This is wonderful news. My people have stopped lying about their true feelings ?

Or maybe the researchers modified their questions

Anyway, I must celebrate.









Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. - Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"

My brother Papabrowne don start again





I hope they are renovating those their toilets too?

Negro_Ntns,

I know, it's a sad state of affairs, In Nigeria you sometimes have to roll with the punches and wait for an opportunity to deal your own blow.

Hopefully the people empowering Tompolo and Boyloaf won't come out in a few years complaining about their abuse of power.

We dey here dey watch drama.

“Even if it were to be owned by a militant, what offense has the militant has committed in owning a business?” asked Ziakede Patrick Akpobolokemi, director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, which will partner with the private firm. “Here is a country where people have served prison terms and become heads of state or presidents. ... When people say ‘ex-militant this,’ ‘ex-militant that,’ they should be mindful of their utterances.”

Hahaha

I no blame you jare.

AP Exclusive: $103M anti-piracy contract in Nigeria linked to ex-militant from oil-rich delta



Before the amnesty, men allied with the ex-militant, Government Ekpumopolo, carried out attacks and killings



LAGOS, Nigeria — A former militant leader in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta is linked to a private security company that signed a $103 million deal with the government to patrol the West African nation’s waterways against pirates, officials have told The Associated Press.

The commander, who was granted amnesty in 2009, endorsed hiring Global West Vessel Specialist Agency Ltd. to protect the waterways, something Nigeria’s navy and civil authorities appear unable to do.
 

Nigeria struggles with endemic graft; analysts say the nation has one of the world’s most corrupt governments. The government brokered an amnesty deal with militants in 2009 that has since seen oil production rise dramatically, but the $103 million contract raises worries about the influence of former militants.

“It is alarming that the patrol and control of Nigeria’s coastal borders is being handed to a private concern, run by a known warlord, even (if) he is a rehabilitated rebel,” said an editorial in The Daily Trust, the newspaper of record of Nigeria’s north.

A government official saw no problem with the contract.

“Even if it were to be owned by a militant, what offense has the militant has committed in owning a business?” asked Ziakede Patrick Akpobolokemi, director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, which will partner with the private firm. “Here is a country where people have served prison terms and become heads of state or presidents. ... When people say ‘ex-militant this,’ ‘ex-militant that,’ they should be mindful of their utterances.”

It is unclear whether Ekpumopolo, also known by his nom de guerre Government Tompolo, has any financial position in Global West Vessel Specialist Agency Ltd. One of the owners said Tompolo had no interest in the company.

Tompolo served as a commander in the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which was one of several militant groups that crippled Nigeria’s oil industry in the southern delta from 2006 to 2009 with a wave of attacks targeting foreign oil companies.

The region of mangroves and swamps, about the size of Portugal, has been the seat of oil production in Nigeria for more than 50 years. The easily refined crude produced by foreign oil firms provides an energy supply critical for the gasoline-thirsty United States.

Fighters under Tompolo bombed crude oil pipelines, attacked soldiers and kidnapped foreign workers under the flag of the militant group. In May 2009, Tompolo’s forces engaged in one of their biggest battles with soldiers after kidnapping 15 Filipino sailors. Two of those kidnapped died and Amnesty International said hundreds of people were killed in the fighting as the military brought in helicopters and jet fighters.

Later that year, Tompolo would be among the first militant commanders to lay down his weapons in the government-led amnesty program. He largely slipped out of public view, though he and other militants routinely could be found in the ground-floor lounge of the Hilton in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/ap-exclusive-103m-anti-piracy-contract-in-nigeria-linked-to-ex-militant-from-oil-rich-delta/2012/03/29/gIQAsnK3iS_story.html

strangerf:

Pray tell, what accomplishments? MIT and Harvard VS Brown & Harvard x2 vs Notredame & Yale? No ground breaking research paper, no ideological shift whatsoever. Now compare her to Kim's PIH or to what Ocampo did in his home country ( impressive stuff)

Go look at Ocampo's CV and compare with your madame's

That said, she would be a better fit than Kim, Don't know what Obama was thinking . . .

You know I barely made it out of community college, so excuse my excitement. Ivy league no be moin-moin now, especially for someone without a trust fund background

Having said that, I kinda agree that her work as a top WB technocrat is not necessarily a plus in this case. She might be perceived as more of the same by some stakeholders seeking reform.

When it comes to money invested, there is no level playing ground. America has more vote than Anybody else in the WB because they contribute more that everyone. It is what it is.

Having said that though, it is not wise to court a PR disaster by throwing your money at peoples faces, same applies to Ngozi's supporters, if they are not ready to back her with funds if she gets the nomination then all this meritocracy talk will come to naught. She will fail.

