International implications of a Yar’Adua Presidency
It was an election that had the soul of the nation and with good reason. Obasanjo was due for an electoral replacement. Nigerians by and large looked upon the elections enthusiastically with the belief that a culture of democratic – though imperfect -continuity would blossom and the much needed constitutional amendment towards achieving an inclusive society would emerge – even those ruthlessly pessimist, those neck-in separatists or secessionists mustered a flurry of hope . The elections inspired a sense of commaradie among a vast swathe of Nigerians. Nigerians at home and abroad, took the electoral preparation at heart and suggested faults or potential hazards to INEC, but it was deliberately thrown away. Unbeknown to them, the saliva of Maurice Iwu, Obasanjo’s organ grinder’s monkey, had them in, like an unfortunate insect battling to stay alive in liquid.
Obasanjo found in Iwu, a man who combined the mental craftiness of an advanced fee fraudster and the pugilism of a motor park tout, who could institute his shenanigans to the full tilt. He saw a man who possessed a rich well of lying water and the slickly turn of lime. Voices rose up and demanded Iwu’s sack but they deliberately and strategically fell on deaf ears.
By consenting to a Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua presidency, Nigerians accept the inevitability of a pariah status - in a country already reeling from widespread electoral notoriety . Yar’ Adua was the first governor to introduce Sharia in his home state - Katsina – in a multi-religious society. How could a man of his pedigree preside over Nigeria? How would a Sharia Yar’Adua presidency seat with a relationship with Israel and America? I urge the American government and every other government to hold off any oil dealings with Nigeria. Nigeria is America’s fifth largest oil supplier and it is achieved in conditions perhaps on par or less than what obtains in Sudan where a greedy government deprives its southern tribes of their natural resources constitutionally. Perhaps the only difference between the Jangaweed and the Nigerian state is that they are forthright in their determination to extirpate the southern tribes of Sudan while the Nigerian government sponsors a quite policy of opposition elimination and apartheid. It only makes sense to me that the source of revenue is cut off.
Recently - in the Nigerian media - Yar’Adua while receiving members of the Northern Union implored that a power rotation culture between the North and South be entrenched and urged members of the NU to employ the same gusto they did in campaigning for a northern presidency towards a south presidency ‘when the time comes’. Every time he speaks, he confirms his dissonance with sanity. I watched him speak shortly after he was declared president-elect and I bled within me and this is the man many urge our acceptance? His recent statements are no surprise to me - very few things surprise about the Nigerian society; I have always seen Nigeria as a mystical nation, where unusual things happen.
Those who beg our forbearance in the face of monumental evisceration need to provide an answer to this question: when is the right time to act? In 1999 we were told the same thing, in 2003 we were told the same thing and now we are being told the same thing!
I do not blame our leaders because I believe they capture the collective schizophrenia that is Nigeria, I blame Nigerians. Our deep-seated divisions handicap us at this crucial juncture in our history to any concerted front. The rivers of tribalism flow from the kinky hair of Nigeria and empties at its foot .I cannot give an assessment of the 1966 January coup because I lack any subjective understanding of the flag they wove as they spilled blood ruthlessly but sometimes I wonder if any type of leader should be accepted. A wicked leadership can permit the deaths of people. Through the wicked policies of a leadership the majority can be held in prison.
Around the country, it is tales of woe, anger and frustration around .The gored child weeps inconsolably in his mother’s arms. Nigeria is crying.
Obasanjo’s decision to rig was a defeatist confirmation of his unpopularity among the Nigerian public - a realization of the utopian atmosphere he constructed around him .
True, the Nigerian polity is largely unfavorable to any kind of peaceful election considering the ruling and opposition party thugs at their beck and call, armed to the teeth; but all these were made known or known to him before the elections.
What happened on the 14 and 20 of April was an open rape of decency and common sense. Nigeria witnessed the worst rigging in its history. This year’s elections mark the climax of election rigging in Nigeria's voting history – no time in our history has there been so much death, so much violence in a rascal bid to loot and plunder.
Thursday 26 April 2007
Friday 13 April 2007
Welcome the Duke of Calabar!
You see, there is something fundamentally wrong with the Nigerian state. No matter what you do in Nigeria, it won’t stick because of murky backgrounds, stretching back to pre-independence days. There has to be a structural adjustment; a review of the ethnic and resource control issues in Nigeria. I have no doubt in my mind that, there are some that have put in their best in this outgoing administration, but the environment they operate in renders their efforts void because certain oppressive underpinnings are in place - that take way any effort.
Take for instance the drug and food situation in Nigeria. For years hospitals and traders wrecked havoc on Nigerians, sending many to an early grave but the corrupt authorities turned a blind eye preferring the little dole they received - in turn many died: seaports and airports were turned into graveyard transits: that is why I am firmly committed against the perpetrators and beneficiaries of corruption. In my university, I met a governor’s child who paid most probably more fees than the father will earn in three months, not to talk of accommodation, feeding etc. Yet Google the state the father presides over, and you’ll be amazed at the strength of corruption in the state.
Thanks to the internet everyone can now voice their opinion or events as they truly are without the punitive reach of the Nigerian state, much to their utter disappointment. Even this newly found freedom has come under severe strains but still, Nigerians in blogs and newspapers like http://www.leadershipnigeria.com/ where people are free to voice their views on Nigeria, reveal a country at tenterhooks and present a spectacular scenery for those of us in the diaspora intent on knowing the happenings in our homeland. Though one must point out these forums host libelous people who roll out out-of-sync views but nevertheless a picture of instability and massive discontent and simmering uprisings like the type envisaged by some in the Muslim world against their governments, perceived to be at loggerheads with Islam.
