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For those of us who
found Jesus in a crib, not in Bethlehem of Judea, but in the goat shade
in our remote African villages, celebrating Christmas meant a change in
the normal course of our daily lives. The birth of Jesus meant that
something different would happen in the family diet as well as in the
ways we normally costumed ourselves.

There was no real Christmas if
there was no rice to be eaten in a way it was not eaten in our normal
daily dieting. Christmas was, for us, rice and more rice and more rice!
And of course there was no Christmas rice if there was no animal to
kill and bleed, at least a fowl. There was no proper Christmas if there
were no set of new clothes and shoes to put on.

How could anyone
approach Mary’s Boy-child in his crib with old clothes on? Christmas
meant the newness we had never known, a newness of the old story. But
it also particularly meant some special noise in the neighbourhood: the
noise of cooking and eating; the noise of the arrival of the people of
the city; the noises of fireworks, locally made from matches and
carbide or wrapped-up explosives brought by the people from the city;
the noises of some new masquerade or group dance, and of some
house-to-house carolling and carousing; the noises of noises in our
feasting hearts, et cetera.

Christmas, the
perspective of the village, still is the time for the city to remember
what it has almost forgotten. The people of the city will visit the
village and add to the warmth and noise in the air. City things make
Christmas in the village glow and so every family looks forward to the
return of its ambassadors from the city.

Perhaps this is one
thing that Igbo ethnic persons in Nigeria are now known for: every
Christmas and New Year, they must return to their villages to make
their homesteads warm and sufficiently noisy. None wants to deny their
family the joy of the noise of that reunion.

There are family
meetings to be held, disputes to be settled, relationships to be
serviced. There are community projects to launch and funds to be
raised. It is a time to make the village begin to happen again as a
“community” and those who fail to return without any good reason are
seen as people who have chosen to be “outside” the community, in fact
some thoughts away from self-ostracism! Christ is born in Bethlehem, a
choir sings. But, hold it there! Bethlehem is no other place than my
village in Anambra State, Nigeria. If you say that is a lie, then you
would be the one to pay the
ten-ten-thousand-Naira-plus-five-cartons-of-beer fine that the
Development Union of my village has slammed upon any member not found
in the village this Christmas for the launch of a new project. Yes,
“TEN-TEN thousand Naira” fine plus-or-minus the usual gragra from the
Union’s Executive and harassment by the Provost, the official police
officer of the Union.

That Bethlehem is
my village and my village is Bethlehem where three-times-three wise men
from Eastern Nigeria must go also means that other parts of Nigeria
where they live and do their businesses would become empty during
Christmas. I am not sure their hosts in these parts of the country like
it. The shops would be locked up for at least two weeks and it would be
difficult to see where to buy what one needs or to get a service one
requires. I am not sure the pastors in the churches they attend in
these other parts of the country like it either, for it means that the
offertory tray would be starved throughout this very “fertile” period.
Ah well, the churches in the villages rejoice and thank God that, as
the Igbo say, the termite has eventually fallen for the toad after
flying about.

It is also some
good business for the people of the road: commercial vehicle operators,
touts, fast food vendors, beggars, emergency motor mechanics, the
police, (ah, yes, the POLICE!), the customs officials, vehicle
inspection officers, and other uniformed and non-uniformed problem
people on Nigerian roads. The people of the road look forward to the
celebration of the birth of Christ for an improvement in their income.
Christmas, for them, means more noise in their pockets or that the
new-born king has redistributed wealth, so that someone has to pay
extra for looking for a noisy celebration in another location on the
Nigerian map. Their Christmas has to be noisier than someone else’s
too, after all, the Star that is leading the three-times-three wise men
to where Jesus lies in the crib in the village also has to drop its
light on the affairs of other social actors.

Yes, my Christmas is noisier than yours because I am one of the
three-times-three wise men whose journey, too, is a cause for
celebration, even when it creates some emptiness here and some
congestion there!

It was only a few
weeks ago that I wrote about an experience which I had in Abuja
regarding the attitude of Nigeria’s older generation towards the up and
coming generation. I have also written about our culture of
‘gerontocracy’, the attitude of making the younger ones take a back
seat regardless of how many goofs are made by the elders.

Last Sunday, I was
at a friend’s place when we were introduced to a young man whom I am
very impressed with. His name is Tolulope Iruoye. Mr. Iruoye is twenty
seven, but has already achieved a lot. The problem is that he has not
exactly been recognised by his country, more importantly, his good work
has not received the attention it deserves, and as a result has not
started to touch the lives it is capable of touching.

