Saturday, October 27, 2012
LA's DA candidates to return donations from felons
(Los Angeles - AP) The leading candidates for the office of Los Angeles district attorney say they will return campaign contributions from convicted felons. The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Jackie Lacey will return $3,000 in donations from a developer convicted of wire fraud in 1999 and his wife, while Alan Jackson will return $3,000 to Victorino Noval, who was sent to prison for a mortgage loan scheme in 2003. Lacey says she has no personal ties to real estate executive Kip Cyprus. Campaign consultant Parker Shelton says Cyprus' conviction did not come up when his contributions were vetted. Jackson says he attended a Cinco de Mayo party at Noval's home. Noval described the event as a Jackson fundraiser on his Facebook page. Both Lacey and Jackson are career prosecutors
How Woman Lost Two Children To Circumcision In Bayelsa
Yenagoa, (Bayelsa State, Nigeria) — After one of her daughters bled to death after circumcision and another went missing for fear for being circumcised, a mother of three was told by her in-laws that she must also be circumcised if she must remain their wife.
Despite the fact that the Bayelsa State House of Assembly had enacted a law prohibiting female genital mutilation, many communities in the state are allegedly still engaged in the practice, which many say violates women's rights.
The state Assembly had during the last dispensation through a bill sponsored by the then only female member, representing Southern-Ijaw constituency 1, Vivian Imananagha-Ere, promulgated a law to sanction erring families who forced their female relations into circumcision.
The federal government had also frowned at the practice, therefore, prescribing a seven year jail term for any offender. In the case of Bayelsa State, anyone who indulges in the act would be liable to two-year-imprisonment or a fine of N20, 000.
But many women are still secretly telling their story of pain and anguish of how they fell victims in the hands of their natives, who forced them into circumcision against all odds.
One of such women is Patience Youngbo who lost her daughter to the "barbaric" culture in Amassoma, Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of the state. Patience is still nursing the trauma of how to find the other daughter who fled home to escape the "cruel hands of the initiators."
The victimized girls - Patricia Youngbo (18), Joy Youngbo (16) and Success Youngbo (8) - were said to have traveled home to celebrate the last Christmas with their grandmother while their mother was far away in United Kingdom.
Mrs. Patience Nmgbor Yougbo, mother of the three children said, when she returned from the UK on June, 27, 2012, was informed by her husband that their three daughters went to Amassoma in Bayelsa to spend Christmas holiday with their grandmother but were subjected to the inhumane treatment.
According to her, she agreed to travel home in company of her husband to bring back the children, but on reaching home, it was discovered that one of the daughters, Joy Youngbo, who was forcefully circumcised on January 3, 2012, died two days later from excessive bleeding.
Her elder sister, Patricia Youngbo, out of fear, absconded from home since February 14, 2012 to Lagos which was expected to be her destination, but has not been found up till date.
The development, Patience narrated, propelled the relations, who did not make any contact to acquaint her over the incident to send her third daughter to an aunt's place where the worst fear of her life manifested real.
The family members insisted that she (mother) must be circumcised alongside her remaining children and her husband consented to it because it is a family tradition and also as part of sharing the inheritance left behind by her husband's father.
She stressed that due to pressure from the family members, her husband decided to succumb but promised his kindred that they (himself and the wife) would come back for the ceremony on August 25, 2012. To secure her release, she was also taken to a village shrine called Ogbaro to swear to an oath that she will come back for the circumcision ceremony.
"When I returned to Lagos, I reported the matter at the police headquarters in Ikeja, where the officers in charge said it is a family matter and I should go back and settle with them. Till date my daughter Patricia is still missing while my husband and his family are still mounting pressure on me to be circumcised," the woman said.
When contacted on the matter, Secretary of the Civil liberty Organisation (CLO), Morris Alagoa in the state confirmed that the primitive practice still exists in the state, adding that he actually heard of Youngbo's case but was yet to dig deep into the matter.
........HOPE ABAH/DAILY TRUST NIGERIA, OCTOBER 27, 2012
Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country" By Olu Obafemi
Most people who have entered into the controversy and discussion of Chinua Achebe's latest book with the quasi-eponymous title, Chinua Achebe: there Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra did so without having read the book, or even worse, without having read excerpts of the book that was widely available. This quite unfortunate, giving the heated passion, partisan anger and grandstanding posturing that have informed the various engagements with the book from ethno-nationalist, political perspectives. It is a pity that people will evaluate, judge, interpret, eulogize and denounce a book they have not read!
I have received a number of calls seeking my comments on the book and I have been point blank in my refusal to comment on a book that I have not read. Even when some of the entreaties asked me to speak purely from the position of a past President of the Association of Nigerian Authors ( ANA), Nigeria's and Africa's foremost literary Association which Chinua Achebe helped found and was the pioneer President, I still resisted the temptation, even for that reason alone to be dragged into evaluating a book that I have not read. I have now, most recently been able to read the book ( a rapid, first read in twenty-four hours of a borrowed copy), I am still reluctant to do a thorough-going critique of the book in the heat of the moment but I shall make a few cursory, tentative observations, more from a literary vantage and inevitably, as Achebe is himself the first to acknowledge, from a political angle since the writer has no business standing aloof from the controversy and reality of the moment in the interest of the future.
I fervently hope to be able to return to the book within the context of Achebe's position as literary ancestor and as a statesman. Achebe's reticence--reluctance to offer words volubly in circumstances of crisis and national incoherence is proverbial. Why speak now on a subject over which national recuperation is partial and where a foremost writer should nurture curative tendering? Does anyone have a right to censor his fundamental right to free speech, on a subject which, as is obvious has caused him so much despair and anguish, and which he may be doing himself a disservice bottling up upon and carrying to his eventual, inevitable grave? Questions galore!!
