Our Bad News

Uncle Judas betrayed Grandpa Yesu

He escaped with the returns from the New Yam Harvest

And absconded to a far country, which no one knows

Then Grandpa Yesu, the aged family breadwinner, dies

And while everyone argues his funeral arrangements

The old thief walks in gallantly, flaunting his luxurious garment

We heard Uncle Judas made big money from unarmed robbery in the big city

We know he married a strange woman who bears him weird children

But we also know his woman as the biggest problem in our village

Since the rich bandit brought home the evil-ridden gorgon

And proclaimed her his till-death-do-us-apart

We have stopped seeing goodies in his stagnant life

Since she started getting pregnant and coughing phlegm

And giving birth to monsters that are no taller than a witch’s broomstick

We have caught many thieves who often disappeared before daylight

Since she started chanting incantations in the briskest hour of the night

Alleging the performance of her precious family sacraments

We have lost count of infants whose living are quelled in the daytime

Since she joined the naive women at the market square

Selling articles that only unfortunate foreigners buy

We have heard incessant cries from neighbouring villages

Since some politicians from Nigeria started patronising her

Seeking her blessed curses for their selfish ambitions

We have started hearing funny stories about that country

Now, we are fed up and will remove her from her place

We are angered by her unleashing of this living hell

And will offer sweet-smelling burnt offerings to set it away

But, she was the same witch a mob stoned to death one fortnight ago

The one they thought had died –who also lived the next day

Some say it was Uncle’s life that she took to live again

It was also heard that she had died nine awesome times

And she has relived life to enjoy the freshness of air at her balcony

In the cool of the evening hours, upon the inexplicable death of another child

Yet, in a revelation, we see the end of life come to her quickly

For she will be a sign and an object of God’s terrible power

She will be a scapegoat to her comrades and a message to the politicians

Since she houses no more of innocent orphans for voodoo power

And has no more of her own children to die her own death

We know she has run out of her so-called uncountable life lines

And the gods of this world will beg the God of all things on her behalf

They will offer many unsolicited sacrifices at their dirty shrines

But at the endmost end, nemesis will be found in the right hand of God

Then, our infinite bad news will know a definite end

And our good news will find a place in foreign ears

And with smiles long-lost and ecstasy newly restored

We will assemble in the public squares of our land

Without chains, singing songs of change in growing cheer

And in the end, we shall doubtless yell in harmony, “Jubilee!”

Happy Independence Day in advance

© Moraks 2012

Project Time Management

Considering life, time is a unit of measurement since all events occur within its intervals. In fact, no two recurrent activities in history can be absolutely described without due reference to it. For instance, when intercontinental events such as the Olympics, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) world cup and Wimbledon are occur repeatedly in the same location, they are mainly referenced based on their years or dates of occurrence. Again, time is generally an independent resource which we spend and can never retrieve –we can only attempt to compensate for it presently or in future. Therefore, in achieving project objectives and producing deliverables, time is a critical constraint to which all human resource must be sensitive.

When customers, sponsors and other stakeholders outside an active project team appraise the team or their projects highly, they often adjudge them based on the team’s ability to maximally influence the main constraints of time, cost, scope and quality. This suggests that a team’s collective ability to produce the totality of expected deliverables in a satisfactory manner at a friendly budget within the appropriate schedule is what qualifies them as an ace project team; not the presence of a few highly-skilled or vastly-experienced individuals. While it is true that the presence of an effective project manager makes a team prone to being more successful, most successful teams are actually constituted by members who each understand the overall effect of working in proximity to planned schedule. If a team of fourteen members contain seven persons that are variously certified by PMI as CAPM®, PMP® and PMI-RMP® credential holders and these individuals apply and transfer the knowledge obtained from the consulted editions of the Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) across the entire team, the likelihood of the team’s overall success will escalate as the factor of time will be handled more efficiently.

Dynamic project managers and team leads adequately imbibe the schedule management tools and techniques recognized in the PMBOK® Guide and consciously influence their subordinates to do likewise. Great team members are persons who always desire to keep the disparity between planned project time and the actual work durations minimal. They demonstrate a working knowledge of the flow of work. They understand how the duration of each preceding activity affects its successor and can proactively predict their resulting effects on the overall project length. However, this does not overrule the ultimate responsibility incumbent on project managers to verify the appropriate completion of work packages. Rather, it fosters the probability of keeping the time expended in actualizing the deliverables at relative parity with the pre-planned durations and schedule baseline...

To read on, please visit: Project Times where it was first published.

