Jill Rees: Welcome Press

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In the last 2 weeks, US planes have bombed towns in Pakistan, claiming that there are ‘Al Qaida’ forces hidden among the locals. These ‘terrorists’ have crossed from Afghanistan where the US troops are, rather astonishingly perhaps, legitimately at war.

The Afghanistan question, as it happens, was a second invasion led by Bush’n’Blair, sanctioned somewhat reluctantly by the United Nations Security Council, whose Headquarters are in New York.  From the point of view of the TV-watching public, Tony Blair persuaded us that we had to get in there and enable women to liberate themselves from the headscarf.

To date, despite several towns being annihilated and innumerable civilian deaths, not one woman seems to have taken off the headscarf.  In fact in Turkey, where women are required by law to remove the headscarf at work, they endlessly protest the right to keep it on!

Putting details and civilian deaths to one side, the reason for the war in Afghanistan is that the brains behind 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, is supposed to be holed up in a cave in the Afghani desert, and the Afghani and Pakistani people refuse to blow his cover.

Osama Bin Laden disguised as God  

Bin Laden’s group, ‘Al Qaida’ then, led by a man in a cave, seems to have long arms, stretching as it does from Pakistan on the Indian subcontinent to Western Sahara on the Atlantic coast of Africa. A recent shooting on the main highway in Mauritania was blamed on Al Qaida factions ‘trained in Algeria’. (Clue – Algeria produces oil). The perpetrators turned out to be a group of local unemployed lads who were in a gang, had just left one of their grandfathers’ house where they had been staying. A tragic, but straightforward murder, and the police quickly caught the criminals. This didn’t stop the US Press having a field day.

There, in the Sahel, on the edge of the vast sands where men can hide, ancient peoples travel and trade with their camels, anarchic and ill-fit to our CCC-TV eye all-seeing world.  Driving through the area myself, I saw buildings disguised as local Arab and Berber hangars and habitations. You could tell they were false because they all stood in line, and were clean and modern. A good place to store tanks, I thought to myself. Then I saw a sign hammered sardonically by the road: ‘Baghdad 2’. I was surprised to find US troops slinking around the desert, until I heard about the money that had been pumped into Mauritania.

Between the shifting sand –dunes, hidden somewhere between the oil wells and water holes, lies the Algerian border. Algeria is one of the fastest economically enriching nations of the world, because of its oil reserves. The CIA constantly insinuates that there are ‘Al Qaida’ forces in Algeria, hiding in the desert, ignoring experts on the area such as Jeremy Keenan, who accuse the Americans of muck-raking in fact, the people of the western Sahara loath Al Qaida and all things Arabic, having been invaded by the ruthless Arab Empire in the 7^th century. Memories are long in the desert, and I would be surprised to see a Berber or a Touareg who is sympathetic to an Arab cause. But then, I didn’t think the Arabs who rule Mauritania would be snuggling so closely to George Bush either, so who am I to judge?

My question is: who are these ‘Al Qaida’ groups who keep popping up everywhere? Let’s look at the evidence.

Bearded and robed, ruling with seemingly infinite power over the entire world, threatening to destroy whole swathes of civilisation because of its decadence and sin. It rules its earth mission from an invisible and untraceable cave in the desert, communicating with men through the disembodied technology of radio and video broadcast.  

To my mind, reports about the ‘Axis of Evil’ and the ‘Terror’  bear astonishing resemblances to the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God couldn’t put up with human beings seeking only pleasure, wealth and material treasures, instead of the more spiritual treasures of the heart, any longer.

Global capitalists surely have forsaken religious and moral tenets. The West is under siege again from that mysterious condemnation from the desert. Worst of all, it feels as if it is true, as we pile our hard earned taxes into saving the big banks. (Does anyone else want a tee-shirt blazing ‘Marx was right’, selling like hot cakes on ebay?)

Instead of the Lord himself booming out in righteous indignations against our folly from the desert wastes, we have bin Laden’s crackly videotaped messages, his word of damnation the technological version of God. Once again, man has invented God in his own image, the image of his guilt. Oh but look what we are thinking we look like deep down!

