At the end of July, the Presidential Guard of Niger, backed by the military, unseated the current president, Mohamed Bazoum, in a coup supported by the people. In response, the United States and France, with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), began planning a military intervention to return Bazoum to power. West African nations, including Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, quickly declared solidarity with the new government, a move that could turn a military intervention into a greater regional conflict. To understand what is happening in Niger and how it fits into the bigger picture of the rejection of neo-colonialism and US hegemony, Clearing the FOG speaks with Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire.
Listen here:
Review us on iTunes! Click here … Then click on “View in iTunes … Then click “Ratings and Reviews.”Guest:
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire, an electronic press agency that was founded in 1998. He has worked for decades in solidarity with the liberation movements and progressive governments on the African continent and the Caribbean.
Azikiwe is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science/Public Administration and Educational and Administrative Studies.
He is the co-founder of several Detroit-area organizations including: The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, and the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs.
Between 2007-2011 Azikiwe served as the chairperson of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights(MCHR). For additional three years Azikiwe served as President and later Vice-President of MCHR. He is currently a board member at large in the organization.
Azikiwe has worked as a broadcast journalist for the last 22 years and has hosted and co-hosted programs on several radio stations including, WHPR in Highland Park, MI, WDTR in Detroit, WCHB in Detroit, CKLN in Toronto and WDTW in Detroit. In 2010 he launched a weekly two-hour blog talk radio program entitled the “Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast.”
Azikiwe is often solicited by various newspaper, radio and television stations for comment and analysis on local, national and world affairs. He serves as a political analyst for Press TV and RT worldwide satellite television news networks as well as other international media in the areas of African and world affairs. He has appeared on numerous television and radio networks including Al Jazeera, CCTV, BBC, NPR, Radio Netherlands, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Belgian Pirate Radio, TVC Nigeria and others.
Azikiwe has traveled and lectured throughout the United States and Canada. In the 1990s he conductd field research in the Southern African nations of South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho.
Between 1984-2000, Abayomi Azikiwe served as the editor of Pambana Journal monograph series published at Wayne State University in Detroit. During this period, Azikiwe published twenty-four monographs dealing with the history and political economy of the Pan-African world and the international community in general. There were two research discussion papers on Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Studies in 1992. Azikiwe also formed and directed the Pan-African Research & Documentation Project from 1991-1999 at Wayne State University.
He is the author of numerous articles and monographs and his writings have been published in the Tanzania Citizen, Zimbabwe Herald, Malawi Nation, Southern Times in Namibia, The New Worker in England, Africa Insight in South Africa, the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal, The 4th Media in Beijing, Capital Asia in Malaysia, the Albany Tribune, Black Agenda Report, The San Francisco BayView, News Ghana in West Africa, Pambazuka News at Oxford UK, Allafrica.com, the World Financial Review along with others publications.
Azikiwe has published chapters in three books over the last seven years: “Haiti: A Slave Revolution,” NYC (2010) and “Gaza: Symbol of Resistance,” World View Forum (2011) and “The Illegal War on Libya,” edited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (Clarity Press, 2012).
He is the author of recent pamphlets entitled “What You Should Know About the The Hidden War in Congo, Past & Present (2008), “Africa and Imperialism,” (2011) and has four articles in another pamphlet entitled “U.S. Hands Off Libya.” (2011)
In September 2016, Azikiwe published a book entitled “Pan-Africanism, Gender Emancipation and the Meaning of Socialist Development: Revisiting the Role of Women in Nkrumah’s Ghana”. Later in 2017, Azikiwe published the book “Notes on the World Socialist Movement: From the Soviet Union to the Bolivarian Revolution.”
Also in late 2017, the PANW editor published the book entitled: “Rebellion, Crises and Social Transformation: Lessons From the July 1967 Detroit Rebellion and Beyond.”