It has been a couple of years since I posted regularly on this blog. You know how it is with life. A lot has happened, and I have been busy.
There is a new president, but the issues remain the same.
I hope to restart regular commentary.
There is much to talk about.
I am embedding Sunny Okosuns 1980s hit "Which Way Nigeria". It is interesting that he references mistakes make during the 1970s Oil Boom, considering the mistakes we made during the 2000s Oil Boom.
It is also interesting that President Buhari is back for a second stint as Nigeria's Head of State. His first tenure, beginning in 1983, was separated from President Obasanjo's first tenure by a 4-year administration led by a lifelong civilian who took office as the 1970s Oil Boom ended and the emerging global economic environment of the 1980s turned problematic for Nigeria. Decades later, their respective second tenures in the Fourth Republic were separated 8 years, and two lifelong civilians who took over from Obasanjo just as the 2000s Oil Boom ended and the global environment of the 2010s turned problematic for Nigeria.
Many things have changed in our economy, notably telephony and the internet, but fundamentally nothing of real significance has changed.
Add to this a political system that never answered any of the questions raised in the 1950s, opting instead to recycle the same questions tediously without solution. Back then, they worried about which Region was to produce the Prime Minister. Today, the argument is over which "geopolitical zone" should produce the presidents (and which senatorial zone is to produce the governor), with little or no discussion of anything that can be termed an issue of importance or substance. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone who has served as president in the Fourth Republic did so based on "geopolitical zone" calculations, and not because they ever did or said anything that would lead anyone to think that they understood our problems much less had deduced a solution to any of the problems.
Anyway, enjoy the late Sunny Okosuns (RIP) singing "Which Way Nigeria".
Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
29 August, 2016
03 September, 2013
CBN's Sanusi Lamido Sanusi on Vested Interests
The always outspoken Central Bank of Nigeria boss addresses "youths" on confronting vested interests. Perhaps the event organizers should have given him more time to speak.
28 August, 2013
Permit the Digression ....
Were these really the first women to serve as "police" in Nigeria? Either way, it is an interesting historical video.
11 March, 2013
Infrastructure and Trade
One of the longstanding clichés about the African continent is the statement that it is easier to do something (e.g. transportation, phone calls, trade in goods, investment, e.t.c.) between an African country and a European or North American country than it is to do the same thing between that African country and another African country -- even if that other country is right next door.
The report above details the positive changes in the lives of Nigerians and Camerounians attendant upon the completion of the Enugu-Bamenda highway. Our people are entrepreneurs, gifted at figuring out ways to earn a living provided the opportunity to earn a living is not blocked, limited or otherwise distorted in service of the interests of the internal and external powers that be.
These are things we should have started doing as far back as the 1960s, shifting away from the economically distortionary colonial transportation network (particularly railways) designed to move our raw materials to the ports and onwards to Europe, and shifting towards a new transportation structure that allows for intra-African comparative advantages to define new patterns of economic activity. Unfortunately, we spent the 1960s fighting each other, and have spent the decades since then in simmering distrust.
The report above details the positive changes in the lives of Nigerians and Camerounians attendant upon the completion of the Enugu-Bamenda highway. Our people are entrepreneurs, gifted at figuring out ways to earn a living provided the opportunity to earn a living is not blocked, limited or otherwise distorted in service of the interests of the internal and external powers that be.
These are things we should have started doing as far back as the 1960s, shifting away from the economically distortionary colonial transportation network (particularly railways) designed to move our raw materials to the ports and onwards to Europe, and shifting towards a new transportation structure that allows for intra-African comparative advantages to define new patterns of economic activity. Unfortunately, we spent the 1960s fighting each other, and have spent the decades since then in simmering distrust.
The Insidiousness of Propaganda (3) - Another Example
You've probably seen this video. It is almost 2 years old.
This type of example is easy to "reveal" or "expose". What bothers me are the adjustments and edits made to information reported as "news", that none of us as viewers/readers/listeners are in a position to detect.
For the record, this isn't a rant against the "mainstream media". To be honest, critics of the media are as apt to "adjust" and "edit" as the news outlets are. And don't get me started on politicians, and on the people who are very adamantly attached to politicians, political parties and political ideologies.
This type of example is easy to "reveal" or "expose". What bothers me are the adjustments and edits made to information reported as "news", that none of us as viewers/readers/listeners are in a position to detect.
For the record, this isn't a rant against the "mainstream media". To be honest, critics of the media are as apt to "adjust" and "edit" as the news outlets are. And don't get me started on politicians, and on the people who are very adamantly attached to politicians, political parties and political ideologies.
