Commentariat Index - 010508

Happy New Month everyone. Pls pardon the 'naked' link left at the end of yesterday's post. None of such among today's offering. Apologies in advance for excluding the synopses today.

The pick of the African press

Edwin Madunagu (The Guardian, Lagos): Doubts and prospects

Karoli Ssemogerere (Daily Monitor, Kampala): The Pope is unveiled a second time to the world

Florence Mutesi (The New Times, Kigali): When Political Parties Suffered Suffocating Burden of a Despotic Regime

Edward Ssekabanja (New Vision, Kampala): Talk Back - Your Safety Starts With You

Jide Osuntokun (The Nation, Lagos): Nigeria’s national interests and strategies for national unity (3)

Charles Onyango-Obbo (The Nation, Nairobi): How African Country Folk Hit Back At Urban Snobs

From the rest of the World

Nichola D. Kristof (The New York Times): Can We Be as Smart as Bats?

Blessing-Miles Tendi (Guardian, UK): Arms and the man

Commentariat Index

FROM THE AFRICAN PRESS

Dele Agekameh (The Nation, Lagos): Time to rattle the 'sacred cows'

"In the last nine years, a lot of under-the-table deals have taken place. Those whose grandfathers and great grandfathers never came into contact with anybody in the Niger Delta Region are those now profiting from the oil resources of the region. Nigerians will be glad to know who these vampires are."


Seumas Milne (Mail & Guardian): Why do Zimbabwe and Tibet get all the attention?

"What has made human rights edicts by the US and Britain since the launch of the "war on terror" even more preposterous is that not only are they themselves supporting governments with similar or worse records, but they are also directly responsible for these outrages themselves: from illegal invasions and occupations to large-scale killing and torture -- along with phoney elections -- in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Anton Harber (BusinessDay,SA)- After Mugabe: the media challenge

"That the opposition has been able to win parliament in a situation where they have had almost no media platform, and faced the naked hostility of powerful state media, is a remarkable achievement...Much of the opposition communication has also been via SMS, another new technology hard for the state to control. In the words of my colleague, Tawana Kupe: “Zimbabweans have become masters of alternative communication and media strategies as surrogates for mainstream media.”"

Stephen T. Maimbodei (The Herald, Harare): Jendayi’s safari exposes Western hypocrisy

"Last December, she did it in Kenya, and now she is doing it in Zimbabwe, despite assurances by ZEC chairman Justice George Chiweshe that all electoral results are on the way.The outside world remembers that it was the US government through their top African diplomatic official Frazer who were the first to congratulate Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki as the winner, after the controversial December 27 2007 election, only to have the State Department backtrack from her statement a few days later."

Tony Marinho (The Nation, Lagos): Reversing Nigeria’s ‘fiscal political and corporate cultural castration’

"Our nation has the arts and culture it deserves – cheap and a disgrace and unexportable. More money is spent on buntings, balloons and populist Star Quest, a good project in its own right giving musical voice to the voiceless, than on Soyinka or Achebe in their life time. The real ‘money making’ culture remains comatose. Arts and culture worldwide are exactly like agriculture, needing not only government budgetary ‘subsidies’ but ‘financial fertilizers’ from the private sector to bear rich fruit and bring profitable harvest

Allister Sparks (BusinessDay,SA): Outrage and consequence in the twilight of a tyranthttp://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A758766
What brought about this sudden capitulation? One can only speculate, but the surge of public disapproval throughout the region, and particularly in SA, has undoubtedly played a role. As long as the disapproval came only from the “imperialist” west, Mugabe could brush it aside. But the surge of outrage in his own backyard shook him and opened cracks in the Zanu (PF) leadership

Plane Racism? - A PR crisis all the same

I'm not a PR man, but I don't need to be one to recognize a Public Relations crisis when it happens.

Commenterati - 290408

No, this is not just a play on the words- Commentariat & Index, but as in Glitterati, it's a pronoun describing the tribe of the commentariat.

