09012021 - Nigeria must stop paying ransom to kidnappers

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24—SATURDAY Vanguard, JANUARY 9, 2021 Life of a present day journalist Two decades of Simon Kuper's pioneer move This week 26 years ago, I started office life. Wearing a cheap suit and awkwardly knotted tie, I clicked through the security gate at One Southwark Bridge, London, the FT’s office from 1989 to 2019 — and a sick building if ever I saw one. At about 5pm that first day, the full horror of the office-worker’s existence dawned on me. School had done its job of preparing me for the regimented daily tedium. But at least school generally ended mid-afternoon. In the office, long after the January night had fallen, my new colleagues kept bashing away at their computers in a room where the windows didn’t even open. Careers spent seated under fluorescent lights had denatured their bodies and skins. One day, I realised, I would be them. I’m not big on Wordsworth, but I remembered the lines that John Mortimer’s fictional barrister Rumpole was always quoting: Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy I made my escape from the office early, and have worked from home for 22 years now. I only hope the pandemic permanently liberates others from these inhuman places. Leaf through this issue and you’ll see some of the things that officeworkers leave behind each morning. The family snaps on the edges of Endia Beal’s portraits are vestiges of what Orwell satirically called “ownlife”: the suspect private sphere. Jessica Bernard’s pictures of absurd “team-building” games stand for the lost world of play. Hiroshi Okamoto captures the monkey suits that drain office-workers’ individuality. In Alex Prager’s renderings of “holiday parties”, the Gothic figures with rictus grins look straight out of a horror movie. Saskia Groneberg’s sad office pot plants are faint signals from distant nature. All offices are versions of each other, whether they produce invoices, architectural drawings or newspaper articles. I recognise most of the horrors in these pictures, and remember others. Proper food — scarce anyway in mid-1990s London — didn’t exist at Southwark Bridge. The canteen specialised in British-East German fusion cuisine. Some people spent lunchtimes at their desks eating plastic bags, which on closer inspection turned out to be sandwiches. In a tiny act of rebellion, a few like-minded souls and I would go out to a local coffee shop that was known as “Toilet Harpers” because it occupied a converted former public toilet. From Left: Deputy Governor, Cecelia Ezeilo, Seadorf and Uzoamaka, Jim Nwobodo and wife My colleagues were mostly good company. Say what you will about journalists, but because the nature of the job is getting information from other people, they tend to be sociable types and good listeners. The profession also has a decent male-female balance, except at the top. But I came to realise that my older colleagues had been institutionalised by office life, sometimes over the course of 40 years. They no longer even expected to see natural light on workdays half the year, except on their morning walk from home to Tube. Like lifers in jail, they couldn’t quite cope in the outside world any more. Some only saw their children briefly at night, if that. They had lost contact with old friends because, even on weekends, commute plus work left them too drained to leave their neighbourhoods. Instead, they had shifted their emotional existence to the office. As in any workplace, people who had worked together for decades took care of each other. One colleague told Second weekend of December 2020 saw the deputy governor of Enugu State, Cecelia Ezeilo give out her daughter, Uzoamaka in marriage to Engr Seadorf Emeka Maduahusi at Aguobuowa in Ezeagu Local Govt Area for the traditional marriage and church wedding in Enugu. Below is list of some of the dignitaries that attended the traditional marriage Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, Senator Ken Nnamani (former Senate President), Senator Jim Nwobodo (former Governor of old Anambra State) and his wife, Pat, former Governor Sullivan Chime, Rt. Hon. Edward Ubosi (Speaker, ESHA), Hon. Sunday Onyebuchi (former Deputy Governor), Rev. Dr. Raphael Nwoye (former Deputy Governor), Hon. Augustine Nnamani (PDP State Chairman), Rt. Hon. Ofor Chukwuegbo (Enugu North/South Federal Constituency), Hon. Prince Cornelius Nnaji (Enugu East/Isi- Uzo Federal Constitency), Chief Anayo Onwuegbu. me she’d gone to confide in the workaholic managing editor about a personal disaster that required her to take time off. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she asked him. He said, “If you only knew half the things people tell me in this room.” The FT’s editorials in those days were pretty Thatcherite, but the workplace was soft-hearted. A burnt-out case who could no longer write was given a job ferrying messages between desks. When a team of expensive consultants performed a time-and-motion study of our work processes and recommended sacking him, the staff rebelled. The flipside of closeness was excessive socialising. People felt they had to be there till 7pm anyway, so in those pre-online days (Southwark Bridge only got internet in about 1998) they might as well pass the time chatting. The challenge was to slack off without the bosses noticing. I hit on a trick that worked best for white men: leave a suit jacket draped permanently over my empty chair, so that whenever a boss Day Enugu Deputy Gov gave out her daughter in marriage From left: Okeugo Ezeilo, son of deputy governor; Cecelia Ezeilo; Bishop Chukwuma and the couple. Former Enugu Governor, Sullivan Chime and his successor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in a chat while Cecelia Ezeilo watches walked by, generally a fellow white man of similar educational background, he’d think, “Ah, Kuper, good chap, working all hours.” Meanwhile, I worried that I would never escape. Most of my colleagues seemed to have given up hope. My friends in other offices, still not quite 30, had already begun nattering about their pensions. I told a colleague who actually covered pensions of my ambition to retire at 30. “Not a chance, mate,” he said. One day, I saw a man in his sixties limping through the City with his briefcase and thought, with horror: that could be me. In summer 1998 I went to tell the FT’s editor that I was resigning. He did his best to conceal his delight. I said I was going to freelance, writing a column for The Observer newspaper. “That’s a leaky ship,” he frowned. The Observer was founded in 1791, but life-long office-workers tend to be riskaverse. Leaving the building, I felt as if I was handing in my junior membership card of the Establishment. But it turned out that even in 1998, all the technology for homeworking already existed: the internet, the telephone and the Tube for those occasional visits to offices. I no longer wasted hours a day commuting or chatting. I’d made sure to leave the FT on good terms, so I continued to sell it the odd article. I soon realised that it wasn’t the work that had got me down; it was the workplace. Popping into Southwark Bridge months after resigning, I passed a former colleague on the stairs. She glanced at me with halfrecognition, stopped, scrutinised me and said: “You look healthier.” That’s because on sunny days I worked from a deckchair in Regent’s Park. I discovered over time that my three years at Southwark Bridge paid off. Because I’d spent endless hours with people at the FT and knew the corporate culture, a quick email was usually enough to ascertain whether they’d take an article. Later the FT gave me a column. When I realised I could write it from almost anywhere, I bought a flat in Paris. I suspect the FT didn’t even notice I’d moved until years later. After I acquired a family, that flat became my workplace. It’s where I wrote this article. Quite accidentally, I had anticipated a sequence that may now become common: spend your first couple of working years in the office getting acculturated, then gradually detach until finally you’re living more comfortably and cheaply 300 miles away. Then the big city becomes an occasional meeting-place and playground, instead of an overburdened human supply chain for 1980s offices. My commute is now a 12-minute bike ride. I no longer wear suits. In fact, I’ve spent much of this longest winter sitting at my desk in a woolly hat. When I want to talk to someone, I decide who it is, so I no longer have to listen to Joe from Graphics talk me through last night’s Chelsea game while my will to live fades. When I do have to dress up or see colleagues, it feels like a thrilling adventure. Early in the pandemic, about 80 per cent of employees reported that they liked working from home, according to research by McKinsey. I hope they can keep doing it forever. - •Culled from Financial Times Edo govt moves to sanitise motorcycle, tricycle operations T he Edo State Government has rolled out a licensing system for motorcycle and tricycle riders in the state, in furtherance of its efforts to check the influx of undocumented operators and curb criminality perpetuated with the motorcycles and tricycles in the state. Director of Transport, Ministry of Infrastructure, Mr. George Aghahowa, in a chat with journalists, said the government plans to do this with the introduction of the Edo State Riders’ Permit, which would build a database of motorcycle and tricycle riders in the state for ease of identification and tracking. According to him, “We have commenced the issuance of the Edo State Riders Permit. The initiative is intended to sanitise the operations of tricycle and motorcycle operations across the state. While motorcycles and tricycles remain prohibited in Benin metropolis, it remains a veritable means of transportation in other major towns and suburban areas in the state. “What we intend to do is to create a database that would profile all those operating motorcycles and tricycles in the state through the Riders’ Permit registration scheme and they get incentives to be enlisted, ranging from unique identification codes, health and life insurance packages as well as legitimacy to conduct business within the state.” He added that another aim of the scheme is to check the influx of undocumented drivers, who hide under the guise of riding motorcycles to perpetrate crime in the state. “We often have incidents of robberies and kidnappings perpetrated by those who ride motorcycles. This would be put to a stop with this initiative, as all others with permits to conduct business would bear unique codes identifying them as genuine operators.”
