Nigeria: This House Is Not For Sale!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

“Why do I ever think of things falling apart? Were they ever whole” – Arthur Miller, Late American playwright and essayist    

-----------------------------------

I am forced by some very discomforting thoughts to remember today Bessie Head, the late South African writer and her 1989 collection of short stories entitled, Tales Of Tenderness And Power. I remember particularly one of the stories in that collection captioned,  “Village People,” especially, its opening lines which reads: “Poverty has a home in Africa – like a quiet second skin. It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with an unconscious dignity.” 

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, this is one assertion that immediately compels one to start visualizing images of scenes and objects that readily constitute benumbing evidences of “dignified poverty” spread all over Africa, where people try to give some form of shine and panache to a very horrible situation they have somehow convinced themselves would always be with them. In those two brief lines, Ms. Head states a truth about Africa which we may find very demoralizing and objectionable, but which would remain extremely difficult to contradict. 

But is poverty the only thing we appear to have accepted as inevitable component of life in this part of the world? What about crime? How come crime appears to have gradually become too natural with us in Nigeria here, that we even go ahead to put up notices to moderate its operation? We appear to relish more the very unpleasant job of merely alerting people to it than doing anything to stamp it out. Now, if I may ask: what usually occurs to your mind each time you enter a hotel room in Nigeria and on the wash-basin, dressing mirror, bed-sheet or towel you see the following inscription: “Hotel Property, Do Not Remove!”   

If you ask me, this warning simply takes it for granted that guests would naturally wish to remove those items, and so to forestall that, care is taken to advise them not to remove those particular items as the hotel is still in need of them. In other words, the absence of such a warning on any other item should be construed as an automatic authorization any guest requires to move those things together with his personal effects, if he so wishes, at the expiration of his stay.  That’s just the implication.  Or have we not also thought about that? What are we then, by this practice, telling numerous foreign visitors that use those hotel rooms daily about ourselves?  

Yet such warnings abound everywhere, but I doubt that it in any way bothers anyone, even those public officers spending billions of naira on their so-called efforts to manage the nation’s image. Indeed, it no longer shocks us to see daily on virtually every building, even rickety, dilapidated ones, this inscription, usually written in very bold letters, even at the risk of seriously defacing the structures: “This House Is Not For Sale!!” And in most cases, they usually add, for maximum effect: “Beware of 419! Beware of  Fraudsters!” For goodness sake, is Nigeria the only country that fraudsters can be found?

 Is this the only country with records of incidents of people selling properties that do not belong to them? Are there no better, more decent, less socially destructive ways of protecting people from fraudsters than screaming on virtually every house out there: “This House Is Not For Sale, Beware of 419!!” Are these houses not properly registered at the appropriate offices where prospective buyers can go and verify their real owners? Today, almost every undeveloped, refuse-ridden land on every street hosts at a prominent spot an imposing signpost informing people the land is not for sale, plus the usual warning screaming to prospective buyers to beware of fraudsters and 419.


The impression the continued proliferation of these warning signs can only convey is that most Nigerians do nothing else than wander all day looking for each other’s properties to sell to unsuspecting buyers; that our society is filled with so many rich, dumb buyers without the slightest awareness that checks ought to be run on properties before paying for them; that the system here is so chaotic and unreliable that people prefer to rely only on this very crude, people-diminishing method of discouraging potential property buyers with mostly badly written notices.    

Out there, my beloved sister, Dr. Dora Akunyili, is shouting herself hoarse in a determined effort to convince us that she is re-branding Nigeria or its image; she claims that she is striving to give Nigeria a positive image, but I doubt if it has ever occurred to her that this unwholesome phenomenon alone can easily destroy the best cultivated image. What for instance would a foreign visitor think of us, after observing this inscription on virtually every building he saw on a particular street he visited?

There are some crooks in Nigeria, like in every other nation, but, for goodness sake, this is NOT a nation inhabited by only fraudsters! Decent people like me also exist here, okay! And it is somebody’s job to ensure that this point is cleared underlined to every ear that can hear.  


And because we appear to demonstrate through our indifference to the whole thing that these vulgar displays are in order, foreigners living among us have gone ahead to add some really ruinous sophistication to the ugly    phenomenon. In front of even some hardly known, struggling foreign companies today, you must find notices screaming: “No Waiting; No Loitering.” The next time you visit an embassy, try and look at the kind of notices placed in front of the buildings.  Indeed, United States Embassy in Lagos here appears to be the most enthusiastic offender in this regard.

