STAR ESSAY: Obi - Trump of Africa by Niyi Akinnaso
Mobolaji Aluko
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Obi's supporters are pan-ethnic even though containing a good no of Igbos.
Could Igbos alone have given Labour the Presidential elections in the APC stronghold of Lagos?
APC and PDP are parties many people are tired of. They want something different and Obi and Labour gave it to them.
If any party is rabidly ethnocentric, its is Lagos APC, which used deadly ethnocentrism as its main tool of fighting back after losing that election, a strategy spearheaded by the vile anti-Igbo utterances of their spokesmen Bayo Ononuga and FFK, which latter I have compiled and sent to this group in response to a challenge from another forumite but which the moderator has refused to post because it foregrounds ethnocentrism without preferring solutions, he claims.
How will dangerous ethnocentrism be combated if evidence of it is not presented as some pretend it was not a central factor of APC in the Lagos guber, and has been in recurrent elections, with even the Oba of Lagos in a previous election threatening to drown Igbos in the lagoon if they did not vote for APC's Ambode?
Make we hear word, as its said in pidgin.
thanks
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Michael Afolayan
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2023 7:38 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR ESSAY: Obi - Trump of Africa by Niyi Akinnaso
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
please forgive my doubting this-
Why do I doubt it?
It could be true that a good no of LP supporters are Igbo, going by my experience on Facebook.
It seems also true that a good no of Yoruba people did not vote APC at the Presidential election.
The open critiques of BAT I witnessed from Yoruba people at the highly Yorubanized OAU campus late last year continues to shock me.
Its most unlikely that Igbo votes alone defeated APC in the Lagos Presidential or provided the majority of votes that did so.
The reasons why APC lost that election might not be hard to see, given the high youth demographic of Nigeria, the cosmopolitan nature of Lagos, the EndSars fallout and the disasters of the APC govt.
Most people I spoke to at random in Lagos were not APC. Atiku seems to have been ruled out for them. Imagine APC losing even Bourdillon, where Tinubu lives.
Its also true that anti-Igbo demonization is not new to APC politics, as in the Oba of Lagos threatening to drown Igbos in the lagoon if they did not vote for APC guber candidate Ambode in a previous election in which all parties necessarily fielded only Yoruba indigenes.
I am not aware that the Oba ever apologised nor was called to order by APC.
Apart from that incident, which I followed, it is also claimed that anti-Igbo demonizations are invoked at every election cycle. APC thugs disrupting voting in Igbo dominated areas was reported through video evidence I saw in 2019.
I am opposed to APC and PDP. I see Obi as a political opportunist like most of the others. The controversially named Obidient movement, however, is a movement coalescing around the idea of an alternative to the old boy politics of APC and PDP, with Obi, ironically a man in his early 60s, and a defector from PDP, as its centre.
I hope they can regroup, using another name, genuinely youthful political contenders, eliminate dogmatism and close mindedness to alternative views, and continue the long struggle to change Nigeria's political and economic eco-system.
The visionary, welfarist and techno-savvy culture that defined the Lekki toll gate arm of the EndSars movement convinced me that those are the kinds of people to be running Nigeria, not the Tinubus, the Buharis, the Atikus or even the Obis.
We need a new generation of politicians.
Watching the stepping down of most APC contenders for Tinubu at the APC primaries was a sad experience for me, encapsulated by former lawmaker Dimeji Bankole giving as his reason for stepping down ''emi no fe dagba'', ''i too want to grow into being an elder,'' complemented by Ekiti state governor Fayemi giving as his own reason that he ''still has much time ahead of him'', all invocations of age and time by vigorous men in their 30--50s referencing Tinubu, an old man of troubled health who has already made a powerful name through a decades long chequered career in politics, these much younger but mature men in their prime giving way to such an elderly man who refuses to give way for his political children who are fitter than him but insists he must be king as well as king maker, while other countries reinvent or revivify themselves by changing their leadership demographics in favour of people who grew up in the relative present rather than in the past.
So, will Fayemi and Bankole expect younger people to step down for them tomorrow?
