Moses E. Welcome.: 2016

Thursday 22 December 2016

'Plastic Rice' Seized In Lagos, Nigeria

Nigeria has confiscated 2.5 tonnes of "plastic rice" smuggled into the country by unscrupulous businessmen, the customs service says.

Lagos customs chief Haruna Mamudu said the fake rice was intended to be sold in markets during the festive season.

He said the rice was very sticky after it was boiled and "only God knows what would have happened" if people ate it.

It is not clear where the seized sacks came from but rice made from plastic pellets was found in China last year.

Rice is the most popular staple food in Nigeria.

Whoever made this fake rice did an exceptionally good job - on first impression it would have fooled me. When I ran the grains through my fingers nothing felt out of the ordinary.

But when I smelt a handful of the "rice" there was a faint chemical odour. Customs officials say when they cooked up the rice it was too sticky - and it was then abundantly clear this was no ordinary batch.

They've sent a sample to the laboratories to determine exactly what the "rice" is made of.

They are also warning the public not to consume the mystery foodstuff as it could be dangerous.

Fake food scandals are thankfully rare in Nigeria when you compare it to countries such as China.

The big scandal here is fake pharmaceutical drugs that kill a huge number of people every year.

A total of 102 sacks, each containing 25kg (55lb), was seized.

Sacks of rice — *Image captionEach bag contained 25kg (55lb) of fake rice*

Investigations are under way to establish how much of the contraband has already been sold.

The customs official called on "economic saboteurs who see yuletide season as a peak period for their nefarious acts to desist from such illegal" business activity.

Mr Mamudu did not explain how the plastic rice was made but said it had been branded as "Best Tomato Rice.

Now it's very obvious that this so-called rice might even be in the Nigeria market now.

What baffles me the most is, what could possibly be the profit made from selling unwholesome goods to the general public and even the merchant's relations, jeopardizing the health of a whole nation.

This should be seen as an act of terrorism and be treated as such.

This issue have been viral on the social media for some time now but the federal government through it's agent turned down the claims, now it's very evident.

HOW TO IDENTIFY 'PLASTIC RICE'

• It floats on water:

Be observant, once you see majority of your rice grains floating in water maybe when you want to wash/parboil, please do not continue with the cooking.

• It gives off plastic/rubber smell when being burnt.

Always test you rice before cooking. Get a portion of it and burn, if it smells plastic like do not go further with the cooking.

• after boiling, the rice sticks together more than the usual one, so when you boil it and discover that the rice is very sticky/gums together more than the way it's supposed to be, please do not eat it.

There are other ways of identifying this so-called rice but I'll stop here. Please be observant this Christmas period, be mindful what you eat, drink, and put on...try and kill the rush hour syndrome of this period and protect your health and the health of the whole nation.

Thanks for reading...much love from Jeff 😘😘😘

Sunday 4 December 2016

Trump Appoints A Nigerian As Part Of His Economic Team

Nigerian-born Adebayo Ogunlesi, who is the chairman of Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm and one of Fortune 500 companies, has been named a member of an economic advisory forum to US president-elect Donald Trump. The 63 year-old Nigerian is the only African face in the 16-man team, which has Steve Schwarzman, CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone as chairman. Adebayo Ogunlesi: to advise Trump on the economy “President-elect Donald J. Trump today announced that he is establishing the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum,” said the press release from Blackstone. “The Forum, which is composed of some of America’s most highly respected and successful business leaders, will be called upon to meet with the president frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the president implements his plan to bring back jobs and Make America Great Again,” Blackstone said in the release published by Business Insider.
The members of the forum are:

Stephen Schwarzman (forum chairman), chairman, CEO, and cofounder of Blackstone Paul Atkins, CEO of Patomak Global Partners, former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Mary Barra, chairwoman and CEO, General Motors
Toby Cosgrove, CEO, Cleveland Clinic
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Larry Fink, chairman and CEO, BlackRock
Bob Iger, chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company
Rich Lesser, president and CEO, Boston Consulting Group
Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Jim McNerney, former chairman, president, and CEO of Boeing
Adebayo “Bayo” Ogunlesi, chairman and managing partner, Global Infrastructure Partners
Ginni Rometty, chairwoman, president, and CEO of IBM
Kevin Warsh, Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in economics at the Hoover Institute, former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Mark Weinberger, global chairman and CEO, EY
Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO, General Electric
Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize winner, vice chairman of IHS Markit
For Ogunlesi, the Trump advisory appointment may be a distraction as he has his hands full. Ogunlesi on 15 October was named as an independent director of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Apart from being managing partner of Global Infrastructure Partners, he also serves on the boards of Callaway Golf Co. and Kosmos Energy Ltd. At the same time he’s the chairman of Africa Finance Corp. and serves on the boards of various not-for-profits ranging from New York Presbyterian Hospital to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ogunlesi, whose father came from Makun, Sagamu in Ogun state was born in 1953. His father, Theophilus Ogunlesi was Nigeria’s first professor of medicine. After attending Kings College, Lagos for his secondary education , he received his B.A. with first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Oxford University. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and later got an MBA from Harvard Business School. Ogunlesi had a banking career with Credit Suisse First Boston from 1983 and rose to become its executive vice chairman. Before joining Credit Suisse, Ogunlesi was an attorney in the corporate practice group of the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. From 1980-81 he served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and the Yale School of Organization and Management, where he taught a course on transnational investment projects in emerging countries, according to Wikipedia He is married to an optometrist, Dr. Amelia Quist-Ogunlesi. His company Global Infrastructure Partners manages Gatwick Airport in the UK.

