IS THE VOTING RIGHTS FOR MINORITY AMERICANS A RACIAL ENTITLEMENT?

America practices a representative democracy that is based on the supremacy of the United States constitution. The 15th Amendment of the United States constitution states in Section 1 that:"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude and in the Section 2 it states that:"The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation". The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits any discriminatory practices that prevent any American from voting or denies any American the constitutional rights to vote. The section 5 of this voting rights act is now before the nine Supreme Court justices of America to either strike down permanently or uphold to continue as the voting law of America.

One of the conservative justices of the Supreme Court Anthony Scalia called this section 5 of the voting rights act that is before his court today as the "perpetuation of racial entitlement". Is Justice Anthony Scalia telling America in 2013 that racism or racial discrimination in voting practices is now official dead? Is America now a 100% color blind society that American minorities should not be protected by federal law any longer from all forms of  voting discriminations? America's democracy can only survive in this 21st century human universe if it is truly all inclusive in all reality.  I hope the Supreme Court justices will uphold the constitutional rights of all Americans from all races, ethnicities, languages, national origins and cultures to be part and parcel of the American representative democracy.

"SHAME ON YOU, BEYONCE" - RUDOLF OGOO

If not for Wikileaks cable, Beyonce would have kept the $1 million dollars she got for performing at Gaddafi’s family party.

In 2009, we learned from Wikileaks cable that Beyonce got $1 million to perform at Gaddafi’s family party. So did Usher and Mariah Carey. Mariah Carey received $1 million dollars to sing four songs at Gaddafi’s son’s birthday party at Nikki Beach, St Bart’s. When the story broke, Beyonce was so embarrassed that she donated the money to earthquake relief agencies in Haiti. Usher also donated his to charities, including Amnesty International. In his statement to the press, Usher said that he was “sincerely troubled.”

When Maria Carey donated hers to charity she made this statement: “I was naïve and unaware of who I was booked to perform for. I feel horrible and embarrassed to have participated in this mess. Going forward, this is a lesson for all artists to learn from. We need to be more aware and take more responsibility regardless of who books our shows. Ultimately we as artists are to be held accountable.”

Beyonce should be sincerely troubled, embarrassed and horrified by the deal she had with Nduka Obaigbena which brought her and Jay-Z to Nigeria in 2006. I think it is time for Beyonce to once again donate the money to charity.

Thanks to Saharareporters, we now know that Beyonce was paid $1million dollars to perform at the 2006 ThisDay Music Festival in Lagos, Nigeria. Part of the money used to fund this festival came from the then governor of Bayelsa, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan.

So let us first start from home.

President Goodluck Jonathan had no shame when he was governor. And he has no shame now that he is president. If he had shame then, he wouldn’t have taken money allocated for poverty alleviation in Bayelsa state and given it to Nduka Obaigbena, who in turn gave it to Beyonce and Jay-Z to come to Nigeria and sing the Nigerian national anthem.

If Jonathan has acquired any shame since then, it would have been tolerable. But he has mastered the skill of moving from one lower office to a higher one without learning a thing. If Jonathan has any feeling of shame he wouldn’t have allowed this spectacle of an inept government that he heads to keep dancing in the market place.

Start with the wife. There is nothing wrong with a man marrying a woman that is domineering. Some wives are more powerful than their husbands. What is absurd is for the president to allow his wife to dance naked on the streets of Nigeria, squandering the nation’s resources. If Jonathan could not do anything about his Patience, he should at least warn the nation. He should say the same thing America’s 26th President Theodore Roosevelt said about his wayward daughter, Alice, who was making a scene across America. The president remarked: “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."

Obviously, Jonathan cannot run Patience and Nigeria at the same time. The burden of attempting the two tasks can be heavy even to the best of us. But if Jonathan is running the nation well, nobody would have cared what his wife does. But he isn’t. He, too, makes a fool of himself. The routine task of providing transparency and accountability and representing the nation to the outside world is as impossible for him as urinating is for a fowl.

The nation could forgive clumsiness, inability to articulate policies and issues and general uninspiring posture. But must 160 million Nigerians have to also bear an unresponsive leadership that is being swallowed by corruption? What has being dull, inarticulate and unsophisticated have to do with not telling the nation the truth; showing a sense of duty; knowing what is appropriate; and having any inclination as to what best practices should be? What will it take for Jonathan to gain some shame and raise a finger against corruption?

A man who had the hardheartedness to take $1 million dollars meant for the underprivileged and give it to the scammer, Nduka Obaigbena, is beyond repair. He may boast of a PhD but he lacks the simplest of gifts – an educated mind.

In the same vein, Nduka Obaigbena has no shame. His whole career is built on a ladder of shamelessness. Every business venture he sets up has its foundation deep in deceit. The good thing is that he doesn’t try to hide it anymore. People who do business with him have factored it in. If he promises to pay you, you collect upfront your payment for the duration of the contract. If he promises to marry you, you collect your 18-years of child support payment before the wedding.

And collecting many have been doing. A group of U.S. music stars and celebrities have been treading to Nduka’s doorstep to get paid. The African brother is donating and they are collecting. From Rihanna to Chris Brown to Usher. Why not? For some, it must be their own reparation for slavery. For others, another dumb African brother is sharing free money, so why not?

But we have always known that Obaigbena does not share his own money. He goes to Nigerian government officials and their business friends and asks for the money he would donate. For example, between 2004 and 2007, Gov. Odili channeled over N300 million to Nduka Obaigbena’s Leaders and Company. In exchange, Obaigbena promises the giver favorable coverage in his ThisDay newspaper and other media ventures of his. If the public official needs an opinion poll, Obaigbena will cook up one in his bedroom.

Obaigbena does not care where the money he is given comes from. Even if pregnant women are dying because money meant for their medicine was given to Obaigbena to bring Beyonce to Nigeria, Obaigbena does not care. In Obaigbena’s mind, it is not his fault that the poor are clueless about the people hurting them and keeping them in poverty. Obaigbena will neglect, mistreat and ruin the people as long as he feeds his greed. There is no greater sham than that Obaigbena is in the business of promoting Africa. Obaigbena’s only goal is the promotion of himself.

So from the likes of Jonathan down to the Obaigbenas, there is no hope. They are a bunch of mentally depraved individuals who are no better than the Emperor Bokassa and Mobutu Sese Seko before them. They have no idea what leadership entails. They have no iota of commitment to any cause greater than them. They come to the world just to perambulate around, build big houses, drive big cars, own private jets, spend nights in expensive hotels and eat processed foods that push their stomachs out. In no time they will die like those before them and leave a rotten legacy that their grandchildren would be ashamed of.

Which brings me back to Beyonce. On the surface of it, I know it was all business for Beyonce. Someone has money to pay for her service and she goes for it. Beyonce and her husband, Jay-Z, are more than the low-pants wearing crowd. They have reached the point where their view of life should have expanded beyond grabbing money for its sake. They have done well enough to ask deeper questions about decisions they take in their careers. When you are offered lots of money from a country where majority are wretched, do you ask questions about the ethics of the person offering the money? When you are flown into a country and placed in the best hotels, do you spare a moment to look at other parts of that country? It matters more when these are happening in Africa, the land of Beyonce’s supposedly distant cousins.

