Behold General Buhari's Contemporaries!

By Dan Amor
They were all members of a departed era, apostles of a dying generation — a generation that raped Mother Africa to this pariah and prostrate status. Members of the clan of military dictators in Africa were many but for space management, we may mention just a few who were as brutal as General Muhamadu Buhari was before his regime was halted by General Ibrahim Babangida in August 1985. 

*Gen Buhari

At their commanding height was Gnassingbe Eyadema who in January 1963 organized the first military coup in Africa to overthrow the government of President Sylvanus Olympio. Eyadema assumed full power in 1967 and ruled till 2005 when he died. Before his death, he had groomed his son to assume the mantle of leadership in that tiny West African country like a dynasty. 

There is Paul Biya of Cameroon who came to power since November 6, 1982. There was a Charles Taylor, leader of the rebel group known as National Patriotic Front of Liberia(NPFL), one of the groups that forced erstwhile dictator Samuel Doe out of office. Taylor who committed a lot of war crimes and crimes against humanity over which he was jailed in 2012 by the International Court of Justice at The Hague, ruled Liberia between 1997 and 2003. Also, there is Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, one of the most treacherous dictators in the world today. He has been declared wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity since 2008 having embarked on ethnic cleansing like the late Adolf Hitler of Germany.

2015 Nigerian Elections: Jonathan Will Not Win!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

                                                      

It is my considered opinion that President Goodluck Jonathan will not win the February 14, 2015 presidential election. But then, he will NOT also lose. And if Jonathan is declared winner after the votes had been cast and counted, it would not be because the people voted massively for him. It would be that Nigerians trooped out to overwhelmingly vote against the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. 

*Jonathan

Although, President Jonathan has performed far better than his predecessors in office, especially, his arch-critic, former President Olusegun Obasanjo (who went all out to impoverish and ground the country despite the unprecedented earnings that poured into the treasury during his tenure from oil exports) and whose regime brazenly institutionalized corruption (thereby, proving that it was indeed possible to beat the solid record left by the Ibrahim Babangida military regime), what cannot be  denied is that Jonathan could have done far better than he has done. But, sadly, the APC whose candidate is Jonathan’s major challenger is just incapable of inspiring confidence. Although labouring to present themselves as the “face of change,” the APC people only succeed in making Jonathan more appealing to the people by the way they conduct themselves and their campaign.

And despite all the resources and efforts the party has deployed to market itself as an alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has only succeeded in solidifying the egregious impression that it is nothing other than the PDP’s dustbin, where mostly frustrated and disgruntled PDP members seek refuge and are heartily received no matter their past records.

Mocking Jesus And The Poor As We Celebrate

By Banji Ojewale 

In Nigeria’s Northern State of Gombe, a crowd of excited citizens at a motor park clusters around a bus revving to take them to a holiday destination for Christmas and New Year celebrations. But a female Jihadist bomber thinks otherwise. Feigning to be passenger, she sneaks into their midst and detonates the lethal luggage on her body. She is blown into a thousand and one pieces. Scores of others suffer the same fate. Those who don’t die instantly, will die slowly, maimed, scarred and glued to gory memories of anguish for life. Are they luckier than those who experience prompt dispatch to the great beyond?

(pix:tvcnews)

Same scene in Bauchi: at the town‘s busy central market, an explosion rocks the shops and sheds, sparking an inferno that kills many of those shopping for Christmas and New Year. Health personnel race the wounded and the dead away in ambulances to medical centers and mortuaries. Global news agency, Reuters, tells the world “there are unknown numbers of casualties” in the tragedy.

Is Buhari The End Of Tinubu Politics?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

One of the most astounding surprises of the current political dispensation is the ease with which the National Leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has allowed himself to be convinced that in the event of a General Muhammadu Buhari win in the February 2015 presidential election, that there would still be anything like another “national leader” of the APC aside from Buhari himself.

Bola Tinubu and Buhari

I have not read the APC constitution, but even if there is a provision in it fueling such a grand assumption, such an office can only exist in name. It would amount to the greatest delusion of the century to imagine that any other “national leader” can co-exist with the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Resources, and that such a “national leader” would still be able the wield enormous influence and retain the loyalty of the governors, other elected officials and party leaders, even those he anointed and installed who had all along been very loyal to him.     

