Civil war: Prosecute Gowon, Obansanjo, Danjuma, INC

The Igbo National Congress (INC), a political pressure group, has called for the prosecution of former Head of State, General Yabuku Gowon; former president Olusegun Obasanjo and General T.Y. Danjuma for alleged premeditated and organized genocide against Ndigbo during the 30 months civil war.

In a press statement signed by its President-General, Comrade Chilos Godsent, after the organization’s executive session in Owerri, it urged the prosecution of those indicted for genocide against the Igbo. “INC calls for the prosecution of all those indicted for genocide against Ndigbo, which includes General Yakubu Gowon, General Olusegun Obasanjo, General T. Y. Danjuma, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (post-humous) and many others at the International Criminal Court.

“They violated humanitarian laws during the war they declared against Ndigbo for trying to express their rights to self-determination and should therefore be brought to book for their crimes against humanity,” the group stated. Comrade Godsent said the massive investments being made by Ndigbo all over the country, especially in the South-west and the North have constantly been under attack to weaken and intimidate Ndigbo.

“Ndigbo have lost millions of naira through unwarranted attacks by their hosts, including bombing, riots as well as cold blooded murder as being witnessed in northern Nigeria today. “Many local governments in most of these states, especially in Lagos and the North have initiated anti-Igbo trade policies to cripple the businesses and investments belonging to Ndigbo. “The INC therefore, calls on Ndigbo living in other parts of the country, especially in the North where jihad has been declared against them, to begin to bring their businesses and investments back home.

They should as well begin to develop properties in Igbo land to ensure safety. It is the position of the INC that people who want their goods will always come for it no matter where they are.” The INC also urged governments of Igbo states to take issues of good governance, development of infrastructures more seriously and initiate pro-people policies to encourage investments in Igbo land.

Meanwhile, the council praised the audacity and forthrightness of the renowned literary icon and statesman, Prof Chinua Achebe, in the publication of his personal memoirs on the Biafra-Nigeria civil war in which he pointed out crimes committed against Ndigbo by Nigerian officials and their allies, especially Awolowo and Gowon, during the war.

The INC also commended the courage of many Nigerians including Prof. Wole Soyinka, who have persistently stood on the side of t truth and condemned the evil meted out against Ndigbo during the civil war.

.....GEORGE ONYEJIUWA, OWERRI/SUN NEWS

Mali: The New Afghanistan – OpEd

The international community have for some time ignored Morocco’s persistent warning that sub Saharan Africa is starting to transfom into a safe haven for terrorist groups. Plagued by systematic state failure, sub-Saharan Africa’s failed states have helped facilitate internationally sponsored terrorist networks and operations.

States such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia are now lending huge quantities of arms, money to radical extremist jihadist movement of internationally sponsored terrorist such as al Qaeda. With the continuous abduction of European humanitarian workers in the region, it is becoming increasingly obvious that internationally sponsored terrorist networks have found a permanent home in sub-Saharan Africa and even within the hearts and minds of its people.

The last abduction of three European humanitarian aid workers south of Algeria proves that extremist jihadist ideology is already prevailing in Sahrawi camps. This new reality poses significant challenge for the international community, given the region’s patchwork of failed states, where terrorists can easily hide and strive. Moroccan authorities have given threat alarm for many years and have even urged strongly neighboring countries to coordinate their efforts to fight terrorism in the region.

The situation now has become even more serious and terrorist groups are now actively recruiting more militants from within the region and wide popular support for extremist acts is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa. Europeans are the first to suffer from this escalation of terrorist groups in the region but the United States should take this threat very seriously. It is no more a benign terrorist group as used to be described. Soon sub-Saharan Africa will become the site of terrorists, and the next wave of terrorist activity if it hasn’t already become one. Now the occupation of the north of Mali by jihadist guerrillas has lately become a serious menace for Mali, its neighbors and Europe.

This is unfortunately one of the undesired consequences of the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, which had attracted Tuareg warriors and others in its defense. If the armed Islamists consolidate this area as a safe haven, it would constitute an Afghanistan on the doorstep of the European Union. It could be a springboard for terrorist attacks in Europe, as well as strengthening the kidnapping network in the region, and unbalancing neighbor states.

For all these reasons we can only applaud the decision, endorsed by the UN, to set up an African force for the reconquest of this territory, with European support. The EU will contribute to the training and operative capacity of the force, made up of troops from members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Its task is going to be a reconquest of the lost territory. And, within the Union, it will require a high level of solidarity between North and South. Algeria, though largely affected by the situation,does not want to be involved directly in this military operation. It may commit itself however, to the task of closing its territory to jihadists fleeing from Mali.

The details of the EU’s military mission, which has received the political support of the European Council, are only gradually becoming apparent, though one of its principal duties will be to organize and train the precarious army of Mali up to a level where it will be able to reconquer the lost territory. This is going to call for a substantial amount of logistical support from Europe, as well as a supply of information from the United States.

The rebels denied news of the arrival of hundreds of combatants in their support, proceeding from Sudan and the Polisario controlled camps in Tindouf, which suggests that the situation may easily become very dangerous and that intervention is an urgent matter. In the view of French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, it will have to be a matter of weeks, not of months.

In principle, the operation ought to be the starting point in a widespread struggle against the multiple cells of Al Qaeda in the Muslim area of West Africa. But to grant it credibility , the government of Mali must also do its part. The provisional president, Dioncounda Traoré, came to power after a coup d’état in March. Since that time he has been promising a national dialog and the organization of fair and honest elections. Since then nothing has been concluded so far. The region needs real democracy, economic growth, rule of law and good governance.

SAID TEMSAMANI/EURASIA REVIEW

Said Temsamani is a Moroccan political observer and consultant, who follows events in his country and across North Africa. He is a Senior Fellow, Merdian International Center Washington DC, Founder and CEO "Public Initiatives" Consulting firm and Former Senior Political Advisor, US Embassy Rabat, Morocco.

Burkina Faso ALERT: Court sentences two journalists to 12 months imprisonment

PRESS RELEASE

A Magistrates’ Court in Ouagadougou, the capital, on October 29, 2012 sentenced Roland Ouédraogo and Issa Lohé Konaté, both editors of privately-owned L’Ouragan newspaper to 12 months in prison on charges of defaming Placide Nikieme, the State Prosecutor.

The two journalists who were taken straight to prison to begin their sentence were also fined an amount of CFA 4 million (about US$ 7,800) in damages to Nikiema while the newspaper was suspended for a period of six months.

According to the Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent the sentence followed a complaint lodged by Nikiema at the Court accusing the newspaper and its editors of defaming him in a published article, which cited corrupt practices in the State Prosecutor’s office.

The Court found them guilty and pronounced judgement on charges of “defamation, insults and contempt of court through the press.”

According to the correspondent, a delegation of media professional groups and associations had on October 25, 2012 met with the State Prosecutor to request him to withdraw his complaint, but their efforts proved futile.

