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Tag: Obama

Summit on Boko Haram opens in Paris

A security summit to discuss strategies to tackle the threat from Boko Haram has opened in Paris, France.

The meeting was called by French President, Francois Hollande, after the sect abducted more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, last month.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who is attending the talks, had to call off a visit to the town where the girls were seized for security reasons.

As West African leaders arrived, reports emerged of suspected Boko Haram attack in Cameroon.

Ten people are reported missing.

One person was hurt when militants attacked a Chinese camp near Cameroon’s porous border with north-eastern Nigeria.

Those missing had been working for Chinese company Sinohydro, China’s state news agency Xinhua said.

The BBC reports that militants have staged several attacks in Cameroon; last year they kidnapped several members of a French family, who were later released.

Boko Haram released a video earlier this week showing more than 100 of the girls and offering an exchange for prisoners. Their relatives have called for their unconditional release.

The girls, a mixture of Christians and Muslims, were seized on April 14 from their hostels at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibook.

President Jonathan has ruled out negotiations over their possible release, government officials say.

President Hollande will open the Saturday’s summit, and the leaders of Nigeria’s neighbours – Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad – were scheduled to attend the talks. Representatives from the United Kingdom, United States and European Union were also taking part.

A statement before the summit said delegates at the meeting will “discuss fresh strategies for dealing with the security threat posed by Boko Haram and other terrorist groups in West and Central Africa.”

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC from Paris that Cameroon and Nigeria in particular had an important role to play in pooling their intelligence.

“There are many borders here and they are porous. The first focus of everything we’re doing is about the girls now, but that requires these countries to work together. Cameroon and Nigeria… have not enjoyed strong positive relations in recent years.”

Mr. Hollande discussed the issue on Friday in a phone call with US President Barack Obama.

The safe return of the 223 girls was now one of America’s main priorities, with US specialist teams and drones being involved in the rescue operation, the White House said.

May 17, 2014
Nigeria’s abduction shows man’s ‘darkest impulses’ – Obama

United States President, Barack Obama, issued a somber warning on Wednesday that the kidnapping of Nigerian girls and sectarian conflicts worldwide are a sign that “we have not extinguished man’s darkest impulses.”

Obama accepted a humanitarian award from director Steven Spielberg at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, a Holocaust museum founded by Spielberg after he made the film “Schindler’s List.”

Obama spoke about a variety of global conflicts including Ukraine, Syria, and the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls by the Boko Haram sect.

“We only need to look at today’s headlines: The devastation of Syria, the murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, the sectarian conflicts, the tribal conflicts to see that we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses,” Reuters quoted Obama as saying at the gathering.

He expressed alarm about a rising tide of anti-Semitism based on events such as a gunman’s attack on two Jewish facilities in Kansas and the distribution of pamphlets in eastern Ukraine that demanded the registration of Jews.

“None of the tragedies that we see today may rise to the full horror of the Holocaust,” he said.

However, he said “they demand our attention that we not turn away.”

“We have to act even where there is sometimes ambiguity. Even when the path is not always clearly lit. We have to try. That includes confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the world,” he stated.

Obama said Americans must speak out against any rhetoric that threatens the existence of Israel “and to sustain America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

The Shoah Foundation’s annual gala featured Bruce Springsteen performing “Promised Land” and “Dancin’ in the Dark,” and a comedy routine from Conan O’Brien.

At Obama’s table were Spielberg, Barbra Streisand and “Schindler’s List” star Liam Neeson.

May 8, 2014
Obama signs UN envoy visa ban law

United States President, Barack Obama ,has signed into law a measure that would bar entry for any United Nations ambassador whom the US says has engaged in “terrorist activity.”

The law came as a response to Iran’s pick of a UN envoy linked to the student militants who overran the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, the BBC reports.

The US has already denied Hamid Aboutalebi a visa, and Mr. Obama said he would treat the new law as “advisory.”

Iran has lodged a formal complaint with the UN over the rejection.

The bill that Mr. Obama signed into law on Friday passed both houses of Congress handily following uproar over Mr. Aboutalebi’s links to the students who seized the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held the American diplomats hostage.

Mr. Aboutalebi has said that he acted merely as a translator on a couple of occasions for the hostage-takers, an account corroborated by some of the activists.

