Hello Nairalanders am in serious trouble and need all the help I can muster. It started this evening when I visited the President GEJ and his family which is customary for me and my folks especially on weekends. While there, I got busy with the family members and household staffers as am a known and regular face at the villa. Meanwhile the President was busy as usual with state matters at his private office is not far from the residence. I played several games with the kids on their PS3 and discussed wide ranging issues but not politics with the staffers. While there I did take notice of the activities down the corridor of to the private office which on careful observation revealed the interest revolved around a document. For the records before heading out to the villa tonight I have been briefed about the compilation of list for employment to federal civil service and that I had to locate the list and include the names of my candidates.
As God will have it I cited Mama peace walking elegantly towards the private office, I quickly mobilised my legs to accost her and hail her a niger delta nigga. This enabled me access past the security cordon and the outer office. On my getting there, they including GEJ has dispersed for a high level meeting. I did a quick check for the list but I discovered a bomb. Yes a bomb shell, the list I found left carelessly on the PA's table titled FIFA ELIMINATION contains names of political opponents marked for elimination, for dearth of time and space I will just name the top 10 target on the list
1. Rotimi Amaechi
2. Barack Obama
3. Iran
4. Iya Basira
5. Basket Mouth
6. Abacha
7. El Rufai
8. APC
9. Beyoncé
10. INEC

All the security men in the villa are currently after me,am holed up somewhere in the villa.
Thank God for Nairaland and MTN am able to report this great find.
Happy New year to you all.
God bless GEJ.

www.twitter.com
Always the follow back guy.

A Chinese thief painstakingly wrote out 11 pages of telephone numbers from a stolen iPhone and sent them to the owner, state media said Monday.
The pickpocket is believed to have taken the Apple handset from Zou Bin when they shared a taxi, the Xinhua news agency said.
Zou had nearly 1,000 contact numbers in the device and with no backup copy -- like millions of other people around the world -- he was more concerned about losing the data than the phone itself, it added.
"I know you are the man who sat beside me. I can assure you that I will find you," he said in a text message to the thief.
"Look through the contact numbers in my mobile and you will know what trade I am in," he added. "Send me back the phone to the address below if you are sensible."
The tone of the message was unmistakably threatening -- Zou works in the pub industry, which in China is widely held to have links with gangs.
Days later he received a parcel containing his SIM card and 11 pages of carefully handwritten contact numbers, Xinhua said, adding he was "fossilised" by the result -- a Chinese colloquialism for astonished.
"It would take a while to write from one to one thousand, let alone names and a whole string of digits. I suppose (the thief's) hand is swelling," Zou was quoted as saying.
The theft earlier this month is believed to have happened somewhere between Yiyang and Changsha in the central province of Hunan.
Chinese Internet users gave the thief plaudits for his efforts, dubbing him "the conscience of the (theft) industry".
One user of Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, posted: "What a sympathetic and faithful thief, one who values professional ethics."

Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State has berated presidential aides, Doyin Okupe and Ahmed Gulak on their recent outbursts against him and four other governors just as he has dismissed the recently registered All Progressive Congress, APC, as a panacea to the nation’s problems.
Governor Lamido, in an interview, said he was in agreement with President Goodluck Jonathan that Nigeria cannot break as he said that members of the elite class in the country were united in preserving their advantages over the masses irrespective of tribe and religion.
Lamido also expressed disappointment with statements credited to former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Mohammed Abba-Gana, that there was no presidential material in the north.
Lamido, who attended the same Barewa College with Abba-Gana, said that the education Abba-Gana had, prepared him for the presidency.
Defending recent visits to some of the country’s elder-statesmen, he said the governors acted in the interest of the nation and in their determination to salvage the country’s democracy.
He said: “A situation where a hired hand like Doyin Okupe, a wage earner that speaks only to justify his pay, will malign me that I am irrelevant.
“He became an aide after the election. These people who are now talking and abusing us are personal aides, who became what they are when the mandate was achieved.
“They were nowhere when the whole thing was being worked out. It means there was an election before they were able to serve as aides.
“There is nothing like honour in that because they are just hired hands. If tomorrow you have another President, they go to him.”
‘Why Nigeria can’t break’
Agreeing with President Jonathan that Nigeria cannot break, he said: “It is too weak to break. Who will break it? The ordinary person in Jigawa or the ordinary person in Sokoto or the ordinary person in Bayelsa?
“Is it the Ibo vulcaniser or the Yoruba woman that is selling kerosene by the roadside or the Okada man in Delta?
“They don’t have the capacity to unite because they are burdened by poverty. We have taken away from them their dignity, their self esteem, their pride and self worth so that they cannot even organise.
“Up there, we (elite) unite, we sing and so we will never allow Nigeria to break because once it breaks, we will lose.
“But the common man loses nothing. What is he losing? He is already living in hell; he cannot lose anything more than this hell.”

A married woman and mother of three, was arrested after having sex with her daughter’s former boyfriend.

It is an unspoken rule, and most people know to stay away from, and definitely not sleep with, the former lover of a family member or friend.

But one mother broke that rule, and also broke the law by sleeping with her daughter’s underage former boyfriend.
Sarah Maria Torres, 33, of Sugar Land, Texas, was arrested on rape charges after she allegedly had sex with her 14-year-old daughter’s former boyfriend.

According to Sugar Land Police, an investigation began after the boy told a family member about the sexual relationship he had with the woman, who lives on the same block as him.
Investigators said the alleged incident took place when the boy stayed home from school. The boy's mother provided officers with evidence that corroborated her son’s claims.

Neighbors are shocked by the allegations and are doubly concerned over the disturbing accusations because Torres runs a daycare center out of her own home.
Torres was booked into the Fort Bend County jail and charged with sexual assault of a child. Her bail was set at $150,000.

2ND SEMESTER EXAM. On Amechium Vs Jonathium.

Course tittle: CHM 215 (THERMODYNAMICS ­ OF POLICTICAL CHEMISTRY)
TIME ALLOWED: 72 Hours.
QUESTION 1.
In a reaction involving 19g of Amaechium sulphate and 16g of Jangline carbonate, 2015g of Forumium Governo acid was produced.
i. Calculate the percentage purity of the product, assuming the reaction took place under JEGA standard condition.
ii. Assuming that 3g of Akpabio Chloride was added using Goodluckium solution, calculate the mass of Amaechium sulphate that would have been needed for the reaction to be endothermic?
iii. What is the colour of Akpabio Chloride before and after the reaction?
iv. Calculate the molecular weight of the reactants and products with respect to their places on the electrochemical ­ series of quality leadership and state which is stronger.
v. Using their age, prove that Jangline is weak and would need more solution of Goodluckium nitrate to be able to precipitate Amaechium from the reaction.
vi. Why is it that the solution produced can't react with APCium Nitrate but would react violently with Turkia PDP (5) Jonite?
Goodluck to you!

[b]2ND SEMESTER EXAM. On Amechi Vs Jonathan

Course tittle: CHM 215 (THERMODYNAMICS ­ OF POLICTICAL CHEMISTRY)
TIME ALLOWED: 72 Hours.
QUESTION 1.
In a reaction involving 19g of Amaechium sulphate and 16g of Jangline carbonate, 2015g of Forumium Governo acid was produced.
i. Calculate the percentage purity of the product, assuming the reaction took place under JEGA standard condition.
ii. Assuming that 3g of Akpabio Chloride was added using Goodluckium solution, calculate the mass of Amaechium sulphate that would have been needed for the reaction to be endothermic?
iii. What is the colour of Akpabio Chloride before and after the reaction?
iv. Calculate the molecular weight of the reactants and products with respect to their places on the electrochemical ­ series of quality leadership and state which is stronger.
v. Using their age, prove that Jangline is weak and would need more solution of Goodluckium nitrate to be able to precipitate Amaechium from the reaction.
vi. Why is it that the solution produced can't react with APCium Nitrate but would react violently with Turkia PDP (5) Jonite?
Goodluck to you!

[b]2ND SEMESTER EXAM. On Amechi Vs Jonathan

Course tittle: CHM 215 (THERMODYNAMICS ­ OF POLICTICAL CHEMISTRY)
TIME ALLOWED: 72 Hours.
QUESTION 1.
In a reaction involving 19g of Amaechium sulphate and 16g of Jangline carbonate, 2015g of Forumium Governo acid was produced.
i. Calculate the percentage purity of the product, assuming the reaction took place under JEGA standard condition.
ii. Assuming that 3g of Akpabio Chloride was added using Goodluckium solution, calculate the mass of Amaechium sulphate that would have been needed for the reaction to be endothermic?
iii. What is the colour of Akpabio Chloride before and after the reaction?
iv. Calculate the molecular weight of the reactants and products with respect to their places on the electrochemical ­ series of quality leadership and state which is stronger.
v. Using their age, prove that Jangline is weak and would need more solution of Goodluckium nitrate to be able to precipitate Amaechium from the reaction.
vi. Why is it that the solution produced can't react with APCium Nitrate but would react violently with Turkia PDP (5) Jonite?
Goodluck to you![/b]

2ND SEMESTER EXAM. On Amechi Vs Jonathan

Course tittle: CHM 215 (THERMODYNAMICS ­ OF POLICTICAL CHEMISTRY)
TIME ALLOWED: 72 Hours.
QUESTION 1.
In a reaction involving 19g of Amaechium sulphate and 16g of Jangline carbonate, 2015g of Forumium Governo acid was produced.
i. Calculate the percentage purity of the product, assuming the reaction took place under JEGA standard condition.
ii. Assuming that 3g of Akpabio Chloride was added using Goodluckium solution, calculate the mass of Amaechium sulphate that would have been needed for the reaction to be endothermic?
iii. What is the colour of Akpabio Chloride before and after the reaction?
iv. Calculate the molecular weight of the reactants and products with respect to their places on the electrochemical ­ series of quality leadership and state which is stronger.
v. Using their age, prove that Jangline is weak and would need more solution of Goodluckium nitrate to be able to precipitate Amaechium from the reaction.
vi. Why is it that the solution produced can't react with APCium Nitrate but would react violently with Turkia PDP (5) Jonite?
Goodluck to you!

Nigerian are fools just making comments and arriving at jaundiced conclusions without seeing pictures or evidences of the destruction ongoing in the areas where the military are operating.We need to be careful how or what we wish for as the military has shown themselves time and over again to be untrustworthy in handling both affairs of state and such security challenges.

