Elizabeth Arrott
Egyptian officials say the results of the first round of voting in parliamentary elections will be announced Friday evening local time, after delaying the announcement twice this week. Observers have said Egypt's first elections since President Hosni Mubarak's February resignation were mostly peaceful.
The Muslim Brotherhood is thought to be taking the early lead in the Egypt's months-long parliamentary elections. But support for the moderate Islamist group, as well as for more fundamentalist ones, may say more about Egypt's past than future.
From a purely practical standpoint, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to benefit from the timetable of elections.
The best-organized, yet officially banned, opposition group under the old government, the Brotherhood has left its newly-formed competitors scrambling to catch up.
Perhaps more important is the suffering members of the Brotherhood endured - arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture.
Human Rights Watch Egypt researcher Heba Morayef says both privately and in recent years more publicly, members were at the forefront in opposing the former government's tactics.
"They took on many human rights issues, in a sense, and would very often use their position as being the victim of these violations, I think, to recruit other sympathizers who were angry at Mubarak's repressive regime," she said.
Morayef also points to the Brotherhood's criticism of rampant corruption in the Mubarak years, and the long history of the group's charitable works - key economic points in a nation where at least one third live in poverty. Such acts, she says, have given the Brotherhood "a very strong grassroots presence."
The group's slogan "Islam is the answer" also strikes a resonate chord in deeply devout Egypt. But political observers note the Brotherhood has a moderate face that also appeals to the pragmatic nature of many here.
It stands in contrast to another Islamic group expected to make its presence felt in these first post-Mubarak elections - the fundamentalist Salafis.
"For the Salafis, their situation was a lot worse than the Brotherhood because they were not able to operate at all as a group politically," Morayef added. "And this is the first year, in 2011, that we've actually seen Salafis organizing themselves into different parties, being much more present in the media. Because Salafis were very, very underground and they would only conduct charitable activity."
But for all the apparent newfound success of both groups, political analyst and publisher Hisham Kassem says neither has much of a track record as political strategists, and calls into question how well they might do in the future.
"The Brotherhood - I could talk for hours about how they've bungled historically, and how I think they will bungle again. But to get to the main point, they have a problem that most of the political forces don't trust them," said Kassem.
The Brotherhood, he says, promises too much to potential allies, but then goes back on its word when it gets the upper hand. The Salafis, he says, have another problem. While the puritanical group might attract some by using the language of the democracy, Kassem argues its true message will prove offensive to the majority of Egyptians.
"They adapt and then a situation arises and you hear words of 'we are ready to become martyrs' and relapsing into their own diction. In addition to their aggressive attitude, where they push people around in the street, claiming they are the voice of God, or the hand of God on earth, they are anarchic," he said. "They don't have a central command. Their figures are estimated to be one and a half million in a nation of 80 million."
Human rights researcher Morayef says the real test will come as the new government is formed, and both groups will face the responsibilities of running a country.
"We'll see how the Brotherhood does in this first term of parliament, how they manage to deal with a lot of the bigger policy issues which they've never had to address because all they've ever had to do was to criticize the repressive tactics of the Mubarak government. And now we're going to shift into a new phase," she said.
Only then, she says will it be clear if people are putting blind faith in the religious nature of the Brotherhood and the Salafis, or whether their support was based on the pragmatic hope these groups would bring about real change.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Support for Putin party drops as it hovers around 50-percent mark in parliamentary vote
RIA Novosti
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party suffered a sharp drop in support Sunday in parliamentary elections, winning the most votes but falling far short of the majority it has enjoyed for years and possibly failing to clear the 50-percent mark, early results showed.
With more than 75 percent of the ballots counted, the ruling United Russia party had picked up nearly half (49.99 percent) – a far cry from the commanding two-thirds constitutional majority the party has held in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, for the past four years, according to the official count.
If born out by the full vote count, the result would mark a major electoral setback for the political party that Putin leads and that has been the dominant political organization in Russia for much of the past decade.
The Communist Party (KPRF) has 19.35 percent, the moderate A Just Russia got 12.98 percent and the nationalist Liberal Democrats (LDPR), 11.80 percent, according to preliminary results. Voter turnout was above 50 percent.
Putin, 59, who last month accepted United Russia’s nomination as the party’s candidate in presidential elections scheduled for next March, appeared at party campaign headquarters after early results were announced and described the vote as an “optimal” outcome.
Standing alongside President Dmitry Medvedev, his hand-picked successor when he left the Kremlin in 2008 after two terms as president, Putin told supporters that the results of Sunday’s voting “really reflect the situation in the country.”
He said the Duma election, in which exit polls placed the Communist Party in a distant second place with around 20 percent of the vote, would pave the way for “steady development of Russia” in the years ahead.
Both Putin and Medvedev appeared intent on emphasizing the legitimacy of the election and the balance of political forces it would yield in the next Duma, with Medvedev saying that United Russia had run a convincing campaign and even a 50-percent result “testifies to real democracy.”
Medvedev acknowledged, however, that United Russia, long able to impose its will on the national legislature with or without the support of other political parties, “will have to join coalition bloc agreements” in order to get its legislation through the Duma.
“This is normal, that is what parliamentarianism is,” Medvedev said. “That is democracy, and our colleagues and leaders of the relevant fractions said that they were ready for that.”
The elections were punctuated by thousands of claims of violations both from independent observers and the government, with the Interior Ministry alone announcing it had received and would investigate more than 1,000 complaints of irregularities.
Election day was also marked by what appeared to be concerted DDoS hacker attacks that temporarily took down a number of websites that had published reports of elections violations including those of media, popular blogs and independent election observers.
Near-complete official results were due to be announced Monday at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time (06:00 GMT), by which time 99 percent of the ballots will have been counted, the election commission said.
Sunday’s vote was considered an important test for Putin ahead of the presidential election next March and analysts said the reduced support for United Russia increased the likelihood that Putin, who remains the most popular politician in Russia, may not win outright in the first round.
“It will depend upon whom other parties nominate and how well they campaign,” political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko said.
He added, however, that the mitigated outcome for United Russia would force the party accustomed to passing legislation without regard for support from others to negotiate and cooperate with competing political parties.
“By all means, this is good for the development of political culture in Russia,” Minchenko said.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party suffered a sharp drop in support Sunday in parliamentary elections, winning the most votes but falling far short of the majority it has enjoyed for years and possibly failing to clear the 50-percent mark, early results showed.
With more than 75 percent of the ballots counted, the ruling United Russia party had picked up nearly half (49.99 percent) – a far cry from the commanding two-thirds constitutional majority the party has held in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, for the past four years, according to the official count.
If born out by the full vote count, the result would mark a major electoral setback for the political party that Putin leads and that has been the dominant political organization in Russia for much of the past decade.
The Communist Party (KPRF) has 19.35 percent, the moderate A Just Russia got 12.98 percent and the nationalist Liberal Democrats (LDPR), 11.80 percent, according to preliminary results. Voter turnout was above 50 percent.
Putin, 59, who last month accepted United Russia’s nomination as the party’s candidate in presidential elections scheduled for next March, appeared at party campaign headquarters after early results were announced and described the vote as an “optimal” outcome.
Standing alongside President Dmitry Medvedev, his hand-picked successor when he left the Kremlin in 2008 after two terms as president, Putin told supporters that the results of Sunday’s voting “really reflect the situation in the country.”
He said the Duma election, in which exit polls placed the Communist Party in a distant second place with around 20 percent of the vote, would pave the way for “steady development of Russia” in the years ahead.
Both Putin and Medvedev appeared intent on emphasizing the legitimacy of the election and the balance of political forces it would yield in the next Duma, with Medvedev saying that United Russia had run a convincing campaign and even a 50-percent result “testifies to real democracy.”
Medvedev acknowledged, however, that United Russia, long able to impose its will on the national legislature with or without the support of other political parties, “will have to join coalition bloc agreements” in order to get its legislation through the Duma.
“This is normal, that is what parliamentarianism is,” Medvedev said. “That is democracy, and our colleagues and leaders of the relevant fractions said that they were ready for that.”
The elections were punctuated by thousands of claims of violations both from independent observers and the government, with the Interior Ministry alone announcing it had received and would investigate more than 1,000 complaints of irregularities.
Election day was also marked by what appeared to be concerted DDoS hacker attacks that temporarily took down a number of websites that had published reports of elections violations including those of media, popular blogs and independent election observers.
Near-complete official results were due to be announced Monday at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time (06:00 GMT), by which time 99 percent of the ballots will have been counted, the election commission said.
Sunday’s vote was considered an important test for Putin ahead of the presidential election next March and analysts said the reduced support for United Russia increased the likelihood that Putin, who remains the most popular politician in Russia, may not win outright in the first round.
“It will depend upon whom other parties nominate and how well they campaign,” political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko said.
He added, however, that the mitigated outcome for United Russia would force the party accustomed to passing legislation without regard for support from others to negotiate and cooperate with competing political parties.
“By all means, this is good for the development of political culture in Russia,” Minchenko said.
Putin says election results 'optimal,' 'reflect real situation in country
'
RIA Novosti
The results of the vote on Sunday in Russia's parliamentary elections were "optimal" and "really reflect the situation in the country," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said as early election results showed his United Russia party had suffered siginificant losses at the polls.
Speaking to supporters alongside President Dmitry Medvedev at United Russia's campaign headquarters, Putin said the outcome of the elections "will allow for the steady development of Russia."
Medvedev said that United Russia would have to join a coalition with other political parties on certain issues in the lower house, the State Duma.
"We will have to take into account the more complex configuration of the Duma and for some issues we will have to join coalition bloc agreements," Medvedev said, adding: "This is normal, that is what parliamentarinism is, that is democracy, and our colleagues and leaders of the relevant fractions said that they were ready for that."
Medvedev said "a 50-percent result testifies to a real democracy."
Putin’s United Russia party failed on Sunday to win a majority in legislative elections, exit polls showed, confounding forecasts and confirming waning popular enthusiasm for the country’s dominant political organization.
United Russia won 46 percent of the vote for seats in the new State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a Kremlin-favored polling institution, according to exit poll results broadcast on the NTV national television network.
Results from another exit poll conducted by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), also broadcast on Rossiya-24 just after 9:00 p.m. Moscow time (17:00 GMT) when the last polls closed in the westernmost Russian exclave of Kaliningrad showed United Russia picked up 48.5 percent of the vote.
Both polls put the Communist party in second place, with FOM putting their support at 21 percent and VTsIOM placing it at 19.8 percent. Both put the moderate A Just Russia party in third place, followed closely by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. The liberal Yabloko party scored around four percent falling short of the 7-percent barrier.
Official results will be announced at 10:00 a.m. on Monday Moscow time [06:00 GMT] after 99% of the ballots have been counted, the Central Elections Commission head, Vladimir Churov, said.
RIA Novosti
The results of the vote on Sunday in Russia's parliamentary elections were "optimal" and "really reflect the situation in the country," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said as early election results showed his United Russia party had suffered siginificant losses at the polls.
Speaking to supporters alongside President Dmitry Medvedev at United Russia's campaign headquarters, Putin said the outcome of the elections "will allow for the steady development of Russia."
Medvedev said that United Russia would have to join a coalition with other political parties on certain issues in the lower house, the State Duma.
"We will have to take into account the more complex configuration of the Duma and for some issues we will have to join coalition bloc agreements," Medvedev said, adding: "This is normal, that is what parliamentarinism is, that is democracy, and our colleagues and leaders of the relevant fractions said that they were ready for that."
Medvedev said "a 50-percent result testifies to a real democracy."
Putin’s United Russia party failed on Sunday to win a majority in legislative elections, exit polls showed, confounding forecasts and confirming waning popular enthusiasm for the country’s dominant political organization.
United Russia won 46 percent of the vote for seats in the new State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a Kremlin-favored polling institution, according to exit poll results broadcast on the NTV national television network.
Results from another exit poll conducted by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), also broadcast on Rossiya-24 just after 9:00 p.m. Moscow time (17:00 GMT) when the last polls closed in the westernmost Russian exclave of Kaliningrad showed United Russia picked up 48.5 percent of the vote.
Both polls put the Communist party in second place, with FOM putting their support at 21 percent and VTsIOM placing it at 19.8 percent. Both put the moderate A Just Russia party in third place, followed closely by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. The liberal Yabloko party scored around four percent falling short of the 7-percent barrier.
Official results will be announced at 10:00 a.m. on Monday Moscow time [06:00 GMT] after 99% of the ballots have been counted, the Central Elections Commission head, Vladimir Churov, said.
Syria Faces New Sanctions as Violence Continues
Syria faced new sanctions Sunday after ignoring an Arab League deadline to let observers into the country as part of a plan to end a military crackdown on protests, which the U.N. says has killed at least 4,000 people.
Senior league officials said that failure to reach an agreement could lead to outside involvement in the Syrian crisis.
The latest standoff between the two sides came as activists said new violence killed at least nine civilians Sunday, including a father and his three children and a female university professor. At least 25 people died across Syria in anti-government unrest Saturday.
A local activist network put the death toll from violence Sunday at at least 21, but the number could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Reuters news agency quoted Syrian activists Sunday as saying that about a dozen secret police have defected from an intelligence compound in Idlib province, near the Turkish border. The activists said a gunfight broke out overnight after the defectors fled the compound and 10 people on both sides were killed or wounded.
A senior U.S. official said Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for deepening the sectarian division in the country. Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State ((for Near Eastern affairs)), accused Mr. Assad of forcing his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, into a bloody conflict with other sects and "fulfilling his own prophecy that Syria is going to move into more chaos and civil war."
Speaking in Amman, Jordan, Feltman also charged that Syria's ally Iran was "actively engaged" in supporting the Syrian regime's lethal crackdown and "facilitating" the murder of Syrian people. He added that both Hezbollah and Iran had agents in Syria to bolster Mr. Assad's waning regime.
The Arab League on Saturday froze assets of 19 top Syrian officials and banned them from traveling to Arab states.
Syria's failure to meet an earlier league deadline resulted in the enactment of a series of measures including a ban on dealings with the central bank, a halt to Arab funding of projects in Syria and a freezing of Syrian government assets.
In Istanbul Saturday, visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised Turkey for taking steps to address repression in Syria. He added his voice to those calling for Mr. Assad to step down.
Syria has contended its actions are not a crackdown on protests, but a necessary response to attacks by "armed terrorists" on civilians and security personnel.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Senior league officials said that failure to reach an agreement could lead to outside involvement in the Syrian crisis.
The latest standoff between the two sides came as activists said new violence killed at least nine civilians Sunday, including a father and his three children and a female university professor. At least 25 people died across Syria in anti-government unrest Saturday.
A local activist network put the death toll from violence Sunday at at least 21, but the number could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Reuters news agency quoted Syrian activists Sunday as saying that about a dozen secret police have defected from an intelligence compound in Idlib province, near the Turkish border. The activists said a gunfight broke out overnight after the defectors fled the compound and 10 people on both sides were killed or wounded.
A senior U.S. official said Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for deepening the sectarian division in the country. Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State ((for Near Eastern affairs)), accused Mr. Assad of forcing his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, into a bloody conflict with other sects and "fulfilling his own prophecy that Syria is going to move into more chaos and civil war."
Speaking in Amman, Jordan, Feltman also charged that Syria's ally Iran was "actively engaged" in supporting the Syrian regime's lethal crackdown and "facilitating" the murder of Syrian people. He added that both Hezbollah and Iran had agents in Syria to bolster Mr. Assad's waning regime.
The Arab League on Saturday froze assets of 19 top Syrian officials and banned them from traveling to Arab states.
Syria's failure to meet an earlier league deadline resulted in the enactment of a series of measures including a ban on dealings with the central bank, a halt to Arab funding of projects in Syria and a freezing of Syrian government assets.
In Istanbul Saturday, visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised Turkey for taking steps to address repression in Syria. He added his voice to those calling for Mr. Assad to step down.
Syria has contended its actions are not a crackdown on protests, but a necessary response to attacks by "armed terrorists" on civilians and security personnel.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
US Official Disputes Reports Iran Shot Down US Drone
A U.S. official on Sunday disputed reports in the Iranian media that Iran's armed forces shot down an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance drone that violated its airspace.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said "there is absolutely no indication up to this point that the drone was shot down."
Earlier Sunday, Iranian media reported that an RQ-170 drone was downed along the country's eastern border after it made a brief incursion into its airspace.
Quoting an unnamed military source, the media said the aircraft was not badly damaged and is in the Iranian military's possession. The source warned "the military response to the drone's violation of the Iranian airspace will not be limited to the country's borders."
In a statement Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said the Iranians may be referring to "an American drone that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week and is now missing." The statement said "the operators of the drone lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status."
In July, an Iranian lawmaker claimed that Iran shot down a U.S. spy aircraft near the Fordu nuclear site. Iran's Revolutionary Guard later refuted the report.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said "there is absolutely no indication up to this point that the drone was shot down."
Earlier Sunday, Iranian media reported that an RQ-170 drone was downed along the country's eastern border after it made a brief incursion into its airspace.
Quoting an unnamed military source, the media said the aircraft was not badly damaged and is in the Iranian military's possession. The source warned "the military response to the drone's violation of the Iranian airspace will not be limited to the country's borders."
In a statement Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said the Iranians may be referring to "an American drone that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan last week and is now missing." The statement said "the operators of the drone lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status."
In July, an Iranian lawmaker claimed that Iran shot down a U.S. spy aircraft near the Fordu nuclear site. Iran's Revolutionary Guard later refuted the report.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Panetta to Israel: 'Get to the Damn Table' for Peace Talks
The top U.S. defense official is warning Israel it cannot afford to further isolate itself from Arab neighbors in the Middle East.
During a forum in Washington late Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Israel needs to start by getting back "to the damn table" and negotiating peace with the Palestinians. He also called on Israel to mend its fraying relationships with traditional partners like Turkey, Egypt and Jordan.
Some Israeli leaders have viewed the Arab Spring, and uprisings like the one that toppled long-time Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, as a threat to regional stability as well as to Israel's security. But Panetta urged Israeli officials to reject that way of thinking.
