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What we need now is another Jonathan Swift.

Most people know
Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me
thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed
the dire poverty of the Irish and offered a solution: Sell the children
as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but
this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have
already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to
the children.”

OK, these days it’s
not the landlords, it’s the bankers – and they’re just impoverishing
the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist – and one with a very
savage pen – could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.

The Irish story
began with a genuine economic miracle. Eventually, though, this gave
way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate
developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The
frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks,
largely from banks in other European nations.

Then the bubble
burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those
who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they
were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they
were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish
government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private
losses into public obligations.

Before the bank
bust, Ireland had little public debt. However, with taxpayers suddenly
on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the
nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to
reassure the markets with a harsh programme of spending cuts.

Step back for a
minute and think about that. These debts were incurred, not to pay for
public programmes, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but
their own profit. Ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of
those debts.

Or to be more
accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt – because
those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition
to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging
incomes and high unemployment.

There is no alternative, though, say the serious people: all of this is necessary to restore confidence.

Strange to say,
however, confidence is not improving. On the contrary, investors have
noticed that all those austerity measures are depressing the Irish
economy – and are fleeing Irish debt because of that economic weakness.

Now what? Last
weekend Ireland and its neighbors put together what has widely been
described as a “bailout.” What really happened, though, was that the
Irish government promised to impose even more pain, in return for a
credit line that would presumably give Ireland more time to, um,
restore confidence. Markets, understandably, were not impressed as
interest rates on Irish bonds have risen even further.

Does it really have to be this way?

In early 2009, a
joke was making the rounds: “What’s the difference between Iceland and
Ireland? Answer: One letter and about six months.” This was supposed to
be gallows humor. No matter how bad the Irish situation, it couldn’t be
compared with the utter disaster that was Iceland.

At this point,
however, Iceland seems, if anything, to be doing better than its
near-namesake. Its economic slump was no deeper than Ireland’s, its job
losses were less severe and it seems better positioned for recovery. In
fact, investors now appear to consider Iceland’s debt safer than
Ireland’s. How is that possible?

Part of the answer
is that Iceland let foreign lenders to its runaway banks pay the price
of their poor judgment, rather than putting its own taxpayers on the
line to guarantee bad private debts. As the International Monetary Fund
notes – approvingly! “Private sector bankruptcies have led to a marked
decline in external debt.” Meanwhile, Iceland helped avoid a financial
panic in part by imposing temporary capital controls – that is, by
limiting the ability of residents to pull funds out of the country.

Iceland has also
benefited from the fact that, unlike Ireland, it still has its own
currency; devaluation of the krona, which has made Iceland’s exports
more competitive, has been an important factor in limiting the depth of
Iceland’s slump.

None of these
heterodox options are available to Ireland, say the wise heads.
Ireland, they say, must continue to inflict pain on its citizens –
because to do anything else would fatally undermine confidence.

But Ireland is now
in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining
away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to
realise that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than
a crime; it’s a mistake.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

In continuation of
the series of events marking Nigeria’s 50th anniversary, the left and
progressive persons converged at the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic
Research and Training in Kano to reflect on their contributions to the
construction of democracy in the country.

Numerous comrades
including Baba Omojola, Issa Aremu, Bamidele Aturu, Ibrahim Muazzam, W.
O. Alli, Dipo Fashina, Baba Aye, Hauwa Mustapha, Nasiru Kura, Raufu
Mustapha, Abiodun Aremu and Y. Z. Yau graced the occasion. Our foreign
friends such as Bjorn Beckman (Sweden), Yusuf Bangura (Sierra Leone),
Lloyd Sachikonye (Zimbabwe) and Sakhela Buhlungo (South Africa) also
participated in the event.

It was an occasion
for the celebration of ideas, of recognising that over the past fifty
years, the ideas of progress, social change, development and
transforming the lives of the masses for the better have always been
championed by the small but articulate left circle in Nigeria. Indeed,
it was with the relative decline of leftist ideology over the past two
decades that Nigeria descended into the current regime that is governed
by sheer and absolute greed, self-interest and self-aggrandisement.

Leftist forces in
Nigeria were influenced by the great revolutionary ideas of Marx,
Engels and Lenin. In Nigeria, our teachers have included Michael
Imoudu, Ola Oni, Esker Toyo, Dapo Fatogun, Hassan Sumonu and Baba
Omojola. The inspiration of the Left also came with the promise of the
defunct Soviet Union that the mobilisation unleashed by socialism can
generate the electricity and steel that would industrialise the economy
in a couple of decades. And then, the Berlin Wall collapsed and the
Soviet Union disintegrated provoking disillusion for some and
disorientation for others.

