Ghana must go no more...

Ghana must go? Louis Vuitton appear to have other ideas. Pictures from CoolDigest.

Chatham House rules

Chatham House has just published a guide to the elections. And it also has a transcript of Atiku's speech on Tuesday.

Plaut and Hearing

The World Service Africa editor, Martin Plaut, interviewed Atiku for the World Today, and Roger Hearing interviewed him on Newshour.

Plaut:


Hearing:

No matter...

Atiku's interview on Focus on Africa. I'll put up a World Today interview by morning hopefully.

Atiku keeps hope alive

Atiku Abubakar is still VP.

In defence of English

What seems to have emerged from people's reaction to the Kalu interview is a disdain for English, or the ability to express one's self in English. English isn't Kalu's first language, so he should be allowed to butcher it the way he did - or so goes the thinking. I had two problems with the interview. First, he couldn't express himself, and second, even if he could, he had nothing to express. It wasn't about accent, because if it was, 99% of Nigerians would fall short of whatever glorious standard people imagine I've set.

OBJ speaks English with a thick okra-consistency Yoruba accent, yet he is very capable of expressing himself. OBJ is a surprisingly competent public speaker. Charles Soludo has an Igbo accent almost as strong as the akpu he probably eats, yet he makes sense when he speaks. Umaru Yar'Adua has a strong accent, Babangida has a strong accent, most Nigerians have strong accents - it's a reality. The case of Kalu was not one of accent, but one of a dearth of ideas. Chxta's analysis is on point.

A politician who cannot tell us what we, as an electorate, get for our vote should move to the backroom. We don't all have to be governor, or president, or senator, we can be advisers. As matter of fact, a leader is only as good as his closest advisers. If he can tell some apparatchik in Igbo, or Hausa, what his ideas for the state are, then fine. If Kalu wants to help Abia state, fine. But don't put his mug on the BBC, and then insult me by telling me this is the face of Abia state.

People in Nigeria forget that English is not just a colonial imposition, but is the egg that binds Nigeria together. I cannot think of anything else Nigerians have in common. The arbitrary colonial borders do not bring Nigeria together, as there are still vastly varying customs, languages, landscapes, an inexhaustible list of differences. This is Nigeria: a vast piece of land, around which Lord Lugard and his people drew a line, and then asked all the people within that line to speak English. It's the story of Africa, and now we have to deal with it.

The Rainbow Nation, South Africa, has 11 official languages, and eight non-official languages. But South Africa has 47 million people, while Nigeria has 140 million. India has 23 different official languages, and its own unique way of giving those languages some usage in system of government communication. The reality is that English and Hindi trump all in the usage stakes. Believe it or not, but even God's own country, the United States, does not have an official language at federal level. It is, however, the de facto language of communication. So wherefore Nigeria?

In Nigeria, nobody is formally educated in any local languages. Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba are part of the curriculum, taught as foreign languages; rather than science, history, or maths taught in any of those langauges. People fail, or worse, don't do Nigerian languages for O'levels. It's Nigeria's loss. But everything is done in English, yet we are supposed to forgive politicians that cannot interact with us in the only way in which we should all collectively be able.

For those that say, "English is not his first language". I say that is no excuse. In essence, if someone has grown up in Sokoto, and goes to live in Abia state, they will in effect be disenfranchised. They may be within the same country, but they're not being communicated with because Orji Uzo Kalu, the state governor who should have the interests of all residents of his state, regardless of background, has failed to express himself to one of his citizens - as is his duty.

This is not a tirade against indigenous languages, or a declaration of love for Elizabeth Regina's English. I kick myself all the time for not being able to speak Igbo, and I pat myself on the back for the little Yoruba I can speak. The Yoruba that I speak was not as a result of living in Lagos, but came from slugging it out in a boarding school in Ondo state where the language was second nature to everyone. I have never been ashamed of my Nigerian heritage. This is about dealing with the reality of Nigeria as it stands today.