For now, let me embark on general observations and in the next serial of this stint draw tentative conclusions.
Writing from a purely literary point of view (on a book that cannot pretend to be literature, in spite of the re- hash and infusion of old poems form Beware Soul Bother and Collected Poems), and even despite the author's claim of the existence of two 'art-forms', consciously chosen or/and 'juxtapose'(d) 'to tell complementary stories', Nadine Gordimer, eulogistically raise the book to the level of exceptionality; extra-ordinariness. Hear Nadine, the Nobel Laureate from South Africa:
'Achebe has created here a new genre of literature in which politico-historical evidence, the power of story-telling, and revelations from the depths of the human sub-conscious are one. The event of a new work by Achebe Is always extraordinary; this one exceeds all expectation.'
Which new genre? Juxtaposing prose and poetry? Which Kofi Awoonor (formerly Awoonor Williams) inimitably did in This Earth, My Brother, many decades ago, or the 'history of Biafra' told with the 'factuality' of historical evidence? There have been numerous gripping, tense narrative , both of the facts of Biafra's experience and the figurative rendering of it by other participants in the experience, and still, the creative/literary children and grandchildren of Achebe--the most recent of which are by Chimamanda Achidie in Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun and Akachi Ezeigbo's Roses and Bullets.
For a literary ancestor like Achebe to take us back into the mortally painful story of the cataclysmic fratricide of 1967-1970, when the curative therapy from those events is yet to blight the scars in our nation's flesh and spirit, there has to be a compelling reason, which must certainly transcend the personal 'brilliant mind and bold spirit' of a patriarchal oracle of the literary Muse. Achebe, I have said elsewhere, not in any particularly ingenious, innovative way, that has led the postcolonial narrative of Africa--by beginning the long epic of the African story in our own voice. He has been the spirit of the new age, along with the other members of his generation. Is this new work inevitable? Is it in the spirit of recuperative literature; healing our nation's blistered soul and fractured spirit? This is the question that must be addressed.
Achebe has spoken of the collective/communal (Nigeria), the ethno-nationalist (Biafra) and intrinsically personal (my (Achebe's) story). It is possible, and Achebe has done it many times in evocatively powerful and objective way, that all of the senses of narrative have come through without palpably partisan designs. Did he need to do it once again? Why not if not? Has it done as well as before? That is the explanation needed to justify this, perhaps the greatest, stridently divisive controversy in any and all of Achebe's literary oeuvre.
How has he led people on to the virulent responses to his new work? He has chosen this alarming title; There Was a Country. Nigeria or Biafra? Most likely the former and this is the crux of the matter. Too many debatable claims and arguable generalizations about places an persons. The preferences are too un-creative too justify the rabid controversies that the book has generated--about the Igbo and the rest of the country, even traceable from the superlatives and exaggerations.
......OLU OBAFEMI/DAILY TRUST NIGERIA, OCTOBER 27, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
'There is no good or evil in Voodoo'
A new exhibition of Voodoo art from Haiti evokes the island’s heat and intensity while setting a few records straight.
BY MARK HUDSON, TELEGRAPH UK
"Energy can get very hot very fast in Haiti,” says Leah Gordon. “You’ll be at a carnival and things will suddenly burst out in a way that can feel very unnerving. But when you get to know the place, you realise these things aren’t as life-threatening as they first seem.”
Photographer, film-maker and curator, Gordon is best known for her black-and-white photographs of Haitian carnivals, which brilliantly evoke the heat and surreal intensity of these events in which the island’s slum-dwellers act out its troubled history in terrifying-looking masquerades.
Most of Gordon’s professional life has been bound up with Haiti, a Caribbean island which is often considered a byword for poverty, corruption and untrammelled desperation. From the time of its creation in a slave revolt at the end of the 18th century, Haiti, the first black republic – and the poorest country in the Western hemisphere – has been caught up in an apparently endless cycle of natural disaster, foreign invasion and chronic misgovernment.
This month, Gordon turns curator for a major exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary which casts the island in a very different light, through art inspired by a phenomenon that is widely seen as synonymous with the sickness and hopelessness of the Haitian condition: voodoo.
From effigy dolls and zombies to curses, blood sacrifice and endless drumming in the tropical night, the term voodoo – or vodou as this exhibition has it – has become a catch-all for just about any scary, Afro-Caribbean mumbo jumbo. Simultaneously it has been a source of sinister glamour for a privileged array of Western artists as diverse as Truman Capote, Andre Breton and Mick Jagger.
This exhibition, however, presents it in a more measured fashion, as a coherent religion followed by at least half of the Haitian population, an amalgam of African, Christian and native Indian beliefs that has given rise to an extraordinary iconography. We are shown magical folk paintings in which the events of Haitian history are seen in relation to voodoo deities – such as Ogun, the African god of war, and the glamorous love goddess, Erzulie Fréda – along with iron sculptures cut out of oil drums and sequinned flags used in secret rites.
“Voodoo is a set of ceremonies that bring down spirits,” says Gordon. “The spirits indicate they’re present by possessing the celebrants. An animal is sacrificed to feed the spirits, and there’s a lot of dancing and drumming that goes with that. I can’t see anything intrinsically threatening in that. And it’s a lot more entertaining than any church service I’ve been to.”
Entertaining, possibly, but challenging too, certainly for the non-initiate. Yet Gordon, a quietly determined Cumbrian, who doesn’t consider herself particularly intrepid, came to Haiti and its culture through the unlikely agency of a television programme presented by the late Jill Dando.
