Nigeria on the brink..
Or so says the lead op-ed piece in The Times today.
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20 comments:
Hello,
The idea of Nigerians being used a proxies to infiltrate the West is preposterous and outrageous.
Suddenly, with all our angst about a failing Nigeria, we in Diaspora are now targets for suspicion and surveillance.
Whilst the writer has every right to be paranoid, it should not be on our account, it is just too far fetched.
That view is uncalled for and should be excoriated without respite.
Regards,
Akin
You just have to love our people, instinctively defensive. Nigeria is in a mess and shouldn't be so. The extrajudicial execution of Islamist insurgent leader and media parade sums up the psychology of the Nigerian State... messed up
We do have to admit the depth of problems and the reality of an impotent state. If it takes some lazy oyinbo writer to cobble together the obvious and throw it in our faces then so be it. Lets stop being so defensive, deflate our egos and hang our heads in shame.
We have collectively abdicated our responsibilities as citizens in letting things get so bad. We'd be doing much better if the energy spent on tired and predictable reactions to the truth had been put to productive use.
Hello,
I suppose Irritated Oguro's comments are in response to my comment.
I suggest you find out about my writings, opinions and the context of my commentary before you tar me with the epithet of being defensive.
You can offer your opinions on the article itself but I will not stand for wilful and groundless sniping.
With the kindest regards,
Akin
nigeria on the brink but its business as usual for shell in the niger delta region where shell wont let that minor issue of the massacre of ijaw people in the niger delta stand in the way of their exploitation, devastation and environmental destruction of the niger delta.
no wonder ghandi said the sun never sets on the british empire because god wouldnt trust them in the dark - i mean the hypocrisy of these people is unbeleivable.
nigeria is on the brink but its business as usual as far as the arms trade is concerned - where is the nigerian military getting the helicopter gunships that its using to slaughter its own citizens?
as for the whole al qaeda recruitment exercise - i wont even dignify that with a response because its pure garbage written by an ignoramus who wouldnt even be able to find nigeria on a map.
nigeria's economic problems stem from the corrupt imf and world bank loan agreements that previous corrupt nigerian puppet leaders agreed to sign us up to. You only have to look at the draconian conditions that were attached to those loans to see that these banks were taking us for a ride,many of these agreements have clauses written into them which permit the creditors to set the price at which they will buy the donor countries natural resources in the event of a payment default. no prizes for guessing whats happening here.
these are some of the conditions that the imf and world bank attach to loans that they grant to countries like nigeria:
currency devaluation, cuts in public services ie education, health, cuts in employment, social services, removal of trade barriers, privatisation of existing public services by foreign owned companies.
these structural adjustment programmes have sapped the economic life blood from the nigerian economy and destroyed the nigerian economies and the only people suffering the consequences are the nigerian people, not the elite, just the ordinary people.
we're not under any obligation to take these loans but sometimes theyre needed in order to facilitate the economic development of a nation, now we're paying the price. this is not to exonerate corrupt leadership but the problem is not solely one rooted in corruption of the nigerian elite.
I rarely read the newspaper since i'm in the US so i don't think i want to register on the site to paste a comment. That said, the author's line of reasoning is beyond silly. First off, a basic knowledge of the demographics of Nigerians abroad shows that 95% of us are from the South; Northerners (who presumably would constitute the 'targets') are a minority among Nigerians abroad. Second, a huge percentage of that number aren't muslims. The few muslims from the SW are either nominal or mildy practising. How then can the author make such ridiculous assertions? Just because Nigerian's name/identity has been repeatedly maligned thus not mean there aren't boundaries. I hope the editors address the absurdity of the author's claims.
oh please Akin take a chill pill. your comments are the ones to be termed too far fetched.
how did you come to the conclusion that Nigerians in Diaspora 'are now targets for suspicion and surveillance'? aren't you taking some 'lazy oyibo writer's' observation a bit too seriously?
boko haram in nigeria is potentially what the taliban is in afghanistan - so one cannnot fault the writer for believing the next set of terrorists will be recruited from there.
oguro's sniping was not groundless nor is the writers paranoia on our account farfetched.
it is irrelevant what ur writings and opinions of previous are, i will judge you solely on this comment you made.
regards
anonymous
@chinny - you are rambling
tridereThis has to be one of the crappiest stories I have read in a long time. I am not blind to Nigeria's This person seems to have created a Nigeria of his own. Civil warS? In my opinion, this story is a farce and lowers the integrity of The Times as an authoritative news body.
