White privilege is a beast. It is an innate, naturally concocted following…it is therefore hard to extricate oneself from its snares. ―Don Okolo Man has disintegrated badly; his mind is still functional in the sense that it still wants to satisfy the musings of those like him. But the rest of him has acquired real estate in the pit of squalor where he now sits in comfort writing essays of disdain and mischievous husbandry in...
Mainstream U.S. media is characterizing the September 29 debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as a disaster. The moderator was never able to establish control. President Trump, especially, constantly interrupted former Vice President Biden. Rather than a discussion about policy and ideas, the debate was a rant or a temper tantrum. In Africa, the debate will hardly burnish the image of democracy or the United States. However, the October 2 news that President Trump and the...
In August, jihadists in Niger killed six French aid workers and two Nigeriens just outside of the capital, Niamey. Terrorist attacks have increased by 250 percent over the last two years in Africa’s Sahel region, according to the State Department. To help counter the threat of terrorism and build the capacity of African militaries, the U.S. government spends over $1.5 billion a year on security assistance to the African continent. Does this support work? Reliable security cooperation and assistance data are...
Aside from the ruling class in the north, south, west, and east of the country, nobody else is benefitting from the country. ―Ebuka Onyekwelu Sixty years is too long, but apparently, too short a time within which Nigeria can decide the identity it wants to take on. For six decades after Nigeria’s independence, basic questions of nationhood remain unanswered; Nigeria is yet to resolve issues surrounding its identity. Most recently, the recurrent question remains if...
Inhumane sharia punishments, including flogging, amputations, and stoning, have long embarrassed the federal government of Nigeria. That is happening now, with the 120-month prison sentence handed down by a Kano sharia court to a thirteen-year-old boy, Omar Farouq, and the death sentence handed down by the same court, again for blasphemy, on a twenty-two-year-old musician, Yahaya Sharif, for a song he shared on social media. A third, Mubarak Bala, a self-proclaimed atheist, has disappeared in police custody....
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a September 22 UN General Assembly (UNGA) speech, made continued French military involvement contingent upon Mali’s restoration of civilian rule. He was blunt: “They (the junta) must put Mali on the irreversible path of returning to civilian power and organize rapid elections.” And, “France […] can only remain engaged on this condition.” As he has in the past, Macron was also clear that France has a low tolerance level for popular demonstrations against...
For 50 dormant years – roughly, the period between Muhammad Ali’s heyday and the Miami Heat donning hoodies after Trayvon Martin’s murder – athletes, as a general rule, steered clear of politics. Teams and leagues liked it that way, as did sponsors. Why take a stand if it might cost you a customer? Fans seemed to like it that way, too. In a national survey conducted in 2016, after Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem to...
Mwazulu Diyabanza, a Congolese-origin activist in France, first attracted social media attention by seeming to steal an artifact from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris to protest slavery, colonialism and the alleged French theft of Africa’s cultural patrimony. The attempted theft was carefully staged for live streaming. The museum authorities stopped the theft. In July, he repeated his protest at a museum in Marseilles. It was also live-streamed. Diyabanza is now back in the news because he, along...
It could have been minority’s win because of the absence of majority participation. ―Ebuka Onyekwelu The just-concluded governorship election in Edo state was a clash of powerful political forces and no doubt part of the buildup to the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. But most importantly, the victory in that election belongs to the people of Edo. The less than six hundred thousand Edo voters, who matched their words with action, went out to cast...
Seven years ago, my student and I at Penn State built a bot to write a Wikipedia article on Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s play “Chitra.” First, it culled information about “Chitra” from the internet. Then it looked at existing Wikipedia entries to learn the structure for a standard Wikipedia article. Finally, it summarized the information it had retrieved from the internet to write and publish the first version of the entry. However, our bot...
