Mariam Mariam
It some of those wishes that we some how hope we shall fulfil, sooner or later. That’s what visiting there public of Malih as always been for me. Now, if you ask me, I can’t even remember for how long I have nursed that wish. But it must be lost in a pestery of events of my life .
As a kid, I was always fascinated by the complex patterns of the history that we were taught at home. For example, Ilorin’s different peoples include some who secrets are located in itinerant Islamic scholars from Mali. Some were Fulani, others were not; but the point was that they were part of the historical sensibilitity of the spread of Islam in the old Western and Central Sudan. We even have a part of Ilorin, called OKEMALE, which acknowledged the Malian settlement of that quarter of our home town.
Some how, this lived experience of Malian presence in our lives flowed in to my study of West African history during secondary school in the 1970s. I can still see in my mind seye, the dramatic manner our teacher used to describe the grandeur of the Empires of Ghana, Maliand of Songhai.
Then the pantheon of great Emperors, the most famous of who seemed to be Man Sakankan Musa; his well – recorded pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 left a great trail in term so fits publicity about the Golden wealth of the Western Sudan and the revolutionary effect it would have on the architecture of our region. Musa had brought back a famous Muslim architect, so the story goes, who had a commission to redesign the great mosques of Timbuctu and Jenne. It would kick start a narch it ectural revolution that can still be caught on the wings of history up till today in the great cities of the Western and Central Sudan, from Timbuctu to Kano!
There was yet another strand to my fascination with Mali, which was located in the epic description of a strike during the 1940s on the colonial railway linking Mali with Senegal. That description was provided by the Senegalese writer Sembene Ousmane in the book GOD’s BITS OF WOOD, which I studied in University in the French original as LESBOUTS DESBOISD EDIEU. It some how linked two aspects of my romanticism so firmly; the history of Mali and the railways.
In my years of work as a broadcast journalist, especially when I reported for Radio France and the BBC World Service, I nursed the hope very much to one day travel on that colonial rail way which links Dakar to Bamako. I always felt that so me how, I would be able to take in so many strands of the history that I have read up so much, and which, in a most fundamental manner has conditioned our lives and also helped to define who we are today .
You can then imagine how glad I was when about three weeks ago, I got a telephone call from Dakar, Senegal that a party of African journal is ts was being put together by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) tore port the inaugural meeting of the African States men Initiative. The icing on the cake was that it was to take place in Bamako. It was as if they knew that I had always nursed the hope to go to Mali.
The conference itself was scheduled for between the 5 and 81st of June, 2005; so in my mind, I had expected that we would travel out of Nigeria, latest by Sunday, the 5th of June, 2005. On the evening of Thursday, the 2nd of June, 2005, I got a call that a ticket was on its way, and the journey was for the next day at 8 a.m. If we missed that flight, it might be difficult to arrive in Bamako in time for the conference at all.
The problem of travelling in Africa, with the rigid patterns of colonial controls and the long-lasting effects of the colonial balk anisation of Africa, hitsone in the face each time we had to travel between our different countries. Former President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana travelled to Bamakovia Paris, France. Its incredible when he was explaining the way he travelled to arrive in Bamako. I recollected that just in the 1960s, Presidents Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and Modibo Kaita were so wing seeds of African Unity, in the Ghana, Guinea Mali Union, which subsequent neo-colonial regimes did not follow through!
We travelled to Bama kovia Abidjan, and as the Senegal International Airline air craft landed in the hot Bamako afternoon, I remembered again how historically significant the land we were land in gon used to be, in the comings and goings that represented the eternal wave of African history; the role its people played in these read of Islam and the place in the affirmation of our place in the history of man kind. Ibn Batuta, the great traveller of the Middle Ages, visited the Empire of Mali at the height of its power and would report that in all of his travels, he had not see nasense of justice and order, as he saw in ancient Mali.
Sometimes too, I would wonder what it was topromenade the streets of Timbuct uatthe height of its popularity as agreat centre of learning or what the great mosque of Jenne was at the time it was first built; not to talk of the eternal effervescence of the in land port town of Mopti which has always fascinated people who have visited its noisy market place. I also remember the place of gold as the underlining representation of the wealth of the African empires of the Middle Ages, which old Malire presented so typically.