So those who want to forgive our politicians for not speaking English, good luck to you.

Gogo Ett

So, Orji Uzo Kalu has access to the internet, and knows what Google Earth is, except he calls it "Gogo Ett". Where does Nigeria get these people from? How did he sign his name on his gubernatorial candidacy form, let alone win an election? What in tarnation makes him think that he should be president of Nigeria? These are just a few of the questions I've been wrestling with since I saw Kalu on Hardtalk.

I kept cringing and wanting to change the channel, but these things are like car crashes, gruesome but compelling. What upset me more than anything was Kalu's lack of even a feather - no substance. He had neither character nor charisma, like a brown paper bag. It is forgiveable for politicians to have ideas, but be rubbish as expressing them. It happens all the time. In fact, more often than not, politicians are adept at expressing non-ideas brilliantly. But lacking both ideas and powers of expression should be punishable by guillotine. And firing squad. And electric chair. And hanging. All at once.

If you compare Kalu to George W Bush, that other great mangler of the English language, Bush is an eminently more electable person. For despite the fact that Bush butchers his syntax all the time, he is still an eminently good speaker. Hear him at press conferences and interviews, and journos always have a solid soundbite to run on 24 hour news. Not the stolid sub-platitudes spewing forth from Kalu's mouth.

On another level, Kalu has no beer factor. Were you a drinking man, who will you rather have a bear with? I'm willing to bet that nobody would pick Kalu, unless they were kneecaped, and had their teeth taken. No redeeming features. Nada. Nothing.

As Walter Mondale said to Gary Hart in the 1980 presidential elections, "Where's the beef". Kalu stands for nothing but himself. I like to hang on to the romantism that most politicians are in it for the good. Quite often, they might traverse many good intentioned roads, but eventually end up in hell. Kalu has no such. He is just Orji Uzo Kalu, with nothing to offer the Abia state, Nigeria, or the world.

As promised

The Beeb have now put the interview on the HARDtalk website, but below's mine:

Grrr

I'v spent all morning trying to get the damn Kalu HARDtalk interview into an editable format so that I can edit, and then upload. So far, so bad. Interestingly, it hasn't been put on the HARDtalk website, and I can think of several reasons why. For starters, interpreting and subtitling Kalu's heavy abuse of syntax would task even the greatest Egyptologists, and two, the Beeb isn't used to broadcasting what could be seen as "bare faced lying". I will have the interview from a more reliable source tonight, and barring Google video censoring me for fear of being wrapped over the knuckles over copyright issues, it will be on here by midnight GMT.

In the meantime, you can regale yourselves with altogether more eloquent Nigerians. Femi Kuti was on Radio 4's Midweek (listen) - he's starting his UK tour this week. And the Guardian profiles Peter Akinola (or Peter Aky-nola, as the Brits pronounce it), and asks if he's the most powerul man in the Anglican communion. The backdrop is the Communion's chinwag being held in Tanzania this week.

First impressions

Just caught the last few minutes of HARDTalk with Orji Uzo Kalu. I'll watch the repeat at 0230, and try and upload the whole thing by the morning. When he wanted to make a point, and Allan Little interrupted him, he kept saying, "I'm coming, I'm coming"...

Exclusive!

Nuhu Ribadu, was supposed to have addressed Chatham House today at 1pm. But his assistant was sent instead. Why? Apparently Atiku served him with a writ. Also, OBJ's bête noire and presidential candidate, Orji Uzo Kalu, was interviewed by the Beeb today, and the interview will be broadcast on Hardtalk tomorrow.

Habila in the Indy

There's a Helon Habila interview in today's Indy.

Ghana must go!

