalled. First, it was a carefully planned operation. Secondly it has never been condemned by the Nigerian government. In short thousands of citizens were slaughtered, hundreds were wounded and maimed and violated, their homes and property looted and burned; and no one asked any questions. A Sierra Leonean living in Northern Nigeria at the time wrote in horror: ‘The killing of the Igbos has become a state industry in Nigeria’” (Achebe, 1975: 83).

The benumbing account of the pogrom is re-presented in greater detail in Achebe’s memoir with several quotations from the writings and statements of other observers. Achebe “was one of the last to flee Lagos” because, as he says: “I simply could not bring myself to accept that I could no longer live in my nation’s capital, although the facts clearly said so” (p.71). Achebe was disappointed that whereas mobs hunted innocent civilians down and slaughtered them, “the federal government sat by and let it happen” (p.71). Earlier, he had smuggled his pregnant wife and children out of Lagos on a cargo ship, a journey which his wife, Christie, describes as “one of the most horrendous voyages she had ever undertaken” (p.69). Achebe was to hear later that a drunken soldier had gone to his office “wanting to find out which was more powerful, their guns or my pen.” Fortunately, Achebe was not in the office. Also, some determined pogromists had visited his Ikoyi residence to look for him and, happily, he had left the house. It could be heart-shattering to be made to suddenly feel unwanted, in fact, that you have become a prized target for brutal slaughter in a city you once called home – your own country’s capital. What happened next can only compound such feelings:

“As many of us packed our belongings to return east some of the people we had lived with for years, some for decades, jeered and said, ‘Let them [Igbos] go; food will be cheaper in Lagos.’ That kind of experience is very powerful. It is something I could not possibly forget. I realized suddenly that I had not been living in my home; I had been living in a strange place” (p.68).

What flourished in Nigeria at this time was barbarism at its best. Achebe writes that a “detailed plan for mass killing was implemented by the government – the army, the police – the very people who were there to protect life and property … it was a premeditated plan that involved careful planning, awaiting only the right spark” (p.82).

Achebe observes that it was Collin Legum of the London Observer that first described the mass killings of Igbos after the July 1966 “revenge coup” as genocide (p.82). Many others including journalists, international observers, representatives of international humanitarian agencies and even Pope Paul IV’s special envoy were to use the word “genocide” to describe the situation in Biafra. Given the magnitude of the massacres and the bitter, fierce feelings that fired them, it remains surprising that some Nigerians are today surprised that the Igbos were reluctant to accept later assurances from the federal government that their safety would be guaranteed anywhere in Nigeria, more so, when those who had earlier believed such assurances and returned to their stations outside the East from where they had successfully escaped death during the initial massacres were soon hunted down and gruesomely slaughtered, while the same federal government that had promised to protect them watched with what could be called collaborative passivity.

Starving Biafra Children

Achebe writes that “following the pogroms, or rather the ethnic cleansing in the North that occurred over four months starting in May 1966, which was compounded by the involvement, even connivance, of the federal government in those evil dastardly acts, secession from Nigeria and the war that followed became an inevitability” (p.125). Indeed, many Igbos felt that secession was the most effective way to safeguard their lives and fight back their murderers.

The recent death and burial of late Biafran leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, provided excellent opportunity for deep, sincere reflections on the war by a number of Nigerians. One example of the very instructive sound bites heard during the burial ceremonies will suffice. Niger State Governor, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu said:

"Many saw him (Odumegwu-Ojukwu) as controversial, a war lord and a rebel whatever we might think of him, we must appreciate the issue of the time and majority of the people concluded he was forced by circumstances to take up arms against the country he loved and swore to defend. I, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, from my studies know that, I will take up arms to defend my people if confronted with similar circumstances that Ojukwu found himself that time.’’ (The Nation February 19, 2012).

The devastating war that followed the pogroms (after the Republic of Biafra was declared), during which the worst manifestations of human depravity was brazenly advertised is now, according to Professor Ekwe-Ekwe, an expert on genocide, “one of the most documented crimes against humanity.” Gallant peace efforts by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka landed him in prison, where he stayed till the war was nearly over. To the Nigerian authorities all was fair in war, including such horrible crimes against humanity like callous bombings of markets, schools, hospitals, relief centres and private buildings, ripping apart unarmed civilians mostly women, including many pregnant ones, children and health workers. It also meant the “starve them unto submission” policy of the Gowon-led regime.