Now, no matter your view about Tinubu, you cannot accuse him of lacking in political shrewdness. One readily remembers what happened during the build-up to the 2003 elections when President Olusegun Obasanjo deployed a very simple, well-worn “we-are-brothers” strategy at the famous meeting with the leaders and “elders” of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Lagos and changed the political equation in the South West in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The only governor who survived that great onslaught which prepared the ground for the untimely death of the AD was Bola Tinubu of Lagos State. And from the rubble of that “earthquake,” Tinubu built what later became the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which surprised many people with the kind of progress it recorded within a very short time.    

But as things stand now, would it be safe to describe the APC as Tinubu’s last political gamble? Or is there something the man knows that he is not telling us? Is it likely that his interest might even be in 2019 instead of 2015? Could it be that having failed to persuade Buhari to give up his very problematic ambition, Tinubu has merely agreed to back him fully convinced that he would fail? And since everyone knows that this is Buhari’s “last card,” Tinubu can now persuade him to remain a “father figure” in the APC in order to retain his supporters up-North and then prepare the party for a real electoral contest with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019? Because, it is difficult to imagine that the Tinubu we all know would just open his eyes and enter into an arrangement that would make him lose in a moment the enormous political clout he has worked so hard to accumulate just because he wants to witness a Buhari presidency!  

Okay, let us look at the issues involved. No matter how we choose to view it, the APC is nothing but an assemblage of strange bedfellows with clearly conflicting narrow interests held together by the secret hope in each person (or group) to outsmart and use the other to achieve his (or its) own personal agenda. In the APC, we have the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) which derived its strength and following from the deep conviction in the North that its leader, Buhari, could be a reliable tool for the gratification of the hard-to-disguise   desperation of the core North to take back “its power”. The defunct New-PDP, the second group that came together with others to form the APC, is, however, very easy to describe. 

It emerged from the sentiment fueled at that time by the Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, (who incidentally is still in the PDP and one of President Goodluck Jonathan’s strongest supporters in the North) that it was the time of the North to produce Nigeria’s president. And so it had no other agenda except the realization of a president of Northern extraction. And that is why the unduly loud presence of the Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi in that group (who was reportedly seduced by a “vice presidential carrot” dangled before him by Northern political strategists in order to use him against Jonathan in the Niger Delta to return power to the North) looked (and still looks) quite ridiculous to many people. We, also, have the defunct ACN led by Tinubu which saw in the North’s mad quest for power (as represented by the CPC and the New-PDP) an attractive opportunity to play on the national league – to lead a party whose influence and presence could be felt everywhere across the nation.

*Jonathan 

On its part, too, the “Bring-Back-Our-Power” groups within and outside the APC easily   saw in Tinubu an opportunity to use the ACN’s South-West’s supporters to realize their undisguised agenda. But to conceal their real, individual interests, these groups found a ready, mutual target in President Jonathan. And as they direct all their energy and focus on Jonathan whom they are attacking relentlessly, each is able to remove attention from its own motive and moves. Everyone is waiting for the right moment to remove his own mask.  That was why it was so easy for the APC to agree that their presidential candidate should come from the core-North. (Forget the suspicious appearance by Rochas Okorocha at the primaries).

That was also why the North could easily concede virtually every important and powerful post in the APC to others once they secured the assurance that the presidential candidate would not just be one of them, but one fully trusted to shun all pretenses and “political correctness” to emerge and act as a truly “Northern president”! And again, that is why no one has raised any objections to Tinubu’s continued reference as the “National Leader” even after the ACN where he firmly held that post had ceased to exist. They know that raising eyebrows now is a needless distraction. The preoccupation now is to put Buhari in Aso  Rock and every other thing will fall in place and every water will find its level.      

What further compounds matters for Tinubu and the South-West he is trying to pull along with him is what Buhari truly represents despite what some pundits are telling us. The Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Ahaji Ibrahim Coomasie, did not mince words when he said:  “I am the Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum and we have said it before, but we are reiterating it, that we are going to support the northern candidate. The APC has voted a northern candidate, so we are going to support him 100 per cent. So, Buhari is our candidate for the 2015 presidential election.” 

Northern leaders have never been able to conceal the sole motivation behind their stiff opposition against Jonathan. That is why no matter all he has done in the North all they want is for him to go away and hand over not just to anyone, but a person from the North. And not even a person from the Middle-Belt or a Christian from the North is good enough! That is the truth many people know but would never admit.

