Nigeria: Constitution Review: Govs Insist On Immunity

Governors are expected to meet in Abuja on Wednesday (today) in a bid to stop the planned removal of the immunity clause from the constitution. According to Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution, the clause, no civil or criminal proceeding shall be instituted against the President, Vice-President, governors and their deputies while in office. The Justice Alfa Belgore committee set up by President Goodluck Jonathan had recommended the removal of the clause.
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Conversations With Nina Fabunmi

Date of Face-2-Face Conversations: February 16, 2012 at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza

I had walked up to my appointment with Los Angeles filmmaker Bill Wynn on the arrangements to meet with filmmaker Al Thompson whose movie "Odessa", about a man and his daughter on the run from the mysterious shadow program that bestowed them with psychokinetic abilities in which they must avoid capture at all cost or be used as living weapons when I bumped into Nigerian-born creative artist, Nina Fabunmi's exhibition on display at the 20th Anniversay of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival on the complex of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles.

I had seen the sign and her work but wasn't sure if I knew her well and her work. She was gone running the events related errands when I arrived. I had asked her caretaker when would be timely to catch up with Nina, as I would like to know more of her work and what got her into the world of creative art. I was told she'd be back the next day. I came the next day at the exact time I was told she'd be there. I met her and we spoke briefly requesting an interview which she granted. We scheduled the interview for Sunday, February 16, 2012; and I came, from my other related assignments.

Nina Fabunmi was born in Nigeria. She studied Estate Management at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria, but chose to take on the arts for the passion she had in it even though her parents did not want her ending up an artist. On why she chose to study arts in the United States, she said, "I'm here in the US because of the system hoping for the opportunity in learning the arts because art has no limit."

On Nina's interest besides arts, she's into Fashion Designing & Modeling, Sports (Taekwando, Basket Ball, and Swimming), Music, Photography, Reading, Writing Poetry and short stories and Creativity in general.

On Nina's passion for arts, she notes;

"My earliest memories are memories of me making art. I was born an artist and have grown in it. In this life , I have ventured into other vocations, but they all always lead me to my hearts desires! Art. With an MFA at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, I am tightening my skills and striving to be the best that I can be at what I do best, Art!"

From the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles held February 9-20, 2012 where she had an exhibition, Nina had exhibited at the following events: Art exhibition at Zozi’s Loft , 235 9th Street, San Francisco, 17th November 2011.Art Exhibition to Send forth Dr. Renee Sanders (Outgoing US Ambassador to Nigeria), Nike Art Gallery Lekki, 8th Aug 2010. ETA Fyne Art’diction Art Exhibition, Southern Sun Hotel, ikoyi, December 2009. Vlisco Fashion Show, 1st November 2009,– One of the Top 15 Finalist for Fashion Art Competition organized by AAF (African Artists Foundation) and exhibited at the Civic Center. October rain October 2009 National Museum Onikan, organized by Society for Nigerian Artists (SNA Lagos Chapter). Vason Open House Exhibition, Mydrim Gallery Ikoyi, September 2009. “Rencontre Avec les Artists, Aquarelles et Peinture a Huile, Besancon vu par Nina et Adejumo 20-24th Juillet , CLA (Centre de linguistique Appliquee), Universite De Franche-Comte. Naijazz 2008, NAIJART Art Exhibition, Studio 868, Bishop Aboyade Cole Street V/I, Dec 2008. “Lagos Hot on Artists” Art Exhibition and documentary, 23rd May 2009, Alliance Francaise, Ikoyi, Lagos. Exhibited at Eden Fashion Show, Didi Museum. 12th Dec 2008. Serendipity by ITA (Association of Informally Trained Artists) 6-11th Dec 2008 Didi Museum, Victoria Island, Lagos. Experience Nigeria 2008 Art Show organized by AARC (African Art Resource Center), Theme: Nigerians at Work 22nd- 28th Nov 2008; Beyond Imagination: 8th -14th November National Theatre Iganmu , organized by Multimedia Association of Artists (MFA). October Rain : 18-24th October 2008 National Museum Onikan, organized by Society for Nigerian Artists (SNA Lagos Chapter).

On a fast-pace degenerating Nigeria state, Nina said she wished the country had been more organized with its abundant natural resources and the brain drain in it's human capital, and totally felt disappointed while visiting Nigeria last December. Acoording to Nina, "nothing works with a filthy Murtala Muhammad International Airport."

