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Enahoro: Exit of a Dogged Fighter
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With the demise on Wednesday of Chief Anthony Enahoro at the age of 87, Nigeria lost a fine gentleman who could very well be decsribed as a father of the nation, a quintessential politician and an unrepentant believer in the Nigerian project. Enahoro, who had been having a running battle with sicknesses related to old age for sometime, finally succumbed to death in Benin City on Wednesday morning.
Born on 22 July, 1923, at Uromi in the present Edo State, Enahoro was one of Nigeria’s foremost anti-colonial and pro-democracy activists. He had a long and distinguished career in the press, politics, the civil service and the pro-democracy movement.
He was educated at the Government School, Uromi; Government School, Owo and King’s College, Lagos. Chief Enahoro became the editor of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspaper, the Southern Nigerian Defender, Ibadan, in 1944 at the age of 21, thus becoming Nigeria’s youngest editor ever. He later became the editor of Zik’s Comet, Kano, 1945-49, and equally an associate editor of the West African Pilot, Lagos. He was also the editor-in-chief of Morning Star between 1950 and 1953.
In terms of politics, Chief Enahoro was an active politician right before the nation’s independence. Indeed, he was one of the very few who could give an accurate account of Nigeria’s journey to nationhood. He became a foundation member of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group party; he was secretary and chairman, Ishan Division Council and member Western House of Assembly. Later he became a member of the Federal House of Representatives in 1951, where he played an active role. He later became Minister of Home Affairs in the old Western Region. He was the opposition spokesman on foreign policy and legislative affairs in the Federal House of Representatives, 1959-63; and was the first person to move the motion for the independence of Nigeria, though it was unsuccessful.
Though he played a commendable role in Nigeria’s struggle for independence, the fact remains that Chief Anthony Enahoro did not successfully move the motion for Nigeria’s independence as has been suggested in various quarters. What he did was to attempt to move the motion for Nigeria’s independence in the Nigerian Parliament in 1953, in which he argued that Nigeria should be granted independence in 1956. However, this was met by stiff resistance in Parliament.
For the records, the motion for Nigeria’s independence was not successfully moved in the Nigerian Parliament until 1958 and this was done by Chief Fani-Kayode, who moved that Nigeria should be granted independence on April 2, 1960. This was accepted by Parliament and the British authorities acquieced to it. However in 1959, yet another motion was moved by Sir Tafawa Balewa and seconded by Chief Raymond Njoku to shift the month of Nigeria’s independence from April 2, 1960 to October 1, 1960. Chief Enahoro was a delegate to most of the constitutional conferences leading to the independence of Nigeria in 1960 and thus played his part in the quest for socio-political, economic and regional liberty of what is now known as Nigeria.
Philip Emeagwali: The lie Doctorate
Emeagwali’s insistence on degrees muddles defence
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Emeagwali’s insistence on degrees muddles defence
By Musikilu Mojeed
November 21, 2010 01:39AM
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In a bid to defend himself against allegations of fraudulent claims leveled against him by leading American scientists,American-based Nigerian scientist, Philip Emeagwali, has told a new set of lies, an investigation has shown.In an article he published on ‘nigeriavillagesquare.com’,a Nigerian Internet discussion forum, to deflect the damaging allegations against him, Mr. Emeagwali claimed he had a 17-year academic career in eight-degree programmes at five universities.
He added that he bagged “an equivalent of six degrees in mathematics and Engineering” from those universities.But NEXT checks at the universities Mr. Emeagwali usually claim to have attended indicate that he has just three academic degrees from three universities.
The embattled scientist earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the Oregon State University in 1977; a Masters in Mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1986; and another Masters in Ocean and Marine Engineering (not civil and marine engineering as he often claims) from George Washington University in 1986.
Contrary to his claim that he earned a first degree from the University of London after self-study -as contained in a profile of himself he provided to the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,(IEEE), Lisa Pierre, the alumni relations’ manager of the university said there is no record to back such a claim.“I can’t find him in our database,” Ms Pierre said in response to the enquiry.
In the same IEEE profile, Mr. Emeagwali claimed he earned a doctorate in civil engineering (scientific computing) from the University of Michigan.But the spokesperson for the university,Deborah Greene, said although Mr. Emeagwali attended the university, he was not awarded a degree because he failed to complete the requirements for a Ph.D.
