Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY Media Group/ARISE TV Networks, Nduka Obaigbena, has threatened to sack any worker in the organization that fall short of the new work schedules as contained in a memo he rolled out.
The publisher warned the workers in all the departments of the company that the management will no longer condone what he called divided loyalty, saying that absentees at the mandatory staff meetings as contained in the memo would have their appointments terminated.
“Please note that these staff meetings beginning tomorrow March 14, 2016 are mandatory and compulsory ( emphasis mine). Absentees will have their appointments terminated. You have been warned. It is time to take back the company for the welfare and benefit of every one. If you have other (employment) commitments elsewhere and or conflicts of interest, you must resign honourably. Divided loyalty will no longer be condoned.”
The full text of the memo reads: Dear Team THISDAY: This is to confirm MANDATORY MEETINGS FOR ALL STAFF as follows: 1. Advertising and Marketing Divisional Meetings ( All marketers and sales agents must attend) : 09:00 – EVERY DAY Monday to Fridays; 2. FULL Editorial Meeting – in Lagos and Abuja : ALL Editorial Staff in Lagos and Abuja including Editors must attend – 11:00 EVERY DAY Monday to Fridays. Journalist are required not to book and or accept appointments before 1PM everyday. If you are to cover a scheduled assignment OR meet up an important appointment, you are required to submit your request for a written approval by email -complete with evidence – for exemption form the daily meetings at least 24 hours earlier. ( verbal approvals will not be accepted); 3. LINE Editors Meting- ( ALL Line Editors must attend) 4PM EVERY DAY – Monday to Friday; 4. Digital Division Meeting: – Must be attended by all staff of the newly formed Digital Division.- 12 Noon Mondays – Fridays; 4. Operations Services Meeting – must be attended by all unit heads of all operations and services departments: -circulation, printing, pre-press; transport & logistics, maintenance, procurement, finance and administration. 2PM Monday to Friday; 5. Senior Management Meetings: 12 Noon every Monday; 6. Board Of Directors Exco Meetings – First Tuesday every month.
POLICY ANNOUNCEMENTS: 1. The Editorial Building will now open at 7AM and Close at 10PM every day except for the Night Editors and team as well as the Digital Team on night duty. Every journalist is required to close, submit final copy and go home at 9PM every day, except for days with LATE BREAKING NEWS. Page planners are required to complete their work by 10PM every day, except for LATE BREAKING NEWS. The building will be restricted at 11 PM. A new staff bus will depart the premises at 9PM. NO LOITERING WILL BE PERMITTED ANY LONGER. 2. PRINTERS AND NON-EDITORIAL STAFF WILL NO LONGER BE ALLOWED INTO THE EDITORIAL BUILDING EXCEPT FOR THEIR MANAGERS ON ASSIGNMENT. 3. The Staff Canteen will be open from tomorrow for all socialising. 4. Visitors will now be strictly restricted. Any new policy on visitors will be announced soon. 5. Please note that these staff meetings beginning tomorrow March 14, 2016 are mandatory and compulsory ( emphasis mine). Absentees will have their appointments terminated. You have been warned. It is time to take back the company for the welfare and benefit of every one. If you have other (employment) commitments elsewhere and or conflicts of interest, you must resign honourably. Divided loyalty will no longer be condoned. Very many thanks! Nduka Obaigbena Chairman & Editor-in-Chief THISDAY Media Group / ARISE TV Networks Level C, 885 2nd Avenue, New York NY 10017 Ground Floor, 80 Haymarket London SW1 Y4TQ 35 Creek Road Apapa, Lagos www.thisdaylive.com www.arise.tv. [myad]
Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has condemned the unsolicited and indiscriminate calls and Short Message Service (SMS), known as text messages by Telecommunications Companies proiding mobile phone service and called on the House of Representatives which has aready started the move to enact a bill aimed at reducing such incidences to pursue it to logical conclusion.
