Onwuka Nzeshi
The much awaited debate on the review of the 1999 Constitution kicked off on a stormy note yesterday at the House of Representatives as lawmakers were sharply divided over the tenure of an Acting President and the appointment of the Chairman and Commi-ssioners of the Independent National electoral Commission (INEC) by the President.
The day’s proceedings which began at about 2.40 pm witnessed an early break occasioned by a closed door session which lasted for about one hour. The consideration of the Report of the Special Ad-hoc Committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution effectively kicked off at 4.06 pm when the House dissolved into the Committee of the Whole.
The first signs of division among the lawmakers came during the consideration of Section 145, the controversial section that deals with succession to the Office of the President. Chairman, House Committee on Judiciary, Hon. Bala Ibn NaÃllah, expressed discomfort with the new couching of the clause with the word Shall which makes it mandatory for the President, Governor or Local Government Chairman to transmit a letter informing the parliament of his leave or medical vacation within 21 days.
Na’ Allah argued that the provision needed to be looked into again because there could be situations when the President may not be in a position to transmit that letter. But the Chairman, House Committee on Police Affairs, Hon Abdul Ningi, countered this position and insisted that given the history of the amendment of this particular clause, the three weeks provided was good enough and anyone aspiring to be President, Governor or Local Govern-ment Chairman need to be prepared to transmit letter of vacation within the stipulated time, failing which his deputy will step in as Acting President.
Action Congress Leader and Minority Whip, Hon. Gbajabiamila, observed that the House needed to re-examine the concept of Acting President as presently practiced in Nigeria.
According to him, it will be a constitutional anomaly for an Acting President to remain in such a capacity in perpetuity while the person for whom he was made Acting President remains on vacation ad infinitum. He argued that it will be better to set a time frame within which a person can function in acting capacity. However, other contributors to the debate differed as they argued that the issue be left as it is in the draft amendment.
However the real storm came when the issue of the appointment of the Chairman of the Independent National electoral commission (INEC) came up for review. Gbajabiamila narrowly escaped suspension from the legislative chamber when he took on the leadership of the House on its seeming silence over the vexed issue of who should appoint the Chairman and other Commissioners of INEC. Gbajabiamila argued given the controversy generated by the issue in the public domain and the need to restore public confidence in the electoral system, the House needed to take a stand on the issue.
According to him, silence on such an issue will seem to confirm the public perception that the House was not in tune with the yearnings and aspirations of the Nigerian people on the issue of conducting transparent and credible elections.
“We cannot keep quite over such a sensitive issue otherwise it will amount to a confirmation of the public view that while the rest of the country is going in one direction, the leadership of the House appear to be driving us towards another direction,†he said.
This remark sparked off a series of angry reactions from across the chambers. Deputy Speaker, Honourable Usman Nafada expressed disgust at what he termed an attack on the leadership of the House, while a number of other lawmakers murmured in reaction to Gbajabiamila’s remarks. Proceedings was stalled for some twenty minutes as some lawmakers protested and demanded an open apology from Gbajabiamila. Although, Minority leader of the House Honourable Mohammed Ndume; Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa and Honourable Abdul Ningi tendered apologies on Gbajabiamila’s behalf, the aggrieved lawmakers would accept none of those apologies. Even when Gbajabiamila rose to announce the withdrawal of his statement, it did not go down well with the protesters, apparently because of his insistence that he spoke frankly in the interest of the House of Representatives and the nation.
The consideration of the Constitutional Amendments continues today and lawmakers are expected to commence voting on the various clauses.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has given assurance that the ongoing constitution amendment exercise would eventually dovetail into the creation of new states in the country.
Deputy Speaker Usam Nafada stated this while receiving members of the Movement for the Creation Apa State, from the present Benue State at the National Assembly yesterday in Abuja.
Nafada in his remarks after receiving the memorandum from the group stated that the House had earlier resolved that new states would be created, adding that the creation of Apa State was long over due.
Also, the House has mandated its committees on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora to constitute a joint team which would visit the Polish Ambassador to Nigeria with a view to expressing the House’s commiseration with Poland over the recent death of the country’s president in a plane crash. The resolution was sequel to a motion moved by the Chairman, House Committee on Defence, Uluwole Oke.
Polish President, Mr. Lech Kaczynski, his wife and several key government officials were recently killed in an air crash in Russia. The Movement for the creation of Apa State was led by the Och’Idoma, His Highness, Elias Ekoyi Obekpa.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Plot To Remove House Leadership Is Real...Ndume
Adesuwa Tsan
Following denials by some members of the House of Representatives that there are on-going attempts to unseat the leadership of the House, leader of the opposition parties in the House, Hon Mohammed Ali Ndume, has confirmed that indeed there are such plans in progress.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP yesterday in the National Assembly, the leader also revealed that members of his caucus have even been meeting with him to enquire about how they should swing in the crisis.
He said: "It is true that there is something like this in the House and it is usual but my only disappointment is that we are being derailed by issues like this that are personal to us instead of concentrating on national issues that can affect and improve the lives of our people.
"Some of the members of my caucus have approached me to ask where to go in terms of pro-Jonathan as a group now or pro-Yar'Adua group and that is how the House is truly divided, and in fact, the way the country is divided. We are the stabilising factor in the House because you can only have a PDP speaker, so it is only a PDP man that will have interest to unseat the speaker so that they will have the opportunity to be there but they cannot do that without the opposition. My members are asking where do we go and I say go to wherever you feel like."
Ndume noted that the distraction in the House of Representatives through threats of impeachments and other issues such as the Yar'Adua/Goodluck Jonathan issue are devices of members of the PDP aimed at removing attention from important matters.
"I think the PDP government has succeeded in taking away Nigeria's attention to trivialities instead of issues. Since they abandoned the seven-point agenda nobody is talking about it anymore, what we are talking about now is Jonathan's agenda and even that is not clear or spelt out. Nobody is talking about the megawatts they are generating anymore, the electoral reforms, where have we gone to? Nobody is talking about state creation, the suffering of the masses or anything aside personalised issues and Nigerians are buying into that. It is very sad.â€
Ndume added, "it is still a PDP government, and we in the opposition in the House have remained solid in terms of our approach to issues. If we feel that the speaker is found wanting and there is a need to go to that level, we will do that but for now, it hasn't gotten to that"..
OGBULAFOR: It is the work of the Devil
The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Prince Vincent Ogbulafor appears to be a firm believer in this scriptural passage, “Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devourâ€. Hence Ogbulafor has said that “it was apparent that a devil had come to visit the party but said that he would be defeatedâ€.
Ogbulafor has also called on God to intervene in the crisis currently rocking the party.
He is responding to reports that the Chief Judge of the Abuja High Court, Justice Lawal Gumi, has assigned the N170m graft charge against National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party and two others.
In the charge, Ogbulafor was said to have fraudulently received the said N170m while he was the Minister of Special Duties. Why do Nigerians often blame the devil for evils they should rightly blame themselves?
Ogbulafor only has himself to blame. As Chairman of PDP, he is not the leader of the party; Under Ogbulafor, the PDP chair became an errand boy to the presidency!
I remember well that during the crisis that engulfed the Anambra State Chapter of the PDP primary, I asked an Aso Rock insider why President Yar’adua had sidestepped power structure in the PDP to empower hoodlums who now causes confusion.
I was told that Yar’Adua plainly empowered Ogbulafor to take charge and deliver in the Anambra Primary, but he failed; “he was so weak and inept.
When I interjected that Yar’Adua might have made himself unavailable to Ogbulafor, thus depriving him of the necessary support, he then added the clincher:
“The President doesn't want to be running the PDP from the villa, nobody can do to Anyim Pius Anyim what some characters are doing to Ogbulafor, the man is a big disappointment to say the least and I am restraining myself here...this President is not like Baba who micromanages everything…the President is very much accessible to Ogbulafor, he is here at the villa at least twice a week, it's just that when he is here, he pursues other matters, that's why he has lost the respect of manyâ€
According to this gentleman therefore, Ogbulafor, “is at the villa at least twice a week†but the problem is that instead of discussing the problems of the party and how to solve them, Ogbulafor only come to pursue government contracts and “that is why he has lost all respectâ€!
He cannot deliver because he is more interested in government contracts than in ensuring proper democracy in the PDP.
It is equally disingenuous – as some are inclined to do - to blame Ogulafor’s woes on the acting president. Some accuse Jonathan Goodluck on a vendetta mission simply because Ogbulafor allegedly opposed his ascendancy to office.
In November 2009, I published among other issues a petition to the ICPC dated July 4, 2009, an NGO sent to the ICPC accusing Ogbulafor of buying a house worth N400 million within three months of becoming the ruling party’s chairman.
The PDP Chairman was also accused of misappropriating N104 million belonging to the Federal Government when he was Minister of Special Duties (Economic Affairs).
According to the petition, “The sum of N104 million belonging to the Federal Government was distributed under the supervision and or connivance of Prince Ogbulafor. The federal government did not receive any consideration on the above sum as they were distributed and paid out for the execution of no-existent contract.
"Prince Ogbulafor and several others shared the loot and doctored the papers to cover their paths. Prince Ogbulafor, in a rare show of honesty in dishonesty, admitted receiving N2 million from the said lump sum. He, however, claimed it was ex-gratia payments to aid him pursue an undisclosed political venture.â€
The offences were allegedly committed by Ogbulafor and others charged with him in March 2001.
If the President, Umaru Yar’adua failed to act on the petition when it was made, why would anyone henceforth blame the Acting President in his effort to fulfill the pledge he made on assuming duties to re-invigorate the war against corruption?
Ogbulafor has also called on God to intervene in the crisis currently rocking the party.
He is responding to reports that the Chief Judge of the Abuja High Court, Justice Lawal Gumi, has assigned the N170m graft charge against National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party and two others.
In the charge, Ogbulafor was said to have fraudulently received the said N170m while he was the Minister of Special Duties. Why do Nigerians often blame the devil for evils they should rightly blame themselves?
Ogbulafor only has himself to blame. As Chairman of PDP, he is not the leader of the party; Under Ogbulafor, the PDP chair became an errand boy to the presidency!
I remember well that during the crisis that engulfed the Anambra State Chapter of the PDP primary, I asked an Aso Rock insider why President Yar’adua had sidestepped power structure in the PDP to empower hoodlums who now causes confusion.
I was told that Yar’Adua plainly empowered Ogbulafor to take charge and deliver in the Anambra Primary, but he failed; “he was so weak and inept.
When I interjected that Yar’Adua might have made himself unavailable to Ogbulafor, thus depriving him of the necessary support, he then added the clincher:
“The President doesn't want to be running the PDP from the villa, nobody can do to Anyim Pius Anyim what some characters are doing to Ogbulafor, the man is a big disappointment to say the least and I am restraining myself here...this President is not like Baba who micromanages everything…the President is very much accessible to Ogbulafor, he is here at the villa at least twice a week, it's just that when he is here, he pursues other matters, that's why he has lost the respect of manyâ€
According to this gentleman therefore, Ogbulafor, “is at the villa at least twice a week†but the problem is that instead of discussing the problems of the party and how to solve them, Ogbulafor only come to pursue government contracts and “that is why he has lost all respectâ€!
He cannot deliver because he is more interested in government contracts than in ensuring proper democracy in the PDP.
It is equally disingenuous – as some are inclined to do - to blame Ogulafor’s woes on the acting president. Some accuse Jonathan Goodluck on a vendetta mission simply because Ogbulafor allegedly opposed his ascendancy to office.
In November 2009, I published among other issues a petition to the ICPC dated July 4, 2009, an NGO sent to the ICPC accusing Ogbulafor of buying a house worth N400 million within three months of becoming the ruling party’s chairman.
The PDP Chairman was also accused of misappropriating N104 million belonging to the Federal Government when he was Minister of Special Duties (Economic Affairs).
According to the petition, “The sum of N104 million belonging to the Federal Government was distributed under the supervision and or connivance of Prince Ogbulafor. The federal government did not receive any consideration on the above sum as they were distributed and paid out for the execution of no-existent contract.
"Prince Ogbulafor and several others shared the loot and doctored the papers to cover their paths. Prince Ogbulafor, in a rare show of honesty in dishonesty, admitted receiving N2 million from the said lump sum. He, however, claimed it was ex-gratia payments to aid him pursue an undisclosed political venture.â€
The offences were allegedly committed by Ogbulafor and others charged with him in March 2001.
If the President, Umaru Yar’adua failed to act on the petition when it was made, why would anyone henceforth blame the Acting President in his effort to fulfill the pledge he made on assuming duties to re-invigorate the war against corruption?
Ogun State 2011: Some facts, figures
Wale Adedayo
With the declaration of Ijebu-born Rev. Olajide Awosedo as a gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a fresh twist has been added to the quest by both the Yewa/Awori and Egba to occupy the Ogun State Governor's Office come May 29, 2011.
Until Awosedo's declaration, the interest of the Ijebus in Oke Mosan was not public knowledge, with the Egbas contending against the Yewa/Awori for the seat. But in the words of an Ijebu leading light of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, in Ogun State last week: "The Ijebus will contest if the Yewa/Awori fails to present a candidate."
Traditionally, Ogun State has four divisions: Egba, Ijebu, Yewa/Awori and Remo. Proponents of Egba's right to Oke Mosan in 2011 argue that instead of the known old divisions, it is the senatorial districts, as recognised by the current political dispensation, that should guide the acknowledged rotation principle for political offices. If this argument should hold, it will be an uphill task for the Yewa/Awori given the ambition of prominent Egba moneybags eyeing the seat.
In the words of the Afenifere chieftain: "The Egbas know it is not their turn, yet. The Ijebus were the first to taste the office under a democratic dispensation. That was in 1979, when Chief Olabisi Onabanjo got elected. An Egba, Chief Olusegun Osoba, has been there twice. He just left for the incumbent, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, from Remo to occupy the place. It is the natural turn of the Yewa/Awori to produce a governor. But if they are not interested, either by acts of commission or omission, the Ijebus will be foolish not to take their turn. It is after an Ijebu has been there that the Egba will take their turn. That is the natural order of things here."
But yours truly believe that instead of the PDP being the sole determinant of who occupies the exalted office, groups within and outside the party also have dominant roles to play irrespective of who picks the PDP ticket. The five prominent groups irrespective of party affiliation in Ogun State today are:
1. OGD Team: Until the emergence of Buruji Kashamu's Omo Ilu, it was the most formidable despite the negative publicity around the person of the governor and his associates. Originally made up of Ogun State indigenes resident mostly in Lagos with a few in Ibadan, Oyo State, the group soon swallowed followers of Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye. OGD's background in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and Afenifere also ensured the defection of many who should have strengthened the Action Congress (AC) to the PDP as members of the Governor's Team. Economic largesse to dull the political sense of the people, spiritual coercion and the use of strong boys was almost the exclusive preserve of the group. The pyramidal structure of the group ensured that the 236 Wards of the state are covered like a web without any village or rural settlement missing from its political map.
2. OMO Ilu: Founded by Ijebu Igbo-born moneybag, Prince Buruji Kashamu, the group was originally a sub-set of OGD Team. With a lot of attention on the Shagamu shrine where oath of allegiance to OGD was being taken, it was a big relief when Kashamu approached his old friend and offered Ijebu Igbo as a new base of oath-taking in support of the Governor. But it was a miscalculation on OGD's part because he did not take into consideration the affinity between Senator Lekan Mustapha and Kashamu, thus a possible allegiance to JMK. It was not a surprise to the discerning when the original name of OGD Omo Ilu was changed to simply, Omo Ilu, and the oath-taking became an allegiance to Kashamu. The group has effectively diluted OGD's Team presence across the state having adopted similar tactics which made the Governor 'acceptable' to the grassroots.
3. JMK Team: Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye emergence as a minister has boosted the morale of this group, which was already in a coma before the emergence of Omo Ilu. Just like OGD's Team, the JMK Team is spread across the state with politicians from the Second Republic till date being active members. Most, if not all, leaders/elders of the PDP in Ogun State would prefer a JMK as leader and follow his directives instead of OGD. Kashamu's Omo Ilu is also most likely to dissolve into JMK's Team not just because both men are from the same local government. But the political engine room of the JMK group, Mustapha, is like a twin brother to Kashamu, socially, economically and politically.
4. SIA Team: But for the defection of a number of his key allies to OGD's Team in 2008, Senator Ibikunle Amosun was a very potent force in Ogun State politics. He had the six Egba Local Governments, which the ANPP won in 2007 elections, in his political grip. His support base was also solid in Ado Odo/Ota and Yewa South Local Governments in the Yewa/Awori area. The poor presence of his boys in Shagamu Local Government ensured that SIA's supporters kept to 'houses' and did not openly 'show' themselves. But he also understand grassroots mobilisation better than the Action Congress (AC) people. We had to hurriedly leave the campaign ground in Ijebu Igbo towards the 2007 elections when his boys joined forces with Alhaji Gbenga Kaka's DPA crowd to attack the PDP campaign train in the town. Four 18 seater buses hired for members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) by the PDP were seized by the DPA boys with the OPC boys suffering different degree of injuries. It was a very tough one with yours truly barely escaping with his life!
5. Team DPA: Maybe it was the old Afenifere tactics or simply Alhaji Gbenga Kaka at work. But till date, apart from SIA in Egbaland, the only other formidable opposition with serious grassroot presence against the PDP remains the DPA. For instance, the DPA won in Ijebu North, Odogbolu and Remo North local governments during the 2007 elections. But unlike what happened in Ijebu North, especially Ijebu Igbo, the party could not 'police' its vote just like the ANPP in Egbaland. It was thus easy to 'officially' reverse its victory. The DPA, with its obviously meagre economic war chest, has excellent organisational ability in its area of popularity - Ijebuland..
With the declaration of Ijebu-born Rev. Olajide Awosedo as a gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a fresh twist has been added to the quest by both the Yewa/Awori and Egba to occupy the Ogun State Governor's Office come May 29, 2011.
Until Awosedo's declaration, the interest of the Ijebus in Oke Mosan was not public knowledge, with the Egbas contending against the Yewa/Awori for the seat. But in the words of an Ijebu leading light of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, in Ogun State last week: "The Ijebus will contest if the Yewa/Awori fails to present a candidate."
Traditionally, Ogun State has four divisions: Egba, Ijebu, Yewa/Awori and Remo. Proponents of Egba's right to Oke Mosan in 2011 argue that instead of the known old divisions, it is the senatorial districts, as recognised by the current political dispensation, that should guide the acknowledged rotation principle for political offices. If this argument should hold, it will be an uphill task for the Yewa/Awori given the ambition of prominent Egba moneybags eyeing the seat.
In the words of the Afenifere chieftain: "The Egbas know it is not their turn, yet. The Ijebus were the first to taste the office under a democratic dispensation. That was in 1979, when Chief Olabisi Onabanjo got elected. An Egba, Chief Olusegun Osoba, has been there twice. He just left for the incumbent, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, from Remo to occupy the place. It is the natural turn of the Yewa/Awori to produce a governor. But if they are not interested, either by acts of commission or omission, the Ijebus will be foolish not to take their turn. It is after an Ijebu has been there that the Egba will take their turn. That is the natural order of things here."
But yours truly believe that instead of the PDP being the sole determinant of who occupies the exalted office, groups within and outside the party also have dominant roles to play irrespective of who picks the PDP ticket. The five prominent groups irrespective of party affiliation in Ogun State today are:
1. OGD Team: Until the emergence of Buruji Kashamu's Omo Ilu, it was the most formidable despite the negative publicity around the person of the governor and his associates. Originally made up of Ogun State indigenes resident mostly in Lagos with a few in Ibadan, Oyo State, the group soon swallowed followers of Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye. OGD's background in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and Afenifere also ensured the defection of many who should have strengthened the Action Congress (AC) to the PDP as members of the Governor's Team. Economic largesse to dull the political sense of the people, spiritual coercion and the use of strong boys was almost the exclusive preserve of the group. The pyramidal structure of the group ensured that the 236 Wards of the state are covered like a web without any village or rural settlement missing from its political map.
2. OMO Ilu: Founded by Ijebu Igbo-born moneybag, Prince Buruji Kashamu, the group was originally a sub-set of OGD Team. With a lot of attention on the Shagamu shrine where oath of allegiance to OGD was being taken, it was a big relief when Kashamu approached his old friend and offered Ijebu Igbo as a new base of oath-taking in support of the Governor. But it was a miscalculation on OGD's part because he did not take into consideration the affinity between Senator Lekan Mustapha and Kashamu, thus a possible allegiance to JMK. It was not a surprise to the discerning when the original name of OGD Omo Ilu was changed to simply, Omo Ilu, and the oath-taking became an allegiance to Kashamu. The group has effectively diluted OGD's Team presence across the state having adopted similar tactics which made the Governor 'acceptable' to the grassroots.
3. JMK Team: Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye emergence as a minister has boosted the morale of this group, which was already in a coma before the emergence of Omo Ilu. Just like OGD's Team, the JMK Team is spread across the state with politicians from the Second Republic till date being active members. Most, if not all, leaders/elders of the PDP in Ogun State would prefer a JMK as leader and follow his directives instead of OGD. Kashamu's Omo Ilu is also most likely to dissolve into JMK's Team not just because both men are from the same local government. But the political engine room of the JMK group, Mustapha, is like a twin brother to Kashamu, socially, economically and politically.
4. SIA Team: But for the defection of a number of his key allies to OGD's Team in 2008, Senator Ibikunle Amosun was a very potent force in Ogun State politics. He had the six Egba Local Governments, which the ANPP won in 2007 elections, in his political grip. His support base was also solid in Ado Odo/Ota and Yewa South Local Governments in the Yewa/Awori area. The poor presence of his boys in Shagamu Local Government ensured that SIA's supporters kept to 'houses' and did not openly 'show' themselves. But he also understand grassroots mobilisation better than the Action Congress (AC) people. We had to hurriedly leave the campaign ground in Ijebu Igbo towards the 2007 elections when his boys joined forces with Alhaji Gbenga Kaka's DPA crowd to attack the PDP campaign train in the town. Four 18 seater buses hired for members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) by the PDP were seized by the DPA boys with the OPC boys suffering different degree of injuries. It was a very tough one with yours truly barely escaping with his life!
5. Team DPA: Maybe it was the old Afenifere tactics or simply Alhaji Gbenga Kaka at work. But till date, apart from SIA in Egbaland, the only other formidable opposition with serious grassroot presence against the PDP remains the DPA. For instance, the DPA won in Ijebu North, Odogbolu and Remo North local governments during the 2007 elections. But unlike what happened in Ijebu North, especially Ijebu Igbo, the party could not 'police' its vote just like the ANPP in Egbaland. It was thus easy to 'officially' reverse its victory. The DPA, with its obviously meagre economic war chest, has excellent organisational ability in its area of popularity - Ijebuland..
