Poor Poetry, Rich Deceit: Is POETRY.COM The Most Lucrative Scam In American Poetry?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
In Nigeria, it is called O.B.T. (Obtaining By Tricks). But in America, it is known as Better Business. In Nigeria, they are not registered; they operate under the shadow of darkness. But in America, they are duly registered and given a clean bill of health by the Better Business Bureau (BBB). 

In Nigeria, they are abhorred and isolated by decent society, but in America, they have on their pay roll America’s accomplished poets and professors who use their hard-earned reputation to polish their image. Also, a bevy of lawyers work for and with them. And their business is “legal.” But each time they stretch forth their hands and reach out for the jugular of unsuspecting victims, they leave in their wake excruciating pain, sorrow, loud cries, and bitter anguish.

Dr. Len Roberts
ISP Educational Director

In the State of Maryland, United States, there is a body called the International Library of Poetry (ILP), or POETRY.COM or the International Society Of Poets (ISP) or as they have begun to also answer recently, LULUPOETRY.COM. All they are after is your money, which they get by flattery and lies. And if you are enticed by their carefully worded letters, then you will tell the story of your penury with hot streaming tears! 

But to Grace Cavalieri of the Poetry Faculty of St. Mary’s College, Southern Maryland, one of America’s nationally known poets, who unabashedly associates with this poetry body, ILP is “run by good people” and “honorable people.”

But let’s hear Theresa Coleman, one of the victims of ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM. She told Charlie Hughes, a US poet of repute and owner of Wind Publications who has been monitoring the activities of ISP/ILP/Poetry.com, (quoted here with Charlie Hughes’s permission): “I am a disabled Veteran and live on a very small pension and Social Security Disability pay. I had to borrow the nearly $1,500 to attend this conference (ISP Conference). It will take me over a year to pay all the money back. Not to mention, I did not have clothing suitable for such an event, so there went another $300.00! …There were hundreds of us… I cried like a baby after realizing that I was just ripped off, knowing how long it will take me to pay back all the money I borrowed…

Organizations like this SHOULD NOT be permitted to continue preying on innocent people and robbing them of money most of us didn’t have and had to borrow …I cannot express the deep, emotional anguish this has caused me…I almost feel like suing the BBB (Better Business Bureau, whose approval rating of ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM helps people get caught in their trap)… Now I am so angry with them that I cannot express how badly I would like to choke every one of those rip-off artists! …I am totally appalled that they have remained in business for so long” (Coleman’s testimony).

Fleda Brown: Professor of English and
Delaware Poet Laureate

 Like Coleman, we too are totally appalled that ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM has remained in Business till now. Unfortunately, American laws have no succour for the likes of Coleman. And there are thousands like her, bleeding at all corners, after an encounter with ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM.

Now why would this poor woman plunge herself into debt to attend an ISP conference? Well, she is one of the several victims of ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM grand lies and deceit, who are made to believe they had won some big money, and lured into paying the conference registration fees which Professor Fleda Brown, another poet who associates with ISP, admits is “very high”.                                                              

     

        
                                                             

David Wagoner: Former Chancellor, Academy
 of American Poets

Len Roberts, a brilliant US poet and professor of English at Northampton Community College, was hired about five years ago as ISP “Educational Director”. With his reputation and ISP’s fat accounts, he hires America’s best poets to speak at ISP conferences.         

Some eminent literary figures like  Professor Stephen Dunn (Pulitzer Prize winner),
 Grace Cavalieri,  Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin, Professor Fleda Brown (Delaware  Poet Laureate), W.D. Snodgrass (1960 Pulitzer Prize winner) Lucille Clifton,  Robert Winsky, etc. also associate with ISP and their names are used to  purchase respectability for ISP’s unwholesome trade.


W.D Snodgrass
Pulitzer Prize Winner


Roberts told this writer that most of the complaints about ISP occurred more than five  years  ago, before ISP hired him. But Theresa Coleman got her bitter deal from ISP in 2000!

Roberts insists: “The only valid complaint I find among all these criticisms  is that the phrasing of ISP’s letter is misleading.”  Now what does ISP gain by misleading people? Simple! To make them believe they have won some money in order to lure them to the conference for which they would pay ISP as much as $702.00 dollars as  registration fee. By their own admission, in 2002 alone, not less than  2,500 people got into their trap. This way they can comfortably give  away $74,000.00 to 36 “poets” and still smile to the banks with their millions. So, contrary to the claims in a recent feature article in a Nigerian  newspaper, ISP holds elaborate conventions where interesting lectures are delivered on poetry by nationally acclaimed poets and university  professors. More importantly, it pays all the prize money as advertised. Only  it achieves that by robbing Joseph to pay Josephine.



Grace Cavalieri:Award-Winning American Poet
And Playwright

 The ISP professors maintain that only those who fail to win prizes complain after the convention. But Charlie Hughes disagrees. “Those people who are disgruntled with ISP convention are not disgruntled because they lost a contest. They are upset because facts were misrepresented to them in order to lure them to the convention,” he told this writer.
Now how can America whose press regularly malign other countries, and whose government regularly issues negative reports about select  countries, including Nigeria, allow an outfit like the ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM to go on “legally” inflicting pain on hapless folks and raking in millions in the process? Their Educational Director has admitted that the “phrasing of ISP letters is misleading”.


So, is there no law in the United States capable of stopping person(s) and institutions from continuing to deliberately circulate misleading letters with the sole aim getting at people’s money and plunging them into huge debts? Even if they have snaked their way through some legal loopholes to make their activities remain “legal”, can’t the US authorities listen to the anguished cries of all their victims and clamp down on them in public interest, as has been done in Nigeria here with even organizations like Umanah I. Umanah’s Resources Ltd in Port Harcourt, whose activities had not even begun to cause any harm to anyone, but was seen as potential time bomb?