In this present dispensation we have had to endure mass death in the Niger delta and the Middle belt, incompetence, misused oil funds, raped hopes but nevertheless there has been few flash points from individuals who I believe point the way Nigeria must go.Governor Donald Duke of Cross River State, the good-looking, impressionable young man, has thrown in a new dynamism in Nigeria with his groundbreaking projects.
Cross River State, home to the Efiks, has produced personalities like Professor Eyo Ita, Etuborn Oyo Orok Oyo and Magaret Ekpo. Calabar the capital of the state was the first capital - from 1893 to 1906 - of the British Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Marry Slessor arrived Calabar in 1878 from the United Free Church of Scotland.It was here that Nigeria’s first president Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe attended the historic Hope Waddel Training Institute.
To understand the history of Calabar is to understand Nigeria’s history. The history of old Calabar enlightens us about the obsession of our ancestors with the mythical, the superstitious and practices that seemed in keeping with their religious proclivities - and our slave trading past.Calabar has always been a factor in Nigeria’s history.
It is not surprising that the people of Cross River will indulge in throwing off the garb of oil dependence and launching into a non-oil dependent dispensation. Ghana recently posted huge returns in tourism, bolstered by American migrant inflows. Recently in a conversation with Mauritians they revealed that their little island off South Africa, gets its money from ‘tourism, tea and sugar!’Duke has had his own fair share of criticisms, but nevertheless he is a pointer to the direction many long after.
Nigerians to my mind are not dull people. There are people in Nigeria who produce things. I even hear that mobiles phones are now being cloned. I have met Nigerians in my sojourn abroad who commanded responsibilities.The Dukian concept is an outspill of years of compression and repression. It is a recognition of the malady inflicting Nigeria and a deliberate attempt to stray away.
The Dukian concept contends with the reductionist concept that revels in the maintenance of the status quo; Dukianism urges a conscientious movement towards a sustainable ideology.
‘Tinapa is conceptualized to be a world-class integrated business resort. It is to be implemented under the Private Public Partnership (PPP). Located by Calabar River, and contiguous to the Calabar Free Trade Zone, it is the realization of an exciting dream - the first integrated business and leisure in resort in Nigeria.Calabar, with her natural potential for tourism, through the unique vision of Tinapa, will be transformed into a global trading hub reminiscent of great international free zones like Hong Kong and Dubai.The complex will provide international standard wholesale emporiums, integrated shopping complexes and product distribution elements supported business tourism and entertainment facilities. The locations of these, in close proximity to Free Port on the east-west trading routes, provide exciting opportunities for Tinapa to serve…,’ says the Cross River State government’s website.
The Tinapa dream captures a dynamic, complex ingenuity that will rebound into the future of Nigeria and serves as the single most pivotal highlight of this present civilian administration.
Just today, while at the Leadership newspaper website, I came across corruption allegations against the Kogi state governor. I constantly come across corruption allegations against Nigerian heads, not to talk about the unresolved Petroleum Trust Funds, but there are people who have put in their best into a system begging for continuity and development and this to me is the single most daunting challenge that should occupy the thoughts of anyone aspiring for presidency.
We have seen people in authority come and go and some of us are not deceived. No matter what anyone does it would never equal the efforts put in by Duke and some others in revamping the system and so the game must be raised below par. Right now I see a murderous rat race to the presidency to lay hold on oil wealth. In secondary school economics I was taught the theories of supply and demand: too much demand , price increases; less demand, price decreases.
In Nigeria the demand for presidency is incompetently high - requested by people who have rarely distinguished themselves in any field. Too much demand competing for a commodity: demand outstripping supply. Nigeria is terribly uncultured politically – we have still not shed ourselves of the violence in the first republic. Nigeria is a country where power is sought with gung-ho fanaticism, where blood inevitably flows for selfish reasons. I came across a fellow I knew recently, who vanished during the primaries. Upon my inquiries about his whereabouts during the period, he confided, he returned to contest in the primaries in his region. Unable to carry on, the winner of the battle deposited money to him to ‘assuage any injury’. ‘Everyone must be killed for there to be development; everyone is corrupt,’ he sounded apocalyptic.
These president wannabes, in a bid to gain relevance have joined the opposition and caught many gullibles in their fake pieties. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone: before President Olusegun Obasanjo, came on stage the second time he ‘lamented the worrying state of Nigeria.’ We now know better. When he leaves he will do the same: a vicious hypocritical cycle bind. Somehow a sense of caution is missing. Their mission though written in cryptic ink bears an unmistaken quest to protect sectional interests.
The Vanguard newspaper in its editorial today says: ‘Nigerians have endured unnecessary hardship since 1999 because their Governors with the connivance of the powers in Abuja elected backwardness, and at best a blurred future, for the country.Many of the charlatans who have presented themselves for these offices are definitely deficient and grossly incompetent to steer Nigeria to the future its people desire and deserve.The ravaging poverty in the land has reduced the people to a state of the helplessness never before seen in these parts, at a time of unprecedented revenue from oil and gas. Yet the obscene opulence of the campaigns, is another reminder to voters to be careful in choosing who manages the country from May 29.How sad it is that prudence, accountability, selflessness and the interest of the public are no longer worthy attributes for office. What happened to the trillions of Naira that the States got from the federation account in the last eight years? Is it enough to prance about on campaign podium and make new promises when the ones made eight years ago have not been fulfilled?It is more disheartening that with the poor performance of the last eight years, candidate after candidate pledges continuity of the programmes of the departing administrations. What future is there then for the country?’
To the Duke of Calabar: you have towered above those in Nigeria, who among the festering rot have sought whether genuinely or not, to bring some sanity, showing Nigerians can, if they desire, unravel detrimental infrastructures. Your print on our sand will reverberate.
