Nigerians Dream

Your Excellency President Joyce Banda, Professor M.S. Swaminathan, the Borlaug family, John and Janet Ruan, the World Food Prize Laureates, Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and the future leaders in agriculture. I am delighted to be here with you all today. It is such a great honour for Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, to have invited me to be keynote speaker today. Thank you very much, Ambassador Quinn, my dear friend; Professor Swaminathan; the Board members and staff of the World Food Prize Foundation, for all the great work you do. And congratulations as you celebrate the 30 th  Anniversary of the World Food Prize. I applaud and congratulate the World Food Prize Winners of 2016, for their transformative work on developing bio-fortified crops. My most recent interaction with this team was two years ago, when Howarth Bouis and his team at Harvest Plus organised the Second Global Forum on Biofortification in Kig...

There is an ongoing discussion on the effectiveness of foreign aid in helping the economic development of Africa. One thing is obvious: the results are not exactly what Africa’s development partners have expected, and the reasons are not far-fetched. Dambisa Moyo, global economist, and author contends in her book  Dead Aid  that while foreign aid that addresses humanitarian needs caused by drought and conflict is helpful, most of the aid given to African countries is rather harmful. The OECD provides  comprehensive statistics  on the kinds and volume of aid received by the continent up until 2015. Moyo lists the problems enhanced by aid to include corruption, civil conflict, shrinking of the middle class, and the instilling of a culture of dependency. All of these combine to make Africa unattractive to global investors. It has become obvious that it is politics that drives the economies of nations. Acemoglu and Robinson assert in their seminal book ...

Now let’s get this straight, this is not another patriotic strategy, as most people think all my posts or article are about, although there is nothing wrong at all with being patriotic! But this is me spilling out from the bottom and the   “koko”   of my belly. Trust me as a man if you don’t marry a   Nigerian Woman , I don’t envy you at all   ooo … not even a bit   sef!   I really do pity you. Seriously it’s almost certain that you will struggle with some aspects of life as you journey. God help you   sha ... Reasons because a   NIGERIAN WOMAN IS A COMPLETE AWESOME PACKAGE   with no apology to anybody! I know the first thing that happens when people read an article like this is, they start to conclude stuff like …. “Hmmmm… I think he is trying to get at somebody, or perhaps he wants to win the heart of women or a particular woman by writing this article”,   but if you know me very well, you know I don’t really care about chat...

Wait ooó my people, I'm just thinking ooó, please it's just me wondering, perhaps you can say I'm not in touch with reality after I air my mind...  But I'm just thinking if in Nigeria we can adopt  ‘oyinbo’  (white) people's names, what stops us from bearing names from other regions or ethnic groups in  Nigeria  where we are not originally from. The funniest part is that some of us bearing those white people's names from cultures that are completely foreign to us, don't even know the meaning let alone the origin. Think about it, is that not a pity?! I mean what stops a  Yoruba  man from bearing an  Igbo  name, or an  Igbo  man bearing a  Hausa  name, and  Hausa  man bearing an  Edo  man’s name. What stops an Igbo man from bearing a  Hausa  man’s name? Why can’t a  Hausa  man bear  Chinedu ? Tell me, will an  Igbo  man die if he bears  Magaji , or...

Biafra... Arewa... Oodua... ... Wow!... What an interesting time to be alive! Sincerely, I can't be more grateful to be born in these times. It would have been boring been born in a rather 'perfect' nation or times. If we ask the right questions, and employ ourselves to this call to duty for our nation, we would have played the role divinity originally entrusted to humans to live above mere mortals, with just flesh, blood and bones. As young people, well meaning citizens and custodians of our father land, no matter how much we blame the leaders before us of their various unpopular conducts which corruption is top on the list, we must give credence to them for their fight for the independence of Nigeria from our colonial masters. Even though they have missed it along the way, and have become the colonial masters of our own generation. But what is undisputed is that they did confront the arch evil of their time, we must also now confront the evil of our time. ...