My dear,its a real problem you have on your hands and it can potentially ruin your the relationship. I did have the same experience when i wanted to marry my former fiancee when her mum insisted that we were not spiritually compatible even though we 'loved' eachother then i began to notioce some strains in the relationship as my fiancee found it had picking my calls and started making excuses for seeing me.Well,as a sharp naija guy i took the bull by the horn and cancelled some stuffs i ordered for her and moved ahead with my life which is one of the best decision i have made so far in my life. Actually,i am never the suspicious type but i had a strong feeling that the babe was seeing someone else cause she started hiding her phone from me and recieving strange calls also refusing to sleep over at my house.She is the first born of her family and told me on several occasion that she can never go against her parents wishes when it comes to the issue of marriage.
So my dear poster,do read the handwriting on the wall and move on.

Please do help me check the history of my car with VIN number 4T1BG28K4XU434023 1999 ,TOYOTA, 4D.

I need it asap.

Thanks

Hello Mekozoral,your tale is such a familiar one to so many young ladies out there in the cities and countryside of this nation Nigeria.Really your tale as told if true evokes sympathy towards you and your situation but i want to know how much effort you have really put in to ameliorate your condition.Have you tried to to seek for a teaching job or if you a christian approach your local church/parish for a job.Being a virgin or wanting to maintain your virginity is not enough and should not be enough reason to deter you from seeking relationship with men and getting ahead in life.Your case brings to mind the story of Prophet Elijah in the Bible who ran and hid from Jezebel in the hope that he was the only remaining saint in the then land of Israel but was quickly shown by an Angel when his eyes were opened that he was just one in a thousand of prophets that have maintained there sainthood and incorruptibility.So what am saying in essence is there are many a virgin in this wicked land of Nigeria of which i know not one but twenty at the last count and don't doubt me when i say 20 cause i mean 20.currently am helping one with her school not because of her "virginity" but because of an enduring friendship we did have then when she was my neighbor. So my dear try harder as the one i know do some plethora of jobs coupled with the largesse i dole out once in a while to make ends meet.you can make things work for you if only you believe,approach NGO's or reasonable individuals for help and not sex starved gorillas in human skin.I can push adverts to your mail to help and encourage you but frankly you need to do more by stepping out of your shell,not hiding in your room ,make friends both male and female not sex friends and lastly do not be discouraged for some years ago when i had no job what i held onto was hope and it saw me through.It is well.

VZCZCXRO7442
OO RUEHPA
DE RUEHUJA #0259/01 0411610
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
O 101610Z FEB 09
FM AMEMBASSY ABUJA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 5253
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
RUEHOS/AMCONSUL LAGOS 0802
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHDC
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 000259

NOFORN
SIPDIS

STATE PASS USTR FOR AGAMA
USDOE FOR GEORGE PERSON AND CHAYLOCK

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/02/2028
TAGS: EPET ENRG ELAB PINR ECON SENV PGOV NI
SUBJECT: (C) NIGERIA: SHELL BRIEFS AMBASSADOR ON OIL GAS ISSUES,
COMMENTS ON PRESIDENT'S HEALTH AND HIGH-LEVEL CORRUPTION

REF: ABUJA 203

Classified By: Ambassador Robin R. Sanders for reasons 1.4. (b
& d).

¶1. (S/NF) SUMMARY: Shell's regional executive vice president for
Africa Ann Pickard and government relations representative Peter
Francis met with the Ambassador on January 27 in Abuja and provided
an update on problems in the oil and gas sector. Pickard said that
things were going from bad to worse, especially the security
situation. She said that Nigeria now had one of the highest negative
ratings for maritime operations, creating problems for Shell in
hiring oil tankers to load, as tanker operators will work only under
highly selective conditions. Last year there were about 80 piracy
attacks on land and water combined. This year already 15 have been
tallied, which includes 3 for Shell and 3 for Exxon. On corruption,
Pickard said that Nigerian entities control the lifting of many oil
cargoes and there are some "very interesting" people lifting oil.
Oil buyers would pay NNPC GMD Yar'Adua, Chief Economic Advisor Yakubu
and the First Lady Turai Yar'Adua large bribes to lift oil. Pickard
also reported an instance of the Attorney General Aondoakaa allegedly
soliciting a $20 million bribe to sign a document. The International
Oil Companies (IOC) are quite concerned about the "very flawed" new
petroleum sector energy bill. The IOCs will be asking U.S., Dutch,
and U.K. COMs to convey points on the bill to GON policymakers.
Pickard agreed that the President's health is a guessing game. She
said that in her recent meetings with Yar'Auda he seems alert, though
very drawn in the face, thin, and frail. Her information is that the
President was not in danger of dying soon, but also was unlikely to
ever fully recover from his ailments. (Note: see septel on oil/energy
sector issues for the Ambassador's meeting with the new Minister of
Petroleum Resources. End Note). END SUMMARY.

¶2. (C) Shell's regional executive vice president for Africa Ann
Pickard and government relations representative Peter Francis met
with the Ambassador on January 27, 2009 in Abuja and provided an
update on problems in the oil and gas sector. Pickard reported that
Shell's meeting with Minister of Petroleum Resources Dr. Rilwanu
Lukman scheduled for earlier that day had been cancelled; the third
week in a row where key appointments had fallen through, with the
excuse of being summoned to the Presidential Villa. (Note: Emboffs
have observed that meetings with ministers and senior staff are
indeed often cancelled with the explanation that they have been
summoned to the Presidential Villa, even when the President is out of
town. End note). Econ Counselor and Econoff (notetaker) also
attended the discussion.

- - - - - - - - -
FROM BAD TO WORSE
- - - - - - - - -

¶3. (C) The Ambassador took the opportunity to share with Pickard that
the Mission was in the midst of completing its Strategic Plan and
asked Pickard where she thought Nigeria was headed. Pickard said that
things were going from bad to worse, especially in terms of security.
She said that Nigeria now had the highest negative rating for
maritime security, creating problems for Shell in hiring oil tankers
to load; tankers will work only under highly selective conditions.
She also noted that late on the evening of Saturday January 17,
Nigerian militants attacked and boarded two vessels at a Shell crude
oil loading platform in Bonny and took eight crew members hostage.
Standard procedure on the tanker was followed: the ship went into
immediate lock down; there were no injuries or fatalities from the
boarding. The eight Nigerian crew members who were taken hostage were
later released. The pirates who went through the sections of the
boat to which they were able to gain access, smashing and stealing
computers, electronics, and personal items of the crew members. The
second vessel was a tug boat towing a supply vessel from Bonny to
Calabar. Last year there were about 80 incidents of piracy; this
year already 15 had been tallied, which includes 3 for Shell and 3
for Exxon. GON officials have told Shell to "hire more security."
The price of doing business in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria
continues to climb she concluded. [Note: The International Maritime
Bureau (IMB), a division of the International Chamber of Commerce -
www icc-ccs org - reports that the waters off the Gulf of Guinea
(Nigeria) remain the second worst, with 40 incidents in 2008 to the
Horn of Africa (Somalia) with 42 recorded incidents. The IMB notes
that in 2009 the Horn of Africa will be more intense as Spring comes
due to the large number of foreign warships in the region on active
patrol to ensure the safety and security of vessels. The same
increased security is not expected for Nigeria in 2009. End Note]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SHELL BELIEVES COUP UNLIKELY; CORRUPTION WORSENING
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


ABUJA 00000259 002 OF 003


¶4. (S/NF) The Ambassador asked what Shell's thoughts were on any
potential for a coup. Pickard answered that there is little
intellectual capital to plan and execute a coup and Shell sees little
potential for one. Pickard then went on to say that corruption in
the oil sector was worsening by the day. The Ambassador asked for a
few examples. Pickard said that Nigerian entities control the
lifting of many oil cargoes and there are some "very interesting"
people lifting oil (People, she said that were not even in the
industry). As an example she said that oil buyers would pay Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) General Managing Director
Yar'Adua, (Note: not related to President Yar'Adua. End Note) Chief
Economic Advisor Yakubu, and the First Lady Turai Yar'Adua large
bribes, millions of dollars per tanker, to lift oil. The IOCs
control the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cargos, so GON actors do
not have the same opportunity for illicit gain. Pickard also said a
former associate of hers (protect) had told her he had been present
when Attorney General Aondoakaa had told a visitor that he would sign
a document only if the visitor paid $2 million immediately and
another $18 million the next day.

- - - - - - -
VERY BAD BILL
- - - - - - -

¶5. (C) Pickard reported that Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron all have
big license review disputes with the GON. Shell has taken its
dispute to court and the court is supporting Shell's position.
According to her, Shell is stepping back for the moment, however, to
see how the other two majors negotiation fair, but is not taking its
case out of court yet. The IOCs are quite concerned about the "very
flawed" new petroleum sector energy bill. The bill is silent on what
fiscal regimes would be applied. Shell says that the bill could
reduce the corporation's overall value in Nigeria. GON discussions
around the bill have mentioned the possibility of moving to five-year
licenses and prohibiting exploring both oil and gas from the same
source, which would contradict how oil and gas extraction works in
practice. The bill is silent on joint ventures; it just states that
NNPC will be incorporated. Pickard said the bill was "likely to sail
through." The IOCs will be asking U.S., Dutch and U.K. COMs to
convey points on the bill to GON policymakers. (Note: Pickard
mentioned that the IOCs will not share company information directly;
they will hire consultants, like McKinsey, to produce common themes
so the messages from the IOCs to be shared with the relevant
Ambassadors are clear and consistent. End note). Pickard lamented
that the expected cycle of petroleum is at least five years for the
first oil to flow, another 10 years of production to begin to break
even. These numbers change when oil is $40 per barrel instead of $100
per barrel. Hence, a five year license would not be an incentive for
investment and development.

