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Every columnist
worth his or her onions and tomatoes has written about the vuvuzela,
the non-musical musical instrument of choice for fans at the World Cup
in South Africa. The “others” are finding Africaness difficult to
contend with. The suburbia cannot handle the disturbia. Some compare it
to the humming of a million bees while others say the sound is like an
African elephant charging in the jungle.

They say the sound
is distracting them, making conversation difficult during play –
Omaseo! I have never heard where football is quietly played like golf
in Augusta, Georgia. I really feel sorry for these people; life must be
difficult outside GRAs of their clinical world.

And patiently I am
waiting for the first Lagosian or the average Nigerian to complain
about the vuvuzela, so I can scream HYPOCRITE! Not with the honking of
cars, molues, trucks or okada horns blasting day and night in our
streets.

As for me, the
sound of a vuvuzela is not strange to me one bit. Where I come from it
is known as akala (ours is made from wood), usually blown during the
Esan Igbabornelimin (dance of the spirit). The akala is an essential
musical instrument that whips up the spirit in the masquerade to
perform the magic that makes him spin in mid-air, sometimes with one
leg. The masquerade yearns for the akala sound, without it the dance is
lacklustre, dull, dispirited and sadly un-African.

As a kid, the sound
of the akala also signified the imminent dance, the calling of the
ancestors to come for an earthly jamboree. That experience is ancient
now, the sound of the Esan vuvuzela known as akala is gradually fading
because the masquerades have left the square.

The new vuvuzelic
experience I am having these days is in my Lagos neigbourhood. Day and
night, I hear the vuvuzela-like humming sound from north, south, east
and west of my apartment. My neighbours’ generators (including my small
“I better pass my neighbour”) generate so much noise that what these
vuvuzela Europeans are complaining about sounds like Hugh Masekela’s
Hope album in one’s ears.

The one that really
mimics the sound of one-hundred-and-fifty-million humming bees is the
generator that belongs to the Redeemed Church opposite my parlour. It
is one of those earth-shaking types that give my entire house
earthquake tremors. It used to annoy me, but because it belongs to the
house of God, I have figured out a way to benefit from the booming
sound. Every Sunday morning before I go to my own service, I put on a
track suit, stand in my living room with feet firmly placed on the
ground and I’d grip the burglary proofing on my window, with my iPod
blasting “I have a very big God du o, who is always on my side…” After
about thirty minutes of the generator’s sound shaking me up, I start
sweating like a vuvuzela dipped in water. That is my Sunday workout
regime now, I have found a way to benefit and deal with the sound.

And this is what I
want those complainants to do, find a way to deal with the noise of the
vuvuzela and embrace the “otherliness” in the other. A visitor does not
dictate to a host how to sit on his own chair. For we are Africans, we
bring in the noise and we bring in the funk. It’s a bit surprising and
annoying that the rest of the complaining world actually thought that
Africa would not bring something peculiarly exciting to the World Cup.
What were they expecting, pianos and cellos that buzz like misguided
anopheles mosquitoes?

It also shows none
of these complainants have ever worshipped in an African pentecostal
church. Sad. We don’t hide or control our excitement. When we are
chasing the devil, we scream, blow vuvuzelas and run with agbada and
buba flaying through the entire church. During thanksgiving we roll on
the floor from one end to the other – carpeted floor or dusty muddy
floor, governor or ordinary citizen, because that is how we roll.

My only regret in
the whole anti-vuvuzeling clamour is that South Africans did not know
that the sound of vuvuzela could be used as a Weapon of Mass
Distraction. If they did, I doubt that Apartheid would have lasted that
long. Can you imagine if every oppressed South African or every member
of the ANC party back in the WHITES ONLY days, decided to blow
vuvuzelas day and night in the white supremacist quarters? No weapon
fashioned against them would have prospered. The world would have
witnessed a modern day falling of the walls of Jericho by Joshua’s
vuvuzelists.

