Shame: Visitation panel floors UNIABUJA

Shame: Visitation panel floors UNIABUJA, says it graduates students with multiple carry-overs

by Isi Esene
A visitation panel to the University of Abuja has lamented the lack of academic culture in the institution since it was established.
The special presidential visitation panel accused the university of graduating students with multiple carry-overs in its 2003/04 session.
The panel, led by Dr. T. C Osanakpo, said it took into cognizance the general environment, conduct and the host community as the major concepts in the term of reference addressed under the focus area of conduct of academic and non-academic staff.
As reported by the Punch Newspapers;

The panel noted that the graduation of 31 students of the English Department who had varying numbers of carry-over courses in the 2003/2004 session, “indicates the highest degree of carelessness, incompetence, and insensitivity.’’
It added, “We have every reason to believe that there could be more of such cases. The Senate should be directed to revisit these cases and take appropriate action.”
The panel examined the general atmosphere in the university under different administrations from the first (Prof. Isa Mohammed) to the fifth and current (Prof. JSA Adelabu), and the conduct of academic and non-academic staff before reaching its conclusions.
It noted among other things, that “In terms of management of academic matters, the Panel noted that it is characterised by non-existence/lack of examination and student record office/unit (s) at the university, and management’s/vice chancellor’s reluctance to deal/dispense with proven cases of examination misconduct and malpractices (e.g. the case of graduation of unqualified students (31 No. 2003/2004 session) by Dr. Nnadi of English Department.
“There is also evidence of confirmation of results administratively on behalf of Senate by the Vice Chancellor without due diligence and authorisation ( the case of 31 No. unqualified graduates from English Department);
“Over-admission of students in all programmes of the university resulting in over-stressing, over crowding and over-use of available university physical and manpower resources, and ineffective performance of personnel in carrying out examination administration functions.’’
The panel indicted the university administration for poor record keeping and computation of students Grade Point Average
“It was characterised, in the case of academic staff, by absence from examination invigilation without approval, lack of diligent supervision of postgraduate students, delays in the marking of examination scripts, grading and release of results as well as in the conduct of postgraduate examinations.
“In the case of non-academic staff, they participate in examination invigilation, particularly the junior non-academic staff cadres, too low by training, rank and experience to be part of academic affairs of the university, overstay (surprisingly, in the examinations of the regular programmes of the University).”
The Panel also found out that N98m was expended on ICT from 1999 to date out of which N18. 52m was expended on networking at the Mini Campus aside from the many special grants received from agencies like TETFUND and the National Communications Commission.
It, however, noted that, “Despite the various huge investments, there is no functional e-library on the campuses of the university in a Federal Capital Territory.”

This is a sad commentary not only on the said institution but on the state of education in the country.