Yakubu Gowon (pix:NAN)

Major characters in the crises: Ojukwu, Gowon, Awolowo, etc.; organizations like the United Nations (UN) and Organization of African Unity (OAU), and countries like Britain and Russia, got their shares of critical examination in Achebe’s memoir. The UN, for instance, was in a very good position to achieve an amicable resolution of the conflict and halt the genocide if it did not choose to encourage the atrocities against Biafrans by its atrocious silence. The British which had reluctantly relinquished power to Nigerians ensured that the Nigeria she left behind was (if you would permit the cliché) “a disaster waiting to happen.” She used “a courageous English junior civil servant named Harold Smith” to rig Nigeria’s first election in favour of her “compliant friends” so she could still manipulate the country from London to safeguard British interests (p.50). And when Nigeria was plunged into a bloody conflict, she played direct, active role to ensure the victory of its preferred side.

What Achebe has done in this book is to invite Nigerians to deeply reflect on their country’s journey so far. It is unhelpful to wish away your ugly mistakes with the hope that its consequences would just disappear, or that somehow, they would correct themselves. “I believe” Achebe once wrote, “that if we are to survive as a nation we need to grasp the meaning of our tragedy. One way to do it is to remind ourselves constantly of the things that happened and how we felt when they were happening” (Achebe, 1975: p. xiii). In other words, we need to look back to find out where exactly “the rain began to beat us.”

According to Achebe: “The post Nigeria-Biafra civil war era saw a ‘unified’ Nigeria plagued by a homegrown enemy: the political ineptitude, mediocrity, indiscipline, ethnic bigotry, and corruption of the ruing class. Compounding the situation was the fact that Nigeria was now awash in oil-boom petrodollars, and to make matters worse, the country’s young, affable military head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, ever so cocksure following his victory, proclaimed to the entire planet that Nigeria had more money than it knew what to do with. A new era of great decadence and decline was born. It continues to this day” (p.243).

It is saddening to note that Nigeria needed to waste three million lives to achieve this descent.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

2013 Budget Prudent And Reasonable - Okonjo-Iweala

2012-10-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

From The Federal Ministry Of Finance

Press Release

THE PROPOSED BUDGET OF THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF FINANCE IS PRUDENT AND REASONABLE

Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,

Greeting Labour Leaders

Since the presentation of the 2013 Budget draft to the National Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan, we have received a lot of positive feedback from Nigerians in different parts of the country.

In particular, the fact that the budget presentation took place in October, the earliest in recent memory, was highly commended by many Nigerians who have reached out to us.

Many other aspects of the budget also received commendation. They include:

- the focus on power supply, roads, rail and aviation safety

- the robust plans to reduce domestic debt, recurrent expenditure and the fiscal deficit.

- gender-friendly nature of the budget and the provisions made to boost maternal and child welfare.

President Goodluck Jonathan Shakes Hands With

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

We welcome this dialogue on the budget because we believe that transparency is a key ingredient of an effective budget process. The budget is for the Nigerian people and they have a fundamental right to have their say on it.

It is in this spirit that we take some comments on some aspects of the budget of the Federal Ministry of Finance even when the motives of some of those making the comments may not be positive. The aspects which have attracted comments include provisions made for personnel, overheads, capital expenditure, sitting allowances, refreshments, travels and training.

In responding to these comments, it is important to keep the following facts in mind:

· The total budget proposal for the Federal Ministry of Finance is N5,599,576,180. This represents 0.11% of the entire budget estimates.

· The budget for the Ministry together with its agencies is N14,759,952,111. This comes to 0.30% of the total budget.

· The agencies are Debt Management Office, Budget Office of the Federation, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Investment and Securities Tribunal and the National Insurance Commission.

· The provisions made for personnel, overheads, sitting allowances and travels, training and so on are modest and justifiable. It is important to keep in mind that the ministry pays for a lot of studies and investigations done for other parts of government in various areas of economic reform, including pensions, public service reforms, housing and mortgage etc. It also hosts experts from within and outside the country in technical sessions and meetings in line with its mandate.

Hoping The Budget Will Address A Concern Like This

· The proposed annual budget for cleaning and fumigating the premises of the ministry – N43,381,673 – is certainly within the parameters of industry standards. Additionally, it is also important to keep in mind that the ministry is facing serious structural and environment challenges which have made these services very necessary.

The ministry under the leadership of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is very conscious of its key role and will continue to lead by example in areas under its mandate. The focus as always is on managing the finances of the country in a manner that protects and enhances the interests of the country.

-----------------------------------------

Paul C Nwabuikwu

Senior Special Assistant to the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance

Achebe Colloquium On Africa 2012

2012-10-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

Theme:

Governance, Security and Peace in Africa

The 2012 Achebe Colloquium on Africa will take place on Friday and Saturday, December 7-8, 2012 at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center, Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

Professor Chinua Achebe Reads A Poem At
The 2011 Achebe Colloquium On Africa

The Achebe Colloquium on Africa annually brings together an international group of scholars, officials from African governments, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and civil society organizations for two days of intense deliberation and exchange of ideas on the importance of strengthening democracy and peace on the African continent.
The theme for the 2012 Colloquium is Governance, Security and Peace in Africa; and will highlight security issues which challenge the establishment of institutions and principles of good governance on the continent.

