Friday 19 March 2010

gaddafi's call for splitting-up nigeria

By CAMERON DUODU

The statement by the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, that
Nigeria should be divided into two nations to avoid further bloodshed between Muslims and Christians, has caused immense anger in Nigeria.
For in order to stay as one country, Nigeria fought a blood-soaked civil war between 1967 and 1970 -- the Biafran War -- which cost the lives of between one and two million people. Therefore to suggest that all the work
that has been done over the past 40 years to keep the country together should be tossed into the rubbish bin was a very insensitive thing to say
about one African country by another.
It is therefore not surprising that some of the remarks that have greeted Gaddafi's statement have not been exactly couched in diplomatic terms. The president of the Nigerian Senate, David Mark, for instance, has been quoted as describing Gaddafi as "mad".
Gaddafi made his statement in a speech to students. His showed that his knowledge of history is patchy at best, because the example he used to buttress his suggestion -- the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 -- is one of the worst examples he could have chosen, inasmuch as it is redolent with deliberate, politically-inspired massacre.
In the wake of what the British euphemistically called a "population exchange," in which millions of Indians streamed into Pakistan while a reverse exodus of Hindus and Sikhs occurred in the opposite direction, hundreds of thousands of people died of exhaustion and starvation, while between half a million and one million others were set upon, in their vulnerable state, and butchered by people who professed a faith different from their own. Needless to say, all the faiths involved paid lip service to the sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human being.
Even after the havoc it caused, the partition left many areas in both the new sovereign states of India and Pakistan, where remnants of "unwanted people" remained, and tension between India and Pakistan over the treatment of these eventually led to a second partition -- this time, the hiving-off, after a successful "liberation war", of East Pakistan from the rest of Pakistan, to become the new state of Bangladesh in December 1971.
The Bangladeshi "liberation war" too cost many lives, and the two episodes of unconscionable bloodshed are often cited as a good example of what happens when colonialists -- in this case, the British -- create "nations" by drawing in the sand, for their own administrative convenience -- without a thought for the socio-economic consequences of their egocentric actions -- and then leave for home without being able to set new boundaries entirely satisfactory to the inhabitants.
Nigeria is in a similarly precarious position. Apart from the fact that it has a population that is almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians, (with huge numbers of adherents to indigenous religions in between) it harbours inter-ethnic rivalries that go deep into the country's pre-colonial history. During the Biafran civil war of 1967-70, many of these fissures were brought to the surface.
After the war, state-creation (there are now 36 states) was the usual way of trying to satisfy sectional interests. But no sooner has a state been created than another one is canvassed for. The clamour for ever more states isn't going to stop any time soon, for those "left behind" always try to copy the methods used by those who succeeded in getting States created for them.
Nigeria's best bet is, of course, to stay united and to approach sectional agitation with sensitivity. This is not a difficult as it appears on paper. For in a modern state, the apparatus exists for obtaining an accurate reading of the public mood, settling reasonable demands and anticipating trouble wherever it may raise its head from. When all fails, individuals who take the law into their own hands can easily be dealt with by a government with public opinion on it side.
In such a delicate balancing act, the last thing Nigeria needs is meddling by foreigners dangling simplistic solutions that show no awareness of the complexities that drive peace and unrest in such a huge and and frail country. What Gaddafi has done is to gratuitously raise the intensity of the collective neurosis under whose clouds Nigerians are obliged, perforce, to exist.

http://http-ws.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net/asx.esi?worldservice/tx/nb/latest/networkafrica.wma

Thursday 18 March 2010

nigeria must not become a failed state



By CAMERON DUODU


The Acting President of Nigeria, Mr Goodluck Jonathan, must act fast to replace the Ministers he has sacked with men of proven ability and visibility, who can bring confidence back quickly into the body-politic. If he merely fills the new Exectuive Council with the usual time-servers, sycophants and opportunists, the Nigerian people will spread their hands in desperation and say, "It's the same thing different".

