NIGERIANS: How to keep your nerves 1

HOW TO CONDUCT A NIGERIAN MEETING 

A Nigerian is not just a person who has a green passport or one whose parents are Nigerian citizens. A Nigerian properly-so-called, is one who knows how to live in Nigeria without bursting an artery, committing suicide, or running away to seek asylum somewhere else. If you have run away, kindly refrain from calling yourself a Nigerian. The acceptable term for you is ‘of Nigerian origin’. There is a difference. 
Being a proper Nigerian, I feel like I should explain this concept thoroughly starting with how to conduct meetings. A Nigerian meeting is not just an event. It is that sacred, multipurpose, indispensable tool for living the Nigerian life. This is how to conduct a Nigerian meeting.
As a business owner, always call for meetings even for things you can do by email. Sometimes, meet early in the morning for morning devotion to commit your business and hustle to the hands of God. Meet to set the agenda for other meetings that will be held over the week. 
Jobs are boring. You need a distraction. Meetings, especially ones with tea break, prevent you from losing your mind and picking up a gun to shoot all your annoying colleagues like white people do. White people need to have more meetings. 
When going for a meeting, never arrive early. This will give the impression that you are jobless, desperate or too eager. Nobody likes Nigerians who are jobless or too eager. A true Nigerian, not one who is pretending to be white, will understand if you show up late for a meeting. They may feign annoyance, but usually they will wait. In fact the best of Nigerians will make excuses for you, especially if you live in a place like Lagos. You will walk in late to a meeting, panting, with that faux look of contrition and the person you are having a meeting with – if she is a good Nigerian – will say: Eiyah! Traffic abi? You will only have to nod or say something like: No be small tin o. Everyone will be grateful that you showed up and the meeting will begin. 
When you are having a big meeting with an ‘oga’ (or oga-madam) it is safer to cancel all other appointments for the day. Because the oga will saunter in three hours late and you will have to smile and say “No, not at all!” when he asks: “Did I keep you waiting?” 
If you are an oga, you should never, ever show up for a meeting on time. This is Nigeria. People disrespect ogas who don’t keep them waiting forever. They will think you are equals and before you know it one ordinary person will call your name without adding Chief or Prof or Honorable or Your Excellency. God forbid that after hustling to get those titles, some idiot forgets to mention them. All because you came early to a meeting. 
As a proper Nigerian whose father is God, you must commit all meetings to His hands. You may work hard but it is God that is in charge of blessing our hustle. Never forget to say at least two prayers in every meeting. One Christian, one Muslim. You never know which of the Gods will answer favorably. It does not matter if you will be discussing how to steal from other people. God sees the heart and he knows that deep down, all you want to do is succeed. 
When it is your turn to speak at a meeting it is rude to go straight to the point. Proper Nigerians are not rude. Because I care, please find below a summary of how to speak at a Nigerian meeting:
1.     Don’t be ungrateful. Thank the moderator for giving you the opportunity to speak. 
2.   Don’t be disrespectful. Observe all protocol. People did not become highly placed by mistake. 
3.    Show appreciation. Say how much it is a privilege for you to be at the meeting. Use the phrases ‘singular honor’ and ‘rare privilege’.
4.  Show understanding. Explain how important the meeting is to you and to everyone present. Thank the conveners for having the wisdom to organize the meeting.
5.    Show regard for the last speaker. Use words like ‘just like the last speaker has said’ or ‘I want to concur with the last speaker’ or ‘I totally agree with the last speaker’ or ‘I want to align myself with the last speaker’. Then proceed to say the same thing using your own words. It is important for everyone to have a chance to speak at a meeting. 
6.     Be considerate. Promise not to speak too long with a phrase like: ‘I will not take much of your time’, after which you can speak freely.
7.    Always provide a summary of all you have just said. Use phrases like: ‘So, what have I just said?’ or ‘What am I trying to say?’ to introduce you summary. 
8.    Be observant.  If you still have more things to say and you sense that people are tired of hearing you speak, use the words ‘In conclusion’ to give them hope that you will soon end, after which you can continue to speak freely. 
All meetings must end in a closing prayer. To avoid a fight however, take care to remember whether it was a Christian prayer or Muslim prayer you began with. When you are not sure, do both prayers. You do not want to annoy any children of the Nigerian God. 
One last thing: Don’t forget that the only acceptable way of answering a phone call during a Nigerian meeting is to shout: “Hello, please I am in a meeting, let me call you back.” People will smile, seeing how important this meeting is to you.  

I hope that this helps and that God will continue to bless your hustle as you conduct meetings.
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ON RUGA AND HERDSMEN

*On Ruga, Cattle Herders, Fulanization and Dangers of Hysterical Reactions by TMZ (Michael Oluwagbemi)*

Let me first put my biases out there for my intelligent reader. I’m an herdsmen. I own a few heads of cow, on a beautiful ranch I built literally from the grounds up with a few believing young people: no one older than forty years of age: in the last three years. It spans almost forty hectares, our cattle is our work. They’re fat. They’re beautiful to behold. We recently fanned out from our base in the Middle Belt, and now have three smaller livestock farm lots in three Southwestern states. I’m proud of our work at Owonikoko Ranch & Farms. Follow us on Twitter @owonikoko.

I’m Fulani in my past life, I think ; but I speak no Fulfude nor Hausa, and my people are aboriginals from Ekiti state. I’m probably ethnologically not Yoruba. My existence predates the Yoruba, and that is a matter of historical fact: for those that know the pre-historic origins of the region we now call Nigeria. So pardon me, if I speak often like a disinterested party in the struggle for tribal supremacy that has characterized Nigeria’s post-colonial history since independence. I don’t see tribes, I see black people fighting over crumbs. How about we grow the pie?

Ultimately, I hope at the end of this article you will become more like me. Decipher a business opportunity instead of a challenge. See a gap, instead of a hole. Get involved, instead of lamenting. Why? Because nothing, is new on the surface of the earth. Not even the challenge that behooves on us as a country. But first me we must define the challenge.

