ASU, Baobab program revamps educational technology for young African scholars

 

September 14, 2022

For prospective graduate students from Sub-Saharan Africa, studying at a world-class university is no longer a wish, but an achievable dream.

The Baobab platform, a Mastercard Foundation initiative in partnership with Arizona State University, offers the Baobab Digital Innovation Scholars Program for young African students to pursue various ASU graduate degree programs related to the educational technology field, including user experience, information technology, learning sciences and software engineering. A Group of scholars poses for a photo on a sidewalk. From left: 2021 Baobab Scholars Jennifer Sarfo, Kwabena Adu-Darkwa, Sandra Nabulega,

Hero-Godsway Zilevu and Viola Melly.

The program was conceptualized to build education technology capacity for the African continent and prepare a cadre of young African scholars for employment and entrepreneurial ventures in the field.

Founded in 2021, the Baobab Digital Innovation Scholars Program will provide 25 young African scholars with graduate-level education and professional training in fields critical to the educational technology and online learning space over the next four years.

Baobab currently has five graduate students studying at ASU in its first cohort. The second cohort comprises 10 students who have been offered scholarships for various master’s degree programs. This cohort started classes in August and will be followed by a third and final cohort of 10 students, who will join the program in 2023.

Jennifer Sarfo, from Ghana, is currently pursuing a master's degree in software engineering through the program and describes herself as a future software developer. Sarfo, whose sister is an alumnus of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, said the software engineering training she is acquiring through her program at ASU will enable her to contribute to solving critical global problems that require software solutions.

“I have always believed that mobile and web applications will never go extinct in our world. With people increasingly depending on phones and social media becoming integral parts of people’s lives, mobile and web applications are here to stay,” said Sarfo, who obtained her undergraduate degree from Ashesi University in Ghana before accepting the Baobab scholarship.

“I think Africans are looking for learning opportunities in prestigious world institutions that do not cost as much as they do when attending physically. Online education will help address most if not all of these concerns and give Africans access to higher education that will help them acquire relevant skills.”

Sarfo is currently working on the Salesforce team at Ed Plus, building custom mobile and web applications using the Salesforce framework.

Sandra Nabulega, a Makerere University-trained statistician, is one of the students who joined the first cohort of the Baobab program from Uganda. Nabulega was an alum of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program before she moved to ASU to pursue a master's degree in learning sciences. Nabulega said a university like ASU, with a variety of learning resources, is a place she always dreamed of studying in.

“Studying about learning and how different people learn is not anything anybody has ever thought of studying in our local universities on the continent. Since I took these courses at ASU, I have realized a great difference as somebody who used to train people. I’m not only learning in a classroom but also taking online learning. I am eager to know more about how different building applications with Salesforce are from other languages like Java, Angular, and others, and I can’t wait to develop applications for the team,” she said.

Nabulega described online education as the future of learning in Africa. Given the situation that happened to in-person classroom learning during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, she described a need to shift to online education that has become a matter of priority.

Kwabena Adu-Darkwa, a Ghanaian studying information technology, said he sees a bright future for IT on the continent of Africa given the exponential growth realized in the past decade. He works on the Salesforce team at EdPlus and had also worked in the tech industry in Africa for two years before coming to ASU.

Adu-Darkwa said one of his goals is to leverage skills from the program that will enable him to create innovative educational technology solutions that will fit the context of the African continent.

“With the rising interest in ed tech, I believe that in the next few years we will see many initiatives innovating in this space for the African market. These solutions will become more accessible to the masses and will scale across the continent. I am working on advanced information management systems. My primary goal is to connect what I’m learning, which focuses on big data. This is what I would like to pursue once I return to Africa," he said.

The Baobab Digital Innovation Scholars Program is part of Baobab’s Phase 2, a second five-year grant with the Mastercard Foundation with a focus on training an educational technology talent pipeline of Mastercard Foundation Alumni and Scholars across the continent of Africa.