- - - - - -
GAS ISSUES
- - - - - -

¶6. (C) The Ambassador said that the Mission was looking at
performance measures for the economy, i.e. the linkage between the
country's electricity output and gross domestic product (GDP). The
Ambassador shared that the Mission feels strongly that gas for
feedstock is the key to Nigeria's power production, which is only
about 2,800 average megawatts for a country of 140 million people.
Pickard agreed and added that the U.S. got it wrong on its domestic
natural gas policies, which it took over 20 years to sort out. So it
is not surprising that Nigeria has it wrong at this point. She said
there is not adequate infrastructure for gas. Gathering plants and
pipelines to carry the product to the power plants still have to be
financed and built. The Nigeria Independent Power Projects (NIPP)
were located where there is no gas and no infrastructure. In
addition, the international oil companies were coerced into building
a power plant each, something they have no expertise in, and they are
scrambling to deliver gas to these plants.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
YAR'AUDA VACATION IS PERHAPS SOMETHING ELSE
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

¶7. (S/NF) Pickard agreed that the President's health is a guessing
game. She said that in her recent meetings with Yar'Auda he seems
alert but drawn in the face and frail. She reported that a Julius
Berger (protect) contact says that the President was not in danger of
dying soon but has serious ailments from which he will never fully
recover. Pickard shared that Berger provides transportation
including planes for the President and has reportedly flown in
doctors and technicians to attend the President (reftel). She said,
for instance, that her Berger contact confided that they flew the
President from Germany to Saudi in September 2008. Additionally, the
Berger contact thought the President would not return to the Villa

ABUJA 00000259 003 OF 003


offices, as they were moving the President's personal things out of
the Villa. (Note: What we think this means is that Yar'Adua is
spending most of his time in the presidential residence and not in
the Villa offices. End Note).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
HOPES THAT OIL NATIONALISM CAN BE TEMPERED
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

¶8. (C) The Ambassador asked how comfortable Shell was with the new
appointment of Dr. Rilwanu Lukman as Minister of Petroleum Resources,
and the appointment of Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo as the new NNPC GMD.
Pickard sees the nationalism card cooling with the removal of former
NNPC GMD Yar'Adua, given that new Minister of Petroleum Lukman is
more "pragmatic" and will hold sway over deputy Minister Ajumogobia.
(Note: Ajumogobia's technical assistant told EconOff in a meeting on
January 14, 2009 that the State Minister was focusing on Gas, since
before the mass cabinet change he was State Minster of Petroleum,
with a separate State Minster for Gas.) End Note. She said she was
also okay with NNPC chief Barkindo. She has worked with Barkindo
several times over the past few decades, especially when they were
both working climate change. She said Barkindo led Nigeria's
technical delegation to climate change negotiations that produced the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)and the
Kyoto protocol to UNFCCC during while he served on its Bureau at
various times. She indicated that although his undergraduate studies
were in political science, he obtained his MBA from Southeastern
University in Washington DC and did postgraduate work in petroleum
economics and management at Oxford University. Although she also said
terms like nationalistic and Chavez she however said that she thought
he could be steered in the right direction on the petroleum sector.

- - - -
COMMENT
- - - -

¶9. (C) Although Pickard clearly seems frustrated with the way things
are going in the maritime security, oil sector legislation, and
corruption which affects Shell's bottom line, it was useful to hear
that she has hopes for the new Petroleum Minister and NNPC chief.
Septel on the Ambassador's meeting with new Petroleum Minister Lukman
will address many of these same issues.

¶10. (U) This cable was coordinated with Consulate Lagos.

SANDERS

Fresh facts emerged yesterday on how a woman, Ms. Chinwe Masi, died on Thursday August 19, 2010 at the Potomac, United States residence of fomer Governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu.

The fresh facts emerged as the Homicide Section of the Montgomery County Police Department told THISDAY yesterday that the case is being treated as an undetermined death and that they were waiting for the result of the autopsy for a final conclusion.
"It is an undetermined death and we are waiting for the results from the autopsy from the chief medical officer. The result usually take several weeks, but there were no signs of foul play," Blanca Kling, an officer at the Homicide Section, told THISDAY.

When THISDAY sought to find out how the tragic incident occurred, a source at Kalu's Potomac residence on that fateful night, who spoke with THISDAY yesterday, said not less than five of them were at the residence on that night. The source said the late Chinwe arrived at the residence at about 8:30pm "and all this happened just within 30 minutes."

The source, who pleaded not to be named, said: "We asked her to join us as we were drinking red wine. She said no, she would not drink red wine, that she was going for soda or Guinness. Luckily we had Guinness in the fridge. She took the small guinness and we were drinking red wine. After about fifteen minutes, I heard her shouting, my chest, my chest.

"The next thing, she started vomiting blood. We rushed to her and asked if she was asthmatic, but she said no, she had high-blood pressure. Immediately, the (ex) governor rushed to the phone and called ambulance and the police. And they came immediately. The ambulance arrived first and the paramedics were trying to take her into the ambulance when she gave up the ghost.

"At that point, the ambulance people said they would not be able to take her away until the police arrived. When the police came, they told us to come outside and wait. They were in the house for eight hours searching everywhere. And the police came in with all their equipment. They took the former governor's blood, his fingerprint and his statement.

"He told them that he met her at Montegory County Mall in June when he went to shop and forgot two bottles of perfume at the store. He told the Police that when he returned to US upper weekend, Chinwe, who was a senior staff of the high flying fashion store, called him last Tuesday that he would be bringing the perfume on Thursday and that was why she came to his residence.
"They gave him paper to sign and said they needed to search his house. First, they asked him whether the lady used cocaine, but the (ex)governor told them that she didn't use cocaine and he does not use cocaine. We were also told to write our statement, which we did.

"They checked the phone to see the last people she made contact with. She made contact with one of her cousins in Las Vegas, her name is Nonye, and she made contact with one of her friends when she missed her way while looking for the house that night."

When asked when next they would be reporting at the Police station, the source said apart from the statement the police obtained from them, they did not give them any appointment. THISDAY also also sought to know whether they had got in touch with the families of the deceased.

The source, who said the former governor flew to Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday by United Airlines and would be back in Washington DC on Wednesday, said they had not been able to do that because they do not have their contact address or phone number, and the Police also refused to give the number on the deceased’s call log to them.
THISDAY could however not get in touch with any of the members of Chinwe's family at the time of filing this report.

India says may drag US to WTO over visa fee hike
August 18, 2010


Inflation
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India said Tuesday it may take the United States to the World Trade Organisation over a "protectionist" US move to hike work visa fees that will hit the country's flagship outsourcing sector.

The new law earmarks funds from the visa fee hike to pay for the US government's plans to boost security along its border with Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

India "cannot keep quiet" on an issue that hurts its commercial interests, Rahul Khullar, the top bureaucrat in the commerce ministry, said in New Delhi.

Every moment in life is a moment of history. Every present action immediately becomes past and roles played today will be remembered tomorrow with pride or shame, satisfaction or regret. Yet some moments are clearly more momentous than others, and represent far greater opportunities and dangers. These are often moments of crisis, a word which in its Japanese form is written with two characters, the one representing danger, the other opportunity.

The deaths of ‘Yar Adua, Abacha and Abiola plunged Nigeria into a crisis. That is, a period portending great danger for the corporate body called Nigeria as well as near limitless opportunities for progress, for a departure from the tension, the stagnation, the corruption and the injustices associated with the dark period known as the Abacha days. For the leaders of Southern Nigeria and, in particular, the two dominant tribes, the Igbo and Yoruba, it represented an opportunity once more to make a move for the presidency, and shift power (whatever that means) away from the North which has come to be portrayed as the source of all the problems of the nation. The desire to win over power is the natural goal of political activists. The use of propaganda, blackmail, lies, bribery, deception, even threats of secession has been the hallmark of many an astute political strategy aimed at attaining set goals. Yet the choice of which method is appropriate to a specific polity in a specific historical context is a difficult one, requiring a high sense of perception, a knowledge of history, a natural intelligence and political sophistication. In choosing the path of black-mail and ethnocentric diatribe, the leaders of the South have once more displayed to the world their political naivete, and set the stage for another defeat that may see them remaining in opposition for the next four years.

One marvels at the never-ending cycle which sees Southern Politicians play into the hands of their northern counterparts. For a people who take pride in the depth of their Western Education and who have often expressed contempt for the “backwardness” and “illiteracy” of their northern brothers, southern politicians have presented to the world the ever-present proof that “book – knowledge” and intelligence are not necessarily correlated. One recalls Chief Awolowo’s description of Shagari as a “glorified Grade Two Teacher”. It was missing on Awolowo’ that the more contemptible the adjectives he used to describe Shagari, the lower he sank in the eyes of perceptive watchers, as the man he was describing had clearly shown that he was better by defeating him in a race both participated in from start to finish.

Western Liberal Democracy is a product of the nation-state. It takes as given, the corporate existence of the state and establishes institutions and the rule of law such as to ensure that the system, rather than an individual, is relied upon for safeguarding individual rights and societal values. To the extent that Nigerians have decided to pursue the path of the Western Nations (or at least those in power have decided that this is the way to go) participants would do well to bear this fact in mind. A democratic system is primarily about Institutions and the rule of law. It is not about individuals. We need a system, based on laws and a constitution agreed upon by all, that guarantees each and every Nigerian wherever he is from the right to full political participation and unfettered expression. A system that protects each and every one of us from the tyranny of an individual. A system in which our dignity and liberty are not protected only when the president comes from our own part of the country.

Abacha was a corrupt, ruthless dictator – period. Where he was from is immaterial. All Nigerians, Northerners and Southerners, Muslim and Christians, suffered from the corruption and injustices of his regime with the exception of a small band of family members, sycophants and traitors who joined him in looting the coffers of our nation. Those who stood against his tyranny and spoke out for freedom and equity suffered: among them Obasanjo, Yar Adua, Abiola, Rimi, Ige, Lamido, Nwakwo and Ken Sarowiwa. A cursory look at the list of those detained, framed, murdered, lied against, pauperized and otherwise abused in the last five years will prove to honest persons that Abacha was no respecter of region or religion and that he represented the least form of humanity degenerating dangerously close to bestiality, which is why, like Pharaoh, he is remembered today for his evil rather than his good, for no good of his can obviate the memory, etched in the individual and collective consciousness of Nigerians, of what it is like to live in an environment of terror, not knowing who next will be struck with impunity.

In pretending that these are not the issues, in teaching their followers to oppose Abacha not for his corruption, greed and cruelty but for his ethnic origins, in portraying the annulment of the June, 1993 election as an act against the Yoruba, in pretending that Abiola’s death in prison was in some way different from ‘Yar Adua’s death in prison, in claiming that the solution to this country’s predicament lies in changing the ethnicity of the president and producing a “Southern” President: in all this, the political leaders of the South have displayed the highest degree of naivete, the lowest sense of responsibility and the crudest application of their intellectual faculties. Worse than all this, they have played straight into the hands of their political rivals, the Northern Politicians.

The history of Nigeria since independence is too recent, too many real-life participants are still alive, for it to be rewritten with impunity as a political strategy. It was only in the 1960’s that the Nigerian Army’s officer corps was predominated by officers of Igbo extraction. It was only in 1966 that a group of such officers decided to destroy the peace of this nation and wage a war against other tribal groups. That was when the five majors decided to eliminate the Premiers of the North and West while letting the Igbo Premier go scot-free, to assassinate the Prime Minister who was a northerner after having advised the Igbo president to flee and letting the Igbo Senate leader go scot-free. To execute the Minister of Finance who was from the Mid-West; to execute the most senior military officers from the North and the West while letting the most senior military officer and army commander who was Igbo go scot-free. Not one prominent Igbo leader, military or civilian was touched . All the prominent civilian and military leaders from other regions were executed. The Igbo senate leader, acting for the Igbo president in his absence was, by the constitution, mandated to swear - in the most senior NPC minister as Prime minister. He did not. Instead, having consulted his Igbo President, and the president alone, he handed over power to the Igbo GOC in flagrant disregard for the provisions of the constitution. The speech of Nzeogwu, the magazines and newspapers published in the six months of the Ironsi government, his declaration of a unitary state, the provocation of northerners by Igbo traders who laughed at them in Sabon Gari markets, all of these are too recent, too well-documented to be rewritten.

