OPERATION-PROTECT-YOUR-EKITI-VOTE #32: Those Other Guber Re-Run Elections - And Why Ekiti is Different!
Mobolaji ALUKO
PAST (2008/2009) GUBER-RERUNS IN NIGERIA – AND WHY EKITI IS DIFFERENT
S/N STATE INCUMBENT GOVERNOR AS ON MAY 29, 2007 DATE(S) ELECTION ANNULLED DATE(S) OF RE-RUN INEC RESULTS OF RE-RUN COMMENT 1 Kogi Ibrahim Idris (PDP) October 10, 2007 (State Tribunal Nullifies Election) February 6, 2008 (Nullification Upheld by Appeal Court) Saturday, March 29, 2008 Idris (PDP) – 518,581 Audu (ANPP) – 175,978 Momoh (PAC) – 1,529 Appeal of Re-Run going on. May 6, 2009 – Appeal Court adjourns judgment indefinitely 2 Sokoto Magatakardawa Wammako (PDP) October 29, 2007 (State Tribunal upholds election) April 11, 2008 (Appeal Court annuls election) Saturday, May 24, 2008 Wammako (PDP) – 562,395 Dingyadi (DPP) – 124,046 Iyaki (ANPP) – 1,842 No further petition 3 Bayelsa Timipre Sylva (PDP) September 17, 2007 (State Tribunal upholds election) April 15, 2008 (Appeal Court annuls election) Saturday, May 24, 2008 Sylva (PDP) – 538,204 Kemodokumor (AC) – 26,635 Amabebe (ANPP) – 6,892 No further petitions 4 Cross-River x Lyel Imoke (PDP) January 23, 2008 (State Tribunal Upholds Election) July 14, 2008 (Appeal Court Nullifies Election) Saturday, August 23, 2008 Imoke (PDP) - 650,723 Ukpo (ANPP) – 15,734 Ibeshi (AC) – 4,255 No further petitions 5 Adamawa Murtala Nyako (PDP) November 15, 2007 (State Tribunal nullifies election) February 26, 2008 (Nullification Upheld by Appeal Court) April 26, 2008 Nyako (PDP) – 361,729 Bapetel (AC) – 201,767 Madaki (LP) – 7,360 No further petitions 6 Ekiti Segun Oni (PDP) August 28, 2008 (State Tribunal upholds election) February 17, 2009 (Appeal Court annuls election) Saturday, April 25, 2009 & Tuesday May 5, 2009 Oni (PDP) – 111,140 Fayemi (AC) – 107,017 Fayemi petitions court
yunusa yau
Obituary: Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
We received with shock and deep sadness the news of the death of our Chair, Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. He died early this morning, 25th May 2009 in an accident while on his way to the Airport in Nairobi, Kenya to catch a flight to Rwanda to meet with the county’s President on the current maternal mortality rate campaign and to Nigeria for a meeting with the MDG Committees of the National Assembly.
Tajudeen was the Deputy Director (Africa) for the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC). He was a leading development activist at the world level and an inspiration leader of the Pan African Movement and has been the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Movement. He is also a director of Justice Africa and the chair of PADEAP in London. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, where he received a D Phil in Politics and was President of the Africa Society, Dr Abdul-Raheem has extensive experience of political and social movements in Africa and has been at the forefront of several campaigns. He was editor of Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-first Century (Pluto Press, 1996). Has also written extensively and some of his works include: Nigeria, Oil, and Democracy [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1986]; The Left in Nigerian Politics and the Struggle for Socialism: 1945-1985 [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1986]; Nigeria, Crisis Management under the Buhari Administration [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1985].
The Centre for Democracy and Development expresses its heart-felt sympathy and condolences to his immediate and extended family, the UN system, particularly the Millennium Campaign Team, the Pan African Movement and his large circle of friends and comrades over this sudden and devastating loss of this accomplished human rights activist.
May Allah grant him eternal rest and give his family the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss.
