My Beauty Best Teacher

Philip Shenon reports on Omoyele Sowore's investigative media house Sahara Reporters in the Daily Beast:

From a cubicle in midtown Manhattan, a Nigerian publishes staggering examples of his country’s government corruption online—information that would get him killed back home...“This is evidence-based reporting,” said Sowore. “We are here as a check against corruption and bad government. If we have photographs of the corruption, we post them.” He said “a lot of our leaks come from Nigerians who are angry—who want to see a different country.” The site has given Nigerians a journalistic watchdog that local reporters back home in West Africa could not hope to duplicate. In Nigeria, reporters are routinely threatened with violence or bribed into silence.

Pius Adesanmi writes in Sahara Reporters:

The lack of exclusive dependence on illegal slave labor and plantations by the North created a pluralistic conceptualization of the material base of society in that part of the United States. This in turn led to a diversification of the sources of wealth creation and a boundless spirit constantly seeking more diverse ways of societal progress and advancement that would later eventuate in manufacturing and industrialization. Theirs was a philosophy of building society yourself...[continue reading]

Pius Adesanmi writes in Sahara Reporters:

The lack of exclusive dependence on illegal slave labor and plantations by the North created a pluralistic conceptualization of the material base of society in that part of the United States. This in turn led to a diversification of the sources of wealth creation and a boundless spirit constantly seeking more diverse ways of societal progress and advancement that would later eventuate in manufacturing and industrialization. Theirs was a philosophy of building society yourself...[continue reading]

Jonathan Elendu's Elendu Reports and Sowore Omoleye's Sahara Reporters are a pointer to the promise of bottom-up methods. More familiar but maverick instruments like Al-Jazeera have been positively disruptive to the social-political fabric of the Middle East and beyond,however their establishment and operational costs have been prohibitive and a barrier to scrappy potential new entrants. Elendu Reports demonstrates the potential of diligent no holds barred investigative reporting for the continent of Africa enabled by the tools of web 1.0 and 2.0 . Recent reports of corrupt goverment officials with the accompanying images of their ill-gotten luxury properties in Western cities is threshold breaking,the denials and obfuscations of the past by the officials is now indefensible the brigandage seemingly more brazen . The effect of this is undeniable, it brings the third dimension of texture to accusations of corruption, in the flesh so to speak, the world can now see what happens to the revenue and resources of some of the most impoverished countries in the world, while the leaders don the caps of debt-relief and aid. This medium yet to include podcasting (sound) and vodcasting (video),are the developing worlds alternatives to '60 Minutes' etc. The erosion of the digital divide and its interactive enabling nature could have an accelerated cleansing effect on the hitherto incorrigibles that rule the roost, accountability and transparency sought so long in Africa's leadership might now be within its grasp.

Image via WikipediaIn Sahara Reporters Gary K. Busch provides a contrarien view about the crisis in Ivory Coast:

The civil war which broke out between the North and the South in the Ivory Coast was largely about the efforts of the Gbagbo government seeking to achieve real independence; a breakaway from the colonial dominance of the French which controlled almost every aspect of national life. He had the support of the Ivorian people. However now, after all the fighting and suffering by both sides, the current policy of Gbagbo seemed to veer away from confrontation to a policy of restoring the status quo ante; French neo-colonialism. This didn’t work. It fostered is a level of bitterness and rancour among a people who were watching the yoke placed on their necks again and, despite their current apathy and discouragement after years of fighting and sacrifice, they realised that, North and South, they had nothing to lose by sweeping the board clean of their black Frenchmen and installing genuine Ivorian patriots in their place...[continue reading]

In a country of long-term and soaring unemployment, these men found that their political activities gave them slight leverage in an atmosphere of otherwise dwindled opportunities. As one of my respondents astutely remarked, in a crisis-ridden Côte d’Ivoire, “the one business that works is politics.” Admittedly these men were far from gorging themselves off the fat of party politics. Instead, situated at the bottom of the hierarchy, they received little more than its crumbs. But crumbs – to appear as a guest speaker here, to get help to pay a medical bill or a child’s tuition there and to be relatively immune to the informalised state extraction in the form of the regular bribes – are all heavy incentives in the absence of gainful employment. Moreover, each speaker boasted of meeting warm congratulations after a speech, having his name called when walking down the street or being bought a beer from an admiring spectator he encountered when out on the town...[continue reading]

Okey Ndibe writes in Sahara reporters:

At the slightest provocation – in fact, often at no provocation at all – Nigerians invoke God’s name. In today’s column, I imagine a letter God has written to Nigerians titled “You’re on your own.” Here goes. Beloved Nigerians (yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are among the world’s most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt.

