The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Obama

  • Obama names first woman head of US Secret Service

    Obama names first woman head of US Secret Service

    US President Barack Obama has picked the first woman director of the Secret Service.

    Julia Pierson, formerly Secret Service chief of staff, will succeed Mark Sullivan, who announced last month that he would retire.

    The agency was caught up in a prostitution scandal last year during a presidential visit to Colombia.

    The Secret Service investigates financial crimes and protects the president and his family.

    “Over her 30 years of experience with the Secret Service, Julia has consistently exemplified the spirit and dedication the men and women of the service demonstrate every day,” Mr Obama said in a statement.

    “Julia has had an exemplary career and I know these experiences will guide her as she takes on this new challenge to lead the impressive men and women of this important agency.”

    Ms Pierson, originally from Florida, joined the Secret Service’s Miami Field Office in 1983.

    From 1988, she spent four years with the Presidential Protective Division. Ms Pierson’s appointment does not require confirmation by Congress.

  • Obama to meet Sall, Koroma, two others

    Obama to meet Sall, Koroma, two others

    United States President Barack Obama will welcome four African leaders to Washington this month, the White House said Monday.

    Obama on March 28 will meet with the President of Senegal, Macky Sall; of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma; of Malawi, Joyce Banda; and the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, Jose Maria Pereira Neves.

    Spokesman Jay Carney said the leaders will discuss issues that include economic development and reinforcing democracy in sub-Saharan Africa.

    AFP reports that the multi-party meeting is not unprecedented as in late July 2011 Obama met with the presidents of Benin, Guinea, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

    Obama, the son of a Kenyan-born father and a US-born mother, has visited sub-Saharan Africa only once as president — he made a short trip to Ghana in July 2009.

     

  • U.S immigration deal in ‘six months’

    U.S immigration deal in ‘six months’

     

    President Barack Obama has said United States immigration reform could be achieved within six months, in an interview with Spanish-language TV channel Telemundo.

    The president said reform should pass in 2013 and he would put “everything” into securing a deal even sooner.

    Obstacles to a deal were political rather than technical, Mr. Obama added.

    The comments came the day after Mr. Obama backed comprehensive immigration reform, and after a group of senators unveiled a similar plan on Monday.

    BBC says the focus on immigration reflects the growing influence of Hispanic voters.

    “I can guarantee that I will put everything I have behind it,” Mr. Obama told Telemundo, one of two Spanish-language networks he spoke to on Wednesday.

    The president also said he would work with all politicians to achieve reform, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican.

    Mr. Obama’s plan, unveiled at a secondary school in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday, reflects a blueprint he rolled out in 2011.

    But while he applauded the Senate effort – put together by a group of four Democrats and four Republicans – the president also warned that if Congress fails to take action on immigration, the White House would write legislation of its own and insist that lawmakers vote on it.

    Like the bipartisan plan, the president backed an overhaul of the existing legal immigration system, securing U.S borders, and offering a pathway to earned citizenship.

    But the senators’ proposals would allow undocumented immigrants to start the process of becoming citizens only after U.S borders are deemed secure, a link that did not feature in the president’s plan.

     

  • Obama inspires brother to run for office in Kenya elections

    Obama inspires brother to run for office in Kenya elections

    KOGELO, Kenya – U.S. President Barack Obama’s message of hope and change has inspired his half-brother Malik to launch a political career of his own, with his eye on elections in Kenya in March.

    “If my brother is doing great things for people in the United States, why can’t I do great things for Kenyans here?” Malik Obama said in an interview in the village of Kogelo, President Obama’s ancestral homeland.

    Malik, 54, is running for governorship of the rural Siaya county as an independent candidate.

    His sibling’s message resonates with a Kenyan electorate angry over a political class widely regarded as greedy and corrupt.

    However, the odds are stacked against lone candidates in a country where ideology is trumped by tribe or clan ties. This is the first time independents have been permitted to run in an election after a constitutional change in 2010.

    For Obama, the inspiration comes from elsewhere.

    “He is an inspiration to me and I feel that he is an embodiment of my father’s dream,” he said of the U.S. leader.

