Nigeria Content Online

It is great being an expatriate. You are away from the societal
pressures of your home country, and the ‘ties that bind’. You are free to
reinvent yourself as you wish. All the people who knew you growing up and who
had pegged and pigeonholed you as a certain type of person are no longer there
to force you to conform to the way you previously defined yourself. You are
liberated from those shackles.

At the Moorhouse Hotel on Sunday, I witnessed two French
expatriates here working technical jobs, pursuing their true vocations as ‘cool’
musicians playing the guitar, the saxophone and the flute. They were part of a
trio of jazz musicians who treated the brunch crowd to Bossa Nova standards,
Desafinado, and French Jazz classic, la vie en rose. The third person was
Nigerian, a gifted guitarist. It was a wonderful and energising time out.

It is great to be an expatriate regardless of your gender. For
the men, be you 28 or 68, you are forever young. Starting new jobs, engaging in
new responsibilities, taking on new pursuits, and entering new relationships
with mature and adventurous fellow world travellers or with young, beautiful,
ambitious and exotic local girls. Ah, la vie est belle! Just this weekend, I
heard from one of the arm-candy girls that the expatriate men are experts at
managing the balancing act of those relationships with young girls.

Venezuelan men are hard to tempt. Their girls back home are as
feline and assertive as ours, and have beautiful faces and bodies too. Germans,
Americans, and Englishmen are true connoisseurs of the West African beauty.
Women are women are women – they are looking for the same qualities that they
seek in a woman back home, plus that ‘je ne sais quoi’ exotic quality that
stands them out in a crowd, and makes them feel the way ‘true men’ are supposed
to feel. It has to be love, though.

Frenchmen, on the other hand, are reputedly tricky!!!! The word
on the street amongst the girls is that the men initiate those relationships
purely to have fun! ‘Quelle horreur!!’ There are exceptions, of course. I hate
stereotypes as a rule, but I have to be true to the reports I have received.
The French dangle a journey to Paris on one hand and the possibility of
marriage on the other, stringing the lady along for years sometimes, before
neither materialise. The francophone girls are NOT amused!!! They believe that
a Frenchman is more likely to marry an elegant and exposed black girl bred in
France than one from our shores.

Gentlemen, is this true?

As for the expatriate ladies, it is both a wonderful and
terrifying experience, but it is never dull!!! How many of us working women or
even housewives would love to leave it all behind and take off to a country
where your husband’s skills (usually), sometimes your own, are needed. You are
an expert, you are valued, you are treasured and looked after and pampered.
Your health and your recreation are the focus of meetings by managing directors
and HR directors of multinational companies.

Nothing less than a three-bedroom apartment in a complex with a
playground and swimming pool is good enough for you. You are assigned a driver
to take you shopping and convey you anywhere you wish to go. You are assigned a
cook/steward to ensure that you do not strain yourself seeking to feed yourself
and your family, and so that you can immediately become an expert hostess for
the inescapable social round of parties, teas, cocktails and dinners to further
your partner’s career. If you have children, you MUST have a nanny so that you
can focus on your health and beauty and QUALITY time with the children. You can
let someone else do the routine stuff. What a hardship! What is lovely is that
you get the time you need to further your interests, whether in philanthropy,
fashion, education, art or sport. Many expatriates who spent time in Nigeria learnt
to sail in Lagos Lagoon, according to John and Jill Godwin, the notable
architect couple who can proudly call themselves Nigerian-British after
residing here for over 50 years. Many have also picked up golf and discovered
unimagined and rewarding new skills and talents here.

This is where the terrifying part of being an expatriate partner
comes in. You really do need to stay healthy, beautiful and active.

You had better play golf and tennis and keep your bikini body
looking good, or work towards those two-pack abdominal muscles (six-pack may be
asking for too much) because you and your partner are ordinary to each other,
in an unusual environment. Yet you are each viewed as unusual and desirable in
the eyes of others. Which regard would YOU prefer? To retain your partner’s
affection, you have to compete with all the colleagues, subordinates, service
providers, and young men and women seeking the favour and the liquid currency
of your partner.

We all assume that expatriates have more money than regular
mortals. After all, they get all kinds of extra allowances and incentives for
working away from home. They generally have most of their local bills taken
care of or are living in a place where the cost of living is much lower than
their country.