A senior political adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, he has previously served as the Iranian ambassador to Italy, Belgium and Australia.

In a statement on Friday upon signing the bill, Mr. Obama said, “I share the Congress’ concern that individuals who have engaged in such activity may use the cover of diplomacy to gain access to our nation.”

But he said the law could effectively curtail his power under the US constitution to receive or reject ambassadors, and thus he said he would treat the law “as advisory in circumstances in which it would interfere with the exercise of this discretion.”

April 19, 2014
US extends Russian sanctions

United States President Barack Obama has announced further sanctions on Russian officials and a bank over the crisis in Crimea.

Mr Obama also said he had signed an order enabling the US to impose sanctions on sectors of the Russian economy.

Meanwhile EU leaders have arrived in Brussels amid warnings that they may impose tougher economic sanctions.

Tensions are high as Moscow approves a treaty enabling Crimea – an autonomous republic in Ukraine – to join Russia.

Mr Obama said: “Russia must know that further escalation will only isolate it further from the international community.”

He said the US was watching with concern the situation in southern and eastern Ukraine.

A White House official said the latest wave of US sanctions targeted 20 Russian individuals with interests in the Crimea.

The Russian bank being targeted – for supporting government officials – is Bank Rossiya, the US Treasury said.

March 21, 2014
Obama urges Putin to recall troops

United States President, Barack Obama, has told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Russia has flouted international law by sending troops to Ukraine, the BBC reports.

In a 90-minute telephone conversation, Mr. Obama urged the Russian leader to pull forces back to bases in Crimea.

Mr. Putin responded by saying that Moscow reserves the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

Meanwhile, Canada has recalled its ambassador to Moscow for consultations.

Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, said he was also suspending Canada’s preparations for a G-8 summit in the Russian resort of Sochi in June.

Ukraine said it has put its army on full combat alert after Russia’s parliament approved the deployment of troops.

Acting President Olexander Turchynov said he had also stepped up security at key sites, including nuclear plants.

Mr. Obama, the White House said, told Mr. Putin that the appropriate way to address any concerns “is peacefully through direct engagement” with the Ukrainian government and international mediating bodies.

“President Obama expressed his deep concern over Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the White House said.

Mr. Obama told Mr. Putin his actions were a “breach of international law, including Russia’s obligations under the United Nations Charter, and of its 1997 military basing agreement with Ukraine,” a statement added.

March 2, 2014
Obama warns Russia over Ukraine

United States President, Barack Obama, has warned Russia there will be “costs” for any military intervention in Ukraine.

He said he was deeply concerned by reports of Russian military movements inside the country.

The BBC reports that Ukraine’s acting president has accused Russia of deploying troops to Crimea and trying to provoke Kiev into “armed conflict.”

Russia’s United Nations ambassador said any troop movements in Crimea were within an existing arrangement with Ukraine.

Speaking from the White House, President Obama commended Ukraine’s interim government for its “restraint.”

“Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilising, which is not in the interests of Ukraine, Russia or Europe,” he said.

“It would represent a profound interference in matters that must be determined by the Ukrainian people. It would be a clear violation of Russia’s commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine – and of international laws.”

He added: “Just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic games, it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world. And, indeed, the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”

March 1, 2014
Obama to host Dalai Lama

United States President, Barack Obama, will meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday, US officials say.

China has urged the US to cancel the meeting, saying it will “seriously impair China-US relations.”

China describes the Dalai Lama as a separatist, while the spiritual leader says he only advocates greater autonomy for Tibet, not independence.

Officials say the US does not support Tibetan independence but is concerned about human rights in China.

The BBC reports that the two men last met in 2011, in talks that angered China.

Tibet is governed as an autonomous region in China.

China has been widely accused of repressing political and religious freedoms in Tibet. Beijing rejected this and said economic development has improved Tibetans’ lives.

Mr. Obama will host the Dalai Lama in a private meeting in the White House Map Room on Friday morning, US officials said.

Mr. Obama traditionally hosts foreign leaders in the Oval Office, so the decision to use the Map Room is viewed as an attempt to give the visit a lower-profile.

