₦airaland Forum

(Caution)
Better practice the eating of snails and grass cutters before visiting Ghana. If you do not mind these as delicacies, then you will enjoy your stay in the land of Osyagefo. Beautiful people, great Fanti ladies. If you can make it to Tamale and Paga, you will be genuinely surprised to actually ride real crocodiles.

@JeSoul
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hehe okay I hate Cambridgers except for Naliakar   

I have already bought the ring. I am waiting for a date now. may be at The Charles. Will it work?

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My 2 year stint in cambridge was very forgettable jare . Why are you cambridge residents/politicians always trying to dictate to the rest of us how we should live, what we can eat, what we can say . . . etc?

Simple. Because  Cambridgers are the top feeders of world  intellectual cadres. Why then do you think it is called the peoples republic?

@jesoul
Lol got that right. I cannot stand Cambridgers. Infact I can tell you the west of Boston people are not so liberal and have a certain measure of disdain towards them.


So you hate me now JeSoul. I see. Cambridgers are some of the finest people you will ever see and interact with.

@Topic

This thread should have read: Mugabe calls himself an idiot. And he is. Anyone's got a problem with that?

Nice thread indeed. It would also be informative to have knowledge of Nigerian High Commissions, Embassies and consulates abroad, wherever they may be. It will be fair to begin with the Nigerian High Commission in Africa's greatest country, Ghana.

@Mwanamwiwa,

Apenji mwanamwiwa. Niambie ni bedrooms ngapi in each of those Eagle Plains Estate appartments,Mombasa road. Na ni pesa ngapi (kadiri) for unit moja. Niambie otherwose I will stay put Enugu. OK?

@ Tayo-D

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Charges can be dropped for many reasons. Political expediency sometimes trumps following the law to the letter. Why else would the Officer insist he will not apologise?  Why would the Police Union give him their unconditional support despite antagonism from the Governor and the President? And if we should continue with your line of logic, why isn't the Prof pressing charges agains the Officer? Why back down if you feel your rights have been trampled upon?
,
Just as I said earlier, you obviously can't reason outside a box.  No wonder you are either compartmentalising people or force-fitting everyone into a character.  Such actions may help a lazy mind get through life, but they will sure lead him astray most times.
Now you wanna talk about race relations in America. Here is probably a non-US resident lecturing those of us who live through the experience everyday. Oh the folly of the self-righteous



Tayo, ! Tayo, ! Tayo, !

The unquestionable merit in your rejoinders is that you at least make an effort to explain your positions even if such positions be found to be dismally narrow and logically unadventurous. You cannot claim to be living through the daily dosage of racism as a US resident and yet you remain completely oblivious of the complex ways by which it is embedded in institutions and systems.  It is contradictory to affirm the strictures of the law in respect of the Cambridge incident while summoning your felt knowledge of the general racist climate within which this law operates. In the execution of the law, there is always a grey area where actions are left to the discretionary powers of the executioner, in this case the cop. The actions taken within this grey area is what determines the difference between a good cop and a bad one. The good cop will do the right thing. He will not do things right. In the Gates case, the cop strove to do things right and this is what earns him the attributions of stupidity.

@ Tayo-D

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By Obama's admission, he did not know all the facts and yet jumped to a conclusion. Never mind that he obviously stated he was biased because one of the partis was his frined. What do you call jumping to a conclusion without facts? Wisdom?!

Potus was very clear, both sides could have done with a little moderation. But he also ponted, out after listening to all the facts on the matter, that the burden of stupidity is for the police to prove. If Gates acted criminally, the case should be alive. And it is not.

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It's been a loong time I had such a good laugh. Tell me, what have you achieved in your life that compares to what Obama has achieved? Who the heck are you? While Obama is gifted in his field, I am also in mine. There are a thousand things he can do that I can't do, and there a a thousand things I can do that he can't do. So should he feel inadequate? And could your snese of inadequacy be fueling your accusation at others of inadequacy?

Laughing to keep from crying or cringing that your parvenu antics can be called out. Who the heck I am? I am sure you don’t really wanna know.

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How do birther's reason and talk? Tell me, how many birthers' biographies have you studied to know how they reaon and talk? have you ever heard my voice to even know how I talk? Oh I forget, you have the unique gift to arrive at wise conclusions even when you do not have all the facts.

Of course I know how they talk. I would not have identified you as one if I did not. But one can tell clearly when someone’s perlance reveals the commonality of their mental specimen with Limbaugh’s or Ann Coulter’s or pastor manning etc. Who wouldn’t recognize such progeny my dear.