Jibrin Ibrahim
Director
Centre for Democracy and Development
Jibrin Ibrahim PhD
Director
Centre for Democracy and Development
4,Kikuyu Close,
Off Nairobi Street, Off Parakou Crescent
Off Aminu Kano Cresent
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Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima
Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima
Independent Consultant: Youth Development and HIV Prevention
www.dabesaki.freeservers.com
blog:http://blog.developmentpartnership.org
Abdul Bangura
Gemini
----- Original Message -----From: yunusa yauSent: Monday, May 25, 2009 11:48 AMSubject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tajudeen Abdulraheen: Obituary
Femi Kolapo
War! The Horror of War! The agony of war! The tragedy of innocent civilians, of innocent women and children, of innocent people caught in the inexplicable inhumanity and barbarity of war. Horrible phrases. But sadly familiar.
I must confess that I never fully appreciated what those type of phrases embraced until very late in my adolescence. I was a preteen when the Biafran war was fought and ended in Nigeria and lived my youthful live too far away from areas where I would have had an early and full encounter with victims of this war. Also, though really horrible religious crises that saw horrendous brutality inflicted on fellow human beings happened, especially in northern parts of Nigeria during my adult life, I was fortunate to have escaped being eye witness. My sense of what happened came to me second hand through news reportage.
In Kwara and Niger states of Nigeria where I did my elementary schooling, so far away from the Eastern Nigeria centre of the Biafran war, the closest idea I had about the ongoing debacle related to a song we sang at close of school day which included the phrase that implored God to keep us and put an end to war as we headed home after the days work. Some of the most memorable experiences I had in the secondary school involved competing with classmates to read as many novels as were listed on the Other Titles sections of the inside of the back pages of novels we had read. While a couple of these novels dealt with war, they were light novels or perhaps were read so lightly that it was the heroes and their heroic deeds that mattered much to me. Death, dying and pain were themes and experiences that were never brought up to a level that my mind could really appreciate in any sensible depth. Perhaps, that was not the age when such emotions and knowledge should be revealed to students in peaceful post-civil war Nigeria.
By the end of my secondary school experience and especially at college, what we then called A-Level, when we were into trying out our mettle not only on Complete Works of Shakespeare but any fat book that we found somebody had enthused about, I had obviously had more in-depth treatment of war. However, unfortunately, it was still very much academic, and with hindsight, I could say without much thought. Was this due to the rural backwoods nature of the high school that I went to or to the failure on my part or my teachers at college to develop an appreciation of such an important topic; or due to the failure of our national curricular regarding what children and students should be taught as they grew up to become useful, helpful, responsible and humane beings. Perhaps, it was because we were living at a time of peace. It is possible of course that other schools and perhaps even other kids in my school had a different experience learning about deeper issues of life than I had.
Sometime in 1977 though, all this changed for me in one day! It was in a poetry session taught by an Igbo professor - a Biafran war survivor. The title of the poem I have forgotten, but it seems to be a poem, I think, by Wole Soyinka, in which he used the popping of acorn seeds as a figure to illustrate the inhumanity and horror of human heads popping in the course of a war. Our poetry class sessions usually involved interesting contributions by students. Unfortunately, on this occasion, a student had obviously made light of the Biafran war experience. What exactly he said wrong I could not remember. But I was jolted to full attention and the class to dead silence when the professor became visibly agitated, his now reddened eyes bulged in anger and obviously holding down a volcano of rage and hurt, he shot questions after questions out to the student or perhaps it was to the entire class, demanding to know whether we knew what it meant to have one’s pregnant wife’s belly ripped open in front of him; whether we had experienced hiding out in the bush and eating weeds and grass to survive because one has been driven out of his home; whether we had seen the gashed head of our dead father, etc. Somebody eventually rumoured that the professor had lost his wife in the war.
