Why You Should Keep An Eye on the Northern Nigeria

Yes, our eyes are trained on the soap opera of the fuel subsidy protests and the re-invigoration of Nigerian civil society, but we should all be very worried about the North. Here’s why.

1 – Before fuel subsidy protests, we were facing an emboldened Boko Haram striking seemingly at will at a mosque around New Years’ Day and a church on Christmas day (you can read on this here), and a Nigerian government that has shown that it has no answer to their brutality. Arrests were made on the Christmas bombings, but thanks to focus on the fuel subsidy issue, many Nigerians did not notice that persecution and investigation of the Christmas Day attacks have stalled.

The worst thing that can happen to the situation in the north is for Nigerian media to look away in favor of another story. With the fuel subsidy taking over media coverage and the presidency’s continued ineffectiveness in security issues, the situation in the north will continue to worsen.

2 – The State of Emergency has done absolutely nothing to improve the situation of the northern states most impacted by Boko Haram attacks. There have consistently been attacks since the closing of borders and  heightened surveillance in the state, and the Boko Haram has been so bold as to release a video justifying their attacks on their most recent killings of Christians (perhaps they will release another justifying their killings on Muslims). With their ultimatum for southerners to leave the north, the islamist sect has declared itself owner of the north and determiner of who stays and who does not while the government looks on impotently. Following the group’s ultimatum for Christians to leave the north, they since killed 12 in Adamawa on the 7th of January, 8 in Yobe, and that's just to name a few of the atrocities carried out by Boko Haram in January.

3 – If the situation worsens we will start to see reprisal killings of a higher and higher scale. During the fuel subsidy protests in Benin, there has been the burning of a mosque and citizens have reported killings of Hausas in the Sabo area of Benin on twitter. Following the bombing of an Islamic school in Sapele, Delta State, Many southern regional groups like the Igbo Massob and the Yoruba Oodua People's Congress, and the south-south Niger-Delta Youth for Radical Change have called for northerners to leave the south-east. Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) vow to defend Nigerian Christians from Boko Haram (without elaborating on how) certainly does not help with the petering away of trust that Nigerian society, as any other forward-moving society, is built on. In addition to worsening economic climes and intra-national security, the last thing Nigeria needs is wide-spread ethnic tension and reprisal killings.


It is not clear that there is anyone that GEJ even must listen to on the issue of fuel subsidy. He will get no pressure from his political party; Nigerians vote personalities, not parties, into power for gubernatorial or presidential elections, so PDP could still win another election regardless of how unpopular Jonathan becomes in his final term as president. It makes sense, then, that GEJ would rather the Nigerian populace focus on the fuel subsidy protests than on the rapidly deteriorating security situation: one problem he has the power to control, and the other he so patently does not.

The situation cannot stay a stalemate for long; the senate president has been asked by his members to tell the president to revert the pump price to N65.00, but there is as yet no official word from the President. With the protests and strike entering its fourth day, one wonders how long the protesters can conceivably hold on, how long the labour can hold its ground and maintain support, and how much pain the presidency is willing to allow be inflicted upon the citizenry.

Holding Up The Mirror to Ineptitude

On my Twitter feed, I’ve been tracking and commenting on the fuel subsidy issue. But in the haze of the nation’s collective rage on the fuel subsidy removal, and in the euphoria of being virtually surrounded by a heightened sense of political awareness on the part of Nigerians on a level made even more intense thanks to social media, it is entirely possible that we may be allowing ourselves to be distracted by other pressing issues at hand.

Boko Haram has been responsible for two killing sprees in as many days. In Gombe, Gombe State, the Islamic sect sent a gunman to go to a Deeper Life church service and kill 6 and injure 10. In the other, the sect claimed responsibility for the killing of 20 in a church in Mubi, Adamawa State. These attacks, they claim, were in response to the government’s admittedly-laughable State of Emergency in both states.

And those are only in the past two days. On the 3rd of January, in Dutse, some suspected Boko Haram members attacked Birniwa Divisional Police Headquarters in Jigawa State, killing a teenage girl and a police officer before setting fire to the building. In a ridiculing of the State of Emergency put in place by President Goodluck Jonathan, explosions rocked both Maiduguri, the sect’s stronghold in Borno State, and Damaturu, Yobe State, late on Wednesday, the 4th.

This Vanguard piece also has a great timeline of Boko Haram’s attacks on Nigerians. In the face of government’s ineptitude in dealing with them, the sect has even grown so bold as to issue ultimatums to Christians to leave the North, lest they be killed.

It makes sense that the government would rather face a group of protesters it does not believe will hold firm to its purported ideals than its ineptitude in the mirror. And so we must do exactly that: stand firm. And we must hold that mirror up high.

It is good for us to train our eyes on issues like the fuel subsidy removal that directly affect us, but it is also very important that we do not let the rug be quietly swept from under us in other areas. Let us not be inured to the deaths of those that have suffered at the hands of a ruthless band of crazed men. Let us not forget to hold accountable the government that has allowed them such boldness as to believe that our lives are worth more when we lie blown to bits, our blood on our walls, our eyes devoid of life.

Mainstreaming Hausa

I had a conversation earlier today with a few friends about Hausa representation in Dare Art-Alade's new video for "Ba Ni Kidi."



My friend took issue with Dare's "weird" Hausa (the title is grammatically incorrect, he thinks), but I'm more concerned about the circus, the monkey, the magic... it just felt a bit too Aladdin's Genie for me. It is almost like the singer forgot the song was in Hausa, and decided to go Arabian Nights route instead.