Sunday 27 November 2016

How They Deceived Us

It all started as freedom propaganda.
The lie was told so subtly that we didn’t notice.
To gain popularity, they convinced us that it was all about gender equality🤔. Then they preached to us, saying it was a human rights and child rights agenda.
To draw the attention of women, they hid under Women Empowerment Campaigns.
We saw everything they did as part of civilization, because of this, we applauded them and blindly sang their praises.
We were so blind that we did not notice when they went from equality to role reversal, and from ‘rights’ to ‘wrongs’. They told us it was all a matter of understanding. I mean, if she earns more than he does, why can’t she be the head while he submits?
They told us we had the right to our bodies. They told us that if the guys can do ‘it’ anytime with anybody, so can the girls🙂. They introduced free love, and ‘friends with benefits’, and convinced us that we were just exercising our rights to enjoy our bodies.🤔 We agreed. Which youth wouldn’t?
When we complained about STDs, they introduced condoms, and even started sharing it to us free of charge in our secondary schools.
They told us that from the age of 16, we had the right to do whatever we wanted to. This made us to start seeing our parents and school teachers as toothless bulldogs as they no longer had the right to discipline us.
Talk of sweet freedom!
When we complained about teenage pregnancies, they told our parents to educate us about contraceptives as early as possible. Then they introduced the reformed sex education in our school as a guise to give us more condoms.
Some of us still got pregnant, and we complained yet again. So they decided to legalize abortions, this was in a bid to help us. You see, they really cared about our future, and wanted to ensure that we live a free life.
Abortion made sense to us so we accepted it. I mean, why bring a child you don’t want or can’t take care of into the world? We felt a bit guilty because it seemed like murder. But they told us not to worry. According to them, what we were doing was merely taking out an unwanted foetus, and not killing a child. Yet again, we accepted it, and got pacified.
They said that we weren’t supposed to be accountable to any deity, religion, our parents or the society. Next, they told us we had the freedom to do what we wanted with our lives, so far as we weren’t hurting other people or trampling on their rights.
Almost immediately, we stopped regarding God.
We rather chose to play football, hang out, or watch seasonal movies on Weekends.
We also decided to experiment with homosexuality, it seemed like fun, and they encouraged us, when we told them that the society frowned against our choice, they legalized it and told us we can get married too.
We decided to go further and experiment with drugs, they frowned against it publicly, but we still had access to it. Moreover, we were minors, and the law enforcement agents couldn’t really punish us.
We looked for role models and they gave us Hollywood stars with multiple divorce stories, musical icons addicted to drugs/alcohol, and sports stars with numerous extra marital affair scandals.
They told us, that those celebrities were successful and free and we should aspire to be like them. Some of us started pumping iron, getting tattoos, and injecting steroids in order to look as manly and as ‘successful’ as our role models.
We started seeing fidelity as a sign of weakness and just like our ‘role-models’, we started going after everything in skirt.🙄
We equally tore off pictures of our successful and ‘sexy’ looking role models off celebrity magazines, and pasted them on our mirrors, we started dieting like mad so we can lose weight and look like them. We noticed that they hardly wore any clothes, so we followed suit.
When we became bored, they introduced us to their clubs and night parties. They told us to throw caution to the winds and just have fun, even when some of us got raped, they encouraged us to shut up and keep having fun.
Some of us became addicted to alcohol, but we were told not to worry that it was one way to prove our manhood, so we continued.
At a time we noticed that we had lost our will, we had become their slaves without knowing it.
We noticed that we don't have any reason to live again, and life was no longer purposeful.
In the bid to look sexy, some of us became victims of anorexia nervosa.
Those of us in relationships found it impossible to be faithful. Many started contemplating suicide. Many more had STDs, some of us experienced series of psychological traumas and mental breakdowns, a lot more dropped out of school as a result of unwanted pregnancies, drugs, or an abortion that went wrong.
At this point we saw our future get dashed before our faces, we started looking for whom to blame. After a fruitless search, we had to admit that we didn’t even know who ‘they’ were. Then the reality dawned on us.
We remembered our fathers telling us that “unlimited liberty is slavery in disguise”. We also remembered when our mothers told us that “freedom without checks and balances is tantamount to advanced bondage”. By then it was too late for us, we had bought ‘their’ freedom lie.
Maybe for you, it is not yet late, then please don’t be deceived by their lies and evil propaganda. Do not be swayed by their subtle message of freedom.
They’re all lies! We can prove it with our relationships, drug addictions, unwanted pregnancies, violent tendencies etc.
Beware, and please let's warn our youths and teenagers so the menace will not colonise all of this generation.
Not all reality shows are realities, not all models are role models,
Not all that glitters is gold...
Listen to wise counsel and save yourself.

