Avoiding The Next Obama

FROM THE ARCHIVES

BY L. E. IKENGA

In times like these, it is tempting to focus only on the issue at hand. But if you do, you do so at your own peril. As I watch what is happening to this great country, I find myself just shaking my head more and more while thinking, Mark Twain was absolutely right: "history does not always repeat itself, but it does often rhyme."

My Igbo parents came to this great country from Nigeria. They arrived a few years after Nigeria's independence from Great Britain. In Nigeria, it was a time of unprecedented cultural and political turmoil, which allowed politicians very much like Barack Obama to continue to seep into Nigeria's political system. These politicians all promised a change from the past. And unfortunately, they ended up fulfilling their promises. What these politicians ended up changing was the very fabric of the African societies, which they had been taught to see as unsophisticated and inferior.

I call these men, who appeared all over Africa in the wake of independence, African Colonial politicians (ACP's). They were the direct offspring of the European Imperialists, imposing radical European leftist political theory on tribal cultures. ACP's and their unscrupulous followers were able to almost completely destroy many African cultures.

For the most part, these ACP's were intellectual frauds, completely unworthy of the honors bestowed upon them. But they sounded and looked good; so the people listened to them. With their fancy Oxbridge degrees, grandiloquent speeches given with perfectly accented "Queen's English", finely tailored European suits, and fabled family histories, ACP's took the masses by storm.

ACP's convinced their constituents that they were as dumb as baboons and did not have what it took to make good decisions for themselves and for the future. They made Africans feel embarrassed about their entire histories and conservative values. They persuaded Africans to follow the "European way" of doing things, and assured that this blueprint for progress was one that could not fail.

The people believed them. And so, over the course of many decades, and by means of the standard instruments of cultural indoctrination that included liberal education, elite professional career paths, and new religious and political paradigms, Africans began to consume ideas and theories that implicitly alienated them from their own roots. Today, many of those Africans and their respective cultures are well on their way to being nothing more than topics for discussion at some freshman anthropology seminar at some elite university.

Colonialism in Africa ended but the ACP remained. He is now a touchstone in African political culture -- and so are his imperialist policies. The ACP will never go away. He dominates all politics, all of the time. His presence is ubiquitous. He is being cloned by the thousands everyday at universities in Africa and in other parts of the world. Marxist mentors rear him in his professional and private life. Thus, he has been taught to see himself as a benevolent Pan-Africanist. Instead, he is an uncontrollable cancer, steadily pushing African cultures to the point of extinction.

This all happened because African conservatives lost their way, took their cultures for granted, and underestimated the cupidity of their wanton politicians. They failed to make adjustments that would have helped to preserve their necessary values. The challenge for any culture is knowing when and how to make these adjustments, because if you do not, you die.

Africans allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by smooth-talking elitist charlatans; they are now paying a very dear price for this.

Politically speaking, most of Africa is now the laughingstock of the world with little to show for all of the progress that was once so intensely promised. In his 1947 essay, Path to Nigerian Freedom, Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared that,

"... the educated elite in Nigeria were qualified by natural rights to lead their fellow nationals into higher political development."

Chief Awolowo, where is that development now?

It is a very painful thing to know that something that you hold dear will soon cease to exist. It is even more painful to know that you are only one of a small few who can actually see that it is happening. This is what I am faced with. My Igbo heritage, passed down especially by my mother, has become a very precious thing to me, particularly because it is something that will soon cease to exist. I am sure that my great-grandchildren's children will have to go to some Museum of Natural History to know who I was, and so I continue to fight to make sure that they have something to see.

All of this is because my ancestors did not make the necessary adjustments. And most importantly, they never saw that there was always a large troupe of African colonial politicians, each impatiently waiting in the wings for the chance to audition for the role of a lifetime. (Obama's 2004 DNC speech was an audition.)

The Barack Obamas of the world helped to kill off so many cultures throughout the African continent. He is now here, with his Bacchic attendants, working hard to kill (conservative) American culture. He is killing everything that this country stands for. He is doing it under the guise of altruism. However, there is nothing altruistic about Obama. Instead, what we are witnessing is the greatest comedy of fateful errors that the world has seen in quite some time. The gods must be laughing like crazy.

The move towards the Euro-style imperialist socialism that has taken over this country has been a long time coming. For decades, oblivious youth have been indoctrinated at American universities to sympathize with far-left values; the entertainment industry is filled with leftist blowhards who wear the mask of intellect; liberals of all stripes have become unselfconscious in mocking (Christian) religious customs, and the juggernaut that is the left-stream media has been sealing the deal for years, helping to make this Republic increasingly vulnerable to demagoguery and despotism.

During the campaign, there was a reason why Obama's handlers kept telling him to say, "We are the ones we have been waiting for!" So many are waiting in the wings for their chance to audition. Obama is now the playing the lead role. But new faces will come and take his place when he is done.

This is why our nation is under siege with "all Obama, all the time". They want you to focus on him so that you do not see what is coming. As difficult as it may be to believe, Obama is probably not the worst that this far-left faction will use to win future elections. There will be others who will be more "eloquent", more charismatic, more racially mixed, more (once) oppressed by "the man"...

In closing, I offer a wish list. If I could go back in time and meet some of my ancestors, here are a few things that I would tell them to watch out for and consider. And to my fellow American Conservatives, here are a few things to help us avoid the next Obama:

Brand name market academics: the killers of common sense

I cannot emphasize enough how these types of people continue to destroy cultures throughout the world. I have seen it happen; I am seeing it happen. Most of their ideas are based on book theories and not reality. They cannot relate to everyday people. Bottom line: if someone needs to tell you where they went to school in order to explain why they voted a certain way, change the subject, or better yet, if you can, just walk away.

Spread your message, especially to the young

One of the biggest mistakes that many Igbos continue to make is not teaching their kids about their ancestry and culture. In the West especially, some of those kids do not speak the language, understand any of the traditions, nor do they have the desire to visit the land of their forefathers. By default, these children have become Igbos in name only. A person without knowledge of their history and culture is like a tree without roots-a shell of a thing that can be easily blown away. Ironically, irreverence towards one's culture and history is always part of a tradition that is passed down from one generation to the next. Be the one to put an end to this tradition.

In praise of patriarchs

The whole truth, not half of it. The Igbos are a patriarchal people, and I grew up listening to fantastic tales of how my great forefathers lived impeccable lives. I understand why this was necessary but some of those tales just bordered on the absurd. I might as well have been reading the Aeneid. Patriarchs are people, and it is equally important that we learn from their successes AND their failures. Avoiding talk of their failures leads to a loss of trust from those who really want to learn. The reality is that many Igbo patriarchs made crucial mistakes, which allowed the Imperialists to gain access and power; this must be acknowledged. The American Founders achieved tremendous goals. The United States Constitution is the Crown Jewel of Western civilization. The Founders paved the way for liberty and justice for all; this was no small feat. But mistakes were still made, and the legacy of some of those mistakes still haunt us today. Telling the whole truth is what sets people free.

Intellectual integrity

The Imperialists let the genie out. It is now up to you to put it back in the bottle. The Igbos allowed many things to be redefined for them by Imperialists who then took these new definitions and ran with them in order to make the Africans feel inferior. One of my favorites is how the Imperialists began calling African medicinal herbalists, "witchdoctors". (I always crack up when I hear this word!)

Something similar is starting to happen with the word racism. The far-lefties are now using this word willy-nilly to defame innocent people. Racism, in my opinion, is something very specific: an assault -- of any kind -- that attacks the humanity of a specific ethnic group. A racist is someone who believes in and sees the good in these attacks. And then there is bigotry; and there are bigots. By thoughtlessly throwing around the word racism we truly dishonor the memory of those who, throughout human history, actually went through the real thing. Imperialists and their liberal offspring, have no real intellectual integrity. They will stoop to any low to get their message across. Do not let these fools tell you what is and what isn't.