       

Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin: Mellon Poetry Prize
Winner

This writer tried to make inquiries about ISP at the Public Affairs Department of the United States Consulate in Lagos, but was told to go to the ISP website, as they do not have any information about them. Also, in June 2001, following “dozens of complaints” it had received, WritersWeekly.com forwarded information to the Maryland State Attorney General about the activities of ILP/POETRY.COM. Now, this is July 2005, what has happened?

Is ISP a sacred cow, beyond investigation? Is it because of its fat taxes?
So what really is the sin of ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM? On their website, they call for poems. Any trash you submit is an instant hit. Then you will automatically become a poet with “unique vision” and great talent, certified by their  “Acceptance Committee” as semi-finalist and eligible for publication in an anthology that costs $59.95 plus another $8.

One Of The Several "Awards" Dished Out By POETRY.COM


And if you want a 150-word introductory note to appear with your “poem”,  you will pay another $25.00. Well, whether you pay or not, your “poem” will still be published. But, of course, many buy several copies out of joy that they are featured in an anthology. So regularly, they churn out these anthologies filled with near rubbish just to get at the money of any one that submits just anything.

Then after this stage, a certain Steve Michaels enters with a letter informing you of your nomination as Poet of the Year. The letter starts with some sort of announcement in front of an imaginary crowd declaring you the Poet of the Year and winner of the grand prize of $20,000! The purpose is to make you believe when you now read of your nomination that you have won the prize. All effort is deployed to make the letter (also sent out to more than a thousand others) appear personal and exclusive to you in order to lure you to register for the conference.

What is the necessity for this deception? What is really happening? Professor Fleda Brown explains: “almost every one who submits poems is ‘accepted’, so they should not understand their invitation as any particular honor”.

But how would these hapless souls know that letters coming from ISP/ILP, an organisation that parades the cream of America’s poets and intellectuals on their website is worthless, not indicative of any honour? Note that, their victims are mostly barely literate “poets”, who are prone to misunderstand letters that have continued to dribble even college graduates!

(Prof. Roberts, ISP Educational Director, is a most charming fellow, as Charlie Hughes confessed to this writer. After a series of interactions in the process of preparing this article, this writer was so affected by Roberts’s personality and manners that he almost gave up writing this article. Apart from his reputation as a distinguished poet and academic, this other personal quality may have influenced the decision of ISP to hire him for the job. He is always handy to charm aggrieved “poets” into silence with his warm personality, beautiful diction, and style.)




Stephen Dunn: Pulitzer Prize Winner

Now, the next in the web of deceit comes from Nigel Hillary of Noble House Publishers with another set of lies and flattery. 
ILP//POETRY.COM subscribes to a Privacy Policy. So, how then does Noble House get people’s addresses and other details in order to write them to announce they had read their poems in the United States and now wished to publish them in the UK also?

Is Noble House just ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM in another name, since both are only all after your money? A question of Esau’s hand, Jacobs voice?

Both flatter you to high heavens with unspeakable lies about a poem they have not even read, which may even contain terrible errors that cannot be accommodated by even poetic license! At the end of the day, you will still be the one to “edit” your "poem."




The Bright Face Of Scam In  American Poetry
------------------------------------------------


In its commitment to publish just any trash, look at ILP’s output posted on its website and compiled by Theresa Coleman:
*In 1997, they published 44 anthologies of “poems”;

*1998, they published 78;

1999,  52 came out (that is, one a week!);

*2000, they had published 46…as of August)…
Source: http://windpub.com/literary.scams/bigmoney.htm).

The Editor of the page estimates that with these publications, the ILP is richer with about $9 million dollars each year at just $50.00 per book. But by this writer’s estimate, based on ISP letters and documents available to him, they realize $84.95 plus additional $8.00 from each “poet” who orders just a copy of their book.

Also, “Greater Maryland Business Bureau reports that ILP has 500,000 customers each year. If only half purchase a single book, that’s $12.5million”! Hughes, also a publisher of long-standing, told this writer that based on his experience as a publisher, the production cost of an ILP book cannot be more than $10.00.

The question is: Can the ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM enjoy a conducive climate in Nigeria? The answer is obvious and it is No! Now, in America, truth is: no one can stop ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM. So, for now, the only way to avoid their trap is: don’t send them a poem; don’t believe anything their letter says. Take time to read them, as Roberts says, and realize that despite all it may say, it is not informing you that you have already won a prize, rather, you are only being invited to a conference where you will then compete for a prize. All the deceptive and flowery language is solely meant to lure you into registering for the conference.

Or, as Ms. Cavalieri says: “Come to learn poetry and have fun at the convention, not to win money.”

Well, tomorrow, American officials will still come down here to sermonize about Nigerians “who obtain money by tricks (OBT or 419)” But can’t anyone out there stand up to them and yell: “Physician, Please, Heal Thyself First? Our boys are merely apprentices of their big brother in Baltimore,  Maryland?”

Well, the fault may after all be ours: We gave room for those patronizing insults. Instead of registering our own equivalents of ISP/ILP/Poetry.com in Nigeria, we blacklisted them!

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Interview With The Dramatis Personae

Charlie Hughes

...Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye Interviews Charlie Hughes, Owner of Wind Publications, And Unyielding Critic Of POETRY.COM/ISP/ILP 

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

Len Roberts

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye Interviews Dr. Len Roberts, Poet, Professor Of English, And ISP Educational Director 



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scruples2006@yahoo.com
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Four Indian Universities to Celebrate Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in October 2008

Four Indian Universities – Osmania University, Hyderabad; Mysore University; Kolkata University; and the University of New Delhi, will kick off conferences to mark the celebration of the 50th year of the publication of “the noted Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s highly influential and widely studied first novel “Things fall Apart,” starting with opening proceedings at Osmania university, the last week of October.

Chinua Achebe (Th Guardian.co.uk)

According to the convener of the sub-continental conferences, Professor Bala Kothandaraman, each major Indian university will host individual seminars organized by their local English Departments – made possible by funding from the respective universities and the ICCR (the Indian Council for Cultural Relations).