To an untrained eye, the problem of the Cattle value chain is fundamentally the issue of uncivilized pastoralists roaming rural lands and invading farms with their animals leading to clashes. Thousands of lives has been lost to these fights and clashes for years. Between 2006 and 2014, data shows over 600 people were killed in these clashes across Nigeria. From independence, we’ve lost well over 5000 people to these clashes.

Indeed, by 2016 more people died from these clashes than in the hands of Boko Haram according to SBM Intelligence — research outfit in Nigeria. The natural narrative of emboldened Fulani Herdsmen because the new President is Fulani thus took hold, forgetting that. the President’s PR may well have been taking a hit because of his own success in tackling Boko Haram that was at the doorstep of the North. Without Boko Haram to worry about, the irascible Southwest media promptly turned their attention to Fulani Herdsmen. Heck, no brown envelope. Why should they do their work of investigative journalism? Let us help them.

Further exacerbating the tension is the lack of distinction between violence caused by attacks on farmers by Herdsmen, and the attacks on Herdsmen by farmers — the later more commonly called rustling or banditry. Certainly, to many southerners — what is the difference between the Fulani Herdsmen and the Hausa farmer? Not much! They grew up on the propaganda of Hausa-Fulani as some kind of fused ethnic group when the North of Nigeria is a lot more complex than that.

Further to this, is a protein problem for Nigeria. Animals that arrive on our plates are often processed unhygienically and lack optimal nutrients and tough- having been walked long distances (some time up to 100km) before they arrive on our plate. Nigeria also pay far more per kilogram, while consuming far less per capita than she should considering her economic standing on the continent relative to others. Basically, we have a protein problem!

Nigeria is currently consuming 360,000 tons of beef a year
Interestingly, it is the food security angle with respect to nutrition, health, protein, jobs and employment that the true definition of the herdsmen challenge of Nigeria lies. Forget the narrative of some Fulani invading your land, the problem is the process of the meat arriving at your table. And to understand this process, you must understand the structure of the current livestock market. Hope you follow the next few paragraphs.
There are over 26 million heads of cattle in Nigeria today, valued at well over $16 billion USD according to FAO — a United Nations Agency. 90% of Nigeria’s cattle stock are imported — I mean literally walked into the country from neighboring nations of Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Most of the meat you eat are gotten from animals that were born in Central Africa Republic, Burkina Faso and Mali. Animals are born in Nigeria by chance. Imagine the Forex loss due to this, shouldn’t we look closely as we do rice and poultry?

On the consumption side, it is estimated that annual domestic and imported slaughtering is around 7.5 million cattle with a livestock value of $5bn. Nigeria is currently consuming 360,000 tons of beef a year, a volume that is predicted to rise to 1.3 million tons by 2050. In Lagos alone, data shows between 6,000 to 9,000 heads of cattle are slaughtered every day. Over 60% of beef consumption in Nigeria takes place in the six south-western states and Edo. Nigerians love their meat, we are carnivores!
Nigeria has no breeding industry

To link consumption to production, Livestock move through various markets and incur a number of trading transactions as they move from pastoralist through to the terminal market & mostly get to market emaciated. They often walk thousands of kilometers, are lost to peril and bear in mind engage well over 15 million pastoralists who will be left with no assets and no jobs if we suddenly stop this flow of goods!

Try imagine additional 15 million more people unemployed in Nigeria, and begin to process the impact of an irrational policy in the sector!
If Nigeria stops buying, there will be more need of aid for many landlocked West African countries

Beyond these, the implication of the two facets of production and consumption pattern I have summarized above for you are thus:
Nigeria has no breeding industry. Mostly what happens in Nigeria is incidental breeding. This creates a value chain capture problem. We are losing millions of jobs in the Cattle value chain to our neighbors, who essentially depend on us for their market and most valuable exports. Nigeria is the outlet market for West Africa. We are providing immense economic aid for others without realizing or arrogating it. Hence, it is no surprise that international organizations that should point these out, generally don’t. If Nigeria stops buying, there will be more need of aid for many landlocked West African countries. Fact.

Flowing from the above, the lack of breeding stock ensures we import live animals from our Northern neighbors (up to 90%) while banning bovine meat offal (processed) imports — inconsistent with international standards. Remember, you can’t bring live animals or meat dripping with blood into most countries in the world to prevent disease transmission and protect local stock. Nigeria is the reverse. This has also ensured that a lot of diseases unfounded in the agricultural industry of others happen to persist in Nigeria. This has prevented Nigeria from exporting some animals and crops to premium markets like Middle East and Europe.
The pastoral industry that grows and transports the animal from border posts to market today employs 15 million pastoralists. Any solution as such must consider the change impact of this, which is beyond jobs but also has to do with a way of life of indigenous people which is protected by international convention.

The impact of climate change and rapid urbanization, including the development of a federal capital (Abuja) right on the path of the pre-colonial grazing routes (lets remember all borders of West Africa are artificial) has ensured more pastoral to farmer contact. With this contact comes conflict. The pastoralist lives for his animal as you will if you’re civilized for your pet, and has his assets tied up in it — while the farmer lives off his subsistence farming. The land his his livelihood — and cherishes his land and crops. In competition for resources, strife happen.

When the Pastoralists arrive in the market, it arrives relatively more expensive than other places in the world. A cattle we sell for equivalent of $1000 in Nigeria, goes for a third of that price in the United States if it sells at all! They arrive also emaciated. and tough — really tough!

To make them into meat you can cook, eat and digest — Nigerian factor of disorganization reigns supreme. Animals are slaughtered in nasty and dirty Abattoirs across the land, and are chief transmitters of typhoid that kill thousands yearly while making millions sick.

Lastly, the impact of years of lack of investment in agriculture had worse impact on livestock farming than crop farmers in Nigeria. Crop farmers are easy to locate, hence even years of political intervention in agriculture no matter how half hearted always easily impacted the crop aspects of Nigeria’s agriculture. Research no matter how minimal took place and methods have improved on the crop side no matter how small. The pastoralists were harder to get to, and still do things the old fashioned way ensuring very low productivity : of meat and milk. Even as the population ballooned and demand pressure rose in our urban areas.
Nigeria’s problem in the Cattle value chain is real, and is by the way self evident but also not unexpected for our current stage of development.