If they are renting out their own home rather than maintaining
two, as some choose to do, their income can far exceed their expenditure.
Besides which they live in good homes, drive new cars, and love doing fun and
adventurous things. There are a whole raft of people on standby and eager to
help you spend your ready cash, or keen to divert it from its rightful
recipients to themselves. So, watch out! And fellow expatriates, the
experienced ones, are experts in giving you a helpful push into that sinkhole
of expat exploitation, degradation and ruin. Hey, they need your company there
to feel good about the antics that they are up to themselves. I won’t go into
the widespread salacious and sometimes tragic stories of what happens in
expatriate compounds all over the world. The US TV series, Desperate
Housewives, and the new UK series, Mistresses, have nothing on it.

To be fair, expatriates still have a lot to learn about
convoluted love triangles, thwarted passion, agonising betrayals and extreme
measures to capture and keep a desirable partner. Our domestic movie industry,
Nollywood, can educate them in that regard and show them endings in tears,
recriminations, and broken homes.

We hear you, we empathise with you, we feel you as you face your
unique travails during your residency here. There is something called expat
culture that explains the inevitability of many of the situations you find
yourselves in. They are a function of being brought into a different
environment as an expert expat or as the companion of one. We, the locals,
don’t co-operate as we ought to either. Don’t take it personally. It is not
about you; it is about your status as a transient guest, here to sample a
facsimile of our lives and then move on, abruptly cutting the fragile ties and
dependencies that have formed.

There are more advantages than disadvantages to being an expatriate, and
Nigerian expats enjoy them and suffer them too when they are posted or hired on
contract abroad. The trick is, not all foreigners here are expatriates. If you
are one of us, enjoy the benefits but avoid the traps of the expatriate
lifestyle; and if you are an expatriate, especially you French guys….be
nice!!!!

Residents of Plateau State who were displaced during the
violence in and around Jos city have been hit by diarrhoea and other forms of
diseases at their camps in Boto, Bauchi State.

Bala Yakubu, the Bauchi State Search and Rescue officer
disclosed this in Abuja.

He said the camps are facing an acute shortage of drugs to
combat the diseases.

According to him, medical personnel at the camps have run out of
drugs that were provided by the state government.

There are currently four camps operated by the State Emergency
Management Agency in Boto.

In Camp A, there are 1, 673 refugees, 170 in Camp B, all of
whom, he said arrived after the crisis in Jos .

He said the latest crisis caused an influx of 4,565 people,
mostly women and children who are now in Camp D.

Responding, the Director- General of the Governors’ forum, Bayo
Okauru, promised that the secretariat would look into how to provide more
relief materials to the camps and reach out to the governor, Isa Yuguda .

Mr.Okauru also told Mr. Yakubu to give him a list of what they
need so that he can forward it to the state governor.

Two members of the House of Representatives have denied
knowledge of summons of the Libyan envoy to Nigeria, said to have been invited
by the House in the aftermath of Mr. Gaddafi’s call for Nigeria’s split.

After Mr. Gaddafi’s comments last week, the House, as part of a
series of resolutions last week, had urged the Federal Government to recall
Nigeria’s envoy to Libya for consultations, while his Libyan counterpart to Nigeria
was due to be summoned to the House, in protest.

Umar Bature, whose Foreign Affairs committee was expected to
conduct the planned talks with the envoy, and Halims Agoda, the sponsor of the
last Thursday’s motion, said they were unaware of such invitations to the
Libyan Ambassador, although it has been widely reported by the media.

Mr. Bature (PDP, Sokoto State), responded to inquiries by NEXT
on the date of such summons, saying, “To my knowledge, there is no such
invitation.” He said the House “only” condemned the comments of Mr. Gaddafi,
without enlisting further prayers.

Mr. Agoda, the House Air Force committee chairman, said although
they resolved to do more than “condemn” Mr. Gaddafi’s controversial remarks,
the prayers excluded summons on the envoy.

“We urged the Federal Government to recall Nigeria’s ambassador
for consultations which it has done, and also to liaise with the African Union
to investigate the link between the comments and the source of the infiltrators
who have been killing our people,” he said.

No formal rebuttal

During last Thursday’s session, Mr. Agoda, who sponsored the
original motion, had called for the condemnations on Mr. Gaddafi’s remark and
the investigations on the source of the attackers in recent violence in Jos,
Plateau State.

However, during the debate carried live on national television,
other members amended part of the prayers and called for the recall of Nigerian
ambassador to Libya and the summoning of Libyan envoy to Nigeria.

