The Wars Fighting Back.

Trade wars are mostly made up of fightbacks. It is what everyone knows and so it is a surprise that President Trump is querying the decision of the motorbike manufacturer, Harley Davidson, to move some production abroad. It is only fair that the EU should effect retaliatory tariffs in response to the ones imposed by the US government on steel and aluminum products from Europe and elsewhere and in trade wars, it is usual to counter where it hurts most. It is unfortunate that Harley Davidson should be a victim of the reprisals but this is the age of globalization and outsourcing and it is inevitable it should switch to plants outside the US where lower wages and general costs will help to offset some of the slide in turnover expected from prices of its bikes going up in the EU, an important market. This is a common economic move that is vital in order to survive: at least in the long run. Trump cannot complain. He fired the first shot.
A sensible move as opposed to Trump's rationale of 'safeguarding national security', a bye-slang for old, turgid protectionism. How much of the steel and aluminum consumption in the US goes into national security? Are US metal plants at par with Chinese variants in efficiency? Isn' t it more profitable to concentrate energy on reforming labour and wages? Someone said Trump has to fulfil his promises to American workers, a sizable component of his political base. Such political promises often turn out to be rash. Too bad economics does not often work well with promises.
And on another front, the president's peremptory annulment of the Iran deal is having a bit of boomerang now. Ramping up sanctions would ultimately lead to cuts in Iranian oil production and that was going to push up oil prices, resulting in higher energy costs in the US. Unless production is increased quickly elsewhere to bridge supply gaps. Oil prices inching towards $80pb is a mayhem the delicate economy can gladly do without and so worrying is the scenario that the president had to resort to some fake tweeting: announcing that Saudi Arabia has promised to ramp up production. News that turned out to be false.

Why Herdsmen-Farmers Clashes Won't End.

Herdsmen-farmers clashes are common all over Africa. Grazing routes inevitably pass through farmlands and there and then there is little the herdsman himself can do to restrain famished animals from lunging into a bite and crops are the usual victims. Droughts and unexpected weather patterns occasioned by global warming have helped to exacerbate the problem of late and for many herdsmen and farmers, the crisis could approach a struggle for life itself. But the problem is especially intractable in Nigeria because of an entirely different reason. Many of the cows, sheep and goats being herded do not belong to the herdsmen themselves. Estimates reveal that a herdsman do not really need more than 20 head of cattle for the upkeep of his family. Wealthy ones among them barely own more than 60 and if you see 300 cows with a herdsman or two, be rest assured he doesn't own more than 25% of the herd. At most. The brutal truth is that cow-rearing is big business in Nigeria. A fair-sized cow costs an average 100,000 naira and just having 10 is big money, at least by Nigerian standards. Hence there is a frenzy to own cows and since it is only the herdsmen that have the expertise of rearing, it makes sense to acquire the animals and keep them with them, eventual proceeds being shared according to a prearranged formula. This business cuts across all strata of the society: the poor who own one or two to the rich who own them in hundreds; Christians or Muslims; military, paramilitary or civillian. A discreet investigation carried out by this forum reveals that during festive periods or seasons where cattle sales are high, it is common to see wealthy individuals in jeeps sneaking under the cover of dusk into herdsmen temporary huts to collect fat wads of notes, being their own share of the sales. In central Nigeria where the crisis rages fiercest, at least 40% of the cattle being reared by herdsmen belong to soldiers, naval officers, air force men and policemen, retired or serving. These are men that will go to any length to protect their investment. They do not think twice before they supply weapons to Fulani militias or militias dressed as Fulani herdsmen, arms which these untrained handlers are liable to use indiscriminately. The central states of Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba have huge military bases and a huge reservoir of serving and retired military personnel and it is a wonder the clashes should persist there. Major mayhem usually breaks out when there is large-scale cattle rustling. All hell is let loose in order to recoup or revenge losses. The recent massacre in the central Plateau State has as part narrative, the rustling of 8 head of cattle belonging to the Archbishop of Jos. It is easy to see why the government is helpless in curtailing the crisis. Those who are to handle the crisis, arrest and disarm the culprits, have the least inclination to do so because the cows at the centre of the problem actually belong to them. And it is difficult blaming them. For some, their cattle investment is all they have in these hard times.

The Train to Helsinki: Entertaining Mr Putin.

US-USSR, now US-Russia, summits used to be no more than glorified ceremonies, grand meetings to sign, or not to sign, essentially nuclear deals that had been thrashed out months before by officials of the two countries: superpowers that had enough weapons between them to destroy humanity and most of other flora and fauna several times over. They are no more than a reaffirmation of the agreement that none will be the first to pull the nuclear trigger. It is as if one is saying to the other: 'hey guy, I know all about the madness involved in MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), so let's shake hands and then use our fingers to commit to paper, put it in black and white, that we we will never use them to make the insanity happen.' You wouldn't know the nuclear weapons they were so frightened to use were the same they had spent billions of resources to make and which they used to send enemies into sleeplessness everyday. These two monsters at the opposite ends of a bipolar world were not going to agree on much else: the Soviet Union wasn't going to back off supporting Vietnam or Cuba and the US wasn't going to stop supplying arms to Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA bandits in Angola or the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. So summits were all about managing the nuclear conundrum. That and a sprinkling of trade and scientific deals.
They could even take on a daub of notoriety. Like the infamous one between Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev in which the US president arrived in a suit so ill-fitting that a journalist was compelled to ask him if the oversized clothes really belonged to him. Regan had not made a hurried visit to a flea shop, it was a measure of how much esteem with which he held the meeting.
Nothing has much changed. It is now Russia instead of the USSR, the nuclear weapons are still there aplenty, but both countries are even less enthusiastic about using them now. If you held a knife to his throat, Putin wouldn't even think of letting go Crimea, an Ukrainian territory he annexed in 2014 to global outrage. And even less reluctant would he be in admitting his country meddled in the US elections that brought Trump to power even if his counterpart prodded him on it till tomorrow. And neither will Trump be in a hurry to lift sanctions the US and its allies imposed on Russia for her arrant misdemeanors all over the world, from Salisbury in England to Abkhazia in Georgia Republic.Trump himself has placed a thick, damp squib on what would have been the major talking point of the summit, by casting serious and deflating aspersions on the findings by his own officials that it was likely Russia meddled in the polls that brought him to power.
It is no surprise many pundits have predicted the summit isn't likely to achieve anything of substance.
But the sightseeing is going to be okay even though Finland is such a flat, colorless country you begin to wonder if bears roamed the streets of Helsinki. And there is no doubt Trump has been overawed by Putin. He has often spoken of his admiration for the Russian strongman. The enormous powers he wields, the grip he has on his country, the crucial matters of life and death he commands on the tips of his fingers were things Trump covets. And which he would like to lay his hands on but which he is highly unlikely to get because of chuffing lawyers and courts and a liberal, squeamish populace in his own country. His backing down on forced family separations of illegal immigrants and the torrid hounding of his officials in restaurants and public places have been chastening indeed. He will never be Putin and the US will never be Russia. But if you cannot be him, why not shake hands with him. High autograph-hunting can be very pleasant.
Which has brought some trepidation that has been thankfully taken care of. The summit will take place four days after a meeting with NATO allies. Officials of the organization were jittery that if it were the other way round, Trump out of some figure worshipping, might agree certain things with Putin. Things that would later put NATO in an awkward position indeed.