Echoes from the Niger-Delta

Echoes From The Niger-Delta – By Chinedu Ekeke

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Apart from the very strange, utterly shocking and painful deaths, yesterday, of Kaduna State governor, Patrick Yakowa, the former National Security Adviser, Andrew Azazi and four other people in an inexplicable helicopter crash; as well as the dramatic release of UNN’s retired professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of Nigeria’s Finance minister, by her abductors, two other very important messages came from the Niger-Delta last week. The messages were words of mouth, from two ‘leaders’ of the region who represent two different generations, and varying degrees of closeness to Nigeria’s presidency, the source of mega money.
The first of them was the salvo by the Ijaw ethnic warlord, Edwin Clark, who declared that President Goodluck Jonathan cannot kill himself in a bid to prove to critics that he is fighting corruption. He said the president is waging a tough war on the monster, contrary to what critics say, and that he is very honest about it, so much so that he is trying the son of his party chairman for sleaze. He wondered who amongst the past leaders who now criticize Jonathan can achieve such feat.
I do not expect Edwin Clark to sound differently. You don’t think about country if you have a warped definition of life and success. Mr Clark’sdefinition of success is to have surplus, in bank accounts, from the money that should be used to build Nigeria’s infrastructure andhuman capital. If he can go on a motorcade, maintain an exquisitesuite in the Sheratons and Hiltons of this world, and have enough left with which to enslave the many broke boys in his village, then he is successful. And, yes, the country is working: nothing to be ashamed of. That explains why the recent report by Transparency International means nothing to Mr Clark. That equally explains why the report by Punch Newspaper that about N5trillion has been stolen under the Jonathan presidency is bullshit as far as Clark is concerned. It is for the same reason that he wouldn’t mind ignoring the recent Gallup polls in which the Nigerian government is grossly perceived by Nigerians as very corrupt, coming second to Kenya amongst the countries polled.
Whenever Edwin Clark talks, Nigerians should know what is talking. It is never patriotism. It is a mind that is a slave to filthy lucre.
The other message from the Niger-Delta was delivered by the very loquacious militant, Asari Dokubo. He declared that Jonathan will lose the 2015 elections. He said the president has been caged by some greedy people. And that Jonathan should not have allowed himself to disagree with former President Olusegun Obasanjo since the former helped him become president.
For me who want an emphatic and dramatized defeat for President Jonathan in 2015, the only sense in Asari’s rants is his acknowledgment of what I have long concluded – that Mr Jonathan will not win another election in Nigeria. And that all the armed forces combined cannot help him achieve an electoral victory even in a local government. My reason is that he has made non-performance an art, and has excelled in it with unbelievable expertise.
Every other thing Asari said is rubbish, and should be thrown into the trash can. If not frustration and a possible reduction in the amount of free money that goes to him from Jonathan, I wonder what would have made Asari to speak out against an oppressive regime which head is from the Niger Delta. Asari is a younger version of Edwin Clark, whose definition of performance of any public office holder is the amount of patronage he gets, personally, from the leader of such government. His truth is paid for, and will never weigh as truth in the world where truth isn’t produced by cash or wealth, but conscience.
Recall that in January this year, while Nigerians groaned under the corruption-coating policy of Mr Jonathan, the one they called subsidy removal, Asari Dokubo called them unprintable names. He particularly declared that Nigeria would be in for a war – possibly costlier than our very costly civil war – if the protests continued. He even asked oil workers to leave their ‘Niger-Delta’ if they would join other Nigerians to protest the government’s anti-people policy.
I watched him on TV fume like a medieval warrior in the company of his minions. As he thundered his threats, moved his body dramatically in a certain rhythm like Ohafia war dancers, reducing the subject matter of his disagreement to a mere joke and attention-grabbing opportunity, I could discern the hubris concealed by his thick flesh.
While Asari fumed, Ademola Aderinto and about a dozen other Nigerians were lying stiff and lifeless in various mogues across the country, conscious of nothing. Jonathan’s police had killed them in cold blood without any remorse. They committed a sin: demanding transparency from an opaque regime. It was on their blood and a future cut short that Asari stood, devoid of any jot of empathy, issuing threats and making a mockery of common sense.
