Showing posts with label Charles Taylor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Taylor. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2024

Africa’s Continental Criminal Court Can No Longer Wait!



By Chidi Odinkalu

Less than a decade ago, the detention centre of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in Scheveningen on the outskirts of The Hague could easily have been mistaken for a committee meeting of leaders of the African Union. One of its long-term guests was Laurent Gbagbo, a former president of Côte d’Ivoire. From neighbouring Liberia, Gbagbo’s contemporary, Charles Taylor, kept up a punishing schedule on the tennis courts of the facility. With them there also was former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, Jean-Pierre Bemba. 

Friday, November 26, 2021

Nollywood Personifies The Resilience And Ingenuity Of The Nigerian, Says Sam Kargbo

 Lawyer, law teacher, social commentator and film maker, Sam Kargbo is many things to many people. Although a regular TV guest on many topical issues and a newspaper columnist,  Kargbo carries about his life with utmost modesty. He loves his beautiful wife from Akwa Ibom State and adores his mentors with a passion. He is the maker of Blood Diamonds, arguably one of the highest budget films in Nollywood, the Nigerian Home Video Industry. Yet, he insists film making is just an avenue for him to pass his message across to a target audience. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (February 2005), he talks about his involvement in film making and the bold efforts of private investors that have taken the good image of Nigeria across continents.

Excerpts:

*Sam Kargbo

Most people are familiar with Sam Kargbo the lawyer, not the script writer and film producer, at what point did this other side of you come up?

Yes, I studied law. But I have been doing many other things, and as lawyers would say, legal things for that matter. I have always been a heckler  and proactive person. I don’t sit on the fence on matters. I like emptying my chest and putting my money where my mouth is. I realise that one stands in a  better  position to understand things when one is involved. I have been writing  ever  since my secondary school days. I have written short stories for radio   presentation. I was one of the earlier contributors to the His and Hers  (or  something like that ) on Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC)  in 1991. I had a teacher called John Agetua who encouraged me to take writing seriously but I disappointed him when I veered off to study law. He wanted me to study English Language. Am sure he was the one that influenced people like Nnamdi Okosieme (of Independent) to study English and Literature. I followed the advice of another teacher,  Mrs. Lambert Aikhion-Bare, who was equally close to me, to study law. But even at that all my colleagues at the University of Benin knew me more for my writing potentials than for my law studies. I am also a very outgoing person. My social life is, to be honest, very complex. My circle of friends cut across all classes. But I have my preference for artists. That was why people like T.J. Cole, Mike Nliam and Abay Esho of  Safari could convince me to invest in movies. To cut cost and perhaps to simplify matters, I decided to write the first story I was to shoot. I  wrote the screen play and Teco Benson, who directed it for me,  gave it to one Bat Hills,  a banker,  to edit it, and he did it overnight. Blood Diamonds came out very well but I can assure you I am a better writer now and my next effort in screen play would be better than Blood Diamonds. Many people have asked me to screen play for them but I can’t afford to add that to my busy chores. For now, I will confine myself to writing my movies.

Friday, May 28, 2021

International Criminal Court: An Early Warning For Nigerian Officials

 By Aloy Ejimakor

The Rome Statute is the international treaty that founded the International Criminal Court. Comprising of 13 parts, it establishes the governing framework for the Court. Adopted at the Rome Conference on July 17, 1998, it came into force on July 1, 2002, thereby creating the International Criminal Court. The Statute sets out the Court’s jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and – as of an amendment in 2010 – the crime of aggression.

Nigeria has ratified the Statute, thus making the Nigerian State and non-state actors subject to the jurisdiction of ICC. The Nigerian State means its President and his appointees, especially the heads of the security agencies, their commanders, officers and the other ranks under them. It also includes governors and all personnel working under their authority, directly or indirectly.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Nigeria, Xenophobia and Afrocentricism

By DAN AMOR
In 2005, a new diplomatic law was introduced in South Africa which compelled travelers from Nigeria and a few other countries, to meet certain transit visa requirements before stepping into that country. Those other countries include Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Bangladesh and Sierra Leone. Other countries affected by the law were India, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia, China, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan and Kenya. Principally, the anti-visitor law was targeting Nigeria. This shows that xenophobia is an official state policy of the South African government. There is indeed nothing wrong with the idea of an independent country choosing who her visitors should be and who should not.
Yet, it is not only a diplomatic shortsightedness but also a demonstration of chronic ingratitude for South Africa not to recognize her benefactors. It also shows, to a large extent, the limpid docility in the mindset of those at the commanding height of that country's diplomacy.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

President Buhari And The Irresistible Allures Of Lagos!

