A FEEL GOOD ARTICLE ON US.!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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An interesting article about our country written by a Nigerian
tourist. The telecom executive being referred in this article is
Tunde Fafunwa, head of BayanTel. FINALLY!!! A FEEL GOOD ARTICLE ON US.
>THE GUARDIAN CONSCIENCE, NURTURED BY TRUTH
>LAGOS, NIGERIA.
>Thursday, February 12 2004
>
>Surprised by the Philippines By Okey Ndibe
>
>RATHER than head for Nigeria during the last Christmas
>vacation, my family and I decided to visit the
>south-east Asian nation of the Philippines. We had
>planned a two-week stay, but ended up spending four
>days shy of a month. In the turns and twists of its
>national drama, that archipelagic nation of more than
>eighty million people became an education in several
>ways.
>
>Why the Philippines, so many friends have asked? Why
>endure a twenty- hour flight to spend a vacation in
>Asia? The short answer is that we went to visit my
>wife's immediate younger brother. In 1999, he left his
>job with a major U.S. telecommunications company to
>accept a challenge as a top executive with a
>Filipino-owned telecommunications firm. Ever since
>adopting Manila as his residential address, he'd asked
>us to be their guests. We thought that last December
>was as good a time as any to him up on the invitation.
>
>We left the U.S. in time to escape a record-breaking
>cold blast. While in the Philippines, I received
>e-mail messages from several friends back in the
>States describing the gust of sub-zero arctic weather
>that had enveloped the east coast of the U.S. While
>sorry for our friends caught in nature's frigid
>assault, we were delighted to be ensconced in the
>Philippines' tropical warmth.
>
>There was for me a deeper reason for undertaking the
>trip. The Philippines is regarded by many in Asia and
>the West as the Asian backwaters, a rare symbol of
>chaos and failure cast in the midst of Asia's parade
>of affluent nations. And yet, this was not always the
>way the narrative was scripted.
>
>At about the time Nigeria was coming into
>self-determination in the 1960s, the Philippines was
>also receiving attention as a likely candidate for
>national economic and political success. Like Nigeria,
>the Philippines has had an intriguing history.
>Colonised by Spanish forces in the 16th century, it
>fell under American control at the end of the 19th
>century. The country would only regain a measure of
>autonomy from the American yoke in the mid 1940s.
>Under Nigeria, independence came to the country after
>protracted, and bloody, wars of liberation. There are
>other respects in which the Filipino people invite
>comparison with Nigerians. Endowed with a large
>population, the Filipino economy is roughly the size
>of Nigeria's. In 1998, for example, the country earned
>$14.5 billion, doing only slightly better than Nigeria
>in that department. What amazed me was to learn where
>the Philippines makes most of its income. When I asked
>my sister-in-law what natural resource the country
>tapped for its wealth, she let our a deep guffaw.
>
>Then she told me that the country's only export was
>its own citizens. It was not, I soon discovered, a
>joke as I had thought. Far from possessing any
>dollar-generating natural resource, the Philippines'
>chief source of foreign exchange is in the form of
>remittances made by its nationals working in richer
>Asian nations as well as Europe, North America and
>elsewhere. It is projected that their remittances
>total between 10 and 12 billion dollars each year. A
>few years ago, the country's economywas also boosted
>by Japanese investments in industrial concerns. But
>over the last ten years, the Japanese have shut many
>plants, drastically reducing the Philippines'
>industrial capacity.
>
>Despite its reputation as south-east Asia's wretched
>nation, the Philippines boasts a GDP of about $300
>billion, almost three times that of Nigeria. Where
>Nigeria's per capita income totters well below $1,000,
>Filipinos have a per capita income close to $4,000. In
>choosing to spend some time there, had wanted to find
>out, first hand, how one of Asia's poorest nations
>fared when put side by side with Africa's
>self-acclaimed giant.
>
>Before arriving in Manila, I had asked my
>brother-in-law to describe how the Philippines might
>stack up against Nigeria. In his meditative fashion,
>he simply replied: "Well, the Philippines is actually
>like Nigeria, except that things work." With that
>answer at the back of my mind, I arrived in the
>Filipino capital with very low expectations. It turned
>out, as I repeatedly reminded our host, that he had
>grandly misrepresented the nation.
>
>At first sight, Manila could be mistaken as another
>Third World capital. Its streets are jammed with
>"jeepneys," stylishly decorated buses that are the
>Filipino version of "danfo," and "tut tuts," tricycles
>that reminded me of "okada." The streets also teemed
>with hawkers, as in Lagos, selling anything from
>flowers to mirrors. I saw pedestrians who, rather than
>use overhead pedestrian bridges, chose to risk lives
>and limbs by racing across the streets. In fact, there
>was the bustle of shop fronts, the ubiquitousness of
>sellers, the din of car horns, and the
>lung-discolouring fumes from exhausts. That was one
>face of Manila.
>
>That first impression past quickly. As it did, I began
>to notice, not the similarity between Manila and Lagos
>(or any other Nigerian city), but the telling
>differences. As much as the streets of Manila were
>crowded, I did not see refuse dumped in public.
>Instead, I noticed that markets had a pristine look. I
>saw that refuse bins were placed everywhere to enable
>people to responsibly dispose of their trash.
>
>The night we arrived, I asked my hosts how frequently
>they experienced power failure. Again, I was visited
>with laughter. Then my brother-in-law explained that
>four years ago, there were two power outages in Manila
>within a space of six months. There was such
>indignation among the populace that the government
>fired the man who ran the electric corporation. Since
>then, the city had not witnessed a single interruption
>of electric supply! We drove to different parts of the
>city, but I never once saw a pothole. Then we
>journeyed to the beach resort of Montemar, a trip that
>took three and a half hours.
>
>To my amazement, the roads were in excellent condition
>all the way. When one of our relatives visiting from
>Nigeria fell ill, we got the opportunity to visit
>Makati Medical Center. I could not believe the medical
>collosus that my eyes beheld. This private hospital,
>which treats several thousands of patients each day,
>was as equipped with technology and expertise as any
>American hospital. Its medical staff, mostly trained
>in the Philippines, conducted themselves with a
>professionalism that was peerless. The medical complex
>had many doctors in any area of medicine in which
>patients required succour. Despite the daily throng of
>patients (think of as many people as go through
>Tejuosho market), the hospital was stunningly clean.
>And this impressive cleanliness extended to its
>toilets.
>
>The poet Niyi Osundare once described Abuja as a city
>of concrete and steel but no cultural harvest. Manila
>is a city cast in a different mould. Everywhere one
>looked, there was evidence that this is one metropolis
>with a sound sense both of culture and history. There
>are world-famous art museums. There is a war memorial
>commemorating the founding fathers of the republic.
>The architecture of the city is literally branded with
>its history. Driving through the city (and indeed in
>other parts of the country) one beheld vistas of
>Spanish, Chinese and American influences reflected in
>the landscape, monuments and buildings.
>
>One day, the relative who had flown in from Nigeria
>turned to me and asked: "Okey, why would anybody say
>that the Philippines and Nigeria are together as Third
>World nations?" After a pause, he proffered an answer
>I could not dispute: "Either the Philippines is part
>of the First World, or Nigeria must now be moved to
>the Fifth World." He re- considered for a moment. "No,
>compared to the Philippines, Nigeria is in the Sixth
>World."
>
>It was a painful verdict to hear, but I found it
>difficult to disagree.
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