Sunday, February 8, 2015

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15
 Is this one of them?
Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?
Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:
“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”
That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.
Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?

Friday, February 6, 2015

A Humbling Reality!

By Banji 0jewale

One day in the very near future, naysayers of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency are going to be confronted with the greatest and indisputable evidence of their error and ignorance: the aircraft in which they travel to take care of their vast business empire straddling the length and breadth of Nigeria and sometimes across our shores will be handled by pilots trained under the Amnesty scheme of the Jonathan Administration! When their jets and helicopters would have flown safely through the turbulence of the sky and landed to the applause of both the passengers and loved ones waiting to receive them at well-lit airports maintained by electricians including trainees of the Amnesty school, the critics would be humbled by a numbing reality: Jonathan isn’t “clueless” after all!

















*President Jonathan

But it is not only in that field the president has confounded his captious compatriots. In education he has become the first president of Nigeria to address the vexatious issue of federal universities being the exclusive preserve of some states. By causing the establishment of nine of such institutions in the states that had none, Jonathan has ensured that each state in Nigeria now has at least one federal university either in existence or under actual construction.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Robert Mugabe Falls At Harare International Airport

As he left the podium after addressing supporters... 









Mugabe falls after addressing supporters at Harare
International Airport
Zimbabwe's 90-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, fell down a staircase Wednesday as he left the podium after a speech.
There was no indication Mugabe was hurt by the fall, and presidential spokesman George Charamba refused to discuss the incident with reporters.  
The president had just finished addressing supporters at Harare International Airport upon his return from an African Union summit in Ethiopia, where he was elected AU chairman.
Witnesses say Mugabe missed a step and fell while walking down the stairs. The president was helped to his feet by aides, who escorted him to a waiting car while dusting off his suit.
Video of the incident 

Security agents quickly rounded up journalists covering the event and ordered them to delete all pictures of Mugabe's fall.
Journalists have often complained of censorship in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 35 years.
Civil society groups opposed his election as AU chair because of alleged election rigging and human rights abuses.

2015 Presidential Election Issues (3)

By Chinweizu

Part II of “2015-- Between Liberation and Slavery (3)”
Copyright © by Chinweizu, 2015
 31jan15
A contribution to the Abuja symposium on “NATIONAL CONFAB AND THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS” on MONDAY, 2ND FEBRUARY  2015
VENUE: LAGOS/OSUN HALL, TRANSCORP HILTON HOTEL
-----------------------------
 ===========================================
2015 Presidential Election Issues
After that historical backgrounder, I shall now examine 4 election issues, the two on everybody’s mind —Corruption and Insecurity, with insecurity in the two forms of Boko Haram and The Fulani militia, plus two others that are not but should be on everybody’s mind namely, the 1999 Constitution—hereafter referred to as the Constitution; and Candidate Buhari.  So all in all I shall examine 5 distinct election issues: Corruption; Boko Haram; The Fulani Militia; the 1999 Constitution; Candidate Buhari.
------------------------------------------------
1] On Corruption, I submit that, under the Constitution, no President of Nigeria can tackle corruption without inviting impeachment, simply because corruption is encouraged and protected by the constitution which he is sworn to enforce.

2] On Boko Haram, I submit that it is partly funded through the structures of the Constitution and can’t be extinguished without first discarding the Constitution. I also submit that a military solution to Boko Haram is not possible under the Constitution.

3] On The Fulani Militia, I submit that it is an ethnic cleansing and land grabbing instrument of the Caliphate and a mortal danger to all other Nigerians, and that it can’t be curbed under the Constitution.

4] On the Constitution, I submit that it is the godfather of corruption, as well as the codification of the sources of all the vices that plague Nigeria, and that Nigeria cannot be reformed without discarding it. Though ostensibly democratic, its frauds make it a fake-democracy constitution.

