Dr. Wolassa Kumo
Introduction

Fixed capital has long been considered as an engine of growth both as a factor of production and as an embodiment of technological progress. Countries that had made sustained accumulation of fixed capital were able to achieve higher and sustained economic growth and development while those who had not lagged behind. For instance, economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been severely constrained by inadequate saving and investment, among other things. The average annual gross domestic saving rate by 41 sub Saharan African countries during the period 1980-2010 was as little as 14.3% of GDP while the average fixed investment was 20% of GDP for the same period. Therefore, sub-Saharan Africa’s burgeoning debt was not primarily meant to finance investment as the saving- investment gap was only about 6% of GDP during the past three decades.

Sub Saharan Africa’s dismal average economic growth of about 3.8% during the past three decades was therefore a direct consequence of low saving and low investment. The Sub Saharan Africa average saving and investment rates pale in comparison to the saving and investment rates of the newly industrialized and emerging Asian economies, such as China, whose saving and investment rates of over 40% of GDP ensured real economic growth rates of over 10% during the same period, i.e. 1980-2010.

Average annual growth in Africa reached above 5% during the past decade following the commodity price boom since the early 2000s but was dampened by the global economic and financial crises during 2008-2009. Growth rebounded in 2010 and is projected to reach 5.5% in 2011 making sub Saharan Africa the second fastest growing region in the world following Asia.

However, heavy dependence on growth driven by improved commodity terms of trade subjects the sub continent to vagaries of global demand uncertainty. Unless improved commodity terms of trade translates into higher saving and investment, the sustainability of the current improved growth performance will be at stake. Equally important is the continuation of economic and political reforms that are required to enhance the participation of the private sector in economic development, and also improve productivity and investment efficiency.

This brief paper presents an overview of investment efficiency, savings and economic growth in 41 sub Saharan African countries for the past three decades using data from the IMF, World Economic Outlook Data Base, April 2011. Six countries have been excluded from the analysis for lack of consistent time series data. These are Djibouti, Liberia, Mauritania, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Investment Efficiency in Sub Saharan Africa

There are two broad concepts of efficiency: allocative efficiency and technical or production efficiency usually measured by total factor productivity. Some empirical analysts use these broad concepts of efficiency to assess inefficiency in aggregate investment in terms of excess investment demand that captures the deviations of actual investment from the desired investment. These approaches usually use nonparametric methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), as well as, parametric methods including multiple linear or non- linear regression models.

In this brief article, we use a simple approach based on marginal productivity of capital, known commonly as the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) to measure investment efficiency in 41 sub Saharan African countries for the period 1980-2010. ICOR is the ratio of investments in some previous period or periods and growth in output in subsequent period or periods measured at constant prices.

Growth in output is not attributed only to investment in fixed capital. It could be due to growth in productivity (partial or total factor productivity), increased use of labour input or improvement in the level of education of the labour force (growth in human capital), and/or improvements in productive capacity utilization. However, changes in fixed investment still explain a significant portion of growth in output particularly in developing countries with limited fixed capital stock and therefore the efficiency with which this input is utilized provides a useful clue about the correlation between the later and economic growth.

The higher the ICOR, the lower is the implied investment efficiency. That is fixed investment is more efficient if fewer dollars are required to generate a unit growth in output. The average ICOR for sub Saharan Africa for the period 1980-2010 was 5.23 and was comparable with the ICOR for of about 5 during the 1980-2003 period. This implies that fixed investment in sub Saharan Africa is pretty efficient and the level of investment efficiency in the sub region is comparable with that of China during the early two decades of its rapid industrialization. This is not only because the sub region is capital scarce but also because there have been marked improvements in business climate and political environment during the past two decades. Therefore, no wonder that foreign direct investment surged in Africa from less than US$15 billion in early 2000s to over US$80 billion in 2007 before the inflow was hit by the global financial and economic crises of 2008-2009.

While average investment efficiency in sub Saharan Africa is high, performance varies from country to country. The 41 countries in sub Saharan Africa can be classified into three groups based on their ICOR performance for the period 1980-2010: (a) those with ICOR value of 1-5, (b) those with 6-9, and (c)) those with ICOR values of above 10.

