Developing Positive Self-Images In Black Children

CC™ VideoSpective

The Great Groundnut Pyramids of Kano: A Truly Nigerian Masterpiece

CC™ VideoSpective

Dan Senor’s execrable take on the growing numbers of babies and children being killed in Gaza

CC™ Introspective

By Deji Komolafe, Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Dan Senor, former Bush foreign policy advisor and co-author of a new book called "The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World”, recently joined Fareed Zakaria on the latter s long running Sunday morning show on CNN, Fareed Zakaria GPS.

Here is a transcript of their conversation regarding the ever growing death toll in the Israeli siege on Gaza, especially with regard to children. 

ZAKARIA: How long -- if this campaign goes on for another month or two, more and more civilian casualties, will -- you know, the memory of the Hamas attack fades and the reality of pictures of Palestinians dying increases, how long do you think he has? 

SENOR: It depends how he frames this. If President Biden frames this accurately that Hamas is responsible for Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties, that the reason Palestinians are being killed is because Hamas has chosen to wage its offensive military capabilities in hospitals, in U.N. run schools, near mosques.

[10:45:04]

Israel doesn't get to choose and the U.S. doesn't get to choose where Hamas fights. Hamas chooses where it wants to fight and is deliberately choosing it. It would be like -- the analogy I recommend President Biden give is it would be as though Russia located a missile launcher next to a Russian orphanage and was firing at Ukraine, and Ukraine responded and accidentally killed the -- they took out the Ukrainian orphanage.

The U.S. wouldn't blame Ukraine for that. It would obviously be Putin's decision. It was a strategic decision. And, I think, President Biden needs to start framing things in those terms and -- then I think the American public's tolerance for the images coming out of Gaza will be, you know, higher.

Dan Senor’s response is truly instructive as it shows an unfortunate reality regarding the subjective value of human life in this conflict. 

No amount of political engineering or public relations branding should ever compromise the humanity of ALL to call things exactly as they are. I am confident that the tolerance of the American people will never get higher for the gruesome images of babies, children and mothers being collectively slaughtered. 

Source: CNN

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CC™ VideoScope

The Forgotten Arab Slave Trade

CC™ VideoScope

Elijah McCoy - Genesis of The Real McCoy

CC™ VideoScope

Warren Buffett: All Successful People Have This One Rare Thing in Common

Warren Buffett

CC™ Digest - By Marcel Schwantes 

The difference between successful people and really successful people, according to the Oracle of Omaha..... 

Have you ever wondered how the most successful people achieve so much when they have the same number of hours in the day as the rest of us? To Warren Buffett, the 89-year-old chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the third richest person in the world, it's not a mystery at all.

In the words of the Oracle of Omaha, "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

Hang on, they say NO?

It feels counterintuitive, but give it some thought and Buffett's advice will ring true in virtually any context, whether it's investing, work, or your personal life.

So often we spread ourselves thin by saying "yes" constantly, and we end up taking on more commitments than we can handle. If you've been there, you know the outcome: increased stress and lower quality, whether it's of work, life, or just decisions in general.

Successful people say no to these 4 things 

The good news is that you can turn things around just by saying no. Does that mean it's easy? Of course not -- but it's worth the effort.

1. Exciting opportunities that aren't a good fit.

Always remember that devoting attention to something, whether it's an investment opportunity, a new project at work, or a new hobby, means taking time away from something else. This year forgo all those opportunities with potential in order to focus on the ones that are the most important.

2. 80-hour work weeks that cost you time with family.

Our culture has glorified the struggle of the entrepreneur and businessperson to the point where people feel like 60- or even 80-hour workweeks are something to brag about. Show me an 80-hour zealot and I'll show you a family or personal life that's been sorely neglected. Successful people choose balance over burnout.

3. Superficial networking events.

While some people slog through speed dating style networking events that go by in a blur of business cards, the smart ones spend their time nurturing a few truly valuable relationships. Successful people choose quality over quantity.

4. Going to incredible lengths to please people.

Spend too much time trying to please the people around you and you'll find you've neglected your own most basic needs. Successful people aren't self-absorbed, but they're also not going to cater to the people around them at the expense of their own lives and happiness.

