CredoWriters:Wakdok,Samuel Stephen
Rebranding is more than wearing smuggled ankara and telling pauperized citizens white lies behind a TV camera, which is powered by generators with fuel procured from black markets. It should be about gilded in Made in Nigeria textile fabrics and speaking the truth on behalf of millions of voiceless Nigerians.
Rebranding is not riding in foreign made jeeps to escape the impacts of our potholed embellished roads; it is about driving in Nigerian manufactured cabbies without feeling the fissures because the roads are themselves rebranded, hence no pot holes.
Rebranding is not having foreign construction firms building their own embassies in Nigeria and also building our own embassies in their countries, It is having Nigerian world class building and construction firms excelling anywhere in the world.
Rebranding is not restricted to acquiring a foreign degree as a prerequisite for local jobs, rebranding entails having a Nigerian degree that allows us international access to all job opportunities.
Rebranding transcends deregulating the importation of petroleum products to shoot a renowned cabal out of business; it is promoting local content drive to establish transparency and accountability. It is ensuring adequate local production and refining capacity to meet domestic need and achieve exportation of finished goods.
Rebranding should not be about a brazen mother-in-law of foreign men but being a gratified mother-in-law of humble if need be unemployed Nigerian men to diffuse the circular flow of national income.
Rebranding is beyond destroying fake drugs and running abroad to treat mere headache or food poison. Rebranding is having first class Nigerian hospitals to treat general and sophisticated ailments, coupled with magnificent indigenous drug manufacturing companies
Rebranding is not the cowardice of placing responsibilities on the doors of Nigerians while giving flimsy excuses for the miscarriage of governance, it ought to be the remorse of a government spokeswoman who is determined to right the ills of failures of government institutions as a first step towards making amends.
Rebranding is not the mouthpiece of a few parasites in power, propaganda failed woefully to win Hitler the Second World War. Rebranding is standing up as a patriot on the side of country and truth.
Rebranding is not the sanctimonious rigging of elections with imported electoral materials; it should be the reverence of conducting people driven elections where winners are elected not selected or imposed.
We are patriotic even if unbranded Nigerians. We pay our taxes and we can show the world our pay slips. Madam ‘Rebrandress’; can we please see your pay slip? We are so Nigerian that we have no International Passports since we do not envisage fleeing Nigeria after our ministerial tenures like El-Rufai et al. Can you please drop your dual nationality? All we have are our National ID cards. But our National Identity has been rebranded by hunger, fuel queues, potholes, strikes, insecurity and unemployment.
Madam Minister, nonetheless tell yourself the truth if not your employer or the tax payers. Do you still drink pipe borne water?
Do you eat local rice?
Do you pay for your fuel while it is still un-deregulated?
Do you pay PHCN utility bills?
No! Madam Minister, it is a fib.
Remove those spectacles and stop fibbing.
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Sunday, November 8, 2009
THE FECKLESSNESS OF AFRICA AND THE WIDER WORLD
CredoWriters:Wakdok, Samuel Stephen.
They wandered off our coastlines, disguising first as traders to the amazement of a so called primitive population. We were carried away by the charms of their goods. Common mirror, now we could see ourselves starring at us, unlike when we depended on the blurred images of our shadows or when we had to look into a bowl of water to see the imagery of our faces. When they saw our elation they brought religion and we were told to let go of the gods we knew, gods we were born into and worshipped. They came with their almighty God, who was hitherto unknown to us. While the Christians came from the south, the Moslems came from the north, and our gods were caught in the middle of crossfire. Suddenly our gods became idols and with all our sense of religion we became idolaters. We dropped the sword for the bible and Koran; we jettisoned life on earth for a life in heaven. With all our intelligence they called us illiterates. We had our languages they brought theirs; literacy was now measured only in their own language.
If we could solve all the geometry in this world and use herbs to cure all the ailments, as long as it was not in their language, for all they cared we were illiterates. Hence they took us under the trees, on the hills, inside a room anywhere they deemed fit and called it school, western education, Islamic education, and abolished home training. We were taught to read and write in their languages and to know their histories; we became an extinct people because we did not remember our history. We only know the history they wrote for us. They opined that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger, and we agreed, writing it as the answer to pass our exams. They wrote that Dr. David Livingstone and Sir Henry Morton Stanley were great explorers who came to the Dark Continent, we concurred although it was the black man who first struck fire to cook his meals, and light up his environment.