Since I am unable
to attend the Mundial in SA (thankfully so, for our perenial losing
Super Eagles would have given me indigestion and a dose of HPB) I
kindly beseech our 62 Senators that have gone to proudly and loudly
represent Nigeria to bring me colourful vuvuzelas – come 2011 Elections
me and some of my vuvuzelous friends might need them.

Don’t worry about what we are going to do with them in Abuja.

Oil
has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for eight weeks now – and sent a
bipartisan wave of criticism crashing into the White House.

Allies and adversaries have accused President
Barack Obama of reacting too slowly, deferring too much to BP,
displaying too little emotion, and demonstrating incompetent
management. Fans of historical analogy compare his performance to
ineffectual responses by President Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage
crisis, and President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina.

In other words, the crisis in the gulf has become
a first-class political crisis, too. Right? Maybe not – or at least,
not so far. Polls show that American voters give Obama the same mixed
evaluation as before the spill. They like him personally but have
reservations about his policies.

Roughly half approve of his performance in the
Oval Office, about where the president has remained since fall after
his initial honeymoon with Americans faded.

“It’s hard to make the case that the BP oil spill
has a substantial impact on Obama’s job approval,” said Bill McInturff,
a Republican pollster.

Charles Franklin, an analyst for pollster.com, has
tried to make it. Franklin examined polls that run “hot” for Mr. Obama,
like the Washington Post/ABC News survey that recently measured a 52
percent job approval rating.

He parsed polls that run colder, like Rasmussen
Reports, whose automated phone survey recorded 47 percent approval over
the weekend. Neither has moved significantly since the Deepwater
Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

Gallup’s daily “tracking” has shown a slight
decline. But after examining the surveys used in the tracking, and
finding scant movement in other polls, Franklin isn’t convinced of
genuine deterioration beyond routine survey-to-survey “noise.”

“I see current approval about in line with the
fluctuations we’ve seen all year for each pollster,” said Franklin, a
political scientist at the University of Wisconsin. “Little evidence of
real change.”

Presidential job approval is the most watched
statistic in American politics, a proxy for the chief executive’s power
to persuade lawmakers, capacity to win re-election, and ability to help
or hurt in midterm elections.

It rarely moves rapidly. Because Americans know so
much about presidents already, new information must be extraordinarily
powerful to change impressions.

National security crises can do it when the public
rallies around the president. After 9/11, Bush’s approval rating
quickly jumped to the 80s from the 50s.

Political fiascos can have the opposite effect, if
not as dramatically. By mid-2005, setbacks in Iraq, a star-crossed
effort to overhaul Social Security, and the right-to-die controversy
involving Terri Schiavo were sapping Bush’s strength.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Franklin calculated,
Bush’s approval rating was already dropping by 1 percentage point a
month. The rate of decline doubled in the wake of Katrina’s televised
images of human suffering.

Fortunately for Obama, the BP spill hasn’t
produced comparable images. Also shielding him is the presence of BP, a
corporate giant in an unpopular industry, as a lightning rod.

A third is the administration’s effort to
publicize its attempts to respond and hold BP accountable. That effort
included another trip to the gulf on Monday and a presidential address
on Tuesday night.

“His standing with the American people is not
being negatively affected,” said Joel Benenson, a pollster for Obama,
because “they overwhelmingly see the president making this his top
priority.”

Obama may be sustaining damage in subtler ways.
Gallup’s slight decline could prove the leading edge of a trend that
shows up later in other surveys.

The spill could also increase White House
vulnerability to future setbacks. McInturff noted that Katrina, by
eroding Bush’s reputation for competence, had deeper long-term
ramifications for his presidency than were apparent in fall 2005.

Moreover, attention to the spill has cost the
administration opportunities to communicate on what Democrats want to
be their 2010 centerpiece: recovery from the Great Recession.

The spill “adds to the burdens he carries,” said
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “But none of it is
as central to judgments about him as the economy and unemployment.”