Putting "no" into practice

As we start a new year (and a new decade!) it's the perfect time for you to step back and rethink your priorities. If you're still saying yes to the things above (and everything else that comes your way), you'll be amazed at what can happen when you finally start to say no. It won't be easy, and here's a quick exercise that proves it designed by Buffett himself.

Write down a list of your 25 most important goals. That may seem like a lot at first, but you'll hit that number quickly when you think about all the different directions you're trying to go in life. 

Next, circle the top five, and then (this is the painful but important part) cross out the rest.

No one -- not even the most productive person in the world -- has room for 25 goals. The really successful people are the ones who recognize that fact, accept their limited bandwidth, and choose to allocate their time to a few things that matter the most. Try emulating this practice and you'll be able to join their ranks.

Source: Inc.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Africa's cultural and literary icon

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

CC™ Opeditorial

By Yahaya Balogun

When a Muse is within my reach or vicinity, my literary antenna captures the precinct or perceives the Muse. When you have an insatiable quest for knowledge acquisition, the muse in talented and good people around infatuates your literary urge. I am an ardent adherent of the muse any day!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes us proud! She is one of our cultural icons and literary moguls in Africa! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University during the university’s 2019 commencement ceremony. 

She got this deserving award one day after delivering the Class Day address. 2019 marked the first time in Yale’s history that the Class Day speaker would receive an honorary degree in the same year. Chimamanda is one of the muses and Nigerian cultural ambassadors to the world. Chimamanda represents one of the best in us in Nigeria and Africa.

On November 16, 2019, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received the Bookcity Milano prize during the Bookcity Literary Festival in Milan, Italy. She also appeared in an onstage conversation. Adichie's beautiful story in the United States and around the globe is being told beautifully in different forms by the world. And these effervescent forms transcend a single story being told by some Nigerians. But the deafening silence on her achievements by Nigerians is also very obvious.

Nauseatingly, why do we not celebrate the good ones among us? Why do the brown-envelope Newspapers in Nigeria, and social media hogwash us with naughty and noxious things? Why don't people rejoice with our collective achievements domestically and on the world stage? These are damning questions begging for honest answers! Chimamanda Adichie is not the Gucci-COZA, ELISHA ABBO, SYNAGOGUE, HERDMEN or RUGA. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the representations of Nigeria's intellectual glory. Her achievements are cocooned in a meritocracy. Unfortunately, Adichie comes from the clime where mediocrity holds sway. Mediocrity always takes precedent over meritorious service in the homeland: the reason why Adichie wouldn't make any headlines in our brown-enveloped and hate-monger Newspapers in Nigeria. Nigerian passion for mediocrity is damning and alarming!

Meanwhile, Chimamanda Adichie is flourishing exceptionally in America's exceptionalism, abundant opportunities, and prosperity! The most glowing part of her story is her referential of Nigeria in all her expositions. She is a true patriot and amazon daughter of the soil of Nigeria. Adichie has a compendium knowledge and unique style in preserving Professor Chinua Achebe's literary encyclopedia. Some of our people stereotype Adichie for her beliefs in feminism and controversial academic presentations. Some Nigerian professors frown at her feminist postures, and uniquely essentials, but their inability to understand her multicultural intelligence and literary-know-how is bewildering and damning.

Interestingly, Chimamanda Ngozi's books have been translated into more than 30 different international languages. Her book Americanah made it to the list of the top best Barack Obama's 2018. Adichie is engagingly following the path of our cultural and literary giant---Prof. Chinua Achebe whose book "Things Fall Apart" has been translated to more than 50 international languages.

Chimamanda Adichie beautifies one of the human capital endowments we have known in Nigeria. It is unfathomable to see how unwilling Nigeria exports her best human resources (brains) to a willing world that utilizes them for its benefits. Nigeria is a reservoir of raw and untapped knowledge. The processed brains and other knowledgeable people currently residing in Nigeria are being abused and bastardized daily by the hostile environment. Jealousy, selfish motives and deliberate ignorance signal the hard times ahead of the country.

Consequently, Time actually heals! I hope time heals our people's self-hate, self-destruct and deliberate ignorance. There should be no burden in being critical about something or someone. But when you morph low to hate someone who is making progress because of his or her opinions on germane issues, you will need to make a critical visit to a psychologist for moral therapy.