February 21, 2014
Talakawa in the richest country in the world: reflections on Obama’s State of the Union Speech 2014 (2)

I readily admit the unexpected irony in the real life event and experience that gave rise to the subject of my reflections in this series. In a time and a climate that made me feel so far away from home, Obama’s State of the Union Speech for 2014 surprisingly made me feel that, with regard to the fundamental moral and economic questions concerning the wealth and the poverty of the nations of the planet, I was actually so close to home that it actually began to feel as if I was still at home. In concrete terms, Obama’s speech made me realize that, as in Nigeria, there are legions of talakawa and almajaris in America. Moreover and again as in Nigeria, their ranks, their numbers are growing.

I do not of course wish to ignore or even downplay the vast differences between Nigeria and the United States, especially with regard to the all-important question of the structure of the relationship between wealth and poverty in the two countries. My point is precisely that because, as in weather and climate, there are vast and seemingly incommensurable differences between the two countries, we should not allow ourselves to miss or ignore the remarkable similarities between the two societies. By this, I do not mean the rather abstract and hackneyed saying that human beings and human communities are the same everywhere. In very precise terms, Obama’s speech made me see so clearly as I had never done before that even though America is the heartland of global capitalism and Nigeria, with all its oil wealth, is one of the most perilous peripheral capitalist countries in the world, the things that drive poverty and inequality in the two countries are remarkably similar.

Well, to convince the skeptical reader that my central argument in this series does not ignore the vast differences between the United States and our country, Nigeria, let me detail some of the most important and definitive differences of economy and society in the two countries. In gross domestic product – GDP in its shortened acronym form – the difference between Nigeria and the United States is like comparing the summit of the Himalayas to the lowlands of the world that are barely above sea level. Think of it: 15. 68 trillion dollars (US) to 405 billion dollars (Nigeria). Put in terms of population sizes, this means that while the population of the United States is roughly two times greater than that of Nigeria, the total value of goods and services produced in the United States is about thirty-two times greater than the total value of goods and services produced in our country annually. Which is perhaps why the per capita income – average personal income per year – of the United States is, at 42,953 dollars (2012) so vastly bigger than Nigeria’s per capita income of only 1052 dollars (also for 2012).

There are even more startling indices of great difference between Nigeria and the U.S. in economy and technology that ought to caution us not to simply lump the two countries together when we are talking of wealth and poverty and the quality of life. For me, one of the most crucial differences is the fact that while the United States is the foremost country in the world in terms of research and development (R & D), in the last two decades, Nigeria’s infrastructures and performance at all levels of education have declined exponentially and our country’s status as a scientific and technological society in the modern world has hit rock bottom. Certificates from Nigeria’s universities are now regarded with dubiousness of their quality almost throughout the world. Indeed, quite recently, institutions and organizations based in the United States that are responsible for organizing examinations like the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and the SAT (Standard Aptitude Test) have cancelled all Nigerian centers for conducting their examinations and as a result, Nigerian candidates for the examinations necessarily have to travel to Ghana to take the tests!

The consequences of differences between the two countries in these particular areas are nothing short of truly sobering for in the modern world in all the regions and nations of the planet, poverty and inequality find fruitful environments to grow and fester in educationally, scientifically and technologically backward countries. We are becoming one of the most educationally backward countries not just in the world, but on the African continent itself. Only a Nigerian whose patriotism is as obdurate as it is ignorant will fail to recognize and worry about the fact that gradually and seemingly inexorably, education, science and technology are being driven out of the organization of life in our society, to be replaced by an otiose, idolatrous and infantilizing religiosity that pervades all aspects of life in our society.

In the face of such vast and consequential differences between the United States and Nigeria, it would seem that it is mere dogmatic anti-capitalism to insist in seeing in Obama’s State of the Union Speech intimations of similarities and even common causes and connections between the talakawa and almajaris of the two countries. But this is not the case. The most persuasive reason for saying this is that there are many capitalist countries in the contemporary world that are radically different from the United States and Nigeria with regard to how they deal with poverty and inequality, countries like those in Scandinavia and South America where everything possible under the framework of capitalism is being done to lessen the gap between the haves and have-nots. And there is a country like China- which I have visited several times and in which I have done extensive internal travels – in which a form of state capitalism, with all its problems and crises, is doing a lot to substantially eradicate poverty if not wipe it out. Thus, the real motivating factor in this series is not a spurious and dogmatic anti-capitalism; rather, it is the need for us to recognize and engage the things that are remarkably similar between Nigeria and the United States in spite of the many differences that I have identified and discussed. In bringing the series to its conclusion, let me now briefly identify the major expressions of these similarities, common causes and connections between our two countries and economies.

