₦airaland Forum

50 Kids from 12 Countries participated.
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[I]Friday [/I] 19 October 2007

2 pm
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[B]Mr. Prescott:[/B] Does that mean that you want the
motion? As you have agreed, you will have three
motions. We are going to debate them and you will
have a vote on them as they come. During Question
Time we do not have motions but ask questions.
Following that, we shall get into the debate; that is why
the Speaker will be leaving this session. There will be
three motions that you have chosen and you will be
able to vote on them. I hope that that is okay.

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[B]Henry Akahara[/B] (Nigeria): I beg to move that
[I]‘All people should be educated about historical and modern
slavery and its impact today. They must recognise the
contribution of Africa and its people to the wealth and
development of other countries around the world and the
importance of creating a positive future in view of this legacy.’
[/I]

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[B]Madam Deputy Speaker:[/B] I shall now put the motion
to the vote.
Question put: Ayes 16, Noes 25.
Question accordingly negatived

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[B]Ricardo Brooks [/B](Jamaica): I beg to move that
[I]‘The huge cost of slavery be recognised and the concept of
debt to developed nations be reversed so that reparation be made
to Africa and the Diaspora to create and sustain economic
development using its own skills and resources.’[/I]

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Question put: Ayes 23, Noes 19.
Question accordingly agreed to.

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[B]Pandit Mami[/B] (Sierra Leone): I beg to move that
[I]‘The idea of racism should be made illegal worldwide and
there should be no concept of superior or inferior people.’[/I]

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Question put: Ayes 7, Noes 30.
Question accordingly negatived.

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[B]Madam Deputy Speaker:[/B] It is now my privilege to
ask you, Your Highness, to make the concluding
remarks of this very important and historic session of
this particular Parliament.


[B]His Highness Nana Kodwo Condua V:[/B] I am going to
speak to you on behalf of His Majesty Nana Kodwo
Condua VI, the Paramount Chief of Elmina.
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[B]Madam Deputy Speaker:[/B] I thank His Highness for
closing the debate.
The sitting was closed at 4.45pm.

Henry Akahara (Nigeria): I beg to move that
‘All people should be educated about historical and modern
slavery and its impact today. They must recognise the
contribution of Africa and its people to the wealth and
development of other countries around the world and the
importance of creating a positive future in view of this legacy.’
I am for the motion which says that all people should
be educated about historical and modern slavery, its
impact, and our role to change its legacy, because I
know that education is essential for everyone.
Education is a right; it goes around and around.
Everyone should be educated: the young and the old
should know about modern day slavery. Wherever you
are, you should know about modern day slavery. In the
UK, they know less about the subject, but because of
this event they will know more. Modern day slavery
should be known about by the big, the small, the
superior and the inferior.


Henry Akahara (Nigeria): The hon. Gentleman says
that education should mean formal education. I both
disagree and agree, in the sense that: yes, it should be
formal, as it should be added to the curriculum. We
have to know about modern-day slavery. All the same,
if we say that it should be only formal education, it
means that there are parents at home who will not get
to know about it, because some parents do not listen to
what their children say. Children might know from
what they have been taught at school that slavery is
going on and when they return home and tell their
mum, “Hey, you are carrying out modern-day slavery
on me,” she will reply, “Shut up! You don’t know
anything.” So I think that we should just carry on a
system to educate people generally—not to use only
formal education. You can educate them generally—
young and old—just through media houses, hand bills,
posters and television. My grandmother can get
educated while seated on her couch watching TV. I do
not think that education should be formal, or only in
schools.

Henry Akahara (Nigeria): Madam Deputy Speaker,
my thinking is that formal education is school alone. I
do not see why my grandmother should be told to
come to school and sit down. Maybe she does not
know anything, like how to read and write, like people
in the villages. If such people are given pictures and
written documentation and told to go through it, how
should they do that? They will just see the pictures and
admire them, and think, “Oh, this guy is smiling; yeah,
I’m okay with that.” They will not know the message
being passed to them. If we can educate them
normally, with, as I said, hand bills and through TV
and radio stations that speak their language, that will
be splendid.


Henry Akahara (Nigeria): As the hon. Gentleman
says, some people are a little confused, but I am not
confused. The fact is that informal education is the
best. To me, it is outstandingly good, because
everybody will benefit from it. If you say that formal
education is good for you, everybody has his way out,
but formal education is not going to help anybody
except those who live in a confined area. Informal
education is the best.

Ibime:
Eventually it will become inevitable. All tribes will have their own state. Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa, Ijaw, etc

dayokanu:
What has been Westerhof's achievement since leaving Nigeria 14 years ago.

He complained Berti Vogts went abroad for camping I can remember him taking us to Papendal Holland to train. He is just looking for a job.

davidif:
Yemi Tella ko, Yemi Tella ni. Everyone knows that it was Ben Iroha that was doing the whole thing behind the scenes even the players confirmed it that it was Ben Irohas input that mattered the most, and why did they (the NFA) not make him coach, its simply because of politics, Tella had the connections and Iroha simply did not.
If you guys want a local coach, tell the NFA to sponsor our coaches to go to England and get there UEFA A-License and a UEFA Pro License.

naijaking1:
Nigeria and communist China are not same. Was the one child/family policy a success? No.

A large population helps tax base, manpower, and resources, please redirect your energy on how Nigeria will improve, not how to decrease the population. We're post-industrial age for goodness sake.

http://www.supereaglesnation.com/Historical_Results.asp

REQUIEM FOR NIGERIA'S FOOTBALL AT THE BEHEST OF A NEW COLONY

If I had hopes for Nigerian football prior to a recent visit to Nigeria then those hopes have now evaporated. There is now a requiem for Nigeria's football. The global transition in football engendered by the vast economic liberalization opium has clearly hammered the final nail in Nigerian football coffin and even FIFA's haste to stem its impact will only slow itself in stutters. That much is clear to me but here is the key question: "Is it clear to the Nigerian FA?"

The media lliberalization in NIgeria has introduced a brand of neo-colonization where Nigerians have adopted the English Premier League (EPL) teams and are unable to name a single player who plays for their local NIgerian clubside. Shocking! EPL team gear is all over Nigeria and they are proudly worn by infants, college girls , their boyfriends, their moms, and the sugar daddies. It is Arsenal there, Liverpool, Chelse, and Manchester United galore. No room for the likes of Enugu Rangers, Enyimba, Insurance, 3Sc, or the Dolphins. Nigeria is indeed an EPL colony. I went into the Ceddi Plaza in Abuja and into a store selling football gear and not one item belonged to a local Nigerian team. In one evening outing with friends at Blue Island hotel in Enugu, the one time hotbed of Enugu Rangers only to endure an entire evening of discussion centered on Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. I sought discussions on the local league but found no takers. I found out that very few knew the current league performance of the once-revered Enugu Rangers. Shocking? That was only a part of it, I purchased a local sports newspaper hoping to read about the local league only to quickly note that onl;y one page (tucked inside) focused on the local league. The rest was on EPL and other European leagues. The EPL domination is complete and total, make no mistake about it.

The long term effect is predictable and there are signs, already. The local stadia are virtually empty. For instance, Rangers hosted local league leaders Niger Tornadoes and only a handful of people showed up to watch. Guess what? the city was abuzz with football on that day but the buzz was not about Rangers or the visiting Tornadoes. Instead, it was for the televised Arsenal v Burnley and Liverpool v Luton, two rather pedestrian English FA Cup fixtures. Then I was informed that the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) recently interrupted its popular late news to broadcast an EPL game. Unbelievable! It is indeed deep.

Obviously, Nigerian fans of local teams are now part of a dinosaur-breed. They are now few and far between and soon they will be extinct. What then is the FA doing about this dreadful situation for local football? The facts are evident and they lie squarely on the FA's table and yet what we read about is the FA claiming effectiveness based on the achievements of the Under-17 team that it barely supported on the way to the team's win of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup.  As for the big picture -- the ongoing colonization -- the FA is indeed comatose.

Sure, the current EPL hegemony is a response to economic calculations, a byproduct of liberalization. In essence, private broadcasters seeking a large audience have found nirvana in the broadcast of EPL games, creating and whetting the appetite of NIgerian fans that had long been denied live football on television. There is no question that it is the broadcast of EPL games that has attracted its worship.
       
Perhaps, it is also possible that televising local Nigerian games will restore a substantial part of Nigerian football's lost glory. I watched the Nigerian game and the talents are still there and the Enugu Stadium (and perhaps others) are reasonably in good shape. Unfortunately, the refereeing and financial issues remain problematic. Thus, the quality may not exactly be EPL but it surely compares or outpaces the PSL of South Africa that is also screened frequently on Nigerian television sets.
       