Ikwerre - Igbo - 22 MISINFORMATION ON IGBOS
OKACHIKWU DIBIA,
GREETINGS AGAIN FOR YOUR PAINSTAKING EFFORT TO LAY DOWN YOUR ANGER AND PROBLEMS IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE WITH BOTH THE IJAWS AND IGBOS. IT IS VERY GOOD YOU ARE LAYING OUT THESE ANGER AND CHARGES WHICH A LOT OF US DO NOT KNOW EXIST, BECAUSE EVERY GROUP HAVE THEIR OWN GREVIENCIES AND NO BODY IS LISTENING OR TALKING ABOUT IT AS FRANKLY AS WE ARE TRYING TO DO HERE WITH RESPECT LATELY.
I WANT TO POINT OUT HERE CERTAIN MISINFORMATION SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT IGBOS HERE.
22 WRONG MICONCEPTION AND WRONG INFORMATION SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT IGBOS AND YOU ARE FREE TO AGREE WITH ME ON THESE 22 FACTS OR DISAGREE AS IT RELATES TO HOW IKWERRE IGBO RELATIONSHIP HAS DEGENERATED WITH TOO MUCH WRONG INFORMATION AND MISCONCEPTION ABOUT IGBOS.
(1) IGBO ARE NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING OVER IKWERRE LAND AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION IGBO LAND IS RICHER THAN IKWERRE LAND IN QUANTITY, QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY OF FERTILE LAND FOR AGRICULTURE, OIL DEPOSIT AND ANY SOLID MINERAL AND COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND FOR THESE REASONS IGBO DO NOT WANT TO TAKE IKWERRE LAND FROM YOU.
ESPECIALLY IF IKWERRE IS DEVELOPED TO ITS FULL POTENCIAL AND IGBO IS DEVELOPED TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL WITHOUT THE CORRUPT LEADERSHIP THAT DRAGES EVERYBODY DOWN IN NIGERIA AND IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA. AFTER IJAW NATION IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST OIL AND GAS DEPOSIT, EXPLORATION, SUPPLY AND EXTRACTION RIGHT NOW IN NIGERIA.
IGBOS HAVE NEVER TALKED ABOUT THEIR OIL AND GAS POTENTIAL LIKE YOU GUYS DO. IGBOS HAVE MORE THAN 30 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS IN IMO STATE, ABIA STATE, ANABRA STATE THAT HAVE HUGE OIL AND GAS DEPOSIT NOT TO TALK OF IGBOS IN DELTA, AKWA IBOM AND CROSS RIVER STATE, BUT IKWERRE HAS ONLY FOUR LOCAL GOVERNEMT AREAS AND IT SEEMS THAT IKWERRE PEOPLE FORGET THAT IGBOS HAVE MORE OIL AND GAS 100 TIMES OVER THAN WHAT IKWERRE HAS BUT YOU GUYS DONT EVEN THINK LIKE THAT AND ALL I HEAR IS HOW IGBOS WANT TO TAKE OVER IKWERRE LAND BECAUSE OF OIL AND GAS - WHAT A BALLONY.
(2) NOW, THE IS ANOTHER MISCONCEPTION AMONG THE IKWERRE PEOPLE I HAVE MET, THAT SOMETIMES I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MAYBE BECAUSE THE IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE NOT REALLY GONE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS IGBOS AND IJAWS OR AT LEAST LEARN OR GO TO IGBOLAND AND IJAW LAND TO DISPROVE SOME MISCONCEPTION ABOUT IGBOS AND IJAWS. JUST LIKE A LOT OF IGBOS LIKE MYSELF AND MANY MORE HAVE TRAVELLED TO IKWERRE LAND AND GIVE EAR TO THEIR STORY AND LISTEN TO THEM AND JUST LIKE I TRAVEL AND LISTEN TO OTHER TRIBES AND GROUPS IN NIGERIA TO LEARN AD UNDERSTAND THEM AND KNOW ABOUT THEIR POTENTIAL. ALSO THEY ARE IGBOS AND IJAWS TOO WHO HAVE NOT TRIED ENOUGH TO HEAR THE STORIES AND PAIN OF OUR SMALL NEIGHBOURS AND THAT IS WRONG TOO. BUT A LOF OF IKWERRE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO UNDERSTAND WERE THY IGBOS ARE COMING FROM.
(3) YOU WROTE- OKACHIKWU DIBIA QUOTE " What our sworn enemies should do is not to be jealous about our economic location, rather they should accept us for what we say we are and work with us as friendly equals. Afterall Igbos who survived slavery and Arochukwu cleansing and decided to remain in Ikwerre are there in Ikwerreland and doing well. We rescued them and have taken care of them. Those few Ikwerre people that supported Igbo in suppressing and victimising Ikwerre are just a few Judases in Ikwerre. We know them very well. Ikwerre will forever remain Ikwerre until we get superior historical, sociological and economic evidences to show otherwise." UNQUOTE OKACHIKWU DIBIA
QUESTION FOR NUMBER (3)
WHY DO SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE (FEW OR MANY IT DOES NOT MATTER) SUPPORT IGBOS AND CLAIM THAT THEY ARE IGBOS AS OPPOSED TO YOU AND OTHER IKWERRE (FEW OR MANY IT DOES NOT MATTER), AND WHAT IS YOUR LONG TERM SOLUTION TO THIS DIVID IN IKWERRE LAND - AND WHAT COMPROMISE DO YOU THINK YOU CAN ARRIVE AT WITH THESE OTHER IKWERRES PEOPLE WHO HAVE SAID THAT THEY ARE IGBOS AND SUPPORT IGBO CAUSE.
(4) I HAVE BEEN AROUND MANY IKWERREE PEOPLE BOTH IN NIGERIA, RIVER STATE, IKWERRE LAND AND ABROAD AND I AM SHOCKED AND IN DISBELIEF THE LITTLE IKWERRE PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS AND I WONDER WHAT IS CAUSING THESE MISINFORMATION AMONG IKWERRE PEOPLE, AND IT HAS MADE A LOF IKWEWRRE PEOPLE NOT KNOWING THE CORRECTS FACTS ABOUT IGBOS OF SOUTH EAST.
.
(5) IKWERRE IN RIVER STATE IS ONLY 4 (FOUR) LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS AND YOU STATED IT HERE ALSO, BUT DO YOU KNOW THAT THE CORE IGBO STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAS ABOUT 104 (ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR) LOCAL GOVERMENT AREAS AND WHEN YOU ADD IGBO LOCAL GOVERMENT IN DELTA STATE WHICH IS 7 LGA IN ADDITION TO IGBO POPULATION IN AKWA IBOM, CROSS RIVER, BENUE STATE BORDER IGBO COMMUNIITES AND KOGI STATES BORDER IGBO COMMUNITIIES IT WILL BE MORE BUT LETS LEAVE THOSE FOR ANOTHER DAY.
(CORE SOUTH EAST STATE IMO STATE HAS 27 LGA, ABIA STATE HAS 24 LGA, ENUGU HAS 17 LGA, ANAMBRA 22 LGA AND EBONYI HAS 14 LGA FOR A TOTAL OF 104 LOCAL GOVERNEMENT AREAS.) IN SOUTH EAST OF ZONE OF NIGERIA.
(6) YOU KNOW THAT IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND DEPOSIT IN NIGERIA AFTER IJAWS AND YOU CAN NEVER HEAR IGBOS TALK ABOUT THEIR OIL WEALTH OR RICH DEPOSIT, BECAUSE SOME OF THE RICHEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD TODAY DO NOT HAVE ANY RAWS MATERIAL OR OIL DEPOSIT, INFACT NO NATURAL DEPOSIT OF WEALTH EXAMPLES ARE JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA, SWITZERLAND ETC. BUT RATHER HUMAN CAPACITY AND HUM RESOURCES IS THEIR WEALTH. IGBOS NEVER TALK OF HOW OUR LAND IS SO RICH AND WEALTHY, BUT IKWERRE PEOPLE SINGS IT LIKE A SONG KNOWING FULLY WELL THAT IGBOS HAVE OIL, MORE GAS, MORE DEPOSIT AND MORE FERTILE AGRICULTURAL LAND, BUT YOU PORTRAY IGBOS AS ONLY INTERESTED IN TAKING PORTHARCOURT BEFORE IGBOS CAN BECOME RICH - WHAT A FALLACY. WE ARE RICH BUT WE DONT TALK ABOUT IT AS FAR AS OUR BROTHERS AND NEIGBHBOURS IKWERRE ARE CONCERN.
(7) DO YOU KNOW THAT HALF OF IMO STATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS 13 OUT OF 27 LOCAL GOVERMENT AREAS IN IMO STATE ARE OIL AND GAS PRODUCING AREAS IN LARGE COMMERCIAL QUANTITY IN EXPLORATION, DEPOSIT AND PRODUCTION, ABIA STATE HAS 13 OUT OF 23 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS WHICH HAS OIL AND GAS PRODUCING IN COMMERCIAL QUANTITIES IN EXPLORATION, DEPOSIT AND PRODUCTION, ANAMBRA BASIN ALONG THE RIVER NIGER UPLAND ON BOTHS SIDES OF THE RIVER NIGER BANK AND IN OGBARU, ONITSHA, IGBORIAM AREAS ETC, COVERING ABOUT 9 LOCAL GOVERNEMT AREAS IN ANAMBRA STATE HAVE PROVEN STORED AND RESERVED DEPOSIT OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF OIL AND GAS IN ADDTION TO THE 7 IGBO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS OF DELTA STATE (ASABA ANIOMA AREAS) WITH PROVEN DEPOSIT OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF OIL AND GAS BUT IGBOS DO NOT TALK ABOUT THIS.
(8) ALSO, THE LARGE COMMERCIAL, INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS TOWNS OF ONITSHA, NNEWI, ABA, OKIGWE, ABAKALIKI IN ADDITION TO OUR ADMINISTRATIVE, BUSINESS AND POLITICAL CAPITALS LIKE OWERRI, ENUGU, UMUAHIA, AFRIKPO AND AWKA GIVES IGBOS GREAT LEG UP TO BE A VIBRANT GROWTH POTENTIAL NATION IF IT HAPPENES THAT NIGERIA BREAK OR IF NIGERIA AND IGBO NATION CAN PRODUCE GOOD LEADERS LIKE DR. MICHAEL OKPARA AND DR. AZIKIWE AGAIN TO UNLEASH THESE POTENTIALS.. WE ALSO HAVE TWO VERY VIBRANT AIRPORTS (ENUGU AND OWERRI) AND READY FOR EXPANSION TO INTERNATIONAL TRAVELS AND CARGO IN ADDITION TO ONITSHA AIRPORT ON THE DRAWING BOARD AND THE ASABA ALMOST READY AIRPORT. THESE INFRASTRUCTURES AND RESOURCES MAKES IGBO A RICH PEOPLE BUT IGBOS DO NOT SAY THAT AND OUR DETRACTORS DO NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT IGBOS AND WHAT WE HAVE BECAUSE THEY HEAR ONLY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT IGBOS.
(9) ON EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE - ALL THE 5 CORE IGBO STATES IN THE SOUTH EAST HAVE ONE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY AND IN ADDITION EACH HAVE ONE STATE UNIVERSITY AND 3 EACH OTHER INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING AND EACH STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAVE ONE MEDICAL SCHOOL EACH AND ONE TEACHING HOSPITAL EACH. AND EACH STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAVE AT LEAST 3 ACREDITTED PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OR PRIVATE INSTITUION OF HIGHER LEARNING IN IGBOLAND AS WE SPEAK RUN BY PRIVATE IGBOS EDUCATORS AND BUSINESS PEOPLE.
(10) SOME PARTS OF IGBOLAND ARE VERY FERTILE AND PRODUCTIVE IN FOOD PRODUCTION LIKE THE AFIKPO, ABAKALIKI, NKALAGU AREAS, IGBORIAM, UZOUWANI, OGBARU, NKANU, BENDE, ISUKWUATO AREAS AND FARM SETTLEMENT AREAS THAT STILL PRODUCES LARGE QUANTTITIES OF RICE, BEANS AND CORN ETC AS WE SPEAK TODAY.
(11) IGBOS WILL DO WELL AND SURVIVE WITH OIL AND GAS AND OTHER RESOURCES IN COMMERCIAL AND EXPORT MARKET IN IGBOLAND LIKE COAL, CEMENT, LIME STONE, STEEL ETC. IGBOS WILL DO QUITE WELL WHEN ALL THEIR RESOURCES ARE USED AND ORGANIZED WELL. EXAMPLE IGBO WILL BE AN OIL PRODUCING NATION IF NIGERIA BREAKS.
(12) OIL/GAS AND ENERGY SUPPLY:
IJAW TRIBE HAVE BY FAR THE LARGEST RESERVE DEPOSIT AND OUTPUT OF OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA TODAY AND THEY CAN SURVIVE EASILY BUT ALSO IGBOS TRIBE ARE SECOND IN TERMS OF RESOURCES IN OIL AND GAS, RESERVE AND OUTPUT IN OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA TODAY.
(13) IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST RESERVE DEPOSIT AND OUTPUT OF OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA. IGBOS HAVE ENOUGH OIL AND GAS TO MAKE IGBO NATION AN OIL PRODUCING COUNTRY WITH OIL AND GAS IN ABIA STATE, IMO STATE, IGBO PART OF RIVER STATE, IGBO PART OF DELTA STATE AND WITH THE LARGE DISCOVERY AND RESERVE DEPOSIT OF OIL AND GAS IN THE NIGER RIVER BASIN AXIS OF (ONITSHA/OGBARU/ASABA, OGUTA) AXIS AND UP NORTH ALONG TWO SIDES OF RIVER NIGER UP WITH ABUNDANT RESERVES OF OIL AND GAS AS KNOWN SO FAR.
(14) IGBOS ALSO HAVE THE LARGE DEPOSIT OF COAL ENERGY WHICH WILL EARN IGBOS HUGE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL WHEN WELL HARNESSED ALONG THE ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, NKALALGU AND AFRIKPO AXIS FOR ENERGY SUPPLY AND EXPORT MARKET.
(15) IGBOS ALSO HAVE LARGE COMMERCIAL DEPOSIT OF CEMENT AND LIME STONE ALONG THE ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, NKALALGU AND AFRIKPO AXIS FOR CONSTRUCTION AND EXPORT.
(16) IGBOS HAVE LARGE DEPOSIT OF CERAMIC AND CLAY IN OKIGWE, MBANO, MBAISE, UMUAHIA AND NGWA AREAS IN COMMERCIAL QUANTITY AND BEING EXTRACTED USED ALL ALONG IN IGBOLAND AND OTHER PARTS OF NIGERIA. .
(17) RIGHT NOW COMMERCIAL CHICKEN FARMS, FISH FARMS AND COMMERICAL ANIMAL FARMING IS ON GROUND AND FLORISHING IN IMO STATE, AFIKPO, ENUGU, UMUAHIA, OKIGWE ETC.
(18) AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES WILL DO WELL IN IGBOLAND WITH HUGE AND ARABLE AND PRODUCTIVE LANDS IN THESE AREAS OF AFIKPO, OHAOZARA, ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, OKIGWE, ISUKWUATO, OGBARU, IGBOARIAM, BENDE, UMUHHIA AXIS FOR MECHANIZED AND EFFICIENT AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM LIKE THE ISREALIS ARE DOING TODAY.
MR. OKACHIKWU DIBIA, WITH THE ABOVE FACTS, YOU CAN SEE THAT IGBOS ARE VERY VERY RICH IN TERMS OF HUMAN, MATERIAL, RAW MATERIAL, YOUTH AND ADULT CALCULATION OF WEALTH AND WITH THESE IKWERRE CANNOT MEASURE UP AT ALL BUT IGBOS DO NOT SAY OR TALK ABOUT THESE, BECAUSE LIKE SAID EARLIER THE RICHES COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD DO NOT HAVE OR AND THEY DO NOT EVEN HAVE FERTILE LAND FOR ANY THING.
(19) LOOK AT THE MOVIE INDUSTRY (NOLLYWOOD), MUSIC, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPORTS AREAS IN NIGERIA AND IN DIASPORIA AND YOU SEE THAT IGBOS HAVE A CAMPARABLE ADVANTAGE BUT WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT TO TAKE OVER OUR NEIGHBOURS.
(20) CORE 5 IGBO STATE GOVERNEMENT GENERATES INTERNAL REVENUE LARGE ENOUGH AND CORE IGBO 5 STATE GETS IT SHARE OF MONEY FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE SHARING, AND WITH SUCH HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY GOING TO CORE IGBO SOUTH EAST FROM OIL AND GAS ROYALTIES, INTERNAL GENERATED FUNDS, OTHER SOURCES, WE ARE RICHER THAN A LOT OF COUNTIRES LIKE KENYA, GHANA AND RICHER THAN A LOT OF COUNTRIES IN SOUTH AMERICA, ASIA, EUROPE ETC. IF NIGERIA RESOURCES IS WELL MANAGED AND EACH STATE IS WELL MAMAGED.
(21) IGBO POPULATION IS CONSERVATIVELY BETWEEN 35 MILLION TO 50 MILLION WORLD WIDE AND WITH WHAT WE HAVE WE ARE RICH IF WE HARNESS OUR RESOURCES VERY WELL
(22) FINALLY, IGBOS POPULATION IN LARGE NUMBERS HAVE COMMERCIAL, INDUSTRIAL, IMPORT, EXPORT AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENSE IN MAJOR CITIES OF NIGERIA, AFRICA, AMERICA, EUROPE, CHINA, LIKE LAGOS, ABUJA, KANO, KADUNA, IBADAN, BENIN CITY, RIVER STATE, SOKOTO, BENIN REPUBLIC, TOGO, IVORY COAST, GHANA, WEST AFRICAN COASTT, SOUTHERN AFRICAN COAST AND ALL OF AFRICA, IN ADDTION TO HUGE PRESENCE OF IGBOS IN AMERICA, EUROPE AND GIVES US HUGE ADVANTAGE FOR WEALTH CREATION AS WE PUT THINGS RIGHT BUT IGBOS DO NOT TALK ABOUT HOW RICH WE ARE SO THAT WE CAN TAKE OVER IKWERRE LAND OR ANY OTHER LAND.
.
THANKS
GREETINGS AGAIN FOR YOUR PAINSTAKING EFFORT TO LAY DOWN YOUR ANGER AND PROBLEMS IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE WITH BOTH THE IJAWS AND IGBOS. IT IS VERY GOOD YOU ARE LAYING OUT THESE ANGER AND CHARGES WHICH A LOT OF US DO NOT KNOW EXIST, BECAUSE EVERY GROUP HAVE THEIR OWN GREVIENCIES AND NO BODY IS LISTENING OR TALKING ABOUT IT AS FRANKLY AS WE ARE TRYING TO DO HERE WITH RESPECT LATELY.
I WANT TO POINT OUT HERE CERTAIN MISINFORMATION SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT IGBOS HERE.
22 WRONG MICONCEPTION AND WRONG INFORMATION SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT IGBOS AND YOU ARE FREE TO AGREE WITH ME ON THESE 22 FACTS OR DISAGREE AS IT RELATES TO HOW IKWERRE IGBO RELATIONSHIP HAS DEGENERATED WITH TOO MUCH WRONG INFORMATION AND MISCONCEPTION ABOUT IGBOS.
(1) IGBO ARE NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING OVER IKWERRE LAND AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION IGBO LAND IS RICHER THAN IKWERRE LAND IN QUANTITY, QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY OF FERTILE LAND FOR AGRICULTURE, OIL DEPOSIT AND ANY SOLID MINERAL AND COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND FOR THESE REASONS IGBO DO NOT WANT TO TAKE IKWERRE LAND FROM YOU.
ESPECIALLY IF IKWERRE IS DEVELOPED TO ITS FULL POTENCIAL AND IGBO IS DEVELOPED TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL WITHOUT THE CORRUPT LEADERSHIP THAT DRAGES EVERYBODY DOWN IN NIGERIA AND IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA. AFTER IJAW NATION IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST OIL AND GAS DEPOSIT, EXPLORATION, SUPPLY AND EXTRACTION RIGHT NOW IN NIGERIA.
IGBOS HAVE NEVER TALKED ABOUT THEIR OIL AND GAS POTENTIAL LIKE YOU GUYS DO. IGBOS HAVE MORE THAN 30 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS IN IMO STATE, ABIA STATE, ANABRA STATE THAT HAVE HUGE OIL AND GAS DEPOSIT NOT TO TALK OF IGBOS IN DELTA, AKWA IBOM AND CROSS RIVER STATE, BUT IKWERRE HAS ONLY FOUR LOCAL GOVERNEMT AREAS AND IT SEEMS THAT IKWERRE PEOPLE FORGET THAT IGBOS HAVE MORE OIL AND GAS 100 TIMES OVER THAN WHAT IKWERRE HAS BUT YOU GUYS DONT EVEN THINK LIKE THAT AND ALL I HEAR IS HOW IGBOS WANT TO TAKE OVER IKWERRE LAND BECAUSE OF OIL AND GAS - WHAT A BALLONY.
(2) NOW, THE IS ANOTHER MISCONCEPTION AMONG THE IKWERRE PEOPLE I HAVE MET, THAT SOMETIMES I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MAYBE BECAUSE THE IKWERRE PEOPLE HAVE NOT REALLY GONE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS IGBOS AND IJAWS OR AT LEAST LEARN OR GO TO IGBOLAND AND IJAW LAND TO DISPROVE SOME MISCONCEPTION ABOUT IGBOS AND IJAWS. JUST LIKE A LOT OF IGBOS LIKE MYSELF AND MANY MORE HAVE TRAVELLED TO IKWERRE LAND AND GIVE EAR TO THEIR STORY AND LISTEN TO THEM AND JUST LIKE I TRAVEL AND LISTEN TO OTHER TRIBES AND GROUPS IN NIGERIA TO LEARN AD UNDERSTAND THEM AND KNOW ABOUT THEIR POTENTIAL. ALSO THEY ARE IGBOS AND IJAWS TOO WHO HAVE NOT TRIED ENOUGH TO HEAR THE STORIES AND PAIN OF OUR SMALL NEIGHBOURS AND THAT IS WRONG TOO. BUT A LOF OF IKWERRE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO UNDERSTAND WERE THY IGBOS ARE COMING FROM.
(3) YOU WROTE- OKACHIKWU DIBIA QUOTE " What our sworn enemies should do is not to be jealous about our economic location, rather they should accept us for what we say we are and work with us as friendly equals. Afterall Igbos who survived slavery and Arochukwu cleansing and decided to remain in Ikwerre are there in Ikwerreland and doing well. We rescued them and have taken care of them. Those few Ikwerre people that supported Igbo in suppressing and victimising Ikwerre are just a few Judases in Ikwerre. We know them very well. Ikwerre will forever remain Ikwerre until we get superior historical, sociological and economic evidences to show otherwise." UNQUOTE OKACHIKWU DIBIA
QUESTION FOR NUMBER (3)
WHY DO SOME IKWERRE PEOPLE (FEW OR MANY IT DOES NOT MATTER) SUPPORT IGBOS AND CLAIM THAT THEY ARE IGBOS AS OPPOSED TO YOU AND OTHER IKWERRE (FEW OR MANY IT DOES NOT MATTER), AND WHAT IS YOUR LONG TERM SOLUTION TO THIS DIVID IN IKWERRE LAND - AND WHAT COMPROMISE DO YOU THINK YOU CAN ARRIVE AT WITH THESE OTHER IKWERRES PEOPLE WHO HAVE SAID THAT THEY ARE IGBOS AND SUPPORT IGBO CAUSE.
