₦airaland Forum

Celexralno:
Pls any DStv channel showing the match

Ofemmanu1:
How much them sell Nigeria?

On the afternoon of Saturday, November 15, 1884, an international conference was opened by the chancellor of the newly-created German Empire at his official residence on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin. Sat around a horseshoe-shaped table in a room overlooking the garden with representatives from every European country, apart from Switzerland, as well as those from the United States and the Ottoman Empire. The only clue as to the purpose of the November gathering of white men was hung on the wall - a large map of Africa "drooping down like a question mark" as Nigerian historian, Professor Godfrey Uzoigwe, would comment.

Including a short break for Christmas and the New Year, the West African Conference of Berlin would last 104 days, ending on February 26, 1885. In the 135 years since, the conference has come to represent the late 19th-century European Scramble and Partition of the continent. In the popular imagination, the delegates are hunched over a map, armed with rulers and pencils, sketching out national borders on the continent with no idea of what existed on the ground they were parcelling out. Yet this is mistaken. The Berlin Conference did not begin the scramble. That was well under way. Neither did it partition the continent. Only one state, the short-lived horror that was the Congo Free State, came out of it - though strictly speaking it was not actually a creation of the conference.

It did something much worse, though, with consequences that would reverberate across the years and be felt until today. It established the rules for the conquest and partition of Africa, in the process legitimising the ideas of Africa as a playground for outsiders, its mineral wealth as a resource for the outside world not for Africans and its fate as a matter not to be left to Africans.

From the very start, the conference laid out the order of priorities. "The Powers are in the presence of three interests: That of the commercial and industrial nations, which a common necessity compels to the research of new outlets. That of the States and of the Powers summoned to exercise over the regions of the Congo an authority which will have burdens corresponding to their rights. And, lastly, that which some generous voices have already commended to your solicitude - the interests of the native populations." It also resolutely refused to consider the question of sovereignty, and the legitimacy of laying claim to someone else's land and resources.

Uzoigwe notes that: "Bismarck … stated in his opening remarks that delegates had not been assembled to discuss matters of sovereignty either of African states or of the European powers in Africa." It was no accident that there were no Africans at the table - their opinions were not considered necessary. The efforts of the Sultan of Zanzibar to get himself invited to the party were summarily laughed off by the British.

American journalist Daniel De Leon described the conference as "an event unique in the history of political science ... Diplomatic in form, it was economic in fact." And it is true that while it was dressed up as a humanitarian summit to look at the welfare of locals, its agenda was almost purely economic. Few on the continent or in the African diaspora were fooled. A week before it closed, the Lagos Observer declared that "the world had, perhaps, never witnessed a robbery on so large a scale." Six years later, another editor of a Lagos newspaper comparing the legacy conference to the slave trade said: "A forcible possession of our land has taken the place of a forcible possession of our person." Theodore Holly, the first black Protestant Episcopal Bishop in the US, condemned the delegates as having "come together to enact into law, national rapine, robbery and murder".

The outcome of the conference was the General Act signed and ratified by all but one of the 14 nations at the table, the US being the sole exception. Some of its main features were the establishment of a regime of free trade stretching across the middle of Africa, the development of which became the rationale for the recognition of the Congo Free State and its subsequent 13-year horror, the abolition of the overland slave trade as well as the principle of "effective occupation".

Though the attempt to create a free trade area in Africa and therefore keep the continent from becoming both a spark for, and a theatre of conflict between the European powers, was ultimately doomed. The principle of "effective occupation" was to become the catalyst for military conquest of the African continent with far-reaching consequences for its inhabitants.

At the time of the conference, 80 percent of Africa remained under traditional and local control. The Europeans only had influence on the coast. Following it, they started grabbing chunks of land inland, ultimately creating a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that was superimposed over indigenous cultures and regions of Africa. However, to get their claims over African land accepted, European states had to demonstrate that they could actually administer the area.

Often, military victory proved to be the easy part. To govern, they found they had to contend with a confusing milieu of fluid identities and cultures and languages. The Europeans thus set about reorganising Africans into units they could understand and control. As Professor Terence Ranger noted, the colonial period was marked "by systematic inventions of African traditions - ethnicity, customary law, 'traditional' religion. Before colonialism Africa was characterised by pluralism, flexibility, multiple identity; after it, African identities of 'tribe', gender and generation were all bounded by the rigidities of invented tradition."

That first-ever international conference on Africa established a template for how the world deals with the continent. Today, Africa is still seen primarily as a source for raw materials for the outside world and an arena for them to compete over. Conferences about the continent are rarely held on the continent itself and rarely care about the views of ordinary Africans.

The sight of African heads of state assembling in foreign capitals to beg for favours is a re-enactment of the Sultan of Zanzibar's pleading to attend a conference where he would be the main course.