Trump

 Putin and Trump

Gorbachev

Regan

Germany, Ozil and Loew: The Clay Triumvrate.

Watching the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Germany and South Korea that has just ended, it was damn difficult believing it was the same German team that thumped Brazil 7-1 in the semi-finals of the 2014 edition of the same tournament that was on the field. The

magnificent squad that later went on to win the cup at the expense of Argentina. It is charitable saying the team was a shadow of its former self. No shadow, no matter how miserable, would want to be associated with this pathetic performance. Is this not the same team that used to be called the 'German Machine' by admirers all over the world? A moniker earned for competence, ruthless efficiency, crisp passing and wondrous organization. The squad we've just seen rather looked like a chapped-out car, a contraption coughing badly and no amount of pushing was going to make it start. Plenty of pushing there was, as strenuous as hell, millions of German fans at home and abroad doing all they can to urge on their team to glory, but Joachim Loew's team was simply dire. It was a car they couldn't even get to the mechanic. The fire-high passion of supporters would eventually get damped by a performance nothing short of a damp squib.
The prime architect of the heinous 2-0 defeat  was Loew himself, World Cup winner in 2014, now diving steeply and very fast from hero to zero. If Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira played so poorly in the first match defeat to Mexico, and the team managed to win against highly-organized Sweden in the second match, why field them again in the final match? A crucial match that they had to win, take their own fate in their own hands and avoid the risk of depending on other results from the group. Perhaps he thought Mexico would beat Sweden. Perhaps he underestimated South Korea. Perhaps he has lost his gravitas for caution, shrewdness, alertness and judgment.
He had an able lieutenant in Ozil, the hero of 2014 that started Germany's precipitous slip in the current edition long before the tournament started by that notorious photo-op with Erdogan, the Turkish president, a rabble-rouser as loud and violent as they come. With Ilkay Gundogan, another German player of Turkish origins, it was not a little rumpus they caused team preparations by posing with Erdogan and calling him 'my president'. Only God knows the inspiration they hoped to gain from the pugnacious lout? And if they thought that muzzling opposition, clamping opponents into jail without trial and screaming at real or imagined threats were all going to be insightful, the idiocy of it all was ruthlessly exposed by Mexico and South Korea. Loew shouldn't have taken the pair to Germany. Just as he was with Arsenal, his performances were slow, lethargic and horribly sloppy and his body language bespoke that of a spoiled brat, a lout quarreling with team mates and himself. The upside of it all is that he knows he is finished in international football and needs a huge redemption at club level. He might have won the World Cup but hanging around his neck now is the unwanted medal of Germany exiting the tournament at a group stage since 1938, before the 2nd World War.
It is that bad. 

Nigeria's Bizzare Public Examinations.

Nigeria's public examinations are very good indicators of what is really wrong with the country as a whole. They are excellent mirrors of the rot, the chaos, arrogance and official helplessness that characterize public institutions and the processes they run, or that run them. Technically, examinations in Nigeria are no more examinations, the expectations and darkness that should be innate to them having gone to the dogs. Sloppy leakages have been peculiar problems but the mayhem has simply gone beyond that. Internet has shattered any credibility that is left. The open practice is now for the solutions to the papers to be placed on websites specially created for such purposes by gangs that make enormous profits from such illegal ventures. On or before the examinations and it is then easy for any student with a phone to copy answers directly from the web. That might not even be necessary. A teacher could copy the answers and help reproduce them en masse for students. As exams approach, teachers and students alike race to subscribe to these websites and this mass movement can approach a frenzy. Some create whatsapp groups that facilitate the spread of answers. From teachers to pupils, billions of naira are involved in this illicit activity and it has become the fastest growing component of the Dark Web in Nigeria.
The certificates being issued by the examination bodies are simply not worth the paper on which they are printed. The worst culprit is the National Examinations Council, NECO. The West African Examinations Council, WAEC, is a regional body made up of 5 countries in the West African sub-region. Though not immune to the problems enumerated, it still manages to conduct its examinations with a semblance of decency. NECO is a body peculiar to Nigeria alone and it operates with all the stains the country can muster. Its questions are in public domain at least a week before they are written and a grim example is the vital English Language paper in the ongoing June/ July Senior Secondary School Examinations, SSCE, The leakage was so bad that NECO was forced, against its established inclinations, to cancel the paper and shift it from 10.00am to 2.00pm on the 7th of June, on the premise that new questions will be ready by then. But Nigeria is a vast country and distribution of papers must involve enormous logistics. Expectedly, the rescheduled questions could not reach everywhere and some states had to demand another reschedule. Kano State is an example and students therein will be re-writing the English Language paper on the 30th of June. In essence, different versions of the same paper are being written all over the country. No wonder education is on the rise in Nigeria.
AND THE EAGLES CRASH DOWN AND OUT.
The Nigerian national football team, the Super Eagles crashed out of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia yesterday through a late Argentine goal by Marcos Rojo of Manchester United. Once again, the country suffers an agonizing heartbreak to a late goal, just like it was in the 1994 edition of the tournament in the US. It was the second round match with Italy and Nigeria was leading 1-0 with a couple of minutes to spare and the then coach, Clemens Westerhof,  was screaming at the players to put the ball in the stands. Just hoof it away. Unfortunately few heeded him and Sunday Oliseh promptly lost the ball in the midfield while trying some daisy-cutting: someone laid a pass to Roberto Baggio and the lethal striker could not fail to ruthlessly slot in from 10 yards out, beyond the outstretched hands of the excellent Nigerian goalkeeper, Peter Rufai.
Italy was to win it in extra time through a penalty and the rest is history. It was history the Eagles should have learnt from yesterday. Just keep hoofing the ball into the stands, waste the couple of minutes left, keep on frustrating Messi and co, keep on demoralizing them. They knew they were already beaten and such tactics would have killed off the game.  

Season of Anomy: 'Yahoo' is Nigeria's 4th Income Earner.

