I have a lot of questions about this. First of all, why has @SecBlinken removed Nigeria from this list of religious freedom violators? That placement was one of @SecPompeo's last actions in office.
Second, why is the public link to this press release on the @StateDept website broken? Why did I have to go hunting through the newsroom section to find it, and why does the URL show that the press release has been deleted?
I really hope the Buhari junta has not been successfully lobbying the new administration in Washington DC to look the other way despite the detailed work in the @SilentNigeria report that got Nigeria placed on this list in the first place.
I really hope this is not the case.
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I have just received a message from Cote d'Ivoire about Itunu Babalola. She is still in prison in Abidjan where she has contracted a serious infection and apparently she is dying.
All those promises by NIDCOM, Abike Dabiri, OYSG etc - audio.
She's so far gone that the guy who reached out was only asking for her parents' contact details, presumably to inform them about their soon-to-be-dead daughter's condition.
Before slipping into unconsciousness, she showed him my name and he found me on Facebook.
One of the most profitable internet grifts I've observed since 2011 is when an African living in Africa starts courting diaspora African audiences who have read some Walter Rodney and imagine they've figured out why Africa is underdeveloped.
It's so predictable and so funny.
The diaspora people (usu. 1st & 2nd gens in Europe and North America) make the fundamental mistake of extrapolating the petty racisms they face daily, to global geopolitics and economics.
Tim in Accounts making a racist joke = The White Man oppressing Africans globally🌚
They need someone on the ground in Africa (which they are hopelessly disconnected from) to confirm this for them by telling them that there are French soldiers in Yaoundé oppressing Cameroon and that American corporations dump used electronics at a landfill site in Agbogbloshie.
I strongly believe that many of the weird societal values and low quality cultural behaviour present on the African continent, stem from Africa's historical lack of difficulty.
If Africa had European/American climate or Australian wildlife, our behaviour would be VERY different.
Our equatorial climate allowed for subsistence agriculture all year round, plus vast biodiversity and huge savannas made feeding yourself a slam dunk.
Unlike places where the ground freezes solid for 6 months a year, there was no need to plan ahead significantly or innovate.
Due to this relative ease of survival, behaviour that is detrimental to the group wasnt punished to the same extent as elsewhere.
Elsewhere, natural selection would rapidly delete you if your group couldn't work together. Here, you'd stroll a few km away and start a new village.
Just Femi Osibona, rich, educated, UK-resident, high end Nigerian developer who lived in Ikoyi, proudly admitting on national TV that he does not listen to architects and structural engineers when doing projects in Nigeria.
Same dude admitting proudly that he gamed the system to flout planning regulations and build an extra storey on a house he redeveloped in Stoke-Newington, London🌚
Well, after a career of stacking unapproved extra storeys on buildings and ignoring advice from structural engineers, here is where he died.
Under his own stack of concrete Lego.
The quintessential rich and educated Nigerian illiterate pauper.
I've always said that Nigeria has no elite. It only has a group of monied people who differ from your average okada rider only in financial status.
Femi Osibona KNEW that his building was structurally defective and yet he sold units to members of his own social circle.
He sold $1.2m a piece worth of nonsense to people whose kids go to school with his kids, and whose parties he attends.
Doesn't matter how much money a Nigerian rich person has. They have the exact same ethical compass and behaviour as your garden variety yahoo boy in Abeokuta.
Nigeria has no elite.
Just different types of poor people desperately struggling to escape from poverty by fucking each other over.
Not just a pointless country, but a hopelessly primitive society with almost no redeeming features.