HILLARY CLINTON, UNDESERVING OF BLACK VOTES - MICHELLE ALEXANDER

Hillary Clinton loves black people. And black people love Hillary—or so it seems. Black politicians have lined up in droves to endorse her, eager to prove their loyalty to the Clintons in the hopes that their faithfulness will be remembered and rewarded. Black pastors are opening their church doors, and the Clintons are making themselves comfortably at home once again, engaging effortlessly in all the usual rituals associated with “courting the black vote,” a pursuit that typically begins and ends with Democratic politicians making black people feel liked and taken seriously. Doing something concrete to improve the conditions under which most black people live is generally not required. 

Hillary is looking to gain momentum on the campaign trail as the primaries move out of Iowa and New Hampshire and into states like South Carolina, where large pockets of black voters can be found. According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as much as 60 percent among African Americans. It seems that we—black people—are her winning card, one that Hillary is eager to play.

And it seems we’re eager to get played. Again.

The love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president. He threw on some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems silly in retrospect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a popular slogan was “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand,” Bill Clinton seemed to get us. When Toni Morrison dubbed him our first black president, we nodded our heads. We had our boy in the White House. Or at least we thought we did.

Black voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons for more than 25 years. It’s true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obama in 2008, but it’s a measure of the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama among black voters until he started winning caucuses and primaries. Now Hillary is running again. This time she’s facing a democratic socialist who promises a political revolution that will bring universal healthcare, a living wage, an end to rampant Wall Street greed, and the dismantling of the vast prison state—many of the same goals that Martin Luther King Jr. championed at the end of his life. Even so, black folks are sticking with the Clinton brand.

What have the Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks to defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to right-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization, and the disappearance of work? 

When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, urban black communities across America were suffering from economic collapse. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs had vanished as factories moved overseas in search of cheaper labor, a new plantation. Globalization and deindustrialization affected workers of all colors but hit African Americans particularly hard. Unemployment rates among young black men had quadrupled as the rate of industrial employment plummeted. Crime rates spiked in inner-city communities that had been dependent on factory jobs, while hopelessness, despair, and crack addiction swept neighborhoods that had once been solidly working-class. Millions of black folks—many of whom had fled Jim Crow segregation in the South with the hope of obtaining decent work in Northern factories—were suddenly trapped in racially segregated, jobless ghettos.

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attention from the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did.

We should have seen it coming. Back then, Clinton was the standard-bearer for the New Democrats, a group that firmly believed the only way to win back the millions of white voters in the South who had defected to the Republican Party was to adopt the right-wing narrative that black communities ought to be disciplined with harsh punishment rather than coddled with welfare. Reagan had won the presidency by dog-whistling to poor and working-class whites with coded racial appeals: railing against “welfare queens” and criminal “predators” and condemning “big government.” Clinton aimed to win them back, vowing that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he.

Just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton proved his toughness by flying back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him for later. After the execution, Clinton remarked, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.”

Clinton mastered the art of sending mixed cultural messages, appealing to African Americans by belting out “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in black churches, while at the same time signaling to poor and working-class whites that he was willing to be tougher on black communities than Republicans had been.

Clinton was praised for his no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to racial politics. He won the election and appointed a racially diverse cabinet that “looked like America.” He won re-election four years later, and the American economy rebounded. Democrats cheered. The Democratic Party had been saved. The Clintons won. Guess who lost?

Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. Clinton did not declare the War on Crime or the War on Drugs—those wars were declared before Reagan was elected and long before crack hit the streets—but he escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible. He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement.

Clinton championed the idea of a federal “three strikes” law in his 1994 State of the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own.”

When Clinton left office in 2001, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983. All of the presidents since 1980 have contributed to mass incarceration, but as Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson recently observed, “President Clinton’s tenure was the worst.” 

Some might argue that it’s unfair to judge Hillary Clinton for the policies her husband championed years ago. But Hillary wasn’t picking out china while she was first lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That record, and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

Both Clintons now express regret over the crime bill, and Hillary says she supports criminal-justice reforms to undo some of the damage that was done by her husband’s administration. But on the campaign trail, she continues to invoke the economy and country that Bill Clinton left behind as a legacy she would continue. So what exactly did the Clinton economy look like for black Americans? Taking a hard look at this recent past is about more than just a choice between two candidates. It’s about whether the Democratic Party can finally reckon with what its policies have done to African-American communities, and whether it can redeem itself and rightly earn the loyalty of black voters.

An oft-repeated myth about the Clinton administration is that although it was overly tough on crime back in the 1990s, at least its policies were good for the economy and for black unemployment rates. The truth is more troubling. As unemployment rates sank to historically low levels for white Americans in the 1990s, the jobless rate among black men in their 20s who didn’t have a college degree rose to its highest level ever. This increase in joblessness was propelled by the skyrocketing incarceration rate.