I have heard 85-year old Harry Belafonte level similar charges against Beyonce and Jay-Z. The civil rights activist accused the couple of not fulfilling their social responsibilities. "They have not told the history of our people, nothing of who we are," Belafonte lamented. "We are still looking. We are not driven by some technology that says you can kill Afghans, the Iraqis or the Spanish. It is all - excuse my French - s**t. And I think one of the great abuses of this modern time is that we should have had such high-profile artists, powerful celebrities. But they have turned their back on social responsibility.”

Beyonce and Jay-Z have not taken any risk for their people- the people they profess to care about. They have not shown any care for the African people, the people they profess to share the same heritage with. They can buy $1 million dollar nursery for their daughter, Blue Ivy. Beyonce can buy $30 million private jet as birthday gift for her husband. But must they indirectly deprive the malnourished boys and girls of the Niger Delta $1 million just to visit Nigeria and sing the national anthem?

Harry Belafonte said that his mother used to tell him, “Never go to bed at night without doing something to enhance justice". Beyonce and Jay-Z should do well to embrace such philosophy. Beyonce should be sincerely troubled, embarrassed and horrified by the deal she had with Nduka Obaigbena that brought her to Nigeria in 2006. Scratch that. She should be ashamed of herself for remaining quiet about it until Saharareporters revealed it. And Beyonce can start by returning the $1 million to Bayelsa state. Not to the current governor. No, no, no. To a reputable charity, please - Published by the Sahara Reporters.

WHAT IS THE BEST PRACTICAL ANSWER TO THE NIGERIA'S FAILING DEMOCRACY?

Nigeria as a nation has tried her hands on the representative and constitutional democracy in four different political dispensations without any national progress or democratic dividends to show for it. The first democratic dispensation from October 1, 1960 to January 15, 1966 was a big failure that was marred with official corruption, electoral frauds, tribalism, nepotism, violents and the political intimidation of opponents. 

The second democratic dispensation that started on October 1, 1979 and was terminated on December 31, 1983 by a military coup was worse than the first democratic dispensation in all ramifications. The attempt that was made at the third political dispensation under the highly deceptive political transition of the former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida was the biggest political sham in Nigeria to date. The current political dispensation which is the fourth attempt at practicing democracy in Nigeria which began on May 29, 1999 has been moving Nigeria gradually toward a failed nation for the last 14 years of this democratic experimentation.

The biggest questions that are left unanswered in Nigeria today are simply these:where do we go from here as a failing nation? Is the answer that we are looking for going to be found in the 2015 elections or not? Will these representative democracy and party politics ever work in Nigeria in all reality in our own lifetime? What is the truly wrong with us as a nation that has failed this democratic examination woefully on four different times? The present political arrangement in Nigeria is structurally deficient and any attempt to build a representative democracy and the party politics on this faulty political foundation will always result in a huge democratic failure upon democratic failure.

Nigeria needs to immediately convene the most needed Sovereign National Conference of her ethnic nationalities, religious faiths and cultural groups to formally address all that is truly wrong with the Nigerian nation since its amalgamation by Lord Lugard on January 1, 1914 and her independence from Britain on October 1, 1960 as a nation in the constant national crises and democratic failures. The Sovereign National Conference will give all Nigerians the rear opportunity of a lifetime for the first time in 100 years to sit down together, talk about their differences together and then decide the most realistic constitutional path for all her federating units. If this constitutional conference fails to hold, then our democracy will never work as a nation and our nation may eventually collapse finally.

TIM SCOTT, MARCO RUBIO AND THE GOP'S DIVERSITY PRIMARY - PERRY BECON

FROM THE GRIO WEBSITE:If Florida senator Marco Rubio is tapped for president or vice-president in 2016, Republicans will credit his charisma and perhaps his role in convincing fellow Republicans to back an immigration deal, if that eventually passes. But in reality, Rubio was already in the driver’s seat before he ever spoke a word.

Immediately after Election Day, when Republicans for the second straight time lost the presidency in part because minority voters turned against them in droves, GOP elites launched series of tactical shifts that acknowledged the party’s diversity problem. Fox News host Sean Hannity and other conservative voices indicated they would back a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, hoping to blunt the Democrats’ advantage with Latinos. The Republican National Committee convened a group to study how the party could better reach minority voters. Politicians like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal condemned Mitt Romney’s suggestion that minority voters backed Obama because he offered them “gifts” and said the GOP would not allow such rhetoric in the future.

But a more quiet shift is also taking place: The party that officially opposes affirmative action is heavily promoting its diverse faces. When Jim Demint decided to step down as South Carolina’s senator, Republican elites quickly coalesced around the idea of replacing him with Tim Scott, the only African-American Republican House member who had won reelection in 2010. Jindal, virtually ignored as a potential presidential candidate in the 2012 cycle after a dreadfully-delivered speech 2009 when he gave the official GOP response to Obama’s State of the Union address, has seen a revival among conservatives touting him as a White House hopeful. Nearly everyone in politics knew Rubio would give the GOP response to Obama’s State of the Union address if he wanted. There has even been speculation in GOP circles about the potential candidacy of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is Canadian-born and therefore probably ineligible to run for president. (Cruz has argued his mother was a U.S. citizen, so he could run for national office).

In this context, Rubio and 11 others have a decided advantage as the party looks to its future: They are not white males in a party desperate to show voters its diversity. Republicans are almost certain not to run a ticket of two white males again in 2016 and risk being cast as out of step with an increasingly diverse country, even if the party also shifts to more palatable views for minorities on issues like immigration. Most party nominees for president and vice-president are either U.S. senators or governors. In short, one of the six non-white/male Republican governors (meaning they are female, minority or both) and the six non-white/male Republican U.S. senators will almost certainly be on the 2016 Republican ticket, either winning the primary or being selected as the running mate.

They are effectively in a “Diversity Primary” against one another for a spot on the 2016 ticket.

This diversity imperative, and a resulting winnowing of the field, is not completely unusual in politics. In 1981, male candidates did not really need to apply when the first Supreme Court vacancy occurred under President Reagan, who ran a campaign in which he committed to appoint the first female Supreme Court justice and then selected Sandra Day O’Connor. In 2009, it was broadly known President Obama wanted to tap the first Latino Supreme Court justice, so Sonia Sotomayor’s name was on nearly every short list, and she was eventually nominated.

And it does not suggest any lack of qualifications. Sotomayor had the same pedigree of Ivy League degrees and top clerkships as other Supreme Court justices. Rubio, if on the ticket in 2016, would have a similar level of political experience to Obama when he ran. Jindal, having served in the House, as a top official in the Bush administration’s department of Health and Human Services and two terms as governor, would have a more diverse and complete set of government experiences than most modern presidents.

“I would say that Jindal, Ayotte, and Rubio are all in good positions because of their capabilities more than their gender, ethnic backgrounds,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist, noting New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is also considered a potential GOP contender for president or vice-president.

Feehery, like other GOP strategists I spoke with, did not want to cast his parties’ leading figures in terms of identity. His argument is both right and wrong. Rubio is no doubt a talented politician. But even Barack Obama had delivered one of the best political speeches in recent memory when he was being touted as presidential candidate in 2007.