22 January, 2013
The Insidiousness of Propaganda (2)
This post continues from the one immediately prior.
I have known for decades that there is no such thing as "objective" and "unbiased" when it comes to the media. Indeed, I strive to get "news" from rival sources with contradictory biases, knowing that each side will highlight the part of the news that ties into their bias and ignore the part of the news that doesn't. Even so, I caught myself one day having a viscerally negative reaction to a politician from a foreign country (i.e. not Nigeria) after months of reading relentlessly negative portrayals of that politician from variously biased news sources from the man's home continent.
What made these sources (from the "right" and the "left") dislike the man was his contrary opinion on one specific issue on which journalists from the "right" and "left" of this particular region agreed on. The thing is, the man had every right to have that opinion, and regardless of whether I agreed with him or not, the journalists' shared position was simply an ideological opinion and not an absolute truth.
To be honest, I didn't and don't have an opinion on the man, because I do not understand the man's language and hence have never heard (or read) him expressing his opinion in his own words, from his own mouth (or pen). Everything I have ever heard or learned about him came from the mouths and pens of people who dislike him because he doesn't share their opinion. They tend to caricature him as being stupid, looking stupid and talking stupid. I always made it a point to disregard the caricaturing, but one day, in one moment, after years of reading about him in the English-language media, I looked at a picture of him and the first thing that came to mind was he looked stupid.
I instantaneously caught myself, realized that for all my efforts to block out the propaganda, I had in fact been affected by it.
This video, pulled from Youtube, discusses how journalists, politicians and the media can subtly or openly influence and manipulate citizen perceptions of other peoples.
I have known for decades that there is no such thing as "objective" and "unbiased" when it comes to the media. Indeed, I strive to get "news" from rival sources with contradictory biases, knowing that each side will highlight the part of the news that ties into their bias and ignore the part of the news that doesn't. Even so, I caught myself one day having a viscerally negative reaction to a politician from a foreign country (i.e. not Nigeria) after months of reading relentlessly negative portrayals of that politician from variously biased news sources from the man's home continent.
What made these sources (from the "right" and the "left") dislike the man was his contrary opinion on one specific issue on which journalists from the "right" and "left" of this particular region agreed on. The thing is, the man had every right to have that opinion, and regardless of whether I agreed with him or not, the journalists' shared position was simply an ideological opinion and not an absolute truth.
To be honest, I didn't and don't have an opinion on the man, because I do not understand the man's language and hence have never heard (or read) him expressing his opinion in his own words, from his own mouth (or pen). Everything I have ever heard or learned about him came from the mouths and pens of people who dislike him because he doesn't share their opinion. They tend to caricature him as being stupid, looking stupid and talking stupid. I always made it a point to disregard the caricaturing, but one day, in one moment, after years of reading about him in the English-language media, I looked at a picture of him and the first thing that came to mind was he looked stupid.
I instantaneously caught myself, realized that for all my efforts to block out the propaganda, I had in fact been affected by it.
This video, pulled from Youtube, discusses how journalists, politicians and the media can subtly or openly influence and manipulate citizen perceptions of other peoples.
17 January, 2013
Channels TV Report on the Nigerian Police College, Ikoyi, Lagos
I criticize the Nigerian Police Force a lot, explicitly and implicitly. Every Nigerian does.
Even police officers are critical of the Force, none more so than Sergeant Musa Usman, the speaker of truth to power whom I wrote about in this post. I still don't know what happened to Sergeant Usman. If you know anything more about his story, leave a reply or email me.
Among many posts I have made directly or indirectly about the Force is this one, about the murder of a 3-year-old girl, Kaosarat (or Kausarat) Muritala. In September of 2012, the Police Corporal accused of the crime was convicted and sentenced to death. I have not seen anything in the media in terms of an appeal, or in terms of the sentence being carried out.
There is another side of the story, one told in part by Sergeant Usman. The conditions of service of the Nigerian Police Force not only encourage things like graft and corruption, but discourage things like bravery or initiative in the face of violent criminals.
I have often said on this blog that the people who govern Nigeria do not want Nigeria to have an effective law enforcement system or an effective judiciary. If these institutions functioned properly, most of what the political and economic leadership are currently free to do in advancement of their self-interest would become impossible, difficult or would attract a higher risk of sanction than currently pertains. As such, the people most responsible for ensuring that the Police Force are effective are simultaneously the people least interested in the Police Force being effective.
