Destination: Lagos

I'm off to Nigeria this weekend, its been 2 years since my last visit so i'm looking forward to observing the many changes that has happened since 04.

I know there'll be a few things i'll be irritated about, you see i can handle everything naija throws at me but there's one thing that will always ruffle my feathers.
I hear there's now a church close to where we live. I tire o.. its bad enough that religion will be shoved down my throat everywhere i go (on the TV, radio, billboards etc) but when i can't sleep peacefully in my own house, na yah be dat o.
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a great response to the question 'Why Is Nigeria Not Working?'
I had to grab this off a forum i check out occasionally and it was in response to the question: Why Is Nigeria Not Working?
Birdman posted:

I think we blame our leaders too much. Our leaders did not drop out of the sky. These people are from among us, they lived among us and they reflect what we as Nigerians have become. Our problem isn't oil, roads, food, Our problem is us. The way we think is twisted, and we refuse to love ourselves enough to change.

You have probably heard several stories of how patients in critical conditions die at hospitals because of no electricity. If we loved ourselves, we would demand without rest and make sure that all hospitals have reliable backups, because one day, someone we love may very well be in critical condition in a hospital.

We attend "all-night" prayer sessions binding all manner of spirits, gyrating as though by our loud speaking we can make God do 'jara' for us. As Yorubas will say, this is "oju-aiye" (pretense). How can a christian who has enough faith to bind some supposed principality not have enough faith to make a lasting change at his/her workplace. We keep invoking God's name in everything but our actions towards ourselves and fellow Nigerians show we really are not serious about anything. The words we speak outside of church contradicts our prayers 80% of the time.

Finally, you all remember the poll that placed Nigerians as the most happy people on the earth? Some think this is a good thing. It isn't. You might think it implies resilience. I think it points instead to our laziness and careless attitude. Rather than change things, we are content to sit by and look, hoping some mugu will risk his life to make things better while the rest of us enjoy.

Only a madman does the same thing over and over again, and expects a different result. I personally have little faith in the current generation ruling us (these guys were in power from when we had independence, through our first coup, until now). They remind me of the first israelites who left Egypt. Their minds have been warped and all we can do is wait for them to die out or get too old to rule (or maybe amadioha strikes the lot of them down Tongue) so that new blood can come in (Utomi, Duke, Dora I am looking at you )

"The eyes of the future are looking back at us and praying for us to look beyond our own time"

I love your smile

Jr is growing so fast its hard to keep up, hard to imagine that he is a little over 2 months old.
Its not easy interacting with a baby at this stage, the interaction is usually one-way, as they don't really respond apart from crying.
But it’s amazing what you learn about them from the few clues they provide. For instance he hates his Moses basket and has stopped sleeping in it (shame we can't send it back to mothercare). He loves, correction; demands attention (typical Leo) and he 'prefers' that you walk around when you carry him in your arms. (you are not allowed to sit down and do anything else).
Failure to adhere to the above instructions will result in a loud noise that may result in the council issuing a noise abatement order…

But I digress...
And then the other day it happened, he responded, our little boy started smiling and its the most beautiful smile i've ever seen…

Political DeathMatch (update)

Nigeria vice-president suspended
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5390230.stm

After a short ceasefire (as a result of last week's military air crash), Round four kicks off as PDP suspends Atiku for three months. According to the report 'his suspension means he will not be eligible to seek the ruling PDP's presidential nomination. '

Atiku's next move will be to set up or join another political party, but whatever move he makes, he will never be the next president of Nigeria. Whether he remains the VP is irrelevant, Obj has achieved his goal and ensured that he will not be PDP's presidential aspirant.

Why IBB will fail

Looks like IBB is shifting his campaign into high gear, he has already started the process of 're writing history', by glossing over all the horrible things he did while in power.
In an interview with BBC's Network Africa programme, he claims "In eight years, we made a lot of progress and development of this country and people also benefited," he also states that he had organised the "freest elections that has ever been conducted in the country".

That IBB is now trying to rewrite history shows desperation on his part. He realises that his past misdeeds have now come back to haunt him. All of a sudden he is on the defensive, the same IBB that has always refused to talk about the June 12 election or any of the many accusations against his regime, is now defending his administration.
In his recent interviews IBB has talked about the so called 'Gulf war windfall', the Vatsa coup and June 12. Since IBB is now in the mood to talk maybe he can offer an explanation about who killed Dele Giwa? and the allegations made against him during the Gideon Orkar coup attempt.

IBB is smart enough to realise that the south west and Obj are the major obstacles he has to overcome to return to power.
The south west
His attempts to pacify the south west over june 12 will ultimately fail. He has the likes of Alex Akinyele and one of Abiola's wives campaigning for him, but the thing is, june 12 was bigger than Abiola and even if IBB chooses one of Abiola's wives or kids as his running mate it would not make any difference.
Even on the web IBB seems desperate for yoruba support, www.babangida.com was registered by a 'Adetunji Adeoba' according to whois while www.mribbforpresident.com was registered by a 'Michael Adesina'.

coincidence? i don't think so

Obj
Whatever 'agreement' he had with Obj in 99 is no longer valid considering the role he played in frustrating obj's third term agenda. The irony of it all is that he is now in a similar situation that Abiola was in, back in 93. He desperately needs the support of the current resident of Aso rock to get back into power. Talk about role reversal.

IBB's options???
He has none
The thing is, IBB is damaged goods, june 12 will continue to be an albatross around his neck, he should learn from Buhari's experience in 2003. Buhari lost the last election because his opponents kept saying he would introduce sharia. With sites like AgainstBabangida ,Social critics like Gani Fawehinmi, 'former friends' like Mrs Vatsa, a hostile press and a vindictive Obj to contend with, IBB has his work cut out.