One argument is that backwardness demonstrated by classical African cultures was due significantly through an excessive focus on tradition and gerontocracy.
thanks
thanks
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Victor Okafor
Niyi Akinnaso's Unfortunate Caricature of Peter Obi
Hello Friends:
It is self-evident that Niyi Akinnaso's "Obi - Trump of Africa" constitutes a misleading commentary. And I am both surprised and disappointed that Professor Bolaji Aluko accorded respectability that the write-up does not deserve by characterizing it as a "Star Essay." Akinnaso's commentary was unmistakably a piece of propaganda, a caricature of Peter Obi, aimed at deceiving the US population—designed to mis-inform the politically conscious public of the United States of America. It is a factually challenged essay meant to incite the Democrat-led US government against presidential candidate Peter Obi, given the apparent bad blood between Donald Trump and the incumbent Democrat-led presidency of the United States. But being a well-organized bureaucratic entity, the US government has established channels by which it obtains and verifies information about key political actors and the politics of countries of interest to the United States. I doubt that this factually challenged commentary from Niyi Akinnaso would supplant facts and information already available to the US government and its related agencies about the shameful elections that Nigeria conducted both on February 25, 2023, and March 18, 2023. What a mockery of democracy that we saw unfold on those two days of infamy in the political history of Nigeria!
That said, my take on Akinnaso's piece comes from the standpoint of a keen observer and student of Nigeria's political matters. I am not a card-carrying member of any of Nigeria's political parties though I must state clearly that Peter Obi's presidential campaign did win my affectionate attention, for the following reasons: (1) his persona as an experienced and incorruptible public official with a proven record of frugal management of public finances against the backdrop of a Nigerian public space that is undermined by rampant public corruption, (2) his persona as a man who organically and psychologically connected with and inspired hope in a mass of unemployed, under-employed and frustrated Nigerian youth, (3) his persona as a man of worldly understanding, (4) his demonstrated understanding of the root causes of the socioeconomic and political challenges faced by contemporary Nigeria as whole, (5) the force of the pragmatic solutions that he advocated for those challenges, (6) his persona as a person who understands the intricacies of the place of Nigeria within today’s intricate and globalization-oriented international political economy, and (7) his Pan-Nigerian presidential rhetorical strategies. We are tired (are we not?) of tribalism, tribal divisions, and religious politics, all of which have not served a centripetal cause of building a federation from a conglomeration of ethnic groups, as well as various religious communities, which makes up Nigeria's geopolitical territory. Given the level of advanced educational acquisitions and distinctive worldly exposures of most of the subscribers to this Toyin Falola "USA Africa Dialogue Series," it has been my hope and expectation that forum members would generally strive to lead the way, would serve as vanguards, in our generational task to help nudge Nigeria towards what in America, we call "a more perfect union."
Nigeria’s More Perfect Union
Nigeria's more perfect union would be a polity where it would be a norm for ethnicity not to constitute a disability in the public life of a Nigerian, a Nigeria where a Nigerian would not be denied access to equal opportunity to compete in the socioeconomic and political squares within a shared federal space due to his/her ethnic orientation or religious beliefs, a Nigeria where one's state of origin would not be a key determinant of one's life chances, a Nigeria where a person's religious beliefs (including African traditional religious beliefs) would reside in and be confined to the private sphere of life and would not be part of how that person's suitability for public service or private service is determined although understandably the peculiarities and essentialities of purely traditional cultural affairs must be respected across the four corners of the federation. And Nigeria’s more perfect union would be a land where a person’s gender would not constitute a barrier to equal opportunity to compete for life’s chances.
Dependable purveyors and evaluators
If we all see ourselves as academically dependable purveyors and evaluators of ascertainable facts of life, and if we count ourselves among those who, by training, education and life experience, have been imbued with knowledge and skills for deciphering facts from fiction (to the extent humanly possible, given our human frailties, and given the fact that the human mind is not perfect anywhere), it should not be difficult for us to acknowledge that the only key factor that Nigeria's Peter Obi shares in common with America's Donald Trump is that both of both have a wealthy private sector background. Furthermore, both are of the male gender. Other than those two factors, they are as opposites as night and day. All the other variables that Niyi Akinnaso’s essay deployed to create a false comparison between two clearly political, ideological, and human personality opposites are dubious.