Indeed, the stickiness of Obama’s standing cuts
both ways. If BP hasn’t eroded it, the administration’s signal
achievement – passage of health care legislation – hasn’t much enhanced
it, either, as joblessness hovers near 10 percent.

And one thing Democratic strategists agree on:
they need Obama’s approval rating to move higher to ease their Election
Day pain.

As Obama visited the gulf this month, the Labor
Department reported that just 41,000 new private sector jobs had been
created in May, down from more than 200,000 in April. That flow-rate is
likely to prove most critical to the president and his party this fall.

© 2010 New York Times

Years
ago during our first two and a half year stint in South Africa, a
fellow correspondent’s mother had arrived for the USA on her first
visit to the country. At dinner after a Nigerian meal of coconut rice,
moin moin and various trimmings she was asked how she was finding the
country. It was the middle of the South African winter, which is a
Northern hemisphere’s summer and it was almost as icy cold as it is
now. Winters elsewhere are known for their frosty temperatures and
darkness. South African winters can be cold but the sun is ever present
She shifted in her chair and drawing her shawl even closer around her
body she said, “I’m adjusting.”

Adjustment yes, an
important factor in the concept of globalisation. So there is this
constant blare of vuvuzelas at World Cup matches taking place in South
Africa. Some have described it as a white noise, (appropriate don’t you
think?) that ruins their enjoyment of the game. Some players have
offered it as an excuse for not hearing the ref’s whistle (how
convenient). International broadcasting media have complained,
promising to devise ways of deleting the sound for the ‘refined’ ears
of their audiences.

It is the same old
same old. Why must you expect an African based World Cup to sound the
same as one in Europe, Asia or The Americas?

Is it not enough of
an imposition that in a country of pap, (corn meal fufu) fleis (meat)
and biltong, all you can get at a World Cup game in the heart of an
African city is hotdogs or corn dogs washed down with coke and wait for
it, a bottle of Budweiser; not Tusker, Star, Gulder or Sefrica’s own
Castle. Outside Soccer City on opening day there were mamas braing
(barbecuing) meat, boerewors (local giant sausages) serious gut fillers
to be sure. But nothing so appetizing gets through FIFA. What exactly
is the origin of a corn dog? Scatch that. I am not really sure I want
to know.

What I did do
instead was ask around for a random sample of national traits and
practices that have elicited a similar response from visitors as has
the vuvuzela, the sound of which has ricocheted across the world and
promises to be the signal feature of the 2010 World Cup.

ARGENTINA – don’t ask them for directions. It’s almost always wrong.

BRAZIL – meat, meat and meat in every meal.

CHINA the
propensity for Chinese taxi drivers to light up cigarettes in their cab
without checking if it is alright with you the passenger

DUBAI – People generally ignore the tourists

EGYPT – You can haggle everything from hotels to camel rides

ENGLAND- The
reticence of the English. Bland pepperless food! The question, “can I
call you “Yemi”? People thinking its ok not to try and say my name
properly. I try with theirs so they must also with mine.

EVERYWHERE – The inefficiency of air travel and the mechanical mindlessness of airport security checks.

FRANCE – “Je ne parle pas anglais”

ISRAEL – Border security, they are mean SOBs, even holding a U.S passport doesn’t help

ISTANBUL – the intense stare down

JAPAN: the
obsession with the Western world when their own culture is so rich and
beautiful. Try speaking to them in Japanese and they respond in
English. It faded when I realised my Japanese wasn’t that great and I
started to find the humor in their attempts at being non-Japanese. Like
the restaurant named “Derriere” or the chocolate bar named “Asse” to
name a few…

MALAYSIA…the very dirty Malaysian toilets

NIGERIA- Rice, Rice and More Rice at every f*&^king event you go to. Creativity anyone?

Generators.“That
is just how it is here.” People and their serio-comical posturing .The
funk of 40,000 years on people that should know better.

QUEBEC- The hatred
of everything non-French. Don’t bother speaking to them in English;
they will ignore you, even though they speak perfect English.