In that one class day, I imbibed an experience that the previous 12 years of schooling had not brought me. Though my subsequent university years were very eventful and choked full of useful experiential learning opportunities, but looking back, I would not say that I gained a deeper perspective about how horrible war could be than I had gained back in that single day during my A-Levels. Excepting for the treatment of the Middle Passage where the cruelty of the white man to the enslaved black man was taught to us, most of the treatment of wars that I encountered in my history classes at university were general, too long ago, too dried up and too removed from reality. Even the more recent, more usable 19th-century wars of the Yoruba, or of the Sokoto Caliphate or of the Zulu were taught and interpreted within that nationalist and heroic framework that only praised our local, regional or national heroes, the revolutionaries, and the nation builders. Much of the horrors were passed over and catchily phrased out as nation building, new experiments in successor states, development of revolutionary military or administrative tactics, or defeat of reactionaries etc. The multiple thousands and millions of helpless children, women, and men who were needlessly, mercilessly, brutally killed, displaced, mistreated, driven into the bush, made to suffer hunger and untold hardship and families thorn apart and communities, dreams and hopes completely wrecked were never stuff clearly brought out in those books I read and those lectures that I attended. Our focus was not on the people, but on the nation and on the leaders; clearly not on death, suffering, horror atrocities and inhumanity and dehumanization of war as they affected real individual persons and families.
I can now say that there was too little done by way of sensitizing us, at least that’s how it feels now to me, to what war meant and to the stupendous catastrophe and the dehumanization that any war and all armed violence against populations imply. I could not but wonder whether this was simply my singular experience or perhaps an indication of a deeper problem with the educational system I grew up with in my part of Nigeria. We simply valorized the military, the local soldier and their reported heroic deeds. We never considered seriously the catastrophic effects of their success on the victims nor did we consider that some of the soldiers we valorized themselves were scarred for life or had grown to become demi gods and rats of war.
I have said all this just to make some sense out of the inexplicable words that have been reported to have emanated from one of the educated leaders of Nigeria - those who have the immense power to use the military to kill and maim as is reported to be currently happening in the Niger Delta. Sanctioning massive military operation against the Niger Delta people of Nigeria, Nigerian Lawmaker Bala Ibn NaAllah was said in a debate to have declared that “For the survival of 100 million we can do away with 20 million.” He was said, though, to have been forced to apologize for the statement and was reported to have claimed that he meant no harm and that he saw himself, though from far away Kebbi State in the northwest, as being part of Niger Delta. Perhaps this was a single wild cat case. But clearly and regrettably, with the uproar about the ongoing JTF military activities in the Niger delta, only lawmakers from the affected states seem to be actively opposed to the campaign. Most others whose views were reported support the war.
I wonder how many of the legislators and people in government who are currently for this war have had any depth of understanding, even if third hand, of what war is. Have they seen footages of the Darfur war, of the wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Did any of them see heart rending footages of children turned into rickety skeletons in the Biafran war? Were they alive during the Balkan war of the early 90s. Did the images of the war and insurgency in IrAQ and Afghanistan make any sense to them? I wish lawmaker Bala Ibn NaAllah had had the humanizing experience of a teacher or education that would sensitise him to the horror of war. I wish president Yar aDua had had a professor to bring Soyinka’s popping acorn to life in his mind. I wish our leaders whose hands are on the trigger would have a better appreciation of the gun than consider it a toy and would have a fuller appreciation of the deadly power of the bomb on entire community, on life, hope, future, and on the nature of humanity. One wishes that Nigeria has an educational system that would clearly humanize its citizens and future leaders.
I shudder to imagine the types of Hon. Bala Ibn NaAllah becoming governor in one of the crisis prone northern states or becoming the president of Nigeria. What kind of solution will he proffer to Nigeria’s problems?
And by the way, the implication of the resort to full blown military campaign to solve a problem that has become as hydra headed as we have in the Niger Delta seems to have escaped most supporters of this war: that we have a government incapable of carrying out reasoned and negotiated, planned out political solutions to problems of state; one unable or unwilling to engage in serious political negotiation because it has a rigid immutable view of some of the critical elements to the crisis- a government who would resort to war if it feels unable to resolve a political problem.
