9ja sef una too like to dey claim. d guy talk say im be 9ja?

wetin concern una conern osama sorry obama. no be me o. na so cnn spell am one time like dat.

amigoes:

hear them,
", South Africa,which had surplus power capacity a few years ago now experiences problem, "

How come these people can't have a better example, Ghana celebrated full year of uninterrupted power supply sometimes ago, our leaders cannot strive towards such lofty goal,

, countries must therefore continously strive to upgrade capacity,improve infrastructure, blah, blah , blah, like OBJ did in his 8yrs reign.

The point is increasing bills can't solve Nigerias problem. It is rooted in corruption and it is endemic!
Solve the problem of corruption in this nation and I'm telling you over 70% of our problems are gone!

shey, but then dey now took light during mali vs benin in nations cup.

d usual supects don come to celebrate robbers and thieves. nothing don change. oya make i run for cover.

romeo:

Link or no link the original poster should've indicated he's not the author before pasting such rubbish to avoid unnecessary attacks from others

And stop being rude young man


BESIDES THAT LINK WAS NOT THERE BEFORE

u r not only a fool u r a liar too. d link has been there since i copeid the article. if u cant read then dont talk.

romeo:

Link or no link the original poster should've indicated he's not the author before pasting such rubbish to avoid unnecessary attacks from others

And stop being rude young man

u r a fool.

darfur:

@planner,
the elders probably fell for his rhetorics thinking they have what it takes to win the war.if the elders knew what he knew they woulda prolly adviced against it. otherwise, the elders are also guilty as charged.

@lafile,
I’ll like to address him as General Ojukwu too. But this is the Nigerian Army here Addresing him and they see him as a lt col. He was not recognised by the Nigerian army as a general and that’s it. Period. If I go to Europe and they don’t recognise my degree, I’ll simply write their own exam. Na quarrel?

@planner,
if it pains me that 2.5 million igbos died including women and children and you are more concerned about your hero then I am more igbo than you.@youngies
thanks for being polite in your disagreement. This way we can debate issues. Ist of all, armies look at themselves and imagine if they have what it takes.

Hitler had used about 6yrs for re-armament before he declared war in Europe and he actually did conguer Europe before the US came. He never wanted to fight the US at the time. May be later. But not at that time.

Bush actually destroyed saddam and Afghanistan. But the issue is that he won the war but did not win the peace. So he was deemed a failure. But militarily he won. Infact, the Iraqis were wiser than Ojukwu at some point. When the war came to Baghdad, the defence disappeared and the marines virtually walked in. they changed tactics. Americans controlled the city while they used guerrilla warfare. They knew they were no match for the Americans face-to-face.

Soviet union and even the US knew that each had nuclear capability. Watch the movie I3 days. It’s about the Cuban missile crisis. There you’ll see how much both sides did not want to go to war . . BECAUSE THEY KNEW THE RESULT OF DOING SO.
Yeah, the igbos say that “ejighi ekwo maka mgbagbu ghara i ga agha” (you can't avoid war b/c of the possibility of death) but why, why,why,why in God’s earth, why is it that when the war enters the door steps of the leaders, they surrender or vamoose.why?whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

MLK led the demonstration for the civil rights movts. He had fears of death. Yet he led the demonstrations and eventually got killed.sadly. why do war leaders hide. Hitler was even better, after the war, he did not beg to live. The coward shot himself. Ojukwu did not even shoot himself. He so loved life that he ran away, came back, joined politics, went for a beauty gueen,( young enough to be his daughter even against the advice of her dad, which is very very very un-igbo take note)

And while the innocent igbos were fighting to protect themselves Ojukwu, the hero, ordered the invasion of western Nigeria. The mid-west was overrun by biafran soldiers and they went as far as Ore. Closing in on lagos. Hmmmn open your nose and smell some imperialistic appetite bro

got a lecture to attend.catch ya later. keep the debate free of abuses.

