Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
Like a hurricane, it swept through, leaving anything but smiles on many faces. Not the faces of the sacked Bank Chiefs and their high profile debtors. Not on the faces of the Bank staff and innocent depositors. Not on the faces of shareholders and investors.
For weeks it was the subject of national gossip, on the TV, in the papers and on the Internet. Naturally, three camps emerged. There was the pro Sanusi who awed by the revelations applauded the reform efforts of the Central Bank Governor. The anti Sanusi group who though equally awed, saw the impending melt down and advised caution. The final camp consisted of the majority of Nigerians who do not understand the economic jargons but whose only concern is to have food on the table every day.
It’s been over a year and many things have happened since. Loans have been recovered, Assets frozen, people put on trial, businesses grounded, Jobs lost, pays cut, share values crashed and yes, the banks have since erased the advancing of credit facilities as one of their services. We all refer to the situation as fall outs of Sanusi’s banking reform and is there any one who has not been affected in some way?
There is however another fall out of the reform. It is fast emerging that Sanusi swept away Bank Chiefs he described as fraudulent and replaced them with even more fraudulent bunch. Interim management teams as he called them were supposed to run the supposedly distressed banks for a while, stabilize them and put them in a shape that will be attractive to investors. These Interim Teams who have long outlived their interim-ness are now beginning not only to help themselves to whatever is left of the supposedly struggling banks resources but are also turning the banks into their fiefdom .
If the news out of Union Bank is anything to go by then there is yet many reasons to give Sanusi Lamido a thumb down. The revelation came to me in the form of a full page open letter by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor in one of the Dailies, highlighting what they termed “Unwholesome actions of Mrs. Funke Osibodu led Management Team at Union Bank.”
The revelations are as shocking as they are worrying. Mrs. Osibodu is said to have doubled the wages of the management team. While the ousted team earned about N38 Million per annum, the current executive Directors each earn N68 million per annum while that of the Group Managing Director is an official secret. This is in addition to tax free two years housing grant in advance totaling N180million, and medical grant of US$120,000 for each director all of which has been paid in full. In addition, Mrs. Osibodu bought her self two bullet proof Mercedes Jeeps at a total cost of N40million and Mercedes ‘E’ series for Four Executive Directors.
This spending profile which smacks of insanity certainly does not sound like measures to reposition an allegedly sinking Bank. As shocking as they are, it is even more shocking to hear of the manipulations in the bank books. For example, the Banks Fixed Assets has undergone an unexplainable reduction from N79,522billion in 31st December 2001 to N62,iiibillion as at 30th June 2010. Without stretching logic here, are we supposed to assume that N17.41billion in Fixed Assets simply grew wings and flew away in six months?
The management team does not fail to scream that the Bank s in bad standing financially, yet it has gone on a recruitment frenzy, hiring high earning senior personnel whose career exposure is no where as good as that of existing staff to justify the bumper compensation packages. What is more, the existing staffs have been moved away from sensitive duties, allowing the interim Management and their new recruits the needed space to run the show without challenge. And yes all these special new recruits are said to all be from the Interim GMD’s ethnic group. How convenient.
To add to all these, the Osibodu led team is accused of highhandedness and insensitivity. Indeed, the letter stated clearly that no bank in the country would dare compete with Union Bank under the interim leadership in very poor labour relations. Staff are not being promoted when due, 37 staff were sacked for overdrawing their account even when Mrs. Osidodu’s own account had been overdrawn within the same period. Three months after, the team has refused to act on the report that reviewed the illegal and unwarranted sack of 223 employees of the Bank.
There are also other allegations of deliberate de-marketing and striping of the bank Assets which has seen treasured long time customers of the bank being hounded out with their deposits and goodwill all of which curiously points to a deliberate effort to impoverish the bank and truly make it seem insolvent and thus good only for sale which has always been the alleged mission of the Central Bank Governor for the outset.
