Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the captcha-bank domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/c306474/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the email-users domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/c306474/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the wordpress-seo domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/c306474/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131 Tunde Oseni, Author at TalkAfrique - Page 3 of 4 Deprecated: Function WP_Dependencies->add_data() was called with an argument that is deprecated since version 6.9.0! IE conditional comments are ignored by all supported browsers. in /home1/c306474/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
Deprecated: Function WP_Dependencies->add_data() was called with an argument that is deprecated since version 6.9.0! IE conditional comments are ignored by all supported browsers. in /home1/c306474/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
Dr Tunde Oseni bagged a First Class Honours degree in Political Science from Nigeria’s premier University of Ibadan, where he was a MacArthur Foundation scholar at the University of Ghana, Legon in 2005. He did his National Youth Service as a Graduate Assistant at the Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki. He then got a scholarship to study for an MSc at the prestigious University of Oxford, United Kingdom, after which he got another scholarship to do a Doctorate and was simultaneously appointed as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Exeter, UK. Dr Oseni has participated in several international conferences and summer institutes across Africa and Europe and currently teaches Comparative Politics, Public Administration and Leadership Studies at Crawford University, Igbesa, Nigeria. He enjoys reading, meditating, and meeting people.
In case you do not have enough time to read this brief piece, the answer to the question raised above is: corruption. Yes, sounds familiar? I am talking about politicians in developing countries. In general terms, politicians in developed nations are not angels but they are structurally constrained to corner public monies to build private mansions and buy private jets. They hardly can stash away their taxpayers’ monies in ‘foreign accounts’. Any time a leader in Africa is removed, what you hear next is that his assets (and many of the guilty leaders are men) are being frozen in Switzerland or London. It still beats my imagination why someone entrusted with public trust will embezzle public monies and lodge same in private accounts in foreign lands.
Not all politicians make empty promises, and some of them do try to deliver. Human problems cannot be solved a hundred per cent. Some politicians sincerely want to make a difference in the lives of the electorate. Some want to genuinely improve the welfare of the people; build more roads to connect rural farmers to urban consumers, make drinking water available to millions who need it, make environment clean to reduce health hazards, and pay more wages to teachers, civil servants, doctors and nurses to deliver services. But public funds cannot duplicate themselves. As promises and plans are made, and contracts awarded, the same politicians or their cronies or their patrons are somewhere busy, planning and promising themselves and their concubines some big mansions and exotic cars and jets in Dubai, London, New York and Geneva. You see, out of nothing, nothing comes. And the cycle continues till the next election. To break such an ugly trend, people will generally need to wake up, vote right leaders into power and devise means to hold them accountable.
The recent ‘people’s revolt’ against the ousted President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt started on facebook and twitter. Politics and all its contents and discontents now find relevance mostly on the internet. In fact, no web attention, no politics. Politicians have also seized the opportunity of technology to promote their ideas and raise awareness about their policies. President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria made his first declaration to contest 2011 elections on the Facebook. We should have known that the time would come when ‘techno-democratic forces will drive silent revolutions across the globe’ (Tunde Oseni The Economist, 19 June, 2008).
This is the era of political technology (not necessarily in the Michel Foucault way please) and technological politics! It reached the peak when, for the first time in history, a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, as he then was, raised a youth-focused campaign from Chicago to reach the nooks and crannies of the United States. Obama literally started it!
Not only was Senator Obama able to use the internet as a political technology, he also changed the way and manner politics was played. For the first time, a presidential candidate raised millions of dollars via the internet. With oratory prowess and a highly electrifying message of change and hope, Senator Obama changed the face of politics. Before other candidates could realize the power of politics in technology and the power of technology in politics, Obama had raced over. While they were too busy with the old idea of political marketing, Mr Obama had raised several volunteers and foot soldiers from millions of facebooking and twittering youths. While his opponents were using analogue, Mr Obama had gone digital.
Digital democracy is now moving fast across the world. The internet is now the most important tool of politicking. Those who want to catch the majority of their constituents, which in most cases are the youths, have come to terms with the inevitable use of the internet. It is no longer enough to have good ideas; you have got to sell them digitally. It is no longer enough to claim follower-ship; you have got to tell us online. Leaders are now seen in the image which the internet users create for them. No doubt, the cyberspace is limited in developing countries, and could be a very rowdy space for cacophonous views and counter-views, but the cyberspace has come to be a very significant avenue for democratic political mobilization.
[ad#Adsense-200by200sq]
[1] Phrase first encountered during a Xmas Lunch (25 December, 2010) conversation with Terry Dunn, a 64-year old British Linguist and University Receptionist at Hope Hall, Exeter University, United Kingdom: The idea is that all humans, black or white, carry red blood in our veins, and therefore we should see ourselves as one.
Success is a marathon, not a sprint. But many of today’s youth do not know this, or they know but not make it a maxim in running their life race. If we take things easy, and act as purposely and positively as we can, success will surely come our way.
There are rules for success, and one of them is: ‘Never rush’. If you look around you, you will discover that those who have made it to the top are not only those who inherit wealth, fame or name. Yes, wealth, fame, and popular name can open door of opportunities for some folks, but the lack of them, abinitio, does not lock such doors and windows of opportunities either.
If you want to make it in life, as we all make efforts to achieve greater potentials and accumulate better aspirations of life, the rule , ‘never rush’, applies. What do you want to make in life: intellectual progress or social mobility? The best and possibly easiest way to make it in life is to make it slowly but surely.
With this recommendation, I am not saying we should be lackadaisical about life, or that we should sleep off all the twenty-fours and expect miracles to come, what I am saying is that we should organise ourselves, and see our dreams come true one by one.
Remember the scriptural axiom that the battle is neither for the strong nor the race for the swift, but that time and chance happen to them all. In the year 2006, I gave a speech at the orientation event organised by the Student Leadership Development Programme, SLDP, at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The coordinator of that novel student programme, who read my modest citation on that day, is today the Chief Economic Adviser to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am talking about
Prof (Mrs) Precious Kassey Garba, a woman of substance; respectful, respected, and respectable scholar and teacher.
Prof. Garba always told us to believe in ourselves, and that no matter how big a challenge could be, determination can melt it. At the event mentioned above, I spoke about why and how the youth can take their destiny in their own hands. I said the youth should always plan their time and time their plan. I said the youth should always choose their friends and make library one of their friends. I reminded the youth about what Prof Adedoyin Soyibo used to tell us, that when you add value to yourself, the distance from your success is reduced by miles. We can make it slowly but surely. Nothing is worth-worrying or worth-rushing about in life.
The biggest god most people worship is money. Money is good but money is not god. How you get is more important. Remember Napoleon Hill, who wrote in Think and Grow Rich that ‘Quick riches are more dangerous than poverty’. What we need most of the time is organised planning, faith, hope, and action, and slowly but surely we shall make it.
Success is a marathon, not a sprint. But many of today’s youth do not know this, or they know but not make it a maxim in running their life race. If we take things easy, and act as purposely and positively as we can, success will surely come our way.
There are rules for success, and one of them is: ‘Never rush’. If you look around you, you will discover that those who have made it to the top are not only those who inherit wealth, fame or name. Yes, wealth, fame, and popular name can open door of opportunities for some folks, but the lack of them, abinitio, does not lock such doors and windows of opportunities either.
If you want to make it in life, as we all make efforts to achieve greater potentials and accumulate better aspirations of life, the rule , ‘never rush’, applies. What do you want to make in life: intellectual progress or social mobility? The best and possibly easiest way to make it in life is to make it slowly but surely.
With this recommendation, I am not saying we should be lackadaisical about life, or that we should sleep off all the twenty-fours and expect miracles to come, what I am saying is that we should organise ourselves, and see our dreams come true one by one.
Remember the scriptural axiom that the battle is neither for the strong nor the race for the swift, but that time and chance happen to them all. In the year 2006, I gave a speech at the orientation event organised by the Student Leadership Development Programme, SLDP, at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The coordinator of that novel student programme, who read my modest citation on that day, is today the Chief Economic Adviser to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am talking about
Prof (Mrs) Precious Kassey Garba, a woman of substance; respectful, respected, and respectable scholar and teacher.
Prof. Garba always told us to believe in ourselves, and that no matter how big a challenge could be, determination can melt it. At the event mentioned above, I spoke about why and how the youth can take their destiny in their own hands. I said the youth should always plan their time and time their plan. I said the youth should always choose their friends and make library one of their friends. I reminded the youth about what Prof Adedoyin Soyibo used to tell us, that when you add value to yourself, the distance from your success is reduced by miles. We can make it slowly but surely. Nothing is worth-worrying or worth-rushing about in life.
The biggest god most people worship is money. Money is good but money is not god. How you get is more important. Remember Napoleon Hill, who wrote in Think and Grow Rich that ‘Quick riches are more dangerous than poverty’. What we need most of the time is organised planning, faith, hope, and action, and slowly but surely we shall make it.
All humans are omnivores but some are more omnivorous than the others. While most humans, to some extent for vegans, eat fish, chicken, meat and plants such as vegetables and fruits, some actually do eat humans! Clifford Orji was an alleged cannibal caught in the then notorious Oshodi Bridge in Lagos. Nobody, except perhaps the Nigerian authorities know where he is now. And just yesterday, in Bradford, UK, Stephen Griffiths, the ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ was sentenced for slicing three sex workers in his room, and eating them cooked and raw. Stephen showed no remorse and even told the prosecutors he had ‘killed many more’ (BBC News 22.12.2010).
The reason for crime of such magnitude is not one, but aside the claim that the human eater was a psychopath, he was a ‘loner’ and someone who has been emotionally detached from family and friends. If Stephens was a loner, so also was one of his victims, a heroine addict and prostitute. Why is that folks are leaving their sons and daughters, cousins and nephews to battle with the challenges of life all alone?
Whatever may be the cause of the ugly incidence of cannibal tendency in Clifford and Stephens, one crucial lesson to learn is that we must care for vulnerable people. Human beings are political and social animals, according to Aristotle, and according to reality. If we must reduce tendency for criminal and evil minds, we must increase our relationship status. Care for those around you and make them feel they are important to you as you are important to them. As for Clifford, hope he has not been let lose and hope he truly was investigated. As for Stephens, it is better for him to be behind bars than to continue to consume more human beings in Bradford.
