President Goodluck Jonathan

I have been one of those in favour of the removal of fuel subsidies. However for most Nigerians the problem is not that they don’t understand the logic of spending wisely. The problem is they don’t trust the government to do so. The government has used these tricks in the past and there really is no reason to believe they are serious about investing now. As popular as the protests are, and I support them, the only tangible plan I’ve seen involves returning to N65 per liter, reducing the  cost of governance, plugging holes in oil sector and provide power. The N65 is popular however the rest are all pretty vague. Almost as vague as the government SURE plan.

I have therefore decided to try to contribute by coming up with a plan that doesn’t require people trusting the government. This is a plan to replace the governments proposed subsidy reinvestment and empowerment program. It is based on three principles: ringfencing the savings from the subsidy removal; enforcing pre agreed conditions on projects with the federal, state and local government; and providing a tool for ordinary Nigerians to monitors projects. This plan is not supposed to replace other demands by protesters. Demands such as reducing the allowances of members of the national assembly.

This plan is still in the early stages of development and all suggestions are welcome. Please email suggestions to me at thesubsidyplan@gmail.com.

ThePlan(Download)

Fuel Pump, Courtesy of Business Day Online

This blog is cross-posted originally from AkinBlog.nl

The Fuel Subsidy Debate

The Nigerian Social Media space has been considering the possibility of Nigerians waking up from their docility and acceptance of everything thrown at them by their indifferent government to the inspiration of their own Arab Spring early next year.

This has been predicated by the decision of the government to remove subsidies from Premium Motor Spirit what we generally call fuel subsidy early next year.

The chatter has really been confounded by the situation where over decades there have been threats and salami-sliced implementations of the removal but no one is particularly sure of how much that subsidy really is, that it has become some imaginary slush fund of ready cash that the government suggests it will plough back into the economy taking cognisance of the effects such a removal might have on the working classes.

The Truth About Our Government

Sadly, the government has never really had a track record of ploughing oil profits back into the pockets of Nigerians except in the mid-70s after which plunder and squander has been the tack of those in leadership with little consideration of the bottom-line and particular welfare of the generality of the people – there are points for argument in the previous statement but little to dispute in terms of results.

Fundamentally, the fuel subsidy is literally the substrate of the totality of the Nigerian economy, it will touch on every aspect of life in relation to prices for food, goods, transport and every other service apart from the inflationary pressures it will present, but those issues are best left to central bankers and economists whilst one deals with a few other brass tacks.

Plans or Fables?

As a producer of petroleum products, it is bordering on the atrocious that Nigeria imports about 85% of its refined fuel needs because its existing four refineries are poorly managed and are lacking in serious productive capacity which means that the federal government subsidies imported fuel to the tune of $4 billion annually. [TransparencyNG]

Commonsense will suggest that the long-term goal of the government will be to facilitate, encourage or sponsor raising our refined fuel capacity to levels that will ensure that the subsidy expended in imports is radically reduced, at least that is what informed the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation in May last year to build refineries in Lagos, Kebbi and Bayelsa States at the cost of $23 billion. [TransparencyNG][China in Africa][BBC News]

Whilst it is interesting to note the activity of the Chinese in building refineries in Ghana, Niger and Nigeria, what made interesting news a few months ago was the idea that Niger might get way ahead of Nigeria in commissioning its own refineries and end up exporting refined fuel to Nigeria. [All Africa]

How Much Is The Subsidy?

Besides, it appears no one is sure of what the cost of subsidising fuel is, the Central Bank in its MPC Meeting minutes suggested that the cost was about $6 billion, the on-going debate in the Nigerian Senate suggests the Federal Government budgeted NGN 240 billion ($1.54 billion) for subsidies in 2011 but have found that cost inflated to NGN 1.5 trillion ($9 6 billion) in what is a looking like a typical Nigerian scam. [CBN (PDF) Page 3][All Africa]

This amazing discrepancy should have heads rolling faster than when the Bastille movement chopped off heads in the French revolution, but none such will happen because the matter of responsibility leading on to accountability is just absent in Nigerian governance.

As an aside, the real big cost of governance sits within the profligate nature of our Federal Government, the abuse of security votes at state government level and the exorbitance of our legislature that consumes over 25% of our Federal Government overheads without essentially being a productive sector of our economy.

Indonesia Caught in Denials

Much as the idea of building more refining capacity in Nigeria does not seem to appeal to those resolute in finding another largesse to nudge their greedy snouts into, what adds insult to injury in spite of the now seemingly white elephant plans to build refineries in Nigeria is the news that Nigeria plans to invest Rp 24 trillion (US$2.68 billion) in Indonesia to build three refineries. [Jakarta Post]

The Nigerian Government has gone to great lengths to deny this report, but one has to ask why Indonesia will dream up such a scheme if there were no iota of truth in the same. The Nigerian Government unfortunately for all its protestations has a Matilda Complex about it, its propensity for denying fact and defending lies is legendary especially with the instrument of Social Media personnel it has employed for propaganda, obfuscation, distraction and alienation. [All Africa][AkinBlog]

Our Insurrection In Planning

It has become known that any opposition to the government is quickly construed as unpatriotic whilst the government has perfected a complacency of siege mentality proffering more excuse than reason for any action or inaction they have found themselves in.

At the end of the day, the reasonable thing about fuel subsidy is for Nigeria to build and sustain its refining capacity by whatever means encourages that trajectory and it is only after that is put in place that the desire to remove the fuel subsidy can be justified.