I only mean to make an observation -- and not pick on Dare Art-Alade -- when I say that this video has me thinking about Hausa people and their place in Nigeria's mainstream culture. The only thing even remotely Hausa about me is my name, but it's worth lending a thought to the representation of the Hausa -- or lack thereof -- in Nigerian pop culture. And no, I don't mean somebody saying "Nagode Jesu" in church songs, or Style Plus singing a hook to a song in the language.

In addition to being, according to some observers, the least likely to be educated in Nigeria, Hausas have been left behind in Nigeria's popular culture. The artist Zaaki never did get other Hausas to come to the fore in Nigerian music. I am not aware of any major Hausa actresses in Nigerian films who identifies with being Hausa the way Funke Akindele and Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde do with being Yoruba, or Genevieve Nnaji, Patience Ozorkwor (sorry if I'm butchering it), Stephanie Okereke and Rita Dominic are so obviously Igbo. Hausa films are much younger an industry than Yoruba and Igbo ones, but I wonder about their distribution in Lagos; if they only get around in Kano and Kaduna, it will only strengthen Hausa's isolation from Nigeria's mainstream. I am Yoruba, and the people and culture are so thoroughly a part of pop culture that one cannot but notice Hausas' absence when one compares. Couple this with the power Hausa elites have in Nigeria's polity, you get a lot of room for resentment and misrepresentation aided by silence of the group in the mainstream.

And then there's this video.

What makes the video so repellent to me is the near voicelessness of the people whose language and image is used in this song. I know Dare probably just means to put together a fun, interesting music video, but I know that if someone put together a not-so-flattering/ even slightly mocking video on Yorubas, there'd be more of a reaction across followers of Nigerian music. I wonder what a Hausa person would think seeing this, and how they will feel about their inability to affect the way they are being depicted in the popular culture of their own country.

Irritated Sigh Turned Blogpost on Lagos

I saw poster of “I See Lagos” a few weeks ago when I was visiting family, but, thanks to Emeka Okafor's blog Africa Unchained, I now know what it is.



Heh.

It's weird how you can always tell when a government is doing something that bears paying attention to, and when they're not. When INEC sent out its BB Pin and Twitter handle, they also put out billboard and radio jingles with SMS numbers to report election irregularities across the country. That's how you know that they were serious. While governors put up websites to showcase the work they've done in the states, they also take out ads on TV in pidgin and the local language. With this kind of forum that I See Lagos has, where's the analog equivalent? There's a reason why, when folks have important things to say in Nigeria, they don't necessarily go on Facebook to say it. And it is that reason that makes things like this look unserious.

There's nothing wrong with a bunch of diaspora folks and their internet-ready friends with strongly-held opinions batting back and forth on how best to help Lagos in and of itself, but this should not be the sum of what we can expect from our government and other people within relatively-easy reach of the resources that can make a difference in people's lives. This has less to do with getting people talking about how to move the most populous state in the most populous countries in Africa, and more to do with Fashola getting “cool points” with upwardly mobile middle-class Nigerians and the Nigerian diaspora. Nothing wrong with that, let's call it what it is, shall we?

I'm probably being harder on this than I absolutely need to be, but this points to a larger trend I see among more-monied, London-for-Summer-hols Nigerians like myself, where we band together in our little bubbles and beat our Proudly Nigeria drums and extol on the virtues of change. We make election monitoring forums by and for us. Our blogsphere is created by people like us and for us. We are both addresser and addressee. Think about it: do you think Nigerian newspapers have to worry about making less money because folks read 234Next/Punch/This Day/Guardian/Daily Independent online and don't buy the physical newspaper? NYT, LA Times and the Washington Post have to worry about stuff like that, because, in the U.S., internet access is ubiquitous. In Nigeria, it's not, so internet cannot be the default for a national or statewide conversation that we actually really need to have. Gov. Fashola and his posse really ought to think about expanding their scope and widening our conversation to those who don't have the same access as we do. That is, Fashola and his posse should really think about expanding the conversation to within the reach of most Lagosians.

Not Speaking Yoruba

It is with more than a pang of regret that I acknowledge that I do not understand Yoruba.

OK, that's not entirely true. After all, there is nothing you can say to me in Yoruba that I won't understand. There isn't enough Nigeria in my voice, apparently, to give this understanding of the language away, but I've actually learned to like that. I relish the look on people's faces when they talk about me in Yoruba as though I am not there, only to have their eyes widen in shock when I respond. Yes, I respond in Yoruba sometimes, so it's probably not true, is it, that I don't know any Yoruba.

I should be more clear: speaking Yoruba, speaking it well, is not the same as speaking English well. You can do quite well without speaking English idiomatically, each word an island that reveals itself through practice of conjugations and direct meaning, like a street increasingly familiar with returning visits. Words in English take their place like soldiers. Subject, verb, direct object. You can get more complex than that if you wanted to, of course, but it really is enough to convey your meaning the majority of the time.

Yoruba, however, doesn't work that way. True, you can learn Yoruba in a classroom, like I did in my primary school days, with paperback textbooks the exact thickness as freshly-ironed adire. You could, but why would you, when you could listen to your grandparents talk, read the Yoruba daily newspaper Alaroyin, watch Yoruba movies and laugh at the grammatically-incorrect English captions? No. Yoruba is to be experienced, lived, not – in the academic sense of the word – learned.

