Nigeria Content Online

The fate of our languages was brought into focus
recently during the second International Conference on the Extinction
of Igbo Language held in Owerri, Imo State. The Minister of Labour and
Productivity, Chukwuemeka Wogu, who represented President Goodluck
Jonathan, made a revelation that should not surprise anyone.

Quoting the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Mr. Wogu said that the Igbo
language might become extinct in the next fifty years.

The fact is that it is not only the Igbo language
that is under threat of extinction in the country. All our indigenous
languages are endangered species and there seem to be no visible
efforts to rescue them. A few years back Babatunde Fafunwa, a professor
of education and one-time minister of education conducted a controlled
research in Ife where some pupils were taught all subjects, including
the sciences, in Yoruba and the others in English. At the end of the
experiment both groups were examined and those taught in Yoruba
performed better than those who had their lessons in English. At the
end of the experiment Mr. Fafunwa campaigned for the adoption of
indigenous languages as medium of instruction in schools across the
country. His recommendation was implemented for a while, and then
abandoned.

The endangered status of our indigenous languages
has become more pronounced in the new world order, represented by
globalisation, and with the advent of the borderless Internet, which
has succeeded in giving English fresh dominance at the expense of our
local languages.

This is mistaken. In Japan children are taught all
subjects including the core sciences in Japanese and the country today
is a leader in the all facets of science and arts. Russia too has
demonstrated this in its arts and literature.

Its world renowned writers such as Leo Tolstoy,
Fyodor Dostoevsky and a host of others wrote in their native languages
and attained world fame based on the translations of their works.

In Africa, this debate has been ongoing and a
writer such as Ngugi wa’ Thiongo has since decided to write in his
native Gikuyu language and translate to English later.

In recent times some State Houses of Assembly have
resolved to conduct debates in local dialects as a way of encouraging
the revival of the local tongue. In Anambra State, Governor Peter Obi
has outlawed the treatment of Igbo as ‘vernacular’ in public schools,
while his Edo counterpart Adam Oshiomhole has advocated the teaching of
Edo language at both primary and secondary school levels.

We appreciate these gestures but the way to
achieve what they intend goes beyond tokenism. Structures must be put
in place to help achieve the aim. For example literature publishing in
local languages should receive government support.

The huge task ahead is however not for the
government alone; parents and teachers have important roles to play as
well. The idea of treating our local languages as inferior to English
or any other foreign language must be discouraged.

Language is bound up with our history and identity and our sense of
who we are as a people. Our local languages must not be allowed to
succumb to the ravaging flood of globalisation. We must not allow our
local languages to die and end up on the UNESCO’s listing of ‘dead’
languages. This can – and will – happen if we fail to speak our
languages, and to teach our children to speak and to write them.

Inhabiting
cyberspace is something that should suit wanderlust. Cyberspace
provides a relatively free environment for one to migrate from one
location to the other. Cybernomadism, the habit of constantly migrating
from one location in cyberspace to another, seems very attractive for
many reasons.

With the collapse
of community in real life, or at least the serious threat to community,
online migration is already a kind of coping strategy. Human beings
must look for communities to replace those they have abandoned or
forfeited. So, first of all, one escapes online to see if one could
meet those with whom one could commune. But, of course, even when human
beings mutually hallucinate about their alternative cyber communities,
they have not quite abandoned their humanity. Even as fictional
characters, they come to those online communities with the same
tendencies that endangered their actual communities. In fact, conflicts
in online communities are intensified by the very fact that members of
such communities interpret and pursue their freedoms in ways that
frequently endanger interpersonal relationship and create instability
in community life.

Cyberspace,
especially the Internet, frequently creates new attractions,
introducing new environments with exciting features such as free email
services, blogs, storage locations, and so on. Free services have
always been ways of baiting the crowds and using their presence to
sell. Reduce or remove the free services and you find that the
migratory tendency in online life would be reduced. The fact that
YahooMail, for instance, is free means that one can have an intra-mail
service migration, creating several Yahoo accounts, or maintain several
email accounts with Yahoo,

Gmail, Fastmail,
Hotmail, AOL, Excite, etc along with official institutional email
accounts. As they say in Nigerian pidgin, “Who talk say free ting no
sweet?” As an experimental and evolving world, cyberspace is home for
many in search of adventure into ideas, practices, and applications of
self. Already, this attraction has become an addiction for many,
heightening their Netizenship (being a subject of the Net) in ways that
affect their domestic and professional responsibilities and
relationships tremendously.

