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Education › Re: Oxford, Cambridge, 61 UK Varsities To Go On 2-week Strike by HigherEd: 2:11pm On Jan 31, 2018
Interesting.... Truth is even in Canadian public universities it seems they have these issues with occasional Strikes(but very rare).
The US by not owning Federal Universitie seems to have evaded many of these issues.
Lalasticlala no be only us dey go strike o grin
Education › Re: Oduduwa University Student's Cries Out Over #5000 by HigherEd: 2:02pm On Jan 31, 2018
See ehn OUI is a private uni and if you are not happy about their administration just apply for ur transcript and transfer to adeleke or something.
Education › Re: Student Burnt To Death In His Hostel In Sokoto (photos) by HigherEd: 12:39pm On Jan 31, 2018
Eyah so sad. Universities in states without a good fire service department should endeavour to own one inside the campus that would serve both the University and Surrounding community.
Lalasticlala
Education › Re: The Rot In Nigerian Universities(photos) by HigherEd(op):
University of Benin

Education › Re: The Rot In Nigerian Universities(photos) by HigherEd(op): 11:29am On Jan 31, 2018
Ambrose Alli University

Education › Re: The Rot In Nigerian Universities(photos) by HigherEd(op):
Obafemi Awolowo University

Education › Re: The Rot In Nigerian Universities(photos) by HigherEd(op): 11:11am On Jan 31, 2018
..

Education › The Rot In Nigerian Universities(photos) by HigherEd(op):
Lalasticlala

Education › Re: Admission: Over 600,000 Students In Limbo As JAMB Insists On Eligibility by HigherEd: 6:42am On Jan 30, 2018
Though Jamb has been mismanaging these process by getting too involved in the admission process which just stalls everything but to blame jamb exclusively would be erroneous. Covenant concluded its own admission in September 2017 and Matriculated in October 2017, Kwasu, Abuad, Babcock, Landmark also Concluded in October and matriculated in Novembe. So I don't understand how it is exclusively jamb's fault. Those Universities that have matriculated don't have two heads na
Lalasticlala
Education › Re: How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op): 11:55pm On Jan 29, 2018
chloride6:
The relatively high staff to student ratio raises the wage bill a little.

However, UI makes a lot of IGR. UI makes enough IGR to cover 50% of it's staff expenses.

UI is however fond of rather unnecessary expenditure like purchasing too many cars and loans, don't even get me started on loans. A lot of staff loans go unpaid once they retire.

UI's high staff salary and expenses is fueled by the it's communal structure. The top echelon of it's management and academic staff act also like a cult.

When I was a second year student , my course mate's father was the HOD of a certain department. However he's tenure was also over, meaning that in a normal setting the official car attached to that office would soon be reliquished.

I jokingly asked her what her poor Dad would now drive. She looked at me bewildered and just laughed. She then told me confidently that he father even after retirement would have an official car for the University. I laughed it off. She explain that the top echelon acts like a closely knitted community.

And sure enough, at the end of the semester, he was conferred with some almost irrelevant position in the school chapel. He didn't even attend the chapel. Of course it came with an official car and driver.

When next we meet , she had that Shebi I told you look.
You are right on the IGR thing. UI PG and DLC generates about 4 billion naira annually...yet the poor financial management of UI and other FG unis has been noted for sometime... I remember stumbling on a particular publication of recent(I don't know how to retrieve it) where a lecturer was ranting about how UI top management poorly spent a man who willed UI his assets in the 90s to the extent that UI today does not have a trace or record of how that money was spent...
Education › Re: How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op): 11:01pm On Jan 29, 2018
chloride6:
Not true,

Ekiti receives about 50 - 60 annually.
Oh damn. I meant IGR not FAAC. Thanks
Education › Re: How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op):
writerights:
I'm not surprised UI gets so much fund from government. This isn't even part of the internally generated revenue made by the school. However, no amount can be too much on education. I hope these monies aren't diverted as it's always case among schools.
Lol bros there is so much story on that igr matter.

Between 2007 and 2014, UI bought 124 cars. I can't remember how much they spent on Research between that period but it isn't much. In fact in 2013 UI spent a paltry 65 million naira on research yet they are spending 27 million on phone allowance. They also spend hundreds of millions to set up igr outfits may end up not profitable.