Rubio, as even some his allies acknowledge, has done virtually nothing on the national stage, but the former senator is in a stronger position to be on the national ticket in 2016 than any other person in American politics except for Hillary Clinton. The Republicans have a diversity problem, but in practice it’s really a Latino problem. Blacks have backed Democrats for generations and are not likely to defect to the GOP in large numbers, Asians remain a very small part of the American electorate, and Mitt Romney actually won the majority of white women voters and white voters under 30. If Romney could have matched the 40 percent of Latinos George W. Bush did in 2004, instead of getting just 27 percent, he would have had a very strong chance of winning the election.

Rubio is a charismatic Latino from a swing state in a party with only two other Latinos who are governors or senators, aside from Cruz. The key question for him over the next four years is not how does he position himself to either run for president or be nominated for vice-president, but does he make any mistakes that stop an almost inevitable ascension? Outside of legislative battles on the economy, where Rep. Paul Ryan  has huge influence with party elites and members, Rubio is already the defining figure in the GOP, a person who almost certainly will have staying power.

Rubio seems to know this, and so do other Republican elites. His leadership on pushing Republicans to accept immigration reform shows a politician confident of his conservative bona fides and looking for a way to make sure the GOP ticket in 2016 (one he could be on) can actually win. And when Rubio appeared recently on the show of Rush Limbaugh to tout his ideas, Limbaugh, one of the most ardent opponents in the country of creating a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, seemed determined not to blast the potential savior of his party. Even as Rubio listed ideas Limbaugh is skeptical of, the host told the senator  “what you are doing is admirable and noteworthy.”

Of course inevitable candidacies don’t always work out. But if it’s not Rubio, it will be one of about a dozen others. There are two Latino Republican governors, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval and New Mexico’s Susana Martinez. And even without a Latino politician on the ticket, party leaders are very likely to want to pick a figure that includes some nod to diversity.

Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, two nationally-known Republican figures, both have signaled little interest in entering electoral politics, but could emerge if they wanted, as could perhaps a very credentialed GOP military figure or business woman, like former eBAY chief executive Meg Whitman. At the same time, even among the 12 in the Senate or governor’s offices, it’s hard to imagine Republicans backing political moderates like Maine’s Susan Collins or Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

But the group is not tiny. The challenge of 2008, when Republicans tried to match the historical nature of Obama’s candidacy and instead ended up with a candidate (Sarah Palin) viewed as unqualified for national office, is no longer an issue. The Republicans have a bench of people with both traditional qualifications and diversity. Palin had only served as governor of a tiny state for less than  two years before she was nominated as vice-president. If they win reelection next year, Sandoval, Martinez and Haley of South Carolina would have already served five years as governors before 2016.

What this means is that the moves of Jindal and Rubio in particular should be viewed as a proxy for where they think the Republican Party is now and must shift to by 2016. Both have emphasized the party talking about things beyond fiscal issues, a jab at Paul Ryan’s obsession with the budget and spending. Both men have said the GOP should not abandon its opposition to abortion and gay marriage, a sign they think the party can win at least one more presidential election without strong shifts on social issues. Jindal has said he won’t implement parts of “Obamacare” in his state, an acknowledgement that the legislation is still strongly opposed in GOP primary circles.

What does the rise of Republican minorities mean for the Democrats? In some ways, very little. The Democrats increasingly rely on blacks, Hispanics and women to win on Election Day. The party’s days of an all-white male ticket are already over, and there is already pressure by party activists to make sure the next Democratic ticket includes a woman, even if Clinton does not run. Democrats policies already line up with these groups on most issues.

But the kind of identity politics Democrats have practiced in the past may be coming to an end. In 2012, as debates about contraceptives and abortion happened both nationally and in key states, Democratic activists would frequently note that the voices of Republicans were all male. On immigration, with Rubio in the lead for the GOP, Democrats can’t say the Republicans aren’t listening to any Latino:From Perry Bacon Jr. on Twitter at @PerryBaconJr.

IS THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF JESSE JACKSON'S DYNASTY BLEAK OR BRIGHT IN AMERICA?

FROM THE GRIO:Are we witnessing the end of the Jackson dynasty?  Where does this once beloved political family go from here?

With former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. pleading guilty to spending $750,000 in campaign funds on a personal spending spree—and his wife Sandra Stevens Jackson pleading guilty to knowingly filing false joint federal income tax returns—the couple is facing years of prison time.

Mrs. Jackson, who resigned as a Chicago alderman last month, failed to declare $600,000 to the feds.

For a man who was once considered a contender for mayor of Chicago, the fall from grace was swift and sudden.

But even more dramatic than the fraud and conspiracy charges against the son of the veteran civil rights leader is how so much was thrown away on so little, it seems.  Is one’s career and reputation worth a $43,000 Rolex watch, nearly $9,600 in children’s furniture, over $14,500 in dry cleaning, $5,800 in drinks and $5,150 in furs?  An even better question: Is the legacy of the civil rights movement worth a man benefiting from his father’s name and enjoying a lavish lifestyle in the process?

“Over the course of my life I have come to realize that none of us are immune from our share of shortcomings and human frailties,” the former congressman said in a statement.  “Still I offer no excuses for my conduct and I fully accept my responsibility for the improper decisions and mistakes I have made.”

“The guilty plea today is so tragic because it represents such wasted potential,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. at a news conference.  “Jesse Jackson Jr. had drive, the ability and the talent to be the voice of a new generation, but he squandered that talent.  He exchanged that instead to satisfy his personal whims and extravagant lifestyle.”

Meanwhile, in light of his brother’s political woes, Jonathan Jackson, a professor at Chicago State University, was viewed as a possible replacement for Jesse Jr. in Congress, but declined to run for the seat due to a lack of interest in politics.

So, now what?  As for Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., who may have had hopes of building a political dynasty that once knocked on the White House door, just as another prominent black Chicago family moved into the White House, it would appear that dynasty has ended.  And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Empires and dynasties decline and crumble for a variety of reasons, including corruption, greed and excess, mission creep, and mediocre successors to the throne.  Old dynasties are replaced, and time goes on.  The senior Jackson, known for his role in the civil rights movement working with Martin Luther King, became a power broker with his 1984 and 1988 presidential runs. He has a long track record of fighting for economic and social justice for the poor and disenfranchised, and for his international activism, including aiding in the release of Americans captured in foreign countries.

His accomplishments are to be honored and appreciated, personal foibles, stumbles and all. After all, no one is perfect, and we are all human beings with imperfections.  But that otherwise great legacy does not translate into a right to cash in the chips of past civil rights struggles for personal fame and perpetual power.

Certainly, Jesse Jackson Jr. is not the first politician to use campaign cash for personal aggrandizement, nor will he be the last.  Other lawmakers, including African-Americans, have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar while trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Public service is a privilege that is desecrated by far too many, which is why there is so little faith in political leadership today.  Further, when people invoke the movement as their source of legitimacy, the stakes are higher and more is expected of them.  They voluntarily place themselves on a higher pedestal, allowing for a much harder fall on the way down.  And in the end, people suspect they were only in it for the money in the first place.