Professor Lyn Innes Professor Emeritus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, will be the keynote speaker. In addition, Professor Kothandaraman provides that the seminars will celebrate local Indian and Asian scholars and highlight their vigorous and extensive Achebean and African Literary scholarship. Also invited to these ambitious celebrations are noted scholars from America, Europe, and Africa.

The Keynote speaker, Professor Lyn Innes, was born in Australia. Currently Professor Emeritus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, she graduated from the University of Sydney, before spending 12 years in the United States as a Postgraduate student and University lecturer, first at the University of Oregon, then at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1968-70), and finally at Cornell University. At Cornell, she completed the Comparative Literature doctoral programme revolving around Irish, African and Caribbean literatures (Francophone and Hispanic as well as English). After completing her doctoral thesis on Black and Irish Cultural Nationalism, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where the Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, was Professor of African Literatures, and became Associate Editor of OKIKE Magazine: A Journal of African Creative Writing, which Chinua Achebe had founded. In 1975 she went as an exchange lecturer to the University of Kent, and remained there.



At the University of Kent she helped introduce the undergraduate degree in African and Caribbean Studies, which has now become a degree in English/Postcolonial Literatures; developed courses in Australian literature; taught various Irish literature courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and joined with colleagues in English to establish a Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and an MA in Postcolonial Studies. She is a member of the editorial board of Wasafiri and of Interventions.

Her publications have developed the lines of interest established early in her career. They include two collections of African short stories co-edited with Chinua Achebe, and a critical book, Chinua Achebe (1990). Her other books are The Devil’s Own Mirror: the Irish and the African in Modern Literature (1990); Woman and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880-1935 (1993); and A History of Black and South Asian Writing in Britain, 1700 – 2000. She is currently engaged in a diverse set of projects: compiling an anthology on the afterlife of the Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, writing an Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures, and researching the history of black and Asian writers and artists in Ireland.

Professor Kothandaraman believes the series of seminars throughout India will provide “an ample occasion for some of the most expansive analysis of the contributions of Achebe’s oeuvre to world civilization.” A fitting tribute, according to the professor to “ a body of work that is required reading in schools and universities in India and around the world; and a novel (Things Fall Apart) that remains one of the most widely read and influential books ever written.”

2008

Now, Will President Yar’Adua Be Kind?

(First Published July 12, 2008)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

About forty days after Mr. Umar Musa Yar’Adua was sworn in as Nigeria’s president and the nation was saturated with loud calls on ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to leave alone the new man he single-handedly imposed on Nigerians to implement his own ideas and programmes to “move the nation forward”, I published a piece in my newspaper column and on several internet news sites entitled, “In Nigeria, Yar’Adua Reigns, Obasanjo Rules,” asking those trying to shout our heads off whether they were sure “Yar’Adua himself [was] even desirous and eager to be rid of the overbearing influence of Obasanjo?”

I said: “Is he really ready to take charge? Are we sure that the ‘Servant-leader’ is not even too grateful that Obasanjo’s meddlesome and looming shadow are providing perfect alibi for what is gradually appearing as his stark visionlessness? I would certainly want to know those great ideas of Yar’Adua’s which Obasanjo’s meddlesomeness is preventing him from unfolding! The truth, as we know it, is that Yar’Adua never wanted to be president, and so, he never sat down to draw up anything that vaguely looks like a blueprint for the country’s redemption. When he was conscripted by Obasanjo and imposed on both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Nigerians at a time elections were merely a couple of weeks away, he was too preoccupied with the thought of winning elections to have any time to concentrate and think about how he would rule Nigeria … it soothes Yar’Adua, [therefore], to still have Obasanjo in charge, while he enjoys the perks of office without the responsibilities that go with them. And at the end of the day, when another four years of devastating failure must have been successfully enacted, Yar’Adua can conveniently come up with the theory that he was not allowed to implement his ‘superior ideas’.”

The essay, judging by the reactions it generated, won me many friends who thought that my judgment of the ‘Servant leader’, though too early in the day, could hardly be faulted.

But there were a few who maintained that it was unfair to state like I did that the president (who was barely a month in office) presented the perfect picture of “a pitiably confused leader groping his way through an impenetrably dark alleyway.”  

President Umar Musa Yar'Adua and Pres George Bush of USA: What Lesson Did

He come Away With From Meetings Like These?

Well, I have since been vindicated because the crippling directionlessness and benumbing passivity which President Umar Musa Yar’Adua presides over in Abuja today have clearly validated the ‘heresy’ I dared to utter about forty days into his regime, so much so that it has since become a permanent feature in virtually every public commentary or formal and informal discussions on the present regime. Unlike the time I first expressed it, the view has now become all too common and very obvious to elicit any more surprises. In fact, I doubt if it still has the capacity to make the president feel embarrassed.

Okay, I have been proved right, but where has that left us? Nigeria is presently weighed down by so many big problems, but here we are, stuck with a president who can neither be hurried nor bothered that the nation he is supposed to be ruling is dying every day.

Yes, we have a ruler who cannot be made to allow even the slightest hint of urgency in his moves and seems not to have the barest idea of what it means to be perturbed that he had flopped on virtually every promise he had made to the nation. In fact, it does not appear he can even be brought to lose any sleep that he has failed even before he started, and that most Nigerians have since lost every confidence in him. Many are no longer able to feel there is a government in Abuja! What is plastered everywhere are utter hopelessness and despair.

Hapless Victims Of Leadership Failure (Pix: Caboose)

Here is a president who evidently came into office without any ideas, focus, any coherent action plans or even an average understanding of what he was coming to office to accomplish. And so, each time his attention is called to the mounting problems begging for his urgent intervention, he appears startled and looks as if he feels he is being unduly bothered. It looks very much like what he would prefer is to merely sleep through the problems with the blissful hope that he would wake one day see all of them solved.