As is Herdsman-Farmer clash in Nigeria in 2019, so is the western cowboy and farmer clash of 1819 United States. The problem spans West Africa too, a further proof that it is not a unique ethnological struggle but only a phase in our development as a modern country. It is this optimism we must bring to tackling the challenge.

First, what we need to solve this problem is to have cooler heads prevail, drop the demagoguery and the seemingly open season of demonization. The politicization of meat also does not help. Name calling and tagging whole ethnic groups terrorists just because you hate the President is exactly not smart if you want solutions instead of knee jerk engagement. If we won’t all turn to vegetarians, then we may as well start reasoning together. There will always be the sliver of the population spoiling for fight and edging on the rest to be relevant as interlocutors who are only relevant when things scatter: but we must not give elements any room. They abound among politicians, so called activists and ethnic liberation movement jingoists. Just remember, these elements have no solutions. They’re noisemakers!

*The real solution will come from real people, reaching alignment and understanding that we need one another.* We need 15 million Fulani people who are Nigerians as well as great farmers to produce grains and fodder to feed their animal. Both groups have rights to earn a living and to continue to earn a living in the context of peace and security of their neighbors. And if you believe in self determination rights of ethnic groups in the UN Charter, then you’re also bound to believe in the preservation of the lifestyle of indigenous peoples especially pastoralists like the Fulani: those rights in the same document!

To my patient reader, you will agree with me that some form of transition arrangement to convert pastoralists to the breeders we lack in Nigeria is required. The obvious hybrid approach to this is self revealing. Why not create a breeding industry with pastoralists who already do it incidentally while filling the over 512,000 tons per year. gap between supply and demand for milk?

It appears to me that this is the effort that the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) — whom some people always mistaken for the Miyetti Kattle Houre the militant agitation group in Benue’s Junkun region- got up its sleeves of late. Some people have claimed the effort amount to hush payment to herdsmen militants, but I enjoin MACBAN not to relent. This conversion is a necessary step if the same people that now want Buhari to ban movement of cattle or seize them, won’t later be the. wailers decrying new upsurge of unemployment among ex-Fulani Herdsmen who will have to turn to crime to stay busy. You just can’t win!

Before the protest against settling Fulani Herdsmen into livestock farming communities that rent land to grow fodder and feed cows instead of grazing in pastoral manner, which to an outsider may seem logical but within the context of Nigeria’s complex tapestry of ethnic supremacists is harakiri, the idea of cattle colonies have been rejected. This is true even as the same people that rejected this idea of colonies also rejected the idea of restoring grazing routes or establishing grazing reserves. President Buhari has a tough job: in an emotional argument there is no logical solutions that makes sense.

That said, *those advocating for private ranches as an alternative must understand that ranches are very expensive infrastructure and have limited outcomes short to medium term.* The development of ranches is often a consequence of economic development and evolution: including of land tenure, commodity exchange, infrastructure and good tastes including appetite for inorganic farming.

*To break even within a pure ranch model, the price of meat must easily double.* If this is the way to go, I suggest we must be prepared; to either pay more for meat or take it off our diet with dire nutritional consequences. However, there is room for private enterprise in areas such as breeding, fattening and dairy. The demand for milk in Nigeria is insatiable- an investment for milk makes sense for my readers who live North of Jos for obvious reasons!

It is highly recommended that we implement a transition arrangement that quickly builds capacity for cattle fattening, dairy and breeding capacity that can see Nigeria own the process in 3–5 years! During this period, pastoralist communities can gain parity to purchase land where they need to — like any other Nigerian for their business, after securing necessary government support (like crop farmers do all the time) to develop an upscale business model! I bet farming communities that become more prosperous will be welcoming to host pastoralists once the economic symbiosis in-between the two communities become self evident under a pilot. The autonomy of sensible state Governors in this regard will be very critical as much as the creative provision of grants by the federal government to do it.

Beyond the transition arrangement, we must as such look for also permanent solutions. There is an urgent need to modernize the livestock value chain. First, the prohibition of import of live animals with the transition arrangement in place will be a good step. Slaughterhouses can be placed at key border posts alongside National Livestock Markets that will be equipped with cold rooms and cold chain vehicles. Animals being brought into Nigeria will thus be mandatorily tested, slaughtered and frozen for transport to end market.

Those that want fresh day animals will have to patronize "bred-in-Nigeria" cattle and create jobs for transitioning pastoralists. similar to the way chicken farmers benefitted under one Aremu who implemented similar policy after he cornered the poultry market as he always does. That story is for another day!

In the South, especially the South West (where most of the meat is consumed) our lazy thinking Governors should wake up and wake up quick. Instead of the knee jerk rejection of solutions, the modernization of the livestock value chain can employ millions of their jobless youths. The meat on your plate does not say it was groomed by a Fulani or a Yoruba man. What prevents Southwest Governors from investing and employing our roaming youths some of whom are increasingly hooked to codeine?

Indeed, when you do this you grow fodder and you employ grain and pasture farmers. The thousands of hectares of fallow lands now dominating the Southwest terrain can. be converted to useful purpose instead of becoming hideouts of kidnappers. Simple as ABC. But our Governors rather use state money to charter jets, build unnecessary airports. and buy ammunition for elections. Awo is rolling in his grave!

To conclude however, I reserve for our academia the worst contempt for allowing a basic issue like this become a crisis without any intervention. ASUU is quick to go to strike, where are academics on this matter, debating papers, enriching the public discourse and presenting well researched solution? I depended more on academic papers written by foreign aid organizations, who have no interest in cutting Nigeria off from providing markets to their West African aid baby countries, while writing this than on local research. It is a shame. Our professors should be ashamed!

God Bless Nigeria.

TMZ also known as B dousanga, is a public commentator since 1999 online and offline. He writes from Abuja

https://medium.com/@busanga/on-ruga-cattle-herders-fulanization-and-dangers-of-hysterical-reactions-by-tmz-47884fcec046

The conversation we don’t want to have about Biafra

The conversation we don’t want to have about Biafra

By David Hundeyin

Published on May 31, 2019

Ten years ago, when I was a 19 year-old fresher at the University of Hull, I met Ify. She was at that time, probably the most beautiful girl I had ever set my eyes on. I immediately tripped, hit my head and went into an infatuation coma. Ify was the quintessential social butterfly – witty, friendly, distinctly intelligent and culturally Nigerian, with a few notable modifications like her South London accent and a slight tomboy streak.

