What We Can Know By Ian McEwan Review – The Limits Of Liberalism

BY KEVIN PORTER

The sheer Englishness of Ian McEwan’s fiction may not be fully visible to his English readers. But it is clearly, and amusingly, visible to at least this Irish reader. It isn’t just McEwan’s elegiac, indeed patriotic, attentiveness to English landscapes – to the wildflowers and hedgerows and crags, to the “infinite shingle” of Chesil Beach, to the Chilterns turkey oak in the first paragraph of Enduring Love. Nor is it merely the ferocious home counties middle-classness of his later novels, in which every significant character is at the very least a neurosurgeon or a high court judge, everyone is conversant with Proust, Bach and Wordsworth, and members of the lower orders tend to appear as worrying upstarts from a world in which nobody plonks out the Goldberg Variations on the family baby grand. No, McEwan’s Englishness has most to do with his scrupulously rational, but occasionally and endearingly purblind, liberal morality: England’s most admirable, and most irritating, gift to politics and art.

These thoughts were provoked by a brief passage in McEwan’s future-set new novel that describes the “Inundation” of Britain after a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a tsunami that, combined with rising sea levels, wipes out everything but a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain peaks. In these entertainingly nihilistic pages, the fate of that other major chunk of the British Isles is not mentioned. Presumably Ireland, with its dearth of high peaks, fared badly as Europe drowned. But from McEwan’s future history, you’d never know it. I began to think of What We Can Know as another of McEwan’s deeply English stories. It has, I thought, the familiar partialities of vision. Has Brexit, endlessly backstopped by those pesky six counties, taught English liberals nothing?

But I don’t mean to make fun. Insularity, in both senses of the word, is one of McEwan’s themes in What We Can Know. The book is composed of two islands of prose, linked only by the tenuous bridge of a brief note at the end. And it is about being islanded, in time, in space, in life.

The novel is set a century hence, in 2119. Part one is narrated by Tom Metcalfe, who teaches literature at the University of the South Downs, an institution largely focused on science and maths, located on a 38-mile-wide island in the “sleepy ahistorical” republican archipelago that is all that remains of the UK. (To say who narrates part two would constitute a spoiler.) The world is post-catastrophe. The 21st century has unfolded as we all fear it will. The US is now run by rival “warlords”; Nigeria is the hegemonic power. But this is all offstage stuff. As the novel begins, Tom catches various boats to the Bodleian Library, now occupying a Snowdonian peak and accessible by “water-and-gravity-powered funicular”. Here, he trawls the archive of Francis Blundy, a poet of our own time, and allegedly the equal of Seamus Heaney (whose papers at the National Library of Ireland must now be soggy beyond use).

Superficially a quiet, scholarly sort – his opening pages stress how “tranquil” and “smooth” his life is – Tom, like a true scholar, burns within. He is in search of a lost poem, the improbably named A Corona for Vivien, which Blundy wrote for his wife Vivien’s 50th birthday in 2014. Read aloud once at Vivien’s birthday dinner, the sole copy, on vellum, which scholars know of only from contemporary accounts of the dinner, vanished into a credulity-stretching afterlife as the great lost poem of the climate crisis. Alone on the island of his obsession, Tom builds a portrait of the missing masterpiece, and alongside it, a portrait of the early 21st century.

It’s a nostalgic portrait, and Tom’s obsessive nostalgia for our violent and chaotic historical moment is the canniest thing about What We Can Know. Certainly, the plot – turning as it does on the fate of Blundy’s vellum manuscript and a series of shock disclosures about various characters – is absurdly gripping and finally unpersuasive in that familiar McEwan way (you turn the pages hungrily, and then at the end you think: Hang on). “To have been alive then,” Tom writes unironically, “in those resourceful raucous times.” Tom’s nostalgia is not shared by his present-minded students, who see us as having been “ignorant, squalid and destructive louts”.

Beneath his opinionated frankness, we come to suspect, Tom is really a deeply elusive narrator. It is Tom, perhaps, and not his creator, who has the English liberal’s partiality of vision. Crusoed on his regressive scholarly island, he has little time for the needy humanity of the people around him. He views his colleague and sometime lover Rose, for instance, increasingly as a means to an end. Can his nostalgia, or indeed his liberalism, be trusted? Will they ever be enough, now or in the future? What We Can Know gradually reveals itself as an anatomy of, precisely, liberal partiality – of the insularity of a liberalism busily nostalgic for all the wrong things.

At one point, Rose argues that, during the years 2015 to 2030, there was “a crisis of realism in fiction” brought about by the scale of climate disaster: “New forms were needed to frame the physical and moral consequences of a global catastrophe.” We are meant, I think, to view Rose’s theory with some irony. But we are surely also meant to see What We Can Know in Rose’s terms, as an attempt to find a new form in which to speak about what McEwan’s characters, echoing Amitav Ghosh, call “the derangement”. Thus, this is a science fiction novel (McEwan’s second proper one, after Machines Like Me) that is also a novel entirely about our mundane present, with its “metaphysical gloom” about the future. The science fiction scenario, the secret histories eventually disclosed: these are fun, and handled with great brio, but they’re not exactly original. The book’s value lies in what it is prepared to omit – nothing new, this, but a classically realist virtue. What it omits, and makes us work out for ourselves: the “moral consequences of a global catastrophe”. Which we can know only, perhaps, by inference or by imagining.

Liberalism itself, in the early 21st century, feels increasingly archipelagic – confined to the island peaks of a former upland. We may see McEwan, the liberal critic of liberalism, as one of those peaks. Après lui, le déluge?

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‘Queer People Were Living, Loving, Suffering, Surviving – But Invisible’: West Africa’s Groundbreaking Gay Novel 20 Years On

A scene from the 2019 film version of Walking With Shadows, based on the novel.

BY ADESOMOLA ADEDAYO

When Jude Dibia first tried to sell the manuscript of his groundbreaking novel Walking With Shadows 20 years ago, he was aware of the silence around queerness in West African literature. While there had been books with gay themes, his is widely recognised as the first novel in the region to put a gay character at the heart of the story.

“The absence wasn’t just literary; it was societal,” Dibia says. “Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but largely rendered invisible or spoken of in hushed tones, if at all. That silence felt violent. It felt like erasure.

“Literature has the power to name what society refuses to see. Walking With Shadows was my small attempt to do that,” he adds.

Initially, some publishers refused to touch the novel, considering it too controversial. Others suggested he rewrite the ending, either making the character renounce his homosexuality or killing him. When the book was finally published, Dibia was called names. He lost friends and was blacklisted from certain literary spaces. He was invited to events, only to later be uninvited once the organisers realised who he was and what he had written.

Dibia’s novel is widely recognised as the first Nigerian book to depict queerness with depth and empathy. It tells the story of Ebele “Adrian” Njoku who has buried his sexuality in the past, become a husband and a father, but who has to confront who he really is when a co-worker informs his wife that he is gay.

Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. “For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,” she says. “So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.”

The book, which turned 20 this year, was published by Blacksands in 2005 and republished in 2011 by Jalaa Writers’ Collective. In 2019, it was adapted for the screen by Oya Media and a special film edition was released.

But the initial backlash Walking with Shadows faced has not entirely disappeared, says Dibia. “Some still view the book as too controversial, too political, too queer. But I’ve made peace with that. If a story makes people uncomfortable because it tells the truth, then perhaps discomfort is the first step toward awareness.”

Dibia was forced to leave Nigeria and now lives in Sweden after the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, a law that criminalises homosexuality, was passed in January 2014, fearing he might become a target for his writing.

Since the publication of Walking With Shadows, an increasing number of books with queer characters at the heart of them have been published in West Africa and, specifically, Nigeria. There have been a slew of firsts: Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015) was the first novel to focus on lesbianism; Romeo Oriogun’s Burnt Men (2016) was the first queer poetry book; Chike Frankie Edozien’s Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man (2017), the first gay memoir; Unoma Azuah’s Embracing My Shadows: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria (2020), the first lesbian memoir.

Dibia, who has published two more novels – Unbridled in 2007 and Blackbird in 2011 – considers the fact that his debut gave visibility to lives that had been systematically ignored as the book’s most meaningful contribution.

“That’s the legacy I’m proudest of: not the controversy, but the quiet courage it gave others to tell their own stories, in their own ways,” he says.

Chike Frankie Edozien, author of Lives of Great Men, agrees. “Each time I do something that examines the fullness and varying natures of our lives, I know that I’m continuing the work Jude began by adding to a canon that boldly debunks the prevailing narrative that queerness in West Africa is foreign or imported,” he says.

“We’ve been diverse as long as we’ve existed and I’m thankful for Jude’s brave work that cracked open the door for the rest of us to kick down. All these years later, it [Walking with Shadows] still is for me a guiding light.”

