Nigeria Content Online

President Barack
Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before – taking on two
Missions Impossible at the same time. That is, a simultaneous effort to
heal the two most bitter divides in the Middle East: the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shiite-Sunni conflict cantered in
Iraq. Give him his due. The guy’s got audacity. I’ll provide the hope.
But kids, don’t try this at home.

Yet, if by some
miracles the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that opened in Washington
on Thursday do eventually produce a two-state solution, and Iraqi
Shiites and Sunnis do succeed in writing their own social contract on
how to live together, one might be able to imagine a Middle East that
breaks free from the debilitating grip of endless Arab-Israeli wars and
autocratic Arab regimes.

Obama deserves
credit for helping to nurture these opportunities. But he, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the newly elected leaders of
Iraq need to now raise their games to a whole new level to seize this
moment – or their opponents will.

Precisely because
so much is at stake, the forces of intolerance, extreme nationalism and
religious obscurantism all over the Middle East will be going all out
to make sure that both the Israeli and Iraqi peace processes fail.

The opponents want
to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and
Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like,
democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want
to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq
fractured, so it never coheres into a multi-sectarian democracy that
could be an example for other states in the region.

I hope that one of
my personal rules about the Middle East is proved wrong – that in this
region extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away.

Obama was right to
keep to his troop-withdrawal schedule from Iraq. Iraqi politicians need
to stand on their own. But this is tricky. The president will not be
remembered for when we leave Iraq but for what happens after we leave.
That is largely in Iraqi hands, but it is still very much in our
interest. So we need to retain sufficient diplomatic, intelligence,
Special Forces and Army training units there to promote a decent
outcome; because all the extremists are now doubling down.

Last week,
insurgents aligned with al-Qaida boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis.
On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli
settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In
Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party,
Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian
president and his people would die. “All these evil people should
perish from this world … God should strike them with a plague, them
and these Palestinians,” Yosef said.

Trust me, this is just the throat clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal.

Even if Israel
agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the
Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000
will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove
8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of
Israel. Imagine when today’s Israeli Army, where the officer corps is
increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler
movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.

None of this is a
reason not to proceed. It is a reason to succeed. There is so much to
hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match the hoped-for
outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: The effort to build
a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most important democracy
project in the world today.

If Iraqi Sunnis,
Kurds and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first
time in modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only
possible in Iraq, but everywhere in the region.

“Iraq is the
Germany of the Middle East,” says Michael Young, opinion editor of The
Beirut Daily Star and author of a very original book about Lebanon,
“The Ghosts of Martyrs Square.” “It is at the heart of the region –
affecting all around it – and the country’s multi-ethnic,
multi-sectarian population represents all the communities of the
region. Right now, what is going on in Iraq represents all the worst
trends in the region, but if you can make it work, it could represent
the best.”

The late Israeli
leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the
Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if
there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi,
Arab, Palestinian and

Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt.

I hope the forces of moderation are up to it.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

In July some
African First Ladies met at a summit called ‘Forum of African First
Ladies against breast and cervical cancer’ in Accra, Ghana. According
to them, the reason for the summit is to draw the attention of leaders
in the region to what they described as, ‘‘the growing burden of
women’s cancers, especially cervical and breast cancer-in the world’s
poorest nations,’’

The ladies are
wives of presidents and heads of state and include – Ernestina Naatu
Mills (Ghana), Djibo Saalu Fati (Niger), Momsa Matsebula (Swaziland),
Tobeka Zuma (South Africa), Zainab Yayah Jammeh (The Gambia), Janet
Museveni (Uganda) and Thandiwe Banda (Zambia).

At the meeting
they all decried the rising wave of breast and cervical cancers among
women on the continent where studies have shown that the two diseases
are the commonest and leading causes of death among women.

In a statement at
the end of the summit they lamented, ‘‘cervical, breast and other
women’s cancers take a tremendous toll on women’s health in developing
countries. Over 80% of all cervical cancer deaths occur in developing
countries where girls and women do not have access to prevention
services such as education, vaccination and lifesaving pre-cancer
screening and early treatment. Breast cancer, once relatively unknown
in developing countries, is rising rapidly, often appearing in women 10
to 15 years earlier than in developed countries.’’

This observation
needs proper and detailed attention and one study after the other in
the last two years has endorsed this fact: It is no longer an ailment
of the West or of those accustomed to that lifestyle.

We agree with that
enlightenment on cancer issues is very poor in Africa and there is a
crying need for our health authorities to step up education on the risk
factors that predispose our women to breast and cervical cancer.
Because many do not know what they should do or how to check themselves
for signs the ailment is allowed to fester and patients only report at
hospitals at a point when the case has become terminal.

At the Ghana
summit the ladies pledged to mobilise their diplomatic and public
health leaderships to ensure women’s cancers feature prominently at
this month’s United Nations General Assembly Development Summit on the
Millennium Development Goals and at the United Nations High Level
Summit on non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) scheduled for September next
year. They also stated their plan to work with other international
agencies to help champion and focus on these challenges of bringing to
the fore the need to see cancer as a threat to the health of women and
the populace in general.