Panetta said Israel has no choice but to take some risks to ensure a safer future, starting with resuming peace talks with the Palestinians, a process that Panetta said has "effectively been put on hold."
The U.S. defense secretary said the U.S. continues to be committed to safeguarding Israel's security but that "Israel too, has a responsibility" to build regional support through "strong diplomacy."
Panetta also addressed ongoing concerns about Iran's nuclear program, but said that while the U.S. has not ruled out using military force, such a strike was an option of last resort. He said a possible military strike might only delay Iran's nuclear program by two years, while potentially rattling the U.S. and European economies.
Turkey was the first Muslim state to recognize Israel in 1949, but relations worsened last year when Israeli commandos boarded an aid flotilla challenging a naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, killing nine Turkish activists.
Israeli-Egyptian relations soured in August when Israeli troops killed five Egyptian policemen while pursuing Palestinian gunmen who crossed into Israel from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and killed eight Israelis.
Israel also fears that if radical Islamist political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood make a strong showing in the latest elections, Egypt will annul the two countries' peace agreement.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
During a forum in Washington late Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Israel needs to start by getting back "to the damn table" and negotiating peace with the Palestinians. He also called on Israel to mend its fraying relationships with traditional partners like Turkey, Egypt and Jordan.
Some Israeli leaders have viewed the Arab Spring, and uprisings like the one that toppled long-time Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, as a threat to regional stability as well as to Israel's security. But Panetta urged Israeli officials to reject that way of thinking.
Panetta said Israel has no choice but to take some risks to ensure a safer future, starting with resuming peace talks with the Palestinians, a process that Panetta said has "effectively been put on hold."
The U.S. defense secretary said the U.S. continues to be committed to safeguarding Israel's security but that "Israel too, has a responsibility" to build regional support through "strong diplomacy."
Panetta also addressed ongoing concerns about Iran's nuclear program, but said that while the U.S. has not ruled out using military force, such a strike was an option of last resort. He said a possible military strike might only delay Iran's nuclear program by two years, while potentially rattling the U.S. and European economies.
Turkey was the first Muslim state to recognize Israel in 1949, but relations worsened last year when Israeli commandos boarded an aid flotilla challenging a naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, killing nine Turkish activists.
Israeli-Egyptian relations soured in August when Israeli troops killed five Egyptian policemen while pursuing Palestinian gunmen who crossed into Israel from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and killed eight Israelis.
Israel also fears that if radical Islamist political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood make a strong showing in the latest elections, Egypt will annul the two countries' peace agreement.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
“The euro may not survive after Christmas”,
Says ex European Bank President
The European debt crisis is gathering pace. The debt of the Eurozone countries totals 89 percent of the GDP vs. the required 60 percent. The crisis has hit both secondary and primary economies.
The public debt of Greece makes up 166 percent of the GDP, Portugal - 106 percent. The largest economies of the region also exceed the limit: Germany - 83 percent of the GDP, France - 87 percent, Spain - 67 percent of the GDP. Experts continue to bury the euro. Jacques Attali, the former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said that the euro would only last before Catholic Christmas. There is no more than a 50/50 chance for the euro to survive until this Christmas, the economist said.
Russian experts say that one should not take such pessimistic forecasts for granted. However, they add, Russia should keep this possibility in mind.
According to Attali, it will be possible to rescue the euro only if the EU takes urgent measures. The EU must give the European Central Bank a permission to buy state bonds of the crisis-hit countries of the Eurozone. The bank would also have to establish the supranational control over their budgets and partially deprive those countries of a part of their financial sovereignty. To crown it all, one would have to introduce changes in the EU legislation.
The main threat is coming from Italy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated after the meeting with Italy's new Prime Minister Mario Monti. Italy's debt collapse will inevitably mean the end of the euro, the officials said. The leaders of the three largest economies of the Eurozone said that they would do their best to prevent the collapse of the European currency.
The IMF has prepared a special loan for Italy. The loan may vary from 400 to 600 billion euros with the interest rate from 4 to 5 percent per annum.
The loan will temporarily remove the need to refinance Italy's debt. The Italian authorities will thus obtain from 12 to 18 months to cut public spending and conduct other reforms. Italy's public debt makes up 1.9 trillion euros.
Fitch rating agency downgraded the ratings of eight Italian banks: Banca Popolare di Milano, Banca Popolare dell' Emilia Romagna, Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Credito Emiliano, Credito Valtellinese, Veneto Banca, Banca Popolare di Vicenza.
According to the European Commission, the growth of the Italian economy will slow down next year from 0.5 to 0.1 percent. Official forecasts are higher - 0.7 percent in 2011 and 0.6 percent in 2012. The country will not be able to have the non-deficit budget in 2013. Italy will reach 1.2 percent of the GDP in the best scenario (currently -4.6 percent), experts of the European Commission said.
In the meantime, Spain has already warned other EU members that it could also ask for help. The debt virus continues to attack other countries of the European Union. On Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded Belgium's credit rating from AA to AA+ with a negative forecast. Belgium's economy is one of the most open ones in the Eurozone. Any negative action taken towards its rating will seriously affect the country's economy, the agency said.
Russia may suffer serious problems from the possible financial collapse of the Old World. The euro makes up 41 percent in the structure of Russia's international reserves.
Some experts believe that Germany and France simply can not turn their backs on the support of the Eurozone. European analysts and economists may make such statements to intimidate the weaker economies of the region, which do not want to cut their public spending or fall under the financial control of Paris or Berlin.
The European debt crisis is gathering pace. The debt of the Eurozone countries totals 89 percent of the GDP vs. the required 60 percent. The crisis has hit both secondary and primary economies.
The public debt of Greece makes up 166 percent of the GDP, Portugal - 106 percent. The largest economies of the region also exceed the limit: Germany - 83 percent of the GDP, France - 87 percent, Spain - 67 percent of the GDP. Experts continue to bury the euro. Jacques Attali, the former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said that the euro would only last before Catholic Christmas. There is no more than a 50/50 chance for the euro to survive until this Christmas, the economist said.
Russian experts say that one should not take such pessimistic forecasts for granted. However, they add, Russia should keep this possibility in mind.
According to Attali, it will be possible to rescue the euro only if the EU takes urgent measures. The EU must give the European Central Bank a permission to buy state bonds of the crisis-hit countries of the Eurozone. The bank would also have to establish the supranational control over their budgets and partially deprive those countries of a part of their financial sovereignty. To crown it all, one would have to introduce changes in the EU legislation.
The main threat is coming from Italy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated after the meeting with Italy's new Prime Minister Mario Monti. Italy's debt collapse will inevitably mean the end of the euro, the officials said. The leaders of the three largest economies of the Eurozone said that they would do their best to prevent the collapse of the European currency.
The IMF has prepared a special loan for Italy. The loan may vary from 400 to 600 billion euros with the interest rate from 4 to 5 percent per annum.
The loan will temporarily remove the need to refinance Italy's debt. The Italian authorities will thus obtain from 12 to 18 months to cut public spending and conduct other reforms. Italy's public debt makes up 1.9 trillion euros.
Fitch rating agency downgraded the ratings of eight Italian banks: Banca Popolare di Milano, Banca Popolare dell' Emilia Romagna, Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Credito Emiliano, Credito Valtellinese, Veneto Banca, Banca Popolare di Vicenza.
According to the European Commission, the growth of the Italian economy will slow down next year from 0.5 to 0.1 percent. Official forecasts are higher - 0.7 percent in 2011 and 0.6 percent in 2012. The country will not be able to have the non-deficit budget in 2013. Italy will reach 1.2 percent of the GDP in the best scenario (currently -4.6 percent), experts of the European Commission said.
In the meantime, Spain has already warned other EU members that it could also ask for help. The debt virus continues to attack other countries of the European Union. On Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded Belgium's credit rating from AA to AA+ with a negative forecast. Belgium's economy is one of the most open ones in the Eurozone. Any negative action taken towards its rating will seriously affect the country's economy, the agency said.
Russia may suffer serious problems from the possible financial collapse of the Old World. The euro makes up 41 percent in the structure of Russia's international reserves.
Some experts believe that Germany and France simply can not turn their backs on the support of the Eurozone. European analysts and economists may make such statements to intimidate the weaker economies of the region, which do not want to cut their public spending or fall under the financial control of Paris or Berlin.
U.S. Senate Unanimously Backs Sanctions Against Iranian Central Bank
The United States Senate has unanimously approved tougher sanctions against Iran -- including measures aimed at cutting off Iran's central bank, the main institution that handles Iran's oil revenues, from the global financial system.
The vote in Washington on December 1 was 100-0 in support of an amendment to a defense spending bill.
The measure must be blended with similar legislation from the House of Representatives, before it can be sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law or vetoed.
The Obama administration had urged lawmakers not to pass the legislation, saying it could jeopardize international unity against Iran's nuclear program. The administration warned the measure could also trigger an increase in oil prices if the world market is deprived of Iranian exports because of sanctions on the Iranian central bank.
The measure would cut off from the U.S. financial system non-U.S. banks which carry out energy-related business with Iran's central bank.
The sanctions would not cover transactions involving sales of food, medicine and medical devices to Iran. The United States already bars American banks from dealing with the Iranian central bank.
The vote came after the European Union on December 2 expanded its sanctions against Iran. That action came two days after hundreds of Iranian protesters stormed the British Embassy in Tehran, and also followed the recent release of a United Nations report suggesting that Iran had been conducting research aimed at developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran says it is not trying to make an atomic bomb.
compiled from agency reports
The vote in Washington on December 1 was 100-0 in support of an amendment to a defense spending bill.
The measure must be blended with similar legislation from the House of Representatives, before it can be sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law or vetoed.
The Obama administration had urged lawmakers not to pass the legislation, saying it could jeopardize international unity against Iran's nuclear program. The administration warned the measure could also trigger an increase in oil prices if the world market is deprived of Iranian exports because of sanctions on the Iranian central bank.
The measure would cut off from the U.S. financial system non-U.S. banks which carry out energy-related business with Iran's central bank.
The sanctions would not cover transactions involving sales of food, medicine and medical devices to Iran. The United States already bars American banks from dealing with the Iranian central bank.
The vote came after the European Union on December 2 expanded its sanctions against Iran. That action came two days after hundreds of Iranian protesters stormed the British Embassy in Tehran, and also followed the recent release of a United Nations report suggesting that Iran had been conducting research aimed at developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran says it is not trying to make an atomic bomb.
compiled from agency reports
White House Rejects Detainee Policy Passed by US Senate
Cindy Saine
The United States Senate has passed a massive defense spending bill that would authorize money for military personnel, weapons systems and the war in Afghanistan for the fiscal year that began in October. The White House has threatened to veto the bill over provisions boosting the role of the military in handling detained terrorist suspects.
The U.S. Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill, which is less than President Barack Obama proposed and less than Congress gave the Pentagon the previous year, reflecting budget constraints in tough economic times. It was not the spending amount though that prompted days of heated debate on the Senate floor, but a provision of the legislation that would require military custody of a terror suspect believed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States.
A last minute change to the provision exempted American citizens and would allow the executive branch to waive the authority based on national security and hold a terror suspect in civilian rather than military custody. But the bill would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.
Reacting to the vote, a senior Obama administration official again said that any bill that challenges or constrains the president's critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the nation would prompt the president's senior advisers to recommend a veto.
One of President Obama's main challengers on detainees has been fellow Democrat and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. Levin cited a 2004 Supreme Court ruling saying that U.S. citizens can be treated as enemy combatants.
"Al-Qaida is at war with us," said Levin. "They brought that war to our shores. This is not just a foreign war. They brought that war to our shores on 9/11. They are at war with us. The Supreme Court said, and I am going to read these words again, 'There is no bar to this nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.' "
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham strongly agreed.
"Here is the question for the country, 'Is it okay to hold an American citizen who is suspected of helping al-Qaida under military control?' You better believe it is okay," said Graham. "I don't believe that helping al-Qaida is a law enforcement function. I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys, at home and abroad."
Some lawmakers disagreed, such as Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who defended the record of civilian U.S. courts in dealing with terror suspects.
"And this notion that there is no way to keep America safe without military tribunals and commissions defies logic and defies experience," said Durbin. "Since 9/11, over 300 suspected terrorists have been successfully prosecuted in Article 3 criminal courts in America. Yes, they have been read their Miranda rights [right to remain silent and right to a defense attorney], and yes they have been prosecuted and sent to prison."
Civil rights groups argue that the bill is an historic threat to liberty because it expands the authority of the president to order the military to imprison suspects without charge or trial.
The Obama administration argues that the military, law enforcement officials and intelligence agents need flexibility to act on a case-by-case basis in dealing with terror suspects. The White House also opposes a different version of the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would limit President Obama's authority to transfer detainees from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba to U.S. federal prisons. The House and Senate versions will have to be reconciled in conference, before a single version can go to the president's desk for his signature.
The United States Senate has passed a massive defense spending bill that would authorize money for military personnel, weapons systems and the war in Afghanistan for the fiscal year that began in October. The White House has threatened to veto the bill over provisions boosting the role of the military in handling detained terrorist suspects.
The U.S. Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill, which is less than President Barack Obama proposed and less than Congress gave the Pentagon the previous year, reflecting budget constraints in tough economic times. It was not the spending amount though that prompted days of heated debate on the Senate floor, but a provision of the legislation that would require military custody of a terror suspect believed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States.
A last minute change to the provision exempted American citizens and would allow the executive branch to waive the authority based on national security and hold a terror suspect in civilian rather than military custody. But the bill would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.
Reacting to the vote, a senior Obama administration official again said that any bill that challenges or constrains the president's critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the nation would prompt the president's senior advisers to recommend a veto.
One of President Obama's main challengers on detainees has been fellow Democrat and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. Levin cited a 2004 Supreme Court ruling saying that U.S. citizens can be treated as enemy combatants.
"Al-Qaida is at war with us," said Levin. "They brought that war to our shores. This is not just a foreign war. They brought that war to our shores on 9/11. They are at war with us. The Supreme Court said, and I am going to read these words again, 'There is no bar to this nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.' "
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham strongly agreed.
"Here is the question for the country, 'Is it okay to hold an American citizen who is suspected of helping al-Qaida under military control?' You better believe it is okay," said Graham. "I don't believe that helping al-Qaida is a law enforcement function. I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys, at home and abroad."
Some lawmakers disagreed, such as Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who defended the record of civilian U.S. courts in dealing with terror suspects.
"And this notion that there is no way to keep America safe without military tribunals and commissions defies logic and defies experience," said Durbin. "Since 9/11, over 300 suspected terrorists have been successfully prosecuted in Article 3 criminal courts in America. Yes, they have been read their Miranda rights [right to remain silent and right to a defense attorney], and yes they have been prosecuted and sent to prison."
Civil rights groups argue that the bill is an historic threat to liberty because it expands the authority of the president to order the military to imprison suspects without charge or trial.
The Obama administration argues that the military, law enforcement officials and intelligence agents need flexibility to act on a case-by-case basis in dealing with terror suspects. The White House also opposes a different version of the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would limit President Obama's authority to transfer detainees from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba to U.S. federal prisons. The House and Senate versions will have to be reconciled in conference, before a single version can go to the president's desk for his signature.
UN Human Rights Council strongly condemns abuses by Syrian authorities
2 December 2011 – The United Nations Human Rights Council today strongly condemned the continued abuses by the Syrian authorities as part of its violent crackdown against protesters which has led to the deaths of more than 4,000 people since March, including over 300 children.
The 47-member body also urged the Syrian Government to meet its responsibility to protect its people, in a resolution adopted during a special session in Geneva to discuss the report of the independent international commission of inquiry into the crackdown that was released this week.
The text – which received 37 votes in favour to four against (China, Cuba, Ecuador and Russia), while six countries abstained – also established a mandate of a Special Rapporteur, or investigator, on the situation of human rights in Syria.
Earlier today, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged immediate action by the international community to protect the people of Syria from the Government’s “ruthless” repression.
“In light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people.”
In addition to the number of those killed, tens of thousands have been arrested since March, when a public uprising began across Syria, in line with similar movements across North Africa and the Middle East.
More than 14,000 are reported to be in detention as a result of the crackdown, at least 12,400 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and tens of thousands have been internally displaced, said Ms. Pillay.
Reports of increased armed attacks by the opposition forces, including the so-called Free Syrian Army, against the Syrian military and security apparatus are also of concern, she added.
The report by the three-member commission of inquiry concluded that Syrian security and military forces have committed crimes against humanity against civilians, including acts of killings, torture, rape and imprisonment.
The report – based on interviews with more than 200 victims and witnesses of human rights violations – documents widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“The levels of excessive force used against civilians, the scale of the attacks, their repetitive nature and their coordination has led the commission to the conclusion that these crimes have apparently been committed pursuant to State policy,” the commission’s chairperson, Paulo Pinheiro, told the Council.
He added that the unrest has directly affected the lives of as many as three million Syrians. Virtually all victims and witnesses had stated that one or more of their family members, neighbours or friends were killed, wounded, arrested or tortured since the protests started.
“The extreme suffering of the population inside and outside the country must be addressed as a matter of urgency,” stated Mr. Pinheiro. “Victims should expect nothing less from the United Nations and its Member States.”
Aside from its findings, the commission called on the Syrian Government to immediately end the ongoing rights violations, to initiate investigations of these incidents and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Ms. Pillay stated that international and independent monitoring bodies, including her office (OHCHR) and the League of Arab States, must be allowed into the country, particularly to all places of detention, and all humanitarian workers must be guaranteed immediate and unhindered access to the country.
In August the High Commissioner had encouraged the Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The commission’s report reinforces that the need for international accountability has even greater urgency today,” she stated.
The Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement that he is greatly disturbed by the confirmed reports of “abhorrent” abuses committed against children in Syria, including sexual violence against children in places of detention.
“Such blatant disregard for children’s lives must not be ignored,” Anthony Lake stated, urging the Government to abide by its commitments to uphold the rights of children.
Farida Shaheed, Independent Expert in the field of cultural rights, read out a statement on behalf of all UN human rights experts, in which they voiced dismay at the fact that the number of deaths had doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 in just three months.
