#like a lot; a little... like I know Nigeria has one of the highest populations; but I couldn't tell you the number

[medicinemane]

Make Puerto Rico a state already, don't like having second class Americans, and that's how I'd describe it when they're out there paying taxes, contributing to the good of the country, but they don't even get representation via things like a senator

Like I'm sat here thinking about it and... do Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico even get to vote for president? Cause... that's never listed in the electoral college vote count, so I'm gonna guess no

Seem to remember hearing somewhere something about "no taxation without representation", sounded pretty good I thought

Make Puerto Rico a state, make them a state. Every year I get more and more pissed off as I think about how fellow Americans are treated like this. I'm extremely pro Puerto Rico, they're clearly a part of the union... you either make them a state or make them their own country, you don't keep people trapped in this limbo state where they've got less rights than I do

[akpenekudjo]

So Nigerians want Obi

Let's talk a little about the just ended Nigerian presidential elections.

Being Ghanaian, our louder neighbours to the east tend to take up a lot of space in our collective consciousness, no matter how hard we try to mind our own business. In spite of our relative closeness, many of us who've never lived there for any length of time know very little about the ins and outs of Africa's most populous country.

It is from this seat of ignorance that I wish to opine on a thing that's caught my attention in the aftermath of Bola Tinubu's win.

It came to the fore of my thinking a few days back when a popular Ghanaian journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni, tweeted a picture of Bola. It was a close up that emphasized his droopy lips, sleepy eyes and deeply wrinkled face. Take a look at it here.

The sentiment of that tweet was shared by the wider Twitter community, among whom Peter Obi, a younger contestant, seemed to have a lot of support. The general feeling can be summed up as: Africa's challenges are largely the result of poor leadership, and young blood is needed to guide the continent in the future.

Stated as fairly as I can, I find nothing immediately wrong with the diagnosis and proposed remedy. It's a pragmatic observation that some of the continent's leadership struggles are caused by leaders who are somewhat out of touch with what the youthful energies of their countries need to be galvanized for great exploits, so and so.

Fair enough, but there's the hard-to-ignore ageism and somewhat ironic lack of an inclination towards meritocratic solutions that deeply, very deeply, troubles me.

Take the tweet by a celebrated investigative journalist who is credited with exposing corruption at the highest levels of public office in Ghana. He tweets an unflattering picture of the winner of a national election (let's, for now, set aside the irregularities of their process: I'm a firm believer that all high-stakes contests are inherently corrupted) with a caption that reads "The fresh blood and mind to take over from old man Buhari."

Perhaps my reading of this is too critical. There should be, after all, room for humour. But Manasseh seems here to stoop low and criticize the competencies of Bola and Buhari in reference to their age, rather than their past actions and, perhaps, character in previously held offices.

It felt like a cheap shot to take from a prominent media figure, no different from how famous Western media houses despoiled themselves during the Donald Trump presidential campaign and term in office.

But it gets deeper than Manasseh.

Following the conversation on one multinational WhatsApp group showed me hints that my ill-feeling about the nature of the wave of negative sentiment following Tinubu's win was justified.

It came to a head when one of my peers suggested that the death penalty be handed out for corruption, to rid us all of the canker. No be small Rawlings vibes.

Anyone who has witnessed something as petty as SRC elections on any large-enough college campus in Ghana will know that the problem with corruption and poor leadership in the country, Nigeria, and most of the continent has little to do with age.

This was something I learned in my first term in high school, a truth I have validated since at all levels of my education and even in the cutthroat world of tech business, dominated by young change makers.

I don't think we're ready.

[thisdaynews]

87% Nigeria’s Poverty Rate In North – World Bank

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/87-nigerias-poverty-rate-in-north-world-bank/

87% Nigeria’s Poverty Rate In North – World Bank

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The North accounted for 87 per cent of all the poor people in Nigeria in 2016, the World Bank has disclosed in a new report.

The report titled ‘Advancing social protection in a dynamic Nigeria’, released on January 28, 2020, was described as a ‘detailed analysis of the social protection sector’ in the country.

The report noted that social protection measures implemented by the government in Nigeria had not been able to address the high level of poverty, as well as the negative impact of conflicts and natural disasters.

In the comprehensive report, obtained by one of our correspondents, (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); the World Bank observed that although Nigeria was a richly endowed country, it had a larger proportion of the world’s extreme poor than any other nation.

The report further noted that most of the poor in Nigeria were found in the Northern part of the country.

The North-West, specifically, was described as home to almost half of all the poor in the country.

Nigeria’s President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, (retd.), is from Katsina, a state in the North-West, which like other parts of the North, has produced a larger proportion of Nigerian leaders.

Looking at inequality in the country, the report said, “Nigeria experiences high inequality along geographic lines, with poverty mostly concentrated in the North and in rural areas.

“Poverty in the northern regions of the country has been increasing, especially in the North-West zone.

“Almost half of all the poor lived in the North-West and the North (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); accounts for 87 per cent of all the poor in the country in 2016.”

“Poverty rates in the southern zones were around 12 per cent with little variation across zones. The South-South zone saw the most significant drop in poverty from 2011-2016.

“Poverty was significantly higher in rural areas of the country in 2016. An estimated 64 per cent of all poor lived in rural areas and 52 per cent of the rural population lived below the poverty line in 2016. In contrast, the poverty rate in urban areas remained stable at 16 per cent between 2011 and 2016.”

Painting the picture of a relatively prosperous South and an impoverished North, the report stated, “Regionally, the North lags far behind the South in every human capital outcome. People in the Northern regions are also more vulnerable to falling into poverty.

The report established a link between poverty in the North and the Boko Haram insurgency. According to the World Bank, most of the youth recruited by Boko Haram are jobless, a development which made them more prone to radicalisation.

It noted that the activities of the Boko Haram insurgents in the North-East since 2014 had created a sense of ‘failed political promise’.

It added, “Disasters and conflict have displaced many Nigerians, especially in the North-East. According to estimates provided by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, there were more than two million internally displaced persons in Nigeria as of 31 December 2018.

“In 2018 alone, more than 600,000 Nigerians were displaced due to natural disasters and more than 540,000 were displaced due to conflict and violence.

“In the North-East, the emergence of the militant Islamist group Boko (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); Haram since 2014 has not only caused large scaled displacement, but also several incidences of kidnapping, death, and injuries, and the erosion of social contract due to widespread perception of a failed political promise. Poverty and deprivation have played a central role in fostering a social divide.

“The youth used by Boko Haram to partake in the conflict are jobless, without skills, or trades, and are easily susceptible to radicalisation,” the report said.

The World Bank added that besides conflict, climate related factors had caused additional displacement in the North and the Middle Belt regions of the country.

In 2018, flooding affected 80 per cent of the country and triggered more than 600,000 new displacements.

The report said, “Social protection measures in the country are neither well-suited to respond to conflict, nor well-placed to anticipate and mitigate the risks of natural disasters caused by climate change.”

Weak governance, lack of basic infrastructure, poor quality of (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); education, and poor social service delivery, were identified as some of the reasons for the high level of poverty in Nigeria.