Yahoo in Nigeria is not often your normal Yahoo. In fact, it could be a far cry from it, especially when it is placed in quotation marks. It then becomes a popular moniker for the Dark Web in the country. It is originally a popular slang for basic internet fraud such as love scams but it has rapidly grown beyond that to encompass activities such as fake job adverts, identity theft, hacking, false e-messages to gain to bank details, employment scams and so on. And so vast and growing is this illicit economy that if it were to be legitimate, it would be the fourth contributor to the economy, after agriculture, manufacturing and services. Tourism used to contribute about $14billion to the economy but conservative estimates put the proceeds of internet crime in Nigeria at $17 billion. This disparity could be wider. The Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east and growing insecurity in the rest of  the  country, especially kidnapping, have succeeded in putting many prospective tourists and visitors off and cyber crime is widely under-reported. Many victims simply chose not to report their losses as they are limited to what is easily affordable in affluent societies of the US, Japan, Canada, Australia and western Europe. Few fraudsters now move for big bucks, funds that will easily attract attention and reportage. A hundred dollars might be small beer in the US but in Nigeria, with the heinous exchange rate, it is huge money that rapidly accumulates and enables the criminal to buy flashy cars and homes and spend money like hell in nightclubs.
 The rank and file of fraudsters are growing by leaps and bounds and it is easy blaming the horrible unemployment situation in the country for it but it hardly justifies secondary school students and dropouts going to the extreme to own laptops and smartphones and delving straight into 'Yahoo' business. In a country hardly noted for its work ethics, 'Yahoo' money is easy money and it catapults successful ones into a life of glamour and adulation. 'Yahoo boys' are the toasts of a society that can go the extreme to worship wealth and these individuals always have their praises sung to high heavens by musicians at parties and other social functions. To make it in the society, internet fraudsters provide a dark inspiration to many, so also are politicians, many of who are also former scammers, guys who had simply bought their way to the top with the proceeds of their illicit internet income.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, better known as EFCC, is the agency set up by the federal government to specifically combat this menace and it has been doing its better to arrest culprits and prosecute them. Many have been sent to jail and cash and material proceeds confiscated. Some money have also been returned to victims but the bottom line is that the commission is stretched thin. The number of these fraudsters in Lagos alone is estimated to be ten thousand. Many cities abound in the country and the criminals need not even stay in urban areas again, where their activities will be easily scrutinized. Internet services now penetrate even the remotest of provinces and all the individual needs to do is acquire a laptop or smartphone and hide in a hut for months. The EFCC can only monitor few places and individuals at a time. The banks, which those funds must pass through are not helping at all. The anti-corruption posture of the Buhari administration has deprived many banks of slush funds corralled from government revenues. These used to be the cash cows of illegal gains and bank officials are just too happy now to collaborate with fraudsters, collecting hefty percentages in order to pass on 'Yahoo' money. That would be money laundering but many bank officials regard that as mere semantics.
But that is just a tiny view of the overall picture. Officials are confronted by resolute, intrepid youths in their early or mid twenties who are not afraid to serve a 7-year jail term, the maximum penalty under extant laws, knowing very well that after coming out of jail, they will still have enough strength and vigor to make something out of life with hidden wealth or to simply continue in their old ways. And the society will readily welcome them back, a group of citizens that regard 'Yahoo' as a 'soft crime'. Not few Nigerians argue that since colonialists plundered African resources, fraud proceeds are fair returns, a regain of what white people stole from their forefathers. The counter argument that countries like Sweden, Japan and China and many other countries that lose millions of dollars every year to these criminals never did engage in colonial adventures in Africa does not receive much reception. To them, any white-skinned person is fair game.
It is a dark economy that will not abate soon. The resources to combat it is not just there. And matters got to a head of recent when a video, not verified, surfaced on the net. In it, you could see a white woman screaming at the security forces to leave 'Yahoo' boys alone and that white women are just too happy sending money to them.
 

Get Leo!

The most revealing match of the FIFA 2018 World Cup has just been played. In a huge upset, which is not, with the benefit of hingsight, Croatia handed a torrid 3-0 defeat to Argentina: the supposed underdog eating up the supposed top dog. Now we have seen the second goalkeeping howler of the tournament, Ivan Caballero gifting Croatia the first goal. He could have done better too in the second and third goals but largely to blame for the defeat is the poor tactics of the coach. He seemed just content to get the ball to the front lethal trio of Messi, Aguero and Dyabala without any form of creativity from the midfield. The prompt result was the neutralization of Messi and co by the well-marshalled Croatian defence that used their advantage in height to full effect. The Croats also have stars of their own such as Modric who scored a stunner for the second goal but this match has clearly shown the brightest constellations are not made by the brightest stars.

Messi is finished in international football, there is no doubt about that now. The cup just wasn't his to lift. Life is like that and we might just parody Elmore Leonard's famous title. Get Leo! A return ticket to Argentina.

Migrant Crises: Leave the Wall, Cut a Deal with Mexico.

One way or the other, family separations will end but if the decision to criminalize illegal entries remain in force, it is still difficult to see how one form of separation or the other will not take place as children cannot possibly follow their parents into prison. It is therefore pertinent to delve into the wider picture of illegal migration in order to forestall future outrages. Children being corralled in metal cages do not make pleasant viewing but the pictures a bit away from the southwest borders of the US do not present endearing images too. Whole families in a march through Central America towards Texas and New Mexico as if the country is a no-man's land without laws and borders. As if you could just walk in and start a new life without regard to any form of due process. It looks like a modern form of the gold rush and we all know the consequences of those unregulated movements. Even allowing for the fact that very few countries will allow such unregulated influx, there is the distinct possibility of letting in terrorists and criminals. Central American gangs thrive in almost every American city, consequences of earlier unregulated migrations, causing untold mayhem and further drain on the  already thin resources of law enforcement agencies. It is a picture that can get very ugly.
The equally ugly scenario is that Trump is not doing anything enduring to fight and fix the problem. His determination, or lack of it, to build a concrete wall that practically straddles the long Mexican border is the quixotic adventure of the modern age, utterly preposterous and laughable. Even if he eventually pulls it off, there is little guarantee it will put off determined immigrants and people-smuggling gangs. The infinitely shorter Berlin Wall with its infernal towers, barbed wires and guards ordered to shoot at sight could not prevent dissidents from escaping into the West. And neither is the present demarcation in Korea. The $25 billion needed to fund the wall can be put to more effective use. It is no wonder the plan has gained little traction. Trump's diversionary tactics have attracted similar opprobrium to themselves. What is his concern with immigration problems in Germany? Refugee issues are threatening the governing coalition of Angela Merkel for sure but it is difficult to see what he hopes to achieve by chipping in the falsehood that crime rates are up in Germany due to the influx of refugees. A little attempt at subverting the government of a supposed ally? Or a harebrained justification for tearing children forcibly from their parents and putting them in concentration camps? The US president doesn't appear to be a pleasant man.
Even more so considering his attempts at immigration legislation. If he wasn't using Dreamers at hostages in his desperation to secure funding for his wall, children as young as two are now his bargaining chips. His wall is his real focus in achieving legislation with Democrats and not curbing the flow of illegal immigrants. Which the wall isn't going to do in a million years.
Yet it is not legislation that the immigration problem needs. Horrendously tough sanctions have not stopped the flow of cocaine into the country. More success has been achieved with foreign governments in destroying coca plantations in Colombia and blocking drug smuggling routes. Pro-activeness  is the key, attack the menace from the source. The Mediterranean migrant crisis shows no sign of abating simply because there is nobody to relate with in the lawless cluster of enclaves Libya has become. Mexico has a stable, functional government and migrant caravans could be stopped long before they reach the US border. It would be dead easy to do that, get violators arrested, as well as their people-smuggling gangs facilitators. Even a well-pronounced, tough posture that Mexico will not be the Libya of the Americas can send a very clear message to would-be illegal migrants.
Cut a deal with Mexico, Mr President.