Professor Chinua Achebe And Professor
Ali Mazrui At The 2011 Achebe Colloquium
On Africa In Providence, Rhode Island
(pix Brown.edu)

Invited panelists will discuss the complex security issues confronting nations on the continent; security challenges surrounding the proliferation of small arms and lights weapons; piracy and terrorism; the continuance of ethnic and religious conflict; and peace building in post-conflict situations.
Enquiries about travel and hotel accommodations for guests should be addressed in writing to: achebecolloquium@brown.edu.
SAVE THE DATE.

Signed:
Achebe Colloquium Committee

Funding for the Colloquium is provided in part by the Chinua Achebe Foundation.

Patience Jonathan Returns From Germany

2012-10-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

The Wife Of The Nigerian President, Mrs. Patience Jonathan Has Arrived The Country After Being Away For About Two Months

Mrs. Patience Jonathan Alighting From Aircraft
At The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja

The aircraft conveying the First Lady landed at the presidential wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja at few minutes to 4pm, Wednesday evening.

Hundreds of women and members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) were at the airport to welcome the first lady back home.

Hurray! I Am Back!
Mrs. Jonathan And Her Husband, President
Goodluck Jonathan

Mrs Jonathan had travelled out of the country for treatment of an undisclosed illness in Germany about two months ago and series of questions have been raised by civil society and some opposition parties, seeking to know the where about of the president’s wife.

However, while the saga was on, the president briefly visited her in Germany. The Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) had broadcasted a short video clip showing the a smiling Mrs Jonathan receiving her family in Germany.
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-- Channels TV

Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra" [ A Review]

2012-10-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

By Professor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.

Prof Chinua Achebe

Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses.

Achebe praises, particularly, the writings and campaign work of opposition to the genocide by Jean-Paul Sartre, Francois Mauriac, Auberon Waugh, Kurt Vonnegut, Herbert Gold, Harvey Swodos, Geoffery Hill, Douglas Killam, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Stanley Diamond. On Diamond, for example, Achebe notes: “This world-renowned anthropologist … galvaniz[ed] a formidable American and Canadian intellectual response to the tragedy” (Chinua Achebe, 2012: 106).

These responses to the genocide from abroad are a sharp contrast to the appalling position of Nigerian intellectuals, Achebe’s own contemporaries of writers and academics mostly from the University College Ibadan, essentially Nigeria’s pioneer post-conquest circle of scholars who emerged in the mid-1950s (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, 2002). Apart from dramatist Wole Soyinka, notably, a stretch of Nigerian intellectuals supported the genocide or were complicit in the crime by their deafening silence: “We expected to hear something from the intellectuals, from our own friends. Rather, what we heard was, ‘Oh, they had it coming to them’, or words to that effect” (68-69). Furthermore,

[a]s many of us [who survived the first phase of the genocide] packed our belongings to return [home] some of the people we had lived with for years, some for decades, jeered and said, ‘Let them [Igbo] go; food will be cheaper in Lagos’. That kind of experience is very powerful. It is something I could not possibly forget. I realized suddenly that I had not been living in my home; I had been living in a strange place. (68)

Okwudiba Nnoli, the political economist, who, equally, cannot forget the nonchalance and hostility of Nigerian colleagues and others then, recalls: “[a]t that time, Nigeria seemed morally anesthesized” (Okwudiba Nnoli, 1980: 245).

The perpetrators of the genocide, who subsequently seized and pillaged the rich Nigerian economy, have by and large escaped sanctions from the international community. The consequences for Africa have been catastrophic, in that various autocratic regimes on the continent felt they could go on similar killing sprees with impunity. Forty-two years on, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in the ever-expanding genocidal killing fields of the continent in Rwanda (1994), Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo (variously, since the late 1990s), Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004), Abyei – south of the Sudan – (ongoing) and Nuba – south of the Sudan – (ongoing) and in other wars in Liberia, Ethiopia, Congo Republic, Somalia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Mozambique, Algeria, Libya, Kenya, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burundi and Mali.

