Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
Tunji Olaopa
http://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/05/08/modern-traditional-change-agents-achebe-ogunwusi-and-sanusi-by-tunji-olaopa/
Rex Marinus
Part of the many contradictions of the modern Nigerian nation is this inability, even of its bureaucratic elite to know the differences between a democratic state negotiated and founded as a modern, secular republic and a "noyau state" with that terrifying Janus-faced condition that keeps it continuously at the crossroads as an "Ogbanje nation" that neither wants to grow, nor does it want to die peacefully. I am shocked that a public servant and intellectual of Tunji Olaopa's weight and experience would celebrate the Obi, Ooni, and Emir as "growing national brands." First, is the contradictory nature of that description, "national" - these are provincial pseudo-monarchies hibernating in a republic! Achebe, Ogunwunsi, and Sanusi - not as individuals - but in the institutions they represent are relics that have no place in a modern republic founded on a secular constitution. They are drawbacks to the settlement of the spirit of nation. They in fact constitute the single most dangerous contradiction limiting the full formation of a modern Nigerian state founded on the liberty of the individual, the equality of the citizen, and the freedom guaranteed by those individual rights protected under the charter of rights of Nigeria's constitution. Conservative defenders of these institutions say the are "repositories of our culture." False. Nigerian culture is in its music , its food, its couture, its modes of worship, its threatre, its poetry, its narratives, its people, its street culture - and it is modern, hybrid, global and increasingly interlinked with the realities of the many contacts made outside of the "ethnos." These "monarchies" must be abolished in the same ways that the Indian republic abolished its many, even more ancient and bigger monarchies, in order to solidify the idea of an "Indian nation" and citizenship. Olaopa celebrates an aberration, and I feel utterly scandalized for a brilliant scholar of nation, and practitioner of modern statecraft, who fails to understand the profound contradictions and fatality represented by these institutions and the implications of maintaining them within a modern republic.
Obi Nwakanma
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2017 7:41 PM
To: Usa dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
http://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/05/08/modern-traditional-change-agents-achebe-ogunwusi-and-sanusi-by-tunji-olaopa/
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Chika Okeke-Agulu
Chika
Okechukwu Ukaga
Obi, the Indians may have abolished their monarchies, but not the nationalisms of its constituent ethnic and religious groups, or its uniquely entrenched class system. India is a nation funded by Hindu nationalism. It is no more secular than Nigeria, despite having a better working democratic system.
Chika
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Rex Marinus
Chika, first, no one can abolish the ethnic religious groups, be they in India or any other place. That's out of the question. The class and cast systems themselves are situations sedimented by economic and religious reality. All those are besides the point. As a matter of fact, the security of one's religion or ethnicity, is part of the reality in the creation of a modern republic. Ideally, the only "class" permitted by the republic is "equal citizenship" irrespective of those affiliations. Whatever else accentuates any disparity in class formation arises, as Marx would put it, from the convergence of "material" and "historical" conditions. Secondly, it is not quite right that the Indian state is the product of "Hindu nationalism." Hindu nationalists may have had a great hand in India's nationalist movement, but you must remember that the legacy of Ghandi is of pluralism, and Jawaharhal Nehru was a secularist. E.M. Forster's Passage to India, at the very least, gives us a sense of the plural nature of Indian nationalism under the British Raj. The Hindutva - Hindu revivalist and militant nationalism does contend with the Islamist movement of which it is in great conflict even in cotemporary India. But also note that among the great monarchies abolished by the Indian republic were Hindu Rajas and Kumaris.
And Okey, this is not just a mere matter of my "hating" monarchies. This is also not a question of adapting the monarchies to a republican state. This is a question about nation and forms of nation. Nigeria chose to be a multiethnic republic, not a constitutional monarchy. And there is a reason for that. A republic by its very nature is, well, a republic. Adapting the monarchies to a republic is fundamental contradiction - it is like mixing paint and water. Besides, it diffuses loyalties, and in a very fragile state like Nigeria with its plural contours, it keeps active the fissures that continue to limit its formation as nation. You cannot have two captains in a ship.
Obi Nwakanma
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 12:25 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
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Toyin Falola
Kenneth Harrow
Hi obi
I enjoy reading, as an outsider to your profession, these analyses. So take this as the amateur’s musings. It may be the case theoretically that the republic and the kingdom do not mix: oil and water. You are right—but perhaps only in theory.
The combinations of sovereignty lead to many many possible configurations, whatever the state might proclaim its constitution to be. Just imagine a state apparatus—call it republican, but in reality relatively mixed—alongside county, city, etc. governances. There are regional, as in france; states, as in the u.s. and within all those, other forms. We have townships, in Michigan. Then the universities control a good deal of their territory, avoid state and city taxes, have their own police forces. The churches too march to relatively different drummers from state institutions or configurations.
Why not a thing, a local thing, called a kingdom. We might call it a county with a county executive. We might call it a native reservation with its own council and ruler, native ruler. Under the ultimate authority of the state…?
