My parents are worried

Off the hinge with shingles

Just about 4 weeks ago I saw blisters appear on my upper left arm and over a day of so, it spread up my arm over the left side of my chest, it amazingly travelled across the entire upper back to parts of the upper right arm.

Now shingles, theoretically should not cross the mid-section of the body, I probably carelessly spread it to the right side not seeing that rubbing my back was bursting the blisters and spreading the virus.

The worst of that phase is over but we are now in what is called the post-herpetic neuralgia stage where the pain radiates just behind the skin where the blisters and then the rashes appeared and dried up – all those places temporarily discoloured and bearable to sight.

The business with mum

As I gained my strength, I phoned mother, I call her Iya, which is mum in Yoruba; to see if she had some home-grown remedy which she seems to always have for any malady.

The conversation we had was too business-like for my liking I was really taken aback, but on reflection, I felt she must have been busy on some important thing that required minimal disturbance.

Me: Hello Iya, it’s Akin

Iya: Hello, How are you? What do you need to tell me.

Me: I’ve been very ill with shingles.

Iya: Is that all I need to know, now?

Me: Yes, that is all.

Iya: You will be well in Jesus Name, bye.

Me: Amen.

Dad, I had it as a kid

So, there I was wondering and considering my mother already had a premonition I was unwell and already had an expectation I would call – later that day, she tried to contact me and even the next morning, we finally chatted again where I explained exactly what shingles was, how I was feeling and got a few ideas for remedy.

Meanwhile, having not chatted to daddy for a while, I called him too and told him I had been ill, he had never heard of shingles and did not think I had chicken-pox as a kid – well, I am glad I had chicken-pox as a kid because the pox on adults is just not good.

So, I explained to him that one usually has chicken pox as a child and its reappearance in adults is indicated by shingles.

They are worried

However, these benign pieces of information shared with my parents had gotten them extremely worried even though their approaches to the same problem were diametrically opposed with me caught in the middle as usual.

My father also used the situation to advance once again the need for companionship, well, my neighbours have been extremely neighbourly and helpful during the more difficult times, single people find ways to adapt and survive – companionship is not a compulsory essence of life even though it can be useful.

Iya’s view had a spiritual dimension to it which one should not discount out of hand, I listened again as she offered more useful advice and remedies.

When I spoke to my father again, he was concerned about the differences between home remedies and Western medicine and wondered if I could get West African remedies consisting of herbs and the possible ritual – well, I don’t think the ritual part would have been to my liking, but London offers an interesting eclectic mix of the Nigerian ghetto in Europe with the possibility of rat tails, cat heads and every scary concoction out of this world.

Viral becomes venereal

Meanwhile, I was being driven to complete distraction at night with severe itching on my back and sometimes down my arms; I had cut my nails and tried to ease the itch with rubbing gently or passing a towel over the affected areas latitudinally back and forth.

Another call from my father included the advice to call a doctor relation of ours who I had chatted to a few weeks ago. The doctor had explained to my dad what shingles was, saying it was a viral infection and what it entails.

By the time my father was on the phone to me, viral had become venereal, I was not going to correct him or explore the ideas between viral infections and venereal infections.

You suddenly realise that of all you will like to discuss with your parents, your sexual proclivities do not rank anywhere in the exchanges, I was glad the conversation was over though worried about what he might have thought I was up to when I really had not been up to anything untoward.

In all, one takes from the situation a sense of how worried the man and lady were, and the link between us so happens to be their parenthood – the healing effect of realising that people so dearly care for you is without peer and I am glad for that.

Ghana: No antibodies for this virus - Obama's speech

Not the miracle speech

Commentary has been flowing online and on the airwaves about President Barack Obama’s speech to the Ghanaian parliament.

I attentively listened to what he had to say and then read through the transcript of his speech just to corroborate what I heard with what was said.

I was almost annoyed with the bellyaching that has come from some who seemed to be expecting this speech to end all speeches, a work of oratory to make Pluto a planet again, words that would change Africa like Jesus said “Rise up and walk”.

Indeed, there were so many looking to be impressed and bowled over that they might just have lost the significance of the visit to Ghana and the speech itself.

Ghana was really second in Africa

Africa has 53 countries and in the run up to President Obama’s visit to Ghana we had all been made aware of the reason why Ghana was chosen as the second African country not as the first African country to be visited by him, that was Egypt – we sometimes forget that Arabian North Africa is very much part of Africa, the Middle East is geo-political moniker, not a continent.

It is clear that President Obama was persuaded of strong democratic institutions and reforms that engender development and opportunity. It would also appear that he had only had two countries to mind that met that basic qualification for validation in those terms and he mentioned them in his speech as Ghana and Botswana.

No antibodies for this virus

However, what must not be lost as the significance of this visit to Ghana must be the fact that President Obama in his status, stature and progeny represents by analogy for the first time ever a virus against which the pachydermatous and megalomaniacal leaders of Africa have no antibodies.

One glaring fact is exemplified in this statement made in his speech, “the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade”. Imagine the deluge of condemnation and contempt that would have swept over him from the Grand Despot of Africa if this statement had been made by any other leader.