It doesn't help that he is still seen as a shifty manipulator, the many years outside power has not changed this perception. If he had spent his time outside power reinventing himself as an elder 'statesman' or philantropist, he might just about convince enough Nigerians to vote for him and/or convince Obj that he can be trusted with the keys to Aso rock.

But will IBB see the writing on the wall ?? As i said in a previous blog entry
'like Maradona's addiction to cocaine (which destroyed his football career), IBB is addicted to power, and his pursuit of that power will ultimately lead to his downfall...'

Political DeathMatch

Not too long ago when MTV was still mildly entertaining, they had a great show called Celebrity Deathmatch. In naija we now have our own real life version of the show called Political Deathmatch.

In the far corner is the embattled VP - Atiku (aka oko jennifer) , his opponent is the president - obj (aka baba iyabo)

the story so far,
Round one, EFCC submits damning report on Atiku
Round two, Obj sends efcc report to the senate, recommending Atiku is impeached.
Round three, Atiku strikes back in true naija style ('you tarka me i daboh you'), claiming obj too is corrupt and they both 'shared' the loot

Both parties are taking no prisoners and its going to be a fight to finish

Trust Reuben Abati he has an interesting piece on the whole saga called 'A Bolekaja Presidency'
http://odili.net/news/source/2006/sep/15/2.html
http://odili.net/news/source/2006/sep/17/10.html
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???
The news that the military lost 8 major generals in the Dornier 228 plane that crashed near Obudu, raises a lot of questions as regards to why so many of the military top brass travelled on the same flight.
Apart from making the plane an obvious target for the many groups that have grudges against the military, it shows a complete lack of awareness of basic security precautions. A company i worked for had a policy where no more than 2 directors could travel on the same flight. It was actually for insurance purposes but it made absolute sense as it safeguards the future of the company.

The Nigerian military obviously doesn't understand the concept of not putting all your eggs in one basket. God help us all if we have to rely on them in a state of war...

'foot in mouth' disease

protesters doing 'fire dance' in response to pope's speech

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Pope had an interesting case of 'foot in mouth disease' and the islamic world erupts in anger.
Predictable...

i found this response from an iraqi militant group hilarious

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen,"
Qaeda-led group vows "jihad" over Pope's speech

My advice to the Pope next time you want to say something nasty about muslims say it in Latin, that way they won't understand

Things that have changed my life - 1

the 4 agreements

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

It was 5 years ago that i first read the four agreements by Don Miguel, the book affected me on so many levels. Back then i was going through an interesting NLP phrase, it kicked off my journey of self discovery which has made me aware of the power we all have to make things happen in our lives.

to be continued soon....

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~Kurt Lewin

Extreme measures

EFCC seizes N7bn assets of INEC dead director
ABUJA — THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has secured a court order, confiscating alleged ill-gotten assets, worth about N7 billion, belonging to a deceased Director of Finance and Supplies of INEC, Pastor Timothy Olufemi Akanni.

The assets include cash in local and foreign currencies; landed properties in choice areas in both Lagos and Abuja; shares in bluechip companies; registered schools, bakeries and expensive cars, among others.
The order was granted ex-parte by the vacation judge, Justice Anwuri Chikere, upon a request by the anti-graft commission on behalf of the Federal Government.
rest of the story

They say we shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but damn it, this guy was greedy and to make matters worse he was a "pastor". Its not as if that counts for anything but it does make you wonder if there's any morality left in our society.
They say Nigeria is the most religious nation in the world. and yet it tops the corruption list

Makes you wonder if religion and corruption go hand in hand in Nigeria....

But we shouldn't be surprised; it just goes to prove that in the Nigerian context when there's a conflict between personal and religious values, personal values will always triumph.

Christianity and Islam can never really change our value systems, its about time the government adopts traditional African measures to reduce the rampant corruption in the country. If people had to swear to ‘sopona’, ‘ifa’ or some other oracle when they assume public positions, i'm sure they'll be scared of stealing large amounts of public funds.

The oath for public office could include something along the lines of "I Alhaji, Cheif, Major general, Pastor etc hereby swear that if i steal a single kobo of public money, sango strike me and all generations of my family down."

A bit extreme but our situation calls for extreme measures...

Quote: Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. - Eric Hoffer

Little Miss Jocelyn

Jocelyn J Esien playing a parking attendant on her show

Having watched 3 episodes i think i can now comment on Little Miss Jocelyn, a new comedy sketch show on BBC 3 featuring Jocelyn Jee Esien.

Its official I hate it....

The show is full of sketches making fun of Nigerians (one sketch is about a Nigerian park attendant with the catch phrase 'this will take a looong time', in another sketch she plays a Nigerian wife, with three husbands and in another one she plays a nigerian cab driver/driving instructor)

Some of the sketches did make me laugh especially the Nigerian couple seeking marriage counselling but i couldn't help thinking she was trying to outdo Gina Yashere, who has built her whole standup routine on making fun of Nigerians.

Gina is naturally funny while Jocelyn is trying too hard to be funny and its just not working...
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Like my peeps will say 'abeg make we talk about beta person jo', Metro (Wed aug 30) did an interview with upcoming actor, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje . Talk about someone with his head screwed on properly, i was quite impressed with his reponses.

Q: Was there pressure to make your name more Westernised to fit into Hollywood?

