Details of My New Book on Arthur Nwankwo

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ISBN: 978-2904-53-8 (Paper); 978-2904-54-6 (Hard Cover) First Edition (C) Agozino 2016

Blurb:

This book situates the socio-political thought of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo within the paradigm of Africana Studies as a way of encouraging more scholars in the field to pay more attention to contributions from scholars based in Africa. At the same time, scholars in African Studies should radicalize the field by embracing the revolutionary field of Africana Studies to make all the respected African Studies Institute in the world to evolve into Africana Studies Institutes. Nwankwo’s revolutionary theory and praxis are challenging to academic scholars in Africa who appear to be satisfied with quoting theorists from Europe without adequate originality in the development of indigenous knowledge systems for the explanation and transformation of the enduring conditions in Africa. This book differs from the previous tributes to Nwankwo by his admirers in the sense that this is not a tribute but a constructive critique and also because this book goes beyond the theoretical and historical texts of Nwankwo to read his creative writings inter-textually.

Praise for the book:

“… critically incisive study of outstanding intellectuel engagé Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo by Biko Agozino, one of the most prolific and accomplished scholars of his generation.”  - Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Visiting Professor in Graduate Programme of Constitutional Law, Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil.

"The book is very informative, lucid and analytical. It provides a rigorous analysis of one of Nigeria's and Africa's foremost activist and revolutionary (Arthur Nwankwo) who challenged the oppressive and unjust rule of military and civilian regimes in Nigeria. Furthermore, the book elucidates the complexity of the Nigerian state and the position of the Igbo Nation. The book is compulsory reading for all those interested in both the Nigerian and African project." Professor Akpan Hogan Ekpo, Director General, West African Institute For Financial And Economic Management (WAIFEM), Central Bank of Nigeria Learning Centre and Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

‘This is the first systematic study of the ideas and praxis of Arthur Nwankwo. Biko took a studied and methodical approach to Nwankwo's worldview and political practice in a critical and yet fair minded way. It is an inspiring work in the realm of African political thought which scholars and activists will find useful.’ Professor Abubakar Momoh, Director of the National Electoral Institute, Abuja, and Professor of Political Science, Lagos State University, Lagos.

‘The book Critical, Creative and Centered Scholar-Activism: The Fourth Dimensionalism of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo by Professor Agozino presents a brilliant, refreshingly in-depth understanding of the works of the great African intellectual, Arthur Nwankwo. The book provides uncommon insight into the possible motivations and reasoning behind certain beliefs of Dr. Arthur Nwankwo as espoused through some of his published works. Reading through Professor Agozino's work should remind the present and future generation of Africans, that life, to be well lived must be founded on values, principles and moral convictions. Writing the book must clearly have been a sacrificial exercise embarked upon for the sole purpose of bringing what should come to light, to light. Generations to come owe a mountain of debt to professor Agozino for this selfless act.’ Dr. Chika Ezeanya, Assistant Professor of African Business Studies, University of Rwanda, Kigali.

‘It seems safe to say that  CRITICAL, CREATIVE AND CENTRED SCHOLAR ACTIVISM: THE FOURTH DIMENSIONALISM OF AGWUNCHA ARTHUR NWANKWO will be one of the best social science books of the year in Nigeria and may be of the decade. Biko, arguably one of the worlds leading experts on sociology and Africana Studies, made a powerful case for Afrocentricity: "AFROCENTRICITY … DOES NOT START FROM THE PREMISE THAT EUROCENTRICISM IS ALWAYS WRONG BUT FROM THE FACT THAT WHATEVER IS THE FOCUS OF ANY SCHOLARSHIP SHOULD BE PLACED AT THE CENTRE OF SUCH SCHOLARSHIP". By this, Afrocentricity as an approach, is elevated to a global principle with broader human implications.’ Dr. Augustine Obelagu Agu, Retired Senior Social Policy Officer, UNICEF, Independent Policy Consultant, Texas, USA.

‘I enjoyed reading every single line of your work; and I’m quite surprised that you had to produce this solid work in 2 months. That’s an incredible turn out time for an incisive scholarly work of this nature. It’s a big lesson for me who has been playing around endlessly with two manuscripts for years. … Your big brain is, therefore, also partly responsible for the global warming.’ Dr. Ifeanyi Ezeonu, Professor of Sociology, Brock University, Canada. 