In other words, President Obama was laying down the ground rules for constructive engagement with a changing world, but most importantly declaring the fact that the responsibility for change in Africa is squarely in the hands of Africans themselves. The fallback excuse of the legacy of colonialism can no more hold water just as neither the Japanese nor the Germans can blame anything in their countries today on the losses they suffered in the Second World War and occupation by the victors of that war.

Changing focus of aid

However, I have digressed, what I take from this speech is the radical change in the way aid is distributed and used in Africa – rather than having aid bolster businesses and bureaucracies of the donor countries, it would be geared to helping build capacity in recipient countries by engaging local resources and expertise allowed for a greater percentage of the aid to reach its intended purpose.

This I think would appeal to the Dead Aid bandwagon that have argued that the aid industry itself absorbs most of the aid reducing the amount of aid that is supposed to reach the intended causes for which aid has been raised.

Democracy and the opposition

Meanwhile, President Obama has not redefined democracy but he has clearly indicated that it is definitely more than the sprinkling of elections, there is a governance, accountability and responsibility to being in government by the consent of the people and for the good of all the people for the duration of the term for which that government has been elected.

However, more tellingly about the state of affairs in Ghana is the way the President of the United States of America was greeted by both the government and members of the opposition. The end of brinkmanship politics based on difference, rancour, power and abuse needs to be in sight for things to progress throughout Africa.

Speaking to a greater multitude

President Obama might have been speaking to the Ghanaian parliament yesterday but he was finger-pointing at a good deal of leaders not only in Africa but all around the world which includes those who “change constitutions to stay in power” as in Venezuela, Niger, Ecuador, Peru, the botched attempt in Nigeria and the failed attempt in Honduras – your books are marked.

I was not expecting the speech to be the beatitudes or the Hippocratic Oath of democracy, rather, the speech struck the right balance as an introduction to what is expected of those in leadership and those who seem to be in power but not in office – for some listeners however, it was the Riot Act and it probably would have smelt like tear gas to them.

Attachment

Obama in Ghana file, PDF with pictures and transcript of speech available from http://www.america.gov

Akin Konsult gets registered in less than 35

Hardly doing business smoothly

Just about a year ago, a report was published about the cost of doing business around the globe from the basic registration of the entity through to getting elements together to make that business function.

The bottleneck impeding the smooth transaction of business registration is the bureaucracy that underpins the system in most cases, but bureaucracies do not have to be all that bad. Properly managed and efficient bureaucracies do exist and function like clockwork.

For instance, with the basic information of being a single man with a salary, a mortgage and no other extraneous liabilities; I file my taxes online from inception to completion in less than 25 minutes, if it takes an hour for anyone else, they must be filing for team.

“Den say” to nothing happening

So, I finally decided to form a company and register one in the Netherlands where I live, the residual Nigerian in me trying to allay concerns about the process immersed myself in asking questions and seeking first-hand information from others.

I sunk into the “den say” complex – “den say” {A pidgin English translation of they said, they being anyone and everyone} the process of accumulating information from everywhere but authenticated verifiable sources till you have enough to knock the courage and boldness out of you to do what should be done. Read this in the light of the residual Nigerian lurking in my seemingly Western outlook.

This silly situation basically kept me from doing this stuff for months because I was waiting to have my hand held through the process when I could have just read up on the stuff in the first place.

Get on with it, yourself

Anyway, I finally went to the company registration website and immediately found the forms I needed to fill for a sole proprietorship – in English.

Bless these people, the English end of the form was filled in and it automatically filled in the official Dutch version so you just got it right – thankfully, ICT Consultant translates to ICT Consultant in Dutch, the aspect of design, architecture and development is easily done with a quick chat on MSN Messenger with a friend and we were done.

I printed out the form and left it a while until I was overcome with shingles, but it was at the back of my mind. Meanwhile, I had a chat to a friend who had just finished a company registration last week, it was a positive ”den say”.

All the help and more

So, this afternoon, as I realised I had strength to do something, I left home for the Kamer van Koophandel (KvK), namely, the Chamber of Commerce which is a few hundred metres from the Central Station in Amsterdam.

As I got to the KvK, I asked in English about company registrations, the friendly receptionist immediately gave me a VAT form to go with my company registration and a ticket signifying my turn in the queue with a warning that it might take 15 minutes to get called. I think I arrived there at just before half-past three in the afternoon – they close at 5 o’ clock.

I filled in the financial projections for the VAT registration and wondered, I had just walked into the Chamber of Commerce a foreign not speaking the lingo to register my company and it would be done in minutes without having had any money exchanging hands to get in the queue, having some urchin demand something to see my forms and then dismiss them out-of-hand because palms have not been greased.

I snapped out of that trance quickly enough to realise, I am in the Netherlands not Nigeria and my number came up E42. He asked if I could speak Dutch, I said badly, and he replied, no problem, we help as many languages as we can speak.

All done in 35 or less

No tension, as we entered his office, he asked if I was registered with the local government, I thought I was, I have been paying council taxes for years, the payer is definitely no ghost.