With trade and religion as the precursors, all they wanted they got in us. They chained us and sailed us as cargoes to their lands and their new world in the Americas. We became slaves, enslaved by those who stood on the pulpit preaching that God created us in his own image and thus equal. Yes, but the black man was not a man, so how dare we claim equality with the white? Though we were sub-human our men were able enough to plough their lands and mend their fences. They found our sub-women sexy and seductive enough to cohabit with, and the half caste came into being. After they had taken enough of our populace to produce more than what they could consume, when by the stroke of ingenuity the industrial revolution was born, they were faced with the bitter reality. They now converted the source of labour to become their market. The Blackman will be better as an everlasting consumer than a slave. It is still market slavery anyway.
They pushed the likes of William Wilberforce to fight for the abolishment of slavery; winning double honours. Get the glory for ending slave trade and prepare a market of heavy consumers. Long before now, they had found out that the Dark Continent after all is not so dark; they had placed their feet on a fertile soil with a ludicrous people and their hands on our resources. Therefore they decided to hold power in trust for us since we were barbarians and ushered in colonialism. In 1884 they went to Berlin to scramble for and partition Africa, what a great favour they did for us! The British, the French, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch the Belgians, all had a bite and a lot to chew. Lord Lugard consolidated for the British through this method of indirect rule as the French introduced the principle of assimilation. We a people, unfit to rule ourselves.
Africa and the wider world; the beauty or the beast? Africa is that beauty which has attracted the world to her lands with her resources and people. From the destruction of Carthage to the invasion by slave traders, and the onslaught of colonial imperialists, all have laid siege on Africa. The wider world has raped, starved, bruised and exported the best of Africa. Yet Africa too is her own beast. When you see the starving children of the wars in the horn of Africa, if you ever saw the genocide in Rwanda, the amputees from Sierra Leone, the victims of Liberia’s war, the aftermath of the Janjaweeds in Darfur, the Guinean massacres of September 28th 2009. The beauty and the beast, the beauty is also the beast. Come home to Nigeria, corruption walks proudly at day and shake hands with poverty, co-habiting with unemployment and hunger.
When the foreigners came, they stayed at the coast; they didn’t enter the hinterland to arrest or steal us into slavery. We raided villages and towns, captured ourselves and brought us to the coast where the white man was waiting. We sold ourselves into slavery. Africa has been her beast; we are again selling our selves into economic mismanagement, political destabilization, social disharmony, religious fundamentalism.
What is happening to the African Peer Review Mechanism? The African Union {AU} must avoid the pitfalls of the Organization of African Union which preceded it. How many custom unions or common markets exist in Africa? The West African Monetary Zone has severally failed to take off due to the inability of member states to meet the conditions. The recent happenings in Niger and Guinea which have led to economic sanctions and arm embargoes will further strain the ECOWAS.
North Africa is more loyal to the Arab league than the African cause. Morocco bluntly is the only country which does not belong to the African Union. This is attributed to the AU recognizing the sovereignty of Western Sahara, a country occupied by Moroccan forces since the exist of Spain in 1975.The Southern African Development Commission (SADC) which ought to be more stable is now faced with the nemesis of a Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the quagmire in Madagascar.
The horn of Africa is highly volatile, with Somalia as the world’s numero uno failed state. Eritrea and Ethiopia once the same country are now locked in bitter rivalry and have not recovered from their border war. Rwanda is trying to heal the wounds of its 1994 Genocide. This leaves Kenya and Uganda as the stable members of the East African Economic Community who themselves are not immune from internal rancor. Congo D.R. in Central Africa has the largest number of peace keepers in the world; Burundi and Central African Republic are still nursing the wounds of their civil wars.
While other economies of the world have long reached the fifth stage of Rostow’s growth theory; the state of High Mass Consumption, many African states are still at the first level of Traditional Society. Some have barely attained the second stage of Pre-Take Off and just a few may have reached the Take Off stage which is the third. May be South Africa can be said to have reached the fourth level of the Drive to Maturity.
Africa must rise up to the challenge, we must claim this 21st century which was earlier proclaimed the African Century at the turn of the last century. We should take a cue from the Latin American and Asian countries who themselves where colonized. Today many of them are a success story. We can not continue to bask in the euphoria of colonialism and pretend that we can escape with its curses as excuses. Africa must chart a development oriented course built on viable institutional frame works. Our African leaders must see themselves more as statesmen who think of the next generation rather than mere politicians who only think of the next election.
