Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[Scientific Playa]

Topic: Collapsed Building: I Was The Target- T.B Joshua

The head of Synagogue Church of All Nations, Prophet Temitope Joshua has said the uncompleted guest house which collapsed in his church premises on Friday was due to a strange aircraft which kept hovering around the building till it collapse an hour later.

While addressing journalists yesterday, the Prophet showed them a CCTV footage to prove his point. In the footage, a plane was seen flying over the collapsed guest house at four different times on Friday morning- 11: 30 a.m, 11: 43 a.m, 11:45 a.m and 11: 54 a.m, before it collapsed at about 12:44pm.

He also went further to disclose he was the target of the ‘attack’. Continue below.

“Immediately I left the prayer room (which is a 10-minute drive from the church) for the church, I got a call that a jet was hovering over the prayer room but as I finished bathing and moved to the prayer room, I got another call that the jet has moved to the church and that was it.

Members cannot be the target, the easier way to stop this church is to get the head and from my explanation, you know the truth” he said.

He also called on security agents to study the CCTV footage as they investigate the incident. He promised to speak further on the incident during church service this morning.



EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FOOTAGE OF SYNAGOGUE COLLAPSE AND 'STRANGE AIRPLANE' ALLEGEDLY BEHIND IT

On Sunday 14th April 2014, Prophet T.B. Joshua played to his congregation and Emmanuel TV viewers worldwide shocking footage captured by security cameras of the horrific moment a guest-house collapsed within the church premises.

Joshua, speaking to a packed auditorium of worshippers seemingly undeterred by the tragic incident that transpired days earlier, began by thanking officials involved in the extensive rescue operation, as well as supporters worldwide for their prayers.

He then recounted the events that preceded the building collapse at exactly 12:44pm on Friday afternoon. “I know this is not the right time to talk,”the cleric started. “I will just say a little because I don’t want to interfere with the job of security personnel.”

Joshua narrated how on Friday morning at approximately 8am, he left the ‘prayer mountain’ where he ‘lives’ to return to the church, only to be alerted by phone that “there was a jet hovering, moving around at very close range at the mountain which I had just left.”

Shortly afterwards, he was informed the plane in question was flying dangerously low over a particular building within the church premises. “We are going to show you the video,” he then announced.

Church members reacted with gasps of shock and disbelief as a video containing security footage of the ‘strange airplane’ and its multiple flights was shown, followed by the building collapse in less than three seconds of horror.

Joshua went on to state that after thirty years residing in Ikotun, Lagos, he had never witnessed an incident of this nature. “This is to tell you we have a stable terrain in this area. I have been in this community for the past 30 years and no building has collapsed,” he insisted.

He went on to assure congregants that no effort was being spared in rescuing the victims of the tragedy. “As a minister of the Gospel, our first priority is life – life saving,” he stated. “There is no compromise in what we do at all. I am going to leave this for you to judge.”

He then released a warning that another similar incident would occur within the country if proper precautions were not observed. “Let us believe, educate our people and be alert. Why? So that our country will not witness a similar incident in another place.”

Seeming to speak the minds of congregants, Joshua went on, “I know you will ask me – why Synagogue? Don’t forget the spiritual blessing that God has bestowed on us? A big head wears a large hat.”

He proceeded to decry the attitude people had exhibited towards a much-publicised confession of an alleged Boko Haram member in The SCOAN in March 2014. “No matter how long a lie is sustained, truth will someday prevail,”the cleric admonished. “We should remember the militant that came with his group to this church with a bomb. Upon televising it, they said it was a lie – but later discovered it to be true. The case is still with the security.”

He added that the multiple rumours peddled about Ebola victims dying at The SCOAN and the alleged ‘salt-water’ cure ascribed to him that went viral were all attacks against the church. “They were trying to scare you from coming to this church. Don’t be scared – you are not the target, I am the target.”

Joshua stated however that his ‘job’ on earth was still unfinished. “I knew my hour had not yet come. I have not yet finished my job.”

He reminded congregants of a message he had given several weeks earlier that the last few months of 2014, which he had already termed ‘The Year Of Crossing The Bridge’, would contain tragic and calamitous events as if ‘it were 10 years’. He declared that in the midst of the unfortunate incident, “God is on top of the matter”.