For the British-Nigerian gay rights activist Bisi Alimi, the book was liberating the moment he laid hands on it. “Prior to that day, I had never really read any book as personal and relatable as that. Jude and the book did something to me,” he says.

The writer and researcher Ayodele Olofintuade had a similar experience. “The book came as it is, creating a new genre, queer literature,” she says. “Encountering the novel about two years post-publication was a shift in reality for me. Walking with Shadows is a roadmap of what is possible.”

Dibia’s deepest satisfaction comes from readers all over the world who say that Adrian’s story helps them feel seen. He sometimes wishes, however, that he had been better prepared for, and protected against, the fallout. “But then again, maybe part of the novel’s power comes from the fact that it was written without armour,” he says. “I don’t regret writing it. I only regret the climate that made it feel dangerous to tell the truth.”

Today, Dibia still hopes people see the book as an act of courage and, more importantly, an act of care. Likewise, 20 years from now, he hopes the novel will still feel relevant yet like a historical document of a time outgrown.

‘[I hope it] becomes a reminder of what silence cost us, and how far we’ve come,’ he says.

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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Obituary

Ngugi wa Thiong'o shakes hands with a young fan on June 13, 2015 during a book signing to celebrate the golden jubilee of his first book 'Weep Not Child' in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Image: Tony Karumba/AFP

BY LYN INNES

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has died aged 87, was long regarded as east Africa’s most eminent writer and, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, a founding father of African literature in English.

Like Achebe, his novels showed the social, psychological and economic impact of the colonial encounter in Africa, as well as the disillusion that followed independence. In later years Ngũgĩ championed writing in African languages and published fiction, drama and poetry in Gikuyu, his mother tongue.

His first novel, Weep Not Child (1964), told the story of brothers who respond in different ways to the struggle in the 1950s for independence from British rule by the Land and Freedom Army (also known as the Mau Mau) in his native Kenya, and depicted the brutality of the British in their attempts to quell the rebellion.

After Ngũgĩ showed the manuscript to Achebe at an African writers’ conference in Makere, Uganda, in 1962, Achebe secured its publication (under the name James Ngũgĩ) in the Heinemann African Writers series. It was awarded Unesco’s first prize at the World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966.

Thereafter, many more of Ngũgĩ’s novels and short stories were published in that series. A Grain of Wheat (1967), considered by some critics his best work of fiction, is set during celebrations for Kenya’s independence day and deals with issues of single-minded heroism and betrayal, as well as the sufferings of detainees and women during the struggle for freedom.

An earlier novel, The River Between (1965), featured an unhappy romance and divisions between Christians and non-Christians. It was written while Ngũgĩ was studying for a master’s degree in the UK, at the University of Leeds.

Ngũgĩ also wrote plays, including The Black Hermit (1962), which dramatises a conflict between the desire to stay with the traditional world of a rural village and the wish to benefit from modern improvements and wealth, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in 1976 with Micere Githae Mugo, focusing on the deeds and aims of a leader of the Mau Mau.

Appointed professor of English literature and fellow of creative writing at the University of Nairobi in 1967, Ngũgĩ argued successfully for the re-formation of the department to place African literatures, including oral literatures and writing in African languages, at its centre. At this time he changed his name from James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He also published a series of influential essays gathered later in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972).

Increasingly alienated by the corruption and authoritarian policies that characterised Kenya’s government under Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was influenced in his later writing by Frantz Fanon and Marxist ideology. Petals of Blood (1977), the last of his novels composed in English, was completed while he stayed in Yalta in Crimea, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Its central character, Wanja, a barmaid and prostitute, becomes a symbol of Kenya and the capitalist exploitation of labour, raped and damaged by corrupt businessmen and politicians.

In the same year that Petals of Blood was published, Ngũgĩ became involved in creating community theatre along the lines advocated by Fanon. Together with the Kenyan playwright Ngũgĩ wa Mirii he composed a play in Gikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which included members of village audiences as actors and vocal responders.

Its success, allied to its outspoken criticism of the Kenyan establishment, led to Ngũgĩ’s arrest in 1977. He was detained in Kamiti maximum security prison in Nairobi for almost a year, until released partly through the intervention of Amnesty International. Finding that he had been stripped of his professorship and facing threats to his family, he left Kenya for Britain in 1982.

While in prison Ngũgĩ had used sheets of toilet paper to write Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (The Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Gikuyu. Drawing on styles and forms reminiscent of traditional ballad singers, the novel mingles fantasy and realism to satirise wealthy Kenyans who exploit the poor.

In Britain between 1982 and 1985 he worked with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and was writer-in-residence for the London borough of Islington. He was also in demand as a speaker at conferences promoting the reading and study of African and other Commonwealth literatures, often explaining his conviction that African and other indigenous writers should cease writing fiction in English, “the language of the oppressor”.

His arguments were later published in several collections of essays, including Barrel of a Pen (1982) and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).

Born in the village of Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kenya, Ngũgĩ was the son of Ngũgĩ wa Ndūcū, a landowner, and his third wife, Wanjiku, in a family consisting of four wives and 28 children. After primary education in the village school he was sent as a boarder to the Alliance high school near Nairobi. There students were made to speak in English only, and beaten if caught speaking Gikuyu or other indigenous languages.

On his return home after his first term, he found that his village had been razed by British forces opposing the Mau Mau insurrection. His family were divided in their attitudes to the Mau Mau; some members opposed it, and one became an informer to the British government, while a half-brother joined the movement, another was detained, and a third, who was deaf, was shot in the back when he failed to stop in response to a command he did not hear. His mother had been detained and also abused.

Ngũgĩ went on to complete a degree in English at Makerere University College in Uganda in 1963, and in 1964 won a scholarship to Leeds. That same year he married his first wife, Nyambura, a teacher, farmer and small trader. He taught English and African literatures at the University of Nairobi from 1967 to 1977, while also serving as a fellow in creative writing at Makerere University.

Following his release from detention in December 1978 and subsequent move to the UK, he remained an exile from Kenya. His one attempt to return, in 2004, resulted in a brutal robbery and a sexual assault on his second wife, Njeeri, an incident that Ngũgĩ strongly suspected was encouraged by people close to the government.

While teaching in the UK and the US, Ngũgĩ wrote several memoirs, including Detained: a Writer’s Prison Diary (1982, updated as Wrestling With the Devil, 2018), Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer’s Awakening (2016). He also continued to write fiction in Gikuyu. His verse epic retelling the Gikuyu myth of origin, Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (2019), translated by Ngũgĩ as The Perfect Nine, was the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker prize.

He was the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees across the world, and was often seen as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature; so much so that in 2010 many reporters gathered outside his home on the day of its announcement. When it became clear that the award had gone to Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ seemed much less disappointed than the reporters, whom he had to console.

Having separated from Nyambura, who did not accompany him into exile, Ngũgĩ married Njeeri, a counsellor and therapist at the University of California, in 1992; they separated in 2023. He is survived by 10 children and seven grandchildren.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ), writer and activist, born 5 January 1938; died 28 May 2025

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Black Medal Of Honor Recipient Removed From US Department Of Defense Website

Maj Gen Charles C Rogers. Photograph: US Department of Defense via Internet Archive

BY MAYA YANG

The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.

On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.

According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge.

As of Sunday afternoon, a “404 – Page Not Found” message appeared on the defense department’s webpage for Rogers, along with the message: “The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.”

A screenshot posted by the writer Brandon Friedman on Bluesky on Saturday evening showed the Google preview of an entry of Rogers’s profile on the defense department’s website.

Dated 1 November 2021, the entry’s Google preview reads: “Medal of Honor Monday: Army Maj Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers.” Below it are the words: “Army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers served through all of it. As a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service.”

“Google his name and the entry below comes up. When you click, you’ll see the page has been deleted and the URL changed to include ‘DEI medal,’” Friedman wrote.

The Guardian has asked the defense department for comment.

Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has moved his administration to roll back DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – efforts across the federal government.

One executive order sought to terminate all “mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities in the federal government”, which the Trump administration deems “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility’ (DEIA) programs”.

In a win for the Trump administration on Friday, an appeals court lifted a block on executive orders that seek to end the federal government’s support for DEI programs.

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INTERVIEW: 2015 Presidency: 'I Weep For The Southeast People'

BY SAMSON EZEA AND NKECHI ONYEDI

PROF. A.B.C Nwosu, former Minister of Health and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), speaks on the state of insecurity in the country, Igbo Presidency in 2015, corruption and other issues.

The Igbo are clamouring for the Presidency in 2015, do you think it would be possible?

