Who would have thought that after my last post that I would be so upset by England losing to Portugal? But there was something about the heart with which they played with ten men against eleven that won me completely over. Aaron Lennon and Crouch were both playing with all their hearts and you couldn't but wish them well. Every minute from the 62nd when Rooney got sent off was a cliffhanging, lip-chewing one....and when it all ended in tears, I found myself with a lump in my throat as well....It was such a shame that Rooney fell victim to the provocation, but then when all's said and done, he is ONLY a 20 year old....I'm sure there'll be lessons for him in this. To add insult to my English friends' injury, France won THEIR match, going on to the semifinals. At the end of the England Portugal match, my friends had said, "Now we're supporting anyone but France"....Oh I said "Do you dislike the French more than the Germans then?" "Of course" they all spat with one voice, leaving me yet again bewildered by the hierarchical nature of these intra-European rivalries.....
Had friends visiting from Nigeria over the weekend with disparate rumours about why Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was moved from Finance. One school of thought was that it was to clear the path for building up a war chest for the 2007 elections. The other (less complimentary) was that it had to do with the brouhaha over commissions for the debt buy back. I've come up with my own theory- a middle ground combining both: in order to build war chest, commissions brouhaha is waved in the air to secure acquiescence...or perhaps there is no shred of truth in it all.....
Freedom of speech is under threat both in Nigeria and the UK. In the UK, Steven Jago was arrested under the Serious and Organized Crimes Act for carryinga placard and copies of a Vanity Fair article entitled Blair's Big Brother Britain outside Parliament. News of this led me to go out and buy Vanity Fair so I could read the offending article by Henry Porter, a columnist in The Guardian. I must say the picture he paints is quite scary, but what is even scarier is the deafening silence from the press and members of the public. Why on earth should demonstrations be banned within one kilometre of Parliament- a radius that very conveniently includes 10 Downing Street? Security measures are already in place and tourists are free to mill about so it cannot be about that. Or perhaps the police are worried about spontaneously combusting placards? The mind boggles......
Taking a leaf from our erstwhile colonial masters, the Nigerian State Security Service arrested journalists who questioned the safety and security of the newly acquired presidential aircraft were arrested and charged with sedition.
Since Tony Blair recently put in a proposal for a new executive plane, perhaps he'll be taking a leaf from his good friend Obasanjo if any dare criticize the move......
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