The addiction to
online life seems to be based on the principle that says, “keep
moving.” When one tries to stop, one experiences the fear of having
missed something wonderful in that other online location. Part of the
desire is to be everywhere and nowhere. To stop permanently somewhere
is to be crippled. The pleasures of wanderlust are not complete in one
journey; never.

The problems that
some Netizens encounter in locations they have migrated to online also
make them to want to keep moving, for example finding yourself in an
email service that is frequently under virus attack, or that has no
effective way of checking spam mails, would naturally be frustrating
and you would want to pack and leave. How does one stay with an email
service that cannot prevent spam mail about Viagra and that invites one
to increase the size of one’s penis? Definitely, one would tell
oneself, “no, this is not the place to be,” or “this is not yet the
destination.” But email homesteading appears always to be temporary,
not only because there could be an online Katrina that could demolish
the home and erase all of one’s important mail, but also because one is
not quite sure that home is actually a particular location. One is not
quite sure that the symbol “@” in emailing has not completely turned
one into a rock or a stone statue, trapping one in ways that entail
predictability and controllability.

The cybernomad redefines home as a location that also moves, and such a location could be an idea or a culture.

What we therefore
call “home” becomes a mere stopping point, mere “bus stop” where one
has the opportunity of disembarking for few moments to stretch one’s
legs, buy or share some communication, and then continue the journey.

One could make a
stop at a listserv where there are many touts or pundits, or touting
pundits, and hang around to enjoy all the “garagara”. It would be some
fun to join in the “garagara” about how people have made ideas their
home, at least to understand that it is part of the excitement of
homesteading and that one could use each homesteading to redefine and
authorize one’s voice within a fictional heteroglossia.

Perhaps one will return someday to that location from which one
escaped. One playful contemporary Igbo proverb advises: “Onye mee n’afa
nna n’ihu, ya mekwaa ya n’azu, maka o maghi ma o bu n’azu ka Jeso
ga-esi bia ozo” (One who makes the sign of the cross in the front
should also do it at the back, for one is not sure whether Jesus will
come from behind next time). Abandoned homes do not abandon themselves;
they too keep moving to some newness. It is left for the cybernomad to
learn to return to the newness of the old abandoned homes.

Nigerian
Writer, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani recently won the Commonwealth Book Prize
(Africa Region) for her book “I do Not Come To you By Chance” which is
a brilliant fictional account of the Nigeria cyber crime story. In the
book, Kingsley the main protagonist, a young man eager to help his
family, loses his idealism and joins his mothers infamous brother,
Boniface aka Cash Daddy in a successful and lucrative crime syndicate
that relieves unsuspecting but often greedy westerners of their hard
earned money from the safety of cyber cafes littered all over Nigerian
urban centers.

The story of cyber
crime in Nigeria is now so familiar to the point of cliché. The
perpetrators have been so aptly named “Yahoo Yahoo boys”, a term that
has now joined our lexicon along with such other words like “maga” and
“mugu” both of which describes victims of the activities of the yahoo
yahoo boys. However, in attempting a definition here so as to put this
discourse in proper context, I would refer to Cyber Crime as the use of
computers and or computer networks to commit crime. Computer assisted
crimes include but are not limited to e-mail scams, hacking, cyber
theft, credit card theft, impersonation, spread of hostile software and
cyber terrorism.

Worldwide, we enjoy
negative popularity as a criminally minded people with Robert Mallet,
former US deputy Secretary of Commerce for example complaining once
that the more aid the US was giving to Nigeria, the more they were
losing to Nigeria through cybercrime. He alleged that US citizens lose
approximately $2 billion a year to Nigerian fraud of all sorts.

Similarly,
according to the 2007 Internet Crime report of the Crime Complaint
Center (IC3), Nigeria ranks third among the cybercrime committing
countries in the world. In the US alone, Nigeria scam e-mails accounted
in 2007 for 1.1 percent of the top IC3 complaint categories received.

The enormity of
this problem has long been appraised. Several Nigerian administrations
have in the past taken steps towards checking the vice. In 2004 the
Federal Government established the Nigeria Cyber working Group (NCWG).
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has also been
working to monitor public cafes, stopping night browsing and tracking
suspected parcels procured fraudulently online.

As sincere as some
of these efforts have been, they have not been as successful as would
have been desired thus the need to develop more result oriented steps
to fight the crime. You cannot fight today’s crime with yesterday’s
technology. A successful fight against cybercrime requires not just
Information Technology Knowledge, but Information Technology
Intelligence on the part of the security agencies. They must be
equipped with the right skills, the know-how and the insight necessary
to rise to the challenge. In this regard, I advocate the development of
software that can monitor Internet usage in the country without
interfering with users’ right to privacy with the aim of tracking and
arresting fraudsters.