While the NIgerian FA may stick its head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, FIFA clearly has worked to adapt and maintain some balance in this era of economic liberalization and global expansionism. FIFA's edict on football transfers, restricting movement of underage players and restricting transfer periods are some of the strategies that FIFA has used in attempt to negotiate and maintain a balance in the post-Bosman era. But even FIFA's edict, while slowing down European domination, does not extinguish it. But FIFA can only do but so much. The local FAs, like Nigeria's FA,must realize the threats that exist within their own environments and plan accordingly.
         
If the Nigerian FA fails to plan, there will be a time when even the Nigerian players will gravitate to other nationalities and play for other countries instead of Nigeria. Make no mistake about it, that time may well be nearer than we care to admit. Who wants to play in an environment where the local support may be grossly inadequate? In fact, one of the holdbacks to such a gravitation is the reluctance and slowness in several European countries to use available foreign nationals in their national teams. Just maybe, the appointment of Fabio Capello in England may open this vista for England. If he weathers the media flak that will follow then he would cement a new route to an England revival and a death nail for Nigeria and other countries like Nigeria.
         
The fight is on, the Nigerian FA just has not realized it. Its unwillingness to think BIG and deal with this deep problem will eventually upend Nigerian football.

http://www.tribune.com.ng/01122007/issues.html


Nigerian Football And Threat Of Foreign Domination

FOREIGN influence in Nigerian football is as old as the advent of television in the country.

Thanks to cultural exchanges as a form of mass communication for citizens of the world, German, English and Brazilian brands of football found their way into the living rooms of privileged Nigerians who were comfortable enough to acquire television sets.

Through TRANSTEL channel, German football and its talents became models of aspiring Nigerian footballers.

Names like Karl Heinz Rummenigge, Klaus Hrubesh, Hanze Muller, Gerd Muller, Frantz Beckenbauer, Uwe Seeler, were adorable figures in the eyes of Nigerian football fans.

Englishman Kevin Keegan emerged the brightest star of his generation in the German League. Keegan was so good he had the Germans singing his name in the colour of Hamburg football team.

The Keegan craze infiltrated Nigerian football scene and budding talents preferred to adopt the star as their role model.

One of Keegan’s fanatics, Niyi Adeleye, who was fondly called KK after Kevin Keegan, ended up as bronze medallist at the 1985 World Youth Championship (WYC) in the old Soviet Union.

Adeleye’s team mate and captain to the 1985 WYC, Andrew Uwe, also adopted “Seeler” after another German star, Uwe Seeler.

O’Globo went into partnership with Nigerian television and made Brazilian football attractive to Nigerian viewers. Through this medium, Nigerian teams adopted the names of great Brazilian sides.

Flamboyant Lagos side, Stationery Stores of Lagos, called itself Flaming Flamingoes, after the Brazilian side, Flamingoes. Another Brazilian stalwart, Vasco da Gama, caught the fancy of defunct Enugu side, P & T Vasco da Gama.

Not only that, Nigerian talents adopted Brazilian nicknames — Marinho, Zeze, Pintinho. One of Nigeria’s former national team captains, the late Sam Opone, who later became a coach, was fondly called Zagalo after the Brazilian hero, Mario Zagalo.

In the height of their achievements, Brazilian teams - Santos (starring the inimitable Pele) and Fluminense came on a playing tour of Nigeria for the country’s fans to see their idols live in action.

England, the traditional home of football, commanded a lot of spectatorship in the 1960s and 1970s Nigeria. Known variously as Star Soccer, Premier Soccer or Target Soccer (when a Nigerian tobacco firm capitalised on the profound viewership of the matches to sponsor the programme), the package aired on weekends featured a star match with footage of other games across England.

Harry Redknapp, Steve Bruce, Steve Coppell, Mark Hughes, now coaches of English Premier League sides became household names among Nigerian fans.

The late Ayo Adeniji was named ‘Allan Ball’, George Omokaro of the old Bendel Insurance was nicknamed ‘George Best’ after the late Manchester United enigma and perhaps the first real superstar of the game, George Best.

Italian football may not be a weekly feature on Nigerian screen, yet stars from that country-namely Paolo Rossi (who became toast of Nigerian musicians), Silvatore Schillachi were darlings of Nigerian football fans, thanks to their exploits at the 1982 and 1986 World Cup finals.

As famous as these foreign stars were, they lived in the shadows of Nigerian footballers who were idols to their fans.

The performance of Haruna Ilerika, the left-footed dribbler of Stationery Stores was enough to fill the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos to capacity. The entire stadium stood still for Nigerian stopper - Godwin Odiye - on his first touch of the day on match days.

The shout of Owoblow was enough to cow opposing sides when Felix Owolabi performed in front of his beloved fans. Former national team captain, Christian Chukwu was called the ‘chairman’ for the way he carried himself among team mates, opponents, match officials and administrators of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA).

Segun Odegbami was known for his enthralling dribbling, heading and speeding techniques.

By far, the most beloved set of Nigerian footballers represented the country in the United States at the 1994 World Cup.

Let it be said that as qualitative as the team was, the stars of that squad – Rashidi Yekini, Peter Rufai, Stephen Keshi, Daniel Amokachi, Uche Okechukwu - made their names playing for the IICC Shooting Stars (now Shooting Stars Sports Club), Stationery Stores, New Nigerian Bank, Ranchers Bees and Iwuanyanwu Nationale now Heartland FC respectively.

Also, teams like Leventis United, Abiola Babes, Flash Flamingoes, later Bendel United of Benin, Rangers International, Sharks FC, BCC Lions of Gboko and Bendel Insurance once reigned on the domestic soccer scene and filled stadiums to capacity.

Some crowd pullers include Bunmi Adigun, Wole Odegbami, James Etokebe, Andrew Uwe (Leventis); Taju Disu, Toyin Ayinla, Yisa Shofoluwe, Chris Anigala (Abiola Babes); Isaac Semitoje, David Ngodigha, Ben Iroha (Bendel United); Christian Chukwu, Emmanuel Okala, Okey Isima, Aloysius Atuegbu, Ifeanyi Onyedika, Slyvanus Okpala, Emma Okocha (Rangers); Adokiye Amiesimaka, Davidson Owumi (Sharks); Dominic Iorfa, Moses Kpakor and Samuel Addingi (BCC Lions) and David Adiele, Kadiri Ikhana (Bendel Insurance), among others.

Nigerian football receded into neo-colonialism in the 21st century, no thanks to a number of factors begging for solutions.

A clique specialises in forgery of International Transfer Certificate (ITC) to facilitate local players’ dumping loyalty to their local side for a stint abroad.

Another class of one-season flukes, believes it has arrived to try its luck in exchange for hard currency.

Some players believe an appearance in the colours of the national team, however ephemeral it is, should be good enough to land them a deal abroad.

The talents’ drain, dubious officiating, questionable attitude of coaches and insecurity at match venues combined to rob Nigerian football of quality.

The case is so amazing that players of the country’s cadet national team overlook Nigerian clubs and rely on their agents to secure foreign clubs for them. Very few members of Nigeria’s U-17 successful campaigners at South Korea 2007 returned to their clubs or the grassroots where they were discovered.

Top scorer, Chrisantus Macaulay has since joined German side, Hamburg, while defender Matthew Edile is hoping for the best after trials with English Premiership side, Manchester City.

Maurice Inok, a former captain of Black Cats of Ogoja said there was no chance for Nigerian local football to excite when stars of the game have their eyes fixed abroad.

“You can imagine how excited the fans would have been if those Eaglets had returned to their clubs but you can’t blame them. You blame the system which makes playing at home unattractive,” said Inok.

Rasheed Mohammed, former league winner with Stationery Stores of Lagos in 1992, blamed lack of adequate welfare package for the decline of Nigerian football.

“As a player of Iwuanyanwu Nationale, we lacked nothing. In fact, we got everything before we asked for it. So, there was nothing to look out for abroad,” Mohammed recalled his days at the Owerri-based side.

His experience with Stationery Stores of Lagos was also remarkable. Then bankrolled by a certain Mr. Anonymous, the Lagos side flourished in the early 90’s, got to away games in chartered flight and were dressed in attractive attires to match venues.

The club was good enough to attract players from the West Coast of Africa as ‘foreigners’ Arthur Moses and Stephen Botchway were pillars of that golden era of the Flaming Flamingoes.

Today, poor officiating indeed remains the greatest problem as many league matches had been ruined by men of the whistle.

Tribunesports investigation revealed that biased officiating is caused by gratification being given to match officials by clubs. Aside from the indemnities, referees are always tempted with bribe by home teams to curry favour. The practice is referred to as ‘tactical’ in football parlance.

Crowd violence is not peculiar to Nigerian football, as such had been witnessed several times in the European league. A case in point was the local derby involving Inter Milan and AC Milan during the 2005 UEFA Champions League. The return leg which took place also at the San Siro Stadium was disrupted in the second half by crowd violence as AC Milan keeper, Nelson Dida was chased out of the goal post with dangerous flying objects.

In Nigeria, the winatall cost syndrome results in fans’ unrest. The belief is that if your team plays at home, it must win regardless of the strength of the opponents.

The urge to help home teams win by referees at times could take the shine off the match and this is why the officials of the away teams do complain of ‘daylight robbery.’

A recent case was the one at the Aba Township Stadium when Enyimba FC of Aba played host to Wikki Tourists of Bauchi in a Week Seven Globacom Premier League.

The scoreline was 2–2 when Wikki scored another goal towards the end of the match but it was overruled by the centre referee due to the antics of a ball boy who threw in another ball onto the pitch at the time the shot was taken.

The referee, by the laws of the game, could use his discretion to accept the goal but he chose to decide otherwise.

As a result of crowd violence, teams are banished every season so that their fans could learn to embrace the spirit of sportsmanship after defeat.

Heartland FC and Wikki Tourists, among others, have been banished in the ongoing season as a result of fans’ unruly behaviour. Heartland moved to Ibadan from Owerri ,while Wikki Tourists were banished to Calabar from Bauchi just as Akwa United is still serving its one-year banishment in Calabar as well.

Economic factor is equally affecting the standard of the Nigeria game as many players earn peanuts compared to their colleagues even in other African countries such as Gabon, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.

Most clubs end up not paying the players the agreed sign-on fees and even salaries except token as match bonuses.

Again, because of the literacy level, most of the players do not care to know what is contained in the contract they sign. They want to sign and play football as a means of livelihood hoping that when they get a breakthrough to Europe, their fortune will improve.

Some players have had cause to be paid their backlog of entitlements through the Arbitration panel set up by the Nigeria Football League (NFL), when clubs refuse to honour the contract reached with these players.

There are some clubs in the professional cadre today in Nigeria that still pay their players as low N7,000 as salary with fixed sign-on fees that will never be paid except the player wants a free clearance in return.

There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria needs to improve on the administration of the game. Most of Nigerian clubs are poorly administered because unqualified people are appointed to be at the helm.

95 per cent of the clubs are owned by state governments which nominate favourites to run them. Mostly, politicians are in charge of these clubs’ management board who are after their selfish interests, leaving the players who can deliver the goods to work on empty stomachs.

All these setbacks combine to endear foreign football to Nigerian fans so much that hardly can one see a Nigerian football fan without allegiance to one foreign team or the other.

For instance, the crave for foreign football in Nigeria has brought in emotional solidarity among motorists who gracefully concede rights of way to drivers who display stickers of their darling clubs on the windscreen of their cars.

Lanre Arogundade, former chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Lagos State, branch sees an advantage in this addiction.

He hopes that one day, the big clubs in Europe will realise they have a massive fan base in Nigeria and embark on a playing tour of the country just like teams like Santos, Fluminense, Brighton, Orient did in the 60s and 70s.

However, it is not all good news about foreign football in Nigeria. The aftermatch tauntings among fans of rival clubs had resulted in exuberance and, in extreme cases, tragedy.

UEFA Champions League match nights have become covers for unscrupulous elements which infiltrate the rank and file of fans as viewing centres have been swooped upon by security operatives.

A stadium manager of one of the southwestern states, in an interview with Tribunesports ,accused operators of viewing centres of harbouring vandals and rogues who pilfer facilities and equipment of the stadium on UEFA Champions League nights.

By and large, the indigenous game continues to prosper despite the incursion of its foreign brand. As long as the Nigerian teams give the fans what they want in terms of quality and result Nigerians continue to boast about their talents which have given the country a positive image in the world.

Matches involving world U-17 champions, the Golden Eaglets, were played on the dawn of new day, yet Nigerians abdicated their family, corporate and religious responsibilities to cheer the team to victory.

On those glamorous occasions, rival fans of foreign clubs partied together after successful Nigerian outings depicting that the soul of Nigerian football is not yet lost to foreign mentality.

John Obuh (Coach)
Nigerian league is being neglected because of biased officiating. The way our referees handle matches leaves much to be desired. The way clubs are run in this country is not encouraging.

We lack professionalism in the appointment of players and coaches. There is no club with a definite pattern because there is no continuity.

Ufere Nwankwo (Coach)
It is the power of the media, with good television coverage, our football will attract more fans to the stadium.

Abdulrahman Sambare (Fan)
Even if 11 members of my family constitute the starting line-up of the Super Eagles, I prefer to watch Arsenal.

Chief Olayiwola Olagbemiro (Soccer Administrator)
The press would have to give local football adequate publicity. Hardly can you get a soccer fan today who can name the line-up of any team in the Nigerian league, but you will see many who know the full squads of Arsenal, Manchester Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool. With adequate publicity, the standard of our league will improve.

The standard was not as low as this in the 70s through 80s. The local league then was the toast of every Nigerian and you can always expect a capacity-filled stadium in every match.

The players too were always inspired to give the fans what they deserved in terms of excitement.

Chief Segun Odegbami (Sports Analyst/Columnist)
During our time, the urge to play professional football abroad was low because everybody was comfortable. There was no sign-on fee but we relied on salaries and match bonuses which were a lot of money then. There was a time I got N1,000 as match bonus and I bought a piece of land out of it and invested the remaining in business.

Well today, there is money in Nigerian football, players earn fat sign-on fees and entitlements but I notice a decline in the quality of the game.

We don’t have good strikers and players do not like to take risk again unlike during our time.

Our game is too defensive and we need to appreciate that goal scoring makes the game to be more exciting. Why should we go to Ghana, Guinea, Cameroun to look for strikers? Today, our clubs go to neighbouring countries to look for players. It is funny.

Abubakar Garba (Fan)
The first time I watched the Nigerian league live on the Supersports television, I was highly impressed. It has confirmed that the standard of Nigerian league is high. At least, the outside world is beginning to have the chance to assess our players in their localities before they become stars in Europe. The television coverage has also raised the standard of officiating.

Nathaniel Adewole (Football consultant)
I can only go to the stadium to watch a quality player and not anybody who puts on a shirt in the name of one club-I mean players who can make fans enjoy their money.

We need to check the exodus of our local players. The football authorities too are not helping matters. The FA should even make it difficult for these players to travel abroad.

The exodus is affecting the quality of our league. Where are the players to watch on the domestic scene when you have all the Taiwos, the Mikels, the Nsofors, the Adeleyes, the Okoronkwos abroad? The emerging ones will not also wait to acquire experience before they start junketing abroad in search of greener pastures. That is why you see some Nigerian players ending up in hotels, restaurants, car parks after just two seasons in Europe.

Stakeholders’ Perspective:
Dr. Ken Onyeali Ike (Sports Analyst)
A product must be well-packaged to attract sponsors. At the moment, we don’t know what our football is worth. We don’t have the structure in place and the personnel that can give our football economic power. Brazil has over 700 players in Europe.

We have the NFA that has the tendency to share wealth and the NFL that has the capability to create wealth. That is a problem because both parties do not have the same ideology. In England, they don’t fight over the sponsorship grant.

The organisers of the English premier league and the FA there do not have an axe to grind but it is not so in Nigeria.

Maurice Cooreman (Football Coach)
The standard of Nigerian league is high, but the organisation is poor. We need at least two experts from England to come and help us organise the league, at least for one year. It will help even our administrators to improve.

The administration of the game here is not encouraging. We need to improve the standard of our pitches too. You need a good pitch to play good football.

Monday Sinclair (Coach)
How do you appreciate what you don’t see? People are following foreign football religiously because they have access to it through the cable television.

With a token, you can go to any viewing centre around and enjoy good football instead of coming to the stadium in the face of crowd violence. It is not that our local players are not playing good football.

Again, every team in the Nigerian league is under enormous pressure to perform. The jobs of both the coaches and players could be on the line after two or three poor outings. Even, the management committees of most of these government-owned clubs are under tremendous pressure because the hammer could descend on them anytime if the result is not forthcoming. Nigerian football is about result and not planning.

John Fashanu (Soccer Ambassador)

The major problem with Nigerian football is that we have people on the board without the knowledge of the game.

You don’t need politicians to be on the board of FA. We have so many ex-footballers in this country, these are people who can run the game.

Kadiri Ikhana (Coach)
There is nothing special about these foreign coaches. We have a lot of indigenous coaches who are better, as well as talented players.