The Heart of Darkness 2: Putting Children in Cages.

Someone has eloquently written of man being the largest beast of the fauna: a brute that not only preys on other creatures, but also preys on his own on a massive scale. The images coming out of the United States bears grim testimony to that and nothing could ever be more shocking than children being kept in metal cages held together by chain links. Everyone has been to a zoo or has seen pictures of one and animals of the wild certainly enjoy more freedom in captivity than we are seeing children of immigrants enjoy in Texas and US borders. It is typical of Trump to blame every failure or disaster of his on enemies or Democrats, with references he can neither back with facts or his limited intelligence. So the notorious forced family separations are backed by a law with provenance in Democrats: a piece of statute he has failed miserably to mention. But apportioning blame here can be too easy. The buck stops on his table but we can beam brighter searchlights by turning the rays on his Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, a dry-faced henchman who derive little thrills doing dirty jobs for his principal now and then and Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, a woman whose rugged face takes on a bit of menace when she puts on sunshades. The picture she is presenting to terrified children screaming for their mama might chill Medusa now. These two individuals are the principal architects of the horror playing loudly in warehouses, defunct supermarkets and plastic tent cities springing up in the hot deserts of Texas but of equal worry with their taste for terror is the denial and mendacity with which they seek to justify the evil in searing display. Sessions was quick to quote Roman 13 to justify his actions but Himmler and Goebbels could have quoted the same to support the insanity they were herding Jews into concentration camps to maintain order in Nazi Germany. There was no way Apostle Paul, who penned the missive to the Romans, could have been writing about an order in which screaming children are violently torn from their parents and thrown into steel cages. Indeed fanatics will not exist if some folks do not have some pious blood surging violently in their veins. It is instructive to note, however, that Sessions' fellow Methodists have roundly denounced his referrals. If anything, the situation at hand rather dovetails with King Herod's heinous order for the extermination of all male Jewish infants in Israel on learning of the birth of Jesus Christ, a king that would supplant him one day.
When his half-arsed scripture references are not serving him, both Sessions and Nielsen take refuge (no mischievous pun intended) in equally half-arsed, strident denials and semantics. The children detention centers were not Nazi concentration camps but Sessions did not say what they were exactly. Perhaps swanky New York apartments. Perhaps he did not read or heard the Boston Globe reports that children being seized from their parents were being taken away under the pretext they were going to be bathed, a line borrowed perfectly from the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camps. Nielsen was to later called the notorious zero-tolerance immigration policy an 'initiative' and not a 'policy'. After she had initially denied flatly reports that children of illegal immigrants were being forcibly separated from their families. This queen of semantics would later define the metal chain-link enclosures with concrete floors in which children were being held as 'shelters' and not 'cages' or 'dog kernels'.
Whatever they are, they are not alluring images.

Trump

Sessions

Nielsen

The Heart of Darkness 1: Concentration Camps Make a Big Comeback.

If you were horrified by President Trump's idea to build concrete walls along vulnerable sections of the Mexican border, then you, as Americans themselves say it, ain't seen nothing yet. In fact, you are in for a real shock, in the far more eerie specter of concentration camps springing up in the hot sands of Texas, close to the proposed walls.
Recent days have seen children of illegal immigrants being separated from their families and taken to detention facilities converted from warehouses and defunct supermarkets while their parents and other accompanying adults are sent to jail awaiting trial under laws extant, or non-extant, that criminalize illegal entry or immigration into the US. This family splitting now seems a cardinal focus of what has been dubbed Trump's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy. Reports have it that all available spaces have been filled up and plastic tents erected for the same purposes are springing up in the deserts of Texas where temperatures more ruthless than humans can reach 105F. In a recent six-week period there had been more than 2000 family separations and officials are planning to build more tent cities to house these innocent children. We are describing these shelters as detention and processing facilities only out of literary politeness and deference to the taste of our readers. Actualities are grimmer. Representative Peter Welch has made a visit to one of such centers in Brownsville, Texas, and in a tweet, described harrowing images of boys being held in chain  link cages. It held more than1500 boys sitting and staring vacantly in space in what used to be a Walmart. If this is not the description of a concentration camp, we don't know what it is. The good Peter was very prompt in slamming the zero-tolerance policy as zero humanity with zero logic in it.
His is just a bellow in a stridently growing outrage. An indignation so loud and obstreperous that the normally reticent First Lady, Melania Trump, has chipped in with her serious concerns. No woman is ever going to stay undisturbed seeing children being violently torn from their parents. And Laura Bush, wife of ex Republican President G. W. Bush has wasted no time in comparing the unfolding situation to Japanese American internment in the 2nd World War. One of the most dire episodes of the war. Even such frightening reminiscence will hardly do justice to a concentration camp filled with innocent children languishing under conditions that easily stop the heart. Trump has often been compared to Adolf Hitler and there seems to be more than just mere mischief in the dovetailing images now. It is difficult seeing how Trump can get away with this. Maybe in politics where fortunes are so inconstant but morally, the guy has overplayed his hand.
We have it on good authority that conditions in these camps are not all that cozier than what subsisted in Nazi extermination camps or British-built Boer concentration camps in South Africa. Perhaps not many people have noticed that it is in the most advanced countries at a point in time that we find the cruelest methods to run the most deranged of policies. In no time, barbed wire fences and watchtowers are going to spring up in those detention facilities as the situation grows desperate and you wouldn't think the US will be the place to see such horror in this post-internet age, would you? The mightiest, the richest, the supposedly most civilized nation on earth. Man seems to be climbing out of a deep, deep, dark abyss and no matter how much he has achieved, he really cannot tear himself free of his eerie, primordial beginnings

The Aquarius Berths.

The migrant ship, the Dattilo has finally entered the port of Valencia, Spain. Two other ships, the Orione and the Aquarius itself are expected to follow suit soon. The three ships are carrying between them 629 migrants who were rescued off the coast of Libya in the usual appalling conditions of horrid weather and overcrowded rubber dinghies by the NGO rescue ship, Aquarius. The ships were promptly barred from berthing in Italian and Maltese ports and have been floating in the Med ever since, a situation the Italian right-wing, anti-immigration, populist interior minister Matteo Salvini has received considerable flak for. In political bashing, soft targets are popular objects of attack. Mostly because they are easy explanations for situations that are far more complex than we are wont to admit. Italian migrant camps are overflowing and social and economic tensions are spilling over into the streets; the point that facilitates the crisis, Libya, became the lawless land it is because of the overthrow and killing of erstwhile dictator, Moammer Gaddafi, a mayhem precipitated mostly by France; the real destination of the migrants are the wealthier European countries further north, so why should Italy be at the frontline of the crisis and bear the brunt of a movement to countries that had done little to help it? The situation has become sweaty for many Italians and Salvini is merely harvesting political capital out of a situation growing popular, a not infrequent crime in politics. However it is instructive to note that on Wednesday, with the Aquarius affair raging, the coastguard ship Diciotti brought more than 900 migrants to Sicily.