Achebe reminds his readers that the perpetrators have still not shown any form of remorse for this crime (234-236). On the contrary, Nigeria’s genocidal campaign against the Igbo people has been followed, post-January 1970, by the implementation of the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of deprivation in occupied Igboland, not seen anywhere else in Africa. This package includes the following 10 distinct features:

1. Seizure and looting of the multibillion-(US)dollar capital assets across Biafra including particularly those at Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt conurbations and elsewhere in Nigeria
2. Comprehensive sequestration of Igbo liquid assets in Biafra and Nigeria (as of January 1970), bar the £20.00 (twenty pounds sterling) doled out only to the male surviving head of an Igbo family

3. Exponential expropriation of the rich Igbo oil resources from the Abia, Delta, Imo and Rivers administrative regions
4. Blanket policy of non-development of Igboland
5. Aggressive degradation of socioeconomic life of Igboland
6. Ignoring ever-expanding soil erosion/landslides and other pressing ecological emergencies particularly in northwest Igboland
7. Continuing reinforcement of the overall state of siege of Igboland
8. Nineteen cases of premeditated pogroms against the Igbo, particularly in north Nigeria, between 1980 and 2012
9. Ninety per cent of the 54,000 people murdered in Nigeria by the state operatives and agents since 1999 are Igbo people, according to the December 2011 research by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule Of Law – an Onicha-based human rights organisation.

Professor Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

10. At least eighty per cent of people murdered by the Boko Haram islamist insurgent group’s attacks across swathes of lands in north/northcentral Nigeria since Christmas Day 2011 to date are Igbo.

These latter features, especially numbers 1-7 which inaugurated phase-III of the Igbo genocide on 13 January 1970, constitute one of the five acts of genocide explicitly defined in article 2 of the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life designed to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2012).

There was an extensive coverage of the Igbo genocide in the international media throughout its duration. Yet in most countries of Africa in addition to the Organisation of African Unity, the continent’s supranational body, there was no condemnation of the Igbo genocide. On the contrary, in one conference communiqué after another issued throughout the 44-month duration of the slaughter, most of Africa considered the genocide a “Nigerian internal affair” (Achebe: 96-99). Achebe himself was part of the Biafra delegation to one such conference in Kampala, Uganda, in May 1968 (Achebe: 166-167). It is precisely because the perpetrators of the Igbo genocide appeared to have been let off the hook for their crimes that Africa did not have to wait very long before the politics of the Nigerian genocide-state metamorphosed violently beyond the country’s frontiers. Leaders elsewhere on the continent would subsequently wage their own versions of the liquidation of “opponents” of subjugated nations and nationalities as ruthlessly and horrifically as they could, à la Nigeria, because they expected no sanctions from either their African colleagues or from the rest of the international community. As a result, as already indicated, the killing fields of Igboland expanded almost inexorably across every geographical region of Africa.

As for the United Nations, it, too, never condemned the Igbo genocide unequivocally. Achebe appropriately uses the word “silence” (Achebe: 211) to capture the UN response to the tragedy. U Thant, its secretary-general, consistently maintained that it was a “Nigerian internal affair” (Achebe: 211-212). The United Nations could have stopped the genocide, instead of protecting the interests of the Nigerian state (Achebe: 212). In the wake of the Jewish genocide of the 1930s-1940s, Africa was, with hindsight, most cruelly unlucky to have been the testing ground for the presumed global community’s resolve to fight genocide subsequently, particularly after the 1948 historic UN declaration on this crime against humanity (cf. Hugh McCullum, 2012). Only a few would have failed to note that U Thant’s reference to “internal” is highly problematic, for genocide, as had been demonstrated devastatingly 20-30 years earlier in Europe, would of course occur within some territoriality (“internal”) where the perpetrator exercises a permanent or limited/ partial/ temporary sociopolitical control (cf. Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy its Jewish population within Germany itself; Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy Jewish populations within those countries in Europe under its occupation from 1939 and 1945). Between 1966 and 2006, the world would witness genocide carried out against the Igbo, the Tutsi/some Hutu, and Darfuri in “internal” spaces that go by the names Nigeria, Rwanda, and the Sudan respectively. The contours of the territory where genocide is executed do not therefore make the perpetrators less culpable, nor the crime permissible as the United Nations’s crucial 1948 genocide declaration states unambiguously.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu

The central role played by Britain in this campaign no doubt reinforced the failure of the United Nations to protect Igbo people during this catastrophe. Britain, a fully-fledged member of the United Nations – indeed a founding member of the organisation who enjoys a permanent seat on its security council and participated in drafting the anti-genocide declaration – supported the Igbo genocide militarily, politically and diplomatically. Britain was deeply riled by the Igbo lead-role in the 1930s-1960s in the struggle to terminate its occupation of Nigeria. A senior British foreign office official was adamant that his government’s position on the international relief supply effort to the encircled and bombarded Igbo was to “show conspicuous zeal in relief while in fact letting the little buggers starve out” (Roger Morris, 1977: 122). Indeed as the murder of the Igbo progressively worsened, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who Achebe describes as “villain of the peace” (Achebe: 214), was unfazed when he informed Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” (Morris: 122) Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide.

