Were these really the first women to serve as "police" in Nigeria? Either way, it is an interesting historical video.
Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
28 August, 2013
11 August, 2013
What We Say About Ourselves - 1
My apologies for not updating this blog in a while.
My three most recent posts have been on "propaganda" in the foreign/international media (here, here and here). It is usually not as overt as these examples, and the massaging, spinning, pointed editing and unabashed distortion of the "news" is not always done to quite that degree.
But you already knew that. Most people know "news" dissemination outlets -- be they government information ministers, mainstream media, "alternative" media, "satirists", bloggers, etc. -- try to push their viewers/listeners/readers towards adopting whatever happens to be that particular outlets' political or ideological agenda.
You also know that most people who criticize media bias, are not really criticizing media bias as an abstract concept, but are rather lambasting that part of the media (mainstream or alternative) that is not biased in favour of their agenda; such people amusingly tout equally biased outlets that happen to be biased in favour of their agendas as being more truthful.
If you are like me, and you just want to know what exactly is going on, you are out of luck.
But all those posts about media in the rest of the world are a digression from the purpose of this blog.
Frankly, we Nigerians/Africans spend too much time and energy on what is done by other peoples in their own countries. Many of us are loquacious "experts" when it comes to the minutiae of politics in the USA, Britain, France, Israel-Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula (much of this "expertise" based on dubious reports from the international media).
In the meantime:
(a) We know comparatively little about politics in the African countries that are our continental next-door neighbours.
(b) We don't know anywhere near as much as we should about other regions within our own countries.
(c) We are so powerless in the politics of our own hometowns that we cannot make the authorities do so much as clear the piles of garbage that build up on our streets.
It doesn't matter though. We know everything about USA, Britain, France and Western Asia.
While I am here, criticizing "propaganda" in the foreign media, the truth is the Nigerian and African media get their "news" of the world by culling stories from the foreign media. We get our news about the rest of Africa ... by culling stories from the foreign media.
Dangerously, our constitution-writers, media commentators, academics, intellectuals, politicians, technocrats, policy-makers, diplomats, generals and other decision-makers also tend to cull their thoughts and "analysis" of our problems, prospects and path to development from foreign sources as well. The African continent is known for self-defeating policy-making, in part because so many key decision-makers have absorbed other people's views of the African continent, and have come to the conclusion that "African strategic interests" are a set of actions and decisions that are actually in other people's strategic interests at the expense of ours.
Ultimately, we the Africans are producers of some of the world's most insidiously anti-African propaganda.
More on this in subsequent posts.
My three most recent posts have been on "propaganda" in the foreign/international media (here, here and here). It is usually not as overt as these examples, and the massaging, spinning, pointed editing and unabashed distortion of the "news" is not always done to quite that degree.
But you already knew that. Most people know "news" dissemination outlets -- be they government information ministers, mainstream media, "alternative" media, "satirists", bloggers, etc. -- try to push their viewers/listeners/readers towards adopting whatever happens to be that particular outlets' political or ideological agenda.
You also know that most people who criticize media bias, are not really criticizing media bias as an abstract concept, but are rather lambasting that part of the media (mainstream or alternative) that is not biased in favour of their agenda; such people amusingly tout equally biased outlets that happen to be biased in favour of their agendas as being more truthful.
If you are like me, and you just want to know what exactly is going on, you are out of luck.
But all those posts about media in the rest of the world are a digression from the purpose of this blog.
Frankly, we Nigerians/Africans spend too much time and energy on what is done by other peoples in their own countries. Many of us are loquacious "experts" when it comes to the minutiae of politics in the USA, Britain, France, Israel-Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula (much of this "expertise" based on dubious reports from the international media).
In the meantime:
(a) We know comparatively little about politics in the African countries that are our continental next-door neighbours.
(b) We don't know anywhere near as much as we should about other regions within our own countries.
(c) We are so powerless in the politics of our own hometowns that we cannot make the authorities do so much as clear the piles of garbage that build up on our streets.
It doesn't matter though. We know everything about USA, Britain, France and Western Asia.
While I am here, criticizing "propaganda" in the foreign media, the truth is the Nigerian and African media get their "news" of the world by culling stories from the foreign media. We get our news about the rest of Africa ... by culling stories from the foreign media.
Dangerously, our constitution-writers, media commentators, academics, intellectuals, politicians, technocrats, policy-makers, diplomats, generals and other decision-makers also tend to cull their thoughts and "analysis" of our problems, prospects and path to development from foreign sources as well. The African continent is known for self-defeating policy-making, in part because so many key decision-makers have absorbed other people's views of the African continent, and have come to the conclusion that "African strategic interests" are a set of actions and decisions that are actually in other people's strategic interests at the expense of ours.
Ultimately, we the Africans are producers of some of the world's most insidiously anti-African propaganda.
More on this in subsequent posts.
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