Could it be that the leaders of the West, men who claim to be Christian in the main, yet clearly fail to act on the morals so clearly stated in their religion, have subconsciously created a terrorising, punishing all-powerful wrathful being that they are at the mercy of, but is, in reality, the echo of their own ragged conscience?

‘I am a jealous God’, says the voice George Bush and Tony Blair both claim to hear on those long dark nights of indecision, ‘You cannot worship both global greed and worship me’. In their masochistic (some have said homoerotic) obsession, the cause of the ‘war on terror’ is not some Oxbridge dropout from a wealthy family weakly lying on his sickbed in some peasant’s hut, but the terror which is the conscience of the real evil men of the present time.

As George Bush exits centre stage, with Blair already gone, we can only reflect that we are well rid of them, and hope that Obama, who understands Africa, can make more sense out of the world, for all our sakes.

980 words

 Jill Rees

04 November 2008

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In the late 1970s I lived in Brixton, the poor area in South London which had ended up being home to many immigrants from the West Indies. Being first generation, largely working class uneducated young people, they had few contacts locally, and little idea how things worked. While the older men went to the workers’ pubs, especially ‘The George’ in Railton Road, where they were largely accepted by the white South Londoners, to play dominoes and billiards, drink English ‘bitter’ beer and talk about work. Their fat wives would stay home, watching TV and chatting with other wives about their low-paid jobs in cleaning and the like. Meanwhile their children, now young adults the same age as me, felt in between the culture of their parents and the vivid ‘punk-rock’ culture of their peers, who didn’t really fully accept them as part of their generation.

Meanwhile, the world of politics was in upheaval. The oil crash of the mid 1970s had left Britain economically vulnerable, and unemployment was high. The sense of bringing immigrants to work in a country short of workers no longer made sense, when there were too many workers but a shortage of skills.  The people they still thought of as immigrants, because of the difference in colour, were however locally-born like themselves.

The IRA, the rebel movement of Ireland which was trying to make the government in London yield Northern Ireland to Eire, was at the peak of the mainland bombing campaign. I had witnessed several bomb attacks, and narrowly escaped an explosion in a cafe where I usually took breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs.  A law called the ‘suss’ law had been brought in, ostensibly to enable the police to pick up anyone suspected of terrorism, but used in fact to take Irish and black people into the police station for some dubious interview techniques. Friends who had been arrested under ‘suss’ and taken in for the three days then permitted, reported beatings and mistreatment: being placed between tow mattresses and jumped on, having cigarettes stumped out on their bodies and so on. Later the infamously racist ‘Met’ police would be taken to task for its treatment of innocent citizens.

In the prison meanwhile, the notorious Brixton Prison just up the road, black prisoners sometimes disappeared for weeks at a time, without relatives being informed of their whereabouts. When immigrants were without families, and in a situation where there were no educated black lawyers or ‘friendly’ white lawyers, almost anything was permitted. The local secondary school was known for its institutional racism, and alienated young black boys within a year of their going there. Invariably, these lads would leave school without any qualifications, and often semi-literate.

Eventually some boys managed to get through and go on to college to do ‘A’ levels, bearing God only knows what insults and physical bullying to get through. A team of black lawyers appeared on Railton Road, and the disappearances from the prison ceased after the first enquiry, along with the torture and the unjustified arrests.

In Jamaica, the ‘homeland’ of the parents, meanwhile, Bob Marley and the Wailers were taking the world by storm, encouraging black youth to sort their lives out with the Rasta religion, and to stand up for themselves in an unjust society.  Smoking ‘ganja’ , growing their hair into long  dreadlocks and playing reggae music was behaviour the hard-working parents thoroughly disapproved of, of course, not least because it got their kids into even greater trouble with the police, this time justified as marijuana was illegal in the UK. This time, the young people were proud of getting arrested; it was for their cause, the right to be Jamaican.

In 1978 the rock Against Racism march walked through Brixton, with Brockwell Park full of beautiful music including The Clash, and black and white youths singing and dancing together. The march was protected from the new neo-Nazi racist groups by the Metropolitan police. What a turnabout! Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister, and John Major, one day to succeed her, led Lambeth council.