@Ndu_chuks I don't blame Madam o, it's tough to abandon your ambition for a Nigeria post where you can't really dictate much. Where Tony Anenih and Tompolo can overrule your well thought out policies

The buck still stops at GEJ and PDP's table, there's only so much Madam Ngozi can change. Sad but true. If she gets the job, maybe it will be an opportunity to ride from WB to Aso Rock in the future, hopefully she won't annoy the real Kingmakers in washington before then.

But win or lose, he who pays the piper dictates the tune at the end of the day.

I guess it is safe to conclude that folks at the Economist are very effusive about Madam. Org/as/mic maybe

She is a very accomplished woman though, proud of her accomplishments.

WHEN economists from the World Bank visit poor countries to dispense cash and advice, they routinely tell governments to reject cronyism and fill each important job with the best candidate available. It is good advice. The World Bank should take it.

In appointing its next president, the bank’s board should reject the nominee of its most influential shareholder, America, and pick Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The World Bank is the world’s premier development institution. Its boss needs experience in government, in economics and in finance (it is a bank, after all). He or she should have a broad record in development, too. Ms Okonjo-Iweala has all these attributes, and Colombia’s José Antonio Ocampo has a couple. By contrast Jim Yong Kim, the American public-health professor whom Barack Obama wants to impose on the bank, has at most one.


Ms Okonjo-Iweala is in her second stint as Nigeria’s finance minister. She has not broken Nigeria’s culture of corruption—an Augean task—but she has sobered up its public finances and injected a measure of transparency. She led the Paris Club negotiations to reschedule her country’s debt and earned rave reviews as managing director of the World Bank in 2007-11. Hers is the CV of a formidable public economist.

Mr Ocampo was also finance minister, though his time in office, 1996-98, saw the budget deficit balloon. He ran the mildly statist UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. His is the CV of the international bureaucrat.

Mr Kim, the head of a university in New England, has done a lot of good things in his life, but the closest he has come to running a global body was as head of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organisation—not a post requiring tough choices between, say, infrastructure, health and education. He pioneered trials of aid programmes before they became fashionable and set up an outfit called Partners in Health which does fine work in Haiti and Peru. But this is a charity, not a development bank. Had Mr Obama not nominated him, he would be on no one’s shortlist to lead the World Bank. (Indeed he is a far worse example of Western arrogance than Christine Lagarde, whom the Europeans shoehorned into the IMF job last year: the French finance minister plainly had the CV for the job.)

Ms Okonjo-Iweala is an orthodox economist, which many will hold against her. But if there is one thing the world has discovered about poverty reduction in the past 15 years, it is that development is not something rich countries do to poor ones. It is something poor countries manage for themselves, mainly by the sort of policies that Ms Okonjo-Iweala has pursued with some success in Nigeria.

Mr Kim’s views on development are harder to divine. But what can be gleaned is worrying. In an introduction to a 2000 book called “Dying for Growth”, he wrote that “the quest for growth in GDP and corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of men and women”, quoted Noam Chomsky and praised Cuba for “prioritising social equity”. Were Mr Kim hoping to lead Occupy Wall Street, such views would be unremarkable. But the purposes of the World Bank, according to its articles of agreement, are “to promote private foreign investment…[and to] encourage international investment for the development of the productive resources of members.” The Bank promotes growth because growth helps the poor. If Mr Kim disagrees, he should stick to medicine.

Ready. Steady. Ngo

For almost 70 years, the leadership of the IMF and World Bank has been subject to an indefensible carve-up. The head of the IMF is European; the World Bank, American. This shabby tradition has persisted because it has not been worth picking a fight over. The gap between Mr Kim and Ms Okonjo-Iweala changes the calculation. It gives others a chance to insist on the best candidate, not simply the American one. Mr Ocampo should bow out gracefully. And the rest of the world should rally round Ms Okonjo-Iweala. May the best woman win.


http://www.economist.com/node/21551490

When money stops talking
The sound of dissent in oil-rich Angola


Mar 31st 2012 | LUANDA | from the print edition



Cover art with attitude

WITH his thin-rimmed spectacles and philosophy degree, MCK belies the image of a streetwise rapper, but his latest album bears a message that is authentically tough. Released in January, “Proibido Ouvir Isto” (Forbidden to Hear This), assails a host of national ills, from the corruption of Angola’s elite to the squalor of its fetid musseques (slums).

Flush from oil exports that now generate more than $45 billion a year, the government is used to silencing critics with cash.“Four years ago they offered me $500,000 to stop rapping,” MCK confesses with a smile, sitting in a sports hall in Angola’s capital, Luanda. “Now they know it won’t work.”