Joshua then stated that Divine judgement would befall the perpetrators of the attack. “I want to assure you that our God will get back to them – the agents of satan,” he authoritatively declared.

Joshua went on to shock congregants the more by reading out a message he had received concerning another foiled Boko Haram plot against The SCOAN. “Man of God, my name is Emmanuel,” the message stated. “I have a confession to make. I want to give my life to Jesus Christ. I am a Boko Haram member. I came to SCOAN to plant a bomb but could not do it because of the God who called you. I went back to Jos with the bomb which I still have with me now.”

“The reason I am showing you this is for you to know the God you are serving,” Joshua explained. “God wants to reveal to you what He has been doing that you don’t know about,” he continued, adding that he knows ‘faithless’ attendees may likely stop visiting his church.

Joshua concluded by saluting the ‘martyrs’ who lost their lives in the tragic incident, describing them as people of faith who ‘knew the God they are serving’.

He insisted that truth would prevail amidst the conflicting reports arising concerning the cause of the building’s collapse. “Right from the beginning of my life, people have been lying but they still come back to the truth. That is a good life – for people to lie against you first before they realise the truth. Here I am – I leave it for you to judge. I am a prophet. The security have a job to do.”

 

[Poitier]

Why saying ‘seven out of ten fastest growing economies are in Africa’ carries no real meaning – By Morten Jerven
Posted on August 26, 2014 by AfricanArgumentsEditor



Before, during and after the US Africa summit one of the most frequently repeated factoids supporting the Africa Rising meme was that ‘seven out of ten fastest growing economies are in Africa.’ In reality this is both a far less accurate and much less impressive statistic than it sounds. More generally, narratives on African economic development tend to be loosely connected to facts, and instead are driven more by hype.

***

The ‘seven out of ten’ meme derives from a data exercise done in 2011 by The Economist. The exercise excluded countries with a population of less than 10 million and also the post-conflict booming Iraq and Afghanistan. This left 81 countries, 28 of them in Africa (more than 3 out of 10) and, if you take out the OECD countries from the sample, (which are unlikely to grow at more than 7 percent per annum), you find that every second economy in the sample is in Africa. It might not give the same rhetorical effect to say: ‘on average some African economies are expected to grow slightly faster than other non-OECD countries,’ but that would be more accurate.

And before we literally get ahead of ourselves (The Economist was reporting forecasts made for 2011 to 2015) there is a difference between forecasted and actually measured growth. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. So how good is the IMF at forecasting growth in Low Income Countries?

According to their own evaluation, IMF forecasts “over-predicted GDP growth and under-predicted inflation.” Another study looked at the difference between the forecasts and the subsequent growth revisions in low income countries, and found that “output data revisions in low-income countries are, on average, larger than in other countries, and that they are much more optimistic.” Forecasts are systematically optimistic all over the world, but in Low Income Countries even more so.

***

Among those on the list of the fastest growers were countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia. The news that both Nigerian and Ghanaian GDP doubled following the introduction of new benchmark years for estimating GDP in 2010 and 2014 should remind us that the pinpoint accuracy of these growth estimates is lacking. How confident should you be about a 7 percent growth rate when 50 percent of the economy is missing in the official baseline? Recent growth in countries with outdated base years is also overstated.

While Ghana has reportedly had the highest growth rates in the world over the past years, a peer review of the Ghana national accounts noted that “neither a national census of agriculture nor other surveys, such as a crop and live-stock survey, have been conducted…there is no survey to provide benchmark data for construction, domestic trade and services.” It was recently reported that an economic census is being planned for next year. What we do know is that Ghana (together with Zambia, another of the projected ‘top ten growers’) has returned to the IMF to seek assistance following their entry into international lending markets.

Most of the time we simply do not know enough to assert accurate growth rates. There are also known biases and manipulations. Ethiopia, for example, is notable for having long-standing disagreements with the IMF regarding their growth rates. Whereas the official numbers have been quoted in double digits for the past decade, a thorough analysis suggested the actual growth rates were around 5 to 6 percent per annum. More generally, one study used satellite imaging of nighttime lights to calculate alternative growth rates, and found that authoritarian regimes overstate reported rates of growth by about 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points. Another recent study argues that inflation is systematically understated in African countries – which in turn means that growth and poverty reduction is overstated.

