DPI Weblog

I read an article yesterday written by Mr. Dele Momodu on Thisday newspaper, and made the following response.
“Dear Mr. Momodu, I had responded to a recent article of yours, but I am really pleased and inspired by the recent focus of your articles. Today’s gives me the idea that your recent series of articles are geared towards beginning a large-scale discussion on 2011, and to support mass mobilisation of Nigerians to ensure that the Presidency in 2011 goes to a credible candidate, and someone who believes truly in Nigeria’s future and has a clear idea how to get there.

I believe that the youth are the hope of Nigeria’s future. Check it out. Zik and the rest of them who fought for our independence were quite young. Many of the leaders of the 50s and 60s were in their youth, under the age of 35. The good thing with this generation of young people is that we are more exposed, recent reports have shown that this generation of young people are the most educated ever in the history of the world, and I can say Nigeria is not an exception. Our young people litter everywhere as you have indicated in many previous articles undertaking undergraduate and graduate studies in various disciplines. At home our Universities are overwhelmed by the huge numbers of students they have to cope with every year. Our young are initiating various innovative businesses of world class standards. We can do it again, just like the 50s and 60s.

Goldman Sachs had predicted that if we sustain economic growth at the levels that we were in 2004, we may become one of the World’s 20 most powerful economies by 2025 alongside the BRICs, Mexico and a few other developing countries. While our leaders seem to be touting 2020, we need to take advantage of our mass of educated young people to start to make and prescribe projections towards 2025, and start to use self-help models to mobilise resources to support these initiatives. I am personally committed to mobilising Nigerian students and young people around the world to work through this process. Students of Economics, Engineering, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Mathematics and Statistics and various disciplines must be those to make this kind of Team. In visioning for Nigeria 2025, I propose a Team 2025 which will bring together 25 highly talented Nigerian youth in various disciplines, who will work together to analyse all possible data related to Nigeria both from National and international sources, who will review all development programmes and strategies from the National Development Plans, to the structural adjustment programmes, to the operation feed the nation to NEEDS and now the 7 point agenda. This group will then evolve clear strategies for development keeping in mind local, state and national development priorities. As a next step, Team 2025 will then start to mobilise resources from different sources. If the National Association of Nigerian Students and the National Youth Council of Nigeria agree, they can use the traditional rag- day to raise millions and millions, even billions and these monies can be used through an incorporated trustee or other mechanism to support projects across the country.

I believe that the time for action has come, and the young people can proactively set the standard on which basis Nigeria can realise her dreams. I do not believe in breaking bottles and public properties, I believe in intellectual engagements, and the young people- our first class students, second class students, the ones who top their classes in UNN, UNILAG, Ife, ABU, UK, USA and various countries can lead this process. I am confident that we can. YES WE CAN!”

If you are interested in nuilding a New Nigeria, then join me on Team 2025, let’s build a new Nigeria. My email is dabesaki@gmail.com.

I am in Dar Es Salam for the first African Union Conference on Curriculum, Literacy and book sector development. The conference was opened this morning by the rt Hon. Prime Minister of Tanzania. I was baffled by the protocol people, who were saying when the PM comes in, you have to stand-up and clap. I can understand that you should stand-up, but why the applause? Then comes the main reason for my blog. The keynote speaker was confronted with the issue of learner/ child centred curriculum and the need for the learners themselves, in this case youth to be present when the issues of curriculum are being discussed. I was very baffled when the Prof. described young people as peasants who did not deserve to be at the policy making table. I was furious and wanted to intervene, but the chair of the session systematically ignored my hands.

So comes my question, who is who when it comes to delivering educational services? From my training, I know that learning is a process of behaviour change which results from encounter. So comes the question, what are the facilitating factors of behaviour change. Who changes behaviour? In whose hands is it to actually change. Behaviour is learned, and can only be unlearned in many cases, therefore, the clients in the delivery of educational services are critical in the teaching and learning process. Behaviour modification MUST involve the participation of the client, even in counselling processes.

At this conference, speaker after speaker has emphasised the failure of Africa to advance its education system. Who knows whether the reason for this failure is because they have not actually taken into account the voices of the learners. According to the Rt. Hon. Meles Zenawi, it is only in Africa that we do the same things over and over again and expect different results. I hope that this conference will come-up with recommendations that will actually advance the educational system in Africa in this second decade of education.

http://blog.developmentpartnership.org

I have been travelling during the last week and will be travelling until February 14. First, I was in Portugal for a meeting to review progress made with implementing the outcomes of the AU-EU Youth Summit. Right now, I am in another country on official mission. Its a long mission, so I have been looking-up websites and reflecting on Africa’s development and its future.

This is more so because part of my work is supporting the revitalised Pan African Youth Union to sort out all its administrative and technical issues. The other reason is the very worrying trend of events that have been taking place in Africa during the last year- the return of coup d’etats. First it was Mauritania, next it was Guinea, then another attempted coup in Guinea Bissau, the most recent is the political situation in Madagascar. In the past, the PYU which I am currently assisting was involved in supporting liberation efforts when it was PYM. In its current form, PYU’s objectives includes a provision for promoting and supporting democracy. But the question is whether today’s youth have the capacity to engage the political space.  A colleague told me today that when the repression is from within, its more difficult to negotiate an exit.

I know I have started great efforts in the past. I am thinking that this is the time to mobilise around a strong political youth movement in Africa! How best this can be done remains the biggest dilema. There are many issues to be resolved, and many questions to be answered. Zimbabwe, Kenya and the recent bombing, Madagascar, Guinea, Mauritania, the challenge of post conflict countries. Many issues begging for attention! I am still thinking through this idea, and hope I can come-up with something positive, please contact me at dabesaki@gmail.com if you would like to share any ideas.