About the Author:

Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. He is the author of the following books - Today Na Today (Poetry), 2013; The Debt Penalty (Play), 2010; ADAM: Africana Drug-Free Alternative Medicine, 2006; Counter-Colonial Criminology, 2003; Pan African Issues in Crime and Justice (co-edited), 2004; Nigeria: Democratising a Militarised Civil Society, (co-authored) 2001; Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research (edited), 2000; and Black Women and the Criminal Justice System, 1997. Also Director-Producer-Editor of Reparative Justice, 30 minutes, color, African Independent Television, Lagos, Nigeria, 2002; Director-Producer of CLR James: The Black Jacobins Sociology Series, 2008; Director-Producer, 'Shouters and the Control Freak Empire', Winner of the Best International Short Documentary, Columbia Gorge Film Festival, USA, 2011. Editor-In-Chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, and Series Editor, Ashgate Publishers Interdisciplinary Research Series in Ethnic, Gender and Class Relations. Ph.D. (Edinburgh); MPhil. (Cambridge); B.Sc. First Class Hons (Calabar).

Book Review Editors of Journals who wish to receive review copies and those who wish to order copies and or arrange readings should contact the publishers or the author directly:

Publishers Contact: Fourth Dimension Publishing Co. Ltd, House 8, First Avenue, City Layout, New Haven, Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. Phone: +2348035511487; +2348055790009; email: chairman@arthurnwankwo.com or Arthur.nwankwo@yahoo.com www.arthurnwankwo.com

 

Author Contact: Dr. Biko Agozino, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, 225 Stanger Street, 562 McBryde Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24073; Phone: 1-540-231-7699 (Office); Fax: 1-540-231-3860. Email: bagozino@gmail.com or agozino@vt.edu blogsite: www.massliteracy.blogspot.com

Press Release on Black Unemployment

Press Release: African Criminology and Justice Association Policy Proposal on Black Unemployment

The unemployment rate for African Americans (16.7%) has been reported to be at its highest level since 1984.[i] At nearly double the national average (9.1%) or over double the rate for white Americans (8%), the members of the African Criminology and Justice Association, meeting in Washington DC, November 2011, hereby vote to propose feasible policies for the elimination of such a scandalous level of unemployment among African Americans in particular and Africans in general who were always at the receiving end of hardship even in 1984 when unemployment was lower than it is today.

Source: Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011.

We disagree with the rightwing proposal of Mr. Arthur Laffer, chairman of Laffer Associates, who is co-author, with Stephen Moore, of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).[ii] In an opinion editorial article published in The Wall Street Journal of September 12, 2011, Mr. Laffer called for the creation of ‘Enterprize Zones’ in the inner cities where a) There should be zero payroll tax on employers employing people who live in the inner city zone; b) The minimum wage legislation would be suspended; c) Building codes in the zone should be audited quickly with the view not to constrain entrepreneurs and union membership requirements should be suspended; and d) Profits from the zone should be taxed at one-third the normal tax rate.

Such a policy of sweat-shop zones in American inner cities would make matters worse by turning our fellow citizens into working poor who would be trapped in unsafe working conditions with less than minimum wages while corporate fat cats would enjoy tax holidays. Mr. Laffer’s ludicrous suggestions would only take African Americans back to the years of share-cropping with all the attendant oppression, exploitation and impunity. There must be a better way for African Americans and indeed for all people of African descent.

First of all, we call on President Obama and all the presidents of African countries to look beyond the Jobs Bill and consider an entrepreneurship bill for African Americans and all Africans. Obama needs to set aside at least $50 billion from the proposed Jobs Bill (estimated at $470b) to be disbursed to unemployed Americans to enable them to set up their own small and medium businesses. The same way that the government gives out huge grants as agricultural subsidies and business start-ups for the richest one per cent, we call on the government to initiate enterprise subsidies for the urban poor. 

We commend the governor of Anambra State in Nigeria, Mr. Peter Obi, for disbursing one hundred million naira to a thousand unemployed youth after their training to help them to be self-employed. We urge him to make this an annual part of the budget and not a one off and to increase the size of the checks given to some to enable them to become medium to large-scale entrepreneurs. Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State in Nigeria has also implemented a similar grants program worth about fifty million naira while the federal government announced that it has fifty billion naira set aside for similar purposes. 