Maybe we should not even blame Yar’Adua, because, come to think about it: what exactly did he promise Nigerians   during his so called campaigns in which he was an imposed, “unwilling” candidate?

Okay, I remember that he kept saying something about “Energy Challenge” which he intended to tackle headlong. But since he came into power, the energy situation has worsened beyond what anyone had imagined was possible in a richly endowed and high-earning country ruled by a human being. The Obasanjo junta had allegedly squandered about $16 billion to plunge Nigeria deeper into thicker darkness, and the toxic revelation had caused Nigerians untold mental torture. But to demonstrate his utter disdain for the feelings of Nigerians on this heartless pillaging of the nation’s resources, and his unambiguous opinion on the astounding revelations at the power probe panel, President Yar’Adua recently appointed three governors (Liyel Imoke, Segun Agagu and Danjuma Goje) who had served as Ministers of Power in that darkest period of Nigeria’s history to serve in the so-called Presidential Implementation Committee on Power.

NIGERIA: Yearning For Purposeful Leadership

What this should mean is that in the thinking of the   president, these men deserved to be applauded by all of us for colluding with Obasanjo to ensure the nation remained in impenetrable darkness. What Yar’Adua has dropped is a bold hint on what he would do with the power probe report once it gets to his table.  What an unlucky nation!

If till now there is hardly any evidence that Yar’Adua has been able to achieve an appreciable grasp of the enormous task facing him as Nigeria’s president, then it would be most foolish to hope that he would still not be groping for direction even after two years from now. In fairness to the man, it could well be said that since he had raised no hopes from the beginning till now, no one can justifiably accuse him of dashing any.

But how long can a continuously decaying nation defer its reclamation by endlessly waiting for a president who is yet to start charting a very clear direction?

If Yar’Adua would be kind, that is, to himself and Nigeria, he should put a halt to all these blind pursuits and dumb guesswork, hand in his papers, retire to Katsina in peace, and save the nation further trauma of having to perennially wait for a man who may never be able to either comprehend or respond to the challenges of such a high and strategic office.

Although hangers-on and parasites feeding fat on the grounded system may hold a different view, certainly, the line of action I am recommending to Yar’Adua would attract a kinder verdict from history to him than going on confusedly like a child handed a terribly complicated, strange toy to decode, and traumatizing the whole nation in the process.

Indeed, quitting now would be more redemptive of Yar’Adua’s person than being remembered later as the groping undertaker of a richly endowed but seriously ill nation?    

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

Yar’Adua, Give Nigerians Prepaid Metres!

(Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2008, a day before Nigeria’s ‘Democracy Day’ and President Yar’Adua’s one year anniversary)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

By this time tomorrow (May 29, 2008) President Umar Musa Yar’Adua would be one year in office. As usual, he may call for “low-key, sombre celebrations” and “sober reflections” which would not be extended to the obscene gaiety, excessive mirth, hugging, necking and backslapping amidst endless flow of champagne and sumptuous delicacies, in short, the bacchanalian revel that would take place in the name of State Banquet later in the day.

He would also record a speech in which he would appeal to us to make further sacrifices and exercise more patience to allow the great seeds of growth, development and incredible plenty which he has been carefully sowing and watering for the past one year (and which he may continue to sow and water till he leaves office) to germinate, grow and spread unimaginable prosperity all over the nation. He would probably spice the speech up with a long list of the phantom achievements he had recorded since he was sworn in and grab the headlines by announcing some really ambitious and big projects he would undertake between tomorrow and the “second quarter of next year.”  Needless to add that he may well forget the whole thing before Sunday afternoon. 

 

President  Yar’Adua: Floored By the ‘Energy Challenge'?

If he is able tomorrow, he may also attend a parade at the Eagle Square, give a short address, or send his irritatingly dull deputy to stand in for him, while he stays at home to rest and conserve some strength for the State Banquet, where Turai, his wife (and she that must be obeyed), cannot wait to star without moderation. Indeed, not even the Servant Leader himself can deny her this day!

It is unlikely, too, that the contractors, hangers-on and jobless fellows whose eyes are fixed on the next cabinet reshuffle would heed his call to observe tomorrow as a day of sober reflection. No doubt, newspaper pages would be dominated by full-page colour adverts extolling his “sterling virtues  and great vision,” and the “unprecedented achievements of this great son of Africa who has just under one year taken Nigeria to great heights” – the same words they had deployed to seduce Gen Olusegun Obasanjo into his present grief.

(By the way, when last did anyone witness where Obasanjo was referred to as the Founder and/or Father of Modern Nigeria? The last I heard was Founder and Father of Modern Corruption!)

But if Yar’Adua would take my advice, he should ask everybody to stay at home tomorrow and excuse himself from any grand design by unconscionable fellows in and around government to celebrate failure. I mean abysmal and all-round failure!

He should also be man enough to stand up to his restless, limelight-crazy wife and tell her that any State Banquet tomorrow evening would constitute an obscene provocation to long-suffering Nigerians. What exactly would Yar’Adua be celebrating? Does he need anyone to tell him that his one year in office has been one woeful story of overwhelming failure? Sometimes I am tempted to feel that this country would have even fared better if this government (or any other one like it) was not in place. At least, the country would have moved faster on the path of development without the crushing burden this burden  constituted.

Last Saturday evening, I entered a filling station to buy fuel and the crowd I saw there almost scared me. It was when I looked closely that I saw containers of different sizes in the hands of the people. Oh, all those people had come to purchase fuel for the countless generators they use to generate power for themselves in a failed state like Nigeria. As I looked at this large crowd and it occurred to me that many of them may even be storing the fuel under their beds, I shuddered. No doubt, it is only God’s mercy that has prevented the whole of Lagos from going up in flames before now.