People get the leadership that they deserve, but the Bible also says that where there is no vision, the people perish, I weep for the Southeast and beyond, I won’t say more. There are people who promised the Ohanaeze leadership that power will go to Southeast in unbroken succession in 2015 from the Southsouth, that was their solemn word and that was what the Ohanaeze leadership told Ndigbo last year. So, we must hold them to their words if not, and the people should disgrace them thoroughly, because if we don’t disgrace them, another set will come up again. When a leadership says this is what they will deliver and they don’t deliver it, the followership should sanction them.

What were the factors that hindered previous moves by the Southeast to clinch power in the country?

The Igbo got the first Presidency of Nigeria, but it was a ceremonial president during the time of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. It has not always been like this with the Igbo. After independence, it was Azikiwe until 1966. The situation changed when we had the executive president in 1979, after the civil war had intervened. There is a school of thought that believes that the Igbo, having fought the civil war, should never be allowed to be President again until centuries have passed. There is also another school of thought that says ‘no, the Igbo have paid their dues and are entitled to the exercise of their full citizenship rights, including the Presidency’. The Igbo believed they must produce the President and in 1979, they came near it with Chief Alex Ekwueme as Vice President. Perhaps, if the military hadn’t intervened in 1983, Ekwueme might have become the President at the end of Shagari’s second term, but the military intervened and later there was June 12 presidential election, which was won by the late Chief MKO Abiola. Because of that, in 1999, it had to be exclusively Southwest issue.

Now, the Igbo are saying that they also need to become part of the equation and they reached an agreement with the Southwest, South-south in 2007 that the we didn’t mind if a Southsouth was, that was why some of us gave Dr. Peter Odili our best support in his presidential quest in 2007. Now that the Southsouth has produced the President, the only people who have not produced president is Southeast and we are saying we should produce. We are not anti-anybody, we are just pro-Igbo.

I respect the Yoruba the way they canvassed, pushed and held on to June 12. They are a people, they didn’t have to agree, but they made June 12 an issue and Nigeria recognised that June 12 was an issue. They presented a credible threat and were recognized.

I salute people like Chief Edwin Clark, though I will not go with him, but I salute him for his spirited defence of his people. He is a soldier of his people and a defender of Ijaw rights and I respect his tenacity. Because of that and the resource control issue, they also presented a credible threat and have become a force in Nigeria and Nigeria has recognised them.

But my heart bleeds when it comes to the Igbo, and then I weep again for the late Ikemba Odimegwu Ojukwu. And I ask, when will some leaders emerge from Igbo and say, ‘this is us, we mean no harm, but we are citizens of Nigeria and are entitled to full citizenship as a right’.

Not for people to be looking for where they are sharing porridge and running into the place, collect plates of porridge and vanish. It has always been an issue and each Igbo man must choose what he wants.

What is your view on the proposals submitted by Ohanaeze leadership on the amendment of the country’s constitution?

I needed a tranquilizer when I saw the president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo presenting a proposal to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

I have four issues with that; if you are presenting a proposal on my behalf, at least, I ought to know what it is, it was in the pages of the newspapers that I heard that it was a six-year single term and I know it flies in the face of what Ndigbo has been asking for. My first quarrel was: why don’t they let our people see what they are submitting their behalf? How did they arrive at the decision? They can’t just wake up and begin to act as if nothing else occurred before now? I saw the one submitted by Delta State which was published in the newspaper. It was specific that Federal powers must be devolved to the states and it quoted specific sections of the constitution that they want to be amended.

I am not saying that they shouldn’t do it, but it will be easier if they carry everybody along and publish the proposal on the pages of the newspaper. Nothing will be lost because this thing is not a secret document. The Igbo people are not seeking something that is anti-Nigeria.

Many believe that corruption has worsened in the country since 1999 and the government is not doing enough to curb, do you agree?

I was shocked on May 29, 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed me as Political Adviser and brought me into his government without knowing me.

We had never met as at that time, he had never seen me and I remembered that we went into the small room in the Villa after we congratulated him. I told him that I am Prof A.B.C Nwosu, he held me and took me into the small room and said, he wanted me to work with him and he had two bills with him that day he was sworn in. The Bill on Niger Delta Development (NDDC Bill). I will always say the truth, if anybody says it is an afterthought from Obasanjo, it is not true. He came to the Presidency determined to set up the NDDC to redress the injustice meted to the Niger Delta. How he ended up, he will be in the best position to tell us, but I know he showed me the Bill.

The second bill he showed me was the Anti-Corruption Bill, and he wanted me to do a research on how countries of the world had dealt with corruption and set up their anti-corruption agencies and the kind of powers they have.

The most charitable thing I can say is that corruption is still with us, and it illustrated what the Igbo man wrote on his motor that ‘to be a man is not a day’s job’. To fight corruption in Nigeria is not a day job, because corruption will fight back. So we have to fight it, if we don’t fight it, it will undo us as a nation. It diminishes our sovereignty and ability to fulfill our destiny in the world, so we must fight it.

Let’s forget yesterday, let’s start from today. This current Senate has identified wrongdoings in the privatization; we can fight it by doing something about that. We can look at the report, it is a report from our Senate, we can deal with it, we can deal with the corruption witnessed in the pension probe, it is mind-boggling. That brings us to the subsidy scam. What can stop corruption is that anybody who is caught in corruption is arraigned and jailed in accordance with the law. That is why you see people looking for General Muhammed Buhari; he sentenced people to unbelievable jail terms which they served some. If you catch a person, you send him to jail and make him forfeit some of those property and people see it.

What is your reaction to the state of insecurity across the country today with the killings in Jos and Boko Haram?

Everybody is worried, including the security agencies. My problem is that worrying about this cannot give us security. It is doing something about it that will give us security and I want to suggest that we can do something about it by engaging traditional rulers. Not just in places where we have security problems, but also all over the country.

I am convinced that we all have a firm resolve that the security problem cannot go on anymore, because I don’t think there is anybody who is benefitting from it. The problem is diminishing Nigeria’s sovereignty.

For somebody who witnessed the civil war, it is frightening. The thing has gotten out of hand and out of control and the only way to control it is to engage the traditional rulers and the various stakeholders. It is not of religion, and it is a matter of sovereignty, nationhood and citizenship.

We need to be firm about how the coercive agencies of the state are handling this matter. Murder and arson are criminal offences of the worst order. We have a proverb that says, “ If a small child craws and bites an old man without respecting the grey hair, the old man should craw back and bite the child on the buttock without respecting whatever he sees there.”

So if these people kill and maim people, the coercive agencies should use maximum force to establish the sovereignty of Nigeria. This insecurity issue has gone so far that it has to be dealt with decisively now.

Is the high rate of unemployment in the country a contributory factor to the problem?

Unemployment is a major factor because an idle mind is the devils workshop. The level of unemployment is intolerable and nobody is happy with it, but there are people who are paid by government to think out programmes that will keep people employed in a sustainable manner.

We cannot import tricycles popularly Keke NAPEP from India and tell a graduate of Chemistry to be driving and say it’s employment. What we are facing in the world is not new, America and Britain have gone through depression and a major way of creating employment in a sustainable manner is through massive investment in public works.

If government decides now to build one million housing units in Nigeria today, do you know the number of people who will be employed? Not Keke NAPEP for God’s sake. Or this thing they are doing, call young boys and give them lectures, after the lectures, they give them N5 million and ask them to go and be entrepreneurs and employers of labour. That again to me is again laughable. We should have a way of encouraging small and medium scale industries in a measurable way.

The Nigerian market is huge, we don’t have to export, we have over 160 million people. If we make enough quality goods and people buy into it, it is enough to create employment. The one that my heart bleeds as I drive to Enugu is the Ajaokuta steel. There are so many buildings that have passed lintel level, they have been wasting away for over 20 years. Ajaokuta is not only a steel factory, it is steel city. That is why you have hospitals, residential quarters and others there.

Ajaokuta Steel can conveniently absorb thousands of unemployed youths. Why should we leave the fate of people like that to some nonsensical privatization which every probe has found wanting.

I was one of the authors of the PDP manifesto, we believed in private sector-led economy, but we did not say that we would auction off the entire economy to whatever private sector. We have no national carrier, how many countries do you know that don’t have national carriers? Because of private sector, they go and bring 30-year-old aircrafts into Nigeria airspace. That is a shame.

This is 13 years of Democracy in Nigeria, do you think we have done well?

I laugh whenever I hear that US spent 200 years before they got to where they are today. The issue is that people learn from people’s experiences, so that you don’t have to go through the same thing. We have more than enough time. What are we learning that nobody should rule another person without the persons’ consent? When you rig the election, you are ruling without the consent of the people, is that what you need 500 years to learn? Do we need 500 years to draw up people’s constitution?