Salvini.

What actually fuels

this crisis is a strange lack of articulation in EU's response to the crisis. And a poor definition of the crisis itself. Are we dealing with real asylum sekers or economic migrants? In most African countries, democracy, with attendant tolerance, is firmly taking root and political repression is on the back foot. Gone are the gory days of Uganda, Chad, Zaire e.t.c. that gave rise to huge waves of political refugees. It is the economic front that has not improved, conditions are even getting worse and the EU may begin taking some profitable actions by recognizing that the bulk of those migrants they are trying to restrain are people fleeing appalling living conditions of want: incessant power blackouts, slave wages, outright unemployment, hunger, lack of pipe-borne water. Horror of basic living conditions. Drawing an ecnomic blueprint for Africa will begin to address this horrid and intractable migrant crisis. It may turn out that a factory in Nigeria may prove less costly to set up than a migrant center in Spain.
The new Spanish government may want to gain some socialist traction by allowing the Aquarius refugees in but Sanchez has to realize drawbacks of populism are not always apparent. Migrants are from a mass of people watching closely the position every European government is taking on migration and Spain may face far more problems if it is generally perceived it has become a soft center in immigration obstacles. More Aquarius ships might be heading in that direction and the government might find itself unwilling to hunt for goodwill.

Spain vs Portugal: Heroes and Villains.

Every football match produces its heroes and villains and the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Spain and Portugal was no exception. In fact football turned up the day everyone wanted it and the whole tournament itself would be lit up for the first time.
An expected hero turned up all right; Cristiano Ronaldo producing a dazzling, relentless display that would eventually net him a spectacular hat trick. The third goal, a result of a free kick, was especially well-taken. His team was losing, with a few minute to spare and it was a moment that require steady nerves, precision and brilliance: that called for a hero and perfectly did he answer the call.
Another hero turned up in the shape of Diego Costa. Not everyone expected him to be one, not the least his Brazilian countrymen who have been very tardy in forgiving him for turning his allegiance to Spain. Traitors, real or perceived, are not a particularly welcomed breed anywhere on earth. As a matter of fact, certain folks rather expected some villainy from him, a player notorious for his tempers and tantrums on field. They all got disappointed, Costa putting up a display in which industry and instinct got complemented by brilliance. Check out the first goal, an endeavor in which he had everything to do and he did not shy from duty. The second goal was simply instinctive, a striker's delight.
The villain that rather turned up was a most unexpected one: David De Gea, a goalkeeper that has been excellent all season for Manchester United. His attempt at Ronaldo's penalty could hardly be excused for a world class goalkeeper and he would compound sloppiness with the howler that led to the second goal, a goalkeeping blunder straight out of Robert Green's school of errors. His poor positioning would eventually lead to the third goal. Not a few argue now he helped made Ronaldo's day, gifting him his hat trick on a platter of heinous incompetence. Well, De Gea's woes might be traced to a bite of nerves and he is expected to get far better grip on himself in subsequent games.
Spain was lovely to watch in their possessive tiki-taka but some lethargy could not help peeping up. It was clear that if they had channeled their possession into greater relentless pressure especially in the final third, Portugal would have been toast. The team clearly felt pressure from the turmoil that had bedevilled it in recent days. A mayhem that led to the sack of the coach Lopetegui two days to the tournament and his replacement with Fernando Hiero, ex-national player. But there was no taking from Nacho' s goal, a strike that was as

fortuitous as it was instinctive.

Obasanjo Quietens as Buhari's Sword Dangles.

Ex head of state, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has suddenly gone quiet in his public spats with President Muhammadu Buhari. And for good reason. He knows Buhari is a no-nonsense army general and will not hesitate to move against him if only to show the whole world and his critics he does not believe in sacred cows and is not afraid of anybody. The sword of Damocles, read

Buhari

Obasanjo

Buhari, hangs low, ominously over him. Obasanjo was thrown off his strides by the sudden bringing up of the power projects quagmire by Buhari when the Buhari Support Organization paid him a courtesy call. The whole project and the sleaze that came to accompany it was the major black spot of his administration and there was no way he was going to wash his hands clean of it if it comes to judicial scrutiny. And the penalty could be severe. Two long-running cases of graft have of late ended in disaster for Rev Jolly Nyame, ex-governor of the north-eastern state of Taraba, who was sentenced by an Abuja court to 14 years in prison and Joshua Dariye, ex-governor of the nearby state of Plateau, who also bagged the same prison term. All to the glee of Nigerians, who want more big fishes nabbed by the hook of anti-corruption. Obasanjo is 80 and a single day in prison for him is going to be more than a disaster.  And recent history is not on his side. Lula, Brazil's former president has just been sent to prison to corruption and the sky has not split into two. Close aides have been advising him to pipe low as Buhari will just send him to prison for nothing and cronies now loud will not hesitate to abandon him and let him stew in his own juice.
Yet Buhari does not even need to arrest him or send him to jail. He only needs to set up a probe panel and that would be enough to finish Obasanjo. His enemies, who are legion will only be too glad to come to such a panel with sacks of indictments genuine or ludicrous. Many Nigerians will not be able to tell the difference, besides, having suffered terribly at the hands of corruption, they will not care to put accusations to much scrutiny. A probe will be a public, kangaroo trial for Obasanjo and he will hardly get any justice. $16b was wasted on the power projects, perhaps the largest single case of corruption ever in Africa, without a single wink of electricity to show for it and there is no way he is going to escape censure, even though no single instance of graft has been traced to him directly. The whole mess happened under his long watch of 8 years and the buck stopped on his table. It will be very difficult for him to handle the noise, the mayhem, the opprobrium such a probe will spew into the political space.
SAUDI ARABIA GETS A BLOODY NOSE.
The opening match of the current edition of the World Cup going on in Russia has seen Saudi Arabia ship in 5 goals against the host country, making an average Russian team play spectacularly. That is why the tournament is a World Cup and not a cup for the best gladiators. Otherwise a lot of folks will start querying the injustice of Italy staying behind at home and Saudi Arabia attending the tournament. In world football, Saudi Arabia is a midget and Russia is not itself oversized but the Saudis turned them into giants overnight.
Luis 'the snake' Suarez misbites.
The World Cup match between Uruguay and Egypt has just ended. The first half was cagey but the two teams came out in the 2nd half more adventurous and that section was more noteworthy for Luis Suarez's two glaring misses. He might have been more restrained in biting with his teeth but his biting feet seems to have been in remission with that disinclination. That is the stuff of which genius is made of at any rate and we expect him to be sharper in coming matches. In tight matches like this, a half chance might be all that is needed and Uruguay was grateful to seize it via a header by Athletico Madrid's Gimenez. Egypt will have to improve in the final third in subsequent matches.