***

Data bias is carried across from economic growth to other metrics. The pressure on scholars, journalists and other commentators to say something general about ‘Africa’ is relentless, and so the general rule is to oblige willingly. When talking about average trends in African politics and opinion, analysis is influence by the availability of survey data, such as Afrobarometer, and the data availability is biased. According to Kim Yi Donne, on The Washington Post’s ‘Monkey Cage’ blog, of the 15 African countries with the lowest Polity IV rankings, only seven have ever been included in the Afrobarometer, whereas all but one African country rated as a democracy by the same index is included.

Any quantitative study which says something about the relationship between growth and trends in inequality and poverty, relies on the availability of household survey data. One paper boldly stated that African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think! The data basis was very sparse and unevenly distributed. There were no data points for Angola, Congo, Comoros, Cape Verde, D.R. Congo, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, Togo, Sao Tome and Principe, Chad, Liberia, and Sudan. In addition, six countries only have one survey. The database included no observations since 2004 – so the trend in poverty was based entirely on conjecture. Famously you need at least two data points to draw a line. Yet the study included a graph of poverty lines in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1970 to 2006 – based on zero data points.

A result of doubts about the accuracy of the official evidence, and a dearth of evidence on income distributions, scholars have turned to other measurements. Data on access to education and ownership of goods such as television sets from Demographic and Health Surveys were used to compile new asset indices. In turn, these data were used to proxy economic growth and in place of having a measure of the middle class. In both cases the data may paint a misleadingly positive picture. While claiming to describe all of Africa over the past two decades, these surveys are only available for some countries sometimes.

***

The statement ‘seven out of ten fastest growing economies are in Africa’ carries no real meaning. To utter it is merely stating that you subscribe to the hype. It is particularly frustrating, and it surely stands in way of objective evaluation, that the narratives in African Economic Development switches from one extreme to the other so swiftly. The truth lies somewhere between the ‘miracles’ and ‘tragedies’. It is nothing short of stunning that in a matter of 3-4 years the most famous phrase relating to African economies has turned from ‘Bottom Billion’ to ‘Africa Rising’.

Because of a lack of awareness on historical data on economic growth it was long claimed that Africa was suffering “a chronic failure of growth”, but growth is not new to the African economies, growth has been recurring. There is no doubt that there are more goods leaving and entering the African continent today than fifteen years ago. More roads and hotels are being built and more capital is flowing in and out of the African continent than before. But what is the real pace of economic growth? Does the increase in the volume of transaction result in a sustained increase in living standards? The evidence does not yet readily provide us with an answer. It is the job of scholars to give tempered assessments that navigate between what is make-believe and what passes as plausible evidence.

Morten Jerven is Associate Professor at the Simon Fraser University, School for International Studies. His book Poor Numbers: how we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it is published by Cornell University Press. @MJerven

 

[Scientific Playa]

AFRICA: A Voyage of Discovery

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLabE-2ZiM-FOPR8CL4Qmtg

Editorial Reviews
Better known as Africa: Story of a Continent. This 4 vhs set is the original release from 1984. The New York Times dubbed this series "...a stunning piece of work...a winner...in part, because it's host, Basil Davidson is an enthusiast." Davidson, the British author of more than 30 books about Africa, says "Now that we know more about Africa's past, we see that it tells a story both long and remarkable." The story is unfolded on location all over this fascinating continent, showing life as it is today, plus archive footage and dramatized reconstructions. Program 1 Different But Equal, Program 2 Mastering The Continent, Program 3 Caravans of Gold, Program 4 Kings and Cities, Program 5 The Bible and The Gun, Program 6 The Magnificent African Cake, Program 7 The Rise of Nationalism and Program 8 The Legacy.