You see, there is something fundamentally wrong with the Nigerian state. No matter what you do in Nigeria, it won’t stick because of murky backgrounds, stretching back to pre-independence days. There has to be a structural adjustment; a review of the ethnic and resource control issues in Nigeria. I have no doubt in my mind that, there are some that have put in their best in this outgoing administration, but the environment they operate in renders their efforts void because certain oppressive underpinnings are in place - that take way any effort.
Take for instance the drug and food situation in Nigeria. For years hospitals and traders wrecked havoc on Nigerians, sending many to an early grave but the corrupt authorities turned a blind eye preferring the little dole they received - in turn many died: seaports and airports were turned into graveyard transits: that is why I am firmly committed against the perpetrators and beneficiaries of corruption. In my university, I met a governor’s child who paid most probably more fees than the father will earn in three months, not to talk of accommodation, feeding etc. Yet Google the state the father presides over, and you’ll be amazed at the strength of corruption in the state.
Thanks to the internet everyone can now voice their opinion or events as they truly are without the punitive reach of the Nigerian state, much to their utter disappointment. Even this newly found freedom has come under severe strains but still, Nigerians in blogs and newspapers like http://www.leadershipnigeria.com/ where people are free to voice their views on Nigeria, reveal a country at tenterhooks and present a spectacular scenery for those of us in the diaspora intent on knowing the happenings in our homeland. Though one must point out these forums host libelous people who roll out out-of-sync views but nevertheless a picture of instability and massive discontent and simmering uprisings like the type envisaged by some in the Muslim world against their governments, perceived to be at loggerheads with Islam.
In this present dispensation we have had to endure mass death in the Niger delta and the Middle belt, incompetence, misused oil funds, raped hopes but nevertheless there has been few flash points from individuals who I believe point the way Nigeria must go.Governor Donald Duke of Cross River State, the good-looking, impressionable young man, has thrown in a new dynamism in Nigeria with his groundbreaking projects.
Cross River State, home to the Efiks, has produced personalities like Professor Eyo Ita, Etuborn Oyo Orok Oyo and Magaret Ekpo. Calabar the capital of the state was the first capital - from 1893 to 1906 - of the British Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Marry Slessor arrived Calabar in 1878 from the United Free Church of Scotland.It was here that Nigeria’s first president Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe attended the historic Hope Waddel Training Institute.
To understand the history of Calabar is to understand Nigeria’s history. The history of old Calabar enlightens us about the obsession of our ancestors with the mythical, the superstitious and practices that seemed in keeping with their religious proclivities - and our slave trading past.Calabar has always been a factor in Nigeria’s history.
It is not surprising that the people of Cross River will indulge in throwing off the garb of oil dependence and launching into a non-oil dependent dispensation. Ghana recently posted huge returns in tourism, bolstered by American migrant inflows. Recently in a conversation with Mauritians they revealed that their little island off South Africa, gets its money from ‘tourism, tea and sugar!’Duke has had his own fair share of criticisms, but nevertheless he is a pointer to the direction many long after.
Nigerians to my mind are not dull people. There are people in Nigeria who produce things. I even hear that mobiles phones are now being cloned. I have met Nigerians in my sojourn abroad who commanded responsibilities.The Dukian concept is an outspill of years of compression and repression. It is a recognition of the malady inflicting Nigeria and a deliberate attempt to stray away.
The Dukian concept contends with the reductionist concept that revels in the maintenance of the status quo; Dukianism urges a conscientious movement towards a sustainable ideology.
‘Tinapa is conceptualized to be a world-class integrated business resort. It is to be implemented under the Private Public Partnership (PPP). Located by Calabar River, and contiguous to the Calabar Free Trade Zone, it is the realization of an exciting dream - the first integrated business and leisure in resort in Nigeria.Calabar, with her natural potential for tourism, through the unique vision of Tinapa, will be transformed into a global trading hub reminiscent of great international free zones like Hong Kong and Dubai.The complex will provide international standard wholesale emporiums, integrated shopping complexes and product distribution elements supported business tourism and entertainment facilities. The locations of these, in close proximity to Free Port on the east-west trading routes, provide exciting opportunities for Tinapa to serve…,’ says the Cross River State government’s website.
The Tinapa dream captures a dynamic, complex ingenuity that will rebound into the future of Nigeria and serves as the single most pivotal highlight of this present civilian administration.
Just today, while at the Leadership newspaper website, I came across corruption allegations against the Kogi state governor. I constantly come across corruption allegations against Nigerian heads, not to talk about the unresolved Petroleum Trust Funds, but there are people who have put in their best into a system begging for continuity and development and this to me is the single most daunting challenge that should occupy the thoughts of anyone aspiring for presidency.
We have seen people in authority come and go and some of us are not deceived. No matter what anyone does it would never equal the efforts put in by Duke and some others in revamping the system and so the game must be raised below par. Right now I see a murderous rat race to the presidency to lay hold on oil wealth. In secondary school economics I was taught the theories of supply and demand: too much demand , price increases; less demand, price decreases.
In Nigeria the demand for presidency is incompetently high - requested by people who have rarely distinguished themselves in any field. Too much demand competing for a commodity: demand outstripping supply. Nigeria is terribly uncultured politically – we have still not shed ourselves of the violence in the first republic. Nigeria is a country where power is sought with gung-ho fanaticism, where blood inevitably flows for selfish reasons. I came across a fellow I knew recently, who vanished during the primaries. Upon my inquiries about his whereabouts during the period, he confided, he returned to contest in the primaries in his region. Unable to carry on, the winner of the battle deposited money to him to ‘assuage any injury’. ‘Everyone must be killed for there to be development; everyone is corrupt,’ he sounded apocalyptic.