The Igbo people were responsible for the first military coup in this country; They were responsible for the first attempt at ethnic cleansing; They were responsible for the first violation of constitutionally laid down succession procedures; they were responsible for the destruction of the federation and the creation of the unitary system of which they are now victims (since the initial objective was for the Igbos to dominate the other groups); they were responsible for Nigeria’s first civil war.

It makes no sense, in the face of these facts, repeat facts, for the Igbos to shed tears today and claim to have always been an aggrieved party. It will convince no one. Granted, the Igbo people as a whole must not be punished for the action of some. Granted, there can never be full reconciliation without justice and equity. Granted, the Igbo people, like all Nigerians, have the right to fight against perceived injustices. The way to do this is by integration into the country, by joining broad-based parties and establishing a system that guarantees all individuals and groups their rights and liberty. It is not by crying Biafra again. It not by following the man who led them to defeat and ran away to come back later and enjoy his wealth. The Igbos have always had alliances with other parts of the country. The astute political strategy is to go into one now. Tribalism will lead to defeat, once more, and even more humiliation.

As for the Yoruba, they have not been known to call for secession or the break-up of the country until recently in the aftermath of the June 12 crisis and Abiola’s death. One may not agree entirely with their description of themselves as peaceful people, but they clearly are a peace –preferring people, consistent with their well-known nature of seeking maximum enjoyment from life at minimal personal cost. The Yoruba instinctively know that more can be gained in peacetime than in war. Being business people, they have an acute sense of the risks of war and its implication in terms of destruction of accumulated wealth and property.

Yet in spite of this, the Yoruba have in their politics displayed two consistent streaks that have consistently kept them in opposition and cost them opportunities for coming to power. The first is vanity – a dangerous state of self-delusion borne of imagined intellectual and academic superiority over opponents and rivals alike. Thus, Yoruba politicians have consistently underestimated their northern opponents who thrive on wily intrigues and far-sighted manipulation of the political process. They have also assumed to their peril that other southern tribes would naturally acquiesce to their leadership and be lured into a southern alliance whose objective is to help secure supremacy and power for the south – west. Even the so-called Oduduwa republic assumes that the people of the former mid-west who had fought for an independent region in the sixties will willingly resubmit themselves to Yoruba domination. This is all in addition to the recent utterances of Afenifere calling for excision of the Yoruba of the north from Fulani domination, a call dismissed by a prominent northern Yoruba leader, Sunday Awoniyi, for its banality and presumptuousness.

The second streak is self-centredness. Of all the tribes in Nigeria who sometimes fight for parochial reasons, the Yoruba are the only group who clearly believe they are Nigeria. When they have what they want, Nigeria is good. Otherwise it is bad. When a Yoruba candidate loses an election (like Awolowo did in 1979 and 1983) it is rigging. When he wins (like Abiola in 1993) it is a landslide victory in a free-and-fair election. When Buhari overthrew a democratically elected and sworn-in government headed by Shagari, he was hailed as a reformer who came to fight corruption. When his tribunals jailed ‘progressive’ Yoruba governors for theft he became unpopular. When Babangida dissolved the election of Adamu Chiroma and Shehu ‘Yar Adua as flag-bearers of NRC and SDP the decision was hailed as patriotic and courageous even though it led to an extension of military dictatorship. When the same man annulled Abiola’s election it was a travesty of democracy. The list is too long to go through.

As a result of these two characteristics, the Yoruba have tended to be received by all other groups in Nigeria with one sentiment: mistrust. The Igbo people believe to this day that the Yoruba led them into the war pretending to be with them and dumped them at the last moment. During the Second Republic, a grand alliance of four opposition parties capable of winning power from the NPN achieved nothing when it became clear that for the Yoruba the issue was not one of supplanting a conservative government and installing a progressive one, but of securing the presidency for a Yoruba candidate – Chief Awolowo.

NADECO, whose members had been strident opponents of Abiola branding him Babangida’s boy, suddenly look up June 12 and tribalised the cause. Subsequent to Abiola’s death, the memorandum NADECO submitted to the Government of Abdulsalam Abubakar was such a comical exercise in vain hallucination and naïve optimism that one wonders if those that drafted it were in complete possession of their mental faculties.

The Yoruba have become Nigeria’s wailing tribe, detaching themselves from the rest of the country and alienating the people they hope to rule; abusing other Nigerians through their vociferous media and hoping for votes from the same Nigerians on ballot day.

The lesson in all this is that the Igbo, Yoruba and all Nigerians must learn by now that no one can win a national election on a tribal platform. Those clamoring to join Ojukwu’s Igbo party, and those attempting to transform Afenifere/NADECO into a tribal party are heading for a resounding defeat at the polls.

The presidency can, and perhaps should, move to the south. But it will be to a southerner who contests on the platform of Nigeria, not of his tribe. A southerner committed to the system, to the rule of law and to the principles of peace, justice, equity and freedom, not of avenging real or imagined wrongs; a Southerner like Chief Abiola who stands the chance of winning.

This is an opportunity to make (or unmake) history. But, sadly, it is being thrown away once more in what may be the commencement of a new cycle of defeat, frustration and wailing.

Will Nigeria ever unite?

How the colonial masters empowered the North — Chief Mbazulike Amechi

By Ochereome Nnanna

*Why Zik did not work with Awolowo
*The genesis of agitation for COR state

Getting to the country home of Chief Mbazulike Amechi in Ukpor Nnewi, was no easy task, even in a Jeep. But when we eventually got there on Wednesday, February 3rd 2010, we met a man of 80 plus a couple of months still standing tall, still handsome and still very sharp in the mind and memory. Our mission was to encounter him in this interview to get a clearer picture of some historical issues surrounding the early political life of Nigeria before it degenerated to the sorry state in which we find ourselves. When I was through with him, he autographed three of his books which I have since found to be invaluable for the better understanding of Nigeria’s early beginnings. It is my pleasure to present to you, Chief Amechi, A PLEASURABLE READ.

You are known as “The Boy is Good”. How did you come by that name?
(Chuckles). I think it was in 1957. A constitutional conference was taking place in Lagos. I was in the secretariat team of the National Council for Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) delegation. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was leading our team. The Sardauna led the Northern team and Chief Awolowo led the Action Group. At the Lagos Marina, the Sardauna had just arrived at the residence of the Colonial Governor. He drove into the compound. Awolowo arrived with his own team and they drove into the compound. As we approached the compound we came down for Zik to enter the compound in a Chevrolet station wagon. As we opened the gate for him to drive in, one big stone landed on the side glass of his car.

The driver quickly applied the brakes. I was in my car together with Chief Fred Anyiam, an old Zikist. As I looked back to see what was happening, I saw a young man dressed in a fine suit pull out one long, sharp dagger from under his coat. He meant to stab it on the chest of Zik. Then I shouted: “this is an assassination! This is an assassination!” I jumped out of my car and grappled with the young man. The policemen who were there looked the other way and everybody was scared. I held him by the hand and he stabbed me in my hand (shows a large scar on his right forefinger).

I was bleeding and yet the white police officer who led the policemen stationed there looked the other way. As I was grappling with the man I shouted to Zik’s driver: “Sam, don’t you see it was your master they wanted to kill? Common, drive into that compound, don’t be silly!” he drove into the compound and I raised the traditional Igbo war cry: Igbo onozikwa ebea e? Igbo onozikwa ebea e?”

At this one Inspector Chukwuma, from Anambra as I was later made to understand, rushed out with a long baton, gave the man a big blow on the head and on the elbow and the dagger-holding hand, and the man slumped. The Inspector stepped on the dagger and then picked it up and I was rushed to the General Hospital in Lagos Island. I was treated by a lady doctor, Dr Ofili. This was relayed in the news everywhere. And when Zik was narrating the story in Onitsha, he kept saying: “the boy was really good”. That was how it started. Since then wherever I come in contact with people they hail me: “The Boy is Good”, and it has become part of my name”.

So it has a noble connotation. But today “The Boy is Good” now means, “He is rich”. He has a lot of money?
Good luck to him.

We hear of “Awoist”. We hear that some people are Aminu Kano’s political disciples. Who is a “Zikist”? What is Zikism?

When nationalism was building up it took a dramatic crescendo when Zik returned to Nigeria around 1934-35. He went to Ghana or Gold Coast and when he returned to Nigeria he set up the West African Pilot and other newspapers. Nwafor Orizu came back and wrote a book on youth and dynamism. Azikiwe means Azi ka iwe (or, the youth are more revolutionary than the elders). It was a source of inspiration to us and we decided to make a radical organisation out of him.

The Zikist Movement was founded around 1944 with MCK Ajuluchukwu as its first National President and Dr Kola Balogun as its first National Secretary. As the organisation grew the NCNC in 1948 tried to revolutionise its activities and drew up what they called the Freedom Charter at the Jos convention. Then in 1949 the youths in the Zikist Movement felt that the NCNC elders were not sufficiently forthcoming in implementing the Jos resolutions. So the Zikist Movement drew up its own programme and passed its own resolution.

The first phase of it was Passive Resistance. After that we would enter the phase of Dynamic Action. And after that we would enter the Total Revolution stage. The stage of passive resistance was to educate the people on their rights and ask them not to do anything that is anti-Nigeria or anti-nation as may be ordered them by the white colonialists. The second stage was to urge Nigerian people to stop paying tax because taxes then were being paid in favour of the British government in Nigeria.

The final stage was to go into demonstrations, to go into positive action and to urge the police and military officers not to obey their white commanders. So, it was decided that the first stage should be given effect in a lecture. We looked for somebody to deliver the lecture and we zeroed in on Osita Agwuna. He agreed to deliver a lecture entitled: “A Call for Revolution”.

He delivered the lecture. Anthony Enahoro was the chairman of the lecture. Zik was billed to chairman the lecture but he sent a message late that he was not feeling well and would not be able to attend. Enahoro, who was then the Editor of The Comet, one of Zik’s newspapers, presided. A few days after the lecture, the authorities pounced on Agwuna and arrested him, seized the text of the lecture and charged him to court for sedition and being in possession of seditious documents and so on. Agwuna was defiant in court. He told the magistrate that he did not recognise his court because the court was an instrument of British imperialism and not a Nigerian court, even though his salary was being paid through the Nigerian tax-payers fund.