Much love from Jeff...😘😘😘

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Who Are The Avengers?

L: Niger Delta Twitter photo R: A photo taken in September 2008 showing a fighter of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), holding his weapons at the militia's creek camp in the Niger Delta. — ImageThe Avengers' Twitter account uses a Mend oil militant from 2008 (R) as its profile picture

With a name that sounds like it has come from the pages of a superhero comic book, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) is the latest militant group to emerge in Nigeria - attacking oil installations in a campaign which threatens the economy of Africa's most populous state.

"We are a group of educated and well-travelled individuals that are poised to take the Niger Delta struggle to new heights that has never been seen in this nation before," the NDA proclaimed in one of their first statement's on their website in April.

"We have well-equipped human resources to meet this goal."

It was not an idle threat. The NDA has carried out a barrage of attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta region, causing a huge decline in oil production, which is the mainstay of the West African state's economy.

"The renewed activities of the militants in the Niger Delta is seriously affecting our oil production," Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun admitted on state-owned NTA television.

Who is their leader?

This is the first armed group to emerge in the region - where most people are poor despite the fact that it is rich in oil - since late Nigerian President Umar Musa Yar'Adua granted amnesty to militants there seven years ago.

At the time, militants in the region said they wanted a better deal for their people who have suffered environmental degradation and economic dislocation because of oil production by some of the world's leading firms.

Many of the militants were encouraged to drop their arms and agitation in exchange for some cash incentives and training. Former President Goodluck Jonathan, who comes from the Niger Delta, continued the scheme.

File photo of Shell staff in the Niger Delta — ImageForeign oil companies have long been targets for militant groups in the Niger Delta

The amnesty programme, which provides tens of thousands of former oil militants with a monthly stipend from the government, stemmed the level of violence.

But in the latest budget, President Muhammadu Buhari reduced funding for it by 70%, and has spoken of phasing it out entirely by 2018.

It is difficult to identify or determine who the members of the NDA are - their Twitter handle currently has an AFP photo of a Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) militant taken in September 2008 as its profile picture.

Local people in the region believe members of the group are largely elements of previous militant groups like Mend - led by Henry Okah, who has been incarcerated in South Africa - or the Niger Delta People's Salvation Front led by the vocal Mujahideen Asari Dokubo. They were left out of the government's amnesty programme.

Many say the NDA militants are followers of former Niger Delta warlords like Government Ekpemupolo, who has the alias Tompolo.

He signed up to the amnesty programme but has been on the run since February, refusing to be questioned by Nigeria's anti-corruption agency in connection with $231m (£163m) in missing government funds.

Mr Ekpemupolo has dissociated himself from the group - but none of the former militant leaders have commented.

Others believe the new militants are criminal elements that want to draw attention to themselves now that their kinsman, ex-President Jonathan, is out of power.

Currently, it is not known who officially leads the group, although a Col Mudoch Agbinibo has been signing press releases on behalf of the NDA.

There are suggestions that "Mudoch" is a pseudonym, like the one-time "Jomo Gbomo" of Mend.

Whatever perceptions people might have of the group, its activities in the Niger Delta appear well co-ordinated with a high level of technical expertise.

Oil production down

The NDA has stated unambiguously what it is setting out to achieve: "Our goal is to cripple Nigeria's economy."

After declaring what it called "Operation Red Economy" in February, it blew up an underwater pipeline forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut down a terminal which normally produces 250,000 barrels of oil a day (bpd).

