Nigeria Content Online

The 2005 “Ig Nobel
Prize” (awarded annually by an organisation called “Improbable
Research”, in recognition of “achievements that first make people
laugh, and then make them think”) for Literature was awarded to “the
Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail
to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions
of readers to a cast of rich characters – General Sani Abacha, Mrs.
Mariam Sanni Abacha,
Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others – each of whom requires just a
small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great
wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share
with the kind person who assists them.”

(Wole Soyinka would
be intrigued, wouldn’t he?) Every time I come across Nigeria in
newspaper articles and blog posts in the international media, a
sizeable amount of the commentary that follows chooses to ignore
whatever the theme of the piece is and insist instead on showing off
their knowledge of Nigeria as the Land of the Rising Scam, amongst many
other ills.

The chapter on
Nigeria in Richard Dowden’s book, ‘Africa, Altered States, Ordinary
Miracles’, begins thus: “Nigeria has a terrible reputation. Tell
someone that you’re going to Nigeria, and if they haven’t been there
themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria,
and they laugh.”

It was this
“terrible reputation” that so riled the Obasanjo administration that it
spent millions of dollars trying to create a new reputation for
Nigeria, as the “Heart of Africa.” (Forget the fact that when many
people think of “Africa” and “Heart”, the next word that comes to mind
is “Darkness”). Obasanjo went on CNN years ago to play the lead actor’s
role in an ad extolling the virtues of the giant of Africa. “Welcome to
Nigeria” (or something like that), he announced.

It is this same
reputation that annoyed Obasanjo that today riles Dora Akunyili,
Minister for Information and Rebranding. So baffled is she by the fact
that no one seems to see Nigeria for what it really is – a great nation
of good people – that she is often to be found singing Songs of
Lamentations at public events.

One imagines that
perhaps there is a conspiracy against Nigeria, and that even Nigerians
are in on it. Everybody who is anybody has weighed in and put forward
his or her own treatise. Journalist Karl Maier’s 2002 book on Nigeria
was titled “This House Has Fallen”. Diplomat John Campbell’s ‘Nigeria’
book (he was US Ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007), forthcoming
later this year, is titled “Dancing on the Brink.” Not even the CIA is
left out, years ago they announced that Nigeria has an expiry date:
2015. One wonders why they didn’t adjust it to 2014, the year Nigeria
would have been a hundred years old…

The way things are
going; the way Nigeria’s bad reputation is being ruthlessly colonised
by expat writers and journalists and pollsters and international
organisations, I will not have any NEW bad thing to say about Nigeria
in my ‘in-progress’ book – tentatively titled: “Three, Two, One…”
(you get the drift, don’t you?)- about how awful Nigeria is, and how
close it is to imploding / exploding.

Much of this year
my book has come along nicely; Nigeria has provided every ingredient
for what my synopsis (sent to publishers around the world) describes as
“the most pessimistic book ever about any country this side of the Big
Bang”: the country’s admission into the expanded Axis of Evil on the
strength of Farouk AbdulMutallab’s achievements; that most bizarre
constitutional crisis that effectively “uselessed” much of the first
half of the year; the regular as clockwork killings in Jos; the
buffoon-ridden road to Aso Rock, and so on.

My progress is
sadly being threatened by a combination of two things: the immense
international media goodwill Nigeria seems to be enjoying as it clocks
fifty (call it a “ceasefire” if you will; CNN, BBC et al have been
devoting too much time in recent days to “celebrating” the country);
and the sense of excitement that seems to have seized the country’s
citizens as October 1 draws near. For, cynical as they may appear to
be, Nigerians are ‘confirmed’ suckers for hope, and very few are going
to be able to resist the temptation to revel in the year long
merrymaking that will commence in a few days.

My only consolation
is this: that elections are forthcoming. Everyone knows that elections
always bring out the worst in Nigeria and Nigerians. 1964/65, 1983,
1993, 2007 – the pattern is clear: mind boggling rigging and violence
and entertaining dances on the brink.

With that in mind I am actually going to continue writing my book
knowing that if I’m cynical and negative enough I won’t have to alter
one bit after the elections. Hate me all you want, but when my tome
wins the inaugural CIA / John Campbell Prize for Writing on Nigeria,
you’ll be sending me a congratulatory email…

In two days Nigeria
will celebrate fifty years of political independence from Great
Britain. There has been much criticism of the material cost of
celebration as wasteful and excessive. Many say there’s nothing to show
for the golden jubilee by way of a qualitative difference in the
people’s lives, contrary to the promise of independence. A good example
is Dr. Mohammed Salami, a retired permanent secretary, who, at last
week’s Akintola Williams lecture organised by the Nigeria-Britain
Association, urged Britain to withhold or vote against any aid due to
Nigeria because it would not be judiciously spent.

