April 11, 2010
There is a very bad habit, which I have cultivated over the years. It is the habit of spending the first chunk of time whenever I go to the library to do serious work on whatever piece of literature that I happen to find on the desk that I settle down at to work.
There is a very bad habit, which I have cultivated over the years. It is the habit of spending the first chunk of time whenever I go to the library to do serious work on whatever piece of literature that I happen to find on the desk that I settle down at to work.
I use whatever that piece of literature is to unwind before I settle down on to tackle what I have to do. This bad habit has enriched me in knowledge considerably on several occasions when whatever I found revealed pieces of vital knowledge that I could not have accessed that day if I hadn’t let my bad habit take the better part of me for a while. I still recall that it was through the said bad habit that I stumbled on a political geography journal in which I found an article on US exceptionalism that I found useful for an aspect of my doctoral dissertation. On yet another time, a fat book on British historical statistics became a data source for a graduate seminar paper that I subsequently developed into an article that the Journal of Asian and African Studies accepted.
Well, bad habits die hard. It seems like that same bad habit has paid off some again for me today when I stumbled onto The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, From Nixon to Obama, in which Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman, two investigative writers laid out what they called “the little-understood evolution of the neoconservative movement—from its birth as a rogue insurgency in the Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America’s foreign policy in the Bush years to its repudiation with the election of Barack Obama in 2008”. The pay-off is not in terms of what I read in the book, it is about the picture of one of the people on the cover. That person is Dr. Paul Wolfowitz. Do you remember him? He was one of the more prominent neoconservative elements in George Bush’s administration during the first term when the US invaded Iraq. In fact, he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense who wrangled hard with his principal, Donald Rumsfeld over who would out-do the other in their over-zeal to invade Iraq.
If you recall, Wolfowitz was parceled to head the World Bank by the Bush White House right after Bush won a second term in 2004 in a manner that mirrored Richard Nixon’s when he sent his then Secretary of Defense, the now late Robert McNamara off to head the Bank. Although one would not want to be consumed by why Wolfowitz was parceled out of the Pentagon at the time, but his short-lived stay at the helm of the World Bank is exactly why his picture on the book’s cover struck a nerve in me. I am talking about how the determined employees of one of the more conservative multi-lateral global establishment like the World Bank frustrated what they perceived as US effort to foist someone known for his impeccable disdain for the sovereignty of another state, on the Bank where he could continue his signature use of the big stick to knock the hell out of weak states. Not withstanding Wolfowitz’s proclamation that under him, the Bank would have zero tolerance for the corrupt rulers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who get patronage from the Bank, the employees were not swayed. They stood their ground, and refused to let the US repeat what it did in the 1970s when it off-loaded Robert McNamara, another character who was associated with US involvement in Vietnam on the Bank after he became a spent force as Secretary of Defense. At the end, facts about Wolfowitz’s high-handedness at the Bank where he had only spent just a little time, signifying his arrogance were marshaled against him, and he was compelled to walk. Nothing could save him.
The lesson I am bringing up here relates to General Ibrabim Badamasi Babangida, another unsavory character whose recent announcement that he is once again ready to return to wreck additional havoc on the Nigeria project as it exists presently, has rightly piqued people of conscience amongst us. The US was successful the first time when it off-loaded someone like McNamara who was perceived by many in the world as a discredited war-monger on the World Bank, but come the second time, when it tried to off-load Wolfowitz, it was stopped by mobilized employees of the Bank who were not even supposed or expected to exert the kind of determination they ended up show-casing against a president of their establishment.
One has not sensed any scintilla of pretense in the expression of revulsion that is coming from credible groups and individuals over Babangida’s announcement that he wants to return to public life in Nigeria. His sins against humanity during his eight years of misrule of Nigeria stink to high heavens. Anyone who presumes that given the enormity of stolen public funds that Babangida has at his command, his return to public life in Nigeria is a done deal is ignorant of history in its entirety. Such presumption is the equivalent of pop-psychology that could dampen the righteous revulsion felt by the millions of well-meaning people who rightly believe that he simply lacks even a scintilla of good to offer. Just because Olusegun Obasanjo, another unsavory character had his own second run over us is no reason for anyone including those who ill-advisedly paid Babangida a recent social call in Minna, cause to presume that he will have his way this time. The weapon that we must wield against Babangida this time is our determination. Stopping him can be done.