Written by Atok Dan, Hubert H. Humphrey Fulbright Fellow at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

 Burdens of Living with Machines

April 22, 2022 - by Atok Dan

The planet earth was once a kind of a safer place without technology or fewer machines. The air we breathe had no impurities – meaning issues of environmental pollution were somewhat not in the lexicon of ancient people. Less or no giant technologies meant less exploitation of natural resources. Few lands had been disfigured for agricultural activities. The era of no machines had its own uniqueness. Fear of nuclear or atomic weapons never existed. In the world of fewer machines, human deaths in conflicts could count less as compared to the current alarming figures we do experience today. In the world of machines, millions of precious lives can be erased on the planet just in a blink of an eye. Living with machines seems to accelerate human demise. The heat we do produce with our machines does threaten even that of the master, the sun. 

Deforestation was never an issue. Trees and vegetation of all species had established strong colonies all over the entire planet. Plants had colonized both the seas and the lands, with the administrative structure of each species straddled beyond current human lines of settlements but never quarreled. The plants commanded some social discipline over every piece of the territory allotted to each family using natural rules of habitability.

Desert and semi-arid species had established some social harmonies with their surroundings, thus giving a lengthy lifespan for those kinds. Wetland areas were tamed to conform to the survivability of the leafiest plants. On the land, climate change wasn’t a common thing. Ancient people would equate it to a curse. If machines have improved our lives, they have also mutilated them. The spread of highly contagious diseases like COVID-19 has come with frequent human migration.   

Marine lives flourished under conducive environments. There were no large water vessels capable of upsetting the natural rules of habitats under the seas or oceans. Fishing or human water hunting never emptied rivers. Humans could terminate a few lives for survival. Today, vessels that empty rivers of their inhabitants never existed. Birds were the kings of space. Now, huge metallic birds spread their wastes in ozone layers, severing atmospheric peace. The human machines have gone to fester habitats of spirits, places preserved for holiness.  Our machines, the hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that roam the milky Way have angered aliens and other space creatures. Treat this text for creative imagination.

  Catching a mirage: A case of achieving a sustainable peace under a ruling SPLM party in South Sudan

By Atok Dan

May 18, 2022

The ruling SPLM party in South Sudan under President Salva Kiir: a laboratory clone of Islamic National Salvation impedes achieving sustainable peace in the country. Juba, the political capital of the government of the world's youngest country, South Sudan, is no longer a place embellished with the euphoria of happiness we witnessed over a decade ago. Desperation and miseries are lesser descriptions of the place. Dilapidated streets are littered with countless street kids’ equal plastic bags thrown at will, little or nothing to tell of an oil-producing state. Debts, incentivized rebellions, and expenditures aren’t what a country less than two decades in statehood is proud of. 

With Salva Kiir, a former rebel commander at the helm of power continuing to sandwich presidential decrees at will, no doubt, a strong African autocrat is in his advanced stage of craftsmanship. The international community, the guarantors of the 2018 revitalization agreement of the resolution of the conflict in the Republic of South Sudan – R-ARCSS, are equally hypnotized by strategic mistakes, no doubt, the regime in Juba is fully immune against any pressure, regionally and internationally. Regional actors such as Uganda and Sudan aren’t trustworthy partners but are parasitically draining every little blood running to revitalize this fledgling and left-alone body called South Sudan. This makes the country a worthy donkey for President Museveni to ride. Ethiopia, which is ostensible, a key player in the region is as well bogged down in a similar conflict. Kenya, which is the only host where oil wealth stolen from South Sudan is kept, is left alone to play a solo game. China as the only close-to-heart benefactor or patron to Juba in the blood oil business has polluted environs in oil-producing areas, a horrendous reality whose outcomes are deformed births, stillbirths, bareness, and rise of cancerous ailments among both humans and domestic livestock. This is an added load to an environment already threatened by desertification and carefree deforestation.

The worse pending on the list of stresses, the regime has struck a crooked deal with Egypt to dredge lungs of the Sudd in the name of flood control, a deal if executed would quickly wither the world's largest wetland on the continent of Africa. There is no deal, but the Egyptian government compromised the entire system. The maladroitness of these leaders has blindfolded them to scope their mandate. A decision to dredge is a mandate an elected government can do, not a prerogative of those in power through violence.   

