Libya Minus One

Libya­­­ Minus One

By Biko Agozino

‘If a continuous function is observed to be positive at a certain point in time, and then observed to be negative at a later point, then there must be at least one point between the two observed points where the function is zero, where it crosses the line separating the positive sphere from the negative sphere. That point of “transition,” that critical point, can always be determined to any degree of approximation desired. I remember this theorem because it is true not only for mathematical functions but also for historical processes. It is, in particular, true for Libya – and, of course, Egypt’. Madunagu, March 17, The Guardian.

Edwin Madunagu has taken the unprecedented step of setting a problem to be solved by his teaming readers instead of attempting to provide all the answers as usual. As someone who hardly ever misses reading his weekly column, I cannot wait to weigh in with an attempt to answer his question about when Gaddafi’s Libyan Revolution passed the point of transition from being a positive event, if ever it was, to become a negative one. My very limited knowledge of mathematics will probably result in errors here that I am sure a mathematician like Madunagu would forgive and correct.

An internet search tells me that zero was the newest number borrowed by European mathematicians because the African inventors of geometry dealt with real construction problems like the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt and so did not have to worry about a zero pyramid or a minus one pyramid for that matter. The ancient Egyptians, of course, knew about the quantity zero and represented it with the symbol, cypher, as the code for the body when the soul had departed to the world of the ancestors to continue its life in eternity, a condition that is far from zero life or minus one life. The Arabs later called this number safir before the Greeks learned of it and called it zero. An Indian finally used the notation 0 to represent it and the number has revolutionized mathematics both as a numeral and as a place-holder as in 101. Roman numerals still do not have a zero but their numbering system is consequently cumbersome.

Mathematicians have written theses on the square root of minus one and concluded that it is an irrational number that is assumed for the sake of argumentation but Cheikh Anta Diop concluded convincingly that there was no need to go to negative functions in search of irrational numbers because the ancient Egyptians already knew that the number two, though positive, remains an irrational number because it has no rational square root that would yield the number two when multiplied by itself. We may never discover the square root of minus one but we know that there is no such thing as a zero or minus one person, nor zero or minus one country.

I wish to contribute to the solution by starting with a concrete reformulation of the abstract theorem of Olubummo as summarized above by Madunagu. Mathematicians are always proud of the exactness of their science because one plus one is always equal to two. But what if the quantity in the theorem is one woman plus one cruise missile? Surely, the answer is not two! Two objects; two things; two creatures; two phenomena? Not at all, the answer remains one woman and one cruise missile. Even if the missile explodes and kills the woman, the resulting sum is not zero given that there are many more where they came from. In other words, it is logically difficult to find a minus one human being or minus one cruise missile as a negative function that passed through the hypothetical transition point of zero.

Similarly, Libya cannot be said to have moved from a positive function to a zero and finally to a negative function as an explanation for the mass uprising that quickly turned into an armed insurrection, leading to a ‘humanitarian’ intervention by NATO forces to enforce a UN no-fly zone (no-fly suggests zero flying but paradoxically, they fly numerous sorties over the no-fly zone) that the African Union urged to be halted for a comprehensive cease-fire and that Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin dismissed as a call to crusade, while the Arab League had second thoughts about supporting it earlier. I am sure that you have heard the joke: if a vegetarian lives on vegetables, what does a humanitarian live on?

Seriously, Libya cannot be said to be a zero nation or a failing (negative) one given that the country has been consistently ranked highest among African countries on the Human Development Index of the UNDP. With only six million people, however, the size of the population of Libya is equal to or less than that of Lagos state in Nigeria and so the fact that the health, education, transportation, employment, housing and military infrastructures of the country are much better than those of most African countries can only be expected, given the huge oil and gas revenues accruing to the country, the people deserve to expect more.

Gaddafi, like any leader in the world, like any individual human being, is full contradictions that resulted in many mistakes but he is far from zero or a negative function as a human being or leader. He will always be remembered as the African leader who has pushed the project of African Union government more energetically than almost all others with the significant exception of Nkrumah. Rather than always focusing on their micro-nationalism, progressive Africans should contribute to the campaign for African Union government to help Africans prevent any attempts at genocidal violence internally and rule out foreign military interventions that have contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa over the years.

Without recounting the achievements of Gaddafi and his errors in the past four decades, I agree with those Libyans who say that 41 years in office must be more than enough for him and so he should step down and allow a democratic election to choose his successor in a free and fair election. The rebels who reportedly killed black Africans and labeled them mercenaries before inviting foreigners to bomb their own country should be ordered by the UN to back off and lay down their arms while Gaddafi should order the troops back to the barracks and allow the formation of political parties, the draft of a new constitution with provisions for equal representation of men and women in the government and a general election in which any African should be allowed to move to the state of Libya and contest for office, work, study or do business as an African Union government citizenship model to be emulated across Africa. It was reported that when the demonstrations started in Libya, Gaddafi joined the demonstration and declared his support for the revolution. If this report is true, he should step back from his defiance and re-embrace the legitimate uprising of the masses so long as the opposition sticks to non-violent methods of democratic struggles.

In conclusion, the reason why the masses have risen up to demand for increased democratization of their societies is not because the governments of North Africa are zero or negative in their function but because, as CLR James pointed out, human beings are not like lower animals that may be satisfied with food and shelter, human beings deserve a say in how their society is governed and they will demand this irrespective of the intentions or records of the rulers. This is not due to the influence of outside or domestic agitators but the result of human consciousness that problems of democracy could only be solved through greater democracy and not less.