In 1991 she was an aspiring photographer looking for a destination that would yield compelling images, when one Sunday evening she saw an edition of the Holiday programme in which Dando visited the Dominican Republic, the Spanish-speaking country that shares an island with Haiti. “It was snowing outside,” recalls Gordon. “I was dreamily thinking, why don’t I go somewhere hot, when I heard her warning viewers not to go to Haiti by mistake: there was black magic there, dictatorships, military coups. I remember thinking, “All that – and hot weather too!”
Knowing nothing of the country beyond Steely Dan’s song Haitian Divorce, Gordon threw in her job as a van driver for a left-wing book distributor and within a month had booked herself a ticket to Haiti. In the capital Port-au-Prince she checked into the Olofson, the rackety hotel where Graham Greene set his spine-chilling 1966 novel The Comedians, and within days was immersing herself in Haitian culture.
“I didn’t have much money. But there were a couple of nice elderly New York art dealers, who took me to see Andre Pierre” – an artist and voodoo priest whose work appears in the Nottingham show. “I remember thinking, I really want to be a Haitian art expert.”
Centring on the idea of the Master of the Head – a guiding deity who determines the individual’s destiny and can be called upon for assistance – voodoo’s imagery and practices belong to a vast complex of belief stretching between Africa and the Americas, created by the comings and goings of the slave trade. The great blues singer Robert Johnson, for example, is said to have gained his talent by making a pact with the devil at a crossroads, where, in voodoo and in West African belief, the mortal and sacred realms meet. Yet voodoo has gained a somewhat separate character, even in this rich spiritual terrain, through the brutal vicissitudes of Haitian history.
A French colony from the 17th century, Haiti became rich through sugar and coffee. Yet the lot of the vast slave population was so hard the entire population had to be replenished every 20 years. Against this background, voodoo emerged as what Haitian artist Edouard Duval Carrié calls a “rebel religion”, the slaves clinging in desperation to vestiges of African belief. When they rebelled in 1791, a new rank of dangerous and unpredictable deities was created, to help them defeat their oppressors. The voodoo pantheon has gone on expanding, with artists taking inspiration from the images around them, whether it’s baroque religious art or Princess Diana, who became a model for the love goddess in the period following her death. “I’ve seen Fred Flintstone on a voodoo altar,” says Gordon.
The kind of painting on board and canvas that makes up much of the Nottingham exhibition emerged in the Forties, when Dewitt Peters, an American watercolourist and pacifist who had been sent to Haiti as a teacher in lieu of military service, opened a small arts centre, the Centre d’Art, in Port-au-Prince.
The tiny Francophile mulatto elite who dominated Haiti for much of the past two centuries disdained voodoo and the country's African heritage as primitive. The Centre d’Art was created as a showcase for Haitian modern art, but it soon became known for so-called “naive art”, the work of untrained peasants and artisans. Driving through the town of St Marc, Peters had seen an elaborately painted door blazoned with the words “Ici la Renaissance” – Here is the Renaissance. It was the work of Hector Hyppolite, a house painter and voodoo priest, who Peters encouraged to work on board and canvas. When he gave art materials to his driver, Rigaud Benoit, he too proved a talented artist.
Whether Peters was acting as a catalyst for a new kind of Haitian art or simply creating a market for what was already there, the result was a kind of Haitian primitive renaissance, which the Surrealist leader André Breton acclaimed as genuine, lived Surrealism – as opposed to the effete, intellectual European kind – when he visited the island in 1945. International collectors and dealers began paying attention, and in 1948 New York’s Museum of Modern Art began buying Haitian art, leading to a sense of national pride in Haitian creativity – the often expressed view that every Haitian is not only an artist, but a kind of natural Surrealist, instinctively in touch with primal forces.
While the Centre d’Art artists have long since given way to new avant-gardes such as the Atis Resistanz, a group of street sculptors whose work is also seen in the exhibition, the linking factor is the way the spirit world of voodoo intertwines with real history and politics.
“In Haiti, history is told from the bottom up, beginning with the poorest people in society,” says Gordon. “People really know their history, and it’s acted out spectacularly in art, carnival and even in politics.” She describes the bizarre dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier (from 1957 to 1971), an initially well-meaning doctor who used voodoo as an instrument of terror, as “like some huge theatrical production”. “It had costumes, a setting, a narrative and characters, which drew on the lexicon of voodoo. Papa Doc dressed like Baron Samedi (the voodoo deity of death), while the Tontons Macoutes (his notorious militia) dressed as Papa Zaka, the spirit of agriculture.”
Yet Papa Doc is said to have been responsible for the deaths of some 30,000 Haitians, while rampantly looting the nation’s wealth. The fall of his son Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc, in 1986, led to a massive backlash against voodoo and the killing of many priests. Isn’t there a danger of whitewashing voodoo, and with it many iniquities of Haiti’s past?
“When you realise that voodoo isn’t what most people think it is, you can find yourself care-bearising it too much,” says Gordon. “It is a complicated phenomenon. It’s about creating and channelling energy.” There are voodoo objects, that might almost be considered works of art, which are designed to “have agency” – as she puts it – to effect change by creating points of energy. “Maybe that’s what all art tries to do, but it’s not so clearly articulated.” And is this power, this “agency”, for good or evil? “There is no good and evil in Voodoo.”
So what about the future, as the long arm of globalisation finally reaches Haiti? “Since the 2010 earthquake a lot of things have changed,” says Gordon. “It was always thought to be impossible to do business in Haiti, but now mobile phones have arrived. Haitians are becoming consumers for the first time. They’re delighted: finally they’re joining the rest of the world. Whether that will take the edge out of the country’s creativity it’s too early to tell.”
Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou is at Nottingham Contemporary (0115 948 9750; nottinghamcontemporary.org) until Jan 6, 2013
Weep, Beloved Nigeria: Three Contemporary Nigerian Writers On A Theme
THE GUARDIAN NIGERIA
WRITERS are like town criers. And between the year 2000 and 2011, Nigerian creative writers have worriedly depicted the downward slide to criminality in the Nigerian polity. At the turn of the century, writers like Maik Nwosu (Alpha Song, 2001), Omo Uwaifo, (Fattening House, 2001), Wale Okediran (Dreams, Die at Twilight, 2001), Fola Arthur-Worrey (The Diaries of Mr. Michael, 2003), Chim Newton (Under the Cherty Tree, 2003), and Toni Kan Onwordi (Ballad of Rage, 2004), have shown Nigeria as a nation adrift. The writers listed above are discussed by this writer as “fleshly” (1), lamenting that Nigeria, after military rule has become a nation without a soul, a rudderless nation that had emerged from military dictatorship, into the raging fire of corruption, prostitution, debauchery, and mindless hedonism.
Within the same decade, another set of writers, as if on cue, began to scream at the level of moral decadence into which Nigeria had fallen in so short a time. They concentrated on seemingly new crimes which just reared their ugly heads, as if the engagements of the “fleshly” school of writers were mere dress rehearsals to new crimes that just emerged: kidnapping, ritual killings, selling of body parts, and human trafficking. Writers who have especially written on human trafficking are:
(a) Chris Abani: Becoming Abigail (2006)
(b) Jude Dibia: Unbridled (2007)
(c) Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo: Trafficked, (2008)
(d) Tony Alum: Images From A Broken Mirror (2008)
(e) Chinedu Anyaso: My Daughters’ Trouble (2009)
Now, “Three Nigerian writers on a Theme” which is the subject of this paper are: Chika Unigwe: On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) (2) Ngozi Achebe: Onaedo, the Blacksmith’s Daughter (2010) (3) and Olusola Olugbesan: Only a canvas (201. Strangely what unites these three writes is their united pursuit of the theme of human trafficking and prostitution abroad by our women involving all other collateral crimes including murder and the international slave trade, plus general insecurity within the Nigerian polity which these crimes engender.
We may begin with Olusola Olugbesan’s Only A Canvas, without forgetting the general theme of this study which concerns the unhappy events in the Nigerian polity: corruption, prostitution and human trafficking. Only A Canvas opens on an isolated rural environment, segregated because they are Osu, with Eze and a local wrestling champion, Joe, with his 3 wives (Nneka, Ifeoma and including Ngozi), Amaka his daughter, plus a devious friend, Obi. On the non-appearance of Okafor for the wrestling championship, Joe became triple champion. Amaka met Jane who gave her chocolate bars, and Edgar, a photojournalist was there.
Only A Canvas while decrying the rot in the Nigerian society is written in the thriller tradition. The setting is “romantic” in its remoteness, an isolated Osu society segregated from other communities. As in the true thriller tradition, there is plenty of adventure, crime and criminals, cop and robber chase, a serious manhunt, sensational and action-packed scenes, law agents and criminals on the run. In a thriller, there is a happy ending, engineered by the victory of the hero (the good character) over the villain.
Only A Canvas in addition to reading like a thriller also reads like a fairy tale where Amaka, the protagonist, is Cinderella the Enchanted Princess who, in the end, does not marry Tom Bridge, the Prince Charming. If read like a fairytale, Mrs. Anna Bridge becomes the fairy godmother who not only protects Amaka but provides her with a magic wand - travel, education - all enabling her to excel and ride unscathed, to freedom and wealth, In a fairytale world, Amaka is a waif besieged by Obi, the ogre and demon- king. Amaka’s father, the wrestling champion becomes the culture-hero who in the end overcomes the machinations of the demon-king. As in fairytales, those who are good are so good they have no faults, and those who are bad have no redeeming features. Mrs. Anna Bridge, Amaka’s fairy godmother, is so good, but her husband Donald, ever corrupt and ever womanizing, has no redeeming features. Other good characters like the Eze of Umuise, police officers Nasir and Danladi are painted as saints. While police officer Bama (who rapes women in his office) and Mama T., end disastrously.
In spite of everything, Olusola Olugbesan on the evil-infested, corrupt-ridden polity called Nigeria that accommodates human traffickers like Obi, corrupt officers like the DCO in the Kano office, and devious white men like Donald Bridge. Although the story of Amaka ends on a happy note, Only a Canvas is not a happy novel, considering the criminal and human trafficking activities of captain Obi and his marauding gang.
Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street is set mainly in Europe (Antwerp, Belgium) to be precise. It reflects unhappily the fears, exploitation, shame, murder, humiliation of being a prostitute in Europe. But the major issue is what pushes Nigerian women to Europe for prostitution: personal ambition? Problems with joblessness in Nigeria? Limited opportunities? The answer may be: all of these.
Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street is a story of four mature women (Ama, Joyce, Efe, Sisi) who willingly trafficked themselves to Europe under the aegis of a one man criminal syndicate headed by Mr. Dele. Although these women were not forced, the fundamental issue is why each agreed to go abroad. The reason is that Nigeria failed them as a country to fulfil their dreams, and negates their longings to live a self-fulfilling life. But irony is the weapon used by the author to mock their ambitions. Chisom (Sisi) the most ambitious, with big dreams about the future because she is a graduate, is the most frustrated. She is murdered, not by racist Belgians, but by her own fellow Nigerian, Segun. Her death leaves everyone weak because of its seeming senselessness, at a point she was about to achieve her aim through marriage to Luc, a Belgian banker, Her murder has the implications of a double tragedy for she was an only child through whom her parents hoped to achieve the dreams of their frustrated lives: buy a car, own a house. Of the four prostitutes under madam’s control in Antwerp, Sisi reluctantly submitted to prostitution, a humiliating criminal way to make it to wealth and influence.