These are by all means weighty accusations which can not be swept under the carpet. For the NLC to make this public shows that it has gone way beyond mere speculations. The figures and precise information provided do not equally sound fictitious. While the team is presumed innocent until proven guilty, we can only hope that the necessary process necessary to proving that they are not guilty is set in motion under an atmosphere of integrity and if indeed they have done these things, they face the same fate as those whose places they took.
In all however, it is pertinent to note that this situation provides one more reason to give the Central Bank Governor a thumb down for his reforms that have failed to reform. Perhaps we shall all learn from this that there are many ways to kill a rat without spilling blood. Zeal must always be balanced with rationality or else it all comes crashing down as our banking industry has today.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Leadership woes worse than HIV
A popular Nigerian stand up comedian once stated that while other countries of the world were bedeviled by one form of natural disaster or the other, Nigeria’s own nightmare was Bad Government.
It would amount to perhaps, the understatement of the century to repeat here that the reason why we are where we are as a country-one of the more popular countries that has not shown any capacity and which certainly will not be meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, is solely due to a consistent failure of leadership. Chinue Achebe thought so, I think so too and indeed, a whole majority of Nigerians think so too such that we have come to sort of accept it as our lot-our own natural disaster like Basket Mouth would say.
If we all seem to agree that bad leadership is our problem, what then is the solution?
People while criticizing the Government often say things like “if I get in there, I will do bla bla bla” but history has shown that when they did get there, they performed even worse. Successive military governments often cited corruption and derailed leadership as reasons for over throwing the previous government, yet before long they them selves get thrown out for the same reason. The conclusion therefore points to the fact that we’ve been having the wrong notion of what leadership is all about and our approach to solving the problem has equally been wrong and futile because we have been treating leadership as a title or a position of authority.
Naturally, it is more difficult to learn new ideas as an adult. A popular Igbo adage has it that you don’t learn the use of the left hand in old age. So also, you don’t learn to lead a people aright when you get into power. I often argue that leadership workshops or seminars organized for our leaders are a pure waste of money as it can not make them change. This is because we have leaders who are ill prepared and ill equipped to handle the responsibilities of the position they found them selves in and in most cases they get to those positions either by rigging, federal character, quota or biased appointment. They are thus lacking in the moral pre-requisite for leading and like they say in law, once a process is wrong, the following actions that are a fall out of the initial process are equally wrong.
I wish therefore to opine here that leadership is an attitude not a position or title.
Leadership includes simple acts we carry out in our every day lives that portray who we are as an individual and the content of our character. Such things as not walking on the lawn, not beating the traffic light, not thrashing the road from our car, not messing up a public toilet, not posting a wrong time while signing at work, etc
It includes our response to situations and our ability to make informed decisions at every point in time even when it is inconvenient. Leadership is being able to motivate others and inspire them into attaining their full potentials as individuals especially by showing good example. It encompasses selflessness, dedication and steadfastness.
It is only when we raise a generation of Nigerians who have the right attitude that we would be able to solve our leadership problems at the top for someone who has had it as an attitude to be at school before 8.00am will also not fail to turn up to work at 8.00am and when he/she becomes a Minster, no worker in the ministry will dare turn up late because the boss him self doesn’t. That is leadership.
The fear I have however for my country is that those right attitudes are currently scarce in her youths who are soon to take over the public positions of leadership. On the contrary really, we have a generation that is so in tune with the failures of the past, have perfected it and are eager to take over so as to unleash the worst forms of leadership the world has ever witnessed.
I know some people would not want to agree with me and perhaps will call me a prophet of doom. They would want to argue that there are many young Nigerians out there who are breaking new grounds in all fields of life which gives the hope that all would be well for Nigeria in the future. I wish I could share that optimism. While I am also an incurable optimist, I am also a realist. No need saying a cup is half full, when you know it is half empty and fast going down.
The solution?: Change.
No one person can bring up a formula for solving Nigeria’s leadership woes. The solution simply lies in a genuine change in our attitudes as individuals. I am a big supporter of a reintroduction of civic education in primary and secondary schools and perhaps even the universities. If the family units can not teach us to act right, then I guess the schools will.