Nigerians have two and a half long months to put everything in place to start off their justifiable insurrection against a moribund, ineffective government in détente and inertia, for once, let us – Arise, O Compatriots and heed a call for a democracy that is fair, just, honest and true.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I think that is what is most encouraging: Yes there are issues, but we are able to identify these issues and do something about resolving them. Or are we?

How are we able to deal with these issues if we are not educated? What is education? What are the policies we have in place that tackle the illiteracy problem? What has been implemented? What exactly are we doing? Do we even prioritise education as a key development issue?

There are many statistics on the United Nations and World Bank’s websites that inform on the role of education in development. The focus though is on Basic Education. Yes we have basic education (don’t get me started on the issues with these, issues on quality of education, etc.), but after that, what next? It is like a pyramid, the numbers that pass through to the next upward level taper continuously until the apex is comprised of children of the elite, and some few people that are ‘lucky’.

Surely this is a dire situation. Yes education is important; it can lead to change (the ability to know the issues and the know-how to find where if not how to resolve them). But we cannot get to that point as a continent if 60% of our population is illiterate. 60%! SIXTY PERCENT! This figure is shocking. Scary. Painful.  What are we going to do about it?

May I suggest a few things: creating awareness about the importance of education. Supporting local schools. Starting workshops to educate parents about the need for education. Adult education. Educating domestic helps, their children.  There is so much to write on this topic. I shall continue next time.

World Bank Education For All

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION/0,,contentMDK:20374062~menuPK:540090~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:282386,00.html

United Nations Millennium Development Goal 2- Education

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml

The anticipation for this day has been presaged with a lot of debate and discussion as to how we would want to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Nigeria’s independence from the United Kingdom.

In my view, the failings and failures of Nigeria over the last 50 years have been documented relentlessly by activists, polemists, detractors, traitors and patriots, there is probably not much else we can add to that catalogue than to rehash the old mantras with more sophistry about leadership, corruption, religion, poverty and whatever else we can deftly use sarcasm to portray with every increasing excellence.

Today, I want to try a new perspective, there was a great euphoria and burst joy with the realisation of opportunity and responsibility that greeted the 1^st of October 1960 when the Union Jack came down and the flag and standard of Nigeria was raised heralding the birth of an independent, sovereign country ready to grow and do its part as a member of the global community.

Our claims to responsible government

The speech given by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa [1], the Prime Minister on that day contained a number of declarations the chief amongst which I read as “We are called upon immediately to show that our claims to responsible government are well-founded, and having been accepted as an independent state we must at once play an active part in maintaining the peace of the world and in preserving civilisation. I promise you, we shall not fail for want of determination.”

This I believe is the continual challenge we have faced since independence and it remains a goal to aspire to without contest for the future. This is the theme of my write-up “Nigeria at 50: Looking to the future” as if I was living the circumstances that inspired the speech that heralded the birth of Nigeria’s sovereignty 50 years before.

We can paint a brighter and hopeful future for the next 50 years or regress to the scepticism and cynicism that is the easy default to what we could readily call the intractable issues with Nigeria – but this day should hopefully give us a sense of optimism and maybe a new foundation defining that great harvest of Nigeria our founding fathers and leading women saw in 1960.

A representation representative of the people

The first claim to responsible government is the onerous task before us in the election of a new executive and legislative branch of government at the federal and state levels. What we need are people representative of the interests of the people who are committed to the development of the country in its people, its resources, its outlook and its status.

The Independent National Electoral Commission needs all the leeway to ensure that elections are conducted freely and fairly, that the will of the people is duly and correctly expressed and with that the people who have lost should gracefully retreat and find other ways of contributing to their communities without the need of political office.

The people as citizens and stakeholders

The second claim to responsible government evolves from the people, stakeholders of this great nation who should be able to pursue worthy goals of better livelihoods and the pursuit of happiness whilst being able to hold their leaders accountable for their views, actions, practices and sense of duty.

The people should be able to enjoy the protection of its government in security, in the economy and in the maintenance of peace and order in our communities. They should be able to seek redress without being priced out of the system, their rights should be championed by every representative without pandering to populist or divisive rhetoric – we need to relearn the fact that Nigeria is bigger than any one group, any one tribe, any one religion, any one faction and any Nigerian who calls the country motherland or fatherland.

Applying reason to faith

This great nation of people of different faiths needs to temper their faith with reason, the application of intellect, the deployment of our individual and unique talents adapting the things that define us in our culture, our language, our customs and our traditions which are not necessarily so divergent as to make it impossible for us to co-exist.

We cannot afford religious fundamentalism just as the followership of supposed men of God cannot be dumb, without examination or inquiry. We each need to have a personal comprehension of the truth by reason of our study, reasoning, debate and discussion. We should ask difficult questions and not be fobbed off with easy or unreasonable answers.

Let us look for logic in the place of idle superstition and old-wives tales, allow imagination to take us beyond our comfort zones but be grounded in reality. For every quest for gain there must be the exercise of labour, the religion of wishful thinking and the fixation on mammon is the wrong foundation for moral rectitude or the development of faith.

Nigerian above all else

We belong to that entity called Nigeria and have the identity of Nigerians that should be first and foremost in our hearts and minds; we seek the best Nigerians to help Nigeria not our close kith and kin for the deceptive safety of mediocrity.

How wonderful it would be if state-lines and tribal lines dissolved and what binds us together is the geographical fencing that demarcates the country of Nigeria, this would enhance the view of being accepted as an independent state preparing us for national greatness and the ability to project that moniker of the Giant of Africa that we really should assume without derision.