The situation has attracted a lot of concern among media professional groups in the country, who have expressed surprise at the verdict, describing it as very harsh since such a verdict has never been handed down to the press before.

For more information please contact:

Kwame Karikari (Prof)

Executive Director

MFWA

Accra

Tel: 233-30-22 4 24 70

Fax: 233-302-22 10 84

Email: mfwa@africaonline.com.gh, alerts@mediafound.org

Website: www.mediafound.org

The Gods Are Angry -- WSJ Review

False narratives hamper Africa's development, while dangerous new ideologies flood in from the outside

BY GEORGE AYITTEY, WALL STREET JOURNAL

Of Africa

By Wole Soyinka

Yale University Press, 199 pages, $24

Africa as we know it is a fiction, constructed after the arrival of Arab and European slave traders, at which point the continent had already experienced millennia of cultural and civilizational developments. That history was largely unwritten and therefore lost. Africa in the past century was governed by rulers, both colonial and postcolonial, who didn't know where she came from. Artificial borders and alien political structures were set up to govern her peoples. Rebellion, instability and economic stagnation followed. Though the leaders have changed repeatedly, the results have remained the same.

Consider Nigeria. The country had its borders drawn by the British in 1914, with little regard for ethnic and social cohesion among its hundreds of tribes. After independence in 1960, the Brits rigged the first election to ensure that power went to the conservative elements in the north, who came to believe that it was their natural right to rule Nigeria. In subsequent years, the country was racked by ethnic strife, secession and civil war. No Nigerian statesman was able to reach across to other tribes. And while the country has regained stability in recent years, its path to development today is hampered by corruption, misrule and the rise of radical Islam.

Nigeria stands in for Africa's broader plight, and it is fitting that books by two Nigerian authors—the Nobel-winning playwright and poet Wole Soyinka and the celebrated novelist Chinua Achebe—attempt to confront the historical and spiritual roots of Africa's crisis. The authors—among Africa's greatest intellectual giants—have been consistent and courageous critics of misrule on the continent for decades, stances which put their lives at risk and forced them to flee their native country. Both authors see hope in Africa's indigenous religious and political traditions.

Mr. Soyinka is "frustrated" by the false narratives of the continent, as well by the dangerous new ideologies flooding in from the outside. "Of Africa" is an intellectually robust, book-length essay that attempts to unravel the paradoxes and contradictions plaguing Nigeria and, by extension, Africa. "What is Africa?" the author asks. What we know of the continent is based on mythologies propagated by the early European adventurers, colonialists, postcolonial African leaders and African Americans.

The Arabs and the Europeans were invaders, colonizers and enslavers, who imposed their alien religions on Africa. Neither Islam nor Christianity, as Mr. Soyinka points out, is indigenous to Africa. While the Europeans ran the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Arabs ran its north and east African counterparts. But, says the author, the suppression or denial of the equally ugly history of Arab and Islamic plundering in Africa—perhaps for reasons of political correctness—has allowed a new threat to emerge: "a shadowy but lethal force determined to reenslave a continent with its chains of fundamentalist theology!" Radical Islam has taken root in places like Mali, Somalia and Nigeria. Mr. Soyinka sees it as more dangerous than the corrupt, secular dictatorships. The latter, he says, can be confronted but "the chains placed around the mind through religious absolutism are far more constrictive, tenacious, and implacable." According to Mr. Soyinka, the pre-eminent African issue of the 21st century will be a "crisis of religion," and he warns that if "Africa falls to the will of the fanatic, then the insecurity of the world should be accepted as its future and permanent condition."

Salvation, he thinks, can be found in "the undiscovered—or neglected, indeed, despised—terrain of African spirituality." He discusses "Negritude," a concept first formulated by, among others, the American civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois to refute racist claims of black inferiority and spotlight black contributions to civilization. Among African intellectuals, Negritude took hold in the 1930s. To Mr. Soyinka, it is an untapped resource of African humanism. The anti-Apartheid icon Desmond Tutu describes a similar concept when he talks about ubuntu—"the bundle of humanity"—and Mr. Soyinka finds his own version in the traditional religion of his Yoruba culture, Orisa.

Mr. Soyinka's motivation for writing "Of Africa" was his search for an African humanism that could counter the deadly consequences of religious fanaticism. He urges Africans to remember their continent's traditions and recognize that tolerance is at the center of African spirituality.

There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra

By Chinua Achebe

The Pengium Press, 333 pages, $27.95

Mr. Achebe's book is a history and decidedly less ambitious, philosophically speaking. But it, too, is driven by an ideal. "There Was a Country" is a fascinating and gripping memoir of Biafra, the country his Igbo tribe sought to create by seceding from Nigeria. In the first years after Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960, the Igbo, who hail from a region in the country's southeast, were among the most successful of the country's tribes. They had the highest literacy rate, the highest standard of living and the greatest proportion of citizens with postsecondary education among the tribes. They dominated senior positions in government and educational institutions. Igbo success bred resentment.

The fateful day was Jan. 15, 1966, when Maj. Chukwuma Nzeogwu, an Igbo, led a group of army officers in an attempt to overthrow the government. It was widely misinterpreted as an "Igbo coup" and caused a backlash throughout Nigeria: "Thirty thousand civilian men, women and children were slaughtered, hundreds of thousands were wounded, maimed, and violated, their homes and property looted and burned." There was a mass exodus of the Igbo from the north. Mr. Achebe was working at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and had just completed a novel, "A Man of the People," which severely criticized Nigerian politics and climaxed in a coup. Being an Igbo, he was naturally linked to the real coup under way. Drunken soldiers appeared at the NBS to ask him which was more powerful: their gun or his pen. The author wasn't yet at work, and, upon hearing this account, he fled.

On May 30, 1967, the Igbo declared their own independent country, Biafra. (Mr. Achebe would serve as its roving cultural ambassador.) But the Nigerian government reacted savagely to the Igbo secession, blockading the region and starving the rebel tribe into submission. Over three million perished, mostly Igbo, before the end of the civil war in 1970. Mr. Achebe interweaves his own history with a harrowing account of the war.

The end of Biafra didn't bring an end to the pogroms against the Igbo, nor to Nigeria's problems. The country became plagued with "a home-grown enemy: the political ineptitude, mediocrity, indiscipline, ethnic bigotry, and corruption of the ruling class," as Mr. Achebe writes. To resolve these problems, Mr. Achebe also invokes the Negritude embedded in the mbari of his own Igbo culture, which emphasizes mutual respect and coexistence. "The Igbo believe that art, religion, everything, the whole of life are embodied in the art of the masquerade," Mr. Achebe says. It is the cosmic masquerade that upholds the "virtues of African tolerance and accommodation."

It is astonishing that two authors writing from such different perspectives should conclude that the solutions to Africa's problems can be found in Africa—her bosom, her humanity—and that Africans must rebuild their own indigenous institutions.

But Messrs. Soyinka and Achebe's focus on Negritude is problematic. It is an idea that failed miserably. Its first African proponent, the late president of Senegal Leopold Senghor, thoroughly discredited the concept by using it to develop an "African socialism" as an alternative to Marxism. Socialism is fundamentally antithetical to Africa's economic heritage, which explains why it was a disaster wherever it was implemented in Africa—in countries as varied as Ghana, Guinea and Tanzania, for example—producing one economic crisis after another. (When Senghor retired as president in 1980, he settled in France with his French wife to focus on helping improve the French language—some Negritude!)

Messrs. Soyinka and Achebe fail to adequately explain the genesis of African spirituality. It stems from the belief that man doesn't live alone in the universe, which Africans divided into three elements: the sky, the world and the earth. Each person has a specific place and function in this universe. Human action corresponds to the animation of nature, and each gesture correlates with some aspect of the universe. African art, dance, music and other human activities are a reflection of the rhythms of the universe.

The three cosmological elements—each represented by a god—must be in perfect harmony or balance. The sky god is the supreme among them, and each must be propitiated. If the sky god is "angry," there will be thunder, floods, etc. If the world god is angry, there will be conflict, war and state collapse. If the earth god is angry, there will be poor harvest, famine, barren women and the like. The gods may take human, inanimate or spiritual forms, and there are many intercessors—dead or alive—between man and the gods: ancestors, kings, chiefs, priests, medicine men. All are arranged in a hierarchical order. Among some tribes, harmony among the cosmological elements, called kiet, requires corresponding human behavior: tolerance, accommodation, etc. (Mr. Achebe's Igbo, for instance, have no gods, since any individual person is the union of the three elements.) Religious intolerance and fanaticism thus have no place in the highest ideals of the African soul, something noted by both Messrs. Soyinka and Achebe. They wouldn't coexist in a religious system that seeks harmony among the cosmological elements.

There are more than 2,000 African ethnic groups but despite the incredible diversity there are striking commonalities among them. Whereas Western jurisprudence emphasizes punishing the guilty, the widespread African tradition stresses restitution and reconciliation or "restorative justice"—the basis of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established after the dismantling of Apartheid. Africa's economic heritage featured free village markets. There were rudimentary free markets in Timbuktu, Kano, Salaga, Onitsa, Mombasa and elsewhere before the advent of the colonial era. Whereas the West practiced majoritarian, or representative, democracy, ancient Africans practiced participatory democracy, where decisions were taken by consensus at village meetings variously called asetena kese by the Ashanti, ama-ala by the Igbo, guurti by the Somali, dare by the Shona, ndaba by the Zulu or kgotla by the Tswana.

More important, the traditional system of governance was inclusive. In Senegal, slaves could send the representatives to the king's court. There was also foreign representation: The kings and chiefs of Angola and Asante, for example, allowed European merchants to send their representatives to their courts. Many empires in pre-colonial Africa—Ghana, Mali, Songhai—were confederacies, characterized by decentralization of power and devolution of authority.

But much of this knowledge, as Mr. Soyinka rightly complains, has been hidden. Myths about Africa came to replace these truths, and the problem was compounded by the failure on all sides to distinguish between form and substance. The institutions of democracy, free markets, money, marriage, justice, can take many forms. Just because there were no ballot boxes or supermarkets or white-wigged judges in pre-colonial African villages doesn't mean Africans had no conception of those institutions. African tribal cultures aren't in conflict with the Western; only the forms of institutions are different.

In fact, there is one area where the two share exactly the same political philosophy. Both see the state as a necessary evil. The American founding fathers chose to deal with this particular threat constitutionally by limiting the powers of the state. Africans found two unique ways to accomplish the same. The first was to abolish the state altogether and dispense with centralized authority. Such acephalous, or stateless, societies included the Ga, the Igbo, the Gikuyu, the Somali and the Tallensi. These tribes have no chiefs or kings and took the concept of freedom to its most radical limit.

Other tribes chose to have states and centralized authority but surrounded them with councils upon councils to prevent them from abusing their powers. Such kings had no political powers; their role was spiritual or supernatural (to mediate among the cosmological elements). For this role, they were mostly secluded in their palaces and kept their royal fingers out of people's business. The Yoruba Oona, for example, could only venture out of his palace under the cover of darkness. Such indigenous democratic forms were eroded during the colonial age and decimated in the post-colonial one.

So what makes up Africa's soul? Tolerance, consensus-building, inclusion, restorative justice, decentralization of power, free village markets and free enterprise. The gods are angry because Africa's soul has been denigrated and trashed. As Messrs. Soyinka and Achebe warn us, Africa is doomed unless her rulers discover her soul. Without this knowledge, we cannot traverse the path to development. An African proverb says, "He who does not know where he came from does not know where he is going."

Mr. Ayittey, a native of Ghana, is president of the Free Africa Foundation and the author of "Indigenous African Institutions" (2006).

The Elders Speak: Remembering Biafra

BY ADAM NOSSITER, NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

By Chinua Achebe

Rumors of Nigeria’s demise have been somewhat exaggerated. This turbulent and magnetic African megastate endures despite its intense regional, religious and other divisions (the country has an estimated 250 ethnic groups and more than 500 languages).

Nigeria did fracture once, however, and it is this story that Chinua Achebe, a giant of African letters, tells. His memoir of the moment describes when the country, yoked together artificially by British colonizers, split apart at a cost of more than a million lives.

Nigeria is the Texas of Africa: it’s big and loud and brash, a place of huge potential, untapped talent, murderous conflict and petroleum riches. It also has a singular capacity for irony and self-reflection that is both cultural habit and survival tactic. It is difficult and often dangerous to get by in Nigeria unless you are a fortunate member of the infinitesimally small and mostly corrupt oil-fed elite. Acute awareness of your surroundings is a necessity; along with it goes another Nigerian trait, thinking and dreaming big.

All these characteristics were in play when the nightmare for weak nation-states became reality in 1967. Seven years after Nigerian independence, the prosperous Ibos, dominant in the eastern part of the country and targets of persecution and pogroms, declared their independence. Led by the charismatic Oxford-educated, Shakespeare-loving Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, the fledgling nation called itself the Republic of Biafra. Achebe, an Ibo himself and the new country’s pre-­eminent intellectual, a product of Nigeria’s finest ­English-style schools and author of “Things Fall Apart” — soon went to work at Biafra’s Ministry of Information, serving as special envoy and chairman of a committee charged with writing a constitution for the new country.

The architects of Biafra were correct in their frustration with the Nigerian government, which did not intervene as thousands of Ibos were massacred. But they were deluding themselves that Biafra was viable. The nascent state had virtually no chance of survival once the authorities in Lagos decided they were going to stamp out the secession in what they called a “police action.” Was Biafra ever really a “country,” as Achebe would have it? It had ministries, oil wells, a ragtag army, an often-shifting capital, official cars (Achebe had one) and a famous airstrip. But as a “country,” it was stillborn.

Nonetheless, for over two brutal years, the Biafran war dragged on at the insistence of Ojukwu — described as “brooding, detached and sometimes imperious” in a 1969 New York Times profile by Lloyd Garrison — and meddling international players. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. As many as 6,000 a day starved to death once the federal government blockaded the ever diminishing Republic of Biafra. But Ojukwu refused to give up. The final death toll was estimated at between one and three million people.

It was the first conflict in Africa to draw much outside media attention; the photographs of starving Biafran children with distended bellies became symbols of African suffering, and they triggered an extensive Western relief effort.

We get glimpses of this immense human tragedy in Achebe’s characteristically plain-spoken narrative: the millions of citizens escaping the war zone, targets of the federal Nigerian planes even as they fled; the men and women driven mad by the grinding, endless war who “could often be seen walking seemingly aimlessly on the roads in tattered clothes, in conversation with themselves”; the federal soldier, who “wandered into an ambush of young men with machetes” and was murdered and mutilated “in a matter of seconds.”

But mostly Achebe’s account is tinged with odd nostalgia for the ephemeral moment when Biafra seemed to birth a national culture. “One found a new spirit among the people, a spirit one did not know existed, a determination, in fact.” This feeling — evidently alive for him a half-century later — recalls the spirit that imbues his most celebrated work, “Things Fall Apart,” itself a fairy-tale-like re-creation of self-sufficient, indigenous nationhood.

Literature for Achebe had a didactic function; working for officialdom thus was not a stretch. It is clear that the writer, long a resident of the United States and now a professor at Brown University, recalls this period as a golden age. “During the war years one never really unpacked,” Achebe writes, but despite the hardships, he paints it as a time of unequaled excitement and stimulation. His committee produced a landmark speech for Ojukwu, the “Ahiara declaration,” “an attempt to capture the meaning of the struggle for Biafran sovereignty.”

Yet when Achebe praises Ojukwu’s “gift for oratory,” the colors in the new nation’s flag or the accomplished design of its new currency it is sharply at odds with the haunting images of the suffering engendered by the war: the famine, the bodies “rotting under the hot sun.” His nostalgia seems jarring and misplaced.

And that nostalgia, in turn, is a kind of justification for one of this book’s underlying themes: bitterness over what Nigeria became after independence from Britain in 1960 — a stance familiar to those who follow the country and Achebe’s regular critical pronouncements on it.

“There was enough talent, enough education in Nigeria for us to have been able to arrange our affairs more efficiently, more meticulously, even if not completely independently, than we were doing. . . . Nigeria had people of great quality, and what befell us — the corruption, the political ineptitude, the war — was a great disappointment and truly devastating to those of us who witnessed it,” he says. Writers faced political repression and “found that the independence their country was supposed to have won was totally without content. . . . Like the head of John the Baptist, this gift to Nigeria proved most unlucky.”

Worse, after the end of civil war, “a new era of great decadence and decline was born. It continues to this day,” he laments. The country is a “laughingstock.” His disappointment fortifies his belief that “the British governed their colony of Nigeria with considerable care.” Achebe is careful to say that he is “not justifying colonialism.” But this partially rose-tinted view of the colonial past — a view one sometimes hears from other elderly Nigerians confronting the chaos of daily life — surely has much to do with the favored status enjoyed by Her Majesty’s onetime brilliant subject.

Like his nostalgia for Biafra, Achebe’s judgment on contemporary Nigeria seems excessive — more the products of a writer’s jaundiced backward glances than a coming to grips with the reality of what was and what is. Nigeria today is a seething caldron, maddening in its contradictions and capacity for self-destruction but full of promise too, in its immense energy and human resources.

As for judgments on Biafra — perhaps we should rely on Nigeria’s other great man of letters, Wole Soyinka, whose blunt appraisal is that secession was “simply politically and militarily ­unwise.”

Adam Nossiter is West Africa bureau chief for The Times and the author of books on France and Mississippi.

CPC Reacts to the terrorist group Boko Haram mention of former military junta Muhammadu Buhari as Mediator

PRESS RELEASE.

WHAT IS THE PORTENT OF USING BUHARI’s NAME IN FG/BOKO-HARAM PARLEY?!

Our attention, in the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), to a widely publicized news that our National Leader, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) has been appointed to take part in a Boko Haram/Federal Government parley. As a Party, we are convinced that this is the latest gambit in the desire of this organically corrupt PDP-led Federal Government in diverting the attention of the unsuspecting Nigerian public from the on-going massive looting of their common patrimony. Without any scintilla of equivocation, General Muhammadu Buhari has never been directly or remotely connected with any insurrection or insurgency against the Nigerian Nation and her people.

He remains the quintessential Patriot that continues to magnetize the very best across the ethno-religious boundaries within the Nigerian nation-space. As we have stated in an earlier communication, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), as a corporate entity, is the harbinger of the insecurity travails of the Nigerian People for the sole reason of ensuring perpetuity in governance. From recollection of events of the last two years, there are three variants of the Boko-Haram: the original Boko-Haram that is at daggers drawn with the Nigerian authority for the extra-judicial killing of their leader; the criminal Boko-haram that is involved in all criminality for economic reasons and of course, the most lethal of all, the Political Boko-Haram-which this PDP-led Federal government represents.

The President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan had once alerted the Nation of the ubiquitous presence of Boko-Haram in his government- a fact aptly amplified by his erstwhile National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi. Undoubtedly, the latest revelations by the State Security Services (SSS) on the complicity of the top echelon of the PDP leadership in Boko Haram activities aptly bear testimony of the noxious subterfuge to extirpate the essence of our Nationhood.

Finally, we call on all Nigerians to reject this latest deceptive ploy by this PDP-led government and demand for more transparency in the governance of the Nation. As a Party, we remain unfazed by the cheap propagandist endeavours of the PDP, knowing that Nigerians are the best judge of the under-performance of this regime.

God bless Nigeria.

Rotimi Fashakin (Engr)

National Publicity Secretary, CPC.

(Friday, November 02, 2012)

L.A. porn stars show higher rates of STDs than Nevada prostitutes

Adult film stars in Los Angeles County have significantly higher rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia than legal prostitutes in Nevada, according to a report published this week.

A study of 168 adult film performers in Los Angeles County found that 28%, or 47 performers, tested positive for either gonorrhea or chlamydia or both diseases. On Tuesday, voters will decide the fate of a measure that would require porn actors to wear condoms.

The report was written by six public health experts whose affiliations include the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and UCLA.

"Compared with the brothel workers of Nevada, another legal sex worker population in the United States, [gonorrhea] and [chlamydia] prevalence in this study is significantly higher," said the report, published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases on Tuesday.

The study ran from mid-May to mid-September 2010.

Sexually transmitted infection rates among legal prostitutes are negligible, the report said, because brothel workers in Nevada are required by state law to use condoms and are tested weekly for disease. Since those rules went into effect in Nevada, there have been no cases of HIV infection, and their infection rates were negligible, the report said.

In contrast, the report said, there have been a number of HIV infections among porn stars in Los Angeles County since the 1990s. The report said that there was "very low" consistent condom use among the study participants, either on the set or in their personal lives.

"The results of this study suggest that many performers in the [adult film industry] are not safe on the job from acquiring and transmitting [sexually transmitted infections] at multiple anatomical sites," the report concluded. "Repeated and chronic infection with [sexually transmitted infections] can lead to infertility, chronic pelvic pain and ectopic pregnancies, and can facilitate HIV infection."

The authors also said that many adult film performers may not be aware of an infection.

The study was published a week before voters will go to the polls to consider Measure B, which would require adult film performers to wear condoms during filming. The initiative is sponsored by the L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which says that porn performers need to be protected from HIV and sexually transmitted disease, and the issue is a matter of protecting public health.

The adult film industry has opposed the measure, saying consumers don't want to buy porn that features condoms. They say that regular testing of adult film performers offers a safe environment for them, although they have acknowledged the risk of disease infection.

Opponents of Measure B have argued that voters do not want the creation of an unwanted, ineffective county bureaucracy and said the industry can police itself.

......LOS ANGELES TIMES

Community health centers on the rise in Los Angeles

Picture of the Center for Community Health in Downtown Los Angeles. Lauren Whaley

Joe Castel never pictured himself driving to Skid Row to visit his doctor. But the 49-year-old Pasadena resident is a contract employee with the government agency FEMA and that job does not provide health insurance.

So when his friend, the CEO of the John Wesley Community Health Institute (JWCH), invited him to visit the clinic, Castel accepted.

Still, the rough neighborhood where the clinic is based gave him pause, especially on his first trip down there. Castel’s doctor had him run around the block to get his heart rate up to check his heart murmur.

“I was literally jumping over people laying on the street ,” Castel said. “I mean, people shooting up, I was running past them. Doing drug deals, I was running past them. Pushing their carts, I was running past them. You know, they were like hurdles laying on the ground.”

Although the neighborhood feels troubled, on the inside, the superstore-sized clinic is stocked with clean exam rooms, a pharmacy and a seven-chair dental wing. It also offers psychology, radiology, vision and even housing services.

Castel, who has since joined the clinic board as a consumer representative, is not the only one looking to community health centers for care. Clinics like this one are booming, in California and across the country. They are expanding and renovating with billions in federal dollars provided by the stimulus legislation and the Affordable Care Act.

This clinic is part of a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), a type of clinic targeted in President Obama’s health reform measure as a key component in building medical capacity for the millions of Americans expected to gain health insurance under the legislation. In Los Angeles alone, one million people are projected to land federally subsidized coverage starting in 2014, and many are likely to go to clinics for their care.

In California, there are about 120 FQHCs, representing over 1,100 “delivery sites” and serving upwards of 2.9 million patients. Nationwide, there are more than 1,100 FQHCs providing care to about 20 million patients at 8,000 delivery sites.

The clinics use the federal money to build more centers, add more exam rooms, expand services and switch over to electronic health records. As a result, many of these clinics are no longer operating on shoestring budgets.

Just last May, the JWCH Institute received a $2.7 million federal grant to renovate and expand its Norwalk clinic, about 15 miles southeast of Skid Row.

“There’s also a special reimbursement that we get for each patient that has Medicare or Medi-Cal that exceeds what a doctor in private care would get,” said Dr. Paul Gregerson, medical director for the JWCH Institute.

This higher reimbursement allows clinics to build a team-based approach, or patient-centered medical home, emphasized under the Affordable Care Act. Under this model, patients see teams of caregivers from chronic disease specialists to social workers to nutritionists to clinical pharmacists.

“All these people … will be able to see the patient and we’ll be able to afford them because the overall visits when they do see the doctor will be reimbursed at a higher rate of pay,” Gregerson said. An added benefit, he said, is that the team approach allows primary care doctors to see more patients.

With all this federal money, community clinics are growing quickly, but this rapid growth is creating some anxiety.

“It’s creating a lot of tension because the growth has just been so fast,” said Melissa Schoen, an independent consultant for community health centers and foundations. “I think clinics are really struggling with this, the increase in demand they’ve been seeing and now getting ready for health reform and more and more patients potentially coming to them.”

......LAUREN WHALEY/SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO - 89.3 KPCC

Lauren M. Whaley is a reporter at the CHCF Center for Health Reporting, based at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The center, which provides in-depth reporting on California health issues, is funded by the nonpartisan California HealthCare Foundation.

L.A. Council Moves Forward On Four Proposed Tax Increases

City Council President Herb J. Wesson during a Los Angeles City Council meeting in March. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / October 31, 2012)

BY KATE LINTHICUM, LOS ANGELES TIMES, NOVEMBER 1, 2012

The Los Angeles City Council moved forward with four proposed tax increases Wednesday, instructing city lawyers to draw up the language for ballot measures that would raise property, real estate, parking and sales taxes.

Council President Herb Wesson said he hopes that only one of those proposed increases ends up on the March ballot and said he will be pushing for the half-cent sales tax hike, which would generate an estimated $215 million to $220 million for the cash-strapped city.

Wesson, who said he asked the council to proceed with all of the ballot measures as a safeguard, said he will be closely watching the results of Tuesday's election, when voters in three dozen California cities will decide local sales tax increases on the ballot.

"I think it will be a big indicator as to how people feel throughout the state," Wesson said, noting that if the response to those proposals is tepid in other communities, he might support putting one of the other tax measures on the ballot.

Wesson surprised community leaders and some of his colleagues Tuesday when he announced that he wanted to increase the sales tax from 8.75% to 9.25%. The proposed change would bring L.A. in line with Santa Monica and Inglewood, but it would leave the city with a higher rate than some neighboring communities, including Burbank, Pasadena and Glendale.

The plan has alarmed some business leaders, who argue that it could drive shoppers away, and some community activists, who complain that lawmakers have fallen into a pattern of raising fees instead of making difficult decisions to rein in costs.

Several council members expressed support for raising the sales tax Wednesday, including Bernard C. Parks, who said the proposal was the fairest on the menu of increases the council is considering.

One proposal would generate $40 million a year by increasing the parking tax from 10% to 15%. Another would generate between $76 million and $103 million by raising the tax on real estate sales. Parking lot operators and real estate agents have fought those proposals, saying they shouldn't have to bear the burden of raising revenue for the city.

Parks complained about a third proposal to charge a $39 parcel tax to fund the Recreation and Parks Department, which has been decimated by cuts in recent years. He said residents in poorer, denser parts of the city would benefit less than those in other neighborhoods.

"The people with the least amount of park space and the most density will come out on the short end," said Parks, who represents part of South Los Angeles. A coalition of community leaders that supports the parcel tax has said they would support a plan that ensured that underserved neighborhoods got their fair share of new park land or services.

Councilman Paul Koretz said he supported putting one large tax increase on the ballot instead of several smaller ones, saying that he thinks voters will understand that lawmakers have done all they can to cut costs.

"We're doing everything that we possibly and legally can," Koretz said, "and yet we still have a hole not of our own making."

Since the economic recession hit in 2008, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the council have trimmed the city payroll by about 4,000 people. Many employees who remained have faced mandatory furlough days, have seen their pay raises postponed and have agreed to pay more toward their retirement benefits.

Villaraigosa has said that he would not support a tax increase unless the council adopted additional cost-cutting measures, including privatizing the city zoo and Convention Center. Wesson said Wednesday that the council will continue to move forward on those initiatives, and he promised to lobby Villaraigosa to warm him to the idea of a sales tax increase.

"We'll sit in a room and maybe argue a little bit and see if we can't work this out," Wesson said.

An outside analyst is expected to deliver a report on Nov. 9 about the economic effects of a sales tax hike. The council is expected to decide soon after on which tax measures to include on the ballot in March, when voters will fill eight City Council seats and elect a new city attorney, controller and mayor.

NMA president charges medical professionals abroad to invest more in country’s healthcare industry

THE president of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Osahon Enabulele, has called on Nigerian medical professionals abroad to invest more in Nigeria’s healthcare industry in order to redress the phenomenon of medical tourism and poor state of Nigeria’s healthcare system.

Enabulele stated this while speaking on “Investment in healthcare in Nigeria-the role of medical association of Nigerians Across Great Britain (MANSAG) and NMA,” at the 23rd Annual Scientific Conference of the MANSAG that held at Westwood Hall Conference Centre and Hotel, Leeds, United Kingdom from October 20 to 29.

Enabulele while commending the leadership of MANSAG for organising the conference, recalled the historical evolution of Nigeria’s healthcare industry and regretted that despite efforts by Nigeria’s current ministers of health to improve Nigeria’s healthcare system, Nigeria’s health status indicators were still largely unsatisfactory.

This, Enabulele attributed to years of cumulative insults to Nigeria’s healthcare system as a result of poor commitment to the health of Nigerians by the country’s political leaders coupled with their frequent visits abroad for medical care, political instability and policy inconsistency, poor constitutional and legal framework for health, poor government support for the private sector, pervasive quackery and lack of adherence to international best practices and professionalism in the health sector, poor health human resource development and motivation, cancerous levels of corruption and systemic infrastructural decay.

Enabulele emphasized that the poor development of other health-impacting social sectors like education, roads/transportation system, power, housing and water, had done incalculable harm to the health of Nigerians, stating firmly that health status indicators and performance are determined not only by the services delivered in the hospitals but majorly by occurrences at pre-service levels.

To reverse Nigeria’s poor health situation, Enabulele declared that Nigerians (home and abroad) had all it takes to solve Nigeria’s healthcare challenges if the enabling environment and international best practices, as well as good governance and transparent commitment is shown by governments at all levels.

He, therefore, called on Nigerian Medical Professionals to stop lamenting or agonising about the poor state of Nigerian’s health, but to move from the realm of idealism into the realm of realism by joining forces with their colleagues in Nigeria to strategically re-organise the healthcare system through significant investments in health human resource, health infrastructure, health institutions and systems/service delivery and health-impacting social sectors.

Enabulele went on to highlight various areas in which Nigerian Medical Professionals under the aegis of MANSAG could partner with the NMA in the determined quest of the current leadership of NMA to make substantial contributions to the revitalisation of Nigeria’s healthcare system.

Enabulele expressed the hope that through this partnership many of Nigeria’s medical professionals in the diaspora can gradually return home to join forces with their colleagues and compatriots in Nigeria who are daily toiling hard to keep Nigeria’s healthcare system alive in spite of the extremely suffocating and challenging circumstances.

Other speakers at the conference included Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, the President of MANSAG, Dr. Dilly Anumba, amongst others.

......CHUKWUMA MUANYA (LAGOS); EMEKA ANUFORO (ABUJA)/THE GUARDIAN NIGERIA

Achebe's "There Was A Country," Stirring Up A Desirable Controversy -- By Dr. A.B.C. Nwosu

Prof. A.B.C. Nwosu, Nigeria's former Minister of Health during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

PROF. CHINUA ACHEBE'S BOOK TITLED: "There was a country: A personal history of Biafra”, has expectedly stirred up an important but desirable controversy, notably from the disciples of late Pa Obafemi Awolowo.

This was predictable. Achebe, true to his character will be unfazed by the insults and abuses, but will welcome criticisms. A writer of his stature should be used to all these.

In my view, the controversy including the orgy of abuse is desirable because it brings out into the public domain, bottled-up and vile ethnic prejudices. In my view also, it is preferable for such prejudices to be aired rather for them to remain and fester in the innermost recesses of ethnic minds, to be secretly whispered around from door to door, neighbour to neighbour and passed on from generation to generation. Closet ethnicism to me is very dangerous and militates against nation-building.

There are many who believe that certain things are best not said at this time. I disagree. It is best for these things to be said so that brethren and compatriots will be aware of what others truly think of them. Therefore, let the criticisms, insults and even abuse continue to come out into the open so we can better understand ourselves as individuals, and as micro-nations within the macro-nation Nigeria.

“All that rubbish of Biafran children with ribs and swollen stomachs and the rest of it, what did you expect in a war?” - Mr Odia Ofeimun (62).

Three write-ups and interviews, one by Ayo Turton, the national legal counsel to Egbe Omo Yoruba U.S.A and Canada, posted on October 11, 2012 (Sahara Reporters), the second by Mr. Odia Ofeimun, a diehard Awoist on Sunday October 14, 2012, (The Guardian) and the third by Alhaji Femi Okunnu on Monday October 15, 2012 (Tribune) engaged my attention. I was particularly shocked by the anger and language of Mr. Ofeimun who said: “All that rubbish of children with ribs and swollen stomachs and the rest of it, what did you expect in a war?” Mr. Ofeimun has three more shockers from me. One, “If Awolowo did not say that starvation is a weapon of war, he needed to have said so because it is a weapon of war”. Two, “Many of the children who died in Biafra died because their leaders took stupid decisions”. Three, “True, all the Igbo killed in the pogroms in the North are Nigerians, and their families needed to grieve and mourn, but if you want to grieve and mourn, do you slaughter the next generation of your family?” Alhaji Femi Okunnu, who is about the same age as Achebe, says that “It is Ojukwu who used starvation as a weapon of war”. These quotes speak for themselves and I shall not respond to them.

Given the kind of vitriol spewed by Mr. Ofeimun, my recommendation to him is to please write his own “personal history” as Prof. Achebe has done. Mr. Ofeimun is a writer, and we all shall benefit one way or another from his book. Meanwhile, my generation is grateful to Prof. Achebe for writing his book on Biafra because to us, it offers an opportunity for national conversation and catharsis, a kind of cleansing and purging of the Nigerian soul of the evil of pogrom, genocide and mass-starvation to death of millions of innocent Biafran children in a “war of unity”.

At this stage, it is important for me to point out to Achebe’s traducers and abusers that his latest book is not about Pa Obafemi Awolowo. It is not about General Yakubu Gowon either. The book, as the title clearly states, is about Biafra and Achebe’s “Personal Account” of what transpired. Achebe was careful and thoughtful to state that it was a “personal history”. The book (333 pages) is about the events, the principal actors, the victims, those that died on the Biafra side, especially the over two million children who starved to death in what the Times of London in its full-page leader of 28th June 1968 described as a “Policy of Famine It is also about those Biafrans who survived, for some of whom the trauma persists till date. Achebe, who was present in Biafra to the end, owed us, a duty to write his story. Others including his critics should write their own stories. We have a right to know what happened.

Chief Ebenezer Babatope has observed correctly that Achebe’s views on Pa Awolowo (and other Nigerian leaders) were lucidly stated as far back as 1983, in his angry booklet titled “The Trouble With Nigeria”. In that book, Achebe took very serious swipes at Pa Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Alhaji Tafawa Balewa and had kind words only for Mallam Aminu Kano. Achebe wrote this book in 1983, almost 30 years ago, so what is new about his views on Pa Awolowo?

There are several facts, which stand out in Achebe’s latest book. I shall dwell on seven of these facts in this write-up. Before I do this, let me point out that enormous literature exists on the subject of the Nigerian Civil War, or Nigeria-Biafra War, if you choose. Indeed, archival materials and pictures have found and are still finding their way to various internet outlets. Continuing to ignore the subject or clinging to the position that certain things are best left unsaid is playing the ostrich and amounts to self-deception.

Fact Number one is that there was pogrom, genocide and mass starvation of innocent children directed against Ndigbo in Nigeria in 1966 and from 1967-1970. The celebrated writer Frederick Forsyth devoted an entire chapter (pages 257 to 271) to this vexed issue. A writer of Achebe’s stature cannot, therefore, ignore this fact. One of the duties of a writer is to tell the truth, especially inconvenient truths. This is also what is expected of an Nze in the Igbo society. And these are precisely two obligations that Achebe has discharged by writing his latest book.

Lest we forget, haunting pictures of Biafra’s starving innocent children abound on the internet; they are also there on front page of LIFE magazine of July 12, 1968 titled: “Starving Children of Biafra War” (pages 20 - 29). Ditto LIFE magazine of 23, 1968 (pages 50 - 52). Mr. Steve Jobs, co-founder of APPLE Computer Company renounced Christianity indignant over the matter of Biafra’s starving children.

By September 4, 1968, a massive airlift of starving innocent Biafran children to Sao Tome was initiated by Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Relief Agency. This was followed on October 31 of same year by similar airlift of the starving children to Albert Schweitzer hospital at Lambarene, Gabon on the initiative of the daughter of the late Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. A statement issued in late 1968 jointly by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Council of Churches, and Caritas Internationalis was clear that Biafra was its biggest emergency since World War II. And yet ours was a civil war, a brother’s war, a war of unity!

And in case we have forgotten, Mr. Bruce Mayrock, 20 years old of Old Westbury New York, a part-time student of Columbia University, died of burns after he had set himself afire outside the United Nations Headquarters with a sign that read: “you must stop genocide - please save nine million Biafrans”. We shall not say more?

Fact Number Two is that anyone who was in Biafra, that is at the receiving end of the pogrom and genocide, and lost loved ones in those days of starvation of children, and bombing and strafing of churches, hospitals and markets, carries a big emotional scar of those horrific days. This includes Prof. Achebe as is evident from his account of why, when and how he fled Lagos, and his account of the war. To trivialise Achebe’s story, the Biafran story, our story, is wrong and it hurts. To trivialise pogrom and genocide and mass starvation of innocent children is wrong. Genocide dirties the soul and diminishes a nation. Achebe has simply told our story fearlessly and truthfully. We have waited for this book and Achebe has not disappointed us. May God bless him. Others should tell their own stories. And may all Nigerians learn lessons from the past so that we can build a more caring society.

Fact Number Three is quintessential Achebe: He apportioned blames for the pogrom, mass starvation of innocent children and genocide. He singled out General Gowon as the Head of State/military government at the time. He singled out Chief Awolowo as the deputy chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Federal Commissioner for Finance. He singled out the British government and its Prime Minister at the time, Mr. Harold Wilson, and finally the United Nations, and its Secretary General U Thant. Achebe clearly does not subscribe to the concept of “unknown soldier”, and “unknown government officials” so as to be politically correct.

As expected, Achebe’s traducers and abusers have focused their attack mainly on the infamous policy that “starvation is a legitimate instrument of war”, which was very robustly defended by Pa Awolowo on behalf of the Federal Military Government. True to his honest self, Chief Awolowo admitted this and gave his justification. His 140-page book titled “Awo On The Civil War” published in 1981, reprinted 1982, by John West Publishers, Ikeja told his story. This book also contains the verbatim report of the two-day meeting in Enugu in 1967 between Lt.-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu and Chief Awolowo leading the National Conciliation Committee comprising Prof. Aluko, Chief Mariere and Chief Onyia. Achebe’s abusers should please read this book to know who said precisely what at the Enugu meeting.

With regard to the explosive policy of “starvation as a weapon of war”, more damaging evidence abound especially from non-Nigerian writers. I shall quote one of these in full.

Mr. John de St. Jorre, Oxford-educated and author of “The Brothers War: Biafra And Nigeria” (1972) was explicit. He wrote on pages 243 and 244: “In the federal camp the Hardliners, who included some of the leading soldiers, politicians (Notably Awolowo) and many of the top civil servants who were concerned about the internationalisation and cost of the war, advocated the Quick Kill. For them, starvation was a legitimate weapon of war and Awolowo defended the concept publicly”. He continued: “The moderates of the federal side notably Gowon thought differently. For as Gowon often said, the war was not against innocent Igbo masses but was designed to win them back to the federal side. Nourishing their bodies was one way of retrieving their hearts and minds and it consistently featured in Gowon’s thinking and actions”.

These comments are from John de St. Jorre, not Achebe. Others abound. The books are freely available in Nigerian bookstores. Expectedly Frederick Forsyth’s book: The Biafra Story, also treated this issue exhaustively in Chapter 11, pages 194 to 241. Achebe’s traducers should deal with the evidence and not resort to abuse.