We condemn the plan of Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich to turn poor inner city school children into janitors and toilet cleaners for their schools in the guise of training them as apprentices on the assumption that poor children have no work ethics even though poor people are the hardest working people.

The entrepreneurship policy we advocate will work as follows: select 1000 unemployed citizens from each state and send them to be trained as apprentices by successful businesses. On completion of the short apprenticeship, award each of them one million dollars to set up their own enterprises. If each of them goes on to employ 100 people, that will be 5,000,000 new jobs every year! Repeat this every year and we will be creating millions of jobs every decade while making sure that the wealth created will stay in our communities to help transform the urban neighborhoods into zones of prosperity. The Hip Hop generation has been telling us that they are not into seeking jobs to work for Massa anymore, they want to be their own bosses and our simple and practical proposal will help to do this quickly and save the economy too. The government already does this to bail out Wall Street, it is time to bail out the street corner too.

We support the current Occupy Movement that is sweeping across the world but we go beyond the call to occupy Wall Street and to occupy cities to call for the occupation of the prison industrial complex. The excessive incarceration of African Americans and other minorities is helping to fuel to job crisis because corporations that rely on prison labor would be unlikely to hire free labor until we end the inhumanity of what Michelle Alexander[iii] aptly dubbed The New Jim Crow and free the captives from the unjust drug wars, decriminalize all drugs and restore the voting rights of all felons.

Across Africa, unemployed youth are increasingly being drawn into violent armed robbery and kidnapping for ransom gangs. We believe that have every African state implement our entrepreneurship policy proposal would result in massive wealth creation and possible reduction of street violence across Africa. Every industrialized country gives out massive grants to spur entrepreneurship while African countries neglect the creative talents that abound in Africa and only call on developed countries to end subsidies to their own entrepreneurs.

With the decriminalization of drugs and the ending of the war against African Americans in the guise of the war on drugs, as we have called for in a previous Press Release, many of the youth who may not get grants to start their own businesses could grow their own marijuana and sell them legally to medical patients and recreational users alike, pay taxes on their sales, create jobs that will pay well and end the ‘homey-cidal’ violence that is associated with the war on drugs. We can rely on education to get our fellow citizens to say no to drugs the same way we do with more dangerous drugs like alcohol and tobacco which kill more people than all the illicit drugs put together.[iv]

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[i] ‘Black unemployment at highest level in 27-years’ Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2011.

[ii] Arthur, Laffer, ‘How to Fight Black Unemployment: The tragedy of the failed stimulus is felt hard in minority communities. There's a better way.’ Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011.

[iii] Alexander, M. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York, New Press, 2010.

[iv] Rieman, J. (1979). The Rich Get Rich and The Poor Get Poorer. New York: Wiley.

Naipaul's Ingratitude

Naipaul's Ingratitude

Dr Onwubiko Agozino Mon, 22 Nov 10

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Naipaul's problem is primarily that of ingratitude, which he probably inherited from his father. According to the literary theorist and former Principal of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, Dr Bhoe Tewarie, if Mr Biswas was a little more grateful to all the people who were trying to help him, he may have been a more successful person in life.

