The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the seizure of result by the Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC) was a plot to manipulate and declare the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) winner of Saturday’s legislative re-run in Rivers State.
The PDP, in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh on Monday stated that it will not accept any result that doesn’t tally with the figures from the polling units.
The statement reads: “Nigerians and the international community can now see the desperation of the APC, which has now arm-twisted INEC in the unholy bid to alter the results of the elections and subvert the will of the people.
Read Also: INEC Reveals Why It Suspends Rivers Re-run
“We want the APC and INEC to mark the salient fact that the PDP, the people of Rivers state and indeed all Nigerians are already aware of the results from respective polling centers, wards and local government areas and will in no way whatsoever accept any final result that does not tally with the actual and already established figures from the polling units.
“We wish to remind the APC and INEC that Rivers state is a known stronghold of the PDP and the results from the elections cannot show otherwise. INEC should therefore understand that Nigerians are aware that in withholding the final results, they are ostensibly preparing grounds for chaos in the state.
“While we invite all to note the avoidable growing tension occasioned by the desperation of the APC to steal the mandate of the people, we caution INEC to extricate itself from the evil web and immediately release all the final results of the ballot as cast by the people and nothing more”.
Thanks for reading
I helped create Donald Trump the politician. Now I bitterly regret it Christopher R Barron
In early 2011, the gay conservative organization I co-founded, GOProud, was embroiled in a fight over our inclusion in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Forces of intolerance within the conservative movement were boycotting CPAC because they allowed our group to serve as a co-sponsor. After a bruising few months of fighting, we wanted to find a way to make CPAC not about the boycott, but about uniting and energizing the conservative movement. I decided to reach out to my friend and longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone to see if Trump would be interested in coming to CPAC as our guest and speaking to the gathering.
Just before he climbed into the waiting limo I yelled out to him ‘Mr Trump, please run for President’
Trump agreed and over the next couple weeks I worked with him and his team to arrange for his first ever speech at CPAC. I gave the New York Times the exclusive story of his surprise appearance and the reporter told me it was the first time the political section of the Times had actually covered Trump.
He arrived at the Wardman Park hotel in Washington DC in typical Trump fashion – he insisted on making a dramatic entrance through the front door (even though I had recommended he be whisked in through a private entrance). Trump was greeted like a rock star by thousands of grassroots conservatives and he delivered a barnburner of a speech in front of an overflow, standing room only crowd.
I walked with Trump out through the back of the hotel after his speech, assuring him that it had been a huge success. Just before he climbed into the waiting limo I yelled out to him: “Mr Trump, please run for president.”
Man, I had no idea this is where we would end up.
I loved the idea of Trump running for president. The idea of a charismatic, successful businessman who wouldn’t be a captive to special interests and who could fundamentally shake up the broken political status quo.
Trump, Clinton and more candidates take the stage at Aipac - as it happened
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I thought Trump could follow in Reagan’s footsteps. I was wrong.
Instead of emulating Reagan, Trump has played to the political cheap seats. Instead of offering Republicans a positive vision for the future, he chose to play on some of our most base fears.
Instead of building the conservative movement, Trump has torn it apart. Reagan attracted disaffected Democrats and independents, while at the same time keeping the core conservative base. Trump, on the other hand, has turned off movement conservatives while attracting the political equivalent of the Stars Wars cantina. He has allowed his campaign to play footsy with xenophobes, white nationalists and unreconstructed bigots.
I expected that, like any good businessman, Trump would first and foremost figure out what he didn’t understand and surround himself with some of the best and brightest policy minds in the country. Instead Trump has surrounded himself with yes men and sycophants.
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I expected that Trump, a lifelong New Yorker, a man whose own personal life was far from the family-values-crowd version of perfect, would run a campaign that would be libertarian on social issues. Instead he has actively sought the support of anti-gay zealots like Jerry Falwell Jr.
I expected that Trump would push the envelope, indeed I hoped he would break the rules. I did, however, believe that Trump would be guided by some sense of common decency. Instead his campaign has been more Andrew Dice Clay than Ronald Reagan – belittling POWs, women and the disabled.