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He was not arrested in his house.

You are right here. He was spirited out of his house to be arrested on his pouch

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Have you ever heard of verbal assault and accosting a Police Officer? Have you ever heard of disorderly conduct.

The case should be alive then. What police officers arrests a criminal then cancels the charges. Are we talking dereliction of duty here. Whose perspective on the matter between gates and the police is vindicated by the hurried, if not embarrassing halt to the case?.

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You are welcome to ignore my responses. Afterall, there is no way I can comprehend the things written by someone who does not rely on facts to reach a conclusion.

Your arguments remind a lot about one of Soyinka’s characters “Salubi” Omo agbepo. The pity of it tayo-D, you are such a good foil and I like that.

If your take of the Gates versus police saga is informed by some knowledge of race relations in America, you will see the folly of being the massa's mouthpiece.

@ tayo-d

Since when did the President begin to invite foolish people for a beer at the WH?


You are implicating the president in what you deem to be an unprecedented folly. Really?? Nearly all your postings on POTUS betray a deep sense of inadequacy in the face of his achievements. Why do your ideas betray a profound sense thoroughly emasculated pride? Are you a "birther" tayo-D? You sure reason and talk like one? What rights did dear old prof have in his house? Since when did shouting at a police officer constitute a crime?

These are rhetorical questions. Just me wondering aloud. No response needed Tayo-D.

@Otele

Ikomi my dear, I'm sure by now u must have heard the president backpedalling on his statement. The Cambridge police standing by thier man, the black officer who witnessed the encounter indicating that mr gates was unnecessarily belligerent. Mr gates' lawyer ruling out legal action. Use ya brain to add up these facts.   About the officer's lack of humility , the guy is white, you may call me racist but I don't expect the best of character from a white officer when a black man is involved. That's what I expected gates to know.


TRUE and it seems both Crowley and Gates are inching slowly toward a mutually acceptable closure on this matter over a beer.

http://www.theroot.com/views/gates-says-yes-beer-crowley


Gates Says 'Yes' To Beer With Crowley
In a statement to The Root, the Harvard professor says he would meet with the cop who arrested him, as President Obama has suggested.

   
Statement from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"It was very kind of the President to phone me today.  Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.

And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS.   I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative.  I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.

After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying.  Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor in chief of The Root.

God, God!! I love Becomerich. You ramble a lot of sense maan!! Yes Hillary should know the wrath of an angry Capo who is also a "noble" prize winner for his capo ways-and his hirelings too. Gosh!!!

But Nigerians  should be happy now. Naija go with Ghana for draw: ONE ALL.

@ IGWE-USA
I hope that the message of this humble scholar would trickle down into the auditory canals of all these Yoruba
imbeciles spewing the whole thread with their tribal sentiments.

You go call Akinwade Oluwole humble? you don't know the man. He is arrogance itself academically and socially. Positive thing is he puts it to good use, like he is doing.

@tpia
btw, what I've noticed is you're the one trying to appear oversmart and labelling others while hiding your own identity.

You have a choice of giving yourself a stereotype or staying out of the game. So far you don't seem to be interested in the latter option.

How studious of you tpia. I am just part of the swarming tide of naija opinions' eb and flow. In a collective forum such as this one, yone assumes a singular identity, but only within the collective (very much like in jazz music). My comments are meaningful only when pitted against/alongside others. It is in that spirit that my smartness nourishes and is nourished by everyone else's.

Here is an offer. Post your picture here first and I will invite you to a meal of ngwo-ngwo and reveal myself to you. Deal?

Now back to the topic

@ JeSoul
Infact I am switching squarely to the side of the Police.
Gates has shown over the past few days that he is unreasonable and straight up looney. I bet my car his actions probably provoked the cop to arrest him. They showed an interview of the cop last night on local tv, he said he will not apologize - good for him jare.

And for those who don't accept Harvard is overrated - you need to look no further than the 'distinguished' Professor Gates recent comments and actions for evidence of that fact.


For a good measure a case can indeed be made that gates displayed rash judgment and chose a presumption of police racism over the the circumstances that obtained. And we will never know what would have happened had the cop been black. Whether or not gates reaction would have been different.

Granted what I have just said, there is also the question why in such a small place like Harvard square, and Gates visibility as a scholar at Cambridge, the whole of the US even the world. that the police establishment had no idea who he actually was. this is not to begrudge police action but just to ask why the vigilance with which they run up one's details in seconds when stopped for traffic violations could not be deployed when burglary was reported at that address. Like I asked in an earlier post, would cops at Abeokuta mistake Soyinka for a burglar?

