It's my blog, and I can post what I want to...

Ceu is a queen. That is all.

A New Movie on Child-Witches

So they're making a new movie of the child-witches phenomenon brewed by crackpot Nigerian pastors who convince parents to turn their backs on their own children. 234Next was at the screening.

“The Fake Prophet” is a concept film created and funded by Stepping Stones Nigeria (SSN), a non-governmental organisation, to promote awareness about the plight of the so-called ‘child witches’.

According to the organisation, the issue of “child-witches” grew out of the Niger Delta in the 1990s as many powerful pastors began accusing children of plotting to supernaturally harm their families and communities. Children were often coerced into confessing their ‘crimes’, following which their families were charged money for lengthy and sometimes painful exorcism rituals. Thousands of children - an estimated 15,000 in Akwa Ibom State alone - were blamed for their family’s misfortunes, shunned by their communities, and abandoned.

According to a report in the British press, before being pushed out of their homes many of these children were beaten, slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them as punishment or in attempts to make them “confess”. Many of those branded child-witches were murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive - in an attempt to supposedly drive satan out of their soul. Once on the streets, many of the children became prey to child traffickers.

“We decided to make this film because we realised that the proliferation of Nollywood movies that focus on issues of witchcraft, specifically child witchcraft, was leading to the spread of the belief,” said Gary Foxcroft, SSN programme director. “We needed a counter to that.”

I want to be optimistic about the movie, but I'm still smarting from how woefully, laughably terrible this one movie I watched on a Liberian refugee who moved to Lagos was. And not for lack of talent -- the movie starred Omotolade Jalade Ekeinde and Ramsey Noah, so two of the biggest names in the biz right there. But hey, that was two years ago. Maybe I'll give this one a shot. For more on child-witches, click here, here, here and here. And here's a video from a short UK Guardian documentary on the issue.

Poem for Sunday

"I shall let my future dwell in my past so that I might live a brighter now."

This is the scene from "Slam" where Saul Williams performed the hell out of his poem "Sha Clack Clack". Happy Sunday.

Nobody Likes African Resource Nationalism

I laughed out loud when I read this:

Add another item to the agenda at this weekend’s G20 summit: African resource nationalism and the twin issue of security of mining contracts. That’s thanks to a burgeoning dispute between Canadian miners and the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If Africans are so nationalistic with their resources, surely we wouldn't have the Niger-Delta wahala raging on, or the western companies profiting from Liberian lumber more than Liberians do, or those DRC miners making less from their resources than men in suits who oftentimes are not even Congolese do. But I digress.

Later in the post:

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, who is hosting the meeting, plans to raise concerns about the case, which Canada views as particularly egregious. Canadian authorities think they should play a part in a decision by the IMF and World Bank due next week on whether to conclude the write-off of $9bn of Congo’s historic foreign debt.

The Kinshasa government last year revoked Canadian miner First Quantum’s license to exploit the Kolwezi copper and cobalt tailings project in which the company says it has already invested $750m. The case went to international arbitration in Paris in February.

What’s made the Canadians particularly hot under the collar, and alarmed investors across the board in Congo, is the emergence of a secret contract that appears to hand the asset over to a British Virgin Islands-registered consortium, led by the mysterious Highwinds International, before the arbitration has even started.

Sources familiar with the dispute in Kinshasa say IMF officials have asked the Kinshasa government to refrain from signing off on the deal - or any other related to the asset - before the case has been heard in Paris, to commit publicly to good governance and to submit all future mining contracts to open and transparent tender.

In four simple paragraphs, Beyond Brics encapsulates everything wrong with Africa in global trade: Canada doesn't like a deal, so they're trying to blackmail DRC by holding their IMF deal hostage; IF DRC makes a calculated decision to hand over the exploration of their mineral resources to a high bidder (I would suppose that's the case, though what I've read doesn't make that explicit) it'll make Canada "hot under the collar" and "alarm" potential investors. And if the case hasn't even gone into arbitration, then clearly nothing is set in stone and Congo can do as it likes? And why again is the Canada in any position to influence the IMF's decision to write off their $9 Billion debt? In whose interest is the IMF working?

The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, is an equity partner in the venture with First Quantum, and, unusually, has joined in the international arbitration after carrying out a judicial audit.

This presents an awkward conundrum for the World Bank, which has played a part in painstaking negotiations the terms for a debt write-off to a country which is simultaneously threatening its own investments.

HUH??

Are you serious???? Should this even be allowed to happen? The World Bank has private sector interests in the exploration of mining exploration company that deals in the Congo, and has carried out an audit on its own dealings. I defy anyone to find a better definition of "Conflict of Interest".

Of course, Kabila's government is not exactly clean in the mess that is Congo's quagmire. Still, stories like this get me wondering if it's even possible for a developing country to enrich itself and do what is best for its own people, even if the president had the best of intentions.

Nigeria Wahala

So Nigerian Curiosity posted up this vid over at her blog.


I've come to the conclusion that the best thing about living in America, or really much of the Western world, is that you don't have to see the poverty if you don't want to. In Nigeria, there are street kids begging you for money on your way to your private school, old beggars hanging out outside shopping malls and clubs, prostitutes galore on Allen Avenue on your way to the late-night Ikeja market. As a rapper/singer/whatever, I imagine that you don't get to choose whether you want to be more like a Nas or a Jay-Z. You're going to have to acknowledge what's around you in some way. It's a bit like living right next to a garbage heap -- that mess stinks, and you can't help but smell it.

