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Tucked away from
the volumes of news generated by the Nigerian media was a plaintive cry
for help by the president of the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria
(RIFAN), Abubakar Wodi. There is nothing unusual in demands by interest
groups, especially farmers, for government support for their industry.

But Mr. Wodi has
an unusual request. He wanted government to assist members of his
association to build on their success in way that could only be
beneficial to the country itself.

The rice farmer is calling for a freeze in rice importation to save local production.

He said the need
for such a measure is necessary because of a glut in paddy rice due to
importation. Mr. Wodi said that more than 75 percent of the rice
produced locally remains unsold, adding that the latest report from Edo
State indicated that the price of the commodity had fallen drastically.

The leader of the
rice farming community further argued that, for a country, which
consumes rice more than any other staple food, concerted efforts must
be made to address the problem urgently. He urged the federal
government to review the N23 million worth of contracts for small-scale
rice processing centres, awarded in 2009, to give way to large-scale
rice processing centres.

We can but urge
government, at all levels, to hearken to the cry of the association for
the lives of thousands of people involved in the cultivation,
processing and marketing of this cereal depend on sustaining the
industry. Nigeria also stands to gain economically by keeping these
people in employment – and that is without talking about the millions
of dollars the country expends every year to import the product.

Rice, until the
oil boom of the 1970s, was not a major source of food for Nigerians. In
fact, statistics show that Nigeria had the lowest per capita annual
consumption of rice in West Africa in the 1960s. But since then, the
consumption of this cereal has literally gone through the roof,
recording an estimated growth of 10 per cent a year – and demand for
the grain is predicted to surge by almost 50% to 2013. Yet, the need,
fostered as it were by changing feeding patterns, is largely met by
foreign imports. The commodity, which is procured mostly from Asian
markets, costs the country close to $1 billion a year.

It has also
changed from being middle class fare to that eagerly consumed by all
classes. A World Bank report, which classified rice as a strategic
commodity in the country, noted poor urban households obtain over 30
percent of their caloric intake from rice. The product also constitutes
a major component of their food expenditure.

Rice has thus
become a security issue, which the government has to pay serious
attention to. Rice is grown in virtually all the states in Nigeria and
there is nothing that stops the country from becoming major net
exporter of the grain except lack of investment.

It is possible
that the perceived low quality of locally produced rice was responsible
for the low patronage of the stock. But half the job has been done with
increased cultivation and higher yielding varieties.

Surely, as Mr.
Wodi said, better and bigger processors should improve the quality of
the local product. If government recognises rice as a strategic
commodity, then it ought not to be too difficult for it to make this
happen. As countries such as India have shown, nothing exalts a nation
more than an ability to feed itself. It should also free up some more
of our foreign reserve for other products that would have bigger impact
on national development.

Unlike her husband who embodies the name Goodluck, Patience Jonathan is not so lucky.

It seems that every
time she tries to do good, misfortune attends. Some of it is due to
dumb planning of course, but mostly, it is plain bad luck.

When as a
governor’s wife she tried to move some of her money abroad like other
people, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, allegedly, caught
her: twice if you believe the accounts. As a result, she is probably
the first lady with the least money in foreign banks to have served in
Bayelsa State.

Then in May
Interpol in Dubai caught a family friend, James Ibori, and she went
there to visit, to be with him in his hour of need. Some in the media
turned the matter into a national cause célèbre, accusing her of going
on a shopping spree, lampooning her timing, even questioning the nature
of her relationship with Mr. Ibori. But she may just be the kind of
person who does not abandon her friends simply because they hit a bad
patch!

Last month, her
husband attended the 65th UN Assembly in New York and she accompanied
him, as a good wife should. Somehow, the fact emerged that she had
taken along 23 other people including her personal cook, her friends,
and her valet. All paid for by the federal government.

Perhaps the worst
example of her sheer ill luck was the Independence rice spree. Mrs.
Jonathan, aware of the breathtaking poverty in the land, sought to
distribute two million bags of rice to poor people in the federal
capital territory and a stampede ensued. In the process, people lost
their lives. The rice trucks crushed some who had abandoned the queues
to seek vantage points, and some died because the police officers, who
should keep order, were eagerly grabbing bags. Mostly, the most
abominable planning marred the whole thing.

In any case, her
attempt at helping to alleviate hunger, at bringing smiles to the faces
of her fellow citizens as the country celebrated its 50th anniversary,
turned into ash in our mouths. Only God knows how bad she must have
felt, but she is not one to rest on her oars.