    “All he told me is ‘brother, it is not an easy thing to get into public office. Just have a thick skin because people will be targeting you. The media will be saying this and that. There will be people who love you and people who won’t love you’.”

    He said his younger brother has flourished by following the footsteps of their father, Barack Obama Snr – the first African to attend the University of Hawaii before returning home to work in the senior echelons of the Kenyan civil service.

    “The old and tested way has not really worked for us. Right now we need a bold, radical and fresh approach,” he said.

    To capture the governorship, Obama will face a bruising battle from the likes of Oburu Odinga, brother to Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and a new and popular entrant to the political scene, William Oduol.

    Oburu Odinga is a long-serving member of parliament in the area, while Oduol, 35, has won favor with the youth.

    “As much as the brother has done well in the U.S., the truth of the matter is that he (Malik) is not very close to the people here on the ground,” Amos Owino, a 29-year old clinician, said.

    Malik Obama, a resident of the United States, has lived in Washington DC since 1985 where he worked with various firms before becoming an independent financial consultant.

    In his office are framed photographs of himself with President Obama in the Oval office and another at the president’s wedding, where he was the best man.

    He lives partly in the United States where he takes up work contracts from time to time and Kenya.

    “We are very proud of him (Malik), but Oduol has better policies especially on education improvement and roads construction,” said Irene Sindih, a 24-year old businesswoman.

    Obama said he is running as an independent to avoid being beholden to party grandees whom he blames for what he says is the failed leadership in the country of 40 million.

    Obama said the U.S. president also urged him to be honest with the electorate and to be true to himself.

    His campaign slogan is “Just as it is in United States, I want it here”, he said in his office in a recreation centre he set up with the Barack H. Foundation, a charitable organization he founded to build houses for women and orphans.

    With a population of 832,000 people, the main economic activities in Siaya county are subsistence farming and small trading. Many residents live in mud huts with thatched roofs.

    Obama wants to help build new roads, water and electricity supply, hospitals and small-scale industries once he is elected governor. After conquering this, he has eyes for an even bigger prize, the Kenyan presidency at the next elections in 2017.

     

    …begins second term with 51 per cent approval rating

    President Barack Obama embarks on his second term in office on Monday with half the nation giving him a good performance review, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday.

    Fifty-one percent of Americans surveyed Jan. 11-15 approve of how Obama is handling his job, the poll said. Forty-one percent disapprove.

    The Times’ Marjorie Connelly notes in her analysis that Obama’s approval rating is similar to the one held by former President George W. Bush at the start of his second term, but far below ratings garnered by former President Bill Clinton (60 percent) and former President Ronald Reagan (62 per cent) at the beginning of their second terms.

    The “fiscal cliff” negotiations didn’t alter public opinion of the president’s ability to handle the economy, the poll said.

    Forty-six percent of adults surveyed said they approve of the president’s ability to handle the economy and 49 per cent disapprove. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3 per centage points.

     

  • Obama to unveil gun control proposals

    Obama to unveil gun control proposals

    United States President, Barack Obama, is expected on Wednesday to unveil wide-ranging measures aimed at curbing gun violence.

    The proposals could echo measures, considered the toughest in the nation, passed in New York State on Tuesday.

    Mr. Obama has said he favours bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as broader background checks.

    The BBC says the U.S gun control debate has been revived by last month’s mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

    There, a gunman shot dead 27 people, including 20 children and his own mother.

    At 11:45 EST (16:45 GMT) on Wednesday, Mr. Obama is expected to unveil the new proposals at the White House, flanked by children who wrote him letters after the Newtown shooting.

     

  • U.S must protect children – Obama

    U.S must protect children – Obama

    President Barack Obama has said the United States must do more to protect its children in the wake of Friday’s shootings at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

    Speaking at an inter-faith vigil in Newtown, Mr. Obama said he would use the powers of his office to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

    He told residents that the nation shared their grief.

    BBC says 20 children and six women died in the assault on Sandy Hook school by a lone man who then took his own life.

    The first funerals for victims will be held on Monday.