And, anyway, the kind of Yoruba you learn is not the kind of Yoruba you want to speak. Where English lines up, Yoruba is a contortionist. I am going to the market. The market, I am going. Both correct. And as you get to more complex situations, this ability to shape and reshape itself gets even thornier, expecting the speaker to move into a thicket of idioms, metaphor. In English, this will only serve to embellish, soften the stark nakedness of one's words. Not quite so in Yoruba. Individual words in this language can take on so many meanings, depending on where one places emphasis. Ife could be a small, university town some hour or so outside of Ibadan, or it can be love. Oko can mean husband, or perhaps forest, and, maybe, if you really butcher it, penis. This nuance is true not just of Yoruba pronunciation, but of Yoruba itself.

To understand Yoruba, then, is to know not just the words themselves, but the spirit in which the words can be used. Someone like me who merely speaks Yoruba can tell you what is bothering them. A person who truly speaks Yoruba will use metaphor as stand-in for himself, at once distancing himself from his words and bringing him – and by extension, his listener – closer to his real meaning. One realizes that this is not a language to be spoken plainly. And if you do, it is because you don't truly understand.

The older one gets in Nigeria, the more one notices the wedges that so many drive into our society. Accent and language is one such wedge, and it is not lost on me what it means to not speak my language. One finds this in English, too, where even the slightest whiff of foreignness is noted and commented on. Immediately comes to barrage of questions: Where are you from? How long have you lived in Nigeria? How long did you live abroad? These I find more understandable and less curious than the responses one gets to the inability to speak Yoruba. One is often met with what can be described as interest, but it really is something more akin to fascination. Who is this person, where did they come from, that they were so surrounded by English that they never got to learn? On occasion, one may get the “it is your mother tongue, why don't you speak it, eh?” But even this is spoken with in irritability directed at not the fact of one's level of fluency, but rather a fact of one's supposed social status. What that question means is very often “who do you think you are that you can't even deign to speak the language?”

Collective self-esteem issues always seem to pervade post-colonized spaces, and it takes different forms from African countries to the United States, from Asia to Latin America. One may even deem the latching on to something else almost necessary, a step that acknowledges the new standard in which things get validated before crafting something of one's own that meets that standard for oneself. As I say this, I am thinking of the way this new popular culture came up in most African counties, where young folks are no longer ashamed to request songs made in their own countries on radio shows, as they were not even quite a decade ago. I don't know, but I do know that the self-esteem issues that relate to culture metamorphosize, change shape. From the way American conservative nativists in the U.S talk, almost spitting in their withering contempt at the effete ways and artsy sensibilities of Europeans, we from African countries can see ourselves: the way the men from Africa are the more manly; the way the black women are stronger than their frailer, paler counterparts; the way Nigerian children are smarter than white ones, regardless of where the white people come from. We may wallow for awhile, but we always somehow find comfort, grasping at the straws of our inadequacies for something bright to hold on to.

But this is not about the self-esteem of a shapeless collective; it's about my own. After all, it's not like all Nigerians born of my generation speak so abysmally their native language. I wonder what the draw to English and not to Yoruba says about who I was at an earlier age, and what it was that I saw then. And I wonder what this pang of regret really means, and what it says about who I am now.

On Debating Nigeria

The Nigerian #WhatAboutUs Presidential debate left me cold, and it's taken me a couple of days to understand why.

Let's forget for one moment the question of whether or not this debate will change the electoral calculus. It won't. Probably everyone in that room holds themselves in high enough moral standing as not to sell their vote for a cup of rice or a small nylon bag of garri, or perhaps some money. I know, because I'm one of them. Indeed, most politicians can't afford to buy off the dignity of someone who is middle to upper-class. Our tastes are too high. We already have rice, bags of it, probably eat it with stir-fry at fancy Chinese restaurants once a month when we save money. Guys can afford to buy their girlfriends a bottle of champagne (however much he'll wince at his bank statement later), maybe even play the big boy once in awhile – if not every weekend – at Koko Lounge or Marquis or wherever it is those young Lagos folk hang out these days. No, a corrupt politician wouldn't want to buy our vote. Our apathy is so much cheaper.

And apathetic we usually are, even as so many among us profess “Proudly Nigeria”, and believe that we are the ones we are waiting for. But we are not. Because we are already here. We have known for a long time what needs to be done, probably have technocrat friends who could us exactly how, and we have know for a long time. No, we are not any less Nigerian than them, but we are not the critical mass; those other people are.

Let it be known that there are less of the yuppy Nigerians trooping to Victoria Island than there are them. Yes, them. Those people who weren't there in the debate. Those people who are likelier to own a radio than a TV. Those people who were probably on their okadas looking for passengers during the debate, hawking food or recharge cards, selling tomatoes in the market. Those people whose vote is up for resale because they don't see the difference in the candidates, and are so disillusioned because they don't have the same sense of urgency for their stomachs as they do for the country.

Those are the people politicians go to, after all, when they want votes, not us. With our Twitter and Blackberries, our Bella Naija and our good English and trips to London for summer. And I'm not even saying I blame these people. I'm just saying that we do not have the humility to see the smallness of our number. I'm saying that, if we did, we would have had a debate beamed from a market somewhere, with the head marketwoman or Iyaloja moderating, with translators for the Hausa or Igbo presidential candidate.

I'm not saying that that would have helped much either. We as Nigerians are so used to our leaders being unavailable that it may even backfire. What kind of “Big Man” the logic goes, would sit with his servants? And Nigeria has always had a twisted relationship with leaders, these leaders that we have had for so long that never serve. But I wanted something, anything, to show that people in that room, the organizers of that debate, understood. Because something, however, misguided, would have shown that they realized that people like us aren't the ones that matter. Or that people like us are not the only ones that matter. Not by a long shot.