A country that has already been left to fend for itself on auto-pilot for a good 90 days, cannot afford to envelope itself in another newly-wrought malaise created by people who seek high office merely in order to get close to the national cake.

Let's be clear about one thing: Nigerian affairs are of concern to everyone on the African continent.

For without Nigeria‘s diplomatic -- and sometimes military -- support, at least four African countries would, today, be quite unrecognisable.

These countries are Angola, Namibia, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Extend that the include South Africa -- for reasons that will become clear soon.

When the Portuguese Government, after the “Carnation Revolution” of 25 April 1974, began to grant independence to its African territories -- Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe -- the situation in Angola in particular was quite messy. Three almost equally-matched, armed movements, the MPLA, UNITA and the FNLA, each claimed to be the one to whom the Portuguese should hand over power. The movements y fought an on-and-off civil war, in which Nigerian diplomatic support for the MPLA, which became pronounced after the accession to power of General Murtala Muhammed (July 1975 - February 1976) and his successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo (February 1976 to September 1979) was of crucial importance.

This was because the United State and the apartheid regime in South Africa,afraid of the MPLA's ties top the Soviet Union and Cuba, tried to divide the Organisation of African Unity and prevent it from supporting the MPLA. If Africa had fallen into the traps of regarding the MPLA as a mere surrogate of the Communists in Cuba and the USSR, the MPLA regime would have had a tougher time garnering diplomatic support to obtain recognition for Angola from the international community as an independent country.And if Angola had failed, the transformation of South Africa from the apartheid monster it the was, to the multi-racial society it is today, would not have occurred.

Liberia and Sierra Leone would also not be enjoying the peace they are currently enjoying, had Nigeria, in the company of other West African countries, including Ghana, not played a leading role in sending forces under ECOMOG and United Nations auspices to provide peacekeeping services in both countries.

So, from an African continental point of view, it is extremely important that Nigeria should continue to be be stable and respected by the international community. But as important as that is, Nigeria’s stability is, of course, primarily of concern to the country’s own population of between 140 and 150 million. Sadly, Nigeria’s politicians have, of late, displayed a disregard for their country’s stability that is quite alarming.

Everyone in Nigeria knows that President Umaru YarAdua is not the most healthy human being on earth. Now, there is nothing wrong with that. Every human being can fall sick. Although President YarAdua was known to be sickly, he was adjudged capable of becoming President before he actually assumed the post. So, if his sickly nature becomes more pronounced after he’s taken office, there is hardly anything earth-shattering about it.

But he has a so-called “kitchen Cabinet”, led by his wife, Turai, which has come to the inexplicable conclusion that his true condition should not become known to the Nigerian populace. They took him to Saudi Arabia in November 2009 and kept him incommunicado there until 24 February 2010, when they brought him back, in the dead of night, without even informing his Vice-President!

When they were taking him to Saudi Arabia, they refused to comply with a constitutional provision that if the President was going to be away for any length of time, he should write to the National Assembly to inform it of his absence, and ask the Assembly to accord the Vice-President all the powers of the presidency.

There was a “he-did, he didn’t” run-around between the Parliament and the President’s liaison officer with the Parliament, over whether he had written to the Parliament, but that the liaison officer had not delivered the letter! It was an amazingly amateurish bit of dissembling over a matter of such national importance..

In the end, the Nigerian Senate took matters into its own hands and declared the Vice-President as Acting President. Even then, the “kitchen Cabinet” wouldn’t accept the situation and tried all sorts of manoeuvres to try and undermine the position of the Acting President. Its most disgraceful faux pas was to smuggle the President back into the country, in the middle of the night, without alerting the Acting President. Many people even thought a military coup had been mounted against the Acting President, inasmuch as he had not, apparently, been made aware of of a military deploment in the middle of the night to cordon-off Abuja airport, at the time of the President’s return. They created the impression that the Acting President was not in full control of the military.

Nigerians began to make fun of their government. "A country with two Presidents", some said. Others called Yar'Adua a "Shadow President". Many more resorted to Nigerian local colloquialism and described Yar'Adua as "President not on seat."