I produced the forms and my identity, a British passport as I explained the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom which consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – lots of light hearted banter, I signed the form and my company was registered, within 5 minutes, I had the confirmation that I own and run Akin Konsult, an ICT consultancy as a business entity in the Netherlands.

Another 10 minutes, the process had been completed for my VAT registration all in one go and at one basic cost that did not exceed EUR 30.

In all, I probably spent 35 minutes from the time I walked in the KvK and left the proud owner of a fully registered sole proprietorship all managed and steered by people who are a members of a bureaucracy no doubt but are satisfied with their jobs, willing to help, very friends, deftly efficient and quite knowledgeable about their tasks.

Most importantly, they were doing me no favours and they were asking for no favours, they were just doing their jobs and I left extremely impressed with what should be an everyday circumstance anywhere in the world.

I would indeed want to find out the experiences of company registrations in other countries especially the one that leaves the residual Nigerian awakened from dormancy when it should have been extinct.

Nigeria: Ministers' perception of bad image

Perceptions of image

Nothing gets me so irked than to read half-truths and sometimes untruths upon which the principals have entered into a determined scheme of denial whilst pasting every external element in sight with blame.

The Nigerian Guardian reports that the Nigerian Ministers of Finance and Information blame the media and human trafficking for Nigeria’s bad image [1].

I quote liberally from that news story acknowledging the source to be the Guardian Newspapers.

Whilst the plight of human trafficking is a very serious issue that has hit our screens over time, I would be hard pressed to find any recent material on that matter as compared to the Niger Delta crisis and the way it imparts on the oil infrastructure and oil markets, the inability to conduct decent elections and the sometimes unfavourably slanted reference to Nigeria when it comes to scam letters.

The West has people in Nigeria too

Let us examine the premise put forward by these esteemed servants of the Federation of Nigerian, the Finance Minister, Dr. Mansur Muhtar revealed, “there was a lot of negative reports from the local media and these in turn shaped what the Western media and investors think about the country.”

Interesting insight suggesting the Western media do not have liaison offices and personnel in major cities of Africa’s largest “democracy” and one time its biggest oil producer. Investors would come from countries that probably have embassies plugged into Nigeria and its environment for business and Nigeria belongs to many trade and bilateral organisations that would have representatives in the country and there are international conglomerates operating in Nigeria already.

It is a bit far-fetched to suggest that it is the local media that serves as the main news feed for the International press thus the main source of the bad image of Nigeria.

Credit comes with noticeable impact

The same minister went on to say, “the public seemed not to be giving enough credit to government for what was being achieved.”

Whilst Nigerians might like to hire praise-singers they are not effusive in praise for situations that impact on them negatively. Unlike in the West where we desire and demand small government; where infrastructure, power, transport, health, education and water resources do not seem to be available to the common man, that country needs big government.

The minister must understand that to gain any credit, the activities of government must touch people’s lives – roads for their business activities, power that meets the needs for a developing nation, integrated transport with focus on railways, hospitals that have qualified personnel and unadulterated drugs accessible to the majority, schools that have materials and can stay open the whole year round and really potable water.

Unfortunately, the ministers live in the exclusive decadence of opulence called Abuja almost oblivious of the realities that meet everyday lives such that they expect praise from postulation rather than action that really changes lives for the better.

The enormity of the challenges

I suppose what really puts it all in perspective comes from this further statement; “... government's efforts are not being given enough recognition and coupled with the enormity of the challenges not being appreciated.”

Nigerians know the challenges they face every day, the need to survive, the need to keep a roof over their heads, the need to put food on their tables and the undying optimism that things would improve.

What they expect of their government is first of all competence, the statement the minister made cuts the other way which questions whether the government has ever appreciated the enormity of the challenge of steering the ship of state called Nigeria.

10 years is some time

Blaming previous governments for our problems today is becoming an unforgivable excuse, the same party has been in power for 10 years, a fifth of the time that Nigeria has been independent, 10 years is a long time to turn a country round if the leaders can exhibit a modicum of competence.

I am happy that the Minister of Information has also recognised the negative element of human trafficking and child abuse, however, it does not go far enough as a matter of the Nigerian image abroad if it does not also address the more controversial issue of child sexual abuse within Nigeria itself.

Deliver and trust will follow

If the “people no longer had trust in the government to deliver its promises,” it would appear no tangible promises have yet been delivered on because like I said earlier in my blog; impact would bring recognition, Nigerians would no more stand for the voluble, loquacious and vacuous politician with promises by the truckload – I am sorry, we are looking for results not the thought and ceremony about actions.

Let us see ceremonies at completed projects not stupid foundation-laying ceremonies for white elephants.

In all, I think the ministers are looking for sycophants to sing their praises in vacuity and publish lies and vague achievements to give the government credit for nothing and hoodwink Nigerians with statistics and platitudes without showing real results.

Methinks, the ministers are in deep denial.

Sources

[1] Guardian Newspapers: Muhtar, Akunyili blame Nigeria's bad image on media, human trafficking