*Chief Mbazulike Amechi, Nelson Mandela escaped to Nigeria to stay with me in Lagos for six months
The executive of the Movement decided to repeat the lecture a few days after Agwuna’s arraignment, at the Glover Memorial Hall, Lagos. It led to the arrest of more Zikists: Mallam Raji Abdallah, Obed Macaulay, Fred Anyiam, Mokwugwo Okoye and others. They were all arrested and sent to prison. They made no plea in the courts. This was late in 1949 and it spilled into 1950. In my book: The Forgotten Heroes of Independence in Nigeria, I captured it all. I was in Benin myself as the Assistant Secretary of the Zikist Movement. Henry Igbosua was my Chairman. The files were in my house. They searched my house and found a circular directing us on what we must do.

They arrested me and sent me to Benin prison. I did not know that the Oba of Benin stepped in on my behalf and the case was withdrawn from court. I quickly moved down to Lagos because when the other leaders were arrested it created a sort of vacuum so there was a need for people to come in. Bob Ogbuagu was in Jos.

The Zikist Movement was meant to cause a revolution in the country and achieve independence through revolution, and that was why many of us swore never to get married until Nigeria became independent. We did that because we did not want to bring into the world young children who would be fatherless or to create young widows. We expected to die in the struggle. We were not expecting to survive. We were prepared to die for Nigeria’s freedom. That was the same spirit with Dr Nelson Mandela. When he was being pursued by British intelligence in South Africa, he escaped to Nigeria to stay with me in Lagos.
Nelson Mandela?

Yes. He stayed with me for six months. By then Nigeria had got independence I was a Parliamentary Secretary. I got married immediately Nigeria’s independence was imminent in 1960. When Mandela came to Nigeria with his wife after his release from prison he came here to my house in Nnewi. When he was in prison he was writing me. I still have some of his letters.

After six months, Mandela decided to return to South Africa, saying he was tired of hiding. He said he wanted to go and be part of the struggle. “If I die”, he said, “Many people will be inspired and continue with the struggle. But if I did not die and we won, I will give leadership to the people”. That was the kind of decision we Africa freedom fighters had taken. We would rather die and give inspiration to people who will succeed us or give them leadership. He went back and was sent to prison for 27 years. He came out and led South Africa.

When the Zikist Movement was approaching the drive for the independence of Nigeria through that revolutionary method, was the same push being applied in other parts of the country? The North and Western Regions?
No. Except in the West. The Action Group elders were like the NCNC elders who wanted to proceed with caution. But there were in the Action Group young people who were nationalists, like Olu Adebanjo, Bisi Onabanjo and so on, who were thinking along the same lines with those of us in the Zikist Movement. For example, when the Queen was to visit Nigeria in 1956 we formed a joint committee of NCNC Youth Association (when the Zikist Movement was banned we changed the name to NCNC Youth Association) and Action Group Youth Association, and these two bodies worked like radical wings of the parent political parties.

In the north, no. There were radical elements like Aminu Kano, Tanko Yakassai, Bello Ijumu, Sa’adu Zungur and others. But they could not form a body in the north to come and join us in the south because the influence of the white rulers and the emirs would not allow them because of their system of governance. If you said a word they would just seize you and send you to prison with or without trial. This was the system they had which the white man saw and allowed them to function under the Indirect Rule approach.

Would you say that the different approaches to decolonisation in the East as compared to the North made the British colonialists to load political advantages against the East and in favour of the North when they were about to go?
Definitely, it was Zik that opened the eyes of people. And then, the radical elements in politics were found more in Igboland and second to Igboland was the Yoruba side. The British colonial authorities did not allow themselves to trust the Igbo man or Yoruba man. The Hausa/Fulani was the man they could trust. And so, they gerrymandered the constitution that brought independence in such a way that made sure that the North had all the powers. If you go to my other book: Nigeria, the Two Political Amalgams you will see the figures I gave there.

In the 1959 election, the election that preceded independence, the NCNC, which was predominant in the East, having 50 per cent in the West and having a foothold in the North through NEPU, scored a total of 2,594,577 votes to capture 94 seats in the Federal House. The Action Group/UMBC alliance had 1,992,364 to capture 73 seats in the House.

The NPC scored a total of 1,992,179 votes to capture a total of 142 seats in the House. So, the constituencies were carved out in such a way that the North would always be in control, and if you look at subsequent delimitation of constituencies and the population figures, the North has always ensured to maintain this pattern of dominance because nobody will like to throw away his advantages voluntarily.

That was a creation of the white man. And two, when elections were over like this and there was no one with a clear majority, what usually happened was that somebody could be called upon to form a government. But in the case of Nigeria it was not like that. Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the NPC was not called upon to form a government. He was not invited by the Governor General to form a government. He was appointed Prime Minister. Balewa’s emergence as the first Prime Minister of Nigeria was by appointment.

What led to that? They could easily have invited him since the figures indicated they had the majority?
What happened was that even the North was not expecting that. They were afraid. But we knew that the British government wanted the North to produce the Prime Minister because they did not trust an Igbo or Yoruba Prime Minister or anybody from the South.

After the elections and the three parties saw their standings, we were meeting at Onitsha a message came to Zik telling him that Awolowo was sending a delegation for the purpose of forming an alliance with the Action Group. They proposed that Zik should be the Prime Minister while Awolowo would be the Finance Minister. We were discussing with the delegation in Zik’s main sitting room when the telephone rang upstairs. Zik went up to answer the phone. When he was coming down the stairs, he said in Igbo, as if he was talking to someone upstairs: “agwo anyi na ya no bu kwa agwo isi na-buo!” meaning: “the snake we are dealing with has two heads!” When he came down, he told the Awolowo delegation: “Okay. Go and tell Awolowo that we are considering his proposal. We will send a delegation back to him”.

When they left, Zik told us that the telephone that he went to answer was from the Sardauna of Sokoto, and the Sardauna told him that a delegation from Awolowo was with him, offering the North Prime Minister and Awolowo the Finance Minister. This meant that if he got what he wanted from the North he would kick the East out and if he got it from the East he would kick the North out. There and then, Zik and the Sardauna decided that this man was a treacherous person and was not the type of person they wanted to work with in a government that would usher in Nigeria’s independence. It was on that ground that Zik and the Sardauna agreed to negotiate.

During the negotiation the North insisted that they should produce the Prime Minister, otherwise they were not ready for independence. In the agreement signed at the Lancaster House, it was agreed that if any Region said that they were not ready for independence, independence for Nigeria would be postponed indefinitely until all regions were ready. The North took advantage of that. Zik and the top leaders of the NCNC said having fought for independence and sacrificed so much, it was better to allow the North produce the Prime Minister so that the independence would be achieved.

So this was what happened when they got the Prime Minister and the NCNC got the Finance Minister through Chief Okotie Eboh?
Yes.

Isn’t it an irony of Nigeria that when General Gowon needed to build his federal coalition against Biafra, he quickly released Awo from prison and offered him the Finance portfolio which he coveted so much?
You see? Let me tell you how Okotie Eboh got the Finance Minister portfolio under the first indigenous federal cabinet. Sir Louis Ojukwu, Emeka’s father, contested election to the Federal House. Another multi-millionaire like him, one Shodipo from Abeokuta, contested and won election also on the NCNC platform. In those days you had to be a member of the House of Representatives to be appointed Minister. Both of them as millionaires, were expecting to be appointed minister of finance. The way power was shared between NCNC and NPC was by putting all the posts on the table and NPC to pick first and NCNC next until all the posts were exhausted.
They chose the Prime Minster, we chose Finance. They chose Minister of Defence; we chose Commerce and Industry because our people were mainly traders. It was not a question of one victorious party or region sitting down and choosing what to give to the junior partner. We got Finance and gave it to Delta (Okotie Eboh). We got Communications and gave it to Ondo (Olu Akinfosile). Shodipo was bent on having the Finance portfolio. Ojukwu was bent on having it. The NCNC leaders sat and deliberated on this. They said if we give it to Ojukwu, the Yorubas will opt out accusing us of tribalism. If we give it to Shodipo Igbos will feel very bad, and Ojukwu was a major financial muscle of the NCNC. They decided to look for a rich man from the minority areas, and that was how Okotie Eboh got it. Immediately after that, Ojukwu resigned from the House, and I took over his seat.

Let us revisit the famous carpet crossing event, which many people blame for the tribal nature of Nigerian politics. Could you tell us exactly what happened?
Yes. That was in 1952. There were elections to the Western House of Assembly, Eastern House of Assembly, and Northern House of Assembly. Lagos was part of Western Region then, and NCNC was in control of Lagos. From Lagos, the NCNC put up four candidates: Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Olorunnimbe, H. O. Davis and Adeleke Adedoyin. We defeated the Action Group in Lagos and all members of the Western House of Assembly from Lagos were NCNC members.

Generally, the NCNC had a very comfortable majority in the rest of Yorubaland in the Western House of Assembly. The constitution then said that the leader of the party with the majority in the house would be the leader of the House, and when self governance came he would be designated Premier of the Region.

Awolowo quickly mobilised the Ooni of Ife and other prominent Yoruba Obas and said: “can’t you see the danger that is coming on now? If we allow an Igbo man to be the Leader of this House the Igbo man will one day be the Premier of this Region”. His message hit home, and the Yoruba members of the NCNC were lobbied to cross over the Action Group to stop an Igbo man from coming to be the Premier of Western Region. When the House met, there was a red carpet and the Speaker’s bench was in the centre, the government side was this side and the opposition bench was over to the other side.

The NCNC, the majority party occupying the government side, had the red carpet separating them from the opposition. The Governor was then the Speaker or Chairman of the House. He took his seat. Awolowo got up and said he had a matter of urgency to raise to forestall a situation that could lead to riots and anarchy, which he said, many members of the House had decided to correct. One by one, our members got up and said Your Excellency, I don’t want to be part of a situation where Yorubaland would be set on fire.

So, I am crossing over to the other side. He would get up, walk across the carpet and take his seat. It started from Ibadan, where Adisa Akinloye led the four decampees. Adelabu, Richard Akinjide and Mojeed Agbaje, refused to cross over. Adeleke Adedoyin from Lagos, Olorunnimbe from Lagos, and others crossed the carpet. After the crossing, the NCNC majority was reduced to a minority. Okotie Eboh broke down and started crying.

At that time to be a member of the House of Representatives you had to be elected a member of the Regional House of Assembly. That was how the expression: “Carpet Crossing”, came into the political dictionary of Nigeria.

The leaders of the NCNC decided it was no use for Zik to be the leader of the opposition in Western Nigeria; that it was better for him to go to head the government of his own region since the politics of Nigeria had been reduced to this absurd tribal level. It was then that a member representing Onitsha was persuaded to resign for Zik to take his place at the Eastern Region House of Assembly.