    The gunman has been identified by police as Adam Lanza, 20.

    Officials say he was armed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and used a semi-automatic rifle as his main weapon. He was also carrying two handguns, and a shotgun was recovered from a car.

    “I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation,” Mr. Obama said, speaking after religious leaders and the state governor.

    “You are not alone in your grief. All across this land of ours we have wept with you.”

    Mr. Obama repeated a call for action against gun crime, saying that in coming weeks he would use “whatever powers” his office held “in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

     

  • Obama: Lessons for young Africans

    History was made in the United States on November 4, 2008 when 47-year-old Barrack Obama was elected president of the most powerful nation on earth. The election of Obama, a black American of African descent, from Kogelo in Kenya, as the first black president in the US will for a long time be a subject of discussion in all nooks and crannies of the world.

    No one ever expected that a black man could attain such position of prominence. It was the belief of everyone that it would be a herculean task, if not an impossible one, for a black man to be elected president in a country widely known for its racist inclination.

    However, Obama’s re-election on November 7 has no doubt swept the ancient prejudice against black people and inferiority complex into the junkyard of history. The Obama’s victory has, no doubt, broken all the myths that have surrounded white supremacy in America.

    Nelson Mandela recalled how the blacks had been marginalised, treated as second class citizens, denied of their rights and never given fair justice. He said: “A law was also formulated to teach African children that they are inferior to their white counterparts.” When on the night of November 4, 2008, the election of Obama was announced to the world, television camera caught Reverend Jesse Jackson and other people shedding tears of joy.

    Jesse Jackson cried because he remembered quite well the history of how black people had been treated in America which has made the entire black race in other countries of the world looked down on themselves and believed there was no inherent good in them to display to the world.

    The Obama re-election was no doubt a sweet assurance that the long fight for the freedom and dignity of the Black race has been effectively fought and won.

    However, it is not enough for us to learn just historical dates and events, it is imperative that we learn from history itself. History has proved that we can equally achieve outstanding feats as done by the Europeans. We do not have to continually depend on them for survival, instead we can maximise our potentials and surpass what they have done.

    We can unleash the treasures in us to design amazing inventions. We can now start taking responsibilities for our greatness because if a black man could be the number one citizen in the United States, and by inference of the world, then we can attain any height we set out to reach.

    We cannot continually place blame on what some people did or did not do. Rather we’ve got to take up the challenge like Obama did and create the future we desire. Obama could have dwelt in self pity and inferiority complex and concluded: “I am not good in anything because my brain is black and no black man has ever been allowed near the White House!” His feat would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, but he took up his seeming disadvantage and wrote his name in the granite of history.

    Nelson Mandela gave this speech on September 21, 1953 before his imprisonment: “Teach the children that Africans are not an iota inferior to Europeans.”

    The Obama victory has clearly shown every African youth that the world will pave a path for a man who knows his identity and destination. To that young African youth, would you rather say ‘yes we can’?

     

    Taiwo, 200-Level Human Anatomy, UNIMAID

     

  • US Presidential election: Women gave Obama second term, says American professor

    US Presidential election: Women gave Obama second term, says American professor

    professor of Political Science from the Loyola University Chicago, Richard Maitland, has disclosed that President Barack Obama would have lost his re-election to his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, if not for women.

    Obama defeated Romney in a keenly- contested race already described as the fiercest presidential battle in the history of US presidential elections.

    Maitland spoke in Abuja at a national multi-stakeholders dialogue on enhancing women’s political participation through constitutional and legal reforms in Nigeria organised by the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD) in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development.

    He said women had majority votes that earned Obama the victory, a development he said was because the American President has addressed major issues affecting them.

    According to him: “It is very clear that the majority of the men in the United States of America (USA) voted for Romney during the Presidential election by very small margin but the majority of women voted for Obama by a large margin and when the votes of the two groups were colleted Obama ended up winning the election.

    “You can effectively say he (Obama) won because of the women’s vote and believe me the women’s groups are very happy for him to remain in office because they voted for him and they expect him to do things to support the issues, especially those ones that concern women.

