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Must Baroness Lynda Chalker Insult
Us Too?
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Before now, the only thing I could vaguely
recollect about Baroness Lynda Chalker was that the last time I
saw her, and that was during the reign of late General Sani
Abacha or so, somehow, I had thought she was slightly overweight
and needed some help. I am not too sure now if I also thought
she could use the services of a dietician or a visit to the gym
then, but what I remember vividly was that at that time, the
ebullient Baroness took extreme delight in throwing her weight
about all over Africa as Britain’s Minister for Overseas
Development.
In fact, the way she spoke and carried
herself in those days, one always had this unappetizing feeling
she sometimes probably derived undue ecstasy with some delusive
thought that she may have after all become some kind of colonial
administrator over Africa and her peoples.
But until last February, when I stumbled on
the report of the outrageous and totally scandalous statement
she made at the Nigerian Investment Forum in Abuja, I had
practically forgotten about this woman.
No doubt, Baroness Chalker, has since ceased
to be of any real use to her country, and has probably been
politely dumped in the camp of yesterday people, but you can
trust my country, the Giant of Africa, to find her attractive
for a very lucrative appointment. I am told that President
Olusegun Obasanjo has appointed her the Chairperson of
Nigeria’s International Investment Advisory Council. Her brief
is to use her “powerful influence” and “wide
connections” to persuade the much sought-after foreign
investors to troop to Nigeria in droves. But in this job, as any
person can attest, she has woefully failed just like the
government that hired her.
And so in order to justify her devastating
failure, she has now reached into the repertoire of
over-recycled phrases of the highly discredited Nigeria Image
Laundering Project (NILP), dredged up the most hackneyed logic
therein, beautifully plagiarized it, and slapped it on the
Nigerian media and Nigerians in the Diaspora.
Hear what she reportedly said in Abuja in
February 2005: “Many good things have happened in Nigeria in
the last 18 months than in any other country in Africa but the
outside world needs to know this to be able to take positive
investment decisions on the country. . . . But often all that we
see outside Nigeria are the negative things. The media and
Nigerians in the Diaspora must take the challenge of telling the
world that good things are happening here. Nigeria stands a good
chance of attracting foreign investors if they have adequate
knowledge of the real situation rather than the perception which
is often wrong”.
Beautiful. Very beautiful! I could see my
good brother, Emeka Chikelu, Minister of Information, nodding
his head with immense satisfaction, as this statement
reverberated around Abuja. Indeed, his Image Laundering Project
is surely receiving a great boost from the “right” quarters!
I can equally imagine “Baba Anti-Corruption” himself,
President Obasanjo, muttering under his breath: Tell them;
tell these ungrateful people!
Well, Mrs. Chalker is welcome to her game,
but a character in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of The Savannah
had noted that it feels good to admire Castro and sing his
praises if you know very well you won’t ever have to live in
Cuba. Yes, to the Baroness, Nigeria is merely a generous casino
box where she hops in from time to time to collect jumbo
consultancy fees with a very long spoon, and that’s all. My
good ‘nwanna’, Uche Nwora, who resides in London,
observed recently in an open letter to Mrs. Chalker on this
subject, that “… in Nigeria, the word ‘Baroness’ has
negative connotations; it is usually associated with big time
drug pushers…”
But like Uche also added, I would not want to
associate the Baroness with that kind of unhealthy trade, but on
a second thought, it does seem to me that the trade she is
currently involved in, precisely, the one that compels her to
seek to discredit our legitimate bitter and excruciating
experiences as a people that have found themselves in an
impossible country ruled by heartless and unconscionable men,
has far worse effects than drug trafficking!
Now, how can you cruelly hit an innocent
child and still expect him not cry out? Why is Chalker
descending on me for daring to insist that my country has no
business remaining in the prehistoric age of darkness, even
after my government has announced that it has plunged 2.5
billion dollars in the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA),
Nigeria’s official Agent of Darkness? Why should my
country in the 21st century remain the biggest dumping ground
for candles, hurricane lanterns, and lots of toy generators
from that country of criminal prosperity called China?
Why must I write this essay with the aid of
candles, while my colleagues in nearby Niger, Ghana, and even
Togo where my president went recently to flex his muscles,
countries not up to the size of Ikeja, and which sometimes look
up to Nigeria for handouts, have since forgotten what it feels
like to experience a blackout? By the way, how many times has Chalker
experienced a blackout in her country? Did she hear about the
gory tragedy of the Ayinla family in Ibadan, where an entire
family of ten was wiped out by poisonous generator fumes?
