47 Years Less from Uhuru

So Nigeria celebrated 47 years of independence on Oct 1^st, 2007, there was fanfare, hosts of conglomerate chief execs felicitated with the federal and state governments, cellphone service providers bombarded subscribers with “Happy 47!” phone spam (the buggers never figured to ‘dash’ us free credit?), and in an odd twist, radio stations were agog with request programs mostly deluged by syrupy messages between lovers who took advantage of the season of goodwill to rekindle the spark of Valentine-type romance that might have been doused by the throes of hard-knock living through the past 9 months.

The euphoria was markedly palpable, and why not? Nigeria has been getting good rep lately in the international media, no less for an uncanny coincidence of noteworthy exploits by its nationals. First you’ve got the Super Eaglets carting away the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in impressive style, then Samuel Peters the ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ (or is it ‘Pride of Africa’?) snags a version of the World Boxing Heavyweight Championship belt from Oleg Maskaev in a walk-over and defends it admirably against McCline, albeit for the interim, then former Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala is installed as one of only two Managing Directors at the World Bank. Even more significant is the heralding of Nigerian diplomats into the world arena with the statements and actions of UN representative to former Burma Ibrahim Gambari being updated to-the-minute by global networks in tandem with the harrowing civil rights crisis there, which he has been mandated to resolve. By all means, it felt quite in order to pop the champagne, belt the National Anthem and coo susurrations to loved ones in the dead of night, all in the name of patriotism.

It’s been 7 days since, though. The confetti’s been swept away and, most unfortunately, we’re back to business per usual, with our attendant hydra-head of problems not even showing signs of a half-decent haircut. The usual candidates of corruption, unemployment, ethnic conflict, ill-advised state policy and human rights violations are daily reflecting the unusually adaptive and resourceful mind of the unscrupulous Nigerian, assuming more cumbrous forms of late. In fact, these hot-zones of societal crisis have begun networking in true Web 2.0 style. To illustrate, statistics today indicate that 8 out of 10 varsity graduates that hit the employment market turn up empty-handed. In time this has only served to swell a teeming academy of literate criminals gagging to showcase their expertise in advanced free fraud, armed robbery and cyber crime, with reports of these felonies skyrocketing nationwide. These highly-trained idlers have also played into the hands of dodgy politicians, who employ them to rig elections, intimidate voters and erase opponents, leaving a laundry-list of unsolved assassinations in their bloodthirsty wake. But more recently, they’ve spawned the abduction lottery in the name of armed activism, extorting expatriates and other wealthy victims of millions, to the lurid delight of their greasy gaffers and the undisguised envy of late starters looking to cash in. The spate of clashes between rival gangs in the Niger Delta has been the macabre result, and because militarization of the region only appears to be biting barely, the state government is attempting an ungainly reclaim of its dropped trousers by announcing the planned demolition of riverside settlements, which they assert to be a “haven for criminals,” unwittingly victimizing a swarm of innocent and underprivileged creek-bed dwellers as a result. Meanwhile, a quartet of individuals (2 Germans, 1 American, 1 Nigerian) evidentially conducting a journalistic investigation into the matter are being unjustly detained under charges of espionage. Did I miss anything? Oh and there’s the reason the Eleme gas flares are the only lights visible in space from the heart of the Dark Continent - perennial and protracted power cuts.

If in spite of all these seemingly intractable problems, Nigerians were giving each other high-fives on the morning of October 1, I’m afraid we’re decades yet from Uhuru. Maybe by another 47 years…

Fed on Fire!

"Fed's on fire...!" That's how the official US Open website describes Roger's blistering performance at the Flushing Meadows finals, where a sizzling serial of salvos from the firebrand that is Federer in the end proved too hot for 20-year old upset-upstart Djokovic to handle. Roger ended up surprising records held by tennis greats, Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver, in Grand Slam totals and creating another one of his own - 4 Wimbledon and 4 US Open wins in a row, a feat unprecedented in tennis history. I found it curious that the top radio media, BBC in particular, were particularly mute today about the meet. After frenetic to-the-minute updating
throughout yesterday, the newstream just shrivelled up peremptorily for some reason. I guess a Djokovic win would've evinced a more animated response, eh? With all fairness to him, I think the Serb's challenge was pretty ferocious, and watching his rise lately seems like a re-run of Roger's earlier years. Call me presumptuous, but the man to beat after Fed's gone is Djokovic, not Nadal ('Heard it here first). A Federer triumph seems so pedestrian these days, people often forget what steely will and gritty resolve is required to achieve such consistent mastery (wait a minute. 'steely will and gritty resolve'? Did I just tautologize?). In any case he's still got one record to beat: the Sampras 14. Let’s hope his drive keeps up.

A Royal Flush at Flushing Meadows?

A pair of lissome gazelles grazes at the Flushing Meadows, scene of the 2007 US Open. They are Wimbledon winner Venus Williams and World No. 1, Roger Federer, two of the most graceful players in the world arena of tennis and my personal favourites. Now, I’m not the regular gawking, hair-pulling, eye-gouging hyper fan, but during the meet, I’ve followed every encounter this duo of tennis royals have been involved in quite keenly, experienced the nervous heart-leaps with every falter and luxuriated in the depthless euphoria of every triumph. And now they sail to the semis over rivals Jankovic and Roddick respectfully. Could a royal flush at the finals be in the offing for Flushing Meadows? Ssshhh, don’t jinx it, dammit

The Naira Revaluation Saga: Dateline

- August 14: CBN Governor, Charles Soludo unveils naira revaluation plan.

- August 15: Yar’Adua summons Soludo to FEC meeting to define his plans. FEC commissions Economic Management Team (EMT) to vet the strategy; Finance Minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, reassures that autonomy of the CBN is not in question, citing EMT contributions as merely “advisory”.