Jesse Jackson Jr. has shown contrition and has apologized to his family, friends and supporters for the mistakes he has made.  The former congressman said that “while my journey is not yet complete, it is my hope that I am remembered for the things that I did right.”

Humility and adversity, which Jackson is apparently experiencing now, are among the traits of an effective leader.  And while he let many people down and is facing jail, his story is not yet completed.  Everyone deserves second chances, and is worthy of redemption.  If Rep. Jackson Jr. is guilty, then so too are the many in the black community who traded in “we shall overcome” for the empty materialism of “I’ve got mine, better get yours.”

Meanwhile, never mind the played-out talk of political dynasties.  Power for power’s sake, to be inherited by future generations who may not deserve it because they did not have to earn it, is not a useful pursuit.  Rather, true power lies in helping others rather than serving inflated egos or lining pockets, and the rest falls into place.  Perhaps this is the future of the Jackson family legacy, should they choose to pursue it - by David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove.

AMERICA:A DEMOCRACY THAT HAS DIVIDED THE NATION INTO TWO DISTANT POLITICAL CAMPS

The representative democracy and the party politics in America have divided this nation into the two major political camps on all the most important national and the international issues that America is facing today as a nation in this 21st century human universe. The two major and the national political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have both divided the American voters and the 50 states electoral map into the blues states for the Democrats, the red states for the GOP and the swing or the battleground states that can go to either of the two political parties in any statewide and national elections. 

The Republicans stands for the conservative ideologies of small government, low taxes for the richest Americans and the biggest corporations, strong military, aggressive militarized foreign policies, unregulated private sector of the national economy, cutting down on government spendings and social services. The Democratic promotes the middle class Americans, demands for fairer tax rates for all Americans including the rich Americans and the biggest corporations. The Democrats also want more federal regulations of the private sectors, diplomatic foreign policy agendas and the protection of the social safety net programs for the poor Americans. 

There is no single issue today in America that has not heavily divided this nation apart, from here politics to her politicians to her news media and to the entire national discourse or the public opinion. America is divided from her foreign wars to foreign debt to national deficits to Obamacare to women' rights to wage equality to gay rights to marriage equality to abortion rights to voting rights to illegal immigration to the failing public education to gun control to fairness in taxation to Supreme Court decisions to the exact interpretations of the US constitution to the US Congress and finally to the seat of the government in Washington, DC.

THE ALL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESS (APC) IS ANOTHER POLITICAL DECEPTION IN NIGERIA

Few days ago, I perused the list of the politicians that were named to draft the manifestos and the official constitution of the recently formed political party in Nigeria that is known as the All Progressive Congress (APC) which had not yet been registered by the INEC and which was also a political merger between the already existing four smaller political parties (ACN, CPC, ANPP and a faction of APGA) that had no national spread unlike the present ruling party, the People Democratic Party (PDP) that has controlled the national government of Nigeria since 1999.

A general survey of the past political life of few of these men who are currently in the leadership of this young political organ speak volumes. I will put my satellite on Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Tom Ikimi and Audu Ogbeh to reveal some of the most important facts that many Nigerians need to know about this new party that is interested in winning at the federal level in 2015. Many of the leaders of this newly formed APC were once the pioneer members and leaders of the PDP like Audu Ogbeh who was the Chairman of the PDP at one time. Mr Tom Ikimi was a man that served one of the most corrupt and repressive military governments in Nigeria under the late General Sanni Abacha as the nation's foreign minister. Tom Ikimi travelled all over the world wasting the tax payers' money, promoting and defending all the actions of the Abacha's government including the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa, the environment advocate and the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria. Tom Ikimi also served at one time as the chairman of the PDP in his home state of Edo.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu entered the office of the governor of Lagos State of Nigeria with a very serious allegation of certificate forgery and discrepancies in the information that he provided to the INEC. Bola Ahmed Tinubu still has an unresolved case of official corruption in office hanging on his head from the EFCC when he presided over the affairs of the government of Lagos State of Nigeria. These men are all political opportunists without any sound principle, integrity or exemplary performance in the political offices that that held in the past in Nigeria. 

The APC in my own personal judgement is simply a bunch of politicians that are seeking national prominence, who are tired of the local, ethnic and regional politics plus its limitations and are now pursuing their own political ambitions or agendas with one primary desire and purpose of wrestling the political power from the ruling PDP. Have these four political parties (ACN, ANPP, CPC, APGA) turned their respective states or regions that they presently control since 1999 or after 1999 into paradises on earth for those Nigerians who are living in that part of Nigeria? Charity truly must begin at home.

MALCOLM X:HIS LIFE AND LEGACIES IN AMERICA 48 YEARS LATER

Today makes it exactly 48 years ago that Malcolm X was murdered prematurely. This dead American remained one of the few men that helped to shape the destiny of the United States of America in the 20th century as the nation that had struggled for centuries for true racial equality, integration and justice. The history of the American nation and the chapter on the American civil rights movements can never be complete without mentioning the key roles played by Malcolm X in his very short, controversial, colorful and very eventful life.

Malcolm X to some Americans was a black racist, anti-American, anti-white, black supremacist, anti-semitic and a promoter of violence. To the other Americans, Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for the racial equality and economic justice for all African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for her crimes of slavery, segregation and racial discrimination against black Americans.

Today makes it exactly 48 years ago that Malcolm X was assassinated in a manner that is still mysterious till today. Malcolm X's true legacies and his rightful place in America are now finally in the hands of time, history and posterity the three true judges to determine.

IS BARACK OBAMA GOING TO BE REMEMBERED AS ONE OF THE GREATEST AMERICAN PRESIDENTS?

Today is the President's Day in America and Barack Hussein Obama is the current President of the United States of America till 2016. Every American President to date left the White House either with many enduring legacies that will be remembered for generations to come and in the history books or with a departure from power that will have no single remembrance in history books. The three elements of time, history and posterity are always the true incorrigible judges of all American Presidents once they leave that highly esteemed office either for a continuous remembrance or for no remembrance at all. The biggest question today in America as we celebrate some of our few, but great former Presidents and their enduring legacies from generation to generation is simply this:Will Barack Obama join the special list of the great American Presidents when he leaves the White House in 2016? What will be his enduring legacies? How will he be remembered by historians and the future Americans yet to be born? What will he be remembered for in particular?

President Barack Hussein Obama will be remembered for making history and for breaking the racial barrier in America to become the first black President in a nation with past that was full of very sad or brutal history of slavery, racial segregation, racial discrimination, racial injustice and institutionalized racism. President Barack Obama will be remembered as the President that gave all Americans a universal health care that is known as the Obamacare for the first time in America. President Barack Obama will be remembered as the President that used his economic stimulus to stop the America's national economy from her total collapse in 2008. President Barack Obama will be remembered for his equal pay for equal work law across all the genders. President Barack Obama will be remembered for his D'ont Ask and D'ont Tell in the United States military. President Barack Obama will be remembered for promoting marriage equality and gay rights. President Barack Obama will be remembered for ending the war in Iraq and if he is successful in 2014, he will be remembered for ending the war in Afghanistan also. President Barack Obama will be remembered for the following important national issues, such as the comprehensive immigration reform that will give 11 million illegal immigrants in America a path to the American citizenship, gun control to reduce gun violence in America and the America's energy independent plan to reduce America's foreign dependence on oil if he is successful with all these planned policies and proposed bills in his second and the last term that will officially end in 2016.

"THE 1914 AMALGAMATION OF NIGERIA:HISTORIC FRAUD OR ACT OF GOD" - TAYO OKE

By Tayo Oke

On January first, 2014, it will be one hundred years since the colonial robber Baron, Lord Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1858-1945), made the audacious decision to bring what was then the Northern part of the Niger (area) in unison with the Southern part, to create what we have today as Nigeria. Before then, the two regions lived as distinct and separate entities; not having much in common. Lugard, however, felt it expedient to create the new country, Nigeria, purely for administrative convenience.  No account was taken of differences in culture, tradition, religion, way of life or, for that matter, the wishes of the people being so rudely submerged. After all, the inhabitants of the regions were colonial subjects, and so, it was left to the master to do as he pleased.

This singular colonial fiat has been the source and fountain of Nigeria’s persistent crisis of nationhood ever since.  Thus, the Federal Goverment’s plan to throw up a huge party to “celebrate” the centenary of this forced merger, next year, is bizarre and ill-advised. Of course, the act of drawing up arbitrary boundaries and creating new state territories is not such a unique thing to Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the whole of modern African states were created in exactly the same fashion at the Berlin Conference of European powers in 1885. They sat around a long, round table with the boundary-less map of  Africa in the middle, and started carving up the territories into choice names:  Cameroon (land of shrimps), Gold Coast  (land of gold), Ivory Coast (land of ivories), Upper Volta, Kenya, Mali, etc. That is how modern African states acquired their identities. It is a painful part of African history. That is why no one proposed the centenary celebration of the Berlin Conference in 1995. The 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria was an unfinished business from ‘Berlin 1885’. It therefore defies logic that right-thinking Nigerians would want to turn that into a cause célèbre. Perhaps more than just the funfair planned by the Federal Government is the more pressing issue of the legality of the amalgamation itself.

My search through the UK Parliamentary archives did not reveal any promulgation of an Act of Parliament on the subject as it should have.  Lord Lugard presented a series of “reports”, one of which was published in May 1913 in which “the secretary of state has decided that the combined territories of Northern and Southern Nigeria, divided into two or more subsidiary administrations, shall be placed under the control of a single Governor-General...” .  Lugard had simply prevailed on the secretary of state to rubber stamp his wish to rule over a vast swathe of land which he had Christened Nigeria.  The next occasion of historical significance that took place in relation to this was when Lugard actually delivered the “amalgamation speech” on the “amalgamation day of January 1st 1914”. He boldly announced to the world, based on his agreement with the secretary of state the previous year, his ‘desire therefore as  briefly as possible to describe to his audience, and through them to the official and unofficial community of Nigeria the basis on which this Amalgamation is to be carried out..’  The basis, of course, was to facilitate the continued exploitation of the people and their natural resources. Let’s not forget, this was done as World War 1 was just breaking out, Parliamentary process was thus dispensed with. It is my submission, therefore, that a Nigerian court of competent jurisdiction can and should be given the opportunity to rule on the said Amalgamation. Committed eminent Nigerian lawyers could, if they choose to, seek a judicial review of the decision to amalgamate as soon as it is practicable to do so. A declaration that the decision is null and void should usher in an immediate convocation of a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) to give Nigerians the long awaited say on this most vexed of all issues.

Having said that, I can hear discordant voices saying: ‘leave well alone; let it be; the fraud was perpetrated long time ago; it’s an Act of God; it’s our destiny to be together, etc.  These voices are well meaning, but wrong in a fundamental respect. In 1707, the previously disagreeable Kingdoms of Scotland and England were merged together by King James (1), a Scottish Monarch, and was later ratified by Scottish and English Parliaments when they both met for the first time in October 1707. There lies the basis of the United Kingdom as we know it today. Why was this precedent not applied to the Amalgamation of Nigeria over two hundred years later? Nonetheless, Parliamentary legitimacy notwithstanding, the “Act of Union” between Scotland and England has been a running sore in the hearts of many Scots for a long time. With its population of just over five million compared to England’s  fifty three million (or 84% of total UK population), Scottish nationalist leaders have long felt ‘sub-merged’ and ‘marginalised’ within the UK although, this may be more apparent than real to an outside observer. Nonetheless, because this feeling runs deep, it was given political expression by the formation of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) in 1934. Why can’t, for instance, Boko Haram be allowed to express their political grievances through a legitimate political party with the sole aim of establishing a Sharia state in the Northern region? Why not? Once you have feelings of ‘injustice’ running so deep, and being so visceral, it needs to be given democratic expression or, the people will resort to violence.

Anyway, back to Scotland. The SNP was berated and shunned for much of its early existence, until it gradually began to win the hearts and minds of the Scottish people.  It won its first Parliamentary seat in 1945, then, substantially increased its representation in 1974 with eleven Members of Parliament, before finally becoming the majority in Scottish Parliament in 2007. The party’s mantra since formation has remained full independence for Scotland and a break away from the UK. Guess what? The UK Parliament has now agreed a referendum of the Scottish people to take place in 2014 to determine whether Scotland should opt out of the UK and re-start life as an independent entity. The campaign has already started between pro and anti independence camps.  It promises to be lively and enlightening.  My haunch is that there will be a narrow victory for those who wish to remain in the UK and the nationalist fervour would have been extinguished for the foreseeable future.  The question for us in Nigeria is why are we afraid of an open democratic debate about the terms of our existence as a state? Why is this type of debate encouraged in Western countries as a mark of political maturity and it is discouraged in our society as heresy? Why do we want to spend a trillion naira bringing out dance troupes and masquerades next year to celebrate the centenary of an amalgamation, which to all intent and purposes is a legal infamy? Our leaders appear to have taken leave of their senses with this one. Let’s hope common sense will eventually prevail - published online by the Sahara Reporters.

ARE NIGERIAN LEADERS SUPER HUMAN BEINGS THAT CANNOT BE SICK IN ALL REALITY?

Nigerian public elected and appointed officials as well as their immediate family members always present themselves to their fellow Nigerians as super human beings that can never be sick or even die. They present an image that is larger than life. A life that is above all human sicknesses and diseases. They always hide their health histories from the public and even deny their publicly known medical records, hospitalizations, medical treatments or any medical procedures that were done on them either in Nigeria or in the foreign nations. The long-list of their decades of medical denials is so long in Nigeria beginning from the IBB who was holed up in a military hospital in France for 30 days in the 1980s without any public disclosure of the nature of his illness.

The late Sanni Abacha was rumored to be nursing an undisclosed ailment that never saw the light of the day till his sudden death in power. Olusegun Obasanjo was said to be diabetic and hypertensive with any public disclosure till today. The late President Yar'Adua never publicly disclosed to the Nigerians that he was sick nor the true nature of his illness. The current Nigerian first lady Mrs Goodluck denied any known illness or foreign hospitalization after she was away from Nigeria to Germany last year for about six weeks and then returned back to Nigeria to celebrate a $3 million resurrection thanksgiving service at Aso Rock villa in Abuja. The health histories of the Nigerian leaders are truly based on secrecies, cover-ups, denials, lies and the dirty game of hiding and seeking in all reality.

WHY ARE NIGERIANS CONSIDERED AS SETTLERS IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY OF ORIGIN?

"NO NIGERIAN SHOULD BE A SETTLER ANYWHERE IN NIGERIA:A CHEAP TALK FROM THE SULTAN OF SOKOTO":The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, has called for an end to the current settler syndrome in the body politic. He said no Nigerian should be treated as a settler in any part of the country. The eminent traditional ruler made the appeal in Osogbo, Osun State on Friday when Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, hosted him to a dinner.

Was the non settler clause part of the unseen, unknown and the invisible amalgamation document of 1914 that was carried out by Lord Lugard that gave birth to Nigeria in the first instance that no single Nigerian either died or alive ever saw or possessed? Did those 450 ethnic nationalities, the major religious faiths and cultural groups agree in 1914 during the amalgamation of both the Northern and the Southern protectorates together that the non settler status will be their new constitutional term of engagement? Does Nigerian constitution recognize the non-settler clause in all reality when all federal government policies in Nigeria from 1960 to date are based on federal character, quota system, state of origin, geopolitical zone, cultural and religious identities?

IS NIGERIA NOW A NATION OF TEMPORARY PLEASURE SEEKERS?

‎Nigerians always focus their positive energies on things that will never make their country greater, better, more prosperous or even add positive colors to their own life in all truth, honesty and reality. The nation has witnessed or seen an enormous energies from all Nigerians that are geared toward the recently concluded 2013 AFCON football championship that Nigeria won after 19 years of failure to the sudden death of the popular Nigerian lady singer Goldie that is now surrounded with many controversies and to the visiting American TV reality personality Kim Kardashian who is currently in Nigeria to promote her global image.

 How can we ever move forward as a nation when these enormous energies and excitements from Nigerians are never channeled toward a better Nigeria, a working Nigeria, a Nigerian where the rule of law reigns supreme, a Nigeria where her democracy works and brings political and economic dividends for all her citizens, a Nigeria that we can all be very proud of in this 21st century human universe that also truly works fairly for all Nigerians?

‎"NIGERIA:A NATION THAT IS BUILT ON DECEPTION"

Nigeria under the current presidency of Jonathan Ebele Goodluck is currently celebrating the centenary anniversary of the formation of the Nigeria nation by Lord Lugard in 1914 when he amalgamated the Northern and the Southern protectorates together as directed from England without any Nigerian either died or alive claiming to have seen that amalgamation document to date. Who has the custody or the official possession of the legal document that was signed into law that amalgamated the Northern protectorate and the Southern protectorate together in 1914 to form a new British colony that was named Nigeria by the then British colonial authority led by the then Governor General Lord Lugard?

Why is this legal document hidden from all Nigerians since 1914? What exactly were the legal terms in this amalgamation document? Why is this document which is the most important legal document that binds over 450 ethnic nationalities, many religious and cultural groups together as one nation by ending caliphates, kingdoms and empires for almost 100 years not publicly accessible to anyone in Nigeria today or made publicly available or accessible since 1914?

Is it true that this important amalgamation document will expire officially on the January 1, 2014 when Nigeria will be exactly 100 years old as a nation? Is this legal document that was signed into law in 1914 set on stone forever and can never or must never be researched, discussed publicly, amended or revisited again in our lifetime no matter what Nigeria is facing in this 21st century human universe? Why are we still using this unseen and unknown legal document to run Nigeria for almost 100 years without any single political contribution or input from the 450 different nationalities, the many religious and cultural groups that formed the present day Nigeria?

"TAXATION WILL BRING MORE REVENUE THAN OIL TO NIGERIA - EL RUFAI"

This article was published by Sahara Reporters:
The Federal Government earned N2.2trillion as opposed to N1.9trillion it targeted in 2009; N2.9trillion as against N2.5trillion in 2010; N4.7trillion in 2011 as opposed to N3.6trillion and N5trillion generated in 2012 as opposed to N3.6trillion.  No, these are not foreign exchange earnings or even the Jonathan administration’s spurious borrowings. These are the sums generated by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in the last five years.
With these figures, borrowing to fund our budget deficits which grew from N161.1billion in the third quarter of 2011 to N459.1 billion in the third quarter 2012 are unjustifiable. Despite claims of deficit reduction by the Finance Minister, the projected deficit for 2013 is N1.039trillion. When we consider that these deficits further compound our national debt which is around N6.9trillion ($44billion) we begin to see where the transformation agenda of this administration is taking Nigeria - long term sovereign insolvency!
The FIRS has undergone quiet and true transformation since Mrs. Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru was hired by the Obasanjo administration from the private sector to lead it. Not only has the FIRS been able to draft an updated legal framework for taxation, it was able to expand our existing tax brackets, introduce re-organization policies and saw to the passage of about 4 Acts, including ones for FIRS Establishment, Value Added Tax Amendment, Companies Income Tax Amendment, and the Petroleum Profit Tax Amendment. Yet, the N5trillion record achievement is only a scratch on the surface of Nigeria’s tax generation potentials. Nigeria can easily generate taxes equivalent to just the global average of 25% of GDP (which will be in excess of least N10trillion) if we can get our act together.
Oil taxes revenue contributed N3.2 trillion; representing 64% of the entire 2012 collections as against the 2011 figures of N3 trillion. Interestingly, another major feat of the FIRS has been its ability to bring a significant swathe of the non-oil sector into the tax bracket. The contribution of non-oil taxes increased from N1.5 trillion or 33.65% in 2011 to N1.8 trillion or 36% in 2012, from much lower numbers in 2003.
Why has taxation, which is potentially Nigeria’s largest source of revenues, still been neglected in favor of ‘cheap’ oil money? Is it because of the fear that a tax paying citizenry would not allow their taxes to be looted as happens with oil revenues which are sometimes diverted by officials and spent even before reaching our shores? What is the story of taxation in Nigeria?
In 1943, the Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service was carved out of the former Inland Revenue Department (IRD) that covered what was then the Anglophone West Africa (including Ghana, Gambia and Sierra Leone) during the colonial era. In 1958 the Federal Board of Inland Revenue (FBIR) was established under the Income Tax Ordinance of 1958. After various transformations in 1961 and 1993, on 16th April 2007, the FIRS (Establishment) Act 13 of 2007 was passed, and the operational arm of the FBIR, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) secured its autonomy.
State Assemblies were also expected to pass laws facilitating the autonomy of their Internal Revenue Services. Now 6 years later, only Lagos and Adamawa States have granted their IRS autonomy, while Ogun, Ekiti and Bauchi states are in the process of doing so. A look at how Lagos state utilizes its taxpayer’s money underscores the importance of autonomy for state IRS.
The FIRS is charged primarily with the responsibility of accessing, collecting and accounting for the various taxes to the governments of the federation. However, many Nigerians have seen this as a big loophole to the Establishment Act, leaving some to wonder why this body that collects public funds is responsible to the government, and not to the people. After the funds are remitted to the federal government, what accountability measures are put in place? How does the average Nigerian who pays his taxes diligently know that his taxes are not just moved into offshore and local accounts that benefit only the corrupt few?
In Price Water House Cooper’s (PwC) 2012 ease of paying taxes ranking, Nigeria was ranked 138 out of 183 economies. According to the same report, the average tax compliance time in Nigeria is 936 hours as opposed to a 318 hour benchmark for Sub-Saharan Africa and 186 hours for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. During 2010/2011 period covered by the 2012 study, 33 economies were said to have improved in the ease of tax payments. A common feature amongst these 33 economies was the introduction of electronic systems that make tax compliance easier.
The mistrust in the system is one of the reasons why the country has not been able to harness the full benefit of taxes compared to other countries. Many people, who pay taxes, do it reluctantly because infrastructure that should be maintained by tax funds suffer neglect; public utilities do not function, educational and health facilities decrepit, and roads are now considered by most as death traps.
In most countries, tax legislation is used to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, and in 2011, Nigeria assented to the Personal Income Tax (Amendment) Act, 2011 (PITAM 2011) in a bid to move in this direction. The PITAM 2011 consolidated all personal income tax reliefs and allowances into a single Consolidated Tax Relief Allowance (CTRA) of N200,000 (Two Hundred Thousand Naira) or a minimum of 1% of a person’s annual gross income, whichever is higher of the two, plus 20% of the individual’s annual gross income as CTRA.
The remainder of income was liable to Personal Income Tax at an average graduating rate of between 7% to 24% of the individual’s annual income; thus, a higher PIT Tax rate is reserved for people earning above N1.6Million and N3.2Million per annum after making provision for CTRA. Ordinarily, this should fulfill the tax objective of income redistribution. The problem was and is that tax evasion or avoidance is done mostly at the top levels of government and amongst the richest in society, year in year out, we hear of tax evasions by government agencies.  Furthermore, our informal is estimated to be at least three times the formal economy, and these incomes are hardly ever captured for taxation.
Tax evasion in the formal sector occurs due to weak enforcement, corruption and impunity. For instance, in the period of 2004 to 2012 alone, the FIRS stated that 100 organizations including MDA’s owed N169billion in tax arrears. This is quite apart from the corruption inherent in normal tax administration and collection. Most tax collectors and officials conspire with tax payers; negotiate some sort of bribe with individuals or companies for a reduction or total avoidance of their tax burdens.  The various structures which are required to work together to make tax evasions difficult are not properly coordinated. Enforcement of tax compliance should be given adequate attention and various government agencies should collaborate to share information to reduce tax evasion or avoidance.
Even for diligent Nigerians who voluntarily go to make tax remittances, they are often met with bureaucracy that leads to time wastage and sharp practices. For instance, you need a Tax Identification Number (TIN) for tax payments, these TIN numbers cannot be generated online, an individual has to go to a tax office, fill a form and wait for paper work before the TIN is generated which would typically take between a day or two. It is also tedious that whenever taxes are paid, the individual has to go to the tax office to collect his tax payment receipts after making payment in banks. A more simplified system needs to be put in place.
Perhaps the biggest problem to Nigeria’s tax administration is the absence of a comprehensive tax payer’s database. The absence or inefficiency in this area undermines tax systems. The accelerated completion of the National ID project with biometric capture incorporating TINs will go a long way in enhancing tax administration, collection and accountability.
For the FIRS to go beyond its present capacities, it must be free of the present internal conflicts plaguing the system, it must win public confidence by creating an accountability framework, and it must adopt a technology-driven approach as opposed to the largely bureaucratic manual tax administration system currently in place throughout most of the country.
If online accounts, where filing, tax payment, tax records, receipt printing and certificate generation can be done are created for individual tax payers and tied to their TIN numbers for login, would this reduce compliance time and the associated costs? Would this encourage voluntary tax compliance? What about abolition all income taxes and introducing sales taxes at state and LG levels, while raising the VAT rate from 5% to a higher number? These are all policy and fiscal choices that need to be debated and considered going forward.
While our tax fortunes may appear to continue to increase, the reality on ground is that with appropriate policies, technological and operational reforms, collections, expanding the tax bracket and monitoring made more effective, we can raise more revenues than we currently earn from non-renewable natural resources like oil and gas.
The danger of course, is that like the huge oil revenues and consistent domestic and foreign borrowing by this government, more revenues may only add to the pool of funds from which money is stolen or wasted on non-viable projects that neither create jobs for the millions that are jobless, nor improve the quality of life for Nigerians. We must refocus our energies on citizens' taxation so that accountability demands on our leaders will also intensify - Mallam El-Rufai, a former minister of the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria and the author of the recent controversial book "The Accidental Public Servant".

IS THE MARCOS RUBIO THE TRUE SAVIOR OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OF AMERICA?

The GOP for the first time in more than 40 years lost a huge support of the American minorities in the November 2012 presidential election. The GOP presidential flag bearer in that election Mitt Romney received only 29% of the Latino-American votes which was the lowest presidential votes ever received by any Republican presidential candidate since the 1970s. Between the 1970s and the 1980s respectively, all the GOP presidential candidates received more than one-third of the Latino-American  votes except Mitt Romney. The last Republican President in the White House, Mr. George Bush Jr received more than 40% of the Latino votes for his reelection in 2004.

The Latino-Americans are now the nation's largest minority group with more than 60,000 Latinos turning voting age every month or approximately about 4 million new Latino voters in every presidential election circle. The three GOP traditional red states of Georgia, Arizona and Texas may soon become the earliest battleground states in 2016 presidential election or latest in the 2020 presidential elections because of the rapidly growing Latino-American population in those states. Today in America, it is almost practically impossible for any political party to win the White House without winning at least 40% or more votes from the Latinos.

The GOP has now come to the full realization that their party in 2013 now has a big minority voting problem in America. The GOP establishment circles are all busy today searching for the political solutions and the ways out of their present major political obstacle or barrier in the wrong places. This present political predicament of the GOP  may prevent this party from winning any national election again in America. One of the answers that the GOP has decided to use to return to the national acceptance in America in 2016 is the Florida young Latino-American senator Marcos Rubio who was given the rare opportunity to deliver the GOP response address to the President Barack Obama State of the Union address yesterday. The GOP has been secretly projecting and promoting the political image of Marcos Rubio after they lost the presidential election of last year November as a bait that will catch the Latino-Americans who massively rejected the GOP in November last year.

The Latinos rejected the GOP because of their hostile policies that are all anti-Latino in nature. What the GOP needs right now is not Marcos Rubio, but policies and programs that will directly address the political, economic and the social aspirations of the Latino-Americans in 2013. In conclusion, the erroneous belief that this Florida GOP senator Marcos Rubio is the true and the expected savior that will take the Republican Party back to the limelight, its former glory days and the national acceptance in 2016 and beyond will soon collapse like a pack of playing cards between now and the 2016 presidential election.