A week ago, she
decided to launch her ‘pet project’, as all first ladies before her
have done, as all those after her will. Somehow, the roads to the
federal secretariat Abuja were blocked and many civil servants, who
some say wanted an excuse to stay away from work anyway, could not get
to their offices. A number of them had to return home, and crucial
(wo)man-hours were lost.

My friend in Abuja
was sure that Mr. Jonathan lost more than a few votes that day as
frustrated commuters cursed him, his government, and his wife. “These
Jonathan people are doing IBB’s campaign for him,” he said.

Then today, I get
a text message that has been doing the rounds. Titled, “The bomb the
1st lady dropped during her speech at Eagle Square,” it contained half
a dozen grammatical errors, including how the October bombers made
“some children a widow.” Here is the shortlist:

1. “The people sitting before you here were once a children.” 2. “The bombers, who born them? Wasn’t it not a woman?”

3. “A good mother takes care of his children.”

I have no proof
that all that is true but my friend, a good mother herself, said she
has decided to protect her children by making sure the television is on
mute whenever Mrs. Jonathan is delivering speeches. The standard of
education is poor already as it is. True, grammatical howlers by people
who should know better are not new. The Economist Style Guide even has
one by George Bush, the former American president whose syntax is
sometimes toxic. “There is a child somewhere in Birmingham and all
across the country and needs somebody to put their arm around them and
to say: you’re a part of America.”

Yet, too many
things have happened too recently that, taken together, make Mrs.
Jonathan somewhat a liability to the president’s campaign. There are
rumours that she is a more vigorous politician than her husband is;
that she helps him take care of the basics, that she is the one who
does most of the consulting, the conjuring, and the consolidating. Now
if only she had more luck!

Still, we cannot
have everything. So, it will help the campaign, I think, if Mrs.
Jonathan will try to embody her name and be subdued, less visible:
enough of the activities already. As one newspaper editor likes to say,
she needs more ‘sobriety’.

To all intents and purposes, Patience still has virtue; but too much of her is hurting Mr. Jonathan right now.

If you knew how much of your life would be spent waiting, would you still make the trip?

Waiting for ‘oga’
to rouse himself from whatever has seized his mind at the time (heaven
forefend that he should be waiting for you); waiting for the young
ladies to finish colour coordinating, accessory matching and putting
the finishing touches to ‘the look’ of the day; waiting for that police
officer, bored out of his tiny mind, to decide whether to prolong the
pleasure he derives from wasting your time; waiting for that parking
attendant who thinks he can show you how to drive (something that would
not cross his mind if you were male); or just simply waiting because
everybody else seems to think your time is theirs.

I am sitting in my
car in the hot sun waiting for a sixteen year old. I came when I was
instructed to: 1.30 pm she said. I will have lunch with my friends
after school officially closes for half term and will be ready to be
picked up at 1.30. Of course she wasn’t, and of course she was not the
one who provided an explanation because of course she did not pick up
her cell phone when I called (why would she call me?); one of her
friends did.

I am long past
wondering about how our children manage to be so different from us. Try
anything you like at home to mould them onto the template you came
with, it does not work because they simply breathe in this free
wheeling sense of entitlement from the air around them.

Keep my mother
waiting? Certainly I would have to be ad, possessed by some alien
spirit. Infractions like that would earn you a scolding that could
reduce you to dust and remind you of your insignificance in the scheme
of things. It was not quite the equivalent of “I brought you into this
world and I can take you out”, but it was close. It implied a greater
force of nature would correct the imbalance in the universe occasioned
by your incomprehensible behaviour.

And there is little
point going down that old pot holed road, when I was a child …The
answer would come whipping back at you accompanied by gales of
laughter:” That was then Daddy, this is now. Don’t even go there!”
Which leads to another thing, smart quick thinking and eloquent today’s
children can see past the façade of do as I say not as I do.

Where we would
simply accept and keep silent even if we thought differently, they want
an explanation now and one that makes sense so they can throw it back
at you when you are least expecting it. Parenting has become a full
time job. The bulwark of those forces of nature, aunts, uncles cousins
the wider community of family has been permeated by a wild, angry and
unscrupulous world of people seeking their own progress and pleasure at
the expense of yours. This is also matched by a free wheeling media
that forces you to eternal vigilance in policing what your children
read and watch on those constantly available screens big and small.

My mother’s most
potent weapon against me was guilt. “Why do you want to put me to
shame. What wrong did I do in having you?” I used to hate it, but it
worked. Look at me today, married with children and sitting in a hot
car waiting for a teenager!

Could I try that
same tack with her? Unlikely because I do not think it would work and I
could not bring myself to do it. Each generation climbs on the
shoulders of the other and so can see ahead to a future from a
different view.

