Pathfinder weekly sample (1)

PATHFINDER

WEEKLY

Celebrating unforgettable AWO — Pg. 5

Championing the cause of Africa

VOL. 1, NO. 1

Trump’s executive order: Undocumented Immigrant seeks sanctuary in Church — Pg. 9

Celebrating national icon: Untold story of 8th Bola Tinubu colloquium — Pg. 8

Who pays the hidden price for Congo’s conflict-free minerals?

— Pg. 11

MARCH 1, 2017

FREE

Wanted: New Development Agenda for Western Nigeria

By Soji Amosu

P

enultimate Monday, the governors of the six states in the South West Nigeria met in Ado-Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti, one of the states to deliberate on a new agenda for the integration of the region.

The conference had in attendance, governors of five states, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos, Senator Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State, and host governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose.

The Governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun was represented by his Deputy Governor, Chief (Mrs.) Yetunde Onanuga.

Ekiti State Governor and the host, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, while addressing the governors of the SouthWestern states of the country at the meeting, opined that the issue of hunger is no respecter of any political party, hence the meeting was attended by all the governors from the region irrespective of their political affiliations.

Fayose called on the Governors to unite as brothers and not let party affiliation make them undermine each other's efforts.

He also asked the SouthWest Governors to adopt a unified approach that will stop Fulani herdsmen from destroying agricultural investment in the SouthWest.

After the Ado-Ekiti meeting, some technocrats and civil servants also held a four day conference in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital with the aim of charting a common front for the region.

The theme of the conference which was “Innovative Governance and Effective Service Delivery” attracted

Governors of South-West Nigeria: L-R: Akinwunmi Ambode (Lagos), Mrs. Yetunde Onanuga (Dep. Gov., Ogun), Sen. Abiola Ajumobi (Oyo), Olusegun Mimiko (Ondo), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), Ayodele Fayose (Ekiti)

participants from all the South West States of Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ondo Ekiti and Ogun, the host State.

They brainstormed, among other things, to set governance framework in the affected States and also present game-changing State level innovations and reforms for improved governance.

The consensus of all the Speakers at the opening ceremony was that it had become inevitable for the Western States to put in place a roadmap for accelerated development and regional integration.

They also challenged the States to invest heavily in capacity building of their personnel, insisting that such gesture should cut across political divide.

They again called for consistency in policies by all the affected States.

Those who spoke were the Chief Executive Officer of Proshare Nigeria Limited, Dr. Olufemi Awoyemi, Dr. Dayo Adelogu, Ogun State Commissioner for Urban and Regional Planning, Mrs. Ronke Sokefun, Rev.

Patrick Ngoye and Mrs Olubunmi Fadairo.

The conference was put together by “Dawn Commission”, an agency whose core mission is to strengthen the governance process as a fundamental requirement for effective public service delivery across the region in partnership with Dept. for International Development (DFID) and PERL.

The keynote Speaker and Chief Executive Officer of the Proshare Nigeria Limited, Mr. Olufemi Awoyemi said Nigeria lacked innovations that would foster development, saying the country must ensure its citizens enjoy economic as well as human rights.

He insisted that for Nigeria to move forward, it must separate good

innovations from routine governance whereby “successive government dropped good innovations by their predecessors”.

Awoyemi said Nigeria committed the greatest error by declaring itself giant of Africa, saying the country had the biggest population in the continent but regrettably had failed to plan for the population's future. n

171 Nigerians Voluntarily Return From Libya

T

he News Agency of Nigeria reports that the aircraft landed at about 4:18 p.m. at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

No fewer than 171

President Buhari

Nigerians voluntarily returned from Libya on Tuesday aboard a chartered Nouvelair aircraft with registration number TS-1NB. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the aircraft landed at about 4:18 p.m. at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

NAN reports that another batch comprising 161 Nigerians, had earlier on February 14 also voluntarily returned from the North African country where they had been stranded enroute Europe.

The new set of returnees were brought back by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, and the Nigerian Embassy in Libya.

They were received at the Hajj Camp area of the airport by officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, the National Agency for the Protection of Trafficking in Person, NAPTIP, and the Police.

Also on ground to receive them were officials of the National Emergency M a n a g e m e n t A g e n c y, NEMA, and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN.

2 | PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1 2017

FEATURES

J

AKARTA, Indonesia – In the struggle against Islamic extremism, few groups have been fighting for longer than Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Sunni organization that has become the global face of Indonesia's pluralistic Islam.

Founded in 1926 to prevent Saudi Arabia's bitterly intolerant Wahhabism from taking root in Indonesia, it's a cultural touchstone for Indonesians proud of their heritage of religious tolerance – and a symbol of moderate Islam worldwide.

But NU's work seems to be collapsing at home. The national conversation of the last five months has been monopolized by a far-right Islamist group called the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

FPI has around 200,000 members; NU – somewhat dubiously – claims 50 million worldwide. But it's the extremists who are setting the pace in Indonesia and threatening to transform NU in the process.

FPI has organized huge, racially charged rallies in Jakarta to protest the city's Chinese Christian governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, whom it accused of blasphemy for quoting a Quran verse about electing non-Muslim leaders. NU discouraged, but didn't prohibit, its members from attending them. Some NU members, wearing the group's scarves and holding its flags, even attended FPI's rallies. FPI's hyperbolic allegation went all the way to court, where the governor is now sitting trial as he runs for reelection. In charging Ahok, the police sided with FPI rather than NU, which publicly disputed the blasphemy charge. It was a stunning accomplishment for a fringe group – and one that has left the Indonesian center shaken and frightened.

NU is reliably quick to defuse anxiety about radicalism with the refrain that the “real” Islam is tolerant, peaceful, and inhospitable to jihad – especially in Indonesia.

And it's true that Indonesia has remarkably few terrorists given its population size. NU also has a prominent global profile due to its fondness for interfaith conferences, summits for Muslim leaders, and ambitious campaigns against extremism.

But there is a growing chasm between Indonesia's national refrain about its tolerant, pluralistic tradition and the conservative populism that has breached public life. People on both sides are now waiting to see if the governor's trial will

President Joko Widodo

Indonesia’s moderate Islam is slowly crumbling

By Krithika Varagur

help revive Indonesia's moderate Muslim establishment or mark the beginning of its end.

“The Ahok affair has been a huge wake-up call,” said Alissa Wahid, a social activist, NU official, and daughter of late Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. “We have been suffering for 10 years, letting hard-liners take center stage on social issues and even commit violence,” she said. “The challenges for NU going forward are not small.”

NU was a political party until 1984 but now concentrates on social welfare and religious education, often in tandem with other faith groups, encapsulating Indonesia's syncretic mix of animistic, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist traditions alongside Islam. The archetypal NU public figure was Abdurrahman Wahid, who was chairman of the group for 15 years before he was elected president in 1999. Yet under Wahid, far more strident groups started to elbow NU offstage.

“The prominence of liberal Muslim intellectuals like Wahid made moderate Islam seem like a stable and dominant ideology,” said Luthfi Assyaukanie, a researcher and co-founder of the Liberal Islam Network. “But before 1998, when [the dictator] Suharto fell, the media was tightly controlled and privileged the discourse of liberal, tolerant groups like NU.” In retrospect, Assyaukanie said, the center could not hold.

Suharto's authoritarianism prioritized religious

tolerance – for the sake of stability, if nothing else. But when the democratic floodgates opened in 1998, conservatives could finally organize and evangelize.

FPI was founded in late 1998, the sharia-promoting hard-line Indonesian Mujahideen Council in 2000, and the reactionary Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in 2002.

“I don't think NU adapted fast enough to the new media environment,” said Savic Ali, a young NU member who runs its website and Nutizen, a new streaming video platform.

“The people who really took advantage of it were the hard right – conservative voices like that of [the celebrity TV preacher] Abdullah Gymnastiar who amass huge followings on TV and social media.” Ali is spearheading an effort to raise the digital profile of NU preachers but admits they're playing catch-up.

Indonesian Muslims, including NU's member base, are becoming more intensely and visibly conservative. A recent survey found that four in five public school religion teachers support imposing sharia, or Islamic law. And “more women wear hijab, more families go to Mecca, more people pray in public spaces after 1998,” Assyaukanie said.

The conservative elements within NU itself make it difficult to robustly counter these trends. Many NU ulema (religious scholars) have always been conservative, said political scientist William Liddle, at Ohio State University.

“During and since President Wahid, the impression that

moderates dominate NU has never been accurate.”

A l i s s a Wa h i d s a i d growing conservatism within NU has been accompanied by intolerance. “In the last 15 years, NU members have become not just conservative in ritual but also rude, enforcing a 'majoritarian perspective' that dismisses all other kinds of Islam, leave alone other religions,” she said.

The decentralized nature of NU is another roadblock to reform: It has always been a loose alliance of religious leaders and lay members, so there is, Wahid said, a “constant discussion” within NU leadership about how, if at all, to enforce NU directives.

Beyond these internal issues, Saudi Arabia has also invested billions of dollars since 1980 to spread puritanical Salafi Islam in Indonesia. Despite its explicitly anti-Wahhabi origins, NU has largely neglected to address the effects of this program, Assyaunakie said. “Plus, Salafi ideas are entering the organization itself, which has become steadily more conservative since the day Wahid left.”

“NU is not a good soldier for this battle vis-à-vis Salafism,” said Ulil AbsharAbdalla, the other cofounder of the Liberal Islam Network. “It still has conservative instincts.

Many members share, for instance, the fundamentalist viewpoint that Shiites and Ahmadiyya are not real Muslims; the only difference is that they don't

condone violence.”

And NU's own efforts in the international battle against extremism may also be hampering it at home.

