Fw: communique

[ayo_ol...@yahoo.com]

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.

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From: toks x <to...@yahoo.com>

Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 08:45:19 -0700 (PDT)

To: ayo olukotun<ayo_ol...@yahoo.com>

ReplyTo: toks x <to...@yahoo.com>

Subject: communique

[Felicia Oyekanmi]

Prof Olukotun
I wonder how the electoral colleges recommended in this communique will be defined.

Prof Felicia A. D. Oyekanmi
Department of Sociology
University of Lagos
Akoka, Yaba,
Lagos Nigeria
Tel: {234} 1 7941757
Cell: {234}8056560970

--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 9/10/13, ayo_ol...@yahoo.com <ayo_ol...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: communique
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Date: Wednesday, 9 October, 2013, 13:00

Sent from my BlackBerry®
wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.From:

toks x <to...@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 08:45:19 -0700

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olukotun<ayo_ol...@yahoo.com>ReplyTo:
toks x <to...@yahoo.com>
Subject:
communique

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

This is a great communique and its points dovetails with what I've always argued. Folks are right to be skeptical about the timing of the national conference. They may be vindicated if as they suspect Jonathan takes the country through another wasteful, inconsequential farce--if he mimics Mr. Obasanjo. The truth, even those of us who have a long record of advocating for a national conference, have to admit is that, without a commitment from Jonathan and other "elected" principal officials of this republic to put the key outcomes of the conference to a national referendum that would inform the inauguration of a new constitutional order, the conference's failure is almost guaranteed. The dismal implementation records of previous conferences do not inspire confidence.

Nonetheless, a national dialogue is timely in the present circumstance of multiple threats to Nigeria's very existence. Not only that, the structural defects that undergird  corruption, electoral malfeasance, and unhealthy political quarrels need to be addressed. The conference should obviously not usurp the sovereignty entrusted in the current elected officials, however problematic this process of sovereignty transfer was. The idea of a sovereign national conference is a fanciful overreach for those desiring a forum for perfecting or, failing that, dissolving the house of Lord Lugard.

I love this communique for rejecting the no-go-area canard. What are the powers that be and some respected intellectuals afraid of when they argue that the break up of Nigeria should be off the table? You can't inaugurate a political conversation on the many existential questions plaguing the Nigerian state and refuse to entertain the broaching or discussion of break-up. What if the discussions return with or congeal to a verdict that the Nigerian union is irretrievably broken and needs to be destroyed in the interest of everyone? What then? Do you regiment the discourse away from its logical, considered conclusion in an arbitrary effort to preserve a union that representative interlocutors have declared unviable? It would be the analytical equivalent of a coitus interruptus, not to mention a waste of money, time, and opportunity.

I do believe that the secessionists are vastly outnumbered by those who want Nigeria preserved in one form or another---ranging from the broken status quo to a confederacy of autonomous jurisdictions. But I also realize that there are many who are invested in the structural status quo and have dubiously and self-interestedly demonized secession while valorizing the present union as a way of preserving their privileges, which a different structural configuration would undermine. I also realize, as a historian, that centrifugal pressures are regenerative, creative ingredients in nation building, for they help to shake stakeholders from their complacency and to prevent citizens from taking the nation as a settled, sacrosanct, final product. Besides, providing a platform for those who desire separate states will afford us an opportunity to understand the depth and breath of the current disenchantment with how Nigeria is presently structured and run. Additionally, it is a way to channel the more virulent forms of these separatist political imaginations into a democratic and deliberative medium that would tame and mainstream them before they morph into something threatening and violent. 

The more I think about this national conference idea, the more I am reminded that:

1. There are several unfinished/truncated nationalisms and decolonizations all over Africa. 

2. There is a fetishization of the nation-state as a final, linear end-point of political organization and state formation, which in turn forecloses on the possibility of revisiting, revising and, when necessary, undoing the territorial-political bequests of colonizers.

On the first point, one of the most enlightening papers I heard at the recent Toyin Falola International Conference in Ibadan, is the presentation of Professor Fonkem Achankeng, who presented an incisive paper on the uncompleted but ongoing struggle of the Southern Cameroons to be allowed to determine their political future outside the colonial creation called Cameroon. Professor Achankeng has several articles in journals that articulate the self-determination aspirations of the Southern Cameroon peoples.

In Western Sahara, the people's struggle for a separate state or at least for substantial autonomy from Moroccan rule is all bu forgotten. In several other theaters, the work of colonial state-building is unraveling, with regions and peoples thrown into strange national cauldrons increasingly voting with their feet against such colonial contraptions.

Perhaps we need a continental discussion and debate on these unfinished business of nationhood and self-determination that is increasingly bubbling to the surface to trouble colonial states previously considered fairly settled.