Here's some more socially-conscious Nigerian stuff. Lots of oldies in here from my high school days.

Real Talk on Inter-Africa Trade

Besides iffy transportation systems, high tariffs and the electronic money transfer issues, what else hinders Inter-Africa trade? Gregory Simpkins does the knowledge.

One phenomenon that is involved in lower than possible intra-African trade may be the practice of transfer pricing. By over-pricing imports and under-pricing exports, multinational companies transfer profits, revenues or monies out of a country in order to evade taxes. This may seem to be solely a tax issue, but if neighboring countries aren’t in on these deals, wouldn’t they be locked out of trade in the goods in question? The OECD estimates that nearly two-thirds of global trade in goods and services takes place not on the free market, but rather between subsidiaries of the same multinational company. Global Financial Integrity, an organization that tracks illegal fund transfers, estimates that sub-Saharan African countries lost more than US$800 billion through techniques such as abusive transfer pricing between 1970 and 2008.

He's a U.S. flag-waver, and I have my doubts on AGOA (that's another post). Still, though, read the whole thing.

Poem for Sunday

Yusuf Komunyakaa is easily one of the best poets America has produced. I just love his tone, the easy way he conjures images, the real heart with which he imbues his work. Nobody sounds like him, in my book. Here's one of my favorites from him.

My Father's Love Letters

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?

Don't know how I missed this, but (via Africa Unchained) Former Central Bank Chairman Charles Soludo said "our politics must change". How? Well...

Soludo who was guest lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he spoke on the topic “Who Will Reform Politics in Nigeria” called for the pruning of Nigeria to six regions with Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja as special centres. He said 774 local governments, were merely conduits for profligacy and waste, as well as the adoption of a unicameral legislature that would reduce the number of law- makers from 459-150.

Hmm...

On the surface, I get it: If you want to reduce corruption, which tends to happen mostly at the local and state level, reduce the number of, well, local and state levels. Decreasing the number of states makes for a more effective federalism, and ensures that our oversight mechanisms work better.

Of course, one must ask: Does having less states mean having less corruption?

First of all, you're trimming the number of states, not the size of the country, so basically you'll be giving government officials wider mandates and, effectively more power. You can actually argue that this on-the-surface "pruning" is actually enlarging our government, so much so that it'll make corruption easier. If Jigawa and Kaduna cannot run their individual corners competently, what makes you think it'll be better to add Kano and Zamfara to the mix? What makes you think it'll be easier to catch inefficiencies in larger, bloated states?

Another concern is that civil servants, on the whole and at the local level (where there is more corruption, keep in mind) are not imbued with much respect. This for me is an even bigger deal, and I don't see how this idea addresses it. I don't think having less police commissioners will make policemen stop being corrupt until they get some benefits with their jobs and get paid well and not live in squalid police quarters in Ikeja. I don't think we'll get much progress with our public education system by shrinking the number of state systems if the teachers aren't paid well and don't get enough benefits.

It's just my sense that adding more dignity in public service which, aside from easing the rush into universities and into police and military training, will help attract intelligent people from all walks of life into civil service, which will then give such public work dignity and perhaps offset the need to be filthy rich (A girl can dream, I know, but I think this is right).

It's nice to see someone giving our governance issues some serious thought, and I'll be looking forward to more from Soludo on this stuff, but cutting out the number of institutions seems to me more like addressing a symptom, rather than the problem. Like anybody in Nigeria will probably tell you: The best way to get rid of mosquitoes in your room is not to keep slapping away at them when they bite you; it's closing the damn window and spraying the entire room with Raid. This is slapping away at mosquitoes. We need the big stuff.

Crossposted at Nigerians Talk

Aiding and Abetting Fake outrage

When my friend sent me this article on sexual abuse in Lagos, my two-word emailed response was "Na today?"

“The truth is that the whole thing has made me begin to distrust anybody that is not a close friend or relative around my daughters,” said Ifeoma Akanwa, a banker and mother of three. “I used to have a house boy, and since he left last year, I have been reluctant to get another help, despite that my youngest child is just a year old. I prefer taking her to a crèche, or even locking her up with my eldest child (aged 10) at home at times.” Uwadiegwu Otisi, a sociologist holds the opinion that this portends a dangerous trend, and might fracture the fabrics of Africa’s familial culture if left unchecked.

I find that I say this a lot, but to reiterate, can we stop acting surprised when certain things happen? I know I heard so many stories like these from the weekly Yoruba show Feyikogbon to NTA news. This isht is not news. Stop acting like it is and do something about it. Sensitization exercises. Organize hotlines with Starcomms or MTN, so young girls can text you free and you can call them free of charge. Ads in the paper. Talk in schools. Something.

Floating supermarkets in Brazil? But of course!

This, from FT, caught my eye:

The vessel is designed to enhance Nestle’s reach among the lower income consumers that make up a core part of its market. The company has been in Brazil for 89 years and products like its powdered milk are staples among Brazil’s poorer consumers. As the economy continues to grow quickly, Nestlé is hoping that rising incomes among the poor will bring its higher priced goods within their reach, too.

The best solutions in economic situations are always tailor-made.