At the moment, many of the thorny issues indicative of a power-struggle appear to have been resolved. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, has begun demonstrating that he will be governing the country with a firm hand. He first dismissed the national security adviser appointed by Yar'Adua, General Sarki Mukhtar, and replaced him with General Aliyu Gusau, who was General Obasanjo‘s national security adviser, and had been involved with national security matters over a long period before that.

With the security situation under control, Mr Jonathan has now began to reconstruct the government by dismissing the Cabinet. Everyone in Nigeria is agog with speculation about the new men he will bring in.

Meanwhile, he is confronted with one of the most difficult situations any President can be faced with. The Plateau State, which lies right across the fault-line of Nigeria, in the sense that it is in what used to be called the “Middle Belt” between the North and the South, and between Islamic and non-Islamic communities, is falling apart.

Terrible pictures of Fulani herdsmen taking revenge over non-Fulanis who had attacked Fulanis in January 2010, have made their appearance in both the local and foreign media. Because of the Internet, these pictures have received wide publicity and inflamed a great deal of passions.

It is not only in the Plateau state that there’s tension between people of different religions and ethnic backgrounds. In 2009, there were terrible outbreaks of violence in Bauchi province, pictures of which have again been publicised on the Internet. Extrajudicial executions by the police took place during the disturbances.

Each time these acts of violence occur, great damage is done to the fraying lines of cohesion that hold Nigeria together. Ethnic and religious rivalries are two of the worst forces that any nation can be faced with. They just turn human beings into animals and there is no way of reasoning with people when the two evils take hold of them.

The Acting President has two courses of action open to him; 1. to establish a much-better organised intelligence structure that can detect social tensions before they reach the breaking point where people take up weapons and 2. to set up a body to distil all the reports that already exist about social tensions. There have been many such reports gathering dust in civil service offices and it shouln't be difficult to sift their recommendations and implement those that are practicable.

At the same time, a serious effort must be made to alleviate the underlying poverty in Nigerian society that enables desperate people to obtain supporters for any violent enterprise that promises to make the participants richer. Politicians with an axe to grind can far too easily "rent a crowd" in Nigeria.

An important -- and rich nation -- like Nigeria cannot just sit down and tear itself apart the way it has been doing. Sporadic outbreaks of violence may look transitory and unimportant, but the lesson of the dozens of small acts that eventually led to the Biafran war of 1967-70, in which between one and two million people are estimated to have lost their lives, must not be forgotten. For, as the Spanish-born American philosopher, George Santayana (1863-1952) said, "Those who forget the past are condemned to re-live it."

Tuesday 16 March 2010

cameron duodu: BRITISH MUSEUM IS EXHIBIT ING IFE ART

Here is a short video showing some of the exhibits and discussing the background to Ife artefacts

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturevideo/cultureminute/7378407/Kingdom-of-Ife-Culture-Minute.html

Life In The Media 40 Years ago



Below is
a link to a piece I published in New African magazine to mark the paper's 40th anniversary in 2006.

I wasn't in on the founding of the magazine, but I was close to some f the people involved in the paper's origins. Its London offices --40-43 Fleet Street, EC4 -- held a special emotional appeal for me: they were just above the London offices of the magazine that first made me famous, the Ghana edition of Drum.

When I left Ghana in 1965 to escape being imprisoned under the obnoxious Preventive Detention Act,for things I had written in Drum, I began to write for my own paper as a freelance! There was a lot to write about life in London and I used to show up in the Drum office once a month, to submit my copy to a nice Welshman, called Alun Morris, who had been "Editorial Adviser" to me when I first joined Drum as Ghana editor.

Alun and I hadn't been too close socially when we were both working at Drum in Accra. But in London, he was most friendly and we were soon spending Saturday mornings at a pub at the junction between Holland Park Avenue and Ladbroke Grove, where I lived. He later became editor of the colour supplement of the London Observer.