"PROSPERITY GOSPEL IS A FIRST-CLASS RELIGIOUS FRAUD AND A PONZI SCHEME"

Below are the seven most important reasons why the so called prosperity gospel or the gospel of health and wealth or the gospel of financial abundance is a typical religious fraud and a ponzi scheme that is covered with God, the name of Jesus Christ, the Christian faith and with the manipulated, twisted or the wrong interpretations of the Bible for the personal enrichment or the benefit of the prosperity preachers only:

(i) Prosperity gospel is not biblical in its origin or nature. This gospel came from men and not from God. This gospel was man made and man created. This is a strange and another type of gospel that is not from the New Testament Scriptures. It is a greed gospel that is based on the love of money and materialism. A gospel that Jesus Christ, his 12 apostles and the early Church did not preach anywhere and at anytime in the Bible days. There is no single known traditional or any historical precedence of this type of gospel anywhere in the entire New Testament Scriptures or in the entire history of the early Christians and Church. This prosperity gospel is not the pauline gospel that was preached to the Jews and the Gentiles by Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ. This prosperity gospel measures spirituality, divine blessings and spiritual growth in the life of a Christian by using money and materialism as the measuring tools, its biblical standards and spiritual requirements.

(ii) The canon of the Scriptures (The Bible) was completed in AD 96 through the divine revelation of God that was given to Apostle John who was later martyred for his faith in Jesus Christ in the Isle of Patmos. This development signified the end of the last Book of the Bible which is the Book of Revelation. The today's prosperity gospel is an extra-biblical revelation that is based primarily on the false promise of money, materialism, sound health or healing for the tithers and sacrificial offering givers. This strange gospel started in the 1940s almost 1,838 years later after Apostle John's divine revelation was given to him to complete the last Book of the Bible. Prosperity gospel started through a small religious sect that was known then as the "Faith and Healing Movement" in the southern United States or in the so called Bible-Belt region of America. It was pioneered by the late Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin Sr respectively. The core teaching of the prosperity gospel says that "God wants all Christians to be very rich in this life, stay healthy and the key to that divine blessings is by giving one's tithes, regular offerings and using the creative power of positive confessions to make or create your own world the way you want it to be in all reality". This gospel was later preached across the length and the breath of the United States before it was then exported from America to the nations of the world in the later part of the 20th century.

(iii) This prosperity gospel has produced two visible, distinct and very different mixed results anywhere this type of gospel is preached and is practiced worldwide. The two results are:(a) The primary beneficiaries from this prosperity gospel are the prosperity teachers or preachers themselves who continue to enrich themselves from the tithes and the offerings of their ignorant, gullible and vulnerable givers. These prosperity preachers are normally wealthy or super-rich. (b) The tens of millions of their followers and givers worldwide continue to live daily in abject poverty and lacking the basic needs of life despite their givings and the promises of financial liberty to them through this prosperity gospel.

(iv) The givers to this type of gospel are always financially and materially worse of or more miserable at the end of the day when you compare their financial and material status after months or years of givings to this gospel of wealth and health or to this so called prosperity gospel.

(v) The teachings of the prosperity gospel also violates the three traditional or the conventional ways in which people have being making money all over the world for thousands of years, such as, employment, business ownership, investments and savings.

(vi) This prosperity gospel teaches that its followers and givers live in the supernatural heavenly realm of an economic system on earth that is totally immune to the present global financial systems and the economic forces of this present world that can only affect the non Christians who do not practice the teachings of this prosperity gospel in real life.

(vii) Prosperity teachers teach that financial abundance and the practical answers to the problems of abject or chronic poverty in the life of a Christian comes directly by tithing and by giving of one's offerings. There is no single biblical evidence to show that tithing was ever practiced once or regularly in the entire early Church according to the accounts of the New Testament Scriptures. Jesus Christ and the New Testament Scriptures never commanded the Christians to tithe. The grace giving that is clearly visible throughout the New Testament Scriptures and was openly practiced or demonstrated extensively by the early Church or the early Christians throughout the 1st century Church era was never based on the mandatory tithing for the nation of Israel according to the law of Moses in Malachi 3:8-11.

The givings that were seen and practiced by the early Christians in the New Testament Scriptures were based solidly on the scriptural directive from 2 Corinthians 9:7 which reads "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" (NIV Translation of the Bible). The New Testament Scriptures type of grace-giving that was practiced openly and extensively throughout the early Church was not mandatory for Christians or required from Christians. It was not a 10% based giving that is known as tithing. It was not a divine curse if it was not done by any Christian. It was not an act of robbing God and it was never tied to any divine discipline coming from the devourers or to any overflowing divine blessings that come from the opened windows of heaven.

"OLUSEGUN OBASANJO IS NOT IN THE SAME CLASS WITH NELSON MANDELA AND KOFI ANNAN"

The former Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo was reported to have launched his own political foundation in London over the weekend that will promote democracy, good government and development in Africa. This guy is the biggest political clown and joker that I know today in Africa. This was a man that did not believe in the democratic principles and the rule of law. This was a man who institutionalized electoral frauds, political exclusion and political persecution of his perceived political opponents. This was a man who started the politics of "Do or Die in Nigeria". 

This was a man who violated the various court orders. This was a man who corrupted the NASS with his "Ghana must go bags". This was a guy who used the EFCC for the selective official corruption trials. This was a man that attempted to change the Nigeria's constitution to enable him to have a shot for the 3rd term at the presidency of Nigeria. This was a man that put the entire oil industry in Nigeria under his direct control from 1999 to 2006. 

This was a man who entered the Aso Rock villa financially broke in 1999 and then left in 2007 owing a mansion, a presidential library, a private high school, millions of shares in the major corporations in Nigeria. Africa is truly in a big trouble with this type of shady individual as a role model of what an elder stateman should be in all reality. Olusegun Obasanjo is never in the same class as the former South Africa President Nelson Mandela or the former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan of Ghana.

"AMERICA'S DEMOCRACY NOW HAS THE UNOFFICIAL 4TH BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT"

The America's constitutional democracy that is based on party politics, popular election and official selection of our public officials is now 236 years old. The United States constitution that is the supreme law of the land in America officially recognizes the three branches of the government (executive, judiciary and legislative) that are all politically and constitutionally autonomous or independent from one another. The United States constitution also places the principles separation of powers and checks and balances in the way these three branches of our government interact, operate, function and govern this nation. In the last few decades, another branch of the United States government that is not recognized by the constitution of the United States has emerged in our government with an enormous political power as well as political influence that transcend all the three constitutionally recognized branches of the American government.

The 4th unofficial branch of the United States government today is the special interest groups and lobbyists from the Wall Street banks, multinational oil and gas corporations, big businesses, professional groups and labor unions as well as the special interest groups that have their own political, economical and social agendas designed to primarily benefit these interest groups only and never the American voters. The United States Congress for the last few decades is politically muzzled and influenced by these powerful groups. There are strong and undisputed correlations between the voting patterns of the members of the US Congress on the important bills before the United States Congress and the political, economical and social agendas of these special interest groups and lobbyists.

This is the reason why Washington politics is completely broken. No single legislative bill can successfully pass the both houses of the United States Congress today without these congress men and women giving their strong political considerations to the political agendas of the special interest groups and lobbyists. The 535 members of the United States Congress are popularly elected by the American voters to serve and to defend their interests in Washington and not the interests of these powerful special groups and lobbyists. Whenever the US Congress works and a bill is passed by both houses, it is because one of the political parties have the majority control of the both houses or both political parties will jointly benefit from that particular bill and lastly, that bill will favor the political agendas of those special interest groups and lobbyists. The US Congress continues to leave the interests of the American voters who elected these officials behind and unattended to in favor of the 4th tier of our government in Washington, DC.