WHY OBASENJO WILL FAIL
People’s Democratic Party chieftain and former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, may be defeated, as he jostles along with the former military president, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida for the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT) chairmanship in the next convention of the party.
From the sensibility and comments from the party stalwarts and delegates one would discover that they would tilt towards Babangida because of his humane and democratic disposition despite his military background.
The erstwhile labour boss, who spoke to Daily Sun in Yola, declared that the dictatorial posture of Obasanjo would greatly count against him at the PDP national convention, while Babangida would emerge as the consensus BOT chairman because he commands more respect of party stalwarts.
Though the former leaders have military background, Obasanjo was more dictatorial and unreceptive to corrections when mistakes were pointed out to him. Actually, the two have military orientation. The difference is that one was a military head of state and later, became a civilian president. But who was more liberal, democratic, accessible and sensitive to the plights of Nigerians during their respective regimes? you may ask.
Monday, 26 November 2007
Sunday, 18 November 2007
The Dynamics Of African Hair
The Dynamics Of African Hair
The difference between those africans who have gorgeous healthy hair, and those who do not, is knowledge. Once you know what your hair likes, and what it does not like, then you are already on your way to glorious hair. If you listen to what your hair tells you, you can return strength to structure.
Your hair is as individual as your signature, and so you need to treat it a little differently from any other person’s hair. It is important that your hair has the right texture before the right style will follow. And this is why you must stop following the crowd when it comes to your hair. Can you recall all those things you do or have done to your hair, but which common sense tells you is wrong? And yet, you sit there while the stylist bullies you into having that touch-up immediately after your three month-old braids came off!
Bad hairdressing practices are the single most common causes of hair damage and breakage to black hair today. Of course, we have individual causes like tight braiding, which do irreparable damage to the hairline especially. These are all referred to as styling damage; i.e. damage that one gets when one wears certain hairstyles.
The only way to healthier hair is to avoid all harmful procedures, and hairstyles that are bound to cause trauma and breakage to the hair, no matter how beautiful the style may be. Preventing damage is easier and cheaper than repairing hair; when you prevent, your work is then limited to strengthening and improving the hair, rather than seeking to first repair and then reconstruct damaged hair.
The difference between those africans who have gorgeous healthy hair, and those who do not, is knowledge. Once you know what your hair likes, and what it does not like, then you are already on your way to glorious hair. If you listen to what your hair tells you, you can return strength to structure.
Your hair is as individual as your signature, and so you need to treat it a little differently from any other person’s hair. It is important that your hair has the right texture before the right style will follow. And this is why you must stop following the crowd when it comes to your hair. Can you recall all those things you do or have done to your hair, but which common sense tells you is wrong? And yet, you sit there while the stylist bullies you into having that touch-up immediately after your three month-old braids came off!
Bad hairdressing practices are the single most common causes of hair damage and breakage to black hair today. Of course, we have individual causes like tight braiding, which do irreparable damage to the hairline especially. These are all referred to as styling damage; i.e. damage that one gets when one wears certain hairstyles.
The only way to healthier hair is to avoid all harmful procedures, and hairstyles that are bound to cause trauma and breakage to the hair, no matter how beautiful the style may be. Preventing damage is easier and cheaper than repairing hair; when you prevent, your work is then limited to strengthening and improving the hair, rather than seeking to first repair and then reconstruct damaged hair.
Sunday, 11 November 2007
UNILATERALISM: A COURSE FOR PERCEPTION
UNILATERALISM: A COURSE FOR PERCEPTION
By Kenneth Egere
It is not strange to verify among the journalists a certain mistrust toward "institutional sources" that they act as craftsmen of "informative poisonings" or respect to the job of some employees press nearly considered "agents of the manipulation." A mistrust similar to that, that certain institutions generically feed toward the media, when they criticize their superficiality or their habit to accent the negative aspects. The journalists, after all, recognize and they appraise a lot the role of the employees press when they have moved from true professionalism and from interest to help in to adequately develop their informative assignment, when I am able of to effectively communicate and openly in times of good person or bad news.
