Columbus...City on the Move—Mayor Andrew Ginther

Mayor Andrew Ginther

He oversees a city of almost a million population and he is always excited about the job when he wakes up in morning and it remains in his mind  before going to bed at night. With a phone call, an assurance and the interview was scheduled. Wednesday,     September 13, the New Americans’ “crew” of Deba Uwadiae and Tatjana Bozhinovski met with the number one person of the City of Columbus, Mayor Andrew Ginther, going through several issues that make the City the beautiful bride of the Midwest.

Andrew Ginther

I was born and raised here in Columbus, making me a minority. Over half of the people living here were not born here. This makes our city so well situated to live up to our mantra of being smart and open. We want to welcome the best and the smartest from around the region, the state, the country and the world. I think the fact that the majority of the people that live here weren’t born here gives us a sense of a growing, dynamic city that is on the move and that is becoming more and more international by the day. We just came from Toronto recently, and when you think of where Toronto was in the last 20 or 30years of being a sleepy Canadian town to the fourth largest city in the North America; you couldn’t walk down the street of Toronto without hearing so many different languages. It is truly an international city with incredible culture and arts and food. But truly, thinking about putting Columbus on the map internationally as a great international city is an exciting thing. Think about how quickly we’re going to grow here as a city over the next 15 to 20 years and certainly over the next 30 years. And new Americans have been such an important part of our past and present and our future.

I graduated from Whetstone High School, went to Earlham College, played for the Fighting Quakers.  Served on the Franklin County school board for six years, Council for eight and my last four as President. When Mayor Mike Coleman decided to retire, I ran to succeed him in 2015. But I now have the best job in the best city. It is a phenomenon job. 

Columbus

Columbus is evolving and we are progressing. I think we are a very welcoming city. I talked to a lot of people, I am not trying to be disparaging, they’ve been to second and third cities before coming here, they weren’t welcome in some other places and weren’t included in the community in the way we are in Columbus. Let’s be honest, commerce has changed greatly over the last 30 or 40 years. Change is hard. But what makes us so dynamic and such an exciting place to be is that we are embracing change and we are shaping change as we move forward.  Change is never easy. There are a lot of people in Columbus who want us to go back to being that calm town of 250,000 people that it was in the 1950s. But now we are a town of nearly a million and we are going to grow and potentially double in the next 30years, the 14th largest city in the country. We are not going back, folks are getting more and more comfortable with our diversity every day.    

Smart Columbus

Transportation is such an incredible part of the Smart Columbus project. I view mobility as the great equalizer in the 21st century.  Regardless where you stay in the city, if you have access to good paying job, affordable and high quality child care for your children; access to fresh food and vegetables, having unlimited access to these things, that is when we will really overcome some of the social determinants of health and wellbeing and poverty that are holding people back. Maybe because of where they live or the challenges they face. So Smart Columbus is all about opening up a lot of opportunities to people regardless of where they live in the community. I believe the greatest challenge or challenges of the 21st century is how to use innovation and technology to help people improve their own lives. That is what Smart Columbus is all about. The foundation of it is based on integrating data exchange, so that we can make better use of the mode of transportation that are available today and also planning for the future so that we have probably a dozen places around the city that already have dramatic free-congested traffic.

If we are going to potentially double our size in the next 30years that will be all of central Ohio, and unless we are smart about different modes of transportation. The great part in our Smart Columbus is that it doesn’t put all our eggs in one basket. It is simply a bus or a train or street car, all of the above platform so that we can use everything from autonomous vehicles, autonomous shuttles, and plug it in with our rapid transit system, particularly in Linden to job centers in Easton and Polaris and other places around the community so that we can make sure we are getting people to jobs, opportunities, education, childcare for their kids regardless of where they live.