- August 22: EMT suggests cursory amendments, including a review of implementation date (August 1, 2008) and voicing concerns over decision to gradual phase old currency, arguing that cost of implementation would be prohibitive.

- August 24: Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, announces that CBN Governor is in breach of the CBN Act 2007 by not obtaining written approval from the President before making the policy public, orders the suspension of further actions on the plan.

- August 27: Soludo capitulates to FEC pressure, acquiescing to Presidential transcendence on monetary decisions as constituted in Section 19 of the CBN Act 2007.

Like the proverbial flash in the pan, the naira redenomination spectacular was over in a fortnight. Personally, I feel sad for Soludo. The idea was ingenious, impressive. The President wasn’t impressed, though, and as I got to learn, if Soludo hadn’t been so politically inept, he might have seen it coming. The first sign was when his junior was appointed Federal Minister of Finance instead of him. Then he and EFCC boss Ribadu were unceremoniously dropped from the EMT, the think-tank I later discovered he’d himself conceived. The last straw was when subordinate officials were drawn from the CBN to enflesh the team. Clearly the writing blazed from the wall that Soludo had fallen out of favour, and as the vultures circled, it would’ve been more prudent to tread carefully. And trust me, there were vultures. A particularly hostile horde is an influential conclave of powerbrokers from the President’s region of extraction, the Northern Union (NU). With more northerners now clinching top positions in the present administration, the NU were more than a little miffed that a southerner still held fort at the apex bank and were gagging for Soludo to slip. Then with atrocious sense of timing, Soludo delivered on a silver platter August 14 and his political enemies rubbed their hands with glee. What’s worse, by supposedly misinterpreting the CBN Act 2007 as the source of autonomy in implementation of the revaluation policy, Soludo had implicitly challenged presidential authority and shot himself in the leg. No surprise then that when the gavel was whipped down calling him to order, it was heavy. The Attorney-General of the Federation, doubtlessly livid at not being consulted, had him for breakfast. Now, even after eating humble pie on August 28^th, the certitude of Soludo’s tenure hangs over his head like a gleaming sword of Damocles. Whom the President appoints, he can disappoint.

But controversy surrounds the linchpin of this debate, namely Section19 of the CBN Act 2007. As the Nigerian Guardian bureau chief, Madu Onuorah ponders, “…if you are searching at the CBN website for the CBN Act, in order to read for yourself the contending Section 19 Sub-sections (1) and (2), you won't find it. You can get highlights of Sections 1 to 12. But Sections 13 to 19 are not available. And when inquiries were made from some top Nigerians on how to get a copy of the CBN Act, the question posed to a journalist was instructive: "is it the fake or the authentic copy?" This means there are two versions of the CBN Act in circulation. Then, who has the authentic copy? Who worked with the fake copy? Which one did Prof. Soludo or Mr. Aondoakaa work with?”

Well, there it is. Whereas elsewhere in the free world, the autonomy of central banks in executing monetary policy is fundamental, in Nigeria, down is up, like the realms of Davy Jones’ Locker in the Pirates of the Caribbean. I still support Soludo’s shimmering vision of a reinvigorated naira, and with a bit more patience and lobby-savvy, perhaps in the future he could susurrate the sound advice into Yar’Adua’s ears and softly sidle his way into his good graces instead of grandstanding in panic to sound off his relevance. He’ll be hard pressed to find the Pres. in an accommodative mood any time soon, though. Lord knows these days the man’s so busy setting up supervisory bodies over every strategically positioned sector of the economy faster than you can build shacks in a Maroko ghetto, often chairing the commissions himself. Now, he’s ruminating over the advantages of exercising emergency powers over the energy sector. Hm…is Yar’Adua a power-hungry megalomaniac, or just a dedicated control freak…? Oh the heck with it. Deciphering that is early days yet. I’ll catch the US Open quarters instead.

Quotes of a Criminal Mind

They’ve got this knack for citing poignant quotes on the TV series Criminal Minds, and I’ve enjoyed mulling over them. This set’s from Season 1. Caution: The selection has been adulterated by a criminal mind - yours truly

Mich
-It’s nice to have friends. Nicer still is to go through the thicket of trial, then look back and see how many are left.

Dr Thomas Fuller
-With foxes, we must play the fox.

Joseph Conrad
-The belief in the supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Harriet Beecham Stowe
-The bitterest tears shed over graves are for the words left unsaid and the deeds left undone.

Emerson
-All is riddle and the key to the riddle, another riddle.

Samuel Beckett
-Try again, fail again, fail better.

Yoda
-Try not. Do, or do not.

Mich
-You can’t dig your own grave and expect not to pay for the coffin.

Winston Churchill
-The further backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.

Nietzsche
-When you look long into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.

James Reese
-There are certain clues at a crime scene which by their very nature do not lend themselves to be collected or examined.

Einstein
-Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Faulkner
-Don’t bother to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Samuel Johnson
-Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those we cannot resemble.

Nietzsche
-The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather, a condition of it.

Shakespeare
-Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable.

Mich
-Living is certain death.

Sherlock Holmes
-When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

Robert Bolton
-Belief is not just an idea the mind possesses; it’s an idea that possesses the mind.

Peter Ustinov
-Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.

Eugene Inesco
-Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

Mich
Whatever a man deludes his mind to think he is, the same is he

Of Lawmakers and "Long-Throats"

In Nigeria, the term “long-throat” is employed when someone exhibits an irrepressible trait of avarice. The current blow-out of graft accusations aboard the country’s House of Representatives would suggest avarice there is not a mere trait; it’s a veritable disease, spreading virulently from the top down; more’s the shame ‘cos the top is occupied by a woman.

