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.

Gambian Kongi's Harvest: Mass Executions

By Biko Agozino

Gambia has embarked on what Wole Soyinka indelibly condemned as Kongi's Harvest: Mass Executions.

President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria was reported as comparing the mass executions to the Rwanda genocide. All African states should avoid hypocrisy and appropriately respond to Gambia's display of barbarism by abolishing the death penalty in Africa the way Nelson Mandela did in South Africa at a time that the assassins of Chris Hani were still awaiting trial and could have been given the death penalty.

The reasons for abolishing the death penalty across Africa are:

1) The death penalty was imposed on Africans by colonial authorities and those colonizing countries have since abolished it in their own countries because the death penalty is barbaric and unconstitutional.

2) The death penalty leads to increased violence and homicide given that the states that have the death penalty also record higher rates of homicide. This is called the brutalization effect or the impact of state sanctioned killing on the psyche of citizens who tend to follow the example of the state by killing fellow citizens to settle disputes. Across Africa, the death penalty is no deterrent to violent crime maybe because the fear of the death penalty makes criminals to attempt to eliminate all witnesses.

3) The margin of error is huge in the death penalty and once executed, there is no way to correct the wrongful killing of innocent suspects like Ken Saro-Wiwa whereas a life sentence would give the innocent more chances of proving their innocence.

4) Violent criminals are more afraid of life sentences than the death penalty and some of them attempt suicide in prison rather than spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Life sentences would also allow society to attempt to reform dangerous criminals.

5) Nigeria should follow the good example of South Africa and immediately abolish the death penalty as contravening the human rights provisions in our constitution. Prof. Ben Nwabueze argued accordingly in his critique of the borrowing of the death penalty from the American Presidential Constitution by the drafters of the 1979 Nigerian Presidential Constitution.



6) The death penalty is biased against poor black men and is therefore arbitrary, cruel and unusual punishment.

For public discussions of the scholarly evidence, see the earlier post here: 

http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2012/02/public-sociology-on-death-penalty.html   

Biko Agozino

Jonathan urges Africa to respond to Jammeh’s threats Africa » Gambiahttp://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/jonathan-urges-africa-to-respond-to-jammehs-threats Friday, August 24, 2012 Reactions to President Yahya Jammeh’s threat that by the middle of next month (September 2012), all death penalties would have been carried out in The Gambia continues, with the latest coming from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan, who arrived in neighbouring Senegal on a 24-hour working visit, told journalists in Dakar on Thursday that the entire African continent “should respond” to Jammeh’s threats to implement the death penalty, Senegalese daily Rewmi reported yesterday. “Such an act would mean genocide in Africa, after that of Rwanda,” Jonathan was quoted as saying. Jonathan’s reaction comes a day after France also condemned such a threat, saying The Gambia has applied a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 1981. “France therefore urges Gambia to maintain this moratorium with a view toward the definitive abolition of the death penalty, and not to execute these death row prisoners. It also demands that Gambia commute all death sentences to custodial sentences,” France declared. The statement added: “France, in keeping with its opposition to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, believes that the death penalty is a cruel punishment and that its abolition contributes to strengthening human dignity.” It said considerable progress has been made in the fight to abolish the death penalty in recent years. In an address to the nation to mark the Muslim holy feast of Eid-al-Fitr, Jammeh said by the middle of next month (September 2012), all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter, though he did not give the exact number of the prison inmates currently on death row. “All punishments prescribed by law will be maintained in the country to ensure that criminals get what they deserve; that is, that those who kill are killed, and those who deserve to be put away from society are put away according to the dictates of the law,” Jammeh said.

SPORTS AS INDUSTRY

By Biko Agozino

Following the embarrassing showing of Nigeria at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, a Nigerian sports official proudly promised that the country will do better at the London Olympics by aiming for four medals or double the number of medals won in Beijing. Only four? Given that a Chinese official announced that the goal of his own country was to achieve 100 medals, I was surprised that the Nigerian official had such a low ambition for our own athletes. But after the London show of shamelessness by the Nigerian delegation, I stand corrected because that official knew something that I did not know about the lack of seriousness in the country regarding strategic preparedness for excellence in all fields.

The Guardian editorialized on August 16, 2012, and I opined as much on my Facebook page during the games, that the Sports Minister should do the honorable thing and resign before he is sacked for such a mediocre record after spending more than two billion naira to parade as one of the best dressed delegations. President Jonathan was reported also by The Guardian as calling for a retreat to plan the reorganization of sports in the country and to discuss the causes of the disastrous records of Nigeria in sporting contests recently. Here, I offer a few tips:

First of all, abolish the Ministry of Sports. The US, China, the UK, Russia and even proud Jamaica all have one thing in common – none of them has a Ministry of Sports - and yet they put Nigeria and many other big African countries to shame again and again at sporting contests. The staff of the Ministry of sports who have sporting experience should be redeployed after retraining to serve as coaches in educational institutions or they should be absorbed into other ministries.