NU's biggest overture a g a i n s t S a l a f i encroachment was its annual congress in 2015, in which, as Margaret Scott wrote, NU leaders affirmed that “Indonesian Islam is nationalist, pluralist, moderate, and democratic . . . as a way to fight Salafis and Saudi influence.” The congress is part of a packed calendar of outward-facing NU meetings and conferences, which, according to French political scientist Delphine Alles, springs from NU's unofficial role as an international ambassador for Indonesia's moderate image.

Alles recounts how Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has promoted staging “international forums of inter-religious dialogue, a popular theme since the middle of the 2000s.”

Indonesia's director for information and public diplomacy has been “financially and logistically supporting” NU's International Conference of Islamic Scholars since 2006. But it is a “notorious fact,” writes Alles, that “the declarations of intentions that these forums pronounce often leave their observers with a sense of frustration” because they fail to address any real points of contention.

Observers argue that the bandwidth NU devotes to targeting foreigners could

be better used on promoting progressive values in terms of issues that affect its base directly. “The emphasis placed by NU elites on pluralism and tolerance has, at times, translated into support for socioeconomic policies, like forced evictions, that have had devastating impacts on the poor,” said Ian Wilson, a researcher at Murdoch University in Australia.

“This seeming disjuncture between progressive social values and acquiescence to economic policies hostile to the poor may have provided o p e n i n g s f o r neoconservatives and hardliners to capture resentment.”

In this vacuum, FPI has become an invaluable resource to embattled Jakarta slums that are targeted by Ahok's eviction program. In April 2016, for instance, when the government threatened to evict about 1,000 residents of the Luar Batang neighborhood, FPI set up a lean charity operation that provided food, clothing, and volunteers to the poor community.

Despite these hiccups, liberal Islam remains the rule, not the exception, among Indonesia's political parties. The catch is that politicians tend to manifest this obliquely, Assyaukanie said.

“Secular parties don’t talk about Islam in straightforward terms; they couch it in issues like ‘religious tolerance’ and ‘ i n c r e a s i n g w o m e n ’s rights’,” he said. “It could to be Contd. next edition.

PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017 | 3

Opinion Comparing Automation with Industrial Revolution, isn’t Comforting “WHY should it be different this time?” That's the most common response when I raise concerns about automation and the future of jobs, and it's a pretty simple rejoinder. The Western world managed the shift out of agricultural jobs into industry, and continued to see economic growth. So will not the jobs being displaced now by automation and artificial intelligence lead to new jobs elsewhere in a broadly similar and beneficial manner? Will not the former truck drivers, displaced by self-driving vehicles, find work caring for the elderly or maybe fixing or programming the new modes of transport?

As economics, that may well be correct, but as history it's missing some central problems. The shift out of agricultural jobs, while eventually a boon for virtually all of humanity, brought significant problems along the way.

This time probably won't be different, and that's exactly why we should be concerned.

Consider, for instance, the history of wages during the

Industrial Revolution.

Estimates vary, but it is common to treat the Industrial Revolution as starting around 1760, at least in Britain. If we consider estimates for private per capita consumption, from 1760 to 1831, that variable rose only by about 22 percent.

That's not much for a 71year period. A lot of new wealth was being created, but economic turmoil and adjustment costs and war kept down the returns to labor. (If you're wondering, “Don't fight a major war” is the big policy lesson from this period, but also note that the setting for labor market adjustments is never ideal.)

By the estimates of Gregory Clark, economic historian at the University of California at Davis, English real wages may have fallen about 10 percent from 1770 to 1810, a 40year period. Clark also estimates that it took 60 to 70 years of transition, after t h e o n s e t o f industrialization, for English workers to see sustained real wage gains at

By Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include “Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond theAge of the Great Stagnation.” all.

If we imagine the contemporary U.S. experiencing similar wage patterns, most of us would expect political trouble, and hardly anyone would call that a successful transition.

Yet that may be the track we are on. Median household income is down since 1999, and by some accounts median male wages were higher in 1969 than today.

The more pessimistic of those estimates are the subject of contentious debate (are we really adjusting for inflation properly?), but the very fact that the numbers are capable of yielding such gloomy results suggests transition costs are higher than many economists like to think.

Industrialization, and the decline of the older jobs in agriculture and the crafts

economy, also had some pernicious effects on social ideas. The early to mid-19th century saw the rise of socialist ideologies, largely as a response to economic disruptions. Whatever mistakes Karl Marx made, he was a keen observer of the Industrial Revolution, and there is a reason he became so influential. He failed to see the long-run ability of capitalism to raise living standards s i g n i f i c a n t l y, b u t h e understood and vividly described the transition costs and the economic volatility.

Western economies later turned to variants of the social welfare state, but along the way the intellectual currents of the 19th century produced a lot of overreaction in other, more destructive directions.

The ideas of Marx fed into

the movements behind the Soviet Union, Communist China and the Khmer Rouge. Arguably, fascist doctrine also was in part a response to the disruptions of industrialization in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I like to think we will be more intellectually moderate this time around, but the political developments of the last few years, and the observed global tilt toward the authoritarian, are hardly reassuring.

The shift of jobs away from agriculture also poisoned economic policy.

Ty p i c a l l y t h e U . S . government spends more than $20 billion a year subsidizing farmers, even though virtually all economists think those expenditures are wasteful.

The European Union is worse yet. Although Europe has pressing problems with bank solvency, Italian and Greek debt, and refugees, an estimated 38 percent of the EU budget will be going to farm subsidies. Farms as a share of total employment

are quite small (about 2 percent), but farmers as an interest group have not gone away, even hundreds of years after agricultural employment started to decline.

It is possible a similar logic may play out with the jobs that will be rendered obsolete by automation.

That is, we may decide to subsidize and protect those jobs for centuries to come, to the detriment of long-run economic growth.

When it comes to automation, my all-thingsconsidered view is still “full steam ahead,” and I might have felt the same way and bit the same bullet, had I been alive in the late 18th century. But invoking the Industrial Revolution today is not going to ease my worries.

Ty l e r Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist.

He is a professor of e c o n o m i c s a t G e o rg e Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include “Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation.” n

Gerrymandering, biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in United States

G

errymandering is the biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the United States. So why is no one protesting?

There is an enormous paradox at the heart of A m e r i c a n d e m o c r a c y.

Congress is deeply and stubbornly unpopular. On average, between 10 and 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress – on a par with public support for traffic jams and cockroaches. And yet, in the 2016 election, only eight incumbents – eight out of a body of 435 representatives – were defeated at the polls.

If there is one silver bullet that could fix American democracy, it's getting rid of gerrymandering – the now commonplace practice of drawing electoral districts in a distorted way for partisan gain. It's also one of a dwindling number of issues that principled citizens – Democrat and Republican – should be able to agree on. Indeed, polls confirm that an overwhelming majority of Americans of all stripes oppose gerrymandering.

In the 2016 elections for t h e H o u s e o f Representatives, the average electoral margin of victory was 37.1 percent.

That's a figure you'd expect from North Korea, Russia or Zimbabwe – not the United States. But the shocking reality is that the typical race ended with a Democrat or a Republican

winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, while their challenger won just 30 percent.

Last year, only 17 seats out of 435 races were decided by a margin of 5 percent or less. Just 33 seats in total were decided by a margin of 10 percent or less.

In other words, more than 9 out of 10 House races were landslides where the campaign was a foregone conclusion before ballots were even cast. In 2016, there were no truly competitive Congressional races in 42 of the 50 states.

That is not healthy for a system of government that, at its core, is defined by political competition.

Gerrymandering, in a word, is why American democracy is broken.

The word “gerrymander” comes from an 1812 political cartoon drawn to parody Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry's re-drawn senate districts.

The cartoon depicts one of the bizarrely shaped districts in the contorted form of a fork-tongued salamander. Since 1812, gerrymandering has been increasingly used as a tool to divide and distort the electorate. More often than not, state legislatures are tasked with drawing district maps, allowing the electoral foxes to draw and defend their henhouse districts.

While no party is innocent when it comes to gerrymandering, a

By Brian Klass

Brian Klaas is a Fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and author of The Despot's Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy.

Washington Post analysis in 2014 found that eight of the 10 most gerrymandered districts in the United States w e r e d r a w n b y Republicans.

As a result, districts from the Illinois 4th to the North Carolina 12th often look like spilled inkblots rather than coherent voting blocs.

They are anything but accidental. The Illinois 4th, for example, is nicknamed “the Latin Earmuffs,” because it connects two predominantly Latino areas by a thin line that is effectively just one road. In so doing, it packs Democrats into a contorted district, ensuring that those voters cast ballots in a safely Democratic preserve.

The net result is a weakening of the power of Latino votes and more Republican districts than the electoral math should reasonably yield. Because Democrats are packed together as tightly as possible in one district, Republicans have a chance to win surrounding districts even though they are vastly o u t n u m b e r e d geographically.

These uncompetitive

districts have a seriously corrosive effect on the integrity of democracy. If you're elected to represent a district that is 80 percent Republican or 80 percent Democratic, there is absolutely no incentive to compromise. Ever. In fact, there is a strong disincentive to collaboration, because working across the aisle almost certainly means the risk of a primary challenge from the far right or far left of the party. For the overwhelming majority of C o n g r e s s i o n a l representatives, there is no real risk to losing a general election – but there is a very real threat of losing a fiercely contested primary election. Over time, this causes sane people to pursue insane pandering and extreme positions. It is a key, but often overlooked, source of contemporary gridlock and endless bickering.

M o r e o v e r , gerrymandering also disempowers and distorts citizen votes – which leads to decreased turnout and a sense of powerlessness. In 2010, droves of tea party activists eager to have their

v oices heard qu ick ly realized that their own representative was either a solidly liberal Democrat in an overwhelmingly blue district or a solidly conservative Republican in an overwhelmingly red district. Those representatives would not listen because the electoral map meant that they didn't need to.

