Some time in 2009 a friend of mine who read Political Science in University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was visiting me after eight years.
THE IGBO GIANT STRIDES AGAINST ALL ODDS
9 years ago
The boy was invisible from the skies I flew in over the day before, wandering alone somewhere under cover of the plantations that blanket Malaysian Borneo. The monoculture is carved by muddy rivers where crocodiles lurk and laterite roads that lead to processing plants with belching steel smoke stacks. Patches of clear-cut earth indicate where some farms are being expanded to keep the boilers full and the profits flowing into the coffers of the multinational agro-businesses that own them.
On the ground, in the void between the giant trees, Leonary stands out. He plods along, despite the heat and unexpected arrival of an outsider with questions about where he's from, why he's not in school. After moving from Indonesia as a boy with his migrant worker parents, he attended a learning center run by a local non-profit organization. But because he did not have any legal documents, he was barred from secondary school, leaving him with no choice but to work the same farm as his parents for about $7.50 a day. "There is no other option for me," he says.
***
To the Malaysian government, Leonary Marcus officially does not exist.
He is one of an estimated 50,000 stateless Indonesian children living in Sabah province, the country's palm oil producing heartland. Thousands more have come from the Phillipines, born to workers that have arrived in waves since the 1970's to fulfill a demand for cheap labor in what is now the world's second-largest palm oil industry. Without papers that prove nationality, their children are likewise denied healthcare and education, while the rest of the region continues to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Over the past two months, life has grown even harder for migrant workers in Sabah. When followers of the mysterious Sultan of Sulu traveled to the region in early February to re-establish a land claim, a weeks-long standoff turned bloody, leaving more than 70 people dead and scores displaced. Malaysian forces are accused of rights abuses against the migrant community in the backcountry as they try to flush out remaining gunmen, while scores of Filipinos have fled the violence by boat.
In 2011, the export of palm oil and palm-based products earned Malaysia $27 billion -- a five-fold increase over the past decade -- thanks to brisk trade with China, the European Union, India and the United States, which is now importing record levels for its low price and long shelf life. Today, more than half of all products sold in U.S. supermarkets, from cosmetics to candy bars, contain palm oil. And with new government-mandated labeling requirements in the United States and Europe aimed at phasing out unhealthy trans-fats found in other types of oil, demand is increasing.
That's more good news for Sabah, which accounts for one-third of Malaysia's palm oil output. Twenty-five years ago, Lahad Datu, the provincial capital, was a forgotten backwater of clapboard buildings. Drunkards roamed cracked sidewalks by day and nightfall was a signal to stay indoors. Locals recall how their hapless police force was nowhere to be seen when a gang of pirates shot their way into the town's only bank, walking out with sacks of cash over a trail of dead bodies.
Such visions are hard to square with the robust development sweeping the area: Over the past 15 years the city's population has doubled; downtown real estate prices have quadrupled; gleaming business-class hotels and fast-food franchises line newly paved roads that are monitored by squad cars. In the middle of a busy traffic roundabout in the center of town, a gilded palm tree stands as a symbol for the government-led campaign to upgrade a region that has lagged far behind Malaysia's industry-rich Western peninsula.
Jason Motlagh
"Life here used to be much different; it was a rough kind of place," says Tammay Bin Inton, 58, a community leader for whom the days of violent street crime and power outages are a not-so-distant memory. He sat with a group of friends at a popular Indian teashop, talking football over cups of milk tea and samosas. With some pride, he noted that both of his children had recently moved back from Kota Kinabalu, eastern Malaysia's largest city, to start projects of their own and take advantage of the boom. "The quality of life here has improved tremendously," he says. "Business is good."
South of town, lines of tanker trucks deliver crude palm oil around the clock to a sprawling, state-owned refinery complex where fresh lots have been set aside for potential investors. Provincial officials hope that a deep-water port currently under construction nearby will position the region to be a top exporter of biodiesel, if and when overseas demand surges. With government plans to double the overall area under cultivation by 2020, the prospects of Lahad Datu's inhabitants are poised to get brighter.
But when the subject changes to the migrant laborers who keep the tankers revving around the clock, the mood at the cafe table sours. Mention of the vital role legions of Indonesians and Filipinos play by filling menial plantation jobs that most Malaysians would never consider causes the men to grumble vaguely about an increase in troubling behavior ("...the migrants are causing public disturbances"); the erosion of local culture and traditions; and the threat migrants posed to local employment prospects ("...what about the locals?").