That was even after the university agreed to waive some of their requirements for candidacy.To buttress her points, Ms Greene referred NEXT to the judgment of a 1996 case Mr. Emeagwali instituted against her university claiming that the university discriminated against him because of his race.
But, in an unanimous judgment delivered in October 29, 1999, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled against Mr. Emeagwali,saying he could not have been awarded a doctorate after he failed to pass his examination.
“Plaintiff did not take his qualifying examination until May 1991. He failed this examination, was given an opportunity to retake the examination in July 1991,and failed this examination as well,” Judges P.J. Murphy, Holbrook, Jr. and J.J. Gage, ruled.
Mr. Emeagwali’s dissertation was also found to have fallen far short of the standard expected of a doctoral candidate.“Plaintiff submitted his dissertation on July 24, 1992. The university faculty members who ultimately reviewed the dissertation did not view it favorably,” the judgment said. “On June 17, 1993,Gulari (a professor in Mr. Emeagwali’s department) notified plaintiff that the engineering college faculty had concluded that his thesis was not worthy of a doctorate degree.”
Contacted by NEXT, Mr. Emeagwali refused to respond to specific questions.“Please remove us from you email list,” his wife, Donita Brown, who responded to our enquiry on his behalf, said. “As we said at emeagwali.com, his list of patent claims and degrees, “father of the internet,” discoveries and inventions will be discussed in our weekly series. We will post information by our weekly schedule, not your daily one.Once again, remove us from your list.”
Exaggerating accomplishments
Adesuyi Ajayi, a professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Chicago State University College of Pharmacy, blamed Mr.Emeagwali’s fraudulent claims on his failure to obtain a doctorate.
“I believe his inability to obtain his PhD led him to develop an inferiority complex , which he then responded to by exaggerating his modest accomplishments, and misinforming some media places and tolerating lies, fabrications and distortions about his scientific non-accomplishments,” Mr. Ajayi said in response to enquiry. “He became a serial exaggerator and transformed to a liar.”
Following a $1,000 Gordon Bell Prize he won in 1989, Mr. Emeagwali proceeded to claim, for several years, that he was a father of the Internet; that he improved upon Isaac Newton’s laws of motion; that he owned the world’s first personal website; that American computer giant, Apple, uses the microprocessor technology he pioneered in its Power Mac G4 model, among many other claims.
But NEXT, in a report in its November 7 edition,quoted some leading American scientists as describing Mr. Emeagwali’s claim that he was a father of the Internet as misleading.
The Nigerian government later said through its Minister of Information and Communication, Dora Akunyili, that it would investigate the allegations against the scientist to enable it decide whether to remove his image from the Nigerian stamp.
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Another Trouble for Aondoakaa
Suspended as SAN
The Nigerian former Attorney general and Minister of Justice Michael Aondoakaa is in the news again, this time, he has been suspended as senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN)
The Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) told him to stop parading himself as SAN pending the outcome of the an investigation into a petition by the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR demanding his removal as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
The committee took the decision at its meeting in Abuja.
Recall that Mr Aondokaa and his family were barred from entering United States following allegations of monumental corruption leveled against him and other corrupt Nigerian officials
The Contradiction Called President Jonathan
By Dshaikh Izuchukwu
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The Contradiction Called President Jonathan
Posted: September 12, 2010 - 03:18
Posted by siteadmin
By Majek Adega
Since assuming office as the acting and later president of Nigeria, I have carefully followed the actions, inactions, speeches and silence of President Goodluck Jonathan. After several months of this exercise, I have come to the conclusion that the President is but a bundle of contradictions.
His speeches reflect the ideals that governance should represent while his actions and inactions speak volume to his deep entrenchment in the mess called government in Nigerian and his lack of willingness or ability to take the bold steps necessary to build a modern nation state out of the current criminal outpost where thugs, criminals, vagabonds, looters and pedophiles lord it over tired and worn out citizens.