The problem with Nigerian football has to do with organisation. If you remember in 2003 when I won the CAF Champions League with Enyimba, we defeated teams handled by these white coaches. The standard of our league is improving.

Ifeanyi Onyedika (Coach)
Where are the players to watch in the Nigerian league again? During our time, people came to the stadium to watch Segun Odegbami, Christian Chukwu, Emmanuel Okala, Adokiye Amiesimaka, the late Muda Lawal, Baba Otu Mohammed and a host of others.

I refused to play professional football abroad because I was comfortable with what I was earning. I got an offer from Portugal alongside Sylvanus Okpala and Okey Isima but I didn’t bother to go.

Now, you don’t even know the players who are going to feature for Rangers or Shooting Stars. Imagine, a local player who reigns in his first season, the next thing is for him to play in Europe. The quality of the game is depreciating even though some exceptional players are still being discovered year in year out.

Shuaibu Amodu (Coach)
We have to de-emphasise win-at-all-cost syndrome, it’s not helping our football. In fact, the way out is to suspend the league for one year. Let us go back to the drawing board and see how we can put things in order. We need to change the face of our league so that it can attract investors. The quality of play is okay.

ritchboy:
I think its out of their jurisdiction.

http://kenyangenocide..com/

Raila Odinga Defends The Eldoret Massacre


In an interview on the BBC's Hardtalk, Raila Odinga said, "the father … the catholic father who is in charge has given an explanation and the explanation is that these people who were attacking people from another community were being chased and when they were being chased they went to take refuge in a church and the pursuers then pursued them to the church … they did not know that in the church were children which were being kept there as refugees so in the process of cause they set the church on fire…"

Raila goes on to say that his is not a defense of the massacre but his statement is doing just that. His statement that, "they (the Kalenjin militia) did not know that in the church were children which were being kept there as refugees so in the process of cause they set the church on fire" shows how hard Raila is working to take blame from the militia and allocate it to the victims.

Raila Odinga did not offer us the name of the 'CATHOLIC FATHER' who gave him that story. The facts are that the massacre was executed in an Assemblies of God church and there was not catholic father in charge of the church. Raila's lies show how far he can go to fabricate a story to justify the massacre of innocent women, children and disabled citizens who were taking refuge in the church.

The murderers who spoke to the press said,

"The men and women had babies and small children, but they carried pangas to defend themselves. Is someone with a panga innocent? It is not our custom to kill women and children. We told them to come out of the church, but they locked the door and refused to come out. So we burned them."

A third youth spoke. "They were not worshipping in the church. They were hiding. That makes it a cave not a church. Let Kibaki send a plane for the Kikuyus. They can go ,  or they will be killed."

Several more men confirmed that youths from this village had helped carry out the attack.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/kenya/story/0,,2234305,00.html

Similar reports as above have been filed by several media houses. Contrary to what Raila said, the murderers knew that there were women and children in the church. I am sure they heard cries of little children as the fires raged.

"As she climbed through the window, the attackers were on the other side - they grabbed her baby and threw it back in. The child died in the inferno," said a BBC correspondent

http://kenyangenocide..com/2008/01/eldoret-massacre.html

The Eldoret Massacre



If you are Raila Odinga, the Eldoret Massacre is part of the expected results of a football match. If you are Ida Odinga, you will stand besides your husband as he uses violence as a bargaining chip. If you are Fidel Castro Odinga, you will cheer on your dad's fans seeking to burn Kenya to the ground. But if you are a Kenyan you will not see anything funny in this:



Raila Odinga: This kind of violence can be caused by anything. I give you and an example of a football match. You have also cases of Manchester United in UK fight against fans of Chelsea he he he ho ho or Asenal he he or so on.

Intervewer: But burning of churches and mass murder have more in common with the specter of Rwanda than they do a football matches.

http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/player.jsp?showId=10680

That is how cheap the life has become in Kenya. It is just a game so sit back, grab some popcorn and enjoy watching children tossed into the fire.


"The men and women had babies and small children, but they carried pangas to
defend themselves. Is someone with a panga innocent? It is not our custom to
kill women and children. We told them to come out of the church, but they
locked the door and refused to come out. So we burned them."

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/kenya/story/0,,2234305,00.html



Those are words of a brave Raila Odinga supporter. Cold and unmoved by what they did. That was the demeanor in Rwanda. Human life had been rendered worthless.

Leaders of the Orange Democratic Movement are yet to come out and condemn the Eldoret Massacre from the bottom of their hearts. The Vocal MP for Eldoret North William Ruto is missing from the national scene and has not dared to restrain his supporters. The victims of the Kenyan Genocide are instead being blamed for their situation.

The official line from ODM has been, "Nobody wants to spill blood, but democracy has no shortcut."

REUTERS http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0269316120080107

In short, we have been forced to spill the blood of innocent Kenyans because there is a dictator in power.

Democracy -as per my aunderstanding- is when citizens make a choice without having to pay with their lives. There have been several reports saying that the Kikuyu, Kisii, Kamba, Embu, Meru and Kamba have been targeted because they "never voted for" Raila Odinga. I wonder what kind of democracy they are talking about.

I wonder what democracy they are talking about when they are urging their supporters not to respect the right to own property in any part of the country.

I wonder what democracy they are taling about when freedom of movement is not a right but a privilage dished out only to those tribes that are seen to be in support of Raila Odinga.

wormedup:
what happened to the other 14years before 1980

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/08/560005.aspx

ANGRY KENYAN: ‘WE ARE DYING FOR NOTHING’


NAIROBI, Kenya – I was drinking lemon tea in the Bambara lounge of the Serena Hotel in Nairobi on Tuesday, as two conflicting images kept tripping over each other in my mind.
Earlier, on the way into the hotel, I had passed a long line of drivers standing by their black sedans – Mercedes, Chrysler, and SUVs of all kinds, all gleaming clean. Once inside the hotel, I was surrounded by their passengers – laughing, excited Kenyans in dark suits and ties and shiny shoes. I sat and listened and watched. They stood and hugged each other, laughed uproariously, and slapped and shook hands vigorously. I understood immediately: These are the politicians who won the elections that sparked a week of mayhem and murder.

That’s one image.

I witnessed a very different spectacle earlier in the day at the agricultural fairground, where tea with milk was all a group of refugees had to consume. An angry young man in a black shirt had pulled at my arm and jostled me, not in a hostile way, but in a bitter way, and shouted that his home was burned, his business looted, his neighbor killed, and he had nowhere to go. There were hundreds like him scattered around the benches inside the stadium sitting on the grass outside, staring blankly.

Handshakes and laughter
Back in the hotel lounge, one man seemed to be the center of attention. He laughed the loudest, the longest, and shook the most hands. A kindly looking gentleman of medium build and height, he was wearing gold spectacles and gold cufflinks with a starched white shirt. They all seemed to have starched white shirts. A telephone rang with a jolly jingle, and it was his. I was sitting at the next table, so I could hear him clearly. That was easy as the room instantly hushed with his first words: "Yes sir, "

"Yes sir, this is Professor , " He was silent for a moment, listening intently, just as he was watched intently by the others in the room. His face stiffened in concentration and then broke into a huge grin and he nodded abruptly to his friend.

"Yes sir, thank you, yes sir, of course Mzee, I am honored to be appointed your minister, Mzee. It is a great honor for my community and for me. There is a large number of people to call, yes sir, thank you sir, " and so on. (Mzee is a term of respect for an older man in East Africa). Then he added, "Can I see you tomorrow?" Pause. "Yes, I will phone you tomorrow. Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you," and he slowly folded the phone.

He stood there, silent, looking at his phone, and sat down slowly, satisfied, expanding almost in his suit. The room stayed hushed. Everyone looked at him. He didn’t look up. He leaned forward and whispered to his friend. "You heard? I asked to see him tomorrow." He said it proudly, as if it was an achievement.

Then he began to dial, talk, dial again, talk again, dial another number and so on and on. The room was silent; in respect, I think.

Winners and losers
I thought to myself, "I bet he isn't calling anyone in the fairground. There are winners and losers in everything, and these are the winners and the losers are sipping their tea for dinner."

I wandered off, dejected. It isn't fair. There has been so much violence this week in Kenya, so much looting and burning and raping and hacking people to death and police shooting at rioters, and for what?

One of the local newspaper columnists asked the same question a few days earlier. Roughly: Why are we simpletons fighting when the leaders wear their black suits and are driven in their limousines and their families are not even in the country, and we kill each other? For what? Because two rich men can't decide which one will run the country?