President Obama made a similar point in his speech in Cairo in 2009 and he should be reminded of this doctrine of his and urged to back away from the blunder of being the first black president of America only to authorize the bombing of Africa supposedly to aid democratization. The African philosophy of non-violence is a proven better alternative strategy for democratic struggles worldwide. As Horace Campbell has argued in his book on the method of organization that made the election of Obama possible and in his essays on the North African mass uprisings, what is at work is the African Fractal technology of non-lineal geometry characterized by self-similarity, recursion, self-organization, infinity, and scaling of far from equilibrium states of orderly chaos that will be difficult for any Cartesian geometry of militaristic or monetary lineal power to defeat, distort, destroy or neutralize with bribery or delusions of humanitarianism.

Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA. Agozino@vt.edu

Obama's Moral Victory

Obama's Moral Victory

Dr Biko AgozinoMon, 29 Nov 2010

Obama's star has not faded at all, contrary to some speculations, it continues to shine bright, but many viewers are deliberately wearing blinkers, and are blinded by hate and anger and cannot see that in reality, we are witnessing one of the most historic presidencies of all time. In two years, Obama has achieved more than most presidents have achieved in four years, despite having to deal with intense opposition, not only from the other party, but also from within his own.

He has passed the biggest health reform act of all time in American history to extend health coverage to millions of Americans, but the Tea Party activists and some so-called Bluedog Democrats campaigned against what they dubbed 'Obama Care'.  Well, 70% of Tea Party candidates lost in the recent midterm elections, as well as most of the Bluedog Democrats. The surprising thing is that the Tea Party losers are prancing about claiming victory and the humble Obama was forced to concede that he got a Schellacking. What Schellacking?

Obama promised to end the war in Iraq responsibly, and he is on his way to accomplishing this with over 100,000 US troops removed from harm's way; with the remaining 50,000 scheduled to leave Iraq by August 2011. This is also the time that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would commence in earnest.  Stanley McKrystal, the military commander in Afghanistan who disagreed his Commander in Chief was wisely fired and replaced. It is an example of the African philosophy of non-violence which Obama exhibited in opposing a war of choice that America was fighting even while he was just a candidate. He went on to win the election by beating the decorated war veteran John McCain who was out of touch with the mood of the electorate.

Obama has lowered taxes for the middle class several times in his two years in office, by reducing the rates of federal tax with-holding from earnings. He has also used the stimulus package to save the American banking system and the car manufacturing industry; saving jobs while also making a profit of over $28 billion dollars on the interests from the loans.

Obama announced a plan to close Guantanamo Bay on day one, but he has been blocked by ideologues who do not want to see suspects tried in civilian courts, and jailed in conventional prisons if convicted. He has given Cuban Americans greater opportunity to remit money to their families in Cuba, and to visit them without undue restriction. He has reached out to Muslims to open dialogues and offer intellectual and moral leadership rather than the threat of force alone. Obama has helped many Americans to save their homes or to buy a home with the $8,000 tax credit to new home buyers, and he has increased the grants to those who want to go to university to improve their skills.

The reason why many Americans are angry with Obama is because he inherited the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, and many have amnesia of the fact that this mess was created by the Republicans over eight years, turning record surpluses into record deficits by giving huge tax cuts to the richest 2% of the population, and by waging a wasteful war of choice.

Now that Obama has pushed the American family car out from the deep ditch into which the reckless Republicans plunged it, they swagger back and ask to be given the key again. He is right to tell them to get in the passenger seat because it is obvious that, as one West Indian calypsonian once put it, their drivers can't drive!

Many are blaming Obama for trying to reach a compromise with the other party, but he is right to do so. There are liberals in the Republican party just as there are conservative Democrats.  His job description says that he is President of the United states of America, and not just for his party, his race, or his friends alone.

Once the unemployment rate is reduced significantly, many Americans would see Obama more for his accomplishments. He might even be able to reduce unemployment further by giving billions of dollars to fund business start-ups for the unemployed.

However, he still needs to deliver a policy success for people of African descent, specifically by endowing the slavery reparations fund, ending capital punishment in America, and ending the war on drugs in the next two years to guarantee that his Presidency would rank among the best ever.

Passing the funding in Congress for the damages won by African American farmers against the department of Agriculture despite calculated racist insults from several Teabaggers in congress is an indication that the Obama presidency will yet deliver more historic achievements for the American people.

An earlier version of this opinion was published in caribbeanicon.com in response to an editorial opinion suggesting the contrary.

For Achebe @ 80: Tulu Ugo

ELECHI AMADI’S COLONIALIST CRITICISM OF ACHEBE

By Biko Agozino, Ph.D.

I enjoyed reading the interview of Elechi Amadi by

James Eze in The Sun in October 2004. I wish to thank Amadi

for sharing the open secret of his success as a

writer: you need to read hundreds, and he repeated,

hundreds of novels before you can master that art form

and venture to become a successful novelist. I hope

that this simple lesson will be encouraged in many

more high schools by requiring students to read for

pleasure beyond their textbooks.

As a high school kid, I read some of Amadi’s novels

and books for pleasure and marveled at his ability to

move my emotion in sympathy with his characters. I

believe that it was his The Great Ponds that nearly

drove me to tears in sympathy with the people dying in

droves after someone swore an oath claiming a piece of

land that was in dispute between two villages. The

oath ended the bloody warfare but the mass suffering

from what we can suspect to be cholera (but which the

author represented as punishment from the gods) was

too much for a kid to take.

In the interview, Amadi was wrong in assuming that he is the first to

accuse Achebe of ‘pandering to the white man’. This

question is raised frequently on the internet by

university students of World Literature who argue that

Achebe did not accomplish his stated objective in

Things Fall Apart. As Achebe stated this objective

shortly after the publication of the novel, his aim

was: "to help my society regain belief in itself, and

put away the complexes of denigration and self

abasement."