These president wannabes, in a bid to gain relevance have joined the opposition and caught many gullibles in their fake pieties. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone: before President Olusegun Obasanjo, came on stage the second time he ‘lamented the worrying state of Nigeria.’ We now know better. When he leaves he will do the same: a vicious hypocritical cycle bind. Somehow a sense of caution is missing. Their mission though written in cryptic ink bears an unmistaken quest to protect sectional interests.
The Vanguard newspaper in its editorial today says: ‘Nigerians have endured unnecessary hardship since 1999 because their Governors with the connivance of the powers in Abuja elected backwardness, and at best a blurred future, for the country.Many of the charlatans who have presented themselves for these offices are definitely deficient and grossly incompetent to steer Nigeria to the future its people desire and deserve.The ravaging poverty in the land has reduced the people to a state of the helplessness never before seen in these parts, at a time of unprecedented revenue from oil and gas. Yet the obscene opulence of the campaigns, is another reminder to voters to be careful in choosing who manages the country from May 29.How sad it is that prudence, accountability, selflessness and the interest of the public are no longer worthy attributes for office. What happened to the trillions of Naira that the States got from the federation account in the last eight years? Is it enough to prance about on campaign podium and make new promises when the ones made eight years ago have not been fulfilled?It is more disheartening that with the poor performance of the last eight years, candidate after candidate pledges continuity of the programmes of the departing administrations. What future is there then for the country?’
To the Duke of Calabar: you have towered above those in Nigeria, who among the festering rot have sought whether genuinely or not, to bring some sanity, showing Nigerians can, if they desire, unravel detrimental infrastructures. Your print on our sand will reverberate.
Thursday 12 April 2007
America assures Nigeria of cooperation during April Elections
America has assured Nigeria of cooperation in the forthcoming elections scheduled to hold on April 14 and 20 and urged all parties involved to ensure their success.
‘The United States is a committed partner in assisting Nigeria with its preparations for credible elections that are acceptable to the Nigerian people.’ The U.S State department said in a press statement today.
‘The election poses a unique opportunity for that country's democratic development. This transition, along with the sustained fight against corruption, and the emergence of an institutional balance of power among the three branches of government is a vital element in the growth and consolidation of democracy in Nigeria.’ The report said.
America highlighted the financial and manpower support it has provided Nigeria for the April
elections.
'The United States has provided almost $15 million over the past three years to train political parties, electoral commission staff, and civil society in facilitating preparation of these polls. The United States is supporting nearly 200 observers accredited to the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the U.S. Mission in Nigeria.’ Sean McCormack, a Spokesman said.
America urged the electoral authorities and the government to ensure the total success of the election and urged all parties involved to eschew violence.
The press release said: ‘We encourage the electoral authorities and government to take all possible measures to enhance public confidence in the elections. These steps should include the immediate granting of full and transparent access for domestic and international electoral observers, as well as posting and publishing results at each polling station.
‘We urge all parties to refrain from violence, and to exercise their liberties responsibly and according to the rule of law.’
If the elections go smoothly, it would be the first time Africa’s most populous country embarks on a civilian to civilian transition since it achieved independence in 1960.
Many Nigerians are dissatisfied with the current administration. They say the fight against corruption is selective and that the government failed to institute a viable constitution and improve infrastructures, significantly power supply despite unprecedented rise in oil revenues.
America has assured Nigeria of cooperation in the forthcoming elections scheduled to hold on April 14 and 20 and urged all parties involved to ensure their success.
‘The United States is a committed partner in assisting Nigeria with its preparations for credible elections that are acceptable to the Nigerian people.’ The U.S State department said in a press statement today.
‘The election poses a unique opportunity for that country's democratic development. This transition, along with the sustained fight against corruption, and the emergence of an institutional balance of power among the three branches of government is a vital element in the growth and consolidation of democracy in Nigeria.’ The report said.
America highlighted the financial and manpower support it has provided Nigeria for the April
elections.
'The United States has provided almost $15 million over the past three years to train political parties, electoral commission staff, and civil society in facilitating preparation of these polls. The United States is supporting nearly 200 observers accredited to the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and the U.S. Mission in Nigeria.’ Sean McCormack, a Spokesman said.
America urged the electoral authorities and the government to ensure the total success of the election and urged all parties involved to eschew violence.
The press release said: ‘We encourage the electoral authorities and government to take all possible measures to enhance public confidence in the elections. These steps should include the immediate granting of full and transparent access for domestic and international electoral observers, as well as posting and publishing results at each polling station.
‘We urge all parties to refrain from violence, and to exercise their liberties responsibly and according to the rule of law.’
If the elections go smoothly, it would be the first time Africa’s most populous country embarks on a civilian to civilian transition since it achieved independence in 1960.
Many Nigerians are dissatisfied with the current administration. They say the fight against corruption is selective and that the government failed to institute a viable constitution and improve infrastructures, significantly power supply despite unprecedented rise in oil revenues.
Friday 6 April 2007
Dr. Dora Akunyili: Tribute to a Woman Warrior
Before the advent of award-wining, fifty-three year-old Dr. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and control (NAFDAC), most Nigerians did not know that a body vested with the responsibility of ensuring standard drugs and food existed, but now the campaign has reached a crescendo worldwide.
On Thursday, N6.5 billion worth of substandard drugs from over 3000 drug shops, were destroyed in Onitsha. The drug market was closed on March 6. In place, Onitsha Bridge Head Drug Market was constituted with a warning not to indulge in selling fake drugs.
The closure of the Onitsha drug market is a long overdue but welcome step. To think that those slimballs have fed on the blood of many is terribly inexplicable rationally and further highlights a worrying social rot. For years they got away bribing corrupt authorities in Nigeria, who shared the same passion for money above life, but now the death knell tolls on their activities. Attempt has been made on Professor Akunyili’s life but she escaped.
