Convocation address by Kanayo Nwanze to Agriculture and Environmental Sciences graduating students of McGill University!

A friend of mine sent me this address by one of Nigerian's illustrious sons, i find deep and inspiring. It can not be more timely especially at this time when most Nations are undergoing different levels of developmental transformations, hence i decided to share it on this platform.




Convocation address by Kanayo Nwanze at the faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences - McGill University:
My deepest thanks to Chancellor Arnold Steinberg, Chair of the Board, Stuart Cobbett, Principal Heather Munroe Blum, Dean Chandra Madramootoo, Parents, friends and most of all, fellow graduates. Thank you for thehonour of inviting me to be a part of this important day. Congratulations. Félicitations. Or as we say in many parts of Africa, ﺗﻬﺎﻧﻲّ [Tahanía], Hongera, Eku-ise.
You have much to be proud of. You have earned a degree from a fine university; one of the best in the world. This is an important and significant achievement.

The world you are about to enter is very different from the one I stepped into so many years ago. The headlines speak of financial turmoil, alarming unemployment numbers and political instability. But you have two key attributes that will help you thrive in this world: You have fine minds and a
fine education. Use your knowledge – apply it and share it – and not only will you do well for yourselves, you will contribute to making the world a better place.

Let me tell you a little story. Where I come from in Nigeria, there is a saying that when you go to the stream to fetch water, your bucket will only be filled with the water that is yours. No one can take the water that is destined for you. Life will give you what you deserve, nothing more and nothing less. But first you must walk to the stream, bend down and dip your bucket.
Walking to the stream is not always easy. 

When I was younger, much younger than you, I thought I would never get there. My father, at the time, was a travelling teacher. The year I finished elementary school my family moved three times, and I had to wait another year before I could start high school. Then, just when I seemed to be back on the path to higher education, war broke out. The Biafran War that ravaged my country is, even today, a synonym for horror and atrocity.


Three years went by before I finally made it into a university campus. I was 23 years old, and my peers had graduated the year before, well ahead of me.
Yet, I too reached the stream, and my bucket is certainly not empty. What the stream gave me has made my life rich and fulfilling. It has taken time and perseverance, a few stumbles and falls – never totally down, but always with a sense of satisfaction. 

And this is the best advice I can offer: do something that gives you satisfaction. Your work will occupy most of your waking hours, and if it does not give you satisfaction, no matter how rich you may become, you will not be happy – your bucket will feel half empty. As a research scientist, it gave me joy when my papers were accepted for publication. I enjoyed sharing what I had discovered – so be sure someone learns something from you and comes to know how to do it better than you did. In other words, “pass it on”. Knowledge is a gift that grows only when it is shared.

Today, 40 years after graduating from the University of Ibadan, I enjoy a different sort of knowledge sharing. My greatest joy is going to rural communities to sit down with the women, men and children who live there.
In various countries on different continents, in remote regions of the developing world, and in places not found on most maps, I have seen people empowered to transform their own lives with the support of the agency I now work for – the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
When I spoke before about satisfaction, I meant the feeling I get when I hear people talk about how they can now eat two or even three meals a day. How their children can now go to school, or that they have a new clinic down the road. It takes so little to change so much in people’s lives. The secret is to remember that development is not something we do to people but something they do for themselves.

Whether you are planning a career as a scientist or in development, remember to listen to and respect the opinions of the people in the communities where you work. They may not have had the same opportunities as you, but their knowledge of the land and local conditions is far deeper than that of the development workers who parachute in for a few weeks or months. 

They know what they need. Our job is to help them get it. If you want your work to transform lives, you need to look up from your desk and apply the same rigour of thought to understanding the social dimension of local communities that you hope to serve. If you can do this, your work will take root, and although you may not know it, the benefits will last long after you have left, like a footprint in the sands of time. Lives will have been transformed in the process. Your own life will be transformed as well as you come to know the joy of bringing happiness into the lives of others. And that is when you too will come to know true happiness. These are the stories that bring joy to my life and make me realise, every day, that my bucket is certainly not empty – and perhaps it is much more than half full. I wish you every success as you follow your path to the stream.