Asking Nina what was her experience, she said "all had to be learned anew", which was the culture shock. For instance, learning how to use the bus lines, applying for library cards, transactions at the post office and things like that she appreciates because of a working system that brings in hope and lots of opportunities in how one could go pursuing his or her dreams.

Nina is also involved in volunteer work in the San Francisco Bay Area museum where she now calls home. Currently at the museum, she is on projects on African Diaspora and book on "Igbo Women's War."

A Man's Mind By Nina Fabunmi

Legendary Nigerian Footballer Rashidi Yekini Dead

Series of media reports have noted that Rashidi Yekini known to have scored the first goal for Nigeria in World Cup is dead. He was 49. According to Wikipedia, Yekini was born in Kaduna. After starting his professional career in the Nigerian league, he moved to Côte d'Ivoire to play for Africa Sports National. From there he went to Portugal and Vitória de Setúbal, where he experienced his most memorable years, eventually becoming the Portuguese first division's top scorer, in 1993–94, as his performances (32 matches, 34 goals) earned him the title of African Footballer of the Year in 1993, the first ever from the nation.

In the 1994 summer, Yekini was bought by Olympiacos FC, but did not get along with teammates and left. His career never really got back on track, not even upon a return to Setúbal, which happened after another unassuming spell, in La Liga with Sporting de Gijón. He successively played with FC Zürich, Club Athlétique Bizertin and Al-Shabab Riyadh, before rejoining Africa Sports. In 2003, at 39, he returned to the Nigerian championship with Julius Berger FC.

In 2005, 41-year old Yekini made a short comeback, moving alongside former national teammate Mobi Oparaku to Gateway FC. Scoring 37 goals for Nigeria's national side in 58 appearances, Yekini is the national record goalscorer. He was part of the team that participated in the 1994 FIFA World Cup (where he scored Nigeria's first-ever goal in a World Cup, in a 3–0 win against Bulgaria) and the 1998 World Cup.

Additionally, Yekini also helped the Super Eagles win the 1994 Africa Cup of Nations, where he also topped the goal charts, and participated at Olympic level, in Seoul 1988.

He was reportedly sick for a while . One of Africa’s greatest footballers, he was said to have suffered a neurological illness which hinges on belief that is pathological and held, despite evidence to the contrary.. The two-time African footballer of the year was said to have been walking the streets of Ibadan barefooted, and suffered delusions. Yekini lived alone in his house, had a few tenants and rarely gets visitors. Since his marriage crashed in 1994, he hasn't remarried but has two children who visit him on holidays. Neighbours at his Oni and Sons Ring Road residence in Ibadan,Oyo State, Nigeria say he's been acting strange for some time now, always seen talking to himself. Sources say sometime late in 2010, Yekini, in the full glare of neighbours, brought out his belongings and allegedly set it on fire.

Nigeria: Gunmen Raid Cattle Market; Kill 60

Death cows lie amid burned posts Thursday, May 3, 2012 following a raid by gunmen in a cattle market in Potiskum, Nigeria. Image: Adamu Adamu/AP

A man receives treatment at the general hospital in Potiskum, Thursday, May 3, 2012, following a raid by gunmen on a cattle market in Potiskum, Nigeria. About 60 people were killed after a failed cattle raid on Wednesday in the northeast Nigeria market sparked a retaliatory attack by robbers angry one of their colleagues had been burned alive by herders, an official and witnesses said Thursday. Image: Adamu Adamu/AP Related Story: Gunmen Kill 60, Injure Others In Yobe Market

UN-Backed Court at The Hague: Charles Taylor

This Monday, Aug. 11, 2003 file photo shows former Liberian president Charles Taylor, center, flanked by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, left, and President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, right, as Taylor arrived into exile at Abuja international airport, Nigeria. On Thursday April 26, 2012, judges at an international war crimes passed judgment on warlord-turned-Liberian president Charles Taylor, who is accused of sponsoring rebels responsible for untold atrocities, including abetting murder, rape and the forced enlistment of child soldiers during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war in return for so-called blood diamonds. Taylor had been on trial at the UN-backed court in The Hague for almost five years. The historic verdicts at the Special Court for Sierra Leone will mark the first time an international tribunal has reached judgment in the trial of a former head of state since judges in Nuremberg convicted Karl Doenitz, a naval officer who briefly led Germany after Adolf Hitler's suicide. This week the United Nation Special court in The Hague, Netherlands convicted Taylor of war crimes against humanity and would serve 80-years in prison. Image: George Osodi/AP

Conversations With Devin Bly

"How're you doing today," Devin would throw at me while his girl wraps around him with the "what's up" kinda look. The hard working 24-year-old in da hood kinda hip-hopper swinging in Los Angeles ain't playing in the world of Hip Hop and determined to be the next sure thing happening to Hip-Hop.