What I could not
share with my mother out of an old fashioned code of respect, I can
share with my daughter today in the confident hope that knowledge and
not luck will guide her to make the right choices and decisions in
those subjects that do not come on any school curriculum, even today.

But is still
remains a continuous circle of life when your offspring stop being
children and grow more like companions as they traverse that same road
you struggled on and come to understand so much more about what you
were trying to teach them. Daughters come to understand the particular
nature of motherly and wifely toil, and often times you find yourself
looking into a mirror of your past as you watch your children.

The other day
halfway through a morning schedule of juggling work, home and offspring
I was presented with two sets of requests for afternoon pick ups and
drop offs. I had already had to cancel two previous appointments with
my barber that week because of other pressures. But I was planning to
cut my hair this afternoon I moaned. ” Mummy you don’t need to cut your
hair, why are you always cutting your hair.”

I had to turn round and tell that sixteen year old: “You know you sound just like my mother!”

I have one cocoa
tree in my back garden. It is in the shade of some hoary plantain
trees. The cocoa pod is aesthetically one of my favourite fruits. I
love its sunglow gold complexion when ripe; its muscularity, the way
the pod rests on the tree like an elongated breast. Today is my first
taste of the cocoa bean. On opening the pod, one discovers the beans
wrapped in thick white pulp. I am presently sucking on the pulp, which
tastes a little like Soursop or Lychee, and also reminds me of the
smoothness and creaminess of bananas. The taste of the bean is
acquired. It is a contrasting bitter taste.

For the past two weeks,
we have been sun drying some beans. Today they will go in the oven for
about twenty minutes, the chaff surrounding the beans will be removed
and I will blend the beans to produce a bitter dark powder, which
because we have skipped the fermentation stage will not have as strong
a chocolate flavour. It is the fermentation simply carried out by
spreading the beans in wooden crates or baskets lined with banana
leaves for two to seven days that help to produce the intense flavour
of chocolate.

I have in front of
me a bar of Cameroun’s Chococam Mambo dark chocolate. Unlike the
familiar and touted best worldwide brands, its dark chocolate is only
50% cacao content. The best dark chocolate should have at least 70%
cacao content. I have also in front of me three other brands that I am
savouring and comparing; Green and Black’s organic dark chocolate
(shorter bite, light, sweet); Menier’s Chocolat Patissier (very, very
smooth texture, slight chew with a pleasant bitter aftertaste) and
Lindt Excellence’s Mint Intense (chewiest texture, spreads between the
teeth, almost too refined).

Cameroun must be highly commended for
producing any form of chocolate. They are a small country with a high
poverty rate. They are also the fourth largest producers of cocoa in
Africa after Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and yours dearest, Nigeria. When
the packet of Mambo is opened, the smell of the chocolate is strong,
full and amazing.

Unfortunately, its
taste is disappointing and it has too much sugar in it. Nevertheless,
I wonder why Cameroun can produce chocolate as a national export and
Nigeria can’t or won’t. I consulted Mr. Anthony Ubi, special adviser
to the Cross River State government on processing marketing and
packaging, on why Cross River State as the second largest producer of
cocoa in Nigeria can’t make chocolate. Here I am after all in my
backyard, fermenting and sunning beans, roasting them, effectively
making hot chocolate.

Cacao nibs fully
fermented and dried are now being sold in developed countries as a
super food. There are all kinds of research on how healthy it is to
eat raw cacao, and how much more antioxidant flavonoids they have than
red wine and tea. Mr. Ubi claims that the international buyers’ hold
on the cocoa coming out of Nigeria and other African countries is like
that of the Mafia. West Africa produces 70% of the cocoa used to
produce chocolate in Western countries. In order to turn cocoa into
chocolate, and to break the Mafia’s monopoly, the Nigerian government
has to be willing to commit four times the cost of growing cocoa pods
into the industry. The Nigerian

government is
unwilling to do this. As usual, it head is up its backside. By the
way, the world’s processed chocolate market is worth $60 billion. When
the cocoa growers sneeze in Nigeria, it sends panic waves to the
international market. All that influence and power and potential, and
so much indifference and laziness on our part. Even our trees are said
to be old, the industry long in need of new cocoa producing trees.

One should not of course be allowed to go on and on about chocolate
in such dire terms. Chocolate is exciting, delicious, healthy, an
aphrodisiac, a guiltless replacement for sex for those whose hearts are
set against fornication. So here is my little contribution to the
moral right standing of my fellow Nigerians: My beans are brought in
from the sun and roasted in the oven till they give off a wonderful
sweetish smell almost like baking pastry. The beans out of the oven
are shelled, revealing dark soil coloured beans. To the shelled beans I
add half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, half a dried Cameroonian pepper,
the scrapped insides of a vanilla pod and plenty of cinnamon bark. I
blend all the ingredients in my dry mill.

