faulker002

By Peter Wamboga-Mugirya  A joke that is going around refers to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as “nothing going on.” My experience over a 15-year period of studying, interacting with and experiencing NGO activities in my country, Uganda, has proven the joke to be spot-on, apart from those genuinely fighting or advocating for the protection of human and child rights. The NGOs that have emerged to fight against the transformation of agriculture are really up to the nasty mission of stagnating agricultural development in Africa , and developing countries in general. Why? Because a focus on these NGOs and their anti-GMO activities has proven that they are hell-bent on selfishly opposing application of advanced scientific techniques or better methods of breeding crops/plants — particularly modern biotechnology or genetic engineering (GE) aimed at introducing drought-tolerant, disease- and pest-resistant and biofortified crops to our countries. They base their opposition to GM/GE...

By   Jerome-Mario Utomi Merit, taken objectively, is ‘something earned, something owed to a person. Taken subjectively, merit is the right of a person to his earning and is of two types- condign and congruous merits. While condign merit deals with strict justice to a reward, congruous merit is not so much a right as a claim but rests upon what is suitable or fitting in a situation’. With this words of Paul Glenn in mind, each time I am asked my opinion on the nation’s media industry in relation to free speech/freedom of expression, I usually pause to honestly look at its virtues and attributes both objectively and subjectively, and in all, one thing often stands out; the Nigerian media industry in the writer’s views neither merits nor deserves the inequitable treatments so far mated to it by the successive administrations. The reason for this position is signposted in the fact that the vast majority of the ordinances/codes made to guide the practice has never squared up or in harmo...