Like Amadi, the students point out that the white man

won the struggle and Okonkwo’s people were humiliated

and they wonder how that could be uplifting to the

people of Umuofia. The question is whether Achebe was

pandering to the white man by portraying him as

dominant or whether he was reporting the reality of

the colonial and the neo-colonial situations in

Africa? Is it an insult to Africans for someone to

tell them that we are still under the domination of

Europeans? How do you ‘help’ a people under domination

to regain self-respect if it is taboo to tell them the

home truth that they remain under domination? Is it

more empowering to explain everything in terms of the

anger of the gods?

In the work of Amadi the white man is almost

completely absent but the author panders to

superstitious beliefs in gods and goddesses. Is it not

the case that Achebe was rendering a more urgent

service to the people by telling them a few home

truths? For instance, what if the white man had come

to The Great Ponds of Amadi and diagnosed the cholera

that was wiping them out and advised them to boil

their drinking water and adopt sanitation measures to

save more lives, could that be dismissed by Amadi as

the triumph of Western medicine and therefore an

insult to his people? Achebe wisely saw the need for

us to send our children to the white man’s school to

learn his wisdom for our own purposes.

In other words, why should Amadi keep silent on the

colonial struggle in his own work and now try to

lampoon Achebe for addressing the struggle and

correctly concluding that our people have suffered

major set-backs? Achebe claims that he was named after

the husband of Queen Victoria, Albert, but that when

he went to visit the Victoria Falls in East Africa,

some petty colonial official tried to segregate him on

the tour bus by asking him to move to the back but he

refused and told him that in Nigeria we sit where we

like on a bus. I do not think that such is the

attitude of someone who would pander to racist

Europeans.

Apart from this point on realism, I suspect that Amadi

missed a secret in Achebe’s uses of European

characters in his novels. I suspect that this is also

a clever marketing ploy to get more readers worldwide

beyond the place of origin of the author. Reading

books without a character that you can identify with

could be fun but it could be even more fun when you

find characters that you can identify with. Beyond

Africa, readers might find it difficult to identify

with Amadi’s attempts to mystify the quite common

death of young men at a time that life expectancy was

so low in The Concubine or the senseless blood-letting

in The Great Ponds of interethnic wars that continue

to afflict sections of our society today.

As Biodun Jeyifo argued in The Truthful Lie, we need

more writers who would contribute to the

demystification of our crises and thereby contribute

to our search for solutions. Achebe could have blamed

Okonkwo’s death on some god or goddess, but he made it

clear that he took his own life with his own hands and

severely criticized him for killing Ikemefuna to

appease some god.

I believe that the work of demystification runs

through Achebe’s body of works in such a way that

after reading any of his books, we are encouraged to

seek human solutions to human problems rather than run

to flawed places of worship for answers to mundane

questions. The point of Achebe is that even though we

are a conquered people, the conquerors are not

perfect; even though we should learn the wisdom of the

conquerors, it does not follow that we should abandon

our ancient peace-loving ways either.

I use the occasion of Achebe’s 80 birthday to re-circulate this response as my contribution to the good wishes for our father, Chinualumogu nwa Anichebe! May your days be longer, Odenigbo, more ink to your printers; we are watching those who are watching you; keep on going, no shaking!

Dr. Biko Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Against War on African Americans

RESOLUTION AGAINST THE WAR ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

By Biko Agozino

Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies Program, Virginia Tech,

Blacksburg, VA 24061, agozino@vt.edu 1-540-231-7699

Contrary to the claim by Time magazine that  the war on drugs, the longest war that has cost American taxpayers $2.5 trillion over 40 years, has ‘no clear enemy’,[1] the NAACP in 2010 rightly condemned the war on drugs as a racist war against African Americans and against the poor generally.[2] Californian voters have also proposed the legalization of marijuana to avoid the unnecessary criminalization of otherwise law-abiding responsible adults, aid the sick who need the drug and create fair employment opportunities and wealth for the people and tax revenues for the state.[3]

The intensifying violence among poor urban youth across America, the Caribbean, South America, South East Asia and Africa have all been linked to struggles over the control of the lucrative illicit drugs trade that governments could tax for revenue to support education, health and social services while saving on unnecessary repressive enforcement. The attempt to arrest a single drug lord in Jamaica for extradition to the US resulted in the death of nearly 80 innocent Jamaicans in 2010 and the war on drugs in Mexico has claimed more than 30,000 lives in three years while a similar attempt to make Thailand ‘drug-free’ in 2003 resulted in the extra judicial killing of 2800 people. Not surprisingly, three former South American presidents, including the eminent sociologist, Dr. Cardozo of Brazil, issued a policy statement in 2009 denouncing the war on drugs as a costly failure that should be abandoned.

The Drug Czar of the Obama administration, Gil Kierekowski, in 2009 announced that the war on drugs was inconsistent with the goals of a democratically elected government that should be serving the people and not waging war against its own citizens but insisted that there is no need for a change in policy except the stopping of the raids on medical marijuana dispensers in states that approve of the legal prescription of the drug for patients and promised only a change in language.[4]

Research by Human Rights Watch in 2010 reported that “blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison … federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men.”[5]

Based on the available overwhelming evidence, there is no doubt that the war on drugs is a war against African American men and women primarily and we call on the Obama administration to immediately end this injustice and free the drugs war prisoners who are in prison for no violent offences.

