₦airaland Forum

what im most happy about is ngige left, following the court's order. something obj needs to learn to do

why adopt a foregn phrae to describe our culture? why do you term is a "price"? when a man in london buys his fiance a $50,000 wedding ring is he buying her? if not why is such an expensive ring a prerequsite for the engagement and marriage. it's the same thing. the money exchanged in our customs reflects a man's capacity to care for his family (or at least that how it started). in neither of those instance is he buying a bride.

you can get them that cheap,but its usualy in very bad areas and would need a lot of work. sometimes not much resale value

seun isnt completely wrong. some of these banks do reposses the property and sell them for thier proper prices, then lie that it was sold for less and come after the debtor for the balance. thats where i come in and sue the bank or finance company for fraud and deceptive business practices.

the south africans on the list are a family. as an individual there are not africans, except the egyptians. and yes they count as africans

it depends on the python. some of them don't grow very long so they are harmless. very few types of snakes on the planet can kill or eat a man. the african rock python, burmese python, anconda and one other one i've forgotten

snakes generally don't like to eat humans. most deaths by snakes come from the bites of a poisonous one, not from a boa or python eating a man. so babies and the like are generally ok. but i dont see why someone would leave a baby at ome alone anyway.

what was nnenna's story?

Nah, i don't eat them. i just like them as pets.

many of the stories here about snakes shows an unfortunate ignorance. most are ok and lack venom. and even those with venom canbe taken care of, if you pay close attention. im generally an animal lover so there are animals i don't have a fascination for, anyway

It's your opinion that its a recent phenomenom, not a necessarily fact. besides recent or not, for africa to lead the world in these areas means something must exist on the ground to create a fertile environment for such to exist. The fact is african women have been in charge of more aspects of their lives than european women for centuries. one of the major conflicts in eastern nigeria during colonialism came from market women's being marginalised. Meaning africa women had jobs long before women in europe and america starting working in the 19th century. the idea that africa women are particulrly disempowered is false. Though no society has given women total contral, africa has led the way in many respects. In some nigeria societies when a woman in married she is given money to start a trade. in many of these households she actually holds the wallet, despite what it may look like on the outside. read on the women of the past and their strength, even before democracy, such as amina of zaria, shaka's mother, the queen mothers in ghana and a host of other women in africa that were emplowered and led their societies.

regarding the status of younger women. 1. it goes against your point that the advances of women in africa is recent since the women doing well are older. are you implying the older african educated their daughers, but today's africans don't? Before you answer if you get a chance, go look at the lagos state judiciary. 75% of all the judges are women! what other region fo the world can compare to that?

http://www.lagosjudiciary.gov.ng/d003/main.aspx?dbID=DB_ServingHon_Judges185


2. regarding the laws of africa. unles you have actually studied our laws, you can say definitively that our laws are all and all harmful to women. But as i pointed out, no society has men and women equal, so i'm certain bias dos exist in our laws. But my point was relative to other societies, even industrial ones, we are not the barbarians the world holds us to be. the idea that africa's developmental index being corrolated to its treatment of wmen isnt the case. One has nothing to do wit the other. the figures you posted about the education rate hardly tells the whole story. look at the figures of the live expectancy. women are outliving men in nigeria. does that now mean the lives of men are harsher than women? These facts are only relevant in relation to a variety of other facts.

sorry for my tone by the way. i havent yet figured out the art of speaking 'softly' on message boards. i modified my posts to lighten it. hope it worked. i realized my point seemed to be directed at your in particular, not the ideas i was going against

There is a strong correlation between the level of women representation and women's rights and the human development index. Of course you are confronted with the chicken-or-the egg problem, but there are strong indications that investments in women are far more beneficial from an overall development point of view than in men

nferyn, you have to understand there is a world of difference between correlation and causation. how then do you explain the fact that africa leads the world in women representation in political power but is behind in its development index?. i think its best we leave these false ideas of women and focus on what makes peopel good. afterall from my understanding, women have fought to have these features you attribute to them removed, so they are not stereotypes as mothers and wives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/international/africa/11cnd-liberia.html?ei=5088&en=f437c0aa6bcd7336&ex=1289365200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1138888118-QC5TYQ6quL4zAjtzU5kn8g
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: November 11, 2005

DAKAR, Senegal Nov. 11 - When supporters of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
marched through the broken streets of Monrovia in the final, frantic
days of the campaign for Liberia's presidency, they shouted and waved
signs that read: "Ellen - she's our man."