The majority of the 41 counties (i.e. 25 countries) in the sub region recorded higher investment efficiency during the past three decades. These countries include both the least developed countries with very low fixed capital stock base, as well as, some middle income economies with higher level of capital stock. These best performing countries with ICOR value of 1-5 are: Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, DRC, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinean Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. Most of these countries are not only face extreme capital scarcity but have also shown some progress in opening up their economies during the past 3 decades.

The countries with medium investment efficiency level of ICOR 6-9 include: Benin, Burundi, Cape Verde, Eritrea, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland. Mauritius is among the Upper Middle income countries and top reformers in the sub region. Lower investment efficiency may imply an over investment in the economy where marginal investment needed to generate a unit output was greater during the past three decades than during the earlier years of its economic expansion.

Investment efficiency was the lowest in the following countries during the past three decades: Angola, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa and Tanzania. All of these four countries have experienced some form of economic and political upheavals during the past three decades. Preliminary data analyses showed that South Africa’s ICOR was comparable with that of China for the post-Apartheid period, but the number was very high for the pre 1994 period, i.e. 1980-1994 pulling the country’s overall performance significantly down. Investment efficiency was very low during the Apartheid rule in South Africa, due to global isolation and heavy state control over the economy. Thus if we exclude the pre 1994 period South Africa’s investment efficiency will fall within the first group of best performers. Poor performance by Angola, Cote d’Ivoire and Tanzania reflects the continued impacts of civil war and socialist mode of production in the case of the later which contributed to wasteful investment.

Investment required to achieve a minimum growth threshold of 7 percent

While Africa’s growth performance is the second best in the world at present, the continent still lags behind other regions in terms of socioeconomic development. Over 380 million people in Africa today live below poverty line, while youth unemployment is as high as 70% in some countries. Most economies are still heavily dependent on rain fed subsistence agriculture with extremely limited investment on irrigation. Weak economic structure reinforces poverty and poses a major risk to the sustainability of the current growth fuelled by commodity price boom.

African countries will not be able to address this fundamental economic challenge with current growth rates of 5% or less. They should achieve a minimum of 7% annual growth rate individually or collectively for the coming two decades to make a dent on poverty and unemployment. With an average ICOR of 5.23, the sub Saharan Africa region therefore requires a minimum fixed investment of 35% of GDP over the coming two decades collectively or by each country. Given the current actual average regional fixed investment rate of 20% of GDP, the desired investment rate of 35% over the coming two decades seems insurmountable, but not unrealistic. China’s economic growth during the past three decades was fuelled by fixed investment of over 40% of GDP. China’s massive investment was financed by extraordinarily high household and public savings which at times reached 50% of GDP. The major challenge for Africa, in this respect, is a culture of low savings, which we expound in the following section.

Saving-investment gap in Sub Saharan Africa

When domestic household and public savings fall short of the fixed investment needs of a country, this leads to a saving-investment gap. This gap is exacerbated when export earnings of a country fall short of import demand leading to a second, foreign exchange gap. Most developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa are often characterized by both gaps. Except five countries, i.e. Botswana, DRC, Gabon, The Gambia, Namibia, and South Africa, the rest of 41 sub Saharan African countries had an average saving -investment gap ranging from 1% to nearly 30% of GDP during the past three decades.

The saving-investment gap, however, significantly varies across the countries in the sub region. Countries that faced relatively lower saving-investment gaps ranging between 1-5% in the sub region during the period under review include Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Swaziland and Uganda. The lower gap by some countries reflects increased savings from oil revenues, while lower gap by others simply mean lower level of investment.

Countries in the sub region with the average saving investment-gap of 6-10% during the stated period include Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African republic, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius. Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia, while those with average saving-investment gap of above 11% include Cape Verde, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Lesotho, Mozambique, Seychelles and Togo.

