Dr. Barbara Teer's Legacy Continues

Watch out "Hurricane Season" is coming soon - July 10‏

Dear friends,

Please click on the link below for news about an exciting event that is about to occur.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.nationalblacktheatre.org/


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Elmer Smith On Bernie Madoff's Recent Sentencing

"Additionally, perhaps, part of Madoff’s plea bargain was for the government to leave his wife and kids alone, if they did not want to hear him start singing like a grease monkey in a shower stall."

Dear friends,

If Bernie Madoff conspired with others, in order to pull off a 60 billion dollars Ponzi scheme, then it would seem reasonable, at least to me, that along the way he encountered - if not colluded with - people who were/are either directly linked to our federal government or, at least, in some way connected to it. Would he then also know about other happenings involving the US government’s shady dealings and contractors, for instance? Maybe the powers-that-be just want him to shut up. Additionally, perhaps, part of Madoff’s plea bargain was for the government to leave his wife and kids alone, if they did not want to hear him start singing like a grease monkey in a shower stall.

Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, the inevitable trillion dollars-plus “Bailout” for big banks and companies makes Madoff’s “take” of 60 billion dollars look like chump change, especially since our government has both the right and threat capacity (police and military) to legitimize printing up as much money as they see fit, at any time. Dig?

In any case, on the link below, you will find an inquiring piece from my very dear friend Elmer Smith who is both a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Philadelphia Daily News. Here, Elm questions Bernie Madoff’s recent sentencing. Check it out!

G. Djata Bumpus


G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/elmer_smith/49489737.html
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The scandal called “security vote”

"Nigerian officials have a penchant for taking an otherwise good concept and bastardizing it."
The scandal called “security vote”

By Okey Ndibe

The far from resolved drama of the N250 million cash which police officers reportedly discovered in a convoy of cars belonging to Anambra State points to a peculiarly Nigerian scandal.

The scandal’s name is “security vote.”

Nigerian officials have a penchant for taking an otherwise good concept and bastardizing it.

Take the idea of executive immunity. In the U.S., a serving president or governor is shielded from litigation in his or her personal capacity for all acts and decisions that fall within the legitimate purview of his or her office. Mark that officials are protected from prosecution for acts that are, as a rule, both legitimate in character and consistent with the job specification.

Corrupt enrichment is neither legitimate nor part of the tasks that voters hire a governor or president to discharge. A U.S. governor who dips his or her hands in the public treasury is apt to invite the ire of taxpayers and a visit from agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Last December, FBI agents stormed the residence of then Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. A handsome, dashing man who briefly dabbled in boxing, Blagojevich was apparently something of a rogue politician. His troubles began after Barack Obama was elected president. It fell to Blagojevich to choose a replacement for the Senate seat the then president-elect had to relinquish.

For the governor, Obama’s seat was a bait to be used in a scheme to rake in cash. According to the FBI, Blagojevich decided to auction the seat to the highest bidder. In numerous taped telephone conversations, he told aides and relatives about his plan to cash in.

Not so fast, said law enforcement agents, who arrested and shackled the governor. They then announced a wide-ranging indictment on federal corruption charges, including solicitation of bribery. On January 29, 2009 the Illinois State Senate voted 59-0 to impeach Blagojevich.

Were Blagojevich a governor in Nigeria, he would still be at his desk today, gloating as if nothing was amiss. The reason is that Nigerian “rulers” enshrined a perverted version of immunity in their constitution. The Nigerian brand of immunity protects a gove rnor even when he betrays his oath of office by committing a crime. Indeed, especially then.

If the Nigerian doctrine of immunity is weird and counterproductive, the idea of security vote is plain wacky – nothing short of a crime in itself.

Each month, Nigerian taxpayers hand billions of naira to the president and state governors in the name of security vote. Each governor receives a few hundred million naira in this slush fund said to be for security purposes.

Bizarre as this “vote” is, what’s even more unbelievable is that each governor is given the absolute prerogative to dispose of the funds as he deems fit, with no oversight whatever.

That kind of license is a recipe for scandal, fraud and abuse. It’s common knowledge that many governors, in the past and now, simply pocket the money. If you dare to ask where the money went, you become – yes – a security threat.

It’s been suggested that the N250 million being ferreted away by Governor Peter Obi’s aides was the monthly security vote. Obi has yet to offer a convincing rebuttal to allegations that, each month, he freighted the security cash to Lagos and “voted” it into his personal account.

To leave so much cash in one man’s unsupervised hands is to encourage unconscionable diversion of public funds in a country where the basic facilities that create a habitable space are lacking. Access to such easy cash explains the desperation and violence with which Nigerian politicians seek political offices.

Who exactly came up with this deranged notion of security vote? The inventor of this scam deserves Nigerians’ collective scorn.

For running the world’s most powerful country, President Obama earns a little more than $400,000. The man doesn’t have one cent of public funds he can spend without answering to the Congress. Why then do Nigerians permit their governors – most of them inept at their job – to cart away the equivalent of $2 million per month, no questions asked?

In America, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a budget to enable it to carry out its intelligence operations. Owing to the covert nature of its work, the agency does not give a public accounting of how it spends its money. Even so, the agency has accountability obligations, including classified briefings to a select committee of Congress. & nbsp;

Nigerian politicians took from the CIA the idea of concealing how security votes are spent. But they forgot that, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the security funds are handled by agencies with highly trained professionals, not handed out as largesse to politicians seized more by greed than vision.

Nigerians should insist that security vote be expunged – voted out – from their political playbook.
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What is all of the fuss about the recent Iranian presidential election?

"...Iran is a developing “super-power”, with nuclear energy ambitions that include a space program."

Dear friends,

Just this morning, I was listening to the radio program of a good friend of mine at weibfm.com (smooth jazz), as he mentioned, during a news break, what he and some others in the mass communications media are currently calling the “Iranian Revolution” due to the protestations of young people there who are demanding that their government be more fair about the election process, as well as having a more inclusive public leadership and authority, especially for women. Are any of the young people just mentioned calling for the US government and other Western countries to cease their decades-long economic embargo against the Iranian people? After all, who does the boycott hurt the most – i.e., the privileged bodies (both ecclesiastic and political) or the common folks?

To be sure, if the Western powers mentioned above call off their economic boycott of Iran will that not send a positive message to the people of Iran that the US and others are not trying to meddle in their business, but only mean to provide positive and strong support to the people of Iran? Besides, the history of our own government is covered with blood, especially when talking about African Americans and others fighting for equal rights. As well, in spite of the proclamations of having a “Black” president, African Americans are faring no better, as a whole, than we were prior to President Obama’s election into office.

Moreover, at least to me, the real paradox lies with the fact that African Americans will now be even less likely to protest against governmental injustice, because of the illusion that somehow we have gained power through the election of Barack Obama. Yet, if one thinks about it, while for the past forty years Black mayors have spread across America, all the way from Philly to Alaska, little has changed for most African Americans – or many others peoples, including European Americans (so-called “whites”). How will Barack Obama change that grim reality? More often than not, unfortunately, history has taught us that those who fight against the privileged, once in power, have their own newly-acquired privileges to defend. Dig?

Additionally, as they seem to be having with the elections in Iran, why have neither Western governments nor their media outlets shown any concern with the fairly recent election results in Palestine/Israel that excluded the native people from being part of the electorate and promises to further colonize said Palestinian people (if that is possible) with increased Jewish settlements?

Does all of this media frenzy by the US government- and corporate-controlled media reveal any similarities between Iranians and Americans and how we both conform to whatever our government and the cultural institutions that it endorses - like certain media, churches and schools – as they remind us how to behave/respond to a variety of issues and events? Or do many Americans feel that they have minds of their own, in spite of the ideas that are superimposed upon those minds beginning at a very early age?

Finally, Iran is a developing “super-power”, with nuclear energy ambitions that include a space program. These folks are not “desert jockeys” as racist Western media groups often try to portray the people of Iran and her neighbors. About that, how do the earlier-mentioned young people feel? Worse yet, the more that the US and other Western nations hold on to their nuclear weapons to enhance their “threat” capabilities or muscle, as it were, the more other nations feel that they must both develop and maintain nuclear weapons for their own security and ability to threaten. The end result, at least to me, will be suicidal for all humanity, if we continue to resist genuinely democratic principles and do not stop grandstanding with illusions about “freedom, justice, and equality”. For, ultimately, the quintessence of “democracy” is non-violent conflict resolution. Therefore, the claim of introducing it (said democracy) to Iranians, Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else, by violently invading their lands, is a pure lie. Period!

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus

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Has Peter Obi Let Nigerians Down?

"Many of us applauded the tenacity with which the man mounted a legal effort to retrieve the mandate the voters of Anambra gave him in 2003, but which was hijacked by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate, Chris Ngige, a medical doctor. As an unwavering believer in the principle of credible elections, I took pride in Obi’s decision not to abandon pursuit of an office he’d won."

Is Peter Obi a hypocrite?

by Okey Ndibe

Governor Peter Obi of Anambra is in serious danger of becoming a tragic political figure. According to widely circulated reports, police officers two weeks ago caught men close to the governor with a large cache of cash. As I write, there’s some uncertainty about the sum, but most accounts say N250 million.

Apparently, the cash couriers were stopped as they drove to Obi’s business headquarters in Apapa. Since then, Obi’s office has tried to explain away the scandal. The governor’s aides have, to put it bluntly, done a poor job of it.

They suggested that the cash belonged to a contractor who’s done business with the state government. They have also contended that the cash was far less than newspapers reported. Then, in a needless and unconvincing attempt to muster moral bravado, Obi telegraphed a public letter to the Inspector General of Police demanding a thorough investigation.

Even at the most charitable, one must state that Obi’s explanations, so far, about the source, ownership and purpose of the cash have been nothing short of inconsistent and unimpressive. If anything, the tenor of the Government House’s statements suggests the scrambling incoherence of a man caught doing something indefensible.

In the ten years since Nigeria embarked on this strange phase many pundits call “nascent democracy,” no politician has garnered as much goodwill as Mr. Obi.

Many of us applauded the tenacity with which the man mounted a legal effort to retrieve the mandate the voters of Anambra gave him in 2003, but which was hijacked by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate, Chris Ngige, a medical doctor. As an unwavering believer in the principle of credible elections, I took pride in Obi’s decision not to abandon pursuit of an office he’d won.

Once he claimed the office, Obi faced twin nemeses: a state legislature dominated by PDP members, and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a man whose middle name should be mischief. The former president made no secret of his desire to hand the governorship of Anambra to his ward, Emmanuel Nnamdi (Andy) Uba. Encouraged by Aso Rock, the state legislators impeached Obi in a process that was transparently fraudulent. Again, many Nigerians rooted for him and celebrated when the judiciary restored him to office.

Obi’s come-back achieved dramatic culmination when he persuaded the Supreme Court to find that he had yet to serve out his four-year term as governor, and to oust the impostor, Mr. Uba. His victory triggered a paroxysm of jubilation not only in Anambra but also throughout Nigeria and abroad.

In fact, Obi’s triumph came to symbolize a promising dawn for the judiciary as well as the potential for democratic flowering in a country that continually hovers on the edge of despair.

A man with Obi’s political biography should have governed with a sense of history. He might have surrounded himself with the best talent in every area to enable him to succeed.

Instead, Obi appeared to have misread his political fortune as evidence of his genius. By many accounts, he became impervious to advice, however sound. He began to relish the company of court jesters who fed his ego. He began to court a man with the unsavory antecedents of Chuma Nzeribe, a member of the House of Representatives who’s hardly associated with admirable causes. Instead of delegating duties, he began to function as if he and he alone enjoyed a monopoly of wisdom in the state.

Even before this cash scandal, Obi had disappointed many who expected him to help transform his political party into an institution possessed of gravitas, instead of the ragtag it’s become. Under his watch, doctors went on strike for several months because the governor waved them off instead of engaging them in respectful negotiation. His verbal run-ins with his deputy, Mrs. Virgy Etiaba, as well as Ngige left the impression of a man whose personal limitations have confounded his public office.

It’d be hard to forgive Obi if it turns out that he’s been fiddling with public funds. Anambra needs all the money it can get for the great challenge of development. Awka, the state capital, is in a shameful state, an eyesore. The state’s infrastructure is dismal and requires a lot of cash to fix.

Obi liked to say he was a man of means long before he sought the office of governor. I heard him tell a gathering that if he stole one kobo of Anambra funds, he’d invite God to unleash wrath on him as well as his children.

I hope – for the sake of the long-suffering people of Anambra – that it was not a hypocrite who uttered that sentiment.
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Smith on the progress of the "Stimulus" Package

"...the only "stimulus" that has been mentioned by the government seems to be about big banks and companies getting billions of dollars of "bailout" money. What is going on?"

Dear friends,

Throughout the recent presidential campaign and all the way up to the inauguration we heard about part of the new administration's "Stimulus Package". Supposedly, it would involve a massive employment projecct for "infrastructural improvement" like repairing roads and fixing old bridges.

Yet, the only "stimulus" that has been mentioned by the government seems to be about big banks and companies getting billions of dollars of "bailout" money. What is going on?

Fortunately, on the link below, the incomparable Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News provides us with some clarity.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20090609_Elmer_Smith__To_see_stimulus_at_work__follow_the_______if_you_can.html
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Why we need Single-Payer Health Care

"While President Obama and others say that making our current health system a "single-payer" one would "disrupt" the current process..."

Dear friends,

While President Obama and others say that making our current health system a "single-payer" one would "disrupt" the current process, there is no doubt that single-payer health insurance (which is used by most advanced nations) would be a far better choice than the one that we currently have. Besides, while he has been using that excuse of not wanting to "disrupt" lately, perhaps, our president should consider the fact that the same type of people who protest single-payer health insurance as a disruption, probably thought that having a "Black" president would be one too. Eh?

Nevertheless, on the link below, you will find resources for more information about this crucial issue.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=What+is+single-payer+health+insurance%3F&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=2&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnhp.org%2Ffacts%2Fsingle_payer_resources.php
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Taking a measure of Nigeria in London

"Headlined by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the event was organized by the Nigerian Liberty Forum. The NLF, whose public face is Kayode Ogundamisi, exemplifies what can be achieved when committed, mostly young, citizens come together to exclaim no to the diabolical bunch who’re mortgaging their country’s interests."

Taking a measure of Nigeria in London

By Okey Ndibe

Anybody who wished to gauge what Nigerians think about their country’s bizarre brand of “democracy” should have been in London on May 29.

I was there as one of the speakers in a symposium tagged “The State of the Nigerian Nation.” It was clear to me that Nigerians had exhausted their patience with the coterie of criminals who have hijacked their nation, and that something is about to give.

Headlined by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the event was organized by the Nigerian Liberty Forum. The NLF, whose public face is Kayode Ogundamisi, exemplifies what can be achieved when committed, mostly young, citizens come together to exclaim no to the diabolical bunch who’re mortgaging their country’s interests.

Given many Nigerians’ tendency to quickly discount the perfidious acts of their so-called leaders, it’s comforting to behold a group that’s sworn not to forget. Instead, the NLF maintains a formidable sense of the multiple ways in which Nigeria has been betrayed. The group’s goals include advocacy of “good governance, accountability and the enthronement of democracy” and the organization of “peaceful public protests against corrupt Nigerian practices.”

It has recorded some remarkable feats. When Umaru Yar’Adua visited the United Kingdom, the NLF mobilized Nigerians to come out and remind the man’s British hosts about his tainted mandate.

More recently, the group pulled off a successful rally that sent former President Olusegun Obasanjo cowering for cover. Obasanjo had been invited by the London School of Economics to talk about his role as a United Nations’ peace envoy to the Congo. The NLF felt that, given Obasanjo’s record as president, his name and peace should never be mentioned in the same breath.

True, the NLF fell short of persuading LSE to withdraw its invitation. Even so, its members ensured that Obasanjo’s inflated and delusional credential as a peacemaker was eloquently called into question.

In a sense, the symposium was proof that the NLF is far from just reactive. Its lineup of speakers was morally august. There was the former Chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Nuhu Ribadu. Soft-spoken in voice and wiry in appearance, Ribadu’s message resonated deeply with the audience. In what amounted to a cry from the heart, he implored Nigerians, one, to reject the false creeds those in power employ to divide and conquer and, two, to reclaim their country from the hands of its despoilers.

There was Femi Falana, one of Nigeria’s most intrepid lawyers, whose insider account of the recent electoral shame in Ekiti reminded the audience about the depth of the ruling party’s determination to emasculate the Nigerian electorate.

The unprepossessing Sowore Omoyele, publisher of saharareporters.com, proved a crowd favorite. Omoyele’s website, which combines hard-edged investigative reports with an iconoclastic style, has endeared him to many Nigerians who relish the way he exposes the cupid underbelly of the ruling class. He challenged Nigeria’s traditional media to awaken to the need to identify with the cause of the masses or risk losing relevance.

