Blog

later (3)

IBB "bribes" Journalists

Posted by Paul "EFCC" Hawk Adams on August 31, 2010 at 11:25pm

Five months ago, a friend of mine, who edits a national daily, sent me a text message agreeing substantially with my column, ‘The Punch and the rest of us’, except the generalised conclusion that “all (journalists) have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the profession”. There are still some journalists, he submits, who toe the narrow path of integrity. Of course I knew where he was coming from, but I also knew the context in which I had made that statement.

I revisit that statement in light of the stories spewing out of the political beat, specifically on the race for the 2011 presidential elections and how it affects the integrity of news.

As part of the effort to sell his candidature for the presidency, former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) invited as many as 40 journalists to his Minna home on August 14 for an interview. I have heard questions asked about why he should invite journalists to his home instead of a public place if he didn’t have an ulterior motive, and why he should offer monetary gifts to the journalists in the name of paying for their transportation.

One news medium, which has championed this opposition in the open, is the online agency, Sahara Reporters. According to SR each of the journalists received N10 million for heeding Babangida’s call on his presidential ambition. That is N400 million just for one night’s interview from an aspirant yet to win his party’s nomination if it were true. But it was not. When some of the journalists complained about the fictional sum, SR changed the story on August 19, saying it was just “a paltry N250, 000 each”. Rather than admit its initial error SR simply said, “our accountants have told us that going by the number of 40 journalists in attendance, we are still around the same ballpark of N10 million”. So much for credible reporting!

Three days later, SR followed up with ‘IBB and his Rogue Journalists’, accusing the journalists of roguery and professional misconduct; roguery, because they collected money from two sources—their employers who presumably authorised and funded the trip and their news source, IBB; misconduct because it is unethical for them to demand/receive gratification from news sources for their services.

And on August 23 in ‘IBB Nocturnal Press Parley: Punch fires Editorial board Chairman’, SR stayed on top of the story by reporting that Adebolu Arowolo, editorial board chairman of the Punch, had lost his job for going on that trip without his management’s approval..

Read more…

Movie: Blood & Oil Naomi Harris Stars 28days later, Ninja Assasin, Pirates of the Caribean BBC Drama on the Niger Delta Crisis

Posted by NollywoodMohits on April 5, 2010 at 6:04am

‘Blood And Oil’: BBC Drama on the Niger Delta Crisis


The Niger Delta crisis is coming to an audience of millions as BBC 2 screen the long anticipated and award-winning drama, ‘Blood and Oil’ on prime time television..

Guy Hibbert’s tense thriller (starring Naomi Harris (28 Days Later), Johdi May (Defiance) Patterson Joseph and David Oyelowo) follows two women as they investigate the circumstances that led to the deaths of four hostage oil workers and their militant captors in the oil-rich Niger Delta..

A fictitious oil company, ‘Krielson International’, stands in as a thinly veiled corporate giant, whose corrupt deals and failed development projects infuriate local communities.

Without giving too much away, the oil company, Krielson, and the Nigerian military are profiting hugely from illegal practice of oil bunkering, at the expense of local communities and ultimately risking the lives of their own workers.

It may sound like a thriller plotline, but it bears a striking resemblance to real life events in the Delta, and in particular one of the darker chapters of former President Obasanjo’s repressive rule of Nigeria.

As scholar and author Ike Okonta writes:

http://remembersarowiwa.com/wp-content/themes/hybrid/images/quotes.gif); text-decoration: none; font-style: italic; quotes: none; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); background-position: 0px 0px;">

20th August 2006. On that afternoon, soldiers of the Joint Task Force, a contingent of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air Force deployed by the government to enforce its authority on the restive oil-bearing Niger Delta, ambushed fifteen members of the MEND militia in the creeks of western delta and murdered them. The dead men had gone to negotiate the release of a Shell Oil worker kidnapped by youth in Letugbene, a neighbouring community. The Shell staff also died in the massacre.

Spokesmen of the Nigerian government had sought to represent the fifteen militias as ‘irresponsible hostage-takers’ in the wake of the slaughter. But those massed at the hospital that morning spoke only of heroes who had fallen in the battle for ‘Ijaw liberation.’

