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Chelsea Clinton isn’t the first presidential
daughter who has tried to keep private the details of her wedding day.
“I feel that marriage vows are sacred, and I hope that mine will be
spared the hurly-burly attending a news event,” Margaret Truman said
before her 1956 nuptials in Missouri. At least she and the groom,
Clifton Daniel, consented to a press conference with 50 reporters.

But Clinton, 30, was silent in every way except one. Her dress told a lot.

Designed by Vera Wang, the strapless dress
consisted of a number of yards of ivory silk organza that had been
lightly gathered, with tulle pleated diagonally on the bodice. The
dress was finished with a silvery embroidered waistband, not unlike the
dresses with dark sashes that Wang showed in a bridal collection this
year.

It was a flattering dress on a woman with pretty
shoulders and a small waist, but it wasn’t an especially high-styled
choice. Wang also made the dress for Ivanka Trump’s wedding last year,
and its tight lace bodice and elbow-length sleeves, somewhat based on
the severe style of Grace Kelly’s bridal dress, reflected a
sophisticated taste.

In a similar vein, one also thinks of the
radically simple dress that Narciso Rodriguez did for Carolyn
Bessette’s marriage to John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1996. The success of that
dress – one of the most widely copied at the time – was all based on
its refined cut. And Bessette, who worked for Calvin Klein, probably
expected that it would have an impact.

Clinton’s dress, on the other hand, suggested a
completely different relationship with fashion – even, perhaps, an
ambivalent one. Her metamorphosis from a gawky, studious teenager to an
accomplished, self-assured young woman who prefers straight hair to
curly seemed to happen almost overnight, like the discovery, suddenly,
that she had a voice and was indeed, as Politico said in 2008, “a
significant surrogate” and not merely a “silent symbol.”

Still, we don’t really know anything about
Clinton’s style, and in a way her pretty dress, with its modestly
embellished waist and romantic layers, reflects a woman whose focus
isn’t directed in that way, and maybe isn’t that vain.

Before Saturday’s wedding in Rhinebeck, N.Y.,
there was a lot of speculation about who designed the dress – Wang or
Oscar de la Renta. A number of websites favored de la Renta, on the
grounds that he makes clothes for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and designed Jenna Bush’s sleeveless lace wedding dress in
2008. De la Renta also occasionally plays host to Clinton’s parents at
his home in the Dominican Republic.

But Clinton seems her own boss, and one way to
create a distinct experience is to have a separate dressmaker. Her
mother’s dark fuchsia dress was made by de la Renta.

Apart from Tricia Nixon Cox, who married in 1971
in the White House Rose Garden in a stunning Priscilla of Boston gown,
with “400 guests and 600 journalists,” according to a news report, the
daughters of American presidents are not attention-grabbers.

Amy Carter, wed in 1996, wore a 1920s dress, as
well as her glasses, and walked on a carpet of pine straw and magnolia
petals. Truman wore a fitted dress of beige Venetian silk, by the Roman
designer Micol Fontana.

White didn’t suit her, she said. Caroline Kennedy
wore a dropped-waist gown, by Carolina Herrera, sentimentally
embroidered with shamrocks.

Unlike Bush and many young brides nowadays,
Clinton wore her hair up, scraped away from her face in a somewhat
grand chignon. Bush, who wed at her parents’ ranch in Crawford, Texas,
and said she wanted everything to have an “organic” feel, also skipped
the veil.

Clinton’s wedding was black tie, therefore more
formal, but the sleek updo also betrayed the Clinton women’s
complicated hair history. Her minimal jewelry – a small bracelet,
earrings – seemed closer to her personality.

But that is just a guess. The tab for such a dress
would also be pure guesswork. Twenty thousand dollars? Perhaps. (Wang
said in an e-mail that she was not permitted to speak about the bride
or the details of her dress.) For the reception, Clinton changed into
an ivory silk tulle Grecian dress with a crisscross back and a black
grosgrain belt. Her bridesmaids each wore a strapless gown in lavender
chiffon with a plum-colored bow.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Nigeria celebrates five decades of existence as
an independent state on October 1, 2010. Its first chance to show whether the
next fifty years will be an improvement of its first fifty years will come in
early 2011 when Federal and state presidential, gubernatorial, and
parliamentary elections will be held. All of us know what is wrong in Nigeria:
the tremendous venality of public officials and politicians, for one; the
maddening maze of inefficient state monopolies over large swathes of the
Nigerian economy for another. How for do?