Here's some more of today's better servings from them:

Olatunji Dare (The Nation, Nigeria): Encounters with Gani Fawehinmi

"It is given to only a few to know how their contemporaries and the larger society will remember them when they depart this mortal world. Gani Fawehinmi, our own Gani, can now count this gift among his sundry blessings"

Luke Onyekakeyah (The Guardian, Nigeria): Visioning for 2020: Constraints to national development

"With such uninspiring history of steering committees and national development, it would have been better if there were a change in the modus operandi in this dispensation. We have remained at the same spot over the years doing the same thing repeatedly. We need to move from the status quo that has not worked to something more proactive."

Prince Mashele (Businessday, SA): Imagination needed to avert looming crisis

"In international affairs, SA might not again attain the high esteem in which it was held in the first 13 years of democratic rule. The glory associated with the first decade of freedom made most of us proud to introduce ourselves as South African wherever we went."

Michael Nyamute (East African Standard): Markets can help pay for education at universities

"In Africa, many a government finances are in dire straits, but the demand to provide at least basic education is still strong. Government financing is insufficient for universal basic education, let alone higher education. Radical changes are required in the financing of education worldwide...Securitisation is one such option."

Tony Leon (BusinessDay, SA): Depressing consistency in Mbeki’s stance on Mugabe

"Although the endgame in Zimbabwe remains unknown, the locust years, which saw the destruction of one of Africa’s greatest economic success stories and potent symbols of democratic reconciliation, yields no end of lessons, most of them sombre.
The relative ease and speed with which Mugabe could plunder his country and starve his people is the most obvious. But Zimbabwe also demonstrated the severe limits of SA’s willingness, or ability, to lead the African renaissance to which Mbeki committed his presidency. In the words of Harvard’s Samantha Power, faced with a real test he “flunked it”."

Commetariat Index

I must admit that I spend considerable time everyday reading opinion pieces and commentaries in Newspapers, Magazines and increasingly these days on blogs.

Recently I came across a word that describes this community of op-ed wrters, columnists and commentators who fuel mine or others daily indulgence. This word is none other than Commentariat (aka Commentorate).

Starting today, this blog will attempt to put a link to some of the best the commentariat has to offer especially those offerings with an African bias.

Welcome to the first post on the Commentariat Index

Raenette Taljaard (The Times, SA): We should all be up in arms

Mick Hume (The Times, UK): Zimbabwe: keep your nose out

Is Atiku still the VP?

Yes, according to President Yardy's photographer. The words in black are from Aso Rock's website

PRESIDENT YAR'ADUA RECEIVES CHAIRMAN OF EXXON-MOBILMar 29, 2008, 13:51

FROM LEFT, VICE PRESIDENT ATIKU ABUBAKAR, PRESIDENT UMARU MUSA YAR'ADUA, MR. REX TILLERSON, CHAIRMAN/CEO EXXONMOBIL AND ALHAJI RILWAN LUKMAN, HONOURARY SPECIAL ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT ON ENERGY DURING MR.REX'S VISIT TO THE STATE HOUSE ABUJA ON FRIDAY.

Let's hope they notice this error in time.

Books as Romantic Deal Maker or Breaker?

It's the ultimate bookworm dilemma

African Soccer - My Missing Memories

I wonder why I woke up this morning with the feeling that I was missing something.

By the time I was getting through breakfast, the name of Emmanuel Maradas popped up in my head.

Mr. Maradas is a FIFA Media heavyweight these days, but in his former job he was the editor of the now rested African Soccer Magazine.

The only relic of that by-gone era is this link to what used to be the website.

What I am missing is the collection of that Magazine that I built up from my under graduate days at Ife. I hope it's still where I left it in the store at my parent's home in Nigeria. The only thing is I really doubt it.

I'm looking for anyone who is willing to part with old issues of African Soccer Magazine - please leave a comment here if you know of any.