    “Obama has been much more supportive of women groups and issues than Romney was in terms of health care, equal paper, equal works. We expect big changes in the area of immigration from President Barack Obama.”

    A fact sheet obtained by our correspondent showed a shortfall in the number of women elected at state and national levels after the 2011 general elections.

    It said the Senate and the House of Representatives have 6.4% and 6.7% female representatives respectively and in the State Houses of Assembly only 6.9% of the 990 legislators are women.

    However, none of the state executive councils, the document said, meets the minimum 35% gender representation recommended by the National Gender Policy.

    Some of the factors identified for this include: “money politics, patriarchy, indigene-ship issues and lack of access to education and other socio-economic opportunities.”

     

  • ‘U.S women gave Obama second term ticket’

    ‘U.S women gave Obama second term ticket’

    A professor of Political Science from the Loyola University Chicago, Prof. Richard Maitland, on Friday said President Barack Obama would have lost the United States presidential election to his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, if not for women.

    Obama, the Democratic Party candidate defeated Romney in a keenly contested race already described as the fiercest presidential battle in the history of U.S presidential elections.

    Maitland spoke in Abuja at a national multi-stakeholders dialogue on enhancing women’s political participation through constitutional and legal reforms in Nigeria, organised by the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD) in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development.

    He said women had the majority vote that brought about Obama’s victory due to the fact that he had attended to major issues concerning women.

    Maitland said there is no gain saying that women play a very crucial role in election throughout the world, hence should be allowed to participate effectively in politics.

    His words: “It is very clear that majority of the men in the United States voted for Romney during the Presidential election by very small margin but the majority of women voted for Obama by a large margin and when the votes of the two groups were collected Obama ended up winning the election.

    “You can effectively say he (Obama) won because of the women’s vote and believe me the women’s groups are very happy to retain him in office because they voted for him and they expect him to do things to support issues, especially those ones that concern women.

    “And that has happened; Obama has been much more supportive of women groups and issues than Romney was in terms of health care, equal paper, equal works. We expect big changes in the area of immigration from President Barack Obama.”

    A fact sheet obtained by The Nation from the organizers, shows that after the 2011 elections there was a shortfall in the number of women elected across all the states and at the national level.

     

  • Obama/Justice Jombo-Ofo: Tale of two nations

    Obama/Justice Jombo-Ofo: Tale of two nations

    The widening gap between America’s astonishing progress in managing her diversities and Nigeria’s rather embarrassing retrogression at integrating her diverse populations has come to the fore, once again. While an Anambra born woman, Justice (Mrs.) Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo, could not be sworn in as Justice of the Court of Appeal because she hails from Abia, a different State as her husband’s, an Africa-American, Barack Obama, was re-elected by a predominantly white population as the President of the most powerful nation in the world. What a shame!

    This brings to the fore a recent lecture entitled “The Political Ideology of the Great Zik of Africa and the Leadership Challenges in Nigeria” delivered by the Deputy President of Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu in Awka. Ekweremadu had noted that apart from the fact that Zik won election in the South West, with his NCNC also showing great strength in the 1951 Western Region House of Assembly election, NCNC installed Altine Umoru and Bashorun Balogun as the Mayors of Enugu and Port Harcourt, respectively. According to him, therefore, the question our generation would have to answer is: “Why is it that decades after the great Zik and his generation had shone the light of this level of brotherhood, we are still unable to profitably manage our diversities and gel into a true nation state?”

    Also, wondering if we are actually making progress or retrogressing, the Senate Leader explained during a debate on the matter by the Senate in plenary that some 30 years ago, an Igbo man, Honourable Justice Kalu Anya was the Chief Judge of Borno State, while a Yoruba man was the Attorney-General of the Borno Judiciary.