The bill to sanction the GSM providers for the unnecessary calls and text messages, sponsored by Ali Madaki (APC-Kano), has already scaled through the second reading on the floor of the House. It is now awaiting fine-tuning by the House Committee on Telecommunication. In a statement, the Director of MURIC, Professor Ishaq Akintola, noted that unsolicited calls and text messages constitute public nuisance, irritants of no small measure, threat to the health of Nigerians and drawbacks to productivity. “Judged from its irritant perspective, mobile telephone services which began actively during the regime of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 – 2007) is fast becoming a curse rather than a blessing unless something is done urgently. “Service providers have become extremely audacious. They exhibit no concern for the personal privacy and health of consumers. They call defenseless consumers by phone and send strange and unsolicited text messages to them at odd times. Those that are most disturbing and irritating are sent in the unholy hours of the morning between 1 and 4 am when hardworking Nigerians are fast asleep. “The messages wake them forcefully from sleep. Many find it hard to go back to sleep hours after the satanic invasion of their privacy. This is not only irritating but provocative and exploitative. It is gross abuse of priviledge on the part of service providers. “These unsolicited telephone calls and text messages are not limited to nights and early morning hours alone. They also come during the day. The high volume of text messages sent by service providers has exposed these shylock business concerns as relentless capitalist compradore bourgeoisie. Some customers receive as many as 40 messages per day. “MURIC is asking the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria: If you can afford to send so many text messages to all customers at no extra charges to yourselves, why do you charge so high for the text messages sent by individual customers? “It is our contention that Nigerians are being taken for a ride by service providers. These capitalist-oriented companies are inflicting pain on innocent subscribers. Nigerians yearn for protection. “We call attention to the great havoc in the torrential outpouring of text messages from service providers to innocent tax-payers. The havoc is mainly in health hazards but what could be more damaging to a nation than threat to the health of its citizens? “Experts agree that sound sleep means ability to think clearly, to plan and to design the next line of action in day-to-day endeavours. The reverse is the case when sleep is brutally cut. There is no gainsaying the fact that stress and fatigue are certain to occur when people are stinted of sleep. We suspect that the current rise in mental illnesses all over the country is partly informed by this flagrant disregard for people’s privacy and the rate at which unsolicited calls and text messages have been disturbing Nigerians. “The impact of this phenomenon on the nation’s economy cannot be overemphasized. . If it is true that the health of the individual reflects on the performance of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), then we must agree that the telecommunication service providers are not serving the interest of our country. “MURIC invites the Consumer Protection Society to wake up to its responsibilities. We also charge the House Committee on Telecommunication to expedite action on the draft bill as Nigerians are eagerly awaiting the outcome of its deliberation on the bill. Finally, we urge President Muhammadu Buhari to give speedy accent to the bill as soon as it gets to the Presidency.” [myad]
Some personal aides, including the domestic staff of the former Nigeria Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, have clarified that no money was ever picked from house of their embattled boss at any point in time by the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). Speaking to newsmen at separate points, the aides said however that they were aware of attempts by the people they could identify, to plant some objects, including money around the house, ostensibly to implicate their boss. The EFCC had recently alleged that its operatives have discovered the sum of $1 Million cash at the residence of embattled former Chief of Defence staff. Badeh’s aides made it clear that the story of $1 Million was part of a grand design to nail the Adamawa born General. According to them, Badeh could not have kept such a colossal amount of money in cash in his residence when he had all the opportunity to move it somewhere else; if it ever existed. “Moreover, he does not have $1 Million to keep for anybody to find, having been surviving on charity, following the blockage of all his access to funds.” This is even as Chief Badeh had himself repeatedly denied the report linking him with a so-called $1 Million cash in his residence, saying that he did not even have any such money and could not have kept what he did not have for the EFCC to pick. Badeh was reported as challenging the EFCC to provide proofs linking him with the money, even as he alleged that he was being framed up in a seeming vendetta war against him by unnamed forces. Badeh’s attorneys have expressed surprise that so far, no official reaction has come from the EFCC since the speculation gained currency in the media to the effect that the sum of $1 Million was picked up by its men from the residence of Badeh. They said that what has been happening has been what they called ‘syndicated fresh angles’ being added to the report to embellish it as an issue in the media. [myad]
The Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, has directed the Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone 6 Calabar, Adisa Bolanta and three Commissioners of Police to relocate to Port Harcourt on Monday for pre-election preparations for the rerun polls scheduled for next Saturday.
This, he said was in furtherance of strategies designed to prevent electoral violence and to ensure a smooth and orderly conduct of the Rivers State Supplementary elections.
