JERUSALAAM – JERUSHALOM

JERUSALAAM – JERUSHALOM:

PALESRAEL AS A SINGLE STATE SOLUTION:

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

By Biko Agozino

"... Israeli Jews and Palestinians are irrevocably intertwined demographically...Palestinians and Israelis interact, through antipathy and hostility, but physically they're in the same place...this is something that can't be changed by pulling people back to separate boundaries or separate states." Edward Said, interviews by David Barsamian on 'A One-State Solution', in Culture and Resistance, South End Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 5.

ABSTRACT:

This is a proposal for a lasting peace in the Middle East based on the possible application of the principles of federalism that were first outlined by the founding fathers of the US in the famous Federalist Papers. I propose to sample a group of Jewish and Palestinian youth on the applicability of the Federalist Papers to what I choose to call Palesrael, a single state solution for both Jews and Palestinians united in a federal system of government which would respect the autonomy of local governments while guaranteeing the equal protection of all under the federalist constitution. I choose to sample the youth because they will be the future leaders of the country and also because the older population are sufficiently traumatized by the conflict not to be sensitive to any new ways of thinking about innovative solutions. The single capital city for the single state solution will therefore be Jerusalaam or Jerushalom, call it what you may in your own dialect for 'City of Peace'! Seriously.

 

NARRATIVE TEXT:

In the year 2020, I would like to see a Just Jerusalem as the capital city of a federal republic of Palesrael, I proposed in 2008 while I was a Professor of Sociology at the University of the West Indies. It was a proposal for a contest at MIT for a Just Jerusalem, not funded but slightly updated here. This proposal assumes that both Jews and Palestinians are Semites with more in common than is apparent from their sibling rivalry. The proposal is for Jerusalaam-Jerushalom to be recognized as the capital city of one state, the state of Palesrael. This is the best political scenario for a city like Jerusalem that is holy to many different faiths and is being claimed by rival faiths: the federal capital city status would enhance the sharing arrangements while federal presence would guarantee equal protection of all.

The conflict in the Middle East has been rightly described as the most intractable conflict of its kind that has bedeviled the world and any solution to that puzzle is likely to contribute to global peace for the benefit of humanity. The area occupied by Jews and Palestinians is arguably the holiest land on earth with Jews, Rastafarians, Christians, and Muslims claiming every inch of the land as a special place for their faith. It is ironic that the Holy Land is also the most troubled and conflict-ridden, although religious fanatics might see this as logical in the sense that the devil would be working overtime to ensure that the holiest of places is denied the peace that all religious faiths preach but often fail to practice adequately.

The conflict in the Middle East, like most cases of social conflict, is not a religious conflict between God and Satan but a conflict that is man-made and that is open to rational, empathic and creative resolution by human beings no matter what faith they profess or lack of it. The federalist solution as pioneered by Americans is effective because of the clear distanciation between religiosity and the state or attempts to keep religion as a private personal affair while leaving politics as the remit of elected officials and democratic citizens alike. It is true that even Americans continue to redefine the tensions between religion and the state as fundamentalist groups mobilize to threaten aspects of secularism but the US is exemplary in the ways that Native Americans, Christians, Africans, Jews and Muslims, not to mention other faiths, unite to build a strong and democratic federalist polity as a shining example to the rest of the world, the flaws of America especially in international relations and domestic race-class-gender politics not withstanding.

For those who are not familiar with the federalist papers, it is important to clarify that it is a collection of mostly newspaper articles written by some of the American founding fathers as part of the debate that continued after the Pennsylvania constitutional conference. There were some who believed that federalism was bad because the federal government could become imperialist and thereby sabotage the autonomy of local government. They argued for confederation to be maintained on the basis of a friendly association or imperfect union among the willing states as was the case prior to the attempt to engineer a ‘more perfect union’ through the federal constitution.

On the other hand, those who supported federalism argued that the imperfections of confederation were obvious in the fact that some states were using exclusionary measures to protect their own residents from free market competition against residents of other states. States like Delaware and Connecticut were almost about to go to war against the state of New York over such issues as the imposition of import duties on chicken and timber! Moreover, members of state militia were beginning to mobilize and take the laws into their hands to pressure the central government to pay them better remuneration but without a central government capable of defending the union with a collective force or moral leadership.

