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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Third International Conference ofAfrican Studies Institute, University of Georgia: Call for Papers

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On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Oyinlola Longe <honey.honour@gmail.com> wrote:
Good day sir,

Please get me in. I will be eternally grateful. I am sorry I am late but I thank God for you.

Always,

Oyin.
Thank you so much. As you can see we have extended the closing date of submission. So you are in order.
Aderibigbe

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 9:41 PM, Ibigbolade Aderibigbe <gbolaade.aderibigbe@gmail.com> wrote:
Colleagues,
Please find attached the call for paper for third International Conference of African Studies Institute, University of Georgia, Athens, USA. Please spread the "word" around.
Aderibigbe

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria: one week, one tragedy

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It’s almost a week since the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) job recruitment tragedy that claimed the lives of many young Nigerians. At the last count, the number of deaths stood at 20 with scores injured. The death of any Nigerian under the tragic circumstances of March 15 ought to be of grave concern to the state.

But then, this is Nigeria. We are inured to tragic deaths. No week passes without bloodcurdling reports about one tragedy or another claiming the lives of Nigerians. Whether it is the mindless mayhem in the name of religion, road accidents, boat mishaps, kidnappers and armed robbers on the prowl or ethnic skirmishes over land, in this huge prison called Nigeria, the majority are “dead men walking”.

Of course, there is no other way to describe what took place last Saturday other than to say it is the product of a dysfunctional country. That incident did not happen by chance. It was carefully orchestrated. Perhaps, those who orchestrated it didn’t imagine that so many young people would die in the process.  

The latest tragedy is the product of an entrenched web of corruption which is rooted, evidently, in the warped socio-political structure of Nigeria. You can sense this much from the insensate remarks that came out of the House of Representatives and the reports of what went behind the scene at the NIS.

Read more… http://www.chidoonumah.com/2014/03/nigeria-one-week-one-tragedy.html#axzz2wXNOQbKF

 



Regards,
Chido Onumah
Coordinator, African Centre for Media & Information Literacy,
P.O.Box 6856, Wuse 11, Abuja, Nigeria
www.africmil.org
+234-7043202605+234-7043202605

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB

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Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.

From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:50:06 +0000 (GMT)
To: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
ReplyTo: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB

IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB
 
Ayo Olukotun
 
"Nigeria sits on many time bombs, but the deadliest time bomb of all is that of youth unemployment.  There can be no talk of good governance where millions go unemployed and many are under the crushing weight of poverty."
-       Bola Tinubu, 26 February, 2014
 
     The nation is very much in the throes and traumatising aftermath of last Saturday's death of at least 23 young Nigerians, who showed up for the aptitude test of the Nigerian Immigration Service.  The job hunters were trampled to death in stampedes which erupted in the screening centres of Abuja, Minna, Benin and Port Harcourt. The sensible postponement of the exercise in Lagos spared the nation more deaths in the wake of the lethal bedlam that marked the event.
    It is now history and a matter for profound regret that rather than show penitence at the massive fraud and organisational fiasco that led to the disasters, Interior Minister, Abba Moro, chose to indict the victims of a system that sentences its youths to fatal ordeals. Of course, our penchant as a nation for costly bungling is legendary.  A recent example is the adjournment of the much advertised National Conference almost as soon as it was inaugurated, because of logistical hitches.  So, no one had taken time to think through the details of organising such an important event?  In the same manner, a little forethought on the mechanics and logistics of holding the massive immigration screening on the same day would have averted the tragic fiascos; especially in the light of a similar disastrous outing in 2008 by the same parastatal.  But then, this is a nation that is organisationally challenged; flaunting great potentials but unable to collate them to achieve desired results. More baffling is the fact that the calamity occurred in the context of a paramilitary institution which ought to have accumulated the disciplinary orientation and strategic insight germane to crowd control.  But then we are dealing with decaying and dysfunctional institutions in which human lives and happiness are seen as expendable.
     Anomie and the absurd, ingredients of gripping thrillers and engrossing fictions are normalised on our streets.  The disappearing and reappearing petroleum queues with their tolls on productivity and health; the unending wait for a glimmer of electric power and the virtual shutdown of essential services as a result of strikes or cash crunches are all varieties of the disorder which occasioned last Saturday's harvest of deaths.
   Consider too, the emptiness of official assurances in the tragedy.  On Friday, the minister was quoted as saying that "Adequate arrangement has been made for security and effective conduct of the test." On Saturday, the solemn assurances went up in smoke and nobody as far as we know, including the minister has lost his job for shoddy performance.  Do you recall, by way of a related example, that at the outset of the current elongated petroleum shortage, the minister, Dizeani Allison Madueke came over to Lagos and assured that the hiccup will be short lived; and that marketers caught hoarding fuel will be sanctioned? Well, nothing of the sort as far as we know has happened; but there are official statements being made concerning the need "to deregulate the downstream sector of the industry" an ominous warning that the siege on consumers will soon be legitimised by an increase in the pump price of petroleum.  Frightening are the omens if we recall the upheavals of January 2012.   
   Let us now touch on the scourge of youth unemployment which is at the heart of Saturday's tragedy.  The statistics of woe are distressing enough.  520, 000 applicants were seeking jobs for which there are less than 5, 000 vacancies.  And that sums up the social terror of youth unemployment put officially at 23% but which may be as high as 45%.  It is tempting but dangerous to dismiss Bola Tinubu's warning quoted above as political rhetoric, especially in the light of the deadly stampede at the immigration screening centers which rendered it prophetic.
    To be sure, there is a global dimension to unemployment which the International Labour Organisation puts at over 203 million at the end of last year.  Disturbing still is the fact that in 2013 alone, the number of unemployed people rose by 5 million, one of the highest in many years. ILO's warning of a jobless recovery in the advanced economies finds its correlate in Nigeria's jobless, high growth.  Our economy is caught in the trap of impressive but non-inclusive growth, that is also not creating jobs.  President Goodluck Jonathan's claim to have created 1.6 million jobs in 2013 was hotly disputed on social media by unemployed youths who asked scornfully: Where are the jobs?
    Even if Jonathan's claim is verified it still falls short of what is required to roll back the tide.  For example, at the just concluded 20th Summit of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Foluso Philips, Chairman of the Group disclosed that Nigeria requires to create 24 million jobs in the next 10 years if it is to reduce by half the country's gargantuan unemployment crisis. That gives us a yearly target of 2.4 million jobs to reach a 50 percent rollback of the swelling army of unemployed.
    That is not all.  If you take a quick look at the ILO survey you will discover that the countries with the least unemployment figures are those in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as those in Asia.  What does this tell us?  It returns to the debate about unemployment, the issue of the nature and character of the State since the countries in the regions mentioned are either emergent left of centre governments or the developmental states of Asia which have clear social welfare credentials as well as privilege the closure of the gap between the affluent and the have-not.  In other words, it is likely that there is a connection between the current neo-liberal growth strategy and our escalating unemployment considering that growth does not automatically translate into jobs unless there is a conscious effort and plan to draw the connection.
    At a recent workshop attended by this writer in Osogbo, in the state of Osun, one was pleasantly surprised to discover how job creation was made the focus of educational policy through for example the construction of an extensive garment factory employing designers, tailors and allied artisans perhaps the biggest of its type in West Africa. The brief of the workers is to design standardised school uniforms for the schools in the state; but it is of interest in the context of this discussion that an elaborate job creation mechanism had been aligned to it as well as to an equally far-flung schools feeding system which generates employment for caterers, food vendors and farmers with a value chain built around the project.
    The point then is this: Jobs cannot be created in the haphazard, lack-lustre manner in which the government at the centre has hitherto approached the matter. It connotes consciously formulated policies, energetically directed to yield backward and forward linkages which generate jobs and alleviate poverty. 
    This is the lesson to take home from the recent immigration jobs tragedy.
 
 
 
Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236
 
 
 

USA Africa Dialogue Series - News Release: Modification Of Gov. Obiano's Inaugural Speech, Our Advice (Part Three)

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On 18th day of March, 2014, our leadership at International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law-Intersociety, x-rayed Governor Willie Obiano's inaugural speech and concluded that with some modifications here and there, the people of Anambra State and the entire Southeast geopolitical zone may most likely smile at the end as was the case under the out-gone Chief Peter Obi's administration. As part of our social obligation and thematic areas of advocacy activities (advancement of democracy, good governance, security and safety), we have decided to offer a credible opinion and advice based on areas we think the new governor will focus on for the purpose of ensuring greater happiness for the greater number of the people of the State. This is because when leaders govern well democratically, people rejoice and become happy. Our 18th day of March public statement dwelled on the new governor's promise to "set up an oil refinery within one year and build power plants in Onitsha, Nnewi and Awka". These we saw as good, but subject to the outcome of findings by a committee of experts, which we seriously recommended. Our 19th day of March statement took a critical and conventional look at the new governor's proposed policy on "security and vigilantism" and advised accordingly........

 

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: ARE TERRORIST FULANI HERDSMEN A SECOND WING OF BOKO HARAM? A LAND GRABBING POGROM IS TAKING PLACE IN NIGERIA

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Kaduna violence: Death toll in vicious Fulani onslaught hits 200





                                                                                              









IF YOU DON'T SPEAK WHEN THEY COME FOR ME...

They slept on the night of March 15th 2014 and as they had done the nights before, they prayed before they slept and hoped to carry on with life the next day, but that was not to be. Over 150 innocent and unsuspecting people of Moroa land in the southern part of Kaduna State - mostly women and children both pregnant and nursing mothers - were sent to an early Mass Grave by sworn enemies of the region, suspected to be Fulani herdsmen. All the churches in the areas affected also went down in ashes and so too every grain and food item. Eternity itself will be too short to thank those who will take the trouble to share in the pain of my people by sharing this story and reward seven-fold those behind this evil.

I have shed so much tears and still shed tears but then I have to take time out to speak or else I remain a specimen of futility to my generation at large, to my state and my people of Southern Kaduna in particular and to humanity in general.
It is common human folly to keep mute when evil befalls the house of another, thinking as we often do, that it is not my household that is affected. However, evil is not a permanent friend - when it is done with your neighbour, it finds its way to you. Also, a threat to life anywhere is a threat to life everywhere. The eternal drama of life has a way of rewarding its actors and actresses both in time and in eternity.

By this post, I wish to arouse the conscience of all those who are not from southern kaduna or from Kaduna, or even Nigeria; I wish to draw your attention to the height of inhuman cruelty and crime against humanity perpetrated against my people, the place of my origin, in the southern region of Kaduna state last Saturday week.

I wish to end with this quote by a pastor in Nazi Germany who chose to be indifferent to the crimes against the Jews and others as the Nazi government visited hell on them. He had said:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist;

"Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist;

"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist;

"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;

"Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Pastor Martin Niemöller

I wish to add: now they have come for Southern Kaduna, now they have come for Maiduguri and Yobe and Adamawa, if you keep silent because these are not your places, be rest assured that, in the course of time, they will come for you...only that time it might be too late as there may be no one to speak for you.

Behold the Mass Grave...

God bless you, grant eternal rest to the dead and peace to our land!
 

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: ARE TERRORIST FULANI HERDSMEN A SECOND WING OF BOKO HARAM? A LAND GRABBING POGROM IS TAKING PLACE IN NIGERIA : PART 2 : SHOULD CITIZENS BEAR ARMS IN SELF DEFENSE?

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Kaduna violence: Death toll in vicious Fulani onslaught hits 200





                                                                                              





The masses of the Middle Belt must mobilize, arm and defend themselves against this senseless pogrom.

 Organised and refocused violence must be made to checkmate this cowardly violence from these medieval bloodthirsty fanatics.

 It is the only way to end the madness.

 It's no use lamenting any longer because as has become glaring now this lust for innocent blood is deeply ingrained in some religions. 

From Plateau to Nasarawa to Benue to Southern Kaduna, which of the political or 'religious' leaders of these bloodthirsty criminals have condemned any of these repeated genocides?

 Defend yourselves!



RIP. 

Its so sad that innocent ppl are killed like chicken, oh God! 

Only two comments impresses me, and i want to add that even as we pray we should also work for our safety. 

By working for our safety i mean exploiting avenue for peace also for self defence. Yes, we need to defend our self. 