I went to the Ghana v Nigeria game at Griffin Park on Tuesday. I went, of course as a journo, so I was that rare bird, the neutral observer. So, Nigeria's 4-1 loss didn't hurt me one bit... When Nigeria failed to qualify for the World Cup last year, everyone said that was a wake-up call. And on Tuesday at Griffin Park, the loss to Ghana was also, wait for it, a wake-up call. But I quite like the spirit of the some of the organisers who were there. They're quite keen for Nigeria not to lose faith, and to restore some morale to the team. "We need to organise another friendly soon. You know who we always beat, don't you?" Jamaica, I replied. "Exactly!"

The Guardian blog has what has to be the best match report. Ever.

This article really should be written by The Guy from Ghanaian Radio (TGGR). Because last night he was awesome. Never did catch his name, but only because breaking his commentary to ask him would have been a crime against passion. "Fifteen years! Fifteen years! Ladies and gentlemen it has been 15 painful years since Ghana beat Nigeria!" he hollered in a tone that made it clear he considered this to be a national scandal. "I'm telling you, tonight must be different." And it was. Read on...

MEND on CNN

CNN has been running a piece by its man in Africa, Jeff Koinange, where he visits the MEND rebels in the Niger Delta. After the piece had run, Sebastian Junger, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 to talk about his experiences. I've just come off a night shift and haven't got the energy to comment on the story. There were one or two red flags, so I actually called CNN in Atlanta to put them straight. Still, read and watch.

Once again

We have yet another incident of police brutality making headlines in the US. This isn't explicitly brutal in that the usual police brutality tactics of pummelling someone into the ground, or battering people with batons, but this is negligence at its worst. In November, it was the shooting of the UCLA student with a taser gun, and the killing of a black guy in New York on his bachelor's eve do. So what do we have this time.

We have a woman, Sofia Salva, whose car is stopped by Kansas City police officers, Melody Spencer and Kevin Schnell. She's wanted on a variety of minor charges. When the police start questioning her, she tells them she's bleeding and she's on her way to the hospital. Basically, she's three months pregnant, and she thinks she's about to have a miscarriage. So do the boys in blue call an ambulance? No siree, they take her into custody. The next day, she has a miscarriage.

It's not just the fact that a woman who desperately needed medical attention was locked up, but the disdain with which she was treated. Sofia Salva did not matter to these officers. The woman was just another statistic to be locked up, another notch to be added to the department's belt. The whole thing was recorded on the squad car camera, and Kansas City Star got a copy of the tape under freedom of information laws, and have a harrowing transcript of the encounter. It's distressing to watch. To serve and to protect?

Where anything goes

I saw Last King of Scotland last week, and saw Babel last night. I now know that I'm fed up of doom and gloom. The next time I go out, I want to watch a chick flick, maybe something with Lindsay Lohan. I'd like to leave my brain at the door, because it seems that when I don't, I watch these films with great unease. So much for slice of reality, I'd like an unreal Hollywood ending, a good chuckle.

The problem with watching a film like Last King of Scotland, is that you know how it ends. Just as when watching Shooting Dogs or Hotel Rwanda, we all know what eventually happens. We all know that the cheers and exhilaration that greeted the charismatic Idi Amin's rise to power will soon be severely tempered by the babarous side of Amin's persona. Without knowing anyting about post-colonial Ugandan history, it's always been that way in Africa. Africans ove the next regime more than the last. So as the characters all crack jokes, full of jovial asides, patting each other on the back in revolutionary solidarity, I sit as an audience member, tense, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

No more. I had nightmares after watching Last King of Scotland, thinking that militias were coming after me. That kind of thing just isn't good for my constitution. One reviewer on the radio call Africa's place in films "the place where anything goes". You have government brutality, government corruption, corporate corruption writ large (Constant Gardener), lawlessness. There is no redemption for the African. And to add insult to injury, Africa is still the white man's burden. Be it Constant Gardener, Blood Diamond (Dicaprio's a Rhodie though), Last King of Scotland: only the white man wants to save Africa.