The poor performance of the sub region in terms of the saving-investment gap reflects two major challenges: First, most countries are characterized by low saving and low investment and hence are at the risk of being trapped in vicious circle of poverty if the they do not raise their saving and investment rates immediately; and second if they raise their investment levels without a concomitant increase in domestic savings they may be trapped in vicious cycle of debt which could undermine the value of their investments, provided money borrowed is invested in economic development. Since the recent economic crisis proved that most of the aid pledged by non-African donors is unlikely to be delivered, the only sustainable solution to Africa’s development challenge is aggressive domestic resource mobilization for development. This could be supplemented by foreign direct investments, if the countries in the sub region speed up the current economic and political reforms.

Concluding remarks

Africa is rising. After 5 decades of civil strife and economic stagnation, the first decade of the 21st century shone a new light on the continent. Africa is no more a hopeless dark continent. Like its diamonds in the West, South and at the center, the continent is shining.

It is also shining as a second fastest growing continent in the world. However, there is no time for complacence as Africa is still the least developed continent in the world plagued with high level of poverty, unemployment, political instability and corruption. To sustainably address these fundamental socio economic challenges the region should at least grow by 7% per annum for the coming two decades. However, this is unlikely to be achieved with the current investment rate of 20% and the saving rate of 14% of GDP.

While the return to investment in Africa is high, it is such low levels of investment and saving that are holding the continent back. Given higher returns to investment, Africa’s economic transformation will depend on radical shift in the saving culture of its people, further economic and political reforms, and accelerated fixed investment.

   By: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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In an earlier article titled “Nigeria 2011: Chances for an African Renaissance. Interview with ARP Chairman, Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu” (amongst others), I published the first part of an interview with Mr. Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu, Chairman of the African Renaissance Party (ARP), who was a candidate in Nigeria’s presidential elections in 2003.

Visionary and politician, intellectual and activist, Mr. Yahaya Ndu is member of the National Committee of the African Unification Front (AUF), and spearheaded many initiatives aiming at eliminating colonially-imposed tyranny, military dictatorship, cultural alienation, socio-behavioural disintegration, historical denigration, and identity confusion from Africa. Struggling in the first line of the front against fallacious, colonialist historiography, neo-colonialist involvement, policies and practices, Mr. Yahaya Ndu defends the cause of reparations for Africa. His interview bears witness to new theoretical and intellectual trends that emerge in Nigeria, to prevail throughout Africa and thus herald a great future for the entire Black Continent.

Today, I publish the second part of the interview, and in several forthcoming articles, I will complete the series.

5. How did you feel personally your identity of African, intellectual and statesman, and what is Africa’s role in today’s global world, according to your “Weltanschauung”?

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – The United States of America prides herself as the policeman of the world, but everything in its origin, nature and character shows it to be the very opposite of what she claims. Instead of being the policeman of the world, the US has consistently proved to be the most criminal nation of the world.

The United Nations has been shown to be nothing but an outer cloak of the US, and is totally incapable of acting against the dictates of the US.

Africa is the continent that is morally positioned to take over the role that the US has erroneously ascribed to itself over the past centuries.

Africa is first of all the father and mother of Humanity in the sense that it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubts by scientific and historical facts and finds that the entire Mankind started in black Africa. Secondly, civilization started in Africa, and in other words Black Africa taught Humanity all it knows.

Thirdly, no people have suffered as much as Black African did in the hands of other races on earth, and in this sense, Black Africa is the conscience of the world. All these elements make of Black Africa the natural candidate to assume the role of the policeman of the world.

I look forward to the emergence of a self-sufficient, self-reliant Africa that will be in a position to grant aids to other parts of the world. I want to see the rise of an Africa that is industrialized enough to manufacture all her needs; I believe in an Africa normally and naturally looked upon by the rest of mankind as able to settle all global issues.

“The European Renaissance was a result of a resurgence of new ideas from European students of primo, the African old school of Egypt, such as Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, and secondo, the Zoroastrian Magi of the Middle East.

6. What is your evaluation of the existing borderlines in Africa, and to what extent do they represent an imperative reality or a righteous situation for you?