This is not just true of political leadership beyond the Force, but is true of leadership within the Force. Read the blog post on Sergeant Usman, and you will see where he makes clear that the top brass of the Force are ultimately responding for the corruption and graft. They deploy their men in a manner so as to make money for themselves, taking a cut of whatever "action" their men are involved in and passing a share of that cut up the chain of command.
This paradox of the government being constitutionally responsible for an effective law enforcement system while being simultaneously opposed, in practice, to the existence of effective law enforcement has existed since the founding on the modern Nigerian Police Force as an arm of the British Colonial Government(s). From the start, the Nigerian Police Force has been obliged to systemically ignore the fact that the government(s) it served were illegitimate, that these governments could only sustain themselves in power by doing illegitimate and unconstitutional things, and that the policy-making output of these governments were inevitably going to be just as illegitimate.
Indeed, from the very start the Nigerian Police have been poorly paid, and have been expected to supplement their wages through activities that were just as illegitimate as the activities of the governments they served. Yes, believe it or not, Nigerian Police were "supplementing" their pay as far back as the colonial days. I know we have all been taught to believe that everything was perfect when the British ruled us, but that is colonial propaganda still being spread by the products of colonial education systems.
Having said that, the British were a foreign people pursuing their own interests at the expense of ours. What is our excuse? We regained our self-rule in 1960. Why have we continued the pattern? Why are we consigning ourselves to a situation where public security is ephemeral rather than substantive?
As citizens, we perceive the police to be behaving badly, but in reality the police are doing exactly what is expected of them. This is what they were created to do, this is what they are trained to do. Their original job was never to protect us from crime, but to protect the British colonialists from us and to punish us if we didn't obey British decrees that we neither approved of nor were consulted about. What we in post-colonial Nigeria see as their brutal treatment of "bloody civilians" is the modern iteration of an institutional culture put in place from the very beginning to create a Force that sees us, the people they are supposed to protect, as people to be beaten into submission on behalf of whoever happens to be in government. Indeed, the post-colonial police have been more likely to aid in rigging an election than they have been to arrest an election rigger.
Again, one can see why the British would do this .... but what is our excuse?
I am a federalist, like every other Nigerian, so I am not philosophically opposed to "state police", but calling for "state police" ignores the basic problem. The Regional and Provincial police forces of the past were just as likely to follow the colonial paradigm, and just as ineffectual when it came to the issue of public security and crime-fighting. If things seems more peaceful in the past, it is because there were fewer armed robbery gangs, for example, and not because the Colonial or First Republic police had any particular skill at fighting armed robbery gangs. Beating up the political opponents of the major regional First Republic parties was a more likely function.
What I am trying to get you to understand is that the Police Force functions the way it was designed to function. For an individual officers, your choice is to do what the institution requires of you, or to exit into the congested pool of unemployed or under-employed formal sector Nigerians. Tell the truth, most of us make compromises of one kind or another to keep our jobs, so long as the compromise does not hurt us individually, and the Nigerian policeman is no different.
I wonder sometimes if the same men and women wouldn't have been more effective as a Police Force if our Federal Republic had been genuinely interested in making them an effective Force.
Channels TV is organizing a forum to discuss the Nigerian Police Force, and prepared this report as a sort of primer to the problems facing the Force. It seems the disincentives to effective policing start as early as the induction to the Nigerian Police College.
Even police officers are critical of the Force, none more so than Sergeant Musa Usman, the speaker of truth to power whom I wrote about in this post. I still don't know what happened to Sergeant Usman. If you know anything more about his story, leave a reply or email me.
Among many posts I have made directly or indirectly about the Force is this one, about the murder of a 3-year-old girl, Kaosarat (or Kausarat) Muritala. In September of 2012, the Police Corporal accused of the crime was convicted and sentenced to death. I have not seen anything in the media in terms of an appeal, or in terms of the sentence being carried out.
There is another side of the story, one told in part by Sergeant Usman. The conditions of service of the Nigerian Police Force not only encourage things like graft and corruption, but discourage things like bravery or initiative in the face of violent criminals.
I have often said on this blog that the people who govern Nigeria do not want Nigeria to have an effective law enforcement system or an effective judiciary. If these institutions functioned properly, most of what the political and economic leadership are currently free to do in advancement of their self-interest would become impossible, difficult or would attract a higher risk of sanction than currently pertains. As such, the people most responsible for ensuring that the Police Force are effective are simultaneously the people least interested in the Police Force being effective.