To help me figure that out, I have been thinking
about the traits of Nigeria which were evident at its birth to determine what
can be expected realistically from Nigeria over the next five decades. Let me
start with that most notorious of allegedly Nigerian traits-a thirst for
corruption. The American journalist-John Gunther-visited Nigeria and the Gold
Coast in the mid-1950s.

His impressions were recorded in a book entitled
“Inside Africa” that was published in 1955. Despite the limitations of relying
on a visitor’s perceptions of a country, Mr. Gunther’s observations are useful
as a record of the common views of that pre-independence era.

Listen to Mr. Gunther’s commentary on corruption
in Nigeria and the Gold Coast.

“It was in Lagos that we first began to hear
about the worst thing in Nigeria, corruption. A tip or gift is known as dash,
and “dashing” exists almost everywhere. This phenomenon is probably unavoidable
in any community like Nigeria, convulsed as it is by the most violent
fermentations, and where people thrown up from the bottom suddenly find themselves
able to exert power through money.

Nevertheless, it is regrettable…A boy in a
hospital will have to “dash” the nurse a penny to get a bedpan. Horrible, of
course.

” … Corruption is another characteristic [in
the Gold Coast], although I had the feeling that Accra was not so sensationally
corrupt as communities in Nigeria…. We asked several prominent Gold Coasters
what they thought the country needed most. Answers: (1) More honesty in the
public service. Abolition of corruption”.

In a manner reminiscent of babies born with the
HIV/AIDS virus today, Nigeria and Ghana were born with the “corruption” virus.
Like HIV/AIDS, it has spread and mutated over the years into a horrible
debilitating disease sapping our polity and economy. It is time for us to admit
that our leaders and politicians are a reflection of us. As we change, so do
they. Not the other way!

If we want a sober and honest Nigerian
administration, the quiet majority of ordinary people must show first, by their
deeds, that they will accept nothing less from Nigerian politicians. In a way,
Nigerian attitudes towards corruption and incompetent government remind me of
St. Augustine’s cry to God: “Give me chastity; but not yet.”

In the same vein, Nigerians want a prudent
government, but only tomorrow.

Permit a small example. Nigeria’s political class
proposes to spend 17 billion naira to celebrate five decades of independence.
Outrage has been expressed in several quarters. But, is there a movement to boycott
all celebrations or commence hunger strikes to stop such palpable profligacy?
Nothing of the sort! Rather, mere bombastic words of sound and fury signifying
something, but we know not what! Can it be a surprise that President Jonathan has
not objected to this wanton waste of public funds? Why should he when

Nigerians are unwilling to endure pain for a
modest celebration, befitting Nigeria’s mediocre experience of independence to
date?

There is an old saying that Nigeria is a place
where the best is impossible but where the worst never happens. There can be no
doubt that its first 50 years of existence have confirmed the truth of that
saying. The road ahead is to turn Nigeria into a country where the best is
possible.

The journey on that road should start at the
level of daily life-the states.

Reformers must build their vision of Nigeria at
its best, state by state. It is an arduous mission that will take the better
part of two decades. Lagos State seems a good place for reformers to create a
microcosm of the new Nigeria. It has an independent tax base, a vigorous
economy, a large population and a respected reformer as governor. Other states
which should be targeted now to show the benefits of reform are Plateau State, Kano
State, and Rivers State.

The road to a resplendent Nigerian centenary
celebration starts in the Nigerian states.

The British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) was
formed following the severe cotton shortage of the Lancashire looming
industries at the turn of the twentieth century (1901-1903).

Its purpose was to find new sources of cheap
cotton to replace the expensive and increasingly sparse productions from the
southern states of North America.

The newly colonised provinces of Northern Nigeria
promised to fulfill this role.

Hausa farmers had been growing cotton for
centuries. It would not be a problem to persuade them to expand production for
export. All that was needed to transform Kano into the Mecca of Lancashire. The
way through was to improve transport in between Kano and Lagos by expanding the
Nigerian railway project with a section linking Baro to Kano.

Members of the association argued that linking
Kano with the port of Lagos by rail would provide an endless supply of
affordable and good quality cotton for the looming industries of North Western
England. By persuading Hausa farmers to grow cotton for export, the BCGA would
be accomplishing it’s mission and saving one of the founding sectors of British
industrialisation.