In the present historical phase of capitalism as a global phenomenon, the central ideological, political and ethical divide is between, on the one hand, progressive and democratic forces that want to regulate capital so as to hold it accountable to the needs of the public good and economic justice and, on the other hand, those forces that would go to the limits of institutional legality and the ends of the earth itself to keep capital unregulated. The powers that be and the hegemonic political systems in Nigeria and the United States are, at least for the moment, dominated by the forces of both relative and absolute deregulation. In both countries and their economies, privatization has achieved something of the status of an orthodoxy, a fanaticism that is secular in its uses but religious in its discourses and mystifications. And in both countries, privatization is nothing but another name for the massive transfer of wealth to a few hands at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the population.

In Nigeria and present-day United States, the dominance of capital over regulation and the public good receives its greatest cover or protection from monumental levels of corruption that have legality and institutional authority and prestige behind them. In the United States, this is best seen in the widely discussed fact that big financial services enterprises like hedge funds and investment banks cheat their clients of hundreds of billions of dollars and get away with it. How does the same process operate in Nigeria? Well, from chairmen of local councils to executive state governors all the way to the presidency, hundreds, trillions of naira are stolen and looted in plain sight and nobody is punished, nobody goes to jail. Transparency International consistently ranks Nigeria as one of the most corrupt nations in the world; it is time for that organization to recognize the United States, in the legal and institutional cover that it gives to corporate greed and cheating, the most corrupt country in the world.

One of the things that I personally find endlessly intriguing in contemporary discussions of poverty and inequality in the United States is the claim, hardly disputed by anyone on the Left or the Right, that 1% of the population corners the lion’s share of the wealth that is produced in the country. Isn’t this rather like Nigeria where 7 out of ten live below the absolute poverty line and if you extend the poverty to relative then the figure approaches 9 out of ten? To this question can be added the observation that in both Nigeria and the United States, these horrendous income gaps are stoutly, cynically defended by the rich and the powerful. In the United States, the over-affluent 1% proportionately pays less tax than most of the income groups in the country and in Nigeria it has been as long and futile to know exactly how much our legislators are paid as it has been to stop them from cornering the lion’s share of our national wealth.

Since I wrote the first essay in this series last week, a monster snowstorm has hit large parts of the United States including the part in which I live and work, the Northeast. Climactically, it is a long, long way from home. But when I reflect on the things that I have discussed in this series, I find that the moral and ideological realties of the place I call home and the country of my sojourn indicate that I am really in the same climate, the same season of despair for so many in the face of obscene wealth for the few. The hope, the aspiration is that the other climates and seasons in the world wherein poverty and inequality are being greatly reduced may spread to the length and breadth of the planet. This will require more than a pious hope; it will require looking beyond the superficial differences that mask so much that unites us in this world.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

February 8, 2014
Obama offers retirement savings plan for workers

President Barack Obama offered more Americans the chance to save for retirement through payroll deductions with a plan for new government-sponsored savings accounts.

The accounts, which Obama announced in a State of the Union Address that concentrated on expanding economic opportunity, will be available to workers who don’t have access to a 401(k) plan, administration officials said.

The “MyRA” accounts, similar to an individual retirement account, will provide “a new way for working Americans to start their own retirement savings,” Obama said in the text of the speech released by the White House.

Under the initiative, workers would be allowed to have a portion of their pay deducted for deposit into an account invested in U.S. government bonds that would be treated for tax purposes as an individual retirement account, administration officials said.

The accounts, set up through the Treasury Department, would have a maximum balance after which money would have to be rolled over into an IRA, the officials said.

The officials project that millions of Americans will take advantage of the savings accounts.

“This isn’t earth-shattering stuff,” said Brian Graff, the chief executive officer of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries. “But it is a step in the right direction to get more people saving for retirement, which I would think is a bipartisan issue.”

Existing authority

Obama can establish the savings program under existing executive authority without new legislation, the officials said. He will announce details of the plan tomorrow.