Remember, you must bend down and dip your bucket to collect your water. And when you do, be sure to share it with your community.

Thank you.

Horrors of Syria's prisons visit Geneva!

Fatima Khan's voice pierces the silence of Geneva's chilly streets as she runs after officials from the Syrian government delegation.

"Why did you kill my son?" she screams. "Tell me, why did you kill my son?"

She receives no answer. The officials walk away in haste, taking long steps while keeping their heads down until they reach a parked black Mercedes and are driven away.

Khan came to the Swiss city from Britain to seek answers as to why her son Abbas Khan, a British doctor, died in a Syrian government-run prison in Damascus.

She says Abbas Khan was a humanitarian worker who travelled to Syria for voluntary work before he was captured and put in jail. His death was announced in December, just a few days before his scheduled release.

The Syrian government says he committed suicide in prison by strangling himself with his pyjamas. The mother accuses the regime of killing him.

Khan knows that coming to Geneva will not bring her son back. She knows that she will never get satisfactory answers.

But she still chased the Syrian delegation through the streets, in the hotel lobbies - and even at the UN headquarters where negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition were taking place.

"I want to embarrass them in front of everyone. Maybe they will now think twice before killing anyone in detention, maybe this will save another son's life," she told Al Jazeera as she tried to hold back tears.

Political detainees

The Syrian authorities are accused of holding tens of thousands of political detainees. New York-based Human Rights Watch says arbitrary detention and torture has become "business as usual for Syrian security forces".

Just a few days before the Geneva talks, a report emerged purporting to show evidence of systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees.

The government officials on hand in Geneva denied the authenticity of the report. They said the images were fabricated by "the hostile" country of Qatar, which had commissioned the report.

The fate of Syria's detainees became a recurring topic as journalists confronted government officials at the peace conference.

In the media bar of the UN headquarters in Geneva, as Omran Zoabi, Syrian information minister, leisurely sipped coffee in the company of a group of journalists, a reporter seated next to him asked: "What happened to Abdel Aziz al-Khayyer?"

Al-Khayyer, a prominent Damascus-based human rights activist, has been missing for more than a year. His opposition group, the government-tolerated National Coordination Body, has accused the intelligence services of detaining him.

Answering the reporter’s question, Zoabi said: "You are talking about my friend, Abdel Aziz al-Khayyer. He is a friend.

"Even though we had differing views, we used to be driven back from conferences in the same car."

"I want him to be free. He wasn't arrested by the Syrian authorities. If we had information about his whereabouts, we wouldn't have waited until this noise happened."

Another journalist in Geneva asked Faisal Maqdad, Syrian deputy foreign minister, about a list of tens of thousands of names of detainees provided by the opposition to the UN.

Maqdad said: "When we examined the list, we found that 60 to 70 percent of the people in it have never been in prison. Twenty percent were people freed from prison [already]. And the rest, we don’t know anything about them."

Reacting to a claim made by a journalist and echoed by human-rights organisations, Maqdad said: "We do not have children detainees."

Fate of detainees

The negotiations between the two rival Syrian delegations were based on a communique from 2012 that lays out a political transition plan and calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors and the release of detainees.

For those whose family members are believed to be held in prison, nothing could be more ominous than the government's denial of the existence of their loved ones.

The sister of Ahmad Hilmi does not know the fate of her 25-year-old brother. Ahmad, a Red Crescent volunteer, was detained about 20 months ago.

"We continue to hear mixed reports. Some say he is still alive, while others told us he died under torture," she told Al Jazeera.

She was never optimistic that the peace talks in Geneva would lead to the release of her brother - or any of the other detainees.