Okonta interviewed Oboko Bello, an Ijaw civil-society leader who traced a clear chain of command between Shell and the soldiers who murdered the boatful of MEND insurgents and Shell workers:

http://remembersarowiwa.com/wp-content/themes/hybrid/images/quotes.gif); text-decoration: none; font-style: italic; quotes: none; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); background-position: 0px 0px;">

“Shell was in direct communication with the commanders of the Joint Task Force, even up to the time our young men set out in their boats to rescue the Shell worker in Letugbene. These young men were not hostage takers. They were Ijaw patriots, selflessly working to repair the damaged peace between the oil company and our people. For this they were ambushed and murdered by soldiers in the service of Shell.”

Then, as now, the Delta is betrayed by broken promises and military violence. With no end in sight to the devastation of the ecosystem and the ongoing exploitation of Nigeria’s oil, it is unlikely that the wider drama of the Delta’s will end as upliftingly as Hibbert’s movie.

Read more…

31 years later US Movie-maker Polanski arrested

Posted by NollywoodMohits on September 27, 2009 at 7:24pm
WHAT A LEGAL AND POLICE SYSTEM CAN THIS HAPPEN TO JAMES OHANEFE IBORI ?Film director Roman Polanski, whose turbulent life has come close to resembling the violent, perverse world of his movies, was arrested in Switzerland on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old.Polanski, 76, had been due to receive a prize for his life's work at the Zurich Film Festival on Sunday evening, opening a retrospective of his film career but was arrested on arrival at Zurich airport on Saturday night.Calling Polanski, who won Best Director Oscar for "The Pianist" in 2003, one of the greatest film directors of our time, the festival directors said they had "received this news with great consternation and shock."Polanski's Los Angeles agent and the U.S. embassy in Zurich were not immediately available for comment.Zurich Cantonal Police spokesman Stefan Oberlin said Polanski's arrest had been carried out on instructions from the Federal Justice Department in Berne.Polanski was arrested in the United States in the late 1970s and charged with giving drugs and alcohol to a 13-year-old girl and having unlawful sex with her at a photographic shoot at Jack Nicholson's Hollywood home.Maintaining the girl was sexually experienced and had consented, Polanski spent 42 days in prison undergoing psychiatric tests but fled the country before being sentenced.Considered by U.S. authorities as a fugitive from justice, Polanski, whose films include "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," has lived in France avoiding countries that have extradition treaties with the United States.Turbulent lifeFew lives have turned into the macabre public spectacle that Polanski's has, first after the gruesome murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate in 1969 by the Charles Manson murder gang, and again eight years later when he was arrested for the statutory rape of the 13-year-old girl.But few directors have laid bare their inner fantasies and fears like Polanski in films such as "Repulsion," "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant" -- films of disturbing brutality shot through with voyeurism and dark humour.From early childhood when he escaped the Nazi holocaust in Poland, Polanski's life has appeared, like his movies, to hover precariously on the brink of tragedy.Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.When the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in 1940, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber.His first full-length feature film after graduation, "Knife in the Water," won awards and, most important for Polanski, was his ticket to the West.As his reputation grew -- first with "Repulsion," his study of a woman terrified by sex who becomes a psychotic murderer, and then with the absurdist masterpiece "Cul de Sac" -- Polanski developed a taste for the high life and beautiful women.In 1974 Polanski had another major Hollywood success with "Chinatown," a stylish thriller starring Nicholson, but his private life stayed unsettled as he drifted between Paris, Rome and Los Angeles and embarked on numerous short-lived affairs.In 2003, he won the Oscar for "The Pianist.""I am widely regarded, I know, as an evil, profligate dwarf," Polanski wrote in his autobiography. "My friends -- and the women in my life -- know better."
Read more…

Latest Blog Posts

Most Popular Blog Posts

Blog Topics by Tags

  • in (506)
  • to (479)
  • of (339)
  • ! (213)
  • as (166)
  • is (157)
  • a (156)

Monthly Archives