New and more
defined laws against cybercrime must be enacted to give bite to the
efforts of law enforcement agencies. These new laws must spell out
stiffer penalties and machinery for proper enforcement must be put in
place. One of such machinery is the dedication of a special court for
corruption cases in general. This will ensure speedy litigation and
punishment of fraudsters and would in a positive feedback mechanism act
as a deterrent to would be fraudsters.

Besides the laws
and their enforcement, there is the need for advocacy, public
enlightenment and national re-orientation. There has to be a conscious
effort both on the part of government and civil society to take the
fight against cybercrime into the consciousness of Nigerians, to
highlight its negativity and its consequences and to emphasise that
hard work remains the surest path to fame and fortune. There has to be
a return of civic education into our curriculum at the primary and post
primary levels with the aim of instilling in the young minds a sense of
responsibility towards their nation and the pride and dignity of honest
labour. On the other hand, private organisations should come up with
initiatives that exploit our rapidly expanding pop and music culture to
pass the same message.

An interesting
initiative in that regard comes to mind. In February 2010, we witnessed
the release of “Maga no need pay” a music video produced by a
collaboration of popular Nigerian artists amongst which were Cobhams,
Modele, Omawumi, MI, Rooftop MC’s, and Wordsmith. The video was to
support the Microsoft Internet Safety, Security and Privacy Initiative
for Nigeria (MISSPIN) aimed at fighting cybercrime among youths.

Finally, it is
important to note that cybercrime cannot be divorced from the
widespread corruption, harsh economic climate and ubiquitous poverty in
the land. To fight crime, you must attack the cause. Attacking the
cause in this context comes by the way of good governance, transparent
electoral processes and accountability in government all of which
translates into food on the table, more good jobs, better schools, a
fairer investment climate and ultimately a reduction in the tendency of
our citizens to want to go into cybercrime.

This piece is an excerpted version of the 1st runner up in the YGC/MISSPIN National Anti Cyber crime essay competition 2010.

“The people deserve the government that they have.” —Karl Marx

Last week we were told that Attahiru Jega, INEC
chairman, wanted N55billion to successfully rehash the voter’s
register. The sum of N55billion was what you would have been told if
you read NEXT. If you read The Punch, you would have been told it is
72. Between all of the papers, those were the limits. For the purpose
of this write-up, let us work with the smaller sum.

Prof. Jega drew on the example of Bangladesh in making his claims.

According to him, and he is quite correct, it took
the Bangladeshis eight months to complete their voters’ registration.
We have four months. He also said that the Bangladeshis completed their
registration with 30 000 units of the scanning machine. Then he pointed
out that the machines cost $2000 per unit.

30 000 units at a cost of $2000 each would come to $60,000,000.

Multiply that by 150 (converting to Naira), and we
get N9,000,000,000. Unless my maths is incredibly faulty, that is
N9billion! Even if we make room for a doubling of the number of
machines needed because we have half the time that Bangladesh had, we
would still arrive at N18billion. So where does this extra N37billion
that would make the lower limit of N55billion come from?

More questions, fewer answers…

When I first raised these questions, some people
tried to justify Jega’s maths. Some reminded me of what it would cost
to pay the staff who would complete the exercise. Others said that
because of Nigeria’s terrain that we should take into account the
diverse terrain (Nigeria has a more diverse climate and geography than
Bangladesh), so getting the equipment to the locations would be
costlier.

I think that is hogwash given the amounts involved.

For the record, Bangladesh is almost all swampy
rainforest like Nigeria’s south, so they probably would have more
difficulty in getting things around. But that is nit picking.

The important point here is this: why is it that
our leaders never give us a detailed breakdown of what the money is
for, and how they intend to use such monies?

Would Prof. Jega not have neatly avoided this
furore if he had told us, machines would cost N9 – 18billion, and this
is precisely how we intend to make use of the N37 – 46billion remaining
from the N55billion we are asking for?

On Monday morning we were informed that our House
of Representatives have approved the bumper sum of N17billion for the
two-day jamboree that is going to be our independence celebrations. You
can get the breakdown of the expenditures at NEXT’s website so I won’t
go into all that here. What is interesting however, is that this
breakdown is not detailed. The approved budget was done only in lump
sums for the subheads only!

To cap it all, Ayo Adeseun who is the head of the
Committee on Appropriation refused to offer explanations. He claimed
that he needed to consult the records before offering explanations?
Would any of you give money to someone who cannot tell you what for and
how he intends to use the money?