The story of Akunyili of Nanka, Anambra State is a story of unrelenting gusto in the face of dare-devils without any care for life and the stench of corruption that allowed the growth of fake drugs . The story of Nigeria cannot be written without mention of her name. Her story evinces an unusual fortitude in the face of life-threatening realities around the path to sanitizing the country from a multi-billion monstrous drug monolith that has caused the death of many including Vivian, Akunyili’s sister.
Since she left her role as a Senior lecturer and Consultant Pharmacologist in Medicine ,University of Nigeria Nsukka (U.N.N.), Enugu Campus, she has led a trail of success in fighting the menace of substandard food and drugs.
Before Akunyili took over her post in 2001, 80% of drugs in circulation were substandard: some were outright poison; powdered chalk; some expired.
There are people who want Nigeria to remain backward and a land of anything-goes, so they can profit. Nigeria without regulations sweetens their gory appetites but this time around they have had it in their faces. At the heart of this crusade is a tireless woman who braved a society greatly prejudiced against females. Even Obasanjo confessed to narrowly missing her. She is a shadow of merit in the right position. She vindicates my position that authority must be held by the qualified – there’s no apology for being good that is why the English league travels around the world to get players, despite homegrown football players. Merit must outpace sectionalism in every form.
Dora is a beautiful advertisement for the Nigerian woman long held down by societal misconceptions. Nigeria women occupy a very strategic position in the Nigerian society. It is not unusual to find women almost single-handedly feeding, clothing etc their families – in the traditional Nigerian family, divorce is rare, so efforts are put in to ensure the success of marriage against all odds, often times with the woman at the receiving end.
Since her emergence on the national stage there has been a lot of debate about the place of women in Nigeria.
Olakunle Fredrick Sorinmade, the Lagos West senatorial candidate of the Citizens Popular Party (CPP) has cashed in on Akunyili’s rising profile in his proposal to create laws strengthening women (Daily Champion,2007).
Professor Akunyili stands tall. She may have foibles, but no matter how it is cut, she shows that Nigerians can have a will to dismantle the various evil structures in place if they desire. She has strenuously fought her corner. Hardly a week goes by – anytime I read the news – without mention of progress towards stemming the tide of illicit drug related activities made. Recently 800 cartons of banned vegetable oil valued at N10 million were impounded by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control (Daily Champion). Whenever I think about her I see the picture of lost Nigeria; a Nigeria that can be found.
In recognition of her service, the European Parliament has invited her as a guest speaker to the forth-coming Public Hearing on Counterfeiting Medicine on April 10, 2007, where she is expected to pour insights into the global fight against drug counterfeiting.
Prof.Akunyili was born in Makurdi, Benue state on the 14th of July 1954 to Chief & Mrs. Paul Young Edemobi.A devout catholic, mother of six children – having a grand child - married to Dr.J.C. Akunyili a Medical Practitioner, she has more than 20 awards under her belt .
She got her B.Pharm (Hons) in 1978 and P.hD in 1985 from the University of Nigeria Nssuka (UNN).
On resuming office she restricted pharmaceutical imports to two airports and two seaports, each staffed by NAFDAC officials and blacklisted foreign companies thought to be involved in manufacturing fake drugs.
"It is in Onitsha that all the fake drug dealers in all Nigerian markets are trained. They move from Onitsha to other markets. They distribute from Onitsha to other places. They have so much money. It is by the grace of God that anybody can resist their money. They often claim that they are millionaires in all currencies (ThisDay, 2007)." She said.
The war against substandard food and drugs is just a tissue in the morass of decadent activities plaguing Nigeria.
According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), Nigerian fraudsters raked in N70 billion from advance fee fraud (419) in the past 10 years.
The Federal Government recently released N1.2 billion to the newly-created Directorate for Cyber security (DFC) to respond to security issues on the internet.
References
Lemonick.D.M and Costa D.G.(2005).Drug Warrior (Times magazine)
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1124289,00.html
nafdacnigeria.org
Before the advent of award-wining, fifty-three year-old Dr. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and control (NAFDAC), most Nigerians did not know that a body vested with the responsibility of ensuring standard drugs and food existed, but now the campaign has reached a crescendo worldwide.
On Thursday, N6.5 billion worth of substandard drugs from over 3000 drug shops, were destroyed in Onitsha. The drug market was closed on March 6. In place, Onitsha Bridge Head Drug Market was constituted with a warning not to indulge in selling fake drugs.
The closure of the Onitsha drug market is a long overdue but welcome step. To think that those slimballs have fed on the blood of many is terribly inexplicable rationally and further highlights a worrying social rot. For years they got away bribing corrupt authorities in Nigeria, who shared the same passion for money above life, but now the death knell tolls on their activities. Attempt has been made on Professor Akunyili’s life but she escaped.
The story of Akunyili of Nanka, Anambra State is a story of unrelenting gusto in the face of dare-devils without any care for life and the stench of corruption that allowed the growth of fake drugs . The story of Nigeria cannot be written without mention of her name. Her story evinces an unusual fortitude in the face of life-threatening realities around the path to sanitizing the country from a multi-billion monstrous drug monolith that has caused the death of many including Vivian, Akunyili’s sister.
Since she left her role as a Senior lecturer and Consultant Pharmacologist in Medicine ,University of Nigeria Nsukka (U.N.N.), Enugu Campus, she has led a trail of success in fighting the menace of substandard food and drugs.
Before Akunyili took over her post in 2001, 80% of drugs in circulation were substandard: some were outright poison; powdered chalk; some expired.