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – The realities of the Berlin Conferences of 1883 – 1885 and the grave distortions these conferences brought about in the lives of the peoples of Africa are no secrets to anyone. The present borderlines of the African nations are due to the partitioning of Africa in the Berlin Conferences, and were occasioned by the economic and political interests of the colonial powers. These borderlines were arbitrarily drawn, without any recourse to the cultural and historical affinities of the diverse peoples of Africa. The borderlines are indeed the main responsible for the incessant crises that have bedeviled the African continent.

So, to answer your question directly, my evaluation of the existing borderlines in Africa is that they are criminally, wickedly, selfishly and atrociously instituted, and that they must be redressed.

7. Would you briefly describe to our readers the political ideology and the principal political targets of your party?

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu – According to Nelson Mandela, Africa has gone beyond bemoaning the past for its problems. The task of undoing that past is ours, with the support of those willing to join us in a continental renewal. We, the Africans, must take responsibility for our own destiny, if we really want to uplift ourselves by our own efforts in partnership with those non Africans who wish us well.

However, the truth is that Africa cannot possibly renew herself within an ugly context in which all the upper echelons are mere parasites on the rest of society in every African country, enjoying a self-endowed mandate to use their political power in a way to ensure that our poverty-stricken and underdeveloped continent reproduces itself as the periphery of the world economy, being always incapable of development.

The African Renaissance demands that we purge ourselves of these parasites and maintain a permanent vigilance against the danger of this rapacious stratum being entrenched in the African society; its debased social morality brings about an unacceptable situation according to which everything in the society must be organized materially to benefit the few.

The African Renewal demands that African intelligentsia carried out the gigantic task to end the poverty, the ignorance, the disease and the backwardness; the African intelligentsia must be inspired by the fact that the Africans of Egypt were in some instances two thousand years ahead of the Europeans in the mastery of such subjects as geometry, trigonometry, algebra, chemistry, astronomy, medicine and natural sciences.

The beginning of the African Rebirth throughout the continent must be our own rediscovery; we must find again our soul, which was immortalized since the Dawn of the Mankind in the great monuments that encapsulated knowledge and wisdom altogether, nanely the pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt and Ethiopia, i.e. Ancient Sudan, the steles (hawalti) of Axum, the ruins of Carthage and Zimbabwe, the rock inscriptions of Somalia, the drawings of Tassili in the Atlas region, the paintings of the San, the Benin bronzes and the African masks, the carvings of the Makonde, and the stone sculptures of the Shona.

The Rebirth of Africa will not occur overnight. It will naturally take some time. The African intelligentsia, wherever they may reside and originate from, must undertake the systematic re-establishment of the History of Africa as an unbiased discipline of Humanities, purified from all the Western fallacies, schemes and preconceived racist concepts. They must reinterpret the African Past, implement their conclusions at the levels of the African Primary and Secondary Education, publications, and average culture, and ultimately enable all the Africans to better understand how and why we fell and we came to be where we are right now. Their task is therefore not a merely academic responsibility but a social mission of awareness raising and resource mobilization so that a greater number of African, if possible all, participate in and contribute to the African regeneration process.

The African Renaissance entails Heritage reclamation for the people of the African continent, whether at home or in the Diaspora. The African Renaissance is the only possible means to trigger socio-economic and political renewal of Africa. This is our vision, the program of the African Renaissance Party (ARP).

We, at the African Renaissance Party, believe that all the systems of governmental practice currently undertaken in Africa are fundamentally defective and constitute basic reasons for holding the existing potentials in bondage. Our party aspires to institute a mass participatory system of government that will bring about efficient, responsive and responsible governments that will subsequently unleash the creative and productive potentials of the people, thus catapulting Africa to where our continent belonged already at the Dawn of the Mankind.

The African Renaissance brings forth a genuine effort to address the need of people for identity, integrity, and self-knowledge; making of our lost literatures and scriptures from all over the continent the focal point of tomorrow’s African average education and culture means that we guarantee for our children a bright future and that we make sure that they will not be another wasted generation. Everything we have so far studied tells us that we, Africans, are meant to be teachers of the rest of the world and leader of the Mankind in the path toward true Knowledge and Wisdom.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe tells us in his books the Renascent Africa will “educate the Renascent African to be a Man. Tell him that he has made definite contributions to history. Educate him to appreciate the fact that iron was discovered by Africans; that the conception of one God was initiated by Africans; that Africans ruled the world from 763 to 713 B.C.; that while Europe slumbered during the dark ages, a great civilization flourished on the banks of the Niger, extending from the salt mines of Taghaza in Morocco, to Lake Chad right to the Atlantic; Narrate to him the lore of Ethiopia, Ghana, Melle, Mellestine and Songhay.