A statement by the Force Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Kolawole today in Abuja, said the three Commissioners of Police were deployed to supervise security arrangements within the three Senatorial Districts – Rivers East, Rivers West and Rivers South East, respectively.
It said that 6000 conventional Policemen and 14 units of Police Mobile Force personnel would complement the personnel of Rivers State Command during the election.
“In addition, the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of Department of Operations, Sontoye Wakama, has also been directed to proceed to Rivers immediately to hold meetings with stakeholders and police officers in the State Command on the need for peaceful conduct before, during and after the election.”
The IG, who assured the law-abiding electorates of a secure and enabling environment to exercise their franchise, warned all security details against accompanying their principals and politicians to polling booths and collation centres during the election.
He emphasized that only security personnel specially assigned for election duties must be seen within and around the places designated for the election. [myad]
International scammers were believed to have duped the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of the sum of $441,000 out of which $251,000 was blocked and recovered. The incidence has resulted in the suspension of a CBN’s Deputy Governor of the Financial System Surveillance, Joseph Nnanna. Also suspended, as announced by the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele for failing to follow financial regulations and due process, were four deputy directors of the apex bank. Information reaching us indicated that out of the total amount the bank was duped, it was $190,000 that the fraudsters were able to cash. It was gathered that two of the scammers have been arrested in Dubai in the United Arab Emirate and are currently being questioned by investigators. From their modus operandi, the scammers apparently timed the execution of the fraud to take place when the CBN governor and other deputy governors were out of the country. The suspended senior officials of the bank were seen to have derelicted against the bank’s regulations regarding respond to spam emails which they ought to first cross-check to ascertain the authenticity of the mails. It is said that CBN has stringent payment process before authorising the release of funds and that those officials authorised the release of the funds when the governor and several senior officials of the bank were on a flight to China last month. The deputy directors affected by the suspension include the deputy director in charge of payment, the deputy director trade and exchange department, and the deputy director in the office of the governor, who heeded Nnanna’s directive to pay when they themselves ought to know CBN’s payment due process. A statement posted on CBN website only stated that the bank had uncovered and aborted fraud without giving details. The four-paragraph CBN statement, signed by the Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okoroafor, and titled, ‘CBN Uncovers and Aborts Fraud,’ reads: “A highly sophisticated plot to defraud the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by some criminal minded elements has been uncovered and aborted by the bank. “Although preliminary investigations so far have not revealed any accomplices within the CBN, management has decided to place all key personnel involved in the transaction on suspension. “This is to ensure a full and unfettered investigation. “This incidence has been reported to relevant authorities. The CBN wishes to assure the general public that the security of the bank remains intact.” Hackers have been on the prowl lately breaching accounts of banks around the world. Recently, hackers breached Bangladesh Bank’s systems and attempted to steal nearly $1 billion from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Though a typo error by the hackers aborted their $1billion heist, they however netted more than $80 million before the cyber heist was uncovered. The hackers appeared to have stolen Bangladesh Bank’s credentials for the SWIFT messaging system, which banks around the world use for secure financial communication. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with about three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank’s account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organization was held up because the hackers mis-spelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation, prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction. [myad]
A helicopter described in security circle as ‘mysterious’, flew over, and raised security concern in Opialu Village in Edemoga District of Okpokwu Local Government Area of Benue State. The security siege mentality in the highly populated village is not unconnected with the appearance of a similar helicopter shortly before the recent mass killing in Agatu District in the same Benue State. Information reaching us said that two occupants of the ‘strange’ helicopter which barely touched the grounds at the St. Theresa LGEA Primary School at Opialu at about 5 pm on March 10th, waved their hands at mainly pupils who were playing football on the mission ground. The helicopter, which did not land, was said to have been close enough for the pupils and others who ran towards it to see that one of the two occupants wore an orange colour dress. An eye witness account said that the helicopter tried to land twice, came so close and then zoomed off and went away only to return. Chief Emmanuel Onuh, the Chairperson of the Opialu Community Development Association reported the matter to the Divisional Police Headquarters at Okoga. The eye witness quoted the number of the helicopter as AB-ANA. It was suspected that the helicopter is one of the de-commissioned aircraft, either of the Nigerian Air force or one of the charter companies. Daniel Ojo, the Divisional Police Officer in charge of Okpoga, the headquarters of the Okpokwu Local Government Area did not pick his phone today after several attempts but police sources at Okoga confirmed that a report had been lodged at the station. The police said that the community has been placed on alert even as they warned against taking the law into their own hand. It was learnt that the police had specifically drawn the attention of the community to anything strange and which could be a bomb on the farms or within it, asking the local chief to, in such instance, alert the police for action. [myad]
Northern Christians under the umbrella of Northern States Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) have alleged that more than 1,000 teenage girls in the North have been subjected into Kaduna shortly after the election of new executive members of the association that there have been increased cases of abduction and forceful marriage of underaged girls in the region.