There are those who
say not only is there nothing positive to show, Nigeria, indeed, would
have been better off as a vassal state of Great Britain. One of them is
Dr. Niyi Adedeji, who not only called for continued Britain’s
supervision of Nigeria’s fiscal policies at the same lecture but also
volunteered to provide damaging information about our leaders.

On the other hand
are those who say there’s a lot to thank God for. Nigeria fought a
bitter civil war and has managed to remain one while struggling to
manage its diversity. Nigeria may be small in the eyes of some
Nigerians, but a journey through much of Africa will show that it is
good to be a Nigerian, even as we set our sights on higher grounds.
Nigerians of all ethnicity and religions are distinguishing themselves
in various walks of life. Nigeria may have suffered some reversal of
fortune but she possesses the capacity to be truly the giant of Africa
in many ways.

To be sure the story of Nigeria in the last fifty years is one of mixed blessings.

From the giddy
promise of independence to serve as a beacon of hope to people of
African descent, our leaders enjoyed the grandeur of office without the
matching discipline. Avarice disconnected them from the people, which
ultimately paved way for the military’s misguided foray into
governance. From the painful and destructive civil war to the post war
effort at rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation; from the
buoyancy of the oil sector and rapid infrastructure development, to the
profligate times when Nigeria’s problem was not how to make money but
spend it; from the days of sporting glory when indigenous effort
boosted the spirit of competition and sports men and women took pride
in representing their country, to the waywardness of sports stars that
prefer to monetise honour, the Nigerian media have been part of the
success and the failure.

The limited success
in building a nation out of many nation-states is as much a consequence
of failed leadership as it is the handiwork of a media more polarised
than professional. Historically, media organs in Nigeria tend to rely
heavily on politicians and public funds in their hegemonic contest for
supremacy. Media reporting is often no more than the extension of the
war of the stomach coloured by ethnicity and religion. Ideas are seldom
bad in themselves in our media without wearing a coloured toga,
especially when they touch on our political livelihood. If the country
has been unable to produce a quality professional group of leaders
because of an absence of consensus on the much needed requirements, the
same is true of the media.

As the media
pitched tents with political parties in the first republic, they
parroted their masters’ voices under military rule when the media were
predominantly state-owned and shamelessly went to bed with the highest
bidder in the second republic.

Today, there is a
discernible parochial pattern in the editorial positions of our media.
Many are not even bothering to reflect some balance in their reporting.
The focus is increasingly on the moment, not the hereafter. So, a major
broadcast network cedes its CEO to an aspirant for party candidacy and
every other candidate barely gets a mention.

When they do it is
with distorted visuals or audio sound. What will happen when the proper
inter party campaign commences? At a time the country should be
searching for quality people to find solutions to our stunted growth,
too much energy is being dissipated on the zonal origin of a candidate
and not the character and content of programmes.

If the new
experiment must succeed the media need to reduce the current hysteria
that dominates much of the reporting and focus more on tomorrow’s
progress that can only come from the lessons of the past. The fresh
effort at building democratic governance can turn round things for the
better if we rid our sights of myopia.

We note the ongoing
efforts of our new political umpires to succeed where others have
failed. We urge for more vigilance to ensure they are in tandem with
the national assignment. As the parties search for their candidates,
the media must challenge them to demonstrate clearer vision that they
can do things better than those they seek to replace.

The general public must show greater sensitivity to the issues that
define their existence by going beyond clichés and demanding relevant
programmes and greater commitment to service from the candidates.

Very few novels make clear and provocative arguments about
American life anymore, but Jonathan Franzen’s important new book, “Freedom,”
makes at least two.

First, he argues that American culture is over-obsessed with
personal freedom.

Second, he portrays an America where people are unhappy and
spiritually stunted.

Many of his characters live truncated lives. There’s a woman who
“had formerly been active with the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in
Madison and was now very active in the craze for Beaujolais nouveau.” There are
people who devote their moral energies to the cause of sensitive
gentrification. One of the “heroes” experiences great fits of righteous outrage
when drivers ahead of him change lanes without the proper turn signals.

The central male character, Walter, is good but pushover-nice
and pathetically naive. His bad-boy rival, Richard, is a middle-age guy who
makes wryly titled rock albums and builds luxury decks to make ends meet. He is
supposed to represent the cool, dangerous side of life, but he’s strictly
Dionysus-lite.

One of the first things we learn about Patty, the woman who
can’t decide between them, is that she is unable to make a moral judgment. She
invests her vestigial longings into the cause of trying to build a perfect home
and family, and when domesticity can’t bear the load she imposes, she falls
into a chaos of indistinct impulses.

In a smart, though overly biting, review in The Atlantic, B.R.
Myers protests against Franzen’s willingness to “create a world in which nothing
important can happen.” Myers protests against the casual and adolescent
language Franzen sometimes uses to create his world: “There is no import in
things that ‘suck,’ no drama in someone’s being ‘into’ someone else.” The
result, Myers charges, “is a 576-page monument to insignificance.”

But surely this is Franzen’s point. At a few major moments, he
compares his characters to the ones in “War and Peace.” Franzen is obviously
trying to make us see the tremendous difference in scope between the two sets
of characters.

Tolstoy’s characters are spiritually ambitious – ferociously
seeking some universal truth that can withstand the tough scrutiny of their own
intelligence. Franzen’s modern characters are distracted and hopeless. It’s
easy to admire Pierre and Prince Andrei. It’s impossible to look upon Walter
and Richard with admiration, though it is possible to feel empathy for them.

“Freedom” is not Great Souls Seeking Important Truth. It’s a
portrait of an America where the important, honest, fundamental things are
being destroyed or built over – and people are left to fumble about, not even
aware of what they have lost.

“Freedom” sucks you in with its shrewd observations and the
ambitious breadth. It’ll launch a thousand book club discussions around the
same questions: Is this book true? Is America really the way he portrays it?

My own answer, for what it’s worth, is that “Freedom” tells us
more about America’s literary culture than about America itself.

Sometime long ago, a writer by the side of Walden Pond decided
that middle-class Americans may seem happy and successful on the outside, but
deep down they are leading lives of quiet desperation. This message caught on
(it’s flattering to writers and other dissidents), and it became the basis of
nearly every depiction of small-town and suburban America since. If you judged
by American literature, there are no happy people in the suburbs, and certainly
no fulfilled ones.

By now, writers have become trapped in the confines of this
orthodoxy. So even a writer as talented as Franzen has apt descriptions of
neighborhood cattiness and self-medicating housewives, but ignores anything
that might complicate the Quiet Desperation dogma. There’s almost no religion. There’s
very little about the world of work and enterprise.

There’s an absence of ethnic heritage, military service,
technical innovation, scientific research or anything else potentially lofty
and ennobling.

Richard is an artist, but we don’t really see the artist’s
commitment to his craft. Patty is an athlete, but we don’t really see the team
camaraderie that is the best of sport.

The political world is caricatured worst of all. The
environmentalists talk like the snobbish cartoons of Glenn Beck’s imagination.
The Republicans talk like the warmonger cartoons of Michael Moore’s.

The serious parts of life get lopped off and readers have to
stoop to inhabit a low-ceilinged world. Everyone gets to feel superior to the
characters they are reading about (always pleasant in a society famously
anxious about status), but there’s something missing.

Social critics from Thoreau to Allan Bloom to the SDS authors of
The Port Huron Statement also made critiques about the flatness of bourgeois
life, but at least they tried to induce their readers to long for serious
things. “Freedom” is a brilliantly written book that is nonetheless trapped in
an intellectual cul de sac – overly gimlet-eyed about American life and lacking
an alternative vision of higher ground.

© 2010 New York Times News
Service

On Friday, the
government of the United States took Nigeria off its list of major drug
traffickers where its National Drug Law Enforcement Agency had first
placed this country in 1991, during the administration of President
Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.

According to the
NDLEA, the president of the United States acknowledges that, though our
country used to be a focal point for the global drug trade, it has
taken a number of bold steps to fundamentally alter that state of
affairs, making counter narcotics a major national security issue.

According to the
report, Nigeria, Brazil, and Paraguay were recently removed this year
from the list because they no longer meet the criteria for placement
according to US law. Indeed, for many years, Nigeria was at the centre
of a narcotics trade that transcends national boundaries.

The government has
got this impressive result based on a mixture of imaginative measures
including drug interdiction; effectively blocking off exit entry
points, relentlessly pursuing drug barons and dealing with this problem
with an admirable dispatch and professionalism.

Reacting, Ahmadu
Giade, the Chief Executive of the NDLEA, claimed credit for his bureau
– as he should. In news reports almost daily, there is a steady stream
of information about drugs seized at airports, in aircraft and in other
hideouts. Evidently, the anti-narcotics squad has been working steadily
-this result is not some accident or stroke of good luck; it is the
culmination of consistent and committed efforts towards engaging this
problem.

It brings to mind
something Nigerians do forget – that a lot has changed in Nigeria. At
times of frustration, certain Nigerians – understandably – begin to cry
for the ‘good old days’ of military rule. And there are indices that
can encourage such thinking – certainly the naira, for instance, was
stronger in years past. And the economy was on much surer footing.