 Local residents of the beautiful spacious Victorian terraced houses, which gave themselves perfectly to the Jamaican habit of standing outside, chatting and smoking, were to be sold off. Tenant families were unceremoniously sent packing, and those who refused to go mysteriously received firebombs through the front windows, blamed on the neo-Nazi National Front movement, but possibly from a more official source. Tanks from the nearby Chelsea barracks frequently were rolled down the narrow residential streets, intimidating the families and children. One by one, the families agreed to move into the vile concrete prefabricated council flats opposite the police station. The culture of Jamaican London broke down.  The gambling houses, the dominoes pubs, the reggae discos, all closed down, and disenfranchised youth increasingly targeted by the right wing government, started to become the notorious gang culture we have today, with hard drugs, guns, and very little religious zeal.

Of course, on the other side of the tracks, the Access course was started in Brixton College which enabled young black people who had left the horrible school without qualifications to get into universities and training courses, and those who did well were able to move out of the slums and join their white peers in the eighties boom. Their children in turn have something like equality today. Gradually, they are moving out of London and becoming part of the landscape. Improved anti-racist laws and sympathetic lawyers mean that racism has been largely kicked out of official life. The third and fourth generation of those original immigrants consider themselves part of British culture, and may visit the West Indies on holiday, like everyone else.  True mixing is still new, however, and as I speak a local teacher here in the sticks has been suspended for ‘warning’ her class

‘Don’t be afraid, but the new kid in class is black!’ At least in this day and age, this kind of slur is taken seriously.

In the Hotel we call the Meridion in Abuja, I was introduced to a Very Important Person. This noble-looking gentleman told me that he was educated in the UK, in Loughborough University. I started to reply inanely that I hope he had been as welcomed in my country as I was in his, when the words choked in my mouth: what if he had not had such good experiences, but had met with hostility and racism?

True, it is different to be an African to a Jamaican, because it was the poorest and lowest- class Jamaicans who were taken on as workers , rather than rich middle-class people, but still any black person is likely to experience some racism at some point. Perhaps you will be served last in a shop queue, perhaps a taxi won’t stop for you, or a comment may be made about your white girlfriend. This man correctly interpreted my hesitation,

‘Yes,’ he said gallantly, ‘My reception in England was very warm.’ I was relieved.

1176 words

© Jill Rees

18 October 2008

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I know what it is like to weep bitter tears for my country. Throughout the 1980s my country was run by a rabid right wing solipsist who systematically destroyed every institution which had made ‘British Constitutional Socialism’ almost universally respected as an attempt to build Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land. Finally, when criticised, she snorted, ‘There’s no such thing as society.’ So it was that I read a reader’s letter with empathy, a PhD student at a prestigious university in Benue, telling me he wept for Nigeria.

British Democracy evolved over several centuries following the 16^th century Earls Rebellion for freedom of religion and the fair application of land inheritance. Although ‘gentlemen’ had a say in Parliament, democracy in the sense of the common people having a say was much fought for and much died for.

After the Plague in England, workers were very much in demand, and wages and conditions were excellent. Consequently, political change occurred mainly among the aristocrats and concerned higher constitutional matters. By the early 1880s, the population had grown and wages could be cut to starvation level because workers were obliged to take what they could get. If anyone objected, they would be fired and another hired in his stead. Agriculture and industry was just beginning to develop on a global scale and production had not yet reached levels of major exportation. It was illegal to join together to protest until 1824, when trade unions began to be formed legally.

In 1832, six men joined together in a ‘friendly society’ in Tolpuddle, south west England, to protest against the gradual lowering of wages. The powers that be objected, and they were arrested and exiled. These men became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and symbolise the rights of the working people to a decent living and a decent lifestyle.