GUARDIAN NIGERIA INTERVIEW AUGUST 4, 2012

Figure Of Extremely Poor Nigerians Rises To 93.7 Million

BY THE GUARDIAN

An estimated 6.8 million Nigerians have slipped into extreme poverty in just 12 months, according to the World Poverty Clock. The body yesterday said that 93,720,530 people in Nigeria now live in extreme poverty. It was first revealed in June 2018 that Nigeria had overtaken India as the nation with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty across the world, with an estimated 86.9 million Nigerians measured to be living on less than $1.90 (N684) a day.

According to new data from the World Poverty Clock, a web tool produced by World Data Lab, that figure has increased to 93.7 million in June 2019. 4.5 Nigerians slip into extreme poverty every minute with 47.7 per cent of Nigeria’s estimated 196.5 million people affected. This figure has risen from the 44.2 per cent of the total population that was recorded in June 2018.

According to the World Bank, a person can be said to be living in extreme poverty if they live below the poverty line of $1.90 which translates to N693.5 per day. This means that more than half of Nigeria’s population live on less than a dollar a day.

In June 2018, the World Poverty Clock named Nigeria the poverty capital of the world. In its assessment last year, the World Data Lab noted that the outlook for poverty alleviation in Nigeria is weak, and that an estimated 120 million Nigerians are expected to slip into extreme poverty by 2030.

“If current economic trends persist, we forecast that between 2018 and 2030 real GDP growth (2.15 per cent per annum) will be unable to keep up with population growth, resulting in an average annual growth of GDP per capita of less than zero,” the organisation noted.

World Poverty Clock provides real-time poverty estimates until 2030 for almost every country in the world, monitoring progress against ending extreme poverty which is the United Nation’s first sustainable development goal. According to its methodology, the World Poverty Clock uses publicly available data on income distribution, production, and consumption, provided by various international organizations, most notably the UN, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

These organizations compile data provided to them by governments in each country. In the few cases when governments fail to provide data, the agency uses models to estimate poverty in affected countries. The agency’s data covers 99.7% of the world’s population.

For Nigeria, the general household survey (GHS) from 2012/2013 is used, rather than the harmonised Nigeria living standards survey, because it is more recent and believed to be of higher quality.with statistics showing 87 million people live in poverty.

The latest numbers indicate that since June 2018, four million Nigerians have joined the poverty club occasioned by factors such as unemployment, insecurity, among others.

I Am Leaving N42.5 Billion For Ihedioha To Govern Imo, Says Okorocha

Rochas Okorocha

BY CHARLES OGUGBUAJA

OWERRI (GUARDIAN) -- Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha yesterday said he would leave a whopping 42.5 billion for his successor, Chief Emeka Ihedioha, to enable him work without initial excuses.

Okorocha disclosed this while swearing in the new Head of Service, Mrs. Ngozi Ama Eluwa; 11 new Permanent Secretaries and Accountant-General, Donald Igbo, at the Government House in Owerri. He said N8.1 billion is meant for the payment of salaries and capital projects, while N5.2 billion would be for payment of pension arrears.

But the incoming administration of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) through the state’s Publicity Secretary of the party, Damian Oparah, alleged that Okorocha would leave with debt of over N100 billion and uncompleted projects, among other myriad of problems.

The state Publicity Secretary of the party, Damian Oparah, who spoke with The Guardian, expressed disgust over the comment.“It is when we see it we know if it is true. He is leaving N45.5 billion when he is also leaving over N100 billion debt; over N200 billion worth of uncompleted projects and problems he created in the state. Look at Owerri each time it rains how the entire place is.” Oparah said.

The outgoing Imo State governor, who accused the PDP chieftains of sending petitions to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which made the agency to block the funds for the payment of pension arrears and others at the point of commencing payment, advised the new appointees to reposition the state civil service, shun corruption and keep their integrity.

He said: “Remember God in discharging your duties. Discharge your duties without fear or favour and also defend your state when the need arises. I gave this state my best. I will do all I can to support the incoming government. Imo State Government has kept aside a total of N4.5 billion for the in-coming government, and for that reason, I will set up a sub-committee to make sure that the projects they are attached to come to fruition even when I am out of office or when I will not be available because government is a continuum.”

NIGERIA: Time To Offload Our Unitary Burden

BY GUARDIAN EDITORIAL
This year’s Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebration a couple of months ago triggered discussions of sad memories of our tortuous journey through military incursion into politics, which consequences were also felt in the just concluded general elections.

Specifically, at press time, a committee was still sitting on alleged undemocratic role the armed forces (and police) played in the 2019 elections. This is a sad commentary that this newspaper cannot ignore.

More important, the army remembrance day also marks the incursion of the military into politics and signalled the death of democratic institutions and the organic laws of the country once anchored on a functional federalism. Similarly, probing the role of soldiers in a critical election 59 years after independence is also saddening.

In the same vein, 53 years after military incursion into the political arena, the country has remained in the wilderness in search of the right constitutional framework.

Ostensibly, the country retains the appellation of a federal republic but this is merely in name as the country is still being run as a unitary state, despite democratic institutions. This is unacceptable!

In other words, the country is run on ‘command and obey’ code of military ethics. Indeed, the component units have been run as military garrisons. The military, which hitherto dominated the polity introduced and domesticated this obnoxious method of governance in a highly plural and multi-ethnic society.

First was the promulgation of Decree No 1, which dissolved and modified the constitution and followed by Decree No. 34 of 1966, which centralised administration structures and abolished the federal regional arrangement well thought out by the founding fathers and prevalent at the time.

The decree states inter alia that Nigeria ceases to be a federation but a republic comprising all the component units of the federation.

In spite of extant opposition to centralisation of the country by some of the federating regions, the so-called victors of the civil war saw the new dispensation as a convenient tool for the hegemonic control of the country thereby introducing buccaneering and whimsical control of the institutions of state from which the country is yet to recover.

And so, subsequent efforts at constitutional engineering witnessed deliberate erosion of the federal essentiality of the Nigerian state by means of atomisation of existing regions through capricious state creation and overweighed exclusive legislative list.

Disingenuously, those whose hegemonic interests are served by the prevalent unitary structures have argued that a unitary system is the elixir to the country’s unity; that the plurality of the country can only engender multiple problems; unnecessary duplications of the institutions of state; and uneven development. It is further argued that a unitary system allows for quick intervention in matters of national interest by the central government. Besides, they argued that a federal system engenders legal differentiation and jurisdictional dispute.

Nevertheless, the cost of reversal of the federal structure of the country invalidates the stream of arguments for unitarism. The net effect of the actuality of the unitary contraption is the destruction of regional autonomy in terms of fiscal autonomy and independent development initiative.

Consequently, the country slipped into the nature of a rentier state, dependent on a mono-product—oil—which accrual is the source of funding for the non-descript states passed as units of the federation and which has fuelled external consumption pattern, large-scale corruption, debt overhang and inter- and intra ethnic conflicts as well as partisan pacification of ethnic groups on a genocidal scale.

Sadly, the development initiative of hitherto flourishing regions has been held down – since that darkness of 1966.

The irresistible logic of federalism cannot be overemphasised. The call for restructuring is about restoration of the Nigerian state to a federal constitution or state structure.

Nicholas Schmitt once defined federalism as a system of polity building in which the benefits of statehood such as liberty and autonomy are harnessed in a constitutional federal arrangement.

In the inimitable words of Kenneth Wheare, it is a power sharing process such that both the central and regional governments are compartmentalised but simultaneously coordinate and independent. Central to Wheare’s definition is the fiscal autonomy of the component units of a federal system. Remove this principle and you will not have a federal system but a unitary patchwork.

Indeed, in a federation, the national and state governments are split into their own spheres and each is supreme in its respective sphere.

Clearly, the power of the central government are enumerated often with a limited set of constitutional functions while the component units, namely, state and federal are sovereign within their sphere of jurisdiction.

Besides, the rationale for federalism is unambiguous: if a country is unilingual or bilingual or multilingual and has divergent nationalities or a combination of all these cultural accoutrements, such a country must be organised along: one, linguistic, and two, on the dual basis of linguistic and nationality.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo did emphasise the point that, “of all the cultural equipment of a people, language is the most formidable, the most irrepressible, and the most resistant to diffusion, not to talk of fusion. It lies at the base of human divisions and divergences.”

This is why thinkers on the federal idea say that focus must be on the forces of economic, socio-political and cultural that have made inevitable federalism as an organising principle of polity building.

The Nigerian case is quite instructive that we can only ignore it to the detriment of the country’s wellbeing. The peoples are not only diverse but territorially segregated in ways in which each of the component nationalities can be defined by geographical location and linguistic distinction.

