Who do you guys think will win the wrestlemenia? Obj or Taylor?

I still wait to read the exact points this man supposedly made .

Truth is even if they pay reparation, none of us will see a dime, the people that will chop and yank it off to offshore accounts are waiting (pls excuse my cynicism). Finally, a US President that can look straight into our eyes and say STOP BEING VICTIMS. A great wrong was done, everyone acknowledges that but the people that deserve the reparation are not even here, they are the ones that were taken away, not the ones left behind.

becoomrich:

I do not think falana said so. You see the newspaper Thisdays is a propaganda machine of the government of Nigeria.

@ becoomrich

I beg to dis-agree with you sir.

I don’t understand this feeling that the world OWES us. Worse, I cannot for the life of me, understand how anyone can believe that apply in this day and age. The world has given OVER $1.5 Trillion dollars( number as of July 2005) in AID to Africa in the last 40 years alone. How can Africa, still UNGRATEFUL, continue to ask for reparation in this time and day when we have yet to show that the FREE OFFERS we have gotten in the past made any difference?

We have had numerous opportunities to turn our situation around yet, we remain ground zero for some of the world’s most despicable and disgusting situations.

TheSeeker:

Lazy ass lawyer looking for recognition!

That was harsh, but its not lie sha.

Bill Clinton once said (I might not have remembered the right words he used but this is what he implied): "The question has always being what can we do for Africa? but now I think the right question is what can we do with Africa?"

I agree with him

FALANA that I knew was an activist a die hard human Right. But Now he is dining and wining with looters when last did he check AC thru his activism ,now its only PDP looting ? dont know if U hear him about Ekiti Election as if only PDP rigged. (all parties rigged) . The FALANA I see now has derailed.

Falana has been given some Ghana must go bags
why should we continue to blame colonialism for our troubles?
South Africa had aparthied, but look where they are today!
Ghana also had colonial masters, but they have sanitized their place and have had the freest election ever and have transfered power peacefully from the ruling party.

Falana's comments are just diversions from the real truth.
can anyone here imagine PDP handing over the presidency to AC, APGA, FRESH or any political party
Obama wants us to sanitize our democracy and allow we the masses to choose our leaders NOT some cabal forcing obj and yar'adull on us. we all know PDP never won the presidency.

its only a fool who will continue to look at the source of his problem instead of jumping over it and moving on.

@ samparian and walakolobo

Thanks for you guys comment. OBAMA has said his own, if we like, let us blame the whole world for whatever the problem, as far as that which we should be concerned about, is finding solutions to our present predicament.

I have said it before, and I will repeat it again

1. LEADERSHIP
2. CORRUPTION
3. TRIBALISM
4. DIVERSION FROM REAL ISSUES- which Falana has now become part of.

I can continue with intellectual debate which is enriching BUT  i must consider FOOD NOW ON THE TABLE FOR THE HUNGRY and build infrastructures, systems and institutions of the future so that this generation and the ones yet to be born will see a future and have a sense of direction.

FALANA  is a waste of a space, OBAMA is the real deal and that is why he is today the President of the United State.

We in the South of Nigeria have too much academic knowledge and practical  little real world knowledge (the North posses that abundantly- they have used that to obtain or retain political power)

The only and major reason why Obama could open his mouth to speak of this is because

a) He is of African descent
b) He is black in America


If none of these applied, he would have been STONED for such statements, even though we all know it is the truth and has been the truth for all this time.

But a little reality check here, who's the leader from the SE -- Ojukwu, Kalu, Ekwueme or who? So pitiful.

eeeekkkkkk!!!!

Bill Clinton tried in the past to make similar statements and the international media next to crucified him for it.

Soyinka backs Obama in Ghana, scolds Nigeria, Kenya


Soyinka backs Obama in Ghana, scolds Nigeria, Kenya
By Bayo Ohu

NOBEL Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has justified the United States President Barack Obama's decision to choose Ghana as his first touch-down on Black African soil, saying that the American leader did well to shun visiting Kenya, his father's country of birth and Nigeria, a self-acclaimed giant of the continent, since both nations have distinguished themselves in everything that has to do with corruption and bad governance.

Soyinka, in an article titled "Obama's choice", said the U.S. leader's astuteness, one that dictated the strategy of a political campaign that catapulted him to victory from the underdog position, should have informed the 'patriotic' cheerleaders of Africa's mis-governance that they can expect no preferential consideration from the 44th American president.

He said although a decade ago, Accra would also have been a non-contender for Obama's maiden visit to Africa, "but the continent has witnessed, and remains envious of, the transformation that has taken place in Ghana, an internal process of self-recovery that nearly matches that of the United States in her transition from George Bush to Barack Obama."

Soyinka, in whose honour a birthday lecture is being held in Lagos today, stated that although blood may be thicker than water, Obama's gesture was intended to inform nations like Kenya and Nigeria that neither blood nor oil is thicker than equity.

He said: "How else it is possible for Nigerian politicians to conceive that a leader like Barack Obama, who has ascended to power through a respect for the manifested will of a people, would actually lend his presence to dignify any state that demonstrably rejects, indeed actively ridicules, the very means that brought him to power?"

Defending his refusal to visit Nairobi, the Nobel Laureate noted that Obama's election took place after one of the most devastating riots ever witnessed in Kenya that lasted weeks in which entire townships and hundreds of lives were destroyed. All this, he added, was as a result of the denial of a people's right to choose their own leader through the ballot box.

"Kenya nonetheless made a claim on Obama as the logical spot for his first presidential touch-down on Black African soil and it should have been an occasion to be celebrated in festive accents as the return of the native son. And if sentiment indeed weighed more on the scale of entitlements than humanity itself, the Kenyan claim would be universally unassailable," he said.

