Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Friday, August 4, 2023

Chasing Rats In Niger Republic

By Ochereome Nnanna

When the immediate former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, came to power in January 2017, he took stock of the situation the country was in. Over the decades, warlike America had become war-torn though the fighting was always on foreign land. It spends an average of $1 trillion on defence and wars annually. Its troops were mired all over the Middle East and Asia, especially in such countries as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Trump, who campaigned on a mantra of Making America Great Again, MAGA, decided to de-escalate belligerence. The troops must come home. America must make peace with its traditional foes – Russia, China, North Korea and others. America must suspend its “big brother” role to the European Union and let them shift for themselves, at least for the time being. America must rebuild the coal-fired energy sector and revamp abandoned towns. America must rebuild its broken philosophical and cultural foundations and become America once again.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Why Politicians Need To Address Poverty During Campaign

 By Stanley Achonu

The 2023 elections loom, with politicians making campaign promises that offer hope. Yet, poverty, probably the biggest threat to Nigerians today, has gone unaddressed.

In October, the World Bank released its ‘Poverty and Shared Prosperity’ report outlining progress in the global fight against extreme poverty. According to the report, the world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, with COVID-19 as a major factor in upending progress made in recent years. The total number of people living in extreme poverty has risen to 719 million globally, with 71 million people added in 2020 alone.

Monday, October 24, 2022

Why Climate Change Must Define Our Elections

 By Nick Dazang

Following unprecedented rainfall this year, the vast length and breadth of this country has been flooded. Most adversely impacted are Kogi and Bayelsa states. Kogi State, which is located smack on the confluence of Rivers Niger and Benue, has been submerged by water. Bayelsa, which is down stream, has been cut off completely from civilisation, with nearly one million of its citizens displaced.

It is a tale of woe for nearly all the states of the federation, including the Mambilla and Jos plateaux, which experienced the most torrential rains in a generation. Not less than a conservative 700 Nigerians have lost their lives. Millions have lost their properties and live in camps. And millions more are prone to diseases and hunger as a consequence.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Endless Deaths From Generator Fumes

By Egwu Ben Obasi
Aside from  terrorism, threats to our lives are ceaselessly coming left, right and centre, and we still seem uncertain as to when the next will hit us. If it is not HIV/AIDS pandemic, it is the dreaded Lassa fever spread or bird flu. If it is not Lassa fever or Bird flu, it is the ravaging viral haemorrhagic fever, otherwise known as Ebola virus disease; and for some time now electricity generator fumes occasioning deaths. 
Electricity, as a form of energy supplied through cables and wires for lighting, heating, and driving machines, helps to power our technology and drive national development. Electricity generation over the years has been from public sources. With perennial inefficiency in power management over these years, and epileptic power supply that has bedeviled our public power systems, Nigerians could not stand still but settle for alternative sources. Electricity power generating sets become that ready option open to most people for home comfort and business productivity. Abused usages of these generators have had life-threatening consequences and deserve attention to avert occurrences.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Nigeria: When 'Clueless' Is Better Than Calamitous

By Bolaji Tunji
The present government of President Muhammadu Buhari would, in a few months, be two years old. Ever since the government was sworn in, save for the euphoria that trailed a new government and the expectation of Nigerians looking for change, if truth has to be told, Nigerians have not really got anything to show for all the change that they were promised. There is hardship in the land occasioned by the poor state of the economy. Nigerians are hungry. Prices of essential commodities are soaring. Food items are no longer affordable. As for social amenities, Nigerians experience more of darkness than light as power has worsened. Former Lagos governor and Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Raji Fashola, has not been able to find solution to the problem.
*Buhari 
Most of the people who aided and supported this government such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo have equally signaled their dissatisfaction with the way things are going. He told the government to concentrate on clearing the mess inherited instead of complaining about the situation. In the early days of the administration, it was the in thing to blame the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the rot in the system. If the present government would continue to have its way, it would still have preferred to continue blaming the previous administration. But this would have shown the new government as lacking in initiative for still blaming its predecessor at nearly two years of taking over. Come to think of it, does this present administration have initiative, creativity? I do not think so. As much as Nigerians admire the person of President Buhari for his honesty, integrity (I equally do),  he has fallen short of the expectation of so many Nigerians. This is not just about criticizing the president for the sake of it, but criticism is coming because the president, in the past 17 months, has shown his unpreparedness for governance. I want him to succeed but wishing is different from the reality. The reality is that nothing is working. Companies are finding it difficult to continue and jobs are being lost.
I have written about the fact that there is no clear cut economic blue print and so many other Nigerians, who are in position to know this, have said the same. It is what former President Obasanjo described as administration by “adhocry”. Looking for quick fix solution without an in depth understanding of the problem. It is what led this same administration to China like other administrations before. Obasanjo visited China twice, late President Umaru Yar’Adua, President Jonathan equally visited before President Buhari’s visit in April.
Prior to that trip, the government had made us to understand that solution to the problems we are facing especially as it concerns the dollars would be found in China and that the focus on that country would reduce the over dependence on the dollar.  I had sounded a warning that the China trip would not solve our problem as it was an ad hoc solution. We were told that many agreements were signed in areas of power, solid minerals, etc. I am yet to see any of these taking off. Why not against such a trip, it should have been taken as part of a larger picture of our economic policy. If we have an economic policy, the question would have been; how does China fits into the overall picture?