She blames the international community for its "lack of seriousness" in putting pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's government.

"What you see in Geneva, it's just a theatrical play. The world is pretending to be doing something for Syria but they are wasting time," she said.

Adnan Haddad, a young Syrian activist, came from the war-torn city of Aleppo to observe that play in Geneva.

He sat in the press room watching the Assad government official as he dismissed the opposition-provided list of detainees as inaccurate.

"I'm not surprised," Haddad told Al Jazeera. "If the regime admits to the presence of detainees, it would be condemning itself in front of the international community.

"This is simply because the regime killed a lot of them under torture. The rest of the detainees will be used as a bargaining chip."

Justice for all

Sitting at the doorstep of the entrance to the UN building in freezing weather, Fatima Khan screams to passing crowds that she wants justice for all the detainees still alive in Syria.

"We are living in a civilised world and still the international community allows the Assad regime to get away with crimes," she says.

Fatima Khan was allowed by Syrian authorities to visit her son in prison several times during her five-month stay in Damascus, as she tried to secure his release. She said he looked as malnourished as some of the men pictured in the report about detainee abuse.

"They starved people. He told me they tortured people for pleasure. How can we allow that?" she said.

On the day she thought she was going to meet her son upon his release, she brought the guards chocolates and sweets to celebrate.

"They told me my son committed suicide - while chewing the sweets I had given them."

Tens of thousands march in Paris to protest LGBT rights and easing of abortion restrictions!

Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris and Lyon on Sunday against new laws easing abortion restrictions and legalising gay marriage, accusing French President Francois Hollande's government of "family phobia".

The movement opposes a slew of policies under Hollande, believed to be the the most unpopular French president of modern times , including last year's law allowing gay marriage.

Other targets of LMPT's protests include medically assisted procreation techniques for lesbian couples and in vitro fertilisation.

They are also demanding the scrapping of an experimental school programme aimed at combatting gender stereotypes.

In Lyon, politicians wearing their tricolour sashes walked at the front of the march behind a banner reading, in English, "Brussels, Leave Our Kids Alone".

LMPT official Francois de Vivies said the European Parliament was set to review a report on Tuesday that "again tries to tell us how we are supposed to educate our children".

In Lyon, protesters shouted: "Hollande, You Have Broken France", with many calling for his resignation as well as that of Education Minister Vincent Peillon.

The mass protests come a week after several thousand people marched through Paris in a "Day of Anger" against Hollande's Socialist government.

Ukraine president announces return to work!

Ukraine's embattled president announced on Sunday that he would return to work after four days' sick leave, as protesters filled Kiev's main square to demand he give up power.

Opposition leaders, addressing the crowd after meeting European and US officials, said they hoped for international mediation in negotiations with the government and for constitutional change to limit presidential power.

Viktor Yanukovych who angered opponents in November by spurning a trade pact with the European Union and turning instead to Moscow for financial support, announced on Thursday he was on sick leave. The president has not been seen in public since.

Nebo assures Nigerians of steady electricity supply!

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on Sunday reassured Nigerians, especially industrialists, of steady electricity supply in a very short time.

Nebo gave the assurance at the investiture of the newly elected president and council of the Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA) in Enugu.

According to him, downturn in the power sector is only temporal and that government is doing everything possible to provide stable electricity.

“Lots of work is being done. Government is putting the right mechanisms to ensure adequate electricity 24/7,’’ he said.

Nebo praised industrialists for their steadfastness, urging them to support government’s endeavour toward making them succeed.

The minister said that the Federal Government had commenced the mapping out of industrial and agricultural clusters across the country with a view to giving them electricity.

“Industry and manufacturing are keys to economic development and give a double digit growth to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),’’ he said.

The Chairman, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr Sam Amadi, said that privatisation was a major component factor in the power sector reform.

“The establishment of a competitive electricity market with free entry and exit for private providers is the major objective of the power sector reform in Nigeria,’’ Amadi said.