It is an apt cry for the woman - known as Liberia's Iron Lady - who is
on the cusp of ruling this wartorn nation as the first elected female
head of state on a continent ruled by men for its entire modern
history.

Today, with 97 percent of the vote counted, Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf, a
66-year-old former United Nations official with a degree in public
administration from Harvard, appeared to be headed for victory. She
received 59 percent of the vote to the soccer star George Weah's 41
percent.

"Everything is on our side," said Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf's spokesman,
Morris Dukuly. "The voters have chosen a new and brighter future."

Mr. Dukuly said Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf had held off declaring victory
because Mr. Weah, who won the first round of the election and enjoys
broad support among Liberia's huge youth population, has alleged that
the results were tainted by fraud.

Mr. Weah told reporters in Monrovia that he has submitted a formal
complaint to the National Election Commission, which will investigate.
International observers said that while there were some minor
irregularities, they were too small to change the outcome.

Mr. Weah, speaking to a crowd of supporters at his campaign
headquarters today, appealed for calm, but hundreds of his backers,
wielding branches, marched through the streets in protest, chanting
"No Weah, no peace."

They threw stones at the police in front of the elections commission
headquarters, and United Nations peacekeepers fired tear gas at the
crowd as they rushed through a line of riot police trying to keep them
from storming the United States Embassy, according to Reuters.

From the Cape to Cairo, from Dar es Salaam to this seaside capital,
men have dominated African politics from the earliest days of the
anticolonial struggle.

"There are so many capable women," said Yassine Fall, a Senegalese
economist and feminist working on women's rights issues in Africa.
"But they just don't get the chance to lead."

The history of the continent rings with the names of heroes like Kwame
Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Jomo Kenyatta , fathers of the modern
African states they helped form. And villains like Mobutu Sese-Seko,
Idi Amin and Sani Abacha, the despotic "big men" who ruled ruthlessly
over their terrorized subjects, enriching themselves along the way.

Despite the large role women played in the struggles of many nations
for independence, they were relegated to the sidelines in the
post-colonial era. The most ambitious women often went abroad, and
some - like Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf - rose to prominence working for
international organizations like the United Nations and the World
Bank.

But in recent years, African women have begun to assert their place in
the traditional halls of power. In 2004, a Kenyan environmental
activist, Wangari Maathai, won the Nobel Peace Prize, raising
immensely the profile of female African leaders.

Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has emerged as one of
the country's most respected and feared officials, part of a brain
trust trying to pull Africa's long-foundering giant from the miasma of
corruption and mismanagement.

Women have made gains at the ballot box in some nations. The prime
minister of Mozambique, Luísa Dias Diogo, is widely seen as a future
president. In Rwanda, there is a greater proportion of women serving
in Parliament than in any other nation, nearly half of the seats.

Indeed, Africa leads the developing world in the percentage of women
in legislative positions - at about 16 percent, according to the
Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organization of parliamentary bodies
worldwide.

Yet having more women leading does not necessarily mean decisions that
benefit women. While research has consistently shown that women
generally make decisions that favor women and children, when they get
political power it is often - at first - as an embattled minority that
feels it must follow the lead of men in order to maintain power, said
Geeta Rao Gupta, the president of International Center for Research on
Women in Washington.

"When there is a critical mass of women leaders, they gain confidence
over time and are more likely to exhibit diversity of experience as
women in their decisions," Ms. Rao Gupta said. "It is a good start but
not an automatic thing. It takes a few cycles to really sink in."