The core of the
progressive Left however never gave up the struggle. Having been
schooled in the Leninist theory of organisation aimed at precipitating
the “national democratic revolution,” this energy was transferred to
the struggle against military rule and for the expansion of human
rights.

The Left is
eminently qualified for this having been schooled in the radical
tradition of the progressive student’s movement and the Academic Staff
Union of Universities and has cut its teeth in journalism, trade
unionism and civil society activism in human rights organisations. In
spite of, or rather, because of its ideological training the Left
became a powerful agitator of the liberal state based on the rule of
law, even if in our own thinking, we were keenly engaged in the
struggle for socialism and uplifting the masses from poverty and
squalor.

The Nigerian Left,
I am convinced, has been the champion of the promotion of liberal
democratic rights. A key ally has been the legal and judicial system.
It has been a powerful ally because Nigeria has an old tradition of
producing crop of lawyers engaged in private practice for whom the
emergence and improvement of the rule of law and a regime of rights is
a professional and political necessity.

Of course the
alliance between the progressives, the lawyers and the judicial system
has been based on the fact that the principles and practice of the rule
of law have been constantly violated and threatened by successive
military and civilian regimes. In this context, one of the most
frightening moments for the alliance was the enactment by the Buhari
regime of Decree no. 2 of 1984 that allowed the Chief of General Staff
to detain citizens for extended periods without charging them to court.
The decree suspended the important instrument of ‘habeas corpus’ that
citizens could use to compel the state to produce detainees in court.

It should be
remembered that in April 1961, the three ‘National Government’ leaders;
Ahmadu Bello, Michael Okpara and Tafawa Balewa met and decided to enact
this type of detention law but resistance to their plans was too strong
(African Concord 16.8.1988, p. 16). It took the Nigerian state 23 years
of ‘effort’ to impose this repugnant law. The Civil Liberties
Organisation (CLO), and the Nigerian Organisation of Democratic Lawyers
needed to organise to confront the risk.

What emerged from
the conference was that democracy is a progressive feature of political
society because it is based on the premise that all human beings are
free and equal. It is a progressive principle for the organisation of
society even if it is true that democratic principles are not fully
implemented in the societies that lay claim to it. A gap therefore,
exists between enunciated democratic principles and ‘really existing
democracies’.

Of course, the
problem with liberal democracy is that it neglects the need for
economic equality and social justice. This is why the Left believes
strongly that liberal democracy is not enough. The conclusion of the
conference was that the Left must never give up on the task of building
the capacity and will to engender social movements that can bring
economic equality and social justice back into the democratic agenda of
empowering the people.

Say hello to the
new me: Mrs. Princess Barrister Sister Daughter Angela Ajetunmobi, BaC
(Babelicious Chick), GC (Great Cook), WM (wife and mum). Well, one has
finally decided that one shall acquire a ‘’good’’ title (or two) before
one gets any more cheek from the hired help.

Hmmm, Come and see
‘‘dissing’’ from a glorified, albeit uniformed gateman! And why? All
because I filled an official visitors form, and had no pompous title. I
no blame am: I blame political correctness! I blame the conversion of
the modest gateman of old, now transformed to the new ‘security’
detail, complete with uniform and all. And we all enabled this
confusion in their minds.

So even if just to
preserve family pride, acquire some ‘respect’ and be important, one has
narrowed down the options on possible titles. And the opportunities are
endless!

First step is to
determine how many titles one wants to go with; more doesn’t
necessarily translate to better. I am convinced that one only needs
those titles that will conjure awards and endow me with Instant
Immediate Importance (the three I’s)! One must leave no room for ifs or
maybes, ‘sugbon or tabi’, but one can be crass if one so wishes.
Crassness just may bestow that awe many reserve for titled people.

And one doesn’t
want to copy the woman one met the other day, who’s complimentary card
read- ‘’Double-Chief Mrs. Surv’’. Married thrice, one felt the ‘Mrs.’
seemed a little lonely, not even hyphenated and she also had a Master’s
degree. I think, though I couldn’t say so, that it should have been
perhaps ‘’Double-Chief, Triple-Mrs. Surv-in-Mast’’ to reflect her
reality. After all, none of the titles would have been a
walk-in-the-park for her to acquire. But I digress!