Those in support of federalism argued that a strong central government was essential for the defense of the polity against foreign invasion while leaving the matters of law and order largely to the local government authorities and to individuals who are granted the right to bear arms (more of a duty in the Middle East). The federalists won the argument and thirteen states initially ratified the new constitution and gave birth to the United States of America. More states later joined the union and the strength of that union was tested by confederates in the civil war when it was proven to be adequately strong especially with the support of hundreds of thousand formerly enslaved Africans who rallied to fight on the side of the union army.

As we watch the rain of missiles in the air and the harvest of the mangled corpses of children, women and men who would rather live in peace and prosperity; as we remember the pitiable image of Jews being dragged off their homes by Jewish soldiers in order to demolish those homes because they were built in occupied territories that had been ceded back to Palestinians or watch Israeli bulldozers demolish the homes of Palestinians or bomb them for one reason or the other and as Palestinians are forced into a ridiculous position of fighting and killing each other in factional battles over the control of crumbs, I wonder if the American founding fathers of God’s own country could lend a light to the Holy Lands by applying the principles of federalism to the conflict.

The two states solution appears to be the compromise being pursued after both sides recognized the right of each other to exist side by side by side but there is doubt about the viability of two states with one splintered and with the capital city still in contention by both sides that are intricately tied together in economic, legal, political and social relations. The idea of a single state solution has been raised occasionally by the Palestinians but the Israelis tend to see that as the worst case scenario for fear that they might lose what some call a Jewish state which Israel is not, being a secular state. I see the single state solution to be a win-win solution to the crisis.

Jews can reside in any state of the federation and Palestinians can reside in any state they choose. To some extent, this is already true in the sense that there are Palestinians living in Israel just as there are Jews in ‘occupied’ territories. Most countries in the world today are multicultural and citizens are free to settle wherever they choose, whereas those countries that tried genocide and expulsion of the other tends to fail when multiculturalism works better. A federal structure is best suited to do that especially by building settlements and distributing them equitably to those who cannot afford to choose in the free market but without creating urban concentration of poverty ‘projects’.

The federalist solution appears even more feasible given that Jews and Palestinians are one Semitic people linguistically whereas the US is one of the most multicultural countries in the whole world. If a country as diverse as that could unite under a federalist constitution, there is no reason why a people as homogenous as Semites could not unite under a federalist arrangement that would respect the rights of all citizens to live wherever they could afford to live and practice whatever faith they subscribe to while respecting the rights of their brothers and sisters or else they would attract the might of the federal government which should be equipped to guarantee the equal protection of all.

Since the adult populations of the region have tried and woefully failed to engineer a solution to this conflict despite expensive militarization, terrorization, victimization, assassination, iron domes securitization, nuclearization, apartheid, genocide, and hideous walls of separation, I am inviting young people who are not yet old enough to vote, to apply the legendary ingenuity and originality of young minds to the solution of the problem by borrowing from the mistakes and successes of the American founding fathers but without the prejudice of their oversocialization into exclusionary boundary enforcement and ideological intolerance.

LOGIC OF PROJECT DESIGN:

I hypothesize that there are lessons in the Federalist Papers for the resolution of the Middle East crisis between Palestinians and Israelis. I propose to test this hypothesis by randomly sampling one hundred and seventy young people under the age of 18, half being Palestinians and half being Israelis, half male and half female, and assigning one of the Federalist Papers to each to argue for and against the application of the views in each Paper to the Middle East crisis. If Federalist paper number one is randomly assigned to a Palestinian youth to argue for and against, then the same paper should be randomly assigned to an Israeli youth to argue for and against. The responses will be compiled as the Federalist Papers for the Middle East.

The 85 Palestinian youth and the 85 Israeli youth will then meet at a constitutional conference to draft a youth constitution for the Federal Republic of Palesrael in which Jews and Palestinians will live side by side and happily ever after. The draft constitution could be put to a referendum among young people for a possible youth election and youth model government for Palesrael. In 10 to 20 years, these young people would be the leaders of the new republic and will get the opportunity to implement their peace plan if current leaders of the beloved territory leave it until then. The resulting constitutions for Palesrael and the constitutent states and local governments could include the principles of structural equality by ensuring that half the senators will be Jews and half Arabs, half will be male and half will be female, if possible.

LIMITATIONS:

It is being assumed here that the young people would come to an agreement that there are lessons and support for Palesrael within the Federalist Papers. What if the youth reject the idea and opt to retain the boundaries as they exist or continue expansionist fantasies due to the entrenchment of the socialization of mutual hatred in their upbringing? Then the experiment would end there.