Why is this not common knowledge? Because government statistics like poverty and unemployment rates do not include incarcerated people. As Harvard sociologist Bruce Western explains: “Much of the optimism about declines in racial inequality and the power of the US model of economic growth is misplaced once we account for the invisible poor, behind the walls of America’s prisons and jails.” When Clinton left office in 2001, the true jobless rate for young, non-college-educated black men (including those behind bars) was 42 percent. This figure was never reported. Instead, the media claimed that unemployment rates for African Americans had fallen to record lows, neglecting to mention that this miracle was possible only because incarceration rates were now at record highs. Young black men weren’t looking for work at high rates during the Clinton era because they were now behind bars—out of sight, out of mind, and no longer counted in poverty and unemployment statistics.

To make matters worse, the federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds by the Clinton administration in its effort to “end welfare as we know it.” In his 1996 State of the Union address, given during his re-election campaign, Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and immediately sought to prove it by dismantling the federal welfare system known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). The welfare-reform legislation that he signed—which Hillary Clinton ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008—replaced the federal safety net with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions, and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored).

Experts and pundits disagree about the true impact of welfare reform, but one thing seems clear: Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after the law was passed. What is extreme poverty? US households are considered to be in extreme poverty if they are surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person per day in any given month. We tend to think of extreme poverty existing in Third World countries, but here in the United States, shocking numbers of people are struggling to survive on less money per month than many families spend in one evening dining out. Currently, the United States, the richest nation on the planet, has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the developed world.

Despite claims that radical changes in crime and welfare policy were driven by a desire to end big government and save taxpayer dollars, the reality is that the Clinton administration didn’t reduce the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor; it changed what the funds would be used for. Billions of dollars were slashed from public-housing and child-welfare budgets and transferred to the mass-incarceration machine. By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food stamps. During Clinton’s tenure, funding for public housing was slashed by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent), while funding for corrections was boosted by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to sociologist Loïc Wacquant “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the urban poor.”

Bill Clinton championed discriminatory laws against formerly incarcerated people that have kept millions of Americans locked in a cycle of poverty and desperation. The Clinton administration eliminated Pell grants for prisoners seeking higher education to prepare for their release, supported laws denying federal financial aid to students with drug convictions, and signed legislation imposing a lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense—an exceptionally harsh provision given the racially biased drug war that was raging in inner cities.

Perhaps most alarming, Clinton also made it easier for public-housing agencies to deny shelter to anyone with any sort of criminal history (even an arrest without conviction) and championed the “one strike and you’re out” initiative, which meant that families could be evicted from public housing because one member (or a guest) had committed even a minor offense. People released from prison with no money, no job, and nowhere to go could no longer return home to their loved ones living in federally assisted housing without placing the entire family at risk of eviction. Purging “the criminal element” from public housing played well on the evening news, but no provisions were made for people and families as they were forced out on the street. By the end of Clinton’s presidency, more than half of working-age African-American men in many large urban areas were saddled with criminal records and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and basic public benefits—relegated to a permanent second-class status eerily reminiscent of Jim Crow.

It is difficult to overstate the damage that’s been done. Generations have been lost to the prison system; countless families have been torn apart or rendered homeless; and a school-to-prison pipeline has been born that shuttles young people from their decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons.

It didn’t have to be like this. As a nation, we had a choice. Rather than spending billions of dollars constructing a vast new penal system, those billions could have been spent putting young people to work in inner-city communities and investing in their schools so they might have some hope of making the transition from an industrial to a service-based economy. Constructive interventions would have been good not only for African Americans trapped in ghettos, but for blue-collar workers of all colors. At the very least, Democrats could have fought to prevent the further destruction of black communities rather than ratcheting up the wars declared on them.

Of course, it can be said that it’s unfair to criticize the Clintons for punishing black people so harshly, given that many black people were on board with the “get tough” movement too. It is absolutely true that black communities back then were in a state of crisis, and that many black activists and politicians were desperate to get violent offenders off the streets. What is often missed, however, is that most of those black activists and politicians weren’t asking only for toughness. They were also demanding investment in their schools, better housing, jobs programs for young people, economic-stimulus packages, drug treatment on demand, and better access to healthcare. In the end, they wound up with police and prisons. To say that this was what black people wanted is misleading at best.

To be fair, the Clintons now feel bad about how their politics and policies have worked out for black people. Bill says that he “overshot the mark” with his crime policies; and Hillary has put forth a plan to ban racial profiling, eliminate the sentencing disparities between crack and cocaine, and abolish private prisons, among other measures. 