Instead of a Ministry of Sports with huge estacodes for a waka-about Minister of Sports, channel more funding to schools for the development of sporting contests starting from the elementary and all the way to the university levels. Every elementary school should be equipped with a gym, basketball court, a tennis lawn, a beach volleyball sand pit, a football field with tracks; every town should have a swimming pool, every high school should have similar facilities and every university should be equipped with Olympic standard facilities in all sports.

Re-introduce the inter-house sporting competitions in schools, inter-school contests, university athletics contests with full scholarships for athletes to motivate them, then have the national leagues in all sports to keep them ready for international contests. Go beyond schools to award grants to private sporting clubs that will specialize in scouting talents and training them to get them ready to break world records. The clubs can enter into agreements with the athletes that they train for a small percentage of their earnings to be paid to the clubs to keep them sustainable.

I support the development of sports as an industry in which the child of poor parents with natural abilities and zero capital could be given the opportunity to pull the whole family out of poverty simply by playing the sport that he or she loves. Usain Bolt earns an estimated $20 million a year from running 9 seconds races and I am certain that if the talented youth in Nigeria have dedicated coaches in sprinting, many of them will give Bolt a run for his money in a very short time. 

The same goes for the long distance runners from East Africa, the tennis players from Europe and North America, the equestrian riders, the swimmers, the boxers, the basketball players, the footballers and the volleyball stars. Even acrobatics do not require a lot of equipments, nor do high jump, long jump, pole vaulting, javelin throwing, discuss and short-putt. Cycling is a common skill in Nigeria but no club exists to train poor youth to take on the best in the world and win the Tour de France and feed their family forever. All it takes is systematic daily practice rather than the folly of cramming lessons into a few weeks before competitions or exams.

Federal, State and Local Government executives should include at least 10% provisions in their annual budgets to be awarded directly to the people not only for the development of sporting facilities and training programs but also as grants for private citizens or cooperatives to set up their own farms or businesses, conduct research, pay for school fees, produce movies or music or manufacture sporting goods that would support the sporting talents of our blessed youth. Corporate citizens should also come up with sponsorships for athletes who excel in their fields.

Athletics is an industry that is not easily dominated by employers of labor because the athletes own themselves in most cases and act as free agents in search of better opportunities. If we refuse to invest in the youth of Nigeria simply because there is no loot there waiting to be embezzled by kleptocrats, more and more of our youth will be seen donning the colors of other countries and kicking our butts at international contests as Igudala did with the US basketball team. Team spirit is also a skill to be learned in all fields and it is a transferable skill that will benefit other aspects of national life.

As The Guardian pointed out in its editorial, sporting events usually unite Nigerians more than any other projects. At a time that ineptitude at all levels is threatening to tear the country apart, excellence in sports could be a national security priority to be taken seriously at the level of individuals who would be empowered to excel in their own interest and also in the national interest. If kidnappers, pick-pockets, terrorist bombers, bribe-takers, armed robbers, fake pastors and unemployed youth generally knew that the waist is made of money, they will not be using theirs simply to dance bongo, as one Igbo singer put it.

A brother shared an internet link where Transparency Nigeria has already outlined a regional strategy for national mobilization – target swimming clubs at the Niger Delta youth who would out-dive the Chinese and out-swim the Americans any day if they knew that there is a career in what comes naturally to them; target horse riding and archery to the Northern youth who would win every race with their Durban skills; target sprinting at Eastern youth whose distant cousin is no other than Usain Bolt; target ball players at the Westerners; distance runners could come from the Northerners; wrestlers and boxers from the East, etc.

My suggestion is that any such targets should be tempered with pragmatism because no matter where a Nigerian comes from, with the proper training, he or she will excel in any sport. No ethnic discrimination should be tolerated in the selection of representatives given that racism could have denied the US and the UK lots of medal opportunities won by black athletes if they had insisted on the ideology of white superiority.

More than half the medals won by the US and the Chinese teams in London were won by women. Also, the closest Nigeria came to medaling in London was the female relay team that came fourth. This means that we should avoid gender discrimination in sports and all other aspects of national development.

Finally, we should note that developing sports without developing education is not an option, hence the proposal above for sports to be developed as an integral part of the educational curriculum, the way it is done in the US and China. We could mandate that every sporting practice should start with 30 minutes lessons in English and Mathematics on a daily basis. Thus, we will not only aim for 100 medals at Rio 2016 but also aim for 100% pass in Mathematics and English exams as opposed to 80% failure currently.

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

My Award-Winning Documentary: Shouters and the Control Freak Empire

 

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi3129384217/

I have just learned that my film won the Best International Short Documentary at the 2011 Columbia Gorge International Film Festival (USA) and will be showcased at the 2012 Havana Film Festival this August:

‘This fascination led him (Tayo Ojoade) to co-direct Shouters and the 'Control Freak' Empire with Nigerian criminologist Professor Onwubiko Agozino. This short documentary which re-visits the 1917-1951 Prohibition Ordinance examines how Christianity, when infused with African cultural or religious practices, creates discords of power and class and so, he challenges laws that legislate against a belief system, questioning the effects of such laws for both the members of the faith and the general public. Shouters and the 'Control Freak' Empire questions power and social control through exposing the central conflict between Euro-centric and Afro-centric religions. It places these two elements side by side to give voice to the voiceless by exposing the schisms inherent in the unhappy marriage between the secular and the sacred.

'Shouters and the 'Control Freak' Empire has enjoyed local, regional and international audiences and has been highlighted on numerous occasions during the Shouter Baptist holiday. First screened at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2010, it went on to win a prize at the 2011 Colombia Gorge International Film Festival (USA). Later that same year it was screened both at the Portobello Film Festival (London) and the Montreal International Black Film Festival (Canada). This year, 2012, it has been selected by the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company for the Caribbean Film Showcase to take place at Havana, Cuba in August.

'Shouters and the 'Control Freak' Empire remains Ojoade's most widely screened film. He attributes this success to his own Trini-gerian heritage, a fact which deeply informed his passion for this piece. Nigerian by birth, Ojoade's interest piqued in Trinidad when he noted how Afro-Christian spirituality sometimes becomes rooted with African cultural practices and the "Shouter" faith attracts his interest precisely because of this. Upon discovering how the Shouter faith was once ostracised when Prohibition laws were implemented, Ojoade's cultural conscience was piqued and he conceived a film which addresses these issues.’

To read more, follow the link:

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/sunday-mix/Trini-gerian_Filmmaker_Makes_His_Mark-160927745.html

Prof advocates legalising marijuana

Trinidad Guardian: Published: 

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Melissa Doughty

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Melissa Doughty

Published: 

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Director of Africana Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Prof Onwubiko Agozino is calling for the legalisation of marijuana. He believes people who use/sell marijuana and may be arrested and sentenced to prison for it cannot be compared with one incarcerated for homicide. He also believes imprisoning someone for a marijuana offence exposes that individual to violent socialisation.

The right to sell marijuana, as in Netherlands or Portugal, he said, should also be decriminalised thereby allowing people to earn a living. Other illicit drugs such as cocaine, he said, should also be decriminalised, but through education, the public should be made alive to the the dangers.

“The war on drugs is a choice our leaders have made. Waging war on drugs is not working; what works is education. Marijuana never killed anybody. We should end the war on drugs, legalise marijuana and allow the young people here in Trinidad and Tobago to grow their little marijuana and make a decent living and pay some taxes,” he said.

Agozino’s comments came as he delivered the keynote address at the opening day of the 14th Biannual International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA). The conference invites the opinions and expertise of activists, academics, journalists, practitioners, people currently or formerly imprisoned, survivors of State and personal harm and others from across the world working toward the abolition of imprisonment, the penal system, and the prison industrial complex.

Held in conjunction with the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus, the conference is being hosted at the university’s Learning Resource Centre for participants from Jamaica, the USA, UK and T&T.

President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Sir Dennis Byron chaired the panel on Criminal to Reparative Law. Agozino also recommends the lifting of the death penalty. He described as ‘shameful’ that the death penalty is being retained in the constitutions of Caribbean countries. He said the death penalty encourages one to kill one’s wife or friend as a form of punishment.

“The people who imposed the death penalty on us, the Europeans, have all abolished it. We did not make the law to kill our own people as punishment. That is a European, modern fetish of control-freak technology. “As part of the decolonisation our people have been waging for centuries we should say enough to the death penalty as punishment. I say to you, people of Trinidad, you are the new Pharaohs of the age if you make it known that you do not want the death penalty any more,” he said.

Criminologists, he said, should advocate for the British to apologise and pay reparation to the Shouter Baptists for the 1917 Ordinance which prohibited Shouter Baptists from their form of worship. Agozino’s address, “Control-Freak Criminology and Penal Abolitionism” called for the discipline to take a peacemaking and lovemaking perspective as espoused by philosopher and criminologist Harold Pepinsky and others.