This is not just true of political leadership beyond the Force, but is true of leadership within the Force. Read the blog post on Sergeant Usman, and you will see where he makes clear that the top brass of the Force are ultimately responding for the corruption and graft. They deploy their men in a manner so as to make money for themselves, taking a cut of whatever "action" their men are involved in and passing a share of that cut up the chain of command.
This paradox of the government being constitutionally responsible for an effective law enforcement system while being simultaneously opposed, in practice, to the existence of effective law enforcement has existed since the founding on the modern Nigerian Police Force as an arm of the British Colonial Government(s). From the start, the Nigerian Police Force has been obliged to systemically ignore the fact that the government(s) it served were illegitimate, that these governments could only sustain themselves in power by doing illegitimate and unconstitutional things, and that the policy-making output of these governments were inevitably going to be just as illegitimate.
Indeed, from the very start the Nigerian Police have been poorly paid, and have been expected to supplement their wages through activities that were just as illegitimate as the activities of the governments they served. Yes, believe it or not, Nigerian Police were "supplementing" their pay as far back as the colonial days. I know we have all been taught to believe that everything was perfect when the British ruled us, but that is colonial propaganda still being spread by the products of colonial education systems.
Having said that, the British were a foreign people pursuing their own interests at the expense of ours. What is our excuse? We regained our self-rule in 1960. Why have we continued the pattern? Why are we consigning ourselves to a situation where public security is ephemeral rather than substantive?
As citizens, we perceive the police to be behaving badly, but in reality the police are doing exactly what is expected of them. This is what they were created to do, this is what they are trained to do. Their original job was never to protect us from crime, but to protect the British colonialists from us and to punish us if we didn't obey British decrees that we neither approved of nor were consulted about. What we in post-colonial Nigeria see as their brutal treatment of "bloody civilians" is the modern iteration of an institutional culture put in place from the very beginning to create a Force that sees us, the people they are supposed to protect, as people to be beaten into submission on behalf of whoever happens to be in government. Indeed, the post-colonial police have been more likely to aid in rigging an election than they have been to arrest an election rigger.
Again, one can see why the British would do this .... but what is our excuse?
I am a federalist, like every other Nigerian, so I am not philosophically opposed to "state police", but calling for "state police" ignores the basic problem. The Regional and Provincial police forces of the past were just as likely to follow the colonial paradigm, and just as ineffectual when it came to the issue of public security and crime-fighting. If things seems more peaceful in the past, it is because there were fewer armed robbery gangs, for example, and not because the Colonial or First Republic police had any particular skill at fighting armed robbery gangs. Beating up the political opponents of the major regional First Republic parties was a more likely function.
What I am trying to get you to understand is that the Police Force functions the way it was designed to function. For an individual officers, your choice is to do what the institution requires of you, or to exit into the congested pool of unemployed or under-employed formal sector Nigerians. Tell the truth, most of us make compromises of one kind or another to keep our jobs, so long as the compromise does not hurt us individually, and the Nigerian policeman is no different.
I wonder sometimes if the same men and women wouldn't have been more effective as a Police Force if our Federal Republic had been genuinely interested in making them an effective Force.
Channels TV is organizing a forum to discuss the Nigerian Police Force, and prepared this report as a sort of primer to the problems facing the Force. It seems the disincentives to effective policing start as early as the induction to the Nigerian Police College.
26 September, 2012
Interviews with Nigerian World War Two veterans
Corporal Sani Akpa (rtd)
The lighting is poor, but the content is clear.
Al Jazeera feature on Isaac Fadoyebo - Burma Campaign Survivor
22 March, 2012
Questioning technocrats
A bit of controversy has developed in the past week or so.
Mr. Herman Hembe, until recently the chairman of the Capital Markets Committee in the lower house of the National Assembly, was ostensibly leading an investigation into the collapse in the value of equity on the Nigerian Stock Exchange between 2008 and 2009. Somewhere along the way, his committee launched something of an attack on Ms. Arunma Oteh, current Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Oscar Onyema, current Managing Director of the Nigeria Stock Exchange. Ms. Oteh and Mr. Onyema were appointed to their current positions after the stock market collapse.
Ms. Oteh counter-attacked, accusing Mr. Hembe of demanding a bribe. You've probably all seen the video:
Mr. Hembe called for the EFCC and ICPC to investigate her accusation. He later resigned as Chair of the Committee, but also counter-accused Ms. Oteh, arguing the SEC (i.e. Ms. Oteh) offered him the bribe first. Oh, and he said some thing about her allegedly excessive expenses paid for with government money while she was lodged at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja.
It is a soap opera ... but it is not what this post is about.