Of course, obstacles to this project included the
four century-old textile manufactures, dying industries, and wide reaching
trading networks of Kano itself. Short looms were traditionally used to
manufacture the cotton and indigo produced in the region into high quality
turkedy and indigo dyed cloths. These were then traded across West Africa, the
Sahara, and North Africa, through a complex web of caravan routes and trading
networks.

The prices paid for cotton in Kano were often
twice as high as those paid in Lancashire. These figures demonstrate clearly
that local supply never satisfied the very high demand of the local
manufactures. However, British cotton enthusiasts, blinded by their agenda,
failed to evaluate the strength of the native industry.

By applying simple price comparison models they
imagined that they could overflow the northern market with cheaply produced
cloth from England to effectively ‘choke’ the Kanuwanci market. The Baro-Kano
railway extension was the effective means to transform the Manchester of West
Africa, as Kano was known, into a primary cotton exporter and an important
consumer of European textiles.

By March 1911 the tracks reached Kano, and on 1
April 1912, the railway opened for general traffic. In between, the BCGA
distributed free seeds of their preferred long-staple variety (Georgia variety)
and sent “junior native clerks” to train and buy cotton directly from
small-scale farmers. Their policy was to constantly offer a little more than
Hausa traders did to ensure they would get the product. However, the BCGA’s
dream turned into a nightmare when they realised that they had lost the
propaganda battle, a nightmare filled with mountains of groundnuts.

Whilst BCGA clerks were distributing free cotton
seeds, the Kola-nut trading families, Kambarin

Beriberi, Agalawa and Tokarawa, toured the region
promoting groundnuts by recruiting the services of village heads, offering
small gifts of salt and cloth and singing songs to the praise of groundnuts.
Farmers produced so many tons of these in the first season following the
arrival of the railway that the Kano rail station was ‘literally buried in
groundnuts’.

In December 1912, there were 3000 tons of
groundnuts stacked at the station awaiting shipment. By January 1913, only 674
tons had been shipped south, and more nuts were pouring into Kano. These were
not cleared until late April. The groundnut ‘boom’, as it is known, increased
in intensity in the planting season of 1913. Even the cattle Fulani are
remembered to have planted groundnuts to supplement their income!

On the other hand, not one batch of cotton is
recorded to have been shipped; no cotton at all!

Any increase in the region’s cotton production
following the BCGA’s efforts was therefore diverted to the manufactures of
Kano. Indeed, what turned out as a disaster for the BCGA and the colonial
government was an immense success for the economy of the northern regions.

Income generated by the groundnut boom further
boosted the manufacturing sector and set in motion externalities which
benefited all levels of the economy. The railway provided long distance traders
with access to European markets through the port of Lagos. Gandu farmers
supplemented their household income. Manufactures of all sorts expanded as
demand increased.

Ironically, Kano was able to import more cotton,
and reap the benefits of its centuries old ‘comparative advantage’ as West
Africa’s centre of trade and production.

In a nutshell, business oriented networks used
the dreams of the BCGA to their advantage. Colonial naïveté, coupled with an
important infrastructural investment, met the experience of kola traders, the
immense adaptability of Hausa farmers and the ‘vent for surplus’ of the
northern economies. Instead of cotton, the Lagos-Kano railway provided Europe
with endless supplies of groundnuts.

From the farmer’s perspective, there are four
main advantages to growing peanuts. First, ‘the groundnut has the most welcome
property of adding nitrogen to the soil, meaning that little or no manuring is necessary.’
Second, the nut draws on nutrients that are located higher in the soil than
cassava or millet, making intercropping recommendable.

This meant that any one, no matter how small his
farm, could produce groundnuts to supplement his income. Third, the nuts could
be picked early and stashed to await the availability of labour if priority was
given to food crops. At last, they could act as a substitute food crop in times
of hardship. In the end of course, peanuts paid a lot more than cotton in
return for the farmers’ investments of labour and capital.

Currently
conducting research in Kano, Olivier is finishing an MA in History at the
University of Liverpool.