Liberia's presidential election comes two years after the nation
emerged from a brutal civil war that killed more than 200,000 people
and displaced a third of the population. Pushed from power by a rebel
insurgency, Charles Taylor, the warlord who became Liberia's president
and fomented a series of bloody wars that wracked the region for more
than a decade, went into exile in 2003.

He left behind a nation shattered by war, with the entire
infrastructure, from roads to electric wires to water pipes, rotted
away or looted. Liberia today, despite its natural wealth in gems,
rubber and timber, is one of the world's poorest and least developed
nations.

Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf has been known as Liberia's Iron Lady since she
ran against Mr. Taylor for president in 1997 and was jailed for 18
months by the regime of the former dictator, Samuel Doe. She will have
no trouble fitting into the all-male club of African heads of state,
said Ms. Fall, who has known her for years.

"She is fearless," Ms. Fall added. "No men intimidate her."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4428434.stm

BBC News website

African women are celebrating, as Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
looks set to become the continent's first elected woman president.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Mrs Sirleaf says she want to bring motherly sensitivity to her job

The 67-year-old grandmother said she hoped her win would "raise the
participation of women not just in Liberia but also in Africa".

"It's a historical phenomenon, which is going to be an example to
other African countries... I could scream my heart out," Nigerian
politician Sarah Jubril told the BBC's World Today programme. So is
Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf's apparent victory the start of a trend?

Ugandan academic Sylvia Tamale says African patriarchal societies like
to see women firmly in their place. She quotes a Ugandan man at a
woman candidate's parliamentary campaign rally in 1996 asking: "Have
you ever heard a hen crow?"

Yet, despite these traditional values, African women can crow success
on a number of fronts.

Leading the world

For the past two years Rwanda has led the world in parliamentary
representation for women.


Women are becoming more involved in making decisions in the village
Kulah Balo
Liberian farmer

Its case is more unusual given the large number of people, educated
and moneyed, who returned from the diaspora after the 1994 genocide -
but it does reflect the trend in countries moving from post-colonial
turmoil to multi-party democracy.

In rankings compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mozambique,
South Africa and Burundi have more than 30% of parliamentary seats
held by women, compared to an average of 19% for their contemporaries
in Europe.

Send us your experiences of being a woman in Africa

New constitutions like those adopted in Burundi and Rwanda ensure
ethnic and gender quotas, while political parties like South Africa's
ruling African National Congress have quotas for women candidates.

Grassroots

Affirmative action has it critics, but as Kulah Balo - a woman farmer
in Sinje village in Liberia - illustrates things are changing even in
remote areas.

Wangari Maathai
Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize

"Women are becoming more involved in making decisions in the village.
Before, when the men held public gatherings here, they told us women
to stay behind. If we went, they wouldn't let us say anything," she
told the BBC.

Mrs Balo says with more educated women in the public eye, ordinary
Liberian women have been given a sense of empowerment.

"Before whatever the man said would go but now both husband and wife
take decisions together."

And it was fighting a cause for ordinary women that won Kenya
environmentalist and politician Wangari Maathai international
recognition.

Known for her tree-planting campaigns, last year she was awarded the
prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for promoting social, economic and
cultural reforms.

Mrs Sirleaf and Mrs Maathai share - as well as iron determination - a
feminine approach to politics.

Mrs Sirleaf says she wants "to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion
to the presidency" as a way of healing the wounds of war.

Queen-makers

Feminine sensitivity, however, is not something that is immediately
associated with Zimbabwe's Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, whose nom de
guerre during the 1970s liberation struggle was "Spill Blood".

Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was once vice-president of the World Bank

Analysts believe she was picked as President Robert Mugabe's number
two last year, not only because she is from his ethnic clan but
because her husband, Solomon Mujuru, once led the army and can still
guarantee their loyalty.

This is a slight role-reversal. In the past, it was by pulling strings
from behind the scenes that women managed to exercise power.

In Rwanda, former first lady Agathe Kanziga, married to the late
President Juvenal Habyarimana, and her family kept a firm grip on the
steering wheel until 1994.