(4) I HAVE BEEN AROUND MANY IKWERREE PEOPLE BOTH IN NIGERIA, RIVER STATE, IKWERRE LAND AND ABROAD AND I AM SHOCKED AND IN DISBELIEF THE LITTLE IKWERRE PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THEIR NEIGHBOURS AND I WONDER WHAT IS CAUSING THESE MISINFORMATION AMONG IKWERRE PEOPLE, AND IT HAS MADE A LOF IKWEWRRE PEOPLE NOT KNOWING THE CORRECTS FACTS ABOUT IGBOS OF SOUTH EAST.
.
(5) IKWERRE IN RIVER STATE IS ONLY 4 (FOUR) LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS AND YOU STATED IT HERE ALSO, BUT DO YOU KNOW THAT THE CORE IGBO STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAS ABOUT 104 (ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR) LOCAL GOVERMENT AREAS AND WHEN YOU ADD IGBO LOCAL GOVERMENT IN DELTA STATE WHICH IS 7 LGA IN ADDITION TO IGBO POPULATION IN AKWA IBOM, CROSS RIVER, BENUE STATE BORDER IGBO COMMUNIITES AND KOGI STATES BORDER IGBO COMMUNITIIES IT WILL BE MORE BUT LETS LEAVE THOSE FOR ANOTHER DAY.
(CORE SOUTH EAST STATE IMO STATE HAS 27 LGA, ABIA STATE HAS 24 LGA, ENUGU HAS 17 LGA, ANAMBRA 22 LGA AND EBONYI HAS 14 LGA FOR A TOTAL OF 104 LOCAL GOVERNEMENT AREAS.) IN SOUTH EAST OF ZONE OF NIGERIA.
(6) YOU KNOW THAT IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND DEPOSIT IN NIGERIA AFTER IJAWS AND YOU CAN NEVER HEAR IGBOS TALK ABOUT THEIR OIL WEALTH OR RICH DEPOSIT, BECAUSE SOME OF THE RICHEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD TODAY DO NOT HAVE ANY RAWS MATERIAL OR OIL DEPOSIT, INFACT NO NATURAL DEPOSIT OF WEALTH EXAMPLES ARE JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA, SWITZERLAND ETC. BUT RATHER HUMAN CAPACITY AND HUM RESOURCES IS THEIR WEALTH. IGBOS NEVER TALK OF HOW OUR LAND IS SO RICH AND WEALTHY, BUT IKWERRE PEOPLE SINGS IT LIKE A SONG KNOWING FULLY WELL THAT IGBOS HAVE OIL, MORE GAS, MORE DEPOSIT AND MORE FERTILE AGRICULTURAL LAND, BUT YOU PORTRAY IGBOS AS ONLY INTERESTED IN TAKING PORTHARCOURT BEFORE IGBOS CAN BECOME RICH - WHAT A FALLACY. WE ARE RICH BUT WE DONT TALK ABOUT IT AS FAR AS OUR BROTHERS AND NEIGBHBOURS IKWERRE ARE CONCERN.
(7) DO YOU KNOW THAT HALF OF IMO STATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS 13 OUT OF 27 LOCAL GOVERMENT AREAS IN IMO STATE ARE OIL AND GAS PRODUCING AREAS IN LARGE COMMERCIAL QUANTITY IN EXPLORATION, DEPOSIT AND PRODUCTION, ABIA STATE HAS 13 OUT OF 23 LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS WHICH HAS OIL AND GAS PRODUCING IN COMMERCIAL QUANTITIES IN EXPLORATION, DEPOSIT AND PRODUCTION, ANAMBRA BASIN ALONG THE RIVER NIGER UPLAND ON BOTHS SIDES OF THE RIVER NIGER BANK AND IN OGBARU, ONITSHA, IGBORIAM AREAS ETC, COVERING ABOUT 9 LOCAL GOVERNEMT AREAS IN ANAMBRA STATE HAVE PROVEN STORED AND RESERVED DEPOSIT OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF OIL AND GAS IN ADDTION TO THE 7 IGBO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS OF DELTA STATE (ASABA ANIOMA AREAS) WITH PROVEN DEPOSIT OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF OIL AND GAS BUT IGBOS DO NOT TALK ABOUT THIS.
(8) ALSO, THE LARGE COMMERCIAL, INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS TOWNS OF ONITSHA, NNEWI, ABA, OKIGWE, ABAKALIKI IN ADDITION TO OUR ADMINISTRATIVE, BUSINESS AND POLITICAL CAPITALS LIKE OWERRI, ENUGU, UMUAHIA, AFRIKPO AND AWKA GIVES IGBOS GREAT LEG UP TO BE A VIBRANT GROWTH POTENTIAL NATION IF IT HAPPENES THAT NIGERIA BREAK OR IF NIGERIA AND IGBO NATION CAN PRODUCE GOOD LEADERS LIKE DR. MICHAEL OKPARA AND DR. AZIKIWE AGAIN TO UNLEASH THESE POTENTIALS.. WE ALSO HAVE TWO VERY VIBRANT AIRPORTS (ENUGU AND OWERRI) AND READY FOR EXPANSION TO INTERNATIONAL TRAVELS AND CARGO IN ADDITION TO ONITSHA AIRPORT ON THE DRAWING BOARD AND THE ASABA ALMOST READY AIRPORT. THESE INFRASTRUCTURES AND RESOURCES MAKES IGBO A RICH PEOPLE BUT IGBOS DO NOT SAY THAT AND OUR DETRACTORS DO NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT IGBOS AND WHAT WE HAVE BECAUSE THEY HEAR ONLY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT IGBOS.
(9) ON EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE - ALL THE 5 CORE IGBO STATES IN THE SOUTH EAST HAVE ONE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY AND IN ADDITION EACH HAVE ONE STATE UNIVERSITY AND 3 EACH OTHER INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING AND EACH STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAVE ONE MEDICAL SCHOOL EACH AND ONE TEACHING HOSPITAL EACH. AND EACH STATE IN SOUTH EAST HAVE AT LEAST 3 ACREDITTED PRIVATE UNIVERSITY OR PRIVATE INSTITUION OF HIGHER LEARNING IN IGBOLAND AS WE SPEAK RUN BY PRIVATE IGBOS EDUCATORS AND BUSINESS PEOPLE.
(10) SOME PARTS OF IGBOLAND ARE VERY FERTILE AND PRODUCTIVE IN FOOD PRODUCTION LIKE THE AFIKPO, ABAKALIKI, NKALAGU AREAS, IGBORIAM, UZOUWANI, OGBARU, NKANU, BENDE, ISUKWUATO AREAS AND FARM SETTLEMENT AREAS THAT STILL PRODUCES LARGE QUANTTITIES OF RICE, BEANS AND CORN ETC AS WE SPEAK TODAY.
(11) IGBOS WILL DO WELL AND SURVIVE WITH OIL AND GAS AND OTHER RESOURCES IN COMMERCIAL AND EXPORT MARKET IN IGBOLAND LIKE COAL, CEMENT, LIME STONE, STEEL ETC. IGBOS WILL DO QUITE WELL WHEN ALL THEIR RESOURCES ARE USED AND ORGANIZED WELL. EXAMPLE IGBO WILL BE AN OIL PRODUCING NATION IF NIGERIA BREAKS.
(12) OIL/GAS AND ENERGY SUPPLY:
IJAW TRIBE HAVE BY FAR THE LARGEST RESERVE DEPOSIT AND OUTPUT OF OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA TODAY AND THEY CAN SURVIVE EASILY BUT ALSO IGBOS TRIBE ARE SECOND IN TERMS OF RESOURCES IN OIL AND GAS, RESERVE AND OUTPUT IN OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA TODAY.
(13) IGBOS HAVE THE SECOND LARGEST RESERVE DEPOSIT AND OUTPUT OF OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA. IGBOS HAVE ENOUGH OIL AND GAS TO MAKE IGBO NATION AN OIL PRODUCING COUNTRY WITH OIL AND GAS IN ABIA STATE, IMO STATE, IGBO PART OF RIVER STATE, IGBO PART OF DELTA STATE AND WITH THE LARGE DISCOVERY AND RESERVE DEPOSIT OF OIL AND GAS IN THE NIGER RIVER BASIN AXIS OF (ONITSHA/OGBARU/ASABA, OGUTA) AXIS AND UP NORTH ALONG TWO SIDES OF RIVER NIGER UP WITH ABUNDANT RESERVES OF OIL AND GAS AS KNOWN SO FAR.
(14) IGBOS ALSO HAVE THE LARGE DEPOSIT OF COAL ENERGY WHICH WILL EARN IGBOS HUGE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL WHEN WELL HARNESSED ALONG THE ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, NKALALGU AND AFRIKPO AXIS FOR ENERGY SUPPLY AND EXPORT MARKET.
(15) IGBOS ALSO HAVE LARGE COMMERCIAL DEPOSIT OF CEMENT AND LIME STONE ALONG THE ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, NKALALGU AND AFRIKPO AXIS FOR CONSTRUCTION AND EXPORT.
(16) IGBOS HAVE LARGE DEPOSIT OF CERAMIC AND CLAY IN OKIGWE, MBANO, MBAISE, UMUAHIA AND NGWA AREAS IN COMMERCIAL QUANTITY AND BEING EXTRACTED USED ALL ALONG IN IGBOLAND AND OTHER PARTS OF NIGERIA. .
(17) RIGHT NOW COMMERCIAL CHICKEN FARMS, FISH FARMS AND COMMERICAL ANIMAL FARMING IS ON GROUND AND FLORISHING IN IMO STATE, AFIKPO, ENUGU, UMUAHIA, OKIGWE ETC.
(18) AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES WILL DO WELL IN IGBOLAND WITH HUGE AND ARABLE AND PRODUCTIVE LANDS IN THESE AREAS OF AFIKPO, OHAOZARA, ABAKALIKI, ENUGU, OKIGWE, ISUKWUATO, OGBARU, IGBOARIAM, BENDE, UMUHHIA AXIS FOR MECHANIZED AND EFFICIENT AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM LIKE THE ISREALIS ARE DOING TODAY.
MR. OKACHIKWU DIBIA, WITH THE ABOVE FACTS, YOU CAN SEE THAT IGBOS ARE VERY VERY RICH IN TERMS OF HUMAN, MATERIAL, RAW MATERIAL, YOUTH AND ADULT CALCULATION OF WEALTH AND WITH THESE IKWERRE CANNOT MEASURE UP AT ALL BUT IGBOS DO NOT SAY OR TALK ABOUT THESE, BECAUSE LIKE SAID EARLIER THE RICHES COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD DO NOT HAVE OR AND THEY DO NOT EVEN HAVE FERTILE LAND FOR ANY THING.
(19) LOOK AT THE MOVIE INDUSTRY (NOLLYWOOD), MUSIC, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPORTS AREAS IN NIGERIA AND IN DIASPORIA AND YOU SEE THAT IGBOS HAVE A CAMPARABLE ADVANTAGE BUT WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT TO TAKE OVER OUR NEIGHBOURS.
(20) CORE 5 IGBO STATE GOVERNEMENT GENERATES INTERNAL REVENUE LARGE ENOUGH AND CORE IGBO 5 STATE GETS IT SHARE OF MONEY FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE SHARING, AND WITH SUCH HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY GOING TO CORE IGBO SOUTH EAST FROM OIL AND GAS ROYALTIES, INTERNAL GENERATED FUNDS, OTHER SOURCES, WE ARE RICHER THAN A LOT OF COUNTIRES LIKE KENYA, GHANA AND RICHER THAN A LOT OF COUNTRIES IN SOUTH AMERICA, ASIA, EUROPE ETC. IF NIGERIA RESOURCES IS WELL MANAGED AND EACH STATE IS WELL MAMAGED.
(21) IGBO POPULATION IS CONSERVATIVELY BETWEEN 35 MILLION TO 50 MILLION WORLD WIDE AND WITH WHAT WE HAVE WE ARE RICH IF WE HARNESS OUR RESOURCES VERY WELL
(22) FINALLY, IGBOS POPULATION IN LARGE NUMBERS HAVE COMMERCIAL, INDUSTRIAL, IMPORT, EXPORT AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRESENSE IN MAJOR CITIES OF NIGERIA, AFRICA, AMERICA, EUROPE, CHINA, LIKE LAGOS, ABUJA, KANO, KADUNA, IBADAN, BENIN CITY, RIVER STATE, SOKOTO, BENIN REPUBLIC, TOGO, IVORY COAST, GHANA, WEST AFRICAN COASTT, SOUTHERN AFRICAN COAST AND ALL OF AFRICA, IN ADDTION TO HUGE PRESENCE OF IGBOS IN AMERICA, EUROPE AND GIVES US HUGE ADVANTAGE FOR WEALTH CREATION AS WE PUT THINGS RIGHT BUT IGBOS DO NOT TALK ABOUT HOW RICH WE ARE SO THAT WE CAN TAKE OVER IKWERRE LAND OR ANY OTHER LAND.
.
THANKS
Election 2011 Are We Serious At All???
Olabode O.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that we may yet have another 'recycled' politician elected as our President in 2011. From all look of things, we are not serious in our quest for a serious, focused, educated and forward-thinking leader. But as it is now, we are heading for another 'accident waiting to happen' situation!!
I have asked the same question many times over but there seems not to be an answer from us, the so-called Progressives, so I ask yet again: "Who will be the Progressives' 2011 presidential candidate?" It's beginning to seem that the Progressives are merely a talking shop; nothing more! We make so much noise but do nothing about the reality of the so-called recycled politicians now staring us in the face come 2011.
For as long as we do not have a credible and formidable candidate to contest elections against the reactionaries, for so long will the results be clearly predictable! The rent-seeking politicians of Nigeria will win over and over again.
From history, it is evident that most Nigerians are unprincipled, undisciplined, selfish, egoistic and largely myopic. It is always 'me, me, me!'; ready to line their pockets at the first opportunity. Many of the people now clamouring for IBB, OBJ, IBORI, et al to be prosecuted are not likely to do any better themselves, given the opportunity. Most of us will accept an appointment very easily from anybody that wins the presidency tomorrow, without consulting our conscience, talk less of asking the opinion of friends and family members. We know some of them amongst us.
The issue of Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of House of Rep's, and the foundation he set up as an apparatus to lure some of us who are critics of the PDP, is still very fresh.
We must remember that the Presidency will not come to us for free! As things stand now, the recycled politicians are at a vantage position in the coming elections in Nigeria. If there are no progressive candidates come 2011, it means the people we do not want to rule will be selected again to rule us!
In the process of missing our goals and aspirations of electing better hands and brains to manage our company called "Nigeria for All Plc", we are also losing sight of what we want and where we are, or where we need to go. So it will be inevitable to have "Bad Nigeria for All Incorporation" and a house full of reactionaries come May 2011.
We get nothing for doing nothing, after-all 'sidon look' is our favourite pastime; critiquing at both low and high levels of our profession.
Let's think of events from KYRGYZSTAN, Ukraine or from Georgia where people fight for what they don't like and ready to die for their rights. We are too religious to fight for our rights. Let's see how the changes we desire will come about without any effort on our side!
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that we may yet have another 'recycled' politician elected as our President in 2011. From all look of things, we are not serious in our quest for a serious, focused, educated and forward-thinking leader. But as it is now, we are heading for another 'accident waiting to happen' situation!!
I have asked the same question many times over but there seems not to be an answer from us, the so-called Progressives, so I ask yet again: "Who will be the Progressives' 2011 presidential candidate?" It's beginning to seem that the Progressives are merely a talking shop; nothing more! We make so much noise but do nothing about the reality of the so-called recycled politicians now staring us in the face come 2011.
For as long as we do not have a credible and formidable candidate to contest elections against the reactionaries, for so long will the results be clearly predictable! The rent-seeking politicians of Nigeria will win over and over again.
From history, it is evident that most Nigerians are unprincipled, undisciplined, selfish, egoistic and largely myopic. It is always 'me, me, me!'; ready to line their pockets at the first opportunity. Many of the people now clamouring for IBB, OBJ, IBORI, et al to be prosecuted are not likely to do any better themselves, given the opportunity. Most of us will accept an appointment very easily from anybody that wins the presidency tomorrow, without consulting our conscience, talk less of asking the opinion of friends and family members. We know some of them amongst us.
The issue of Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of House of Rep's, and the foundation he set up as an apparatus to lure some of us who are critics of the PDP, is still very fresh.
We must remember that the Presidency will not come to us for free! As things stand now, the recycled politicians are at a vantage position in the coming elections in Nigeria. If there are no progressive candidates come 2011, it means the people we do not want to rule will be selected again to rule us!
In the process of missing our goals and aspirations of electing better hands and brains to manage our company called "Nigeria for All Plc", we are also losing sight of what we want and where we are, or where we need to go. So it will be inevitable to have "Bad Nigeria for All Incorporation" and a house full of reactionaries come May 2011.
We get nothing for doing nothing, after-all 'sidon look' is our favourite pastime; critiquing at both low and high levels of our profession.
Let's think of events from KYRGYZSTAN, Ukraine or from Georgia where people fight for what they don't like and ready to die for their rights. We are too religious to fight for our rights. Let's see how the changes we desire will come about without any effort on our side!
LET IBORI GO FREE
On August 19, 2009 Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba wrote as follows
"The president should retreat from pursuing the past corrupt officials and let them go free. Many Nigerians would be upset to see Ibori, Nnamani, Bode George, and other past governors and party stalwarts escape their well earned anger. But the truth of the matter is that they are already free, the trail has gone cold, and Ribadu's successor is not up to the job. We might just as well recognize reality when we see it…"
Now that the pursuit of Mr. Ibori is in full force I am inclined to restate my earlier position, this time with more reasons. Mr. Ebere Chukwu Jonathan, Nigerian's Acting President, will be better served by focusing his attention on the future rather than on past. Chasing down Ibori would be chasing the past. If he is caught, tried and jailed, it would be big story but at what price? My guess is that it would not be worth it and if the effort fails it would be a disaster.
1. Catching Mr. Ibori is going to be difficult because of some antecedents of Nigeria Law enforcement. Especially under former president Obasanjo. During OBJ administration, both Mr. Ibrahim Babangida and Odumegwu Ojukwu were invited by the security forces and both refused to answer the call and nothing happened. Mr. Ibori has those precedents to rely on. Both men retired to the states where they have strong support and waited for the law enforcement agencies. Arresting Mr. Ibori is not going to be easy. His legal successes in Asaba are a good indication of his support in Delta State .
2. Nigerians have a tendency to rally behind their ethnic group leader when he (usually it is a he) gets into trouble. If you doubt this go and reread the contributions of Nigerians on this web site and see how the contributions divide. The usual argument starts with something like this: There are many Nigerian thieves, why is my thief the place to start. This is selective. If we want to clean Nigeria we should start with all of the thieves and a list of thieves would follow. The now popular Ribadu was accused of pursuing OBJ's enemies and protecting OBJ's friends. The same accusations are now being leveled on the current EFCC leadership. The truth of the matter is that we are not yet ready to clean the Aegean stable.
3. AP Jonathan has a very short time in the office and the amount of time that would be required to arrest, prosecute, and convict Mr. Ibori could be used to accomplish other things. I feel strong heart pains to write what I just wrote because I am advocating letting an alleged criminal go free. But my reason is based on the greater good.
If Mr. Jonathan could ensure that none of his current ministers, any current governor or LGA chairman suspected of thievery is uninvestigated, he would go down in history as the man who started accountable administration in Nigeria .
This might be the time to listen to what Mr. Obafemi Awolowo observed in earlier times during the military government. The military were setting up commissions of inquiry to probe corruption year after year and he noted that if a tree fell on top of another tree, it would be best to remove the tree on top before trying to reach the one below. I suggest we let OBJ, Ibori, IBB, Atiku, Kalu, Nnamani et al go.
Let us make sure that we get it right from now on. Ozoemena (let it not happen again).
Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba
from
Boston, Massachusetts
since this last post the following has being reach us at Asaba-Post, please read on
Are you by any chance paid to do this job or you are one of his boys planted around here. You stay in Boston and you write this nonsense. Is Ibori bigger than Nigeria or just taking advantage of a country that can only bark without the ability to bite. He should be pursued to anywhere on this planet if the government has a case against him.
That you made it to the US should not give you that audacity and liberty to campaign that looters of our treasury should be left off the hook Benjamin. There are millions of Nigerians that are not sure of the next source of meal. It is to them that some of us will continue to fight until death do us part.
Sometimes, it is better to keep the mouth shut when what will come out of it will defile the speaker.
Just an advise.
Dele
Mazi Uzo Obi
"whatsoever thou resolvest to do,do it now. Defer not till the evening what the morning can accomplish"(Unto thee I grant the economy of life,1978).
Aduba,
You are one of the greatest idiots and fools I have ever known in our checkered History.Odumegwu Ojukwu has always been picked up whenever the FG wanted and for a fool like you to lie on the internet to please your sponsors is not only ridiculous but exposes you as a wretched mercenary.Who has ever defied the FBI and got away free?Ibori should stand on his own and fight if his hands are clean
Emmanuel,
This personal abuse of an elder is NOT necessary. Mr Aduba is entitled to his views and we are entitled to disagree in an agreeable manner with him
stay blessed
Joe
Joe Attueyi:
You should say "Become blessed" to Emmanuel Uzo Obi rather than "Stay Blessed" because he need not be abusive to Maazi Aduba for this one current and clearly un-popular view. If Uzo calls Aduba "one of the greatest idiots and fools" - maybe more for Aduba's view of Ojukwu on this narrow matter than that of Ibori - how could he (Uzo) have agreed with him (Aduba) in the past, or bring himself to agree with him in the future? Why do we use words that are irretrievably "total"? Who knows whether Aduba was just being an agent-provocateur on this issue?
Anyway, if Uzo had been the Catholic Church of old, he would already have burnt Aduba at the stakes!
So yes, let us be more temperate in expressing our disagreements, particular to an elder and veteran lie Maazi Obi Aduba. In any case, I called him already to commiserate for all the undeserved rudeness and deserved criticism that he has received so far, but in his characteristic manner, he has just been laughing it all off. As the Yoruba would say, na rain fall wey chicken and pigeon dey for same space. ("Ojo lo ro to pa eyele po mo adie")
Bolaji Aluko
Shaking his head
Bolaji Aluko
Shaking his head" ,,,,,,,,,,,
It is a good sign,it shows that you are still under the curse of the gods for the role your adopted and biological fathers played during the genocide.
Very soon your neck won,t be carrying your head ,when you shake it ,it will simply snap or roll off.
Mazi Odera
Bad ,embezzling,suffocating leadership are not limited to local Nigerians,just see Diasporian associations leaders , see what they can do to be a leader in association that is honorary.