Even more interestingly, the chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Appropriation refused to speak to the press.

At the end of the day, all of this is possible
because the Nigerian people never complain. Yes, we do moan in the
privacy of our homes, but we almost never take those complaints
outside, and when we do, we are too easily divided, settled and
dispersed.

Our leaders do not feel responsible to us for
their actions or inactions, and this is what the National Assembly is
clearly displaying.

Despite our rejection of the independence
jamboree, they are going ahead to approve large sums of money that
would no doubt find their way into private pockets. The average
Nigerian would remain oblivious to all of this…

In more serious countries with serious people, a
general strike would be in the offing. Come to think of it, N3.8billion
to replace carpets at the International Conference Centre?

Damn!

The
last time Imo State’s Governor Ikedi Ohakim caused a stir in Lagos it
was with the way his convoy brutalised a female driver: until last
Thursday, that is, when, on a courtesy visit to his Lagos State
counterpart, Babatunde Fashola, he declared that the menace of
kidnapping in the East should be blamed on the stock market collapse in
Lagos. He said:

“You may have
noticed the state of kidnapping in the southeast. One of the things I
need to tell you is that people came from Lagos to tell us in the east,
they called it Road Show, asking our people to buy shares in banks…
Our people sold their wares, some sold their warehouses and we were
captured by volcanic market …Unfortunately, the market crashed and
young boys got frustrated. We are trying to see how we can restore
them. Our people have lost too much money in most of these banks
stationed in Lagos.” Brilliant stuff, you’d agree. Misbehaving bankers
in the west leading to misbehaving youth in the east. I was still
relishing Mr. Ohakim’s Nobel-quality submission when something, or
rather somebody, caused me to lose my temper.

That person (going
by the name “Akika”), made a comment on the story, on the NEXT website.
Akika said: “Our problem as Igbo is due to the brainless worms that
lead us more than Federal Government’s marginalisation.” This got me
mad. Why would Akika be insinuating that the Igbo hold the monopoly on
questionable leadership in Nigeria, I wondered. I immediately realised
that Nigeria has subtly moved from a “my Mercedes is bigger than yours”
age to a “my governor is more inept / corrupt / greedy / stupid than
yours” age. We have found yet another intriguing avenue for our innate
competitiveness: which explains what Akika was trying to do.

Thankfully I was
not alone in my displeasure. As though to convince Akika that he didn’t
know what he was saying, Oyo State’s Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala called
a press conference in Ibadan the same day that Ohakim was revealing his
groundbreaking socioeconomic discovery in Lagos. Amongst other things,
Akala, in response to allegations by a former Oyo governor, Lam
Adesina, that Akala was seeking to assassinate him, said:

“What would I kill
Lam for? Of what use would killing him be for me? He can’t stand on my
way… The man is over 70 years. He smokes pipe and he is dying by
installment. Why would I accelerate his imminent death?” Now tell me,
is Akala an Igbo governor? The sameness of their actions and utterances
thus pushes me to imagine that when our governors gather for their
forum; beyond reminding themselves of how powerful they are, and beyond
plotting new ways of showing Nigerians how powerful they are, they also
find the time for special ‘self-development’/‘gubernatorial-conduct’
classes.

The next time you
hear of a Governors Forum meeting, maybe you shouldn’t make the mistake
of imagining that it is ALL about politics. Indeed it is mostly about
politics: self-preservation, self-interest. Take this as evidence: In
the dying days of the Yar’Adua administration, they spent all their
time preventing Vice President Jonathan from taking over power. In
these early days of the Jonathan administration they are spending all
their time telling President Jonathan that nobody is worthy of taking
power from him.

But these
governors are also smart enough to know that ‘self-development’ is as
important as self-preservation. Recall how they all made plans to be
Harvard alumni in 2009. Since that didn’t work out I imagine they found
ways of incorporating special tutorials into their intrigue-fuelled
forum sessions.

What this means is
that apart from plotting which one of them will take over from
President Jonathan in 2015 or 2019, they also spend time attending
special classes on topics ranging from “How to ‘DEAL WITH’ the media”
and “Foreign Banking for Beginners” to “British Virgin Islands or The
Isle of Man: How to Select a Tax Haven?”; “Talking before Thinking”;
and “How to Bargain with Award Peddlers”. And courtesy of former
governor Donald Duke, we now know that, “How to Rig Elections” is also
on the curriculum.