Born on May 27, 1987, Devin wants to take Hip-Hop to another level since his joint master-tape release with J-Nug The Boss called "That's Us." Devin was inspired by Lil wayne, working now on his solo mixtape due to be released before the Summer gigs begins of which he is no new comer, featuring in several gigs in the Los Angeles-Hollywood area pubs. Swag, dope and da music -- Devin wants to shake Los Angeles with his new approach on how to direct Hip Hop, whether it's underground or straight out of the master's voice - the dimension is gloomy and the time to rock LA full time is coming with a new mixtape.

 There is nothing about life now to hate for Devin - he's been working hard ever since he played that opening slot in a Hollywood gig and the duo mixtape with The Boss. On "That's Us" Devin explains he'd come up with something big while going solo and a mixtape that is about to be released within the summer. While we are at it, Devin says he couldn't wait after Capitol Records executives listened to his tape, and when I asked him about it, he said they all liked it and now waits on the next line of action. For his birthday, Devin drove to Las Vegas to treat himself before heading back to the studio for his upcoming release; and the Cream video is sure bet he's taken that step to rock Los Angeles in every way it flows and the next big blast at Samaka Studios.

THE CREAM VIDEO

Senate President David Mark Returns To Nigeria From Medical Treatment

David Mark at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, returned from his medical treatment in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was received on arrival by the Speaker, House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminul Tambuwal, the Deputy Senate President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, and several ministers including members of the senate and house of representatives. Mark had been in Israel for complicated medical examination...In his first press statement, Mark said: "I thank God I am now hale and hearty and back to my feet. I will continue to be faithful to God and my commitment to the service of my fatherland."

Nigeria: A Disappearing Lagos

The Church Missionary Society Bookshop house and tower (CMS Bookshop) was built in 1973 by G Cappa and designed by Architects Godwin and Hopwood with sun screening and windows to reduce the heat load on the air-conditioning. It is still one of the few buildings in Nigeria to have a facade correctly designed to exclude direct sunlight between 9am and 5pm with a consequent astonishing 75% saving in air-conditioning loading on the office floors, in Lagos, Nigeria. What is predicted to become the most populous city in Africa was initially ignored by the Portuguese explorers who first dominated it, served as a hub for a brutal slave trade and once held the hope of a continent that even now struggles to overcome its colonial past. Date: April 01, 2012. Image: Sunday Alamba

Commercial buses park in front of the gothic style designed Chrit Church Cathedral, which incorporates Brazilian details and motifs with the foundation stone laid by Prince Edward in 1925, but was not completed until 1948. It's imposing tower dominates the road junction and this part of Marina in Lagos island, Nigeria. Date: April 01, 2012. Image: Sunday Alamba

In this photo taken Sunday, April. 1, 2012, Doherty Villa, was built in 1895 by liberated slaves returned from Brazil and known as the Amaro who tended to settle on the island in Lagos, Nigeria. What is predicted to become the most populous city in Africa was initially ignored by the Portuguese explorers who first dominated it, served as a hub for a brutal slave trade and once held the hope of a continent that even now struggles to overcome its colonial past. Image: Sunday Alamba

This Phase Of Igbo Genocide

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The concept “failed-state” carries an understandable melodramatic import! It refers to the inability or failure of a state to fulfil some of its key roles and responsibilities to its people(s) and others domiciled within its territory and consequently to its neighbours and the wider global community of states. State failure materialises at three broad spheres of the lives of the people(s): social, political and economic. The following would feature among the key empirical determinants of this failure:

1. The state’s inability to provide security to its population – crucially, a catastrophic failure as the state’s primary existence is predicated on this provision of security to its citizens. This failure may have arisen because the state no longer exercises control across part/parts or all of its territory. Several factors could account for this including, for instance, calamitous breakdowns in vital internal sociopolitical and economic relations, intra-regime fractionalism and rivalries and the unmanageability of natural disasters. As we shall note shortly, it could also be due to the state’s actively pursued violation of the human rights of the people(s) including, most gravely, a deliberate state policy to embark on the destruction of one or more of its constituent nations/peoples/religious groups, etc., etc.