Those who now oppose P r e s i d e n t Tr u m p a r e quickly learning the same lesson about the electoral calculations made by their representatives as they make calls or write letters to c o n g r e s s i o n a l representatives who seem about as likely to be swayed as granite. This helps to explain why 2014 turnout sagged to just 36.4 percent, the lowest turnout rate since World War II. Why bother showing up when the result already seems preordained?

There are two pieces of good news. First, several court rulings in state and federal courts have dealt a blow to gerrymandered districts. Several court rulings objected to districts that clearly were drawn along racial lines. Perhaps the most important is a Wisconsin case (Whitford v. Gill) that ruled that districts could not be drawn for deliberate partisan gain.

The Supreme Court will rule on partisan gerrymandering in 2017, and it's a case that could transform – and

reinvigorate – American democracy at a time when a positive shock is sorely needed. (This may hold true even if Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, as Justices Kennedy and Roberts could side with the liberal minority).

Second, fixing gerrymandering is getting easier. Given the right parameters, computer models can fairly apportion citizens into districts that are diverse, competitive and geographically sensible – ensuring that minorities are not used as pawns in a national political game.

These efforts can be bolstered by stripping district drawing powers from partisan legislators and putting them into the hands of citizen-led commissions that are comprised by an equal number of Democrat- and Republican-leaning voters.

Partisan politics is to be exercised within the districts, not during their formation. But gerrymandering intensifies every decade regardless, because it's not a politically “sexy” issue. When's the last time you saw a march against skewed districting?

Even if the marches do come someday, the last stubborn barrier to getting reform right is human nature. Many people prefer to be surrounded by likeminded citizens, rather than feeling like a lonely red To be contd. on page .....

4 | PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

EDITORIAL Purposeful Unity of Nigeria South West Governors: Welcome development

T

he continuing public show of unity by Southwest governors is a thing of joy.

This is especially because unity is what has eluded the zone for so long even at those times, in the current republic, when the zone was (or almost) under the control of one party, first between 1999 and 2003 and then between 2003 and 2007.

Of course, we cannot afford to overdramatise, or be sheepishly carried away by, what is happening at the gubernatorial level. It may just be a case of ardent political enemies presenting a common front in public to deceive the electorate. Or maybe it is probably just a group of self-interested politicians selling themselves to the public as self-consciously concerned with the progressive development of the entire zone when in fact they are simply each looking out for self. Is Fayose not seeking a way out of his present troubles with EFCC? Or is Mimiko not just seeking redemption?

The cynics who indulge in such thoughts are not to blame. The environment in which politics has been conducted in the last 17 years leaves much to be desired. What is coming

EDITORIAL BOARD Publisher Femi Odedeyi Editor Chair, Editorial Board

Managing Editor Gbenga Gbesan Production Editor Soji Amosu

Graphics / Design Mikaiil Akinlawon Published by Pathfinder Media LLC P.O. Box 1256, Greenbelt, MD20768, USA www...............................

out of various investigations and prosecutions confirm the suspicion of many that some individuals go into politics simply for personal gains.

And so, we cannot expect that the selfless efforts of some are going to change many minds.

But there is a clear danger inherent in such attitude. As our forebears know so well, if you choose to close your eyes to avoid witnessing the passing of the evil ones, you may also miss it when the good ones pass by. More to the present discourse: if you are tuned off by past disappointments, you may miss out on optimistic outlook for the future.

Despite the misgivings of the cynic, there are good reasons for a positive re a c t i o n t o t h e n e w development. First, that politicians could be selfinterested is not just an old clichĂŠ; it has always been the belief of far too many citizens and electorate. In the Southwest, especially, we tend to rule out the possibility of genuinely honest people-oriented politicians until they are no longer with us. That was the fate of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who,

PATHFINDER WEEKLY

... we must not be too cynical as to rule out the possibility of a change of heart even in those that we may have given up on. If a Saul could become a Paul, there is nothing beyond the capacity of the one who is beyond human comprehension.

despite his self-denying attention to the public good, was loathed by the self-centred ones. But the people got to know his intention for them, that it was good and not evil.

Second, we must not be too cynical as to rule out the possibility of a change of heart even in those that we may have given up on.

If a Saul could become a Paul, there is nothing beyond the capacity of the one who is beyond human comprehension. And when he is ready to use his creatures for the purpose that he created them, they have no right of refusal. I believe that this is the time.

And what is needed from the rest of us is encouragement.

Third, our governors have held two meetings.

The first was hosted by Governor Ajimobi of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while the second was hosted by Governor Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

At both events, the focus of the meeting was on the development agenda for the Southwest.

The communiques at both events point to their sense of urgency about this matter. Even if belated,

they have come to the realisation that the Southwest must not rely on old glory which appears to have faded but must now embrace the future that is beckoning. That future is not one in which there is a prominent role for the black gold to play. Rather, it is one in which the stone of agricultural revolution that had been unwisely rejected must now be the corner stone of the new industrial building.

The communique from the last meeting of the governors is especially heartening because it demonstrates the commitment of the governors to regional integration, an indispensable strategy for development in an age of d w i n d l i n g a n d disappearing federal revenue. The present national economic malaise is just a constant reminder of the fragility of a federation in which the constituents are forced into a dependent relationship which unfortunately they have each embraced as long as the revenue keeps flowing.

Now that it has stopped, it is time each addressed the question of its identity and survival. n

PATHFINDER WEEKLY

5

Magazine Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Yorùbá World

Remembering Unforgettable:

AWO

By Segun Gbadegesin

A

s I sat down to prepare this column for submission, I was also getting ready for my participation in the 2016 Obafemi Awolowo Commemorative Birthday Symposium organized by The Awolowo Foundation, under the a d e p t l e a d e r s h i p o f D r.

TokunboAwolowoDosumu. I considered it an honor to be a part of the memorialisation of the life and service of an active thinker and a thinking actor that Chief Awolowo was. It is, therefore, my great pleasure to bring to readers today an excerpt from my contribution to the symposium.

My presentation covered the theme of the symposium, which was AWO Then and Now: On

Politics, Economics and Education. I sought to address our present national malaise in the light of Awolowo's lifetime struggle of mind and body, including his thoughtful proposals on education, political arrangements and the economy. I concluded that in all these areas, Chief Awolowo gave us access to light in the midst of the darkness that confronted the nation at every point while he was an active player in the intellectual and political terrain of his days.

Though he is gone away from us, we still have the tools that he left us, the product of his versatile mind. We will do ourselves a lot of good if we care to use them.

The excerpt I bring today to

Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo

readers from my contribution to the symposium is on Awo's thoughts on the economy.

In Path to Nigerian Greatness, Chief Awolowo identified the characteristics of an underdeveloped economy deriving from three kinds of underdevelopment: Underdevelopment of the mind, arising from ignorance, illiteracy, deficiency in technology and in technical and managerial know-

how; Underdevelopment of the body, arising from disease, bad and inadequate food, bad water, bad housing, meagre clothing and filthy environment; Underdevelopment of agriculture and excessive and widespread underdevelopment of the rural population arising from underdevelopment of the mind and body, and from lack of savings and capital formation. (PNG, p.154) He then made three further propositions from which he drew a conclusion: All men have innate talents or talent ability” and must be given equal opportunity to develop.

When all talents have been developed fully, each must be given equal opportunity to contribute to socio-economic development.

The society as a whole (not just individuals) suffers when all talents in society are not fully developed.

Therefore, the solution to the problem of our country's economic underdevelopment lies in the “full development and full employment of every Nigerianman or woman, child or adolescent.” (emphasis in original): “no economic revolution has ever succeeded or will ever succeed, whether green or otherwise, which does not give the prime of place to the full development of man.” p.155 It is to be expected that when a man of thought deliberates and arrives at a conclusion, the next reasonable step is action on the basis of the thought process, unless there is akrasia or weakness of the will. No one has ever Contd. on Page 6

“Is there a policy alternative canvassed by politicians and/or economists as a counter to Awolowo’s prescription? No.”

6 |

PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Yorùbá World

By Ropo Sekoni

BOOK REVIEW

Yorùbá Art and its An ancient Yorùbá battle of methodologies religious hymn FAITH

BOOKS: Yoruba Art And Language: Seeking The African In African Art, By Rowland Abiodun, Cambridge 2014; 386 pages; Hardcover: $115.00.(2); Art And Risk In Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, And Identity, C. 1300. Suzanne Preston Blier, Cambridge 2015; 574 pages; Hardcover: $115.00.

I

Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II n the second volume of the To restore Ife to her lost estate “Nigerian Chronicle”, No 21, He came, ( a mighty priest) dated April 8th 1910, there is He tried, but FAILED to achieve given, by the learned and it. painstaking writer “Adesola” “To the city Owo, to Erinmi the (who is now revealed as the Rev E. priest T. Johnson, a Yoruba clergyman) a The invitation was next extended translation of a remarkable and To restore Ife to her lost estate very ancient lyric. It is really a He came( a mighty priest) religious poem on the FALL and he tried, but FAILED to achieve it.

REDEMPTION of MAN. Mr ThoughAdo is wise Ifa's abode, Johnson gives it as chanted by an And owo the seat of the sapient old Ifa priest. He tells us that it is Elu “about the oldest of the religious YET, the wisdom of these sages poems of the Yoruba people”, and FAILED them says that ” from internal evidence, T h e i r e f f o r t s w e r e q u i t e the composition dated several unavailing. centuries before the Birth of “Post-speed, a newChrist…. The facts therein related commissioned mandate point to remoter ages, and it is To Ogun in the city of Ire regarded as the Yoruba version of To bring him quick to Ife the story of the Garden of Eden, To help restore her estate.