The end result looks like
any hot chocolate powder and smells just as good. This blend is cooked
in hot water with milk and good quality honey like the old world Aztec
would have done until a thick chocolate drink is produced. A whisk is
applied to the blend to give it a frothy appearance. More milk and
pepper is added to suit the drinker’s taste. And there’s the best,
the healthiest, the most delicious Nigerian hot chocolate made in my
own backyard, no emulsifiers, no junk and no fattening cocoa butter. I
think I need to pat myself on the back!

Our dear President,

My main purpose in writing you at this time is to seek your intervention on the menace of oil theft in Nigeria.

It is a well known
fact that hundreds of thousands of barrels of our crude oil leave our
shores illegally for the international market, daily.

The clandestine nature of the trade has made reliable statistics impossible.

However, estimates
leave the number of stolen barrels to an alarming 400,000 daily. At the
current crude rate of 82USD per barrel, this would amount to a whooping
32.8 million USD (N4.920 billion) daily worth of revenue lost to
criminals. It is believed that Nigeria has lost close to 25 billion USD
in the last ten years (an assertion by one of the major players in the
oil industry in Nigeria).

Indeed the extent of the loss in simply unquantifiable. This national hemorrhage is not only embarrassing but also unacceptable.

As an indigene of
Otueke community from Ogbia extraction, same as Oloibiri where oil was
first discovered in commercial quantities, this sad reality must be
twice worrisome to you, your Excellency.

A few years ago, an
audit conducted by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (NEITI) revealed that the number of barrels of oil produced
in Nigeria is yet unknown because of the absence of precision meters at
flow stations. Currently what is known is the amount of oil exported as
metering is done only at various export terminals. The report further
reveals that all the losses of crude oil happen between the various
flow stations and these export terminals. This also affects the current
calculations of royalty and Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) as defined in
our laws. These revelations have been in the public domain since 2006.

A peep into global
best practice reveals that precision meeting can happen at various flow
stations to get accurate hydrocarbon mass balance (actual number of
barrels of oil produced) and that it is both technically and
financially feasible to do same in Nigeria.

All concerned
regulatory agencies are aware but for some reasons no one has dared to
break the status quo and that is why I seek your kind intervention. The
Norwegian government had once offered technical assistance in this
regard to deploy a technology in monitoring oil production in the Niger
Delta. The institutional reforms proposed in the Petroleum Industry
Bill (PIB) (currently awaiting passage) have done nothing to improve
the metering regime. This is an opportunity to make history by stopping
these predatory activities, privileged criminality and economic
sabotage.

It may also please
Mr. President to note that it is widely believed by the public that the
same route through which our barrels of oil leave, serves as the route
of entry for all forms of arms and ammunition that are currently used
to perpetrate mayhem in many parts of our country today. From Jos to
Maidugiri, from Aba to Bauchi the new wave of crime that we are
witnessing today is a direct reflection of reckless inflow and stock
piling of small arms and light weapons mostly received from external
sources.

I respectfully ask
you to take advantage of the goodwill that your government is enjoying
internationally especially among energy partners in the Gulf of Guinea
to ensure that this wicked economic crime is put to a stop. Late
President Umaru Yar’ Adua at the G8 summit in 2008 called on the world
to, “treat stolen crude oil as it treats stolen diamonds as both
generate blood money”

Citizens deserve
the maximum benefits that are possible from our natural resource
endowment. Our oil will not last forever and so we must hurry to ensure
that we use the revenue to diversify our economy. This will require
rapid infrastructural development, industrialisation and job creation.
The beginning of this will be to plug any form of leakage in revenue,
improve our national earnings to be able to finance these capital
intensive long term projects.

There will also be no need for a nation like ours to borrow at this time.

Generations yet
unborn will not forgive us if we fail. No other Nigerian leader is
better positioned than you, your Excellency, to match rhetoric with
action in this regard.

I respectfully
await your usual swift action, which has endeared you to many, as a
listening and responsive leader. May wisdom be stirred up in you to
lead our country especially through free, fair and transparent
elections in 2011?

Yours Sincerely

Uche Igwe

Africa Policy Scholar Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Washington DC USA

Last week Friday
was a big turning point in Nigeria’s journey towards genuine democracy.
The Appeal Court sitting in Ilorin finally gave a judgement which
returned the mandate of Ekiti people to Kayode Fayemi of the Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN)). Segun Oni of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP), who held the mandate of the people captive for the last three
and a half years, was asked to go home.

Since the
judgement and the swearing in of the legitimate governor, intense joy
and celebration have broken out in the state. Men, women, children, old
and young have burst into a mood that was hitherto unusual for the
state since the return of democracy in 1999.

It was as if the state was just witnessing a new dawn.

But a new dawn it
really is. The journey for Mr. Fayemi and his party has been really
long and tortuous. It is still unclear why it had to take this long-
three and a half years- in a tenure that was supposed to last just
four. Mr. Oni has had full run of the state taken decisions and
appointed people to sensitive posts when in actual fact he was an
impostor and should never have been allowed to preside over the affairs
of a state.

It is these kinds
of anomalies that the Electoral Act 2010 is supposed to quickly address
and make sure that those who do not have the legitimate votes of the
electorate are not allowed to hold public office in future. It is
important that the National Assembly, political parties, Independent
National Electoral Commission and all well meaning Nigerians cooperate
to see to it that this kind of thing is not allowed again.

This is very important because it is gradually becoming a practise.

Between 1999 and
2001 the same scenario was played out in Anambra State when Chris Ngige
was declared as the governor of the state until he was later sacked by
a court to usher in Peter Obi who is now the governor of the state.

This aberration
that is gradually being turned into a norm must be stopped. That is why
we support the need to have elections well ahead of time so that all
grievances pertaining to them would have been solved before a candidate
is sworn in. A situation where a candidate has been sworn in and spent
two to three years in office before being sacked does not augur well
for democracy. In such a situation who pays for the costly mistake in
declaring a wrong candidate the winner? And who pays for the errors? In
our system we have found out that no one in the long run pays for the
mistakes, except, of course, the electorate that has been short changed.

For instance, all
the INEC officials who participated in the heists that foisted both Mr.
Oni and Mr. Ngige on the electorate are still holding to their posts at
the commission or wherever they came from. They have not been arraigned
before any tribunal to face trial for their connivance in the travesty
that brought those men to power. The question then is: how will such
people be dissuaded from committing such electoral crimes in future? Or
how will the failure to punish them serve as deterrent to others?

We salute the determination of Mr. Fayemi to pursue his case to a
logical conclusion and also salute the courage of the judiciary to
restore his mandate. However, the time to begin work is now. The new
governor must realise that he is no longer an activist; the traumatised
people of Ekiti expect a lot from him. He should therefore bend down
and work to restore the confidence of the people and justify their
votes.

I have some respect
for honest criminals. Such criminals do not pose a great danger to
society, especially because they make the job less stressful for crime
investigation officers and law courts. Although they may run, they do
not run far, and when they run, it is to give security agents a little
job to do to justify the salaries they are paid.

The honest criminal
tells the world: “Yes, I am a criminal, full-time. Catch me, if you
can!” And when the honest criminal is caught, arraigned, and the
charges are read, such a criminal nods the head and answers, “guilty as
charged.” Little wonder a presiding judge, full of admiration for the
display of sincerity, immediately commutes a clear 55-year sentence to
five, and, since love covers a multitude of iniquities, goes ahead to
translate the five year jail term to five months. If you ask me, I
would say that nothing stops such a judge from further translating the
five-month jail term to five weeks, or five days, even five minutes.
After all, a conviction is a conviction, whether one is convinced that
the punishment is commensurate to the crime or not.

And why should
Nigerians think so badly about conviction? Is it because their prisons
lack good facilities? With good food served at regular hours, movies to
watch, books to read, and even an arrangement for the prisoner to have
rich sex, who needs the freedom of the outside that comes with a lot of
responsibilities? Ask Clint Eastwood in the Hollywood film “Joe Kidd”
why he opts to go to jail for some days instead of paying a fine of
about five dollars to the court. Boy, in jail, he has access to rich
beer and some rest from action! Much later when a hunt for a criminal
is launched and the Sheriff needs men who are men, he would beg Joe
Kidd to allow someone to pay his fine so he could come out of jail and
join in the manhunt.

Don’t the whining
Nigerians know that imprisonment, for Cecilia, is some rest from
running after kudi and buying of assets? Those could be stressful, you
know.

Imprisonment could
be a vacation, or a retreat, especially if you have a good Bible or
Quran in your cell and an understanding chaplain or Imam to attend to
you every day. Inside your cell, you could be a monk. If you do not
have the right spiritual understanding, then you would be an isolated
monkey in your cell.