My attention was drawn to comments attributed in BusinessDay to CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. I have often said that Sanusi is the only political figure in Nigeria I could ever vote for, not because I agree with everything he says/thinks, but because I know what he thinks.
Sanusi has been writing and speaking about Nigerian issues for years, expressing honest, forthright, thoughtful and at times controversial opinions. Virtually everyone else in the Nigerian political landscape is either a blank canvas that nothing substantive is known about (yet they have supporters) or are people who, like politicians all over the world, tell citizens (or specific segments of the citizenry) exactly what they think those citizens want to hear, while revealing nothing of substance of their actual thoughts on the issues (mainly because their thoughts are supportive of most of the things the citizens oppose).
But like I said, I don't always agree with what he says. I certainly don't agree with what BusinessDay attributed to him, viz:
I don't know if BusinessDay misquoted him. Perhaps they quoted sentences where it would have been more elucidatory to quote an entire paragraph or two.
Don't misunderstand me. I do not doubt Ms. Oteh. On the other hand, I do not not doubt her (double negative). I do not have an opinion whatsoever because I am not in a position to know who did what. There is no available, credible information upon which to make a conclusion. Programmatically, I find I am somewhat opposed to the SEC and NSE's plan for demutualization, but that has nothing to do with the who did what to whom when and how malarkey of the soap opera.
No, my disagreement with Sanusi's quoted comments have nothing to do with Ms Oteh or Mr Hembe at all.
It is the way Sanusi reportedly outlined a person's degrees, the prestigious universities the person's degrees were obtained from, the famous institutions the person worked for in the past, and then designated the person as "a reformer" ... which apparently led him to the conclusion that mere mortals have no grounds to question the person's suitability for a public service or political job.
That is nonsense and Sanusi knows it. You know how I know he knows it? Because everything he said about Arunma Oteh was also said about Charles Soludo, his predecessor as CBN Governor, and the fact is Sanusi has spent most of his tenure cleaning up the mess left behind by Soludo, reversing or altering some of the "reforms" of his "reformer" predecessor in the process.
Again, please take note, I am not criticizing Ms. Oteh or agreeing with the most likely corrupt Mr. Hembe.
There is another point I am trying to make.
The fact that a person has fancy degrees from a fancy university and used to work for one of the many multilateral organizations does not mean that their actions and decisions are beyond reproach, beyond question, beyond doubt. And insofar as they take actions and make decisions with "political" implications, then anything and everything they do should be rightly questioned by we, the electorate.
Indeed, one problem I had with Soludo, a problem I must admit I have with Sanusi too, is they both seemed to make what seemed to be one-man decisions on issues that should actually have been debated and decided politically, through elections driven by that particular issue, ultimately candidates elected by citizens based on the citizens knowing what the candidates' view on that issue is.
Of course our elections are not really driven by issues, and for the most part the votes of the electorate do not necessarily determine the results. The absence of issues in our voting was made clear by the map showing who won what state in the 2011 Presidential Election. We all know why the pro-Buhari states voted for Buhari, and we all know why the pro-Jonathan states voted for Jonathan (even the ones otherwise owned by ACN and APGA). After all that, the whole Nigeria was shocked when Jonathan summarily removed the fuel subsidy. I mean seriously, why would you vote for someone when you have no idea, not even a shred of an idea what they are going to do once elected?
Still, that doesn't mean CBN Governors get to decide political questions on their personal whim, or in the case of Sanusi, take over the Federal Executive's economic development and economic policy functions. The question of whether Sanusi or Jonathan would be better at economic policy-making is entirely besides the point. Institutions are more important than individuals, and neither Sanusi nor Jonathan will be in their respective jobs forever, so it cannot be a question of whom is personally better at it, but of what our institutional structure is supposed to function as and why it doesn't quite function properly.
But I digress.
My point is, even the most decorated, educated "technocrat" could make the wrong decisions even on straightforward bureaucratic matters, much less important, future-affecting political questions and economic policy. They can be wrong and they are often wrong. Indeed, I am not exactly sure why people act as though a lifetime of working at the World Bank means you somehow know how to transform an economy like Nigeria's.
Did any country in the world that transformed its economy by following the diktat of the Bretton Woods organizations? Indeed, as much as we Nigerians have bad memories of "military rule", and as much as the world (and myself) love democracy, the political and economic transformation of nations has more often been superintended by autocrats or army generals. And yes, that includes the USA, with their long line of presidents who used to be Army generals famous for doing immoral things in the service of strategic political and economic interests.
But I am digressing again.