In his speech during the recently concluded 4th National Diaspora conference in Minna, Niger State, President Goodluck Jonathan warned delegates to the conference that the high level of corruption, illegal acquisition of wealth and non-payment of taxes by Nigerians could lead to the collapse of the nation’s entire system. This same Goodluck Jonathan is the husband of one Patience Jonathan whom the EFCC under charged with the theft of $16.5 million dollars in 2006. The matter is still in court and has not come up for hearing since Goodluck Jonathan became vice-president and later president. Dealing decisively with allegations of corruption against the president’s wife does not appear to be of importance to his government. This same Goodluck Jonathan it was who could not account for the N4 billion that disappeared from the coffers of Bayelsa state between the time he was nominated to be Yar Adua’s vice president to the time he was sworn into office in may 2007. The looted funds allegedly represented his contribution to the Yar Adua/Jonathan presidential campaign fund.
I have stopped counting how many times I have heard President Goodluck Jonathan promise Nigerians and the world that there would be free and fair elections come 2011. I have heard it so many times that it now sounds like a broken record. This President Goodluck Jonathan who is promising free and fair elections is the same Goodluck Jonathan who shamelessly and without regard for the wishes of Nigerians partnered with the late president Musa Yar Adua and the country’s acerbically rotten judiciary to plan and execute the most heinous electoral heist in the history of Nigeria. I will not disrespect the president by mentioning the smaller electoral heists himself and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha connived to perpetrate in Bayelsa state in 1999 and 2003.
President Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians on several occasions that he does not and will not interfere with the work of the law enforcement agencies and the courts. He says he will not stand in the way of his friends and enemies facing the wrath of the law if they are accused of corruption and other crimes. It is this same President Goodluck Jonathan who as the then vice president and barely a few weeks after being sworn into office, asked the prison authorities to bring his former boss Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who was then serving a jail term for misappropriation of billions of public funds to Dodan Barracks for a meeting with him. A few weeks after the meeting, Alamieyeseigha was released from jail. If the witch flew by yesterday and the child died the following morning, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. The same president Goodluck Jonathan who does not interfere with the work of law enforcement agencies was the same person who ordered the police to fish out those responsible for the death of late Kano politician Abubakar Rimi and Dipo Dina of Ogun state. As well intentioned as the orders maybe, they represent a direct contradiction of his claim of non-interference.
Like a preacher, President Jonathan has seized every opportunity to remind Nigerians of the need for probity, accountability and proper use of scarce resources. It is this same President Goodluck Jonathan who along with his do nothing Federal Executive approved the sum of $156m for the purchase of three new aircrafts for the presidential fleet that reportedly has six planes already. The presidential Fleet probably has more functional aircrafts than Nigeria Airforce. Before I forget, it is the same President Goodluck Jonathan who decided to spend N10billion celebrating the country’s stunted growth since independence. His former boss and convicted looter, Diepreye Alamieyeisegha is reportedly a member of the committee planning the 50th Independence Day celebrations and spending of the N10billion voted for the shenanigans. Hmmmmmmm.
The president is making all these decisions in a country where the ordinary citizen is groaning under the yoke of multiple taxes, lack of water, lack of good roads and insecurity. The combined sum above will go a long way in solving the nightmare that the Lagos-Benin road has become. But why should the president care? Only mortals travel by road. Yet, the president says he has a vision for Nigeria and he cares about ordinary Nigerians.
While late president Yar Adua was sick and ensconced in a Jeddah hospital, then vice-President Goodluck Jonathan played to the gallery and encouraged every manner of demonstrations in support of calls for power to be transferred to him. He even got the Nigeria Police to provide security for the demonstrators and sent Yayale Ahmed, the secretary to the federal government, to collect a letter from some of the protesters who were matching towards Aso Rock. The bad optics of that meeting between Yayale Ahmed and the demonstrators was not lost on those watching it on television as the secretary arrived in a long convoy of glittering black Mercedes Benz cars in a country where there is no electricity and minimum wage is less that $100 a month.
Back to the demonstrations. I remember telling a friend that what we were witnessing was not the broadening of the democratic space to the point where any form of peaceful demonstration would be allowed and demonstrators protected. I had the feeling the then vice-president was playing on the intelligence of Nigerians who were sincerely seeking a solution to the political deadlock. Since that time, members of the Nigeria Police and other security agencies have stopped demonstrators who gathered in Kano to protest the president’s possible entry into the 2011 presidential race. Just a few days ago, members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities were prevented from stepping out of the school compound in pursuit of a planned demonstration.