Irony skirts Sisi’s dreams for she never realizes any of the castles she built in the air:
She would work for a few years, keep her eyes on the prize, earn enough to pay back what she owed Dele, and then open up her own business. She would resurrect as Chisom, buy a house in Victoria Garden City. Marry a man who would give her beautiful children. And her beautiful children would go to private schools. She would have three house girls, a gardener, a driver, a cook. Her life would be nothing compared to what it was now. And nothing compared to her parents’. (pp. 102- 103).
Ama, who was violated at the age of eight by her step-father confessed: “you know what Joyce? I made this choice. I came here with my eyes wide open” (p. 114).
On Black Sisters Street is not a happy book. Its central theme is frustration. The four girls: Sisi, Ama, Joyce and Efe left Nigeria out of frustration and incipient despair. Sisi is frustrated because Nigeria could not offer her opportunities for a self-fulfilling job after a degree in Banking and Finance. She is further frustrated because she could not lighten the burden of her parents’ dreams since her joblessness compounded the frustrations of her parents. Ama’s frustration stemmed from the fake existence in her parents’ house. Her mother who was hailed by her husband Brother Cyril, as an angel and a virgin had actually come to Brother Cyril with a pregnancy that they had covered up. Brother Cyril, a sanctimonious “Man of God” in white, raped Ama at eight and when she later confronted him, to further cover up their fake existence forced Ama out of their house, to live with Mama Eko from where Ama escaped to Antwerp through the services of Dele.
Ngozi Achebe’s Onaedo, the Blacksmith’s Daughter joins Chika Unigwe and Olusola Olugbesan in expanding the imaginative terrain of African literature. This writer in an earlier study had accused African soil, while European writers imaginatively invade other continents. It has cited EM Forster’s A Passage to India and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as examples. The three writers under discussion have each extended their stories to Brazil and America (Ngozi Achebe); Antwerp, Belgium (Chika Unigwe); and London, England (Olusola Olugbesan). They collectively give readers the impression that Nigerian literature is still evolving.
Ngozi Achebe’s Onaedo, the Blacksmith’s Daughter still harps on the unhappy theme of human rights abuses within the Nigerian soil as it touches on the vexed issue of the beginnings of the trans-Atlantic slave trade especially to Sao Tome and Brazil. Historians have graphically described the trans-Atlantic slave trade as an unhappy episode in our history. But Ngozi Achebe’s Onaedo, the Blacksmith’s Daughter is historically important by giving us rare insights into how criminal-minded Portuguese merchants, Alvarez and Pasquale, using criminal-minded natives, Ideheno and his comrade-in-crime, Oguebie, hounded out fellow citizens, and captured them, under the guise of working in the white man’s farm.
Through flashbacks the reader is given insights into a slave outpost in Sao Tome, a halfway house for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Life in Sao Tome is shown to be depraved and degraded both for the slaves and for the white slave holders. Diego da Silva, owner of the plantation in Sao Tome is shown to be debauched, depraved, and immoral, with his several wives, mistresses, and slaves. Diego sleeps with his female slaves at will, is an inveterate gambler and alcoholic. Although there were initial moral qualms among the white slave traders, this was brushed aside. When Pasquale objected to brutally capturing fellow men as slaves, Alvarez reassures him: you have to trust me. Slave trading is a business like any other. The only difference is we’re transporting workers instead of goods”.
The story of Onaedo is that the quest and struggle for freedom is an unending and eternal one. In the end Onaedo in spite of mind-numbing suffering and tribulations regains her freedom as well as the freedom of her three children, born under slavery.
In sum, these three authors, writing about prostitution, slavery, human rights abuses and all kinds of insecurity in the Nigerian polity give readers cause for worry. That about all the writers mentioned in this study, writers writing in the first decade of the 21st century harp on the same unhappy themes should alarm the Nigerian government. And it is indeed alarmed, having in recent years established the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), committed to rescuing Nigerian women engaged in prostitution abroad. How much energy it commits to this alarming pandemic remains to be seen.
Charles E. Nnolim,
NOTES:
Charles F, Nnolim. “Contemporary Nigerian Fiction”. Issues in African Literature. (Yenagoa, Treasure Books, 2009).
Chika Unigwe. On Black Sisters’ Street (London: Vintage Books, 2009).
Ngozi Achebe. Onaedo, the Blacksmith‘s Daughter (Lagos: Mandac and Best Publishing, 2010).
Olusola Olugbesan. Only A Canvas (Ibadan; Mosuro Publishers, 2011).
Bayelsa’s Restoration Agenda Unrivaled - SSG
BY STANLEY NKWOCHA/LEADERSHIP INTERVIEW
The secretaries to state governments met recently in Abuja with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). What was the essence of the forum?
The retreat was planned as part of the 52nd Independence anniversary celebration of Nigeria. Given the depth and the quality of the deliberations we had for the two days we were here in Abuja, I cannot but conclude that it was not a jamboree.
What specific challenges did the Forum attempt to address as regards effective delivery of the civil service?
First of all, the office of the secretary to the state government doesn’t directly supervise the activities of the civil service as such. The officer that is directly responsible for that is the head of service. As you are aware, the offices of the secretary to the state government and head of service were merged in one and along the line, it was during Babangida era that the two were separated, so it is the head of service that is directly responsible for supervision of the civil service.
The secretary to the state government does that indirectly through the office of the head of service. Having said that, maybe it is true the civil service is not effective but this is relative because it varies from one state to the other. In some states, the civil service is quite effective, for instance, in Bayelsa state, even though it is a young state, I will not say that the civil service is not effective. I think what the civil service needs is just encouragement, capacity building and the required motivation and I am sure that in the case of Bayelsa state, the civil service will be able to compliment the efforts of the executive in the implementation of government policy programs.