Imagine what they will do if they have a paying position,they will make killer look like saints.
As Obi Begins Another Eventful Four Years...
By Chukwujekwu Ilozue
Politicians themselves acknowledge that Governor Peter Obi is not a run on the mill politician. He is so different that often times, you are forced to conclude that the toga of politics he wears does not indeed fit him. For instance, when Obi came into office the first quarrel he picked with his predecessor Dr. Chris Ngige was the closure of Onitsha main market, Anambra’s single largest source of income so that traders could attend the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu whose verdict eventually was not his favour. Obi who has always said he is trader wondered why a group of traders would be denied their legitimate source of income in the name of politics. To many people, that was strange. For a long time, Anambra markets had remained a political arm of the state government. Successive governments close markets on slightest opportunity for political gains.
Obi came into office driven in Peugeot 504 Best line model. He stuck to it and refused to use expensive vehicles especially jeeps. He also shunned sirens as he travels to various areas of engagement. He said it was not necessary because it alienates government from the people. The consequence is that Governor Obi rides side by side with fellow citizens. This is also a habit he carried into the church because Obi never discloses to his security details, which church he would attend. Should he by any means attend church late he would simply sneak in and take a seat at the back just like any other late comer. Once at Ukpor in Nnewi South local council when overzealous security aids caused the car of another road user to skid into the gutter, Obi stopped the convoy, came out with all the security aides and personally assisted the man to pull the car out. The man never forgot the gesture. On clocking one year in office the man went to Anambra Broadcasting Service to place a well deserved congratulatory message in which he narrated a bit of the gesture. Nevertheless, Obi’s security aides conspired to post a terrifying security situation that forced the Governor to change cars and use siren.
That was the much they could do to change his life style. They could not prevent him from giving his phone numbers freely so that even school prefects call and discuss matters about their schools with him, not to talk of traditional rulers and town union Presidents-General. They could not prevent him from mingling freely with the citizens each time he has public functions, a luxury many other governors cannot afford. They could not also change his aversion to acquisition of public wealth. If he visits a community and the community offers him a goat or a cow or any other material good for that matter, he would quickly look for an old people’s home, an orphanage or the like to direct whatever that is given to him to be channeled to. If a corporate organization offers him some gifts, usually executive gifts, for instance, they may offer to build a house for him, or give him a vehicle or vehicles, and so on, he would politely thank the corporate organization but would plead that the money be channeled to doing a a major investment in any of the public sectors like build classroom blocks in some public schools, provide generating sets to schools or help to supply buses to the State ANIDS Urban Mass transit scheme. This attitude, he has gradually passed to his appointees, thus ensuring that his lieutenants follow his footsteps. Obi says, sometimes to the chagrin of his traducers that God has blessed him so much that he did not seek public office to make wealth.
The consequence of all these is his stupendous performance in his first troubled four years in office. His integrity naturally attracted friends and well wishers from far and near. It is no wonder that national and international organizations, like the World Bank, European Union, UNICEF and Corporate Organizations which are falling head on heels to be part of the success story of Anambra State. Many of the international organizations had closed shops and relocated from Anambra state when successive administrations could not account for money remitted to them to execute projects not to talk of their own counterpart fund that never came.
Obi achieved much because he spread development to every sector of the economy and every community in the state too. His early months in office was marked by disillusionment by citizens who were having the tempo of road construction during the time of his predecessor and would want such to continue. But Obi has his own ideas. He took time to plan, arguing that those who fail to plan to fail. When he finally took off, he had conceived a guiding philosophy known as Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS), a philosophy that tackled the problems of every sector of the state simultaneously. This was a departure from mono development strategy that was witnessed in the days of predecessors. The result is that in his first tenure, Obi’s administration constructed 405 kilometers of roads, began the longest bridge in Anambra state, the Odor River Bridge, paved way in virgin lands such as the road to Lilu community, and so on.
The first issue Obi tackled when he assumed office was security. His predecessors hired private security outfits to guard them in office and to provide security to the citizenry, having been disappointed with the Nigeria Police. But Obi thought otherwise. He decided to energize the police by providing it logistics to fight crimes- operational vehicles and communication facilities. He also rehabilitated police posts and provided them with electricity generating sets to make their offices conducive.
In education sector, he rehabilitated virtually all schools: primary or secondary or built new structures in each of the schools, established Microsoft academy in 210 secondary in conjunction with Microsoft Corporation. One hundred and ten of the schools got 50 lap tops donated by Microsoft Corporation, while others got 50 flat screens computer sets each with complete internet facilities, V-sat, a battery and an inverter to keep the sites on when there is power outage. Each school got between 50 , supplied electricity generating sets to schools, provided bore holes for schools with girls’ schools as priority; provided new desks and so on and most importantly initiated town hall meetings with students during which students are free to tell the governor the problems of their schools. Obi said he took that decision when he discovered that adults and school heads usually paint a wrong picture to him each time he visited their schools. Obi also visits schools every week as a matter of routine. As for tertiary institutions, both state university with campuses at Uli and Igbariam and the Nwafor Orizu College of Education Nsugbe, new structures have been built to cope with the rising number of admission seeking students and facilities have been upgraded and more courses accredited.
When Obi took over office on March 17, 2010, the state did not have a Civil Service secretariat. Government offices were scattered all over the state. Within two years in office he completed an expansive three story secretariat while the second one is nearing completion. He also rebuilt Government House Awka which was burnt down during the November 2004 mayhem.
Health seems to have enjoyed Government attention most. Before assumed office, the health sector was in a shambles. Immunization coverage was about 45 percent, no health institution in the state was accredited by either the Nigeria Medical Council nor the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria to offer internship for medical students in the state or run some courses. The situation has completely been reversed. Immunization coverage has gone up to 85 percent; Onitsha General Hospital has been accredited to offer internship to medical students, while College of Health Technology Obosi, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Obosi and Nkpor, Mission hospitals at Waterside Onitsha, Iyienu, Adazi, Ihiala have been accredited to train nurses after funds were pumped into those by the government. In addition regional hospitals such as the ones in Onitsha, Awka and Ekwulobia, and very importantly, the General hospital Umuleri which was ravaged during the fratricidal wars in the area in the early 90s have also been rehabilitated while new cottage hospitals, health centres have been built.
Most importantly, Amaku General Hospital have been upgraded into a University Teaching Hospital with structures provided to take off soon, while Cardiac/Kidney Dialysis Centre has been built in Onitsha General hospital. In all 16 general hospitals across the state have been rehabilitated and provided with ambulances. Another set of Rapid Response Ambulances which pick sick people from remote parts of the state on calling them have also been provided. Apart from this each of these hospitals and schools have been provided with buses for the day to day running of their affairs. It is important to note that achievements recorded in health have a link with the caliber of personnel in that sector led by the Commissioner of Health, Professor Amobi Ilika, a specialist in Tropical medicine recruited from the school of Health Sciences of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nnewi campus.
One other area where Obi provided novel ideas is in Commerce and Industry. Again, with hardworking Hon. Chima Okafor as commissioner, Anambra for the first time in the history of the state built a Financial Centre which hosts Onitsha Nigerian Stock Exchange, security and Exchange Commission, capital market operation (broker’s) offices and offices of some banks. The administration is currently building Onitsha ICT park otherwise known as Onitsha Business Park which will provide accommodation for companies and form a training ground for youths on ICT. Also, the Onitsha Government Reservation Area has been tidied up with illegal structures on government land demolished and in their place, Onitsha amusement park has sprang up. The brown sugar factory at Omor has been rehabilitated. The big projects expected to take off this year are the International Conference Centre in Onitsha, work on the Industrial Parks and the granting of Trade Free Zone status to Ogbaru axis and collaboration with LG Electronics to construct a facility centre in Awka. The ongoing second Onitsha Business Park will be completed this year.
In the last four years, all sectors of the economy have enjoyed a boost: Ministry of Agriculture has provided farming implements, seedlings, soft loans and motorcycle for farmers; a College of Agriculture has been established at Mgbakwu and so on.
In Awka, Obi’s administration solved the largest man-made environmental disaster at Iyiagu. The river was blocked by heartless business men years ago thereby creating an environmental havoc. The administration opened the water channel thereby freeing a large population at the other end of it of the disaster. But environmental sanitation is certainly one area Governor Obi is yet to get right. With the arrival of refuse compactors refuse disposable vehicles, a new lease of life will certainly be felt in that sector.
Obi did not also forget Judiciary. He provided brand new vehicles for judges and magistrates, built judges’ quarters at Awka and Onitsha built and handed over customary court of Appeal and Federal High Court in Awka.
A very visible sector in the administration is the transport sector. On assumption of office, Obi assisted the state Transport Company (TRACAS) to acquire 40 Peugeot Expert model, christened ‘Peter Obi’ which it deployed to long distances journeys. They were to be joined later by a fleet of cars and buses under the Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS) buses and taxis. He also provided free helmet to commercial motorcycle riders in the state.
Under various agreements, the state provided water in schools and communities, provided transformers for electricity generation. It energized the information outfits-Anambra Broadcasting Corporation and Anambra Newspapers and Printing Corporation and the mobile Cinema Film Unit.
One other are the administration made a big impact is in the local government administration. It built several new buildings in local government headquarters, built Onitsha North and Onitsha South local Government headquarters entirely new after relocating them. Besides, an innovation introduced by Governor Obi is the recognition of communities as the fourth tier of government. Regular meetings are held with town union Presidents, funds are directly disbursed to them on regular basis for security and carrying out of palliative measures on community roads. Besides, the novel town hall meetings with communities brought communities in the state closer to the government.
Women and children also find a place in the government. The office of the First Lady and Ministry of Women Development organizes yearly women summit to which prominent women of Igbo extraction were invited to educate women on their expected roles in their family. Her Excellency Mrs. Margaret Peter Obi has also personally toured the 177 communities in the state where she meets with women, disburses loans for small scale businesses to the women and generally felicitates with them.
But credit must be to the Commissioner of Budget and Planning, Professor Chinyere Okunna in whom Obi found a competent planner and adviser. Okunna doubles as chairman of Good Governance Team, a government watchdog on the actions of the executive. It was Okunna that plans and directs the pace of development. She also calls the governor to order in cases where the direction the governor is going is not what the people desire. Okunna said: “Our job as a committee is to watch the way government is going, the governor is going and draw his attention. So, if you see him doing well people are nudging him at the back. He is basically a good person and the committee is there to oversee what he is doing to call him to order when he is not doing well.â€
Yet it must be said that the last four years has been turbulent for Obi who suffered an unjust impeachment which was reversed by the court, and who also stepped aside for 17 days in 2007 during which Dr. Andy Uba came in as governor. In all cases, he puts the matter behind and marches on.
For the next four years Obi plans to consolidate on his achievements of the last four years still guided by the philosophy of ANIDS. He has pledged to construct 100 kilometers of road every year, complete the Odor River Bridge, Ebenebe, Ogboji, NTA, Obibia Bridges respectively and embark on new ones. He will go on with the construction of 4,000 classroom blocks in primary schools in the state and spread ICT to more schools, resuscitate more water projects and build mini water schemes; complete the Neem Fertilizer Industry at Amawbia, sustain the security situation to create an enabling environment for investment; rehabilitate more health facilities while completing the first Teaching Hospital, among other things#
Politicians themselves acknowledge that Governor Peter Obi is not a run on the mill politician. He is so different that often times, you are forced to conclude that the toga of politics he wears does not indeed fit him. For instance, when Obi came into office the first quarrel he picked with his predecessor Dr. Chris Ngige was the closure of Onitsha main market, Anambra’s single largest source of income so that traders could attend the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu whose verdict eventually was not his favour. Obi who has always said he is trader wondered why a group of traders would be denied their legitimate source of income in the name of politics. To many people, that was strange. For a long time, Anambra markets had remained a political arm of the state government. Successive governments close markets on slightest opportunity for political gains.
Obi came into office driven in Peugeot 504 Best line model. He stuck to it and refused to use expensive vehicles especially jeeps. He also shunned sirens as he travels to various areas of engagement. He said it was not necessary because it alienates government from the people. The consequence is that Governor Obi rides side by side with fellow citizens. This is also a habit he carried into the church because Obi never discloses to his security details, which church he would attend. Should he by any means attend church late he would simply sneak in and take a seat at the back just like any other late comer. Once at Ukpor in Nnewi South local council when overzealous security aids caused the car of another road user to skid into the gutter, Obi stopped the convoy, came out with all the security aides and personally assisted the man to pull the car out. The man never forgot the gesture. On clocking one year in office the man went to Anambra Broadcasting Service to place a well deserved congratulatory message in which he narrated a bit of the gesture. Nevertheless, Obi’s security aides conspired to post a terrifying security situation that forced the Governor to change cars and use siren.
That was the much they could do to change his life style. They could not prevent him from giving his phone numbers freely so that even school prefects call and discuss matters about their schools with him, not to talk of traditional rulers and town union Presidents-General. They could not prevent him from mingling freely with the citizens each time he has public functions, a luxury many other governors cannot afford. They could not also change his aversion to acquisition of public wealth. If he visits a community and the community offers him a goat or a cow or any other material good for that matter, he would quickly look for an old people’s home, an orphanage or the like to direct whatever that is given to him to be channeled to. If a corporate organization offers him some gifts, usually executive gifts, for instance, they may offer to build a house for him, or give him a vehicle or vehicles, and so on, he would politely thank the corporate organization but would plead that the money be channeled to doing a a major investment in any of the public sectors like build classroom blocks in some public schools, provide generating sets to schools or help to supply buses to the State ANIDS Urban Mass transit scheme. This attitude, he has gradually passed to his appointees, thus ensuring that his lieutenants follow his footsteps. Obi says, sometimes to the chagrin of his traducers that God has blessed him so much that he did not seek public office to make wealth.
The consequence of all these is his stupendous performance in his first troubled four years in office. His integrity naturally attracted friends and well wishers from far and near. It is no wonder that national and international organizations, like the World Bank, European Union, UNICEF and Corporate Organizations which are falling head on heels to be part of the success story of Anambra State. Many of the international organizations had closed shops and relocated from Anambra state when successive administrations could not account for money remitted to them to execute projects not to talk of their own counterpart fund that never came.
Obi achieved much because he spread development to every sector of the economy and every community in the state too. His early months in office was marked by disillusionment by citizens who were having the tempo of road construction during the time of his predecessor and would want such to continue. But Obi has his own ideas. He took time to plan, arguing that those who fail to plan to fail. When he finally took off, he had conceived a guiding philosophy known as Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS), a philosophy that tackled the problems of every sector of the state simultaneously. This was a departure from mono development strategy that was witnessed in the days of predecessors. The result is that in his first tenure, Obi’s administration constructed 405 kilometers of roads, began the longest bridge in Anambra state, the Odor River Bridge, paved way in virgin lands such as the road to Lilu community, and so on.
The first issue Obi tackled when he assumed office was security. His predecessors hired private security outfits to guard them in office and to provide security to the citizenry, having been disappointed with the Nigeria Police. But Obi thought otherwise. He decided to energize the police by providing it logistics to fight crimes- operational vehicles and communication facilities. He also rehabilitated police posts and provided them with electricity generating sets to make their offices conducive.
In education sector, he rehabilitated virtually all schools: primary or secondary or built new structures in each of the schools, established Microsoft academy in 210 secondary in conjunction with Microsoft Corporation. One hundred and ten of the schools got 50 lap tops donated by Microsoft Corporation, while others got 50 flat screens computer sets each with complete internet facilities, V-sat, a battery and an inverter to keep the sites on when there is power outage. Each school got between 50 , supplied electricity generating sets to schools, provided bore holes for schools with girls’ schools as priority; provided new desks and so on and most importantly initiated town hall meetings with students during which students are free to tell the governor the problems of their schools. Obi said he took that decision when he discovered that adults and school heads usually paint a wrong picture to him each time he visited their schools. Obi also visits schools every week as a matter of routine. As for tertiary institutions, both state university with campuses at Uli and Igbariam and the Nwafor Orizu College of Education Nsugbe, new structures have been built to cope with the rising number of admission seeking students and facilities have been upgraded and more courses accredited.
When Obi took over office on March 17, 2010, the state did not have a Civil Service secretariat. Government offices were scattered all over the state. Within two years in office he completed an expansive three story secretariat while the second one is nearing completion. He also rebuilt Government House Awka which was burnt down during the November 2004 mayhem.
Health seems to have enjoyed Government attention most. Before assumed office, the health sector was in a shambles. Immunization coverage was about 45 percent, no health institution in the state was accredited by either the Nigeria Medical Council nor the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria to offer internship for medical students in the state or run some courses. The situation has completely been reversed. Immunization coverage has gone up to 85 percent; Onitsha General Hospital has been accredited to offer internship to medical students, while College of Health Technology Obosi, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Obosi and Nkpor, Mission hospitals at Waterside Onitsha, Iyienu, Adazi, Ihiala have been accredited to train nurses after funds were pumped into those by the government. In addition regional hospitals such as the ones in Onitsha, Awka and Ekwulobia, and very importantly, the General hospital Umuleri which was ravaged during the fratricidal wars in the area in the early 90s have also been rehabilitated while new cottage hospitals, health centres have been built.
Most importantly, Amaku General Hospital have been upgraded into a University Teaching Hospital with structures provided to take off soon, while Cardiac/Kidney Dialysis Centre has been built in Onitsha General hospital. In all 16 general hospitals across the state have been rehabilitated and provided with ambulances. Another set of Rapid Response Ambulances which pick sick people from remote parts of the state on calling them have also been provided. Apart from this each of these hospitals and schools have been provided with buses for the day to day running of their affairs. It is important to note that achievements recorded in health have a link with the caliber of personnel in that sector led by the Commissioner of Health, Professor Amobi Ilika, a specialist in Tropical medicine recruited from the school of Health Sciences of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nnewi campus.
One other area where Obi provided novel ideas is in Commerce and Industry. Again, with hardworking Hon. Chima Okafor as commissioner, Anambra for the first time in the history of the state built a Financial Centre which hosts Onitsha Nigerian Stock Exchange, security and Exchange Commission, capital market operation (broker’s) offices and offices of some banks. The administration is currently building Onitsha ICT park otherwise known as Onitsha Business Park which will provide accommodation for companies and form a training ground for youths on ICT. Also, the Onitsha Government Reservation Area has been tidied up with illegal structures on government land demolished and in their place, Onitsha amusement park has sprang up. The brown sugar factory at Omor has been rehabilitated. The big projects expected to take off this year are the International Conference Centre in Onitsha, work on the Industrial Parks and the granting of Trade Free Zone status to Ogbaru axis and collaboration with LG Electronics to construct a facility centre in Awka. The ongoing second Onitsha Business Park will be completed this year.
In the last four years, all sectors of the economy have enjoyed a boost: Ministry of Agriculture has provided farming implements, seedlings, soft loans and motorcycle for farmers; a College of Agriculture has been established at Mgbakwu and so on.
In Awka, Obi’s administration solved the largest man-made environmental disaster at Iyiagu. The river was blocked by heartless business men years ago thereby creating an environmental havoc. The administration opened the water channel thereby freeing a large population at the other end of it of the disaster. But environmental sanitation is certainly one area Governor Obi is yet to get right. With the arrival of refuse compactors refuse disposable vehicles, a new lease of life will certainly be felt in that sector.
Obi did not also forget Judiciary. He provided brand new vehicles for judges and magistrates, built judges’ quarters at Awka and Onitsha built and handed over customary court of Appeal and Federal High Court in Awka.
A very visible sector in the administration is the transport sector. On assumption of office, Obi assisted the state Transport Company (TRACAS) to acquire 40 Peugeot Expert model, christened ‘Peter Obi’ which it deployed to long distances journeys. They were to be joined later by a fleet of cars and buses under the Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS) buses and taxis. He also provided free helmet to commercial motorcycle riders in the state.
Under various agreements, the state provided water in schools and communities, provided transformers for electricity generation. It energized the information outfits-Anambra Broadcasting Corporation and Anambra Newspapers and Printing Corporation and the mobile Cinema Film Unit.
One other are the administration made a big impact is in the local government administration. It built several new buildings in local government headquarters, built Onitsha North and Onitsha South local Government headquarters entirely new after relocating them. Besides, an innovation introduced by Governor Obi is the recognition of communities as the fourth tier of government. Regular meetings are held with town union Presidents, funds are directly disbursed to them on regular basis for security and carrying out of palliative measures on community roads. Besides, the novel town hall meetings with communities brought communities in the state closer to the government.
Women and children also find a place in the government. The office of the First Lady and Ministry of Women Development organizes yearly women summit to which prominent women of Igbo extraction were invited to educate women on their expected roles in their family. Her Excellency Mrs. Margaret Peter Obi has also personally toured the 177 communities in the state where she meets with women, disburses loans for small scale businesses to the women and generally felicitates with them.
But credit must be to the Commissioner of Budget and Planning, Professor Chinyere Okunna in whom Obi found a competent planner and adviser. Okunna doubles as chairman of Good Governance Team, a government watchdog on the actions of the executive. It was Okunna that plans and directs the pace of development. She also calls the governor to order in cases where the direction the governor is going is not what the people desire. Okunna said: “Our job as a committee is to watch the way government is going, the governor is going and draw his attention. So, if you see him doing well people are nudging him at the back. He is basically a good person and the committee is there to oversee what he is doing to call him to order when he is not doing well.â€
Yet it must be said that the last four years has been turbulent for Obi who suffered an unjust impeachment which was reversed by the court, and who also stepped aside for 17 days in 2007 during which Dr. Andy Uba came in as governor. In all cases, he puts the matter behind and marches on.
For the next four years Obi plans to consolidate on his achievements of the last four years still guided by the philosophy of ANIDS. He has pledged to construct 100 kilometers of road every year, complete the Odor River Bridge, Ebenebe, Ogboji, NTA, Obibia Bridges respectively and embark on new ones. He will go on with the construction of 4,000 classroom blocks in primary schools in the state and spread ICT to more schools, resuscitate more water projects and build mini water schemes; complete the Neem Fertilizer Industry at Amawbia, sustain the security situation to create an enabling environment for investment; rehabilitate more health facilities while completing the first Teaching Hospital, among other things#
ANAMBRA SET TO TACKLE EROSION AT OKPOKO
Governor Peter Obi has initiated another fundamental measure to entrench permanent solution to problem of flooding and environmental degradation in Okpoko, Ogbaru Local Government Area and environs.
Speaking when he led some members of the State Executive Council on inspection of drainage system and roads in the area, Governor Obi said the State Government was working with the Federal Government to clean up the silted Sacamori Drain and open up the blocked drains but stated that residents of the area must sign an undertaking pledging to maintain a friendly environment culture, including desisting from dumping refuse inside the drainage system.
Governor Obi said that traders along the Obodukwu road would equally be relocated to a better site, attributing the collapse of the newly reconstructed Obodoukwu road to blockage of the drain which forced flood on the road.
He stressed that while government was expending huge resources rebuilding the various sectors, the people should also live up to their responsibility of effectively maintaining their surroundings as a critical step to confront existing ecological challenges.