MCK, who doesn’t disclose his real name, gained fame in 2003 after presidential guards in Luanda murdered a 27-year-old car-washer whom they caught singing his anti-government lyrics. His music has become a staple in the candongueiros (shared taxis) that criss-cross the vast country. MCK (pronounced MC Kappa) has himself faced death threats, and decides to leave the sports hall when a police informer sniffs around nearby. But like fellow Angolan rappers Ikonoklasta, Nástio Mosquito and Carbono Casimiro, he continues to speak his mind.

His most coruscating new track, “O País do Pai banana” (the Banana Republic’s Leader) accuses the patrão, or boss, President José Eduardo Dos Santos, of treating his country like a colonial fief. Another object of ire is Portugal, the former colonial master that has lately flooded Angola with some 130,000 workers. “They come here to make their fortunes,” complains MCK, who is himself from Catambor, one of Luanda’s most violent musseques, “but they never question the origin of the money.”

Political protest had been rare since Angola emerged in 2002 from three traumatic decades of civil war, and began slowly to rebuild itself. But MCK is pleased that fewer Angolans now accept the conflict as an excuse for the lack of jobs and services. He and fellow artists are central to a slender but persistent protest movement that is making the government tetchy in the run-up to parliamentary elections due later this year.

Mr Dos Santos’s regime does not like surprises. The constitution it enacted in 2010 means that Angola’s next president will be chosen not by popular vote, but by the ruling party, which since independence in 1975 has been the MPLA (or Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola). One of Angola’s last two independent newspapers, Folha 8, was recently raided for lampooning the president. Other media outlets have long since been bought off.

Nobody expects an effective challenge from the host of brave but impotent opposition parties. Yet despite being banned on government radio, the lyrics of MCK and other rappers sound a constant subversive drumbeat:

The boss is the coloniser

in the Banana Republic…

We either put an end to corruption

or corruption puts an end to us.



http://www.economist.com/node/21551547

This is how it starts. Enrich private defense contractors and you will never know peace.

Empower them and they will end up running your country covertly and overtly.

How do you wear an Agbada with a giant picture of your own face printed on it?

My people and our ways sha

I apologize for my ignorance. my transistor radio broke.

Have we divided the country??

isale_gan2: THE MAKING OF AN EDO PHILOSOPHER FROM IGBARA-OKE
Ulli Beier talks to Dr. Sophie Oluwole

U: There are not many people who have tried to study and define Yoruba Philosophy. This is surprising, because you might say that those of us who study the art, the literature, the religion of the Yoruba people are studying various manifestations, symptoms perhaps, of the basic Yoruba interpretation of life. And yet philosophy was introduced rather late into Nigerian universities and most Nigerian philosophers seem more interested in Greek or British philosophy than in African philosophy. I am curious therefore to hear from you how you became interested in the subject and what problems you faced on the long road towards becoming a leading authority in Yoruba philosophy. First tell me something about your background.

S: Well, I was born in Igbara-Oke, a town that lies on the border between Ilesha and Ondo.

U: I know the place well. In the fifties and early sixties it was a favorite stop-over for truck drivers on the way to Benin city. The road side restaurants sold the best pounded yam and the best bush meat in the whole of Nigeria. I enjoyed many wonderful meals there.

S: Yes, that is true. Unfortunately our people lost that trade, when the shorter Lagos-Benin road was built further south. Nowadays that market has almost disappeared.

U: What did your father do?

S: He was a trader. He first went down to Lagos in 1910, buying clothes. Then, in 1912 he established his trade in Igbara-Oke and he would walk to Onitsha ...

U: ... walk all the way to Onitsha?

S: Yes, in those days there were no trucks. Traders used to trek with a group of carriers. So for many years he would walk between Igbara-Oke an Onitsha which was even then the largest market in West Africa. My mother was trading on the market of Igbara-Oke - but she was also a dyer and a weaver. She must be close to a hundred years old now, because her first child was born in 1918. She had eight children altogether. Four of them died and four of us remain. I am her last born. My mother was a very short woman, that is why she married rather late. She still looked like a child when her age group was getting married. She told me that she married about four years later than the others.


U: Did you still know your grandparents?

S: Yes, my grandfather came from Benin. My father was born in Igbara-Oke, but my grandfather came from Benin in about 1850. He was already a married man then, with about five wives. He had been a high ranking official in the Oba's palace in Benin. Igbara-Oke was part of the Benin empire then; in fact it belonged to the Oba's mother, because the Oba divided the empire among members of the family. So when there were reports that Ogedengbe was raiding Igbara-Oke ...

U: ... you mean Ogedengbe, the famous Ijesa warrior?