Last month, Shell declared a force majeure, which excuses a company from contractual agreements because events beyond its control, on exports of high grade crude oil after an attack on one of its trunk lines.

A few days later, US firm Chevron shut its Valve Platform following another attack, also claimed by the Avengers.

And ahead of President Buhari's first expected visit to the region on Thursday, the NDA said it had blown up two Chevron export terminals.

These attacks have dealt a huge blow to the revenue of the Nigerian government, which says the renewed activities of the militants are seriously affecting oil production.

In fact the country's production has dropped to 1.65 million bpd, as against the projected 2.2 million bpd.

Pollution in Niger Delta — ImageThere have been many catastrophic oil spills in the Niger Delta over the years

The military has issued a stern warning that it will deal decisively with any group fermenting trouble in the country, including those it has described as "criminal elements in the Niger Delta".

But this appears to have emboldened the Avengers into more attacks that have had a knock-on affect on the supply of electricity that depends on gas from the oil-producing companies.

For President Buhari, who just marked one year in office, the NDA presents another fresh security challenge to the government which has been grappling with Islamist insurgency in the north-east of the country.

Again The Niger Delta Militants 'Bomb' oil pipelines.

File photo of Mend militants in the Niger Delta — ImageThere have been numerous different oil militant groups in Nigeria

A militant group in Nigeria says it has bombed three pipelines in the south of the country in the latest attack on the country's crucial oil industry.

The claim by the Niger Delta Avengers has not been independently confirmed.

The NDA, the latest militant group to emerge in Nigeria, is demanding that a greater share of oil wealth be spent on ending poverty in local communities.

Attacks resumed earlier this year after funding for former militants was slashed.

Nigeria is one of Africa's biggest oil exporters and it is the country's main export earner.

Nigeria's government and the Dutch-British oil company Shell, which operates the pipelines, have not yet commented on the alleged attack.

The NDA said it had blown up three trunk lines carrying 300,000 barrels of oil a day to Shell's Bonny export terminal in southern Bayelsa state.

Destruction of oil installations by successive militant organisations have severely disrupted crude production.

But an amnesty programme for former militants led to a period of relative peace until earlier this year.

Talks to resolve the conflict have been taking place in recent months, resulting in a delicate ceasefire, but those talks stalled at the beginning of November.

Since then there has been a sharp increase in attacks.

President stands his ground: By Martin Patience, BBC News, Lagos

Nigeria is Africa's largest producer, accounting for roughly two million barrels of crude daily

The continued attacks on pipelines are slashing Nigeria's oil production - and hammering an economy reeling from its worst recession in years.

This month, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari met leaders from the Niger Delta in a bid to end the violence.

The government also announced a vague plan to invest $1bn in the region - although it didn't spell out where the cash would come from.

Since the high-profile meeting, there have been a slew of attacks.

One of the militants told the BBC that the government was "playing with us" and that it wasn't putting its words into action.

Militant groups say they're fighting for a greater share of the resources for local communities. They also want the government to honour a previous amnesty programme - which offers cash payments and retraining - after its budget was slashed by two-thirds at the start of the year.

The government, however, accuses the militants of holding the country to ransom.

The continued violence is designed to pressure the government into making an agreement.

Despite the enormous economic pain, the president is standing his ground.

Sunday 13 November 2016

Green Card Saga, See What Prof Wole Soyinka Has To Say

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, has released a statement blasting "ignorant" Nigerians calling on him to tear his green card as he had earlier promised to do if Donald Trump emerged winner of the US Presidential election. Read the statement below...

"Let me end with a Red Card to those noisome creatures, the nattering nit-wits of Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as despicable as the Naijaland you impose on our reality from your secure cesspits of anonymity. Go back to school. Your problem is ignorance, ignorance of whatever subject you so readily comment upon.

Learn to study your subject before opening up on issues beyond your grasp. Sometimes you make one feel like swapping one green for another, out of embarassment for occupying the same national space as you. But don’t get nervous, or start jumping for joy too soon – the Nigerian passport is just as tough to rip, physically, as is the Green Card, so I’ll stay put in my private Green Belt – the one I have named the Autonomous Republic of Ijegba. I negotiate my relations with both peoples and nations from its internal protocols – yes, that is indeed arrogance for you, but an arrogance of several decades’ principled growth. I carry that patch of green with me, everywhere, in a secure, invisible, and inaccessible pouch! It is that warehouse of ingrained sensibilities that engendered my decision".