Cecilia is a
special Cecilia, the type that a long or short sentence cannot break
her heart. Dear reader, stop humming that Simon and Garfunkel song at
the mention of her name. Cecilia is not breaking your heart by choosing
not to come home and to do her long-short time.

A sincere Cecilia
means a new thing in the ranks of big time business of the siphoning of
public funds in Nigeria. With her example, it is hoped that many big
timers in Nigeria would choose the path of cooperating with the Law.
After all, the Law, like its agent the police, is your friend, even
though in its mythical blindfold. The Law is indeed showing that it is
humanistic and cares more about disciplining the subject than
punishing. After all, it is always preferable to have a reserve hand of
consolation for a child whom one has used the other hand to spank.

A sincere Cecilia
is a type that survives, even if she has made history with her skills
in the game of Monopoly, buying here and there, as the spirit moved
her.

A sincere Cecilia tells us that financial corruption has no gender; that what men can do, women can also do and even do better.

A sincere Cecilia is more than oceanic in her internationalisation of reckless wealth from Nigeria.

She is Ibru and her
name travels faster than her deeds. Those who think that she has done
some damage to a hallowed family name are mistaken. For her Ibruness,
she would compensate an empire and still not Helen a Troy.

A sincere Cecilia
accepts having fallen short of the glory of a family and of
self-righteous nation. She has disappointed you and me, not just
because she has stolen, but also because she has not allowed the plot
of the drama to develop complexity and thrill us more. She has cheated
you and me twice, so we are disappointed.

If you are sincerely less Cecilia that she is, cast the first stone.

Ever since former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua fell ill last year, the word “zoning” has been on everyone’s lips. The talk has been of whether the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s “zoning” arrangement would be applied to permit the emergence of a new President from the south, the north, the east, the south-south etc. Throughout all debate about zoning, no one considered the prospect of zoning the presidency to…women.

Are women excluded from the “gentleman’s agreement”?

Even the vocabulary of zoning is sexist. Zoning is referred to as a “gentleman’s agreement”, implying that it is an exclusive matter for men. Since it is permissible to zone the most important job in the country to a piece of territory, is there anything wrong with zoning it to a gender representing half the population? Zoning by gender is arguably more inclusive than zoning by territory. Since the zoning formula splits Nigeria into six zones, once the presidency is zoned to one of them, over 80% of the population is automatically disqualified from contesting the presidency. Yet only 50% of Nigerians would be ineligible if the presidency is zoned to women.

Women only shortlists are nothing new. The Labour Party in England, and the South African government have both implemented programmes stipulating mandatory minimum female representation in politics or commerce.

RATHER DIE THAN HAVE A FEMALE PRESIDENT?

Previous attempts at making women more prominent in Nigerian politics have failed miserably. President Shagari considered having a female Vice-President/running mate. However his National Party of Nigeria had to drop the idea when one of its male members threatened to commit suicide if the country had a female Vice-President. Before you southerners immediately jump to conclusions and assume that the person who so virulently opposed female candidacy was a “feudal, conservative, Muslim northerner”, think again…the man in question was a southern Christian.

In 1986 the Political Bureau recommended that 5% of legislative seats should be reserved for women. The recommendation never saw the light of day as it was overruled by an eight member advisory committee (of whom only one was female).

UNDERPERFORMING CHAPS

Can the ladies do any worse than the men? Let’s look at what 50 years of uninterrupted rule by men has brought Nigeria: civil war, one million dead bodies in the space of 3 years, systematized corruption, destruction of national morals, ostentatious living, and decadence that would make the ancient Romans blush.

OVERPERFORMING LADIES

Yet ironically, many of the best performing ministers of recent times have been women. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Dora Akunyili, and Dizeani Allison-Madueke have all performed admirably as ministers. Let us not forget that if not for aunty Dora’s forceful insistence that Jonathan be appointed acting President, we might still be sitting here today with Yar’Adua’s supporters telling us that Umaru is alive and well, and that he will “very shortly” return to Aso Rock and resume his job.

Let us not forget that over $30 billion of national debt was paid off after several decades when a female Finance Minister negotiated an elaborate debt repayment programme with international lending institutions. Thus Nigeria became the first African country to pay off its national debt. Funny, why didn’t the fellas think of that?

Another irony is that women make up a very substantial part of the voting electorate (in rural areas). Old women are known to vote regularly. Yet we refuse to empower a part of the national demographic that votes heavily and which has performed very well in government.