And then two months later, in March, he followed through to type, declaring that Jonathan was going to contest the 2015 elections. He even declared that the president’s open declaration during his 2010/2011 campaigns that he was going to serve only one term was ‘unacceptable’ to him (Asari). He said Mr Jonathan must go for a re-election so as to serve the full eight years which is the turn of the South South.
The question is: what has changed? I don’t know. But if I’m forced to guess, I would think his expectations from this government, possibly in the form of an oil block or some juicy contracts like Tompolo’s, may not have come his way.
He quickly took a jab at the president on why the East-West road has not been constructed. But I still wonder where Asari wants the money for the East-West road to come from. Here’s a man who is paid $9 million per year just for being a militant, a renegade who should be tried for the crimes he committed against the state and even his people. He isn’t just the only one. Tompolo – the one who secures our waterways – is paid $22.5m, while Ateke Tom and Boyloaf each collects $3.5m from Jonathan’s government. It isn’t important converting the money to naira to put these amounts in perspective. It is only an unreasonable fellow that will eat his cake and insist on having it. Ethnic warlords cannot continue to ask for money unworked for from the government and still expect infrastructural development. Money doesn’t grow on trees.
In one rare demonstration of guts, his wife lashed out on critics of the bizarre amounts being doled out to her husband and his co-travelers. Without minding her inability to understand what punctuation marks mean in English language, Mrs Asari made a post on her Facebook wall, without comma or full stop, calling the critics names and boasting that the money was ‘their’ money.
The assertion that Jonathan should not have disagreed with Obasanjo is quite unintelligent. Where is it written that two people should not disagree? I didn’t vote Jonathan, but I feel the millions who sincerely voted him are insulted each time anybody tries to attribute Jonathan’s victory to just a few individuals. Even if Obasanjo had not supported Jonathan, he would have won that election. The sentiments were high and greatly tilted towards the ‘poor, harmless kid from the creeks’. In Jonathan many Nigerians – I wasn’t among – saw goodness and a promise of a good future. Nobody in this country could have stopped his victory. Even as I took a different stand on the election, I knew Jonathan was going to win.
Somebody should tell Asari to shut up and enjoy his just desert from Jonathan’s presidency, whichever way it comes.
Back to the other two messages from the Niger-Delta. Those in government have always blamed the media for the negative coverage of Nigeria. Interestingly, part of those who think the media is unfair to their honest efforts is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the daughter of the kidnapped 82 year-old Professor Kamene Okonjo. In the heat of the woman’s abduction, I asked friends how best Nigeria media could report the story so as not to portray Nigeria in bad light before the world. Nobody could answer. The very simple truth – which, unfortunately, those in government have refused to acknowledge out of sheer mischief, is that Nigeria is in trouble, and that it will take only a humble acceptance from the government, and a sincere will for change, to face the troubles and surmount them. Denial has always hurt us, and will continue to do so, even as Nigeria accelerates to the bottomless pit.
How much have we spent on security in the last two years? What have we got in return: mounting insecurity and a few overnight billionaires? How many policemen do we have in Nigeria? Of that population, how many are drafted to the houses and offices of politicians, capitalists and traditional rulers for private protection? The insecurity is worse than we’ve always thought, and the kidnap of Prof Okonjo should cause a security reform. But again, have we chosen between private wealth of a few friends and cronies of those in government and public security? I don’t think so.
The death of Kaduna State governor and Andrew Azazi underscores what many have been echoing since the day of Dana: that Nigerian airspace is not safe, and that refusing to fix our roads because government officials can fly is not an escape from the carnage on the roads. Happening barely two months after Governor Suntai of Taraba State had a crash that has reportedly rendered him perpetually brain-damaged, the Bayelsa helicopter crash should remind Nigerian rulers of both the necessity of good public life and the finality of death.
It is not too late to ask those who stole the funds voted for our roads to return them. It is equally not late to start using the instrumentality of the law to punish those who brought us this path of total state dysfunction. The government should be awakened today to the demands of posterity.
I said yesterday on twitter that the most important thing in life isn’t money, it is the life itself. This is a simple lesson that must be learnt by Nigerian rulers.
Every of the echo from the Niger-Delta in the last two weeks should cause this federal government to rethink how they have treated Nigeria and Nigerians in the last two years. If the baggage they are dragging will let them, then there’s still room for change.
You can follow @ekekeee on Twitter for more direct engagement.