S: Yes ... and so it became necessary to send somebody to keep watch ... somebody to act as a kind of resident or governor looking after the interests of the Oba. In those days the Chief of Igbara-Oke could not make any decision without consulting my grandfather.

U: What about your father's mother. Was she a Yoruba woman?

S: No. As a matter of fact, she was the daughter of another Benin ‚governor' who resided in Ogotun, a few kilometers away, because the Oba of Benin had these residents all over the place ... My father married the daughter of a man who had come with my grandfather from Benin. Only my maternal grandmother was Yoruba. So actually I am an Edo woman - except that I was born and bred in Igbara-Oke.

U: Did your father speak Yoruba or Edo?

S: My father grew up speaking Yoruba but he made sure that he went back to Benin to learn Edo. My mother could not really speak Edo. She was a very shy woman. She could understand it but did not speak it.

U: Did you consider yourself Yoruba or Edo as a child? Or didn't you really think about that?

S: I did. I thought of myself as an Edo girl. Because until I left primary school the Oba of Benin used to stop in Igbara-Oke, whenever he traveled to Ibadan. You remember that Benin was part of the Western Region of Nigeria then, and the Oba of Benin had to attend the House of Chiefs in Ibadan. So whenever he was to travel on that road he sent a message some days ahead to my father, and as from seven o'clock in the morning all the Edo people in Igbara-Oke would wait on the road side, drumming and dancing, with a banner, saying: "Welcome, Oba of Benin!" There were about ten Edo families in the town and the local people referred to us as Ado Igbara.

U: Ado meaning Edo?

S: Yes, that's how they pronounced it. And even the local people would come and gather on that day, because we had different drumming and different dancing ... So many of them were curious and they would not go to the farm that day.

U: Were you singing in Edo? S: No, we were singing in Yoruba. The Oba would not leave his car. He would remain seated and talk to my father and then drive away. He did not stop in Igbara-Oke on the way back.

U: Was That Akenzua II?

S: Yes, it was Akenzua. So I was calling myself an Edo girl when I was small, but I never learned the language. I can hear a little, but i cannot speak it. My sisters speak Edo very well and my only brother who was a very well known journalist with the " Daily Times" in Lagos has now retired in Benin. You know him well. His name is Ebenezer Williams.

U: What names were you given by your parents? What does the initial "B" stand for? Is it a Yoruba name or a Bini name?

S: It is Yoruba: Bosede - "A girl born on a Sunday". And I was also named Olayemi, which is Yoruba again, Meaning: "I fell comfortable with dignity."

U: And how did you get Sophie? It is unusual in Yoruba country.


S: My parents didn't think of such a name, of course. But we had a headmaster then, who was a friend of the family. I suppose he came to the house often because there were several beautiful young girls and he was unmarried. I was very tiny then. He liked me, he gave me biscuits and I followed him around everywhere. I ended up living with him at the age of eight. It was after I had started school that I was to be baptized and he told my father that he should name me Sophia. My father didn't know what it meant. But the headmaster thought that I was a clever girl. It is funny, but many years later my supervisor for my PhD thesis at the University of Ibadan said to me: "Why should you call yourself Sophia, just because you have decided to become a philosopher?" And I said to him: "I was given that name long before I knew what it meant." We used to even write it with an ‚f' like the capital of Bulgaria.

U: What kind of naming ceremony would you have had? Was it like the Yoruba one, where you give the baby various things to taste - kolanut to teach him that life can be bitter, pepper to teach him that life can hurt and honey to teach him that sweetness always follows pain in life?

S: It would have been similar; only some of the items would have been different. For example, in Benin we can hardly do anything without coconut or snails. Snails are for peace. The snail moves slowly. It is soft. It doesn't fight, it doesn't harm. And when you break the shell there is that beautiful blue water. The snail is harmony. There used to be plenty of snails in Benin. In the olden days, when you cooked food and the meat was not enough, you would just go behind the house and pick a dozen snails. They would be everywhere. But today they have gone. The Binis buy snails from the Yoruba.

U: So you were not given any Edo names?

S: No, my brothers were given Edo names. By that time there was a nostalgia to go back to Benin. All my father's grandchildren were given Edo names. All of them. At that time he would have loved to go home, because he was not fully accepted in Igbara-Oke. He reminded them of the ‚colonial' rule of Benin. There was an incident that nearly forced my father to leave the town. My brother went to Government College Ibadan and during the first term, when he was asked, he said that he was a Benin boy. The people in Igbara-Oke got angry and said: "Why should he call himself a Benin Boy? Was he not born and bred in Igbara-Oke and was not his father born here also?"