I deciphered long
ago how significant the Nigerian title is. Young newly married couples
while still single, would happily and lovingly address each other by
their first names, but once kids come along, it becomes an abomination
to call hubby by name. First-name calling is automatically banned
because parenthood has been achieved. So, good old Kunle suddenly
transmuted to Daddy-Wa or Daddy Junior or Papa ‘Bornboy’. Funke also
became Mummy-Wa or Mama-something. So if no children arrive after a
year or two of marriage, can we call them Mama or Baba Didn’t-Born-yet’?

And one doesn’t
want titles that you have to explain. What then will be the point?
While Angela’s father wanted her to study ‘Classics’ at university, her
mother would have none of that! ‘’No oh, what will they now call me,
the mother of a ‘Classics’ graduate or ‘Mama-Classics? Please, let the
girl read something that will be easy to incorporate into a name’’.
Mother wanted the girl to read a subject that will automatically confer
a more specific title. So, instead of just ‘Mama Graduate’, Angela’s
mum wanted ‘Mama Doctor/Lawyer/Professor’’.

And you are
forgiven if you thought JP meant ‘Justice of the Peace’ because that is
the norm. But did you know that it also means Jerusalem pilgrim? What
about some professionals who never thought they needed to fix a title
to their name, suddenly now attaching Pharm, Surv, and even specifying
what type of engineer they are: Auto Engr, Mech Engr, Civ Engr.

And from the
ridiculous to the mundane: BeauQ for Beauty Queen; ProDanc for
professional dancer; Plumb for plumber; Carp for carpenter; Mech for
mechanic; CSO for chief security officer, as in gateman; HSCSD for head
sub-committee for special duties.

I just cannot keep up people.

Nigeria’s Senate President David Mark declared a
few days ago that the National Assembly would not succumb to pressures
from oil companies to pass a watered down version of the Petroleum
Industry Bill (PIB). This sounds very positive and patriotic, but how
true is this threat?

The PIB potentially promises to deliver far
reaching reforms to the Nigerian petroleum industry. The reforms
include: transforming the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation from
a cost centre to a profit centre competing with Petrobras of Brazil and
Petronas of Indonesia; deregulating the downstream sector; boosting
funding to arrest decline in production; introducing globally
competitive fiscal systems; increasing revenue streams through gas
production; improving the overall transparency regime in the sector,
and so on.

Since the draft bill was submitted to the National
Assembly in 2008 by the late President Yar’ Adua its consideration by
the federal legislature has been shrouded in secrecy. More than three
different versions of the bill have been circulating. Even the Inter
Agency Team, which drafted the bill, did a u-turn at some point,
submitting a memorandum suggesting areas of amendment to their own
bill. Both chambers of the National Assembly held poorly coordinated
public hearing sessions. A few weeks ago, unconfirmed sources within
the National Assembly indicated that a particular version gave
multinationals in the oil industry significant concessions including
juicy fiscal terms on gas and off shore investments.

The promise of the PIB to improve transparency in
the sector is based on its compliance with the principles of the
Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). It
prescribes that the reforms in the sector must comply with the NEITI
Act 2007. Many observers are unaware that Section 14(a) of NEITI Act
states that disclosure of audit information will only happen if such
information is not prejudicial to the proprietary interest and
contractual obligations of the audited entity. With this clause in
place, the NEITI Act retains the issue of confidentiality and so it is
worrisome to make the PIB compliant on such an Act.

Interestingly however, section 173(1) of the PIB
states that “Confidentiality clauses or other clauses contained within
any licenses, leases, agreements or contracts for upstream petroleum
operations that are for the purpose of preventing access to information
in respect of any payments. ……shall be null and void” Many observers
believe that this clause in the initial draft might have been tampered
with too.

The worrisome implication of this is that the so
called reforms to be ushered in by the Petroleum Industry Bill when
passed will likely accommodate a practice that has already been
abandoned in the oil and gas industry worldwide.

Of all the prescriptions of the PIB, the
fundamental issue of crude oil metering is conspicuously missing. Very
few suggestions on improved metering are contained in the Bill. It is
public knowledge that the NEITI audit 1999-2004 recommended a change in
the metering infrastructure to include measurements at the flow station
to ascertain the number of barrels of oil Nigeria is currently
producing and to compute royalties based on that figure as contained in
many MOUs entered with the Joint Venture Partners. However, crude oil
metering is currently done only at the export terminals, which provide
export figures only. Verifiable practice is that in many other oil
producing countries, precision metering begins at flow stations, but
not in Nigeria.