I wonder whether the innocent citizens of the affected communities and sympathisers in their states would consider the federal government and its JTF forces friends or foes helpers or destroyers.
While criminality has become an important element to the crisis in the Niger Delta and stands eternally condemned, to subsume the decades long Niger Delta problem in its entirety under that rubric as the current operation does and to strategically conflate criminals, militants, and legitimately aggrieved civilians do more long term harm to the hope of peace and national unity than any short term gain that the Nigerian federal government might expect to gain from this war.
------
f. kolapo. Univ. of Guelph
One at a time or all at once? Get updates from your friends in one place.
Otieno Janet A.
death but instead organise as he would always quip. Let us celebrate a
life well lived by this gallant son of Afrika who served this
continent tirelessly till his death. His spirit of panafricanism will
live on.He was an inspiration to us.May his soul rest in peace.
Kiki
On May 26, 1:19 am, "Gemini" <so...@multilinks.com> wrote:
> This is truly shocking and sad news. Tajudeen was a genuine original. It's so hard to believe that he's written his last Pan-African Postcard with his always thought-provoking insights. A big loss.
> Ayo
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: yunusa yau
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 11:48 AM
> Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tajudeen Abdulraheen: Obituary
>
> Obituary: Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
>
> We received with shock and deep sadness the news of the death of our Chair, Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. He died early this morning, 25th May 2009 in an accident while on his way to the Airport in Nairobi, Kenya to catch a flight to Rwanda to meet with the county’s President on the current maternal mortality rate campaign and to Nigeria for a meeting with the MDG Committees of the National Assembly.
>
> Tajudeen was the Deputy Director (Africa) for the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC). He was a leading development activist at the world level and an inspiration leader of the Pan African Movement and has been the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Movement. He is also a director of Justice Africa and the chair of PADEAP in London. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, where he received a D Phil in Politics and was President of the Africa Society, Dr Abdul-Raheem has extensive experience of political and social movements in Africa and has been at the forefront of several campaigns. He was editor of Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-first Century (Pluto Press, 1996). Has also written extensively and some of his works include: Nigeria, Oil, and Democracy [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1986]; The Left in Nigerian Politics and the Struggle for Socialism: 1945-1985 [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1986]; Nigeria, Crisis Management under the Buhari Administration [Journal Article, Review of African Political Economy, 1985].
>
> The Centre for Democracy and Development expresses its heart-felt sympathy and condolences to his immediate and extended family, the UN system, particularly the Millennium Campaign Team, the Pan African Movement and his large circle of friends and comrades over this sudden and devastating loss of this accomplished human rights activist.
>
> May Allah grant him eternal rest and give his family the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss.
>
> Jibrin Ibrahim
>
> Director
>
> Centre for Democracy and Development
>
> Jibrin Ibrahim PhD
> Director
> Centre for Democracy and Development
> 4,Kikuyu Close,
> Off Nairobi Street, Off Parakou Crescent
> Off Aminu Kano Cresent
> Wuse II
>
> Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. Check it out!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Mahmood Mamdani
‘Don’t Agonize, Organize!” In Memory of Tajudeen.
I was introduced to Taju by Abdul Rehman Babu in the early 90s. Taju came to Kampala as Babu’s nomination to Museveni for Secretary General of the newly established Pan-African Movement. We invited Taju to Centre for Basic Research to give a talk. His opening salvo was a bitter indictment of Africa’s post-independence leadership: “If an American ship docked at Lagos port today, with a huge banner reading ‘Slave ship to America,” there would a queue of millions of Nigerians wanting to get on that ship.” This was classic Taju: there is no time for formalities, or pleasantries; the time at hand is short.