But what about a larger agenda that would not just reverse some of the policies adopted during the Clinton era, but would rebuild the communities decimated by them? If you listen closely here, you’ll notice that Hillary Clinton is still singing the same old tune in a slightly different key. She is arguing that we ought not be seduced by Bernie’s rhetoric because we must be “pragmatic,” “face political realities,” and not get tempted to believe that we can fight for economic justice and win. When politicians start telling you that it is “unrealistic” to support candidates who want to build a movement for greater equality, fair wages, universal healthcare, and an end to corporate control of our political system, it’s probably best to leave the room.

This is not an endorsement for Bernie Sanders, who after all voted for the 1994 crime bill. I also tend to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that the way the Sanders campaign handled the question of reparations is one of many signs that Bernie doesn’t quite get what’s at stake in serious dialogues about racial justice. He was wrong to dismiss reparations as “divisive,” as though centuries of slavery, segregation, discrimination, ghettoization, and stigmatization aren’t worthy of any specific acknowledgement or remedy.

But recognizing that Bernie, like Hillary, has blurred vision when it comes to race is not the same thing as saying their views are equally problematic. Sanders opposed the 1996 welfare-reform law. He also opposed bank deregulation and the Iraq War, both of which Hillary supported, and both of which have proved disastrous. In short, there is such a thing as a lesser evil, and Hillary is not it.

The biggest problem with Bernie, in the end, is that he’s running as a Democrat—as a member of a political party that not only capitulated to right-wing demagoguery but is now owned and controlled by a relatively small number of millionaires and billionaires. Yes, Sanders has raised millions from small donors, but should he become president, he would also become part of what he has otherwise derided as “the establishment.” Even if Bernie’s racial-justice views evolve, I hold little hope that a political revolution will occur within the Democratic Party without a sustained outside movement forcing truly transformational change. I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.

Of course, the idea of building a new political party terrifies most progressives, who understandably fear that it would open the door for a right-wing extremist to get elected. So we play the game of lesser evils. This game has gone on for decades. W.E.B. Du Bois, the eminent scholar and co-founder of the NAACP, shocked many when he refused to play along with this game in the 1956 election, defending his refusal to vote on the grounds that “there is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I do or say.” While the true losers and winners of this game are highly predictable, the game of lesser evils makes for great entertainment and can now be viewed 24 hours a day on cable-news networks. Hillary believes that she can win this game in 2016 because this time she’s got us, the black vote, in her back pocket—her lucky card.

She may be surprised to discover that the younger generation no longer wants to play her game. Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll all continue to play along and pretend that we don’t know how it will turn out in the end. Hopefully, one day, we’ll muster the courage to join together in a revolutionary movement with people of all colors who believe that basic human rights and economic, racial, and gender justice are not unreasonable, pie-in-the-sky goals. After decades of getting played, the sleeping giant just might wake up, stretch its limbs, and tell both parties: Game over. Move aside. It’s time to reshuffle this deck.

ALL IN THE FAMILY, IT IS NOW MY TURN - JEB

Icheoku says wait a minute JEB, as American presidency is not only the Bush family for keeps. It cannot be a baton passed from father to son and to yet another son; and in a country of over 300 million people. Enough of the Bushes, ditto the Clintons; say no to another Bush in the White House.

ENOUGH OF THE CLINTONS AND THE BUSHES.

Icheoku agrees that America is not a 'Family-dom' and in a country of over three hundred million, two families after holding forte in the White House for twenty years should make way for other Americans. Icheoku joins babies of America in saying NO TO HILLARY CLINTON; ditto JEB.

NSOBUNDU, NIGERIAN COUPLE IN AMERICA WHO ENSLAVED A NANNY?

Icheoku says less than five days after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari berated Nigerians in Diaspora as "criminals", in American State of Texas, two Nigerians, a couple, Chudy and Sandra Nsobundu, have given impetus to the president's outburst. The couple were arrested for holding a woman they smuggled  from Nigeria captive for two long years. According to the story, the couple converted the woman to an indentured servant, forcing her to take care of the couple's five children and for two long years without ever paying her for her forced labor services. 

Chudy 56 and Sandra 50 are being detained and awaiting trial for offenses ranging from forced labor, withholding documents (passport), conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrant and visa fraud. If convicted on all the charges, they could receive sentences ranging up to 55 years in Federal prison each. They are also looking at a possible fine of about $250,000 including restitution for services rendered but not paid for. They equally abused their captive physically and verbally, forced her to do all manner of domestic chore including cooking and cleaning, in addition to caring for the couple's five kids; and was forced to work from 5:30am t0 1:00am - literally round the clock with little to no food, rest or sleep. They also refused her access to television and denied her hot water bath and will not allow her to sleep on a bed but on the floor. 