The South Sudan People’s Defense Force SSPDF, a mere name upgrade of the SPLA, the former Southern guerilla military wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement -SPLM, is now fully relegated in power preference. It is a worthless ragtag or loose tribal alliance, with no semblance of a national army. The regime in Juba relies heavily on the services of the national security service NSS, a brute prototype to that of the National Congress Party in Sudan. This bunch of ill-disciplined militias is what constitutes a national army of South Sudan. The peace agreement is stalled, aggregates of white army, a Nuer collection of forces which resisted against the Dinka dominated SPLA. Agwelek battalion, a Shilluk tribal force under another self-anointed Gen, Johnson Olony is awaiting reintegration into the SSPDF. There was also a Cobra battalion whose composition comprised the ethnic Murle tribe under David Yau Yau. This force, together with the Mathiang Anyoor, a Rek Dinka tribal militia, and Padang Dinka Abushok forces are part of the SSPDF force. Just a week ago, armed Dinka civilians in Warrab, the home of President Kiir, mowed down dozens of SSPDF intelligence officers. In the same Warrab state, machetes are held high in the air for slaughter between Twic and Ngok Dinka, communities intertwined by blood relations. The Murle tribe in Jonglei, the largest state in South Sudan, has recently launched a deadly raid on the Toposa people in Eastern Equatoria, killing over a hundred people. Disarmament has failed time and again. Armed civilians are technically in an arms race with organized forces.  

Gen Gatwic Dual, a Lou Nuer self-declared SPLA -IO head and currently stationed in a Shilluk village called Kitgwang on the north-south border initiated another piecemeal agreement with Gen. Akol Koor, head of the NSS. For no clear reasons, Gen. Gatwic can’t come to Juba despite assurance from his funder, the NSS. Such defiance also poses a threat to peace in this oil-rich state of the Upper Nile.

In Equatoria, a region that had some relative calm in the past has now modeled Gen. Thomas Cirilo’s rebellion, a quasi-tribal and a regional outfit. This is another hot blaze that continues to wreak havoc on the realization of peace in this war-ravaged country. Pastoralists of the Bor Dinka, a subtribe of the Dinka, have their feet printed in the region for chaotic stories. Armed pastoralists have proven a threat to host sedentary tribes in the region. Michael Makuei Lueth, a native of Bor Dinka and an outspoken spokesperson of the Juba, has been on record urging pastoralists from his constituency to vacate Equatoria. Minister Lueth has persistently been a vocal voice for his people and the government alike.

Catching a desert mirage and a prospect of a peaceful election in South Sudan.

The current coalition government would soon outlive its mandate. Conducting a peaceful election, let alone its credibility, within a stipulated time frame is another chase for a desert mirage. Voter registration, awareness, repatriation of refugees, and internally displaced persons, and creating a conducive environment besides internal border demarcation, are some of the gigantic challenges likely to derail the process. Tribes continue to dispute current lines. The AK-47 assault rifle remains a walking stick for civilians in the country. A disciplined force to disarm the population is nowhere, with what is there as tribal militias protecting tribes.

The ruling SPLM party under President Salva Kiir is calling for an urgent election, just a mandate renewal concert in the name of the election. The SPLM-IO, a political wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army -In Opposition under first President Dr. Riek Machar, a native Nuer warlord, has just called a shot to boycott the process including participation in the current government. In the event of this scenario, a ground is set ready for another flare-up. The government under President Kiir, a Dinka chief in the outfit, has not had enough money to fund the peace process but there is enough to sponsor counter-tribal militias to frustrate its implementation.

IGAD, East Africa, and horn regional bodies are ever ill-prepared to exert meaningful pressure. The IGAD heads of state are all divided. With President Museveni of Uganda, the longest serving leader in the region, and a technical head coach of African dictators, a peaceful South Sudan is never the best night story this tired grandfather can share with grandchildren. Ethiopia, another instrumental key player, has its knees deep down in tribal conflict. The role of IGAD in the region thwarts every effort aimed at pressuring South Sudanese corrupt men. The United Nations arms embargo and sanctions cannot impact because Uganda continues to play the role of arms procurement officer for Juba. Corrupt officials sanctioned by the American government continue to crisscross the world using the passports of their wives or next of kin. No sanctions monitoring schemes to deter culprits.