The House has made no formal rebuttal of the decision, even
after wide media reportage. Many of its resolutions sponsored by members have
been seen as largely routine and bearing no enforcement. According to the House
Legislative compliance committee, the level of adherence to such adoptions,
particularly by the executive arm, exceeds a little above 30 per cent by June
2009.

If last week’s resolutions are listed in the Votes and Proceedings, the
denials by the members will highlight such low compliance, which at times, even
the sponsoring members are accused of.

The presiding judge of the Kano High Court, Haliru Abdullahi has
ordered a stay of proceedings on a libel suit instituted against the
multinational drug outfit, Pfizer.

Idris Mohammed, a professor of medicine had alleged that he had
been defamed by the content of Pfizer’s statement of defence in a suit brought
against the company. In the libel case filed against the company he is
demanding ₦120 million as damages against Pfizer.

Mr. Mohammed was mentioned severally in the statement of defence
filed by Pfizer as a result of the 1996 Trovan clinical trial in the outbreak
of meningitis epidemic in some northern states.

Prayer granted

Justice Abdullahi ruled in favour of Pfizer’s application for a
stay of proceedings on the matter pending when the Federal Court of Appeal in
Kaduna rule on an appeal filed by Pfizer’s lawyers on September 22 last year.

The decision came after Ado Balarabe Mahmoud who stood in for
Mr. Abdullahi prayed the court not to fall for Pfizer’s delay tactics in the
case at the Kaduna Court of Appeal.

Nelson Uzuegbu, who stood in for Pfizer, had in a 10 paragraph
affidavit applied for a stay of proceedings pending the determination of the
substantive suit at the court of appeal. He cited order 8, rule 47 and section
36 of the constitution to justify his demand.

Mr. Uzuegbu enjoined the judge to preserve the integrity of hierarchy of the
court since the appeal court is yet to determine the issue bordering the
substitution of the name of Pfizer in the libel case.

The
long dredging of the lower River Niger, which is expected to pass
through 152 riverine communities at a huge N36 billion, is half
completed, Ahmed Aminu, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Inland
Waterways Authority (NIWA), disclosed on Wednesday.

Mr. Aminu told a
House of Representatives team that the 572 kilometers project started by
President Umaru Yar’Adua, has progressed at a steady speed and has left
no significant negative impact on the marine ecology and the adjoining
communities.

With the
development, he said, barges and small ships of 3000 metric tons can now
sail from Warri in Delta State, to Baro in Niger State.

“The former Minister
of Works (Mr. Ibramin Isa Bio) had said that it is about 60 per cent
completed, but that was an estimate,” he said.

“Work on Lot 2,
from bifurcation of Nuns River and Forcados, to Onitsha and Lot 4, from
Idah to Jamata, is about 80 to 90 per cent completed,” he told the
members of the South-South Parliamentary Caucus of the House of
Representatives, led by Andrew Uchendu, which said it met with the
managing director to appraise the progression of the project.

He said that the
project is divided into five lots, but that on the average, about 50 per
cent is completed. He also disclosed that NIWA is still working on the
inland ports that would facilitate cargo handling and sundry commercial
activities.

On the impact of
the dredging on the environment, he told the caucus that “there is no
way the dredging would affect the inflow and outflow of its
tributaries, since the dredging is not done with embankments.”

“The project is
being undertaken under the strict terms of the Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA) carried out in 2002.

“So far, we have not heard any complaint from any community, because
the dredged materials, except in Lokoja, are usually dumped 300 metres
from the dredged channels. And you know that the Niger is on the average
about a kilometre wide. So the materials are still dumped into the
river,” he said.

The Senate will on Monday, in a historical plenary, commence the
screening of the ministerial nominees sent by Acting President Goodluck
Jonathan. This is the first time the Senate will hold a plenary on a Monday.

Conventionally, the Senators do not sit on Mondays and Fridays,
but the leadership of the Senate said it was necessary to break the convention
and confirm the ministers in order to get the executive arm working,
considering the limited amount of time left to the expiration of their tenure.

This latest resolution is the second friendly gesture the Senate
has extended to the Acting President in recent times. It had earlier this week
postponed its Easter holiday by one week to enable them attend to the Acting
President’s request for the confirmation of his ministers and the formation of
a new cabinet.

Last week, Mr. Jonathan dissolved the Executive Council of the
Federation with a promise to re-constitute the council as soon as possible.

The screening would be a question and answer session between the
nominees and the Senators. Screening ministerial nominees is the Constitutional
duty of the Senate and it allows senators to ask the nominee questions and
determine their eligibility or otherwise.