During the next 50 years, conditions for ordinary people in Britain were dire. A novel, ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, was written about the conditions endured by poverty-struck working men who were unable to make enough money to support themselves and their wives. Throughout this long story, wives die in childbirth, men too sick to work are unable to visit a doctor, children die in hunger and of ordinary childhood diseases they could not afford to treat and cause by defiled living conditions.  The book was not permitted to be published until 1914, when many of the workers the author Robert Tressell wrote about were being slaughtered as ‘cannon fodder’ on the battlefields of Europe.

Throughout the novel Tressell’s hero Frank Owen asks the question, why do so many allow themselves to be so mistreated by the few? He urges working people to stop being ‘philanthropists’ to the rich, working themselves literally to death so that fat cats can make ever increasing profits, and supported by those who could afford the backing to be in potions of power. Until the poor become organised, he thinks, the rich will take what they want.

This is similar to Nigeria today in many ways. Wealth is the main source of power, and to be in government you need to be from a certain background. Meanwhile, low wages, poor housing, paltry health and nutritional resources and limited educational opportunities keep the poor in their place. The poor and powerless complain, they talk about the corruption in power, yet they remain in isolation, and do nothing. They weep.

There are too many young people in Africa. They don’t need to be persuaded by high wages, they don’t need to be educated, and they have no leverage to fight corruption in high places. If an individual complains out loud, they are sacked and replaced.  The state doesn’t need to keep all the babies born alive until they reach working age, more will come.

Never has anyone with power voluntarily yielded it. Nigerians can look at corruption and ask ‘Why, why?’ but the answer is simply ‘Because’. Why don’t the rich and powerful not share their wealth?  Because they don’t have to, nobody makes them.

When I went to Nigeria I too was concerned about all this corruption in high places.  I was soon shocked to understand that it went all the way to the bottom too: to the maid who steals from her Madam, to the security who keeps you waiting until you pay a bit extra, to the worker who won’t do anything extra unless you give him a ‘tip’. How can they complain about corruption, I would ask, and yet do the same?

‘To survive’ said my friend, obviously wondering how I got to be so stupid.

The oppression of the workers continued in the UK in between the wars. In the 1930s poverty was so bad that the famous ‘Jarrow Marchers’ walked from the north to London, picking up thousands of unemployed workers along the road.  The Labour government of the day, along with the Trade Union Movement, ignored the 12,000 workers who came on the Houses of Westminster.

Only after the Second World War, when the whole of Europe was in ruins, did some element of idealism as well as necessity see fit to build the decent society we find in Britain today. In 1945, a newly elected government began to invest in agriculture, in steel and coal industries, in Heath and education for all its citizens, and in child support for poorer families.

The lessons we have learned are these: those in power will not yield it without a fight; the working people have to unite and work together, not to let one individual get fired or bullied in the workplace;  poor and underprivileged people need to get organised; we must never give up however long it takes; dignity and unity are what matters.

The economic crisis is worrying many people worldwide, but for us who have nothing, the worry is much less. In fact, this may be a window of opportunity for us to change some conventional  economic structures. Today’s forward-thinkers are interested in sustainable development and co-operative working.  These obviously lend themselves to small independent projects.

Sustainability means we don’t have to produce an awful lot of stuff. Co-operatives mean we don’t have to have money, because several minor players combine what they have.  The trick is to contain them. In the USA, at the start of the great corn belts, famers worked in co-operatives to share expensive machinery, and this enabled them to harvest huge areas of land, and make profits which could then be put back into the farms, until they were able to become independent.

With sustainability however, there is no real need to ever become independent. In France and Spain, wine and other co-operatives have simply stayed together, enjoying the pool of labour and skills, and content with smaller profits. The increase in standard of living is slow, but this in itself enables the co-operatives to stay ‘beneath the radar’ as it were and out of the state’s eye, with its desire to control everything.

Modern co-operatives include coffee co-ops in South America, and the organic projects in Uganda. Fair Trade, a company which began as a farmer’s co-op to keep profits with the growers instead of the supermarket chains, has developed into an international phenomenon. Organisations and NGOs abound whose job is to help fledgling sustainability projects, like the Green Belt project of Uganda. But how close are Nigerians to being able to use these opportunities?