With the recent
statements of Ohakim and Akala you can clearly see the A-students in
the “Talking before Thinking” class. Ohakim also seems to be excelling
in the Personal Branding Class (see ‘Clean and Green’).

It is however the
“Social Networking for Governors” class I’m most interested in. Rumour
has it that no one in the class understood the difference between
Twitter and Facebook until the instructor explained it thus: “Twitter
is like the Ecological Fund; little room for ‘free styling’. Facebook
on the other hand is like a Security Vote. You can do a lot more with
it…”

PS. Governor Fashola of Lagos is a consistent F-student in the
“Talking before Thinking” class. If you know of any other governors
failing courses, please let me know.

In
the last few months headlines around the world have devoted
considerable attention to the issue of oil spills. The most significant
of course has been the BP oil spill, following the explosion in April
of a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Following that was a
noticeable attempt by the international media to divert some of the
world’s attention from the Gulf of Mexico to a much older tragedy: the
Niger delta.

On May 30, the UK Guardian published a piece by
John Vidal, its environment editor, titled “Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the
Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it.” Vidal’s piece was based
on a trip to the Delta. “We could smell the oil long before we saw it –
the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly
in the air,” he wrote. “The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it
became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the
best-quality oil in the world.” Two weeks later the New York Times took
the baton, publishing on June 16 an article by Adam Nossiter, “Far From
Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old.” The piece opens with the
heartrending words: “Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast,
tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of
all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the
equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some
estimates.” A few weeks later it is the turn of Reuters, in a story
with the headline,

“Gulf spill a familiar story in oil-soaked
Nigeria.” The gory details are the same: “While the world is transfixed
by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spills have become a part
of everyday life during the 50 years that foreign firms have been
pumping out Nigeria’s easily refined fuel. Environmentalists estimate
as much as 550 million gallons of oil have poured into the Niger River
Delta during that time – at a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon
Valdez disaster per year.” Only last week, Julie Baird, deputy editor
of Newsweek, was on America’s National Public Radio (NPR), to talk
about “the environmental and social impact” of the Niger Delta’s spills.

And then Omoyele Sowore, Nigerian
citizen-journalist and publisher of online news medium Sahara
Reporters, wrote an article for the Huffington Post, titled “The Oil
Spill No One’s Talking About.” In it he focused on one oil giant:

Exxon Mobil, accusing them of importing to Nigeria
an aged, leaking oil platform from Angola; “a platform even Angola’s
government regulators rejected.” Sowore says this platform is leaking
5,000 barrels of oil daily, and that Exxon Mobil has been making it
impossible for journalists to gain access to the site, as well as
bribing government officials.

The UK Guardian’s John Vidal also implicated
Exxon Mobil in a May 1 Akwa Ibom spill in which, over the course of a
week, more than a million gallons of oil leaked into the Delta.

In the face of such damning accusations, Exxon
Mobil’s grudging responses amount to no better than a loud, arrogant
silence. Nigerian history is littered with evidence of the nonchalance
of oil giants in a country where people – officials and even victims –
can easily be silenced with cash.

The Nigerian government has also been acting in its customary tardy manner.

“Exxon Mobil needs to show more caution in terms
of the management of oil spills,” Minister of the Environment, John
Odey, told journalists in June. No word from President Jonathan.
Compare that ministerial finger wagging with the American response to
the BP fiasco.

Nigeria’s news organisations also appear to be so
overwhelmed with news of kidnappings and constitutional amendments that
there is little time left for Niger delta spills.

The country’s biggest tragedy is that there are
too many tragedies competing for attention. With the election season
approaching fast, and politicians and government officials scheming for
the spoils of office, we wonder how long it’ll take before President
Jonathan realises that armed youth are not the only militants in the
Delta; that the most dangerous militants may very well be
blackberry-clutching corporate executives.

In
2006, the Bush administration declared Somalia the latest front in the
war on terrorism: a newly influential movement, the Union of Islamic
Courts, was suspected of playing host to al-Qaida there.

When this union took over the capital in June
2006, the United States tried to coax moderates within it to enter a
dialogue with Somalia’s official government, a toothless institution
that was exiled from the capital. But by December of that year, when
the Islamic courts seemed about to take down the government entirely,
neighboring Ethiopia convinced U.S. officials that allowing the courts
to control Somalia would be tantamount to handing the country to
al-Qaida.

And so, the Ethiopian military moved into Somalia
to protect the unpopular government, and for the next two years the
United States bankrolled a brutal occupation. Today, no one doubts that
this was a tragic error. To defend the dysfunctional government,
Ethiopian soldiers robbed, killed and raped with abandon.