Read the full statement below

I shall begin on a morbid note. One of the horror stories that emerged from the Daesh (Isis) controlled parts of Iraq was the gruesome tale of the mother who had a daughter affected by wanderlust, even in that endangered zone. One day, when she looked for her to attend to some home chores, she found that she had gone missing yet again. As she searched, she shouted in frustration: ”As Allah is my witness, I’ll kill that girl when I catch up with her”. A neighbour overheard and reported her to the Hisbah. The mother was summoned by the mullahs who ordered her to put the child to death, since she had sworn by Allah. She refused, so they took the child by the legs and smashed her head against a wall. End of story. True or false? It certainly was published as true testimony. That is all I have to say to the ”literalists” who obsess over a time scheme of their own assessment. Thus, failure to have torn my Green Card ”the moment” that I learnt that Mr. Donald Trump had won the presidential elections of the USA. It did not matter what I was doing at the time – teaching, eating, swimming, praying, under the shower or whatever. Or a family member saying, ”Wait for me!” – speculatively please, no such disturbance ever took place. If it did however, I am supposed to contact the Nigerian media – to whom I have never spoken, and who never contacted me – except one – to beg permission to pursue a realistic definition of ”the moment”. Media fascism is however, a subject for another day,

For now, that moment having passed, I must be culpable of breaking a solemn promise. By the way, since we are on the terrain of literalism, has anyone attempted to ”tear” or rip apart a Green Card? Even a Credit Card? For the average hands, that would take some doing! I have actually considered garden shears for a dramatic resolution, this being closer to my real profession.

I have been asked several times – interestingly only by the foreign media, with the exception of THE INTERVIEW – whether indeed I did make such a statement at any time, and whether I still intended to carry it out, and the answer remains a categorical ’Yes’. Not recently, mind you, nor, in the inaccurate blazing PUNCH headline of Thursday Nov. 16 , but in the accurate wording that is contained in the actual story on page 9. So, where and when did I first notably make that declaration. Answer: Addressing a group of students at Oxford University and fielding questions. It was NOT a public lecture. I have never summoned a press conference on the issue. The organizers did not invite the (unregistered) Association of Nigerian Internet habituees. It was the accustomed student seminar format that moved from the light-hearted to the serious, the ridiculous and (hopefully) the profound and back again. I even used the encounter to compare my threat with the public antics of a former president – unnamed, I assure you – who tore up his party membership card of a moribund ruling party. Whatever my failings, I do not lack originality, and I was not about to be find myself indebted to that contumacious general!

Nonetheless, did I mean what I said – that is, ’exiting’ the USA? Absolutely, and that is the very theme of this address. It will not attempt to deal with the notion of an exit time-table as conceived by others, as if even the incumbent US president and his replacement are not even permitted over two months to pack their bags and prepare to move in and out of the White House, but must exchange positions the very moment that a winner was proclaimed. Anyone would think that the Brexit Vote made it imperative for the Brits to plunge into the English Channel instantly, instead of negotiating two years for an orderly withdrawal. Plebians like me of course need far less time, nevertheless they do not uproot overnight. Any other proposition speaks of a permanent agenda, of frustration and hidden histories – such as opportunities to rehabilitate themselves in the public eye. There is also recession in the land, and I can understand the psychology of impotence and thus, transferred aggression. Let it be understood – before I move even one word further – that I interrupted my present commitment in the United States solely for an urgent meeting with the Ooni of Ife on an ongoing project. I am obliged to return to the US in a matter of two or three days to complete my interrupted mission. Fortunately, that mision is guaranteed to end long before the United States becomes Trumpland Real Estate.

And now we move from absurd, frankly idiotic distractions to Substance. Why, in any case, am I pulling out of the United States? Why – as demanded of me by some of my genuinely concerned and sober interlocutors around the world – why such an extreme reaction? Why the terminal response to the elections of another land? Also, and perhaps most crucially, why am I left virtually mouth agape at the furore my stance has engendered? I simply fail to understand why this has gone beyond a flurry of public commentary and hilarious cartoons, and turned into a masturbatory for some, a vomitory for others, and an epilleptic sanatorium for a self-reproducing number? Why, in genuine bafflement, do I experience astonishment? Why do people find this commonplace, accessible-to-all act so extraordinary?

The answers to all the foregoing can be summed up in a familiar expression: a life of environmental sanitation, or call it – sanity. My temperament requires a certain minimum level of environmental health to function properly. I use the word ’temperament’ as a historical fact, a personality development that first manifested itself all the way back to student days, and has remained consistent all my life. Nowhere is perfect, certainly not all the time. Nonetheless, every human being has this need, however approximate, some perhaps with objective awareness, others intuitively, some more acutely and intensely than others, especially when defined by their professions, occupations, social and other involvements. The craving is common to all humanity – if I am wrong, then I must have dropped from Mars.