I think my eyeballs actually turned into heart emojis everytime I saw her, and within a week of starting university, my mission in life was to get Ify to be my girlfriend. The problem was, it didn’t matter how much time and attention I dedicated to her – Ify was not interested in me. We were very good friends, but as time went on, it became clear to my great dismay that she and I as an item, was just never going to happen. Eventually, I gave up on Ify and retired to lick my metaphorical wounds, completely assured in my 19 year-old wisdom that I would never love again.

Same Country, Different Worlds

Then one day, I happened to stumble into a conversation with our larger group of Nigerian friends, about what brought their families to the UK. Unlike the others, I was not an immigrant, so as a full fee-paying international student, I was effectively not part of the conversation. Our friends with names like Timilehin and Tunde all had similar stories – born in Nigeria, parents wanted more out of life, family moved to the UK. It didn’t occur to me or anyone that Ify – normally the life of the party – was not talking.

Then Ify spoke.

She was also born in Nigeria – Kaduna to be precise, and she lived there until 2000. That year, a religious crisis broke out in the city, and the Hausa natives embarked on a frenzied pogrom of their Igbo neighbours. According to her, a Mercedes-Benz lorry filled with the dead bodies of slaughtered Igbo people was dispatched from Kaduna to Onitsha. Ify and her family had to hide from their neighbours whom they grew up with, until her dad was able to sneak them out of Kaduna and on a flight to London, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. That was her “immigrant” story.

When she finished her story, a kind of dead silence followed as our small group of 17 – 20 year-olds tried to process probably the heaviest thing our ears had ever listened to. Suddenly I understood why Ify would never be interested in me, despite seemingly sharing every interest and identity in common – we came from two different worlds. I came from a Nigeria that I spoke of with pride, based on a privileged background and a Lagos-centric worldview. She also came from Nigeria, but her Nigeria was a place of fear, darkness and dread where the kids you grew up playing hopscotch with could at a moment’s notice become your executioners for an offence none of you understood.

I remember hearing of the corpse-filled truck incident in Onitsha as an 11 year-old, but it seemed as distant to me as a bombing in Lebanon. “Kaduna” and other exotic places like that were just names I heard in the news. Listening to Ify’s story was the first time any of it felt real. It was the first time the word “Igbo” – pejoratively thrown around in Lagos as a sort of light-hearted insult took on a new meaning to me. It was the start of my struggle to engage with the word “Biafra.”

Biafra is a very dirty word

Prior to meeting Ify and a number of friends whose experience in Nigeria substantially broadened my worldview, my only knowledge of the Biafran war was a book called ‘Sozaboy’ by Ken Saro-Wiwa, which I found in the family library. The book was written from the point of view of a barely pubescent protagonist thrust into a war he did not understand, and forced to witness acts of incredible violence. He returns home at the end of the war, only to discover that his hitherto innocent sweetheart now has a child conceived through rape. Amidst all the death and carnage, this for him, is the biggest tragedy of the war. I grew up thinking of the Biafran war as this huge, avoidable playground fight between two sets of silly boys who have now learnt their lesson.

My parents – like many other Nigerian parents – hardly ever spoke about the war. Occasionally, when someone like Ralph Uwazuruike, the MASSOB leader, appeared on the news, one of them would drop a dismissive comment about “omo Ibo” and that would be that. It never occurred to me that Uwazuruike and his group were not just some asshats on the TV talking about something that happened in 19-gboboro, or that the “omo-Ibo” thing, was a term that carried a certain weight with it.

When you grow up and go to school in Lagos, you and your mates all wear the same clothes, speak only English – because your parents won’t speak their language to you at home – listen to the same music, watch the same movies and read the same books – “Igbo,” “Yoruba” and “Hausa” are just annoying subjects at school taught by frustrated teachers with anger issues. You also learn nothing about Nigerian history beyond a few vague soundbites about Herbert Macaulay, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo. The word “Biafra” is completely absent from your syllabus from Primary 1 through to SS3.

Even the maps on the wall of my dad’s study which had a water body called “Bight of Biafra” were later replaced with maps labeling the same body of water as “Bight of Benin.” Absolutely nobody wants to talk about Biafra, what came before, what happened next, and how it connects to our modern Nigerian reality. This goes to the heart of Nigeria’s cultural problem – a belief in using silence and hope as a strategy instead of engaging in the messy process of working out a solution. As a country and as a civilization, we believe that if we not-look at a problem hard enough, it will get tired and go away.

As we know all too well, that is never going to happen.

Civil War or Genocide? Why It Matters

Why is our awkward silence on the subject of Biafra extremely problematic? There are several reasons, but to begin with, I think it feeds into our lack of historicity, which manifests itself in our national decision making. If it was general knowledge for example, that a certain Muhammadu Buhari was involved in the so-called counter coup of 1966 – essentially a horrendous massacre of Igbo army officers that directly led to the general pogroms that started the war – even the best efforts of marketing communications agencies in Lagos back in 2015 might not have sufficed to convince Nigerian voters that he was a suitable presidential candidate for the 21st century.

But I digress.

The Nigerian civil war took place between 1966 and 1970. The Kaduna pogrom mentioned at the outset happened in 2000. What connects the two events and why is it important to break the suffocating silence and delineate what happened as a war or as a genocide as many now say? Well for one thing, it’s the same people who died in both cases – innocent civilians whose crime was being born within an ethnicity called “Igbo,” which didn’t exist 200 years ago. Assuming these “Igbos” as a group genuinely did something to warrant furious retribution – that included having their children poisoned with rations laced with rat-killer – were they again doing that something – whatever it was – in Kaduna in 2000?

Since the evidence would suggest not, that points to another motivation for the constant and continued need to massacre a specific group of unarmed civilians. Whatever that motivation is can only be identified by those who hold it – a harmless, eyeglass-wearing Lagos yuppie like myself cannot possibly answer that question. The point however, is that to begin with, “Igbos” did nothing as a group to warrant their wholesale slaughter – both before 1966 and after 1970.