Also "she was not allowed to eat fresh food but leftover scraps from previously prepared meals. She was not allowed to drink milk except she cleverly stole some from the children's cereal. She was also forced to remain indoors under a form of house arrest and to make matters worse, the paltry $100 per month they agreed was to be her salary and paid directly into her bank in Nigeria, was similarly withheld and never made due on. Sources also confirm that none of the five children is the couple's biological child as they adopted or are fostering them. So it is possible that the couple are receiving state benefits and support for those children and wanted to keep all the money to themselves. Icheoku says regrettable; but unfortunately, some Nigerians, in their drive to play a fast one, are giving the general populace a bad name. Peradventure, validating President Muhammadu Buhari's assertion that Nigerians, especially those in Diaspora are criminals. 

BERNIE OR DONALD, GOOD FOR AMERICA

Icheoku says is the New Hampshire primaries a sign of things to come down the pike? Congratulations to both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump for showing their fellow contestants how elections are won; unlike the "WIN IS A WIN" shrill Americans heard the other time from Iowa. What a trouncing. Icheoku opines that either of them in the White House will be good for America and okay by Icheoku. In short any candidate and every candidate will suffice provided they do not share the Clinton and Bush family last name, period. Americans are ready to move on to new territories and not stuck up in the past.

WOMEN NOT VOTING HILLARY ARE GOING TO HELL - MADELIENE ALBRIGHT

Icheoku says they will gladly go to HELL smiling, rather than vote or support a woman who is not good enough for the office, simply because she is female gendered. According to these women, they will like to see a woman in the White House but regrettably not this very particular woman Hillary Clinton. So Madeleine Albright, be prepared to secure so many shipping documents to Lucifer's hell because so many American women have vowed not to be intimidated by your threat.

OBAMA IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON OF TRUMP

Icheoku says Americans deal with it because without President Barack Obama there will be no agitation for a President Donald Trump. One begot the other and on November, America will have a president-elect named Donald J. Trump.

AMERICAN WOMEN DAMNS HILLARY, TELLS HER TO SPEED-DIAL LUCIFER.

Icheoku says their message to her was simple, tell Satan to add more charcoal to the oven in the pit of hell.  If Lucifer  likes, he can add more sulphur and everything and anything that will make their stay very discomforting and uncomfortable; because according to these insulted American women, they would rather go in droves to hell than support or vote Hillary Clinton. Icheoku says me too; as Icheoku will in protest join the women of America headed to hell, in our joint renouncement of Hillary Clinton as not that woman America wants as their first female president. 

Imagine a candidate running for the highest office in the land, instead of campaigning on what makes her eminently qualified for the office, is playing the gender card as if pussy-power is still in vogue. Icheoku says please give me a break as the presidency of America is gender-neutral and admits of no such consideration, as it is not a battle of the sexes. Therefore no such subtle sissy-collective sympathy will ever make American women to opt for a fellow woman who is not befitting of the office, simply to appease her female characteristics.  Good enough American women in New Hampshire have forcefully responded with their votes to tell her to take a hike and to FaceTime Lucifer ASAP, to accordingly increase the temperature of hell. According to them,   they would rather exercise the option of a longer sojourn in hell than support and vote for Hillary. 

In a campaign stump speech that sounded so bizarre and condescendingly very inappropriate, one member of the "Team Never Yield Power,' a woman who looks and grins like Hell's own very ambassador on earth, Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton's Secretary of States, attacked and threatened American women. She threatened American women with the hottest spot placement in hell in the event they do not fall in line behind the Hillary project. In her own very exact words, she said, “We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, and a lot of you younger women think it’s done. It’s not done. There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” Icheoku admonishes Hillary Clinton's campaign organization as well as the candidate herself for not, like Donald Trump did with the Cruz-is-a-pussy-comment, retract this statement as unfittingly inappropriate. 

Icheoku condemns any statement suggesting that women should just line up behind another woman seeking the office of the presidency or any other one for that matter, simply because they share similar biology, instead of because she is supposedly qualified for the office, is indeed too demeaning of women. But true to type, Hillary Clinton, notorious for playing the p-power, instead of condemning and denouncing the offensive disparaging statement, pretended as if she did not hear it or that it was a harmless comment. Icheoku decries it as both sexist and thoughtless, crude and patronizing; and should make every woman of America irate enough to abandon that campaign, particularly those leaning or already engaged thereto. What a bunkum of a statement and you ask yourself should all the men in America now veer towards Bernie Sanders simply because he has a phallus and not because what he is espousing is resonating with majority of Americans, especially the youths of America. 

As if American women have not been insulted enough already by this or intimidated or denigrated enough by this Hillary Clinton's campaign backer, later that same Friday, another surrogate of Hillary Clinton and one of her campaigns' wild eyed feminist activist, Gloria Steinem, piled more insult on American women. On behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign, she posited that those women surging to Bernie Sanders campaign are simply attracted by the opportunity of being laid by the many boys and men in that campaign? In her own very words while  speaking at Real Time with Bill Maher, she said “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.” Icheoku empathically condemns this as very demeaning and that it is very inappropriate to infer that all those women folk enmeshed in operation elect Bernie Sanders are merely dick-hungry and driven? Hookers of some sort, who could not otherwise get laid or find some penis elsewhere, except they go to the Bernie Sanders campaign organization, pants in hand? 

What an inarticulate statement to make; yet the Hillary Campaign organization did not condemn nor retract any of the abusive statements as not theirs or out of character. Icheoku queries what does such statement telegraph to American women or is it a coded message, that like Bernie said, the kitchen sink would now come out and every and any of his campaign staffer, enthusiast as well as himself will not be spared from either a broken rib or a cracked skull. Icheoku says to Hillary Clinton, for not retracting or condemning and apologizing for this two women-antagonizing statements, borrowing from her own words against Obama, SHAME ON YOU HILLARY CLINTON, SHAME ON YOU. 

On behalf of American women, Icheoku hereby register our protest accordingly:- that women should not just line up behind Hillary simply because she is a fellow woman; that the women who are attracted to and supporting Bernie Sanders' campaign are happily paired up and are not looking for loose penile appendages as motivation for joining the campaign. However, if Hillary Clinton has a red-phone direct-dial to Hell, let her do her worse, call Lucifer and inform him that American women have rejected her; that they have decided to rendezvous in hell rather than support her campaign.  According to them, Hillary Clinton is not that type of female who American women want to see in the White House as their very first. Icheoku agrees with American women that an apology and retraction is appropriate and needed; and that 'women are free to have independent thoughts and political views.' Further that they do not need anybody telling them how to think or what is best for America or the struggles of the women of America. Lastly, that their support for Bernie is not hormone-driven or a lusting attraction for the opposite sex. Also, women of America condemn in no unmistakable terms, the threat of being dispatched to the hottest place in hell, which somehow is special to Madeleine Albright.

HILLARY CLINTON, YES WE ARE INVESTIGATING HER - FBI

Icheoku say this is the final gathering of the storm that will soon, very soon, send down the rains tumbling down from the skies. With its flood, possibly sweeps away the Hillary Clinton's campaign effort to be the first female president of the US of A. A woman who nobody really likes but for the love for Bill which is being channeled to her; and whom American woman have rejected and branded "SORRY, NOT THIS KIND OF WOMAN" for our first female president in the White House, will possibly be indicted for her Emailgate scandal. 

Icheoku says why take a chance with such a person who has a sword of Damocles of possible indictment and prosecution hanging around her neck as the party's nominee and presidential candidate? According to a released agency's statement, "FBI acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server.” Icheoku says FBI are investigating Hillary Clinton because they believe there is strong probability that illegal acts carried out by her will be uncovered, otherwise as a practice, the agency usually does not waste its time on frolics. But hey, tired of the Clintons and the Bushes, just say no to another one of them, whether JEB or HILLARY. I am Icheoku and I approve this message.

NIGERIA IS COMING APART AT THE SEAMS - FOREIGN POLICY

At best, a revitalized Biafran secessionist movement will lead to mass blood shed. At worst, it will trigger the country's unraveling.  Crowds of Igbo-speaking people barricade streets across southeastern Nigeria, bringing traffic to a standstill. They wave black, green, and red secessionist flags; distribute their own currency and passports; and demand the creation of a new independent country called Biafra. It could be 1967 — or 2016. Nearly 50 years after the same region of Nigeria seceded, sparking a devastating civil war, separatists are once again threatening the fragile national unity of Africa’s most populous country. Back in 1967, the federal government deployed a quarter million troops to quash the secessionist movement, while also imposing a land and sea blockade. Over a million civilians died in the nearly three years of fighting that followed, mostly from starvation. 

Why is the southeast once again considering secession when the region’s last attempt resulted in such horrendous suffering? Part of the answer is that many Igbos, who form the majority in Nigeria’s southeast but a minority in the country as a whole, view the failure of their previous attempt at secession as the great missed opportunity of their time. For three decades after the war, military dictatorships suppressed all secessionist talk, leaving Igbos to wonder silently about what might have been. But after the country transitioned to democracy in 1999, latent separatist inclinations began to resurface once again.

The resurgence of the Biafran secessionist movement is symptomatic of a much deeper problem with the Nigerian state. The federal government’s chokehold on states and ethnic groups is fueling multiple demands for autonomy and the right to manage resources at a local level — demands that could ultimately lead to a fracturing of the country. The latent insurgency in the oil-producing Niger Delta is one example of this trend, as is the emergence of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), which has acted both as a violent vigilante group and as an advocate for the autonomy of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.

A deep disillusionment with the Nigerian government also lies at the heart of the Biafran dream of independence. Igbos have long felt marginalized and excluded from economic and political power by the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba ethnic groups, which have dominated national politics and the bureaucracy since 1970. Many Igbos believe that the federal government (and their fellow Nigerians) have never forgiven them for seceding in 1967, and have discriminated against them ever since. They believe that in Biafra they will find all the things that Nigeria has failed to provide: good leadership, jobs, infrastructure, regular electricity, economic and physical security.

“Nigeria is a mess…with bad and corrupt leaders,” a Biafra supporter in her mid-20s told me recently. “We want freedom.”

Yet not everyone is willing to risk a war for independence. Younger Igbos born after the civil war tend to be more militant about Biafra in 2016 than their parents and grandparents, whose memories bear scars from the previous attempt at secession. One 72-year-old Igbo man, who was wounded during the 1967-1970 civil war and left bleeding and without food or drink for days, told me, “No one who experienced what happened last time will ever advocate Biafra again.”

But roughly two-thirds of Nigeria’s population is under 30 years old, making them too young to remember the suffering that accompanied the last civil war. These youngsters have plenty of reasons to resent the central government: Nigeria’s youth unemployment rate stands at approximately 50 percent. In the southeast, the feeling of marginalization only deepened after last year’s presidential election. Igbos voted heavily for the former president, the southerner Goodluck Jonathan, who lost to Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north. As an army officer, Buhari had fought to crush the first Biafran independence movement; the most powerful jobs in his new government went to the Yoruba and to northern ethnic groups. 

Now Nigeria’s new president may once again be on a collision course with separatists in the southeast. Like all previous Nigerian heads of state, Buhari regards the country’s unity as non-negotiable. He will not allow the region to secede without a fight — not least because it contains oil fields that supply three-quarters of the government’s revenue. Oil is thus an incentive for unity as well as disintegration: It gives Igbos confidence in the economic viability of an independent Biafran state, but also gives the government a powerful reason to prevent such a state from ever coming into being. If Igbos continue to agitate for independence, mass bloodshed seems inevitable.

Secession would lead to confrontation on two levels — between Igbos and the federal government, and between Igbos and other minority ethnic groups in the southeast. The latter — such as the Efik, Ibibio, Ijaw, Esan, and Urhobo ethnic groups — do not want to exchange minority status in Nigeria for minority status in a new country dominated by Igbos. To succeed in winning their own state, therefore, Biafran separatists would need to fight both a war of independence and a second war of repression against the minority groups living in their midst.

The Nigerian government has made clear that it views the Biafra issue as a danger to national unity, and Buhari has said he regards the movement as “treasonable.” Last October, security forces arrested Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the secessionist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, on charges of sedition and treason, and ignored a subsequent court order to release him. The symbol of the Biafran independence movement, Kanu is regarded as a dangerous man by authorities. He is alleged to have tried to procure weapons in the United States, and once told a public gathering, “[I]f we don’t get Biafra everybody will have to die, as simple as that.” But by arresting and detaining him, the government only added fuel to the Biafra fire, causing the protests to intensify and spread across cities in the southeast over the past three months.

Even if the government calms the Biafra storm, its standard refusal to consider demands for regional autonomy all but guarantees that another insurrection will emerge somewhere else in the country. Making matters worse is the demographic time bomb that ticks faster each day in Nigeria. A dramatic “youth bulge” has turned grievances of the type felt by young Igbos into a national security risk in marginalized communities across the country. Every few years, young people from one of these communities rise up and shake the country’s unity. Ethno-regional separatist groups such as the OPC in the southwest, Boko Haram in the north, and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in the oil-rich deep south are notable examples.

Yet the government has no viable plan for dealing with uprisings like these beyond sending in the army. Two years ago, the former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, revealed that Nigeria’s military was deployed in 28 out of the country’s 36 states —  a fact that suggests it has become more of an internal occupation force than a defender against external aggression.

Nigerian governments have a long history of treating serious problems as molehills until they become volcanic-mountain-range problems. In 1995, the government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists who had dared to call attention to economic exploitation and marginalization in the Niger Delta. The core complaints raised by the activists were never addressed, however, and soon they had given rise to an armed insurgency that reduced Nigeria’s oil output by 50 percent and cost it billions of dollars in lost revenue. In the early 2000s, the government also ignored a small religious sect in the northeast — only to watch it morph into Boko Haram.

As resentment mounts among Igbos in the southeast, the Nigerian government cannot afford to allow yet another molehill to grow into a mountain.- by Max Silloun

PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI, THE PARADOX OF HIS DOUBLE SPEAK.

"Some Nigerians claim that life is too difficult back home, but they have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking. I don't think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home, where their services are required to rebuild the country." - President Muhammadu Buhari speaking in London. 

“I believe a lot of you are doing well and are better off here. So, the question of facilitating your coming home does not arise. We don’t want you to come back home and be unemployed. Don’t come and add to our problems. If you have something doing here please continue doing it”. - President Muhammadu Buhari speaking in Benin Republic.