African Colonial Politicians and Black Liberationist Preachers: Best Friends Forever

This point is more for future African and American generations. ACP's and BLP's go together like peanut butter & jelly. Black Liberation Theology (and all of its strange offshoots) is wreaking havoc in Africa and it will soon do the same here. The pastor and politician work like a tag-team to rob people of their dignity, culture, and political capital. Both teach their congregants/constituents to wear their (imagined) victim status like a badge of honor. By using all sorts of hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo techniques, they exact votes, cash, and "AMENS!" from lost and impressionable people. The less of a real history that people have to "cling to" the more they will seek these soothsayer/snake oil sales people out.

Countries like Nigeria most definitely have what I call a "pastor problem", and it looks like America is starting to have one too. As many have already figured out, the Obama-Wright relationship was no chance coincidence. Despite the Showtime at the Apollo theatrics in which they engaged the nation during the election, right now, both are laughing all the way to the bank.

Chukwu duwe anyi (May God be with us).

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED VIA THE AMERICAN THINKER AT OHUZO, AUGUST 5, 2009

The Woman Who Founded Father’s Day Was A Renegade, Great-Granddaughter Says

FILE - A rose lies on a grave marker of Sonora Smart Dodd at Greenwood Memorial Terrace on June 16, 1999, in Spokane, Wash. Dodd is known as the founder of the first celebration of Father's Day in 1910. Sonora Smart Dodd lobbied local church and public officials for its creation. In the years that followed, Father's Day grew to become an international event and Dodd lived to see President Richard Nixon declare it an official U.S. holiday in 1972. (AP Photo/Jeff T. Green, File)

BY JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — You could call her the mother of Father’s Day.

The late Sonora Smart Dodd launched the celebration of dads in 1910 in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. As a result, she is the one responsible for those annual gifts that run the gamut from embarrassingly silly-looking neckties to kids’ finger paintings crafted with so much love by those tiny hands that they can bring a tear to the eye of even the most stoic father.

It’s a tradition Dodd decided to start as she sat in a Spokane church on Mother’s Day 1909, listening to a sermon about — what else? — Mother’s Day.

“And it bugged her,” Dodd’s great-granddaughter, Betsy Roddy, told The Associated Press in 2017. “She thought, ’Well, why isn’t there a Father’s Day?”

Dodd and her five younger brothers, after all, had been raised by their father after their mother died in childbirth in 1898.

William Jackson Smart became a farmer after fighting in the Civil War. He not only held down both parental roles but did it with “leadership and love,” his daughter always said, and she believed he ought to get some credit.

“So she worked tirelessly with the local clergy and got the YWCA on board, and they had their first Father’s Day in Spokane in 1910,” said Roddy, displaying a copy of The River Press of Fort Benton, Montana, which reported on the event.

Although that story predicted the celebration would go nationwide by the next year, Father’s Day was slow to catch on. So much so that Dodd spent the next 62 years lobbying everyone from presidents to retailers for support.

Finally, in 1972, President Richard Nixon declared the third Sunday of June a federal holiday honoring dads. Dodd, who died at age 96 in 1978, had lived to see her dream come true.

A Renaissance woman, the Mother of Father’s Day was a painter, poet and businesswoman, running a funeral home with her husband while raising the couple’s only son, a future father named Jack.

“I take a great deal of pride in that renegade spirit that she clearly had,” said Roddy, marketing director for a large Los Angeles company.

Dodd’s great-granddaughter inherited some of that spirit herself. Raised in Washington, D.C., she earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Penn State before heading to Europe for several years of backpacking between studies at Vienna’s Webster University, where she earned a master’s degree in international business.

Moving to Los Angeles decades ago, she found her niche here in marketing and stayed, eventually moving into a Craftsman-style home on the city’s west side, where she lives with her two dogs.

The only child of an only child and recently widowed after 24 years of marriage, Roddy never had children of her own. That not only leaves her with the title of Great-Granddaughter of Father’s Day but also assures she is the last direct descendant of the holiday’s creator.

Although she’s always been well aware of that legacy, she’s never talked about it publicly until now.

She began to get more involved after MyHeritage.com, the company that helps people trace family histories, asked if she knew her family’s story.

Learning that she did, MyHeritage dug up historical documents about Dodd that Roddy says even she and her mother didn’t know existed. They are considering eventually turning over some of their artifacts to a museum.

As a child, Roddy said, she loved her great-grandmother deeply, visited her every year and treasures the poems, books and notes she gave her, including one welcoming her to the world on the year she was born. She still keeps it, in pristine condition, in a small box in her home.

Still, as a child, Roddy says, she took Father’s Day largely for granted, concluding the elaborate celebration, including the special card for her great-grandmother, was just something her family did. Even as an adult, she’s generally kept quiet about being the ultimate Father’s Day insider, leaving it to her mother to spread the word.

But no more.

“It’s time for me to pick up the baton and carry it proudly,” she says with a smile. “I’m the last direct descendant. The legacy is here, which is an honor.”

FILE - Betsy Roddy looks at a story in the Aug. 17, 1910, edition of The River Press of Fort Benton, Mont., on June 12, 2017, describing how her great-grandmother, Sonora Smart Dodd, organized the first Father's Day earlier that year in Spokane, Wash. Father's Day, which has since become an international celebration, was created by Dodd to honor, among others, her own father, William Jackson Smart, who raised her and her five siblings after their mother died. Roddy is the last living descendant of Dodd, known as the Mother of Father's Day. (AP Photo/John Rogers)

___ This story was first published in 2017. Rogers retired from The Associated Press in 2021.

How Classified Documents Became A School Girl’s Show-And-Tell

FILE - Kristin Preble, 13, and her mother Carol, get ready to leave the Ingomar Middle School in Franklin Park, Pa., Jan. 21, 1984. Kristin brought a briefcase with classified government documents to school as a show-and-tell project for her class. Her dad had found them in his Cleveland hotel room several years earlier and taken them home as a souvenir. Marked "Classified, Confidential, Executive" and "Property of the United States Government," the material from the Carter White House ended up in the hands of the Reagan campaign and, eventually, the schoolgirl. (AP Photo/Keith B. Srakocic, File)

BY CALVIN WOODWARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — On a winter’s day in 1984, a briefcase stuffed with classified government documents showed up in a building in Pittsburgh, borne by someone who most certainly wasn’t supposed to have them.

That someone was 13-year-old Kristin Preble. She took the papers to school as a show-and-tell project for her eighth grade class. Her dad had found them in his Cleveland hotel room several years earlier and taken them home as a souvenir.

As a different sort of show and tell unfolds in Washington over the mishandling of state secrets by the Trump and now Biden administrations, the schoolgirl episode from four decades ago stands as a reminder that other presidents, too, have let secure information spill.

The Grade 8 escapade and one known as Debategate both involved the mishandling of classified documents that Democratic President Jimmy Carter used to prepare for a debate with Republican rival Ronald Reagan in Cleveland on Oct. 28, 1980. In the latter instance, the Reagan campaign obtained — some said stole — Carter’s briefing materials for the debate.

In today’s docu-dramas, special counsels have been assigned to investigate Donald Trump’s post-presidential cache of classified documents, which he initially resisted turning over, and Joe Biden’s pre-presidential stashes, which he willingly gave up when they were discovered but did not disclose to the public for months.

With classified material also found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home, there is now a palpable sense in the halls of power that as more officials or ex-officials scour their cabinets or closets, more such oops moments will emerge.

On Thursday, the National Archives wrote to representatives of all ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents back to the Reagan administration to ask that their personal records be checked anew for any classified documents, according to two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to speak about document investigations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Carter files fell into Kristin’s hands through a somewhat meandering route.

Two days after the 1980 debate, businessman Alan Preble found the papers in his Cleveland hotel room, apparently left behind by Carter press secretary Jody Powell. Preble took them to his Franklin Park home, where they sat for more than three years as a faintly appreciated keepsake.

“We had looked through them but didn’t think they were important,” Carol Preble, Kristin’s mother, said back then, apparently unimpressed by the classified markings. But for social studies class, Kristin “thought they’d be real interesting. I thought they’d be great, too.”

Off the girl went to Ingomar Middle School on Jan. 19, 1984, with the zippered briefcase.

Teacher Jim DeLisio’s eyes popped when he saw the warnings on the documents inside. Among them: “Classified, Confidential, Executive” and “Property of the United States Government.”