When you disparage Harvard as an institution, it means you have very little knowledge of the legacy of that institution. So you think it compares favorably with Ugbawka's Renaissance University or Umaru Musa Yar'adu University. No jokes abeg. Give Harvard its due recognition

@ Tpia

poster

no man is an island.

where are you from btw.



I thought the "where do you come from" game  was an Aloy-Emeka and Becomerich Hobi. Isn't it enough that I am a fellow  Naija abe. Or you are waiting to slot me into the Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa  set stereotypes.

Anyway, tell me how much of Enugu you know first.  What was that you said about the Nnamdi topic being an island?


@No21

we will respond when you speak english

OK I am sorry I used my native tongue initially. You will pardon my clumsiness. Here it is in English.

The annals of Nigerian history have barely interrogated Nnamdi Azikiwe's rationale of convenient self exile when Igbo nationalist aficionados like Nzeogwu and Ironsi struck and effectively railroaded the trajectory of Nigerian leadership toward the self destructive path of the ogre we now live with.And I am asking if there is an explanation out there for such reckless abdication.

@Obiem
When Nzeogwu and co struck in 1966, Zik happened to be away in the United states and Balewa was killed. So to say that Azikiwe abdicated his position is not entirely true.


Was it no so convenient that he should travel first to Europe then to the Caribbean just when Nzeogwo struck and later on Ojukwu. Isn't emerging that he may have been aware of the events before traveling. Assuming he was in Nigeria. is there a likelihood he would have suffered the same fate Tafawa Balewa suffered.

Perhaps one thing I have never quite understood is why Nnamdi Azikiwe abdicated his leadership of Nigeria in 1965-66. I consider this to be the seminal point of the sad trajectory that Nigerian leadership has evolved into. Why did he do it?

@Mwanamwiwa

We have universities and great ones at that,this is not the place since most of them are outside Nairobi,start a Kenya country thread and I will post them,

Just post the ones in Nairobi and environs and I hear there are a few. At least they are part of the city you are showing off.

@Mwanamwiwa

Does Nairobi Kenya have any universities? I would love to see their pictures. You see, naija leads in education and in educational institutions. That is why Naija produces unmatched brainpower in Africa. Show me what your universities look like and my comments henceforth about Nairobi and overrated Kenya will be salutary.

@Osisi
Chiogo do they still have the Filene's basement at downtown crossing?
I practically lived in that place

Now I know why When Filenes closed down and Macys took over, the cops had a hard time sending some guy off the basement who claimed some square foot space. I did not know it was Chiogo otherwise I would have helped a fellow Naija abeg. The guy has moved to Braintree area, SO I hear.

@ Osisi
I left the area a while back and still miss it
Tufts is a great school, ranked 28 in the US colleges.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search/page+2
The place is expensive and the pay is not that great compared with cost, that's the main reason we left.
If she's single,with no kids,sharing a house or an apartment with a bunch of other students will be her best option.
I can recommend a good church though.
My old church.


I guess she also want to consider relatively cheaper suburbs such as Watertown, Newton or Waltham. Communication in Boston are is pretty good so questions of proximity to Tufts should not worry her that much. the beauty of Boston is the "overcon-centration" of student population that is always transient. This means that greater possibility for shared experiences and potential to team up like you suggest. Another beauty of being in the Boston area is the near ease with which one can access most of the libraries in the famed and not so famed institutions that are awash in the city. Good luck.

@ Volina
i doubt if ur from enugu, r u sure ur nt .5 kenyanaija?


Look at this one oo. You now want to make me Kenyan. You see how the Nigerian charm never wears off that easily. You pretend to hate them like mwanamwiwa does but deep deep you say I wish. When are you coming to Enugu we share Egusi soup together? Kenyan women!!! Nah. They need polishing.

This just came out. Not which college is best, But which one guarantees best remuneration thereafter in the US



http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp

Charges dropped after all the ruckus. So why was he arrested in the first place?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/21/henry-louis-gates-jr-arre_n_242010.html

BOSTON — Prosecutors dropped a disorderly conduct charge Tuesday against prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested at his home near Harvard University after a report of a break-in.

The city of Cambridge issued a statement saying the arrest "was regrettable and unfortunate" and police and Gates agreed that dropping the charge was a just resolution.

"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department," the statement said.

Supporters say Gates – the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research – was the victim of racial profiling.

Officers responded to the home Gates rents from Harvard after a woman reported seeing two black men trying to force open the front door. Gates' lawyer, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, said the professor had returned from a trip overseas, found his front-door jammed and had to force it open.