A lady of lowly Ikire beginnings, Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh was thrust into the public eye by that hard-churning engine of politics and fortuitously became the highest-placed female in public service as Speaker of what lawmakers themselves fondly refer to as the “Hallowed Chambers”. The profligate conduct of its occupants however relate a totally untoward tale, and since her instatement, the actions of Madame Speaker have only served to deepen the irony of such an appellation, from throwing a birthday bash in the States to taking gratuitous medical trips abroad. In a more recent turn of events I’d like to call the Renovation Rigmarole, Etteh and her deputy, Mr. Babangida Nguroje, were accused to have expended a whopping ₦628m ($ 5.0 million) to renovate their official residences (What’s that, a state’s budgetary allocation for the quarter?). These allegations came on the heels of yet another medical trip, which needless to say was cut short abruptly in the interest of political longevity, something she should’ve given more thought to earlier, considering that the whistleblowers were Assembly Reps who’d apparently been overlooked when juicy committee placements were shared out on resumption.

The up-shot of this falling-out is more revelations have been made to indicate these gluttonous activities were not perpetrated in isolation: Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu had also purportedly ‘upgraded’ his dwellings to the tune of ₦29m ($ 0.2 million). Speaking of the Upper House, the Senate President, rtd Major Gen. David Mark, is himself embroiled in electoral litigation. His opponent, a Mr. Usman Abubakar, who’s filed a court petition against Mark, insists he was the true winner at the ballot box and was robbed of victory by Mark who got in by the backdoor, supposedly aided by the electoral body INEC. While the bespectacled poster-child-for-alopecia Senator is keeping mum about the petition, he seems to be employing populist tactics to steer the contentious issue out of court. Last week Wednesday 150 women of his ethnicity from Idoma, Benue State (earth mothers all, God bless ‘em), rallied in a public street protest against the court petition, ferrying their grievances to the doorsteps of their village chieftains for them to initiate an ‘urgent intervention’. Meanwhile INEC repeatedly thwarts court directives to release the official vote count roster.

At the moment, Madam Speaker's engaged in a flurry of harum-scarum consultations with juggernauts of the Lower and Upper House for an emergency salvage from this slew of rip-roaring mud-slinging and possible impeachment. He he… Lawmaking politicking certainly just got greasier from all indications, and sadly, Patricia Etteh might just be the first head to roll. But this, as they say sometimes, is the land of cats with nine lives. That said, if she does go down, at least she won’t go down alone. Maybe she could become the “Deep Throat of Long-Throats”…

Naira Redenomination: The FEC/CBN Face-Off

It did not sit very well with me when I heard earlier this week that the CBN Governor Charles Soludo (yeah, that’s him on the pic) was called before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) by President Yar’Adua to ‘explain’ his policy of naira redenomination. The Naira is Nigeria’s currency and only just shrugged off the inflationary pressures of a debt-ridden, flux-susceptible economy. At the moment the country is practically debt-free and remarkably solvent, with a dollar reserve of over US$40 billion, but the value of the Naira hardly reflects this. Meanwhile market transactions in Nigeria are still predominantly paper-based, entailing that the Central Bank is constantly burdened with the printing of fresh bills to sustain market liquidity, shrinking the monetary base as a result and making it harder to keep inflation at bay or revalue the nation’s currency. A possible solution would be to raise interest rates, effectively dampening loan requisitions, but this move would discourage investors, whom the Nigerian economy rely to supply the much-needed foreign direct investment (FDI). At any rate, a cessation of cash flow would be counterproductive, retarding economic growth and bringing back the lean years when Nigeria crawled, begging bowl in hand, to the Paris Club. But where the status quo to be maintained, the economy would’ve suffered the self-same outcome. Charles Soludo figured it was time for what a certain pastor I know would call “a paradigm shift”.

Last week Tuesday he unveiled his plan, which was essentially a fixed exchange rate policy. He announced that by January 1, 2009, two zeros would be knocked off the naira, placing it at ballpark parity with the dollar (N 1.25 per US$1.00, more precisely), a move that would simultaneously raise its currency value and effectively staunch the mint ‘bleed’, as it were. This is something the Chinese have already done (with resounding success, I might add), and I hear the Ghanaians executed the same play last month, but Soludo’s strategy implementation comes with a twist. He stated in addition that, effective from said date, federal and state government extra-budgetary allocations would be paid out by the CBN to respective parties in dollars. Now that even more drastically diminishes the need for minting vast sums of the naira, being that government is the country’s biggest spender, inducing scarcity of the local currency and fortifying its revaluation. One consequence is that as money is expended at the federal and state levels of government, it is the dollar that gets dissipated, not the naira; this reduces the economy’s monetary base, which has what economists call a ‘contractionary’ effect and lowers inflation, without having to raise interest rates or adversely affecting the spending habits of the capital market. Another positive impact is the attraction of foreign investors, who will reckon the added value of the local currency as a sign of growing market stability, encouraging them to ‘pitch their tents’ more permanently, if you will. Already, the robust fiscal structuring of Nigeria’s banks is well-known by now, a feat made possible by the forward-thinking CBN Governor.