 Only recently, while visiting the US embassy, I was suddenly moved to look at the number of large, gleaming notices in front of the compound warning people against patronizing touts, submission of fake information and documents etc.

I can’t really recall now how many notices I saw in front of the same embassy gate saying the same the thing in the same words, and standing gallantly near each other, in silent competition.

Robin Sanders: Former US Ambassador
To Nigeria

I have not tried to investigate whether this is what obtains at the US embassies in other countries, but I am willing to guess that this proliferation of demeaning notices may not be the case in other lands.  Inside the US embassy building itself, the rooms are generously splashed with well illustrated notices warning people that fake visas or passports or false information or documents can open many doors and but close one permanently. Even warning notices meant for the blind and deaf could not have been so generously pasted! 
Indeed, the thing is so gratuitously done that I am forced to wonder if the aim is really to discourage fraudsters or to advertise a well-cultivated opinion about Nigeria to visiting Americans and other foreign nationals who also visit the embassy as often as Nigerians. 

 I am tempted to suspect that the latter is the prime motivation, and as I look at Ms. Robin Sanders, US Ambassador to Nigeria, and observe the facial features she shares with me, I am forced to wonder how she is able to allow this clearly unhealthy profiling and stereotyping to continue flourishing during her tenure against the land of her ancestors.    

Yes, we can say that after all we asked for it by failing to contain the vile activities of some Nigerians that clearly portray here as a country of crooks. Indeed, there are fraudsters in this nation, as in any other country, but this is by no means, a nation peopled by ONLY fraudsters. It ought to be clear that fraudsters constitute only a negligible minority in this country, but their evil deeds seem to speak louder than the good works of the decent, hardworking majority.


And although the fellows ruling us are mostly very low characters who care very little about reputation and self esteem, and whose understanding of being in public office is to loot the treasury pale, I refuse to accept that any nation’s politicians should form the basis for judging the people’s character.

Else, why do Americans still speak contemptuously about the “Washington crowd,” and yet hallow their country at any given opportunity?

Yes, we have the Dimeji Bankoles out there, the Iboris, the Bode Georges, Governor-General Alams, Big Tafas, Obasanjos, IBBs, Dariyes and the rest of them, who know only how to rubbish the country and give it a monstrous image, but for goodness case, this does not automatically consign all of us to the refuse dump reserved for low, dishonourable characters. The time to do a rethink and act accordingly is now.

Enough of this debilitating profiling, please.       
  —————————————————

scruples2006@yahoo.com

Campaigns Deadlier Than AIDS

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, assuming you wake up tomorrow morning and hear that an effective, duly tested and proven curative and even preventive drug for HIV/AIDS is now available in every chemist shop, what would be your first reaction?

Or rather, do you think that everyone should just celebrate profusely, and then draw with immense relief a huge curtain against a horrible scourge that has for some years now distinguished itself as the worst and most traumatic nightmare of this part of the world, aside poverty, irresponsible leadership and corruption?

I think we should be wary of oversimplifying the whole matter.

For me, if a vaccine is found for HIV/AIDS today, it will now be time to brace up for the real, arduous work, more herculean, and more complicated than the search for a cure for the killer disease.

A Meal From A Dustbin In Lagos

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

It was a very beautiful evening in Lagos. I had parked the car in front of my wife’s office, and was inside the car waiting for her to get her bag from her office so we could go home together.

And then, I saw the man as he passed, looking very hungry, haggard and harassed. It was quite clear that he was not mad. At least, not yet. What was easy to notice was that he was greatly traumatized by the impossible conditions under which he struggled each day to exist in this impossible place called Nigeria, a country so richly endowed, but where life for the majority has become hellish. 

Victim Of Corruption And Failed Leadership

Recent studies have shown that due to boundless plundering of the public treasury flourishing in Nigeria, about 99% of the country’s resources are in the hands of just 1% of the population, and more than 85 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty level.

Well, suddenly, the man’s hungry eyes caught the dustbin outside the office complex, a few meters away from where my car was packed. He appeared so elated at his clearly delicious find. His face creased into an awful gesture, which he probably meant to be a smile.

Then, with a quickened pace, he made for the dustbin, and began to desperately rummage in it, among its decayed, putrid, stinking contents. He seemed afraid that someone might come out to drive him away before he was through. His diligence, meticulousness, and sense of urgency would have been very infectious were it not that were deployed on the clearly diseased contents of a refuse bin.