Go to Africa, and you can shoot a film with everything in it. I think I've reached saturation point. I want to watch a comedy set in Africa, a romance set in Africa. Enough of the brutal dictators, genocides, corrupt governments, corrupt people, let's see a human story. Let's see a lightening of the dark continent.

Last King of Scotland is still a good story. Forest Whitaker should win an Oscar for it. His protrayal of Amin as a charming, yet brutal man is earth shattering. You can feel him lovingly clasping you in his bossom, yet you could still be crushed in that same clasp. It's a frightening place to be. The director, Kevin MacDonald captures 70s Africa with a beauty I haven't seen before. This was a continent full of hope. The decrepit thieving postcolonial presidents had been replaced by idealistic military regimes - so everyone thought. Only for the yoke of military rule to crush the spirit of a continent even more forcefully. The music is before my time, but still nostalgic. Buy it!

Babel. Babel. Babel. Alejandro González Iñárritu's last film in the "death trilogy" (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, the first two), is a painful film. There are moments of touching poignance, such as the wedding scene in Mexico (they were spraying money!), the peeing scene (watch to see what I mean), even the knickerless terrorism (no spoilers here). But none of these detract from the pain of miscommunication. How often have you travelled somewhere and you have trouble explaining to the waiter that you'd like the beef well done, not slightly mooing? Now think of a life and death situation, think of preconceived prejudices, and you have Babel. We all spoke the same language, we tried to build a tower to the heavens, God scattered us for our audacity, and now we miscommunicate in a variety of ways.

The doom and gloom is enough to almost make me want to watch a Nollywood home video, but not quite.

Happy Birthdays

A few weeks ago, I had an argument with a Nigerian friend of mine about extravagance. One of the things she loves about Nigerians, is that, "if a Nigerian has money, you will know they have money". Basically, she likes the fact that Nigerians are one of the most showy, opulent people in the world. I don't. There's never any need to show the whole world what your bank balance is. It's not what civilised people do. Yes, terribly British, I know.

I've thought about what she said, and I guess I'm more Nigerian than I think. I'm known for wearing African shirts - in a European country. This would be seen as extravagant by any tiny stretch of the imagination, yet I cringe at thinking that I'm extravagant. What the shirts attempt to betray though, is a certain flamboyance, rather than extravagance. There is a difference, and this is where I part ways with money shower offers. The shirts I wear are quite cheap when you compare them the badge of honour TM Lewin, and Thomas Browne. Or should that be Thomas Pink?

It is the idea that what I'm wearing is somehow indicative of how much money I have which sticks in the throat. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that I can be sussed out as loaded from the shirt on my back. I do agree that Nigerians are flamboyant, but this doesn't always have to mean show offy. There's a distinct difference, and that's the crux of my argument. I can hear all my friends bellowing that I'm only carping because I don't exactly have Oprah's bank balance.

Which brings me finely onto the topic of the post - kids' birthdays in Nigeria. When I was growing up, there was always a feeling of one upmanship with regard to birthday parties. Did you go to Uche's tenth birthday party? They had Ken and Barbie dolls in the party pack, they must have spent so much money. Wole, from now until your birthday party, we'll eat just two meals a day. I refuse to be disgraced as the only mother who couldn't put Transformers robots in the party pack. Every gathering becomes an ode to "mine's bigger than yours", a kind of penis envy for parents.

Naturally, the greatest cardinal sin of all is the first birthday party. All the bambinos sleep through the whole thing, sucking on dummies, or dazed wondering what all the fuss is about. Meanwhile, the parents are dancing the night away, spraying (abusing) naira like it's 1999. It's supposed to be a day dedicated to the children, but instead becomes an ode to parental extravagance. Why? We couldn't possibly let the Adeyemis, Okonkwos, or the Abdulahis get one up on us.