SATURDAY Vanguard, JANUARY 9, 2021—25 bunmsof@yahoo.co.uk QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASKED IN THE NEW YEAR: Are you hooked on more supplements than you need? “WE all believe that health is wealth, and we should spare no expense in making sure we glow with health most of the time. One of the fast fix ways for most of us to stay healthy is popping all manner of vitamin pills. Only recently, it’s been alleged that many people who take high doses of certain vitamins and minerals could be damaging their health. According to recent advice from Britain’s Food Standard Agency (FSA), most of us don’t need supplements as we get enough nourishment from our food. Are we then wasting our money and endangering our health on supplements or is it a storm in a tea-cup? According to the FSA, high doses of supplements on top of a balanced diet could take our intake several times over the daily allowances of certain nutrients. It calls for the ban on the mineral, chromium picolinate and says that long term high doses of betacarotene, Vitamin B6, nicotinic acid, managanese, phosphorus and zinc could do irreversible damage; high doses of Vitamin C, calcium and iron may have harmful though reversible effects; and high doses of biotin, niacin, thiamin and Vitamin B12 have unknown efforts. FSA reports that its advice is based on a thorough, independent and expert review of available scientific evidence, though it alleges that ongoing research into the effects of some of the Vitamins and minerals may mean the advice will have to be modified at some future date. According to the FSA, supplements more than 100mg of Vitamin C, 1,500mg of calcium or 17mg of iron a day can cause abdominal pain, wind and diarrhoea, and more than 200mg a day of Vitamin B6 can make arms and legs numb. It advises that supplements of more than 7mg a day of betacarotene may encourage lung cancer in smokers, and large amount might increase the risk of cancer in other people. It is recommends avoiding supplements of two minerals – these are chromium picolinate (which some people take to increase their levels of blood sugar), as there is an unproven suggestion that it may cause certain cancers, and germanium (which some people take to increase the energy they get from food), as its effects aren’t clear. These minerals occur at very low – and safe – levels in many foods (chromium in Best ways to soothe indigestion Most of us have experienced the discomfort of indigestion. Usually due to poor eating habits, it occurs when the stomach produces too much acid, casing a burning sensation and pain. When the acid is in the stomach, it is called gastristis. But, if it leaks into the Oesophagus (the tube leading to the stomach), it is called oesophagitis or heart burn. At some time, we’ve all paid the price for spicy food, here are some tips by nutritionists for soothing away indigestion: Turn to nature: Peppermint, ginger and chamomile all soother indigestion. They’re available as teas. Create your own by adding fresh mint and a slice of ginger to boiling water leave for a few minutes, then meat, while grains, lentils and spices, for example; and germanium in beans; tuna and garlic). It advises, however, that if you are taking high doses of Vitamin B6 or iron because your doctor advises it, you should continue. It also says that supplement of other forms of chromium (for example chromium polynicotinate) are unlikely to do any harm but advises not taking more than 10mg a day. Though supplement producers have maintained supplements are safe long term, if they contained no more than the BOA of each nutrient, the FSA say it plans to ask supplement producers to reduce the dose (and/or provide label warnings for some high-dose nutrients. So are extra nutrients really helpful? Yes, says the ROA though it’s nearly always better to get them from a strain. Choose carbs: Carbohydrates are easy to digest, so opt for a baked potato or pasta instead of hard-to-digest proteins, such as meat. Even fruit and vegetables can cause upset. Sidestep spices: Spicy foods irritate the stomach wall and the valves leading in and out of it, making it easier for acid to leak and cause pain. Avoid milk: Although it is alkaline, milk contain substances which make the stomach produce more acid. Avoid junk: Fatty, salty and sugary foods all irritate and prolong indigestion. If you’re promftobouts, cut down or leave them out altogether. Stop and rest: Rushing around triggers indigestion and encourages acid to leak into your oesophagus. Seek heat: Apply some warmth to the turn. A hot water bottle or a warm bath encourages sore muscles to relax. Check it out: If you suffer pain or indigestion frequently, check with your doctor to make sure it is not a symptom of something else. Are we then wasting our money and endangering our health on supplements or is it a storm in a tea-cup? healthy diet, partly because food provides a complex mixture of nutrients that encourage each other to be a absorbed and used well. The argument that many people need a daily supplement to make up for having a poor diet doesn’t wash, since it is wiser to buy good food than supplements. However, it is true that intensive farming Short men really do miss out on sex, according to a study. Researchers looking at how people’s height and weight affected the number of sexual partners they had had found short men had the least. However, they were surprised to note that tall men did not always have the best sex lives. The study of 60,058 heterosexual men and women aged 30 to 44 found that their average number of sexual partners was eight. Researches said there was little difference in the number of partners across the height range with one exception – very short men. While men of other heights had a median of seven sexual partners, those between 5ft 2in and 5ft 4in had only five, the team from Chapman University, California, found. Regarding weight, normal and overweight men reported the most sexual and certain modern food technologies have reduced that amount of certain nutrients in food, so our diet may not always supply enough. Who needs extra nutrients? Women with heavy periods may need extra iron (discuss with your doctor). Women of child-bearing age, or pregnant should take a daily 0.4mg of folic acid. Pregnant or breast-feeding women should take a daily 10cg Vitamin D while some older people may need Vitamin D (discuss with your doctor). Most children aged six months or two years (or five, if they don’t eat a wide range of foods) should take Vitamin A, C and D drops. Some researchers would like everyone to take a multimineral and vitamin supplements (“multi”), others, say that this is money down the drain. Some nutritionists are more specific, saying, for example, that a multi is wise for elderly people (since they no longer absorb nutrients as well) and those who are stressed or unwell (since they need more of certain nutrients – for example, Vitamin B and C). Taking a multi and eating a healthy diet means that you may get a surplus of some nutrients. That might not really matter since even if the multi contains 100 per cent of the RDA of certain nutrients, your total intake of anyone nutrient still won’t be very high. However, it’s very wise to avoid high dose supplements, unless recommended by a doctor, dietician or well qualified nutritionist. Why short men have fewer lovers partners, while underweight men had the least. Underweight women also had notably fewer partners, said the journal Evolutionary Psychology.
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