For Africa especially Sub-Saharan Africa to move out of the doldrums, we must replicate the experiences and determinations of South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique and Botswana. We must realize that our development will be attained endogenously. Exogenous dependent developments will only further re-enforce our dependence on the outside world which has always placed us at their mercy making us feckless before the wider world.
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They wandered off our coastlines, disguising first as traders to the amazement of a so called primitive population. We were carried away by the charms of their goods. Common mirror, now we could see ourselves starring at us, unlike when we depended on the blurred images of our shadows or when we had to look into a bowl of water to see the imagery of our faces. When they saw our elation they brought religion and we were told to let go of the gods we knew, gods we were born into and worshipped. They came with their almighty God, who was hitherto unknown to us. While the Christians came from the south, the Moslems came from the north, and our gods were caught in the middle of crossfire. Suddenly our gods became idols and with all our sense of religion we became idolaters. We dropped the sword for the bible and Koran; we jettisoned life on earth for a life in heaven. With all our intelligence they called us illiterates. We had our languages they brought theirs; literacy was now measured only in their own language.
If we could solve all the geometry in this world and use herbs to cure all the ailments, as long as it was not in their language, for all they cared we were illiterates. Hence they took us under the trees, on the hills, inside a room anywhere they deemed fit and called it school, western education, Islamic education, and abolished home training. We were taught to read and write in their languages and to know their histories; we became an extinct people because we did not remember our history. We only know the history they wrote for us. They opined that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger, and we agreed, writing it as the answer to pass our exams. They wrote that Dr. David Livingstone and Sir Henry Morton Stanley were great explorers who came to the Dark Continent, we concurred although it was the black man who first struck fire to cook his meals, and light up his environment.
With trade and religion as the precursors, all they wanted they got in us. They chained us and sailed us as cargoes to their lands and their new world in the Americas. We became slaves, enslaved by those who stood on the pulpit preaching that God created us in his own image and thus equal. Yes, but the black man was not a man, so how dare we claim equality with the white? Though we were sub-human our men were able enough to plough their lands and mend their fences. They found our sub-women sexy and seductive enough to cohabit with, and the half caste came into being. After they had taken enough of our populace to produce more than what they could consume, when by the stroke of ingenuity the industrial revolution was born, they were faced with the bitter reality. They now converted the source of labour to become their market. The Blackman will be better as an everlasting consumer than a slave. It is still market slavery anyway.
They pushed the likes of William Wilberforce to fight for the abolishment of slavery; winning double honours. Get the glory for ending slave trade and prepare a market of heavy consumers. Long before now, they had found out that the Dark Continent after all is not so dark; they had placed their feet on a fertile soil with a ludicrous people and their hands on our resources. Therefore they decided to hold power in trust for us since we were barbarians and ushered in colonialism. In 1884 they went to Berlin to scramble for and partition Africa, what a great favour they did for us! The British, the French, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch the Belgians, all had a bite and a lot to chew. Lord Lugard consolidated for the British through this method of indirect rule as the French introduced the principle of assimilation. We a people, unfit to rule ourselves.
Africa and the wider world; the beauty or the beast? Africa is that beauty which has attracted the world to her lands with her resources and people. From the destruction of Carthage to the invasion by slave traders, and the onslaught of colonial imperialists, all have laid siege on Africa. The wider world has raped, starved, bruised and exported the best of Africa. Yet Africa too is her own beast. When you see the starving children of the wars in the horn of Africa, if you ever saw the genocide in Rwanda, the amputees from Sierra Leone, the victims of Liberia’s war, the aftermath of the Janjaweeds in Darfur, the Guinean massacres of September 28th 2009. The beauty and the beast, the beauty is also the beast. Come home to Nigeria, corruption walks proudly at day and shake hands with poverty, co-habiting with unemployment and hunger.
When the foreigners came, they stayed at the coast; they didn’t enter the hinterland to arrest or steal us into slavery. We raided villages and towns, captured ourselves and brought us to the coast where the white man was waiting. We sold ourselves into slavery. Africa has been her beast; we are again selling our selves into economic mismanagement, political destabilization, social disharmony, religious fundamentalism.
What is happening to the African Peer Review Mechanism? The African Union {AU} must avoid the pitfalls of the Organization of African Union which preceded it. How many custom unions or common markets exist in Africa? The West African Monetary Zone has severally failed to take off due to the inability of member states to meet the conditions. The recent happenings in Niger and Guinea which have led to economic sanctions and arm embargoes will further strain the ECOWAS.