2. The state’s inability to provide essential social services (communication infrastructure, health care, education, housing and recreation, development of culture) to its people(s) or the state’s deliberate policy to deny or partially offer such services to some of its constituent nations/peoples/religious groups…

There remains a lack of consensus among scholars studying the failed states of contemporary Africa on the terms of the evaluative parameters of this enterprise including the critical constitutive timeframes of assessing and therefore concluding when this or that African state ‘began to fail’ or/and when indeed it “failed”. There is a tendency by many to arbitrarily circumscribe the limit of the focus of interrogation to the so-called African post-conquest epoch (i.e., post-1 January 1956, following the presumed restoration of independence date in the Sudan) with the underlying presumption that the state, as formulated and constituted on the eve of the “restoration of independence”, has a definitive and enduring internal logic to its being. Of course what such a staggeringly ahistorical arbitrariness does to this scholarship is that it attempts to freeze layers and layers of vital record and practice off sustained scrutiny as it wishes to project this era of all-Africa external conquest and occupation as “largely unproblematic”. Undoubtedly, as has been demonstrated all too clearly since January 1956, a post-(European)conquest African Studies corpus built on such a blatantly contrived edifice is hopelessly trapped in a debilitating and eventual terminal crisis.

1945 & 1953

For Nigeria, the country at the focus of this roundtable, it is at once a failed and genocide state. It is to Jos, a city in its northcentral region, that we locate the start of the trajectory to its “failed state” status. The year is not 2000 or 2001 or any other year in this last decade nor indeed in any of the three years of the current decade but 1945, eleven years before 1956 and fifteen years before 1960 – the year of the “termination” of the British occupation of the country. In October 1945, in the wake of a very successful anti-occupation countrywide strike, Hausa-Fulani muslim north regional leaders, those much endeared clients of the occupation-regime who were not only opposed to this strike but also the ultimate goal of Nigeria’s liberation from the British conquest in which Igbo people played a vanguard role, organised and launched a pogrom against Igbo immigrants in Jos and the surrounding tin mining towns and villages on the plateau. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered during the massacre and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property looted or destroyed. No perpetrators of these murders were ever apprehended or punished by the occupation-regime. As a result, emboldened Hausa-Fulani leaders organised yet another pogrom of Igbo immigrants in the north, this time in Kano, 180 miles further north, in May 1953, which coincided with the heightened debates among Nigerian politicians on the possible date for the formal termination of the occupation and the restoration of independence. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered during this massacre and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property looted or destroyed. Once again, no perpetrators of these murders were apprehended or punished by the occupation-regime.

1966-2012

On the contrary, as the world would witness 13 years later, these dual pogroms became dreadful dress rehearsals for the most gruesome, most devastating, and most expansive stretch of state-organised mass murders of a people not seen in Africa since the German-organised genocide of the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of contemporary Namibia in the early 1900s. Beginning 29 May 1966 to 12 January 1970, the composite aggregation of the Nigeria state – military officers, the police, Hausa-Fulani emirs, muslim clerics and intellectuals, students, civil servants, journalists, politicians and other public figures – planned and executed the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. This is also Africa’s most destructive genocide of the 20th century. A total of 3.1 million Igbo people, a quarter of this nation’s population at the time, were murdered during those harrowing 44 months. Most Igbo were slaughtered in their homes, offices, businesses, schools, colleges, hospitals, markets, churches, shrines, farmlands, factories/industrial enterprises, children’s playground, town halls, refugee centres, cars, lorries, and at bus stations, railway stations, airports and on buses, trains and planes and on foot, or starved to death – the openly propagated regime-“weapon” to achieve its heinous goal more speedily. In the end, the Igbo genocide was enforced, devastatingly, by Nigeria’s simultaneously pursued land, aerial and naval blockade and bombardment of Igboland, Africa’s highest population density region outside the Nile Delta. The genocidists also sequestrated and pillaged the multibillion-dollar Biafra economy, one of the most advanced and enterprising hubs in Africa of the era.