The inter ministerial task team put together to
implement the recommendations of the NEITI audit confirmed that it is
both technically and financially feasible to install precision meters
at the flow stations in Nigeria. The silence of the PIB on metering
means that the questions stakeholders are asking about the numbers of
barrels of oil we produce per day will remain unanswered.

One of the most interesting aspects of the
Petroleum Industry Bill was the introduction of equity payments to oil
bearing communities. This fairly popular memo was introduced by the
office of the Presidential adviser on Petroleum matters. It recommended
the idea of 10 percent equity ownership of the Joint venture by oil
producing communities.

The idea began as we were told, with the concept
of 10 percent of Joint Venture equity, that later became 10 percent of
profit and now finally $600 million annually as host community
dividends.

Could this be another community windfall or the
usual handout that will end up in the pockets of self appointed
community leaders?

A watered down PIB will mean reduced revenue to
government at all levels, an export oriented oil and gas sector with
minimal downstream multiplier effect on the economy (poor local
content), increased unemployment, low incentive for domestic gas
utilization leading to hiccups in power generation and
industrialisation.

Despite the threats of Senator Mark and our
“wise” legislators, it is crystal clear that the Petroleum Industry
Bill as it is being conceived and pursued cannot reform the Nigerian
oil and gas sector. After spending so much energy, time and resources,
we will suddenly find ourselves at the same point where we began. It is
called a national perambulation! Uche Igwe is an Africa Public Policy
Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre writes from Washington DC, USA.

One hundred years ago, Leo Tolstoy lay dying at a
train station in southern Russia. Journalists, acolytes and newsreel
photographers gathered for the passing of the great prophet. Between
3:30 and 5:30 on that freezing November morning, Tolstoy’s wife stood
on the porch outside his death chamber because his acolytes would not
let her in. At one point she begged them to at least admit her into an
anteroom so that the photographers would get the impression she was
being allowed to see her husband on his final day.

There are many reasons to think about Tolstoy on
the centennial of his death. Among them: his ability to see. Tolstoy
had an almost superhuman ability to perceive reality.

As a young man, he was both sensually and
spiritually acute. He drank, gambled and went off in search of
sensations and adventures. But he also experienced piercing religious
crises.

As a soldier, he conceived “a stupendous idea, to
the realisation of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life.
The idea is the founding of a new religion corresponding to the present
development of mankind: The religion of Christ purged of dogmas and
mysticism.” But when he sat down to write his great novels, his dreams
of saving mankind were bleached out by the vividness of the reality he
saw around him. Readers often comment that the worlds created in those
books are more vivid than the real world around them. With Olympian
detachment and piercing directness, Tolstoy could describe a particular
tablecloth, a particular moment in a particular battle, and the
particular feeling in a girl’s heart before a ball.

He had his biases. In any Tolstoy story, the
simple, rural characters are likely to be good and the urbane ones bad.
But his ability to enter into and recreate the experiences of each of
his characters overwhelms his generalizations.

Isaiah Berlin famously argued that Tolstoy was a
writer in search of Big Truths, but his ability to see reality in all
its particulars destroyed the very theories he hoped to build. By
entering directly into life in all its contradictions, he destroyed his
own peace of mind.

As Tolstoy himself wrote, “The aim of an artist is
not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all
its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.” But after “Anna
Karenina,” that changed. He was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of
existence. As his biographer A.N. Wilson surmises, he ran out of things
to write about. He had consumed the material of his life.

So he gave up big novels and became a holy man.
Fulfilling his early ambition, he created his own religion, which
rejected the Jesus story but embraced the teachings of Jesus. He
embraced simplicity, poverty, vegetarianism, abstinence, poverty and
pacifism. He dressed like a peasant. He wrote religious tracts to
attract people to the simple, pure life.

Many contemporary readers like the novel-writing
Tolstoy but regard the holy man as a semi-crackpot. But he was still
Tolstoy, and his later writings were still brilliant. Moreover, he
inspired a worldwide movement, deeply influencing Gandhi among many
others. He emerged as the Russian government’s most potent critic – the
one the czar didn’t dare imprison.

What had changed, though, was his ability to see.
Now a crusader instead of an observer, he was absurd as often as he was
brilliant. He went slumming with the peasantry, making everybody feel
uncomfortable. He’d try to mow the grass (badly), make shoes (worse),
and then he’d return to his mansion for dinner. He was the first
trust-fund hippie. He seemed to lose perspective about himself: “I
alone understand the doctrine of Jesus.” There were many consistencies
running through Tolstoy’s life, but there were also two phases: first,
the novelist; then, the crusader. And each of these activities called
forth its own way of seeing.