my guy are you chxta in disguise?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ttv/news.jhtml?bcpid=1137942530&bclid=1155254697&bctid=1387545787



judge for yasefs. For those who think we are the only intelligent being in the vast universe you'll be in for a suprise soon. Even if u conclude that the image is not human then its obvious that it was created by an intelligent being.

d man is dead jo. make una leave am make im rest in peace. for d record he wont have made a good prez.

and none of the break up campaigners has ever ever proposed how d new conturies will work. abeg jo same shit different day. make una go find better thing do.

dis nigeriaone guy sef. abeg make u dey foollw dey type for grammer. which ones?

all of una dey crase. una no fit read see say no be me write am na so so sentiment dey worry una, oya carry on. olodo people.

http://www.chatafrikarticles.com/articles/1111/1/BIAFRA-INTERNET-TERRORISTS-AND-I/Page1.html

I have just taken a look at my email. I found a letter posted to naijapolitics by one of the Igbo chaps that seem to exist to verbally and emotionally abuse me. Apparently, if these folk did not abuse me they would not feel alive. This particular chap must have read something that I said somewhere and it robbed him wrong and he let lose a string of invectives against me. He called me every negative name his limited vocabulary could muster, including his favorite, osu, though I am not an osu; apparently, he takes the prefix, osu in my name to mean that I belong to the low class cast called osu; I am a diala. He made me angry but, as usual, instead of fighting back by telling him what I think of him and his kind I displace my anger to my journal, I analyze my feelings towards these people. God, I find these people disgusting.

Why does this monkey call me Osu, anyway? He probably reasons (if what he does is called reasoning) that I must be an Osu to be angry at Igbos, that I feel like Igbos did something bad to me, enslaved me to be this much angry at them. Alternatively, he reasons (from his ass) that since Osus are lower class folk that it must hurt to be called an Osu, so to hurt me he calls me an Osu? This is monkey reasoning, isn’t it? A human being would reason that it is not appropriate to be called an Osu, even if one is one. Didn’t John Brown, a white man, fight and got killed trying to end slavery? Don’t idealistic hence developed human beings fight for justice even if they were not the ones unjustly treated? Igbo Negroes did not even fight to end slavery in their freaking land; they rather fought the white men who came to end their selling their people into slavery! I tell you, this man is a nigger and I would love to kick his nigger ass into the River Niger. He makes me sick with his criminal thinking and behaving patterns. (If you called him a nigger, since you are a black person, are you not calling yourself a nigger, too, or like the house nigger, have you so completely identified with the oppressor, white folk, that you call other black folk, field niggers, nigger? Good point, but we must remember that black folk do call other black folk, those who exhibit the dreaded Sambo behaviors associated with slaves, nigger; that is probably why I call this baboon a nigger. Boy, I loathe him and his kind; they make black folk seem primitive.)

I gave the Igbo chaps jostling with me the impression that I take them seriously; actually, to me they are no more than apes that I am trying to see if they could be transformed into human beings. Give them a chance and they would be chopping off each others heads, burying each other with each other to prove that they are very important apes, or stealing from each other and not feeling guilty. They are savages through and through. It would probably take several hundred years before they approximate civilized status. I humored them by talking back to them.

There are state terrorist (such as the former Soviet Union etc), group terrorists ( such as Muslim suicide squads, criminal gangs etc) and individual terrorists ( such as when one person knowing that another person is prone to fear tries to terrorize him into submitting to his will…the Biafra Internet Terrorists assumed that I am prone to fear and tried terrorizing me; they tried to intimidate me into embracing their political agenda, their wish for Biafra; I understand the nature of terrorism and intimidation and no human being can intimidate me, much less a bunch of savages…for many years I had nothing to do with them because I considered them primitive and avoided their company; it was only three years ago that I acknowledged my Africanness and exposed myself to them and they tried to rip me off; they were amusing).

