to think that nearly 200 people being killed in Nigeria should be more newsworthy

[ElaineBenes]

What happened in Kano over the weekend is not even on the front pages of the so called international news websites like the BBC. I've had to search for any reporting on it.

Can you imagine if such a thing had happened to people in a rich country?

I think it's really sad that Africans dying isn't considered newsworthy. Are we really that racist?

Wannabe - no need to make assumptions. I've been to sub-Saharan Africa plenty of times including for extended periods .

I don't get what your point is about HIV prevalence, yes, we know that HIV prevalence is far higher in SSA. What's your point there?

I don't deny that there is violence in some part of Africa and there is also corruption in some countries. I just object to a characterisation of an entire continent. It'd be like some saying that violence is a just a way of life in Europe based on all our wars in the first half of the twentieth century. Violence is not 'a way of life' in Africa. It's a good way though of justifying doing nothing.

The oil element is very interesting. Does anyone have a link?

(lazy emoticon)

Wannabe, I don't disagree that there is a lot of violence in some countries in Africa, I disagree with characterising violence as a "way of life in Africa". It's misleading at best, it generalises the same stereotype to cover 54 countries, and comes perilously close to suggesting violence is a natural or unavoidable part of African culture.

I'd recommend by Binyavanga Wainaina and Djimon Hounsou (or read the original essay), it points out how Europeans are routinely shown a "single story" about Africa which reduces a whole continent to a tragic stereotype.

"Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don?t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book..."

Mojitomania, if you believe you and your son can't get a job because of immigrants, you are correct. Its not because immigrants are doing jobs English don't want to do, its because they are doing the jobs English aren't qualified to do. My DP is Nigerian and works 5 days a week and studies the other two to qualify as a pharmacist in the summer. I doubt many people in this country would have the inclination to follow this lifestyle as it would require far too much hardwork and to be honest I doubt many like yourself have the intelligence

Boobiebrain (very intellectual site name). You are another one that really needs to wind their necks in you nasty litttle piece of work.

The oil element is very interesting. Does anyone have a link?

Goodle "African Oil Wars" and have a good nose.

So much will fall into place :)

I don't understand why someone should wind a neck in. What does that mean? Can someone enlighten me? I'm guessing it's offensive in some way.

Elaine I think it's said by people who can't/won't answer questions and/or dish out the insults but can't take it back.

On this thread anyway.

I doubt many like yourself have the intelligence.

Umm, Booby seeings you brought intelligence into the argument:

The IQ data is from IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen.

New Zealand IQ 100 (103)
Nicaragua IQ 84
Niger IQ 67
Nigeria IQ 67
Norway IQ 98 (99)
Oman IQ 83
Pakistan IQ 81
United Kingdom IQ 100
Northern Ireland (102)
Scotland (104)
Wales (100)
United States of America IQ 98 (97)

FFS

"wannaBe, check your spelling darling"

I'm sure Wannabe doesn't need me to answer for her but just thought I should point out that she uses voice recognition software to dictate onto her PC so most/any mis-spelling can be laid at the door of technology.

Its generally ill advised to be patronising about spelling IME unless you know the circumstances of the poster involved.

yanbu, same goes to massive oil disasters in Nigeria too

What you've posted has racist undertones mojito You're suggesting that the average IQ in Nigeria is seriously retarded. It doesn't even make any sense statistically and I doubt that it's based on empirical observations either.

Even if it's true
a) there's ecological fallacy
b) migrants aren't like the rest of the population - they're the ones who have the get up and go to get up and go and look for a better life.

So has no relation to boobiebrain's husband at all. In fact, what is your point???

My point is booby insinuated a certain lack of intellegence, I just fired back.

Oh and as for corruption

Sorry, it was a map etc. so couldn't cut and past but this is taken from National Corruption stats:

1 being the most corrupt, 10 being the least

Nigeria 2.4
England 7.6

I really don't see your point. I think we all know that Nigeria is more corrupt than England. We're very lucky to live in a country with strong public institutions and good governance. I wish others were as lucky as us. I don't think it's something which is appropriate for smiley faces.

You really aren't making any sense mojito. You think that somehow showing that British people are more intelligent than Nigerian confers on you some kind of intelligence? It doesn't - even if it's true which I seriously doubt.

They started it so ner.

Another factor is 'competing' news at the time this event was hapening / reported - - in addition to the commercial interests I mentioned previously.

If there happened to be several other " newsworthy " (each make your own definition) stories over the weekend or a paper / news site had planed to release a scoop then yes, I'm afraid celebrity / scandal / political news would indeed trump the Kano story.

I wouldv'e thought being arrested for screaming racist insults on a Croydon tram would've made Mojito think twice about spouting racist crap in public but it doesn't seem to have stopped her!

I don't know where you got your stats mojito, I'm thinking probably from some extremeist racist website/book but not only is your IQ facts incredibly offensive but quite obviously made up.