Echoes From The Niger-Delta – By Chinedu Ekeke
http://www.ekekeee.com/echoes-from-the-niger-delta-by-chinedu-e

Nlc keeps missing the point.

Ijeoma Nwogwugwu: NLC keeps missing the point

by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu

…what should preoccupy the NLC is how the federal government can cut its wage bill without causing social upheavals and throwing more people into the labour market

My biggest problem with the labour movement in Nigeria is that it is prone to playing to the gallery. Even when some of its leaders are abreast of the problems of this country, their preference is to choose the popular but costlier route. A case in point is the Nigeria Labour Congress’ recent admonition of the central bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and its call for his sack.

Labour’s grouse arose from Sanusi’s temerity for telling the truth. Sanusi had at a capital market conference called for a 50 per cent reduction of civil servants, blaming personnel cost for taking the lion share of recurrent expenditure of the federal budget. He said the federal government’s propensity for spending a large chunk of the recurrent budget on salaries, entitlements and pensions of civil servants was hampering its ability to deploy more resources to capital projects, which, mind you, actually help to create more jobs.

In response to Sanusi prognosis, the NLC called for Sanusi’s head and drew attention to the pervasive corruption is the country, which it said should be blamed for the government’s inability to allocate more resources to capital projects. But the NLC, as usual, misses the point, as it is erroneous to blame corruption and leakages on top government functionaries alone. Corruption is more widespread in the public sector where a thousand and one agencies of government and the people who man them bleed the system dry on a daily.

In a three part series on the cost of governance by this column more than a year ago, I pointed out that since the resumption of democracy in 1999, instead of growing smaller, the federal government has grown into a frightening behemoth that is snuffling the life out of the Nigerian economy. In yet another article early this year on the need for the federal government to be more prudent in its spending, this column wrote: “The over-bloated size of the federal government and the penchant by the legislature through its legislations to create even more departments and agencies of government that eventually overlap, in terms of functions, and conflict with existing MDAs (ministries, department and agencies). Not only do these MDAs contribute to an inefficient government bureaucracy, they are a drain on public funds and are cesspits of corruption, resulting in over-inflated government contracts, loss of value for money, and vandalism of public property.

For instance, the Federal Ministry of Health alone boasts 77 agencies and departments under it; the Ministry of Science and Technology has 40; Education – 41; Agriculture – 44; and Power and Steel – 27 agencies, among many others. Most of these parastatals, more or less, perform the same functions. Yet the National Assembly continues to legislate on the establishment of new ones and even larger bureaucracies, instead of amending existing laws to empower the available MDAs to undertake more functions. …It must be added that most of these needless MDAs are over-staffed by public servants who contribute minimally to the economic well being of this nation and add to the astronomical wage bill in the public sector.”

A month later, a more detailed assessment of the public sector’s wage bill in the 2012 budget was diagnosed in this same column as follows: “Since the recurrent budget comprises personnel cost (salaries), pensions, overheads, service wide votes (including MYTO) and debt-service payments totalling N3.031 trillion, this means that the federal government’s personnel cost of N1.655 trillion will account for 54 per cent of total recurrent expenditure while the same personnel cost will account for 86.4 per cent of non-debt recurrent expenditure in 2012.

It should be noted, however, that these estimates do not take into consideration personnel cost that will be incurred by public sector institutions that are entitled to statutory transfers as provided by the constitution. These include the National Judicial Commission, Independent National Electoral Commission, the National Assembly, Niger Delta Development Commission and Universal Basic Education Commission. If we factor them into the equation, the federal government’s wage bill will inch up to N2 trillion in 2012. This is humongous, and I believe is where more attention needs to be paid by the government and anyone interested in reducing the cost of governance.

Between 2005 and 2007, a conscious effort was made by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo to rationalise the public sector, during which almost 100,000 public sector workers were let go. Unfortunately, between 2008 and 2011, a lot of these public servants were smuggled back into the pay roll after they had been paid their terminal benefits, a fact attested to recently by the Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Another factor that led to the hike in the payroll of the federal government was the increase in salaries of university lecturers and medical personnel between 2009 and 2010, which was followed by the passage of the minimum wage legislation in 2011. This coupled with the creation of new departments and agencies of government through acts of the National Assembly have all helped to increase the wage bill to frighteningly unsustainable levels.”

From the above, what should preoccupy the NLC is how the federal government can cut its wage bill without causing social upheavals and throwing more people into the labour market, it will also be counter-productive to resort to slash and burn cuts of public sector workers that could lead to unintended consequences in the long run.

The unions in this country tend to get emotive over the removal or sustenance of fuel subsidies, but the same degree of passion and healthy discourse on the wage bill, especially by the unions, has been absent. In fact, I find it rather ironic that everyone agrees on the need to divert more resources to infrastructure development for electricity, roads, water, refineries, etc, but few acknowledge that one of the major impediments to this is the size of the federal government’s wage bill.

A way out is for the federal government to continue to adopt measures to wean out ghost workers in the public sector through the use of biometrics. Another measure is for the federal government to undertake a diagnostic assessment of its parastatals that are unproductive, with the aim of rationalising and consolidating a lot of these MDAs. I believe that has already been done by the Orasonye committee on the rationalisation of the public sector. However, concerns remain that if care is not taken, the process of rationalisation could be politicised and stalled by vested interests wanting to mark their territories and retain the status quo. To prevent this from happening, the presidency, especially, would need the political will to see this through.