It didn’t have to be like this. Trump has a natural charisma and God-given political talent that is rarely seen in today’s political world. I suspect that like any good businessman, Trump is merely selling what we, the political consumers, want to buy.
And there’s the rub. Being president isn’t just about selling us what we want to buy. Being president is often about selling us what we need to buy.
Thanks for reading.
INEC Reveals Why It Suspends Rivers Re-run
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has explained why it suspended the legislative re-run election in some part of Rivers State.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by Oluwole Osaze- Uzzi, Director, Voter Education and Publicity.
The statement reads: Pursuant to the Orders of the Court of Appeal, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conducted elections into various seats in both the National and the Rivers State House of Assembly yesterday, the 19th of March, 2016.
Rather unfortunately, some of these elections witnessed the disruption of the process, including the barricading of some of the INEC Local Government offices and Registration Area Centres (RACs) used for the distribution of Electoral materials which led to the late commencement of the exercise in some places and consequently, its smooth take off.
Of more serious concern was the level of threats, violence and intimidation of election officials and voters by well-armed thugs and miscreants allegedly acting on behalf of some politicians, which marred the elections in some areas.
There were reports of numerous attacks resulting in fatalities, kidnappings, ballot snatching, diversion of officials and materials, amongst others, which necessitated its suspension in 8 Local Government Areas.
Regrettably, such deviant behaviour has continued today. Several permanent and ad hoc staff engaged have been attacked, again resulting in fatalities, while some have been forcibly abducted and taken to presently unknown destinations.
Under such difficult circumstance, the Returning Officers were only able to collate and declare results in 1 Federal and 9 State constituencies where the disruption and malpractices were not so widespread.
Having reviewed the situation, the Commission is compelled to suspend all further action concerning the exercise in all the other constituencies in the State pending the receipt of a comprehensive report from its Field Officials and Monitors.
For the avoidance of doubt, it should be noted that the suspension does not affect the constituencies where the exercise has been completed and the results declared by the Returning Officers.
'Living in hell': mentally ill people in Indonesia chained and confined
Almost 40 years after Indonesia banned the practice of shackling people with mental health conditions, nearly 19,000 are still living in chains, or are locked up in institutions where they are vulnerable to abuse, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The study says that although pasung – shackling or confining people with psychosocial disabilities – was banned in 1977, enduring stigma and a chronic lack of mental health care and community support services mean its use remains widespread.
People subjected to pasung can have their ankles bound with chains or wooden stocks for hours, days, months or even years. They are often kept outside, naked and unable to wash.
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Recent figures from the Indonesian government suggest that more than 57,000 people in Indonesia have endured pasung at least once, while an estimated 18,800 are currently chained or locked up.
In 2014, 1,274 cases of pasung were reported across 21 provinces and people were rescued in 93% of cases. There is, however, no data on how many of those were successfully rehabilitated and how many were later returned to their shackles.
HRW researchers spoke to one man who kept his daughter shackled for 15 years because he feared she had been bewitched and didn’t have the money to take her to a doctor.
“She became destructive, dug up other people’s crops and ate raw corn from the plant. I was ashamed and scared she’d do it again,” he said.
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“First I tied her wrist and ankles together with cables but she managed to untie herself so I decided to lock her up because the neighbours were scared.”
Although he released his daughter two months after the visit from HRW, he told the group that, for a decade and a half, she had been left to defecate in her room, which was never cleaned. She was not bathed in all that time, and was neither clothed nor visited. Her only contact with the outside world, beyond the meals pushed twice daily through a hole in the wall, came when local children pelted her with stones.
“Shackling people with mental health conditions is illegal in Indonesia, yet it remains a widespread and brutal practice,” said Kriti Sharma, disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report.
“People spend years locked up in chains, wooden stocks, or goat sheds because families don’t know what else to do and the government doesn’t do a good job of offering humane alternatives.”
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The report recognises that the government has taken action to address the practice through initiatives such as the “Indonesia free from pasung” programme, which aims to eradicate the practice by 2019. But it says progress is being stymied by the decentralised nature of the governmental system and by inadequate resources and infrastructure.