An idea occurred to me immediately. Nigerians ought to share this heart-rending image with me, to see one of their own reduced to such a sorry spectacle in a country that was overwhelmingly prospering from crude oil exports. Perhaps, a few would weep and think deeply about the unbearable condition that years of abysmal misrulership have reduced many Nigerians.  

President Goodluck Jonathan Of Nigeria And Other

 African Heads  Of State: What Are They Doing

About Widespread Poverty

Yes, my camera was at the backseat, I remembered. I quickly reached for it, and with a greater part of me hidden behind the windshield, I took two shots of him while he was still busy searching and collecting some items triumphantly.  Then my third shot caught him as he made to move away with his booty. 

And within a few minutes, he went down the street and was gone.  Perhaps, very fulfilled that for that day, he would not, like countless other impoverished Nigerians, go to bed (Did I say bed? Could he afford one?) on an empty stomach.

That man, too, is a Nigerian, with flesh and red blood running in his veins, like you and I. Like President Goodluck Jonathan, whose daily campaign expenses, as Professor Pat Utomi has told us, and which no one in the Presidency has convincingly denied, exceeds a hundred million naira daily!

     Just Enough For One Evening

Yes, that scavenger is a human being just like our distinguished Senators whose annual allowances have been put at $1,500,000 (You can convert that to naira and see what it amounts to!) Yes, the man is a human being like Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo (the man that loves to be called founder/father of Modern Nigeria – whatever that means) whose multi-million dollar farm is flourishing somewhere at Otta in Ogun State. 

Indeed, our dustbin man is not less  human than our State Governors, ministers and Super Special Advisers and Assistants, Local Government Chairmen, many of whom are now incredibly wealthy after just a few years of “self-less service to the nation.”

Now, if this hapless Nigerian ever heard that sometime ago, specifically under the tenure of a certain lady called Patricia Etteh, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, that a house was renovated in Abuja with the “paltry sum” of N628 million, he didn’t show it.

Nigeria's Former Heads Of State: Ibrahim Babangida,

Olusegun Obasanjo And Muhammadu Buhari 

If he had heard that some $16 billion dollars that were sunk in the power sector only succeeded in generating uninterrupted darkness, he never betrayed. He was just content to invade the dustbins, to fill his stomach with its putrid contents, until life, his life, reaches a T-junction, where, his candle would be cruelly extinguished by the violent wind of the unspeakable callousness of Nigerian leaders.

By the way, is Mallam Umaru Dikko reading this? Then he should rejoice that his prediction had come true, for Nigerians are now feeding from dustbins. Where are our rulers and former rulers? They should rejoice because that proud scavenger out there is a living evidence that their many years of altruistic, selfless leadership in Nigeria had yielded far greater dividends than we had imagined.

 That is the reality of present day Nigeria. And make no mistakes about it, there are several others like that man, who would never have anything to eat today, until they are able to find a dustbin rich enough to yield them a meal.

His condition is like that because those who are supposed to take care of him are out there in Abuja and other points of power engaging in unspeakable profligacy, with the commonwealth, from which they have carefully insulated him. While he dies slowly, and miserably – a victim of boundless greed and callousness among the ruling elite. 

Indeed, everyone appears to accept this very glaring truth that any day Nigeria is able to make up its mind to end its obscene and ruinous romance with the stubborn monster called “Corruption”, this country will automatically witness the kind of prosperity no one had thought was possible in these parts.

 Just imagine the amount of public funds reportedly (and un-reportedly) being stolen and squandered daily under various guises by too many public officers and their accomplices, and the great transformation that would happen to public infrastructure and the lives of the citizenry if this organized banditry can at least be reduced by fifty percent! 

Can Nigeria ever drag itself out of the muddy waters? Can we ever destroy a monster we have all clearly identified and agreed constitutes our worst undoing? Let’s hope that post-May 29, 2011 will usher in some fresh air.

Hope did I say? No! What I actually mean is that Nigerians can strongly desire that change, insist on getting it and never give up until it materializes. It is quite possible, if not very easy.

==========
scruples2006@yahoo.com

Wanted: President Gaddafi Of Nigeria!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

“This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen” – Prof Chinua Achebe

A very offensive and utterly depressing scenario thrown up by the raging storm in North Africa is the unedifying sight of several Nigerian rulers thumbing their noses at the “sit-tight” dictators in that region being consumed by their people’s overflowing frustration and fury, while flaunting their “democratic” credentials to underline their cock-sureness that such popular uprising will never happen here to threaten their own hold on power.