On Thursday 29th July, the Senate President
dissolved the Committee on Communications chaired by Sylvester Anyanwu for
telling a lie and bringing the Senate to ridicule. The committee had claimed
that they had studiously screened the chair, executive chair and commissioners
of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and it turned out that they did
no such thing. Rather than carry out their legislative functions, they were
fabricating stories about their work.

One key question is the explanation for why they
claimed they had screened them if they had not. We know that they had also
approved over N6 billion for the registration of SIM cards for GSM phones. We
know however that the registration is being done by the phone companies not by
NCC. It is clear that the anti-corruption agencies have some work to do
investigating possible connections between the committee and the budget lines
approved for theft.

There are indeed clear indications that
increasingly, National Assembly Committees are approving budget lines that were
not conceived by the originating ministries. They make the allocations with the
intention of recovering the monies later by using their “oversight might” to
blackmail ministries and agencies to pass on the budget lines to them. If the
rumours circulating about such activities are true, then the level of
irresponsibility of our legislature has reached the point of no return.

We recall how on Tuesday 22nd June, the House of
Representatives engaged in a disgraceful show of disrespect to Nigerian
citizens by organizing a fist fight choreographed with kung fu moves, blood,
screams, whistles and tear gas. They were showing their determination to prove
to all who cared to listen that they were the most irresponsible legislature in
the world.

As I have argued previously, one of the most
serious threats to sustaining democracy in Nigeria emanates directly from the
irresponsibility of the National Assembly. And yet, legislatures are the only
institutions that directly represent constituencies, and thereby the people.
They have the power to create other powers which means they have the monopoly
of the powers to make laws through which they create new commissions and
agencies, enact public policy and determine public expenditure through the
process of appropriation laws.

It is this legitimacy derived from the electoral
process that gives them the power to translate the views and concerns of citizens
they are representing into public policy. Not surprisingly, when many a
legislator owes his or her seat to godfathers rather than the votes of
constituents, the focus of work is diverted.

On 30th June this year, the Kenyan Parliament
approved a 25% increase of their allowances. They earn $13,455, (about 2
million Naira), a month today and the increase led to major condemnation around
the world over the excesses of the income of Kenyan legislatures. The important
thing in Kenya however was that the increase was debated openly and citizens
know what their parliamentarians earn.

In Nigeria, the National Assembly members have
refused to let us know officially what they earn. We have however learnt from
leaks that they illegally pay each member about N15 million every month and are
about to double the amount. They will not pass the freedom of information bill
because they want to hide from Nigerians the scandalous financial packages they
give themselves.

In addition, Section 24 of the Legislative Houses
Powers and Privileges Act of 2004 prohibits Nigerian citizens from publishing
any statement that falsely or scandalously impinges on the character of the
leaders or members of the National Assembly. This means that when they tell
lies about their work, steal our money, fight each other in public and engage
in disgraceful acts, we the ordinary citizens who they are supposed to be
representing must shut up because they are convinced that they are our
overlords.

Consolidating Nigerian democracy today requires
an open confrontation between the people and the legislature. We must insist on
an open debate on the take home pay of every legislative member. It is curious
that no member of the legislatures has to my knowledge confessed the totally
scandalous monthly take home package they pocket.

We all know that the contract between the
legislatures and the people is a dubious one because most of them were not
genuinely elected by the people. Be that as it may, we know today that they are
an avaricious, self-serving bunch of goal getters whose sights are on their
pockets and not the interest of the people. To save our democracy, we must
confront, challenge, delegitimise and recount on a daily basis how their lives
and actions betray the interest of the people and prove that they represent the
god of money rather than the good people of Nigeria.

The common melon plant called egusi is cultivated
all over the country and soin pidgin, we say fo Naija, no ples we egusi
no de. In comparison with other meals, egusi soup is one of the most
popular in the country, which makes it easy to distinguish between a
well-prepared one from di wonwit wota wota (watery).

In pidgin, it is common to hear pipul de se, beta
sup na moni kil am; meaning any well-prepared soup costs a fortune. Bot
fo fud mata, na wetin pesin sabi; no bi hau mosh pesin spend; meaning
as far as the preparation of soup is concerned, one’s skill in cooking
is vital. Like soups, most human beings offer very unpleasant “flavours
” that contrast sharply with the huge efforts and resources expended in
raising them. Similarly, it can be very disappointing if after spending
so much on a particular project; one gets a displeasing result.

In Abuja where we have so many bai fos bachelos an
manshelos, most men patronise different restaurants daily to get the
best deal.