With this convoluted nature of issues, Juba, in a practical sense, is a mile away from becoming a regional Kremlin with President Kiir as Putin’s prototype, and the Soviet-like kind of media propaganda, the victims are the poor South Sudanese. Since the world seems to license another human-made catastrophe in South Sudan under another man who plays part two role of Putin, America through USAID will not send Javelins or Stringers to South Sudan but bags of flour grains for humanitarian intervention. The processes of manufacturing more refugees in South Sudan have hit the ground for a journey.

 The stress of counting days

By Atok Dan

September  27, 2021

When Dionysius Exiguus, a Russian 6th Century Monk, also known in (Latin as Dionysius the Humble) took a task to modify the Christian Calendar from the years 527 to 626, he had to start from (Before Christ -BC) and (Anno Domini - AD), a Latin phrase for the year (DeClercq, 2000, p. 152). Dionysius might have not been fully aware of the likely connotation such innovation may bring forth. The Roman Christians and the hoi polloi in the empire alike had to start to date events. The birth of Christ had to start from somewhere and zero couldn’t be a year enough, thus counting had to start from 1 which became the first day of the modern calendar.

When I landed at Kansas City Airport, Missouri, en route to Lawrence, Kansas, it was June 1st, 2021. At the University of Kansas, a team of jovial Americans, affectionately as they were, unconsciously infected me with the stress of counting down days. The first word, pleasant as it was in my ears, was in the usual American way, “welcome to the US”. This was the second time I heard the word on American soil. In Washington DC, a neatly dressed handsome immigration officer told me after he stamped my passport. Unlike in Lawrence, this busy officer only welcomed me to American soil. The Lawrence friends did immediately proceed to inquire about my next university which I said to be Arizona State University.

A mere mention of Arizona State University invokes the mercilessness of its cruel temperatures. In their hoarse voices, as Midwest Americans sound in my ears, every single loaded negative adjective was used to describe the heat in Arizona. While still mesmerized by a new place, the infectious cadence I had received about my next place started tormenting me in the future. I started counting down my worst days before arriving in a land colonized by wild heat.

Even when I tried to put on a face of resistance, my black and ebony melanin felt like something closer to a furnace described in the book of revelation. What made me almost succumb to heat wasn’t the blast itself, but the way traumatic preaching played out in my brain. Coming head-on with the reality of heat, I postulated that if Arizona doesn't have its extra sun, then the sun overhead must be out for a revenge mission. Having been denied control in other parts of the US, the sun above Arizona must be begging for a space of recognition.

On days one and two, it was inevitably possible to coin my name for Arizona, and invariably, it became the Arid zone - a desert zone. Its ever-dried rocks, barren environs, and dwarfed cactus trees are some of the features which make it a classic colony of the sun, just like the Arabian desert. Sometimes, I would think the Arizonians cold war with the sun needs some magic intervention from the one who regulates it before the sun could unleash her heartless offspring to bake all that oxygen. Could this take some form of a peace pact with the sun, perhaps? No, can I describe it as a flat edge baking pan which people mistakenly referred to as the state of Arizona? Possibly, the pan could be on a slow coal fire to roast. My strong-hearted attitude almost disparaged cruel human greed which contributed to environmental degradation. How I wished I could borrow bags full of snowdrops to bribe the angered sun above us.

This was self-dialectic appeasement to wane off two months of induced stress. In an ideal or natural economy, the sun isn’t only supposed to ration heat but also work collaboratively with helpless souls beneath it. It should not always be an era of the atomic nucleus. The endless thoughts of being part of this beautiful program called Humphrey Fellowship kept me on, however, I would still think the Arizona sun might need some foreign blood to appease it. Daily, my meditation is to beseech this blazing heat to rain softly on us, or else it would take us alive.

 

Lonely in the ghettoes of life

By Atok Dan

March 23, 2013

My eyes could hardly miss seeing stars at midday,

In the ghettoes lived by desperate souls

The ghettoes depicted in life

Yet souls still flourish

Never mind we are in

In the lonely ghettoes, life could still blossom in the bud

With flowers of love and hope, a festival valentine

Though shall few love the exact mindboggling

All are bound by the stage of events in the premise

The desperate environment of now

And I shall leave the rest to self-corrective nature

Is when lonely in the ghettoes of………..

