'How to write about Africa' by Binyavanga Wainaina

Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina's sarcastically written excellent essay How To Write About Africa makes for good read in the current Granta magazine which is a special on Africa.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Nigeria, News, Africa, Wainaina

Odd Facts : The Land Of Twins

Nigeria holds the World Record in Multiple Births.

Twins info about Nigeria:
Most of the multiple births, comes from the women of the Yoruba Ethnic group in the Western part of the Country who have the highest number of multiple births in the world.
Nigeria has more of Identical twins than Fraternal twins.
The tribe of birth determines the names of twins in Nigeria. Among the Hausas Northern tribe of Nigeria, the first is called Hassan, while the second is called Hussien. In the Yoruba tribe of Western Nigeria, they are called Taiwo and Kehinde. While in Mid-western of Nigeria (Edo State) It is Odion and Akhere.

Source: Twinsworld

In Igbo-Ora, residents have no explanation of why their own town should be more twin prone than any other. Some attribute the phenomenon to providence, others to lineage and still others to diet, specifically the reputed high oestrogen content of agida, a local variant of the popular yam root tuber used as a staple.

"Agida grows in clusters and anybody who eats it is bound to have babies in multiples" said Mojisola Adeniyi, whose father had four sets of twins, of
which she was one. Robert Asiedu, a yam specialist at the internationally-funded International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, 60km east of Igbo-Ora, is sceptical of a yam lin

Source: Science In Africa

It's a curious, but little-known fact that the rate of twin births in West Africa is about four times higher than in the rest of the world. The centre of this twin zone is Igbo-Ora, a sleepy southwest town in Nigeria.

Source: BBC World Service

Nigeria, News, Twins, Fact

Demonstration Of Craze

This Sunday Punch front page is just to serve as a reminder that we still have a long way to go with our "demonstration of craze." A really long way.


Nigeria, News

Infamous 'Nigerian scam' gets Russian spin

What is Abacha and the jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky have in common? Yes thats right they both inspire scammers. Baiting guillible foreigners in the name of the despot has been Nigerian scammers classic template since the dictator kicked the bucket in 1998 (who hasn't recieved one email from Mariam Abacha or his son Mohammed?) but now the Russians have put a new spin on it and don't be surprise if you recieve a email from Leila Khodorkovsky or Larissa Sosnitskaya requesting your help to transfer/invest US$45 million (euro37 million) of the tycoon's money.

"Dear friend, I got your reliable contact from my husband's business diary ..." begins one letter from "Leila Khodorkovsky," claiming to be the billionaire's wife — whose actual name is Inna. The letter requests assistance investing US$45 million (euro37 million) of the tycoon's money and promises compensation.

More...
Nigeria, News, Russia, Scam

Assessing America's behaviour Towards Nigeria

Paul I. Adujie asks:
Why else would the United States, a supposedly friendly nation with Nigeria, always find itself frequently engaged in the throwing of verbal and undiplomatic projectiles and cudgels at Nigeria?

Real Talk

A very interesting interview with Sowore.

People who can't sleep can't dream, I would like to see a Nigeria the day after a revolution. Seriously, the world of dreams smacks of certain laziness that makes me think we are still on our knees waiting for answered prayers; it depicts a surreal life of something out of space. Dreams make me think of complacency, you don't really need to go to sleep to know how you want Nigeria to be!

Alert on the going on in Aviation

Kola Animasaun's Voice of Reason this Sunday called attention to the supposed reorganisation going on in the beleagured Nigerian aviation. He particularly made mention of Babalola's appointment of Harold Olusegun Demuren, as the director-general of NCAA. Demuren was a senior officer of the scraped FCAA and and also the owner of Afrijet Airlines, a mostly air cargo company. This obvious conflict of interest mysteriously escaped Babalola and so now we have this.

"The NCAA boss, who was until his appointment the managing director of Afrijet Airlines, reportedly grounded the aircraft on grounds of safety.But Mr. Ibidapo alleged that the grounding was borne out of the need to favour Afrijet Airlines for continuation of the airlift.According to him, the grounded aircraft had successfully airlifted pilgrims shortly before the new NCAA boss assumed duty."

I couldn't agree more with Animasaun that Obasanjo should seek second opinion. Demuren with his three directorate solution is definitely wrong for the job. This impending tragedy must be rectify before its too late.

Nigeria, News, World, Africa, Aviation

Site of the Week: Nigerian Blogs Aggregator

The featured site this week is Nigerianbloggers.com, a parking lot for naija bloggers. Its a very novel and timely site for us Nigerians writing about our thoughts and opinion of daily events in the country and around the world. The site is pristine enough which allowed it to focus on its stated goal with the featured blogs listed alphabetically accompany by the RSS feeds of the recently updated blogs and their summary direct from Technorati.com.

From the site:
Nigerian Blogs aggregator was founded by Kayode Muyibi on the 24th of August 2005 as a move to establish a home for live feeds for all Nigerian written blogs arround the globe and also blogs of Nigerian interests especially by expatriates based in Nigeria.

Their future plans:
1. Blogging Awards. (Team ready but waiting for my feedback)
2. Blog entry of the week.
3. A Chat room ,Still looking for a good server.
4. A sourvenier Shop, selling shirts and sourveneirs with beautiful logos of "I AM A NIGERIAN BLOGGER" etc.
5 A section for freebies. Still contemplating on whether it is necessary. Stay tuned.

Blogs, Nigeria, News

The Persistent Praise On Muazu Can't Be Ignore

I first heard of Gov. Ahmed Muazu of Bauchi state's good work on Nairaland and ordinarily I didn't paid much attention to it because Bauchi is one of the shariah state in the country which make it uninteresting, at least to me, in term of what one might expect from a community adhering to such barbaric tenet. However the more recent news and analysis about the performing Muazu can't be ignore inspite of his sharia introduction into Bauchi state. I am not witnessed to his performance but lots of people has and so I'm ready to take their word for it. If the praise accruing on him are justified, then the Nigerian democratic option can't be jeopadized any more. All we need is time and we shall get there. kudos.

Debt {Return} Skewed Argument

US Lawmakers Call Nigerian Debt "Odious"

"We feel that the U.S. should not accept the payment of debt from Nigeria given that it is one of the world's most impoverished countries," said the letter. It added that a write-off would cost the United States, the world's largest economy, "a relatively small amount in terms of the U.S. budget, but large in terms of the potential impact in Nigeria".

The lawmakers, led by Rep. Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat, and Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat of California, noted that 20 percent of Nigerian children do not live to the age of five. In the impoverished West African nation, 2,500 children die every day from preventable diseases, while more than 300,000 Nigerians die each year from HIV/AIDS.

A fool's argument

Read him here

The Coming Census

There has never been a conducted Nigerian census without controversy and contradictions which make this year's planned head count all the more interesting. The volatility of the planned census is underlined by the fact that religion and ethnicity data will not feature on the census questionaire. This means that Nigerians are not mature enough to accept whatever results those excluded data might bring. This is telling indeed. According to the chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Chief Samu'ila Danko Makama, "the stakeholders brainstormed over two days and agreed on every variable except two, religion and ethnicity. There were two schools of thought. One held that the two variables should be included, the other felt it should be excluded, because they have a potential to generate a lot of controversy, and in the end, we will not have acceptable census.

"So the stakeholders decided that the National Population Commission should submit a paper to the Federal Government outlining the merits and demerits of inclusion or otherwise of the two variables from the 2006 census," (This Day, December 18, 2005 ). This is indeed immmature. The cut the limb to heal the wound classical approach to solving problem in Nigeria. Lets recall that the planned census was to have taken placed in 2003 but was postponed to 2005 due to the general elections of 2003 and then again postponed till this year. Meaning government could have avoided conducting it if it could. Statistics like religion and ethnicity are not necessarily have to be included on census form but the evading approach by the government point toward inability to face the problem head on. One day we would still want to know how many muslims, christians and others we have in Nigeria and how many Ijaw, Nupe, Efik, Igalas and others we are. Lets hope we will be mature enough in the future and confident enough to include those data without them having to generate controversy.

So after this cutting and chopping, it is expected that NPC will not have excuse to a)try to postpone it again and b) to let the exercise fail or embroil in controversy when finally conducted. The EU is supporting the exercise with about 20 billion naira, which cover more than half of the estimated total cost of the exercise so the best enumeration tools and officers are expected. The importance of well conducted census cannot be overemphasised. Indeed 2006 will show how far we have gone in this post military journey called democracy.




Nigeria, News

Marwa's Ordeal

It was as a surprise, the end of year news about Marwa's ordeal with EFCC. Marwa was among the more popular gov. of erstwhile Abacha's administration and a probable presidential hopeful. The guardian newspaper had considered him a rising star for 2007. Of course I don't buy into the nonsense of his travail having to do with his presidential ambition and Obasanjo's third term but he must have really pissed someone off high on up to get in trouble like that. His site is currently down and no word from his supporter's site as yet who considered him "the Nigerian Option"; but his unrequested name analysis from kabalarian philosophy produced this:

Though the name Marwa creates the urge to understand and help others, we emphasize that it causes procrastination, lack of confidence, and the inability to realize your goals and ambitions. This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the fluid systems.

Nonsense of course but it does underline the present bad luck plaquing him.Anyway corruption free loving society can't be bother on what underlying reason a thief is caught but that he is caught.

More:
From AgainstBabangida site
Marwa finally opens up
The Marwa Movement

In The News

First woman police commissioner appointed in Ekiti state.

419 is still biting....incredulously

Child labour in cocoa
farms????

More evidence of lack of self organization as NFA can't properly elect its president.

Also Chidi Anselm Odinkalu discussed why the disgraced Balogun should be disbarred and CBN Gives New Conditions for Foreign Reserve Management

Happy New Year 2006

This is wishing every one out there happy new year and best of lucks in all your endeavour. We hope for good news in 2006.