U: I gather that your parents were both Christians.

S: Yes, they were Anglicans. My father was baptized in 1912, my mother in 1915, just before they got married. In fact you could say that Igbara-oke was a Christian town.

[b]U: That means, I suppose, that you grew up without knowing anything about Yoruba religion.

S: Since my grandfather had come from Benin we had Olokun in our compound and all the traditional dances were still being performed for him. And the worshippers of the other Orishas would come and celebrate with us. For us children it was very, very interesting; and in the evening, when nobody was watching, we would imitate them. We would dramatize the ritual with all the songs and dances. But my father was always worrying us not to go and watch the ‚pagan' ceremonies. As Christians we were supposed to stay clear of all that. to him it was like worshipping the devil. We would be sneaking out whenever there was an Orisha ceremony somewhere, but when we came home we would deny we had been there. One morning during our prayer session my father said to us that he had warned us several times not to worship Orisha, but we had refused to listen to him. He was not going to warn us anymore. But we would have to remember that on the day of judgment, God and the devil would pick their children among all the human beings. Then some of us would say that we were the children of God, but the devil would say: "No, you are mine." Then there would be an argument. God would say: "They are my children" and the devil would say: "They belong to me." And then the devil would have to prove his case. Then my father said: " Do you know that each time you are watching the Olorisha the devil is there with his camera, taking the picture of all the worshippers ... and on judgment day, when there is an argument, all the devil will have to do is to bring out his pictures. When they have identified you on the photographs, you will be asked: was it a ceremony for God or for the devil? And you will have to answer: it was for the devil." From that day on, we never went to see the Orisha dancers again, and for years after that I was so afraid. And at night I wondered how I could recapture those Photographs from the devil, because although I had stopped going to the ceremonies - what of the pictures he had taken before?[/b]

U: Did you go to school in Igbara-Oke?

S: Yes, I finished my primary school - Standard VI. Than I went to Ile-Ife to what was known as a ‚Girls School'. It was only a two years course, but it was so intensive that you could come out with a Class IV certificate. In those days the full secondary schoool was six years. But you could leave with a Class IV certificate and find a job fairly easily. Or you could go back to school and work for your Class VI. I went on to Ilesha to the Women Training College. It had been set up by the British, when they were on their way out of Nigeria. It was wholly financed by the British government and thirteen out of fifteen teachers were British. Every single thing we used in that school was imported from Britain: biros, paper - everything. Even our uniforms. I trained as a teacher and began to teach first at Ogotun then later at Ibadan.

U: But your teaching career didn't last that long. When did you go to university?

S: I went to Moscow in 1963.

U: You went to Moscow to study philosophy?

S: No, no. My husband got a scholarship and I went with him. I wanted to study economics, but at first I had to do a year of preparatory classes. Mainly Russian language, but also some other subjects. But after one year my husband decided to leave the Soviet Union, so I never had a chance to do the proper course.

U: Why didn't he like it? Was it the life style? The politics?

S: He found the language too hard. He wasn't a language man. As for me I could pick it up quickly.

U: What was life like in Moscow on campus? Did you have Russian friends?

S: We lived in what they called Cheriomushky: a whole house full of foreign students. Maybe I was biased coming from a completely free country, but I found everything terribly regimented. You could not, for instance, freely listen to the BBC. If you wanted to visit somebody, you had to deposit your passport with the porter of the house. You had to tell him which room you were going to and whom you were going to see. They recorded the time you entered and the time you left. Another fundamental problem was food. Rice was a rare commodity. Sometimes you saw people queuing in front of a supermarket. They told you that rice was going to be sold. After Queuing for three of four hours, somebody would come out of the shop and say: "What are you waiting for?" We said: "We are waiting for rice." Then he would say: "But I don't have rice!" and everybody would go away without saying anything. In 1964 I went to the Studienkolleg in Cologne while my husband went to the United States to continue his studies. I didn't have A levels so I couldn't enter a German university straight. I had to do another preparatory year. It was more or less like what I had to do in Moscow, except that this time I studies German. I did well, but I didn't enter a German university, where I had been offered a full scholarship in philology; I went to the US instead. But after three months I decided to return home, because all my children were at home. I already had three children then. I had made sure I gained admission to the University of Lagos, before I returned home.

U: You went on a long Odyssee abroad, that in the end didn't get you anywhere. But I suppose that it was all to the good: if you had stuck it out overseas and completed one of those courses you would never have become a philosopher.