I found their behaviors very unacceptable. I have given it some thinking why I found these people’s behaviors unacceptable. I think that I found their behaviors unacceptable because they represent everything that I find disgusting in human beings. More to the point, they remind me of what I do not like in Africans and black folk in general.

This is not unconscious self hatred (projected to Igbos) but conscious awareness of what I do not like in me and in our people, Igbos, Nigerians and Africans.

In my judgment, Igbos do not seem thoughtful; they tend to say whatever comes to their minds unmindful that words can hurt people. In fact, they seem to enjoy saying hurtful things. Their past time and recreation seems to lie in making derogatory statements about other people, unmindful that most human beings have fragile self esteems and that you could damage those self concepts by what you say.

We know that people who are productive and creative tend to be those who have positive self esteem, and that unproductive people, such as Africans are, tend to have low self esteem.

Damaging Africans already low self esteem contributes to their already low productivity.

But I see Igbos taking pleasure in saying nasty things about other people (imanjakiri, eko okwu, they call it). To me their behavior seems mindless.

Their apparent enjoyment of putting other folks down is probably a residue of their slave trading days. During their over 1000 years of selling their people into slavery they devalued human life. Slavery was stopped in Alaigbo only a hundred years ago (1902) by a foreigner, Lord Lugard, not by the Igbos, shame on them. I believe that they still have the bad habit of seeing people as worthless hence enjoy denigrating people. These people, if you associate with them, can damage your self esteem in a minute. They have so damaged self esteems that no wonder they are not creative.

If you listened to them you would think that they are civilized and value human life. But they did not fight for human dignity; none of them tried to stop slavery; it took white men to come and stop them from selling their brothers and sisters. I believe that if you gave them the opportunity they would resume selling their people, using the money they receive to buy the accoutrements of social prestige, such as chieftaincy titles, and feel no guilt from doing so. God, they seem like savages; their civilization is only skin deep.

They are proud and feel special; they feel superior to their neighbors and find every excuse to say derogatory things about them. I ask: what makes them feel proud and special, what have they contributed to knowledge? I am fairly up to date on the sciences (biology, chemistry, biology, mathematics etc) and do not remember coming across an Igbo (or African) who has made seminal contribution to them. They did not even invent the wheel or writing.

In the world of governance I do not remember hearing of an Igbo whose writings has shown us how to govern human beings well. Nor do I recall reading in history where they produced statesmen who unified their people and developed them; all I hear is that they were a stateless people whose social organization was at the baseline level of social organizations: communal level. In Marxian schema they had not attained higher levels of political development, such as feudalism, bourgeoisie and socialist society.

I do not believe that contemporary Igbos have what it takes to govern large polities; they lack the tact and diplomacy needed in holding diverse people together; their tendency to insulting folk would bring about war. I doubt that they can even manage an Igbo wide polity; Ojukwu was able to hold them together because the constraints of war made it impossible for folk to criticize his apparent authoritarian rule; without war the various clans would war with each other. Can you imagine an Owerri man taking orders from an Onitsha man, a person he considers not even Igbo! Hausas, who are more united, would best Igbos in political struggles, any day.



Igbos have contributed zilch to knowledge. If so why are they feeling special and proud? Shouldn’t they be hiding their heads in shame?

I personally feel ashamed that my race, black folk, is not accounted for when folk talk about contributions to science and philosophy. Come Igbos making black folk less productive by their primitive tendency to putting folk down.

In my view, folk who destroy other folk’s self esteems ought to be shot. That is correct, if you shot and killed the Igbos damaging other folk’s self esteems I would say good riddance. Those who contribute to the retrogression of humanity seem like savages.

If you have ever tried doing something with Igbos you probably have learned that when they see money they become criminals. The sign of money literally transform them to thieves. Instead of seeking ways to make the collective venture succeed they devote their little heads to figuring out ways to steal from it and in time to chase you out and appropriate the fruit of your work. And do you know what? They do not feel guilt from engaging in such antisocial behaviors. It is like they are amoral animals and do not have conscience and simply do what they think that they have to do to make it in life regardless of the morality involved. These people make the worst business partners and only a fool would partner with them and or trust them. They are too quick to steal and not feel bad about themselves from doing so.