Indeed, if this election is about the possession of better ideas and competence, why on earth would any sincere, rational person be presenting Buhari as the alternative to Jonathan? The only coherent thing I have heard from Buhari since he indicated interest to run for president is that “the PDP government has failed.” Of course, anybody can say that – it does not require even a less-than average brain to be able to say it. Then he would start rolling out a catalogue of what he would do if elected president including a promise to “stabilize the oil market”! If I did not hear this myself during a Channels TV interview (still available on youtube), I would not have believed anyone hoping to be taken seriously would say such a thing. But that’s Buhari for you. Is he going to issue another Decree 2 to regulate OPEC activities? Okay, that aside, what are his strategies for achieving all the paradise-on-earth he is promising? No one has heard him utter a single one!

In the interview he granted an online medium, TheCable in October 2014, a very simple question was asked Buhari to outline his policy direction, to show how he would do things differently from the current president whom he has been criticizing and recover the country as he has been promising. When he failed to give any coherent answer, the question was rephrased  two more times, yet the Daura General just left what he was asked and continued saying every other thing that entered his head except the answers required from him.

Buhari announced the other day that if elected president, he will gather some other generals together to help him devise a strategy for ending the Boko Haram menace; in other words, right now, he has no idea how to end the security problem for which he and his party has fiercely attacked the present administration and which they have also made the backbone of the Buhari campaign. Given the very ugly developments (and his own pronouncements) in the course of his collection and submission of his N27.5 million naira APC nomination forms which grossly discoloured his so-called anti-graft credentials, and how dollars reportedly competed with naira to buy him delegates at the APC convention in Lagos, how can anyone possibly invest trust in Buhari’s ability to fight corruption given these early signs? Okay, his party has said that all public officers that looted the treasury in the past would not be bothered by a Buhari regime, but only new thieves would be dealt with, is he now saying that all those APC stalwarts (it was reported that a certain Southern governor was his biggest financier) who poured out all those wads of naira, dollars and pounds to generously bribe the APC delegates to vote him would not want to recoup their investments, plus the profits? Can Buhari say in all sincerity that he was not aware that corrupt elected officials and party moneybags deployed huge piles of public and private funds to outspend his co-contestants to purchase him the APC presidential ticket as was widely reported in the media?  Now, assuming he was not aware, when he found out later, what did he do? Did he try to distance himself from the horrendous sleaze? Was this what informed the pledge to not probe past corrupt public officers who had looted the treasure pale?    

I do not believe that those pushing Buhari into our faces are just being motivated by an Anything-But-Jonathan mindset. Indeed, they know exactly why they want to foist him on us, and they have not been able  to hide it. It is the army of “brilliant analysts” in the Lagos media that are overstretching their optimism and unduly embellishing very clearly declared intentions to confuse themselves.

If then Buhari proves book makers wrong and wins the presidency, it is difficult to see how the Ango Abdullahi-led Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and other fire-spiting “Bring-Back-Our-Power” warriors who will immediately form a ring around him can tolerate another “national leader” calling the shots out there or the interest of those he is pulling along with him.  One only hopes that this merger which is clearly a bad marriage still held intact by the anticipated realizations of private interests is not a disaster waiting to happen which, perhaps, only the failure of the APC in the February election will save us from?    

Also, those who have chosen to relapse into convenient amnesia and are busy celebrating the emergence of Prof Yemi Osibajo as Buhari’s running mate should hasten to recall the kind of vice president Jonathan was for Yar’Adua, how a tiny cabal ruled Nigeria in place of an unconscious president after brutally shutting out the vice president and threatening fire and brimstone against anyone who dared to suggest that their “son” was simply too incapacitated to continue to rule Nigeria. The constitution has not changed on the status of the vice president. He is still a “spare tire,” and would be even more so in a Buhari presidency.

So, could it be that the Asiwaju of Lagos is taking his followers, especially, in the South-West on a road that leads nowhere instead of, perhaps, exercising a little patience to give the ACN a little more time to grow and gather more weight and then really confront the PDP? Is he stretching optimism beyond its malleable limit? Or could it be that he has his own secret plan for beating in their own game those scheming to use, outwit, and relegate him? Indeed, we have interesting times ahead of us.

