₦airaland Forum

ceo4eva: Despite leaving Nigeria early for the funeral of late South African leader, Nelson Mandela, President Goodluck Jonathan has been snubbed by the South African authorities at the State Memorial Service of the anti-apartheid leader.

An official release of programmes during the memorial service shows that the Nigerian president was missing on the list of world leaders billed to give tributes. The world leaders who will be giving tributes are, United State President, Barack Obama; President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil; Vice-President Li Yuanchao of China; President Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia; President Pranab Mukherjee of India; and President Raúl Castro Ruz of Cuba.

Other leaders billed to give tributes are the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon; and the African Union Commission Chair, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

Though Mr. Jonathan is not the only head of state that would not give tribute- there are about 90 heads of state attending the funeral, the apparent snub handed Mr. Jonathan also appears to rubbish the enormous effort played by Nigeria to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa at a time when Western governments were pussyfooting to pressure the apartheid government to renounce its policy of segregation and its brutal abuses against the black majority. Some Western governments including the U.S. had even designated the ruling Africa National Congress (ANC) as a terrorist organisation, and Mandela a terrorist.

This point was also highlighted by the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday in a chat with journalists.
“There are more questions to answer. When you look at the part of the world where ovation is now the loudest, it was the part of the world the pain was the most vicious. In a very cruel irony, history is being revised.

“The people, who collaborated with the government that enthroned apartheid at that time, are the people that are paying the biggest tributes now. But I ask myself: is this not the time for deep reflection? I doubt if any African country expended as much time, as much money and as much commitment as the Nigerian Government.

“I was a teenager then in 1976 when anti-apartheid campaign really gained resurgence in every home in this country. Nigeria paid a huge price for what South Africa has become today. I remember the anti-apartheid campaign was at the core of Nigerian foreign policy.

“Apart from scholarship given to South Africans, I remember President Yar’Adua met Thabo Mbeki in South Africa and he was telling me about their relationship, which he said was dated to when Mbeki used to come to Zaria for student exchange programme. I remember we did not go for Commonwealth Games because of South Africa. I remember we took drastic measures against the foreign collaborators of apartheid regime and nationalised assets.”

However, Lagos-based lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, says Nigerian politicians are to be blame for the pedestrian level the country presently occupies in the international community. He says the complete atrophy of the respect the country was accorded in global affairs was as a result of years of misrule and corruption by the country’s politicians.

“Nigeria has lost its social, political and economic glory domestically and that glory that is lost cannot be recovered at Mandela’s funeral,” he said.

“While Nigeria officialdom maybe in a state of discomfiture by the non-recognition of Nigeria in the protocol of the funeral, the point is that it is not what Nigeria did for South Africa or for Angola or for any of the frontline states like Namibia that Nigeria will be remembered. It not the support Nigeria gave to the ANC… that Nigeria will be recognised by, it is what Nigeria has done for itself and what Nigeria has not done for itself. And we’ve done a lot against ourselves. Look at our country; our country is broken in many respects and no you’re talking about xenophobia, what led to it? Nigerian young people go overseas and become criminals the way we are criminals in our own country.

People leave the shore of Nigeria to be criminals outside our shores. Right from the time they leave Nigeria they’re going overseas to be criminals. We are exporting blue-collar crimes and Yahoo Yahoo to all sorts of countries, to Malaysia and are we blaming those countries for our own woes?
“How you will be regarded abroad is determined by how you’re regarded at home. Now how is the Nigeria state regarded by Nigerians? The Nigerian state is regarded by Nigerian as an uncaring state, as a heartless state, as a state that has no love for its people, as a state that has abandoned its people. So how has the Nigerian state treated its own people before we start taking offence at how the Nigerian state is treated by another country?

“Those who may be belly-aching about not being giving recognition by the organisers of the funeral of Mandela should know that while they may not be regarded, the South African people regard Nigeria. Go and read all the accounts, the role that is played by Nigerians is recognised in all those imperishable works and this cannot be obliterated by this treatment that is accorded to Nigerian officials that we at home have contempt for.

If we are disgraced outside, that disgrace didn’t come from outside that disgrace come from within because we have disgraced and debased ourselves. Do you expect anybody to take you seriously when what your rulers are known for is taking your money and cashing them away? In fact it s better they are humiliated outside so that they can come back home and be serious. If bad people are accorded all the respect and dignity that good people should be accorded how do you think they will change.”

http://premiumtimesng.com/news/151219-jonathan-snubbed-mandelas-memorial.html

uspry1: @All new members who have difficult finding a button to create a new topic.

