Tunde Oseni, Author at TalkAfrique

December 20, 2010December 21, 2010

Give Us Electricity, Not Megawatts

I was a student of Physics, so I know what a megawatt means, but Nigerians are actually tired of the ‘megawatts stories’. All that the government has been promising without fulfilment are more megawatts by ‘next year’. So far, nothing has happened. Yet, without stable and reliable electricity, you cannot produce anything, and if Nigeria must achieve the Millennium Development Goals and or even gravitate toward becoming a G20 country, she must get her electricity right as soon as possible

According to the Managing Director of the World Bank, and Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, electricity consumption per capita in Nigeria in 2009 was 106 kilowatts. This is abysmal, she said, when compared with other growing economies: 443 kilowatts for India, 2,443 kilowatts per capita for China, and 4,921 for South Africa. Said she: ‘Nigeria generates about 4,000 megawatts of electricity for 150 million people; South Africa generates 45,000 megawatts for 49 million people (while) Indonesia generates 30,900 megawatts for its 200 million plus people. Even though South Africa is generating 45,000, the country has just gone to the World Bank for a mega loan over $3.5 billion, the biggest the World Bank has ever made’ (Vanguard 6 Dec. 2010).

The multiplier effects of a stable and reliable power supply cannot be over-emphasised. If there is light, there will be jobs, and crimes like robbery and kidnapping will nosedive. It is unfortunate that more than 60 million generators make noise every day and night in Nigeria, and the monies used in fuelling these noise makers can even finance an annual budget.
The rich people who benefit from this lamentable circumstance should not worry whether a stable power would deplete their purse; they can as well choose to invest in the power sector and Nigerians who buy petrol and diesel will definitely buy the light! We do not need a formal declaration of an ‘emergency in the power sector’; there has been an emergency in this sector since as far as we can remember.
Let all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory create the ministries and departments for electricity; let all local governments replace all old transformers in all wards, and let there be light; and no one will care if at all they came in naijawatts!

December 18, 2010

Nigeria’s Millionaires by Promo

Money is good, and so everybody wants money. But the proliferation of promos and lotteries by telecommunications companies and even banks, by which many hope to get rich quick are essentially anti-social. While a few might be lucky and start thanking their stars that they are now millionaires in naira, and even in dollars, this get-rich-quick attitude needs to be examined. It is like robbing many to enrich few, not even to talk about allegations that the companies running the try-your-luck games in town often undercut the intelligence of their unsuspecting subscribers.
The Director-General of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Mr. Peter Igho, once said that “one of our major telecom operators made a profit of N2 billion from a lottery game and I do not think it gave up to N20 million to the public who played the lottery. Imagine the impact on the people if N1billion had been given to the public as prizes won in the lottery.” (Daily Trust, September 13, 2009).
Aside the cheating claims, the main reason why I think both the telecoms and the participating population should review this kind of lottery is that it tends to promote a materialist and consumerist society. Every young person is made to think that money is everything and the adverts for these lotteries seem to suggest that gambling is the best source of wealth. Instead of focusing on the lottery mentality, telecommunications companies should improve on their services. Call drops, bad networks, undelivered (yet charged) text messages are too common to enjoy the benefits of the global system for mobile communications in Nigeria.
They should use part of the proceeds from these lotteries to execute social responsibility services in schools and health centres. Banks should give scholarships to diligent students and modest loans to indigent ones. Many of our students in public schools cannot afford food and books and when they hear about enrichment by lottery I wonder what they think.
There is no doubt that lottery is a matter of choice, and that there are laws that govern it. Even in the UK some are becoming millionaires in pounds by hitting the jackpot. Yet, the psycho-social impacts of lottery mentality, especially when it is not properly regulated and is being branded as the most normal source of wealth, can only give rise to a material-driven and heavily monetized society, where people, especially the youth, would want to chase money by all easiest means possible.

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December 12, 2010January 8, 2011

Football Fanatics

I am not a fanatic of anything, let alone the round-leather games, whose players only entertain and then smile to the banks. Why should people bully and kill themselves over a “game”? The result of a game can go either way. So, it is important for the supporters of players to withstand the outcome of football matches, even when they are not happy about it.