Also, I challenge our Men of God both Christians and Muslim to go beyond talking about witches, and wealth or about how one religion is superior to the others and start teaching their congregation how to become better people, inculcating in them the right attitudes that make for good leadership. The religious institutions should also be a strong voice against bad leadership and must begin to see it as their responsibility to save the society from final collapse.
The private sector must also step in. Though I don’t have statistics, but I am quite sure that the numbers of NGO’s on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria are perhaps ten folds more than those that deal with capacity building and reformation especially among youths. While AIDS is a big problem, I wish to state that bad leadership is even more deadly for it takes a good leader to make the better policy and supervise same to help those suffering from the disease. Civil society must begin to pay greater attention to leadership development and begin to work towards raising a new generation of leaders who have the right attitude to be leaders.
In the light of the above, I wish to commend the efforts of those organizations that have taken a lead in an attempt at trying to develop leaders in our great nation. Their efforts are still at best insignificant considering the population of this country.
We need leaders, not rulers and leaders are those who have got the right attitude. The time to raise them is now.
It would amount to perhaps, the understatement of the century to repeat here that the reason why we are where we are as a country-one of the more popular countries that has not shown any capacity and which certainly will not be meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, is solely due to a consistent failure of leadership. Chinue Achebe thought so, I think so too and indeed, a whole majority of Nigerians think so too such that we have come to sort of accept it as our lot-our own natural disaster like Basket Mouth would say.
If we all seem to agree that bad leadership is our problem, what then is the solution?
People while criticizing the Government often say things like “if I get in there, I will do bla bla bla” but history has shown that when they did get there, they performed even worse. Successive military governments often cited corruption and derailed leadership as reasons for over throwing the previous government, yet before long they them selves get thrown out for the same reason. The conclusion therefore points to the fact that we’ve been having the wrong notion of what leadership is all about and our approach to solving the problem has equally been wrong and futile because we have been treating leadership as a title or a position of authority.
Naturally, it is more difficult to learn new ideas as an adult. A popular Igbo adage has it that you don’t learn the use of the left hand in old age. So also, you don’t learn to lead a people aright when you get into power. I often argue that leadership workshops or seminars organized for our leaders are a pure waste of money as it can not make them change. This is because we have leaders who are ill prepared and ill equipped to handle the responsibilities of the position they found them selves in and in most cases they get to those positions either by rigging, federal character, quota or biased appointment. They are thus lacking in the moral pre-requisite for leading and like they say in law, once a process is wrong, the following actions that are a fall out of the initial process are equally wrong.
I wish therefore to opine here that leadership is an attitude not a position or title.
Leadership includes simple acts we carry out in our every day lives that portray who we are as an individual and the content of our character. Such things as not walking on the lawn, not beating the traffic light, not thrashing the road from our car, not messing up a public toilet, not posting a wrong time while signing at work, etc
It includes our response to situations and our ability to make informed decisions at every point in time even when it is inconvenient. Leadership is being able to motivate others and inspire them into attaining their full potentials as individuals especially by showing good example. It encompasses selflessness, dedication and steadfastness.
It is only when we raise a generation of Nigerians who have the right attitude that we would be able to solve our leadership problems at the top for someone who has had it as an attitude to be at school before 8.00am will also not fail to turn up to work at 8.00am and when he/she becomes a Minster, no worker in the ministry will dare turn up late because the boss him self doesn’t. That is leadership.
The fear I have however for my country is that those right attitudes are currently scarce in her youths who are soon to take over the public positions of leadership. On the contrary really, we have a generation that is so in tune with the failures of the past, have perfected it and are eager to take over so as to unleash the worst forms of leadership the world has ever witnessed.
I know some people would not want to agree with me and perhaps will call me a prophet of doom. They would want to argue that there are many young Nigerians out there who are breaking new grounds in all fields of life which gives the hope that all would be well for Nigeria in the future. I wish I could share that optimism. While I am also an incurable optimist, I am also a realist. No need saying a cup is half full, when you know it is half empty and fast going down.
The solution?: Change.
