http://www.usafricaonline.com/patutomi2007.nigeriastrugg.html

April 29, 2007: I set out to run the 2007 campaign on issues, avoid casting aspersions that take away from the dignity of any person. I am pleased that I was significantly able to stay the chosen course. But this happened with the help of friends, staff persons and men of goodwill at home and in the Diaspora.

Hence, as we reflect on dozens of lives lost in protest of election rigging, billions of Naira expended on campaigns even as many of our compatriots are dehumanised by dreadful poverty, it is important to extend gratitude, and commit afresh to the struggle on the long road to freedom for Nigeria.

When about a year ago I gave up all income, stepped down from boards and committed to seeking votes for the presidency many thought it was a three month quest to prove a point. It turned out to be a grueling venture that involved at least three near death experiences, thousands of miles of road and air travel and a discovery of a country I thought I knew well.

For the privilege of such remarkable personal growth I owe much gratitude to so many. To the Governors who gave me warm welcome in their Government Houses, the thousands of citizens who welcomed me to rural village squares; traditional rulers from Sokoto to Gombe, Oloibiri to Benin and Ife to Biu. They taught me that tradition has been updated by men of great exposure who have taken up the thrones of their ancestors. Surely I cannot be the same because they crossed my path.

I learnt a long time ago that I grow from acknowledging that I have made mistakes in the past. Traversing this country deepened my recognition that I could do many things that I had done in the past differently. This Return on Experience (ROE) was more valuable than any investments I had ever made. For this immeasurable gain I will never be able to say thank you enough.

My debt of gratitude can only be paid through continuous sacrificial service to Nigerians, especially those less fortunate than I. To say that politics, especially in the kind of presidential system we run, cost a lot of money, is to state the obvious. While we push for reform that should place a cap that is measurable on campaign finance, I want to thank immensely friends and well wishers who sent generous cheques, particularly the poor woman who truly gave a widow's mite of N500. I know it is more generous than the N5,000,000 cheques from some more endowed compatriots.

Criss-crossing Nigeria put my conscience to the test regarding what must be done to rescue our country. After some challenging reflections I have had to conclude that the rest of my life will have to be dedicated to directing Nigeria away from the road to serfdom that we currently travel unto navigating the lanes to liberation. I can see clearly from the vantage point of becoming involved in politics, the troubling crossroads we stand on, as a crisis of values we have long lamented, moves Nigeria ever so close to the precipice. The least I can do, in the circumstance, is quit my day job and dedicate the rest of my life to this struggle. I am convinced that the struggle as my life is worthwhile venture.

The struggle will be aimed largely at keeping the man-in-the-street, middle class professional people, and the youth ever committed to the quest in advance of the Common Good for change. The pain of seeing so many middle class people come out to vote on April 14 and witnessing their retreat on April 21 after it became clear their votes were not allowed to count increases the essence of the struggle. It is time to say thank you and to roll up our sleeves, like Nehemiah, to rebuild the falling walls of Nigeria.

No one can go through what I have experienced this last year and be the same, if they have a sensitive conscience. The sacrifice of total commitment therefore comes easy. As soon as the period of reflection is over with the rainy season, we shall begin a nationwide "Thank you" tour, traveling the same very path we traced during the campaigns to personally say how grateful we are for the privilege of sharing our vision of a new Nigeria with you, whether Maurice Iwu bother to count your votes or not. I know you heard me and I felt your pain.

During the tour we will begin to put in place through Private Development Agencies (PDAs), sometimes called NGOs platforms for implementing some initiatives we promised for uplifting the human condition, in places where we made such promises. The two key targets of the initiatives are poverty and ignorance through ideas that confront the crisis of values that is crippling Nigeria, and the poverty of ideas that leave people so deep in want that a ripple can drown. We hope the flame imagined possibilities will be kept alive. Indeed Nigerians have no business being poor.
Utomi, a professor of business management and founder of the Lagos Business School, is the presidential candidate of the ADC in the recently concluded controversial elections of 2007 in Nigeria.

As early results showed the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) heading for victory, the main opposition party said it would not accept the election and called for President Olusegun Obasanjo to be impeached. The chaotic poll dashed hopes it would boost democracy in the West African giant, scarred by lengthy periods of military rule and corruption that have left much of the population still cursed by poverty despite the country's huge oil wealth.