Man's Fall and his Redemption”. he came ( a mighty priest) He says also (apparently on the he tried but FAILED to achieve it. authority of the old priest, as well as the internal evidence of the STATE OF THE COUNTRY poem)– “Their religion was “Men famish for lack of bread, monotheism. Throughout the no crop, no rain there was whole “Odu”, there is no trace of Abitter wail from man and beasts fetish-worship. In times of “Who will restore IFE to her lost disaster, they consult the will of estate”?

God by some oracular means…. Loud spoke a voice and said: The IFE here spoken of is not the You have not consulted Obalufon modern Ife”…. This should be of Iyinde, carefully noted. The site of the andLaberinjo of Ido, ancient IFE is quite unknown – a With Jigure of Otunmoba, full copy of the translation is now andEsegba, the high priest of the given.

Egbas ODU OFUNSA Who was the first to lead men to SCENE 1: The divination Room the confines of Egba-land (Enter Elders from the different WithAsada, the priest of Ijesha, federated States of Ife-land, to Akoda of Ife, and Aseda, the great ascertain the cause of national high-priest of all in Ife-land calamity) They came, they tried, But all their efforts were ORACULAR RESPONSE. unavailing.

“If the globe be unhinged from its “And now, they had to send to orbit Akonilogbon (the one who And the solid earth from pole to teaches wisdom) pole be wrent And sought an approach to If this orbit in our age lose its Afonahan (the one who shows the balance way) 'Tis that we have erred from the That they help to restore Ife to her right” lost estate.

So, the oracle to the supplicants These sages came and advised declared: who have come from the Federated States the Will of God to know When Ife-land lost her first estate.

I

SCENE 2: Poet-priest depicting events in the Assembly hall( Priest from the State summoned by the Elders to offer sacrifices to propitiate Divine wrath).

“Olola from the city Ado they summoned

The IFE here spoken of is not the modern Ife”…. This should be carefully noted. The site of the ancient IFE is quite unknown ...

n these two books, Rowland Abiodun, formerly, Professor of Art at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and currently Professor of Art and Black Studies at Amherst College and Suzanne P. Blier, Professor of Fine Arts and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University in the United States have given the world of Art and art scholarship in relation to Yoruba art two tomes of well researched books.

Surprisingly, these two books of deep reflection and many years of research by both authors have not been reviewed together in Nigeria: the postcolonial nation that houses Ife, whose artistic heritage has been examined with rigor in both books. It is the hope of this writer that this review will attract more joint reviews of the two works on a visual heritage that has become of immense interest to the rest of the world of art.

Abiodun in nine chapters and Blier in nine chapters (apart from each book's introduction on the concepts that drive analyses and conclusions of each author) support their interpretations with numerous illustrations from a wide range of artistic works. For example, Abiodun has 135 illustrations, collected primarily from Ile-Ife and other parts of Yorubaland while Blier has 131 illustrations collected primarily from the ancient city-state of Ife and related communities. Each author uses his/her illustrations to support the interpretations derivable from the methodology employed to examine the data provided. What distinguishes one work from the other is largely hermeneutic tradition employed by each author.

The methodology of each author renews aspects of what W.J.T. Mitchell once recognized in The Language of Images, as “the language about images, the words we use to talk about pictures, sculptures, designs, and abstract spatial patterns in the world…and “images regarded as a language” or the semantic, syntactic, communicative power of images to encode messages, tell stories, express ideas and emotions, raise questions, and speak to us.”

Abiodun does more of the first while Blier does more of the second form of language. Each author states with conviction the power of his/her preferred method of reading many visual objects that the two books have in common.

For example, Abiodun states boldly: “The urgent task before us is to ensure the survival and essential role of African artistic and aesthetic concepts in the study of art in Africa.” In his effort to apply a Yoruba perspective to the interpretation of African art, Abiodun draws attention to the interconnection of visual and verbal arts of the Yoruba. He does this by deploying cross-genre aesthetic concepts, such as iwa, ewa, oju-inu, oju-ona, iluti, asa,

and newly created vocabularies such as Ife-naturalism, Akographic, Ase-graphic Asa, and Epe-graphic as lenses for reading Yoruba visual culture and images.

In short, Abiodun establishes a Siamese connection between Yoruba verbal and visual art forms, citing Oriki as the protoform for both mimetic and stylized traditions of Yoruba verbal and visual arts. Oriki is used consistently in Abiodun's book as a verbal or visual communicator's representation and interpretation of any aspect of life in the Yoruba world in terms of reflection or refraction.

Blier, on the other hand, emphasizes that her goal “throughout this research was not only to gain a deeper understanding of the artworks in question but also to try to reposition these works within the specific geographic and temporal settings in which they were made, found, and used.” In what Blier calls 'thinking anew about ancient Ife art,' she pays special attention to physical attributes and symbolic properties of the works under study through a close reading of objects, their locations, ongoing ritual contexts and oral traditions, to unearth the theme of risk, power, and identity.Apart from the use of a few Yoruba proverbs and the reference to Aroko as a symbolic form of communication that is capable of both horizontal and subliminal meanings, she does not dwell on Yoruba oral traditions as much as Abiodun while Abiodun also does not give as much attention as Blier to speculations about how ancient Ife art tells the story of actual events in the history of the ancient citystate.

Each author's methodology illuminates the field of Yoruba visual art. For instance, by rooting his interpretation in Yoruba language, worldview, and thought system, Abiodun brings insight to t h e i n f l u e n c e o f Yo r u b a metaphysics and values on creation of Yoruba visual art in all its manifestations: alloy, wood, beads, terracotta, stone, etc.

Similarly, Abiodun's privileging of oriki as the driving force behind Yoruba verbal and visual art further illuminates the form, style, and significance of specific art objects as well as the field of

Yoruba art in general.

For instance, Abiodun's notion of the centrality of oriki to creative arts or even the creative industry in ancient Ife and contemporary Yoruba culture cuts across all forms of Yoruba semiotic system: verbal, spatial, and temporal. He further shows that oriki tradition of portrayal or memorialization of a subject allows for fidelity to the object, as well as for underrepresentation and overrepresentation of the object. This explains why ako can be as close to the subject being portrayed as is humanly possible why the representation of the human head can be outlandish as it is in conical heads or conical headgears ranging from the Are crown in Ife, Ondo, Owo, Ijebu, Ila, and many o t h e r Yo r u b a c i t i e s t o contemporary tall hats, such as is seen today on the head of the current governor of Ogun State in the Yoruba region of Nigeria. The desire of the artist to illustrate the concept and power of Ori-inu (the inner head) may lead, according to Abiodun, to creation of oversize heads while an artist's effort to reproduce in the fashion of ako may stimulate naturalist representation.

Blier's book raises many important questions that should interest not only art scholars but also students and admirers of Yoruba art and culture. Blier's reading of ancient Ife art and ritual shows a magisterial knowledge of Western hermeneutics. While Abiodun relies on Yoruba metaphysics, spirituality, and language to illuminate Yoruba visual culture, Blier applies Western interpretive techniques ranging from psychoanalytic and semiotic criticism to the rich texts at her disposal. She illustrates the theme of risk to the artist and the community in many works that include full-size memorialization of historical figures and design of crowns and other headgears. She also shows how specific sculptures repeat stories also simulated in rituals, with the aim of imaging the ancient city-state's history of conflicts, already acknowledged in its myths of origin and legends of growth.

The focus of Blier's book is on works she categorizes under Florescence and Post-Florescence

Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking The African in African Art

ART AND RISK IN ANCIENT YORUBA: IFE HISTORY, POWER, AND IDENTITY

To be contd. on page ...

Rowland Abiodun Suzanne Preston Blier

PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

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7

Yorùbá World Remembering Unforgettable Awo accused Chief Awolowo of having a weak will at the point of putting words to action, no matter what the sacrifice on his part might be.

Therefore, it is not a surprise that

in 1979, for him and his colleagues in the UPN, the reasoning leads to the four cardinal programs of the party, namely:

— Contd. from page 5

Free education at all levels; Integrated rural develop-ment; Free health care; Full employment (155-158) From the foregoing, it follows that the “full development and full

Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo

FAITH

Ancient Yoruba religious hymn Contd. from Page 7 that: OLOOTO ENIYAN(THE PERFECT MAN) who resides in the land of Arufin (The transgressor of the law) Be summoned to trumpet the Alajogun(The Great Captain) That they may invoke the Olofin(the law-giver) My lord, the Ajalaye and also to invoke my lord, theAjalorun, as well as my lord the Agirilogbon The child born on the hill Itase Whence the day begins to dawn For he alone can resotre IFE to her lost estate.

(THE TRUMPET SOUNDS) “Why call you me to your world?”

OlootoEniyan came and spoke.

The reply came forth: We have called you Thou PERFECT MAN That you may trumpet to the Alajogun a n d h e t o t h e Olu(head/chieftain) OLOOTO ENIYAN refused: “I shall not blow” “why not blow”, said they? “does not the squirrel trump for the Boa?” “I shall not blow” said he: “Does not the toad trump for the viper?” and again, he replied “I shall not blow” “Does not the Woodcock trump for Neptune?” and the cock for the mermaids?

The Oloburo alone can carol to the man of heaven And you, the “PERFECT MAN” alone, can And were ever wont to blow to theAlajogun.

(The trumpet sounds, and the Celestial beings, Ajalaiye, the great Aja, Whirlwind, spirit in the Earth; Ajalorun, the great Aja, Whrilwind or the spirit in the Heavens and Agirilogbon, the Man of Perfect Wisdom, descend)

GENERAL EXODUS OF MAN AND BEAST FROM IFE “At the sound of the trump of the “PERFECT MAN” A great commotion arose in the earth, Elephants rushed to their homes in the woods The Buffalos betook themselves to the wilds The winged fowls to their kingdom The reptiles to their homes The great giants to their regions by the sea Dogs to their dog-land Sheep to the sheep-land The brute creation to their respective haunts Each race of man to his respective claim, That was the day of the great confusion, When men and beasts dispersed.