Icheoku says which Dr President Muhammadu Buhari is this that made the two statements? Can the real Dr President Muhammadu Buhari please stand up so that Nigerians can know which version of Dr President Muhammadu Buhari to look forward to, for guidance, in the continuing governance of the country. Icheoku is afraid that this man is gradually but surely losing grip of his faculties. Unfortunately for Nigeria, their president has no tutelage in the art of diplomatic speak and niceties; what a jerk, who does not know that he is the number one image-burnisher of Nigeria.

BIAFRA AGITATION, A MIX OF CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY - JOHN CAMPBELL

Nigeria’s old Biafra problem has reared its head again and with it, the specter of disintegration. For a thirty-month period between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria was embroiled in a bloody civil war as its eastern region unsuccessfully tried to secede from the country under the banner of the Republic of Biafra. 

The latest episode in the Biafra crisis revolves around the arrest on October 19, 2015 of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of a secession movement called the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Kanu is presently facing trial for sedition and treason. Since his arrest, protesters demanding both his release and an independent Biafra have repeatedly clashed violently with security forces with resulting deaths. 

On the international front, the European Union’s foreign policy chief recently weighed in on the matter with a policy statement and the controversy is on its way to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. To be sure, though the wider Igbo community do not support secession, the grievances about ethnic Ibo marginalization touted by the Pro-Biafra activists resonates highly with them. 

In context, Nigeria by character is fundamentally a tribal society with longstanding distrust among the various ethnic groups, in addition to deep seated primordial loyalties. Rightly or wrongly, most ethnic Igbos believe that since the end of the civil war in 1970 and prior to the arrival of Goodluck Jonathan at the helm of affairs in 2010, Nigeria’s central government deliberately pursued a discriminatory policy aimed at marginalizing the Ibos. It is this tribal factor that largely explains the overwhelming Ibo support for Jonathan’s re-election despite the administration’s unfortunate record of high corruption and underperformance. By contrast, Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim, is particularly viewed with suspicion and distrust in much of Igbo-land.  

Incidentally, separatist impulses and/or cries of marginalization in Nigeria are not limited to the Igbos in the Southeast. For example, after the mysterious death of Moshood Abiola as a political prisoner in 1998, separatist sentiments were heard among his Yoruba kinsmen in the Southwest around that period. Also, there was deep frustration and deadly violence in northern Nigeria after Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011 amidst claims that the presidency should have been rotated to the north as allegedly promised; a dispute that terribly aggravated the Boko Haram problem and deeply divided the north and the south. 

However, the surprising success of the National Conference of 2014 offers Nigeria a silver lining, namely, that Nigeria’s diverse constituent groups seemingly want to continue coexisting with one another if fair terms of coexistence can be arranged. 

Among the most valuable proposals adopted at the National Conference was the provision for power rotation among the regions in the country. Given the country’s tribal character with its unfortunate, albeit understandable, obsession with control of the national government, the power rotation option for all its rather wooden or inelegant character, seems particularly utilitarian. Quite simply, Nigerians need to take the pragmatic step of first forging a country prior to attempting to build or develop it. The notion of “power rotation” may seem crude to democratic purists, yet, each society being different, it does have genuine utility in the current Nigerian context, comparable to the archaic device of the electoral college in American presidential contests, which made the new constitution acceptable to the smaller states. 

In this regard, Nigeria’s National Conference of 2014 and the American Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia can be viewed as parallel events aimed at renegotiating and improving the terms of national coexistence. 

In the end, nothing short of proactive measures by Nigeria is needed. And there is genuine opportunity in this crisis for the Nigerian government to profoundly strengthen the country. Since the continued detention of Kanu in disobedience of court orders is simply incompatible with the rule of law in a democratic society, the government is bound to release him. However, the government can take the wind out of the sails of Kanu and other ethnic separatists around the country by publicly committing itself to a reasonable timeline in which to implement the National Conference recommendations. This path offers the Nigerian government a genuine opportunity for a positive outcome in the current crisis.

NIGERIAN PRESIDENT'S EMPTY PROMISES - ALISTER DAWBER

The Nigerian leader clearly overstated his ability to stop the Islamists. The attack in the village of Dalori began when three female suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts in the name of Boko Haram. 

Four hours later, after the jihadists had firebombed houses with local people locked inside, 86 men, women and children were dead. “They came in through the bush, some of them riding on motorcycles and some in cars,” a resident of Dalori, in Nigeria’s violent north east, told Channels Television. “People ran helter skelter for safety. Some crossed the river behind our village and we made distress calls to the soldiers but no help came. They started shooting and burnt the town. They even beheaded some of us and set the elderly, who could not escape, on fire." 

Boko Haram, the band of Islamists that has sworn loyalty to Isis and which wants to extend its writ across West Africa, is a group that President Muhammadu Buhari has previously said he has beaten. Its continued presence is an embarrassment for the retired army general. To make matters worse, as news of the attack filtered through, his government had been forced to go cap in hand to the World Bank and African Development Bank, asking for $3.5bn in loans as the fall in the price of oil has caused the Nigerian economy to falter. Last weekend was probably Mr Buhari’s worst since winning the election 11 months ago – and it capped an uncomfortable time in office. 