The fact is, regardless of where Arunma Oteh went to school, regardless of where she used to work before, regardless of whether she designates herself a reformer or is so designated by someone else, and regardless of whether Mr. Herman Hembe is or is not as corrupt as she says he is ... we the people of Nigeria are perfectly entitled to question whether or not Ms. Oteh is suitable for the job.
Sanusi is wrong.
Assuming they quoted him properly.
And by the way, there needs to be more debate about the impending demutualization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. I mean real debate, not one of those managed "Stakeholder" things that have become the preferred method worldwide for pretending to consult citizens when you have already decided and will do what you have decided even if citizens disagree.
But, as usual, I digres....
Mr. Herman Hembe, until recently the chairman of the Capital Markets Committee in the lower house of the National Assembly, was ostensibly leading an investigation into the collapse in the value of equity on the Nigerian Stock Exchange between 2008 and 2009. Somewhere along the way, his committee launched something of an attack on Ms. Arunma Oteh, current Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Oscar Onyema, current Managing Director of the Nigeria Stock Exchange. Ms. Oteh and Mr. Onyema were appointed to their current positions after the stock market collapse.
Ms. Oteh counter-attacked, accusing Mr. Hembe of demanding a bribe. You've probably all seen the video:
Mr. Hembe called for the EFCC and ICPC to investigate her accusation. He later resigned as Chair of the Committee, but also counter-accused Ms. Oteh, arguing the SEC (i.e. Ms. Oteh) offered him the bribe first. Oh, and he said some thing about her allegedly excessive expenses paid for with government money while she was lodged at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja.
It is a soap opera ... but it is not what this post is about.
My attention was drawn to comments attributed in BusinessDay to CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. I have often said that Sanusi is the only political figure in Nigeria I could ever vote for, not because I agree with everything he says/thinks, but because I know what he thinks.
Sanusi has been writing and speaking about Nigerian issues for years, expressing honest, forthright, thoughtful and at times controversial opinions. Virtually everyone else in the Nigerian political landscape is either a blank canvas that nothing substantive is known about (yet they have supporters) or are people who, like politicians all over the world, tell citizens (or specific segments of the citizenry) exactly what they think those citizens want to hear, while revealing nothing of substance of their actual thoughts on the issues (mainly because their thoughts are supportive of most of the things the citizens oppose).
But like I said, I don't always agree with what he says. I certainly don't agree with what BusinessDay attributed to him, viz:
It is only fitting that this diary starts from the questions so poignantly raised by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi at a well appointed gathering in Lagos on Friday.
He asked, “can you rightly question the competence of this 1984 first class honours graduate in computer science from Nsukka and who went on to take an MBA from Harvard University and then worked at the African Development Bank for 18 years and could have been the governor?“Can you really question her competence to head the Securities and Exchange Commission?
“And do you know who is questioning her competence? A 2005 graduate of the University of where? Benue State and the fellow became a member of the House the following year?”
Sanusi, known for being unusually outspoken in Nigeria asked the questions as he set the tone for his brilliant presentation as key note speaker at the knowledge roundtable on financial system stability organised by one of the country’s outstanding law firms, Olaniwun Ajayi, LP.
He cited Nigeria as a place where one can become the target of harassment and intimidation for standing up to vested interests.
Sanusi had said he did not want to speak to or about the macabre hearing at the House of Representatives because he did not want anyone to say he insulted him or her ,but not many in the audience thought he could keep quiet for long given, the outrage.So it was not a surprise when the CBN governor asked rhetorically, “do you keep quiet and watch while a good person is being hung and dried for pursuing reform, or do you stand up in support? At the CBN, we will support reform minded people and regulators because an attack on one is an attack on all reform minded regulators.”
I don't know if BusinessDay misquoted him. Perhaps they quoted sentences where it would have been more elucidatory to quote an entire paragraph or two.
Don't misunderstand me. I do not doubt Ms. Oteh. On the other hand, I do not not doubt her (double negative). I do not have an opinion whatsoever because I am not in a position to know who did what. There is no available, credible information upon which to make a conclusion. Programmatically, I find I am somewhat opposed to the SEC and NSE's plan for demutualization, but that has nothing to do with the who did what to whom when and how malarkey of the soap opera.
No, my disagreement with Sanusi's quoted comments have nothing to do with Ms Oteh or Mr Hembe at all.
It is the way Sanusi reportedly outlined a person's degrees, the prestigious universities the person's degrees were obtained from, the famous institutions the person worked for in the past, and then designated the person as "a reformer" ... which apparently led him to the conclusion that mere mortals have no grounds to question the person's suitability for a public service or political job.