“Bow and go”

Nominees who do not meet the expectations of majority of the
senators are usually dropped at this stage. Old hands are barely screened; they
are usually asked to “bow and go.” The Senate is however, threatening not to
use the “bow and go” screening method, even though their colleague, Bala Mohammed
(ANPP, Bauchi State), is amongst the nominees.

Mr. Mohammed led the pressure group whose actions led to the
unusual motion that empowered the Acting President to act while the president
is on sick leave.

The senators also booed when the Senate President read through
the list of nominees and mentioned “Sanusi Dagash”, who was a member of
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s first cabinet, showing a sign of disapproval
and perhaps, stormy weather for the nominee.

The list, which was received by the Senate on Tuesday but made
public on Wednesday, has 33 names, nine of which were re-appointed.

The reappointed nominees include Fidelia Akuabata Njeze, Peter
Godsday Orubebe, Nuhu somo Way, Adetokunbo Kayode, Henry Odein Ajumogobia,
Akinlabi Olasunkanmi, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Shamsudeen Usman, and Dora
Akunyili.

The new nominations are: Chukwuemeka Ngozichineke Wogu, Iyom
Josephine Anenih, Labaran Maku, Chris Ogiemwonyi, Suleiman Bello, Murtala
Yar’Adua, Sanuai M.Dagash, Bala Mohammed, Nduese Essien, Josephine Tapgun,
Mohammed BelloAdoke, and Ernest Olubolade. Others are:

Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, M.K Abubakar-Kebbi, Adamu Waziri, Umar Aliyu,
Awodele Najeem Adewale Alao, Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, Yusuf Suleiman, Ruquiya
Rufai, Musa Sada, Sheik Abdallah, Emmanuel Iheanacho, and Jibril Martins Kuye.

March 8 is celebrated globally as the International Women’s Day.
It is a day that unites women across boundaries to celebrate their achievements
and examine their struggles to eliminate gender discrimination. Today, I bring
you the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon’s message for 2010.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are fundamental to the
global mission of the United Nations to achieve equal rights and dignity for
all. This is a matter of basic human rights, as enshrined in our founding
Charter and the Universal Declaration. It is part of the Organization’s very
identity.

But equality for women and girls is also an economic and social
imperative. Until women and girls are liberated from poverty and injustice, all
our goals — peace, security, sustainable development — stand in jeopardy.

Fifteen years ago at the Fourth World Conference on Women,
Governments pledged to advance equality, development and peace for all women
everywhere. The landmark Beijing Declaration has had a deep and wide-ranging
impact. It has guided policy making and inspired new national laws. It has sent
a clear message to women and girls around the world that equality and
opportunity are their inalienable rights.

There are many examples of progress, thanks in large part to the
resolute efforts of civil society organizations. Most girls now receive an
education, particularly at primary level, and more women are now more likely to
run businesses or participate in government. A growing number of countries have
legislation that supports sexual and reproductive health and promotes gender
equality.

Nonetheless, much work remains. Maternal mortality remains
unacceptably high, too few women have access to family planning, and violence
against women remains a cause for global shame. In particular, sexual violence
during conflict is endemic.

The Security Council last year adopted two strong resolutions on
this issue and I have just appointed a special representative to mobilize the
international community to address these crimes. My “UNite to End Violence
against Women” campaign and the recently launched Network of Men Leaders are
striving to expand our global advocacy efforts.

One key lesson of the past decade-and-a-half is the importance
of addressing broader discrimination and injustice. Gender stereotyping and
discrimination remain common in all cultures and communities. Early and forced
marriage, so-called ‘honour killing’, sexual abuse and trafficking of young
women and girls are disturbingly prevalent and, in some areas, on the rise.
Whether looking through the lens of poverty, or in times of disaster, we see
that women still bear the greatest burden.

Lead by example

Another lesson is that the United Nations must lead by example.
Emphasizing that women are central to peace and security, we are working to
deploy more women military and police officers in our peacekeeping operations.
We have more women in senior United Nations posts than at any time in history,
and we hope soon to have a dynamic composite entity within the UN system to
provide more coherent programming and a stronger voice for gender equality and
women’s empowerment. I urge the General Assembly to create this new entity
without delay.

The Beijing Declaration remains as relevant today as when it was adopted.
The third Millennium Development Goal – to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment
– is central to all the rest. When women are denied the opportunity to better
themselves and their societies, we all lose.

