Pa­tri­ot­ic Trinida­di­ans/To­bag­o­ni­ans, in­clud­ing those on the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, must show their out­rage and dis­gust at the state­ment made by the Pres­i­dent of Nige­ria, Dr Good­luck Jonathan, at the Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions when he ac­cord­ed racial prece­dence and ex­clu­siv­i­ty to Afro-Trinida­di­ans/To­bag­o­ni­ans in our na­tion­al quest for at­tain­ing the good life (the promised land).

This un­for­tu­nate state­ment was made at a func­tion or­gan­ised by the ESC that re­ceived a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion of $4 mil­lion and at which the In­do- Trinida­di­an Prime Min­is­ter of T&T and Cab­i­net min­is­ters were in at­ten­dance. The Pres­i­dent of Nige­ria, on an of­fi­cial state vis­it, paid for by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, is not on­ly sup­port­ing that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and the ex­clu­sion of the oth­er races of our rain­bow coun­try be the dom­i­nant pil­lar in our na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal agen­da, but shows as­pi­ra­tions for the ad­vent of black glob­al im­pe­ri­al­ism.

These are ideas and as­pi­ra­tions that are out of sync and in­con­sis­tent with our core na­tion­al val­ues and ideals, our for­eign and do­mes­tic poli­cies and our pledge to forge uni­ty and co­he­sive­ness out of our cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty-leav­ing no race or peo­ple be­hind or out of the na­tion­al equa­tion and iden­ti­ty.

The ESC must is­sue a pub­lic state­ment dis­as­so­ci­at­ing it­self from the black su­prema­cist stance ad­vanced by the Pres­i­dent of Nige­ria. As for the Gov­ern­ment it must re­assert its po­si­tion enun­ci­at­ed in our Con­sti­tu­tion, the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion and in the es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial De­vel­op­ment re­lat­ing to the equal­i­ty of treat­ment to be ac­cord­ed to all our cit­i­zens.

It must al­so in­form the Gov­ern­ment of Nige­ria via diplo­mat­ic chan­nels that race will not be a fac­tor in the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of our diplo­mat­ic and func­tion­al re­la­tions.

Stephen Kan­gal

Ca­roni