Stars dim in broad daylight,

Flowers begin to wither  

Dying of desperation,

Gardeners lament too

And again in the lonely ghettoes of a jaunt

Quite impressive that few could dare

To evaluate the sex of………

Its offspring to come,

Faring well with suffering,

I shall labor like a slave,

And eats like a king

In the lonely ghettoes of life,

The lice, the shirt, and shorts,

In the hair on my head….

All are friends of the time,

I shall part-time with them

When soap, razorblade,

Are all invented,

No longer in squalid,

Peace came

Let’s keep Juba clean slogan transcends in our daily lives

By Atok Dan Baguoot

December 15, 2012

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it”, Thomas Jefferson. 

With the rise in plastic bags importation to Southern Sudan, “Keeping Juba Clean” through do not litter slogan will emerge as one of the most frustrating tasks to execute all over towns in entire Southern Sudan but until it is virtually owned by the populaces, the fight against health hazards would remain a tough war to achieve after corruption. 

It takes personal efforts to keep the vicinity of your compound clean, something regarded as a prerogative of family hygiene. By doing so, one distance away from mosquitoes whereas, air ventilating through your compound becomes as fresh as a daytime breeze in the valleys. 

 It is a commonly known fact that most of our imported packed foods are sealed in either polyethylene plastic containers or canned/bottled an instrument which is more hazardous to our health than even quality nutrients provided by those foods because the end life of these materials in our reach tends to contaminate efficiency of nutrients in our body systems. The vicious cycle poses upon us by the environment we live in is tentatively equal to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. A clean environment means living friendly with a healthy mind and body as a healthy city is an asset to his/her nation. 

For us to be as productive as we can, we need to treat our ecosystem with a lot of respect and care so that it in return provides us with friendly products for our daily bread. It is in the environment that these already baked pieces of bread emerged first in different forms. 

Children can never know how bread and milk come in their present forms. If there is where we have really perfected since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was inked on paper in 2005, it is in littering and dirtying our environment with different kinds of non-degradable polythene plastic papers and cans/bottled to the extent that our surround looks incompatible with our natural senses. 

Today if one is to use a small piece of land for cultivating simple vegetables, one has to remove thousands of plastic papers before one does that job before considering the direct infertility effect caused by these materials on the soil. Plastic papers defined as none degradable burn up the micro living organisms that catalyze fertility of the soil hence, resulting in poor yield or no yield at all. 

 Once upon a time while walking in Juba town, my eyes came into unexpected contact with mountains of garbage almost everywhere in the whole town, so I had to ask myself what if such a situation persists for some more years while waiting for a referendum of the South, the answer in mind was that Juba like any other city in South Sudan would produce people whose senses can operate well in a dirty environment because overstay in our wrong made environment would acclimatize us as enemies of clean environment and the likelihood of us becoming like bushy animals is there. 

In recognizing our positive deeds to the environment, the governor of Jonglei State, Kuol Manyang Juuk had earlier issued a policy of keeping Bor town clean with a slogan “per every empty bottle dropped”, you go around collecting ten more empty and take them to their rightful places since we don’t reuse them nor do we have a policy of recycling and reduce which is called the 3Rs, Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. 

Due to that attempt, the death of cattle having swallowed plastic papers has tremendously reduced thus, cattle keepers are no longer reporting rampant death of animals around town, besides improvement in the general environment of the town. Another town with a concrete policy of keeping the environment clean is Unity State in which governor Taban Deng Gai issued a decree that banned the sale of plastic bags in town. 

Portable goods are sold in a grey paper envelope in Bentiu town, making it almost the cleanest city in Southern Sudan, though other towns have not imitated that policy of keeping Bentiu clean. Thanks to the two governors for having shown spirit in protecting the unfortunate environment. 

By the way, clean beer needs a clean environment so that it does a clean and excellent job of confusing our minds well. Besides impeding crop farming, animals’ husbandry becomes the worst hit by rampant plastic bags everywhere in Southern Sudan, and given the high demands for meat in our society, if cattle continue dying on daily basis, there would be a decline in meat supply to the markets causing a situation of us becoming man-eaters. 

