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This week’s deadly Israeli attack on an activist flotilla in the Mediterranean seems to have left the White House adrift.

World leaders were
quick to condemn the Israeli sea assault Monday that took the lives of
nine people on an aid flotilla to Gaza. President Barack Obama wasn’t
one of them. He spoke with the prime ministers of Israel and Turkey,
but said nothing beyond those private conversations. Officially his
administration urged Israel to release the hundreds of activists it
captured and investigate the incident, but Washington didn’t criticize
anyone.

“Turkey and Israel
are both good friends to us,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
“and we are working with both to deal with the aftermath with this
tragic incident.”

Some Republicans
were quicker to choose sides. “The Israelis have been very clear about
sustaining a blockade of Gaza, and they have every right to sustain a
blockade of Gaza,” Newt Gingrich, a senior figure in the Republican
Party, told Politico.Com. “Hamas is actively every day trying to kill
Israelis, and as a matter of international law, Turkey should not have
allowed that flotilla to go down there.”

Last month’s BP
oil-well disaster hasn’t been fixed and oil continues to soil the
southern U.S. coast. Both it and the Israeli attack have one thing in
common: they’ve forced the Obama administration to navigate its way
through someone else’s mishap.

Many Americans have
complained that the president seemed too passive in the days after the
oil disaster, leaving BP to address the emergency. Some people outside
the U.S. complained that the administration has been nearly absent from
the debate over Israel’s attack, leaving others to manage that crisis
too.

“I have to be frank: I am not very happy,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. “We expect a clear condemnation.”

The United States
wants to encourage oil companies to supply it with ample, inexpensive
energy and, at the same time, it wants to safeguard the environment.
The United States wants to be Israel’s protector and, at the same time,
it wants to calm tensions and improve its standing in the Muslim world.

It can be difficult to head in such different directions. After the
two mishaps at sea, the White House has appeared to its critics and
even some of its friends, to be just treading water.

Our
legislators are in an uproar. The event that has led to this
pandemonium is not the abuse of an innocent 13-year-old child by a
member of their ‘hallowed’ chambers. It is also not the fact that women
regularly die at childbirth, as do babies because basic healthcare
facilities are not available. The death of thousands annually on
yawning craters that pass as our roads is also not the source of their
headache. Neither is it the fact that everyday small and medium scale
businesses are shutting down because they cannot afford the cost of
diesel to power their premises, thus leading to an increase in the army
of the unemployed and criminal. That our name has become synonymous
with everything bad, from corruption to fraud, is also not the source
of grief for lawmakers.

Our legislator’s
angst is not because thousands of our graduates come out of university
mostly uneducated without the knowledge and skills to better their
lives and contribute to nation building. The fact that the country is
insolvent – our expenditure is more than our income – is also not the
source of their ire.

There is something
much more important pre-occupying the mind of our lawmakers: a problem
so momentous, that if it is not resolved, things will fall apart and
the centre will no longer hold. Our legislators think they are grossly
underpaid and are therefore seeking an increase in their quarterly
allowance.

You cannot blame
them. Their allowances are a meagre N27.2 million each, hardly
commensurate with all the sterling contributions the ‘Honourable’
members have made to nation building. Think all the laws they have
passed that have made life better for the average Nigerian, enshrined
democracy and ensured that we have a functional society. Think all of
the good businesses they have attracted to their constituencies to
ensure rapid development. Think all the time they have spent on their
home ground listening to the grievances of their constituencies and the
alacrity with which they have jumped back into their jeeps and raced
back to ensure those opinions are heard and respected at the centre of
power.

Our legislators
indeed deserve kudos. An analysis of their achievements in the last two
and a half years in office leaves one totally in awe. They are so
efficient at their job that all appropriation bills that have been put
before them have received prompt attention. In a few cases they have
even showed initiative by increasing the amount of money to be
‘appropriated’.

Why should a group
of people with this enviable record be denied an increase in
emoluments? After all it is not as if they recorded this dazzling list
of achievements while safely cushioned in the lap of luxury. You have
to admit, that their residences in Apo quarters are not comparable at
all to the home of an average Nigeria.

Have we all
forgotten so soon the N628 million that had to be spent on the
renovations of the last Speaker’s residence and that of her deputy,
just to make the homes habitable? You also have to pity our lawmakers
for the many other hardships they have to endure. While many of us have
the luxury of getting our water from the ever-efficient government run
water boards and power from the ever-faithful PHCN, we have forced them
to dig boreholes and rely on generators.