“I don’t expect this to get a lot of pushback,” said Graff, who discussed the proposal in advance with Treasury officials. He said it draws on an existing program that permits workers to purchase U.S. savings bonds through payroll deductions and adds “a retirement twist.”

The proposal resembles an earlier Obama administration plan that would have required employers to offer an automatic IRA option to employees. That plan, which was included in Obama’s 2014 budget, would have cost the government an estimated $17.6 billion in foregone revenue over 10 years.

About 68 percent of U.S. workers had access to retirement benefits as of March, last year, with 54 percent participating, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Company reaction

“Although we don’t have the details yet, Vanguard is generally supportive of expanding savings opportunities for those not covered by a workplace retirement plan,” Linda Wolohan, a spokeswoman for Vanguard Group Inc., said in an e-mail.

Wolohan declined to comment further before hearing the specifics of Obama’s proposal. Vanguard was the second-largest manager of 401(k)-type assets in 2012 behind Fidelity Investments, according to researcher Cerulli Associates.

Fidelity, which is also the largest provider of IRAs, declined to comment before hearing the speech, according to an e-mail from spokeswoman Eileen O’Connor.

February 5, 2014
Talakawa in the richest country in the world: reflections on Obama’s State of the Union Speech 2014 (1)

Irinajo lawa yi o, ori gbe wa dele/Irinajo lawa yi o, ori gbe wa dele
[We are journeying far from home, fate, lead us safely home/We are in a foreign land, fate, see us safely home]

A traditional Yoruba song of travellers

Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A, in the grip of a winter that is one of the most severe in recent memory. It is bitterly cold. The cold is made even more bracing by the fact that I have just come back from home where I spent most of December 2013 and the first twenty-four days of January 2014. Moreover, January at home had been unseasonably warm for where one had expected the chastening but bearable cold of the harmattan, it had been day after day of too much heat, too much warmth. From that to this: from unseasonable warmth to excessive cold. As I walk to my first class of the new semester, I can feel the steely chill of the cold in my bones. But for the fact that I have to earn my keep and go and teach my class, I would have stayed indoors in my apartment ensconced within the comfort of its centrally heated warmth.

My first class of the new term goes very well. I am lucky to have students who are bright, eager and endlessly curious. The class is the first meeting of a course on the literary and cultural production of Africa’s diasporas in Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean. I tell the students that we will read the works of old and young, dead and living master novelists like Alejo Carpentier, Toni Morrison and Chimamanda Adichie and watch the films of classic filmmakers like Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Julie Dash and Euzhan Palcy. I tell them that the African presence in the world encountered through the artists and writers of the African diaspora is a field of imagination and accomplishment in the face of tragedy and trauma. I tell them through the works of these diasporic writers, artists and intellectuals, Africa is in the world and the world is in Africa. I tell them that the homeland that is Africa has extended itself into homes away from home in every continent, every region in the world. As I tell my students these things, one part of my mind is aware of the fact that the words are meant as much for me as for my young audience. You are away from home, I am telling myself, but home is not too far away.

For the two hours of the duration of the class, I completely forget the bitterness of the cold and my unquenchable longing for the home that I have just left in Nigeria with its climactic and human warmth. But as soon as the class is over and I am in my office dealing with my accumulated unanswered emails, the yearning for home comes back with the force of hurricane winds. It is only a little after 5 o’clock and it is already dark. Soon, I shall have to walk through the bitter cold to get to my apartment. And when I get there, I shall be alone. I have friends in Cambridge and my children and my partner are easily reachable by phone, so I am not exactly bereft of human company. But I have just left Oke-Bola, Ibadan and the Ogunbiyis in Victoria Island; Cambridge is and feels like a world apart from these homely places I have just left. With these thoughts, the words of the song that serves as the epigraph for this essay begin to buzz and resound in my head as if my head is an echo chamber. “Irinajo lawa yi o, ori gbe wa dele”.

After an early supper, I turn on the TV to watch the live broadcast of Obama’s State of the Union Speech for 2014. It is a masterful speech. Recent polls show that public opinion of Obama as president is at its lowest since 2008 when he assumed office as the most powerful politician in the world. It is perhaps on account of this dour fact that Obama put everything he could muster in the arts of oratory and rhetoric into this speech. Time after time in the slightly more than one hour that it took to deliver the speech, his audience rose to give him loud, cheering and prolonged ovation. And quite remarkably, in some instances, the ovation was joined by Obama’s arch-enemies, Tea Party Republicans.