The study says that Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago country of 250 million people, has only about 800 psychiatrists and 48 mental hospitals, more than half of which are in just four of its 34 provinces.
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Noting that the ministry of health’s budget is 1.5% of Indonesia’s central government expenditure for 2015, the report describes mental health spending as negligible, adding that the latest data shows nearly 90% of those who may need to access mental health services are unable to do so.
Those locked up in institutions, meanwhile, can fall prey to physical and sexual violence, or find themselves subjected to involuntary treatments such as electroshock therapy, seclusion, restraint and forced contraception.
HRW found some of the facilities were overcrowded, while personal hygiene levels in many were “atrocious”, with people “routinely forced to sleep, eat, urinate and defecate in the same place”.
The organisation also documented the use of “magical” herbs, Qur’anic recitation and electroconvulsive therapy without anaesthesia and without consent. Cases of physical and sexual violence were noted by researchers: in seven of the institutions visited, male staff were either responsible for the women’s section or were able to come and go as they pleased, raising the risk of sexual violence.
The report calls on the Indonesian government to make mental health a priority by putting an end to pasung, ordering immediate inspections of state and private institutions, and instigating regular monitoring.
Other recommendations include amending the 2014 Mental Health Act to give people with psychosocial disabilities the same rights enjoyed by their fellow citizens, training mental health workers, and developing community-based services.
Equally important, however, is listening to the voices of those affected by mental illnesses, consulting them over their treatment, and seeking their informed consent.
“The thought that someone has been living in their own excrement and urine for 15 years in a locked room, isolated and not given any care whatsoever, is just horrifying,” said Sharma. “So many people told me, ‘This is like living in hell’. It really is.”
Thanks for reading.
Full Text Of President Buhari’s Speech At National Economic Council Retreat
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT
MUHAMMADU BUHARI
AT THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL RETREAT ON THE ECONOMY HELD AT THE STATE HOUSE CONFERENCE CENTRE, PRESIDENTIAL VILLA, ABUJA,
MONDAY 21ST, MARCH 2016
I am delighted to have the opportunity to address this distinguished and all-important retreat on the Nigerian economy. The purpose of this retreat as outlined in the Retreat Concept Notes is to generate immediate, medium and long-term viable policy solutions to the economic challenges facing us at both the Federal and State levels.
2. From information at my disposal, if we aggregate public views from the grassroots, city dwellers, the economic managers, consumer groups, the Unions and other stakeholders of the economy, there is near unanimity about the ills of our economy. But naturally, there are divergent views about solutions.
3. I am going to throw at this gathering some random policy options filtered from across the spectrum of our stakeholders on four (4) selected sectors of our economy.
These are:
Ø Agriculture
Ø Power
Ø Manufacturing
Ø Housing
4. I have not touched Education, Science and Technology pointedly because these related subjects require a whole retreat by themselves.
5. Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen, these suggestions I am putting forward to you are by no means directives but a contribution to your discourse.
AGRICULTURE
6. On Agriculture today, both the peasant and the mechanized farmers agree with the general public that food production and self-sufficiency require urgent government action. For too long government policies on agriculture have been half-hearted, suffering from inconsistencies and discontinuities.
Yet our real wealth is in farming, livestock, hatcheries, fishery, horticulture and forestry.
7. From the information available to me the issues worrying the public today are:
· Rising food prices, such as maize, corn, rice and gari.
· Lack of visible impact of government presence on agriculture.
· Lack of agricultural inputs at affordable prices. Cost of fertilizers, pesticide and labour compound the problems of farming. Extension services are virtually absent in several states.
· Imports of subsidized food products such as rice and poultry discourage the growth of domestic agriculture.
· Wastage of locally grown foods, notably fruit and vegetables which go bad due to lack of even moderate scale agro-processing factories and lack of feeder roads.
8. These problems I have enumerated are by no means exhaustive and some of the solutions I am putting forward are not necessarily the final word on our agricultural reform objectives:
· First, we need to carry the public with us for new initiatives. Accordingly the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the States should convene early meetings of stakeholders and identify issues with a view to addressing them.
· Inform the public in all print and electronic media on government efforts to increase local food production to dampen escalating food prices.