Police said the 58-year-old Gates was arrested after he yelled at an officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after the officer demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home.

Gates declined immediate comment Tuesday, and Ogletree did not immediately return a request to comment on the charge being dropped.

It is analogous to mistaking Wole Soyinka for a Bugler at Abeoukuta and arresting him for shouting in his house.

there some truth in what JeSoul says about not just Boston but almost the whole of New England. The notion that New England is liberal, relatively better educated and accommodating of differences and diversity may be true only if one ignores the more institutional and systemic subtext of attitudes and behavior that may not be different from those one would get in Mississippi for Instance. the difference being that at least in the south, they will be open about it. The case of gates is audible because of who he is? How about many nondescript blacks who reside in such areas and lack the wherewithal in fame and education to attract such attention.

@ JeSoul[/co lor[color=#000099]]
Harvard is overrated anyways

REALLY?

And the police themselves if they are from Cambridge should at least have had an idea who Gates was. The question is, would the neighbor have called the police if the two alleged buglers were white?

@ Volina
@naliakar, kwani ulionyeshwa dust hapa, pole. Chinedu is not as foolish as akinyi. N akinyi will loose the divorce case terribly. u know akinyi anasema chinedu is a wife beater n that why she want divorce, bt chinedu is playin the beaten man.so how will akinyi proof that when the whole world watched akinyi beat him in public. I got alot of admiration for tony. [color=#000099][/color]


Ehe, tena na dada mmoja anaitwa Njeri Anyango. Alinionyesha vituko kushinda za Akinyi. But tell Mwanamwiwa what you have just said about Akinyi and Chinedu.

@Mwanamwiwa

Chinedu is a drug dealer,not an investor, infact he is seeking asylum and coz he has deep pockets to pay the police,naliakar,who told you we want you in Kenya?Keep ur proud ass in Enugu and take Chinedu the refugee with you, Obudu ranch is a joke and I know u cant name any other, compare it to Kenyas tourism Industry


So Nigerian investors in Kenya are drug dealers eh? When he was building his hotels in Nairobi, why didn't Kenyan authorities refuse his so called "drug money" and stop his investments?. Aren't you falling into the stereotypical inferiority complex that most Africans feel when confronted by anything Nigerian? What happened to African brotherhood/sisterhood if I may ask? Is not the reason you flood Nigerian site with Kenyan images so that we are inspired to visit your country?

They don't even recognize him at Cambridge. A case of racial profiling

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html


Harvard professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home
July 20, 2009 05:55 PM Email| Comments (1229)| Text size – +

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

gates072009.jpg
Gates

Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to a police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had "no idea who he was messing with,'' the report said.

Gates told the officer that he was being targeted because "I'm a black man in America.''

* Gallery Who is Henry Louis Gates, Jr.?
* 3/17/04 Big man off campus
* 11/12/06 Q&A with Gates

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at the investigating officer repeatedly inside the residence then followed the officer outside, where Gates continued to upbraid him. "It was at that time that I informed Professor Gates that he was under arrest,'' the officer wrote in the report.

Gates, 58, declined to comment today when reached by phone.

The arrest of such a prominent scholar under what some described as dubious circumstances shook some members of the black Harvard community.

“He and I both raised the question of if he had been a white professor, whether this kind of thing would have happened to him, that they arrested him without any corroborating evidence,” said S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor who spoke with Gates about the incident Friday. “I am deeply concerned about the way he was treated, and called him to express my deepest sadness and sympathy.”

Counter, who had called Gates from the Nobel Institute in Sweden, where Counter is on sabbatical, said that Gates was “shaken” and “horrified” by his arrest.

Counter has faced a similar situation himself. The well-known neuroscience professor, who is also black, was stopped by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect as he crossed Harvard Yard. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.

That incident was among several that ignited criticism from black students and faculty, highlighting the prejudices that many black students say they continue to face at Harvard.

“This is very disturbing that this could happen to anyone, and not just to a person of such distinction,” Counter said. “He was just shocked that this had happened, at 12:44 in the afternoon, in broad daylight. It brings up the question of whether black males are being targeted by Cambridge police for harassment.”

Cambridge police would not comment on the arrest, citing an investigation into the incident by Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. A spokesman for Leone said Gates is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 26 and said the office could not provide details on the arrest until that time.

Gates is being represented by Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, who has taken on previous cases with racial implications.

@ Becomerich
sun is becoming a fraud newspaper. no other paper reported it. sun is the propaganda machine of the igbos

Hey man!! What did the Igbos do to you? Be serious in your answer for once.