"The system failed the Nigerian people and suffers from a lack of credibility...the Nigerian people were failed by their leaders," said Pierre Richard Prosper of the International Republican Institute, which monitored the vote. The IRI, a U.S.-based pro-democracy group, said both Saturday's presidential election and regional polls a week ago fell below international standards. The biggest local monitoring group, which had 10,000 observers across Africa's most populous nation, said voting was either delayed for hours or did not occur at all in many areas. "We are going to call for a rerun of elections. You cannot use the result from half of the country to announce a new president," said Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of the Transition Monitoring Group.

Many Nigerians still feel disappointed that a man (Obasanjo) who had gained so much from Nigeria would cling so tightly to power, even against the popular will of the people, moreso with age, energy and fresh ideas for a new era not on his side.

Also, USAfricaonline.com review of Nigeria's recent history show that President Obasanjo seems to be moving rapidly into the zone of ill-repute of his former military colleagues who, like him, refused to leave office when it was time to go. Gen. yakubu Gowon in 1975; Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in 1993; Gen. Sani Abacha in1995, 1996, 1997, 1998. More baffling many Nigerians we interviewed recall is the lessons of the excesses of the late Gen. Abach who jailed Obasanjo while the former schemed to remain in power. For the special report by USAfrica multimedia networks' Publisher Chido Nwangwu, click on 3rd term.

His globalist underpinnings and outlook are truly reflective of the true essence of his Igbo world-view, his Igbo upbringing and disposition. Igbos and Jews share (with a few other other cultures) this pan-global disposition to issues of art, life, commerce, juridical pursuits, and quest to be republicanist in terms of the vitality of the individual/self. In Achebe's works, the centrality of Chi (God) attains an additional clarity in the Igbo cosmology... it is a world which prefers a quasi-capitalistic business attitude while taking due cognizance of the usefulness of the whole, the community. I've studied, lived and tried to better understand, essentially, the rigor and towering moral certainties which Achebe have employed in most of his works and his world. I know, among other reasons, because I share the same ancestry with him. Permit me to attempt a brief sentence, with that Achebean simplicty and clarity. Here, folks, what the world has known since 1958: Achebe is good! Eagle on the Iroko, may your Lineage endure! There has never been one like you!
Ugo n'abo, chukwu gozie gi oo!. Chido Nwangwu, recipient of the Journalism Excellence award (1997), is Founder and Publisher of USAfricaonline.com (first African-owned U.S.-based professional newspaper to be published on the internet), USAfrica The Newspaper, CLASS magazine and The Black Business Journal. He has served as an adviser to the Mayor of Houston on international business (Africa) and appears as an analyst on CNN, VOA, NPR, CBS News, NBC and ABC news affiliates.

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Nelson Mandela, Tribute to the world's political superstar and Lion of Africa   Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's burden mounts with murder charges, trials Why Bush should focus on dangers facing Nigeria's return to democracy and Obasanjo's slipperyslide TRIBUTE A KING FOR ALL TIMES: Why Martin Luther King's legacy and vision are relevant into 21st century. DIPLOMACY Walter Carrington: African-American diplomat who put principles above self for Nigeria (USAfrica's founder Chido Nwangwu with Ambassador Carrington at the U.S. embassy, Nigeria) DEMOCRACY'S WARRIOR Out of Africa. …The cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household but his voice is the property of the neighborhood. -- Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah. An editor carries on his crusade against public corruption and press censorship in his native Nigeria and other African countries. By John Suval. The Economics of Elections in Nigeria HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY How far, how deep will Nigeria's human rights commission go? Rtd. Gen. Babangida trip as emissary for Nigeria's Obasanjo to Sudan raises curiosity, questions about what next in power play? 110 minutes with Hakeem Olajuwon Nigerian stabbed to death in his bathroom in Houston. Since 1958, Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" set a standard of artistic excellence, and more. By Douglas Killam Why Chinua Achebe, the Eagle on the Iroko, is Africa's writer of the century. By Chido Nwangwu(First written on March 1, 2002, for USAfrica, updated for Prof. Achebe's 74th Birthday tribute on November 16, 2004, and published in CLASS magazine same month): Africa's most acclaimed and fluent writer of the English Language, the most translated writer of Black heritage in the world, broadcaster extraordinaire, social conscience of millions, cultural custodian and elevator, chronicler and essayist, goodwill ambassador and man of progressive rock-ribbed principles, the Eagle on the Iroko, Ugo n'abo Professor Chinua Achebe, has recently been selected by a distinguished jury of scholars and critics (from 13 countries of African life and literature) as the writer of the Best book (Things Fall Apart, 1958) written in the twentieth century regarding Africa. Reasonably, Achebe's message has been neither dimmed nor dulled by time and clime. He's our pathfinder, the intellectual godfather of millions of Africans and lovers of the fine art of good writing. Achebe's cultural contexts are, at once, pan-African, globalist and local; hence, his literary contextualizations soar beyond the confines of Umuofia and any Igbo or Nigerian setting of his creative imagination or historical recall. His globalist underpinnings and outlook are truly reflective of the true essence of his Igbo world-view, his Igbo upbringing and disposition. Igbos and Jews share (with a few other other cultures) this pan-global disposition to issues of art, life, commerce, juridical pursuits, and quest to be republicanist in terms of the vitality of the individual/self. In Achebe's works, the centrality of Chi (God) attains an additional clarity in the Igbo cosmology... it is a world which prefers a quasi-capitalistic business attitude while taking due cognizance of the usefulness of the whole, the community. I've studied, lived and tried to better understand, essentially, the rigor and towering moral certainties which Achebe have employed in most of his works and his world. I know, among other reasons, because I share the same ancestry with him. Permit me to attempt a brief sentence, with that Achebean simplicty and clarity. Here, folks, what the world has known since 1958: Achebe is good! Eagle on the Iroko, may your Lineage endure! There has never been one like you! Ugo n'abo, chukwu gozie gi oo!. Chido Nwangwu, recipient of the Journalism Excellence award (1997), is Founder and Publisher of USAfricaonline.com (first African-owned U.S.-based professional newspaper to be published on the internet), USAfrica The Newspaper, CLASS magazine and The Black Business Journal. He has served as an adviser to the Mayor of Houston on international business (Africa) and appears as an analyst on CNN, VOA, NPR, CBS News, NBC and ABC news affiliates. This USAfricaonline.com commentary is copyrighted. Archiving on any other web site or newspaper is unauthorized except with a Written Approval by USAfricaonline.com Founder.