The perception that the United States had sided with Ethiopia and the African Union internationalised the conflict.

Ultimately it allowed al-Qaida to gain a foothold
in a country that American intelligence, in 2007, had declared to be
“inoculated” against all kinds of foreign extremist movements.

Sadly, today, the Obama administration is poised to repeat its predecessor’s mistake.

The situation now is very similar to what it was
in 2006. The Ethiopian soldiers are gone, but the regime they
protected, the so-called Transitional Federal Government, is still in
place, now protected by 6,000 African Union peacekeeping troops.

Like the Ethiopians before them, African Union
soldiers from Uganda and Burundi are inflicting thousands of civilian
casualties, indiscriminately shelling neighborhoods in Mogadishu.

Today most of southern Somalia is under the
control of a vicious mob of teenage radicals known as al-Shabab, who
are clearly getting guidance from al-Qaida and who have proudly claimed
responsibility for the attack earlier this month that killed 76 people
in Uganda.

Nobody, from the White House to the African Union,
can believe that the ineffectual transitional government has any hope
of governing Somalia. During the latest round of infighting the speaker
of Parliament was ousted and the prime minister was fired (though he
has refused to step down), and soon afterward the minister of defense
resigned, accusing the government not only of incompetence but also of
trying to assassinate him.

Yet in the past 18 months, the international
community has trained some 10,000 Somali soldiers to support this
government, and American taxpayers have armed them. Seven or eight
thousand of these troops have already deserted, taking their new guns
with them. Indeed, Somalia’s Western-backed army is a significant
source of al-Shabab’s weapons and ammunition, according to the U.N.
Monitoring Group.

There are better ways for the United States to
prevent the rise of terrorist groups in Somalia. A strategy of
“constructive disengagement” – in which the international community
would extricate itself from Somali politics, but continue to provide
development and humanitarian aid and conduct the occasional special
forces raid against the terrorists – would probably be enough to pull
the rug out from under al-Shabab.

This group, led mostly by foreign extremists fresh
from the battlefields of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, is internally
divided, and is hated in Somalia. It has recruited thousands of Somali
children into its militias and uses them to brutally impose a foreign
ideology on the religiously moderate Somali people.

The only way al-Shabab can flourish, or even
survive in the long term, is to hold itself up as an alternative to the
transitional government and the peacekeepers. If the Somali public did
not have to face this grim choice, the thousands of clan and business
militiamen would eventually put up a fight against al-Shabab’s
repressive religious edicts and taxes. (Somalia’s sheer ungovernability
is both its curse and its blessing.) And without a battle against
peacekeepers to unite it, al-Shabab would likely splinter into
nationalist and transnational factions.

Distracted by the unwarranted concern that
withdrawing the soldiers would allow al-Qaida to take control of
Somalia, the Obama administration argues that it can’t afford to step
back.

On the contrary, it can’t afford to do anything
else. To truly stabilise Somalia by force would require 100,000 troops.
Putting another few thousand on the ground – as the African Union has
announced it will do – would only increase the violence. It could also
necessitate sending soldiers from Ethiopia or other bordering states,
bolstering al-Shabab’s best argument for popular support.

Because plans to send more soldiers to Somalia
cannot succeed without American support, the Obama administration is at
a significant crossroads. It is essential that it resist the temptation
to allow history to repeat itself.

Instead, the United States should negotiate with
the moderate elements within al-Shabab. It is not a monolithic
movement, after all. Extremists from Kenya, Afghanistan, Somaliland and
elsewhere have spoken publicly for the group.

But al-Shabab also includes many of the same
Somali religious leaders who controlled the Union of Islamic Courts in
2006, the people the Bush administration once hoped to draw into the
transitional government. Some of these leaders are extremists, and the
idea of talking with them is unappetizing. But the United States can
and should negotiate with them directly.

Most Somalis, who are desperate to be rid of the
foreign extremists, would support such an effort. And it is the best
alternative to escalating the violence and strengthening al-Shabab.

Bronwyn Bruton is a former international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

© 2010 The New York Times

We
live in an age of unprecedented opportunities as well as challenges.
East Asia has experienced spectacular growth, with China recording
quantum leaps by way of an annualised average of 15 percent growth over
the last two decades. India and Brazil have joined the club of newly
prosperous nations as have Malaysia and Indonesia. The digital
revolution has made the world ‘flat’, as Thomas Friedman tells us,
while discoveries in genetics and biotechnology are opening new
prospects in medicine and food production. The search for renewable
energy sources is gathering new momentum.