The youth MUST reclaim the political space in order to protect the future they seek to inherit.

I could not resist not sharing this article. The former SG has put it correctly, there needs to be a change in generation in leadership in Africa.
See the article here: http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=133060

This story on Thisday newspaper suggests that Obama is related to me in some way. I hail from the Kalabari Kingdom, where Bakana (Obama) is located in Nigeria. Is nt this interesting? See story http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=133379
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Does the President-elect of America, Barack Obama, have roots in Nigeria? The Obama community in Rivers State says yes, claiming that the great-great-great grandfather of the next US President, who assumes office tomorrow, is their “kith and kin”.
The community, which is in present-day Bakana in Degema Local Government Area of Rivers State, said the name “Bakana” was a Portuguese creation as their real name is “Obama” which means “Oba’s kingdom” or “Oba’s town”. “Oba” means king.
THISDAY was informed that when Barack Obama became a Senator four years ago, the then monarch, King Kegan Igbanigbo Will-Braide, informed his chiefs that the African-American has his roots in Obama Kingdom in Rivers State.
It was also gathered that when the former Illinois Senator became a presidential aspirant the now deceased monarch wrote to the Federal Government, intimating them of this. A delegation of three chiefs from the kingdom dispatched to Abuja to meet with Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, could not get audience with the Minister and was then forced to abort the mission.
Akasoba Zainab Duke, lawyer, political scientist and traditionalist, who first brought the existence of the Obama kingdom to the attention of THISDAY, said Will-Braide had intimated her that the US President-elect has roots in Nigeria as far back as 2004, when Obama won election as Senator.
Elders of Obama who spoke to THISDAY yesterday on the island, which is five nautical miles from Port Harcourt, claimed that the US President-elect’s great-great-great grandparents were from Obama Bakana Kingdom.
The story goes that following inter-tribal wars around 1776, the people of Obama began to disperse and that the US President-elect’s ancestor migrated up North to Kanem Bornu Empire. Obama’s great-great-great grandparents, out of sheer tiredness and not wanting bloodshed, moved up towards the Kanem Bornu area. The condition for the stay of Obama’s ancestors in Kanem Bornu empire was to convert to Islam, according to the story. The US President-elect’s father and great-grandfather were Muslims.
From Kanem Bornu the Obama ancestors were said to have migrated to the present Kenya. The father of the US President-elect hailed from Kogelo in Kenya.
“No one is saying by any stretch of imagination that if you go to Kenya, you will not see Obama’s father’s house; we are looking at his ancestry, at his roots. It is like Alex Haley, an American who traced his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, to Gambia,” Duke said.
Most of the elders in the Kingdom who spoke with THISDAY claimed that the founder of the Kingdom was a warrior who after defeating the Kalabaris at Iwofe blockaded the area from produce supplies.
The action was said to have angered the British colonial masters, who intervened and compelled him (the monarch) to sign a treaty that forced him out of the Iwofe front area into the present day Obama Kingdom.
After establishing the Obama Kingdom, which he named after his father, the monarch, who wielded great influence, was said to have even visited the Oba of Benin who allegedly recognized him as a fellow Oba.
“Obama Kingdom was founded around 1881 by King Igbanigbo Will-Braide after he migrated from the Iwofe area when he was forced by the colonial masters to leave the area.
“After fighting the Kalabaris at the Iwofe Front and defeating them, Will-Braide blockaded the food and produce supply route. He was later reported to the colonial masters who came with HMV Dido (gun boat) and forced him by a decretive order to leave the Iwofe area.
“He left and founded the Obama Kingdom which he named after his father. The name Bakana, which the Kingdom bears now, is a Portuguese coinage. After listening to Louis Armstrong, who used the word Bakana in his record, I went to the Portuguese Embassy and inquired from them the meaning of Bakana. They said it means beautiful flowery place.
“The original name of Bakana is Obama and that is why we have been naming every important landmark in the place Obama so that the name would not be lost. We have Obama Boys High School and Obama Community Bank in this place,” Chief Ibiekaribo S. Sogules told THISDAY. Sogules’ account was corroborated by Chief Costa Jim-Emine.
Reminded that there is another Obama town in Japan, Sogules was quick to point out that the other Obama town is made up of whites but that the US President-elect in spite of “his long stay in America and having a white mother still retains his black skin and other African features”.
The elders of the Obama community urged the US President-elect to “link up with his own people and contribute his quota to the development of where he is from.”
THISDAY observed that there exists in the kingdom a community bank named Obama Community Bank Nigeria Limited floated in the early 1990s and a secondary school, Obama Boys High School.
Duke said efforts should be made by historians and cartographers to establish the true ancestry of Barack Obama, as there exists now a Nigerian dimension to that. She said that the loss of historical documents and archival materials are largely responsible for why some of these controversies have not been resolved.
“I recall my grandmother crying because they lost a golden bird and a golden throne, which the Ashantihene had given to my great-great grandfather. It is not because it is gold or whatever, but artefacts, historical documents and things like this should be kept for future generations to know that at least there were inter-African friendships even among the kings. Recall what happened in the time of Cleopatra with the burning of the Alexandria Library. That is why Africans have not been able to fully recover. They lost so much historical artefacts and documents and archival materials, which would have shown them who they are or their roots and backgrounds,” she said.
She advised the youths of Obama Kingdom, which has become an enclave for militants to take a cue from Obama who has made peace an integral part of his vision for the US and the world.