After he was pressured to publicly declare his assets under the late President Yar Adua, the first lesson the president gave Nigerians in accountability after assuming office was to secretly declare supposedly the same assets that he publicly declared a few years earlier. One of the closest people to the President is his chief of Staff, Mike Oghiadomhe, whom he reportedly befriended while both of them were deputy governors of Edo and Bayelsa states respectively. Mike Oghiadomhe who was a hustler and had no real job before he became the deputy governor of Edo state in 1999 has metamorphosed into a multi billionaire in less than a decade. Ogiadomhe who was Lucky Igbinedion’s partner in the looting of Edo state is enjoying the most productive period of his treasury looting career. This man meets with President Goodluck Jonathan on a daily basis when he is in the country.
The president talks about integrity and hard work but he assembled the most dishonorable set of people in the country and bestowed national awards on them. From the certificate forging Customs and Excise boss to the Police Chief who was presiding over an unprecedented kidnapping spree, and from Farida Waziri who wants Nigerians to believe that investigations has become another word for conviction and imprisonment to the bankers who brought the country’s banking system to its knees, President Goodluck Jonathan lined them up and one after the other, he decorated them with medals and thanked them for the great services they have rendered to the nation. Great services indeed.
There is nothing new about most of the information detailed above. What is new is the shameless attempt to paint a different picture of the President. The president cannot run away from his antecedents and if he has changed, he must demonstrate such to Nigerians in deeds, not just words. The President Goodluck Jonathan that I have described above is the same person who, despite his refusal to confirm it, will be running for the presidency come January 2011. That is the candidate Nigerians are being called upon to put their faith in.
Whatever the voters decide, they cannot say they did not know who they were voting for. If he “wins” the person described above is the person who will be the president. He is the best example of “say one thing and do something else”
Dshaikh Izuchukwu
Chairman
ANAC CA
Nigerian president dies after long illness
Africa
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Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, long plagued by poor health, has died at age 58, almost three months after his vice-president assumed control of Africa's most populous nation, Yar'Adua's spokesman said.
Yar'Adua died Wednesday at the Aso Rock presidential villa with his wife Turai at his side, presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi told The Associated Press, his voice cracking with emotion. Adeniyi did not give a cause of death.
A Muslim, Yar'Adua will be buried before sundown Thursday afternoon in his home state of Katsina, said Ima Niboro, a spokesman for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.
Thursday will be a national holiday and the country will observe seven days of mourning for Yar'Adua.
In a statement, Jonathan said all the nation could do is "take solace in the fact that the Almighty is the giver and taker of all life."
"Nigeria has lost the jewel on its crown, and even the heavens mourn with our nation tonight," Jonathan said.
Nigeria's national security adviser and other ministers flooded into the presidential villa late Wednesday night to meet with Jonathan, who offered condolences to Yar'Adua's wife before beginning work as the country's head of state, Niboro said.
"The acting president is very sad with what has happened," Niboro told reporters. "The nation is mourning."
Yar'Adua took office in 2007 in a country notorious for corruption and gained accolades for being the first leader to publicly declare his personal assets when taking office — setting up a benchmark for comparison later to see if he misappropriated funds. But enthusiasm for his presidency waned as time passed and he made no headway in fighting entrenched corruption.
He had tried to peacefully end an insurgency in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta that had attacked the petroleum infrastructure, allowing Angola to overtake Nigeria as Africa's number one oil exporter. Those efforts frayed after Yar'Adua became gravely ill.
Yar'Adua went to a Saudi Arabian hospital on Nov. 24 to receive treatment for what officials described as a severe case of pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart that can cause a fatal complication. He failed to formally transfer his powers to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, sparking a constitutional crisis in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 150 million people.
Jonathan assumed the presidency Feb. 9 after a vote by the National Assembly while Yar'Adua was still in Saudi Arabia.
Lawmakers left open the possibility for Yar'Adua to regain power if he returned to the country in good health. He returned on Feb. 24 but never appeared in public and did not assume power again.
Eugene Terreblanche killed in South Africa
South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country's north-west.
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Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.
Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.
He became the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.
"Mr Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.
The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, aged 21 and 15, who have been arrested in connection with his murder.
"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.
Mr Zuma condemned the killing as a "terrible deed".
"The president appeals for calm... and asks South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred," his office said in a statement reported by South Africa's SAPA news agency.