On this International Women’s Day,
let us look critically at the achievements of the past 15 years so we can build
on what has worked, and correct what has not. Let us work with renewed
determination for a future of equal rights, equal opportunities and progress
for all.

The mild, montane
climate on the plateau and the picturesque hills of Jos offer a sharp
contrast to the gory massacres and bloodletting Nigeria has witnessed
in the past years. Jos presents the typical vignettes of sectarian
killings, like in Northern Ireland. The city is reminiscent of Belfast
– each stroke of violence is followed by revenge.

Inappropriately,
such barbarism gets classified under the microscope of religion –
Catholics against Protestants; in the Nigerian case, Muslims versus
Christians. Many of us have even forgotten the origins of the perennial
fighting between Israelis and Arabs. Conflicts always have causes and
consequences beyond the boundaries of religion.

The Jos carnage
could have been prevented if governance in this country was of the type
permitting introspection, analysis, conflict resolution, and
restitution.

When violence is naively forgotten and forgiven, everything is postponed.

South Africans
instituted a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission,’ not so much
designed as a punitive campaign to dredge up and hang tormentors of the
apartheid period, but to get to the roots of what had happened, and
learn lessons for the future.

Most conflicts are
over land and the inequity in holding it, the stronger forcibly
hijacking the communal cake, which they hardly helped to bake. Such
injustices are straight from the Jungle Book – lionesses make a kill
and a hefty, passive male ambles in for the first bite.

Land appreciates
with time and lays the foundations for economic growth and military
might. But Nigeria’s land tenure systems encourage a perverse model of
capitalism where wealth continues to circulate within small, corrupt,
indolent and well-connected elite. Weaker people and communities are
routinely pushed aside and into inhospitable and unproductive
ecosystems and occupations by stronger cabals, under the common pretext
that they are lazy.

The corporate
existence of Nigeria is a function of two sharply contrasting and harsh
ecological systems – the sea and the desert.

Christian
missionaries arrived by boat. Islamic scholars and Jihadists galloped
from the Sahara into the north of the country. While the former
suffered immensely under the attack of anopheles mosquitoes, the
latter’s horses succumbed to the tse-tse fly and failed to penetrate
the forest zone.

The blurred fault
line separating both religions lies in Nigeria’s middle belt on which
the city of Jos is planted. A collision of religions is often a clash
of cultures, land use systems, legal interpretations, economic
activities, and political aspirations.

The problems of Jos had been lying latent for a long time.

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following statistics?

29 have been
accused of spouse abuse, 1 convicted of conspiracy, 7 have been
arrested for fraud, 19 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 117
have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses, 3 have
done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 4
have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for
shoplifting, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 84 have been
arrested for drink driving in the last year and these are just the ones
we know about.

Which organisation
is this? It’s the Members of Parliament, the same group that cranks out
many hundreds of new laws each year, designed to keep the rest of us in
line. I rest my case.

I was astounded
when I received this chain email. I immediately thought about our own
parliament, the National Assembly, and what the profile of its members
would be when compared along these lines. How many of them have beaten
their wives until they were hospitalised. How many have been part of
treasonous plots against the state, how many left bankrupted or failed
companies and redundant staff behind them? How may have been indicted
or convicted for assault, fraud, theft, embezzlement, murder, drug
trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking? How many have EFCC
cases against them, or are currently in court facing criminal charges?
I wonder…. Someone, please help us out. It will explain why only one
law has been passed in 3 years and why only budget related bills have
been treated. Could they be there only to wield power and make money
and not to transform our lives for the better by passing just laws as
they are charged to do? I in no way mean to wield a broad brush and
stereotype our parliamentarians. I am sure that there are many sincere,
hardworking, devoted and dedicated public servants and activists
amongst them, but unless they exist in sufficient number, independent
of the ubiquitous puppet masters, how much good can they really do?

I later
investigated the email and discovered that it came from anonymous
origins in 1999 and the target was the US Congress. I also discovered
that the statistics were never verified and yet it caught on like
wildfire and has spread around the world adopted by different
jurisdictions as statistics relating to their own legislators.

The lord of misrule
is an ancient title for the officer appointed in medieval Scotland to
officiate over the Feast of Fools. Later, during the Roman empire is
was the person appointed as ruler of the feast of Saturnalia. These
festivals were occasions where the natural order of society was turned
upside down and inside out.