As a novelist, Tolstoy was an unsurpassed
observer. But he found that life unfulfilling. As he set out to improve
the world, his ability to perceive it deteriorated. Instead of
conforming his ideas to the particularities of existence, he conformed
his perception of reality to his vision for the world. He preached
universal love but seemed oblivious to the violence he was doing to his
family.

In middle age, it was as a novelist that Tolstoy
achieved his most lasting influence. After all, description is
prescription. If you can get people to see the world as you do, you
have unwittingly framed every subsequent choice.

But public spirited, he also wanted to heal the
world directly. Tolstoy devoted himself to activism and spiritual
improvement – and paid the mental price. After all, most historical
leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but
because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible
for them to see it clearly. Activism is admirable, necessary and
self-undermining – the more passionate, the more self-blinding.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

One of the risks of
taking the bus at night is that you are more likely to enter the
devil’s danfo, otherwise known as One Chance. It uses the best line in
public transport advertising: it is going your way and you are the last
passenger. It is also not the whole truth.

Oh, it is going
your way all right, it is always going your way. But you are the only
passenger: the rest are robbers. Welcome to your worst nightmare.
Prepare to be slapped, stripped and shoved out of a speeding vehicle.
It is a robbery and an accident rolled into one. And it does not have
to be at night either.

The other day, a
young colleague of mine was coming to work when he unluckily took such
a bus. He was, to add to his misfortune, flouting a beautiful new phone
that must have set him back some. As he studied the sundry
applications, three men approached and without further ado began to
pummel him: blows, kicks, and screams were coming at him from
everywhere. Ah, how they worked Ayo (oops) over, and since he is a big
guy, they didn’t take any chances.

There were all
kinds of plasters on his face the next day, but I suspect the loss of
that E72 was the unkindest cut of all. And for that, there is no
bandage.

Yesterday, in the
bus I took to Ojota, a woman was on the phone (not an E72) to her
daughter who said she had just escaped from a One Chance. “Are you OK?”
she kept asking. “Stay there, am coming. No enter any bus. Just stay
there.”

She was quite
agitated, so I gave her my sympathy look, and she gave me the story.
The girl had gone to visit her cousins at Mile 12 but she never got
there. The woman, after calling her cell phone to no avail, had spent
the whole day taking all kinds of buses to all kinds of places in
search of her daughter. She was losing all hope when the girl called
minutes ago – with her own phone.

Journalism is
nothing if not pitiless in its search for truth, so I asked, gently,
“How come the girl didn’t lose her phone?” As Ayo’s case demonstrated,
the phone is usually the first to go. But a mother is nothing if not
defensive.

“You see, na wise
girl. She quick notice the kine people wey dey the bus, so she hide her
phone. After everything, she call me. She is wise.”

No doubt, but I
still wondered. And my next question would not have been wise but
fortunately the driver was then giving his take on the matter. “You go
do thanksgiving o,” he said.

“Yesterday, as I
dey go ‘Yanaoworo for express, the bus for my front na One Chance. I
suspect am because e too slow. So as I wan overtake am, dem just
throway one pregnant woman from inside suddenly for the middle of the
road there. Na God say I no go match am. Remain small.”

“So what happened to her?” I asked.

“Ehn? As I see that woman, she go die. Woman with belle, for that night. No hope.”

I was, as they say, flabbergasted. “You no stop pick am?”

“Pick wetin? You
know the kine people wey dey do One chance? My passengers sef no gree.
Dem say e fit be trap. If we stop, the other bus go fit turn back rob
us. Na speed we take leave the place.”

“Eeewo!,” said the
woman whose child may just have escaped a similar ordeal. She resumed
her call, “Bose, BOSE. No enter bus o. Wait for me …”

The
settlement of the Trovan trials case brought by the Nigerian plaintiffs against the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has
all the elements of a deal or no deal contest, at least on this side of the
Atlantic. In this famous game show where contestants have to choose between a
set of 26 identical briefcases holding anything from $.10 to $1million,
Nigerians deserve to know the exact contents of the ones collected on their
behalf by their “representatives” in the Kano State government.

The
settlement of the case brought by the plaintiffs represented something of an
achievement for Nigeria in the David and Goliath, Third World versus
Multinational giant category if you could ignore the searing tragedy that led
to it, both on the side of a rapacious multinational and the dubious tactics of
Nigerian officials who signed first and asked questions later.

The real
victims were the 30 families whose offspring were killed, maimed and paralysed
by the drug Trovan that had never been administered to children. Pfizer hit on
its idea to try it out in the midst of a raging meningitis outbreak in Kano in
August of 1996 that led to 12,000 deaths in the country. The US Federal Drug Administration approved
Trovan in 1998, two years later, for use on adults.