Watching these mostly deficient rulers calling with self-righteous air on leaders of these countries still hanging on to power despite mounting opposition against their regimes to respect their people’s wishes for change and stand down can be very exasperating indeed.

*Col. Muammar Gaddafi, Embattled Libyan Leader and Hosni Mubarak, Ex-Egyptian Ruler: One Gone, The Other About To Go?

Now, what can these Nigerians rulers show in character and leadership to embolden them to talk down on the embattled North African leaders most of whom have generously given their people quality life and enviable infrastructure that hapless, perennially shortchanged Nigerian citizens can only continue to day-dream about until a messiah emerges someday in these parts to clear the Augean stable? Indeed, it is quite in order to call for democratic rule in those countries, but Nigerian rulers (and former rulers) should hasten to disqualify themselves from joining the chorus.

The mere fact that Nigeria is stuck in a very iniquitous relay race that always imposes on us (yes, they are NOT elected, but mostly imposed through massive electoral fraud, ) every four years a gaggle of mostly treasury looters with each new set being far worse than their predecessors, or even recycling some clearly expired drugs that have done nothing in their entire public life to add any value to the lives of the citizenry should in no way embolden our rulers to suddenly forget that were there a reliable justice system in Nigeria, many of them should be rotting in jail for willfully turning a generously endowed country into Dante’s Inferno!

Just imagine the amount of public funds reportedly (and un-reportedly) being stolen and squandered daily under various guises with utmost impunity by too many public officers and their accomplices, and the great transformation that would happen to public infrastructure and the lives of the citizenry if this organized banditry can at least be reduced by fifty percent!   

* President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali -- Forced Out Of Office By  Protesting Tunisians (January 2011), Thus Ending  His 23 Year Old Rule. He Fled To Saudi Arabia

 Indeed, were the various anti-corruption and security agencies in Nigeria to do their work with conscience and diligence, Nigerian prisons would today be brimming with ex-public officers who had helped themselves from the public till. Recent studies have shown that due to this boundless plundering of the public treasury, about 99% of the country’s resources are in the hands of just 1% of the population, and more than 85 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty level. How can any sane person explain this in a country earning plenty of money from oil exports?

Now, where is even the democracy we claim to have in Nigeria? Is it this severely discredited electoral system that has gradually degenerated from the culture of grossly manipulated elections to almost no elections at all, as we saw in the 2007, for instance? How many “elected” officials have the courts sent packing since then? How many have rigged themselves back into power by perpetrating far worse electoral fraud during the rerun elections ordered by the courts? How many Nigerians can happily and proudly affirm that majority of the characters ruling them today are in office by reason of the votes cast for them on Election Day? Please, Nigeria should never dare to mention among decent people that it is practicing democracy!

We have, most unfortunately, been labouring under a more subtle (and therefore more insidious and enduring) “sit-tightism” whereby we have been ruled by the same looters for several decades. What changes every “election” year are their faces and names, but the same characters remain – several sides of the same evil box! This is much more frustrating because they have succeeded in giving it a “democratic” hue! Imagine Nigeria’s worst Headache, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), assaulting our ears with the oppressive declaration that (whether we like it or not), it would continue to rig itself back into power for the next 200 years. What do you call that?     

From Tunisia to Egypt and now Libya, a deep yearning for mass-participation in the process of making and enthroning leaders has indeed successfully dismantled once formidable regimes and brought some others under considerable threat.

It is Libya’s turn in the sun. Given the determination of the Allied Forces led by France, Britain and the United States to implement the “No-Fly-Zone” imposed on Libya a few days ago by the United Nations (UN), it is becoming increasingly clear that the Libyan strongman, Col Muammar Gaddafi (who prefers the title, “Brother Leader”), would eventually suffer the fate of his erstwhile colleagues like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia. The UN Resolution also stipulates the adoption of other measures to save the people from dying from the growing offensive by pro-Gaddafi forces and the genocide that would have most certainly followed had Benghazi, the opposition’s bastion, fallen to pro-Gaddafi forces. Allied forces had already carried out bombings aimed at crippling Gaddafi’s ability to flout the “No-Fly-Zone” resolution by the UN. Indeed, much of global attention drawn to somewhere else by the very devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan recently and immediately knocked Libya off the front pages across the world, has now returned to the North African country. 