A commonly held view from the ‘Stupid White Man’ community (apologies to other stupid white men out there) is that Africans are incapable of strategic thinking and unable to plan ahead. This is patently not so: the Nigerian scams are often brilliantly planned and executed.   If, instead of spending their energy scheming plotting and cheating, young people decided to work together to improve their lot, what could not be achieved?

1,309 words

©Jill Rees

04 October 2008

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It’s nice to get letters from readers of this column, even when the response is not as positive as it could be. Contrary to what a reader recently accused me of, I don’t say things just to ‘provoke a reaction’, as he felt obliged to write his thoughts to me about the intentions of Archbishop Peter Akinole’s attempts to split the African Church from the Rest of the World over the issue of homosexuality. I thought long and hard about whether I should write about a subject that still upsets many Nigerians. In the end I wrote about it because I thought it was right that Nigerians are aware of this big difference in attitude between Nigeria and the developed world.

In the liberal, secular nations, personal choice issues such as homosexuality and sex before marriage are almost universally accepted. Even if a lifestyle is not approved of by an individual, the right to live according to one’s own conscience is strongly upheld by all.  Nigerians have the right to know that that is how we think in the north.

For us it is part of the whole human rights thing and ‘rights of the individual’ thing. In the UK in particular, laws against discrimination are enforced fairly rigidly, and any kind of attack or slight against a gay person, a physically handicapped person or a person of a different race or religion will be taken seriously both by the police and by employers.  Even children can’t be bossed around by strangers. Sometimes this goes a bit far. The other day I was cycling down the canal path when a little boy accompanied by his mother, also on a bike, wobbled about unsure which side to go past me on. As I went by him i called out ‘It’s best if you pull onto the left hand side’. His mother yelled furiously after me,

‘You mind your own f*&^%$£ business you f*&^%$£ cow!’ which I thought was a bit over the top in the circumstances. It reminded me of teaching in English schools.

I found it quite sad last week when I came back to teach in school here to hear the children swearing at their teacher.

‘We don’t want to learn’ they say. Because their parents have bought them the latest blackberry phone, iPod and Wii computer games, they see no reason to work hard for themselves.

Democratically mature countries seem to have a disrespect for authority. Even more, a distrust of those in authority. When Priests have been led into the courts in droves for child abuse, our Prime Minister has lied in the House of Commons about Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction, and where the banks with our mortgages collapse, how are we to trust them? Gordon Brown at the moment can’t put a foot right. Whenever he speaks in his own defence, his audience just laugh mockingly. Nothing he says will sound credible, because we can’t tell lies from truth now.

So while I can understand the children for not trusting what their teachers say to them, I feel sorry for them. Human society progresses only by each generation being able to assimilate just that little bit more each time, and this is achieved by listening to those who have gone before. If children won’t listen to their teachers, they won’t be able to learn. Of course this is how the governments want it, only the most liberal of nations, maybe Sweden or somewhere, would want its young people to genuinely be able to work out what’s going on.

Nigerians I guess can see how, when something is handed to you on a plate, it can be taken for granted. The positive side to it is that when many children in the UK don’t take advantage of their opportunities, it is more worthwhile for Nigerians to persist in becoming qualified as much as they can, despite the hardships. If Nigerians can rid themselves of the reputation they have in England for dishonesty and scams, they will be recognised for the hard-working people the majority are, and will become a sought after workforce in an under populated Europe, for those Nigerians who want a spell abroad.

While every Nigerian is aware of the importance of education, as yet the government has not managed to ensure even Primary education for every child, and huge investment in public education is still needed. Even then, teachers will have to be better trained, and this is going take a generation at best. The same problem occurs in Nigeria as in the UK, if the government can’t be bothered to fund education properly, how can we trust them?

Nigerians have picked up on the idea that their politicians and business leaders may not be entirely honest in their dealings.  If you want to join with us in distrusting our leaders, why not take up the correlative? The good side of this mainly negative trend? The idea that everyone is equal and has the right to be themselves. We need  unity among ourselves to keep a beady eye on authorities, secular or otherwise to get through this.