Illustratively, in terms of their sociopolitical public policy preferences, while Peter Obi demonstrably espouses an egalitarian package designed to uplift the welfare of the proverbial common man/woman, Donald Trump arguably is center-right in his own socio political public policy preferences, which, overall, tends to be tilted towards the middle class and the well-to-do of society. While Peter Obi is known for his careful choice of words in his public utterances, Donald Trump has demonstrated a penchant for a no-holds barred public rhetoric.
Second, in terms of the outcomes of the elections that both political figures disputed or continue to dispute, a fundamental difference that some of our forum commentators, as well as Akinnaso, have seemed to ignore is that the two elections that were conducted recently in Nigeria, namely the presidential election of February 25, 2023 and the governorship & state assembly election of March 18, were visibly compromised (perhaps with a few exceptions) and, therefore, lacking in credibility. Nothing of the sort applied to the US presidential election of 2020. We know (don’t we?) that if any of the types of barefaced thuggery, barefaced ballot-box snatching, barefaced data falsification, barefaced vote-buying, barefaced voting intimidation and barefaced voter suppression that generally characterized Nigeria’s elections of February 25 and March 18 had surfaced, anywhere, anytime, during the US presidential election of 2020, the culprits would have been languishing in prison as we speak.
INEC’s Broken Promise
I take it as a given that members of this respected forum do not need a lecture on the ingredients of a credible election. Thus, I would like to believe that you would readily understand that the chief source of the general distrust of the results of the two Nigerian elections of February 25 and March 18 was that INEC reneged on its repeated, law-based promise that election results would be electronically transmitted in real time from polling stations. As you may recall, while speaking in public on October 19, 2022, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu said as follows: "Most Nigerians are more familiar with the bimodal voter accreditation system (the BIVAS), which doubles as accreditation device as well as the upload of polling unit-level result sheets on election day onto the IREV in real time. This innovation has increased transparency and public confidence in the electoral process. They are also part of the legal requirements for conducting elections in Nigeria." For the remainder and an analysis of that critical but failed INEC promise to Nigerian voters, go to: INEC Insists on Use of BVAS, Electronic Transmission of 2023 Election Results.
Had INEC Kept Its Promise
If, in conducting the elections of February 25, 2023 and March 18, 2023, INEC had kept fidelity with that law-based aforementioned promise to have election results electronically transmitted in real time with all of us watching, trust me, I would have been among the first group of persons to leap for joy, clap for Nigeria and extend a warm hand of congratulations to the winners, irrespective of whatever corner of Nigeria they came from! Had that critical promise been kept, and election results transmitted in real time with all of us watching, the politics of Nigeria would have been elevated to an all-time high. Had that critical promise been kept, today, Nigeria would have been added to the club of credible democracies of our modern world. Had that critical promise been kept, I believe that we would not be where we are today whereby a cross section of the Nigerian public, including Nigerians in the Diaspora and non-Nigerian observers alike, does not have faith in the results of those elections. In fact, disbelief, rather than belief, is the dominant tendency. I bet that even the latter-day propagandists, in their heart of hearts, do not believe and cannot believe their own concoctions meant to deceive the gullible members of their international audience! Had that critical promise been kept, a crisis legitimacy, a stigma of illegitimacy, would not be hanging over all the individuals who were pronounced as elected through a process that was visibly and demonstrably tainted. Had that promise been kept, Chimamanda Adichie would not have written an open letter to President Joseph Biden of the United States about the open irregularities that marred Nigeria's place on the map of global political histories of February 25, 2023, and March 18, 2023. Had that promise been kept, I am persuaded to believe that there would have been no need for Niyi Akinnaso to seek to distort the image of Peter Obi through his noncollegiate commentary entitled, entitled "Obi - Trump of Africa," which our otherwise highly respected Bolaji Aluko endorsed as a star essay.