 

[Sinnerman]

My fellow igbo brehs

@#1 pick @Marvel @PrnzHakeem and others, how many of you would support a biafra? or do you prefer one nigeria?

not tryna start nothing just a convo with another nigerian sparked this question

 

[TMNT4000]

My fellow igbo brehs

@#1 pick @Marvel @PrnzHakeem and others, how many of you would support a biafra? or do you prefer one nigeria?

not tryna start nothing just a convo with another nigerian sparked this question

Do Nigerians wanna break up the country?

 

[Sinnerman]

Do Nigerians wanna break up the country?

Before I would have said no, I still stay in general no, but I've noticed an uptick in Nigerians who want to go their separate ways in real life.

 

[TMNT4000]

Before I would have said no, I still stay in general no, but I've noticed an uptick in Nigerians who want to go their separate ways in real life.

Separate ways for what? Is it a tribe thing?

 

[Sinnerman]

Separate ways for what? Is it a tribe thing?

diff reasons. there aren't any movements with any serious steam atm however

 

[Poitier]

diff reasons. there aren't any movements with any serious steam atm however

Just take care of Boko Haram.

This Scotland independence got Zanzibar wanting independence

 

[Poitier]

U.S. military will lead $750 million fight against Ebola in West Africa


The World Health Organization warned that health workers in West Africa can't keep up with the Ebola outbreak. In countries hardest hit, the economic damage is coming into focus, too. (Reuters)
Global health experts and international aid groups who have been urging the White House to dramatically scale up its response praised the plan as described. They have said charities and West African governments alone do not have the capacity to stem the epidemic.

The U.S. military, with its enormous logistical capability, extensive air operations, and highly skilled medical corps, could address gaps in the response quickly.

“This is a really significant response on the military side,” said Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a book about the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 and another on the global public-health system. “This is really beginning to seem like a game-changer.”

But much depends on how quickly personnel and supplies can get there.

“The problem is, for every single thing we’re doing, we’re racing against the virus, and the virus has the high ground right now,” she said. “I would hope this would reduce transmission, but it’s all about how fast people can get there and get the job done. If it takes weeks to mobilize, the strategy won’t even be within reach.”

Although the official death toll is at least 2,400 people in five African countries, officials say it vastly underestimates the true caseload. Garrett, who has been talking to health-care workers in the region, said the cumulative total, including deaths, could reach 250,000 by Christmas.

A senior official cautioned that the efforts “won’t happen overnight.” It will be several weeks before training of health-care workers can be up and running.

Suiting up for Ebola VIEW GRAPHIC
At a briefing Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama is visiting the CDC to get an update from the experts there “about the success of their efforts so far to try to confront this problem. . . . And that is the strategy that we’re implementing here, is to try to invest early to prevent this from becoming much more serious.”

Washington has come under fire from African officials — especially in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — and on Capitol Hill for not marshaling more of its resources to combat the epidemic.

The United States has already spent $175 million responding to the outbreak and has dispatched 100 CDC experts, among the largest deployments of agency personnel in its history. The administration has sought an additional $88 million and may ask for more, according to a senior administration official. “I don’t want to close the door to potential additional funding,” the official said. Separately, the Pentagon wants to take up to $500 million from existing funds within the Pentagon’s budget that have not yet been spent and use it for the plan to fight Ebola.

The Pentagon announced last week that it would send a 25-bed hospital to Liberia. The hospital is designed to care for health-care workers who become ill, and eventually will be turned over to the Liberian government. It will be at least a month before the hospital is up and running. The United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is preparing to deploy 65 Commissioned Corps officers to Liberia to manage and staff the hospital.

The United States has already set up one mobile laboratory, and another two are on the way.

In addition to expanding treatment and training facilities, the United States will send enough basic Ebola response kits to supply 400,000 households in Liberia, according to a senior administration official. That is intended to address an increasingly common phenomenon in which sick patients are being denied access to overflowing treatment centers and being sent home.

The packages, which include sanitizers, will help curb transmission of the disease among family members and expand access to ambulances and treatment centers so those infected can be isolated. As part of this effort, the U.S. Agency for International Development this week will airlift 50,000 home health-care kits from Denmark to Liberia to be hand-delivered to distant communities by trained youth volunteers.