The particle
accelerator Large Hadron Collider (LHC) developed by European
scientists at CERN in Geneva holds immense promise for cheap, renewable
energy.

The prospects of supersonic flight based on green energy seem closer than ever before.

But we also face
new dangers and vulnerabilities. Climate change is no longer the stuff
of science fiction. The warming-up of our biosphere is altering
rainfall patterns, speeding up desertification and engendering
devastating natural catastrophes. ‘Failed states’ such as Somalia and
DRC remain a challenge to global governance even as the scourge of
poverty continues to afflict a billion people on our planet; nor could
we ignore the challenge of new pandemics and viral diseases that
recognise no national borders.

We also live in a
cruel and divided world. What Harvard professor Joseph Nye terms the
‘clash of civilisations’ has become one of the defining elements of our
age. Formerly harmonious societies are reaching breaking point.

There is widespread alienation and crises of identity. We in Nigeria can no longer take our nationhood for granted.

We also face a
global financial crisis that is worse than anything that has been
witnessed since the Great Depression. Financial markets lost an
astonishing US$14 trillion – equivalent to the annual GDP of the United
States – from their book balances. The major currencies have been in
turmoil, with many fearing that the Euro may be in its death throes
even as the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency comes
increasingly into question.

We in Africa have
not been immune to the crisis. The Nigerian capital markets, once
considered the most attractive in the world, have been badly hit.
Foreign investors have recalled more than US$15 billion of their
portfolio investments. The collapse of oil prices has led to a growing
fiscal crisis, even as our parliamentarians and the state/local
governments continue on a spending spree that borders on profligacy.
Our manufacturing sector has all but disappeared while the few
remaining industries are relocating to our neighbouring countries in
droves. Our policy choices have wiped off the life-chances of millions
of teeming youths, many of whom have taken refuge in hustling, armed
robbery and prostitution. All the symptoms of social decay are there –
kidnapping, criminality, cultism,

ethno-religious
killings and the retreat into primordial cocoons. Amid all this chaos,
our leaders are engaged in a vacuous debate on ‘zoning’. None of the
pretenders to the presidency has put forward one single idea on how to
make our country go forward, which is what truly matters to most
Nigerians.

Four priorities, in my opinion, would be crucial in the coming year.

First, we must
speedily conclude the arrangements for the conduct of free and fair
elections, on which depends the future of our democracy. Updating the
electoral register is crucial. I would strongly recommend that we
borrow the Indian model where IT has been used to ensure successful
voting by over 670 million voters.

New laws need to be put in place to prosecute vote-rigging and any form of bribery aimed at changing electoral outcomes.

Second, we must
take bold steps to exorcise the demons of crime which have made ours a
byword among the nations. Crime is not in our genes. Some of us are old
enough to remember when our country was not like this.

Third, we need
extraordinary measures to revamp our parlous infrastructures,
particularly power. While there have been some modest improvements, we
are still a long haul from the minimum international standards for
civilized nations. Massive investment in the sector should be linked to
wide-ranging reforms and more severe laws against vandalisation.

Fourth, we must
speedily ensure structural diversification of the economy. We have to
think the unthinkable. We would be fools to stake all our future on
oil. Structural diversification entails looking at sectors such as
solid minerals, agro-allied industries and biofuels. Improving the
business climate is imperative, in addition to enhancing private
sector-led growth, strengthening public institutions, tackling
corruption and ensuring financial deepening.

Industrialisation linked to agriculture is key to rebuilding our economy and creating jobs for millions of our people.

The mass of
evidence from economic literature shows that an open, competitive
economy is the best way to ensure accelerated transformation while
hooking on to the digital world economy. Promoting inward investments,
particularly to the non-oil sector, is vital. We must reposition our
country to grab a large chunk of the estimated US$1.7 trillion of
global capital flows. Many are saying that Africa and its 900 million
market is the next global frontier. No country, in my opinion, is
better placed than ours to lead this renaissance and rejuvenation of
our continent.

(Summary of a Presentation at the Breakfast Talk Series at Abuja Investments Ltd, Abuja, Thursday 22 July, 2010).

The World Cup has
taught us many lessons but these lessons have to be transmuted into
improving the game and providing a platform for growth. At this moment-
Now Focus Fully (NFF) on the NFF should be the motto. The NFF have been
at it for ages, we all know that; but this latest act of overseeing
Nigeria perform woefully in South Africa was the final straw that broke
enough important people’s backs to catalyse a change, albeit only in
leadership of the inept NFF board. Like many other like-minded
Nigerians desirous of true change in the NFF, I howled at the
President’s proclamation and initially proclaimed to whoever I
discussed with that the effects would damage and retard our football by
many years and result in more harm than good. After discussing with a
few well-placed Nigerians, I am certainly better informed about the
politics that went on behind the scenes to actualise the removal of the
autocratic trio that represent only a tip of the iceberg.