He warned traditional rulers and religious leaders in the region not to encourage forceful marriage of innocent underage girls against their wish, saying that that such practice is a violation of the constitutional rights of the girls and the Nigerian laws.
Rev Pam challenged the traditional and religious leaders to lead campaigns against underage forced marriages, noting that such practices have a disastrous impact on the education, health and emotional well being of the girls.
Rather than forcing the girls into early marriage, the new Northern CAN Chairman called on the traditional rulers and government in the region to send the young girls to school to enable them secure a better future.
He also called on security agencies to be proactive in such cases and ensure that perpetrators of such crime against humanity are brought to justice.
On Nigeria joining the Arab nations in the fight against terrorism, the Christian body urged the Federal Government to come out clean and explain to Nigerians the modalities involved in the coalition, and to ensure that their lives and property are guaranteed. (Channelstv, News Express).
President of the United States of America, Barack Obama has asked Presidential contenders to the White House to stop the insults in their campaigns. His call came a day after a rally by Donald Trump was called off amid clashes.
Obama said candidates should not resort to “insults” and “certainly not violence against other Americans”.
Obama, who will be standing down next January following November’s presidential election, was speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Dallas on Saturday.
He said: “What the folks who are running for office should be focused on is how we can make it even better – not insults and schoolyard taunts and manufacturing facts, not divisiveness along the lines of race and faith.”
Trump, who leads the race for the Republican nomination, cancelled his Chicago rally after fighting broke out between his supporters and protesters. His rivals and others have accused him of using inflammatory rhetoric.
Yesterday, Trump suffered heavy defeats in Republican caucuses in Washington DC and Wyoming.
The clashes at Trump’s Chicago rally on Friday began more than an hour before the event was due to start, and continued after it was cancelled.
Yesterday Trump campaigned in Ohio, one of several key states – also including Florida and Ohio – holding primaries on Tuesday. In Dayton, Ohio, he was briefly surrounded by Secret Service agents on stage after a man tried to breach the security cordon.
Trump has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance, promising to build a “great wall” at the border with Mexico.
Commenting on relations between Muslims and America earlier this week, he said: “Islam hates us.”
Speaking to Fox News after Friday’s events in Chicago, Trump denied fostering division.
“I represent a large group of people that have a lot of anger,” he said. “There is tremendous anger out there on both sides.”
Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have both called the incident “sad”.
Texas Senator Cruz accused Trump of creating “an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse.”
Rubio and another Republican challenger, John Kasich, suggested they might not rally behind Mr Trump if he wins the nomination.
Rubio said it was “getting harder every day” to keep his promise to unite behind the eventual Republican nominee.
Kasich said Trump’s rhetoric “makes it very difficult” to support him.
On Saturday, Cruz won a convincing victory in the Wyoming caucus, while Rubio narrowly defeated Kasich in Washington DC. Trump came a distant third in both contests.
Cruz also won on the island territory of Guam.