While Chimamada's spiral self-made and talent are soaring high among the global academia, and in the international arena, her resenters are soaring deep in low-life of jealousy and confusion. Nigeria is a nation with abundant human capital. We are the number one exporter of human resources in the global world. Anytime I see Nigerians achieving a great feat in a competitive global community, my adrenaline-rush for our greatness always go beyond imagination and satisfaction.

Congratulations to Amazon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is one of our cultural icons and ambassador extraordinaire! Let's celebrate her brilliance, candor, confidence, grace, and resourcefulness. We are very pleased with Adichie, and also very proud of her great literary talent and achievements.

Amọtẹkun: Why it is here to stay and may end up being the defining issue on the continued corporate existence of Nigeria

Western Nigeria Security Network (Amọtẹkun)

CC™ Viewpoint - By Editor-in-Chief

Nigeria is a great nation. In the history of the world, there has never been such abundance of natural wealth, talent, ingenuity, resourcefulness and dogged resiliency assembled within the borders of one nation. 

Nigerians are an extremely resourceful, prideful and accomplished people but one thing, yes that one main thing, the key ingredient that serves as the penultimate fulcrum for moving a nation to the next level, has always been missing...... LEADERSHIP!

Leadership is and will always be key to the success of an organization or a people. True leadership is equipped with vision, empathy, compassion and a servant spirit. It is the glaring lack of leadership or the rudderless nature of it that has brought Nigerians, the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria in particular, to the realization that they must take their future into their own hands. The central government of President Muhammadu Buhari has essentially abdicated its responsibility under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to safeguard lives and property within the borders of the country. 

Enter then now Amọtẹkun (Cheetah or Panther), the Western Nigeria Security Network established by the six states in the South-west, for the purpose of self-defence and self-protection in the face of unending attacks by criminals, especially the terrorist Fulani Herdsmen responsible for ethnic cleansing across much of Western Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria and the Middle-Belt. This would not have been necessary if President Buhari and the Nigerian Service Chiefs (most of whom are from Buhari's Fulani ethnicity) had not consistently turned a blind eye to the persistent killings of innocent citizens mostly women and children by the rampaging Fulani Herdsmen; a group that has been designated as one of the five most deadly terrorist organizations in the world behind only Boko Haram and ISIS. 

The response to the establishment of Amọtẹkun has been as expected with the Attorney General of the Federation (of Fulani extraction) and various Northern leaders and organizations including Miyetti Allah (essentially the silent partners and benefactors of the Fulani Herdsmen) voicing their disapproval of the security unit. The hypocrisy of the Northern leaders can obviously be seen with the fact that they created the Hisbah and other community policing and paramilitary outfits to counter the trend of insecurity in their region, but then have a problem with a parallel existence of such outfits in other parts of the country. 

Perhaps, there is an inordinate reason for their objection since the law is actually on the side of the creation of such units with a view to having them also work in conjuction with the police and the Nigerian Armed Forces. It is no secret that the Nigerian Army under the current Chief of Army Staff, General Buratai has been found wanting when it comes to protecting and safeguarding the territorial integrity of Nigeria. 

The Nigerian Army has also been accused of sectional/ethnic bias. The high-handed treatment of IPOB and Shia group members in comparison to that of the rampaging Fulani Herdsmen is evidence that this current administration has a clandestine internal colonization agenda. 

The fact remains that the precedent of the implementation of full fledged Sharia by the Northern Nigeria State of Zamfara (with 11 other Northern States then following suit) gives credence and legal muscle to the creation of Amọtẹkun, as the latter is an extension of Yoruba Customary Law as entrenched in the Nigerian Constitution. Furthermore, Chapter 1 Section 4 [6,7(a)(c)] of the Nigerian Constitution states as follows:

(6) The legislative powers of a State of the Federation shall be vested in the House of Assembly of the State.
(7) The House of Assembly of a State shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the State or any part thereof with respect to the following matters, that is to say:-

(a) any matter not included in the Exclusive Legislative List set out in Part I of the Second Schedule to this Constitution.

(c) any other matter with respect to which it is empowered to make laws in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

Furthermore, Chapter 1 Section 5 [2 and 3] of the same Constitution vests executive and legislative powers to create laws and maintain order within States of the Nigerian Federation in the hands of the constituted bodies of that State in as much as they ensure a good faith synergy with the Nigerian Constitution.