By Olugbenga David
On Thursday, after commissioning a bus stop - Ghana will in May, commission their new and futuristic Kotoka International Airport - in paralysed Lagos, President Buhari went to the main event that brought him to Lagos, the Bola Tinubu Day, which has now been surreptitiously made into a national holiday.
 
*President Buhari, Bola Tinubu, Oluremi
Tinubu, during Buhari's visit to Lagos
And while Mr. President was attending events to mark this birthday, the Army was burying 11 soldiers in a very lowkey funeral in Kaduna. The soldiers were killed at Birnin Gwari, Kaduna State, several days earlier, reportedly by late Buharin Daji’s murderous bandit group.

This was the same day also, that dozens were killed, for the umpteenth time, in Zamfara, said to be by the same Buharin Daji’s murderous group. But the President did not care to even ask for a minute’s silence in honour of the murdered soldiers. Nor silence in honour of the poor peasants killed. He only had time and words of praise for the Jagaban Borgu, whose electoral value is suddenly attractive, valuable and desirable to the President. After all, 2019 elections are here, and John Odigie-Oyegun has no electoral value in the new turn of events and scheme of things. So the Jagaban must be vigorously courted, and be properly romanced.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Nigeria, Xenophobia And Afrocentricism

By Dan Amor
In 2005, a new diplomatic law was introduced in South Africa which compelled travelers from Nigeria and a few other countries to meet certain transit visa requirements before stepping into that country. Those other countries include Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Bangladesh and Sierra Leone. Other countries affected by the law were India, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia, China, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan and Kenya. Principally, the anti-visitor law was targeting Nigeria. This shows that xenophobia is an official state policy of the South African government.
 
*Zuma and Buhari
There is indeed nothing wrong with the idea of an independent country choosing who her visitors should be and who should not. Yet, it is not only a diplomatic shortsightedness but also a demonstration of chronic ingratitude for South Africa not to recognize her benefactors. It also shows, to a large extent, the limpid docility in the mindset of those at the commanding height of that country's diplomacy. Even when one can safely argue that the prolonged period of apartheid in South Africa virtually turned black natives of that country to psychopaths, it is a terrible malaise for black South Africans not to remember those who fought relentlessly for their freedom.
Of course, there is so much to say in the justification for the proclaimed Afrocentric foreign policy thrust of Nigeria. With about 180 million people, Nigeria's population is more than double of that of Egypt - the second most populous country in Africa; twenty-five times that of Benin Republic and thirty-five times that of Togo. This demographic edge is matched by comparatively high economic endowments, with Nigeria being, for instance, the sixth largest exporter of crude in the world. In terms of human capital development, there is no country in Africa that churns out the magnitude of graduates from institutions of higher learning like Nigeria.
It is, perhaps, in realization of this that the country has played a crucial role on the African political stage. For example, Nigeria helped in no small measure in dismantling apartheid in South Africa thereby earning the sobriquet of "a distant frontline state" during the struggle against white minority rule in the entire Southern Africa. She also played a decisive role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which metamorphosed into the African Union (AU) recently, and later the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) of which she continues to be a central player. More recently, Nigeria was the chief architect of the ECOMOG, the military wing of ECOWAS, which has successfully checked military aggression in some countries in the West African sub-region, notably, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Was Lai Mohammed The Man For The Job?

