Exposed! Nigeria’s Deputy House Speaker In N1.1bn Water Contract Scam (II) |RN

Tolerance and bridges.

The value of tolerance is fundamental to human co-existence.Tolerance builds bridges that connect people,cultures and hearts

It is this fundamental value of human nature in particular that has drawn people from other parts of the world to Dubai despite it been a Muslim country.Tolerance being an essential element of the Emirate’s development and prosperity,is built on the notion that tolerance and bridges are the essence of human connectivity for development,not the silos of religion and ethnicity which disconnects.

That the City of Dubai is the cynosure of the United Arab Emirates,UAE, attests to the open mindedness of its leadership and people which has been responsible for the phenomenal growth and development in the last three to four decades.

What lessons can other countries such as Nigeria with acute diversity, lies in the leadership  imbibing the value tolerance among its many diverse nations;building bridges of understanding across divides instead of digging  silos of disconnection among people and faiths.

The Tolerance Bridge in Dubai city epitomizes this philosophy in that it connects one part of the city with another in commemoration of the “International Day of Tolerance”.The institution of the United Nations after world war two was in furtherance of the principle of tolerance of one another between nations and peoples,living in harmony of shared vision and humanity

Unfortunately,mankind has fallen far short of this, of  all most noble values of human existence with more strife,wars,displacements of human beings from their abodes driven by hate and bigotry.

INTERVIEW: How investigation into Alison-Madueke’s corruption killed NEXT newspaper – Dele Olojede – Premium Times Nigeria

The journalist also proposes that Sumo wrestling tactics can be adopted to transform Nigeria.

Source: INTERVIEW: How investigation into Alison-Madueke’s corruption killed NEXT newspaper – Dele Olojede – Premium Times Nigeria

Leading across cultures: bringing out the best of all worlds | London Business School

Working effectively across cultures requires different skills for leaders and teams. Randall S Peterson shares intercultural advice

Source: Leading across cultures: bringing out the best of all worlds | London Business School

Lebanese Village, Miziara Built Opulent Mansions From Wealth Made In Nigeria

Profile of the global workforce: present and future – Future HR Trends

As the workforce becomes more global—a product of the economic, political, social and technological forces described in the previous section—the dynamics underpinning human capital have been altered extensively. Today, the profile of the average global worker entails a myriad of characteristics: An older, more gender and ethnically diverse workforce, with increased interconnectivity, has become the… Read more »

Source: Profile of the global workforce: present and future – Future HR Trends

Nigeria and her dark side of nationhood.

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That Nigeria is beset by a myriad of self created problems,(seemingly intractable) is without doubt,by any stretch of the imagination.Could they have been avoided? Yes,without a doubt once again!

The country flounders because it is not safe guarded by a set of national norms that ought to have been settled,fifty six years after its flag independence.What are norms? Norms are like the concrete foundations of a building upon which it rests.If brittle,the building collapses,but if solid,it stands the test of time.

Norms are structural in other words.They create a framework of informal understandings within which societies operate.They define the “up and down, left and right”within which citizens-leaders and the led should function.

Norms establish what good and bad is.They are an absolute necessity for democratic institutions to function;they are time and honour bound because citizens recognize the dire consequences of violating them.A normless society is a rudderless ship sailing in…

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Nigeria and her dark side of nationhood.

That Nigeria is beset by a myriad of self created problems,(seemingly intractable) is without doubt,by any stretch of the imagination.Could they have been avoided? Yes,without a doubt once again! T…

Source: Nigeria and her dark side of nationhood.

Nigeria and her dark side of nationhood.

That Nigeria is beset by a myriad of self created problems,(seemingly intractable) is without doubt,by any stretch of the imagination.Could they have been avoided? Yes,without a doubt once again!

The country flounders because it is not safe guarded by a set of national norms that ought to have been settled,fifty six years after its flag independence.What are norms? Norms are like the concrete foundations of a building upon which it rests.If brittle,the building collapses,but if solid,it stands the test of time.

Norms are structural in other words.They create a framework of informal understandings within which societies operate.They define the “up and down, left and right”within which citizens-leaders and the led should function.

Norms establish what good and bad is.They are an absolute necessity for democratic institutions to function;they are time and honour bound because citizens recognize the dire consequences of violating them.A normless society is a rudderless ship sailing in chatted waters.This is so because self -control which is the basic guardrail of norm is absent in the national life.The imperative of self-control is that each individual must possess self-control and have the notion of rules of personal or civil conduct.This is abysmally lacking,more lacking in the political arena, where rules are breached more as the rule than the norm.

We are therefore confronted with the dark side of politics of dissimulation,evasion and misdirection in national conduct.A lack of guardrails means that the country suffers from too many marginalized people who don’t understand the need for rules,who don’t think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them.They have no notion of self-control.The frontier mentality of the wild,wild,West pervades their consciousness and behaviour accordingly.

The notion of self-control therefore is that norms are enforced by communities not by law.In government however,they are enforced by political parties governing and the opposition ,and in an ideal situation,the media.The constitution of a nation is a norm and when a government or political party negates the constitution specific to it,it has abdicated the responsibility to the community for upholding the norms that under-gird society.