S: That's right. And when I returned home I was still not thinking about Philosophy. I had been admitted for a BA Education an my main subject was to be English. But in those days the University was very relaxed about things: as long as you had a letter of admission you could go around and shop for subjects. You could do anything, as long as the Department was willing to have you. I did not really want to get back into school teaching. I first decided to do English, but some of the students said to me: "Madam, you better be careful. Because if you want to do English you may never end up with a degree from this university." I said: "Why?" They said that Wole Soyinka was their teacher and he had passed only two students that year! So I ran away. I didn't want to waste my time, because I already had three children. I was looking around for subjects I could do. I had O levels in history and geography and I needed a third subject. Philosophy was the only department that was willing to take me, because they were the only ones who had no prerequisites. The system was that after the first year you dropped one subject and carried on with two. Then you did ‚Combined Honors' in the remaining two subjects. Or, if you did very well in one subject, you could even end up with ‚Single Honors'. I had intended to drop philosophy. But at the end of the first year my worst subject was history. I discovered that I didn't have the retentive memory that an historian needs. So I dropped history and decided I would try to aim at ‚Single Honors' in geography. If you could score more than 60 % in one subject, you would be allowed to do ‚Single Honors' in it. At the end of the second year I qualified to do geography, but I also qualified to do philosophy. I got 62 % in geography and 64 % in philosophy. It was difficult for me to make a choice: geography was willing to take me. At that stage I had already discovered my love for philosophy, but the problem was, that they had only three lecturers and the professor said they couldn't accept a ‚Single Honors' student until they got another lecturer. But the new member of staff wasn't expected for some months. So I decided I was going to run two ‚Single Honors' courses concurrently. I went to geography and I went to philosophy. But as soon as the fourth lecturer arrived in the Philosophy Department I dropped geography. I became very embarrassing, because the geography professor said: "She is my student!"

U: So you got into philosophy almost by accident. Or was it Esu blocking all the other roads on which you attempted to travel - until you hit upon the right one? What finally attracted you to philosophy?

S: It was my nature. I found it so easy. I wasn't good at learning facts. But I could look at critical issues. I could take a sentence and pull it to pieces. So I was at home. I was comfortable ...

U: What kind of philosophy did they teach you at the University of Lagos? I suppose it wasn't African philosophy.

S: No, no. The first year we did Greek philosophy: starting with Thales and down to Plato and Aristotle. The second year we did British philosophy: Hume, Locke, Hubes - all of them. In the final year we did British philosophy again with the one exception our English head could not ignore: Immanuel Kant Hat was the only German philosopher we studied. came out top of the class: second class Upper Division-Which was thee best you could hope for in any honors subject those days.

S: It was Dr Danquah who first got me interested in African Philosophy. But he was on that Egyptology thing, trying to trace the origin of African philosophy to Egyptian religion.

U: Another Detour!

S: Yes. Although his father had written The Concept Of God, he had not actually stressed that point. The grand old man was not interested in proving to the west ,that Thales had borrowed the concept of god or mathematics or whatever from Egypt.

U: It still fashionable. Cheikh Anta Diop and so many others still claim that there was a west African civilization from which the Greeks derived their ideas.

S: Yes, but I had a feeling right from the start: if it is true that the Greeks came and stole African Philosophy-what happened to the Africans? You can steal my ideas, but you cant steal the brain from my head. Forget the borrowings. I do not mind what they took. But do we have anything left today-which I can show? So my first concern was to find records of Yoruba thought. I went to the Yoruba Department and asked them wether I could have access to records of Yoruba thought before colonialism. There was an Egba poet called Sobo Arobiodu. I had heard of him even as a small girl. My father had been quoting his poems and his proverbs. I was so excited to find that Prof S. A. BaBalola and Moses Lijadu had recorded him and that I could listen to this material. But I was so disappointed to discover that he had been a Christian! He was talking about Jesus! He was a hardly a Yoruba thinker! But the Yoruba Department told me they had no other records predating him. So I decided to look into Ifa oracle Texts.

U: Now tell me one thing: are you still the only one trying to establish Yoruba thought as a philosophy? Are there others now working in this field or do you still come up against a lot opposition?

S: There are now quite a number of lecturers and students who wants to establish African philosophy. But the fundamental difference is :what basis for the basis for their claims? If you look at my book "Witchcraft, Reincarnation and the God-head, "my claims are based on what people are saying in the street. How they describe a witch or what reincarnation means to them-for example Christian ideas have influenced peoples thinking people are not even aware of such influences.


Dr Sophie Oluwole is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Lagos {Nigeria}. She is currently National President of the Nigerian Philosophical Society. She is the editor of "Imodooye"-a journal of Yoruba philosophy. In 1993 Dr. Oluwole was visiting lecturer at the the University of Bayreuth under the auspices of a special research program {"SFB214"-Identity in Africa}.