And the fact that we so often don't see it, and very often only give it lip service speaks louder than anything else of why we get the politicians that we do, that acknowledge only one slice of Nigeria in their daily business. That is what we do, too, is it not? And don't our leaders come from us? this society? these people? This society that we have crafted with our bare hands, brick-by-brick, almost adoringly. We will not blow this brick house down if we do not turn the lights away from ourselves, and on to the people who will really change this country, those who need convincing that this change is possible, and those who need convincing that there is actually a way to make it happen. We – diaspora kids, Enough is Enough kids, full-bellied kids, going to Arise Fashion Week in Muson kids, going to art galleries and Silverbird Galleria kids – are not the ones that need convincing. They are.

The secret of our dignity that makes us so hard to buy is our ability to dream. But it doesn't matter if we have stars in our eyes. It matters that they don't. It doesn't matter if we have dreams of a shining city on the hill. It matters that they don't. Because our country will not live off of our dreams. Our revolution wouldn't happen until those people who were not in that room during the debate starve, because they choose to ignore the stretch of that arm offering money for their vote, and dream, too.

Pointing and Laughing - Campaign Ad Edition

Here's the problem with my flying visits to Lagos - I never remember to bring my camera. Worse, I managed to lose the USB cord for my Blackberry. This means that when I happen upon random pieces of awesome I may not be able to take a picture.

Like incumbent Gov. Babatunde Fashola's campaign poster on Lagos's BRT buses, for instance. It's basically a big yellow poster with the governor smiling at you. Below his picture are the words, in bold, purple letters:


GOVERNOR BABATUNDE RAJI FASHOLA SPEAKETH.

Speaketh?

Don't you just love "God Sent Me" rhetoric? This is not nearly as flagrant as current President Goodluck Jonathan's "vote me for the will of our Lord" (I can't find this ad on the 'net, not even on Goodluck's youtube channel), but it's just as funny. Downright hilarious.

On the whole, though, I've found watching campaign ads in Nigeria has been interesting. Muslim and Christian politicians in Nigeria like their religious signaling overt. Some of Muslims make the extra effort to be seen with Chief Missioners of huge megamosques like NASFAT and Ansarudeen. Indeed, Lagos Gov. Fashola spent the first couple of months as Lagos governor cozying up to Muslim leaders, even so far as going after women dressed "indecently" around his government's headquarter's. Christians ones, from Goodluck Jonathan himself onwards, make sure they're seen with megachurch pastors like Redeem's Adeboye and Canaanland's Oyedepo.

This is especially interesting to watch because we have one pastor running for president and one pastor on a ticket as a vice-presidential candidate, neither of whom is throwing his religiosity in the faces of Nigerian voters. Why does this realpolitique on the part of these pastors -- nobody wants to scare away those Northern and Yoruba Muslim voters -- not ring true for these other political aspirants?

I wouldn't go as far as calling this religious hinting in campaigns a trend, though; it's pretty much just an extension of Nigeria's collective religious nature. But it's certainly worth pointing out/rolling one's eyes at/bursting out laughing about.

Guess which of those I'm doing?

Ad-Watching, Nigeria Style

If you live in Nigeria, are female and have not gotten funny looks upon going to a bar and ordering something even slightly alcoholic, you haven't lived.

Accordingly, Nigerian ads for beer are blatantly male, with blatantly male slogans like "Ultimate Man" (Gulder) or "For the Real Man" (Legend Extra Stout). But this Star Commercial, taking you on a journey through Nigeria with Sir Victor Uwaifo's "Joromi" playing in the background, is a beauty.

What's the Point of Nollywood?

The other day, I was watching an episode of a show on the Yoruba movie cable channel (with that, you should already know there would be no embed link to this – sorry!) where Yoruba filmmaker and actor extraordinaire Saidi Balogun was saying how the purpose of his movies is to spread wisdom to Nigerians on how to behave to each other and spread love to their fellow man and roll around in meadows and have flower parties with dolphins and puppies. Or something.

Yes, I know.

It has to be said, hearing a Nigerian filmmaker tout usefulness and wisdom as the point of his movies cannot be a surprise to anyone who has ever seen a Nigerian film. This isn't a direct hit at Saidi Balogun. If anything, I'm actually a big fan of his specifically, and of Yoruba movies in general. Where I find the sanctimony of their storylines to be quite grating and the often-poor quality of the production to be, well, poor, one can easily see the great quality of the acting and a real sense the filmmakers are speaking of a people they know well. Where English actors tend to be stilted, Yoruba actors are fluent, not just in the language, but in the tradition of those who they seek to depict, and this gives their films a sense of ease and color. I would argue that Yoruba filmmakers know Yoruba people in a way that English filmmakers, in the broadness of their intended audience and their lack of mastery even of the language of their art, do not their intended audience. What I'm wondering about is this notion that art must serve some utilitarian end.

Generally speaking, one of the saddest things to me about African artistic expression has always been this need to be 'useful'. Forget the obvious examples of the gorgeous printed design that gets used for clothing and stories in folklore used to spread wisdom. Take literature. Writers in French and English in the independence movements across Africa used their stories and poems to raise consciousness about freedom and political struggle. Then came women like Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Tsitsi Dangaremgba, and Ama Ata Aidoo, who used their work to talk about women's experiences. This is not just in Africa, of course; James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston's works, for example, were not exactly P.G. Wodehouse-style fiction, after all. The thing is, I love all these writers. Their work was deep and heart-wrenching and difficult. Above all, their work was necessary.

But is this kind of work still necessary?