However, because the experiment is designed to solicit views for and against, it is reasonable to hope that the federalist option would appear competitive if not more attractive in the end. Lack of funding for the project is another limitation but a fraction of the funding dedicated to sustaining the current violence would fund this project or we will rely on volunteer youths and NGOs to pull it off.

With a Washington DC model for a Just Jerusalaam-Jerushalom, there will be peace, justice and economic sustainability for all the citizens of the federal republic of Palesrael even if all ills are not cured as is the case with DC today. All the money being wasted currently waging a war without end against brothers and sisters would be poured into human development instead. Everybody wins 200% by gaining the state they cherish plus much more in the whole federation from the river to the sea as is the case in the US. Only the people could decide how many states to create as members of the new federation. Whereas federalism would not cure all the ills of society, it offers more comprehensive and comprehensible solution that will be sustainable and just.

INNOVATION

There is nowhere else the Federalist papers have been debated and adapted for the drafting of the constitution of a new republic that I know of. The American constitution has been remarkably successful in attracting the attention of other nations that try to base their constitutions on that model. Yet, none has based such a decision on a replication of the debates that gave rise to the federal constitution in the US. If successful, the project could be a model for the training of youth in political leadership around the world and the model could also be applied to other conflict-ridden regions of the world for global justice, peace and sustainable development.

Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.

Pushing Obama's Second Term Agenda

By Biko Agozino

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West made compelling arguments in their Democracy Now Interview:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/9/tavis_smiley_cornel_west_on_the

35 out of 36 in child poverty among industrialized countries, only better than Rumania, is a hard statistic to digest with reference to the 'richest country on earth.' I have read The Rich and The Rest of Us and found it hard to see a specific proposal that brothers Tavis and Cornel would like brother Obama to pursue. They say that he should talk more about the problem of poverty and call a White House conference on poverty and they are convening a conference on poverty before the inauguration. All well and good but talk is cheap without strategic proposals.

As a scholar-activist, I have drafted policy proposals for black associations of scholars in the past to address this problem but only Cornel West individually endorsed the proposals and only the African Criminology and Justice Association endorsed them and issued them as press releases. Visit the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies online to read those press releases or visit my blog for the relevant posts:

1. http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/search?q=against+the+war+on+african+americans
2. http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/search?q=press+release+on+unemployment
3. http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/search?q=born+free
The first item has been prophetically validated by the votes in Washington and Colorado states to legalize marijuana. President Obama should ignore the chicken hawks who are egging him on to continue the failed drugs war against poor Americans. He should issue an executive order ending the war on drugs on day one of his second term the way Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation without waiting for a do-nothing congress. That is what it means to be an executive president.

The second item outlines a policy for tackling unemployment and poverty and the third item analyzed the presidential campaign themes with a prediction of an Obama win back in September but with emphasis on the agenda for the second term - jobs, ending the war on drugs, abolition of the death penalty, and reparations for people of African descent.

I agree that we should push bro Obama or any president to get anything significant done but we must be pushing with concrete proposals.
 

Civil Aletrt Radio Talk Show

I have started a series of radio talks about aspects of my work with Sister Asha of Civil Alert Radio, Atlanta, online radio station that you can access online. If you missed the first episode on Tuesday, October 30, 9:30 -12:00 Midnight, you can go online and listen here:




http://www.blogtalkradio.com/civilalertworld/2012/10/31/africana-drug-free-alternative-medicine-with-biko-agozino

Peace Biko,

It was good speaking with you.  Elena, the show's co-host/research analyst read your book Counter Colonial Criminology
and suggested that I reach out to you. 

Based on our conversation I see that there are !3! shows to do:

• A.D.A.M. - Africana Drug-Free Alternative Medicine with Biko Agozino, A Professor, Healer, Igbo Renaissance Man
• 
  
• 
  
• Control Freak Criminology with Biko Agozino
• Biko Agozino, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virgina Tech University
• 
  
• 
  
• Cloned Behavior. An Inside look at Social Control Strategies with  
• Biko Agozino, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virgina Tech University
  

I will touch base with you in a few hours.

Amenably,



SentAsha

404.944.2072 404.944.2072>

Awolowo Was No ‘Friend’ of Ours

By Biko Agozino

I eagerly await the arrival of my copy of Achebe’s personal historiography of Biafra with my mouth salivating in anticipation, given the spoilers already raising storms of debates. The charged debate over Achebe’s book gives Nigeria enough reason to reverse the dumb policy of Obasanjo who banned the teaching of history in Nigerian schools under the excuse that history is a yeye subject that does not lead to employment. Dalu (thank you), Nna anyi (our father) Achebe, you will live life until the endless time! I will wait until I have read every word and reflected on it before I comment on your magnum opus.