Indeed, Libya needs democracy. The people must have a say in the determination of who rules them. Gaddafi needs to quit power to make room for fresh ideas in Libya and allow freedom to hold and express opinions that run counter to official thinking which have been gradually stifled in the country since opposition to his continued stay in office began to emerge.

But as I ponder the enviable state of development in Libya under Gaddafi’s “dictatorship” and compare it with the boundless decay in our “democratic” Nigeria, and then observe the insufferably hypocritical reactions of our grossly deficient rulers to the Libyan crises, I am forced to wonder if what Nigeria direly needs now is not a Gaddafi who despite his authoritarian leadership style can effectively deploy the vast resources of Nigeria to enhance the quality of life of our people as he has successfully done in Libya?

Yes, for 42 years, he has ruled his country. He has no stomach for divergent views. Yet, the infrastructural development Libya has recorded despite suffering many years of economic blockade makes one wonder which is really to be preferred: A dictatorship that has been able to raise the quality of life or a so-called democracy whose only dividend is the replacement of mostly treasury looters with another band of treasury looters every four years – a ‘feat’ Professor Atahiru Jega, the current Chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),  may yet again achieve for Nigeria at the cost of over 50 Billion Naira! Indeed, Nigeria remains a very bad advertisement for democracy!

As I write now, 1.2 Dinar (Libyan currency) exchanges for 1 US Dollar. Yet, one dollar is the equivalent 156 Naira! If Libya were to be Nigeria, 1.2 Dinar should be 1Naira.20 Kobo! Can you imagine that?

At N156 per one Dollar, you can now calculate how much Naira is required to buy just one Libyan Dinar!

US President George Bush Meeting With Uganda’s
President Yoweri Museveni At The White House
On October 30, 2007

 In Libya, uninterrupted power supply is taken for granted; but in Nigeria, the people are still groping in darkness despite the mind-breaking revelation that the Olusegun Obasanjo regime had squandered $16 billion pretending to fix the power sector. The last time I checked (and that was this morning), no one has been arraigned in any court for that alleged monumental act of profligacy and economic sabotage.  

The other day, a friend and I arrived at the Nigerian-Benin border about 9.00 PM. The Nigerian Immigration Office (like the country that owns it) was enveloped by pitch darkness and the officer who stamped our passports had to do that with the aid of a very weak torchlight. But just a stone-throw from there, the Benin Republic Immigration offices glowed brilliantly with full power supply. Given that Nigeria has the resources to buy up the entire Benin, what then can anyone make out of this sickening situation? Nigeria appears to be the only country in Africa that is still stuck in the long-forgotten and excruciating past of very poor energy supply, where people in an urban city like Lagos can live for several weeks and months without a flicker of light in the bulbs adorning their living rooms.

The cost of doing business in Nigeria, due to intractable energy crises, has forced several industries to close shop here and relocate to our well-managed neigbours where they would not have to spend millions of naira to operate their power generating sets in order to remain in business. Consequently, many Nigerians have in the process lost their jobs to the citizens of those countries where the companies have relocated.  Yet, products of those companies are shipped back to Nigeria where a huge market exists and sold to us as exorbitant prices.

In Libya, there is clean water rushing from every tap; but Nigeria is generously adorned with perennially dry taps. Any day any liquid manages to gush out from those taps, only the irredeemably insane would dare to taste it.  Any sane person that tries it would deserve to be arrested and charged for attempting suicide.   

*Col Muammar Gaddafi And Robert Mugabe Of

Zimbabwe

The roads in Libya are as good as any you can find anywhere in the world; Libya’s airline is world-class while Nigeria Airways is dead and buried; Libyan hospitals and schools can compare with the best anywhere in terms of the quality of services and infrastructure. But to obtain quality education, Nigerians are compelled to send their children to Ghana, Togo and even Benin Republic. There are even speculations now that very soon, Nigerians may start going to places like Liberia and Sierra Leone to get quality education!

In 1993, I met an America Professor of Economics who proudly announced to me that while he studied for his Masters Degree at the University College, Ibadan, (UCI) in 1958, he stayed at Kuti Hall. I wonder if he can advise any American child today to get near that same Kuti Hall he spoke so glowingly about, or encourage the child of his worst enemy to attend a Nigerian University. But while visiting Ghana the other day, I noticed that at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Americans, Britishers, Chinese and people from diverse nations of the world are proudly enrolled there as students.