It is as though, having seen no knowable, physical enemy against which to write our movies, like there was for writers in new pre- and immediate post-independence literature, we have chosen some abstract monster of depravity and corruption and dressed them up like ourselves. I join in the chorus of complaint too often to say that Nigeria isn't that bad, but I think I can say that Nigeria is not all bad. We are a complex lot, and we all know that. And if we are so complex, and fimmakers seek to capture us on-screen, are we not worthy of that complexity by those who seek to depict us?

And if “mega-church Christianity meets Yoruba proverb” morality is really all we can hope for, then it cannot be too much to ask to get some simplicity. Just once, it would be wonderful if someone wasn't trying to preach to me and instead just told me a story about a man who wanted to get a girl and did all sorts of wacky things to make her go out on a date with him. That's it. No juju, nobody giving their lives to Christ at the end of the movie, no Ifa priest and prayer beads, no sudden coming of age. Just so – well-acted, maybe even funny, with characters more fleshed-out than clapboards.

The more I think about it, I wonder if the magic of Hollywood for so many of us non-Americans is this ease to create such movies as they do, movies that do not reach any further than the world that they are seen to create. While I love ambition in any artwork, there is something to the simple romantic story, the action movie with nothing beyond its gunshots and gore, the comedy that seeks nothing but your laughter, that speaks to a level of comfort in one's skin. There is nothing to parse in Titanic and Iron Man for knowledge. It just is. For reasons beyond my ken, the single-mindedness to make such films comes with a certain kind of cultural ease by people no longer driven with a need to ask questions of themselves. For now this is a privilege that it seems Nigeria cannot yet afford, and I hope that one day we can.

Another Lagos Documentary (and a Little Something on Governance)

BBC has been killing it with the Nigeria documentaries. Via my twitter friend @419Positive, here's a great one featuring Funmi Iyanda, TV personality and probably one of my favorite people anywhere. She talks to major Lagosians like eccentric entertainer Charles "Charley Boy" Oputa and Lagos State Gov. Babatunde Fashola.



Lagos, unlike the rest of Nigeria, has always had some good luck with it's leaders. We (Yes, I'm from Lagos) have definitely been a lucky state, always having one thing tangible with which to attribute to a certain governor, from Jakande (the free high schools) to Marwa (the bicycle taxis), and Tinubu (the much-needed road splitting in Allen Avenue and ambulances on Third Mainland) to Fashola (the BRTs). My theory is that Lagos is the one place in the country where you do not want to lose face. A lot of major business in Nigeria is done there, so it adds a good amount of pressure on its leaders to make sure that you do a good enough job that you can still make an appearance in those high society parties, those tennis clubs, those functions in those hotels, be taken seriously as a leader as the city evolves in its role as epicenter of one of Africa's major economies. The last place in the world a Nigerian wants to be persona non grata is Lagos.

This line of thinking definitely has its holes. Among other problems, Lagos is quite socially segregated and the ghettos are still sprawling, so this societal pressure has not worked well for everyone (Maybe it's worked best for whom the likelihood of bumping into said governor at MUSON Center or Yoruba Tennis Club are quite high). Still, everyone I've heard from who lives in Lagos quite likes Gov. Fashola. His administration has made laudable changes to improve transportation, but I do not know much about his work on Lagos's ailing infrastructure, nor on his initiatives (I believe there have been some) to encourage small business. It's also worth mentioning that I have no idea how this pressure that I think works so well in Lagos holds out in a commercial area in other regions of Nigeria, like Port Harcourt, for example.

I think I'm right on the merits and I'll stand my ground until corrected, but I'm curious if there is a correlation at all between the number of major cities in a country -- and therefore pockets of industry where a sizable middle class can thrive -- and the likelihood of there being good governance practices.

The Anatomy of a Blogpost on Nigeria's Big 50

A reflection post on 50 years of Nigeria's independence is an unnecessarily difficult thing to write.

The funny thing is, I can't even really articulate why. I refuses to believe that what I'm afraid of is an effort at stocktaking devolving into a long post of despair. I write posts about Nigeria all the time, after all. Sometimes these posts do teeter on the edge or actually are one long complaint, but ultimately they get written, posted, filed.

The fear, perhaps, is not so much what the post will ultimately have to say, but of where the country itself, and where it will end up next year, at this juncture in our history.

How much have things changed since last year? Yes, we have a president now. Goodluck Jonathan isn't going to fall terminally ill anytime soon (let's hope, knock on wood). The Super Eagles are not up for qualification for an international tournament with only the slightest chances of getting in. Nuhu Ribadu isn't making demands on Capitol Hill in DC. But all that is circumstantial. How different will things be next year when I have to write another post on Nigeria's independence day since so many of Nigeria's troubles come from the same issues of corruption and complete lack of regard of the governed? A lot of the troubles that Nigeria faces will continue. We probably will find out that still more of our elected officials have been stealing from the public coffers. The militias in the Niger-Delta and the North will probably still exist. Mega-church pastors would still buy expensive cars and houses and there will be few investigations into their affairs. Nigerian movies will still be laughably bad. The economy will still grow, but very few will actually know it.

The weight I am feeling on my fingers that renders this post such a chore is not fear at all, is it? It's fatigue. I don't want to throw my hands up in despair anymore. I'm tired of doing that. Lamenting "No water, no light" holds no interest to me. I'm not Wole Soyinka. Pounding my fists on my soapbox is getting irritating. I admire those among us who never tire of crying for change, but I do.

And yet, as living in the U.S. and knowing a fair amount about EU politics has shown me, every country has its problems. Logic then follows that Nigeria has either this set of problems, or another. So as the big 5-0 approaches, I will this space to hope not that Nigeria gets rid of it's problems, but that it replaces them. And soon.

Relentless

Via the good bloggin' people over at Shadow and Act, a trailer for a Nigerian movie I -- and here's a shocker -- actually want to see.