Amadi urged Nigerians to stop politicising power, saying that to privatise power was not an easy process.

According to him, the next phase of the power reform is to regulate the tariff, which he said, was already in progress.

He appealed to chambers of commerce in the country to support the transformation agenda of the present administration by ensuring the realisation of the power reform objectives.

The chairman presented a paper entitled, “New power Sector Regime as Panacea to Stable and Quality Electricity Supply’’.

Earlier, the Director-General of the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr Joseph Odumodu, stressed the need for the public to be vigilant and take action whenever they buy substandard products.

Odumodu said vigilance was necessary in curbing the existence of counterfeit and substandard products in Nigeria.

In his acceptance speech, the new President, Dr Ifeanyi Okoye, said he would redouble efforts to move the council forward.

Okoye said he would focus on promotion of the agriculture sector as well as improve on the activities of manufacturers.

In his remarks, the past president of ECCIMA, Dr Theo Okonkwo, urged the new executive to remain focused, and promised to offer useful advice to the chamber if need be.

The event witnessed awards to some distinguished industrialists in the South-East zone of the country. 

Source:News Agency of Nigeria

Amazing picture shows newborn delivered INSIDE its amniotic sac!

A doctor recorded the moment he  delivered a baby inside an intact amniotic sac.

The photo was reportedly taken by Obstetrician ,  Aris Tsigris after he delivered a baby through caesarean section. He uploaded the photo on Facebook.
According to the doctor, because the sac had had not been punctured, the baby did not even realise it had been born and behaved as if it was still inside the mother’s womb.




The amniotic sac is a bag of fluid inside the womb where the unborn baby develops and grows. It is also referred to as the ‘membranes’, because the sac is made of two membranes called the amnion and the chorion.
The sac is filled with clear, pale fluid, in which the unborn baby floats and moves.
The fluid helps to cushion the baby from bumps and injury, as well as providing them with fluids that they can breathe and swallow. The fluid also maintains a constant temperature for the baby.
The amniotic sac starts to form and fill with fluid within days of a woman conceiving. 
Amniotic fluid is mainly water but from about week 10 onwards, the baby passes small amounts of urine into the fluid.

2015 Valentine’s Day Presidential elections, informed by rational and logical considerations – Jega!

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, has said the timetable for the 2015 general election recently announced by the Commission was informed by rational and logical considerations, not sentimental or ulterior motivations. 



He said the Commission was mindful of its own operational effectiveness and global best practice in grouping national elections together on one day, and state elections together on another. 
The timetable announced two weeks ago by INEC schedules National Assembly and Presidential elections for February 14, 2015, and Governorship as well as State Assembly elections for February 28, 2015. 
While fielding questions from that audience after a presentation he made at a well-attended forum at Chatham House, London, at the weekend, Professor Jega dismissed suggestions that INEC was under external pressure in designing the election timetable the way it did. “Nobody has put us under any pressure. We did these things logically and rationally, in terms of what we considered best for our country,” he said. 
The Chatham House event was a public forum at the instance of Africa Programme unit of the organisation, which invited Professor Jega to make a presentation on ‘2015 Elections in Nigeria: Expectations and Challenges.’ Responding to an enquiry on the rationale for the election schedules, the INEC chairman explained that the country is not up to having all the elections in one day. He also disagreed with suggestions that the 
elections were drastically reordered, when compared to 2011. 

“As far as we are concerned, the presidential election is not positioned first. What we did is that we combined the National elections, so you can’t say that presidential election is placed first,” he said. 