A: I’m of Nigerian descent, from the Yoruba tribe. Names are very significant in that culture. It basically states your purpose in life. Ade is ‘the crown’, Wale means ‘to arrive’, so that means ‘the crown has arrived’. Akin is ‘warrior’ and Agbaje is ‘prosperity and wealth’. Every day when someone calls my name, they remind me of that purpose and for me to renounce that would be sacrilege. The name caused a lot of scrapes growing up. Having come this far, I wasn’t going to abandon it for Hollywood. People are getting used to it. They abbreviate it to triple A.

the full interview in metro

After reading the interview, i've become a big fan, although i still have misgivings about his roles in Lost and The Bourne identity, but i guess 'man got to chop now'.
Hopefully as his profile rises he'll be in a better position to choose his roles rather than playing the usual 'stereotypical' parts that Hollywood gives to black Africans (Drug dealers, Slaves, criminals etc)

No 'Respect'

Blair 'chav' style

Britain 'worse than 20 years ago'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5310016.stm

The threat of terrorism is one reason why Britain is a worse place to live now compared with 20 years ago, a BBC poll suggests. Nearly half (47%) of those questioned thought quality of life in Britain had declined, with 47% blaming a "lack of respect" and 46% citing crime.

The study of 1,006 adults was conducted for BBC One's Six O'Clock News.

According to the poll, 47% think Britain the worst place to live, 24% think its better while 27% think no better/worse.

I'm not yet part of that 47% but in a few years time when global warming and right wing groups dominate the political landscape, Nigeria may not be too bad after all...

Whats in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet."
The famous line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare may have felt that a name had no importance and that a rose would still smell the same regardless of what it is called, but the Yorubas obviously don't see it that way.
A name is seen as a celebration and an indication of who we are, hence the Yoruba saying "Oruko lonro ni" (which means names affect behavior)

Don't mess with the Yorubas when it comes to names, thats why our names are littered with Ade, Oluwa, Ayo, Ola, Akin, Baba etc. The name given to a child is supposed to signify the destiny of the child (yeah destiny that's another thing the Yorubas don't mess with)

The importance placed on names is a part of our culture that i hold dearly. Prior to the birth of jr, we had debated over possible names to give him. My wife been of the pentecostal leaning had wanted a name from the bible, me of the African leaning said No. I told her point blank no child of mine is going to have any foreign name, that the name is from the bible is completely irrelevant, the bottom line is, it is not a Yoruba name.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with names from the bible (to each his own) i just feel we need to protect our culture by ensuring our children have yoruba names, it is even more important when you live outside Nigeria as it may be the only connection the next generation has to our culture.

Anyway the naming ceremony was about 2 weeks ago and i'm happy to say the names (all yoruba) we chose truly reflects the way we feel about our son.

nights to remember

staring out into the future..

I'm gradually getting used to the sleepless nights since junior arrived home. Its been pretty exhausting but kudos to the wife as she is bearing the full brunt of junior's antics at night.
We've been told it's a phase and in a couple of weeks he'll adjust to sleeping through the night. (I can't wait)

Its still a strange feeling knowing there's an individual out there with my genes. I'm gradually bonding with him, its easier for the wife i suppose he sees her as his only source of nourishment so they're pretty much glued together.

I was the first person he saw when he opened his eyes. He was handed over to me the night he was born by one of the midwives (while the wife was heavily sedated) and she said something along the lines of 'congratulations here's your son'. I was surprised that i didn't really feel anything, it was like someone introducing me to a complete stranger. However by the next day i was in full fatherhood mode, i suspect it took a full night's sleep for my brain to fully understand the implications of what happened the night before..

so 2 weeks later i'm still coming to grips with life as a dad while junior is changing and growing by the day, the other day my mum said he looked just like me, which is kind of strange considering he seemed to look like the wife when he was born.
I suppose the jury's still out on who he looks like


"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." - Anne Sexton
for my dad (aug 16 1938 - apr 19 2004)

The Real Story indeed..

UK bank details sold in Nigeria
Bank account details belonging to thousands of Britons are being sold in West Africa for less than £20 each, the BBC's Real Story programme has found.
It discovered that fraudsters in Nigeria were able to find internet banking data stored on recycled PCs sent from the UK to Africa.

rest of story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4790293.stm?ls


I watched the Real story (the source of this news story) on BBC1 yesterday and its amazing how far this news story is from the actual truth. The program did not show any 'evidence' that 'Nigerian fraudsters' found any bank details on used PCs and if it was used. What the program discovered was that hard disks bought in Lagos had deleted personal data on them.
The data could only be retrieved by using specialist hard disk tools. The reporter had to take the hard disks to a data specialist in Switzerland to retrieve the personal information used on the program.

Methinks the BBC gives 'Nigerian fraudsters' too much credit, recovering deleted files takes time and specialised software, then what guarantee do the 'fraudsters' have that they'll find any meaningful data.
It seems the BBC was out to do a hatchet job on Nigeria for the sake of getting a news headline and cheap publicity for a crappy show.

ijebuman junior

ijm jr at '16 hrs' old

Sunday July 30th started off like any normal day but by 19.42, we had a new addition to the family, weighing 3.8kg, ijebuman jr finally arrived.
Considering the manner of his arrival, I know this kid is going to make my life very interesting….

Quote: "A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for” - Anon

Blue Collar Lawman: the story of Nigeria's "independence"

omelettes cannot be made without breaking eggs. - English saying

Its explosive, its captivating and i spent the better part of today reading through the site.

Blue Collar Lawman is the account of Harold 'Sean' Smith (a former British Government senior civil servant) and recounts the events (1955 - 60) leading up to Nigeria's independence

This is the story of evil committed by kind, nice, decent British politicians. They sought to keep Britain from bankruptcy and found a solution in the mineral-rich Empire on the point of independence. It was necessary to bend the rules and, sadly, in due course the rules were totally forgotten. Those who got in the way were innocent like the colonial peoples, but both had to be dealt with quite harshly.