In May of
2006 a confidential report published by the Washington Post found that Pfizer
had violated Nigerian and international law in its trials on 200 children in
Kano in 1996. This finding led to criminal charges brought against Pfizer by
the Federal government in 2007, which sued for $ 6 billion in damages.

But the
issue here is not Pfizer, which argued in its defence that it had obtained
approval from Nigerian officials to conduct the trial.

The
Nigerian government system has been described as a kleptocracy and the handling
of the details of the settlement of this Pfizer case look to be following that
pattern.

Based on
the broad terms of the settlement Pfizer is to pay $30 million disbursed over
two years on heath care initiatives chosen by Kano State. Pfizer will pay $10 million towards the Kano
State governments legal fees and $30 or $35 million, there is some discrepancy
here, will be used to set up a fund for valid claims from eligible victims who
were part of the trial. A six-person panel established by Kano State and Pfizer
will determine the eligibility of the victims and the level of compensation.

In return Kano State will drop civil and
criminal claims against Pfizer. Last
year a statement in the Washington Post credited to Babatunde Irukera in who
represented Kano State when the
settlement was announced in August of 2009
said the Federal government’s case against the company was not affected
by this settlement But this paper has reported that an agreement brokered by
former Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice Michael Aondoakaa has
led to the withdrawal of the Federal governments $6 billion suit also. “People and entities can and must be held
accountable for the consequences of their conduct,” Mr Irukera was quoted as
saying.

That same
accountability we would say requires the Kano State government to be open and
scrupulously detailed as it disburses the funds for the victims and for the
healthcare projects, even before we begin to ponder the possible subterranean
terms of the agreement brokered on Aondoakaa’s behalf by a team of lawyers.

The issue
here from the start was justice, on behalf of 200 sick children who were used
as fodder for illegal clinical tests, not lawyers and their fees, government
officials and secret ‘settlements’ or a pharmaceutical giant anxious to ward
off any bad publicity.

Full
disclosure and transparent monitoring is what justice demands for the souls of
the 11 children who died, and the rest who were paralysed or brain damaged by
the administration of the experimental drug Trovan.

Today is Black
Friday in America, the day after Thanksgiving when bargain hunters give
each other black eyes. It is also the day the prices of most things
crash to rock bottom and you see many black people crashing over
themselves in stores to buy items they already have.

In all seriousness,
Black Friday craziness can be hilarious because it is when retailers
come together to pick a consensus product that sets shoppers on frenetic
rampage as if possessed by voodoo.

Waiting for that
quintessential Black Friday item, is always dramatic, like waiting for
Ciroma and his wise men to pick a consensus candidate to represent the
north. Come to think of it, what level of technology or electronic
gadget do you think each of the four candidates represented in Ciromart
during the decision making process that led to the picking of Abubakar
Atiku? Let’s see.

Starting from
Saraki – I think he was represented by Wii, exciting for both young and
old, a virtual exercising mechanism, which doesn’t quite cut it for
those that want to take body building or working -out seriously.

IBB was represented
by Betamax – if you are thinking that Betamax is some species of
dinosaur, you may be right to some extent. But for the purpose of this
discussion, it was a machine, the same size as an I-Better-Pass-My-
Neighbour generator, used in playing videotapes in the olden days. Two
of the famous movies Nigerians watched on Betamax were Idi-Amin Dada of
Uganda and the Gods Must Be Crazy. According to Wikipedia “The format is
generally considered obsolete, though it is still used in specialist
applications by a small minority of people.” You get the drift.

Gusau was
represented by Grand Theft Auto – a video game that only appeals to
those interested in clandestine activities and who are security
conscious. The American government can’t afford to sleep with both eyes
closed each time a new version is released. Here is what Wikipedia has
to say about this product: “The series focuses around many different
protagonists who attempt to rise through the ranks… although their
motives for doing so vary in each game. The antagonists are commonly
characters who have betrayed the protagonist or their organisation.”
Hmmm, go figure.

Atiku had the ipad
to stand for him, the new darling of techies and novices. A cross breed
between an iphone and the sleek MacBook Air, a product that won’t do
anything meaningful for you unless you have entered your credit card
information so it can zap money out of your pocket like the customs
officers at Nigeria’s borders.

The ipad is like a bat; neither this nor that, other than it is the coolest effizy to be seen with these days.