Most of Africa and the world stood by and watched, hardly critical or condemnatory of this wanton destruction of human lives, raping, sacking and plundering of towns, villages, community after community in Biafra and elsewhere... The consequences for Africa have been catastrophic. In this genocide of the Igbo, Nigeria inaugurated the “age of pestilence” that defines contemporary Africa. Several regimes elsewhere in Africa are “convinced” of the conclusions that they have drawn from this crime by their Nigerian counterpart: “We can murder targeted constituent people(s) at will within the state we control … Haul off their prized property and livelihood … Comprehensively destroy their cities, towns, villages, communities – precisely their agelong, priceless, inheritance ... There will be no sanctions from Africa – and the world”. As a result, the Igbo genocide becomes the clearing site for the haunting killing fields that would crisscross the African geographical landscape in the subsequent 40 years with the murders of additional 12 million Africans, since January 1970, by regimes in further genocide in Rwanda, Darfur and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of Congo and other killings in Liberia, Ethiopia, Congo Republic, Somalia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, south Sudan, Burundi.

One would perhaps be forgiven if they thought that, after such a frenzied indulgence in indescribable depravity in mass slaughtering and a trail of destruction, capped by its occupation of Biafra, Nigeria would tire out of its appetite to continue the murder of Igbo people. No, not really. This obligatory haematophagous creature continues its murder of the Igbo unabated – almost routinely and ritualistically during the course of subsequent years, signposted here by the eerie columns that chart the contours of fresh pogrom outrages: 1980 ... 1982 ... 1985 ... 1991 ... 1993 ... 1994 ... 1999 ... 2000 ... 2001 ... 2002 ... 2004 ... 2005 ... 2006 ... 2007 ... 2008 ... 2009 ... 2010 ... 2011 ... 2012. According to the December 2011 research by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule Of Law, a human rights organisation based in Onicha, 90 per cent of the 54,000 people murdered in Nigeria by the state/quasi-state operatives and agents since 1999 are Igbo people. Since last Christmas Day, the Boko Haram islamist insurgent group spearheads these murders. At least 80 per cent of people murdered by the Boko Haram across swathes of lands in north/northcentral Nigeria since then are Igbo. Hundreds of thousands of Igbo families have abandoned homes and businesses in the affected region and have returned to Igboland. Arguably, the Igbo are the world’s most brutally targeted and most viciously murdered of peoples presently. Not since 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 has Igbo life in Nigeria acquired such a gripping existential emergency…

The Boko Haram now issues its threats to murder quite habitually, at times on a daily basis, and, true to its words, executes its mission most ruthlessly, most remorselessly. After each of its outrages, Boko Haram acknowledges responsibility and does this most dispassionately… The regime in Abuja appears cruelly powerless to protect Igbo people (and others) emplaced within the jurisdiction of the supposedly sovereign state it controls with the well-known consequences in international law that this shocking relegation of responsibility entails. Regime-head Goodluck Jonathan says as much in a recent astonishing radio and television broadcast to his country and the world: “Boko Haram is everywhere in the executive arm of [my] government, in the legislative arm of [my] government and even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security [services] … Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house”. Following from Jonathan’s proclamation, it is conceivable that right there closeted in his regime, there are operatives deeply complicit in these ongoing murders. And it doesn’t appear that the regime can halt the
murdering nor the insurgency. On the contrary, Jonathan is essentially saying in his broadcast: “I don’t know how to solve this problem; I can’t solve this problem”. The seriousness of this situation cannot be exaggerated. Presently, Nigeria is a grave danger to itself. Nigeria is a grave danger to its constituent peoples and nations, to its neighbours, to the west Africa region, to Africa and the wider world. Nigeria has indeed now run the course of its bloody trail in history. The ongoing murders have exposed, particularly, the lethal fissures in a hitherto seemingly compact genocidist monolith. This fractionalisation cannot be contained.

REFERENDUM AND SUCCESSOR STATE(S)

Whilst Jonathan’s broadcast is undoubtedly a desperate acknowledgement of helplessness if not hopelessness, it however opens up an historic opportunity to overcome this tragedy. There is undoubtedly a silver lining over this cloud. What is critically at stake here is the right of the peoples domiciled in Nigeria, each and every constituent people, to democratically decide their future. This right to self-determination for every people is inalienable and is guaranteed by the United Nations. No people is exempt from exercising this right. To proceed to the realisation of this goal, two key features are called for forthwith:

1. The requisite institutions of the world must now embark on initiating the process for an internationally organised, supervised, and binding referendum across Nigeria for the peoples, themselves, to decide whether they wish to remain in Nigeria or form new state(s) of their choice.