And all great birds betook themselves to flight, And our belongings got scattered here and there “This is parting for ever, said I; “is it a question of the breaches?” “yes, of breaches, said I. Abreach here and a breach ther Which oft disturb the lunar months.

THE DIVINE BEINGS IN COUNCIL “From my lord the OlofiunAjalaye; From my lord the OlofinAjalorun From my lord, the “Man of Perfect Wisdom” Achild born on the hill Itase, Whence the day begins at dawn, Came the oracular response—TO BRING BACK PEACE TO IFE AND RESTORE HER TO HER LOST ESTATE Yo u n e e d s m u s t h a v e EwewAlasuwalu( MAN'S C H A R A C T E R REMODELLING LEAF) Go, fetch the leaf at once, ere peace to the world be restored.

(MANKIND WENT IN SEARCH OF THE LEAF FROM DIFFERENT PARTS A N D B R O U G H T W H AT APPEARED TO THEM TO BE IT) “Lo, here is one,my lord”, they said: “This CANNOT be”, the “man of Perfect Wisdom” replied “And here is another, my lord” quoth they; “This too, CANNOT be” was the quick reply.

Again, said the “Man of Perfect Wisdom” WHY DO YOU MORTALS NOT CONFESS TO YOUR FILTH AND NAKEDNESS? AND I PURIFY AND CLOTHE YOU? THE CONFESSION “Then, all replied: “We, O Lord, to our filth and nakedness confess; Do Thou purify and clothe us”.

THE MAN OF PERFECT WISDOM PRODUCED THE LEAF. “So, he dipped his hand into the bag of mystery, And brought out the healing leaf.

There was universal joy and merriment: men sang aloud and danced, “We have received the healing balm.

O Heavenly Prince, re-model our lives as Thou wilt” We have received the healing leaf, Thou Heavenly Prince, remodel our lives as Thou wilt.

“On that day, it was that the rain fell, and the World of Ife restored to her lost estate”.

To be contd. next edition.

employment of every Nigerian citizen” should be the primary national objective of the nation because a good national education policy and program is indispensable to a good national economic advancement.

What needs to be added is that a good national policy without an equally good action plan for its implementation cannot lead to national economic advancement.

There is no better illustration of this observation than our experience in the last 30 years or so.

The man who shepherded the economic policy of the country through a major national crisis during the civil war without the nation borrowing from external sources, cannot but be appalled at our peace time heavy borrowing that eventually led to the collapse of the economy in 1982.

While Chief Awolowo was not silent in the days of the military, he knew that those were abnormal situations and passing phases. He was forceful in condemning those policies of the military, which militated against the welfare of the common run of men and he intervened strategically in a number of economic issues, especially during the Agbekoya crisis in the West. But he expected politicians who presented themselves for positions of leadership to do their homework well with adequate plans in place for the welfare and advancement of the people. When this was not so, he did not hold back even when his criticism and suggestions were mischievously construed as sourgrapism. His 1982 paper on the economy and the NPN London Press Conference on same is a good illustration. The whole point about that debate was on the management of the economy in the light of what was clearly a glut in the oil market.

Fast forward 33 years later, we have not moved an inch from where he warned the nation against complacency and laziness of mind and therefore we have not prevented the kind of crisis that he had responded to with thoughtful proposals, which included the restructuring of the economy from our focus on oil. Now we have another oil glut. Yet, we are yet to restructure the economy away from mindless dependence on oil even when it was clear that our major export market was developing internal sources of supply, including alternative sources of energy.

Is there a policy alternative canvassed by politicians and/or economists as a counter to Awolowo’s prescription? No. So, if there is a consensus of expert opinion on what needs done, what prevents those in authority from putting his prescription to work for the country? But that approach would have them include the masses in their reckoning as he did. And for those of them that still consider the masses as expendable, it was a bitter pill they would rather not swallow even if it meant that the county cannot make it developmentally.

A few weeks after the expiration of the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan, Premium Times published the result of its investigation into the management of Excess Crude Fund by the Ministry of Finance and came up with a startling revelation that N11.56 trillion of the fund had not been accounted for in eight years from 2007 to 2014. This was at a time when all the major infrastructures were left wasting away with no visible effort to develop them for economic advancement. To the question “where did the funds go?” we are now being treated to some tragic drama with revelations about defense and security funds that ended up in private bank accounts.

This has been the fate of this nation from the beginning, except that the extractive agents have become bolder and more creative.

It will continue unless the masses decide to take their destinies in their hands.

The Arab Spring and its aftermath clearly remind us that poverty is at the root of citizens' discontent. The authors of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (WNF) discovered this much in their research across the globe. In the particular case of the Arab Spring, they interviewed the Tahir Square protesters in Egypt, one of who reportedly declared in palpable anger: “We are suffering from corruption, oppression and bad education. We are living amid a corrupt system which has to change.” (WNF, 2) If you didn't know the identity and country of origin of that young interviewee among the Egyptian protesters, you could justifiably deduce that she was a Nigerian. I hope we do not get to that stage of generalized despair with its unpredictable outcomes before reason prevails. Or are we there already? n

The man who shepherded the economic policy of the country through a major national crisis during the civil war without the nation borrowing from external sources, cannot but be appalled at our peace time heavy borrowing that eventually led to the collapse of the economy in 1982.

8 | PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Yorùbá World Celebrating a national icon:

Untold story of 8th Bola Tinubu colloquium Segun Gbadegesin reports that the colloquium turned out to be another remarkable example of the synergy and meeting of minds between President Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

T

he classy and stylish Eighth Bola Tinubu Colloquium has come and gone. But for all who witnessed the event, it was an eloquent testimony to the greatness of its namesake and the tremendous goodwill that he has earned through years of consistent demonstration of courage and resilience, fighting against political tyranny and impunity in high places. This will remain indelible in the hearts of many participants and attendees.

There is probably no better evidence for the enviable political stature of Bola Tinubu in contemporary Nigeria than the fact that his birthday provided the platform for a “vital national discourse” at which the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria made important policy declarations and agriculture, one of the most crucial planks of national economic priorities, was subjected to serious intellectual and policy analysis.

The choice of the colloquium topic, “Agriculture: Action. Work.

Revolution”, is not only timely; it is also critical to the overall agenda and policy thrust of the current administration. The President, therefore, has every good reason for his enthusiastic presence. The topic gave him another opportunity to drive home his determination to impact the lives of the millions of Nigerians who believed in him and entrusted their future to him. He reassured them of his empathetic understanding of their present pain. He also renewed his administration's promise to diversify the economy, using agriculture to lift the masses out of poverty.

Indeed, the Eighth Bola Tinubu Colloquium turned out to be another remarkable example of the synergy and meeting of minds between President Muhammadu Buhari as the official face of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its progressive policy thrust on the one hand, and AsiwajuTinubu, the charismatic national leader of the party who with the scars of decades of struggle for progressive transformation of the nation, continues to re-present the future that is possible for our people and therefore reserving the right of intervention at critical junctures on behalf of the voiceless.

This synergy and meeting of minds is not lost on President Buhari himself as he declared his self-evident enthusiasm for the topic of the colloquium with his observation that the “theme for (the colloquium) this year could not have been better chosen. As the nation grapples with decades of dependence and profligacy of natural resources, and the coincidence of shrinking of oil prices, the chickens have indeed

come home to roost.” For this reason, the President rightly observed that “diversifying the economy can no longer be a slogan; it has become a necessity.”

And in a moment that betrayed his progressive bona fide and the reason for his initial acceptability to the masses that voted for change in the last general election, President Buhari declared that economic growth must be “broadbased, for every Nigerian citizen” and it “cannot just be for the lucky few at the top.” Since the majority of citizens are in the agricultural sector, it stands to reason to initiate a progressive agenda for economic growth with a laser beam on agriculture.

That understanding of the meeting of minds is crucial to the overall success of the administration and the continued relevance of the party that it represents. I believe that this is in part a good reason for the President seizing the opportunity of the colloquium to reiterate the commitment of the party and the administration to the prioritization of agriculture and the specific plans for its realization.

Among others, President Buhari pledged his commitment to the ultimate goal of self-sufficiency in the production of the categories of food that are staple to the diet of most Nigerians; and the ultimate ban on importation of such food items as rice, wheat, fish and sugar. That we continue to import these items is a shame and a vivid demonstration of our national deficit in seriousness. These are items that we can either grow at home with our expansive farmlands and teeming population of unemployed people, or can afford not to consume since there are good if not better alternatives.

What is in jollof rice that is not in ofada rice? It is therefore encouraging that President Buhari has given the marching order with the setting aside of N40 billion for rice and wheat farming and his promise to stop the $11 billion of foreign exchange that we waste on importation of these items. Many Nigerians would willingly decide to partner Mr. President on this journey of hope. Nigeria has no reason to spend its hard earned foreign exchange on food importation.

Of course, the real success story of this policy thrust cannot and will not be in the amount that we save in foreign exchange if it ends up hurting the masses whose fortune it is designed to improve.

The real success story, as AsiwajuTinubu, the celebrant himself observed, is not about the rate of GDP growth. “Our real quest”, Tinubu insisted, “is to strive to provide the people with sufficient food at affordable prices. The real story is that our farmers and their land must become more productive, but they

Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu must also be secured with better pay for their increased output.”

In other words, a progressive strategy in the agricultural sector is for the ultimate good of the people. The prioritization of agriculture as an economic strategy is for the benefit of families such that “no child goes to bed in want and hunger.” It is just as well, again, that the President and the party's national leader spoke with one voice on, as the former put it, “the injustice of hunger and the need for long-term food security.”

Matching the leadership declarations on policy strategy is the demonstration, by expert colloquium speakers, of practical possibilities and challenges in the agricultural sector. From the Keynote Speech of the Minister of Agriculture, which enunciated the policy specifics and the challenges of meeting them, to the guest speaker's address on the prospects of a Nigerian Commodity Exchange system from an Ethiopian Commodity Exchange perspective and the fascinating prospects of poultry farming in Nigeria, the audience

was treated to a day of so much nutritious food for thought (no pun intended).