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Why Africa’s Industrialization Is Still A Mirage


By James Shikwati
It is time Africans identified the difference between market seeking industries and intrinsic industrialization. When international food, beverage, motor vehicle and information technology companies set foot on African soil, they do so to access domestic markets. Such initiatives do not necessarily lead to industrialization.
To industrialize, Africa must invest in growing its own productivity character, a form of “African capitalism.” Productivity character requires that Africans patiently study what drives Western and Asiatic industrial powerhouses such as Japan and China. What type of individual and societal habits do these industrial centers exhibit? The Japanese are nurtured to focus on personal reflection and how one connects to the entire society. Amongst the Chinese, man is at the center of all things as long as he is balanced with the universe. The West is driven by the notion of the “original sin” that prompts man to seek to redeem oneself.

Sub-Saharan Africa exhibits a strong sense of extractive entitlement to ethnic and extended family networks. The safety or security provided in ethnicity blunts the thirst of individuals to surface innovation and industry. Safety in extractive entitlement is analogous celebrating the ownership of a big piece of family land but waiting for someone else to develop it. Progress is slow for those who merely celebrate ownership of physical, human and intellectual resources and stop at that.

Can the attitude of the continents’ urbanized folks who are always quick to transform challenges to opportunities evolve “African capitalism?” It is easier to blame thriving industrial centers that thwart the ability of others to surface in order to protect their domestic producers.

Africa has no excuse but learn from China, Japan and other Asian Tigers that have successfully navigated Western roadblocks to industrialize. The continent should adopt the urbanized mindset and forge carefully calculated steps that will lead to rapid modernization by studying the systems of successful economies. This quest should urgently replace the political electoral cycle that is driven by short term focus. Long term strategies should exploit the current dominance by Anglo-American industrial initiatives and the USD $ 10 billion China-Africa Industrial Capacity Cooperation Fund. The West and Asiatic characteristics will not by themselves set Africans on the path of industrialization.

Africa’s industrialization dream is held back internally by the lack of a competitive “African character.” Imagine if the continent’s 1.2 billion people reversed their sense of extractive entitlement to the over 2,000 ethnic groups and encouraged individual productive obligation to the numerous challenges facing thousands of ethnic groups! The continent would become a bubble chamber of innovations that address ethnic and by extension global challenges.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Herdsmen And The Looming Rage