As if that is not
bad enough, they are made to travel, elevated above the ground. What
fun is there to be had from driving in a jeep? The value of each
journey should surely be measured by the experience itself. No jolts
and no bumps. How does one even begin to believe that a journey has
taken place?

Imagine also their
trauma at having to take themselves and their loved ones to foreign
lands at the first inkling of an illness. These sorts of trips are just
so exhausting. The rest of us of course have the privilege of been
treated in Nigerian hospitals and luxuriating in that peculiarly local
brand of hospitality known as ‘dismal health care ‘safe in the
knowledge that money for drugs, needles and other medical sundries will
be footed by relatives who are just a bike ride away and can be relied
upon to provide assistance, no matter their own personal circumstances.

Let us also
remember that our oil wells are in full production and gushing. Plus,
the price of black gold is on the up and up. The country is awash with
petrol dollars and what to do, if not spend them. We have also
diversified our economy and so have multiple sources of income. Foreign
direct investment is on the increase and the Nigerian economy, in total
contrast to that of the rest of the world, is booming.

Nigerians can
afford to be magnanimous. We are lucky to have such a dedicated and
honest bunch as our ‘Legislooters’. After all what is another N540
million quarterly, to a nation that has plenty?

Our
parliamentarians held a rather curious debate recently on the motion of
whether or not we are a ‘failed state’. The mere fact that this debate
was taking place at all was in itself an issue for concern. We as a
people have this penchant for sado-masochistic self-loathing; believing
everything about us to be a catalogue of unrequited evil. We take our
blessings for granted – good health, fulfilling careers, our families,
our friends and all the other good things with which we have been
blessed. Instead, we prefer to focus on our failings — on all the
things that are wrong with us as a people.

There is evidence
from Werner Heisenberg’s ‘indeterminacy principle’ in quantum physics
that sub-atomic particles do tend to adapt their characteristics to the
manner in which they are actually being observed. If this is true of
nature, how truer it must be for people and nations. If we choose to
focus on our collective foibles, then we are playing the game of
losers. You cannot use the word ‘stupid’ on your child for every small
mistake and not expect that child to grow up stupid. Was it not the
ancients who taught us that our universe was brought into being through
the mystery of the spoken word?

As we approach our Golden Jubilee, perhaps for once, it might do us some good to count our blessings.

Consider where the
Almighty has chosen to place us. Nigeria is the most strategically
located country in Africa. If we were the sun, our rays would irradiate
the length and breadth of the continent from our location on this most
strategic corner of Africa. We are the ‘heart of Africa’ not only in
metaphor but also in the literal mathematical-geometrical sense; the
bridgehead for reaching out to the rest of the continent in trade,
business and communications.

Unlike countries
such as Haiti, Bangladesh, Turkey, Indonesia, India, Japan and the
United States, we have been spared from natural catastrophes such as
earthquakes, tornadoes and Tsunamis. What we have experienced as
natural disasters has been comparatively tame by world standards. Of
course, we have to worry about ecological problems such as
desertification in the North, environmental pollution in the Niger
Delta and gully erosion in the East. But these are largely man-made
disasters which we ourselves can reverse if we set our minds so to do.

Apart from the
1950s when we suffered a famine deliberately imposed by British
colonial policy which forced people to produce cash crops to feed the
factories of Europe following World War II, Nigeria has never undergone
the kind of dreadful experiences that Somalia and Ethiopia have
undergone. We do of course have incidences of malnutrition and we still
import some of our food. But much of this is down to the intellectual
laziness of our leaders more than anything else. If properly harnessed,
our soil could easily become the granary of our continent.

We are also a
gifted people; known the world over for our brilliance and ingenuity.
The world’s greatest living mathematician is one of our compatriots.
Nigerian scientists and professionals are flourishing all over the
world. Some of the luminous lights of our renascent Africa are to be
found on our shores, ours being a land of star-scattering thinkers,
artists and griots. We do our things with such style and panache that
shocks our friends and confounds our enemies alike. We have been spared
the heartbreaking inferiority complex that Global Apartheid has so
successfully inflicted on the psyche of the African people. We have a
supreme confidence that many of our detractors mistake for arrogance.

While our record in
economic development is rather mediocre and our people still wallow in
millennial misery, we can nonetheless point to a few notable strides.
In 1960, we had only one university. Today, we have sixty. We can
debate the standards, but we cannot deny that there has been an
explosion in school enrolment and in higher education. During the Gowon
years, we built more roads than the British did in their century-long
occupation of our country. Abuja is also a success; a capital city of
which we must all be proud. In spite of the challenges, we can claim to
have launched a satellite, NIGCOMSAT-1, into space. Nollywood has
become the toast of the global film industry, second in output only to
India, and well ahead of Hollywood.