At the same time, I was consciously aware as we stepped out into the open, hot, disordered, bubbly exterior parking area of the Bamako airport, that today, the Republic of Maliis one of the poorest countries in the world. Its almost as if it was not here that all the grandeur of the Middle Age sun folded. If we wait long enough, as the saying goes, everything changes! Malimadea transition from being one of the richest trading systems of the world of the Middle Age stone coming one of the poorest countries in the world of the twentieth and twenty – first centuries. In between, there was the slave trade which destroyed African societies; that was followed by colonialism which was an organised system of piracy and plunder; then the last forty – five years or so, of neo – colonialism with its succession of bandit military regimes.
There was however a longlasting testimony to the grandeur of the past, that can still be appreciated in Malians today. This can be found in the dignity of its people and the richness of its musical culture. The sewere the most enduring memoriest hat I carried away from my one week of visiting the Republic of Mali. Confab Logjam: The North must defend its stand
One of the major gains that the peoples of Northern Nigeria have made from the dead locked National Reform Conference, is there-affirmation of our unity, around basic issues, as demonstrated at the end of the last one week or two. Its our hope that we would remain united, across ethnic and religious lines, because we have defeated decisively the six years of manipulation by Obasanjo, in his efforts to tear the North apart.
The fact that we have also defeated the effort to smuggle in the six years in gleterm and rotation of power between geopolitical zones, represention the major defeat for the hidden agenda that informed the calling of the conference in the first place. This is the reason that a desperate effort is being made to pressurise the Northern IG over norsto breath down the necks of our Delegate 6 accept to revisit the decision stake non the day the South-South Delegates walked out from the National Conference.
An emotional appeal is being made, that the North should accept to revisit the decisions in the interest of the country. In the mean time, Obasanjo had got tenth South West, which was originally part of the decisions, to now call for are visit. The idea is to be able to unfold the Obasanjo agenda, of getting a six year sigleterm accepted as a conference decison. It is then hoped that he can get the two year sex tension that he craves so badly, and for which characters like Greg Mbadiwe, Vs Waziri Mohammed, Kanu Agabi and Jerry Gana have been manoeuvring at the conference.
It would be the height of political suicide to accept the nonsense of a single six year term. Didn’t Obasanjo enjoy two four-year terms? Why must he be allowed to short change us at a time power is expected to shiftt o the North? The irreducible nium for us is tore tain there newable four year term for the President and Governors of the Nigerian Federals tates.
The Governors are under tremendous pressure to get the Delegates to bend to Obasanjo’s wish. But it must be made clear that Obasanjo’s agenda is not in the interest of the North, and it is not in the interest of Nigeria’s democracy. We should all resist the pressures, and count the days leading to the 2007 termination of the absolutely incompetent Obasanjo governent. In six years, this man has in flicted so much suffering on our country; he has mortgaged our nation’s sovereignty with his surrender to neo-liberal economic policies and has done so much damage relationships betweent he different peoples of our country, with his divide and rule policies. Let him going 2007 so that a patriotic government can conic into power democratically to serve our people’s interest, including getting him and his closest collaborators to account forth circrimes against the Nigerian people. Please, Northern Delegates, don’t bow to pressures from Obasanjo, in respect of the settled issues of the Conference.
Post script: Paul Wolfowitz’s visit to Nigeria The new helms manat the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, was in Nigeria last week. As usual, the visit of this leading representative of imperialism put Obasanjo and members of his so-called economic team in their best behaviour. But forme that’s not even the point.
Wolfowitz is the architect of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the occupation of that country, on the basis of lies, about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. The world now knows better, but what does it matter? The American transnational companies are steadily stealing the oil resources of Iraq anyway.
Wolfowitz has been architect of a war that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and also about one thousand seven hundred young American soldier s.I fit is a world of justice, he should be in ‘The Hague, being tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) forge nocide and other crirhes against humanity. But we live in a world of in justice, where the internationals system is trampled under by one super power, the United States. Today Wolfowitz is prancing around Africa supposedly to help end poverty. How cana man who engineered mass poverty in Iraq, help end poverty in Africa? He was targeted by the Iraqi resistance in Baghdad and only escaped by the skin of his teeth. The badly shaken coward fled the country with his tail between his legs, only to resurface as the helms man at the World Bank. Some four journalists have even dubbed him as a “ friend” of Africa. But with a friend like Wolfowitz, Africa will not need enemies!
