Niger Delta Picture

Niger Delta Militant in the riverian area

Update on the S.A.A.C Project

On the 26th of June 2009, the fliers for the S.A.A.C Essay Competitions was dispatched to the schools involved in the S.A.A.C project. The schools include; St Patrick’s College- Ikot Ansa, Government College-Ikot Ansa, Government Secondary School –Atu, Government Secondary- Henshaw Town, Edgerley Memorial Girls School, Army Day Secondary School, West African People’s Institute (WAPI), NYSC Model School, UNICAL international School and Government Technical College-Mayne Avenue.

The students were afforded 3 weeks to write an essay on the Topic” How Conflicts affect our lives” with a maximum of 1,500 words. The deadline for the essay is Friday, 17th of July 2009.

We are excited that the response we have so far is quite impressive, the writings are creative, and objective. Most of the essays we’ve gotten are very deserving of the prizes,but we have to hold on till the 17th to know “who the cap fits’

…Until then,we would keep you posted


Esther Eshiet
Calabar, Nigeria

The S.A.A.C Project

The Student Arise Against Conflict (S.A.A.C) project is targeted at students in 10 secondary Schools from Classes JSS 1-SSS 3. SAAC believes that conflicts arises from a break down in communication at the different levels in society be it the family, school, church and other social institutions. Therefore the preparation of young people as conflict mitigators is very necessary for the attainment of peace in our society.
The SAAC project is focused on the 2 local government areas in Cross River State (Calabar South and Calabar Municipality) in the Calabar metropolis. The reason for this spread is because of the social stratification existing in these local governments, this difference in economic power and social amenities provided to these areas do cause enemity between students residing in this area, there are also reported cases of inter-school fighting among students of various secondary schools.
The project objectives are:

• To increase the knowledge base of students in peace, conflicts resolution and management
• To examine the dimensions of conflicts facing students in their daily lives
• To explore management and preventive strategies to conflict issues amongst students
• To educate students on communication skills especially dialogue and tolerance as an effective way to addressing conflicts
• To reduce incidences of conflicts amongst students, school authority and interschool relations
• To publicize YAC FD project to students, teachers and other stake holders.

The S.A.A.C project would be Implemented using the following strategies:

• Publicize an essay competition for students in the Secondary Schools (Class Range-JSS 3-SS3) on the topic: “The effects of conflicts in our lives” -1500 words Maximum!
• Organize a SAAC Workshop for students from 8 secondary Schools(4 from Calabar South and 4 from Calabar Municipality-5 students per School)
• Present Prizes to Winning Essays at the SAAC Workshop
• Workshop Sessions would address the following areas, Peace Building, Conflict Management, Communication and Human Relationship Skills as well as Decision making skills.
• Inclusion of conflict management (linking that to MDGs Goal 8)to topics discussed by the MDGs clubs existing in these schools and the creation of such clubs in schools where there are non-existent.
The S.A.A.C project is supported by the Forgotten Diaries small grant programme.

Project Team Members
Esther Eshiet, Franklin Ubi, Donald Henshaw and Bernedette Assim-Ita.

UPDATE ON PROJECT/CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Since last week and this week we have been doing a selection of those who would attend the training and as of today we have 30 young people who have been randomly selected from three schools, a youth resource center where youths are trained on skills acquisition and also a street youth.

We have also been able to arrange for a training venue and have contacted the resource persons that includes myself (Ogaga Maxwell), a physically challenged person Lucky, My Igho and the mediator expert Dr Brown Ogbeifun

The schedule for training has been outlined and the first training will commence on Thursday this week by Friday Saturday the first set of pictures will be posted and the first full report including the list of accepted students will be posted.

The football and stationeries have been purchased and also the project banner is been printed and the design will be posted online in the blog on Saturday also

Ogaga Maxwell
Sports Skills 4 Peace Project
www.ogagamaxwell.org

Sports Skills 4 Peace Project

www.forgottendiaries.org

Your Project Overview

Project Name:
Sports skills 4 peace

Timeframe: 1st July-August 2009.


Project geographic focus:
The project would be in the Sapele area of the Niger Delta region , a semi-urban area there have been cases of inter-school fights and violence, where students from different schools fight each other and these has in some case escalated to families, streets and some times led to the closure of the said schools, we want to use these project as an intervention project using sports and mediation /peace education skills capacity building workshop to empower the student to act as agents of change and held instill peace in their schools. The increase in school violence has led to the formation of secondary school gangs (cults) a sense of belonging may decrease the vulnerability of young people to school gangs and militancy afterward, sports becomes a good method to increase dialogue, friendship and new identities, while at the same time they are acquiring new skills. The target audience is 40 (forty students) , 8 (eight) each from the four schools in Sapele that have been involved at one time or the other in fighting (violence), age bracket 13-20. and street kids