This is an excerpt of an interview Dr Oluwole had with Ulli Bier at the Iwalewa House,University of Bayreuth.

http://www.edofolks.com/html/pub70.htm

Thank you for posting this Isale!

One of my favorite Oyinbo person (RIP to Ulli Beier) and of course mama Sophie Oluwole is probably my favorite living female intellectual. Good read.

Sophie Oluwole is now retired. I pray Olodumare and the Irunmoles will grant more of us the wisdom to continue building upon her foundational work. I'm hopeful.

Kilode?!:
Snooper-tatalo hit the home run on almost every paragraph.

Now to the question; Yes we can get a "new" Country, but unfortunately for us and according to every silly survey out there, Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. It is hard to argue with happy people.

When we stop lying about our collective national emotion, when we stop hiding our true feelings as a people, we will get a "new" country.

For now, we will stay in this bubble and smile at the camera.

Months later and hundreds more hacked, gunned and bombed to death, It is still too difficult to pull "happy people" away from their illusion. .

I trust bros Jonathan, He's a man of justice and equity

I heard the next derivation sharing will touch Agric resource states like Ondo ( number 1 Cocoa Producer) extra % for their trouble

Then he will add Extra 13 or so % for my people in Niger State (Naija cheated them for too long by using Kainji dam and river Niger for free)

The mother of all sharing will go to Lagos and a few other states across Nigeria for taking in people running away from their villages. It shall be well with Uncle Jona.

It's sharing time in Nigeria, even Boko Haram go get their share. Everything will be backdated

Sharing is caring, Sango bless GEJ

^
That's backwardness. Wetin una give Seun drink? Help the boy out nah.

^
Option to choose between old and new.

Proper arrangement of site, NL handles and posts

Font size.

We don tell am tire. Anyway he's encouraging less time on NL which is good.

This is one of the reasons why it's important to do credible census. So one Boniface with too much Eba in his tummy won't wake up one morning and start claiming impossible millions.

Except you pour a ship load of Viagra + fertility drugs in your water overnight, one can measure population trends based on historical patterns. You can't just become "populated" overnight

. . And which services are you going to export to employ a good percentage of your working class when you lack basic infrastructure?

Very few companies can afford to work beyond 6pm in Nigeria. Even petrol stations close after 8-9pm in Nigeria, that started in the 90's when basic security became a mirage.

It's funny you are quick to admonish the OP to not wait on government, unfortunately in our country, Government controls almost every sector. Nigeria has one of the hardest entry barriers on earth for enterprenuers and small businesses or any business at all. From stupid CAC red-tapism to govt supported monopolies like Dangote and PHCN it's hard to get a leg in around here.

Don't be confused, because one man broke even in Sango Ota does not mean Nigeria is open for sensible commerce. We are 160M for Sango's sake. For every Successful entrepreneur there are hundreds of thousands with no access, chance or opportunity to even start on their dream.

^^^^^^^^

Awon Iya ti n ba Seun ja. E je lo se etutu fun

NO LONG TIN:
You made the site for us, therefore WE & not YOU must like the site

Customer Service 101

OAM4J: More than 70% of the complaints here will be addressed if Seun just get a good graphic artist to suggest a good color theme and font.

But if this is Seun favorite color, we prolly just have to get used to it, am thinking of getting a light-shade, except that people in my office might think something is wrong with me wearing a light-shade in the office.

OAM4J, my bro. Don't encourage Seun, the man is not blind he sure can see this new layout is not gettIng many favorable reviews. Take
a good look at most of the negative reviews, they are from long-term users, people who obviously enjoy visiting NL not once a month posters.. It is silly to ignore that Client base.

1. The red user name color is distracting (color riot)
2. The table (text box) is too wide, it occupies the whole screen. It gives no room to reset the eyes and scan outside the text box.
3. No signatures (a very popular NL feature and expression)
4. On The sub forum pages (e.g politics ) NL names are arranged haphazardly ( no order, not aligned, just all over the place) and it's so obvious because it's RED
5. The fonts are too tiny, both the mobile and PC views. Looks crappy on IPhone
6. The text seems to have no "word wrap" very tiring to keep strolling endlessly.
7. I won't comment about the color shade ( people already said enough)
8. Preview button?
9: The "topic title" above each post/reply is too visible, it could be due to the small size of the other fonts or the unnecessary deep blue color. It's visible and distracting, takes focus
Away from the comments. Keep things simple and understated.

10. New features like "friend" "new quote button" and "like" are great. But still.

I know it's hard to give up something you've spent months creating, but he needs to listen to his more dedicated (read addicted users. This is business.

Seun can solve this problem by running both versions while working to perfect NL2. The choice is his. Else he'll just cure many people's NL addiction..