Mr. Iruoye took an
early interest in knowing how things work and naturally gravitated
towards engineering. He says that he loved viewing pictures of
electrical designs from about age six. By the time he was six (when my
three-year older self was climbing trees), Tolu had built his first
batteries, and by ten (when young Chxta was being heart-broken for the
first time), Tolu was already repairing electrical devices. Two years
later, he had built a mini-radio transmitter. Six years down the line
at age eighteen, self-trained Tolu designed and built an inverter.

Over the years, he
has designed and constructed many different devices such as voltage
stabilizers, inverters, home security systems, solar power systems, and
a whole lot more. The device which impressed me the most is what he
calls ‘Magic Box’ which gives the user access to his electrical systems
from anywhere in the world using a mobile phone. This device was tested
in our presence when someone from London made a call to turn on a
device in front of our very eyes. He has clients in Lagos, Benin and
even in neighbouring Cotonou, Benin Republic.

However, I am of
the opinion that Tolu’s capacity is nowhere near being realised. For
crying out loud, the boy lugs a rucksack around to show his devices.
This in an economy where power is still a serious issue.

What Tolu needs is
money to achieve his potential. How does he raise that money? Does he
go to a bank? Nigeria’s banks are not lending at the moment, and even
if they were, the interest rates would be such that Tolu would
essentially be working for them, and would not achieve much. I have
seen too many good business ideas crumble under the unrealistic burdens
imposed by Nigerian banks. So how does he get the money?

In 2004 a young
Harvard student started a web site and moved from Boston to California.
He met with some people who liked his idea, believed it could work, and
invested $500 000 into it. Now the young man is the world’s youngest
billionaire, and the people who gave him money have reaped their
investment many times over. That story leads to the question where are
the people in Nigeria who have money? Why can they not invest in
bright, young minds like Tolu who would not only give them an excellent
return on their investment, but also ease the burden on Nigeria by
providing employment for a lot of other young Nigerians?

We need venture capitalists in Nigeria, unfortunately, our older generation refuses to think out of the box.

Since Wednesday the
15th of December, the government and people of Ghana have been thrown
into celebrations as they join the global league of oil producing
countries. Ghanaian President John Atta Mills, opened the valve at the
Jubilee field where oil was discovered in commercial quantity in 2007.
The field has about 500 million barrels proven reserves and a potential
of over a billion barrels. The first phase of the production has begun
with about 55,000 barrels per day with a potential increase of 120, 000
barrels in January 2011.

The jubilee
partners include Tullow Oil plc (37.7 percent), Anadarko Petroleum Corp
(23.49 percent) Kosmos Energy (23.49 percent), and Ghana National
Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) (13.75 percent) Sabre Oil and Gas (2.81
percent) and E.O. Group (1.75 percent). Oil production has a potential
of supplying 400 million dollars worth of revenue to Ghana’s 2011budget
and one billion dollars annual income in subsequent years. However
there is widespread fear that events may go the way they have gone in
many other oil rich African countries especially neighbouring Nigeria.

Although it has
been more than three years since oil was discovered in Ghana, there is
still no legislation to regulate the sector. The Ghana Petroleum and
Exploration Bill 2010 is still being debated in the parliament. As the
valve opens for oil to flow, Ghana may depend on an ad hoc regulatory
architecture until the Bill is passed into law. As a country with no
oil production experience, Ghana will need to build up a brand new
bureaucracy and man power for the sector to take off. With an apparent
lack of indigenous man power, an option may be to import personnel from
neighbouring Nigeria while an aggressive man power development
programme is launched. Many civil society activists believe that a
particular clause in the Bill that seeks to prevent government from
securing oil backed loans has been excised. Speculations are therefore
rife that these gaps will provide opportunities for multinational oil
companies who are in partnership with the Ghanaian National oil company
to have a field day. In many African countries like Nigeria and Angola,
this is the case. Multinational oil companies have ripped of many host
governments because they lack the requisite capacity to negotiate
favourable agreements. What has therefore happened is that the
agreements entered into mostly turn out to be unusually skewed in the
favour of these companies. The so called natural resource curse is
therefore something Ghanaians must watch out for. Former Venezuelan oil
minister and cofounder of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC),
Joan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, once predicted that oil was the devil’s
excrement that will only bring ruin to countries where it is found.

He was referring to
a situation where many countries that are rich with natural resources
have not managed to get their development right. Such countries depend
on oil exports and overtime become economically troubled, often
becoming authoritarian and conflict ridden. A very important symptom of
the resource curse is increased appetite for spending due to the oil
boom.