Every month, civil servants find it hard surviving twenti hongri; the brief period preceding the payment of salaries.

At this time, there is a huge decline in
after-work hang out sessions with friends. It’s also not the best of
times for guests planning to pay one a visit. And bikos e get as tins
de bi, (things could be really rough), a friend of mine in the bai fos
machelos club, once invited a “sista” to do him a nice egusi soup to
see him through the next week. For him, it was another way of saving to
ensure a smooth “roll on” to the end of the month. Hau pesin go de go
restorant evride? He asked rhetorically.

On this appointed day, the “sista” was on hand to
prepare the soup. It was a day to remember as yours truly was present
to partake in a special weekend lunch session. At the end, we all gave
kudos to the lady for her awesome cooking skills. It was proof of the
fact that no bi evri taim plenti moni de bring beta sup.

It was such a nice time that it reminded me of
those days when my mum would prepare very sumptuous meals wit smol smol
moni (little money). But unfortunately, on the following day, my friend
was “weeping ” as he informed me of what had befallen the soup. It lost
its original taste (di sup don sawa) due largely to his carelessness.

Why should such a thing should happen to us at a
critical time when wi de put tu an tu togeda to sovaiv, he lamented. E
bi laik se yu no wom am wel; I remarked (it looks like you didn’t warm
it properly before going to bed).

Thereafter, my friend had to put a call through to
the gracious ‘sista’ who had produced the “once upon a time” delicious
meal. According to him, he wanted her to set her eyes on the the soup
so as to fully appreciate the “niu kondishon”. As she arrived, she
walked straight to the kitchen and was amazed at the sorry sight. The
following discussion ensued between them:

Sista:Yu sho se yu wom di sup wel? (Are you sure you warmed the soup properly?)

Mai Frend: Yes

Sista: Ah neva si dis kain tin bifoNa wa! Egusi no
get shem (I have never experienced this before. Surprising! Egusi is
shameless).

Captivated by the lady’s comment, I was moved to
apply it to my own experiences. I have this strong belief that the
popularity of egusi soup inNigeria doesn’t make it the best of the wide
variety we have. A

well-prepared soup attracts compliments to the
chef, at any material time. As humans, we can’t be at our best all the
time, but striving to remain relevant at all times is very important.
Prompt attention to issues saves us from future embarrassments. The one
that prepared the egusi soup was well commended but the soup was not
well cared for after she left and things “fell apart”.

The sour part of us is demonstrated daily in the
display of sycophancy. Egusi fit no get shem, bot manpikin sopoz get
shem! (Human beings should command of respect and dignity).

Shikena!

The country is on a spending spree; everywhere
one turns yet another ridiculous budget is to be encountered.

The latest of these budgetary excesses is the
listing of N90 million by the Niger Delta Development Commission in their
annual budget to cater for marriages and funeral donations for staff. This
particular commission has long been associated with budgetary atrocities of
unimaginable magnitude.

The commission, set up in 2000 by the former
president, Olusegun Obasanjo “with the mission of facilitating the rapid, even
and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is
economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and
politically peaceful” sadly cannot be said to have achieved a discernable
success rate in carrying out any of these duties. Yet, billions of naira continues
to be pumped into coffers annually.

While the commission has clearly turned into a
cash cow for a few, the entire region is still the most volatile environment in
our country and a large part of it is still very much underdeveloped.

Already our House of Representatives has allowed
the budget with this questionable amount to pass through a second reading.
Though some members of the House have raised eyebrows at the amount of
N90million for a marriage and funeral allowance for staff, it is obvious some
do not see anything wrong with spending such a sum for such purpose in a region
where it is almost impossible to openly have an elaborate wedding due to fears
about security.

Hitting the nail on the head was Sa’adatu Sani, a
member from Kaduna State asked: “How can we have N90m for marriage alone, when
the problems of Niger Delta have not been solved?” But the cruel irony of this
is lost on the deputy speaker of the House. He rallied support for the allocation
on marriage stating on Tuesday that the budget should be granted on the ground that
the provision was not only for marriage but “bereavement, condolence purse and
transportation”.