The member representing Ogbaru 1 in the State House of Assembly, Chief Benson Nwawulu thanked the Governor for his prompt response to the plight of the people and assured him that they will cooperate as partners to achieve the set goals.
Also speaking, the Parish Priest Saint Raphael’s Catholic Church, Okpoko, Rev Fr. Fred Anyaneme assured government of all necessary support and cooperation while requesting government intervention on some roads in the area.
Speaking when he led some members of the State Executive Council on inspection of drainage system and roads in the area, Governor Obi said the State Government was working with the Federal Government to clean up the silted Sacamori Drain and open up the blocked drains but stated that residents of the area must sign an undertaking pledging to maintain a friendly environment culture, including desisting from dumping refuse inside the drainage system.
Governor Obi said that traders along the Obodukwu road would equally be relocated to a better site, attributing the collapse of the newly reconstructed Obodoukwu road to blockage of the drain which forced flood on the road.
He stressed that while government was expending huge resources rebuilding the various sectors, the people should also live up to their responsibility of effectively maintaining their surroundings as a critical step to confront existing ecological challenges.
The member representing Ogbaru 1 in the State House of Assembly, Chief Benson Nwawulu thanked the Governor for his prompt response to the plight of the people and assured him that they will cooperate as partners to achieve the set goals.
Also speaking, the Parish Priest Saint Raphael’s Catholic Church, Okpoko, Rev Fr. Fred Anyaneme assured government of all necessary support and cooperation while requesting government intervention on some roads in the area.
GOVERNOR OBI'S MODESTY
Ifeanyi Ubabukoh
In an interview, published in Daily Sun of April 7, 2010, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Eze Igbo Gburugburu, highlighted the sparkling qualities of Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State. The leader of Ndigbo, Ojukwu, says: “He (Obi) is very modest. Whenever we have to talk, he comes as Peter. He does not bring half a brigade as entourage as the others would do. You notice also that whenever he talks he keeps to the point and does not elongate matters unnecessarily ……â€
Dim Ojukwu’s appreciation of Obi’s character reminds me of the Governor’s visit to a traditional ruler in Anambra State. When the Governor paid a courtesy visit to offer him some gifts, the ruler was surprised and displeased that the Governor was unaccompanied by entourage and his visit unheralded by blaring siren. The traditional ruler therefore pleaded with the Governor to reschedule the visit to enable the ruler adequately assemble his subjects in his palace to welcome the Governor. The ruler bitterly complained that without the necessary pomp and ceremony, his subjects, and indeed nobody, would believe his tale that the Governor ever visited His Royal Highness.
But in his service to Ndi Anambra and the rest of the Nigerians, Governor Obi has remained consistently modest in speech, dress and behaviour. He shows a not too high opinion of his merits and abilities, but his solid and extensive achievements in all sectors of Anambra’s economy speak volumes of his competence and success as the Governor. He takes and shows care not to do or say anything impure or improper.
Governor Obi is humble. He shows a modest opinion of himself and of his position. He is one Governor who does not like to be addressed a “His Excellencyâ€, but simply “Mrâ€. He honours almost all invitations from Anambra people. He visits them as individuals and groups but he does not do so in a noisy way. He quietly meets his people, individually or in groups, and discusses, strictly, the purpose of his visit or the people’s welfare.
During the discussions, he analyses rather than synthesizes matters. And his analysis consists in reducing things to their principles; and not in endless details and subdivisions. He clears away the rubbish of school-boy technicalities and strikes at the root of his subject.
Alhaji Lam Adesina, when he was governor of Oyo State, banned “courtesy calls†by his people to the governor. He complained that such visits squeezed his official time and resources. Instead, he proposed to visit communities, local councils and individuals whenever he felt the need to meet the people of Oyo State. In an article, I condemned the ban, since the courtesy visit should be a way the people could make their feelings known to the governor.
Governor Obi has not outlawed courtesy calls. But he has not allowed such visits to degenerate into revelries and frivolities. What he has banned are all-night gatherings of wayward male and female politicians who soak themselves in drinks and idle away in immoral and purposeless talks. Underlining this is Governor Obi’s strong Catholic family background and his prudence in management of Anambra State’s money. His brother is a Reverend Father and his sister a Reverend Sister of the Catholic Church. Obi was the Chairman of a successful bank, and on becoming the Governor he spends public money only after careful thought and planning. Is it a wonder that Anambra is one of the few states of the federation that pays its workers’ salaries and allowances as when due?
When our revered leader Ojukwu humorously advises Obi “should try to be more of a politician than a businessman,†I begin to wonder if business is separable from politics. Socrates warns that politics is a serious business. If so, a successful politician must be businesslike. In Nigeria, politics has become a game, and not a serious business, and many of our politicians play it for the fun of it or for what they can get from it. Not so for Governor Obi.
A typical Nigerian politician lies so routinely that he cannot be trusted to tell a blind man if the sun was shinning. During the campaigns for the Anambra February 6 Governorship election, most of the candidates went about promising the people all heaven on earth and assassinating characters of their rivals and distributing bags of rice to voters. Governor Obi warned his aides to focus on issues and not persons. It worked marvelously for him.
Most surprisingly, not fearing that the election could go either way, since it is not a pure or exact science, Governor Obi confidently, all through the electioneering, continued to work on his development projects – building roads, installing transformers in all the communities and distributing computers to schools and disbursing funds for building 400 classrooms in each local council. A typical, self-centered Nigerian political leader would have seen the Obi style as a gamble, and would instead hide the money for personal use if he happened to lose the election.
Governor Obi will remain on record as a person who pointed the way to progress in our budding democracy. He showed the life-saving role the judiciary could play in our presidential system. He has also showed that a Nigerian politician could become successful without being dishonest, spendthrift, pompous and flamboyant.
In the end, Governor Obi has shown clearly that the way to move great masses of men is to show that you yourself are moved. And, in appealing to the public no one triumphs but in the triumph of some public cause, or by showing a sympathy with the general and predominant feelings of mankind.
It is evident in Obi's style of governance in Anambra State.
In an interview, published in Daily Sun of April 7, 2010, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Eze Igbo Gburugburu, highlighted the sparkling qualities of Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State. The leader of Ndigbo, Ojukwu, says: “He (Obi) is very modest. Whenever we have to talk, he comes as Peter. He does not bring half a brigade as entourage as the others would do. You notice also that whenever he talks he keeps to the point and does not elongate matters unnecessarily ……â€
Dim Ojukwu’s appreciation of Obi’s character reminds me of the Governor’s visit to a traditional ruler in Anambra State. When the Governor paid a courtesy visit to offer him some gifts, the ruler was surprised and displeased that the Governor was unaccompanied by entourage and his visit unheralded by blaring siren. The traditional ruler therefore pleaded with the Governor to reschedule the visit to enable the ruler adequately assemble his subjects in his palace to welcome the Governor. The ruler bitterly complained that without the necessary pomp and ceremony, his subjects, and indeed nobody, would believe his tale that the Governor ever visited His Royal Highness.
But in his service to Ndi Anambra and the rest of the Nigerians, Governor Obi has remained consistently modest in speech, dress and behaviour. He shows a not too high opinion of his merits and abilities, but his solid and extensive achievements in all sectors of Anambra’s economy speak volumes of his competence and success as the Governor. He takes and shows care not to do or say anything impure or improper.
Governor Obi is humble. He shows a modest opinion of himself and of his position. He is one Governor who does not like to be addressed a “His Excellencyâ€, but simply “Mrâ€. He honours almost all invitations from Anambra people. He visits them as individuals and groups but he does not do so in a noisy way. He quietly meets his people, individually or in groups, and discusses, strictly, the purpose of his visit or the people’s welfare.
During the discussions, he analyses rather than synthesizes matters. And his analysis consists in reducing things to their principles; and not in endless details and subdivisions. He clears away the rubbish of school-boy technicalities and strikes at the root of his subject.
Alhaji Lam Adesina, when he was governor of Oyo State, banned “courtesy calls†by his people to the governor. He complained that such visits squeezed his official time and resources. Instead, he proposed to visit communities, local councils and individuals whenever he felt the need to meet the people of Oyo State. In an article, I condemned the ban, since the courtesy visit should be a way the people could make their feelings known to the governor.
Governor Obi has not outlawed courtesy calls. But he has not allowed such visits to degenerate into revelries and frivolities. What he has banned are all-night gatherings of wayward male and female politicians who soak themselves in drinks and idle away in immoral and purposeless talks. Underlining this is Governor Obi’s strong Catholic family background and his prudence in management of Anambra State’s money. His brother is a Reverend Father and his sister a Reverend Sister of the Catholic Church. Obi was the Chairman of a successful bank, and on becoming the Governor he spends public money only after careful thought and planning. Is it a wonder that Anambra is one of the few states of the federation that pays its workers’ salaries and allowances as when due?
When our revered leader Ojukwu humorously advises Obi “should try to be more of a politician than a businessman,†I begin to wonder if business is separable from politics. Socrates warns that politics is a serious business. If so, a successful politician must be businesslike. In Nigeria, politics has become a game, and not a serious business, and many of our politicians play it for the fun of it or for what they can get from it. Not so for Governor Obi.
A typical Nigerian politician lies so routinely that he cannot be trusted to tell a blind man if the sun was shinning. During the campaigns for the Anambra February 6 Governorship election, most of the candidates went about promising the people all heaven on earth and assassinating characters of their rivals and distributing bags of rice to voters. Governor Obi warned his aides to focus on issues and not persons. It worked marvelously for him.
Most surprisingly, not fearing that the election could go either way, since it is not a pure or exact science, Governor Obi confidently, all through the electioneering, continued to work on his development projects – building roads, installing transformers in all the communities and distributing computers to schools and disbursing funds for building 400 classrooms in each local council. A typical, self-centered Nigerian political leader would have seen the Obi style as a gamble, and would instead hide the money for personal use if he happened to lose the election.
Governor Obi will remain on record as a person who pointed the way to progress in our budding democracy. He showed the life-saving role the judiciary could play in our presidential system. He has also showed that a Nigerian politician could become successful without being dishonest, spendthrift, pompous and flamboyant.
In the end, Governor Obi has shown clearly that the way to move great masses of men is to show that you yourself are moved. And, in appealing to the public no one triumphs but in the triumph of some public cause, or by showing a sympathy with the general and predominant feelings of mankind.
It is evident in Obi's style of governance in Anambra State.
FCT Minister Suspends Land Allocations
Juliana Taiwo
Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Bala Mohammed, has suspended further allocation due to what he described as gross abuse of delegated authorities, deficiencies and misuse of public thrust in recent allocation of land for residential, commercial and mass housing processes.
Addressing newsmen yesterday, the minister also hinted that land allocation between 2007 to date will be probed even as he added that the move does not translate to revocations.
He noted that all allocations and Development Control approvals made in line with due process would be sustained.
Mohammed also stressed that all forms of transactions, payments and transfers in respect of plots allocated from January 2007 to date, including Development Control approvals will also be suspended pending conclusion of the probe.
The minister further stressed that there were files scams in Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS) and Land Department where some land speculators have been able to break through the electronic system with active connivance of AGIS staff to duplicate genuine allocations and obtain CofO ahead genuine applicants.
"The general public is advised to refrain from open-market land transactions pending further announcement on this matter" he said.
The obvioiusly disappointed minister lamented that some officials of the FCT administration have exploited certain loopholes in the billing system to defraud government of millions of naira , "There is the bank draft payment scam in the AGIS Bala disclosed that this became necessary following the briefs he has received since he assumed office noting that there have confirmed the widespread criticisms and petitions from the general public about the land allocation processes in the FCT adding, "the briefs have also revealed that the problems associated with land administration in the FCT are enormous,†he said.
Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senator Bala Mohammed, has suspended further allocation due to what he described as gross abuse of delegated authorities, deficiencies and misuse of public thrust in recent allocation of land for residential, commercial and mass housing processes.
Addressing newsmen yesterday, the minister also hinted that land allocation between 2007 to date will be probed even as he added that the move does not translate to revocations.
He noted that all allocations and Development Control approvals made in line with due process would be sustained.
Mohammed also stressed that all forms of transactions, payments and transfers in respect of plots allocated from January 2007 to date, including Development Control approvals will also be suspended pending conclusion of the probe.
The minister further stressed that there were files scams in Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS) and Land Department where some land speculators have been able to break through the electronic system with active connivance of AGIS staff to duplicate genuine allocations and obtain CofO ahead genuine applicants.
"The general public is advised to refrain from open-market land transactions pending further announcement on this matter" he said.
The obvioiusly disappointed minister lamented that some officials of the FCT administration have exploited certain loopholes in the billing system to defraud government of millions of naira , "There is the bank draft payment scam in the AGIS Bala disclosed that this became necessary following the briefs he has received since he assumed office noting that there have confirmed the widespread criticisms and petitions from the general public about the land allocation processes in the FCT adding, "the briefs have also revealed that the problems associated with land administration in the FCT are enormous,†he said.
ANAMBRA REVOKES ROAD CONTRACT
The Anambra State Government has revoked the contract for the construction of Oba-Ichi-Nnewi road otherwise known as Landers Guest House road, awarded to Brecco Construction Company. Governor Peter Obi announced this while addressing the people of Ichi at the project site.
Governor Obi who lamented the slow handling of the job, in spite of Governemnt fulfilling its own obligation.
The Governor said that the project would be re-awarded to a serious contractor within sixty days and would be completed before the end of the year.
He stated that henceforth no contractor will be allowed to handle more than two project at a time in the State to ensure that all projects are completed according to schedule.
In a welcome address, the secretary of Ichi Town Union, Mr. Damian Atuigwe said the contractor did not have the necessary equipment to execute the project and his poor performance had made the road impassable especially in the rainy season.
Governor Obi who lamented the slow handling of the job, in spite of Governemnt fulfilling its own obligation.
The Governor said that the project would be re-awarded to a serious contractor within sixty days and would be completed before the end of the year.
He stated that henceforth no contractor will be allowed to handle more than two project at a time in the State to ensure that all projects are completed according to schedule.
In a welcome address, the secretary of Ichi Town Union, Mr. Damian Atuigwe said the contractor did not have the necessary equipment to execute the project and his poor performance had made the road impassable especially in the rainy season.
ISSUES IN THE ANAMBRA GOVERNORSHIP ELECTION
Ejike Anyaduba
Since the conclusion of the February 6th governorship election in Anambra State, it has been a season of commentary on the upshot of that exercise. Opinions have persistently varied as there are interests. The currency of commentaries whether in support or against, refuses to wane many months after the results were declared.
Brooding over the merit or lack of it; what made it difficult for commentators on the trot to refuse to surrender all opinions on the matter to the decision of the tribunal; we may be tempted to conclude that politics in the State is still an ordeal.
For a state which had had the indignity of negative press reportage on account of its troubled political past, it may be glossed over as normal. However, it ought to bother no less a patriotic citizen that an election adjudged by many as free and fair will continue to elicit such biased analysis. But again, our intelligence may be called to question, if failing to take cognizance of the acephalous nature of the people, (which hardly abides the kingship culture of some of the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria) we continue to worry about the situation unduly.
Going by the fairness and order associated with the conduct of that poll, the State is expected to move on regardless of distractions from acclaimed past masters on election matters.
The interpretations so far given, especially by elements claiming greater knowledge on this issue than those assigned the task, is once again putting the State on a reverse gear even as their submissions on the matter is quite broad-brush.
Reading through an interview granted Daily Independent newspaper by one Mr. Pat Anyadubalu and others of his ilk makes one wonder for how long these people would continue to bother us with their analysis. The banality of such exercise is sickening.
If you don’t hear them say that the incumbent governor was re-elected by minority, they are ever ready to argue that there were selective disenfranchisement of voters by INEC in areas where their preferred candidate has his political strength. Such conclusions smack of unreasoning bias since Ndi Anambra and indeed Nigerians, would want to know when these men became experts in addressing election issues. Or what percentage of votes constitutes in their view, an acceptable standard?
For the record, the vexed issue of minority voting had played itself out two years earlier with none of today’s experts kicking up some dust. The two bye elections for the Anambra South Senatorial district and the Nnewi North/Nnewi South/Ekwusigo Federal Constituency returned Senator Ikechukwu Obiora and C.I.D Maduabum respectively. In those elections, the percentage of votes cast vis-a-vis the registered number was quite insignificant. For the senate, the total number of registered voters stood at 585,385 while total valid votes cast were 68,030 meaning that Obiora won that election on 11.6% voter turnout. Maduabum on his part, won on a total valid votes of 27,767 as against 221,522 registered voters and 11.9% turnout. Neither of them made 25% of the total votes cast and nobody has hounded them out of the National Assembly.
The areas mentioned as the stronghold of their principal and selectively disenfranchised by INEC are Idemili North, South and the Onitsha axis. But the result showed that Ngige, the AC candidate won in Idemili North and South, losing as it were in Onitsha area. Except, they are saying that the margin with which he would have won in those areas was whittled down by INEC’s alleged disenfranchisement, in that case, advocating simple majority instead of 2/3 majority which was the issue in the election. If the two council areas of Idemili claimed by Anyadubalu to be disenfranchised by INEC were still won by AC then his argument is puerile.
As to whether the result should be based on total votes cast as expressly stated in the Constitution, or on the basis of valid votes cast, we should be content to leave this to the tribunal. Belabouring this aspect on which basis the aggrieved party is already in court is deemed sub judice. However, Anyadubalu was gracious enough to admit that in determining the 1979 election logjam, the Apex Court stated that its judgment on 2/3 of 19 States which it gave as 12 should not be used as judicial precedent. Whatever informed the decision of the Apex Court on that matter is not in the court of public opinion here, but what consolations do Anyadubalu and his cohorts have that there won’t be a repeat performance.
Elsewhere in countries with advanced democracy, the issue of invalid votes hardly constitutes any cog in the wheel of election results. Be it in Tallahassee, Florida or elsewhere, there has always been a pattern but since it will serve no purpose for now, let Mr. Anyadubalu and others of his kind continue to indulge themselves until the appointed date.
Still talking about disenfranchisement of voters in areas of strength of the opposition, Mr. Anyadubalu must be saying that INEC was privy to organized rigging to the advantage of the incumbent. Hopefully, he is not imputing that the electoral body is without brain, for if disenfranchisement was devised for the purpose for which it is attacked today, the issue of tribunal would not arise. For it is difficult to see where a man availed the opportunity of victory by the State as alleged by the theory of select disenfranchisement, would nibble at such offer only to surrender himself afterwards, to the harrowing experience of a tribunal to reach the same goal.
The silence that greeted the election of Mr. Peter Obi which Anyadubalu considered as equivalent to mourning is an affront on the people of the State. From his analysis, 301,000 people voted and out of this number, Obi polled 97,000, while all the other candidates shared the balance of 204,000 votes.
This analysis will suffice. A commander in a military campaign who surrenders to a conquering army with a pledge of loyalty is expected to yield his men to the services of the victor to which there is no rancour. That was virtually what all the candidates in the contest did almost immediately the results were declared. Apart from his principal and one other candidate which both performances in the said election did not aggregate to 85,000 votes, the rest are silent and happy on the turnout. If Anyadubalu is still in doubt, the intimidating crowd at Ekwueme square, venue of the inauguration, on the 17th of March was not rented neither is the hoard of congratulatory messages being placed daily in the newspapers any less a sign of jubilation.
Ejike AnyadubaLagos
Since the conclusion of the February 6th governorship election in Anambra State, it has been a season of commentary on the upshot of that exercise. Opinions have persistently varied as there are interests. The currency of commentaries whether in support or against, refuses to wane many months after the results were declared.
Brooding over the merit or lack of it; what made it difficult for commentators on the trot to refuse to surrender all opinions on the matter to the decision of the tribunal; we may be tempted to conclude that politics in the State is still an ordeal.
For a state which had had the indignity of negative press reportage on account of its troubled political past, it may be glossed over as normal. However, it ought to bother no less a patriotic citizen that an election adjudged by many as free and fair will continue to elicit such biased analysis. But again, our intelligence may be called to question, if failing to take cognizance of the acephalous nature of the people, (which hardly abides the kingship culture of some of the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria) we continue to worry about the situation unduly.
Going by the fairness and order associated with the conduct of that poll, the State is expected to move on regardless of distractions from acclaimed past masters on election matters.
The interpretations so far given, especially by elements claiming greater knowledge on this issue than those assigned the task, is once again putting the State on a reverse gear even as their submissions on the matter is quite broad-brush.
Reading through an interview granted Daily Independent newspaper by one Mr. Pat Anyadubalu and others of his ilk makes one wonder for how long these people would continue to bother us with their analysis. The banality of such exercise is sickening.
If you don’t hear them say that the incumbent governor was re-elected by minority, they are ever ready to argue that there were selective disenfranchisement of voters by INEC in areas where their preferred candidate has his political strength. Such conclusions smack of unreasoning bias since Ndi Anambra and indeed Nigerians, would want to know when these men became experts in addressing election issues. Or what percentage of votes constitutes in their view, an acceptable standard?
For the record, the vexed issue of minority voting had played itself out two years earlier with none of today’s experts kicking up some dust. The two bye elections for the Anambra South Senatorial district and the Nnewi North/Nnewi South/Ekwusigo Federal Constituency returned Senator Ikechukwu Obiora and C.I.D Maduabum respectively. In those elections, the percentage of votes cast vis-a-vis the registered number was quite insignificant. For the senate, the total number of registered voters stood at 585,385 while total valid votes cast were 68,030 meaning that Obiora won that election on 11.6% voter turnout. Maduabum on his part, won on a total valid votes of 27,767 as against 221,522 registered voters and 11.9% turnout. Neither of them made 25% of the total votes cast and nobody has hounded them out of the National Assembly.
The areas mentioned as the stronghold of their principal and selectively disenfranchised by INEC are Idemili North, South and the Onitsha axis. But the result showed that Ngige, the AC candidate won in Idemili North and South, losing as it were in Onitsha area. Except, they are saying that the margin with which he would have won in those areas was whittled down by INEC’s alleged disenfranchisement, in that case, advocating simple majority instead of 2/3 majority which was the issue in the election. If the two council areas of Idemili claimed by Anyadubalu to be disenfranchised by INEC were still won by AC then his argument is puerile.
As to whether the result should be based on total votes cast as expressly stated in the Constitution, or on the basis of valid votes cast, we should be content to leave this to the tribunal. Belabouring this aspect on which basis the aggrieved party is already in court is deemed sub judice. However, Anyadubalu was gracious enough to admit that in determining the 1979 election logjam, the Apex Court stated that its judgment on 2/3 of 19 States which it gave as 12 should not be used as judicial precedent. Whatever informed the decision of the Apex Court on that matter is not in the court of public opinion here, but what consolations do Anyadubalu and his cohorts have that there won’t be a repeat performance.
Elsewhere in countries with advanced democracy, the issue of invalid votes hardly constitutes any cog in the wheel of election results. Be it in Tallahassee, Florida or elsewhere, there has always been a pattern but since it will serve no purpose for now, let Mr. Anyadubalu and others of his kind continue to indulge themselves until the appointed date.