"The foreigners must be controlled. They are stealing jobs... Those that don't have documents should be kicked out of Malaysia," says Arnan Angkut, 50, a contractor. As for those who have toiled for decades to the benefit of the local economy, whose children are rejected by state schools and hospitals? "That's up to the bosses (of the plantations). They can take care of their workers as they see fit. We don't want to pay for anything."
It was several days later that I came across an interesting item in the Business Times newspaper: Malaysia is losing at least 3 billion Ringgit ($986 million) in potential exports and tax revenue due to unpicked palm fruit resulting from its labor shortage. To avoid huge losses and hit target output goals, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board estimated that 40,000 additional workers needed to be hired, and fast. The article pointed out that many oil palm planters are mechanizing agricultural practices wherever possible and offering better wages in the estates across the region.
"Despite this," the article continued, "many locals continue to shun plantation jobs." Officials lamented the loss of potential tax revenues and vowed to get approval for extra foreign workers. No mention was made of incentives that might be offered to retain existing Indonesian and Filipino workers, some of whom are starting to leave the country for rival Indonesia as palm plantations expand into virgin tracts of forest.
The contradiction seems to be lost on everyone in Sabah. Nasrun Datuk Mansur, a state assemblyman and assistant to the state's chief minister, later boasted to me that palm oil is the catalyst for a raft of business activities raising Lahad Datu's profile, and the region's.
Until Malaysia gained its independence in 1957, all children could attend school regardless of where they came from or what documents they had. But with migrant populations now accounting from nearly one-third of Sabah's 3.2 million people, rights activists say that over the years burgeoning nativism has made the government less willing to pay for universal education.
"This whole question that arose from locals that, if you provide the education for migrant children, then the local children lose out," says Aegile Fernandez, program director of Tenaganita, a Malaysia-based nonprofit group that assists migrant workers. In other words: to propose reforms that would extend rights to migrants' children would prove costly at the ballot box. And with elections on the horizon in the coming months, no politician dares stray from the script.
When I reminded Mansur that his government does not currently provide any services, he feinted by complimenting the non-governmental organizations that are stepping up with help from foreign governments and agro-businesses, whose mega-farms dominate the countryside. "The companies are also making money," says Mansur. "They should be responsible to support the foreign children."
Pressed further about the thousands who are not taken care of, he ended the discussion and walked out of the room.
***
They may lack government funding, but Sabah's stateless children have at least have Torben Venning. Tall and sturdy-built, with a fair complexion that refuses to adapt to the equatorial sun, the Danish native has waged a dogged campaign to sew education in plantation country since he arrived more than two decades ago as a traveler.Venning and some friends opened a facility in 1990 to educate 70 farm children. Since then, his organization, Humana Child Aid Society, has established 128 "learning centers" (designated as such because they are not officially accredited) that offer instruction to more than 12,000 students with help from donors such as the European Union. "We came here as teachers and had no idea this was going to develop into the project it is today," he said.
It costs about $13 a month per student to provide lessons in core primary subjects, along with a uniform, two meals and salary for teachers, some of whom are brought from the students' home countries. Venning says that educating them will ultimately benefit the country by "ensuring that they have a future beyond the plantations and don't become part of the social problem."
Yet, ever the diplomat in a land not his own, he tiptoes around the question of whether the Malaysian government's must look after the children of its labor force. He prefers to focus on the heavyweight companies that are picking up some of the slack.
On a searing hot morning Venning drove me out to what he described as a model of corporate social responsibility. The pavement on the outskirts of Lahad Datu crumbled into a dirt track that winded up steep switchbacks before descending into an expanse of oil palm plantations where the dense canopy scarcely allowed any light through.
Jason Motlagh
We finally arrived at the gate of plantation owned by Wilmar International, one of Asia's largest agribusiness companies and the world's largest listed palm oil firm, with more than $30 billion in revenues in fiscal year 2010.
Manager Frederick Chok greeted me with skepticism at one of four learning centers on the premises. Wearing a white company polo shirt, he pointed out athletic fields and a mosque just a short walk away, as well as a new series of concrete barracks where, we were told, veteran workers and their families were housed.
