Media turns Boko Haram into 'superstar monsters'

Editor's note: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is the author of "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," a debut novel set amidst the perilous world of Nigerian email scams. Her book won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award, and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. The views expressed in this commentary are solely the author's.

Abuja, Nigeria (CNN) -- My friend's eight-year-old daughter burst into tears while watching a Boko Haram video release on TV the other evening. The terrorist group has been receiving the kind of local and international media coverage that could make even a Hollywood megastar explode with envy. At the current rate, the group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, might as well be given his own reality show.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

I understand the reporting of a bomb blast: the need to let the world know about 234 missing school girls is obvious. Updating us on the world's efforts to rescue the abducted girls definitely makes sense. But why should law-abiding citizens be bombarded with the megalomaniac audio and video rantings of every Shekau recording forwarded to the press?

As news organizations around the world scrambled to make amends for their belated coverage of the kidnapped school girls, Boko Haram contributed to the media frenzy by releasing a video in which Shekau boasted that he would sell the girls for the equivalent of $12 each.

Since then, many of us have had to endure, from local and international media, several replays of the villain's Idi Aminesque gloating into the camera.

The group's earlier video released days after the bombing of a bus park in an Abuja suburb (which took place a few hours before the abductions) featured Shekau barking bombastic statements such as: "We are in your city but you don't know where we are", "(President) Jonathan, you are now too small for us. We can only deal with your grand masters like Obama, the president of America ... even they cannot do anything to us ... we are more than them," and "So, because of that tiny incident that happened in Abuja, everybody is out there making an issue of it across the globe?"
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These taunts and other details of the video were broadly reported by international news organizations, even at a time the world was paying little attention to the missing girls -- when Nigerians were yet to know exactly how many students had been abducted, their names, and what they and their families looked like.

The media has also been sophisticating its coverage of Boko Haram's activities. What looks to me like the effort of steamy thugs to stock up on females to meet their physiological and domestic needs -- while grabbing major headlines in the process -- has been glamorised as "an attack on the right of girls to education." Additional reports that more girls were stolen from their homes -- not school, this time -- in Warabe and Wala villages of Bornu State, should have caused the media to finally acknowledge the abductions for the common criminality that they really are. Besides, anyone following the news closely might have heard that these abductions of females have been carrying on for quite some time, though never on the scale that has recently shocked the world.

Opinion: How Islam can fight back against Boko Haram

Similarly glamorous motives were ascribed to Boko Haram's bombing of two newspaper offices in Nigeria. Headlines described the April 2012 incident as "an attack on freedom of the press." However, Shekau's video release, which followed soon after, gave his actual, rather primitive reasons: "...Each time we say something, it is either changed or downplayed...I challenge every Nigerian to watch that video again. There is no place our imam either said he will crush President Jonathan or issued an ultimatum to the government in Nigeria, but nearly all papers carried very wrong and mischievous headlines."

I can imagine the AK47-clad hoodlums scrambling to Google after each fresh aggression, frantically typing their leader's name and some relevant key words. There was nothing complex about the group's motives: The newspaper office bombings were a mere act of raw revenge.
There has to be a better way of passing on the relevant information and awareness of danger about terrorists to the public, without creating superstar monsters
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Boko Haram is probably just a gang of plundering hoods masquerading as a group with higher motives that could warrant dialogue -- never mind that they may have attracted the alliance of more sinister sponsors with more strategic purposes. The group claims "Western education is a sin" yet records its threats with hi-tech video equipment and employs advanced ammunition to destroy; it has no clear target and attacks willy-nilly, a la Wild Wild West; and its conduct is as Islamic as that of the street preacher who kidnapped and raped Elizabeth Smart was Christian.

The media and expert analysts are the ones who seem to be supplying Boko Haram with all the grand motives they may never really have thought about in the first place. As an author, who has had expert reviewers dissect my book and ascribe to my writing various meanings of which I had absolutely no idea, I am quite familiar with how something straightforward can suddenly be accorded impressive complexity.