*Lai Mohammed
By Ochereome Nnanna
In 1996, when the first phase of the Liberian civil war was ending, one of the warlords, Brigadier General Yormie Johnson (who personally killed former dictator, the late President Samuel Doe) wrote a pamphlet where he recorded his random musings about the war and his philosophical attitudes to some issues connected thereto. He titled the book: The Gun That Liberates Should Not Rule.
His argument is that a liberator’s role is to remove the problem and then give way to those who have the capacity to correct it. If the gun that liberates mounts the throne, it will turn the liberator into a dictator. While most of the warlords who drove away Doe from power (such as Charles Taylor) jostled for leadership, Johnson simply came to Lagos to cool his heels, perhaps, his own way of walking his talk. His postulations were later proved right, because Charles Taylor went on to become an even deadlier dictator than Doe and today, answers for his crimes at the Hague.
However, there are those who would fiercely disagree with Johnson’s argument. They would ask: What is the point of putting your hide on the line to drive away the perceived source of a nation’s problems if you cannot pick the courage to show you can do better? The tendency of most people who participate in getting rid of an entrenched ruling class is to entertain the feeling of legitmate entitlement to be part of the government that replaces it. Let’s face it: The 2015 presidential election was historic. The removal of a ruling party from power through the polls rather than through the gun barrel was hitherto seen as an impossibility in our political cosmos. But it happened.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed was the voice of the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), which performed the feat of dethroning the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). You and I know that during elections, the truth is usually forced on a compulsory leave by all contestants. What remain are cleverly dressed-up falshood, hyperboles, false promises, false statistics, angelic characterisation of mere mortals and their dressing up in borrowed robes, diversion of attention from things that matter and the playing up of inanities to fool the gullible voter; in short, PROPAGANDA and its sly accoutrements.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Is Robert Mugabe’s Fall Symbolic?

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

Not a few across the world are convinced that it has become completely impossible to feel any sympathy for President Robert Mugabe no matter what happens to him. Mugabe’s 35-year old rule which has rewarded Zimbabweans with untold hardship has continued to defy any attempt at rationalization.













Robert Mugabe tripped and fell at Harare Airport 

But when he tripped on a red carpeted staircase last Wednesday (February 4, 2015) and came crashing down to the ground as he descended a podium at the Harare International Airport after addressing a very enthusiastic crowd of Zimbabweans, I could not help nursing some discomfort over the prompt, massive celebrations that greeted the accident across the world. I almost found myself agreeing with the Zimbabwean Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, that the global bacchanal over Mugabe’s tumble amounted to “morbid celebrations.”  

Mugabe must have been in a very pleasant mood that Wednesday. He had just returned from the 24th African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa where, despite stiff oppositions from Civil Society organisations, he was crowned the new Chairman of the 54-nation body, a position that would now afford him a more elevated platform to periodically deliver well-aimed sound bites to the West, his mortal enemies.

Also, as his plane touched down in Harare and he saw such a large crowd of supporters waiting to receive him, he must have reassured himself that his western antagonists would once more get the message he has been trying hard to send across to them, namely, that he is still in power because Zimbabweans want him. 

Friday, December 17, 2010

I Wanted to Unmask Charles Taylor in My Film, Says, Sam Kargbo, Producer of 'Blood Diamonds'

Lawyer, law teacher, social commentator and film maker, Sam Kargbo is many things to many people. Although a regular TV guest on many topical issues and a newspaper columnist,  Kargbo carries about his life with utmost modesty. He loves his beautiful wife from Akwa Ibom State and adores his mentors with a passion. He is the maker of Blood Diamonds, arguably one of the highest budget films in Nollywood, the Nigerian Home Video Industry. Yet, he insists film making is just an avenue for him to pass his message across to a target audience. In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE (February 2005), he talks about his involvement in film making and the bold efforts of private investors that have taken the good image of Nigeria across continents.

Excerpts:


Sam Kargbo on Channels TV

Most people are familiar with Sam Kargbo the lawyer, not the script writer and film producer, at what point did this other side of you come up?

Monday, December 13, 2010

Liberia: The Willis Knuckles Saga

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

There are quite a number of lessons to be learnt from the scandal which hit the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Administration in Liberia recently, and which resulted in the resignation of the highly influential Acting Chief of Staff, Minister Willis D. Knuckles jnr. One of the country’s tabloids, The Independent, had published the nude picture of Mr. Knuckles in a revolting threesome sexual act with two women, thus provoking a national outrage and widespread calls for the resignation of Knuckles, whose office was also known as Acting Minister of Presidential Affairs.

















President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf And Mr. Willis Knuckles 

At first, Knuckles thought he could manage the crises, by trying to point accusing fingers at different directions. At a hurriedly arranged press briefing at the Conference Room of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia on February 19, Knuckles declared that “the perpetrators of this act along with a certain female legislator have distributed copies of the photograph with the intent of embarrassing me socially and inflicting political damage to the government given my current political position.” 

Although Knuckles did not call any names or accuse anyone directly, there were reports that he strongly believed the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep Edwin Melvin Snowe and his wife, Mardea White Snowe, were responsible for his predicament.  Moreover, during the press conference, at which he refused to take any questions, he made references to Mr. Snowe and his wife in ways that suggested he strongly suspected them. 

A week before Knuckles’ travails commenced, Speaker Snowe had been forced to resign from office and he had accused an unnamed “senior minister” of bribing the lawmakers to ease him out. He had given the “senior minister” one week to publicly declare his role in the bribery allegation or he would also deal with him in his own way.

“If he does not make public everything he knows about this alleged bribery at the House of Representatives, I will expose him”, Snowes told newsmen some minutes before he handed in his resignation letter.

Despite his refusal to name the “senior minister” in question, FrontPageAfrica (FPA) News reported that Snowe’s aides had told it that Knuckles was the “senior minister” their boss was referring to.

On his part, Knuckles stated that Snowe had pleaded with him to stop opposing him, but instead intervene to salvage his sinking political ship. He said Snowes and his wife had informed him about the existence of the nude, obscene photograph and had threatened to make it public if refused to accede to Snowe’s request.

“I rejected their overtures and suddenly, since his (Snowe’s) resignation as Speaker, copies [of the nude photograph] have appeared everywhere…Now for whatever political or other ends the perpetrator wishes to achieve, my private life is being drawn into the short and inglorious end of someone else’s public life,” Knuckles said at the press conference.

 The FPA had also reported that Snowe had wanted to use the threats of releasing the indecent photograph to the public to blackmail Knuckles into using his influence with President Johnson-Sirleaf to halt investigations into his tenure at the Liberian Petroleum Refinery Corporation. But Knuckles had told him that the matter was already before the world, and there was nothing he could do at that stage to save him.

But the Chief of Staff to the former Speaker, Darius Dillon, has scoffed at Mr. Knuckles’ accusations. “I think the question Mr. Knuckles should be asking is: Is the immoral person in the photo me? … That is the substance of the matter, it is not who set it up. He went and did his immoral act, now he must bear the consequences,” Dillon told FPA.

 
Executive Mansion, Monrovia, Liberia

As the offensive picture began to widely circulate in Liberia and on the internet, calls for Mr. Knuckles’ head poured out from embarrassed Liberians within and outside the country. Rufus S. Berry 11, for instance, writing in the February 26 edition of the Atlanta, Georgia-based The Perspective, stated that “As the former President of the Liberian Community Association Of Northern California (LCANC), with more than 5,000 Liberians, a recent unscientific poll showed that the vast majority of the people view Mr. Knuckles’ resignation or termination as in the best interest of the country.”  The article was addressed to President Johnson-Sirleaf.  There were more virulent condemnations of Mr. Knuckles’ misconduct and calls for his resignation. 

For President Johnson-Sirleaf, the scandal represented a very sad setback. She was faced with two unattractive choices, to either sack Knuckles and lose an invaluable hand or retain him and be tarred by his moral problems. In a nationwide broadcast on February 25 however, she said she had “accepted today, with regrets, the resignation”  of Knuckles, “which he offered not because of demands from those who sought to use this unfortunate situation for blackmail and who should probably review their own moral probity.” Mr. Knuckles, she said, “has been a friend and close associate for many years”, but by the unfortunate incident that had occurred, he has brought “to his family and friends much pain, but one which should not be allowed to tarnish his long years and commitment to our beloved country.”

On his part Knuckles said: “I must express regrets to my wife of 37 years, my children, my mother, and all my other relatives, my boss, the President, my pastor and my church, my co-workers in government and all my friends, associates and others in the general public to whom this episode has come as a pointless embarrassment.”

As I followed the sad story of Mr. Knuckles’ downfall, I began ask myself whether he would have bothered to even address the issue, if he was from my own country. In a country like Liberia, described by one of its citizens, Rufus S. Berry 11, as having “a chronic, pervasive problem with sexual immorality”, I am amazed that a national outrage could attend the shameful misbehaviour of Mr. Knuckles, although, there were muffled noises here and there about “human rights” like the one contained in the unedifying article by Professor (Ms.) Francien Chenoweth Dorliae, in the March 3 article of The Perspective. A public officer need not be told that there is a minimum standard of conduct expected of him, and that he loses the right to behave anyhow once he is appointed into such an office.
Again, as role models and people that are always in the public eye, public officers should endeavour to conduct themselves in ways and manners that do not constitute damaging examples to society, especially the youth.