Let him realize with the rest of the world that while Oxford and Cambridge were in their inchoate stages, the university of Sankore in Timbuktu welcomed scholars and learned men from all over the Moslem world”.

Mass Participatory Government
“Only through the direct and continuous participation of all citizens in political life can the state be bound to the common good or general will”.

8. In a paper presented at the occasion of the Badagry Folk Festival, last August, you stipulated a Cultural Renaissance is a ‘priority challenge’ for Africa in the 21st century. Why so?

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu ? According to an old saying, “there is nothing new under the sun”. That being so, I may bold to say that the true solutions to all the problems confronting the peoples of Black Africa today can be found in the cultures and traditions of ancient Africa.

The African Cultural Renaissance today will signal the reintroduction of African solutions to African problems; and this is of the utmost importance.

The African Union in its wisdom has seen it fit to dedicate this year and next year to African Cultural Renaissance because that august body has come to recognize in our ancient and surviving cultural treasures the wisdom that our African forebears left for their descendants.

“Needless to say, there is an urgent need to redefine the parameters of scholarship. Everything we have learned will have to be unlearned. By the time the timeless knowledge encoded in the Arts and Culture (symbolism, dance, masquerades, masks, body paintings, textile designs, wall paintings, architecture, folklore, sacred ceremonies, and especially the monoliths) of Africa and other aboriginal peoples of the world are decoded and deciphered, History itself would have to be rewritten, and science would turn its attention to the study of culture and cultural phenomenon, which would then appropriately become the subject matter of Quantum physics.

To Africans, Blacks and all deprived peoples all over the world, we say, culture is everything! Those who took your cultures from you took everything from you. Your culture is your life, your past, your present, your science, your religion, your closest link to the One True God. You are your culture, and your culture is all you have. It is your link to all knowledge available in the Universal Mind of the Creator. Your culture is you. It is your Archetypal image as conceived in the mind of the creator who made you in his image. Thus, your culture is your expression of the image of God, the universal Archetype”. Prof. Catherine Achaolonu-Olumba.

We must divorce our minds from understanding the word ‘development’ as related to high elevation buildings and automobiles. True development is the maintenance of a divine state of order, equity, justice and contentment in a given environment or among the members of a social group. It is a society characterized by harmony and order between Heaven and Earth, and among the various sections of that society. Judging by these standards our modern societies, we safely conclude that they do not qualify to be called developed.

Note
Picture: ARP Chairman Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu addressing a political meeting

   By: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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Nigeria is Africa’s heart and largest country; at the same time, it seems to be the continent’s gravitational centre, the anti-colonial locomotive, and the laboratory of new considerations about Africa’s identity, cultural integrity, and educational rehabilitation. Home to the African Renaissance Party, Nigeria features fresh approaches to African historiography, in full refutation of the colonial falsehood that instigated so many conflicts throughout the continent by means of introduction of fake names, false ideologies, and fallacious state-imposed doctrines.

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu is the chairman of the African Renaissance Party (ARP), and was a candidate in Nigeria’s presidential elections in 2003. Visionary and politician, intellectual and activist, Mr. Yahaya Ndu is member of the National Committee of the African Unification Front (AUF), and spearheaded many initiatives aiming at eliminating colonially-imposed tyranny, military dictatorship, cultural alienation, socio-behavioural disintegration, historical denigration, and identity confusion from Africa.

Struggling in the first line of the front against fallacious, colonialist historiography, neo-colonialist involvement, policies and practices, Mr. Yahaya Ndu defends the cause of reparations for Africa. He is therefore the most suitable person to describe Nigeria’s and Africa’s chances for a better future.