CPRsouth/CPRafrica: Transforming Lives & Economies through Policy Research

Photo Credit: Christoph Stork

Once upon a time, there was an inquisitive girl named Nanna. She lived with her parents in the village of Beiyerunka and was an only child. One time when Nanna was seven years old, her father took her to his brother’s house in the city of Lagos for holidays. Nanna’s uncle, Dr Timothy, was a reputed computer science professor at the single research institute in the entire city. He had a Pentium I computer at home and always wanted to teach his children how to use it. However, none of them was fascinated by the machine so it was hardly in use. When Nanna arrived at her cousin’s house in Lagos, she took much interest in the machine and her uncle gladly taught her how to use it. After eight weeks of steady tutorials, Nanna fell in love with the computer. She had learnt how to use the DOS command prompt and was beginning to learn programming.

At that point, her cousins often joked that one day, they would marry her off to the computer and post both of them to Microsoft in USA. When it was time to return to the village, Nanna’s father sojourned to Dr Timothy’s house to retrieve his daughter to the village life. That day, Nanna wailed and begged to be left with her cousins in Lagos but her father simply listened with absolute deafness. Dr Timothy’s wife and children were moved with compassion. They knew that Nanna wanted to stay because of the computer and joined in the soliciting until Nanna’s father got annoyed and said, “Abeg, make una no intafair for dis situation. Abi na for wia una espekt make I get di kin moni wey Timothy sef stil dey hussle to pay ya skool fees?” Meaning, “Please, do not interfere in this situation. Or where do you expect me to get the kind of your money that my brother Timothy struggles to make to pay your school fees? Nanna became angrier and childishly insulted her father. Her father turned red with fury, lashed her sore and bundled her back to the village. That was the first and last time Nanna ever visited the city or moved near a computer. I do not think that she lived happily ever after.

It is true that nothing good comes easy and it is not all the best things in life that are free. Sometimes, a few good people just have to carry out informed research to help create or influence policies that will ensure that they happen. While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers sometime ago, I was reminded that Bill Gates could have been a foreign version of the curious Nanna if an accessible computer had not been brought within his vicinity. In fact, no one would have brought the computer if the national ICT policy of the United States did not allow or encourage it. In every good story, there is always an element of fateful intervention or underlying factor that comes as an opportunity and catalyzes the achievement of human desires, thereby transforming possibilities into realities. Nevertheless, someone somewhere has to do something to trigger the required chain of positive reactions.

In support of this truth, two dynamic think tanks, LIRNE Asia and Research ICT Africa, collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Ford Foundation to hold a crucial conference on communications policy research in September 2013. The expository event which focused on Changing Asia & Africa through Innovation and Entrepreneurship in ICT was themed CPRsouth8/CPRafrica2013. It was held at the prestigious Infosys campus in Mysore, India and attracted tons of seasoned researchers, regulatory officials, young scholars, experienced academics, government representatives, dynamic entrepreneurs and other dignified stakeholders who nurture similar interests and expertise in fields that are relevant to the research of communications policy.

The entire event was initiated with the training of new young scholars from various parts of Africa and Asia-Pacific on how to carry out evidence-based research, create policy briefs and cause policy change. The papers that were presented at the event profiled research works that have been performed and are ongoing in the areas of financial inclusion & mobile money, gender in ICT policy regulation, drivers of policy change, gender and other divides, assessment of ICT policy regulation, what works and does not work for the governments of a few nations in communications policy, benefits of using ICT and challenges & other mobile applications. These presentations further spurred reflections and discussions by policy experts, regulatory officials and key researchers on the use of evidence in policy briefs and regional reflections on research priorities in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific. 

This significant event has certainly honed the skills of researchers (especially the new and young ones) and influenced the thoughts of the regulatory and government representatives that attended. Perhaps, this would help end the miseries of countless unknown Nannas and discover the smaller and bigger versions of Bill Gates in various developing economies.

It is strongly believed that the yearly event will continue to foster the perpetual execution of quality communications policy research which is capable of transforming lives and reshaping economies to obtain national and intercontinental gains. Moreover, it is the hope of all young scholars and other beneficiaries that the team of experts at LIRNEasia and Research ICT Africa would receive incessant support from financial sponsors, NGOs and government bodies to annually and seamlessly organise the CPRsouth/CPRafrica forum and further promote the development of policy experts in both Africa and Asia-Pacific.

This article was first published on Omojuwa' website

30 @ 30: the top 10 places that have shaped my life in 30 years – by Michael Taiwo

Introduction to the Top Ten Places I remember the most

There is nothing magical about the places I have been. I remember them because they were locations where my view of humanity rose via the interactions I had with people or places where I had a new epiphany or made contact with my spirit. Some of the places may have been renamed, some may not even exist anymore, some may be shadows of their former selves but that is all beside the point. The memories created here will stay with me forever.