Achebe embarks on his all-important memoir by quoting that engaging Igbo proverb that reminds everyone of the urgency of trying to come to terms with a catastrophic history: “a person (sic) who does not know where the rain began to beat them cannot say where they dried their body” (Achebe: 1). Thankfully, for the interest of posterity, this subject, the Igbo genocide, is one of the most documented crimes against humanity. Leading university and public libraries across Europe (particularly in Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden) and North America have invaluable repositories of books, essays, articles, state papers (including, crucially, hitherto classified material now declassified as part of mandatory timeframe provisions and freedom-to-information legislations), church papers, human rights/anti-genocide/anti-war groups’ campaign papers, reports, photographs and interviews, Red Cross/other third sector papers, reports and photographs, newspaper/newsmagazine/radio/television/video archives and sole individual depositories, some of which are classified as “anonymous contributors”.

Biafran Child (pix: The Guardian-UK)

These data variously include extensive coverage of news and analyses of varying features of the genocide between May 1966 and January 1970 as well as still photographs and reels of film footage of the devastating impact of the genocidist’s “starvation” attack on Igbo children and older people, the air force’s carpet bombings of Igbo population centres (especially refugee establishments, churches, shrines, schools, hospitals, markets, homes, farmlands and playgrounds) and the haunting photographs and associated material that capture the murder of tens of thousands Igbo in north Nigerian towns and villages and elsewhere during the first phase of the genocide in May-October 1966. A stream of these archival references has flowed steadily onto the youtube website as well as other internet outlets and much more material on the genocide will be available online in the months and years ahead. On the whole, this documentation is a treasure-trove for the conscientious scholar and researcher on the genocide.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua Achebe, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. London: Allen Lane, 2012.
Amnesty International, “Killing at will: Extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings by the police in Nigeria”. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR44/038/2009/en/f09b1c15-77b4-40aa-a608-b3b01bde0fc5/afr440382009en.pdf (accessed 24 September 2012)
Duffield, Caroline (a), “Nigerian hospital ‘overwhelmed by corpses from the police’”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/8400799.stm (accessed 25 September 2012).
Duffield, Caroline (b), “Nigerian police: Issuing corpses and denials”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/8401119.stm (accessed 25 September 2012)
McCullum, Hugh, “Biafra was the beginning”. http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=5549 (accessed 22 September 2012).
Morris, Roger, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger & American Foreign Policy. London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977.
Nnoli, Okwudiba, Ethnic Politics in Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Convention and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide”. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm (accessed 25 September 2012)
Walker, Andrew, “On patrol with Nigeria’s police”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/7986039.stm (accessed 23 September 2012).

Citation:
Ekwe Ekwe, Herbert. "There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 October 2012
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34707, accessed 05 October 2012.]

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RELATED POST

Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country - A Personal History of Biafra - A Review By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

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Flood Sacks Communities In Anambra State

2012-10-04T05:48:00.001-07:00

Anambra Governor Peter Obi Tours Flooded Communities...

See What Floods Are Doing To Nigerian People!
(Pix: kwenu)

Governor Peter Obi Wading Through The Waters While
Visiting Communities Affected By The Recent Flooding
In Anambra State (pix: Punch)

(pix: allafrica)

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Lend A Helping Hand, The Flooded Communities Need Help Urgently... Let's Not Leave Everything To Government! Contact The Relevant State Agencies...

The Genocidal Biafran War Still Haunts Nigeria

2012-10-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

By Chinua Achebe

The Persecution Of The Igbos Didn't End With The Biafran Conflict. Until The Nation Faces Up To This, Its Mediocrity Will Continue...

Chinua Achebe

Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people – mothers, children, babies, civilians – lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria.
As a writer I believe that it is fundamentally important, indeed essential to our humanity, to ask the hard questions, in order to better understand ourselves and our neighbours. Where there is justification for further investigation, justice should be served.

In the case of the Nigeria-Biafra war there is precious little relevant literature that helps answer these questions. Did the federal government of Nigeria engage in the genocide of its Igbo citizens – who set up the Republic of Biafra in 1967 – through punitive policies, the most notorious being "starvation as a legitimate weapon of war"? Is the information blockade around the war a case of calculated historical suppression? Why has the war not been discussed, or taught to the young, more than 40 years after its end? Are we perpetually doomed to repeat the errors of the past because we are too stubborn to learn from them?