Masters served
their slaves, and subordinates ruled their superiors with full license
and without fear of reprisal. You can only imagine what took place
during those times. They could very well have been Sodom and Gomorrah
reinvented for some hours or some days. Historically, the person in
charge comes to a bad end when the feast is over. Sometimes sacrificed
for the good of all, at other times forced to suicide.

The parallel that I
can draw is that very often things seem to be done back to front in the
public arena. You could say that we have the habit of putting the cart
before the horse – reversing the accepted order of things. In George
Puttenham’s ‘The arte of English poesie, 1589’ he named such a practice
preposterous. In some cases we call it cruelly uncaring. Why wouldn’t
we bring the horse out first, then bring out the cart and fit it to the
ready-made harness? The world famous Ferrari team does not bring the
four wheels and space them out on the tarmac then struggle to position
the race car within them.

The nationwide
demolition and relocation of illegal structures that cause flooding of
homes, disrupt traffic to the agony of commuters, and blight our
environment is in general welcomed by all and sundry. Yet, time and
time again, the people affected, and the communities they are in ask
why alternative housing, alternative markets, alternative abbatoirs,
alternative trailer parks are not readied first so that there is a
smooth and less painful migration from where they used to be? Whatever
you may say about the people in positions of power, I do not think we
would be quick to label them cruel. So I presume there must be several
good reasons why this phenomenon keeps repeating and replicating itself.

Let us depose the Lord of Misrule presiding over the disorder in our
country. Let us have eligible people in our national assembly. People
who can interpret laws and read budgets. Let us follow the correct
steps and processes in putting the ills of our society to rights.
Conduct impact assessments, put mitigation strategies in place, before
implementing change. We will all be happier for it.

Muammar Gaddafi is
a newsmaker any day and anywhere he goes. He is not like other leaders
who do not give journalists interesting quotes. I am yet to get over
the surprise that his tenure as chairperson of the African Union, a
post he had very much desired, lasted without any much drama. The only
controversy during the time was his attempt to elongate his tenure as
the AU’s head, perhaps viewing the organisation as an extension of his
Libya where he has held power since 1969. African leaders, knowing this
would send a wrong signal across the world, rejected his plan.

Now, he has jumped
into a new controversy. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last
week quoted Mr. Gaddafi as offering what he thought, in his fertile
imagination, was the best solution to the crises of relationship which
seem to have embroiled Nigeria in the last few years.

According to the
report which the BBC credited to the Libyan news agency, the maverick
leader of Libya said the best way to solve this problem was to severe
Nigeria into two and let the Muslims go their way and the Christians to
their tents. To back his argument, he, reportedly, pointed to what was
done to India and Pakistan shortly before independence by allowing the
Muslim dominated Pakistan to go its way and the Hindu dominated India
the other way.

But has the
separation solved the problem between the two countries? Are Pakistani
Muslims and Indian Hindus not fighting between themselves? If religion
is the basis on which people would no longer fight one another, why are
the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq always engaged in internecine
wars? Is Libya, which boasts of being an Islamic country, free of
strife among its Muslims?

The Libyan leader
has by this simplistic and out rightly stupid outburst shown that he is
not the kind of leader that the continent should look forward to. As
the Yoruba people say, cutting off the head is not the cure for a
nagging headache! No sensible person would think that the solution to
the senseless killing going on in northern Nigeria is to apply the
Gaddafi recipe. I am not by any stretch of imagination a supporter of
getting people divided along religious or tribal lines. It is bad
enough that Africa’s colonial masters divided the continent along
tribal and ethnic lines why then should the Gaddafis of this world want
to further polarise it along religious cleavages?

Tribal and ethnic
wars are usually easy to overcome. Religious divisions are the worst
kinds of differences and should not be allowed to fester. What is
happening in Nigeria has not gone too bad as to desire or require the
dangerous recipe that Gaddafi has proposed. He should leave Nigeria
alone and concentrate on his selfish expansionist ambition in his
spheres of the Arab world.

The condemnation of
his recipe by Nigeria’s Senate President, David Mark, who dismissed him
saying he is ’mad’’, might be harsh on a leader of another country but
what do you call a man who does not weigh his words before throwing
them around?

The African continent is unlucky to be inflicted with men who spew
nonsense and behave irrationally. Finally, however, no matter how much
condemnation we heap of Gaddafi, we must tell Nigerian leaders to wake
up to their duties to the traumatised populace and save us from being
killed by some marauding bandits who hide under the guise of religion
to shed innocent blood.