And these configurations all, without exception, enter into conflict when the larger one says to the smaller, give me taxes, or let my policing supplant your own.
You can see that with all the messiness re marijuana nowadays (if you are following that).
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 9 May 2017 at 10:05
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
Chika, first, no one can abolish the ethnic religious groups, be they in India or any other place. That's out of the question. The class and cast systems themselves are situations sedimented by economic and religious reality. All those are besides the point. As a matter of fact, the security of one's religion or ethnicity, is part of the reality in the creation of a modern republic. Ideally, the only "class" permitted by the republic is "equal citizenship" irrespective of those affiliations. Whatever else accentuates any disparity in class formation arises, as Marx would put it, from the convergence of "material" and "historical" conditions. Secondly, it is not quite right that the Indian state is the product of "Hindu nationalism." Hindu nationalists may have had a great hand in India's nationalist movement, but you must remember that the legacy of Ghandi is of pluralism, and Jawaharhal Nehru was a secularist. E.M. Forster's Passage to India, at the very least, gives us a sense of the plural nature of Indian nationalism under the British Raj. The Hindutva - Hindu revivalist and militant nationalism does contend with the Islamist movement of which it is in great conflict even in cotemporary India. But also note that among the great monarchies abolished by the Indian republic were Hindu Rajas and Kumaris.
And Okey, this is not just a mere matter of my "hating" monarchies. This is also not a question of adapting the monarchies to a republican state. This is a question about nation and forms of nation. Nigeria chose to be a multiethnic republic, not a constitutional monarchy. And there is a reason for that. A republic by its very nature is, well, a republic. Adapting the monarchies to a republic is fundamental contradiction - it is like mixing paint and water. Besides, it diffuses loyalties, and in a very fragile state like Nigeria with its plural contours, it keeps active the fissures that continue to limit its formation as nation. You cannot have two captains in a ship.
Obi Nwakanma
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Okechukwu Ukaga <ukag...@umn.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 12:25 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
And why must we copy India? Nigeria and Nigerians should be free to adopt/adapt/develop any system they like/want/need, and to keep or change that as they find necessary and appropriate. Obi does not like monarchy and for that reason wants everyone to also not like it. Well, that is not going to happen. Some will continue to like it while others will not. Best to make peace with such reality and move on. Regards!
OU
On May 9, 2017 6:08 AM, "Chika Okeke-Agulu" <okeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
Obi, the Indians may have abolished their monarchies, but not the nationalisms of its constituent ethnic and religious groups, or its uniquely entrenched class system. India is a nation funded by Hindu nationalism. It is no more secular than Nigeria, despite having a better working democratic system.
Chika
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
Rex Marinus
Toyin asks a very vital and intriguing question: "If we cannot abolish the ethnic and religious groups, as you have argued, can you abolish some of their definitive markers? Thus, if you cannot abolish Islam and Fulani, can you abolish the Sultan?" And I dare to say, yes, you can abolish the Sultanate without abolishing the Fulani. The repudiation of the Ottoman Caliph Abdul Mejid Efendi and the abolition of the Caliphate by the Turkish Nationalists in 1924 did not end or destroy Turkish identity and personhood, it in fact amplified it. When the British overthrew and abolished the Caliphate of Sokoto in 1904, a new Fulani identity tied far more closely to a new national spirit would have emerged had the same British not created a Sultanate and imposed their native informants to maintain a hybrid feudal system that compromised that process under the "dual mandate." Nigerian nationalists, founders of the modern nation argued strenuously against the "dual mandate." As a successor state, Nigeria is obligated to secure its compact with her citizens under the constitution of the republic. In other words, Nigeria's compact with her citizens is not as Igbo or Hausa or Yoruba or Fulani or Angas, but as "individual citizens." A citizen is a sovereign self and does not require any more ambiguous affiliation in that relationship with nation. As a matter of fact people pay tax, are conscripted to war in the event of war, are called up for National Service, serve imprisonment, and suffer privations or even enjoy preferments as individuals and not on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliation, if we go by the charter of the republic. The continual maintenance of these sites of dual authority creates ambivalent affiliations with nation. Perhaps one way of looking at this question is to ask another: how does the Fulani animist, atheist, agnostic, or even Christian like, say the writer, Emma Usman Shehu, fare under the Sultan given the promise of an equality of citizenship between Emma Usman Shehu and Abubakar III under the constitution? Each of these individuals strictly by the guarantees of the constitution of the republic cannot impose another rule, one on the other, except by the laws granting them equal protection and equal citizenship under the constitution?