However, it is
easy to forget just how bad it was, just how much of a pariah nation
our country had become, and how there was a near breakdown of law and
order. Drug trafficking, the near-industrialisation of advanced fee
fraud and forgery (including, for instance, the evolution of places
like the Lagos centre of forgery called Oluwole or the rise of
counterfeit products in Aba) are living examples.

All of this went
largely unchecked because the country was held hostage by a revolving
door of bandits who found little to fear from the country’s law
enforcement agencies, and managed to confound international crime
detectors too because of the ease with which they operated here.

All that changed
with democracy – one of its consequences being the opening of the civil
space, and the response to the needs of the populace as well as concern
for the country’s place in the comity of nations. The consequence of
this is that successive governments especially – and to his credit –
that of Olusegun Obasanjo – began to aggressively tackle this problem
with the establishment of new anti-corruption agencies, as well
attention to as the importance of transparency and the rule of law.
Above all, giving true authority to the agencies fighting these crimes
helped in no small way.

In addition to
this, there is the transparent fact that with democracy has come the
renewed flourishing of enterprise. New industries have grown – from
telecoms to entertainment – that have ensured viable alternatives for
creative hands. It might not be enough and there is still a whole lot
to be done, but there has been appreciable growth.

This news give us
a certain re-assurance, that though our politicians continue to fail
and that some of those given charge of the commanding heights of the
economy continue to abuse our trust, there are certain bright spots
where dedication and a concrete vision can make change happen.

As Mr. Giade said, “It is a call to duty that demands higher commitment on our part.”

In one breath there is something to be said for a
politician who, only a few months to a re-election bid, is willing to
annoyevery possible section of the electorate – okada riders,

Lekki residents, market women, small business
owners and now doctors. However,there is also something to be said
about governance by the will of the people – that path between the
governed and the governor.

Under this arrangement, the leader is not an
all-wise sovereign, whose every word will be unquestioned, whose
decisions haveto be accepted for their wisdom and where his will is
resisted by the people, the people are to be treated with disdain.

The recent state government order that medical and
dental officers under the Lagos State government, who have been on
strike,should resume work or be summarily dismissed and replaced
immediately brings to mind something of this trend as noticed with
Governor Babatunde Fashola; a manwho ordinarily had delivered
impressive results.

The strike has been on for about three weeks over
the non-implementation of agreements reached between the Lagos chapter
ofthe National Association of Resident Doctors and the state government
on the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure and other arrears withheld
from January 2010. Thenthere is the dismissal of the last chairman,
their union dues and what they call “over taxation”.

Negotiations, as led by the commissioner for
health, Jide Idris, haven’t made any headway. “Negotiations involve
figures,”says Dr. Saliu Oseni, the president of the Lagos State
Teaching Hospital chapter of the Association of Resident Doctors. “But
they are not negotiatingwith us. The governor has said they will pay
come January, but what we are saying is that ‘how much are you paying
come January’, ‘how are you going tohandle the arrears’, and that they
should give us a written document to that effect.” Into this mix comes
the state government’s order to resume last Monday, a posture that is
certain to complicate the crisis. TheLagos State information
commissioner said that any doctor who did not answer the directive will
be seen to have abandoned duty post – codeword for ‘fired’;but any
responsible democratic government knows that such threats are only
counter-productive, especially in a country that desperately needs as
manyqualified doctors as it can get in public service.

The Lagos government has an attitude that suggests
where it is convinced of the rightness of its action and perhaps
because of the goodwill it enjoys, the people must sit down and take it
– and be grateful while doing so. Fortunately for the people, this is
in fact a democracy. A leader might passionately disagree with the
people, but in so as far as they elected him and gave him the powers
that he has, he serves at their pleasure.

The Friday before this, the state’s intransigence
was on display when the National Industrial Court had to strike out the
matter between the government and the doctors based on a notice of
discontinuance moved by the counsel to the state government. A
resolution was said to be in progress since one of the doctors’ demands
that two cases against them be withdrawn was almost granted. However,
just as the presiding judge was about to announce the withdrawal of the
second case against the Medical Guild, two lawyers asked to be joined
as defendants on behalf the National Association of Government General
Medical and Dental Practitioners (NAGGMDP), another association of
medical workers.

This incensed the presiding judge, Babatunde Adejumo, since the striking doctors had
agreed to resume work and reopen discussions with the government once
the cases were withdrawn.