Meanwhile ... In response to this welcome addition to the cleansing of the historical conscience of Nigeria by Chinua Achebe, some misguided and misinformed miscreants have dredged up what looks like a fabrication, claiming that Awolowo regarded himself as a friend of the Igbo. The strange document lacks any of the clarity of the sage and digresses from a serious discussion of the haunting responsibility for genocide to the trivial mythology of fish as an astrological sign. That apparent forgery smell foul like a dead fish all right for the following reasons supported by quotations on friendship from Awolowo’s favorite text, the Bible:

1)   Awolowo was an elder, uncle or father of the Yoruba nation and not a friend of the Igbo. But being a beloved elder does not mean that you could never err: Soyinka has a character in Mad Men and Specialists who despite his immense wisdom grossly erred by teaching military officers how to enjoy cannibalism. ‘As soon as he began to reign and was seated on the throne, he killed off Baasha’s whole family. He did not spare a single male, whether relative or friend.’ 1 Kings 16:10-12

2)   To suggest that Awolowo saw himself as a friend is to distance himself from the Igbo as if we are not related, ‘why can’t we be friends’ is a polite turn-down for a jilted lover, as Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald dueted. ‘Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” Exodus 32:26-28

3)   If Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo really said what was attributed to him as a justification for the absolutely unjustifiably act of genocide, he must have been reading the book of his angry name-sake too literally: ‘For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; with your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies. I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, who will carry them away to Babylon or put them to the sword.’ Jeremiah 20:3-5

4)   To claim that you are a friend of someone is no argument for mitigation in any court of law especially when the charge is genocide: ‘You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.’ Luke 21:15-17

5)   I have never met any young Nigerian who calls Azikiwe, Balewa, or Awolowo, nor the legends, Kano, Achebe and Soyinka his friend; they were/are more like elders. An old man who goes about saying that he is a friend of starving children but refuses to feed them as punishment for their parents is surely dodgy and dishonest. I doubt if Awolowo stooped that low.

6)   As a statesman, you are not expected to serve only your friends – you serve the whole country whether you love them or hate them. "My life has been a joy to me wherever I may be, for I have learnt to live in peace with either friends or foes." NNAMDI AZIKIWE.

7)   To say that Awolowo is a friend of the Igbo suggests that the Igbo regarded Awolowo as their enemy despite the fact that predominantly Igbo officers led a military coup for the explicit purpose of freeing Awolowo from prison and making him an executive president. As one of the coup plotters, Nwobosi, stated, he supported Awolowo over his next-door neighbor, Azikiwe: ‘Awolowo was our man, our man for the job; I don't think he was even the best friend of the Igbo. He wasn't, but we wanted a job done and we knew that the man who would do it well was Awolowo.’  Odia Ofeimum, the secretary of Awolowo, was quoted as saying that this is true but strange to Nigerians today because they do not know any patriotic Nigerians who would rise above ethnicity. No wonder Odia is yet to publish that book of his.

8)   Gowon was reported as having apologized to Asaba people for the massacre that took place in the town under his watch as Head of State but he claimed that he was ignorant that such atrocities happened. He is yet to apologize to the Igbo for the genocide that he was fully aware of and over which he actively presided. Descendants of Awolowo, Enahoro, Gowon, Danjuma and others still alive should lead in the soul-searching that Achebe has launched and support the call for reparations that Wole Soyinka has been making, lest future generations continue to believe that the genocide of more than 3 million of our compatriots was a heroic thing to be celebrated with honors and rewards.

9)   Starvation as a weapon of war especially after seeing that the prime victims were children is not just a mistake by Awolowo, it is a wicked crime against humanity. Even after the war, did he justify the stripping of Igbo families of all their life savings in exchange for 20 pounds to demonstrate his ‘friendship’? ‘Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? Luke 5:33-35

10)  It is painful to associate the respected sage with such a crime but he allegedly bragged that he saw malnourished children with his own eyes but said that he did continue to starve them because the adults were not also equally bloated with kwashioko and dying to surrender. Did he really say that?