Talking about policies and programs of government, how far has the Bayelsa State government been able to impact on the masses of Bayelsa?
Our administration is just about 6 months old. As you are aware, Hon Henry Seriake Dickson is the man at the helm of affairs in Bayelsa. He was sworn-in precisely on the 14th February, 2012 after the elections and it is too early in the day to say we are creating impact. Even though, the initial actions we have taken, policy pronouncement that we have made and programmes that we have set in place indicate that there is hope for some positive changes, we leave the assessment of the impact for the members of the public perhaps when we have been able to stay on for one year.
So what has been the main thrust of your administration then?
The main thrust of the administration is restoration. We see our administration as one that is here to carry out a restoration agenda. Restoration in the sense that over the years, the government of Bayelsa State derailed from the dreams of its founding fathers and what we are trying to do as an administration is to see how we can restore that dream and make sure that we bring it to realization.
Taking about policies and programmes that we have initiated as we are probably aware, we are embarking on free compulsory education at the primary and secondary level. As we speak, we are renovating and rebuilding all primary schools, we are starting with primary schools because our resources are also dwindling and so we want to bite the much we can chew. We have started the renovation of primary schools and then the rebuilding of the ones that are very dilapidated.
We have also introduced something that is novel in the history of Bayelsa State and that is to encourage headmasters to stay in their respective schools and supervise the teachers and the pupils. We have decided to build two bedroom flats as headmasters’ quarters and are joining the two bedroom flats and four rooms that could accommodate at least some of the teachers. That project is on all over the state, we are also introducing new uniform and the distribution of free uniforms will commence.
We are also embarking on the retraining of teachers. You may have heard some weeks ago, we made announcement that all primary school teachers in Bayelsa State will have to go through another retraining programmes just to make sure that we sharpen their teaching method to be able to teach effectively.
Before I left for Abuja, that programme was on and one of the aspects is that we threatened that at the end of the training, there will be examination and those primary school teachers that will not be able to pass will probably be asked to leave teaching. But what we will do perhaps is even though they fail, we are a government that has human feeling, maybe we will subject them to further training for a while to be able to meet required standard.
Why is education taking these proactive measures in Bayelsa State?
Apart from levels and standards, this administration believes in Adam smith’s dictum that says that the most important resource of any nation are its human beings so we believe that we should train Bayelsans to such an extent that they will be competitive not just in Nigeria but internationally. So, we give education, human resources development and capacity building top place priority.
We believe that even if we have all the infrastructure around the state and the human beings are not properly educated that is to say they positive mind change, we will not be able to bring about peaceful and sustainable development. I am emphasizing peaceful development because we are talking of development that takes place in an atmosphere of peace and unity and then we are talking of sustainable development in the sense that development that will endure beyond administrations.
These are the areas where we are focused on and we believe that key resource that should be developed to bring peaceful and sustainable development is the human being and that is why we give education first place priority.
The second priority is infrastructure because infrastructure in bayelsa state is very limited. We have designed a number of roads, the three senatorial roads that has been abandoned for almost four to five years. Work has started in the three of them, Julius Berger is handling one, and a Chinese company is handling the other one and so on.
The other area is agriculture; we believe that a nation, society or community that cannot feed itself is vulnerable to the manipulations of who would be in position to supply or feed them and so we want to make sure that we revolutionize the agriculture in the state.
You know that Bayelsa State is a riverine state and we believe that we should be able to produce enough fish not just to feed the population but to export to other parts of Nigeria and the world. So, we are embarking on robust agricultural development programmes.
One of the first things we have done is to see maybe we can transport the sun-high concept to the state. I had the privilege of leading a state delegation to Republic of Benin to understudy what the sun-high regional centre is doing there. We have also invited the founder and the director over to Bayelsa State and he has inspected the sites and as we speak, we are at the level of signing the necessary contract agreement.
China: $4 Trillion In Dirty Money Should Worry Us All
Raymond Baker/Huffington Post
By Raymond W. Baker
Hardcover
Global Financial Integrity's new report on illicit financial flows from China showed some of the worst numbers that we've ever estimated. Crime, corruption, and tax evasion cost the world's largest country and second-largest economy $3.79 trillion from 2000-2011. To make matters even darker, illicit capital flight is intensifying. In 2011 alone, China lost over $600 billion --more than any other single country lost over a ten year period when Global Financial Integrity estimated illicit financial flows from 2000-2009.
At first glance, these numbers are so big that it can be difficult to wrap your head around them. Even for a country the size of China, $3.79 trillion is a lot of money. What does this look like in the concrete example? A story in The New York Times this morning reported that close family members of Wen Jiabao, the outgoing Premier of China, have accumulated $2.7 billion in wealth--much of it housed offshore. His immediate family was awarded tremendous amounts of money in government contracts. This comes not long after The Wall Street Journal exposed that the wife of Bo Xilai, a rising star governor who was on the verge of being promoted to China's powerful Politburo, was responsible for the murder of a British citizen who helped her family smuggle as much as $1 billion to offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.
Illicit financial flows on a massive scale--as captured in the GFI study--are how these corrupt billionaires hoard their money. Global Financial Integrity's new report found that in 2010 alone, $213.7 billion of foreign direct investment flowing into China was officially reported to come from the British Virgin Islands--population 28,000. This is likely the result of round tripping--where Chinese elites launder money through secrecy jurisdictions and back into China in order to disguise its source--and is what you would expect wealthy Chinese elites to do if their wealth was earned illegally. However, massive amounts of money are indeed leaving China and not returning. Our report found that of the $2.83 trillion that flowed out of China since 2005, almost $600 billion wound up as deposits or liquid assets in tax havens.