I am going to Atlanta, Georgia, to talk about Smart Columbus to their regional planning commission. It is a great opportunity. We are going to be the first Smart City intelligent transport system in a big city in the country and also because we are laboratory. We are using best practices to share with other great cities around the country which is exciting and dynamic, especially when you have great partners like American Electric Power, The Ohio State University, Nationwide, Huntington and all others working with us to make this happen. It is pretty exciting.

Education

Superintendent Daniel Good has been an outstanding Superintendent. I think he has helped restored confidence in Columbus City Schools. I think he has really lived up to our community mantra by being smart and open with the expansions that he has made around new Americans and their families that are settling and including and representing the growing diversity of this community.  He has been an outstanding Superintendent and a great partner of the City.  I worked very closely with him on expanding high quality and improved kindergarten. My vision is to have universal high quality pre-K throughout the City. The school district has been a partner and champion and working with us on that. It has increased by third the number of pre-school openings and opportunities. We opened the Linden pre-K Center. We kicked off with Hilltop. We want to double the number of young people they enrolled with high quality by 2020. Dan has been a very great partner in that work. 

Teachers

I know that folks are always going to agree about contract, negotiations and so forth.

I have a great confidence in our teachers. I have the best teachers of my life in Columbus City schools.  They are fantastic teachers. I respect what they do and I value what they do. I know the Board of Education was elected by the voters. I trust their choices. Hope they can continue to move forward and support the teachers and the kids that need to be our top priorities in the community so that they can be successful.

I am blessed with an outstanding Director of Education, Rhonda Johnson. She’s been the President of the Columbus Education Association for at least a decade or two and classroom before that. She is very close to the Board of Education and the Superintendent. We don’t have any control over them. I view my job as being Partner-In-Chief to the Superintendent and to the School District. What can we as a city do to invest in and support things outside the traditional school day? So I think the after school program. We dramatically increased our funding for after school program. The Recreation and Park Department is the largest sponsor of the Summer Meal Project in the State of Ohio. We opened up our Rec centers not just for scheduled camps but places where kids can get access to good nutrition meals. The summer time was also a safe place to play, to congregate and get together. I believe that our goal is to do everything we can. I mentored a young woman last high school session. I didn’t know two weeks to graduation whether she was going to graduate. But because of the amazing teachers, Mrs. Chamberlain in particular, one of the administrators of Whetstone High School, she graduated and she is now enrolled in Columbus State Community College.  Not any one person can do everything but all of us can do something. Whether it is by mentoring young people, reading buddies, getting directly involved, working in ESL (English as a Second Language) with our young people in the district. We all have a role to play. 

Business

From the bottom-line perspective for us, income tax revenue drives our city. With tax and policy changes at the state and federal levels nearly 80percent of our revenue for our general funds for cost of our fire fighters, public health workers, public service staff, all those folks get paid by income tax revenue. Nearly 80percent of that comes from the people working in different paying jobs. For our economic development in the near term and long term it is going to be in the IOT – Internet of Things and that is going to be our future economic growth and development. I think we can get a lot of international investments into Columbus because we are stable, strong, great American city where it is much more cost efficient to do business. Much more stable environment than sometimes on the coast and in the south. I’ve met with folks from all over the world trying to encourage them to invest and do business here in Columbus. I think there is a real opportunity especially as we continue to progress and evolve around and be more open. More and more international companies are coming to Columbus which I think will help us create jobs as well.  

