For example, in South Africa, during the Apatheid Era, freedom fighter and world's role model Nelson Mandela, was unjustly incarcerated for 28 years by a tiny 14 percent white minority. At the same time, blacks were mercilessly murdered and physically separated. The irony: OAU watched and could not form an army to liberate South Africa.

In Nigeria, during the pogrom, uncountable number of Igbo children, women and men were rounded up, murdered in the most brutal of circumstances by the Hausa-Fulanis and the rest of their Nigerian counterparts in a desperate move to wipe out the Igbo nation from the face of this planet. Again, the irony: OAU watched and did nothing.

In Sierra Leone, the whole story of massacre is still alive and well. So too, is Liberia, Sudan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Algeria, Uganda, etc. Also, the irony: OAU watched and did practically nothing.

The most brutal of these cases was seen in 1994. A whopping 800,000 Rwandans of the minority Tutsi tribe were butchered in less than three months. The irony: OAU watched and did absolutely nothing.

I think this is a good topic, that we have to seat back and analyze very well. Is not just OAU what about the socalled ECOWAS I was still in elementary school when they used to makes us know who is the secretary General of OAU UN, UNESCO, and ECOWAS, Today I am aging and I am yet to find the usefulness of any of this organizations.

OAU is a gathering of dictators, who occasionaly come together and cooperate to protect each others junta.Such notable men as Mobutu,Moi,Mengistu,El Bashir, Babangida etc. are held in high regard.Notice how sensible men like Mandela keep their distance.Please let's leave the dead to bury their own.

++++ Biafran efforts shall be vindicated by the minds of tomorrow.+++

====== Anichebe

Any orgnization with principles of perculiarity well incripted against Biafra should be dissected and of course buried. To hell with the organization, who cares? after all, hunger, civil war, beggars and loosers is still a reflection of Africa since inception. Africa is still subjected to parody and mockery by Europe. OAU has been masquareding as Africa's saviour for years yet our economy is degraded and inimical to Asian countries and even Latin America. What a joke. I say bury them.

The Guardian Online - http://ngrguardiannews.com
Wednesday, May 16 2001
African union replaces OAU May 26

From Tony Eluemunor and Jide Olaniyi Abuja

SEVERAL decades after the vision of a united Africa was espoused by progenitors of pan-Africanism, the dream of an economically and politically integrated Africa will come true on May 26.

On that date, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) would begin to wind up, as it would transform into the new African Union, within one year.

Disclosing this in Abuja yesterday at a seminar on the African Union, which theme was "The challenges of co-operation and integration," President Olusegun Obasanjo said the birth of the new union is the dawn of a new era.

And to avoid the pitfalls of previous efforts to ensure economic and political integration of the continent, Obasanjo said it would be built on a strong base, propped up by strong pillars.

Delivering a keynote address at the seminar, the Nigerian leader listed the following as the pillars on which the community would rest:

an appropriate institutional framework, sufficient authority and capacity for implementing agreed decisions;

solid regional infrastructure in transport, communications and energy;

full private sector and civil society involvement to ensure the building of integrated production capacities in industry, agriculture, mining, to adoption of regional strategies and policies on poverty eradication, environment, health and water resources management, human resources development and on technical co-operation.
Speaking on the failure of previous efforts at integration, Obasanjo identified the unwillingness of African governments to subordinate domestic political and economic interests to supranational institutions, with long-term goals.

Other factors which according to him had hampered efforts to create a common market and pool the resources of the continent together for the benefit of her people include:

lack of good governance and rule of law;

debilitating civil wars and armed conflicts

pervasive weaknesses in regional integration structures as exemplified by the existence of weak industrial structure and the absence of intra-industrial linkages;

poor transport and communication infrastructure, and non-convertibility of African currencies.

lack of policy consistency and credibility as well as antipathy to market oriented economic reforms, resulting in vacillation and reversals in implementation of reforms and the continued state domination of production through inefficient and subsidised parastatals.
He urged Nigerians to support the new union, saying that the country had always shared the pan-African vision and worked hard to use regional economic co-operation and integration to create a larger economic entity and market.

President Obasanjo noted that the African Union would not only be building on existing regional blocs, but also broaden the objectives of economic co-operation and regional integration which include the restoration of peace and stability, protection of human rights, co-ordination and harmonisation of macro-economic policies and the facilitation of the free movement of persons good and services.

His words: "Africa's integration arrangements must focus primarily on trade promotion through trade liberalisation schemes based on the creation of Free Trade Areas. The strategy was to overcome three fundamental development constraints characteristic of African economies, which are the relative small-sized economies of many African nations and the dependence on import".

He stated that Nigeria ratified and deposited the ratification of the Constitutive Act establishing the African Union on May 26, giving the Act the necessary two-thirds majority of the OAU.

"Thus the African union comes into being on 26th which will give a one-year period when OAU will transform into the African Union," he said.

He stressed the need for Nigerians to be fully aware of "the consequences of this new frontier in African unity, by which the management of their political, social and economic affairs will be integrated into those of the African continent.

"This seminar should therefore reflect that the union is entirely in people's interest and that they stand to gain infinitely from this new continental entity," Obasanjo declared.

The president lamented the scourge of wars, conflicts, diseases, debilitating poverty which he said should not be allowed to discourage participating countries from pursuing the endeavour for the unity of the continent.

"The establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was an historic turning point, marked the end of the beginning in the search for an institutional framework for the struggle for freedom and unity.

"The signing of the Constitutive Act of the African Union in Lome in July 2000, marked the beginning of the end," Obasanjo said.

He recalled that Europe, North America, Latin America and the Asian/Pacific regions were moving steadily towards political and economic integration.

OAU is a lunie bin where despots in various stages of derangement converge to hatch further crime against humanity.