Interestingly, there are other implications drawn from Soludo’s statements which may have stirred quite the hornet’s nest. One inference is that in order to avert the dangers of over-dollarisation of the money market, the CBN may be compelled to regulate both budgetary and extra-budgetary cash flow issued to the federal and state governments. This has raised a few eyebrows in these circles, and there are concerns that, while the government maintains that the autonomy of the CBN is not in question, calls by the economic advisers of the FEC to ‘fine-tune’ the plans might conceal concerted measures to reverse it. At any rate, implementation will require a delicate balancing act, and it is my hope that the need for clarification is the only reason the FEC summoned Soludo to its fortnightly session. But I strongly doubt that yesterday’s courtesy call by the IMF and World Bank emissaries on the CBN Governor were equally innocent. In their statement, they are also here for ‘clarification’, but “methinks more ominous business is afoot”. Here’s why. If my inferences from Soludo’s press statement are accurate, another goal of naira redenomination is to raise its value as a reserve currency in the West African sub-region and across the Sub-Sahara, entailing that countries in these areas will increasingly find it more convenient to compose their currency reserves in naira, alongside the US dollar and the euro. As momentum ramps up in this direction, the naira could fulfil AU visions of a single African currency, at least in contest with regions where the South African rand holds sway, and the hegemony of the dollar could be gravely at risk. Evidently, the IMF and World Bank, minions of the G7, have also been looking into their crystal balls like Soludo, and are here to see if they could not persuade our Nostradamus in other less …‘baleful’ directions, as it were. Hmm…I wonder if such hurried meetings were scheduled when Ghana toed the fixed rate line.

Now the FEC has been advised by its Economic Team, a state brain-trust, to review the date of implementation, i.e August 1 next year, and to reconsider the gradual phasing out the old currency, citing concerns of cost incurred in the process, which admittedly is sound logic but tantamount to a ploy of dilatory tactics. Naysayers like Comrade Abiodun Aremu of the UAD party (never mind what that means), are equating Soludo’s plan with the infamous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), forecasting doomsday if executed. My opinion? The FEC’d be better off not to meddle with the autonomous affairs of the CBN. And might I respectfully suggest that the Comrade shut his pie-hole? Much obliged.

Opportunity for Murderous Impunity - The Yazidi Massacre

The death toll of Iraqis, which in recent times has probably exceeded the length of a million Muslim prayer beads, just got a bit longer. 250 are feared dead, 350 wounded, as Al Qaeda bomb attacks in the Yazidi villages of Khataniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair shattered the rustic tranquil of their abodes in another million clayey pieces. This is not news. What I find bone-chilling is how oh, so nearer this recent spate of bloodletting has brought home the reality that, following America’s evacuation, Iraq is destined to disintegrate in countless shards of tribal fiefdoms on the incarnadine foreground of a brutal civil war.

Until the current Sunni-led attack, Kurdish settlements were for the most part unaffected by Iraqi insurgencies. This observation gave the slightest of hopes to proponents of the American invasion for containment of the vitriolic Sunni-Shiite ethnic conflict within the greater Baghdad geography. That was until general outrage was sparked off by the public stoning of a Yazidi girl who had married a Muslim and converted to Islam. This barbaric ‘honour-killing’ especially incensed Muslims in Iraq, who view the Yazidi as devil-worshippers or devotees of Shaytan, the Qur’anic variant for Satan. For their part, the Yazidi refer to him as Melek Taus ((Tawûsê Melek in Kurdish), or the Peacock Angel, leader of a Heptad of angels who govern the earth. They adhere to a strict code of religious purity, evident in their caste system and intra-marriage customs, which meant that the girl’s apostasy could only be visited with summary ruthlessness. Consider the irony, then, that another faith noted, if infamously, for inviolate compliance with religious purity, Islam, should find this pious display of fundamentalism so palpably odious! In true fundamentalist style, the retaliation was equally unadulterated. In April, Al-Qaeda gunmen shot dead 23 Yazidi factory workers in Mosul. The 3-way bombing detailed above was an assuredly bloody follow-up, claiming more lifes in a single concerted attack than ever witnessed since 2003, according to The Guardian (You've gotta admire their sense of dedication, these extremists!).

And so, with this most recent of blitzes, the vicious arc of extremist violence turns full circle. In the meantime extremists continue their mass butchery gleefully, their bloodlust yet unsated. Bush may have been decried vehemently for opening the Pandora’s Box, but for the extremists, he is their Prometheus, bearing the benevolent gift of purging fire. And Iraq smoulders still within its unslaked flames.

Ajuwaya! ("As You Were!")

Guess what, folks? L'il sis just completed her Corps service! And for those of y'all who are clueless what I'm speakin' of, it's the National Youth Service Corp Programme, a 12-month drudgery all Nigerian graduates undergo before they invade the employment market, sorta like the calm before the storm, the rat-race for jobs, y'know... I'm so proud of her. She just got back from Abuja where she served, bringing in tow three Certificates of recognition for her excellent delivery. That' s her shortly before she left. Don't she look so pert 'n l'il :-)? How time flies, eh...?

On other turn of events, an electric hum buzzed through the nation’s macroeconomic sector with the recent unveiling by Central Bank Governor, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, of his plans to achieve near-parity value of Nigeria’s fiat currency, the Naira, with the US dollar by 2009. Wanna know how this seemingly grandiose plan is gonna work, what pitfalls may likely beset its progress, and why the country is itself, including the President, befuddled by the plan? Keep it here, guys, and you just might find out!

The Great Garden City 'Blackout'

Ah, Port Harcourt, River State, ain’t the Garden City it used to be. A drive through the ‘petropolis’ imparts that foreboding feeling of being watched by a legion of furtive eyes. With security road-blocks dotting major trunk roads, military stations hurriedly erected mid-city and the remnant expatriates only capable of traversing the city in herds, with busloads of military escort at all times, one would be forgiven to think he’d stepped into a state-of-emergency situation. Nightlife in particular is languishing fast in the absence of the foreign big-spenders. Call-girls have never had it so bad. Some are hightailing it to Lagos in droves, where major oil multinationals are said to be relocating. Clubs whose patronage drew heavily from these riggers are closing shop permanently, while others have had to lose a star or two in standards to accommodate the locales and stay in business. A cheerless chore, recounting the downgrade in affairs, especially when one is conversant with what a bustling, breezy fair exploring the city’s seedy suburbia was acclaimed to be (Who, me? I haven’t the slightest idea).