It was also decided that Professor Eyo Ita, who was the Leader of Government Business in the Eastern Region House of Assembly, should resign for Zik to assume that position. Eyo Ita refused to resign. Eyo Ita, along with R. R. Uzoma of Orlu and A. C. Nwapa, Ubani Ekeoma, all of whom were ministers at Enugu, refused to resign. So it was not possible for Zik to come in. Another crisis was created, this time in the Eastern Region. Then I was the Secretary General of the NCNC Youth Association which, as I told you, was a reincarnation of the Zikist Movement. During the crisis, I was arrested along with Malam Umaru Altine and five others and imprisoned at Enugu because we insisted that the proper thing must be done…


Which was that…
Which was that these five ministers must quit. The Governor, C. J Pleass, was backing them. The House decided to dissolve itself, so the Governor had no choice but to dissolve the House. Fresh elections were conducted throughout the Eastern Region and Zik became the Leader of Government business and later, Premier of Eastern Region.

That was why the minorities of the East said the Igbos took advantage of their majority and elbowed away Eyo Ita. But the leaders of the Party did not see it in that light. What we were looking at was that it was absurd for the national leader of the Party to be a floor member while an ordinary floor member could be the leader of the government. Naturally, the national leader of the party should take precedence over everybody. The minorities then started their agitation for the creation of the Calabar/Ogoja/Rivers (COR) State.

You mentioned Umaru Altine, the first Lord Mayor of Enugu. Many people just mention the name but they don’t know how a Fulani man became the first Mayor of Enugu. Can you explain it? These days, people are harassed and killed in parts of the country, and they have no right to be elected or get jobs outside their states of origin, especially in the North?
It will interest you to know that Malam Umaru Altine was not appointed. He was elected Mayor of Enugu two times. Malam Umaru Altine was the Vice Chairman of the NCNC Youth Association at Enugu. He identified with the NCNC as a political party. During elections NCNC decided to nominate him at Coal Camp where he lived. He contested and won the election in the same manner as we did that kind of thing in many places. After what happened at Ibadan and the crisis it precipitated in the East, Altine was fully involved with us. He was arrested with me as I told you, and we were imprisoned together. That was in 1952. I shared the same prison cell with him and one Ernest Obianwu and one Akunne Nwanolue, and one Okeke, a blacksmith from Awka.


*Chief Mbazulike Amechi
Later, one M. E. Ogon from Ogoja later came and joined us. When Altine won the election, we decided that this man did not see himself as a Fulani man but a nationalist. And we NCNC we believe in one Nigeria. So, let him be the Mayor of Enugu. In the same manner, John Umoru, from Etsako in today’s Edo State which was then in the Western Region, was presented by the NCNC as a candidate for the House of Assembly, and he won to represent Port Harcourt in the Eastern Nigerian House of Assembly. Later, Zik appointed him as Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier. That was the way we saw Nigeria at that time. When the Eastern House of Chiefs was constituted Malam Umaru Yushau, the Sarkin Hausawa or chief of the Hausas at Onitsha, was elected as a member of the Eastern House of Chiefs. He was there until the military coups of 1966.

I must mention that a year or two before the coup, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Region, reciprocated our gesture by appointing one Felix Okonkwo, then known as “Okonkwo Kano”, as a special member of the Northern House of Chiefs. He was the leader of the Igbo State Union, which was very strong. It had Igbo State primary and secondary schools everywhere, including the North.

The term: “One Nigeria” of the NCNC vision, was it the same thing as the One Nigeria of today which emerged after the civil war?
It is not the same thing. In our own time we said it and we meant it. We used it as a slogan but we concretised it in action. During the Second Republic, the NPN took it up. That is the symbol there (pointing to a wooden statue that had a bunched hand with one middle finger pointing upward standing on a shelf in his sitting room). And One Nigeria then was that the North would produce the presidential candidate after Zik was deceived by Jim Nwobodo into believing that the NPP could give him the presidency. When Zik left the National Movement (which became the NPN) we insisted on the One Nigeria policy to the extent that that was what led to the coup of 1983.

President Shagari and the leadership of the NPN agreed that the next president of Nigeria after Shagari in 1987 would be an Igbo man. So, Buhari and the northern hawks said they cannot live to see this. That was why the coup of January 31 1983 took place. Dr Umaru Dikko said that.

That it was not acceptable to him that an Igbo man would be president in 1987?
No. Dikko exposed the conspiracy that led to the coup. That was why they crated him and wanted to bring him back alive and kill him. Umaru Dikko said this was the motive behind the coup; this is where the conspiracy was hatched.

Was this before or after the coup?
After the coup. He was speaking in London before they put him in a crate.

You know, Professor Jibril Aminu has always kicked against that notion that the coup of 1983 was staged to stop Ekwueme from being president in 1987?
I wouldn’t say it was staged to stop Ekwueme but to stop the Igbo.

Aminu says it is not true.
What did he know? He was not in the party hierarchy at that time. He was running the University of Maiduguri. He was not in a position to know what was happening.


Could it be called a Northern agenda to stop the Igbo producing the president?
It was not a northern agenda. There was a group they used to call the Kaduna Mafia. It could either be the agenda of the Mafia or just the hawks in the military and few of their confederates in the civilian class.

The hawks in the military must have been in the vanguard of it because they were the ones who fought the war. Obasanjo was one of them. When in 2006 he came to visit in Amichi in my local government here where the surrender document was signed he said, how do you people expect that after conquering you we come and hand over power to you? Many of the northern officers had that feeling. He said it when he had lost his bid for third term. So it could have been said out of frustration.

You mentioned Igbo State Union, which was very strong and did a lot of exploits. Can you compare and contrast the Igbo State Union and the Ohanaeze Ndigbo of today?
I can only compare and contrast them insofar as I can compare and contrast them in relation to the Igbo politicians of that time and the Igbo politicians of today. At that time, Abiriba Union could invite an erring Abiriba son at Port Harcourt and say: “come and kneel down here” and he would come and kneel down. That was the picture of discipline. But today you find someone whose mental faculty or even natural intelligence is limited. If you tell him to wait, if he looks into his bank account and finds some one or two billion naira which could be stolen he will tell his father, “who are you?”. His own father. That is the mentality of today.

I am not saying this anomaly is found only among the Igbo. It is a growing trend across the board. That’s why there is no more discipline now. There is no more patriotism now. In those days, just like today, there was no part of Nigeria you would go and not find an Igbo man. If you found an Igbo man engaged in a fight, once the news went out that an Igbo man was involved in a fight with someone who was not an Igbo, the Igbos in that area would come out and fight the non-Igbo to submission. At the end, they would ask the Igbo man, what caused the fight.

Then where he was wrong they would tell and warn him to desist from doing such a thing in the future. It is no longer the same now. I shudder to think of what would have happened to Zik in those days when that young man wanted to stab him. If it were today, unless he had his well paid thugs with him who are working for their money, he would have perished. More so, if I had not intervened and I shouted as I did, the policeman, Inspector Chukwuma, would not have responded. He would have been more concerned for the safety of his job and his own skin. I would have perished. At that time, one Igbo man’s problem was the problem of all the other Igbos in a branch of the Igbo State Union. Today the Igbo man will mortgage or sell his own brother to make money. At that time, politics was more for patriotism and nationalism, rather than opportunism and mercenary tendencies. Today, the politics of Nigeria is politics of money. No principles, not patriotism, no nationalism. The same thing has permeated the Ohanaeze. You saw what happened. While the Igbos were saying that they did not want Obasanjo and his third term, the then President General of Ohanaeze, and the Secretary General, along with the PDP governors of the South East, came out with the statement that had have consulted with 50 million Igbos and they all said they supported Obasanjo for third term. See what is happening with the Yar’ Adua case now. Look at the five South East Governors issuing a statement saying that Yar’ Adua is right in what he is doing, without consulting those who elected them.

The present crop of Igbo political actors have no sense of patriotism and are more influenced by material and mercenary considerations than patriotism and national interest.

How would you situate Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria’s history? Was he an Igbo hater?
Obasanjo was a soldier. He fought for Nigeria against Biafra. As a military head of state he handed over to civilians in 1979, which was a patriotic act. Obasanjo was elected president in 1999. How well he performed is for history to determine. But I don’t think he was the best president Nigeria ever had. I do not know if it was deliberate but he did not project the interest of the Igbos. He was there as a Yoruba president and if he did not have love for Ndigbo he did not hide it.

Is this the Nigeria you nationalists fought for?
Certainly not. We envisaged a country that was rich in human and natural resources. We founded a country that was big and had the potentialities to lead Africa. We founded a country where patriotism was the motivating factor. But unfortunately, an unpatriotic military came and intervened and distorted everything. And so from there change came. What we have now is not in any way near the country we envisaged. In our own time there was no oil and gas or mineral resources except coal, copper and tin.

We only had agricultural produce such as palm oil, cocoa and groundnuts. Look at how rich the country is in natural resources and there is nothing we can do for ourselves. Common electricity, common water supply. Even the industries we created with our lean resources at that time have all been killed. They have all died. The only investment you find in Nigeria is in oil and gas.

But a lot of the oil is offshore, and people just suck the thing, give a little part of the proceeds from the stolen oil to people who are around them, people in government, people in the military, some privileged traditional rulers and chiefs and these foreign countries cart away billions and billions of dollars worth of oil everyday. I have here an industry where I process kaolin. I can no longer continue because there is no electricity. I have a generating plant but I cannot afford the high cost of diesel.

There is no security in the country. How would you expect an American investor, a European investor, a Chinese investor, to come and establish an industry in Nigeria where there is no running water and electricity, where they can be kidnapped, where armed robbers can kill them on the road? This is not the country we envisaged. This is a creation of the military, inherited and further developed by an unpatriotic political class raised under the tutelage of the military.

Finally, what should Yar’ Adua do at this juncture?
Before answering that question, I don’t know whether I should not put it back to you. Are you sure that Yar’ Adua is in a position now to understand what I tell him to do? Are you sure he is conscious? What happened is that a few hawks, a few nation-breakers have stolen the issue of Yar’ Adua’s illness to perpetuate their own interest, to run and own the country, even if it means destroying the country. They have taken the country to such a dangerous precipice that the constitution, which is the thing that holds the country together, is being violated with impunity. And when that happens, this country could break up.

The constitution is clear. This is president. This is vice president. If the president for one reason or the other is not able to perform his duties the vice should continue to perform those duties. Then you have one Attorney General, who has no scruples twisting the constitution. You have a jellyfish national assembly just sitting down there thinking of money and passing the buck to the Executive Council asking them to pass a resolution as to whether Yar’ Adua is fit. How do they expect them to do that? All members of the Federal Executive Council were appointed by Yar’ Adua.

The moment they say that Yar’ Adua is no longer fit to continue it automatically means they have lost their jobs. Even Osama bin Laden who is wanted by powerful American intelligence is in hiding. But once in a while when he issues a statement he brings out a tape. Al Jazeera or other world television networks will publish the tape to show he is till alive. Have you seen any tape about Yar’ Adua?