------------------------

*Ejinkeonye is a columnist with Daily Independent newspaper where this article was first published. (scruples2006@yahoo.com) Twitter:@ugowrite  

Why Should I Read Obasanjo’s Book?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

I must congratulate myself on successfully avoiding virtually all of Gen Olusegun Obasanjo’s usually ego-massaging and attention-craving books. I have, for instance, NOT read Obasanjo’s My Command, Not My Will, Nzeogwu, and his other little-known titles.

*Olusegun Obasanjo

(pix: magazine.tcu)

But when his first wife, Mrs. Oluremi Obasanjo, published her book, Bitter-Sweet: My Life With Obasanjo, I went through a lot of stress to purchase a copy. I also wasted no time to read and review it.  Obasanjo had been talking about other people and cutting them down with self-righteous zeal, so I wanted to hear what somebody who had intimately shared a greater part of his life had to say about him.  Indeed, this is one book Obasanjo would not like to be in circulation. But   most people who have read the book would readily recommend it as a background study to anyone interested in reading Obasanjo’s books where he usually presents himself as one of the world’s most righteous human beings and competent leaders. Like one reviewer said and I agree, in societies where the law is alive and active and treats everyone equally, “the allegations against Obasanjo [in that book], if proven in a court of law, would have earned him a long stay in jail.”    

Now, Obasanjo has published another book which he called My Watch and I seriously doubt that I would want to read it. There are several wonderful books lying in my study and begging for my attention, so I would consider it a complete waste of my time to read Obasanjo’s new book, which judging from the snippets published in the media is nothing more than unappetizing potpourri of cassava-market gossip, careless hawking of vicious, libelous allegations, and further futile attempt at self-canonization. His aim, it appears, is to settle some scores with his real or imagined adversaries, undermine President Jonathan’s chances in the February 2015 elections and raise an ear-deafening controversy that would turn the book into an instant best-seller.

Under Obasanjo’s Watch

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo released his autobiography, My Watch, on Tuesday, December 9 at the Lagos Country Club, Ikeja.

President Jonathan and Obasanjo 

He defied an Abuja High Court order obtained by a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Buruji Kashamu, barring him from releasing the book. Rather than obey the order, Obasanjo wanted Justice Valentine Ashi sanctioned.   The judge had ordered that the book launch be put on hold over claims by Kashamu that the three-volume series contained details of a libel case involving a drug trafficking allegation Obasanjo made against him, which is already before the court.  Obasanjo’s excuse that the book had been published before the order was made is as ludicrous as it is bizarre.

But that is quintessential Obasanjo, who has no respect for others, who revels in desecrating hallowed institutions.   Holding him in contempt of court, Ashi on Wednesday, December 10 gave him 21 days to demonstrate why he should not be punished for publishing the book.  

“The fact that the book was published in November is irrelevant. As long as the substantive suit is not yet determined, no party is entitled to publish or comment on material facts that are yet to be decided on by the court,” the judge said.  

Convicted, Executed For Murder At 14, Exonerated 70 Years Later

It took 70 years, but a 14-year-old African American boy from Alcolu, South Carolina who was executed for allegedly killing two white girls has now been exonerated of murder.

George Stinney Jr

In a ruling issued Wednesday by Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen, the murder conviction against George Stinney was vacated over concerns that the young boy’s constitutional right to a fair trial was violated to the point that his name should be cleared, WIS TV reported.

Stinney, who was so small at the time of his execution by electric chair that he had to sit on a phone book, is often cited as the youngest American to be put to death by the state in the 20th century.

During his trial in 1944, Stinney’s white lawyer did not present witnesses or cross-examine witnesses presented by the prosecution. In 2009, Stinney’s sister claimed in an affidavit that her brother could not have killed the two young girls because he was with her at the time their deaths occurred.

Guinea’s Other Emergency: Organising Elections

Africa Briefing N°106

Guinea's President Alpha Conde

OVERVIEW

Guinea is due to hold presidential elections in 2015. The country’s electoral history, the failure of dialogue between the government and the opposition and the indefinite postponement of local elections originally scheduled for early 2014 are all bad omens. With a divided political scene split along ethnic lines, and in the grip of an Ebola epidemic that has weakened Guinea’s economy, the government has two options. It can either promote dialogue and establish a credible framework for the second free presidential election in the country’s history, a framework that could include a negotiated postponement; or run the risk of instability and inter-ethnic violence. Given its control of institutions and the political timetable, it must work with the opposition and international partners to build minimum consensus on electoral arrangements in order to reduce the risk of violent protests in the lead up to, during or after the vote.

