Author Archives: Saratu Abiola

Ghanaian and Nigerian Movie Industries Are Getting More Protectionist

Some folks have started get­ting queasy about inroads being made into the Niger­ian film indus­try by Ghana­ian actors. First it was the Ghana­ian super­star Van Vicker get­ting slammed with $2,000 per fee to make him more expen­sive to hire, now it’s a blan­ket 250,000 naira clear­ance fee in addi­tion to cost of hire per Ghana­ian

Nigerian Movies Are Products Not Art

(Cross-posted at my blog Method to the Mad­ness) Abena P.A. Busia has a speech at a forum on the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Niger­ian women in the Niger­ian film indus­try that’s worth a read. This, on the Niger­ian film indus­try in gen­eral, caught my eye. The Nol­ly­wood film indus­try, will­ingly or unwit­tingly, car­ries on its shoul­ders the hopes

Will Decreasing the Number of States Ease Corruption?

[Cross-posted at my blog Method to the Mad­ness] Don’t know how I missed this, but (via Africa Unchained) For­mer Cen­tral Bank Chair­man Charles Soludo said “our pol­i­tics must change”. How? Well… Soludo who was guest lec­turer at the Fac­ulty of Social Sci­ences of the Uni­ver­sity of Nige­ria, Nsukka where he spoke on the topic “Who Will

Oversimplifications Are Lies in Drag

(This piece is cross-posted at my blog Method to the Mad­ness) Pankaj Mishra has a dev­as­tat­ing piece on Ayanna Hirsi Ali [Somali-Dutch, now liv­ing in the U.S., Islam critic (hater?) extra­or­di­naire] and her newest book “Nomad”. A taste: “Nomad” is unlikely to earn Hirsi Ali many Mus­lim admir­ers. Nei­ther will her recent sup­port for the pro­posed

The Obsession with Beauty

(Cross-posted at my blog­ging house Method to the Mad­ness). There’s some­thing about a suit that irks me. Don’t get me wrong, I appre­ci­ate a well-dressed man as much as the next girl, but there’s some­thing about a per­pet­u­ally well-dressed per­son that puts me ill at ease. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s that you

First Impressions on Seeing Acting President Goodluck Jonathan Live in Washington, DC

Hear­ing Act­ing Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan live was a con­fronta­tion with my pre-conceived impres­sions. All the news reports from Nige­ria have a sim­i­lar air, in that they tend to depict him as an acci­den­tal leader being floated about in the wave of the tur­moil that sur­rounds him. I’ve heard him being spo­ken of as though he

The world is crumbling around you and there is nothing you can do about it.

Nobody wants to ever think that, but it’s true. Homes have been demol­ished. Lives have been upended. Entire worlds have caved into them­selves, col­lapsed like bro­ken hearts, been swal­lowed whole. What to do? What to do? The eter­nal cynic that I am, I don’t have any illu­sions as to the effec­tive­ness of any char­ity on any

Uganda’s Anti-Gay Law in Western Media

Below is an arti­cle of mine pre­vi­ously posted at  allAfrica.com.  The pre­vi­ous post on this sub­ject and Nige­ria can be found here. Update: I sug­gest read­ing the allAfrica.com copy with the link pro­vided above. There, you will see all the links referred to in this arti­cle. Ugan­dan MPs prob­a­bly didn’t know what a firestorm David

Just when I thought we could move on from Undie-Bomber Dude.….

This. I have a lot of respect for Dr. George Ayittey, but come on. “In many African coun­tries, gov­ern­ment has ceased to exist or func­tion. In its place is a vam­pire state — a gov­ern­ment hijacked by unre­pen­tant ban­dits who use the machin­ery of the state to enrich them­selves, crush their ene­mies, and per­pet­u­ate them­selves in

The New Danger

The idea that under­lines the banal­ity of evil relies on the notion that peo­ple are put in sit­u­a­tions – by their respec­tive gov­ern­ments or larger author­i­ties, even mere fam­i­lies – where the per­pet­u­a­tion of evil acts stop being evil and become merely a way to ensure their sur­vival. By sur­vival, I mean every­thing from “If