A NECESSARY WORD!!!

Nigerian music is now being encompassed by a borrowed culture of American Hip-hop. Ever stronger becomes the pressure, sharply obliterating the beauty of our indigenous music due to the current dense nebulous amalgamation of Nigerian and American culture. It is unfortunate Nigerians, especially the Yoruba youths, do not value their culture.
However, they forgot, an urobo will always be urobo, irrespective of his mastery of Hip-hop slang or any mouth contortion or distortion in morbid attempt to sound like the Americans. This stupidity is like the invertebrate which expended its vitality in the over-development of its thoracic cavity in attempts to have big brains like the mammals. Is it not denigrating or outright shameful, when you see artists from Nigeria dressed in winter hooded shirts, because he believes it is a fashion trend, or civilization, simply because it emanated from the United States?
It is enough time to stop this nonsensical, and I just hope the media will rise up, and write to discourage this malady. True progress for each people lies solely in the advancement of its own culture. A people can only progress through the upward development of what it already possesses, and not by the adoption of something it has borrowed. It is not something personally achieved, not a result of the people’s own spirit, of which alone it could and must be proud.
Look at a Yoruba woman who dresses herself in European or Asian clothes, and then see her when she wears the costume of the Yoruba people! What a difference! How much she loses when wearing clothes alien to her country! Same thing as in clothes is in music, hence the secret of the success and international recognition of King Sunny Ade, and Fela Kuti.
We ought to become indigenous in the purest sense, because true progress for each people lies solely in the development of its own culture. ======deola.

Let there be peace

bcos of oil

Now the deltans‘re at the mercy of the MEND ET JTF;
JTF is bombarding, land, sea and air;
MEND is shooting, east, west, north and south;
Ban-bang, bang-crack-shack-fire;
Helpless children‘re dying, and women're trapped;
There ain't a place to run to, ain't a place to run;
Oh, God of mercy, behold a reflection of a failed state;
Behold Nigeria of the People demonic government tyranny.

Truth don die

Re: Rebranding Nigeria-vangaurd wed. march 18,2009

Basket-mouth wan open im mouth again ooo. So, fellow Nigerians listen to me with open mind. Because, na truth I wan talk again.
Now, here we go. Just last night I read from the Nigerian vanguard how our government is preoccupied with the idea to re-brand Nigeria in the hope to stirrup Nigerians to have confidence in themselves and the entity called Nigeria.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could not but wonder why the government would propose a re-branding at the pedestal of financial mismanagement and economic imbroglio or economic melt-down. How can Nigeria be re-branded when majority of people are unemployed, hungry and angry? How can Nigeria be re-branded without obedience to the rule of law? How can Nigerians have confidence in themselves and Nigeria when justice is dispensed with biasness? How can Nigerians portray the country image positively when money launderers, looters of public funds, election riggers et al are glorified and harbored by government? What is our benefit to build further our house on sand dunes? Definitely, this government is confused and we’ve got a lot of trouble hovering around and over us-ready to annihilate in a slight momentum.
Therefore, am again to say to you that, it is our prerogative to tell Mr. president that we have outgrown the childhood ignorance whereby a parent would put stone on fire and be telling his/her child to be patient for meal. There is the need for us to strive and wrestle ourselves out from the dominion of pdp mafias, because forever they’ll be too hot for comfort.
I understand the problem about economic melt down and how to maneuver out of the suffocation. But I do not understand the preoccupation with the launch to re-brand us,like manufactured goods, while people like Ibori and co are roller-coasting and singing hosanna in the name of yara-dua et aondoaka. ====deola

a mega-house in a mega-city

Behold a mega-house in a mega-city of Lagos Nigeria. At least, if the whites built a "white house" in washington DC, blacks gotta have a "black house". ===deola

Thread of fenetics among Nigerian-Americans

What speak ye, friends? What is all this tumultuous phonetic pronunciation of "girl" as "gurl“? It is incredible, this style has dominated your speech like a ferment. In your morbid craving to acquire american way of English speech, have you not surrogate the beauty of the accent of your Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ibibio, Fulani et al? He who thinks more deeply will not be satisfied with all the loquacious pomposity of English speech, as an excuse to surrogate his africanness. No matter how fluently you might have mastered your american speech, you should remember, an angenegbode would always be an angenegbode, irrespective of any mouth contortion, nose distortion or american speech acquisition. So, it is enough time we disuse illogical fenetics. All hail AFRICANS. ====DEOLA.

Guardian Newspapers

Guardian Newspapers: "The political economy of foreign reserves
By Kenneth Amaeshi

HAVE you ever wondered where the U.S. foreign reserves are? What of those of Britain and Japan? The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the newly created Presidential Steering Committee on the Global Economic Crisis appears poised to fiddle with the economy to stave off the country from the impending catastrophe that is currently unleashed by the global financial system. One of the mechanisms at the disposal of the CBN, in particular, is the control over exchange rate and external reserves. For example, the CBN has recently switched from the Wholesale Dutch Exchange Mechanism (WDEM) that has been in place since 2004 to the Retail Dutch Exchange Mechanism. One of the reasons the CBN offered, which could hold some water, is that the WDEM fuels currency speculations, which further erodes the value of the naira. However true this may be, it is difficult to isolate the entire global economic crisis, and indeed the responses of economists and central banks all over the world from some political influences.