Columbus Police

My relationship with the Divisional Police has never been stronger. We have the best Chief of Police, Kimberley Jacobs, in the country and the best divisional police in the country. It is by making yourself transparent, accountable and responsive to the community. That is why I have such regard for the use of body cameras making sure we continue training our officers. We understand that all of us have bias. This is the way we were raised and grew up with, but it is how to deal with that, how to manage that, to do our jobs effectively in a diverse and interactive growing city. Having more diversity inclusion officers, specifically assigned to work with different parts of the community, has been an important issue. I think the safety forces, both police and fire service should reflect the beautiful diversity of this community. How can we figure out new innovative way to get more diversity into the police and fire service? Part of that is that we now have for the first time in our city, a Chief Diversity Officer. The challenges are not just from our workforce diversity side but supplier diversity. We’re making sure not only our workforce is better and represent the diversity of the community but also making sure that small business owners have a fair shot in doing business and providing services in the community. That is a part of the larger goal of becoming the America’s opportunity city, giving all Americans equal opportunities. My vision is we have the largest middle class of any city or size in the country than anywhere else. The economy is working very well for about two third of people that live here. A third of our neighbors has been totally left out of the success story in Columbus. That is inconsistent with our core values and our vision. We can grow the prosperity and make sure that prosperity is shared by families and neighborhoods throughout our city. That is the most important thing a local government or a city government does. That is our top priority. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to provide outstanding safety services to people throughout our community – diversity inclusion, innovation, using technology in different ways, making sure we are being transparent, accountable and responsive.

Service

I don’t think I will ever have a better job. I absolutely love this job. I get up in the morning excited about going to work. I think about it going to bed at night. I’m thrilled and excited that my wife, Shannon, has stepped up and really taken the Women Commission to an incredibly high profile, influential work, family stability and financial empowerment for women, pay equity, and all that are part of American opportunity city vision because 78 percent of the minimum wage earners in this community are women. So regarding family stability, neighborhood success and strength that is what we have to be tackling – everything from addiction and homelessness that are plaguing women and children and families in this community are such important part of our mission and focus.

“DACA doesn’t define us as Human Beings…”

By Tatjana Bozhinovski

 

Last month, I wrote quite a bit about my experience of working with students from dozens of countries around the world. I shared good stories and bad, happy moments and sad, challenges and accomplishments.  This past month, due to certain actions of our country’s administration, I couldn’t help but think of my students I had that are DACA recipients. I thought of Maria among many others, a young girl, who I thought has a very bright future. Though it’s been almost 10 years since she was in the same school where I worked, we kept in touch and I have followed her challenges, ups and downs and everything that life has thrown her way. She agreed to talk to me a couple of weeks ago to share her story and tell me what she could.

I  am not going to use Maria’s last name, nor her picture due to the circumstances, but her story is worth telling. She came to the USA in January of 2006 with her mom and two brothers. She was 12 years old and was the oldest sibling. They were faced with many challenges on their way here, but she chose not to share details with me at this time about that journey. The four of them stayed in Virginia for a week. They had heard that Columbus, Ohio was a better place for them. They had better opportunities as new arrivals. I asked her what she remembers about her first day of school here and the first year. “I remember not being able to speak any English”, she said, “but I was glad to see other students who came from other countries. We couldn’t speak the same language, but we could still communicate and laugh. I was happy to be learning English in my first year and be attending school. When we had school breaks, I would be sad because I wasn’t in school”. 

 I didn’t have Maria in any of my classes. I had her younger brother who loved soccer and was picked to be on the school’s soccer team. I knew Maria from seeing her in the halls, in the lunchroom, in the auditorium. Everyone knew Maria. She was this bright eyed girl that always smiled and was nice to everyone. She had many friends and helped others. She always talked to teachers and other adults in the school about her plans and her future. She told me that many of the teachers told her that she will probably not be able to attend college due to her status. Initially, she became disinterested in college because that seemed impossible for her to achieve. But, she also said, “I never fully gave up on going to college because education was always something I wanted to attain. I was encouraged by other undocumented students around the country…Gabby Pacheco is an immigrant activist who walked from Florida to Washington, D.C. with a group of undocumented students. She gave me hope! I, other DREAMers, and allies in our community began organizing for educational attainment in Ohio. Even after DACA was created, I still had major hurdles to get to college, first at CSCC and then once I was able to transfer to OSU. In both organizations, there was significant push back to aiding or working with undocumented or DACA students”. 