The administration’s decision to involve the military in providing equipment and other assistance for international health workers in Africa comes after mounting calls from some unlikely groups — most prominently the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders — pressed the urgency of the issue.

While the world’s largest international health organizations, several governments and many nonprofits have already devoted significant resources to addressing the virus outbreak, administration officials said Monday that they had concluded that the United States would have to lead more aggressively in order to check Ebola’s spread. In Liberia’s capital, patients are dying on the street because there aren’t enough beds in treatment centers.

“Our concern is if we do not arrest that growth, and we don’t arrest that growth now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases” in Africa, the official said, noting that it will still take “months” to reduce the numbers of illnesses and deaths from the disease.

The U.S. response drew cautious praise from Doctors Without Borders, which has been the most active group in the region, battling the epidemic for months.

“Although we have not yet seen the official details, we welcome the ambition of the new US Ebola response plan, which appears to match the scope of the disaster unfolding in West Africa,” Brice de le Vigne, the group’s director of operations, said in a statement. “This latest pledge, alongside those from a handful of other countries, needs to be put into action immediately.”

He said that the response to Ebola continues to fall “dangerously behind” and that too many lives are being lost.

“If implemented swiftly, the deployment of new Ebola management centers, qualified staff and health personnel training could begin reversing the trend of the fight we have collectively been losing against Ebola,” he said.

Even as officials emphasized the need for bolder action and said they were bolstering defenses within the United States, they said the chance of an Ebola outbreak here was “a very low probability.”

Public health experts in America “know how to contain this virus,” one official said. “If there is a case that appears in the United States, that person would be isolated [and] the appropriate protocols would be put in place such that it would contain that.”

To some extent, the measures that the president is now adopting have been called for by some of his critics. On Friday, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) called on Obama to appoint a “central coordinator” to oversee the federal government’s response to the disease.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the top Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement Monday, “This is an instance where we should be running toward the burning flames with our fireproof suits on.”

High-level planning by top officials from the CDC, the Pentagon, the State Department, USAID and the National Institutes of Health has been taking place for some time about options for a U.S. response, according to a senior administration official who spoke on background because planning was underway. The most recent high-level meeting was convened by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the Pentagon last Wednesday.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sept. 7, Obama said that if the United States and other countries did not send equipment, health workers and other supplies to the region, the virus could mutate to become more transmissible.

“And then it could be a serious danger to the United States,” Obama said on the show.

 

[Poitier]

#BringBackJonathan2015: The Wages Of Impunity By Wole Soyinka
Regarding General Ihejirika, I have my own theories regarding how he may have come under Stephen Davis’ searchlight in the first place, ending up on his list of the inculpated. All I shall propose at this stage is that an international panel be set up to examine all allegations, irrespective of status or office of any accused.

BY WOLE SOYINKA
SEP 13, 2014

The dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of psychopaths and child abductors, taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign on internet, finally met its match in Nigeria to inaugurate the week of September 11 – most appropriately. Shekau’s dance macabre was surpassed by the unfurling of a political campaign banner that defiled an entry point into Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. That banner read: BRING BACK JONATHAN 2015.

President Jonathan has since disowned all knowledge or complicity in the outrage but, the damage has been done, the rot in a nation’s collective soul bared to the world. The very possibility of such a desecration took the Nigerian nation several notches down in human regard. It confirmed the very worst of what external observers have concluded and despaired of - a culture of civic callousness, a coarsening of sensibilities and, a general human disregard. It affirmed the acceptance, even domination of lurid practices where children are often victims of unconscionable abuses including ritual sacrifices, sexual enslavement, and worse. Spurred by electoral desperation, a bunch of self-seeking morons and sycophants chose to plumb the abyss of self-degradation and drag the nation down to their level. It took us to a hitherto unprecedented low in ethical degeneration. The bets were placed on whose turn would it be to take the next potshots at innocent youths in captivity whose society and governance have failed them and blighted their existence? Would the Chibok girls now provide standup comic material for the latest staple of Nigerian escapist diet? Would we now move to a new export commodity in the entertainment industry named perhaps “Taunt the Victims”?