She pointed to “alarming” numbers of reported extrajudicial executions and injuries. There was also great concern that tens of thousands had allegedly been arbitrarily arrested and detained in overcrowded detention facilities and many had reportedly been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, as well as reported cases of enforced disappearances, possibly in the thousands.
Syria’s representative, Faysal Khabbaz Haboui, said that the commission’s report was not objective, and made criticisms while ignoring information given to it by the Syrian Government, including new legislation to bring about reform.
The draft resolution before the Council, he said, would prolong the crisis and deliver an erroneous message from those who supported terrorism and violence, rather than pursuing constructive and positive dialogue.
The 47-member body also urged the Syrian Government to meet its responsibility to protect its people, in a resolution adopted during a special session in Geneva to discuss the report of the independent international commission of inquiry into the crackdown that was released this week.
The text – which received 37 votes in favour to four against (China, Cuba, Ecuador and Russia), while six countries abstained – also established a mandate of a Special Rapporteur, or investigator, on the situation of human rights in Syria.
Earlier today, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged immediate action by the international community to protect the people of Syria from the Government’s “ruthless” repression.
“In light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people.”
In addition to the number of those killed, tens of thousands have been arrested since March, when a public uprising began across Syria, in line with similar movements across North Africa and the Middle East.
More than 14,000 are reported to be in detention as a result of the crackdown, at least 12,400 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and tens of thousands have been internally displaced, said Ms. Pillay.
Reports of increased armed attacks by the opposition forces, including the so-called Free Syrian Army, against the Syrian military and security apparatus are also of concern, she added.
The report by the three-member commission of inquiry concluded that Syrian security and military forces have committed crimes against humanity against civilians, including acts of killings, torture, rape and imprisonment.
The report – based on interviews with more than 200 victims and witnesses of human rights violations – documents widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“The levels of excessive force used against civilians, the scale of the attacks, their repetitive nature and their coordination has led the commission to the conclusion that these crimes have apparently been committed pursuant to State policy,” the commission’s chairperson, Paulo Pinheiro, told the Council.
He added that the unrest has directly affected the lives of as many as three million Syrians. Virtually all victims and witnesses had stated that one or more of their family members, neighbours or friends were killed, wounded, arrested or tortured since the protests started.
“The extreme suffering of the population inside and outside the country must be addressed as a matter of urgency,” stated Mr. Pinheiro. “Victims should expect nothing less from the United Nations and its Member States.”
Aside from its findings, the commission called on the Syrian Government to immediately end the ongoing rights violations, to initiate investigations of these incidents and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Ms. Pillay stated that international and independent monitoring bodies, including her office (OHCHR) and the League of Arab States, must be allowed into the country, particularly to all places of detention, and all humanitarian workers must be guaranteed immediate and unhindered access to the country.
In August the High Commissioner had encouraged the Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The commission’s report reinforces that the need for international accountability has even greater urgency today,” she stated.
The Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement that he is greatly disturbed by the confirmed reports of “abhorrent” abuses committed against children in Syria, including sexual violence against children in places of detention.
“Such blatant disregard for children’s lives must not be ignored,” Anthony Lake stated, urging the Government to abide by its commitments to uphold the rights of children.
Farida Shaheed, Independent Expert in the field of cultural rights, read out a statement on behalf of all UN human rights experts, in which they voiced dismay at the fact that the number of deaths had doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 in just three months.
She pointed to “alarming” numbers of reported extrajudicial executions and injuries. There was also great concern that tens of thousands had allegedly been arbitrarily arrested and detained in overcrowded detention facilities and many had reportedly been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, as well as reported cases of enforced disappearances, possibly in the thousands.
Syria’s representative, Faysal Khabbaz Haboui, said that the commission’s report was not objective, and made criticisms while ignoring information given to it by the Syrian Government, including new legislation to bring about reform.
The draft resolution before the Council, he said, would prolong the crisis and deliver an erroneous message from those who supported terrorism and violence, rather than pursuing constructive and positive dialogue.
2015: NIGERIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION....CALLING EVERY SOUTHERN
Jerome Niang Yakubu, SE., PE.
Again, and again, and again.
CALLING EVERY
SOUTHERN NIGERIANS.
The Edos, the Ekois, the Ibibios, the Itsekiris,
the Efiks, the Urhobos, the Ijaws, the Igbos
and other less populous tribes.
This is about the
year 2015 PRESIDENCY
and the
VICE-PRESIDENCY
of the
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
As written above, FEDERAL, (belonging to EVERYBODY)
Not REGIONAL, (not belonging to a certain region of Nigeria)
Not TRIBAL, (not belonging to a specific tribe in Nigeria).
It is time to start preparing for the upcoming
2015 presidential election.
IT IS YOUR TURN TO LEAD NIGERIA
BY ELECTING ONE OF YOUR OWN
SON or DAUGHTER
as the
PRESIDENT or the VICE-PRESIDENT
of the
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.
However, the IGBOS and the IJAWS
have had their own shares of leadership of Nigeria by
Nnamdi Azikiwe, Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi,
Alex Ekwueme and Goodluck Jonathan.
NO MORE IGBOS and NO MORE IJAWS.
Every tribe in our southern region
has highly educated sons and daughters with
PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., Engr., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Which means it is time for every other southern Nigerian
tribes to exercise their God-given rights, as equal owners of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria and be ready to provide the next
President or the Vice-President of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.
THE TIME IS NOW, START RIGHT NOW !!!
UNLESS YOU THINK THAT YOUR TRIBE
IS A SECOND-CLASS TRIBE AND YOU ARE
A SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN OF NIGERIA
OR YOU WERE BORN INTO A SHAMELESS
IGBO-FOLLOW-FOLLOW TRIBE.
One by one, I will make the roll-call, in alphabetical order.
EDOS,
Honorable proud children of the Benin Empire of the Igodomigodo land.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Edos too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
EKOIS,
The Ejaghans, the Atams, the Bokis, the Mbembes, the Yakos.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Ekois too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
IBIBIOS,
the Annaang, Eke, Oron and the Efiks.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Ibibios too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
ITSEKIRIS,
Honorable children of the Iwerre (Warri) Kingdom,
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Itsekiris too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
URHOBOS,
Honorable children of the Ovie Kingdom,
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Urhobos too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
OTHERS,
No matter how small your population,you are all equal owners of Nigeria.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to you too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
2015 IS ALMOST HERE
PREPARATION TIME IS NOW,
PASS THIS AROUND.
NO MORE FOLLOW-FOLLOW
OF THE IGBO TRIBE.
BE PROUD CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN TRIBES TOO.
GOD DID NOT CREATE YOU AS SECOND-CLASS,
THEY WON"T JUST GIVE IT TO YOU,
YOU HAVE TO CLAIM YOUR OWN RIGHTS.
DON'T BE AFRAID,
TEACH YOUR FAMILY HOW TO VOTE.
IT WILL BE A CLOSED-BALLOT ELECTION,
NOBODY WILL KNOW WHO YOU VOTE FOR
ON ELECTION DAY,
DON'T BE AFRAID AT ALL, IT'S DEMOCRACY.
FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL YOUR BROTHERS
AND SISTERS EVERYWHERE.
THIS MESSAGE WILL BE RE-POSTED
EVERY WEEK UNTIL 2015.
Jerome Niang Yakubu, SE., PE.
Civil/Structural Engineering.
Again, and again, and again.
CALLING EVERY
SOUTHERN NIGERIANS.
The Edos, the Ekois, the Ibibios, the Itsekiris,
the Efiks, the Urhobos, the Ijaws, the Igbos
and other less populous tribes.
This is about the
year 2015 PRESIDENCY
and the
VICE-PRESIDENCY
of the
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
As written above, FEDERAL, (belonging to EVERYBODY)
Not REGIONAL, (not belonging to a certain region of Nigeria)
Not TRIBAL, (not belonging to a specific tribe in Nigeria).
It is time to start preparing for the upcoming
2015 presidential election.
IT IS YOUR TURN TO LEAD NIGERIA
BY ELECTING ONE OF YOUR OWN
SON or DAUGHTER
as the
PRESIDENT or the VICE-PRESIDENT
of the
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.
However, the IGBOS and the IJAWS
have had their own shares of leadership of Nigeria by
Nnamdi Azikiwe, Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi,
Alex Ekwueme and Goodluck Jonathan.
NO MORE IGBOS and NO MORE IJAWS.
Every tribe in our southern region
has highly educated sons and daughters with
PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., Engr., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Which means it is time for every other southern Nigerian
tribes to exercise their God-given rights, as equal owners of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria and be ready to provide the next
President or the Vice-President of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.
THE TIME IS NOW, START RIGHT NOW !!!
UNLESS YOU THINK THAT YOUR TRIBE
IS A SECOND-CLASS TRIBE AND YOU ARE
A SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN OF NIGERIA
OR YOU WERE BORN INTO A SHAMELESS
IGBO-FOLLOW-FOLLOW TRIBE.
One by one, I will make the roll-call, in alphabetical order.
EDOS,
Honorable proud children of the Benin Empire of the Igodomigodo land.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Edos too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
EKOIS,
The Ejaghans, the Atams, the Bokis, the Mbembes, the Yakos.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Ekois too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
IBIBIOS,
the Annaang, Eke, Oron and the Efiks.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Ibibios too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
ITSEKIRIS,
Honorable children of the Iwerre (Warri) Kingdom,
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Itsekiris too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
URHOBOS,
Honorable children of the Ovie Kingdom,
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to Urhobos too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
OTHERS,
No matter how small your population,you are all equal owners of Nigeria.
Were you all born to be floor mats for the Igbo tribe?
If NOT, it is time for all of you to stand up for your rights,
Southern regions of Nigeria belong to you too.
PROVE THAT YOU ALSO HAVE LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.
You have highly educated sons and daughters
with PhD., MD., LLB., LLM., M.Sc., or MBA too.
Stop being a carry-on luggage for the Igbos.
Provide one of yours for the presidency or the Vice presidency of Nigeria,
OR, support other minority tribe listed herein, of our region for those positions.
2015 IS ALMOST HERE
PREPARATION TIME IS NOW,
PASS THIS AROUND.
NO MORE FOLLOW-FOLLOW
OF THE IGBO TRIBE.
BE PROUD CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN TRIBES TOO.
GOD DID NOT CREATE YOU AS SECOND-CLASS,
THEY WON"T JUST GIVE IT TO YOU,
YOU HAVE TO CLAIM YOUR OWN RIGHTS.
DON'T BE AFRAID,
TEACH YOUR FAMILY HOW TO VOTE.
IT WILL BE A CLOSED-BALLOT ELECTION,
NOBODY WILL KNOW WHO YOU VOTE FOR
ON ELECTION DAY,
DON'T BE AFRAID AT ALL, IT'S DEMOCRACY.
FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL YOUR BROTHERS
AND SISTERS EVERYWHERE.
THIS MESSAGE WILL BE RE-POSTED
EVERY WEEK UNTIL 2015.
Jerome Niang Yakubu, SE., PE.
Civil/Structural Engineering.
ANAMBRA GOVT ORDERS THE ARREST OF BEGGARS WITH CHILDREN, 29 ARRESTED SO FAR
ODOGWU EMEKA ODOGWU AWKA
In its determined efforts to ride the state environment of beggars daily increasing in their numbers, the Anambra state government has issued an ultimatum to all the street beggars especially those using children to beg in Anambra state to vacate the streets or face arrest within 72 hours.
Meanwhile over 29 beggars with children have been arrested in Awka and Onitsha , warned and repatriated back to their various states of origin mostly Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states to mention but a few.
Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development , Dr Ego Cordelia Uzoezie disclosed Friday in Awka when a middle aged woman was arrested begging with 9 children at various points in Awka.
The attention of Dr Uzoezie was drawn to the beggar with children when one of the kids begging at Unizik junction Awka , 6 years old Goodnews Sunday was hit while begging by an Okada operator injuring her jaw.
She was later taken to Beacon Hospital Awka after two hospitals turned her down when good Samaritans rushed her to hospital for first aid. Reasons for her rejection are yet to be ascertained as at press time.
Uzoezie decried the attitude of some parents who indulge in using children to beg, warning that after 72 hours any beggar seen in the state would be arrested by the law enforcement agents and the special task force of the ministry of women affairs and social development.
The accident victim Goodnews said she came from Akwa-Ibom Oron in Akwa-Ibom state and is staying with her mother at Isu-Aniocha but her twelve years old Sister , Blessing Sunday not only concurred the story of her sister but admitted that her mother actually sent them to go for the begging and that they used to be students of Anointed Nursery/Primary school Awada Obosi until they were pushed into begging following taunts on their mother who use to hawk curry and garri at Onitsha by one Happiness from Calabar.
Blessing further informed that the accident victim is a twin and that their parents now do nothing but to depend on what they were able to get from the begging. She said they would use it to pay for their school fees and house rent and equally build a house. She however contradicted herself when she later said she and her sister were being enslaved by one, Happiness who was already repatriated but came back to Anambra.
The other woman with 5 children, Mrs Nwakaego Eze from Amafor Uli, in Ihiala local government of Anambra state married to Arochukwu in Abia state blamed her begging now on week days to the dislocation of her husband and others from the Army barracks Onitsha as their begging before now was only on weekends.
She said although they have a house at No 2 Igbamaeze Street Awada Obosi , she equally rented a house at Isu-Aniocha to enable them sleep after begging in Awka. She said her children were not begging with her before as they were students of Basic Foundation but since after the Army Barracks dislocation they have joined her in begging, She further said they are now going to Anointed Nursery/Primary School Awada Obosi. She promised not to use the children for begging again, if allowed to walk home free.
But the Director Child Development , Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development , Mr Emeka Ejide warned the beggars to leave their children alone and can beg if they choose to as the interest of the ministry and Anambra state government are on the children.
He said the Ministry has repatriated more than 29 women begging with children to their various states and would not hesitate to deal with parents who still engage in such acts describing them as products of Mammy market Onitsha where anything goes before its closure.
One of the good Samaritans who rushed the victim to hospital Mrs Stella Samuel incidentally an indigene of Akawa Ibom wondered why people from Akwa Ibom state must still be begging in Anambra state when the Governor of Akwa Ibom, Governor Godswill Akpabio had declared free education for children of the state. She said the accident happened in front of her shop and she had to run around to save the life of the girl but was shocked that no hospital wanted to accept her until later when the Ministry took custody of her and others.
But the President General of Akwa-Ibom Central Union, Anambra state , Sir Chris Ekanem who not only admitted that the victim and some of the beggars came from Akwa-Ibom but requested for authority for them to repatriate them home since their Governor Akpabio has given free education to people like them.
He appealed that those who brought them to Anambra only to subject them to begging should be punished adding that they had reported to the police the incident. He revealed that the children told him in their dialect that they were many in the state from the same Akwa-Ibom doing the same business of begging in Anambra state.
In its determined efforts to ride the state environment of beggars daily increasing in their numbers, the Anambra state government has issued an ultimatum to all the street beggars especially those using children to beg in Anambra state to vacate the streets or face arrest within 72 hours.
Meanwhile over 29 beggars with children have been arrested in Awka and Onitsha , warned and repatriated back to their various states of origin mostly Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states to mention but a few.
Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development , Dr Ego Cordelia Uzoezie disclosed Friday in Awka when a middle aged woman was arrested begging with 9 children at various points in Awka.
The attention of Dr Uzoezie was drawn to the beggar with children when one of the kids begging at Unizik junction Awka , 6 years old Goodnews Sunday was hit while begging by an Okada operator injuring her jaw.
She was later taken to Beacon Hospital Awka after two hospitals turned her down when good Samaritans rushed her to hospital for first aid. Reasons for her rejection are yet to be ascertained as at press time.
Uzoezie decried the attitude of some parents who indulge in using children to beg, warning that after 72 hours any beggar seen in the state would be arrested by the law enforcement agents and the special task force of the ministry of women affairs and social development.
The accident victim Goodnews said she came from Akwa-Ibom Oron in Akwa-Ibom state and is staying with her mother at Isu-Aniocha but her twelve years old Sister , Blessing Sunday not only concurred the story of her sister but admitted that her mother actually sent them to go for the begging and that they used to be students of Anointed Nursery/Primary school Awada Obosi until they were pushed into begging following taunts on their mother who use to hawk curry and garri at Onitsha by one Happiness from Calabar.
Blessing further informed that the accident victim is a twin and that their parents now do nothing but to depend on what they were able to get from the begging. She said they would use it to pay for their school fees and house rent and equally build a house. She however contradicted herself when she later said she and her sister were being enslaved by one, Happiness who was already repatriated but came back to Anambra.
The other woman with 5 children, Mrs Nwakaego Eze from Amafor Uli, in Ihiala local government of Anambra state married to Arochukwu in Abia state blamed her begging now on week days to the dislocation of her husband and others from the Army barracks Onitsha as their begging before now was only on weekends.
She said although they have a house at No 2 Igbamaeze Street Awada Obosi , she equally rented a house at Isu-Aniocha to enable them sleep after begging in Awka. She said her children were not begging with her before as they were students of Basic Foundation but since after the Army Barracks dislocation they have joined her in begging, She further said they are now going to Anointed Nursery/Primary School Awada Obosi. She promised not to use the children for begging again, if allowed to walk home free.
But the Director Child Development , Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development , Mr Emeka Ejide warned the beggars to leave their children alone and can beg if they choose to as the interest of the ministry and Anambra state government are on the children.
He said the Ministry has repatriated more than 29 women begging with children to their various states and would not hesitate to deal with parents who still engage in such acts describing them as products of Mammy market Onitsha where anything goes before its closure.
One of the good Samaritans who rushed the victim to hospital Mrs Stella Samuel incidentally an indigene of Akawa Ibom wondered why people from Akwa Ibom state must still be begging in Anambra state when the Governor of Akwa Ibom, Governor Godswill Akpabio had declared free education for children of the state. She said the accident happened in front of her shop and she had to run around to save the life of the girl but was shocked that no hospital wanted to accept her until later when the Ministry took custody of her and others.