This has tremendous implications for the Chinese economy. Our report found that illicit financial flows are increasingly driving inequality in China, and may reflect recent concerns about Chinese elites wishing to leave the country. At some point, something has to give. Crime, corruption, and tax evasion will threaten China's economy, and as a result, the global economy if this trend continues. In the words of our Lead Economist, Dev Kar, "[China's] social, political, and economic order is not sustainable in the long-run given such massive illicit outflows."
China has seen massive, world-changing, economic growth over the past three decades. However, corruption is undermining much of this growth. The infrastructure that China is building right now should drive growth, and therefore raise living standards for the Chinese people for a century to come. However, many of the brand new bridges, roads, and modern buildings in China have been plagued by shoddy quality and massive amounts of corruption. Our research suggests that much of this money is flowing out of China.
I spent most of my professional life as an entrepreneur in Nigeria, and lived there for 15 years. Despite massive oil wealth and a vibrant, young population, 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. Per-capita GDP has barely risen since I first set foot there in the 1960s. I know far too many people living worse off today than they did decades ago. This is not because the Nigerian economy lacks promise--it has huge oil exports, and the country is filled with good, ambitious, entrepreneurial people--but because crime, corruption, and tax evasion have torn the country apart.
When China is growing at close to 10% every year, China's median citizen sees their life improving despite endemic corruption and illicit outflows. However, there are serious questions for the political and social stability of China's economy if growth slows. Will the median citizen continue to tolerate obvious and tragic corruption on the scale that we are seeing when more modest growth is not improving their living standards? When we say that illicit flows drive inequality, it is because money moved illegally out of the economy hurts your average person. That money can't be spent on schools, infrastructure or basic services. To make matters worse, our prior research finds that illicit flows drive underground economies, resulting in more organized crime, smuggling, and other factors that undermine the Chinese economy.
A recent Pew poll suggests the average citizen may be getting restless. The study released last week found that roughly half of the Chinese public now see corruption and inequality as "very big problems" in their country, a significant spike from 2008 when the poll was last conducted.
Still, the world needs to do something about this. Potential political unrest in China affects us all. We make it far too easy for wealthy elites all over the world to stash their money in tax havens, including the United States. The world cannot afford to let China collapse into a pit of corruption and civil unrest. The result would be a disaster.
Tycoon wins ruling in divorce case
A Nigerian oil tycoon won the latest round of an "extraordinary" divorce battle when senior judges said he did not have to hand millions of pounds worth of property to his estranged English wife.
The Court of Appeal concluded that a High Court judge had wrongly ordered Michael Prest to transfer six London properties - held in the names of companies he controlled - to estranged wife Yasmin Prest.
Lawyers said the decision had implications and was "disappointing" for wives whose husbands might use companies to shelter wealth.
Appeal judges said the couple - both in their early 50s - had married in 1993, spent most of their time in London, had properties in Nigeria and the Caribbean and lived to a "very high standard".
They said Mr Prest was "prominent in international oil development and trade" and claimed to be worth about £48 million - Mrs Prest said he was worth "tens if not hundreds of millions" of pounds.
Mrs Prest had asked for 15 times the amount Mr Prest wanted to give when the couple had argued over money in a High Court trial. Mr Prest had proposed giving his wife a package amounting to "a little over £2 million" - Mrs Prest wanted £30.4 million, appeal judges said.
High Court judge Mr Justice Moylan had "conservatively" put Mr Prest's wealth at £37.5 million - and concluded that a fair award to Mrs Prest was £17.5 million.
Mr Justice Moylan had taken into consideration a string of London properties - in the name of "one company or another" - worth millions of pounds in total. And he had ruled that six should be transferred to Mrs Prest.
But a panel of three appeal judges overturned Mr Justice Moylan's ruling on the London properties - after challenges by companies. They allowed appeals by a 2-1 majority in a written judgment, following a Court of Appeal hearing in London in July.
Lord Justice Thorpe dismissed appeals - and agreed with Mr Justice Moylan's findings. But Lord Justice Rimer and Lord Justice Patten allowed appeals and said Mr Justice Moylan had been wrong.
Israel Must Be Shunned
Liezelle Kumalo and Fanisa Masia/The New Age
International boycotts and disinvestment, which were used as effective tools to fight apartheid should also be used to further the cause of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.
This call was made at a tribute to the longest serving president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) on Wednesday night.
The event organised by the Wits SRC also saw the screening of a special tribute “Have You Heard from Johannesburg”, highlighting OR’s campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa at a time when the ANC was viewed by the west as an agent of communist Russia or at worst a terrorist organisation.
Speakers said there were strong parallels between the two struggles against injustice and oppression.
They also pointed to the tactics used by Tambo to mobilise the international community against South Africa, and argued that the same strategies were needed to help the people of Palestine.
The Wits SRC reiterated its call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel despite Wits management distancing itself from the move.
This comes at a time when there is a strong movement in favour of boycotting Israeli products in South Africa.
SRC representative Tokelo Nhlapo said that the similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel’s occupation of Palestine were too great to ignore. The Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ebrahim Ebrahim’s statement for the event read: “Today, there is a similar international civil society solidarity campaign in support of the Palestinians against Israeli policies and practices of occupation and aggression.
“The ANC fully supports this international movement to pressure Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”
University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Prof Farid Essack, one of the guest speakers, said that Israel was an apartheid state and should be stopped.
“This is what is expected from the family of humankind. Not because we owe it to the Palestinian people but we owe it to ourselves,” he said.
