Around
Abuja
FOR ONE little old lady, Queen Elizabeth II
can cause a lot of upset. Almost every main road in
Abuja’s closed for her majesty. “Queen who?”,
you could almost hear the young people (born after the
colonial years) asking as they angrily zoomed by yet
another closed boulevard. “And she and Phillip
are probably having a snooze,” remarked one miffed
young lady.
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. . .
AND, NEWS agencies report that Lillibet’s not venturing
far out on trip back to the old colonies. The BBC’s
set up a mock village for her Nigerian safari – Kano’s
been forsaken, ostensibly for time constraints, but probably
because she’s worried about the restive natives there.
. . .
NOW HOW’S this for irony: our team, on their way to
fetch their dog-tags from the media centre, ran into a particularly
officious brand of Nigerian traffic-cop turned God. “I
am not listening; not listening” he said as a delegation
got out to explain the concept of a free press, freedom of
movement, not to mention how desperately the ageing Commonwealth
needs all the media coverage it can get.
A few moments later, the same team was handed stickers saying
“Welcome to Abuja” by another man in uniform.
. . .
AND SOMEONE really should tell the army bosses
that the dictatorship’s over, boys. Time to put away
those guns! The CHOGM venue had more guns than visitors yesterday
and that’s before the heads of government even arrive.
. . .
“I’M NO Donald [Rumsfeld],”
Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon told NGO’s
yesterday when a delegate to the Peoples Forum asked him whether
the organisation might find the ability to shock and awe the
world out of poverty the way some of its members had managed
to shock and awe Iraq earlier this year.
. . .
HOT-CAREERS around Abuja during CHOGM: MTN phone-card sales;
money-changer; taxi-driver; protocol officer; hotelier; bottled
water-seller.
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