Pls note UI is one of the best case scenarios in Financial management for public unis, don't even go close to the financial management of most other public.
Education › Re: How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op):
Desyner:
Hmmm . . . That's alot. I hope people bashing top private unis see what it takes to run a uni.
True that. Imagine, if Ebonyi, Yobe and Ekiti put 100% of their IGR together, they still can't single handedly fund UI's wage bill....

In fact if you give UI all the tuition fees realised in Covenant uni which is about 8 billion and remove govt allocation UI won't still survive.

We've not even talked about what ui receives from TetFund, CBN and Philanthropist. People would do well to divide all these allocations by total number of students to have a better grab of what govt pays before slandering churches especially.

Now amazingly, ui is still an underfunded university. In fact UI needs 50 billion naira/year to be a proper world class university. But more importantly for UI today is a need for a better financial mananagement system than even more funding....
Education › Re: How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op): 7:12pm On Jan 29, 2018
...

Education › How Much Money The University Of Ibadan Gets From Government Annually by HigherEd(op): 7:08pm On Jan 29, 2018
First of all it is important to note that the most funded Nigerian University is ABU which is closely followed by the University of Ibadan and University of Nigeria Nsukka so this figures can very well be representative of either UNN or ABU

Secondly, the personnel cost of University of Ibadan appears to be so huge that one begins to wonder what exactly are the Unions going on Strike for(in the case of staff emoluments)? Considering the fact that the wage bill allocation of UI is more than IGR of Ekiti and Ebonyi states put together.

Thirdly there appears to be an inconsistent trend of capital allocation on the side of the FG. The disparity between the wage bill grants of UI and their Capital grants is way too ridiculous. In the worst case scenario capital expenditure and recurrent expenditure should be 50-50. In Comparism a notable private university in Nigeria has its own budget as 70% Capital and 30% Recurrent.


#Transparency #InvestigatingNigerianUniversities

Celebrities › Re: Bovi Highlights What Dorcas Fapson Did Right And 'Wrong' by HigherEd: 5:12pm On Jan 29, 2018
See how bros evaded the rape allegation. Nonsense
TV/Movies › Re: Bbnaija Housemate Khloe Twerks For Rico (VIDEO) by HigherEd: 3:20pm On Jan 29, 2018
Nigerians have started with this bbn thing undecided

Let's forget reality TV show and face our Realities - Adekunle Gold

Education › Re: Dangote Donates N1.2bn Building To Buk Business School by HigherEd: 12:46pm On Jan 29, 2018
Great! He donated 250M to UI also for a Business School. His foundation should focus on elevating STEM courses though.
Lalasticlala
Health › Re: Why Shaving Your Pubic Hair Might Be A Bad Idea by HigherEd(op): 10:25am On Jan 29, 2018
Its just amazing how we think a particular part of the body is useless only for science to tell us otherwise..
Wax in the ear helps to keep bacteria and insects out
Pubic hair apparently helps to guard the genitals
Hair in the nose helps to keep out dirt
Nonalignment of the Testes ensures you don't crush them while working. Over a 100 vestigial organs decades ago have been reduced to 10. Science keeps confirming God is truly an intelligent designer....
Lalasticlala
Health › Why Shaving Your Pubic Hair Might Be A Bad Idea by HigherEd(op): 7:50am On Jan 29, 2018
must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.

It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical. The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their speciality services to those seeking the "clean and bare" look, is booming.

But why pick on the lowly pubic hair? A few sociological theories suggest it has to do with cultural trends spawned by bikinis and thongs, certain hairless actors and actresses or a desire to return to childhood or even a misguided attempt at hygiene.

It is a sadly misconceived war. Long ago, surgeons figured out that shaving a body part prior to surgery actually increased, rather than decreased, surgical site infections. No matter what expensive and complex weapons are used – razor blades, electric shavers, tweezers, waxing, depilatories, electrolysis – hair, like crab grass, always grows back and eventually wins. In the meantime, the skin suffers the effects of the scorched battlefield.


Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles left behind, leaving microscopic open wounds. Rather than suffering a comparison to a bristle brush, frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area. When that irritation is combined with the warm moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture medium for some of the nastiest of bacterial pathogens, namely Group A Streptococcus, Staphylococcus aureus and its recently mutated cousin methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). There is an increase in staph boils and abscesses, necessitating incisions to drain the infection, resulting in scarring that can be significant. It is not at all unusual to find pustules and other hair-follicle inflammation papules on shaved genitals.

Additionally, I've seen cellulitis (soft-tissue bacterial infection without abscess) of the scrotum, labia and penis as a result of spread of bacteria from shaving or from sexual contact with strep or staph bacteria from a partner's skin. Some clinicians are finding that freshly shaved pubic areas and genitals are also more vulnerable to herpes infections due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to viruses carried by mouth or genitals. It follows that there may be vulnerability to spread of other STIs as well.


Pubic hair does have a purpose, providing a cushion against friction that can cause skin abrasion and injury, protection from bacteria and other unwanted pathogens, and is the visible result of long-awaited adolescent hormones, certainly nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.

It is time to declare an end to the war on pubic hair, and allow it to stay right where it belongs. We owe it to our patients to encourage them to let it be.

https://www.google.com.ng/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/07/pubic-hair-has-job-stop-shaving

Lalasticlala
Education › Re: Babcock University Student,khabirah Ibraheem Needs Your Help To Save Her Life by HigherEd: 7:26am On Jan 29, 2018
I hope they are able to finish raising it in time.
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op): 10:57pm On Jan 28, 2018
abayomi93:
Abeggi, unilag better pass covenant joor. Come unilag come see state of the art facility,and the special breed of handsome boys and pretty girls.
Oya post the pictures on nairaland and tag #peopleofUnilag let's see what you guys got.
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op): 9:30pm On Jan 28, 2018
Mofe72:
You see how you people spread false information. I’m a graduate of covenant fam (2016 set)

Our school fees as at 2016 was max 700k+( engineering and architecture are the most expensive). That sum is for a year, including accommodation, medical fees, books, tuition, internet etc.

NGN 700k = approximately $2000 at today’s exchange rate.

Stop spreading fallacies.
A lot of people there are average Nigerians. Our parents just wanted to give us something of value. Don’t get it twisted.

There are wealthy people there and there are regular people.
Lol bro I was surprised when I saw 40k USD. That would have mean Covenant is more expensive than some UK universities. But honestly, Winners is really trying by being able to offer such quality for such a low amount.
The structures at the background are simply huge and can contend with foreign structures.
Education › Re: Nigerian Lecturer Responds To Trump Over 'Shithole' Comment by HigherEd(op): 6:30pm On Jan 28, 2018
writerights:
Definitely not, it will remain in the shithole's cyberspace and its borders grin
Lol don't say so, this particular lecturer is an affiliate of UNESCO at the high levels. I saw a German UNESCO official tweeting about it that was why I checked and posted it on nairaland.
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op):
Bollinger:
No. He's actually feeling sorry for the m.orons who donate to make this happen.
As if the parents of these ones didn't Tithe too. If I am not wrong most of CU students tithe to winners too.
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op): 4:43pm On Jan 28, 2018
youmour:
When you no dey enter class but wan blow by force by force..what is peoples?
A university is a confluence of many Cultures, Religions and Sometimes Nationalities and all. Hence you can refer to the inhabitants of a University as peoples.
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op): 4:39pm On Jan 28, 2018
BTT:
Fixed.
Thanks
Education › Re: The People Of Covenant University In Pictures by HigherEd(op):
..
Education › Re: Nigerian Lecturer Responds To Trump Over 'Shithole' Comment by HigherEd(op): 3:05pm On Jan 28, 2018
The frightening part is that this is too pristine and totalizing a story to be told about shit. Shit is not a “good object”, and it refuses to be “treated” or located. It’s not just that the occasional sewage mishap could flood neighbourhoods with millions of gallons of gooey poop, or that critical human errors often pollute rivers with faecal matter, but that the process of treating shit already ropes one back into a network of fragility one desperately tries to evade. Sooner or later, shit finds its way into water supply systems. Additionally, as Phillips notes[2] in her observations about the ubiquity of shit, “a disturbing amount of it, in truth – does not find its way into a toilet at all, and goes nowhere. A lot of shit lands not in a toilet, but along a woodland path, behind a garden wall or hedgerow, along the margins of a railway, or in the muck heap where the family bucket gets dumped in the predawn hours…”