SENEGAL-Dakar – the
intense fish smell mixed with other odoriferous smells emanating from
Le Marche Soumbedioune on the Rue de Oakam

USA and SOUTHERN USA –Political correctness.Overly conscious about race. “God bless your heart. Where are you from?”

“I met a Nigerian once in the grocery store, do you know him?” The general lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.

Gum-chewing habits-
until I encountered winter. Their propensity for eating at the
slightest opportunity, until I became one of them.

Atlanta and Texas – “How y’all doing? You from Africa?”

SOUTH AFRICA- The accent, and yes vuvuzelas!

I
sent a blackberry message to my husband asking if he had had lunch. His
response, “… having porridge yam”. “You mean yam pottage” I proposed,
and received an abrupt, “…what the cook is making is porridge yam and
not yam pottage. Thank you!”

He was right of
course. Nigerians call it yam porridge even though porridge by strict
definition is oats or other grains or legumes boiled in water or milk
or both, usually served hot. But here we are living in the only country
in the world where the words “see your mouth!” are an insult and a
provocation. We must concede that we have our own legitimate way of
naming things. Oats cooked in milk or water is not porridge. No matter
the brand of the oats, it is “Quakeroats!”

As to the
disdainful drawing of attention to someone’s mouth by using the words,
“see your mouth!” or the other popular and perhaps more painful, “see
your head!” the question is: “What about my mouth?”

One does not need
to break this down for a Nigerian. The three words mean there is
something annoying about the mouth; either in the way that it is moving
in speech, or in it is mastication of food, or in the God given shape
of the whole thing. Even if it is a perfect enough mouth, the insult is
effective because ones lips are not in view like one’s hands or feet.
Its posture cannot be vigilantly monitored to ensure it is always
perfectly aligned. The insult is really about bestowing a dose of acute
self-consciousness on the person being insulted so his mind is
involuntarily divided in two. One half thinking up a face-saving
response and the other half frantically cogitating: “What about my
mouth…Well what about it?!”

It is yam porridge
for another reason: I find the duality of purpose of the mouth
fascinating. It speaks and it eats. And because these two fellows are
effectively sharing the same door, it is hard to argue about details of
their intimacy. If a Nigerian mouth says that what it is eating is yam
porridge, then that is what it is.

It is also
interesting to think about how we refer to our cooking or dining
implements. I used to wonder why it was necessary for Nigerians to say,
“please abeg”. Why is one “please” not sufficient? The answer I suppose
is simple enough; the speaker is making a strong emphasis and
distinguishing between a simple please and an earnest one.

And so it is with
words like “cooking pot” and “feeding spoon” and “broken plate” and
“glass cup” where we are emphasising and also distinguishing a flower
pot or water pot from a cooking one; a spoon for eating from one for
cooking; a ceramic plate from a “pan”, and a special guest worthy
drinking glass from a plain cup that any old body can drink out of.

I once planned an
expedition to Watt market in Calabar to find and buy a duck. I was
advised that in order not to waste my time and draw attention to
myself, attention that would only make it more difficult to negotiate
with traders in the market, I should ask for a “duck fowl” as opposed
to a simple “duck”. Rationale for the need of using both words being,
it is commonsensical that there are many types of fowl of which duck is
only one. Also, the words were not to be pronounced as two words but as
one. With the same intonation as if one were calling out “police!”
“duckfowl!” Simply asking for a duck and with the wrong intonation
would immediately set the trader’s mind to wondering which planet I had
recently dropped from.

My favourite has to
be the confusion (or clarity) of the description of sensory perception.
Let us say there is an aroma of food mouthwateringly wafting in one’s
direction, does the Nigerian smell it or hear it? Every true and
sincere Nigerian must admit that it is both. “You no hear dat smell?”
is as legitimate as “Do you smell that?” depending on the context.
Using the wrong words out of context would either be termed
inappropriate or pretentious.