As I told Dr. Achankeng, the nation-state as a form of disciplined territorial political space is a relatively recent idea, having its origins in the so-called treaty of Westphalia in the mid 18th century. In Africa it's even more recent, dating only to the late 19th century and early twentieth century. Yet Africans have become so wedded to that state form despite the fact that, being a jealous and domineering entity that brooks little or no challenge to its sovereignty, the nation-state frowns upon alternative expressions of African nationhood and group political solidarity. Given the recency of the nation-state, and the non-linear trajectory of human political evolution (forget Fukuyama and his nonsensical end-of-history neoconservative fantasy) the notion that the African postcolonial nation state is beyond negotiation or reconstitution and is a sacred baseline of political organization, debate, and governance is untenable.

My feeling is that in addition to having this debate on the whether the national houses that colonizers built can still accommodate the varying, divergent aspirations of their occupants, perhaps the best way to win support for simmering--and legitimate-- nationalist, separatist, centrifugal, and self-determination struggles across the continent is to first deconstruct the nation-state and wean Africans from its mysterious hold on them. Once this task of deconstruction and historicizing is complete, Africans may be more receptive to legitimate political and territorial challenges to the existing nation-states of Africa.

The only conceptual snag in this business of deconstruction right now is that putative African nations and groups who aspire to international recognition have to use the idiom of the nation state to shape their struggle because that is unfortunately the only entity that commands international recognition--the only territorial vocabulary with the force of legality in international affairs. This sad reality limits the appeal of deconstruction, because folks involved in struggles of self-determination simply want what others have--a nation-state to call their own--even if in principle they are not sold on the paradigmatic political stature of the nation-state form or its superiority to alternative local or supra-national territorial entities.

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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Wonderful Writing 

My God!

This piece from Moses is the equivalent of a serious  academic paper.

I particularly enjoyed these lines-

'What if the discussions return with or congeal to a verdict that the Nigerian union is irretrievably broken and needs to be destroyed in the interest of everyone? What then? Do you regiment the discourse away from its logical, considered conclusion in an arbitrary effort to preserve a union that representative interlocutors have declared unviable? It would be the analytical equivalent of a coitus interruptus, not to mention a waste of money, time, and opportunity.'

What I enjoyed most are the expressions  'congeal to a verdict ' and 'the analytical equivalent of a coitus interruptus'

How do people learn to conceptualise and express themselves like this?

'congeal to a verdict ' is particularly beautiful because  it very effectively adapts  a process derived from the actions of material substances in describing human social action, action emerging from the combination of the immaterial-the human mind- and the material- human society.

He is indicating that such a conclusion could form gradually, on its own , through the momentum of people who might not necessarily be working together towards such a goal.

'the analytical equivalent of a coitus interruptus' is beautiful because it correlates the rough effect of interrupting the ecstatic experience of sex with breaking the natural development of discourse between people towards a liberating  direction, this liberating direction being compared with the climax represented by sexual release. 

This is also wonderfully articulated :

" I also realize, as a historian, that centrifugal pressures are regenerative, creative ingredients in nation building, for they help to shake stakeholders from their complacency and to prevent citizens from taking the nation as a settled, sacrosanct, final product. Besides, providing a platform for those who desire separate states will afford us an opportunity to understand the depth and breath of the current disenchantment with how Nigeria is presently structured and run. Additionally, it is a way to channel the more virulent forms of these separatist political imaginations into a democratic and deliberative medium that would tame and mainstream them before they morph into something threatening and violent." 

This is beautiful for its sheer rhetorical force. 

Puzzles About Self Description of Educational History by the Writer of the Admirable Piece 

At the risk of seeming quarrelsome, I need to state that I have a problem that comes from reading those lines I so admire.

Who  is this person,who, clearly, can teach how to write English to many well educated English people?

How did he gain the knowledge of how to conceptualise and express himself this way?

At what stage in his education were the foundations for such knowledge and skill developed?

Can this be the same person who describes himself a victim of his teachers at university, in a system  where the majority of his teachers were mischievous crooks, for each good one there being two or three destructive devils?:

'But I'll tell you that for every one lecturer who taught me well, for every lecturer who takes his/her pedagogy seriously, there were/are two who were/are terrible teachers. I mean, some lecturers were scatter brain jokers who themselves should be in the classes they claim to be teaching! Many saw the rudimentary elements and obligations of the teaching craft as distractions and nuisances. And that is the problem.'

After leaving Nigeria 15 years ago, did he reeducate himself after his self described experience of the Nigerian university education : 'I'm a victim, direct and indirect, of that which I critique.'? 

Im puzzled.

I started from admiration of his superbly conceptualised and expressed essay to puzzlement.

thanks

toyin