One wonders how much Nigerians are spending looking for quality medical attention outside Nigeria, even in countries Nigeria can, under responsible leaders, fairly prosper better than, given the huge earnings that pour into the country from oil exports. Right now, the traffic to Indian hospitals is quite overwhelming.

Several Nigerian rulers may have sneered at Hosni Mubarak when he was being forced out  of power the other day, but for the quality hospitals he either built or maintained during his “sit-tight” years, many of them or their relatives would have since been buried and forgotten. Countless children of Nigerian public officers are enrolled in Egyptian schools, built or maintained by the same ousted “sit-tight” Egyptian leader, because they have lost confidence in Nigerian public schools and colleges devalued by years of wayward and bankrupt leadership.  

There are hardly any reports of religion-inspired violent and mindless killings in Libya despite the country having a Christian minority population. In fact, so sick and fed-up with Nigeria’s crying inability to manage its differences, Gaddafi had to once ask this country to dismember itself along ethno-religious lines, eliciting angry but insufferably hypocritical reactions from our largely failed leaders who instead of burying their faces in shame called him names. Senate President, David Mark, called him a madman! He may probably be, but most Nigerians at that time wondered publicly who was mad between the two men.  

I am not aware that refineries in Libya have since packed up and that Libya is importing fuel from mostly refineries built with mostly stolen funds by their nationals in other countries. The vehicles one sees on the streets of Libya are not like the moving coffins that slug it out on the deathtraps we call roads here.

Even with Libya being a desert place, food was still cheap, and life more promising there , so much so, that, before the present crises, Nigerians utterly frustrated beyond measure by worsening conditions in their country and eager to escape from the hell our leaders have turned this place into were trouping to Libya in droves, and remaining there despite clear signs of being less-than welcome.  Today, Nigerians are being subjected to unimaginable indignities in several countries where they have escaped to and become economic exiles, and sometimes humiliated and deported from all sorts of places including even a place like Sudan!

Yes, I like democracy, no doubt. But if it only exists as a mere slogan to enrich a few and circulate only miseries among the larger population (as is the case in Nigeria), I won’t mind for now Gaddafi’s “dictatorship” which has improved the quality of life in Libya.

The common man on the streets of Nigeria bearing the excruciating pain of directionless leadership and mindless looting of the common wealth is only interested in who would provide his basic needs and give him hope to continue living again.

He would prefer a non-democratic Saudi Arabia where every ante-natal and post-natal medical care, including surgery and several other forms of medical treatment are free; where doctors don’t suddenly go on strike due to very poor working conditions, leaving patients to die; where quality healthcare is so pronounced to the extent of attracting the patronage of Nigeria’s late ruler, Umar Yar’Adua; where quality schools exist for the common man to send his children at affordable or even no costs at all.

To him debates on such issues as how long a particular person had ruled him or the system being operated are more of elite preoccupations, and may most of the time be borne out of less-than patriotic motives to acquire power, and so he feels less concerned. Leadership after all is defined by quality, selfless service and not its opposite. Where this is lacking, nothing else matters!

Indeed, democracy is good and desirable, especially, where it adds value to life. But those who have turned it into a religion seem to easily forget that Adolf Hitler was not a product of imposed leadership through a military coup, but had emerged from one of the freest elections the world has ever witnessed.

So, if Libyans are tired of Gaddafi, and eventually succeed in pushing him out, he should hurry down to Nigeria where years of morally bankrupt and failed leadership seem to have enhanced his attraction.

21 March 2011

Women Who Smoke At Any Stage Of Their Lives ‘Are More Likely To Get Breast Cancer’

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Women who have smoked are at greater risk of developing breast cancer in later life – even if they gave up the habit decades earlier.

According to a study, women are 16 per cent more likely to suffer from the disease after the menopause – when most cases are diagnosed – if they smoke.

The earlier a woman starts smoking, the greater her risk, and it remains high for 20 years after she has given up.

Hooked To The Deadly Stuff
Overall, if she has smoked she is 9 per cent more likely to develop the disease, according to the U.S. research.

The study also suggests that decades of passive smoking increases the risk of breast cancer by 32 per cent, particularly if the exposure occurred during childhood.

Around 46,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in the UK each year, and one in eight British women will develop the disease during their lifetime.

Researchers led by Dr Juhua Luo from West Virginia University and Dr Karen Margolis from the HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis studied data collected between 1993 and 1998 from a sample of almost 80,000 women aged 50 to 79.