The children of Isreal never prayed all day in the temple, they went to war! In this case, i'm not advocating for war but we should press for legalization of procuring arms for self defence.

 I will prefer to die fighting than be slaughter like chicken. 

To me, its wrong and criminal to deny the ppl the means to defend themselves.

 In the begin it was not so. The fulani herdsmen accused in this case don't move around without arms, these days they are moving away from their traditional sword and dagger to sophisticated weapon such as AK47. 

Its obvious that the govt can not secure lives and properties in the face of this worldwide escalation of violence. Our elites, our representatives in NA, chiefs and leaders should push for bill that decriminalizes possession of light weapon. Bcos of economic woes and escalation of hate things might get worse world wide in yrs to come. Govt world wide might not be able to curtail evil that have come upon the earth. 

So what do we do? Prepare (protect) urself. Hold ur bible/koran/traditional hamlet in one hand and ur weapon in the other.

 Jesus told his disciples sell their coat and buy a sword! luke 22:35-38. Here, i want say all i said is MPO anybody night differ or disagree.

 Above all lets fear God and let love lead.

 Lord, let there be peace in our land!

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [akandabaratam] In the digital age, the humanities can afford to go on the offensive

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: K. Loganathan<ulagankmy@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 6:13 AM
Subject: [akandabaratam] In the digital age, the humanities can afford to go on the offensive
To: "akandabaratam@egroups.com" <akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com>, "meykandar@egroups.com" <meykandar@egroups.com>, "tolkaappiyar@egroups.com" <tolkaappiyar@egroups.com>, "agamicpsychology@egroups.com" <agamicpsychology@egroups.com>


 

In the digital age, the humanities can afford to go on the offensive

March 19th, 2014 in Other Sciences / Social Sciences
In the digital age, the humanities can afford to go on the offensiveYeah thats right: English major with philosophy. Deal with it. Credit: whatleydude
Humans, as a species, are around 200,000 years old. Compared to the age of the universe we're clearly infants but compared to the internet, we're pretty old and compared to social media, which is still in its infancy, we're positively ancient.
We're definitely quite experienced when it comes to human interactions, expressions and relations and have even come up with a field of study to describe, analyse and account for this experience in the form of the humanities. In the information age, humanities is turning into a whole new beast. It's time to stop defending the field as though it needs our help and show the world that it really can't live without us.
The box is open
Humanities is the study of the human condition and the way we interact with nature, technology, health, art, politics, religion, money and mystery. The internet is, in effect, the greatest cultural treasure chest ever created and is allowing us to expand our horizons like never before. It's a constantly updated repository of the very human interactions and expressions we have always sought to explore in the humanities and, for better or worse, they are all stored on file. We can rifle through them using search engines, network analyzers and crowd opinion aggregators.
Leopold von Ranke, a German historian and the pioneer of modern source-based history, could not have asked for better conditions for conducting studies on the human condition. But von Ranke, who sought objectivity in historiography, would probably also be apprehensive about the ease with which information can be obtained these days. Not all information is good information. It can, if not properly acquired, formatted, handled and administered, derail reason and rationality and even threaten democracy.
Years after the age of von Ranke, Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, one of the most successful companies back in the early days of personal computers, warned of the dangers of getting information in abundance and using it uncritically when he said that "getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant."
And that might be even more true when it comes to social media. Market strategist Jeffrey Kleintop, recently argued that while you might be able to get news first on Twitter, it might not be the full story and you should often wait for established news sources or do your own legwork before jumping to conclusions.
This legwork that Kleintop is referring to is essentially the search for objectivity that von Ranke prized so highly. It's about source-based information rather than hearsay, reflective criticism, multiple source triangulation and many of the other methods of scientific inquiry taught in the humanities today.
Thus the common practices of the humanities securing qualified deliberation, decision and action are already in use out there as we face up to every day tasks, from economic decisions to which school to choose for our children.
Humanities on the defensive
There is a a pervasive narrative about the decline of the humanities. We're told that jobs are scarce for graduates and the Daily Beast even declared recently that history, philosophy and English are some of the most useless majors.
Those who believe in the value of the humanities often point to successful business stories, innovators and luminaries with a background in these "useless" fields to back up their own arguments in this debate. They also point out that studying the humanities equips graduates with cross cultural understanding in a global world and analytical skills.
But these are defensive tactics that we might no longer really need. It might instead be more useful to offensively set new standards for the humanities in the information age. There is new territory here to conquer, analyse and understand and the humanities could and should be at the vanguard.
Look at the trend for outsourcing human interaction and communication to technology. BroApp, for example, is an automated messaging service, or "relationship wingman", that sends romantic messages to your significant other so you don't have to. What does that mean for the future of the human condition? And what about "social physics"? This new theory of social interaction spills over into "organizational management, urban planning, and digital privacy" among other things.
Then there are the bubbles in which we increasingly live. How do they affect our experience of the world and our relationships with others?
The very nature of transparency, security, democracy, knowledge and power is changing more rapidly than ever and the humanities shouldn't just be contributing to the debate, it should be leading it.
Provided by The Conversation
This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives). 
The Conversation
"In the digital age, the humanities can afford to go on the offensive." March 19th, 2014. http://phys.org/news/2014-03-digital-age-humanities-offensive.html

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB

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Hello Professor Olutokun,

Another insightful analysis. Thank you. My friends and I had a vibrant discussion on facebook about the multidimensional socioeconomic and political factors you touched on in your article. The issue of the very configuration of the Nigerian state, to which we cannot but critique the historical forces by which Nigeria and all other African states were formed -- what Ken Harrow on this list has rightly criticized as the very origin of modern violence, of exclusion and the continuing oppression of the global masses perhaps most glaringly the socio-economic exclusion of young people (what philosopher Enrique Dussel has called the 'underside of modernity').

I find parallels between your criticism here and the work of Robert Reich (secretary of Labor in Clinton's administration). Some of his lectures at UC Berkeley were recently made into a documentary titled, "Inequality for All". I think the central thesis has been that it is only by investing in their own people -- access to education, jobs, health care, etc. -- that countries thrive. Also, given the enormous inequality (think of Oxfam's recent report and the shocking claim regarding global inequality) between the global rich and poor existing today (restricting the analysis just to America), there is a striking resemblance between the socioeconomic state of affairs in 1928 and 2007 - what Paul Krugman has called 'depression economics'.

I will certainly love to engage with you more about your reading and criticism of the Nigerian state.

Regards,
Seun.

On Mar 21, 2014 5:37 AM, <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com> wrote:
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.

From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:50:06 +0000 (GMT)
ReplyTo: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB

IMMIGRATION JOBS TRAGEDY AND THE UNEMPLOYMENT TIME BOMB
 
Ayo Olukotun
 
“Nigeria sits on many time bombs, but the deadliest time bomb of all is that of youth unemployment.  There can be no talk of good governance where millions go unemployed and many are under the crushing weight of poverty.”
-       Bola Tinubu, 26 February, 2014
 
     The nation is very much in the throes and traumatising aftermath of last Saturday’s death of at least 23 young Nigerians, who showed up for the aptitude test of the Nigerian Immigration Service.  The job hunters were trampled to death in stampedes which erupted in the screening centres of Abuja, Minna, Benin and Port Harcourt. The sensible postponement of the exercise in Lagos spared the nation more deaths in the wake of the lethal bedlam that marked the event.
    It is now history and a matter for profound regret that rather than show penitence at the massive fraud and organisational fiasco that led to the disasters, Interior Minister, Abba Moro, chose to indict the victims of a system that sentences its youths to fatal ordeals. Of course, our penchant as a nation for costly bungling is legendary.  A recent example is the adjournment of the much advertised National Conference almost as soon as it was inaugurated, because of logistical hitches.  So, no one had taken time to think through the details of organising such an important event?  In the same manner, a little forethought on the mechanics and logistics of holding the massive immigration screening on the same day would have averted the tragic fiascos; especially in the light of a similar disastrous outing in 2008 by the same parastatal.  But then, this is a nation that is organisationally challenged; flaunting great potentials but unable to collate them to achieve desired results. More baffling is the fact that the calamity occurred in the context of a paramilitary institution which ought to have accumulated the disciplinary orientation and strategic insight germane to crowd control.  But then we are dealing with decaying and dysfunctional institutions in which human lives and happiness are seen as expendable.
     Anomie and the absurd, ingredients of gripping thrillers and engrossing fictions are normalised on our streets.  The disappearing and reappearing petroleum queues with their tolls on productivity and health; the unending wait for a glimmer of electric power and the virtual shutdown of essential services as a result of strikes or cash crunches are all varieties of the disorder which occasioned last Saturday’s harvest of deaths.
   Consider too, the emptiness of official assurances in the tragedy.  On Friday, the minister was quoted as saying that “Adequate arrangement has been made for security and effective conduct of the test.” On Saturday, the solemn assurances went up in smoke and nobody as far as we know, including the minister has lost his job for shoddy performance.  Do you recall, by way of a related example, that at the outset of the current elongated petroleum shortage, the minister, Dizeani Allison Madueke came over to Lagos and assured that the hiccup will be short lived; and that marketers caught hoarding fuel will be sanctioned? Well, nothing of the sort as far as we know has happened; but there are official statements being made concerning the need “to deregulate the downstream sector of the industry” an ominous warning that the siege on consumers will soon be legitimised by an increase in the pump price of petroleum.  Frightening are the omens if we recall the upheavals of January 2012.   
   Let us now touch on the scourge of youth unemployment which is at the heart of Saturday’s tragedy.  The statistics of woe are distressing enough.  520, 000 applicants were seeking jobs for which there are less than 5, 000 vacancies.  And that sums up the social terror of youth unemployment put officially at 23% but which may be as high as 45%.  It is tempting but dangerous to dismiss Bola Tinubu’s warning quoted above as political rhetoric, especially in the light of the deadly stampede at the immigration screening centers which rendered it prophetic.
    To be sure, there is a global dimension to unemployment which the International Labour Organisation puts at over 203 million at the end of last year.  Disturbing still is the fact that in 2013 alone, the number of unemployed people rose by 5 million, one of the highest in many years. ILO’s warning of a jobless recovery in the advanced economies finds its correlate in Nigeria’s jobless, high growth.  Our economy is caught in the trap of impressive but non-inclusive growth, that is also not creating jobs.  President Goodluck Jonathan’s claim to have created 1.6 million jobs in 2013 was hotly disputed on social media by unemployed youths who asked scornfully: Where are the jobs?
    Even if Jonathan’s claim is verified it still falls short of what is required to roll back the tide.  For example, at the just concluded 20th Summit of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Foluso Philips, Chairman of the Group disclosed that Nigeria requires to create 24 million jobs in the next 10 years if it is to reduce by half the country’s gargantuan unemployment crisis. That gives us a yearly target of 2.4 million jobs to reach a 50 percent rollback of the swelling army of unemployed.
    That is not all.  If you take a quick look at the ILO survey you will discover that the countries with the least unemployment figures are those in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as those in Asia.  What does this tell us?  It returns to the debate about unemployment, the issue of the nature and character of the State since the countries in the regions mentioned are either emergent left of centre governments or the developmental states of Asia which have clear social welfare credentials as well as privilege the closure of the gap between the affluent and the have-not.  In other words, it is likely that there is a connection between the current neo-liberal growth strategy and our escalating unemployment considering that growth does not automatically translate into jobs unless there is a conscious effort and plan to draw the connection.
    At a recent workshop attended by this writer in Osogbo, in the state of Osun, one was pleasantly surprised to discover how job creation was made the focus of educational policy through for example the construction of an extensive garment factory employing designers, tailors and allied artisans perhaps the biggest of its type in West Africa. The brief of the workers is to design standardised school uniforms for the schools in the state; but it is of interest in the context of this discussion that an elaborate job creation mechanism had been aligned to it as well as to an equally far-flung schools feeding system which generates employment for caterers, food vendors and farmers with a value chain built around the project.
    The point then is this: Jobs cannot be created in the haphazard, lack-lustre manner in which the government at the centre has hitherto approached the matter. It connotes consciously formulated policies, energetically directed to yield backward and forward linkages which generate jobs and alleviate poverty. 
    This is the lesson to take home from the recent immigration jobs tragedy.
 
 
 
Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236
 
 
 

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: [Yan Arewa] Sanusi's deputy, Moghalu, moves against him; says suspended CBN governor overstepped his mark

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yakubu Muhammad Rigasa<ymrigasa@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:04 AM
Subject: [Yan Arewa] Sanusi’s deputy, Moghalu, moves against him; says suspended CBN governor overstepped his mark
To: 'Yan Arewa <yanarewa@yahoogroups.com>


Nicholas Ibekwe - 20 hours ago NATIONAL, NEWS

While suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, is trying very hard to clear his name from the indictment of financial recklessness by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) and the presidency, his colleagues appear to be gradually distancing themselves from actions taken during his stint at the regulatory bank.
A deputy governor at the bank and once a leading contender to replace Mr Sanusi, Kingsley Moghalu, told the U.K. Independent newspaper that his boss overstepped his authority.
“The lesson that can be drawn from it is the limits of central bank independence… There is a very thin line between central bank independence and… political posturing,” Mr Moghalu said.
According to the Nigerian presidency, Mr. Sanusi was suspended on the strength a report by the FRCN, indicting him for financial recklessness.
But Mr. Sanusi said he was suspended for exposing the diversion of at least $20 billion oil revenue by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Mr. Sanusi also said that he believed that his suspension was hastened after he threatened to commission a special audit of all Nigerian banks to unravel the whereabouts of the missing $20 billion. He was suspended nine days after he made the threat at a meeting with the heads of Nigerian banks.
Further, in a statement released on Sunday, the CBN governor denied being reckless with the bank finances.
He said some of the “intervention” spendings for which he is being disparaged were actually made at the behest of the presidency.
“The governor began to make very damaging public allegations against the government… allegations that have not been proven, after the president had sent him a presidential query about the finances of the central bank. The government has given a reason for the suspension and that was… to enable an investigation into the allegations against him,” Mr. Moghalu told the Independent.
“Somebody in the central bank was taking on an activist political role. That is not our function. Central banks over the world have clear functions and in your country [Britain] and any other civilised country I know that central bank governors operate within certain expectations and constraints and respect those expectations and constraints.”
Ironically, the FRCN report, which was cited as a reason for Mr. Sanusi’s suspension also indicted the deputy governors of the CBN. Mr Moghalu and his colleagues were also recommended for dismissal and prosecution.
But when asked about his indictment by the FRCN, Mr. Moghalu denied that he’s under investigation or accused of any wrongdoing by the FRCN. He also said he has no plan to resign.
Mr Moghalu also told the Independent that President Goodluck Jonathan has always respected the independence of the CBN.
“The president of Nigeria and the government of Nigeria have never in my knowledge interfered with the function of the central bank. And therefore I think we need to give them credit for respecting [its] independence,” he said.
Mr Moghalu said the CBN has been able to manage the sharp drop in the value of the naira that followed the shocked suspension of Mr Sanusi.
“Life is back to normal,” he claimed.
-------
YMR

http://projectgmb2015.blogspot.com

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: BILL COSBY HAS GONE AND DONE IT AGAIN...

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BILL COSBY HAS GONE AND DONE IT AGAIN...! HE REPORTS BELOW IN A  COMIC DELIVERY:
They're standing on the corner and they can't speak decent English. 
I can't even talk the way these people talk, but I will try below: 
Why you ain't, 
Where you is, 
What he drive, 
Where he stay, 
Where he work, 
Who you be... 
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. 
And then I heard the father talk. 
Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. 
The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. 
These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. 
$500 sneakers for what? 
And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. 
Where were you when he was 2?
Where were you when he was 12? 
Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?
And where is the father? Or who is his father? 
People putting their clothes on backward: 
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? 
People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?
Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? 
What part of Africa did this come from?? 
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa .....
I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid. 
I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany , Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa . So stop, already! ! ! 
With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap ......... And all of them are in jail.
Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. 
We have got to take the neighborhood back. 
People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now. 
We have millionaire football players who cannot read. 
We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job. 
Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. 
We have to start holding each other to a higher standard..
We cannot blame the white people any longer.'
~Dr.. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed..D.






USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1929 British Massacre: Is it Aba Women's Riot or Ikot Abasi Massacre?

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Comment: It would be interesting to read the reactions of our esteemed historians on this list regarding this story and Gov Akpabio's identity narrative and brokerage.

Regards,

Okey Iheduru
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1929 British massacre: Akwa Ibom to immortalise slain Ikot Abasi heroines

By News Express on 20/03/2014

http://www.newsexpressngr.com/news/detail.php?news=5049&title=1929-British-massacre:-Akwa-Ibom-to-immortalise-slain-Ikot-Abasi-heroines


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The Akwa Ibom Government has unfolded plans to establish Girls Secondary School in Ikot Abasi to immortalise women who lost their lives in the 1929 Ikot Abasi Women Massacre by the British colonial masters.

Governor Godswill Akpabio stated this Tuesday at Ikot Abasi Council Hall during a town hall meeting/constituency briefing in Ikot Abasi Federal Constituency. He said names of the women who died would be engraved in front of the school as a reminder to the sad incident by the British oppressive rule.

Akpabio announced the plans following the submission of Madam Edith Etete, an educationist from the area, that six women from Ikot Abasi who opposed British oppressive rule and taxation of women in 1929 were publicly executed while about 2,000 were randomly shot and some were drowned.

Her words: “In December of the same year, there was a protest march that took place in front of the District Officer’s office here in Ikot Abasi. That was the bloodiest, the most heartless killing of women, unarmed women that just went to the DO to present their demand that their husbands should not be taxed, they should not be taxed and that democracy should prevail.”

According to her, “The District Officer (DO) ordered his soldiers to open gun on the women. Forty women were killed; a lot of them fell into the river and died and that was the greatest massacre of women on 16th December, 1929.

“The other one at Aba, no life was lost. We don’t know why what happened in Ikot Abasi is tagged ‘Aba Women Riot’. Since 1989, the women of Akwa Ibom State have been struggling to correct that wrong impression that what happened in Aba was different from what happened in Ikot Abasi.”

Responding, Akpabio expressed shock at such gruesome killing and queried why the people have not sought payment of reparation for such crime against humanity.

“We will establish a secondary school for girls as a memorial for those women who lost their lives in 1929 women massacre in Ikot Abasi. If we can have their records, we will have cenotaph with their names all listed in front of that secondary school so that they would never be forgotten because through their blood, they brought about this democracy we are enjoying today,” the governor said.

He recalled that the 1929 Ikot Abasi Women Massacre  and the 1929 Aba Women Riot led to the agitation for independence from the British Colonial rule, saying: “I heard about the Aba Riot, a riot that did not claim a single life. The riot that led to the emergence of nationalistic spirit in Nigeria was actually the one at Ikot Abasi, where so many women were massacred in cold blood.”

Continuing, Akpabio said: “The place of Ikot Abasi Federal Constituency in our nation cannot be ignored. Lord Lugard lived here in Ikot Abasi and it was here that he signed the amalgamation papers. In other words, Nigeria was midwifed, and birthed in Ikot Abasi Local Government Area. It was also here in Ikot Abasi that our women led the fight against injustice in what has come to be known as the Aba Women Riot.

“This land is the land of great people who have made great sacrifices for our great nation. We are not therefore surprised that you produced one of the greatest legal minds of our country in the late Justice Sir Udo Udoma, the first African Chief Justice of Uganda and a former Judge of the Nigerian Supreme Court. Today we urge you, as we strive to make Akwa Ibom a better place for our children, to let that sense and commitment to justice be a compass directing you to do what is right before God as well as stand the tests of righteousness.”

Akpabio who pledged to establish tourist sites in Ikot Abasi commended the people of the Federal Constituency for their labours of love for our state and our country, positing: “The time has come for you to make further sacrifices and restate your enviable credentials as just and fair-minded people who believe in justice and whose parents were reputable defenders of justice. As we seek to bequeath to our children a just and equitable society founded on the principles of justice, we count on your support, partnership and prayers. Together we can rewrite the Akwa Ibom story.”

In his contribution, Obong Obot Etukafia, an elder statesman from Ikot Abasi Federal Constituency, lauded Governor Akpabio for making Akwa Ibom a model state in Nigeria, advocating for the zoning of governorship in 2015 to Eket Senatorial District and Ikot Abasi Federal Constituency in particular. 

“Let the governor that you are going to choose come from Ibibio land and from Eket Senatorial District and let him be a typical Ibibio person,” Obong Etukafia advised.

•Photo shows Governor Akpabio.

Source News Express

Posted 20/03/2014 08:22:13 AM




--
Okey Iheduru, PhD
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - History ends in Nigeria

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@Kolapo, greetings! I think you are not in Nigeria. we should not be scared or ashamed of accepting factual statements about Nigeria, even when they are derogatory. Our Post-primary schools do not offer 'History'. A few of us who have gone to the 'Ivory towers' to study history are seen as primitive people. Osun State government has a policy that officially banned the History. other states and the federal government has sentenced it to a 'natural death'. Apart from the civil history, many aspects of Nigeria's national life are left in the memory of the elites and political class. this is because they have had the opportunity of been active in governance and crippling the 'Giant of Africa'. Finally, is it not obvious in the attitude of our politicians that they lack a sense of HISTORY?


On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 10:19:14 PM UTC+1, FJKolapo wrote:
Some baffled non-Nigerian friends of mine saw this piece last weekend and sent me emails asking whether it was true. My response to one of them was,  "it cant be true. 
I have not read anything official from any quarters nor any discussions regarding this anywhere. Its not unlikely that the fellow read a piece about Nigerians not learning from history and mistook that for a policy statement. I think its one of those misconceived pieces that crop up from time to time."


From: "Ikhide"<xok...@yahoo.com>
To: "Toyin Falola"<USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:58:58 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - History ends in Nigeria

Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
 "Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.

Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.

How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.

The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital."

- Vanguard editorial (March 12, 2014) on the elimination of History from Nigeria's curriculum.

I thought this odious act was executed a while back... Obnoxious still!

Please read the rest here...


Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide


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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - History ends in Nigeria

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Femi, 

Ekhator has done me, at least,  a service,  for I am utterly bemused by how many young Nigerians who come to my classes so generally ignorant of Nigerian history. Few, except many of the young Igbos  (sorry oh, but I put names to questions and answers)  seem to know much, for instance about the civil war;  and in the case of those who do, the extent of the details are self-taught or what their parents told them, not what they got in the schools.
This is all very unscientific, I know, but it would be useful and instructive to carry out a survey, informal or formal,  and to make some inquiries to find out how extensively  histories in schools in Nigeria are being taught,  and how to see if,  I guess,  this is policy at both the state level lends itself to amnesia both by design and by default.

Pablo


On 14-03-21 10:46 AM, Ekhator Godfrey wrote:
@Kolapo, greetings! I think you are not in Nigeria. we should not be scared or ashamed of accepting factual statements about Nigeria, even when they are derogatory. Our Post-primary schools do not offer 'History'. A few of us who have gone to the 'Ivory towers' to study history are seen as primitive people. Osun State government has a policy that officially banned the History. other states and the federal government has sentenced it to a 'natural death'. Apart from the civil history, many aspects of Nigeria's national life are left in the memory of the elites and political class. this is because they have had the opportunity of been active in governance and crippling the 'Giant of Africa'. Finally, is it not obvious in the attitude of our politicians that they lack a sense of HISTORY?


On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 10:19:14 PM UTC+1, FJKolapo wrote:
Some baffled non-Nigerian friends of mine saw this piece last weekend and sent me emails asking whether it was true. My response to one of them was,  "it cant be true. 
I have not read anything official from any quarters nor any discussions regarding this anywhere. Its not unlikely that the fellow read a piece about Nigerians not learning from history and mistook that for a policy statement. I think its one of those misconceived pieces that crop up from time to time."


From: "Ikhide"<xok...@yahoo.com>
To: "Toyin Falola"<USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:58:58 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - History ends in Nigeria

Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
 "Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.

Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.

How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.

The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital."

- Vanguard editorial (March 12, 2014) on the elimination of History from Nigeria's curriculum.

I thought this odious act was executed a while back... Obnoxious still!

Please read the rest here...


Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of the Civil War. When we obliterate history, we should also destroy our artifacts, burn our museums and monuments, heritage sites and archaeological activities. A generation of Nigerians without knowledge of history would not appreciate these treasures.
How does a country proceed without a knowledge of it heroes and heroines? History is not just a study of events and dates, it provides analytical insights into social formations, anthropological developments, inventions and innovations that shape humanity.
The roles of history in governance, conflict resolutions, diplomacy and international relations, science and medical studies, technological developments, advancement of civilisations and human relations are vital.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/history-ends-nigeria/#sthash.mtXHvyYK.dpuf
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Quote of the Day

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - History ends in Nigeria

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Ikhide,
"Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses."
The reasons Ikhide gave above for Nigerian Government to remove history as a course in our schools are trivial. If  there are no teachers to teach the subject, why can't they train people to teach the subject? That will even reduce unemployment. A people without history cannot claim to be in existence. America with a population of about 300 million people makes sure their children take American history as a course. If America, the most powerful nation on earth, finds history relevant to its people why shouldn't Nigeria that calls itself the giant of Africa? 
Perhaps the truth of the matter is that Nigerian leaders know that they have not contributed positively to the civilization of their country apart from corruption and overthrow of legitimate governments that were put in place by the majority of the electorate. 
This is a country endowed with both natural and human resources and yet its leaders have not used the resources for the benefit of most Nigerians. Why will they not have aversion to history that will make them a reference point when considering reasons for the underdevelopment of the country?
We have naive and parochial leaders and until something is done to change their mindset, Nigeria remains a pitiful nation. 
Academics who know better should not rest on their oars until history becomes a subject taught at all levels in our institutions. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 
Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 21, 2014, at 3:46 PM, Ekhator Godfrey <godgate4luv@gmail.com> wrote:

Official reasons Nigeria advances for expunging history as a course of study are that students are shunning it, as there were few jobs for history graduates, and there is dearth of history teachers. These are excuses.
Nigeria's abhorrence of history is not new. There is no official account of

USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Implosion of Libya

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Three Years After Qaddafi

The Implosion of Libya

by PATRICK COCKBURN

The Libyan former prime minister Ali Zeidan fled last week after parliament voted him out of office. A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, illegally picked up a cargo of crude from rebels in the east of the country and sailed safely away, despite a government minister’s threat that the vessel would be “turned into a pile of metal” if it left port: the Libyan navy blamed rough weather for its failure to stop the ship. Militias based in Misrata, western Libya, notorious for their violence and independence, have launched an offensive against the eastern rebels in what could be the opening shots in a civil war between western and eastern Libya.

Without a central government with any real power, Libya is falling apart. And this is happening almost three years after 19 March 2011 when the French air force stopped Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s counter-offensive to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Months later, his burnt-out tanks still lay by the road to the city. With the United States keeping its involvement as low-profile as possible, Nato launched a war in which rebel militiamen played a secondary, supportive role and ended with the overthrow and killing of Gaddafi.

A striking feature of events in Libya in the past week is how little interest is being shown by leaders and countries which enthusiastically went to war in 2011 in the supposed interests of the Libyan people. President Obama has since spoken proudly of his role in preventing a “massacre” in Benghazi at that time. But when the militiamen, whose victory Nato had assured, opened fire on a demonstration against their presence in Tripoli in November last year, killing at least 42 protesters and firing at children with anti-aircraft machine guns, there was scarcely a squeak of protest from Washington, London or Paris.

Coincidentally, it was last week that Al-Jazeera broadcast the final episode in a three-year investigation of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people in 1988. For years this was deemed to be Gaddafi’s greatest and certainly best-publicised crime, but the documentary proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of carrying out the bombing, was innocent. Iran, working through the Palestinian Front for The Liberation of Palestine – General Command, ordered the blowing up of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by the US navy earlier in 1988.

Much of this had been strongly suspected for years. The new evidence comes primarily from Abolghasem Mesbahi, an Iranian intelligence officer who later defected and confirmed the Iranian link. The US Defense Intelligence Agency had long ago reached the same conclusion. The documentary emphasises the sheer number of important politicians and senior officials over the years who must have looked at intelligence reports revealing the truth about Lockerbie, but still happily lied about it.

It is an old journalistic saying that if you want to find out government policy, imagine the worst thing they can do and then assume they are doing it. Such cynicism is not deserved in all cases, but it does seem to be a sure guide to western policy towards Libya. This is not to defend Gaddafi, a maverick dictator who inflicted his puerile personality cult on his people, though he was never as bloodthirsty as Saddam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad.

But the Nato powers that overthrew him – and by some accounts gave the orders to kill him – did not do so because he was a tyrannical ruler. It was rather because he pursued a quirkily nationalist policy backed by a great deal of money which was at odds with western policies in the Middle East. It is absurd to imagine that if the real objective of the war was to replace Gaddafi with a secular democracy that the West’s regional allies in the conflict should be theocratic absolute monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This is equally true of Western and Saudi intervention in Syria which has the supposed intention of replacing President Bashar al-Assad with a freely elected government that will establish the rule of law.

Libya is imploding. Its oil exports have fallen from 1.4 million barrels a day in 2011 to 235,000 barrels a day. Militias hold 8,000 people in prisons, many of whom say they have been tortured. Some 40,000 people from the town of Tawergha south of Misrata were driven from their homes which have been destroyed. “The longer Libyan authorities tolerate the militias acting with impunity, the more entrenched they become, and the less willing to step down” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Putting off repeated deadlines to disarm and disband militias only prolongs the havoc they are creating throughout the country.”

Unfortunately, the militias are getting stronger not weaker. Libya is a land of regional, tribal, ethnic warlords who are often simply well-armed racketeers exploiting their power and the absence of an adequate police force. Nobody is safe: the head of Libya’s military police was assassinated in Benghazi in October while Libya’s first post-Gaddafi prosecutor general was shot dead in Derna on 8 February. Sometimes the motive for the killing is obscure, such as the murder last week of an Indian doctor, also in Derna, which may lead to an exodus of 1,600 Indian doctors who have come to Libya since 2011 and on whom its health system depends.

Western and regional governments share responsibility for much that has happened in Libya, but so too should the media. The Libyan uprising was reported as a simple-minded clash between good and evil. Gaddafi and his regime were demonised and his opponents treated with a naïve lack of scepticism and enquiry. The foreign media have dealt with the subsequent collapse of the Libyan state since 2011 mostly by ignoring it, though politicians have stopped referring to Libya as an exemplar of successful foreign intervention.

Can anything positive be learnt from the Libyan experience which might be useful in establishing states that are an improvement on those ruled by Gaddafi, Assad and the like? An important point is that demands for civil, political and economic rights – which were at the centre of the Arab Spring uprisings – mean nothing without a nation state to guarantee them; otherwise national loyalties are submerged by sectarian, regional and ethnic hatreds.

This should be obvious, but few of those supporting the Arab uprisings, for reasons other than self-interest, seem to have taken it on board. “Freedom under the rule of law is almost unknown outside nation-states,” writes the journalist and MEP Daniel Hannan in a succinct analysis of why the Arab Spring failed. “Constitutional liberty requires a measure of patriotism, meaning a readiness to accept your countrymen’s disagreeable decisions, to abide by election results when you lose.”

Even this level of commitment may not be enough, but without it only force can hold the state together. The escape of Morning Glory, the ousting of Ali Zeidan and the triumph of the militias all go to show that the Libyan state has so far neither the popular support nor military power to preserve itself.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of  Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Funny Video

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Just something to make you laugh
 :)
; or cry--really!




--
Okey Iheduru, PhD
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa Conference 2014: Schedule

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Conference Schedule: Friday, April 4, 2014

 

Panel Session A: 11:00-12:30

 

A1: Resistance and Nationalist Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora, SAC 1.106

Chair: Moyo Okediji, Art and Art History Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Between Afrocentricity and Afrolatinidad: Identity Construction as a Revolutionary Practice

Ashley D. Aaron, San Francisco State University

Revolutionizing the Homeland: The Philosophical Relevance of Nigerians in Diaspora

Oladele Abiodun Balogun, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

Re-Membering Samson OtherWise: Resistance, Revolution, and Relationality within The Carnivalesque-Creolized Chronotope of Judges 13-16

A. Paige Rawson, Drew University

Reconstructing Jamaican Nationalism: Five Centuries of Culture, Resistance, and Identity Formation

Ben Weiss, The University of Texas at Austin

Nobody Knows De Troubles I’ve Seen: A Discourse Analysis of Selected Afro-American Protest Music and Their Relevance to Contemporary Issues

Stephen Olusoji, University of Lagos, Nigeria

Back to Africa: Roy Campbell’s Voorslag (1926) and its Political Protest against Racial Inequality in the Union of South Africa

Michael Sharp, Universidad de Puerto Rico



A2: Music, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the African Diaspora, SAC 1.118

Chair: Steven J. Salm, Department of History, Xavier University of Louisiana

 

Analysis of Forms and Instruments in Bembe Music: A Study of Obafemi Owode, L.G. Abeokuta Ogun State

Oni Abayomi, Waterman College, Nigeria

Aganyin Musical Tradition in Lagos State, Nigeria: A Diasporic Approach

Samuel Toyin Ajose, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Queens in Flight: Fela’s Afrobeat Queens, Performance and Transnational Imagination in the Production of “Black” Feminist Diasporas

Dotun Ayobade, The University of Texas at Austin

Reggae Music as Expression of African Culture in Diaspora

C. Izeoma Chinda, Rivers State College Of Arts and Science

C.D. Chuku, Rivers State College Of Arts and Science

Amugo Frank, Rivers State College Of Arts and Science

The Profits of Slavery and the Furtherance of Music

David Hunter, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Fela on Broadway: Seeing Fela Anikulapo Kuti through the Eyes of the Fela! Musical

Albert Oikelome, University of Lagos, Nigeria

 

A Marriage of Inconvenience: Miriam Makeba’s Marriage to Stokely Carmichael and Its Impact on Her Recording Career in the United States

Tyler Fleming, University of Louisville

 

 

A3:  Africans Abroad: The Homeland and the Politics of Relevance, SAC 2.120

Chair: Mickie Mwanzia Koster, The University of Texas at Austin at Tyler

 

Nigerians in Diaspora and the Challenges of Good Governance: A Rescue Mission

Lalude Goke Abidemi, Fountain University, Nigeria

Visa Lottery Versus Brain Drain, and Africa in Diaspora: Depleting Effects on Vocational Artisanship in Africa

Tajudeen Adewumi Adebisi, Osun State University, Nigeria

The Bantu Matrilineal Belt: Dismantling Notions of Women’s Perpetual Subjugation in Diaspora

Rhonda M. Gonzales, The University of Texas at Austin at San Antonio

Christine Saidi, Kutztown University

Catherine Cymone Fourshey, Susquehanna University

Redirecting Second-generation Americans: Seeking Authority and Authenticity in North Africa and the Middle East

Maysan Haydar

The Remittance Intentions of Second-Generation Ghanaian-Americans

Kirstie Kwarteng

Brothers of the Trade: Intersections of Racial Framing and Identity Processes upon African-Americans and African Immigrants in America–Ancestral Kinsmen of the American Slave Trade

Veeda V. Williams, Prairie View A&M University

 

A4: Human Rights and the Diaspora, SAC 2.302

Chair: Celine A. Jacquemin, Department of Political Science, St. Mary’s University

Human Rights as Natural Rights: The Quest for a Theoretical Grounding

Wanjala S. Nasong’o, Rhodes College

Unraveling Somalia’s Global Human Rights Narratives

Amentahru Wahlrab, The University of Texas at Austin at Tyler

Abuse of Human Rights of Africans in Diaspora

V.O. Adefarasin, Olabisi Olabanjo University

 

Human Rights in the African Diaspora

Richard Agyei, University of Education, Ghana

Untangling Discursive Reproduction: Negras, Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in Brazil

Ugo Felicia Edu, University of California, San Francisco/University of California, Berkeley

 

Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Southwestern Nigeria: Myth or Reality

Adeniyi, Emmanuel Olufemi, Federal College of Education, Nigeria

Dada, Olubukola Christianah, Federal College of Education, Nigeria


Human Rights and Physical Capital (Environmental Infrastructure and Social Services) in Nigeria

Jonathan Ogwuche, Benue State University, Nigeria

 