Another industry suffering a serious setback due to the Great Garden City ‘Blackout’ is the infamous abduction racket. Practitioners who just joined the kidnapping business have been sorely distraught to discover that there are no oil expatriates left for easy picking. The result has been a resorting to desperate measures. No longer interested to operate under the guise of ‘freedom-fighting militants’, these man-hunting malefactors are now snatching any human that even remotely reeks of value, grabbing mulatto kids on their way to school, indigenous company managers heading home from church and foreign construction engineers at building sites (I wonder when they’ll start plucking off albinosJ). The latter scenarios recently involved an Elf company manager, Mr Peter Aguma, abducted on his way home from Sunday service, and a Pakistani engineer, who was nabbed while at a construction site in Ogoniland. With options fast thinning out, even relatives of government officials have been targeted. Two weeks ago, armed men beached commando-style on an island in Yenogoa, Bayelsa state, where the Deputy Speaker’s mother was abducted and a message left behind requesting substantial ransom money. The following week the ordeal was repeated, this time involving the Rivers State Governor’s mother. There are political connotations however to these latest events – and haven’t there always been, if one may ask? The crows, it would seem, are coming home to roost.

Needless to say, robbed of steady ransom income, Garden City criminals have resumed their day-job on the streets. Street stick-ups and burglaries have soared – but with a slight elevation in style, it would seem. Recently, a gentleman exited a shopping mall to find his recently purchased Peugeot 206 coupe missing. Expectantly, the fella was devastated, prancing about in panic without a clue what to do. It so happens he’d forgotten his cellphone in the passenger seat, so he hustled to a pay-phone booth and rang it. Starting off with a nervous “Hello,” he waited with bated breath for a response – and was pleasantly surprised. The carjackers calmly acknowledged that they were the robbers that took his car, but that it had only served as a get-away for another operation entirely. It would be parked at So-and-so Street, they said, with the car keys deposited under it, as they weren’t interested in keeping the admittedly low-priced car. Apparently, robbers have taste, too…

PS: On a sad note, it has been reported that the father of the first mulatto child abductee, Margaret, recently died of kidney complications. It is said that he was to travel overseas for medical check-up on his condition before his daughter was kidnapped and the trip had to be delayed, with funds intended for the impending operation diverted to pay the ransom. Meanwhile, it’s become a dog-eat-dog situation on the streets of Port Harcourt with rival militant gangs gunning down each other - to ratchet down the competition, it would seem. Government media is however calling these gunfights the handiwork of varsity cultists. Now, someone enlighten me: why, if these are cult clashes, have no shoot-outs been witnessed on college campuses? Is it just me, or do I smell cover up?

Meet the New Boss

…‘same as the old Boss. Probably the year's most infamous presidential run, Nigeria's search for the nation's Ace has turned out a relay race (duh!). While irate opponents are crying foul, breathing fire and puking on humble pie, the ruling party's government is suspending its gleeful gloat for a more politically expedient route: sending plenipotentiaries to media stations across the nation in the bid to pour oil on troubled waters. Speaking of troubled waters, the country's focal point should be narrowing back to the normalcy of the Nigerian condition - power shortages, unemployment spikes, religious extremist conflicts up North, hostage-takings down South, the whole 'enviable' enchilada. Hm...Mallam Yar'Adua DID say he would unreservedly accept the outcome of April 21. Let's hope he doesn't 'botch' beyond what he'd bargained for.

The Fright to Vote

It’s a manic frenzy that’s gripping our global village in a spit-spewing seizure, from the Americas to Africa, via Europe. Once again the power to arrogate power is in the hands of society’s dregs, and politicians are bending over backwards to blend in with the populace and elicit as much ‘grass-roots’ support they can squeeze out of the sordid bunch, God bless them, rifling deep into their wardrobes for their faded jeans trousers, lumberjack shirts, and dog-bitten baseball caps. Doubtless, some in America (and Australia perhaps, don’t know diddly about the state of oral hygiene Down Under) have had repeated dentist appointments to make their most winsome of smiles sparkle like diamante, adding orthodontic P.A.s to their campaign entourage just in case, not forgetting coiffure specialists, couture impresarios and the ever-indispensable speech smiths. There are high hopes this year in these countries, talk about women and black men on the verge of seizing top office, and smothered snarls and snaps between opponents in the naked bid to blemish reputations, from their choice of running mates to their choice of underwear. All’s fair in love and politics.

So how’s the show back home, you say? Hmm, lemme see…seeing that Nigerians haven’t got qualms over image much (we hold our advanced free fraud supremacy with pride, and the outgoing president looks like a llama’s distant cousin), I guess dentist visits are out of the question. Very little is known about any but the most prominent parties or candidates, and the gazillion-page manifesto compendium for Nigeria’s over 30 parties would drowse you to sleep, if you can avoid a coma. The old mud-slinging routine’s a tradition we’ve honed to perfection here, though – a dominant candidate (a.k.a. ‘Tiku’) has been successfully disqualified as a result, in a maelstrom of audacious and inauspicious (sometimes valid) allegations, lawsuits and federal indictments. Something else election run-ups worldwide share is the race to rake in and shell out titanic sums of money, and in Nigeria, this serves more than just the purpose of oiling the campaign machine. No, money is used in this part of the woods to seek out and retain the services of the worst form of political ‘animals’ – thugs.

