NUBIAN ARTS
Issue #8
December 20th 2003

AMITY MAGAZINE: "The Issue"
by Chukwuma Chukwuka

As the federal government of Nigeria prepared for the 8th All African Games, the members of the Nigerian Divsion of the Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) got set for the publication of the maiden edition of Amity Magazine.

To many, this makes Amity timely. Albeit others think it is a mere coincidence. Whatever it is, there is something more. There is an issue. Africa and Africans. Both the games and the magazine are for Africans. The latter including those in the diaspora, Africans at home and abroad.

A lot has been said about Africa. Africa and Africans notwithstanding remain an issue. African nations have for long been alienated from one another by the ravages of war, poverty, disease, ignorance, and politcal instability. Unfortunately, Africans constitute their problems. Africans are problems to themselves. Many including respectable African leaders delude themselves by blaming their woes on others. "If not for colonialism"... they argue.

The African has been long ignored and disregarded. He is ignored today simply because he has kept himself backward, almost stupid and unproductive. Does that disturb him? I am afraid of what looks like an answer even when my black ego utters the opposite. The African should start thinking of self-reliance and independence in the real sense. He should aspire towards discipline. Internal discipline generates authentic self, stable identity, and issue-based ideology.

The urgency Marcus Garvey felt for racial independence and self-reliance led him to argue that in independent endeavors lay the only hope for eventual solution to the problem of race prejudice. If the African were to try to raise himself to a higher state in the civilized cosmos, all other races would have to meet him on the plane of equality and brotherhoood.

In the maiden edition of the Amity Magazine, a clarion call for change is made. The days of slavery are not gone forever; slavery is endlessly threatened for every race and nation that remains weak and refuses to organize its strength for its own protection.

LOOK FOR THE AMITY MAGAZINE AT A LOCATION NEAR YOU SOON!

Chukwuma Chukwuka
Editor-in-Chief
Amity Magazine

NUBIAN ARTS Vol.1