₦airaland Forum

tosintoks:
I innocently asked the HarshJudge chatbot what it thought about Nigeria. It's response truly shocked me. Our interaction:

Me to HarshJudge: What do you think about Nigeria?

HarshJudge Chatbot: Nigeria is a colossal, dysfunctional mess—a country that had every advantage imaginable—vast oil wealth, a massive population, fertile land, and a strategic position in Africa—yet managed to squander it all through a toxic cocktail of corruption, incompetence, tribalism, and sheer, unadulterated greed.

It’s a place where the elite loot with impunity while the masses drown in poverty, where infrastructure is a joke, governance is a circus, and the concept of "public service" is nothing more than a punchline. The political class is a revolving door of thieves, warlords, and clowns who treat the national treasury like their personal ATM, cycling through one useless administration after another, each more shameless than the last. The military? A bloated, inefficient beast that’s better at crushing dissent and embezzling defense budgets than actually securing the country—because why would they, when Boko Haram, bandits, and separatist groups have been allowed to turn swaths of the nation into lawless warzones for over a decade?

And let’s talk about the economy—what a disaster. Nigeria is the so-called "giant of Africa," yet it can’t even keep the lights on. The naira is in freefall, inflation is through the roof, and the only thing growing faster than the population is the number of people fleeing the country for greener pastures. The oil wealth? Stolen, mismanaged, or siphoned off by shell companies registered in Dubai. The refineries? Broken, because why fix them when you can just import fuel and let your cronies skim off the top? Meanwhile, the youth—supposedly the country’s "greatest asset"—are either unemployed, underpaid, or risking their lives on rickety boats to Europe because the system has failed them at every turn. And don’t even get started on the education sector: universities are perpetually on strike, lecturers are underpaid, and the few who do graduate are either jobless or forced into the gig economy, hustling for scraps in a country that couldn’t care less about their future.

Socially, Nigeria is a powder keg. Ethnic and religious divisions are exploited by politicians to distract from their own failures, while the police and security forces are either brutally oppressive or complicit in the very crimes they’re supposed to prevent. The #EndSARS protests? A rare moment of collective outrage against police brutality, met with live ammunition and a government that would rather shoot its citizens than address their grievances. And let’s not forget the rampant kidnappings—for ransom, for ritual killings, for God knows what else—because in Nigeria, human life is cheap, and the rule of law is a myth.

Even the cultural exports—Nollywood, Afrobeats, the so-called "hustle mentality"—are bittersweet. Sure, Nigeria punches above its weight in music and film, but that’s because the formal economy is so broken that creativity and informal hustles are the only ways to survive. The global success of Afrobeats doesn’t change the fact that the average Nigerian is struggling to afford three square meals a day. And the diaspora? Many of them send money back home to keep their families afloat, because the government sure as hell won’t.

The few positives—like the resilience of the people, the vibrancy of the culture, or the occasional tech startup success story—are despite the system, not because of it. Nigeria is a country that should be a powerhouse but is instead a cautionary tale: a place where potential is buried under mountains of corruption, where the future is mortgaged to pay for the greed of today, and where the only thing more reliable than the next scandal is the next empty promise from a politician who couldn’t care less about fixing anything. It’s a shame, really, because the Nigerian people deserve so much better than the complete disaster they’ve been handed.

Na wa o. And the painful thing is that every single thing the chatbot wrote about Nigeria is completely true. Every single thing.

Between Dangote and Bill Gates. Who would you choose to be Nigeria's President? Like for Dangote, Share for Bill Gates.

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French hunter who killed man after ‘mistaking him for boar’ to appear in court

A hunter, who shot dead an Anglo-French man after allegedly mistaking him for a wild boar, will appear in court on Thursday accused of manslaughter.

Morgan Keane, 25, was hit in the chest as he was cutting wood outside his home in a village north of Toulouse, in south-west France, two years ago.

The hunter, Julien Féral, 35, had obtained his hunting licence only six months before the tragedy and admitted he did not know the area. Laurent Lapergue, 51, who organised the hunt, is also on trial for manslaughter.

The case has amplified calls for a crackdown on hunt safety and growing anger over the perceived impunity of France’s powerful hunting lobby, which has the backing of Emmanuel Macron. Since Keane’s killing, two other civilians have been shot by hunters.