Such a consensus must be stronger than the one reached for the September 2013 legislative elections, held after a delay of almost three years. Those polls were preceded by fierce controversy and violent demonstrations. Although the conduct of the vote was peaceful, the opposition accused the government of fraud and called for the elections to be annulled. Many foreign observers questioned the integrity of the polls. The government managed to contain tensions only because the opposition felt that legislative elections were of secondary importance, and because international partners mediated between the two sides.

Obasanjo Lies Like A Badly Raised Child - Gen Alabi-Isama

I implore Obasanjo to stop lying before he dies...

By Godwin Alabi-Isama

I am gravely pained to be trading words with General Olusegun Obasanjo once again on the history of Nigeria-Biafra War. He is an elder and a former ruler who, ordinarily, should be treated with utmost respect.

*Alabi-Isama (pix: vanguard)

But how can one genuinely respect an old man who tells lies like a badly raised child? Obasanjo has obviously not recovered from the shock inflicted on him by my book, The Tragedy of Victory in which I exposed the tissues of lies in his civil war memoir, My Command. It is said that a lie may travel for a thousand miles, but it takes just one step of truth to catch up with it.

I’m alive to stand up to him on the lies he has told on the war because I was a major participant in it.  I kept records.  With facts and figures at my finger tips, I have debunked Obasanjo’s lies in part three of my book, consisting of one hundred and sixty five pages, sixty nine pictures, thirteen military strategies and tactics, maps and documents.  This was the same Obasanjo who published a fake Federal Government gazette that I was found guilty by the Army when I was never tried.  I have proved that Obasanjo was an incompetent commander. I have proved that he was a wily and cunning fellow, and an incredible opportunist who reaped where he did not sow.

I have proved that he was an ingrate and a hypocrite. More importantly, I have proved that he was a coward, who ran away from the war front to go and look for phantom ammunition.  Rather than respond to my claims the way a gallant officer should, he has now responded like a motor-park tout, impugning my person and questioning my ethnic lineage. I never said I was from Ibadan. I only schooled there.

The Central African Republic's Hidden Conflict

International Crisis Group
- NEW BRIEFING

Away from the international spotlight, the Central African Republic’s rural areas are turning into fields of violence as war over territory and livestock hits a highly vulnerable population, with effects increasingly felt in neighbouring Cameroon and Chad.

“The country’s crisis has exacerbated old conflicts and produced new ones. Rural Central African Republic is now the stage for a violent competition over livestock, the wealth of the poor”.

Thibaud Lesueur, Crisis Group’s Central Africa Analyst

In its latest briefing, The Central African Republic’s Hidden Conflict, the International Crisis Group examines a dangerous conflict-within-a-conflict requiring urgent action by the transitional government and its international partners. Targeted by anti-balaka militias and ex-Seleka fighters, many pastoralist communities are left in extreme poverty and forced to flee. Tens of thousands cross the border to Cameroon and Chad where, in turn, land pressure intensifies. Many of the victims seek retribution or join armed groups to survive, becoming actors in a conflict that divides communities and damages a pillar of the traditional economy.

The Gospel According To St. Obasanjo (1)

By Dan Amor 

For all it may be worth, the last tirade against President Goodluck Jonathan by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, is certainly one of the salvos intended to weaken the support base of the President as his enemies led by Obasanjo plan to hit him below the belt. But the reactions of Nigerians of varied backgrounds to Obasanjo's old tricks show that Nigerians are no fools. The people's condemnation of Obasanjo's arrant hypocrisy has been overwhelming. The first reaction came from no less a personality than the traditional ruler of Lagos, His Majesty Oba Rilwan Akiolu,  who said that Obasanjo's government was the most corrupt in the history of Nigeria. The respected monarch cannot be more correct. Amidst Obasanjo's catalogue of anti-corruption verbal interventions, the question that now begs for an urgent answer is: is Obasanjo among the Saints? 

*Obasanjo

Due largely to the lamentable short memory of homosepiens, it seems as though we have forgotten so soon about the person of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and his recent past. But the poor boy from Owu Village in Ogun State was led by fortuitous and opportunistic circumstances to have a rendezvous with history and destiny. Against his will and command, Obasanjo became head of state after the assassination of his boss, General Murtala Muhammed. He was said to have been the man who launched Nigeria into the estranged comity of heavily indebted nations when he took the first ever N1 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan in 1978 when the Nigerian currency was 75 kobo to the United States dollar. It was said that more than half of this money was not accounted for by General Obasanjo while a fraction of it was left for the incoming administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in October 1979.