There is a future of an industrial and industrious Nigeria, the exploitation of our natural resources for creating a contented middle-class not consumed with hedonism and unnecessary ostentation which is usually more expressive of a poverty of spirit.

Our youth being able to recite the National Pledge with a sense of patriotic fervour and optimistic future mentored by grown-ups who remembering the day of independence would recast their vision to better ideals living out the National Pledge as examples and role models, unimpeachable and above reproach.

We are unwitting ambassadors

Each of us at home and abroad are unwittingly ambassadors of Nigeria either by designation or by affiliation no matter how remote, we all have within us a sense of passion about our dear country but all that has to be harnessed to positive ends.

Excelling in all we do, honest in all our dealings, exemplary in all our conduct, accommodating of all our differences, tolerant of opinions at variance with ours and meticulous in quest for improvement of ourselves and our communities both far and near.

Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress

Let us take the respect for our flag; the words of all our anthems that plead for brotherhood, an adoration of motherland and fatherland, the land of birth, land of our ancestors or any other affinity; the pledge which we should hand on heart with all integrity and purpose strive to live out to ourselves, our communities and the world at large and give it all prime importance.

The coat of arms with all its symbolism and the motto that should mean everything to Nigerians as Nigerians first and anything else second, the quest for unity, the use of faith with reason, the pursuit of peace for all ends laying the foundation for progress, we should stop having potential and start exceeding potential with excellence.

This is what our independence is about, the ability within ourselves to secure our identity in one entity Nigeria, having sound moral grounding from whatever religious affiliations we may have whilst being tolerant of others; compromise for confrontation, control for chaos, and harnessing every talent and good knowledge to make the best of what Nigeria should aspire to be and rightly occupy – a well-founded claim to responsible government.

That day, this day and a day in the future

This day, the 1^st of October 2010 can be that day when a new resolution can be made to build Nigeria up and condemn every action inimical to the progress of our dear nation.

There probably was a time Nigeria was worth dying for, but this is not a call to war but one to a cause greater than each of us, one that ignites us with a resolve to see Nigeria praised, glorified and honoured for who we are, what we do and what we represent as individuals and collectively and for this cause we shall not fail for want of determination.

Happy 50^th Independence Anniversary, our great people of Nigeria and the greater nation of Nigeria, I see a future that can be different but it would take each and every Nigerian the will, the determination, the resolve and the desire to see change, engage change and become that change.

God bless Nigeria and help us see a brighter future that is of greater promise and achievable goals beyond that which augured October 1^st 1960.

Thank you.

Sources

[1] Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa’s address to the nation on Independence day

Today, I will be recalling sections of Karl Maier’s This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis for the nth time. It always baffles me how it has been successfully seared into the annals that the election of June 12, 1993 is the freest and fairest of them all. I hold up the face of that election, its historical background and vital statistics, I hold it up to my mirror and it shatters in a million pieces. Imagine an election marred by grievous voter apathy, recording a turnout of no more than 35 per cent of the registered electorate, i.e. the Nigerian people, using or not using their legs, passed a vote of no confidence on June 12, 1993 and rejected a transition programme that had lost every iota of credibility owing to the disgraceful manner in which it had been stage-managed by the military puppeteers. Imagine an election the lead-up to which had been marred by the disappearance of the freedom of political association and political thought both for those seeking the vote and, by implicature, for those giving it. The SDP and NRC were the two remaining fingers of a leprosy-ravaged hand, bankrupt manifesto-wise and peopled with all manner of strange bedfellows with an eye for the main chance. Imagine an election in which all the political sluggers that could have matched Abiola blow-for-blow (or is it dough-for-dough?) were disqualified from the fray while an unknown apparition was conjured and superficially propped up for the pretence of a contest with Abiola. This is the election that we hail as Snow White, the freest and fairest of them all. Today many people will beat their breasts in that predictable and silly ritual, and claim they are willing to die in honour of whatever it is Abiola stands for in their imaginings. I, being aware of the iniquity into which I was born and have lived in happily ever since, prefer demonologies to hagiographies. So, drawing from the demonology built up before June 12, 1993 by Nigeria’s progressive bastion, what I prefer to recall of MKO is that he was promoter and financier, a veritable diabolus ex machina, of the NPN, that constellation of the most cussed diehards and dyed-in-the-wool holdouts in the reactionary firmament of Nigerian politics. I also recall that his middle-name used to be military collaborator and his cognomen International Thief Thief.

And each time, before I hold up this construction of his reputation to the mirror, I do not forget to add as addendum to his demonology the fact that he became a ‘progressive democrat’ only after what he expected to receive on a platter, like the head of Saint John the Baptist, began to prove unfortunate for his ambition. I recall the media blitzkrieg of his campaign. I remember the ‘Na for bingo’ TV advert in which it became clear that the NPN’s erstwhile financier had ‘finally’ acquired the knowledge that contrary to the false image of a rich country with a contented citizenry whose high standard of living could underwrite the extravagance of moneybags who owned houses in all the capitals of the West and fornicated in every galaxy in the universe, the vast majority of Nigerians were vying with dogs for bones to crunch. I marvel at the expertise and alacrity with which a completely new image, that of an ‘a luta continua’ fighter, was well-nigh successfully minted for MKO, the hitherto proverb-munching and skirt-chasing Aare Ona Kakanfo—he cut a figure close to Elesin, didn’t he?—as it dawned on him and his fellow progressives that his friend Abacha had not ousted Shonekan from Aso Rock so that Abiola could retrieve his stolen mandate. Abacha, Abiola’s friend, had gothic things in mind for his own kakistocracy, including show trials and kangaroo courts, dungeons, roadside murders, séances with marabouts, and regular soirées featuring nautch dancers from India. ‘A looter continua!’