Objectives of the project
1. To enhance the capacity of young people in identifying conflicts and method of resolving conflicts.
2. To raise through the project 40 peace peer educators into the secondary schools.
3. To develop an understanding of the process of mediation.
4. through practical sports session learn tolerance, dialogue, team work, build relationships and bridges
5. To kick start the process of contributing towards sustainable peace and social cohesion for secondary schools.
6. To engage and redirect the energy of young people towards positive and meaningful activities
Activities planned 1. 3 Peace/ Mediation Capacity workshops
2. Practical Sports session/Practice
3. A peace match (Peace & Sports Day)
4. Printing/Distribution of stickers to schools (1,000) Peace stickers “I am a student, I stand for Peace”
5. Monitoring and Evaluation
Partner NGO Expert/Resource Person
U.K Certified Mediation
Dr Brown Ogbeifun
African Initiative for Transparency
Accountability and Leadership (AFRITAL)
No 12 Okumagba Avenue, Warri
Delta State, Nigeria

Project Supervision/Mentor

Global Youth Leader (World Economic Forum)
Youngstars Development Initiative


Project Partner (Execution)
Igho Irish
Dowell Foundation Sapele.

Monitoring & Evaluating 1. Monitoring progress during and after workshop through pre and post workshop test.
2. Observing tolerance and team work attitude before and after project especially during sports session.
3. Attendance to all sessions and final completion of project.
4. testing knowledge through post test
5. No of trainees that attended sessions and completed their assignments
oral interview and questionnaires
Timeline 1stt Week July –Call for Application
2nd week in July-Review of Application/ Confirmation of selected participant
3rd week July-1st Workshop
4th week July-2nd workshop
1stst weekAugust-3rd Workshop/peace sticker’s distribution
2nd week in August-Sports Team work skills/Peace Match/ Certificate presentation.

Additional Funding Please specify all additional sources of project funding (if any), including amounts.

. Football Jerseys provided y AFRITAL (Dr Brown Ogbeifun) and technical support







Your Data

Ogaga E. Maxwell

No 12 Okumagba Avenue
Warri, Delta State

+2348034801869
+2348050637252

ogagamaxwell@yahoo.com
d2dyi@yahoo.com

www.ogagamaxwell.org
www.d2dyi.org

A CRY FOR A BETTER TOMMOROW

A CRY FOR A BETTER TOMMOROW



: - A BETTER ROAD TO NOWHERE



“Countries with power, made by essential raw material, is in danger of being Economics falter as the only road, a world concern, linking them is left in a terrible state of been eroded.”



The World’s economics dilemma has causes country’s growth over the last decade and the current challenges as a result of economics falter or turndown. Economics falter can be briefly explain as a economics becoming weaker or less effective, also a less effective, also a less confident in production, trade and organize money in a particular country or region.



To understand the world’s economics dilemma, we need to consider that causes of the country’s growth over the last decade and the current challenges. The dominant cause of growth has been European or Capitalist convergence as a result of increase of stock market value, stalled of domestic reforms, isolated country’s from the outside world, falling of demand, enormous corruption, unpredictable economics crime, deterioration because of increased protectionism especially in agriculture and finance, poor banking system, malfunction public services … etc.



Unfortunately, it is easy to compile some major reasons why the world is likely to have lower growth in the near future 2020 than it has had for the last nine years.



1. Internationally, one of the greatest booms of all times is finally coming to an end. Demand is falling throughout the world, and soon the world, the developed countries like U.S.A, Russia, China … etc will also be hit. This factor alone has brought the Western World to stagnation.

2. Infrastructure, especially road, has become an extraordinary bottleneck, and the sad fact is that they are unable to carry out major infracture projects. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s came to power in 2000, Russia had 754, 000 kilometers of paved road. Incredibly, by 2006 this figure had increased by only 0.1 percent, and the little that is built costs at least three times as much as in the west.

3. The World’s main problem is its enormous corruption and implausible leader’s. According to Transparency international only Equatorial Guinea is richer and more corruption than major countries like Russia. Since the main culprit behind Russia’s aggravated corruption is Vladimir Putin’s, no improvement is likely as long as he persists.

4. Renationalization is continuing and leading to a decline in economic efficiency for example Russia, when Putin publicly attached Mechel, inventors presumed that he had decided to nationalize the company. Thus they rushed to dump their stock in Mechel, having seen what happened to Yukos, Russneft, United Heavy Machineries, and VSMR Avisma, to name a few. In a note to investors, UBS explained diplomatically that an old paradigm of higher political risk has returned to Russia, so it has reduced its price targets by an average of 20 percent, or a market value of $ 300 billion. Unpredictable economics crime is bad for growth.

5. Inflation is now rapidly high because of a poor exchange rate and monetary policies, though the current capital outflow may ease that problem.