““Immigration has constantly been a political football in the US for both parties. However”, she said, “DACA doesn’t define us as human beings! Migration should not define any person”

Despite the many barriers, Maria did receive her Bachelor of Arts and Science from the Ohio State University this year, focusing in Geography and Anthropology. Thankfully, some of her mentors convinced her to continue her studies. She is currently attending Miami University in Oxford, studying Geography. 

I couldn’t help but ask about her family. I wanted to know how Nestor is doing. Did he go to college? Does he still play soccer?  She has another younger brother and her mother had baby girl that should be in elementary school by now. But, because of the current political situation concerning DACA, she did not feel safe sharing any information. She only added that her mother has been a great support to her, acting as mother and father in their household. She also added: “I am the oldest of my siblings and feel an intense drive to continue being a role model for them”. 

As for the DACA program, and her opinion about the changes President Trump has proposed, Maria had a lot to say.  She said she was not surprised with the new Trump administration’s decision, but feels it is pretty painful because many of her fellow undocumented students and workers had gotten the chance to live a life outside the shadows for a little while after the program was implemented, and now they have so much to worry about again.  “Immigration has constantly been a political football in the US for both parties. However”, she said, “DACA doesn’t define us as human beings! Migration should not define any person.  I can say by experience that if we fight for something as hard as we did for DACA, we can fight for our collective rights in the future.  I will continue with my graduate education with the full support of my family and my community. I will continue to fight for all immigrants. There is a false narrative of “good” and “bad” immigrants that I want to dismiss as divisive. No human being is illegal!”

“No human being is illegal”. I don’t think that there is much more to add to that, so I will leave this as the conclusion. I thank Maria from the bottom of my heart for agreeing to talk to me on this subject. The beautiful young girls I knew, with brown eyes and a big smile on her face, grew up to be a wonderful young woman with great dreams for her future, and I wish her nothing but the best.

More opportunities in Columbus—Tobias Iloka, President/CEO Dynotec Inc.

Tobias Iloka

At the top floor of Dynotec Commercial Complex on E Dublin Granville Road, Columbus, OH Tobias Iloka, holds sway as the President/ Chief Executive Officer. He has always wanted to be an engineer and an entrepreneur. In the last 20years, and with his supporting staff, his business, Dynotec Inc. has impacted several projects in Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

I am originally from Nigeria and I came to America in 1976 to go to college. I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana to study civil engineering in a small college, Indiana Institute of Technology. When I graduated, I got an engineering job in Indianapolis, with the Indiana Department of Transportation. After a few years there, I left to attend Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN for my master’s degree in structural engineering. Upon graduation, I returned to Indiana DOT again in Indianapolis for few more years of work before leaving Indiana for good after 10 years there.

Columbus

I came straight to Columbus from Indianapolis in 1986. I got a job here in the private sector managing transportation projects for a consulting firm. Columbus was much smaller then, obviously. But what caught my immediate attention was that Columbus was a much more welcoming City than Indianapolis where I just moved from, even though the two cities were similar in size and were capitals of two neighboring states. At the time, there were very few African families in Columbus. African food stores were non-existent. We had to rely on Asian stores as the closest thing to African foods. Education and the Ohio State University were the two major draws for immigrants to Columbus back then. Many people who came to study stayed in the Columbus area after graduation. The fact that Columbus is a state capital was an added attraction for many immigrants looking to work in State government after graduation.

Dynotec

I started Dynotec in 1990, just four years after I arrived in Columbus. Dynotec is a civil engineering company that provides professional design services to public and private clients in the areas of infrastructure development. We are not contractors, we are designers. The typical work we do consists of design for roadways and highways, bridges, water plants, sewer plants, sewer collections, water distributions and many more. We have offices also in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. We have been involved in most major civil engineering projects with the City of Columbus in the past 20 years. Our company is one of the well-established minority firms in Ohio. My greatest motivation for starting Dynotec was the passion I have for engineering and my fascination with entrepreneurship. When I was young, all I wanted to study in college was engineering and nothing else, and I also aspired to owning a business someday. I am fascinated with the business world. So knowing what I wanted, and with hard work and steadfast determination, everything came together to happen. People and friends helped along the way. But for me, family and supporting wife helped the most. They provided the stability in an unpredictable world of business.