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  
As a prime indicator of the failure of leadership in the country, government at all levels and public officials seem to derive some inexplicable joy from a creed that requires the neglect of problems until they deteriorate and almost defy any redemptive measures. Let the citizens protest or wail over roads that have been rendered impassable by their dilapidation that is worsened by floods and decrepit drainage systems. The government and its officials would wait. For to them, the bigger the problem, the better. If at all they intervene after the citizens’ outrage, it would only be because the problem has festered.
This official neglect was the compost for the proliferation of the Boko Haram crisis. Now, after the crisis has hobbled the North East, the government is troubling the citizens and the rest of the world with how to redevelop the region. Yet, our leaders have not learnt their lessons; they have not realised the futility of waiting for problems to fester before deploying tepid measures to solve them. The current response of the Federal Government to the danger posed to national security by Fulani herdsmen who are now on the prowl is underpinned by the same attitude of not frontally attacking national challenges as they occur.
Of course, we cannot capriciously abridge the right of Fulani herdsmen to pursue their business like other citizens. But the problem is when the pursuit of their business is a danger to the existence of other citizens and their legitimate businesses. It is the herdsmen’s predilection for blurring the distinction between their right and the right of others to their businesses that has launched them onto a path that is paved with impunity and tragedy. They ravage farmlands of other citizens in the course of grazing their cattle. Worse still, they rape women and girls. As has become rampant, a whimper of protest from those whose farmlands are destroyed provokes a ferocious response from the heavily armed herdsmen who unleash violence on them. These confrontations have led to tragic consequences: thousands are left dead and entire communities sacked and the residents rendered homeless.
But a more worrisome development is that the Federal Government has embarked on a course to legitimise the impunity of the herdsmen. Or how else do we consider the plan by the government to establish grazing reserves for the herdsmen? Already, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Audu Ogbeh to set up 50, 000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months first in the north before moving to the south. By this policy, the government would seize the land of other citizens and give it to the herdsmen. Under the auspices of the new policy, the herdsmen can now leave Daura in Katsina State and have grazing reserves funded by the citizens’ taxes in a community in Anambra State. Aside from the president’s move, there is a bill that has passed the seconding reading and waiting for the third reading to be passed into law that would empower the Federal Government to create grazing reserves for the herdsmen.
But rather than having any potential to end the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers, the approach of the government would rather aggravate them. For in the first place, no one wants a neighbour imposed on him or her. Not even the likelihood of the government paying compensation for the land acquired for the grazing areas would make farmers to accommodate unwanted and destabilising guests. And why must the host communities accept the government’s position when without a clear legal backing as it is now, the herdsmen are already causing so much havoc? If there is an official policy that legitimises their grazing in other citizens’ communities, would the herdsmen not be more audacious in wreaking havoc? And why should the government spend the citizens’ taxes on private businesses?
The position of the government shows that it does not sufficiently appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. It does not take into cognisance the need of the communities that are afflicted by the menace of herdsmen. And since it is getting clearer that the government has failed to solve the problem, we must all be alert to the possibility of the victims of herdsmen’s violence protecting themselves. In fact, but for the efforts of some leaders in the south where the herdsmen have caused so much havoc, the crisis provoked by them would have assumed graver dimensions. For instance, the anger of the south west was only assuaged when the herdsmen who kidnapped its prominent son Olu Falae were apprehended last year. But apparently, the arrest of the kidnappers is not enough deterrent as Falae’s farm was again invaded this week and his security man shot dead. But for the intervention of the leaders of Ondo State, there would have been reprisal with its attendant calamitous consequences. Indeed, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) to which the security man belonged has threatened that one major way to appease them is for the suspected killers of the security man to be apprehended or else they would retaliate.
The likelihood is fast disappearing that the citizens would forever contain their anger in the face of provocation by the herdsmen. That the patience of the much-offended farmers is running out was demonstrated in a community in Delta State where a lawmaker, policemen and community leaders went into the forest to search for the herdsmen who were destroying their farmlands and raping their women.
Instead of pursuing a tendentious policy of establishing grazing reserves for the herdsmen, the government should find a lasting solution to the issue. It is shocking that the government cannot ask itself the simple question of whether in the countries of the world known for producing beef what the government is considering is the best practice there. Nigeria is not on the list of the largest producers of beef in the world. Countries such as the United States, Brazil , China, Australia and even Libya and Gabon are not riven by conflicts over cattle like Nigeria. In these countries, there are no herdsmen who wake up every morning, strap guns on their sides and begin a mission of destroying other people’s farmlands. The governments of those countries have better things to do with their time than settling herdsmen-farmers’conflicts. In these countries, those whose business it is to breed cattle have ranches for doing this.
The government should be concerned with how to improve the standard of living of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. There is the need for the government to encourage their education. This can only be done when the herdsmen are made to settle in ranches with their families. This has an additional benefit of stopping the spread of arms. Indeed, the government must appreciate the urgency of resolving this matter without seeming to be protecting the herdsmen. This is the only way to check the looming rage of communities that have been ravaged by the herdsmen with remorseless regularity and seeming government’s complicity.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of the The Guardian where he also writes a weekly column that appears every Thursday


Friday, November 27, 2015

Did Washington Order Russian Aircraft Shot Down?

By Stephen Lendman

A personal note. I’m not writing from my usual location, comfortably at home on my desktop - currently hospitalized, hopefully released soon. 

I’ll be briefer than usual, conserving strength - thankful to maintain daily communication with readers, best as able when less than par.















*Obama and Putin (pix: vox)

Let’s not mince words. Washington is no Russian partner. Its policy is adversarially hostile, notably during the Cold War, especially throughout Putin’s leadership years - a preeminent world leader/peace champion polar opposite rogues running America, perhaps one day able to turn the tide against their hegemonic agenda.

Saving humanity from the scourge of another devastating global war - potential nuclear armageddon - depends on his efforts to prevent it. 

Washington’s rage for endless wars threatens world peace, security and humanity’s survival. Bipartisan US policymakers tolerate no independent countries, especially Russia, China and resource rich ones like Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela - two down, two to go plus others. 

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15
 Is this one of them?
Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?
Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:
“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”
That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.
Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?