The angry man in the fairground told me: "The leaders, the elephants, they don't care, we must make peace, among ourselves. Back in Kibera [Nairobi's biggest slum], we are dying for nothing. It's all about rich men wanting more of everything. What do they care about us? Why should we fight for them?"


I stood up and walked to the raised floor of the lobby seating area. There were dark suits everywhere, all excited, slapping hands, laughing loudly.

One big man had his arm around the shoulders of a white-shirted waiter, who wore a fixed smile, and the big man pointed and shouted: "Meet the new member for, and here is the leader of, " And I heard another group erupt in laughter and hand-slapping and heard the word "Vice-president."

Clearly President Mwai Kibaki, the man who one newspaper kept referring to as "the man who calls himself president," was appointing his cabinet, although many had advised him against this, because it would be seen as a provocation to the opposition, which still disputes the election result.

I thought of a little girl, about three-years-old, with tears flowing down her face, that we had seen in the stadium of refugees, all slum-dwellers who had almost nothing to begin with, and now had nothing at all. She just looked at the camera and silently cried.

"It's been a rough week in Kenya," I thought. "But it looks as if things are getting back to normal."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Fletcher is an NBC News Correspondent and Tel Aviv Bureau Chief. He is on assignment in Kenya.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7188107,00.html

Tribalism Fuels Kenyan Election Violence


Political and ethnic loyalties have long intertwined in Kenya, and the violence that erupted after President Mwai Kibaki claimed re-election shows how volatile the mix can be.

As in previous ballots, candidates campaigned using a mix of direct and indirect ethnic appeals. Phrases like ``It is our time to eat'' were understood by voters who know that whoever controls the presidency has power to allocate money, jobs and other benefits to his own group.

Kibaki's Kikuyu people comprise the largest ethnic group in Kenya and are frequently accused by other tribes of monopolizing business and political power. Chief among the critics are members of another major tribe, the Luo. The president's rival, Raila Odinga, is a Luo.

Kenya has more than 40 tribes in all. It is easy to identify some by their looks or their dress, such as the stately, cattle-herding Masai, but most tribe members cannot be easily identified just on appearance.

What is common among all tribes is that most people are poor because of Kenya's high unemployment. In the past five years, Kibaki's administration introduced a fund that saw money allocated and disbursed directly to all of Kenya's 210 constituencies that saw some areas receive government funds for the first time since independence from Britain in 1963.

In an attempt to force candidates to reach beyond their own groups, lawmakers amended the constitution in 1992 requiring a winning presidential candidate to get both the most votes overall and at least 25 percent of votes in at least five of Kenya's eight provinces. Provinces tend to be dominated by different tribes, so the amendment was aimed at ensuring a president has at least some support across much of the country.

But in 1992, the new opposition parties campaigned primarily in their perceived tribal strongholds. That was easier for parties only a year old and, in any event, government officials stopped them campaigning elsewhere.

Tribal clashes fanned by politics in that campaign resulted in hundreds of deaths and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. To date many have been unable to return.

Similar violence preceded the 1997 election, though on a smaller scale, with dozens killed.

Campaign violence was even milder before this year's ballot, held Thursday. But that changed when officials declared Kibaki the winner Sunday. Opposition supporters accusing Kibaki of fraud have clashed with police, and direct tribal fighting also has flared across Kenya.

Both the president and his rival urged an end to ethnic violence that killed more than 100 people since Saturday, according to reports from police and witnesses. But there was no let up.

The head of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, said mobs in many provinces were attacking the homes of Kikuyu, forcing the families to seek refuge in police stations. Rioters even demanded to know the ethnicity of Red Cross workers offering first aid to the wounded, he said.

In Kibera, a huge slum in Nairobi, panicked residents called journalists to report ethnic gangs roaming the narrow, sewage-filled alleys seeking out rival tribe members to avenge their own tribe's deaths in overnight violence.

``Why are we burning these shops?'' 26-year-old Abdi Ochieng said as he watched his Luo neighbors cart away sheets of corrugated iron looted from smoldering Kikuyu businesses. ``Kibaki does not own them. Neither does Odinga.''

http://www.ceddert.com/Rigging_nigerian_history.htm


The Rigging of Nigerian History

Dr Alkasum Abba, Department of History,

Ahmadu Bello University,

Zaria, Nigeria.

I have read, with keen interest, the two cover stories of TELL magazine published earlier this month. These focused on Nigerian political history in the 1950s and the 1960s, as seen from the view point of Mr. Harold Smith, a former British colonial Labour Officer posted to Lagos in 1955-1960.



The Packaging of Harold Smith

The first story has a screaming and sensational headline: “How Britain Rigged Elections, Census for the North - Former Colonial Officer.” This was published on the March 7th 2005 edition of the magazine. It covered a total of 13 pages with a one-page introduction by the editor of TELL, Ayodele Akinkuotu, captioned: “The Evils The British Did”.

In this introduction, an attempt has been made by Mr. Akinkuotu to paint a saintly picture of Harold Smith, in order to give credence to what he wrote and said. The rest of the 12 pages of the cover story were made up of carefully selected excerpts of the unpublished autobiography of Mr. Harold Smith, titled, Blue Collar Lawman.

These excerpts are clearly aimed at denigrating the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons, NCNC, its President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and its Federal Minister for Labour and Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. The excerpts also painted a similar picture of the Northern Region and its ruling party, the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC. But in a sharp contrast to the above two cases, the excerpts paid glowing tribute to the Action Group, AG, and its leaders Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Anthony Enahoro, presenting them as virtual saints; and claiming that they were victims of political machinations of the British, the NCNC and the NPC.

After a fortnight, on 21st March 2005, TELL came out with another sensational headline on Harold Smith. This time, Harold Smith was brought live with an interview through the Internet. This interview was published as the cover story with a title: “Exclusive Interview: The British Expected Nigeria to Break Up - Harold Smith, Former Colonial Officer”. This covered 10 pages of the magazine.

It was also divided into two parts. The first part was made up of 3 pages of introduction to the interview. This was titled: “A Bureaucrat as an Idealist,” written by Dele Omotunde, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TELL magazine. In this write up, Harold Smith was again eulogised:

“As a patriot, Smith is also fighting for the reinstatement of British honour which he says had been cruelly defiled by the sordid, evil machinations of men at the helm of affairs in the old colony who handed over a counterfeit democracy on the eve of independence in 1960.” (P.26)

The second part of the cover story is made up of an interview with Harold Smith, covering pages 29-35 of the magazine. The questions raised followed the pattern of the selected excerpts from the unpublished autobiography of Harold Smith.

The Credibility of Harold Smith

The two editions of the TELL magazine on Harold Smith’s version of recent Nigerian political history, made me to go to his website and read the story, in its complete form, as he wrote it. I had to do this, because decolonisation is the subject of research I have been actively involved in for nearly twenty years. Indeed, I had spent one year in the UK, 1989-1990, recovering written and oral primary source material on this subject.

In the course of this research, besides the field, library and archival work I have done in Nigeria, I had interviewed, in the UK, a number of former colonial officials and had combed libraries there and worked in the Public Records Office, London. The evidence in the primary sources which I have recovered, assessed and studied, up to now, contradict this picture of this period of Nigerian political history painted by Harold Smith and eulogised by TELL magazine. After reading the story of Mr. Harold Smith from his website I identified three important elements which call into question his whole credibility as a source for Nigerian political history in this period.

Firstly, Mr. Harold Smith’s claim that he refused to obey the orders of the Governor-General of Nigeria, Sir James Robertson, to take part in the rigging of the 1956 election into the Western Regional House of Assembly, in Warri, the political base of Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, in favour of the NCNC, is not substantiated by any evidence and by the subsequent course of his career in the colonial service in Nigeria. But, although he claims that he refused to obey what he calls, an “illegal order,” to rig elections, he was not queried nor officially sanctioned by anyone.

According to his own account, in his autobiography, it was only, four years later, in 1960 that he claimed that, the Governor – General, Sir James Robertson, invited him to the Government House, Marina, Lagos, to warn him to shut up over this “illegal order” and threaten him. What explained the gap of four years between his refusal to obey the instructions of the Governor-General of Nigeria in 1956 and the warning and threat from the Governor – General in 1960?

Was it because it was only in 1960 that he decides to expose the Governor General’s “illegal order” of 1956, and the Governor –General learnt of this and moved in to warn and threaten him? If that is the case, where is the documentary evidence that he was going to use to expose the Governor – General? Or, was he only going to rely on hearsay, by word – of – mouth, to expose such a high – ranking official of the British colonial establishment, as Sir James Robertson? If he has any documentary evidence for this whole episode over the elections, and anything else on Nigerian politics and elections, why has he not put them in his autobiography, giving their sources and posted them on his website?