“I truly didn’t want to look at it,” he said then. “I was just too … scared. I didn’t want to know.”

Curiosity got the better of him. That night, he said, he and his wife and daughter pored over the documents, containing “everything you’d want to know from A to Z” on world and U.S. developments. One folder was marked “Iran.” Libya was also in the mix.

Unable to reach Kristin’s family by phone, DeLisio the next day called the FBI, which swiftly retrieved the papers.

A Justice Department official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity at the time said the bundle of documents was 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick.

Despite steering the secrets back to their proper place, DeLisio was reprimanded by school officials for calling the authorities before reaching the Preble family or them. The discovery fed into a broader investigation by a Democratic-led congressional committee of the official Carter papers obtained by the winning Reagan campaign.

The Reagan Justice Department declined calls by the committee to appoint a special counsel in that matter. A court case trying to force that appointment failed, and no criminal case was brought. Debategate faded, but not the concern over how classified documents are handled by those in power.

As for Kristin, she earned a niche in history and a “B” on her school project.

This story draws on one by Associated Press writer Marcia Dunn in January 1984 and on research by Rhonda Shaffner in New York.

Who Gets To Be Abstract? A Legendary Show Of Black Artists Gets A Second Look In “Revisiting 5+1”

BY JASMINE LIU

In 1969 Stony Brook University was in dire straits. Having been rocked by anti-war protests, student demands for a Black studies program, and a drug raid on campus, the institution was under pressure to radically transform just over a decade after its founding. Amid these circumstances, the school invited British Guyanese artist Frank Bowling to curate an exhibition of works by Black artists, sponsored by a new “Afro-American Studies Program.” Bowling seized on the opportunity, later declaring that “young people clamoring for more and better Black studies” were its “natural audience.”

Bowling invited five African American artists—Melvin Edwards, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Al Loving, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams—to join him in exhibiting work. The show’s title, “5+1,” gently set him apart as both the curator and the only non-American participant. Despite their disagreements about representational politics and their varying relationships with predominantly white gatekeeping institutions, the artists lamented the reigning expectation that Black artists should produce overtly political, figurative work. At the time, abstraction was often presumed to be the preserve of white artists with silver-spoon upbringings; prominent advocates like Clement Greenberg systematically overlooked Black artists. Bowling and his artists showcased their work at a time when major institutions were just beginning to work with Black artists, and they neither spoke directly to political questions of the day in the recognizable style of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) nor acted indifferent to the struggle to improve conditions for Black art. The exhibition demonstrated more indeterminate forms of expression to the same young students who were attending Black Students Union meetings, writing fiery op-eds, and participating in sit-ins.

Little survives from “5+1,” aside from the pamphlet and photographs of the lively opening by photographer and painter Adger Cowans. “Revisiting 5+1,” staged this winter at the Paul W. Zuccaire campus gallery at Stony Brook, is the result of assiduous research by professors and PhD candidates into the original exhibition, despite the archival gaps. A number of the original works have since been lost or destroyed, so the current show exhibits works by the same artists made around the late ’60s. It also incorporates work by women; Howardena Pindell curated a section that presents Black female artists active in the 1960s and ’70s who also created work largely out of step with BAM and struggled to receive recognition from major institutions.

Prominently featured in both the 1969 exhibition and “Revisiting 5+1” are similar barbed wire curtains by Edwards, hemmed at the bottom by lengths of rusted metal chain. Although their materials have associations with confinement and oppression, both works transform the severe wire and metal into a gossamer-like and playful architecture. In Cowans’s pictures, out-of-focus strands of wire often float harmlessly in the foreground of animated conversations between artists and friends, adding texture and a sense of leisure to the shots.

Other standout works include a large 1968 painting by Whitten that commands the exhibition with its infernal blood-orange hue. Layered with indeterminate forms, faint gestures evoking spray paint, and broad strokes and dripping splatters of oil, the canvas is energetic and chaotic, reflecting its turbulent times. Near Whitten’s canvas is an untitled Johnson painting (ca. 1969) on a tall wood panel showing an elongated, pyramidal shape composed of candy-colored vertical bands truncated before they reach their pinnacle. The central band is an intense yellow beam. The painting’s propulsive directionality, brought to an end ahead of its acme, might evoke thwarted intelligence and purpose. Alternatively, it encourages viewers to complete the mission on their own.

Pindell’s section encompasses a range of attitudes, mediums, and artistic concerns. Jabberwocky, a canvas from 1976–77 by activist artist Mary Lovelace O’Neal, is blackened with soot. Though O’Neal faced criticism for a lack of political messaging in her art, her use of color in this work is in fact socially powerful: at the time, soot and the color black were loaded with political and aesthetic meaning, with some artists regarding black as an important signifier of African American identity. Feeble lines of blue and pink peek through the charcoal, a formal gesture that O’Neal said was inspired by the “shot of light” that would pierce through “black spaces of flatness” in the sky of the Bay Area, where she lived. Elsewhere, a soft, sunny, semi-figural piece by Vivian Browne, painted after a 1971 trip to West Africa, likens the arch of a back to a dangling, especially ripe banana. Browne’s trip marked a turning point in her practice: inspired by the region’s vivid colors, textiles, and sculptures, she moved toward a more abstract style. Another gem in the show is Betye Saar’s Eyeball, a 2-minute film (an uncommon medium for Saar) featuring a procession of eyes mischievously close-cropped and edited to produce a haunting, depersonalized, atmosphere.

While “Revisiting 5+1” is exciting for its doubling of Bowling’s ambition, it also feels disconnected. Men and women are separated, and there is little discussion of how the original participants and newly included artists influenced and critiqued each other. Discussion of how the work of Black women abstract artists was further excluded and devalued in the late 20th century is limited to a catalogue essay.

In his essay for the 1969 exhibition, Bowling wrote, “The structure of Black life has revealed, over centuries, a creative, self-perpetuating process of anarchist, pro-life zeal which a study of the fine arts and history alone, though helpful, can never fully define.” Viewers might crave historical or sociopolitical referents for the diverse abstract gestures on display—could the breaks of light in O’Neal’s paintings represent the difficulty of individual expression amid prevailing demands on Black artists, or could Eyeball read as the repurposing of a surveilling gaze cast on Black women? In the end, these explanations prove to be contortions for justifying work that requires no such justification.

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New Poem By Famed Early American poet Phillis Wheatley Discovered

Phillis Wheatley. Image via Biography

BY BETHANY BUMP

ALBANY, NY (U @ ALBANY) -- A University at Albany professor has discovered the earliest known full-length elegy by famed poet Phillis Wheatley (Peters), widely regarded as the first Black person, enslaved person and one of the first women in America to publish a book of poetry.

English professor Wendy Raphael Roberts found the elegy, titled "On the Death of Love Rotch" and dated 1767, in a Quaker commonplace book at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania while conducting research into Wheatley's life and legacy. While the elegy was never claimed by the poet, it was attributed to her by a trustworthy manuscript witness embedded in Wheatley's network and local poetry scene.

The discovery expands Wheatley's canon at a time of growing interest in and scholarship around the poet, and provides new evidence for her presence and influence in Nantucket; New Bedford, Mass.; and Newport, R.I.; which were home to early abolitionist movements in the U.S.

"We don't know much about her early life, we really don't," Roberts said. "We have scraps here and there, and there's a lot of good work happening right now, but we don't know where she went, what her daily life might have been like, and this gives us one more piece."

Wheatley was believed to be around 7 years old when she was kidnapped from West Africa and sold to Susanna Wheatley, the wife of wealthy Boston merchant John Wheatley.

Though unusual for an enslaved person in America, Wheatley was taught to read and write and quickly demonstrated intellectual prowess. She began writing poems from a young age, with her earliest work appearing in print while she was still a teenager. Her work included elegies for prominent people, and touched on themes of theology, slavery, abolition, politics and America.