But back to the Drum office in Fleet Street. I was made welcome there by Alun's secretary, a lady we knew simple as Margaret. She used to give me a nice cup of tea when I went there, and we became so friendly that eventually, it was she to whom I entrusted the typing of my first novel, The Gab Boys. By the way, although this novel was first published in 1967 and has been out of print for many years, it can almost certainly be bought on the Internet at www.abebooks.com

You will probably pay as much for it now as the entire amount of royalties I received for writing it, but never mind -- try buying a Van Gogh! Writers and artists are supposed to starve in their lifetimes, whilst those who had the foresight to buy their works early make pots of money on those works. Well,enjoy the piece. It will give you an insight into life in journalism in Ghana between 1960 and 1965. Here is the link:



Wednesday 3 March 2010

Extra-judicial executions by the Nigerian police exposed by Aljazeera


By CAMERON DUODU



THE Nigerian Federal Government is reported to have revealed that "over 600 persons, including police officers", were indicted by the probe panel set up to investigate the bloody "Boko Haram" crisis in July 2009.

The Government has also ordered a probe into a documentary on a foreign television station, Al-jazeera, "on extra-judicial killings by the Nigeria Police.

(See extremely disturbing video WARNING: VERY DISTURBING!) http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/02/2010298114949112.html


THE Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, told journalists in Abuja, that all those found culpable in the two incidents would face the music.

Kayode, who spoke with newsmen after a closed-door meeting with members of the National Committee on Torture, said that he would be holding a meeting with the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ogbonna Onovo, next week, on the legion of alleged extra-judicial and other unlawful killings by some police officers.

He also instructed the committee to put administrative measures in place to investigate the Aljazeera documentary on extra judicial killings by the Nigeria Police as well as the report of Local and International Human Rights Organisations.

The Minister added that the officers who appeared in the television footage would be identified and brought to face the wrath of the law, adding that the committee on torture, as an independent body, would be given a free hand to investigate such incidents in detention centres all over the country.

If the Minister is to be taken at his word, then the Government is showing a marked difference in its attitude to reports of police brutality in Nigeria. For years, the "Mobile Police" in particular have earned for themselves, a reputation as a brutal organisation whose members just "Kill and Go". Of course, Nigerian criminals are also extremely brutal and the deaths of many policemen, as well as civilians, can be laid at their door. But a law force that is feared by the population it is supposed to serve has already lost half the battle of preserving law and order. For the sine qua non without which the police can never achieve their objectives is information, and no member of the public is going to volunteer to contact an organisation he fears in order to provide it with information.

The Government was disappointed that the police were unable to predict the "Boko Haram" troubles in July 2009 in which so many people lost their lives. But such disappointments will continue so long as the police authorities fail to enforce the precepts by which modern police organisations operate, namely, be friendly to the public and respect their human rights, for without them, you work in darkness and can never detect any crimes.

UPDATED HERE:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/nigeria-police-killings-boko-haram?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments






Tuesday 2 March 2010

VIRGIN TO FLY TO GHANA

Virgin Atlantic launches service to Ghana on 24 May

Sir Richard Branson's airline Virgin Atlantic, is to start flights from London to Ghana, it was announced on Tuesday 2 March 2010..

Subject to Government approval, Virgin will begin a three-services-a-week operation between Heathrow Airport and the Ghanaian capital of Accra on May 24, 2010.

The carrier will be using a 240-seat Airbus A340 aircraft on the route, which will be Virgin's fifth to Africa.

Virgin Atlantic chief executive Steve Ridgway said: "We are delighted that we are able to launch services to this fast-growing and vibrant capital city with its historic links to Britain, thriving economy and growing oil and gas industry."

I welcome the Virgin service because it ought, in theory, to bring competition to a route on which passengers feel they have been overcharged for a long time.It takes at least about two hours more to fly from London to New York, but on any day, you can fly to New York and back at half the price it rakes to fly to Accra and back. And it is not even as if there weren't passengers on the Accra-London route. Anyone who uses it regularly will testify that it is usually filled to the brim with passengers fighting to obtain seats.