RELENTLESS from Lluís Prieto on Vimeo.

I'm excited about this. It's got the ubiquitous Nneka, yes, but it's also got Andy Amadi Okoroafor. I can't tell much about her acting job from the trailer, but I just love the quiet expressiveness of Okoroafor's face. As Rilke would say, not everything is as 'sayable' as people would often have you believe.

Generator and Petroleum Importers in the Nigeria's Power Industry

The glaring omission of generator makers and importers of diesel into Nigeria seems to me to be a lack of real politique on the part of analysts of Nigerian politics.

If there are 18 local and foreign companies vying for a share in a privatized Nigerian power sector, it should not be ignored that all the companies involved in generator-making are necessarily foreign companies: Perkins, Volvo, Honda, Deere (I believe), among others. As I said in a previous blogpost, the Nigerian power industry already has private interests vested in it. It is estimated that U.S.$13 billion a year to fuel generators, which is good business on the part of generator-makers and importers of diesel. As is all too often the case when writing about Nigeria, hard data is hard to come by on who exactly does big business and in what sector, but it will be very curious to me if a lot of moneyed, government-related Nigerians are not already investors in the generator industry, not to mention questions of trade and foreign direct investment from countries these generator companies come from. More urgently, if Nigeria does pull off a better power grid and improved power industry, it could affect the importation of diesel and generators into Nigeria, and thus could impact trade relations.

Also of concern is the government's ability to uphold rules to make sure that its interests align with that of these companies investing in the industry. Nigerian lawmakers do not have a good track record in showing resolve in their dealings with foreign companies. Take gas flaring, for example. There have been promises by many companies to stop gas flaring in the Niger-Delta most recently one from Shell in 2010. Still, a Federal High Court ruling in Benin in November 14, 2005 ordered the company to stop, that gas flaring was a "gross violation" of constitutionally guaranteed rights. What hope does one have that the most recent promise from Shell will be upheld without government pressure if they have been flouting court rulings for at least 5 years without penalty? All this is to say that there have been no systemic changes, in the oil industry or anywhere else, in how business with large companies has been conducted. Mind you, the new power industry will be full of them. One cannot but worry when one sees more foreign interests coming into the Nigerian industry and the government has no ways in which to tweak the incentives so that the interests of the market and the consumer are not at such cross-purposes.

More worrying than political analysts ignoring the reality of the industry is the fact that there has been no indication by President Goodluck Jonathan that he has taken this reality of the Nigerian energy market into consideration. Nobody feels sorry for generator-makers -- I certainly do not -- but it is hard to take seriously a new privatization scheme in a key industry that does not acknowledge the trade relationships that it will affect.

Governance and Privatization in Nigeria's Power Industry

Goodluck Jonathan is ramping up efforts on stabilizing Nigerian energy supply, and talk of privatizing the industry is once again in the air. Economic liberalization seems to be the default mode for the Nigerian government when its called upon to act more efficiently, but the idea of ceding ground to the private sector on energy ought to make one stop and think.

I have always found the irregular energy supply in Nigeria to be an interesting policy question. Thanks to general waste and age-old corruption, Nigerian electric power authority (It's PHCN now, but I always think of it as it's old name NEPA) has been found wanting in its provision of a public good (electricity). But people have to find a way, don't they? There are products to sell, football matches to watch, drinks to keep cold. The market responds: generators in all sizes. Businesspeople know a good opportunity when they see one, so money -- within Nigeria and out -- floods into the thriving generator industry. The price of kerosene rises and falls for lamps. Binatone makes electric lamps. Out of government inefficiency arises private sector innovation.

Of course, out of private sector innovation come the trouble of incentives -- Who really wants there to be 24-hour electricity? Think about it. The generator-makers certainly don't, or what would then happen to their business? And these energy companies, who would they profit? Certainly, their services would be obtained by many, not all of whom can afford it.

A good metric, I think, for how an exclusively-private power industry can be found in ICT. It is difficult to find hard data on these things (Though page 9 of this study gives some idea) so I have not run the numbers, but I bet that average usage of ICT services per 100 inhabitants would be surprisingly low compared to how many people actually own cell phones, particularly outside urban areas. Why? Because cell phone services are actually quite expensive. People text on their phones much more than they actually talk. They have found a way to make their money stretch further within the current system, and in so doing entrenched the status quo.

The fact of the matter is that the private sector is already in the power industry, and they have served only to entrench the status quo with their products, not challenge it. Nigerians -- the whole continent, I suspect -- prides itself on gritty resourcefulness. Learning how to manipulate your surroundings to the best of your ability is great in the short-term, but it does nothing to turn the incentives in your favor in the long-term. When there is no real consumer protection agency to speak of and the industry is more connected to the government than consumers are, the designated body can take your writhing for comfort as silence in consent.

In order for privatization to work, it needs to make sense for the market to provide energy services at every price range, something I am not convinced will happen. Without that, all this is doing is creating another item on the list that "only certain people" can afford and maybe even adversely affecting the start-up cost for businesses in an economy badly in need of diversifying. In our bid to make more money for GEJ and all his moneyed friends, the questions Nigerians need to be asking is whether all the pieces are in place to ensure that turning over the energy industry to the market can actually work. Privatization cannot simply be a way for elected leaders who need a way out of their duties to govern.

Is Goodluck Running for President or What?

Goodluck Jonathan is oscillating so much on his 2011 plans, he makes Hamlet look decisive. He can't just be doing this for kicks - what's his endgame?

