August 4, 2009

Avoiding the Next Obama

By L.E. Ikenga
In times like these, it is tempting to focus only on the issue at hand. But if you do, you do so at your own peril. As I watch what is happening to this great country, I find myself just shaking my head more and more while thinking, Mark Twain was absolutely right: "history does not always repeat itself, but it does often rhyme."My Igbo parents came to this great country from Nigeria. They arrived a few years after Nigeria's independence from Great Britain. In Nigeria, it was a time of unprecedented cultural and political turmoil, which allowed politicians very much like Barack Obama to continue to seep into Nigeria's political system. These politicians all promised a change from the past. And unfortunately, they ended up fulfilling their promises. What these politicians ended up changing was the very fabric of the African societies, which they had been taught to see as unsophisticated and inferior. I call these men, who appeared all over Africa in the wake of independence,...(Read Full Article)