Darui: How is sitting on the floor dirtying your babariga simple and humble?
It is good and humble that he decided to spend his vacation in his village but not the sitting on the floor. Those sort of traditions then should have been frowned upon. Modernization was lacking in his mindset. Its the truth.

nagoma: The first ever military coup in Nigeria was planned by Igbo Soldiers
Was viciously and mercilessly executed by Igbo soldiers on 15 th Jan. 1966.
That was the bloodiestt coup in history of all coups in Nigeria
It was actually genocidal and attempt at ethnic cleansing as no Igbo officers or politicians were targeted or affected.
The right Honorable gentleman Balewa was one object of their hatred. They murdered him in cold blood.
The hatred still persists after 46 years , the sons and daughters of these murderers are still insulting this great man. Here on NL.
Why would i want to live in the same country with such evil and wicked people?
Divide the country fast , north for NORTHERNERS and south for SOUTHERNERS .

Darui:
You are just one of them almajiris,unwanted by their own fathers. If you have a true father, you won't have posted this.

Concept:

If you live in a glass house, please resist the temptation to launch attack. Do not be the first to throw stone. I regard my father I will never rubbish anyone's father.

Darui: I suggest you take a proper look at my post when I gave the example of far eastern countries. I pray(salat) on my mat. I m very sure you won't sit on the outside floor in front of your house to accept one of your important business guest.
Imagine the shock,other people will feel to see the prime minister( leader) of the most populous black African country with the biggest potential sitting on the floor like THAT. That's one of the reason we are yet to shake off the primitive african stereotypes.
Note- there's nothing wrong with sitting on the mat or rug in your house or atleast a respectable place and Its even more important for a PRIME MINISTER to project the correct image to the world!

T9ksy:

Yeah right! The same "simple & humble" later sent his 10 yr old son to complete his primary school

education in a private school in london. The day this guy became our PM, the country embarked on her downward slope to

zero development.He was a stooge of the sardunna who was hell bent on his northernisation policy and therefore danced to

his (sardunna's) beat..

T9ksy: @ bolded, oh yeah? So we should be glad then that TB only sent his son to finish primary education at a private school in london at our expense. You thought processing is definately amazing!

My father never lost faith in me despite all the evidence that I was never going to fulfill my academic potential. He had high, high hopes for me - that I would attend Eton or Harrow, then go on to Oxford or Cambridge to study law. I would then return to Nigeria and sign up to his lifelong ambition to bring the plight of our people to national and international attention. That was his plan for my life when he decided to send me, aged ten, to Stancliffe Hall prep school in England in 1978.

That is when my idyllic, football-playing Nigerian childhood ended - early in 1977. Arriving home from work one day, my father looked at me, smiled to himself, and said: "I'm sending you to England."

England. I was ecstatic. I had goosepimples remembering how often I used to pore over our place mats that featured scenes from London's landmarks. And now my father was telling me that I was going to see these places for myself.

Change is a traumatic experience at any age, but at ten, hovering as you are between childhood ignorance and adolescent terror, change can be totally disorientating.

I don't remember much about coming to England in January 1978 but two things stick in my mind: the unbelievable cold and the hours we spent in that cold wandering up and down Oxford Street looking for some famous store called Harrods.

At the end of the 1970s, Nigeria's economy was still experiencing the boom that had started when the Arab-Israeli conflict escalated oil prices and pumped petrodollars into the economy of oil-producing states. In those heady days the naira was stronger than the dollar. We were so giddy with money that our head of state at the time declared that our problem was not lack of money but "how to spend it".

General Gowon's phrase is often lazily hauled out to illustrate Nigeria's spend-happy attitude to money, but what he actually meant by it was that Nigeria's greatest problem was a chronic inability or unwillingness to invest its money for a rainy day.

This was why the education system was, by 1978, so underfunded that those who could afford it seriously considered sending their children abroad. Many of my father's generation had been educated during the colonial era when Nigeria's schools were run by ex-pats and missions. Those colonial schools were modelled on British public schools and turned out smart kids versed in Latin and Greek, familiar with Dickens, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. My father and his peers received a classical education, the kind that was unavailable in the Nigeria of 1978.

So my father sent me abroad. He was determined, no matter what the cost, to give me the same start in life that he had been given, first at Government College Umuahia and then later at Ibadan University, where he graduated in English. [s]Ibadan University was Nigeria's equivalent of Oxbridge.[/s] Most of Nigeria's best-known personalities, including Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, graduated from Ibadan.

My father was determined that I should have the same kind of education, even if it meant having to go abroad for it. The cost, as long as Nigeria's economy remained buoyant, was negligible. What stopped many Nigerians who could afford it from sending their children abroad was the cultural value of an English education. Although many Nigerians would have gladly taken their children out of the local system, there was a general fear that those who were educated abroad often came back with ideas and values that were useless in Nigeria and had to spend years readjusting.

PhysicsQED:

T9sky, this is the second time I've seen you make this claim/insinuation that Balewa was looting the country by sending his son to a private school in the UK. I took the time to look into it and there is not a single shred of validity to this claim.

All I stated was that the man chose to send his 10yr old son to finish his primary school education in London!


Balewa may have been somewhat naive, may have been used by the Sardauna (The Sardauna referred to Balewa as one of his "boys", which Balewa countered by saying that he brought the Sardauna into politics, which may be true), and obviously supported the wrong side in the Akintola-Awolowo dispute, but we don't have to start blaming him for things which never he did.