11) He said that the allocation of public funds to a state in Nigeria was a sign of his friendship and expected to be commended for claiming that he did not demand 10% for himself out of the statutory allocation. Now that does not sound like the wise Awolowo. ‘If anyone denounces their friends for reward, the eyes of their children will fail.’ Job 17:4-6

12)  He said that he built schools in Warri but the credit probably belonged to the communities that built their own schools through community effort and he claimed that he saved abandoned properties for the Igbo in Lagos, yet Ojukwu had to go to court in 1985 before recovering his father’s property. If he suggested that Ojukwu was the real enemy of the Igbo, it must have been in the context of the 1983 election when Ojukwu declared for the National Party of Nigeria rather than join the Progressive Parties Alliance of Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria, Azikiwe’s Nigerian People’s Party, and Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party.

13) ‘You are not my friend, my friend.’ That is a style of rhetoric that Nigerians use as a retort whenever an antagonist calls you his friend without meaning it. We are expected to know who our friends are even if we may not know our brothers and sisters from other mothers or fathers. Achebe’s book should be read by all Nigerians and by all Africans to learn how to love one another like brothers and sisters and avoid any excuses to indulge in genocidal rages that have continued to consume the continent since the Igbo genocide as Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe has been documenting. Instead of reacting by defending ethnic icons, let us all demand that the Nigerian government, the British government, Russia and Egypt should atone for this heinous crime that has robbed Nigeria of some of its greatest minds. Reparations for the Igbo genocide will help to heal the open sores of that crime and pave the way for a progressive future for all Africans to enjoy.

Cargo Cult Arithmetic and Anambra Oil

By Biko Agozino

“The primary association in cargo cults is between the divine nature of "cargo" (manufactured goods) and the advanced, non-native behavior, clothing and equipment of the recipients of the "cargo". Since the modern manufacturing process is unknown to them, members, leaders, and prophets of the cults maintain that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that the foreigners have unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.” ^{(Wikipedia, citing} Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House, 1974, pg. 133-152)

In The Trouble With Nigeria, 1984, Chinua Achebe lambasted the leaders of developing countries who were always boasting that they were prepared to steal technology if those who possess the know-how refuse to transfer it to them. Achebe chided their cargo cult mentality and explained that technology is not like some material possession waiting to be stolen but a way of life and a worldview that can be learned through disciplined study. Rather than look for technology to steal, why not develop your own technology by funding research and development projects?

As oil and gas deposits are being discovered all over Nigeria and in some other parts of Africa, giving rise to claims and counter claims by communities who contest the ownership of the oil-rich land, we need to pause for some sober reflections. There is a gross overestimation of the potential income from oil and gas and as a result, there is an excessive expectation by even learned elites that oil wealth would be enough to banish poverty from the land whereas only a select few are likely to line their pockets from petrodollars. A Professor of Political Economy in Nigeria recently circulated this formula online to rather uncritically buttress the oil bounty hypothesis:

‘1. Crude Oil production/day - 2.5M barrels
2. Current Price = $113/barrel
3. Daily Sales = 2.5M x 113 = $282.5million
4. Monthly Sales = 282.5M x 30days = $8.475billion
5. Yearly Sales = $8.475billion x 12 = $101.7billion
6. Naira Equivalent = 101.7billion x #160 = 16.272trillion Naira per year.
7. Nigeria's budget for 2012 = 4.5trillion Naira.

Even if you take 90% of 16.272trillion naira as the Fed Govt's Share of the barrel, which comes to14.645 trillion naira we still expect over 10 trillion surplus!!! Now, the question is: Where is the surplus going?! -(Analysis by Femi Falana (Senior Advocate of Nigeria/Activist, on Channels Tv).’

I agree with some of the the cargo cult logic in Falana's arithmetic above: Even 10% of the profits from oil since 1960 should be enough to Chinarize Nigeria or out-Cuba Cuba and beat Japan, Singapore or Finland (all with less natural resources than Nigeria) in the improvement to our Human Development Index. However, the danger in overestimating the potential income from oil and gas is that other sectors of the economy end up being neglected even though they contribute more to the economy than oil and gas.

It is cargo cult arithmetic to simply multiply the oil barrels per day by current market price and project to national revenue. In my opinion, such calculations falsely raise the sense of relative and absolute deprivation among the people and potentially heat up communal violence in the struggle over scarce resources.

I recommend that readers should consult the chapter, ‘Revenue Allocation and the National Question’, by Professor Eskor Toyo in the book edited by Abubakar Momoh and Said Adejumobi, The National Question in Nigeria, which I published in the series that I edit for Ashgate Publishers.