It is a short distance from the NPN to the SDP. Abiola actually ignored that short distance and took a shortcut made even shorter by the media power, the connections within the military-industrial complex, the philanthropist’s clout and, not least, the vast marital and fornication network he had amassed over the decades. Maybe there was no distance to travel at all, as Atiku’s example now convincingly instructs us. Indeed, under the barefaced puppetry and magomago of the demiurge IBB-Maradona, there was no line, thin or thick, between the NRC and the SDP. Those two parties were tighter than Siamese twins walking a little to the right and a little to the left; they were thick as thieves. The political players of that era, minus, of course, the apparition Bashir Tofa, are still at their nefarious worst, evenly and interchangeably spread over the landscape of party politics, all of them ancient rogues and toughs ruining the ‘nascent democracy’ and kicking the battered ball that is Nigeria here and there and nowhere in particular because the goalposts have long been dismantled. (Aside: FIFA ought not to have fixed a world cup match for Nigeria today June 12 when it is most likely not to score any goal. Tatalo Alamu has written a fine article on this ominous mistake here.)

If Abiola had survived those fateful sips of hemlock… sorry, I’ve just crosschecked that against the official record, it says ordinary tea… but if MKO had survived those trembling mouthfuls he managed to swallow that fateful day in July 1998, he would most likely have signed up as a player on the PDP team like his running mate Babagana Kingibe. I dare anybody to contradict me on this. Africa’s ‘Pillar of Sports’, founder and owner of Abiola Babes FC, would have been a PDP playmaker today. And if he had ended up in the AC or ANPP, what degree of difference would that have signalled? Let’s ask Atiku who’s been there and done that. Or, for that matter, Bola Ige who served as minister in the PDP government of OBJ, that ‘nest of killers’, even though he was chieftain of the AD, a party that was supposed to stand for everything the PDP was the antithesis of. Or prithee let’s ask our ‘new-breed’ political parvenus, from Speaker Bankole to every harried AC rep, all of whom share the same mind, the same ‘long throat’ cloned from an extinct species of giraffe, insofar as the issue is jumbo allowances for the asses at the National Assembly. And what else besides their obese earnings and bulging ‘Ghana-must-go’ booty is always on the agenda of those asses at the Assembly? Eh, what else do they aye and nay and bray about?

I agree that people have the right to construct and recall their history however it pleases them. In the case of Abiola, it is sure that the progressive hagiography has both overtaken and overpowered the progressive demonology. The man is a saint, and the election he won is our Snow White. This is the dominant political history of June 12 in both expert and popular discourse in our land. But I also say that whatever the edifice of historical syllabus people construct, it is susceptible of critical inspection, and when we can, it is our duty to deconstruct every such construction in order to understand it. Brecht wrote the words: ‘Unhappy the land that needs heroes.’ The desperation in our land shows up in the way we have clutched at the straw of MKO. In the absence of Snow White, haunted Prince Charming embosoms the queen. I wonder if the same unhappy desperation does not explain the beatification and eventual deification of Shango the marauding fire-breather. Anyway, I would sooner look to Shango for heroism than join the breast-beaters of the annual June 12 ritual. At least Shango repented of his belligerent ways and regretted that he had got his two strongest generals—IBB and Abacha?—overly accustomed to slaughter and plunder in addition to the worse crime of militarizing the imagination and ethos of his people. Shango ‘Oba Koso’ willingly took his own life. And then the ebullient bata rhythms of Shango worship—where is the colobus monkey that prefers the flying spittle and grating mendacities of the June 12ers to that? In matters heroic I prefer myths because we can always metaphorize them and distil some nuanced essence from their offerings. As Auden warned, ‘Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.’ The admonition should be extended to the pedagogy of adults as well. Especially those adults who, when they look in the mirror, find that like Dele Momodu they have regressed into adolescence.

When documentaries are advertised about some aspect of Nigerian life one now tends to take everything with a pinch of salt.

If anything, the titles count for nothing, the expectations the titles invite are usually never anywhere near the reality of what gets shown – in the end, one has to stretch ones imagination to match the intentions with the purpose; objective scrutiny usually ends up as a parody.

This was the feeling that greeted the showing by BBC Four of Storyville: The New Kings of Nigeria [1], which was apparently about the brain gain of Nigerian returnees from the West with the ability to make a difference back home.

Media generation not royalty

At the beginning of the programme, it became clear from the narrator that this was really about “the changing face of Nigeria’s media generation.”

The protagonist was Walter, a great grandson of King Jaja of Opobo [2], a slave in the 19^th Century who became king of his people in Niger Delta area of Nigeria, was captured and exiled by the British, never to return alive to his land because of how powerful he had become.

One can suppose the idea of king came from this relationship rather than king in any real sense of the word. Walter, a public-school educated man from England with a passable English accent had returned to Nigeria after what could not be termed a sterling career in England but with the braggadocio of some foreign expertise to command attention and meet up with opportunities more easily.

The voice of a chancer

He lived with his sister in a fortress-like barricaded building and offered all sorts of platitudes about the hustle of life and livelihood in Nigeria, in many ways meeting up with the sharp ends of skullduggery and people trying to take advantage of so-called newcomers.

He landed his first job as the voice of “Big Brother Nigeria” and then moved into producing and directing reality shows and music videos – at every point, he appeared to pull it off but he never really had the gravitas of being king of his entire in terms of what he did, even though he had lots of words to describe any situation he found himself in.