 Therefore, this workable slogan of keeping Juba clean is tantamount to keeping our health clean from attacks by tropical diseases which are directly associated with an ill-health environment. It is a healthy call to all responsible citizens who mine their hygiene as we all boastfully swagger in our clean attires along freedom corridors. Being clean also deserves special attention like the referendum because diseases would never have time to negotiate another referendum with us unless we do it wholeheartedly. 

Letter to Glory in the name of Gen George Athor Deng

By Atok Dan Baguoot

December 20, 2012  

Dear Gen Athor Deng,

It was exactly on the 19th December at 10:a.m. local time in Juba that your news of being besieged at Morobo county in Central Equatoria state hit the market. A few minutes later, you were pronounced dead in a gun battle that involved SPLA soldiers. You had died as a villain according to your assassins but on the other hand, you were a hero when one revisits stories of struggle.

Your death took Juba and the entire South Sudan a surprise because upright mental persons could not come to terms with the reality that you had come to graduate sections of your army in military training near this endpoint. On that day when the Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, flanked by the SPLA Spokesperson, Philip Aguer Panyang went to the media to declare the news, the next thing one asked was the number of casualties involved on both sides of the battle. It happened that it was a wishful battle that nobody died apart from you and your personal aid.

Though that statement contradicted the reality of the term “besieged” used by the SPLA spokesperson Philip Aguer before the final announcement. Nobody was bold enough to question it. Of course, Dr. Machar said you were killed on Monday while Panyang said you died on Tuesday, a fact that contradicts the truth surrounding your death. The right persons who knew when you died were your own God and those triggered the bullets that sent you to heaven or hell. It has gone a month now since we were relieved of your burdens.

In this account, you ascended to the highest rank in the SPLA through personal contributions during the struggle. 2005 when a peace agreement was signed wasn’t a long one for your assassins to have forgotten what you had brought to the people of this country. You didn’t go and come back for confirmation like what others had done, nor did you even go to rest after the combined enemy had lodged seven rounds of bullets into your flesh. Your ascension to the highest rank was gradual based on achievements counted.

In fact, we were relieved from your burdens when you died for the simple reason that all the deaths including those who died of malaria were attributed to your rebellion. The government could say an ambulance would have gone to pick up a patient in the village if Athor had not waylaid ambush. Crops would have yielded well if Athor had not stirred up violence even in Raga leave alone Jonglei and Warrap where perennial hunger has erected tents.

Your children would never live to celebrate when you departed the world except for your birthday which I also doubt if you had a birth certificate to show such a record. Your death had discolored our Christmas and new year happiness. To those whom you had killed their loved ones, it was a joyous moment and justice was seen done. Those who had known and have not forgotten your valor in the struggle, it was a day of regrets. All in all, we would have loved to see justice done if you were brought to the competent court of law to answer all charges levied on you and to tell us why you rebelled more so against those who were aggrieved by your action. They had wished to see you being handcuffed and drag to court and made public so that others who held the same sentiment of rebelling against the government can see that complaining in South Sudan when rigged off in elections, warrants death if the aggrieved nag.

Inasmuch as this, the only culprit condoning impunity is the government that robs Peter to pay Paul and felt justice done. If the government can rob somebody from his victory and liaises in partnership with the robber, then it becomes a tale in the Manor Farm which later became “Animal Farm” after which all animals struggled for freedom and later turned to be “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. After South Sudan obtained freedom, some became more equals, so the least equals must learn that.

In regard to this, the only station in life in which you were wronged was the time when Gen Kuol Manyang Juuk lifted you on his huge shoulder after you succeeded to disrupt and dislodge the assembly of the Nassir group and their affiliates in Panyagor in 1994. Night preceding that you were in Poktap, a distance of more than 12 hours walk. Dr. John Garang De Mabior persuaded you saying “Athor from tomorrow if the meeting in Panyagor succeeded, that will mark the day the souls of all those South Sudanese who had perished to bring justice would be rendered in ruin and the Movement would then be no more”. You heeded that benevolent call from your leader and ordered all your soldiers at around 7:00.p.m. to start running together with you and by 4.00.a.m, you had arrived in Panyagor, four hours before the commencement of the highly regarded meeting of true betrayers.