To leave friends in charge of Nigeria in our absence was surely prudent. The local people chose hothead politicians and it was our duty to outwit them. The loss of one or two lives is all we can truly comprehend. An expedient Whitehall decision is calm and deliberate and the risks if ever considered must be small and, of course, anonymous.

http://www.libertas.demon.co.uk/index.htm

until you can walk in my skin you don't know shit

"I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race." - a white person

stumbled on the article below while reading this blog and it got me thinking about the things we (and i mean blacks) have to deal with all the time.

Its easy for some white person and i'm refering to certain bloggers (ok i'll name one, naijablog) who think because he lives in Nigeria, it automatically gives him the right to dish out advice and all.
As a white person you will never ever understand what it feels like to be one of us, so please until you can walk in my skin you don't know shit...


White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"

Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."

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Daily effects of white privilege

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.


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Elusive and fugitive

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.

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Earned strength, unearned power

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

he's having a baby

My life is about to change (big time!!!) yep its going to be scary and exciting at the same time and my life is never going to be the same again.
I'm going to be a father sometime in july (or whenever the little sprog decides to show up). As the day gradually approaches the panic is becoming apparent.

Mrs Ijebuman seems to be coping fine despite the fact that she'll be doing most of the work, while yours truly still can't believe that in a couple of weeks i will be a dad.
I've been reading a book called 'he's having a baby' by Jack O'Sullivan and it has gone a long way in allaying my fears about how totally unprepared i am to face fatherhood.

But many questions still linger, will i bond with this baby? will i be a good father or be a typical naija dad who is only interested in the child's education and nothing else..

and then the financial costs oh dear...

Sports and Stereotypes

The world cup has started and everyone seems to be football mad (except me). A colleague at work has been commenting about the performance of the African teams so far, his view is that in a few years time the African teams will dominate the competition.
I had a strong suspicion where he was going with this conversation and wasn't surprised when he concluded that blacks have certain physical attributes that makes them better at sports (namely football and athletics) than other races.
Oh well might as well give up the day job and take up a sport....

Which brings me to the article i stumbled on recently by John Hoberman on the sociological impact of such 'thinking'


"There is no suggestion of racial tension. Why is that possible there but not in the church, or in the schools, or anywhere else? Because whenever the playing field is even, and the rules are public and the goals are clear, we can all move to the next level. We want an even playing field" - Jesse Jackson

Race and Sport: The Social Costs of Black Dominance
By: John Hoberman


The global prominence of African and African-American athletes represents for many people a clear example of racial progress in the modern world. Here, after all, is an international subculture in which black people can assert themselves and enjoy success to a degree that makes the world of sport look like an interracial utopia. Compared to other venues of competition and endeavour, such as business, science or the law, the sports world is, in fact, an extraordinary social phenomenon that seems to contradict some familiar racial stereotypes. The sheer celebrity of the black athletic star seems a refutation of the colonial anonymity of the black masses, his wealth contrasts with traditional images of black poverty, while his honored status appears to dissolve centuries of racial subordination. The utopian potential of sport in this sense has long intrigued the African-American leader Jesse Jackson. Describing the stadium crowd at an American professional football game, he marvels that there is \"no suggestion of racial tension. Why is that possible there but not in the church, or in the schools, or anywhere else? Because whenever the playing field is even, and the rules are public and the goals are clear, we can all move to the next levelWe want an even playing field\". (1)

The past century of integrated sport has demonstrated that interracial athletic competition has both positive and negative effects. The sports world does present a model of racial integration that makes more comprehensive social reforms easier for many people to imagine. It has provided many black people around the world with opportunities for social and economic advancement. It has also provided a platform for a small number of courageous black athletes to demand racial reforms in the larger societies to which they belong.

But it is also important to recognize the limits to progress that apply within this interracial domain. Racial integration in the sports world is relatively easy precisely because, as Jesse Jackson suggests, the more intractable social problems are left outside the stadium. At the administrative level, moreover, the colonial racial hierarchy remains quite intact. The blacks who currently wield influence in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the international sports federations can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Anita de Frantz (IOC), Keba Mbaye (IOC), Lamine Diack (IAAF). Of the ten members who were expelled or resigned from the IOC in 1999, a conspicuous number were black Africans who lacked the political connections that might have saved them. But when the powerful European soccer official Lennart Johannson made a racist remark about black Africans in 1996, he retained his position. (2)

The upward mobility and wealth achieved by the most successful black athletes dominates media coverage and promotes an illusory sense of social advancement for blacks as group. Who would guess, in a world of NBA millionaires, that the net worth of the average African-American home is only one-tenth that of its white counterpart? In a similar vein, omnipresent images of vigorous black athletes help to camouflage the disastrous health problems of both African and African-American populations. One black superstar can put a happy face on an entire system of racial injustice. Even a conscientious and politically progressive figure like Pel - one of the few elite athletes ever to serve as a government minister - has inadvertently distracted public attention from the enormous racial inequities that characterize Brazilian society. In a similar fashion, the sensational feats of Kenyan runners displace coverage of the political tyranny that is destroying their society.

The social costs and failures associated with racially integrated sport have been underestimated precisely because they cannot function as signs and portents of the racial progress globalization requires. The racial integration of European soccer, for example, has been accompanied by many racist mainfestations that raise troubling questions about the social utility of multiracial sport. A spokesman for the German Soccer Federation said in 1995, for example, that his sport stood for \"problem-free integration.\" (3) But what sport symbolizes does not always match the reality inside the stadium. In years past black soccer players in German stadiums would hear calls of \"Hush, hush, hush, nigger in the bush!\" or watch as bananas rained down the field. (4) More recently it has been good form for a German team to have at least one African player, but the effects of such initiatives are not clear. 85) Charles Friedek, a German triple-jumper who is the son of an African-American father and a German mother, commented last year: \"We [blacks] can win medals for them, but they won\'t let us in. When they see us in the stadium in our athletics clothes, they cheer us. If we walk on the street in our athletics clothes, then they think of us as asylum-seekers.\" (6) Generations of African-American athletes (and soldiers) have made the same discovery about their own tenuous civic status, no matter how many medals they won \"for their country\".