Luis 'the snake' Suarez.

World Cup of Scrutiny.

Another soccer World Cup starts today in Russia. Congratulations everyone! We really look forward to a real football fest. Which is what the World Cup should be all about: grand displays of the world most popular sport that one is ever unlikely to find on another platform. We are constrained to dwell a bit on global expectations of this fiesta because the last two editions have not been, generally speaking, all that edifying. The 2010 edition in South Africa was more notable for the hideous noises vuvuzelas were making, the poor pitches and the mayhem in the French national team than for any footballing spectacle. The last edition in Brazil did produce a footballing spectacle, the 7-1 drubbing of the host nation by Germany in the semi-finals. The Horizonte Massacre, as this incredible defeat became known, after the city in which the match was played, has been dubbed Brazil's darkest hour. And rightly so. No national distress in the country is ever going to replicate people weeping openly in the streets as the match wore on and in the aftermath. But before that, in one of the group matches, obstreperous headlines had been made by Luis 'the Snake' Suarez,  the talented but flawed Uruguayan player who had little restraint in reprising his notorious biting inclinations on the Italian player, Giorgio Chellini.
We rather want to see spectacular scissors and scorpion kicks in this edition. We don't want to see Maradona's infamous Hand of God but his famous half field dribbling that eventually nailed England in the 1986 World Cup, we simply want to see what we saw in 1970, 1982, 19...
Yet we cannot help bringing up two things to scrutiny. The first is the rather curious theory that football can be separated from politics or political behavior. This bunkum used to be promoted by the erstwhile FIFA Secretary-General, Sepp Blatter, and his predecessor, Jao Havelange.. Blatter has since been disgraced in a corruption scandal and falling into disrepute too is his theory. The host country, Russia, have been behaving very badly in the international arena. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, a region that geographically belongs to its weaker neighbor, Ukraine, against strident international opposition and that would have been a hefty outrage on its own but Putin has compounded mayhem by sowing seeds of subversion in the eastern parts of the country. Ukraine is now practically partitioned into two and the Donetsk region seems in all respects, a buffer zone to Russia. It is difficult telling what would have happened if Ukraine had qualified for the tournament but clashes in the streets of Russia between fans of the two countries would not have been out of place and the police would have had a hectic time separating them, just as it is now separating politics from football. Or the fake murder of the journalist, Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, in Kiev from the distressing comedy the relationship between the two countries has become.
Still Russia had enough mischief left to attempt to kill ex-double spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England with a particularly poisonous nerve agent, Novichok. Although Russia has strenuously denied culpability, few people are convinced and the idiotic, amateurish assassination attempt has visited on Russia a fresh round of international sanctions. England matches in Russia will surely be focus of international attention in this tournament and that will hardly be because of footballing reasons. 
Under close scrutiny too will be the the fate of the two biggest superstars in world football: Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and the Argentine, Lionel Messi. If any of these two countries fail to win this tournament, then the chance might as well be gone that they will ever be regarded as real greats. Check out all the illustrious names in world football: Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, perhaps the only thing that separates t

hem into the exalted realm they belong is that they all won the World Cup. If Messi or Ronaldo fails to win it, they will be superstars, for a period or era, but never all time greats. We hope they will strive to reach above themselves, have a magical tournament and catapult themselves into that realm that the likes of Pele belong.  

Real Reason June 12 1993 Elections in Nigeria Were Annulled.

June 12 has been touted as a grand elite conspiracy. It is not: it was a conspiracy between two, and only two persons alone; General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sanni Abacha. The twosome had to draft in the greedy, thieving elite when it became clear the situation was getting more intractable than envisaged.
In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, Gen Muhammadu Buhari,  now Nigerian president, granted Tell magazine (or The News) an interview in which he categorically stated that the elections were not meant to work in the first place. It was a revelation that should have been obvious to everyone in the first place, the storied elections being a culmination of a macabre political transition process in which two political parties were registered by fiat by the military junta headed by Gen Ibrahim Babangida who loved to style himself the evil genius. It might sound a bit funny that political institutions in Africa were being modeled after the Republican and Democratic parties of the US but the joke turned a bit flat when Babangida started banning, unbanning and then banning again political aspirants and election dates got mired in endless postponements. It was a process meant to have one logical end but Nigerians, being the passionate and passive people they are, had to wait for Buhari to reveal it to them. When it was too late.
Yet, the interview, revealing as it was, was only a tip of the iceberg. A huge chunk of horror and distress lay underneath. Being a measured man, flames were already high and he was reluctant to pour in more petrol. Otherwise he would have revealed that when Babangida was plotting to overthrow him as military head of state, he swore to Gen Sanni Abacha, whose support was vital to the success of the coup, on the Koran, that he would hand over power to Abacha, nobody else but Abacha, anytime he relinquished power. Not that Abacha believed him, he knew Babangida liked swearing falsely, taking the name of Allah in vain. In fact, Buhari got wind of the plot against him and promptly invited Babangida, his Chief of Army Staff. 'Ibro, I heard that you were plotting a coup against me'. Babangida denied it outright and had a Koran brought in, on which he swore. So merely swearing on the Holy Book wasn't going to fool Abacha
Nobody can say with certainty how this power-transfer oath between these two men would have unraveled but two events were to later play hugely to Abacha's favor. The first was the first plot against Babangida, otherwise known as the Vatsa coup. The rebels had tried to draw in Col Alalade, an Abacha acolyte, into the plot. He refused but kept silent. Not until the conspirators set after him, fearing he would let the cat out of the bag. He was fatally wounded but did not succumb to his injuries immediately and it was on his death bed that he sent for Abacha and revealed everything to him. Abacha did not hesitate to save Babangida's skin.
Again in 1990, in a far more violent insurrection led by a young major, Gideon Orkar. As the gunfire of the mutiny died down, quelled by Abacha's troops, it dawned on Babangida that whether he was sincere in his oath to hand power over to Abacha or not, he had no choice now. Hence, the whole transition program was no more than a contraption, a rigmarole, to bring to fruition the fulfillment of a pact he swore to in 1984.
So by the time the presidential elections were held on June 12, 1993 and the results started tricking in, giving Chief M.K.O.Abiola an overwhelming lead against his rival, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, Babangida was practically a prisoner in Aso Rock, cornered like a rat in his own seat of power, held hostage by Abacha. He has made so much noise about officers and prominent northerners being against Abiola's presidency. It was all bunkum. Only one prominent northerner was against Abiola. That was Abacha. And he was the person that mattered, control of the army being completely in his hands. Babangida himself was finished militarily in the aftermath of the Orkar coup, having escaped from the mutineers in an old Peugeot 504 station wagon through a secret path out of Dodan Barracks, the then seat of power, dressed as a cook. It was the worst humiliation he would face in his life and in the wake of that, Abacha was the de facto military strongman, planting his boys and buddies in the strategic military formations. Therefore as the controversy over the polls raged, Babangida was a commander-in-chief unable to give orders to his own bodyguards. When Professor Omo Omoruyi, head of the Center for Democratic Studies visited him in Aso Rock during the crisis, Babangida intimated him of people watching all his movements and would not hesitate to kill him. He was right. Those invisible eyes were Abacha's men stationed everywhere in the seat of power, armed with the order to move against him if there was slightest inclination to do so. A move to announce the results and declare Abiola as president would have sent him instantly into his grave. In fact, Abacha would have finished him off instantly if not for the fact that it was Abacha who insisted in the first place the polls should go ahead, believing Tofa, a fellow northerner who hailed from the same Kano state as himself would win the election. It would then be easy for him to move against a fellow northerner. The average northerner does not really care about who governs them, civilian or military, as long as he is from the north. Spurious sample polls had fooled Abacha into believing that the voting patterns that brought Shehu Shagari's NPN into power in the defunct 2nd Republic would be reenacted. Northern votes would be delivered for Tofa en bloc and votes from the fractious south would be shared between the two candidates. The more discerning Babangida wasn't so sure and was for the postponement of the polls, favoring interim political arrangements, schemes in which he was well-versed. As he feared, Abiola won hands down, fair and square, taking the vital northern city of Kano, home of his opponent. There was no way Abacha was going to seize power from Abiola, northerners had been in power for a hefty 14 years, besides Abiola would have moved against him the moment he assumed power, Abacha being a famed coup plotter. Annulling the elections became the only option. An alternative was to announce the results of the elections and declare Abiola as president. And die. At the hands of Abacha. Sad Babangida lacked the courage to lay down his life for honor.