Still talking about disenfranchisement of voters in areas of strength of the opposition, Mr. Anyadubalu must be saying that INEC was privy to organized rigging to the advantage of the incumbent. Hopefully, he is not imputing that the electoral body is without brain, for if disenfranchisement was devised for the purpose for which it is attacked today, the issue of tribunal would not arise. For it is difficult to see where a man availed the opportunity of victory by the State as alleged by the theory of select disenfranchisement, would nibble at such offer only to surrender himself afterwards, to the harrowing experience of a tribunal to reach the same goal.
The silence that greeted the election of Mr. Peter Obi which Anyadubalu considered as equivalent to mourning is an affront on the people of the State. From his analysis, 301,000 people voted and out of this number, Obi polled 97,000, while all the other candidates shared the balance of 204,000 votes.
This analysis will suffice. A commander in a military campaign who surrenders to a conquering army with a pledge of loyalty is expected to yield his men to the services of the victor to which there is no rancour. That was virtually what all the candidates in the contest did almost immediately the results were declared. Apart from his principal and one other candidate which both performances in the said election did not aggregate to 85,000 votes, the rest are silent and happy on the turnout. If Anyadubalu is still in doubt, the intimidating crowd at Ekwueme square, venue of the inauguration, on the 17th of March was not rented neither is the hoard of congratulatory messages being placed daily in the newspapers any less a sign of jubilation.
Ejike AnyadubaLagos
CALL TO ACTION FROM ILGA AND ARCIGAY
World protest against child abuse in front of all Vatican embassies
or main catholic churches on Saturday, April 24
Prosecute abuses firmly. Full support for victims.
On April 13 the number two in the Vatican hierarchy, the Pope’s Secretary
of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, claimed that there is a link between
homosexuality and paedophilia.
The LGBT movement worldwide has risen up against this false, despicable and
anti-scientific statement from the Vatican, which is trying to deflect
attention from priests’ sex crimes by blaming LGBT people.
While they are trying to hide the truth about the abuses perpetrated
against innocent children, by making absurd parallels between homosexuality
and paedophilia, ILGA and the Italian LGBT movement have launched an appeal
to all citizens and associations all over the world to join a worldwide
protest against child abuse and support for victims in front of the Vatican
embassies or the main Catholic churches on Wednesday, April 21.
Turning the paedophilia issue into a matter of sexual orientation, as the
Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone did, can only lead to failing
to address the serious allegations coming from around the world. The point
is not the sexual orientation of paedophiles, but to prosecute firmly those
responsible for such abuses, especially if they have an educational or
spiritual role.
The Catholic Church must answer to the courts and the world public opinion
for the serious cover-up occurred worldwide. This is our call, to all women
and men of goodwill, of any religion, who cannot be silent in front of
these abuses against innocent children.
Take Action Now
Contact your local lgbt association and organise a protest in front of the
Vatican embassy the main catholic church of your city.
List of the Vatican embassies all over the world: http://www.catholic-
hierarchy.org/country/xdip.html
References
Vatican comments:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/latinamerica/6955641.html
Gay groups responses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8618878.stm
ILGA Press release: http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/mnE6fHv1Za
Let us know
1) Send us an email to let us know where and when you will hold the protest.
2) After the protest be sure to send us a photo or a video.
Mail please to: renato@ilga.org and international@arcigay.it
or main catholic churches on Saturday, April 24
Prosecute abuses firmly. Full support for victims.
On April 13 the number two in the Vatican hierarchy, the Pope’s Secretary
of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, claimed that there is a link between
homosexuality and paedophilia.
The LGBT movement worldwide has risen up against this false, despicable and
anti-scientific statement from the Vatican, which is trying to deflect
attention from priests’ sex crimes by blaming LGBT people.
While they are trying to hide the truth about the abuses perpetrated
against innocent children, by making absurd parallels between homosexuality
and paedophilia, ILGA and the Italian LGBT movement have launched an appeal
to all citizens and associations all over the world to join a worldwide
protest against child abuse and support for victims in front of the Vatican
embassies or the main Catholic churches on Wednesday, April 21.
Turning the paedophilia issue into a matter of sexual orientation, as the
Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone did, can only lead to failing
to address the serious allegations coming from around the world. The point
is not the sexual orientation of paedophiles, but to prosecute firmly those
responsible for such abuses, especially if they have an educational or
spiritual role.
The Catholic Church must answer to the courts and the world public opinion
for the serious cover-up occurred worldwide. This is our call, to all women
and men of goodwill, of any religion, who cannot be silent in front of
these abuses against innocent children.
Take Action Now
Contact your local lgbt association and organise a protest in front of the
Vatican embassy the main catholic church of your city.
List of the Vatican embassies all over the world: http://www.catholic-
hierarchy.org/country/xdip.html
References
Vatican comments:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/latinamerica/6955641.html
Gay groups responses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8618878.stm
ILGA Press release: http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/mnE6fHv1Za
Let us know
1) Send us an email to let us know where and when you will hold the protest.
2) After the protest be sure to send us a photo or a video.
Mail please to: renato@ilga.org and international@arcigay.it
Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives
he Arab-Israeli war of narratives that has led to Holocaust-denial on the one hand and Nakba-denial on the other opposes two entirely symmetrical visions of the origins of this intractable conflict. In Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Gilbert Achcar traces a complex history of interpretations from Arab responses to the earliest intimations of the Nazi genocide, through the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestine, to last winter's Israeli offensive against Gaza. Demonstrating that to the present day there has never been one Holocaust-denying ‘Arab’ narrative, Achcar calls for a genuine dialogue based on a full and mutual recognition of both the Holocaust and the Nakba. We publish two extracts from the book’s Introduction which trace the origins of the narratives around these two terms.
Part One: Zionism, Colonialism, Uprootedness
Zionism, considered as the political movement to create a Judenstaat (‘state of the Jews’) in the title of the famous book by its principal founder, Theodor Herzl, was first and foremost a reaction to anti-Semitism that envisioned an ethnic-nationalistic segregation and regrouping of Jews on a territory of their own. It often found itself in virulent opposition to competing options that promoted the individual and collective rights of Jews, where they already resided, whether via autonomy or social integration.
The beginnings of the Zionist colonization of Palestine considerably antedate Hitler’s assumption of power, as do the first hostile Arab reactions. The Arab inhabitants of Palestine perceived the Zionist undertaking there as one more avatar of European colonialism, particularly since it mostly unfolded under the post-First World War British colonial mandate. In his famous 1917 letter addressed to the Zionist movement, British Foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared His Majesty’s government favourable to ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.
From the inception of European-Jewish colonization in Palestine in the latter half of the nineteenth century - a movement accelerated above all by pogroms in Russia - to the outbreak of the First World War, Arab peasants squared off with Jewish settlers in repeated and sometimes bloody confrontations. These were not xenophobic or even anti-Jewish reactions on the part of the Palestinian villagers, at least initially, but rather altogether predictable reactions by farmers who had been expelled from their lands. The clearest proof is that when the settlers allowed the peasants to remain on the land and gave them the opportunity to continue working it, they acquiesced in the new arrangements. When, in contrast, the new owners sought to expel them or to induce the Ottoman authorities to do so, as they increasingly did after the turn of the century, the farmers rebelled.
The hostility of the native population, both Muslim and Christian, would increase over the years in direct proportion to the expansion of this colonization and to the growing awareness that the Zionist movement was seeking to create a state in Palestine. Thus, well before the First World War, opposition to Zionism was a key component in the formation of a Palestinian identity and of an Arab nationalistic consciousness. Witness the articles published from the late nineteenth century on - with greater frequency after mid-1908, thanks to the political liberalization in the ottoman empire at that time - in newspapers in not only Palestine but Cairo, Beirut and Damascus as well.
The number of Jews living in Palestine doubled between the dawn of the twentieth century and the First World War. It increased by a factor of ten under the British mandate, rising from 61,000 in 1920 (out of a total population of 603,000) to more than 610,000 (of a total population of nearly 1,900,000) on the eve of the proclamation of the state of Israel. In the early 1920s, Jews were migrating to Palestine at an average annual rate of 8,000; this migration then intensified, cresting at 34,000 in 1925. Inevitably, the first major anti-Jewish Arab riots broke out shortly after the de facto establishment of the British mandate. Beginning in Jerusalem in 1920 and Jaffa in 1921, the initial violence culminated in the riots of 1929.
The fact remains, however, that the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933 and its aftermath were much more than a mere stimulant to Jewish immigration to Palestine. They were the decisive factor lending credence to the views of the Zionists and leading ultimately to the realization of their project – as the immigration statistics make clear. After the 1925 peak (a result, in particular, of both the Depression and of anti-Jewish measures in Poland coinciding with new restrictions on immigration to the United States) the number of immigrants sank to fewer than 20,000 for the entire five-year period 1927-31 – that is, an annual average of fewer than 4,000. In 1931, Jews made up one- sixth of the population of Palestine: according to the British census, the country counted 175,000 Jews and 880,000 Arabs that year. Immigration levels rose to higher than 12,500 in 1932, then shot up to more than 37,000 in 1933, 45,000 in 1934, and 66,000 in 1935. The influx was then slowed by the 1936–9 Palestinian uprising, after which the British colonial administration imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration.
Over the forty-year period 1882–1931, a total of nearly 187,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine. Between 1932 and 1938, a period of only seven years, more than 197,000 people poured into the country, followed by 138,300 more in the ten years between 1939 and 1948. In sum, a total of nearly 313,000 immigrants settled in the area between Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933 and the end of the British mandate in 1948, according to official Israeli statistics. One hundred and fifteen thousand of them came illegally. In the three years between the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 and the proclamation of the state of Israel in May 1948, 80,000 Holocaust survivors came to Palestine illegally, according, once again, to official Israeli figures
In 1932, the Jewish population of Palestine – almost 181, 000 – constituted 18.3 per cent of the total population. By 1946, it represented more than 35 per cent, reaching 37 per cent at the moment the state of Israel was proclaimed two years later. Of the 716,700 Jews living in the new state six months after it declared its independence, 463,000, that is, nearly two-thirds, had been born abroad, according to the 11 November 1948 census.
Thus the ‘state of the Jews’ plainly owes its creation to the Holocaust, for more than one reason. The Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies were initiated with the expulsion, under increasing duress, of German Jews. Until 1939, the Nazis preferred that these Jewish émigrés leave Germany for Palestine:
“Jewish emigration to Palestine ... is a lesser evil for Germany. ‘I know from my own experience,’ wrote an official of the Auswärtiges Amt [the German Foreign office], ‘how unusually unpleasant the influx of Jewish intellectuals is for us.’ He pointed out that the emigration of Jews to the United States, Turkey and Iran influenced intellectual life in the direction of strengthening anti-German feeling, and that Jewish immigrants in Latin America caused the Germans much economic, propagandistic and political harm ... but in Palestine, argued that official, the Jews are among themselves and cannot harm the Third Reich.
Within Germany, Hitler actively intervened in the debate over Palestine in 1937 and early in 1938. He insisted on the stepped-up promotion of Jewish emigration and deportation by all possible means, regardless of destination. According to Hitler, Palestine was to continue as a prime destination for German Jewish refugees, and became an even more significant factor in Nazi emigration policies in 1938 and 1939 as the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst collaborated with underground Zionist organizations in the ‘illegal’ immigration of Jewish refugees past the British blockade into Palestine.”
Nearly 53,000 Jews from Germany alone left for Palestine between 1933 and 1939, taking only legal emigration into account. German Jews represented one-quarter of all legal Jewish immigrants in 1933; by 1939, the proportion had risen to 52 per cent. Their emigration was facilitated by a 25 August 1933 agreement between German Zionists and representatives of the Jewish Agency, on the one hand, and the Nazi government on the other. Known as the Haavara (‘transfer’ in Hebrew), it authorized German Jews emigrating to Palestine, and these Jews alone, to transfer part of their assets there in the form of goods exported from Germany. The agreement was the more controversial in that it subverted the economic boycott of Nazi Germany which many believed capable of precipitating the downfall of the Hitler regime, which at that time was still being put in place. On the other hand, the Haavara agreement shored up the then almost bankrupt Jewish Agency for Palestine, the institution responsible for organizing Jewish immigration and overseeing the Yishuv (the community of Jews living in Palestine).
In spite of all the Zionist movement’s efforts, a majority of the German and Austrian Jews who left continental Europe by September 1939 went to the Americas – 95,000 of them to the United States and 75,000 to Latin America, over against the 60,000 who emigrated to Palestine. Yet the fact remains that, in 1948, 170,000 Jews from Poland constituted the largest segment of the Yishuv. When all is said and done, it is obvious that National Socialism, by substantially boosting Jewish emigration to Palestine, allowed the movement to attain the critical mass that enabled it to triumph politically and militarily in 1948. ‘The rise of the Nazis thus proved advantageous for the Zionist movement,’ Tom Segev has accurately pointed out.
History was thus confirming Herzl’s vision – in a way that he could not have imagined in his worst nightmares. ‘The present scheme’, Herzl had declared in the preface to his 1896 manifesto in book form, ‘includes the employment of an existent propelling force ... And what is our propelling force? The misery of the Jews.’ This vision underlies the same ‘philosophy of the beneficial disaster’ that Shabtai Teveth, the biographer of the president of the Jewish Agency’s executive committee and the most important of the founding fathers of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, attributes to the man whom he knows better than anyone else does. Teveth cites Ben-Gurion: ‘The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.’
This philosophy explains, in Teveth’s view, Ben-Gurion’s relative indifference to the Holocaust, for which he has been much criticized: ‘two facts can be definitely stated: Ben Gurion did not put the rescue effort above Zionist politics, and he did not regard it as a principal task demanding his personal leadership… ’
The head of the Jewish Agency gave stark expression to the implacable logic of Zionist priorities when he declared, in December 1938, not long after the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht: ‘if I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second – because we face not only the reckoning of these children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ He added: ‘like every Jew, I am interested in saving every Jew wherever possible, but nothing takes precedence over saving the Hebrew nation in its land.’
In the opposing camp, the most eminent members of the Brit Shalom and, later, Ihud circles, both of which rejected Zionist statism in favour of a binational state in Palestine – Hugo Bergmann, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Henrietta Szold – waged, unsurprisingly, a desperate struggle to persuade the Yishuv to put rescuing Europe’s Jews ahead of all else. Late in 1942, when news of the ‘Final Solution’ began to reach the Yishuv, members of these circles played a pivotal role in founding an association called Al-domi (biblical Hebrew meaning ‘do not remain silent’) that worked actively, albeit in vain, to attain this end. The very existence of this association appears to have been blotted from memory.
The American Council for Judaism (ACJ) followed an equally consistent line. An anti-Zionist organization founded by Reform rabbis and lay-people in the 1940s, the ACJ favoured a single democratic, secular Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would enjoy equal rights. The UN Special Commission on Palestine took note in 1947 of the ACJ’s position that ‘proposals to establish a Jewish state ... are a threat to the peace and security of Palestine and its surrounding area, are harmful to the Jews in Palestine and throughout the world, and are also undemocratic.’
The ACJ, which boasted more than 14,000 members at its apogee, fought energetically to open America’s doors to the displaced. This was the logical corollary of its opposition to the Zionist project in Palestine in a context of solidarity with European Jews. Its attitude was not unlike that of the British writer Israel Zangwill who broke with the Zionist movement when it opted for Palestine as the only territorial objective of the future ‘state of the Jews’ – this despite the fact that Zangwill is said to have been the author of the notorious phrase that has it that Palestine was ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’ (an attribution that is imprecise and has been contested). Zangwill – who knew well that, unless the Arabs were driven from Palestine, creating a Jewish state in this country implied domination of an Arab majority by a Jewish minority – militated in favour of ‘territorialism’, the project of regrouping Jews on a territory better suited to the purpose than Palestine, wherever it might be – preferably in the United States. ‘America,’ he wrote, “has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale [i.e. the Pale of settlement, home to most of Russia’s Jews]; any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution.”
Conversely, the Palestinian project determined the American Zionists’ position on the question of immigration to the United States by Holocaust survivors. The extraordinary Congress that brought American Zionists together with leaders of the world movement in New York’s Biltmore hotel in May 1942 demanded only that the doors of Palestine be opened to Jewish refugees – not those of every country at war with the Axis, beginning with the United States. As Aaron Berman has shown, this stance was not modified – quite the contrary, in fact – when it was learned that the Nazis were carrying out a systematic genocide: “American Zionist leaders decided that their primary task had to be the building of support for the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Their decision did not reflect a callousness about or disinterest in the terrible fate of the European Jews. Rather, American Zionists believed that there was nothing unique about Hitler’s plan for genocide ... believing that Jewish homelessness was the basic cause of all anti-Semitism, American Zionists resolved to put a final end to Jewish statelessness ...”
“Sadly, the American Zionists’ calculation was faulty. ... once the Nazis embarked on their program of genocide, the American Zionist decision to make the establishment of a Jewish state their primary goal handicapped any attempt to build a powerful lobby to force the American government to undertake the rescue of European Jewry.”
David Wyman, who can hardly be accused of hostility to American Zionists, has drawn up a balance sheet of their actions in this field: ‘An unavoidable conclusion’, he writes, ‘is that during the Holocaust the leadership of American Zionism concentrated its major force on the drive for a future Jewish state in Palestine. It consigned rescue to a distinctly secondary position.’ However, he adds, ‘substantially more was possible than they recognized’.
Of all the arguments invoked to justify the Zionists’ undeniable lack of enthusiasm for the demand that the United States, Great Britain and the other allied countries open their gates before continental Europe’s Jewish refugees, even the most reasonable constitute mitigating circumstances at best. The political motivation for this lack of enthusiasm is equally undeniable, as is indicated by a comment of Ben-Gurion’s that Segev cites: ‘in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms,’ Segev reports, ‘Ben-Gurion commented that “the human conscience” might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: “Zionism is in danger!”’
Francis Nicosia sums up the consequences of the Zionists’ attitude towards Nazism: “If, as the Zionists had always claimed, the assimilationists had been living an illusion, the Zionists had undoubtedly lived one of their own. it was rooted in the fallacy that if anti-Semitism was natural and understandable, as Herzl and others had insisted, there was room for its accommodation to the principles and goals of Zionism. Herzl and others believed that anti-Semites would accept Zionism, even if they disliked or hated Jews, and that they might indeed do everything necessary to support Zionist efforts until Jews and non-Jews reached their common goal of removing Jews from Germany. What they had not understood, and what post-World War 1 German Zionists apparently would not understand until after 1933, was that whatever appeal Zionism had for most anti-Semites, even for the Nazis after World War 1, it was of a purely pragmatic nature, and therefore problematic. Indeed, an understanding of National Socialism and precisely how Zionists should respond to it seemed to elude the entire Zionist movement, including the Yishuv, until well into the Second World War.”
The fact remains that responsibility for the failure to grant haven to European Jewish refugees ultimately lies with the governments of the allied countries that were in a position to do so. Although Berman’s judgement can seem excessively severe, he is not wrong that ‘while Germany was primarily responsible for the Holocaust, the democratic governments of the United States and the United Kingdom must be considered at least accomplices in genocide’. Nothing is more revealing in this regard than the international conference held in Evian, France, from 6 to 15 July 1938. Initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, its mission was to reflect on the fate of the Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, whose numbers had increased considerably as a result of the Anschluss and the intensification of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic program. Thirty-two countries sent delegations.
“As the conference proceeded, delegate after delegate excused his country from accepting additional refugees. The United States delegate, Myron C. Taylor, stated that his country’s contribution was to make the German and Austrian immigration quota, which up to the time had remained unfilled, fully available. The British delegate declared that their overseas territories were largely unsuitable for European settlement, except for parts of East Africa, which might offer possibilities for limited numbers. Britain itself, being fully populated and suffering unemployment, also was unavailable for immigration; and he excluded Palestine from the Evian discussion entirely. The French delegate stated that France had reached ‘the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees.’ The other European countries echoed this sentiment, with minor variations. Australia could not encourage refugee immigration because, ‘as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.’ The delegates from New Zealand, Canada, and the Latin American nations cited the Depression as the reason they could not accept refugees. Only the tiny Dominican republic volunteered to contribute large, but unspecified areas for agricultural colonization.”
It was due to this set of historical circumstance that the Jewish tragedy, which peaked in the Shoah, also culminated in the Palestinian tragedy, the Nakba. In a pivotal essay, Edward Said underscored the ‘link to be made between what happened to Jews in World War II and the catastrophe of the Palestinian people’, going so far as to add that ‘the Jewish tragedy led directly to the Palestinian catastrophe by, let us call it, “necessity” (rather than pure will).’ Of course, the Holocaust was incomparably crueller and bloodier than the Nakba. This consideration, however, in no way diminishes the tragedy of the Palestinians, particularly since they did not, as a people, bear any blame for the destruction of European Jewry.
In an attempt to show conversely that ‘the Jewish tragedy did not create the Palestinian catastrophe’, Joseph Massad criticizes Said’s contention. The Zionist project, he argues, antedated National Socialism and the Holocaust; furthermore, ‘only one-third of holocaust survivors ended up in Palestine, mainly because they could not go to the United States.’ His argument, however, is aimed at the wrong target. When Said speaks of ‘the Jewish tragedy’ he obviously means the Holocaust in the broad sense of the tragedy spawned by the Nazis’ accession to power and its aftermath, not in the narrow sense of the 1942–5 ‘Final Solution’.
Moreover, the direct relationship between the Palestinian drama and the Jewish tragedy was inscribed in the fact that Zionism was first and foremost a reaction to anti-Semitism. Certainly, if one takes the Holocaust in the narrow sense of the ‘Final Solution’ initiated in 1942, it becomes harder to maintain that the state of Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. And it is indeed primarily pro-Zionist authors who have combated such a thesis. Yehuda Bauer, who, like Massad, reformulates the idea in narrow terms (‘Israel was created by the Holocaust’), advances the opposite thesis: “On the contrary, if the German Reich had held out one more year, it is doubtful whether there would have been any survivors at all ... The Holocaust prevented a Jewish State from coming into existence with, as new-minted citizens, the millions of Jews who were murdered. Indeed, because of the Holocaust, the attempt to establish a state almost failed. There were almost not enough Jews left to fight for a state. The ones who survived the Holocaust were central to that effort, and had there been more, the effort would have been easier and the outcome more certain. My answer, therefore, is unequivocal: The view that Israel was created by the Holocaust is erroneous. The opposite is true.”
Bauer’s contention is the more surprising in that a few lines earlier he declares: ‘if the United States had opened its gates to Jewish immigration ... it is highly probable, in my view, that a much larger proportion of Jewish D.P.s would have gone to the United States than did.’ The notion that the ‘millions of Jews who were murdered’ might have constituted ‘new-minted citizens’ of the state of Israel, many of whom would have fought for its creation, is of a piece with the one that led Mordecai Shenhabi – the man credited with the idea of founding Yad Vashem – to propose in 1950 that Israeli citizenship be posthumously conferred upon all Holocaust victims.