Hoping to publish a book of poems but confronting a racist press, Wheatley's book was prefaced with an attestation of her authorship and poetic capabilities by prominent male citizens of Boston. Facing continued resistance in the U.S., Wheatley traveled to London with Susanna's son, Nathaniel Wheatley, and won support for her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

Published in 1773, it was met with acclaim and she quickly became celebrated across the British Empire. Her work, which included letters to George Washington and other high-ranking Americans, served as a catalyst for the early antislavery movement, with abolitionists touting her as proof that Black people could be artistic and intellectual equals to whites.

Roberts first became interested in Wheatley in graduate school while taking a course on early American literature focused on writers of the Black Atlantic. She published a book that examined some of Wheatley's work in 2020 titled, Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism.

During research for the book, she came across a poem about Wheatley by a white woman in Boston and grew curious about how Wheatley's poems were first circulated.

"I earmarked that for later because I started to think, wait a second, we know so little about how (Wheatley's) manuscripts circulated," Roberts said. "At the time, that was predominantly the way that women writers would be published and circulated—they would be in coteries and networks—but we knew very little about it."

"On the Death of Love Rotch," the poem that Roberts attributes to Wheatley, showed up in a commonplace book 15 years after it was penned. Commonplace books—a collection of writings, quotes, ideas and more—were often kept by poets and scribes and included works by other authors of whom they were fond.

The book containing the Love Rotch poem was kept by Mary Powel Potts (Jones), who was embedded in the poetic manuscript networks of the Delaware Valley and closely connected to Quaker teacher and minister Rebecca Jones and her teaching and life partner Hannah Catherall, who assigned early Wheatley poems for their students to copy, including at least one that was never published.

Roberts said scholars have always assumed that Wheatley's poems would be marked with her name, even though it wasn't common practice for the time.

"In the 18th century, even well-known writers would take on cognomens—a kind of variant of a pseudonym that their network and poetic coterie would know them by," she said. "They all knew who the actual writer was, but it was very common at the time not to put your name to a poem, both in print and in manuscript."

Roberts was combing through commonplace books from the time Wheatley was active when she came across the Love Rotch poem, attributed only to "A Negro Girl about 15 years of age."

"As soon as I saw that I knew this was a Wheatley poem because there was no other 14- to 15-year-old Black girl writing poetry like this at the time," she said.

Written in 1767, the poem laments the death of Love Macy Rotch, a member of the powerful Rotch family of Nantucket and mother to Joseph Rotch, Jr., who was the subject of a published Wheatley poem.

The only thing that didn't make sense to Roberts was the copyist's claim that Love Rotch was the poet's mistress, since it was widely known that Susanna Wheatley held that role.

In an upcoming article in the journal Early American Literature, Roberts theorizes that Potts may have known more about Wheatley's first years in America than print publications cared to highlight at the time.

"Print performed particular work for those supporting Wheatley's publications," she wrote. "What incentive would there be for the Wheatley family while showing off their genius enslaved poet to highlight times when she was hired out or taught by others? It would not be out of the question for Wheatley's enslavers to have loaned her out to the Rotch family for a time, especially to provide comfort and company or to serve as an amanuensis for an ailing Love Rotch."

Roberts provides other theories as well, but notes that Rotch's exact relationship to the poet need not be confirmed to confidently attribute the poem to Wheatley. A combination of external factors—such as the close connection between the copyist and Wheatley's known networks—and internal evidence such as the poem's subject, style and language—led her to confidently claim Wheatley as the author.

The discovery places Wheatley in Nantucket, which may help explain why her earliest published poem appeared in New Bedford and not Boston, where Wheatley is known to have lived.

"New Bedford is right across from Nantucket, and Nantucket is a hotbed through the 19th century for abolitionist thought," Roberts said. "So all of a sudden she's there at the very beginning when Quakers are starting to really think more seriously about their abolitionist sensibilities. So part of the argument that I want to make is that she's influencing them—that her presence there matters."

Roberts found another anonymous poem in the Potts book that she believes Wheatley wrote but can only speculatively attribute to her. Titled "The Black Rose," it mourns the death of a Black woman named Rose and uses theology to critique a society that refused to mourn the enslaved and oppressed. It would be the only known elegy Wheatley wrote for a Black woman.

Roberts will detail her discoveries at an upcoming talk on Jan. 26. The Library Company of Philadelphia is hosting the free and virtual discussion as the first event of a yearlong celebration marking the 250th publication anniversary of Wheatley's book.

Renewed interest in the poet has led to a flurry of discoveries in recent years that have helped fill in gaps on her life and death. Roberts' discovery is the first full-length Wheatley poem to be discovered in 20 years. Her efforts recently earned her a 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which will support her continued research into Wheatley and a second book.

"She's kind of coming into her own at this moment," Roberts said. "There's real interest in the whole field and among Wheatley scholars right now in trying to rethink what we know about her and the limits of what we know, and I think there's going to be a lot more discoveries."

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Igbo Can't Be President

 

BY CHIDI NNADI

Former Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, Dr. Ifeanyi Chukwuka has picked holes on the power rotation principle of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), saying it was designed to keep the Igbo out of power. Chukwuka, a medical doctor and politician of note, who is now based in the United States of America, also spoke on his political antecedents among other issues. CHIDI NNADI brings the excerpts

Political tutelage:

When General Ibrahim Babangida dissolved the 13 political parties formed then, and established the National Republican Convention(NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), being a progressive, I quickly registered in the Social Democratic Party (SDP), where I contested and won the state publicity secretary of the SDP in the old Anambra State. Discharging that position with dexterity and unparallel amiability, I became popular with all governments and served in various capacities both in political parties and the government of my state.

At the Jos convention that produced the late Chief MKO Abiola, I won the post of Assistant National Publicity Secretary, but when the convention was cancelled and the re-run election ordered at Abuja Sheraton Hotel, I lost that opportunity to national limelight to the political organogram of the late Alhaji Shehu Yar’Adua. Not deterred by this, I went back to Anambra State, and was later appointed by Dr. Ezeife as cabinet consultant on Health Matters.

Later Colonel Mike Attah appointed me the director general of Bureau of Information and Culture; then Dr. Mbadinuju as Special Adviser on Lands, Survey and Urban Planning, Media and Publicity and Managing Director of ANSEPA. Later, the then President, Chief Obasanjo appointed me the Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA) when Professor Jerry Gana was the supervising minister. Finally, I worked with Dr. Chris Ngige as Senior Special Assistant on Mobilization and State Orientation.

Passion for politics;

Regrettably, politics has not at all times presented a bed of roses for me. My worst period in politics was when I was dropped as the DG of NOA in Abuja. No sooner was I appointed to the job of orientation than that appointment was lost in a mysterious circumstance which till today remains inexplicable to me. All I know was that my Personal Assistant continued to warn me to hide my intelligence, that Abuja politics is not Anambra politics. Of course, I ignored him to my own detriment.

Yes, Abuja politics is dirty. If you are smart, you will be schemed out of the system. They need idiots, half-baked fools, embryonic politicians that are initiative barren. They hate those who are inherently endowed with visions and dreams to move this nation forward. This is the political quagmire that has for many years stagnated the progress of this nation. Realizing that the orientator has to be orientated in Abuja politics, my PA bought me a book called “The 48 Laws of Power”, which opened my eyes to the fact that my intelligence will soon have a negative impact and cause me to lose my job.

Categorically, he opined that if he was the president of the country, and witnessed what I did at the podium, he would simply drop whoever was the Minister of Information and immediately appoint me in his place. All my pleas to him to take it easy with me fell on deaf ears. He promised to call my minister to remove me as I was after his job. Surprisingly, two days after that encounter, I lost my job in the most mysterious circumstance. No reason was given. That is Abuja politics and I do not regret the impact I made as DG of NOA. If you go to NOA today, I am well respected. My stay in office was barely a year, but the impact was reverberating and the echo and ripple effect were felt in all nooks and crannies of this nation.

So, at what point did you leave the country and why?

Since Dr. Ngige lost his governorship seat in the court in 2006, I travelled to America to study their system, and also disappear from the scene. Having worked in their hospitals, taught in their nursing schools and taught mathematics in their higher schools, I have come to the conclusion that Nigeria is a country endowed with individuals with high acumen. Our children are by far more intelligent than an average American child in secondary school.