The bloated bellies of these Biafran children, pictured
in 1968, show the effects of starvation in the three-year
conflict. Photograph: AP Photo/Church World Service/AP

The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group ...". The UN general assembly defined it in 1946 as "... a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups". Throughout the conflict the Biafrans consistently charged that the Nigerians had a design to exterminate the Igbo people from the face of the earth. This calculation, the Biafrans insisted, was predicated on a holy jihad proclaimed by mainly Islamic extremists in the Nigerian army and supported by the policies of economic blockade that prevented shipments of humanitarian aid, food and supplies to the needy in Biafra.

Supporters of the federal government position maintain that a war was being waged and the premise of all wars is for one side to emerge as the victor. Overly ambitious actors may have "taken actions unbecoming of international conventions of human rights, but these things happen everywhere". This same group often cites findings, from organisations (sanctioned by the federal government) that sent observers during the crisis, that there "was no clear intent on behalf of the Nigerian troops to wipe out the Igbo people ... pointing out that over 30,000 Igbos still lived in Lagos, and half a million in the mid-west".

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu

But if the diabolical disregard for human life seen during the war was not due to the northern military elite's jihadist or genocidal obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than during the entire second world war? Why were there 100,000 casualties on the much larger Nigerian side compared with more than 2 million – mainly children – Biafrans killed?

It is important to point out that most Nigerians were against the war and abhorred the senseless violence that ensued. The wartime cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Chief Obafemi Awolowo among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don't see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.

It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbos at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra war – his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation — eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

Yakubu Gowon

The federal government's actions soon after the war could be seen not as conciliatory but as outright hostile. After the conflict ended, the same hardliners in the Nigerian government cast Igbos in the role of treasonable felons and wreckers of the nation – and got the regime to adopt a banking policy that nullified any bank account operated during the war by the Biafrans. A flat sum of 20 Nigerian pounds was approved for each Igbo depositor, regardless of the amount of deposit. If there was ever a measure put in place to stunt, or even obliterate, the economy of a people, this was it.

After that outrageous charade, Nigeria's leaders sought to devastate the resilient and emerging eastern commercial sector even further by banning the import of secondhand clothing and stockfish – two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.

There are many international observers who believe that Gowon's actions after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatises that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbos were not and continue not to be reintegrated into Nigeria, one of the main reasons for the country's continued backwardness.

pix: blackpast

Borrowing from the Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, the federal government launched an elaborate scheme highlighted by three Rs – for reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. The only difference is that, while the Americans actually carried out all three prongs of the strategy, Nigeria's federal government did not.
What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as a war – ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery.

Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial, political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today.
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The Guardian (UK)

Patience Jonathan, The Inimitable Dame!

2012-09-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

It is a classic case of ‘One Week, One Controversy’! And the inimitable Dame, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, has been in the news again. She hardly disappoints. Perhaps, before your read this piece, Mrs. Jonathan would have returned from Germany where she had gone “to have some rest,” or receive medical treatment, or both, depending on whom you choose to believe between the media, opposition parties and Aso Rock spokespersons. Or her husband, our president, would have decided to come clean about her exact state of health and whereabouts.

Mrs Patience Jonathan

(pix: onobello)

But the latter may eventually not happen. Indeed, President Goodluck Jonathan understands this game very well. So, he is not unduly perturbed by all the din saturating the polity because of what his wife chooses to do with herself or not to say about her health condition. Yes, he does not “give a damn” because he knows full well that no sooner than his wife’s plane touches down in Abuja, and she sweeps across the red carpet like the marvelous Dame that she is, than she would stumble onto another controversy which would immediately and effectively kill and bury the present one over which the media and the opposition have raised ear-splitting cries. And so life goes on. Who, for instance, is still talking about her controversial appointment as Permanent Secretary in Baylesa State or the famous purchase, (or is it donation or lending or all three?) of posh cars scandal that embarrassed us all during the African First Ladies Summit in Abuja recently.

But the problem with always refusing to “give a damn” about public opinion and hoping that each controversy would soon burn itself out and be forgotten is that, like we all know, all postponed evil days only offer temporary relief. They always have ways of returning at very inconvenient times to haunt the person concerned. And so, the best, time-tested option has always been to be open and tackle matters as they come.

Mrs. Patience Jonathan With Her Husband,

President Goodluck Jonathan In April 2011

Now, even though the story about Mrs. Jonathan’s alleged ill-health had already appeared in the media, probably, before the president thought about how to manage the information about it, what would it have cost him to immediately confirm it, if it was true? Or summon his wife out of her “rest” to briefly show herself to the nation, to see if that would solve the often intractable traffic situation in Lagos or bring down the price of fish in Oyingbo market? Well, I can appreciate the psychology of the “most criticized president in the world.” I can imagine him wondering what his battalion of implacable critics would do with such information at that time. Would they join him to pray and wish his wife quick recovery or find ways of reaping some emotional and political capital out of his trying moments? Well, while his dilemma is somewhat understandable, it does not constitute sufficient reason for underlining the damaging impression that his paid advisers are incapable of generating a sound response to such a simple development.