Agidi Geek, This man go just lose members.

What about providing NL1 as an option like he's been doing with NL2 for the past few weeks? Like I advised on the other thread, People can gradually ditch the old one at their own pace. Just like Yahoo did with their Classic Vs New.

Finally, Listen to your users, without them, all your codes are meaningless.

Ok. Seen. Where is the link to the Old Version?

I love my creeks though.

Abeg where can somebody buy Niger Delta citizenship?

Or visa?

I want to leave Nigeria for Obodo Niger Delta

Nigerians on the rampage!

View 77 comments | Comment on this story
By: JohanLombard
2012-03-09 15:28


Following the storm in a teacup reaction of the Nigerian government regarding the deportation of numerous Nigerians in Johannesburg, news24 and other websites were flooded with comments from South Africans and Nigerians, defending the position of their countries.

In the meantime, the South Africans have apologised for their behaviour and under normal circumstances, the story should now be left to die. However it seems that the Nigerian government has smelled blood, and various of their news sites are proudly proclaiming a victory over South Africa.

The comments section of amongst others the Vanguard news in Nigeria, is unbelievably arrogant and aggressive towards South Africans. Most people claim that they “saved South Africa from slavery”, and that should ultimately give them a free pass into the country without harassment. Unfortunately  it seems to be the attitude of their government as well. Furthermore they state that most South Africans are infected with HIV, so we should in fact get HIV certificates to enter Nigeria. They also claim that our business interests in Nigeria should be stopped and companies such as MTN and DSTV should close their doors. Nigeria is portrayed as the giant of Africa, while South Africa is diminished to a country of HIV infected people who bow down to their white masters. Then the comments about us being Xenophobic and intolerant has also been actively promoted.  More sinister motives are quoted, and it seems that there are some diplomatic issues boiling under the surface, such as power struggles within the African Union.

I prefer positive dialogue to mudslinging. However, I need to elaborate on some of these sweeping statements our brothers in Nigeria are making, and I sincerely hope that I can point out the logical flaws in many of their views. I hope that they can see this as not an insult to their country, but rather a basis to start looking at their own issues, and hopefully they will be able to understand the situation from the South African perspective.

Drugs, prostitution and kidnapping is rife and Nigerians in South Africa operate many syndicates. No South African in their right mind will blame all Nigerians for this behaviour, but unfortunately, most of us has had run ins with these individuals. This has led to police crack downs and a general mistrust of Nigerians living in South Africa. This is the cause for the suspicious attitude towards Nigerians in our country.

Secondly, I am not diminishing the role that Nigeria played to assist in the democratic election process of South Africa. The democratic election process was mainly developed through decades of talks and internal protests that came from within South Africa. The people who suffered the most under apartheid, was ultimately the ones that sacrificed their lives in order to establish a peaceful nonracial government. For the Nigerians to claim that they were the victors in this battle, without spilling one drop of blood is not only ignorant, but extremely arrogant. The struggle was won from within.

Race issues will not be understood by Nigerians, as much as we don't understand issues between Christians and Muslims in their country. Our constitution views all our citizens as equal, being white, black or Indian. This is the way we operate. We are all Africans in South Africa, and to mention that blacks bow down to whites, and that only whites are active in the economy is false information. It is a complex situation at times, and we have so much to overcome, but we are working amongst ourselves to better the lives of the underprivileged in the way that we see fit.

In terms of trade partners and the role of Nigeria on the South African economy. There has been direct threats that Nigeria will investigate the role South African companies play in Nigeria. They specifically mention MTN and DSTV. We have many multinational companies operating on our shores, and elsewhere in the world. We are not only about DSTV and MTN, so I am sure our economy can survive even should the Nigerians be so petty to relook their position.

I still maintain this is a storm in a teacup and our actions were not malicious. You must respect the rule of law if you travel abroad. We are yellow fever free, and we would not like to introduce the virus into our country again. I myself have a yellow fever card. It is one injection, once in your life. I use it to travel all over Africa. You need this if you travel to Kenya, Tanzania etc. The fact that I am a fellow African does not give me free entry into any other African state. Easy as that!

And the comments about HIV and Aids are unfair and unjust. Our average life expectancy is very low at an average of 51.6, but Nigeria (without HIV) is even lower at 50.6. So both countries have to work on Health issues.

Hope we can understand and learn to respect each other.


http://m.news24.com/news24/MyNews24/Nigerians-on-the-rampage-20120309

^^^

Good. I wish you success bro.

Can you provide more insight on Yoruba/Ifa's concept of Afterlife or Heaven?

Ezeuche, my brother. Where have you been?