Nigeria gained a reputation for being a country where harmful drugs were sold and used without scrutiny. Merchants of death plied their wares with shameless abandon; rejected drugs found a ready market in Nigeria. Tales of corroboration with authorities abounded – it was pathetic. Nigerians have been known from South Africa to Thailand for being involved in illicit drug peddling. I remember being told by a smiling chunky dud in Nigeria: ‘I like to be involved in drug trading.’ People turned their eyes as these death sellers indulged in their nefarious activities.
In 1990 more than 100 Nigerian children died from a painkiller that had been made with a toxic substance.There are people who want Nigeria to remain backward and a land of anything-goes, so they can profit. Nigeria without regulations sweetens their gory appetites but this time around they have had it in their faces. At the heart of this crusade is a tireless woman who braved a society greatly prejudiced against females. Even Obasanjo confessed to narrowly missing her. She is a shadow of merit in the right position. She vindicates my position that authority must be held by the qualified – there’s no apology for being good that is why the English league travels around the world to get players, despite homegrown football players. Merit must outpace sectionalism in every form.
Dora is a beautiful advertisement for the Nigerian woman long held down by societal misconceptions. Nigeria women occupy a very strategic position in the Nigerian society. It is not unusual to find women almost single-handedly feeding, clothing etc their families – in the traditional Nigerian family, divorce is rare, so efforts are put in to ensure the success of marriage against all odds, often times with the woman at the receiving end.
Since her emergence on the national stage there has been a lot of debate about the place of women in Nigeria.
Olakunle Fredrick Sorinmade, the Lagos West senatorial candidate of the Citizens Popular Party (CPP) has cashed in on Akunyili’s rising profile in his proposal to create laws strengthening women (Daily Champion,2007).
Professor Akunyili stands tall. She may have foibles, but no matter how it is cut, she shows that Nigerians can have a will to dismantle the various evil structures in place if they desire. She has strenuously fought her corner. Hardly a week goes by – anytime I read the news – without mention of progress towards stemming the tide of illicit drug related activities made. Recently 800 cartons of banned vegetable oil valued at N10 million were impounded by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control (Daily Champion). Whenever I think about her I see the picture of lost Nigeria; a Nigeria that can be found.
In recognition of her service, the European Parliament has invited her as a guest speaker to the forth-coming Public Hearing on Counterfeiting Medicine on April 10, 2007, where she is expected to pour insights into the global fight against drug counterfeiting.
Prof.Akunyili was born in Makurdi, Benue state on the 14th of July 1954 to Chief & Mrs. Paul Young Edemobi.A devout catholic, mother of six children – having a grand child - married to Dr.J.C. Akunyili a Medical Practitioner, she has more than 20 awards under her belt .
She got her B.Pharm (Hons) in 1978 and P.hD in 1985 from the University of Nigeria Nssuka (UNN).
On resuming office she restricted pharmaceutical imports to two airports and two seaports, each staffed by NAFDAC officials and blacklisted foreign companies thought to be involved in manufacturing fake drugs.
"It is in Onitsha that all the fake drug dealers in all Nigerian markets are trained. They move from Onitsha to other markets. They distribute from Onitsha to other places. They have so much money. It is by the grace of God that anybody can resist their money. They often claim that they are millionaires in all currencies (ThisDay, 2007)." She said.
The war against substandard food and drugs is just a tissue in the morass of decadent activities plaguing Nigeria.
According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), Nigerian fraudsters raked in N70 billion from advance fee fraud (419) in the past 10 years.
The Federal Government recently released N1.2 billion to the newly-created Directorate for Cyber security (DFC) to respond to security issues on the internet.
References
Lemonick.D.M and Costa D.G.(2005).Drug Warrior (Times magazine)
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1124289,00.html
nafdacnigeria.org
Sunday 1 April 2007
What if Biafra had won?
‘IF Biafra had succeeded it would have created an imbalance in the African continent,’ a Ghanaian who I was discussing with said, ‘it would have been the most powerful and richest African country, thereby endangering Africa unity’. I come across people who have more than a passing interest in Nigerian history but this assertion was simply mind-blowing. The Biafran war reverberated around the shores of the world – I have read excerpts from people who confessed to hearing the name Nigeria for the first time when poverty-stricken Biafran children surfaced in their television sets, with pleas for aid, the thrust. Great faith was placed in Nigeria at independence but no sooner had it achieve nationhood than it plunged into a bloody war that claimed more than one million people and ensured the utter destruction of infrastructures in its three year duration (1967 – 1970) and solidified a country perennially divided along the basic fault-lines of ethnicity and religion.
I have read and heard participant versions of the civil war but I have still not come to my own conclusion: whether the war was a right step or was just a gratuitous gamble. But no matter how it is looked at, the Biafra war was indeed a shaping point in Nigeria’s history.
Some Igbo people rhapsodize about what a Biafra country would have been like given the many stories of technological creations - documented. A Biafran – during the war- is credited with the first attempt to seek nuclear materials in Nigeria’s nuclear history. It was a war whose passionate personality was in no doubt, whose human investment in blood was powered perhaps with hope of greater returns.
Whether the Eastern Region's military governor, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu left his Oxford degree, a life that appeared promising outside the shores of combat and largesse from his wealthy dad and plunged into servitude for the former Eastern region, was done with altruism is beyond my scope at this stage. I am still a lava waiting to develop enough conviction to state my position in this field. Yet 40 years on, Nigeria is haunted with the same dynamisms .The Nigerian country is a piece of oppression in the West African plate, a waste of space, a place where talent is unforgivingly punished and banished to pittance and mediocrity absorbed into the ever waiting wings of a relentless socialism with a pathological emphasis on mono-economy, wheeled by oil, accessed in the most deplorable condition. The Nigerian society is a fraud that must die and give birth to babies, able to wean into a generation outside the prejudices and failings of their progenies. By death, I mean reproduction into a just state even if it necessitates the literal death of the Nigerian nation.