I will defer further to the legal luminaries that abound in Western Nigeria and other parts of Nigeria, but on the surface of it, the Attorney-General of the Federation is playing with fire by putting his ethnic and personal feelings above the good of the nation. If Amọtẹkun is illegal, then Hisbah and every other community security outfit (including the Civilian Joint Task Force working with the military against Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria) is illegal as well and should be proscribed with immedate effect.

There are those in the Southwest who are supposedly waiting for the "approval" of Bola Tinubu on this matter. The truth is that much like Nnamdi Kanu's opinions do not matter here (as he has an inordinate agenda that Amọtẹkun is no part of), that of Tinubu should not, as the latter is prepared to mortgage the future of the Yoruba race for his own personal ambition. That is just who he is.

In concluding, let me state categorically and without equivocation that Amọtẹkun is here to stay and any attempt to outlaw the outift will be steeped in unconstitutional chicanery.

According to the Constitution, the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice. Furthermore, sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through the Constitution derives all its powers and authority. In so much as the Federal Government of Nigeria has abdicated its primary responsibility of ensuring the security and welfare of the people, that power then naturally devolves to the States to ensure that the security and welfare of the citizens within their domain is assured.

The blood of the women, children and men that have been shed in their thousands, with the heinous acquiescence of this current administration, will be on the heads of the Western Nigeria leaders that accede to the unconstitutional demands of an over-reaching central government with an inordinate agenda.

Nigeria’s government budgets for SUVs and president’s wife while millions struggle to make ends meet

CC™ Global News

By Chinedu Asadu

Nigeria’s lawmakers on Thursday approved the new government’s first supplemental budget, which includes huge allocations for SUVs and houses for the president, his wife and other public officials, sparking anger and criticism from citizens in one of the world’s poorest countries.

In the budget presented to lawmakers to supplement the country’s expenditures for 2023, the government had allocated about $38 million for the presidential air fleet, vehicles and for renovation of residential quarters for the office of the president, the vice-president and the president’s wife — even though her office is not recognized by the country’s constitution.

Before the budget was approved, and facing increasing criticism, lawmakers eliminated $6.1 million earlier budgeted for a “presidential yacht” and moved it to “student loans.”

A Nigerian presidential spokesman said President Bola Tinubu had not given approval for the yacht, whose allocation was provided under the Nigerian Navy’s budget.

The country’s National Assembly recently confirmed that more than 460 federal lawmakers will each get SUVs — reportedly worth more than $150,000 each — which, they said, would enable them to do their work better. Local media reported that the lawmakers have started receiving the vehicles.

“All of this speaks to the gross insensitivity of the Nigerian political class and the growing level of impunity we have in the country,” said Oluseun Onigbinde, who founded Nigerian fiscal transparency group BudgIT.

The allocations reminded many Nigerians of the economic inequality in a country where politicians earn huge salaries while essential workers like doctors and academics often go on strike to protest meager wages. 

Consultants, who are among the best-paid doctors in Nigeria, earn around $500 a month. After several strikes this year, civil servants got the government to raise their minimum wage to $67 a month, or four cents an hour.

Such steep expenditure on cars in a country where surging public debt is eating up much of the government’s dwindling revenues show its “lack of priorities” and raises questions about the lack of scrutiny in the government’s budget process and spending, said Kalu Aja, a Nigerian financial analyst.

Kingsley Ujam, a trader working at the popular Area 1 market in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja, said he struggles to feed his family and has lost hope in the government to provide for their needs.

“They (elected officials) are only there for their pockets,” said Ujam.

It is not the first time Nigerian officials are being accused of wasting public funds. 

That tradition must stop, beginning with the president “making sacrifices for the nation, especially as vulnerable people in the country are struggling to make ends meet,” said Hamzat Lawal, who leads the Connected Development group advocating for public accountability in Nigeria.

He added that Nigeria must strengthen anti-corruption measures and improve governance structures for the country to grow and for citizens to live a better life. “We must also make public offices less attractive so people do not believe it is an avenue to get rich,” he said.

While Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer, chronic corruption and government mismanagement have left the country heavily reliant on foreign loans and aid, while at least 60% of its citizens live in poverty.

Austerity measures introduced by the newly elected president have drastically cut incomes and caused more hardship for millions already struggling with record inflation.

AP NEWS