Mr President, it turns out shit will not be told what to do. Just another thing you can add to the list of ‘real’ substances that resist our efforts to grab them, and insist on being heard. “We all answer to a lower power.”[3]



Shit is alive:

The chunky confluence of “diet, metabolism and environment”[4] we call shit is not inert, dead or mute. Shit is alive, animated, electrifying, generative and disruptive. Shit does things. Shit does shit. We are reminded that a “gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs…[and so] our shit…provides a home for an impressive number of creatures…” This belies the account that shit does nothing. Given its sternness, its ubiquity and intractability, shit both produces us and eats away at our boundaries. Summarily, it is not to be discountenanced, and it doesn’t need to fit into our frames of utility to be real or consequential. Shit matters.



Shit is sacred:

In India, cow-shit has more aesthetic purposes than human shit. More sacred uses. I have watched a cow splatter its glory into waiting human hands, and watched those hands – now hidden in the thick matter – rub the excrement on walls. This is a form of prayer, in case you are wondering what I am talking about. The cow dung is spiritually significant: mixed with ghee, it is said to purify the home with its anti-pollutant properties. This is the beautiful irony we live with – one which you are unable to notice: shit purifies.

Of course, human waste is a bit trickier to employ in those senses, but perhaps the aesthetic call of shit is to notice how fragile our own claims to lasting presence really are. How the world is composed by things other than can be employed or deployed for our own ends. This teaches us an erotic sensuality to life that rebuffs advancement and resists intelligibility – often inviting us to slow down.

In calling us shitholes, you probably meant to belittle us – to say we haven’t arrived. But shit teaches us that no one has. No one will. We are all somewhere in the middle together. All of us: Norwegians and shitholes. There’s no escape.



The future is brown:

And this point is the vital point to make – what we’ve been leading up to all this while. (Oh yeah, sorry: Trump! Trump! Trump!). Part of your modus operandi has been to rule sure lines of demarcation between here and there, these ones and those ones, shitholes and Norwegians. We are not so sure you can do that without running into trouble – the kind that a repellent, chunky piece of shit constitutes.

In writing this letter to you, our aim has been not to redeem shit from its stinkiness (shit will not be redeemed), or to rehabilitate and recycle it for use within a logical system. We do not seek to render shit usable, thus denying it of its recalcitrance. We want to take it literally – to listen to its stories. The eternal optimism/positivity and humanism upon which the West is founded leaves little room for the loss of hope and the discipline of uncertainty. Even the movement for zero-emission ‘green’ technologies presumes a bright future we can all trust in – if only we galvanized the right kind of expertise. But the future isn’t green, it is brown. It is toxic – we might well find toxic pleasures entangled in the networks that will yet produce us, but there is no foundation upon which to build or secure the future we want. In short, shit is – at this time at least – the most stunning critique of the North, the most stentorian dismissal of its confidence, the most corporeal rebuttal of the Enlightenment, as well as the ironic redemption of the Global North in its constitutional inability to address its impasses.

But we promised you compliments – and compliments we shall give! You are certainly a genius – the most stable kind, sir! There is a theory among us that you are the compost heap’s most eminent agent of disintegration. The diarrhoeaic catalyst that has emerged to speed up the excretion of what no longer serves. Perhaps your shithole comments are in keeping with these roles. Whatever the case, we thank you for calling us shitholes; it is our hope that we can use this to call our brothers to the nobility of the worlds we left behind, to a stunning politics of the otherwise, to a different story of our people.
Education › Re: Nigerian Lecturer Responds To Trump Over 'Shithole' Comment by HigherEd(op): 3:02pm On Jan 28, 2018
insurgency of climate change, of toxic futures, of renegade chimeric forms disturbing the tranquillity of modern categories.