But the President General of Akwa-Ibom Central Union, Anambra state , Sir Chris Ekanem who not only admitted that the victim and some of the beggars came from Akwa-Ibom but requested for authority for them to repatriate them home since their Governor Akpabio has given free education to people like them.
He appealed that those who brought them to Anambra only to subject them to begging should be punished adding that they had reported to the police the incident. He revealed that the children told him in their dialect that they were many in the state from the same Akwa-Ibom doing the same business of begging in Anambra state.
Bomb blasts in Nigeria on Sunday
Suspected members of the Boko Haram militant Islamist group attacked a police compound in the northern Nigerian town of Azare in Bauchi State on Sunday, killing three people, local residents and an official said.
Bomb attacks by suspected Islamist militants Sunday left three people dead in northern Nigeria's Bauchi State, an official and residents said.
The suspected members of the radical Boko Haram sect, armed with heavy machine guns, threw explosives and fired into a police compound in the town of Azare, setting the buildings on fire, residents said.
"They came in a large convoy," resident Usman Musa told AFP, adding that the assailants hung a black banner at the entrance of the police station reading "Allahu Akbar" (God Is Great).
Musa said he saw the bodies of a soldier, a policeman and a police employee at a medical centre, where another two policemen were being treated for gunshot wounds.
The assailants also bombed and robbed two banks in the town, residents said.
Militants from Boko Haram, whose name means "Western Education Is Sin" in the regional Hausa language, have repeatedly targeted police and military, community and religious leaders, as well as politicians, in Nigeria.
The radical sect has also claimed responsibility for the August suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in the capital Abuja which killed at least 24 people and coordinated attacks in the country's northeast on November 4 that left some 150 people dead.
Another resident, Garba Mohammed, said the assailants bombed two banks and emptied the vaults, making off with the money.
Mohammed said unexploded bomb canisters littered the grounds and police kept onlookers away while an anti-bomb squad worked to make them safe.
Ishola Michael, spokesman to the Bauchi State governor, said state police commissioner Okechukwu Aduba had rushed to Azare.
Local reporters said two truckloads of soldiers had been sent to the scene as reinforcement.
Boko Haram, which wants Muslim Sharia law to be adopted across Nigeria, launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead.
It appeared to go dormant for about a year before re-emerging with a series of attacks.
In September 2010, the sect raided a prison in Bauchi, freeing more than 700 inmates, and claimed to be behind bomb attacks at a military barracks on May 29 when President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in.
Sharia law is observed in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states, all of them in the mainly Muslim north.
Bomb attacks by suspected Islamist militants Sunday left three people dead in northern Nigeria's Bauchi State, an official and residents said.
The suspected members of the radical Boko Haram sect, armed with heavy machine guns, threw explosives and fired into a police compound in the town of Azare, setting the buildings on fire, residents said.
"They came in a large convoy," resident Usman Musa told AFP, adding that the assailants hung a black banner at the entrance of the police station reading "Allahu Akbar" (God Is Great).
Musa said he saw the bodies of a soldier, a policeman and a police employee at a medical centre, where another two policemen were being treated for gunshot wounds.
The assailants also bombed and robbed two banks in the town, residents said.
Militants from Boko Haram, whose name means "Western Education Is Sin" in the regional Hausa language, have repeatedly targeted police and military, community and religious leaders, as well as politicians, in Nigeria.
The radical sect has also claimed responsibility for the August suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in the capital Abuja which killed at least 24 people and coordinated attacks in the country's northeast on November 4 that left some 150 people dead.
Another resident, Garba Mohammed, said the assailants bombed two banks and emptied the vaults, making off with the money.
Mohammed said unexploded bomb canisters littered the grounds and police kept onlookers away while an anti-bomb squad worked to make them safe.
Ishola Michael, spokesman to the Bauchi State governor, said state police commissioner Okechukwu Aduba had rushed to Azare.
Local reporters said two truckloads of soldiers had been sent to the scene as reinforcement.
Boko Haram, which wants Muslim Sharia law to be adopted across Nigeria, launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead.
It appeared to go dormant for about a year before re-emerging with a series of attacks.
In September 2010, the sect raided a prison in Bauchi, freeing more than 700 inmates, and claimed to be behind bomb attacks at a military barracks on May 29 when President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in.
Sharia law is observed in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states, all of them in the mainly Muslim north.
Africans in Britain.........They came before the SS Empire Windrush
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
In that moving, intensely expansive exposition on the subject of history in James Baldwin's Just above my Head, the narrative voice states:
To overhaul a history, or to attempt to redeem it “ which effort may or may not justify, it is not at all the same thing as the descent one must make in order to excavate a history. To be forced to excavate a history is, also, to repudiate the concept of history, and the vocabulary in which history is written; for the written history is, and must be, merely the vocabulary of power, and power is history's most seductively attired false witness.
Baldwin's interest in history and power of course focuses on world history and its aftermath during that crucial, unprecedented epoch of globalisation, namely the 15th-20th century. In Just above my Head, as well as in his other novels, writings and lectures, Baldwin is wrestling with the position and impact of this history and power on African peoples, peoples of African descent, in the United States and elsewhere. Baldwin's interest is not predicated on merely assessing and classifying the obvious balance of forces of the principal national/racial/class/continental participants in this interplay of conflict relations, important as this goal may be, but much more in engaging in a challenging enterprise to, to use his word from archaeology, excavatethe critical agencies at work in the process, during the epoch.
We should now focus more closely on Britain, our own regional tributary in this global stream of history, and explore its variegated course and profile. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which is all too eager to limit our comprehension of African-descent presence in Britain to the post-Second World War era, I am not aware of any historian who has categorically stated that the origin of the presence of African peoples, African descent peoples, in Britain began in 1948 with the Tilbury port docking of the SS Empire Windrush ship from Jamaica with 492 African Caribbean immigrants on board. What is true however is that few historians have found it expedient to challenge this seeming orthodoxy for all kinds of reason that would become apparent shortly.
The truth is that African-descent peoples have lived in Britain, in varying numbers, for several centuries. There were African soldiers in the Roman legions that invaded Britain thrice (in 55BCE, 54BCE, 43CE) including those who embarked on the Roman occupation of the country in 43 CE. For the interested researcher, there is a veritable storehouse of sources that catalogues the African presence across the ages at the British Library, the London Records Office, local history libraries, museums, churches, art galleries, local governments, municipal councils, health authorities, trading companies, the merchant marine and military records.
These records show that African-descent peoples have maintained a continuously expanding permanent presence in London since 1507. Subsequently, the presence of African peoples in London and elsewhere in Britain, in varying numbers and circumstances, would be inextricably woven with that of British history itself through enslavement, mercantile capitalism, industrial/monopoly capitalism and enhanced global conquest and hegemony. The visit to England in 1555 by five west African merchants from Shama was an opportunity seized by English traders involved in the lucrative west African gold, ivory and pepper business.
The English were keen to dislodge the Portuguese from their dominance in the external sector of the trade. With the beginning of the European World enslavement of African peoples in 1562 (first evidence of enslaved Africans physically sold in England was in 1621) and following the outbreak of the Spanish war of succession in the early 1700s, African peoples began to arrive in Britain in droves. By the 1750s, the African-descent population in Britain was approximately 20,000 with the majority living in the London area (10-15,000). Soon, it was fashionable for members of the British aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie to own one or more enslaved African. Those Africans who became free (the enslaved became free by either buying back their freedom through an agreed payment to their owner/owners or, more audaciously, by escaping from the bondage!) earned their living as entertainers, artists, craftspeople, cleaners or street beggars. In a celebrated painted panel of the royal court at Kenilworth (Warwickshire) in the 1570s, Queen Elizabeth I is shown being entertained by a group of African musicians and dancers.
Soon, the essentially racist stereotype of the African, particularly the diasporan African in the West, as a natural entertainer was developed. More institutionalised caricatures of the African-descent presence, especially in London, were expressed in the naming of streets and pubs. From the mid-16th to mid-19th century, a total of 61 streets in London were named Black Boy Lane (One still exists in Tottenham, borough of Haringey[!] and there are still popular public houses in Reading, Winchester, Banbury, Caernarfon, Oxford and elsewhere called Black Boy Pub/Inn from the same period. In the latter example, Oxford university students tried unsuccessfully to have the pub's name changed in 1999 because they felt that the name caused offence.) and 51 taverns were called Blackmoor Head (blackmoor, blackamoor, were some of the other English epithets used in describing Africans during the era).
For African peoples, generally, life in Britain was indeed harsh, turbulent and grim. It was a social existence of deprivation, hopelessness and humiliation Babylon, to borrow the popular imagery of the Rastafarian movement. Africans were subjected to life on the edge of society. Quite often, in spite of this obvious marginalisation, the African-descent population was blamed for society's ills and misfortunes. For instance in 1596, during a devastating famine in the country, Queen Elizabeth I signed a decree ordering the deportation of all Africans from the land. She simply felt that the Africans were responsible for the scourge of the times! This was the same monarch who, 30 years earlier, had made fortunes from the African enslavement traffic. Apart from handsomely decorating John Hawkins, the first principal English enslaver of the African mission, the queen also lent Hawkins a ship during his second enslaving voyage to the west Africa coast and the profits made by that mission were shared by both.
Huge surpluses generated by Britain during the 350 years as the leading enslaver- power in Africa (a position it had taken over from the Iberian states of Portugal and Spain) were later used to finance its spectacular industrial revolution, finance its invasion and occupation of India, and emerge as the first truly expansive global power by the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century. Cities such as London, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow became extremely rich, showcasing the spectacular transformation that each had undergone from being key destinations of prime investment of profits accruing to the British treasury and multifaceted institutions from the enslavement of the African humanity.
Thereafter, Britain became the epicentre of the intellectual activity of an ever-expanding collective of scholars, scientists and writers who offered the requisite cultural/scientific/literary rationalisation for the African holocaust. As for the Africans, the cataclysmic consequences of this phenomenally long-stretched dehumanisation on themselves and on their African homeland and the new spaces of enforced habitation in the Americas, Britain and elsewhere in Europe are extensively documented in an impressive and challenging African-led scholarship available in schools, colleges, libraries, museums and elsewhere across the world.
Fortitude & resilience
African experience and presence in Britain though was not just a long, dreadful, and uninterrupted age of woe. It was also an epoch when African intellectual ingenuity, artistic expression and activist involvement in the host society's social struggles flourished. Utilising these crucial sociocultural arenas, even if at times uneven and contradictory, Africans mounted their resistance and embarked on clearly marked liberatory initiatives here and there in Britain. Phyllis Wheatley, the poet, became a celebrity in literary circles in 1773 when her poems (Poems on Various Subjects) were published. Wheatley had been kidnapped from contemporary at the age of 8 and transported to Boston (United States) where she became a child prodigy and later arrived in England in 1772. In the 1780s, two Jamaicans, William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn, emerged as leading organisers of the Spencean revolutionary socialist movement in London. The Spenceans (followers of Thomas Spence) were the most radical organisation at the time, which included agrarian communalists, factory workers, tradespeople, shoemakers, sailors and soldiers. Wedderburn was later jailed and his address to the people before he was marched off to prison became an enduring inspiration to the African population:
Oh ye Africans and relatives now in bondage because you are innocent and poor; receive this the only tribute the offspring of an African can give, for which, I may ere long be lodged in prison for it is a crime now in England to speak against oppression am a West-Indian, a lover of liberty, and would dishonour human nature if I did not show myself a friend, to the liberty of others.
William Cuffay, who was most likely from present-day Ghana or corde Ivoire, was one of the principal leaders of the chartist movement (the first mass political organisation of the British working population) which fought for the human rights of the people, including universal adult suffrage. Cuffay's militancy and astute political leadership were often satirised in the media, with the Punch once depicting London's chartists as the Black man and his party. Cuffay was later deported to Australia for his work in the movement. Africans usually found it tactically perspicacious to participate in the great social struggles of the oppressed and disadvantaged sectors of the British population and then use the opportunity to broaden the scope of the protests to incorporate their own worse condition. A notable example was the African-descent involvement in the gripping Gordon Riots of 1780. This was a campaign that initially began as a protest against the social position of rich Catholics. Soon, this turned into a generalised political struggle by the people against the nobility and the political establishment. During the march, state institutions such as the City, Westminster and the Lord Mayor's office were attacked. A number of leaders of the uprising were later executed at Tower Hill including the prominent Africa activist, Charlotte Gardens. Ignatius Sancho, the African grocer and diarist, recorded this historic event and his account was published posthumously as Letters of the Late Ignatius, an African in 1782.
There was another aspect of British society in which Africans played an important role. This was in military service. Africans began to serve in the British armed forces in the late 18th/early19th century. Military historians note that the origins of African active service (earlier on in the 17th century, African servicepeople had been restricted to music duties in band regiments) could be traced to the US war of independence when some Africans fought for the British. After Britain's defeat, the African soldiers were promised refuge and settlement in England and a large number of them arrived here in 1784. On the whole, the rehabilitation of these ex-servicepeople did not materialise and many of them joined the rank of the very deprived African population. But Britain would in future always resort to this population and those of their cousins in Africa, the Caribbean and South America to fight its wars“ most often, ironically, its wars of conquest and occupation across the world. It was in one of such wars, this time in the Crimea, that the services of a legendary African-descent woman must be recalled“ Mary Seacole, from Jamaica.
Seacole, from relative obscurity, volunteered her services and projected herself on the international scene of her day and through extraordinary selfless care for the wounded and suffering at war, anticipated the massive humanitarian concerns and support that the world and the British Red Cross would be contending with just a few decades away. A dispatch sent from the Crimea in 1855 by a British assistant field surgeon serving with the British 90th light infantry is a moving reminder of Seacoles legacy:
She did not spare herself In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day, she was at her self-chosen post, with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it and there were many. Sometimes, more than 200 sick would be embarked in one day but Mrs Seacole was always equal to the occasion.
Intellectuals for freedom
Another prominent member of the Africa population in London during this period was the Igbo intellectual, diarist, orator, sailor, explorer, entrepreneur and political organiser named Olaudah Equiano. Equiano had been captured and enslaved in Igboland at the age of 10. He purchased back his freedom in 1766. In the following year, he emerged as leader and spokesperson of the African-descent population in London and campaigned extensively across Britain for the termination of African enslavement. Equiano was appointed commissary of stores for the Sierra Leone resettlement scheme but was outraged by the corruption of government agents who spent much of their time pilfering the basic settlement necessities required for the scheme.
Equiano's outspokenness on this situation and his subsequent volte-face on the entire Sierra Leone programme cost him his job. He was later accused by the authorities of inciting an increasingly restive African population. When in 1789 Equiano published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, it was received with popular acclaim and became a seminal contribution to the African enslavement abolitionist movement. Equiano's organisation with those of Paul Cuffee's and Ottobah Cugoano's, a Fante, another influential resident African, constituted, in essence, an incipient pan-African consciousness that would be transformed into a full-blown liberation movement uprising in a subsequent epoch to free European-occupied Africa and the Caribbean and Guyana (South America) as well as the parallel African American civil rights uprising influenced and led by a range of intellectuals such as Sojourner Truth, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, James Africanus Beale Horton, King Jaja of Opobo, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Harriet Jacobs, George Washington Carver, Ras Makonnen, Eric Williams, Aim Csaire, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, John Henrik Clarke, Abdulrahman Mohammed Babu, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lon-Gontran Damas, Marcus Garvey, C.L.R. James, Countee Cullen, Malcolm X, Lopold Sdar Snghor, E. Franklin Frazier, Martin Delaney, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, George James, Ama Ata Aidoo, Walter Sisulu, Louis Armstrong, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Duke Ellington, Nichols Guilln, Mahaila Jackson, Agostinho Neto, George Lamming, Theophilus Enwezor Nzegwu, Ivan Van Sertima, Louis Mbanefo, Ousmane ¨mbene, Charlie Parkar, J.F.K. Aggrey, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Mingus, Nelson Mandela, Billie Holiday, Mbonu Ojike, Amiri Baraka, Frantz Fanon, Gani Fawehinmi, Ngugu wa Thiongo, James Baldwin, Onwuka Dike, Thelonious Monk, Patrice Lumumba, Miles Davis, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Julius Nyerere, Dizzy Gillespie, Chinua Achebe, John Coltrane, Okot paBitek, Jacob Caruthers, Christopher Okigbo, Eric Dolphy, Ladipo Solanke, Molefi Kete Asante, Steve Biko, Walter Rodney, Chike Obi, Bob Marley and Theoophile Obenga.
We should conclude by returning to Baldwin's Just above my Head. The narrative voice ends those intense reflections on history and power by stating, Our history is each other. That is our only guide. One thing is absolutely certain: one can repudiate, or despise no one's history without repudiating and despising one's own. It does appear that these thoughts, made in the mid-1970s as Baldwin writes Just above my Head, underline the thinking being vocalised more keenly by intellectuals, statespersons and many others in our current era in a new millennium namely, that we are now in a more interdependent world which inevitably calls for an honest, multiple, uninhibited flows of our collective narratives of experiences and aspirations from across and from within the varying regions of our world, however seemingly uncomfortable these may be. There cannot be a hegemonic reading of our disparate historical experiences and discourses without simultaneously creating the marginalisation, alienation and subjugation that characterise that overwhelmingly tragic globalisation heritage of the 15th to “20th century.
*An earlier version of this essay was a lecture I gave during the 2009 British Red Cross African-descent History Month, British Red Cross Headquarters, Moorfields, London, 6 October 2009. I wish to acknowledge that the phrase.
They came before, in the essay caption, is borrowed from the title of the path-breaking study, They came before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima, the distinguished African-Guyanese historian and linguist. They came before Columbus was published by Random House in 1976. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe's latest book, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature is available at amazon.com/amazon.co.uk priced US$29.99/£19.99.
In that moving, intensely expansive exposition on the subject of history in James Baldwin's Just above my Head, the narrative voice states:
To overhaul a history, or to attempt to redeem it “ which effort may or may not justify, it is not at all the same thing as the descent one must make in order to excavate a history. To be forced to excavate a history is, also, to repudiate the concept of history, and the vocabulary in which history is written; for the written history is, and must be, merely the vocabulary of power, and power is history's most seductively attired false witness.