How did all these come to happen on the birthday of a citizen, a day which would otherwise have passed without notice but by the immediate family and friends?

How come the birthday of a citizen without official appointment in government became an occasion for presidential policy announcements? The simple answer is that AsiwajuTinubu has successfully and effectively represented the hopes and aspirations of the masses. He has championed their cause in and out of office. He has demonstrated an uncommon courage in the struggle against oppression and in pursuit of good governance. He has been an indisputable bridge builder across the national divides of tribe, tongue and religion.

From the North and South, from the East and West, politicians, traditional rulers, intellectuals, market women, civil servants and youths gathered to celebrate the icon of change and the generous spirit that they fondly cheer as Jagaban. As the Yoruba would say,

it is futile to engage in the comparison of heads. One who does that kind of exercise may end up suffering untold psychological breakdown. Therefore, it is sensible to allow destiny to play itself out. Some are just destined to be great.

Yet the Yoruba, in their candid pragmatism, would also remind us that we must engage our hands to influence and improve our lot.

This means that we are the architect of our fortunes. Tinubu's ascendance in national political and business leadership is a testament to this belief. He has his maker to thank. He has his dutiful and supportive wife, Senator OluremiTinubu, to thank.

For the success of the colloquium, which is in its eighth year, Vice President YemiOsinbajo, the initiator and architect of the idea since 2009, has every reason to be proud. Each year the programme has gotten better and better, and certainly, this has been the best thus far.

Professor Osinbajo has put a stamp of his penchant for excellence on this annual event. It will only get better. n

From the North and South, from the East and West, politicians, traditional rulers, intellectuals, market women, civil servants and youths gathered to celebrate the icon of change and the generous spirit that they fondly cheer as Jagaban.

PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017 | 9

Life Trump’s executive order: Undocumented Immigrant seeks sanctuary in Church DENVER – On We d n e s d a y m o r n i n g , Jeanette Vizguerra was scheduled to show up for a check-in at the local office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Service.

Instead, Vizguerra, a 45year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, sent her attorney to request a stay of her deportation. As Hans Meyer entered the low-slung brown brick building, a pastor by his side, scores of protesters waving signs shouted “No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here.”

A few minutes later, Meyer returned. Vizguerra's request had been denied.

Then an activist pu t Vizguerra on speakerphone and held it up to a megaphone and, her voice choking with tears, the mother of four delivered her announcement to the crowd: Vizguerra had decided to seek sanctuary 15 miles away in a makeshift bedroom in the basement of First Unitarian Society of Denver. There, she would remain indefinitely.

“This is not the end... This is just a step in a long, long journey,” she declared in Spanish.

ICE public affairs officer Shawn Neudauer affirmed in an email that Vizguerra was denied a stay of her deportation. She called her “an ICE enforcement priority” based on two misdemeanor convictions.

Propelled by President Donald Trump's antiimmigrant rhetoric during the campaign and the election in November, the number of churches and other houses of worship that have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants like Vizguerra has doubled to an estimated 800 over the past year, according to leaders of the loosely-knit movement.

Trump's Jan. 25 executive order calling for a crackdown on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally and the raids that have followed are only serving to galvanize the movement further.

Last week, ICE agents arrested more than 600 people in at least six states.

Officials said the raids have targeted known criminals, but they also detained some immigrants without criminal records, in an apparent departure from the Obama administration's policy.

Trump's order extended the scope of enforcement to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all. In Arizona last week,

a woman was deported after checking-in with ICE – just as Vizguerra was supposed to do on Wednesday.

Tw e l v e y e a r s a f t e r c r o s s i n g t h e b o r d e r, Vizguerra was pulled over in 2009 for a traffic violation and convicted of falsifying a Social Security number, which she said she planned to use to secure a part-time job. Her case eventually led to an order of deportation. Vizguerra said she has been granted five stays during which she has been required to check in with ICE, although ICE officials say the agency has granted her six stays of removal.

Last year Vizguerra, whose husband had been convicted of assaulting her years earlier, applied for a U Visa granted to crime victims, which would waive her removal order and give her a three-year visa. That application is still pending.

In December, she requested another stay but has not yet received a decision. Her latest stay expired on Feb. 7.

Now, ICE knows exactly where to find Vizguerra.

The question is whether they will enter a church to retrieve her.

The current church sanctuary movement in the U.S. began to take shape about 10 years ago, inspired by a 1980s effort that provided shelter to thousands fleeing to the U.S. from civil war in Central American countries, said movement co-founder Alexia Salvatierra, a Lutheran pastor and an immigrationrights activist.

Under Obama, ICE pursued a more aggressive deportation policy than any previous president, returning more than 400,000 illegal immigrants to their native countries at the height of his administration's raids in 2012. Public outcry prompted Obama to prioritize convicted criminals in his second term. But by then, in 2011, former ICE director John Morton had already instructed employees to avoid “sensitive locations,” including churches, schools and hospitals.

Despite the aggressive enforcement under Obama, movement leaders viewed immigration reform as a viable goal. And so in the early days of the modern sanctuary movement, activists ultimately attempted to change policies, simultaneously seeking reform while honoring some church members' concerns for increased border security.

At the time, the movement consisted primarily of churches with mostly white congregations and struggled to get immigrant involvement, according to Grace Yukich, a sociologist at Quinnipiac University who has studied the early days of the movement.

Then Congress failed to pass reform measures.

“Even though they didn’t achieve some of the goals they had at the time, those social networks enabled what's happening now,” said Yukich.

Over the last three years, the sanctuary movement has grown greatly. In 2014, it had attracted 250 congregations, including synagogues. Following raids in January 2016, the number climbed to 400 congregations, according to Rev. Noel Anderson of the World Church Movement, which works with and tracks the U.S. sanctuary movement. By November, the number of churches involved had doubled to roughly 800 congregations, Anderson said.

The total number of undocumented immigrants currently in sanctuary is unknown, in part because of the desire of undocumented immigrants and houses of worship to keep the cases private. A handful of cases have been well-publicized, however, including in Philadelphia, Chicago, Texas, Arizona and now Denver, where Vizguerra is one of two staying in houses of worship.

“We consider it part of our religious freedom,” Anderson said. “It's a prophetic platform to lift up the stories and hear a human side of people who are facing deportation.”

L e g a l l y, s a n c t u a r y churches are not likely protected under the First Amendment, said Charles Haynes, vice president of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum, since the government would likely claim a compelling state interest.

Courts, he said, have varied in their interpretations over whether the act of providing sanctuary should be considered harboring or concealment. In 1986 a group of activists tied to a church in Arizona were tried and convicted of conspiracy in a case involving smuggling undocumented immigrants.

Criticisms of the movement range from people who consider sanctuary a costly and ultimately ineffective way to help undocumented immigrants to those who say the religious leaders are

l Under Obama, ICE deports over 400 illegal immigrants. l Under Trump, ICE agents arrest more than 600 in six states.

Donald Trump, U.S. President encouraging illegal activity.

Haynes noted that civil disobedience, especially among religious people, has been the key to success of almost every significant social movement in American history from abolition to suffrage to civil rights.

“For many religious people, protecting undocumented people is a matter of conscience – and they are willing to go to jail to live out this conviction,” he said.

Even so, the turn the movement will take feels very uncertain under Trump, Salvatierra said.

The Department of Homeland Security still lists churches as sensitive locations on its website, but some worry whether ICE will adhere to the policy under Trump.

However morally compelling it may seem to some as a statement of civil disobedience, sheltering undocumented immigrants can also be costly, both financially and emotionally, especially if it is openended. And if there is no hope for reform, where will it end?

“When we started, we had hopes that the sanctuary movement would change hearts and minds and pass immigration reform,” Salvatierra said. “We took people into sanctuary without an exit strategy because immigration reform was our exit strategy.”

While still heeding the religious call to offer refuge, Salvatierra said churches may need to turn increasingly toward helping undocumented immigrants snared by ICE to pay for

legal help.

While they were living in Mexico City, Vizguerra said her husband was threatened at gunpoint three times by criminals while he was driving a bus, so he decided to move to live with his relatives in the U.S. He arrived in Sept. 1997.

Next, Vizguerra attempted to cross the border with her family. She was detained while her 7year-old daughter continued on with friends.

She finally made it across and joined her husband and daughter on Christmas Day in 1997.

She and her husband had three more children in the U.S., bought a house and ran a cleaning company.

Shortly after she moved here, Vizguerra became an organizer for Service Employees International Union, a large labor union, and for Rights for All People, an immigrantrights advocacy organization.

On Jan. 20, 2009, the day of Obama's first inauguration, she was pulled over in a traffic violation. She was then detained, convicted of possessing a forged document and served 23 days in jail. She said she had used her birth date to create a Social Security card to apply for a part-time job.

“The poor treatment that they give you as an immigrant, the lack of medical attention and the (jail custodians) treat you like you are trash. People are so afraid of talking about this,” she said. “They think that if they talk or tell, their cases will worsen.”

Vizguerra acknowledged that she broke the law but she contends the

punishment — separating her from her children through deportation — is too harsh.

That arrest eventually led to an order of deportation in 2011. The court ruled that though her deportation would cause hardship for her children, it would not rise to the level of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship,” said her lawyer, Hans Meyer. That same year, ICE had been instructed to focus on those who posed a national security risk, recent illegal entrants and fugitives, and she appealed her case.

During her appeals process, Vizguerra said she learned that her mother was dying of cancer. In an attempt to see her before her death, Vizguerra left for Mexico. But before she arrived, her mother died of complications and Vizguerra's appeal process ended because she had left the country.