A flawed process cannot engender a respectable outcome
Friends, there is no way that a flawed process can produce a credible and respectable electoral outcome. Respect is earned, not forced. To repeat, respect is earned, not forced! Propaganda cannot sanitize an electoral outcome that was brought about by a globally witnessed electoral malpractice. A house built on a sandy foundation cannot stand! Think of the analogy of a soccer game that is supposed to be played according to mutually-agreed upon rules, specifically that a player can use any part of his/her body, except his/her hands or arms, to score a goal, but on the day of the match, a referee effectively changes this mutually-agreed upon code of conduct by accepting and announcing goals scored by hand. Would either the players (that is, the competitors) or the spectators view or be made to view the outcome as credible, as respectable by a post-match propaganda blitz? This is the sad fate that befell Nigeria's fraud-married elections of February 25 and March 18, 2023, with some probable exceptions. Admittedly, this national failure occurred despite a fact that Nigeria has the potential and tools to conduct credible national, state, and local elections. Plus, all along, the generality of Nigerian voters was inspired to expect credible elections in 2023. Their hopes were cruelly dashed by the handiwork of the same forces that have also kept Nigeria from rising to its potentials since achieving political independence from British colonialism. Yet, a crop of individuals has had the effrontery to deploy an international propaganda blitz that makes me wonder if, in their heart of hearts, they think of the rest of us as a manipulatable flock of sheep.
You see, once you have breached public trust in a process, as INEC massively did during the recent Nigerian elections and as I have demonstrated above, the public (perhaps with the exception of politicians who directly benefited from the corrupted process and their die-hard partisans, including partisan scholars who tend to be quick to scream and condemn racism in the Diaspora but tacitly and unashamedly condone ethnic profiling in Nigeria) is bound to view the outcome with understandable distrust and contempt. Through live and streaming social media videos, did we not see scenes of data falsification at collations centers, did we not see scenes of massive voter suppressions, such as scenes in places like Lagos where thugs, armed with matches and other weapons, were openly chasing voters away, openly snatching and taking away ballot boxes, openly taking over polling stations (even in the presence of law-enforcement) and openly telling arriving voters that they would not be allowed to cast their ballots unless they pledged to vote for only a particular political party during a multiparty election? It strikes as particularly worrisome that anyone on this forum would witness all of these and other video-captured irregularities that severely tainted Nigeria's elections of February 25 and March 18, and yet proceed to act as if none of it happened. Are we being true to ourselves as scholars? What kind of scholars do we project ourselves to be when and if we ignore massive factual shortcomings of a paper and we proceed to accord it a passing grade?
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
I would like to see evidence of this even though I have read it reported by two other people.
thanks
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
''Through live and streaming social media videos, did we not see scenes of data falsification at collations centers, did we not see scenes of massive voter suppressions, such as scenes in places like Lagos where thugs, armed with matches and other weapons, were openly chasing voters away, openly snatching and taking away ballot boxes, openly taking over polling stations (even in the presence of law-enforcement) and openly telling arriving voters that they would not be allowed to cast their ballots unless they pledged to vote for only a particular political party during a multiparty election?''
I take it as a given that members of this respected forum do not need a lecture on the ingredients of a credible election. Thus, I would like to believe that you would readily understand that the chief source of the general distrust of the results of the two Nigerian elections of February 25 and March 18 was that INEC reneged on its repeated, law-based promise that election results would be electronically transmitted in real time from polling stations''
thanks
toyin
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Fela: Beasts of no Nation
I applied some breaks to my head when I saw that the next post was from one Kenneth Harrow because Harrow and Trump are names that don’t rhyme - and I decided that I just don't want to hear any more whining about our dear Trump. All things being equal they’ll soon throw out both Brag and the 34 charges against Trump. Hopefully, Peter Obi will not do anything as foolhardy as inspiring the Obidients to storm The National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for any purpose whatsoever.
