Around Abuja

WHILE SOME may decry the Commonwealth goings-on as irrelevant, the meetings may in fact be vital for the Nigerian economy. Word is that the Naira is on a spiral downward because Muslim pilgrims are buying up dollars ahead of the journey to Mecca. Also leading the currency’s fall are citizens going off to the good life in the North for Christmas.

With delegates changing dollars by the bag-full with the money-changers in the bureau-de-change-under-the-trees across the Sheraton, the Naira could just regain some of its strength. Who said the Commonwealth was just an outdated old colonial clap-trap? It may not be able to save Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe from himself, but it could perhaps just do the trick on the Nigerian economy. Spend, people, spend.

AND SPEAKING of Naira … anybody else noticed what seems to be a dire shortage of N50 notes? Whenever you’re owed change of N50, be it for a newspaper, change from coffee, or anything else, the cashier miraculously runs out of the smaller notes. Print, mint, print.

FOR SOME seasoned hacks not used to press and other conferences Nigerian style, one correspondent was taken aback when an event was started with not one prayer, but two! A Christian woman willed God to help her government and to help it see the path toward gender equality. A Muslim man prayed that politicians would mend their pesky, corrupt ways.

After years of preaching good governance and protesting against bad governance, NGO’s are now turning to a tried and tested recipe: God in any of his/her forms.

THE TERRA VIVA offices were stormed by three armed policemen yesterday afternoon. Not out to staunch the free flow of our information, they were in fact just looking for plain white paper. A Commonwealth Foundation staff member got such a fright at this infringement of the freedom of association, she took to her heels.

But the gauche policemen hadn’t banked on the Peoples Forum chair, Nkoyo Toyo, being in the room with her own lieutenant. Before the men in green could say a word, the two were on to them. “Show some civility!,” said one, shooing them out like school-boys. “Barging in here with guns – why can’t one come in,” said Toyo bundling them out and shutting the door. “Please don’t be annoyed,” said the lead policeman, looking very sheepish. How things have changed in Nigeria since the Abacha days!

It is not pleasant to look around and see menacing black police vans saying ‘Operation fire for fire’. No doubt that is how security forces work around the world. But to say it sounds too much like “an eye for an eye...” We are all like that, but can we have some hypocrisy here?