We declare that the war on drugs is part of the systematic processes to strip African Americans, Hispanics and the poor generally of the constitutionally guaranteed right to equal protection and return them to prison slave plantations where their labor is exploited cheaply by the industrial complex and we call on President Obama to abolish this racist affront to democracy without further delay the same way that President Lincoln proclaimed the abolition of slavery with a stroke of the pen.

As educators, we are confident that we could teach our communities to use their civil liberties to choose not to consume dangerous substances the same way we have been able to teach large sections of the community to say no to tobacco and alcohol which kill many more people around the world than all the illicit drugs put together. We know from research that one illicit drug, marihuana, has never killed anyone but is used as the major pretext (with 800,000 arrests annually in the US alone) for the criminalization of otherwise law-abiding youth from the African American, Latino, South Asian, Caribbean, African and poor white communities worldwide at huge costs to tax payers.

We suggest that illicit drug dealers are the major beneficiaries from the war on drugs and therefore they oppose decriminalization because the war makes drugs relatively expensive and directly increases their profit margins the way bootleg liquor enriched organized criminals before the ending of prohibition. We are confident that the same way the Mafia violence associated with prohibition was ended with the ending of prohibition, the violence associated with the turf wars for the drug trade would be significantly reduced once this racist war primarily against African American, Hispanic and poor communities worldwide is brought to an end with rehabilitation programs for the prisoners of the war on drugs.

In line with the emphasis on prevention in the health reform act, we call for harm reduction through the hospitalization of those who fall sick from drug dependency just like tobacco and alcohol patients who are more numerous and more likely to die despite the fact that tobacco and alcohol remain legal.

We call on President Obama to extend his policies of hope and reduce the politics of fear and greed by borrowing from the experiments in countries like The Netherlands and more recently Portugal which have been implementing different forms of decriminalization with the result that their prisons are decongested, their streets are safer and their citizens face reduced harm compared to the US, France, UK, Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and Russia, to name a few examples of the battlefields of the so-called war on drugs.

Many law enforcement officers favor decriminalization to remove the temptation of corruption, increase respect for officers in the community, and free them from a racist war so that they could concentrate on the real bad guys. The Vienna Declaration on illicit drugs has also called for policy change to help reduce the epidemic spread of HIV/AIDS.[6]

Thanks to Dr. Cornel West of Princeton University, the only eminent public intellectual with the courage to endorse the draft of this resolution within 24 hours after it was sent to him. I invite others with moral and intellectual courage to sign on to this resolution and help to bring about a change in policy for the benefit of all. The endorsements of Prop 19 below show that more black public intellectuals and organizations need to join this campaign given that the war on drugs is a war on the black people who do not use more drugs, especially in the case of black women who are close to suspected black men.[7]

Endorsements

The following people and organizations have endorsed Proposition 19 to allow local jurisdictions to legalize marijuana in California. To submit your endorsement of the initiative, click here. http://yeson19.com/node/13

 

Law Enforcement

• National Black Police Association
• San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara (Ret.)
• Seattle Police Chief and San Diego Deputy Police Chief Norm Stamper (Ret.)
• Former Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Stephen Downing
• Former Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant and Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney William John Cox
• Former Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriff David Sinclair
• Former Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff MacKenzie Allen
• Former Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff Jeff Studdard
• Former Sutter County Deputy Sheriff Nate Bradley
• Former Yolo County Resident Deputy Sheriff Danny Maynard
• Humboldt County Sheriff’s Captain Stephen Cobine (Ret.)
• Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray (Ret.)
• Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos
• San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan (Ret.)
• Former Senior Humboldt County Deputy District Attorney and Prosecutor Jeffrey Schwartz
• Former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney and California Administrative Law Judge Mike Schmier
• Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Walter Clark (Ret.)
• Former Orange County Senior Reserve Park Ranger L. Lawrence Baird
• Oakland City Attorney John Russo
• Former Community Prosecutor James Anthony, Oakland City Attorney’s Office
• Los Angeles Police Department Narcotics Detective David Doddridge (Ret.)
• Former San Jose Police Department Narcotics Detective Russ Jones
• Former Los Angeles Senior Police Specialist Walter McKay
• United States Air Force Security Forces Officer John Darker, Anderson, CA
• Former United States Military Police Officer Dr. Nina Graves, Santa Barbara, CA
• United States Navy Officer and Intelligence Specialist Larry Talley (Ret.)
• California Correctional Peace Officer William Baldwin (Ret.)
• California Correctional Peace Officer Madeline Martinez (Ret.)
• Mohave County Deputy Probation Officer Joe Miller (Ret.)
• Former Lakeport Police Officer Rick Erickson
• Former San Francisco Police Officer Bill Dake
• Former Stanton Police Officer Jerry Ross
• Former Torrance Police Officer Kyle Kazan
• Atlanta, Georgia State’s Attorney Jay Fisher
• Former American Samoa Attorney General’s Office Chief Prosecutor and Municipal Prosecutor for Washington Cities Jim Doherty
• New Jersey State Police Detective Lieutenant Jack Cole (Ret.)
• New Hampshire State Police Officer Paul Mac Lean (Ret.)
• Retired Bristol, Vermont Police Chief and Saint Albans, Vermont Police Chief Tim Datig
• Former Deputy Sheriff Leo E. Laurence, J.D., Central Missouri
• Former Reserve Deputy Sheriff and Corrections Officer Dwayne Sessom, Lawton, Oklahoma
• Former Davis County, Utah Deputy Constable Bret Black
• Retired Washington Superior Court Judge David Nichols
• Retired Police Captain Peter Christ, Syracuse, New York.
• Former Spokane, Washington Police Department Narcotics Investigator Jay Fleming
• Former Corrections Official Michael Gilbert, San Antonio, Texas
• Former Department of Corrections Sniper and K-9 Narcotics Dog Trainer Rusty White, Bridgeport, Texas
• National Black Police Association Executive Director and former Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Officer Ronald Hampton
• Former Baltimore Police Officer Peter Moskos
• Burlington, Ontario, Canada Law Enforcement Officer Alison Myrden (Ret.)
• Law Enforcement Officer Tony Ryan (Ret.), Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Physicians and Doctors