I’m responding to this, having read no further than Michael Afolayan's comment, that comparing Mister Obi and Mister Trump is akin to comparing “apples and oranges ". In which case Trump is obviously the apple - at least I associate Trump with Trump Towers which is situated slap bang in Manhattan , New York City, otherwise known as “The Big Apple” - relatively speaking Obi on the other hand more of a small town man - not even from Lagos - Nigeria’s bif apple and therefore, relatively speaking, more parochial in his world view and less cosmopolitan in his orientation, final judgments arrived at by zapping through the pre and post-election newspaper hype about him beginning with Kperogi’s original praise-singing and glorification of Obi which at the time I thought was natural, Kperogi being married to an Igbo woman and most probably happy to be enjoying life under her petticoat management / government - in Sierra Leone pidgin/ broken, the popular phrase is “ woman lappa “ - and in Kperogi’s case the transition from hallelujah to crucify him ( Obi / St. Peter crucified upside down in Rome) is also understandable following the trajectory of Obi’s falling star - as the star’s chances diminished, gradually lost its lustre, got dimmer and now on the precipice of fading away into oblivion completely what else to expect but that Dr. Kperogi MD ( Psychiatry) would descend into berating the wannabe and diagnosing him as shuffering from the following malady : “ Peter Obi is suffering from delusional disorder !”
O how have the mighty fallen!
Now, nobody has diagnosed Trump as being delusional
If from the very beginning Obi had something to show, like this young Ugandan billionaire then it could have made a difference, although billionaires are usually not the kinds of people who become leaders of e.g. the Labour Party ( UK)
I’m convinced that the day will come when the name PPP ( Poor People's Party of Nigeria) will gain traction…
Shortly, comparing Obí with Trump should normally be as difficult as comparing Awka with New York City, or comparing Nigeria with the United States of America.
However, we can safely say that Trump on the campaign trail in Nigeria to become the first democratically elected Oyibo President of that country, thundering his message from Sokoto to Port Harcourt that he’s running because he wants to “ Make Nigeria Great Again” - that Trump would be a fish out of water - just as the new-fangled “Labour Party” flag bearer Obi - no charismatic Obama is he - would be like a fish out of water hoping to become the next Black President of the United States riding on the wave “ I’m running to make America Great Again
Toyin Falola
Great Victor:
For my education:
why do you think that the US cares about who wins or loses an election in any African country?
And two, why do African scholars opposed to imperialism and Western domination appeal to this very same West to seek support when aggrieved? Can goats take the problems to the court of lions?
I always ask questions to improve my knowledge.
Socrates argued for the necessity of probing individual knowledge, and acknowledging what one may not know or understand.
From: 'Victor Okafor' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, April 10, 2023 at 12:57 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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Moses Ebe Ochonu
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Michael Afolayan
Toyin Falola
Moses:
Two small questions:
- Does the Nigerian political system prevent crooks from aspiring to power?
- And is he not the president of millions of people who aspire to be like him?
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Victor Okafor
Hi TF, there are times in life when individuals, groups or nations seek external help when there is a sense that internal options have been exhausted or are no longer viable. For instance, do nations not usually seek material assistance from other nations or multi-national institutions when they find themselves in economic strangleholds? Do nations not borrow military hardware, technological knowhow, human resource, humanitarian relief, etc. from fellow nations when and where a need arises?
Yes, we are aware of the historically complex, asymmetrical, and even economically exploitative relations between the global north and the global south, but nations from either geopolitical side of the globe still maneuver their ways through that labyrinth for one type of economic, scientific or technological bailout or the other at given moments in their national journeys or national development strides. For instance, at the United Nations, nations also engage in and do work out coalitions and alliances in pursuit of objectives that are of direct and indirect mutual benefits to them. As you know, during the 2nd World War, the Allied Nations found it necessary to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union in order to checkmate and defeat Hitler’s ravaging Germany. But soon after that War, that alliance of military convenience soon got replaced by a nuclear arms race and a resulting Cold War that only ended in the late 1980s with the fall of the Berlin War in 1989 and the eventual disintegration of what used to be known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) by December, 1991.
In geopolitics, even in interpersonal or group relations, there are no permanent friends or permanent foes; only personal, group or national interests tend to remain permanent.
