Friday, October 06, 2006
Thisday Concert of Charade
Whoever engineered the meeting of Nduka Obiagbena, the Publisher of Thisday Newspaper and Nelson Mandela of South Africa would be biting his fingers now. The Madiba was the icon of the launch of Thisday South Africa and in no distance time the South African government has sacked the organization from its country after it began owing workers salary-it’s a serious labour offence everywhere in the world except Nigeria.
For many Nigerians, especially journalist and those in the business of writing, the closure of Thisday South Africa was less surprising. In fact the surprising thing there was that the Nigerian labour laws has not seen anything wrong in such management system that Thisday management team has ran its Nigerian office with.
Of course, if it was not wrong to owe Thisday workers over twelve months salary there can never be any serious reasons to prosecute the Thisday team for the kind of disrepute that have put the Nigerian image for having to run such a failed system in a foreign country.
At least if Mandela has learnt anything it is that he should choose carefully the class of Nigerian to honour their invitations to launches, Nigerians loves to launch, books even though plagiarized, homes, cars name it.
Nduka Obiagbena and Nelson Mandela are from planets apart and their ideals are poles away from each other.
How do I know? Take for instance, sometimes this October this ‘ailing’ media house would be putting a musical show that its worth is in the neighbourhood of half a million US dollars in celebration of Nigeria’s forty six, independence anniversaries. This showstopper is arguably going to be more colourful than all the parties and the functions that the federal government of Nigerian (the official celebrant) would be putting up.
Definitely the newspaper doesn’t share the same birthday with Nigeria but the Owners are just trying to explore the commercial aspect of the national day on one side and build a business out of it. It is never because they love the country so much.
In all areas of human endeavours, Nigeria as a people has regressed since 1980,no new rail lines have been laid, the GDP is one of the lowest on earth, infant mortality rates have never been higher, her industries are operating at the lowest capacity ever but then we have made so much from oil sales and we re practicing democracy.
Economists says that the Nigeria’s GDP figures has ebbed and it would take 20 years of even consistent 9% GDP increase before we attain the per capita state of 1980. That’s more like a miracle.
Nigeria has the reputation as the fraud capital of the world, perpetuating over 50% of cyber crimes with only about three million people having access to the web.
On the health level, we still have much to grapple with. 11 out of 100 expectant women die. And if Nigeria is one-fifth of Africa’s population (God help our March census) then malaria kills 600 Nigerian daily.
Add all these to the daily news of lawlessness and name-calling in the presidency of shameful embezzlement of public money, you will agree that the Nigerian 46th independent anniversary should be a quiet and sober one- at least for sane and moral minded citizens.
Predictably, because this is Nigeria and those virtues are scarce, we can expect that people with nose for morality and sanity should be expensive.
A sensible 46th independence anniversary should have the one that recognizes the effort being made at ridding the country of these malaises. There never is a better time to assess our stand as a nation than on the national day and best still a moment when education and virtually all what we stand for as a nation has been challenged by corruption.
It is of course not too surprising that Nduka belong to the generation of Nigerian who has not offered the country too much hope, the ones that inherited the post-independent Nigeria with promise and shattered it. The generation that discovered nothing except oil in Nigeria and contributed nothing to advance the world in their time expect for the superior brand of fraud that has earned Nigeria bad reputation.
American rap star Jay z would lead the team of the Thisday idea of celebration for a nation that is serious with its destiny. Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Ciara and a handful of equally ‘focused’ local crooners. It’s a shame we have not heard of anybody declining to perform on the grounds of personal principle rather the Nigerian entertainment world has even been scrambling to be part of it.
We are not even talking of capital flight here, rather it is the avenue that the Thisday has created to showcase our collective unseriousness to the world.
If the Thisday event was meant to be developmental, why cant we reward the microbiologist or the medical undergrad who has just cooked up a new mix that can take out malaria faster or at least cut down our death rate. For now we would still outsource that to the Pfizer scientists in the US while we dance away our collective destinies.
samosita@gmail.com
For many Nigerians, especially journalist and those in the business of writing, the closure of Thisday South Africa was less surprising. In fact the surprising thing there was that the Nigerian labour laws has not seen anything wrong in such management system that Thisday management team has ran its Nigerian office with.
Of course, if it was not wrong to owe Thisday workers over twelve months salary there can never be any serious reasons to prosecute the Thisday team for the kind of disrepute that have put the Nigerian image for having to run such a failed system in a foreign country.
At least if Mandela has learnt anything it is that he should choose carefully the class of Nigerian to honour their invitations to launches, Nigerians loves to launch, books even though plagiarized, homes, cars name it.
Nduka Obiagbena and Nelson Mandela are from planets apart and their ideals are poles away from each other.
How do I know? Take for instance, sometimes this October this ‘ailing’ media house would be putting a musical show that its worth is in the neighbourhood of half a million US dollars in celebration of Nigeria’s forty six, independence anniversaries. This showstopper is arguably going to be more colourful than all the parties and the functions that the federal government of Nigerian (the official celebrant) would be putting up.
Definitely the newspaper doesn’t share the same birthday with Nigeria but the Owners are just trying to explore the commercial aspect of the national day on one side and build a business out of it. It is never because they love the country so much.
In all areas of human endeavours, Nigeria as a people has regressed since 1980,no new rail lines have been laid, the GDP is one of the lowest on earth, infant mortality rates have never been higher, her industries are operating at the lowest capacity ever but then we have made so much from oil sales and we re practicing democracy.
Economists says that the Nigeria’s GDP figures has ebbed and it would take 20 years of even consistent 9% GDP increase before we attain the per capita state of 1980. That’s more like a miracle.
Nigeria has the reputation as the fraud capital of the world, perpetuating over 50% of cyber crimes with only about three million people having access to the web.
On the health level, we still have much to grapple with. 11 out of 100 expectant women die. And if Nigeria is one-fifth of Africa’s population (God help our March census) then malaria kills 600 Nigerian daily.
Add all these to the daily news of lawlessness and name-calling in the presidency of shameful embezzlement of public money, you will agree that the Nigerian 46th independent anniversary should be a quiet and sober one- at least for sane and moral minded citizens.
Predictably, because this is Nigeria and those virtues are scarce, we can expect that people with nose for morality and sanity should be expensive.
A sensible 46th independence anniversary should have the one that recognizes the effort being made at ridding the country of these malaises. There never is a better time to assess our stand as a nation than on the national day and best still a moment when education and virtually all what we stand for as a nation has been challenged by corruption.
It is of course not too surprising that Nduka belong to the generation of Nigerian who has not offered the country too much hope, the ones that inherited the post-independent Nigeria with promise and shattered it. The generation that discovered nothing except oil in Nigeria and contributed nothing to advance the world in their time expect for the superior brand of fraud that has earned Nigeria bad reputation.
American rap star Jay z would lead the team of the Thisday idea of celebration for a nation that is serious with its destiny. Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Ciara and a handful of equally ‘focused’ local crooners. It’s a shame we have not heard of anybody declining to perform on the grounds of personal principle rather the Nigerian entertainment world has even been scrambling to be part of it.
We are not even talking of capital flight here, rather it is the avenue that the Thisday has created to showcase our collective unseriousness to the world.
If the Thisday event was meant to be developmental, why cant we reward the microbiologist or the medical undergrad who has just cooked up a new mix that can take out malaria faster or at least cut down our death rate. For now we would still outsource that to the Pfizer scientists in the US while we dance away our collective destinies.
samosita@gmail.com