Take a trip today to the various areas in Lagos, especially, where people are crammed into small apartments like the face-me-I-face-you type of accommodation, where whole families and dependants are piled into stuffy rooms, and observe the room occupants showing off their generators and the fuel they had stored. At night when all these machines begin to roar, emitting killer fumes into the already airless, stuffy enclosures, what emerges is a most horrible situation where a failed and heartless government has cruelly driven its hapless citizens into organizing their own bitter deaths with generators purchased with monies they had probably starved themselves to save.

In order to escape the unbearable heat and choking darkness their government and its licensed Agent of Darkness, NEPA/PHCN, have heartlessly plunged them into, they end up creating deadly gas chambers where they enact mass suicides daily. We have regularly heard of whole families being found dead in the morning after an all-night inhalation of generator fumes. For those resilient ones still on their feet, what is left of their sensitive organs by the lethal fumes they abundantly inhale every night are being progressively ruined by the ear-splitting din produced by the countless generators. No wonder cases of hypertension and nervous breakdowns are also on the increase in Nigeria.     

 

Turai Yar’Adua, (Right): Power Behind The Throne?

My view is that as these people whose only offence is that they were born Nigerians develop lung cancer and deadly heart and respiratory diseases and die painful in their obscure corners due to lack of medicare (while their president hops across to Germany from time to time to treat catarrh (common cold) and allergic reactions, their blood would certainly be required at the hands of those who claim to be ruling this richly endowed nation.

 Night time in this nation has simply turned into several harrowing hours of unbearable torments. In the fairly moderate accommodation I occupy with my family, we usually abandon our rooms every night to cram ourselves into the parlour and my already jam-packed study, because the ear-splitting noise from my neighbour’s generator in the next compound is simply destructive. As the monster starts roaring (and this continues till morning), not even the wall demarcating the two compounds can mitigate its damage. I have this feeling that if I try any day to protest, the man might pour on me all the pent up anger he had reserved for Yar’Adua and, of course, Obasanjo who for his own selfish reasons foisted on us a man who neither wanted to be president nor have any clear idea how to get this nation on its feet.

For two months now, NEPA/PHCN has left my neighbourhood in total darkness. We used to complain about irregular power supply. Now, total darkness has enveloped the whole place.  Apart from the two or so brief moments I was informed power was supplied, it has been darkness all the way for more than two months now. In the previous months they had managed to flash some flicker of light. Yet despite all these, the huge bills keeps coming. This is nothing but heartless extortion and daylight robbery, actively supported by the Federal Government under Mr. Umar Yar’Adua.

A friend who recently secured his prepaid metre was so excited to discover that it was only two hundred naira that he had consumed in a whole month. Before now, his monthly bill never came below five thousand naira despite the uninterrupted darkness that engulfed him! What an unarmed robbery! The other day, officials of NEPA/PHCN invaded a widow’s house threatening to disconnect her from their Darkness Supply because she was “not paying her bills.” The woman’s protestations that she was using the prepaid metre only annoyed them further. They hate to hear that anyone is using a prepaid metre because it effectively checks their extortion!

So, how long will Yar’Adua allow this robbery to continue? How long will Nigerians continue to pay for services not rendered to them?  Why are the irremediably corrupt sadists at NEPA/PHCN frustrating attempts by Nigerians to get prepaid metres?  

Now, if NEPA/PHCN chooses to supply only darkness, they should let every Nigerian have a prepaid metre so that no one would be compelled again to pay for energy not supplied. It is cruel to force people to pay these bills after they had generated power for themselves at very huge costs and great risks to their health.

If President Yar’Adua wishes to distance himself from this heartless, official robbery, he should tomorrow (May 29, 2008) announce a date when everybody in Nigeria must, without fail, be issued a prepaid metre. If this measure would dry up the revenue base of NEPA/PHCN and cause it to fold up, so be it. Nigerians are better off without such an agency that produces only pain, torments, sorrow, heart-ache and death.  

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 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

    +234-802-883-3853

Will Obasanjo Explode President Yar’Adua’s Anti-Graft Balloon?

(First published April 2, 2008)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  
If you were carrying out an employment exercise in your company, and one of the job seekers  showed up with a letter of  recommendation duly written and signed by Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, the former Chair of the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), would that impress you? 

 Well, the strength and credibility of any   recommendation should flow from the performance of the person earlier recommended by the same person. For instance, Mr. Ribadu had told the nation that he had deployed the full force of his prodigious intellect, experience and thoroughness to carefully examine the eight-year nightmare prosecuted by Gen Olusegun Obasanjo but could not detect the slightest hint of corruption in all that the man did while in office!  

But, for the past few weeks now, Nigerians have witnessed with utter disbelief and deep pain horrifying details of the worst form of heartless plunder this nation had ever witnessed, perpetrated with utmost impunity and even fanfare, under the direct supervision of the same man Nuhu Ribadu had told us was above board.  

About $16 billion was callously squandered under the pretext of fixing the nation’s problematic power sector, plunging the country and   its hapless citizens deeper into thicker and more suffocating darkness.  As sordid revelations ooze from the House of Representatives Probe into the management of the power sector under the Obasanjo regime, where, for instance, it was revealed that a contract worth about N88 billion was verbally awarded, Nigerians are shocked that human beings with hearts and blood running in their veins are capable of such prehistoric greed and cruelty.

While Nigerians groaned under the punishing effect of the protracted energy crises in the country, the very resources meant for the alleviation of their harrowing pain was being primitively plundered.  

 In a decent country, Mr. Liyel Imoke would have since resigned as Governor of Cross River State with shame and haste, while awaiting his well-earned trail alongside his big uncle, Obasanjo. But, this is Nigeria, where something called Immunity Clause exists to provide very formidable protection for unrepentant enemies of the people from the just consequences of their hideous actions in office. 

                                                                                                                                Late President Yar’Adua 

Only last week, former Finance Minster, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told the House Committee probing the mindless brigandage that flourished in the power sector that it was Mr. Imoke and Obasanjo  that concocted the “Due Process Waiver” that enabled them bypass all statutory roadblocks to prosecute their unparalleled clean out of the public treasury to build phantom power plants.  