Here now is a potted history of the choices made by this contributor over the years in pursuit of this need, all the way from student days. Read carefully and learn!

As a student in Leeds University, one of whose subjects was Spanish, I steadily refused to accompany other students on long vacation job opportunities in Spain, designed to make us master the spoken part of the language. Apart from the Isle of Man, I went to France and Holland instead, whose languages were not part of my studies. And yet I had already fallen in love with flamenco music – played for us from records by our Spanish lecturer, and was dying to watch flamenco dancing in the flesh. Language study however, involves, as we all know, the study of a people´s history and culture. I had encountered the history of the Spanish Civil War, the violent overthrow of a legitimate Republican government, and the ’white terror’ of the Falangist leader, General Franco. I identified with the volunteer soldiers of the International Brigade. Spain was under boycott in parts of Europe, so there was a choice to be made. I refused to step into Spain until years after I had graduated and returned home, and General Franco was certified dead and buried. A personal choice.

Australia: It is now some twelve to fifteen years since I issued a Red Card to Australia, unannounced. That Red Card subsists till today. The occasion was a conference of PEN International, and I had made the usual visa application. When the forms arrived, I found the requirements for applicants over 70 years (I think) so obnoxious, intrusive, and degrading that I refused to fill them. Negotiations with the Australian government by Australian PEN led to an exception being made for me. When it was communicated, I wrote back: Absolutely Not. I refused to be the token geriatric. That application document was highly disrespectful of age and I wondered what kind of mentality had crafted it, wondered if the Australians themselves knew what image was being projected in their name. I said to our go-betweens: Not for a moment am I equating myself with Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela, but they are older. Does it mean that, if they decide to visit Australia, you would subject them to this form of degradation?

Till today, I have routinely declined any invitation to Australia, a country I had visited years earlier to sumptuous hospitality. I learnt some time ago that the obnoxious requirements have been removed but have not bothered to check. The reason was this follow-up: a journalist heard about my absence from the PEN conference and made enquiries. He interviewed me and I told him the cause. After visiting the Australian embassy for their side of the story, he reported back that the diplomat in charge responded to his questions with the comment that the embassy was too busy with more important matters. did not make a fuss. My position was based on principle but, basically, it was a personal affair between me and Australia. It remains so till today.

China: I did not, could not visit China for years after Tienanman Square. I was dying to visit that remarkable nation of culture and history, itching to go with every invitation. The Chinese ambassador in Nigeria tried to win me over after the ousting of the Gang of Four. I declined, but accepted the books he had told me did not exist while the Thought of Chairman Mao ruled the waves. Even when, years later, one of the top American travel agents organized a visit of Nobel laureates with mouth watering honoraria, I could not bring myself to join others. Constantly swimming before my eyes was the image of armoured trucks and tanks running over students encamped in Tienanmen Square, leaving behind rivulets of blood. Before I eventually accepted an invitation from the University of Beijing, I checked with some of the dissident poets – was it a decent time to visit? Had sufficient time passed for the average survivor of that carnage to obtain closure? Until they gave me the green light, I refused all invitations. Again I did not fuss. I did not call an international press conference in the interim.

Back home to our continent – this time, post-Apartheid South Africa. How many of these hysterical purveyors of Internet obscenities – including some printed media – are aware that for nearly two years, I handed South Africa the Red Card? And why? Because of her then astonishing display of xenophobia, most notably against Nigerians. I was a personal recepient of that treatment which took place – of all occasions imaginable – on the occasion of my visit to deliver a three-part memorial lecture in honour of the late Nelson Mandela. Undoubtedly, on that very occasion, there had been a misunderstanding over visa issuance. Nonetheless, taken in the context of the rampant humiliation of Nigerians at the hands of South African authorities, and the South African civic pockets also, I went to the final lecture with my luggage. The moment I concluded the last of my lectures, I insisted on being driven to the airport, silently shaking off the South African dust off my feet for ever. It was only to my hosts that I uttered the declaration that they were seeing me in their nation for the last time. Until I withdrew the Red Card, I did not summon the Press.

Now, how did that boycott end? It is a remarkable story which deserves its place in the narratives of sheer serendipity. It involved Dennis Brutus, the South African poet, an enlightened Head of Nigerian Immigration and, indirectly, Archishop Desmond Tutu and Albie Sachs, former chairman of the South African Constitutional Court. Also, retrospectively, the role played by Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, during my ordeal at the airport. While the boycott lasted however, I declined between seven to nine invitations to South Africa, including a UNESCO event that was however billed to take place there. The ending of that boycott, like the beginning, was ultimately my private and personal decision.