No one person can bring up a formula for solving Nigeria’s leadership woes. The solution simply lies in a genuine change in our attitudes as individuals. I am a big supporter of a reintroduction of civic education in primary and secondary schools and perhaps even the universities. If the family units can not teach us to act right, then I guess the schools will.
Also, I challenge our Men of God both Christians and Muslim to go beyond talking about witches, and wealth or about how one religion is superior to the others and start teaching their congregation how to become better people, inculcating in them the right attitudes that make for good leadership. The religious institutions should also be a strong voice against bad leadership and must begin to see it as their responsibility to save the society from final collapse.
The private sector must also step in. Though I don’t have statistics, but I am quite sure that the numbers of NGO’s on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria are perhaps ten folds more than those that deal with capacity building and reformation especially among youths. While AIDS is a big problem, I wish to state that bad leadership is even more deadly for it takes a good leader to make the better policy and supervise same to help those suffering from the disease. Civil society must begin to pay greater attention to leadership development and begin to work towards raising a new generation of leaders who have the right attitude to be leaders.
In the light of the above, I wish to commend the efforts of those organizations that have taken a lead in an attempt at trying to develop leaders in our great nation. Their efforts are still at best insignificant considering the population of this country.
We need leaders, not rulers and leaders are those who have got the right attitude. The time to raise them is now.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Booktrust is delighted to announce the launch of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011
The Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom during 2010. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives the winning author and translator equal status: each receives £5,000.
Submissions for the 2011 Prize – which can be novels or single author short story collections – are now being accepted and will close on 30 September 2010
A longlist will be announced in March 2011, followed by the shortlist in April. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Central London in May.
Click here for details http://www.booktrust.org.uk/Prizes-and-awards/Independent-Foreign-Fiction-Prize
The Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom during 2010. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives the winning author and translator equal status: each receives £5,000.
Submissions for the 2011 Prize – which can be novels or single author short story collections – are now being accepted and will close on 30 September 2010
A longlist will be announced in March 2011, followed by the shortlist in April. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Central London in May.
Click here for details http://www.booktrust.org.uk/Prizes-and-awards/Independent-Foreign-Fiction-Prize
The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award
We are now accepting entries for The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2011- the world’s biggest short story award.
The award aims to honour the finest writers of short stories in the UK and Ireland. It is open to authors with a previous record of publication in creative writing. Entries may be previously unpublished, or first published or scheduled for publication after 1 January 2010. All entries must be under 6,000 words and entirely original.
The winning author will receive £30,000 and the five runners-up £500. The winner will be announced at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in April 2011, with the longlist announced on 20 February 2011 and the shortlist on 13 March 2011 (these dates are subject to change).
Last year’s winner was New Zealand’s CK Stead, with his story ‘Last Season’s Man’.
Click here to read about last year's prize
The deadline for submissions is 1pm on 30 October 2010.
For full details of eligibility and how to submit a story, please download the terms and conditions and entry form.
Click here to download the entry form for the 2011 Award
Click here to download the terms and conditions for the 2011 Award
Click here for more information on the prize
Prize administration
For prize information, please contact the prizes team on 020 8516 2960 or prizes@booktrust.org.uk
The award aims to honour the finest writers of short stories in the UK and Ireland. It is open to authors with a previous record of publication in creative writing. Entries may be previously unpublished, or first published or scheduled for publication after 1 January 2010. All entries must be under 6,000 words and entirely original.
The winning author will receive £30,000 and the five runners-up £500. The winner will be announced at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in April 2011, with the longlist announced on 20 February 2011 and the shortlist on 13 March 2011 (these dates are subject to change).
Last year’s winner was New Zealand’s CK Stead, with his story ‘Last Season’s Man’.
Click here to read about last year's prize
The deadline for submissions is 1pm on 30 October 2010.
For full details of eligibility and how to submit a story, please download the terms and conditions and entry form.