Virgin flights are normally very courteous and enjoyable -- I know because I flew with Virgin once to Lagos repeat Lagos. And enjoyed it -- which is a minor miracle/

I wish Virgin the best of luck in its Ghana operations. It should come to stay.

Or as we say in Ghana: "Virgin, Akwaaba Woaba a tena ase!" (Virgin, welcome.May you come and stay!.)


Monday 1 March 2010

'ZULU CHIEF' TURNS THE TABLES!

The 'Zulu chief' who wasn't

While doing the research for my obituary of Peggy Appiah (nee Cripps), I had occasion to remember the early, happy days of Ghana's independence in 1957, when Peggy's husband, Joe Appiah, was one of the brightest sparks in the Parliament of newly-independent Ghana.

Joe, a handsome man with large eyes and a goatee beard, always turned up for Parliament in Ghanaian native cloth, with a chain around his neck. This made him stand out amongst the new rulers, most of whom preferred the Assembly's stupid uniform - the formal Western suit - which was as uncomfortable in the humid heat of Ghana as one could wish. The only reason why they wore suits was that the British members of the Legislative Council of old had dressed like that. Indeed, the Speaker of the new Assembly, Mr EC Quist, was clad in robes exactly patterned upon those of the speaker of the British House of Commons.

As a young reporter for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, my pass enabled me to go to the inaccessible areas of Parliament House, and I once caught sight, briefly, of Mr Speaker struggling to get into his gear - silk stockings shining, patent leather shoes and a horse-hair wig - when his door was opened by an attendant as I was passing by. I thought it was hilarious. The scene in our High Court was even more bizarre: judges in thick red robes, wearing wigs, and lawyers in thick black robes, wearing wigs.

There was no air-conditioning in those days, and as ceiling fans whirred to try and bring some relief into the rooms, the poor 'Learned Friends' and the 'Lordshits' they fawned upon publicly (but insulted privately) sweated and sweated and sweated. It took about two decades for them to summon the courage to change the uniforms, both in Parliament and the courts. Even today, some lawyers prefer to put on their wig and gown to go to court: so strong is the allure of the mystification that the lawyer's attire apparently enables them to pull off before the eyes of ordinary mortals that they would rather be wet all over than abandon a tradition evolved no doubt to shelter British lawyers from the biting winds of winter.

But back to Joe Appiah. He had an impish sense of humour, which he summoned to make fun of Krobo Edusei, Prime Minister Nkrumah's ebullient minister of the interior. Mr Edusei had brought Dr Emil Savundra - who was later to steal thousands of pounds from the customers of his British motor insurance company, Fire, Auto and Marine Insurance. The crash of the company left 400,000 motorists without insurance cover. He was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and fined £50,000 in 1968.

In the late 1950s, Mr Edusei introduced Dr Savundra as an industrialist who wanted to set up businesses in Ghana in partnership with Ghanaians and even the government. But somehow Joe Appiah and others in the Ghanaian opposition got to know that although Savundra called himself 'Dr', he did not have a doctorate of any sort, and that the capital he was supposed to bring to Ghana did not exist.

They chased Savundra out of Ghana with their mockery and after that, whenever Krobo Edusei entered Parliament House, he was greeted with a shout of 'SAVU!' by Joe Appiah, whereupon the opposition benches would yell back 'SAVUNDRA!' Everyone then collapsed with laughter. This spirit of mirth did not last long in the Assembly, as Dr Kwame Nkrumah soon introduced a Preventive Detention Act under which Joe Appiah and many of his parliamentary colleagues were detained for five years without trial.