She returned to the U.S. on foot and was arrested and detained in El Paso, Texas, before she was eventually transferred to Denver.

Later that summer in 2013, she was granted a 5month stay of deportation and has received four extensions. On Dec. 5, her lawyer requested another stay while she waits to hear whether she could be granted a U Visa since she is a victim of domestic abuse.

In 2011, ICE began urging discretion for victims of domestic violence.

Vizguerra was reluctant to talk about her abuse in details, saying that it happened once. Court records show that her husband was charged and convicted of assault in 1999. In 2015, Vizguerra Contd. on Page ...

10 | PATHFINDER WEEKLY, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

POLITICS

Rise of Trump leads to unexpected twist in Germany’s election R

By Anthony Falola

ise of Trump Leads To An Unexpected Twist in Germany's Election: BERLIN – The unconventional administration of President Donald Trump may be causing consternation among American liberals.

But here in Germany, the anchor of the European Union, Trump's rise is helping fuel an unexpected surge of the left.

What is happening in Germany is the kind of Trump bump perhaps never foreseen by his supporters – a boost not for the German nationalists viewed as Trump's natural allies but for his fiercest critics in the center left. The Social Democrats (SPD) have bounced back under the charismatic Martin Schulz, the former head of the European Parliament who took over as party chairman last month and is now staging a surprisingly strong bid to unseat ChancellorAngela Merkel.

In a country that stands as a painful example of the disastrous effects of radical nationalism, Schulz is building a campaign in part around bold attacks on Trump. He has stopped well short of direct comparisons

to Adolf Hitler, but Schulz recently mentioned Trump in the same speech in which he heralded his party's resistance to the Nazis in the lead-up to World War II. “We will never give up our values, our freedom and democracy, no matter what challenges we are facing,” Schulz said in a recent speech. He added, “That a U.S. president wants to put up walls, is thinking aloud about torture and attacks women, religious communities, minorities, people with handicaps, artists and intellectuals with brazen and dangerous comments is a breach of taboo that's unbearable.”

His anti-Trump platform comes as Germans are questioning American power more than at any point since the end of the Cold War, illustrating an erosion of allied faith in the new era of “America first.”

A recent poll found that only 22 percent of Germans see the United States led by Trump as a “reliable partner” – putting it only one percentage point above Russia.

The traditional left remains in disarray in France and Britain. But buoyed by Schulz's

German Chancellor, Angela Merkel approach, his party last week pulled ahead of M e r k e l ' s c e n t e r- r i g h t Christian Democrats in opinion polls for the first time in six years. Elections

Indonesia’s moderate Islam ...

Contd. from Page .... help if they talked about Islam more forwardly.”

Their failure to do so, he added, creates a vacuum for right-wing Islamist parties like PKS to set the agenda for political Islam in the country.

Still, Liddle thinks liberal political Islam fares far better in Indonesia than in other Muslim countries. “[Right-wing parties like] PKS, though close to being sharia parties, are small and tarnished. Compare that with most of the Arab Middle East, like Egypt, where an Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood . . . got 40 percent of the parliamentary vote and elected a president,” he said.

Indonesia is not alone in its ideological tumult.

Malaysia, a nearby moderate Muslim country, has been edging toward Islamic law in recent years.

The formally secular nation of Bangladesh is seeing many of the same cultural shifts – more women wearing hijabs, higher madrasa attendance – as Indonesia has and with apparent government support. None of the progressive parties of the Arab Spring are thriving six years later, save for

Tunisia's Ennahdha Movement.

But, according to Rice University political scientist A. Kadir Yildirim, Indonesia has an “important advantage” within the Muslim world because, “compared to most Arab countries, Indonesia has an established and vibrant electoral democracy, which provides an opportunity for many important discussions regarding modernization, religion-state, and democratization to take place in public view.”

The obvious comparison to Indonesia's experiment in Muslim democracy is Turkey, which has been similarly blindsided by its population's growing conservatism. Turkey, too, had a generation of Westernized liberalism under a strongman leader – Ataturk there, Suharto in Indonesia. But their ideological legacy was revealed to be less stable when democratic floodgates opened. In the wake of furious culture wars between “Black” (traditional) and “White” (urban progressive) Turks, its citizens have voted the conservative strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan into the offices of prime minister and then president for more than 13 years. Indonesia's

next presidential election, in 2019, could be a weather vane for the country's future course following its currently moderate, globally minded president, Joko Widodo.

Maybe it's hard for moderate Muslims to create viable political platforms because moderation, as a concept, is just difficult. It is a ceaseless balancing act, especially when simplistic right-wing parties like FPI constantly extend the range of acceptable discourse.

For Indonesian moderates, the collapse of the center elsewhere – like in the United States – is a chilling warning. “The essential problem of blasphemy with Ahok's case is not for us to decide, but it highlights how fear and hatred of the 'other' have been politically exploited,” Wahid said. If the Ahok case hadn't happened, she added, something else would have shaken the liberal establishment out of complacency.

“The protests were fine, they were manageable, and dealing with them is preferable to something like the shocking American election.” She sighed.

“Hopefully it won't come to that here.” n

are not until September, but analysts are giving the SPD, under Schulz, its best chances to regain power since Gerhard Schröder lost to Merkel in 2005.

“There are different factors that are coming together for the SPD,” said Ralf Stegner, the party's deputy chairman. “Schulz has provided a new impulse for people who were waiting to come back . . . but also, the new American president, because Trump's presidency has politicized the German public, making them more active and aware.”

Without naming names, Merkel, who was perhaps closer to President Barack Obama than any world leader, has taken aim at Trump – criticizing, for instance, his refugee ban.

But Schulz has also accused Merkel of being too diplomatic.

G e r m a n y, w h i c h shoulders the history of Nazi tyranny, is an outlier in containing the current spread of me-first nationalism. Even as farright parties and isolationist politics gain ground elsewhere in Europe, the largest right-wing populist party here – the Alternative for Germany – has fallen slightly in the polls since Trump's election.

At the same time, leftwing parties in Germany have seen a jump in duespaying members. There are also signs that Trump's election is making leftleaning voters in Germany more politically active.

Ta k e , f o r i n s t a n c e , Kristina Seidler, a 28-year-

old mother and Düsseldorf resident who works as a substantiality adviser for a textile company. She has voted for the SPD before.

But the day after Trump's victory, she signed up as a dues-paying member and party volunteer.

Horrified by Trump's win, she said she sees the traditional left as the only answer and is preparing to put up posters and help with campaigning as the German election season rolls into high gear.

“What kind of sign is it for the world when a man who is a racist, who treats women so badly, can become the president of the United States?” Seidler said. “I thought, 'It's time for me to do something.' ” Perhaps the biggest single driver of the SPD's new popularity, however, is Schulz.

The SPD is already part of Merkel's governing “grand coalition,” with the party's senior operatives filling top cabinet posts. Yet its popularity with its leftleaning base has been hampered by that powersharing deal. Under its former chairman, Sigmar Gabriel – Merkel's foreign minister – the SPD was struggling to distance itself from the current government.

Enter Schulz, who last month took over as the party's chairman and candidate, positioning himself as an “outsider” who could mix things up in Berlin. A 61-year-old who never finished high school, Schulz has embraced his imperfections, openly

speaking about his battle with alcoholism. He started in local politics, becoming the mayor of the western German town of Würselen before being elected to the European Parliament in 1994.

He rose through the ranks as a champion of European unity, civil rights and social justice, becoming the parliament's president in 2012. He has at times been chided for his tell-it-like-itis approach, drawing the wrath of the Hungarian and Polish governments after decrying democratic lapses in those countries.

Critics call Schulz similar to Trump in at least one regard: He is a straight talker who argues against elites and favors the common man. He is also blunt – a trait that contrasts with Merkel, a leader famous for her meandering, parsed answers.

“The way in which he conjures up the alleged division of society in a populist manner is along the lines of the post-factual methods of the U.S. election campaign,” Merkel's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, charged in Der Spiegel last week In the dealmaking game that is coalition governments, Schulz may have several paths to the chancellery if his party can maintain its momentum. It will be difficult, analysts say, but Schulz's rising popularity means it is no longer unthinkable that Merkel loses.

Merkel's open-door policy for refugees brought a barrage of criticism from the conservative wing of her party. And despite Merkel's hesitance, Horst Seehofer, head of her sister party, the Christian Social Union, appears to be extending his hand to Trump, praising the new president's “consistency” and “speed” in implementing his campaign promises.

A Merkel loss could mean a greater frost in German-U. S. relations, harking back to the days of Schröder's cool relationship with President George W. Bush. Merkel, while hardly cozying up to Trump, has nevertheless avoided outright conflict.

Analysts call that further evidence of her pragmatism and firm belief that Germany needs the United States, diplomatically and for collective defense.

“Going after Trump might be a smart strategy for winning elections but not for running a government,” said Jürgen Falter, a political scientist at Mainz University. n

PATHFINDER, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

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11

AFRICAN NEWS

Who pays the hidden price for Congo’s conflict-free minerals? (1) W

ho pays the hidden price for C o n g o ’ s conflict-free minerals?

Valentin was in trouble.

His arms were tied behind his back and he couldn't move. The sun was beating down in the courtyard of the mining company where he and his friends were being held.

The men had been arrested by mining police for peacefully protesting the low price of the coltan ore they had dug out by hand from deep narrow shafts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Western activists have sought to help end violence in Congo by championing conflict-free mineral policies that aim to stop armed groups profiting from the trade. But thousands of miners like Valentin are paying a heavy price. At his mine, Kisengo, a monopoly on clean coltan has kept prices low, reduced revenues, and driven some miners to trade their wares illegally or move into the illicit artisanal gold sector.

