Nigeria: One look at our Dutch website - Ewww!

Another website to cry about

I suppose by now I already have a reputation for being a nit-picking imperfectionist of sorts who has a penchant for finding errors and atrocious mistakes in official documents but almost always ends up with problems in my exposés.

As I have tried to make the keener observers understand, my blog and comments about websites are personal, but those websites under review are official, they are the public face of the institutions that commission them, someone gets paid to provide that service and at the least before publication somebody should proofread the stuff before it goes online.

I am beginning to think that the issue of attention to detail is systemic and endemic in Nigerian officialdom and it is not restricted to the confines of Nigeria’s borders. After Babcock University [1] and The Nigeria @ 50 website [2].

Nigeria showing in the Netherlands

I paid a visit to the website [3] of the embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in The Netherlands this morning and the first impressions could not be more amateurish, the site looked like the mock-up creation of a kindergarten school finger-painting class, it was appalling – but that is beside the point.

The home page had an important notice of an event that took place between the 5^th and 16^th of July, 2010, I think today is the 8^th of October, 2010. It was titled “e-Passport Intervention Exercise for Nigerians”, I am getting ahead of myself here, but what I have done is taken a snapshot of the page and presented it as graphic with the numbered parts being the particular issues I want to concentrate on.

Detailing the itemised points

Item 1; shows how addresses are written and spoken out in The Netherlands and usually in most of continental Europe, the street comes first and then the house number. Nothing wrong with this.

Item 2; “Intervention Exercise”, whilst I agree Nigerians are given to verbosity, myself included at times, giving verbosity vacuity such that context is implied from redundancy is just an excess. However, maybe the “Intervention” implies the normally smooth process of obtaining an e-Passport does not work for all sorts of reasons and the ambassador has decided to intervene.

Otherwise, it is just a registration or validation exercise, the use of intervention confers on the word irrelevance pretending to official importance.

Item 3; speaks for itself, the spelling checker on the author’s computer even if set to Dutch would have flagged that as incorrect. Any public relations department MUST ALWAYS have their copy spell-checked before publication, I dare say, it is a sin not to. Hereby, whack the miscreant across the knuckles.

Item 4; as I stated in Item 1, addresses are written in a particular way in The Netherlands, it helps the post get to its destination and even GPS systems ask for addresses in that order.

I will be as uncharitable as to suggest that some greenhorn who has just been brought over from Nigeria to probably lord it over those who have a clue about things here has thrown their weight about and come up with this nonsense. It might well be the Nigerian Embassy but it is located in The Netherlands, you promote Nigerian culture and values whilst adhering to Dutch standards of communication.

That address should have been The Embassy of Nigeria, Wagenaarweg 5, 2597 LL, The Hague. The use of Post Code No. is redundant but proves my point, a tyro wrote this.

Item 5; English, I believe is still the language for the dissemination of official documents in Nigeria. If that be the case, it is not too exacting to expect the usage of correct grammar and number agreement. Would “who have satisfied” be better than “who satisfied”?

In the same sentence, the indefinite article “a passport” would have been preferred to the definite article “the passport”, I suppose the excuse of English not being the author’s first language might suffice in Nigeria, but surely not in The Netherlands, relatively, Nigerians should and must be better speakers, writers and users of the English language than the Dutch.

Item 6; There might be some disagreement about the use of hyphens in this phrase, which means there would be no preferential treatment or reservations. It is a contraction of “the first to come is the first served”. Hence, it should be first-come first-serveD, not forgetting the essential “D” at the end. Phew!

Item 7; “The Her Excellency”, our pre-occupation with obsequiousness and predilection for titles can get us into serious trouble. Perish the thought that the ambassador is being addressed as such. I swoon with a backhand to my tilted forehead.

Going back to the caption that accompanies the photograph of Dr. (Mrs.) N. N. Akanbi – She is the Nigerian Ambassador to the Royal Kingdom of the Netherlands in The Hague if we are to follow with consistency the way the president has been addressed in the photograph to the left of the ambassador – maybe I am just being pedantic, but surely, it is not too much to ask for.

