Loomnie

In a beautifully written piece over at the New York Review of Books blog, Tony Judt discusses what identity means in a cosmopolitan world. H/T Aleksandra Gadzala

For a further discussion/problematisation of the concept see ‘Beyond “Identity”‘, by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper. Ungated pdf version available here.

The president of Rice Importers and Distributors Association of Nigeria (RIDAN), Gbadamosi Mufutau,

urged the federal government to harmonize the duty on rice with the neighbouring countries to discourage smuggling. “You observed that any increase in duty, tariff, levies and benchmark always cause increase of importation of such products to Republic Benin and Togo ports with the intention of smuggling such products into Nigeria markets,” he said.

The main reason for his policy advice? He said:

Smugglers have almost driven the importers into extinction because they evade duty and taxes and sell at cheaper prices. You know that the margin on a bag of rice is quite small, a maximum of N150 per bag. For those of us that import into the country through sea ports pay duties, levies and pay wages, one would see that the smugglers are sabotaging the economy.

Read the full article here.

The crash of 2008 revealed the flaw in the euro’s construction, as each member country had to rescue its own banking system instead of doing it jointly. The Greek debt crisis brought matters to a climax. If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the euro may fall apart, with adverse consequences for the EU.

Check out the full article here.

And while you are at it, have a look at Krugman’s column, The Making of a Euromess.

The usual images of Africa are of a continent mired in conflict and squalor. But this picture, based on Africa’s most corrupt regimes, is unfair and misleading – like claiming that all Europeans are guilty of “ethnic cleansing” because of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. Yes, African has some failed states, but most of its 53 countries are mostly peaceful, agreeable places.

Last year, the annual Ibrahim Index of African governance, produced by my foundation, showed that governance had improved in two-thirds of African countries. And if we look at politicians such as Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, or Festus Mogae, the former president of Botswana, as well as men like Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela, the high caliber of African leadership is obvious.

Full article.

The Nigerian president got back to the country in the early hours of Wednesday. It is reported that his flight landed in a well-guarded presidential wing of the international airport in Abuja. From an investigative report by NEXT, we learn that the acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, as the acting Commander-in-Chief, did not release the troops that went to secure the airport, and that he did not approve the guards that are currently guarding him.

Mr Goodluck Jonathan apparently called off the Wednesday meeting of the Federal Executive Council because of the uncertainties surrounding the return of the very sick president.

On the same day, the spokesperson of the president, Mr Segun Adeniyi, issued a press release that says that the vice president is still the acting president, until the president is fit to return to work:

After being discharged by the team of medical experts overseeing his treatment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua returned to the Presidential Villa, Abuja early this morning.

President Yar’Adua wishes to express his profound gratitude to all Nigerians for their prayers for his recovery, their exceptional generosity of spirit and their appreciation of the fact that all mortals are subject to the vagaries of ill-health.

President Yar’Adua is grateful to the Vice-President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, for competently overseeing the affairs of state in his absence.

The President also wishes to thank the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the entire membership of the National Assembly, the Governors’ Forum, the Judiciary, the Armed Forces and other security agencies, former heads of state and other eminent Nigerians for their roles in maintaining order and stability during his absence.

President Yar’Adua wishes to re-assure all Nigerians that on account of their unceasing prayers and by the special grace of God, his health has greatly improved.

However, while the President completes his recuperation, Vice President Jonathan will continue to oversee the affairs of state.

Everything reads pretty normal up to this point, right? Well, it turns out that the spokesperson who issued the press release had not even seen the president up till then. And when you read a headline like Turai Takes Over you start wondering what is really happening in the country.

Obvious questions: Is the president as fit and in the state of mind that the press release says? Who authorised the press release?

And, is Mrs Turai Yar’Adua, the wife of the president, really the one running the country? Did she make them release that press release in order to cover up the fact that her husband is very sick?

Let me try to answer those questions.

According to reports of the return of the president, the man is in a really critical situation. NEXT:

his critical condition has necessitated his continued stay in the Ford E-250 intensive care ambulance that picked him at the Abuja airport. He is expected to be in the ambulance until the intensive care unit that will receive him is retrieved by Julius Berger from Katsina and re-installed in House 7 within the grounds of the Presidential Villa.

If he is in that state then one would not be surprised that nobody is allowed to see him except his wife and his security guards. I don’t think that visitors are allowed in ICUs. This might answer the question as regards why nobody is allowed to see him. The fact that the acting president has not seen him might also be due to that. Remember, the Mrs Yar’Adua has not issued any public statement about the state of her husband’s health.

If nobody has seen him then the press release was probably written by the press office. The main information in the release, besides the part that tries to claim that the president said that he was recovering, is that the vice will continue acting as the president. The part where the report claims that the president asks Nigerian citizens to pray for him might be the work of a press office that is used to writing press releases on behalf of a president who has been in poor health for a long while. They are probably simply used to writing these sorts of things on his behalf.

Now to the issue of his wife taking over.

First, let us assume that she is just a very distraught wife who is able to call on friends of her husband to help secure the airport while her husband – not the president – returned. She obviously would not allow people to see her husband since he is in a critical condition. In any case, the country has an acting president so there is not much to worry over in that.

The second scenario is one in which she is the one calling the shots, taking charge of government, dictating to the Chief of Army staff about how many troops to release in order to secure the airport, and trying to stop Mr Jonathan from performing his duties as the acting president. If this is the case then it is absolutely the fault of those she lords it over that way. She is really nobody, just the wife of a very sick  man who is unable to act in the capacity of a president. If she can command the power she is claimed to be commanding then the so-called ruling elite are to blame for rolling over and letting her take control.