In the Democratic race. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is continuing his challenge against frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton won the first ever Democrats’ vote in the Northern Mariana Islands. [myad]
Federal Government has declared total war on pipeline vandals and the sabotures of power infrastructure that have combined to drastically reduce power generation/transmission as well as fuel supplies thereby inflicting untold hardship on Nigerians. In a statement in Abuja today, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the repeated attacks on oil and gas pipelines and the willful shutdown of power facilities by protesters amount to economic sabotage which no government will tolerate. ”Vandals, whatever their motives are, cannot and will not be treated with kid gloves because their actions constitute a clear and present danger to the nation’s economic, social and political well-being. The attack on the Forcados Export Terminal that has affected gas production by oil firms and reduced gas supply to power generating plants and the shutdown of the Utorogu gas plant are totally condemnable and cannot be allowed to continue. ”Also, while this Administration will not do anything to abridge the constitutional rights of any individual or group to carry out protests, it will also not tolerate a situation in which anyone will hide under the guise óf legitimate protests to sabotage power infrastructure. The shutdown of the national transmission facility in Osogbo and the Ikeja Disco by some unionists amount to economic sabotage.” Lai Mohammed said that the government is not unaware that as it steps up the fight against corruption, corruption will vigorously fight back in many forms, including the destruction/sabotage of key national infrastructure to make the government look bad. ”However, nothing will make this government to slow down in its anti-corruption fight and no one who is corrupt will be spared.” The Minister appealed to Nigerians to join hands with the government to check the activities of the unscrupulous and unpatriotic elements who have taken it upon themselves to continuously work against the interest of the people. ”When oil and gas facilities are vandalized, the impact is felt directly by Nigerians. When power infrastructure is sabotaged for whatever reasons, Nigerians bear the brunt. While those actions may be aimed at discrediting the government, those who pay the price are the vast majority of innocent, law-abiding and well-meaning Nigerians, not just the vandals or the saboteurs. This is why Nigerians must not allow the few recreants behind these attacks to hold sway.” Lai Mohammed said that power situation is gradually improving as generation has now increased to about 4,000MW even as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, has assured that the prevailing fuel queues will gradually ease in the next few days. [myad]
There is today in Nigeria an entire generation of Nigerian-passport wielding men and women who do not actually know, to borrow Achebe’s words that indeed “there was once a country”. These children born in a season of austerity, and raised during the years that the locusts ate, have become angry citizens. They are angry because they live in a country that makes them feel less worthy than the human standard. The only Nigeria that they know is a country that makes them feel ashamed of their own origins. Many of them have enjoyed the privilege of foreign education and exposure to some of the best traditions in other parts of the world, but when they return to their own country, right from the airport, the snow of failure and inefficiency strikes them in the face, leaving them with no option but to wonder quo vadis Nigeria? It is the same question that their parents asked and the tragedy is that their own children except something else happens, are likely to ask exactly this same old and vexed question.
The angst of this young generation is made worse when they are told that Nigeria was not always like this. In their late 20s to thirties, these children have only known that Nigeria where fuel scarcity is a fact of daily life, and part of the mechanism of survival is to know how to draw fuel with your mouth, or negotiate black market purchase of fuel, while lugging jerry cans, either at the fuel station or a roadside corner where you cannot be sure of the quality of fuel- all of that in a country that is the world’s sixth largest producer of crude oil. These children have only known a country where the roads are bad, services are sub-standard, people are mean, criminality is rife, and electricity is available once in a blue moon.
What they know is a country where the pastors and malams are better known for lying, swearing, cheating, calling the name of God in vain. In their Nigeria, public and private officials are lazy, and unproductive, they just want to reap, and they have sucked the country so dry, her glands are wasted, flat, going South and no more presentable, the balloon has suffered a blow out, even the blind can see that this is so. These angry children are no longer proud of the green passport; because the Constitution allows dual citizenship, they’d rather grab the citizenship of another country, and remain linked to Nigeria only by blood, and that is the case because they have parents who would not want them to de-link completely, but if they don’t, their own children and their own children after them, are already being lost to countries where things work, where the basic necessities of life are taken for granted and where the future is not a distant, unknown, and impossible destination.
The anger and the nonchalance of this generation of Nigerians is the pain and the agony of an older generation that knew a different country before all things went kaput and Nigeria became a byword for the unhinged, the dark, the ugly and the regrettable. Our generation and the generation before us knew a different country. And because that is so, memory is an affliction, a source of torment, nostalgia and regret, more so as that distant past now seems so unattainable not because distance often makes the past look better, but because in Nigeria, the past is sorrily idyllic. Those who lived in that other country and are still alive could not have forgotten so soon, because to forget something that important is to self-deny, it is to pretend, it is to abuse, it is in all, an act of pitiable abnegation.
