UPTICK IN VIOLENCE AS NIGERIAN ELECTION NEARS

By Lisa Vives Global Information Network

Election Day is around the corner in Nigeria and it’s approaching with new and troubling reports of violent attacks on candidates and their supporters.

Over the weekend, supporters of candidate Peter Obi reported being threatened by vandals carrying machetes and other weapons as they were making their way to a rally in Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos.

ployment, assisting school dropouts, and increased budget allocations for municipalities, among others.

The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, plans to challenge the state of disaster in court, claiming the President’s action will empower the ruling African National Congress party to side-step normal procurement processes.

Professor Lisa Thompson, a political economist at the University of the Western Cape, applauded the president for finally acknowledging the urgency of resolving the energy crisis. Power outages have been implemented on and off since about 2008.

But Malaika Mahlatsi, a researcher at the Institute of Pan African Thought at the University of Johannesburg, expressed concern that the appointment of a Minister of Electricity creates a parallel structure “emasculating government departments and deepening the incapacity crisis they evidently face.

“The government must build the capacity of the public service, not outsource its responsibilities to individuals in the president’s office,” she said.

Obi, a businessman and former governor of Anambra state, urged followers to go out on Feb. 25 and vote for the Labor Party. “Stand there till they count the vote. Once we win the election that is the beginning of a new Nigeria.”

At the rally, Obi pledged he would reform the police to make it more professional, end the oil thefts that have hobbled production in the Niger Delta, and improve security to allow farmers to boost agriculture output.

In Lagos on Friday, two men were caught on a viral clip threatening residents and traders to make them vote for the ruling APC in the general elections or risk eviction from their community.

And in Delta State, three police officers were killed when gunmen ambushed the advance security team of Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa, the vice-presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

The Nigerian military has denied a charge by the governing party that it is planning to disrupt the upcoming presidential election.

An official from the APC party had said that generals held a secret meeting last week with the rival

PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.

The allegations are “wicked” and “malicious”, said spokesperson for Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters Brigadier General Tukur Gusau. “The Armed Forces of Nigeria will never be part of any plot to truncate our hard-earned democracy.”

The International Crisis Group commented: “Amid widespread insecurity, there has been an uptick in election violence, which could escalate further during and after the polls.”

They blamed Intense acrimony, especially among the three major parties, which has raised tensions across the country. The ethnic, religious and regional identities of the candidates, and bombast from the front runners, have polarized the electorate. Failure to prosecute perpetrators of election violence is emboldening them to commit more such acts.

“Why does it matter? A pe aceful election is crucial to the country’s cohesion and to its credibility in discouraging unconstitutional seizures of power elsewhere in Africa. A violent or disputed vote could aggravate Nigeria’s governance challenges and diminish its stature as a democratic leader on the continent.

“There is a chance, perhaps a small one, that no presidential candidate wins the 25 percent of votes in two thirds of Nigeria’s states required to avoid a run-off. A second-round vote could bring additional perils.

“All the three main parties have proclaimed they expect to win in a landslide. All have strong motives to prevail, perhaps even more so than usual, raising concern that the losing parties – either in the first round or the run-off – may not readily accept defeat.”

LITTLE-KNOWN HISTORY OF SWAZI WOMAN ACTIVIST IS RECOVERED IN NEW BOOK

By Lisa Vives Global Information Network

To some, she was a towering intellectual, a pioneering African feminist and anti-colonial political activist. But almost no one knows her name or her story, says Joel Cabrita, a researcher and director of the Center for African Studies at Stanford University and author of the biography “Written Out.” Cabrita, who grew up in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in Southern Africa, drew on her own genealogy - the child of an Afrikaner mother from South Africa and a father of Portuguese descent from Mozambique - to research the life of Regina Gelana Twala.

“Written Out” recovers Gelana Twala’s literary and political contributions while exposing the white academics, apartheid officials and politicians who conspired to erase her legacy.

Born in South Africa in 1908, Gelana Twala was a victim of the Natives Land Act, passed in 1913, that dispossessed Black South Africans and forced an exodus to towns and cities. She followed a similar path, moving from rural Natal to Johannesburg in her 30s to work as a teacher.

Continuing her studies at the famed University of the Witwatersrand, she was the second Black woman to graduate in 1948 and the first to graduate in social science in South Africa. She did contemporary research on women and started a library for mothers, so their girl schoolchildren could come after school and read.

One of the founders of the Swaziland Progressive Party, Eswatini’s first political party, in 1960, She was later arrested for taking part in the Defiance Campaign against

Unjust Laws, a non-violent multiracial resistance movement with roots in the ANC.

When the racist apartheid government was voted into power in 1948, Twala became involved in anti-apartheid politics.

Twala, who died in 1968, left behind a trove of letters between her and her husband, several fulllength manuscripts and a collection of newspaper columns, inspiring Cabrita to write Twala’s biography, now published by Ohio University Press.

“I have been given access to 30plus years of correspondence,” said Cabrita, who is in close contact with Twala’s family. “It’s a unique archive – both personal and political. She and her husband were close friends of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. So there are mentions of big events and famous people and a record of black pol - itics in this era, but also a record of intimate family life.”

“I think African history is dominated by this canon of big men,” continued Cabrita. “There’s a process of public memory, who gets remembered and who gets forgotten.”

Now Cabrita is focused on ways to identify and share the voices of those left out of the African narrative. She plans to start by creating a digital archive of Black African women writers, starting with Twala and building the archive over time. “It can be challenging for some audiences in Africa to access expensive books, so I want to create a website,” she said.

“Some works could be read out loud as an ongoing radio show. It would be a way the authorial voice can be retrieved.”