I am today honoured to publish a first part of the interview that Mr. Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu accorded recently to me; in forthcoming articles, I will complete the series.

1, Would you acquaint our readers with your family and educational background?

My father, Chief Pius Chidobi Ndu, was an Igbo; my mother is also Igbo and both are from Oghe, in Ezeagu local government area, at the state of Enugu.

My father was a traditional ruler, a prominent businessman, and a political figure. Part of his political career involved his tenure as a senator in Nigeria’s first republic.

I was born in Jos, the capital of the Plateau state of Nigeria, a rather cosmopolitan place where my father had settled at the time, and lived a long part of his life.

I started schooling at St. Theresa’s Primary School, Jos. At the outbreak of hostilities in Nigeria in 1966/1967, my family moved to Igboland and I continued my primary education in Enugu, the capital of eastern Nigeria. After the end of the war, I commenced my secondary education at the College of the Immaculate Conception, and thence to Christ High School in Abor, which is located in Enugu state as well.

Thereafter I obtained admission into the Faculty of Law at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), where I read Law.

It was during the course of my academic studies that it became increasingly evident to me that schooling was literally disturbing my education, and that in the process, instead of acquiring real access into real Knowledge, I was merely feeding myself with a manner of Western education, which was especially designed to ensure that I would remain in a state of mental, intellectual and spiritual dependency.

2. Would you highlight your political career’s milestones?

I must have been about seven years old, when one day as I returned from the school (St. Theresa’s primary school, Jos) and greeted my father who happened to be discussing with another man. I was then asked to shake hands with that person, and on that very moment my father introduced that man to me:

- Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe!

That man became later the first president of Nigeria, and his name was always synonymous with politics. From that very moment, I started taking more than a passing interest in politics.

My father being an active politician and a prominent traditional ruler, our house was naturally a beehive of political activities; as a matter of fact, I was a boisterous child was always in the midst of the masses of people that were ever present in our house.

My political career advanced progressively, and I do not recall any particular milestones as such to speak about. Conclusive part of my political thoughts and considerations turned out to be the conviction that Nigeria in its integrity and Africa in its entirety needed a complete redirection. I subsequently decided to devote my life to this task, especially after I came to know in minute details the evildoings perpetrated by the colonials against the highly educated, profoundly humane, and genuinely pacific King Jaja of Opobo (1821-1891); the colonial treachery, the shocking story of King Jaja’s kidnapping by the English government, and his tragic and most undeserved end in captivity overwhelmed my political thought, determined my political stance, and contextualized my African identity.

Organization for Democracy in Africa (ODA)
“Today Africa’s democratic deficit is more significant than its financial deficit”-Julius Nyerere.

Haven shamefully and painfully watched as Africa, our motherland, was apparently terminally engaged in violent confrontations of various proportions with its poor self over the past four decades.

The thoroughness, the ruthlessness and the ferocity of these confrontations, which spanned the whole length and breadth of the continent, from Cape Town to Cairo and from Monrovia to Mogadishu, have often terrified and even dumbfounded the international community.

In May 1994, I gathered several colleagues, companions and activists in a meeting at Enugu in Eastern Nigeria, whereby we all decided to set up the Organization for Democracy in Africa (ODA) with the following aims and objectives:

I. Ensuring and monitoring probity and accountability in the administration of African states

II. Complementing the activities of other progressive regional and sub-regional African organizations committed to the unification, democratization and development of the African states

III. Identifying the colonially-instigated disputes in Africa, and exposing them to the international community

IV. Preventing ethnic, religious, racial, political or cultural disputes from escalating into wars or violent confrontations throughout Africa

African Revolutionary Movement (ARM)

On the 1st of October 2000, at the Abuja Cultural Center, I launched the African Revolutionary Movement (ARM) and at a later date, I – along with my colleagues – applied to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in order to register ARM as a political party. However, INEC refused to register us, claiming that the term ‘revolutionary’ in the party name was unacceptable to the commission, and that in addition, the abbreviation ARM was equally unacceptable. We therefore had to change the name to African Renaissance Party (ARP), which was finally registered in 2002.