Inside the classroom, walls featured bilingual posters and a flat-screen television with a satellite connection. Twenty-plus students, ages 5-15, were upbeat and engaged. Their teacher, a young Indonesian woman in a lavender headscarf, said off-the-cuff that she'd been surprised by the amenities made available to her, to Venning's visible delight. He capped the visit off by leading the group in an off-key rendition of his Humana theme song, which borrows heavily from a Donna Summer track. Even Chok mustered a smile.
Afterward we had coffee on the veranda of the great house that overlooked the sprawling, 8,000-hectacre property, the size of a small national park. Chok stressed the importance of corporate social responsibility like a mantra and said his company spends nearly $1 million every year to take care of migrant children. In the "competition" to retain experienced workers, Chok added that doing the right thing also made good business sense. (Singapore-based Wilmar has its critics, however. The Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based environmental group, alleges the company's security forces have used violence and heavy machinery against villagers in Indonesia's Sumatra province. Wilmar rejects the claims.)
In Venning's view, larger companies like Wilmar were generally doing more to look after workers' children since the advent of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The Zurich-based non-profit stakeholders group was formed in 2004 to address social and environmental problems associated with palm oil. The group, which unites investors, traders, and oil palm growers with retailers and social organizations to better monitor supply chains and promote sustainability, now certifies about 14 percent of the palm oil produced worldwide.
But systemic challenges persist. Greenhouse gas emissions are not included in the RSPO certification process. As peatlands, the earth's largest single source of stored carbon, are cleared for palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, massive amounts of carbon are being released.
In the wilds of Malaysian Borneo, the high cost of logistics inhibits the construction of more learning centers, giving children no alternative to palm oil work. For all Venning's efforts, Humana and its partners take care of only one-fifth of the children estimated to be living on Sabah's plantations. Even those lucky enough to receive some degree of education have little to no mobility once they become adults.
***
Off a nameless back road about an hour's drive from Lahad Datu, Fatima Binti, 18, gazes out into the endless maze of trees. A shortage of money and the long distance from the small plantation the family works forced her to stop going to the nearest learning center a year ago. Absent documents, she can't go into town, fearful she might be picked up and harassed by police.The maximum fine for not having official documents was 10,000 Ringgit ($3,200), a sum that would exceed the family's haul for the year. The alternate scenario, deportation and being split apart from her family, was unthinkable.
The rain is falling hard as she clicks her scuffed pink nails on the rail of the porch, waiting. She wants to be a doctor and longs to join her friends in class. She hopes her siblings will attend school "so they will be able to read and count."
Until then, Fatima is resigned to stay close to her parents, cutting and clearing palm branches from dawn until dusk, helping them earn whatever they can.
The boy was invisible from the skies I flew in over the day before, wandering alone somewhere under cover of the plantations that blanket Malaysian Borneo. The monoculture is carved by muddy rivers where crocodiles lurk and laterite roads that lead to processing plants with belching steel smoke stacks. Patches of clear-cut earth indicate where some farms are being expanded to keep the boilers full and the profits flowing into the coffers of the multinational agro-businesses that own them.
On the ground, in the void between the giant trees, Leonary stands out. He plods along, despite the heat and unexpected arrival of an outsider with questions about where he's from, why he's not in school. After moving from Indonesia as a boy with his migrant worker parents, he attended a learning center run by a local non-profit organization. But because he did not have any legal documents, he was barred from secondary school, leaving him with no choice but to work the same farm as his parents for about $7.50 a day. "There is no other option for me," he says.
***
To the Malaysian government, Leonary Marcus officially does not exist.
He is one of an estimated 50,000 stateless Indonesian children living in Sabah province, the country's palm oil producing heartland. Thousands more have come from the Phillipines, born to workers that have arrived in waves since the 1970's to fulfill a demand for cheap labor in what is now the world's second-largest palm oil industry. Without papers that prove nationality, their children are likewise denied healthcare and education, while the rest of the region continues to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Over the past two months, life has grown even harder for migrant workers in Sabah. When followers of the mysterious Sultan of Sulu traveled to the region in early February to re-establish a land claim, a weeks-long standoff turned bloody, leaving more than 70 people dead and scores displaced. Malaysian forces are accused of rights abuses against the migrant community in the backcountry as they try to flush out remaining gunmen, while scores of Filipinos have fled the violence by boat.