 

A5: Colonial Processes And Inter-Group Relations, SAC 3.116

Chair: Charles Thomas, United States Military Academy at West Point

 

Ikula: The Kuba Personal Knife and Colonial Resistance

Letitia Hopkins, The University of Texas at Austin

The British Colonial Rule and its Implications on Intra-Ethnic Relations among the Yorubas in Southwestern Part of Nigeria

Gbade Ikuejube, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

 

Beyond Diasporic Times and Spaces: Identity Formations among Eritrean Protestants during Colonial Times

Rahel Kuflu, Södertörn University, Sweden

More Than a Victory: The Bechuanaland Protectorate and British Colonialism

Ian Marsh, University of Central Florida

 

Reimagining Space and Diaspora in Colonial Lagos

Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, New York University

 

‘Where the Negros Reign’: African Aspects of Colonial Veracruz, 1580-1700

J.M.H. Clark, The Johns Hopkins University

 

 

Panel Session B: 2:00-3:30 PM

 

B1: Literary and Cultural Expressions of Self and Others, SAC 1.106

Chair: Xavier Livermon, Africa and African Diaspora Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Developing a Framework for Translating Yoruba Novels: Analysis and Synthesis of Translation Strategies in Two English Versions of D.O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olódùmarè

Samiat Olubunmi Abubakre, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

 

Cultural Expressions: Africanisms in the Languages of the Greater Caribbean

Ann Albuyeh, Universidad de Puerto Rico

 

African Kinship Across the Atlantic: A Study of Ben Igwe’s Against the Odds

Itany Ede Egbung, University of Calabar, Nigeria

 

Socio-Political Realities and Technique in Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the

House

Ezinwanyi Adam, Babcock University, Nigeria

J. A. Rogers: Writing Africana World Biography and History Within Western Civilization

Thabiti Asukile, Independent Historian

 

Frantz Fanon and Richard Wright: Diaspora as the Nexus for Intellectual Comparison

Juan Carlos Suarez, The University of Texas at Austin



B2: Children and Youth, SAC 1.118

Chair: Isabel P. B. Fêo Rodrigues, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

 

Exploring the Social Protection Right of the African Child in Diaspora

Rachael Ojima Agarry, Kwara State University, Nigeria

 

Relevance of Parental Cultural and Socio Economic Background in Nutritional Status of Pre-Schoolers

Morounkeji Folarinle Fasakin, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

Bridget Ebunoluwa Adeyanju

Eat, Speak, and Play Like Our Ancestors: A Case of Children from Madagascar in America

Riijasoa Andriamanana, University of New Mexico

 

Impact of Tradition and Culture on Family Dynamics and Physical Disabilities

Adeniyi, Emmanuel Olufemi, Federal College of Education, Nigeria

Olubukola Christianah Dada, Federal College of Education, Nigeria

 

Child Rights in an African Socio-Cultural Context

Olabisi Adedigba, Kwara State University, Nigeria

Crisis of Identity: A Linguistic Study of the Attitude of the Younger Generation of Africans in the Diaspora

Temitope Aboidun Balogun, Osun State University

 

 

B3: Slavery and Enslavement in Africa and the African Diaspora, SAC 2.120

Chair: Edward A. Alpers, University of California, Los Angeles

 

Slavery and Colonialism in Africa Hindered Development: The Base for Underdevelopment in Nigeria

Abdulsalami M. Deji, Taraba State University, Nigeria

 

From Slavery to African Diaspora in the Arabian Peninsula

Iliya Ibrahim Gimba, Taraba State University, Nigeria

 

Remapping the Journey from Freedom to Slavery to Diaspora

Alaine S. Hutson, Huston-Tillotson University

 

Against all Odds: Slavery and the African Diaspora

Rosalie Black Kiah, Norfolk State University

 

Slavery and Its Apparatuses: Machado de Assis’s “Pai contra mãe”

Fernando de Sousa Rocha, Middlebury College

 

Black Women, Blasphemy, and the African Diaspora in Mexico City, 1600-1610

Rhonda M. Gonzales, University of Texas at San Antonio

 

Dehumanization, Enslavement, and Violence against African Americans in American History

Onaiwu W. Ogbomo, Western Michigan University

 

 

B4: Home and Homelands, SAC 3.302

Chair: Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos

 

Colonial Existence, Home, and Nationalism Among ex-British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

Fonkem Achankeng I, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

 

Food as a Medium of Spatial Reteritorialisation: Interrogating How Senegalese Migrants in Durban Recreate ‘Home’ in the Transnational Host Context

Bilola Nicoline Fomunyam, University of KwaZulu-Natal

 

African Diaspora Organizations and Homeland Development: Which Diaspora for Whose Development?

Odoziobodo Severus Ifeanyi, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria

Ihemeje Chidiebere Godswealth, University Putra Malaysia

 

"Home! Sweet Home!": African Diaspora and Reverse Migration in the 21st Century

Donald Omagu, City University of New York

 

A Diasporic Imagining of Homeland on the African Continent

Jessica Stephenson, Kennesaw State University

 

 

Reverse Migrations and the Concept of Homeland in African Diaspora Studies

Osei Boakye and Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, KNUST, Kumasi & International History Department

 

 

Panel Session C: 3:45-5:15 PM

 

C1: Business, Trade and the Building of an African Diaspora, SAC 1.106

Chair: Juliet E.K. Walker, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin

 

De Facto Preferential Lending: How South Sudan’s Microfinance Industry Unwittingly Fostered Divisions Along Wartime Diaspora Lines

Crystal Murphy, Chapman University


Comparative Analysis of African Traditional Economic Systems and Micro-Financing

Iheanyi N. Osondu, Fort Valley State University, Georgia

Diaspora Income and Business Start-Up in Nigeria: Issues and Perspectives

Bolanle Clara Simeon-Fayomi, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria

Abimbola Olugbenga Fayomi, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria

 

Business, Brokers and Borders: Understanding the Structure of West African Trade Diasporas

Olivier Walther, Rutgers University

 

Local Production, Global Entanglement: Early Southern West African Societies in the Trans-Saharan Trade (c. 1100-1500 A.D.)

Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, Rice University

 

Diaspora Remittances and the Development of the Global South

Dahida Deewua Philip, University of Abuja, Nigeria



C2: Asia and the Indian Ocean in the African Diaspora, SAC 1.118

Chair: Indrani Chatterjee, History Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Pushing the Paradigm: Locating Scholarship on the Siddis and Kaffirs

Sureshi Jayawardene, Northwestern University

 

Interrogating Identity: A Study of Siddi and Hadrami Diaspora in Hyderabad City, India

Khatija Khader, Jawaharlal Nehru University

 

Maritime Exchange Networks and Urban-Centered States in Ancient East Africa and South Asia

Chapurukha Kusimba, American University


China’s Emerging Multinational Corporations in Africa: Are These ‘International Vampires’ Different from their Western Counterparts?

Augustine Ayuk, Clayton State University


Coolitude in an Era of Creolisation and Cultural Globalisation: An Epistemological Perspective

Angela A. Ajimase, University of Calabar, Nigeria


The Chagossians: Africans Twice Removed
Peter Harris, The University of Texas at Austin

 

 

C3: African Mobility in the Early Modern Iberian World, SAC 2.302

Chair: Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Soldiers of His Majesty: Inter-Imperial Rivalries and Black Carib Militarization in Central America’s Age of Revolutions

Ernesto Mercado-Montero, The University of Texas at Austin at Austin

 

Royal Subjects: Old African Christians in the Atlantic World

Chloe Ireton, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Negros Libres in Early-Modern Manila: Rethinking the Significance of Blackness in the Seventeenth Century Spanish Philippines

Kristie Flannery, The University of Texas at Austin

 

The Diasporic Birth of a Portuguese-based Creole in West Africa, 1500-1600s

Isabel P. B. Fêo Rodrigues, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

The African Diaspora in Britain, 1500-1640

Miranda Kaufmann, Independent Scholar, United Kingdom

 

 

C4: Popular Culture in the African Diaspora, SAC 3.116

Chair: Steven J. Salm, Department of History, Xavier University of Louisiana

 

Trauma and Reconciliation: Mediating Diaspora Identities and Relations in New African Cinema Spaces

Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, Ithaca College

 

Perception of the New World Experience and Cultural Interference in Selected Nigerian Video Films

Arinpe Adejumo, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

 

The Image, the Identity, and the Crisis: Nollywood Films as a Case Study

Joke Muyiwa Fadirepo, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

 

Nigerian Representation via the New African Diaspora Film

Olaocha Nwadiuto Nwabara, Michigan State University

 

Beyond the Act: Theatre, Culture and Ifa Corpus. A Tradoslamichristic Interrogation

Taofiq Olaide Nasir, Olabisi Onabanjo University

 

Cultivating “True Sons of the Soil”: War, Diaspora, and Popular Culture in Sierra Leone

Samuel Mark Anderson, University of California Los Angeles

 

Skill-Drain or Skill-Gains: Diaspora Intervention, Sports Development and Wealth Redistribution in Nigeria

Oyetunde Samson Oyebode, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Nigeria

 

Dinner Reception, 5:30-6:30 PM

Student Activity Center Ballroom, 2.410

(Registered conference participants only)

 

Keynote Lecture, 6:45-7:45

UTC 2.112A

“Diaspora as Black Politics”

Professor Edmund T. Gordon

Chair and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies

The University of Texas at Austin

 

Edmund T. Gordon is chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology of the African Diaspora at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Gordon is also the former Associate Vice President of Thematic Initiatives and Community Engagement of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement as well as former Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas. His teaching and research interests include: Culture and power in the African Diaspora, gender studies (particularly Black males), critical race theory, race education, and the racial economy of space and resources. His publications include Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African-Nicaraguan Community, 1998 UT Press. Dr. Gordon received his Doctorate in Social Anthropology from Stanford University and his Master's of Arts from Stanford University in Anthropology and Master's degree in Marine Sciences from the University of Miami.

 

 

Saturday, April 5, 2014

 

Panel Session D: 9:00-10:30 AM

 

D1: Literature and Defining Diasporic Identities, GAR 0.120

Chair: Barbara Harlow, Department of English, The University of Texas at Austin

Nigeria, the Long-Armed Woman: Gender as Diasporic Anxiety in Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl

Kim Sasser, Wheaton College

Globalization in the Making: the Role of Afro-Arabic Literary Writings in the Medieval Period

Adam Adebayo Sirajudeen and Aliy Abdulwahid Adebisi

 

From Juan to Juan: The Triumph of Poet and Subject in Juan Latino's Austrias Carmen

Chantell Smith, University of Georgia

 

No Kin, No Country: Rethinking the Black Diasporic Subject in Melville’s Moby-Dick

Sam C. Tenorio, Northwestern University

Ethno-Linguistic Analysis of Some Selected Ijesa Proverbs and the Conceptualisation of “Agidi-Ijesa”

Olaosebikan T.O. Wende, Osun State University

 

New Diasporan History: A Study of Selected Poems of Derek Walcott

Julia Udofia, University of Uyo


D2: Festivals, Celebrations, and Performance, GAR 0.128

Chair: Neville Hoad, Department of English, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Traditional African Festival and Caribbean Carnival: A Comparative Analysis

Ismaila Rasheed Adedoyin, University of Lagos, Nigeria

 

From Feasts to Festivals: Diasporic Divisions in Trinidad Orisha

N. Fadeke Castor, Texas A&M University

 

Where There Is No Second Language: The Problems Faced by International Tourists During the Calabar Christmas Festival

Gloria Mayen Umukoro, University of Calabar, Nigeria

 

Dance as an Expressive Culture: The Example of Adamu Orisa (Eyo) Festival in Lagos State

Dosumu Lawal Yeside, Lagos State University, Nigeria

 

From Witchdoctor To Pastor: The Male Preacher Figure and Cultural Continuities in Nigerian Religious Performances

Abimbola Adelakun, The University of Texas at Austin

 

African Indigenous Knowledge: Dissemination of West African Dance and Drum, Cultural Commodification and Racism

Collette Murray, York University

 

D3: Brazil: Navigating Boundaries, Representing Blackness, GAR 0.132

Chair: João H. Costa Vargas, Africa and African Diaspora Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Axé Politics: The Political Implications of Candomblé Healing Practices