“Doctors owe a moral duty to the society,” he
reminded the litigants “(And) government owes a duty to the citizens.
There must be equilibrium between the two.” The relationship between
governor and governed is not master-servant, no matter how surrounded
it is by luxury and the adulation at Government House.

It is our hope that Governor Fashola continues to
lead Lagos into the future with the same strength of vision and
character that he has exhibited thus far, but any trace of tyranny is
disappointing. Especially when what is at stake is the quality of
healthcare – already deplorable – that Lagosians will receive if the
present crop of doctors are replaced with rookies unused to how
dysfunctional our public health system is.

Governor Fashola is on his way to losing the
goodwill of those he has chosen to lord it over if he doesn’t take to
heart the words of that wise judge. It is the fatal flaw of even the
greatest of men.

One of the grim paradoxes of our global digital civilisation is the increasing asymmetry between the rich and the poor.

The last
quarter-century has seen a doubling of global output. But this wealth
has accrued preponderantly to a few nations and a few classes within
those nations. In the United States, an estimated 5 percent of the
population control 70 percent of the country’s wealth. Poverty still
persists even in the most advanced industrial democracies. But it is
mostly in Africa and South Asia that we have dramatic incidences of
poverty bordering on destitution.

My respected
teacher Paul Collier recently wrote a book, The Bottom Billion (Oxford
University Press 2007). A former World Bank Director of Research and
Director of Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of African
Economies, Collier is one of the world’s most respected economists.

But much of his
technical work is covered up in abstruse algorithms that are known to
only a few. His recent popular work has made him into something of an
international celebrity. Collier underlines four factors accounting for
the phenomenon of world poverty.

First, we have what
is referred to as ‘the conflict trap’. Nations trapped in conflict such
as the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan and Sri Lanka are willy-nilly bound to
remain poor. War saps the energy of nations and peoples, wiping off
physical infrastructures and destroying the fragile networks of social
capital that hold communities together. Post-conflict nations such as
Sierra Leone and Liberia also have to grapple with the challenge of
rebuilding hope and restoring confidence in societies where conflict
and violence have eroded trust among the people.

Second is ‘the
natural resource trap’. It is a well-known law of economics that
nations that rely solely on one commodity for their export earnings
will sooner than later run into trouble.

All raw-material
exports are subject to wild gyrations in world prices. With the
exception of oil and gold, most are also subject to path-dependent
decline.

The wisest leaders
have always pursued the path of structural diversification as the
ultimate solution to the trend towards increasing economic
vulnerability.

Thirdly, we have
the curse of geography. Many of Africa’s nations are small and
landlocked. There is only so much you can do if you are a landlocked
Central African Republic surrounded by poverty-stricken warring
neighbours. Much of Africa is far from the world’s growth poles. This
means that commerce and transportation are bound to be much more
expensive and a country cannot take advantage of the benefits of
contiguity to a prosperous neighbour as nations like South Korea,
Singapore and Malaysia have done.

Fourthly, we have
the problem of poor governance. The accumulated wisdom of five decades
of economic development makes it clear that leadership makes all the
difference. It would be difficult to contemplate Singaporean prosperity
without the figure of Lee Kuan Yew. It is equally doubtful that Tunisia
would have achieved so much in economic and social development without
the leadership of the visionary Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine
Abidine Ben-Ali. Africa’s poverty cannot be dissociated from the
failure of leadership and governance.

The recently
concluded summit by world leaders at the United Nations (20-22
September) has brought into sharp focus the abiding challenge of world
poverty. The summit was convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to
assess the achievements of the last decade in terms of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and to forge a new consensus towards meeting
the internationally agreed targets by 2015.

Many observers had feared that it would be just another talking shop. Diplomats are, of course, paid to talk.

And talk they did.
But the summit was also significant in highlighting areas of progress
and the constraints that must be overcome. It was acknowledged that an
additional amount of US$35 billion would be required annually to meet
the MDG targets. Donors have also pledged contributions of some US$40
billion over the next five years for the Global Strategy for Women and
Children’s Health. This new initiative has the potential of saving the
lives of 16 million women, preventing 33 million unwanted pregnancies
while protecting 120 million children from preventable diseases.

I am pleased to
note that our country was ably represented by President Jonathan
Goodluck and the Senior Special Assistant on MDGs, Amina Az-Zubair.
While some progress has been made in such areas as school enrolment and
child health, we are well below targets in the area of maternal
mortality. I dare to say that Nigeria’s problems transcend mere issues
of MDGs. With our population of 150 million people, tackling poverty
requires a concerted development strategy anchored on agriculture-led
industrialisation. Providing electricity across the country would
reduce poverty by 20 percent in Nigeria.