What this documentary revealed was not so much the resourcefulness and acumen that belied the Welcome to Lagos documentaries but a way of life of the privileged who took things for granted and were ready to mete punishment or retribution out to those who dared challenge the status quo.

No mass opportunity in reality shows

There was no royal aspect to this show, no people being lead or vision being conveyed, rather, cut-outs to The Apprentice Nigeria, Koko Mansion, the popular musician D’Banj and a football talent hunt brought the prospect of great opportunity to the few rather than the many – all these reality shows just plucked individuals from obscurity into stardom and the cachet that it meant in Nigeria.

At the end of the hour, this was a simple favour to Walter, resumé fodder accompanied with references from different people who in one way were burnishing Walter’s ancestral claim with a contemporaneous inclination of expecting Walter to become the “King Jaja” of the 21^st Century; he did not present any such innate ability.

In fact, the classroom references to the story of King Jaja of Opobo was a distraction from the goal of Walter being able to say he appeared on the BBC and you can only wonder how many doors that might open in Nigeria, West Africa and Africa at large.

Public school favours

No, I was not impressed at all, this is not one would expect of kings or of people who really have been successful in the West and have returned to Nigeria to make a difference. If any watcher were persuaded of the opportunities to boss around people as one would not be able to do in the West, it is not entirely that easy and humble-pie is coming fast to your face.

Walter has Elizabeth Stopford the director of this show to thank for this chicanery masquerading as enlightenment, but never say a public school education does not give you undue access to opportunities hard to get by merit.

For a title, it would have been better advertised as “Walter needs a job” and wants VIP access to the big parties and social circles in Nigeria – ambition which does not depict the reserve and comportment of public school progeny, he needs to hear the clink of many kobos before he can cling to being any kind of king .

This was not about Nigeria, it was about an individual many of us in Diaspora would be quite loath to imitate in an fashion, view or mindset.

As usual Nigeria Curiosity has obtained access to the YouTube version of the show [3], watch and well, make up your mind about it. Thank you Solomon Sydelle.

Sources

[1] BBC – BBC Four Programmes – Storyville, 2009-2010, The New Kings of Nigeria

[2] King Jaja of Opobo

[3] Watch BBC’s ‘New Kings Of Nigeria’ (Video) ~ Nigerian Curiosity

Other reviews

How I laughed whilst googling my great great grandfather – King Jaja : Black Looks

naijablog: The New Kings of Nigeria

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• Last Night’s TV – Storyville: New Kings of Nigeria, BBC4; The Big Personality Test: a Child of Our Time Special, BBC1 (independent.co.uk)

I have not seen the second in the series so I can’t really say much about that. The first, though, in my opinion, does not leave any gap that needs to be filled by any fair and balanced reporting.

It is a story about a dump and its dwellers, and how they manage to eke out a living, create a semblance of a government, and work towards achieving much more than they already have.

I would actually find it distasteful if the documentary had brought in a bit of the Lekki side of life in order to show that there is more to Lagos than dumps. That would indeed smack of tokenism, and most likely remove from the main thrust of the documentary by drawing attention to the things that the dump dwellers do not have. It might also end up portraying them as victims, something that the documentary was very careful not to do.

The other question here would be whether the story would in any way be advanced by showing those other sides. I doubt it.

The documentary depicts an important part of Lagos that is almost never talked about. For that, we should be grateful.

Britain
I would assume that it is an insult to the British audience – for whom the documentary is primarily intended – for us to believe that they do not know that there is more to Lagos than dumps. Really.

There are complaints that there are Brits who live on garbage. Oh yes there are, and I could almost bet that there are documentaries on them. Probably prepared by or for the BBC. But that is not the issue here.

The issue here is that this is the story of Olusosun and not a documentary comparing it with dumps in other parts of the world. I am sure that anyone who is interested in doing a documentary on that topic – a comparison – would be able to get some funding for that.

This documentary is one that I am the better for having watched.

Libertarianism
One take on this that I find really interesting is the description of life on the dump as libertarianism in action:

Not only did the scavengers sell on any rubbish of any value, but a market arose to satisfy their own needs; the tip had a café and even a manicurist. And at the nearby cattle market, every part of the cow except the hair was used for profit; even the blood that would otherwise drain away was scooped up and turned to chickenfeed.

In this sense, we saw the free market in its perfect form: sole traders exploiting every tiny profit opportunity; the minute division of labour; hard work, energy and entrepreneurship; the lack of any waste.

We also saw that the market policed itself. The scavengers claimed that they trusted each other – though whether this was because market transactions bred bourgeois virtues, or because they threatened to burn to death suspected thieves, was unclear. What was clear, though, was that they didn’t need the state to solve their disputes.

Interesting.

Cross-posted here.

The second part of Welcome to Lagos [1] shown on the BBC yesterday was another compelling viewing that would leave many viewers divided between the humanity of those communities and the conditions of the same communities.

The second part can be viewed courtesy of Nigerian Curiosity [2] who has obtained video viewable on her blog – Thanks for a splendid job.

There are however a few incontrovertible facts, Makoko is part of Lagos, about 100,000 people live there, they are Nigerians and there is no reason for them to feel inferior to any other so-called emancipated Nigerian who is too ashamed to see the realities in their own country.

Spare me the whining

The middle-class whining about the image, tourist potential and places of superfluous grandeur that majors on trends and the mimicry of foreign styles and mores without any substance, hoping to portray an air-brushed image of life and opulence is interesting but not about Nigeria at all.

In my case, I would have preferred to see the tenacity and in the words of the narrator, the resourceful, determined and unbelievably resilient people of Makoko than pretentious haughty hedonists living in gated communities built by foreigners for which they have to pay fortunes to keep up with the Joneses.

