Special Journal Edition: Media, Politics and Democratic culture in Nigeria and Zimbabwe

The International Journal of Social and Management Sciences (IJOSAMS) devoted its latest edition (Volume 3, No 1, 2010) to Media, Politics and Democratic culture in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Contributions were made from the two countries and the United States. Click here for the table of contents and list of contributors. Click here for abstracts of the papers. The Volume was edited by Anthony Olorunnisola, PhD, Department of Film/Video and Media Studies, College of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University, US.

‘Now that everyone is a photographer, we starve’

Recently at a wedding reception in Lagos, Nigeria, I was attracted to the plight of most of the ‘professional’ photographers present. In Nigeria, ‘professional’ photographers do not wait to be invited to an event especially weddings, funerals and college convocations. They besiege such events and take photographs of especially well-dressed ladies and dash to the nearest studio to print the pictures. Before the event is over, they return with printed photographs, seek out the photographed persons and sell the photos to them. Each 5” by 7” costs N100 (about 70 US cents).

But things are changing. At that wedding reception, I noticed that many people prevented ‘professional’ photographers from taking their pictures. Rather they used their own digital cameras. At a point, I counted 12 guests poised to take shots of the dancing couple.

Many Nigerians have personal digital cameras or mobile phones with camera. Mass produced from the Asian Tigers, camera phones are cheap. A mobile phone set with a camera costs about US$50. With these in many people’s hands, they no longer want to pay for the professional’s shots. As a result, “when you bend down in from of them to take their picture, they scream ‘No, No!’ And if you take them, they won’t pay”, said one of such photographers whom I chatted with in Lagos.

Another told me that five to six years ago, before cheap Chinese phones put cameras in everyone’s hands, he earned up to N10,000 (about US $80) from covering an event (uninvited). In fact, from such monies, he paid his way through the university. Now he hardly earns up to half of that. In his words, “now that everyone is a photographer, we starve. It is frustrating. If it was now, I wouldn’t have been able to pay my fees in the university”.

Researchers assessing the impact of new media technologies have often focused on the positive side. Assessing the full impact of new media technologies must go beyond what the technologies do to users in terms of liberating access and bridging socio-economic and cultural distances. It must encompass the threat which such technologies pose to those whose basic survival depends on the old order.

Corruption in Nigeria: is Jordan Smith Right?

In the premises of a clinic in Ibadan, I overheard three women (Picture to your left) discussing a wide range of issues. Sitting under a huge tree, they lamented the recklessness with which politicians steal and lavish government money in Nigeria. One of them, a terribly aggrieved woman, told the other two of a politician she ‘helped’ during the 2007 elections. According to her, as a result of her help, the politician won and was now earning lots of money.

She did not specify the nature of the ‘help’ she rendered this politician. What she emphasised was the grievous disappointment she had encountered in the hands of ‘that ingrate’.

Her son was on admission and needed surgery. She had no money but had assurance of getting money from the politician. She went to him but all the man gave her was ten thousand naira (about $70). The surgery was to cost thrice that amount. She felt greatly let down because, according to her, even those who did not ‘help’ this politician had received substantial financial help from him.

She and her friends acknowledged the fact that politicians steal government money but wonder why this particular ‘ingrate’ would not share with those who ‘helped’ him. “We are not saying they should not eat money [embezzle money]. But when they eat at least they should remember us who put them in position of power”, they concluded.

I have serious problems with Jordan Smith’s studies of corruption in Nigeria but my anger is made worse each time I see his assertions played out in conversations and conduct of so-called ordinary Nigerians. One of Smith’s (2007)* conclusions is that among Nigerians, embezzlement of public funds and other forms of corruption attract anger and bitter condemnation only when the discussants are not direct or indirect beneficiaries of the loot. If the loot gets to the average Nigerian, they shut their eyes to its sources and the dirt surrounding it. Maybe on this one, Smith was right.

*Smith, J. D. (2007). A culture of corruption: everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

HOME SWEAT HOME: ‘It’s Our Day of Electricity’

I returned to Nigeria few weeks ago and discovered a most ingenious thing that PHCN has done. PHCN is the agency in charge of electricity in Nigeria. PHCN has developed a remarkably intelligent power rationing scheme in the city of Ibadan where I live. In my section of town, we get electricity every other day. The week of my arrival, we "had it" on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Those were our days of electricity, days to really look forward to. But I was soon made to understand what ‘our day of electricity’ means. It means the day that you have the right to hope for electricity—not the right to have it! On such a day, you hope that there will be electricity. That is all you do the whole day--hoping.

In fairness to PHCN, we do have some electricity on those days: sometimes for just a few minutes during the whole day, other times—when we are really lucky—for up to three hours on such wonderful days.

But complete woe betide your section of town if you were careless enough, on your day of electricity, to allow rain to fall or strong winds to blow. Once any of these two evils is allowed, PHCN switches off electricity and you no longer can hope for even a ‘flash’ until your next day of electricity.

I also discovered that my neighbour has bought a mighty electricity generating set. He has also positioned it so strategically that the noise drones right into my bedroom thereby keeping me alert all night. Thanks, dear neighbour. It sure is great to be home, home SWEAT home.

‘My Daughter is not for Sale!’: Is Bride Price Getting less Popular in Nigeria?

‘My daughter is not for sale! All I want is for you to take good care of her’. That was the verdict of Chief Agedo as he gave out his daughter in a traditional wedding to the family of Ter Ikeseh (Ter and Joy are in the pic left). (This was at a traditional wedding I attended in Minna, Northern Nigeria on Saturday May 1, 2010)

Chief Agedo announced that he did not want any dowry (that is, bride price or bride wealth). We who were there to support the groom and his family were overwhelmed by this show of kindness.

In Nigeria, bride price and the cost of wedding have been the reasons that many young men cannot marry and many young women remain spinsters. The cost of wedding and bride price is said to be the highest among the Igbo people of South East Nigeria. Bride price, which is paid by the groom and his family to the bride’s family, comes in the forms of cash, food items, live animals, and clothes. All of these can amount to as much as 2 million naira (about $14,300) or even more—if the groom appears to be rich. To get out of this, many have eloped and many have called off their courtships with ladies from families whose bride price demands were too high.
In the pre-colonial times, among the Tiv people of Nigeria, men avoided bride price by engaging in exchange marriage. In this case, a man gave his sister to another man in exchange for that man’s sister—a very smart practice that was destroyed by ‘civilisation’ and Britain.

Extremely relieved were we when Chief Agedo did not ask for a bride price. Ter, the groom, was so happy that he needed no instructions before lying prostrate in traditional homage to his in-laws. [Picture below]

But some friends told us not to rejoice too much over the demand for no bride price. According to one of them, in his culture, bride prices are not demanded, not out of kindness but because the culture believes that a man cannot (should not be allowed to) pay bride price once but should continue to pay it as long as he lives. Therefore, the bride’s family continue to make financial and other requests for as long as the marriage lasts—as reminder that the man wasn’t asked to pay any bride price.

Others felt the demand for no bride price was actually rising because bride prices have been a way of cheapening the worth of the lady: how can you put a price tag on a human being? A third group felt the growing trend of ‘no’ bride price was a response to the economic difficulties facing young men. In that case, culture is responding to the economy.

I strongly support the dynamic definition of culture suggested by the third group. Culture is not fossilised. I think also that many young ladies today find it hard to get a young man whom they love and count to be a ‘husband material’. When they get one, they will fight tooth and nail to ensure that only few cultural huddles are placed in the way of their wedding. Many of such ladies will kick hard if the family do not quickly announce an affordable bride price—or no bride price at all. In such cases, saying ‘my daughter is not for sale’ may simply be a face-saving effort.

Is bride price payment becoming unpopular? It seems so. The reasons though may be many. Whatever the reason, Ter and his family are grateful to the Agedo family of Fuga, Edo State, Nigeria.

Bye to Holland

I have been here in the Netherlands three months and it is time to return home—home sweat home. I shut my eyes and decided what I want to remember about this beautiful little country and its people. Here is a short list:
Bicycles...bloemen(flowers)...canals...clogs...dogs...dikes...A great people!

Following is an expanded list, a dictionary of sorts:

• Beer means Heineken and Amstel—that’s all
• Bicycle means a Dutch national identity which must be triple-chained or else it is stolen! (The same way a bicycle was treated in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.) (You've heard of 'stolen identity'?)
• Coffee shops: These are places where ‘coffee’ is served rolled in paper and smoked! Coffeejuana. (See 'drugs' below)
• Dogs: These are full-blown citizens with national passports and citizen rights and political party! Dogs take their owners out for a walk. (See 'walkway' below)
• Drugs: Something you should see with your eyes tightly open and discuss with your mouth widely shut.
• Dutch bargain: Something expensively cheap. For example: ‘Rejoice: I saved two Euros comparing prices across 32 shops!’ Alle moet weg!
• Dutch language: A language that is easy to speak—just pretend to be suppressing a bad cough—Wageningen; vereniging
• Dutch national flag: A controversial piece of cloth: Did the French copy the Dutch or the Dutch copy the French?
• Dutch woman: Someone that’s ever smiling--Wonder why she’s called vrouw when she hardly frowns. Could it be because she sneezes very loud? Atchoooooo!
• Energy: Something you spend all your energy saving. For example, it’s better to be sick saving resources than to be warm spending them.
• Flowers (Bloemen): What your host spends three hours showing you and you can’t see it because it is yet to sprout!
• Space: Something small but enough for everyone—except now that Geert Wilders is fuming.
• Space: Something you must economise by writing several words as one: Oldenbarneveltweg!
• The Dutch: very friendly, so very friendly people
• Walkway: Dogs’ lavatory—watch out!
• ASC, Leiden: a great place of wonderful people...

I enjoyed my stay in Holland. I hope to be back someday.

Anne Frank and the Jos babies: the crime that isn’t theirs

My friends, Daan and Thomas, and I passed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. (Picture left). In this house, Anne Frank, her sister and her Jewish parents, hid from Hitler’s men and machinery during the World War II. (Their offence was that they were Jewish. Hitler was reaching for the jugular of every Jew). Here, Anne and her family hid for two years. Here she recorded her feelings and fears in a diary. Anne and her family were betrayed by a neighbour. They were arrested and taken to one of Hitler’s concentration camps. There Anne and her sister, Margot, died of typhus in 1945. Otto, her dad, was the only one who survived the war. From Anne’s surviving diary, movies have been produced and books written. Anne Frank House is a tourist centre today — see the long queue (picture below).

Anne’s case reminded me of the babies in Jos that were butchered in the dead of the night by herdsmen, earlier that week. The offence of the babies was that they were Berom and Christian just as Anne was Jew—an offence that wasn’t theirs.