This is an especially noteworthy point to make because of your present vocation of relieving your government of laws put in place by your predecessor to safeguard the environment. As you deregulate the economy – seeking to convert anything that moves and scurries and thrives into NASDAQ numbers and green arrows pointed north, and as you reward the rich with tax breaks that allow them to add more money to their pockets, you might be quickening the demise of your civilization. The ruins of our home are a prophecy – an ironical ‘completion’ of Euro-American longings to ‘arrive’. In fact, we would argue that the West is the one that needs to catch up. For the sakes of all you pretend to preside over.

So yes, many of us in shithole countries like Nigeria (and the country where I now live, India) would hope we get so backward that we drop out of the race altogether. You might say that ‘nature’ is speaking up, saying “Time’s Up!” And you might say that we are beginning to listen.

Needless to say, the myth of backwardness is invented (wait, are you still reading any of this? Oh right, our contractual obligation to insert laudatory praise to your name somewhere in the body of our letter: Trump! Trump! Trump! USA! USA! USA!)…Where were we? Right. I was saying that the myth of backwardness is invented by a culture that is losing its own sensuousness, and thinks of time and history in terms of linear progression along a single path of emergence. Even if we were to grant that development comes with its own pleasures and luxuries, or if we were to allow that progressive commodification and deregulated industrialization are the only way we can thrive on earth, shithole countries like ours are ‘backward’ or ‘late’ not because we are not running or working as hard as we can, but because the colonial clock you have hung on the wall in our rooms marks (makes) time for your purposes. Not ours.

Here’s something else we need to stress: we shithole people are very skilled at many things. I am not speaking of the fact that Nigerian immigrants “have the highest levels of education in [America], surpassing whites and Asians”[1]. No, not these ones. Of course, your culture likes to celebrate degrees and certificates, and we certainly love to amass those accolades to ourselves. Instead, I speak of the ones that don’t make it to the front-pages – the shithole immigrants that don’t speak any English, the ones whose limp bodies were dragged from cold and wet boats because their homes could no longer contain their aspirations or ideas of wellbeing. The invisible ones. You may barely notice us holding the door open for you, serving you caviar and asking if that’d be all you’ll be having, washing your dishes, nursing your children or driving you to and fro. You may not realize that we helped build your rational shitless order – and that our backs have long been bent under the fury of your whip. You may not know how we are sustaining your Empire. But that won’t be your fault either: we blame your schooling – the selfsame education that tied you to chairs and desks, and taught you only to look straight ahead, never to the sides (for that would be cheating). Never to the luscious and enchanting paths that beckon on the sides of your highway – urging you to notice other places of power-with-the-world and affinity-with-one’s-shit.

And that point brings us closer to the real source of our bafflement with your remarks: your implied aversion to shit. Why this? Shitting is not all bad. It is not negative. There are associated pleasures with taking a dump, as you might know. Yes, shit might come across as repulsive and hideous and monstrous, and its lack of corporeal uniformity might not only be intuitively terrifying to you, but might work as some kind of Rorschach inkblot process – giving you the unbidden opportunity to project your inner tensions on its rough surfaces. But I can assure you that if you really looked into it, there’s a lot more to it than germs and microbes and absent fathers. There are rich dimensions and hidden layers to the pile. So allow me to briefly articulate a faecal feminism (or, in the words of Dana Phillips, an excremental ecocriticism) that speaks to the cultural constipations and rectal rectitude of your ‘forward’ lands. If there’s any justice in the world, we would all learn to cultivate intimacy with our waste, learning to be humbled by the things that resist purpose or direction. But we can only do this if we allow shit to tell its own stories.



Shit is ubiquitous:

Many of us have long suspected that the ‘West’s’ aversion to its own shit – probably embodied by the invention of the flush toilet – points to an ideology of escape from decay. There’s some kind of Marxist plot afoot in the denial of the body’s own energetic productions. Perhaps a Victorian effort to reassign the messiness of the body to some lower stratum, beneath the mind and its obvious royalty. And so, the effort is to send our shit away, throw it outside, and sterilize the inside. Africa has long been an outpost for this ecology of denial – designated as the West’s ‘Away-land’. But the thing is shit always comes back to you. We are all exposed. Even in an effort to rid ourselves of shit, to clean ourselves of the outside, we bring the outside in.