Baldwin's interest in history and power of course focuses on world history and its aftermath during that crucial, unprecedented epoch of globalisation, namely the 15th-20th century. In Just above my Head, as well as in his other novels, writings and lectures, Baldwin is wrestling with the position and impact of this history and power on African peoples, peoples of African descent, in the United States and elsewhere. Baldwin's interest is not predicated on merely assessing and classifying the obvious balance of forces of the principal national/racial/class/continental participants in this interplay of conflict relations, important as this goal may be, but much more in engaging in a challenging enterprise to, to use his word from archaeology, excavatethe critical agencies at work in the process, during the epoch.
We should now focus more closely on Britain, our own regional tributary in this global stream of history, and explore its variegated course and profile. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which is all too eager to limit our comprehension of African-descent presence in Britain to the post-Second World War era, I am not aware of any historian who has categorically stated that the origin of the presence of African peoples, African descent peoples, in Britain began in 1948 with the Tilbury port docking of the SS Empire Windrush ship from Jamaica with 492 African Caribbean immigrants on board. What is true however is that few historians have found it expedient to challenge this seeming orthodoxy for all kinds of reason that would become apparent shortly.
The truth is that African-descent peoples have lived in Britain, in varying numbers, for several centuries. There were African soldiers in the Roman legions that invaded Britain thrice (in 55BCE, 54BCE, 43CE) including those who embarked on the Roman occupation of the country in 43 CE. For the interested researcher, there is a veritable storehouse of sources that catalogues the African presence across the ages at the British Library, the London Records Office, local history libraries, museums, churches, art galleries, local governments, municipal councils, health authorities, trading companies, the merchant marine and military records.
These records show that African-descent peoples have maintained a continuously expanding permanent presence in London since 1507. Subsequently, the presence of African peoples in London and elsewhere in Britain, in varying numbers and circumstances, would be inextricably woven with that of British history itself through enslavement, mercantile capitalism, industrial/monopoly capitalism and enhanced global conquest and hegemony. The visit to England in 1555 by five west African merchants from Shama was an opportunity seized by English traders involved in the lucrative west African gold, ivory and pepper business.
The English were keen to dislodge the Portuguese from their dominance in the external sector of the trade. With the beginning of the European World enslavement of African peoples in 1562 (first evidence of enslaved Africans physically sold in England was in 1621) and following the outbreak of the Spanish war of succession in the early 1700s, African peoples began to arrive in Britain in droves. By the 1750s, the African-descent population in Britain was approximately 20,000 with the majority living in the London area (10-15,000). Soon, it was fashionable for members of the British aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie to own one or more enslaved African. Those Africans who became free (the enslaved became free by either buying back their freedom through an agreed payment to their owner/owners or, more audaciously, by escaping from the bondage!) earned their living as entertainers, artists, craftspeople, cleaners or street beggars. In a celebrated painted panel of the royal court at Kenilworth (Warwickshire) in the 1570s, Queen Elizabeth I is shown being entertained by a group of African musicians and dancers.
Soon, the essentially racist stereotype of the African, particularly the diasporan African in the West, as a natural entertainer was developed. More institutionalised caricatures of the African-descent presence, especially in London, were expressed in the naming of streets and pubs. From the mid-16th to mid-19th century, a total of 61 streets in London were named Black Boy Lane (One still exists in Tottenham, borough of Haringey[!] and there are still popular public houses in Reading, Winchester, Banbury, Caernarfon, Oxford and elsewhere called Black Boy Pub/Inn from the same period. In the latter example, Oxford university students tried unsuccessfully to have the pub's name changed in 1999 because they felt that the name caused offence.) and 51 taverns were called Blackmoor Head (blackmoor, blackamoor, were some of the other English epithets used in describing Africans during the era).
For African peoples, generally, life in Britain was indeed harsh, turbulent and grim. It was a social existence of deprivation, hopelessness and humiliation Babylon, to borrow the popular imagery of the Rastafarian movement. Africans were subjected to life on the edge of society. Quite often, in spite of this obvious marginalisation, the African-descent population was blamed for society's ills and misfortunes. For instance in 1596, during a devastating famine in the country, Queen Elizabeth I signed a decree ordering the deportation of all Africans from the land. She simply felt that the Africans were responsible for the scourge of the times! This was the same monarch who, 30 years earlier, had made fortunes from the African enslavement traffic. Apart from handsomely decorating John Hawkins, the first principal English enslaver of the African mission, the queen also lent Hawkins a ship during his second enslaving voyage to the west Africa coast and the profits made by that mission were shared by both.
Huge surpluses generated by Britain during the 350 years as the leading enslaver- power in Africa (a position it had taken over from the Iberian states of Portugal and Spain) were later used to finance its spectacular industrial revolution, finance its invasion and occupation of India, and emerge as the first truly expansive global power by the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century. Cities such as London, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow became extremely rich, showcasing the spectacular transformation that each had undergone from being key destinations of prime investment of profits accruing to the British treasury and multifaceted institutions from the enslavement of the African humanity.
Thereafter, Britain became the epicentre of the intellectual activity of an ever-expanding collective of scholars, scientists and writers who offered the requisite cultural/scientific/literary rationalisation for the African holocaust. As for the Africans, the cataclysmic consequences of this phenomenally long-stretched dehumanisation on themselves and on their African homeland and the new spaces of enforced habitation in the Americas, Britain and elsewhere in Europe are extensively documented in an impressive and challenging African-led scholarship available in schools, colleges, libraries, museums and elsewhere across the world.
Fortitude & resilience
African experience and presence in Britain though was not just a long, dreadful, and uninterrupted age of woe. It was also an epoch when African intellectual ingenuity, artistic expression and activist involvement in the host society's social struggles flourished. Utilising these crucial sociocultural arenas, even if at times uneven and contradictory, Africans mounted their resistance and embarked on clearly marked liberatory initiatives here and there in Britain. Phyllis Wheatley, the poet, became a celebrity in literary circles in 1773 when her poems (Poems on Various Subjects) were published. Wheatley had been kidnapped from contemporary at the age of 8 and transported to Boston (United States) where she became a child prodigy and later arrived in England in 1772. In the 1780s, two Jamaicans, William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn, emerged as leading organisers of the Spencean revolutionary socialist movement in London. The Spenceans (followers of Thomas Spence) were the most radical organisation at the time, which included agrarian communalists, factory workers, tradespeople, shoemakers, sailors and soldiers. Wedderburn was later jailed and his address to the people before he was marched off to prison became an enduring inspiration to the African population:
Oh ye Africans and relatives now in bondage because you are innocent and poor; receive this the only tribute the offspring of an African can give, for which, I may ere long be lodged in prison for it is a crime now in England to speak against oppression am a West-Indian, a lover of liberty, and would dishonour human nature if I did not show myself a friend, to the liberty of others.
William Cuffay, who was most likely from present-day Ghana or corde Ivoire, was one of the principal leaders of the chartist movement (the first mass political organisation of the British working population) which fought for the human rights of the people, including universal adult suffrage. Cuffay's militancy and astute political leadership were often satirised in the media, with the Punch once depicting London's chartists as the Black man and his party. Cuffay was later deported to Australia for his work in the movement. Africans usually found it tactically perspicacious to participate in the great social struggles of the oppressed and disadvantaged sectors of the British population and then use the opportunity to broaden the scope of the protests to incorporate their own worse condition. A notable example was the African-descent involvement in the gripping Gordon Riots of 1780. This was a campaign that initially began as a protest against the social position of rich Catholics. Soon, this turned into a generalised political struggle by the people against the nobility and the political establishment. During the march, state institutions such as the City, Westminster and the Lord Mayor's office were attacked. A number of leaders of the uprising were later executed at Tower Hill including the prominent Africa activist, Charlotte Gardens. Ignatius Sancho, the African grocer and diarist, recorded this historic event and his account was published posthumously as Letters of the Late Ignatius, an African in 1782.
There was another aspect of British society in which Africans played an important role. This was in military service. Africans began to serve in the British armed forces in the late 18th/early19th century. Military historians note that the origins of African active service (earlier on in the 17th century, African servicepeople had been restricted to music duties in band regiments) could be traced to the US war of independence when some Africans fought for the British. After Britain's defeat, the African soldiers were promised refuge and settlement in England and a large number of them arrived here in 1784. On the whole, the rehabilitation of these ex-servicepeople did not materialise and many of them joined the rank of the very deprived African population. But Britain would in future always resort to this population and those of their cousins in Africa, the Caribbean and South America to fight its wars“ most often, ironically, its wars of conquest and occupation across the world. It was in one of such wars, this time in the Crimea, that the services of a legendary African-descent woman must be recalled“ Mary Seacole, from Jamaica.
Seacole, from relative obscurity, volunteered her services and projected herself on the international scene of her day and through extraordinary selfless care for the wounded and suffering at war, anticipated the massive humanitarian concerns and support that the world and the British Red Cross would be contending with just a few decades away. A dispatch sent from the Crimea in 1855 by a British assistant field surgeon serving with the British 90th light infantry is a moving reminder of Seacoles legacy:
She did not spare herself In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day, she was at her self-chosen post, with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it and there were many. Sometimes, more than 200 sick would be embarked in one day but Mrs Seacole was always equal to the occasion.
Intellectuals for freedom
Another prominent member of the Africa population in London during this period was the Igbo intellectual, diarist, orator, sailor, explorer, entrepreneur and political organiser named Olaudah Equiano. Equiano had been captured and enslaved in Igboland at the age of 10. He purchased back his freedom in 1766. In the following year, he emerged as leader and spokesperson of the African-descent population in London and campaigned extensively across Britain for the termination of African enslavement. Equiano was appointed commissary of stores for the Sierra Leone resettlement scheme but was outraged by the corruption of government agents who spent much of their time pilfering the basic settlement necessities required for the scheme.
Equiano's outspokenness on this situation and his subsequent volte-face on the entire Sierra Leone programme cost him his job. He was later accused by the authorities of inciting an increasingly restive African population. When in 1789 Equiano published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, it was received with popular acclaim and became a seminal contribution to the African enslavement abolitionist movement. Equiano's organisation with those of Paul Cuffee's and Ottobah Cugoano's, a Fante, another influential resident African, constituted, in essence, an incipient pan-African consciousness that would be transformed into a full-blown liberation movement uprising in a subsequent epoch to free European-occupied Africa and the Caribbean and Guyana (South America) as well as the parallel African American civil rights uprising influenced and led by a range of intellectuals such as Sojourner Truth, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, James Africanus Beale Horton, King Jaja of Opobo, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Harriet Jacobs, George Washington Carver, Ras Makonnen, Eric Williams, Aim Csaire, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, John Henrik Clarke, Abdulrahman Mohammed Babu, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Lon-Gontran Damas, Marcus Garvey, C.L.R. James, Countee Cullen, Malcolm X, Lopold Sdar Snghor, E. Franklin Frazier, Martin Delaney, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, George James, Ama Ata Aidoo, Walter Sisulu, Louis Armstrong, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Duke Ellington, Nichols Guilln, Mahaila Jackson, Agostinho Neto, George Lamming, Theophilus Enwezor Nzegwu, Ivan Van Sertima, Louis Mbanefo, Ousmane ¨mbene, Charlie Parkar, J.F.K. Aggrey, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Mingus, Nelson Mandela, Billie Holiday, Mbonu Ojike, Amiri Baraka, Frantz Fanon, Gani Fawehinmi, Ngugu wa Thiongo, James Baldwin, Onwuka Dike, Thelonious Monk, Patrice Lumumba, Miles Davis, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Julius Nyerere, Dizzy Gillespie, Chinua Achebe, John Coltrane, Okot paBitek, Jacob Caruthers, Christopher Okigbo, Eric Dolphy, Ladipo Solanke, Molefi Kete Asante, Steve Biko, Walter Rodney, Chike Obi, Bob Marley and Theoophile Obenga.
We should conclude by returning to Baldwin's Just above my Head. The narrative voice ends those intense reflections on history and power by stating, Our history is each other. That is our only guide. One thing is absolutely certain: one can repudiate, or despise no one's history without repudiating and despising one's own. It does appear that these thoughts, made in the mid-1970s as Baldwin writes Just above my Head, underline the thinking being vocalised more keenly by intellectuals, statespersons and many others in our current era in a new millennium namely, that we are now in a more interdependent world which inevitably calls for an honest, multiple, uninhibited flows of our collective narratives of experiences and aspirations from across and from within the varying regions of our world, however seemingly uncomfortable these may be. There cannot be a hegemonic reading of our disparate historical experiences and discourses without simultaneously creating the marginalisation, alienation and subjugation that characterise that overwhelmingly tragic globalisation heritage of the 15th to “20th century.
*An earlier version of this essay was a lecture I gave during the 2009 British Red Cross African-descent History Month, British Red Cross Headquarters, Moorfields, London, 6 October 2009. I wish to acknowledge that the phrase.
They came before, in the essay caption, is borrowed from the title of the path-breaking study, They came before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima, the distinguished African-Guyanese historian and linguist. They came before Columbus was published by Random House in 1976. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe's latest book, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature is available at amazon.com/amazon.co.uk priced US$29.99/£19.99.
Nigeria CSOs Voice Out at Busan, South Korea
STATEMENT OF NIGERIAN CSOs TO THE FOURTH HIGH LEVEL FORUM ON AID EFFECTIVENESS
BUSAN, KOREA
We members of the Civil Society Organizations being a sub-sect of the global Civil Society and part of the Nigerian delegation to the Fourth High Level Forum (HLF-4) on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, South Korea identifies with all poor, vulnerable, marginalized, and excluded people in Nigeria and the world at large for whom we are engaging the HLF processes. About ten Nigerian delegates drawn from Government, Media and Civil Society are attending the HLF-4 with five representing various Civil Society Organizations participated in the HLF-4.
We commit to the global Civil Society Statement to the HLF4 and reaffirm our support to the processes that would ensure efforts at improving aid delivery actually catalyzing growth and development which would ultimately end aid dependence.
We value our inclusion as equals at the HLF-4 negotiating table alongside governments and donors; expect to replicate this practice at our country level and; welcome the opportunity to join world leaders, governments, donors, parliamentarians, private sector, international institutions and the media to forge a new consensus on effective aid and development effectiveness.
From Paris, through Accra to Busan
We note with deep concern that donors and partner governments have dwelt more on politics rather than aid and development effectiveness and as such failed to deliver on the majority of their pledges made in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action. This has left unfinished business that must now be completed through bold decisions that outline time-bound and clear targets.
In Nigeria, we note the increasing role of the stakeholders especially the private sector and the government in managing Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows since Accra and the poor information flows. For instance, of over $1.6bn ODA flow to Nigeria, the National Planning Commission, charged with the responsibility of coordinating ODA on the part of Nigerian Government was able to track only roughly $400m. This scenario is a complete negation of the principles of harmonization and mutual accountability of ODAs as enshrined in the PD and Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). This situation clearly makes ODA ineffective in Nigeria.
Strengthening Partnership for Effective Development
In the light of the above, we call for a development cooperation architecture that more effectively promotes equity, justice and a rights-based approach to development which considers the present reality of Nigeria as a developing country as provider and recipient of cooperation; guarantees full and genuine multi-stakeholder participation; and deepens the accountability of all actors for meeting their development commitments. We call on donors to be more transparent with Nigerian government and Civil Society for aid effectiveness.
South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation
We recognise that South-South Cooperation and Triangular cooperation has been a hall mark of Nigerian foreign policy even as we recognise both cooperation as a vehicle for enhanced knowledge sharing and creation. We urge our government to deepen engagement in the various processes to promote our South-South development agenda even as we work to strengthen our North-South partnerships and collaborations. By this, Nigeria would be fulfilling her own role of building a new global partnership for effective development cooperation.
Government CSOs Partnership
We note the partnership between the Nigerian Government and Civil Society Organisations on Aid and Development issues, and therefore welcome the establishment of a Civil Society Fund on Results, Aid Effectiveness and Accountability. We also appreciate the Alignment, Effectiveness, Result Accountability Initiative (AERA), an initiative of the Nigerian Parliament, the National Planning Commission and Civil Society Organisations, CSOs which we believe will strengthen Parliamentary role in budgeting, aid effectiveness, results and accountability for resources, support the National Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance in its aid policy as well as strengthen institutional mechanism for aid coordination, results and performance. We urge the Nigeria government to deepen its partnership with civil society by expanding the current space for engagement.
SIGNED
1. Mr. Leo Atakpu
Deputy Director: Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice ANEEJ
2. Dr. D. Tola Winjobi
National Coordinator: Open Forum for Development Effectiveness
3. Mohammed B. Attah
Africa Regional Coordinator: World Association of Non-Governmental Organisations
4. Mrs. Bose Iro-Nsi
Executive Director: Women's Rights and Health Project.
5. Dr. Lola Dare
Chief Executive: Centre for Health Sciences Training, Research and Development
Busan, South Korea,
December 1, 2011.
BUSAN, KOREA
We members of the Civil Society Organizations being a sub-sect of the global Civil Society and part of the Nigerian delegation to the Fourth High Level Forum (HLF-4) on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, South Korea identifies with all poor, vulnerable, marginalized, and excluded people in Nigeria and the world at large for whom we are engaging the HLF processes. About ten Nigerian delegates drawn from Government, Media and Civil Society are attending the HLF-4 with five representing various Civil Society Organizations participated in the HLF-4.
We commit to the global Civil Society Statement to the HLF4 and reaffirm our support to the processes that would ensure efforts at improving aid delivery actually catalyzing growth and development which would ultimately end aid dependence.
We value our inclusion as equals at the HLF-4 negotiating table alongside governments and donors; expect to replicate this practice at our country level and; welcome the opportunity to join world leaders, governments, donors, parliamentarians, private sector, international institutions and the media to forge a new consensus on effective aid and development effectiveness.
From Paris, through Accra to Busan
We note with deep concern that donors and partner governments have dwelt more on politics rather than aid and development effectiveness and as such failed to deliver on the majority of their pledges made in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action. This has left unfinished business that must now be completed through bold decisions that outline time-bound and clear targets.
