Akin Akintayo - an Englishman in Amsterdam
It was my pleasure to meet Akin Akintayo yesterday on my trip to Amsterdam.
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Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Felasophy
An interesting short doc on Abami Eda featuring Sandra Isadore - the woman who brought Fela to political consciousness in the late 1960s, here.
Read more...Thursday, October 21, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Remembering Fela, an interview with Carlos Moore
As Nigeria says farewell to Carlos Moore, I have republished an interview with Carlos from a couple of weeks back in the Guardian here.
Read more...Saturday, October 16, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
ITT
Good post on the Tax Justice Network's blog about the origins of the recent Global Witness report on how British banks act in complicity with corrupt Nigerian officials. Here. Thanks to Tayo the linkmeister for the URL.
Read more...Thursday, October 14, 2010
33 Nigerian miners trapped underground
This one has been doing the rounds. Not sure Ibori is quite the right reference these days but its well done nonetheless:
"Last night I dreamt that 33 Nigerian Miners were trapped underground and the govt sent a capsule down to rescue them one after the other, but the rescue had to be called off as the trapped miners could not agree amongst themselves on who goes first. Zoning was suggested but they could not agree on which zone will go first. Eventually in a struggle to all board at the same time, the capsule was :leading to the attempt being called off.
Oh dear. Sorry it was only a nightmare. In fact the real problem was that FEC awarded the capsule contract to Ibori and we are still awaiting delivery 3 mths later. There is a probe going on to unravel this and retrieve the award sum before we get to the issue of what formula to adopt for the rescue and which miner comes out first. Meanwhile traditional rulers from the miners' towns are paying solidarity visits to the President to thank him for his efforts to rescue the miners.
And the First lady has just invited the wives of the Nigerian miners to Abuja for dinner at the Hilton to honour them! At this meeting, they will pray for the good Lord to rescue the miners. The first lady will lead prayer warriors into battle to attack the devil and enemies of Nigeria, whose wicked acts are constituting an obstacle to the rescue efforts. The first ladies from the 36 states will also be in attendance. All including the wives of the miners will wear the Goodluck for President Ankara.
"Last night I dreamt that 33 Nigerian Miners were trapped underground and the govt sent a capsule down to rescue them one after the other, but the rescue had to be called off as the trapped miners could not agree amongst themselves on who goes first. Zoning was suggested but they could not agree on which zone will go first. Eventually in a struggle to all board at the same time, the capsule was :leading to the attempt being called off.
Oh dear. Sorry it was only a nightmare. In fact the real problem was that FEC awarded the capsule contract to Ibori and we are still awaiting delivery 3 mths later. There is a probe going on to unravel this and retrieve the award sum before we get to the issue of what formula to adopt for the rescue and which miner comes out first. Meanwhile traditional rulers from the miners' towns are paying solidarity visits to the President to thank him for his efforts to rescue the miners.
And the First lady has just invited the wives of the Nigerian miners to Abuja for dinner at the Hilton to honour them! At this meeting, they will pray for the good Lord to rescue the miners. The first lady will lead prayer warriors into battle to attack the devil and enemies of Nigeria, whose wicked acts are constituting an obstacle to the rescue efforts. The first ladies from the 36 states will also be in attendance. All including the wives of the miners will wear the Goodluck for President Ankara.
CNN reported early this morning that after 10mths underground all the 33 Nigerian miners have died and the Nigerian govt has declared 7 days of mourning during which the Nigerian flag will be flown at half mast."
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Missing the one who carried Death in his Pouch
The conversation was profoundly moving. Although Fela was present in the gathering, having been called down by the searing Ewi singing, his absence was just as keenly felt. Read more...
GT the Guitar Man at the Life House/Carlos Moore Book Party
GT the Guitarman has a sublime falsetto voice - its hard to imagine him not going stellar. He rocked the Life House on Sunday. Here for more. Read more...
Review of Louis Theroux in Lagos
...."His first meeting was with an area boy called Tawa, who proved, upon closer inspection, to be a girl. Her authority rests in her union ID card and her ability to fight "like a man".
Louis may be a master of faux-naive inquiry, but in Lagos he encounters several connoisseurs of the freely given but totally disingenuous answer. When he asks why Tawa's terrifying second-in-command seems reluctant to talk about the enormous corkscrew scar running up one side of his head, someone says, with a cold smile, "I don't know. Maybe his past is haunting him."
Here.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Friday, October 08, 2010
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Where Kenya leads, Nigeria must follow
The story of the 1,000 Kenya teachers sacked for sexually abusing minors is disturbing yet welcome news. No one looking in on the development from Nigeria can deny the issue is just as prevalent here and needs to be addressed urgently. This would require a joined-up effort between the State Ministries of Education and the police, using the Child Rights Law where it has been implemented. Kenya has given children suffering in silence hope. The Nigerian directive should of course be extended to tertiary level, where sexual abuse (for accommodation as well as for grades) seems at times to be the norm rather than the exception. Teachers who are found guilty should be prosecuted, and banned from teaching for life. Its time to say no more, and thank Kenya for taking the lead.
Read more...Youtube Nigeria goodies
The Colonial Legacy (excellent documentary series commissioned by the IBB Govt - marred slightly by poor quality audio & video. Ade Ajayi provides a firm counter to colonial apologist Anthony Kirk-Greene):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
The Legacy of Empire (BBC two-parter featuring John Smith, ex-Colonial Officer)
Part 1
Part 2
My Country (Funmi Iyanda on Nigeria)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Thanks to Rosemary Ajayi of 419Positive for all the links.
Louis Theroux with KAI in Lagos
As usual, legal restrictions on the iPlayer mean no one except viewers in the UK will be able to watch the show. The BBC's licensing structure is increasingly belonging to the wrong century. Read more...
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
The Yoruba Institute in Brasil....
The holders of the culture, thousands of miles from home. Perhaps one day, the culture will return home and find less ambivalence and confusion..
Read more...Bino and Fino - pilot launches tomorrow
Zoning the Presidency to women
Let's face it, Nigerian men have messed up politics. Isn't it time the Presidency was zoned to women, asks Max Siollun..
Read more...The power of the tweet
Malcolm Gladwell is off the pace. Perhaps context is everything when it comes to the power of social media, and its amphetamine-fuelled upstart, Twitter. In the US and the West in general, hot news stories are quick to break, with most angles to a story covered relentlessly until the next news break hits the shore. Helicopters take to the air, talk show hosts take calls, the 24 hour news cycle throws resource at the scene, pundits are summoned to the studios..
Things play out quite differently in other parts of the world. Take the recent tragedy of 1-10, here in Abuja. The news warning of a bomb threat from MEND came through Twitter (just minutes after Jomo Gbomo's email was sent). The news of the explosions (first in Eagle Square, then down the road) came through Twitter, from eyewitnesses using their mobile phones. The fastest global news Twitter feed of them all - Breaking News - was onto the story within a few minutes. The news that people had been killed came through Twitter. Bodies were 'seen' first on Twitter. As the terrestrial TV stations went into news blackout mode (showing only the fly past and calisthenics displays), the story developed - on Twitter, backed up by Facebook (although this was much slower and more sluggish), sms, BBIM and voice. Those looking in from conventional media sources overseas, including CNN and the BBC, had to remind twitterers to continue using the correct hash tags so they could follow events. They were powerless to lead on the news - plane tickets had yet to even be bought.
Even now, as the aftermath lurches from one side to the other, from Abuja to Jo'burg to Minna and back to Abuja again, Twitter is eons faster at pinpointing where on the radar the next aspect of the story is emerging from and way faster on follow-up than conventional news media. In Nigeria at least, the revolution most likely won't be televised, but it may well be on Twitter.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Maradona
Still, Maradona came out looking good - it seemed that the dark days of drug abuse and weight gain were behind him. Argentina ultimately left their mark on the finals. A new contract was issued... and then retracted. Who knows what will happen to him now? England fans will never forgive those cunning hands, all the same. Someone who has for so long dominated his country and appeared to be part of the landscape itself exits stage left. How the mighty are fallen. Read more...
Monday, October 04, 2010
The master and the slave
The failure of leadership in Nigeria is so all pervasive and endemic it begs further analysis. Why do Nigerian leaders fail their constituents or members so consistently, in politics, in commerce and elsewhere? Why does almost every young hopeful end up being such a tawdry disappointment? It cannot simply be on account of a repetitious failure of personality, or a renewed shortfall of moral fibre. An individualistic explanation cannot suffice. But why then is leadership in Nigeria such a seemingly insurmountable challenge?
Of the main routes into the seemingly impenetrable forest in search of the clearing of truth, one opportune path we might take is an examination of the master-slave relationship that is alive and well in Nigeria.
