Africa News Digest
Nigerian Ben Okri: Iraq War Unleashes 'The New Dark Age'
The consequence of the Iraq war, is a "New Dark Age"exactly what Lyndon LaRouche, U.S. statesman and candidate for the 2004 Democratic Party Presidential nomination, has long warned against. Celebrated Nigerian author Ben Okri made the same point in an April 19 article titled, "The New Dark Age," in the London Guardian.
Okri wrote: "We are now at the epicenter of a shift in the history of the world. The war against Iraq has unleashed unsuspected forces. The first signs are twofold. The need of the Americans to protect oil fields, but not hospitals, museums and libraries. This is a catastrophic failure of imagination and a signal absence of the true values of civilization. It does not bode well for the future. "The second sign is in the Iraqi people. We ask why have they turned on themselves, looted their own museums, and burnt their priceless National Library. The answer is simple. Some have been dehumanized. They have been broken by sanctions, crushed by tyranny, and annihilated by the doctrine of overwhelming force...."
Okri warned: "We may well be on the verge of a new dark age, when even the so-called highly civilized nations no longer know what the most enduring things are. And stand by and watch as darkness creeps upon us....
"The end of the world begins not with the barbarians at the gate, but with the barbarians at the highest levels of the state. All the states in the world." He concluded: "We need a new kind of sustained and passionate and enlightened action in the world of the arts and the spirit."
The Guardian article is the text of a speech that Okri delivered on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition at the British Museum.
Nigerian Opposition Challenges Obasanjo Claim of Victory in Vote
In the week between Nigeria's legislative elections of April 12, and its Presidential and gubernatorial elections April 19, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led by President Olusegun Obasanjo, claimed a majority of seats in both legislative houses, but was sharply challenged by the opposition parties.
For the National Assembly, the leading opposition party, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) led by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was credited with 82 seats out of 360, with more than 80% of wards reporting as of April 18. For the Senate, the ANPP was credited with 26 out of 109, with 18 districts not yet reporting.
Buhari told a press conference in Abuja April 16, "We witnessed abuses unprecedented in the history of elections in this country." The opposition, he said, "would like to emphasize that any repeat [on April 19] of the fraud of April 12, a fraud we have rejected in totality, will result in mass action and its consequences, which no one can today foresee." Buhari told BBC the same day, "I will not accept defeat, because we have enough evidence that the [legislative] elections have been rigged. I want a rerun wherever the results have been changed."
The press conference was held jointly with six other parties and laid down conditions necessary for the Presidential and gubernatorial elections of April 19 to be acceptable to them.
Obasanjo, in a nationwide broadcast early in the week, without waiting for the election tribunal to do its work, called the April 12 elections free and fair, "substantially devoid of massive rigging." Then, in a letter to Buhari that soon became public, Obasanjo addressed none of the issues Buhari had raised, but subtly accused him of sour grapes and then suggested that he was plotting a coup. "Direct appeal and incitement of law enforcement agencies and the military against lawfully constituted authority is ... reprehensible," he wrote.
The day before Buhari's press conference, 12 parties led by Buhari's ANPP, meeting in Abuja April 15, had spelled out the nature of the fraudulent practices. Reports of pervasive fraud and intimidation came from two Nigerian non-party observer organizations.
Tanzania Decides To Go Nuclear
Tanzania has decided to build one or more nuclear power plants. The Tanzanian Bunge (national assembly) in Dodoma enacted the Atomic Energy Bill in the first week of April. It permits the use of uranium to produce energy, but not weapons, and establishes an Atomic Energy Commission. Nuclear power plants will be kept under state control.
Passage of the bill followed a presentation by Prof. Brig. Gen. Yadon M. Kohi, Director General of Tanzania's Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), to members of the Bunge Standing Committee on Environment, on Tanzania's energy options, on Feb. 8.
Opposition spokesman Benedicto Mutungilehi supported the bill, pointing out that Western Europe gets about a third of its electricity from nuclear power. The chairwoman of the Bunge Environment and Natural Resources Committee, Anne Makinda, said nuclear energy was cheap and "environmentally friendly."
SciDev.Net quotes the comment of one Tanzanian: "We are [one of the] poorest countries in the world. If [the government] thinks that nuclear can pull us out of poverty, let us thank God. But if that will lead us to where Iraq is now, our government should think twice about it."
Only 10% of Tanzanians have access to electricity. Tanzania is said to have rich uranium deposits, especially in the Shinyanga region; apparently they have never been mined.
Tanzania was a showcase of British anti-development policies, marketed as "African socialism" (ujamaa) under its long-serving first President, Julius Nyerere, revered throughout Africa. His policies were not abandoned until Benjamin Mkapa, the current president, was elected in 1995.
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