'Iron Ladies'

But despite concerns about Mrs Mujuru's leadership qualities, she has
earned respect for going back to school to finish her education as
well as taking up a ministerial post after independence in 1980.


Edith Nawakwi (The Post)
We [women] are in the majority
Zambian presidential hopeful Edith Nawakwi
And education remains the biggest challenge as girls' schooling is
often sacrificed in favour of boys - for example in Benin only 47% of
girls attend primary school compared to 61% of boys.

After Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist, perhaps
Africa's most powerful woman is Nigeria's feisty Finance Minister
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. A one time vice-president of the World Bank, she
is waging war on corruption in Nigeria and has negotiated a debt
relief deal worth $18bn (£10bn).

Mozambique's Prime Minister Luisa Dias Diogo is another former World
Bank employee, who shares the nickname "Iron Lady" with Mrs
Johnson-Sirleaf.

In a strange coincidence, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf will be Liberia's second
female head-of-state, after Ruth Perry who acted as a transitional
leader for a short time in the late 1990s.

Competition

Another concern for African women campaigners is that women are often
raised to see each other as competitors.

Mozambican PM
Luisa Dias Diogo is tipped to be Mozambique's president one day

Without unity, Zambia's National Women Lobby Group argues that women
will have no hope of capturing the presidency next year.

This week the umbrella group announced it was backing the candidacy of
the FDD's Edith Nawakwi.

"This is the first time the women's movement has clearly indicated to
the country that it needs to take seriously the issue of having a
female president," Ms Nawakwi said - urging women to go and register
to vote.

"We are in the majority."

Despite the fact women are a majority in Africa, to gain a meaningful
mandate they need the respect of their male constituents and
colleagues.

Ingredients

Even high-ranking female politicians can sometimes be treated with
little or no respect.

Three years ago, Uganda's then Vice-President Specioza Kazibwe
revealed that she had been forced to leave her husband after he had
assaulted her.

The revelation caused a stir in Uganda, where wife-beating is not uncommon.

In Liberia, Mrs Sirleaf will need to win over the ex-combatants, who
largely favoured the brawn of her opponent, the ex-footballer George
Weah.

With so many obstacles, female politicians in Africa must often feel
it is almost impossible to get to the top.

But Mozambique's Prime Minister Diogo - tipped one day to be president
- says she just treats it like a Mozambican woman who has to create a
meal for a large family, often without ingredients.

please , if anything we should use igbo, yoruba pidgin, ibibo and whatever to talk. as long as its understood. besides langauges are given life by breaking certain 'rules'

The areas needed are
1. Power generation to about 10x it's current amount

2. Health care

3. Good transport, especially trains to move people and goods all over the place.

hate to break it to you, but the US has been one of the largest oil producers in the last 2 centuries. how d you think rockefeller got all his wealth. look at the stats. US is rich in oil

Can we stop using the term 'tribe' for starters?

And yes, I'm all for it. I don't see the problem and have never had a problem with various ethnicities in Nigeria.

anyone here been to the game reserves or national parks in nigeria like yankari. how was it? how were th facilities

anyone here been to nigerian game parks like cross river national park, yankari and gashka-gumpti. what did you think? recommend it?

medube you're nigerian, white or not. congrats on staying with nigeria and loving it through its pain.

But i do uderstand the resistance of having non whites in africa. nevertheless if they have the thinking of mudupe, it hink we're fine. after all its the blacks in liberia that oppressed fellow blacks.

anyway, im sure ghana is more peaceful than nigeria. and perhaps even better organized in its main city. But im sure nigeri can give it a run for its money in many of our major cities as well, outside of lagos.. But in parts of nigeria like calabar i don't get the madness normaly associated with nigeria. I think nigeria offers such a diversity of experinces that few countries can beat it.

im both qua and ibibio

My first choice would be Donald duke because he's a politician and a very capable one. He's dynamic, detribalised and a genius who's put his ideas to work.