So, who is sure that… well he is still alive because as a Muslim if he dies he will be buried at once…but is he in a conscious state? If he is not in a conscious state, then why should the health of one man hold 150 million people to ransom? If they want to keep violating the constitution because they don’t want Goodluck Jonathan to take over, if anything happens, those hawks in Aso Rock will be the first to suffer.

Some faceless group have brought forward some allegatios aginst the incubent state Lagos state Governor in the person of Babatunde Fashola.Inasmuch as i do not know if any of the allegations are true,i can as a matter of fact say that one of them is very false which is
"That the helicopter deal was a big fraud. The helicopter was not built for any kind of emergency evacuation, rescue or to even combat urban fire, •That over N5 billion has been spent on the two helicopters. And, the seal of Lagos State is not on it, and it is not even in Lagos but in the Niger Delta making money for some private people in government"
This helicopters two in number are in use at International Airport Ikeja,Lagos being operated by a private aviation company at Ikeja for the Nigerian Police.In fact,daily it carries riot policemen on patrol round Lagos and i have witnessed it first hand as i frequent that company to use their other services.Moreover the seal of Lagos state is on the choppers.
The writers of this advertorial are from the particular allegation mischief makers and should not incite the public with false claims.

Nairalander Babapupa,do take note that Post Codes are not state specific but Town specific.In essence,all towns in Nigeria have their specific Post Code which you can access at any NIPOST office.Lets stop this Post Code IGNORANCE for good.
Also,you sound more like Nazi Hitler/Pieter Botha when condemning others who defer with you on opinions.People like you don't give me much to hope for in Nigeria.

The dark side of Dubai

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.


But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

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I. An Adult Disneyland


Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."

Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never, " She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally, too," Karen says I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."


II. Tumbleweed


Thirty years ago, almost all of contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited only by cactuses and tumbleweed and scorpions. But downtown there are traces of the town that once was, buried amidst the metal and glass. In the dusty fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitised version of this story is told.

In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, in the lower Persian Gulf, where people would dive for pearls off the coast. It soon began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population washing up from Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and other Arab countries, all hoping to make their fortune. They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed everything before it. The town was soon seized by the gunships of the British Empire, who held it by the throat as late as 1971. As they scuttled away, Dubai decided to ally with the six surrounding states and make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The British quit, exhausted, just as oil was being discovered, and the sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge faced a remarkable dilemma. They were largely illiterate nomads who spent their lives driving camels through the desert – yet now they had a vast pot of gold. What should they do with it?

Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi – so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He invited the world to come tax-free – and they came in their millions, swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a single generation.

If you take the Big Bus Tour of Dubai – the passport to a pre-processed experience of every major city on earth – you are fed the propaganda-vision of how this happened. "Dubai's motto is 'Open doors, open minds'," the tour guide tells you in clipped tones, before depositing you at the souks to buy camel tea-cosies. "Here you are free. To purchase fabrics," he adds. As you pass each new monumental building, he tells you: "The World Trade Centre was built by His Highness, "

But this is a lie. The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by slaves. They are building it now.


III. Hidden in plain view


There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.

The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ,  This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets, " He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.


IV. Mauled by the mall


I find myself stumbling in a daze from the camps into the sprawling marble malls that seem to stand on every street in Dubai. It is so hot there is no point building pavements; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism to bask in the air conditioning. So within a ten minute taxi-ride, I have left Sohinal and I am standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, being shown a £20,000 taffeta dress by a bored salesgirl. "As you can see, it is cut on the bias, " she says, and I stop writing.

Time doesn't seem to pass in the malls. Days blur with the same electric light, the same shined floors, the same brands I know from home. Here, Dubai is reduced to its component sounds: do-buy. In the most expensive malls I am almost alone, the shops empty and echoing. On the record, everybody tells me business is going fine. Off the record, they look panicky. There is a hat exhibition ahead of the Dubai races, selling elaborate headgear for £1,000 a pop. "Last year, we were packed. Now look," a hat designer tells me. She swoops her arm over a vacant space.

I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far.

Between the malls, there is nothing but the connecting tissue of asphalt. Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated by shopping centres. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal. The residents of Dubai flit from mall to mall by car or taxis.

How does it feel if this is your country, filled with foreigners? Unlike the expats and the slave class, I can't just approach the native Emiratis to ask questions when I see them wandering around – the men in cool white robes, the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is "fine". So I browse through the Emirati blog-scene and found some typical-sounding young Emiratis. We meet – where else? – in the mall.

Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome 23-year-old with a neat, trimmed beard, tailored white robes, and rectangular wire-glasses. He speaks perfect American-English, and quickly shows that he knows London, Los Angeles and Paris better than most westerners. Sitting back in his chair in an identikit Starbucks, he announces: "This is the best place in the world to be young! The government pays for your education up to PhD level. You get given a free house when you get married. You get free healthcare, and if it's not good enough here, they pay for you to go abroad. You don't even have to pay for your phone calls. Almost everyone has a maid, a nanny, and a driver. And we never pay any taxes. Don't you wish you were Emirati?"

I try to raise potential objections to this Panglossian summary, but he leans forward and says: "Look – my grandfather woke up every day and he would have to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells ran dry, they had to have water delivered by camel. They were always hungry and thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped all his life, because he there was no medical treatment available when he broke his leg. Now look at us!"

For Emiratis, this is a Santa Claus state, handing out goodies while it makes its money elsewhere: through renting out land to foreigners, soft taxes on them like business and airport charges, and the remaining dribble of oil. Most Emiratis, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they're cushioned from the credit crunch. "I haven't felt any effect at all, and nor have my friends," he says. "Your employment is secure. You will only be fired if you do something incredibly bad." The laws are currently being tightened, to make it even more impossible to sack an Emirati.

Sure, the flooding-in of expats can sometimes be "an eyesore", Ahmed says. "But we see the expats as the price we had to pay for this development. How else could we do it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the days before everyone came. We went from being like an African country to having an average income per head of $120,000 a year. And we're supposed to complain?"

He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. "You'll find it very hard to find an Emirati who doesn't support Sheikh Mohammed." Because they're scared? "No, because we really all support him. He's a great leader. Just look!" He smiles and says: "I'm sure my life is very much like yours. We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You'll be in a Pizza Hut or Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one in Dubai," he says, ordering another latte.

But do all young Emiratis see it this way? Can it really be so sunny in the political sands? In the sleek Emirates Tower Hotel, I meet Sultan al-Qassemi. He's a 31-year-old Emirati columnist for the Dubai press and private art collector, with a reputation for being a contrarian liberal, advocating gradual reform. He is wearing Western clothes – blue jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt – and speaks incredibly fast, turning himself into a manic whirr of arguments.

"People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!" he exclaims. "The nanny state has gone too far. We don't do anything for ourselves! Why don't any of us work for the private sector? Why can't a mother and father look after their own child?" And yet, when I try to bring up the system of slavery that built Dubai, he looks angry. "People should give us credit," he insists. "We are the most tolerant people in the world. Dubai is the only truly international city in the world. Everyone who comes here is treated with respect."

I pause, and think of the vast camps in Sonapur, just a few miles away. Does he even know they exist? He looks irritated. "You know, if there are 30 or 40 cases [of worker abuse] a year, that sounds like a lot but when you think about how many people are here, " Thirty or 40? This abuse is endemic to the system, I say. We're talking about hundreds of thousands.

Sultan is furious. He splutters: "You don't think Mexicans are treated badly in New York City? And how long did it take Britain to treat people well? I could come to London and write about the homeless people on Oxford Street and make your city sound like a terrible place, too! The workers here can leave any time they want! Any Indian can leave, any Asian can leave!"

But they can't, I point out. Their passports are taken away, and their wages are withheld. "Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anybody who does that should be punished. But their embassies should help them." They try. But why do you forbid the workers – with force – from going on strike against lousy employers? "Thank God we don't allow that!" he exclaims. "Strikes are in-convenient! They go on the street – we're not having that. We won't be like France. Imagine a country where they the workers can just stop whenever they want!" So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lied to? "Quit. Leave the country."

I sigh. Sultan is seething now. "People in the West are always complaining about us," he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mock-whiny voice and says, in imitation of these disgusting critics: "Why don't you treat animals better? Why don't you have better shampoo advertising? Why don't you treat labourers better?" It's a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes more heated, shifting in his seat, jabbing his finger at me. "I gave workers who worked for me safety goggles and special boots, and they didn't want to wear them! It slows them down!"

And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. "When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried,  Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path."

Sultan sits back. My arguments have clearly disturbed him; he says in a softer, conciliatory tone, almost pleading: "Listen. My mother used to go to the well and get a bucket of water every morning. On her wedding day, she was given an orange as a gift because she had never eaten one. Two of my brothers died when they were babies because the healthcare system hadn't developed yet. Don't judge us." He says it again, his eyes filled with intensity: "Don't judge us."


V. The Dunkin' Donuts Dissidents


But there is another face to the Emirati minority – a small huddle of dissidents, trying to shake the Sheikhs out of abusive laws. Next to a Virgin Megastore and a Dunkin' Donuts, with James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" blaring behind me, I meet the Dubai dictatorship's Public Enemy Number One. By way of introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori says from within his white robes and sinewy face: "Westerners come her and see the malls and the tall buildings and they think that means we are free. But these businesses, these buildings – who are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family think they own the country, and the people are their servants. There is no freedom here."

We snuffle out the only Arabic restaurant in this mall, and he says everything you are banned – under threat of prison – from saying in Dubai. Mohammed tells me he was born in Dubai to a fisherman father who taught him one enduring lesson: Never follow the herd. Think for yourself. In the sudden surge of development, Mohammed trained as a lawyer. By the Noughties, he had climbed to the head of the Jurists' Association, an organisation set up to press for Dubai's laws to be consistent with international human rights legislation.

And then – suddenly – Mohammed thwacked into the limits of Sheikh Mohammed's tolerance. Horrified by the "system of slavery" his country was being built on, he spoke out to Human Rights Watch and the BBC. "So I was hauled in by the secret police and told: shut up, or you will lose you job, and your children will be unemployable," he says. "But how could I be silent?"

He was stripped of his lawyer's licence and his passport – becoming yet another person imprisoned in this country. "I have been blacklisted and so have my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me."

Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's in their interests that the workers are slaves."

Last time there was a depression, there was a starbust of democracy in Dubai, seized by force from the sheikhs. In the 1930s, the city's merchants banded together against Sheikh Said bin Maktum al-Maktum – the absolute ruler of his day – and insisted they be given control over the state finances. It lasted only a few years, before the Sheikh – with the enthusiastic support of the British – snuffed them out.

And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn't pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. "Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day." Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could "damage" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about "encouraging economic indicators"?

Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate. But Mohammed says anxiously: "We don't have Islamism here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode."