A former Nigerian
military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, was quoted as saying on the
national television during the oil boom of the 1970s that “fellow
Nigerians our problem is no longer money but how to spend it”. There is
also the case of volatility of oil prices and fiscal indiscipline which
hampers growth and poverty alleviation. The flow of petrodollars
replaces more stable and sustainable revenue streams exacerbating
patronage and encouraging development as well as accountability
deficits. The situation makes it difficult for local manufacturers to
compete while incentives become distorted. The Ghanaian economy has
shown very commendable positive growth signs recently and must strive
not to allow her growth trajectory to be distorted by the flow of
petrodollars.

One of the greatest
weaknesses of the Africa’s extractive industry is the lack of a strong
regulatory environment. This is sometimes due to capacity weakness or
corruption. Ghana has an opportunity to insist on a regulatory
environment that equates international best practice. Ghana National
Petroleum Corporation must strive to be everything that Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is not. A recent study the
program on Energy and Environment at Stanford University describes NNPC
as “neither a real commercial entity or a meaningful oil operator. It
functions as an instrument of patronage. Each transaction generated by
its profuse bureaucracy provides an opportunity for well connected
individuals that act as gate keepers whose approval must be secured in
contracting processes. It ties oil operations to massive red tape which
increases cost and uncertainties (corruption) and deters investment”.

Multinational oil
companies are the biggest beneficiaries of these shady practices as
they implement their ‘famous’ double standards. While they are happy to
enforce high standards in their home country, they insist on an
entirely porous standards in host countries in Africa in active
connivance with government officials. Ghana must be vigilant to enter
into business deals that can better the lot of her people.

Most importantly
Ghana needs to look at the human poverty, infra structural deficit and
ecological catastrophe in the Niger Delta region to wake up from their
slumber and thread with care!

Uche Igwe, Africa Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson Centre sent this piece from Washington DC, USA

Election violence
has become part of the mix in African countries – something to be jaded
about; no longer breaking news. We fight over power – we kill and maim
the innocent; it’s become part of the problems that ail us and threaten
to swallow us.

So, it must be
that the hands behind the nefarious Kenyan post-election violence in
2008 assumed that it was business as usual, and no one would be held
accountable for the atrocities. There was, after all, serious violence
at the 1992 and the 1997 elections, and the continued fact of electoral
violence has been blamed on what some activists have called “a culture
of impunity”. Indeed, many African countries can identify with this
culture of impunity, a common thread many of them share.

In Kenya’s 2008
case, following the disputed election results of December 2007,
protests began all over the country, powered by militias and a power
drunk police force.

According to the
ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, “victims were hurt. They
were raped, their homes burnt and they lost their cattle, they lost all
means to support themselves. We are siding with them. We will do
justice.”

Last week, the
chickens began to come home to roost. International Criminal Court
investigators are ready to pinpoint suspects that they claim are behind
the violence. Many of course have warned that, in that polarized
country where the coalition government is barely surviving chaos and
different factions are in constant battle mode, naming political
perpetrators might lead to an increase in tension and violence. But
then the law is the law, actions must have consequences and
accountability is necessary to build a just society.

This probe – that
has become popular across the country – began in March of this year to
investigate the death of more than 1000 and the displacement of tens of
thousands, undermining the image of Kenya as one of the better examples
of how governance can work in the continent and the fact that
governance in the continent can be run on stability.

Surely, it is more
important to work to ensure that kind of violence doesn’t occur again
than to massage the fragile egos of politicians who care less about the
long term existence of the country than on the short term weight of
their pockets. Citizens of any country deserve to be protected by the
state and live in the assurance that measures will always be constantly
taken to preserve their lives and sustenance.

That is what is
happening in Kenya now – or has begun to happen. Either way it is a
huge step, and we join many across the continent in applauding it. The
suspects to be named are expected to be from the two main political
factions in the country, and many of its ‘big men’ including business
chiefs and public officials, and if this is the case, even better to
send a strong message to politicians and their acolytes alike that
lives are infinitely more important than power.

The prosecutor in
this case seems determined to pursue all legal and popular methods to
ensure that justice is brought to the victims of this violence and this
never happens again. To prove its effectiveness, many politicians in
that country have begun to run scared, trying to stave off what seems
like the inevitable. Even better, there seems to be a plan to have
local trials complement the efforts on the ICC. In a country where,
like Nigeria, high level criminals are routinely let off the hook, this
is a ray of hope for the common man.

It is also a ray
of hope for the many average Africans oppressed by their own leaders
and seemingly powerless to set things right.

Perhaps Kenya can become the shining light for a continent desperately in need of a road map out of its darkness.