How could we have forgotten? How can anyone possibly forget? That this was once a country where Nigerians felt at home in virtually any part of the country. Igbos lived peacefully in the North, and Fulani herdsmen were at peace with other Nigerians, and there was no issue with the planting of yams or the grazing of cattle. In this same country, Southerners lived for decades in the North, acquired property and spoke the language of their hosts. We grew up knowing Baba Kaduna, Daddy Kano, Mama Kafanchan, Uncle Porta, just as persons from the East and the South South contested for elective positions in the West and won. There was a civil war yes, and things began to change but even after the war, it was never this bad. Nigerians from the South still went on national assignment in the North, Christians and Muslims tried to live together in peace, but today, things have fallen apart.
There is no open civil war, but this country is at war on all fronts, the worst fronts being the ethnic, the religious and the political, and these post-civil war children just can’t understand why the generations of their fathers and grandmothers can’t run an efficient country. They have been taught in school that every nation has problems, but leadership is about managing those problems and building a happy nation. They hear about the big names of Nigerian history, the statesmen who fought for independence, the Amazons who defended the place of women in national decision making processes, the accomplished scientists, the literati and cultural workers, but the historical figures who have made the biggest impression on them are the ones who ruined the nation with their acts of omission and commission.
In this same country, the Naira used to be at par with the pound and was for many years stronger than the dollar. So strong was the Naira that many Nigerians, including the lower middle class could afford to travel to London on Friday evening, attend a party in London on Saturday, attend church service on Sunday, check out one or two mistresses in paid-for flats in different parts of London, and return to Nigeria early enough on Monday morning to be able to go to work. All that was no big deal. Everyone in London knew the Nigerians. They were the biggest spenders and they threw the best parties. There was Nigeria Airways; owned and operated by the Nigerian government and it was one of the best airlines in Africa. Its pilots were rated among the best in the world. Its safety record was superb. And it was affordable. It was the pride of the nation. Within the country, Nigeria Airways was also efficient. A trip from Lagos to Calabar in those days was just N44! Students enjoyed rebates too.
In this same country, once upon a time, public transportation was impressive. In Lagos for example, the public transportation system was almost exactly a version of what they have in London. This may sound like something being made up to the younger generation, but it is nothing but the truth. The railway system worked too, and one of the most prestigious jobs was to be a railway staff. That same Nigerian Railway Corporation that is now a parody of its former self, used to link up the entire country and it helped to build cities and villages, as the various major train stations became commercial centres. Today, railway transportation looks like something we are trying to reinvent.
Once upon a time in this same country, those who sent their children abroad did so majorly out of choice, not necessity, because Nigerian schools were among the best in the continent and the world. Teachers from different parts of the world, the best and the brightest, sought employment in Nigerian schools. The Naira was strong, investors -both commercial and intellectual – trooped to this country in droves and they enriched us in many ways. The schools were well-equipped; they attracted students and teachers based on their reputation.
Parents sent their own children to their alma mater out of loyalty, and regard for tradition. That pattern of grandfather, father and son attending the same secondary school seems to have ended; the public schools in Nigeria have failed, the missionary schools of old have been destroyed by hostile government take-over, back in the hands of the missions, the destruction is yet to be fully corrected. The younger generation reflects on all this: mostly products of private schools, they can’t understand why a country that still prides itself as the giant of Africa cannot run a decent education system or provide jobs for the products of its school system.
In this same county, we used to have industrial estates. In Lagos, Apapa, Ikeja and Isolo were industrial estates. In Kaduna, Jos, and Enugu, manufacturing companies created jobs and wealth. We had uncles and aunties who used to do shifts in many factories and this country produced things: from refrigerators to bulbs to vehicles to metals to books, to textiles to shoes. Sad: many of those factories have become churches! In those days, if you went into a bookshop, you could not miss the mint-fresh smell of the books on display. I miss that smell. There are fewer bookstores today and the books no longer smell the same, because by the time they are imported and passed through dirty containers and the hands of thieving handlers, the books lose their soul.