EVEN IDI AMIN LIKED NIGERIAN WOMEN

I recall watching a TV documentary that featured video footage from a cabinet meeting chaired by Uganda’s former leader “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE” (for the sake of simplicity let’s just call him “Amin”). During the cabinet meeting, Amin poured scorn on Ugandan women whom he accused of being lazy. He asked why they could not be more like those marvelous “hard working” Nigerian women who put Ugandan women to shame, and who get up at the crack of dawn to open their stores before taking their kids to school, then getting home in time to cook their husband’s favourite dish. This was in the 1970s people. I wonder what Amin would say if he saw today’s Nigerian women at the World Bank, in the military, as world renowned Professors, entertainers, economists, and authors.

We have had a lot of firsts. President Goodluck Jonathan recently appointed Professor Precious Kassey Garba, as Nigeria’s first ever female Chief Economic Adviser. We have had female finance ministers, transport ministers, and until recently the head of the traditionally male and macho world of the stock exchange was a woman. We are happy to give women influential positions, but not the ULTIMATE powerful position.

ARE YOU AFRAID OF WOMEN?

So what are we afraid of? I anticipate that many of you reading this will say that conservative “African culture” militates against having a female President. Really? Consider the following countries that have had female leaders:

India – Indira Gandhi
Israel – Golda Meir
Pakistan – Benazir Bhutto
Philippines – Corazon “Cory” Aquino and Gloria Arroyo
Sri Lanka – Chandrika Kumaratunga

Are these countries any more conservative than Nigeria? Most of them are just as religious and even more conservative than Nigeria is. There is nothing “un-African” about female leaders either. Doesn’t local legend speak of a powerful Queen building a mighty empire in the Ijebu area several hundred years ago? Heck, even Liberia has a female President – and blood did not descend from the sky, nor did wild beasts emerge from the seas when she was sworn in.

So for next year’s election, let us not zone the presidency to the south, north, east, west, north-central, south-east, north-west, south-south, north-east, south-west, or any other place that a GPS device can find.

Let us zone it to Nigerian women. It won’t hurt.

Until next time.

Sixty nine days after 33 miners were trapped in a
Chilean mine, the world watched spellbound as all 33 of them were
rescued. That these men endured more than two months trapped hundreds
of feet below the ground is a testament to the amazing power of the
human spirit to overcome challenges. There are, of course, the obvious
lessons to learn from the Chilean story.

Anyone who has spent time on the internet in
recent days cannot miss the many jokes in which Nigerians have
attempted to imagine what would have happened had the events in Chile
taken place in Nigeria. Those jokes reveal one thing – the lack of
confidence that many Nigerians have in the ability of their government
to respond with concern, urgency and efficiency to disaster. We have
seen too many examples in the recent past – the many images of rescuers
attempting to dig victims out of collapsed buildings with bare hands
and shovels, the cholera epidemics that go on unchallenged by the
authorities for weeks on end.

In 2005, the nation watched a plane-full of
persons, most of them young children, consumed by fire at the Port
Harcourt International Airport. There was also the plane crash that
sent emergency services to a site in Oyo State, hundreds of kilometres
from the actual crash site in Ifo, Ogun State. Events like the Chile
rescue always find a way of bringing the Nigerian question into sharp
relief. There’s the temptation to favourably compare Nigeria and Chile
by lumping them together as developing countries. But such a comparison
begins to sound hollow when you realise that Chile’s per-capita income
is $15,000, way above Nigeria’s. Our concern is not so much on the many
ways in which Nigeria has failed her citizens in the past, but instead
in the uplifting aspects of the Chilean story.

We are very much interested in the way in which
such a triumph of the human spirit can serve to inspire the world.
Chile took advantage of a crisis and impressed the world with its
display of national unity. We salute the Chilean miners, for the
indomitable spirit they displayed. We salute the Chilean people for the
display of love and affection they showed for their trapped countrymen.
We salute the Chilean mining minister for the great calm he displayed
in front of TV cameras, and the entire world. There is no doubt that
his calm handling of the crisis significantly inspired many across the
world, the trapped miners included. We salute the Chilean Navy, which
manufactured the rescue capsule that has earned a place in the history
books. We believe that Nigeria can pleasantly surprise the world; that
we can offer a lot more than news of corruption and violence and
electoral malpractice and advance fee fraud. Every day Nigerians
demonstrate this innate capacity to achieve great things. Our
performance at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games is a testament
to this. One can draw parallels between that mine and the Nigerian
situation; the way that life for many Nigerians often seems to be lived
in a trap, swinging between heights and depths of despair, awaiting a
rescue that may never show up. But we also see hope in the way what
might have been a tragedy played out. Quick as we are to point out
Nigeria’s many failings, and excoriate our leaders in the public and
private sectors, we are also eager to use this opportunity to remind
Nigerians that it is important to draw hope from the story of Chile’s
33 miners. Against the odds, against all hope, they held on; kept one
another’s spirits up, and displayed an sense of organisation that
seemed incongruous with the desperate circumstances in which they found
themselves.