"The murder of Terreblanche must be condemned, irrespective of how his killers think they may have been justified. They had no right to take his life."
Prison sentence
The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Johannesburg.
Farming organisations in the Ventersdorp area have called for calm as they are worried that rising tensions may escalate out of control.
Our correspondent says it is too soon to say whether Saturday's killing was politically motivated.
However, a spokesman for Mr Terreblanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) linked the killing to the recent singing of an apartheid-era song by the head of the ANC's youth league.
"That's what this is all about," Andre Visagie told Reuters news agency. "They used pangas and pipes to murder him as he slept."
A spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party pointed to racial tension.
Juanita Terblanche, who is no relation, said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances."
Mr Terreblanche was released from prison in 2004 after serving three years of a five-year term for attempted murder.
He had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African leader, John Vorster.
His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections.
In the 1980s, the government of PW Botha considered a constitutional plan allowing South Africa's Asian and coloured (mixed-race) minorities to vote for racially segregated parliamentary chambers.
For the likes of Mr Terreblanche, this was the start of the slippery slope towards democracy, communism, black rule and the destruction of the Afrikaner nation, analysts say.
Claiming on occasion to be a cultural organisation - albeit one with sidearms and paramilitary uniforms - Mr Terreblanche and his men promised to fight for the survival of the white tribe of Africa.
An ill-fated military intervention into the Bophuthatswana homeland in 1994 ended with three AWB men being killed in front of TV cameras in a PR disaster that diminished further the seriousness with which Mr Terreblanche's movement was taken.
Mr Terreblance continued to campaign to preserve the apartheid system but lived in relative obscurity since it collapsed.
The AWB was revived two years ago and there had been recent efforts to form a united front among white far-right groups.
'Pirate' death puts spotlight on 'guns for hire'
BBC News
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The death of a suspected pirate off the coast of Somalia has drawn attention to the use of armed private security contractors on board merchant vessels.
The incident, which involved guards aboard the Panamanian-flagged MV Almezaan, is believed to be the first of its kind.
But several organisations, including the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), have previously expressed concerns over the use of armed security contractors.
"While we understand that owners want to protect their ships, we don't agree in principle with putting armed security on ships," IMB director Capt Pottengal Mukundan told the BBC News website.
"Ships are not an ideal place for a gun battle."
One argument is that the use of armed operatives could encourage pirates to use more violence when taking a ship.
But Mr Mukundan said he had seen no evidence that there had been much of an increase in the use of armed guards by merchant ship owners.
Dozens of warships patrol the waters off the Somali coast, but this has not deterred the pirates. The amount of ocean to patrol is extremely vast and pirates have responded to the increased naval presence by moving attacks farther out to sea.
"The naval forces are displacing the threat - they can't be everywhere at once," says Nick Davis, chief executive of Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, a not-for-profit organisation.
"Almost the whole of the Indian Ocean region - some 5 million square nautical miles - is a security risk."
Prevention
But the shipping industry has, so far, largely resisted arming their boats - not least because this would deny them port in some nations. Furthermore, arming the ships can raise liability issues and increase insurance costs.
Christopher Ledger, director of security firm Idarat Maritime, says the use of private operatives is not necessary and that ship owners can find other ways to protect themselves, such as boosting training, carrying out more drills and purchasing equipment that could prevent pirates boarding a vessel.
"Private security guards are not necessary, they simply muddy the water," he said. "They are often foreign to the crew themselves and they don't know the ship well.
"Many are former soldiers that have been in Iraq or Afghanistan and they think they can shake the dust off their shoes and make it as a private security guard. Their day rate is pretty high and the crew have to find ways to get them on and off the vessels."
Their presence, he said, would only lead to "more spilt blood".
This month, international shipping law firm Ince and Co released a report highlighting the issues arising from the use of armed guards. It pointed out that a fundamental question arose as to who would authorise the use of force.
Stephen Askins, a lawyer with Ince, told the BBC News website that the debate on the use of armed guards was one that polarised the industry.
"Most industry bodies and ship-owners are against them," he said. "But no ship with an armed guard has been hijacked, so there are those - particularly those who have had hijacked ships - who think they are necessary."
He said private security companies had come into their own in places like Iraq and had seen seen the maritime sector as potentially lucrative.