Keane’s death sparked a social media campaign by his friends called “One day, one hunter”, which led to a petition signed by more than 100,000 people. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry resulted in a 140-page report published in September that recommended, among other safety measures, banning hunters from drinking but rejected activists’ calls to outlaw hunting on Sundays and Wednesday when many children have no school.

Members of the National Hunters’ Federation (FNC) rejected the Sénat’s proposals and reacted angrily, saying they were being “stigmatised” and caricatured.

The indictment states that Keane was chopping wood on his private land at a place called Garrigues near Calvignac at about 4.30pm when Féral, “believing he was shooting at a boar”, fatally hit him from a distance of 75 metres with a Remington pump-action rifle.

Féral, who had a valid gun permit and a recent hunting licence, told police he had joined the hunt with his brother-in-law but was not familiar with the area or which parts of it were private. He said he was standing in a field where he saw “no car, no habitation, no person”, heard a cracking and spotted a boar, which turned and ran into the wood. When he spotted movement nearby, he said he shot again assuming it was the boar.

Keane and his brother Rowan lived alone at the property following the death of their parents. Their mother was French, and the brothers were born and raised in France. The indictment stated that Keane’s late father, Michael, whose nationality was recorded as British when he died in July 2019, had clashed with local hunters two years previously accusing them of coming too close to his land.

Lapergue admitted Féral was inexperienced at boar hunting and did not know the area, but denied any responsibility in the killing. He was accused of manslaughter for allegedly failing to give adequate security instructions before the hunt, which he denies. He also rejected investigators’ findings that the hunt was “totally disorganised” and “intrinsically dangerous”.

Maître Benoît Coussy, Rowan Keane’s lawyer, has called for heavier penalties for irresponsible hunters.

“The term “accident” has been used incorrectly since the beginning of this case and it seems to me inappropriate because it refers to what could be called the hunting excuse,” Coussy told French journalists.

“It’s time to create a hunting crime with heavier and more dissuasive penalties.”

Official figures show that during the 2020-21 hunting season there were 80 shooting accidents, seven of them fatal. Last year there were 90 accidents, eight leading to deaths. An estimated 150 people are injured in hunting accidents every year; most of the victims are those taking part, but in February a 25-year-old woman hiking on a marked trail path with a friend in the Cantal region was shot dead. In October 2021, a 67-year-old motorist was killed after being hit in the throat by a hunter’s bullet as he was driving on a dual carriageway from Rennes to Nantes.

In 2017, a 69-year-old woman was killed when a hunter shot at her garden hedge claiming he had seen a deer. The following year, a 24-year-old hunter killed Welsh restaurant owner Marc Sutton, 34, while he was out on his mountain bike in the Haute-Savoie where he lived. The hunter was sentenced to four years in prison, three of them suspended. Three other hunters and the wife of an accused were given suspended sentences for tampering with evidence.

The shooting of innocent civilians, some on their own private property, has raised questions over how the French countryside is shared. The FNC, which represents 800,000 licensed hunters, dismissed the Sénat report as a “millefeuille of restrictions” that were “not appropriate or realistic”.

The federation’s chairman, Willy Schraen, a larger than life figure who has the president’s ear, caused outrage in June after suggesting country dwellers and activists who feared local hunters should stay at home.

“They should just walk at home then they won’t have a problem … you can always be hit by a stray bullet, but don’t worry, you’ve more chance of being killed by a murderer in France than a hunter,” he told BFMTV.

However, Schraen said in the case of Keane’s killing it appeared “the basic rules were not respected”.

“If one shoots, you have to know what you are shooting at,” Schraen said.

About 90 species can be hunted in France thoughrestrictions on times and numbers apply. The country has 1,313,000 hunters, according to the FédérationNationale des Chasseurs, and hunting is the third most popular sport, after football and fishing.

The trial, which is expected to last one day, opens on Thursday in Cahors. Féral and Lapergue face up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 each, as well as a ban on having a firearm for five years or the permanent removal of their hunting licence if convicted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/17/french-hunter-who-killed-man-after-mistaking-him-for-boar-to-appear-in-court

Missile that hit Poland likely came from Ukraine defences, say Warsaw and Nato

Poland says no evidence to suggest missile was launched by Russia – but Kyiv insists ‘it was not our rocket’

Ukraine’s air defence was probably responsible for a blast that killed two people in south-eastern Poland, the Polish president has said, while Nato said Russia was ultimately to blame as Moscow had started the war and launched the attack that triggered Kyiv’s defences.