That is nonsense and Sanusi knows it. You know how I know he knows it? Because everything he said about Arunma Oteh was also said about Charles Soludo, his predecessor as CBN Governor, and the fact is Sanusi has spent most of his tenure cleaning up the mess left behind by Soludo, reversing or altering some of the "reforms" of his "reformer" predecessor in the process.
Again, please take note, I am not criticizing Ms. Oteh or agreeing with the most likely corrupt Mr. Hembe.
There is another point I am trying to make.
The fact that a person has fancy degrees from a fancy university and used to work for one of the many multilateral organizations does not mean that their actions and decisions are beyond reproach, beyond question, beyond doubt. And insofar as they take actions and make decisions with "political" implications, then anything and everything they do should be rightly questioned by we, the electorate.
Indeed, one problem I had with Soludo, a problem I must admit I have with Sanusi too, is they both seemed to make what seemed to be one-man decisions on issues that should actually have been debated and decided politically, through elections driven by that particular issue, ultimately candidates elected by citizens based on the citizens knowing what the candidates' view on that issue is.
Of course our elections are not really driven by issues, and for the most part the votes of the electorate do not necessarily determine the results. The absence of issues in our voting was made clear by the map showing who won what state in the 2011 Presidential Election. We all know why the pro-Buhari states voted for Buhari, and we all know why the pro-Jonathan states voted for Jonathan (even the ones otherwise owned by ACN and APGA). After all that, the whole Nigeria was shocked when Jonathan summarily removed the fuel subsidy. I mean seriously, why would you vote for someone when you have no idea, not even a shred of an idea what they are going to do once elected?
Still, that doesn't mean CBN Governors get to decide political questions on their personal whim, or in the case of Sanusi, take over the Federal Executive's economic development and economic policy functions. The question of whether Sanusi or Jonathan would be better at economic policy-making is entirely besides the point. Institutions are more important than individuals, and neither Sanusi nor Jonathan will be in their respective jobs forever, so it cannot be a question of whom is personally better at it, but of what our institutional structure is supposed to function as and why it doesn't quite function properly.
But I digress.
My point is, even the most decorated, educated "technocrat" could make the wrong decisions even on straightforward bureaucratic matters, much less important, future-affecting political questions and economic policy. They can be wrong and they are often wrong. Indeed, I am not exactly sure why people act as though a lifetime of working at the World Bank means you somehow know how to transform an economy like Nigeria's.
Did any country in the world that transformed its economy by following the diktat of the Bretton Woods organizations? Indeed, as much as we Nigerians have bad memories of "military rule", and as much as the world (and myself) love democracy, the political and economic transformation of nations has more often been superintended by autocrats or army generals. And yes, that includes the USA, with their long line of presidents who used to be Army generals famous for doing immoral things in the service of strategic political and economic interests.
But I am digressing again.
The fact is, regardless of where Arunma Oteh went to school, regardless of where she used to work before, regardless of whether she designates herself a reformer or is so designated by someone else, and regardless of whether Mr. Herman Hembe is or is not as corrupt as she says he is ... we the people of Nigeria are perfectly entitled to question whether or not Ms. Oteh is suitable for the job.
Sanusi is wrong.
Assuming they quoted him properly.
And by the way, there needs to be more debate about the impending demutualization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. I mean real debate, not one of those managed "Stakeholder" things that have become the preferred method worldwide for pretending to consult citizens when you have already decided and will do what you have decided even if citizens disagree.
But, as usual, I digres....
25 March, 2011
VIDEO: The Presidential Debates - Minus the President
THE VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
I tried to find an embeddable video for the Vice-Presidential Debate that was organized by cable news channel NN24, moderated by Kadaria Ahmed (of NEXT), and boycotted by the PDP's incumbent Vice-President Namadi Sambo. While there are brief, embeddable clips on Youtube, but if you want a full-length version, click on this link hosted on the website Yousabi.com to watch a full 84-minute video of the event.
THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
I did find two videos of the 2011 Presidential Debates, which were also organized by cable news channel NN24, also hosted by Kadaria Ahmed, and also boycotted by the PDP candidate, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.
The first video was edited (not by me) and begins with Buhari's opening statement, and runs for 73 minutes, while the second video begins earlier (allowing you to hear Kadaria Ahmed's opening statement) and runs for only 58 minutes.