Click here to download the entry form for the 2011 Award
Click here to download the terms and conditions for the 2011 Award
Click here for more information on the prize
Prize administration
For prize information, please contact the prizes team on 020 8516 2960 or prizes@booktrust.org.uk
Sorry State of The Nigerian Flag
When last did you take note of a flying Nigeria national flag? The one you took note of, how was it looking? I am almost certain that there must have been something wrong with the flag. It is either it is tattered almost in rags, discoloured as a result of continuous exposure to the elements of the weather, flying at night in the dark, wrongly flown with the green and white laying horizontally instead of vertically, perpetually flying at half (or even quarter) mast when the nation isn’t mourning, very tiny in comparison to other flags flying beside it or looking so funny, like an article just out of an apprentice tailors shop with the green and whites sewn together and so poorly done.
These are the few I can remember of the very sorry states the Nigerian national flag is commonly seen. I guess you might have seen and in a better position to describe even worse forms of flying Nigerian flags as you must have observed in your own vicinity.
I see one every day. The flag-if at all it qualifies to be called that- hangs miserably on a wooden pole about twelve feet long. It isn’t even hanging as there was no rope; it is nailed to the wood. But that is not even the worst part of the flag. The poor flag which from immediate observation presents the picture of a worn out piece of cotton has painfully lost the green parchment at its edge. So effectively, it is green and white only and it flies there from January to December, twenty four hours a day, in the sun and in the rain and daily –every morning- the pupils of the primary school in which it is located face and salutes it while singing the national anthem.
Each time I walk past, I feel a huge sense of shame, a mesmerizing pain in my tummy and a reminder that just like the flag, my country (which the flag represented) was also in rags. For if national symbols are important instruments for creating and sustaining a peoples national identity, then what ours shows is a country of a people who do not even –in the remotest sense- appreciate what it is to be a nation and thus practically not in a position to be one. At least, not in the true sense of the word, nation.
Abuse of our national symbols now seems a national policy. A whole lot of us have little or no regards for the Naira which over the years has been a victim of un-speak able kinds of abuse. A great percentage of our school children sing the lines of the national anthem wrongly and their teachers who don’t equally know what the right lines are do not bother to correct them. Same goes for the national pledge. A few years ago the nation was treated to drama when a ministerial nominee could not sing the National anthem before the Senate. An even greater percentage of our populace cannot recite the pledge and don’t even bother asking any one to explain the symbols of the Coat of Arms, what you will get is absolute silence.
Of all the national symbols which includes (as I was taught in Social Studies Class back in my primary school which I believe has not changed) the national flag, the coat of arms, the national anthem, the pledge, the national currency, the Nigerian passport, etc. I think the national flag suffers the severest forms of abuse.
It is disheartening to note that this abuse of the national flag is not limited to obscure institutions like the Little school with the rag I pass by every day described above, but surprisingly also perpetuated in bigger Government institutions such as the premises of the police and in federal ministries and parastatals, in private institutions especially banks and in a host of other premises occupied by people who ought to know better such as churches, party offices etc.
Some days back, I passed by a party office of the ruling party in one of the Area councils in the FCT and observed that the tiny Nigerian flag was sandwiched in between two much big and better looking flags of the party.
The flag of most corporate institutions especially banks are far bigger than the national flag that flies along side them. The national flag seems to be there only by compulsion or a need to fulfill all righteousness while theirs, which represents their corporate image flies tall and big, not only intimidating the poor green and white, but also virtually removing it from existence. How wrong this is.
And of course, the national flag all over the country perhaps with the exception of military barracks flies all day long. My elementary civic studies taught me that the flag should not fly in the dark. I wonder if the tradition has changed.
In effect, our national flag has been (and is still being) defaced, desecrated, mutilated, disrespected and abused. What is more interesting is that no one really cares. For a country like The United States where Respect and Pride in the State is a national policy, the national flag is treated with such respect that when any group of people are demonstrating against Americas foreign policy, they make a huge show of burning the American flag in front of television cameras just to hurt the Americans. If you do the same to a Nigerian flag with the hope of injuring our sensibilities, you will be simply wasting your time as we ourselves do worse things to our flag.