If a group of five army majors including a man named Adewale Ademoyega carried out a coup, and the response was to slaughter Mama Nneka the rice seller in Sabon Gari market, along with her entire family and thousands of others, then the question is not “What did Mama Nneka do?” (And for the love of God, don’t say that Mama Nneka allegedly sang a song about somebody shooting somebody because if that is a capital offence, then we might as well just throw the whole country away.) The proper question is “Who felt a need to kill Mama Nneka and why?” It is a similar situation to that of a rape victim in Nigeria who is asked what she did to provoke the aggressive penis, rather than directing a question to the penis-owning rapist. Victim blaming is a product of our toxic cultural silence – which has been fed by our 49-year silence about Nigeria’s most momentous national event.

When we ask the right questions and determine that Nigeria’s historically dreadful treatment of one of its three biggest ethnic groups is neither deserved nor justified, but is actually genocidal and irrational, then we can start making progress in our national discourse. If we admit that something is not fair, then that makes us commit to changing it. If we forever continue rationalizing stuff like this, we are merely ensuring that Nigeria will never change the record and dance to something new.

The usual saying makes it seem as if when two elephants fight, they get to walk away unscathed while the grass groans in distress. In reality, grass regrows rapidly, but the elephants sustain severe injuries when they use their tusks on each other. In Nigeria’s case, one such severe injury is the moribund, obsolete and miserable Ajaokuta steel mill. At the planning phase, consultants recommended siting the steel mill just outside Onitsha for reasons of proximity to iron ores, cutting down the need for imports.

The Nigerian elephant delivered what it thought was a huge blow to the Biafran elephant by moving the mill to Kogi state for purely political reasons. That was over 30 years ago. Today in 2019, Ajaokuta steel mill remains as unused as the day it was commissioned, but with thousands of salary earners and pensioners on its books who have sat there for decades without a single productive day’s work. Nigeria still imports every kind of steel product it needs, and the technology used at Ajaokuta is at least 20 years out of date, making Chinese steel imports cheaper than whatever it could theoretically produce today.

Oh, and guess which group of people control that import industry? Yes.

Clearly, it wasn’t only the grass that suffered.

Now let’s do a quick mental experiment. Inside your mind, picture the map of Nigeria. Shade the parts of the map where Igbo pogroms have been commonplace over the past 70 years. Now select a different mental colour and shade the parts of the map that are currently suffering from near-total breakdown of security due to violence from non-state actors. Notice how you end up shading the second colour almost exactly over the first. Precisely.

This is not because of some dead-mans-curse/karma hocus pocus. There are of course numerous political and economic factors contributing to the toxicity of such spaces which cannot be explored in this article. However, a key reason is that after decades of the Nigerian state allowing human beings to be slaughtered at the drop of a hat in those places – because said human beings are named “Chukwuka” instead of “Aliu” – the people there have internalized and normalized such violence. Long after Chukwuka and Odinanka have fled or died, the sense of total impunity and the feeling of power associated with unpunished violence remain firmly rooted in those places. Inevitably, such people turn their weapons on each other and continue acting out what they first practised on “Igbos.”

Southwestern Nigeria, which has managed by and large to restrain itself from such orgies of violence is unsurprisingly Nigeria’s safest, wealthiest and most stable region. This is not rocket science. As Chinua Achebe eloquently put it: “We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.”

An Igbo proverb expresses this thought more starkly as “Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya,” which means “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

Pain Gives Birth to Strength and Resilience

Back when I worked in Marketing, I had a boss, Ayeni Adekunle who was fond of the Yoruba proverb “Ninu ikoko dudu l’eko funfun ti’n jade,” which means “White eko comes out of a black pot.” After 49 years of painful, injurious silence about Africa’s biggest-ever genocide, the cleansing effect of finally speaking up will be a great thing. These conversations will be painful. My good friend Charles Isidi is a good person to talk to if you want to get an insight into how raw, pervasive and real the pain still is, after all these years.

I remember being gobsmacked when he informed me that he knows people whose birth certificates read “Republic of Biafra,” because they were born during the war in a country called Biafra. “Nigeria” to them, was simply this big bully next door trying to kill them for no reason – which by the way, is pretty accurate. So what do we do when confronted by stories that we don’t really want to hear, and that we don’t know what to do with?

The first thing is probably to listen. Just, listen. Really listen. Don’t interrupt with “Ehn. but you know they couldn’t have known that…” It’s not your story, and it’s not about you. Listen and let people tell their story. Nigeria is not going to fall down and die if we listen to one-third of our population telling us “You know, dropping bombs on my daddy’s head because some guys we never met did something that had nothing to do with us in a place we never saw wasn’t really called for.” It’s a difficult conversation, but not a world-ending one.

Ultimately, the Igbo ethnic group is now probably Nigeria’s most widely-recognised and diffused ethnicity, with the vast majority still holding on to their Nigerian identity. My friend Ify whom I mentioned at the outset still identifies with Nigeria and visits from time to time. Despite all that has happened, what binds us all together is still more powerful than what sets us apart. We may have a troubled relationship across ethnic lines in Nigeria, but it can still be salvaged.

Like all troubled relationships however, the first and most important step is to have the conversation.

SOURCE AND LINKS  

From begging to banditry: Revolt of the almajiris

 APRIL 28, 2019 By Dele Sobowale 
“No revolution is the fault of the people but the fault of the government.”—Johann Goethe, 1749-1832, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ. 

A revolution is underway in the northern states of Nigeria. The downtrodden constituting 99.9 per cent of the population, hitherto docile beggars, saying rankaindede to the privileged 0.1 per cent, are sick and tired of begging. They are now demanding for their own share of “the national cake” to be delivered to them – at gun or cutlass points. 

Nigeria will never be the same again. The North is now gradually sliding into the dictatorship of the beggars or almajiris. 

As usual, Nigerian pseudo-socialists, like the original European promoters of the idea, had not expected the least developed region in this country to trigger the revolution, just as the uprising which occurred first in Russia and died there as well was wrongly predicted. Our local copy cats had been writing and talking about revolution in Nigeria on the assumption that highly educated Nigerians would lead it. 