No sir, I really don’t care about his naivety but the man was not fit to be our PM as evidenced by the way and manner he mismanaged our 1st republic. Whatever balewa might have retorted to the sardunna’s claim, it was a fact that he was indeed the sardunna’s stooge. As for your statement that Balewa didn’t support the right side, I say that’s just too simplistic. Balewa was part and parcel of that incompetent, clueless and myopic govt ‘s plot to destroy the western region. He stood watching as hundreds of lives were lost(mostly yorubas) and properties destroyed, consequential to the shenannigan his govt in colloboration with their junior partner,fomented in the region.

In reality, he had several children (19), of which only two ever ended up going to school in the UK, although the other children went to school (in Nigeria) and went on to various careers. He first sent one of his sons to Epsom College, a public (not private) school in the UK, in 1965, one year before he was killed. There's no question that he could afford to pay the costs of that school on the prime minister's salary, especially when the Nigerian pound would have had value, so there is no issue or question about looting or theft that's relevant there.

Of course, am sure he could afford to send his son to Epsom college for PRIMARY school education on a prime minister’s salary with 4 wives and 19 mouths to feed.





To possibly put things in perspective on why Balewa would send his (favorite?) sons to the UK, consider what Ken Wiwa (Ken Saro-Wiwa's son) wrote in his interesting article "Shaping a son of Africa":

Now I can see WHY balewa would send his son abroad for good quality education [/b]but I can’t for the life of me discern [b]WHY (if balewa value quality education so much), he denied his own people some form of education. Instead, we are here now 5 decades later with 10million almajiris- a standing army of ignoramuses just waiting to be unleashed at short notice on those bloody book-worm southerners.



For more on Balewa, see Trevor Clark's biography of him. I haven't read the whole thing (it's 888 pages!) and I probably never will, but I read enough to specifically try and find out about this claim about him sending his son to a private school. The costs of his two sons' education at Epsom College were later covered by the Gowon administration. Balewa made mistakes, but he didn't steal. Just thought I should clear this up. Peace.

nagoma:

And what correct image is your Mumu president Jona presenting , a fleet of jets for the president of a country that cannot even manufacture a bicycle , a billion naira for his feeding, the greatest ever corruption in the oil subsidy scandal, brazen abuse of electoral practice and shameless nepotism and patronage and cluelessness in governance and problem solving. Let me have a competent president, transparent and honest and ready to move the country forward a person who abhors the primitive accumulation of wealth from the country's resources and believe me he can sit on bare ground at his spare time - any time , and I have no problem with that.

Babzilla: /if he sat in a rolls royce or on a golden throne the same f00ls will still castigate the memory of the man.

obo_man: Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest the world has even seen wore only white ropes, shorts and slippers everywhere he went.

He wore the same outfit on his visit to England. Would you still class him as ignorant and lacking good hygiene? He traded his suits and shoes for those outfit meant for paupers in India.

Substituting shoes for slippers could be poor hygiene, but substituting a life of affluence and comfort for simplicity in order to represent your people is priceless...

That is the true beauty of leadership.

nagoma: The first ever military coup in Nigeria was planned by Igbo Soldiers
Was viciously and mercilessly executed by Igbo soldiers on 15 th Jan. 1966.
That was the bloodiestt coup in history of all coups in Nigeria
It was actually genocidal and attempt at ethnic cleansing as no Igbo officers or politicians were targeted or affected.
The right Honorable gentleman Balewa was one object of their hatred. They murdered him in cold blood.
The hatred still persists after 46 years , the sons and daughters of these murderers are still insulting this great man. Here on NL.
Why would i want to live in the same country with such evil and wicked people?
Divide the country fast , north for NORTHERNERS and south for SOUTHERNERS .

T9ksy:

My brother, two wrongs will never make a right. They were both WRONG. Balewa/sardunna govt wasn't a nigerian govt but rather a northern govt with policies being made to favour one region to the exclusion of all others. This was WRONG hence the western region went up in flames with hundreds of nigerians, albeit mainly yorubas killed.
The majors didn't have to kill anyone to correct this wrongdoing as there are more than one way to skin a cat. But when the coupist made it a point to murder leaders from other regions whilst sparing theirs then their wrongdoing was on par with those politicians and fellow army personnels (inc. their wives),they murdered. The coupists were just opportunists hiding behind the incompetence of the central govt to unleash their own sectional hegemonic ambition.

T9ksy:

My brother, two wrongs will never make a right. They were both WRONG. Balewa/sardunna govt wasn't a nigerian govt but rather a northern govt with policies being made to favour one region to the exclusion of all others. This was WRONG hence the western region went up in flames with hundreds of nigerians, albeit mainly yorubas killed.
The majors didn't have to kill anyone to correct this wrongdoing as there are more than one way to skin a cat. But when the coupist made it a point to murder leaders from other regions whilst sparing theirs then their wrongdoing was on par with those politicians and fellow army personnels (inc. their wives),they murdered. The coupists were just opportunists hiding behind the incompetence of the central govt to unleash their own sectional hegemonic ambition.

T9ksy:
Yeah right! The same "simple & humble" later sent his 10 yr old son to complete his primary school

education in a private school in london. The day this guy became our PM, the country embarked on her downward slope to

zero development.He was a stooge of the sardunna who was hell bent on his northernisation policy and therefore danced to

his (sardunna's) beat.