It is also my desire that all publications from the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria have a modicum of professionalism, attention to detail and show us all in better light than this.

Honestly, I am appalled.

Sources

[1] Akin: Nigeria: Ike follows the Babcock University cock-up too

[2] Akin: Nigeria: Reviewing the Nigeria @ 50 website

[3] the embassy of nigeria in the hague, the netherlands

Ms Campbell has since left the building

As diva as is obnoxious

There was reluctance but one could not help but be captivated by the news that that epitome of diva was making an appearance at the war crimes trial [1] of Charles Taylor in The Hague.

For a supermodel, Naomi Campbell who a few years ago was bedecked in haute couture [2] for each day of appearance for a 5-day community service sentence in the United States to the glare of the paparazzi made exacting demands not to be photographed on her entry to and exit from the venue; one could only suppose she decided to inconvenience the tribunal as much as she felt inconvenienced.

Her appearance in the hopes of the prosecution was to link Charles Taylor to the trade in blood diamonds that were then used to arm rebels in the Sierra-Leone civil war, her testimony providing the tenuous but plausible case against the defendant whilst the defence had hoped the same testimony would be as non-committal as to rubbish the presumed culpability of the Mr Taylor.

In the end, Ms Campbell ruled the airwaves, brought focus to the trial but left most reeling with disbelief on a number of accounts.

As diva as is unconcerned

She was woken up to receive a pouch from strangers send by some unknown benefactor, she reviewed the contents and said they were “dirty-looking” stones, she told Ms Mia Farrow and her assistant Ms White about it and either of them volunteered that the gift might have come from Charles Taylor and she gave the pouch of “dirty-looking” stones to a charity in South-Africa.

Ms Campbell’s reluctance to testify might rightly or wrongly have been in fear of running the gauntlet of Mr Taylor’s hoodlums but it was interesting to note that having received diamonds which have had great value to the benefactor, a lady of her standing would have been more conversant with polished diamonds set in works of fashionable taste and quality than dirty-looking stones.

Surely, these stones (rough diamonds) were hardly the girl’s best friend, in a proverbial sense, pearls were cast at swine and they were trampled on in the mud; much more would have been appreciated of a finished work of craftsmanship in a ring, a necklace or some other fashionable accessory.

As diva as is unaffected

In a show of dead-pan condescension masquerading as ignorance, Ms Campbell volunteered she had never heard of Liberia before that encounter which in essence shows that one does not need brains or an education, talk less of geographic insight to wear good clothes and sashay down a catwalk – Ms Campbell is however no idiot by any stretch of the imagination, she is smart and wily.

She cleverly extricated herself from opprobrium by stating she was ignorant of where the gift was from, she was unaware of the value of what she had received and none the wiser when her lady friends jumped to the conclusion the stones were diamonds given by Charles Taylor.

She appeared at the trial by summons at the behest of evidence offered by her lady friends which did not tally because one talked of a stone and the other of stones but if anything, dare I say that Ms Campbell has suitably made gossips of Mia Farrow and Ms White.

As diva as is inconvenienced

For all the greater cause of humanity regarding the suffering of Sierra-Leoneans and the need to get to the truth, we might be willing to weigh the sacrifice of Ms Campbell’s inconvenience against the greater good but we forget that the whole essence of diva is to be odious, indifferent, unconcerned and be as uncooperative as one can be.

Whether Ms Campbell was a credible witness is neither here nor there but she offered the best test case of how to make yourself unbelievable under oath and frustrate the cause of justice without being implicated.

One lesson that should be learnt by these tribunals is, to strive to get at the facts and the truth but avoid as much as possible the spectacle of diva if your credibility is not to be subsumed to media feeding frenzy for celebrity over the facts and substance of your activities.

Ms Campbell has since left the building.