Food Canteen, Offa

This was a micro business my mum started to make ends meet. It was a road-side shed that catered to students of the Polytechnic institute in the area. It was never destined to be a commercial success. It was bogged down by bad lease terms and erratic sales from the start. Yet, it was the perfect crucible to learn entrepreneurship. When I look at how my sisters’ businesses are flourishing today I have no doubt it is because of the (sometimes painful) lessons we learnt together while trying to salvage a failing family business at a young age.

Photo credits: keneugochukwu.blogspot.com

School Chapel, Offa

This is a surprise entry for me. But the more I look back, the more I realize that the only sane moments for me in secondary school (middle school plus high school) were the times I was in the chapel. In the classroom, I was a nuisance. Outside of it, I was on the move to the next prank. But put me in the chapel and a very different – better – side of me showed up. Here, I met some friends I still keep to this day. There were times I even went there by myself simply to pray and meditate. That was an uncommon practice for me then but somehow I found it is the master-key.

Photo source: www.nigerianeye.com

Assurance Villa, Offa

I had an unusual high school experience. My family relocated in my penultimate year in high school leaving me to live by myself. I quickly found myself a two-bedroom rat-hole to accommodate my growing library and friends. All my friends lived either in the boarding house or with their parents, so even though I lived in a shanty they were always there because it offered unrestricted freedom and they could do as they wished away from the prying eyes of authorities or parents. We soon nicknamed my shack “Assurance Villa” because it sounded cool to us and because it was the one place in the world where we were sure we were in complete control. You can have a paradisiac experience in a run-down hut; it all depends on who you are with. That is what Assurance Villa taught me.

Room 353, Awo Hall, Ife

Room 353 was like Assurance Villa without the carefreeness. It was the room I stayed in for four academic sessions. In that time, I must have had dozens of roommates (I define “roommates” loosely in this instance). The most memorable of these were Ugochukwu Onyeonoro, Kolawole Ayinuola, Akintoye Oyekunle, Bible ID, Baba Law, etc. I owe these guys a lot. This was a community in every sense of the word. I knew they were always watching my back as I watched theirs. I cannot recollect any single time in those years we had a bitter argument; it’s surreal. I have met too many guys (and girls) in my life to think the current crop of leaders we have running Nigeria is the best we can produce. No, a thousand times no. Inhabitants of Room 353 remind me that leaders with a passion for the future are in our midst.

Jesus Power House (JPH), Ife

Members of Student Christian Movement (SCM) were like family to me. JPH is SCM’s main office so you can say JPH was my “family house.” SCMers were fond of hanging out in JPH and SCM had no shortage of talents. What this means is that by chilling in JPH, you got a bump in your intelligence as you listened to different opinions and viewpoints. The discussions ranged from the cerebral to the ridiculous but they almost always had a take-home point. The abundance of talent and generosity of spirit also meant you could walk into JPH at any time and find a solution to your problems. The problem could be physical e.g. “I’m hungry, who has gari?,” or intellectual “I need help, who understands Laplace Transforms?” or spiritual “I’m struggling, who can pray with me?” Whatever it was, the family was there to help. My memories of JPH will always stay with me.

Sports Complex, Ife

It was a complex built for school athletes to hone their sport skills. It had a full size soccer field, cricket field, a couple of lawn tennis courts, basketball court, etc. But it was known for the religious activities – both corporate and private that went on there. In and around the fields and courts at any time of the day or night you could find students praying, casting out devils, preaching, you name it, provided no school organized competition or training was going on. After all, physical exercise profiteth a little. I had many experiences, made many friends and won many battles in the significant amount of time I spent in the Sports Complex.

848 Storer Avenue, Fayetteville, US

The biggest change I had to contend with on moving to the States was living alone. All the places I had lived in before were always packed, crowded even, and I loved them. The first time I moved into my studio apartment, I wasn’t sure I could cope alone. There was just so much space! I thought of how about eight people could have easily lived in the space reserved for one. I later adjusted to the new normal and in the process discovered that I actually liked it. I had a handful of friends that made life beautiful but, number wise, it was still nothing compared to my previous life. It was at 848 Storer Avenue that I discovered that I very much enjoyed spending time with me. I always knew I loved hanging out with people but I never knew I equally loved hanging out with myself until I had to. I can now say like Paul, “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.”

2214 Bell Engineering Center, Fayetteville, US

Bell 2214 was both my office and my lab during grad school. This was where I EARNED my PhD…through sweat and tears and serendipity. I was fortunate to have a boss that didn’t care if I came at 9am and left at 5pm; all he wanted was regular updates that showed I was making progress. Because I knew I could always leave the office if I wanted to, I became more productive anytime I was in it. I wasn’t killing time, I was investing it. I spent more nights than days in my office-lab because I am more functional at nights. It was at Bell 2214 that I would learn that there is nothing that cannot be overcome through sheer persistence and a stubborn will.