The Austrian-Jewish
novelist and playwright Stefan Zweig once famously described Brazil,
his adopted home, as “the land of the future” — a country of eternal
potential. Today, Brazil is an increasingly self-confident emergent
world economic power, a technological-industrial state of the first
rank, thanks to visionary leaders such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and
Luis Iñacio Lula da Sliva, who have turned around the fortunes of the
country.

Nigeria,
unfortunately, seems to have inherited the questionable mantle of being
Stefan Zweig’s land of the future – a country forever in suspended
animation.

Last week, during
Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th, a conference was held under the
Abuja Distinguished Speaker Series (ADSS) on the theme of “Unlocking
Nigeria’s Wealth Potentials”. The ADSS is a joint initiative of the
Abuja Investment Company Ltd (AICL), the commercial and investment
agency of the Federal Capital Territory and the Centre for Policy and
Economic Research (CEPER), an Abuja-based macroeconomics and public
policy think tank founded by yours sincerely. The aim of the series is
to bring to our Federal Capital world leaders in business, government
and academia to speak on issues of national and international
importance. It is part of efforts to place Africa’s most beautiful
capital on the map in terms of cutting-edge ideas that would help
transform our country.

Last week saw the
launching of the maiden lecture by Professor Peter Lewis, Director of
the African Studies Programme at the elite Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. The welcome address
was given by the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, the gentle
and soft-spoken Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed. The event was declared open
by the President of the Senate, David Mark. A brief introduction was
made by the Managing Director of AICL, Abdu Mukhtar, a Harvard Medical
School graduate who has become a successful finance and investment
executive. Participants were drawn from industry, finance, government
and the international agencies. Among the speakers were: Bart Nnaji,
Special Adviser to the President on Power; Andrew Alli, CEO of the
African Finance Corporation; Mustapha Bello, Director-General of the
Nigerian Investment Corporation (NIPC); Ernest Ndukwe, former Executive
Vice-Chairman of the National Communications Commission; Ikenna Nwosu,
CEO of Mooregate Ltd; Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Founder and CEO of the
Growing Business Foundation of Nigeria; Isa Odidi, founder/CEO of
IntelliPharmaceutics Ltd, a billion dollar publicly quoted firm based
in Toronto, Canada; Hassan Usman, CEO of Aso Savings Ltd; and my humble
self.

Peter Lewis provided the main lecture around which three round tables were organised.

His paper, titled
“Can Nigeria transform its Economy? Lessons from Asia” drew from his
famous book, Growing Apart: Oil, Politics and Economic Change in
Indonesia and Nigeria (Michigan University Press, 2007). It is one of
the most important books to be written on comparative Nigerian
development over the last two decades and I recommend it to all those
who feel a calling to leadership in this country.

Lewis makes the
point that Nigeria and Indonesia started in the 1960s with similar
initial conditions but ended up with development trajectories. Both are
large, populous oil producers; both are ethnically divided societies;
both underwent bloody civil conflicts as well as corrupt military
tyrannies. But that is where the similarities end. Unlike Nigeria, the
Indonesian power elites managed to broker a national development
consensus that oversaw massive investments in infrastructures and human
capital. Indonesia pursued an agriculture-led, export-oriented
industrialisation strategy that has seen the country reduce its
dependence on oil as principal source of government revenues. Most
importantly, Indonesian elites kept their ill-gotten wealth within the
country. They invested at home, providing jobs and opportunities for
their own people.

We did the complete
opposite. Out of the US$850 billion we have made from petroleum over
the last four decades, between US$200 and US$400 billion have been
squirreled abroad. Our physical infrastructures, including power, are
in shambolic conditions and our education system is fourth-world. The
tragedy of our situation is that most of us do not believe in our
country. This encourages the haemorrhaging of the economy through
capital flight which in turn deepens the vicious cycle of poverty. If
people decide to take everything abroad the country will remain poor
and our people will continue to wallow in destitution.

What is the ultimate solution?

For my part, I
believe part of it lies in the declaration of an amnesty on all
expatriated funds for two years, after which the government should be
free to prosecute those who have pillaged our national treasure.

That could rake in
an estimated 25 trillion naira, which is more than what we need to
realise our much-vaunted ambition of being among the top 20 economies
by the coming decade. We must also create conditions that make it
attractive to invest at home. I regard Indonesia as one of the ‘softer’
Asian countries. We have to benchmark ourselves against China, Japan and South Korea.

History teaches that nations can never rise above the vision and
endowment of their leaders and the heights of their ambitions. I have
never wavered in my faith about our country’s high and noble destiny.
If we do not believe in ourselves nobody will believe in us.