So, for fear of scaring away foreign
investors, I should keep quiet and die in silence while the
vulgar bazaar goes on in Abuja uninterruptedly? Would Chalker be
able to keep quiet if power supply is withdrawn in Britain
during the next winter when she would need to operate her
heating device? Will she be able to survive it? Is Chalker aware
that Nigeria does not start and end in Abuja, that there are
fellow human beings with blood in the veins like her at Ilaje,
Badia and Ajegunle who are forced by ungodly rulers to live in
hell on earth?
Tell me Baroness, only recently, in your
country, a man called David Blunket was forced to resign as Home
Secretary just because he had hastened the visa process for the
nanny of his ex-lover? But didn’t you hear the last time you
came to Abuja that government officials sink billions of naira
belonging to Nigerians in clearly spurious and criminal deals
and expect to be applauded for that?
Didn’t you hear about Pentascope, how one
insufferably arrogant fellow in the Anti-Corruption government
in Abuja called Mr. Nasir El-Rufai, against every good advice,
engaged some gaggle of “experts” squatting in an uncompleted
Church building in the Netherlands to (mis)manage NITEL, and how
he had declared at the Public Hearing organized by the House of
Representatives that he had no apologies for his scandalous
actions even when his “experts” had horribly run down the
company, and made Nigeria lose millions of dollars?
Do you still remember, Baroness, that you are
the Chair of the UK Chapter of Transparency International (TI)?
Will the TI still retain the credibility to pass a valid verdict
on Nigeria now, given your ecstatic flirtation with the
government in Abuja?
Now, have you been to any Nigerian public
school or government-owned hospital lately? Say the truth here,
Baroness: would you send your grand-child (if you had any) or
even your worst enemy to a Nigerian university or agree to be
admitted in a hospital belonging to the government you said has
recorded wonderful achievements in the past eighteen months?
Have you plied the death-traps we call roads
here? Did you hear about the last strike by doctors due to
non-payment of salaries, and the thousands of human beings (not
animals) that died in the process, at a time our president,
reportedly brought in 160 limousines for the African Union (AU)
conference?
How much, dear Baroness, are you being paid
for uttering these damnable heresies on-behalf of those that
have already sold their souls to the devil? Could you please
list those wonderful achievements of this government in the last
eighteen months which only you saw? You are trying to
attract foreign investors for us, what is the fate of the indigenous
ones? Have you heard of Slock Airlines now flourishing in the
Gambia after several hundreds of Nigerians were rendered
unemployed because it had to be frustrated out of this place
because of base and primitive politics?
By the way, have asked your paymasters in
Abuja why Nigerians are moving their businesses to Ghana and
developing those places and offering employment to the youths
there instead of this place?
Did you hear about such public relation
disasters like the Anambra political crises, how a sitting
governor of a state was abducted and forced out of office by
people who have never attempted to deny their treasonable
action? Have you tried to ask your employer when the anarchists
will be arrested, investigated and tried in an open court as is
done in civilized countries?
Did you hear that the Nigeria Police, acting
on orders from “above”, watched as privileged hoodlums
wreaked violence in a state, killed, maimed, and burnt down
government and individual houses in broad daylight, and till
now, no arrests have been made?
Now, was these scary scenes created by the
Nigerian media or Nigerians in the Diaspora? How many investors
would like to put their hard-earned money in a country where
such brazen advertisement of lawlessness, anarchy, and impunity
is being supervised from the highest office in the land? What
are we really talking about Baroness?
Look, we are not animals but human beings. By
taking sides with our oppressors to blame us, the hapless
victims, for Nigeria’s woes, you have portrayed yourself as
equally unfeeling and an enthusiastic collaborator in this grand
design to kill Nigeria.
No wonder no one could point to any form of
positive development in Africa traceable to your tenure as
Secretary for Overseas Development. You were probably more
interested in embracing the robust bodies of the people’s
tormentors than making any significant input for sustainable
development in these parts. Indeed, Baroness, you must be
willing to admit that the sole motivator of your recent
horrifying remarks about the Nigerian media and Nigerians in
Diaspora is just the juicy consultancy fees you collect from
Abuja.
Nothing more, nothing less.
So, by allowing yourself to throw up such an
incredible faux pas, you have willingly and most clearly
awarded yourself a prominent slot in the infamous list of the
unambiguous enemies of the Nigerian people, and if you have any
modicum of decency still remaining in you, you should hastily
give up the juicy appointment that brings you to Nigeria and
retire to the chilling embrace of your perennially inhospitable
climate. That is the only path of honour remaining for
you, Baroness.
scruples2006@yahoo.com
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A
notable historian of the early republic,
Maier devoted a decade to studying the
immense documentation of the
ratification of the Constitution.
Scholars might approach her book’s
footnotes first, but history fans who
delve into her narrative will meet
delegates to the state conventions whom
most history books, absorbed with the
Founders, have relegated to obscurity.
Yet, prominent in their local counties
and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 15 July 2008
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