A third way is for the federal government to prune the number of political appointees in the public sector, starting from the presidency to the numerous aides appointed by heads of the MDAs. This should also be extended to the disbanding of numerous needless committees in the public sector that meet endlessly, submit reports that are not implemented, and yet get paid sitting, transportation and accommodation allowances for work that is largely ignored by civil servants.

Finally, a review of arcane public service rules would also have to be undertaken, so that workers, who might have been let go from the system, do not get reabsorbed through the loopholes inherent in the public sector.

But let no one be under any illusion. Reform measures of this nature that could ultimately reduce the wage bill will not be easy to execute. Neither can they be implemented by the mere stroke of the pen. They must be carried out in a manner that is sustainable, justifiable, and are backed by adequate safety nets that will help to absorb the pain of job losses. Failure to be measured and methodical will attract the same backlash and politicisation that the fuel subsidy removal saga unleashed.

No one listen to me! TB Joshua laments

No one listens to me! – TB Joshua laments that he foretold the tragic deaths of Yakowa, Azazi (WATCH)

Prophet T.B. Joshua, not one to stay on the side-lines allegedly claimed to have foreseen the death of Kaduna State governor, Patrick Yakowa who died in a helicopter accident with former National Security Adviser, Andrew Owoye Azazi, and four others.
On Sunday December 16, 2012, Joshua spoke to a live audience on Emmanuel TV, he explained how God showed him the incident, which he conveyed in a message to the nation after series of prophetic revelations that started in January 2011. The prophetic message has since been uploaded to Joshua’s official YouTube channel and posted on his Facebook account to over 500,000 fans.
“I see the blood of personalities flowing,” Joshua said on Sunday January 2, 2011. “This is a government personality. They should not enter the same plane and say they are flying from one state to another for any reason in this country. There is danger. This is a plane crash.”
On July 15, 20112, he added further insight to the revelation, saying, “Those people who matter in society, they should not go inside the plane, together in one plane because I see satan wants to destroy these people who matter in society…” Joshua specified that six individuals would be involved. “They begin to mention one, two, three, four, five, six people who matter in society, high profile. The enemy is looking for a time when they will enter a plane together and be on the air.”
On September 23, 2012, Joshua sent one of his ‘Wise Men’ to deliver a message, stating that he had seen the flag of Nigeria being lowered, calling on Nigerians to join in prayer to avert the tragedy that would result in this. Then, on October 27th 2012, Joshua himself specified further about the incident that would cause the lowering of Nigeria’s flag, stating that he saw a governor flying with his aide. He said, “Everyone should come together on their knees and pray for the nation. Where will these people go, you, Governor, and you put yourself inside a plane and go together with your aide? Where are they going? They should not put themselves inside the same plane, aircraft and go. I’m seeing this thing is very close.”
After the tragic helicopter crash on Saturday December 15 that saw the death of 6 Nigerians, many online observers that followed Joshua’s ministry stated that they remembered his prediction when it was spoken on Emmanuel TV, lamenting that the government officials had not taken it seriously.
After playing back the clips of the prophetic revelations, Joshua spoke to the congregation, stating that he even went to the extent of reaching out to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to warn him of the impending disaster. He stated that the nation should have entered a period of national fasting for the tragedy to be averted but that people were not taking the prophetic messages seriously.
He then explained how the prophetic gift of God in his life was a tool that was supposed to be utilised and valued rather than neglected. He reminded congregants how this prophetic gift started from the onset of his ministry, specifying an occasion where he personally met the late Chief MKO Abiola during his election campaign and bluntly told him that he did not see him on the throne, despite his popularity and overwhelming support at that period. Joshua said as he was leaving, Abiola sent a large sum of money to him which he refused to take, maintaining that his gift was from God who was more than able to supply his needs.
Joshua has thus called on those in power to publicly call on all those who claimed to have prophetic powers to submit their revelations for the upcoming year to those in authority, as a test of legitimacy. Joshua called on US President Barack Obama to spearhead this arrangement, stating that as government leaders had advisors in every field of life, they also needed spiritual advisors to tell them what the future holds, something impossible to achieve with mere ‘brain power’.
It was also revealed in the service that the tragic massacre of school children in Connecticut, USA was also seen by Joshua. After the movie-theatre shooting in Colorado, he stated on Sunday August 6 that the wave of gun-related massacres would continue to increase, stressing that America needed to pray for their ‘homeland security