An interesting aspect of Igbos is how unsophisticated they are. I used to think that they are smart but coming close to know them as they are, not as they pretend to be, I learned how naïve they are all around.

They have zero psychological knowledge. Though they know zilch about the nature of mental health they are quick to call folk who disagree with them sick. They call their Nigerian neighbors sick though they exhibit the symptoms of paranoia and narcissism. These people seem incapable of abstract thinking and are operating at lower levels of being.

In politics they are so naïve that they make you want to cry. They have absolutely no comprehension of power politics, what Germans call real politics; that politics is war by other means. In politics, as in war, the powerful win and rule the weak. They seem unaware that politics is war by peaceful means and that the powerful rule; we see Igbos, like children, telling other Nigerians that it is their turn to govern Nigeria. They want other people to give them power rather than earn it in the battle field of political competition. They are so pathetic they make you wonder what planet they dropped from. They alienate other Nigerians by insulting them yet they expect Nigerians to place them in power! They are not likely to rule Nigeria in decades, unless, of course, savvy politicians emerge from among them.

Part of their political naiveté is exhibited in the January 15, 1966 military coup. In it, mainly Igbo army officers killed mainly Hausa and other non-Igbo political leaders and military officers. It never occurred to them that politics is war and that what they did was a declaration of war on Northerners. Indeed, Igbos were allegedly taunting Northerners, saying something to the effect that they are going to rule the North forever. (Given what I know about them, their false pride, I would not doubt that they so behaved.)

As expected, in July 29, 1966 the North struck back and killed Igbos. Unfortunately, they did not stop at killing Igbo military leaders, they killed Igbo civilians. Igbos turned around and played innocent victims. If they were victims why did they kill Northern leaders? There were no victims; Igbos had no business killing Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and other Northern leaders while sparing Igbo leaders, such as Azikiwe and Okpara. (God, I feel like teaching these fellows real politics, forcing them to read such books as Machiavelli, The Prince; Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Second Treaty on Government; the writings on and by Prince von Metternich, Von Bismarck, Henry Kissinger, Pareto, von Clausewitz, Joseph Schumpeter, Edward Carr, George Kennan and other real politics scholars and practitioners.)

It is unfortunate that many Igbo civilians living in the North were killed; nevertheless, such is the nature of politics. If you kill peoples leaders what do you expect, that they play dead and allow you to succeed?

At present, misguided Igbos enjoy insulting Hausas, calling them derogatory names, such as aboki, gworo etc (it is my anger at some of the Igbo fools that call Hausas such names that got them to turn their anger at me). If this uncalled for assault on Hausa pride continues, when Hausas feel angry enough they will kill Igbos and, as usual, Igbos will imagine themselves innocent victims. At present their so-called leaders, Oha Na Eze Ndi Igbo (it should be Umuigbo, not Ndi igbo, for Ndi is third person plural; people do not refer to themselves in third party terms, but we are talking about fools), talk rubbish about reparation for the injustice done to them during the 1966 pogrom.

Of course, no one is going to pay them any reparation for they were part of a political chess game that turned out worse for them. (Regarding how to solve Nigeria’s seeming intractable political problems, I posited a viable political structure: a federation of no more than fifteen states, each major tribe a state and the smaller tribes grouped together into states; the country should not be more than fifteen states. See my political writings.)

In the main, Igbos seek political office for the prestige it gives them, not for what they want to do for the people. They want to become very important persons, VIP. If given political office they see it as from which they obtain public admiration and strut about as peacocks. They will betray you in a jiffy if doing so serves their individual needs for power and attention. They are not loyal to principle but to individual ego needs.