· Banks should be leaned upon to substantially increase their lending to the agricultural sector. Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should bear part of the risk of such loans as a matter of national policy.
· States should increase their financial support through community groups. The appropriate approach should be through leaders of community groups such as farmers cooperatives.
· Provision of feeder roads by state governments to enable more effective evacuation of produce to markets and processing factories.
9. When I was a schoolboy in the 1950’s the country produced one million tons of groundnuts in two successive years. The country’s main foreign exchange earners were groundnut, cotton, cocoa, palm kernel, rubber and all agro/forest resources.
10. Regional Banks and Development Corporations in all the three regions were financed from farm surpluses. In other words, our capital formation rode on the backs of our farmers. Why was farming so successful 60 years ago? The answers are simple:
· Access to small scale credits
· Inputs (fertilizers, herbicides etc)
· Extension services.
11. Now we have better tools, better agricultural science and technology, and greater ability to process. With determination we can succeed.
POWER
12. Nigerians’ favourite talking point and butt of jokes is the power situation in our country. But, ladies and gentlemen, it is no longer a laughing matter. We must and by the grace of God we will put things right. In the three years left for this administration we have given ourselves the target of ten thousand megawatts distributable power. In 2016 alone, we intend to add two thousand megawatts to the national grid.
13. This sector has been privatized but has yet to show any improvement in the quality of service. Common public complaints are:
• Constant power cuts destroying economic activity and affecting quality of life.
• High electricity bills despite power cuts.
• Low supply of gas to power plants due to vandalization by terrorists.
• Obsolete power distribution equipment such as transformers.
• Power fluctuations, which damage manufacturing equipment and household appliances.
• Low voltage which cannot run industrial machinery.
14. These are some of the problems, which defied successive governments. In our determination to CHANGE we must and will, insha Allah, put a stop to power shortages. Key points to look at here are:
· Privatization. We are facing the classic dilemma of privatization: Public interest Vs Profit Motive. Having started, we must complete the process. But National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the regulatory authority, has a vital job to ensure consumers get value for money and over-all public interest is safe-guarded.
· Government to fast-track completion of pipelines from Gas points to power stations and provide more security to protect gas and oil pipelines.
· Power companies should be encouraged to replace obsolete equipment and improve the quality of service and technicians.
MANUFACTURING
15. It grieves me that so many manufacturing industries in the country today are groaning and frustrated because of lack of foreign exchange to import raw materials and spare parts.
Painful though this is, I believe it is a temporary phase which we shall try to overcome but there are deeper, more structural problems bedeviling local industries which this Retreat should identify short and long-term answers to. Chief among these problems are:
· Inadequate infrastructure:
Power
Roads
Security
leading to increase in costs of making Made-in Nigeria goods pricier than imports
· High Cost of Borrowing Money:
Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has been hammering on the fact that high lending rates make manufacturing unviable and unprofitable.
· Lack of Long Term Funding:
The Nigerian Capital Market has not completely recovered from the 2008 worldwide crisis. Banks’ funding sources are short-term in nature due to sources of the liabilities.
· Under-developed Science and Technology Research: As with Agriculture, Nigeria’s industries are in the main outmoded and industrial practices far behind those in advanced countries.
· Unions:
We need to protect our workers from exploitation, but unions must cooperate with entrepreneurs to substantially improve productivity and quality of products if we are to move forward.
· Smuggling:
Need I say more?
16. Recommended Actions on industries are:
· The infrastructure Development Fund should be fast-tracked to unlock resources so that infrastructural deficiencies can be addressed.
· There should be more fiscal incentives for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which prove themselves capable of manufacturing quality products good enough for export.
· Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should create more incentives and ease credit terms for lending to manufacturers.
· A fresh campaign to patronize Made-in-Nigeria goods should be launched. Example: all uniforms in government-sponsored institutions should be sourced from local factories.
HOUSING
17. Some estimates put Nigeria’s housing deficit at about sixteen million units. In our successful campaign to win the general elections last year our party, the APC, promised to build a million housing units a year. This will turn out to be a very tall order unless:
· The Federal Government builds two hundred and fifty thousand units. The 22 APC States together manage another two hundred and fifty thousand units.