As if to confirm all the such surmises, an ex-governor, Sheriff, notorious throughout the nation – including within security circles as affirmed in their formal dossiers - as prime suspect in the sponsorship league of the scourge named Boko Haram, was presented to the world as a presidential traveling companion. And the speculation became: was the culture of impunity finally receiving endorsement as a governance yardstick? Again, Goodluck Jonathan swung into a plausible explanation: it was Mr. Sheriff who, as friend of the host President Idris Deby, had traveled ahead to Chad to receive Jonathan as part of President Deby’s welcome entourage. What, however does this say of any president? How came it that a suspected affiliate of a deadly criminal gang, publicly under such ominous cloud, had the confidence to smuggle himself into the welcoming committee of another nation, and even appear in audience, to all appearance a co-host with the president of that nation? Where does the confidence arise in him that Jonathan would not snub him openly or, after the initial shock, pull his counterpart, his official host aside and say to him, “Listen, it’s him, or me.”? So impunity now transcends boundaries, no matter how heinous the alleged offence?

The Nigerian president however appeared totally at ease. What the nation witnessed in the photo-op was an affirmation of a governance principle, the revelation of a decided frame of mind – with precedents galore. Goodluck Jonathan has brought back into limelight more political reprobates - thus attested in criminal courts of law and/or police investigations - than any other Head of State since the nation’s independence. It has become a reflex. Those who stuck up the obscene banner in Abuja had accurately read Jonathan right as a Bring-back president. They have deduced perhaps that he sees “bringing back” as a virtue, even an ideology, as the corner stone of governance, irrespective of what is being brought back. No one quarrels about bringing back whatever the nation once had and now sorely needs – for instance, electricity and other elusive items like security, the rule of law etc. etc. The list is interminable. The nature of what is being brought back is thus what raises the disquieting questions. It is time to ask the question: if Ebola were to be eradicated tomorrow, would this government attempt to bring it back?

Well, while awaiting the Chibok girls, and in that very connection, there is at least an individual whom the nation needs to bring back, and urgently. His name is Stephen Davis, the erstwhile negotiator in the oft aborted efforts to actually bring back the girls. Nigeria needs him back – no, not back to the physical nation space itself, but to a Nigerian induced forum, convoked anywhere that will guarantee his safety and can bring others to join him. I know Stephen Davis, I worked in the background with him during efforts to resolve the insurrection in the Delta region under President Shehu Yar’Adua. I have not been involved in his recent labours for a number of reasons. The most basic is that my threshold for confronting evil across a table is not as high as his - thanks, perhaps, to his priestly calling. From the very outset, in several lectures and other public statements, I have advocated one response and one response only to the earliest, still putative depredations of Boko Haram and have decried any proceeding that smacked of appeasement. There was a time to act – several times when firm, decisive action, was indicated. There are certain steps which, when taken, place an aggressor beyond the pale of humanity, when we must learn to accept that not all who walk on two legs belong to the community of humans – I view Boko Haram in that light. It is no comfort to watch events demonstrate again and again that one is proved to be right.

Thus, it would be inaccurate to say that I have been detached from the Boko Haram affliction – very much the contrary. As I revealed in earlier statements, I have interacted with the late National Security Adviser, General Azazi, on occasion – among others. I am therefore compelled to warn that anything that Stephen Davis claims to have uncovered cannot be dismissed out of hand. It cannot be wished away by foul-mouthed abuse and cheap attempts to impugn his integrity – that is an absolute waste of time and effort. Of the complicity of ex-Governor Sheriff in the parturition of Boko Haram, I have no doubt whatsoever, and I believe that the evidence is overwhelming. Femi Falana can safely assume that he has my full backing – and that of a number of civic organizations - if he is compelled to go ahead and invoke the legal recourses available to him to force Sheriff’s prosecution. The evidence in possession of Security Agencies - plus a number of diplomats in Nigeria - is overwhelming, and all that is left is to let the man face criminal persecution. It is certain he will also take many others down with him.