Unfortunately, the country is still dangerously verged on a perilous pathway heading to absolute collapse and decay, if something is not done soon. In 2010, I visited my country from USA where I boasted that Nigeria has more agreeable, sagacious and astute politicians who can’t compromise on issues of nation building than the GOP and Democrats in America. But the level of infrastructural deterioration and decay in almost all sectors of the nation is not only humiliating, but an outrageous insensibility on the part of the government to the plights of the common man of this nation that voted them into power.

Impressions about Nigeria;

Let me begin with the road infrastructure. From Shagamu to Benin, Lagos to Ibadan, Enugu to Abuja, Enugu to Onitsha, Enugu to Port-Harcourt, Enugu to Nsukka, Ore to Ondo to Ife to Ibadan, the roads have been ignored by successive governments of this nation is not only criminal, but wicked. I wonder what is in resurfacing a road. Billions of taxpayers’ money are every year appropriated for these roads and yet nothing tangible is done. It is indeed shameful for anyone to call himself a senator or member of House of Representatives, or president, or governor in this nation when these roads are crying and begging for reconstruction. Obviously, our highways have posed terrible nightmares to commuters and road carnages have assumed an unprecedented dimension in the history of this nation. Consequently, I make bold to suggest that all senators, governors and presidents of this nation should as a matter of criminal negligence to their duties resign their positions if they cannot cater for the people and provide adequate amenities for the citizenry.

When Chief Obasanjo came to power he promised that power outage will be a thing of the past within six months of his being in office. Eight years later, he left the country in a comatose state. Power outage became worse than before. As a matter of fact, no nation can develop technologically when electric supply is not predictable. No industries can be sited or built in this nation when power is on and off. The use of computers for global networking and indeed information processing cannot prosper in a paralyzed energy sector.

Today, Nigeria has the most backward police force the world over. Created to control crime and protect the citizens, our police force unlike what I saw in America, is a caricature of crime control mechanics. With shameful roadblocks mounted here and there, sometimes in every kilometer, the police have reduced their status to mere illegal tollgate collectors, and yet everyone ignores this corruptive tendency. As a matter of fact, the road blocks have achieved nothing in crime control.

The Police Force in this nation is begging for reorganization and should be made lucrative. Government should abolish police barracks and allow police to live in neighborhoods for ease of busting and controlling crime. Since the roads are bad and may not be repaired anytime soon, police should now use power bikes to control crime. They should patrol rather than mount road blocks to collect illegal tolls and cause untold hardship to road users. Government should pay police salaries that are commensurate to the job of crime control and the risk involved. This is common sense. Give the police the necessary equipment and tools to perform their duties and reap the imponderable benefits. We can do it. Yes we can, if we have the will and zeal.

Igbo president project in 2015:

The Igbo are finished politically in this nation. It will be difficult in the present political dispensation for an Igbo man to be the president of this country. The present political computation and permutation as arranged by Chief Obasanjo of the PDP does not favour the Igbo who have been marginalized by Obasanjo’s crafty political equation of South South plus South West plus North Central plus North West equal to a win-win for him. That is why in the PDP National Working Committee, no Igbo man is even appointed a sweeper or a messenger. However, all hope is not lost since the Igbo man is as incompressible as water. We surely will rebound at the appropriate time. We have the capacity, capabilities, ingenuity, sagacity and political maneuver to scale this political man-made hurdle and reintegrate ourselves into the national political stream. We refuse to be condemned and confined to the present political incarceration. Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo should wake up and lead appropriately.

ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED AT OHUZO VIA SUN NEWS ON AUGUST 31, 2011

Is Prof. Soludo Really PDP’s Anambra Solution

Charles Chukwuma Soludo

BY CHUWUDI NWOKOYE

Then on the issue of drafting Professor Soludo as their joker or game-changer, the party is still doing the same thing they did back in 2003 and even in 2007. If they would tell themselves the truth, there is no way you can tell the state that PDP intended to hold governorship primaries in the state. They had it in mind that Soludo would be the solution to their political imbroglio in the state. No disrespect to our erudite professor, but Anambra is not a bank! Anambra is not a state lacking in people with educational qualifications or connections at Abuja. He is not going to be the last with a president’s ear. I bet that in the whole Isuofia or even in Soludo’s Isuanioma, there are other professors and men that have made their mark in education and came out with distinction, how much more the whole of Anambra state. So the state is endowed with all kinds of high performers that just one person that has a retinue of academic record does not scare us.

The problems with PDP and all the Abuja politicians are that they think that the mere fact that they live in Abuja and make some money while boot-licking; and have access to the corridors of power; that they can just breeze in from Abuja to Anambra, "flash their badges and make us nervous" (apologies Jack Nicholson in the movie ‘A Few Good Men’). That is where they got it all wrong. Anambra has produced all kinds of high achievers that educational milestones are nothing new in the state.

Soludo is a good person despite the problems with Central Bank under his charge. I do not intend to go into some charges levelled against him about cooking the book which has not been proven nor has he been indicted. I think it is unfair to judge him without any formal indictment. Even though he refused to give a specific answer to questions about his stewardship at the bank that failed to regulate the banks under CBN I do not intend to discuss his capability to administer the state. He performed admirably as the Governor of the apex bank of which Nigeria is grateful. He is a saleable candidate, but he has to sell himself and find a way to resonate with the people.

In fact, almost all the aspirants have the paper qualification to govern the state. However, my main point is that the method that the party adopted to field him as their candidate is flawed and he should know that he is sitting at the keg of gun-powder. The system of imposing a candidate would not work in the state as far as the governorship is concerned.

Prof. Soludo fell into the same flawed method that Andy Uba explored to win the party’s nomination. Both Uba and Soludo basically ran against themselves during the so-called primaries. But if well prepared for the post of governor, I have no doubt that he has all it takes to govern the state. Again, like I said, most Abuja politicians do not know the act of electioneering or even how to play politics even when they are quick to adopt that appellation "politician".

The same mistake that Andy Uba made when he was wielding the big stick and has the Anambra PDP at his beck and call; is the same mistake that Soludo made prior to being drafted or coerced or talked into being the party’s nominee. Soludo did not use his leverage at Abuja to help the state he intends to govern. What would have happened if he has effectively used his contact? If Soludo has used his immense contacts with the corridor of power to better the lot of Anambra people in terms of things I mentioned above like influencing the building of second Niger bridge, repairing the federal roads in the south-east, dredging the River Niger and constructing a state of the art sea port at Onitsha, helping to bring Enugu Airport to international standard, and probably coming to the universities in the state once in a while to deliver lectures to the youths, by now he would have been like a super humanbeing. The governorship would be his for the asking. He would have been a household name in the state and he would basically run unopposed both in the primaries and in the 2010 election.

Most politicians do not know how to use their influence to win people over. Senator Ifeanyi Okonkwo used his money and influence to give scholarships to many indigent students in his local government and some other good things he did and was coasting to victory before PDP’s beloved Soludo was anointed. Even other candidates like Iyom Chinwe Ekwunife of Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA) and even Hon. Nicholas Ukachukwu were using their connections and resources to establish scholarship and other poverty alleviation programs. The people they helped wanted to pay them back with their votes; but not so with Soludo and even Andy Uba.

The main problem is that most politicians from Abuja are very selfish. They never look at the big picture, in their little mind, they think that this concept of "igbo enwe eze" (igbos have no kings) is a mere slogan. Inspite of the mistaken opinion that Anambra people love money, therefore if you come around and do some ‘naira rain’ people would be falling over each other to file behind your column is flawed and they cannot follow the trend. That may work during the military regime, but the people have tasted democracy’s forbidden fruit and there is no going back. Also the party thinks that those that have been toiling for the party with the hope of winning the nomination would just roll over and surrender for him!

Also Anambra state would not and will never in the future be anyone’s retirement benefit, severance pay or package. During former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, Andy Uba was said to have served the former president well that OBJ wanted to settle Andy Uba for a job well done with Anambra governorship. That didn’t work out well. It might be the same thing that the current President Umaru Yar’adua is trying to do.