2015 Presidential Election: Where Are The Women?

By Banji Ojewale

In politics if you want anything said ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman – Margret Hilda Thatcher, ex-British Prime Minister

Last year the government in Romania heeded this counsel from the late British leader, Baroness Thatcher. The authorities, gravely worried by high profile corruption slowly killing the country, appointed a woman, Laura Codruta Kovesi, to man the nation’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Within a very short time this 41-year-old 1995 law graduate has turned the  formerly  quiescent agency into a viable attack dog mauling down those who had themselves been bringing down the economy and politics of Romania with their corrupt practices.

*Laura Codruta Kovesi

She has become the most feared public office holder on account of her exploits in an attempt to do what was thought to be impossible: battling graft in high places to a standstill and arresting its spread. Although as in Nigeria, she is horrified that the citizens have expressed  distaste for corruption, they still keep voting for politicians suspected or convicted of larceny.  “ It is extremely difficult to explain this contrast,” Kovesi laments.

But according to an international news magazine report last week, this depressing situation has not discouraged  the woman. A New York Times writer, Andrew Higgins, says: “Since Ms. Kovesi took over D.N.A last year, what was a trickle of high-profile arrests and prosecutions has become a flood. Nearly all have ended in convictions, with her prosecutors recording a success rate of over 90 percent.

Buhari Can Only Offer 'Tired Ideas, Provocative Utterances' - PDP

Press Statement

December 11, 2014

2015: PDP Welcomes Buhari To The Race, 

Insists Jonathan Is The Best 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has welcomed the emergence of former Military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari as the Presidential flagbearer of Bola Tinubu's All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 general elections.

*Buhari

This will be the fourth time General Buhari will be contesting in the presidential elections. On each of the three previous occasions, he failed to articulate a vision of the future that was acceptable to Nigerians. On each occasion his brand of politics was rejected across Nigeria. Apart from changing to a dinner suit, General Buhari, has not changed the tired ideas and provocative utterances that Nigerians rejected in previous elections.

We hope that this time round, General Buhari will conduct a campaign that is issue based and devoid of ethno-religious sentiments.

Obama: Racism ‘Deeply Rooted’ In U.S.

President Obama and his family several years ago

Addressing protests over minorities killed by police officers, President Obama said racism is “deeply rooted” in the U.S. and that activists should keep pressing steadily in their demands for reform.

“This is something that is deeply rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with BET, a portion of which was released Sunday. “When you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias … you’ve got to have vigilance but you have to recognize that it’s going to take some time, and you just have to be steady so you don’t give up when we don’t get all the way there.”

Mr. Obama held meetings at the White House last week with young civil-rights activists who are protesting the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer last August in Ferguson, Missouri.

Wole Soyinka's Demonization Of President Jonathan

By Dan Amor

In a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar, the Biblical autocrat and king of Babylon who initially denounced the Living Supreme God. Soyinka who addressed a press conference on the state of the nation at the popular Freedom Garden in Lagos, said that Jonathan is tyrannical because the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, stopped the attempt by the defected speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, to enter the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with thugs. The respected professor of dramatic literature who is clearly biased in his recent pronouncements given his current alignment with top leaders of the opposition political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), said so many unprintable things against the administration of President Jonathan. 

*President Jonathan and Prof Soyinka 

Indeed, the distinguished playwright is entitled to his opinion especially in a wide democratic space in which freedom of association and of speech is the norm. But it is unfortunate that the renowned literary icon could allow his judgment to be beclouded by ahistorical considerations. By this recent act of likening Jonathan to Nebuchadnezzar, Soyinka has come down from his Olympian height as a global citizen and statesman to the sheer pedestrian rabble of petty villainy and rancour. It is a pointer to the fact that every great intellectual has his weak points. Our own Kongi is no exception. Even with the unsavory political development in Anambra State in 2004 which led to the unfortunate withdrawal of the security personnel of former Governor Chris Ngige after his attempted abduction by the police, no Nigerian, not even Professor Chinua Achebe who rejected former President Olusegun Obasanjo's national award due to that crisis, went as far as comparing the former President with Nebuchadnezzar.