Abraham Agbodo, an aide to the NDDC chairman, has
an interesting perspective on the matter: “Budget is about anticipation and
here we deal with human beings. In every organisation, there should be
emotional intelligence, where the subordinates are made provision for in the
event of anything. These are put in a basket from which such funds are
withdrawn when needed,” he explained. Mr. Agbodo’s view of how a parastatal
should function is worthy of further analysis. It says a lot about how the NDDC
views the funds committed to its care for the development of a despoiled delta.

A quick look at the commissions’ recurrent budget
will supply even more evidence. The office of the commission’s managing
director budgets N178.7m for its personnel costs and N350.6m for overhead
costs. The two executive directors for Finance and Project receive allocations
of N264.8m and N256.9m respectively as the total for their personnel and
overhead costs. Add these together, and what do you get: more than a billion of
the Commission’s funds for this year will go into maintaining its senior
executives.

With a recurrent budget like this, it is obvious
that instead of developing Niger Delta, the managers and staff of NDDC are
apparently developing themselves.

These public officials need to be urgently
reminded that the commission was not set up to finance marriages and
funerals.Those billions are meant to save the living, not join them in
matrimony, or inter their corpses.

It is indeed our hope this was a “typographical error”
like the Nigerian Communications Commission’s budget where N800m mysteriously
ballooned into N13 billion.

When there is no accountability, there is bound
to be budgetary padding, fictitious projects and creative manipulation of the
system to defraud the country. The Niger Delta is central to the development
and peace of our country; every kobo that goes to the commission set up to look
after the region should be accounted for. Whoever is found guilty of defrauding
the commission or using it to siphon money to private pockets should not only
be sacked, but also prosecuted, and jailed.

If you haven’t
heard about it, talked about it, sang about, set up a focus group,
written about it – then you are what Fela called suegbe! To say you are
not aware is to say you don’t live in this our
forward-ever-backward-never country.

You probably think
I am talking about our able Generalissimo; the Inspector General of
Police who almost slapped an “overzealous” journalist in Abuja right
after the President honored him for the role he is playing to make our
lives safer. I think the journalist who asked Ogbonna Onovo if he
deserved to be honored at this time when the country is enjoying peace
and tranquility was clearly out of his or her elements.

What better time
than now to honor the man who through his commando moves just stamped
out all forms of unrest and kidnapping in our land?

Our police are
first class, highly rated among the best trained and most efficient in
combating both local and international crime. Before Onovo came to be
IG, the southeastern part of Nigeria was a no-go area but now everyday
is a new yam festival.

Last Christmas
indigenes went home in droves to celebrate in an open carnival-like
atmosphere. There was no better time for the President to honour the
chief of police, congratulations chief, nothing do you!

So it is not about
the IG that I want to tell you. And neither am I talking about the
latest ear splitting droning noise of ZONING! The debates about
geo-political zoning have raged so much in the last few months that I
am completely zoned out of my brains.

Some of our
politicians have become like a mad woman tying and untying her wrapper
in a market square. Party chairmen would say that the zoning system is
dead today and wake up the next day to say it is alive, biblical
miracles are happening all over the country because of zoning. Recently
nineteen Northern governors were so zoned out in Kaduna that they
couldn’t really come to a consensus on the zoning formula. No one wants
to be zoned out of the big dance come 2011.

So I am not talking
about geo-political zoning of untrustworthy politicians. But be aware
(not warned) that there is a new mafia in town. Don’t panic please;
they are purely harmless in their tactical operations. You know I will
be the last person to hide anything from my fellow Nigerians. And I
will be shocked if you say you have no inclination of what I am inkling
at.

This new mafia is
not like the Sicilian thoroughbred or the Chicago mob or even the movie
version like the The Godfather or the hit TV show, The Sopranos.

GSG as they are
known are completely non-violent, they are the vegetarian mafia whose
choice of weapon is PF2011, (PF stands for Political Finagling). Though
the GSG Cosa Nostra is friendly their tactic is quite effective. This
group is made up of well meaning Nigerians of voting age, with no known
Capone. They service one client and one client only and their primary
assignment is to benevolently crack the 2011 palm kernel for him, even
if they have to do so on the shaven heads of resistant Nigerians.

If they are
harmless and not violent, why do I call them mafia? Well let’s see what
one of the top Mafioso in the GSG Cosa Nostra confessed to a certain
daily newspaper this week: “Most northern states pretend to be with
Professor (real name withheld here for security reasons please) but
they are not really with him. We will now carry battle to the doorsteps
of the North.”