Now you see
Nigerians cradling it like a molue preacher carrying his Bible – and
some of our TV newscasters also carry it the way a girl named Perpetual
used to carry her slate in primary school.

Everybody wants one,
you hate it but you love it. Just like Wal-Mart in America that will
certainly make ipads the chosen product for this year’s Black Friday,
Atiku was represented by the ipad in Ciromart and he got the pick.

Folks, I apologise
for that distraction, such is the nature of Nigeria politics. I just
wanted to talk a little bit about Thanksgiving in America and how
miserable it used to be for me as a new arrival in the 90s. Back then it
was just me, my brother and his young family of three sitting around an
overweight turkey and other foreign looking food.

The first year I
endured the food but the second year I begged Obhiaha, my sister-in-law,
to kindly make Ogbono soup and pounded yam. For Christ sake I am an
Esan man and Thanksgiving wtas similar to the new yam festival in my
village, so it was culturally problematic for me to eat anything else
but pounded yam on a day with such festive trappings.

Another abnormality
that used to drive me bonkers on Thanksgiving Day was that I had to go
to work after loading my stomach with good food. Despite the double pay I
would receive later, I always wept internally on my way to work like a
woman forcefully married off. It was psychologically flagellating for
me to leave the festive warmth of my brother’s house.

If you still don’t
understand why I cried, going to work on Thanksgiving Day was like going
to Ozigono farm to weed elephant grass after eating a New Yam festival
meal in the village.

Happy belated
Thanksgiving to everybody and if you had to work after the feast
yesterday in America, don’t worry, change is gonna come someday. I mean,
did you ever think that a day would come in Nigeria when a customs
officer would be the chosen one over two seasoned army generals?

The stage seems to
be set for a showdown between opposition parties and lawmakers in the
country. The bone of contention is section 87 of the constitution which
the lawmakers want to amend. Before the two legislative houses are
changes to this section which if passed into law will make legislators
automatic members of their parties National Executive Committees (NEC),
the governing organ of political parties.

The NEC is the
highest decision making body of any party and is influential in the
choice of delegates for primary elections. The body also has authority
in deciding who earns the party ticket for general election. .

The amendment as
crafted in the document before the senate seeks to make all principal
officers of the chamber and the Chairmen and Deputies of the Senate
standing committees, members of the national executive of their
individual parties. The House of Representatives amendment is even more
sweeping in its ambition; it seeks to make all 360 members of the house
automatic members of their parties National Executive Committees.

At the moment,
different parties have different modalities for appointing members of
their Executive committees. For some, all principal members of the
assembly, along with national party officials , state chairmen of
parties , state government as well as the President and Vice –
President, in the case of the ruling party, make up the NEC. This mix
with little variations is what exists at present. The important thing
though is that individual parties have rules that govern these matters
and it is not a case of someone sitting in Abuja telling them how to
run their affairs.

But this does not
seem to hold much water with our legislators who say their plan will
contribute to the growth of democracy. Quite how this will work is not
clear but House Spokesman Esemeh Eyiboh has argued that the “aim is to
expand the composition of NEC so that nobody will have monopoly over
any issue, not only in the election but other programmes of the party,
including manifestoes. By the time we have a broad-based NEC; nobody
will have absolute control over party issues.” If the point Mr. Eyiboh
was trying to make is that some parties , including the ruling PDP are
in sore need of reform internally, and their processes sometimes fall
short of democratic ideals, we at NEXT agree but fail to see how giving
a bunch of lawmakers an automatic ticket to executive posts in
political parties is going to usher in reform?

Their share
numbers will mean that they will automatically have an advantage in any
political party and since their antecedents show that they never work
for the common good, we have to assume they are more likely to hijack
parties for their own self interest.

Opposition parties
have described the proposed amendment as “illegal, unconstitutional and
an abuse of power. The parties have threatened to march on the
legislators if they go ahead and pass this amendment and also say they
may seek legal redress.

We at NEXT are in
support of the opposition parties on this matter. It has clearly
escaped the notice of most of our legislators but may we remind them
that they are in office to come up with laws that are supposed to
improve the lot of ordinary Nigerians; laws that should serve to
entrench the tenets of democracy and help towards building a better
society.

Political parties
should be left to determine how to run their affairs. If there is a
need for reform within these parties, we must allow the arbiters of all
elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission to set the
frame work for these reforms.

Our legislators
have taken so many decisions that are injurious to the commonwealth,
including bloating their pay and allowances to scandalous proportions.
Their courage in even considering this amendment must be borne from the
fact that up until now they have gotten away with taking some
outrageous decisions. It is time for Nigerians to say no. Everyone must
stand up and fight this self serving attempt for a power grab by the
legislators.