In 2011, the export of palm oil and palm-based products earned Malaysia $27 billion -- a five-fold increase over the past decade -- thanks to brisk trade with China, the European Union, India and the United States, which is now importing record levels for its low price and long shelf life. Today, more than half of all products sold in U.S. supermarkets, from cosmetics to candy bars, contain palm oil. And with new government-mandated labeling requirements in the United States and Europe aimed at phasing out unhealthy trans-fats found in other types of oil, demand is increasing.
That's more good news for Sabah, which accounts for one-third of Malaysia's palm oil output. Twenty-five years ago, Lahad Datu, the provincial capital, was a forgotten backwater of clapboard buildings. Drunkards roamed cracked sidewalks by day and nightfall was a signal to stay indoors. Locals recall how their hapless police force was nowhere to be seen when a gang of pirates shot their way into the town's only bank, walking out with sacks of cash over a trail of dead bodies.
Such visions are hard to square with the robust development sweeping the area: Over the past 15 years the city's population has doubled; downtown real estate prices have quadrupled; gleaming business-class hotels and fast-food franchises line newly paved roads that are monitored by squad cars. In the middle of a busy traffic roundabout in the center of town, a gilded palm tree stands as a symbol for the government-led campaign to upgrade a region that has lagged far behind Malaysia's industry-rich Western peninsula.
Jason Motlagh
"Life here used to be much different; it was a rough kind of place," says Tammay Bin Inton, 58, a community leader for whom the days of violent street crime and power outages are a not-so-distant memory. He sat with a group of friends at a popular Indian teashop, talking football over cups of milk tea and samosas. With some pride, he noted that both of his children had recently moved back from Kota Kinabalu, eastern Malaysia's largest city, to start projects of their own and take advantage of the boom. "The quality of life here has improved tremendously," he says. "Business is good."
South of town, lines of tanker trucks deliver crude palm oil around the clock to a sprawling, state-owned refinery complex where fresh lots have been set aside for potential investors. Provincial officials hope that a deep-water port currently under construction nearby will position the region to be a top exporter of biodiesel, if and when overseas demand surges. With government plans to double the overall area under cultivation by 2020, the prospects of Lahad Datu's inhabitants are poised to get brighter.
But when the subject changes to the migrant laborers who keep the tankers revving around the clock, the mood at the cafe table sours. Mention of the vital role legions of Indonesians and Filipinos play by filling menial plantation jobs that most Malaysians would never consider causes the men to grumble vaguely about an increase in troubling behavior ("...the migrants are causing public disturbances"); the erosion of local culture and traditions; and the threat migrants posed to local employment prospects ("...what about the locals?").
"The foreigners must be controlled. They are stealing jobs... Those that don't have documents should be kicked out of Malaysia," says Arnan Angkut, 50, a contractor. As for those who have toiled for decades to the benefit of the local economy, whose children are rejected by state schools and hospitals? "That's up to the bosses (of the plantations). They can take care of their workers as they see fit. We don't want to pay for anything."
It was several days later that I came across an interesting item in the Business Times newspaper: Malaysia is losing at least 3 billion Ringgit ($986 million) in potential exports and tax revenue due to unpicked palm fruit resulting from its labor shortage. To avoid huge losses and hit target output goals, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board estimated that 40,000 additional workers needed to be hired, and fast. The article pointed out that many oil palm planters are mechanizing agricultural practices wherever possible and offering better wages in the estates across the region.
"Despite this," the article continued, "many locals continue to shun plantation jobs." Officials lamented the loss of potential tax revenues and vowed to get approval for extra foreign workers. No mention was made of incentives that might be offered to retain existing Indonesian and Filipino workers, some of whom are starting to leave the country for rival Indonesia as palm plantations expand into virgin tracts of forest.
The contradiction seems to be lost on everyone in Sabah. Nasrun Datuk Mansur, a state assemblyman and assistant to the state's chief minister, later boasted to me that palm oil is the catalyst for a raft of business activities raising Lahad Datu's profile, and the region's.
Until Malaysia gained its independence in 1957, all children could attend school regardless of where they came from or what documents they had. But with migrant populations now accounting from nearly one-third of Sabah's 3.2 million people, rights activists say that over the years burgeoning nativism has made the government less willing to pay for universal education.