Formerly preoccupied with felonies from petty crime, burglary to armed robbery, these deviant hoodlums are now enlisted to brandish their machetes and semi-automatics for a better cause, the push for the absolute, all-corrupting power. They commence their murderous itinerary tomorrow with lower-tier elections, which should involve inspiring the fear of God in voters, especially rival party supporters, stealing and making away with ballot boxes, as well as general rabble-rousing at polling stations far removed from the prying eyes of international observers, y’know, the standard stuff. Of course, they could go ‘covert’ and serial-vote, but that’s old-school, and word on the street is the rigging’s now done in secluded 5-star hotel-rooms weeks earlier. And if you can’t read between the lines, it means the elections’ have already been undertaken by the ‘powers-that-be’ (which isn’t necessarily the government). The winners have already been predetermined; tomorrow and subsequent voting days are whitewash. I may even venture saying that apart from June 12, 1993, no real elections have ever taken place in this country, never mind a census.

So while unsuspecting law-abiding citizens and politicians alike act out the charade, a swarm of hired malefactors are unleashed to antagonize and terrorize with abandon. Indeed, these fastidious rascals have already begun, with reports from a Northern state of buses waylaid by cutlass-wielding youths to demand which way the party allegiances of their passengers leaned. Ah, the sweet air of democratic carte-blanche…

P.S: Since the posting of this article, the Supreme Court ruled on the 16th to overrule the disqualification of Mr. 'Tiku'. There may yet be a silver lining amidst all this bedevilment, eh?

Third World 'Toddies'

I had this write-up in mind ages ago when adoption of African kids first captured the imagination of Tinseltown, and it conveniently escaped my memory until I rediscovered it among my scribbles recently. Still an engaging read, I imagine. You be the judge…

If you thought I meant a warm, tingly beverage import from Sub-Saharan Africa, South America or the poorer parts of East Asia which you could savour in your mouth before retiring to bed at night, you would be forgiven. The word really is a personal corruption, and the objects I intend it for are indeed pleasant little servings of joy that do leave you feeling all warm and tingly inside. Furthermore, they’re better animated than the most sophisticated Asimo™ robot, are able to receive and reciprocate affectionate hugs and kisses, and can be taught to understand and respond to you – in your language of choice. No Energizer batteries or short life expectancies for these ‘toddies’: with the proper dosage of TLC, these precious little bundles of jollity can enliven and entertain you for as long as you live! Celebrities have discovered these nifty, bubbly thingamajigs, and found to their scatterbrained double delight that they’re so much cheaper than Chihuahuas to afford and maintain, so much more titillating than their techie toys and gizmos, and so much more effective publicity stunts than public break-ups!

Ever since Jolie opened the floodgates with Maddox and Zahara (with the best of intentions, I might add), the Third-World Garage Sale of Toddlers has never fared better, with Madge and Meg Ryan among others cashing in on the once-in-a-lifetime acquisition rates and unspeakably lethargic legal codes, while others like Jessica Simpson and Michael Jackson (?!!) are entertaining tentative thoughts to toe the line. At this rate, the day’s not far off when a visit to a Hollywood celeb’s home will reveal pet poodles and Porsches no longer on display; instead, you’d probably see their arms draped round the tiny shoulders of a bright-eyed tyke and them calling to you, “Have you seen my African toddy? His name’s Chilakazulu from Timbouctou, and he can say ‘I love you’ in American!” Ah, I guess it’s probably more glamorous to have a foreign kid with an unpronounceable name who can speak three syllables of English than to adopt a 4-year-old named Bob from a foster home in down-town Kentucky...

A Day in the Delta

It is almost amusing that if one dredged the backwaters of history, one would be hard put to find anything spectacularly unique about this soggy, mangrove-fringed ridge of West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. But today, after Royal Dutch Shell struck oil there in 1954, after oil multinationals swarmed the area like termites on Prozac, and after the CNN swung the spotlight on the kidnap jamboree there by youth militants that has netted among others 24 Filipinos (and counting), the former fish-trapping, stilt-house-living locales of Nigeria’s mangrove rainforests wake to the reality of instant celebrity status, however infamous, just by being citizens of the Niger Delta. That’s the miracle of cable, folks.

Of course, the poisonous oil slicks have asphyxiated to endangerment the edible fish population, and the fisherman’s career along with it; the gas flare stacks blaze interminably like a hundred statues of green-house-gas liberties, making the Niger Delta the only region in Africa visible from space at night besides South Africa; and the average man here can barely scrape together one US dollar to his name each day. But that’s ok. For you see, if you believe the news media (a.k.a. the ‘formal grapevine’) these days, a young man here has so many options. You could join the rash of oil bunkering ‘entrepreneurs’, mostly bankrolled by unscrupulous statesmen, and enjoy the dividends of democracy directly: by vandalising oil pipelines and selling the pilfered produce (gasoline is most preferred) to renegade trading shippers from Russia or the Ukraine. Cool dollars, baby! That’s just the day-job. You could then engage in the oil-for-guns programme and hustle your way into the presently lucrative hostage-taking business. If you’re lucky, you might make breaking news on the CNN, dashing across international waters on a speedboat with a Kalashnikov in hand and a cotton condom on your head. And the plot thickens: at night, you get to rendezvous at a five-star hotel with high-powered executives wielding suitcases literally bursting with foreign currency – your foreign currency. Oh, and the champagne is on the house. 2007 is a good year, no?