And this house has
not fallen, in spite of civil war, in spite of the recurrent cycle of
ritual bloodbaths in the name of religion and ethnicity. Through all
the upheavals, our people have shown an extraordinary resilience.
Brutalised by the savagery of our leaders, they have kept hope alive.
We have even won the dubious prize for being the happiest people on
earth. Yes, we have often tempted the fates – teetered on the Niagara
Falls of history – but we have also managed to retreat from the cosmic
abysses of catastrophe.

I have travelled the length and breadth of our beautiful continent.
And I say it again, without any fear of contradiction, that we are the
greatest and most generous people in Africa. We welcome strangers with
a warmth that is unknown elsewhere. A peculiar people, ours is a
heritage of infinite possibilities. If only our leaders understood the
full meaning of our destiny, Nigeria would astonish the world.

Days ago, it emerged that 163 persons, most of them children, had died in Zamfara since March, from suspected lead poisoning. The victims were said to be mostly illegal gold miners, working in an area with high concentrations of lead. Apart from the dead, hundreds have also fallen ill.

Only days before that news emerged, hundreds of persons were hospitalized in Kaduna State after being exposed to poisonous fumes from a mysterious gas cylinder. According to news reports, the toxic gas was released when a welder attempted to open a cylinder. The gas rendered many of its victims unconscious, and affected even rescue personnel as well.

In a country with an age-old disdain for collecting statistics and monitoring trends, these incidents, tragically, are only a tip of the iceberg. The effects of most will not be sudden as in the above instances, but drawn out; slow deaths that no one will ever get to the bottom of.

Incidents like this are to be expected in a society like ours; it goes beyond ascribing the term lawless to the ease with which governance is conducted without any awareness of its basic requirements. The questions on the mind of any right-thinking Nigerian are these: where was the Zamfara State Government all the while a multitude of its citizens carried out illegal mining activities on its territory; and how did it escape the attention of the authorities that the land was contaminated with lead?

Viewers of the (in)famous BBC documentary Welcome to Lagos will recall that some of its major characters eked a living from setting fire to copper wires in a bid to retrieve pure copper which is then sold for profit. At least one of them in fact acknowledged that the venture posed serious health risks.

It is already well known that Nigeria is a major dumping ground for electronic waste (e-waste) from the West and from Asia – obsolete and often unsalvageable computers, mobile phones, TV sets, refrigerators, etc.
Lagos’ Alaba Market, reputed to be the biggest electronics market in West Africa, is an infinite storehouse of disused electronics from within and outside Nigeria. Much of this junk is pulled apart and smelted by a teeming army of otherwise jobless Nigerians, with the aim of extracting – in crude ways – valuable but highly toxic metals. This crude recycling is in all cases a death sentence, poisoning the soil, the air and the bodies of victims; increasing the likelihood of heart and respiratory diseases, cancer and genetic mutations.

On May 29 the Nigerian Customs Service seized a vessel carrying eight containers of e-waste, which arrived at the Tincan Island Port. Only in April yet another ship was detained at Tincan Island Port. Among its contents were containers of lead batteries. The fact that these ships keep showing up in our ports should be sufficient cause for alarm in government circles. It appears that potential dumpers of hazardous waste have identified Nigeria as an easy prey. They must have strong reasons for coming to that alarming conclusion.
We call on the National Environmental Standards Regulation and Enforcement Agency (NESREA) and other relevant government agencies and law enforcement bodies to step up their surveillance. Proactive steps need to be taken regarding these scandals. We cannot afford to wait for these ships to show up on our shores before we take action.

Few Nigerians will forget the Koko tragedy, in which thousands of tonnes of toxic waste originating from Italy were dumped in Koko, present-day Delta State, polluting the air and soil and causing widespread sickness and death. But not many Nigerians will know that Probo Koala, the ship which dumped tonnes of toxic waste in Abidjan in 2006, killing several persons and making tens of thousands of others sick, stopped in Lagos shortly before going on to Abidjan.

Nigeria, it appears, lives perpetually on the edge of disaster. The seeming nonchalance of our authorities gives immense cause for concern. Despite the Zamfara tragedy, we are sure that the illegal mining which led to the death of hundreds (and which also causes the country to lose billions of dollars annually), will continue unhindered, once the dead are buried and the hue and cry has died down. Tragically, Sani Ahmed Yerima, Zamfara State Senator, and one of those who should be spearheading efforts to tackle this disaster, is at the moment caught up in trying to defend his choice of an under-aged wife. Talk of fiddling while the land lies poisoned.