The son is similarly dismissive of his debts to the Caribbean, to Oxford ('Oxford taught me nothing'), to his parents, wife, and partners, as well as to India and to Africa. The lesson for younger writers is to learn the habit of gratitude and eschew the white-superiorism that might interfere with their writings, because even good prose would not be enough to attract and retain significant readership when the personality and ideology are obnoxious and turn-offish.
Yet, we must not throw away the baby with the bath water. As a graduate student in Edinburgh University in the early 1990s, I received my first Naipaul book, 'India: A Million Mutinies Now', from my book club, Quality Paperback Series. However, before I could read the book, an English friend spoiled it for me by asking why I even bothered buying a Naipaul book given the man's well-known racism in the way he portrayed Indians and Africans as dirty and diseased and with no redeeming qualities. The comment discouraged me from reading the book at the time, but when I finally did ten years later before a trip to India, I learned quite a bit from it.
For instance, Naipaul revealed in the book that when Gandhi went to live in South Africa after law school in England, he was 'politically naive'. Now, I have never heard anyone describe the great Gandhi as being naive, and so I read on. According to Naipaul, when Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he actually believed that colonialism was a good thing, but the Zulus soon reeducated him. Like many good writers, he did not go into detail about what lesson Gandhi learned from the Zulus, and so I had to go and find out for myself by reading 'Gandhi: the Autobiography'.
In that book, Gandhi himself agreed that he was a product of British education who believed that the white man was in Africa to bring civilization to the dark continent. He believed that the Zulus were lazy, and that that was why they were always going on strike. He hoped that the British would teach them the ethics of hard work so that they could become a little more civilized like the Indian traders who had invited him to come and fight for them against discrimination by the British, who as it happened, lumped the Indians together with the natives.
To Gandhi's surprise, the Zulu launched an uprising against the British and he quickly joined the British Army; being commissioned Sergeant Major Gandhi in the process. He was put in charge of a group of Indian volunteer nurses supporting the British army. Perhaps Gandhi wished for some of the British officers to be wounded, so that he and his fellow Indians would get an opportunity to treat them and thereby show the British that Indian nurses were every bit as effective as British ones. He probably also hoped to persuade them that Indians should not be categorised in the same level with Africans.
But when all the wounded turned out to be Zulus, Gandhi was frustrated and started asking them why they were sitting there like sissies and taking the beatings, instead of fighting back like men. They laughed at Gandhi and told him that they were fighting back all right, but that they were fighting back non-violently by refusing to pay taxes to a government that did not represent them, and by refusing to work for employers who exploited them.
Naipul narrates how Gandhi took this lesson back to India and used it to change the national liberation strategy that was predominantly the militaristic strategy of mutinies which the British easily defeated through the war of manicures in the past. Now, the Indians started using the non-violent strategy of refusing to buy salt when the prices were inflated (they made their own salt) and refusing to buy British cotton when the prices were hiked up (they wove their own loin clothes).
The nonviolent methods proved more effective in winning Indian independence, and Kwame Nkrumah later adopted similar tactics (Positive Action) for the independence of Ghana, but emphasized that the strategy was an African one in its own right. Although the Civil Rights Movement in America adopted this philosophy, the Martin Luther King Jr Museum in Atlanta still mistakenly attributes it to Gandhi, without adding that Gandhi himself attributed it to Africans. A graduate student from Howard university told me that the day after she heard me make this point at a recent Association of Black Sociologists meeting in Atlanta, she went to the museum and could not resist correcting a parent who was explaining to a child that MLK borrowed non-violence from Gandhi.
Other surprising lessons that I have learned from Naipul's India include the fact that the Black Panther Party influenced the lowest caste in India, the Daliths, to form the Dalith Panthers Party. He also explained that arranged marriages are more prestigious in India than what they call 'love matches'. He has a fascinating chapter on a monthly magazine, Indian Woman, that is published by a man, but is very successful among women because of its ability to involve the readers in the interactive development of soap-opera-like themes. When I arrived New Delhi in 2004, the first thing I bought was a copy of Indian Woman, and not surprisingly, it came with a free gift: a tampon! Some lesson in marketing.
I have since bought other Naipaul books, but I must confess that I have never read any of them from cover to cover. Am I alone in finding his style a touch boring? This might have to do with the attitude of the author to his audience, and since postmodernists have proclaimed the death of the author with the arrival of the reader who is free to interpret the work as he/she feels, I agree with those who have pointed out that when it comes down to a competition for my time, there are choice pieces of literature that I have prioritized over those of Naipaul. Yet, I will not deny that it is possible to learn something new, even from an unusual Naipaul source. I have not read his new critique of Africa but I will not rule out doing so someday.
It is not enough to condemn Naipaul's racism and snobbishness. We need to encourage more writers to dwell on the positive contributions that Africans have made, and continue to make to world civilization- Europe, the Caribbean, the Americans and beyond- even while critiquing the negative remnants of centuries of slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism in constructive ways that would help us to usher in a greater Africa, the Renascent Africa that Azikiwe announced in 1937 while cursing the 'Old Africa' for blocking progress.