The second video is interesting because you hear the audience applaud after Kadaria Ahmed's comment on the President's absence. If you are wondering why the audience applauded, it is because they had been sitting there for an hour or so waiting for the President, who had said he would show up but then didn't and didn't bother to tell anyone he had changed his mind. When he had not arrived by the time set for the debate to begin, NN24 delayed proceedings by an hour or so because they thought he was being fashionably late (as self-important, pompous Big Men usually are) and they didn't want to start live broadcast of a debate only for the President (technically the most important candidate to have on the stage) to wander in halfway through. Eventually, after an hour, they decided to begin the debate .... at which point Kadaria made her comment and the audience applauded.
FIRST VIDEO: EDITED (NOT BY ME) FULL VERSION
SECOND VIDEO: INCLUDES KADARIA AHMED'S OPENING COMMENTS
07 December, 2009
22 July, 2009
234 .... Next
I am impressed with the multimedia news outlet NEXT.
There are other Nigerian newspapers that provide quality service online (too numerous to mention, though The Guardian is excellent, and if you want to escape the Lagos-bubble, check out Daily Trust). And I do appreciate the fact that I can listen to Radio Nigeria's Kapital FM (Abuja) on my computer (though they are frequently off the air) and Brila FM (though they only seem to be talking about the English Premiership when I tune in).
But NEXT is making a conscious effort (in my opinion) to be World-class, as opposed to Naija-class or Africa-class. Come to think of it, most Nigeria web outlets lag behind the leading sites from South Africa, Kenya (I particularly enjoy The East African) and the Maghreb in terms of getting the full experience of current affairs, analysis, audio-visual media and interactive features.
I believe very strongly in the potential of the Nigerian media, and I would not critique it so if I did not care about it. I want them to figure out ways to make money from the worldwide web; while newspapers in the United States and Europe claim to be suffering, the internet gives Nigerian news media a chance to tap into the dollars, euros, and riyals of the Nigerian Diaspora.
I rely on the media for information, and I want the best product I can get. NEXT is not doing anything "new" or "revolutionary", and there are any number of news media sites around the world that do much more. But they seem to be working hard to change the way media sites are run within that sub-set of the world media that is the Nigerian media. Hopefully others catch up and compete; I still like Kickoff Nigeria, but they have not become the one-stop shop for the best in Nigerian football news that I had been hoping (I dare say they provide less information now than they did before.
It is not easy. Soup wey sweet, na money do am, and at some level the sites have to figure out ways of making money to pay for improved information-gathering and investigative journalism.
Good luck to them.
Here are two examples of the audio-visual product from NEXT. Granted they do seem to ask their anchors to blow phonetics on the main news broadcasts (an example below), but they do a weekly news round-up/discussion in Pidgin as well (second below). Perhaps the phonetics evince a desire to attract an "international" audience, as opposed to a strictly Naijan audience.
There are other Nigerian newspapers that provide quality service online (too numerous to mention, though The Guardian is excellent, and if you want to escape the Lagos-bubble, check out Daily Trust). And I do appreciate the fact that I can listen to Radio Nigeria's Kapital FM (Abuja) on my computer (though they are frequently off the air) and Brila FM (though they only seem to be talking about the English Premiership when I tune in).
But NEXT is making a conscious effort (in my opinion) to be World-class, as opposed to Naija-class or Africa-class. Come to think of it, most Nigeria web outlets lag behind the leading sites from South Africa, Kenya (I particularly enjoy The East African) and the Maghreb in terms of getting the full experience of current affairs, analysis, audio-visual media and interactive features.
I believe very strongly in the potential of the Nigerian media, and I would not critique it so if I did not care about it. I want them to figure out ways to make money from the worldwide web; while newspapers in the United States and Europe claim to be suffering, the internet gives Nigerian news media a chance to tap into the dollars, euros, and riyals of the Nigerian Diaspora.
I rely on the media for information, and I want the best product I can get. NEXT is not doing anything "new" or "revolutionary", and there are any number of news media sites around the world that do much more. But they seem to be working hard to change the way media sites are run within that sub-set of the world media that is the Nigerian media. Hopefully others catch up and compete; I still like Kickoff Nigeria, but they have not become the one-stop shop for the best in Nigerian football news that I had been hoping (I dare say they provide less information now than they did before.
It is not easy. Soup wey sweet, na money do am, and at some level the sites have to figure out ways of making money to pay for improved information-gathering and investigative journalism.
Good luck to them.
Here are two examples of the audio-visual product from NEXT. Granted they do seem to ask their anchors to blow phonetics on the main news broadcasts (an example below), but they do a weekly news round-up/discussion in Pidgin as well (second below). Perhaps the phonetics evince a desire to attract an "international" audience, as opposed to a strictly Naijan audience.
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