What is more, the man who designed our national flag is unknown, unsung, and currently languishing in poverty in his old age.
The issue here is simple. We are just not proud of our country or put more appropriately, there is hardly any thing to be proud about our country or better still, the condition of the country makes it impossible for us to be proud of the country. We have too many things to worry about that remembering to honour a piece of cloth ranks last in our line of thought.
The state of our national flag represents the state of mind of a people who have given up so to speak on the ideals on which their nation is built and are more pre occupied struggling to make ends meet.
The solution? A massive national re-orientation. But it does not end there, we need to get the basic things such as the economy, jobs, food, power, etc right. Only a man whose stomach is full remembers to respect the national symbols. Only a man whose need has been met by his nation will care to know and respect the national symbols and laws. Until our leaders begin to do what they should do, the way it should be done, we will continue to be what we currently are; a pariah state.
These are the few I can remember of the very sorry states the Nigerian national flag is commonly seen. I guess you might have seen and in a better position to describe even worse forms of flying Nigerian flags as you must have observed in your own vicinity.
I see one every day. The flag-if at all it qualifies to be called that- hangs miserably on a wooden pole about twelve feet long. It isn’t even hanging as there was no rope; it is nailed to the wood. But that is not even the worst part of the flag. The poor flag which from immediate observation presents the picture of a worn out piece of cotton has painfully lost the green parchment at its edge. So effectively, it is green and white only and it flies there from January to December, twenty four hours a day, in the sun and in the rain and daily –every morning- the pupils of the primary school in which it is located face and salutes it while singing the national anthem.
Each time I walk past, I feel a huge sense of shame, a mesmerizing pain in my tummy and a reminder that just like the flag, my country (which the flag represented) was also in rags. For if national symbols are important instruments for creating and sustaining a peoples national identity, then what ours shows is a country of a people who do not even –in the remotest sense- appreciate what it is to be a nation and thus practically not in a position to be one. At least, not in the true sense of the word, nation.
Abuse of our national symbols now seems a national policy. A whole lot of us have little or no regards for the Naira which over the years has been a victim of un-speak able kinds of abuse. A great percentage of our school children sing the lines of the national anthem wrongly and their teachers who don’t equally know what the right lines are do not bother to correct them. Same goes for the national pledge. A few years ago the nation was treated to drama when a ministerial nominee could not sing the National anthem before the Senate. An even greater percentage of our populace cannot recite the pledge and don’t even bother asking any one to explain the symbols of the Coat of Arms, what you will get is absolute silence.
Of all the national symbols which includes (as I was taught in Social Studies Class back in my primary school which I believe has not changed) the national flag, the coat of arms, the national anthem, the pledge, the national currency, the Nigerian passport, etc. I think the national flag suffers the severest forms of abuse.
It is disheartening to note that this abuse of the national flag is not limited to obscure institutions like the Little school with the rag I pass by every day described above, but surprisingly also perpetuated in bigger Government institutions such as the premises of the police and in federal ministries and parastatals, in private institutions especially banks and in a host of other premises occupied by people who ought to know better such as churches, party offices etc.
Some days back, I passed by a party office of the ruling party in one of the Area councils in the FCT and observed that the tiny Nigerian flag was sandwiched in between two much big and better looking flags of the party.
The flag of most corporate institutions especially banks are far bigger than the national flag that flies along side them. The national flag seems to be there only by compulsion or a need to fulfill all righteousness while theirs, which represents their corporate image flies tall and big, not only intimidating the poor green and white, but also virtually removing it from existence. How wrong this is.
And of course, the national flag all over the country perhaps with the exception of military barracks flies all day long. My elementary civic studies taught me that the flag should not fly in the dark. I wonder if the tradition has changed.
In effect, our national flag has been (and is still being) defaced, desecrated, mutilated, disrespected and abused. What is more interesting is that no one really cares. For a country like The United States where Respect and Pride in the State is a national policy, the national flag is treated with such respect that when any group of people are demonstrating against Americas foreign policy, they make a huge show of burning the American flag in front of television cameras just to hurt the Americans. If you do the same to a Nigerian flag with the hope of injuring our sensibilities, you will be simply wasting your time as we ourselves do worse things to our flag.