"This whole question that arose from locals that, if you provide the education for migrant children, then the local children lose out," says Aegile Fernandez, program director of Tenaganita, a Malaysia-based nonprofit group that assists migrant workers. In other words: to propose reforms that would extend rights to migrants' children would prove costly at the ballot box. And with elections on the horizon in the coming months, no politician dares stray from the script.
When I reminded Mansur that his government does not currently provide any services, he feinted by complimenting the non-governmental organizations that are stepping up with help from foreign governments and agro-businesses, whose mega-farms dominate the countryside. "The companies are also making money," says Mansur. "They should be responsible to support the foreign children."
Pressed further about the thousands who are not taken care of, he ended the discussion and walked out of the room.
***
They may lack government funding, but Sabah's stateless children have at least have Torben Venning. Tall and sturdy-built, with a fair complexion that refuses to adapt to the equatorial sun, the Danish native has waged a dogged campaign to sew education in plantation country since he arrived more than two decades ago as a traveler.Venning and some friends opened a facility in 1990 to educate 70 farm children. Since then, his organization, Humana Child Aid Society, has established 128 "learning centers" (designated as such because they are not officially accredited) that offer instruction to more than 12,000 students with help from donors such as the European Union. "We came here as teachers and had no idea this was going to develop into the project it is today," he said.
It costs about $13 a month per student to provide lessons in core primary subjects, along with a uniform, two meals and salary for teachers, some of whom are brought from the students' home countries. Venning says that educating them will ultimately benefit the country by "ensuring that they have a future beyond the plantations and don't become part of the social problem."
Yet, ever the diplomat in a land not his own, he tiptoes around the question of whether the Malaysian government's must look after the children of its labor force. He prefers to focus on the heavyweight companies that are picking up some of the slack.
On a searing hot morning Venning drove me out to what he described as a model of corporate social responsibility. The pavement on the outskirts of Lahad Datu crumbled into a dirt track that winded up steep switchbacks before descending into an expanse of oil palm plantations where the dense canopy scarcely allowed any light through.
Jason Motlagh
We finally arrived at the gate of plantation owned by Wilmar International, one of Asia's largest agribusiness companies and the world's largest listed palm oil firm, with more than $30 billion in revenues in fiscal year 2010.
Manager Frederick Chok greeted me with skepticism at one of four learning centers on the premises. Wearing a white company polo shirt, he pointed out athletic fields and a mosque just a short walk away, as well as a new series of concrete barracks where, we were told, veteran workers and their families were housed.
Inside the classroom, walls featured bilingual posters and a flat-screen television with a satellite connection. Twenty-plus students, ages 5-15, were upbeat and engaged. Their teacher, a young Indonesian woman in a lavender headscarf, said off-the-cuff that she'd been surprised by the amenities made available to her, to Venning's visible delight. He capped the visit off by leading the group in an off-key rendition of his Humana theme song, which borrows heavily from a Donna Summer track. Even Chok mustered a smile.
Afterward we had coffee on the veranda of the great house that overlooked the sprawling, 8,000-hectacre property, the size of a small national park. Chok stressed the importance of corporate social responsibility like a mantra and said his company spends nearly $1 million every year to take care of migrant children. In the "competition" to retain experienced workers, Chok added that doing the right thing also made good business sense. (Singapore-based Wilmar has its critics, however. The Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based environmental group, alleges the company's security forces have used violence and heavy machinery against villagers in Indonesia's Sumatra province. Wilmar rejects the claims.)
In Venning's view, larger companies like Wilmar were generally doing more to look after workers' children since the advent of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The Zurich-based non-profit stakeholders group was formed in 2004 to address social and environmental problems associated with palm oil. The group, which unites investors, traders, and oil palm growers with retailers and social organizations to better monitor supply chains and promote sustainability, now certifies about 14 percent of the palm oil produced worldwide.
But systemic challenges persist. Greenhouse gas emissions are not included in the RSPO certification process. As peatlands, the earth's largest single source of stored carbon, are cleared for palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, massive amounts of carbon are being released.
In the wilds of Malaysian Borneo, the high cost of logistics inhibits the construction of more learning centers, giving children no alternative to palm oil work. For all Venning's efforts, Humana and its partners take care of only one-fifth of the children estimated to be living on Sabah's plantations. Even those lucky enough to receive some degree of education have little to no mobility once they become adults.