Who cares about obasanjo's gangnam style

Who Cares About Obasanjo’s ‘Gangnam Style’?–By Jude Egbas

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Obasanjo does the ‘Gangnam Style’ In Ghana

I know at least one man who shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Ghana two weeks ago, in the guise of an election observer.
As he waltzed to the pulsating beats of ‘Gangnam Style’ in the humid Ghanaian temperatures ; his rotund figure making a dent on his ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) gear, stacks of Obasanjo’s crude election records back home in Nigeria for eight odd years, stood up in defiant repugnance.
Twitter sneered in unison—Chinedu called the appointment of Nigeria’s former President as an ECOWAS election observer an ‘irony’. Omojuwa gasped in sheer disbelief. And Aninoritse’s trademark chuckles resonated from across the British Isles; dripping withcharacteristic sarcasm.
ECOWAS was no less scathing. Apparently still licking its wounds from including Obasanjo in its election party, one senior official of ECOWAS confided in Sahara Reporters:
“Our meeting this evening has resolved, and this will be communicated to the political leadership of ECOWAS, that Chief Obasanjo should be saved the trouble of trying to give what he doesn’t have.”
“You know Obasanjo is a loose cannon. He becomes uncontrollable once bestowed with power. We regret this appointment and vowed never to have the man invited to head missions again.
“ECOWAS was only fortunate to have [been] at an election of an advanced and stable democracy. Were it to be a volatile country, his disposition, recommendations and utterances are not only capable of truncating the electoral process, they are capable of jeopardizing the security and safety of our 250 monitors mobilized from across the sub-region.”
Obasanjo cannot spell ‘free and fair elections’ on a white marker board and ECOWAS should have known this. It was Obasanjo who handed Maurice Iwu, Nigeria’s former electoral umpire, the carte blanche to inflate election figures with the dexterity of a 21st century magician. It was Olusegun Obasanjo who expounded the ‘Amala’ brand of Politics which found brute expression in the likes of the late Adedibu and his ilk. It was Obasanjo who handed the reins of his Party to the likes of Bode George, Peter Odili and Tony Anenih—characters who stood for everything else but free and fair elections. It was Obasanjo who discovered Umaru Musa Yar’adua and a certain Goodluck Jonathan and foisted them on Nigerians; deploying all the sleight of hand in the copybook. Apparently, the man doesn’t know ‘jack’ about transparent polls.
And so when ECOWAS handpicked the same Obasanjo to oversee its elections, it should have known that it was doing Ghanaians and the continent a huge disservice.
ECOWAS must realize that they are but a sprinkling of past and present African leaders who belong to the noble ‘Class’ of Democratic Torch-bearers. Obasanjo twice flunked that ‘Class’, it has to be noted, in ‘Gangnam Style’.
The writer treats his followers to the authentic ‘Gangnam Style’ steps on Twitter daily @egbas

 Nigerian girls should be mad

by Chiagozie Nwonwu

Nigerian girls should be mad, but they are not, they are okay with playing supporting cast.

In the last decade, since the Plantation Boys and Remedies before them began a revival of Nigerian music’s fortunes, Naija music has eclipsed Africa and is presently showing the world that Africa has got some groove. With YouTube views in the millions, brands such as P square, D’banj and Flavour have become household names and veritable representatives of Nigerian popular culture.

If music is the expression of a nation’s popular culture, whether adopted or not, one would expect the visuals that go with it to reflect that culture as well as the people that embody it, however, in Nigeria, this expectation doesn’t hold.

Close your eyes and call to mind popular Nigerian music videos of the moment. If you were true to yourself, you’d admit that these videos are very unfair to the Nigerian woman. Video after video, American copycat artiste name after another, all we see is the depiction of women as playthings, playthings that come with the money, the cars, the dope houses and the choice wines—a property that success acquires.