Journey to Nowhere, US

In the last few years, I picked up a new habit. Whenever I need to clear my head, I get into my car and drive off with no destination in mind. Sometimes I have a friend hop in with me but most times I go solo. It is a very therapeutic thing to do: discovering new landmarks while chewing over an idea or deliberating on a response to an event all at 70 mph. I cannot get lost because I am going nowhere to begin with. When I feel I have reached closure on the issue at hand, I return home. I call this mobile place my Journey to Nowhere .

 Lagos, Nigeria

I lived in Lagos from right after college till I left Nigeria. Lagos is the soul of Nigeria; its 20 million inhabitants are more than 1/8th of Nigeria’s population. Nigeria is a melting pot of about 250 ethnicities and every one of them has a representation in some form, shape or fashion in Lagos. Yet, on a per capita basis, Lagos is one of the most peaceful cities in the country. Compared to a city of its size anywhere in the world, the murder rate in Lagos is astonishingly low. Lagos is by no means a perfect socio-political environment but it is the best example we have of a working ecosystem in the nation. Lagos doesn’t come close to the dream I have of Nigeria; but whenever I take off my dream glasses and put on my “as-is” (reality) glasses and look at how far Lagos has come, my hope for the entire nation swells.

First Published on the Author's Facebook Page as part of a series.

Michael Taiwo is a believer that Nigeria's best days are ahead. He is a Doctor of Engineering and currently works in the oil and gas industry.

Is there a case for a wife that was raped by her own husband? (2)

 

Photo Source: www.babble.com

Continued from Part One

However, she mentioned that under Nigerian law, there is no statute that makes a husband liable to punishment because he raped his wife. According to her, the law does not recognise such a claim because it presumes that when two adults take an oath of marriage, they are obligated to each other in various ways which strongly includes sexual commitment. I think this implies that when a woman declares herself bound to a man, she commits herself to a level of intimacy that includes undefined sexual relation. This also applies to the man. So, the bottom line would be that each party keep expectations that are within what they know that the other person can handle and discard selfish excesses. But this is not always the case as most couples never get to know each other fully until they have been married for tens of years.

But I still wonder what proportion of married women accounts for those that are actually safe and happy or content in marriage since they are sometimes referred to as the weaker sex. Before I did Biology in high school, I had always wondered why the cocks I saw my grandma breed often raped the hens. I actually remember stoning a couple of cocks that were caught chasing hens around in the neighbourhood until my Biology teacher treated the topic, animal sexual behaviour, in class. Then, I realised that it was called mating.

Recently, I watched the video report of a field broadcast journalist who had interviewed the general public, including some married men in Lagos city, to know their views on the subject of forced sex within marriage. According to the visual record, people have different beliefs about sex in marriage. When asked what would happen if his wife denied him sex, a Yoruba man with three tribal marks on both cheeks replied that he would force her and have his way sexually. That’s a dangerous man. A second man, whose accent sounded Igbo, said that his wife is his property and he can do whatever he likes with her. That guy probably paid a fortune as dowry. A religious leader then commented that it was wrong for a man to force his wife into sexual relations when she is not in the emotional state or health condition to have it. Another religious leader of a different faith commented that a woman is meant to be subject to her husband. He said that she is supposed to be willing and available when her husband demands for sex. As such, the question of rape cannot arise. He further stated that once a woman has commenced menstruation, she is believed to be ready for marriage.

I guess that explains why some of my bold Hausa schoolmates were already married and wearing wedding rings when we were in primary five.

Truly, it is impossible to consider the act of rape as love-making when even the dictionary defines it as the act of using force to have sexual intercourse with somebody. Yet, it is also true, as has been confirmed by every Nigerian lawyer that was consulted, that under the Nigerian law, a man who signs a marriage contract with his woman is free to have sexual relations with her and cannot be accused of raping her because they are legally bound to have sex and no specific definitions are attached.

I think there are two sides to this issue. One seems favourable and the other appears otherwise. On one side, Nigerian marriages tend to endure in the face of diverse human imperfections and this helps to keep more families together. Unlike developed countries where provisions have been made based on human rights to check inconvenient experiences in marriage, Nigeria has several women who are sticking it out in very imperfect marriages with the solemn hope that things would change because their religions and society provide such hope. This position regularly holds when the woman’s life is not at risk. On the other side, it appears that more women than can boldly step out to be counted are involved in marital relationships that allow something such as rape and they cannot get to punish their husbands for it. These women usually stay in marriage because of their children, our culture in Nigeria and the inherent ability of an average Nigeria to endure tough times.