Therefore, to organise them on a unitary basis as the military has done, and equally reified in the so-called democratic constitutions, is a recipe for chaos. The continuous agitation for restructuring of the polity to unleash development in the component parts of the federation is only intelligible in this regard.

It is to be noted that if the country must move forward and avoid a slip towards a predictable dislocation, it is about time that its minders offloaded the unitary burden. It is not suitable for the country; and a step backward to the pre-1966 period might begin the restoration process of a federation badly caricatured. It is better late than never.

Apparently recalcitrant authorities in Abuja and other peripheries of the centre should consider the expediency of offloading the unitary burden as a significant preface to rebuilding the nation’s broken walls.

Chiwetel Ejiofor On His Latest Film: 'There Is No Fairy Tale Africa'

Chiwetel Ejiofor image by Suki Dhanda/The Observer via London Guardian

BY BRYAN MEALER

THE GUARDIAN

On 1 March, Netflix will release the film The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, based on the 2009 bestselling book I wrote with William Kamkwamba. The film, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, premiered at the Sundance film festival in late January. It tells the story of how William, then 14, was forced to drop out of school during a deadly famine that struck Malawi in 2000-2001. As his family and neighbors slowly starved, he found refuge in a local library, where he discovered books that inspired him to build a series of windmills from tractor and bicycle partsto produce electricity for his village, and to eventually pump water. After speaking at the TED Global conference in 2007, William was able to return to school and later graduated from Dartmouth College.

In 2010, after the book’s release, William and I sold the film rights to Chiwetel, who is Nigerian and had grown up visiting his family in villages much like William’s. Chiwetel would go on to star in many films over the next decade, including 12 Years a Slave, which earned him best actor at the British Academy Film Awards along with an Oscar nomination for best actor. This week, I spoke with Chiwetel on the phone in London, where he was fresh off the Berlin international film festival, to discuss his directorial debut.

How did you first come across  The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind?

I was living in Los Angeles at the time and a friend had attended your book party and told me about it. I was just stunned by it, really. It was clear it was operating on several different levels with a very determined humility to it and this real sense of time and place and authenticity and a very lived-in sense of the world. There was no fairy tale Africa, or the other side, the nightmare Africa.

When I met William in 2007, I’d just finished reporting the war in the Congo for three years, so I’d been engrossed in that nightmare version, even contributed to it. That’s why his story was so refreshing to me – it really captured the resourcefulness and tenacity you see every day on that continent, in addition to the mundane.

Right. It dealt with Malawi and those deep family dynamics in a real way, and it was a space that I recognized. Look, there is no generic Africa. Nigeria is different from Malawi but there were connections and similarities that I recognized. I felt it would be powerful to tell a story that was honest about the challenges and the triumphs of a place.

The book is very much a father and son story. I know you lost your own father when you were 11 in a car crash while visiting Nigeria, an accident in which you were also severely injured. Looking at your childhood there seems to be some parallels – or at least an understanding of what may have drawn you to the story. Is that accurate?
Most of my childhood was spent in London, but we visited family a lot. Over a period of years, I understood the dynamics enough to be intrigued by the villages.

We’d spend time in Enugu, but I was aware of the rich cultural spaces the villages represented, this real complex and nuanced space where generations of families lived. You’re trying to keep up with everyone, and at some point, you realize that this square mile you’re standing in is all of you, and it’s deeply connected to your sense of place in the world. It’s the wellspring from which all things have happened in your family’s life. I also knew that from an outside perspective it probably looked very simple and impoverished. So there was something about that that resonated, that connected the book to my family and wanting to explore their experience.

And there was also that dynamic between father and son that I immediately hooked into, my relationship to my father and the fact that he hasn’t been with us in 30 years. It’s still an evolving relationship and it still has a strong space in my life. Those were big themes that jumped out from the book.

After your father’s death your mother started the Brightland International Academy in Enugu, which educates underprivileged kids, a school that you’re still very involved with today … William’s story was perfect for you.
It was perfect, but I also loved it because William’s story also lives in the solution, in the brighter future. People can identify and find solutions for their own issues, as opposed to being presented as victims everyone else is going to help. We’ve tried it that way, this paternalistic way, and it’s disempowering.

I love how the movie, which has an entirely black cast, has allowed you to talk about diversity in film. Throughout your career, you’ve come back to Africa – playing Patrice Lumumba in the play A Season in the Congo at London’s Young Vic, starred in the adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half a Yellow Sun, addressed apartheid in Endgame and Red Dust, and now you’re directing this film …

There are epic stories to be told there. I’ve always been excited by the combination of these western traditions of cinema and these epic stories in Africa. There’s always been an overlap that’s been rarely explored. There’s a rich narrative landscape for people to embrace and fall in love with.

The film is shot entirely in William’s village in Wimbe. Because of that, you were able to accomplish a rare feat – realistically portray African village life, which doesn’t make it into western living rooms that often.

Right, that day to day living. How you get up in the morning, how you have a shower [laughs]. People don’t have a context for that because they’re seeing Africa in these headline-ish ways and they lose the connection to people who are just doing normal things and have the same desires as them. It’s important to take the audience into this private space.

You mentioned somewhere that one of your first references before making the film were the impressionist painters, and how they’d managed to capture these peasants in rural, impoverished France with such romanticism, scope, and beauty. Any other inspirations?

I stated looking at Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, a film that I’ve always loved. I felt like that neo-realism had such a resonance for me. Post-war Italy dealing with all that poverty, that broken structure, and yet this father and son at the center of it finding this new space to communicate and express themselves was a very influential story, not to mention the bicycle at the center.

Another major influence was Haile Gerima and his film Harvest: 3,000 Years. Released in 1977, it’s about the famine in Ethiopia. I couldn’t find it anywhere and finally the British Film Institute had a copy they screened for me. I could watch that film every day for 1,000 years. I actually went to meet Gerima in Washington to talk with him and get his advice. He was very moved that William was stressed by the conditions of his family, and he said that was the heart of his motivation, that somehow subconsciously he was aware that these conditions were wrong, that something was broken in the expression of humanity. His motivating energy was to reconnect with what things should be.

You famously learned to play violin for the role of Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave. For The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, you and several others in the cast had to learn Chichewa during the 37 days on location. Which was easier, learning violin or Chichewa?

[Laughs] Chichewa. Violin is complex. It’s not that complicated to look like you kind of know what you’re doing, but it’s extremely complicated to look like you really know what you’re doing.

Natural Cures For depression Validated

BY CHUKWUMA NUANYA

Image Guardian Nigeria

Depression is fast becoming as common as malaria in Nigeria. Unfortunately, most of the estimated 60 million people with the mental health disorder do not know they have the condition and some are living in denial- “I cannot be ‘mad’. God forbid.”

Depression is a common mental disorder, characterized by persistent sadness and a loss of interest in activities that you normally enjoy, accompanied by an inability to carry out daily activities, for at least two weeks.

In addition, people with depression normally have several of the following: a loss of energy; a change in appetite; sleeping more or less; anxiety; reduced concentration; indecisiveness; restlessness; feelings of worthlessness, guilt, or hopelessness; and thoughts of self-harm or suicide.

Depression is treatable, with talking therapies or antidepressant medication or a combination of these.

Unfortunately, some antidepressants come with unpleasant side effects including suicidal tendencies.

However, scientists have validated some natural therapies to effectively treat the mental disorder.

Top on the list is regular exercise. Others are lettuce, scent leaf/holy basil (Ocimum gratissimum/nchuanwu in Ibo, Effirin in Yoruba), green tea leaves (Camelia sinensis), bitter leaf (Vernonia amygdalina), coffee and Ganoderma mushroom.

Exercise does beat depression
Scientists have found some concrete evidence that exercising a little bit every day does reduce depression symptoms and boost overall mood.

For years, studies have found a connection between working out and lower depression risk – we all know exercise releases endorphins and endorphins make you happy.

But until now, there was no evidence to show a causal relationship when it came to depression – whether physical activity really did affect the condition, or simply that people with depression exercised less.

Now, a team of investigators has used a novel research method to strongly support physical activity as a preventive measure for depression. While many studies have found associations between greater levels of physical activity and lower rates of depression, a key question has remained — does physical activity actually reduce the risk of depression or does depression lead to reduced physical activity? Now a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), United States (US), investigators has used a novel research method to strongly support physical activity as a preventive measure for depression.

Their report is being published online in JAMA Psychiatry.
“Using genetic data, we found evidence that higher levels of physical activity may causally reduce risk for depression,” says Karmel Choi, PhD, of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine, lead author of the report. “Knowing whether an associated factor actually causes an outcome is important, because we want to invest in preventive strategies that really work.”

