Dutch Extreme Right: Muslims, Foreigners Not Wanted

There is an interesting political party here in the Netherlands known as Freedom Party (Dutch: Partij voor de Vrijheid). It is led by the most controversial politician in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders (Picture to your left). Geert is as blunt as the back of a knife. His party wants a stop to the spread of Islam in Holland (he calls it Islamic Tsunami). It also wants an amendment to the immigration policy of the Netherlands to make it more difficult for foreigners to become full citizens of Holland and contest elections or vote.

The cause of Wilders’ fears is visible: many leading politicians in the country are Muslim descendants of Muslim immigrants—Moroccans especially. An example is the current Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb. Wilders is afraid that in his lifetime, Muslims would take over the Netherlands and institute the Sharia Law.

But Wilders’ ideas are not popular—though his party is growing. A recent poll shows that even Christian leaders in the country are not happy with Wilders — talk of democracy based on principles. And, Muslims have not spoken against him loud enough for anyone to hear.

Wilders’ ideas (if adopted) will hurt many more people than Arab Muslims in the Netherlands. Dutch people born abroad will not be able to take part in Dutch politics. A young friend of mine, Meta, a nine-year old girl, born in Botswana by Dutch parents, is afraid Gildeers’ proposals would hurt her. She wrote the poem below on her fears:

Look at what the politicians are doing, it is not good.
I am allochton [state language used to describe people born outside of Holland and foreigners who have settled in Holland]
But nobody knows anything about this,
Geert Wilders wants to banish me.
I am a child
I am not a small thing.
I have a right to freedom.
If Wilders wins, I will only be a small breath of wind.
The Koran is a holy book, and Wilders covers up the bible.
Later I want to emigrate, because here we are shut up in safes.
The rights are of nearly no importance,
That is what the politicians are singing in unison.

AGIP Oil Scholarhips for Nigerian Undergraduates

Are you from Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited (NAOC) host communities in Bayelsa, Delta, Imo and Rivers State, Nigeria, or are you a 100-Level student in Engineering or Medicine in Nigeria? Then you may want to try the Agip Oil scholarship awards. Click here for details.

Nigeria at 50 Conference

Click here for the Call for Paper and other pieces of information.

Invitation to my seminar

DUTCH POLITICS: ‘SMALL’ BOYS AND GIRLS ARE IN CHARGE

In Holland, political posts are held by ‘small’ girls and boys who would have been errand kids or political thugs in Nigeria. When I read that Wouter Bos was retiring from politics at 46 and Camiel Eulings was retiring at 36, I thought, ‘Come on, they weren’t even supposed to have started active politics yet’. Wouter Bos was leader of Dutch Labour Party and Camiel was a leader in the Christian Democratic Party (CDA). Camiel was Minister of Transport; Member of the European Parliament and Vice-President of the continental European People’s Party—all within 36 years of existence on this planet. In Holland, they start (too) early. Consider this:
* 26-year old Herriët Brinkman is CDA councillor in Staphorst.
* 25-year old Evelien van Roemburg is a councillor for the green GroenLinks in Amsterdam
* 24-year old Mohammed Mohandis is Labour councillor in Gouda.
* 22-year old Rob Jetten is the leader of left-wing liberal D66 in the city of Nijmegen
* 22-year old Pieter van Ojen is an SGP councillor in Zeist
* 22-year old Farshad Bashir is two-year member of parliament for the Socialist Party
If you don’t believe this last one, I wouldn’t blame you:
* 18-year old Lidewij Bergsma is a VVD councillor in the Frisian town of Tytsjerksteradiel, and she is still in high school.

But when did these people start? When did they develop an ideology which led them to identify ‘their’ party? How did they start? When did they serve their time out as errand runners in the parties? I knew the Dutch baby starts to ride a bicycle shortly before it starts walking; I didn’t know politicking starts just about the same age. Care must then be taken in addressing people: that teenager riding his bike across the street may be the councillor of this ward! Councillors where I come from are old and powerful: they carry themselves as big men and women with some having their own bodyguards and personal assistants. They earn more than university professors earn.

In gerontocratic Nigeria, party leaders and political godfathers will not think you are fit for any office if you are in your twenties. Do you think politics is learnt in the University that you attended? What do you know? Who do you know? Who is your father? How many party thugs can you muster? AND—How much money do you even have? Small boy like you! How many years have you spent pasting party posters all over town?

Nigerian politicians are old people. Rilwan Lukman was made minister at age 70-something. But in Nigerian you cannot even be sure of anything. Age is shrouded in secrecy. Well, you must begin by asking ‘which age?’ Most Nigerian politicians have several ages: the official age (that is the age stated in official documents—which is altered as and when necessary); the marital age (the age they declared to their wives); the age-grade age (the one known by their age-grade members in the village) and the true age (the one known by God, the All-Knowing!).

Now that the Action President is shopping for a new set of ministers, will he choose old and expired politicians? And they are not in short supply in Nigeria. Or will he look for Nigerian Camiels and Boses? They too are not in short supply.

Nigerian Guerrilla Pressmen Ten Years after the Struggle

I am about concluding my stay at the Afrika-StudieCentrum (ASC), University of Leiden. I will be giving a seminar on my work here on Tuesday March 23. In the last few weeks, I have tried to do a paper on the current conditions and perceptions of the guerrilla journalists in Nigeria. By this term I mean those journalists who confronted the military and were brutalised and driven underground. I have sought to know what their take is on the current democratic dispensation. I had interviewed some of them and examined some of their writings. The result is a thirty-page paper which I reduced to two pages for this blog. You can read that two-page summary here.

Media Muzzling in Uganda--Prelude to Darkness

The Ugandan government is about perfecting all plans to muzzle the media in that country as a preparation for Mr Muzeveni's smooth re-election next year. A new law is being passed to that effect. Called the Press and Journalists Amendment Bill 2010, the law empowers the Media Council (appointees of Museveni) to promptly shut down a media house if it is deemed to have published any content that endangers national stability, security and unity. All media houses will also be required to apply for licences to be renewed annually. This is pretty much like the Kenyan Amended Communication Act which empowers the Minister of Internal Security to raid media houses and seize and confiscate whatever is found incriminating before, during or after publication or broadcasting. (I wrote about this on this blog last year. Click here)

These new Ugandan and Kenyan laws seem to be photocopies of the decrees issued during the infamous military regimes in Nigeria. An example WAS Decree 4 (promulgated by General Buhari) which would punish any journalist who published anything capable of bringing a public official into disrepute even if what was published was true. Another WAS Decree 29 (by General Babangida) which prescribed death for anyone who spoke or wrote anything capable of disrupting the society. I must also add Decree 48 (by Babangida also) which proscribed 17 publications owned by five anti-military newspaper organisations. Others were Decree 23 which proscribed The Reporter, and Decree 35 which conferred on the president the power to confiscate or ban any publication (like Kenya’s new law), and Decree 43 which (like the new Ugandan law) set up regulations for registration of newspapers. In Nigeria, we regard these laws as the painful sores of our past sufferings. They have been repealed long ago. They, in fact, sound so ancient and retrogressive we sometimes wonder if they truly existed. But they did. We have locked them up in the Pain Section of our mental National Archives and won't remember them again. They are the past.

Why are Museveni and Kibaki driving their countries backwards into darkness? Backwards towards the pain and misery that Nigeria left ten years ago? Ugandan media have been pliant for many years. Now that they are coming up, Yoweri is uncomfortable. On September 10, 2009, he shut down CBS FM and has refused to open it. Now he's reaching out for the rest of the independent media. Ugandan journalists and East African Journalists Association (EAJA) must rise up against this law! If they need help, they could talk to Nigerian former guerrilla journalists at The News, Tell, Insider Weekly, and The The Guardian. Twenty-four years as president and yet Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is not tired of ruling Uganda. This act is certainly a prelude to darkness.