According to the report, “Poverty remains high in Nigeria due to its dire social service delivery outcomes and lack of basic infrastructure.

“Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children of primary school age in the world with nine million children out of school.

“There has been little change in vaccination rates over the last 25 years and Nigeria is set to overtake India as the country with most under-five deaths in the world.”

The First Lady, Aisha Buhari, recently raised the alarm over the large number of out-of-school children in the North.

The World Bank added that 71 million Nigerians lack access to (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); improved water, while 130 million people do not meet the Millennium Development Goal standards for sanitation.

However, the situation is worse in the North-East and North-West, where only around 25 to 28 per cent of households have access to basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation.

The World Bank further observed that number of Nigerians living in extreme poverty went up from 2011 to 2016.

The poor in Nigeria lag far behind the rich in every human capital outcome, according to the World Bank Human Capital Index, where Nigeria ranked among the worst seven performers.

It noted that the rate of poverty in Nigeria increased from 35.0 to 38.8 per cent of the total population from 2011 to 2016.

In the same vein, the report pointed out that, despite Nigeria’s middle-income status, almost four out of 10 citizens lived below the national poverty line in 2016.

Between 2011 and 2016, the total number of people living in poverty (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); increased from 57 million to 74 million, the World Bank added.

Commenting on the report, prominent northerners, including ex-Vice-President Atiku Abubakar; Alhaji Balarabe Musa and Junaid Mohammed, called for emphasis on education and a change in some cultural practices.

We should change culture that militates against poverty alleviation – Junaid

In separate telephone interviews with one of our correspondents in Abuja, on Monday, Mohammed and Musa said successive administrations had failed to reduce poverty largely because they failed to ensure that funds meant for the poor reach the masses.

Mohammed said, “I have no doubt in my mind that while it is important to concentrate on the economics of fighting poverty, it is important also for people to be sincere and confront those aspects of their culture which are counterproductive in the fight against poverty.What needs to be done is for government to be sincere in tackling poverty.

“Sadly, even the pittance that is allocated to poverty alleviation in (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); this country is being stolen by those in power because they know nothing will happen.

“Unless we have the political will to deal with this issue nothing will change. We must have leaders with sincerity of purpose. One of the tragedies of poverty in this part of the country is sadly the reality of some of our cultural practices which today’s reality cannot support.”

Balarabe Musa links poverty in North to low education level

Musa said the level of poverty was more in the North because of the poor level of western education.

He stated, “The level of education here is certainly lower that what you have in the South. So, definitely, the level of poverty in the North is higher than that of the South. But if we really decide what is poverty, we will find out the difference between the north and the south is relative in terms of poverty.

“When you are talking of the bourgeois sense of poverty which is restricted to the level of empowerment at the higher level, yes you can say there are poorer people in the north than in the south but if you take Nigeria as a whole, the country as a whole is suffering from poverty that of the north is certainly higher.

“Poverty alleviation programmes by successive administrations have failed because they are bourgeois based.”

Atiku attributes North’s poverty to insecurity, lack of education

On his part, Atiku said insecurity, unemployment, lack of skills and (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); lack of education were responsible for the high poverty rate in the North, especially in the North-East and North-West.

Atiku, who spoke through his Media Adviser, Mr Paul Ibe, said businesses would not thrive in an environment that was plagued by insecurity, lack of skills and lack of education.

Atiku said, “It is very clear that the North-East and North-West have a lot of shortcomings when you look at the index of education. So, education is key. It is the fastest vehicle for upward mobility.

“Education is a game-changer. The North -East and North-West are not doing well in that particular sector. That has impacted on the poverty aspect. To move from the threshold where they are now to the next level, there is the need for re-prioritisation of education as the most important sector.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

So on that note, I’d love to talk about something else that @kittenfair​ brought up in her post (at the risk of enraging Cloud Strife fans everywhere, lolll no biggie a super small fandom I’m sure) but I didn’t want to derail that thread because this is quite a tangential thought—

Why is that relevant? A quick googling has informed me that the average heights of men in Japan (between 2004-2013) is 5′7 - I’m gonna guess it was probably around that or shorter back in ‘97. This is, not coincidentally, a familiar number - it’s how tall the OG says Cloud, our protagonist, is. So for the original team creating this game, the protag is average height, your “relatable” everyman. Now, if they wanted to make the villain tower over him? 6′1 isn’t bad at all! In fact, that’s a solid seven inches taller. Huge gap. Saying Sephiroth is 6′1 establishes him way taller than Cloud.

For some reason it’s a little harder to google up the average male height of the total human population without it being broken down into specific regions, but this webpage has some nice infographics that make their (albeit somewhat edited down) data a bit easier to visualize. Let’s look specifically at this one:

From the countries they selected, 5′4.75″ is the lower boundary and 5′11.25″ is the upper boundary, making the mean 5′8″ and the median of this somewhat arbitrary selection 5′9.25″. Wikipedia’s more complete chart has 5′2″ as the lower boundary in Indonesia with 6′1″ as the upper boundary in the Dinaric Alps, making the worldwide mean height for men 5′7.5″. (You can’t really find an accurate median or average from this data.)

You can maybe see where I’m going with this. Cloud is not actually a shrimp. This is a post about body image and our skewed perception of it.

Even more damnably, I’d like to call attention to Livestrong’s (still somewhat arbitrary) selection of countries, ordered by height rather than alphabetically as they have done:

India: 5 feet 4.75 inches China: 5 feet 5.75 inches Mexico: 5 feet 5.75 inches Japan: 5 feet 7.25 inches Brazil: 5 feet 8.25 inches Australia: 5 feet 8.75 inches Canada: 5 feet 9 inches Russia: 5 feet 9.25 inches France: 5 feet 9.25 inches Italy: 5 feet 9.25 inches America: 5 feet 9.5 inches The UK: 5 feet 9.75 inches Spain: 5 feet 10 inches Greece: 5 feet 10.25 inches Germany: 5 feet 11.25 inches

I’ve highlighted two countries on this list, and they are the US and Japan. The US is highlighted because Livestrong is an American website and specifically addresses their article to American audiences, but also because the US tends to influence a lot of worldwide culture, and I think especially in our fandom on Tumblr, which is also a US-based website. But I've highlighted Japan because, of course, that’s where the source material we’re discussing (Cloud Strife’s height) comes from.

Out of this list, is there anything you might notice about places where the average height is lower than 5′7″ and places where the average height is higher than 5′7″? Because I am noticing a very eurocentric trend.

Here are some other countries with the smallest average male heights from Wikipedia’s list:

Bolivia: 5′3″ rural India: 5′3″ Vietnam: 5′4″ Nepal: 5′4″ Malaysia: 5′4.5″ Sri Lanka: 5′4.5″ Nigeria: 5′4.5″ India: 5′4.5″ Peru: 5′4.5″ Bahrain: 5′5″ Baghdad, Iraq: 5′5″ North Korea: 5′5″

Here are some of the countries with the tallest average male heights (they have multiple entries so I’m not going to list specific heights, but these are all in the 5′11″–6′0″ range):

Netherlands Sweden Denmark Norway Germany Iceland Serbia

So, when we say that 5′7″ is short, could it possibly be that what we’re saying is that 5′7″ is short for white people??

Now, granted, Cloud is arguably white despite coming from a Japanese game. Then again, he is arguably Japanese because Japanese character designers have a habit of creating visually Caucasian characters who we simply have to accept are Japanese/Asian “Because They Say So.” But he’s mostly perceived as white, I think, which might be why nearly everyone looks at him and his height and goes, “omg, he’s so short??”

Except...even among white people, he’s not all that short. If you consider that the average men in the US and UK are around 5′9″–5′10″, and the average men in Australia and Canada are around 5′8–5′9″, 5′7″ is only an inch shorter than that. (And I have chosen these four countries because stats say that’s where the highest percentage of my followers are from, with the overwhelming majority being US-based.) And idk about you guys but even if the difference of an inch is statistically significant, on an individual basis I never stand next to someone an inch or two shorter than me and go “wow wtf you’re so much shorter than I am.”

But...did you know that the average male heights in these countries was even that short? I live in the US and I usually observe people anecdotally marking the distinction between “short guys” and “tall guys” around 6′0″, which is a laughably unrealistic “goal” IMO. There’s also a reblog meme that goes around the Tumblr RP community now and then significantly proclaiming “reblog if your muse is shorter than 6′0″!” like that’s some kind of distinctive feature even though most humans are under 6′0″.

So where do we get these unrealistic standards from?

“The Average Height of a Model”

According to industry standards, fashion models are preferably tall but not too tall. Elite, a top modeling agency, specifies height requirements on its website. Women must be between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 11 inches tall. Men must be between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet 3 inches. Models who want to enter the Ford Supermodel of the Year Search, should be at least 5 feet 8 inches.

I used to work in a department store, and specifically for a while I sold ladies’ clothing in the “special sizes” department: “Petites” and “Women’s.” (That’s code for “short” and “fat,” which by the way are separate distinctions and there are in fact some clothing sizes that are both W and P, although good luck finding even W or P in most stores.) The technical definition of a “petite” woman, in US clothing sizes, is a woman under 5′3″.

According to Wikipedia, the average US woman is 5′3.5″.

But the average fashion model? Is 5′9.5″. And how many women do you hear in the 5′3″–5′5″ range bemoaning how “short” they are? I am 5′1.5″ and I can tell you I hear a lot, because it never slips by me unnoticed because I need to catch my eyes before they roll out of my head and you tend not to miss that.

Around here at least, men are less likely to be caught complaining about their supposed physical deficiencies than women because it’s considered unmanly to do so, but if you listen long enough and hard enough and gain the confidence of enough men under 6′0″, you might just hear a recurring insecurity expressed about the failure to reach that height and about consequently “being short.” That’s not altogether unwarranted, because, disgustingly enough, more often than I hear men expressing a preoccupation with being 6′0″ or not, I hear it from women who say they won’t even consider dating a man under 6′0″.

This is significant because of the next thing I’m going to bring up, which is the part that is going to make the Cloud Strife fandom v angry with me. 😂

Why is Cloud infantilized so much for being “short”??

Unlike the other questions I’ve posed here, I’m not asking this to set you up because I have a proposed answer ready. I am honestly baffled and a little disturbed by this. If it isn’t right to sexualize Tifa because her breasts are large (and it’s not), then why is it acceptable to treat Cloud like a cute little baby child almost precisely because he’s the shortest man in the cast? And more importantly, how does that make actual men who are 5′7″ or shorter feel? (You can come at me about “male fragility” but I hold that all humans have feelings that are worth considering even if they fall into privileged groups.) I can tell you as a woman under 5′2″ that I am sick to death of being infantilized for it, and that’s while falling into a demographic which is supposed to enjoy being thought of as “cuter” or whatever. I don’t, btw, but at least I’m not openly derided and thought of as “less of a [my gender identity here]” than I would be if I were a short man (ooo, there’s some intersectionality we never talk about).

So, a proposition for your consideration: If you tend to associate Cloud with being cute and diminutive, maybe pause and ask yourself if these feelings are influenced by his height and culturally instilled notions of shorter men being thought of as less manly, and if these assumptions do not warrant being challenged. It’s no less than I would ask anyone to do of assumptions about Tifa being hypersexual possibly having anything to do with the size of her breasts.

I welcome respectful discussion, but please note if I feel your contribution is more about arguing with me than about actually making a thoughtful contribution to the topic, I will reply on my personal blog @ravys-ravings rather than trouble my followers with unproductive bickering.

[datoyau]

Dato Yau | Guide to Right Investments

As an individual we all have targets and established objectives in our funds, therefore sufficient information to the appropriate investment is extremely essential. Thinking about the reality that good investments aid us to realise our objectives in our education and learning, career, capital tasks, household requirements, etc, after that it's imperative for us to comprehend these investments.

  Currently, we are confronted with the recuperation of the economic situation after experiencing the international economic crisis for greater than 2 years of financial standstill. In most African nations, especially Nigeria do not appear to get on a good begin as the federal government has actually limited funds to infuse into the economy (Funding market) unlike other industrialized nations of the world are currently doing. For that reason, there's a requirement for us to make the appropriate choice at this trying period. There are various sorts of Investments offered to us; Financial savings, Insurance Coverage, Bonds, Equities and also Stocks, FOREX, Real Estates, Importation and also Exportation, and what have you. These might appear fascinating, but we should look prior to we choose in our chosen financial investments.

  For most people, making the right financial investment decision can be a challenging one. They think that you need adequate cash to endeavor right into a financially rewarding service. It is constantly a great concept to do some research prior to you can make a decision regarding what you intend to buy. This is much better accomplished one of the most when you collect info on your sort of investment since you wish to make the right financial investments that would work best for you. It is financially smart for you to know the financial investment fundamentals to ensure that you will remain in a position to have variety of choices. Is this where using funds is available in? It is suggested that you utilize your cost savings especially if you intend to buy long term. In addition, you do not need a whole lot to enter investing however; you can utilize your monthly cost savings and investing regularly. The Stocks as well as shares choice is among one of the most preferred and also lucrative organisation.

  Additionally investing in Insurance policy is another ensured way of spending without having fear for decrease in market value. Unlike the stock market, Insurance is a certain means of getting your cash back with a particular collected rate of interest over a stated amount of time that is if there have actually not been any kind of incidents prior to the maturation day. This however, would be gone over specifically in my succeeding articles.The shared fund financial investment choice is yet one more kind of investing whereby companies collect cash from different individuals and utilize it to venture right into appropriate priced estimate company supply at the best time.This minimizes your risk of shedding money since you are not straight buying the securities market. You ought to look out for all loophole holes and engage the services of a financial expert to assist you make appropriate financial investment options.

  Before we look into the different financial investments stated over correctly, there is a requirement to highlight the basic Concepts of Investments that would certainly be our overview to an effective endeavor. I will go over 5 of these verified concepts that would certainly assist us via;

  The initial investment principle we need to understand is to get the foundation right of any type of investments plan and all the hiccups we imagined or encountered would certainly be checked. The problem lots of people have is that they attempt to address their challenges from the surface. It is very easy for one to quickly take a discomfort eliminating tablet computers to quit his tooth pain problems without recognizing the cause. Alright allowed's take a look at our company purchases as a circumstances. A growing business owner obtains cash from his fellow company men to construct his company venture. By doing this overtime he became heavily indebted. But in order to be free from his insolvency, he quickly pays his debts without ever considering the fact that his best weakness could be inadequate financial (money) management. In Nigeria today, an ordinary 60 percent of the population are into entrepreneurship in one service or the various other yet most of them have little idea of their endeavor which represents low returns in earnings every quarter. This dismay efficiency can just be attributed to their inadequate expertise of the claimed organisation, therefore business structure is doing not have. In resolving such situations, comprehending the roots of these investments

would place us on the vehicle driver's sit to recognize where and just how to make wonderful returns on our investments

  The second concept just tells us to set values in our investments' strategy and life objectives usually as a lawn stick to take us to our wanted assumptions. Values are interior supports we established ahead of time to assist us in time of decisions making. It is also essential to keep in mind that in our specific workplaces and service places, values we set for ourselves would certainly establish the future as well as success of our jobs and also business ventures. According to Hamel, G. in "Reassessing the basis for Competition" in (Gibson, R (ed) Re-thinking The Future, Nicholas Brealey Posting, London pp. 76-92 he states that "the big challenge in producing the future is not anticipating the future. Rather, the goal is to try to think of a future that is probable - a future that you produce based on values." As matter of fact, we must put great worths on our financial investments as well as businesses for it to expand beyond limits.

  On the 3rd principles of financial investments, we have to draw out our financial investments plans as well as approach. One does not anticipate a high returns as a return on your investments from a quoted company if you do not spend well on that firm. In any financial investment we do, there is need to understand the approach to embrace in getting excellent returns. Allow's take a look at the securities market as an example, you would certainly not be crazy to purchase First Financial institution PLC in the Nigerian Stock Exchange that has actually reached its' favorable state when you understand most capitalists are bailing out after a period of planting after that grinning to the financial institutions for an excellent financial investment. You have to recognize the investment initially (foundation) after that take on a particular plan or technique that would certainly suit it for a stated duration. That is why; Sunlight Tzu, fantastic author, assumes that "the General that wins the fight makes many computations in his temple prior to the fight is dealt with while the General who losses make yet couple of calculations in advance". You need to know that whatever plans or method you improvise not actually ensure you success as it might not suit the kind of investments you are into yet obtain the right information to assist you through. For this reason, you are recommended to purchase financial publications, organisation suggestions or any kind of investment tools to put you in advance of your contemporaries. By doing this, you must have attracted an investment philosophy that includes your; objective, period, returns and also interest of your investments.

Dato Yau

The 4th Principles would certainly centre on our spiritual toughness in business. Understanding that in some cases we deal with all type of troubles and setbacks in our investments or company tasks, we might not have the physical power to conquer them. To be sensible, we need to appreciate God by committing our organisations in His hands irrespective of our faith or faith. According to the Book of Sayings; "If God can see everything in the world of the dead, he can likewise see in our hearts." If we dedicate our ways to God, He would guide our paths. We should always seek Him when faced with any problems. I additionally suggest you renew your minds with great spiritual and motivational materials. Excellent authors like; T.D. Jakes, John Mason, Joyce Meryce, Mathew Ashimolowo, Dale Carnegie, etc have terrific works that can nurture our soul and also make us up-and-comers also despite hardship. You would find out that what you take into consideration as issues are not troubles, however some road blocks you encountered as difficulties to your road to success.

  The last Concepts of investments which is the 5th, concerns you as a person. As a child while maturing, all of us aspired to be one terrific professional in our picked field. That's the reason Education might be decreed as the highest possible type of investment. I must say that many professionals or CEOs these days don't utilize five percent of their brain. With the most up to date modern technologies at our finger suggestions, we hardly ever use our brain to function also getting the least calculations. Expertise they claim is power. The even more understanding we obtain, the extra clever we come to be in influencing our lives favorably. We need to buy ourselves to improve on our organisation ideas and also skills as modification is unavoidable. To strengthen this factor, let's check out Romans 12:2; "and be not adapted to this world, however be ye changed by the restoring of your mind that you might confirm what is great as well as acceptable and also ideal will of God". Please make it a practice to invest massive part of your revenue on your mind and also mind, as it's such a financial investment that you would certainly obtain a 100% returns.

[kim26chiu]

The Once and Future Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria. Image via City Journal

City Journal just ran a very interesting piece on Lagos by Armin Rosen. Lagos is by some estimates Africa’s largest city and is well known as a creative capital. I don’t know anything personally about the city, but found Rosen’s description balanced and fascinating. Here are some excerpts:

Poverty, confusion, and moral fluidity haven’t stopped Lagos from achieving global prominence. Maybe an all-pervading looseness has even been a source of the city’s growth, since it has expanded with a velocity that prudent planning would avoid. Lagos is now West Africa’s economic and cultural hub, as well as perhaps the continent’s largest city, depending on which population figures one accepts. By most accounts, Lagos has twice as many people as London, along with a GDP greater than all but six African states. In its successes and failures, the city offers a cautionary preview of where an urbanizing developing world is hurtling. … The project seeks to expand the congested Victoria Island area, while creating a glittering showcase of world-class high-end real estate, thus helping to reverse Lagos’s reputation for disorder. But the initiative reflects a certain myopia: the landfill destroyed Bar Beach, once a popular public space in a city with no large parks and few major squares or monumental avenues. It’s not obvious whether the existing infrastructure can support such a large development so far off the mainland; as it is, Victoria and Lagos Islands are accessible only through a gauntlet of traffic choke points. The development is also aimed at a tiny upper sliver of an overwhelmingly poor city. “The plan is to create a Dubai and just ignore people who can’t afford to live in the proverbial Dubai, which describes most of the population,” says Olaolu Ogunmodede, a researcher at the Lagos-based Center for Public Policy Alternatives and an editor at The Republic, of the Lagos state government’s approach. (The city is organized as a state within the Nigerian federal system.) … In nearby Ikoyi and Victoria Island, affluent Lagosians have little reason to venture too far, either—they live in gated estates, with their own security, garbage collection, electricity, and private bus services. One gets frequent reminders of how segmented Lagos is, how cordoned off its parts are from one another. Cut down a side street in Ikeja, and you’re suddenly in a squalid parallel world, where generators scream beside narrow mud streets, lined with freelancing numbers-runners and peddlers hawking broken clocks. The alley ends, and the modern downtown resumes again. From the Third Mainland Bridge, travelers can see the plush villas of Banana Island and Lekki glimmer in the distance at night, while the vast lagoon-side Makoko slum, less than 500 yards west of the six-mile-long causeway and home to an estimated 250,000 people, is invisible in the darkness. Makoko has become a transit point for timber from farther down the coast, creating yet another vibrant hyper-local poverty economy. You can smell the tang of burning garbage and wood from the bridge whenever traffic slows.

Cheta Nwaze, a researcher at SBM intelligence, offers more insight into the city’s divisions. Nwaze and another SBM analyst, Ikemesit Effiong, meet me at Seven Eagles Spur, a diner-style restaurant inside Ikeja’s City Mall, decorated in images of southwestern American desert highways and chiefs in feather headdresses. Nwaze informs me that, a decade ago, the land that the mall now occupies was a slum. Residents were removed with a minimum of due process or public deliberation—still the standard procedure for any big-ticket Lagos development project. The mall has a KFC and a Nike store, and our lunch bill comes out to 9,100 naira, or $25. The people who had lived on the site of the future mall probably never imagined such a thing. “You give someone 9,100 naira and tell them to kill someone, and they will do it,” Nwaze says, only half-joking. … Lagos is booming. Credible estimates put the population at 17 million or 18 million, but the city defies understanding of its true scope. “Most Nigerians can’t be accessed even by the government,” Effiong notes. This relative lack of data could turn out to have broader significance, since the world is sure to look more like Lagos in the coming decades. An estimated 54.5 percent of the global population now lives in cities, but urbanization is less complete in the developing world. Slightly more than half of Asia’s population, and nearly 60 percent of Africa’s, still lives in rural areas. The number of cities with 500,000 inhabitants or more is expected to grow by 80 percent in Africa alone between now and 2030, and the ten cities that the UN projects to cross the 10 million–inhabitant “megacity” threshold by 2030 are all in developing countries. By 2030, some 730 million people, or 8.9 percent of the people on earth, will live in these megacities, up from the current total of 500 million, or 6.8 percent. Success has made Lagos an unnerving glimpse into the near future. … This constant flux can make for a verdant creative environment. Jumia and iRoko, West Africa’s leading e-commerce and entertainment streaming services, respectively, are regionally important companies founded in Lagos during the past decade. Music and movies produced in the city dominate West Africa and beyond—it was a Lagosian, Wizkid, who appeared alongside the Canadian pop star Drake in his 2016 megahit “One Dance.” As Edet Okun, an assistant curator at Lagos’s Nimbus gallery explains, the city has also fueled a burgeoning art market. “The money is here, and you have a high concentration of people,” Okun says, guiding me through a collection that includes traditional Ife bronzes, as well as striking monochromatic abstract works from Nigerian artist Olu Okekeanye.

Attracting Nigerians of every description, Lagos offers hope for a country often defined by its religious, regional, and ethnic cleavages. It is the exception to Nigeria’s fault lines, “probably the one place in the country where, regardless of where you came from, you can feel like you belong,” one Nigerian told me. For some Lagosians, the rationalized marketplace of the city is also the only way of escaping a dead-end village economy, in which labor is a social or familial obligation, rather than a source of money and freedom. “A lot of these many odd jobs that people do for free in rural areas, people pay for in Lagos,” says Ray Ekpu, cofounder of the magazine Newswatch. Ekpu moved to Lagos from Nigeria’s southeast in 1980 and has seen the worst of the city: he was imprisoned six times during military rule, and a close colleague at Newswatch died in a mail-bomb attack in 1986 that many suspected was linked with the magazine’s work. “People come searching for the bright lights,” Ekpu observes. “They think they can find a good life here. Some of it is true. Some of it is a myth. They think if they can get here, they can find something to do.” That Lagosian myth—of opportunity and an escape from Nigeria’s various social and political ills—has an intense hold over the country. …

Infrastructural lapses aside, Lagos uneasily embodies one of civilization’s fundamental divides: the split between the city and the provinces, between a flagging periphery and the center toward which that periphery gravitates. The numbers reflect an astounding imbalance. Lagos contributes more to Nigeria’s GDP than any other state, and twice as much as the second highest-ranked state. Only 214 Nigerians pay 20 million naira ($56,000) or more in taxes each year; all live in Lagos, which collects some 39 percent of Nigeria’s internally generated revenue. Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode has claimed that 60 percent of the country’s industrial and commercial business takes place in his city.

Click through to read the whole thing.

from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/07/12/the-once-and-future-lagos/

[barb31clem]

The Once and Future Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria. Image via City Journal

City Journal just ran a very interesting piece on Lagos by Armin Rosen. Lagos is by some estimates Africa’s largest city and is well known as a creative capital. I don’t know anything personally about the city, but found Rosen’s description balanced and fascinating. Here are some excerpts:

Poverty, confusion, and moral fluidity haven’t stopped Lagos from achieving global prominence. Maybe an all-pervading looseness has even been a source of the city’s growth, since it has expanded with a velocity that prudent planning would avoid. Lagos is now West Africa’s economic and cultural hub, as well as perhaps the continent’s largest city, depending on which population figures one accepts. By most accounts, Lagos has twice as many people as London, along with a GDP greater than all but six African states. In its successes and failures, the city offers a cautionary preview of where an urbanizing developing world is hurtling. … The project seeks to expand the congested Victoria Island area, while creating a glittering showcase of world-class high-end real estate, thus helping to reverse Lagos’s reputation for disorder. But the initiative reflects a certain myopia: the landfill destroyed Bar Beach, once a popular public space in a city with no large parks and few major squares or monumental avenues. It’s not obvious whether the existing infrastructure can support such a large development so far off the mainland; as it is, Victoria and Lagos Islands are accessible only through a gauntlet of traffic choke points. The development is also aimed at a tiny upper sliver of an overwhelmingly poor city. “The plan is to create a Dubai and just ignore people who can’t afford to live in the proverbial Dubai, which describes most of the population,” says Olaolu Ogunmodede, a researcher at the Lagos-based Center for Public Policy Alternatives and an editor at The Republic, of the Lagos state government’s approach. (The city is organized as a state within the Nigerian federal system.) … In nearby Ikoyi and Victoria Island, affluent Lagosians have little reason to venture too far, either—they live in gated estates, with their own security, garbage collection, electricity, and private bus services. One gets frequent reminders of how segmented Lagos is, how cordoned off its parts are from one another. Cut down a side street in Ikeja, and you’re suddenly in a squalid parallel world, where generators scream beside narrow mud streets, lined with freelancing numbers-runners and peddlers hawking broken clocks. The alley ends, and the modern downtown resumes again. From the Third Mainland Bridge, travelers can see the plush villas of Banana Island and Lekki glimmer in the distance at night, while the vast lagoon-side Makoko slum, less than 500 yards west of the six-mile-long causeway and home to an estimated 250,000 people, is invisible in the darkness. Makoko has become a transit point for timber from farther down the coast, creating yet another vibrant hyper-local poverty economy. You can smell the tang of burning garbage and wood from the bridge whenever traffic slows.

Cheta Nwaze, a researcher at SBM intelligence, offers more insight into the city’s divisions. Nwaze and another SBM analyst, Ikemesit Effiong, meet me at Seven Eagles Spur, a diner-style restaurant inside Ikeja’s City Mall, decorated in images of southwestern American desert highways and chiefs in feather headdresses. Nwaze informs me that, a decade ago, the land that the mall now occupies was a slum. Residents were removed with a minimum of due process or public deliberation—still the standard procedure for any big-ticket Lagos development project. The mall has a KFC and a Nike store, and our lunch bill comes out to 9,100 naira, or $25. The people who had lived on the site of the future mall probably never imagined such a thing. “You give someone 9,100 naira and tell them to kill someone, and they will do it,” Nwaze says, only half-joking. … Lagos is booming. Credible estimates put the population at 17 million or 18 million, but the city defies understanding of its true scope. “Most Nigerians can’t be accessed even by the government,” Effiong notes. This relative lack of data could turn out to have broader significance, since the world is sure to look more like Lagos in the coming decades. An estimated 54.5 percent of the global population now lives in cities, but urbanization is less complete in the developing world. Slightly more than half of Asia’s population, and nearly 60 percent of Africa’s, still lives in rural areas. The number of cities with 500,000 inhabitants or more is expected to grow by 80 percent in Africa alone between now and 2030, and the ten cities that the UN projects to cross the 10 million–inhabitant “megacity” threshold by 2030 are all in developing countries. By 2030, some 730 million people, or 8.9 percent of the people on earth, will live in these megacities, up from the current total of 500 million, or 6.8 percent. Success has made Lagos an unnerving glimpse into the near future. … This constant flux can make for a verdant creative environment. Jumia and iRoko, West Africa’s leading e-commerce and entertainment streaming services, respectively, are regionally important companies founded in Lagos during the past decade. Music and movies produced in the city dominate West Africa and beyond—it was a Lagosian, Wizkid, who appeared alongside the Canadian pop star Drake in his 2016 megahit “One Dance.” As Edet Okun, an assistant curator at Lagos’s Nimbus gallery explains, the city has also fueled a burgeoning art market. “The money is here, and you have a high concentration of people,” Okun says, guiding me through a collection that includes traditional Ife bronzes, as well as striking monochromatic abstract works from Nigerian artist Olu Okekeanye.

Attracting Nigerians of every description, Lagos offers hope for a country often defined by its religious, regional, and ethnic cleavages. It is the exception to Nigeria’s fault lines, “probably the one place in the country where, regardless of where you came from, you can feel like you belong,” one Nigerian told me. For some Lagosians, the rationalized marketplace of the city is also the only way of escaping a dead-end village economy, in which labor is a social or familial obligation, rather than a source of money and freedom. “A lot of these many odd jobs that people do for free in rural areas, people pay for in Lagos,” says Ray Ekpu, cofounder of the magazine Newswatch. Ekpu moved to Lagos from Nigeria’s southeast in 1980 and has seen the worst of the city: he was imprisoned six times during military rule, and a close colleague at Newswatch died in a mail-bomb attack in 1986 that many suspected was linked with the magazine’s work. “People come searching for the bright lights,” Ekpu observes. “They think they can find a good life here. Some of it is true. Some of it is a myth. They think if they can get here, they can find something to do.” That Lagosian myth—of opportunity and an escape from Nigeria’s various social and political ills—has an intense hold over the country. …

Infrastructural lapses aside, Lagos uneasily embodies one of civilization’s fundamental divides: the split between the city and the provinces, between a flagging periphery and the center toward which that periphery gravitates. The numbers reflect an astounding imbalance. Lagos contributes more to Nigeria’s GDP than any other state, and twice as much as the second highest-ranked state. Only 214 Nigerians pay 20 million naira ($56,000) or more in taxes each year; all live in Lagos, which collects some 39 percent of Nigeria’s internally generated revenue. Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode has claimed that 60 percent of the country’s industrial and commercial business takes place in his city.

Click through to read the whole thing.

from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/07/12/the-once-and-future-lagos/

[kirstymcneill]

Scotland and our movement moment

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Adam Smith Festival of Ideas, first published on Global Dashboard on the 19th of March 2017. 

This weekend was the inaugural Adam Smith Festival of Ideas in Kirkcaldy and I was asked to speak about how Scotland could change the world in the years ahead. This is what I said.

Our world needs movements – and movements need Scots

I want to tell you a story about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we could go. A story about the Scotland we could become – if we first understand who we are.

I came of age politically after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the highpoint of a global order based on shared rules and human rights. From the Arms Trade Treaty to the responsibility to protect doctrine to the cancellation of third world debt, I got kind of used to the uninterrupted march of global justice.

And then the darkness descended.

Just take the last three years.

2015 was the year of the refugee, with global refugee figures reaching their highest point since World War Two.

2016 was the year of populism, with surging support for nativist political forces across the Western world.

2017 is set to be the year of famine, with more than 20 million people at risk of starvation across Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia in the worst crisis of its sort in more than three decades.

Something has gone very very wrong and I’m here today to ask you to join me in helping to put it right. My argument today is three fold.

Firstly, that this particular moment in history is a ‘movement moment’ – it demands of us a willingness to join movements in unprecedented numbers, because the problems cannot be fixed by politicians, public policy or public institutions alone.

Secondly, my argument is that Scots in particular have special responsibilities here, because we believe in cooperation not only in our communities and in our country, but across the world. And thirdly that Scots not only have a duty to be involved in global justice movements, but actually have a very distinctive contribution to make, by virtue of the quirks of our historical experience.

A movement moment

Let me begin by saying a bit more about where we are, and why I think this is a movement moment.

By day I work at Save the Children and each day I try to remind myself of the good we have done together. Since 1990, we have halved the number of children dying before their fifth birthday. Anybody who has ever suffered any form of bereavement knows that each loss is shattering, leaving a hole in a family that can never be filled. That we have halved the number of families experiencing the depths of that sorrow is a good reason to get up in the morning. And if you’ve ever given to an international charity like Save the Children, or happily pay your taxes and support that money being spent on aid, then these are your achievements and you can be very very proud.

But at the same time I cannot say, hand on heart, that I am optimistic about the way the world is moving. I despair every time we release a new report charting the catastrophic failure to protect the children of Syria. Last week we published a report in which a child said “when friends die my chest hurts and I can’t breathe so I sit alone because I don’t want to scream at anyone”. These are words that no child anywhere should say.

In the report before that parents in a besieged area of Syria told us what it was like to raise children in a town where all the doctors had fled or been killed. They had resorted to taking their little ones to the vet when they got sick.

All across the world, from Paris to Mosul, ordinary families are terrorised by extremists and a medieval barbarism is encouraging people to target and torture those who disagree.

Meanwhile here at home the mood has soured and something ugly and sinister is on the march. Jewish friends receive abuse from the swamps of history, Muslim friends report a surge in the most vulgar and blatant Islamophobia, while my friend Jo Cox was murdered doing her job.

Behind all these trends is the same basic story: frightened and frightening people are obsessing about what divides us. We have lost the art of seeing each person as precious and unique, as an irreplaceable and perfect version of themselves, without whom our world would be irrevocably impoverished.

None of these are problems which politicians, however honourable or gifted, can be expected to solve on their own. If we want a different kind of Scotland, Britain or world, we’re going to have to get involved.

For me movement thinking is exactly what we need now because we live in what I call a 3D world – a world characterised by distrust, division and disruption.

Distrust, of both the motivations and the competence of institutions. Division, between people of different backgrounds and opinions. And disruption, of old ways of thinking, doing and being. Those 3Ds all add up to people feeling overwhelmed and alone, and movements hold out the prospects of an answer.

A movement can be the answer to distrust – because movements are strengthened by their perceived authenticity. And it can be the answer to division, because by definition movements involve more than one person (there’s never been a movement of one). And it can be the answer to disruption, because movements are defined by being for change, but giving us the sense that we’re more in control of which change we choose.

This word movement gets bandied around a lot at the moment, so I want to be really clear about what I mean by it. To me a movement is not the same thing as an organisation. To me a movement is a tribe – a really, really big tribe, but a tribe nonetheless – which coalesces around a shared view of how the world could be and which commits not simply to taking one action but instead to a lifetime of service to an ideal.

My friend Alex Evans has just published a book in which he quotes an American organiser as saying ‘what makes a movement is simply enough people feeling part of it – sensing a shared culture, and forcing those watching to take note and take sides’.

That seems about right to me, because movements do force us to take sides, and decide where we stand on the big moral questions of the day. This isn’t a new thing – we’ve had movements for the abolition of slavery and for women’s suffrage and for civil rights. But just because we’re sympathetic to the most famous movements, we shouldn’t assume that movements are always the good guys. There’s a global far right movement too. And a global jihadi one.

So there’s nothing new about movement thinking, and nothing inherently honourable about it either. But my argument today is that there is nonetheless something about it which makes it uniquely well suited to the demands of the hour.

Scots as movement-builders

So why am I talking about this here in Scotland, and suggesting that Scots have a special obligation to fight hatreds which seem so much bigger than us, so big in fact that they could overwhelm the world? My answer is a simple one: Scots have a calling now, because we know better than anybody that none of us have to be put in boxes not of our choosing.

For three centuries we have been simultaneously Scottish and British and there are plenty of people who want to campaign for us to be Scottish and European. The fluidity of our identity is why we can talk of people being Scottish by birth, choice or aspiration – because we have long accepted that there��s nothing binary or closed about being a Scot.

And so my second argument today is that there is such a thing as Scottishness and that it leaves us well placed to be the movement builders that this movement moment demands of us.

The nature of Scottishness has obviously been a source of some controversy, so let me share a little about where I’m coming from.

Given the mesmerising range of choice – the grandeur of our Munros, the mysteries and histories of our lochs and the breathtaking beauty of our islands and our glens, it might surprise a visitor to Scotland to know that two of my favourite sights here are stones. They are both small, both plain and both can be seen within an hour of where we are now.

The first is the one bearing a circular inscription on the floor of the National Museum in Edinburgh, the one which says ‘Scotland to the world to Scotland’. The motto is chiseled in a circle so that, depending on how you look at it, it either says ‘Scotland to the world’ or ‘the world to Scotland’.

The second is embedded in the wall of St Giles’ Cathedral and says simply ‘Thank God for James Young Simpson’s discovery of chloroform anaesthesia in 1847’.

It seems to me that it is in these two small slabs – even more than in our poetry, plays, novels, songs or political speeches – you find the essence of the Scottish national character.

In the National Museum stone, you learn of our sense of Scotland the Good Samaritan, unwilling to pass by on the other side. There is much to be proud of here, from the disproportionate numbers of Scottish volunteers in the International Brigades to the phenomenal demonstration of people power on the eve of the 2005 Make Poverty History summit in Gleneagles. Whatever our views on the constitutional question, we can be proud that both nationalists and unionists, Yes and No supporters are united in their support for Scotland fulfilling our obligations to those beyond our borders who need our help.

In the St Giles’ Cathedral stone, you see a very Scottish combination of intense pride in our temporal talents, combined with a beautifully understated trust in providence, and a reminder not to get too cocky – it’s all very well being the most inventive people on the face of the earth, but don’t go thinking you did it on your own. The reason I love this stone so much is because it really encapsulates what I feel about my obligations as a campaigner – life isn’t about being ‘nice’, about having good intentions but not a real strategy for change. On the contrary – life is really about each of us straining to fulfil our potential so that the talents of each of us are used for the benefit of all of us. Our time on earth is supposed to be a succession of periods of hard thinking followed by periods of hard work.

We don’t have a Scots word or phrase that describes precisely this mix of social duty and determination to apply rigorous thinking to big problems, and the best I’ve come up with is ‘strategic service’.

I should say at this point that I don’t consider these national traits of ours an unalloyed good. The same overwhelming sense of obligation which can lead us to great acts of courage and self-sacrifice can tip all too readily in to an oppressive puritanism and self-righteousness. So I’m not suggesting here that Scots are superior to other peoples, just that we’re not entirely in the wrong when we ask ‘wha’s like us? Damn few’.

Movement thinking

So my second argument today is that to be a Scot is to have a particular take on the world, bound up in our sense of connectedness to other peoples and also in our obligation to give the best service it is in our power to give. It is for historians and anthropologists to tell us how we came to be this way, and for the philosophers to tell us if the downsides I have just described are a price worth paying for our gifts, but for our purposes today I hope we can take it as a starting point that there is something real about Scottishness, and our cultural distinctiveness is to be found somewhere in this area.

My third and final argument is that – if I am right, and our world needs movements and, if I am right that Scottishness is characterised both by its richness as a porous identity and by its internationalism and sense of strategic service, then Scots have a particular contribution to make to building movements in the years ahead.

Let me just say a little about what that would look like.

Firstly, great movements don’t buy great man theories of history. That doesn’t mean movements are leaderless – it means they are leaderful. Just think about Black Lives Matter, or the women’s marches on the inauguration weekend, or the refugees welcome movement. I don’t know who is in charge of any of these things, because nobody is in charge of these things. They are full of leaders, people who identify themselves through action.

And that brings me to my second point about movements. Movements are only as good as the activism they inspire and that should be our aim – providing inspiration, not giving orders. Brilliant movement builders rally people around a vision and then let people decide how they are going to contribute, creating the space for a whole range of creative tactics to emerge.

If we take a look at just the refugees welcome idea for a minute, it is clear that no one person could have come up with the range of activities people have done. Let me be clear here – I’m incredibly proud of Scotland’s response to the refugee crisis, just as I want to celebrate the contribution of communities across the UK. But I’m not naive – my point is not to suggest that everybody is welcoming or that Scots are inherently more progressive on these questions than folk down South.

But I do want to look at how people in Scotland were able to link up with a wider movement in a way that should make us all proud.

To take just two examples. How brilliant that ordinary folk from Glasgow set up Refuweegee, a charity which offers new arrivals to the city not just essentials like toiletries and nappies, but ‘letters fae the locals’ introducing what we love about our city and explaining treats like In Bru and Tunnocks Tea Cakes.

Or when Syrian families were first resettled in Bute, how amazing that locals went to speak to the church about giving a space for Friday prayers and to the local co-op about making sure they had halal meat for sale.

All of these things were just people finding different ways to contribute, the same way a QC in London decided to set up the billable hour campaign where he encouraged all his pals from chambers, and then all the solicitors they worked with, to each give what they would bill in an hour to Save the Children’s child refugee appeal. All at the same time as Belle and Sebastian decided to put on a gig for us, and Caitlin Moran organised a single, and a member of the public set up a petition which ended up forcing David Cameron to agree to take 20 thousand Syrian refugees, while another ordinary woman invited a few of her friends on Facebook to a protest and ended up leading a march of 10 thousand people through London.

There wasn’t a mastermind behind all of these things – but there was a movement, and the movement is delivering real change, right now.

And here’s the final point I want to leave you with, and it brings us full circle as to why we’re talking about this in Scotland. Being a movement builder means connecting with people on the very deepest level of their values and their identity. Something can have mass participation and still not be a movement – after all nobody says they are part of the movement for iphones, or converse shoes or AirBnB. These communities are all massive, but they are just organised around things we use, they don’t represent who we are.

Likewise even if we feel a very strong attachment to one political party or one charity, our loyalty to the movement of which it is part tends to run even deeper. Nobody has a twitter bio saying ‘supporter of the Fawcett Society’ – we say feminist. We don’t say ‘Hope not Hate donor’ – we say anti-fascist. And we don’t say ‘Amnesty member’, we say human rights defender.

And that, of course, is the same idea we started with. My experience of being Scottish – in part I am sure because it’s been an experience of being Scottish and British, not Scottish or British – has made me feel incredibly comfortable with the idea that I’m part of more than one community of action, of mutual obligation, and of identity.

Movement thinking is a new buzz phrase around the world, but it’s actually something Scots do instinctively, because whether we like it or not, duality is part of who we are. There will be plenty of people here – and there are certainly plenty of people among my own nearest and dearest – who want another referendum, and will use it as a chance to vote for independence.

It isn’t my place to pass judgement on that one way or another today. But I hope it is my place to ask you to weigh very carefully whether the rich, multi-layered nature of Scottish identity is something you value and, if it is, whether you’re prepared to put that special perspective to good use in this movement moment.

Over the course of this weekend and in the months and years to come the status of Scotland in the Union will no doubt continue to dominate. But if that is all we talk about I fear we are missing the chance to make our mark on questions of truly global and historical significance.

Scotland’s national question is a complex one, but my argument today is simple: our broken world needs movements, movements need Jock Tamson’s Bairns and they need us now.

[thisdaynews]

The Fulani question

New Post has been published on https://www.thisdaynews.net/2018/07/13/the-fulani-question/

The Fulani question

The Fulani question

Educated Fulanis, many friends of mine included, have displayed a strong reluctance to engage in public discussions about the Fulani herdsmen crisis. Last week, I complained about this stony silence, (which I regard as unhelpful and possibly passive-aggressive!).

Two Your Fulani friends chose silence because the odds are stacked against the herdsmen. The narrative is one in which herdsmen are on a jihad. Anything contrary to that perspective will get short-shrift in the hands of those who control the media – Christian irredentists.

From An Un-named Individual (08091673000)

As a reporter myself I can understand your frustration, but you must also understand the fact that the press has generally been deliberately unkind to Fulanis in their reportage of the unfolding herdsmen crisis.This crass lack of professionalism is responsible for the “unfriendly stance of the Fulanis”.

Meanwhile, Kadaria Ahmed (kadaria@hotmail.com), a Fulani, a friend and a fellow journalist who has a totally detribalised personal and social life, is not afraid to air her views about this burning issue.

Nevertheless, when she tries to put things into perspective, she is sometimes (unfairly, in my opinion) accused of being a Fulani irredentist. And she recently shared the following observations with me:

* Not every conflict that is reported as Fulani attack is actually one.

* There is  some evidence that banditry and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa) attacks are being reported as Fulani attacks. And when Fulani settlements are attacked, there is a deafening silence with little or no reporting in the national press.

Even when it is reported by a handful of people with access to the information, it is ignored or dismissed.

* A large chunk of what the papers report is not properly researched and little journalism goes into it and the biases of the largely Southern Press and a lack of resources have meant they spend very little time actually investigating what they report as facts.

A handful appear to report downright falsehoods as truth. In Taraba for example, Fulani and Hausa villages are being sacked by militias but at least two national media houses are reporting it as a ‘Herdsmen’ attack.

*Many of the reports carried in various newspapers will not stand up to the basic tests of best practice in journalism.

* There is active exploitation of our fault lines, including historical, tribal and religious tensions in the North, amongst its myriad population, for political gain.

* I saw with my own eyes evidence of ethnic cleansing of the Fulanis in the Mambila Plateau.

* Conflicts which involve Muslims against Muslims and   Hausa Fulani Vs Hausa Fulani, as we see in Zamfara, barely get reported because they cannot be politicised and do not fit the binary narrative that the Nigerian media finds very seductive.

* The North or rather what Nigerians call the core North or to be blunt the Hausa Fulani have become the bogey man of Nigeria, blamed for every single woe that dogs the country, even though the evidence of where we are as a nation suggests there are more complex reasons about why we are dysfunctional, especially the role of our leadership which has cut across ethnic and religious lines.

* Pushing this narrative makes it easy for our politicians to refuse to take responsibility for the state of Nigeria and also serves to ensure there is no unity amongst the generality of the population. This unity is critical for building a mass movement capable of wrestling power away from the current, failed political class.

* The strategy has been so successful that even educated people who should know better uncritically swallow the narrative as it reinforces their own biases even if they don’t know or refuse to acknowledge it.

* The North has been labelled with a “born to rule” mentality and with other unsavoury tags based on the action of a few who by no means represent the majority of the ‘North’. This allows for the demonization of a whole population, the majority of whom are paying a higher price for misrule than any other region in Nigeria.

* We are expected to have collective guilt for what ‘the ‘North did’ to Nigeria and should be in a perpetual state of silence and not champion any cause seen as that of the North or question the narrative being pushed; otherwise we are labelled Northern irredentist to discredit our voices so our views can be nullified.

* There is deep hypocrisy about this matter because even those in the highest echelons of this so-called Northern government have bought into this narrative so much so that in their ‘safe’   places they will discuss this openly and term people like me Northern irredentist,  as we see with your APC friend.

* And this last fact illustrates to me how deep-seated the problems are and I personally don’t see how this will end well not when we have a government that is totally incompetent.

* A conversation would be great, but many won’t have the courage to speak. Many who benefit greatly from the current set up shout the loudest privately about marginalisation. The reality is they are among the greatest beneficiaries of our dysfunction and so have a lot to lose. For this reason, they cannot come out to openly to own their views.