What is more, the man who designed our national flag is unknown, unsung, and currently languishing in poverty in his old age.
The issue here is simple. We are just not proud of our country or put more appropriately, there is hardly any thing to be proud about our country or better still, the condition of the country makes it impossible for us to be proud of the country. We have too many things to worry about that remembering to honour a piece of cloth ranks last in our line of thought.
The state of our national flag represents the state of mind of a people who have given up so to speak on the ideals on which their nation is built and are more pre occupied struggling to make ends meet.
The solution? A massive national re-orientation. But it does not end there, we need to get the basic things such as the economy, jobs, food, power, etc right. Only a man whose stomach is full remembers to respect the national symbols. Only a man whose need has been met by his nation will care to know and respect the national symbols and laws. Until our leaders begin to do what they should do, the way it should be done, we will continue to be what we currently are; a pariah state.
Kwani Call for Submissions: CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN WOMEN’S POETRY
Across the continent as well as in the African Diaspora, African women are well
known for their word craft. Over the centuries, African women have accomplished
difficult feats using a capacity for words that is only surpassed by their
ability for physical labor. This project on Contemporary African Women’s Poetry
is looking for submission of poems written by African women from all works of
life. We are looking for: (A) poetry about contemporary African life and
experience on the continent; (B) poetry about life in the African Diaspora.
Poems may focus on any of the following: the work life, motherhood, wifehood,
children, the state and nation, war, Africa’s wealth or lack thereof, poverty,
HIV-AIDS, prison, freedom, celebration, grief, happiness, border crossings,
marriage, birth, the environment, loss, love, trans-nationalism, migration,
gender, race, class, and any other topics or issues that interest African women
globally.
Unpublished poems are preferred. The original poems can also be in any African
language if the poet will provide a translation into English. If the original is
accepted, it will be published alongside the translation. If a translator is
used, the author should indicate how credit should be acknowledged. Maximum
number of submissions per person is three (3) poems.
For consideration, submissions should reach us before or on December 31, 2010.
Please send submissions by email to: Anthonia Kalu (kalu.5@osu.edu); Folabo
Ajayi-Soyinka (omofola@ku.edu); Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi (jmphd@ncsu.edu)
For submissions via snail mail, please mail your submissions to:
Anthonia Kalu, PhD
Professor
Department of African American and African Studies
486 University Hall 230 North Oval Mall
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1319
Folabo Ajayi-Soyinka, PhD
213 Bailey Hall,
1440 Jayhawk Blvd.,
University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KS 66045.
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, PhD
Professor
Department of English
212 Tompkins Hall
North CarolinaState University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8105
known for their word craft. Over the centuries, African women have accomplished
difficult feats using a capacity for words that is only surpassed by their
ability for physical labor. This project on Contemporary African Women’s Poetry
is looking for submission of poems written by African women from all works of
life. We are looking for: (A) poetry about contemporary African life and
experience on the continent; (B) poetry about life in the African Diaspora.
Poems may focus on any of the following: the work life, motherhood, wifehood,
children, the state and nation, war, Africa’s wealth or lack thereof, poverty,
HIV-AIDS, prison, freedom, celebration, grief, happiness, border crossings,
marriage, birth, the environment, loss, love, trans-nationalism, migration,
gender, race, class, and any other topics or issues that interest African women
globally.
Unpublished poems are preferred. The original poems can also be in any African
language if the poet will provide a translation into English. If the original is
accepted, it will be published alongside the translation. If a translator is
used, the author should indicate how credit should be acknowledged. Maximum
number of submissions per person is three (3) poems.
For consideration, submissions should reach us before or on December 31, 2010.