No doubt, there are a couple of occupational hazards – government operatives hard at your heels, the occasional pipeline blast, and with every passing day, it seems there’re as many white men staying in the Delta as there’s hair on Britney’s head – but it shouldn’t matter. All in a day’s work. And as long as the Delta bleeds oil, they’ll be back. So until government gets it act together and the world finds a cure for the ‘Dutch Disease’, let us, as we say here in the Delta, “make hay while the Sun sets…”

Suffering and Smiling

It’s the height of the sunny season here in Equatorial Africa, and every day’s temperature reading is giving a new definition to the term ‘global warming’ (“38^oC in Rio? ‘Big deal. Yesterday we had 41!”). The real scale-tipper though, is the amount of pedestrians padding down the streets in my town. It’s like the collapse of a termite hill. The reason for this quite literal groundswell is due what I’d like to call the Law of Unintended Consequences. See, the Governor slapped a $100 tax on motorbike commuters, the most preferred and most plentiful transport merchants in the city. But these ‘Ruff Riders’ weren’t having it, so he got cops to pick up defaulters. Why, that really riled them bikers, who got Fast and Furious on their tormentors, setting a police station ablaze and razing down the quarters with Molotov cocktails. And before you could say “Red Alert!” the Guv gave the green-light for a martial crack-down, with the permission to use “extreme prejudice”. Soon there were police officers everywhere, every alley, crook and culvert, waiting to pounce on anyone riding a two-wheel. Sadly, that backfired on the transport system, and the city woke the next morning to find the streets bereft of their favourite ‘Okada’ riders, as they are fondly known.

Now, on a typical working day, as early as 5 am, you’ll see a steady pour of nine-to-fivers trudging the sidewalk to work like a disordered Indian file of worker ants, eager to avoid the unforgiving dawn of the sun. Late sleepers are forced to use the only other means of transport – the buses, beat-up steel traps that grunt irritably when passengers hop on board, threatening to come apart any moment.. As such, the passengers don’t sit on as much as squat over the seats, rather like you would over a public toilet seat. In fact, it isn’t long before you start thinking you might be in a toilet; the ambience inside gives off a globigerina ooze of unwashed armpits, and soon the steaming heat has sweat dripping down your back, to sizzle on the iron seat between your butt-cheeks, which themselves are steadily baking like poached eggs. Fortunately, the bus-stop pulls near and the passengers are almost grateful to get off the bus unto the sidewalk, back under the bristling hot sun.

The only ones who don’t seem to be bothered of the sun are the contractor Arabs working here. A couple of them are browsing the market stalls, with one sucking away at a cigarette like it contains some coolant. His nicotine-stained fingers are scratching away interminably at his head, though; I guess the heat wave’s annoying his hair lice, the way dandruff’s powdering off his crown like nuclear fallout. I couldn’t care less – I’m getting back home and can’t stop thinking about that cold shower… When I get there, the security light outside’s on. That’s a surprise. Having constant power from the national grid here is like the sighting of a shooting star – it almost never happens. Having power at all comes in hiccups. Because of that, almost every home’s got generators. Not that they get plenty use these days: petrol’s now a dollar per litre (used to be half that a month ago, but who’s counting?).

Well, the power stays for 5 hours – another surprise – before there’s a blackout and everyone’s fated for another hot, humid, hapless night in the ‘Paradise City’. As usual. No matter. I think I’ll sleep on the roof tonight in my birthday suit and listen to some tennis commentary on the radio, y’know, try to beat the heat – on second thought, maybe not. Some NASA scientist may get the nutty idea to point the Hubble Space Telescope back to Earth, and next thing you know, I’m the latest download on U-tube (“I know you said to view the Big Dipper, sir, but this constellation right here could make astronomical history!”). Hmm. Quite the quandary. Holler if you spring any better ideas, people :-)

Leaks

“Drip…drip…drip…KABOOM!!!!...” This seems to be the recurring sound these days across Nigeria’s pipeline sites. Hundreds of charred cadavers lie strewn across the bordering right-of-ways, with flaming jerry cans scattered between the bodies like hideous confetti. Hours after, the infernos rage still, defying the dousing efforts of panicky villagers and mediocre firemen, billowing for days even under heavy-duty Julius Berger hoses, until they flag, falter, then fail, spent of fuel. Each time, the country’s oil monolith, the NNPC, blames the squalor-driven desperation of the corpses for the dastardly acts of roguery. Conveniently, the roasted slabs of flesh cannot protest, forever muted by the fires that claimed them and all decipherable evidence, while the real vandals slip away with their loot, mentally anticipating their next serpentine strike...

Pipeline vandalism is regularity in Nigeria, more than the authorities would have us believe, and only waxes sensational when there are fires. It is a super-coordinated franchise spanning through the crooked corridors of state, from the underhanded senators who employ the vandals, the compromised oil officials who detail such information as when the pipelines is actually carrying petrol, to corrupt customs men who grant passage and proffer bogus shipping documents ferrying the illicit premium motor spirit, i.e. petrol, to buyers in the black market. Usually the motives have been purely glut-driven, but recent attacks on an important flow station, the Atlas Cove, point to more macabre intentions.

‘Atlas Cove’ is a term that has been used frequently in recent news reports of the vandalism acts. Located in Mosimi, Lagos state, it is one of the nerve centres in Nigeria’s pipeline system from which imported gasoline is pumped to the rest of the nation, to the tune of 58-60 million litres monthly (“Er-hem, that is 36 million litres. Officially, of course”). Three weeks ago, an Awori pipeline supplying this site was vandalised and a fire started that killed over 270 people. Days later, flow units in Atlas Cove itself were vandalised. Repairs were hurriedly put through and for two weeks it was all-clear – until Tuesday last week, when the vandals struck again at an NNPC pipeline in the Ijegbu area of Lagos state, prompting the NNPC to suspend pumping to Atlas Cove yet again. And judging from the non-random nature of these attacks, they are not about to end anytime soon.