• United States Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, MD (Ret.)
• Dr. Larry Bedard, Former President of the American College of Emergency Physicians*, Sausalito, CA
• Dr. Newton Harband, Retired Oncologist, Past President, Stanford Medical School Alumni Association*, San Rafael, CA
• Dr. Daniel Susott, MD, MPH, Medical Director, World Family Foundation*, San Francisco, CA
• Dr. Floyd Huen, MD, Board of Trustees, Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland, CA
• Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany
• Dr. Lester Grinspoon, MD, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Norfolk, MA
• Dr. Julie Holland, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine, New York
• Dr, Leonard Krivitsky, MD, DD, Addiction Medicine Specialist, Philadelphia, PA
• Dr. Frank H. Lucido, MD, Family Practitioner, Berkeley, CA
• Arthur M. Strosberg, Ph. D., Pharmaceutical Industry Consultant, Foster City, CA
• Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, MD, PhD, Seattle, WA
• Dr. Christopher Fichtner, MD, Hemet, CA
• Stephen Frye, M.D., Psychiatrist, Las Vegas, Nevada

Economists and Business Leaders

• Harvard Economist Jeffrey Miron
• Michael D. Whitty, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, University of San Francisco School of Business and Management

Elected Officials

• Congressman Pete Stark (CA-13)
• Congressman Dan Hamburg (CA-1) (Ret.)
• California State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (Ret.)
• California State Senator Mark Leno
• California State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano
• California State Assemblymember Hector De La Torre
• Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley
• Mendocino County Supervisor John Pinches
• San Francisco Supervisor David Campos
• San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi
• Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates
• The Berkeley City Council
• The Oakland City Council
• The West Hollywood City Council
• Arcata City Councilmember Shane Brinton
• Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington
• Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore
• Hayward City Councilmember Bill Quirk
• Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan
• Oakland City Councilmember Jean Quan
• Oakland City Councilmember Pat Kernighan
• Oakland City Councilmember Larry Reid
• Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel
• West Hollywood City Councilmember John Duran
• Windsor Town Councilmember Debora Fudge
• Palm Springs Unified School District Board Member Justin Blake
• AC Transit Board President Rocky Fernandez
• East Bay Municipal Utility District Board President Doug Linney
• Water Replenishment District of Southern California Director Rob Katherman
• Modoc County Democratic Central Committee Chair Thomas Romero
• Alameda County Democratic Central Committee Member Edie Irons
• California Republican Party Delegate David LaTour

Organizations

• California NAACP
• California Libertarian Party
• California Green Party
• California Young Democrats
• Republican Liberty Caucus
• ACLU of Northern California
• ACLU of Southern California
• ACLU of San Diego
• California 16th Assembly District Democrats
• Alameda County Democratic Party
• Butte County Democratic Party
• Madera County Democratic Party
• Modoc County Democratic Party
• Monterey County Democratic Party
• Orange County Democratic Party
• Placer County Democratic Party
• San Francisco Democratic Party
• Siskiyou County Democratic Party
• Sonoma County Democratic Party
• Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley
• Latino Democrats of Stanislaus County
• Progressive Democrats of Stanislaus County
• Desert Stonewall Democrats of Palm Springs
• Culver City Democratic Club
• West Hollywood/Beverly Hills Democratic Club
• Irish American Democratic Club of San Francisco
• Democratic Women's Forum of San Francisco
• Richmond District Democratic Club
• Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club
• Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
• Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
• Valley Progressives
• Libertarian Party of Orange County
• Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights
• San Francisco for Democracy Political Action Committee
• San Francisco Women’s Political Committee
• The LA Gay & Lesbian Center
• NAACP Congress Against Racism & Corruption in Law Enforcement (CARCLE)
• William C. Velasquez Institute
• Latino Voters League
• A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing)
• Bay Area Chapter of Education Not Incarceration
• Idriss Stelley Action & Resource Center

Labor

• United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Western States Council
• International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), Northern California District Council
• Central Labor Council of Butte-Glenn Counties (AFL-CIO)
• Communications Workers of America (CWA), Local 9415
• Instituto Laboral De La Raza
• Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), San Francisco Chapter
• Sign Displays, Local 510
• Michael Hardeman, Business Representative, Sign Displays, Local 510
• John Roe, UFCW, Local 5*
• Dan Rush, UFCW, Local 5*
• Brian Webster, Staff Assistant, Instituto Laboral De La Raza

Faith Leaders

• California Council of Churches IMPACT
• Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative
• Karen Gilman, Women of Temple Israel of Hollywood*
• Rev. Bryan Griem, Pastor of Montrose Community Church*, Montrose, CA
• Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn, Clergy Against Prohibition*
• Jane Marcus, Ph.D., Board Member, Women of Reform Judaism*, Palo Alto, CA
• The Rev. Canon Mary Moreno Richardson, Episcopal Diocese of San Diego*
• Curtis D. Robinson, Sr., President, Girls Inc, WCCC*, Richmond, CA
• Dennis Shields, Minister, The Religion of Jesus Church*, Captain Cook, HI

References

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[1] Brief History The War on Drugs By Claire Suddath Wednesday, Mar. 25, 2009,  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1887488,00.html See also 1994 U. Chi. Legal F. 25 (1994) Race and the War on Drugs; by Tonry, Michael

[2] http://naacpoc.org/2008/03/why-are-1-in-9-young-black-men-in-prison/#more-39 See also J. Gender Race & Just. 381 (2002) Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs Was a War on Blacks; by Nunn, Kenneth B.;

[3] Miron, Jeffrey A. (2007-09-17). "Costs of Marijuana Prohibition: Economic Analysis". Marijuana Policy Project. http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/ See also Gender Race & Just. 225 (2002) Recovering from Drugs and the Drug War: An Achievable Public Health Alternative; Blumenson, Eric.