How to create a new topic:

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ebucha: your "source" ie the link you gave to buttress your jargon is a 2010 post here on Nairaland with out a source. You bookmarked it all this years to justify and conceal the barbaric acts of your brothers. You obviously reason in millimeters( slow and ..). Infact you reason like the South African you are.

dasparrow: And is his visit going to create employment for all the black South African youths who are so agitated by their present predicament that they choose to take out their frustrations on the foreigners living in their midst?

@Post

Obama is in Africa to promote homosexuality. Nothing more, nothing less.

slickrick7: gay campaign!!! make e come.naija talk dat same-sex nonsense see weda agberos no go pelt am wif stones

antontech: and u wont believe that its only 10% of south and eastern africans know their status

uspry1: @All new members who have difficult finding a button to create a new topic.

How to create a new topic:

1.) First, you must reply to a Topic message to get started in order for the New Topic button appears.

2.) Then select which section (forum board) you would like to create a new topic.

3.) Click the "New Topic" button, do your thing the similar function as you reply the message. (see picture below)

That's it!

uspry1: @All new members who have difficult finding a button to create a new topic.

How to create a new topic:

1.) First, you must reply to a Topic message to get started in order for the New Topic button appears.

2.) Then select which section (forum board) you would like to create a new topic.

3.) Click the "New Topic" button, do your thing the similar function as you reply the message. (see picture below)

That's it!

PhysicsQED: a) The Ndebele I was talking about (the 'Northern Ndebele') are in modern day Zimbabwe, not the Limpopo province of South Africa.

b) So every fight between the Zulu and the British involved an ambush?

Physicians: There are two groups of Ndebele and I referred to only one. Just about every source I came across states that the Northern Ndebele (not the Southern Ndebele) are a subgroup of the Zulu. But if you have more familiarity with both languages, and you feel that their language is too different for them to be a subgroup of the Zulu, then I'll take your word for it.

However, if they are a subgroup of the Zulu but were a "weak link" among the larger Zulu nation and that's the real reason they got defeated more easily, there was certainly nothing I came across that indicated that. Also, I was under the impression that they migrated because their leader and his followers wanted to set up a separate kingdom, free of the control of Shaka, not that they were "forced to flee."

Maybe if it was made clearer anywhere that they were a far weaker group than the group that they left (Shaka's group) then I wouldn't have wrote what I did. But really, is there a source or some evidence you can give me to explain how they were a weak link? They had inferior tactics and weaponry? What exactly made them weak relative to other Zulus? The founder of their group was a commander in Shaka's army who clashed with Shaka and left, so I would be surprised if they had drastically different military capabilities.

I didn't say the British tried to invade Zulu land with "minimum machinery," I said they defeated a large group of Northern Ndebele (who most sources claim are a subgroup of the Zulu) with far fewer troops because they had maxim guns.

Also, were the Northern Ndebele fighting the Boers and the BaSotho at the time of the First Matabele War? Or are you talking about the Zulu in South Africa that they were "forced to flee" from? I referenced the First Matabele War, not the Anglo-Zulu war.

On the 20,000 soldiers thing, nobody is saying that they had to count every single enemy soldier. I hope you're not claiming that one can't make a rough estimate of the number of enemy soldiers from a distance, because that's not a reasonable objection. I know I could definitely tell the difference between a group of approximately 5,000 people and a group of approximately 20,000 people from a distance, for example, so I don't see why the British wouldn't have been able to do that as well. Also, I think that in this era (the 19th century), when they were near the height of their power, the Zulu should have been able to put large numbers of soldiers out into the field, so I'm not sure that the numbers the Brits gave for these battles are so unreasonable.

However, if what you're saying is that most or all British writers were simply lying and inflating the numbers of their opponents in order to make the British soldiers look more "heroic" or powerful, then that's a different claim and that might be a reasonable objection. Without verification of their numbers from another source, it's entirely possible that they were fighting far fewer enemy soldiers in their conflicts with the Zulu than they claimed.