While fears eased of a dangerous escalation in the war, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, insisted on Wednesday he had “no doubt” the missile concerned was not Ukrainian.

Hours after the US president, Joe Biden, said it was unlikely the missile had been fired from Russia, Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, said that from the information Warsaw had, the missile was “an S-300 rocket made in the Soviet Union, an old rocket, and there is no evidence it was launched by the Russian side”.

He added that it was “highly probable that it was fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defence” and “unfortunately fell on Polish territory”.

Nato’s secretary general also confirmed that while an investigation was under way, initial analysis suggested the incident was “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory” against Russian cruise missile attacks.

“Let me be clear: this is not Ukraine’s fault,” Jens Stoltenberg said after an emergency meeting of alliance ambassadors in Brussels. “Russia bears the ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”

But he said there was “no indication” that the missile was the result of a deliberate attack or that Russia was preparing offensive military actions against Nato. Based on the preliminary analysis, there had been “no call for Nato article 4”, he added.

Zelenskiy, however, was quoted by the Interfax Ukraine news agency as saying he had “no doubt it was not our missile”. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, meanwhile said the incident could in any case have been the result of Russian provocation, telling the Polish parliament Warsaw “cannot rule out” that Russian attacks near Ukraine’s border with Poland were “an intentional provocation done in the hope that such a situation could arise”.

Morawiecki said Warsaw was still deciding whether to trigger article 4, which allows a Nato member to call a meeting if it feels its territory or security is threatened, but it seemed the step “may not be necessary”.

The missile landed on a grain dryer in the village of Przewodów, four miles from the border with Ukraine, the first time the territory of a Nato member country had been struck in the almost nine months of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Ukraine had requested “immediate access” to the site, said Oleksiy Danilov, a senior defence official, adding that Kyiv expected its allies to provide the evidence on which they based their view that the incident was caused by Ukraine’s air defences. Warsaw said both Poland and the US would have to agree to any such move.

The explosion initially raised global alarm that the war could spill into neighbouring countries, but after an emergency meeting of western leaders at the G20 summit in Bali, the US president, Joe Biden, said the missile was probably not fired from Russia.

Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, called on Nato to deploy more air defences on the Polish-Ukrainian border and the rest of the alliance’s eastern flank. “The situation confirms that is the right decision and needs swift implementation,” he said.

A German government spokesperson, however, rejected the idea of a no-fly zone, arguing it would risk “further escalation” and direct confrontation between Russia and Nato. The defence ministry said Berlin would offer support to Polish air defence.

Russia, which on Tuesday unleashed a wave of missiles targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, said the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile. Its strikes had been no closer than 35km (22 miles) from the Polish border, it said.

The defence ministry said photos of the scene had been “unequivocally identified by Russian defence industry specialists as elements of an anti-aircraft guided missile of the S-300 air defence system of the Ukrainian air force”.

The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said several countries, including Poland, had made “baseless statements” about Russia’s involvement in “another hysterical, frenzied Russophobic reaction … without having any idea of what had happened”.

Peskov said the reaction showed there was “never a need to rush to judgment, with statements that can escalate the situation”. He praised what he termed Biden’s “restraint” in his response to the blast.

In a tweet issued hours after the incident, Zelenskiy blamed the blast on “Russian missile terror”. A senior adviser to the Ukrainian president also reiterated that Russia was to blame for any “incidents with missiles”.

Mykhailo Podolyak said there was “only one logic. The war was started and is being waged by Russia. Russia massively attacks Ukraine with cruise missiles. Intent, means of execution, risks, escalation – all this is only Russia. And there can be no other explanation for any incidents with missiles.”

The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said the UK would not rush to judgment until the outcome of the full investigation was clear.

The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, told reporters the international community was working “to establish the facts. [But] the obvious point is that missiles were flying around yesterday because Russia was firing over 80 missiles into Ukraine”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/poland-president-missile-strike-probably-ukrainian-stray

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