From all the tea leaves before us, this next election is not going to be pretty. Northerners want a Northern president (well, they always do, but..) because Yar'Adua didn't have his full term due to his protracted illness and eventual death. To zone or not to zone has been a question for months. Former military president Babangida has voiced interest, so he along with former vice and now out-of-favor with ruling party heads Atiku are said to be the choices for the Northern leaders' endorsement as the election draws nearer. Attahiru Jega, electoral body INEC head, has already started playing doomsday prophet even after the senate granted him funds for conducting the election. It's interesting times in Nigerian politics, and I don't blame anyone wanting to stay away. I sincerely doubt, though, that Jonathan is "scared". One expects, in fact, that if he keeps his Golden Boy image, he's one more CNN and BBC interview away from Kagame (pre-election) Status and he's earned himself a soapbox for life, abroad if not at home.

There's a lot of real politique going on here. Jonathan is not Igbo (which probably wouldn't have helped much anyway), not Yoruba, and certainly not Hausa. It's already a very long shot that he gets the nomination with the heavy-hitters gunning for it, so he has to speak softly and not look like he's trying to assert authority from leaders he doesn't have within a party system that very much depends on where you come from. Waving a cane in the face of leaders from the North and South when you don't have the political pedigree and support that they do would strike me as quite silly on his part. For my money, GEJ absolutely wants to run for president, but he has to win the staring contest first. And if he does, and earns his party's nomination, then he's certainly worth his first name.

Just How Bad Is Nigerian Police Corruption?

This bad.

The Nigeria Police made a total of N20.35 billion between January last year and June this year from extorting money from motorists at illegal checkpoints, a report by the global organisation, Human Rights Watch has revealed.

Emeka Umeagbalasi, the chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law presented the report in Lagos said checkpoints in the South East yielded the highest sums. Giving a breakdown of what is made from the different regions, Mr. Umeagbalasi said N9.35 billion was realised from the South East, South-South brought in N4 billion, while the South-West nets the police N4 billion. In the North Central, which includes Abuja, N2 billion was made, while the North East and North West brought in N500 million each.

I'm curious to know how one goes about getting such figures nailed to the exact number, but I have no problem with the number per se. Corruption breeds waste. Over at Loomnie's blog, this quote from Elizabeth Dickinson over at the FP magazine as she ruminates on the new Human Rights Watch report on Nigerian corruption:

Like all corruption, there is an element of victimization on both sides of the equation, unfortunately. The people who are extorted from are, obviously, suffering. But so too are the low level policemen in many cases. How can I best illustrate this? Perhaps the fact that the officers were forced to buy their own bullets, uniforms, and pay for their own transportation because the upper ranks had taken the bulk of the funding for themselves or other pet projects. The majority of the officers also likely believed in being policemen, and wanted to be a positive force for their countries. They were proud of their roles and sought to do the best job they could. But they were also pretty hungry sometimes. And as I was once wisely told, a hungry man will do anything you ask.

What is so irritating about Nigerian corruption is just how anti-Robin Hood it is. I think of it as the Sallah theory: What's the wisdom in killing a skinny cow? You'd just end up having to kill more and more skinny cows to get just as much meat as if you'd just waited, fed it with grain, kept it healthy. But these policemen rob a people who cannot afford to be robbed, and so they gain little,which keeps them coming back again and again. And in that way they're just like all the other leaders we have, coming back again and again and robbing a people a lot, little by little.

'GRA Women' and the Men That Love Them (or Not)

We're getting a new soap opera!

Beyond the glitz, glamour, facade of exotic cars, apparels and lifestyles, people, albeit women, who live in posh neighbourhoods, do have their own fair share of challenges, just like the average individual. This is the idea behind ‘GRA Women’, a soap opera that was premiered at the Protea Hotel, Ikeja GRA, in Lagos, on Friday July 9.

Written and produced by Nigerian filmmaker, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, the event had an array of stars in attendance, many of whom said they could not get enough of the highly intriguing drama.

Speaking at the premiere about the idea behind the soap opera, Anyiam-Osigwe said, “GRA Women is an idea I had all along for a long time now, but decided to produce after I got the right team to work with. A lot of families who live in the GRA have old family connections, as such you see that everyone is connected to the other in one way or the other. Those old family connections and things that happen in GRA are some of the things I want to showcase with this family drama.”

Sounds a bit like Sex and the City (hold the sex) meets Real Housewives of... Lagos. Or something. Among the cast of characters is "an adulterous pastor, and wife who do not have a child; girls on the fast lane; a philandering senator and his lonely wife, amongst many others." So basically, easy to typecast and sell as familiar. Unless the writing is good and the emphasis is places less on leather chairs in the living room and more on the quality of the work. And there have been some good Nigerian soap operas. I remember being a huge fan of "Domino" when I was in Nigeria and who in their right minds didn't like "Checkmate" when it aired?

"Superstory" is where it ends, though. Don't know whether it's still running, but I can't stand "Superstory".

Maybe I wouldn't be so inclined to make fun of this if the filmmaker hadn't said she wants this to be a "family drama". At its best, this should be like every bad edition of National Encomium (or other Lagos-based tabloid article) come to life, full of gossip and cattiness and hilarity to no end. But that would be awesome. I would love to watch that.

More seriously, I'm always on edge whenever Nigerian filmmakers have to depict Nigerian women. I don't care that this filmmaker is a woman -- the trouble with chauvinism is that it makes its convinces the people being shoved aside that they deserve it. I bristle when I hear women saying that they'd rather not have female bosses, and that women are more likely to drag each other down. The trouble with women in Nigerian cinema is that they're never personalities, just caricatures. The long-suffering wife who is thus revered by her children as some kind of saint, the university good-girl-gone-bad, the good girl who is demure and goes to church, to bad one who smokes cigarettes and goes to clubs. I don't know this filmmaker's work -- I'm most familiar with Emem Isong among the female Nigerian filmmakers -- but I wonder to what extent she buys the narrative, and how she will take it on in this series.