Okey Ndibe writing in Sahara Reporters:

Nigeria (through Mr. Jonathan) has hardly earned the right to rebuke players who are so good they rank among the world’s best. Countries like Brazil and Argentina take their football seriously, and the state pours in resources and pursues other policies directed at the germination and nurturing of players. By contrast, Nigeria’s football administrators often have their sights set on the main chance – for themselves. Look at the line-up of players that Nigeria sent to South Africa. Can we point to a single one of those players and say, with confidence, that Nigeria’s sports administrators or sports policies fertilized his emergence or growth as a player? I doubt it. My point: each and every one of those players earned a jersey by dint of hard work and gritty determination...

In Sahara Reporters Aliyu Modibbo Umar writes about the present day Nigerian Emperors who run synthetic states:

Over the last ten years of our democratic life in Nigeria, state governors have deteriorated to become imperial lords where their actions and deeds are unquestionable by the electorate through the legislators of the state. A true legislative arm is to provide restraints to personal impulsiveness but this has been absent in most states of the federation. My argument does not foreclose the fact that there are no islands of integrity exhibited by some governors and legislators. There are, but a majority of these governors fit into the imperial template and this is worrisome.

Nothing surprising here,Western banks and the usual shady deposits:

British high street banks have accepted millions of pounds in deposits from corrupt Nigerian politicians, raising serious questions about their commitment to tackling financial crime, warned Global Witness. By taking money from corrupt Nigerian governors between 1999 and 2005, Barclays, NatWest, RBS, HSBC and UBS helped to fuel corruption and entrench poverty in Nigeria.

Chido Onumah writes in Sahara Reporters:

After almost fifty years of independence, we ought to be used to the buffoonery of our rulers. But even for a group of people accustomed to elite perfidy, nothing could have prepared us for the shenanigans of our rulers since November 23, 2009, when the president was flown out of Nigeria to an unknown destination.
From the initial lie about the purpose of the president’s absence, to the swearing in of the new chief justice, to the purported signing of the 2010 budget by an obviously comatose president, to the latest claim by the president’s chief economic adviser that the president recently spoke to a few top officials of the regime, including the vice-president, we have witnessed countless fawning state officials trying to outdo one another. Atop this Hall of Shame is Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. I do not think anything could have prepared us for the antics of Mr. Aondoakaa, who to all intents and purposes, is the evil genius underwriting the current charade by making sure it gets a veneer of legality.

In the wake of the Umar F. Mutallab terrorist incident, Sahara Reporters Aliyu Tilde eviscerates Nigeria's elite and ruling class :

On contemplation, I think the real reason why we elite are afraid of our newly acquired feather is because of the inconvenience that we will suffer from whenever we visit overseas or the opportunities we will miss in our hideout countries where we send our children to study after celebrating the collapse of our public schools at home; where we take our wives for delivery after we have allowed our hospitals to deteriorate; where we hide the billions we steal daily from public coffers; where some of us think is the Promised Land. Think about it: what restrictive measure would the average Nigerian, who will never have the opportunity to board even a domestic flight be afraid of? Will the airport scanners scan him on his farm? Indeed, we are crying for ourselves, for our interests, not for Nigeria

In Sahara Reporters Okey Ndibe writes:

A nation that jails or amputates the limbs of petty thieves, but encourages its big thieves to run for the presidency – such a nation is bound to sail from one disaster to another. There are many Iboris in the space called Nigeria. It’s our individual and collective challenge to ensure that there’s neither rest nor hiding place for these plunderers – neither in Abuja nor in Dubai

In Sahara Reporters Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo writes:

A revolution is not an intellectual activity. It is not something you can will into existence by standing on the sideline, even if you are cheering. Revolution requires action, commitment and sacrifice.If you are not taking action; if you are not making serious sacrifices; if you are not committed for a long-haul, you are just a mere reactionary.Initiating a revolution is like planning a coup. You want to change the dominant order of things. The beneficiaries of the current order will not sit back and watch you throw them out. They will put up fierce resistance because their way of life is threatened.

Nigerians are a conquered people.-Sahara Reporters
'They Came in the Name of Helping'
A canny chameleon-Blaise Compaoré
The Longevity Project,Ghana.
Black Economic Empowerment failed-Moeletsi Mbeki
Carnegie's gospel of wealth