Once upon a time in this same country, there was so much hope about tomorrow. Salaries were paid as and when due. State governments offered students bursaries and scholarships. School was attractive because the teachers were dedicated and they were smart. At the university level, the government provided subsidized tuition and feeding; the rooms were kept clean by staff, the libraries were well-stocked; there was light and water and town-gown relationship was just fine. In the larger society, the present regime of no water, no fuel, no electricity was unheard of. You may have heard of the British standard, there was in fact at a time, the Nigerian standard, and this was the standard that other Africans looked up to. This same country dominated the continent, morally, intellectually and culturally. Financially too: so rich was Nigeria that a former Head of State reportedly boasted that our problem was not money but how to spend it!
But, sorry, we lost it all. And the rains began to beat us. The victims are the younger ones who have not known any other country but this new one. The danger is: they may never know how to make a difference when they inherit this poisoned chalice called Nigeria. [myad]
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Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY Media Group/ARISE TV Networks, Nduka Obaigbena, has threatened to sack any worker in the organization that fall short of the new work schedules as contained in a memo he rolled out.
In This Same Country…By Reuben Abati
There is today in Nigeria an entire generation of Nigerian-passport wielding men and women who do not actually know, to borrow Achebe’s words that indeed “there was once a country”. These children born in a season of austerity, and raised during the years that the locusts ate, have become angry citizens. They are angry because they live in a country that makes them feel less worthy than the human standard. The only Nigeria that they know is a country that makes them feel ashamed of their own origins. Many of them have enjoyed the privilege of foreign education and exposure to some of the best traditions in other parts of the world, but when they return to their own country, right from the airport, the snow of failure and inefficiency strikes them in the face, leaving them with no option but to wonder quo vadis Nigeria? It is the same question that their parents asked and the tragedy is that their own children except something else happens, are likely to ask exactly this same old and vexed question.
The angst of this young generation is made worse when they are told that Nigeria was not always like this. In their late 20s to thirties, these children have only known that Nigeria where fuel scarcity is a fact of daily life, and part of the mechanism of survival is to know how to draw fuel with your mouth, or negotiate black market purchase of fuel, while lugging jerry cans, either at the fuel station or a roadside corner where you cannot be sure of the quality of fuel- all of that in a country that is the world’s sixth largest producer of crude oil. These children have only known a country where the roads are bad, services are sub-standard, people are mean, criminality is rife, and electricity is available once in a blue moon.
What they know is a country where the pastors and malams are better known for lying, swearing, cheating, calling the name of God in vain. In their Nigeria, public and private officials are lazy, and unproductive, they just want to reap, and they have sucked the country so dry, her glands are wasted, flat, going South and no more presentable, the balloon has suffered a blow out, even the blind can see that this is so. These angry children are no longer proud of the green passport; because the Constitution allows dual citizenship, they’d rather grab the citizenship of another country, and remain linked to Nigeria only by blood, and that is the case because they have parents who would not want them to de-link completely, but if they don’t, their own children and their own children after them, are already being lost to countries where things work, where the basic necessities of life are taken for granted and where the future is not a distant, unknown, and impossible destination.
The anger and the nonchalance of this generation of Nigerians is the pain and the agony of an older generation that knew a different country before all things went kaput and Nigeria became a byword for the unhinged, the dark, the ugly and the regrettable. Our generation and the generation before us knew a different country. And because that is so, memory is an affliction, a source of torment, nostalgia and regret, more so as that distant past now seems so unattainable not because distance often makes the past look better, but because in Nigeria, the past is sorrily idyllic. Those who lived in that other country and are still alive could not have forgotten so soon, because to forget something that important is to self-deny, it is to pretend, it is to abuse, it is in all, an act of pitiable abnegation.
How could we have forgotten? How can anyone possibly forget? That this was once a country where Nigerians felt at home in virtually any part of the country. Igbos lived peacefully in the North, and Fulani herdsmen were at peace with other Nigerians, and there was no issue with the planting of yams or the grazing of cattle. In this same country, Southerners lived for decades in the North, acquired property and spoke the language of their hosts. We grew up knowing Baba Kaduna, Daddy Kano, Mama Kafanchan, Uncle Porta, just as persons from the East and the South South contested for elective positions in the West and won. There was a civil war yes, and things began to change but even after the war, it was never this bad. Nigerians from the South still went on national assignment in the North, Christians and Muslims tried to live together in peace, but today, things have fallen apart.
