In a taxi yesterday to a meeting, the driver's black and dreadlock-wearing- so a "brother" and as we settled in, he says to me in that Caribbean lilt- Freezin' isn' it? So I say yes, I agree that it is freezin'. And so he continues, "When I tink of 'ell, for me it's cold, ice cold, not fire. For me to wake up and not to ' ave the warmt' and heat of the sun- that's 'ell" I did point out to him my experience one February when I left the freezing winter of the UK for hot, humid Lagos and how after the first few days of dripping,grimy, sweaty traipsing around town, I was nearly screaming to go back to the cold.......
It's been an eventful few weeks in Nigeria.
Hot on the heels of the announcement that the Nigerian government was going to provide free anti-retroviral medicines to everybody living with HIV, there was another announcement that the government was ordering the release of a good half of the prison population- many of whom had never even been brought to trial. If you have ever visited a Nigerian prison, there again is another alternative vision of hell. So this was cheering news on both counts, even if the talk still needs to be translated into a walk.....
Less cheering, was the impeachment and arrest of another Nigerian governor, Rasheed Ladoja of Oyo State, largely because he had refused to kowtow to an elderly glorified thug who claims that he controls power in Oyo State....of course, being Nigeria, the story is a lot more complicated than that...but hey I only have so much time to spend on this blog....
Then there was the Gbenga Obasanjo interview (or non-interview as his lawyers now insist)
Dr Obasanjo the medical doctor-turned-businessman son of the Nigerian president (or the Nigerian First Son, if we are to follow the nomenclature adopted by the Abacha scions when their father was in power) had allegedly granted an interview with Omoyele Sowore, the daring former student activist and erstwhile correspondent on Elendu reports, the guerilla style rough and ready website that in the last year has blown the whistle on a number of Nigerian politicians-exposing their palatial houses abroad and their murky business dealings. In said interview, http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/content/view/2241/55/ it is evident that there was no love lost between Gbenga and his stepmother, the late recently departed First Lady, but even more interesting than the politics of the famously libidinous Nigerian president's household; are his son's pronouncements on the persistence of corruption at all echelons of the government, his admittance that "only the foolish ones are getting caught", his inference that even some of those close to the President- including the Vice President, one of the more respected ministers, and perhaps his late stepmother and her son- are all involved in not so clean deals, his assertion that his father is a lot older than his official age of 67 and his insistence that his father has no plans of fixing a third term in office for himself. He also admits to being associated with some of the foreign investments in the privatisation of national assets- which perhaps explains why this US trained medical doctor abandoned medicine for "business" soon after his father came to power and displays a worryingly deep knowledge of how easy it is to obtain false passports and presumably open bank accounts in parts of Eastern Europe......
He has since denied granting the interview, saying that he only gave Sowore a lift during which to paraphrase him "they evinced their patriotic views" as Nigerians do whenever they are gathered, while his father has allegedly slapped a gag order on him insisting that the views of the son in no way represent those of the father.
Vaguely reminds me of how another fixture of the Nigerian social and "business" circle, Kojo nearly got his father, the illustrious Kofi Annan into hot water.....
Yet more cryptic steps into the theatre of the dance that is Nigerian politics in 2006 .....
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