Month: October 2013

Reactions to recent events in Nigeria, notably the very tragic loss of lives in the crash of a Dana aircraft and the changing of the name of the former University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos bring again to the fore some persisting peculiarities about social media usage in Nigeria. In the former, whilst families and almost the entire nation stood in shock and mourned in a spontaneous outburst of grief and outrage, a group of individuals jumped on the sad event and sought, after a brief interlude of demonstration of solidarity with families affected by the tragedy, to twist it to advance particular agendas. In the latter, rational discussion and review were marred by a combination ethnic undertones in the reactions and comments of a number of Nigerians and again by an “events hijack” by a group of individuals anxious to score political points. The ethnic undertones were…

Following the handing-over of ownership certificates and legal documents to the 15 new investors of the new power firms drawn out of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), electricity consumers are expecting quality service delivery from the firms. It is, hence, pertinent that the public is enlightened on the real owners of the companies to help prepare them for likely expectations.

President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday September 30 handed over ownership certificates to 15 new investor companies to take over five generation companies (Gencos) and 10 distribution companies (Discos). The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) put the total sale figures of both the gencos and discos at $2.525 billion (about N404 billion). The gencos went for $1.269 while the discos were sold for $1.256bn.

Vice President Namadi Sambo said that with the take-over, the federal government expects the new genco owners to generate additional 5000 megawatts within a…

My Friday Tot for today is a fallout of a conversation with someone from the Niger-Delta. Ponder.

TL

There’s what I call the Bigger Entity Myopia that many Nigerians seem to suffer from. This form of myopia impairs the perception and sensitivity such that we ignore the leadership that is responsible for our immediate wellbeing and focus on the bigger one. So we ignore our councilors and focus on the state governors. We ignore the profligacy and lackluster performance of our governors and rile the federal government as if everything rises and falls there. I did an interesting table recently juxtaposing the monies that come to states from the center, their Internally Generated Revenue and their populations. The data threw up some interesting facts. The first, which should be quite obvious is that many states are pretty much not viable if the feeding bottle from the center is disconnected. But…

Last week, I read a news story that moved me to tears. Well, virtually every news story these days has the capacity to move one to tears so I imagine you are wondering what the big deal about this story is. Somehow our consciences have become deadened to violence and the effects of it from repeated exposure that it now really feels kind of normal.

I thought I had become numb too, until I read that short story. It was one of those early hours rush in Lagos traffic when you kill time scrolling through news stories when I read it and it was almost embarrassing, the way my eyes watered with tears, reminding me that I am still human, still capable of such emotions from items in the news. It was a story about the funeral of four members of a family – Nnamdi Ezebuala (48) and his three…

John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Catholic Archbishop of Abuja,  spoke to the Vatican Radio about the mindless slaughter of about 50 innocent students in Yobe early this week by the Boko haram terrorist group.

Onaiyekan, who is currently in Rome for a Peace Conference shared his thoughts about the Boko haram insurgency.  He also expressed his desire for inter-religious dialogue towards the path to peace. The Cardinal  emphasised that:

“As far as dialogue among religions is concerned, in view of peace, I want to say two things.

The first is that there has been a poor historical record of relations between Christians and Muslims. Our religions have been used in the past centuries for wars. It is necessary to say it loud and clear: we are now in a new era. Vatican II already moved in this direction. We thank God for Vatican II, but unfortunately it was a Catholic Council, the…