***
Off a nameless back road about an hour's drive from Lahad Datu, Fatima Binti, 18, gazes out into the endless maze of trees. A shortage of money and the long distance from the small plantation the family works forced her to stop going to the nearest learning center a year ago. Absent documents, she can't go into town, fearful she might be picked up and harassed by police.The maximum fine for not having official documents was 10,000 Ringgit ($3,200), a sum that would exceed the family's haul for the year. The alternate scenario, deportation and being split apart from her family, was unthinkable.
The rain is falling hard as she clicks her scuffed pink nails on the rail of the porch, waiting. She wants to be a doctor and longs to join her friends in class. She hopes her siblings will attend school "so they will be able to read and count."
Until then, Fatima is resigned to stay close to her parents, cutting and clearing palm branches from dawn until dusk, helping them earn whatever they can.
When it comes to women who are beautiful and at least have above average looks there are two kinds.
In his acclaimed seminal, ‘’Tell no lies, claim no easy victories’’, Amilcar Cabral warned revolutionaries of the dangers of telling lies and claiming easy victories, even before the final battles are won.
"If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you better wakeup and pay attention" was the message of Whoopi Goldberg to her exuberant young students in Sister Act.
Mediocrity, Ignorance, Money and Manipulation Equals Corruption, Violence, Dictatorship and Hopelessness
Progressive Lethargy: APC and the Task of Refining Nigerian Politics
Party politics in Nigeria is for all comers where identity and values mean nothing. Members don’t need to have any special attribute.
Party politics in Nigeria is for all comers where identity and values mean nothing. Members don’t need to have any special attribute.
Governance and Economic Programme Commitment: Defining, Distinguishing and Lifelong Attributes of Politics
What is the Nigerian political opposition all about? Is it simply about not being in current government? Or is it about not being in good terms with functionaries of government and to that extent in opposition to leaders of the ruling party?
What is the Nigerian political opposition all about? Is it simply about not being in current government? Or is it about not being in good terms with functionaries of government and to that extent in opposition to leaders of the ruling party?
Democratic Governance and Federalism in Nigeria: Measure of APC’s Commitment to Human Development Agenda
Speaking about corruption in Nigeria has become as common as singing any of the popular R&B songs in the media today.
The Birth of APC: New Leaf in Nigerian Politics?
Attention Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and others.
Growing up in Zangon Kataf, Ikara and Saminaka of Kaduna State between 1970 and 1975, it used to be extremely pleasurable to visit Zaria. Zangon Kataf, Ikara and Saminaka were then villages with no electricity, pipe-borne water and except for Saminaka none had tarred road.
The addition early next year of a 5,000 naira note, worth $31.25, comes less than a decade after the country introduced a 1,000 naira note. Over that time, the worth of the naira continued its long slide and likely will continue to drop, analysts say. The International Monetary Fund issued a report in July suggesting the naira was overvalued by as much as 8.5 percent, an opinion rejected by Nigeria’s Central Bank.
In announcing the new denomination, Central Bank Gov. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said the new 5,000 naira bill, as well as changing notes from 20 naira (12 cents) and lower into coins, would help the country’s economy by providing a “befitting currency structure.”
Currency troubles have haunted this oil-rich nation for decades. After independence in 1960, Nigeria pegged its naira currency against the value of the British pound and later the U.S. dollar. High oil prices boosted the naira’s value on par with the dollar and the nation’s largest bill for years remained the 20 naira note with the image of assassinated military ruler Gen. Murtala Muhammed. However, the collapse of oil prices in the 1980s saw the value of the naira retrench as officials implemented unpopular monetary reforms that saw the naira begin its drastic drop in value.
The 5,000 naira note proposed Thursday by Sanusi does have logistical upsides. Large purchases in Nigeria often involve bricks of 1,000 naira ($6.25) notes carried around in black plastic bags. Banks throughout the country must have “bulk counting rooms,” where tellers wearing surgical masks run piles of bills through counting machines. Bank ATMs also can quickly run out of cash over weekends. Sanusi himself noted the higher-value notes will mean there’s less currency in circulation throughout the country.
However, some worry that the new note will spark inflation and other problems.