A Mammogram Check Up    May Be Necessary Even For Ex-Smokers!

During a ten-year follow-up study, they identified 3,250 cases of invasive breast cancer among the participants.

The women were asked a range of questions about their smoking status and their exposure to passive smoking.

The results of the study, published on BMJ.com, reveal that smokers have a 16 per cent increased risk of developing breast cancer after the menopause. The increased risk for former smokers is 9 per cent.

Smoking link: Around 46,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in the UK each year, and one in eight British women will develop the disease during their lifetime

The highest breast cancer risk was found among women who had smoked for 50 years or more.

Those who started smoking as teenagers were also at high risk.
And the study suggests a 32 per cent raised risk among non-smoking women exposed to extensive passive smoking.

Dr Margolis said: ‘Our findings highlight the need for interventions to prevent initiation of smoking, especially at an early age.’

Dr Rachel Greig, Senior Policy Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: ‘The study suggests the earlier you start smoking and the longer you continue to do so, the higher your chance of developing breast cancer.

 We encourage all women not to smoke.’
SOURCE

IMPORTANT NOTE: 

Were You Once A Smoker? Or Spent Time Regularly With A Smoker, Or In An Environment Where People Or Someone Smoked Often? You May Consider Undertaking A Mammogram Check Up   

------------------------------

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Alcohol Gravest Threat To Society, Claims British Scientist

By Richard Alleyne, Cassandra Jardine and Richard Edwards

The minimum drinking age should be increased to 21 and the price of alcohol tripled in order to tackle what will soon be the "biggest killer" in modern society, claimed the sacked head of the government's drug advisory body.

Living dangerously! Pregnant women who drink also 

endanger the lives of their babies (pix: womenshealthcaretopics)

Professor David Nutt said that he had deliberately provoked a debate in order to force the government to curb the growing "time bomb" that is the abuse of alcohol.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph and a press conference, he said that the government's response to the problem had been "puny" and he needed to act to stop the "tidal wave" that is engulfing the country.
"When I say alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy, cannabis and LSD, I mean it," said the former chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

"The Government has to wake up to this time bomb and the health risks of alcohol. This whole row is about alcohol. I want parents to know 'alcohol will kill your kids, not ecstasy'."

He said he spoke out because ministers had repeatedly blocked attempts to put meaningful pricing controls on alcohol or increase the minimum drinking age.

NIGERIA: What Is Government To Me?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As I walked leisurely into my street last Sunday afternoon, trying as much as possible not to think about the obviously enraged sun bathing me with its stinging golden rays, I would have been forgiven if I had thought I had missed my way and strayed into some very busy industrial area. But then, the place I had just gone to was a yelling distance from home, and so, there was just no way I could have missed my way.

I live in a very small street, secured at both ends by two gates manned by some nice Mallams, whose salaries are paid from the Security Levy I unhappily part with every month. As soon as I passed the gate, I was greeted by the tormenting din and clatter of several power generating sets locked in a clearly mad competition to out-roar each other.



Every house contributed to the bedlam. Eardrums came under serious threat. Hypertension cases became more complicated, drawing victims closer to their graves. Sanity struggled to take leave of several people, as the roaring noise from every house tore into the very hot Sunday afternoon with violent rage, piercing fierceness and tormenting loudness.

Very lethal, thick, black fumes also oozed into the atmosphere, targeting the hearts and lungs of men, having successfully turned the area into one huge fatally saturated gas chamber. Why did everybody suddenly choose to set the machines roaring this afternoon? Maybe, this was what always happened every other afternoon, but because I was not always around in the afternoons, the whole thing now assailed my ears with menacing strangeness.

After sometime, I paused and listened, trying to make some form of meaning out of the whole chaos. What came into my mind was: Yes, this is a failed state! Like Prof Chinua Achebe once said: “This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen.”

My mind went to Countee Cullen, the African American poet, whose 1925 poem, Heritage, opened with a very significant question that had bugged his mind at that time, “What is Africa To Me?”

In the same vein, I could not help asking: What Is Government To Me? Or put differently, of what relevance is Government to me in a clearly ungoverned enclave like Nigeria?



If I provide for myself virtually everything Government is supposed to make available to me as a law abiding citizen, how then does Government justify its relevance, or even existence before me?

Take the issue of security that I mentioned earlier, for instance. One of the very basic functions of Government is to secure lives and property. But in Nigeria, this has since ceased to be part of Government’s priority. In fact, it is doubtful if those in authority still remember that provision of adequate security is part of their responsibility towards the citizenry.