Sources

[1] BBC News - Naomi Campbell tells Taylor trial of 'dirty stones'

[2] Gaol Couture by Paris [akin.blog-city.com]

Naomi Campbell: I didn't know if 'dirty diamonds' were Charles Taylor's gift | Law | The Guardian

Welcome to recovery

What is recovery?

Sometimes one wonders, as the global economy recovers from the banking crisis, what really constitutes the road to real recovery? The bailouts, the needed reforms and keeping the engine of growth well oiled – the former and the latter are comfortable, reform is a bitter pill.

Likewise, I look at my road to recovery and see certain new thinking and some old habits that die hard – does my full recovery include the reliving of the old or the adoption of the new but unfamiliar? And so much introspection about attitude and the ingestion of pills leads to dilemmas about lessons learnt and ones to discard, reform is not easy.

Escape velocity of a train

For the first time in over 7 months I finally escaped the gravitational pull of being in the Netherlands for a foreign trip to Belgium, Antwerp in fact, just by high-speed train now 1 hour 12 minutes away if there are no delays – this was a journey that usually was about 2 hours 6 minutes – it was my first time experiencing the force of traction at that rate on this journey.

A carefree attitude almost accompanied the booking of my tickets but for the presence of mind to book ones that are changeable, you just never know, the cheapest ticket is not necessarily the best ticket if mistakes or eventualities arise – that must be known.

The inconvenience of not now having a credit card meant transactions were done either with a debit card or with the fact that one still possessed a loyalty card for all sorts of services which had not yet expired.

The Hague is left in the haze

As we raced through the countryside it was not fields of green but greenhouses on swathes of land that imitated foreign climates and lots of tunnels, wherever we surfaced we came up beside macadamised routes for cars and bridges of concrete – indeed, there were areas of nature but not much to admire – contrast with Bohemia and we might well have our windows blacked out.

The route of the high-speed track was bold; bold in the fact that it runs from Amsterdam, through Schiphol international Airport and then to Rotterdam before it arrives in Antwerp in Belgium. The Hague, the administrative capital and seat of government is apparently, well obviously not in the route of the direct journey that runs from Amsterdam to Paris through Brussels.

In words that might sound so foreboding to the residents of The Hague when they do need to go South, they need to board a train to Rotterdam and then change trains – alternatively, they could travel on the slower Intercity train that calls at a few more stations and terminates at Brussels – as I was saying, The Hague has become provincial and almost unimportant – the facts on the track that I have put in words.

Almost business as usual

Everything else had the feel of what I was used to and the questions I would normally ask, as to why I ended up in a twin-bed room rather than a king-size bed room, the safe locked needing opening and what not about services and expectations.

However, one part of the journey I did not fail to notice was when a passenger was told she was not entitled to some apparently free service – she considered it rude, but I thought what she meant by rude was that the steward was not reverential and obsequious – I should have pointed out to the passenger that I did not once hear her say please when she made an aggressive strike for entitlements.

Rudeness begets rudeness, even if the customer thinks they are right – on my part, is this now welcome to recovery?

Thank you.

The Netherlands: Elections grant the freedom to assail

Moderates depart for the extreme

For long I have lamented the docile and cuddly nature of the moderate leaning politicians in the Netherlands who have for the past 8 years given ground to the voluble, garrulous extreme representatives of populist agendas.

One area that seems to excite the electorate without the necessary proof is that of immigration, that in the sense of immigrants who do not have much as opposed to wealthy and prosperous immigrants.

In the Netherlands, the fault lines have been drawn on the anti-Islam rhetoric fronted by The Freedom Party – as an aside, I have never seen a party with “Freedom” in its name ever espouse the real ideals of freedom.

They usually exercise the freedom to be nasty, rotten, atrocious and reprehensible and claim every attack on their positions as an attack on their freedom of expression.