They are so pragmatic that it boarders on lack of principles and opportunism. They would make any bargain, even with the devil, to get what they desire, what gratifies their need for admiration, money and power. They would use you and discard you and to protect themselves tell lies about you and make it seem your fault that they cheated you. They generally engage in amoral behaviors to satisfy their cravings for public attention. Igbo land has become criminal land, 419 Central; do anything to become rich and you are made a chief in your village and nobody asks: how did you acquire your wealth? These people make me want to throw up.

Simply put, Igbos remind me of what I hate in Africans, and since I am an African what I hate in me. They represent my primitive side, the side I rejected and tried to hide from the public.

Igbos, in (Carl) Jungian categories are my shadow side, the dark side of me that I hide from light.

That is to say that I find them disgusting because I find certain aspects of me disgusting.

Since that primitive aspect of me would always be there, it follows that hating it and those who remind me of it is not the right thing to do. Human beings would always remain imperfect and make mistakes. The best thing to do is to gradually improve human beings without expecting them to become angels, perfect. I do not need to hate my shadow and I do not need to hate Igbos.

In the meantime, it is necessary for me to understand why I found Igbos disgusting. It is necessary to analyze my motivation and why I do what I do. An unexamined life, Aristotle observed, is not worth living. One must be brutally honest with ones thinking. I find Igbos primitive and disgusting.

I know that this is not the way Igbos see themselves. Generally, they fancy themselves special and imagine that they are God’s best creation, and that other people admire them. Admire them for what contribution to evolution? For just being alive and polluting the environment with their presence? To me it is what people contribute to science and technology that makes them worthwhile not their being around consuming food.

In my view, it is about time that Africans were told the brutal truth about them. In the past (and present) they were babied and told that their backwardness is the fault of other people. White folk are assumed the cause of their primitive level of social organization.

Unwittingly, white folk are made out as adults and Africans as children; it is adults’ fault that children are suffering. This is infantilizing Africans.

It is time Africans are told that it is their god damned fault that they are where they are in evolution. Their characters are too weak. They sold their brothers into slavery and do not feel guilt or remorse from that heinous crime. Instead, they blame their partners in crime, white folk, for slavery. They deny responsibility for their part in evil.

Given the opportunity to govern themselves all they do is steal from the public treasury; the word integrity is alien to them.

They seem to live for immediate gratification; they are self centered and find it difficult to devote their lives to serving public good.

To the extent that they work hard at all it is to appear socially important, to obtain social prestige and satisfy their infantile narcissistic cravings.

These people seldom engage in activity for the sake of that activity and or to do what serves the human race right.

Well, I think that it is about time the world stopped understanding Africans and making excuses for their shiftless behaviors; it is time the world told Africans the honest truth: that they are childish and need to grow up and accept responsibility for their fate. I think that Africans must be treated as adults who can handle the truth about them; we no longer need to treat them like children and not tell them the truth of how we see them.

In this light, I think that is time we told Igbos that they are part of Africa’s general shiftlessness and asked them to do something to become part of human civilization rather than merely masquerading as if they are special for they aren’t special.

As for me, it is necessary to understand why I found these people totally disgusting. I do not need to hide my feelings. I like those who work for the upliftment of mankind and would never like mere consumers of other peoples productions and while at it are narcissistic.

Finally, I know that it is wrong to talk about a group of people as if all of them behave alike. People are individuals; each of them has a unique personality. Not all Igbos behave as I described them here.

Be that as it may, there is such a thing as group personality. Political correctness discourages talking about group personalities but the fact is that each human group has characteristics unique to it.

We know that the English are smart and devious, that the French are intellectual and not given to military prowess, that the German is disciplined and given to military valor, that Americans are technological but not philosophical etc.

At the end of the Second World War American and English policy planners consciously tried to change what they called the German character so as to make Germans amenable to democracy, rather than the authoritarianism they were used to.