North Africa is more loyal to the Arab league than the African cause. Morocco bluntly is the only country which does not belong to the African Union. This is attributed to the AU recognizing the sovereignty of Western Sahara, a country occupied by Moroccan forces since the exist of Spain in 1975.The Southern African Development Commission (SADC) which ought to be more stable is now faced with the nemesis of a Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the quagmire in Madagascar.
The horn of Africa is highly volatile, with Somalia as the world’s numero uno failed state. Eritrea and Ethiopia once the same country are now locked in bitter rivalry and have not recovered from their border war. Rwanda is trying to heal the wounds of its 1994 Genocide. This leaves Kenya and Uganda as the stable members of the East African Economic Community who themselves are not immune from internal rancor. Congo D.R. in Central Africa has the largest number of peace keepers in the world; Burundi and Central African Republic are still nursing the wounds of their civil wars.
While other economies of the world have long reached the fifth stage of Rostow’s growth theory; the state of High Mass Consumption, many African states are still at the first level of Traditional Society. Some have barely attained the second stage of Pre-Take Off and just a few may have reached the Take Off stage which is the third. May be South Africa can be said to have reached the fourth level of the Drive to Maturity.
Africa must rise up to the challenge, we must claim this 21st century which was earlier proclaimed the African Century at the turn of the last century. We should take a cue from the Latin American and Asian countries who themselves where colonized. Today many of them are a success story. We can not continue to bask in the euphoria of colonialism and pretend that we can escape with its curses as excuses. Africa must chart a development oriented course built on viable institutional frame works. Our African leaders must see themselves more as statesmen who think of the next generation rather than mere politicians who only think of the next election.
For Africa especially Sub-Saharan Africa to move out of the doldrums, we must replicate the experiences and determinations of South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique and Botswana. We must realize that our development will be attained endogenously. Exogenous dependent developments will only further re-enforce our dependence on the outside world which has always placed us at their mercy making us feckless before the wider world.
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Sunday, November 1, 2009
WATER running dry IN NIGERIA
CredoWriters: Wakdok,Samuel Stephen.
The fact that we have more water system than pit toilets today doesn’t mean that we have an improved water supply. Rather we have succeeded in having more empty pipes without water running in them. We have only derived a better means of digging wells exclusively for the rich called boreholes. With the streams and the rivers drying up, with the water table going further down, with pipe borne water disappearing, with the dams functioning at an all time low, with the lakes drying up, Nigeria has gradually become a nation of “Thirsty People”. Water a free gift of nature, abundantly present every where is now a luxury, this is a paradox.
“About two-thirds of Nigeria lies in the watershed of the Niger River, which empties in to the Atlantic at the Niger Delta, and its major tributaries: the Benue in the northeast, the Kaduna in the west, the Sokoto in the northwest, and the Anambra in the southeast. The Niger is Africa’s third longest river and fifth largest in terms of discharge. Several rivers of the watershed flow directly to the Atlantic, notably the Cross in southeastern Nigeria and the Ogun, Oshun, and Osse in the southwest. Several rivers of northeastern Nigeria, including the Komadugu Gana and its tributaries, flow into Lake Chad. The lake rests in the center of a major drainage basin at the point where Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon meet. Kainji Lake, created in the late 1960s by the construction of the Kainji Dam on the Niger River, is Nigeria’s only other large lake”. Microsoft Encarta 2009.
The rivers, lakes and dams we have are enough to make Nigeria not only produce enough water for the needs of the people but also to make us a net exporter of water. Water is gold in its liquid form that is used for human and animal consumption, for domestic and industrial use, for private and commercial use. The prospecting, production, processing and distribution of water are worthwhile ventures that both the public and private firms can tap, tame and channel into profitable ventures. Unfortunately over the years we have not only wasted water but we have allowed water and sources of water to run wild and they are fast running dry.
Population explosion, immigration, global warming, desertification and deforestations, lack of adequate investment in water and associated infrastructure have all combined to endanger water and the millions of people who depend on water for drinking and as a means of livelihood. The rate at which the provision of water is declining, I am afraid we have more blood running across the country than water. Yet we have a federal ministry of water resources with the 36 states each having a state ministry of water not to mention the various water boards. These ministries and boards just read out mere statistics without improvement in the actual volume of water. With the debut of sachet and bottled water for drinking , “mai-ruwa” for household use and tankers for commercial and industrial use or digging of bore holes, the citizens have relieved the government of the responsibility of providing water, why then do we still have budgets running into billions of Naira for a lame duck ministry? Why not liberalize the production and distribution of water and set up a National Water Commission to regulate the sector?