History might eventually record that the Nigerian revolution (and make no mistake about it there is one on) was spear-headed by those with nothing to lose – no job, no house, no family to speak of, and no hope. 

For too long there has been ample evidence to prove that the most difficult enemy to fight is one who has nothing to lose. 

The privileged class in Nigeria had been busy since 1914, and particularly since 1960, nurturing millions of fellow citizens who can only be described as people without hope living in another Nigeria from the one inhabited by their overfed leaders. 

“There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.” Miguel Cervantes, 1547-1616. 

It has always been a puzzle to me why leaders – Presidents, Governors, Ministers, Commissioners, party leaders – who we presumed were/are intelligent and wise could have individually and collectively failed to understand that we cannot continue to increase the number of jobless adults and children out of school without eventually reaching the breaking point. Nigeria has one of the widest income disparities in the world – less than one per cent own over seventy per cent of the wealth. 

The North as a whole is the worst – with the North East and North West being the absolute worst. For as long as anybody can remember religion has been misused to get the vast majority of “have-nots” to accept their penury as an “act of Allah”. 

The extremely wealthy, even if the wealth was accumulated by looting the public purse got away with robbing the masses because of the pervasive docility. Every delinquent individual readily was submissive to the privileged whose only obligation was to give pittance to the people they have robbed by way of alms giving. 

A governor caught on video receiving bribe shows no remorse and even receives presidential endorsement because president and governor belong to the oppressive class. Class solidarity was always more important than justice. For over four decades since first setting foot in the North, I had wondered when the injustice would result in absolute rebellion. I was certain that the system of institutionalised serfdom could not continue for ever.  

The chickens have come home to roost in the North and the revolt might spread all over the country. The former beggars have dropped their bowls and have acquired bullets and guns. They are now forcing the Haves, who have suppressed them to pay. Henceforth, it will be “Your money or your life.” 

The report by DAILY TRUST a few weeks ago is revealing. The four most dangerous places to be in Nigeria today from the standpoint of kidnapping and murder are: Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Federal Capital Territory. President Buhari resides in two of them. 

 “If there is government in place, then it should listen to people and address the security challenges. We have mass burials from time to time and there is no sign that government cares about what is happening.”—Catholic Bishop of Yola, Rev. Stephen Mamza. To that query President Buhari gave an answer which is most pathetic and which tells us all we need to know about why we are in this mess and may never get out of it. Read what our leader said. Speaking through one of his echoes, we were told that “but for Buhari’s efforts, Yola and other towns in Adamawa and the rest of the Northeast would still be under the control of Boko Haram”. 

Two reasons among several render that rejoinder most unpatriotic. One, there was never a time all of the North East or Yola were under the control of Boko Haram. Parts of them yes, but not the entire region. A president does need to stretch a small truth to the breaking point in order to exonerate himself. Two, on the same day that the President’s spokesman was uttering that falsehood, Nigerians were informed thus: 

“Gun men kill 14 in Katsina and Benue.” Nine of the fourteen were slaughtered in Katsina State. Under Jonathan nobody was killed in Katsina State and Kaduna had not become the murder capital of Nigeria. While the Bishop was making a general observation about insecurity, Buhari and his small-minded spokesmen turned the entire problem to a political debate – APC versus PDP. With such little intellect at the top levels of government, it is easy to understand why Buhari might be the last to grasp the significance of what appears like random violence ravaging Nigeria now. Allow me to present a true account of what happened four days to Easter last week. 

“The Devil finds work for idle hands.” I was in Suleija after venturing into a part of Nigeria which was once very safe but which has now become like the “lion’s den” for travellers – especially for those driving good cars and well-dressed. Not to test my luck, I had chartered an old jalopy from the Motor Park instead of the usual Camry. We stopped at a filling station to refuel and my eyes could not believe what they saw.  A leading member of the National Assembly, NASS, was sitting in the back seat of a car which no panel-beater would touch. I recognised him and moved to introduce myself and to ask what was the matter with his cars? 

Almost in tears, he told me he was heading for Kaduna state but he had to disguise out of fear of being kidnapped or murdered. He would enter his community at night and depart before light of dawn for safety. His family once paid ransom to kidnappers and he was not ready to go through the trauma again. He finished with words that will live long in my memory.

 “The kidnappers we dealt with were all graduates. They spoke good English. They said they were all unemployed and they too must live somehow. Dr Dele, God save the North. We are in deep trouble.” He was not alone.

 I know people who would spend every possible week end in their country homes in Kaduna State until a year ago. That was three years after Jonathan left office and Buhari took over. They don’t go anymore – unless it is absolutely necessary. The Governors of Zamfara and Katsina recently cried out loud that their states were under the control of bandits and kidnappers. The Presidency does not dispute those claims. The Governors of Zamfara and Katsina under Jonathan never cried all the way to Abuja that their states had been taken over by criminals. The fact that the President’s own state is under siege by gun men should have been embarrassing to the people (if that is the right word?) at Aso Rock if commonsense is still present there. 

If the President’s men and women have taken any trouble to collate the crime reports daily presented by all our newspapers, they would have discovered an alarming correlation between unemployment and serious crimes in rural and urban communities. Even the murders seemingly committed for rituals have as their goal acquisition of wealth by people whose means of legitimate livelihood is not secure. The North has more of them and it is breeding them faster than any other part of the country. 

“The child is the father of the man.

” William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. When in 2006, Dr Oby Ezekwesili was the Federal Minister of Education and the number of millions of children out of school was reported, any demographer could have told President Obasanjo that the bandits and kidnappers of 2019 were already with us waiting to grow up and terrorise us. The five years old boys of 2006 are now lanky eighteen years old lads; the ten years old have turned to men 23 years old. While the very young might be afraid to kidnap, rob and murder, the eighteen-plus, without parental guidance all the time, are not so squeamish. There are millions of them now. That is bad enough. Now we have a new set of future delinquents – ten to thirteen millions – out of school. Most of them will live to reach eighteen and above. Millions of their older brothers identified in 2006 will still be alive when the fresh crop of idle hands gets set to be engaged by Satan. The numbers will swell and the security forces will never be able to cope with the deluge of criminals unless we do something urgently. The problem is national. 