Discussing the debates that this proposal touched off, Segev describes it as ‘utterly spurious’: ‘There is no way of knowing which, or how many, of the Holocaust’s victims considered themselves “potential citizens” of Israel. Many of them died precisely because they had preferred not to move to Palestine when that option was opened to them. And most of the world’s Jews, Holocaust survivors among them, chose not to come to Israel even after the state was founded.’
It remains true, however, that Holocaust survivors in the strict sense made up about one-third of the Zionist forces who fought in the 1948 war. Nevertheless, the motive common to the authors just cited, over and above the fundamental differences dividing them, is their legitimate rejection of the idea that the creation of Israel was an answer to the Jewish genocide. Bauer passionately disputes it: ‘I do not think I have to deal with this because the very line of thought is so repugnant. I think most Jews would have preferred saving the lives of the Jews who died in the Holocaust to establishing the state.’
Said’s thesis is no different. His recognition of the ‘necessity’ informing the historical process that culminated in the creation of the state of Israel by no means implies approval or legitimization of its creation or of the ways in which it was achieved: ‘I do not accept the notion that by taking our land Zionism redeemed the history of the Jews, and I cannot ever be made to acquiesce in the need to dispossess the whole Palestinian people.’ Historical ‘necessity’ implies no political or moral justification for such acquiescence. Nor does it imply any imperative reason to endorse Zionism. As Isaac Deutscher explained in 1954:
“From a burning or sinking ship people jump no matter where – on to a lifeboat, a raft, or a float. The jumping is for them an ‘historic necessity’; and the raft is in a sense the basis of their whole existence. but does it follow that the jumping should be made into a programme, or that one should take a raft-state as the basis of a political orientation?”
The rising tide of refugees to Palestine was not Nazism’s only contribution to the creation of the state of Israel. In 1947 there also existed a mass of concentration-camp and other Jewish survivors of Hitler’s genocidal enterprise who had been reduced to a state of extreme poverty and profound distress. Supporting the creation of the state of Israel was the way that North America, Europe and the Soviet Union solved, on the cheap, the embarrassing problem represented by this multitude of unfortunates whom neither the Americans nor the Europeans nor the USSR wished to take in.
While the Soviet authorities encouraged illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine from the Central and Eastern European countries under their control,65 Washington asked London to allow Jews to immigrate legally into the country, which was still under British mandate. ‘On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants [in Palestine]. Britain’s Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”’ Long before Bevin, Mussolini had responded in much the same vein to Truman’s predecessor, who asked him, in 1939, to grant the Jews refuge in Italian colonies: ‘President Roosevelt asked Benito Mussolini to allow Jews to move to Ethiopia, which was under Italian rule; Il Duce wondered why the refugees could not be settled in the United States.’
Once the war had ended and the horror of the camps had been fully revealed, the desire to get rid of the devastated Jews by sending them elsewhere persisted. The foundation of the state of Israel directly served that end: 200,000 Holocaust survivors settled there in the year following its creation. According to the official statistics, more than 76,500 immigrants arrived there from Europe between 15 May 1948 and the end of the year, followed by another 122,000 in 1949. In addition to the sordid fact that certain states sought to resolve the problem of the Holocaust survivors at the Palestinians’ cost – as some states nowadays seek to rid themselves of their radioactive waste by exporting it to poor countries – the Zionist movement naturally tried to exploit the shock waves that followed the liberation of the camps in 1945. A former foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, has explained this stratagem:
“The target of Zionist diplomacy was no longer Britain but the United States and international opinion. There was little hope of averting an open clash with the mandatory power now entangled in the conflicting pledges and promises to Arabs and Jews. And as has happened frequently in the history of Zionism, the cause was enhanced by the Jewish catastrophe. It was the full truth and the awesome impact of the Holocaust of European Jewry, as it was exposed worldwide after the war, that served now as the platform upon which Zionist diplomacy could mobilise governments and international opinion in order to attain its major political objective, a Jewish state in Palestine. Once again, Jewish catastrophe was the propellant of the Zionist idea and a boost to its prospects.”
Finally, the National Socialist enterprise steeled the Yishuv for war in both the physical sense, since Palestinian Jews took part in the British war effort, and also the psychological sense, since it imbued Zionist militants with great determination, born of the feeling (the illusion, in the view of critics and sceptics) that they were fighting to establish the definitive response to the Holocaust. From the moment it was proclaimed, the state of Israel laid full claim to its legitimization based on the Holocaust and the anti-Nazi struggle. The terms of the ‘declaration of independence’ read out by David Ben-Gurion on 14 May 1948 are well known:
“The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish state, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
In the second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.”
The subsequent war between the new state and the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries ended with the defeat of the Arab camp and the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem. The two narratives of these events, Israeli and Palestinian-Arab, inevitably turned, from the outset, on two very different sequences. The Israeli narrative featured extermination – the Shoah – and rehabilitation by the state. The Palestinian and Arab narrative revolved around the usurpation carried out by the state and the attendant expulsion – the Nakba.
Part Two: Victim narratives and the last anti-colonial struggle
The Syrian academic Constantine Zurayk (Qustantīn Zurayq), a liberal Arab nationalist, is generally credited with having put the term nakba into broad circulation as a designation for ‘The Catastrophe’ (al-nakba) in a pamphlet that had a profound effect on public opinion: The Meaning of the Catastrophe (or disaster), published in 1948 and reissued in a second edition the year after. In the introduction, the author declares: ‘The Arab defeat [hazïma] in Palestine is not a mere setback [naksa] or a simple, transitory misfortune, but a catastrophe [nakba] in every sense of the word, a calamitous ordeal among the most difficult that the Arabs have undergone in the course of a long history full of ordeals and calamities.’
The extraordinary complexity of the problem before us, like the passion it arouses, is more than just the result of two experiences of persecution. History, after all, abounds in instances of the emigration or forced exile of persecuted people who become persecutors in their turn. Oppressed religious sects and people deported for ethnic or political reasons are among the examples that spring to mind. What makes the Israeli–Palestinian problem exceptional is, above all, that no other population actively involved in a colonial–settler project was fleeing a form of persecution as long-standing and brutal as European anti-Semitism, or was made up of survivors of such a stupefying crime against humanity.
It was with this circumstance in mind that Mahmoud Darwish exclaimed, in an exchange with Helit Yeshurun, ‘Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? It’s because you are our enemy. Interest in the Palestinian question flows from interest in the Jewish question. Yes. People are interested in you, not me ... ! The international interest in the Palestinian question merely reflects the interest people take in the Jewish question.’ This was, of course, an exaggeration blurted out in the heat of the moment: the Palestinian tragedy would certainly have resounded if the Westerners who settled in Palestine had been, say, members of a Protestant sect rather than Jews. How, then, are we to explain the importance accorded to the Palestinian tragedy apart from the Jewishness of Israel?
It cannot fairly be said that the ‘uprooting’ of the Palestinians – to borrow the expression used by Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad to describe the rural populations ‘regrouped’ by the French army in camps in colonial Algeria – has been exceptionally extensive or cruel. Compare it with the Algerian case, in which some two million ‘regrouped persons’ came under the direct control of the French colonial army: measured against its standards of brutality, the Israeli army pales. None of the massacres of Palestinians carried out by Israeli forces compares in scope to the one perpetrated by the French army in May 1945 in the Algerian cities of Setif and Guelma, to cite only that case: several thousand Algerians – tens of thousands, by Algerian estimates – were massacred there in the space of a few weeks. And what the black population of sub-Saharan Africa had to endure during the long ‘civilizing’ period in the history of the colonial empires, from slavery to veritable genocides (which all too often go unmentioned even today), was far more terrible than even the Algerian horror.
As colonial abominations go, the fate of the Palestinians is far from being the worst. The only people who can be excused for thinking differently are those who are directly subject to this fate and lack the necessary basis for comparison. The Palestinians cannot, however, advisedly and legitimately apply to their own case the superlatives appropriate to the Jewish genocide. ‘Who would want morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession?’ Said exclaims in the essay cited above. ‘It would be foolish even to try.’ Similarly, Benny Morris is correct to point out that Deir Yassin – the Palestinian village where 120 people were massacred by the revisionist Zionist Irgun in 1948 – ‘was no Srebrenica’ (the Bosnian city in which eight thousand people were slaughtered by the forces of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia in 1995).
How, then, are we to explain the immense place that the oppression of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis holds among the passionately debated issues of our day? There are several reasons for this. One is that Israel is the only European colonial settler state in which the political rights of the native population have yet to be restored (apart from places like North America and Australia, where colonization all but wiped out the native population). With the disappearance of the South African apartheid system in 1994, the Palestinian question became the last major burning issue of European colonialism. Israel is currently the only state in the world that combines three modes of colonial oppression: members of the indigenous minority who remained after 1948 (the ‘Israeli Arabs’) have the status of second-class citizens; since 1967, the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza have had the status of a population under either foreign occupation or direct control by the former occupiers; and the great majority of Palestinians have the status of people uprooted from their land and barred from returning. Most of this last group live in refugee camps on the periphery of the colonial state or in the territories it controls; others have joined the vast Palestinian diaspora; still others are living uprooted within the 1949 borders as ‘internally displaced persons’.
The persistence of these colonialist modes of oppression makes Israel, in some sense, an anachronism. A colonial state born at the very moment in which the process of decolonization was first gaining strength, it both proved the rule and constituted an exception. Hence the profound ambiguity of a ‘war of independence’ that grew into a war of colonial conquest, by way of a declaration of independence perceived as a declaration of annexation by a majority of the people of the country – Mandatory Palestine – on whose soil it was solemnly read out on 14 May 1948.
Even on the territory attributed in November 1947 to the ‘Jewish state’ by a United Nations General Assembly in which the future ‘Third World’ was barely represented – a territory that would be substantially enlarged manu militari in the course of the first Arab–Israeli war – close to half the resident population received Israel’s declaration of independence as an outrage. At the time, a yawning gulf separated those who regarded the creation of Israel as an act of liberation of the first importance – the redemption of European Jewry’s centuries-old history of oppression – and those who perceived it as the establishment of a colonial entity at the cost of the indigenous population. As the American journalist I. F. Stone wrote in 1967: ‘The fact that the Jewish community in Palestine afterwards fought the British is no more evidence of its not being a colonial implantation than similar wars of British colonists against the mother country, from the American Revolution to Rhodesia.’
Nevertheless, the notion of Israel as the product of an anti-colonial war of independence long held sway in the West. It was decisively modified by the June 1967 war, when the myth of Israel as a David facing the Goliath of the surrounding Arab countries gave way to an image of Israel as the state of ‘an elite people, self-assured and domineering’, as General Charles de Gaulle put it. The phrase was widely criticized because it was not free of anti-Semitic overtones: the French president was targeting what, in his view, the Jews ‘had always been’.
Recognition that Israel is a colonial power was long in coming in the West – longer on the left than the right – and, of course, in Israel itself. The considerable distance covered runs from the period when Jean-Paul Sartre’s review Les Temps modernes published a thick issue on the Israeli–Arab conflict following the 1967 war, in which the title of Maxime Rodinson’s remarkable contribution characterizing Israel as a ‘colonial-settler state’ could still be qualified by a question mark, to the unabashed 1999 admission by the most famous of the ‘new Israeli historians’, Benny Morris, that ‘Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement.’ Uri Ram has summed up Israeli ‘post-Zionist’ discourse on the question:
“Israel is a settler-colonial society on a par with other white European societies such as Australia or South Africa. Whether or not the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was premeditated (the transfer issue), or an unintentional consequence of the war, Israel is largely responsible for the refugee problem. The conquest of land and labor was an avowed principle of labor Zionism, and its logical derivative is dislocation of, and discrimination against, Palestinians.”
Against this backdrop, the Palestinian struggle appears for what it is: the last major anti-colonial struggle. The indigenous population of ‘Rhodesia’ obtained the same political rights as the population of colonial origin in 1960; the country then experienced a second independence and genuine decolonization under the name Zimbabwe. South Africa’s indigenous population, in its turn, had gained the same rights as the population of colonial origin by 1994. Yet the indigenous population of Palestine is still waging a bitter struggle for recognition of its right to sovereignty over as little as one-fifth of its ancestral lands – the portion that Israel did not immediately conquer in 1948, but occupied nineteen years later.
The persistence of Israeli colonial oppression, flying in the face of the prevailing tendency of world history, has been made worse by a rising curve of violence. Israel has fought seven major wars in its six decades, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and 2008–9, the latter two the most brutal of all. Each one profoundly alarmed the world because of the strategic location of the conflict. (Contrast the 5.4 million war-related deaths in the Congo in the ten years since 1998 – 45,000 a month or 1,500 a day in 2008, on the estimate of one American ngo. Black skins are of small worth in comparison with black gold.)
The international implications of the conflicts in the Middle East do not, however, alter the fact that Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is now at its highest level ever. In recent years, it has soared from one peak to the next, beginning with Ariel Sharon’s assumption of the leadership of the Israeli government in 2001, followed by the 2002 reoccupation of the West Bank for the purpose of crushing the Second Intifada, continuing to the 2006 blockade of Gaza and the repeated assaults on it since. Zionist colonial power clings to its 1967 conquered territory in the face of resistance of an intensity and tenacity that would surely have beaten back other forms of colonialism, at considerable cost to Israeli society.
The result is hardly surprising: Israel’s image has, inevitably, deteriorated. According to a BBC poll conducted in thirty-four countries and published on 2 April 2008 – several months before the cruel assault on Gaza unleashed at the end of the year, which has surely had a powerfully negative influence on perceptions of the country – Israel was, after Iran, the state with the poorest image: 54 and 52 per cent cited the influence of Iran and Israel, respectively, as negative. Another poll, in 2003, indicated that 59 per cent of Europeans considered Israel a threat to peace, whereas only 53 per cent thought Iran was. The more the image of the ‘Jewish state’ suffers – above all in the West, where its image counts for a great deal – the more it turns to the Holocaust to shore up its legitimization.
The reason is that the West (vestiges of Judeophobia and anti-Semitism aside, which today persist only among a minority) continues to regard the Shoah from the standpoint, and sense of responsibility, of the culprits, whereas the Arab world and most of the Third World regard the state that claims to represent the victims of the Shoah from the standpoint of the victims of both the Nakba and Israel’s subsequent acts. This fact weighs very heavily on the reception of the Holocaust in the Arab East, which got ever more complicated from the time of the Shoah itself to the time of the Nakba up to our own day.
Part One: Zionism, Colonialism, Uprootedness
Zionism, considered as the political movement to create a Judenstaat (‘state of the Jews’) in the title of the famous book by its principal founder, Theodor Herzl, was first and foremost a reaction to anti-Semitism that envisioned an ethnic-nationalistic segregation and regrouping of Jews on a territory of their own. It often found itself in virulent opposition to competing options that promoted the individual and collective rights of Jews, where they already resided, whether via autonomy or social integration.
The beginnings of the Zionist colonization of Palestine considerably antedate Hitler’s assumption of power, as do the first hostile Arab reactions. The Arab inhabitants of Palestine perceived the Zionist undertaking there as one more avatar of European colonialism, particularly since it mostly unfolded under the post-First World War British colonial mandate. In his famous 1917 letter addressed to the Zionist movement, British Foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared His Majesty’s government favourable to ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.
From the inception of European-Jewish colonization in Palestine in the latter half of the nineteenth century - a movement accelerated above all by pogroms in Russia - to the outbreak of the First World War, Arab peasants squared off with Jewish settlers in repeated and sometimes bloody confrontations. These were not xenophobic or even anti-Jewish reactions on the part of the Palestinian villagers, at least initially, but rather altogether predictable reactions by farmers who had been expelled from their lands. The clearest proof is that when the settlers allowed the peasants to remain on the land and gave them the opportunity to continue working it, they acquiesced in the new arrangements. When, in contrast, the new owners sought to expel them or to induce the Ottoman authorities to do so, as they increasingly did after the turn of the century, the farmers rebelled.
The hostility of the native population, both Muslim and Christian, would increase over the years in direct proportion to the expansion of this colonization and to the growing awareness that the Zionist movement was seeking to create a state in Palestine. Thus, well before the First World War, opposition to Zionism was a key component in the formation of a Palestinian identity and of an Arab nationalistic consciousness. Witness the articles published from the late nineteenth century on - with greater frequency after mid-1908, thanks to the political liberalization in the ottoman empire at that time - in newspapers in not only Palestine but Cairo, Beirut and Damascus as well.
The number of Jews living in Palestine doubled between the dawn of the twentieth century and the First World War. It increased by a factor of ten under the British mandate, rising from 61,000 in 1920 (out of a total population of 603,000) to more than 610,000 (of a total population of nearly 1,900,000) on the eve of the proclamation of the state of Israel. In the early 1920s, Jews were migrating to Palestine at an average annual rate of 8,000; this migration then intensified, cresting at 34,000 in 1925. Inevitably, the first major anti-Jewish Arab riots broke out shortly after the de facto establishment of the British mandate. Beginning in Jerusalem in 1920 and Jaffa in 1921, the initial violence culminated in the riots of 1929.
The fact remains, however, that the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933 and its aftermath were much more than a mere stimulant to Jewish immigration to Palestine. They were the decisive factor lending credence to the views of the Zionists and leading ultimately to the realization of their project – as the immigration statistics make clear. After the 1925 peak (a result, in particular, of both the Depression and of anti-Jewish measures in Poland coinciding with new restrictions on immigration to the United States) the number of immigrants sank to fewer than 20,000 for the entire five-year period 1927-31 – that is, an annual average of fewer than 4,000. In 1931, Jews made up one- sixth of the population of Palestine: according to the British census, the country counted 175,000 Jews and 880,000 Arabs that year. Immigration levels rose to higher than 12,500 in 1932, then shot up to more than 37,000 in 1933, 45,000 in 1934, and 66,000 in 1935. The influx was then slowed by the 1936–9 Palestinian uprising, after which the British colonial administration imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration.
Over the forty-year period 1882–1931, a total of nearly 187,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine. Between 1932 and 1938, a period of only seven years, more than 197,000 people poured into the country, followed by 138,300 more in the ten years between 1939 and 1948. In sum, a total of nearly 313,000 immigrants settled in the area between Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933 and the end of the British mandate in 1948, according to official Israeli statistics. One hundred and fifteen thousand of them came illegally. In the three years between the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 and the proclamation of the state of Israel in May 1948, 80,000 Holocaust survivors came to Palestine illegally, according, once again, to official Israeli figures
In 1932, the Jewish population of Palestine – almost 181, 000 – constituted 18.3 per cent of the total population. By 1946, it represented more than 35 per cent, reaching 37 per cent at the moment the state of Israel was proclaimed two years later. Of the 716,700 Jews living in the new state six months after it declared its independence, 463,000, that is, nearly two-thirds, had been born abroad, according to the 11 November 1948 census.
Thus the ‘state of the Jews’ plainly owes its creation to the Holocaust, for more than one reason. The Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies were initiated with the expulsion, under increasing duress, of German Jews. Until 1939, the Nazis preferred that these Jewish émigrés leave Germany for Palestine:
“Jewish emigration to Palestine ... is a lesser evil for Germany. ‘I know from my own experience,’ wrote an official of the Auswärtiges Amt [the German Foreign office], ‘how unusually unpleasant the influx of Jewish intellectuals is for us.’ He pointed out that the emigration of Jews to the United States, Turkey and Iran influenced intellectual life in the direction of strengthening anti-German feeling, and that Jewish immigrants in Latin America caused the Germans much economic, propagandistic and political harm ... but in Palestine, argued that official, the Jews are among themselves and cannot harm the Third Reich.
Within Germany, Hitler actively intervened in the debate over Palestine in 1937 and early in 1938. He insisted on the stepped-up promotion of Jewish emigration and deportation by all possible means, regardless of destination. According to Hitler, Palestine was to continue as a prime destination for German Jewish refugees, and became an even more significant factor in Nazi emigration policies in 1938 and 1939 as the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst collaborated with underground Zionist organizations in the ‘illegal’ immigration of Jewish refugees past the British blockade into Palestine.”
Nearly 53,000 Jews from Germany alone left for Palestine between 1933 and 1939, taking only legal emigration into account. German Jews represented one-quarter of all legal Jewish immigrants in 1933; by 1939, the proportion had risen to 52 per cent. Their emigration was facilitated by a 25 August 1933 agreement between German Zionists and representatives of the Jewish Agency, on the one hand, and the Nazi government on the other. Known as the Haavara (‘transfer’ in Hebrew), it authorized German Jews emigrating to Palestine, and these Jews alone, to transfer part of their assets there in the form of goods exported from Germany. The agreement was the more controversial in that it subverted the economic boycott of Nazi Germany which many believed capable of precipitating the downfall of the Hitler regime, which at that time was still being put in place. On the other hand, the Haavara agreement shored up the then almost bankrupt Jewish Agency for Palestine, the institution responsible for organizing Jewish immigration and overseeing the Yishuv (the community of Jews living in Palestine).
In spite of all the Zionist movement’s efforts, a majority of the German and Austrian Jews who left continental Europe by September 1939 went to the Americas – 95,000 of them to the United States and 75,000 to Latin America, over against the 60,000 who emigrated to Palestine. Yet the fact remains that, in 1948, 170,000 Jews from Poland constituted the largest segment of the Yishuv. When all is said and done, it is obvious that National Socialism, by substantially boosting Jewish emigration to Palestine, allowed the movement to attain the critical mass that enabled it to triumph politically and militarily in 1948. ‘The rise of the Nazis thus proved advantageous for the Zionist movement,’ Tom Segev has accurately pointed out.
History was thus confirming Herzl’s vision – in a way that he could not have imagined in his worst nightmares. ‘The present scheme’, Herzl had declared in the preface to his 1896 manifesto in book form, ‘includes the employment of an existent propelling force ... And what is our propelling force? The misery of the Jews.’ This vision underlies the same ‘philosophy of the beneficial disaster’ that Shabtai Teveth, the biographer of the president of the Jewish Agency’s executive committee and the most important of the founding fathers of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, attributes to the man whom he knows better than anyone else does. Teveth cites Ben-Gurion: ‘The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.’
This philosophy explains, in Teveth’s view, Ben-Gurion’s relative indifference to the Holocaust, for which he has been much criticized: ‘two facts can be definitely stated: Ben Gurion did not put the rescue effort above Zionist politics, and he did not regard it as a principal task demanding his personal leadership… ’
The head of the Jewish Agency gave stark expression to the implacable logic of Zionist priorities when he declared, in December 1938, not long after the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht: ‘if I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second – because we face not only the reckoning of these children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ He added: ‘like every Jew, I am interested in saving every Jew wherever possible, but nothing takes precedence over saving the Hebrew nation in its land.’
In the opposing camp, the most eminent members of the Brit Shalom and, later, Ihud circles, both of which rejected Zionist statism in favour of a binational state in Palestine – Hugo Bergmann, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Henrietta Szold – waged, unsurprisingly, a desperate struggle to persuade the Yishuv to put rescuing Europe’s Jews ahead of all else. Late in 1942, when news of the ‘Final Solution’ began to reach the Yishuv, members of these circles played a pivotal role in founding an association called Al-domi (biblical Hebrew meaning ‘do not remain silent’) that worked actively, albeit in vain, to attain this end. The very existence of this association appears to have been blotted from memory.