Background

Recent events have
only reemphasized what we have been demanding for decades. Mumini
Alao’s ‘Soccer Talk’ articles of July 7 and 14 as well as his 2008
publication compiling “Soccer Talk” between 1996-2008 is a veritable
reference for confirmation that history is simply repeating itself. A
succinct look at the touted greatest democracy in the world can shed
more light. America’s status originated from the transparent collective
yearning and efforts of the legendary Founding Fathers to first call a
Constitutional Convention in 1787 that resulted in a constitution that
served as the backbone for United States of America we know today.
Though Nigeria as a collective is still in the throes of developing a
Constitution that is generally acceptable to all, it is the
constitution of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) we are focusing
on.

The stark reality
is that all we are going through now; i.e. condemning football
administration, rejoicing over the removal of an NFA board, as well as
listening to countless repeated recommendations to overhaul the system
is just a multiple repetition of the past thirteen years or so. This
was harshly brought home to me in detail again. In truth, from
journalists to the average Nigerian, to our leadership, we all bear
collective responsibility for the malaise depriving us from enjoying
the benefits in terms of development and ‘real’ success, not
questionable underage victories, of a properly run Football Federation.
The Eagles’ (whom I haven’t referred to as ‘Super’ for about two years)
recent fiasco and removal of ‘the trio’ has provided a platform for
genuine reform by the remaining NFF executive members, minister of
sports, and the president if they legitimately desire to move our
football forward.

Way forward

Current statutes
are filled with loopholes and have mostly been subjected to an
inexhaustible range of interpretations by various individuals pursuing
ulterior motives except the establishment and development of the game
in Nigeria. That should have been the focal point of the just concluded
NFF Congress. Unfortunately the congress only focused on ratifying the
removal of the infamous trio that headed the NFF until recently. Whilst
their removal is most welcome, it was only the very tip of a monstrous
iceberg that was a smokescreen to cover up the structural rot the NFF
has become. However, the soon-to-be-elected NFF executive has been
presented with a unique opportunity to make history; as the board which
in collaboration with selected but acceptable Nigerians, the sports
minister, and President Goodluck Jonathan, selflessly took the
necessary bold steps to bring about genuine change. This can be
achieved by jointly producing an amended draft of the NFF Constitution
within two months of election into office (i.e. by October 2010). That
would provide the foundation for proper debate and public contribution
for a month (or two) before being finally adopted as the “New NFF
Constitution” immediately after. I dare say if they achieve this (and
they can) and it leads to the kind of NFF board Nigerians have been
looking forward to, and should, Nigerians will never forget them and it
will tell when votes are needed.

My suggestions

No Constitution is
perfect for each individual it covers whether it is for a family,
organisation or country and is usually considered a permanent
work-in-view. However, the fundamentals would be structurally sound and
generally acceptable, that is what the current NFF Constitution must
urgently address. Permit me to pick a few I consider acutely essential.

1.Remove the
clauses that presently place near absolute powers in the personae of
the NNF President/NFA Chairman. To ourselves be true. The current
statutes are dictatorial and autonomous favour any incumbent Chairman
to interpret selfishly. The acting chairman just resumed office and
should not (yet) be tempted enough to look away from leading the charge
for change under ‘supervision’ by the minister.

2.Introduce the
submission of detailed plans (or manifestoes) prior to campaigning for
office by which elected officers will be held accountable by Nigerians
and those responsible for voting them into office. This must not
include “qualifying Nigeria for every FIFA/CAF competition because that
should be a given.

3.Introduce proper
checks and balances which include an appraisal system for periodic
reviews of performance on submitted plans; say every 2 years with the
proviso of calling elections if boards are classified as non-performing.

4.Limit the number
of times incumbents can contest for office to a maximum of two 3-year
terms. That is enough time to serve the country and leave a mark if
there is focus.

5.Create a platform that (increasingly) gets people with genuine
intentions into the NFF. The current system segregates and discourages
non-politicians, suitable enthusiastic and dedicated technocrats, and
relevantly experienced people, but most importantly does not allow the
country enjoy the crème of the skills we have on offer. I am sure my
suggestions are only a few of many Nigerians would like to make. I am
sure if they achieve these five, and they can, Nigerian football will
be better placed for the future.