In 1999 when Obasanjo became president, total power generation within the national grid stood at 2,400 Mega Watts. But by the time he was leaving office in 2007 (and till date), the whole thing had come down to 2,100 MW, despite the billions of dollars said to have been poured into the obviously phantom efforts to give Nigerians stable power supply.  

To sensible Nigerians, that is hardly surprising. Among the companies awarded juicy contracts, and paid jumbo mobilisation fees, which in some cases were as high as 70 percent of the whole contract value, thirty-three (which got N6.2 billion contracts) were not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission, which means that they were non-existent companies! Even when identifiable companies got contracts and were fully mobilized, several of them vanished into thin air or managed to show some form of presence at the project site. 

 The only believable reason those in charge of the whole obscene profligacy had refused to bother themselves with whether those contracts were executed or not may be that, perhaps, those “companies” were either theirs or belonged to their cronies and agents.

                                                                         
                                                                                 Former EFCC Boss, Nuhu Ribadu            
          
According to Daily Independent editorial of March 27, 2008, “Energo Limited, a company in which a former military head of state is Chairman, [was paid] over N13 billion … without any job done to date … Obasanjo, according to disclosures by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), even commissioned an empty site in Odukpani, Cross River State, as a power station last year.  Top managers of PHCN [also awarded] contracts worth US$142 million to non-existent firms. PHCN was shown to have paid out various sums – N2.1 billion, 2.1million Euros and 1.1billion Yen — for hydropower projects whose existence is unknown to chief executives of the stations.”

According to the Minster for Energy (Power), Mrs. Fatimah Ibrahim, $13.3 billion was squandered in the power sector, under very close, direct supervision of Imoke and Obasanjo with nothing on ground to show for the huge expenditure.

Certainly, this is enough to put these fellows behind bars for the rest of their lives, if President Umar Musa Yar’Adua is serious about all the noise he makes about rule of law and due process.  Well, how Yar’Adua responds to this challenge will help define the image of his administration in the days ahead.

Last week, former Health Minister, Prof Adenike Grange, was sacked or forced to resign, or both, for refusing to heed the Presidential directive to return to the treasury the unspent fund from the allocation to her ministry. The amount involved is N300 million naira, which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused her, her deputy, Gabriel Aduku, and 14 senior civil servants of the ministry of attempting to embezzle.    

Also starring in the slimy scandal is Obasanjo’s first daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health.  It may appear uncharitable to view Prof Grange’s sack or resignation, given its timing, as aimed at diverting significant attention from the earth-shaking revelations rolling out from the Public Hearing on the Power Sector which has provoked widespread demand for the immediate arrest and trial of Obasanjo and all those who had joined hands with him to enact the unprecedented corruption. But then, the whole thing reeks of just that! 

                                                            
                                                                          Former President Obasanjo

On Monday (March 31, 2008), General Jeremiah Useni, the unrepentant alter ego of the late ruthless dictator, Gen Sani Abacha, was quoted as saying that the boundless brigandage that flourished in the power sector has made whatever Abacha was accused of looting to appear like “a child’s play.” He even expressed doubt that the once famous Abacha Loot recovered from several sources were deployed to execute any venture that would benefit the Nigerian people, because, according to him, there was “no bill [that] went to the National Assembly to approve its expenditure.” In other words, Abacha’s may have been looted by those who recovered it!  

Also, on the same Monday, the papers reported that Prof Grange may be charged to court this week. Now, if we consider that what Grange and Co were accused of “attempting to embezzle” was mere “change” when compared with the $16 or $13 billion that was siphoned off thought phantom power projects, we will then begin to ask ourselves whether, under Yar’Adua, different rules apply to different people? 

 Now, some ex-Governors are, justifiably, being dragged about by the EFCC for allegedly stealing N1 billion or N2 billion or even less. If these ex-Governors or Mrs. Grange and Co are found guilty, they should be hastened off to jail, to isolate them from the assembly decent beings, because they have proved themselves to be unrepentant enemies of Nigeria.

But should the alleged bigger thieves be spared? 

 Nigerians and the rest of world are watching to see what President Yar’Adua would do with the fellows who awarded N88 billion contract by mere word of mouth. They would want to know what would be done to the man who gave out juicy contracts to 33 non-existent companies, and commissioned empty lands as power plants, to cover up the squandered fund.

Yes, they would want to know whether the fellow who had bled his country pale to become one of the richest billionaires in Africa is, in the thinking of Yar’Adua, above the laws of the land, and deserves to be celebrated, while the poor clerk somewhere who was driven by hunger to mismanage N5, 000 is sent to jail.  

It must be clear to Yar’Adua that injustice and double standards, especially of this magnitude, can only create fertile grounds for defiance, rebellion and anarchy.
Already, a former Governor standing trial for corrupt enrichment is threatening to make the country ungovernable if big thieves are left to move about undisturbed while mere pickpockets are haunted and harassed with extreme zeal.  

Yar’Adua must be wary of allowing seeds of destabilisation germinate in the country just because of his determination not to “embarrass” some fellows whose only contribution to their fatherland is the ruin and stagnation they had brought to it by their conscious unethical acts.  

By the way, where was Saint Ribadu when the nation was being gang-raped with such unparalleled violence? To what extent did the National Assembly under Ken Nnamani and his brother Aminu Bello Masari exercise its oversight functions when this insane plundering was flourishing?

Well, former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar can gloat today, but would this brazen prodigality have been exposed if Obasanjo had not parted ways with, and handed over to him as he had expected?   Now, we have seen the stench in the power sector, but when will the long-awaited probe of the NNPC commence? 