So every citizen of every country has had an IQ test which gives certain African countries an IQ at a level that would barely make them able to function?

You've put in the UK's IQ stats, I've never had an IQ test so how did they get those results? Has any other poster taken part in this statistic?

Stop making up figures and/or reading racist literature.

Disgusting.

Intellegence is spelled intelligence

Mojito, you are amazing. On the one hand you admit that you know sod all about what you're talking about. On the other hand you keep on prattling on about what you clearly know nothing about.

1. in answer to your earlier statement, I have been to two African countries, four times in total. Never on the tourist trail: always staying with locals.
2. Do you know anything about the IQ test? It is a test of general knowledge, which has long been widely discredited by experts in the field. I was personally told 20 years ago by several psychologists that it is a crap test of intelligence. You would do much better to learn about the seven intelligences and then come back and see if you can rate all 900 million Africans on a scale.
3. Furthermore, IQ is a Western tool. Look at the countries in your list. All the countries scoring lowest are not Western. What does that say? The tool is at best an inadequate way of assessing anything cross-culturally, because of its Western cultural bias. So your statistics are pointless.
4. I know lots of Nigerians. Hundreds, in fact. In Nigeria if you want to get a good job, you need a degree. No, don't be silly, not a Bachelor's: a Master's. Of the hundreds of adult Nigerians I know, the vast majority all have (wait for it...wait for it...) Master's degrees. Do you have a Master's degree, mojito? Is it in Plucking Random Info From The Web In The Desperate Hope That Something Will Stick?
5. How do people know how much corruption is in a country? Do they wave a finger in the air and pick a figure they like? People are remarkably good at hiding corruption, because (surprise!) it's corrupt. I know women who have recently been sacked in the UK because they had a baby. That is illegal AND corrupt. Their companies silenced them with an extra payout and made them sign a confidentiality agreement. Do you think that sort of corruption gets reported in your National Corruption Survey? I have an Ethiopian friend who came to the UK and was shocked to see, once he started working in local government, that corruption here was as endemic as in his homeland. Except that people here hid it better. Do you think there might be one or two more instances of corruption in this country which we just don't know about yet? This is why the NOTW scandal was such a shock: until then we arrogantly assumed we were better than everyone else. We are just as corrupt AND better at lying about it. Are you still going to convince yourself that we have the moral high ground?

Back to the thoughtful side of this discussion.

Derby - you make an interesting point about oil. It is barely known in these parts that Shell and the other oil companies based in the Niger Delta have caused far worse environmental carnage to the region than the BP disaster. And it is only in the last 6 months that these companies have, after a long legal battle, agreed to clear it up. Until then, they couldn't be arsed, because they could get away with it. It will take decades before the cleanup job is complete. And the region will never be the same - how can it?

The Biafran war was generated in large part by the availability of oil; the Southern Nigerians attempted to separate from the North because they had their own cash cow to depend on. Oil has fucked up so many things in that region. Wherever oil is discovered, it Fucks Things Up. Norway, Alaska, Saudi Arabia...nobody is exempt.

Just one more thought about the Problems In Africa question. I have said this on a previous thread but it bears repeating.

The problems which wannabe lists in various African countries cannot be denied. But nor can the origins of many of these problems: Western colonialism.

Imagine a woman who has been abused all her life - first by her parents, and then by her partners. Once she breaks away from her abusers and starts sorting herself out, it's going to take an awful long time until she's anywhere near healed, and she'll probably always bear some element of the scars. She has to take responsibility for changing her life, but it will be a long, arduous and extremely painful journey. And she will mess up a lot of the time, but we hope that ultimately she will succeed.

Now substitute 'woman' for 'Africa', and 'abusers' for 'colonialists'.

When I talk about the damage inflicted across Africa by colonialism, I am not making excuses or dredging up the past in order to have a white-person-bashing whinge. I am putting a context behind otherwise ill-informed posts.

wannabe and mojito, you have made it clear on this thread that you know sod all about what you are posting about. And yet you have continually insisted on blethering on, making up stories about people you have never met, contradicting yourselves when challenged, and not even having the honour to apologise for the offensive statements you've made about 1000 million people in 54 different countries. That is disgraceful, you are making yourselves* look like utter idiots, and frankly you should be ashamed of yourselves. If you had any integrity you would stop posting such utter rubbish.

• just checked - the population of Africa is over 1 billion

To wannabe , the IQ statistics that mojito quoted are genuine, inasmuch as they were released in 2002 by a professors from Ulster University and a Finnish uni.

That is not to say they aren?t hugely contentious, the biggest issue being that in 104 of the 185 countries they listed, there has been no national IQ test!

I would suggest that only a desperate person would use them to make any point at all.

It also seems ludicrous to me to talk of an 'average' Nigerian, there are over 500 languages in a country whose political borders bear no relation to ethnic boundaries.