To our mind, the
important thing is not for the United Nations to discuss it at its
summit, the home front is where the real action is. By now the seven
first ladies who attended the Ghana summit have returned to their
bases. What they do with and how they push the Accra commitment forward
is what should be of concern. Too often summits are held and
declarations made are soon forgotten. This should not be.

As much as we are
wary of the use to which the office of first spouse, let us not forget
that Liberia made history by electing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf president,
has been put in some parts, our hope is that this initiative will not
be allowed to become another avenue for vainglory and little else. It
is far too serious and much too important.

It is regrettable
that some initiatives to combat cancer have been launched with fanfare
in the past and have not survived beyond the razzmatazz of the launch.
A case in point is the billions of naira that was donated to Mrs. Turai
Yar’Adua, wife of the late president, for her much hyped International
Cancer Centre, which was to be built in Abuja. As of the last count,
land had been allocated for the project and a board constituted to
oversee the running of the centre. However, shortly after the launch
Mrs. Yar’Adua’s attention was understandably diverted by her husband’s
sickness from which he never recovered.

We believe that since the money was collected from government
ministries and companies it is important for purposes of accountability
for an account to be rendered and if Mrs. Yar’Adua is no longer
interested in carrying out the project it should be handed over to
another group or agency that can. This is the only way this project can
be of benefit to the majority of Nigerians and make the Accra
declaration a reality for all.

That those who have been blessed with high rank or great wealth
should help the numerous less fortunate is an ancient dictum. Noblesse oblige-
privilege entails responsibility! Modern philanthropy, as illustrated in the
activities of the Gates Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation, walks in that
old tradition. It is the essence of philanthropy to be a voluntary contribution
from the private sector.

Expanding government services to the indigent or the helpless
are not a substitute for the personal gifts or donations of a continent’s
elite. A country’s public services guaranteeing a minimum amount of decent
education or decent healthcare at public expense should be a complement to the
donations of its elite. As denizens of a continent teeming with the poor, the
uneducated, and the hungry, when should Africa’s wealthy entrepreneurs and
investors conduct their philanthropic activities? What activities should be
nurtured by their donations?

My point of departure is that philanthropy has deep roots in the
cultures of several African countries. For example, there has been a long
tradition of community leaders donating land or money to educational causes. In
1876, financial contributions from local businessmen, combined with teaching
staff and other forms of support from the Methodist Missionary Society in
London, resulted in the establishment of Ghana’s oldest boys secondary school,
Mfantsipim, then known as the Wesleyan High School of Cape Coast. I have little
doubt that similar tales of philanthropic support from eminent Nigerians lie
behind the development of schools such as the Methodist Boys High School and
Abeokuta Grammar School.

It does not seem that Africans established permanent collective
institutions for collecting gifts and dispensing those gifts. The modern
vehicle for those institutions, today, is the foundation. America was a pioneer
of the foundation, eponymously named after its settlor-Andrew Carnegie or Bill
Gates. It spread to other countries like India which got one of its first
foundations in 1919 with the creation of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, thus forging
an ongoing link between the Tata group of companies and India’s world of
charities. Africa is following in those footsteps with foundations such as the
TY Danjuma and the Dangote Foundations in Nigeria, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in
the United Kingdom, or the Tiso Foundation in South Africa.

Americans tend to establish foundations after they amass a
fortune. Our needs are so pressing that it would be preferable if foundations
were established alongside the growing fortunes of African benefactors. The
Tiso Foundation embodies my preference. It was set up at the birth of the Tiso
Group, a black-controlled and managed investment companies, with a 16% equity
stake in the Tiso Group donated by its founders.

Led by two consummate and unassuming professionals, Nkululeko
Sowazi from South Africa and David Adomakoh from Ghana, the Tiso Group has made
several successful investments in South Africa between 2001 and 2010.
Consequently, the Tiso Foundation’s endowment has risen rapidly in value,
alongside the success of the Tiso Group, from 5 million Rands (61.2 million
Nairas) to 500 million Rands (10.35 billion Nairas) today. This model of
granting equity stakes in new businesses at their birth can generate large
charitable endowments in rapid order on a fast growing continent.

The Tiso Foundation has chosen skills development and education
as focus areas. By choosing those areas, it is fighting to defeat the apartheid
legacy of mediocre human capital levels among black South Africans. For
example, one of its current programmes is an artisan development system under
which it is providing financial assistance to train 500 competent artisans in
appropriately accredited training institutions. The selection of artisan
development illustrates a major advantage of philanthropy-the ability to
encourage and nurture activities of major social benefit that both governments
and free markets may fail to finance in adequate quantities.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s focus on improving the quality of
governmental and political governance in Africa, by instituting a Mo Ibrahim
prize for wise leadership in Africa and creating an Ibrahim Index to measure
the quality of African public governance, is another example of private
foundations treading where governments and the free markets have been
noticeably absent. Africans should use their charities to tackle festering
intransigent social problems which can yield gargantuan social benefits upon
their resolution.