Farid Suárez, New York University

 

Traditional is Political: The Quotidian Politics of Baianas de Acarajé

Vanessa Castañeda, New York University

 

The Portrayal of Baianas in Two Moments of Brazilian Literature

Rafael Cesar, New York University

Beyond Mãe Preta: The Presence of Black Women in the Imprensa Negra Brasileira (Black Press of Brazil), 1910 – 1937

Wendi Muse, New York University

 

Deterritorialized Temporalities: African Diasporic Narratives by Women Writers from Brazil and Guadeloupe

Hapsatou Wane, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

 

Constructing an Afro-Brazilian Identity in Nineteenth Century Ceará, Brazil

Tshombe Miles, Baruch College



D4: Roundtable: Being and Belonging: the African Diaspora and Representation in the Smithsonian, GAR 2.112

Chair: Ariana Curtis, Curator, Latino Studies, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

 

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

Ariana A. Curtis, Curator, Latino Studies

 

Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Fath Davis Ruffins, Curator of African American History and Culture

 

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Deborah L. Mack, Associate Director Community & Constituent Services

Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Tashima Thomas, Summer 2013 Afro-Latino Fellow

 

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Diana Baird N'Diaye, Cultural Heritage Specialist/ Curator

 

 

D5: Representations of African Diasporic Religious Traditions, GAR 2.128

Chair: Tshepo Masango Chery, African and African Diasporic Studies Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Ethiopianism and Black Women in Pauline Hopkins's Mythological Vision

Elizabeth J. West, Georgia State University

 

Religious Borrowing, Intertextuality and Creolization in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

Maha Marouan, University of Alabama

 

The Relevance of 'Alasalatu' and Celestial Church of Christ of Oriade Local Council Development Area with the Traditional Culture in the African Diaspora

Hannah T.K. Ishola, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education

Bolanle N. Akeusola, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education

 

The Influence of Islam on the Slave Trade in West Africa: The Need for Re-Examination

Rafiu Ibrahim Adebayo, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

 

African Muslims in Diaspora

L.O. Abbas, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

 

The Influence of Religion and Traditional Culture on Creolization in the African Diaspora: The Nigerian Experience

Ezekiel Kehinde Akano, Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Nigeria

 

 

D6: Roundtable: Africans in Southwest Asia: On the Meaning of “Kaffir” (Again), GAR 3.116

Chair: Sumit Guha, History Department, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Melisa Schindler, State University of New York, Buffalo

Omar H. Ali, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Pedro Machado, Indiana University, Bloomington

Sureshi Jayawardene, Northwestern University

 

 

Panel Session E: 10:45-12:15

 

E1: Identity Formation and the Homeland, GAR 0.120

Chair: Emilio Zamora, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin

 

In Search of a ‘Homeland’ in Africa: the Politics of Diasporans’ Resettlement Efforts in Ghana

Kwame Essien, Lehigh University

George M Bob-Milliar, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana

A Kind of Homecoming, 2013

Kevin Brooks, North Dakota State University

Reverse Migrations and the Concept of Homeland in African Diaspora Studies

Wilhemina Donkoh, KNUST, Kumasi & International History Department, London

 

Homeless at Heart, a Comparative Study of the Physical and Cultural Concept of the (Home) Land as Depicted in Lopes’ Le Lys et le Flamboyant and Ndiaye’s En famille

Yasmina Fawaz, The University of Texas at Austin


Paradoxes and Contradictions between African Diasporas and Resident Africans in the Search for an Identity: A Nigerian Outlook

Segun Osinibi, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria


‘I Am What I Eat and Wear When It Matters’: Identity Politics in the African Diaspora

Bridget Teboh, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

 

Connecting with Your People: The Case of Young Igbo Diaspora

Uchenna Onuzulike, Howard University

 

 

E2: Gender and Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, GAR 0.128

Chair: Hauwau Evelyn Yusuf, Kaduna State University, Kaduna Nigeria

Revisiting (Neo)-Colonial Narratives: A Critical Examination of Ethnicity and Gender in the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970)

Golaleh Pashmforoosh, University of Manitoba

 

Race, Gender, and Migration in the Revolutionary Caribbean

Michele Reid-Vazquez, University of Pittsburgh

 

Mutations of Slavery: Prostitution and Women Trafficking in Contemporary Nigerian Novels

Bosede F. Afolayan, University of Lagos

 

Mammies, Mulattoes, Morenas, and the Media: Past and Present Depictions of Women of the African Diaspora

Raven J. Crowder, University of Houston-Victoria

 

Afro-German Women and the Cross-Cultural Black Women’s Studies Summer Institute

Tiffany N. Florvil, University of New Mexico

 

“Use What You Have to Get What You Want--Sex for Work”: The Ghanaian Perspective of Sexual Harassment in the Work Place

Yaa Konadu-Yiadom, University of Cape Coast

 

State Violence, Radical Protest and the Black/African Female Body

Oluwakanyinsola O. Obayan, The University of Texas at Austin

 

 

E3: Religious Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora, GAR 0.132

Chair: Steven J. Salm, Department of History, Xavier University of Louisiana

Cosmos, Kinship and Communitas: Black Pentecostalism(s) in America and the Reworlding of the Black Religious Landscape

Eric Lewis Williams, Iowa State University

Biblical Curses and the Atlantic African Diaspora

Gnimbin A. Ouattara, Brenau University

 

Preparing a People: The Church and the Making of a New African Diaspora in Middle Tennessee

Adebayo Oyebade, Tennessee State University

 

The Slavery of African Descents and Christianization of Yorubaland, Southwestern Nigeria in the 19th Century

Rotimi Williams Omotoye, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

 

Synergy of Religion and Traditional Culture on Job Performance of Africans in Diaspora

Cecilia Nwogu, Rivers State College of Arts and Science, Nigeria

Frank Onyema Amugo, Rivers State College of Arts and Science, Nigeria

 

Religion, Traditional Culture and Creolization in the African Diaspora: The Case of the Banyangs and Ejagams in Southwest Cameroon

Agbor Tabot, Government Technical High School Buea, Cameroon



E4: Globalization and Diasporic Communities, GAR 2.112

Chair: Chair: Martin S. Shanguhyia, Syracuse University

 

The Influence of Globalization and Politic on Nigerian Arabic Poetry

Lateef Onireti Ibraheem, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

Aliyu Muhammad Jamiu, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Nigeria

Mainstreaming Black European Experience in the Global Black Diaspora Studies: Issues, Themes and Prospects

Okpeh Ochayi Okpeh, Jr., Benue State University

Reading Mid-Twentieth Century Haitian Travel Advertisements

Kimberly J. Banks, Queensborough Community College

Red, Black and Greener: Pauulu Kamarakafego, Global Black Power and Environmental Justice

Quito Swan, Howard University

 

Effect of Globalisation and Cultural Diversity on Trado-Medical Practices

Roheemat Olabimpe Adeyemi, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

 

Crossing Boundaries and the Creation of African Consciousness: The Continental Influence of James Aggrey

Ethan R. Sanders, University of Cambridge

 

 

E5: Movement and Space in Africa and the African Diaspora, GAR 2.128

Chair: Olivier Tchouaffe, Southwestern University

 

Global Places, Local Spaces: The Contemporary Afropolitan Experience

Tamerra Griffin, New York University

 

Diasporic Space in the Comoro Islands and in Zanzibar

Iain Walker, University of Oxford

The Multiple Migrant Experiences and the Search for a Place in the Metropolitan Cities in Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah

Inkidzayi Manase, University of Venda, South Africa

 

African Americans in Mexico: International Propaganda, Migration, and the Resistance Against U.S. Racial Hegemony

Alfredo Aguilar, The University of Texas-Pan American

 

'Are you an American or an African?': 19th Century African American Migration through the Diasporic Analytic Lens

Lawrence Aje, University of Montpellier, France

 

The Search for ‘Greener Pastures’ Abroad: Reviewing Modern Migration of Nigerians to the United States of America

Joseph O. Akinbi, Adeyemi College of Education

 

 

Lunch Reception for Registered Participants

12:15-2:00 PM

Garrison Hall

 

 

Panel Session F: 2:00-3:30 PM

 

F1: Francophone African Identities in Motion (Panel presentations inFrench), GAR 0.120

Chair: Benjamin Brower, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin

 

The Expulsés and the Malian Crisis/Migrations de retour et crise malienne

Daouda Gary-Tounkara, CNRS, LAM/Sciences Po Bordeaux

 

“African Diaspora” in the French Historiography: National Boundaries to a Global Concept

Louise Barre, Columbia University, London School of Economics


Rewind and Reframe: Thoughts on Children and Contemporary Issues of Race

Olivier Tchouaffe, Southwestern University

 

Social Unrest and the African Diaspora in the French Banlieues

Hervé Tchumkam, Southern Methodist University

The Identity of the Immigrant in a Postcolonial Francophone World: Léonora Miano’s Ces Ames Chagrines and Habiter la Frontière

Josiane Banini, West Virginia University

The Ethics of Transnationalism in the French Caribbean Thought

Ramon A. Founkoué, Michigan Technological University


F2: Race and Racism, GAR 0.128

Chair: Khushbu Patel, St. Mary’s University

 

Premature Abolition, Ethnocentrism, and Bold Blackness: Race Relations in the Cayman Islands, 1834-1840

Christopher Williams, The University College of the Cayman Islands

 

New African Diasporas and the Development of Black Solidarity in Belgium

Nicole Grégoire, Université Libre de Bruxelles

 

Yearning for Whiteness: Racial Identification Among the Coloureds of Antigua, 1660s – 1860s

Nsaka Sesepkekiu, Independent Scholar

           

African Diaspora: Unending Encounters with the Subtlety and Blatancy of Racism

Kunirum Osia, Coppin State University

 

Tracing the Gaze: The Origination and Perpetuation of the “Single-Story” of Africa

Mandy D. Jolly, Lenoir-Rhyne University

 

“In this Matter of Dignity”: Black Unionism, Racial Order, and the Struggle for Citizenship in Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1899-1907

Bonnie Lucero, The University of Texas-Pan American



F3: Language and Speech in the African Diaspora, GAR 0.132

Chair: Bessie House-Soremekun, African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

 

Indigenous Languages as Tools for Development in Ghana

Agyapong Wireko, University of Ghana

 

Yoruba Speakers in the West African Francophone Diaspora

A. Sanni-Suleiman, University of Ilorin

Language, Militancy, Terrorism and the African Diaspora: Promoting or Resisting Change and Development of Africa?