The populists have the field

The middle ground of the moderate, the reasonable and the consensual could easily have consigned these extreme elements to the scrapheap but the traditional parties and the age-old civility of discourse have been mute, blind, ineffective and scared to tackle hot-button issues that populists thrive on for mass hysteria.

This populist activity warps our democracy and the dividends end up with parties whose singular and narrow agendas is the equivalent of giving control of a cruise liner to someone can hardly float a canoe.

Yesterday, we were at the polls for the local government and council elections and we chose representatives for our local councils and cities in two separate sets of lists that were the perfect confusion for the ballot box.

In the end, I had to go for broad party policy rather than particular party representative balancing the issues of the party I thought was better for my local government which surprisingly was quite different for the one I considered better for the city council.

They are gathering pace

The Freedom Party fielded candidates in two cities, Almere which was reclaimed land – a polder, and Den Haag (The Hague) which is the administrative capital of the Netherlands – they would probably be the biggest party in Almere and the second largest in The Hague.

With the general elections coming in June as I had surmised at the fall of the last cabinet in February there is every possibility that the Freedom Party might well sweep the board and we would be lead by an extreme wing of reactionaries pretending to have the interest of the Netherlands and the Dutch at heart.

Host-Guest dichotomy

It is not like the Dutch can with their Calvinist and Catholic heritage say that in the 21st Century they are anything like a Christian nation and the increase in foreign nationals from Islamic nations has resulted in isolated communities rather than fully integrated adherents to the Dutch ideal.

This was not helped when certain Muslim leaders of thought began attacking the liberalism and tolerance of the Dutch that developed a gathering irritation of guest dictating to host.

The need to crowd the centre

But we need great objectivity in these times not to lose our heads in the hazy cloud of our differences that could bring upon us a government headed for ruin and the destruction of our country but seek the common ground of consensus and commonality that brings out the best of all of us.

The results from Almere are unfortunately a dyke-break, if a polder can vote in the extreme, one can begin to fear the worst but hope that the victory of today just creates the indiscipline and arrogance that would make the people move back to moderation and core Dutch values by June – a long shot but a very hopeful one.

Sources

BBC News - Dutch anti-Islamists makes key gains in local elections

Party for Freedom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fitna - The irresponsible movie [akin.blog-city.com]

The amazing prospect of Balkenende V [akin.blog-city.com]

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Dutch cabinet falls over Afghan row

Polder Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geert Wilders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Justice must not be denied through refusal

Piqued, but who cares?

Charles Taylor the former despotic and tyrannical president of Liberia who is being tried for crimes against humanity in The Hague, The Netherlands has refused to make an appearance at his trial.

I would spare a thought for those who could not refuse to be raped, those who could not refuse to lose their limbs and those who could not refuse to have their youth stolen from them in a war so savage and primitive, the world had to move.

The litany of crimes reads like the Spanish Inquisition was a joyride.

Acts of terrorism (WC)

Murder (CAH)

Violence to life, in particular murder (WC)

Rape (CAH)

Sexual slavery and violence (CAH)

Outrages upon personal dignity (WC)

Violence to life, in particular cruel treatment (WC)

Other inhumane acts (CAH)

Use of child soldiers (VIHL)

Enslavement (CAH)

Pillage (WC)

CAH: Crime against humanity

WC: War crime

VIHL: Violation of international humanitarian law

He must see justice

It would appear Charles Taylor wants to play the system such that his prosecution fails on technicalities - the presiding judge should brook none of this nonsense.

If he would not take representation, the more fool of a man who is being condemned and stays tongue-tied when his mission is in no way messianic.

What bothers me more is than The Daily Telegraph reports that court might not be adequately financed to see this case through - well, I think they are not being inspired and resourceful on this matter; where best would conflict diamonds be to any good if the moneys from selling those bloody jewels can be used to judge and punish a man with so much blood on his hands, the man who brought conscience to the diamond trade.

Charles Taylor must see justice and the decent world must ensure that his example is properly relayed to the Grand Despot of Africa - Robert Mugabe.