Professor Jega explained: “Some Nigerians wonder why we can’t have all the elections in one day. It is true that in some countries, they conduct all their elections in one day. From our own assessment, the enormity of challenges associated with that is such that we are not prepared in the electoral commission to do all the elections in one day. But then, we felt that instead of having three elections, let us have two. In 2011, we had three: we did the National Assembly elections first; then, the Presidential; and then, the Governorship as well as State Assembly elections. But we felt that (in 2015), let us have two elections rather than three. Then we said: what is the best combination in line with global best practice? The global best practice is that you do national elections separate from state elections, if you can’t do all together. So, rather than have the Presidential and Governorship elections together, or the National Assembly with State Assembly elections; we said, let us have all the national elections together, and then the state elections. 
“That is the logic, that is the rationale; and it is defensible. But you hear politicians make all manners of allegations; because in their own calculation, some people want certain elections to come first, others want it to come later. If you do not satisfy what they want, then they would start accusing you as if there is an interest being served, or that we came under some pressure. Nobody has put us under any pressure.” 
The INEC chairman added that the elections were slated for February 2014 to allow time for litigations before the commencement of new tenures. This schedule, he noted, perfectly conforms to legal provisions requiring elections to be conducted not earlier than 150 days and not later than 30 days before the expiration of relevant tenures. 
“In 2011, we did voter registration in January/February, that was why the elections had to wait till April. But since we are not doing a fresh registration in 2015, we said let’s have the elections early in the period permissible, so that there will be more time before swearing-in for litigation.” 

Professor Jega assured that INEC is sparing no effort to ensure that the challenge of logistics which marred past elections is prevented in future elections, namely the Ekiti and Osun governorships, and the 2015 general election. 
He, however, regretted that reports of that challenge during the November 2013 Anambra State governorship election were overblown. 

He said: “The issue of logistics is a major challenge for INEC, and we are doing our best to address it. But for Anambra, the state has 31 local government areas, and the challenge we faced was with regard to one local government – Idemili North. Since the Edo State governorship election, we started customising result sheets to specific wards and polling units. In the past, politicians would get result sheets and move them around. So, we started customised the result sheets. And so, if there was a mix-up in the distribution among polling units, you would have the kind of crisis we had in Anambra. Of course, there was no reason why there should be that kind of mix-up, and we were not satisfied by the explanation given by the Electoral Officer in charge of that local government. But the fact was: before we could retrieve and redistribute those result sheets, time had lapsed and the people had become agitated. Some even blocked our officials from proceeding with the process of redistribution, because they suspected that something funny was happening. 

“What we have done is to have that officer arraigned in court. He has been charged, because it is a criminal offence to obstruct the electoral process or undermine elections. The matter is in court, and is being prosecuted. So, we are doing our best. You cannot stop people from interpreting what happened one way or the other, especially as it is true that Idemili is an area considered a stronghold of one of the candidates. Was it done deliberately? That is what the court case will be addressing. But we cannot allow this to continue to happen. And that is why we are paying a lot of attention to addressing the challenge. We have demonstrated a capacity to identify people who are responsible for failures, and to hold them accountable. And that is another thing that wasn’t the case in the past. It is a big challenge and we will continue to do our best in that regard.” 

The INEC chairman is certain that the challenge of people not finding their names on the biometric register of voters on Election Day will not reoccur if every voter make the effort to ascertain their status during impending display of the register before the commencement of Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) nationwide. Besides, there are additional means being put in place by the Commission to facilitate voter enquiry about the register. He said: “We have already provided a service in that regard, using the SMS platform. In fact, in Anambra – although it came a bit late before the election, and there was no massive publicity to get the people adequately aware – we deployed the use of SMS to enable the voter to interrogate the register. You could send an SMS to a particular number to know whether you are on the register, and in which polling unit you have registered. We hope to launch this facility nationwide by the end of this month, so that people can interrogate the register. And before the 2015 elections, we hope to have the register accessible on INEC website so that people can ascertain their status.”

The Chatham House forum in London was an extension of a similar event organised earlier in the week by the United States Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. Professor Jega was invited to give a keynote speech on ‘2015 Elections in Nigeria: Preparations and Challenges,’ at a public event where leading Nigerian Civil Society activist were panellists.