Shall we take Cuba, that revolutionary island where I was personally decorated by Fidel Castro with the Felix Valera medal of honour? Despite all efforts by the then Cuban ambassador to Nigeria, and very valued friends and colleagues in Cuba, I issued her my usual silent card some years ago. I found the execution of those ill-fated adventurers who tried to escape on a raft excessive, not forgetting the shooting down of a hi-jacked plane. Were their acts condemnable? Indisputably! Did the punishment fit the crime however? My answer is obvious – No. Jose Saramago, the late Portuguese Nobelist had apparently taken the same position, as I found out when we both met at a subsequent event in Cuba when our Cuban boycotts eventually ended. Were we wrong or right? That is immaterial. The point is that neither called a press conference or publicised our individual decisions. They were personal decisions, made independently.

And so on, and on, and on….brief to prolonged, reluctant to instant boycotts of places of normally congenial roosting, for a variety of reasons, and dictated by individual temperaments. And so we come finally to Donald Trump, and the sometimes travesty of collective choice.

I was in New York during the run-up to elections. I watched this face, its body language, listened to his uncouth, racist language, his imbecillic harangues, the insults to other peoples, other races, especially the Hispanics, Africans and Afro-Americans, even citing once – I was told – Nigeria as an instance of the burdensome occupation of global space. I watched and listened, disbelievingly, since this was America, supposedly now freed to a large extent – as we like to believe and have a right to expect – from its lamentable history of racism. But I saw, not only this would-be president but – enthusing followers on populist a populist roll at the expense of minorities! I followed the fluctuating poll statistics. I began to warn my colleagues, friends, my family: listen, this thing is happening right before our very eyes. This is how it begins, how humanity ends up with Cambodia, with Rwanda, with Da’esh. We are watching a Hitlerite phenomenon. We are witnessing history in reverse, unravelling before a complacent world. I said to them, if this man wins, I am relocating. It had gone beyond a joke. They all said, it will never happen. Even a day to elections, some Nigerians, with whom I had a meeting in New York, waved off the possibility. The entire world goofed – T.B. Joshua and other pundits, charlattans and experts alike. A colleague at Harvard mentioned the celebrations that would follow the election, but shortly after, confessed his concerns, cursing the FBI man who had chosen to intervene at an unprecedented stage in the elections.

Again, I said to him, I shall relocate if Trump wins. He said, I’m coming with you, echoing numerous other colleagues to whom I had sounded the same alert. I promised them all political asylum! So, it was nothing new, the Oxford comment. Whatever language I used is my familiar language, not the language of Da’esh or its local impotent surrogates.

Finally, here is something very personal, but I have to answer the question of my genuine interlocutors in matching sincerity.
Our US base and family home in California – Abacha instigated – faces a rockhill known as Mount Baldy. It has survived the menace of fires, so close to disaster that we were placed on evacuation alert a number of times and were once actually bundled out by the police for over forty-eight hours. A fireball overflew the house on one occasion, landed some distance from ours and consumed that unlucky home. Not too far away, an escaping family took a wrong turn and lost their lives in the flames. Nothing of such menacing interludes ever brought to the fore the remotest consideration of relocating! However – and let this be stressed to all those who are strangers to the world of images – for this individual called Wole Soyinka, the superimposition of the Trumpian face on those bare mountain slabs began to take on reality, a reality that probably became even three-dimensional, like the massive faces of those former US presidents that remain gouged into the peaks of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, visited by millions. My environment, albeit a substitute one for our authentic home in the forests of Ijegba – had become compromised. That is all I shall write on the reality of superimposition – the notion of waking up every day of habitation and seeing on that mountain slab the face of Donald Trump on my borrowed preserve, where, from upstairs, I sometimes stood in bouts of contemplation, especially whenever the house was empty.

For me, something is gone. Again, I speak for myself, not for my family who are, in any case, also American citizens, an acquisition that I have declined I cannot recall how often. Let me repeat, even that portion of empathy that comes from intimate occupancy and usage over the years, and where the products of my ”extra mileage” were born, has become violated. It is still home, second home, but one individual named Donald Trump – and his cohorts – have ruined its hard-earned companionship and serenity, built up over the years. As I keep repeating, these issues are personal.