Somebody might want to learn who were those in that highly dramatized meeting. They were, Dr. Riek Machar, the leader of the Nassir, Dr. Lam Akol, Kuach Kang, Joseph Oduoh, Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, Arok Thon Arok, William Nyuon Bany, Gordon Koang Chol, Taban Deng Gai, Simon Kun Pouch, Elijah Hon Top, Riek Gai Kok, James Kok Rue, and many others that you know. Section of this government was for that meeting. It was highly funded by the West and those who were against the leadership of Dr. John Garang De Mabior.

Gen Athor, despite their selfless contributions, it says in English that be fair. “when am right thousands of times, nobody remembers, but when am wrong only a time, nobody forgets”. Gen Athor you are a true victim of this fallacy.

 
In this case, what matters most is not where you died like many people do say you were killed in Kampala and carried to Morobo, it is the fact that you died. As of now, you might have already met with people that had departed earlier. Dr. John Garang is one of those whom you might have shaken hands with. I think he will ask you to do one thing because he was your boss. In the religious aspect, death is not a misfortune nor an accident, or even a punishment. It is the end of life in this part of the universe.

Gen Athor, it is good that you have gone to that covetous place. It is the only place you are either judged wrongly or rightly because God counts on your deeds both known and unknown to humankind while still alive. He is a fair God. He is immune to all human nonsense. Lodge your complaints there and wait for Kuol Manyang who cheated you in elections in the name of SPLM as if SPLM and he were destined to rule by God.

The worse after you left, the same government is still blackmailing scapegoat that you manufactured crisis in Jonglei and that whatever reason of conflict is you. That alone will tell a sound-minded person that something was fishy and that the vehicle of struggle might have truly veered off the road. This is solely judged by comrades versus comrades like exactly in the tale of animals in Animals Farm after they had successfully sung the “Beasts of England”. The alive government officials are saying that guns used in tribal conflicts in Jonglei were brought by you. They don’t even mention anything about the gun companies.

SPLM-DC Press Statement on the killing in juba


Friday, March 9, 2012, 1:49 PM


Since South Sudan attain its Independence in July last year, the new nation is facing many challenges that are really hindering its growth and development of this nation which at times discourages investors to come into the nation to carry out developmental programs in South Sudan because of insecurity. SPLM-DC as opposition in this government has not left any stone unturned in South Sudan, we always advocate the government in all aspects to at least bring matters down into dialogue because we believe, to solve this country's problem is through dialogues to promote peace amongst the communities of South Sudan.

Therefore SPLM-DC blames the government for not considering the problems facing the people in South Sudan in general and Central Equatoria State in particular. We as a party condemned the incident of killings which occurred a few days ago in an area called Komiru in juba over a land dispute; the incident resulted in the killing of ten innocent citizens including women and children. The incident happened after the government of central Equatoria announce the demolition of the area, we are in time to promote peace and development in this nation but not to kill each other, and we wish such an event should not happen again. We will always be there as a mirror to the government and we strongly blame the government for allowing soldiers and law enforcement agencies to keep guns at the time they are out of duty. Therefore, SPLM-DC urges the government to investigate this matter and bring those who are involved in the incident to court to face trial than keeping quiet. the issue of demolition is part of development, especially in juba city, the point that we don't understand is why always issues of land grabbing happen only in Equatoria Region yet some Regions do not experience the same thing, then we urge the government to open eyes on the issues of land, especially in Central Equatoria.

We are also sorry about the denial statement of some officials within the government which stated that there was no death occurred in the incident and yet these officials are sent to the government by the citizens of this nation to represent them in all situations, then standing for personal interest in the government.

We also urge the government should ensure proper security that will protect the rights of the citizens and their properties in the Republic of South Sudan; we also urge the government to compensate the families of those who lost lives and properties during the shooting.

Condolence to the families who lost their dear ones in the incident.

Salah Lumumba Cosmas
SPLM-DC Department of Political Affairs
and Information