There is no open civil war, but this country is at war on all fronts, the worst fronts being the ethnic, the religious and the political, and these post-civil war children just can’t understand why the generations of their fathers and grandmothers can’t run an efficient country. They have been taught in school that every nation has problems, but leadership is about managing those problems and building a happy nation. They hear about the big names of Nigerian history, the statesmen who fought for independence, the Amazons who defended the place of women in national decision making processes, the accomplished scientists, the literati and cultural workers, but the historical figures who have made the biggest impression on them are the ones who ruined the nation with their acts of omission and commission.
In this same country, the Naira used to be at par with the pound and was for many years stronger than the dollar. So strong was the Naira that many Nigerians, including the lower middle class could afford to travel to London on Friday evening, attend a party in London on Saturday, attend church service on Sunday, check out one or two mistresses in paid-for flats in different parts of London, and return to Nigeria early enough on Monday morning to be able to go to work. All that was no big deal. Everyone in London knew the Nigerians. They were the biggest spenders and they threw the best parties. There was Nigeria Airways; owned and operated by the Nigerian government and it was one of the best airlines in Africa. Its pilots were rated among the best in the world. Its safety record was superb. And it was affordable. It was the pride of the nation. Within the country, Nigeria Airways was also efficient. A trip from Lagos to Calabar in those days was just N44! Students enjoyed rebates too.
In this same country, once upon a time, public transportation was impressive. In Lagos for example, the public transportation system was almost exactly a version of what they have in London. This may sound like something being made up to the younger generation, but it is nothing but the truth. The railway system worked too, and one of the most prestigious jobs was to be a railway staff. That same Nigerian Railway Corporation that is now a parody of its former self, used to link up the entire country and it helped to build cities and villages, as the various major train stations became commercial centres. Today, railway transportation looks like something we are trying to reinvent.
Once upon a time in this same country, those who sent their children abroad did so majorly out of choice, not necessity, because Nigerian schools were among the best in the continent and the world. Teachers from different parts of the world, the best and the brightest, sought employment in Nigerian schools. The Naira was strong, investors -both commercial and intellectual – trooped to this country in droves and they enriched us in many ways. The schools were well-equipped; they attracted students and teachers based on their reputation.
Parents sent their own children to their alma mater out of loyalty, and regard for tradition. That pattern of grandfather, father and son attending the same secondary school seems to have ended; the public schools in Nigeria have failed, the missionary schools of old have been destroyed by hostile government take-over, back in the hands of the missions, the destruction is yet to be fully corrected. The younger generation reflects on all this: mostly products of private schools, they can’t understand why a country that still prides itself as the giant of Africa cannot run a decent education system or provide jobs for the products of its school system.
In this same county, we used to have industrial estates. In Lagos, Apapa, Ikeja and Isolo were industrial estates. In Kaduna, Jos, and Enugu, manufacturing companies created jobs and wealth. We had uncles and aunties who used to do shifts in many factories and this country produced things: from refrigerators to bulbs to vehicles to metals to books, to textiles to shoes. Sad: many of those factories have become churches! In those days, if you went into a bookshop, you could not miss the mint-fresh smell of the books on display. I miss that smell. There are fewer bookstores today and the books no longer smell the same, because by the time they are imported and passed through dirty containers and the hands of thieving handlers, the books lose their soul.
Once upon a time in this same country, there was so much hope about tomorrow. Salaries were paid as and when due. State governments offered students bursaries and scholarships. School was attractive because the teachers were dedicated and they were smart. At the university level, the government provided subsidized tuition and feeding; the rooms were kept clean by staff, the libraries were well-stocked; there was light and water and town-gown relationship was just fine. In the larger society, the present regime of no water, no fuel, no electricity was unheard of. You may have heard of the British standard, there was in fact at a time, the Nigerian standard, and this was the standard that other Africans looked up to. This same country dominated the continent, morally, intellectually and culturally. Financially too: so rich was Nigeria that a former Head of State reportedly boasted that our problem was not money but how to spend it!
But, sorry, we lost it all. And the rains began to beat us. The victims are the younger ones who have not known any other country but this new one. The danger is: they may never know how to make a difference when they inherit this poisoned chalice called Nigeria. [myad]