Now, let’s see it this way. Assuming the president woke up the next morning after the media broke the news and mustered the will to tell us that his wife was sick, how would that have enhanced some lives at Ilaje or affected the taste of cassava bread? Now, even if he decides to do that tomorrow morning, will that change the colour of his hat? Is his wife a co-president? Would there be any vacuum created by her absence since she does not occupy any statutorily established office at the presidency? Or would she be compelled by any law to hand over to some “deputy wife” – a harrowing nightmare dreaded by many wives – if the nation hears that she is sick? Who, by the way, is that human being who has never fallen sick? As a permanent secretary in Bayelsa, she is already on a permanent leave, so what is the matter? Why unduly complicate what is otherwise a simple, straightforward matter?

Okay, I think I can understand now. The president may have been worried that he might be asked why his wife was receiving medical treatment abroad while other Nigerians like her patronized local hospitals, more so, when he recently announced that foreign medical travels by public officials and their relatives would no longer be allowed by his administration. If he had no faith in Nigerian public and private hospitals and so had to use public fund to ferry his wife to a German hospital, why should he expect any other Nigerian to? This would naturally remind one of the edifying example of Mrs. Cherry Blair, wife of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, who was delivered of a baby in a public hospital while her husband was in office, and stayed with ordinary Britons in a public ward. Given her earning as an upper-drawer lawyer, Mrs. Blair could afford the services of any quality hospital anywhere in the world, but she chose a British public hospital to demonstrate to the people that under her husband’s watch, public hospitals in Britain have not lost their value. So, by underlining her preference for foreign hospitals over local ones, what point then was Mrs. Jonathan making about the health of Nigerian hospitals during her husband’s tenure as president?

Mrs. Jonathan With Mrs. Roli Uduaghan

That may probably explain why the Presidency chose to insist that she had gone to Germany to rest. But that only made the matter worse. How can the wife of a Nigerian president go all the way to Germany at a heavy cost to the country to just “rest” when there are countless very conducive and comfortable spots where she could do that in Nigeria, and at less cost? In a more serious country, this may become a strong campaign issue and might grossly lower the popularity of an incumbent. It may even bring down a government! Now if this information is in very bad taste, what her spokesman said the other day to justify his insistence that Mrs. Jonathan was entitled to an interminable vacation was more outrageous and overly revolting. Hear him: “She is not a regular public office holder who has a specific duration for vacation. Assuming that she has a specific duration for vacation, then we could have said the vacation will end on a particular day and she will return on a particular day. But as it is, she can decide to return anytime she feels she has rested enough.” (PUNCH September 10, 2012).

That should be very strange information to Nigerians, because, to the best of my knowledge, Mrs. Jonathan has not resigned her appointment as a permanent secretary in Bayelsa State, from where she probably still draws unearned salaries. This statement alone speaks volumes about the chaotic nature of information management at the presidency.

I sincerely hope that Mrs. Jonathan would use this period of her rest and/or medical treatment to deeply ponder the sagging image of her husband’s presidency and determine who between herself and the army of detractors had constituted the greatest problem to the current administration? Why for instance did she agree to have a street named after her in Abuja or accept the scandalous appointment in Bayelsa when she could have scored a great point by dramatically rejecting them? Why did she publicly confront Gov Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State over the waterfront demolition of structures that affected her Okrika people when she could have achieved better results and avoided undue controversy by engaging the governor privately? What did she achieve by sparking off recently the very distasteful debate about payment of salaries and retirement benefits to wives of presidents and governors, perhaps, for idling away or wallowing in countless frivolities during their husbands’ tenure at our expense. The list is endless. From Bayelsa to Aso Rock, she has been trailed by overwhelming rumours of ethical problems, EFCC investigations, alleged cover-ups, high-handed treatment of public officers working under husband, excessive gallivanting, shopping sprees, wanton extravagance and the like!