A family of note

Indeed, the life of the 65-year old who had been there for 40 years was interesting as a father of 18 children welcoming a new grandchild, it would be easily to castigate the creation of such a large family.

However, unlike typical large families that make the news in the West as scroungers living on welfare, the man held his house together, they ate together and he strove to maintain discipline within that seemingly happy household apart from the difficulties he had with a son who was not keen on the dignity of labour for the waywardness of social excess.

A jack of many trades, mastering most, he was fish-farmer, fish-monger, landlord and lucky gambler with an interesting lottery prediction system – the man was grounded, able and willing to do whatever he could for the good of himself and his family – that at least should be commendable.

Let there be sand

Land reclamation was a fascinating mix of the foundation of rubbish, layers of sawdust obtained from a saw mill nearby which also absorbed the foul odours and then sand.

The sand divers collecting sharp sand for the building trade were men of a different kind, one of the divers was 50 and his body could easily pass for a fit athlete half his age. They filled their boats in hours and rather than row they put up huge sails and made for land to deliver their cargo.

The flotilla of sand boats was a sight to behold, a regatta of hard labour and of people who in difficult situations made a living worthy of great respect.

An abattoir for trees

The sawmill was a hive of activity with lots of child labour, one of the foremen slept on the premises but hoped to acquire a place for himself once he had saved enough money {he eventually did} – they were driven and only stopped when the electricity supply was lost for all sorts of infrastructure reasons that have consistently plagued Nigeria.

Thankfully, none of the sawmill owners were in the game of one-upmanship of acquiring generators to draw more business to themselves but when two deaths occurred from electrocution all the operators gathered in a union style meeting and proposed that all operators must wear rubber gloves and boots. Each death initiated three days of mourning along with contributions towards the burial of the victim and for the upkeep of his family.

The sawmills were a seriously unsafe environment but the fatalities necessitated a change to their working environment. At one time, an owner opined that siblings working together might just be engaged in chit-chat, but the dedication of the children lead to their permanent employment with nostalgic memories of home.

A university student, a marine science major paid his fees by logging in the holidays, he felled the trees and used the buoyancy of water to transport the trees to the sawmill over the period of a week – his command of English was hardly good but I felt it was useful for the environment he was in.

A marine science specialist is not necessarily going to be speaking the Queen’s English to the fish when he eventually gets his degree.

Long lost traditions

Animist potions and incisions for protection have always been our traditional way of dealing with omens, evils and the need for protection – logic and religion might have robbed people of faith in the ways of our forefathers but herbal remedies are usually what they are made out to be, if the dispenser knows the detail.

The mode of transport was mainly by canoe and you could see women “drive” their vehicles paddling with a sense of purpose and dignified strokes that caressed the waters of the lagoon.

The people

The idea that the documentary is negative is preposterous and insincere at best, it is dishonest to deny these people a peaceful productive existence because of some aspiration for a civic society where the privileged can showcase their “bling” whilst the underprivileged gets hounded from place to place by government bulldozers and schemes to pave those paradises to put up parking lots.

In an article in the Financial Times [3] about the first instalment of the Welcome to Lagos documentary the columnist said we miss “a compelling case for Nigeria’s economic potential and its greatest but often overlooked asset: its people.”

The people of Makoko and the people of Olusosun are assets to Nigeria, not shiny, window dressed, fake, fickle and plastic imitations of life looking nice, they are the salt of the earth and like it or not – They are fellow Nigerians with rights, dreams, aspirations and much more – live with it.

Sources

[1] BBC – BBC TV blog: Welcome to Lagos – it’ll defy your expectations

[2] BBC’s Welcome To Lagos Part 2 (video) ~ Nigerian Curiosity

[3] FT.com / Management – Business flair in the slums of Lagos

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My reviews of all the parts of BBC’s Welcome to Lagos documentary

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos III – Welthauptstadt Nigeria May 1, 2010

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos II – Beyond Civic Pride April 23, 2010

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos – An inspiration April 16, 2010

Having seen the seeming hatchet job on Nigerians in District 9 [1] and only seen the first part of Blood and Oil [2], I was like many others of Nigerian heritage ready to be cynical about the another telescope on Nigeria centred on Lagos.

Indeed, there have been rather unfair and negative portraits of Nigeria by the realities, the poor news research and the acts of Nigerians especially their leaders that any new perspective might well draw broad skepticism before viewing what was to be said.

Expectations of Welcome to Lagos [3] – a 3-part documentary of which the first was shown yesterday was presaged with low expectations and considerable criticism with defensiveness long before it had been aired – the need for balance on matters concerning Nigeria where getting positive perspectives might be fleeting at best is a fervent desire.

Whilst balance is necessary, sometimes the truth is better, the reality is sure and an understanding of the perspective is pertinent – we were told, Welcome to Lagos will defy our expectations [4] from every objective perspective, it did.

I recorded it on my digital video recorder and I would be watching it again and again, it has been set to record the next two episodes automatically.

Beyond the rump of a dump

The producers of this documentary went to observe life in the Olusosun rubbish dump where about a 1000 people live, work and thrive with an amazing spirit of humanity.

People can so easily be blind-sided by the setting and miss the more serious message of people who are resourceful, able, diligent, orderly, respectful, responsible and successful – all that not necessarily in the way we would view those attributes.

You had to look above the ground to see beyond the default to another shameful view of Nigeria and Nigerians – this was no window-dressing as we would all want people to see of us, but this life that had much to teach everyone.

