I Was Able To Contribute To Changing The World AN AIESEC STORY

One thing i would have to conclude: My Internship Experience in Nigeria totally changed my life path and my belief.My name is Chenhao LIu and am from China.  Intially, when i got to Nigeria to start my one year internship, challenges rushed to me everyday. First being the problem of communication; the english of african prounciation brought me quite lot of trouble in comprehension. Then the open, liberal social values which is totally opposite to that of Easten Asia, Food of strange taste and smell which greatly broaden my concept in food…True, i was initially overwhelmed by all these challenges, I hesitated, took some time out, then i asked myself the reason for choosing Afirca as my desitnation, but soon I realized that learning to adapt and learn as much as i can would be the best thing for me to do, if i am to benefit from my internship.  None of my previous trips can have such huge impact on me like my African intenrship expereince. I had it in AIESEC Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Africa.  I worked in three differnt projects/issues in my one year internship.HIV/AIDS (Project ASK), Entrepreneurship (Project YES) and environmental sustainability (Project Clean). This had me endeavoring with other interns and AIESECers, crossing barriers set by language and belief to reach the goals of the project and make sure that we touch lifes…  These experiences above infomed me a real touch on the pleasure of being a human. I did my utmost to fulfill my willingness to positively impact my surroudings. I still remember unforgotable snapshots when running project Yes, Ask And clean:The curious eyes of local children, the active debates over enterpreneurship in Yes Seminars… As for the effect, although I knew effect might be slight, I was greatly satisfied because I knew the progress of developing the world relied on micro-endeavor of many contributors rather than that of one man ;thus, I felt fortunate to be a member of those contributors.  Members of AIESEC Port Harcourt are an energetic and enterprising group of youths, and they made my stay in Nigeria a very memorable one, they also provided me a platform to contribute my own quoata in changing the world! I would never forget this.

A DEVELOPED FUTURE

Our current trend in development is something to talk about sitting and writing these  in my home in Port Harcourt i feel there is a need to address this issue to make us understand what is at stake and the question here is what is at stake?, The Answer to this question depends on the selective purview of everyone involved which is the youths and the working force .

You can imagine that few years back when you were asked by friends and well wishers what you wanted to be in future the answers where usually in the tune of Doctor,Engineer,Lawyer,Business man etc. no one thought getting there will be as tedious as it is, first our educational system is like a child's nightmare its so old and archaic that when i see my fellow colleagues flaunt their versatile knowledge elsewhere in the world i become very sad , second you might have seen the game show known as "are you smarter than a fifth grader "? the aim of the game was to team up kids against adults to see who have contemporary knowledge more and the kids usually win ,well the developers keyed into one scientific proven fact that 6 to 8 year olds hold the capacity of universal knowledge meaning that if you train an 8 year old in certain principles he is bound to excel in them as he develops now the question is Who is to Blame?, the already hydra headed problematic dying and corrupt yet stable Government? or the cancerous body of the teacher union ? or yet still the curriculum body of education or even the parents and even the students themselves , to know that lets take each age class one by one:

THE NURSERY: At a young age we are sent to nursery schools to start our early development now while some schools capitalize on building moral attirudes and ingenuity others relax letting the students feel like they own the world leading to lazy yet harmful ways of growing up which is neither checked by the ever busy schedule of the parents or the government because who has time to look into the young childs future anyway?, children like that tend to believe they must have everything they ask for without thinking of working for it which makes them lazy and affect their psyche.

THE PRIMARY: At these stage curriculum development plays a keen role, when outdated teaching methods are used creativity will be kept in check and we all know that going by recent trends that it is creativity that is responsible for development , teachers and curriculum developers fail to think of the future hence they go the traditional part saying "after all we learnt this so they should also" not understanding that what applied then and worked then will not work now and again the parents still let their children roam saying they are just growing up!.

THE JUNIOR SECONDARY: In Nigeria today ,we do the usual 3 years junior secondary school but ask yourself is that adequate? we wonder to ourselves why do other kids develop soundly its  because they learn and mature more instead of keeping their children more in school  parents rush their children through school as if they are in a race with no thought on the future in question and now here i point an accusing finger to the curriculum developers ,there is no stringent guidiance and counselling unit , no research teaching unit not even a teachers development unit and you expect the kids to produce miracles not even the introduction of technology can help a school that has a dead teaching style and the government is largely to blame as both private and public schools record all time lows the thought is that the students dont want to learn rather when the learning shouldnt always be educational alone but rather a cross blend of the two there are things that cannot be taught in the class room .