Projection

Columbus is a growing and dynamic city. There are more opportunities for immigrants today than when I came here 30 years ago. All it takes is to articulate a vision for yourself of what you want to be and work extremely hard to realize your dreams. Be nice to people along the way because the relationships you build will definitely come back to haunt you, in a good or bad way.

On Nigeria’s 57th Independence Anniversary, a recap of the country’s trajectory

By George E. Uriesi

Integral to their policy of colonization, European nations, partly for administrative

purposes, but more in an effort to establish their stakes in different parts of the African continent, carved out large chunks of the continent, bunching several different nationalities together to proclaim them ‘countries’. These whimsical configurations were effected without regard for any considerations other than the political and economic benefit of the colonial powers.

Naturally, the end result of these brazen acts of arbitrariness were independent African nations emerging with this baggage and trying hard to foster unions for which they were not accountable in the first place, but which nevertheless now existed, enhanced by several years of co-habitation, inter-marrying and in most cases, joint agitation for independence. Nigeria's peculiar case, being a bunching of over 250 ethnic nationalities in one country, makes her by far the most politically complex African country created by colonialists.

Nigeria achieved its political independence on October 1st, 1960. Today, 57 years later, let us summarize Nigeria's journey since independence and how she has fared with her colonial baggage, in part to reminisce and in part to reflect on how she got to where she is today.

With the benefit of hindsight, the immediate post-independence period (known as the First Republic) can be described as the prime of Nigeria, when the foundations were supposedly being laid for independent Nigeria and by omission, for what she has become today. This is because it has turned out that that was the only period in the short history of independent Nigeria when the country was led by people who despite their many shortcomings, were nevertheless clearly motivated first and foremost by the interests of their people and constituencies. They did have their serious flaws though, as their leadership tended to divide rather than unite the ethnically sensitive and politically fragile country. This led to several testing political crises, which provided the excuse for military intervention in 1966 and the beginning of the military rule era.

  "Indeed, it is this oil (or ‘oyel’ as it is locally called) that has been the source of the immense jostling between the country’s various interest groups for access to its spoils."

The military came into the Nigerian political arena with a bang (literally) and in a manner that helped to ignite the already ethno-politically charged atmosphere. With two coups in quick succession, things quickly degenerated into a bloody, 3-year civil war. After the war, the military settled down to govern and soon transformed Nigeria from a federal system of government to a unitary system that was more in line with their military command structure. This was also the period when Nigeria began to harness her abundant crude oil resources, which then served to redirect all government focus and efforts from ‘baking’ cakes to ‘sharing and eating’ them. Thus, productivity was gradually discarded for the easy-come, easy-go oil money. Vibrant industries and other natural resources upon which the erstwhile regions and the country had relied before the advent of oil money became neglected and eventually allowed to die away.

Indeed, it is this oil (or ‘oyel’ as it is locally called) that has been the source of the immense jostling between the country’s various interest groups for access to its spoils.

The fierce competition underpinning this jostling combined with purposeless and irresponsible leadership at all levels of society, are jointly responsible for the multidimensional conflicts of ethnicity, region and religion repeatedly threatening to tear the country apart. But I digress…

Their return to the barracks in October 1979 was good riddance!!! Thus emerged the period known as the 2nd Republic. With the handover to civilians, the opportunity had finally come for civilian politicians to correct the mistakes made in the first Republic. But alas! The leaders of this era totally lost sight of their responsibility to their people and constituencies. Instead, governing became a comic orgy of avarice, irresponsibility and degeneracy. Thus the era represented the beginning of the decay of all areas of the economy and national infrastructure.