864 words

30 September 2008

©Jill Rees

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Kylie Minogue was in London the other day visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace to receive her OBE. In fact the Queen was away, and she received it from Prince Charles, who she had already met on several occasions in an entertainment capacity.

It is fairly normal for entertainers to receive such awards in the UK. If you keep going for long enough, you usually get something or other. Part of the reason for this is that the UK’s greatest export is culture, a fact which may surprise some people. Fashion, music, design and architecture are what we do best. In fact it would be reckless in the extreme for a child to say they want to grow up to be a factory worker nowadays, as opposed to a rock star, which is perfectly reasonable.

In Kylie’s case, she has been an inspiration to many through her spirited battle against illness and her relentless and somewhat British cheeriness over the years.

In the mid eighties, Kylie became adored by all, especially young girls who were addicted to her sickly sweet romance with Jason Donavan on the Australian soap show, Neighbours, which is still running in Australia and the UK, though Kylie is long gone. Little girls and their Dads watched as the glamorous girl-mechanic from next door Kylie fell in love and eventually married Jason.

She left the show to much weeping and gnashing of teeth. However, fans in the UK were quickly assuaged as she came to visit and to promote her singing career. The hit record ‘I should be so Lucky’ is still played today, and I recently read the headline with regard to her love life ‘She should be so lucky’ to get back with her on/off lover, French hunk, Olivier Martinez.

Back in those days, Kylie was the sweetest thing, all blond hair and smiles, and sang cute songs about boyfriends with little dance sequences. In the UK, she visited frequently and, however famous she became, was never too proud to go on kids’ Saturday shows. She chatted with children and took phone calls from fans, and was always genuinely respectful and grateful to be popular.

Over the next few years, she worked hard at her dancing, and became a great show girl, going on to write her own material and to perform splendid extravaganzas, some in front of His Highness as part of the Royal Performance. Her copybook was blotted somewhat by an overtly sexual affair with the musician Michael Hutchence, which was highly publicised for their open flirting. Once that was over, Kylie dedicated herself once again to pleasing her public.

In her thirties, she began to say she was hoping to find a relationship and settle down to have children. She hadn’t been going out with Olivier Martinez for long when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Suddenly the idea of a world without Kylie struck fear into our hearts. She was always smiling and optimistic, through thick and thin, and brought happiness wherever she went. She did indeed ‘light up a room’. Now she retired to her native Australia, where Martinez looked likely to become a kind of heroic widower as he stayed by her side throughout her treatment. The Press was silent and agreed to respect her privacy, and there was no news as we prayed and worried for the little Antipodean wonder.

Finally, Kylie emerged with cropped hair but boyfriendless after Martinez dumped her once she left hospital, for another woman, the cad. A survivor with her same cheery smile, Kylie returned to a full concert tour and a new album. Although she was sometimes obviously tired, she fought bravely on and won the hearts of everyone. She happily accepted a part on the long-standing TV series for children, Dr Who, and won new hearts in her part as a waitress who sacrificed her life for the Doctor.

This is a person who, despite personal heartbreak, cares only for the happiness of her fans. Kylie is an example of charm, realism, humility and fighting spirit, who women emulate and men admire. When Olivier Martinez was photographed with Kylie once more, the nation cheered! We all hope for the best for our Kylie.

Kylie chose the UK as her main base for her career over 20 years ago, and has remained faithful to us, coming straight back here to continue giving interviews, always polite and happy, the popstar who just can’t stop giving. As well as being an inspiration to women who have cancer, and women who can’t find love, Kylie adds to the public coffers with the revenue from her earnings over here. Like the Beatles, she is an important source of funds for the Treasury, almost an industry in herself.

It has been said that to give such awards to people who are mere entertainers denigrates the award. Far from it! The most important people in the nation are the simplest people, who dedicate their lives to the common good. The Queen’s honours go to entertainers, teachers, dinner ladies in schools, charity workers and others who make our lives in the UK what they are.

There is a story from North Africa in which a King rules over a happy and just nation. One day the King decides to venture out of the Palace to find out what his people really think of him. Dressed as a poor traveller, he stops to ask directions and asks what the workers he meets think of their country and their King.