Abiola

Babangida

Abacha

The Act of the Deal.

The act involved in the deal is far more complex than the art involved in the deal. The later encapsulates a lot of rhetoric, fine, dandy language; the former a lot of sweat, high doses of difficult reality. For the North Korean leader, any sign of success in his imminent summit with President Donald Trump of the United States will do. In fact, holding the summit at all is a victorious step for him: he faces a mass of countrymen whose sense of expectations is disorganized, scattered, muted and bland at best. Unless he is genuinely interested in denuclearization, reconciliation with his southern kinsmen and economic reforms even if they are only Chinese-style market tweaking. Then he would certainly need more than showboating and publicity. And a bad haircut.
For Trump, home expectations are more coherent and, in fact, could approach a sort of inquisition. He might think that his sanctions are working and that Kim Jong-un is already feeling the heat and is under intense pressure to cut a deal. That might be true but the real person under pressure to cut a deal is Trump himself. His critics and enemies, which are legion, are quick to point out that ever since he came to power, his most visible inclination is to dismantle, or attempt to dismantle, those deals he met in place, cut by his predecessors, and the list is lengthening day by day: Iran, Obamacare, Paris climate and a host of trade agreements. And he has done pretty little to fill the huge, gaping void left by the abrogations. His attempt to install his own healthcare has lacked a bit of coherence and has been swiftly dealt resounding blows everywhere. Trump often refers to himself as a builder but many are wont to argue he has rather behaved like a bulldozer, a wrecking party, a demolition crew. And if his argument is that he needs to pull down in order to construct, it is safe to counter that folks have seen much of the demolition, perhaps too much, and little, perhaps too little, of any form of building or rebuilding.
If he listens to his enemies or critics at all, even Americans that elected him, then he will strive as best as he can to cut a deal with Kim. He has achieved pretty puny domestic agreements, let alone foreign ones, and he will try to throw some pepper into his doubters' eyes. Besides, he has been touted as a master of  one-to-one, man-to-man negotiations and he will want to gratify his boys in this regard. Trump is heading to Singapore with his sights set on a trophy he can hold aloft to his enemies and in the process, cut himself some slack.
Which could bring in the twin dangers of urge and haste: a surge of adrenaline that could engender some sloppiness and throw whatever he has to agree with Kim into unintended webs of complexity. It is US-North Korea summit but thickly enmeshed in the web of negotiations are other countries. For a start, Japan, not in any way buoyed by the recent G-7 summit in Canada, may feel its own security concerns are being poorly handled. From South Korea to Philippines, there is the widespread suspicion that Trump does not think much of ditching allies, leaving them flat and dry and frying in the high desert. The summit may therefore turn out to be far more complex than he has envisaged and if he has negotiating powers, now is the time to deploy them. It is a golden opportunity.

President Trump

Kim Jong-un

Buhari, Abiola, Obasanjo and June 12.

In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, with nationwide protests the most visible affairs on Nigerian streets and the nation on the brink of collapse, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo formed an organisation that had as its immediate and express mandate, the re-validation of the election results. It was almost a national coalition, credible too, with the present head of state, President Muhammadu Buhari, a prominent member. In its inaugural meeting in Otta Farms, home of Obasanjo, the group issued a communique which expressly condemned the cancellation of the polls and called for their re-validation and attendant declaration of Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president-elect of the country. Gen Buhari was to give fillip to this quest by granting an interview to Tell magazine in which he categorically stated, told all and sundry, that the elections were meant to fail right from the beginning. 'The elections were meant not meant to work, right from their inception' were his words. A copy of the interview should still be available in the relevant archives. In the same interview, Buhari debunked the insinuation that the north was against the candidature of Abiola, reminding everyone that Abiola won in Kano, the home state of his opponent, Alhaji Tofa, and challenging Gen. Babangida, the grim strongman who conducted and then annulled the elections to name just a couple of those in north opposed to Abiola. With the tension in the national air so thick and Babangida cornered in his Aso Rock Villa, government headquarters, like a rat that had overplayed its hands, Buhari's bold interview was a very dangerous thing to do. It was just like laying his life on the line and in no small measure did he alarm the powers that be.
By the time the meeting would reconvene in the same venue, Buhari got the rudest shock shock of his life. In the interval, Babangida had sold the idea of the Interim National Government to Obasanjo, a stop-gap arrangement to be headed by the industry titan, Chief Ernest Shonekan, A fellow Yoruba like Abiola and even from the same city of Abeokuta. Shonekan had little compunction in playing Judas and so was Obasanjo. In fact it dawned on everyone that Obasanjo's earlier moves to side with Abiola were nothing more than a mischief to harvest some of the national outpourings of anger and put himself a bit in the spotlight. He was a guy who liked swimming with the tide but not for long. A new current and he was away with a fresh shoal. Buhari was dumbfounded when Obasanjo started to digress from the commonly-stated objective of poll re-validation and realized he had been fooled into being drafted into a fool's errand.  In fact, Buhari stormed out of the meeting halfway and was never to attend it again. In fact, the meeting was never to hold again.
Hence it is on record that Buhari was the only leader to have taken a consistent stand on the whole June 12 saga, even endangering his life in his vociferous insistence, and his decision to honor Abiola should be seen only in this light. When he became the president of the country again and the clamor to honor Abiola got strident, Obasanjo told not a few aides that doing such was going to anger the north. He simply lacked the gravitas for boldness. Now a northerner has done it and everyone is happy, north and south. 