In Nigeria, we note the increasing role of the stakeholders especially the private sector and the government in managing Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows since Accra and the poor information flows. For instance, of over $1.6bn ODA flow to Nigeria, the National Planning Commission, charged with the responsibility of coordinating ODA on the part of Nigerian Government was able to track only roughly $400m. This scenario is a complete negation of the principles of harmonization and mutual accountability of ODAs as enshrined in the PD and Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). This situation clearly makes ODA ineffective in Nigeria.
Strengthening Partnership for Effective Development
In the light of the above, we call for a development cooperation architecture that more effectively promotes equity, justice and a rights-based approach to development which considers the present reality of Nigeria as a developing country as provider and recipient of cooperation; guarantees full and genuine multi-stakeholder participation; and deepens the accountability of all actors for meeting their development commitments. We call on donors to be more transparent with Nigerian government and Civil Society for aid effectiveness.
South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation
We recognise that South-South Cooperation and Triangular cooperation has been a hall mark of Nigerian foreign policy even as we recognise both cooperation as a vehicle for enhanced knowledge sharing and creation. We urge our government to deepen engagement in the various processes to promote our South-South development agenda even as we work to strengthen our North-South partnerships and collaborations. By this, Nigeria would be fulfilling her own role of building a new global partnership for effective development cooperation.
Government CSOs Partnership
We note the partnership between the Nigerian Government and Civil Society Organisations on Aid and Development issues, and therefore welcome the establishment of a Civil Society Fund on Results, Aid Effectiveness and Accountability. We also appreciate the Alignment, Effectiveness, Result Accountability Initiative (AERA), an initiative of the Nigerian Parliament, the National Planning Commission and Civil Society Organisations, CSOs which we believe will strengthen Parliamentary role in budgeting, aid effectiveness, results and accountability for resources, support the National Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance in its aid policy as well as strengthen institutional mechanism for aid coordination, results and performance. We urge the Nigeria government to deepen its partnership with civil society by expanding the current space for engagement.
SIGNED
1. Mr. Leo Atakpu
Deputy Director: Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice ANEEJ
2. Dr. D. Tola Winjobi
National Coordinator: Open Forum for Development Effectiveness
3. Mohammed B. Attah
Africa Regional Coordinator: World Association of Non-Governmental Organisations
4. Mrs. Bose Iro-Nsi
Executive Director: Women's Rights and Health Project.
5. Dr. Lola Dare
Chief Executive: Centre for Health Sciences Training, Research and Development
Busan, South Korea,
December 1, 2011.
How the Senate passage of the anti Homosexual bill will help some Nigerians.
*Nigerians react aloud
Some Nigerians are going to reap bountiful harvests from the recently passed anti gay bill which prescribed jail term for persons who involved in gay marriages. They will start showing up at embassies at home and abroad alleging persecution because of their gay status and asking for asylum. Some of them will display photographs with two men kissing each other and two women kissing each other at a marriage ceremony.
Of course the marriage never took place and the kissing simply stage managed to drive home the point that they are gay couples. So the new business for Nigerians desperate to leave the country and for those of them living abroad without valid papers would be to declare themselves gay. I'm sure that some smart immigration lawyers are already preparing the papers.
And European countries must be ready to receive flux of Nigerian men and woman to prove that they respect human rights.
I think that Nigerian Legislators are Very Busy Pursuing Rats instead of the Big Cows out there!! Why can't these Legislators LEGISLATE against Treasury Looting, Corruption, and Focus on How to Arrest the Treasury Looters, to Recover the Nations Wealth from these Thieves?
What have Homosexuals and their Life style got to do with Nigeria's Progress and Development? Can this End Boko Haram destruction of life and property? Provide Jobs for Nigerians? Provide Good roads & Provision of Basics to live basically by an average Nigerian in Nigeria? Are We after rats here, while Our House is engulfed in fire?
I quite agree with you that there is a need to focus on the eradication of looting , corruption, etc in Nigeria. But talking about homosexual, that act is not permissible in our culture and it should not be embrace at all. Homo craziness will be setback in Economic development, health care system, and it may end marriage between man and woman.
Flipping and shaking of as......? by a man is a taboo
Homosexuality is not permissible in our culture.
Should one dare ask whether pedophilia, child marriages to octogenarians,
female genital mutilation, infanticides, lynching of witches,
discrimination (on the basis of caste, ethnicity, religion or socio-economic class)
are permissible or acceptable.!
In reality which one is the greater threat to societal values
any or all of the vices listed above or homosexuality?
Who declared that sexuality and sexual preferences are cultural
phenomena specific to any particular human culture?
Did humanan beings invent the sex act?
Even amongst heterosexuals--are we suggesting
that the so called missionary position is the only way acceptable to Africans
(because our ancestors always did it that way)
and all other positions both within and outside
of the scope of the kama sutra and beyond are therefore forbidden in our culture.
Should kissing, oral sex. anal intercourse between men and
women also be criminalized because they are not acceptable
in the Nigerian culture?
Should public display of affection such as man and woman holding
hands, kissing, hugging, smooching etc be also criminalized?
Should the occassional scenes in our villages especially amongst the poor
where by elderly women are seen walking walking around with their breasts
exposed --either by their own free will or sometimes in protest be also criminalized/
If we do, how do we exempt those who are so poor they cannot afford to buy
bras? Are bras originally a component of the African female attire?
Bottom line--let us leave every man or woman to him or herself on sexual matters
aside of pedophilia, rapes, bestiality etc.. The state has no business
in what goes on amongst her citizens behind the closed doors of
their bed rooms as long as they are between two consenting adults.
What does culture have to do with what goes on behind the nations bed rooms?
Some societies find polygamy abominable--going as far as to incarcerate
offenders while they look the other way on other sexual aberrations
such as swingling life styles, orgies etc amongst hetero sexuals as long
as they do not disturb the public peace and they carry on their immoralities
behind losed doors. In a few of the world's juirisdictions--polyandry rather
than either monogamy or polygamy is the norm.
Given the above should Nigerian law makers also enact laws against all
forms of marital arrangements--outside of monogamy or polygamy.
While at it what about laws against premarital sex considering that this
is against the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Koran?
What the Nigerian government has done is not in anyway out of place. I am sure if the Nigerian people were asked to vote on this issue, you certainly know what the answer will be. Democracy stand for the will of the people on one hand and protecting the minority on the other hand. Nevertheless, I would rather have the country to focus on more pressing issues such as Mr. Odeh has rightly highlighted. Our society abhors homosexuality, bestiality, and other social vices. Mind you, female genital mutilation is still a strong human rights debate and the support for eradicating it has the tendency to flip-flop. Of this, I will present the other side of the argument.
What the government did in banning gay marriage is standing against Western opinion on sexuality and simply resonating the Nigerian identity. Religion cannot be separated from the Nigerian identity. Are we not tired of neo-colonialism and the continued erosion of our social values? I hailed your opinion on vices including infanticide, you have clearly put in view the Western support on the liberalization of abortion laws - what is the difference between killing a born and unborn child, are they not all the same? Why should there be an outcry for killing a child and not the same principle for the unborn?
The same people who say we should ban female genital mutilations are conducting breast mutilations in their hospitals with public funds. Confusion, all is confused - the West is confused and are confusing us. What we need to do is find our own identity and reinforce it. If the women accepts FGM, it is their freedom and it is their human rights lets provide a safe environment for them. I am sure of the West practices it as part of their culture, they would have protected it and brought the practiced it safely, since the major problem with FGM is safe practices.
The story of Santa Claus in the Netherlands which has a connotation of racism is still being protected and practice till date. I am may sound anti-West but this are just a matter of balancing principles, values and ideals. If the West wants to protect their values, which emanates from their cultural perspective, I do not see any reason why we should not resonate and preserve our own identity. This is our human rights.
"The state has no business in what goes on amongst her citizens behind the closed doors of their bed rooms..." The truth is that whatever policy, including economic policies, which the state comes up with have a way of interfering with what goes on within the bed rooms. This has been strongly recurring debates in the Netherlands and other parts of the world.
I believe strongly in democracy.
The law makers in Nigeria have simply reflected the will
of the majority of the people they serve in this matter.
I was never under any illusion that the result of a vote
in either the Senate or the HOR would have been different.
I also know that even though I could sway the argument
in favor of the rights of the homosexuals amongst members of
my nuclear family in Toronto, I would have no such chance with
members of my broader family back at home in Nigeria
or amongst my friends, acquittance and colleagues at
home in Nigeria.
The above dichotomy is due to the conservative ethos
of the African value system--which has both positive
and negative consequences.
However the will of the majority is not always right!
We may not be ready today to accept the idea that homosexuals
are not that different from you and I and everyone else outside
of the context of their biologically determined preference for
same gender sexual partners. It is possible that we might be
ready in 50 years as more knowledge about homosexuality
surfaces. Only the almighty God knows when!
"We may not be ready today to accept the idea that homosexuals
are not that different from you and I and everyone else outside
of the context of their biologically determined preference for
same gender sexual partners. It is possible that we might be
ready in 50 years as more knowledge about homosexuality
surfaces. Only the almighty God knows when!".......Dr. Ola Kassim.
A MUST READ on HOMOSEXUALISM. Dr. jide Emordi's Enlightenment.
"Homosexuals are God's lovely children, caught in a spiritual web by the transference of the spirit of Sodomy (every single one of them has been violated growing up) which is no fault of theirs.
They require proper diagnosis as having the psychological ailment called 'GENDER ROLE CONFUSION', lovingly assisted to straighten them out."
May I state categorically that homosexuals have every right to use (abuse) their bodies whichever way they choose just as well as the age old practice of prostitution or the mad fellow that is eating rotten food out of the garbage dump.
One thing remain sure, we REAL Africans will NEVER legitimize the practice and UNAPOLOGETICALLY SO. Lest the LAND spur us Out. lev.18v25.
Our basis is the scripture which is littered with citations on God's displeasure over this conduct. Unfortunately, a few in the forum, like Tony Egbe and Ronke has alluded to it but completely out of context.
Now, whether or not you believe the scripture does not absolve anyone or nation of THE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES OF HOMOSEXUALISM, But please be patient with me while I educate us as 'they that have knowledge, shall instruct many.
Besides, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Ignorance of the LAW (inclusive of God's) remains inexcusable. In the book of leviticus 18v22, GOD gave an unambiguous forbearance against homosexuality. "22) You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination."
I would have referred us to read the book of Romans, chapter 1verses 18- 32, but since many in the forum will not take the extra effort to reference to passage, we may as well read in concert:
Gods Wrath on Unrighteousness. NKJV.
18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them."
( please take special note of verses 26,27*nd 28 above ).
May I also state authoritatively here that every world power that went under was as a result of endorsement of HOMOSEXUALISM as an acceptable life style; be it the Amorites, Cannanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greek, Romans, Great Britain and guess who is next on this list ?
President John Quincy Adams made it clear, "if America (home of the Puritans) ceases to be Godly, it will cease to be great." period.
If you imagine there's a problem with the U.S. economy, you've missed it by miles. Their Policy makers have been given over to delusion. OR do you think it is sanely to borrow more and more from China so you can use the same money to import Chinese made goods? Meanwhile, your jobs are outsourced to the same.
I suppress a chuckle to conclude that it is only a God given delusion that will make a nation surrender it's greatness willingly to another. I should say this; Except America AMENDS their constitution to define MARRIAGE as the union of a man and a woman, they will SURELY hit ROCK BOTTOM.
Woe to the WORLD should godless China ever become the mistress thereof.
Homosexuals are God's lovely children, caught in a spiritual web by the transference of the spirit of Sodomy (every single one of them has been violated growing up) which is no fault of theirs.
They require proper diagnosis as having the psychological ailment called 'GENDER ROLE CONFUSION', lovingly assisted to straighten them out.
Even animals understand that a Dick and a Hole has to COPULATE to procreate. I am yet to see a gay whose NATURAL PARENTS are the same Sex. Let's engage our thinking cap and save humanity.
Should this citations deliver one soul from this snare of the Fowler, my work is done.
Dispassionately yours,
Jide Emordi.
Some Nigerians are going to reap bountiful harvests from the recently passed anti gay bill which prescribed jail term for persons who involved in gay marriages. They will start showing up at embassies at home and abroad alleging persecution because of their gay status and asking for asylum. Some of them will display photographs with two men kissing each other and two women kissing each other at a marriage ceremony.
Of course the marriage never took place and the kissing simply stage managed to drive home the point that they are gay couples. So the new business for Nigerians desperate to leave the country and for those of them living abroad without valid papers would be to declare themselves gay. I'm sure that some smart immigration lawyers are already preparing the papers.
And European countries must be ready to receive flux of Nigerian men and woman to prove that they respect human rights.
I think that Nigerian Legislators are Very Busy Pursuing Rats instead of the Big Cows out there!! Why can't these Legislators LEGISLATE against Treasury Looting, Corruption, and Focus on How to Arrest the Treasury Looters, to Recover the Nations Wealth from these Thieves?
What have Homosexuals and their Life style got to do with Nigeria's Progress and Development? Can this End Boko Haram destruction of life and property? Provide Jobs for Nigerians? Provide Good roads & Provision of Basics to live basically by an average Nigerian in Nigeria? Are We after rats here, while Our House is engulfed in fire?
I quite agree with you that there is a need to focus on the eradication of looting , corruption, etc in Nigeria. But talking about homosexual, that act is not permissible in our culture and it should not be embrace at all. Homo craziness will be setback in Economic development, health care system, and it may end marriage between man and woman.
Flipping and shaking of as......? by a man is a taboo
Homosexuality is not permissible in our culture.
Should one dare ask whether pedophilia, child marriages to octogenarians,
female genital mutilation, infanticides, lynching of witches,
discrimination (on the basis of caste, ethnicity, religion or socio-economic class)
are permissible or acceptable.!
In reality which one is the greater threat to societal values
any or all of the vices listed above or homosexuality?
Who declared that sexuality and sexual preferences are cultural
phenomena specific to any particular human culture?
Did humanan beings invent the sex act?
Even amongst heterosexuals--are we suggesting
that the so called missionary position is the only way acceptable to Africans
(because our ancestors always did it that way)
and all other positions both within and outside
of the scope of the kama sutra and beyond are therefore forbidden in our culture.
Should kissing, oral sex. anal intercourse between men and
women also be criminalized because they are not acceptable
in the Nigerian culture?
Should public display of affection such as man and woman holding
hands, kissing, hugging, smooching etc be also criminalized?
Should the occassional scenes in our villages especially amongst the poor
where by elderly women are seen walking walking around with their breasts
exposed --either by their own free will or sometimes in protest be also criminalized/
If we do, how do we exempt those who are so poor they cannot afford to buy
bras? Are bras originally a component of the African female attire?
Bottom line--let us leave every man or woman to him or herself on sexual matters
aside of pedophilia, rapes, bestiality etc.. The state has no business
in what goes on amongst her citizens behind the closed doors of
their bed rooms as long as they are between two consenting adults.
What does culture have to do with what goes on behind the nations bed rooms?
Some societies find polygamy abominable--going as far as to incarcerate
offenders while they look the other way on other sexual aberrations
such as swingling life styles, orgies etc amongst hetero sexuals as long
as they do not disturb the public peace and they carry on their immoralities
behind losed doors. In a few of the world's juirisdictions--polyandry rather
than either monogamy or polygamy is the norm.
Given the above should Nigerian law makers also enact laws against all
forms of marital arrangements--outside of monogamy or polygamy.
While at it what about laws against premarital sex considering that this
is against the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Koran?
What the Nigerian government has done is not in anyway out of place. I am sure if the Nigerian people were asked to vote on this issue, you certainly know what the answer will be. Democracy stand for the will of the people on one hand and protecting the minority on the other hand. Nevertheless, I would rather have the country to focus on more pressing issues such as Mr. Odeh has rightly highlighted. Our society abhors homosexuality, bestiality, and other social vices. Mind you, female genital mutilation is still a strong human rights debate and the support for eradicating it has the tendency to flip-flop. Of this, I will present the other side of the argument.
What the government did in banning gay marriage is standing against Western opinion on sexuality and simply resonating the Nigerian identity. Religion cannot be separated from the Nigerian identity. Are we not tired of neo-colonialism and the continued erosion of our social values? I hailed your opinion on vices including infanticide, you have clearly put in view the Western support on the liberalization of abortion laws - what is the difference between killing a born and unborn child, are they not all the same? Why should there be an outcry for killing a child and not the same principle for the unborn?
The same people who say we should ban female genital mutilations are conducting breast mutilations in their hospitals with public funds. Confusion, all is confused - the West is confused and are confusing us. What we need to do is find our own identity and reinforce it. If the women accepts FGM, it is their freedom and it is their human rights lets provide a safe environment for them. I am sure of the West practices it as part of their culture, they would have protected it and brought the practiced it safely, since the major problem with FGM is safe practices.
The story of Santa Claus in the Netherlands which has a connotation of racism is still being protected and practice till date. I am may sound anti-West but this are just a matter of balancing principles, values and ideals. If the West wants to protect their values, which emanates from their cultural perspective, I do not see any reason why we should not resonate and preserve our own identity. This is our human rights.
"The state has no business in what goes on amongst her citizens behind the closed doors of their bed rooms..." The truth is that whatever policy, including economic policies, which the state comes up with have a way of interfering with what goes on within the bed rooms. This has been strongly recurring debates in the Netherlands and other parts of the world.
I believe strongly in democracy.
The law makers in Nigeria have simply reflected the will
of the majority of the people they serve in this matter.
I was never under any illusion that the result of a vote
in either the Senate or the HOR would have been different.
I also know that even though I could sway the argument
in favor of the rights of the homosexuals amongst members of
my nuclear family in Toronto, I would have no such chance with
members of my broader family back at home in Nigeria
or amongst my friends, acquittance and colleagues at
home in Nigeria.
The above dichotomy is due to the conservative ethos
of the African value system--which has both positive
and negative consequences.
However the will of the majority is not always right!
We may not be ready today to accept the idea that homosexuals
are not that different from you and I and everyone else outside
of the context of their biologically determined preference for
same gender sexual partners. It is possible that we might be
ready in 50 years as more knowledge about homosexuality
surfaces. Only the almighty God knows when!