Terseer Jija, Benue State University

 

Diasporic Dialects: Garifuna

Brittmy Martinez, University of Baltimore

Re-defining Language and Identity: A Study of Migrants in Chimamanda Adiche's American

Juliet Nkrane Ekpang, University of Calabar, Nigeria

 

“Whatsupotch:” the Social Remittances of the Ethiopian Diaspora and Return Migrants

Hewan Girma, Hofstra University and State University of New York at Stony Brook

 

 

F4: Pan-Africanisms and Transnational Identities, GAR 2.112

Chair: Adebayo Oyebade, Tennessee State University

Pan-Africanisms as Bulwark for Unifying Continental and Diaspora Africans: A Critical Evaluation

Victor Iyanya, Benue State University, Nigeria

Borrowing the Philosophy of Pan-Africanism from the Diaspora: Challenges of African Unity, Democracy and Development in the 21st Century

Alexius Amtaika, University of the Free State, South Africa

 

Jomo Kenyatta and the Puzzle of Pan-Africanism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Nationalism, 1926-1963

Michael Mwenda Kithinji, University of Central Arkansas

 

The African Diaspora as a Catalyst for African Freedom: Pan-Africanism and Africa’s Decolonization

Wanjala S. Nasong’o, Rhodes College

Malcolm X Transnationalism and Legacies in Kenya

Mickie Mwanzia Koster, The University of Texas at Tyler

 

Re-Engineering the Pan-Africanist Vision in the Black Atlantic

David Imbua, University of Calabar, Nigeria

Stella-Effah Attoe, University of Calabar, Nigeria

 

 

F5: Conceptualizing the African Diaspora, GAR 2.128

Chair: Okpeh Ochayi Okpeh, Jr, Benue State University

 

Writing African Students into the Modern African Diaspora

Olanipekun Oladotun Laosebikan, Chicago State University

 

Mapping the African Diaspora

Edward A. Alpers, University of California, Los Angeles

 

Thugs and Welfare Queens: Self Authorship and Identity for African Diasporas

Leamon Bazil, Saint Louis University

Diasporas Collide: Identity at the “Fault Lines”

Daniel C. Castilow II, Tulane University

 

Slavery and the African Diaspora: A Discourse on the Dislocation and Mutation of the African

Alaneme Justina Chika, Imo State Polytechnic, Nigeria

 

Religion, Traditional Culture and Creolization in the African Diaspora: The Case of the Banyangs and Ejagams in Southwest Cameroon

Richard Agbor A. Enoh, University of Buea, Cameroon

 

 

Panel Session G: 3:45-5:15 PM

G1: Consciousness, Expression, and the Creation of African and Diasporic Identities, GAR 0.120

Chair: Moyo Okediji, Art and Art History Department, The University of Texas at Austin

Styles and Themes: The Case of Visual Artists in Diaspora

Bojor Enamhe, Cross River University of Technology

Beyond “Good” and “Bad” Hair: African American Hair, Self-Esteem, and Ethnic Identity

Denika Y. Douglas, Texas Southern University

 

Cultural Expressions in the Christian Yoruba Native Airs of Gilbert Popoola Dopemu

Tolulope Olusola Owoaje, University of Ibadan

 

Analysis of Bob Marley’s Redemption song: An Allegory of Mental Slavery in Nigeria

Olufunmilola Oladipo, Adeyemi College of Education

Akwanshi: Historicizing and Immortalizing Kinship Ties Through Art Forms

Umana Ginigeme Nnochiri, Cross River State University of Technology, Nigeria

 

The Convergence of Old and New Diasporas: Dilemmas and Visions of an Emerging Generation

Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, Ithaca College

Candace King, Ithaca College



G2: Education and Youths in Africa and the African Diaspora, GAR 0.128

Chair: Alexius Amtaika, University of the Free State, South Africa

Youth and Irregular Migration in Nigeria: Causes, Consequences and Policy Challenges

Ukertor Gabriel Moti, University of Abuja

 

Strategies for Enhancing Local Food Consumption Among Adolescents In Ondo West Local Government, Ondo State, Nigeria.

Morounkeji Folarinle Fasakin, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

Bridget Adeyanju, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

 

Modernizing the Minds: The Introduction and Impact of Western Education on the Nomadic Fulani of Southern Cameroons

Emmanuel Mbah, City University of New York, College of Staten Island

 

 

Education and Mobilization: Primary School Designs for Rural Africa

Michael Garrison, The University of Texas

 

Perspectives on Recruitment and Retention of African American Students in Higher Education

Queen Ogbomo, Tennessee Technological University

 

Challenges of Adopting ICT in African Primary Schools: Case Study of Rwanda

Bitutu Nyambane, Mount Kenya University



G3: Politics and Governance in Africa and the African Diaspora, GAR 0.132

Chair: Usen Smith, Federal University, Nigeria

 

Gift Giving as Modern Manifestation of Corruption among African Leaders in Diaspora in Contemporary African Societies

Wisdom Okwuoma Otaluka, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

 

The State and Political Corruption in Nigeria: an Anatomy of a Perverse Pathology

Hauwau Evelyn Yusuf, Kaduna State University, Kaduna Nigeria

Ibrahim Kawuley Mikail, Federal College of Education, Nigeria

 

The Politics of Living Abroad: Exploring the Impact of International Migration on Ethnic Identification

Karen Okhoya, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

 

The Diaspora and the Leadership Challenge in Nigeria

Silk Ugwu Ogbu, Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria


Re-Thinking Evidential Requirements in Prosecution of Embezzlers of Public Fund: The Olabode George and John Yakubu Sagas

Olubukola Olugasa, Babcock University, Nigeria

 

 

G4: Continuity and Change in Practices and Identities, GAR 2.112

Chair: Gloria Emeagwali, Department of History, Central Connecticut State University

Improving Traditional Technology Transfer for ‘Aso Ofi’ (Indigenous Yoruba Textile) Through ICT.

Kidelmo O. Adubi, Federal University of Agriculture, Nigeria

Bridget Itunu Awosika, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

 

Emergence of African Independent Churches in Nigeria and Its Impact on African Diaspora: Christ Apostolic Church in Focus

Lydia Bosede Akande, Kwara State University

 

Africa’s Ethno-Xenophobia: Cross-Cultural Conversations with Politics of Identity

Gbenga Dasylva, University of Ibadan

Cosmopolitan Dilemma: Diaspora and Postcolonial Liminality

Delphine Fongang, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

 

Betwixt and Between: Creating, Negotiating, and Contesting Diaspora Identities

Genet Lakew, New York University

 

Black Leadership in the United States of America and Jamaica: The Political and Cultural Expressions of the Black Predicament in the Activities of Malcolm X and Peter Tosh, 1952-1987
B. Steiner Ifekwe, University of Uyo, Nigeria

Knowledge of Value as Imperative to Yoruba Cultural Preservation and Propagation

O.O. Shada, Federal College of Education (Special), Nigeria



G5: Politics and Diplomacy, GAR 2.128

Chair: Charles Thomas, United States Military Academy at West Point

 

The Role of Diaspora in Strengthening Democratic Governance in Africa

Kenneth Nweke, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Nigeria

Vincent Nyewusira, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Nigeria

 

South Africa’s Bantu World, Race, and the United States, 1949-1957

Derek Charles Catsam, The University of Texas-Permian Basin

 

Transnational Network and Nigerian Security: Challenges of Cattle Herders and Farmers’ Conflicts

Bolaji Omitola, Osun State University, Nigeria

The Role of Africa Diaspora in the Modern Politics of Nigeria

Boniface Opara, Institute of Direct Marketing of Nigeria

 

People’s Diplomacy: Transatlantic Organizing during Portuguese African Decolonization

R. Joseph Parrott, Yale University Fellow, The University of Texas at Austin

Done Waiting: When African States Fail to Deliver, Afropolitans are Stepping In

Joyce V. Millen, Willamette University, Salem

Amadou Fofana, Willamette University, Salem



G6: Challenges in Motion, GAR 3.116

Chair: Aori Nyambati, University College London

The African Diasporas and the Challenges of Contemporary Regional Integration in Africa

Felix Chinwe Asogwa, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria

 

The Role of the Diaspora in Strengthening Nigeria’s Electoral System

Philip Sunday Bagu, Benue State University

 

Perspectives on Economic Decline, Poverty, and Transmigration in Nigeria

Omeiza Olumuyiwa Balogun, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

Politics and Conflict: The Making of Liberian Diasporas and the Challenges of Post-War Reconstruction
Chris Agoha, United Nations Missions in Liberia

African Spirituality: A Dialogue with Eastern Spiritual Traditions
Assumpta A. Oturu, KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles, (Pacifica Radio)

Homeland and Question in Africa: a Reflection on Onwueme’s Legacy and Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
Vincent Adesina Ayodele, Lagos State University

Experiences, Challenges and the Way Forward for Student Breadwinners: A Critical Appraisal of Push-Factor Immigrant Scholars
Consoler Teboh, St. Cloud State University

 

Reception

Holiday Inn at Town Lake

Cocktails at 6:30 PM, Conference Banquet and Dance, 7:00 PM

Registered participants and invited guests only.

 

 

Sunday, April 6, 2014

 

Panel Session H: 9:00-10:30 AM

H1: From Crafts to Computers: Technology, Skills And Education, GAR 0.120

Chair: Gloria Emeagwali, Department of History, Central Connecticut State University

 

The Development Implications of Mobile Banking in Africa: A Kenyan Case Study

Tara Mock, Michigan State University

 

The Lack of Political Identity of the African Diaspora on Facebook.

Louis-Marie Kakdeu, Centre de Recherche et d’Action pour la Paix (CERAP), Côte d’Ivoire

Unifying Yoruba Culture and Tradition with Modernity Through Science and Technology

Bridget Itunu Awosika, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

 

African Diaspora and the Challenges of Globalised Education in a Virtual World

Elizabeth Tolulope Adenekan, Lead City University, Nigeria

A. Oyesoji Aremu, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

 

‘They Are Putting Us On Our Toes’: Diasporic Alternative Media and Emerging Newsroom Practices in Nigeria

Motilola Olufenwa Akinfemisoye, University of Central Lancashire

Transfer of Skill and Technology through Diasporas to Revolutionise the Pharmaceutical Practice in Nigeria

O. Augustus, Oyo State Hospitals Management Board, Nigeria

 

Social Media, the New Revolutionary Tool of African Diasporas

Akua Anyei Obeng, Texas A&M International University



H2: Exiles, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: Armed Groups in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, GAR 0.128

Chair: Celine Jacquemin, St. Mary’s University, Department of Political Science, St. Mary’s University

 

Museveni, Okello, and Obote: The Ugandan Exile Movement and the Kagera War

Charles Thomas, United States Military Academy at West Point

 

The Tutsi Diaspora in Uganda and the National Resistance Army

Emma Dugas, United States Military Academy at West Point

 

Tutsi Diaspora, Tutsi Nationalism: Rwanda and Politicized Identities in the Great Lakes

T.S. Allen, United States Military Academy at West Point



H3: Hopes and Impediments: Diaspora and Development, GAR 0.132

Chair: Segun Ogungbemi, Adekunle Ajasin University, Nigeria

Africans in Diaspora and Socio-Economic Development in Africa: An Appraisal of the Contributions of Africans in the Netherlands

Ntim Gyakari Ese, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

Otegwu Isaac Odu, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria

 

African Diaspora and the Question of Development in Africa: Lessons from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

M. O. Aderibigbe, Federal University of Technology, Nigeria

 

The More They Leave, The More We Die: An Ethical Investigation into the Politics Behind Africans in Diaspora to Development Focusing on Nigerian Experts Abroad

Okafor Nneka Ifeoma, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

 

Exploring the Untapped Potential of the African Diaspora for Development

Wayem William Kwame, University of Ghana, Legon

 

Harnessing Diaspora Remittances for Africa's Economic Development

Aori Nyambati, University College London

 

Rethinking African Spirit of Collectivism as a Tool for African Empowerment
Sunday Oladipupo, Adekunle Ajasin University


H4: Challenges and Survival: The Trope Of Development, GAR 2.112

Chair: Bessie House-Soremekun, African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

 

The Economics and Constraints of Contemporary Nigerian Diaspora Communities in National Development Since the 1990s

M.O. Odey, Benue State University, Nigeria

 

Migration, Diaspora and Tourism Development in Nigeria: Experiences from Annual Holy Ghost Congress of the RCCG

Adetola Omitola, Redeemer’s University

 

Nigerian Diaspora and National Development Strategies: Reflections from Nido-UAE

Opeyemi Aisha Oni, University of Wollongong in Dubai

The Future of Terrorism: Regional Trends, New Development, Likely Scenarios and Worst Cases in Diaspora

Ehiyamen Mediayanose Osezua, Osun State University, Nigeria

 

Contemporary Challenges in Nigeria’s National Development

Hauwau Evelyn Yusuf, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

Ibrahim Kawuley Mikail, Federal College of Education, Nigeria

 

 

H5: Interrogating Africanity, GAR 2.128

Chair: Sati Fwathshak, University of Jos, Nigeria

 

Narratives of Kinship and Enemification in Offa-Erinle Crises of Kwara State, Nigeria

Yinka Ahmed Aluko, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

Gbemisola A. Animasawun, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

Beyond Redemption? An Historical/Cultural Interrogation of Nigeria’s Political Landscape

Omeiza Olumuyiwa Balogun, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

Taofiq Olaide Nasir, Olabisi Onabanjo University

 

Revisiting Reverse Migrations between Ghana and Nigeria

Ntim Gyakari Esew, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

 

The Problems of Identity and Africans in the Diaspora
Juliet Adaku Egesi, Owerri Archdiocesan Catholic Education Commission, Nigeria

The Concept of “The Middle Passage” in West Indian Scholarship: A Study of the Works of Edward Brathwaite and Derek Walcott

Usen Smith, Federal University, Nigeria


Kinship and Social in Africa: Studies of the Kinship System of the Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria
Rev. Canon Jonathan Chidomerem Egesi, Owerri Archdiocesan Catholic Education Commission, Nigeria

 

Panel Session I: 10:45-12:15PM

I1: Humanity and Bodies, GAR 0.120

Chair: Onaiwu Ogbomo, Western Michigan University

Tracing the History of Slave Trade through Sculpture: A Case Study of the Calabar Slave History Museum

Emekpe Okokon Omon, Cross River State University of Technology, Nigeria

Enslaved Africans and Their Involvement in Crime in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire

Solmaz Celik, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey


Emirate Slave Raiding in the Nigerian Middle-Belt: Revisiting the Depopulation Debate and the Enslavement Purpose

Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos

 

The Trans-Saharan Trade and African in Diaspora: A Discourse on the Status of Slaves Taken Across the Sahara to the Middle East

Hauwau Evelyn Yusuf, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

Adeforakan Adedayo Yusufu, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

Rethreading the Broken Cords in Great Campos: Cultural Renaissance of 19th Century Lagos

Moses Adedotun Atilade, University of Ibadan,Nigeria


Ayi Kwei Armah’s Poetics of Desire
Fouad Mami, University of Adrar, Algeria

 

I2: Africa and Africans in the Caribbean and the Americas, GAR 0.128

Chair: Charles Thomas, United States Military Academy at West Point

Afro-Caribbean Pedagogies: Can We Engage African Diaspora Paradigms Without Addressing Africa?