Is Nigeria a Failed State?

Next's editorial board seems to think so:

We have now grown used to commentator after commentator expressing fears and concerns about Nigeria. Last year US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton described Nigeria’s situation as “a heartbreaking scene.” Earlier this year former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell warned of the possibilities of severe crisis as the fallout of the intrigues that accompanied late President Yar’Adua’s illness and subsequent abdication of office.

None of these “foreign concerns” can however match the ones that Nigerians themselves have cried themselves hoarse expressing. The truth is that the average Nigerian does not need a listing by an international organization to convince himself or herself that Nigeria is a failed state. Any citizen who has to provide electricity, water, security and justice (often expressed as jungle justice) for himself knows what state failure is with far greater certitude than the best-equipped international pollster or researcher.

Nigeria is not a country that acts like it is. We have money, but you couldn't tell from the inequality abound. We've got tons of oil in the Delta, yet the people are perhaps the most miserable of all. We beat our chests about how great we are, the giants of Africa and all that, yet we are among the ones who flee from our country the most. As instinctively protective a lot of Nigerians are in defending Nigeria, they would be blind or crazy (or both) to deny that there's something seriously wrong with the country.

Nigeria is not a failed state the way, say, Somalia is a failed state, but I'm still not sure the characterization is wrong. We can quibble with whether or not Failed State is too harsh a characterization -- never mind a no.14 on the list of Failed States -- but we can all agree that the state is failing it's citizens.

Lagos Town!

Afrikan Boy wan' kill us o...



Not bad.

Nigerian Movies Are Products Not Art

Abena P.A. Busia has a speech at a forum on the representation of Nigerian women in the Nigerian film industry that's worth a read. This, on the Nigerian film industry in general, caught my eye.

The Nollywood film industry, willingly or unwittingly, carries on its shoulders the hopes and expectations of a people. Perhaps the situation can be compared to the burdens placed on the shoulders of African-American writers in the middle of the twentieth century who had to grapple with the interface between artistic freedom and social expectations. Was Richard Wright justified in creating a monster like Bigger Thomas to prove his ideological point that desperate social circumstances beyond one’s control produce desperate people, or did he merely validate the negative stereotype that all young Black men are brutes and rapists? A generation later when Alice Walker gave us Celie in The Color Purple was she showing how no matter what the degradations, women’s sisterhood and solidarity could lead to personal emancipation, or was she, justly accused of merely adding further fuel to the fire engulfing the besieged masculinity of Black men.

It is not insignificant that the furor over the Color Purple blazed more furiously, leading to demonstrations against the actors and the picketing of the Oscars, when it was turned into a successful film by Steven Spielberg. It is not necessary to say, especially in a forum such as this, that in terms of contemporary entertainment, film is arguably the most popular art form of narrative communication around the world today. Something that causes a spark when published in print can turn into a forest fire when presented on the screen. Controversial as the novel The Last Temptation of Christ was when published in 1960 by Nikolas Kazantzakis, that uproar paled when compared to the fury unleashed when it was made into a film directed by Martin Scorsese which reached a much wider general audience in 1988. It can also work the other way; I am sure J.K. Rowling the writer of the Harry Potter series of children’s books today goes to the bank quite happy that she need never write another word in life if she doesn’t choose to!

Nollywood faces the same agonies and choices as all the other ‘woods’ have faced. The point I am emphasizing is that the question of the responsibility for images is not peculiar to Nigeria or to film-makers, but is the concern of all artists; however that responsibility becomes magnified when the medium is an influential and popular one, such as film is.

I almost spat out my mint tea when she started talking about Bigger Thomas in "Black Boy" and "The Color Purple". However badly done, I think you can argue that Nigerian films do not ignore the social context in which they exist. Film after film talks about gold-digger wives, gold-digger families, single women who are sworn to never find a man until they cover up their boobs and find Jesus, university "Bigs Girls" with their rich husbands,etc. She's obviously more concerned about the quality of the product than the content of the product itself. She is right that the quality of the work is a problem, but I'm not really sure that Nigerian film industry players understand their responsibilities as anything other than to entertain.

Industry players are business-minded, and business-minded people are inherently risk averse. When you've got something that works, why on earth would you branch out and try out a model that may or may not work? People like Usofia and the twins and the Iya Rainbow type characters. Give them what they want and you'll continue to make money. And that's the purpose, by the way. To make money.

Chris Abani once said that "If there's nothing at stake, it cannot be called art". He's right. And there is nothing at stake here in Nigerian film, not because people just don't care a damn, but because, well, the art doesn't make money. Pouring tons of money into a production, taking care of it like a new-born child, ensuring the acting isn't below par, tightening that cinematography, putting in excellent directors that bring out the best in their actors, putting in actors that may be unknown but are truly mind-blowing..... that's investment in art. Investment that a risk-averse businessman would prefer to minimize so as to maximize profit. An investment a businessman need not make at this point in the film industry because, seriously, no one expects Nigerian movies to be as good as the best Indian or Italian or American movies. We have low standards for Nollywood, so they will continue to be met. And it's just as well, too, so the businessman doesn't have to raise the bar and he can laugh to the bank. The object of Nigeria's film industry is not to create art, but to create a product that will sell.

And you know what? I don't even knock the hustle. Just don't expect me to go out of my way to watch.