According to Professor Toyo, the contribution of oil to the national revenue is less than 50% with the rest coming from taxes (paye taxes and sales taxes mostly) and other sources of revenue from sectors like agriculture, customs and excise, and culture. Surprised? Well do not be surprised. The explanation is that the Nigerian state, like most oil-producing states, is not an oil-producer but a rentier state that collects rents or royalties from the oil companies. The National Bureau of Statistics confirms this by reporting that the contribution of oil and gas to the GDP in the second quarter of 2012 is less than 14% while the contribution from agriculture is 40% http://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/

This is why oil which contributes over 70% of internal revenues from taxes also contributes a small part of the GDP and the GNP compared to agriculture which employs 70% of the working population: An oil company receives the license to explore for oil in a field; the company invests billions of dollars and sometimes strikes it lucky or fails; when it fails it bears the loss, perhaps written off as tax deductions; when it succeeds, it pays royalties of 10% to the government on the profits (after deducting operating costs, research and development, etc.).

Surprisingly, 10% is considered a generous royalty considering that authors get 8% or less from book publishers as royalties (I think that they are so miserly that they should be called peasantries), with questions emanating about the accurate declaration of sales figures, wastage, theft, subsidy scams and fraud. The recent dispute in Ecuador over agreements with gas companies exposed the exploitative arrangements internationally. The new left-wing government insisted on getting more than 10% in royalties and the gas companies refused. 

 

Anambra State Government under Peter Obi should be commended for having the foresight to form an oil company (perhaps the only state government with such an investment in Nigeria, nothing stops the other states from doing the same) to refine the oil from the area and thereby maximize the benefits to the state but the people should still be made aware that the expectation, even without corruption and the likely harm to the environment through oil spills, will not come close to the expected revenue and benefits from agriculture. Yet Anambra state continues to neglect the agricultural sector like the rest of Nigeria.

Peter Obi has invested billions of naira to develop Orient Oil Company for Anambra State, building on the foundation laid by his predecessors, starting with Mbadinuju. The question the people of Anambra should be asking is how many billions has Peter Obi invested in agriculture which employs approximately 70% of the people and provides food and wellness beyond anything that the oil industry could aspire to?

The answer is provided in the Anambra State contribution to Vision 2020 in which Governor Obi reports that Agriculture receives less than 1% in capital expenditures of the state compared to 77% for transportation while recurrent expenditure for agriculture is less than 2% compared to 37% for education (I commend this prioritization of education, if only the federal government would fund education as generously at the national level). The report proposed to increase livestock and fruit trees in the state but did not specify how.

Rather than invest heavily in agriculture to modernize it and maximize its contribution to the economy, environment and society, Kogi State and Enugu state communities are already lining up cargo cults to contest ownership of the Anambra oil deposits with an eye on the potential royalties. Yes, there is oil in Enugu state too, especially in Awgu Shale, according to the geological map of Nigeria. Kogi State probably has oil too as oil is being discovered all over the country. All I am saying is that the states with oil should be forewarned not to neglect the golden goose that laid the golden eggs - agriculture. As Nigerians will say, na oil we go chop?

If these states prioritize agriculture they would reduce unemployment much more than is possible through oil and gas and they will create massive wealth for the people and potentially reduce the threat of kidnapping and violent crime. Orient Oil is only a refinery and so it does not really matter where the oil comes from given that Kaduna with no oil had a huge refinery located there by military regimes that strategically refused to cite any such factories in Eastern Nigeria probably out of grudge over the Nigeria-Biafra war.

Peter Obi appears to have tapped into the can-do attitude of the Igbo by actualizing the dream of making Anambra an oil-producing state in spite of the federal government intentions. My warning is that the cargo cultists around an oil refinery should be reminded that oil is a finite resource (as the sunflower logo of Orient Oil symbolizes) and that existing oil refineries in Nigeria are sitting dormant in disrepair whereas agriculture is a renewable resource, a gift that will go on giving forever.

I conclude with my tireless call for the revenue allocation formula to be changed constitutionally to guarantee that 10% of the annual budgets at the federal, state and local governments will be allocated directly to Nigerians to invest as they see fit, similar to the farm subsidies and business or research grants that all industrialized countries disburse constantly to their privileged citizens. In ten years, we will count the miles after the race.

As E.F. Schumacher put it in his classic, Small Is Beautiful: ‘…in agriculture and horticulture, we can interest ourselves in the perfection of production methods which are biologically sound, build up soil fertility, and produce health, beauty and permanence. Productivity will then look after itself.’ He goes on to demonstrate that if we plant one tree for every citizen of Nigeria every year, within 10 years we will have billions of new trees in Nigeria that could help to check erosion and desertification, provide food and beauty and create wealth without requiring a lot of work since the trees will generally look after themselves and also look after us as our best friends.

