NTOABOMA — Earlier this year African Union (AU) bigwigs voted to stop the people of Haiti from officially rejoining and realigning their common socio-economic and geopolitical interests with the rest of Africa–a birthright denied Haiti for three centuries and counting.
On June 13, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union (E.U.).
So isn’t it fascinating that after all this drama, exactly two weeks after Brexit, the AU announces a new “single African e-passport”? Isn’t it fascinating that after the AU made a momentous decision against the grain of African interests to disintegrate diasporic ties in the world, it turns around with a proposition to integrate Africa through electronic means—essentially virtual tagging?
This group of bedraggled dignitaries at the African Union parrot the untested and uncontested idea that the e-passport will boost the socioeconomic development in Africa, believing it will reduce trade barriers, although this AU has already raised those barricades between Africa and Haiti. Presumably the e-passport will allow freer movement across African borders for people (though none from the diaspora); ideas and goods (only from Africa and none from Haiti, I guess); and non-diasporic services and capital (non-Haitian capital). Who believes them?
The African Union is a rag-thug organization of complaisant buffoons, bedwetters and coons—at best, a group of Blackface neoliberal think tanks. To believe that this organization, without any mandate of the people of Africa to show, could even brew a development plan from outside a kettle that is not imperialist, let alone fashion a vision that is not neocolonial – what they notoriously call Agenda 2063 – is itself a maddening experience and an outright nefarious nightmare.
What agenda?
Is this the agenda that kicked out Haiti – the world’s first republic – as a nation of African peoples? Is this the same agenda that leaves out Africans in the diaspora only to turn around and blow smoke about embracing diversity? The same agenda cooked up in CIA and Mossad offices across AFRICOM barracks around the continent? What agenda? To kill off Africans with Monsanto’s GMOs and Vaccines? To seize farm lands for the Clinton and Bill-Melinda Gates Foundation? Lands we have acquired and preserved through sweat and blood for millennia?
My blood boils. My stomach sinks for this dyslogistic union. What agenda?
Are these the same AU members that were fed the waggish dose of Barack Obama’s carefully branded tale of “unconstitutional changes in government in Libya, Central African Republic, Egypt and Burkina Faso,” while as they napped in their diapers, foreign agents keyed into motion a plan to suspend twelve member states? Is this the same AU that sat around for the CIA to invade a sovereign nation in Africa, several times over, and is still threatening to invade Eritrea? That rag-thug collection of CIA agents in Africa?
Only when you observe how this clandestine organization called the AU has been run for many decades since its founding under Nkrumah– who was overthrown and nearly assassinated by the CIA – you come to one conclusion alone: The AU is a western neoliberal tool that is now being officially marshalled against the interests and wishes of a bon vivant African peoples.
The AU needs to be overthrown. The latest evidence for this much-needed overthrow of the AU comes from the machinations of its neocon and neoliberal masters in the West, from this ill-gotten idea of an African e-passport.
For what? You would ask. Why is the African Union interested in an electronic passport for all Africans? What man or woman in Africa has asked for an Africa in 2063 in which every free movement can be tracked and monitored by foreign agents in Africa? An electronic passport indeed!
Do these leaders gathering soon in Kigali, Rwanda, understand the expensive and far-reaching consequences of sensitive electronic documents? Exactly what is wrong with the passports we have now? Essentially what is wrong with travelling while using the passports that individual nations issue to citizens? Aren’t member nations more adept at vetting applicants rather than the disparate collection of dollar-grinding whores at the African Union?
If anything Brexit is a reminder to Africa and the African Union of the challenges inherent in a forced political and economic space. That sort of union has no other future but failure. Big failure. In an Africa under the weight of exploitative western nations—that do not seem capable of surviving on their own if they tried, the debates over debt, immigration and national identity that led to Brexit would only be magnified if significant barriers to access in education and health care and ongoing conflicts over resources and identity are not clearly and wisely defined for pragmatic solutions. Conflicts, not with one another, but with the very West – that seems incapable of minding its own business – will be the unavoidable tragedy. Much like the invented calamity of Boko Haram in Nigeria.
The progress and pitfalls of a regional African integration falls squarely in the laps of citizens, not on the tables of foreign spies sitting in the offices of the occupying force that is AFRICOM. Managing a common currency, balancing economies of vastly different sizes and structures, and building solidarity within and across our linguistically diverse nations, Africans have made such progress, just to name a few: the East African Community (since 1967), the Economic Community of West African States (since 1975), the Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa (since 1980) and the Southern African Development Community (since 1992).