My second choice would be Ms. Akunyili because she has shown herself to be a patriot, and one willing to make tough decisions to make naija better. Her downfall is that he's a technocrat with no politicla base. The same argument goes for Ms. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and Soludo. But of the 3, I'd rather pick Ms. Dora because she has shown more results in her post. I think Ms. Iweala is impressive to people more for her credentials than actual results. Ms. Akunyili has been nothing short of revolutionary.

Urji Kalu would be good for transition, thi.e. the first president born after indepenence, but i don;t think he would be as effective as any of thse listed above

i didn't know that of lagos state. if indeed it's true, i stand corrected. do you have anything to show that is indeed the case

drbigdady, i know ibos have been living in cross river for a long time, but we are talking about calabar here. its the seat of the efiks. imagine if the ibos that have lived in sokoto for a long tme decide to crown an ibo king in sokoto, how do you think theier hosts would take it? it's an afront and an imperialsitic mentality on the part of those ibos. I think generally the ibos and efik/ibibios, etc have lived in peace, but this move is uncalled for on the part of the ibos.

i agree greatpeter. we need to show ou justice system can work at home. when one, maybe ship him to the UK

This is sad. The ibos in that region have a very imperialisic mentality as is evident in the whole biafra struggle. i have heard about this for some time now as the ibos in that area have tried to move into calabar, the homeland of th efiks and claim it as thers. this could get ugly

you mean she doesnt spean 'proper' english. not she dosn't speak 'good' english

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/special4/article.adp?id=20051124162309990011

Raiders' Ekejiuba Has Had Unusual Journey to NFL
By JANIE McCAULEY, AP

ALAMEDA, Calif. (Nov. 24) - Playing football never crossed Isaiah Ekejiuba's mind.


NFL Week 12 Roundtable
NFL.com's Pat Kirwan and Deadspin's Will Leitch join the SBL crew to talk football.

Kirwan on Bears-Bucs
Listen | Pigskin Bloggers
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Listen | NFL on AOL
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Listen | Discuss the NFL
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Listen | Live NFL Chat
Leitch on C.J. and Portis
Listen | Read His Blog

KW: Sports Bloggers Live



He joined the soccer team as a boy in his native Nigeria. As a teenager living in the United States, he played basketball and competed as a sprinter and jumper in track and field. He had size and speed, but football was an American game he knew little about.

Then in the spring of 2002, an advertisement in the student newspaper at Virginia caught his eye: football tryouts. There began a most unlikely road to the NFL.

"A little backdoor into football," Ekejiuba said with his friendly smile, sitting in the Oakland Raiders' locker room before a recent practice. "My dad always used to watch football and I didn't really understand the concept. I just wanted to see what it was like.

"I was already studying electrical engineering. The thought of football was just something to do after classes."

Little did he know it's a sport that demands all your time - practice, weight training, team meals and meetings, weekend travel, study sessions.

Ekejiuba is now an NFL rookie, contributing on special teams for Oakland. Even he is surprised at his career route considering academics were always No. 1 in Ekejiuba's family.

Born in Benin, Nigeria, Ekejiuba came to the United States for good in 1995 for his late mother's job. His mom, Felicia, received her doctorate at Harvard. A sociologist and anthropologist, she worked for the United Nations heading the Africa section of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, whose purpose is striving to eliminate violence against women in third-world countries and helping them gain equality.

"She always pushed academics first before anything else," said Ekejiuba, who speaks the Nigerian dialect Ibo and is two classes shy of an electrical engineering degree he plans to finish soon.

So, when he started playing football, everyone in the family was understandably shocked.

"I couldn't believe it," said his older sister, also Felicia. "It wasn't like he had a background in that. My mother was kind of skeptical, too. Isaiah's like her baby. We all supported his decision. I knew if he put his mind to it and worked hard he would achieve whatever he wanted."

Ekejiuba joined the Cavaliers' football team as a walk-on receiver during the spring of his sophomore year at Virginia. He suited up for eight games in 2002 but didn't see any action until the following season. He shifted to defense and became a special teams standout in 2003, appearing in all 13 games. And as a senior last year, Ekejiuba earned a scholarship and received a team award as the school's top special teams player.

