What in the world is going on in Nigeria? It’s been one terrible news after the other. First, I received this really, really gruesome pictures of the utmost display of human brutality. Armed bandits stopped a bus full of travelers on the Lagos- Benin expressway and asked them to give up their money. Those...
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Africa
Wetin dey Happen for Naija?
Another Intelligence Screw Up
“We will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am president, we will...
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Democracy in Africa: The Case of Angola
In a continent that has seen its fair share of international, regional, local and tribal wars, the news coming out of Angola is refreshing. That a country which, until recent times, was enmeshed in a long-running civil war could hold a peaceful election is astounding enough. But the greatest achievement in all this is...
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Growth, Stability and Democracy in Nigeria – Part 1
Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists…
——Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, January 1966 Coup Broadcast.
The African Leviathan
There is agreement across ideological divides that the state in Africa has done so much damage to the idea of nation building. In fact, the political landscape of Africa is littered with the unfortunate relics of broken dreams, broken promises, and betrayal of the popular will.
Contradictions and Crisis of Failed States
The International Relations community has focused its attention in recent times on the growing cost of food and its impact on developing nations and the devastating effect the rising cost of food will have on the world’s poor which is currently estimated to be over one billion people. On top of this, most poor countries are perpetually weak political entities and are often ravaged by internecine wars predicated on the struggle to control vital natural resources and land.
One Man’s Freedom Fighter……
Nelson Mandela was recently removed from the U.s. terrorism watch list. It would be recalled that South Africa’s apartheid government designated the Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) a terrorist organization during the group’s long struggle against the segregationist apartheid (whites-only) rule. Its members have been barred from receiving U.S. visas without special permission. The issue, once again is the definition of a terrorist or freedom fighter. That the United States supported an overtly brutal and segregationist regime in South Africa and had to create a special law that rendered Mandela and other ANC members who were fighting against the apartheid regime inadmissible to the U.S. due to “terrorist or criminal activities” is quite telling of the nature of U.S. foreign policy in those dark days.
AFRICOM Revisited: What is at stake?
A while back, the United States of America proposed the creation of an African Military Command to be known as AFRICOM, to enable the US Department of Defence (DOD) “better focus its resources to support and enhance existing U.S. initiatives that help African nations, the African Union and the regional economic communities succeed”.
VIP: Vagabonds In Power
It was the late Nigerian Musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti who used that term a long time ago. After almost sixty years of political “independence”, it is indeed a testament to his foresight that Africa, today, boasts a handsome resume of Vagabonds In Power – a plethora of idiots, fools, thieves and murderers – masquerading as leaders in various countries on the continent. Africa, today, it can be argued, remains the most oppressed, poverty-stricken, debt-ridden, exploited, unstable and denigrated continent in the world. The continent has more than half of the world’s refugees, and is the least industrialized of the regions of the developing world. Where developing countries of Asia and Latin America have taken great strides forward in recent decades, the African continent seems to be at war with itself to remain stagnant. Where other countries in the developing regions are touting their progress toward industrialization and embrace of the age of technology, Africa seems to be a showcase of “oppression, criminal human rights abuses, discrimination on the basis of ethnic, racial, regional and religious considerations, ruthless exploitation, wars, instability, corruption” (since 1960, around the time of independence, about 9 million black Africans have been slaughtered through genocide, and mass murder), and maniacal leadership.
Equatorial Guinea: Another African Disgrace
While the world is in a tizzy about Zimbabwe, another dictator is being feted by the U.S. government. The world is having its way at the moment at who can hurl the best insults at Robert Mugabe. Meanwhile, in Equatorial Guinea, another genocidal regime is quietly brutalizing its people, removed from the sensational journalism that the Western media has become. Since the discovery of crude oil in this country, American companies and investors have besieged it with a vengeance. The major oil corporations have invested over $10 billion in Equatorial Guinea. As a matter of fact, the U.S. state department describes the relations between the U.S. and Equatorial Guinea as”friendly”.