After Brexit, after a broken E.U. and a bleak future of a world under one government, sadly Africa cannot offer a model and a way out of the loathsomely orgiastic Palestinian-killing machines gallivanting the planet as proponents of globalization. What globalization? For whom and by whom?
In a world now full of a revolutionary verve against an increasing call for homogenous super-states – constructed for easy picking by neoliberal capitalists from western nations – Africans will be making a grave mistake, in fact, we will be committing a heinous crime if we allow the AU to administer and issue passports, electronic passports at that, as permits into our lands. Who will issue these passports? And who is to stop 30 million Europeans and Americans from electronically assigning themselves passports, barging into your continent called Africa, traversing into your country, claiming they are citizens, and demanding a right to occupy your lands—lands for which we have fought and preserved with sweat and blood?
The AU has no mandate in Africa. It is not here to help Africa. With this new development, the African Union has shown that it is clearly a dyslogistic organization, partly because all its agendas are myths designed to fool and sway the African public. And partly because these myths are lies. But still more because some of them are ignoble lies – and the e-passport is one of them.
Electronic passports, especially those only issued by one office for an entire continent, are unacceptable. No nation should accept a government from Addis-Ababa. No sovereign nations, especially Ghana and Nigeria, should accept e-passports for commuting between traditional African states.
E-passports will only tag every business in Africa and supply our competitors with the smart data they need to topple us anytime they want. They are a recipe for entities like America and the EU to enter and socially engineer the whole population of Africa. We do not need your help, America. Get out and thank you very much.
The idea of electronic passports is intolerable and cannot be allowed anywhere.
Brother Amenuti Narmer, you so brilliantly, courageously and passionately say it all with the necessary truthful candour to make Mother Afrika ever more proudly dignified, and all her conscientious daughters and sons ecstatic, with the joyous realization that the likes of you are The Beautyful Ones we have long been waiting for to spearhead our Freedomfighting advancement to our Pan-Afrikan Rendezvous of Global Justice Victory!
I think our passports, they way that they are, can work just fine. No thanks to the e-passports! No thanks, at all!
A common passport with visa free…it’s not a bad idea but we should learn about the problems of the EU to avoid those unwanted problems…. Visa free to all African states is the way forward…
Visa-free. But a common passport? Why? Why can’t I use my Ghanaian passport in Togo and Nigeria without harassment?
What folks have called for is a Visa-free Africa for Africans. I have no idea why the AU is pursuing a “Single E-Passport”? There are serious logistical questions. Plus there are serious issues of sovereignty. We want an AU strong and prosperous but why do we need one passport? Each nation should issue their own national passports, driver’s license and so on. What the AU should do is make these passports Visa-free.
But Dade Afre Akufu isn’t that symptomatic? these are the stuff that I really don’t understand. Misplaced priorities…. which is being carried from the OAU days… A single E Passport will only serve the profit of the company producing the computers, the software and whatever other gadget is required… and time after time the EU or US who will probably be paying for this, will tap into the data for their war on terror
Those people don’t get it. We need one army or a centralised command not one passport
I have no idea why other (mis)construe our fight for a political and economic union in Africa and in the diaspora. I have no idea why. Who said we wanted One Government? What said we wanted One Ruler of All? Who said we wanted one Passport issued by one office? The other day some crook, newly arrived to Ghana to become a politician was fighting me on misconceptions. I let him have the misconceptions and he run with it deep.
But let me hold my point. There’s no need for one passport issued by one office. What is that? Like Narmer Amenuti said, we open ourselves up to more infiltration.
Hahaha, the passport is biometric, it will be easy to identify who bombed a US interest in the horn of Africa because the terrorists will travel from place to place with that passport. who cares about a rebel groups that is grouped in the bush in central African republic. If they unleash mayhem on some villages, who cares?
Audu, you think far. Far, too much and that is your problem. Few understand you. So I like your roll and how you keep it 100 percent. That is exactly the point you’ve made. Exactly. The idea of a single office issuing biometric passports is a very dangerous idea. It should never be tolerated anywhere. Each country must issue its own passports. In fact, I will even leave this to ethnic groups. They should issue their own passports. Like for example, every clan from Ada should vet their members before a passport is issued by a certified passport officer of that clan.