Professor Wole SoyinkaThe unleashing of a viperous cult like Boko Haram on peaceful citizens qualifies as a crime against humanity, and deserves that very dimension in its resolution. If a people must survive, the reign of impunity must end. Truth – in all available detail - is in the interest, not only of Nigeria, the sub-region and the continent, but of the international community whose aid we so belatedly moved to seek. From very early beginnings, we warned against the mouthing of empty pride to stem a tide that was assuredly moving to inundate the nation but were dismissed as alarmists. We warned that the nation had moved into a state of war, and that its people must be mobilized accordingly – the warnings were disregarded, even as slaughter surmounted slaughter, entire communities wiped out, and the battle began to strike into the very heart of governance, but all we obtained in return was moaning, whining and hand-wringing up and down the rungs of leadership and governance. But enough of recriminations - at least for now. Later, there must be full accounting.

Finally, Stephen Davis also mentions a Boko Haram financier within the Nigerian Central Bank. Independently we are able to give backing to that claim, even to the extent of naming the individual. In the process of our enquiries, we solicited the help of a foreign embassy whose government, we learnt, was actually on the same trail, thanks to its independent investigation into some money laundering that involved the Central Bank. That name, we confidently learnt, has also been passed on to President Jonathan. When he is ready to abandon his accommodating policy towards the implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that owes so much to re-election desperation, when he moves from a passive “letting the law to take its course” to galvanizing the law to take its course, we shall gladly supply that name.

In the meantime however, as we twiddle our thumbs, wondering when and how this nightmare will end, and time rapidly runs out, I have only one admonition for the man to whom so much has been given, but who is now caught in the depressing spiral of diminishing returns: “Bring Back Our Honour.”

Wole SOYINKA.

 

[Poitier]

Russia’s Lavrov lauds Africa as pillar of new world order

Tuesday, 16 September 2014 21:56
Posted by Imaduddin

69

DARWENDALE: Mired in a conflict in Ukraine and isolated by the West, Russia sought to woo African allies on Tuesday, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov hailing the continent's role in a new world order.

"Africa is one of the pillars of the evolving world system," Lavrov said during a visit to Zimbabwe, where he signed co-operation deals and won diplomatic backing for the fight against Western sanctions.

Describing his sanction-hit host President Robert Mugabe as a "legend" and "historic figure", Lavrov slammed the West's increasingly tough response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.

The most recent wave of Western measures targeted Russia's banking, energy and defence sectors -- sending the ruble crashing to record lows.

"We are all convinced that these unilateral coercive policies have no future," Lavrov said. "What is important these days is to recognise the pluralism in the international community."

During the Cold War the Soviet Union and the West scrambled for influence in Africa, installing puppet leaders and igniting proxy wars that killed millions from Angola to Mozambique.

Russia hopes to once again enlist allies on the continent, where rapid economic growth is predicted in the coming years, as a counterweight to American influence.

"There is no coming back to a unipolar world, to a bi-polar world. The future of the world would only be multiple, otherwise the whole system would not be sustainable."

Lavrov won support from his 90-year-old host, who has long been a thorn in the side of Africa's former colonisers and who has suffered more than a decade of sanctions for a litany of rights abuses.

Mugabe said the Western sanctions against Moscow were "illegal".

"If sanctions are to apply they must be approved by the UN and those that are being imposed on the Russian Federation have not," Mugabe said after sealing a $3 billion (2.3 billion-euro) investment for Russian business to tap Zimbabwe's platinum resources.

"They are illegal sanctions. So you have a lawless part of our international community seeking to dominate the rest of the world and we say no!"

"That must never be allowed to go on," Mugabe said.

The Western sanctions on Russia were imposed in retaliation to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in east Ukraine.

http://www.brecorder.com/top-news/1...auds-africa-as-pillar-of-new-world-order.html

 

[Poitier]

 

[Kritic]

i woke up in a new kantanka/i woke up in a new kanatanka/i woke up in a new kantanka

Automobiles Made In Ghana

http://africarm.org/automobiles-made-in-ghana-by-apostle-dr-kwadwo-safo-1293/



my woman be on my fb like
what is that..
truck made in ghana
what is ghana
a country in africa
i thought ghana was a company

it's the way you said it

we need to get one.

well let me post it on coli. my brehs can get me one on the low. with some free cowboy hats






that negro biting my avi afro hard

 

[mbewane]

Why is a thread about Africa in the race track?