The human stories

A number of themes came through strongly in this documentary, people were very hardworking, working all hours with particular aims to provide for their families or in another case to launch a career in music – they gave everything to that vision of responsibility.

At another end of town, a cattle market showed the cattle broker who years ago was a nomadic herdsman from the North and now was the chief broker, speaking 6 languages and making really amazing business deals that could better so-called efficient markets.

There you saw an agricultural science graduate who found an opportunity for processing the blood of cattle slaughtered in the abbatoirs for feeding poultry.

Enterprising and improvising

Back at the dump, the waste thrown out by the seemingly well-off found extended usages, better uses or some recycle value that most of the residents thrived on; scavengers at the bottom of the market chain sold to bulk gatherers who sold wholesale to industries – economic laws just worked.

The human interest quality was just exuberant, the bulk gatherer had a very good command of English with an enlightened vocabulary, the scavenger hoping for a music career after working for studio fees had a manicure and when he turned up for his recording session, there is no way you would have believed he lived in a dump.

The sense of community and order was strong, when a fire engulfed the dump, they all gathered with the fire service to quench the flames; when a thief was caught amongst them, I expected the rough justice of a lynching but the culprit was given a stern telling off and banished from the dump.

A community of love and care

The community bond was even deeper as they had a hierarchy built on the democratically elected chairman who was the authority, judge, arbiter and father-figure to the community, when the aspiring artist got into serious police trouble after being charged with grievous bodily harm occasioning the loss of sight in one eye of the victim they closed rank in support.

Having negotiated an out of court settlement with the family of the victim the whole community chipped in to defray of the hospital treatment costs totally and gave the aspiring artist a second chance to redeem himself – our political leaders need to visit this university of commendable leadership.

See the people not the dump

Again the setting of this documentary was a dump but the people were not in the dumps, they were aspiring, amazing people who were optimistic, honest and friendly, they had a sense of purpose that was not encumbered with senseless fanaticism and religious stupidity – they were the salt of the earth.

After watching this, you could only first count your blessings, then proclaim that Nigerians just have the innate ability to make the best of any situation without grumbling, bitterness or rancour.

I saw Nigerians that made me proud and none of them despite where they lived and worked could ever be seen as anything short of a rebranding of Nigeria with values, aims and a driven passion for the pursuit of happiness.

I cannot wait to see the second part of Welcome to Lagos – not the superficial and the mimicry but of real people of substance with their heads lifted up and their feet on the ground. They might have been poor but they had no poverty of spirit, ideas, goals or desires for a better future.

Sources

[1] District 9 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BBC – BBC Two Programmes – Blood and Oil

[3] BBC – BBC Two Programmes – Welcome to Lagos

[4] BBC – BBC TV blog: Welcome to Lagos – it’ll defy your expectations

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Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos III – Welthauptstadt Nigeria May 1, 2010

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos II – Beyond Civic Pride April 23, 2010

Nigeria: Welcome to Lagos – An inspiration April 16, 2010

The South Africans in the film do not all behave in the same way; nor do the aliens. But not so the ‘Nigerians’.

But then, I think that that aspect of the film is not about us. The ‘Nigerian’ characters are not convincing at all. They look to me, in their get-up and mannerisms, like the South African criminals who murdered Lucky Dube. Their accents in English are variations on classic Channel O-speak, not to mention their ‘mother-tongue’ chatter which resonates as an insult to what one knows of the sonority of the languages of SA.

What is more, their violence is the carbon copy of what we have been led by the international media – SABC included in that ilk – to expect of South African black street gangs in the post-Apartheid era. And their ‘black magic’ and cyborg obsession seem to have been taken straight and undiluted from the writing of the Comaroffs on the phenomenon of the ‘occult economy’ in South Africa (Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, 1999, ‘Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony’, in American Ethnologist, Vol. 26, No.2, pp. 279-303).

I heard that Dube’s killers said during trial that they attacked him because they had thought his social poise and palpable sense of control over material wherewithal marked him out as a Nigerian who was flaunting his wealth and rubbing their noses in the rude fact that he had beaten them to ‘it’ in their own country. Those urban SA brigands are the prototype for that ‘Nigerian’ sub-underworld in the underworld of ‘District 9’.

If I regret anything in the film it is the myth of its storytelling framework. It is clear that crucial parts of this mythic framework revolve around the laager mentality and a fascination with miscegenation that beggars belief and neurosis, hence the film’s inevitable interjection of science fiction into the stream of everyday life. These are themes that were prominent social issues in South African society in the Apartheid days, and the film just seems unable to get beyond them. Is that the way their society still is? God help us.

The insight of the film is clearly about South Africa. It is the nightmare of that country of otherwise great promise whose current president is Jacob Zuma – fucker of anything, the Zuma stereotype would, indeed, have brazenly fucked the aliens in the flick and damned and, perhaps, survived the consequences to boot.

(Let me add that the Obasanjo stereotype would do the very same thing. His son Gbenga knows it, and OBJ’s first wife has confirmed in her tell-all that her husband is a sex monster.)

‘District 9’ is about that country where some variety of folk medicine prescribes the rape of virgins, old women and day-old infants as cure for HIV/AIDS; South Africa whose medical establishment once boasted a ‘Doctor Death’ among its membership; that country one of whose favourite exports to the rest of the continent is deadly weapons and even deadlier mercenaries; South Africa many of whose citizens, caught up in the delirium of how to deal with the turbulence of life in a long period of social transition, have in the very recent past maimed and massacred Nigerians and other foreigners residing in their country. This film could make me shed some tears for that otherwise beloved country.