It is not going to work out for him. It did not work out for Andy under OBJ. In my place we would say "the deer we sent to the stream did not return and we are trying to send the antelope to the same stream; how do you think that the antelope would return?" It is the same old trick that never worked. I pity Prof Soludo because he fell into the same PDP Modus Operandi and he would come out frustrated. If he had started earlier to water the ground, do lots of heavy-lifting in terms of making people believe that he is not just a name in the Nigerian currency, but a real person with human flesh and not a fiction at Abuja, it could be different. Market women, Okada riders and peasants that struggle everyday to put food on the table for their families do not mainly understand what success at Central Bank has to do with them and their situation. Local people who are the main chunk of the electorate do not give a damn about a Central Bank Governor since it meant nothing to them. Some of them haven’t even heard about him before and PDP would find it difficult to convince them that he is the real deal.

Most Anambrarians are mostly concerned about some achievements they can relate to like "this road was constructed by Ngige" or "that school was built by Peter Obi" or "that hospital if not for Chief (Mrs) Ekwunife, we would not have it". That’s what normally resonates with local people. Majority of the electorates do not live in the cities, they live in the villages and the things that would normally get their attention are roads, schools, hospitals, water, electricity, bridges and other social amenities that would make their life better. If a road is inaccessible for ages and somehow someone in government builds it for them, his name is forever on that road.

Like in my hometown, some ‘nwadiana’ (our daughter’s son) from Onitsha that was in the eastern region government at the time built the road for the people. Many people do not even know the man, but up till today, when the story of the road is told, people do not fail to praise the man that built the road even though the man has long passed away. Dr Ngige understands the politics of roads and obviously Peter Obi understands how providing the infrastructure in the state write a governor’s name forever in the hearts of the people. A situation where the people actually kneel down and pray for their governor and ask God to preserve him, and PDP thinks that they can just pick a candidate and phew, magic happens and he breezes into the Government House,may be difficult to reverse. But PDP does not understand that simple fact of winning hearts and mind of people. Prof Soludo does not get it. It is either that he is not as smart as we make him out to be or he believes just as PDP that there would not be an election come February 6, 2010, but a selection or coronation of Soludo. Either way it does not say well of him and both he and the party should get ready for the greatest shock of their lives.

Chukwudi Nwokoye writes from Maryland, USA nwokoyeac@hotmail.com

Article published October 7, 2009 on OHUZO via Triumph Newspapers

INTERVIEW: 2015 Presidency: 'I Weep For The Southeast People'

BY SAMSON EZEA AND NKECHI ONYEDI

PROF. A.B.C Nwosu, former Minister of Health and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), speaks on the state of insecurity in the country, Igbo Presidency in 2015, corruption and other issues.

The Igbo are clamouring for the Presidency in 2015, do you think it would be possible?

People get the leadership that they deserve, but the Bible also says that where there is no vision, the people perish, I weep for the Southeast and beyond, I won’t say more. There are people who promised the Ohanaeze leadership that power will go to Southeast in unbroken succession in 2015 from the Southsouth, that was their solemn word and that was what the Ohanaeze leadership told Ndigbo last year. So, we must hold them to their words if not, and the people should disgrace them thoroughly, because if we don’t disgrace them, another set will come up again. When a leadership says this is what they will deliver and they don’t deliver it, the followership should sanction them.

What were the factors that hindered previous moves by the Southeast to clinch power in the country?

The Igbo got the first Presidency of Nigeria, but it was a ceremonial president during the time of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. It has not always been like this with the Igbo. After independence, it was Azikiwe until 1966. The situation changed when we had the executive president in 1979, after the civil war had intervened. There is a school of thought that believes that the Igbo, having fought the civil war, should never be allowed to be President again until centuries have passed. There is also another school of thought that says ‘no, the Igbo have paid their dues and are entitled to the exercise of their full citizenship rights, including the Presidency’. The Igbo believed they must produce the President and in 1979, they came near it with Chief Alex Ekwueme as Vice President. Perhaps, if the military hadn’t intervened in 1983, Ekwueme might have become the President at the end of Shagari’s second term, but the military intervened and later there was June 12 presidential election, which was won by the late Chief MKO Abiola. Because of that, in 1999, it had to be exclusively Southwest issue.

Now, the Igbo are saying that they also need to become part of the equation and they reached an agreement with the Southwest, South-south in 2007 that the we didn’t mind if a Southsouth was, that was why some of us gave Dr. Peter Odili our best support in his presidential quest in 2007. Now that the Southsouth has produced the President, the only people who have not produced president is Southeast and we are saying we should produce. We are not anti-anybody, we are just pro-Igbo.

I respect the Yoruba the way they canvassed, pushed and held on to June 12. They are a people, they didn’t have to agree, but they made June 12 an issue and Nigeria recognised that June 12 was an issue. They presented a credible threat and were recognized.

I salute people like Chief Edwin Clark, though I will not go with him, but I salute him for his spirited defence of his people. He is a soldier of his people and a defender of Ijaw rights and I respect his tenacity. Because of that and the resource control issue, they also presented a credible threat and have become a force in Nigeria and Nigeria has recognised them.

But my heart bleeds when it comes to the Igbo, and then I weep again for the late Ikemba Odimegwu Ojukwu. And I ask, when will some leaders emerge from Igbo and say, ‘this is us, we mean no harm, but we are citizens of Nigeria and are entitled to full citizenship as a right’.

Not for people to be looking for where they are sharing porridge and running into the place, collect plates of porridge and vanish. It has always been an issue and each Igbo man must choose what he wants.

What is your view on the proposals submitted by Ohanaeze leadership on the amendment of the country’s constitution?

I needed a tranquilizer when I saw the president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo presenting a proposal to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

I have four issues with that; if you are presenting a proposal on my behalf, at least, I ought to know what it is, it was in the pages of the newspapers that I heard that it was a six-year single term and I know it flies in the face of what Ndigbo has been asking for. My first quarrel was: why don’t they let our people see what they are submitting their behalf? How did they arrive at the decision? They can’t just wake up and begin to act as if nothing else occurred before now? I saw the one submitted by Delta State which was published in the newspaper. It was specific that Federal powers must be devolved to the states and it quoted specific sections of the constitution that they want to be amended.

I am not saying that they shouldn’t do it, but it will be easier if they carry everybody along and publish the proposal on the pages of the newspaper. Nothing will be lost because this thing is not a secret document. The Igbo people are not seeking something that is anti-Nigeria.

Many believe that corruption has worsened in the country since 1999 and the government is not doing enough to curb, do you agree?

I was shocked on May 29, 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed me as Political Adviser and brought me into his government without knowing me.

We had never met as at that time, he had never seen me and I remembered that we went into the small room in the Villa after we congratulated him. I told him that I am Prof A.B.C Nwosu, he held me and took me into the small room and said, he wanted me to work with him and he had two bills with him that day he was sworn in. The Bill on Niger Delta Development (NDDC Bill). I will always say the truth, if anybody says it is an afterthought from Obasanjo, it is not true. He came to the Presidency determined to set up the NDDC to redress the injustice meted to the Niger Delta. How he ended up, he will be in the best position to tell us, but I know he showed me the Bill.

The second bill he showed me was the Anti-Corruption Bill, and he wanted me to do a research on how countries of the world had dealt with corruption and set up their anti-corruption agencies and the kind of powers they have.

The most charitable thing I can say is that corruption is still with us, and it illustrated what the Igbo man wrote on his motor that ‘to be a man is not a day’s job’. To fight corruption in Nigeria is not a day job, because corruption will fight back. So we have to fight it, if we don’t fight it, it will undo us as a nation. It diminishes our sovereignty and ability to fulfill our destiny in the world, so we must fight it.

Let’s forget yesterday, let’s start from today. This current Senate has identified wrongdoings in the privatization; we can fight it by doing something about that. We can look at the report, it is a report from our Senate, we can deal with it, we can deal with the corruption witnessed in the pension probe, it is mind-boggling. That brings us to the subsidy scam. What can stop corruption is that anybody who is caught in corruption is arraigned and jailed in accordance with the law. That is why you see people looking for General Muhammed Buhari; he sentenced people to unbelievable jail terms which they served some. If you catch a person, you send him to jail and make him forfeit some of those property and people see it.