On January 1 1984, Nigerians woke up to find the military back in power, not so much with a bang this time around as like a thief in the night. The inept civilian government had been overthrown in an almost bloodless coup d'etat. The leaders of the newly installed junta gave the impression that they wanted to arrest the drift and to put the country right and their overarching strategy was to forcibly restore discipline. However, within 20 months, another military coup ushered in a period that cannot but be personalized in Nigeria’s short history as ‘the Babangida’ era!

The Babangida era was the point at which the trajectory of ‘project Nigeria’ can be said to have emphatically turned ‘South’. It was the period when all previously revered national institutions as well as the nation’s intelligentsia came under systematic attack.

The Judiciary, the Labor Congress, the Medical Association, the Bar Association, the

University Teachers Union (ASUU), the National Association of Nigerian Students amongst others too numerous to mention were all systematically sullied or routed. Also, iconic federal government institutions like Nigeria Airways, Railways, Shipping lines, Ports Authority et al all suffered accelerated decline in corporate governance.

" Soon enough, everyone was on the run. Youths finishing from the university could not wait to leave the country. Professionals who had braved it through Babangida’s time could take it no more. Even Nobel Laureate escaped too."

In the same vein, despite the introduction of several supposedly sensible schemes designed to accelerate social and economic development, such as Peoples Bank, DFFRI, MAMSER, OMPADEC, not to mention the "Better Life for Rural Women" program of his wife, the national infrastructure began to collapse. Maintenance ground to halt. Even the national refineries all began to break down, leading to the emergence of perennial fuel scarcity from which the country has never fully recovered.

The Babangida era was also the point at which Nigerians began to lose faith in the country for the first time since independence. As a result, highly qualified professional Nigerians began to leave the country in droves. It is safe to say that this period saw the loss of the first wave of a significant chunk of Nigeria’s vital, highly qualified human resources who went out into the world and have made a name for themselves in virtually sector of every economy of the world.

After 8 years of military rule under General Babangida, the turbulence coming in the wake of the annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election eventually forced the General to ‘step aside’ on 26 August 1993, ushering in an "Interim National Government". But the interim arrangement, illegal and ‘wobbly’ as it was, quickly gave way to a new military administration. Enter General Sani Abacha. A man of few words, the General proceeded to double down on the mistakes and misadventures of the Babangida era to the extent that if the Babangida administration had only desecrated national institutions, the Abacha administration proceeded to behead them. They were not interested in just banning organizations. They took it personal and went after the main actors.

Soon enough, everyone was on the run. Youths finishing from the university could not wait to leave the country. Professionals who had braved it through Babangida’s time could take it no more. Even Nobel Laureate escaped too. The nation seemed headed for the precipice. However, on June 8 1998, Nigerians woke up to hear that General Sani Abacha had passed away overnight, giving the country a breather. At that point, the nation needed to make some hard choices and try to steer its trajectory pointedly upwards. What choices would be made? Would we learn from all the missteps since independence and chart a new course, or would we double down on our South-bound trajectory and put our feet down on the gas pedal?

Well, the military appeared to choose wisely and opted to retreat to the barracks ‘voluntarily’ and hand over to civilians once again. But of course, as is their custom, they manipulated the process to best suit their hasty retreat. And what did the new civilian ruling class do since May 1999 when they regained political power? In a nutshell, they chose to ‘triple’ down on irresponsibility, defaulting back to all the very worst traits learnt from the 1st and 2nd Republics, as well as military rule. As a result, the old multidimensional fissures became pronounced and the country is back to tottering on the brink of implosion yet again. And yet the political ruling class carries on as they always have, taking Nigeria for granted!

So, as Nigeria turns 57 today, the question must be asked for the umpteenth time, for how long can Nigeria be taken for granted as it is? Or is it ‘granted’ already? Nobody really knows and nobody can say for sure. But common sense will suggest that if a better way isn’t yielded to very soon, the status quo is unlikely to prevail for much longer because what we do know and what cannot be disputed by any right thinking, well-meaning

Nigerian is that it is definitely not yet Uhuru for Nigeria!!!

Happy 57th birthday Nigeria!