We sympathize with the victims of these disasters, and call on our governments to wake up to their responsibilities. These clearly avoidable tragedies will continue to be inevitable as long as no lessons are learnt from the ones that have already happened.

Let’s be honest: Nobody would be talking about the Gore breakup were it not for The Kiss.

The Kiss doesn’t
get the top line on the Al Gore resume, of course. He did win a Nobel
Prize and an Oscar, after all. He also has won the enmity of every
climate-change denier/skeptic across the world.

What’s strange is
that Gore, of all people, has excited such emotions. What made The Kiss
so remarkable was that people weren’t necessarily sure Gore had human
emotions.

It wasn’t the
all-time great kiss. That would have to be the sailor-meets-nurse Times
Square kiss on V-J Day that made the cover of Life magazine.

The Gores’ kiss wasn’t exactly the Rodin sculpture either, although Al Gore has been accused of being at least semi-immobile.

(By the way, the most-cited Gore-breakup joke so far: Tipper gets half the Internet.)

But as political kisses go, it was certainly memorable, if not necessarily in a good way.

I was showing a
photograph of The Kiss to a friend at the office, who said, “I wish I
hadn’t seen that. It’s like having a hair caught in your throat.”

The kiss was almost
certainly staged. This is politics, after all. But real or fake or (my
guess) real and fake, The Kiss was meant to represent the notion that
the Gores were a real couple and nothing like the Clintons.

Without the Monica
Lewinsky affair, there would have been no kiss. There also would have
been no impeachment and possibly no George W. Bush presidency, just so
you understand the stakes.

Strangely, the
Clintons’ strange marriage continues, and now the Gores are splitting
up. That’s the bet that no one would have taken and everyone would have
lost. It’s a reminder of how little we actually know about other
people. Face it, we barely know ourselves.

In 2000, Al Gore
wanted to remove himself as far as possible from the Clinton drama.
Tipper Gore had said how upset she was that Hillary hadn’t left Bill.
Al Gore had said he felt personally betrayed.

No one was
officially more upset by Clinton’s behavior than the Gores. It was as
if the pair were getting their advice on the lovelorn from the Gallup
poll.

And yet, after Gore
lost the triple-overtime election to Bush, Bill Clinton left office
with 60 percent approval ratings. And Hillary Clinton, of course,
nearly became the nation’s first female president.

Whatever else,
though, the Clinton marriage is famously complicated. The Gores wanted
to show that their marriage was just like yours, if you, too, had been
married at the National Cathedral.

And so, we got The
Kiss, which was so embarrassingly real-looking – a kiss that seemed
more like a teenage grope – that it had to be mostly real, even if it
was planned.

But now people
wonder. The Gores have been married for 40 years. Forty years is
forever. Forty years is so long that everything that could happen to a
couple has already happened. The scars are all there to prove it.

You don’t wake up
after 40 years and suddenly discover something is wrong with your
partner. When you wake up after 40 years, you’re just glad you woke up
at all, even if your spouse’s underwear is on the floor.

But the Gores are
in their early 60s, which we like to say is the new early 40s, meaning
plenty of time to have a different, if not entirely new, life. They
were married at ages 21 and 22 to the tune of “All You Need Is Love.”
They had four kids, one who nearly died. They had enough highs and lows
for several lives. And apparently they just bought a new
multimillion-dollar mansion, this one a 6,900-square-foot carbon
footprint, for at least one of them to live in.

You’d like to hope
that this won’t turn into a Tiger Woods story or a Jesse James-Sandra
Bullock story. (Which proves, if nothing else, you’re asking for
trouble if you marry someone named Jesse James. Who’s the divorce
lawyer? Billy the Kid?)

If you want to read
a story about the Gores, read the Time piece from 2000 by Tamala
Edwards and Karen Tumulty, who quoted Gore as saying he and Tipper were
the “old cliché about opposites attracting.”

The authors pointed to a dinner party that Al gave to discuss the “declining role of metaphor in American life.”

Tipper, meanwhile,
liked to take the kids rollerblading in the Senate hallways. And, of
course, she played drums, despite her once-famous spat with Frank
Zappa.

Meanwhile, Al was writing books on climate change.

In other words, it
sounds like it was once a real marriage. Or as the great philosopher
Chuck Berry put it in his ode to young marriage: “C’est la vie, say the
old folks. It goes to show you never can tell.”

Mike Littwin is a columnist for The Denver Post

© The New York Times 2010