There is a tendency for some economists to give the impression that economic postulations and theorisations are as constant as natural laws. This inclination often stands in the way of critical reflections on the nature of economics and economic behaviours. Despite the desire of economists to position economics as a physical science - often obfuscated through the mathematisation of the physical sciences - economics still remains intrinsically a performative art and presents an arena of power struggles and interest contestations. This understanding of economics is often suppressed in the neo-classical approach to economics and its operationalisation, by its agents.

What is not often presented to the public is that economics, as a discipline, gains its dynamism through strife, rivalries of views, and socially constructed experimentations, so that at each point in time the discipline is disciplined by uncertainties. In other words, economics is not always about the science of the real and the certain. It could as well be an indulgence in academic sophistry and the performance of artificialities. This indulgence is not better expressed anywhere in economic thoughts than in its corner stone expression: 'ceteris paribus - all things being equal.' What is certain and real is that all things will never be equal. The truth is that economics can be very economical with the truth. It is from this perspective of economics as an art of performance, uncertainty and political contestations that one may appreciate the economic hegemony on which the themes of foreign reserves policies are interpreted and enacted.

Neo-classical economic principles and mechanisms can be weapons of mass subjugation by those who have control of them. At the moment, the U.S. appears to be the master of this weaponry and exercises its hegemony parsimoniously through the market system. Since the great wars of the last century, the U.S. domination of the world currency market has not waned. The U.S. dollar is the major reserve currency of the world. This gives the U.S. cheaper access to the reserves than any other economy and helps to save it from currency crisis since every other currency will be chasing it and thereby enhancing its value through a high demand. There have been attempts by some governments - e.g. the Chinese Government - to de-link their currencies from the U.S. dollars. These attempts are often met by high level of politicking, which goes a long way to suggest that economic thoughts and mathematisation alone do not offer the solution. To extend its domination of the world, the amount of foreign reserves a country has determines its credit rating.

An understanding of the politics of foreign reserves perpetuated through neo-classical economic doctrines induces one to wonder why it is not necessary to rethink our foreign reserve policies. Will it be best to have these reserves outside our economy while poverty ravages significant number of Nigerians or to use them to build our institutions and capabilities to be competitive in the short and long runs? This question is even more pressing now that it has been reported that some credit lines from foreign banks to some financial institutions in the country towards infrastructural and other projects are being withdrawn.

One way to go about it is to ensure that the effects of the withdrawal of funds from external sources on Nigerian financial institutions are cushioned through the substitution of such funds with some proceeds from the countries' foreign reserves. The current global financial crisis may provide a window of opportunity for the economics of the foreign reserves rhetoric and its antecedent globalisation mantra to be politically undermined by national economic patriotism. The Nigerian businesses need all the support they can get to weather the impending global economic recession. The so-called big economies are nationalising their businesses, saving jobs and stimulating their economies, in the name of financial bailouts. Didn't they advise us to deregulate and de-nationalise our businesses? Why have they suddenly changed their tune?

Although the suggestion to de-link from the foreign reserves system may appear simplistic in outlook, it recognises the enormous political will required to enact it, even if it sounds reasonable. First and foremost, Nigeria lacks the economic and political resources to de-link its economy from the reserve currency system. What would we tell the U.S. - the headmaster of the world? What will happen to our oil revenue if the U.S. decides not to buy from us any more? The incentives for the Nigerian economy to be tied to the foreign reserves doctrine, even as the credit lines for Nigerian businesses dry up, arise more from the country's weak negotiating base than the economic superiority of the argument to stick to dictates and demands of the foreign reserves systems. Tied to this weak base negotiating power, the risks of having all our eggs in one unreliable basket - i.e. the corrupt Nigerian politics and the elite class - is even more frightening.

But what does the alternative of investing in local businesses hold for us? One of the likely outcomes of the deliberations of the Presidential Steering Committee could be investments in property and infrastructure, agriculture and '...how best to use the pension funds to continue to sustain liquidity and to fund long term development in the economy' (ThisDay, January 16, 2008). What appears missing or at best taken for granted is that these postulated outcomes would require strong institutional base to function - including the rule of law, strong civil society, good corporate governance, responsible business practices, strong sense of national and economic patriotism, et cetera.

Unfortunately, despite the many pledges to fight corruption in the country and build a civilised society based on the rule of law, lip service appears to be the best we can achieve as a country. The death of national patriotism in Nigeria is the death of our economic independence and political will. In this regard, the hope of building a strong economic foundation and or the political will of de-linking from the foreign reserve system will continue to be an illusive aspiration. Politics and economics are intertwined and should be appreciated as such. The economics of foreign reserves can only be fully understood within its politics and power struggles.

* Dr. Amaeshi is with the Cranfield School of Management in the United Kingdom"

FOR MY ENGEL!!!

Eniola;

Deep in my heart;

Your picture fuels;

A deep dreaming;

And, sensual need;

Becomes high;

All day through night;

My love's on roll;

How I wish;

To be close to you!

 =DEOLA