I know Ms.
Az-Zubair and I know that she can achieve even more if she has the
necessary backing. It was rather unfair that some sections of the press
recently made some outrageous allegations about her Office, insinuating
corruption involving figures that were wildly above the total quantum
that the Federal Government has committed to poverty alleviation over
the last decade. Some of the problems the MDG Office has encountered
have to do with legislators cornering some of the funds in the name of
‘constituency projects’. We would do well to keep politics out of
poverty.

I know that I complain a lot, which is
the reason I’ve tried to keep quiet recently. But something happened on
Wednesday that bears complaining about. You see, on that day, the
Federal Executive Council approved the sum of N972 600 000 for the
purchase of 60 000 waste bins from the United Kingdom. The purpose of
the importation of these waste bins is to ‘maintain a clean environment
in Abuja’.

This bumper purchase was made known to
the nation by Dora Akunyili, our formerly loveable Information
Minister. In all honesty, were I Aunty Dora, I’d rather have resigned
than make that announcement to Nigerians! But then again, there is this
little problem of the divide between Nigeria’s elite and the rest of
us, so in Aunty Dora’s defence, it is more than likely that she thinks
she’s doing us a favour by purchasing those bins from Jand at those
prices.

The very first question that arises
here is why does the FEC, the Nigerian Cabinet (!) have to get involved
in something as mundane as the purchase of rubbish bins? Are we a
Banana Republic (no, we are a Plantain Republic)? What is the point of
having an Abuja Municipal Council if Aso Rock keeps butting into their
business?

The next question that arises, and
probably the scariest one is why our own dearly beloved FG is taking
such a large sum out of our own purse and transferring it to Britain.
For the sake of clarity, I admit that Nigerian artisans are not the
best (that is an argument for another day), but for crying out loud, it
cannot possibly be so difficult to manufacture a dustbin! Okay, okay,
okay, the British variety have wheels on them, but hang on, wheels
aren’t difficult to make either!

The third question, which is closely
related to the second, is that ofemployment. I know that assumption is
the mother of all … (insert expletive here), but at the end of the
day, it is safe to assume that if a huge government contract comes to a
Nigerian company for the provision of 60 000 waste-bins, many of our
teeming youth, like the kind I saw playing snooker at Ikeja this
morning, would be taken off of the streets and made to do something
productive. Instead our Cabinet would rather take this opportunity and
give it to the jobless in Britain?

Then there is the question of cost…
It so happens that not too long ago, I in fact, bought a waste-bin. I
bought it at Ojuelegba. I bought it for the cost of N800. Now, it is
perfectly possible that given where I bought it, and the fact that I
haggled for 30 minutes before parting with my cash, that I bought it
cheap. So, let us assume that being that it is a government contract,
the purchaser would pay the first price, no questions asked. Let us
assume that that first price is double the N800 that I paid for my bin
that is N1600. Then let us assume that since ‘some other people must
eat’, that the bins would be quoted at double the asking price, which
is N3200. Now let multiply that new price by 60 000 units. The total
sum for all those bins given these variables would be N192, 000, 000!

There, you see, I’ve just saved the
Nigerian tax-payer almost N800million, and added to that, I’ve created
jobs for some of our unemployed youth…

I admit, I am jealous.

On Friday, I got
the call from a friend who has links with CNN. She asked if I would be
interested in having exclusive access to transcripts of an interview
our president, Goodluck Jonathan, was scheduled to have with the
station later that day.

You can’t be
serious, was my response to her. My disbelief was not so much that I
didn’t believe and trust that my friend knew what she was talking about
and would send the transcripts once the interview had been conducted,
(after all it was she who gave NEXT exclusive access to transcripts of
the Amanpour interview with Mr. Jonathan) it was more like he is
talking to CNN, AGAIN, just five months after doing the Amanpour
interview but also at a time when his handlers are busy dribbling
Nigerian journalists and refusing to give us access to him for one on
one interviews? What on earth could he be thinking, I pondered?

Does he realise how this will look?

In the end, my
friend called me late in the day to say in far away New York, Mr.
Jonathan had ducked out of the interview. So there is at least someone
on his team who is thinking, I said.

Can you imagine if
he had appeared live on CNN so soon after that first interview? I would
not have been pleased and neither I suspect would a few of my other
colleagues who have spent months trying to persuade the president to
grant us interviews. I am not talking about an interview granted to a
few handpicked people on a state controlled station like that which was
aired on NTA recently, but a one on one interaction with individual
journalists where hopefully a candid conversation can take place.

But Mr. Jonathan
is not the first and probably won’t be the last Nigerian leader to shun
the local press. Most would rather speak to the CNN’s and BBC’s of this
world than speak to us.