The social problems exist across Europe. The Dutch national soccer team includes important black players from Surinam whose relations with their white teammates have at times been contentious. (7) In Italy one black player was hanged in effigy inside the stadium, and another subjected to other forms of racist abuse when he was on the field. \"We are disgusted, not only by the poor idiots who reject Ze Maria on account of his skin colour, but even more by the silent masses around them,\" Gazzette dello Sport commented. (8) In Some European stadiums the spectators screech like chimpanzees at the sight of a black player. \"It\'s a deep problem\", an Italian sports official said in 1997. \"In the lower leagues, you hear the chanting when a player of African descent comes on to the field. But I\'m not even sure that I\'d call that racism. It\'s stupid emulation, a kind of generalized adolescent babble that the fans direct at the player without even knowing intellectually that what they\'re doing is racist\". Nor is this behaviour just a matter of crowd psychology, since the racial slurs come from some of the white players as well as their fans. (9)

The sociological point here is that racial integration inside the stadium remains essentially symbolic - an arrangement one might call \"virtual integration\" - and has not succeeded as the social engineering strategy some have imagined it to be. In a word, athletic stardom is not equivalent to fully human status, let alone equal social status, in the eyes of many Europeans.

This implicit distinction between the black athlete and the fellow citizen has been exploited by the extreme right in France. The racist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen attracted international attention in 1996 when he told his followers that the multiracial French national soccer team could not really represent France because it included too many \"foreigners\". These athletes, he complained, either did not know how to sing the national anthem or did not sing it \"lustily\" like the (all-white) teams of certain other nations. (10)

More ominously, Le Pen has invoked the idea of racial athletic aptidude to justify a racial hierarchy that subordinates blacks. Le Pen has stated that he believes in the \"inequality of the races.\" History has demonstrated, he says, that the races \"do not have the same evolutionary capacity.\" The 1996 Olympic Games, for example, had shown that \"there was an obvious inequality between the black and white races.\" (11) The neo-fascist newspaper Rivarol mocks the idea that soccer in France might become a \"fantastique laboratoire d\'intgration.\" (12)

Le Pen\'s simplistic racial theory of genetically programmed black runners and white swimmers is one example of how multiracial sport has given nineteenth-century racial anthropology a new lease on life. As Franz Fanon pointet out in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Western racism has always identified black people with their bodies to an extraordinary degree. For this reason, stereotypes of black athletic superiority are now firmly established as the most recent version of a racial folklore that has spread across the face of the earth over the past two centuries. At the same time a corresponding belief in white athletic inferiority pervades popular thinking abourt racial differences. Such ideas probably do more than anything else in our public lives to encourage the idea that blacks and whites are biologically different in meaningful ways. Conservative racial thinkers such as Charles Murray and Dinesh D\'Souza have claimed that black athletic superiority is evidence of more profound racial differences, and there is no telling how many people, black and white, may agree with them. (13)

Behind its cosmopolitan faade, multiracial sport in the Age of Globalization retains a number of colonial features: a predominance of white administrators, the emphasis on black physicality, a white monopoly on leadership positions (coaches and managers) on the field, and white monopoly on leadership positions (coaches and managers) on the field, and white dominance of media and technology. Worst of all, there is what one Italian sports official has called \"a new slave market\" - the importation into Europe of hundreds of black African teenagers as raw material to be tested, trained, and most often discarded by European professional soccer teams. (14) Small Wonder that stereotypes of \"The African personality\" thrive in this milieu. African marathoners, who have enjoyed much success, run \"too anarchistically\", says the Spanish runner Martin Fiz. (15) They must learn to run patiently, says the German coach Dieter Hogen. (16) The Nigerian soccer team, a British sportswriter comments, \"has the force, the ability, the courage that belies African disorganisation.\" (17) Rather than neutralizing such ideas, the multiracial sports world acts as a megaphone that amplifies and broadcasts racial folklore of this kind to an international audience that has already become accustomed to all-black sprint finals and the overwhelming superiority of East African distance runners.

The colonial dynamics of international sport also apply to the relationship between African American Athletes and the predominantly white society that watches, celebrates and sometimes resents them. While African Americans have believed in sport as an engine of racial progress since the 1920s, the limitaitons of this strategy have become evident during the period of \"black dominance\" in major sports that is now about a generation old.
In addition, the African-American athlete has become an international role model whose overwhelming media presence misrepresents African Americans as a group. Based on what their media show them, one black American wrote me form Thailand, South Asians have no reason to believe that African Americans do anything but play sports. The 1996 inaugural issue of Brazil\'s first magazine for blacks included stories on Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman of the NBA - a curious pair of world citizens with whom to celebrate black progress. Such caricatured versions of black identity are constantly being generated by the athleticzing of the black image that has become a staple of global advertising.

Most of the familiar images of black athletes in the United States do not serve the social advancement of African Americans. In recent years black athletes have been involved in a highly publicized series of criminal cases that have begun to worry the white owners of professional teams. The recent banning of a throat-slashing gesture by the national Football League was widely interpreted as an attempt to control the violent impulses of black players. (18) The merging of a showy black athletic style with the crime-ridden \"hip-hop\" culture of the popular music industry has further promoted the identification of black athletes with criminal behavior. This is a significant phenomenon in a society where most whites already believe blacks to be violence-prone by nature.