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Toyin Falola
Great Victor
I love your answer, but democracy is peripheral to the interest of the US. It is more of propaganda to advance the agenda of the market (translation: exploitation).
Internal contradictions, rebellions, street fights, and youth insurgency are where the energy for transformation should focus.
Nations worry about their core interests, defined by those matters that they will use their military forces and destructive capacities. The US will not move its army an inch because of democracy in Nigeria.
Trump, rather Mr. Trump, apologies; President Trump described you and your people as living in a shithole.
TF
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Victor Okafor
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
ive been seeking evidence of igbo complicity in the lagos is no mans land rhetoric and am yet to find it. as to igbo gloating over the lagos victory i shall look out for the evidence.
keeping in mind my observation of anti-igbo demonization as a recurrent APC strategy, i hope the pan-ethnic movement that coalesced around Obi, a movement reflecting unfinished business from endsars, the latter being another movement APC and its sympathisers are struggling to discredit, will take stock and move forward.
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Moses Ochonu
Moses Ochonu
Toyin Falola
Moses:
I debate only with a few people, as in Nigerian circles, after three minutes, they take to insults and yelling, which I don’t appreciate. Debates are not strictly about being wrong or right but knowledge sharing. And I don’t engage with “tribalists”, as they can come out with their cutlasses at short notice.
I don’t vote, as I reject the assumption that it is anti-democracy not to vote. I have to anticipate the possible outcomes before I make my choice. Of the three candidates, I cannot vote for any unless you tie a rock to my neck and the threat to throw me into the ocean is real. My neighbours in Lagos are all anti-Tinubu for some of the reasons you mentioned.
But I disagree that a “best” candidate exists in a political competition. It is a strange concept in a plural society like Nigeria, delineated by identities. Dual societies like Rwanda cannot have the best candidate, and plural societies cannot come up with the best candidate, except accidentally. The best candidate in racist America, except for the singular exception of Obama, is always white, but what do we tell black people?
There was no one I did not tell before the election that Obi had a zero chance. A minimum of 12 states in federal Nigeria will not vote for him. Indeed, I gave him a total of 19 states where he could come up with 25 %.
I introduced many people to the concept of “wishful thinking,” a theory which applies to many in Nigeria. Rebecca Neumann, Anna Rafferty and Tom Griffiths have elaborated on this theory. It is one of the theories that explain why people become angry when they see outcomes. To summarize this theory, from what I lifted:
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.
Let me provoke the Obedients: the future chances of Obi are gone. The South East has to rethink its politics since it has been demonstrated that you don’t need its states to emerge as the country’s president. Maybe Soludo will give it a shot. An Igbo will emerge as a President—no process can stop that. But the person has to be the consensus of politicians at the very center of state capture. The logic that guides the Nigerian state is clear.
Good morning to you all.
TF
From:
usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 7:25 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR ESSAY: Obi - Trump of Africa by Niyi Akinnaso
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Moses Ebe Ochonu
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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 6:35 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - STAR ESSAY: Obi - Trump of Africa by Niyi Akinnaso
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Mr. E. B. Jaiyeoba
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Toyin Falola
Sir:
What will be the remedy if Moses is sued?
Take over his books and his aged computer?
TF
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Moses Ebe Ochonu
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
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Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
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Food for Thought:
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vok...@emich.edu
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Chidi, why not simply speak for yourself rather than for others whose track record of civic engagement you might not be adequately informed about?toyin
On Wed, 12 Apr 2023 at 11:01, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
What if Tinubu turns around the fortunes of this country, which is what is needed now?America and Europe are known to have in the recent past and now installed and backed known terror and drug lords as heads of government in Latin America, Africa and in other places, yet we are comfortable with taking all kinds of grants from them grants and from foundations they sponsor.By the way, is hiding wealth in a tax heaven and by so doing denying your country of the much needed fund from tax to provide for example, adequate primary health care in a country where people die in thousands from malaria and typhoid a lesser crime than illicit drug peddling and certificate forgery? Why are we not pontificating on that also?One often gets sick and tired of these rehashed pontifications.Thank you all for your time.
--CAO.
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Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vok...@emich.edu
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
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