The technique used in the study — Mendelian randomization — uses gene variants to study the effects of a non-genetic factor in a different approach from that of traditional research. The gene variants are studied as a type of natural experiment in which people show higher or lower average levels of a factor like physical activity that are related to gene variants they have inherited. Because genetic variants are inherited in a relatively random fashion, they can serve as less biased proxies to estimate the true relationship between physical activity and depression. This approach can also determine which of two traits is actually causative — if levels of trait A affects the levels of trait B but levels of trait B do not affect levels of trait A, that implies that trait A leads to trait B, but not vice versa.

For this study, the researchers identified gene variants from the results of large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that were conducted for physical activity in the U.K. Biobank and for depression by a global research consortium. GWAS results for physical activity were available for two different measures: one based on 377,000 participants’ self-reports of physical activity and the other based on readings of motion-detecting sensors called accelerometers, worn on the wrists of more than 91,000 participants. The GWAS for depression was based on data from more than 143,000 participants with and without this condition.

The results of the Mendelian randomization study indicated that accelerometer-based physical activity, but not self-reported activity, does appear to protect against the risk of depression. The differences between the two methods of measuring physical activity could result not only from inaccuracies in participants’ memories or desire to present themselves in a positive way but also from the fact that objective readings capture things other than planned exercise — walking to work, climbing the stairs, mowing the lawn — that participants may not recognize as physical activity. The analysis revealed no causal relationship in the other direction, between depression and physical activity.

“On average,” Choi says, “doing more physical activity appears to protect against developing depression. Any activity appears to be better than none; our rough calculations suggest that replacing sitting with 15 minutes of a heart-pumping activity like running, or with an hour of moderately vigorous activity, is enough to produce the average increase in accelerometer data that was linked to a lower depression risk.”
Lettuce ‘cure’ for depression, stroke, thromboembolism

Can eating meals rich in lettuce provide relief from anxiety, depression, chronic pain, sleeplessness, indigestion, lack of appetite, blood clots, heart attack, stroke and thromboembolism?

Botanically called Lactuca sativa, lettuce, a leafy vegetable, belongs to the Asteraceae family. Lettuce has been traditionally used for relieving pain, inflammation, insomnia, anxiety, neurosis, dry coughs, rheumatic pain, stomach problems including indigestion and lack of appetite. Moreover, the therapeutic significance of lettuce includes its anticonvulsant, sedative-hypnotic and antioxidant properties.

However, a recent study has validated lettuce for the treatment of anxiety, depression, chronic pains, sleeplessness, indigestion, lack of appetite, blood clots, heart attack, stroke and thromboembolism.

Thromboembolism is the formation in a blood vessel of a clot (thrombus) that breaks loose and is carried by the blood stream to plug another vessel.

The study published in BMC Complement Alternative Medicine is titled “Evaluation of analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant and anti-coagulant properties of Lactuca sativa (CV. Grand Rapids) plant tissues and cell suspension in rats.”

The researchers concluded: “The present experimental findings of different extracts suggest that Lactuca sativa is a broad spectrum pharmaceutical crop conforming significant analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant and anti-coagulant properties that has potential to replace synthetic drugs.

“More interestingly, cell suspension exudate showed prominent results in all the assays which is the main point of interest because valuable secondary metabolites and economically important substances can be produced in bulk from plant cell suspensions in simple, cost-effective and reproducible way. However, advance study is needed to explore the precise mechanism of action the active components.”

Several studies have shown that the function of the anticoagulant drugs is to inhibit blood clotting, which is the major cause of heart attacks and strokes. Anticoagulant drugs can be used with a number of diseases when there is a high risk of blood clots. The researchers said that since anti-coagulants are used for the cardiac problems, instead of relying on blood thinners, physicians could shift to herbal medicine. It has been reported that antioxidants can counteract the haematological and blood coagulation disturbances, oxidative stress, and hepatorenal (liver and kidney) damages.

The researchers added: “Anticoagulants play an essential role as mediators for the treatment and prevention of thromboembolic disorders. Due to their pharmacological possessions, plants can serve as the sources for the investigation of new compounds with anticoagulant properties. There is convincing scientific indications representing that the use of phytochemicals with anticoagulant effects and dietary anticoagulants can eventually eliminate or reduce the risks of thromboembolic diseases.

“Here we report the L. sativa a herbal drug for its analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant and anti-coagulant activities of the seeds and leaf extracts along with the cell suspension exudate. We obtained very interesting and promising results which elucidate the importance of lettuce as a traditional medicine.”

The current findings showed that aqueous and methanol and chloroform; 1:1 (MC) extracts of seed have the least immobility time in the forced swimming test, which could act as an anti-depressant on the central nervous system. The leaf extracts and cell suspension exudate also expressed moderate anti-depressant activities. In anticoagulant assay, the coagulation time of aspirin (positive control) and MC extract of leaf was comparable, suggesting strong anti-coagulant effect. Additionally, no abnormal behaviour or lethality was observed in any animal tested.

“Conversely, if a condition such as an inflammation of the paw, serves to decrease the response latency, it is said to induce hyperalgesia. Inflammation is a condition involving confined increase in the amount of leukocytes and various complex mediator molecules. The most common screening method of acute inflammation has been the prevention of edema in rats by induction of carrageenan. It is believed that the COX (cyclooxygenase) enzyme involved in inflammation can be inhibited by NSAIDs (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) to reduce the edema. But NSAIDs have some side effects like renal and gastric toxicity. Medicinal plants are believed to be cost-effective and harmless source of novel biochemical constituents with strong therapeutic properties.”

Hyperalgesia is an increased sensitivity to pain, which may be caused by damage to nociceptors or peripheral nerves. Also, researchers have also successfully used lettuce to reduce anxiety (anxiolytic).

The study titled “Anxiolytic property of Lactuca sativa, effect on anxiety behaviour induced by novel food and height” was published in Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine.

The researchers from the Biochemistry and Applied Nutrition Discipline, Defense Food Research Laboratory Mysore-570011, India, concluded: “… that hydro-alcohol extract of L. sativa rich in polyphenols possess potent anxiolytic property.”

They further explained: “The hydro alcohol extract rich in polyphenols and other secondary metabolites is a potent anxiolytic agent. It has been established that there are lot of plant secondary metabolites like polyphenols and flavonoids being employed in the treatment of psychotic disorders especially for anxiety in traditional medicine practice, most of which directly or indirectly affect the central nervous system.

“Considering the varied important activities reported in traditional system of medicine about L. sativa, it was planned to study the effects of the extract of L. sativa leaves on anxiolytic properties in mice. Although anxiety is an important protective mechanism, it can become maladaptive and disruptive.

“Pathological anxiety, as manifested in anxiety disorders, is an anxious response that occurs out of proportion to the threat, becomes disruptive to daily life and causes suffering. Anxiety has been implicated in a number of psychiatric disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder, depression, panic-attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders and posttraumatic stress disorders.

“Anxiety alleviates the levels of intracellular reactive oxygen species. Anxiety induces stress and activates the sympathetic nervous system, stimulating the release of catecholamines from the adrenal medulla as a response to stressors fight or flight. Benzodiazepine, the most commonly prescribed treatment for anxiety disorders, has side effects such as sedation, myorelaxation, ataxia, amnesia and pharmacological dependence. Hence various plants are used in complementary and alternative medicines for management of anxiety.”

How herbal teas burst anxiety, depression, fatigue, others
Researchers have identified immune boosting herbs and mushrooms that could be effectively used to address executive stress and metabolic syndrome.

Top on the list are: Scent leaf/Holy basil (Ocimum gratissimum/nchuanwu in Ibo, Effirin in Yoruba), green tea leaves (Camelia sinensis), bitter leaf (Vernonia amygdalina), coffee and Ganoderma mushroom.

Indeed, executive stress is on the rise due to crushing economic pressure on businesses, unrelenting competition, crazy work hours, downsizing, slashed budgets, and uncertainty.

Executives and middle managers alike are exhausted by their brutal schedules and the intense demands on them. Business leaders may be relieved to be working at all, but they are stressed out, anxious and sleep deprived. The result? Health problems, deteriorating relationships and weakened job performance.

Several studies have also shown that metabolic syndrome is on the rise.

According to a study published in Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders, the most prevalent metabolic disorders are diabetes mellitus, obesity, dyslipidemia, osteoporosis and metabolic syndrome, which are developed when normal metabolic processes are disturbed.

The study is titled “Targeting metabolic disorders by natural products.”

Several studies have shown that there is a challenge in the prevention and treatment of metabolic disorders due to severe adverse effects of some synthetic drugs, their high cost, lack of safety and poverty in some conditions, and insufficient accessibility for the general population in the world.

The study concluded: “Since metabolic disorders are multifactorial, it seems that poly-herbal medications, or drug-herbal combination are needed for their treatment.”