2. To support Igbo people’s participation in this referendum, Igbo intellectuals should double up their efforts to work for the restoration of Igbo sovereignty, Biafra. The Igbo genocide is one of the most comprehensively documented crimes against humanity. Nonetheless, Igbo intellectuals must contribute, robustly, to continue to inform the entire world of the nature and extent of the genocide, examining, particularly, the variegated contours of the expansive trail of this crime, the parameters and strictures of the monstrosity of denialism of the crime (especially by some clusters of the core perpetrators of the crime in Nigeria and their collaborators abroad including some in academia and media) and the debilitating and oppressive burden of 40 years of occupation.

Let it never be forgotten that, four decades ago, Igbo intellectuals, many very talented and widely accomplished men and women in their varying fields of expertise (writers, academics, artists, students, diplomats, military officers, scientists, physicians, lawyers, engineers), contributed most profoundly to the eventual survival of the Igbo during phases I and II of the genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, when only few in the world thought that they would accomplish such an improbable feat. We surely have an historic legacy to contend with.

*(Paper presented at “Roundtable on Nigeria’s future: The challenges to security and economic development caused by Boko Haram and the way forward”, held at E. Franklin Frazier Center for Social Work Research, Howard University Law School, Washington, DC, United States, Thursday 12 April 2012. Roundtable moderator: Robin Renee Sanders, former US ambassador to Nigeria and Republic of Congo; other roundtable panellists – Pat Utomi, professor and senior fellow, Lagos Business School, Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria; Augustine (Gus) Fahey, senior desk officer for Nigeria, Bureau of African Affairs, US State Department, Washington, DC; Oguchi Nkwocha, physician, Biafra Foundation, Los Angeles; Michael Maduagwu, professor and senior fellow, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Nigeria and Eric Guttschuss, Nigeria researcher, Human Rights Watch, Washington, DC; roundtable coordinator: Chima Korieh, professor of history, Marquette University, Milwaukee; roundtable co-sponsors: Apollos Nwauwa, president of Igbo Studies Association and professor of history, Bowling Green State University, Ohio; Kanayo Odeluga, physician and executive director, Igbo League, Chicago and Mike Mbanaso, professor and director, E. Franklin Frazier Center for Social Work Research, Howard University, Washington, DC.)

Please follow Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe on twitter: @HerbertEkweEkwe

2012 Time's 100 Most Influential People In The World

When Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan made the list for Time's poll to pick the magazine's top 100 people that influence our lives, there was this feel that Time magazine editors had begun to recognize a volatile and troubled state that is Nigeria. Jonathan had been picked on "the twin imperatives of trying to end a bloody northern Nigeria Islamist rebellion led by Boko Haram and dismantle the fuel subsidies that are one of the country's main sources of corruption, requires bold leadership of Jonathan, who is finishing his first year in office."

However, the opening shot for Time's 2012 100 most influential people was the wonder Asian-American kid, Jeremy Lin picked against all odds that nothing is impossible. According to the Time editors, the 100 most influential people in the world are "the people who inspire us, and change our world -- from politicians and revolutionaries, to statisticians and roboticists. Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan made the list.

THE FULL LIST


ELLEN JOHNSON ON GOODLUCK JONATHAN


BARTON GELLMAN ON ANONYMOUS


JOE KLEIN ON PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA


CHARLIZE THERON ON SAMIRA IBRAHIM


ARNE DUNCAN ON JEREMY LIN


CICELY TYSON ON VIOLA DAVIS

Memorable Images And Time (West African Leaders)

Jacqueline Kennedy chats with Mrs. Houphouet-Boigny (right) as they pose for photographers prior to a state dinner given by President and Mrs. Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast in honor of the Chief Executive and Mrs. Kennedy here tonight.Date: May 24, 1962. Location: Washington, D.C. Image: Bettmann


7/28/1966- Washington, DC: State visitor. President Johnson chats in his office with President Leopold Senghor of Senegal today after the African Chief Executive arrived for a nine-day visit. President Johnson welcomed President Senghor as "the head of a very friendly and vigorous African nation."


President John F. Kennedy greets the first Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa at the White House.Date: July 25, 1961. Location: Washington D.C. Image: Bettmann


7/24/1958-Washington, D.C.- Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana shown during his White House visit with President Eisenhower today. He later told newsmen that the President was "sympathetic" to the economic problems of his newly independent African state.