We may not be able to take the guns and bombs out of the hands of Boko Haram and their ilk yet, but since they are not content to take full advantage of Instagram or Facebook -- as many other attention-seekers of this age are -- the media must stop fuelling their inner psychopaths. If they won't travel to Hollywood and patiently wait tables until they get noticed by Quentin Tarantino, we must not offer them stardom on a platter. There has to be a better way of passing on the relevant information and awareness of danger about terrorists to the public, without creating superstar monsters.

By  Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Northern Nigeria’s oil barons lap luxury as poverty spurs insurgency

by PATRICK ATUANYA

The palatial home of Ahmed Mai Deribe, the famed billionaire of Bornu, in northern Nigeria is purported to be the most expensive home ever built in modern Africa.

Fit for a king, the mansion which was completed at a staggering cost of $100 million in 1991 is today a tourist attraction for people brave enough to visit the battleground that its location, Maiduguri, has become.

Northern Nigerian oil barons like Deribe, who is now late, got their start as businessmen in the freewheeling days of military rule in Nigeria when the government, dominated by Northerners, dispensed favours by gifting off state-owned oil fields to friends and cronies.

The beneficiaries in turn controlled a disproportionate amount of the Nigerian economy through their dominance of the country’s natural resources, even as the northern regions progressively got poorer over the years.

The north-east, base of the murderous Islamist group, Boko Haram, is the poorest region in the nation, with 69.1 percent and 76.3 percent absolute and relative poverty levels, respectively, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Poverty Profile Report.

On the other hand, OML 110, with the good yielding OBE field, awarded to Mai Deribe by military dictator Sani Abacha on July 8, 1996 and operated by Cavendish Petroleum, is estimated to have proven oil reserves in excess of 500 million barrels.

Oriental Energy Resources Limited is another of such oil bloc awardees. It is a company owned by Mohammed Indimi who, sources say, is a close friend of former Nigerian military ruler Ibrahim Babangida.

Oriental Energy Resources Limited runs three oil blocs: OML 115, the Okwok field and the Ebok field. OML 115 and Okwok are OML PSC, while Ebok is an OML JV.

Perhaps the most famous northern oil bloc owner is T. Y. Danjuma, a retired general who served as defence minister during former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s stint as civilian ruler.

South Atlantic Petroleum (SAPETRO), owned by Danjuma, was awarded the Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 246 in February 1998 by Abacha. SAPETRO divested 45 percent of its contractor rights and obligations to China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for $1.75 billion (N283.5 billion) in 2006, retaining a 5-percent stake.

Another northern oil baron is Sani Bello, chairman of AMNI International Petroleum and Development Company, who hails from Kontagora, Niger State.

AMNI International Petroleum Development Company owns two oil blocs, OML 112 and OML 117, both awarded by Abdulsalami Abubakar who presided over elections that ushered in Nigeria’s current civilian democracy.

The Okoro and Setu fields in OML 112 are operated by Afren Energy, a company in which  a former petroleum minister from northern Nigeria is believed to have substantial interest.

The Okoro and Setu oil fields have about 50 million barrels in reserve and currently produce/export just a little below 20,000 barrels per day.

Express Petroleum and Gas Limited floated by Aminu Dantata are owners of OML 108 awarded by Abacha in 1995, and OPL 227. The firm’s holding which contains up to 2.7 million barrels per day of oil may be valued as high as $22 million, according to research and investment firm CBO Capital.

While these indigenous energy companies are seen by some as a sign of the maturing Nigerian oil and gas industry, which has seen numerous homegrown players emerge in recent times, critics say they are only existing as a result of undue political influence.

“These companies usually lack the technical know-how to operate their oil licences and often have to partner with established international oil majors to extract either crude, gas or condensate,” said one industry source who preferred to remain anonymous. 

The Nigerian government, eager to lessen the country’s dependence on oil and gas, is pushing a marshal plan for the blighted north-east to attract investments and jobs to the area. However, there have been few takers from within the northern oil barons or elsewhere.