Please send submissions by email to: Anthonia Kalu (kalu.5@osu.edu); Folabo
Ajayi-Soyinka (omofola@ku.edu); Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi (jmphd@ncsu.edu)
For submissions via snail mail, please mail your submissions to:
Anthonia Kalu, PhD
Professor
Department of African American and African Studies
486 University Hall 230 North Oval Mall
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1319
Folabo Ajayi-Soyinka, PhD
213 Bailey Hall,
1440 Jayhawk Blvd.,
University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KS 66045.
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, PhD
Professor
Department of English
212 Tompkins Hall
North CarolinaState University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8105
Monday, August 30, 2010
Before We Give ourselves Away
Sylva Ifedigbo
The registration of Subscriber Identification Module (otherwise know as SIM) cards has finally commenced. This exercise, which is poorly understood by the populace, has continued to be the object of debate among telecommunication industry professionals on how the registration should work, who should be responsible for it and how the exercise is different from the Registration of Telecommunications Subscriptions (RTS) or Subscriber Registration.
While the argument rages, MTN Nigeria has continued a nation wide public registration of its SIM cards. The conduct of the exercise has raised fresh issues, which threaten the success of the exercise as a whole and undermine both the security of subscribers as well as that of the country.
SIM registration is a regulatory requirement by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). With crimes committed through the help of phone lines on the increase this exercise has become exigent as it is intended to assist law enforcement agencies to investigate, track down and prosecute those who exploit the anonymity currently provided by prepared GSM subscription.
As laudable as this scheme seems, there is everything wrong with the way MTN Nigeria is currently handling the exercise.
MTN, a South African company, is the foremost GSM operator in Nigeria.
According to latest figures, of their 129.2 million subscribers worldwide, 35.1million are in Nigeria. If figures, which put the telecommunication subscriber, base in Nigeria at over 75 million are anything to go by, it would be safe to conclude that MTN owns close to 50% of the GSM subscriber base in the country.
This is currently how MTN’s SIM registration exercise works; some roadside kiosks offering telephone services including those that sell accessories and recharge cards now have MTN branded notices announcing that they register SIM cards. When you walk in, you are asked to fill out a form which requires you to disclose such information as your full name, date of birth, occupation, address and phone numbers. Your thumbprints are taken along with a digital passport.
As harmless as this seems, it raises grave questions about privacy and security. Is it safe to leave such a sensitive exercise with all its security implications entrusted to just anyone? In the wrong hands the information filled out in the form could be used for many things ranging from the exploitative to the down right sinister. We certainly can’t be registering SIMs to combat crime and at the same time empowering criminals by allowing them easy access to sensitive personal information.
Perhaps even more important is the overall national security question,
which the exercise raises. When MTN is finished with this exercise it would effectively have in its possession the most accurate statistical information about Nigerians complete with such details as faces, names, addresses, and occupations. No other government agency, not even the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has such detailed data. Should we be comfortable placing such data in the hands of a foreign private company?
Have we taken into cognizance the many other uses such sensitive data can be put to in the hands of other nationals to undermine our sovereignty as a people and our territorial integrity as a nation? Is there a law regulating access to and the use of the information generated with clear cut penalties for its abuse or mismanagement?
It is even more curious that while the debate is still ongoing about whether the National Communications Commission (NCC) should be responsible for the exercise, MTN is already carrying on with it. Just last week the National Assembly sat and deliberated on the N 6 billion budget submitted by the NCC as funding required to carry out the exercise. One is tempted to ask why the enthusiasm on the part of MTN? Why is it that none of the other major operators has hit the streets seeking for our bio data? Even as this is going on, new SIMs are still being sold without any registration or activation hindrance.
The publicity for the exercise leaves much to be desired. Very few people are aware that this is going on. Currently it is being handled like some clandestine matter with nobody sure of what exactly it is about, not the serious exercise with grave national security implications that it is. Just this week newspapers reported a case of an agent who was charging subscribers to register them.
It would be unfortunate and indeed a national shame if in trying to solve one problem we end up creating an even bigger one.
It is important that all necessary security and quality assurance checks be put in place to avoid the abuse of peoples privacy and misuse of the information currently being generated. This is a threat to National Security and must be addressed with both the urgency and the seriousness it deserves.
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