Buhari

Abiola

Babangida

G-7 Minus One Gentleman.

Disputes are not new to the G-7, a group of wealthy, industrialized and advanced nations that is made up of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Being an association of countries with diverse economic, social and political histories, disagreements were bound to be plenty and loud but the good news was that they always managed to resolve them, or at least paper over the cracks. Simply because it was supposed to be a club of gentlemen well-versed in boardroom antics of compromise and hand-shaking. National leaders who must carry with them the negotiating skills and dignity of their respective countries The not-so-good news now is that the good news seem to be finding it very difficult and awkward to fan out. All because one of them does not now care a hoot about being a gentleman, cracking up huge fissures in the organization.
It is well-known President Trump of the US has a predilection for prowling on the battlefield, not in the boardroom, despite his corporate background, and, not surprisingly, did not think it twice before firing hefty salvos at gentlemen supposed to be his comrades in the G-7, slapping huge tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico. The president argued the move would protect domestic producers of such commodities and help to boost national security. He conveniently forgot to add most of those home producers were struggling. And his colleagues in the EU, still smarting from his unilateral and very peremptory abrogation of the Iran deal which they helped to bring to the table with a great deal of effort and to which they were signatories, wasted no time in retaliating, announcing counter-tariffs on a wide range of goods from the US. In fact, the G-7 now looks like a madhouse, with a huge madcap of retaliations reminiscent of cold war battles. The schism has been widening since last year over conflicting positions on climate change, differences that came to a head with Trump's subsequent announcement to unilaterally withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. This year G-7 summit in Canada is even expected to generate less agreement. Meetings have been at best fractious with leaders speaking loudly and unreservedly about divisions and Trump's body language suggesting his forthcoming June 12 summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un in Singapore was of far greater interest to him than sitting down in Canada to resolve a host of differences with his G-7 allies. Which is as well, as he has long been suspected of being uncomfortable at negotiating with groups as opposed to one-on-one, man-to-man, mano-o-mano negotiations that the summit with Kim envisages. And he has just dropped a cat in the cage of pigeons by suggesting Russia should be readmitted into the body. He knows it is a suggestion that will raise the decibel of commotion a shade further, giving him ample cover to sneak out of Canada.
As for the G-7 itself, the convulsions extend beyond Trump and may take some time quietening. It is too exclusive a club, practically needing the Crown Jewels for admittance. Requirements will have to be lowered and there is no reason for countries like South Korea and China and India and indeed Russia not to come in. The body might corner 60% of global wealth now but it is a share that is not going to increase in the near future. Many nations are coming up and a rival body might not be out of place. It is instructive to note that as the summit in Canada taking place, China was hosting a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security block, inviting Russia to the event. The G-7 should look over its shoulders in its squabbles.
AND THE GIRL LIFTS IT.
Simona Halep has just won the French Open, beating Sloane Stephens in the process. It would be her first Grand Slam, having lost on all three previous occasions she would reach the final. Still she remained unbowed, just like Chris Evert who faced exactly an ordeal in her career,

Simona Halep

and has just confirmed the suspicion that despair and defeat are not always linked. Congrats, girl.

Trump

G-7

M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.

Why Zinade will not miss Real Madrid.

Few, very few, managers seem to be interested in the Real Madrid job, thrown wide open with the sudden, unsurprising surprise resignation of Zinedin Zidane. Sisyphean jobs, which the position has become, are hardly appealing. No sooner do you roll the huge, taxing stone of success to the top than it rolls down and you start all over again, heckled to heavens by a mean, taxing, vociferous crowd Charles Dickens himself would have found confounding. For a start, the manager is a workman whose tools and parts, horribly expensive tools and parts, had been assembled by the workstation and he is expected to perform miracles with what he has been provided. It might be that the parts may not fit in with the design and machine he has in mind, it may be that a part may turn out bigger than the whole, the disharmony does not really matter, he is expected to proceed pell-mell. After all only a lazy or uninventive workman complains about his tools. And if he sets about his task with zeal and determination and eventually wins a trophy, his situation even gets the more complicated. Another tournament, another competition is just around the corner and he must reprise the whole regimen of success again, as if he was in continual duel with competitors in eternal slumber or inertia: folks not facing the pressure of winning from their own supporters too. And if you think that is the end of the intricacy, you aint seen nothing yet.The definition of success itself, among the fan base, may turn out to be very maddening. For some, it may be Zidane winning the La Liga, or winning the Champions League three times in a row, or winning the World Club Cup. A combination of all that may still not assuage some sections of the crowd. Zidane won the eternal enmity of some fans who vowed never to forgive him for that chaffing 3-0 home defeat to Barcelona in the league. It does not really matter that Real Madrid loses to a team at the 19th position of the table, it may not matter that they have not won a trophy for three seasons, the cardinal sin might be losing to bitter rivals, read enemies, such as Barcelona or Athletico Madrid. At the Bernabeu, there are so many segments of the crowd to appease. The New York Giants, a team of comparative size in American or gridiron football have not been NFL champions since 2012 and no major upheaval have been recorded at the club as a result of this. Real Madrid have been champion of Spain and three times master of Europe in the same period and that is not appeasing many fans. It was just like appeasing Hitler: the more territories dignity you conceded, the more his appetite got whetted for greater capitulation. Heavens will not fall if the same New York Giants loses to city rivals, New York Jets, it will not fall too in Madrid if Real loses to Athletico, but the coach will certainly feel something very heinous falling on his head.
Zidane might have felt it was not possible for him to go beyond his unprecedented success at the club and so decided: not to throw in the towel, or quit when the ovation was loudest, but to simply shock the shockers. Many other great managers: Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benitez have left under less propitious circumstances and one could conveniently argue the club is getting its just desserts. More so that many big names being bandied about such as Pochettino and Loew do seem to be all that eager to be associated with the job. The logic is very simple. Many of them may just feel that replicating Zidane's  achievements at the club may be tasks too tough for health. And after that? Still being put against the ropes by an insatiable fan base.
The latest is ex-legend, Raul Gonzalez. Why not?  Doing another Zidane might be the only option left for the club? But even then many are already thinking Gonzalez might be too fragile for the job. Every manager, in any sporting club, works under one pressure or the other. The urge to win is what drives sports, especially football. Hence he is virtually working in a cauldron, the fire continually stoked by fans. In Real Madrid, it is an inferno that they stoke.
  

New York Giants

Raul Gonzalez

Zinedin Zidane