Meanwhile, scent leaf is a relatively well-studied herb, with research that has demonstrated that it can radically and speedily improve anxiety and depression, and reduce stress – both physical and emotional.

In addition, scent leaf has the capacity to increase physical and emotional endurance thus increasing the resilience to all stressors. As already mentioned, it lowers blood sugar levels, which in turn reduces cravings and stabilises moods, and thus facilitates weight loss.

Scent leaf has been traditionally used to support people through times of stress, working as adaptogen (that is substance that balances and protects the body by improving resistance to any type of physiological or mental stress) and anxiolytic (decreasing anxiety). One of the most strongly supported actions of this herb is that of an adaptogen, with current research supporting its traditional use in managing acute and chronic stress and fatigue.

Chronic stress has been shown to increase the levels of oxidative stress and free radicals. Scent leaf enhances the levels and activities of endogenous antioxidants and antioxidant enzymes including glutathione and superoxide dismutase.

In a recent randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled trial researchers evaluated the efficacy of an extract of scent leaf in the symptomatic control of general stress. They concluded that the effect of holy basil supplementation over placebo on comparison was considerable for all stress parameters measured. The treatment showed 39 per cent improvement in general stress symptoms over and above the placebo. The significant finding in this study was the reduced intensity of forgetfulness, reduced symptom scores of sexual problems (stress-related), and the effective relief from frequent feelings of fatigue and sleep problems.

According to the Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders study, among 19 natural based drugs that have been approved for worldwide marketing between the years 2005–2010, seven were classified as natural products, 10 as semi-synthetic natural products, and two as natural product-derived drugs.

Some example of natural products for the management of executive stress and metabolic syndrome include: InterCEDD Health Products Limited (IHP) Ganoderma Green Tea and Coffee; Erovit-IHP “Age Redefinition”; IHP Vernonia Ocimum Tea “The Scented Bitters” made from Vernonia amaygdalina and Ocimum gratissimum; Immunovit “Immune Booster”; Virgin Coconut Oil “Drug Store in a Bottle”; Garcinia-IHP “The Cold Cap”; Moringa Oleifera “Tree of Life Series; and Bissap Tea “The Heart Insurance Tea.

IHP is a health and wellness-company specialized in high quality herbal and dietary supplements produced in the laboratories of International Centre for Ethnomedicine and Drug Development, InterCEDD. The company focuses on development, sales, and awareness of health and wellness products. IHP is also a member of a 20-year old group called Bioresources Development Group (BDG).

The Obasanjo Missile: A Lesson From History

BY HOPE EGHAGHA

GUARDIAN, JAN. 28, 2019

Olusegun Obasanjo image via Guardian

If I were a president or political leader, one of my prayers to God would be: may I never receive a public letter from Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, ex military Head of State, ex-president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and world-President-at-Large! His letters to leaders are often guided missiles, much like the famed ‘ogbunigwe’ of the Biafra era, designed to achieve maximum impact of confusion and destruction.

I marvel at his international connections and how much he can and could galvanize the world community on matters Nigerian! I am sure former President Goodluck Jonathan has not forgotten the letter which OBJ wrote to him when the entire world decided that he should not, must not win a second term! I also remember that there was a letter exchange between OBJ and former super permanent secretary Allison Ayida before the 1990 violent shake-up of the IBB administration by the Gideon Orkar boys.

OBJ usually sends his missiles when push has come to shove, when ‘e get as e be’, when ‘water don pass garri’, when in the words of Chinua Achebe ‘the thief has taken enough for the owner to notice! And anyone with a sense of history must take his letters seriously.

Since his last missive which came in form of a missile, some overzealous citizens have gone to town disparaging the person of OBJ. They have ignored the message and focused on the messenger.

You know, in our days as boys on the football field, towards the end of the match there used to be what we called ‘ten minutes ugbo! During this time rough tactics were allowed. It was only for the strong.

Guys with spindly legs quietly stayed away or avoided those ‘yam legs’, which you could only confront if you didn’t mind ending up flat on the floor! Talking about yam legs, I remember when as a Form Two boy I collided with one Joshua Habila a classmate of mine who ran on the field like a locomotive train from Lokoja and how I saw stars and how I avoided him thenceforth and how it taught me a lesson on legs that could be missiles in objectives!

Three weeks to elections we are now in ‘ugbo’ period. All is fair. Fair is foul.

Foul is fair! The Vice President is distributing money in marketplaces! The parties are preparing to buy votes. The anti-corruption fight wears a shortsighted pair of glasses.

The great and revered Adams Oshiomole with a basket mouth has declared that sinners who join the ruling party become saints. Presidential debates are being stage-managed.

An obviously reluctant and unfit president is being goaded into the rigours of electioneering campaigns.

The sword of Damocles hangs over opponents and journalists who get too ambitious. The Chief Justice is being hounded.

The hounding has split the country into two parts, along ethnic and party lines. The Nigerian Army has declared ‘Python Dance’ in an election period.

Herdsmen activities have subsided for reasons not so clear. There is hunger everywhere. But politicians have money to fritter away.

The universities have been shut since November 5 and the Federal Government is not in a hurry to end ASUU strike. All is fair, fair is foul, and foul is fair!

What can we say is the substance of OBJ’s guided missile? That PMB has become a dictator, reminiscent of the Abacha days; that the incumbent government has become desperate; that the forthcoming elections are not likely to be fair because INEC is compromised; that there was injustice in the last Osun State governorship election; that the public trial of the Chief Justice stinks to the high heavens; that the international community is watching.

Now, which of these assertions is not true? But as always, we ignore the message and attack the messenger.

To be sure OBJ is not a saint. As a Niger Delta man how may I forget the Odi Massacre? No Nigerian can ever forget the third term attempt, whether it was true or a figment of the imagination! No matter what you say, the words of OBJ carry weight.

You may abuse, ridicule or tear him apart with criticism: he speaks for the millions of unheard voices, on the side of the people.

I was amused to no end when OBJ showed up at the Council of States meeting the very week he sent out that stinging uppercut.

Imagine the temerity of showing up at the table of the man whom he had taken to the cleaners the day before.

These Generals eh! Well, as a statesman the President gave him his due. OBJ is his senior in the Army. And in the Army Forces, once you are a senior you will always remain a senior.

No? Yes? What happens if you retired as a Brigadier and your former Staff Officer later became a General? Hehehehehehe! We are not sure about the age of these generals.

Who is older? Who is 84years passing for 76? That’s beyond me.

It’s only in Nigeria that we doctor our date of birth in order to remain in service.

I once chaired an interview panel in which a man who applied for the post of registrar left primary school at Age 6, that is, judging by the CV which he presented!

I read somewhere that it was OBJ himself that said the opening prayer in the assembly of who-is-who in Nigeria! You know, not Oga, the living ancestor Dr. retired General Yakubu Gowon, the prayerful, soft-spoken ex-Head of State; not retired General Abubakar Abdulsalami former Head of State the man of peace.

They asked the rambunctious and straight-shooting OBJ himself to lead the prayer.

You know, we play politics with everything; even with prayer to God Almighty.

In my short foray into the midst of politicians, I learnt that politicians believe that even the devil can see God when the proper arrangements are made! Is that why they do yeye and jagajaga politics and treat the rest of us like mumu? May be!

I would give everything, including the loincloth of granny (whom I never met) to hear the kind of prayer that the Missile-Giver rendered on that day in the presence of enemy and friendly forces, while walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Did he pray for all enemies to fall down and die in the Mountain and Fire tradition? Did he pray for the walls of Jericho to crumble? Did he pray for the president to ensure a free and fair election?

Did he pray that at the next debate the president should find the right words to convey his inner thoughts, hopes and aspirations to the Nigerian people?

Did he pray for the president not to stumble during campaigns? Did he pray that the president should rein in the murderous herdsmen?

Did he pray for the good health of the nation’s first citizen? Whatever the prayer was the guided missiles of OBJ should not be ignored by friend or foe – that is one of the lessons of our contemporary history. Baba Abeokuta I salute you with all of my mouth!

‘It Will Be Terrible If Nigeria Does Not Have A Change Of Government In 2019’

Olisa Agbakoba via Guardian

BY KEHINDE OLATUNJI

Olisa Agbakoba is an activist and a former president of the Nigeria Bar Association. He is also one of the conveners of the Nigeria Intervention Movement (NIM). In this interview with Kehinde Olatunji, he spoke on the forthcoming 2019 general elections and zoning among other things

Why has NIM been quiet lately?

Before NIM came on board, politics was dead in the country. It was so predictable.

This went back to 1979, when we had National Party Nigeria (NPN), Social Democratic Party (SDP) of 1991-92, then 1999’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD).

It had always been two parties with no ideology. It had been how to take power to do one thing-divert the resources of Nigeria into their private pockets.