“The emergence of the 5,000 notes will be the fifth time in 13 years of introducing new denomination notes, which invariably accelerates the disappearance of low denomination notes and coins and engenders an inflationary push,” an editorial published Friday in The Guardian newspaper warned. “Large denomination notes encourage cash hoarding, a profitable boon to counterfeiters and a windfall to corrupt practices.”
In remarks Thursday, Sanusi said that “inflation in Nigeria is a monetary phenomenon,” while pointing to the nations of Germany, Japan and Singapore as nations with large denomination notes and low inflation rates. However, those nations have manufacturing bases unrivaled by Nigeria, which has a weak industrial sector and remains almost entirely dependent on crude oil exports for government spending.
Changing smaller denominations to coins represents a risk as well. Sanusi acknowledged the “public apathy” that greeted coins already in circulation. By making up to 20 naira a coin, there will be pressure among those in Nigeria’s informal economy to raise prices to avoid accepting the coins, said Adeola Adenikinju, an economist at the University of Ibadan. That could mean rising prices on everything from tomatoes in the local market to rides on the motorcycle taxis that ply the nation’s congested streets.
In a nation where most earn less than $2 a day, that could be a tremendous pinch on pockets.
“I think the central bank is trying to indirectly devalue the currency,” Adenikinju said. “I think it will also have an inflationary effect that will affected many ... Nigerians who are in the informal sector and are on fixed salaries.”
The effect the new currency regime could have on those selling goods in the many local markets that dot Nigerian cities and villages comes as one of the three women to be honored on the new 5,000 naira note is Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Ransome-Kuti, the activist mother of the famed Afrobeat singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, led her first major protest against price controls that hurt the lives of market women.
Nigeria Voters Assembly has warned that the plan by President Goodluck Jonathan to increase prices of petroleum products may precipitate a revolution against the leadership.
The president had indicated at the economic summit in Lagos last week that prices of petroleum products might soon increase.
Voters Assembly, in a statement on Monday by its National President and Convener, Moshood Erubami, said, “Nigeria will rise peacefully to shoot down any move to increase their misery and poverty through another regime of deceptive petrol subsidy removal, in a sense that will make the January 2012 anti-subsidy removal protests a child’s play.
“The recent exposure of the real cabals, who have been living on subsidy as parasites and the quantum of petrol naira that have been personalised and pocketed has made it quite evident that past regime of Nigerian oil subsidy removal was antithetic to the development of Nigerians.
“The current move to withdraw another subsidy is condemnable.
“President Goodluck Jonathan should resist, for once, the current push by his colleagues and agents of international finance bodies, who are known parasites on government, to hearken to the cries of the citizens to deliver service that can transform their lives.”
Culled The PUNCH
March 11,
2013
We convey fraternal greetings of solidarity from our
teaming patriots and nationalists working under the platform of Patriotic Front
(PF) seeking to develop a common framework with you toward resolving the
critical issue of producing a truly alternative people-oriented political party
capable of producing credible, responsive and accountable leaders in 2015. This
is a historic challenge in our march to nationhood, which require that all
patriots and nationalists must work together to redirect the political process for
the pursuit of genuine nation-building.
Our goal is to define the path to strategic
relationships between Nigerians represented by patriotic interests with our
political leaders currently working for the merger of the Action Congress of
Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC), section of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), other
political parties, progressive organizations and individuals with the objective
of facilitating the emergence of All Progressives Congress (APC). The vision is
to articulate key issues which will form the basis of engagement in the
political process.
PF care about you because we recognize that there is
little chance of effecting positive political change in the country and/or
making fundamental change to the way we live without massive mobilization of
various potential partisan and non-partisan political actors. We understand
that electoral success depends largely on whether strategic and principled
partnership with several political, professional and communal movements can be
built to break away from the reinforcing circle of underdevelopment and
authoritarianism.
PF recognizes the need to spend quality time engaging
with politicians to facilitate minimum commitments and understandings before
the urgent work of direct and traditional politicking begins. We care about you
because we recognize that there is little chance of tailoring electoral victory
towards effecting fundamental change to the way we live without massive
mobilization of various potential political actors. Countries where opposition
parties have defeated the ruling party and facilitated a fundamental shift only
succeed through broad alliances and mass mobilization.
