by Cheta Nwanze
The Amis sadly, have a long history of failing to take into consideration the cultural nuances of places that they interact with, and Nigeria’s West has a proud history of games played with firewood and matches. Think Operation Wetee, and you’ll catch my drift….
On a Saturday morning, exactly twenty one years ago today, Nigerians in their millions took to the polling booths. They voted by the millions, irrespective of creed or ethnicity, for a Yoruba Muslim, called MKO. Unfortunately however, MKO’s election was rudely taken away from him, and from all of us, by the military junta, at the time headed by Ibrahim Babangida. While MKO himself is long gone, Babangida is still alive, receiving national awards, and in some eyes, still very much a behind-the-scenes power broker. That he is still alive gives him a shot at atonement, and possibly redemption, but it all has to start with an apology.
But demanding an apology from an ex-dictator may just be akin to asking beggars to begin to ride horses. Something that is quite similar in nature to expecting Nigerian politicians to put away their firewood and matches. Nah, it ain’t gonna happen, so this reaction by the Amis to a Jagaban statement, is just what it is, air that has passed through, err, firewood and matches. The Amis sadly, have a long history of failing to take into consideration the cultural nuances of places that they interact with, and Nigeria’s West has a proud history of games played with firewood and matches. Think Operation Wetee, and you’ll catch my drift…
In addition to burning people, Nigeria, and Nigerians also have a proud history of failing to read books. So it should come as no surprise that despite the fact that we do not produce paper any more, neither do we produce printers, or ink, our suits have seen it as fit, to begin moves towards stopping the importation of books. This is where we go back briefly into history: in May 1821, Heinrich Heine told an audience at the Opernplatz in Berlin: “where they burn books, they will eventually burn people”. Opernplatz was renamed Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz in 1910, and Bebelplatz in 1947. On May 10, 1933, the Nazis organised a book burning in that same square, where 112 years earlier, Heine had uttered those words. Some of his own books were burned as well. We all know what the Nazis went on to do…
My friends at EiE are hosting a charity auction in Lagos on Sat June 14th @ 6pm to raise money for their voter education/awareness campaign: RSVP – Register| Select | Vote | Protect. They have 2 tickets to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a photo shoot by Kelechi Amadi-Obi and 1hr time slots with Wole Soyinka, Fola Adeola, Mo Abudu, Leke Alder & Ibukun Awosika to auction. Tickets are N25k! To support them, send email to info@eienigeria.org. Thanks!
Bits and Bobs
Mustapha Bakare decided to go shopping Tuesday evening. The contents of his shopping bag, a fresh human head. He’s lucky he wasn’t burned. This cow rustling business is now big for full police action. 522 recovered in Zamfara at the cost of just one life. Continuity has always been the bane of economic planning in Nigeria. So 4000 abandoned projects in the Delta alone should not surprise us. Regarding continuity, at least we got it right with Big Boss. One of the people he foisted on us, who became a hero, will be a hero again starting Monday.
Right of Reply
Olamide Babalola wrote,
I am compelled to respond to your allegation that Prof. Rabiu stated that it takes four days for a satellite to orbit the earth. You have misquoted the professor and I suggest you apologise openly just as you have bad mouthed him openly.
The Prof. said and I quote Besides, when the satellite passes through a point, it takes another four days before it passes that point again.
What prof. is talking about is a satellite cannot pass through the same point (as in longitude and latitude) until after 4 days (and by this, I assume he is not speaking generically but specifically about our satellite) and not about orbiting the earth, unless your interpretation of orbiting the earth is passing through every longitude and latitude point on the earth.
The Nigerian education system may be below par, but I can assure your that it is not made up of eggheads and neither does it produce eggheads, yourself and myself as well as many of your readers are also proof, so when next a professor speaks, research properly on possible inferences drawn before you conclude.
Chxta responds,
Let’s start from the bottom: according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an egghead is “a highly educated person who may not know much about real life”. That definition, the last time I checked, is how most people, the world over, rightly or wrongly, categorise academics.
About the latitude and longitude thing, you are weaving a spider’s web that you are getting entangled in. A four day lead time over a certain “latitude and longitude” suggests that the satellite is trekking over one same area, which given its bird’s eye view is simply put, impossible. A satellite in geostationary orbit has at any given point in time a view that encompasses a lot of latitudes and longitudes. I can direct you to the Earth Observation Portal which tracks all satellites in orbit, and gives their orbit times. Not one of the thirty random that I picked, has an orbital time of more than a day. What I did find interesting though, is that, err, NigComSat was not listed. That brings up a whole rash of questions I’d rather ask after the kick about which starts in just under 10 hours and lasts for a month.
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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