Despite achieving independence for the most part in the 1950s and 1960s, many African countries have continued along the destructive path laid out in Berlin. Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere declared: "We have artificial 'nations' carved out at the Berlin Conference in 1884, and today we are struggling to build these nations into stable units of human society... we are in danger of becoming the most Balkanised continent of the world." Ethnicity and tribalism continue to be the bane of African politics. "The Berlin Conference was Africa's undoing in more ways than one," wrote Jan Nijman, Peter Muller and Harm de Blij in their book, Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts. "The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent. By the time independence returned to Africa… the realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily."

Now, 135 years after Berlin, it is perhaps time for introspection. While it is impossible to turn back the clock, Africans would do well to reflect on what has happened since. Teaching the real history of the subjugation of the continent would help counter the myths of "ancient hatreds" that are said to fuel the conflicts on the continent. And Africans could decide to get together on the continent to debate and decide on the relationship they want with the rest of the world rather than always having that dictated to them from abroad.

charliboy654:
Oga lead us na, or are you not a youth?

Jarus:
Southeast in this sense means "South East of Niger Delta", not the geopolitical South East.

The company's assets are in Akwa Ibom state which is still South South (geopolitically) but South East of Niger Delta.

That said, there are oil assets in the geopolitical South East too (eg Anambra Basin).

MoIbrahim:
Then you are still young. Especially with 1 and 2.

People do not even know that there are native Hausa and Fulani Christians even in states like Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa etc.

Asnafsaeed:
We don't have any hausa/fulani Christians

Austine1212:
I don't know what Ghana has i was talking about population and artillery

BAGHDAD Iraq's embattled leaders on Sunday pledged wide reforms in a fresh effort to assuage anti-government protests that have paralyzed the country and left hundreds dead.

At least 319 protesters and security personnel have been killed in the demonstrations since they erupted in early October, the Iraqi parliament's human rights committee said, according to the official news agency INA, without giving a breakdown.

Street protests, mostly by young people, have roiled Iraq in two waves, mainly in the capital Baghdad and the oil-rich south.
Demonstrators have decried corruption, a lack of jobs and poor access to electricity and clean water.

The demonstrators have also demanded the resignation of the government, the dissolution of parliament and an overhaul of the country's political system, which has been in place since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

On Sunday, President Barham Salih, Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi and parliament head Mohammed al-Halbousi promised in a joint statement to combat corruption and work for an electoral reform.
They called on the country's political powers to accept "positive" changes.

"They (changes) are particularly related to having a government shake-up based on efficiency, and initiating a national dialogue to revise the ruling system and the constitution," they added in the statement following talks in Baghdad.

The chief of Iraq's Supreme Judiciary Council, Iraq's highest judicial authority, Faeq Zidan, attended too.

Iraqi governments have been formed along political and sectarian lines since the 2003 invasion which deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Critics say the system contributes to corruption and incompetence in state institutions.
The three leaders on Saturday called the ongoing protests "a legal reform movement" and vowed to bring to justice those involved in attacks on demonstrators.

Several rights groups have recently accused Iraqi security forces of using excessive force in quelling the protests.

Amnesty International has urged Iraqi authorities to rein in security forces, saying at least six protesters were killed Saturday in central Baghdad.

"There have now been at least 264 protester deaths across the country in little over a month. This is turning into nothing short of a bloodbath," Heba Morayef, the watchdog's Middle East and North Africa director, said in a statement released late Saturday.

"Baghdad and Basra (a southern province) have seen yet more bloody days of excessive force meted out against protesters. Iraqi authorities must immediately order an end to this relentless, unlawful use of lethal force," Morayef said.

The rights group, citing medics, said four of the protesters killed in central Baghdad on Saturday had been shot dead with live ammunition while two others died of injuries resulting from tear gas grenades striking their heads.

"This bloodbath must stop now, and those responsible for it must be brought to justice," Morayef added.

The protests are the country's largest since December 2017, when Iraq declared the liberation of all territory previously under the control of Islamic State militants.

nototribalist:
You Ghanaians are fools. Mumuu kill una there

nototribalist:
Traitor

nototribalist:
It still doesn't hide the fact that Ghana is a baby to Nigeria.

You guys are too tiny for us

nototribalist:
make I laugh

nototribalist:
Make I laugh

Ghana is 26m

Lagos State is 22m

So Ghana who are you fighting, Lagos army personnel

Or Nigerian army?

OGHENAOGIE:
it's annoying for folks to advocate a keeper without any rating over one with rating... maduka has no business with d national team

OGHENAOGIE:
de gea kepa Allison de get bad day...kepa conceded 4 against MAn Utd so shut up u keep mentioning one match d ones he did well uncore... if not for rohr Maduka has no business in national team