How come, that, after his refusal to obey the orders of the Governor – General in 1956, he finished his first two-year contract in 1957, and went to the UK on six months leave and the Colonial Office renewed his contract with the Ministry of Labour in Lagos, for another two years, without any problem? This second contract also run its natural course and ended in 1960, when he departed for UK, like any other colonial official.

Even if it is true that he was summoned by the Governor – General in 1960 and warned and threatened over these 1956 elections in Warri, this did not seem to have made any differences to his employment in the British colonial government in Nigeria. How credible, therefore, are all his stories and claims?

Secondly, Mr. Smith was not a political officer, he was just a Labour Officer at the Ministry of Labour headquarters, in Lagos and, was, therefore, not in a position to know, the real wheeling and dealing among Nigerian politicians and between them and the British colonial government, in the critical period of transition to independence, 1950-1960.

Mr. Harold Smith was on the margins of the Nigerian political environment. The Colonial Office recruited him into the Labour Department in 1954, and he arrived Lagos in 1955. Even in Lagos, he was pre-occupied with the problems of his Labour Department, where he was busy working on the Factories Act and the Provident Fund. These were clearly where his duties were located in the colonial service.

Therefore, the claim by Ayodele Akinkuotu that Harold Smith was “neck-deep in laying the foundation for the British retreat from Nigeria” is false, and is without any foundation. He was not, in any way even near those, “neck-deep” involved in laying the foundation for the British retreat from Nigeria.

Indeed, the claim of Mr. Smith that, “when I suggest that the British Government meddled with the democratic elections in Nigeria, I write as an authority” is patently false. He was only a minor official in a specialised department of the British colonial government in Nigeria, where he served for about five years, 1955-1960, entirely in Lagos. Even in Lagos, he did not mix with Nigerians and therefore remained on the sidelines.

In addition, he had no experience in colonial service and colonial political intrigues because his Nigerian service was the only record of experience he had in the massive, worldwide, British colonial machinery and it was the only formal employment he himself maintained in his entire 78-year life.

Thirdly, he was not close to a single Nigerian politician, or to a British colonial political officer as is clearly evident from his autobiography. In fact, the closest he got to a Nigerian politician, was that he was a staff of the Ministry of Labour when Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh of the NCNC became its Minister, shortly after his arrival in Nigeria.

His Hatred for Okotie – Eboh and Nwokedi

Part of the problem of Harold Smith as a source, is that he hated Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh with an irrational intensity, for reasons, which are not clear, except the accusation of corruption against the Chief. Even in this case, he did not substantiate it beyond the claim that the Chief sold one of the buildings of the Ministry of Labour in Apapa. He did not give any details to substantiate this accusation. He just accused Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh of being a stooge of the British colonial government without evidence.

In fact, I am tempted to argue that Harold Smith did not like Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh because as the Minister he represented the fact of Nigerian independence. For Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh becoming a Minister meant that Harold Smith, who had failed to secure a good employment, in UK before, and after, going to the University of Oxford, and had to seek for employment as a Labour Officer in colonial Nigeria, would have to retrace his steps back.

This becomes logical when we put into account that Harold Smith also hated Mr. Francis Nwokedi, the most senior Nigerian civil servant in the Labour Department. He was a supporter of the NCNC and rose to become Harold Smith’s Permanent Secretary. In fact, he did not mention in his autobiography, the name of a single Nigerian in the Labour Department, or any other Department that he was close to, or interacted with.

He merely called these Nigerians clerks, typists and African staff, without mentioning their names. Maybe, he did not think that it is important to know their names and mention these in his autobiography, in the way that he did to each and every European staff that he worked with, or even came across. The truth is that the closest Nigerians to Harold Smith were his household servants, whose names he knew and mentioned them in his autobiography.

Harold Smith’s hatred for Nigerian independence, and for those who personalised this independence to him, like Okotie – Eboh and Nwokedi, because he had to work under them, is clearly stated in the first paragraph of chapter one of his autobiography, where he states, categorically, that:

“The British retreated from West Africa almost in a state of panic. A few African nationalists were making noisy demands for freedom from the Colonial yoke, but the riots and rebellions hardly existed and no blood was shed in Nigeria expelling the forces of Imperialism [!!]. The British withdrawal took place in haste, because world opinion was beginning to demand that the Colonial powers spend money on their African possessions. If this suggests that Britain exploited its Colonies it simply is not true [!!]…

The vast mass of the African people was indifferent or actually would have preferred the British to stay” [!!]. (p.1)

Harold Smith makes a blanket condemnation of the performance of the leaders of the former British West African territories, which became independent in the 1960s. He clearly denounced African independence. He was even calling for the return of British colonial rule when he said:

“Whatever the shortcomings of British Colonial Administration in Africa, some of the more or less well ordered systems which were handed over to the native populations in the 1960's degenerated fairly quickly into corrupt, one-party states. Many of the native peoples must have looked back with regret to Independence and wished once more for British rule.” (p. 4, my emphasis)

The Claims of Harold Smith

This brings me to the substance of Mr. Harold Smith’s autobiography, which obviously, the TELL magazine wanted to disseminate. They revolve basically around four issues.

Firstly, Mr. Harold Smith claims that the British colonial government rigged the 1956 regional elections in the Western Region in favour of the NCNC. Secondly, he claims that the NPC and the NCNC were favoured to form the independence government by the British against the Action Group. Thirdly, he claims that the British government rigged census figures to favour the Northern Region. Fourthly, he claims that the violent overthrow of the First Republic was brought about because of the persecution of Chief Awolowo due to the effective role he played as the Leader of Opposition. I will take these one –by - one, to show that Harold Smith has no credibility as a source for this period of Nigerian political history. Mr. Harold Smith, far from exposing British rigging of Nigerian elections is just trying to rig Nigerian history for his own purposes.

The 1956 Western Regional Elections

According to Harold Smith, he was instructed by Sir James Robertson, the Governor General of Nigeria, to make available vehicles and staff of the Ministry of Labour to NCNC candidates contesting election into the Western Region House of Assembly at Warri, the hometown of the Minister of Labour, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. He said he refused to carry out the order. This is how he reported it in his autobiography.

“I was one of the British officers serving on the headquarters staff in Lagos, chosen by the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, to mastermind the covert action to rig Nigeria's elections. This secret operation hatched in Whitehall was of course a gross betrayal of trust by Prime Ministers Sir Anthony Eden and Mr Harold Macmillan. The orders which arrived on my desk from the Governor General before the elections for the Western Regional Government in 1956 were quite illegal and in direct contravention of Nigerian and British law.” (p. 5)

Mr. Smith, however, did not give any details of the alleged rigging of the election in favour of the NCNC, either in Warri or any other constituency in the Western Region. Mr. Harold Smith did not follow the events by collecting all the relevant materials to prove the rigging of the 1956 elections. For he should know that it is not enough to throw accusations of election rigging against the British, and the NCNC, without bringing out the facts and the figures of how this rigging took place.

How did the staff and vehicles of the Lagos Office of the Ministry of Labour help to rig the election in Warri and elsewhere in the Western Region? Unless Harold Smith can bring out the evidence of this, he would appear just to be engaged in trying to rig the history of these elections for his own purposes.


The NCNC, the AG and the British

I have raised these issues and questions because the NCNC was the leading political party produced by Nigerian nationalists in the course of the struggle for independence. This is in the sense that the process of its formation in 1944, its objectives and activities involved, for the first time, the massive mobilisation of the colonised people of Nigeria from cities, towns and villages, to struggle for their emancipation from colonial yoke imposed on them by the likes of Harold Smith. The successes recorded by the NCNC in the mobilisation of the ordinary people of Nigeria to struggle for independence, earned the party and its leadership, particularly Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the dislike and hostility of the colonial administration and some of its leading officials.

I would like to cite few examples of the formidable achievements of the NCNC, which earned the party the dislike and hostility of the British Colonial Government in Nigeria and the Colonial Office. One of the first important acts of the NCNC after its formation in August 1944 was to join hands with the trade unions under the leadership of Michael Imoudu to organize the first Nigeria-wide strike by workers in 1945. It was so successful and effective that even night soil men joined it and British officials were forced to do menials jobs. This strike lasted for 44 days and its impact was politically and economically devastating to the British.

Soon after this strike ended, the NCNC increased the pressure by organising a national mobilisation campaign in 1946 to get the oppressed people of Nigeria to reject the attempt to divide them along ethnic and regional lines through the Richards’ Constitution. This constitution created three regions and made them new centres of political power. The objective of this reginalisation of Nigerian politics was to block the political ascendancy of the NCNC, which was mobilising Nigerians across the ethnic, religious and regional divides. The 1946 campaign was so successful that the NCNC became a household name in Nigeria.