6. Minimal reforms in law enforcement, education, and health care have been undertaken, and no new attempt is likely. The malfunctioning public services will become an even greater drag an economics growth.

7. Oil and commodity prices can only go down, and energy production is stagnant, which means that world most developed countries like Russia, U.S.A, China … etc external account are bound to deteriorate quickly.

8. Banking system in world is dominant state banks, it is inefficient and unreliable, and the national cost of a poor banking system rises over time.

9. The most successful transition countries have investment ratios exceeding 30 percent of GDP, as is also the case in East World. But west world, it is only 20 percent of GDP, and it is likely to fall in the current business environment. That means that bottlenecks will grow worse.

10. An immediate consequence of the world’s transformation into a rogue state is that membership in the World Trade Organisation is out of reach. World Bank and economics Development Ministry assessment have put the value of WTO membership at 0.5 to 1-percentage points of additional growth per year for the next ten years. Now a similar deterioration is likely because of increased protectionism, especially in agriculture and finance.



In short, the wold is set for a sudden and sharp fall in its economics growth.. It is difficult to assess the impact of each of these reasons or factors, but they are all potent and negative. A sudden, zero growth would not be surprising, and leaders in the world are not prepared to face reality. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing and also any other.” Abraham Lincoln’s and also he quoted that the “ The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them. The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”



In Nigeria, when Ibrahim Babangida took power in a coup in 1986, he inherited a desperate economics situation. Nigeria Source of credit of Finance ministry report, “On the Verge of external bankruptcy.” Oil, of which h the United State has been Nigeria’s largest customer, has accounted for 95 percent of the country’s export. But because of a decline in energy price, oil revenues had fallen from $ 25 billion in 1980 to about $ 6 billion in 1986, Nigeria’s external debt soared, from $ 452 million in 1970 and $ 18 billion in 1984 to $ 30 billion last year 2008. After four years in which the real gross domestic product declined or increased only marginally, the economy expanded by 4.1 percent in 1986 and is expected to grow about the same this year 2009.



In 2009, President Umaru Yar’ Adua came to power, in an effort to stanch the hemorrhaging of the economy, the Government adopted a stringent “Structural adjustment program.” The program had all the classic financial strictures of the International Monetary Fund but without the I.M.F’s conditions for repairing the economy-conditions that many Nigerian viewed as undermining the country’s sovereignty. Fixed exchange rates were abolished and the value of the currency, the Naira, was allowed to decline from parity with the dollar to the current rate of more than seven to dollar. The Government also slashed state agricultural exports and began a program to sell state enterprises. In January, the Government announced that it was amending the Nigerian enterprise promotion decree, which will reduce the number of business reserved for Nigerian Ownership and open up most other business to 100 percent foreign ownership. “The only Hope”.

The austerity program was “Clearly the only hope Nigeria had for a recovery”



1. All Vacancies for teachers in primary and secondary schools will be immediately filled.

2. Salaries and benefits for Government workers will be raised.

3. Import duties on commercial vehicles and spare parts will be eliminated for the rest of the years.



Several factor have been adduced to explain the full in economics growth and to summarize my writ-up, I conclude homily reason or factor for A Better Road in the nearest future 2020.



We can resolve this economics situation if YOU, help in being useful, truthful, honest, and willing to create unite in our society. You as a leader’s can resolved economics falter in the world because if the leader doesn’t modify its program, this could turn into another Venezuela. So I humbly pledge for change in our society, and take examples from good leaders. Eg, Boris Yeltsin’s who fought hard to introduce Market economy, Privatization, and International Integration in Russia, the President of United State, President Obarack Obama who colluded with the province to build easy and quick wealth on a low dollar, on the steady supply of cheap immigrants labour, and on the commodities boom.

The most spurious – namely the Oil Price Windfall, it has boosted several countries budget Surplus, current account balance, and currency reserves, it have damaged its policy badly, so we need the elite focussed on the distribution of Oil rents to improve it policy.



Communism should be built over capacity in production, infrastructure and human capital.



As a consequence, the world has seen no economic or social reforms worth mentioning for the past six years. The world economic situation looks ugly. For how long can the World remain in economic crisis?

INTERNET CENTERS NEEDED IN THE REGION

The youths of Niger Delta in most cases have not been empowered to fulfill their highest dreams and desires; part of what can lead them to begin to work on their POTENTIALS is the creation of viable youth centers in various rural communities in the Niger Delta area.
Few weeks ago I was doing a seminar for young people in the Sapele region of Niger Delta and you can imagine the internet café in the center has not been working for a long time, the question now is how can these young people adequately thrive in a 21st century economy that is based on internet and computer.
This is an appeal there is need for internet centers in the Niger Delta area it is needed and it is very vital
I pray that help will come at these strategic times in the region.