And that might well be the case. In many situations in Nigeria, if you want to curry favour with the boss you do not go to the vice, you go to the wife. Power is often seen as being embodied in the person who holds it. In order to have access to that power one needs someone who has unrestricted access to the Power. That is the wife. Which is why, in order to get the head of, say, a university department to do something one would be advised to talk to his wife.

So, maybe the wife is running the show in that way. Maybe people run to her for favour and she makes them do her wishes because she is the only one who has access to Power.

Whatever the case is, things are going to have to become clearer in the next few days.

And, oh, you are surprised that there has not been any outcry among the populace? Well, it is because nothing has changed in the country. Salary workers still get paid and things appear to be normal. It seems that the machine of government is better oiled than I ever thought.

So, apparently, the Nigerian president has decided to return home, only a few days after the vice president was named acting president. Interesting.

NEXT reports that the president’s ambulance arrived in Aso Rock, Abuja, the presidential ‘grounds’ about 4 hours ago.

See this Aljazeera report for some background to the story.

So, what happens to the acting president? Who will be ruling the country?

There seems to be no end to drama in Nigeria. It is amazing – and this has to be said over and over again – how much Nigerian leaders, in their confusion, have managed to sort of keep it together and get the state going. Somehow. The book on this period in Nigeria has to be written.

Let us wait and see how this develops.

I’ve had this major Ohrwurm for the past two days. In any case, it is one I’m very happy with.

Enjoy!

Mugabe “thanked the Chinese embassy for its painstaking preparations for the birthday celebration and … hoped to further expand friendly cooperative relations in every field between the two nations”, the foreign ministry said.

The ministry’s website (www.mfa.gov.cn) showed pictures of Mugabe cutting a birthday cake in front of a large sign wishing him “Happy 86th birthday” and addressing almost 100 guests.

Really, no kidding.

writes Gopnik in The Philosophical Baby, a tour through the recent findings of cognitive science about the minds of young children. For one thing, the prefrontal lobe, which has a major part in blocking out stimuli from other parts of the brain and fostering internally driven attention, is undeveloped in young children, and doesn’t fully form in most people until they are in their twenties. Internally driven attention, cognitive research suggests, isn’t a capacity that children fully acquire until at least the age of five. What arouses them is what is in front of their eyes, the first burst of information about cause and effect in the physical world.

That is from an interesting review article in the New York Review of Books.

The Aristotelian view had it that the child wasn’t important for himself, but rather for his potential. Gopnik reverses this view. She finds that the child is a full partner, with a different brain than that of the adult, more capacious, with a greater plasticity, and a more highly attuned ability to drink in new information. The child is the auteur, the adult the producer.

I find the whole article really fascinating. And not just because I became a father last month.

A Lagos High Court has given nod to 80 aggrieved investors, bonded in a class action suit, to seek legal remedies against a Lagos asset management company, BGL Ltd., for an alleged N30 billion financial fraud in a private placement offer.

In the nation’s first class action lawsuit in the margin loan crisis, Justice Charles Archibong of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos, certified the suit and appointed two investment houses, EP Staff Investments Ltd. and Gold and Gate Resources Ltd., to act as representatives for “all the investors” who subscribed to BGL’s PP.

How did it happen?

In November 2007, BGL Limited (now Plc), a registered broker and capital market operator, advertised a Private Placement offer of 4.3Billion Ordinary Shares at N7 per share to raise N30.1Billion ($250million).

BGL approached some staff of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in Port Harcourt whom they considered “a select list of potential investors” with the capacity to subscribe to “a minimum of 1,000,000 shares and multiples of 100,000 shares thereafter”.

After only few of them purchasing the minimum N7million share units, BGL encouraged others to form a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) in order to avail them funds it had obtained from First Inland Bank (now Finbank), the lead underwriters for the Private Placement.

BGL promised them that “within the next 18-24 months”, it would be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange via an Initial Public Offering and that the value of the shares would increase to between N15-N30 by December 2008. It also said that allotment of shares and share certificates would be issued soon after the placement.

BGL’s stock broking subsidiary, BGL Securities Ltd., said it would provide an Over the Counter (OTC) market on “Bloomberg” and “Reuters” for shareholders seeking liquidity, while it was promised that an Annual General Meeting (AGM) would hold after the placement.

But

By August 2009, Finbank Plc. was found guilty of excessive non-performing loans. BGL with Finbank officials then decided to shift its debt unto BGL shareholders who received margin loans, by allegedly forging documents authorising a facility from the bank to them.

To achieve this, a staff of BGL’s Corporate Treasury, Bolaji Oyemade, said “there is urgent need for BGL to provide Finbank with the passport photographs of our shareholders who took advantage… to invest in BGL PP.” The photographs were said to be needed to update KYC (Know-Your-Customer) requirements with Finbank.

Mr. Oyemade scheduled a meeting between BGL, its shareholders and Finbank at the bank’s head office in Lagos on August 31 and September 2, 2009 where EFCC operatives led by Wakili Mohammed, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, allegedly intimidated, harassed and detained the shareholders so as to force them sign documents and issue post-dated cheques showing their perceived indebtedness to Finbank.

Read the whole story here. Have to keep my eye on this.