Lidia Marte, University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras Campus

 

Systems of Violence: Inequalities and Diasporic Identities in the North of Ecuador

Melana Roberts, York University

 

Integrating African-Inspired Religious Practice in Eastern Cuba: Reynerio Perez and Vicente Portuondo Martin

Shanti Zaid, Michigan State University

 

Black King, Indian Country: Bolivia’s Rey Negro as Tradition, Symbol, and Strategy

Sara Busdiecker, Spelman College

 

The African American Civil Rights Movement: Reminisces and Lessons

Danazumi Sharwa Bukar, Plateau State University, Nigeria

Revolution at the Crossroads: Re-framing the Haitian Revolution from the Heights of Platons

Michael Becker, Duke University

 

 

I3: African Diasporas: Case Studies of Flux, GAR 0.132

Chair: Tyler Fleming, University of Louisville

 

Transnational Migration and Ecological and Economic Transformation in Eastern Africa: The Case of the Maragoli Diaspora in Kigumba Settlement Scheme, Uganda

Martin S. Shanguhyia, Syracuse University

 

The Kongo Empire: Membership, Metal, and Trans-Atlantic Identities

Blair Rose Zaid, Michigan State University

 

Okon Edet Uya: Pioneer African Diaspora Scholar, 1969-2012

Udida A. Undiyaundeye, University of Uyo, Nigeria

 

(Re)examining Traditional Drum Surrogacy: dundun as a Conduit of Socio-Cultural Cohesion in hte African Diaspora

Adeolu O. Ogunsanya, University of Ibadan

 

Diaspora, Dispossession, and New Collectivities in Texas’ Freedom Colonies

Andrea Roberts, The University of Texas at Austin

Deskilling, Resilience and International Migration among Nigerians in US Cities

Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi, Missouri State University

 

No Longer “America’s” Pastime: A Look at the New Ethnic Make-Up of Baseball

Lauren Bednarski, The University of Texas at Austin



I4: Thinking Through Diaspora, GAR 2.112

Chair: Segun Ogungbemi, Adekunle Ajasin University, Nigeria

 

African Diaspora In Old And New Worlds: A History Through Culture, Religion, and Politics

Eric Tuffour, University of Cape Coast, Ghana

 

The Curve on the African Concept of Diaspora and the Real Life Situation

Ernest Muchu Toh, University of Western Cape, South Africa

Counting the Cost of Culture of Neglect in the African Diaspora

Tabiri Sylvester, University for Development Studies, Ghana

 

Redefining the African Diaspora to Include the Old: Its Effects and Implications

Mustapha Sadiq, Garden City University, Ghana

           

The Extended Family and African Diaspora: The Need for Social Harmony and Communalism A Case of Olugbon Family, Agosasa Ogun State, Nigeria

Wale Olatunji, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Nigeria


Communication and Transculturation: Case of Senior Citizens’ Welfarism in South Western Nigeria
E. Oluwakemi Augustus, Federal College of Agriculture, Nigeria

 

I5: Identities in Motion, GAR 2.128

Chair: Okpeh O. Okpeh, Benue State University, Nigeria

 

Zimbabwean Transnational Migration and Diasporic Identities in Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2009) and Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly (2009)

Terrence Musanga, University of Venda, South Africa

Reverse Migration of Africans in the Diaspora: A Woman’s Quest for her Roots in Tess Onwueme’s Legacies

Jeremiah Methuselah, Kaduna State University

Relevance of Parental Cultural and Socio Economic Background in Nutritional Status of Pre-schoolers

Morounkeji Folarinle Fasakin, Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria

Adeyanju Bridget Ebunoluwa

 

African Diaspora and the Decolonization of Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa

Ntim Gyakari Esew, Kaduna State University, Nigeria

 

Pragmatic Analysis of Former Nigerian President Obasanjo’s Political Rhetoric on African Empowerment

Ngozi U. Emeka-Nwobia, Ebonyi State University, Nigeria

 

Blueprint for Africa’s Political and Economic Transformation and the Role of the Diasporas: Moving Beyond Talkshops

Noah Yusuf, University of Ilorin, Nigeria



I6: Roundtable: Disparate Diasporas:  The Austin School’s Vision for Black Studies, GAR 4.100

Chair: Professor Joao Costa-Vargas, The University of Texas at Austin

 

Jafari Allen, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

 

Kia Lilly Caldwell, Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 

Courtney Morris, Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Rice University

 

Keisha Khan Perry, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University

 

Jaime Amparo Alves, DSD/SSRC Postdoctoral Fellow

 

 

Sunday Dinner for Registered Conference Participants

St. Edward’s University

Main Building

7:00 PM

 

 

Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: The Aim of The National Conference - by Bolaji Aluko

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Many thanks Prof for this and for your volunteership to be a virtual delegate. I am a little disappointed that you insinuated that you would have taken the 12million and not return it to chase as was done by "only 2" out of the 492 delegates, so far.

At 12million, I think Nigerians, at least those on this list, deserve to have the emails and even telephone numbers of delegates, so that they can from time to time make their voices heard. Point them to the right direction. My friend says, "the right skeletons", but this is not an inquisition or is it?

Have a nice conference week!
Hadiza.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

From: Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 20:16:12 -0400
To: USAAfrica Dialogue<USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>; NaijaPolitics e-Group<NaijaPolitics@yahoogroups.com>; naijaintellects<naijaintellects@googlegroups.com>; ekiti ekitigroups<ekitipanupo@yahoogroups.com>; OmoOdua<OmoOdua@yahoogroups.com>; Ra'ayi<Raayiriga@yahoogroups.com>; Yan Arewa<YanArewa@yahoogroups.com>; nigerianid@yahoogroups.com<nigerianID@yahoogroups.com>; NiDAN<nidan-group@googlegroups.com>
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: The Aim of The National Conference - by Bolaji Aluko


___________________________________________________________________

Sunday Musings: The Aim of The National Conference


by


Mobolaji E. Aluko, PhD

Alukome@gmail.com

 

Sunday March 23, 2014

 

___________________________________________________________________


 

Introduction


Nigeria's 2014 National Conference began in earnest in Abuja on Monday, March 17, and the jostlings, posturings and hectorings of and between delegates are already with us.


According to the website of the National Conference 


http://nigerianationalconference2014.org/aim#.Uyzk8vmwL-k


QUOTE


Aim


The National Conference is a national project, a sincere and fundamental undertaking, aimed at realistically examining and genuinely resolving, long-standing impediments to our cohesion and harmonious development as a truly United Nation.


UNQUOTE


This rather simple statement of purpose is pregnant with implications, which we now intend to explore back to front.

 

Nationhood


Is Nigeria a nation or a country of nations.  If i is nation what are its shared values of language, culture, religion, dress, history  etc.?  If is a country of nations, do the ethnic nationalities constitute those nations, or must we look for some other constellations?  Should we then strive to build one "United Nation" from this country of nations INTENTIONALLY, or will that just HAPPEN willy-nilly under constitutional tinkering and over time?  Is Nigeria so unique that we have no lessons to learn from similar nations or countries once in our shoes?


One trusts that these knotty questions will be asked and addressed early on in the National Conference.

 


Development


Proceeding from cradle to grave, the intelligent human being expects secure and steady progress in life - materially, spiritually -with societal protection  at youth and in old age, and the assurance of education, jobs and personal dignity in the middle ages.  The USA  Declaration of Independence encapsulates it well in a universal mantra: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ——"


So despite all of the usual indices of development- GDP, GNP, External Reserves, inflation rates, total budget figures, even HDI - one should be able to ask whether inequality is being reduced in the country, Nigerians are living fuller (and longer) lives, are free to move about in the country to practice their religion, culture, vocation and avocation, and in general are happier this year than last. The Reagan age-old test first propounded in November 1980 is simple enough for evaluating leaders: "(under this leader) Are you better off this year than (when he took office)?"  Is there justice in the land - both in the courts and on the streets -  without which there can be no peace, harmony or cohesion?


One trusts that these knotty questions will be asked and addressed early on in the National Conference.

 


Impediments


Nigeria, with a checkered pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history, with 160 million people and 400 ethnic groups, with an intersecting venn diagram of religious (Christian, Muslim, Traditionalist) worshippers,  spread over almost 1 million square kilometers of arable and resource-rich land in 36 states and a federal territory that sweeps from the coastal swamps of the Niger-Delta to the Sahelian desert of Jigawa, has inherent impediments to linear development.  Yet these long-standing obstacles are the very seeds of opportunity that a visionary leader - or better yet, a committee or comity of leaders - can take advantage of. Seizing this advantage will be the ultimate genius of Nigerian leadership, and one hopes that the National Conference will address it.

 


Resolution


Posing these knotty questions and outlining the challenges are not  simply for academic purpose, but rather in order to consider ways to make our Nigeria "a more perfect union", echoing the US Constitution preamble of 1787, and Obama's speech of 1980.  It may sound trite, but the evaluation of strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats - a SWOT analysis - of the Nigerian state followed by realistic and genuine steps to move the state forward into the next century should really be what this Conference is about.

 


National Project


This is indeed  - or should be - a currently-pregnant national project, not a presidential project, not a National Assembly project.   Will the baby be aborted (as in Obasanjo's Constitutional Conference), still-born (as in Babangida's Constitutional Conference), short-lived (as in Abacha's Constitutional Conference), or hidden before deployment (as in Abdusalami's Constitution) - or nurtured post-partum until the next Centenary?  None of those elite "military" Constitutions were put to democratic popular test via a Referendum, and one hopes that in these heady days of civilian democracy  (or rule),  it is that device that will, among other things, make the difference.


We shall see.

 

Why I am a virtual delegate


Contrary to all expectations (!), my name was not mentioned among the 492 delegates.  After all, I am not an Elder Statesman yet, or a woman, or a retired government official, or a youth (although there are 50+ persons in my neighborhood who call themselves "youths."  )  I no longer qualify for any of the Diaspora slots - and so on.  I could have used the N12 million (?) for the three months sitting - on top of my VC-ship salary, I guess - and lobbied for an Ekiti, Southwest socio-political or even a free-lance government slot.  However,  the clincher for me was this:  how would I have combined the work of that national service on-site in Abuja with my VC-ship in remote Otuoke,  what with all kinds of threats of sanctions for not attending sessions - or for cussing people out in a jankara fashion?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.  Nevertheless, I have chosen myself to be a remote (virtual) delegate, harvesting the phone numbers and emails of as many of the delegates as I can (I know at least 60 of them fairly personally) and letting my voice br heard a la Baba Adam.


And there you have it.

 

 

Bolaji Aluko


___________________________________________________________________

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - NYTimes.com: Cultural Exchange

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From The New York Times:

Cultural Exchange

Dinaw Mengestu's "All Our Names" follows the relationship between a foreign exchange student from Ethiopia and the Midwestern social worker assigned to help him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu.html



 -Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
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