Last year, a blogger called Steve Carper quoted from my piece “Never say pap” in his blog Planet Lactose.

The quote read:
“…I gained a new food obsession; homemade Guinea corn gruel also
known as Oka Baba or very commonly and plainly called Ogi, served with
unrestrained lashings of Obudu delight. Ogi is never ever referred to
at our house as “pap”… Obudu Delight by the way, is the name of the
honey produced in deep cloud layers in Obudu cattle ranch.”

He went on to say
that he had no clue what I was talking about. I must admit it made me
stop and think. Here I was writing in English, and to another English
speaker, I might as well have been speaking in Sanskrit. Did it make me
change my ways? Of course not! The people to whom I am speaking
understand me perfectly. Eavesdroppers must, after all, know their
place.

And it would be dishonest to promise what I cannot do. If our food
is what we call it, then I cannot say it is otherwise. Take note all
eavesdroppers: “swallow” is a verb, a bird, and a morsel of gari,
amala, semo or pounded yam: chop is synonymous to the word “eat” as
“slapping” is synonymous to “blowing” and is also the adjective for
describing the pain pleasure sensation from a “criminally cold” drink,
etc. etc.

“We
are a developed country with undeveloped people.” How provocative! My
instinct was to reject the statement, but on deeper thought I feel that
there is an element of truth in that statement. If that is the case,
what does it mean in practical terms?

All of a sudden,
many incomprehensible and frustrating things make sense. Nothing seems
to last! Our big national projects that are well started end up
half-done. Our well trained staff start off well but like batteries,
they quickly exhaust their energy and thinking cells, and grind to a
halt until the employer starts the process all over again.

Why are we labelled
a developing country? 30 years ago we had trains, planes, schools,
universities, farms, plantations, factories, roads, reliable power,
postal services, telecoms services (albeit limited), and formal cordial
relations with most countries in the world. We built industries around
our mineral resources and took pride in our contribution to worldwide
commodities trading. Growing up, the industries I heard most frequently
referred to were textiles, fisheries, cocoa, and rubber.

We had low
unemployment, high enrolment in apprenticeships, vocational training
schools and well-run polytechnics and universities. Our graduates,
academics, and citizens were valued and respected world-wide for their
energy, enterprise, and the contributions they could make. Enterprise
and occupations were passed from parent to child and we had generations
of farmers, blacksmiths, artists, traders, market women, transporters,
lawyers, taxi drivers, doctors etc..

Engagements with
government were straightforward and took minimal time. The civil
servants were friendly, helpful, informative and happy to be of service.

To all intents and
purposes, I would assess Nigeria then, even in the rural areas, as 60%
on the road to developed nation status. What went wrong?

I join a long list of more eminent people who have pondered and explored the causes. This is my own take on it.

Fola Arthur-Worrey,
in his book, the Diary of Mr Michael, writes about the observations,
thoughts and experiences of a visitor to Nigeria starting from his seat
on the plane as it approached Murtala Muhammed International Airport in
Lagos.

What does the
visitor see? And this is very important. The largest manifestation of a
nation’s culture is in the external sensory components of it – what you
can see, smell, hear, and touch. The landscape, the buildings and
structures, the dress and appearance of inhabitants, the available
facilities, the language, the facial expressions, posture and gestures
of people.

Form follows functions:

So what did Mr
Michael see as he moved around our country? The same things that we see
on a daily basis. On the surface, we see all things that have always
been there (except trains) plus new technological advancements such as
mobile phones and computers. It all seems logical. It all seems to be
working.

Yet, once you look
beyond the surface and delve a little deeper, you may find a vast
difference between what is on the surface, and the reality. That was
the role played by Mr Michael’s Nigerian driver.

He was the voice of
the people, deconstructing, demystifying and explaining the
inexplicable. What we have in place is Form without Substance, a
developed country with undeveloped people.