When a majority of the community fails to enforce norms,they are gone;only will their lights flicker if the media does its job by pointing out the infractions.Only if.Nigeria at the moment is faced with a scepter of moral relativism or false equivalence,you said,he said and nothing in between.Non adherence to norms or normative practice is like allowing water from the sea ,wash off your sand castle.

Ensuring that norms remain firmly rooted is the moral equivalent of war given their illusory nature.They are illusory because they are normative and effective only to the extent of parties in the community sharing in the belief of their efficacy and enforcement,turning bad behaviour into good .However when once a gap appears in the armor bearing of their enforcement,norms become illusory.

Our democracy,our institutions-if we can call them so- cannot function without norms.Therein lies the danger to this democracy.We must remind ourselves that it was the disdain for norms that led to the explosion of the People’s Democratic Party,where rules meant nothing,cherished norms were breached with reckless abandon;unraveling as the dominant ruling party for sixteen years.Presently,the ruling All Progressives Congress,is also having its own fair share of norm busting,disdain for its own rules,lack of self-control from leaders of the party at various levels.

Norm busting is transgressive behaviour. Edmund Burke had to remonstrate when he wrote: ” Society cannot exist unless a controlling power will, and appetite be placed somewhere,and the less of it there is within;the more there must be without.It is ordained in the external constitution of things,that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.Their passions forge their fetters”.When Burke talks about controlling power he means,the internalization of the norms that support the structure of society or community,failing which,it will have to fall back on external controls enforced by law and regulation,if it is to survive.

When a political party fails to internalize its norms like our political parties often fail to do,they bring themselves to forceful observance of the law and compulsion.No wonder numerous of their palaver ends up in courts for adjudication because internal controls have failed.Their passions often forge their fetters.

The consequence is the explosion and implosion of party structures and dismemberment.In de Torqueville’s ,”Democracy in America”,we are counselled on the importance of norms or custom in regulating democracy.Trash the norms and you destroy self-control destroy self-rule,destroy the community.

Harvard historian James T.Kloppenberg’s book,”Toward Democracy”,points or lays out a distinctive vision of what he suggests democracy is,” one that stresses not institutions or practices,but ethical ideal”.By this,Kloppenberg means the “ethics of reciprocity”, whereby a person should always be willing to “think in other people’s shoes and act accordingly”.This sounds Utopian in an amoral world of politics and fierce competition for power.All politics it is often said,is self-interest,either for individual self or group.

But the current climate of complete bifurcation of society,suggests a return to this ideal,not of one man,one vote or majority rule,not political representation,but a combination of individual autonomy and reciprocation in the community based on norms or custom.Perhaps we should consider the concept of collectivism one again upon which group norm rests firmly in time past before rugged individualism displaced it as a concept of social organization.

The search for Utopia continues,in the present where the golden rule of democracy faces its truest test of survival.The question still remains,when will Nigeria as a nation achieve settled norms as guardrails of national life welding together the disparate nationalities that coheres into one with one vision,one mission?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VISION IN TWO EYES AND VISION IN ONE: How we interpret the world around us?

“There is the vision with physical sight and there is the vision with social sight-all involve seeing.But not “why” is seen,but what.Seeing with both eyes and telling with only one eye, is partial social sight.It is short sighted.It is a distortion of any social order”. 

Optics or illusion of seeing the world depends on what we see,why we see,when we see,where we see and how we see the events around us.Vision is a process whereby you use your eyes to see through the lenses in them,then interpret what is seen.Being blind is losing cognitive sight of what is around you and leaving what it means from the materialist construct of reality.Recognizing things for what they are for instance,comes from learning.

How do you know about a boat or chicken for that matter,if you have not seen a boat or chicken for once in your life?But then,your perspective changes towards the boat or chicken the moment you’ve come in contact and you see either of them again because of apriori learning.Learning involves visual and other sensual contacts with the object and knowing what it is.So it is in social interactions,our everyday contacts with each other leads to learning.

The barrier of prejudice reduces the social distance between the eyes and objects.Lack of contact that stimulates cordiality between objects is responsible largely for the social atrophy between classes,peoples,religion,cultures and ethnic groups;distorting the good optics that ordinarily ensues from social interactions between diverse groups of people.

Distortions ( warped optics) are mere distractions orchestrated by the ruling coalition against the lower classes;the vectors of social wedge being religion,illiteracy,poverty though cutting across the classes,these weaponized ‘knives’ are the portent instruments of divide and rule.Pity,we hardly see beyond our noses; the noses having being abridged by the ‘weaponized knives’ to see the what from what it is.

The worst of these instruments is gossip and its hand-maiden-rumour.Pope Francis has this to say of gossip,”gossip is rotten.At the beginning it seems to be something enjoyable and fun,like a piece of candy.But at the end,it fills the heart with bitterness and also poisons us. The gossip is a “terrorist” who throws a grenade-chatter in order to destroy”. The mind and hands that are busy will hardly be filled with idle  prattle.Gossip,rumours are products of distorted optics pushed by the ruling coalition for its preservation and continuous plunder of the commonwealth.The only route to freeing the mind to see independently is through education,increasing prosperity, and expansion of the middle classes which serves as the moderating wedge between the ruling coalition and the lower classes.

In the final analysis,social tension arises because we are all born with two eyes,but vision only with one.