The point here is that there is no ‘Away-land’. There has never been. My daughter said to me, “Dada, where does kaka go?” By ‘kaka’ she meant shit. I could not really answer the question. I hadn’t given much thought to this. I wonder if you have – if your overabundant ingenuity led you to use “shithole” to draw your country’s attention to this very important question. In Nigeria, our sewage treatment is not as sophisticated as yours (perhaps this really legitimizes your remarks). But sophistication is not the same thing as resolution. It’s interesting: flushing away shit might be reassuring, but it doesn’t really go ‘away’. The usual story you are told about poop is that it goes down the pipes to the sewage treatment plants, where it is screened and sorted out in terminals (very much like what the TSA does when shit immigrants come through), and then fed to aerobic bacteria who happily feast on the goo. What’s left is water, which is then brought back into the system – perhaps used to nurture crops, which in turn grow and are eaten. Thus beginning the cycle of poop over again.
Education › Nigerian Lecturer Responds To Trump Over 'Shithole' Comment by HigherEd(op): 3:01pm On Jan 28, 2018
The Surprising Nobility of Shit: A Serious Response to President Donald Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Remarks about African Immigrants

[Warning: There are some big words here. Not the best words like yours, but big words nonetheless]

Bayo Akomolafe



Dear President Trump,

I am Nigerian, from Nigeria, a shithole non-Norwegian type country in West Africa – widely considered the largest black nation on earth. This makes my country the biggest shithole on the planet, if your pronouncements still carry the moral weight of your once revered Office. Whether you truly understand the business of Empire or not, your recent remarks about African immigrants were received very solemnly around the world, as well as in Nigeria. Where we had once held our pride aloft as the largest collective of black bodies, we must now insert our dismay. But not just dismay – alarm! For if Nigeria is the biggest shithole in the world, and is projected to surpass the US as the world’s third most populous country by 2050, then we are talking about a shitstorm of epic proportions. Shit spills into and through things, you know. Borders and walls too. Nothing is really impervious to its radioactive charms.

But there’s more than alarm and dismay. There’s also gratitude. I think you will understand why we feel grateful for, as well as a bit baffled by, your “shithole” comments as you read further (please do read further – there’s even more complimentary stuff down the line).

Now I do not speak for ‘Africans’ or even ‘Nigerians’. Such representational dynamics are controversial today. But if it’s easier for you to imagine non-Norwegians as a chunky block of homogeneous cookie cutter bodies that look the same and do uninteresting things, then – okay – I speak for all of them. And this letter is from all of us.

A few days ago, we first learned of your comments: that you had referred to some African nations as well as Haiti as “shitholes” (or was it “shithouses”? Whatever). We took this very seriously. Mind you, we were not shocked: we hear this kind of talk all the time. But we took it seriously all the same. So we called the elders and the wisdom keepers away from their mud huts, lowered our bodies from the branches we live on (using our hairy tails, of course), and then we sat under Moon. Under this lunar illumination, we opened the sacred books to recall the names we had been given over time by our white brothers.

Ah! There was ‘Dark Continent’ by a nineteenth century European explorer named ‘Henry M. Stanley’. With this name, Europe denied ‘Africans’ of their agency, pathologized our cultures and wayfinding knowledges, and rendered us mute in the telling of our stories. We smiled even more as our fingers ran down the list of names we’d been named, stopping occasionally to remark on the more amusing ones.

Then there was the one used by one of your fellow presidents, Harry Truman, during his inaugural address on January 20, 1949. This one stung a bit more than the others that came before – because it stuck. Speaking about his ‘Point Four’ assistance project to help save us from our primitive savagery, Truman effectively coined the term “developing countries” – implying that the United States was ‘developed’ and that this ‘development’ – this plundering of our communal bonds and abandonment of our own wisdoms – was the only proper focus of collective rational action. In naming us so, Truman reduced our cosmologies and histories to the imperatives and dynamics of growth and progress. Many of us still think we need to catch up with the ‘West’, to become like you. Like – you know – “Norway.”