"I am so happy for him," said Corwin Brown, one of Ekejiuba's college coaches who now works for the New York Jets directing the defensive backs. "It was something. I kind of remember it. He came at me, a tall, gawky guy. He could run and he had good size. You couldn't help but think, 'How come he hasn't played and why is he just now coming out?' I thought, 'I don't care if he's never played before, if he could learn a couple things, he could be pretty good."'

Ekejiuba signed with Arizona as a rookie free agent in April after the draft and spent training camp and the preseason with the Cardinals before they released him in late August. He joined the Raiders' practice squad Sept. 6, then got promoted to the 53-man roster last month to help Oakland's injury-depleted defense when safety Derrick Gibson went on injured reserve.

Ekejiuba made his NFL debut against the Tennessee Titans on Oct. 30. At 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, the 24-year-old Ekejiuba is a physical presence on special teams - too fast for some of the larger players to stop, and big enough to knock down the smaller ones.

"He's an absolute rare specimen," Raiders safety Jarrod Cooper said. "You don't find people like that very much. We saw him when he was in Arizona before he got here. I watched game tape every year from the last five years on people in the NFL and I was like, 'Who is this?' He just came in like a beast. About three weeks later, he was sitting in our meeting room. I wouldn't want to go up against him."

His college teammates called Ekejiuba "T.O." because his frame resembles that of embattled Eagles receiver Terrell Owens.

"We put him in the spot he could be most disruptive," Brown said. "He was a big kid and he could run. He started lifting, and if you look at him now, he's a worker. He worked hard at everything he did. He's not a kid who's going to give you a lot of back talk. You hope things work out for kids like that."

For Ekejiuba, football has been a positive outlet that helped him cope with the loss of his mother two years ago. He spoke to her on a Wednesday night and she told her son she was feeling fine, then died the next morning of an apparent heart attack.

That came after Ekejiuba and his four siblings already dealt with the death of their father, Benedict, from diabetes in 1996.

"It was a shock," Ekejiuba recalled. "It was actually crazy because my mom at that point was all we had keeping our family together. It was really tough on the family. My mom supported me with everything I did, which is why I feel like I'm so successful. I'm trying to pick up her work ethic. She never saw me even play college ball.

"I feel like she's always with me. Her positive attitude, that's why I feel I've come this far."

Her photo is on his cell phone and he looks at it in the locker room each day before heading to the field for work. And Ekejiuba has been learning more about her work by researching his mom on the Internet - "I'm getting an understanding just what she's done," he said.

Those who knew Ekejiuba in college were impressed by how he managed to get through all of his sadness without missing a beat as an athlete.

"It's one of those pleasant surprises," said Evan Marcus, the Virginia strength coach. "He played special teams here and did a great job, but you know chances of making it in NFL are slim. He wasn't an every-down player. To his credit, he kept working. The one thing I always think about when I think of Ike is he was a high-energy, positive, guy. He's one of nicer kids I've run into, and I've been doing this 15 years."

Ekejiuba is not one to campaign for more playing time. He's content for now.

"That's what I love doing - covering kicks and being on special teams. I feel very blessed to be in the position I'm in," he said. "It's been a very long road. When I look back to a couple years ago, I'm always amazed at how far I've come."

prettyH. what girl has actually tried? you guys are so busy bleaching your skin and straigtening your hair to bother

the original poster misspelled the woman's name

anyway, its wrong to seek women or any ethnicity in power just because its been an unpowerful group for nay lenght of time. especially in afric.a we dont have time for unqualified leaders

yes, but what is the range of thier pay.

MEN RULE!!!!!!! GO MEN!!

By the way, weah didnt solicit teenageers for his campaign (most cant vote anyway). They supported him because he represents the mases. ms johnson represents the oppressors, and has been aligned with former butchers like doe and taylor. that doesnt mean she wont be a good leader, but let's not distort thier stories