Lordship and bondage is the hidden seam running through all strata of Nigerian society. Of course, in the North, slavery has never entirely faded away; historically, the ‘abolition’ of the Saharan slave trade came much later (the early twentieth century in certain areas) than in the Bights of Benin and Biafra. There were no British patrols of the Sahara equivalent to the ships that captured slaves setting out on the Middle Passage and dumped their cargo to fend for themselves in Sierra Leone. Indeed, some emirates still have what might considered as slaves who live in the Palace compound – an echo of the formalised and seemingly ineradicable inter-generational slavery among the hausa in the Niger Republic, where at least 8% of the population are slaves. Outside of the North, slavery often takes a more concealed form. To a foreigner, it can be distressing and embarrassing to glimpse. The quickest way to witness it is by observing how domestic staff (maids, househelps, drivers etc.) are treated by their employers. Apart from salaries, which, even when they are paid on time, guarantee a life of poverty, the verbal abuse can be so intense, it becomes a form of physical and psychological abuse. Sometimes, those who help run the house are treated as untouchables. They must eat from different plates, use separate cutlery and drink from separate glasses. I have met house helps who are allotted one day’s holiday a year. I have witnessed meguards being kicked and beaten. It is reminiscent of the treatment of Philipinos domestic staff in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
It seems to me that this state of affairs is often regarded as the natural order of things: some are born to own and control a household; others are born to clean it up in perpetuity. The pampered children of the elite are brought up with a sense that there are lesser humans among them. Other children are brought up with little sense of a destiny beyond the bondage of a life Sisyphus would recognise: the forever undone task of keeping the compound starched and clean.
It is this entrenched view of how a society should run itself that ruins many organisations in Nigeria. Those made to feel like underdogs will do their best to subvert the system and ensure it never quite works. How can those treated like house helps give their best? The battle at the higher levels to come out on top is intense. As soon as one edges one pay- grade above one’s peers, the licence to disparage and abuse is granted. In corporate Lagos, it is, of course, the ajebutters, with their often hastily acquired British (or sometimes American) accents, who return home to become the new Overlords and Overladies of Ikoyi.
There is little chance in this culture for models of inspirational participatory leadership to emerge. The oga who rolls up his or her shirtsleeves to ensure the work gets done is laughed at. Those on the shop floor unconsciously require a leader who plays to the feudal baron role as expected – a sort of organisational Stockholm syndrome. This is how a society based on patronage and obsequiousness reproduces itself from generation to generation.
Until the ‘problem of leadership’ is unpacked, and trite formulations are discarded in favour of unflinchingly honest analysis, it’s hard to see how highly efficient and productive value-enhancing organisations can flourish in Nigeria; it’s also hard to imagine that Nigeria will get the political leadership it so badly needs. The way those who work for us are treated is the form that leadership takes.
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Public lecture tomorrow on elections & democracy in Africa
Peter R. Claussen, Counselor for Public Affairs
Embassy of the United States of America, cordially invites you to a lecture by
Professor Richard Joseph
John Evans Professor of International History and Politics
Northwestern University
“Elections and Democracy in Africa:
Restoring Nigerian Leadership.”
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
10:00 A.M.
Venue: Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre
Cultural Section, PAS, Abuja
Plot 1, Memorial Drive
0803-408-0362
Abuja
Nigeria: a drama in six Acts
Good historical piece by Dr Adekeye Adebajo in the Mail and Guardian.
Read more...Dickens in Lagos
George Packer wonders when the Great Lagos Novel will be written. Here.
(Grazie a Tayo) Read more...
The Amnesty programme
Just two weeks' training with huge class sizes, skills acquisition centres yet to be built, no job creation strategy. At present, its hard to see the Amnesty Programme for ex-militants as a success, judging from this BBC report.
Read more...Sunday, October 03, 2010
Independence blues...
Eight writers on the meaning of Independence in today's NEXT on Sunday.
Read more...Friday, October 01, 2010
Today's Tragedy in Abuja
Last night we had a group of friends round for dinner to celebrate my 41st birthday. Without trying to sound smug, I am fortunate to count some keen minds as mates, who never fail to impress in their analysis of their beloved country, Nigeria. But, just now, it seems that no one really knows what is going to happen – both with the elections, and more generally, with Project Nigeria. After the party, at midnight, we headed down to the area near Millennium Tower, a half-completed building site near the National Mosque. From behind razor wire, we looked on at the celebrations an invited few dignitaries were privileged to watch. I was filled with a sense of sadness that yet again, ordinary Nigerians were being excluded from the main event.
At 10 this morning, still a little blurry from the night before, the alert came in on my Twitter client (from NEXT) that Jomo Gbomo, the mythical spokesman from MEND, had said that there would be bombs in and around Eagle Square at 10.30. I retweeted the NEXT message. A few others did the same. In the following few minutes, the general sense was that it was more hot air and blather from a weakened organisation. I reminded myself at the same time that Henry Okah’s house in Jo’burg had been raided the day before by South African police on a tip off from Nigeria. I speculated that the two events might be connected. Then, I left it and went to make coffee.