African Renaissance Party (ARP)
In 2003, I contested for the Presidency of Republic, in Nigeria’s presidential elections, under the African Renaissance Party.

3, How did you feel personally your Igbo identity, and at what age were you conscious that you belong to your ethnic religious group?

As I said, I was born in Jos, northern Nigeria. I was ten years old, when the Nigerian / Biafran civil broke out in 1967; as a matter of fact, my parents had to run to the eastern part of Nigeria. It was indeed at that time that the idea dawned upon me that I was an Igbo and an eastern Nigerian.

At the time, there was a general pogrom in northern Nigeria against the Igbos and the Igbos were being massacred in hundreds of thousands throughout northern Nigeria in one of the most thorough but less publicized genocides in the History of the Mankind.

Now, Igbos are predominately Christian and followers of traditional religions, and very few of them are Muslims. In fact, I never came across an Igbo Muslim until my adolescent years.

You don’t need to have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics to know that the Igbos are the most marginalized people of Nigeria. This fact is quite paradoxical because among all the peoples of Nigeria none believes in unified Nigeria as much as the Igbos do.

First of all, you can find Igbos residing all over Nigeria, even in the most remote areas. Secondly, you can easily notice that wherever an Igbo resides, he really invests his property. No other people or ethno-religious group in Nigeria shares this typical trait. Thirdly, throughout Nigeria, the Igbos constitute the 2nd largest group, being second only to the indigenous population as per region.

Yet, the Igbos are still so grossly marginalized that their region (Nigeria’s southeast part) is the zone of poverty and underdevelopment par excellence.

Endowment Fund for the Center for Igbo Studies
The Igbo nation features a home-grown democratic sociopolitical system, which goes back to Igbo Pre-history and at the same time testifies to the most advanced concepts of humane and civilized social order that must have been unique in the Antiquity.

The reason why an Igbo can never grovel and roll on the ground before a fellow human being, no matter how highly placed that human being may or might be, is that every Igbo man knows without any shred of doubt that he is a king. This belief and practice is not common to all Africans, you must note.

The actual center of the habitable world is a location marked in all the ancient maps of the world as “Median”; this is a cartographical term meaning ‘a location situated in the middle’. That place is ‘Median Biafra’, the only place to be marked under this name in the world map. Biafra is located in the South Eastern Region of Nigeria; Biafra had once included the Delta region, the Cameroon Border States, and the fringes of the Niger-Benue confluence.

4, How did you feel personally your identity of Nigerian citizen, and what is Nigeria’s role in Africa according to your political vision?

I see Nigeria as the firstborn of Africa in every sense of the word, and like all firstborns in African cultural and traditional understandings, it behooves Nigeria to take good care of the rest of Africa. This means that Nigeria must lead by example; it implies that Nigeria must be a model state and must get her acts together so to say. In that wise, and going by all available indices, Nigeria is a failure.

I also believe that it is Nigeria’s responsibility to become a super-state strong enough to take adequate care of the rest of Africa and the Black World. When one looks at the crisis bedeviling the Black World and takes into consideration the fact that Black people are not able to take care of themselves and their brothers, one draws the conclusion that Nigeria has abdicated from her position and declined her responsibilities. This is my own reckoning. For instance, the predicament confronting the Black People of Haiti today demonstrates – amongst others – the failure of Nigeria.

Nigeria should become a super-state capable enough to protect the interests of the Black World. Nigeria should be strong enough to be entrusted veto power in the UN Security Council. Nigeria should be an industrialized nation manufacturing her own cars, airplanes, etc. Nigeria should be a net exporter of all types of high technological products. Nigeria should be the very strongest nation on Earth to ensure that no people are persecuted in today’s world and no race discrimination takes place.

It is the direct responsibility of Nigeria to bring about the unification of the Black World, just as it is the responsibility of a family’s firstborn to ensure the togetherness.