A proposed executive order by US President Donald Trump reportedly seeks to cancel those regulatory controls. The draft order, obtained by The Guardian and Intercept, claims to be acting out of concern over “mounting evidence” that instead of preventing minerals from fuelling conflict, these controls are actually causing harm and contributing to instability in the region. On this occasion, Trump may have a point. A months-long IRIN investigation in mineral-rich eastern Congo found that some artisanal mining communities have suffered serious consequences as a result of the new conflict-free rules.

Several thousand selfemployed miners work alongside Valentin in the Kisengo mine. Like him, they're only allowed to sell to a single company. That company, MMR, is a pioneer in the supply of untainted minerals. It has exclusive rights to purchase the entire production of the four main artisanal mines in what was formerly Katanga Province – now four smaller provinces.

“We don't set prices. We impose them on miners.”

That's how one MMR employee, who asked for anonymity, explained the relationship.

Good intentions Artisanal mining is one of the main sources of livelihoods in eastern Congo.

Like Valentin, some 240,000 miners work with

just picks and shovels, under extreme conditions, to extract valuable minerals, among them coltan. The dark metallic ore contains the commercially important element tantalum, which is extracted and used to make key components in mobile phones and almost every other electronic device.

The forests and grasslands where the miners work are crisscrossed by armed militias, whose violence has led to millions of deaths since the 1990s.

The motivations of these groups range from local grievances to regional proxy wars. But one thing many of them have in common is that they sustain themselves by taxing the natural resources trade — in particular minerals.

In reaction, human rights activists in the United States lobbied for a law, section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in 2010 and requires publicly listed companies to determine whether their products contain “conflict minerals” produced in Congo.

The new rules provided the impetus for similar legislation in Congo and neighbouring countries.

This year, the European Union will have its own version, which will apply worldwide. Whether these e ff o r t s h a v e r e d u c e d conflict in Congo is hotly debated between activists and academics.

Passed in the wake of the financial crisis of 20072009 to tighten company oversight, Dodd-Frank was hugely unpopular with the Republican Party and is now under general assault b y t h e T r u m p administration, which reportedly intends to suspend section 1502 for two years.

Keeping it clean For minerals to remain truly conflict-free, their flow has to be kept separate from tainted materials.

It's a challenge. The mines validated as conflict-free can be just a few hills away from those controlled by armed groups. And the trade is messy, with miners and mineral traders operating independently and constantly on the move across the region. Conflict minerals can easily leak into the supposedly clean supply chains.

“If you use the old trading networks… it’s almost impossible to track your minerals,” explained Ken Matthysen, who helped conduct a unique survey of more than 1,600 mines in eastern Congo for the Belgian research institute

IPIS. MMR has been at the forefront of efforts to produce bona fide conflictfree minerals. Its first clients included companies such as Fairphone and Motorola that make a big deal out of sourcing

MMR and the provincial government of Katanga, headed by Moïse Katumbi at the time, was not subject to any tender. Instead, the agreement gave MMR exclusive rights, on the understanding that the company would prevent the

MMR are much lower than those offered on the black market.

Several traders told IRIN they could smuggle minerals out of the Kisengo mine and sell them for twice the price MMR offers.

MMR has been buying

President Joseph Kabila of Congo materials responsibly.

While other mines have more open access, potentially allowing tainted minerals to leak in, MMR goes to great pains to make sure its production is kept pure, from the shafts all the way to export.

The company was also among the first to implement a traceability scheme, called iTSCi, which currently channels nearly all of Congo's legal coltan exports.

Exclusive contract The production of conflict-free minerals kicked off in a village called Kisengo, in eastern Congo.

In 2007, large deposits were discovered there, which soon attracted the miners, with families and merchants in tow. More than 20,000 people arrived within the first year.

Indian businessmen were also attracted to Kisengo's natural riches. In March 2010, their company, MMR, obtained the exclusive rights to purchase the entire production of Kisengo and three other large mining sites. This proved a particularly good deal as, around the same time, the price of tantalum doubled on international markets.

The contract between

mineral trade from funding armed groups and maximise tax revenues for the province. In exchange, MMR had to build a hospital and a school in Kisengo, which it eventually did.

The contract also instructed MMR to collaborate with a miners' cooperative, CDMC, which, according to Africa Intelligence, was founded by a brother of the mining minister. The minister, Martin Kabwelulu, did not reply to IRIN's emails.

MMR has enforced this agreement with the help of the army, and latterly the police, as set out in its contract. Claude Iguma, a PhD researcher who has studied the security situation in Kisengo, counted 43 policemen in the village, most of them armed with assault rifles, and five control points at its exits.

MMR pays the police on top of their government salaries, according to several IRIN interviews with informed sources and prior research, but the company denies this.

Low-balling Despite the impressive security apparatus, minerals are still smuggled out of MMR's concession.

There's good reason for that. The prices offered by

coltan for $20-24 per kilo, whereas one trader told IRIN he sold ore from Kisengo in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, a few months ago for more than $50 per kilo.

The price of coltan depends on its tantalum content, and Kisengo's ore is known by traders to be of the highest quality.

According to confidential information obtained by IRIN, MMR has bought between 100 and 160 tonnes of coltan annually from Kisengo miners over the past few years. This could add up to anywhere between $3 million and $9 million in annual export sales, depending on production, grade, and exact price.

Purchase prices are set by a committee composed of MMR itself, formal representatives from the miners’ cooperative, and government officials.

But the miners’ cooperative, CDMC, supposedly a separate entity, is indistinguishable from the company. Its director sits behind an empty desk in MMR’s building. Questioned by IRIN on this point, the company said: “All entities that work collaboratively with MMR on production of minerals spend time in

MMR facilities.” But MMR also pays the salaries of CDMC's employees, according to two CDMC managers interviewed by IRIN. As such, none of the members of the pricesetting committee effectively represents the miners' interests.

Protests erupt In May 2016, a delegation of miners met with MMR to request better prices, but the company refused.

Valentin and some of the others decided to strike, and a large crowd of miners ended up blocking access to the mine. Valentin said they harassed no one but simply demonstrated, saying, “No organisations owned by foreigners will be allowed to come and conduct its activities… until the price is increased.”

At the end of that day, MMR increased the price from $20 to $22 per kilo.

When the police reportedly fired shots in the air, the miners dispersed and returned to town.

But a little later on, more than a dozen protesters, including Valentin, were arrested by the mining police, tied up in MMR’s compound for several hours, thrown into one of MMR’s cars, and taken to Kalemie (half a day's drive away), where they were jailed overnight, according to several miners and independent eyewitnesses.

There, they were accused of being armed rebels and only released after the p r o v i n c i a l g o v e r n o r, Richard Kitangala, intervened.

A local MMR representative said the car had been commandeered by the police and denied that the miners were held in its compound.

Contacted by email, M M R ’s h e a d o f f i c e responded: “We know nothing of the specifics that are referred to here.” The head of the mining police responsible for the area said he was not authorised to speak with journalists and could not provide a spokesperson.

Similar protests against MMR’s monopoly have occurred routinely over the y e a r s . I n 2 0 11 , U N investigators found that when miners protested the coltan price in another of MMR’s mines, the police and army were deployed.

The report said: “Live rounds were fired, and two civilians were killed.” But MMR told IRIN: “We doubt this is true, as we have never heard of such incident.” n

PATHFINDER

WEEKLY Championing the cause of Africa

VOL. 1, NO. 1, MARCH 1, 2017

FREE

Russia 2018: Lawal predicts tough battle against Cameroon EX-INTERNATIONAL Garba Lawal believes the 2018 World Cup qualifier

Brown Ideye

Ideye the latest African to move to China

T

he 28-year-old has left G r e e k c l u b Olympiakos to sign a threeyear deal.

He will play alongside Super Eagles team-mate John Mikel Obi and Gabon international Malick Evouna.

Chinese Super League clubs are on the hunt for new players ahead of the start of the new season next month.

Tianjin Teda finished

11th in the Chinese Super League last season.

Ideye scored 28 goals in 65 appearances for Olympiakos and won the 2016 Greek championship - his first league title in Europe.

Ideye moved to Greece in August 2015 from E n g l i s h c l u b We s t BromwichAlbion.

He was West Brom's then-record club signing when he joined them in

2014 from Dynamo Kiev, but failed to justify the huge price tag.

Ideye made his international debut for Nigeria in August 2010 and has scored six goals in 27 appearances for the Super Eagles.

In 2013, he helped his country clinch their third African Cup of Nations title, scoring in the 4-1 semi-final victory over Mali.

clash between Nigeria and African champions Cameroon will be a difficult contest.

Gernot Rohr’s men will face the Indomitable Lions in a double-header on August 28 and September 2 respectively, with the three-time African kings hoping for at least four points out of six to confirm their place for Russia 2018.

Despite the Super Eagles leading Group B with six points – four points ahead of Hugo Broos' men, the 42-year-old urged the country's senior national side not to relent.

“I'm happy for Cameroon emerging as African champions.

Nobody gave them a chance, but that's football for you,” Lawal told Goal.

“Now we are playing Cameroon in a double header [qualifier]. We've played two games and got six points from them.

“I must say the coaches and players have done a fantastic job so far. But they need to remain focus and not relent. “They need to concentrate and

maintain what they've started in the best possible way against them because one game can change everything. “Came-roon are a physical side and rely solely on their physical strength. But we (Nigeria) believe in skill, mental and as well as physical aspects of the game,'' he continued.

“Whenever they want to play Nigeria, they know they can't match us, so they will do everything to kick and physically attack us in order to frustrate us.”

“Our players need to be

Garba Lawal

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Managing Director: Femi Odedeyi

ready for that because I believe the match will be very difficult, strong and competitive.

“They know it will be difficult to match us. At this point, we have no pressure and we can't afford to get distracted except we want to throw those points away.

“He [Rohr] is a manager and the coach, and he knows better. He should keep on watching and getting his team together.

He should not get carried away.”