anonymous you are pathetic
first of all i was exposing the hypocrisy of the british journalist who was commenting on the violence in the north without making any mention of the genocide going on in the delta region simply because of britains corporate interests there.
if you cant see that something is inherently wrong with such double standards then you are beyond help.
to dismiss my comments as rambling is an indication of just how indifferent people like you are to the suffering of your fellow citizens -
you go on further to display your ignorance by attacking akin who correctly pointed out that the times journalist was singling out nigerians in the diaspora as potential al qaeda recruits and therefore likely targets for surveillance by the british govt, quote:
"Into this maelstrom have stepped Islamist extremists. Al-Qaeda has identified Nigeria as fertile ground for its nihilist message, just as it saw Somalia, another failing African state, as a new base for its operations. It is swiftly spreading the jihadist message, exploiting the unease over Sharia by pushing for the most extremist interpretation and recruiting Nigerians as new agents to infiltrate Western society. This is extremely alarming. There is a large Nigerian community in most European countries, and an especially big one in Britain...
"If al-Qaeda can recruit sleepers among still largely moderate Muslims living in the West, the security services have a nightmare on their hands"
where is your evidence to indicate that boko haram in the north is as you say "potentially what the taliban is in afghanistan" if anything you make sweeping statements rooted in ignorance which do not bear any resemblance to the facts.
people like you and oguro are so full of inferiority complex and believe in completely swallowing the propgaganda that your white masters bombard you with that you cant even take a step back to engage in critical thinking.
@chinny, na wa o! you too like long story.
But at least i succeeded in making you give an (in)adequate response to the article instead of ur earlier history lesson that blamed everyone else except nigerians for our woes.
I don't have a problem believing those who reside in the 'smarter' camp - yes i said it!!!! sue me!!!
If we Africans (Nigerians) weren't foolish, we would not be spoken of or treated the way we are being treated today.
If you like keep deceiving yourself there - at least my 'inferiority complex' has enabled me believe my 'white masters' who obviously are dominating the world. where has all your 'knowledge' and 'confidence' gotten you? your remain deluded, blaming them for your downfall, and how long for? - ye who proclaims a brain he has, NOT!!!
hehehe in fact Richard, you have killed me with laughter.
so you expect the reporter to know that muslims in the south are 'mildly behaved' and that 95% of Nigerians abroad are from the south ?
hmmmm, please permit me to ask you the percentage of Scottish, welsh and English citizens living in Nigeria? more importantly, please state their religious beliefs, their origins and, the group with the largest percentage residing in your country, and maybe Africa as a whole.
I am certain the writer's point is not whether majority of nigerians who reside in the UK are from the south or not; it is the fact that there is a possibility that even one Nigerian out of the millions who live in the UK could potentially pose a threat - that is the issue.
This article tries very hard to connect an odd mix of themes. It manages to include corruption, oil, failing states, Al-Qaeda, global terrorism and xenophobia. It's almost as if it was calculated to generate fear as a way to make the story relevant to UK readers.
The Times' Nigeria coverage is generally crap. Just last week, they were describing Boko Haram as the Nigerian taleban. A while back when Margaret Hill was kidnapped, one of their writers was claiming that Lagos is the capital of Nigeria. Their articles on Nigeria always seem rushed and written by people that are not very familiar with the country.
Anon 8.19pm you are missing Chinny's point. You don't have to hate yourself before you can appreciate other peoples' good qualities. It is possible to maintain your identity and self-respect whilst being aware of your own shortcomings and open-minded enough to acknowledge other people's achievements.
So you say Africans are foolish - what are you doing about it? Your "four legs good, two legs better" attitude just makes you look even more foolish, if you ask me...... I'm sure you'll feel even better about yourself when you fall victim to racial profiling at the airport on your next trip to overseas.....
anonymous you sound as if you have a lot of self hatred issues -
first of all i think you need to go and re educate yourself about your own history, notice i said your history and by that i mean african history as written by africans and not the white mans eurocentric view of history, this will (hopefully) begin to give you some insight as why we are in the situation that we're in today.
africa was once a great continent with ancient civilizations which were far more advanced than the europeans that you now worship and idolise. Our civilizations were destroyed once the white man stepped foot on the african continent, he enslaved 10 million of our people and this resulted in labour shortages which caused our economies to slow down and ultimately leave us vulnerable as was demonstrated in the scramble for our continent.
Colonialism brought religion and eurocentric education which led to indoctrination and brainwashing, now we have neo colonialism which has enabled western powers to collude with the puppet dictators who assist them in the plunder of our natural resources.
the white man knew, that in bringing religion to africa via the missionaries he would always have a hold over the psyche of africans, he could use religion as a tool to manipulate us keep us docile, ignorant and malleable, he then went on to use his educational system which was designed to reinforce the superiority of the white race over the african race and ensure that africans knew their place and remained in it.
they say that once you have psychological control over a mans mind and convince him that he is actually the cause of his own suffering then you have won total control over him as you dont have to work hard to destroy him, you simply stand by and watch as he destroys himself, this is where we are today, whites have succeeded in convincing us that we are so incompetent, so incapable of being the master of our own destinies that we need constant "assistance" from them and the most powerful weapon used to disseminate this lie is propaganda, this is why people like you can conveniently be in denial about the role that whites have played in the destruction of our continent, your mind is not programmed to criticise whites but merely to agree with everything they say and follow their orders. Common sense and critical thinking would tell you that for a corrupt regime to perpetuate itself in power it needs the assistance and collaboration of a more powerful ally ie an an ally who can provide it with weapons and/or financial assistance to keep the masses in check and prevent resistance or dissent.
we have had sincere leaders who have tried to wrest control from these kleptocrats but for every sincere leader that comes forward, there is a western backed puppet waiting in the wings ready to seize power in order to restore "democracy".
i strongly advise you to go and reeducate yourself, turn off the tv and start reading about ancient egypt.
chinny
@chinny
so with all this long story and history lesson '102', you still fail to admit our foolishness? i don't understand how you can proudly state the history and fail to applaud the smartness of the white man even if it is to our detriment.
don't get me wrong, i am not in support of their wicked ways of previous, but isn't only a foolish person that will quickly abandon their traditional beliefs because some obscure foreigner tells them about his - how fickle were we? do we not have brains? why did we embrace their religion, worse still why did we allow our selves to be recruits to perpetuate their wickedness (slavery).
The black race is the only race in history that has sold its people to slavery... that in itself speaks volumes.
Please enlighten me; who are these sincere 'leaders' we've had that have tried to 'wrest control from the kleptocrats'?
you and this your obsession with pointing fingers at the west - it is tired, a tired argument.
The western world will ALWAYS, i repeat ALWAYS pursue its selfish interest ok?. but it is not the western world that is stealing money from the coffers of the country, it is not the western world that has failed to provide adequate infrastructure in nigeria,(In fact things were better organised under their
leadership) it is not the western world that has eaten up all the oil money generated over the years, ok? so please for once leave the western alone.
We should take responsibility for our actions - we are not babies, except you agree with me that we are FOOLISH, which i am sure you do.
It is only a foolish man that will let an 'undeserving' man TAKE away the BLESSINGS nature has bestowed upon him.
When we stop being foolish, then maybe I will accept that the western world is trying to bring us to our knees. At the moment WE are the ones doing it without much help from outside, the 'outsiders' are only too happy to keep benefiting from our foolishness. WE NEED TO GROW UP, QUICK! QUICK! all these grammar and history will do little to help our dire situation.
... and it is because of your kind of thinking that the BOKO HARAM's of these world exist - this oh! so hideous blame it on the west mentality.
...and i just have to add that i suppose that your common sense tells you that it is the west that has enabled Mugabe to create the deplorable state his country is in today. I am indeed sure that the west is benefiting immensely from the suffering of the Zimbabweans.
Hello,
I don't know why anyone is giving this anonymous whatever any oxygen.
Someone without a clear identity cannot have a personality and a focus to engage with.
It reminds of the person Jesus met at the tombs and Jesus asked his name, he answered, My name is Anonymous, sorry Legion, because we are many.
Makes you wonder which one of the multiple personality Anonymouses masquerading as one person you are engaging with.
Simple reason why I rarely engage with people who are afraid to give their opinions a hand of who wrote it and a face of who said it.
In real life, they will stand for nothing because they identified with nothing, don't make them relevant.