Whether done out of contrition or due to unbearable pressure from the public, however, Mr. Knuckles must be saluted for his courage and decision to tread the high ground of standing down from his post, and openly apologizing for his misbehaviour (a quality that is extremely scarce in my own country).

Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf who is pioneering a new Liberia deserves our commendation too. She said in her broadcast that she accepted Knuckles’ resignation “because first, I have sworn to uphold high standards in my own behaviour and have made it clear to my staff and others that they will be held accountable for the same standards, and second, because I am in full agreement with those who do speak with moral authority that the behaviour of Minister Knuckles, while not illegal, is improper and inappropriate for a public servant.”



  
In Nigeria, all sorts of verifiable scandalous stories explode daily on the faces of public servants, and they simply shrug it off and move on to more hideous acts. Public officers are openly called thieves today in Nigeria for very clear and justifiable reasons, yet they still shuffle about in the limelight with sickening flamboyance, grinning from ear to ear. Liberia is teaching us with the Knuckles affair that the conscience of its people has not been seared by a terrible war, and that whatever image someone may have had about them before now as a “sex-obsessed” and “horribly corrupt” country is already being put behind them. With this, they do not need a multi-million naira Image Project to whitewash their image abroad!

When will Nigeria commence its own cleansing? When will leaders accused of very horrible crimes (as opposed to Knuckles “legal” misbehaviour) shed their thick skin and bow out? Will Liberia also get there before us?

Only last Sunday (March 4), Senator Iyabo Anisulowo (Ogun West) was reported in the Sunday Sun as saying that the “PDP is full of filthy men who only support women politicians that could offer themselves in illicit sexual affairs…”

She revealed how a certain powerful national leader of the party had “refused to support me because I  refused to offer him my body. The man does not even appeal to me… I left the party because of immoral acts and anti-progressive elements in the party. I can’t give my body to any idiot, any filthy person… it is their stock in trade in PDP. I refused to do what my children would not like to see me do.”

Talking about the Ogun State Deputy Governor, Alhaja Salmat Badru, Anisulowo said: “She needed a job very badly, she used whatever she has to get it, and she has gotten it.”

Dear reader, I am surprised that all the men and women in high positions in the PDP whose reputations this devastating statement has raised serious doubts about are yet to rush out to distance themselves from the “sex-for-position” racket allegedly thriving in the PDP, and equally dare the Ogun West senator to be more explicit to prove her point convincingly. I am surprised that the national leaders of the PDP, especially, those who share geographical proximity with Senator Anisulowo, and the bevy of “powerful women” in several strategic positions in both the “largest party in Africa” and the “women friendly government” in Abuja, are yet to come out to denounce her statement and even seek to probe the allegation to see whether this kind of repelling practice reigns in the PDP.   I wonder! May be, it doesn’t matter.

Now, back to Monrovia. The one-year ban clamped on The Independent which had published the former minister’s obscene photograph, by the Liberian government has attracted wide international attention, and mostly condemnation. The action is very unpopular and capable of soiling the good image of Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf is trying to cultivate for her country.


GIRLS AT WAR: It Was That Bad In Liberia

 But Liberian Information Minster, Lawrence Bropleh, is saying the ban “has nothing to do with Minister Knuckles.  This has something to do with ethics of journalism. This has to do with understanding that when you’re in a civilized society, you do not publish pornography in a regular newspaper.”

This is a very familiar line, dredged up by the government’s information organ to justify and an unwholesome act. Interestingly, the Liberian government has apologized for the arbitrary closure of the newspaper, when a siege was laid on its premises by security agents, an action that was sternly condemned by the Liberia Press Union (PUL) and several international agencies. Spokesman for the government, Gabriel I.H. Williams, was quoted by the Inquirer (Monrovia) as saying that “such an act will not be repeated. We have learnt our lesson… what we are saying is that this government subscribes to the rule of law, democratic governance and free press.” 

For those of us in Nigeria, it is strange to hear that a government, especially one headed by the “father of modern Nigeria”, can bring itself to apologize for its (mis)behaviour.  Such an “abnormal” conduct is totally alien to the militarized sensibilities of the grand emperors that rule us from Abuja.

 But the Liberian Government can win more friends if it also lifts the ban and restore the operating license of The Independent. If it feels that the paper’s conduct had breached any of the Liberian laws, as it is claiming, it should go to court. That is a more civilized and decent option, which we have continued to insist that those that rule in Nigeria adopt too.

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Thursday, March 8, 2007