Maurice and The Right to Recall
Okay, so there I was on the other side of the street from the Nigerian Embassy in London. It was 5.30pm on Friday, 15th January, 2010 and our demonstration was just winding down when a few rather more nattily-dressed Nigerians began to arrive on the scene. ‘You are late for the demonstration,’ we told them.
‘We’re all together in the struggle,’ they replied, ‘but we have another demonstration inside the embassy.’ Read more »
We do live in interesting times.
Yesterday I journeyed to London. The occasion was a protest rally at Parliament Square and a march to the Nigerian Embassy at Northumberland Avenue. The immediate provocations for the protest were a missing president, a constitutional crisis and a slow-burning rage (50 years old this year) at a desperate poverty of leadership in Nigeria. There was also the embarrassing mismatch between our national ambitions and our realities. Read more »
Good wishes were never going to be enough.
The token gesture, even the heart-felt, sacrificial donation… they were always going to be too little, too late, not for that disaster area an ocean away. Thanks to television, the world suffered with Haiti. But Haiti needed far more than tears. Enter America. Never was military might put to better use. Never did an American imperial presidency respond with greater heart and promptitude to the needs of needy humanity than in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. As in the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami, it is not just the aircraft carriers, ambulance ships, thousands of soldiers or even the pledge of a hundred million dollars that makes the difference. It is also in the raw empathy and generosity of spirit from citizens on the streets (notwithstanding the ever-present lunatic fringe). Read more »
Here’s the reason why… and a notice from the organisers of a London Protest March… See you there.
Chuma.
Nigeria is in perhaps the worst shape in its approximately fifty-year history. The country lurches from one dispiriting news to another, leaving its citizens close to despair. Recent policy decisions by the Barack Obama administration indicate that Nigeria is now perceived as a pariah state and haven of terror, its citizens regarded as potential terrorists. In the midst of such troubling developments, the members of Nigeria’s political and economic ruling class continue their pursuit of odious privileges and obscene accumulation of the nation’s resources. These unconscionable men and women conspire against the nation’s corporate interests and further impoverish the majority of citizens. Read more »
Here is the text of an open letter released by Nigerian Writers in reaction to the current political situation in Nigeria. Over forty writers have currently signed up to the letter which has this morning been released to the media. You can add your own signature, and support, in a comment box beneath. You can also listen to and download an audio version by clicking on this link: Audio
An Open Letter from Nigerian Writers
Nigeria’s failure to make the progress commensurate with 50 years of nation-building is not just a failure of leadership. It is first and most catastrophically, a failure of followership.
As ordinary Nigerians, we have failed to create an environment where good leadership can thrive. By glamorising fraud and ineptitude, we have created a country hostile to probity. Our expectation from Government House is mediocrity, so that good government surprises us pleasantly and excellence continues to amaze us. Instead of an environment of accountability, we have fostered sycophancy. We have been content to follow every stripe of leader, from the thief to the buffoon. The consequence is that for months we have been happy to be ruled even in absentia.
Today, we say, no more.
Prayer before Flight
(after Louis MacNeice)
I’m about to fly, so help me.
May the heaven-bound youth with a
lust for virgins miss my flight.
when the prodding wand comes my way
let it beep briefly, and be
gone
It was supposed to be the football party before the South African festival, instead, Angola’s showpiece event has disintegrated in a hail of machinegun fire. The victims are the Togolese delegation to the games. They planned to make headlines in Angola, but not like this. The report of gunfire will resound in South Africa where football administrators will be squirming in their bullet-proof vests as they plan a hijack-free World Cup. With the death of the Togolese reserve goalkeeper, an already tragic situation worsens. The Cabinda insurrection is as old as the independent country, and if the Angolan war is over, Cabinda province continues as an incubation of resentment.
The FLEC rebels responsible for this cynical inhospitality will surely count the worldwide publicity that this incident has provoked as a great success for their cause. Adebayor says he feels disgraced by the incident. This is hardly an issue on which to contest equality, but terrorism does not pause for sports, anywhere in the world – in 1972, the Munich Olympics was marred by the murder of 11 hostage-athletes by Black September. More recently, British cricketers have been targeted in India.
What is clear is that a fifty-year-old dialogue that should have been conducted around a negotiation table is still being pursued by arms. The case for an Arms-Free-Africa is more valid than ever. The disgrace – and the nightmare – that Adebayo and his unfortunate colleagues have suffered keenly for thirty minutes is a life sentence for millions of Africans – and people in crisis areas around the world. For them, there is no possibility of a presidential jet waiting at the nearest airport to evacuate them from harm’s way.
We can do better than this.
Human Trafficking.
Chika Unigwe’s recent novel, On Black Sister’s Street, puts some faces on the issues. Yet, the choices that are exercised by the victims of Human Trafficking vary widely: from those seduced by promises of a better life to others who are kidnapped in the first place. All are trapped in situations of inhuman exploitation. All the ingredients of the Great Slave Trade are present: especially a criminal immorality that sits beneath the radar of popular outrage.
Human Trafficking is a catchall for a wide variety of turpitude, not all of which is sexual.
No country is innocent of the odium of H.T. – some countries are Sources, other are Transit or Destination countries. A few are all three, and we are all essential partners in the fight to end this shameful vestige of slavery.
Here is essential reading if you need to plug into the issues.
Chuma Nwokolo
There may be ‘just’ wars, but this was simply not one of them. It is difficult to imagine how one can aspire to make the world a better place by blowing innocents up in the skies.
In addition to the forthrightness of his father, we can also be grateful for the incompetent bomb-making skills of the civil engineer that reserved the fury of his bomb for his own nether regions. And for the swift response of the fellow passengers that may have prevented a larger conflagration over the skies of Detroit. Read more »
Now, here’s an interesting thing:
Tony Blair, in a BBC interview, says he would have gone ahead to invade Iraq to effect a regime change, even if he knew that it had no weapons of mass destruction. Here are his words: I would still have thought it right to remove him.
And yet, who can forget that infamous dossier published to parliament and country, in which Saddam’s chemical and biological WMDs that could have been unleashed on the world within 45 minutes were trotted out as the main reason for the invasion. The threat of those ghostly WMDs descending on London were probably responsible for the scrappy support wrung from parliament for the war. Read more »
My name is Chuma Nwokolo. I am a writer and
lawyer currently living in Britain. Memories
of Stone is my first poetry collection. One
More Tale for the Road and Diaries
of a Dead African are my most recent novels, with Extinction
of Menai, forthcoming. Welcome to my blog.
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