Many see the solution to this problem in investment that would create jobs and generate reasonably distributed wealth. “Unless we create more jobs, we won’t eliminate Boko Haram. Even if we do, another such group will come. We have to empower our people,”  said one major investor in the Nigerian economy.

by PATRICK ATUANYA , BusinessDay

The artist that loves to share

Oluyomi Taiwo Osunfisan is using technology to make paintings available to a broader spectrum of Nigerians writes OBODO EJIRO

With message ridden paintings like The Drunkard, The Spirit of Tao Solarin, Foamy waves, among others, Mr Oluyomi Taiwo Osunfisan, MD, Grafikat Advertising Ltd, dazzles art lovers and  art connoisseur in his Lekki office/showroom.

A veteran painter, he practiced painting, a skill which he developed personally, for over a decade before proceeding to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) for studies on the subject. What however makes him stand in the current dispensation is his emphasis on innovation in art, quality and his unflinching commitment to making art availability to Nigerians.

“I believe that every room should be beautified with a painting. It makes the room look better and the interesting things is that it does not necessarily have to be very expensive” he says, as he enthusiastically points out the inspiration behind the complex stoke of colours which characterizes a painting hanging on the wall of his office. Through innovation in painting, he believes that his goal of beautifying every home and office is attainable.

What Mr Osunfisan is doing differently is that he is using technology to make his classic paintings accessible to a larger audience and at affordable prices. “Several years ago, I visited the United States and found that the use of computer does not affect the originality of a painting, in fact computers can be used to repaint an existing work, and making it available to a wider audience.”

Based on this discovery, Mr Osunfisan underwent training in the United States and gained mastery of the art of painting with computers. The outcome has been tremendous; “his new method means that he can make copies of his old works and still retain the original copies, while the computer generated copies, which look exactly like the originals are made available for sale. He explains that “inspiring works can now be shared more easily and each paining can be produced at a cheaper rate while maintain its original freshness”.

Mr Osunfisan wishes to achieve two major things: “I want the younger generation to know that they already have a tool that they can use for their art”. Also, he says, “if painting always costs as much as N300, 000 to N100,000, how can the younger generation or the middle class afford to buy?

In a country where more than 58 percent of the population live on less than a dollar daily and only well-heeled individuals can afford paintings, Mr. Osunfisan believes that he is bridging the gap in art appreciation . But there are those who believe that computer based paintings are not original.

To them Mr. Osunfisan says, “painting with computers has advanced to the extent that when a work is completed, you get a perfect, finished job as if it was stamped on the canvas even though the artist has not have gone through the traditional four stages of colour mixing”.

In his specific case most of what he offers are age long paintings which he did in the past. The process involves getting a good photograph of the old work, scanning it and then enhancing it graphically with advanced software built specifically to handle such tasks. In the end, what comes out is an exact replica of the original. They are then framed beautifully and can compete side by side with regular painting.

Mr Osunfisan believes that the level of art appreciation in Nigeria is low and needs to rise, because art is part of what we are, and it is one of those things we should enjoy every day, he believes that “it should not be the exclusive preserve of the high and mighty.

But how tasking is the art of painting with computers? The Septuagenarian explains that an artist is always an artist, “both the traditional methods of painting and doing it with computers are cumbersome” what really matters is how much effort you put at perfecting what you do. He explains that “the output from the computer is durable” and that is why he is even more interested in sharing it with those who appreciate good paintings.

Nigeria’s 100 most influential businesses

Two weeks ago, Time Magazine published its list of 100 most influential people in the world. The list, which was first published in 1999, as a result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, is now an annual event. It is made up of individuals who have distinguished themselves in several fields. It categorises them into Titans, Pioneers, Artists, Leaders, and Icons.

As is the case annually, it is made up of outstanding musicians, religious leaders, writers, artists, computer programmers, business moguls, researchers, athletes, actors, government officials (in some cases dictators); this year, even a terrorist, Abu Du’a, made the list!