· We invite foreign investors together with local domiciled big construction companies to enter into commercial housing building to pick up the rest.
· The most frequent public concerns brought to my attention are three-pronged:
1. Severe shortage of housing
2. High rents
3. Unaffordable prices for prospective buyers especially middle and low-income earners.
· In addition, red tape, corruption and plain public service inefficiency lead to long delays in obtaining ownership of title documents.
· Again, there are no long term funding sources for mortgage purposes.
18. These hurdles are by no means easy to scale, but we must find solutions to the housing deficit. This Retreat might start by looking at the laws.
· Laws
The relevant laws should be reviewed to make the process of acquiring statutory right of occupancy shorter, less cumbersome and less costly. Court procedures for mortgages cases should make enforcement more efficient. Ministries of Works and Housing should upgrade their computerization of title registration system for greater efficiency.
· Mortgage Institutions. Achieving affordable housing for all Nigerians will require the development of strong and enduring mortgage institutions with transparent processes and procedures.
· Mortgage Re-financing Company. This institution when fully operational should ensure adequate support for mortgage financing.
HEALTHCARE
19. Last of the four areas that time will allow me to say a few words, but by no means the least, is healthcare. In my inauguration speech last May, I remarked that the whole field of Medicare in our country needed government attention. Dirty hospitals! (Few sights are more upsetting than a dirty hospital), inadequate equipment, poorly trained nursing staff, overcrowding. The litany of shortcomings is almost endless.
20. Sound health system is part of the prerequisites for economic development. Nigerians travel abroad, spending an estimated One Billion US Dollars annually to get medical treatment. Despite huge oil revenues the nation’s health sector remains undeveloped.
21. In attacking the challenges of this sector we could start with
· More funding for health centres to improve service delivery. World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) could be persuaded to increase their assistance.
· Strengthening public health propaganda in primary prevention:
Ø Environmental sanitation
Ø Stop smoking
Ø Better dieting
Ø Exercising
And secondary prevention:
Screening and early diagnosis of diseases
· NAFDAC to intensify efforts on reducing or stopping circulation of fake drugs in Nigeria.
· Ministry of Health should work closely with the Nigerian Medical Association to ensure that unqualified people are not allowed to practice.
22. Finally I urge participants to learn from the array of experts and resource persons and learn from the shared experiences and perspectives to understand how other countries have transformed their economies and livelihoods of their people for the better. It is also the government’s expectation that this Retreat will highlight the respective roles and responsibilities of each tier of government in adopting and implementing agreed policy initiatives.
23. I hope this Retreat will come up with practical, viable solutions and recommendations as we chart a course for our nation in this turbulent domestic and international economic environment.
Thanks for reading.
Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without trace
This is the story of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.
The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.
Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.
Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.
Barely any trace of these walls exist today.
View along a street in the royal quarter of Benin City, from 1897.
View along a street in the royal quarter of Benin City, 1897. Photograph: The British Museum/Trustees of the British Museum
Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.
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When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.
In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”
In contrast, London at the same time is described by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the quick blade or picking a pocket”.
African fractals
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.
As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”
A plaque showing an entrance to the palace of the Oba of Benin.
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A plaque showing an entrance to the palace of the Oba of Benin. Photograph: Alamy
At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets were turf on which animals fed.
“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”
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Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.
Family houses were divided into three sections: the central part was the husband’s quarters, looking towards the road; to the left the wives’ quarters (oderie), and to the right the young men’s quarters (yekogbe).
Daily street life in Benin City might have consisted of large crowds going though even larger streets, with people colourfully dressed – some in white, others in yellow, blue or green – and the city captains acting as judges to resolve lawsuits, moderating debates in the numerous galleries, and arbitrating petty conflicts in the markets.
The early foreign explorers’ descriptions of Benin City portrayed it as a place free of crime and hunger, with large streets and houses kept clean; a city filled with courteous, honest people, and run by a centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy.
What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city
The city was split into 11 divisions, each a smaller replication of the king’s court, comprising a sprawling series of compounds containing accommodation, workshops and public buildings – interconnected by innumerable doors and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that made Benin famous. The city was literally covered in it.