[4] ^ "White House Czar Calls for End to 'War on Drugs'". The Wall Street Journal. May 14, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124225891527617397.html

[5] See, e.g., Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, "The Crack Attack, Politics and Media in the Crack Scare," in Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, Crack in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); David Cole, No Equal Justice (New York:The New Press, 1999); David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973);. See also http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/10/drug-policy-and-human-rights 

[6] http://www.viennadeclaration.com/the-declaration.html

[7] Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, ‘Unfair by Design: The War on Drugs, Race, and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System’ in Social Research: An International Quarterly   Issue:  Volume 73, Number 2 / Summer 2006   Pages:  445 – 472. See also SR Bush-Baskette ‘The war on drugs as a war against Black women’ in Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected readings, edited by Meda Chesney-Lind, Lisa Pasko, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 2004; Doris Marie Provine , Unequal under law: race in the war on drugs, Chicago, University of Chicago Press; Agozino, Biko ‘Editorial: Foreign Women in Prison’ in African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, Vol. 3 No. 2, 2008, http://www.umes.edu/ajcjs/index.cfm?id=18504

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.

Ode to Soyinka @ 76

ODE TO BABA SHO AT 76

By Biko Agozino

‘Unlike societies right next to the Igbo for instance – more famously the Benin, or further West, the Yoruba or, all the way southwards of the continent, the Kwazulu of the legendary Shaka – the Igbo, with their strong social formation rooted in republicanism, would appear to belie my general claim. The Igbo have no history of expansionism, being content with a strong organization around autonomous clan entities that made contact – friendly or unfriendly with one another as the need arose (Wole Soyinka, Distinguished Nyerere Lecture, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, 2010: 1).

Soyinka may have helped to answer a question that I have been longing to ask him for a long time: Why does he love Igbo culture so much when almost everyone else appears to hate the Igbo? I found clues to this answer that his 2010 Nyerere Lecture confirms starting with his childhood autobiography, Ake, where as a kid he refused to lie down to the elders as is expected in Yoruba culture and reasoned that if he was not expected to lie down to God, why should he lie down to anyone? Before the publication of Ake, he had already fictionalized this biographical sketch in his novel, The Interpreters that a Youth Corps teacher, Adamu, tried to get my form four High School class to understand without much success perhaps because of the fractal elliptical structure that is characteristic of Soyinka’s work.

What Adamu taught us effectively was always to look for a deeper meaning in the work of Soyinka and not to read it at the surface level. In that novel, there was a university lecturer, Soyinka’s alter ego, called Egbo, who delivered exactly the same defiant line of prostrating to neither God nor man. Now I wonder if Egbo was a suggestive code for Igbo because Soyinka may have been rebuked as a child by elders for being an uncultured bush man or Igbo man, ‘igbo’ means bush in Yourba language, all because he admired the Igbo concept of all heads being equal. Maybe Soyinka actually witnessed an Igbo man perform this indomitable spirit and admired it enough to adopt it himself.

That childhood sentiment of his must have been reinforced later in life when he was obviously an admirer of Nnamdi Azikiwe and was the Master of Ceremony for the artistic tribute during Zik’s inauguration as the first President of Nigeria where he refused to succumb to the domineering demands of an American opera singer who did not intend to keep to the time allocated to her despite what Soyinka saw as her poor musical talents and not withstanding that she was a personal guest of the guest of honour, Zik (see the autobiography, Ibadan). I think that Soyinka was the first to inform me that Zik was a poet, although he called him a bombastic poet somewhere in his writings, prompting me to go looking for Zik's collection of poetry that was recently republished by his wife, Professor Chinyere Azikiwe of the University of Nigeria. I read the poems and found no bomabastic verses unlike Zik’s political speeches but it was probably to the speeches that Soyinka referred when he called Zik, Mbonu Ojike, K.O. Mbadiwe, et al, the bombastic poets of nationalism.

Soyinka's love for Igbo culture is very obvious in Ibadan: The Penkelmese Years where he secretly admired a bombastic prefect in his high school and said that he talked the way he did probably because that was how everybody talked in his village. No wonder Soyinka became the master of the bombast in his own work as an adult. In the Ibadan volume of his always stranger-than- fiction fictionalized autobiography, he recounts how he was approached as a family friend by the daughter of a western regional governor to ask him why he was supporting the 'socialist' culture of the Igbo rather than the monarchical tradition of his own people? The mutual admiration of Baba Sho and Igbo culture is clearest in that part of Ibadan where Soyinka narrates the role of Power Mike Okpala during operation ‘Weetie’. Instead of sending thugs from the East to join the orgy of violence in the Wild Wild West, Okpala sent a team of mobile broadcasters from the Eastern Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast live election results to the whole world since Akintola's faction was in control of the Western Broadcasting House.

Soyinka said that he sat in Awolowo’s chair and persuaded the mobile broadcasters to go back to Enugu because security agents were searching for them frantically but he himself was not afraid to wait alone for the security agents that desecrated the library of Awo in search of incriminating evidence to return and face his resistance. That took some courage and is indeed part of the democratic trait that Soyinka has identified in our own African culture that is worthy of emulation. This Igbophilia is found in his collection of poetry, A Shuttle in the Crypt and in the prison diary, The Man Died, where he bore witness to the oppression of the Igbo during the civil war and his one-man attempt to stop the carnage, earning him solitary confinement. Then he capped it all with that eye-popping witness-like harrowing account of the pogrom against the Igbo that he detailed in Season of Anomy. In Ibadan, he said that he traveled the country to conduct ethnographic observations of traditional theatrical performances and in Season of Anomy, the hero also travels the country searching for traditional socialist roots but ended up being confined in a psychiatric hospital as a mad man. Did Soyinka witness the pogrom in the North and could he have achieved more in preventing the tragedy if he had worked as part of a popular democratic organization instead of always tending to perform his one man shows apart from that stint with the Peoples Redemption Party as Director of Research in the 1980s? One of the longest sections in his recent Chronicles from the land of the Happiest People on Earth, a land characterized by disease and ruled by a sick man who sought healing from quacks and religious bigots, is the section on Jos, the city where the genocidal massacre of the Igbo originated in Nigeria during the colonial era and continues to date

Soyinka’s love of a people who were almost universally hated calls for some explanation and he may have provided the answer in the Nyerere Lecture that I quoted from above. The Igbo are admirable because they have resisted the temptation to build empires and impose monarchs. Of course, Soyinka could have added that General Obasanjo tried to sabotage this radical republican Igbo tradition by imposing the requirement in the 1976 Local Government Reform Decree that every town should have a 'traditional' ruler, forcing the indomitable Igbo to plunge into bloody chieftaincy struggles unbecoming of their egalitarian principles. Afigbo narrates a similar attempt by the colonial administration to appoint warrant chiefs for the democratic Igbo but the result was that Igbo women declared war on colonialism and warrant chiefs just as Yoruba women did 20 years later by forcing the Alake of Abeokuta to abdicate and make way for a new Alake to be installed and just as Kikuyi women did 30 years later in Kenya. The significant difference was that the Igbo and Ibibio women fought against all warrant chiefs and the colonial administration rather than against an individual chief while the Kikuyi women were led by a Mr Harry Thuku, the Chief of Women.

Please note that Soyinka's praise for the Igbo culture of radical republicanism in the epigraph above and his critique of empires and kingdoms echo that of Walter Rodney in Groundings with my Brothers where Rodney told poor Jamaican youth to be skeptical of African histories that emphasize only kingdoms and empires given that many parts of Africa had no kings or queens but practiced direct democracies of the sort that Soyinka appears to be recommending as a better alternative for the whole of Africa. Europeans simply assumed that such societies were primitive ‘headless societies’ and proceeded to impose chiefs on them but Igbo and Ibibio women declared war on such Warrant Chiefs as Adiele Afigbo documented.

The obsession with monarchism is rife in the Diaspora as well where there are annual contests to see who would be the carnival monarch, the dancehall king, the king of pop, king of reggae, calypso monarch, socca monarch and what have you despite the fact that the American revolution and the Haitian revolution clearly rejected monarchism and opted for republicanism. The late Adiele Afigbo critiqued the tendency in nationalist historiography to focus only on kingdoms as a vain attempt to prove to the Europeans that Africans are not inferior because we also had kings and queens, forgetting that we also had participatory democracy that could only be devalued at our peril.

Soyinka is emphasizing that monarchical institutions tend to be anti-democratic wherever they are found and that our people have better models of democracy to draw from rather than celebrate authoritarianism in the guise of celebrating traditionalism. Baba Sho could have strengthened his case by pointing out that this radical democracy that he admires among the Igbo is not as exceptional as he suggested because the Ibibio of Nigeria and the Kikuyi of Kenya, for instance, were also radically republican traditionally.  Yet, our beloved Baba Sho should be given credit for recognizing that African cultures have indigenous models of democracy that the rest of the world could learn from as opposed to the tendency by Cornel West and CLR James alike to point to ancient Greece as the model for direct democracy despite the institution of slavery, a monarchy and the disenfranchisement of women in Athenian 'democracy'.

Happy birthday Prof! Many many more happy returns!

Biko Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

Abati on Sports and Development

By Biko Agozino

Ruben Abati made very insightful observations in his analysis of the failure of the Nigerian national football team to inspire enthusiasm from supporters at home and abroad during the World Cup in South Africa. He concluded that the outing has brought more shame than pride to Nigerians given that the Nigerian preparations for the competition were characteristically shoddy, while the South Africans distinguished themselves by organizing an efficient competition at a level that Nigeria could not manage, the way they effortlessly introduced a new equipment to the game, the vuvuzela, while Nigeria has yet to bring an innovation to the game we love so much, and how their national team played well even when they lost or drew while the Super Eagles are praying that some other team should suffer misfortune at the hands of some other team in order for us to qualify by default the way we managed to qualify for the finals.

Nigeria’s only innovation appears to be in the unprecedented image of the hustler with 30 stolen tickets who was sentenced to jail by a FIFA special court that must be the first of its kind. The other disgraceful image was that of the most unprofessional player ever whose name, Kaita, supposedly means disaster, who kicked a player outside the sidelines because he allegedly shoved the ball at him and called him unprintable names to get him out of his face so he could throw-in the ball. His red card caused the Nigerian team to collapse from an early lead to a 2-1 loss as they all trooped to the defense and gave up the mid-field to Greece without any imagination that they could still win a game with one man down the way Ghana’s Black Stars beat the Nigerian Super Eagles during the nation’s Cup in Ghana and again in Egypt with just ten men each time. Next time, Kaita should play hurt and see if he could send off an opponent instead of lashing out with the typical Nigerian gra-gra or bolekaja (Yoruba for come down and let us fight) mentality and if he gets sent off for acting hurt, the team should play on and try to win with an attacking game – the best type of defense. Apologies to Abati, I was wearing my coaching cap there, every Nigerian is a coach, says Abati, and yet we believe in the Cargo Cult mentality that the best coach must be imported from Europe.