But on the positive side, two of our own, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Aliko Dangote, are on it. And Time has made a deliberate effort to highlight the achievement of each of the selected 100. Something unique is written about each of them by other prominent individuals.

And indeed, most of the remarks are apt; underscoring the feats, risks and innovative endeavours each of the selected 100 undertook to improve the lots of humanity.

Such a list is something we at the Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) of BusinessDay have pondered over for some time now, albeit, on a different subject.

In our case, we chose to work on THE BUSINESSDAY TOP 100: A list of outstanding businesses in Nigeria.

A major reason we have pondered over this project is because of the elevated plane we place successful businesses as an organisation. We believe that highlighting exceptional companies will engender better performance and quality of service from them.

Also, we are firm believers that the performance of businesses in any country affects the quality of life of the citizenry. That is why we have put in motion mechanisms to undertake the selection. However, our approach is slightly different from Time’s.

Time’s methodology is simple though: Essentially, a list of influential individuals is exclusively chosen by Time editors with nominations coming from the TIME 100 alumni and the magazine’s international writing staff. This list is then subjected to a poll, which willing readers take part in.

The list of winners of the readers’ poll conducted days before the official unveiling is then announced to the general public with a publication. That is the publication Time released two weeks ago.

But we at BRIU thought it wise to make our selection process a little more inclusive and representative of the general population living in Nigeria, putting into consideration the peculiarities of our environment (in fact, that is one of the purposes of this article).

Our methodology involves a number of simple steps, some of which have already been carried out, while others remain in the works.

The first step we took was to decide on parameters that should distinguish between companies that are exceptional and those that are not. We asked ourselves the question, “what makes a company standout?” In response, we highlighted a number of important parameters that would guide our search. The major parameters being:

Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability

Innovation (a company’s ability to be innovative in pricing, advertising, product quality, packaging, etc).

The internal work environment (how conducive is its work environment for employee. Are people enthusiastic to work for this company?)

Quality of customer service, and response to customer complaints; and a company’s ability to provide exceptional products/services (whether in banking, children products, etc)

We then designed a questionnaire to address these parameters and plan to administer it across 12 major cities, in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, in the next two weeks.

Herein lies the major difference between ours and Time’s. While the multinational magazine has adopted an online mechanism for ‘sampling and validation,’ we will visit the nooks and crannies of 12 Nigerian cities as well as use an online platform for our data collection process.

Particularly, Time’s selection process is heavily dependent on an internet survey, and that is understandable given that a large chunk of its readers live in countries where internet penetration is high. We have borrowed a leaf from this, and have gone few steps further.

But we reckon that a simple random sample could skew responses in a particular direction, we therefore decided on a stratified random sampling technique, which we deem to be more inclusive of social classes in Nigeria.

The physical questionnaires will be administered according to quota: Students (10%), Doctors (5%), Media Personnel (19%), Graduates/job seekers (20%), Bankers (5%), Civil Servants (15%), Traders/market men and women (20%), etc. This, we believe, will engender more genuine coverage. Our ambition is to reduce the element of bias to the barest minimum.

We know that there are areas a questionnaire designed for the general public cannot address (e.g. the internal workings of a company in terms of how it treats its employees and how the employees feel about the company). In this direction, we adopt the research findings of an institution that has as its primary focus that type of research.

To determine a list of the best places to work in Nigeria last year, our collaborating consulting firm surveyed over 10,482 respondents (experienced, entry level and executive management staff of different companies).

Workplace metrics that mattered to those respondents in making their choices include Company Culture, Salary, Non-Salary Benefits, Proximity to Company Location, Prestige/Company Brand, Management Integrity, and commitment to staff welfare.

At the end of our survey, we intend to assign scores to our list and that of our partner and come up with objective scores upon which we can judge. The outcome will be a list we believe would be acceptable to the generality of Nigerians and the business community.

We have made the selection process open to everyone. There is an opportunity for everyone to lend their voice to this process, and you are not an exception. The questionnaire will be just a click away soon as we will upload it to a website and make its address available to you soon.