After all, these different perceptions derive from different ways to develop the function of Media Relations and they hide a different conception on the nature of the journalism. To reach a great clarity esposition, we have tried to reassume these different attitudes in two great models in other to develop this function. It is aimed to be understand well that it deals with a simplification because in the reality of the profession it exists, between the black and the white, a wide gradation of grey.
One founds upon a conception of the understood journalism whether to be able to the service of particular affairs
It is a model that is centered on the good image of the institution or person, agreement as popularity. To get good image seems to justify every action. Even if in unconscious way the office generally, prints curtains to often incur in the use of techniques of manipulation and in other ethical abuses: publicity hidden in the form of press release, organization of pseud. events, hiding of information of public interest, pressures on the journalists so that publishes a news, disproportionate gifts as exchange of informative spaces, etc.
The unidirectional paradigm seeks the effectiveness (the goal justifies every mean) rather than the efficiency (attitude of whom assembles in the correct means to come the desired goals). This model, is very diffused unfortunately in the today's panorama of the institutional communication, and it has contributed to the denigration of the profession of the employees press. The practical result is the communicative failure because after sometime the journalists they discover not him respected in their role and they justly have the tendency to close the streets of the communication.
By Kenneth Egere
It is not strange to verify among the journalists a certain mistrust toward "institutional sources" that they act as craftsmen of "informative poisonings" or respect to the job of some employees press nearly considered "agents of the manipulation." A mistrust similar to that, that certain institutions generically feed toward the media, when they criticize their superficiality or their habit to accent the negative aspects. The journalists, after all, recognize and they appraise a lot the role of the employees press when they have moved from true professionalism and from interest to help in to adequately develop their informative assignment, when I am able of to effectively communicate and openly in times of good person or bad news.
After all, these different perceptions derive from different ways to develop the function of Media Relations and they hide a different conception on the nature of the journalism. To reach a great clarity esposition, we have tried to reassume these different attitudes in two great models in other to develop this function. It is aimed to be understand well that it deals with a simplification because in the reality of the profession it exists, between the black and the white, a wide gradation of grey.
One founds upon a conception of the understood journalism whether to be able to the service of particular affairs
It is a model that is centered on the good image of the institution or person, agreement as popularity. To get good image seems to justify every action. Even if in unconscious way the office generally, prints curtains to often incur in the use of techniques of manipulation and in other ethical abuses: publicity hidden in the form of press release, organization of pseud. events, hiding of information of public interest, pressures on the journalists so that publishes a news, disproportionate gifts as exchange of informative spaces, etc.
The unidirectional paradigm seeks the effectiveness (the goal justifies every mean) rather than the efficiency (attitude of whom assembles in the correct means to come the desired goals). This model, is very diffused unfortunately in the today's panorama of the institutional communication, and it has contributed to the denigration of the profession of the employees press. The practical result is the communicative failure because after sometime the journalists they discover not him respected in their role and they justly have the tendency to close the streets of the communication.
Monday, 5 November 2007
Oil And Politics In The Niger Delta
Oil and Poverty in the Niger Delta
By Kenneth Egere
‘...the oil boom has become, to the people of the Niger Delta region, a doom, and years of official neglect has resulted in the Niger Delta Region of today being the epitome of hunger, poverty and injustice.’
Today the Nigerian government and the oil companies operationg in the Niger Delta will gross over US$120 million from pumping oil and gas in the Niger Delta. Tomorow will be around the same.
Every day, around 2 million barrels of oil are pumped from the Niger Delta. At $60 a barrel, that’s about $12 million. Increasingly, natural gas is also being exported from the Niger Delta, adding to the millions in revenues generated every day.
The International Monetary fund calculated that Nigeria earned over US$350 billion in oil revenues between 1965 and 2000, with oil prices soaring, billions more have been earned. The people of the Delta see this wealth being pumped from around them; the high security compounds of the foreign oil workers a reminder of the wealth being enjoyed y a few. What they get in return, and what they have gotten for the past 50 years, is pitiful. Not only have they received little but they have been made even more impoverished by the pollution, corruption and the conflict that oil production has brought in their midst.
Nigeria is among the fifteen poorest countries in the world and 70% of its people live below the poverty line yet is among the tenth largest producers of crude oil in the world. Oh what a rap of wealth. In fact, life expectancy is only 51.2 compared to the UK average of 78. In the Delta region, less than 30% of the people have access to safe water and the prevalence of mortality rate is the highest in Nigeria.
