Showing posts with label Mozambique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mozambique. Show all posts

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Beheadings: Mozambique Puts 189 On Trial

Mozambique put on Wednesday trial 189 people, including foreigners, accused of being involved in deadly Islamist attacks in a northern province
Since October last year, more than 100 people have been killed, often by decapitation, in 40 separate attacks, in villages in Cabo Delgado - a province on the border with Tanzania where companies are developing one of the biggest gas finds in a decade.
*President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique 
The trial was held in the open penitentiary in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, where hundreds of suspected militants including 50 from Tanzania are being detained. The area is near one of the world's biggest untapped offshore gas fields, and Anadarko Petroleum is seeking to raise $14 billion to $15 billion for a liquefied natural gas project in the region.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Nigeria: Very Rich, But Very Poorly Managed

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
A few years ago, we had a very important and urgent need to be in Kumasi very early the next day. It was already midnight (Nigerian Time, but 11pm in Ghana), and we were still in Accra, surrounded by its brilliant lights and soothing serenity (there was not the faintest hint of any generator sound anywhere), wondering what to do.
Obasanjo and Buhari
But a Ghanaian who was with us did not seem to share our worries. He simply told us to hit the road, that in the next three hours, we should be in Kumasi.
I looked at him with surprise and disbelief. Who was sure nobody had hired him to lure the three of us into a well-laid ambush by violent robbers? When I expressed my concern about armed robbers, his answer was sharp: “There are no armed robbers!”
When later I repeated the concern, he said something he quickly realised he should not have said, but which Nigerians need to continue hearing no matter how painful we find it: “I have told you… no armed robbers! This is not Nige…!” He cut himself short. It suddenly occurred to him that he had gone too far in his bid to emphasize that point.
When I called a Nigerian friend in Ghana and he reassured me that the long journey from Accra to Kumasi was safe, we hit the road. At the one or two places where very friendly policemen stopped us, they merely looked at the vehicle and waved us on with their torches, without the slightest hint that they wanted a bribe.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

The Economist And Buhari's 'Change Begins With Me' Campaign

By Lai Mohammed
Our attention has been drawn to a story by The Economist, datelined Lagos and featured in the paper's print edition of Sept. 24th 2016, entitled: ''Nigeria's War Against Indiscipline, Behave Or Be Whipped''.

*President Buhari and Lai Mohammed
Contrary to the newspaper's self-professed belief in ''plain language'', the article in question, from the headline to the body, is a master-piece of embellishment or dressed-up language. It is loaded with innuendos and decidedly pejorative at best, and downright racist at worst.

The Economist wrote that President Buhari wants to ''tame'' Nigerians with the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign. For those who are the owners of the English language, the use of that word is unpardonable, the verb ''tame'' suggests that Nigerians are some kind of wild animals that must be domesticated, and the usage reveals the mind-set of the authors of the article: a deliberate put down of a whole people under the guise of criticising a government policy.

The paper, in striving to reach a preconceived conclusion, also insinuated that some 150,000 volunteers are being trained as enforcers of the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign. This is not true. In his speech at the launch of the Campaign on September 8th 2016, the President, a globally-acknowledged leader who believes strongly in the rule of law, left no one in doubt that moral suasion, the very antithesis of force, will be employed to achieve attitudinal change among Nigerians. In that speech, the President said: ''I am therefore appealing to all Nigerians to be part of this campaign.'' To the best of our knowledge and, surely the knowledge of those who own the language, the words ''appeal'' and ''enforce'' are not synonymous.

In its rush to discredit the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign, The Economist, a widely respected newspaper, fell below its own standards by choosing to be economical with the truth. Enforcement is not part of the strategies to be employed under the Campaign, and nowhere has it been said that the ''moral police'' will be unleashed, as reported by the newspaper. In writing the story, the paper did not even deem it necessary to speak with any official of the government, thus breaching one of the codes of journalism, which is fairness. It chose instead to quote a ''critic'' of Mr. President in a perfunctory manner.

Again, The Economist made the same mistakes that most critics of the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign have made: Rushing to comment on a campaign they do not understand. The Campaign had barely been launched when the critics brought out their big guns to shoot it down. In the process, many of them ended up shooting themselves in the foot. Had they tarried a while to allow the government to roll out the details of the campaign, they might have shown more circumspection than they did in their criticism.