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

scruples2006@yahoo.com
April 2, 2008

I Wanted to Unmask Charles Taylor in My Film, Says, Sam Kargbo, Producer of 'Blood Diamonds'

Lawyer, law teacher, social commentator and film maker, Sam Kargbo is many things to many people. Although a regular TV guest on many topical issues and a newspaper columnist,  Kargbo carries about his life with utmost modesty. He loves his beautiful wife from Akwa Ibom State and adores his mentors with a passion. He is the maker of Blood Diamonds, arguably one of the highest budget films in Nollywood, the Nigerian Home Video Industry. Yet, he insists film making is just an avenue for him to pass his message across to a target audience. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (February 2005), he talks about his involvement in film making and the bold efforts of private investors that have taken the good image of Nigeria across continents.

Excerpts:

Sam Kargbo on Channels TV

Most people are familiar with Sam Kargbo the lawyer, not the script writer and film producer, at what point did this other side of you come up?

Lingering Issues In Chinua Achebe's Female Characterisation

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Recently, (Saturday April 12, 2008), I was at the National Theatre, Lagos, because of Prof Chinua Achebe, Africa’s best known and most widely read author, who many regard as the indisputable father and rallying point of African Literature.  The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) had organised a forum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s classic novel, Things Fall Apart, published in London by William Heinemann in June 1958. 

*Chinua Achebe 

I was held back at the office by some engagements and so by the time I arrived at the venue, I had missed a substantial part of the ‘Interactive Session’. I came in while Mr. Segun Olusola, a former ambassador and arts enthusiast, was concluding his speech. As I sat down, I heard him paying glowing tribute to Achebe and his novel and saying how happy he was to be at the event. He then announced that he would also grace the Awka event in honour of Achebe and Things Fall Apart coming up more than a week later.  

Achebe evokes a very special kind of feelings in most people that have read either his novels or essays. And this was evident in the emotion-laden speeches made by various speakers at the National Theatre that day. The literary patriarch and icon was absent at the ceremony, but his image loomed large everywhere, and this, mind you, was not because of those large posters and billboards bearing his photographs (and, of course, the emblem of the main sponsors, Fidelity Bank Plc) displayed at strategic points by the organisers. 

His wit, deep insights, the wisdom he conveys with such sagely precision, the simple, subtle diction and disarming style, the impressive imageries he effortlessly conjures and the pleasant local colour he so generously splashes on his narratives, never cease to overwhelm. Achebe is one writer whose reputation and looming image was neither built nor enhanced by any prize. What further glamour can occasional decorations add to an already very colourful and ‘big masquerade’? The man rather dignifies any prize he decides to accept and not the other way round. For instance, as Achebe and Things Fall Apart are celebrated across the world this season, only a few, perhaps, might consider it necessary to recall that a few months ago, he was awarded the Man Booker Prize – a very important prize, no doubt.  Such information, though great in its own right, makes little or no difference to the man’s already solidly established stature.    

It is impossible to read Things Fall Apart without visualizing the village of Umuofia in its alluring freshness in the warm embrace of rich nature in its most exciting vivacity and purity.  This is the only novel I know written by an African that has acquired such a stature and influence, as to be so celebrated in such a grand fashion.

No, doubt, Chinua Achebe is Africa’s rare gift to the world and Nigeria should never cease to be glad and grateful that this giant emerged from its loins.

With his novels, superb lectures and rich essays, Achebe has been able to compel the world out there to significantly alter their entrenched warped views about Africa.

After a speaking engagement in Canberra, Australia, in the summer of 1973, Professor Manning Clark, a distinguished Australian historian wrote to Achebe and pleaded: “I hope you come back and speak again here, because we need to lose the blinkers of our past. So come and help the young to grow up without the prejudices of their forefathers…”

I find this display of sincerity very touching.

Part of the greatness of Things Fall Apart is the significant readership it enjoys across cultures and races; its message continues to register lasting impacts that are rare and peculiar. Not a few Nigerians can recall the instant celebrity status they had suddenly assumed or even some favours that had come their way in one remote part of the world or the other just because they had let it be known that they were from Achebe’s country.

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Achebe has also remarkably excelled as a critic and essayist. His 1975 Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, entitled, “An Image Of Africa: Racism In Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness,” which I am never of tired of re-reading, has not only significantly altered the nature and direction of Conrad criticism, but is now widely regarded as one of the significant and influential essays in the criticism of literature in English.

As I listened to several speeches at the National Theatre on that Saturday, I could feel the depth of admiration displayed by the various speakers towards Achebe and his work.  The whole thing was moving on well until one lady came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his female characters achieved in Anthills Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, which we had all gathered to celebrate that afternoon.

 Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars whom I thought should be better informed. For instance, I was at a lecture in Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said,  we complained; then he responded by giving us Clara (in No Longer At Ease) and we still complained; then he gave us Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and we still asked for more; and then he gave us Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)! Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this boldly flaunted in several literary essays by women and some men.

TOBACCO: The Ruthless Killer Next Door

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Today, as I allow my mind to endure the oppressive thought that tobacco still remains the ruthless killer next door, what then shall we call its producers and distributors? The answer can only be simple and straightforward: They are people who prosper at the expense of other people’s lives. They make their billions by ruining other people’s health, and eventually terminating their lives. They should therefore not complain if anyone refers to them as proud, happy, licensed murderers.

Packs of Killer Poison

How these people are able to deaden their conscience to go on prospering and sustaining their own lives by producing and marketing a scientifically confirmed poison whose only benefit is its ability to cruelly terminate the lives of their fellow human beings beats me hollow? Tobacco never adds even the tiniest value to life; it only destroys it completely. Without mercy. This is a fact nobody has even attempted to deny.

The Nigerian president should put the concern for the lives of many Nigerians above his often whispered personal tastes and habits and take another look at the massive freedom granted by his predecessor to tobacco companies to fill Nigeria with their neatly wrapped and attractively packaged killer poison called cigarettes. If he cannot immediately ban the production of cigarettes in Nigeria, he should, at least, put in place stricter regulations that would ensure that tobacco manufacturing would automatically become a very unprofitable venture in Nigeria. 

