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Between wealth, power and privilege

By J K Randle
24 January 2017   |   3:22 am
Egyptian Competitions Authority confirmed that CAF president Issa Hayatou will be referred to General Prosecutor for corruption charges which includes violations made by Hayatou in granting...

 

powerIt was typical of Richard Quest to quickly establish the nexus between wealth, power, status and privilege; and by way of contrast, the connection between the desperate pursuit of wealth and power – driven by greed and corruption. The evidence he relied on was provided by the front page report of Vanguard newspaper of January 6, 2017.

Headline: Hayatou Faces Corruption Charges.
“Egyptian Competitions Authority confirmed that CAF president Issa Hayatou will be referred to General Prosecutor for corruption charges which includes violations made by Hayatou in granting broadcasting rights for football championships.’’

Egyptians Competitions Authorities proved that Hayatou violated article (8) sections (A), (B), (C), (D), (E) from the Protection of Competition Act, as he abused his current position and gave broadcasting rights to Lagardere Sports alone without posing it to other companies in a natural framework that ensures the existence of free and fair competition.

The report says that Hayatou granted Lagardere the right for 12 years starting from 2017 till the year 2028. CAF signed this agreement with Lagardere in June 2015, almost a year and half before the current rights agreement ended. It is worth mentioning that CAF granted Lagardere the same rights in 2008 and until 2016, which means that the company acquired broadcasting rights for 20 years. These broadcasting rights were not only limited to satellite broadcast but included webcasting too, and not only on the scope of Egypt and Africa, but throughout the whole world.

Egyptian Competitions Authority asked CAF for quick measures according to article 20 of the Competition Act, which most importantly included the cancelation of the contract between him and Lagardere because of the outcomes this have on Egypt.

The authority also granted an exceptional right for BeIn media organisation in addition to the other company that applied for the broadcasting grants to continue its live broadcasting for the 2017 AFCON which will start on January 14, because of the short time available to perform the needed procedures before the start to preserve the viewers rights to watch the championship through a competitive atmosphere that allows viewers to review best prices and grants them more freedom to choose, in addition to re-opening the broadcasting rights and other rights publicly on the official CAF website in advance and CAF will evaluate proposals that will be submitted according to an objective criteria in a way that ensures the protection of competition in these markets and to stop monopolies.

CAF will also have to change the way broadcasting rights for its championships are sold in Egypt, in a manner that divides it into bundles that ensure the creation of conditions that encourages competition in broadcasting championships.

Competitions Authority stressed that CAF is subject to the Protection of Competition Act and is obliged to apply it according to the second article of the agreement between the Egyptian government and CAF. The Competitions Authorities assured that they will be contacting all concerned authorities in the country to ensure the implementation of its decisions and remove the serious damages that happened to the Egyptian economy as a result of his actions.”

Additional evidence was provided regarding the even more troubling equation of survival when confronted with desperation – no wealth; no power; no status; and no privilege.

Front page report of “Daily Sun” newspaper of January 6, 2017. Headline: Boko Haram: Women sell sex to survive in Lake Chad – Red Cross.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said women in the Lake Chad basin have been forced to prostitute to survive.

The ICRC attributed the development to Boko Haram insurgency, which drove millions from their homes and left children to starve.

“The violence has displaced over 2.4 million people across the swamp lands of Lake Chad, where the borders of Chad, Cameroun, Niger and Nigeria meet, and disrupted the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of others,’’ ICRC said.

According to the United Nations (UN), up to a million people have been cut off from humanitarian aid by Boko Haram, in spite of a regional military offensive against the Islamist militants

According to Brooks, as the head of their households, some mothers were forced to prostitute so they could feed their family, since many no longer have husbands, because of the conflict.

“When you don’t have the means to survive, you’ll go begging for it. It’s loss of dignity when you’re having to resort to something like that just to keep your children alive – fraternising with people who have money,’’ he said.

The unfolding catastrophe in the Lake Chad basin was named the most neglected crisis of 2016 in a poll of aid agencies by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The report said over seven million people lack food “but insecurity makes it hard for aid agencies to reach the most vulnerable.

“This area has suffered from decades of chronic neglect … if it continues to be under-funded and under-reported, then, millions of people will continue to suffer,’’ Brooks said.

In August 2016, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a report which detailed how 1.4 million children were displaced, with, at least, one million trapped in hard-to-reach areas.

It was President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria who delivered an incisive dimension to the violent consequences of destabilisation of the matrix of wealth, power, status and privilege:

Nobody really knows what Boko Haram insurgents want to achieve by killing everyone and destroying everything. It is just possible that Professor Valmir Dickson-Wright of Cambridge University got it right.

“It is one of the consequences of being excluded from wealth, power, status and privilege. This is a direct contradiction of the acceptance, by those staff who works on the vast estate of the Duke of Westminster, of his century’s long hold on wealth; power; status and privilege.”

It was the front page report of the Saturday Sun newspaper of January 7,2016 which threw up a most intriguing aspect of the wealth / power equation – especially those who are entirely estranged and alienated.

Headline: Love made in prison
“The Love story of Pastor Darlington and Funmilayo Ajitemisan of Open Channel Bible, is out of this world. They were not attracted to each other at first sight; and shared nothing in common, except crime.

These two ex-convicts found love in the most unusual of places, in the Nigerian Prison; where the condemned had no hope.

But Darlington and Funmilayo made the best of their situation, they found love and Christ. Ever since then, their marriage has withstood 28 years of love, relative hardship and perseverance.

While working as preacher in Nigerian prisons, Darlington met Funmilayo, first as a counsellor at Kirikiri female prison. Unknown to both of them they were going to end up marrying each other.

Narrating the story of their journey to matrimony to Saturday Sun, Darlington said the tale started and could only be understood from his life history as a female serial killer which landed him in prison in Bombay, India, to his numerous incarcerations which contributed to who he was and the love life he later had with his wife.

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