But, the North is now experiencing a revolt of the beggars. They no longer wait patiently at the gates of the few wealthy people in their communities. They now have set about redistributing wealth by violence. 

No better definition of revolution can be found anywhere. Hitherto, they were afraid of the rich and powerful. Henceforth, the privileged will be afraid of them. It is no coincidence that Kaduna-Abuja expressway has become the frontline of battle. 

A good percentage of the over-pampered Northern elite travels through that route on their way to their well-appointed palaces. Next to that is Katsina. It is the home of the newly-rich. More public officials from that state had been alleged to embezzle public funds since Buhari became President than ever before. 

The bandits can observe new mansions springing up and they want their share of the loot. Kidnapping will not end any time soon. Like vultures, bandits and kidnappers can literally “smell money”. 

They are not even afraid of the security forces. They fight back; and they can afford to select their targets. They know the army is over-stretched and cannot be everywhere. Most important of all, they have nothing to lose. The soldier who dies in conflict with them probably has a wife and children. He really does not want to die.  The bandits have nobody waiting for them at home.  

That is the nature of the army which Nigerian leaders have assembled and which is now launching a full scale assault on the country – especially the North. They have thrown away the begging bowl; they now confront the rest of us with bullets and guns. We might be engaged in this war for fifty years or more. 

THEY JUST CAN’T STOP LYING. 

“Wherever God erects a house of prayer/ The Devil always builds a Chapel there/ And, it will be found upon examination/ The latter has a larger congregation. Daniel Defoe, 1661-1731. Buhari meant well when he tried to achieve religious balance in the appointments of his closest officials. I cannot speak about Muslims. 

But, the President must have inadvertently strayed into the Devil’s chapel to select his Christian advisers. The Pastors in Aso Rock are probably the worst worshippers of Satan ever to enter the Rock.  One claimed that the FG bought millions of cows to feed the kids. 

Farmers wonder where he got the cattle from since none of theirs was bought. The second went to the South West saying only blind men can fail to see Buhari’s monumental achievements. 

Are Onakakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, a Professor needing no glasses, as well as everybody in attendance laughed derisively at the Aso Rock Pastor. Has shame or honour gone out of fashion in churches? Is the king of darkness the only one working full time? 

 FROM VANGUARD

THIS NIGERIA MUST DIE.....

THIS NIGERIA MUST DIE FOR THE TRUE NIGERIA TO RISE.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State made a startling but sobering declaration recently. In paraphrase, the governor declared that the only thread holding Nigeria together is the indecision or prevarication of the South south states of the Niger Delta zone over where to belong.

According to him, any day the zone decides to join forces with the pro-Biafra protagonists of the Southeast zone, the current Nigeria will cease to exist. In the mind of the newly reborn vocal governor, the life of the present Nigeria hangs in the balance awaiting the final decision of the south south states.

The governor went on to lament the fact that in a nation with about 300 ethnicities, only one ethnic group, the Fulani, controls all the security, political and economic forces available. For him, this will ultimately determine what will tilt the balance on whether Nigeria survives or not.

There is no faulting Governor Okowa’s analysis in this regard. The final decision of the Niger Delta region is crucial towards solving the grave problem of the Nigerian nation. They have the power to tilt the balance and save our nation that is on a perpetual life support. If the people of the zone continue to play their wartime and post-civil war subservient role to the Fulani oligarchs, Nigeria will die eventually but quite slowly. But if they rise and assert their God-given right as equal citizens of Nigeria and not continue to present themselves as slaves to any other region or ethnic group in Nigeria, then they will be respected and our nation will survive.

Currently the minerals underneath their feet are being taken as booty by the oligarchs. They have endured this pillaging for more than fifty years now. If they wish to continue enjoying being pillaged by the conquering oligarchs, let them continue with their indecision. This is most painful as Governor Okowa lamented because while the minerals of the Niger Delta are being carted away and employed in the development and urbanization of western and northern cities, the south south zone is littered with primitive villages that have no hope of seeing any glimmer of civilization until the turn of the fourth millennium. If this is not enough incentive for the south south zone to call off their indecision, then their fate with that of the entire nation of Nigeria is forever sealed and hopeless.

While the minerals of Niger Delta are being “officially” exploited for “common good” of the “the nation” the precious minerals of the north like gold, diamond, uranium, platinum etc, that have the capacity to turn the entire economy of Nigeria around are tactically left in the hands of a few prominent members among the oligarchs who have become international millionaires mining them. If this type of information does not help those in the south south zone make up their minds on where they should belong; if they cannot realize that those they serve as slaves in Nigeria are even their worst enemies, then nobody should weep for them because they are forever doomed.

But back to Governor Okowa’s declaration. The real danger that spells imminent death for the present Nigeria is the concentration of all security apparatuses in the hands of one ethnic group. This is the clear and present danger for the nation of Nigeria. If this concentration had been in the hands of any other ethnic group besides the Fulani, it could be treated as benign. But for it to be in the hand of the Fulanis with all their history of invasion and conquest in Nigeria, the matter is far more serious than ordinary Nigerians are willing to concede.

The only reason why an ethnic group would seize all the security powers of a multiethnic country like Nigeria is because they are planning a conquest. They see war in the horizon. And this is what will kill the present Nigeria sooner than any one of us could imagine. Any day the Fulani that have all the powers in present-day Nigeria decide to use it according to their customary way of invasion and conquest, Nigeria will exist no more.

If Nigerian politicians cannot find ways to decentralize and redistribute Nigerian security apparatuses, we can as well begin a requiem for this hobbled and beleaguered nation of ours. The current Nigeria of power-concentration in the hands of one ethnic group, of election manipulation to perpetuate incompetence in power, of economic blockade and strangulation of one section of the country, of political marginalization of nearly one half of the nation, of booty-taking fifty years after the civil war, etc, etc, must die and die soonest for a new Nigeria to rise.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/oblongmedia.net/2019/05/04/this-nigeria-must-die-for-the-true-nigeria-to-rise/amp/

AN APPEAL FOR SOLIDARITY

Dear Friends,

Last month end we read  of a  horrible road  accident that happened on the  Enugu- PH  express way where about 9 persons  died  instantly and many with  serious  degrees of injuries. During my recent visit to Nigeria last month  I drove past this spot severally while  going to my birthplace  just a  couple of kms away and  can attest to the dangers. I  attach  the this  my  personal request/appeal (the  official  appeal  from the  community leader).

