Kenyans are trying to forge a way forward in their democratic dispensation. Odinga flew into Nigeria to meet Obasanjo. Here is a report written by the Guardian of Nigeria.

By By WOLE SHADARE and DEBO OLADIMEJI

Odinga in Nigeria, meets Obasanjo

Why is Odinga meeting Obasanjo?

Obasanjo supervised the worst election in our history as Nigerians. He perpetrated crimes similar to what Kibaki did last december in Kenya.

Obasanjo is an enemy of democratic processes and it was people like him that squandered the hope of the realisation of the mandate of the June 12 1993 presidential election believed to have been won by late MKO Abiola.

I don’t understand the need for this kind of meeting but I know that African leaders are very insincere bunch of people. They are selfish and egoistic.

I think Kenya’s problems are bigger and more serious than I’d been thinking. Odinga is definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time by meeting a man who installed an illegitimate government in Nigeria.

___________________

disclaimer:

NB: I have not endorsed Odinga as a better person than Kibaki. I don’t know him from Adam. But I know that the last election in Kenya were absolute farce.

I am just surprised that Odinga came to a man like Obasanjo. It shows that Kenya has a very big problem on their hands.

(Original story written by CHIDO OKAFOR …..Published in the Nigerian Guardian Feb 18 2008)

Preamble:

A TEAM of FIFA officials led by the body’s Vice President, Jack Warner, has expressed dissatisfaction with the present state of the Warri Stadium, which the Delta State Government is presenting as one of the venues for the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 2009.

The team toured the Warri City Stadium complex yesterday but was not happy with a lot of things at the stadium. The FIFA team scored low the Warri Stadium pitch, where the game would be played, noting that the field was poorly grassed, thus exposing the earth when looked at from very close range. This, the officials observed, would be hard on players.

Lack of vegetation in the rain forest.

When a Local Organising Committee (LOC) member told Warner that the stadium would be re-grassed before the next FIFA team visit, Warner disagreed, saying that FIFA would prefer synthetic pitch to a re-grassed one.

The first evidence of NEPA

A drama took place as the team toured the Warri Stadium: a quick-fix 30 KVA power generating set hired to light up the stadium while the officials were around broke down and threw the whole inner chambers of the stadium being inspected at the moment into darkness. The delegates waited but power was not restored until they left.

Amos Adamu’s shame !

Even the Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Amos Adamu, could not hide his disgust at the level of unpreparedness at the Warri Stadium. However, Amaju Pinnick, the Warri sub-seat chairman for the 2009 FIFA Cadet World Cup, fought hard to convince the team that the stadium would wear a new look when next it visited.

No light, the 2nd evidence of NEPA.

The FIFA officials were also not impressed with the fact that there was no single flood light at the stadium, and that the stadium environment was too filthy and too indecent to host the world, that purpose-built television stands were lacking, and that the perimeter fence separating the pitch from the spectators looked awkward.

Undressing Room.

At the dressing room, the FIFA delegation observed that there were not enough facilities for a team of 25 players to use at a time, saying it was below the standard requirement needed for such a tournament. The team also highlighted some architectural errors in the stadium, especially in the area of space management.

Food is their problem.

Earlier at a luncheon organised in honour of the visiting FIFA officials by Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State, Warner expressed gratitude for the warm reception accorded the delegation, adding that were he alone to decide on venues to be used for Nigeria 2009 World Cup, he would had approved the Warri Stadium in view of Delta State’s impressive sport records, but said the decision would be made by a large body of FIFA officials. Amos Utuama:

The speech of a Liar!

The state governor, who was represented by his deputy, Amos Utuama, said Delta State met all the requirements for the hosting of the championship, adding that the state was committed to the development of soccer. He said the state government wanted to use the tourney to promote development in the state. The FIFA team included the former Director, FIFA Competition Division, Jim Brown, Senior Manager, FIFA Stadia and Security, Adnan El Guindy, Director, FIFA Competition, John Schumacher, Director, FIFA Communications, Emmanuel Maradas, FIFA Accommodations Office, Enrique Byron, Representative of FIFA Marketing, Christopher Axer, and Cheryl Abrahams, InfoTech consultant to Warner.