Msauza: Point of correction chief. South Africa got her independence before Nigeria on the 31st May of 1960. The year 1994 marks SA's first democratic elections where black and whites were equally enfranchised and not independence day. Apartheid was abolished around 1986 and Nelson Mandela was released in Prison on the 11th Feb 1990. Black SA gained their freedom immediately after ANC came into power on the 27th Apr of 1994 when Madiba became the first democratically elected president of RSA. Get your facts right Mr and next time do not write of anything unless you have done thorough research about the subject.

PhysicsQED: Who wrote this article?

There are a few inaccuracies.

1895 is when Nembe was defeated after the 'Brass Revolt' or 'Akassa War'. It does not necessarily mean that is when "Ijawland" was defeated and annexed.

Niger Coast Protectorate troops (Hausas, basically) were used against the Aro, not British soldiers.

The Ekumeku uprisings were separate events (1898, 1902, 1904, 1909, 1911, etc.) that broke out at different times.

The British did not invade the Oyo empire nor the states that succeeded it. The British did invade and fight the Ijebu kingdom however.

Also, the Benin kingdom was not really in "steady decline" from 1700 onwards and the decline was not due to fighting against external groups. There was a civil war from around that time but the kingdom had recovered and was doing well by the 1780s as attested to by written documents from James Field Stanfield (an Irish abolitionist who visited Ughoton) and also by Pierre Labarthe, although the kingdom was no longer in its golden period. The next period of decline was in the 1850s. Another internal conflict happened around this time and the kingdom was in decline and it was a little after this time that external groups chipped away at the exterior parts of the kingdom. The kingdom was definitely still in decline by the 1880s and of course by 1897 it was far from its glory period.




How many millions? What was the population of Nigeria in 1900?

The 1952-3 census showed that Nigeria's population was around 30 million:books.google.com/books?id=3FHvvW1TclIC&pg=PA154

By 1963, it was 47 million. I think that around 1900 it was much less than 30 million and this is among hundreds of different groups, so individual states and kingdoms would have been of limited size.

It is true that most of these places were all in decline when invaded, but I do not think any of these places had an army of sufficient size out of the population of their individual states that could have put up a really amazing resistance anyway.

It might be more accurate to say that a thousands of people (not hundreds) were able to conquer millions, but it's more or less the same thing. It's happened before in history. Think of the Mongols conquering China or the conquistadors conquering the Aztecs (even fewer people were used here, if I recall correctly). The important thing is who has the superior military force and tactics. Those places that had to face maxims (machine guns, basically) and rocket artillery never really had a chance.

The main reason for this simple conquest was the use of the maxim (developed in 1884) in these invasions. If they had invaded before the maxim was developed, the resistance would have been quite different. For example, when one reads the descriptions of the conquest of Benin by some of those actually involved, it becomes (annoyingly) clear that the whole thing was really about the maxim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Guns

Note the part about 50 soldiers fighting off 5,000 Ndebele (Zulu) warriors in a battle.

Also,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Matabele_War

One reason the 1879 Anglo-Zulu conflict looks like such a great resistance (in comparison to the Matabele invasion or other invasions in Africa) by the Zulu is because they didn't have to face even a single maxim machine gun in 1879. That's one thing that some people miss when they fall for the myth of Zulu military preeminence among African groups. When the Ndebele (who are basically a group of Zulus) were invaded with maxim guns, the result was similar to the simpler invasions in other parts of Africa.The Ndebele were basically forced to flee the Zulu Nation as the great King Shaka Zulu saw them as a "weak link"today even the languages of the two nations are different so this whole Ndebele being Zulu thing of yours is not true,at the time of the british defeat the English were embarrassed as they had set out to invaid Zulu land and you don't invade a nation with minimum machinery,they had it all but having lost the war its sad that they decided to lie to the world about what really happened,and the Zulu were also fighting the Boers and BaSotho people when they defeated the British,its numerically impossible for them to have sent over 20000 soldiers to fight the british and its stupid to even astemate the numbers unless some English guy sat down and started counting everyone.Logic should tell us that this was simply British propaganda

RSA: It is the capital of Kwa Zulu Natal province

Walexz02: Written by Oluwayinka Dada - with Agency Report Wednesday, 20 March 2013