I sincerely ask for  your assistance in this  great distressful time of the community. Our prayers  and  solidarity  are  needed.  No amount is  small because  your 10 kobo added to my 5 kobo totals  15kobo and no more 10k. This  is  the time  to  show  our  brotherliness, our love  and  our  being neighbours. The mere fact that people  they don’t know  and may never meet from far away places    and from neighbouring towns like Nenwe (my town) etc  are showing Love would  play greatly in the psyche and healing of the wounded. Please show love  to these our families, our friends, our neighbours and  our friend’s  friends.

Please  contact or  send  directly your contributions( any amount ) to  the  community leader :

Ekpulambo Mgbowo Development Union Account number 1016068778 with Zenith Bank PLC Nigeria.

However, my friends who may wish more information and probable clarifications on quick overseas transfer  through WORLDREMIT may  feel free to in-box me or mail to charlie.mbc@gmail.com or chukwubike@gmail.com 

Please be generous to this community that is  already stretched to limits

Thanks

Charles O Chukwubike

££££££££$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$€€€€€€

 Dear compatriots, 
I write to thank all of you for your solidarity and show of concern to Ekpulambo Mgbowo community on the calamity that befell us on the 27th day of April 2019 when we lost not less than (9) persons from one family in Ameta in a ghastly motor accident as they were returning from a marriage ceremony.

As we commiserate with the families of the deceased, let us also remember those who survived the crash with serious and various degrees of broken limbs, hands, skulls and faces and who are in different hospitals in Enugu receiving and waiting to receive treatment because of mounting hospital bills. They are six in number. An operation carried out on Sunday on one of them gulped N1.8 million out of which only N500,000 has been deposited. This money was made available by some of our sons. The rest will be taken care of as soon as funds become available.

The community needs to visit the families of the bereaved with funds to alleviate their suffering in this trying times. I count on the support of all well meaning people of Mgbowo and friends to come to our rescue in this moment of grief. No amount is too small and I assure you of the judicious use of whatever is collected.

Please pay into:
Ekpulambo Mgbowo Development Union 
Account number 1016068778
with Zenith Bank PLC

PLEASE FORWARD THIS LETTER TO YOUR CONTACTS AS SOON AS YOU GET IT SO THAT WE DO NOT LOSE ANY OF THE SURVIVORS.

HRH IGWE JOHN AZUBUIKE IBE

 

THE DEPATURE OF A GOOD MAN :AUGUSTINE DURU

THE  DEPATURE  OF  A  GOOD  MAN :AUGUSTINE DURU

It is in human  nature  and more  the  African culture to talk good of  and show  positive  emotions about  someone  when  we  miss him especially through death, but  Augustine  was  a  man talked  good  of  when he  was  alive. He  was  a good  man  he  was  a man of peace.

 My  first  encounter  with Augustine Duru  was  in the  80s  at the Pontifical university in Rome. He was  specially  endeared  and loved  by  most of  the  fresh students  from Africa because  he was  always  there  to give  you   that brotherly, smile, look, and  advise   which were and are still  the most valuable  things  to anyone arriving Europe from Africa; things that no amount  of  money  can  buy. He  was trusted by the younger ones  and  he  never for  once  disappointed  nor deceived  anyone. Everyone in our  university  then would  attest to this.  He  was  a brilliant student  and  a man of the people : He was  a good  man.

In around 1983 he wedded  his  beautiful wife Felicia in the city of Marino and  most of  us  in the faculty were very proud (showing love)  to attend  the  wedding of this our  great brother who was  forming a  family.

He  was an Igboman to the core: silently working very hard   to  take great care of  his  family. A peaceful family that was  blessed  with two children. In the  community he was one of  the  elders  that almost  every president of Nigerian associations  and Igbo community  must have availed  themselves   with his good  guidance  and advise  during  great decisions.   During my double  tenure as the President of the Igbo Community in Rome/Lazio  he  didn’t attend  all the sessions  but there was  no great decision  that  he  was  not consulted  before   they were made. He  was  one of the Igbo community ‘backbones’ and  reflecting on those  years   I reckon that his advise to me then  during difficult times   were always ,for  reconciliation, peace, and non-punitive dictions  in most cases  he  mediated. I trusted  him and his counsels . The  Igbo community will miss Augustine  Duru greatly.

We  separated due  to work  and distance  but never forgot  each other however  our  mutual respect continued within us,  a respect that was  confessed  when  my brother in-law C.J  told me  he saw an Igbo girl to marry. When he mentioned her name (AdaezeDuru) I told him  he had my blessings , before I could place a phone call to Augustine to ask for the hand of his only daughter  he already blessed the marriage on hearing my name  and relationship with the suitor. We both  probably were secretly looking of  a way to continue  the good relationship that started in the University and  these young people   made it  for  us. I was  physically present in his  Village  home  to do all the Igbo traditional marriage  rites. He  was magnanimous, gentle and all the people who came  from Enugu state and Ebonyi  to marry Adaeze loved  him and the wonderful  welcome  he  gave  to us.  He gave me  Adaeze  and I will always respect and protect his princess as  I promised him that rainy day in his village. Dear  Augustine , As  you  continue  the journey I want  to reassure you that Adaeze  has  continued  to represent  you  and your family  well as an authentic Adaeze in our family and  your  wife Felicia  has been  a true  queen. We  shall never disappoint you and  your expectations.

As you continue  the journey we  shall all miss you in the  Igbo /Nigerian communities, your wife , children (Angelo and Adaeze) , your grand children, Aaron,Ifeoma, and Ashley  will miss you. Nenwe, Enugu and Ebonyi people  will miss your smiles. The great Owerri  community will miss you , but  we are all consoled that one  day all good  men will meet again.

May your gentle soul rest in peace  with  God, Amen.

From  your Friend and Inlaw

 Chief  Charles Okey. Chukwubike

(Anyanecheoha)

Rome Italy

02/05/2019