THE SENIOR SECONDARY: Ha ! we have come to the rebellious teenager age where kids feel they know it all what do we do then? we let them continue on this trend here they are meant to be exposed to the global educational environments, taught both science and arts in a bid to increase their knowledge banks as a famous writer once said :"show me two sides of a coin and i will pick the best " they are meant to be exposed to both sides as a teacher when a student does bad on one side then you must know he can excel in the other because we can learn by variuos passions that we have, the curriculum here should be broad with more lay out of science,technology and pratical arts these develops the student and also creating research groups .


THE TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS: An average Polytechnic/University student in Nigeria today cannot beat his chest to his result not because he is not developed or brilliant but because the system fails him all the way . when we turn on our tv set we hear stuffs like such students inventing things here and there and we ask ourselves are we dfferent? the answer is no but our teaching habits are! the university is meant to develop students in an astronomical way but our educational system here has failed woefully they prefer to go to vice related things where they feel they can benefit from where is the passion,creativity,research  bonus,funding,therapy,infrastructure,technology,future administration,business outlook gone to? well down the drain of course we cannot pin point our development , no tracking is done, the marking scheme is poor ,the way to attribute students/assess them is old ,no mordern input no nothing .We are slowly revolving round sparse resources imagine that in these country we have little as 300 universities and polytechics to cater to a whopping 60 million youths or more leading to miscreants which  conduct fake adulterated schools with no strict enforcement or regulations then look at the poor state of lecture rooms, imagine 1000 students crammed in a small space for two hours with no electricity not funny at all, it develops vices like corrupt lectrers and impoverished student the said dreams of being Doctors,Engineers die at this stage,i ask again Who is to Blame? not the parents this time they try to help in any way they can , definitely not the university whose powers are tied to the pockets of the government, the students?, the developers, the agency of education? are they to blame ? these are questions that will be answered come 5th May in Lagos when youths converge with the movers and shakers of development in Nigeria through a leading international student body known as AIESEC NIGERIA with a platform known as Youth2Business Forum ,as Education is the key to business improvement there is a need to answer these questions to improve our structure in society.

What Next? will we achieve things as we see them ?, what is at stake for a developed future? come and find out more if you dare.

See you in Lagos Eko ni baje!

This article is written by Ekundayo Babatunde Temitope a student and finalist in the Department of Geology in the University of Port Harcourt and also the Virtual Manager Aiesec in Port-harcourt
 A seasoned writer and also a good developer you can contact him on ekundayo.temitope@aiesec.net for more .

THE BUHARI SAGA

All Nigerian Coup Generals Were Rogues…And General Muhammadu Buhari Was No Exception

Posted: May 1, 2010 - 01:00

Posted by siteadmin

This article, rearranged for special emphasis, was first published by me in my now rested Sun newspaper Nigeria weekly column of May 26, 2003 under the headline: ‘Has anyone ever seen Buhari laugh?’ All our military heads of state were largely insensitive, corrupt, almost illiterate, self-appointed tyrants who seized their stripes of honour (dishonour is probably more appropriate) through coups rather than the rigours of formal training, experience or war.
Each one of the military heads of state simply got up from bed one chosen morning, pistle on the hip, jackboots on the ready to besmear our constitution to loot our treasury to their hearts content. Of course, they soon made up on the job for their lack of proper war or soldiering experience by detaining, tear gassing, shooting and bombing citizens protesting against their high-handedness and misrule. Everyone of our coup Generals aspired to be the richest lazy fool in the world sitting like an over-fed baboon atop the tallest tree in our devastated and rotting vineyard, savouring their exploits amidst squalor, hunger and decaying corpses. General Muhammadu Buhari was one of such military heads of state.

Shagari’s regime (1979-1983), incurred Buhari’s wrath when it decided to investigate the US$2.8 billion that disappeared from the Midland Bank, London account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation, (NNPC), during General Obasanjo’s era as military head of state that preceded Shagari’s. Dr. Olusola Saraki, Turaki of Ilorin, was the majority party leader of the Senate at the time and he headed the Senate Committee set up to trace the stolen money after some three years of clamour for such an investigation by members of the civil society. The money was traced to the Midland Bank London branch fixed account of Obasanjo’s appointee as military head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company. The Committee’s report was presented to the Senate during the tail end of Shagari’s regime in 1983, so the House decided to deal with the matter and expose the rogue military head of the NNPC soon after the 1983 general elections.
The attempt at civilian-to-civilian transition provided the fillip for mayhem at the time. The elections were marred by massive rigging because incumbent political office holders were refusing to slacken their stranglehold on Nigeria Plc., mortgaged as the leaders private property.

On the 31st December, 1983, Buhari struck under the cover of the political commotion that trailed the presidential election results. Buhari generally had no agenda for leadership but vendetta against those he called critics and rabble-rousers. Buhari did not see any moral wrong in his conversion of our oil money into his personal use. Rather he railed at the press and what he described as the self-righteous sections of the country for making a big deal out of the issue. He locked up without trial, politicians and critics including Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, notorious for clamouring for the exposure of the oil money rogue. Satire saved my neck at the time. Vera Ifudu, who was an NTA reporter then, was sacked through his prodding as military ruler, for reporting what Dr. Olusola Saraki had told her in an interview about how the missing money was traced to Buhari’s account at a Midland Bank London branch. Vera eventually won her case of wrongful dismissal in court against the NTA and was financially compensated.

Buhari’s ‘War Against Indiscipline’ was obviously a swathe to camouflage his moral decadence. He did not see anything wrong with the over 50 suitcases an Emir smuggled through the Muritala International Airport without routine checks. And as a master of selective justice, he refused to convict Shagari, claiming not to find direct evidence against him but making a mountain out of a mole-hill on the indulgencies of Shagari’s lieutenants. His regime’s master stroke to divert attention from his moral ineptitude was exemplified by his crating of Umaru Dikko to airfreight back to Nigeria from London.

Despite his moral degeneracy and his high handedness and intolerance of dissent, his regime was not a total disaster. He maintained a vibrant foreign policy with Africa as its principal focus. Nigeria was already a failed state economically when he seized government from Shagari. We had a staggering foreign debt load of US$18 billion, so Buhari stopped all further borrowing, and in defiance of the IMF and World Bank, provided a home-grown alternative to the IMF’s SAP and pegged the exchange rate of the naira at one to the US$1.50. He stopped all further borrowing from abroad; instituted counter trade for essential or desperately needed commodities and put a ceiling (or an upper limit) on the amount of foreign exchange earnings to be used in servicing foreign debts. After sorting out and rejecting all the dubious and unverifiable foreign debts in our portfolio, he paid off nearly 50% of the genuine debts by the end of his regime in 1985. Even Britain was already scheming to enter into counter trade agreement with Nigeria when Babangida was sponsored in 1986 by the West to sack Buhari in a military coup that reversed our limited economic gains.

Not much is known about Buhari’s family background. Not a great deal has been heard about his educational qualifications either. As head of state, he was a recluse to the core. At least, that was the image he portrayed. His deputy, the late Gen. Idiagbon, was considered by most Nigerians to be the star of Buhari’s regime. It is to Idiagbon that any credit due to that regime is generally attributed. Idiagbon was the defacto head of state. He was honest, upright, disciplined, and like Murtala Muhammed before him, he succeeded briefly in introducing order and sanity to our lives.

After consigning the vexatious matters that brought him to power, to administrative oblivion with the help of Shinkafi, his Secret Service guru, Buhari announced his readiness to quit office. Idiagbon, as Buhari’s lieutenant, naturally insisted on taking over as head of state from his apparently prematurely retiring boss. Babangida, who was Chief of Army Staff at the time and a member of the Supreme Military Council, insisted it was his turn to rule because he had been involved in virtually every military coup up to that time. The quarrel split the Supreme Military Council members almost equally behind the two principal combatants and eventually led to the overthrow of Buhari’s regime by Babangida. America, Britain and the other leading western nations hailed Babangida’s coup and immediately sent emissaries to strategize with him. President Reagan went out of his way to send him gifts including books such as Niccolo Machiavelli’s: the Prince, advocating the destruction of civil freedom to strengthen despotism.

The June 12 annulment provided Buhari with the opportunity to publicly wear a messianic toga while quietly pursuing private vendetta against someone he considered his enemy. He attended meetings at Ota to join with others to condemn Babangida’s decision and as soon as the decision was reached to ask Babangida to step down, he stopped attending further meetings. He had achieved his revenge.

Abacha rehabilitated Buhari with the chairmanship of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) before he (Abacha) died in 1998. When Obasanjo returned to power in May 1999 as civilian president, he found that over 2.5 billion naira had not been properly accounted for in the PTF and that there was not much on the ground to show for the colossal expenditure the agency was claiming. On the day Obasanjo announced the scrapping of the PTF, a non-staff brother-in-law of the boss, allegedly serving as his conduit on some PTF projects, died suddenly from what appeared to be heart failure. Most of what he was able to achieve in the PTF, was focused in his backyard. Haruna Adamu, who was appointed by Obasanjo to investigate the PTF before finally consigning it to the dung heap, quickly pocketed one hundred million naira of PTF’s money before operating table could be set up for him, thus forcing Obasanjo to hurriedly close the place down without further investigations. Buhari has been trying desperately since to return to power, perhaps to get a chance to shred the PTF documents?

Buhari is a tribal and religious bigot. When he lost the presidential election in April 2003, he threatened the nation with mass action and refused to go to court. He organized a rally in Abuja, as one in a series of such civil acts of disobedience to protest what he described as the massive rigging of the election that brought Obasanjo to power the second time.

He almost succeeded in launching his Jihad. The alleged taped sermon of an unnamed pastor at an unidentified church in Adamawa claiming that: “Whether Muslims like it or not, Obasanjo must continue” and that “any Muslim who does not want that, can die or move to Niger” was obviously a blatant forgery. It was very likely to be the handiwork of the ‘Crater of Dikko brigade. For a start, the language of the sermon was too brash to be true, especially coming as it was claimed, from a Christian minority likely to bear the brunt of the consequences of the offensive sermon in a predominantly Muslim state. The Christian minority would have had to be mad to the last man, to call for their own annihilation in such a careless and irresponsible manner.

It is not logical that the Christian cleric would send hundreds of his suicide sermon tapes, not to Christians, but to Muslim clerics and the media around the country. Someone who desperately wanted to kill Nigeria must think we are all morons and I suggest we look for him at the backyard of our current number one Jihadist. Where else to look when Buhari was threatening he must occupy the Presidency whether he won the election or not. We begged him to go to the Electoral Tribunal to settle the matter but he insisted that he would rather clubber us to death, with religion than subject himself to the in indignity of being judged by another man. That is how badly he cares about our welfare and survival.

One is not always sure if he is truly a Nigerian because let’s face it; no true Nigerian would hate Nigeria so much as to threaten her with a Jihad. May be the problem is of a mental nature considering the gutter snipes often credited to the supposed statesman on the Hausa service of the BBC and other foreign media about his fatherland. He seems to love to speak before he thinks. There is something definitely troubling about the mind of this crater genius because it is probably not just Nigerians that he hates but life itself in its totality. In other words, we are probably all trapped in the vicious grip of a cool and calculating sadist. In fact, I am told that no one has ever seen him smile or laugh.

Sam Omatseye, writing about Buhari in the Sun newspaper at the time said: “He (Buhari) uses sharia to justify his worldview; to justify a certain selfish view of the world that serves his interest at a particular time. He played that card in the presidential election in order to secure a base for himself. But he needed more than his northern base to become president. You must be flexible to pull non-sharia base with you and the man has no flexibility in his bones so when he tries to play the chameleon, he fails. He tries to carry a veneer of a man of principles but falls short when selfish interest is involved.”

Buhari has no respect for democracy. Under his behest, the ANPP humiliated five highly respected South-Eastern Presidential aspirants at their primary for the 2003 presidential election despite having Dr. Okadigbo as Buhari’s running mate. After rigging his party’s primary to become its presidential candidate, Buhari then felt he stood on moral grounds to preach election morals to the world. Buhari ignored the South-West completely, as if it did not exist and offered the South-South, the unattractive, legally diminished constitutional option on derivation. To rob salt into injury, he threatened to swap NDDC with PTF. If he wasn’t playing with words, he betrayed his selfish ethnic agenda because we all know what happened in his PTF. It concentrated its activities in the North.

Buhari definitely was not a sellable presidential candidate across Nigeria. What happened was that the incumbent ANPP governors needed a Buhari to help them hold on to their states on religious grounds. Even in the area of public debate, Buhari was not articulate or detribalized and he lacked charisma. He ignored all entreaties to explain his programmes to the ‘bloody civilians.’ Arrogant and condescending, he was unable to climb down from his high horse as a former military dictator. Infused with the moribund myth that Nigerian leadership was the sole property of his ethnic group, he assumed he could cow the rest of us with a jihad. If that failed, some said, military coup was a possibility because a kaferi must not continue to rule. He concentrated his campaign (if it could be called that, because he said very little at every stop), in the North-East and North-West of the country. The little he said, was only in the Hausa language to titillate the warrior nerves of his jihadist gang.

With 19 states in the North, he was convinced he could, at least, force a re-run in the elections, forgetting that the North Central states are already a little weary of jihad. Even the core North itself has some 30% Christian population. Awolowo and Zik exposed the fallacy of the monolithic north by winning elections all over the place during their time. Abiola proved that religion is not the cocoon the Buharis think it is in modern Nigerian politics.

He prostitutes his political ambition by moving from party to party, with the sole aim of becoming the presidential candidate of any party he joins. He is not prepared to serve under anyone else, definitely not under a southern candidate. On seeing that he would not be able to realize his selfish ambition in the mega party he initially joined with others to form, he hurriedly formed a break away party where no one would challenge him as presidential candidate. Since there is no hope of his legitimately ever becoming the Nigerian president or head of state again, Nigerians need to be preparing now for a possible jihad led by this man in the not too distant future.


NAIWU OSAHON, Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader) World Pan-African Movement); Ameer Spiritual (Spiritual Prince) of the African race; MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S; G.I.P.M; Dip.I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M; G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M. Poet, Author of the magnum opus: ‘The end of knowledge’. One of the world’s leading authors of children’s books; Awarded; key to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship, Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship, County of Shelby; Honourary Commissionership, County of Shelby, Tennessee; and a silver shield trophy by Morehouse College, USA, for activities to unite and uplift the African race.

Naiwu Osahon, renowned author, philosopher of science, mystique, leader of the world Pan-African Movement.

AIESEC NIGERIA PRESENTS YOUTH2BUISNESS FORUM

YOUTH2BUSINESS FORUM achieving impossibilities...................  In a fast increasing demographic society where societal needs are increasingly being squandered by the minority leaving the majority to starve and hope for miracles that may never come the youths are the most affected class of societal caste the major question is what hope lies in the future for the youths who are dubbed "the leaders of tomorrow"? ,that question is being answered by AIESEC NIGERIA the national arm of  AIESEC INTERNATIONAL an international student organization that aims to engage youths worldwide by developing them professionally,socially and empowering them psychologically and has existed for over 60 years this year at its annual congress it decided to run a forum titled YOUTH2BUISNESS forum the aim as the name implies is to bring together the two parties of the divide: the ever increasing industrial giants of conglomerates and corporate executives and the ever vibrant youths of Nigeria. the forum is aimed at achieving a common goal try and get to the root of major problems concerning our youths in today's world,the objective in the forum is to build a goal orientated and professional minded youth it will feature captains of industries as well as entrepreneurs that will throw more light on the issue and other side attractions.  The youth2buisness forum is going to be a one day event set in the beautiful ethereal landscape of Lagos,Nigeria with the support of the Lagos state government as well as diverse partners of AIESEC NIGERIA and a full media attendance not only will this forum be unique and fun it will be educative and instructive allowing you to make your voice be heard and listen to others, the forum will be an open one where shared innovation and multi-cultural ideas will be laid down to enable proper groundwork of which the output will be collated and sent to appropriate government officials and business moguls for immediate actions ,this forum is open to the general public and organizations wishing to partner with the local committees of the national body in its 17 state strongholds, the importance of the forum cannot be overemphasized, it will hold on the 5th of may and promises to be a thing to remember,its time for you to decide and take a stand!.The benefits are enormous one of which is self development the other is creative networking with the big wigs of these industries.  So why not invite a friend today and see what wonders you can achieve here you might just need this to achieve greater things.  see you in Lagos eko ni baje!!