The World Bank, Theresa May and the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) confirmed this.

We have overtaken Indian as a country with the poorest number of people; therefore, something needs to be done urgently to deliver the country.

We never said we would come with a magic wand, but we came with the intention to change the character of politics and we have done so.

For instance, this is the first time Nigeria is seeing an array of fresh and new breed of politicians.

These guys might not win, but it gives room for choice, which is very important; it means that you can say, I want this person or the other.

This has been our contribution; it was when NIM came that we provided the platform for the younger generation like the Sowores, Fela DurotoyeS and the likes.

The platform is not a political party, we are not presenting a presidential candidate, but we also understand that it is important to have a political candidate.

We have done the consciencisation, and have generated the interest in political process.

It was as a result of NIM this new actors came. It was the role we played that encouraged them to come out, so, you would discover by 2019, educated Nigerians would make a different choice, the people they go for might not win, but they have the satisfaction that they have voted somebody rather than the known parties.

So, NIM has promoted a third force, we didn’t say, the third force would go to Aso Rock, we didn’t give that assurance, we only created the space for debate, that is when democracy starts to grow, because from 1960 till date, democracy has not grown.

So, hopefully, what we have started may begin to yield result in the next 10to20 years, and people will say that there was a day that democracy debate changed in Nigeria and NIM will be recorded as one of the leading catalyst in that process.

Is the party supporting any candidate?

I didn’t say that, you are putting words in my mouth. I just said this is what NIM has done at the conscientitation level. We do not want to mix the agenda of conscientising Nigerians with partisan politics.

Now, on the political objective level, we joined the Coalition of Opposition Political Parties (COPP), it is here we can express interest, this is playing ground for those who will like to be senators, governors, president and the likes, those who have political ambition on any platform they like.

The agenda that we are trying to promote and I hope will be successful is to have COPP pick one person, because when you go against a sitting president, you will need resources, as he has the power of incumbency and access to financial resources.

In order to defeat a sitting president, there is need for thorough and critical strategies, as we have seen, this is a president who haS shown the determination not to leave office, his statement at the NBA conference was that national security supersedes rule of law, so, to stand a chance of changing the government in 2019 is to have a strong opposition. If we don’t come together and pick one candidate, APC will win.

Are you saying the 2019 election is going to be just between APC and PDP?

No, it is going to be either APC or a party among the coalition of political parties, which PDP is a member, other political parties are also members, but I like to be realistic, PDP is the dominant partner in the process of picking among other parties, this is because, it has structure and deep pocket.

This presidential election is what I call the heavy lifters, you have to be able to lift weight financially, if you cannot, you are going nowhere.

I’m clearly for a change of regime and if we are to have a regime change, we must have a united strategy and some of the strategies is to reflow the economy that has become comatose, create more energy in Nigeria, open the space for Nigeria to allow the region to flourish, from six zones, you can make it eight zones, giving these zones power to be autonomous.

In other words you are supporting restructuring?

Absolutely, there is no way to go, unfortunately, restructuring has been confused. What restructuring means is to have a political conversation whereby we reach an agreement.

For instance, one Inspector General of Police (IGP) cannot provide national security for all Nigerians, if you look at all other democracies, policing is at three levels.

Restructuring is a political tool to free up Nigeria from the lockdown that we now find ourselves.

As you know, we have 774 councils, 36 state governments and Federal Government.

I would like to see a better balance of power, what Professor Nwabueze calls a better division of power. Under the exclusive and concurrent list, there are 98 items of power.

The Federal Government exercises exclusively 68. That means the state and councils cannot do anything.

When you look at what they are exercising exclusively, I’m not sure that they should be doing anything with the police or drivers’ license or registrar of marriages. I don’t think that they should worry themselves about such thing as prisons.

If you go to the prisons’ headquarters in Abuja, you will find over 1,000 senior ranking prison officers with epaulets, doing nothing.

They collect the budgets and spend it in Abuja. When you go to the prison in Oraifite, people are dying of hunger.

Prisons should go to the states. If I were the president of Nigeria, I will take away 68 items of power.

I will retain 30: foreign policy, defence policy, justice sector issues, and monitory policy issues such as, banking.

Throw the rest to the states and make them busy. There are governors who are doing nothing.

Some even travel and you won’t see them for months. One of the governors became a pilot and broke his head, whereas he should be governing his state. It is because he has nothing to do. That is what I mean by restructuring.

Then you look and see whether the councils should be given the other 30 on the list. What is Lagos State government doing by employing Visionscape to carry all the refuse in the statewhereas it is a council’s job?

In my house in London, it is the Borough of Harrow, the local government, not the Prime Minister of UK that collects refuse. That’s the problem. They repair roads, fix water, electricity and all those small things that surround the community.

So, the Federal Government focuses on very narrow thing and does it well. That is restructuring. That is all it means. It is not a big thing.

But for this to work, we in the South must stop the nonsense of antagonising the North. We shout about it not knowing that restructuring is about marriage between the North and the South.

So, the Federal Government focuses on very narrow thing and does it well. That is restructuring. That is all it means. It is not a big thing.

But for this to work, we in the South must stop the nonsense of antagonising the North. We shout about it not knowing that restructuring is about marriage between the North and the South.

So the North would say okay, you want to restructure so that we go hungry? So, we have to show them that the thing will benefit everybody.

There is a particular state in the North, they had 2.5 million candidates for JAMB, and only156 of them came out. That is because all of them prefer to beg as Almajiris.

The Northern governors have made it profitable for them to be on the streets begging. And this thing goes back a long way.

So, the Northern governors themselves need to understand that they need power to bring up their people.

Why do you see this cascade of northern refugees from the north into the south? It is because nothing is there.

Northern governors should be ashamed that they are opposing the legal structure of restructuring.

The Southern leadership should be ashamed that they do not talk to their Northern brothers, that these things will benefit everybody.

If we weaken the Federal Government and strengthen the state governments, Nigeria would be at peace and all the states would have their different skills. In the North, food is so cheap. It is an agrarian revolution waiting to explode.

We spend $6 billion importing low-grade tomato paste from China every year, but Dangote has started producing it in six states in the North with massive tomato factories.

So, there are things they can do like sugarcane, corn, yam, potatoes, and every other thing.

But we need to assure them that changing the way Nigeria works is for the good of everybody. That is what I mean by restructuring.

How would you react to the statement that you are you aspiring for presidency?

An aspiration is different from ambition. I feel that to run Nigeria is the easiest thing to do. It is so easy that I don’t understand why those who are there don’t understand what to do.

I’m a realistic person, when I went to law school, I didn’t need a political godfather to pass my exams, when I became a SAN, I didn’t need anybody, this means I am one driven by merit, so, when I am aspiring to run a country, the factors that would make me succeed are factors that I cannot control but as you know, the presidency is zoned to the North and I am from the South, that means I cannot aspire in 2019.

In 2023, the East is saying well, we have never become president and so it is an obvious war between the Southeast and Southwest and it will also require very deep pocket, the type Tinubu has and I don’t have it. So, I don’t like to think on aspirations that I cannot achieve.

You talked about zoning of presidency, what is its place in choosing the country’s number one citizen?

Zoning is a tricky thing that has a number of contradictions, and it muffles merit.

But in a country of diversity, where you have a strong need to manage your differences, zoning becomes something that helps to manage it.

Generally speaking, I don’t support zoning but I think without it, Nigeria would have been chaotic.

Zoning has become what continues to manage ethnic conflicts, which is why we have to deal with it.

No South will come out in 2019 and win and it is not surprising that all the presidential aspirants are from the North except Donald Duke, who declared on the platform of the SDP.


He is however, going nowhere and it is clear to everybody that is why we are looking to the North to produce a credible candidate.

One of the strong points for Buhari, at least, the assumption is that if he does his second term tenure, it will shift.

That is why Tinubu is supporting Buhari, what he (Tinubu) fails to understand is that with Buhari statement that national security supersede the rule of law there is no guarantee that Buhari will cooperate with him if he wins the 2019 elections.

He may even wish to continue after his second term, because he has said national security supersede rule of law, so this means on the basis of national security Buhari can postpone the election.

Don’t you think Nigerians would refuse this?
Have you ever seen Nigerians come to the road to protest anything, even during the 5 million match of Abacha, how many people came out; Nigeria is too dispossessed and poor to have a meaningful contribution.

After all, when former president Obasanjo pushed for a third term, what did Nigerians do? Nothing, we were just lucky that we had a very strong National Assembly that said no, otherwise, he could have done it.

Many African head of states have done it, the average age of an African president is 75, anything goes and that is why it is necessary that democracy must be salvaged and there must be a change of government in 2019 and if it does not happen, it will be terrible.