Whenever children's birthday parties are planned, the people furthest from the parents minds are the children themselves. How will this make me look. Imagine my shock, and I suppose, slightl elation at finding out that this disease isn't exclusvely Nigerian. Americans are also afflicted. (Then again, it is America, land of the bigger is better). Listening to this item on the Today programme made me wonder about my Nigerian prejudices. I wondered if I judged Nigeria too harshly for sins that are universal, and not particularly unique to Nigeria, but which I sometimes insist is a thoroughly Nigerian ailment. I thought, " I should lay off Nigeria for a while, we're not the worst people in the world". And then I thought, nah...

Image from Anne Karinglass.

Blood and oil in the creeks

The new issue (February) of Vanity Fair has a monumental article on militants in the Niger Delta. Dammie, thanks for the heads up. Sebastian Junger paints a picture filled with colour, light, shade, pain, and anger:

On June 23, 2005, a group of high-ranking government officials were convened in a ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., to respond to a simulated crisis in the global oil supply. The event was called "Oil ShockWave," and it was organized by public-interest groups concerned with energy policy and national security. Among those seated beneath a wall-size map of the world were two former heads of the C.I.A., the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The scenario they were handed was this:

Civil conflict breaks out in northern Nigeria—an area rife with Islamic militancy and religious violence—and the Nigerian Army is forced to intervene. The situation deteriorates, and international oil companies decide to end operations in the oil-rich Niger River delta, resulting in a loss of 800,000 barrels a day on the world market. Since Nigerian oil is classified as "light sweet crude," meaning that it requires very little refining, this makes it a particularly painful loss to the American market. Concurrently, in this scenario, a cold wave sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere boosts global demand by 800,000 barrels a day. Because global oil production is already functioning at close to maximum capacity (around 84 million barrels a day), small disruptions in supply shudder through the system very quickly. A net deficit of almost two million barrels a day is a significant shock to the market, and the price of a barrel of oil rapidly goes to more than $80. Read more...

Bigot Brother coverage

The best understanding of the Big Brother racism furore - that I've seen - is from This Week, last night. Apparently, there'll be no eviction crowd tonight. Watch:


Question Time debate last night:


Newsnight debate from Wednesday:

Bigot Brother

For that's what the media in India are calling Celebrity Big Brother, after Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, (pictured, right) faced off with Jade Goody and the goons (2bit pop star, Jo O'Meara, and WAG, Danielle Lloyd). The only excuse for not knowing anything about the race row caused by Celebrity Big Brother is that you're stuck on Mars without internet, radio or tv signal. More than 20,000 complaints have been lodged with Channel 4 and Ofcom, most newspapers lead on it today, the issue was raised at Prime Minister's Questions, effigies of Channel 4 producers were burnt in India (quite how they know what C4 execs look like, I don't know), Gordon Brown has had his economic growth trip to India overshadowed by questions about Jade Goody's exemplary manners. It's been extraordinary.

I was always reluctant to get into this debate for the simple reason that charges of racism are difficult to prove. There's a very thin line between outright rudeness, hatred and racism; but quite often they are two sides to the same coin. It never seems as if feeling racially victimised is enough to cry racism, I tend to need something overt. "Black bastard", "nig-nog", these are blatantly racist, and you'd be applauded for headbutting anyone who addressed you in those terms. But we live in different times where that kind of racism isn't acceptable anymore.

Basically, the feelings of racism remain, but the methods of expressing the racist feelings change. Instead of "black bastard", you just say "bitch", with the same vitriol and intention of wanting to say "black bastard". Like I said, I wasn't sure what to make of it, whether it was racism. However watch the footage or read the transcript, and you're left in little doubt that racism is indeed an element.

Do you know what many people are saying? That what's happening in the Big Brother House just shows Britain what we've always known - that racism is alive and well in Britain. The subplot, though, is probably a class thing. Germaine Greer tried to make that point in the Guardian earlier this week. Class is definitely still an issue in Britain, throw in race into the mix, and you have a powder keg ready to go off.

Something worse than Jade Goody's braying, however, is the reaction of C4's chairman, Luke Johnson. Listen to him being questioned on the Today programme.