Please, before you
start bringing out your Uzis and AK47s to protect yourselves, remember
I said that these guys are not the violent type, they are just mere
finaglers and they made it clear that the battle they are talking about
is a “campaign battle”. And we all know how peaceful those campaign
battles can be.

They also promise
to shape up and straighten certain PDP governors who are playing a cat
and mouse game with their client – “we know the state we are having
problems with “, they revealed.

They have been
expressly mandated by their client, Professor, to start taking the
pulse of Nigerian citizens of voting age to see how they feel about
him, before he decides to run for office next year. So if somebody
walks up to you, grabs your hand and tries to feel your pulse like a
nurse in a general hospital, please don’t struggle or argue. All they
are looking for is just a 60 percent positive pulse rate for Professor.

If they come to me
to take my pulse I won’t run, because I know Professor will run if GSG
Cosa Nostra goes to him with enough good pulse rates. Oh I almost
forgot to mention what I meant to tell you this week: there is a
political pressure group known as Goodluck Support Group, aka GSG. They
don’t joke.

The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We’re not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to
do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we
try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding on
Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful, they’re disdainful.

Washington gave the
Wall Street banks billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the
back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost
wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the
Pakistanis billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back,
pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the
militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides.

Robert Gibbs
recalled that President Barack Obama said last year that “we will not
and cannot provide a blank check” to Pakistan.

But only last week,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan to hand over a
juicy check: $500 million in aid to the country that’s been getting a
billion a year for most of this decade and in 2009 was pledged another
$7.5 billion for the next five. She vowed to banish the “legacy of
suspicion” and show that “there is so much we can accomplish together
as partners joined in common cause.” Gibbs argued that the deluge of
depressing war documents from the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks,
reported by The New York Times and others, was old. But it reflected
one chilling fact: The Taliban has been getting better and better every
year of the insurgency. So why will 30,000 more troops help?

We invaded two
countries, and allied with a third – all renowned as masters at
double-dealing. And, now lured into their mazes, we still don’t have
the foggiest idea, shrouded in the fog of wars, how these cultures
work. Before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, both places were famous
for warrior cultures.

And, indeed, their insurgents are world class.

But whenever
America tries to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so that
we can leave behind a somewhat stable country, it’s positively
Sisyphean. It takes eons longer than our officials predict. The forces
we train turn against us or go over to the other side or cut and run.
If we give them a maximum security prison, as we recently did in Iraq,
making a big show of handing over the key, the imprisoned al-Qaida
militants are suddenly allowed to escape.

The British Empire
prided itself on discovering warrior races in places it conquered –
Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans, as the Brits called Pashtuns. But why are they
warrior cultures only until we need them to be warriors on our side?
Then they’re untrainably lame, even when we spend $25 billion on
building up the Afghan military and the National Police Force, dubbed
“the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” by Newsweek.

Maybe we just can’t train them to fight against each other.

But why can’t
countries that produce fierce insurgencies produce good-standing armies
in a reasonable amount of time? Is it just that insurgencies can be
more indiscriminate?

Things are so bad
that Robert Blackwill, who was on W.’s national security team, wrote in
Politico that the Obama administration should just admit failure and
turn over the Pashtun South to the Taliban since it will inevitably
control it anyway. He said that the administration doesn’t appreciate
the extent to which this is a Pashtun nationalist uprising.

We keep hearing
that the last decade of war, where we pour in gazillions to build up
Iraq and Afghanistan even as our own economy sputters, has weakened
al-Qaida.

But at his
confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Gen. James Mattis, who is slated to replace Gen.

David Petraus, warned that al-Qaida and its demon spawn represent a stark danger all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

While we’re
anchored in Afghanistan, the al-Qaida network could roil Yemen “to the
breaking point,” as Mattis put it in written testimony.

Pakistan’s tribal
areas “remain the greatest danger as these are strategic footholds for
al-Qaida and its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri,” the blunt four-star general wrote, adding that they
“remain key to extremists’ efforts to rally Muslim resistance
worldwide.” Mattis told John McCain that we’re not leaving Afghanistan;
we’re starting “a process of transition to the Afghan forces.” But that
process never seems to get past the starting point.

During the debate
over war funds Tuesday, Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., warned that we
are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.

“All of the puzzle
has been put together, and it is not a pretty picture,” he told The
Times’ Carl Hulse. “Things are really ugly over there.”

© 2010 New York Times News Service

The word Akara is
so soft yet so seductively broken on the back of that letter ‘k’ that
as it is spoken, you can visualise and hear the squish and subtle chew;
the compression of air through the pores of warm, crisp, freshly fried
bean fritters.

I have been
fascinated with Akara ever since I was told that infamous, cruel,
outrageous “Ajapa” story about Akara and honey as a child. The story is
in fact so disgusting that I cannot repeat the details in a food
column. Suffice it to say that Ajapa, the wily tortoise understood
keenly that any artillery of wickedness and deception is not complete
without knowing how to cook at least one dish to evil distraction.

His forte, Akara and honey, the very idea of it, has made my mouth water like mad for close to forty years.

With it he
conquered two adversaries; a vain swaggering elephant, and an inflated
ambitious chimpanzee. In reality, there is nothing like Akara and
honey, nothing like Akara which behaves in the way that a jam doughnut
does; a fried ball of dough that oozes some sweet suspension hidden
inside.

Honeyed Akara is a
magical ideal, not only one that appeals to children in the way that
sweet things in children’s books or stories uncompromisingly do; like
that swelling bonbon in Enid Blyton’s land on the faraway tree that
eventually explodes in the mouth releasing an elixir sweet and warm.
Akara and honey is our cultural pregnant bonbon because there is no
Nigerian child that cannot relate to fried Akara and honey. It is a
challenge that well made Akara should be as sweet as honey. Not
literally, but the type of sweetness that the Yoruba for example use to
define/symbolise everything from existence to painful childbirth.

Anyone in my
generation can recall the suspense in the words “Tortoise went home to
prepare some akara into which he added some fresh honey…he placed it
just outside [the lion’s] door and left to hide behind a tree. The
Akara was warm and its aroma hung in the air …[lion] picked one ball
of Akara and ate it and this Akara was sweeter than any Akara he had
ever eaten before. He ate another one, and then another one until all
the Akara was gone.” Back to reality where Saturday morning Akara
always falls short because it is too predictable, because it is
relegated to being simply accompaniment to something, to ogi or Quaker
oats, or moin moin, because there is no flamboyant engineering of
Umami, no twist, no possibility of a daring collision of savoury and
opinionated sweetness, …like Mama Rose’s sweet puff puffs defiantly
eaten with stewed red kidney beans… When I think of tortoise’s
Akara’s, I think, well why not?

Why must it always be the same peeled beans blended with water, same chopped onions, salt, pepper; basic, savoury, flat?

So, last Saturday morning, I put my peeled beans in a blender,

along with two
small leeks, because the smell of leeks always remind me of cooking
beans, and because leeks are my favourite vegetables for adding full
rounded flavours to food. I added some garlic and ginger and sea salt,
hot chillies and some coconut cream. In the past, I had successfully
added a large tablespoon of Tahini, sesame seed paste to my blended
beans. But last Saturday, all I had was some almond butter, so a
tablespoon of that went in instead. Then two egg yolks and some dried
Cameroonian pepper. Everything was blended with water until I had a
thick pouring consistency that coated my spoon. If I had had some
coconut oil, it would have been fried in that, but all I had was some
dull vegetable oil. And so, the shallow frying began; the therapeutic
ladling of imperfect circles into hot oil. The Akara is a strange
creature, and I hope someday someone with a scientific mind will
explain why it guzzles so much oil, and then does something to the oil
left in the pan that makes it lazy. After the first two to three sets
of Akara, my oil lost its elasticity, and the Akara spread sideways
into pancakes instead of rising into plump bellies. I was compelled to
add more and more fresh oil, all the time dreading where it would all
go, congealing and layering in the human anatomy.

As my frying, progressed, I began to wish I had some shrimp to attempt a tempura with my blended beans.

What would an Akara concealing a whole shrimp taste like? Would it work?

Is the mixture too laid-back to work?

I altered the
batches, because my palate always becomes bored after eating a few
Akara that taste the same, better if some of them blow your head off,
and some are gentle, and some are slightly more garlicky, and some have
hidden green peppers, and some are fried in palm oil and some in plain, and some eaten dipped in mayonnaise and some in pure unadulterated, tested with fire honey.