Why this is, I
really don’t know especially as the local media not only serves their
primary constituency but is also a part of that constituency. That is
not to say I don’t understand why there is a need for them to tap into
the reach and spread of the international press. I do. What I find
difficult to fathom is why there is no balance and why we are not given
the same access as the foreign press but treated as second class
journalists by our leaders?

Many foreign
journalists come to Nigeria and make their name from reporting out of
this country. In addition to having superior resources, like equipment,
qualitative training and adequate funds, they also enjoy an easy access
to the corridors of power that Nigerian journalists can only dream
about.

Already
disadvantaged by our limited resources, this final indignity of been
discriminated against by our leaders makes it that much harder for us
to compete with our foreign colleagues.

During my time
with the BBC, all I had to do was place a call and Nigerian government
and public officials would be tripping over themselves to accommodate
my request for an interview. On occasions when they were not available,
leaving a message meant seven times out 10, they would return the call.

Now that I am at
NEXT, how things have changed. The majority refuses to answer phone
calls and will not even acknowledge messages sent. This is a scenario
that breeds confusion and misinformation as typified by the dodgy
Yar’Adua interview on BBC.

While it is true
that the media in this country is not perfect and some might even argue
that the problems we face are of our own making, it is also correct
that the work we do under very difficult conditions is important and
can help in nation building.

If our leaders are
truly interested in that, they should make our jobs easier by giving us
access to information. Interviews with key people, like the president,
particularly as we approach elections would be a good start.

An even better one would be the passage of the Freedom of Information bill.

The minister of
information, Dora Akunyili, this week spoke about a problem that media
content owners, especially in the electronic media business, have cried
out about for years now: the huge debt profile they have to contend
with courtesy of advertisers.

It is not often
that the quality of our broadcast journalism is put under the
microscope, although some have complained about the quality of local
content when compared with that of the international reality show
formats and the big budget brand-driven productions. There is one big
reason in particular for this, according to the Independent Television
Practitioners Association of Nigeria (ITPAN). Its members will put it
succinctly and say the independent TV and radio producer is, to use a
popular catchphrase, on her own.

TV stations buck
the global tradition of buying TV shows from original content
producers, instead turning the international standard on its head by
requiring those producers to pay for airtime. With concept owners
impoverished and having to scrap to pay for the expensive airtime,
effort is concentrated on staying on air rather than improving the
depth and quality of their productions.

It is not enough
to point fingers at ‘greedy’ chief executives of TV and radio stations.
The major problem at the end of the day is the fact that advertisers do
not pay. In the big tug of war between media owners and advertisers
(both media buying agencies and the marketing departments of companies)
the independent producer and indeed the media owner who gives his
airtime ‘on credit’, can barely survive.

Media orders are
given for advertising, but even where payment is promised 60 days
after, in practice it can take up to six months for the payments for TV
and radio promos to come through. When there are complaints by
practitioners, these are sometimes accompanied by stories of subtle
attempts at blackmail and blacklisting.

There are two
bodies that have some regulatory power over this relationship between
buyer and seller – the Advertising Practitioners Council for Nigeria
(APCON) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC). Both
organisations are under the purview of the Federal Ministry of
Information and so perhaps it is no small surprise why there has not
been a meeting of minds on how the decline in local content can be
stopped.

Perhaps it is time
for the three to step in and take pro-active steps to ensure that the
steady decline in homegrown productions does not continue. It is surely
not enough to wait for football tournaments and other epic occasions
before government officials pay attention to what is on television. We
should begin to pay close attention to international competition in all
our creative sectors, especially one that we have pioneering status in
with the Obafemi Awolowo-established (WNTV) Western Nigeria Television.

As advertising
professionals tell us, it is not that difficult a problem to engage.
With the deregulation of many sectors and the inflow of investment,
advertising budgets, if anything, have improved. Many companies, flush
with customer patronage, do not suffer for cash flow and so can pay up
in advance or within a legally enforced period without any discomfort
to their bottom-line. They get away with their present conduct only
because they can and because there is next to nothing that radio and TV
content owners, desperate to remain on air, can do.

That is where
government steps in – to ensure that the right thing is done where its
citizens are helpless. If these media buyers pay in advance or on time
for other services that they enjoy, there is no excuse – moral or
business – for them to treat the media so cavalierly.

Nigerians might
continue to complain about ugly sets, tired pictures and studios that
cannot even compete with productions in the rest of the West African
region, and many Nigerians might take comfort in boasting that they
watch only international or cable television, but at the end of the day
this is about developing sectors that can contribute to the Nigerian
economy and provide jobs.