As Nigeria enters its fifty-first year as an independent nation,
those inspiring images from Chile should be allowed to seep into our
national consciousness. It is possible for us to be a country that
takes positive advantage of crises — one that makes the headlines for
our sense of unity and efficiency, just like Chile.

I don’t know if irony is the right word, but it
does give me pause when I reflect on the fact that the male equivalent
of the pill that freed women from the fear of conception is a little
blue diamond shaped pill that prolongs men’s ability to seek
satisfaction in the act of conception. But just the other day, one half
of the duo that made it possible for couples to meet in the middle and
achieve that ultimate joy of union for most- the birth of a child – was
awarded the Nobel prize in medicine.

Robert G. Edwards, an Englishman with his compatriot, the late Patrick Steptoe, developed the procedure for helping infertile couples to
fulfill their hopes. Edwards is a physiologist now aged 85, who spent
years working on getting eggs and sperm to grow and unite outside the
body. The late Steptoe, who died in 1988, ten years after the first
successful test tube baby, was a gynaecologist who pioneered the
concept of laparoscopic surgery, the method by which eggs are extracted
from a womb.

The duo were a dogged and determined pair who
withstood ostracism, hostility, and denial of funds from the medical,
scientific, and religious establishment.

According to the UK Guardian, they were spurred
on, Edwards said in 2008, by their patients. “Nothing is more special
than a child. Steptoe and I were deeply affected by the desperation
felt by couples who so wanted to have children. We had a lot of
critics, but we fought like hell for our patients.”

Louise Brown, the daughter of Lesley and John
Brown, that lucky first couple was understandably excited and happy at
the news of the prize, but many of Edwards and Steptoe’s supporters
felt the Nobel Committee had been very tardy indeed in recognising this
achievement.

Steptoe is no more, and Edwards is too old to
grasp what has just happened to him. To date, 4 million people around
the world have been born through IVF and the procedure has led to the
development of new ways to treat forms of male infertility, a condition
that, to some Nigerians, does not exist.

Which brings us to the strongly held beliefs that
can make the pursuit of happiness so hard for some. The idea that a
person is incomplete without this or that can create a real blight on a
life that could, left alone, find other paths to fulfillment. You must
marry, you must have children, then you must have sons, because
daughters don’t mean as much…It is unending and sometimes it is
nonsensical.

Happily, even in Nigeria, some of that is giving
way to the recognition that there are alternatives, one of which is
providing a loving home to children in need through adoption, an act
that is a two fold gift of giving and receiving that keeps on growing.

Looking back though, there were days when almost every aspect of the act of conception was fraught with fear. Lack of the kind of medical
knowledge and the tools we have today meant that giving birth was a
risky process that could take you to the brink and beyond. If something
went wrong, there was little to choose from between the act of trying
to extract the child with the crude and rudimentary tools available and
saving the mother. Both usually died so that when child was
successfully delivered and the mother lived to share the joy, it was a
triumph of grace and providence.

“I have been and back’ is the chorus of one of the traditional songs announcing the birth of a child.

There was surviving childbirth and there was the
fear of conception, the strain of a child each year, the pressure of
more mouths to feed, the drudgery of a life of constant physical work
farming, childbirth, housework or in between some petty trading, just
to keep something coming.

For schoolgirls, it was a rocky terrain. Teenage
pregnancy meant the end of a chance at education and a career. And
then, with a working life, babies meant no career or one where
advancement was limited, especially if the babies kept coming. Those
were dark days of back street abortions of lives wasted in hidden fear
and misery.

The advent of the contraceptive pill changed all
that. One tiny little tablet freed women up to make choices and plan
their lives, to pursue pleasure without fear, to plan for the
responsibilities young men did not spare a thought about as they went
about sowing the wild oats society entitled them to.

Two inventions have made the pursuit of happiness possible in such fundamental ways

and yet, we still continue to perpetuate the same
problems. Teenage pregnancy is till an issue in many countries, despite
the availability of sex education, and free contraception. Ordinarily
it should be an anathema that HIV AIDS should still continue to spread
when the message of how it can be prevented is so basic and simple:
protect yourself always or abstain and you can live free of the virus.

It is a big puzzle how the human condition simply refuses to change.
Or maybe it is just that freedom without education, and that in its
truest sense, is as bad as no freedom at all.