There is no gainsaying the fact that no serious challenge exists any longer to Senator Barack Obama's public unveiling - scheduled to take place at in an American-style football field - as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. And no matter what ultimately happens, history has been made by Obama's primary victory; a feat that is sure to guarantee that America will never be the same again! No one can deny the freshness and creativity of Obama's campaign and the anachronistic invisible socio-political glass ceilings he destroyed on his way to setting incredible new records.

He was the first black to secure the presidential nomination ticket of a major political party in America. When it is realized that he is only a first generation American citizen - since his father is a Kenyan - then the feat becomes even more amazing. It is very easy for anyone unfamiliar with American history not to fully appreciate the positive monumental implications of Obama's victory. This is a country where disagreements over whether Negroes (blacks) were to be designated 'things' (private property) or part-human beings(!) led to a devastating civil war; where an 'improved' 1787 federal constitution recognized the Negro male as the equivalent of three-fifths of a man(!); and where Negroes (with considerable aid from some 'white knights') had to fight with their sweat, blood and lives to be granted the right to vote (and be voted for) as well as the right to own property.

In a telling speech he delivered in the Hall of Representatives at Springfield, Illinois (Obama's home state) on October 4, 1854, Abraham Lincoln, later 16th U.S. President, had this to say: I hate (the current campaign for the spread of slavery) because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself...(but) I surely will not blame (the people of the South) for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do (with) the (Negroes). My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia, to their own native land...but immediate colonization is manifestly impossible...What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals. My own feelings will not admit of this, and (even) if mine would, we well know those of the great mass of whites will not...A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

President Lincoln has been carefully chosen because he is revered as the Great Emancipator; the point being that if such a more liberal American opinion molder could make such derogatory public comments, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the general mood was a harsher one against black folks. Only foolish politicians, as Lincoln posited, deign to safely disregard those public sentiments held by the majority of the electorate - even when, as aptly expressed by Lincoln, the feelings have no basis! Of course, times have drastically changed from when the motto of a major newspaper in a supposedly moderate northern state like Missouri (Daily Missouri Democrat) was "White Men for Missouri and Missouri for White Men"! But racism still stands as an impregnable fortress in many areas.

Obama is not only black but he is equally a first-term senator and no one else since John F. Kennedy in 1960 has succeeded in becoming the presidential nominee of any of the two major political parties as a freshman congressman! And as Eugene Robinson so succinctly revealed in a Washington Post op-ed essay, in becoming the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party Obama "defied and ultimately defeated 389 years of history (from when the first Africans were brought in chains to America, landing in Jamestown in 1619)." He is also the first candidate to win the presidential primary contest of any major political party despite bearing a name that sounds like he was paroled from the Guantanamo Anti-terrorism Detention Center (Barack Hussein Obama), and what's more at a time the American society is so touchy about negative symbolisms!

Obama equally took on the highly resourceful, influential and larger-than-life husband-and-wife Clinton team and bested it at the end of a tortuous, drawn-out nominating process, which is no mean achievement (even if we concede the considerable self-serving role of the Conservative Right). He also raised campaign fund-raising to an unprecedented height as he garnered stupefying amounts of cash that made his opponents green with envy. By this unassailable performance he was able to establish another record as the first major party presidential candidate to reject federal money ($84.1million) since the public campaign-funding system was instituted in 1976!

*Part 2 of the three-part serial titled "The Obama Unorthodoxy - The Odds Against Him" will appear next week.

What allegedly happened in Osun State must have happened (and is still happening) all over Nigeria. It is just Justice Naron's bad luck that The News chose to zero their snooping lens on his election panel. Regardless of how the matter is ultimately resolved, I've already developed permanent goose pimples from knowing that replacements for the justices of the existing Supreme Court would come from the ranks of the Court of Appeal system whose current stock-in-trade is largely jankara justice (highest-bidder-takes all). Dismissing or quietly retiring compromised judges has now lost its deterrence value. Judges that willfully remove the blindfold from the sword-wielding lady with a balance scale for filthy lucre must be prosecuted as common criminals.