International anti-apartheid movement organiser from the Netherlands Adri Neiwhof said that Tambo was “humble and a motivator”.
A boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigner against Israel, Neiwhof spoke of the success of a Dutch boycott campaign in helping to end apartheid.
However, the chairperson of the Gauteng SA Jewish board of directors said that Israel could not be compared to apartheid (South Africa) because it was a democratic country with democratic principles with a disputed territory in the mix. He said that the best solutions were for the two parties involved to talk, something Israel had been trying to do for the past 20 to 30 years.
“Palestinians have repeatedly rejected a peaceful settlement by responding with suicide bombers. An attempt to boycott Israeli products will never happen. How can Israel engage with people that continuously bomb them?” Katz said. He also said the South African government could play a constructive role in reaching a peaceful settlement between the two parties.
E-readers kindle enthusiasm for learning among children in Kenya
Digital readers supplied by the Kilgoris project are encouraging kids who might otherwise lack basic textbooks to love reading
THE GUARDIAN UK/POVERTY MATTERS BLOG
Half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have few or no textbooks, according to Sacmeq, a body that monitors educational quality in southern and eastern Africa. The cost of buying and transporting books means they often have to be shared between students in a classroom, hindering learning and slowing development. Yet e-readers have the potential to change this.
Intimigom nursery and primary school in the rural Maasai province of Kilgoris, south-west Kenya, is attempting to overcome textbook shortages by using donated e-readers. The e-readers come loaded with hundreds of Kenyan textbooks in English and Kiswahili, as well as stories for primary school children. When electricity shortages occur, they can be charged using small solar power packs and generators.
"I had never seen a Kindle before; I really like using it as it helps me with reading and writing," says Intimigom student Obuto Kukutia, aged 12.
"We have a seen a lot of positive changes since we started using Kindles. The children are very excited to learn and are often reading through their break. It helps them with their spelling and [English] language skills. Compared to other schools I have taught at, the children here appear to be ahead. The parents' reaction to the Kindles has also been very positive; they wonder how such a small device can hold several books," says the headteacher, Shadrack Lemiso.
The school has 150 e-readers for the 200 students. It is supported by the Kilgoris project, a not-for-profit organisation that – partnered with Worldreader – provides e-books to schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldreader works with publishers including Penguin, Random House, and Amazon, as well as African authors and publishers, to ensure local and international books are available and affordable, if not donated for free. It has distributed more than 220,000 digital books to children and teachers across four projects in sub-Saharan Africa.
"We saw the technology as the most effective and efficient way to give our students all the known benefits of access to books. Instead of building a library, the technology lets us put a library in a child's hand. And we can keep that library up-to-date electronically. E-books don't get tattered or torn, like their paper cousins," says Caren McCormack, president and co-founder of the Kilgoris project. "At the launch ceremony at Intimigom, I joked that the Kindles were much like a herd of cows, a source of long-term security and prosperity for a family. And who could better protect a precious herd than a group of Maasai?"
Sporadic internet connectivity in the area means only a small number of books can be downloaded at a time; for downloads to all the devices, the e-readers are taken to Nairobi, where high-speed internet is more readily available.
The Kilgoris project helps seven schools in the province, serving more than 600 students. Each has an active local board and leadership team consisting of parents, elders and teachers. "We rely on these boards for constant feedback, decision-making, direction and support," says McCormack. "We firmly believe that to do the most good and have the most impact, we need to align ourselves to the community's needs through communication with local families."
By expanding the schools it works with and adding pre-school and secondary levels, Kilgoris aims to help 1,000 students by 2017.
Africa Can Feed Itself -- World Bank
Johannesburg - A new World Bank report says that Africa’s farmers can potentially grow enough food to feed the continent and avert future food crises if countries remove cross-border restrictions on the food trade within the region.
According to the bank‚ the continent would also generate an extra $20bn in yearly earnings if African leaders could agree to dismantle trade barriers that blunted more regional dynamism.
The report was released on the eve of an African Union (AU) ministerial summit in Addis Ababa on agriculture and trade.
With as many as 19 million people living with the threat of hunger and malnutrition in West Africa’s Sahel region‚ the bank report urges African leaders to improve trade so that food can move more freely between countries and from fertile areas to those where communities are suffering food shortages.
The World Bank expects demand for food in Africa to double by the year 2020 as people increasingly leave the countryside and move to the continent’s cities.
According to the new report "Africa Can Help Feed Africa: Removing barriers to regional trade in food staples"‚ rapid urbanisation will challenge the ability of farmers to ship their cereals and other foods to consumers when the nearest trade market is just across a national border.
Countries south of the Sahara‚ for example‚ could significantly boost their food trade over the next several years to manage the deadly impact of worsening drought‚ rising food prices‚ rapid population growth‚ and volatile weather patterns.
With many African farmers effectively cut off from the high-yield seeds‚ and the affordable fertilisers and pesticides needed to expand their crop production‚ the continent has turned to foreign imports to meet its growing needs in staple foods.
“Africa has the ability to grow and deliver good quality food to put on the dinner tables of the continent’s families‚” said Makhtar Diop‚ World Bank vice president for Africa.
“However‚ this potential is not being realised because farmers face more trade barriers in getting their food to market than anywhere else in the world. Too often borders get in the way of getting food to homes and communities which are struggling with too little to eat.”
The new report suggests that if the continent’s leaders can embrace more dynamic inter-regional trade‚ Africa’s farmers‚ the majority of whom are women‚ could potentially meet the continent’s rising demand and benefit from a major growth opportunity. It would also create more jobs in services such as distribution‚ while reducing poverty and cutting back on expensive food imports. Africa’s production of staple foods is worth at least $50bn a year.
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