What is your reaction to the state of insecurity across the country today with the killings in Jos and Boko Haram?

Everybody is worried, including the security agencies. My problem is that worrying about this cannot give us security. It is doing something about it that will give us security and I want to suggest that we can do something about it by engaging traditional rulers. Not just in places where we have security problems, but also all over the country.

I am convinced that we all have a firm resolve that the security problem cannot go on anymore, because I don’t think there is anybody who is benefitting from it. The problem is diminishing Nigeria’s sovereignty.

For somebody who witnessed the civil war, it is frightening. The thing has gotten out of hand and out of control and the only way to control it is to engage the traditional rulers and the various stakeholders. It is not of religion, and it is a matter of sovereignty, nationhood and citizenship.

We need to be firm about how the coercive agencies of the state are handling this matter. Murder and arson are criminal offences of the worst order. We have a proverb that says, “ If a small child craws and bites an old man without respecting the grey hair, the old man should craw back and bite the child on the buttock without respecting whatever he sees there.”

So if these people kill and maim people, the coercive agencies should use maximum force to establish the sovereignty of Nigeria. This insecurity issue has gone so far that it has to be dealt with decisively now.

Is the high rate of unemployment in the country a contributory factor to the problem?

Unemployment is a major factor because an idle mind is the devils workshop. The level of unemployment is intolerable and nobody is happy with it, but there are people who are paid by government to think out programmes that will keep people employed in a sustainable manner.

We cannot import tricycles popularly Keke NAPEP from India and tell a graduate of Chemistry to be driving and say it’s employment. What we are facing in the world is not new, America and Britain have gone through depression and a major way of creating employment in a sustainable manner is through massive investment in public works.

If government decides now to build one million housing units in Nigeria today, do you know the number of people who will be employed? Not Keke NAPEP for God’s sake. Or this thing they are doing, call young boys and give them lectures, after the lectures, they give them N5 million and ask them to go and be entrepreneurs and employers of labour. That again to me is again laughable. We should have a way of encouraging small and medium scale industries in a measurable way.

The Nigerian market is huge, we don’t have to export, we have over 160 million people. If we make enough quality goods and people buy into it, it is enough to create employment. The one that my heart bleeds as I drive to Enugu is the Ajaokuta steel. There are so many buildings that have passed lintel level, they have been wasting away for over 20 years. Ajaokuta is not only a steel factory, it is steel city. That is why you have hospitals, residential quarters and others there.

Ajaokuta Steel can conveniently absorb thousands of unemployed youths. Why should we leave the fate of people like that to some nonsensical privatization which every probe has found wanting.

I was one of the authors of the PDP manifesto, we believed in private sector-led economy, but we did not say that we would auction off the entire economy to whatever private sector. We have no national carrier, how many countries do you know that don’t have national carriers? Because of private sector, they go and bring 30-year-old aircrafts into Nigeria airspace. That is a shame.

This is 13 years of Democracy in Nigeria, do you think we have done well?

I laugh whenever I hear that US spent 200 years before they got to where they are today. The issue is that people learn from people’s experiences, so that you don’t have to go through the same thing. We have more than enough time. What are we learning that nobody should rule another person without the persons’ consent? When you rig the election, you are ruling without the consent of the people, is that what you need 500 years to learn? Do we need 500 years to draw up people’s constitution?

GUARDIAN NIGERIA INTERVIEW AUGUST 4, 2012

130 Years After, Nigerian Researchers Declare Bishop Ajayi Crowther National Hero

Samuel Ajai Crowther
 

LAGOS, NIGERIA (NAN)--The researchers say it is imperative to look into the life and times of the Bishop Ajayi Crowther 130 years after his death.

Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Nigeria’s foremost clergyman, deserves to be declared a national hero, some researchers say.

The late cleric was the multi-linguist who translated the Holy Bible into Yoruba language.

He was born at Osogun in present-day Ibarapa East Local Government Area of Oyo State around 1807 and died in Lagos on Dec. 31, 1891.

His death predated Nigeria as a country.

Slave traders captured him alongside members of his family when he was 12 years old. He was later returned to Sierra Leone.

Pelumi Awofeso is one of the researchers who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Tuesday about Mr Crowther.

He said it was imperative to look into the life and times of the cleric 130 years after his departure.

“I started the research about Bishop Crowther after I stumbled on a tweet that talked about his death.

“Looking at the date at which he died, I realised that it is a milestone to celebrate him and dig out more research about him and his activities as a priest, educator, linguist, nationalist and a peacemaker.


“I thought it wise that something should be done in terms of having a documentary about him.

“I do not know the plans of the Anglican Communion, a church where he served as a bishop,’’ he said.

Mr Awofeso said what Mr Crowther stood for has not been fully appreciated adding that his life transcended the Bible translation to his nationalistic movement.

“Bishop Crowther did not translate the entire Bible in one fell swoop, when he was in Badagry as he moved from place to place on other assignments.

“It took him about 40 years to complete the translation.

“All that he did would be exposed in the documentary and how he created national consciousness among the people he met and his impact as an evangelist,’’ he said.

Findings

He also said the team of researchers has been able to unravel more about Mr Crowther after visiting 12 states.

“The team found that there are more than a thousand things he did which are not in the peoples’ consciousness.







“Bishop Crowther could be described as a man of passion who translated the Bible when there was no formal alphabetical order, no electricity, technology or other luxury that we enjoy these days.

“The man was able to keep his sanity in spite of the harsh conditions around him; he was also a linguist of repute who could be regarded as a Professor Emeritus of languages in our time,’’ he added.

“Bishop Crowther’s character and comportment had a lot to teach us in this 21st century. We have it on record that he was able to speak and teach 13 languages both foreign and local.

“He was a self-taught linguist in Latin, Nupe, Igbo, Hausa and other languages. He was always keeping the journals of his travels across the globe.

“Bishop Crowther also authored the Yoruba Primer and other books used in the Anglican Communion.

“He was a man that appreciated western education and always made sure that he built schools anywhere he went to evangelize.

“Many did not know his profession as a carpenter aside from his ministerial work as a priest and also had a lot of empowerment programmes for the people,’’ he stressed.
Funding

Mr Awofeso called for support for the project from Nigerians, noting that the documentary was a self- funded adventure running into millions of Naira.

A co-researcher, Sesede Simeon, also told NAN that Mr Crowther was well grounded educationally and had his education at the highest levels during his time.

“After Bishop Crowther was resettled in Sierra Leone, he was schooled at the famous Fourah Bay College and later he studied Latin and Greek and other things he could learn.

“He lived in different cities such as Ota, Abeokuta, Lokoja, Bonny Island, Freetown, Asaba and many more. He was also awarded an honorary Doctoral Degree at Oxford University.







“I think the sage had been grossly undervalued and underappreciated in the scheme of things.


“It takes a lot before a Blackman could rise to the level of a Bishop in a White-dominated setting.

“We need to attach the requisite honour to this man because he was a hero by all standards,’’ she said.

Rochas Okorocha's Address To Imo State Congress Of America Town Hall Meeting

FROM THE ARCHIVES

AUGUST 4, 2013

Rochas Okorocha, Governor of Imo State Speech to the Imo State Congress of America Town Hall Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, August 4, 2013. Image: Abiodun Oluwarotimi/The Leader News



"What is happening in Imo state now has never been recorded in the past twenty years and that was the result of my decision not to allow corruption in my government. I want you all to know that it was not my desire to be governor in Imo state but I had to come on a rescue mission when I saw failure instead of success.

"The level and the condition I met the state was very embarrassing to the extents that my colleagues did not want to spend nights anytime they visited me. I almost fainted the day Ohakim was handing over to me because everywhere looked very bad.