The villages of the Niger Delta, like many across Nigeria, lack basic amenities; running water, sanitation, health care and schools. The cities overflow with slums. There is no quick fix to the problem of poverty in Nigeria and the vast Niger Delta. There is no shortage of money. In fact, many observers comment that is the vast sums of money generated by the oil and gas that keeps Nigeria poor. They provide irresitable bounty for corrupt politicians and civil servants to fight over. They allow for massive waste in the operation of state.
The corruption that eats away Nigeria’s oil wealth is not carried out in isolation. Multinational oil companies are complicit. For 50 years, shell has done business with every corrupt official and military dictator that has happened to be running Nigeria. It has always been part of the system that rather than enriching Nigeria impoverishes it. Likewise, Chevron, ExxonMoil, Agip and Total, along with hundreds of smaller oil companies, contractors and service companies have done what ever it takes to do business in Nigeria.
Facilitating the epic theft of Nigeria’s oil wealth is an international system of tax havens that enables Nigeria’s elites to disappear billions of dollars without a trace. The UK and US are at the heart of maintaing that system; a system that benefits the rich and harms the poor. If I may ask, my must we remain poor? Is poverty are birth right? Can’t we fight for our fundamental human right and enjoy social amenities like pipe borne water, good roads, sanitation, constant power supply, stable educational like others?
By Kenneth Egere
‘...the oil boom has become, to the people of the Niger Delta region, a doom, and years of official neglect has resulted in the Niger Delta Region of today being the epitome of hunger, poverty and injustice.’
Today the Nigerian government and the oil companies operationg in the Niger Delta will gross over US$120 million from pumping oil and gas in the Niger Delta. Tomorow will be around the same.
Every day, around 2 million barrels of oil are pumped from the Niger Delta. At $60 a barrel, that’s about $12 million. Increasingly, natural gas is also being exported from the Niger Delta, adding to the millions in revenues generated every day.
The International Monetary fund calculated that Nigeria earned over US$350 billion in oil revenues between 1965 and 2000, with oil prices soaring, billions more have been earned. The people of the Delta see this wealth being pumped from around them; the high security compounds of the foreign oil workers a reminder of the wealth being enjoyed y a few. What they get in return, and what they have gotten for the past 50 years, is pitiful. Not only have they received little but they have been made even more impoverished by the pollution, corruption and the conflict that oil production has brought in their midst.
Nigeria is among the fifteen poorest countries in the world and 70% of its people live below the poverty line yet is among the tenth largest producers of crude oil in the world. Oh what a rap of wealth. In fact, life expectancy is only 51.2 compared to the UK average of 78. In the Delta region, less than 30% of the people have access to safe water and the prevalence of mortality rate is the highest in Nigeria.
The villages of the Niger Delta, like many across Nigeria, lack basic amenities; running water, sanitation, health care and schools. The cities overflow with slums. There is no quick fix to the problem of poverty in Nigeria and the vast Niger Delta. There is no shortage of money. In fact, many observers comment that is the vast sums of money generated by the oil and gas that keeps Nigeria poor. They provide irresitable bounty for corrupt politicians and civil servants to fight over. They allow for massive waste in the operation of state.
The corruption that eats away Nigeria’s oil wealth is not carried out in isolation. Multinational oil companies are complicit. For 50 years, shell has done business with every corrupt official and military dictator that has happened to be running Nigeria. It has always been part of the system that rather than enriching Nigeria impoverishes it. Likewise, Chevron, ExxonMoil, Agip and Total, along with hundreds of smaller oil companies, contractors and service companies have done what ever it takes to do business in Nigeria.
Facilitating the epic theft of Nigeria’s oil wealth is an international system of tax havens that enables Nigeria’s elites to disappear billions of dollars without a trace. The UK and US are at the heart of maintaing that system; a system that benefits the rich and harms the poor. If I may ask, my must we remain poor? Is poverty are birth right? Can’t we fight for our fundamental human right and enjoy social amenities like pipe borne water, good roads, sanitation, constant power supply, stable educational like others?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)