“Where’s the Pan-Africanist support needed through Haiti’s dark days?”, asks USAfrica’s Chido Nwangwu
Special to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com
As the efforts by the greater world community continue to tackle the crises following the hundreds of thousands of deaths and destruction from the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, a call has been made for more persons of African descent and governments to intervene boldly.
In making this case, the Founder & Publisher of Houston-based USAfrica multimedia networks and the first African-owned, U.S-based professional newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com, Chido Nwangwu, “appeals to all persons, especially African civic groups, governments, non-governmental organizations and businesses to contribute their financial support to offer some existential light through these dark days of Haiti.”
Dr. Nwangwu who served as an adviser on Africa issues/business community to the Mayor of Houston, Texas, notes “especially persons of African heritage and descent must rise to this historic and tragic challenge. We are required to provide relief to our kinfolks in Haiti, and play valuable roles…. USAfrica is supporting and will continue to mobilize and raise more awareness across our communities and readership around the world by highlighting these tragic events and the quests for relief and reconstruction at the world’s
oldest democratic republic of persons of African descent, Haiti.”
Nwangwu, recipient of public policy and journalism awards, points out that: “The Igbo and Haitians share some common ancestral origins, as particularly and clearly articulated by Haiti’s first President Dr. Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier in his 1969 declarative and lucid statement supporting the sovereign state of Biafra (mainly Igbos, out of Nigeria) published on USAfricaonline.com.”
USAfrica (and USAfricaonline.com, characterized by The New
York Times as the largest and arguably the most influential African-owned, U.S-based multimedia networks) established May 1992,
Offering a philosophical reflection on the scope of the problems, he says: “Merely viewing the images/video of distress and decimation of life and environment, Haiti’s shattering earthquake of January 12, 2010 and its aftershock seem like a filmic creation of a fictional, gharish visitation and enactment of armageddon! But it is so sadly, painfully real. The litany of death and despoliation. The dust and carnage and blood! More dust and destruction and more deaths, and more blood….We have to rise to this human tragedy, humanitarian task and pan-African challenge.”
—–
Chido Nwangwu, former member of the editorial board of the Daily Times of Nigeria (1989-1990), is the Founder & Publisher of first African-owned, U.S-based professional newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com; The Black Business Journal, CLASSmagazine, PhotoWorks.TV, AchebeBooks.com, USAfrica.TV and several blogs. He served on Houston former Mayor Lee Brown’s international business advisory board (Africa), appears as an analyst on CNN, VOA, SABC, NBCNews, CBSNews, ABCNews FOXNews affiliates and honored by the Washington-D.C.-based National Immigration Forum for utilizing multimedia to fight authoritarianism and foster freedom of expression; served on the board of the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S., the NAACP (Houston); publicity committee of the Holocaust Museum, Houston; recipient of an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in May 2009.
——–
e-mail: Chido@USAfricaonline.com
wireless: 832-45-CHIDO (24436). office: 713-270-5500