One learns from Prof. Catherine Acholonu-Olumba that “the wicked and inhuman fate to which the Black race has been confined through the ages was consciously and deliberately plotted”; and that “seeds of enmity were meticulously sowed among Black Africans who had been used as instruments of division, racism, tribalism, injustice and enthronement of falsehood over truth and wisdom”. This wound has remained with Africans, especially Nigerians, who are some of the most gifted men and women in the world but remained prostrate due to tribalism and nepotism; these negative elements have been so deeply ingrained that only a surgical incision of a powerful dose of hard truth could effect the desired changes.

I also select the following excerpts:
“It is no accident that the Niger/ Benue confluence is located in the land of Nigeria, the most populous Black African nation; a country and a people marked out from the twilight of time to be the cradle of African Renaissance”.

“That distinguishing cultural phenomenon known all over the world as Black African culture is Nigerian in origin”.

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Picture: ARP Chairman, Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu, addressing audience at a Seminar held on King Jaja’s legacy

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Al-Jazeera news channel captured chilling footage of men in uniforms shooting unarmed men after they purportedly were arrested during clashes last year with Muslim militants in northern Nigeria.

The footage aired Tuesday on Al-Jazeera shows two uniformed men forcing seven young men to lie face-down at the side of a busy road. The uniformed men then fire into the men’s backs.

Boko Haram sect militants sparked violence in late July, unleashing a bloodbath in which 700 people died. Rights groups claimed authorities committed extrajudicial killings.

Borno state Police Commissioner Ibrahim Abdu says the TV images are false and “a deliberate attempt of the surviving sect members to cause confusion and threats.”

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   [ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
The Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who attempted to blow up an American aeroplane with a bomb built into his underwear, was somewhat unAfrican.

Though so-called Sub-Saharan Africa has its fair share of terrorists, AbdulMutallab is one of the very few who has offered himself up as a suicide bomber. From the days of the slave trade, life has been so grim in Africa that we seem to have developed a strong keep-alive ethos that makes suicide unfashionable.

So how do we explain AbdulMutallab? One of the best attempts to shed light on why this young Nigerian, born into a rich middle class family and having received a very good education, became a would-be suicide bomber can be found on the Zeleza Post. The Zeleza Post is a high-minded blog on African affairs founded by Malawian historian, Dr Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, who is touted as the next big African intellectual.

A December 28 posting on the blog by Nigerian Pius Adesanni blames the AbdulMutallab phenomenon the lazy and parasitic “Feudo-Caliphal establishment in northern Nigeria,” which mass produces poverty and stokes radical Islam in order to maintain power.

However, it is not only Islamic extremism that is being pushed in Nigeria. Nigeria is also the epicentre of Christian extremism in Africa.

My favourite is the “Ministry of Sacrifice” led by Prophetess Felicia Okafor, which is dedicated to finishing the work that Adam and Eve left undone in the Garden of Eden. Members of the Ministry prayed naked, and husbands and wives were barred from having sex with one another. Instead, the church appointed a “brother” or “sister” for them. A female member of the Ministry found to be having sexual relations with her legitimate husband was considered to have committed adultery! By any standard of religious extremism, that was going way too far. Prophetess Okafor was busted after her flock couldn’t take it any more and squealed to the police.

What is happening in Nigeria is taking place all over Africa. Not only are Islamic and Christian fundamentalism on the rise, but also traditionalist extremism. In Uganda, for example, child sacrifice has hit an alarming high. Ironically, it is fuelled not by poverty, but by development and prosperity. A security official told the BBC that as Ugandans grow wealthier, they resort more and more to witchcraft to secure their wealth and to build on it…

In common, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism are growing because there is no competing secular cause. Public policy debate is dying in Africa, and what we have is homophobic fury in many countries. Political discourse has been replaced by ethnic hate rants.

We don’t need a great secular idea. Even an Africa-wide youth rebellion, demanding the right for young people to love, get high on marijuana, and party all night will unite the older folks to set them on the right path.

In the past, we united against imperialism, then against the IMF and World Bank. The biggest of them all was HIV-Aids. These issues were always much bigger than religion and superstition. Now the HIV-Aids has receded somewhat.

We need a new enemy; maybe a disease as fiery as HIV-Aids that will marginalise the merchants of religious extremism. If not, we should prepare for more AbdulMutallabs and child sacrifices.

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