He came to power on a promise of ending the endemic corruption that had become rife under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, and offering his own guarantee as a military man that Boko Haram’s days were numbered. 

He has largely over-promised and under-delivered. 

“There is a difference between what he would like to do and what he is able to do,” said Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society.“He made a promise to tackle corruption, in a country where the only way to get something done is to bribe somebody. Nigeria is almost ungovernable, but he has also been slow to make reforms.” If Mr Buhari, “a straight talking military man” according to Mr Dowden, has had little time to cement changes in Nigerian society, he has been quick to laud apparent successes against Boko Haram. 

In an interview at the end of last year, he said that the Nigerian army, criticised in some quarters for its ineffective performance against the insurgents, had “technically defeated” Boko Haram. It is true that the military has enjoyed a number of successes, and Nigeria’s regional standing has gained currency – there is now more cooperation between Nigeria and its neighbours. But, as the attack in Dalori shows, the fight is far from at an end. President Muhammadu Buhari has previously said he has beaten Boko Haram.

The war between jihadists and the Nigerian government has killed 20,000 people in the last six years and driven nearly 2.5 million from their homes. Mr Buhari has promised “normalcy” for the people in the North-east areas around the town of Maiduguri, the worst affected area, but it appears that the normality is Boko Haram’s ability to act with impunity. If the Nigerian president has been too quick to declare his successes against Boko Haram, he has had little chance to solve the other problem in his in-tray. Nigeria’s economy relies heavily on oil – about 70 per cent of national income comes from sales of crude – but the recent collapse in its price has caused the country’s deficit to grow. Just a third of Nigeria’s income is expected to come from oil revenues this year. 

Gene Leon, the International Monetary Fund’s representative in Nigeria, told the Financial Times that Nigeria faced “significant external and fiscal account challenges”. Africa’s biggest oil producer is looking to borrow up to $5bn to shore up its economy. Up to $3.5bn will be sought from the World Bank and African Development Bank, with the rest borrowed from the capital markets. “We have held exploratory talks with the World Bank. We have not applied for emergency loans,” said the finance minister, Kemi Adeosun. Some of this, at least, has been sheer bad luck for Mr Buhari. The price of a barrel of oil has halved since he was sworn in last May. According to the IMF, Nigeria is expected to report growth of about three per cent for 2015. If accurate, it would be the lowest growth rate for more than a decade.

HILLARY CLINTON, SIMPLY NAUSEATING.

Icheoku says a flip-flopping Nurse Ratched who dances and somersaults on issues depending on the trajectory of polls. First she was against Gay marriage and strongly defended Defense of Marriage Act but now have swiveled 180 degrees to say that she is in support of Gay marriage. First she was against TPP but now claims she supports it. First she was for Canadian oil pipeline but now says she is against it. She was against Obamacare but now says she is all for it. She is in the back pockets of Jewish lobby groups and was against Iranian nuclear deal but now claims she engineered it; but without first obtaining a copyright patent permission to that claim from the man who truly and successfully pulled it off, Secretary of State John Kerry. 

She was also against two states solution to the Middle East Israeli/Palestine conflict, but now says she is supporting it. She was first against Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky but now claims she understands women issues and twill fight for them and that her husband, billy-goat Bill Clinton severally abused those women. First she was in support of Boko Haram, refused to brand them terrorists and advised President Obama against acting against them because they were simply innocent Muslim Northern Nigerian youths protesting a Southern Christian minority president who is marginalizing them. First she was dinning and winning Wall Street and did not disclose to Americans that she collected over $600,000 kickback packaged as speaking fees and NOW says she is against Wall Street. 

First she was against medical marijuana use but now claims she is so into it that even her husband once puffed a roach but did not inhale. Above all, she and her husband are racists, black haters, but pretending otherwise. What happened to Ron Brown? What did he say about Jesse Jackson running in 1988? What did he tell late Ted Kennedy about that boy Barack Obama who should be making and serving them tea than having a fairy tale desire of winning a White House presidential residency. Now you know why ICHEOKU, in addition to the Clinton and Bush fatigue, is horn-mad angry and up in arms against electing Hillary Clinton president. She is not the right woman to break the proverbial ceiling of a female American presidency. She is a fluky, candle in the wind, dancing with the poll, contriving and untrustworthy hag; a Jezebel of our time. The good news however is that Americans generally agree that this woman is not worthy of their trust and it is showing with a 75 year old grandpa wiping the floor with her. Icheoku says GO BERNIE; GO TRUMP; as either candidate is far better than an angry, vengeful and never makes eye-contact Hillary Clinton in the Oval office.