We are extending our hand of fellowship to you and
your esteemed supporters to join, support
or bless our initiative to engage the APC merger process so that it
succeed as a true reflection of what Nigerians are yearning for. In particular,
PF understand that the issue of free and fair elections as vehicle for
ascending to public office in Nigeria is a source of concern to all Nigerians.
Related issues of internal democracy in party organization across all the
political parties further complicate our national democratic challenges. It is
our conviction that proactive engagement especially at this opportune moment of
negotiating the formation of APC is a strategic, patriotic and historic
national duty incumbent on all Nigerians committed to national democratic
development.
PF humbly request your kind endorsement and active
participation in our initiative to engage the APC merger process in order to
move our great nation forward. Our objective is to facilitate the emergence of
the APC as a people-oriented national party committed to specific national
development targets in all sectors of our economy. The ultimate goal therefore
is to ensure that national democratic development is founded on the growth of
truly democratic institution and culture.
We are convinced that the way forward is largely
dependent on the guarantee of issue based political competition
for elective and appointive offices in the new party - APC - and in wider
polity. In order to ensure good understanding and partnership, we will
appreciate an opportunity to share and exchange perspectives on how best to engage
the APC merger process so that it is able to meet the aspirations of Nigerians.
It is our conviction that the challenges require the development of structures
at all levels of our national life. Your views and perspectives on how to
address all these critical national challenges will be required for a
meaningful engagement and structures.
Kindly feel free to reach us by email: pfnigeria13@gmail.com
for any further clarification.
Fraternally yours,
Salihu Moh. Lukman Emma
Ezeazu
I am one with all the poor, marginalized, exploited, and working peoples of the world, for whom El-Comandante represented hope, in mourning the passing of this extraordinary personality, and in celebrating his life and legacy – the Bolivarian Revolution, whose aim is to build Socialism of the 21st century!
Many of us want change, in fact perhaps the overwhelming
majority of us desire to have such a decisive and impactful change in our
polity, in the way we are governed, in the processes of governance, in the
dynamics of our national economy, and in the nature of social cohesion among
our peoples.
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Against the backdrop of the recent forecast issued by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency [NIMET] with predictions and alert on potentially devastating floods in the 2013 raining season;
‘There is one army stronger than all armies
in the world put together; that is an idea whose time has come’- Victor Hugo
This nation has been ‘independent’ for more than 52 years
[some will say ‘gained flag independence’], yet as of today the promise of independence
has become a mirage and the immense potential at the ‘birth’ of our independent
nation recklessly frittered away.
IN LIEU OF AN
INTRODUCTION:
There is no such thing as a perfect revolution, no such
thing as a crystal cut class struggle which is devoid of inert and intra class
skirmishes and battles.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has reversed itself on earlier policy cancelling payment for electricity meters by customers.
BUILD THE PARTY TO
TAKE BACK NIGERIA: CONVERT YOUR ANGER INTO LIBERATING POLITICAL ACTION
[STATEMENT ISSUED BY
THE PROTEST TO POWER COLLECTIVE ON THE RELEASE OF THE MANIFESTO OF THE PROPOSED
PARTY – DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR SOCIALIST
TAKE BACK NIGERIA
...Reclaiming
Our Humanity/Nigeria for Social Justice and Social Transformation
Being the
Manifesto of the
DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR SOCIALIST
RECONSTRUCTION (DPSR)
[BY JAYE GASKIA JAN 15TH 2013]
Let us begin with a quote from The Communist manifesto written in 1845 by Marx & Engels.
“A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism. All the powers of Old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar; Metternich and Guizot; French radicals and German police spies.
It is a
little over 3 weeks since the abrupt and unilateral call off our our nationwide
uprising by a leadership of the labour centres who seemed to have been coerced
and pressured into a hurried retreat from the [unintended perhaps on the part
of labour's leadership] consequences of our collective actions. For let us face
it, when a awakened, increasingly conscious and aroused popular mass protest
movement initiates a resistance with minimum demands such as policy reversal;
if the government of the day seems either incapable or unwilling to meet such
demands in the face of the growing confidence of the popular masses in revolt;
it will not long be long before the mass movement will shift from a demand for
policy reversal to one of changing the unwilling or incapable regime and
replacing it with a new regime, able and willing to meet the demand of the
popular movement.