"The level of crimes and prostitution among our girls and boys had reduced since we made them enjoy free education at all levels. In fact, we do pay some stipends to all our students just for them to be very comfortable

"Education is worth appreciating in the state. You must appreciate something that you want to get the best out of. You can never get the best out of something you do not appreciate, and something you do not appreciate will surely depreciate

"PDP has no plan for the South East because it cannot guarantee an Ibo man becoming the president in 2015. APGA also cannot guarantee an Ibo man becoming the president of the nation because it is not a national party but it is only the APC that can make this happen so I implore all the people from the South East to come and join us

"Why should you, upon all your qualifications, come to America, pick up dirty jobs and still be insulted when there are better opportunities for you to team up with my administration if you know you have the potentials to help develop the state" 

Nigerian Military Is Seen As Losing Support

(FROM THE ARCHIVES)

By Clifforn D. May

New York Times, May 1, 1984

Buhari Image By William Campbell, January 1984

LAGOS, NIGERIA, (NEW YORK TIMES) — Four months after seizing power, Nigeria's military leaders appear to be suffering an erosion of popular support.

Last Dec. 31, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Buhari led a group of young officers in a coup against the civilian Government of President Shehu Shagari, saying the takeover was necessary to save Nigeria, Africa's richest and most populous nation, from economic collapse.

The military intervention appeared at the time to enjoy enthusiastic support from a broad range of Nigeria's population.

Many intellectuals argued that the corruption and incompetence of the Shagari administration had made drastic action both necessary and inevitable. Traders, merchants and people in the streets welcomed the soldiers and looked forward to a quick improvement in their standard of living.

Growing Disappointment

Recently, however, there seems to be growing disappointment with both the military Government's approach and pace.

''Since coming to power, this Government has not found a single problem,'' said Dr. Olu Onagoruwa, a prominent lawyer and a longtime opponent of the Shagari administration. ''But it has managed to alienate the judiciary, the press, labor and students - all the groups that supported it just a few months ago.''

Critics of the military Government point out that it has yet to present its budget. Loan negotiations with the International Monetary Fund continue but Western economists say that Nigeria and the I.M.F. appear to be further apart now than during the final days of the Shagari administration.

Early indications that General Buhari would agree to devalue Nigeria's currency, liberalize trade and reduce domestic petroleum subsidies have so far not materialized. Prices Have Climbed

In addition, prices for food and other essential commodities, which fell in the first weeks after the coup largely because of the presence of soldiers in the marketplaces, have now returned to or exceeded their levels before the coup. Unemployment has been rising, and many of the imported raw materials and spare parts needed to keep factories running have been lacking.

Critics note further that political activity and even debate have been banned and some students organizations have been outlawed. There has been a clampdown on Nigeria's press, and the country's traditionally independent judiciary has also seen its role sharply diminished.

''At the moment we're looking at a clear movement toward authoritarian dictatorship,'' said Stanley N. Macebuh, executive editor of The Guardian, an independent newspaper that had often taken the Shagari administration to task. ''It's a trend that disturbs a lot of people, not least those who welcomed the change of government.''

Spokesmen for the military leadership maintain that they know what they are doing and refuse to be rushed. They deny the charges of inaction, saying that steps have been taken. Trials Being Prepared

The Government, they say, has put much energy into investigating the corruption of the Shagari administration and in preparing tribunals to try the accused, close to 500 of whom are now under detention.

Officials say about 2,000 illegal aliens have been ejected from the country and several thousand people have been detained in a crackdown on suspected criminals and Moslem extremists.

They say Nigeria's bloated bureaucracy has been streamlined through the dismissal of thousands of officials and civil servants.

Three weeks ago an agreement was reached in London on converting a part of Nigeria's uninsured trade debts into loans.

The Government's critics respond that the economic initiatives treat symptoms rather than causes and aid the larger issue of how to restructure Nigeria's economy.

A Western diplomat said General Buhari ''could have accomplished so much if he had moved quickly and boldly in the early days when his popularity was still so high and when he could have credibly blamed everything on Shagari.''

American Seeks To Preserve Storied Afghan Past

An archived paper of the Taliban regime during an interview with The Associated Press at the Afghanistan Center in Kabul University. Dupree heads one of the foremost research centers on Afghanistan's cultural heritage, which stretches back thousands of years - well before the Silk Road - when Alexander the Great and the religious prophet Zoroastra passed through.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (AP) — Nancy Hatch Dupree fell in love with Afghanistan on her first visit in 1962, and embarked on a lifelong mission to preserve the rich cultural heritage of an ancient land scarred by modern wars.

In happier times she traversed the country with the other love of her life — archaeologist Louis Dupree, a fellow American — studying its history, writing travelogues and collecting books, maps, photographs and even rare recordings of folk music. The couple continued their efforts, often from abroad, during the tumultuous decades that followed, and their vast collection, now housed at Kabul University's sunlit Afghanistan Center, provides a rare journey through the country's past.

Small and bird-like with grey curls wound into a bun, the 87-year-old Dupree cuts a colorful figure in a bright green salwar kameez, blue cardigan and scarf as she walks through the halls, stopping now and then to point out her favorites among 90 photographs by Steve McCurry, best known for his 1985 National Geographic cover picture of a green-eyed Afghan refugee girl.

The collection includes copies of a glossy monthly magazine, called "The Islamic Emirate," published in English by the Taliban during its 1996-2001 rule, as well as thousands of slides taken by Louis during his work on archaeological digs. There are newspapers dating back to the 1920s and books so rare that Dupree has the only known copies.

Afghans regard Dupree as one of their own, with some even calling her "grandmother of the nation." President Ashraf Ghani found room at the university when he was chancellor in 2005 to store the tens of thousands of documents in the Dupree collection, and former President Hamid Karzai found the funds to build the center. Both men are old friends of hers.

Dupree now heads one of the foremost research centers on Afghanistan's cultural heritage, which stretches back thousands of years — well before the Silk Road — when Alexander the Great and the religious prophet Zoroastra passed through.

She laments that Afghanistan is barely understood beyond the seventh-century arrival of Islam, and that little of its historical tapestry or influence on the surrounding region appears in the local school curriculum.

"History is my big love, and I find Afghans are not interested in history," Dupree said. "Many Afghans — especially among the young people who spent many years in refugee camps in Iran or Pakistan — don't have a sense of identity, they don't know what it means to be Afghan so they are always thinking about getting out of the country."

Afghans can perhaps be forgiven for neglecting their history. The decade-long Soviet intervention in the 1980s was followed by a brutal civil war that ended with the rise of the Taliban, Islamic extremists who sought to obliterate the country's pre-Islamic past. They dynamited the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion.

But Dupree sees cultural heritage not as a luxury of peaceful countries, but an essential element to knitting troubled ones back together. "They don't realize that the integrity of the country depends on cultural value. It's a question of realizing the strength of the country culturally, and that comes from valuing the past while welcoming the new — the two have to be meshed together and that is what we are trying to do here," she said.

Dupree visited the 2,000-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan in the country's central highlands shortly after arriving in Kabul as the wife of an American diplomat. From that trip, she wrote a guide book to Bamiyan which was to become the first in a series of travelogues that included her own black and white photography and captured an age long past.

She took the Bamiyan manuscript to her future husband Louis Dupree in the hope of some guidance, but he was dismissive, she said, writing "adequate by nothing original" on the cover. She was incensed, "but I never left," she said. They were married in 1966.

Their Kabul home became a salon of sorts, until Louis was accused of being an American spy and expelled from the country in 1978. The Soviets invaded the following year and the Duprees returned to the United States, where he taught at Duke University. Later they moved to Lahore, Pakistan, where they made contact with Afghan refugees and the charities helping them, and continued to amass a trove of information about the country.

Dupree eventually returned to Afghanistan in 1992, three years after her husband's death, and since then has divided her time between Kabul and North Carolina, where she and Louis made a home. She has witnessed much of the sadness that has befallen Afghanistan in the modern era, and hopes the new president can sweep away the legacy of corruption and patronage that marked Karzai's 13 years in power.

The Afghanistan Center's motto, "Nation Building through Information Sharing" sums up Dupree's personal mission to spread literacy to the vast majority of the population who can neither read nor write. The center has produced around 300 easy-to-read books on subjects ranging from bee-keeping to seismology, which are packed into mobile libraries and sent to remote communities. It is, she said, an effort to bridge the development divide.

"We are trying to do a lot of things, but there are only 24 hours in a day," she said.

Follow Lynne O'Donnell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lynnekodonnell .