DEBATE: How Black intellectuals let Africa down, and western stereoptypes complicate the rest. By Cedrick Ngalande at the USC, Los Angeles Africa suffers the scourge of the virus. This life and pain of Kgomotso Mahlangu, a five-month-old AIDS patient (above) in a hospital in the Kalafong township near Pretoria, South Africa, on October 26, 1999, brings a certain, frightening reality to the sweeping and devastating destruction of human beings who form the core of any definition of a country's future, its national security, actual and potential economic development and internal markets. 22 million Africans HIV-infected, ill with AIDS while African leaders ignore disaster-in-waiting In a special report a few hours after the history-making nomination, USAfricaonline.com Founder and Publisher Chido Nwangwu places Powell within the trajectory of history and into his unfolding clout and relevance in an essay titled 'Why Colin Powell brings gravitas, credibility and star power to Bush presidency.' Powell named Secretary State by G.W. Bush; bipartisan commendations follow. AFRICA AND THE U.S. ELECTIONS Beyond U.S. electoral shenanigans, rewards and dynamics of a democratic republic hold lessons for African politics. CONTINENTAL AGENDA Bush's position on Africa is "ill-advised." The position stated by Republican presidential aspirant and Governor of Texas, George Bush where he said that "Africa will not be an area of priority" in his presidency has been questioned by USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido Nwangwu. He added that Bush's "pre-election position was neither validated by the economic exchanges nor geo-strategic interests of our two continents." These views were stated during an interview CNN's anchor Bernard Shaw and senior analyst Jeff Greenfield had with Mr. Nwangwu on Saturday November 18, 2000 during a special edition of 'Inside Politics 2000.' Nwangwu, adviser to the Mayor of Houston (the 4th largest city in the U.S., and immigrant home to thousands of Africans) argued further that "the issues of the heritage interests of 35 million African-Americans in Africa, the volume and value of oil business between between the U.S and Nigeria and the horrendous AIDS crisis in Africa do not lend any basis for Governor Bush's ill-advised position which removes Africa from fair consideration" were he to be elected president. By Al Johnson Johnnie Cochran will soon learn that defending Abacha's loot is not as simple as his O.J Simpson's case. By Chido Nwangwu Should Africa debates begin and end at The New York Times and The Washington Post? No Cheryl Mills' first class defense of Clinton and her detractors' game  It's wrong to stereotype Nigerians as Drug Dealers Private initiative, free market forces, and more democratization are Keys to prosperity in Africa Apple announces Titanium, "killer apps" and other ground-breaking products for 2001. iTunes makes a record 500,000 downloads. Steve Jobs extends digital magic CLASS is the social events, heritage excellence and style magazine for Africans in north America, described by The New York Times as the magazine for affluent Africans in America. It is published by professional journalists and leading mulitmedia leaders and pioneers.