meetlancer

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Nigeria’s foreign policy in 100 years

By

L-R: Awolowo, Abubakar, Bello, Azikiwe at a function in Lagos
Before the amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorates in 1914, agricultural commodities were exported to Europe and totally controlled by the British Empire. This showed the level of foreign bilateral trade between the colony and the outside world, where cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil and palm kernels were exported and chemicals, machines, transportation equipment and other manufactured products were imported. This level of bilateral trade extended until the 1950s.
The dual mandate adopted by the Europeans, whereby African countries will receive Europe’s civilization in exchange for unrestricted access to the continent resources prevailed during that era.
Britain stood as Nigeria’s major trading partner, even as 70 percent of her exports, as late as 1955 went to Britain and another 47 percent of import came from that country to Nigeria.
However, this bilateral trade changed from 1976, when British dominance of Nigeria’s economy began to wane. The United States then took over as Nigeria leading trade partner. By this time, exports to Britain dropped to 38 percent while import from the country to Nigeria dropped to 32 percent.
At post independence and for decades, Nigeria’s fore

Thursday, February 13, 2014

The West and hypocrisy in pushing gay practice to Africa


Anti-gay protest in Paris, France, recently

By Paul Arhewe
What will the western world gain when the whole of Africa continent adopt an alien culture of sodomy and gay life styles? Many advocates of anti-gay practices are asking with fewer responses to this question.  The fierceness in which western countries are pushing for the adoption of gay practices in all parts of the world, especially in cultures that abhor it, makes it looks as if the world’s existence depends on a practice that is known to have sent many to their untimely graves.  Homosexuals are known to be among those who had first contracted the Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which took a rapid spread among same-sex partners. Initially, the terminal disease was referred to as homosexual ailment, where it was called Gay-related immune deficiency (GRID). Some commentators have argued that the move of the West remains sinister, as they continue in pushing the wide recognition of gay lifestyle when it brings no positive contribution to humankind and the society, but diseases and deaths.
President Goodluck Jonathan drew the annoyance of some western nations, recently, when he signed the prohibition act against same-sex marriage in Nigeria.
Antagonists of the anti-gay law have described it as obnoxious and draconian. Some Western governments, including the United States and Britain say the enactment of the law is a direct encroachment on the rights of gay people in Nigeria. The views of these opponents are that the law will make the country a barbaric state and relegate it to be slave to tradition, morality and religion.
In its reaction recently, the Nigerian Federal Government said the Western nations are playing double standard with their crying foul of the new law. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Viola Onwuliri, recently, in her trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told reporters that the president signed the bill into law as a way of protecting Nigerians and democracy. She did not fail in adding that the criticisms of the West are based on “double standards”.