Taju never looked for a comfort zone. He was impatient with boundaries in thought as he was with protocol in life. There was nothing moderate about Taju. A practising Muslim, he refused to believe that rituals could take the place of life itself. He combined Friday prayers and Ramadan fasts with often raucous evenings drinking, feasting and debating comrades and colleagues at open air bars in Kabalagala, just outside Kampala. If he was not feasting, he was in an interlude, a period of abstention.
In those early days, as he set about steering the young Pan-African Movement, Taju exuded confidence and certainty on the outside but constantly wrestled with the contradictions of leading a movement that had been launched by Heads of States. It took him little time to realize that the movement would have to keep more than an arm’s length from officialdom if its name was to amount to a real claim. Should the Pan-African Movement draw its resources from sympathetic African states or from supportive foreign donors? How could a movement launched from the top develop roots on the ground? Would a Pan-African civil society be any different from the assortment of NGOs that have ceased to be membership organizations but are instead accountable to donors that provide them with resources?
I often wondered what sense to make of Taju’s move from a full-time Pan-African job to a full-time UN job. Was it an admission that a healthy Pan-African movement could not be built from the roof down but would require so many national building blocks, as its constituent elements?
The most abiding memory I retain of Taju is that of eternal optimism, the determination that it is possible to proceed whatever the odds, and that the proof of genius lies in the ability to build with materials on the ground, to take a leap from text to life. He broke decisively with the ‘theory first’ orientation of his older comrades. Taju honored no rules, no commandments, no limits except those he encountered on the ground. He could work with anyone, whether government, UN, donor or NGO. The worth of a relationship for him did not lie in the identity of the other side, but in who set its agenda. It is worth recalling the signature with which he ended every note: “Don’t agonize, Organize!”
Whatever the contradictions of life, Taju’s person always seemed big enough to contain them. Set in an always-smiling face, his eyes were ever alert, as if trying to see around the corner. His hand always stretched out in a gesture of friendship, the firm grip at the end of it was a constant reminder of his unfailing strength. Everything about Taju affirmed, not just that his embrace was always larger than life, but that he himself was more often than not perched at its very edge. He was like a force of nature. If nature has reclaimed him, we must draw from his life an example for us all.
Mahmood Mamdani
26 May, 2009
Wassa Fatti
We are planning a memorial service for the late brother and Pan Africanist, Tajudeen. So far we have agreed to hold the service on the last Saturday of June, next month, which should be the 27/06/09. We hope his wife/widow will be back to London from Nigeria by then.
We are presently ooking for a venue in London and we will inform all about it. Those who can attend it, please turn up to pay your last respect to this dear son of Africa. I shall send the address of the venue and time when get one. We would also need to support of others who can help to book a place for us at SOAS or The Friends House to do so and let us konw urgently (please see number below for contacts)
In the mean time those who want to know what is going on can contact this number: 07957725212.
Wassa Fatti.
CC: mm1...@columbia.edu
From: mm1...@columbia.edu
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Tajudeen Abdulraheen: Obituary
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:15:57 -0400
Akurang-Parry, Kwabena
From: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com [USAAfric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Wassa Fatti [wassa...@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5:01 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Godwin Murunga
Godwin
"You can't have a high standard of scholarship without having a high standard of integrity, because the essence of scholarship is truth."
Dr. John Hope Franklin
Winston-Salem Journal
Aug. 6, 1989
Wassa Fatti
Good idea to publish his postcards and the compilation of the eulogies. Another suggestion to add to this idea is also contact individuals who know Taju in his ealy years, school friends, political forces he worked with in various capacities to write what know him so that it be piled into a book that can be titled: "TAJUDEEN- THE PAN AFRICANIST & HIS COMTEMPORARIES". I think that wll be a fitting tribute the late brother. If others have suggestions, please let them put them forward.
For some of us who where closed to the late brother and worked with him politically, understand that anything that will keep his contributions alive, will be something he would have been proud of.
Wassa Fatti
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 13:54:10 +0300
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Tajudeen Abdulraheen: Obituary