"We may not be ready today to accept the idea that homosexuals
are not that different from you and I and everyone else outside
of the context of their biologically determined preference for
same gender sexual partners. It is possible that we might be
ready in 50 years as more knowledge about homosexuality
surfaces. Only the almighty God knows when!".......Dr. Ola Kassim.
A MUST READ on HOMOSEXUALISM. Dr. jide Emordi's Enlightenment.
"Homosexuals are God's lovely children, caught in a spiritual web by the transference of the spirit of Sodomy (every single one of them has been violated growing up) which is no fault of theirs.
They require proper diagnosis as having the psychological ailment called 'GENDER ROLE CONFUSION', lovingly assisted to straighten them out."
May I state categorically that homosexuals have every right to use (abuse) their bodies whichever way they choose just as well as the age old practice of prostitution or the mad fellow that is eating rotten food out of the garbage dump.
One thing remain sure, we REAL Africans will NEVER legitimize the practice and UNAPOLOGETICALLY SO. Lest the LAND spur us Out. lev.18v25.
Our basis is the scripture which is littered with citations on God's displeasure over this conduct. Unfortunately, a few in the forum, like Tony Egbe and Ronke has alluded to it but completely out of context.
Now, whether or not you believe the scripture does not absolve anyone or nation of THE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES OF HOMOSEXUALISM, But please be patient with me while I educate us as 'they that have knowledge, shall instruct many.
Besides, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Ignorance of the LAW (inclusive of God's) remains inexcusable. In the book of leviticus 18v22, GOD gave an unambiguous forbearance against homosexuality. "22) You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination."
I would have referred us to read the book of Romans, chapter 1verses 18- 32, but since many in the forum will not take the extra effort to reference to passage, we may as well read in concert:
Gods Wrath on Unrighteousness. NKJV.
18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them."
( please take special note of verses 26,27*nd 28 above ).
May I also state authoritatively here that every world power that went under was as a result of endorsement of HOMOSEXUALISM as an acceptable life style; be it the Amorites, Cannanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greek, Romans, Great Britain and guess who is next on this list ?
President John Quincy Adams made it clear, "if America (home of the Puritans) ceases to be Godly, it will cease to be great." period.
If you imagine there's a problem with the U.S. economy, you've missed it by miles. Their Policy makers have been given over to delusion. OR do you think it is sanely to borrow more and more from China so you can use the same money to import Chinese made goods? Meanwhile, your jobs are outsourced to the same.
I suppress a chuckle to conclude that it is only a God given delusion that will make a nation surrender it's greatness willingly to another. I should say this; Except America AMENDS their constitution to define MARRIAGE as the union of a man and a woman, they will SURELY hit ROCK BOTTOM.
Woe to the WORLD should godless China ever become the mistress thereof.
Homosexuals are God's lovely children, caught in a spiritual web by the transference of the spirit of Sodomy (every single one of them has been violated growing up) which is no fault of theirs.
They require proper diagnosis as having the psychological ailment called 'GENDER ROLE CONFUSION', lovingly assisted to straighten them out.
Even animals understand that a Dick and a Hole has to COPULATE to procreate. I am yet to see a gay whose NATURAL PARENTS are the same Sex. Let's engage our thinking cap and save humanity.
Should this citations deliver one soul from this snare of the Fowler, my work is done.
Dispassionately yours,
Jide Emordi.
AN ODE TO DIM CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU
Toby Uche Mbamalu
Tis said that old soldiers never die; but they only fade away!
And so, on seven and twenty of Nov. 2011,
Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu,
A Man with courage of moral convictions,
The voice of the voiceless,
The conscience of Nigeria,
The eponymous general,
A historical historian,
An unparalleled patriot,
The pride of the Igbos
A romantic warrior,
A soldier`s soldier,
The lion of Biafra,
Faded away!
Faded away, in our sights, but not in our minds!
For how can we ever forget,
Such a rare gem,
Whom neither shape of danger could dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray?
Eloquence was in his voice,
Bravery in his heart.
His life, he devoted to the cause of his people,
to justice, to fairness, to equity.
And for this he was cannonaded, while he lived,
By the rapine vultures that devoured the land,
The famished land called Nigeria.
They called him a rebel;
And he answered, yes, I was a rebel:
A rebel against a pack of mercenary wretches
Bent on unleashing genocide on my people;
A rebel for refusing to barter conscience for pittance;
A rebel for choosing freedom over slavery!
Oh goodness, that truth would be so scarce,
And lie so aplenty in the land!
And he stood, like a solitary rock in a turbulent sea,
warning and admonishing,
taking the blows;
And his long endurance and vision made him,
An icon, A sage, A hero.
Now he is gone, the way of all mortals.
Did I hear the roaring of lions,
The howling of wolves,
The raging of the stormy sea,
Announcing the departure,
Of the great one into the beyond?
Did I hear his voice roar from the grave, saying:
You, the despoilers of the land,
And oppressors of my people,
Do not stain my bier with your worthless pomp of homage vain
Nor decolorize it with your leasings!
To his people he challenged:
Ye sons and daughters of Igboland, nay, Nigeria,
Awake to glory,
Dare to be true,
For no nation build on a lie,
Can ever attain her potentials.
Farewell, farewell to thee, beloved leader,
Ikemba,
Ochiagha,
Odenigbo,
Dike-di-ora-nma,
Eze-gburu-gburu-ndi-Igbo!
May you awaken to joyful activity in the great beyond;
And May the Light of the Lord guide you upon this journey!
Dr. Toby Uche Mbamalu is an Energy economist and clinical psychologist, in Oslo, Norway
Tis said that old soldiers never die; but they only fade away!
And so, on seven and twenty of Nov. 2011,
Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu,
A Man with courage of moral convictions,
The voice of the voiceless,
The conscience of Nigeria,
The eponymous general,
A historical historian,
An unparalleled patriot,
The pride of the Igbos
A romantic warrior,
A soldier`s soldier,
The lion of Biafra,
Faded away!
Faded away, in our sights, but not in our minds!
For how can we ever forget,
Such a rare gem,
Whom neither shape of danger could dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray?
Eloquence was in his voice,
Bravery in his heart.
His life, he devoted to the cause of his people,
to justice, to fairness, to equity.
And for this he was cannonaded, while he lived,
By the rapine vultures that devoured the land,
The famished land called Nigeria.
They called him a rebel;
And he answered, yes, I was a rebel:
A rebel against a pack of mercenary wretches
Bent on unleashing genocide on my people;
A rebel for refusing to barter conscience for pittance;
A rebel for choosing freedom over slavery!
Oh goodness, that truth would be so scarce,
And lie so aplenty in the land!
And he stood, like a solitary rock in a turbulent sea,
warning and admonishing,
taking the blows;
And his long endurance and vision made him,
An icon, A sage, A hero.
Now he is gone, the way of all mortals.
Did I hear the roaring of lions,
The howling of wolves,
The raging of the stormy sea,
Announcing the departure,
Of the great one into the beyond?
Did I hear his voice roar from the grave, saying:
You, the despoilers of the land,
And oppressors of my people,
Do not stain my bier with your worthless pomp of homage vain
Nor decolorize it with your leasings!
To his people he challenged:
Ye sons and daughters of Igboland, nay, Nigeria,
Awake to glory,
Dare to be true,
For no nation build on a lie,
Can ever attain her potentials.
Farewell, farewell to thee, beloved leader,
Ikemba,
Ochiagha,
Odenigbo,
Dike-di-ora-nma,
Eze-gburu-gburu-ndi-Igbo!
May you awaken to joyful activity in the great beyond;
And May the Light of the Lord guide you upon this journey!
Dr. Toby Uche Mbamalu is an Energy economist and clinical psychologist, in Oslo, Norway
AWOLOWO: QUESTION AND ANSWER ON IGBO ISSUES
During the 1983 elections, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was hosted to a town hall interview in Abeokuta, where in addition to other pertinent topics of the day, he spoke on his role in the civil war, the 20-pound policy, starvation as a weapon, change of currency, abandoned property etc.
Excerpt: ((Moderator: Mr. Oparadike).
CIVIL WAR
Question: Chief Awolowo, your stand on the civil war, however unpopular it may have been to the Biafran people or Ibo people, helped to shorten the war. Today, you’re being cast as the sole enemy of the Ibo people because of that stand, by among others, some of the people who as members of the federal military government at that time, were party to that decision and are today, in some cases, inheritors of power in one Nigeria which that decision of yours helped to save. How do you feel being cast in this role, and what steps are you taking to endear yourself once again to that large chunk of Nigerians who feels embittered.
Awo: As far as I know, the Ibo masses are friendly to me, towards me. In fact, whenever I visit Iboland, either Anambra or Imo, and there’s no campaigning for elections on, the Ibo people receive me warmly and affectionately. But there are some elements in Iboland who believe that they can maintain their popularity only by denigrating me, and so they keep on telling lies against me. Ojukwu is one of them.
I don’t want to mention the names of the others because they are still redeemable, but Ojukwu is irredeemable so I mention his name, and my attitude to these lies is one of indifference, I must confess to you.I’ve learnt to rely completely on the providence and vindication of Almighty God in some of these things. I’ve tried to explain myself in the past, but these liars persist.
Ojukwu had only recently told the same lie against me. What’s the point in correcting lies when people are determined to persist in telling lies against you, what’s the point. I know that someday the Ibos, the masses of the Ibo people will realize who their friends are, and who their real enemies are. And the day that happens woe betide those enemies. The Ibos will deal with them very roughly, very roughly.
That has happened in my life. I have a nickname now, if you see my letterhead you’ll find something on top, you’ll find a fish done on the letterhead. Some people put Lion on theirs, some people put Tiger, but mine is Fish. And Fish represents my zodiac sign, those of you who read the stars and so on in the newspapers; you’ll find out that there’s a zodiac sign known as pieces, in Latin pieces mean Fish.
So I put pieces on top, that’s my zodiac sign being born on the 6th of March,….er well, the year doesn’t matter, it’s the day that matter. And then on top of it I write Eebudola. All of you know the meaning of that. You know I don’t want to tell a long story but Awolowo school, omo Awolowo, the…… started in Urobo land, in mid-west in those days. They were ridiculing my schools, I was building schools –brick and cement, to dpc level, block to dpc level and mud thereafter. And so the big shots in the place..”ah what kind of school is this? is this Awolowo school?
Useless school” and when they saw the children..”ah this Awolowo children, they can’t read and write, Awolowo children” that’s how it started, with ridicule, and it became blessing, and now they say “Awolowo children, they are good people” no more ridicule about it, that’s how it started, so the Eebu becomes honor, the abuse became honor.
And so when I look back to all my life, treasonable felony, jail, all the abuses that were heaped on me, to Coker Inquiry, all sorts, and I see what has happened to the people who led, who led all these denigration campaign, where are they today? Those that are alive are what I call Homo Mortuus- dead living, oku eniyan, that’s what they are, those that their lives have gone.
So when I look back, I come to the conclusion that all these abuses which have been heaped on me all my life for doing nothing, for doing good, they have become honor, and so Eebudola is one of my nicknames. So I’ve cultivated an attitude of indifference, I’ve done no evil to the Ibos.
During the war I saw to it that the revenue which was due to the Iboland- South Eastern states they call it, at that time..east central state, I kept it, I saved the money for them. And when they ….was librated I handed over the money to them- millions. If I’d decided to do so, I could have kept the money away from them and then when they took over I saw to it that subvention was given to them at the rate of 990,000 pounds every month. I didn’t go to the executive council to ask for support, or for approval because I knew if I went to the executive council at that time the subvention would not be approved because there were more enemies in the executive council for the Ibos than friends.
And since I wasn’t going to take a percentage from what I was going to give them, and I knew I was doing what was right, I wanted the state to survive, I kept on giving the subvention - 990,000 almost a million, every month, and I did that for other states of course- South eastern state, North central state, Kwara and so on.
But I did that for the Ibos, and when the war was over, I saw to it that the ACB got three and a half million pounds to start with. This was distributed immediately and I gave another sum of money. The attitude of the experts, officials at the time of the ACB was that ACB should be closed down, and I held the view you couldn’t close the ACB down because that is the bank that gives finance to the Ibo traders, and if you close it down they’ll find it difficult to revive or to survive. So it was given.
I did the same thing for the Cooperative Bank of Eastern Nigeria, to rehabilitate all these places, and I saw to it as commissioner for finance that no obstacle was placed in the way of the ministry of economic planning in planning for rehabilitation of the war affected areas.
TWENTY POUNDS POLICY
That’s what I did, and the case of the money they said was not given back to them, you know during the war all the pounds were looted, they printed Biafran currency notes, which they circulated, at the close of the war some people wanted their Biafran notes to be exchanged for them. Of course I couldn’t do that, if I did that the whole country would be bankrupt.
We didn’t know about Biafran notes and we didn’t know on what basis they have printed them, so we refused the Biafran note, but I laid down the principle that all those who had savings in the banks on the eve of the declaration of the Biafran war or Biafra, will get their money back if they could satisfy us that they had the savings there, or the money there.
Unfortunately, all the banks’s books had been burnt, and many of the people who had savings there didn’t have their saving books or their last statement of account, so a panel had to be set up.
I didn’t take part in setting up the panel, it was done by the Central bank and the pertinent officials of the ministry of finance, to look into the matter, and they went carefully into the matter, they took some months to do so, and then make some recommendation which I approved.
Go to the archives, all I did was approve, I didn’t write anything more than that, I don’t even remember the name of any of them who took part. So I did everything in this world to assist our Ibo brothers and sisters during and after the war.
And anyone who goes back to look at my broadcast in August 1967, which dealt with post-war reconstruction would see what I said there.
STARVATION POLICY
Then, but above all, the ending of the war itself that I’m accused of, accused of starving the Ibos, I did nothing of the sort. You know, shortly after the liberation of these places, Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcort, I decided to pay a visit. There are certain things which I knew which you don’t know, which I don’t want to say here now, when I write my reminisces in the future I will do so. Some of the soldiers were not truthful with us, they didn’t tell us correct stories and so on.
I wanted to be there and see things for myself, bear in mind that Gowon himself did not go there at that time, it was after the war was over that he dorn himself up in various military dresses- Air force dress, Army dress and so on, and went to the war torn areas. But I went and some people tried to frighten me out of my goal by saying that Adekunle was my enemy and he was going to see to it that I never return from the place, so I went.
But when I went what did I see? I saw the kwashiorkor victims. If you see a kwashiorkor victim you’ll never like war to be waged. Terrible sight, in Enugu, in Port Harcourt, not many in Calabar, but mainly in Enugu and Port Harcourt. Then I enquired what happened to the food we are sending to the civilians. We were sending food through the Red cross, and CARITAS to them, but what happen was that the vehicles carrying the food were always ambushed by the soldiers.
That’s what I discovered, and the food would then be taken to the soldiers to feed them, and so they were able to continue to fight. And I said that was a very dangerous policy, we didn’t intend the food for soldiers. But who will go behind the line to stop the soldiers from ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the food? And as long as soldiers were fed, the war will continue, and who’ll continue to suffer? and those who didn’t go to the place to see things as I did, you remember that all the big guns, all the soldiers in the Biafran army looked all well fed after the war, its only the mass of the people that suffered kwashiorkor.
You wont hear of a single lawyer, a single doctor, a single architect, who suffered from kwashiorkor? None of their children either, so they waylaid the foods, they ambush the vehicles and took the foods to their friends and to their collaborators and to their children and the masses were suffering. So I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers will suffer most.
CHANGE OF CURRENCY
And it is on record that Ojukwu admitted that two things defeated him in this war, that’s as at the day he left Biafra. He said one, the change of currency, he said that was the first thing that defeated him, and we did that to prevent Ojukwu taking the money which his soldiers has stolen from our Central bank for sale abroad to buy arms. We discovered he looted our Central bank in Benin, he looted the one in Port Harcourt, looted the one in Calabar and he was taking the currency notes abroad to sell to earn foreign exchange to buy arms.
So I decided to change the currency, and for your benefit, it can now be told the whole world, only Gowon knew the day before, the day before the change took place. I decided, only three of us knew before then- Isong now governor of Cross River, Attah and myself. It was a closely guarded secret, if any commissioner at the time say that he knew about it, he’s only boosting his own ego.
Because once you tell someone, he’ll tell another person. So we refused to tell them and we changed the currency notes. So Ojukwu said the change in currency defeated him, and starvation of his soldiers also defeated him.
These were the two things that defeated Ojukwu. And, he reminds me, when you saw Ojukwu’s picture after the war, did he look like someone who’s not well fed? But he has been taking the food which we send to civilians, and so we stopped the food
.
ABANDONED PROPERTY
And then finally, I saw to it that the houses owned by the Ibos in Lagos and on this side, were kept for them. I had an estate agent friend who told me that one of them collected half a million pounds rent which has been kept for him. All his rent were collected, but since we didn’t seize their houses, he came back and collected half a million pounds.
So that is the position. I’m a friend of the Ibos and the mass of the Ibos are my friends, but there are certain elements who want to continue to deceive the Ibos by telling lies against me, and one day, they’ll discover and then that day will be terrible for those who have been telling the lies.
Moderator: After the question, this particular question from the interview panel we’ll move to the floor, and later we’ll go back to the interview panel for the final two questions. But before we move to the floor I call on Mr. Sonala Olumhense to ask the question
.
CORRUPTION
Question (Sonala Olumhense): Chief Awolowo, I think it is fairly clear that the two major problems responsible for the failing of government in this country are inability or incompetence of officials to manage the economy and corruption.
You have been reported on the campaign ground to have said that when you come to power on October, that you will not probe anybody. I haven’t heard or read of any denial of that statement. If it is actually true that you did make that statement, how is it that you plan to deal with the problem of corruption in this country? Or don’t you have any such plans?
Awolowo: The statement referred to is not new, I first made a statement like that, I believe, in 1969 during my convocation address at Ife University. I then demanded to know why the probe was confined to only the western region and parts of the eastern region. The other part of the country, there was no probe in the other part of the country.