Governor Kayode Fayemi got the memo and I am impressed to hear that he just distributed half a billion naira to 140 unemployed youth who were retrained and funded to start their own farms in Ekiti state. Governor Peter Obi did get the memo too and distributed 100 million naira to unemployed youth to start their own businesses in Anambra. Comrade President Yaradua surely got the memo when he allocated 200 billion naira to be distributed to unemployed youth for start-ups before he died (and I agree with Baba Soyinka that his death should be investigated thoroughly).

Obasanjo and Okonjo-Iweala snatched the idea up when I first aired it in 2006 and proposed 50 billion naira grants just for cassava farmers and reserved 30% for women but I advised that it is not just for one crop and that women should get 50% of the funds. In reviewing my proposals for poverty eradication in his column in The Guardian, the socialist mathematician, Dr. Edwin Madunagu, agreed with some reservations and suggested that 10% of the budget is too small for this purpose. He may be right, my proposal said that it should be at least 10%.

I commend these tentative steps and urge policy makers not to make them a one off but an annual commitment and not to regard them as loans but treat them as grants. If this is done consistently at the federal, state and local government levels, we will no longer be trying to calculate the square root of minus one or zero with cargo cult mentalities. Obviously, we cannot do this systematically without democratically contesting for power on a progressive platform at the global, continental, regional, national, state and local levels and thereby use our abundant resources to empower the tremendous talents of our people.

Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.

Breast Cancer Epidemic in Nigeria

Brecan, Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria, reports the good work of raising awareness through workshops and adds (www.brecan.org ):

''Healthy breakfast was taken after the health talk. This was made up of tea/coffee with bread and butter, slice of cake, an egg, a glass of fruit juice (which was made up of watermelon, pineapple and banana) and water.'

They report that the rates of the cancer have increased 25% since the 1980s!

A simple Google search for 'breast cancer, butter' will show that there is research evidence that high fat foods are not recommended for breast cancer patients, especially butter, milk (especially the 'cream' that we call milk in Nigeria), white bread (almost the only type found in Naija) maybe fruit juices of the sugary type you have in Nigeria, possibly the kind of tea and coffee loaded with sugar and cream, plus a piece of cake (for a 'healthy' breakfast)!

See research reports of case studies from a Tanzania and other parts of the world:

http://foodforbreastcancer.com/foods/butter

Butter is not recommended for breast cancer

foodforbreastcancer.com

Butter is not recommended for breast cancer. Women in the Nurses' Health Study who consumed more butter during high school have been found to have a higher ris

Born Free? Are You Kidding Me?

By Biko Agozino

The movie, Born Free, was made in 1965 about safari hunters who killed a lion and ‘his’ lioness and adopted one of their four cubs while the other three were sent to zoos. They raised the adopted cub to adulthood and later released her back in the wild and tried to teach her how to survive on her own. Years later, they visited her and her cubs and were surprised to get a royal welcome. Some idea of freedom!

That theme of natural rights continues to be replayed in popular culture rather uncritically. For instance, Kid Rock has a song on the theme proclaiming that you can’t put chains around his feet because he was born free and he could reach the top of that mountain because, you guessed it, he was born free. Really?

Jean Jacques Rousseau theorized in political philosophy that man is born free but is everywhere in chains. That was his counter thesis to the original sin formulation of Thomas Hobbes according to which human beings are born as selfish bastards who require the Leviathan or benevolent dictatorship to keep them in check or life would remain nasty, brutish and short in the state of nature where might is right.

Rousseau and John Locke were of the view that human beings are good by nature and that is why they rationally came to the conclusion to give up some of their rights in return for the equal protection of all by the sovereign. A race of devils will be incapable of reaching the rational conclusion that the state of nature was not ideal and that the social contract was better, they concluded.

The American founding fathers were impressed by the ideas of natural rights, equality and liberty but as Condoleeza Rice asserted during her testimony to the Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, when they said that all men were created equal, they were not thinking of people like her (in terms of both gender and race).

For African Americans and the American Indian Natives and women generally, the constitution was content to compromise that they were less than full human beings for the purpose of allocating federal resources for a long time.