The social and political activism once practiced by African-American sports heroes like Jackie Robison and Muhammad Ali is defunct. Like the vast majority of elite athletes everywhere, African-American athletes are essentially apolitical. Until his recent and ineffectual endorsement of Bill Bradley\'s presidential candidacy, Michael Jordan hand shown absolutely no interest in political principles or controversy. One black sports columnist has called basketball players \"most politically oblivious group of athletes\" in the United States. (19) When the NBA players union attempted to mount a labour action in December 1998, the league\'s white administrators easily defeated them, and the intellectual competence of the black athlete was dealt yet another blow. (20) While African-American athletes in team sports now have an annual income approaching $2 billion, their financial contributions to higher education have been negligible. (21)

Conflicts between black athletic and academic achievement remain a serious problem. Over-identification with athletes and the world of physical performances limits the development of black children by discouraging academic achievement in favour of physical self-expression. A survey released in 1997 showed that two-thirds of African-American teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 believed they would be able to support themselves as professional athletes. (22) Another factor driving this symdrome is an intense peer pressure that equates academic excellence with effeminacy and racial disloyalty and identifies \"blackness\" with physical prowess. All of these social phenomena demonstrate that it is time to relieve black people everywhere of the athletic identity our colonial legacy has inflicted upon them.

The price of Ignorance

No one truly understands the price we pay for ignorance.

ignorance
The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed
dictionary.com

The government spends billions on NEPA or whatever its called now and the power situation has still not improved, (in fact its actually worse than it was 10 years ago). What happened to all the money?
Just like the telecommunication sector (where ex NiTel employees now successfully run Private Telcos after destroying NiTel) , the power situation will never improve in Nigeria until private power companies start operating. (i.e Private power companies run by ex NEPA officials...).
The selfish gene is truly alive in naija

The government introduces a discriminatory sex law, the whole debate is hijacked by people who obviously are so scared of their own sexuality but choose to hide behind their so called religious beliefs. The words of Martin Niemöller comes to mind;
'First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.'
It's a slippery slope when government starts regulating morality…

The Lagos state government builds a solar power station (as part of a pilot scheme) for the residents of Bishop Kodji Island.
According to the The Punch Newspaper "Our correspondent who visited the village last Thursday said that the solar panel had been switched off by officials in charge of the project as a result of which the villagers could not enjoy electricity.
It was gathered that the solar panel was switched off because some of the villagers tried to connect electricity from the panel to their homes illegally. This, it was learnt, caused the panel to trip off and the village thrown into darkness."

The Ogun state government repairs a water pumping station that has been out of action for decades, a few weeks later the station is vandalised. The government repairs it and a few weeks later it is vandalised again, this time it can't be repaired.
The people have no water but the owners of water tankers are happy..

Millions of Nigerians are struggling to survive but if you attended an owambe party where people 'spray' dollars or opened a copy of Ovation and saw headlines like 'Chris Uba Hosts The Mother Of All Parties' , You might be forgiven for thinking that everything is well in Nigeria and it is truly the happiest place on earth. (talk about an anomaly - Nigeria tops happiness survey and yet life expectancy is 47, strange indeed...)


Quote: "Power in the hands of an ignorant man, is like a rocket launcher in the custody of a terrorist." - Reuben Abati

The Rich List

"The generation before mine, looted my inheritance and forced me to work in another country, where less qualified people get better jobs than my country folks because of the colour of their skins, of course I am not bitter, why should I be"

my cousin wrote this email and sent it to me and a couple of his friends, i'm posting it here as it touches on issues that affects all Nigerians/Africans.

---------
To some of you who have been asking me about investment ideas, this is where I get things of my chest. If you are of nervous disposition, this is where you should stop reading.

I read with interest the list of the richest people in the UK, guess what!, not a single African. There was even an Asian list. We know there are several Africans who have looted their national treasuries and are probably as rich as hell, obviously those of ill forgotten funds cannot be counted.

So, to my real reason for writing this, why are we not making money in the UK?.

1) We don't have the capital or the number of people to support our ventures
2) We never come together as there are too many 419ers amongst us. Like the people at home, several of us would rather steal from their friends than work honestly for their money, the result, we don't get anywhere at all.
3) We spend most of our time having great parties, without any plans for the future.
4) Unlike the other groups in the UK, we are completely divided and we will rather do our own little things, which normally gets us no where. If you are one of those ˜buy to let" entrepreneurs, before you start writing to me about how wrong I am, please take a few minutes to consider your options. If you are doing so well why are the banks making record profits?.

For some of you interested in properties, have you tried to buy abandoned or struggling hotels, old schools, a warehouses or public houses for conversion. These are property investments outside the reach of most people, but by coming together you can convert these buildings into apartments. Look at the scenario, a 200 bed former hospital on 80 acres of land, costing £2m, look at the potential when you convert a property like this, with land in short supply, you can convert the property into apartments, and use the land to build on, but you ask me how many people have £2m to burn, definitely not one of us, as individuals, but can you imagine if several of you come together and buy shares in a company, buy the building, renovate, sell some of the apartments, let out others, use the money to convert even more. Amongst us are probably the best brains money can buy, but yet divided we will get nowhere, together though, we are a formidable force.
Unless you can rent rooms in a house, its now difficult to make money from property in the UK.

I know some of you will want to rush off and start on this idea, e-mail me and I will advise you on what to do. I am doing same with a few of my friends, there are enough properties to go round. There are pubs and hotels in distress and there are so many "first time buyers" looking for cheap and affordable houses.

Several of you have attended all the start up business courses on "how to make money from no deposit" property deals. Please spare me the details, if you have money to waste, please continue to attend those courses, if those ideas are so good do you think they will be selling them to you. Can you imagine Richard Bronson or even the Donald Trump trying to tell you how to make money from business or properties?.

