Blair, Brown, disloyalty and Okija, female foreign ministers, recent reading and Isioma Daniel

The whole fuss around Tony Blair and his leaving date seems to have reached a new peak or trough(depending on whose side you are on) overnight. Only yesterday morning Blairites were insisting that it would be premature and damaging to set a leaving date and then by this morning, they were all over the place loudly saying that the Tone would be gone by next summer. Whether this had anything to do with the leakage of a planned triumphal victory tour of the country by the Blessed Blair early next summer was unclear but it was obvious that there had been an orchestrated message sent to the Blair loyalists to let rip. What was crystal clear to all observers was the hilt of the dagger sticking out of Gordon Brown's back....in all the interviews, the Blairites made it clear that there was no anointed successor and that the field for the succesion was open to all comers. While I have had my reservations about whether or not Gordon Brown can pull off the feat of leading Labour to a fourth election victory, I can't help but feel that he has been massively betrayed by Tony Blair who appears to have reneged on whatever formal or informal agreements they had had when Brown stepped down for Blair in 1994....Perhaps Brown should have considered dragging Tony to the infamous Okija shrine and made him swear there like some Nigerian politicians do to their acolytes, and then he wouldn't be where he is now....

For some reason I was thinking recently about Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and then my thoughts turned to female foreign ministers as she's since been replaced by another woman- Professor Joy Ogwu- and it then occurred to me that Nigeria, Israel, the UK and the US all currently have female foreign ministers- Tzipi Livni, Margaret Beckett and the delectable (!?!) Condi. Googling to see if any other countries did led me to this very interesting website http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/foreign_ministers_current.htm which has details of female leaders globally (complete with pictures)...

Just finished Atonement- Ian McEwan's novel published in 2001 which I had been meaning to read after I enjoyed Saturday. I was initially skeptical and unsure where the story was going but the ending definitely packed a punch- really great, thoughtful book. At the moment I'm reading what would probably be the equivalent of blogs from 1940s England- diaries kept by various ordinary people as part of the Mass Observation project http://www.massobs.org.uk/introduction.html now published in book form in Our Hidden Lives. It's very interesting to see what ordinary people made of the end of World War II, the Nuremberg trials and other historical events

I see Obasanjo has carried out another of his minor reshuffles exchanging the Ministers for Communications and the Minister of Works- what this really means six or so months to the end of his tenure, who can really say?

Meanwhile 7 months to the Nigerian presidential elections, there's a deafening silence as far as candidates putting forward their manifestos- perhaps they are still waiting for an anointing at Okija or whichever shrine has taken over as the anointing venue of choice for aspirant Nigerian leaders....

Finally, if like me you have ever wondered- "Whatever happened to Isioma Daniel? (the NigerianThisday reporter whose article on the Miss World beauty pageants in 2002 allegedly set off an orgy of violence) There's an update here- http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/isioma.html