Abati’s observation about national branding by Argentina which distributed free jerseys of their stars, free national flags and free vuvuzelas with their national colours to the international fans is a teachable moment for Nigerian officials. The Nigerian memorabilia were put up for sales even though the national sports commission may have already paid for the items to be distributed and in any case, there is not likely to be any accountability for the miserly sale of unpopular jerseys with names like Kaita on them. Typical of Nigerians, some official probably saw it as an opportunity to make quick bucks with the result that some Nigerian fans had no choice but to accept the free Argentina jerseys and wear them proudly without fear of losing their citizenship as punishment given that many Nigerians throw lavish parties to celebrate whenever they give up their citizenship and naturalize in some other country with regular electricity supply as one fan told Abati when threatened with denationalization for wearing the colours of Nigeria’s opponents.

I completely agree with Abati that we need to use this opportunity to re-examine our sports institutions from the local leagues that Nigerians do not seem to care about while they appear ready to kill and die for English Premiership clubs, to the training of coaches with the knowledge that mercenary foreign coaches will never teach us all they know for fear that some day we will face their own national teams, to the organization of supporters’ clubs and to private-public partnerships in the sponsorship of sporting events as is the case all over the world. Bringing in Tokunbo coaches from abroad at the last minute to disrespect the Nigerian coach who struggled to win qualification and demonstrating Pharisees-like prayers on the field of play will not cut it for us.

Where I disagree with Abati is on his observation that the National Stadium is being used by sex workers and fast food hawkers instead of being used for sports development. I would like Abati to visit the stadium early on any Saturday morning and he would be stunned. I recently visited a nephew in Lagos and he told me to get ready for a treat because early on Saturday morning, he wanted me to go running with him at the national stadium. I was intrigued and sure enough, he woke me up about 7:00 AM and off we went with Okada, then changed to a bus, then got another Okada before reaching the distant stadium.

I could not believe my eyes as the whole area surrounding the stadium was filled with amateur sports enthusiasts and fitness gurus and freaks alike jumping, boxing, doing martial arts, weight-lifting, dancing, running, skipping, doing yoga and aerobics, sweating and smiling. Sure, there were food and drinks vendors around but the people needed such refreshments after running non-stop for two hours. We joined one popular group that was led in song by a tireless young man and we chorused with the growing crowd of followers. It was as if we were back in high school and many of the songs were Igbo songs like ‘Obi Kererenke’ - ‘Obi’, to which the lead singer added popular Christian chants like ‘Anyi Ga Ebulia Aha Yaa’ to the chorus, ‘Enuuu’ (or let us raise His name, High!) which served as a notice that he was about to change to a different song. He would chant about the end of diabetes, the end of smoking, the end of alcoholism and his followers provided the ‘End’ chorus faithfully but when he chanted about the end of Igbo or marijuana many protested and shouted nooo! Some who did not understood the exchange in Igbo language asked for translations. I was soon exhausted as I had not done such hectic running in a long time and thankfully, the pure water vendor was on hand to rehydrate me with four sachets of water while I sweated buckets with a big smile on my face.

There and then I began to understand something that I had observed on the faces of many Nigerians: They looked more healthy than I had imagined from the sad stories of poverty and hunger we hear abroad. This must be one of their survival strategies – keeping fit for the fun of it. I asked when this revolution happened in Nigeria and they said that it was started by Sam Oparaji, the Nigerian football player who died tragically on the pitch from a heart condition at the national stadium where his statue stands. It was said that he used to run at the stadium in the 1980s and gradually, his fans joined him every Saturday morning. It felt as if I was witnessing something that happens only abroad and not at home and I was highly impressed.

I was surprised to know that such a popular lifestyle activity was going on for years and none of the newspapers had covered it. If Abati visits Surulere any Saturday morning, then he will realize that his dismissal of the national stadium is premature. Where Abati may not be surprised is that neither the government nor corporate sponsors have absolutely any role to play in all this. There is no budget to train the fitness coaches on safety precautions, there are no ambulances or health workers trained to attend to any emergencies, there are no freely distributed running shoes and jerseys to promote any company products and wait for this, there was no toilet for the athletes who had to enter the nearby bushes to do number one or number two.

The gates of the stadium were firmly shut against the enthusiastic sporting citizens from whose ranks would emerge the next sporting superstars. Only national sporting stars were allowed to train inside the stadium, I was told. There is no doubt that talents abound in Nigeria in all fields but the government and private investors are yet to tap in adequately towards the development of these talents in all fields to win national honours, create wealth for the sports players and create fair employment opportunities for others. For instance, the young man who led the jogging songs was not paid by anyone but I understood that some of the fellow runners settled him occasionally. Here is an opportunity for sporting clubs to emerge and train the Usain Bolts, Tiger Woods, goalie Enyeama and the Williams sisters of the world to break new world records in sprinting, golf, football, tennis and many other sporting areas but greedy leaders are more interested in scrambling for oil blocks that they always auction off to foreign coaches (sorry, companies) and pocket billions of dollars in commissions that they claim they do not know how to spend. What a crying shame!