Achebe and Ndigbo do not hate Pa Awolowo as a person. It is noteworthy that Ndigbo and Biafrans do not attack Pa Awolowo for the swift change of the Nigerian currency. What they quarrel with is Chief Awolowo’s robust defence of the Federal Military Government’s inhuman policy of mass starvation as a result of which millions of Biafran children died.

Ndigbo also quarrel with Pa Awolowo and the Federal Government’s policy in 1970 of expropriating Igbo funds lodged in Nigerian banks (after the war of unity had been won and lost) in exchange for the “ex-gratia” award of 20 pounds for each Igbo person who could authenticate his account, no matter the sum in that account. I must emphasise that this “ex-gratia award” was not for every Igbo person who survived but only for those who had bank accounts. Ndigbo lost so much money by this inhuman policy, through which Nigeria saved an enormous amount of money. For Ndigbo, it did not make any sense for Nigeria to further savage Biafra by this 1970 inhuman policy, while at the same time announcing to the world a so-called “Marshall plan type agenda of the 3 Rs”. Ndigbo are intrigued by Pa Awolowo’s defence that he merely approved the recommendations of committees set up on this matter. He was the vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Federal Commissioner of Finance. The buck on matters of finance stopped on his table on their way to council. Ndigbo believe that the policies of starvation and 20 pounds “award” (not full payment of one’s legitimate savings) could not have been the handiwork of Igbophilic Nigerians. So much for these.

Fact Number Four is very closely related to and intertwined with the starvation agenda of the Federal Military Government at the time. It concerns the Relief Politics. On this subject, there is also a surfeit of evidence. It is a well-documented fact that the Federal Military Government, the International Committee on the Red Cross (ICRC) and other relief agencies played a cat and mouse game over the ferrying of food to the starving children of Biafra.

It is also a fact that a Nigerian MIG fighter shot down a Red Cross DC-7 aircraft carrying tons of food from Fernando Po to Biafra’s starving children. All crew members (foreigners) died. The aircraft did not carry any arms, simply food supplies.

With regard to relief corridors, the literature is again replete with evidence as to who did what. Achebe’s traducers should read “Biafra: A Facts on File Publication” edited by Peter Schwab: War Of Nigerian Unity, by Sir Rex Niven, and Mr. Kirk-Greene’s two volumes of “Crisis And Conflict In Nigeria”. It will be obvious that both sides had serious reservations and objections to routes proposed by the other being used to military advantage. Certainly, Nigeria flatly rejected third-party guarantees along the proposed corridor as demanded by Biafra; and used its diplomatic and military advantages to frustrate the issue of relief corridor.

For Femi Fani-Kayode, Odia Ofeimun and shockingly Alhaji Femi Okunnu to suggest that Biafra rejected a relief corridor so as to use pictures of starving children for propaganda purposes is extremely wicked of them. Their view is sick and twisted. Nigerians are better than this. Nigerians are not this inhuman and can all work together to build a caring society.

To these sick and twisted minds, I say that Ndigbo abhor the shedding of blood and love their children dearly. Ndigbo have a strong sense of family and loved ones, and the starvation of the children of Biafra is a very sore point with them especially in a “Civil” war designed to unite the country. The starvation of innocent children was most painful and Achebe has soothed our pains by letting it out.

To the poet, Ofeimun, who insists that we should be held responsible for our starving children because we declared “a sovereign state of Biafra”

Without formidable arms, I wish to refer him to another poet Claude McKay (1891 to 1948) and his poem titled: “If We Must Die”. A few lines will suffice:

“If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot

While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs

Making their mock………………”.

The circumstances that induced Claude McKays poem were less tragic and horrid than those that led to the declaration of Biafra.

Fact Number Five concerns the acquiescence and the deafening silence of our compatriots, neighbours and friends as the pogrom and genocide unfolded. What can we really say on this? Except to express our amazement and our pain as close confidants, workmates, schoolmates, boyfriends and girlfriends, watched silently, said nothing, did nothing as we were hounded out of Nigeria. I concede that our friends and sympathisers may have been powerless to do something. Therefore, to those like Dr. Tai Solarin and Prof. Soyinka and others who did something, we remain thankful. Perhaps if our friends and sympathisers had found their collective voice, the war may have been averted especially after Aburi and Nigeria may have been a better country by now. We will never know.

Fact Number Six is the infamous role of the British Government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Achebe has called him a “villain” and we should let the matter rest, except to remind ourselves that it was Britain that choreographed the pogrom, arms supplies and diplomatic cum economic blockade that frustrated relief supplies to Biafra’s starving children. Prominent Biafrans like Sir Francis Akanu Ibiam renounced his British Knighthood. Dick “Tiger” Ihetu, Africa’s most celebrated boxer to date, renounced his Queens honour. Need we say more?

Fact Number Seven concerns post civil war neglect and marginalisation of Ndigbo and the South-East geo-political zone of Nigeria, and Achebe’s insistence that the neglect persists till today. The evidence on this is weighty and again in Achebe’s favour. Indeed, the well-recorded persistent and unrelenting struggle by the leaders of the South-East in the past two decades to redress their marginalisation in Nigeria, and the current agitation for a sixth state in the zone so as to achieve parity with other zones bear out Achebe’s assertion. Given the economic and political disadvantages of this matter of sixth State in the South-East, Achebe is very right.

I have a most interesting pamphlet by Major-General Phillip Effiong (who signed the Biafra surrender document) titled “Rehabilitation: True or False?”. The pamphlet included Effiong’s detailed letter to the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, submitted through General Olusegun Obasanjo. The letter addressed matters like relief supplies to survivors; security of lives and property; post-war rehabilitation; the 20 pounds “ex-gratia” award; re-absorption of civil servants; absorption and/or demobilisation of ex-Biafran armed forces personnel, among others. True to his honesty and character, General Gowon commented on the margins of the letter and signed his comments dated January 19, 1970 (19.1.70.) The letter and comments speak for themselves.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that Achebe’s book, Truths, Warts and All, is a very serious book that tells his story of the Civil War. I believe that it has not been an easy book for Achebe to write because he spent over 40 years to reflect on it. Don Burness, one of the reviewers of the book, states that “one senses that this has been a painful book to write and that is why it has taken Achebe so long to write it”. In writing the book, Achebe has discharged his duty to self and community. When the present frenzy subsides, it is my expectation that Nigerians will evaluate dispassionately what Achebe has written because it is precisely how most Ndigbo feel on the subject of the Civil War. It is also my expectation that since Nigeria has trivialised its “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (Oputa Commission), Achebe’s latest book on Biafra may provide us with an opportunity for national healing. Nigeria needs to come to terms with its past. Nigeria needs a soul to transform effectively into a nation. As the poet, Khalil Gibran, writes: “Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.” “Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero.”

“Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.”

“Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.”