Regards,
Akin
anonymous your argument doesnt make sense, if someone comes to your home and you treat them with the utmost kindness and hospitality and then after a while that person responds by stealing your home, raping your wife and killing your children do you congratulate the person for being "smarter" than you?
the white man came to our continent and surreptiously (over a number of years) stole our country from under our feet,enslaved our people and waged war on us and now you say its our fault because we were "foolish".
this take over did not happen over night, neither did we sit by dociley, letting it happen, we fought back but they had the guns which gave them an unfair advantage.
this is why i say look back at history even though you think its a waste of time - there are numerous incidents of african leaders who resisted their invasion -
jaja of opobo
shaka zulu
king afonso of the congo
and much later the nama and herero of namibia who ended up being massacred,the mau mau of kenya
and of course black south africans.
if we are to go along with your argument that we lost our land due to our stupidity then that would mean that the native americans of what is now north america were also "stupid" as well as the aborigines of australia, new zealand and tasmania and that the blacks in south africa were equally stupid for allowing the whites to displace them and put in place one of the most heinous systems ever created in the history of man - apartheid.
what you seem to be saying is that we live in a world where only the wicked, manipulative and evil should survive and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of this group have only themselves to blame - that is a morally bankrupt way of thinking and what makes it so tragic is that we are now at a time in the world where even some whites acknowledge that they have wronged us, but you say no its all our own fault.
you say we colluded with them to sell our own people into bondage - that is a distortion of the truth yes there were SOME colloborators but generally there was great opposition to it. Just becuase a few saboteurs colloborated does not mean that everyone else was in agreement with it, even white historians acknowledge that we fought numerous battles with them in order to stop this evil trade, so if we colluded with them why on earth were we fighting with them.
i have not said that some of the blame cant be attributed to corrupt nigerians but these corrupt nigerians do not represent the nigerian people as a whole, as i mentioned above these people are collaborators and they exist in every society, white people also collaborate for personal gain, greed and selfishness are human traits and not racial ones.
nigeria has and is currently being run by a group of collaborators who do not in anyway represent nigerians as a whole, they represent the interests of their puppet masters in the west.
the black race is NOT the only race in history who have sold their people into slavery - slavery was widely practised by europeans amongst themselves throughout the medeival period.
sincere former african leaders - thomas sankara, patrice lumumba,kwame nkrumah, gabel nasser of egypt
failure by government to provide for its own people creates sects like boko haram.
Mugabe was not the originator of the problems zimbabwe currently faces, british colonialists imposed an aparthied system in that country and stole 80% of its productive farmland from the blacks and gave it to british farmers.
whatever mugabe's current motives are now, you cant ignore the fact that you cannot have a sustainable system built on the theft of indigenous people's land.
the british couldnt care less about the intersts of the black zimbabweans its just their own people they're bothered about, europe and the US has caused the current economic meltdown in the country by imposing economic sanctions which only affect ordinary people. http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/sanctions32.13170.html
@chinny
are you a history lesson teacher? the black race are the only race that SOLD themselves to another race for slavery. The only RACE to do so in the history of the world. i am not talking about amongst themselves, did you hear of a white, indian or asian slave being sold to the black man, or to another race for that matter.
please don't even compare africans to the native americans - how many of them ended up slaves?
so the white man appeared and stole the country, how did he do it?
with what resources?
I can't carry on with this any longer. Okay agreed, the white man is an evil beast who has done the most despicable, unspeakable thing to the black man, we know this abi? now what is stopping us from creating a better life for ourselves? yes, i know your answer - the white man again. My dear when will you stop blaming them? and if they are still doing this evil thing you accuse them of doing, why are we still accommodating it?
we were not the only race that were colonised. our useless and corrupt leaders have made us a laughing stock. better still begin that much needed revolution in nigeria against our leaders. Leave the greedy oyibo's for now as posterity will judge them.
@ Akin
i understand your frustration regarding anonymous people who leave comments. perhaps one day...
chinny and anony. if u take time to go over your comments, u'll c that u both are actually right, but in different times or should i say decades. u've have to pardon me chinny but i'll only agree with u if we were in the 1900-60, when we nigerian didn't really have much say or power to effect change or development in the nation due to the presence of the british. D anony dude has a point, in present nigeria, we it's citizens are playing the foolish role, because our government is taking us for a ride, it is not d white man like anony said that is stealing from the cofre of nigeria, it is not the white man dats killing people in niger delta(chinny, if i buy a gun from u, which u have d right to sell, and kill someone with it, who committed d crime?). i think most nigerian have gone beyond blaming the british for the situation in nigeria, bcos dat won't making any difference. Nigerian have to imitate those people u mention chinny, jaja of okpopo, mau mau in kenya, to create an uprising and revolution for change not against the white man but against corruption both within the common man and the elites, which is the reason nigeria is on the brink.
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