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Nigeria Blogosphere this week

Categories: Sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria

Jeremy of Naijablog [1] has two posts on Gay and Lesbians in Nigeria, a subject guaranteed to send huge numbers of people into a rage with bible quotes being hurled left right and center….In “More on Gay Life in Nigeria [2]” he writes

The Victorian hypocrisy of attitudes towards homosexuality in Nigeria is epic in its tragicomic proportions. From what I have seen and heard, the categories of straight/bi/gay just dont fit the fluidities of Nigerian sexual experience – just as they dont fit many other cultures and times in history (such as pre-Victorian England). Of course, evangelical christianity and stern interpretations of Islam clamp down on this experience being verbalised or part of everyday discourse. It's good with events such as the link below, the lid is being lifted on superabundant reality, and the yawning Nigerian reality-illusion gap is one inch nearer towards being closed.


Aderemi's Notebook [3]
breaks his plans to tour the world in exchange for a visit to the homeland. He has even been practising his “pidgin [4]” and reading local tabloids!

7years and finally returning to see what has changed in my beautiful country. I am very excited but a little nervous. Started practising my “broken english (pidgin)” again after years of misplaced Queen’s English speaking. As friends will testify, “This guy too dey blow fone”. I have been reading Lagos Live religiously.


Ante Thoughts
, who is presently in Nigeria doing her Youth Service, has decided to give up on the bloggie – at least for the moment.

FOR quite sometime now I’ve been seriously thinking about severing the lifeline from this humble blog of mine. It has served me well through the years when I was desperately cathartic and helped me meet so many wonderful people from all around the world whom I would otherwise have never met (or perhaps not. God knows best!) It has, more importantly, helped me express my creativity. Should my writing career ever take off someday, I’ll certainly look back and be thankful for maintaining a blog.


Jangbalajugbu Homeland Stories [5]
writes on some of the new challenges now being faced by Nigerian banks as they move into a new recapitalisation process.

Just last year, 2004, the capital base of banks was raised to a whooping 25 billion Naira and the banks were given till december 2005 to meet up with this new capital base. Prior to this increment, only a few banks had capital bases up to N3 billion naira.

All of this is leading to the creation of some Mega Banks which has led to staff redundancies mainly amongst young university graduates.

However, in a bid to get the best workforce to work in the emerging Mega system, some banks have gone all out to do away with hands, whose services, they feel are “not needed anymore”. Those affected by this move are the young people who are carrying certificates of Nigeria’s polytechnics and state owned universities.

Timbukutu Chronicles [6] (who is up for Best Mid East/African blog [7]) writes about the Palm Wine industry.

Previously suppressed as an industry contemporary Palm Wine production is one of promise, “…Palm ‘wine’ is an important alcoholic beverage in West Africa where it is consumed by more than 10 million people.

Chippla of Chippla's Weblog [8] comments on a piece published in the Christian Science Monitor titled “A visit to Nigeria teaches a lesson in abundance.” The article is written by May Akabogu-Collins who is a Nigerian/American living in the US. The article is taken from her experience of returning to Nigeria with her two children on their first visit to the homeland.

Probably from watching too much American TV, her kids expected to see a land of starving children, one which was AIDS-ridden and full of despondency. However, their preliminary view of Nigeria was anything but that. Flying into Abuja they saw flashy cars on the street and were received by her immediate family who happened to live in luxury and wealth. Mrs. Akabogu-Collins was forced to make one true conclusion:
“There are two breeds in Nigeria: the few have-a-lots and the many have-nots.”


Nigerian Times
reports on the new revived “Biafran war”..”Three Dead as Nigeria battles Biafra across the Niger” and calls on the UN to intervene before it is too late.

The political situation in the South East of Nigeria needs to be addressed by the United Nations and the G-8, because the on-going separatist protests by the members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra(MASSOB), demanding for the release their leader Chief Ralph Uwazuruike have distrupted business activities as markets, shops, offices and banks have been shut since yesterday. And three protesters have been killed and several others have been wounded in the violent disturbances in Aba and Onitsha just across the Niger Bridge.