I call on Nigerians with lively conscience and genuine friends of Nigeria, to join this clearly winnable battle, to flush these heartless fellows out of Nigeria. The question I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come out in the open and assure me that the commodity they manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me one single benefit the human body derives from smoking cigarettes. Has it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly admitted even by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life is sweetest to him?  If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t those who manufacture and circulate it in society be classified as murderers? Hasn’t even our own Federal Ministry of Health been shouting and warning us with passion, sense of urgency and alarm that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?

What the Health Ministry here is saying is very simple: Anyone offering you a cigarette is only wishing you an untimely death. In fact, he is just saying to you: May you die young! That is exactly what tobacco companies, including the government that issued them the license to transact their deadly trade in Nigeria are wickedly wishing their Nigerian victims! Yes, tobacco companies manufacture products that make people to die young. How wicked and heartless could they be!

Before now, these tobacco companies would erect fresh, beautiful billboards, and fill several pages of newspapers and magazines with glossy adverts. Unfortunately, that option is no longer available to them, because of the ban on outdoor advertising of their lethal products. I am glad that those pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with glittering laurels just because they were hooked to particular brands of cigarette which used to adorn glossy billboards and magazine pages, and which had proved irresistible baits to several people, especially youths, have now vanished from the public domain.

As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him, carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him. One wonders how many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went beyond mere fantasies or obsession with their cigarette heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts. Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of monumental deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed, only very few are able to look beyond the meretricious pictures and the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunt and see the blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases, and their associate unyielding killers.

Smokers Are Burning Their Lungs!!!! (pix: pulse2)

I want to challenge tobacco companies to come out and tell Nigerians that tobacco, the product they manufacture and circulate in Nigeria, is no more the resilient, implacable and silent killer, the lethal poison and heartless cannibal that seeks accommodation in the midst of hapless humanity with the sole intention of effecting their eventual decimation. I want to hear that cigarettes are no longer generous distributors of devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry terminal lung and heart disease, etc.

 I have heard tobacco companies pay huge taxes to government, award scholarships to indigent students and embark upon several projects to better the lot of the common man in several communities. But how many people have their lethal product sent to their early graves? How many widows, widowers and orphans are they producing with alarming rapidity?  How many people have been lured to calamity and painful death with their tantalizing and deceptive adverts? How many cancer TB lung disease patients do they produce in a year? How many among their hapless employees are gradually ruined daily because of the insidious fumes they inhale during production of cigarettes? It is so saddening that while in several countries of the world, tobacco companies and their owners are being isolated and choked with harsh laws, they have been allowed to invade Nigeria and other African countries with their filthy billions because we have incompetent and insensitive governments that have no qualms welcoming urbane, but ruthless killers in the name of "foreign investors."


A Poison-Manufacturing Giant


I will never be tired of referring to an interesting development in the United States on June 7, 2001 where a Los Angeles Superior Court slapped an unprecedented $3 billion in damages on Phillip Morris, another giant tobacco company, in response to a suit by a tobacco casualty, Richard Boeken, who had developed incurable cancer of the brain and lungs after smoking two packs of Marlboro cigarettes every day for 40 years. This should serve as eye opener to Africans that with several class suits from victims of tobacco, these evil merchants of death can be forced out of the continent. According to the New York Post editorial of June 9, 2001, 56-year-old Boeken who began smoking as a teenager in 1957 claimed that "he continued smoking because … he believed claims by tobacco companies that smoking was safe." He told reporters in a post-trial interview: “I didn't believe they would lie about the facts that they were putting out on television and radio."


Now, that is exactly the issue. Tobacco companies deploy beautifully packaged lies to lure people into taking their fatally poisoned wraps called cigarettes. Their billboards do not present cancer patients treading the cold, dark, lonely path to a most painful, slow death, which is where tobacco happily leads victims. Every society has a responsibility to defend its unwary and the ignorant, and Nigeria and the rest of Africa cannot be an exception. The argument that smokers ought to be dissuaded from smoking by the hardly visible warnings they put out on their packets, and that people are merely being allowed to exercise their right and freedom to make choices, is akin to endorsing suicide as a lawful expression of freedom? Why allow a killer-poison to circulate among humans in the first place? Do we all have the same capacity to discern and resist the allurement of this clear and present danger called cigarettes?

Cigarette Manufacturers Want You To Die Young!!!!


It is widely known that many tobacco producers are non-smokers because they know too well how deadly their products are! In court and in several enquiries, tobacco producers have admitted that their product contains very harmful substances. So why should the government not protect its citizens against it? Tobacco is a killer. So are its manufacturers. Nigerians should rise with one voice and unified strength and resist this cannibal in our midst. The battle is winnable.

scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye In Conversation With Placid Aguwa

 PLACID AGUWA, a New York-based attorney, is the Managing Partner of the law firm, Placid and Emmanuel, P.C., and former president of the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA).  Since 1991, he has practiced law in state and federal courts in New York and Nigeria. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (March 2007), he speaks on the activities of the NLA, and some of the challenges faced by Nigeria in its tortuous journey to democratic and economic stability. 

Excerpts: 

*Placid Aguwa 

UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE: When was the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA) formed, and what are its objectives? 

PLACID AGUWA: Thank you for your interest in learning more about the Nigerian Lawyers Association (NLA).  NLA was incorporated in 1999 as a not-for-profit, non-partisan association of attorneys. NLA represents the interests of attorneys mainly of Nigerian descent both in the United States and all over the world. It advances the professional needs of its growing members and provides leadership and advocacy for the legal needs of and interests of the minority community in the United States and around the world.

NLA's principal objectives are to cultivate the science of jurisprudence, facilitate and advance the fair and equitable administration of justice, serve the needs of the members of the Nigerian legal community, as well as the minority communities as a whole, in their understanding and access to the law and to educate and assist such persons in their day to day dealings with the law.