The Biafra war stretches like a long bloodline in the Nigerian society. The first time I really came across the Biafra civil war was when a friend I had known for a very long time - as a matter of fact, we had grown up together - tried jokingly or seriously to make fun of Ojukwu’s Abidjan exit at the tale end of war. Looking back now I can only surmise that it was made known to him by his parents or his environment as his sudden transformation stunned me. He exit was relayed to me as a cowardly spectacle and a ‘comical crash of his vaunted empire’.
I was with someone I had known for sometime when he said with his head shaking, that Nigeria would never make it. At that stage I couldn’t understand his pessimism for the nation but issues like ethnically and religious motivated killings really spell red our country’s name. The Niger delta exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called democracy we practice. They have borne the brunt of the evils of incompetence. Put it quite simply: Nigerian democracy is a sham. A Hypocrisy designed to incubate impotents who lack any plan for advancement. I have had to come to the brutal realization of the Nigerian nation following deep research and interview. If you put a 10 year child in the seat of governor he may produce far better results than most governors in Nigeria. After all there are children who win chess competitions at very young ages. A world champion won the world chess championship 16 or under. Everybody knows that you have to build roads, supply water and power etcetera. There is no rocket science in them. It is breaching the threshold of fundamentals and transcending into the realm of harnessing potentials in a nation that makes a difference. There are societies that have little or no natural resources but have turned themselves into tourist hotspots, service hubs etc.
Biafra to me is certainly not the answer to Nigeria’s problem. Saying so is simplifying the problems on the ground. If anything Biafra would localize the national problems we have, but it does remind us of the fragility of our country.
Until justice rules, until leadership is reserved for the capable, then and only then - in any setting or country - can true transformation take hold.
If you meet a Nigerian for a job he is most likely going to ask for your paper qualifications. Because that is only what counts, your experience doesn’t. The government can suck you in and pay you salaries and pensions till you give in to the grave. But in industrialized societies you are asked for experience. I have read company reports criticizing poor ‘performance of students and a preference for other nationalities of better performance’.
They operate on a private plain and they recognize the import of experience. I have experienced it many times in my search for jobs. They were not so much interested in my papers as they were in my actual experiences .That is why you can find corporate managers who have little or no formal education but have under their command vast responsibilities: experience is gold. To understand why societies like these bred the Sir Isaac Newtons - here is the rub. This is how it might typically take shape: somewhere along the line a brother, a friend or a relative takes you on a tutorial in a field and thereafter you acquire the requisite knowledge required and work your way up the ladder.
The sole reliance on oil welcomes mountainous debris of laziness, an apathy to surge high and pitiable admission of impotence. Perhaps there can be no better way of self–expressing a nucleic paralysis.
Add this to perennial infightings and you get a mad house. When I meet a Nigerian I always have fun. They tag along with me thinking I am not Nigerian - something I find rather surprising - and when they do find out that I’m Nigerian the question turns to: ‘which part of Nigeria are you from?’ I have in the past seen this as just an innocent inquiry but after studying the Nigerian society I have learnt it is a quiet invitation to prejudice. I have recently begun revising my automatic replies to one of caution: my revelation would be extremely limited. Since they find it hard to make out my nationality then I guess I would let them hold it that way.
The story of the Nigerian war ignores the whole human firmament involved in the war occasioned by the ethnically induced strands Nigeria rests on. The war had a holistic effect on the Nigerian nation- it involved everyone in the former eastern region as well as the entire nation.
‘Broken brothers,’ a Chinese workmate of mine said in reply to a question I asked about the relationship between the China and Japan. The Nigerian society might just be a case of broken brothers, where the concept of brother’s keeper mashes under the weight of tribalism. Where downright stupidity and incompetence are rationalized on ethnic and sub-ethnic grounds. That’s why I hate any claim to ethnic leadership in whatever form, anywhere, at state, local and federal levels. Trouble in any part is seen as the problem of locality as opposed to universality. People turn a blind eye to the Niger delta because they imagine it has nothing to do with them as has every epoch in our history(tainted with ethnic summations): Civil war, June 12, Jan coup 1966,July coup,1966,1999-2007 etc.
This year marks 40 years since the civil war ended but secessionist pangs still run deep among Nigerians. The challenge is to construct an edifice foundationed on justice. Anytime we grant amnesty to the Nigerian state we are reminded of the paucity of our claim to territoriality. Ms Oluwatoyin Olusesan needless death at the hands of raving underage fanatics questions our national existence and confronts a continuous helplessness to this ruinous routine.
‘IF Biafra had succeeded it would have created an imbalance in the African continent,’ a Ghanaian who I was discussing with said, ‘it would have been the most powerful and richest African country, thereby endangering Africa unity’. I come across people who have more than a passing interest in Nigerian history but this assertion was simply mind-blowing. The Biafran war reverberated around the shores of the world – I have read excerpts from people who confessed to hearing the name Nigeria for the first time when poverty-stricken Biafran children surfaced in their television sets, with pleas for aid, the thrust. Great faith was placed in Nigeria at independence but no sooner had it achieve nationhood than it plunged into a bloody war that claimed more than one million people and ensured the utter destruction of infrastructures in its three year duration (1967 – 1970) and solidified a country perennially divided along the basic fault-lines of ethnicity and religion.
I have read and heard participant versions of the civil war but I have still not come to my own conclusion: whether the war was a right step or was just a gratuitous gamble. But no matter how it is looked at, the Biafra war was indeed a shaping point in Nigeria’s history.