And so, back from our quick excursions to Asia and the Antipodes, what is so special about America that an agenda of abandonment creates such hysteria? I am incapable of double standards in these matters. Why do individuals feel threatened? I have never invited anyone to join me in my purely personal odyssey, begun before most of these sniveling upstarts were born. Is it the Green Card that sets America apart? Then perhaps it iis time to repay the compliment with a Red card, as in soccer. I am not aware that the world’s oxygen storage tanks are located in the US of A, so that we cannot breathe away from it. I shall always compliment the American success story on many fronts, including the fact that millions of migrants derive their very living – including crucial send-home remittances – from her generosity. Many of us will always be grateful to her government at the time for sheltering both our persons and our mission during the Abacha years. However, we are also individuals, with specific needs, different sensibilities, and definitions of productive environments and thus, up to this moment, my Wolexit stands.

It is a personal thing. Perhaps it will help even further if I remind you of what I wrote in my memoirs: YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN. There I confessed that my greatest – and irrational – fear in exile was that if I died outside Nigeria, my well-meaning family, colleagues and friends, would bring my body home. I took firm steps. The thought of resting within that earth while it was trampled over by a despotic monster whom I thoroughly despised, was the absurd but all-consuming fear that I had all through that deadly struggle. Obviously that fear has been eliminated, but then, having watched this American Wonder rise to power through a contemptible denigration of my sector of humanity, through mockery and jeers of my origin, I no longer find that environment congenial either for work or leisure, and I have signalled my unambiguous intent to exit. No one else is invited.

Well now, a remarkable development. I stated earlier that the issue is not just one individual called Donald Trump, but the human environment that he and his ilk have spawned, one that contributes to a toxic environment across the globe, with the rise of ultra-nationalism and exclusionist politics. That environment is however engendering counter aspects to that created by Trump’s lowest common demonimator in followership. Spontaneous protests have sprung up across the country. Too late, I’m afraid, and ineffectual, since Demoracy has the last word, and its rituals have been concluded. The law of the land will prevail. However, I have been considerably cheered by the spontaneous manifestation of this rejection of the shame and horror that a ”majority” has imposed on the totality. Americans will have to live with it, but there is hope. Even before the street protests, something rather strange had taken place.

On the very morning of the conclusion of elections when I switched away from one news channel to the next, the screen went suddenly blank. Then came a scrolled message that called for a quiet, peaceful revolution. It went on and on, without voice or images, and it was non-partisan, since it rejected not only Trump but Clinton as befitting candidates but declared American democracy a sham. It went on to complicate matters by identifying an individual – Bernie Saunders – by name as an acceptable leader of a new movement. It excoriated past governance policies, dismissed even Obamacare as a failure – I disagree by the way – and urged viewers again and again to LET’S TALK ABOUT IT. LET’S MEET ON THE INTERNET. LET A PEACEFUL REVOLUTION BEGIN etc. etc. It could have been Channel 33 or 34, I am no longer sure. A serious, viable movement? Maybe not sustainable under the present system, but it goes into that multi-faceted network that leads to the eventual sanitization of any socio-political environment. And then, latest of the latest, the state of California has mounted a referendum for secession, within her constitutional rights. Quite an unpredictable prospect but, much as I am predisposed to upheavals by vox populi, I prefer to be out of the environment, being a non-citizen.

Let me end with a Red Card to those noisome creatures, the nattering nit-wits of Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as despicable as the Naijaland you impose on our reality from your secure cesspits of anonymity. Go back to school. Your problem is ignorance, ignorance of whatever subject you so readily comment upon. Learn to study your subject before opening up on issues beyond your grasp. Sometimes you make one feel like swapping one green for another, out of embarassment for occupying the same national space as you. But don’t get nervous, or start jumping for joy too soon – the Nigerian passport is just as tough to rip, physically, as is the Green Card, so I’ll stay put in my private Green Belt – the one I have named the Autonomous Republic of Ijegba. I negotiate my relations with both peoples and nations from its internal protocols – yes, that is indeed arrogance for you, but an arrogance of several decades’ principled growth. I carry that patch of green with me, everywhere, in a secure, invisible, and inaccessible pouch! It is that warehouse of ingrained sensibilities that engendered my decision.

WOLEXIT stands – I coined that deliberately, to signify repossesion of my space of legitimate decisions. The media can nitpick over details – that is your profession. At long last, totally oblivious of the ongoing cacophony that had sprung up in my absence, I finally did receive for the first time a brief questionaire from a Nigerian journal, The INTERVIEW, and one other. I responded. My exit time schema applies, not yours. If it even becomes convenient to bring it forward, I intend to do so, but please don’t come at me with plaints of time imprecision. ! never discussed it with you, nor invited you to a private decision whose execution was already in the making. Do not try to browbeat me. It’s a waste of time – all you have to do is immerse yourselves in my antecedents