Two of the three loudest and most prolonged ovations came when Obama asked for equal pay for women and men and when he declared that in the face of inaction from Congress, he was raising the minimum wage for contractors for federal patronage to 10 dollars and ten cents per hour by executive order. These two declarations were based on the central theme of the speech, this being inequality as marked by the growing chasm between the rich and the poor in the richest nation on the planet. Indeed, as I listened to Obama’s speech with its unrelenting emphasis on the tragedy and shame of great and widening circles of poverty in America, it was as if I was back at home in Nigeria. With a rude awakening near the end of Obama’s speech, I realised that the talakawa and the almajaris are also here in their tens of millions in the very heartland of global capitalism. I am far away from home; but I am not that far away because beneath the impressive, indeed stunning physical, infrastructural and material development of America, the fundamental social and existential crises and dilemmas are like the ones I am all too familiar with in my homeland.

Without going into details of comparative statistical data in which there are indeed great differences between America as the richest nation on the planet and Nigeria as one of the poorest countries in the world, I would nonetheless argue that there are indeed striking similarities in the incidence and experience of poverty in the two countries. First of all, there is the general, indeed almost universal feeling in both countries that not only is there a great gap between the haves and the have-nots but also that this gap is widening. Secondly, there is also the fact that in spite of the widening circles of poverty, wealth exists in great quantities in both countries: Nigeria is awash with petrodollars and petronaira; and of course, America is home to the almighty dollar, the currency of choice for exchange between the currencies of all the other countries and economies of the world. Thirdly, there is the fact that the burden of rising and deepening poverty in both countries is falling too much on the young, including the highly educated young. Fourthly, there is the widespread phenomenon of the working poor as a social and economic category distinct and separable from the jobless, non-working poor. Indeed, in Nigerian parlance, I would call the former the talakawa of America and the latter the almajaris of the U.S.A. Finally, there is the fact of the great and depressing complacency of the political class, of the ruling elites in the face of the deepening chasm between the few who are very rich and the teeming multitudes of the poor.

The Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa was present on the high table when I gave a public lecture at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos on July 13, 2013. On any index of ideological progressivism, Abike Dabiri-Erewa must be one of the most progressive and enlightened members of the Nigerian National Assembly. As one of the respondents to my lecture, she gave a short commentary in which she strongly identified with most of my observations and the observations of others at the lecture calling for social justice and equality of opportunities for Nigerians of all groups and classes. Then because in my lecture I had identified the jumbo salaries and allowances that members of our National Assembly are being paid from our national coffers as one of the leading structural causes of inequality and poverty in Nigeria, a large segment of the audience began to loudly demand that Honourable Dabiri-Erewa tell the audience exactly how much each “honourable” in Nigeria is paid. When she didn’t seem to be forthcoming, the loud demand became a chant, a din, a clamor for the truth. But to the end, she stood her ground and refused to divulge that closely guarded secret of our parliamentarians.

This whole essay is based on Obama’s 2014 State of the Union speech in which he not only spoke forcefully and eloquently on poverty and inequality in America but also identified their causes and probable remedies. This indicates a marked contrast with the scenario I have just described of the response of one of the most progressive and enlightened members of our National Assembly to the demand that she break ranks with the cult of secrecy that surrounds the legalised looting of our national coffers by our parliamentarians. In other words, Obama stands before a combined meeting of both houses of American lawmakers and speaks frankly and forcefully urging the lawmakers to join him in attacking the scourges of inequality and poverty thereby showing a stark difference with our own lawmakers in Nigeria. Given this fact, is it valid to talk of a complacency of political elites in both countries, the U.S.A. and Nigeria? Are the social and ethical landscapes surrounding the talakawa and the almajaris of America and Nigeria the same? My response to these questions is an unequivocal yes, in spite of the apparent differences. In next week’s concluding essay in the series, I shall start from this premise hoping to show that the inevitable great climactic differences should not obscure the common sources, the linkages between inequality and poverty in our world.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

February 2, 2014