Soyinka remarked although Nigeria has not witnessed an uprising on a scale like Kenya's in the past few decades, yet "Nigeria cannot be ranked, needless to say, any higher on the democratic scale than Kenya, even though electoral robbery did not result in such mayhem, any more than it has led to a protracted Civil War that devastated the Ivory Coast in recent times."

He went on: "Nonetheless it is important to remind ourselves that the Biafran War of Secession that began in 1966 did not lack for flammable tributaries from accumulated electoral injustices. Memories of that war, and the fear of an even more nation-destabilizing repeat have contributed to the seeming accommodativeness of the Nigerian people towards a now deeply entrenched project of national disenfranchisement.

"Only the complacent however dare eliminate possibilities of an eventual explosion from the suppressed rage that stems from civic dispossession, and the air of impunity that surrounds the incorrigible perpetrators. Indeed, this inevitability is seen by many - both insiders and outside observers - as only a matter of time. Since the debilitation of civil society through decades of military rule, Nigerians freely use the expression 'internal colonialism' as the readiest expression of the continuing suppression of popular will, an orchestrated democratic denial that operates in relay, and is sustained by a select hegemony resolved to remain in perpetual control of the nation".

The unproductive cabal, he regretted, has become increasingly arrogant and contemptuous in its dismissal of even a pragmatic semblance of a gesture towards fair dealing that sometimes salves the pride and dignity of a people.

Soyinka expressed sadness at the lack of objective self-assessment within the ruling circles of Nigeria and Kenya, saying: "It evokes pity for the continent as a whole, that such political leadership exists today which, sooner than retire into their gilded holes to reflect, have actually gone to battle on behalf over some mystic entitlement, since such is not sustained by any credentials in democratic and responsible governance."

On politicians who have expressed resentment and indignation at Obama's symbolic boycott of Nigeria, Soyinka said such leaders were lost to the irony of laying claim to recognition by a product of electoral equity, an African-American who came to power in a once openly racist nation through the ballot box.

"Such complainants are not stupid however, they are merely actors in a script of diabolical cynicism," he affirmed.

He wrote further: "Of the two, the case of our own nation, Nigeria, is obviously the more pathetic. A plague of incontinent rulers in relay, some in military uniform, others in civilian clothing, but all clones of one another, united in a commitment to unabashed profligacy, mutually assisted corruption and, to add insult to injury, an obsessive hankering for self-perpetuation, necessitating the

cultivation of outright disdain for the elementary right of their citizens to a voice in leadership choice.

"Is this truly a nation that deserves the recognition, much less a gesture of respect, from any democratically elected leadership of the world, and one especially of such unprecedented political significance for the African continent itself?"

Soyinka said if it were possible for Obama to visit Nigerians to express his condolences for such an unmerited state of affairs, parley with non-governmental organizations, exchange views with political alternatives, interact with the labour unions, hold talks with the insurgents of the oil-producing Niger Delta region and offer direct succour to the neglected people of a benighted nation, Nigeria would have been his first choice.

To Soyinka, such a precedent being impossible, at least in these times - the only programme that remained would have been, at best, a "tokenist interaction with the other Nigeria, duly vetted."

The rest, he added, "would be to wine and dine, sign some effete agreements and exchange presents with the current symbol of national decay and leadership alienation, a nation whose claim to the status of a giant is upheld only by the gigantesque dimensions of its retrogression since independence, its governance ineptness and the colossal scale of its corruption.

"Obama knows that every other hand he would shake at a state reception is steeped in sheer putrefaction from the sump of robbery, perhaps every third elbow deep in the blood of perceived political threats - across all levels of contestation."

Now this is what i call leadership.
Soyinka is the man, all the respect i have for him has just increased.
How can Obama visit a Nation that is so corrupt, messed up, lawless, care less about development, and practices demon-crazy?

“No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, ” that is the word of a true leader in his address to parliament when he visited Ghana.

Fhemmmy:

Now this is what i call leadership.
Soyinka is the man, all the respect i have for him has just increased.
How can Obama visit a Nation that is so corrupt, messed up, lawless, care less about development, and practices demon-crazy?

“No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, ” that is the word of a true leader in his address to parliament when he visited Ghana.

demon-crazy. demonstration of craziness etc 
that is what our 'leaders' practice and they don't give a toss whatever anyone says. Infact AKINYULI was celebrating her daughter's wedding on the day of OBAMA's visit to Ghana to do a news 'blanket' of the visit. 

Thank God for other media outlet.

We all miss FELA ANIKULAPO KUTI may his soul rest in peace. he saw it and sang about it.

TheSeeker:

Wole Soyinka has never been a disappointment since I grew up to know him. The most upright Nigerian I have ever known, the only person we can be proud of. I wish we can ever have a national leader like that. He speaks the truth and stands by it. I second his motion that, if he were to come and visit the insurgents from the Niger Delta, trade unions, the other political parties etc., Nigeria will have been his first spot to visit.

True word. The guy is the most respected Nigerian to me.The only problem I have with him though is his position on cultism in our higher institutions.

Falana no get gist. Talking about reparation and all that is old school. Ghana has woken up and positioned themselves and they are now reaping goodwill as a serious country. Nuff said

if all Nigerians are made to go and spend only one month in Ghana, and all Ghanians made to spend one month in Nigeria, Ghana will be an empty shell by the time Nigerians return to their country - silly folks all over the place. Who is Falana?

walakolobo:

Who is Falana?

Henry Okah's lawyer.

kokoA:

Henry Okah's lawyer.

of course i know him.

walakolobo:

of course i know him.

Do you also know that he is a common noise maker when he is jobless?