This disrespect of women jars the nerves and grates like mad. More so because most of the so called Nigerian feminists, ever ready to cuss a Nigerian man out on social media, pretend not to notice this constant demeaning of the sex they purport to represent—I don’t want to believe they are okay with this.

Thinking about video vixens (who coined that phrase sef?) made me realise that most of them, at least the stars of the videos, look nothing like Funke, Elenu and Chidera—unless the trio are ‘mullato’ chicksrocking the Nigerian dream. The video vixens are increasingly looking like Vanessa, Tamara and Nadine. Asian, European and mix race girls are the rage. It seems Flavour, Dare, Wizkid, Banky W and the rest can’t fall in love unless the girl has a high percentage of Caucasian gene—except when they are lusting after girls with big ‘bakassi’.

I swear I will gag if I see more of these western compliant girls strut about half nude in another music video. Sheesh! The way this girls own music video after music video, someone who doesn’t know any better would think we have a large population of European types in Nigeria. Truth is, Nigeria is not East or South Africa. The mosquito and its brother malaria ensured we never had shiploads of Europeans coming to settle here during the colonial days. As such our half-castes are few and in-between and we love them to high heavens—perhaps because they remain a novelty, too few of them around, makes you wonder why they dominate our music videos.

Nigerian girls should be mad, but they are not, they are okay with playing supporting cast. These days they bleach their skin, starve themselves and wear the discarded hair of Brazilian, Asian and Caucasian girls to blend into image our recent popular culture imposes on them. They struggle to claim foreign accents and afford the once off visit to any country overseas to get the stamp of approval needed to wield those accents. These ladies represent the new-age Nigerian woman, the one that sees nothing wrong with the fact that those who shoot and direct music videos think that they are not beautiful enough to star in it beside their Naija brothers. They should be mad, but since the black woman is the most self-depreciating being created by God, they won’t see anything wrong there, it would just be another white girl dancing awkwardly to Flavour’s chant of ‘Baby Oku’. Yes, they would give a life to trade skins with that girl, and their menfolk agree—or why else would they chose the most European looking girl above them 9 times out of 10.

NOI kidnapping – Why it’s hard to feel pity

by Yomi Kazeem
Compassion is hard to come by when you’re part of an oppressive upper class who have, to put it mildly, starved the citizenry of joy. On Sunday, social media was split in two halves after the news of the kidnap of the 82 year old mother of finance ministers, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. Some tweeted kind, heartfelt words wishing the family well, others showed a harsh disregard for the event seemingly terming it as a ‘serves them right’ event.
You see, its hard not to feel angry at Nigerian leadership when anger is all you have left. While I hope the elderly woman, who had no hand in ruining Nigeria, is safely found, I also hope that events like this ring a bell in the heads of the inept 1% who lead us.
I hope they realize that their recklessness and brazen disregard for anything tantamount to progress will ignite a vicious cycle. A cycle no-one, not even them, will escape from.
Its simple logic really. There is an inevitable nexus between unemployment and crime rates. Where the majority of the population of young people are jobless and will be jobless for quite a while, its only a matter of time before shit literally hits the fan. Its a hypothesis, yes, but its one that’s backed up with statistics-and victims.
Unemployment is not a direct fault of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala or her mother, but its hard for a hungry mind to discern fine lines especially in a nation like ours where the lines between good and bad, moral and immoral, lions and lambs are increasingly blurred. Its hard for a poverty stricken multitude to sympathize with a minority who live in uncautioned opulence. Say what you want about compassion being a human virtue and all that but just remind yourself that these set of leaders do not have compassion for us either. It may sound harsh but its a fact. A harsh but true fact.
Before you point fingers at others for not caring about Madam Ngozi’s mother, ask yourself if the men who siphoned billions of naira in pension funds cared about those the money was meant for. Ask if anyone thought twice before the trillions carted away during the subsidy scam were looted.
Someone tweeted yesterday and asked ‘How can you not have compassion?’. Sometimes, in certain cases, even compassion is too much to ask. Sadly, this appears to be one of them not because we are not human but only because the line that differentiates lions from lambs is blurred.
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‘Yomi Kazeem is amongst other things, a soccer pundit on radio and a young entrepreneur. His favourite words are: ‘Up Nepa’. On Twitter: