International Social Justice Activist

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Diaspora Voices and Our Perspectives

http://vimeo.com/66875436

Diaspora Voices and Our Perspectives

Public Policy and Social Justice Monthly Program- Diaspora Voices

Our public affairs programming would highlight the state of affairs within specific African and African Diaspora countries, regions, and communities. We are going to take a driver’s seat on the condition of economics, politics, and social justice within our motherland and elsewhere by bridging the gulfs between the African peoples through the required awakenings. For example, emphases would be placed on our perceived intractable problems and the program would include calls for accountability and problem solving within the African context and throughout the globe.

Panelist: Mariama Jalloh-Heyward of the Green White and Blue Commission

Yemi Falusi Esq. of the Occupy Nigeria Movement in Washington DC

Cultural Education and Entertainment Monthly Show- Our Perspectives

With the on-going evolution of the African renaissance there remains the need for Africans to take ownership and present our cultures in ways that illuminates the various positive attributes of the African people. We intend to be the responsible vessels to interpret and utilize our cultural norms, values, food, crafts, and fashion as the means of repairing most of the bias, prejudice, and discrimination of the African people that remains prevalent in the global community. The show portends to reduce our self-hate while advocating self-efficacy and pride. Ours should be the authentic lens for affecting and spreading the African culture and vitality.

Guest: Anna Mwalagho DMV based musician, poet, and social activist from Kenya
www.annamwalagho.com

Emmerson musician, social-economic, and political activist from Sierra Leone

Venue: Agama Kitchen and Restaurants
5640 Annapolis Road, Bladensburg MD 20710
www.agamakitchen.com

Date: Sunday May 26th, 2013
Time: 2pm-4pm

Producer: Omar Rafik of Life Depicted Productions
www.lifedepicted.com

Declaration of Emergency in Nigeria! Is it too little too late?

In December of 2011 after the Christmas Day bombing, President Goodluck Jonathan missed the opportunity to address the Boko Haram issue head-on. Instead of resolving the terrorist problem the administration decided to zero in on taxing average and/or regular Nigerians with the Fuel Subsidy scheme on January 1st, 2012. Shock and Awe policies were rolled out to conflate the oil barons and marketers with ordinary Nigerians and the Islamic fundamentalism with oil subsidies.

Those of us that stood up as Occupy Nigerian Movement protesters have been vindicated over and over again with the exposed corruption in the Petroleum sectors reaching up to the National Assembly membership and the explosion of terror in West Africa. Hopefully, with the eventual declaration of emergency against those that have perpetrated carnage on our homeland, other fights would emerge such as those again corruption, impunity, and unemployment. These scrutiny and measures of accountability should not be reversed for opponents of the regime.

Carnage in Northern Nigeria (article written in April 2011)

Amnesty International, one of the premier human rights organizations characterized the incidents in the northern areas of the United Nations of Nigeria as riots and demonstrations. Thus equating the carnage to the demonstrations in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria where people are currently using peaceful and civil means to petition their governments. This mischaracterization is appalling because what took place in northern Nigeria was hundreds of bloodbaths, lynching, burning of innocent human beings, arson, and gross destruction of properties by Dictator Muhammadu Buhari’s supporters. With nearly 250people dead and close to 50,000 fellow Nigerians displaced, give it up to the perpetrators of inhumanity to remain indifferent. They have mastered the skills of committing mass murders while simultaneously cloaking in victim hood. Similar butchery was the primary reasons behind the Nigerian and Biafran genocidal wars.

Contrary to revisionist historians after the 1966 coup, counter coup d'état, and extinction of some southeastern officers from the ranks of the Nigerian Army, our union was still standing. It was days of similar mass massacres like the world have just witnessed from April 17-18th 2011, that has continued sporadically from 1960’s until now, that forced the hands of the South-easterners to head back home to peace and safety. In the process they realized that their safety could not be protected in some parts of the Disunited Nations of Nigeria and were forced to declare independence in 1966. Unfortunately these shameless killings have continued unabated since then. The Nigerian and international press always report about these barbaric incidents as though they began after 1999 when the civilians took over from the military.

However, Enough is Enough! How can northerners continue to preach “One Nigeria” only when they are holding on to the presidency? The sad reality is that they have controlled and/or occupied the said position for about 40years within our so-called 50years independence. In their time as rulers, the Northern Military Industrial Complex (NMIC) alias Army Arrangement have legitimatized corruption and mismanaged our national resources. The northern elites have set the country backwards about twenty-five years if not more with their incessant coups and dictatorships. This retardation in developments has been felt in every nook and cranny of the United Nations of Nigeria. With the marginalization of the Niger Delta and the assassination of Dr. Ken Saro Wiwa the veils were finally lifted off the eyes of the South-south. The south west including Awoist (who would like to focus on the prediction of Chief Awolowo that a Niger Delta man would become president someday) are beginning to understand that while the Southeasterners might allegedly play you wayo, some northerners are very willing to exterminate their fellow Nigerians.

It is one thing to contest the votes/elections and the tabulations of the result but quite another to execute regional killing orgies. These ghastly acts were done to intimidate the masses who came out in droves to cast their votes all over the country. In the north, President Goodluck Jonathan got more than 25% (http://www.inecnigeria.org/results/states.php) of the votes in nearly a dozen states. So the vitriolic Congress for Progressive Change CPC) supported murdering quads wanted to silence the segment of the northern population that have realized that the Presidency is not the panacea to their problems. The CPC supporters wanted to terrorize the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) who conducted a commendable election. These killing thugs wanted to suppress the announcement of the election results. Why did CPC supporters not wait for the pronouncement of the outcome before going out to threaten and arrest our national security?

Where were these hooligans, their parents, and their sponsors when Dictator Sani Abacha took the whole nation hostage and ostracized Nigerians from the African and global communities of nations? We could not participate in the African Cup of Nations in South Africa and we were suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations not for resisting imperialism but due to authoritarianism. Where were these miscreants when Dictator Abdulsalami Abubakar handed the presidency to Dictator Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999? Why was there no protest when Mr. Obasanjo and his pal Professor Maurice Iwu gave the post to President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007? But they have the audacity to slaughter law abiding Nigerians. These nonsense needs to stop right now, we have to break the cycle of massacres, we cannot compensate our way out of these man made tragedies.

Notwithstanding the concerns of Amnesty International the Nigerian government has a responsibility to use adequate force to defend law abiding citizens. While the observance of peaceful protest should remain sacrosanct the carnage that we have just witnessed in Nigeria should be prevented and suppressed with commensurable force to safeguard the lives of innocent law abiding citizens. The union of the United Nations of Nigeria cannot remain sacrosanct for long when it is a death sentence in northern Nigeria to be suspected of southern ethnicities, an Ancestor worshipper, a Christian, and a Muslim who votes for a Christian. My own sister (a Christian, an Igbo and Ijaw) supported and campaigned for Dictator Muhammadu Buhari, so what would the murderers do in her case?

Moreover the fact is that people like Mr. Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar had sown the seeds of violence before the elections. They purposely used languages like “lynching” and the “inevitability of violence” to ginger up their supporters in preparation of the Saturday April 16, 2011 elections. Hence, Buhari did not see the need to call off his supporters from the streets while the killings went on for more than twenty four hours. Alhaji Abubakar wants to pay lip service to the so-called revered indivisibility of our nation when the lives and property of southerners and fellow northerners who voted their conscience is not guaranteed in the United Nations of Nigeria. Our people are nonchalantly orphaned, our parents are rendered childless through brutality, and others are maimed. The sanctity, safety, and respect of lives should be our primary sacrosanct obligation and not nationhood/religion.

Moreover, the Nigerian federal and northern state governments need to bow their heads in shame because of their negligence. They knew that some in northern Nigeria would turn to their tried and true part time of using tyrannical savagery. The stakeholders should have prepared for the worst while hoping for the best which many of us knew was not likely given the antecedents of some northerners. Heads of the Nigerian security apparatus need to immediately tender their resignations. Hopefully, contrary to press reports, Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho the Minister of Interior was relieved of his position for the ineptitude in providing security for our young national service coopers and the general public in the north. The expectation is that he was not suspended due to internal political considerations from Imo State. It would be a betrayal of the highest order to the victims if no one takes accountability for this perennial mayhem.

Never Again should people be victimized in such callous ways with impunity. President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and the authorities need to establish the Emergency Response Tactical Teams (ERT) in all northern states that have a past history of perpetrating this carnage. The ERTs should train and practice the needed skills to protect the general public and should never be deployed to disrupt non-violent protest. These teams should be able to be organized within 15minutes of any disturbances when the lives and properties of individuals from the United Nations of Nigeria are under attack. Our governments should mandate the ERT to protect our visitors too. We must protect the sanctity of the African lives.

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist

Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Race to the Bottom and the Global Economic Abracadabra

While listening to the radio some days ago in the Washington DC metro area, there was an interview of an air traffic controller in the Frederick county area. The subject was so upset that as part of the United States federal government austerity or sequestration magic, his job would be vamoosed from federal funding. The shocked controller went on to indicate his right wing leaning support for cuts within the government but wondered aloud why his job should be on the cutting block. This is not unique as corporations and individual members of the elite 1% club have used their stooges such as the main street pan-international media to wage regimes of miseducation against public sector workers around the globe.

So from Cyprus to London England, from Greece to Wall Street America, and from Wisconsin to Ohio there is the renewed mantra to blame the victims of corporate malfeasance and victimize the fatalities of individual greed instead of the so-called makers. When middle income folks within the private sectors lose their jobs and are unable to secure and provide for their families they are quick to point fingers at government workers instead of taking an objective look at the global corporate gluttony. They become impotent to challenge the transfer of jobs abroad and the automation of businesses to render people obsolete in various employment arenas.

These economic casualties which are perceived as mere collateral damages but are actual systematic offspring of our global economic systems are depressed, demoralized, and dejected and become unable to connect the dots between the disparities in income within their former organizations and their present conditions. There is a failure to link the corporate jets and CEO bonus to the devastation permitted on the common folks. Ours is a race for the crumbs that seeks to scavenge and be content for what miserly benefits that greedy elites deem necessary for us to survive on. We are swift in condemning homeowners that lost their homes in loan mortgage crises without realizing that they were ponds of the banking cartels and/or turning a blind eye to the same scams which the bankers have used from Spain to west coast states in America such as Nevada and California.

Consequently, we are presented with a Europe of unimaginable dichotomy like in the bible (religion) for butter (resources) days. At the same time we have more Portuguese and Spaniards heading to Angola than at any time since the global slave trade economy. We now have Europeans openly embracing fascism politics and cultural xenophobia. Amidst the petroleum wealth and boom in Luanda no one questions the Europeans for their workers permits. But in Europe and America it is easier to pick on the foreigners instead of organizing against those from within that specialize in setting up tax havens, shipping jobs around the globe to pay the lowest cost, and reaping astronomical profits. On US television there is an open call to move monies and investments to Ireland whereas urban and rural unemployment remains off the chain with the ensuing societal cost.

Paradoxically, the race to the bottom is sanctioned by politicians and the corporate media types who are beholden to the corporate status quo. As such they have the masses divided and fighting themselves, for example poor Europeans in America against African Americans and Latinos and African Americans against immigrants. Whilst they keep us bickering and competing for the lowest common denominators, the Dow Jones and other leading financial markets are creating no jobs, depressing wages, gambling with the savings of folks, forcing municipalities into bankruptcies, but making record earnings for the economic/financial gurus and members of the exclusive 1% club. These entitled classes would rather hoard monies and properties to service 3-5centuries of their descendants, whence people are poor, homeless, and dying today.

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist

Friday, March 29, 2013

Emmerson ft Timaya This Na Mi Yone...2012

1st Music of the Week
www.usafricanculturalfestival.com

LES PATRONS feat J.MARTINS OFFICIEL HD "Près du Coeur"

2nd Video of the Week
www.usafricanculturalfestival.com

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Viva La Comandante Chavez

Hugo Chavez just died few hours ago and yet he has been assaulted by the revisionist histories of western media propagandizing that some around the globe are falling prey to. I am going to analyze Chavezismo based on the contexts of my two homes. The same main street media in the United States that collaborated with Bush and Cheney to deceive us into an unjust war in Iraq and who want President Obama to invade Iran has embarked on the smear campaign against Chavezism, since President Chavez kicked out the oil company cabals, speculators, and monopolies . While Chavez was increasing participatory democracy in Venezuela, setting up business cooperatives, and eradicating poverty, so called democracy agents in the states were busy reducing access to the polling places such as restricting voting centers, limiting days for voting, disenfranchising college students and the elderly in the guise of voter IDs, and requiring voters to wait for 8-9hours before they could cast their votes in 2012.

The sins of Chavez include fighting for the self determination of Latinos, Africans, and other people of the world who desire the pursuit of happiness, liberty, equality, and communal actualization. The media portrays him as buffoonish for speaking truth to power and accuses him of wrecking his nation’s economy; these same journalists that are still embedded in the lies that have sustained the invasion, occupation, reconstruction, and fleecing of Iraq. And then and now they seem not to be interested in truth telling about some of the reasons behind our prolonged economic crisis in the United States and the push for austerity when the 1% are still making out like bandits as exemplified by the Miracles on Wall Street.

One of the most hated truths that Comandante Hugo spoke was when he called Bush a devil at the United Nations in New York. What else could he have called a liar that sent young American soldiers to untimely deaths because Saddam tried to kill his papa or Iraq had nuclear weapons, or he wanted to install democracy or the Texas oil barons wanted control over Mesopotamian oil fields. How many Iraqis have since died because of the actions of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz? Why are they not facing crimes against humanity trials in the United States or at The Hague? But for the so-called American exceptionalism and racism we remain unaccountable to our own citizens and the other inhabitants of the world, hence the escalation to unending global drone strikes and warfare.

In Africa, one wishes that we had just one leader in this generation who would not be preoccupied with their systematic theft of resources and self-aggrandizement but with improving the conditions of the people. A leader or two who would not just allow multinational companies to plunder their nations while accepting crumbs in return like in the days of human slavery and contemporary economic globalization slavery. Chavez was not perfect and should have left the Venezuelan constitution without tamper while training the new crop of leaders, assuming the role of elder statesperson, and taking care of his health. He should have increased community policing in line with the community cooperatives nonetheless if any of our current African rulers can achieve one-tenth of what Hugo Chavez has done, ours would be multiple havens of some sort on the mother continent.

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist

Monday, February 11, 2013

President Jonathan and Co! How do you guys sleep at night amidst the Crumbling infrastructures?

Africans overseas normally get irate when images of poverty stricken rural areas, animals, and woods (aka jungles) are used to portray all of Africa. These are standard images in the western media with the classic been the pictures of poor starving African children with flies on their faces and white “saviors” asking for a dime per day to feed them. In the middle of our indignations we wonder why these so-called saviors do not show either the vicinities of the airports they landed at and/or the luxury resorts they stay in in-between TV shoots. But our desires to have Africa put its best foot out, belies the reality that we have a bunch of impotent, uncaring, and greedy rulers at the helms of governments throughout Africa, who are content to do little for the privileged few while the masses wither away.

Our grievances are misplaced and ignorance becomes bliss whereas we long for a day or setting to show the world the same playgrounds of the wealthy and scant middle income folks on the African continent. We ignore the life line of our countries such as our dilapidated basic amenities and infrastructures. For example, visitors to the local wing of the Murtala Mohamed Lagos Airport would be highly impressed with the edifice and international standards within, when the Port-Harcourt-Aba federal government express road remains a deathtrap of human making and/or neglect. Some get excited about the state of aviation that is used by less than 10% of Nigerians and Africans while our highways and railways the key to affordable transportation for 95% of individuals, businesses, and goods are eyesores.

President Jonathan of Nigeria and his band of yes-men have no qualms in seeking second terms and hedging their power when all the matrix indicate that poverty is on the rise and the benefits of economic growth is centered on the select few in our upper classes. Current Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe is in the middle of a heated argument with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State about performance with government allocations. It should be noted that wiser men have built interstates, railroads, and engineered decades of economic development with lesser monies than Mr. Orubebe and Amaechi have in our public but unaccountable coffers. As they quibble we have young people who have graduated from universities and polytechnics with specialized degrees but are not employed because they lack 3-5years of working experiences and are part of the African underclass.

At least the governor and minister are challenging each other to stop the siphoning and theft of petroleum generated public revenues which are handed to them with insufficient oversights. In Abia State the people are forced to exist in what could best be described as series of manmade disasters. The Abia people have been subjected to inept leadership for close to a decade courtesy of Mr. T. A. Orji and Mr. Orji Kalu. In Port-Harcourt the problem is congestion and pollution but in Aba (Enyimba land) we are presented with a dump for a city. Refuse adorns the Abia axis of the Aba Port-Harcourt express road. In fact motorists have to switch to the opposite sides of the road with oncoming traffic, a situation that compounds those deathtraps that we call roads. This is done numerous times to seek a modicum of drivable freeways.

Irrespective of how our rulers are able to sleep through these glaring problems whether of their free will or through chemical dependency substances, we the people need to brainstorm and implement concrete solutions instead of getting distracted, bamboozled, and mislead by staged optics. Diaspora progressives like this writer take issue with the messages behind aid to Africa such as the Lawrence O’Donnell’s and UNICEF’s K.I.N.D. program in Malawi and other NGO paradigms which reinforces the African dependency narratives, when we have the richest continent that attracts home based and outside exploiters. We would like for shows like MSNBC’s The Last Word, to investigate and find out why the Malawian President Joyce Banda and her cohorts who are multi-millionaires by all standards, cannot provide basic necessities like classroom chairs and desks for African children.

But the reality is that western media establishments do not owe us any favors. We have to be the ones responsible for demanding the changes that have eluded us since the days of our independence. As Diasporan Africans we have to ask the critical questions about rulers like President Jonathan that have become dismal failures and his stooges such as Governor Amaechi and Minister Orubebe whose budgets are more than those of many African countries? We need to realize that our organizing and support of the Occupy Movements from abroad can only go so far. Changes can only come about in Africa when we are ready to move back and put our lives on the line. Alternatively, collective economic developmental changes would come about when our sisters and brothers in the continent actually get sick and tired of the status quo to the point of standing up for the fixing.

References and Related Articles on Infrastructures

http://www.zimbio.com/Nigeria/articles/g0vyMBtph-A/2015+Fight+Between+Minister+Niger+Delta+Governor
http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/nvnews/90993/1/southern-nigerian-guidelines-sng.html
http://www.pointblanknews.com/Articles/artopn3657.html


Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist