UPDATES: The National Chapter of the AAUW has now released an official public statement on this controversy. We are still awaiting an official response from both the New York State and the New York City representatives.
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UPDATES: The National Chapter of the AAUW has now released an official public statement on this controversy. We are still awaiting an official response from both the New York State and the New York City representatives.
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On March 1, 2011, Nigerians woke up to a breathless announcement of a "Prestigious Award" being bestowed upon the person of the Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change and one-time, self-imposed ruler-at-gun-point of Nigeria, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.).
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"Buhari accorded distinguished Women’s Award in the US" proclaimed the headlines, which then went on to say:
Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.)....was accorded distinguished women’s honour in the U.S. yesterday. The award “Legacy Ambassadors Award” by American Association of University Women (AAUW) was received on behalf of Buhari by Mohammed M. Shehu (popularly known as MB Shehu), an activist and member of Buhari Campaign Organization...
The reason for AAUW’s distinguished leadership award to Buhari, was based on his well documented track records. In AAUW words:
“Specifically, during his tenure as the Head of State of Nigeria, his government was the first to decree affirmative action for women....”
The award certificate in appreciation of Buhari’s contributions in advancing equity and education for women and girls was signed by AAUW New York Branch president where the award ceremony took place.
Ordinarily, a Nigerian bagging an "Award" in far-away countries is less a newsworthy occurence than, say, two "agberos" engaging in fisticuffs at your favorite motor park. Nigerians get awards, every which kind. From Toronto degrees to "Professorship" for the least gifted musician you ever had the misfortune of encountering in your life. As "Awards" go, it is the birthright of every husstling Nigerian to return home with a bagful of them.
Ordinarily.
But, like a man-bite-dog story, the "Women's Award" announcement had me flummoxed for many reasons, not the least of which were:
· The painstaking description of some absolutely irrelevant "facts" about the award - kickoff time, street address of venue (after the fact), "historic Victorian blah, blah, blah", The "alias" of Buhari's representative at the event, the actual signatory to the award itself, etc.
· The fact that, after paying so much attention to such minute and irrelevant details, the ACTUAL NAME of the signer of the said Award was omitted. In the US of America, people put their names to stuff
· The incongruity of the Award's citation to the actual records of the honoree.
· The fact that, at the time of our reading the news, there was no other independent source or documentation of the said award. The only media "reporting" this prestigious event all appear to be lifting the same materials from only one source. The appearance of "coordinated messaging" was just too apparent for anyone inclined to notice. And, yours sincerely was VERY interested in finding out who was trying to insult our able Major-General by dressing him up in some “Women Apparel” and whether or not such a person (persons or things) could be retroactively subjected to Decree 4 - or something.
A cursory search of the popular internet search engines failed to yield any meaningful results outside of the coordinated announcement, which had, by now, found its way into the various social media. Not a single line. What about the citation quoted in the coordinated Press Release? Perhaps we can get a hit on that? Nope, no dice. A search on various permutations of the words in the citation leads squarely back to the original packaged Press Release. In a curiously funny round-about way. One begins to wonder why a prestigious organisation like the American Association of University Women would grant a "Prestigious" Award to a former head of a country and NOT say something about it somewhere. Talk about the dog that didn't bark in the night.
Could that be why they called it the "Women's Award"? Was someone trying to insult the good General by calling him names? I mean, we all know that the good General is not the most-macho of all Generals, but....
So, we thought to ourselves (this writer and herself did), perhaps the American Association of University Women (AAUW) are just a little bit tardy in posting Press Releases to their Website. Why not do it the old-fashioned way and just call them up for a copy? They call it "Press Release" for a reason, right? So, we did. And, that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the dam broke and the "Buhari accorded distinguished Women’s Award in the US" house of cards came tumbling down ingloriously.
You see, it so happened that the American Association of University Women (AAUW) is a collection of several parts, with a hierarchical structure that looks something like this: National -> State -> District -> Regional. There is a Board of Directors at the State level, with a President (who is also a part of the Executive Committee) at the helm of affairs. Then there are the District Directors who oversee one or more Chapters of AAUW. At the local (what we call "Regional") levels are officers for each local Chapter of AAUW.
Enter Dr. Nkechi Agwu.
When the announcement of this award broke on the intertubes, one of the impressions conveyed across all the reporting was that the AAUW in "The U.S." had bestowed this honour on the good General. Buried in the details is the fact that the "certificate" was signed by the unnamed President of the New York branch of AAUW. The announcement was not that General Buhari bagged an Award in New York. Nor was it that an individual signed over a certificate for the personal use of the honourable General. So, one is left with the impression that there is a truly legitimate "Legacy Ambassador Award" given for the reason cited by the organisation named the "American Association of University Women"
So, we called up the AAUW and pointedly asked them to explain the pedigree and purpose of "Legacy Ambassador Award", specifically what it purports to recognize, its attributes, how one qualifies for it, the nomination and approval process, etc. Uh-oh!
It turns out that "Legacy Ambassador Award" is a term the national AAUW is not familiar with. Not only that; granting "Awards" to non-AAUW personalities is not a general AAUW practice. Granting one to politicians is not a general practice. Granting one to former dictators? Yeah, that “woooosh!” sound you heard was the sound of several heads exploding at the AAUW headquarters as we began to make our inquiries.
OK, so no one at the national level knows anything about this "Award". How about at the State level? Or the District level? We chased down a number of AAUW officers in the New York state and New York City levels. After being mistaken for crank callers at first, then for "one of those Nigerian Scammers we've heard so much about", then being hung up on a number of times, we were able to elicit this much information from the officers we spoke to: The "Legacy Ambassador Award" is a figment of someone's imagination. It never existed, and as far as everyone is concerned, such an award is a contravention of the AAUW by-laws.
But, but, but ..... We have a Major General in Nigeria brandishing a spanking, newly-minted copy of this "Prestigious" award.
And this is not just any Major-General we are talking about. This is a former Ruler of the nation of 180 million people, who is making another bid for a return to the throne. What do you mean by saying that the "Award" is non-existent? We pointed the AAUW officers to the announcement of the "Award" as advertised on the General's website and social media spaces so that the people we were talking to could see the proud announcement in its full glory, citations and all. And then we got Dr. Nkechi Agwu.
Dr. Agwu is THE President of the New York City branch of the AAUW. Bada bing, bada boom! (as the say in New York). She is the one who remained nameless in the official announcement of the "Buhari Bags US Award" - you know, the announcement that succinctly described the location of the Award ceremony, the alias of the Buhari agent who received the Award on his behalf, the time of the ceremony, the color of the granite (ok, maybe not that), but conveniently omitted to mention the name of the person who signed the said "Award".
The story behind locating Dr. Agwu will be written at a later day, but after fruitlessly trying to reach the Doctor on both her home and mobile phone number, we send her an email asking her to contact us to discuss the “Legacy Ambassadors” issue, letting her know that we were going to write a report on it, with or without her input. Dr. Agwu then contacted us, and we duly proceeded to ask her to explain away the "Award" story
As far as we can tell, Dr. Agwu is a honorable person. A high-achieving Math wizard, with impressive resume and background. So, we thought, we can be reasonably sure that there will be no K-leg in this award story. We informed Dr. Agwu that we were in the process of writing about the award, so may we please have something positive to write about AAUW. We will refrain from mentioning that the Doctor did not very much appreciate the “noise” we had been generating with our inquiries, and she was less than amused that we were able to call her directly asking for information. We impressed upon Dr. Agwu that the General on whom she has conferred a meritorious and distinguished honour is happily celebrating the said honour in Nigeria, in the middle of elections campaign, no less. So, given the timing of the said "Award" and the use to which the good General is putting such foreign recognition from “the US”, we think the Nigerian public deserves to know that everything is above-board.
Well.... deady body get accident for New York City, o. We will not mention that the Doctor believes that we are agent provocateur, sent by some jealous money-bags on whom she had not bestowed the prestigious "Award" of .... well, whatever she chooses to call the next award. Because, you see, there is no precedence for what the Doctor did. "Legacy Ambassadors Award" is something the good Doctor "computed" mathematically and finished up with a flourishing signature in exchange for .... we won’t speculate.
When we pointed out to the Doctor that none of the officers associated with her organisation has an inkling about the said Award, Dr. Nkechi Agwu, esteemed President of the New York City branch of the American Association of University Women whipped out a very broad brush and, in one fell swoop, painted all the other officers as “Not Racially Diversed”. Yes. According to the good Doctor, “those people” are trying to get her in trouble because they are all racially insensitive (a coded euphemism for “RACISTS”) in their interpretation of her laudable goals and efforts to spread Awards around like a drunken Yahooze “spraying” at an Owambe party.
Dr. Agwu did not deny that she unilaterally gave an award to a former military dictator who is also currently actively engaged in electioneering campaigns in Nigeria, although she did insist that her Chapter/Branch of AAUW is “Autonomous” and independent of the State and National organisations. She insisted that, since her assumption of office as the President of the New York branch, she has been trying to bring “diversity” to the organization. She then went on to complain about how the “Wall of Fame” at the UUAW office does not include the pictures of the past 3 African American Presidents of the organization.
Dr. Agwu insisted that General Buhari does indeed “deserve” the award for all the reasons stated in her citation. When we requested that she points out where the granting of such award is sanctioned in the AAUW charter, Dr. Agwu requested the postal/mailing address of yours truly. When we responded that a soft (electronic) copy would do, she declined our request and subsequently claimed that the Legacy Award had been spelt out as part of the Black history activities since last June, and that it is part of AAUW newsletter. The most recent copy of the NYC AAUW Newsletter available publicly anywhere on NYC AAUW website is the one from March 2010. And Dr. Agwu would not provide a copy of any more recent release to support her defense.
Dr. Agwu became rather upset when asked if she didn't think people might see this as a scam, given that Major-General Buhari left power in 1983 as a military dictator who didn't appoint any woman to his cabinet. She explained that more awards will be coming asking that we should attend awards aimed at honouring Dame Patience Jonathan.
At this point, we asked her to tell us what President Jonathan's wife has done to deserve an award of any kind. Wrong question!
The good Doctor proceeded to throw a hissy fit, getting really angry and then yelling that yours truly needs an "education". In Dr. Agwu’s words, Dame Patience Jonathan was the best thing to happen to Nigerian since peanut butter. And bread, if you can afford one. Several attempts to (calmly) get Dr. Agwu to simply list the things the Dame has accomplish to merit an Award from her organization only led to more yelling from the good Doctor.
At this point, we decide to just ask the million naira question – Is the good Doctor using her office and the auspices of the American Association of University Women to run a Awards-mills scam operation? Could this be why her “racially undiversed” colleagues do not agree with her or would it explain why no-one else seems to be aware of the operation?
She did not contest the fact there was no precedent for such award to foreign dignitaries. She did not contest the fact that, by pretending to lend the imprimatur of AAUW onto a political campaign, the campaign gained a disproportionate advantage that could impact the outcome of the elections. She did not contest our inference that, since she is a Nigerian, influencing the outcome of the election results could be to her professional advantages - a sort of quid pro quo. Nor did she contest that one may reasonably infer that her plans to also hand out another “Award” to the honourable Dame Jonathan is tantamount to her “covering her bases”, playing both sides of the fence, if you will. We tried to elicit a response from the Doctor regarding the possibility of the Award having been made in exchange for material (financial or otherwise) contribution, either to her personally or to AAUW. The Doctor hung up the phone.
In an email to us after abruptly ending the conversation, Dr. Nkechi Agwu wrote back with the following (from her City University of New York email address):
When we begin to recognize, honor and educate about the contributions of members of our communities rather than finding ways to diminish, others will begin to respect our communities and we will become more empowered.
This is one aspect of our black history program at AAUW NYC branch that has been in existence for over a decade and has featured and recognized institutions, people and communities where a difference is being made to advance equity and education for women and girls.
Let's not forget to mention the fact that we gave Dr. Agwu the opportunity to provide us further instances of AAUW "honoring" and "celebrating" former despots in far-away lands this close to a pivotal election, and she could not (or is unwilling to) do so. We think that it would come as a surprise to the other members and officers of AAUW to learn that Dr. Agwu chose to begin her charity so far away from her New York home. The AAUW honors, celebrates and recognises the contributions of various members of the society in several ways. Giving awards to a Nigerian Major-General - a military dictator and originator of the most draconian set of Decrees ever unleashed on the human race, the ruler who elevated the arts of public whipping, extra-judicial killing, reckless imprisonment and "disappearance" of opponents to a new form - is a new paradigm shift for AAUW.
The saddest part of this is that a Presidential candidate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is dancing around the entire landscape brandishing a useless piece of paper Awarded to him through the singular act of ONE PERSON at the head of a very tiny branch of an otherwise illustrious organization. And the handlers of the said Presidential Candidate did not deem it fit to perform a due diligence and actually vet and verify the integrity of this “Award”? Is this what General Buhari and the entire CPC call “CHANGE”? We have seen too many versions of this ignominious movie before, and we do NOT care to see it anymore.
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