Thank you. Do u see how power we give away to them by having same passport all over? this frightening.
A common passport is a misplaced priority ..the Americans and EU lobbyists will argue for it but where can’t i use my passport as Ghanaian in another African country?? And these single E passport also brings about security questions where the companies in charge of it can tape and breach the securities of any country…
What we need now is free visa not this misplaced priority…..
But this makes no sense. there are far more urgent things for the au to tackle. like borderless commerce! duuuh!
Let’s not forget that everything is heading in the e direction, e-health, e-governance, e-baking and finance, even e-agric. Presently, the Ghana passport requires the collection of bio-metric data. I dont know if that renders it an electronic passport but what I know from their own pronouncements is that they are incrementally going in a more and more digital and electronic direction. This trend is not entirely autonomous. Some foreign embassies have issued ultimatums to stop accepting old analogue and non-biometric passports. Also presently, Ghana issues ECOWAS passport to its citizens, suggesting that issuance is left to member states, but I see a networking of national databases if this thing is to gain the trust and acceptance of member states. I would be surprised if the AU does not leave the granting of these passports to national governments like ECOWAS but one way or another, either centrally or through a network of national databases, we are going to have to contend with e-passports and we are going to have to protect this data from both state and non-state actors. I can foresee some national governments opting out of this AU passport policy at least initially. Secondly, I would not abolish the AU, though I do not like it as currently configured. I have been scrutinizing the organization of late and at this stage I I believe more in reform than abolition and the critical mass of leaders to make that happen may be only an election or two away somewhere in Africa.
I agree with Mr. Ayoka. I just found it a tad bit disingenuous that an Organization that denied Haiti membership all of a sudden wants to issue e-passports to Africans, especially after Brexit. The timing is uncomfortable if not suspect. Plus it is true the electronic data has changed life. The AU has better stuff to do to ensure better livelihoods in Africa before it stuns us with such a stupendous idea, with which we have very little tools to efficiently manage. I see it as a push by foreign governments rather than an organic germination. This is my fear.
The Haiti decision is still shocking. Very schocking
SUPERB!:”The African Union is a rag-thug organization of complaisant buffoons, bedwetters and coons—at best, a group of Blackface neoliberal think tanks. To believe that this organization, without any mandate of the people of Africa to show, could even brew a development plan from outside a kettle that is not imperialist, let alone fashion a vision that is not neocolonial – what they notoriously call Agenda 2063 – is itself a maddening experience and an outright nefarious nightmare.
What agenda?
Is this the agenda that kicked out Haiti – the world’s first republic – as a nation of African peoples? Is this the same agenda that leaves out Africans in the diaspora only to turn around and blow smoke about embracing diversity? The same agenda cooked up in CIA and Mossad offices across AFRICOM barracks around the continent? What agenda? To kill off Africans with Monsanto’s GMOs and Vaccines? To cease farm lands for the Clinton and Bill-Melinda Gates Foundation? Lands we have acquired and preserved through sweat and blood for millennia?
My blood boils. My stomach sinks for this dyslogistic union. What agenda?” – Amenuti Narmer. AN URGENT MUST READ IN FULL FOR ALL WHO CARE ABOUT OUR BELOVED MOTHER AFRIKA!
“The African Union is a rag-thug organization of complaisant buffoons, bedwetters and coons—at best, a group of Blackface neoliberal think tanks”.
Aaauch!!!!!!
Narmer, di, onti gyae oh! Lol.
I can tell. Well written.
Well written bourgeois language. Misplaced Priorities, it’s time our leaders start thinking far and learn to elevate the aspirations of it’s people rather than constantly muppetting themselves like them nodding agama. Time to salvage our own, and brew a new African ideas in an African pot.
On Africa and E-Passports:
“The African Union is a rag-thug organization of complaisant buffoons, bedwetters and coons—at best, a group of Blackface neoliberal think tanks. To believe that this organization, without any mandate of the people of Africa to show, could even brew a development plan from outside a kettle that is not imperialist, let alone fashion a vision that is not neocolonial – what they notoriously call Agenda 2063 – is itself a maddening experience and an outright nefarious nightmare.” – Grandmother Africa (Narmer Amenuti)
https://grandmotherafrica.com/au-africa-without-africans-u-…/
The above paragraph is harsh and I will not generally call the folks at the AU such names. That said, I will like to serve notice to all jumping up and down about the announcement that the AU is on target to issue an African wise E-Passport.