All of us can make our contributions, no matter how modest. An independent
Africa needs more of its wealthy and powerful to emulate the examples of a Tiso
or a Mo Ibrahim. Then, peace and prosperity will germinate a little more
quickly in Africa’s soils.

When dirty linen
is left unattended for so long that it becomes aromatic, it doesn’t
help to insist that your private washing efforts are working: everybody
can smell that they aren’t; nor is there any point quarrelling with
neighbours for holding their noses when they pass your house. After
all, the unfortunates actually living in the house have been gasping
for air for years!

Such were my
thoughts as I pondered the response of the Nigeria Police Force to the
report by the US-based non-governmental organisation, Human Rights
Watch: “Everyone’s in on the Game.” (Apologies are due for seeming to
notice the problem only because a Western NGO has discussed it, but my
concern here is the response by those whose conduct is under scrutiny.
The sad reality is that reactions to the work of Nigerian NGOs – e.g.
the report on checkpoint extortion in the south-east by Intersociety –
are usually either more nonchalant, or given far less media coverage
than reactions to work by their overseas counterparts.)

Force
spokesperson, Emeka Ojukwu, recited the expected party line of
criticising the report and giving numbers of police personnel
‘sanctioned’: 764 senior officers and 8,831 junior officers for
“various acts of indiscipline”.

The trouble is,
that even assuming that “acts of indiscipline” includes checkpoint
extortion (rather than, for example, resisting sexual harassment by a
squadron commander, as Corporal Emcy Munlip is presently experiencing)
no matter how many policemen officers are dismissed for mounting
‘toll-gates’, on any single inter-city journey in this country, you
will still come across checkpoints at which bribes are openly,
routinely and efficiently collected, particularly from public transport
vehicles. This alone tells every person who sees them – from
wearily-conditioned citizens to shocked open-mouthed foreigners – that
those who were sanctioned must have done something more than- ordinary
checkpoint extortion. Moreover, when many checkpoints on ‘expressways’
are semi-permanent installations with logs, spiked bars and big oil
drums, there cannot be any pretence that what is going on is ‘unknown’
to the police hierarchy.

HRW suggested, as
many have before, that the NPF’s X-Squad must be revamped. Without
this, and expansion of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission’s
‘sting’ operations, it will be difficult to take official protestations
seriously, since for even a half-hearted anti-corruption effort on
checkpoint extortion, catching offenders should be like shooting fish
in a barrel.

Against the
angrily defensive police response, it’s easy to forget that the
personal anecdotes in HRW’s report are what ordinary Nigerians go
through every day. Although the NPF dismissed the report, saying it
“lacked merit and should not be relied on”, nobody reading the
experiences it details can doubt their authenticity. An ear at any of
the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria and Human Rights Commission’s
Public Tribunals on Police Abuse will unearth stories as bad as, or
worse than those in HRW’s report. Even the ‘biggest’ man in the country
will have had someone ask for help with similar scenarios: seeking
either intercession with the police, or money with which to pay their
way out of (often unjustified) trouble.

The reality for
many is that it is indeed only with money, connections or influence
that they can extricate themselves from police wahala. Our congested
prisons are full of people who had neither. The NPF may genuinely
aspire to “maintain an effective internal control mechanism to check
abuses of human rights or professional misconduct”, but the case of
young Comfort Monday, who recently gave birth in prison after being
incarcerated at the instance of the man who claims to have purchased
her, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to those who can’t
pay, arrested at the behest of those who can.

Only the rich or
famous should expect any different treatment, and possibly not even
then: after all, an attorney-general of the federation was gunned down
in his bedroom and “nothing happened”. But the NPF must know that even
if today, it begins to show a serious commitment to the lives and
security of every Nigerian, it cannot succeed without the support of
ordinary people.

And right now, few
ordinary citizens feel that their security is a police priority, or
that the police are on their side; not because HRW tells them, but
because that is their experience.

For this reason,
the arrest in Lagos of a couple alleged to have killed their young
houseboy, Emmanuel Azuka (perhaps they chose not to ‘spare the rod’ in
order not ‘to spoil the child’) is at least as important as the song
and dance being made about arresting a couple of technicians just
because a rich man got stuck in a lift. With disturbing questions
raised about police power to protect or to oppress being available to
those who can pay for it, it will be important for any genuine effort
to bring ordinary people onside, to see who ends up getting justice. Of
course, ‘everymen’ Celestine Ononobi and Moses Oluremi, suspects in the
‘attempted murder by elevator’ case aren’t pregnant teenage girls, so
we may not hear much more about them. But what about the trial and
verdict over ‘everyboy’ Azuka’s death?

We’ll be watching and waiting.