At 10.15, a friend called, and told me both the UK and US Embassies were issuing warnings to stay indoors among their staff and expats. The message was that the threats were both real, specific and credible. I decided to put off a jaunt into town to take pictures of Nigerians celebrating Independence. The Twitterverse started to hot up. I tweeted that there was a heightened security alert among the diplomatic corps. Still there was scepticism that anything would happen.
Then, around 10.30-10.40 I heard what I thought was a thunder-clap. It had started to rain by then. However, the sound wasn’t quite like thunder – it was more of a powdery boom from far away. I suspect now that what I heard was the sound of the bomb – only a couple of miles from my house close by the Arcade Hotel on Shehu Shagari. By this time, I had logged on to watching the official celebration online via live streaming from Eagle Square.
I followed the tweets coming in commenting on the schoolchildren dancing, followed by a powerful show of military hardware. We could all finally understand why Abuja has thrummed with the sound of helicopters and planes flying by in the past week.
And then, a tweet came through from my friend Egghead, who was somewhere outside Eagle Square. There had been an explosion. Tweets started to flood in, with Egghead cited as a “Reuters witness”. Apparently a tear gas canister had been accidentally discharged in a corner of the square. I tweeted that I hoped that this was the cause of the explosion story. And then Egghead confirmed that there had been two car bombs. He must have walked down from Eagle Square on Shehu Shagari in the direction of the Hilton. In one particularly stark tweet a few minutes later, he mentioned that he was looking at dead bodies.
As more information on Mend’s act of terrorism filtered through on Twitter and started to appear on the news wires, the celebration continued on in Eagle Square. It was hard to imagine that the security forces were not aware of what was going on barely 500 metres away. President Goodluck gave a speech and awarded medals. The day had taken on a surreal and tragic hue. News then came in of a bus burning on Airport road. Was this a multi-location terrorist attack? A tweet came in that two ‘arab men’ had been seen on powerbikes just before the car bomb went off. As usual with all things on twitter, it takes longer than traditional media to get confirmation. As I write at 15.40, this witness report has yet to be confirmed and may not be true. Awful images taken at the scene started to appear online, and the BBC published a video clip taken shortly after the explosion. A confused man could be seen trying to crawl away from the site of the explosion. It was hard to believe this was all happening in boring-old Abuja.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow to consider this: MEND were far better prepared to ‘celebrate’ Nigeria’s 50th Independence Anniversary than anyone else. There must have been months of planning involved to create a car bomb as powerful as this. What is worrying is that it shows how easily Abuja can be infiltrated by terrorists – the area around Eagle Square must have been packed with security operatives and yet a huge car bomb exploded close by. As I write, the terrorists are most likely still within the FCT, celebrating the success of their awful mission: the murder of innocent Nigerians.
While many if not most Nigerians have deep sympathy for the conditions in which Niger-Deltans are forced to live, its very hard to see how this IRA-style act of terrorism on the nation’s capital is going to do Mend any favours in the short or the medium term. The military response may well be heavy – we have now seen the helicopters and the fighter planes. It adds a troubling new dimension to the stalling issue of the 2011 elections. And it leaves many Nigerians wondering whether they should celebrate at all. A tragic day for Nigeria.
Fifty's Eve
After the party, we all drove to the building site renamed as Millennium Tower for the day – a wasteland of concrete and ditches near the National Mosque with huge columns testifying to something quarter-built. We arrived just after midnight – and had apparently missed the fireworks. Some said they had cost a million dollars, although those that had seen them said they didn’t last long.
As we drew near, men in suits waved us on hurriedly, not allowing us to park. Gleaming SUVs parked behind them. Up above, a palm tree of searchlights, reaching into the night for an answer. Eventually we found a parking place, and climbed a ramp to get as near as possible. Tall metal fences rimmed with razor wire kept us from getting close. There was no way in. Nigerians in their hundreds sat on walls or stood and watched from afar. Across the way, beyond the ditch, a silhouette of a bank of seats from behind.
An MC was talking, praising the concealed dignitaries: I caught mention of Madam First Lady, David Mark. The Nigeria at 50 song was played – a curiously old fashioned number which sounded like highlife on the cusp of juju. Then, a rumbling powerful bass sound, and a North Korean formation of dancers with Star Wars magic wands. We could just glimpse all of this in the space beneath the shadow of the bank of Great Nigerians.
A short while later, a crane lowered four dancers bathed in neon from an impossible height. There was vaguely Chinese music playing as the four pink swans descended into the space. The future was arriving.
And then the whole thing puttered out, with a few seconds of green laser arabesques cast onto the neighbouring buildings and two or three fireworks exploding into the night.
As we made our way home, hundreds more people, standing, hoping to see something more when nothing would come. The fence and the razor wire stayed with me as home drew close.
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