Don't even get me going about Franchising, I have analysed so many business plans, your chances of making money on several of them are so slim, the camel and the eye of the needle come to mind.

The only way to make serious money is hard work, nobody will make money and then give it to you. Its just not going to happen, mate. So my advise, get together with people you trust. There is no point in trying to make money by ripping people off, you will end up in jail. There is a lot of money to be made, save well, work together, and most importantly don't get ripped off, even legitimately.

The best business at the moment for Africans is in churches, its legitimate and the church ministers have flashy cars and justify everything about how you need to pay 10% of your earning to support their expensive life styles. The 10% in the bible was before the introduction of the current tax systems.


Your next question to me is why the heck are you doing this?. I hasten to say, I dislike people who take advantage of other people, whether a church minister, a government worker, the plumber who charges £300 for half a day's job or people selling "how to get rich quickly ideas".
If you think I am bitter, of course not. Due to some idiots back in my country, I and several of my country men and women and their children are languishing in strange countries as second class citizens, toiling away for pennies, doing menial jobs and getting insulted in the process. Should I be bitter?, of course not. The generation before mine, looted my inheritance and forced me to work in another country, where less qualified people get better jobs than my country folks because of the colour of their skins, of course I am not bitter, why should I be, our kids are now strangers to their own land and like the Israelites will continue to dream of the land of milk and honey. I don't want any e-mail from you IT consultants, doctors and dentists on £1000 a day telling me how rich you are, but I do want to hear from people who should have been on the rich list i.e worth £60m.

For anybody with Investment ideas, from buying a pub, properties, new business, franchising, tax etc I will analyse it for you, free. You may not like what I tell you, but i will give my honest opinion.

If you or your parents are one of the looters in Nigeria, please don't even try and contact me, it will get my blood boiling, same for 419ers.

My mission in life, is to make sure that we have one genuine African on the list of the 1000th richest people in the UK by 2010, at which point only people with £100m will be eligible. I am just tired of people telling me that if Nigerians are so dynamic, smart and hardworking why are they not on the "bloody list". Roller-skate ready and 4 years to go.


Signed

Ade
----------

Quote: "Money is called currency, because it is designed to flow through you. Money doesn't change you; it only reveals who you truly are." ~ Anon

get involved by sponsoring an African child today:
http://www.plan-uk.org/wherewework/westafrica/

Hey Abbott Pt 3 (a rejoinder from Ms Abbott)

Ms Abbott responds...

see previous posts
Hey Abbott
Hey Abbott Pt 2

DIANE ABBOTT
Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON SW1A 0AA

24 Answering Service: (020) 7219 3000 Parliamentary Telephone: (020) 7219 4426
E-mail address: drejerc@parliament.uk Parliamentary Facsimile: (020) 7219 4964



18 May 2006


You contacted me about an article I wrote for a Jamaican newspaper about Nigeria. First let me apologise for taking so long to respond. We had local elections in Hackney at the beginning of this month and the campaign took up a great deal of my time.

Obviously I am sorry if my article caused offence. That certainly was not my intention. I realise that the title was quite provocative. But you will appreciate that I am not personally responsible for that.

But I am a little baffled by the response to the article. I wrote it after my second visit to Nigeria in the past six months. In preparation for both those visits I read widely about Nigeria. The issues that I raised in my article were: the fragility of Nigeria's democracy, corruption, religious strife in the North and the tragic situation in the Niger Delta due to oil pollution and the activities of Shell and other oil companies. And I know from my reading and research that these issues have been written about extensively by politicians, academics and journalists. Some of the judgements I have read from serious political scientists have been much harsher on Nigeria than anything in my article. So I could not have expected that, by merely discussing these issues, I would have excited the vitriolic response that I did.

Many people have taken offence at the comparison with Jamaica and speculated as to why I did not mention Jamaica's own serious problems with crime and violence. But the article is just one column from the regular weekly columns that I write for the paper. In other columns I have discussed at length Jamaica's own problems. The comparison with Jamaica was not meant to be slighting to Nigeria, but merely to engage the interest of Jamaican readers.

One of the issues that I raised was the attempt to alter the constitution to allow President Obasanjo to serve a third term. This was raised with me everywhere I went in Nigeria. After all my discussions I came to the conclusion that this would have undermined democracy in Nigeria so I was pleased to see that the Senate has voted the proposal down. But I do not see how it helps those struggling in Nigeria on this, and other human rights issues, to pour abuse on anyone who tries to discuss them.

The most important thing is that I was criticising the Nigerian government and multi-national corporations, I was not attacking the ordinary people of Nigeria.

I am disturbed by how quickly some of my correspondents have assumed that I am anti-Nigerian and responded with an anti-Jamaican diatribe. I have been a political activist in Britain for thirty years. Everybody who knows me understands that the last thing that I am is anti-African.

However I have had some supportive letters from Nigerians. One of them quoted from the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. I will leave you with this quote that comes from his novel "The Trouble with Nigeria"

"Quite clearly, patriotism is not going to be easy or comfortable in a country as badly run as Nigeria is. And this is not made any easier by the fact that no matter how badly a country may be run, there will always be some people whose personal, selfish interests are, in the short term at least, well served by the mismanagement and the social inequities…. Naturally, they will be extremely loud in their adulation of the country and its system and will be anxious to pass themselves off as patriots and to vilify those who disagree with them as troublemakers or even traitors. But doomed is the nation which permits such people to define patriotism for it"

With all best wishes


Diane Abbott MP
-----------------------------

No wonder Ms Abbott is concerned even The Guardian has an article about it and an interesting quote from moi

"Another British Nigerian, in south London, wrote: 'We intend to mobilise and inform Nigerians in her constituency that she only represents the interests of "Jamaicans" and not of other nationalities."