Paul Ryan is right in asserting that our rights come from the state of nature but he is mistaken to suggest that government should get out of the way for the protection of those rights because every right has been struggled over as a human right especially against stiff opposition by those who assume that they are more human than others – the poor, the women, the racial minorities, the gays – who are still constrained by visible and invisible chains but who remain human deserving human rights.

Thus, being born in chains does not mean that you are any less human than your compatriots who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. All are born chained to our mother’s umbilical cords: kings and queens, paupers and elites, men and women, gays and straights alike. We enjoy different regimes of human rights depending on the balance of forces in human history and the accident of our geographical locations but all of us were born stark naked and, without exception, chained to the baby mama.

Kid Rock was obviously just kidding when he sang that he was born free because no one is ever born free as a human being (although he may have been referring to drug addiction and all the enslaving chains associated with drugs). But for a major political party to adopt that song as the presidential campaign anthem calls for a sober reflection. If they claim to be born free, who do they suggest was born un-free?

No, Kid Rock and Republicans, seriously, you were not born free, you were born firmly attached to the umbilical cord of your mothers as Michael Moore joked in his autobiography, Here Comes Trouble; he said that he wailed like everyone of us when those superhero nurses severed his first guaranteed link to life after his birth, an honor sometimes reserved for the macho warrior father showing off in the maternity.

No human being is ever born free compared to the chicken or ‘lower animal’ that cracks open its own personhood shell or pops out from the womb and walks out already chirping in tribal tongues and running and feeding on its own.

Human beings are a different piece of work. We cannot even hold our own necks up for months, we have to depend on the mama glands too, then we need to learn to sit up before being taught to crawl, then walk before running, and before we go beyond blabbing about mama and dada to learn our ABC and 123, we learn the inconvenience of not wetting our diapers! Duh?

What are diapers for if not to be wet soggy? Before long we discover sex and symbolize maturity with matrimony (except if you want to marry the same sex which remains illegal in many states).

So you were ‘Born Free’ compared to whom? Compared to human beings who were born in chains or those who remain with the chains of the prison industrial complex clanging with every step?

Yeah, that is not just fairy tale, some of us had ancestors who were enslaved and who were enslaved just because their mama was in chains, nothing wrong with their human nature, just like the 99% shackled with twice the tax rate of 1%.

Of course chains are not racial in color and so Joe Biden was right in wondering if you promise to unchain or unshackle Wall Street, are you not suggesting that the shackles should be on the ankles of the middle class, white or black?

The Romney-Ryan Hood platform promises to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act that was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. Joe Biden suggested that they plan to unshackle the health insurance industry from regulation so that they can continue to refuse coverage to 40 million Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions; refuse women the preventive care coverage that they have a right to, yank young adults from their parental coverage, charge the elderly more for less coverage and hand over the hundreds of billions saved in agreement with healthcare providers back to millionaires as tax cuts; all in the name of free enterprise and because ‘corporations are people’.

Not even the big bad (or good, as you like it) Feds are ever without restraints given constitutional checks and balances and so why this fantasy about unchained market forces and the ‘idea’ of rights from nature? Freedom is not just an idea; regulation is not the same as a shackle; and civil society trumps the state of nature when it comes to the protection of rights! Check out life in the jungle today and compare with civil society if you are in doubt.

For the next four years, President Obama should put in place a job plan that will target the unacceptable unemployment rate among African Americans in particular and the poor working class Americans in general. Let him allocate $200 billion to be disbursed over four years at $50 billion per annum. On average, $1 billion will be given to each state annually to fund start ups for 1000 unemployed youth or 50,000 start ups at the cost of $1 million each. Multiply that with the number of employees that they are capable of hiring each year for the next four years!

Obama’s second term should also commit to ending the war on drugs that has seen millions of lives of poor youth, white and black, ruined over substances that are much less harmful than legal tobacco and alcohol. Let the unemployed youth grow and sell their marihuana legally and pay tax on their sales while we use education to get people to say no to drugs as we do with tobacco. Patients who need marijuana for chronic illnesses and recreational users in a democratic society deserve the freedom of choice that some people will give to rich corporations but not to people.

President Obama’s second term will be uneventful without a plan for African reparations in place from day one. All groups that have suffered great historical wrongs have received some form of reparation except people of African descent who suffered the greatest wrongs in history. This is one big ticket item that President Obama should promise, not because he is of African descent but, because it is the right thing to do.

Finally, the constitutional lawyer in President Obama should commit to abolition of the death penalty in America during his second term. Not everyone was born free but everyone deserves to have the right to life guaranteed as inalienable.

Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.