Henry Okah: Connections in High Places

Following the Nigerian Government's decision this week to charge the Niger Delta freedom fighter/rebel/arms dealer (take your pick) to court, my curiosity has led me to find out a bit more about him and his network might be wider than initial media reports have suggested.

My search has been made easy because news about him pops up everywhere you turn. They've ranged from the interview with his wife, Azuka which someone described as "saying very little yet painting enough of the objective picture". ( 'objective' in that quote is very subjective if you catch my drift). His brother has also been speaking. Even his children haven't escaped this PR blitz to let us all into his private world.

But all that didn't satisfy my curiosity, so the search went on. Global Guerillas even ran a revealing profile on him. But the Financial Times have today pointed in the direction of my suspicions by suggesting a link with Arms Dealer Extraordinaire Viktor Bout, who was arrested in Bangkok yesterday

"Most recently, he[Johan Peleman, an arms trade expert who works for the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo] added, law enforcement agencies had been investigating possible ties between companies associated with Mr Bout and militant groups in Nigeria, whose sophisticated weaponry has made it difficult for the federal government to re-establish control over the oil-producing Niger delta." (FT, 07/03/08, page 8)

If their claim is established, then Henry Okah might have to provide a more water tight alibi than what is presently making the media rounds.

Adios Netscape

Tommorow marks the end of an era in the Internet's story. Netscape goes down tommorow.

Thanks to the guys behind it for the memories while it lasted.

Can't get enough of him

If like me, you can't seem to get enough of Barack Obama in spite of the deluge from the media at every corner you turn to, then you've got to see this website by a Photographer who has covered him for the past FOURTEEN MONTHS.

Justin Webb thinks the site is as cool as the owner - a certain Scout Tufankjian and I wholeheartedly agree.

FLS, there are messages for us on slide 7 of the 155 of the Barack Obama link under Barack Obama campaign. If he can, Yes we Can!

The day after our own whatever-you-call-it Tuesday

So now that the Nigerian version of Super Tuesday has turned to Black Tuesday, most folk are just focused on getting on with their lives after the intrusion of the live broadcast from the Abuja court room.

The words of Solomon Emifa in today's New York Times seem to capture the mood.

“For us to gamble on another election is not what we are willing to take right now. We have in the back of our minds what is taking place in Kenya, in Somalia, Chad. No one here wants to have that kind of experience. No one wants to die because of a political crisis. Because at the end of the day, these guys are very rich, so we are the ones who are really going to suffer.”

All Hail the Power of Online Graphics

This has got to be one of the coolest charts I've come across so far. (by way of the New York Times)

What is your Nigerian Age?

While watching the Liverpool v. Inter game on Tuesday with a friend, he reminisced about what could have been if he took to playing football rather than study for a university degree. During that conversation the idea of him still considering the football option came up, all he needed to do was shave off a decade from his actual 28 years of age.
Everton Football Club's manager, David Moyes has now voiced what many have always thought but wouldn't say.
That many Nigerian and African footballers are actually older than they claim to be.
Moyes had this to say about his striker Yakubu Aiyegbeni -
"What people don't appreciate is that he’s only 25, albeit a Nigerian 25, and so if that is his age he’s still got a good few years ahead of him,"
This same allegation has come up before and something tells me it won't go away quietly.

Why do you blog?

I'm starting a little effort today to answer this question.

My first respondent to this question is Ayo Oladejo - the name behind HAYSPIRATION and here's his take

"There is an African proverb which says that a dead old man is like a burning library.
Some people might not be so lucky to write an autobiography.
A blog will ensure that one leaves a trail on the sands of time in a very accessible way even when one is long gone, so that the African proverb can be made irrelevant"

Is blogging a waste of time, or the internet an inanity?

Doris Lessing, the current Nobel Laureate thinks so. She says it loud and clear in her acceptance speech.

"How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?"

But Andrew Sullivan does a brilliant job in laying out an informed case against the notion that the internet and "Youtube, is making America stupid."

Yes, blogging can be a time waster just like anything else done without the required discipline or restraint. But it has far greater value than Ms, Lessing dares to give it credit for.