It is time for the
lawmakers to focus on bills that are likely to make a real difference
in this country. How about they turn their attention to the Freedom of
Information Bill which has been languishing neglected for almost 10
years?

I have often
wondered why people bother with Nfi, the Nigerian periwinkle; that
insignificant disquietingly green gastropod dressed in black ridged
armor. How can one consider something so easily lost on the palate, or
expend so much energy cleaning or preparing it for an unexceptional
appearance in the meal?

I have on a few
occasions been sent Afang soup or Ekpan ku kwo so disfigured by the
quantity of periwinkles in them that it is like an invasion of the
food; like wading through a swamp full of rocks. And what should be a
texturally soft and comforting meal becomes a challenge, a guilt ridden
meal where one doesn’t want to spend the best part “feeeping” minuscule
periwinkles out of their shells, but doesn’t want to waste the food on
one’s plate either.

On the other hand,
if the periwinkles are removed from their shells and placed in the
soup, they disappear into thin air and add very little personality to
the food. Even when the periwinkles are meticulously cleaned, there
will be at least a few round inedible discs from the periwinkles left
behind in ones teeth that need a whole mile of dental floss to get out.

But I have always
believed that there is a lot about food that is not commonsensical or
comfortable, rather nostalgic, customary, or “I don’t know what but I
like it anyway”.

I once prepared a
meal for a non-Nigerian friend who doesn’t like our country fowl
because according to him, when you break the chicken’s bones, they form
dangerously jagged points that can tear your tongue to shreds.

I don’t know why on
earth a grown man can’t maneuvre his tongue around the bones of a
chicken. Why would anyone despise that delicious meat for such a petty
reason, and choose the tissue paper texture and blandness of Agric
chicken over it? Even if it tore ones tongue to shreds, it is
absolutely worth it. The only possible rationale behind his opinion is
that he has grown up eating his type of chicken and for that reason
prefers it.

I think of soups
made up of Imposing chunks of meat and lethal bones intentionally under
cooked so that the eater must fight with them to eat them. And fighting
is 90% of the enjoyment of the meal: “Swallow” made so resiliently hard
that when you throw it against the wall, it bounces back; soups cooked
with strong smelling condiments like Iru and Ogiri that make the
eater’s mind form all manner of associations that have nothing to do
with food or with anything that one wants to put near ones mouth.

We are not alone in
this predicament. Thai Nam Pla, the condiment commonly known as fish
sauce smells by far worse than Iru. Woe betide you if it pours out in
your car on the way home from the supermarket. Not to talk of Chinese
preserved eggs or even that runny smelly cheese that the French call
Camembert.

In other words,
that wading and bruising of lips is exactly what the seasoned eater of
Nfi wants. Surely, that must be 95% of the experience of eating Nfi! Am
I being too harsh on our beloved Nfi? Aunty Thelma of the famous
Fisherman Stew says that unless a machete is used to scrape the
periwinkle, then it is nowhere near clean especially when one considers
its natural habitat Imagine scraping an Nfi with a machete and at the
end of cooking, all the periwinkle is, is a periwinkle.

I admit to being
the philistine here because I sense that Nfi is also a gastronomic
experience (albeit consisting mostly of sucking). It is the scenic
route; a cultural marker, and even an incidental aphrodisiac. I hear
the sucking sound produced when the Nfi is held to the lips is deeply
suggestive; at least between two people (not five) it is.

Placing the whole
periwinkle in the soup gastronomically works because beads of soup pool
in the small crevices of the periwinkle shell and when that is sucked
out, one gets the essence of the soup plus the flesh of the periwinkle.
But as a reward for such hard work, it is still comparably stingy.

For those
culturally well brought up, there is nothing that animates the appetite
and the enjoyment of one’s meal more than sitting around a table where
the white sound of active Nfi sucking is going on. I have to add that
periwinkles work best for me in soups like Abak (Banga) soup where they
have freedom to move around, and they are not crowding out the soup or
competing with the greens.

Is eating the
periwinkle more a force of habit than quelling hunger or eating
protein, or tasting anything at all? Is the sucking more important for
cultural glue and communal thanksgiving than getting meat out of its
shell?

I suspect the
answer is that I have overanalysed the periwinkle and that for those
who have eaten it all their lives, they know what the periwinkle tastes
like, and will say it tastes like fish or snails or has some unique
taste that can’t really be described.

For their sakes, I stand waiting to be corrected.