It’s been a steady build-up from as far back as February 8 2006, when the Escravos-Warri pipeline that transports crude oil to Nigeria’s Kaduna and Warri refineries were attacked. Since then, vandalism of products pipelines have occurred predominantly in three axes crucial to petroleum products distribution in the country i.e. the Atlas Cove-Mosimi, Abuja-Suleja and Port Harcourt flow stations, moving up from only 750 line breaks in 2003 to over 2700 between January and September last year, about the same time the politics hype began to herald the 2007 elections season. The systematic stab at Nigeria’s economic lifeblood is no error. Someone is attempting to force the nation to its knees, possibly for political reasons.

Meanwhile the government appears desperate to restore normalcy, diverting gasoline vessels to discharge at private depots. Pipeline sites are naturally bristling with the military. Security is however also being tightened surreptitiously in ways unconnected with the line breaks, with the police force beefed up numerically in strategically located states. To give you an idea, the state capital in which yours truly's domiciled has been supplied with enough servicemen to capably mount surveillance in grids of a 5-mile radius.

Is someone nudging Nigeria into an impending state of emergency? And to what pernicious end? Could it be phantom enemies of democracy that stand to benefit? Could it be Biafran secessionists - or perhaps protagonists of the botched Third Term campaign? Who in the world could be responsible? Who indeed…?

Annan and New Year Resolutions

peace (pēs) - tranquillity; freedom from war; cessation of hostilities; harmonious relations

pacifism (pas’i-fizm) - the belief that all international disputes can be resolved by arbitration; the doctrine that all violence is unjustifiable

When the clock struck midnight on the 1^st of January, 2007, a great many people may have greeted it with an expectant half-smile. They may have listened blissfully as the chimes rang out, each seemingly pregnant with the promise of some scintillating string of novel experiences, some titillating beginning, a fresh start. Not Kofi Annan. For him, the chimes were a death-knell heralding a hearse, with his career lying stiff as a stockfish in the coffin it bore.

Oh no, Annan was not fired. It’s just procedure. He’d served his term, he’d done his bit. And for the record, Annan embodied the quintessence of the international diplomat. His two-term tenure as secretary-general was not only unprecedented but a bizarre deviation from informal UN policy, a clear indication of his popularity among peers and masterly ambassadorial adroitness. During this time he executed a monumental streamlining of the institution, waged an unrelenting war on HIV/AIDS, and spun into action the Magna Carta of human rights restoration, the Millennium Development Goals Initiative, at a pace nothing short of unabashedly admirable. Not least of all, he was jointly awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize alongside the establishment he so selflessly served, a befitting crowning glory to a distinguished diplomatic career.

Annan could not rest easy on his laurels, however. This is because, if truth be told, Annan was not rewarded for being a peace-maker, but for being a pacifist. He’d honed the habit to fervently adjure against violence with the passion of a Pentecostal preacher, to preach peace with the piety of a Pope, when all he really advocated for was passivity, and for him, conflict resolution by arms was really not a question of conscience, but of convenience. His talent for equivocation was especially evident when 1,000,000 lives were chopped down in Rwanda because as UN Under-Secretary General, Peacekeeping Operations, he allegedly advised against an armed intervention in the interests of ‘regional stability’. Until years later when the outrage was universally vilified, the official UN definition of the Tutsi massacre was not outright genocide, but ‘acts of genocide’. But if he hadn’t proven his semantic skills with Rwanda, he definitely outdid himself with Darfur, where he spent three years orchestrating elaborate round-table ‘peace’ talks while the Janjaweed methodically decimated 400,000 Darfurians in cold blood. That bloodbath, thanks to him, is till date far from over.

The picture was not complete however. The world needed a scapegoat, and in his farewell speech, Annan left us in no doubt, proceeding to give America the best diplomatic dressing-down he could muster, proclaiming the world had become less safe because of America’s incursion on Iraq. Of course, if one gauges the 57,000 body count (or 100, 000 - or 500,000 for that matter, according to certain sources) as a result of that incursion against those enumerated above as a result of ‘peaceable arbitration’, there is no doubt to the rational mind why the world is less safe today. It makes one wonder what the outcome of World War II could’ve been if the fate of Great Britain had been left to Neville Chamberlain (the pacifist) and not Winston Churchill (the ‘warmonger’). What if America had not joined the Allied forces? What could’ve happened in Yugoslavia if NATO had not intervened? What would’ve become of Liberia or Sierra Leone today if the ECOMOG forces of West Africa had relented to intervene militarily, and proposed peace talk marathons instead? One sad yet inalienable fact history has taught us is that the majority of long-running conflicts experienced in our world has been perpetuated by psychopaths and megalomaniacs, for which the cold reality of the need for peace is driven home only if borne in the image of a bullet.

And if Annan were weak on history, perhaps he should’ve recalled from his Methodist school biology lessons that violence as a response to unjustified violence should never be ruled out because the human being is of necessity so conditioned by virtue of the basic ‘fight or flight’ instinct. Not that it would be any use teaching the distinguished sexagenarian new ‘tricks’. He lost that opportunity on Dec. the 31^st. Not you, though, dear reader. So get this: whatever your well-intentioned resolutions for the New Year, be sure that some of them will brace your back to the wall. And make no mistake, each time you vacillate, each time you hesitate, each time you relent to fight back, to ‘do the right thing’ regardless of cost, a piece of you will die, until your will crumbles inexorably from the inability to bear the brunt of failure. Then it will not matter whether you live to be 68 like Annan, or even a hundred. Every passing second will sound like a death-knell to you, because inside, you’re already dead.

Evil, they say, prevails when good men fail to act. Enough said. Have a blessed one, folks.