The point is that each group has unique traits and it helps to understand them, and change negative ones. Igbos have many positive traits, such as industry, but they also have tons of negative traits and ought to understand them and change them rather than feel defensive that some one talks about them. Whatever is hidden, sooner or later, comes to light.

Since they are a very opportunistic people and know that it is wrong to treat people as a class, in stereotypes, they would be the first to say that what I did is wrong. They would even threaten law suits, to manipulate the law courts. Let them try; I have in storage the negative statements they made about Hausas, Yorubas etc to counter their self serving threats of frivolous law suits. They put other people down, and those feel insulted and angry at them and some attack them and then they turn around and play innocent victims that ugly others attack. No, sir, they stimulate the attacks on them by their arrogance and their childishness of saying denigrating things about their neighbors. Like fools they expect those they verbally abuse not to fight back, to take it and smile. As It were their foolish god gave them the right to abuse other people and for those people to accept been abused. No, those derogated tend to feel degraded and fight back.

These people resent been seen in stereotypes but treat themselves in that manner, when they fancy their group superior to other groups. Of course, all human beings are the same, equal and one. The point is that when it serves them to see their selves in a positive group stereotype they do so but if one then sees them in a negative light they cry foul saying that they are stereotyped.

I am tempted to hate these people but that would amount to hate me since they are my primary group. I will not hate them. What I will do is try to understand them. As for now, it serves me best to stay emotionally distant from them; I will do whatever I could to help them become decent human beings.

My obsession with understanding Igbos is really rooted in my desire to understand me. As an Igbo I share many characteristics with other Igbos so in understanding the generalized Igbo I understand me.



* Shearing this journal entry with the public would probably bring out Igbos ire towards me. Some of them would probably say that I hate Igbos and make the usual noises. I know what my intention is. Those who would like to read false intentions to me are free to do so. I know me more than they know me, and if they think that they know me more than I do they are showing their group’s delusion.



* I am not seeking a fight with Igbos; I am not seeking a little negative attention from them either. My goal is to show these people how other people, including some of their members, see them and, hopefully, get them to change, where change is necessary.



* Take my perception or leave it. What you make of it is your business, not mine. You can dismiss it or see its purveyor as misguided (that is ego defenses to enable you continue behaving as you do that folk find irritating).



* As usual, I will ignore noise makers who have not even thought through what I said proffering idle criticisms; they are not worth replying to.



* On this note I end my year long interest in Igbos. When my book (A Psychological Assessment of the Generalized Igbo Character) on them comes out I expect to take additional flak from them. Any one who undertakes to speak the truth, as he sees it, not as his group tells him that it is, must be willing to take criticism; only those who tell folk what they want to hear, engage in group think, are left alone. However, we must remember that conformists to their group’s mores seldom bring about social change. Change agents must be willing to take the heat of opposition. Such is life, cest la vie.



* Finis.



* December 26, 2007.

because d box has opened. u cant go back to fregions

Obalende:

Is the use of 'Third World' to refer to African countries (including Nigeria) and other developing countries rude?

will u prefer if dem say underdeveloped country?

up putin

abeg jo this topic no just catch fire at all. if nutter and chxta were still around na another matter we for dey yarn here

is it true it has been scrapped? discuss

Originally: Killing children in God's Name

Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt

Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2224553,00.html

http://chxta..com/2007/12/things-fall-apart.html

Soundbite: International Thief Thief

"The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."
---Obierika (Things Fall Apart, Chapter 20)

That quote from a book which from me is unarguably the greatest book ever written by a Nigerian sums up the methods that the Europeans (and to a smaller extent the rest of the world) have always used in keeping Africans in check, and up till date it has been brutally effective. Offer concessions to some Africans, then you buy them. Make them 'big men', then you don't need to do your dirty work for you. We've seen so many of such stories in Naija as an example, and Fela's 1979 classic International Thief Thief tells one of such stories in a humorous fashion.