Just as architects
and designers generally follow the principle of ‘Form follows
Function’; in other words, that the design of the object/building must
enable and not detract from the ultimate purpose of the object: i.e. a
beautifully designed bottle opener is no use if it cannot remove the
caps and corks from bottles. Just so, educationists and citizens forget
that the various forms we have, of government, of transport, of
education and so on, are no use if they do not deliver the function for
which they were set up. There is no point having a democracy with three
‘independent’ arms of government, federal, state and local legislatures
if they do not deliver democracy.

Initiatives for progress, improvement and positive change should be
fundamentally about achieving better substance and function. We are
tired of changing and improving ‘forms’ – better job titles for work
that is still undesirable. That is where we seem to be stuck in our
development track. Repeatedly changing the form, without improving the
substance of our existence.

The
royal stool of the Deji of Akure, the paramount ruler of the capital
city of Ondo State has been in the news for the past month – for all
the wrong reasons. The last king, Oluwadare Adesina Adepoju, in an
undignified fit of annoyance, led a group of his aides to the home of
his estranged wife in Akure to wreak violence on her. It became a cause
celebre for women rights activists and other Nigerians disgusted with
any form of violence directed at women.

Mr. Adepoju and his entourage engaged his wife and
her supporters in a public brawl that led to grievous wounds to the
woman and a near lynching of the then king – who had to be helped out
of the encounter after his vehicle had been destroyed and his clothes
shredded.

As it happened, Mr. Adepoju also succeeded in
destroying every shred of respect his people had for him and the
authority he enjoyed over them. This eventually consumed him as his
throne was taken away from him by the state government – who also
banished him to Owo, incidentally the same city where his battered wife
is now being treated.

The actions of the last Deji have, ironically
brought to the fore the controversial manner of his choice as the king
for the town. The unresolved altercations that trailed his selection
have once more become a matter of contention.

Leading the charge is the man who lost to the
deposed king. The former Deji-elect, Adegbola Adelabu, who has come out
to lay his claim to the stool, told the state government early in the
week not to start a fresh selection process for the appointment of a
new Deji.

Mr. Adelabu is not engaged in a wild goose chase.
He topped the selection process for the Deji of Akure in 2005 and the
eighteen traditional kingmakers in the city backed his candidacy. His
victory was, however overturned by the then government of the state,
which based its opposition on the interference of some notable Akure
indigenes. The now deposed monarch was the beneficiary of that
political interference in the selection of the king.

This paper is not privy to the reasons for the
state government’s hostility to Mr. Adelabu and neither do we intend to
hazard guesses at to why this was done. But the action of an elected
government in jettisoning the decision of a council of traditional
kingmakers has a tinge of unfairness and aggrandisement about it.

To be sure, it is the constitutional right of
state governors to appoint or sack traditional rulers within their
jurisdiction. But it is always a sad thing when the traditional
institution is dragged into the murky waters of partisan politics. This
not only mars the authority of the traditional rulers, it also tends to
weaken the ability of the institution to perform its role in the
society. In the end, both the politicians and chiefs are the worse for
it.

Traditional institutions are already facing
pressure – from government and quasi government institutions
questioning their relevance to society having taken on the powers and
functions they were known for in times past. But the fact that the
contest for vacant stools of traditional rulers across the country has
always been subject to intrigue and heated jostling means there is
still life in the old institution yet – and that people still accord a
great deal of respect to the original custodians of their culture.

The Ondo State government has been rightly
commended for the maturity with which it handled the case of the
deposed monarch. The removal of Mr. Adepoju has been received with a
sense of relief by the people of the town and other traditional rulers
in the state. But that means no less a sense of fairness and
thoroughness is expected in the selection of the next Oba.

Mr. Adelabu, were he still to enjoy the support of
the town’s kingmakers, should have the right of first refusal. The
state government should investigate the reasons for why the previous
administration rejected Mr. Adelabu and if it finds these were
politically motivated, then it should go ahead to support the man
picked by his people. Righting a five-year wrong could do wonders to
the psyche of a people traumatised by the events of the last few weeks.