    Let us look at the contrasts to find answers to Ndoma-Egba’s questions. Sometime in the United States history, blacks were just some pieces of property, with the first set of black slaves arriving in State of Virginia. It was a long and tortuous history of misuse, dehumanisation, and derogation. In 1800, a black slave and blacksmith, Gabriel Prosser planned a slave revolt which was to march on Richmond, Virginia. His plan was uncovered and he and many fellow black “conspirators” were hanged. The same faith befell Nat Turner, an African American preacher in Virginia in 1831 as well as Denmark Vessey in Chesterfied, South Carolina in 1821. Ironically, as if to atone for its notoriety for slavery and highhandedness against black slaves, Virginia, known to have consecutively delivered to the Republican Party from 1968 to 2004 presidential elections, made a “U” turn to elect Obama, a black, in 2008 and re-elected him few days ago.

    Now, though the US Congress banned slave importation in 1808, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott’s case that slaves were not citizens. Yet, from Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed black slaves in the Confederate States in 1863 to the Fifth Amendment that gave the blacks voting rights; from the election of Hiram Revels as the first African-American Senator (Mississippi) in 1870 in the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877) to election of 16 black Congressmen and 600 black state legislators in the same period; from the founding of the first college for black women (Spelman College) in 1881 to the breaking of Major League Baseball’s colour segregation when Jackie Robinson signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947; from the integration of African-Americans into the US military by President Truman in 1948 to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans case in which the Supreme Court declared (on May 17, 1954) that all forms of racial discrimination in schools was unconstitutional; from the popular Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger at the “coloured section” of a bus in Montgomery on December 1, 1955 to the successful one-year bus boycott by blacks that led to the desegregation of buses in Montgomery in December 1956; and from the sweeping Civil Rights Act under President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 that prohibits discrimination of any kind- race, colour, religion, national origin, etc, plus the Voting Rights Act (1965) and another Civil Rights Act (1968) to the election of President Obama in 2008, the US has made tremendous progress in transforming into a country that truly lives out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold this truth to be self evident, that all men are born equal”. US is now a country of Martin Luther King’s dream where “men are judged by the content of their character, not by the colour of their skin”. This invariably accounts monumentally to America’s tremendous transformation into an economic and political super power because men and women find their dreams, becoming the best they are capable of, irrespective of their religion, race, colour, etc.

    Conversely, Nigeria has moved from a nation where an Altine Umoru and Bashorun Balogun became Mayors of two biggest cities in the then Eastern Region, namely Enugu and Port Harcourt, to one where no man/woman amounts to anything outside his/her State of Origin. We have retrogressed from a nation where an Honourable Justice Kalu Anya became Chief Justice of Borno to one where an Anambra born Justice Jombo-Ofo, was refused ascension to the Court of Appeal unable to access her full rights and privileges as a Nigerian from her State of Marriage, Abia. Ironically, she remains an Abian, her children remains Abians, and will no doubt be her final resting place when she is called. We have also moved retrogressed to a country where a Governor of a State in a 21st century Nigeria has, on purely sectional and ethno-religious grounds, consistently upbraided and discredited the ongoing efforts to address dire contradictions in Nigeria’s constitution. Even though we spend billions of naira funding the NYSC, we are steadily transforming into a country where funny and incompetent characters could occupy the best of available positions and opportunities, so long as they are “sons and daughters of the soil”. Again, what a big shame!!!

    However, given the national applause that has greeted the patriotic motion moved by Senator Ekweremadu and the entire Senate calling the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Honourable Justice to order, it is comforting that Nigerians understand that this Jombo-Ofo matter, if allowed to stay, would sound a requiem for Nigerian women and big obstacle for inter-state marriage and national integration. It is like digging a grave for our future.

    Kowtowing to an unreasonable Rule of the Federal Character Commission (FCC) is not a complementary commentary on the nation’s judiciary. Unless we are saying that the FCC Rule overrides Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution which provides that no Nigerian should be discriminated against on the ground of religion, state of origin, sex, language, etc.

    i also feel this national embarrassment should further mobilize Nigerians to support the National Assembly to replace the State of Origin with State of Residence in the ongoing constitution review. Indeed, what God has joined together, let no judiciary put asunder. Besides, the hunger, insecurity and poverty challenges we face, know no state, religion, tribe or tongue.

    • Anichukwu is Special Adviser (Media) to Deputy President of Senate.