OBIKA AND PNM’S ‘CONTEMPT’ FOR AFRICAN ISSUES

TAHARQA means “young warrior,” and a leader by that name was a pharaoh in Egypt and a king in what is now called Sudan.

In Nigeria and other African lands, Obika means trustworthy, independent, and inventive.

In Trinidad and Tobago, Taharqa Obika has stunned the political world by defecting from his rooted Afro-consciousness to an organisation with a dubious history o ethnic support.

Obika’s move into the embrace of the People’s National Movement (PNM) is unlike any other modern-day political u-turn.

The 40-year-old politico did not only dump the United National Congress (UNC) but also stepped away from his family’s profound ties to National Joint Action Congress (NJAC).

NJAC emerged in the late 1960s from the bowels of Afro-T&T ambitions against the Dr. Eric Williams-led PNM, which had failed to engineer social and economic mobility for the working class, especially Black youths.

Youth unemployment was at 45 per cent, young Blacks could not aspire to senior banking, insurance, and other white-collar posts, and the economy was overrun by a minority entrepreneurial class.

Large sums of business profits were repatriated to international capitals.

Neo-colonialism was one of the bitter terms that Makandal Daaga and like-minded young warriors heaved from Woodford Square and other urban centres in what became known as the Black Power revolt.

The PNM had failed to deliver the transformative change that was anticipated following political independence in 1962, NJAC argued.

Tens of thousands showed solidarity, punching their fists into the air and demanding power to the people.

Archbishop Anthony Pantin offered to join an ethnic unity march to Caroni, until he was dissuaded by influential Catholic Church conservatives.

When the police murdered Black Power believer Basil Davis at Woodford Square, the overwhelming number of mourners stretched from Batararia to San Juan cemetery, where the activist was being buried.

Williams later crushed the movement, jailed Daaga and other leaders, and made some nominal change, such as setting up an indigenous bank.

But the PNM never initiated sustained transformational changes.

In 1975, Williams used the heavy hand of the police to beat and terrorise workers, led by George Weekes and Basdeo Panday, who were marching for local ownership of the energy sector and other aspects of economic remodelling.

The PNM of today is much alike the party of yesterday.

The PNM is not pro-African, Aiyegoro Ome, former head of the Reparations Committee, has concluded.

“The current African elite and their associates in the PNM seem to have an inherent contempt for African issues,” Ome wrote recently.

The Dr. Keith Rowley administration has virtually disbanded the Reparations Committee, at a time when former chattel slavery societies are advancing the cause of compensation.

Ome said the Government is “very dismissive on the issue of reparations.”

Today, the economy is as much in an economic stranglehold by a so-called “one per cent” as it was in 1970, with privately-held large corporations creaming profits as the masses struggle to put food on the table.

Commercial banks, which are often oppressive toward small businesses, are reporting historic billion-dollar profits. 

The biblical term “hewers of wood and drawers of water” is appropriate for the labouring class.

Professor Selwyn Cudjoe, who leads an Afro-empowerment organisation, has accused the PNM regime of ignoring the Black masses.

“Many PNM members are concerned about the few Black members in the Cabinet and the inconsequential portfolios they hold,” Cudjoe wrote.

“They are also concerned about how the party treats its Black members, the poverty among Black people, and the deteriorating conditions in which we live.”

Cudjoe said that Blacks in T&T are “sinking lower and lower,” and has accused the PNM Government of not seeking the welfare of Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians from which its traditional support is derived.

He said Rowley “does not possess a coherent view of his society,” and “is so filled with hubris that he can’t be bothered to devote the sustained time and attention that his job requires.”

He has called on the national leader to become humble and “respectful” of his obligations, and has derided the PM’s “rudeness and aggressiveness toward his colleagues.”

Like several other commentators, Cudjoe has branded Rowley a failure on crime-fighting and other urgent national issues, and has called upon the Prime Minister to “give someone else a chance to lead us to a higher, more dignified ground.”

That is the organisation that NJAC-bred Taharqa Obika has embraced.