'Mother' Europe

In recent times however, European condescension towards Africans has been a lot more subtle, with issues like human rights coming to the fore. And thus it was that at the Africa-EU 'summit' of the weekend past, the 'mother' of Europe (see Polish magazine picture above) went on the offensive immediately, her target, Zimbabwe's hapless president Robert Mugabe. While on the one hand, I agree with Merkel that Mugabe is a disgrace especially given the apparent economic collapse that has dogged his country in the last few years, on the other hand, the West has through their own actions fuelled the suffering of the Zimbabweans. My main grouse as is usual, is the double standards, where some are allowed to do shyte, and others are harangued for almost 'no reason'.

The Queen of England, her Prime Minister and her son the Prince of Wales were in Uganda a couple of weeks ago for the Commonwealth (a useless organisation if I ever heard of one) summit. We must not forget that Yoweri Museveni has been in power for 21 years now. He runs a virtual one party state, and each time there is an election round the corner, strange things happen to his opponents. In the last presidential elections, his opponent was slapped with a rape charge and thrown in jail during the election campaign. When a judge considered the case against him and ruled that he should be released, police stormed the court, re-arrested the presidential candidate, and beat up the judges and lawyers in the courtroom. Museveni "won"the election.

There have been no cries for human rights and democracy. No matter how flawed, elections in Zimbabwe may be more credible that those in Uganda. At least, opposition candidates are allowed to stand and the MDC has deputies in the parliament. By allowing Uganda to host the Commonwealth summit, and by the topmost personalities in the British hierarchy visiting, they have in very clear terms endorsed Museveni and all his methods. So what moral right do they have to condemn Mugabe?

The Ogaden region of Ethiopia is currently witnessing something that may yet develop into another Darfur. No one has mentioned it on the BBC, Sky or CNN, and the Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has been guilty of the kind of election violence that makes Obasanjo's government look saintly, but aside from the token mention, he has gotten off with a pat on the back. Compared with Ethiopia, Zimbabwe is a model of democracy.

We also have countries like Egypt, Libya and Equatorial Guinea where no one even bothers to hold elections, yet we hear nothing because the interests of Western countries are not at stake here. Libya has opened its oil taps, so all complaints have been dropped. As we speak, Gadaffi is having a drink with Sakorzy,

Despite this, Zimbabwe is seen as so bad that crippling economic sanctions have been imposed. The United States and Britain have blocked the country's access to all international capital markets and institutions (they claim that they imposed sanctions only on Mugabe, but this is a lie),

In 2001, four years after Britain withdrew its support for the Zimbabwean land reform programme, the US congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (ZIDERA). The act specifically orders US officials to block Zimbabwe's access to funds from the following agencies: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Association, International Finance Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Investment Corporation, African Development Bank, African Development Fund, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency.

In my mind this action has more than Mugabe's antics contributed to the hyper-inflation which is so gleefully advertised on BBC and Sky as evidence of Mugabe's 'ineptitude'. It is a poignant advertisement of their hypocrisy when they maintain friendships with some of the worst of the worst still left on the continent,

Meanwhile, official British goverment policy is that Zimbabwe is 'safe' and that people face no danger, so black Zimbabweans seeking asylum in Britain are deported to Zimbabwe. It is a shame that Merkel has allowed Gordon Brown to use her to fight his battle with Mugabe while he himself cowardly remained in London and refused to go to Lisbon for that summit.

You see, Europe has traditionally been Africa's biggest trading partner. Sadly, that trade has been heavily skewered in favour of the Europeans. This was one of the effects of colonialism, and 'preferential' trade agreements drawn up between African nations and their erstwhile colonial masters. This state of affairs has been maintained more or less for the better part of a century. However, in recent times a new kid has emerged on the block. He is slick, suave, apparently a nouveau riche, and is actually attempting to 'treat Africans fairly'. His name is China, and his presence is making the traditional powers of the western world scamper for new deals. The US has reacted with Africom (recommended reading: the debate on African loft), while the EU is reacting with Economic Partnership Agreements.