What are your thoughts on blogging?

photocredit: Martin Cleaver/AP

The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading.

I'm moving house this week and with that comes the necessary and tedious task of putting away the books into boxes. While getting ready to leave for work today, I decided that it was better for me to send back some of the library books I'd borrowed before moving. The only challenge was that I've had these books since early Januaary and haven't gone halfway with any! Still they will have to be returned. My default thinking is that I need to consume & process the daily feed from the web, TV and newspapers as the books will always be there anyway. This thinking needs to be challenged.
Then, during my lunch break, I came across an article by Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor of the Multiple Intelligences fame. In the brilliant Washington Post piece he makes the case that books may not always be here.

Two aspects of the traditional book may be in jeopardy, however. One is the author's capacity to lay out a complex argument, which requires the reader to study and reread, following a circuitous course of reasoning. The Web's speedy browsing may make it difficult for digital natives to master Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (not that it was ever easy).
The other is the book's special genius for allowing readers to enter a private world for hours or even days at a time. Many of us enjoyed long summer days or solitary train rides when we first discovered an author who spoke directly to us. Nowadays, as clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle has pointed out, young people seem to have a compulsion to stay in touch with one another all the time; periods of lonely silence or privacy seem toxic. If this lust for 24/7 online networking continues, one of the dividends of book reading may fade away. The wealth of different literacies and the ease of moving among them -- on an iPhone for example -- may undermine the once-hallowed status of books.

The ability to achieve a fine balancing act in making sense of information and improving literacy will be to think of and adapt to media as they were, are and will be.

In Prof. Garner's words, "maybe there's a technology, just waiting to be invented, that will help us acquire this invaluable cognitive power"

I really hope there is.

Note: The title of this post was borrowed from Howard Gardner

Can He be Nigeria's Obama?

While weighing up the possible fall-outs of Yar A'dua's election being voided, Sonala Olumhense wraps up his column in today's Lagos Guardian with these words:
"Pat Utomi: In 2007, he was the outsider who could have engineered a fundamental difference. He found, however, that Nigerian politics had not left the realm of money and rigging. Since then, however, a young man called Barrack Obama has emerged. His terrain might be the United States, but globalization has made him an international and Nigerian subject. If anyone is to benefit locally from Obama's emergence and message, it is Utomi."

Will his 'insurgency' have any chance of survival this time around?

Who else do you think fits the bill? - comments welcome.

photocredit - kwenu.com

Kofi Annan On the Record

So what is it with Africa? Yeah. I posed this question in Rwanda after the genocide: what is it in our society that makes us periodically turn on each other? Not only do we turn on each other, but then we blame the outside. I say this is a cancer from within that we need to fix.
...I was criticized for it. But it is a fact. It's good to have the support of the international community and all that. But the root of the problem is here. We know what the problem is; we know what needs to be done.

- Newsweek Interview, Feb 18, 2008 Issue

French Democracy mirrors Nigeria's

In the closing paragraphs of his piece last Sunday , Lagos Guardian's star columnist, Reuben Abati situated The Barack Obama Phenomenon currently sweeping America against the reality of politics in Nigeria.

Here are his words: "In Nigeria, party primaries are a charade. They provide an opportunity for party chieftains, self-appointed Godfathers and their band of thugs to impose candidates on the party and the people. Here, the voter is callously discounted and abused."

He might as well have been speaking about the Parisian suburn of Neuilly. According to the blog - Certain ideas of Europe, the elections for local mayor there "reads more like the machinations of a tin-pot republic than those of a serious democratic municipality"

Nicolas Sarkozy is allegedly playing the Chris Uba role in this instance. The drama playing out is "filled with late-night telephone calls, last-minute press conferences and statements cooked up on street corners, exposing all the elements at work in the Sarkosphere".

With elections holding next month, we'll know then if Sarkozy truly pulls it off. Whether the swanky people of Neuilly let their former mayor get away with it is another matter.

photocredit - Reuters