Mrs. Jonathan and Gov Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State

After She Was Sworn-in As Permanent Secretary In Yenogoa

On July 21, 2012 (pix: news.naij)

A measure of how much Mrs. Jonathan is loved or despised by Nigerians was on display recently when she got embroiled in a land controversy with a former president’s wife (and by her aides), Mrs. Turai Yar’Adua. Now, because information about the land tussle was badly mismanaged, public odium had hastily flooded Mrs. Jonathan’s doorsteps, and many were already out there calling her all the unprintable names in the world until the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Mr. Bala Mohammed, came out with a convincing clarification which showed that she was not the guilty party in the land-grabbing scandal. But before then she had already taken an excess dose of public condemnation, and in the process saved Mrs. Yurai Yar’Adua the clearly justified public outrage that ought have naturally followed questions about how she had raised the millions of naira required to purchase such a choice piece of land – a question that we still need to ask. And the last time I checked, no one has thought it necessary to apologize to Mrs. Jonathan for that clearly undue outflow of misplaced aggression. Instead, what I see out there is a sad feeling like: “Oh, she escaped it this time!”

Indeed, whenever Mrs. Jonathan returns to the country, she will do herself and her husband’s political career a lot of good by grossly abridging her ubiquity and distancing herself from those friends who tell her that it is her own time to shine and dance in the open square and so should not “give a damn” about what any other person out there thinks or says about her preferences and preoccupations. Indeed, the less she is in the news, and the less controversies she stirs, the better for her husband’s presidency. I wish her a sound health and her husband better luck.

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RELATED POST

The Fury Of First Ladies

Outrage Over Mugabe's Description Of Jamaicans As Drunkards And Weed Smokers

2012-09-11T05:25:00.002-07:00

JAMAICA House was last night yet to comment formally on unflattering comments attributed to President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe about Jamaican culture at a recent regional three-day Expo in Harare, Zimbabwe, which is causing a firestorm in diplomatic circles. On Sunday, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator AJ Nicholson said Jamaica was seeking to verify the authenticity of the remarks attributed to the president of Zimbabwe, after which, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller would respond.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
On His 85th Birthday

Yesterday, however, a ministry official said they were yet to verify whether the statements attributed to Mugabe were in fact made but said Senator Nicholson was expected to say more on the matter shortly. Senator Nicholson, the Jamaica Observer was told, was unable to respond to queries as he was locked in a Cabinet meeting. In the meantime, a member of staff of the communications unit in the Office of the Prime Minister told the Observer that she was not sure when there would be a response on the issue.

Commenting Sunday night on reports of Mugabe's comments, Senator Nicholson said "we strongly reject the suggestions contained in the news item. Jamaica is a nation characterised by adherence to democratic principles and the rule of law".

"Jamaican men and women from all walks of life have made valuable contributions to national development and have made their mark on the world stage, be it in the field of politics, diplomacy, medicine, science and technology, or sports and culture, among many others," he added.

The foreign minister said the country took "immense pride in the acknowledged contribution that Jamaica has made to the liberation of Southern Africa and was gratified that nations such as South Africa and Zimbabwe enjoy the right to choose their own destiny".

Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller
(pix: Newsone)

"We need not remind that Jamaicans such as Marcus Garvey, Michael Manley, Bob Marley and Dudley Thompson have advocated for and inspired generations of our brothers and sisters both in Africa and in the African diaspora. We believe that our contribution to the promotion of peace and social justice is recognised and appreciated by all well-thinking people across the globe".

Zimbabwe's media reported recently that Mugabe who, on Wednesday, opened the Expo held under the theme, "Research, Innovation and Creativity for Sustainable Development", told academics, dignitaries, business people, and government officials from across the country and the region that Jamaica was "a country of marijuana smokers, where women are now taking charge since men are always sloshed."

It was reported that Mugabe expressed the wish that Zimbabwe never followed the footsteps of Jamaicans, whose influence on the country has been all too pervasive.

Those supposed remarks have drawn the ire of Opposition Spokesperson on Youth, Sports, Gender Affairs, Entertainment and Culture, Olivia "Babsy" Grange who yesterday called on the Government to demand an apology from President Mugabe.

Jamaica Observer

According to the newspaper report, Mugabe said: "In Jamaica, they have freedom to smoke mbanje, varume vanogara vakadhakwa (men are always drunk) and universities are full of women. The men want to sing and do not go to colleges vamwe vanobva vamonwa musoro (some are dreadlocked). Let us not go there."

Said Grange: "I find Mr Mugabe's statements alarming, to say the least, as he has been to Jamaica and is very much aware that those views are quite contrary to the facts in Jamaica. If true, it is startling that someone, who has himself claimed that his country is a victim of imperceptions fed by the international media, should be using these misconceptions of Jamaican society to describe our people at such a forum of students, intellectual and business and social leaders in his country."

She added that if Mugabe's comments were found to be true, it would be an affront to the people of Jamaica who have stood in solidarity, both culturally and politically, with the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle for liberation.

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--Jamaican Observer