According to Wikipedia, EPAs are a scheme to create a free trade area between the European Union and the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries. They are being drawn up in response to continuing criticism about the discriminatory preferential trade agreements offered by the EU which are incompatible with WTO rules. The WTO set a deadline of January 1, 2008 for all EPAs to take effect, and the EU has been feverishly working to get African countries to sign on. However, their approach has left the door wide open for suspicion.

On the face of it, the Europeans appear to be good guys as their offers come with conditions for adherence to human rights and good governance, while Chinese money on the other hand comes with no strings attached. In Sudan for example, the Chinese are pumping in money without a care as to what is happening in Darfur. But the truth is if we look beyond the veil, the Europeans have done that for years (examples of double standards given above, and in a lot of previous articles). In my mind what raised suspicion was the initial method of trying to get individual African nations to sign on to the EPAs as individual countries. This was as opposed to the EU which came as a single bloc. Twelve of the 16 member Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa have already signed up to tentative agreements because those agreements would grant them preferential trade status, another clause which has probably aroused suspicion. I also believe that the whole Mugabe brouhaha in Lisbon was just a ruse to make African nations look the other way, and one must be thankful that on the continent a new breed of leaders (or is it their advisers who for the most part are ironically Western educated) are emerging who know the score.

The EPAs as currently written would spell the death kneel of any budding African enterprise as truth be told they simply would be unable to compete with their state subsidized EU counterparts. Classic examples can be seen on the numerous Oxfam adverts of which this one is just one example. Producers of goods in Western Europe and America have since the 1950s been subsidised by their governments. These subsidies have reached the $1 billion a day mark. The result of this is that when European producers export their products to ACP countries (whose governments evidently don't subsidise anything), those imported products are cheaper than what is produced in the importing country, and like Chxta at his local Sainsbury's the citizens of the importing country shun their own produce in favour of the cheap imports. Knock off effect? Local produce is rendered worthless, local producers ask themselves what the point is of producing anything, down tools, head to Lagos, and go to live in Makoko. We've already seen such things happen in the Nigerian textile industry which has practically shut down as a result of cheaper clothes from Europe flooding the market (and to be fair, we must mention high costs pf production due to factors such as NEPA).

The EU is keen to inject fresh impetus into its trade with Africa before the Chinese corner the entire market, and this promise of a more equal partnership is one of the carrots that will be dangled. There will be a lot more. However, they know the score, and they know the damage that the EPAs would do to us, which is why the initial approach was one of getting countries to sign up one by one. Classic divide and rule. It was very heartening to see African leaders led by Senegal's Wade refusing to be side tracked by the Merkel-Mugabe show. We have to learn to force the outside world to treat us with real equality and respect. Let us make no mistakes, the world is oiled by self interest above all else, and Africa's best friend Europe is definitely not.

d problem with 9ja is dat it is full of nigerians

stupidity is too comon

texazzpete:

I have worked on projects to earn Nigeria millions of dollars and to preserve the life of some of our natural resources.

I personally paid taxes of over a million naira to date this year alone.

All in all, i'd say i was a useful citizen indeed

how much do u earn?

mrpataki:

Islamic women have shut their eyes to this incidence! When such is melted down on them, they resort to hyperventilation, running to various human rights group to help them out.

What a religion of deciet.

y will dey not be quite when they have been totally decived. they r high on the opium of islam

all this pastors dem don come again

@ afam very true sah.

he is a fineboy abi?

d man dey craze. simple.

desgiezd:

We aint seen nothing yet! This is just the beginning. As long as God is still on the throne, all deals done in secret against the people of Nigeria shall be exposed and the perpetrators brought to everlasting shame and condemnation.

peeps like u do worse when dey enter. no be obj dey yarn god god god everyday?

may he rest in peace

it was not my choice so there is nothing to regret or love about it.