VERY INCOMPETENT PEOPLE: NFA, No future ambition.

The LOC team included the Nigeria Football Association Chairman, Sani Lulu Abdullahi, andVice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Local Organising Committee, Mainasara Illo.

One good news!

FIFA vice president, Jack Warner, after the FIFA team on inspection of the Abuja National Stadium declared that the stadium is too qualified to host the FIFA Under-17 World Cup.

By Adeola Aderounmu.

On the 14th of February every year, people fool around the world in the name of love. Teenagers are well indulged in the rituals of expressing their love to their boyfriends or girlfriends as the case may be. It is quite possible that girls and boys use the prevailing atmosphere of perceived love on this date of the year to throw away their precious  flowers. Who knows how many get their infectious first kisses on this worldly date? Adults are not left out of this love game. Incidents have revealed that in as much as the message of Valentine is love, there are a lot of elements of diabolism associated with the event.  

I cannot deny the fact that I have sent 1 or 2 valentine cards in my entire life. I have also made out gifts few times to express my warm regards to the people that are dear to me. But each time I have done that, I have not differentiated the love that I’d radiated on that date with the type of love that I try to radiate for the rest of the month or year. I have tried several times to extend fellowship of love and affection to the people around me or others that I meet throughout the year. 

We live in a world full of hatred, racism, war and general indifference. We have been unable to extend the euphoria of the good times to indefinite lovefulness. This world is full of hypocrisy and the expression of hatred abound.  

The saddest thing about valentine minus Christmas day is its emphasis on expressing love just one day in a normal year and leaving the remaining 363 days to be enveloped by hatred, wicked criticisms, selfishness, indifference, loneliness and broken heartedness.  

It would be a wonderful world if we live everyday of our lives like its Valentine’s Day!

By Adeola Aderounmu.

In early 1996 when I played under a coach in Ibadan preparing for the NYSC football competition, my coach (I forgot his name now) would always scream and shout on any player who made a pass towards our own defence or goal keeper.

Never never attack your defence he would scream! This single offence could ensure your elimination from the screening process as we fought for shirts and places in the team. Lucky me, I ended up on the outside right. We gave a good account of ourselves though we didn’t qualify from the zonals in Lagos. One more reason I have never been to Abuja.

This coach shaped my football mentality a great deal and anytime I see footballers making back passes or getting the ball to their own keeper, I really do get annoyed too.

The other day Nicky Butt of Newcastle made a back pass that landed on the feet of an opponent. Then we had a Gary Neville who netted behind Robinson courtesy of a back pass that trip on a bunch of grass close to the goal line. There are thousands of situations in football when wrong back passes have helped the opponents to win the games!

Ask Rigobert Song of Cameroon and he would tell you the consequences of attacking your own defence.

Egypt played better and deserve to win but Song should accept the responsibility for his errors. In football, you MUST NEVER attack your defence. Shoot the ball wide if you have to: more importantly towards the direction of your opponent’s area.

If only Rigobert Song had done that, Egypt would have found another way to win the game and the burden would not be so heavy on one man.

At a time like this, Song would need to decide on his future and the rest of the team should give him their supports. Errors would always happen and the team should accept the collective responsibility.

Well done Egypt, you are the champions of Africa. The rest must learn from you-the cradle of civilisation!

By Adeola Aderounmu.

This article is also available in The Nigerian Guardian Newspaper:

What happened to a cup of rice at 30 kobo?

One of the oldest words in my vocabulary is thrift. I learnt it before I was 13. When I was a little boy, one of the keys to survival was the act of saving any money that I came by. My parents taught us this moral long before I also knew what it meant to save for the rainy days. My mother still calls me Alowo’nle (meaning the one who has money at home). It is now up to me to ask her the reason for that name. It’s high time I knew if it was a nickname or one of the undocumented names.

I was in primary school from 1978 to 1984. One day around 1979/1980 I went to school with N1 note. At that time, N2 was more than enough to pay NEPA bills but I didn’t know what I could do with N1 note until break time that day in school. Every time I bought something from the food sellers, they always gave me some change back. That day, my best friend and I bought all the things we wanted including fish head, tafirin (peppery groundnut balls), condense (locally made but strong ice cream) and poff poff and I still went home with some money in my pocket.