The NCNC rejected regionalism and fought against it and the successes the party recorded at the initial stages frightened the British the more. Thus, when the first elections were held into the regional parliaments in 1951, the NCNC contested in all the three regions, unlike its regionalist’s rivals, the AG and the NPC. What even astonished the British was the fact that in the election, the AG, which was created as a Yoruba party lost to the NCNC in the Western Region. The Action Group won, only 29 seats, while the NCNC won 35 seats! Regionalism was in danger. There were, however, 16 seats won by small parties and independent candidates available for negotiation.

Through behind the door negotiations, which involved some British officials, these 16 seats went to the AG. This was how the Action Group and the British succeeded in turning the electoral victory of the NCNC into a victory for the AG. Far from the NCNC working for the British, it was indeed the Action Group, which was very close to them, in this and many other instances.

But the NCNC did not relent in its refusal to reject regionalist and tribalist politics. Thus, in the next election it came out in full force to inflict a decisive defeat on the AG in the first federal election into the House of Representatives held in 1954. The NCNC won 23 seats, in the Western Region, against 18 by the Action Group. This defeat of the Action Group by the NCNC in the Western Region frightened both the British and the leaders of AG.

As a result of this significant NCNC nationalist victory, the Colonial Office, the Nigerian Government, the Action Group and the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, made desperate attempts to cripple the NCNC, as a nationalist party in order to entrench tribalist and regionalist politics. This conspiracy to weaken the NCNC involved a proposal to merge the Action Group, the NPC and other smaller political parties together, in order to prevent the NCNC from leading the Federal Government. The evidence for this conspiracy, which had the AG and the NPC, working closely with the British, against the nationalist forces in the NCNC, comes from a top-secret report no. G.221/97, now available in the Public Records Office, in London. The Chief Secretary to the Nigerian Colonial Government in Lagos, Mr. Ralph Grey, sent this report to Mr. T. B. Williamson of the Colonial Office on 31st December 1954. The Chief Secretary reported that:

“Abubakar [Tafawa Balewa] dropped in again this morning to report further on the “situation.” He showed me a paper, which recorded the results of his talks with Mr. Akintola and Mr. Rosoji on 16th December. (These followed an earlier meeting on 15th December at which the Sardauna and someone else from the Action Group, possibly Mr. Awolowo, were present).

2. I glanced through the paper very quickly and wished that I had a better photographic memory. The main thing was to form a United Front Party- consisting of the NPC, AG, UNIP and KNC – under NPC leadership. All members of those parties elected to the House of Representatives would sign a declaration of adherence to the new party…

4. An undertaking was taken by the Action Group that they would cease to press for the Regions to be broken up into States or for an alteration in the North/West boundary, ” (PRO, CO554/1178)

As far as the colonial records are concerned, the attitude of the British Government towards the NCNC and its leader Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe did not change in any significant way as to turn the party and its leadership into stooges over an election in the Western Region, where the party was a formidable force in its own right. The British records are available on this subject and Harold Smith should bring his own evidence, which contradicts these colonial records, unless he just wants to rig Nigerian history.

The 1959 NPC-NCNC Alliance

It is obvious that the dislike of “the North” by Harold Smith is an extension of his dislike of the NCNC. This is particularly because the NCNC formed an alliance with the NPC against the Action Group, which he liked and supported. His support for Awolowo and the Action Group was based on the fact that the Action Group based its party on those of the Conservative Party of the UK. In other words, Harold Smith was quick to recognize that the AG was at that time, a conservative party.

This was not a coincidence because Harold Smith comes from a family, which was poor and Irish, but wanted to become English and had supported the Conservative Party in the UK. In fact, even as a poor youth, Harold Smith was active in the trade unions, fighting communists after the end of the Second World War. He went to the University of Oxford on scholarship. This was why he became an ideal material as a colonial Labour Officer in Nigeria, where the trade unions were active and had been part of the struggle for independence on the side of the radical NCNC.

Harold Smith made every effort to denigrate the election results from the North because of his dislike of the NCNC, whose alliance with the NPC resulted in the formation of the first independent government of Nigeria. He described this alliance as “sordid”! But what Harold Smith did was to display his ignorance of Nigerian politics of the 1950s. The NPC – NCNC alliance, to form the Federal Government of Nigeria in 1959, was a necessary outcome of the actual realities of these politics.

In an address delivered at the meeting of the National Executive Committee of the NCNC held in Lagos on 22nd December 1959, the President of the party, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe explained the reasons for the NPC-NCNC alliance. Among these reasons was the possible break up of the NCNC because of the objection of its members from the Western Region to any alliance with the AG. There was also the issue of the hostility of the AG towards the NCNC in the past eight years, which was expressed in terms of the Awolowo Government of the Western Region seizing the house of Dr. Azikiwe in Lagos and refusing to pay compensation. The AG was also accused by the NCNC of funding its dissidents like Mr. Eyo Ita; attacking its leaders and supporting the break up of the Eastern Region at the Minorities Commission. But, above all, the NCNC were concerned about the threat to national unity at the point of independence.

For given the division of Nigerian politics as North verses South, it was wrong for the NCNC as a party with a national outlook to forge an alliance with the AG, which would amount to an isolation of the North. These were some of the reasons that made Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to reject the offer of becoming the first Prime Minister of an independent Nigeria under the NCNC-AG alliance. He was concerned about the unity of Nigeria and was less concerned about holding the office of the Prime Minister. The NCNC and its NEPU ally were determined to prevent what they called the “Pakistanisation” of Northern Nigeria, by the British and went out of their way to pre-empt that by becoming close to the NPC.


Nigerian Censuses and Northern Nigeria

The attack of Harold Smith on the NPC-NCNC alliance also involved the attempt to discredit the Nigerian census figures especially as they related to the North. Smith writes:

“The massive power of the North rested on the census figures produced by the British officials in early 1950s. All attempts to confirm those census figures since have proved a failure and this has become the most bitterly contested issue in Nigerian politics.” (TELL, March 7,2005, p. 41)



The last census conducted by the colonial government was in 1952, when Harold Smith was a student in the UK. So, how could he claim to know what happen in the course of the conduct of the census when he was not in Nigeria? Did he attempt to check the figures? Harold Smith should know that an autobiography involves writing about events and activities that one is involved in. He was not involved in the 1952 census and therefore had to cite his sources for the allegation that it was rigged in favour of the North.

Leading scholars on the Nigerian economic statistics, like Professor Gerald Helleiner, noted the shortcomings of Nigerian census figures, but thought that the range of error was in the region of 25%, and that the accuracy of the censuses from 1921-1952 was improving. In the three colonial Nigerian censuses of 1921, 1931 and 1952, the Northern Provinces and the Northern Region had the majority of Nigeria’s population. If Harold Smith wants to question that he should do so with reasons and evidence and not just attempt to rig the history of Nigerian censuses, by throwing around accusations, which lack any foundations.

The Violent Overthrow of the First Republic

The last aspect of the rigging of Nigerian history by Harold Smith, which I would like to draw attention to, is his claim that the violent overthrow of the First Republic was brought about because of the persecution of Chief Awolowo due to the effective role he played as the Leader of Opposition. As a student of Nigerian political history, I have kept on asking, what actually went wrong with both Chief Awolowo and the Action Group?

I had to pose this question because as of the time of independence, the AG emerged clearly as the fastest growing political party in Nigeria. I have said so, because the party went a long way to transform itself from the political wing of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (The Society of the Descendents of Oduduwa), which was Western Region and Yoruba centred to a national party after, the severe defeat it received in the hands of the NCNC in the 1954 Federal Elections in its home base, the Western Region. This transformation of the Action Group becomes very clear from the electoral status achieved by the party on 1st October 1960, when Nigeria gained independence from Britain.

On that day, the AG was the official opposition party in the House of Representative. It had 73 out of the 312 members of the House of Representatives with elected members cutting across the three regions. The party had in fact, established itself as the most national political party after the 1959 federal elections by winning 33 out of 62 seats in the Western Region; 14 out of 73 in the Eastern Region; 26 out of 174 in the Northern Region; and 1 out of 3 in Lagos. The spread of its seats made the AG, the second most important political party in the East, the North and Lagos while it defeated the NCNC in the Western Region in the 1959 Federal Elections. In the case of the regional parliaments, the AG was the ruling party in the Western Region and provided the Leaders of the Opposition in both the Eastern and the Northern Regional Houses of Assembly.