'Think Jamaica is bad? Try Nigeria ... ' How Diane Abbott enraged a community
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1774633,00.html


Quote: "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." ~ Harvey Fierstein

get involved by sponsoring an African child today:
http://www.plan-uk.org/wherewework/westafrica/

i'm lovin it

I'm lovin it

I'm talking about Youtube Its like Napster in 99 before it went all 'legal'.
In the last few weeks i've had the opportunity of seeing music videos i haven't seen in years. Shalamar's a night to remember, Kurtis Blow's Basketball, Klymaxx's meeting in the ladies room and Malcolm Mclaren's buffalo girls.

Watching these videos from way back reminds me of how much of a TV addict i was in the 80s. I think i was permanently glued to NTA2 Channel 5 and LWT (Lagos weekend TV, you couldn't touch this station when it came to showing pirated stuff ; ))

I know i'm probably going to come across like an old timer but i have to say the 80s was the best decade ever !!

Interesting Times (in Nigeria)

old Chinese saying (or curse?)
"May you live in interesting times”

I've been trying to stop myself from blogging about the whole third term brouhaha in Naija. Its not that i'm not concerned about the current events in the country, its just that to be honest i'm just bored, fed up, don't care, don't give a shit etc.
I'm kind of at that point where i'll rather just face the important things in my life than read about the shit happening in naija.

But you couldn't keep me away from naija news, so i had to laugh when i read the news story about the presidency revoking AIT's licence
Presidency revokes AIT's network licence
http://odili.net/news/source/2006/may/10/600.html

Senator Uche Chukwumerije on Tuesday said the Presidency has cancelled the Network Licence of Africa Independent Television (AIT) and has issued a 21-day ultimatum to the television station to vacate its Asokoro office in Abuja.

Addressing reporters at the end of debate on general principles of the amendment of the 1999 Constitution, Chukwumerije, who is Leader of the 2007 Movement said the cancellation is part of efforts to frustrate the ongoing debate in the senate over tenure extension.
He confirmed that an ultimatum had already been given to AIT to vacate its the Abuja office.

Chukwumerije also raised an alarm over a plot to remove Senate President Ken Nnamani over his insistence on following the rules in the course of the on-going debate.

Said Chukwumerije: "The 2007 Movement is outraged by the evident determination of the Presidency to violate all rules, reduce and contract our democratic space in order to get its immediate partisan goal of elongating its tenure of office. In the last two weeks, the Presidency has intensified violation of citizens' rights to freedom of speech and association through three-pronged attacks.

Even Shakespeare couldn't come up with the tragicomedy going on in Naija today. When the likes of Chukwumerije become democrats fighting against dictatorship, you gotta laugh. Unless i'm wrong he used to be IBB's mouthpiece or was it Abacha's, many moons ago. As information minister the guy was a complete joke, even worse than the former iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf AKA Comical Ali

but i digress
The issue in naija today is still the same as always, those who want to hold on to power or influence if the dictator stays on and those who will lose out if that happens.
Political alliances change so fast in Naija that i won't be surprised if Atiku changes his mind and then decides to support OBJ for a third term in the "interest of peace"

There's a cancer growing in that country and we need some serious chemotherapy (social revolution to get rid of the political idiots in power) to deal with it. I don't give a damn about third term, as long as we have the usual recycled politicians leading the country we're not going anywhere..

enough said

Labour in meltdown

Yesterday's local election was the perfect opportunity for the electorate to give labour a bloody nose. The Labour party lost over 200 seats (mostly to the Conservatives). My ward which had been predominantly labour is now tory.

I'm really surprised at the turn of events, i thought it was about local issues but it has somewhat turned into a referendum on the performance of the current government.

In my ward the conservative councillors hardly campaigned, it was the incumbent labour councillors that were running around, going from house to house, sending out fliers etc, and they still lost.

The political landscape is definitely changing, the British National Party is making inroads in London, winning 11 seats in Barking. While the conservatives (under new leader David Cameron) are back in favour after a decade out in the political wilderness.
People are really pissed off with the Labour government and even though they voted them back in at the national elections last year, the electorate was prepared to punish them at the local level this time around.

hey Abbott (part 2)

previous post: Hey abbott
got an interesting letter today, it seems the jamaican observer published the email i sent in response to Diane Abbott's article Think Jamaica is bad? Try Nigeria

Which explains why i got a letter from some anonymous fool called Sogey. I won't be surprised if this 'Sogey' person is an assistant to Ms Abbott. Since she wrote the article she has kept a very low profile (i wonder why..)

Anyway this guy 'Sogey' sent me a two page letter on how "great" Jamaica is (yawn) but was too much of a coward to reveal his identity or details so i could respond.

Black youth's murder treated as race crime

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1761425,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1764165,00.html
Police investigating the murder of a black teenager in Kent said yesterday they were treating the attack as racially motivated. Christopher Alaneme, 19, described as a "popular young man with lots of friends", was stabbed to death in an apparently unprovoked attack as he walked along Sheerness High Street just before midnight on Friday.
SNIP
Mr Alaneme, whose family is of Nigerian origin, was from London but had been living in Sheerness. His murder occurred on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south-east London.

I hope the police find the killers and hopefully it doesn't end up like the Damilola Taylor case
........................

face v Baker: No more 'sweet love'

It's strange when two of your favourite artists sue each other. Apparently Babyface is suing Anita Baker (story here)
The man behind some of the biggest love songs of the late 80s and 90s, recently divorced his wife (which explains why his current CD 'Grown and Sexy' has a song called 'goin outta business')
but i digress
I really hope 'face and anita sort this out soon, we need them doing what they do best, providing great music.