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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.

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

As kids, a musician
named Marvel from Uromi town used to torment us. Marvel enjoyed the
monopoly of being the only highlife musician around. News of a
performance by Marvel would spread like fire on dry grass. Boys would
be scrambling to tailor’s shop to sew new outfits and treetop Afros
would spring from girls’ heads. The news of an upcoming Marvel concert
could whip the eight villages that make my clan into a whirlwind of
euphoric anxiety.

“Marvel go come
so?” We would ask, seeking support and reassurance from one another
because it was not unusual for him to take advance payment and go to a
more profitable venue like the burial ceremony of a wealthy patron’s
mother. On several disappointing occasions like that we would sulk to
bed dreaming of the aborted fiesta in our sullen sleep.

After we had
thoroughly stewed in our anticipation, the same way we waited for
politicians to redeem their promises of pipe borne water, electricity,
good roads, and had our hopes dashed like eggs carried by a leper,
Marvel would magically show up with his band members in a beat up
Peugeot 404 pickup.

This motor was a
combination of hard jagged metal and wires on wheels, a relic that
belonged more to the Museum of Natural History if Nigeria had one. Then
again, Marvel’s pijoti was built for the unpaved deadly roads to my
village. The driver would blast his horn and rev the engine that
emitted black smoke into the air to announce Marvel’s arrival. We would
let out ear shattering screams, jumping up and down – “Marvel vale,
Marvel vale, Marvel vale! Marvel has arrived!”

Marvel would remain
inside the pickup, wearing dark sunglasses like Ray Charles
nonchalantly smoking a Gold Leaf cigarette, while his boys unloaded the
musical equipment.

Catching a glimpse
of his weathered, battered, red guitar was like seeing Jesus Christ
walking on the River Niger from Asaba to Onitsha.

Speakers and
keyboards and drums and the most taunting instrument, the microphone,
would be unloaded by men with cigarettes hanging from their quivering
lips. Then the pickup door would open, and Marvel would gingerly test
his steel-toed stiletto shoes on the red earth, before heaving himself
out, slowly. Standing up full length, you would think Elvis Presley had
risen, except Marvel was as black as Idi Amin. He never smiled; he
would just walk straight to a cool-off area reserved for him by his
host, downing bottles of hot Crystal lager beer, until his men finished
setting up.

At about 8pm, the
atmosphere would be aromatically frothing like fresh palm wine. If the
clouds were kind, we would have moonlight, otherwise fireflies provided
enough illumination to help us wander round the venue. The only
electricity lights were a few bulbs powered by Marvel’s small Yamaha
generator, whose sole purpose was to run the musical equipment. In any
case, light was not required, for at Marvel’s highlife party, things
not meant for illumination usually took place.

By now the band would have finished setting up the equipment, plucking at their guitars (not Marvel’s) in tuneless succession.

There were only two
microphones, one for Marvel and one to be shared by three backup
singers. There was no proliferation of microphones back then, it seemed
you had to earn the right to use one because other band members just
bellowed away with their God given throats.

With a bulb
dangling above his head in the shaded area, Marvel would strap his
guitar round his shoulder and adjust the belt a couple of times, all
this while a cigarette would be hanging from his lips tremulously.
Eventually, he would pull a long drag on the Gold Leaf and drop it
disdainfully, grinding the butt viciously with his stiletto. Grabbing
the microphone, the very first words that would come out of his mouth
would be “Testing Microphone…one, two…testing
microphone…one-two.”

While we waited for
the real show to start so we could gyrate in the corner because we were
not old enough to hold girls by their waists and grind the night away
in the middle of the dance floor, Marvel would continue to test the
microphone for an eternity. He would fiddle with knobs in the old
amplifiers and twang his guitar endlessly. At some point, we would have
fallen asleep on benches in the fringes. Earlier excitement would have
worn our young minds out by the time Marvel was done with “testing
microphone”.

We did not know the extent to which this endless testing annoyed grownups, until one night.

Agoslow, a man
whose head was the size of cinder block, walked straight to Marvel,
seized the microphone from him and cleared his throat: “The microphone
is working, play me music and let me dance and enjoy myself, I come
from a far village.”

And today as I wait
for Goodluck Jonathan to declare his intention and he is still dilly
dallying and meeting with the Buharis of this world, the immortal words
of Agoslow come to me. So I am telling Mr. President to stop testing
the microphone and declare his intention and let the dance begin in
earnest.

Enough of this waiting game.