And now, even though our books were full, we found a way to record this name you have given us. At the bottom of the leaf, we scratched the word. The Declarationem Officialis: ‘Shithole’ (or ‘Shithouse’).

However, we are all confused by this new description. Could you be a bit clearer about what you mean? We never did have this problem with previous appellations. For instance, we are very sure of what is meant when many of us are called ‘apes’ (not that we do not feel grateful to be appointed to the sides of those noble creatures – we are). By ‘shithole’, do you mean the orifice in the body that excretes the stuff, or are you speaking of the place – perhaps, like a hole, made in the ground – that receives the excreta?

We checked the etymology of the word, but that didn’t really help us much. So in anticipation of your obliging clarifications, we want to say a few things (mostly about shit), on the off chance that your usage of the word ‘shithole’ was pejorative – as we suspect it was.

But first, give no attention to those of us asking for apologies – or the others who are rushing to defend us by saying we have fine bridges and tall towers and haughty highways and gilded neighbourhoods that are just as good as American ones. Some of us even say that the name you have christened us should energize us to become more ‘excellent’ – and by this they mean that we should pour our energies into doing what America did (and still does) to become the Empire of oil, suburban sprawl, McDonald’s and mercantilist goodness that it is today.

Pay them no mind.

What our little collection of huts would like you to know is that while most of us live under precarious circumstances, with mountains of toxic waste serving as playgrounds for our children, the ‘West’ is by no means neatly removed from its complicity in creating the conditions for this necropolis to emerge.

Did you know that European nations and the US export their industrial waste to Africa? You do this because recycling is expensive – especially when you are generating 50 million tonnes of electronic waste every year. You send your waste down to us through leaders that have been thoroughly schooled in the politics of development, and have learned to think of good living only in terms of how they can enrich themselves. In other words, if Africa is a shithole, there’s more than a generous contribution of your own shit in the mix.

Further still, the story of our backwardness is highly under-reported and understated: yes, we are very VERY ‘backward’. At least I would hope that we are more backward than is often depicted in the tourist ads our governments place on your television stations in order to attract foreigners and dollars. The point some of us are making is this: who wouldn’t want to take the backward position in a race for the edge of the cliff? Who would want to be punctual to the apocalypse?

Let me spell this point out carefully, because it is easy to misconstrue.

When you are unable to see time in its diffracted splendour, in all its thick and organic matterings and unusual activities, in all its entanglements with place and bodies and incorporeal forms, you would suppose that time is simply what the clock measures – and that ‘development’ is the only way to imagine how to navigate the humbling complexity and weirdness of things. You would think that there’s nothing more to time. That the past is really done with, that the present is here, and that the bright future is just up ahead. You might even trust that humans are the sole agencies in the world, with the power to rein in nature, to commandeer her operations and bend her to one’s will. To grab her by the woodsy.

We do not think this way – well, not all of us, but those of us who are revisiting our indigenous traditions, embarking on decolonial quests, and unlearning the givenness of modern power want to attune ourselves to these interesting realities. You see, the problem is that thinking in the way highlighted above (or thinking in – big word alert! – ‘anthropocentric’ ways) generates all kinds of trouble. For one, we are now slowly learning that nature is more mind-like than we previously imagined, and that we humans are not as independent, disembodied or sovereign as we would like to be. The ‘old’ fantasy of humans colonizing the landscape without consequence or push-back from the environment (an ideal that is conceptually indebted to the idea that the environment is ‘outside’, instead of the very material fabric with which our own insides are stitched) – neatly demarcated and domesticated into clean lawns or wilds awaiting culture – must now meet the insurg....

http://bayoakomolafe.net/project/the-surprising-nobility-of-shit-a-serious-response-to-president-donald-trumps-shithole-remarks-about-african-immigrants/

Lalasticlala
Christianity Etc › Re: How Adeboye's Disobedience Built A Global Brand - Leke Beecroft by HigherEd(op): 1:02pm On Jan 28, 2018
Sage7:
Kindly disregard any rude remark or unpleasant commentaries . It will come in numbers.

How did you come across this load of information. It is a nice piece.
Thank you!
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