If content
providers are unable to make monies back, there will be no improvement
in what we see on the small screen, and that industry will remain
stagnant. And for them to make their monies, advertisers have to pay
up. The minister has taken the first step by talking, now it’s time to
put her money where her mouth is.

In other cultures, flour immediately brings to
mind bread; the process of adding a leavening agent to finely ground
grain, with skilful handling and patience. Again this foreign concept
of allowing food to “rest”, allowing a slow chemical reaction that
produces something that rises and expands, is full of air, cooked with
trapped air. Air baked into the fabric of the flour and other
ingredients, the desired end result being the precise textural balance
of crumb and crust…In our culture it is certainly not so. When
presented with flour made from ground dried cassava or yams or
plantains or wheat we do not instinctively think of bread or things
that rise or are left to the will of yeast spores. We do not think of
air, not yeast, but water, not cold water but boiling water, and a
beating stick. Not therapeutic kneading but hard urgent turning. The
Yoruba idiomatically suggest that if you do not take charge of the
flour and water, it turns aggressively on you sensing your weakness,
and wrestles the stick from your hand. It turns you! For us, the
desired end result is a mound, a solid hard mass that has had all the
air beaten out of it: Matter that fills and bursts the seams of the
stomach.

I have been wondering how the word Okele came to
being. The Yoruba word for a morsel when divided into “oke” and “le”
sounds like picking up a small hill with the fingers, separating the
little hill from the big one. It is not the only question in my mind.
Why for example must our flours be made into hard mounds that accompany
oily soups?

Why are they instinctively made into savoury foods and not sweet? Why do we eat them hot and heavy? Why not cold?

The most popular answer to these questions is that
eating heavy starches is carried over from farming community style
eating. If one eats a bowl of fufu first thing in the morning and goes
to the farm, the fufu provides slow burning energy for the hard work of
the day. Not many of us are farmers, yet we crave our fufu and gari and
semovita and pounded yam and Akpu. We eat them in the morning, in the
heat of the day, at night before we roll into bed. We eat them as a
main meal, after a first course of Jollof rice! After about three years
of marriage, my mother -in-law demanded that I start to feed my husband
gari for dinner. Why?

Because after three years, it was not apparent
from just looking at him that he was a married man, that’s why! There
is a Nigerian physique that coerces respect, and it has nothing to do
with muscularity or neat lines in a European suit. I know men who have
cultivated that gari-in-the-gut look to match their political
aspirations, especially if they are running for local government
chairman back in their village or for a position in the house of reps.
Looking like a well-toned and wiry Obama is not the way forward. I’ve
heard Nigerians disdain that look as “The hungry look” “The man looks
hungry!” The Nigerian man in authority is filled out: his stomach rubs
even-if-just-ever-so-slightly against the front of his buba. That look,
that authoritative physique, that signature posture of well taken care
of married men and women who the Yoruba say life begins and ends at
their “Ibadi” (“Ibadi” in this context is that notable backside of
notable proportions) is only achievable from eating mounds of pounded
yam and gari and fufu. From as often as possible bulldozing hills of
ground grain and wading through rivers of soup. These things are
intrinsic. I am not the slimmest of women, but I have noted the disdain
with which I have been regarded in some circles, for being too slim.
(Please Lagos does not count!) As my husband succinctly put it, “No
Efik man will have you!” We are not completely out of touch with food
trends, or ignorant of the fact that the world is talking about cutting
calories, demonizing hydrogenated fats and castigating palm oil as
being the river of blood that flows through hell. My mother recently
spent a few months in Houston, Texas and noted that many Nigerians
living there no longer romanticize the pot bellies, rubbing thighs and
rotating bottoms that are the sure end result of swallowing gari and
soup every day. How have they managed to balance that intrinsic need,
that comforting rolling of morsels between fingers before dipping in
hot soups with keeping up with the West’s obsessive counting of
calories?

Oats is the answer. Rather than give up our
beloved “swallow”, we buy a tin of Quaker oats,run it through the
blender, douse it in hot water and yes as usual, turn it,

beat it, subdue it into swallow. This is called
the new Amala. Its complexion is beige, so perhaps “Lafu” white Amala
is the more appropriate comparison. Nigerian food specialty shops in
America are now brimming with bags of oats sold as the new and
improved, not so bulge inducing swallow.

It is clear that no health fad is going to rescue us any time soon from devouring our Okeles.

As illogical as it is to consume such a high
allowance of starch when one is not doing any manual labour or body
building or indeed going to the farm, eating starchy foods goes beyond
comfort.

It is who we are, what we like.

It is an anchor so familiar, so necessary to
physically feeling “as one should” and even sometimes looking
respectable and well that we will be climbing those hills of grain and
swimming in rivers of soup for a long time to come.