Some Igbo people rhapsodize about what a Biafra country would have been like given the many stories of technological creations - documented. A Biafran – during the war- is credited with the first attempt to seek nuclear materials in Nigeria’s nuclear history. It was a war whose passionate personality was in no doubt, whose human investment in blood was powered perhaps with hope of greater returns.
Whether the Eastern Region's military governor, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu left his Oxford degree, a life that appeared promising outside the shores of combat and largesse from his wealthy dad and plunged into servitude for the former Eastern region, was done with altruism is beyond my scope at this stage. I am still a lava waiting to develop enough conviction to state my position in this field. Yet 40 years on, Nigeria is haunted with the same dynamisms .The Nigerian country is a piece of oppression in the West African plate, a waste of space, a place where talent is unforgivingly punished and banished to pittance and mediocrity absorbed into the ever waiting wings of a relentless socialism with a pathological emphasis on mono-economy, wheeled by oil, accessed in the most deplorable condition. The Nigerian society is a fraud that must die and give birth to babies, able to wean into a generation outside the prejudices and failings of their progenies. By death, I mean reproduction into a just state even if it necessitates the literal death of the Nigerian nation.
The Biafra war stretches like a long bloodline in the Nigerian society. The first time I really came across the Biafra civil war was when a friend I had known for a very long time - as a matter of fact, we had grown up together - tried jokingly or seriously to make fun of Ojukwu’s Abidjan exit at the tale end of war. Looking back now I can only surmise that it was made known to him by his parents or his environment as his sudden transformation stunned me. He exit was relayed to me as a cowardly spectacle and a ‘comical crash of his vaunted empire’.
I was with someone I had known for sometime when he said with his head shaking, that Nigeria would never make it. At that stage I couldn’t understand his pessimism for the nation but issues like ethnically and religious motivated killings really spell red our country’s name. The Niger delta exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called democracy we practice. They have borne the brunt of the evils of incompetence. Put it quite simply: Nigerian democracy is a sham. A Hypocrisy designed to incubate impotents who lack any plan for advancement. I have had to come to the brutal realization of the Nigerian nation following deep research and interview. If you put a 10 year child in the seat of governor he may produce far better results than most governors in Nigeria. After all there are children who win chess competitions at very young ages. A world champion won the world chess championship 16 or under. Everybody knows that you have to build roads, supply water and power etcetera. There is no rocket science in them. It is breaching the threshold of fundamentals and transcending into the realm of harnessing potentials in a nation that makes a difference. There are societies that have little or no natural resources but have turned themselves into tourist hotspots, service hubs etc.
Biafra to me is certainly not the answer to Nigeria’s problem. Saying so is simplifying the problems on the ground. If anything Biafra would localize the national problems we have, but it does remind us of the fragility of our country.
Until justice rules, until leadership is reserved for the capable, then and only then - in any setting or country - can true transformation take hold.
If you meet a Nigerian for a job he is most likely going to ask for your paper qualifications. Because that is only what counts, your experience doesn’t. The government can suck you in and pay you salaries and pensions till you give in to the grave. But in industrialized societies you are asked for experience. I have read company reports criticizing poor ‘performance of students and a preference for other nationalities of better performance’.
They operate on a private plain and they recognize the import of experience. I have experienced it many times in my search for jobs. They were not so much interested in my papers as they were in my actual experiences .That is why you can find corporate managers who have little or no formal education but have under their command vast responsibilities: experience is gold. To understand why societies like these bred the Sir Isaac Newtons - here is the rub. This is how it might typically take shape: somewhere along the line a brother, a friend or a relative takes you on a tutorial in a field and thereafter you acquire the requisite knowledge required and work your way up the ladder.
The sole reliance on oil welcomes mountainous debris of laziness, an apathy to surge high and pitiable admission of impotence. Perhaps there can be no better way of self–expressing a nucleic paralysis.
Add this to perennial infightings and you get a mad house. When I meet a Nigerian I always have fun. They tag along with me thinking I am not Nigerian - something I find rather surprising - and when they do find out that I’m Nigerian the question turns to: ‘which part of Nigeria are you from?’ I have in the past seen this as just an innocent inquiry but after studying the Nigerian society I have learnt it is a quiet invitation to prejudice. I have recently begun revising my automatic replies to one of caution: my revelation would be extremely limited. Since they find it hard to make out my nationality then I guess I would let them hold it that way.
The story of the Nigerian war ignores the whole human firmament involved in the war occasioned by the ethnically induced strands Nigeria rests on. The war had a holistic effect on the Nigerian nation- it involved everyone in the former eastern region as well as the entire nation.
‘Broken brothers,’ a Chinese workmate of mine said in reply to a question I asked about the relationship between the China and Japan. The Nigerian society might just be a case of broken brothers, where the concept of brother’s keeper mashes under the weight of tribalism. Where downright stupidity and incompetence are rationalized on ethnic and sub-ethnic grounds. That’s why I hate any claim to ethnic leadership in whatever form, anywhere, at state, local and federal levels. Trouble in any part is seen as the problem of locality as opposed to universality. People turn a blind eye to the Niger delta because they imagine it has nothing to do with them as has every epoch in our history(tainted with ethnic summations): Civil war, June 12, Jan coup 1966,July coup,1966,1999-2007 etc.
This year marks 40 years since the civil war ended but secessionist pangs still run deep among Nigerians. The challenge is to construct an edifice foundationed on justice. Anytime we grant amnesty to the Nigerian state we are reminded of the paucity of our claim to territoriality. Ms Oluwatoyin Olusesan needless death at the hands of raving underage fanatics questions our national existence and confronts a continuous helplessness to this ruinous routine.
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