5] On Candidate Buhari, I submit that he has neither the will nor the ability to discard the Constitution but has every reason to perpetuate it. Accordingly he can’t solve any of the problems whose solution requires discarding the Constitution. So, those who expect him to change Nigeria by solving these problems are taking themselves for a ride.
From these submissions I argue that because these top problems—Corruption, Insecurity in its Boko Haram and Fulani Militia forms--- can be solved only after scrapping the Constitution; so, the principal election issue becomes the Constitution itself and how to replace it.  Hence, this election should be decided by the answer the candidates give to just one question: What’s your program for replacing the Constitution?
I shall now discuss these submissions one by one.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Burkina Faso: Nine Months To Complete The Transition

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
Africa Report: No:222

















*Burkina Faso's Interim President Michel Kafando

Three months after Blaise Compaoré’s departure, Burkina Faso’s transition is moving forward in an uncertain context. The provisional government, with the help of its international partners, should initiate urgent reforms and ensure the October 2015 elections allow for peaceful, democratic change.

Sudan and South Sudan's Merging Conflicts

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT
Africa Report: No: 223
*South Sudanese President, Salva Kiir Sudanese and President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan in  Khartoum

The conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan are increasingly merged. Halting drift toward a Uganda-Sudan proxy war on the Sudan-South Sudan border requires better coordination by regional organisations and more engagement by influential outside powers, notably China and the U.S., including via the UN Security Council. A UN-imposed arms embargo, improved border monitoring, and a UN panel of experts mandated to study the funding of South Sudan’s war are needed.

Discourse On Our 'Mumu', Part II -- Liberty Or Slavery?

--A backroom view of the state of the struggle for a True Federalism Constitution.
By Chinweizu
10 January 2015

  
Why rebrand as the New South Liberation Movement, NSLM?

Another issue that the CSC session should take up is the rebranding of the struggle and turning it into the Nigerian Liberation Movement, NLM, or better still into the New South Liberation Movement, NSLM? So, why rebrand? Why NLM or NSLM?

A crucial step in ending our “mumu” is for us to recognize that the issue for us all in the New South is liberty or slavery.

One consequence of our “mumu” has been our comparatively laid back approach to the struggle. Instead of meeting the militancy of Arewa with our own counter militancy, we have been making gentleman, negotiating rather than fighting. In December 2013, on the way to the National Conference, one of the Caliphate militants, Junaid Mohammed, even warned us “‘Supporters of SNC asking for civil war’ and that “‘There’ll be bloodshed, if Jonathan runs’. And, like mumu, we failed to take the hint, failed to realize that they were already in war mode going into the National Conference. And we went to the same conference in gentlemanly negotiations mode. The other side has been fighting with the vigilance and courage of desperation, the desperation of a hungry lion who won’t let his prey escape and deny him his dinner.  

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Discourse On Our “Mumu” (Part I)

--A backroom view of the state of the struggle for a True Federalism Constitution.

By Chinweizu
10 January 2015

Our 'mumu' (is it stupidity?) has caught up with us. Now, no one can escape the dire consequences of living in our cultural and institutional deceit, self-denial and delusions. In brotherly frankness, please take these from me,
Amos Akingba.

 The quote is the last paragraph of Amos Akingba’s email of 05jan15 to his aburo. It shall be the text for my discourse on why the decades-long struggle for a True Federalism Constitution stands today in danger of being defeated.
------------------------------

From the backroom where ill health has confined me, I’ve been watching this struggle for a True Federalism Constitution, TFC, and I have a few observations to share with the elders  and captains of the struggle.

The handwriting on the wall, as I see it, is that the chance of winning the struggle for TFC by dialogue and negotiation was lost on the Confab floor during its closing session when Arewa introduced a surprise amendment to the Confab Report requiring that it be sent to the NASS as proposed amendments to the 1999 Constitution. By not defeating that amendment, the non-Caliphate majority of the delegates—from the New South: i.e. south of Shariyaland, and comprising the zones of South-West, South-South, South-East, and North-Central as well as the indigenous non-Hafukawa who are trapped in Shariyaland itself, such as the Zuru in Kebbi State and the Chibok in Borno State, whose new alliance had secured those far reaching recommendations in the Confab Report-- threw away all the marvelous gains they had made. In not defeating that amendment, the New South delegates sent the report to a NASS where Arewa can kill or gut it.  Unless their fraudulently built-in dominance at the NASS can somehow be overcome, Arewa will get NASS to nullify the Confab Report and return the struggle for TFC to square zero where it started decades ago.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

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.

Friday, January 16, 2015

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.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

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.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

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, 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  

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

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.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

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.  

Thursday, December 18, 2014

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.