The American Council for Judaism (ACJ) followed an equally consistent line. An anti-Zionist organization founded by Reform rabbis and lay-people in the 1940s, the ACJ favoured a single democratic, secular Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would enjoy equal rights. The UN Special Commission on Palestine took note in 1947 of the ACJ’s position that ‘proposals to establish a Jewish state ... are a threat to the peace and security of Palestine and its surrounding area, are harmful to the Jews in Palestine and throughout the world, and are also undemocratic.’
The ACJ, which boasted more than 14,000 members at its apogee, fought energetically to open America’s doors to the displaced. This was the logical corollary of its opposition to the Zionist project in Palestine in a context of solidarity with European Jews. Its attitude was not unlike that of the British writer Israel Zangwill who broke with the Zionist movement when it opted for Palestine as the only territorial objective of the future ‘state of the Jews’ – this despite the fact that Zangwill is said to have been the author of the notorious phrase that has it that Palestine was ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’ (an attribution that is imprecise and has been contested). Zangwill – who knew well that, unless the Arabs were driven from Palestine, creating a Jewish state in this country implied domination of an Arab majority by a Jewish minority – militated in favour of ‘territorialism’, the project of regrouping Jews on a territory better suited to the purpose than Palestine, wherever it might be – preferably in the United States. ‘America,’ he wrote, “has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale [i.e. the Pale of settlement, home to most of Russia’s Jews]; any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution.”
Conversely, the Palestinian project determined the American Zionists’ position on the question of immigration to the United States by Holocaust survivors. The extraordinary Congress that brought American Zionists together with leaders of the world movement in New York’s Biltmore hotel in May 1942 demanded only that the doors of Palestine be opened to Jewish refugees – not those of every country at war with the Axis, beginning with the United States. As Aaron Berman has shown, this stance was not modified – quite the contrary, in fact – when it was learned that the Nazis were carrying out a systematic genocide: “American Zionist leaders decided that their primary task had to be the building of support for the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Their decision did not reflect a callousness about or disinterest in the terrible fate of the European Jews. Rather, American Zionists believed that there was nothing unique about Hitler’s plan for genocide ... believing that Jewish homelessness was the basic cause of all anti-Semitism, American Zionists resolved to put a final end to Jewish statelessness ...”
“Sadly, the American Zionists’ calculation was faulty. ... once the Nazis embarked on their program of genocide, the American Zionist decision to make the establishment of a Jewish state their primary goal handicapped any attempt to build a powerful lobby to force the American government to undertake the rescue of European Jewry.”
David Wyman, who can hardly be accused of hostility to American Zionists, has drawn up a balance sheet of their actions in this field: ‘An unavoidable conclusion’, he writes, ‘is that during the Holocaust the leadership of American Zionism concentrated its major force on the drive for a future Jewish state in Palestine. It consigned rescue to a distinctly secondary position.’ However, he adds, ‘substantially more was possible than they recognized’.
Of all the arguments invoked to justify the Zionists’ undeniable lack of enthusiasm for the demand that the United States, Great Britain and the other allied countries open their gates before continental Europe’s Jewish refugees, even the most reasonable constitute mitigating circumstances at best. The political motivation for this lack of enthusiasm is equally undeniable, as is indicated by a comment of Ben-Gurion’s that Segev cites: ‘in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms,’ Segev reports, ‘Ben-Gurion commented that “the human conscience” might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: “Zionism is in danger!”’
Francis Nicosia sums up the consequences of the Zionists’ attitude towards Nazism: “If, as the Zionists had always claimed, the assimilationists had been living an illusion, the Zionists had undoubtedly lived one of their own. it was rooted in the fallacy that if anti-Semitism was natural and understandable, as Herzl and others had insisted, there was room for its accommodation to the principles and goals of Zionism. Herzl and others believed that anti-Semites would accept Zionism, even if they disliked or hated Jews, and that they might indeed do everything necessary to support Zionist efforts until Jews and non-Jews reached their common goal of removing Jews from Germany. What they had not understood, and what post-World War 1 German Zionists apparently would not understand until after 1933, was that whatever appeal Zionism had for most anti-Semites, even for the Nazis after World War 1, it was of a purely pragmatic nature, and therefore problematic. Indeed, an understanding of National Socialism and precisely how Zionists should respond to it seemed to elude the entire Zionist movement, including the Yishuv, until well into the Second World War.”
The fact remains that responsibility for the failure to grant haven to European Jewish refugees ultimately lies with the governments of the allied countries that were in a position to do so. Although Berman’s judgement can seem excessively severe, he is not wrong that ‘while Germany was primarily responsible for the Holocaust, the democratic governments of the United States and the United Kingdom must be considered at least accomplices in genocide’. Nothing is more revealing in this regard than the international conference held in Evian, France, from 6 to 15 July 1938. Initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, its mission was to reflect on the fate of the Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, whose numbers had increased considerably as a result of the Anschluss and the intensification of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic program. Thirty-two countries sent delegations.
“As the conference proceeded, delegate after delegate excused his country from accepting additional refugees. The United States delegate, Myron C. Taylor, stated that his country’s contribution was to make the German and Austrian immigration quota, which up to the time had remained unfilled, fully available. The British delegate declared that their overseas territories were largely unsuitable for European settlement, except for parts of East Africa, which might offer possibilities for limited numbers. Britain itself, being fully populated and suffering unemployment, also was unavailable for immigration; and he excluded Palestine from the Evian discussion entirely. The French delegate stated that France had reached ‘the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees.’ The other European countries echoed this sentiment, with minor variations. Australia could not encourage refugee immigration because, ‘as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.’ The delegates from New Zealand, Canada, and the Latin American nations cited the Depression as the reason they could not accept refugees. Only the tiny Dominican republic volunteered to contribute large, but unspecified areas for agricultural colonization.”
It was due to this set of historical circumstance that the Jewish tragedy, which peaked in the Shoah, also culminated in the Palestinian tragedy, the Nakba. In a pivotal essay, Edward Said underscored the ‘link to be made between what happened to Jews in World War II and the catastrophe of the Palestinian people’, going so far as to add that ‘the Jewish tragedy led directly to the Palestinian catastrophe by, let us call it, “necessity” (rather than pure will).’ Of course, the Holocaust was incomparably crueller and bloodier than the Nakba. This consideration, however, in no way diminishes the tragedy of the Palestinians, particularly since they did not, as a people, bear any blame for the destruction of European Jewry.
In an attempt to show conversely that ‘the Jewish tragedy did not create the Palestinian catastrophe’, Joseph Massad criticizes Said’s contention. The Zionist project, he argues, antedated National Socialism and the Holocaust; furthermore, ‘only one-third of holocaust survivors ended up in Palestine, mainly because they could not go to the United States.’ His argument, however, is aimed at the wrong target. When Said speaks of ‘the Jewish tragedy’ he obviously means the Holocaust in the broad sense of the tragedy spawned by the Nazis’ accession to power and its aftermath, not in the narrow sense of the 1942–5 ‘Final Solution’.
Moreover, the direct relationship between the Palestinian drama and the Jewish tragedy was inscribed in the fact that Zionism was first and foremost a reaction to anti-Semitism. Certainly, if one takes the Holocaust in the narrow sense of the ‘Final Solution’ initiated in 1942, it becomes harder to maintain that the state of Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. And it is indeed primarily pro-Zionist authors who have combated such a thesis. Yehuda Bauer, who, like Massad, reformulates the idea in narrow terms (‘Israel was created by the Holocaust’), advances the opposite thesis: “On the contrary, if the German Reich had held out one more year, it is doubtful whether there would have been any survivors at all ... The Holocaust prevented a Jewish State from coming into existence with, as new-minted citizens, the millions of Jews who were murdered. Indeed, because of the Holocaust, the attempt to establish a state almost failed. There were almost not enough Jews left to fight for a state. The ones who survived the Holocaust were central to that effort, and had there been more, the effort would have been easier and the outcome more certain. My answer, therefore, is unequivocal: The view that Israel was created by the Holocaust is erroneous. The opposite is true.”
Bauer’s contention is the more surprising in that a few lines earlier he declares: ‘if the United States had opened its gates to Jewish immigration ... it is highly probable, in my view, that a much larger proportion of Jewish D.P.s would have gone to the United States than did.’ The notion that the ‘millions of Jews who were murdered’ might have constituted ‘new-minted citizens’ of the state of Israel, many of whom would have fought for its creation, is of a piece with the one that led Mordecai Shenhabi – the man credited with the idea of founding Yad Vashem – to propose in 1950 that Israeli citizenship be posthumously conferred upon all Holocaust victims.
Discussing the debates that this proposal touched off, Segev describes it as ‘utterly spurious’: ‘There is no way of knowing which, or how many, of the Holocaust’s victims considered themselves “potential citizens” of Israel. Many of them died precisely because they had preferred not to move to Palestine when that option was opened to them. And most of the world’s Jews, Holocaust survivors among them, chose not to come to Israel even after the state was founded.’
It remains true, however, that Holocaust survivors in the strict sense made up about one-third of the Zionist forces who fought in the 1948 war. Nevertheless, the motive common to the authors just cited, over and above the fundamental differences dividing them, is their legitimate rejection of the idea that the creation of Israel was an answer to the Jewish genocide. Bauer passionately disputes it: ‘I do not think I have to deal with this because the very line of thought is so repugnant. I think most Jews would have preferred saving the lives of the Jews who died in the Holocaust to establishing the state.’
Said’s thesis is no different. His recognition of the ‘necessity’ informing the historical process that culminated in the creation of the state of Israel by no means implies approval or legitimization of its creation or of the ways in which it was achieved: ‘I do not accept the notion that by taking our land Zionism redeemed the history of the Jews, and I cannot ever be made to acquiesce in the need to dispossess the whole Palestinian people.’ Historical ‘necessity’ implies no political or moral justification for such acquiescence. Nor does it imply any imperative reason to endorse Zionism. As Isaac Deutscher explained in 1954:
“From a burning or sinking ship people jump no matter where – on to a lifeboat, a raft, or a float. The jumping is for them an ‘historic necessity’; and the raft is in a sense the basis of their whole existence. but does it follow that the jumping should be made into a programme, or that one should take a raft-state as the basis of a political orientation?”
The rising tide of refugees to Palestine was not Nazism’s only contribution to the creation of the state of Israel. In 1947 there also existed a mass of concentration-camp and other Jewish survivors of Hitler’s genocidal enterprise who had been reduced to a state of extreme poverty and profound distress. Supporting the creation of the state of Israel was the way that North America, Europe and the Soviet Union solved, on the cheap, the embarrassing problem represented by this multitude of unfortunates whom neither the Americans nor the Europeans nor the USSR wished to take in.
While the Soviet authorities encouraged illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine from the Central and Eastern European countries under their control,65 Washington asked London to allow Jews to immigrate legally into the country, which was still under British mandate. ‘On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants [in Palestine]. Britain’s Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”’ Long before Bevin, Mussolini had responded in much the same vein to Truman’s predecessor, who asked him, in 1939, to grant the Jews refuge in Italian colonies: ‘President Roosevelt asked Benito Mussolini to allow Jews to move to Ethiopia, which was under Italian rule; Il Duce wondered why the refugees could not be settled in the United States.’
Once the war had ended and the horror of the camps had been fully revealed, the desire to get rid of the devastated Jews by sending them elsewhere persisted. The foundation of the state of Israel directly served that end: 200,000 Holocaust survivors settled there in the year following its creation. According to the official statistics, more than 76,500 immigrants arrived there from Europe between 15 May 1948 and the end of the year, followed by another 122,000 in 1949. In addition to the sordid fact that certain states sought to resolve the problem of the Holocaust survivors at the Palestinians’ cost – as some states nowadays seek to rid themselves of their radioactive waste by exporting it to poor countries – the Zionist movement naturally tried to exploit the shock waves that followed the liberation of the camps in 1945. A former foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, has explained this stratagem:
“The target of Zionist diplomacy was no longer Britain but the United States and international opinion. There was little hope of averting an open clash with the mandatory power now entangled in the conflicting pledges and promises to Arabs and Jews. And as has happened frequently in the history of Zionism, the cause was enhanced by the Jewish catastrophe. It was the full truth and the awesome impact of the Holocaust of European Jewry, as it was exposed worldwide after the war, that served now as the platform upon which Zionist diplomacy could mobilise governments and international opinion in order to attain its major political objective, a Jewish state in Palestine. Once again, Jewish catastrophe was the propellant of the Zionist idea and a boost to its prospects.”
Finally, the National Socialist enterprise steeled the Yishuv for war in both the physical sense, since Palestinian Jews took part in the British war effort, and also the psychological sense, since it imbued Zionist militants with great determination, born of the feeling (the illusion, in the view of critics and sceptics) that they were fighting to establish the definitive response to the Holocaust. From the moment it was proclaimed, the state of Israel laid full claim to its legitimization based on the Holocaust and the anti-Nazi struggle. The terms of the ‘declaration of independence’ read out by David Ben-Gurion on 14 May 1948 are well known:
“The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish state, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
In the second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.”
The subsequent war between the new state and the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries ended with the defeat of the Arab camp and the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem. The two narratives of these events, Israeli and Palestinian-Arab, inevitably turned, from the outset, on two very different sequences. The Israeli narrative featured extermination – the Shoah – and rehabilitation by the state. The Palestinian and Arab narrative revolved around the usurpation carried out by the state and the attendant expulsion – the Nakba.
Part Two: Victim narratives and the last anti-colonial struggle
The Syrian academic Constantine Zurayk (Qustantīn Zurayq), a liberal Arab nationalist, is generally credited with having put the term nakba into broad circulation as a designation for ‘The Catastrophe’ (al-nakba) in a pamphlet that had a profound effect on public opinion: The Meaning of the Catastrophe (or disaster), published in 1948 and reissued in a second edition the year after. In the introduction, the author declares: ‘The Arab defeat [hazïma] in Palestine is not a mere setback [naksa] or a simple, transitory misfortune, but a catastrophe [nakba] in every sense of the word, a calamitous ordeal among the most difficult that the Arabs have undergone in the course of a long history full of ordeals and calamities.’
The extraordinary complexity of the problem before us, like the passion it arouses, is more than just the result of two experiences of persecution. History, after all, abounds in instances of the emigration or forced exile of persecuted people who become persecutors in their turn. Oppressed religious sects and people deported for ethnic or political reasons are among the examples that spring to mind. What makes the Israeli–Palestinian problem exceptional is, above all, that no other population actively involved in a colonial–settler project was fleeing a form of persecution as long-standing and brutal as European anti-Semitism, or was made up of survivors of such a stupefying crime against humanity.
It was with this circumstance in mind that Mahmoud Darwish exclaimed, in an exchange with Helit Yeshurun, ‘Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? It’s because you are our enemy. Interest in the Palestinian question flows from interest in the Jewish question. Yes. People are interested in you, not me ... ! The international interest in the Palestinian question merely reflects the interest people take in the Jewish question.’ This was, of course, an exaggeration blurted out in the heat of the moment: the Palestinian tragedy would certainly have resounded if the Westerners who settled in Palestine had been, say, members of a Protestant sect rather than Jews. How, then, are we to explain the importance accorded to the Palestinian tragedy apart from the Jewishness of Israel?
It cannot fairly be said that the ‘uprooting’ of the Palestinians – to borrow the expression used by Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad to describe the rural populations ‘regrouped’ by the French army in camps in colonial Algeria – has been exceptionally extensive or cruel. Compare it with the Algerian case, in which some two million ‘regrouped persons’ came under the direct control of the French colonial army: measured against its standards of brutality, the Israeli army pales. None of the massacres of Palestinians carried out by Israeli forces compares in scope to the one perpetrated by the French army in May 1945 in the Algerian cities of Setif and Guelma, to cite only that case: several thousand Algerians – tens of thousands, by Algerian estimates – were massacred there in the space of a few weeks. And what the black population of sub-Saharan Africa had to endure during the long ‘civilizing’ period in the history of the colonial empires, from slavery to veritable genocides (which all too often go unmentioned even today), was far more terrible than even the Algerian horror.
As colonial abominations go, the fate of the Palestinians is far from being the worst. The only people who can be excused for thinking differently are those who are directly subject to this fate and lack the necessary basis for comparison. The Palestinians cannot, however, advisedly and legitimately apply to their own case the superlatives appropriate to the Jewish genocide. ‘Who would want morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession?’ Said exclaims in the essay cited above. ‘It would be foolish even to try.’ Similarly, Benny Morris is correct to point out that Deir Yassin – the Palestinian village where 120 people were massacred by the revisionist Zionist Irgun in 1948 – ‘was no Srebrenica’ (the Bosnian city in which eight thousand people were slaughtered by the forces of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia in 1995).
How, then, are we to explain the immense place that the oppression of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis holds among the passionately debated issues of our day? There are several reasons for this. One is that Israel is the only European colonial settler state in which the political rights of the native population have yet to be restored (apart from places like North America and Australia, where colonization all but wiped out the native population). With the disappearance of the South African apartheid system in 1994, the Palestinian question became the last major burning issue of European colonialism. Israel is currently the only state in the world that combines three modes of colonial oppression: members of the indigenous minority who remained after 1948 (the ‘Israeli Arabs’) have the status of second-class citizens; since 1967, the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza have had the status of a population under either foreign occupation or direct control by the former occupiers; and the great majority of Palestinians have the status of people uprooted from their land and barred from returning. Most of this last group live in refugee camps on the periphery of the colonial state or in the territories it controls; others have joined the vast Palestinian diaspora; still others are living uprooted within the 1949 borders as ‘internally displaced persons’.
The persistence of these colonialist modes of oppression makes Israel, in some sense, an anachronism. A colonial state born at the very moment in which the process of decolonization was first gaining strength, it both proved the rule and constituted an exception. Hence the profound ambiguity of a ‘war of independence’ that grew into a war of colonial conquest, by way of a declaration of independence perceived as a declaration of annexation by a majority of the people of the country – Mandatory Palestine – on whose soil it was solemnly read out on 14 May 1948.
Even on the territory attributed in November 1947 to the ‘Jewish state’ by a United Nations General Assembly in which the future ‘Third World’ was barely represented – a territory that would be substantially enlarged manu militari in the course of the first Arab–Israeli war – close to half the resident population received Israel’s declaration of independence as an outrage. At the time, a yawning gulf separated those who regarded the creation of Israel as an act of liberation of the first importance – the redemption of European Jewry’s centuries-old history of oppression – and those who perceived it as the establishment of a colonial entity at the cost of the indigenous population. As the American journalist I. F. Stone wrote in 1967: ‘The fact that the Jewish community in Palestine afterwards fought the British is no more evidence of its not being a colonial implantation than similar wars of British colonists against the mother country, from the American Revolution to Rhodesia.’
Nevertheless, the notion of Israel as the product of an anti-colonial war of independence long held sway in the West. It was decisively modified by the June 1967 war, when the myth of Israel as a David facing the Goliath of the surrounding Arab countries gave way to an image of Israel as the state of ‘an elite people, self-assured and domineering’, as General Charles de Gaulle put it. The phrase was widely criticized because it was not free of anti-Semitic overtones: the French president was targeting what, in his view, the Jews ‘had always been’.
Recognition that Israel is a colonial power was long in coming in the West – longer on the left than the right – and, of course, in Israel itself. The considerable distance covered runs from the period when Jean-Paul Sartre’s review Les Temps modernes published a thick issue on the Israeli–Arab conflict following the 1967 war, in which the title of Maxime Rodinson’s remarkable contribution characterizing Israel as a ‘colonial-settler state’ could still be qualified by a question mark, to the unabashed 1999 admission by the most famous of the ‘new Israeli historians’, Benny Morris, that ‘Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement.’ Uri Ram has summed up Israeli ‘post-Zionist’ discourse on the question:
“Israel is a settler-colonial society on a par with other white European societies such as Australia or South Africa. Whether or not the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was premeditated (the transfer issue), or an unintentional consequence of the war, Israel is largely responsible for the refugee problem. The conquest of land and labor was an avowed principle of labor Zionism, and its logical derivative is dislocation of, and discrimination against, Palestinians.”
Against this backdrop, the Palestinian struggle appears for what it is: the last major anti-colonial struggle. The indigenous population of ‘Rhodesia’ obtained the same political rights as the population of colonial origin in 1960; the country then experienced a second independence and genuine decolonization under the name Zimbabwe. South Africa’s indigenous population, in its turn, had gained the same rights as the population of colonial origin by 1994. Yet the indigenous population of Palestine is still waging a bitter struggle for recognition of its right to sovereignty over as little as one-fifth of its ancestral lands – the portion that Israel did not immediately conquer in 1948, but occupied nineteen years later.
The persistence of Israeli colonial oppression, flying in the face of the prevailing tendency of world history, has been made worse by a rising curve of violence. Israel has fought seven major wars in its six decades, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and 2008–9, the latter two the most brutal of all. Each one profoundly alarmed the world because of the strategic location of the conflict. (Contrast the 5.4 million war-related deaths in the Congo in the ten years since 1998 – 45,000 a month or 1,500 a day in 2008, on the estimate of one American ngo. Black skins are of small worth in comparison with black gold.)
The international implications of the conflicts in the Middle East do not, however, alter the fact that Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is now at its highest level ever. In recent years, it has soared from one peak to the next, beginning with Ariel Sharon’s assumption of the leadership of the Israeli government in 2001, followed by the 2002 reoccupation of the West Bank for the purpose of crushing the Second Intifada, continuing to the 2006 blockade of Gaza and the repeated assaults on it since. Zionist colonial power clings to its 1967 conquered territory in the face of resistance of an intensity and tenacity that would surely have beaten back other forms of colonialism, at considerable cost to Israeli society.
The result is hardly surprising: Israel’s image has, inevitably, deteriorated. According to a BBC poll conducted in thirty-four countries and published on 2 April 2008 – several months before the cruel assault on Gaza unleashed at the end of the year, which has surely had a powerfully negative influence on perceptions of the country – Israel was, after Iran, the state with the poorest image: 54 and 52 per cent cited the influence of Iran and Israel, respectively, as negative. Another poll, in 2003, indicated that 59 per cent of Europeans considered Israel a threat to peace, whereas only 53 per cent thought Iran was. The more the image of the ‘Jewish state’ suffers – above all in the West, where its image counts for a great deal – the more it turns to the Holocaust to shore up its legitimization.
The reason is that the West (vestiges of Judeophobia and anti-Semitism aside, which today persist only among a minority) continues to regard the Shoah from the standpoint, and sense of responsibility, of the culprits, whereas the Arab world and most of the Third World regard the state that claims to represent the victims of the Shoah from the standpoint of the victims of both the Nakba and Israel’s subsequent acts. This fact weighs very heavily on the reception of the Holocaust in the Arab East, which got ever more complicated from the time of the Shoah itself to the time of the Nakba up to our own day.
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