The dynamics of water and its recycling will not only provide water for drinking, it can also feed, employ and earn foreign exchange for the country. The water boards can give up their rusty pipes to Independent Water Producers; and create water districts for competent water providers to bid for. These Independent Water Producers can dam their water or drill massive boreholes to generate enough water for processing and distribution in their various water districts. Smaller companies may concentrate on distribution only while bigger ones may focus on drilling and dams according to their economies of scale. Above all researches must be carried out to get the best possible way of producing sustainable and safe water at affordable rates. These will help in meeting the rising need and demand for water, this will go a long way in sustaining life by making safe water available, affordable and accessible to our people.
If countries like the Gulf States and Israel who sit on deserts can adequately provide water for all year use why will a country like Nigeria which sits on massive water bodies be running dry? It is only a fool who thirsts in the abundance of water.
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The fact that we have more water system than pit toilets today doesn’t mean that we have an improved water supply. Rather we have succeeded in having more empty pipes without water running in them. We have only derived a better means of digging wells exclusively for the rich called boreholes. With the streams and the rivers drying up, with the water table going further down, with pipe borne water disappearing, with the dams functioning at an all time low, with the lakes drying up, Nigeria has gradually become a nation of “Thirsty People”. Water a free gift of nature, abundantly present every where is now a luxury, this is a paradox.
“About two-thirds of Nigeria lies in the watershed of the Niger River, which empties in to the Atlantic at the Niger Delta, and its major tributaries: the Benue in the northeast, the Kaduna in the west, the Sokoto in the northwest, and the Anambra in the southeast. The Niger is Africa’s third longest river and fifth largest in terms of discharge. Several rivers of the watershed flow directly to the Atlantic, notably the Cross in southeastern Nigeria and the Ogun, Oshun, and Osse in the southwest. Several rivers of northeastern Nigeria, including the Komadugu Gana and its tributaries, flow into Lake Chad. The lake rests in the center of a major drainage basin at the point where Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon meet. Kainji Lake, created in the late 1960s by the construction of the Kainji Dam on the Niger River, is Nigeria’s only other large lake”. Microsoft Encarta 2009.
The rivers, lakes and dams we have are enough to make Nigeria not only produce enough water for the needs of the people but also to make us a net exporter of water. Water is gold in its liquid form that is used for human and animal consumption, for domestic and industrial use, for private and commercial use. The prospecting, production, processing and distribution of water are worthwhile ventures that both the public and private firms can tap, tame and channel into profitable ventures. Unfortunately over the years we have not only wasted water but we have allowed water and sources of water to run wild and they are fast running dry.
Population explosion, immigration, global warming, desertification and deforestations, lack of adequate investment in water and associated infrastructure have all combined to endanger water and the millions of people who depend on water for drinking and as a means of livelihood. The rate at which the provision of water is declining, I am afraid we have more blood running across the country than water. Yet we have a federal ministry of water resources with the 36 states each having a state ministry of water not to mention the various water boards. These ministries and boards just read out mere statistics without improvement in the actual volume of water. With the debut of sachet and bottled water for drinking , “mai-ruwa” for household use and tankers for commercial and industrial use or digging of bore holes, the citizens have relieved the government of the responsibility of providing water, why then do we still have budgets running into billions of Naira for a lame duck ministry? Why not liberalize the production and distribution of water and set up a National Water Commission to regulate the sector?
The dynamics of water and its recycling will not only provide water for drinking, it can also feed, employ and earn foreign exchange for the country. The water boards can give up their rusty pipes to Independent Water Producers; and create water districts for competent water providers to bid for. These Independent Water Producers can dam their water or drill massive boreholes to generate enough water for processing and distribution in their various water districts. Smaller companies may concentrate on distribution only while bigger ones may focus on drilling and dams according to their economies of scale. Above all researches must be carried out to get the best possible way of producing sustainable and safe water at affordable rates. These will help in meeting the rising need and demand for water, this will go a long way in sustaining life by making safe water available, affordable and accessible to our people.
If countries like the Gulf States and Israel who sit on deserts can adequately provide water for all year use why will a country like Nigeria which sits on massive water bodies be running dry? It is only a fool who thirsts in the abundance of water.
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