The Year That Was 2012 A Harvest of Paradoxes

From my prism, though, what jumps at me from 2012 is a year full of ironies. Indeed 2012 appears to me as a feast of paradoxes in which people used injustice to chase justice, death to chase live, and bullying that decelerate the possibilities of economic prosperity ostensibly in pursuit of reform and sustainable development. Our reflections will therefore cover a broad spectrum of these paradoxes with a view to suggesting how I think they will shape the future.

Let me begin with the paradox of wilful division that is creating a poor and growing Nigeria at the same time. I found one reason for it in the week before Christmas. Through the Centre for Values in Leadership which I founded ten years ago to help build leadership values and skills in young professionals we had initiated a programme to help relief flood victims of aspects of the trauma they were afflicted with. This is because developing the habit of sacrificial giving of self for the good of others is one of the tripod of CVL leadership development platforms, along with a habit of learning, and developing courage of conviction. So I had toured several of the flood affected regions and returned with lorry loads of relief materials donated by concerned citizens Delta, and Anambra. I suspended distribution to go on a programme in the US and therefore had to rush to Adamawa on my return from the US, before it was too late in the year, to see the people who live around the confluence of the Benue and Gongola rivers. They had been visited with a vengeance by the floods and seemed to have been forgotten by the government.

On arriving Yola I met a peaceful community that did not seem troubled by terror, yet the obvious high transaction cost involved in doing business there, as we experienced, would mean lower levels of economic activity and lower competitiveness, worsening poverty levels that were already unacceptable. Further north of Yola where the terror found native place in the Boko Haram insurgency, the city of Maiduguri was said to be more or less a ghost town. With this trend those parts of the country,Laser engravers and laser engraving machine and supplies to start your own lasering. the really terrorized, and the regions perceived as dangerous even though the level of violence is far less than in parts of Los Angeles, would experience economic decline.

As we are in a season of Africa rising when growth is generous, it is possible for the country to surge forward while some parts are in reverse gear. This has grave implications for the future because we can end up with the kind of situation in Germany after the Berlin wall but without the capacity and commitment to bridging the prosperity gap. This may lead to an institutionalized case of a tale of two cities in which the division leaves us in a long term vicious cycle of violence. The evidence is such you would expect those behind the bombs and acts of terror to recognize that it is a lose-lose proposition and engage to arrive at a win-win resolution. Instead we have allowed the paradox of growth in Lagos while some parts of Nigeria are in self inflicted meltdown. Still it is the collective duty to help save a part that chooses to self destruct out of misunderstanding of its reality.Click on one of the categories below and select a custom bobbleheads design to start to design. In truth our shared humanity as our shared nationality means that we can diminished when we are diminished.

Closely related to this paradox as a major feature of 2012,Rist international shoes manufacturer and shoes supplier in agra india making quality. is the frequent preference for injustice to minority or out of power groups even when it is clear that united we stand, divided we fall.Unique tungsten jewelry can be found at Forever Metals with ceramic inlay, Unrestrained narcissism, around the country sadly results in the powerful shooting themselves in the foot in the belief they are oppressing others. On my visit to Numan I listened to speech after speech of how the government in Yola marginalizes people of the Numan federation. But it is not only in Adamawa you find this kind of unintended masochism where self love unwittingly produces effects that hurts self in the long run. In Plateau, Kaduna and other places this has yielded mindless violence with deaths of scores of innocents. In 2012 that paradox persisted. Terrible as this may be I am convinced that more damage came to prospects of well being in Ngeria from how authority figures exercised power ostensibly in advance of the good of all.

In my role as a business angel trying to help young entrepreneurs achieve their dreams, which I know will result in jobs being created to attain my personal desire to reduce poverty and advance my primary social goal of a full employment economy, I witnessed one potential creator of jobs after the other have their faith shaken by bullying Securities and Exchange Commission officials who really could not explain what they violated why their approach was so disruptive and destructive, or one tax agency clamping down on another venturer with spurious projections of what they may be earning. In the end it becomes a round robin of dog eat dog as the same SEC is unfairly bullied by a National Assembly that should back off Arumah Otteh who they lack the moral authority to go after.

In another venture I am associated with, the Ogun State government has frustrated a land lease for commercial purpose because it was approved by a previous government of the state, unmindful that more than a hundred million Naira and goodwill worth a lot more has gone into it. The damage to Nigeria’s reputation with foreign investors and the confidence of local investors being shredded, received little consideration.

These weaknesses in how we use power and a failure to understand the use of what Joseph Nye jnr and others would call soft power, threaten Nigeria leading the flock of Flying Geese, as Africa rises. In a lecture at Imperial College in London a few months ago I finished with a statement that Nigeria’s future was so bright, in spite of hiccups we all complain about, that those who do not wear sunglasses were in grave danger of going blind. But I was acutely aware that we have the capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In many ways the increasingly systemic bureaucratic corruption which was so palpable in 2012, challenged educational system, and goal displacement particularly accentuated by the tendency to see power rather than purpose and the path to progress, could take away this potential.

Part of the paradox of 2012 in Nigeria has been a failure of those who should know to realize what is shaping the Nigerian ascendancy in spite of, and not because of us. These include first the commodities boom with China and India rising that began to frustrate Afropessimism and gave both the Diaspora and trading partners the chance to rethink Africa; the troubles of mismanaged collectivism in Europe which should amuse Samuel Beer who years ago wrote the book Britain Against Itself; the youth bulge in Africa which has be re-jigged from a threat yesterday to what is now fashionably referred to as a demographic dividend; the new skills coming home from those abroad, etc..

And the year closed with a badly framed debate following the publication of Chinua Achebe’s book. There Was a Country. I welcomed the book. Seeing so many people even now in their 40s so badly informed on the years before the civil war and even meeting undergraduates who do not know Nigeria fought a civil war, the book was a true gift. Seeing that history is hardly taught in Nigeria and that the leaders refuse to chronicle their experience I have repeatedly urged General Gowon to write his memoirs. Achebe’s reflections were invaluable. But how the discussions were framed was so disgusting I chose not to be part of it.shedding and no smell about our virgin malaysian hair weave. For the avoidance of doubt there was a pogrom in Northern Nigeria, I am a witness. I still remember images of the light aircraft British Petroleum sent to get my family out of Gusau in 1966 taking off with many not so fortunate chasing after it as we taxied to take off from the old airfield. It would be 40 years before I returned to Gusau. Aspect of the war was clear genocide. I am a witness too. Emma Okocha’s book Blood on the Niger captures one experience. I believe my name appears in the book from some Camp record.