‘This country’s a mess,’ said the worker.

‘What is your king like?’ asked the King in disguise.

‘He’s the worst of them all, a complete rogue’, replied the worker.

The King carried on his way, content.

‘My countrymen are marvellous,’ he thinks, ‘They are free-thinking and independent and confident enough of their liberty to say whatever they like about me’.

The UK is like this. The people make a mockery of Prince Charles, Gordon Brown and the rest, while the Prince himself gives honours to entertainers and school crossing patrol ladies. The leaders know full well that the nation is great because ordinary people, and sometimes not so ordinary people, feel free to willingly give of their best. Being great is not considered that great in the UK: being good is considered great. Kylie is one of the good guys.

1061 words

©Jill Rees

08 July 2008

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The UK is the best country in the world, as most of the world agree. If you have any doubt, go somewhere else for a while and then come back. Relatively calm traffic, health care, almost total liberty of action, when you eat, how long you sleep and so on, all these things are purely individual decisions. Wit and repartee of free speech and the respect others are held in.

Even as we walked through the airport when we arrived back from Bulgaria, not the world’s most repressive state in itself, all the passengers of my plane as usual gloried in our freedom. As we came into the passport hall, where you’re supposed to walk round the miles of ribbon that force you al into a queue, we dipped under the ribbon and walked straight to the front. The watching, unarmed police paid no attention, trusting us to act in a fair and dignified way.

The only thing slightly strange was a bin, subtly placed in the middle of the aisle, which spoke, saying ‘Mind the bin’ as you passed each side of it. Amanda suggested that was put there just to remind Britons that everything is mad here, in case we’d forgotten during our stay in foreign fields.

As the dollar plummets and Europe’s unemployment mortifies its youth, as the US plunges into depression both economic and moral, the UK remains buoyant. The oafs who criticise Gordon Brown have no memory of when our country was thrown to the dogs in the last recession by the Tories, nor any awareness of the difficulties faced by less well-governed nations.

The crisis today is global. only the UK is pottering on as if all is well in the world. The crisis in the banks has been averted, there is low unemployment, good support for the poor, investment continues in welfare programmes and the planning is long-term. What a disaster it would be if, just for the hell of it, the unthinking people of the UK let such a jewel go and land themselves with Beavis and Butthead in power. Get real Little Englanders and stick with Gordon, before you push things down the pan for no good reason.

London’s fair city could do with a break too, and be Boris-free. I hope no-one is seriously thinking of not voting for the greatest hero of our land for many a long year, Ken Livingstone. a great humanitarian who has always stood up for the weak and powerless, and the ordinary citizen, has spent his entire life protecting and caring for his beloved city. I’m grateful to him every time I take a bus through the capital or walk along the river, once a no-go area, and unashamedly kiss the ground he walks on. Again, the important thing is gratitude, and not to take for granted the wonderful leadership we currently have, the likes of which I doubt I will see again in my lifetime.

‘Count your blessings’ my Mum always says. Good advice my fellow Blightians.

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• Tears for my country (0)

To every political commentator, envisaging that the black days that overshadows the April general elections which saw to arbitrary transition of a dictatorial administration to a fraudulent and hoax politically elected leader will not repeat itself, could only amount to an absolute mirage. It is true, and in any where in the world, a house built by an hypocrite will always be occupy by, mediocre or a traitor.

It could be recalled that, prequel to the April general elections a lot of speculations were heard, both good and bad, paraded the air that blow across the nook and cranny of this Country. Some of the hullabaloos, my ears patronized. Perhaps because I read significant meanings from them and in the best interest of this Country, such calls that prompted the exit of the late Obj. led administration thus, became paramount. However and though we may have succeeded at compelling Obasanjo to Ota farm, the worst predicament that appears more confrontational to the glory and survivals of democracy in Nigeria still lingers. Go to the street, I bet you even the primary school children will testify to you that what happen in April 2007 general election was worst than the 1994 April genocide in Rewanda. Far, backward to a Childs play. Infact one can call it a political genocide.