In 1977, I ran into Joe Appiah in Paris, where the late General Kutu Acheampong, then ruler of Ghana, had sent him on a mission to win support for Acheampong's idea of 'union government' between the military and civilians. Joe was in very good form, and over a drink, he told this story: whilst dating his wife, Peggy in the early 1950's, Joe used to go to Speaker's Corner, in Hyde Park, London, to harangue Britain for its unwillingness to grant independence to its colonies in Africa. He always wore his Ghanaian cloth (which is worn at the shoulder, somewhat like a Roman toga) when he went to mount his 'soap box' and speak - if the weather permitted.

One day, he was in full flow when a team from the Daily Express, then a notorious crusader for the continuation of imperial rule over the British colonies, arrived. When its reporter heard what Joe was saying about the Empire, he took down some notes and had Joe photographed. The next day, Joe was surprised to see in the Express, a picture of himself under the banner headline, 'BLANKET-CLAD ZULU CHIEF BERATES EMPIRE'. Now, the Ghanaian cloth is not a woollen 'blanket' (the heat and humidity would kill anyone who wore one in the sunshine!) but apart from the inaccuracy, Joe was also annoyed by what he considered to be the racist undertones of the article. To the Daily Express, Joe thought, the term 'Zulu chief' was a code term for 'uncivilised native'.

So Joe arranged for the editor of the paper to be invited to dinner at the home of his wife-to-be's father, Sir Stafford Cripps, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Joe turned up at the dinner in his best Moss Brothers lawyer's outfit, and had a very 'erudite conversation' with the editor about - the law of libel!

Then, on cue, someone produced the offending article in the Daily Express. Pointing to the splash with the 'Zulu chief' headline, he asked the editor: 'I say! Doesn't that 'Zulu chief' bear a striking resemblance to someone at this table?' Whereupon the entire room erupted into boisterous laughter. The editor looked at the picture, and then looked round, and the penny dropped. Said Joe: "When he realised it was me, he blushed like red ink'. I can still see Joe's big eyes twinkling with pleasure at the memory of the trick played on the editor.

Joe Appiah died in 1990. With him died an era in Ghana, when politics could be fun as well as serious business. Joe's marriage to Peggy Cripps attracted notice because in those days there was an unwritten rule: black men must not marry or make love to white women. If you have read EM Foster's A Passage To India, you will understand the taboos that were attached to contacts between English women and 'colonial peoples'. (Actually, the prejudice was in existence even in Shakespeare's day, which was well before the British empire had sprouted its teeth. Who can forget Othello and the unbearable tensions that the mere union of a black man and a white woman caused in their society, leading eventually to the destruction of both the man and the woman?)

Of course, many people disregarded the race barrier to sex between people of different colours, but those who drove a coach and horses through the hypocrisy of the British empire paid a heavy price. In the colonies, they were usually ostracised by the local 'establishment'. In the United Kingdom, they sometimes had to endure name-calling, or attacks in the streets, or on their homes. Often, these 'low-profile' incidents did not attract the attention of the media.

However, in 1948, marriage between the races became a major story in Britain. A prince of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) called Seretse Khama, a graduate of Oxford University's Balliol College who was in the process of qualifying as a lawyer at the prestigious Inner Temple while he waited to be proclaimed king, married a white woman called Ruth Williams. If and when Seretse Khama returned home to Bechuanaland, Ruth would become Queen of his people.

Now, in neighbouring South Africa, the Nationalist Party had just been voted into power, on a platform of total separation of the races, or apartheid. Sex between the races was made punishable by imprisonment, and to have a Bechuanaland King carrying on a high-profile interracial marriage across the border seemed positively subversive to the apartheid practitioners.

In the post-war world South Africa's gold exports contributed enormously to the foreign exchange reserves of the 'Sterling Area', and using this clout the South Africans exerted enormous pressure on Britain not to allow Seretse Khama to take his white bride home. It was one of the most disgraceful episodes in British imperial history. The outcry over the Khamas had hardly died down when Peggy Cripps and Joe Appiah were also married. The two marriages inspired a Hollywood scriptwriter living in England, William Rose, to write a script for a producer/director called Stanley Kramer to make the famous film that was one of the first to explore sexual relations between black and white: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.