A report has indicated that
about 28 per cent of South
African school girls are still
living with HIV, despite the
marked progress in curbing the
HIV epidemic, compared with
just four per cent of boys.
According to the statistics
released to the media by South
African Health Minister, Aaron
Motsoaledi, at a National Council
of Provinces meeting, called
“taking Parliament to the
people” at Carolina,
Mpumalanga.
The statistics reveals that
94,000 schoolgirls fell pregnant
across the country in 2011 with
77,000 having abortions at
public facilities.
He further explained that there
are also a high number of TB
infections.
He expressed shock over the
statistics, saying it “destroyed
his soul” and blamed the “sugar
daddies” infecting young girls
with the virus and moved for
action to be taken against them.
The minister emphasised that it
was not the boys who slept
with the girls but the “sugar
daddies” in the country,
premising it on the fact if it
were to be the boys, only four
per cent of them would not
have been HIV positive.
According to the minister,
“many of the pregnant girls,
who were aged between 10
and 14 tested positive to HIV.
South Africa has been involved
in one of the world’s largest
anti-retroviral (ARV)
programmes since President
Jacob Zuma appointed
Mpumalanga health minister in
2009.
Reports had it that the HIV
prevalence that in South Africa
remained the highest among
women in age group 30 to 34
years, increasing from 41.5 per
cent in 2009 to 42.2 per cent in
2011.
Among the 35-to-39 year-olds,
the prevalence rate has
increased from 35.4 per cent in
2009 to 39.4 per cent in 2011.
The reason for the higher
prevalence rates among older
women was said to be as a
result of age groups getting
infected earlier in their lives,
and were now moving into a
higher age group according to
the survey.
Is South Africa this bad
http://tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/world-news/item/7754-south-africa-28-of-school-girls-are-hiv-positive-as-health-minister-blames-sugar-daddies-for-spreading-the-virus

sheyie2007: So?

Ibime: Am glad he was killed by his own black kaffirs.

Kharma is a biatch.

sheyie2007: well it's somewhat true, thanks to the white men (afrikaans)..

sambos994: Well....in my opinion SA businesses in Nigeria doesn't matter because there is thing called.....wait for it....nationalization. So we kind of have an advantage. And say we don't want MTN or Shoprite anymore, it will affect SA. We're their biggest costumer. What this minister is saying is nonsense. Also, what has SA done for us diplomatically?

andrewza: And your point is.

andrewza
:
And your point is.

andrewza: I never siad there was no one here. Just they where not bantu. Nore did I say the whites where here before the bantu

philip0906: @rsa
even if bro is frustrated,it definitely can't be cos of your country . . .y should an average Nigerian who is still smiling in d midst of our own "problems" be frustrated cos of a country ravaged by AIDS(highest in d world),murder is like a sachet of pure water,xenophobia and lazy south africans waiting 4 d whites 2 "evacuate" their land ? . . .your country is a joke.God blessed u people wiff almost everything,yet your brains r 2 dull 2 make d most of it(always protesting about service delivery ).even boys r making it in benin republic. . .ask xelele

olayinka1987: Inferiority complex? How? I asked an honest question. Where would South Africa be without Whites? South Africans were chest beating in the other thread, why now can't they answer this question? Oh, that's right, because they know the truth.

**osisi:
Imagine Zimbabwe?
Isn't that where they sell one loaf of bread for millions of their money?

http://www.africaalmanac.com/top20highschools.html

morpheus24: Using the term "Dark" in your response just goes to show how Apatheid has sickened your mind, unless of course you are "colored" or "Afrikaner white"

andrewza: Firstly the xenophobia violence was not a state event nor aimed towards Nigeria. And we are the back bone of SADC at least in a economic and military side witch translates in to political side of things.

Next the only reason there is animosity is because we both regional powers but south africa wants more and this puts them in conflict with Nigeria has we step in to your back yard.

Has for do we want war with Nigeria. No. War is costly and we have no means of putting ground forces of any large size in Nigeria with out support of other nations including nation next to you. The most we could do is a navel blockade.

I do not see us working together we both have different ideas and philosophies concerning how we want to. Deal with the world.

On a related note south africa is pushing for chairmen ship of the AU and a permanent seat on the UN security council.

Horus: South Africa is already Hell, so yes I agree I will never go to South Africa, bulletproof vest are not practical to wear and I dont want to burned alive.

otawa: And it has the highest HIV infected people in the world.

Half of the black population will die before they reach 35years old.

80% of the black lives in 'getto'

It has the highest crime rates in the world.