The exterior walls of the courts and compounds were decorated with horizontal ridge designs (agben) and clay carvings portraying animals, warriors and other symbols of power – the carvings would create contrasting patterns in the strong sunlight. Natural objects (pebbles or pieces of mica) were also pressed into the wet clay, while in the palaces, pillars were covered with bronze plaques illustrating the victories and deeds of former kings and nobles.
At the height of its greatness in the 12th century – well before the start of the European Renaissance – the kings and nobles of Benin City patronised craftsmen and lavished them with gifts and wealth, in return for their depiction of the kings’ and dignitaries’ great exploits in intricate bronze sculptures.
“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan, formerly of the Berlin Ethnological Museum. “Benvenuto Celini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him. Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”
A drawing of Benin City made by a British officer in 1897.
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A drawing of Benin City made by a British officer in 1897. Illustration: akg-images
What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city. Immediately European nations saw the opportunity to develop trade with the wealthy kingdom, importing ivory, palm oil and pepper – and exporting guns. At the beginning of the 16th century, word quickly spread around Europe about the beautiful African city, and new visitors flocked in from all parts of Europe, with ever glowing testimonies, recorded in numerous voyage notes and illustrations.
Lost world
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Now, however, the great Benin City is lost to history. Its decline began in the 15th century, sparked by internal conflicts linked to the increasing European intrusion and slavery trade at the borders of the Benin empire.
Then in 1897, the city was destroyed by British soldiers – looted, blown up and burnt to the ground. My great grandparents were among the many who fled following the sacking of the city; they were members of the elite corps of the king’s doctors.
Nowadays, while a modern Benin City has risen on the same plain, the ruins of its former, grander namesake are not mentioned in any tourist guidebook to the area. They have not been preserved, nor has a miniature city or touristic replica been made to keep alive the memory of this great ancient city.
A house composed of a courtyard in Obasagbon, known as Chief Enogie Aikoriogie’s house – probably built in the second half of the 19th century – is considered the only vestige that survives from Benin City. The house possesses features that match the horizontally fluted walls, pillars, central impluvium and carved decorations observed in the architecture of ancient Benin.
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Curious tourists visiting Edo state in Nigeria are often shown places that might once have been part of the ancient city – but its walls and moats are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps a section of the great city wall, one of the world’s largest man-made monuments, now lies bruised and battered, neglected and forgotten in the Nigerian bush.
A discontented Nigerian puts it this way: “Imagine if this monument was in England, USA, Germany, Canada or India? It would be the most visited place on earth, and a tourist mecca for millions of the world’s people. A money-spinner worth countless billions in annual tourist revenue.”
Instead, if you wish to get a glimpse into the glorious past of the ancient Benin kingdom – and a better understanding of this groundbreaking city – you are better off visiting the Benin Bronze Sculptures section of the British Museum in central London. Thanks for reading.
Mourinho has signed pre-contract agreement with Manchester United – report
José Mourinho has reportedly signed a pre-contract agreement to join Manchester United, with the former Chelsea manager due up to £15m in compensation if he is not appointed by the club by 1 June.
With Pep Guardiola on his way all Manchester City need is new players
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The Portuguese has been out of work since his sacking by Chelsea in December but has been persistently linked with Louis van Gaal’s job at Manchester United. Last week, Mourinho said he wants to join a new club in the summer after “reading and listening to a few lies” about his future.
According to the Spanish newspaper El País on Saturday night, a source from his agent Jorge Mendes’s company Gestifute has now confirmed the 53-year-old has already signed an agreement to move to Old Trafford last month, although United still reserve the right to change their mind.
“If United do not sign the final contract [with Mourinho] before 1 May, they must pay £5m; if by 1 June he’s still not signed, they shall pay another £10m,” read the report. “May is the key, because it’s the month in which the vast majority of the signings of players are closed and the plans formed.”.
El País claim that the clause has been included because senior figures at Old Trafford, including Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Charlton, are not entirely convinced that Mourinho is the right man to succeed Louis van Gaal. The report also states that Real Madrid are also interested in hiring him to replace Zinedine Zidane but Mourinho would prefer to move to United. Thanks for reading