Government has since conceded defeat in this area and seems to flaunt with nauseating relish its inability to protect Nigerians. In other words, it has since relinquished the monopoly it ought to exercise over the instruments of violence and coercion, and Nigerians have become mere lame ducks before hoodlums and criminals who invade homes and offices, taking their time to steal and even sexually abuse women with every fearlessness and fanfare. Robbers are no longer in a hurry because they know very well that nobody would dare disturb their operations, and that policemen would rather take to their heels at the sound of their rifles than attempt to repel them.

And so, because we are now “on our own,” we had to, like many other residents of other areas in Nigeria, engage the Mallams to man our gates? But as we all know, our protection is in the hands of God, because, these same Mallams would be the first to beat Ben Johnson’s track records at the first sound of the gun! And where is the Government in this picture? An absentee as usual!

Nigeria presents the best example of how a nation could be in the absence of any form of governance.

Again, what is Government to me? Darkness, Darkness and more Darkness -- everywhere? The clatter of generators I encountered last Sunday afternoon was a very sad reminder of the painful and oppressive fact that for several weeks now, power supply in my area has gone down to almost zero.


When we could be considered lucky, power would be supplied for an hour or two, and that would be all, in a whole week! But the normal thing now is that week after week, no one sees the slightest hint of power supply, not minding that the agents of that useless body of sadists called NEPA/PHCN would keep sending their huge bills with religious zealousness.

We used to complain of irregular power supply, not knowing that that time was our finest hour. Now, total darkness has enveloped the whole place. I know how much I have spent for some weeks now on fuel to generate my own megawatts for my household. That automatically means that I am my own President and Energy Minster, no matter the clearly idle, unproductive fellows pretending to occupy those offices in Abuja.

If then I am doing for myself what Government is supposed to be doing for me, it can only mean that as far as I am concerned, Government does not exist, having since lost its relevance, the basis for its existence. It might as well be scrapped. A tree that bears no fruits only emphasizes its crying irrelevance.


Powerless Power Plants?

 If anyone needs potable water in Nigeria today, such a one must provide it for himself. Reason? Government is on an interminable recess. In the eighties, one could just walk to any tap, even by the roadside, open it and drink clean water. Whoever tries that now, if at all any liquid gushes out from the tap, could be tried for attempting suicide. And I can guarantee that not even a very large-hearted judge would agree to set him free!


Today, because Government only exists in name, people must sink boreholes in their compounds to provide potable water for themselves. Others must make do with the generous typhoid distributor they call “pure water” (or pure gutter).

In fact, it has got to a stage that if my children ask me today the functions of Government, I wouldn’t know what to tell them, because I wouldn’t want to tell them lies. As far as I am concerned, the most inactive and unproductive institution in Nigeria today is the Government. I had to put it that way because I do not want to simply say that it is useless. Well, Government is not exactly inactive. It has duly distinguished itself as that far-removed, very distantly located band of men and women who only exist to plunder and squander our commonwealth.

They only remember us during election time, not because they really need our votes to acquire power, but it makes them feel good to be able to say that we gave them our mandate – something they had already appropriated long before they came to us canvassing for our votes. They also come to us as occasional sources of irritation, demanding taxes or “more sacrifices” from us in the form of punitive policies like fuel price hikes. We equally encounter them when they run us out of the roads with their blaring sirens.



The Radiance Of A King!
 President Goodluck Jonathan


 Today, in most places, if the road leading to one’s house goes bad, the people inhabiting that area would have to contribute money to fix it, or else, it would be there ruining their cars and giving all of them body aches. Public schools which are supposed to be maintained by the Government have since collapsed, so one has to cough out the very high fees charged by quality private schools if one desires that one’s child should get quality education.

Most Government hospitals have long become very smooth expressways to the grave, which only those who cannot afford any other alternatives still go to gamble with their lives. It is sad, so sad. It is most painful and overly frustrating. It is provocative.

And as I think about these things, I am compelled to ask myself again: What is Government to me? I would have compared it to a refuse dump, but I am reminded that refuse dumps serve some useful purpose. At least, they provide manure for farmers to grow their crops. But as for Government in Nigeria, I cannot readily recall what it stands or exists for, or any form of use it presently is to the generality of Nigerian people, except that it has become a dispensable burden too heavy to bear, and a very easy route for a privileged few to gain entrance into the billionaire club. So sad really.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

March 2008