"Many have moved across but there is no system of accreditation, so there is no way of knowing the good from the bad," he said.
Legal status
Most security operatives are former British servicemen, but there are also operatives from the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Mr Askins said some firms provided armed escort vessels, but that these did not have any status in international law.
"The various conventions dealing with piracy relate to states and their navies," he said. "The rights that they are given, like the right of innocent passage relate to military ships. There are also issues over the use of armed force. The relevant law is the law of the flag state, but a merchant ship could, for example, be Panamanian and the escort ship could be, say, UK flagged."
But he also pointed out that there were some very good companies that had "robust rules of engagement".
"Lethal force for them would come after a series of steps including warning shots. The good companies would follow that procedure. Normally that would be enough to deter an attack."
In May 2009, the US Coast Guard drafted a maritime security directive that would require US-flagged ships sailing around the Horn of Africa to post guards, and ship owners to submit anti-piracy security plans for approval.
At the time, the Coast Guard's director of prevention policy, Rear Admiral James Watson, said that they expected to see "additional security" that could "involve the use of firearms".
He added that they were "looking for things that work but that don't make the situation worse".
Educated African Ladies Dont Know How To Cook - Public Comment
They Only Speak Grammar - Comment and Get A Chance To Win A Free Week Trip To Africa
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Educated ladies can speak only grammar, but cannot cook
I have argued with my mom several times, why the only thing she pressures my sister about is the idea of: Learning how to cook, cook, cook, as if woman-hood was synonymous with cooking. My mom makes this “you must know how to cook this and that” gospel look as if its the most important skill.
What an over reaching comment. I must say that this would likely not stand any serious public scrutiny, however this is the topic we have for today. Please send in your comments and we would publish your selected responses. Let us know if your agree or disagree and state your reasons. If your Comments are selected and published you would be added to our monthly draw, and get a chance to Win a weekend Get away in Lagos, Abuja or Calabar for two Courtesy of Embassy Court Hotels and Hertz Rent a Car, worth over $5,000. Enter as many Times as you can, please give name and country you are corresponding from or you currently reside.
Email your Comments to publicforum@ttimesmail.com
African Writer's Honored in France
Black Culture and Civilization Highlighted
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In the first issue of the journal, Diop defined its goals: to publish Africanist studies on black culture and civilisation, to publish African texts, and to critique works of art or thought concerning the black world.
Although Diop first insisted that Présence Africaine would not be held to any philosophical or political ideology, by 1955 he clearly redefined the journal's objectives. “All articles will be published on the condition that they are in good taste, that they concern Africa, that they neither betray our antiracist and anticolonialist will, nor our solidarity with colonised peoples,” he wrote.
Within the first two years a publishing house was created, and in 1953 the group produced the radical anticolonial film Statues also die. It was banned in France for ten years. There were black writers' and artists' congresses, a cultural association was created, and Diop and his friends were active participants in the organisation of the First Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal, in 1966. The exhibition at the Quai Branly focuses on the major role played by Présence Africaine in the political and cultural history of black Francophone, English-speaking, and Portuguese-speaking intellectuals. To give you an idea of its importance, among the guests at the opening was Wole Soyinka, the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Soyinka has been involved with Présence Africaine for decades. Through the encounters organised by the group, intellectuals, writers and artists can meet and exchange notes on the cultures of the black peoples, he told RFI. That helps them become better known and can influence thinking.
Soyinka describes the impact of Présence Africaine as “diffusive”.
As for the exhibit itself, he says, “There is something both beautiful and sad about it – many of these precursors in the humanities have gone. It’s nostalgic, and a sweet-sour feeling at the same time.”
The exhibition last until the end of January
Oprah Book Circle Winner Author Uwem Akpan To Speak in Michigan
The Jesuit Priest and Winning Author
The Oprah book circle winner, author Uwem Akpan will speak at 4 p.m. Friday at the University of Michigan's Hatcher Graduate Library. Uwem Akpan will talk about his best-selling short story collection at the University of Michigan. Akpan's 2008 book "Say You're One of Them" contains fictional accounts of people seeking normality in the face of often extreme circumstances. He speaks Friday afternoon at the Ann Arbor school's Hatcher Graduate Library.
Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., and Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., and theology at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a master's degree in creative writing at Michigan in 2006. "Say You're One of Them" won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book and the PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
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