RE: WORLD SUMMIT ON REPARATION FOR AFRICA
THE WAY FORWARD - JUDICAL ACTION.
We
write to urge you to join hands with us in organizing the above
Summit and to further nominate one of your principal executives
to deliver a paper at the event.
As
you are aware, a lot of work has been done in the past by distinguished
African Leaders toward the crusade for Reparation for Africa.
Outstanding in the campaign was the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola.
The present initiative of the African Renaissance Party is to
build on the laudable foundations that had already been laid by
such eminent Africans and the Diaspora.
In
December 1990, Chief Abiola convened and sponsored the first World
Conference on Reparation at the Nigeria Institute of International
Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos, where he officially inaugurated his campaign
on Reparation.
This
International Conference which featured prominent people from
different parts of the World did a thorough study on the issue
of Reparation. Such distinguished persons in attendance included
Chief M.K.O. Abiola himself, who was convener and host. Gen Ibrahim
Babangida who was then the Nigerian Head of State. Professor Ibrahim
Gambari, Dr. Randolph Peter, the Trinidad and Tobago High Commissioner
to Nigeria. Professor A.M. Babu of Tanzania. Sir Dudley Thompson,
the Jamaican High Commissioner to Nigeria, Congressman Craig Washington
of U.S., Hon. Bernice Grant of Britain among many others. At the
Conference, after a critical look at the Reparation issue, the
communiqué consequently set up an International Committee
for Reparation (ICR) with Chief M.K.O. Abiola as its Chairman
and Mr. Frank Igwebueze as Secretary.
Subsequently,
the Reparation cause was taken to continental level and to the
organization of African Unity (OAU) which recognized and identified
with the campaign. Reparation became a prominent subject of discussion
within the OAU. The 27th Summit of Heads of State and Government
as well as the 55th Council of Ministers of the Organization,
which met in June 1991 here in Abuja, passed a resolution recognizing
the injustice to Africa. The resolution affirmed the right to
Reparation and suggested a Group of Eminent Persons (GEP), drawn
from Africa and Diaspora, to further take action on the Reparation
issue. This Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) was later empanelled
formally in June 1992, at the 28th yearly Summit of the OAU Heads
of State and Government held in Dakar, Senegal. The group (GEP)
which has as members, men and women of proven integrity included.
Chief Abiola who as the sole financier of the Reparation cause
was elected the Chairman, Professor Ade Ajayi (Nigerian), Ms.
Mariam Makeba (South Africa), Professor Ali Mazrui (Kenya), Dr.
Amadan Mahtar M,bow, Co-chairman (Senegalese), Ex-president Aristide
Pereria (Cape Verde Island), Professor Samir Amin (Egypt), Dr.
Quaissan Sackey (Ghanaian), Madam Grace Machel (Mozambique), Ambassador
Dudley Thompson (Jamaica), Congressman Roland Dellums (U.S.) and
Professor Rex Nettleford.
To
advance the struggle for Reparation to the World level, the OAU
Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) convened the first Pan-African
Conference on Reparation in April 1993 at Abuja. The event drew
participants from Africa, America, Asia and Europe. It also came
out with a communiqué aimed at redressing the injustice
of slavery, colonialism and imperialism in general in Africa,
a decision which if implemented will obviously contribute in no
little way in alleviating Africa’s sufferings resulting
from centuries of merciless exploitation and inhuman degradation
by the West.
Although
the slave trade occurred over 500 years ago in the main, Africans
have all the moral and legal basis to demand for compensation
from the West as the very foundation of the backwardness of Africa
was laid squarely by the slave trade which cost Africa more than
150 million able-bodied men and women. The physical and psychological
brutality, sociocultural dislocation and economic dysfunction
which trade in human beings imposed on Africans and the Black
race in general is terrible and beyond comparison in human history.
It was from these traumatic experiences of Africa that the West
achieved her present development. The argument is that the West
must pay compensation to us for the brain, sweat and blood of
our forefathers. For the forced labour it enjoyed for centuries
from millions of vibrant Africans they carted away from Africa
to build the wealth they are living on today.
The
last major event on this Reparation cause was the 1993 conference
here in Abuja. It is now a full 10 years since then. The African
Renaissance Party is persuaded that it is high time the Reparation
train was re-engineered, hence this:-
WORLD
SUMMIT ON REPARATION FOR AFRICA: The Way Forward.
Exhaustive
deliberations have revealed that JUDICAL ACTION is the next step.
In the New World Order of the 21st Century, Judicial Action is
the appropriate way to bring the age-long struggle to its logical
conclusion.
Therefore,
the Summit is programmed to:
1.
Delve into the archives to fish out specific cases of atrocities,
illegalities and injustices committed against Africa and Africans
for litigation in Western, International and African Courts of
Law.
2.
Create a legal platform for the programme actualization of the
goal of the Reparation struggle.
3.
Provide further information for the realization of the goal of
the Reparation struggle.
4.
Undertake a comparative analysis of successful Reparation crusades
in history vis-à-vis that of Africa.
5.
Establish a Reparation Judicial Action Fund to cater for the legal
and other attendant costs of the Judicial Action.
6.
Demonstrate that Reparations due to African Nations are at least
a thousand times the value of the foreign debts that are currently
crippling African Economics.
Alh. Yahaya E. G. K. Ndu Chairman, African Renaissance Party of Nigeria. alhajindu@yahoo.com