The fictive concept of ‘District 9’ is that it is cast as a documentary on one defining event in the history of SA in the twenty-first century. Yet the themes that propel this concept make up, as I have said, a neat raft of South African déjà vu, thinly ‘alienated’, à la Bertolt Brecht, by the techniques of science fiction and pseudonymy.

However, the use of the term ‘Nigerians’ to label a particularly worrisome element in the society of the film suggests that the filmmakers are missing something in their faculty for self- and other-awareness as regards contemporary SA society. It is not as if real-life Nigerians cannot be gangsters. They can be; in fact, as is well-known, many Nigerians are terrible and shameless gangsters at home and abroad. And there are, for sure, Nigerian gangsters in Jo’burg who bring the already tattered image of their country into further disrepute, if that is still possible these days. The trouble is that these people in the film are called ‘Nigerian’ gangsters and prostitutes, but they play their roles to the hilt as the South African version of a social problem that is common the world over. They do not seem and sound Nigerian in the least. Well, since disguise is part of the skills-set gangsters require, this problem has resolved itself. And it is a very poor disguise, indeed, one to which we cannot apply the standard ‘voice of Jacob, hand of Esau’. Call them what you will, the lumpen elements in ‘District 9’ are one and all South Africans. This looks like a classic case of Horace’s Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur (Though the name has been changed, the story is still about you).

But is there or is there not something in the fact that the latter point is lost on so many of us Nigerians? What if a group of Neo-Nazis in some film set in Europe decide to call themselves ‘Nigerians’ and give their leader the name Obasanjo: would we as citizens of the UN-recognized state of Nigeria feel that it is our lived experience that is being alluded to? What does that kind of reaction say about some of our inmost fears—the paranoia that one of these days we might just be found out to be what we are not?

Apart from the skilful use of FX (Nollywood, shame on you!), I think that the filmic qualities of ‘District 9’ are high enough. It harks back to Orson Welles and the ‘War of the Worlds’ in its use of the concept of the TV documentary and news report to give impact, immediacy and verisimilitude to its narrative sequence of dystopian cyborg fiction.

‘District 9’ is a film that seeks to propagate an enlightened view on alien treatment, with the message: If only we understood them, we would know that they want to go home. But all of that enlightenment is undermined by the name-calling or pseudonymy that tries to gloss over one of the most serious problems of urban life in the country. The gangster problem in SA is not merely an immigrant thing. And it is high time this reality was bluntly faced and tackled. The South Africans can learn a thing or two from Ghana and Nigeria. Either country, at some point in its history, attempted the self-deception of blaming immigrant bloodsuckers for its real woes and hallucinatory terrors; both failed.

A couple of years ago, we saw what xenophobia wrought in South Africa. Obviously, there are other things besides xenophobia in this film. But the depiction of the ‘Nigerians’ cannot be downplayed as a minor event. It is one of the components propping up the action in the plot, giving it dimension as well as a visible force field of tension. It is also a fictive missile that bears scorn and contempt intended for real-life Nigerians. I don’t feel perturbed by it because I am aware of its ultimate failure—the ‘Nigerian’ characters are phoney; they don’t come alive as such. Instead, they tell me a South African story in SA style and voice. Too bad for the intentions of the makers of the film, but the Nigerian version of the malaise of gangsterism does not come out in what they portray.

But how many other people can see through it all? And I don’t mean how many others of us Nigerians; I mean how many others in the world at large see it like I see it? Will the Somali who doesn’t know our Nigerian ways notice that the name-calling in the film boomerangs as a witless joke on the South Africans themselves? Will the Indian, the Finn, the Chilean, the Moroccan demand their money back on witnessing the collapse of the cheap trick in the very first scene in which it is mounted? Are the Israelis aware that the South Africans have not been able to reproduce our Nigerian shibboleth?

Who amongst us thinks that everything in a film is taken as fictive by every viewer? Any resemblance to persons and places blah, blah, blah.

Well, I have to admit that those who made this film somehow chose their target well. Surely, it would have been a different matter entirely if the kingpin of the ‘District 9’ Nigerians is named Emeagwali or Margaret Ekpo or Osundare or Oshiomhole or Aminu Kano or Claude Ake or Mary Onyali or Fawehinmi or Saro-Wiwa or Anikulapo-Kuti or Buchi Emecheta.

Just as many of us who are citizens of Nigeria, suffering from some Jekyll-Hyde syndrome, are afraid that we might be caught one day doing what we never did – hence our indignation at this image that is not us; this image that we could have pooh-poohed and laughed at – so are we hardly bothered to demand, even if only in a face-saving routine, an apology from the ‘District 9’ filmmakers for naming their leader of thugs Obasanjo.

Of course, that thug leader doesn’t even begin to function as a lampoon of the Nigerian leader. Only comic farce can stand the tragicomedy of OBJ on its head. But that is beside the point, which is that the vast majority of Nigerians are not going to request that SA apologize for the abuse of OBJ’s name. His name cannot be abused, as it were. And Nollywood won’t dare repay the compliment by desecrating, say, the name of Mandela or Desmond Tutu in one of its demon-infested absurdities.

So isn’t there something in ‘District 9’ that speaks the truth about one aspect of our social experience, something that we are living with at least until our much delayed ‘revolution’, er, er, happens—that the Nigerian head of state or governor, minister, rep, senator, etc. often doubles as the chief of the bandits who menace the rest of society?

There is something in this film for us, no matter how badly done the stereotyping is.

But good luck to any of those South Africans who do not want to call a spade a spade. They might as well eat their corn meal porridge with a shovel and brand it a ‘Nigerian’ spoon.