●E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
I use whatever that piece of literature is to unwind before I settle down on to tackle what I have to do. This bad habit has enriched me in knowledge considerably on several occasions when whatever I found revealed pieces of vital knowledge that I could not have accessed that day if I hadn’t let my bad habit take the better part of me for a while. I still recall that it was through the said bad habit that I stumbled on a political geography journal in which I found an article on US exceptionalism that I found useful for an aspect of my doctoral dissertation. On yet another time, a fat book on British historical statistics became a data source for a graduate seminar paper that I subsequently developed into an article that the Journal of Asian and African Studies accepted.
Well, bad habits die hard. It seems like that same bad habit has paid off some again for me today when I stumbled onto The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, From Nixon to Obama, in which Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman, two investigative writers laid out what they called “the little-understood evolution of the neoconservative movement—from its birth as a rogue insurgency in the Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America’s foreign policy in the Bush years to its repudiation with the election of Barack Obama in 2008”. The pay-off is not in terms of what I read in the book, it is about the picture of one of the people on the cover. That person is Dr. Paul Wolfowitz. Do you remember him? He was one of the more prominent neoconservative elements in George Bush’s administration during the first term when the US invaded Iraq. In fact, he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense who wrangled hard with his principal, Donald Rumsfeld over who would out-do the other in their over-zeal to invade Iraq.
If you recall, Wolfowitz was parceled to head the World Bank by the Bush White House right after Bush won a second term in 2004 in a manner that mirrored Richard Nixon’s when he sent his then Secretary of Defense, the now late Robert McNamara off to head the Bank. Although one would not want to be consumed by why Wolfowitz was parceled out of the Pentagon at the time, but his short-lived stay at the helm of the World Bank is exactly why his picture on the book’s cover struck a nerve in me. I am talking about how the determined employees of one of the more conservative multi-lateral global establishment like the World Bank frustrated what they perceived as US effort to foist someone known for his impeccable disdain for the sovereignty of another state, on the Bank where he could continue his signature use of the big stick to knock the hell out of weak states. Not withstanding Wolfowitz’s proclamation that under him, the Bank would have zero tolerance for the corrupt rulers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who get patronage from the Bank, the employees were not swayed. They stood their ground, and refused to let the US repeat what it did in the 1970s when it off-loaded Robert McNamara, another character who was associated with US involvement in Vietnam on the Bank after he became a spent force as Secretary of Defense. At the end, facts about Wolfowitz’s high-handedness at the Bank where he had only spent just a little time, signifying his arrogance were marshaled against him, and he was compelled to walk. Nothing could save him.
The lesson I am bringing up here relates to General Ibrabim Badamasi Babangida, another unsavory character whose recent announcement that he is once again ready to return to wreck additional havoc on the Nigeria project as it exists presently, has rightly piqued people of conscience amongst us. The US was successful the first time when it off-loaded someone like McNamara who was perceived by many in the world as a discredited war-monger on the World Bank, but come the second time, when it tried to off-load Wolfowitz, it was stopped by mobilized employees of the Bank who were not even supposed or expected to exert the kind of determination they ended up show-casing against a president of their establishment.
One has not sensed any scintilla of pretense in the expression of revulsion that is coming from credible groups and individuals over Babangida’s announcement that he wants to return to public life in Nigeria. His sins against humanity during his eight years of misrule of Nigeria stink to high heavens. Anyone who presumes that given the enormity of stolen public funds that Babangida has at his command, his return to public life in Nigeria is a done deal is ignorant of history in its entirety. Such presumption is the equivalent of pop-psychology that could dampen the righteous revulsion felt by the millions of well-meaning people who rightly believe that he simply lacks even a scintilla of good to offer. Just because Olusegun Obasanjo, another unsavory character had his own second run over us is no reason for anyone including those who ill-advisedly paid Babangida a recent social call in Minna, cause to presume that he will have his way this time. The weapon that we must wield against Babangida this time is our determination. Stopping him can be done.
●E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
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