And then, they were probing civilians, but then soldiers have boldly begun to enter, to enter the area of those who should be probed. And I said, well, some trees have fallen on other trees, and they should start with ones on the top. Which means to probe soldiers, and who will dare to probe soldiers at that time? So I said they should call off the whole business.
And then a decision was taken that those who had stolen money and had died should not be probed, so it is easy for someone who wants to enrich his children to steal as much as possible, then commit suicide so that his children can live in affluence forever. It’s a far fetch illustration, but it can happen. So I said the best thing is to call off the probe. And how much have we earned in the process? How much have we got back?
You remember that all the thing that Adebayo got in his own time he returned them on the eve of the 10th anniversary of independent. So there’s no point in continuing the probe, I said it at the time, and I repeated it at Ahmadu Bello University when I was delivering my second convo… address there.
So it’s nothing new, but people don’t border to read some of the things I say, but they go on criticizing me for saying this things. Anyway, I don’t want the UPN to embark on probes, first of all I believe that those who have deliberately stolen public money…we keep on saying government’s money, it’s our money, it’s your money, it’s my money. Those who have deliberately done that would dislodge them sooner or later, that’s the law of nature, it has to happen.
In the bible we are told God says “Vengeance is mine, and I will revenge” and I believe it. Then secondly, when you start probing, where do you begin now? The corruption has gone to a very high scale since the Army took over. They were to be corrective, then they became corruptive, and so on, where do you begin? And with whom? And with which part of the country? Throughout the country? You’ll need a large staff of people to do the probe, and then the probers themselves might be bribed and corrupted in the process, and so we won’t get any genuine report.
And then would you also probe members of your own party in addition, because we are not perfect. There must be people who are probable even within UPN, but party pressure will make it absolutely impossible for you to probe anyone within your party.
So why start at all? And what is more, if you probe the past, it’s like going to a grave yard and exhuming the bodies and tried to see what was the cause of the death of each of the copses that you have exhumed. And when you have discovered that so and so who died 10 years ago was killed by what do you do then? Do you revive the body? You cannot revive the dead, but in the process you pollute the air, you pollute the air of the place.
Whereas, you can help the living. I’m interested in the living, and don’t forget that I’m 74 years plus now, and I don’t want to waste my years trying to see what happened in the past instead of attending to the problems of all these people in front of me, and millions who are listening to what I say. If they steal they’ll suffer, if they don’t steal, and you never can know all the truth, sometimes they say somebody take a bribe, then find out and see no bribe has been taken, and so on and so forth. As far as I am concerned, the past- that’s from 30th of September 1983 backwards sealed. But from 1st October 1983 onward, open.
There’s a saying, the past is a story told, the future will be rich in gold. And I’ve always said it that the future is like a wet clay. In the hands of a good potter it can produce very fine potteries. But the past is dead you can’t produce anything from it except acrimonies, exacerbation, hatred, and so on and so forth. So I’m not interested in the past, I’m interested in the future.
And you can correct corruption by examples more than by precepts. Many of us can say corruption is bad. Even the most corrupt person will say “corruption is not good”, but then to see what he can do by examples rather than by precepts and I intend, that’s what UPN has been doing, we intend to lead the people out of corruption into honesty and probity by example.
That’s what we intend to do. But you must bear in mind; you can never stamp out corruption, you can minimize it considerably. In those days of the western region, in 8 years people will say no corruption, there might be, I didn’t know, but the important thing is that people ought to realize that there’s someone somewhere who must never hear that an act of corruption has taken place.
But when the boss himself is the chairman of the corrupt club, then there’s nothing you can do, like what happened, a simple matter, one member of the ministry of housing asked one of the officials to go and get 200 bundles of roofing sheets. Yes sir! And then he went and collected 2,200 roofing sheets.
That’s a fair business, the boss wants 200 and he needs 2000. And the boss can’t pressure on him, on what ground? “You went to go and steal that….”, he’ll say “er master but you asked me to bring you 200…” that’s the trouble. So you get a lot done by example rather than by precepts, and that’s what we intend to do. The future may be rich in gold, like a wet clay in the hands of the good potter.
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Excerpt: ((Moderator: Mr. Oparadike).
CIVIL WAR
Question: Chief Awolowo, your stand on the civil war, however unpopular it may have been to the Biafran people or Ibo people, helped to shorten the war. Today, you’re being cast as the sole enemy of the Ibo people because of that stand, by among others, some of the people who as members of the federal military government at that time, were party to that decision and are today, in some cases, inheritors of power in one Nigeria which that decision of yours helped to save. How do you feel being cast in this role, and what steps are you taking to endear yourself once again to that large chunk of Nigerians who feels embittered.
Awo: As far as I know, the Ibo masses are friendly to me, towards me. In fact, whenever I visit Iboland, either Anambra or Imo, and there’s no campaigning for elections on, the Ibo people receive me warmly and affectionately. But there are some elements in Iboland who believe that they can maintain their popularity only by denigrating me, and so they keep on telling lies against me. Ojukwu is one of them.
I don’t want to mention the names of the others because they are still redeemable, but Ojukwu is irredeemable so I mention his name, and my attitude to these lies is one of indifference, I must confess to you.I’ve learnt to rely completely on the providence and vindication of Almighty God in some of these things. I’ve tried to explain myself in the past, but these liars persist.
Ojukwu had only recently told the same lie against me. What’s the point in correcting lies when people are determined to persist in telling lies against you, what’s the point. I know that someday the Ibos, the masses of the Ibo people will realize who their friends are, and who their real enemies are. And the day that happens woe betide those enemies. The Ibos will deal with them very roughly, very roughly.
That has happened in my life. I have a nickname now, if you see my letterhead you’ll find something on top, you’ll find a fish done on the letterhead. Some people put Lion on theirs, some people put Tiger, but mine is Fish. And Fish represents my zodiac sign, those of you who read the stars and so on in the newspapers; you’ll find out that there’s a zodiac sign known as pieces, in Latin pieces mean Fish.
So I put pieces on top, that’s my zodiac sign being born on the 6th of March,….er well, the year doesn’t matter, it’s the day that matter. And then on top of it I write Eebudola. All of you know the meaning of that. You know I don’t want to tell a long story but Awolowo school, omo Awolowo, the…… started in Urobo land, in mid-west in those days. They were ridiculing my schools, I was building schools –brick and cement, to dpc level, block to dpc level and mud thereafter. And so the big shots in the place..”ah what kind of school is this? is this Awolowo school?
Useless school” and when they saw the children..”ah this Awolowo children, they can’t read and write, Awolowo children” that’s how it started, with ridicule, and it became blessing, and now they say “Awolowo children, they are good people” no more ridicule about it, that’s how it started, so the Eebu becomes honor, the abuse became honor.
And so when I look back to all my life, treasonable felony, jail, all the abuses that were heaped on me, to Coker Inquiry, all sorts, and I see what has happened to the people who led, who led all these denigration campaign, where are they today? Those that are alive are what I call Homo Mortuus- dead living, oku eniyan, that’s what they are, those that their lives have gone.
So when I look back, I come to the conclusion that all these abuses which have been heaped on me all my life for doing nothing, for doing good, they have become honor, and so Eebudola is one of my nicknames. So I’ve cultivated an attitude of indifference, I’ve done no evil to the Ibos.
During the war I saw to it that the revenue which was due to the Iboland- South Eastern states they call it, at that time..east central state, I kept it, I saved the money for them. And when they ….was librated I handed over the money to them- millions. If I’d decided to do so, I could have kept the money away from them and then when they took over I saw to it that subvention was given to them at the rate of 990,000 pounds every month. I didn’t go to the executive council to ask for support, or for approval because I knew if I went to the executive council at that time the subvention would not be approved because there were more enemies in the executive council for the Ibos than friends.
And since I wasn’t going to take a percentage from what I was going to give them, and I knew I was doing what was right, I wanted the state to survive, I kept on giving the subvention - 990,000 almost a million, every month, and I did that for other states of course- South eastern state, North central state, Kwara and so on.
But I did that for the Ibos, and when the war was over, I saw to it that the ACB got three and a half million pounds to start with. This was distributed immediately and I gave another sum of money. The attitude of the experts, officials at the time of the ACB was that ACB should be closed down, and I held the view you couldn’t close the ACB down because that is the bank that gives finance to the Ibo traders, and if you close it down they’ll find it difficult to revive or to survive. So it was given.
I did the same thing for the Cooperative Bank of Eastern Nigeria, to rehabilitate all these places, and I saw to it as commissioner for finance that no obstacle was placed in the way of the ministry of economic planning in planning for rehabilitation of the war affected areas.
TWENTY POUNDS POLICY
That’s what I did, and the case of the money they said was not given back to them, you know during the war all the pounds were looted, they printed Biafran currency notes, which they circulated, at the close of the war some people wanted their Biafran notes to be exchanged for them. Of course I couldn’t do that, if I did that the whole country would be bankrupt.
We didn’t know about Biafran notes and we didn’t know on what basis they have printed them, so we refused the Biafran note, but I laid down the principle that all those who had savings in the banks on the eve of the declaration of the Biafran war or Biafra, will get their money back if they could satisfy us that they had the savings there, or the money there.
Unfortunately, all the banks’s books had been burnt, and many of the people who had savings there didn’t have their saving books or their last statement of account, so a panel had to be set up.
I didn’t take part in setting up the panel, it was done by the Central bank and the pertinent officials of the ministry of finance, to look into the matter, and they went carefully into the matter, they took some months to do so, and then make some recommendation which I approved.
Go to the archives, all I did was approve, I didn’t write anything more than that, I don’t even remember the name of any of them who took part. So I did everything in this world to assist our Ibo brothers and sisters during and after the war.
And anyone who goes back to look at my broadcast in August 1967, which dealt with post-war reconstruction would see what I said there.
STARVATION POLICY
Then, but above all, the ending of the war itself that I’m accused of, accused of starving the Ibos, I did nothing of the sort. You know, shortly after the liberation of these places, Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcort, I decided to pay a visit. There are certain things which I knew which you don’t know, which I don’t want to say here now, when I write my reminisces in the future I will do so. Some of the soldiers were not truthful with us, they didn’t tell us correct stories and so on.
I wanted to be there and see things for myself, bear in mind that Gowon himself did not go there at that time, it was after the war was over that he dorn himself up in various military dresses- Air force dress, Army dress and so on, and went to the war torn areas. But I went and some people tried to frighten me out of my goal by saying that Adekunle was my enemy and he was going to see to it that I never return from the place, so I went.
But when I went what did I see? I saw the kwashiorkor victims. If you see a kwashiorkor victim you’ll never like war to be waged. Terrible sight, in Enugu, in Port Harcourt, not many in Calabar, but mainly in Enugu and Port Harcourt. Then I enquired what happened to the food we are sending to the civilians. We were sending food through the Red cross, and CARITAS to them, but what happen was that the vehicles carrying the food were always ambushed by the soldiers.
That’s what I discovered, and the food would then be taken to the soldiers to feed them, and so they were able to continue to fight. And I said that was a very dangerous policy, we didn’t intend the food for soldiers. But who will go behind the line to stop the soldiers from ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the food? And as long as soldiers were fed, the war will continue, and who’ll continue to suffer? and those who didn’t go to the place to see things as I did, you remember that all the big guns, all the soldiers in the Biafran army looked all well fed after the war, its only the mass of the people that suffered kwashiorkor.
You wont hear of a single lawyer, a single doctor, a single architect, who suffered from kwashiorkor? None of their children either, so they waylaid the foods, they ambush the vehicles and took the foods to their friends and to their collaborators and to their children and the masses were suffering. So I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers will suffer most.
CHANGE OF CURRENCY
And it is on record that Ojukwu admitted that two things defeated him in this war, that’s as at the day he left Biafra. He said one, the change of currency, he said that was the first thing that defeated him, and we did that to prevent Ojukwu taking the money which his soldiers has stolen from our Central bank for sale abroad to buy arms. We discovered he looted our Central bank in Benin, he looted the one in Port Harcourt, looted the one in Calabar and he was taking the currency notes abroad to sell to earn foreign exchange to buy arms.
So I decided to change the currency, and for your benefit, it can now be told the whole world, only Gowon knew the day before, the day before the change took place. I decided, only three of us knew before then- Isong now governor of Cross River, Attah and myself. It was a closely guarded secret, if any commissioner at the time say that he knew about it, he’s only boosting his own ego.
Because once you tell someone, he’ll tell another person. So we refused to tell them and we changed the currency notes. So Ojukwu said the change in currency defeated him, and starvation of his soldiers also defeated him.
These were the two things that defeated Ojukwu. And, he reminds me, when you saw Ojukwu’s picture after the war, did he look like someone who’s not well fed? But he has been taking the food which we send to civilians, and so we stopped the food
.
ABANDONED PROPERTY
And then finally, I saw to it that the houses owned by the Ibos in Lagos and on this side, were kept for them. I had an estate agent friend who told me that one of them collected half a million pounds rent which has been kept for him. All his rent were collected, but since we didn’t seize their houses, he came back and collected half a million pounds.
So that is the position. I’m a friend of the Ibos and the mass of the Ibos are my friends, but there are certain elements who want to continue to deceive the Ibos by telling lies against me, and one day, they’ll discover and then that day will be terrible for those who have been telling the lies.
Moderator: After the question, this particular question from the interview panel we’ll move to the floor, and later we’ll go back to the interview panel for the final two questions. But before we move to the floor I call on Mr. Sonala Olumhense to ask the question
.
CORRUPTION
Question (Sonala Olumhense): Chief Awolowo, I think it is fairly clear that the two major problems responsible for the failing of government in this country are inability or incompetence of officials to manage the economy and corruption.
You have been reported on the campaign ground to have said that when you come to power on October, that you will not probe anybody. I haven’t heard or read of any denial of that statement. If it is actually true that you did make that statement, how is it that you plan to deal with the problem of corruption in this country? Or don’t you have any such plans?
Awolowo: The statement referred to is not new, I first made a statement like that, I believe, in 1969 during my convocation address at Ife University. I then demanded to know why the probe was confined to only the western region and parts of the eastern region. The other part of the country, there was no probe in the other part of the country.
And then, they were probing civilians, but then soldiers have boldly begun to enter, to enter the area of those who should be probed. And I said, well, some trees have fallen on other trees, and they should start with ones on the top. Which means to probe soldiers, and who will dare to probe soldiers at that time? So I said they should call off the whole business.
And then a decision was taken that those who had stolen money and had died should not be probed, so it is easy for someone who wants to enrich his children to steal as much as possible, then commit suicide so that his children can live in affluence forever. It’s a far fetch illustration, but it can happen. So I said the best thing is to call off the probe. And how much have we earned in the process? How much have we got back?
You remember that all the thing that Adebayo got in his own time he returned them on the eve of the 10th anniversary of independent. So there’s no point in continuing the probe, I said it at the time, and I repeated it at Ahmadu Bello University when I was delivering my second convo… address there.
So it’s nothing new, but people don’t border to read some of the things I say, but they go on criticizing me for saying this things. Anyway, I don’t want the UPN to embark on probes, first of all I believe that those who have deliberately stolen public money…we keep on saying government’s money, it’s our money, it’s your money, it’s my money. Those who have deliberately done that would dislodge them sooner or later, that’s the law of nature, it has to happen.
In the bible we are told God says “Vengeance is mine, and I will revenge” and I believe it. Then secondly, when you start probing, where do you begin now? The corruption has gone to a very high scale since the Army took over. They were to be corrective, then they became corruptive, and so on, where do you begin? And with whom? And with which part of the country? Throughout the country? You’ll need a large staff of people to do the probe, and then the probers themselves might be bribed and corrupted in the process, and so we won’t get any genuine report.
And then would you also probe members of your own party in addition, because we are not perfect. There must be people who are probable even within UPN, but party pressure will make it absolutely impossible for you to probe anyone within your party.
So why start at all? And what is more, if you probe the past, it’s like going to a grave yard and exhuming the bodies and tried to see what was the cause of the death of each of the copses that you have exhumed. And when you have discovered that so and so who died 10 years ago was killed by what do you do then? Do you revive the body? You cannot revive the dead, but in the process you pollute the air, you pollute the air of the place.
Whereas, you can help the living. I’m interested in the living, and don’t forget that I’m 74 years plus now, and I don’t want to waste my years trying to see what happened in the past instead of attending to the problems of all these people in front of me, and millions who are listening to what I say. If they steal they’ll suffer, if they don’t steal, and you never can know all the truth, sometimes they say somebody take a bribe, then find out and see no bribe has been taken, and so on and so forth. As far as I am concerned, the past- that’s from 30th of September 1983 backwards sealed. But from 1st October 1983 onward, open.
There’s a saying, the past is a story told, the future will be rich in gold. And I’ve always said it that the future is like a wet clay. In the hands of a good potter it can produce very fine potteries. But the past is dead you can’t produce anything from it except acrimonies, exacerbation, hatred, and so on and so forth. So I’m not interested in the past, I’m interested in the future.
And you can correct corruption by examples more than by precepts. Many of us can say corruption is bad. Even the most corrupt person will say “corruption is not good”, but then to see what he can do by examples rather than by precepts and I intend, that’s what UPN has been doing, we intend to lead the people out of corruption into honesty and probity by example.
That’s what we intend to do. But you must bear in mind; you can never stamp out corruption, you can minimize it considerably. In those days of the western region, in 8 years people will say no corruption, there might be, I didn’t know, but the important thing is that people ought to realize that there’s someone somewhere who must never hear that an act of corruption has taken place.
But when the boss himself is the chairman of the corrupt club, then there’s nothing you can do, like what happened, a simple matter, one member of the ministry of housing asked one of the officials to go and get 200 bundles of roofing sheets. Yes sir! And then he went and collected 2,200 roofing sheets.
That’s a fair business, the boss wants 200 and he needs 2000. And the boss can’t pressure on him, on what ground? “You went to go and steal that….”, he’ll say “er master but you asked me to bring you 200…” that’s the trouble. So you get a lot done by example rather than by precepts, and that’s what we intend to do. The future may be rich in gold, like a wet clay in the hands of the good potter.
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