Later that day, against another identikit-corporate backdrop, I meet another dissident – Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at Emirates University. His anger focuses not on political reform, but the erosion of Emirati identity. He is famous among the locals, a rare outspoken conductor for their anger. He says somberly: "There has been a rupture here. This is a totally different city to the one I was born in 50 years ago."

He looks around at the shiny floors and Western tourists and says: "What we see now didn't occur in our wildest dreams. We never thought we could be such a success, a trendsetter, a model for other Arab countries. The people of Dubai are mighty proud of their city, and rightly so. And yet, " He shakes his head. "In our hearts, we fear we have built a modern city but we are losing it to all these expats."

Adbulkhaleq says every Emirati of his generation lives with a "psychological trauma." Their hearts are divided – "between pride on one side, and fear on the other." Just after he says this, a smiling waitress approaches, and asks us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coke.


VI. Dubai Pride


There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true – but it is the very group the government wanted to liberate least: gays.

Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and partying like it's Soho. "Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!" a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around his 31-year old "husband". "We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays."

It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. "They might bust the club, but they will just disperse us," one of them says. "The police have other things to do."

In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other – but Dubai has become the clearing-house for the region's homosexuals, a place where they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is "great" for gays: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now. I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."

With that, Saleh dances off across the dancefloor, towards a Dutch guy with big biceps and a big smile.


VII. The Lifestyle


All the guidebooks call Dubai a "melting pot", but as I trawl across the city, I find that every group here huddles together in its own little ethnic enclave – and becomes a caricature of itself. One night – in the heart of this homesick city, tired of the malls and the camps – I go to Double Decker, a hang-out for British expats. At the entrance there is a red telephone box, and London bus-stop signs. Its wooden interior looks like a cross between a colonial clubhouse in the Raj and an Eighties school disco, with blinking coloured lights and cheese blaring out. As I enter, a girl in a short skirt collapses out of the door onto her back. A guy wearing a pirate hat helps her to her feet, dropping his beer bottle with a paralytic laugh.

I start to talk to two sun-dried women in their sixties who have been getting gently sozzled since midday. "You stay here for The Lifestyle," they say, telling me to take a seat and order some more drinks. All the expats talk about The Lifestyle, but when you ask what it is, they become vague. Ann Wark tries to summarise it: "Here, you go out every night. You'd never do that back home. You see people all the time. It's great. You have lots of free time. You have maids and staff so you don't have to do all that stuff. You party!"

They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and they are happy to explain how the city works. "You've got a hierarchy, haven't you?" Ann says. "It's the Emiratis at the top, then I'd say the British and other Westerners. Then I suppose it's the Filipinos, because they've got a bit more brains than the Indians. Then at the bottom you've got the Indians and all them lot."

They admit, however, they have "never" spoken to an Emirati. Never? "No. They keep themselves to themselves." Yet Dubai has disappointed them. Jules Taylor tells me: "If you have an accident here it's a nightmare. There was a British woman we knew who ran over an Indian guy, and she was locked up for four days! If you have a tiny bit of alcohol on your breath they're all over you. These Indians throw themselves in front of cars, because then their family has to be given blood money – you know, compensation. But the police just blame us. That poor woman."

A 24-year-old British woman called Hannah Gamble takes a break from the dancefloor to talk to me. "I love the sun and the beach! It's great out here!" she says. Is there anything bad? "Oh yes!" she says. Ah: one of them has noticed, I think with relief. "The banks! When you want to make a transfer you have to fax them. You can't do it online." Anything else? She thinks hard. "The traffic's not very good."

When I ask the British expats how they feel to not be in a democracy, their reaction is always the same. First, they look bemused. Then they look affronted. "It's the Arab way!" an Essex boy shouts at me in response, as he tries to put a pair of comedy antlers on his head while pouring some beer into the mouth of his friend, who is lying on his back on the floor, gurning.

Later, in a hotel bar, I start chatting to a dyspeptic expat American who works in the cosmetics industry and is desperate to get away from these people. She says: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."

With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.

It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.

In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.' At first I would say – my God, I will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their address, and the consulate isn't interested. I avoid them now. I keep thinking about a woman who told me she hadn't eaten any fruit in four years. They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I'm powerless."

The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. "But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn't give me my wages: they said they'd pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn't know anybody here. I was terrified."

One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. "Well, how could I?" she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything," she says.

As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. "Oh, the servant class!" she trilled. "You do nothing. They'll do anything!"


VIII. The End of The World


The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren in the salt-breeze.

Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth's land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven't seen anybody there for months now. "The World is over," a South African suggests.

All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.

The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree – it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.

A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining that this is "the greatest luxury offered in the world". We stroll past shops selling £24m diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis. There are huge water tanks filled with sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines. There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune suite has three floors, and – I gasp as I see it – it looks out directly on to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.

But even the luxury – reminiscent of a Bond villain's lair – is also being abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas' favourite hotel, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A staff member tells me in a whisper: "It used to be full here. Now there's hardly anyone." Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.

The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City. They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it. "You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end, they'd built an entire island there."

My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn't the omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: "That's what we come for! It's great, you can't do anything for yourself!" Her husband chimes in: "When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don't do is take it out for you when you have a piss!" And they both fall about laughing.


IX. Taking on the Desert


Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose."

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil, " he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive."

Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it's all fine, they've taken it into consideration, but I'm not so sure."

Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? "There isn't much interest in these problems," he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.

I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already exists – the pollution of its beaches. One woman – an American, working at one of the big hotels – had written in a lot of online forums arguing that it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can't talk to you," she said sternly. Not even if it's off the record? "I can't talk to you." But I don't have to disclose your name,  "You're not listening. This phone is bugged. I can't talk to you," she snapped, and hung up.

The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing."

The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'. I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.

Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."

She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out," they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's most famous hotels.

"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.


X. Fake Plastic Trees


On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"

Shareholders of the eight banks recently taken over by the Central Bank of Nigeria have automatically lost their investments in the banks.
The CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi disclosed this yesterday in Lagos while speaking at a policy dialogue organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group.
The banks - Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, Oceanic Bank Plc, Intercontinental Bank Plc, Afribank Plc, FinBank Plc, Bank PHB plc, Spring Bank Plc and Equatorial Trust Bank Limited – were found to be in a grave condition after the CBN’s audit of the 24 banks in the country, prompting the injection of N620 billion into the affected institutions by the Reserve Bank.
He pointed out that the result of the audit in the eight banks indicated that the non-performing loans of most of them exceeded their share capital, which resulted in a situation whereby their balance sheets had a negative networth.
“Their shareholders’ funds were eroded from the provisioning for loan losses, leading to an erosion of their investments in the banks,” the governor explained.
He said the sacked bank executives and shareholders that went to court challenging their removal and alleged take-over of the banks, failed to realise they are no longer shareholders of the banks going by the books of accounts of the institutions.
“It is the government (or rather, the CBN) that has provided the bailout that has a claim on the investments. But any other shareholder can emerge after the debts of the banks have been recovered.
“That is what the aggrieved shareholders and former CEOs don’t seem to understand, which is why they even kicked against our debt recovery efforts that ordinarily will favour them,” he explained.
He said the other set of people with claims on the banks are depositors and creditors, whose interest he said the CBN was doing everything to protect by not allowing the banks to fail.
“As far as I know, the so called key shareholders and bank executives that ruined these banks do not deserve a place again in the institutions but should find their place in jail or even be shot dead,” said Sanusi in an emotionally laden voice.
He pointed out that the shareholders have been affected by the grave situation the banks were plunged into.
Sanusi said for some of the banks, the percentage of non-performing loans to total loans was nearing 50 per cent and that these represented loans tied to the capital market that has lost about 70 per cent of its value.
The CBN governor disclosed that one of the banks had non-performing loans of over N300 billion and that the CEO of a particular bank wired £13 million to himself without any transaction to back it.
He however, regretted that the audit was belated, adding that because of it the economy has been deeply affected by the negative consequences that has manifested in an acute credit crunch.
“The problem started as far back as October last year when some banks became permanent customers of the Expanded Discount Window, which was a symptom of a deeper problem.
“Any risk manager that didn’t see that as a sign of a big problem is not worth being called a risk manager.
“The situation necessitated the audit of the banks when I became governor, and it was discovered that five banks accounted for 90 per cent of the borrowings from the expanded discount window. The rest is now history.
“What the CBN is after now is how to make the banks recover and perform their role of financial intermediation for economic growth and development,” said Sanusi.
On inflation, Sanusi said: “Inflation has been reducing, likewise interest rates, but if 20 per cent of the budget is not spent and the economy grinds to a halt, it is not CBN’s problem but that of the government.”
He said government has to work for the economy to move forward, adding that part of the problems of the banking system is that the banks have taken an undue burden of economic growth.
The director general of NESG, Frank Nweke Jr, said the group conveyed the policy dialogue to get first hand information on the objectives of the CBN’s intervention in the banks and to enable the private sector make their input to the reforms.
The chairman of the occasion, Fola Adeola, co-founder and former managing director of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, enjoined banks to always heed regulations for the stability of the financial system.
The chairman of the NESG, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, urged the CBN to fast-track the second phase of the reforms to return the financial system to stability and restore confidence in the system and the economy.

Hi Nairalanders,lets rate all Nigerian banks based on our interactions,problems,customer service,Stock pricing/movement,dividend payment,anticedents,social responsibility and all other criteria than we can figure out.
I Bank with Zenith,UBA,First Bank,Ecobank and GTBank.
I have stocks of Oceanic,Zenith,UBA,Spring,Sterling,Fidelity and IBTC.
ZenithBank:
Customer Service 98%
I.T. infrastructure and security 98%
Innovation 90%
CSR 98%
Stock pricing 70%
Dividend payment 90%
Stock manipulation:note all Quoted companies are heavy culprits
Management Structure and response: 95%
Efficiency 95%
Waiting time in Banking Hall: 90%
ATM services: 98%
Mobile Banking: 99%
InternetBanking:98%
Pls add your own and fill in the space.

Ppl do not forget that these budding DJ's learnt from their predecessors Kenny Ogungbe and Dayo Adeneye "D-one.Back in the days they demanded all sorts of money from young Artists as to play their songs.Its a shame but Its the green white green syndrome.

Charles Chukwuma Soludo The Bank Robber

See Nigeria's CBN governor on an annual salary of 12million naira.
Corruption is neither Igbo,Hausa nor Yoruba.  Shame on US NIGERIANS.

http://saharareporters.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1292:chukwuma-soludo-is-living-large-234nextcom&catid=42:exclusive&Itemid=160leas

It beats me too as i had a very funny experience.I had a friend who claimed that a colleague of mine raped her which i really doubt cause the lady is very fat and never screamed or showed any resistance when the guy invited to his room from my room and had sex with her.How could one have raped a big girl like that.