Josephine Amuwo, who helps run a highly successful London-based agency that offers training and a variety of other services to women, gave a short but spirited testimony about her passion for Nigeria and her belief in its capacity to rise from the morass and achieve its promise. Affiong L. Affiong, a former student activist, spoke movingly about the role of women in the struggle to liberate Nigeria.

The ever-ebullient Kennedy Emetulu and the energetic Professor Sola Adeyeye gave rousing performances as moderators of the morning and afternoon sessions respectively.

So much was at stake at the London symposium. That it was held on May 29, a day Obasanjo presumptuously declared “Democracy Day,” was at once fortuitous and added to the dramatic temperature.

Soyinka’s speech skewered the notion that May 29, rather than June 12 (when Nigerians held what’s acknowledged as the finest election in their country’s history), merits designation as the day democratic aspirations are to be celebrated.

There was, besides, a running subplot to the symposium that lent it some air of drama. Prior to my arrival in London, I’d received feelers that the Yar’Adua regime was hostile to this gathering of Nigerians to take stock. In London, I was shocked to discover how chagrined Abuja was at the prospect of this meeting. Under pressure from the Nigerian High Commission in London, the London Metropolitan University pulled out as co-sponsors of the event.

When Sowore, Ogundamisi and I sat down in the studios of BEN TV to do a live interview on the conference, the audio became unaccountably mute. I later learned that the High Commission had registered its displeasure with the Nigerian owner of the studio for letting subversive elements appear on his TV. At the symposium, a man told me that the commission had signaled that any Nigerian groups that attended the event courted sharp censure.

Despite these shameful efforts, the hall was packed from morning till the event’s conclusion. Still, the government’s attempt to undermine the symposium struck me as powerful proof that our democracy is yet deformed.
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Jen Armstrong named Print Journalist of the Year, in Philly

Dear friends,

Like so many others, I was quite excited the other day to see the
announcement in a Philly paper that read: Daily News columnist Jenice Armstrong, a pop culture critic who pokes holes in - and fun at - national, local and celebrity news, was named Print Journalist of the Year in Philadelphia. Armstrong, who also writes a blog, Hey Jen, will be honored by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists at the 4th Annual Awards Banquet and Ceremony on June 13, at CBS 3 Studios on Hamilton Street near 15th."

I have been honored to share her work on this blog a number of times. I know many journalists around the world, both male and female. Many have received the highest of recognition, awards-wise. Some may have not received awards that they deserve. Nevertheless, Jen Armstrong stands with the best of them. Moreover, I believe that we have yet to see her full potential (which is a scary thought, in a good way).

Cheers!!! - to Jen and her family

G. Djata Bumpus
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Jen Armstrong on Queen Michelle (originally posted 4/11/09)

"even with her queen-touching and bicep-baring self, is more popular than her husband, according to the latest Gallup Poll..."





Dear friends,

I know that there are those who complain about the idea that Michelle Obama's fashion flavor obscures the plethora of relevant social issues that deserve more attention. However, on the link below, the person who is, at least to me, America's foremost features columnist, Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News goes a lot deeper into First Lady Michelle Obama's role as an African American woman who both stands for and represents a great deal more than tasteful outfits and social etiquette. Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/jenice_armstrong/20090407_Jenice_Armstrong__Michelle_the_conqueror.html

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A Nigerian Rawlings to the rescue?‏

"Many Nigerians believe that, unless a man with Rawlings’ stomach for dealing ruthlessly with the enemies of progress comes to the rescue, Nigeria is bound to stay its dismal course..."

A Nigerian Rawlings to the rescue?

by Okey Ndibe

Nigerians have a Jerry Rawlings fantasy. By the day, a growing number of them suggest that the answer to their country’s malaise is to have a homegrown Rawlings emerge.

Many Nigerians believe that, unless a man with Rawlings’ stomach for dealing ruthlessly with the enemies of progress comes to the rescue, Nigeria is bound to stay its dismal course.

For Ghanaians, Rawlings is a contentious, even divisive, figure. In my conversations with numerous Ghanaian acquaintances, I take away the impression that as many of them despise the man as admire him.

There’s hardly any such ambivalence among Nigerians. For us, Rawlings has heroic allure. Many Nigerians contend that it’d take somebody of Rawlings’ willingness to shoot a few bad men for Nigerian knaves masquerading as leaders to sit up.

I’m not altogether persuaded that a Rawlings-like bloodbath is the elixir Nigeria needs. There can be no shortcuts to the ingrained pathology of Nigeria, a country that, in the sage words of Chinua Achebe, always invents a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Even so, I don’t blame those who wish – indeed, pray – for a Rawlings to descend in our midst and hold our traitorous men and women to account.

I believe part of the reason corruption thrives in Nigeria on a grave scale is that no Nigerian of political consequence has ever been made to pay for betraying the public trust.

Impoverished Nigerians desperate for the next meal get lynched everyday for picking somebody’s pocket. I’m certain that Nigerian jails teem with prisoners who have languished for years simply for stealing a goat, a tuber of yam, or a bale of textile. Many wretched Nigerians are locked up daily merely because they happened to be in the wrong place when corrupt police officers chose to make their sweeps.

By contrast, what’s the harshest sanction ever meted out to any governor or head of state for stealing millions of dollars from the treasury? How many judges have paid a stiff price for selling judgment to the highest bidder? Has any lawmaker been sentenced for pocketing constituency allowances?

At the end of 1983, Muhammadu Buhari led a coup d’etat that swept a class of corrupt politicians from power. Many of the rusticated politicians were locked up for months and stripped of their ill-gotten assets. That was until General Ibrahim Babangida showed up and displaced Buhari. One of Babangida’s first orders of business was to quickly release the detained politicians. Each freed detainee was “ordered” to refund some sum of money. Several years later, a confidante of a released former governor told me that the ex-detainee never paid a kobo in restitution. The refund orders, he said, were meant simply to lull the public into a false sense that those who fleeced the public coffers had been divested of their loot.

Far from paying, many of the deposed politicians were soon awarded cabinet posts as well as board appointments by the selfsame Babangida. Their stealing orgy continued – with hardly any interruption.

The late General Sani Abacha borrowed from Babangida’s script. He surrounded himself with some of the most unconscionable robbers of the public till. Inspired and motivated by Abacha’s own depraved expertise in thievery, these men and women pocketed their nation’s resources with impunity.

Check the records and these looters and embezzlers, who should be incarcerated for life, dominate the rolls of national honor laureates.

All too rarely, an isolated good man or woman breaches the barricades and ascends public office in Nigeria. But, as a general principle, criminals run the Nigerian public space. And these criminals go to any length to protect their “right” to continue the privatization of public funds.

Olusegun Obasanjo ruled Nigeria as if it were his private fiefdom. For much of his watch, Nigerians got little or no accountability about the management of their oil sector. He permitted his aides to stash away cash in presidential jets during overseas visits. Tafa Balogun, the man Obasanjo handpicked as Inspector General of Police, spent less than six months in jail for stealing a whooping N17 billion. Other presidential chums did not as much as get a slap on the wrist for their grubbing activities.

Now, Nigeria is in the unsteady hands of Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua. Yar’Adua’s specialty is to use committees to postpone, if not shirk, the task of tackling corruption. He is a man in whom Nigeria’s league of former and incumbent corrupt officials are extremely well pleased. His talk-tough, do-nothing style has become manure for those in the business of pocketing public funds.

Those who feed fat on Nigeria’s crude are applauding the military bombardment of the Niger Delta in the name of combating militants. Yet, it’s their gluttony that produced the militancy in the first place. Are they capable of checking their greed, or would it take a Rawlings to strike fear in these vampires?
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More scamming and stealing by the Nigerian government and their "friends"

"Asked to appear and tell his side of the sordid affair, Obasanjo quibbled about the lowly station of the man who signed his letter of invitation. He then told the committee he was too “indisposed” to appear in person. Instead, he sent a long epistle filled with rambling lectures on etiquette and obfuscations where clear answers were needed about the huge payments he authorized for questionable or non-existent work."

<Hunting the hunter

By Okey Ndibe

Nigerians ought to pay attention to two recent, and clearly linked, events. The two events illustrate how the cabal that runs – which is to say, ruins – Nigeria goes about protecting its own and preserving its right to eat Nigerians for lunch.

First, there’s the EFCC’s arrest and arraignment of Ndudi Elumelu, chair of the House of Representatives committee on power. Mr. Elumelu is accused of participating in a N5.2 billion rural electrification scam. The second is the effort to discredit the work of Elumelu’s probe panel.
Elumelu’s trial is a politically significant development. Last year, his committee had probed Nigeria’s multi-billion dollar investment in power projects that seem to have disappeared, puff, into air.

Umaru Musa Yar’Adua first alerted Nigerians to the scandal. He said his predecessor had spent $10 billion on power with nothing to show for it. Shortly after, Speaker Dimeji Bankole asserted that as much as $16 billion may have been wasted in the name of power projects.

Elumelu and his committee got cracking. Revelation after astounding revelation emerged at their televised hearings. In case after case, witnesses testified that contractors who had not as much as scratched a grain of sand had walked away with as much as 80 percent of contract sums. In most, if not all, cases, the government had violated its own due process rules.

What emerged from the hearings was an unseemly picture of political office holders betraying the public trust. Judging by the hearings, the committee’s report was expected to make explosive findings. It did, indicting both former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his clique of cabinet operatives, including Liyel Imoke (now a governor) and Olusegun Agagu (a rusticated governor).

Asked to appear and tell his side of the sordid affair, Obasanjo quibbled about the lowly station of the man who signed his letter of invitation. He then told the committee he was too “indisposed” to appear in person. Instead, he sent a long epistle filled with rambling lectures on etiquette and obfuscations where clear answers were needed about the huge payments he authorized for questionable or non-existent work.

Imoke appeared before the committee, but his performance was no better than his former boss’s. He arrived with a cheerleading squad in tow. Then he basically told the committee that Nigerians had no right to expect improved power supply before they have pumped cash on the scale of South Africa’s investment in the power sector. Agagu? Well, he could hardly remember a thing he did as power minister.

You’d think that the Elumelu report would inform Nigerians about the way their scarce resources were squandered. From the outset, it was clear that powerful interests were out to torpedo the report. The speaker, once an enthusiast, threw so many roadblocks in the way of the report that it took months before the committee had an opportunity to tell Nigerians what they’d found. Some murmured that the committee had pocketed a huge bribe. An exasperated Elumelu abandoned parliamentary reserve to warn Nigerians that those who misappropriated funds were out to fudge up the picture.

When it came time to present his report, the occasion turned into farce. Numerous members of the committee disowned the report, accused Elumelu of running a witch-hunt, and even sang the praises of the men who’d signed off billions of dollars of public funds to contractors who did next to nothing.

In the end, the House asked another committee, headed by deputy whip Aminu Tambuwal, to take a look at Elumelu’s work.

Last week, Tambuwal’s committee dismissed Elumelu’s report. In a verdict inflected with the misruling cabal’s ability to lie with a straight face, the ad-hoc committee claimed that Nigeria “did not lose any money in the award of power projects executed by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007.”

With Obasanjo, Imoke and Agagu thus canonized, Nigerians ought to wonder whether Elumelu’s trial is a case of teaching a whistle blower a lesson.

If Elumelu played hanky panky with funds meant for rural electrification, by all means nail him. But the leadership of the House must think Nigerians brain dead if they expect us to swallow the concoction that Obasanjo’s power projects were beyond reproach.

The test of the truth lies in Nigerian light switches. If the $10 billion (or $13 billion or $16 billion) Obasanjo threw into power projects were well invested, then Nigerians would find a commensurate measure of improvement in their power supply. Alas, that’s not the case.

The Coalition Against Corrupt leaders (CACOL) is right to question how Tambuwal’s “subterranean committee” could “discredit the report of a probe procedure that the same House carried out in the full glare of the whole world through live transmission on global television channels.”
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Some of Nigeria's children are involved in a holocaust (originally posted 11/21/08)

Ndibe reveals a horrifying predicament that has a certain body of Nigerian chldren caught up in a maelstrom...

Because of last night's airing (May 22, 2009) on ABC's Nightly News and Nightline programs regarding this issue, I have decided tp repost this story.

G, Djata Bumpus


****************************************
Dear friends,

Unfortunately, the illusions that far too many humans embrace have caused more suffering than any illness or disease has.

On the link below is a report from noted Nigerian author, educator, and scholar Okey Ndibe, regarding the horrific acts by certain adults, including parents, against children in parts of Nigeria have created a genuine holocaust among the latter.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/okey-ndibe/nigeria-s-savaged-children-2.html
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HAPPY 60th BIRTHDAY!!! to Stephen Manuel Bumpus

From the entire family. Read full post

Smith on Convenience and Rights

"Until we can contribute as much to their campaigns as the NRA does, a lot of these lawmakers will be more beholden to the gun lobby than to us. *


My old and dear friend Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News, in his usual biting but humorous analysis, reminds us of how significant our votes are. Keep the faith! - but carry...

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20090515_Elmer_Smith__Pack_a_rod_in_Independence_Hall__Your_senators_and_the_NRA_get_the_credit.html
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27 betrayed Nigerian soldiers

"Nigerian soldiers, like most of the country’s workforce, are poorly paid. In contrast, many military officers earn handsome packages..."

27 betrayed soldiers

By Okey Ndibe

On April 27, the Nigerian state committed a grievous act of betrayal of 27 brave soldiers who simply stood up to demand their right.

That day, a military tribunal condemned the soldiers – among them, three women – to spend the rest of their lives in jail. It is nothing short of a scandalous miscarriage of justice that the court found the soldiers guilty of mutiny.

The scandal lies in the details of the case. The soldiers’ so-called crime was to protest the non-payment of allowances that accrued to them from their participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Liberia. Each of the protesting soldiers had earned as much as $25,000. Yet, long after the UN had remitted the funds, some corrupt military officers sat on the funds.

After months of seeking payment, the exasperated soldiers staged a mild protest in Akure, Ondo State. No doubt, they sought to draw attention to their plight – and to shame the military authorities into releasing their overdue entitlements.

Instead of doing the right thing by these long-suffering soldiers, the military brass ordered their arrest and prosecution. Their lawyer, Femi Falana, has said that they were detained for several months under abominable conditions. And then the tribunal compounded this bizarre injustice by herding these innocents off to life imprisonment.

This is one more instance – and a particularly unforgivable one – of a highly criminalized state presuming to be the custodian of law and order.

Let’s be clear: mutiny is a grave matter, with a potential for undermining the security of a state. But the convicted soldiers, properly understood, are not mutineers so much as they are victims of a state that rewards real criminals.

Nobody has denied that some corrupt officers illicitly withheld the soldiers’ stipends. In fact, in January the same tribunal had convicted five officers of stealing $68,000 belonging to the hapless soldiers. And what kind of punishment did the quick-fingered officers receive? Mere demotion. Not one of them lost his job. Not one was slammed with a life sentence.

Yet, the twenty-seven soldiers they disinherited and drove to the edge of desperation are found fit to languish in jail unto death. Falana has described the life sentences as “a charade that cannot stand.” Charade is too mild a word.

Nigerian students, labor groups, academics and other professional organizations ought to rise and protest the cruelty to these poor soldiers who’ve been betrayed by their officers, and are in danger of being made living corpses for asking to be paid what they had more than earned.

Nigerian soldiers, like most of the country’s workforce, are poorly paid. In contrast, many military officers earn handsome packages. Besides, many officers enjoy one form or other of patronage from politicians. There’s neither rhyme nor reason, then, for an officer to steal a soldier’s allowance.

Yet, for years Nigerian soldiers drafted to peacekeeping tasks whispered woeful stories of officers who took huge slices of their payments, or even engaged in wholesale embezzlement.

Despite the appellation of “peacekeeping,” it’s no secret that these operations are highly hazardous. Soldiers whose job is to keep the peace are often shot at. Sometimes, they are sitting ducks, targeted by the armed groups they try to keep from armed engagement. Many Nigerian soldiers have lost their lives in such peacekeeping assignments as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. Many more have been maimed, condemned to carry for life scars that are grotesque reminders of the sacrifices they made to hold hell at bay for besieged civilian populations in such addresses as Bosnia, Rwanda and Liberia.

The least a nation owes these men and women who risk life and limbs is to ensure that they are paid their due at the completion of their assignments. In the lawless space that’s Nigeria, where greed is boundless, this simple expectation is often too much to ask.

What are soldiers to do when a few of their rogue officers decide to pocket their peacekeeping allowances? Crawl into their barrack cocoons and become mute victims? Fall to their knees, raise hands to heaven, and leave the case in God’s hands? Should they pen petitions to politicians in Abuja who all too often are too busy chasing after lucre to pause and listen to anybody’s entreaties?

This is a portrait of the predicament these soldiers had to deal with. They were aware of past instances when grubby officers made away with soldiers’ peacekeeping allowances. They knew that Nigeria is a space where crime pays, provided the criminal has the preferment of rank or access to the powers-that-be.

They made a decision – absolutely sensible in the circumstances – to dramatize their woes. They deserve apologies from the officers who stole from them. Should these men and women be made to spend even a day in jail, the Nigerian state would have made another investment in its demise.
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Proclamations of Electoral Reform in Nigeria

"A president worthy of the name would have recognized the grave danger of Bankole’s perverse speech. He would have immediately stepped forward, asked for the microphone, and publicly rebuked the speaker for telling the world that the PDP’s idea of an election was to stage a coup d’etat against the wishes of the electorate..."

Ekiti and rumors of electoral reform

by Okey Ndibe


A few weeks ago – April 10, to be exact – I wrote on this page that the then forthcoming electoral debacle in Ekiti State foretold the sham that will take the place of the general elections of 2011. In the opening paragraph of a column titled “Ekiti as a preview of 2011,” I warned: “Those who persist in seeing Umaru Musa Yar'Adua as a democrat at heart had better pay attention to the macabre show the man took to Ekiti State.” Yar’Adua, I continued, “comes across as a man who wants power at all cost and for its own sake.”

I wrote those words in the context of Yar’Adua’s bizarre campaign stump in the hotly contested state. First, the resident of Aso Rock manufactured alleged achievements for Mr. Segun Oni, the party’s governorship candidate and impostor who was justly removed by an appellate court. Then he stood by, a confounded and tragic figure, as Speaker Dimeji Bankole tried to galvanize a smattering of party faithful with a fully treasonous campaign speech.

Dimeji told his audience that the PDP had pocketed Ekiti in the elections of April 2007 with the use of police power. A speaker who habitually misspeaks, Bankole then reminded his listeners that their (ruling) party boasts the “commander-in-chief” of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Not one to settle for a coded message, Bankole was not shy to spell out what he meant. This time around, he assured, the party would deploy the intimidating force of the military to capture Ekiti.

A president worthy of the name would have recognized the grave danger of Bankole’s perverse speech. He would have immediately stepped forward, asked for the microphone, and publicly rebuked the speaker for telling the world that the PDP’s idea of an election was to stage a coup d’etat against the wishes of the electorate. Yar’Adua glumly listened to statements that amounted to a threat to subvert democratic ideals.

If Bankole’s martial rhetoric was disturbing, things got even more ludicrous before the April 25 date of the rerun polls. Next and a few Nigerian websites posted the taped voice of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun State doing his treasonous best to rally PDP partisans. Oyinlola, a former military officer, is heard rehearsing an armed strategy to intimidate and suppress opposition sympathizers. He pledges to equip PDP operatives with military uniforms and weapons to enable them to “capture” Ekiti.

In a country where the rule of law is more than a cynical fad, Oyinlola’s taped plan to sabotage democracy would have elicited universal condemnation. The man would have been flushed out of his gubernatorial seat and led away in handcuffs, a disgraced figure.

Not in Yar’Adua’s Nigeria. Oyinlola remains in the office he has tainted by his odoriferous speech, among other unbecoming acts.

It’s painful to gloat that one’s dire prediction about Ekiti and 2011 is being vindicated. Yet, when a character like former President Olusegun Obasanjo takes to mocking the man he imposed as Nigeria’s sleeper-in-chief, Nigerians had better take notice. It’s a sign that things are truly bleak.

Reporters recently asked Obasanjo to weigh in on Umaru Yar’Adua’s avowed reform of Nigeria’s electoral laws. The former president blithely retorted that he wasn’t aware that any polling reforms were in the offing.

In its terseness and wicked indirection, the response was typical Obasanjo. Of course, the former president is smarting from a sharp decline in his fortunes within the ruling party. At a recent gathering in Abuja that it styled a convention, the ruling party pretty much whittled down Obasanjo’s powers.

It was only three years ago that the PDP tagged Obasanjo “father of modern Nigeria.” The same party seems on a mission to deflate the expired emperor’s ego. Its convention stripped Obasanjo of his dream to hold a monopoly on the chairmanship of the party’s board of trustees unto death.

Increasingly vilified, even ostracized, by many of the men and women he smuggled into power at various levels, Obasanjo’s legendary vindictiveness appears aroused. His revenge? To tell the truth – at least on occasion – about the bunch he hoisted into illegitimate power.

Some tell the truth as a way to set themselves, and others, free. Not Obasanjo. For him, it seems, the motivation for speaking truth is merely to get even. However untoward his motivation, what matters is that we now have Obasanjo’s confession that Yar’Adua’s vaunted electoral reform is a yarn, another jiggery pokery.

Nobody who’s watched the sordid events in Ekiti can retain confidence in Yar’Adua, the PDP or the national electoral commission to husband democratic ideals. Even as the drama in Ekiti fostered fears of a military putsch, the PDP hunkered down, determined to snatch the state by unfair and foul means. Maurice Iwu, a man with neither an ounce of integrity nor sense of shame, worked feverishly behind the scenes to gratify the ruling party’s plot. What was this “independent electoral umpire” doing at a meeting that featured such PDP stalwarts as Yar’Adua, Bankole Dimeji and David Mark, but with not a single participant from the opposing AC?

Ekiti was Yar’Adua’s opportunity to silence skeptics by demonstrating his seriousness about ethical and electoral reforms. Alas, the man (and his party as well as INEC) chose to reveal the fake product they’ve been marketing as electoral reforms.
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Defying Justice in Nigeria

"Many Nigerians already suspect that their judiciary teems with too many men and women with a profound deficit of shame and integrity..."

Andy Uba and an indulgent Supreme Court

by Okey Ndibe

Hand it to Andy Uba, a domestic aide to former President Olusegun Obasanjo: the man has a certain viral persistence, a refusal to take no for an answer.

On June 14, 2007, the Supreme Court removed Uba from his ill-gotten perch as governor of Anambra. In a ruling that drew nation-wide cheer, the court roundly rebuked the electoral commission for conducting gubernatorial elections in Anambra when the tenure of incumbent Governor Peter Obi had not ended.

Allergic to being told no, Uba hired a new set of lawyers and approached the same court. He asked a seven-member panel of the nation’s high court to recant its earlier judgment and return him as governor in Awka. In another unanimous verdict, the justices told him, hell no.

Emerging from the court, Uba’s lawyers vowed that the last had not been heard. They soon made good on this improbable boast by asking a court of appeal to find that Uba’s so-called mandate was secured in a legitimate election. In one of the bizarre twists in the country’s recent judicial history, the appellate justices gave a muddled judgment that Uba’s camp then held aloft as proof that their man was “a governor-in-waiting.” In the face of fierce legal criticism, the panel that allegedly gave that verdict beat an untidy retreat.

Even so, Uba was far from done. Late last year, he set out on another adventure to the Supreme Court. His singular wish list is for a court that twice turned him back to contrive some legal contortions to impose him as governor of Anambra.

In entertaining this case at all, the Supreme Court is in danger of leaving its reputation in tatters. Mr. Uba seems to have served notice that he plans to harangue the court until he gets an indulgent panel willing to do his bidding.

Many Nigerians already suspect that their judiciary teems with too many men and women with a profound deficit of shame and integrity. The nation’s highest court cannot afford to leave the impression that its hallowed chambers are permanently open to the fancies of any client with a huge treasury of inexplicable wealth.

It’s doubtful that Mr. Uba’s persistent wheedling has anything to do with respect for the rule of law. He comes across, instead, as a cynical man determined to make relays to the high court until he’s handed a panel of sympathetic justices. It’s an ill-disguised belief in the rule of money.

Mr. Uba’s judicial round-tripping should trouble any Nigerian who wishes to see the enthronement of a fiercely independent judiciary, at once incorruptible and committed to the highest ideals of judicial ethics.

Of course, whenever justice is transparently miscarried, it’s the duty of a court to redress it. But in the case of Uba, it is hard to picture how he’s been ill served by the apex court. Uba’s latest judicial adventure has everything to do with political calculations. One of the closest confidantes of Obasanjo, Uba was eased into place as the PDP’s governorship candidate. He was subsequently declared “winner” of a gubernatorial contest that Human Rights Watch categorized as illustrative of electoral fraud. Here’s how ludicrous Uba’s so-called election was: the electoral commission initially awarded him more votes than there were registered voters in the state.

When the Supreme Court removed Uba on June 14, 2007 – a mere two weeks after he usurped office – their decision elicited widespread celebration. A man rang me from Kaduna to say that it was not just a victory for the people of Anambra but a triumph for all Nigerians.

There was good reason for the celebratory air. Uba epitomizes the worst tendencies in many Nigerians who occupy elective or appointive office. A man who has not been able to authenticate that he earned a first academic degree, Uba’s campaign website misled people with the information that he holds a PhD. When The News, a Nigerian weekly magazine, published a cover on his academic fraud, virtually the publication’s entire print mysteriously disappeared.

Prior to joining Obasanjo’s administration, Uba ran a middling “healthcare” services operation in California. Yet, in 2004 U.S. officials seized cash of $170,000 that Uba had taken into New York City. The cash, concealed from U.S. authorities, was then handed over to a Loretta Mabinton. She used most of it to buy a Mercedes Benz car for Uba, and $45,000 to buy equipment for Obasanjo’s farm in Otta.

Confronted on the smuggled funds, Obasanjo blithely stated that Uba was a wealthy man prior to working for the presidency. It was – let’s be blunt – a blatant lie.

There’s little question that Uba is in possession of a stupendous amount of cash, the source of it a question that Nigerians must raise. It’s a mark of the monumental dysfunction that’s Nigeria that this man is in court asking to be crowned governor rather than in the dock explaining how he accumulated all that wealth.

Uba’s imposition on Anambra would amount to a war on the people’s will – to say nothing of the taint on the name of justice.
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Nigeria's politicians try some PR work

"Every citizen of a country deserves to be called a stakeholder. Yet, when Nigerian politicians speak about the country’s stakeholders, they usually mean the elements who spend their waking hours stealing from the public..."

"A fiesta of delusion"

By Okey Ndibe

Fond of airy rhetoric, Nigerian politicians love to accumulate meaningless words and delusive jingles. The latest fashion is the stark lie called re-branding. Nigeria’s re-branding craze is actually an old, useless idea squeezed into new, expensive clothes.

Mention the name Chukwuemeka Chikelu today and I bet many – perhaps most – Nigerians won’t remember him. Yet, he was the Information Minister in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government who came up with the notion of re-branding Nigeria’s image.

Chikelu’s was a silly gambit with a high price tag. His idea consisted of packaging a few Nigerian achievers to the world in order to counter negative reports about Nigeria. As ideas went, this one was patently hollow in conception and fated for failure. Every single naira spent on that project was a naira misspent. To begin with, the world didn’t need to be reminded that there are extraordinary Nigerians in every field of endeavor. The world already knew, and knows, that Nigeria has produced some of the best writers, top-rank doctors, enterprising scientists and researchers, and excellent teachers. As if to advertise its ineptitude, the government’s line-up of achievers included one or two questionable names, including an academic of minor stature who had used the press to inflate himself as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. A campaign based on reminding the world that Nigeria boasted men and women of high achievement was, then, bereft of purpose.

At any rate, since most of the Nigerian “geniuses” on the government’s propaganda list were based abroad, the world, if it paid attention at all, was apt to ask a few pointed questions. How come this country exports its best and brightest? With this cast of achievers, why is Nigeria in the calloused hands of rustics, “area boys” in agbada, clowns and mediocrities? With its parade of prodigious men and women, why did Chikelu’s Nigeria permit the likes of Lamidi Adedibu, Chris Uba, and Saminu Turaki to own the public space?

Every citizen of a country deserves to be called a stakeholder. Yet, when Nigerian politicians speak about the country’s stakeholders, they usually mean the elements who spend their waking hours stealing from the public, and plotting to embezzle ever more. They hardly ever include such admirable citizens as Gani Fawehinmi, Oyibo Odinamadu, Gamaliel Onosode, Balarabe Musa, Babs Fafunwa, Abubakar Umar, Eskor Toyo, and Bart Nnaji.

When Chinua Achebe dared to reject a tainted national “honor” offered by Obasanjo, Femi Fani-Kayode, speaking in his master’s name, vilified the novelist in the most caustic language. Yet, the same Obasanjo championed “Andy” Uba, a domestic aide who smudged Nigeria’s image by ferrying cash of $170,000 on a presidential jet bound for New York City – and had to pay a steep fine to the U.S. for breaking their currency declaration laws. The self-same Fani-Kayode once had occasion to dismiss Wole Soyinka as godless. He even went further, asking Nigerians to henceforth ignore the Nobel laureate on account of Soyinka’s alleged atheism. The dramatist’s real sin, we knew, was a refusal to shriek “Amen!” to Obasanjo’s divine delusions. In one breath, Soyinka was insulted; in another, Obasanjo feted Adedibu, a self-confessed thug and liar, describing the man as his leader and mentor. At best, then, Chikelu’s re-branding project had zero impact. At worst, it reminded the world about Nigeria’s habit of trumpeting its worst and ostracizing its best. Chikelu’s public relations campaign was fundamentally misconceived. It fizzled quickly, even before its author’s rustication from the cabinet.

This being Nigeria – a space where bad ideas are routinely granted new leases – current Information and Communications Minister Dora Akunyili has decided that re-branding (as re-tooled by her) is, again, what Nigeria needs. Akunyili is beloved by many Nigerians. Many of these admirers hope that, by some magic or miracle, she would succeed. But no magic or miracle would suffice. Her re-branding effort is as ill conceived as Chikelu’s version. One hates to rain on Mrs. Akunyili’s party, but the truth is that her re-branding project came stillborn.

There’s no international conspiracy to give Nigeria a bad name. Nor are Nigerians sourpusses who invent untenable grouses against their government. Nigeria is a potentially soaring story that’s become a tragedy-in-progress.

Part of Akunyili’s predicament is to serve a government produced by electoral fraud. How does she re-brand that? The same government, from the look of things, is gearing to rig the elections of 2011. How does she re-brand that?

Before our very eyes, and those of the world, the Obasanjo government squandered billions of dollars in an apparent scam that used power projects as an excuse. Yet Umaru Yar’Adua, the man Obasanjo handpicked, and other political “forces” in Abuja have effectively squelched a legislative report on the power scam. I’ll wake up and applaud when Akunyili persuades Yar’Adua to prosecute the “stakeholders” implicated in Halliburtongate, Siemensgate, Wilbrosgate, and a plethora of other scams. It’s not enough to wrap feces and present it as moi moi, to spray perfume on cow dung, and to apply deodorant on unwashed stinky armpit.
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Has Nigeria Become Underdeveloped?

"He should clarify the disturbing discrepancy between his sermon and his conduct, or he should simply exit the pulpit."

“Jonathan’s questionable gospel”

By Okey Ndibe

Two weeks ago, a newspaper carried a News Agency of Nigeria report under the caption, “We are a vain nation”. The quoted claim was not as important as the man who voiced it. In case you missed it, the statement was credited to Goodluck Jonathan, sidekick to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the slumbering disaster who presumes to govern Nigeria. Jonathan, a lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt before he made a foray into politics, reportedly “identified the pursuit of mundane things that are worthless to the country's development by both leaders and followers, as the cause of the nation's under-development.” Jonathan made this curious assertion during an Easter Sunday service at Aso Rock Chapel. In what NAN described as “an emotive address,” Yar’Adua’s deputy waxed diagnostic about Nigeria’s crisis. In his words, “What makes us remain the way we are, what makes us to be backward, is that we value those things that matter less to a society.”

At this point, those who’ve followed Jonathan’s political career would want to exclaim Wow! But wait, the man isn’t done yet. The news agency quoted the man as confessing that, “Having worked in the government for almost 10 years now, I know that most of the problems we have, are because of the vain and trivial things that charm us most.” Jonathan then recalled that Nigeria once shared the same developmental bracket as India, Brazil, Indonesia and Singapore, “but regretted that those countries had left us behind.” What accounted for Nigeria’s catastrophic slip? An answer was offered in the gospel according to Jonathan. As NAN reported, Jonathan “blamed past leaders for looting the treasury and stashing funds meant for the country's development in banks outside the country.” Again, in his words: “Nigeria has so much money stashed outside this country, most of the money stolen from the public treasury. If 50 per cent of these funds were brought back and kept in Nigerian banks they would have enough funds to give as loans. Our banks would not need to send girls to go out and hustle for deposits.”

Nor was this the end of Jonathan’s strange confessions. He stated that the embezzlers “do not even need 10 per cent of [their loot]” and that “some of them hide the money and their children will not even see it.” Having diagnosed the Nigerian disorder, Jonathan proclaimed the antidote. He implored Nigerians, wrote NAN, “to use the Easter period to purge themselves of mundane things and pursue things that would be beneficial to the uplifting of the nation.” Speaking with the earnestness of a prelate, he made a prediction: “if we sacrifice most of these artificial and mundane things that are not critical to us…this country will be a better place.”

Odds are that some speechwriter handed Mr. Jonathan this speech and – without pausing to rehearse it – he rushed off to the chapel to read it. Why did he not deem fit to reflect on this self-indicting speech before he mounted the podium with it? For that matter, why did he not see the wisdom of clearing the speech with his wife, Patience Jonathan, before reading it? Until former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s abracadabra installed Jonathan as “vice president,” Patience Jonathan was a target of investigations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In late 2006, agents of the anti-corruption agency seized close to $15 million dollars from Mrs. Jonathan, whose husband was then governor of Bayelsa. Two months earlier, the EFCC had frozen N104 million it also accused Mrs. Jonathan of attempting to stow away through one Mrs. Nancy Ebere Nwosu.

Given his family’s history, Mr. Jonathan’s sermon on the malaise of graft and greed is nothing less than fascinating. Could this Easter message be heartfelt – or was it just another hypocritical speech by a man who, like most Nigerian politicians, is beyond shame? If the man’s sentiments are genuine, then what has he done to censure his wife? Why hasn’t he invited the EFCC to go through with its investigation of his wife, and to haul her before the law if she’s found to have engaged in gluttonous embezzlement?

Beyond his wife’s questionable financial activities, Mr. Jonathan may also have a few personal questions to answer. A year and a half ago, this former lecturer responded to public pressure by making his asset declaration public. He declared that he was worth N295 million. How did he generate that stupendous level of income? As the Guardian columnist Sonala Olumhense noted, “this means he had been growing richer at the rate of close to N17 million per month” during the 17 months he was governor.

If Mr. Jonathan meant what he said in his Easter message, he owes it to himself to explain how he accumulated his fortune. And he should also explain how his wife came by the sums of $13.5 million and N104 million. He should clarify the disturbing discrepancy between his sermon and his conduct, or he should simply exit the pulpit.

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Sandy Banks features some women who are in the know

"The women seated around the table at the Thursday morning knitting club were senior citizens all right -- from 63-year-old Agavanoush Shakhverdian to Ida Capriole, three weeks shy of 92. But they were hardly quiet..."






Dear friends,

On the link below you'll find a piece that proves that women need only act and think for themselves, as opposed to the moronic suggestion that they should "act like a lady, but think like a man", and they will have long, happy, and productive lives. The author, Los Angeles Times veteran columnist Sandy Banks has been featured on this blog in the past.

One Love!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks21-2009mar21,0,5550888.column
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Al Martinez ponders Unemployment

" I’m not sure that unemployment heightens the senses. I don’t know that being apart from the crowd allows any special perspective. But involvement takes time and attention while isolation demands no such effort..."



Dear friends,

I am always honored to present work by my good friend, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Al Martinez. After many decades of doing so, he is no longer working at the Los Angeles Times. Instead, he only works for himself now, and he is plenty busy. We all have powers within us that allow us to do many things, after all.

To be sure, loneliness is a condition that no human can escape, because, ultimately, we have to think for ourselves, speak for ourselves, eat for ourselves and go to the bathroom for ourselves. It is just that we live in such an "advanced" society that allows us to have so much "free" time, instead of having to spend all day foraging and hunting for food - as our ancestors did, that we can easily forget that our relationship to others is the basis for our prosperity. In other words, as a species, from the school janitor to the teacher to the police officer, bus driver, auto meechanic, grocer and carpenter, we all play a role in our cooperative effort to co-exust.

The sad part is: Historically, kids coming out of college have rarely had enough experiences in life to provide any kind of useful analyses for readers. At least to me, the whole process of becoming a journalist needs to be re-done. It has to be more than just a job. It must be a passion.

Finally, everyone wants to know something. However, far too often journalists censor themselves, because the point of so much of North American journalism has more to do with getting the reader riled up, as opposed to “informing in order to inspire”. Additionally, the editors have greater concern for their jobs as their occupations are determined by their bosses and advertisers (secondly). Moreover, at least to me, journalists must become more entrepreneurial ad band to gether to form their own news outlets. Part of the problem is the laziness that people get from taking a pavcheck, instead of earning their money based on a variety of skills they’ve developed over the years.

At any rate, on the link below is a very humorous but equally serious (i.e., thought-provoking) piece. Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://almartinez.org/wordpress/?p=30 Read full post

More on Nigerian Politics

Ojo Maduekwe's crashing stock‏

by Okey Ndibe

Ojo Maduekwe’s crashing stockBy Okey NdibeForeign Affairs Minister Ojo Maduekwe should be ashamed of himself. Any man who lies against children is contemptible, and that’s exactly what Mr. Maduekwe did. Early in March, Mr. Maduekwe had traveled to Geneva as head of the Nigerian delegation to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review on human rights. The event is used to survey the state of human rights across the globe.

Last November, Britain’s Channel 4 TV had broadcast a documentary on Nigeria’s “witch children.” It was a harrowing look at the horrors visited on thousands of children in Akwa Ibom and elsewhere. These children are first stigmatized as witches and wizards and then subjected to excruciating torture.

In short, the program unmasked the human capacity for evil. Channel 4 took viewers on a graphic tour of some deranged churches and their so-called pastors and prophets who rake in huge profits from declaring children as witches. One of the featured “men of God” is a man named “Bishop” Sunday Ulup-Aya. A self-styled “poison destroyer,” he openly boasts that he had physically liquidated 110 witches and wizards. Ulup-Aya’s eyes appear glazed and his slurry speech suggests drunkenness. He’s shown ordering a child to drink a concoction meant to “destroy the poison” of witchcraft. Then the reporter informs us that the concoction is made of strong alcohol, a substance called “African mercury,” and the “bishop’s” own blood.

Hard as it is to imagine, the child who’s shown drinking the strange concoction is one of the lucky ones. The program revealed that some of the children are simply killed. Some are driven out, forced to live in the open like wild animals. Some are tied to trees and starved for several weeks. Some are disfigured with acid, scalded with boiling water, or scarred with fire. The camera showed a young girl in whose skull some superstitious fool had driven a six-inch nail.

This chronicle of gruesome torture is still available online. To see this unflinching portrait of cruelty, just go to www.youtube.com and type in “Africa's witch children”. But be cautioned: It’s a stark, wrenching expose. The images are hard to watch and impossible to rub out of one’s mind. When I first saw it four months ago, I sat before the computer and cried for a while. I shuddered with the shame of being a member of a society that, out of deep and festering ignorance, would unleash such violence on children.

What does it say about us when we stand pat and permit nefarious elements among us to brutalize children, including toddlers? Were the police ignorant about the bloody goings-on? Are we not all implicated, to one degree or another, by the dehumanization of vulnerable children?

A teeming league of fake pastors and ignorant seers prey on children, I believe, because the child-victims are largely voiceless, with few or no options to stand up in their own defense.

It was natural that the question of Akwa Ibom’s tortured children should come up at an international forum on human rights abuses. But when the question was put to Mr. Maduekwe, he reportedly replied that the “children were paid to say they were tortured.”

That’s a callous, despicable response. It’s either the minister never bothered to watch the Channel 4 report – in which case, his fitness for a ministerial post should be called to question – or he somehow felt it was okay to discredit victims of heinous human rights abuses. In that event, we should wonder whether Mr. Maduekwe has a heart at all.

The larger crime here is that, after Channel 4’s exposure of the shameful abuse of children, the Nigerian government pretended nothing was amiss. Mr. Maduekwe might have helped to mobilize a national effort to rescue the besieged children of Akwa Ibom. He might also have persuaded Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua to send a tough bill to the National Assembly stipulating stiff punishment for those who harm children in the alleged name of combating witchcraft.

Since Mr. Maduekwe failed to do this, he had no leg to stand on when he was asked what Nigeria was doing to save children from mindless abuse. Caught in a bind, a good diplomat might have bought time by stating that his government was weighing a number of corrective measures. Instead, Mr. Maduekwe compounded his government’s betrayal of these beleaguered children by painting them as rented scam artists.

This foreign minister took a low, cowardly road precisely because he knows that the children are in no position to counter his lie, much less drag him to court for defamation. Yet, in the court of public opinion – and especially in Nigeria’s humane sector where conscionable men and women care about the fortunes of children – Mr. Maduekwe’s stock has crashed to the bottom.

(okndibe@yahoo.com)
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April is National Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM)

Archie Shepp










April is National Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM)

Saturday Apr 25 3P NMathis Volunteers @ International Women In Jazz
Women’s Festival Fri – Sat 24 – 26 Apr @ St Peter’s Church NYC
212.935-2200/718.468-7376


Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make dinner for $10 or less.

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Brilliant analysis - with genuine humor

Sponsored by Rep. Tim Briggs, D-Montgomery County, it has 37 co-sponsors and asks everyone to turn out all lights for an hour to address global warming. It also urges Gov. Rendell to order "all lights in all Commonwealth buildings" switched off, too. Could make for a fun Saturday night at Graterford (a prison in Pennsylvania), eh?


Dear friends,

On the link below, Philadelphoa Daily News columnist John Baer delivers an incredibly brilliant, yet humorous, analysis of Pennsylvania state politics that could be applied to any of our fifty states. Enjoy!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20090323_John_Baer__Who_says_Legislature_does_nothing__Go_ask_any_box_turtle.html
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Why do we use the term "African American"? (originally posted July, 2008)

"African Americans are a people who grew out of the mixing of various groups of African peoples (that is, individuals who belonged to many cultural backgrounds throughout, mostly, West Africa). We were forced to unite because of our shared oppression and exploitation..."

Dear friends,

Booker T. Washington wrote, "During the period of servitude in the New World, the Negro race did not wholly forget the traditions and habits of thought that it brought from Africa. But it added to its ancestral stock certain new ideas."

I am an African American (I do not use a hyphen, because I refuse to consider myself an abbreviated American.) Yet, many of my fellow countryfolks feel confused about how they should address African Americans, generally, because it seems as though our terms of self-description change from time to time...

However, the term itself (African American) is not new; rather, it points to the natural direction being taken by a people who grew out of a distinct cultural experience, having survived the ravages of time, in a nation that is founded upon both greed and white supremacy. Therefore, by calling ourselves African Americans, we are merely returning to our true identity as human beings.

NOTE: When people hear the term "white supremacy", they usually either think of those who parade around in white bedsheets - like the Old South's KKK (Ku Klux Klan) or others, in blue uniforms, such as the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) in places like Philadelphia and New York City. In other words, many citizens in this country do not see themselves as "white supremacists", per se. However, I use the term “white supremacy”, because a person can come from any European, Asian, or Latin country tomorrow, completely disregard his or her true familial past and declare himself or herself “white” - thus becoming part of an artificial "majority" group. Additionally, by calling himself or herself "white", that same person just mentioned, automatically, inherits a history that includes the likes of the original Pilgrim group, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln (none of whom, as far as I know, are of either Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, German, Asian, "Hispanic", Jewish, or French descent), along with enjoying privileges and advantages over me and people who look like me.

Although around 130 years or a little more than five generations ago, author and formidable scholar George W. Williams asserted that, at the time, many African peoples worldwide preferred to be called "Negro" (see his History of the Negro Race in America), it appears that the expressions "Negro" and "colored" actually gained their popularity after the North American Civil War. Available literature only shows that prior conflict, the word "Africa" almost always prefixed the names of our organizations.

For example, beginning during the last quarter of the 18th Century, with Richard Allen and his friends' Free African Society, in Philadelphia, to the founding of the A.M.E. (African Methodist Epsicopal) church, which spread across the nation soon afterwards, all the way to the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston - a highly-respected activist group that existed for more than 40 years or almost two generations before and during the North American Civil War, we never forgot our African origins.

As well, because of the proliferation of the abolitionist movement that grew correspondingly with the manumission of each captive worker (so-called slave), Black self-help groups, whose purposes were for the economic and social progress of the aforementioned manumitted captive workers, began to flourish. One such group was the Peace and Benevolent Society of Afric-Americans of Connecticut - which thrived around the same time as the previously-mentioned women's group (see Black Abolitionists, by noted historian and scholar Benjamin Quarles. Also, there is other literature concerning African American organizations corresponding with that period in works like Lerone Bennett's classic, Before The Mayflower.)

But is "Black" also a legitimate identity reference? I think that it is. In fact, if we take guidance from Professor Lloyd Hogan's classic "The Principles of Black Political Economy", we see that he has identified five criteria that distinguish African American or Black people as a group that has proliferated. for centuries, within its own environment. They are: 1) Common origins on the continent of Africa; 2) Common history of exploitation as a homogeneous slave working class for more than 250 years; 3) Common exploitation as a more or less homogeneous class of landless peasants for approximately 100 years in the southern United States; 4) Common experience of exploitation as a homogenous wage laboring class since the last generation or so of their history; and 5) Conscious individual acceptance of being Black.

Perhaps, the most crucial aspect of Professor Hogan's abovementioned criteria is the "conscious individual acceptance of being Black." After all, regardless of one's historical experience, at least in the United States, the term "Black" is usually pretty specific. For example, if people are talking about either Rudy from Saint Croix or Ludwig from Antigua, they call him a Caribbean or West Indian. If they are talking about either Okey or Sahalu from Nigeria, they call him an African. However, if folks are talking about Paul from Boston or Barry from Amherst, then they say, "He's a Black man."

Note: This should be spelled with an upper case "B", even though the standard has been set by "white" newspaper editors and educators who, usually, spell it with a lower case one (b). As usual, others outside of our group are defining us by their own measure, as opposed to us doing it for ourselves. Nevertheless, when referring to African Americans, "Black" is a proper noun - not a common one, because it points to a specific group. On the other hand, the lower case "w" should be used for "white", since those who embrace or "cling to" that moniker do not represent a specific culture. Therefore, it is a common noun.

There are, of course, many women of European descent who have had, at least, one child by a man of African descent. Our future president is such a person. Moreover, it is usually necessary for these kids to identify themselves as "Black", for two reasons. They are: 1) Such offspring often have non-pale skin complexions and, as a result, are automatically considered "non-white" anyway - and treated as such. 2) Their mothers typically call themselves "white", thus confusing said youths' about their all-important identities. Moreover, it places children in the position of having to choose sides, as it were. Yet, at least to me, it seems that no one should ever ask a child to choose sides, when it comes to loving his or her parents. Instead, we should only encourage each child to LOVE his or her parent(s). Period.

So, obviously, African Americans are not a monolithic group per se, due to our varied familial backgrounds, income levels and social statuses (as folks like the wealthy entertainer Bill Cosby remind us, when he labels so many of us the "lower echelon"). Nevertheless, because we can be found in all areas of society (except for the ruling class), our ideas and aspirations are quite diverse.

Additionally, a number of us have physical characteristics that make us indistinguishable from many other cultural groups (for example, European American, EarlyAmerican Native, Asian American, Latino, and so forth.) As a result, unwittingly, many non-African American citizens currently associate with African American people who may not even identify themselves as such. On top of all that has been mentioned thus far, as well, the fact must be appreciated that African Americans are a people who grew out of the mixing of various groups of African peoples (that is, individuals who belonged to many cultural backgrounds). We were forced to unite because of Our shared oppression and exploitation.

Prior to the North American Civil War, African Americans tended to form coalitions with EarlyAmerican Natives and, at times, European Americans too (particularly, Irish Americans). Note: I use the term "EarlyAmerican Natives" (with neither a space nor a hyphen between Early and American), as opposed to "Native Americans", because I find the latter term divisive - and offensive to many. After all, most citizens of this country feel "native" to this land. Consequently, at least to me, the feeling of both separateness and aloneness that already lingers, quite naturally, in each individual, in any civilization or culture, worsens. Therefore, I feel that we do not need to "add insult to injury", as it were, by using words that may cause some of the resentment and hostility that can be engendered when people feel that they are being excluded. Hence, in order to distinguish that particular body of people from all other groups in our society, I use the aforementioned term Early American Natives.

At any rate, the identity that we now use, African American, represents the evolution of a people who have, through no choice of their own, struggled together for equality, dignity, and justice, for centuries. This, obviously, has been the same dilemma for all other groups who have come here, outside of the early ruling class. In fact, after the North American Civil War, African captive workers (so-called slaves), according to international law, should have been offered the opportunity to return to Africa. Instead, these now former captives were hoodwinked into accepting partial citizenship and thrown into the plantation economy of sharecropping. As a result, our forebears began identifying themselves according to descriptions that were made by those who did not even acknowledge, much less respect, our aforementioned forebears' ability to know what was best for themselves and those future generations of African Americans that would follow.

Today, we are an African people, and the largest group of those in this country who call themselves "Americans" who have been here since the 17th Century. Period. Moreover, for centuries, there were always folks coming/being brought here from Africa, both legally and illegally; they reminded our ancestors of their former homes - and cultural experiences. Therefore, our forebears never lost all of that which was African in them. Rather, they passed it on to future generations. Therefore, as far as contemporary African Americans go, we have learned to express what is left of our "Africanisms", as it were, within a different context.

Finally, three generations ago, the great Marcus Garvey pointed out: "This propaganda of dis-associating Western Negroes from Africa is not a new one. For many years white propagandists have been printing tons of literature to impress scattered Ethiopia, especially that portion within their civilization, with the idea that Africa is a despised place, inhabited by savages, and cannibals, where no civilized human being should go, especially black civilized human beings." - Marcus Garvey (Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey)

One Love,
G. Djata Bumpus
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