The exit of Obj had ravagely ignited a fire similar to that which emerges from the sea and it’s fast consuming the principles and ethics of politics and democracy in this Country. To day a large number of politicians who prior hitherdo owes and respect the principles and ideologies of great politicians such as Mal. Aminu Kano, Chief Obafemi Awolow, great zik of Africa, Mike Okpara Tafawa balewa, Makaman Bida and my icon Sir Ahmadu, bello are rather force into throwing thus humanitarian precept and opinions which they look forward to replicating in their daily political activities into dustbin. Because, to many of them, if a single person against the interest of million people could single handedly select a leader in a cosmopolitan environment such as Nigeria, so what them is the faith of polity, what is so special about politics without tears, what can a politician who want to adapt the ideology of pragmatism thus as zik advocated? Indeed it would be very disastrous to our psychology if we pretend with all reality on ground that democracy was at work.

Honestly there is absolutely nothing democratic to tell about Nigeria . And believing willingly that judiciary was the last hope as far as save guarding our democracy is concern is an aberration. the recent judgment by the presidential election tribunal authenticates this obvious perception. I can not subscribe to that and I challenge every Nigerian to disagree with the unpatriotic illusion. After all it is only when there was a foot ball match that a referee can officiate, but in this case there were no matchs at all. And as a mater of fact all the judges that precided over the cases that were file by different candidates against the pronouncement of P.D.P as the winner of the presidential election were living witnesses.

To day even some of us who are rootly looking for ward to wearing the shoes of our great founding fathers are now dispelled into having a rethink. Thought such as “those democracy really exist as ascribe by it inventors, could love, hard work, prowess and diligentness really count in the decision and policy making of a society” however occupies our mined in place of new innovations that could add to the image of polity and leadership in this nation. Honestly it is a political assault to admit that judiciary was the last hope for our democracy. We must note that “the world smiles are more dangerous than it frowns” so he said Mathew Henry. let not there fore pretends that all is well while we are much awhere that the devils is strongly at work. It might also interest you to know that “every generation in a related obscurity like ours, who fails to fulfill it promise wills rather betray it.

I am neither against Obasabjo as an individual, but I am an antagonist of those policies that make up his personality. Personally and thus as some well meaning Nigerians. Such as Chief Anthony Nnaworo, former Senate President Ken Nnamani, chief Ganiyu Fahumi San, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, archbishop john Onaiyekan President CAN and alot of well meaning Nigrians, to mention including Yar’Adua himself as rightly noted that the process that brought him to where he is was an outright bridge of democratic principles which resultant effect could amount to lawlessness, disunity and break down of peace and tranquility but because Nigerians are so resilient the dust rested. Nigerian owe him an applause for making this indication, however he will be more honorable if by the virtue of the reality on ground to which the whole world beholds, he kindly step aside and call for a fresh election. By so doing he will undoubtedly become an epitome and a democrat who’s star would shine across the globe, but if in the contrary he fails, fine that means he has refuse to bath after falling in a gotta and he would continue to smell like the local magi popularly called ‘dawa dawa.’ People love to eat it but they don’t like it odor. More so he may have succeeded at the end of his tenure in achieving his seven points agenda which is to day an household talk in Nigeria, but them he should remember an adage that says ”Although a broken put could be rebuilt but the society keep an eye at the spot where the crack lies”.

Also, I may not be a supporter of Buhari but am certainly an upholder of his dream for democracy, for they are in conformity with the principles of democracy and politics. As he also observed “if you say I should withdraw my pursue, what would be the faith of Nigerians who called for election, those Nigerians who were drove away with guns from pulling units and as a result some of them were sent to their untimely grave and what will be the future of democracy” subsequently the Action Congress Presidential Candidate is not also singing a different song, though a wolf in the ship clothing he admonished that ” if the April general election was allowed to remains then a president will always write the name of his successor” this predication is not disputable by all level of thinking-because the perpetrators of the current crisis, that we are left to contempt with will whimsically mistake our patience for compliance with irregularities frau