Yet, this party and its leaders played politics in ways that led to tragedy to itself, its leaders and to the Nigerian nation. Despite this, we have people like Harold Smith exonerating Chief Awolowo from blame and responsibility for this tragedy. This is of course consistent with the worshipful attitude he now claims to have towards Chief Awolowo and Chief Enahoro.

In his TELL interview Harold Smith said, “My idea of heaven would be Awo and Tony giving their ideas and advice.” It is not clear what he would like them to advice him over, in this heaven, where he has Awolowo on one side, and Enahoro on the other!!

According to Harold Smith what happened to Chief Awolowo was because he was such a great politician and an effective Opposition Leader, as to constitute a great threat to the NPC-NCNC alliance government. What explanation could Harold Smith give for the failure of Chief Awolowo to keep his party together? This is an essential question because it was the break up of the AG that sparked off the Western Regional crisis, which became a major factor facilitating the violent military overthrow of the First Republic. To argue, as others have attempted to do that it was the disloyalty of Chief Akintola is definitely not a sufficient answer. To even argue that it was the NPC, or the NCNC, or both of them combined to instigate Chief Akintola is in itself an indictment of the leadership of Chief Awolowo, who had been an active politician since 1938, on the platform of the Nigerian Youth Movement. Chief Awolowo knew the Nigerian political terrain very well, and the personalities, inside out, yet he played a key role in the break-up of the AG.

As if this was not enough, Chief Awolowo got himself dragged into an attempt to change the Federal Government by violent means, at a time when he was leading the fastest growing political party in the country, with a decisive national spread, and considerable support in all the three regions.

As one of the leaders of the AG who was also a leading actor, deeply involved in the conspiracy with Chief Awolowo and Chief Enahoro, late Mazi S. G. Ikoku, stated in a conference held in Kaduna in 1993, that they were planning the overthrow of the government by force. This confession of S. G. Ikoku has been published in a book titled, Inside Nigerian History, edited by Drs. Bala Usman and George Kwannashie and was published by the Presidential Panel on the History of Nigeria Since Independence, Ibadan, under the chairmanship of Professor Tekena Tamuno. This is how on Monday 7th June 1993, S. G. Ikoku responded to a question on the civilian coup attempt led by Chief Awolowo in 1962 in which he too was actively involved:



“All I can tell you in all honesty is that we were fed up with the way the Nigerian system, the Nigerian state and the Nigerian government were operating, we were deeply committed to a change of government and we saw that waiting for elections would not produce any solution to the problem…

This is what we did. We started preparations for it and the preparations had gone very far and I believe we would have pulled it off. But unfortunately for us, our leader [Chief Awolowo] was so kind to the Nigeria Police that he had a police informant among his planners and so the police knew every move we were making. And so it was easy to trip us up. Well, after the act, people have been saying, there was no coup because we went to court, there was no plan to overthrow the government. Naturally, if you catch me over a coup plot and take me to court, I have to enter a plea of not guilty, I did not do it. This is normal. But then the whole thing has blown over. We served our term. We have been granted pardon, we have been rehabilitated, our leader even became the number two citizen in the country. I felt it was time to tell the country the truth, so that our history would be correct. So, all I am saying is that, yes, there was an attempt to overthrow the government. Yes, I took part in the attempt. Yes, it failed. ” (Inside Nigerian History, pp. 43-44)



No one, including Chief Anthony Enahoro, has come out to deny this confession by S. G. Ikoku, yet people like Harold Smith still go round claiming the innocence of Chief Awolowo in the political tragedy of Nigeria from 1960-1970.

The Motives of Harold Smith

It is not quite clear to me as to why Harold Smith has been making attempts to rig the history of Nigeria, decades after he left the Nigerian colonial service. I could not even understand why he made an attempt to write an autobiography, since people write their autobiography to specifically bring out the contributions they made from their own point of view and the lessons to be learnt. But going through what Harold Smith wrote as his autobiography, it is clear that he has nothing to tell people about his life. I have said this because Harold Smith only worked in any serious sense for about five years in Nigeria, 1955-1960. This was his only regular employment in his whole life.

Since he left Nigeria 45 years ago, at the age 33, he was staying at home and living off his kind wife, and possibly his two daughters. It appears as if he needed to create a sensation about Nigerian politics and elections to justify his staying idle for 45 years. This must be why he has been alleging that the British Government vowed to block him from getting employment in the UK. But if he really created such a sensation in 1956, why was he kept in the colonial service up to 1960? Why was his two-year contract renewed in 1957 and he came back to Lagos to continue with his job as Labour Officer? There are a lot of unanswered questions about Mr. Smith and his stories about Nigeria, about political harassment by the British Government and even his sickness. Mr. Smith should know that a lot of colonial primary historical materials are now available, which shed light on some British activities in Nigeria. He should stop rumbling and fumbling around, he should come out straight and clean with the truth, if he has anything truthful to tell us about British rule in Nigeria. Otherwise his motives on Nigerian political history are questionable.

Conclusion

The TELL magazine has found Harold Smith’s stories interesting at this time of Nigerian history when the National Conference on Political Reform is going on, to attack “the North”. This must be why excerpts of Harold Smith’s autobiography were published with two sensational headlines: one attacking the North, while the other threatens the corporate existence of Nigeria.

But, surely, the TELL magazine should do a better job of this, by using a more credible source. Clearly, Harold Smith has very little credibility over what he has attempted to recount as regards Nigerian political history. He has only tried to rig Nigerian history by throwing around unsubstantiated accusations about the rigging of Nigerian elections in the 1950s. But these types of accusations cannot fool Nigerians. They need evidence. Harold Smith has not provided this evidence. He has simply attempted to rig Nigerian history.

naijaking1:
Can you imagine George Bush or Tony Blair going into some alliance with someone they "prefer" to take over after office?

http://www.thenewsng.com/modules/zmagazine/article.php?articleid=21154

The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) has opened, arguably, the world’s biggest auditorium. The facility can accommodate more than a million worshippers at a time. The auditorium, which was opened by the General Overseer of the church, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, was built at a cost of $60 million (about N7.7 billion).
,

The large auditorium, which is yet to be completed, is built with steel and cement fibres.
,

The new auditorium is being built by a Chinese firm.

Orikinla:
Kenya needs Barack Obama more than America.

Obama should honour the will of his late father by returning to his fatherland and become the President of Kenya.

I do not even know why Africans would do anything to deny serving their fatherland to play to the gallery of America.

Yes, Oprah Winfrey is bona fide Afrcan American since Kunta Kinte, but this Barack Obama guy is only an African American by default.
His father was Kenyan, born and bred and died in Kenya and by our African tradition, the first son must live and carry the heirloom of the Kenyan Father in Kenya and not claiming another fatherland, because he looks down on his own fatherland in Africa.
Obama should come back home.
All African immigrants should be sent back to Africa to join proud Africans like Orikinla to develop Africa.

Barack Husseiin Obama, come back home to Kenya.
We need you more than America.
Come back and become the chief of your father's village and marry more wives.

The only African Americans I recognize are the descendants of Alex Haley's Kunta Kinte.
Any African American whose greatgrand-parents did not pick cotton or work in the sugar cane plantations, should never be called an African American.

The Green Card is becoming FFA (free for all) these days that even Osama bin Laden can become an American tomorrow?

Blatant:
Nigerians in totality are responsible for it.

if you disagree, i'll prove it

buluti:
Mr Babasin, where are you from. ICJ law is not binding on Nigeria. Mr inconsistency aka rule of law. You want to follow rules when it comes to protecting accused politicians, but when the law in this case ICJ ruling is seemingly against your position it should be disregarded.

Absolute nonsense whether OBJ ratified it or not the ruling was binding, the way people cried when OBJ didnt obey court rulings, the one he decided to obey is now the problem. What manner of people. Questions that should be asked and that way the same mistakes keep happening. Lets take a trip who handled Nigeria's case in the ICJ, what was the level of competence, was there a persuassion towards the yearnings of the people or were we trying to prove a border boundary defence we were sure going to loose. Rather its obeying the outcome that is being questioned? What a manner of people.

In your dreams war indeed, have you ever experienced war, or being to a war ravished nations. I am tired of Sit tight Nigerians shouting take a trip to Somalia. The senate is just playing politics, they will ratify it soon enough.

denex:
You say the elections were rigged. So since the candidate who rigged is being called on for disqualification, then who will now be the true winner of the elections? Atiku, Buhari or Okotie?

At least in Anambra, when Ngige rigged and was later disqualified, Peter Obi was declared as the true winner. In different states recently, we have seen the same thing.

So according to you claiming that Yar'Adua and the PDP rigged, please tell us the rightful winner of the April 2007 Presidential Poll.

Or are you actually trying to suggest that all the contestants rigged?