At the end of that day, I felt so stupid for daring to go to school with N1. I thought about how my mother could have possibly done some good cooking with the money. I remembered that my allowance to school even in 1987 was not more than 30kobo. So my break in school means that I can only buy the small size meat pie without the luxury of LIMCA or Gold Spot! Big size meat pie was 50k.

There was a time in my life that I felt so proud that I could save 70 to 80kobo/ week out of my daily allowance. My father worked as a civil servant all his life until he retired in 1988. My mother left her teaching job even before I was born to concentrate on motherhood and petty businesses. If your family was like mine, your parents must have taught you as well to save all the money that visitors, uncles, aunts and other people put in your pocket on their way out.

What didn’t I learn from my father? He told me that little drops of water made a mighty ocean before I sang it later in school during the morning assemblies. I found those precious lines embedded in the Songs of Praise. My father told me that an opportunity once lost can never be regained. He told me to work while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work. I found that later in the Holy Scriptures. It was my father who first told me to make hay while the sun shines. He said time waits for no one and that prevention is better than cure. Instead of saying goodbye, my father always says “remember the son of whom you are”.

When I think about these things, the words of wisdom and the endless hopelessness facing millions of Nigeria, I always end up not being able to place the real problems with Nigeria. What exactly was going on/still going on in the minds of the few people who have ruined the lives of the other people including the emerging and possibly the unborn generations? May I ask again, how did we get to this madden point such that a return to our days of glory looked almost impossible?

Who were those men who created their own mighty oceans in one night? Who are the men and women who threw away all the opportunities that we had as a great country? Why did they substitute the opportunities with penury and poverty? Who are those people who didn’t get to the river before fishing? Who are those men who worked at night to ruin our days? What did they do with the hay when the sun was shining? As a matter of fact, what have they done with the livestock? Who are the fathers of these men and women? Do they remember whose children they are and do they have names to protect?

When a cup of rice became 30kobo, my mother and the rest of us complained bitterly-how can rice be so expensive? She was very unhappy with all the successive governments of the 80s. Austerity measure was a calamity. The structural adjustment programme-SAP eventually sapped Nigerians of their meager salary and subsequently of their will and power. MAMSER was an attempt to stop the Andrews from checking out of Nigeria but the Andrews and the Joneses who left Nigeria have not regretted their decisions. Today, the siblings of Andrew are still on the march.

When Agege bread came, it was a buoyant choice for big families (in Lagos anyway) and you just need a little ewa aganyi (specially cooked beans) to balance your ratio. After a while everything went away and beyond our reach. Beans became scarce; eggs became invisible and damn expensive when visible. Milk became a privileged part of the meal. Sardines and Uncle Bens’ rice became extinct on the average Nigerian family center table (who dash you dining table?). For several years I could not have a taste of Milo and Bournvita. Even it was as if we became allergic to common Ovaltine. Blue Band butter melted away and Margarine evaporated.

We finally reached a point where no one asked you if you are satisfied with the food you ate. It was enough to ask you “have you eaten?” At that time, a cup was rice was no longer 30 kobo; it was now at a price that you had to choose between eating rice for breakfast or getting a pair of rubber shoes for the new school year. At that time, eating formulas vary from 0-0-1 to 1-0-0. Some prefer 0-1-0. I don’t know what point we have reached today in Nigeria.

I don’t think we can bring back the price of a cup of rice to 1 kobo or 5 kobo but we must do all we can to salvage the situation. We are in a complete mess and there is no one way out. In the meantime, we must begin to adopt and adhere to family control measures so that we stop producing children that we cannot cater for. In the face of harsh economic realities and a haphazard socio-political situation ridden with uncertainties and a special form of madness, we need to stop the exploding human population situation.

Afterwards, we should concentrate on the business of rebuilding Nigeria so that Nigeria can meet up with the rest of the developed world before the turn of the next century. As a short term palliative, the enthronement of a legitimate government with legitimate goals is paramount. Nigeria needs a government that will look into the sufferings of the masses and apply concrete measures that will resuscitate the hope and national pride of Nigerians. Eliminating corruption, greed and tribalism with be useful approaches among many others.