Suleiman Alphonso Omondi, a 29-year-old Kenyan football fan was once reported to have committed suicide just because the club he supported (Arsenal) lost a match. This is not proper. Maybe psychoanalytic experts may help us explain why some people take football as a religion, and often allow their emotions to overcome their reason when watching the game. The losing players may weep, and react negatively on the pitch, and may even call the bluff of the referee, as Drogba (some Nigerian supporters call him Aderogba!) once did when Chelsea played with Barcelona. But players don’t kill themselves. Look at Kanu or Essien, win or lose, they always take it easy; gentle, cool, calm and collected. It is because they know it is a game.

The problem with fanaticism is that it leaves a bitter taste after a sweet experience. While the players play with one another and even exchange jerseys, knowing that losing a match is not the end of their career, their fanatic supporters fight against one another. Informed investigations show that some football fanatics don’t talk to their spouses for days, some go on sex strike, and some don’t even eat at home in protest of ‘their’ loss. This is still bearable. But ending one’s or other people’s life as a result of a football match is the most unthinkable.

In fact, If Drogba’s Chelsea did not win and Eto’o’s Barca won, what do you stand to lose? If there was no game called football or soccer would you not live your life? If your club does not win today, can it not win tomorrow? We must watch matches responsibly. In short, we should be enthusiasts and fans of football, and not fanatics of it.

§ Earlier version published in The Guardian (Lagos)

December 9, 2010March 6, 2011

Freedom, Opportunity and Tolerance

Sitting at less than five metres from the former President of Ghana, John Kufuor, I listened to what turned out to be one of my favourite public lectures in my adult life. The venue was the Rhodes House in Oxford. President Kufuor was still in power then.

Three words summarised his incisive paper: freedom, opportunity and tolerance. He said in a university, individuals were free, they had opportunity to express their ideas, but these must be nurtured with tolerance if progress was to be made.

I have always held a similar view that we proceed to a higher level of consciousness only when we can tolerate other people’s views. This idea of tolerance, or what some social scientists would call ‘toleration’, does not mean jettisoning our independent opinions for those of other folks. What tolerance actually means is that we are broad-minded, open-minded, namely we reconcile our views with those of others.

Freedom to think, act, and make judgements about issues of life is never absolute. But, in one way or the other, we are all, more or less, free, in the highly globalised, opinionated and competitive world.

Opportunity is available, even though it is not always widespread. But if we dig deep, inside of us, we will see modicums and atoms of opportunity, inherent in all of us. What we need most to keep freedom and opportunity afloat is tolerance. We need to reconcile ourselves with others. We need to complain less, and act more. We need to do as Mahatma Ghandi of India did: be the change we wish to see in others. If we all seize opportunity that comes our way, and we cherish our freedom, and respect the freedom of others, within the context of a tolerant global society, the world, not only us, will be better for it.

Let’s go back to some intellectual basis of reconciliation of opposite views and epochal events. Remember Karl Marx, and remember Thomas Kuhn. Karl Marx (1818-1883) argued fervently, that historically, every society is not static, and that after primitive communism comes slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism, then socialism, then classless communism, which he believed will be the result of all former epochs.

What this means is that all historical stages of development are never perfect, and that remnants of them are carried over into a new beginning. For Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), the writer of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, there is always a Thesis, the reigning paradigm, which then gives away to an Anti-thesis, which in turn gives a way to a resultant outcome called the Synthesis. What this means is that no knowledge is absolute, and that no matter what we know of an issue, there will always be an additional knowledge about it.

This makes us remember the position expressed by the award-winning writer of Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who passionately spoke about ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ at TED Talks. Please see and hear her out on possibly ted.com or TalkAfrique.com, and you will get more insights of what she meant, and what I am actually talking about.

It is only a dialectic and eclectic approach to issue, or what Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe called the ‘harmony of opposites’ that can enrich our freedom as a people, increase our opportunities as a human race , and in turn, make tolerance a virtue we all can share, we all must share, and we all will share

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