First of all, we do not need an e-passport. We just need a policy that allows Africans with valid passports of their countries to visit and do business in each others’ countries.
My take is, this proposal of NEW PASSPORTS is just a way to get the AU and African governments to buy equipment and technology we do not need – mostly from American/EU.
Many regional organisations – ECOWAS, EAC, the South African Grouping, etc all have some form of free movement of persons and businesses and some have passports. What we need is harmonisation of such policies.
However, what is the value of a $30-$100 fee on visa to a flight that is $500-$2,000 more to fly within Africa than outside the continent?
It is cheaper to fly from Ghana to Turkey or to the EU than to fly from Ghana to say Zambia.
What Africa needs and what the AU needs to do is find ways of making travel WITHIN the continent cheaper than throwing about “E-Passports”. E-Passports do not make operations of businesses cheaper – cheap flights do.
I would write more but the point is made: We do not need a universal AU passport – we need cheaper transport – air, road, freight, water, etc within and among Africa.
Let us be more questioning of our leadership; lets stop jumping for the inconsistent policy making and hold the AU responsible to be what Kwame Nkrumah, @Sekou Ture, and others envisioned the AU to be.
We can not remain slaves to the very people that enslaved us by hiring them as our advisors, taking their money and dining with them, while expecting to be free!
May we be blessed!
May we see the vision!
May the vision never get lost!
We we have the courage to speak to weak, poor leadership!
Africa Shall Unite!
Cc:
Narmer Amenuti
Nii Ayertey Aryeh
Nii Anang T
Caridad Souza
Franklin Cudjoe
My friend, you are much nicer than me, that much is clear.
I agree, Narmer. Simon is much nicer, also because of my saved soul, i will cal the AU a bunch of lost minds and helpless hearts. That said, I agree Simon. I wish this is they would just sort our infrastructure and trade. Inter Africa flights are very expensive, yet the we keep saying that Africa needs to grow itself. How, pray tell, will we do that when we cannot sell our products and ideas to our brothers in West Africa without selling our arms, legs and entire lives? Surely, I would think this is common sense! I get so mad when these ……. ‘so called ‘leaders’ use my blood sweat and tears to finance trips to sit and discus stuff that means absolutely nothing to the ordinary citizen! I’m not belittling their role. I just would like them to work for the African people!
As you Diana Dola, this issue is not even important to us…maybe a meme would have been better.
Well the author is simply racist!!
Enlighten me chief Franklin Cudjoe
“Well the author [Narmer Amenuti] is simply racist!!” ~ Franklin Cudjoe
I have no hard-feelings. I am only seriously contemplating an essay about racism and what it means. And perhaps delineate who a racist might even be within that same framework. But I wait for Franklin Cudjoe to tell me why he’s called my article racist.
Please, let us have a candid conversation.
Franklin Cudjoe any reason for which the author is a racist..???..the author is only trying to describe the selfish politicians who cares for their pocket rather than the ordinary people who voted for them….they use the tax payers money to live a glamorous lives and make the worst policies which we think is not in our interest….
Your IMANI organization talks about these issues and formulate policies and criticise the government on these type of issues…
I find it weird for you calling the author a racist whilst you cry and shout every day when people accuse you of been bias…..
Narmer Amenuti I totally agree 100% with you on this we don’t need an E-passports and that this is just an opportunity for some officials to make money. All we need is open access to our borders, easy and ease of travel within Africa and better trade deals.
That’s all I said, albeit, I said it in some very extravagant wording. Your simplicity sista Grace, so immaculate in comprehension, amazes me! 🙂
Dont mind the bollox Narmer. You ken sit for roadside an see wrong wile keep your mof pon mute!! Abi?
Racism? How?
Narmer your “extravagant wording” is/was very appropriate and conveyed exactly the emotions, sarcasm and truth in exactly the point you were trying to make. You do write beautifully!!
We don’t need a lame ill-conceived e-passport bia..for what???
You shoot straight. You don’t beat about the bush. Thank you!
I have seen that people throw around the term racist very loosely without understanding its meaning.
You bet!