And Ken does asks this:
Why not a thing, a local thing, called a kingdom. We might call it a county with a county executive. We might call it a native reservation with its own council and ruler, native ruler. Under the ultimate authority of the state…? Again, the problem is with funding these institutions from the public purse, and in creating sites of authority that undermine, complicate, or even derogates power from municipal governance. We already have local governments established by law, and so why duplicate these and create avenues for local tyrants and potentates to acquire and assert private domains of power as is currently the case? It makes the nation unstable and slippery, and indeed, anxious. A "kingdom" by its very nature belongs to a king, and a king listens only to a king, who rules over "subjects" and not "citizens." We did not fight colonialism in order to re-impose "subjection" and become subject people. The difference between the republic and the monarchy, ceremonial or not, is the difference between the "subject" and the "citizen." The subject has no rights except that granted him by his sovereign. And this in many ways translates, even now, to the relationship between a vast number of Nigerians, and their "big men" - who presume to be their kings. It is the "Oga" mentality that silences, alienates, and disempowers, by its very imposition of the situation of subjectivity, on a vast number of people who still have no idea that the republic has granted them inalienable rights and freedoms.
Obi Nwakanma
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 2:23 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
Toyin Falola
- Is the modern state free of identity politics? Citizenship does not mean the elimination of cleavages, as in say race and racial politics or federalism and Igbo politics? Those cleavages have to be created, organized and maintained, sometimes at the peril of a Republic, just to give you a slice of support.
- Can I not, for purposes of argument, see Pastor Adeboye as my leader instead of Buhari and live in modern Nigeria? Is my allegiance non-negotiable?
- Are you not confusing the “theater" of politics—as in those monarchs—with modernity and the republic? Is the theatric of politics the same as state power in a republic? I will be in Onitsha in June—can Obi Achebe (I know him by the way!) arrest me?
O O
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Rex Marinus
Dear Toyin, I believe I answered these questions in the inferences in my earlier response. But no, (1)the modern state is not free of "identity politics." I did not suggest that. But identity in a complex national state is complicated, and far more importantly, is mediated by the state itself; (2) You may in fact see Pastor Adeboye, or the local Ifa Priest in Ikire, or the President of your Alumni association as "your leader," for as long as these do not mobilize to appropriate the power and function of the state and its organized apparatus, and there is where Buhari, whether you like him or not, exercises the mandate of the republic, to act by the powers of its parliament and constitution. Betterstill, the parliament can remove or sanction him as the case may be; (3). The "theater of politics" is the zone of political action and is not mutually exclusive or indistinct from the state. The fact of the existence of the state is established by that "theater of politics," either as a monarchy, as in say the defunct Austro-Prussian state, or a republic, as say, the Weimar; and (4) I do not know the relationship between the Obi n'Onitsha, and the Onitsha Municipal government, but I know the Emir of Kano has exercised police and judicial function. The legality of those acts under our constitution is another question. I salute you.
Obi Nwakanma
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
- Is the modern state free of identity politics? Citizenship does not mean the elimination of cleavages, as in say race and racial politics or federalism and Igbo politics? Those cleavages have to be created, organized and maintained, sometimes at the peril of a Republic, just to give you a slice of support.
- Can I not, for purposes of argument, see Pastor Adeboye as my leader instead of Buhari and live in modern Nigeria? Is my allegiance non-negotiable?
- Are you not confusing the “theater" of politics—as in those monarchs—with modernity and the republic? Is the theatric of politics the same as state power in a republic? I will be in Onitsha in June—can Obi Achebe (I know him by the way!) arrest me?
Rex Marinus
Agbetuyi:
.The British are not citizens, but subjects of the Queen, and have no rights of citizenship.
. The United Kingdom, by its very term is not a "republic" but a Constitutional monarchy. That is why Nigeria exited the Commonwealth in 1963, and enacted its charter of the Republic to be governed, not as subjects of the Queen, but as citizens of Nigeria under a constitutional, parliamentary democracy.
. Yes, the Monarchy is incompatible with modernity. The entire movement of modernity was against the values embodied by the institutional monarchy and the church of medieval Europe. These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom. By the way the only system that can grant you the power of a referendum through a sovereign national conference to relocate some of the power wrested from "traditional rulers" to them is the democratic system. You would not convene by any other means. But it would be a foolish race of inferior people who would seek to hand their sovereign will - the divine in them - to a single monarchical authority to rule them having attained the right of self-determination in the first place. For the rest of your questions, I think this editorial in the Guardian in the UK answers them better than I could.
-Obi Nwakanma
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/27/future-of-the-royal-family
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 10:53 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
Kenneth Harrow
Dear obi,
You write below: “These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.”
Isn’t that actually the case in the u.k.?
The queen has no power, is only a monumental relic for the enormous tourist trade; the church has no role in the govt. and in fact, the citizens of England elect their members of parliament; it is entirely a representational republican form of democracy, with effectively all the same features as all other western liberal democracies.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 10 May 2017 at 12:51
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.
Rex Marinus
Dear Ken,
Yes, technically, the British royalty does seem to live in the world's biggest museum, but that is only technically. Below is a very summaru description of the powers of the monarch:
"In theory, the Queen (the reigning monarch) could disband parliament and rule by herself with a technically legitimate power. However, this would likely lead to a civil war which would likely end swiftly and decisively against the Queen's favour and lead to the dissolution of the monarchy and the establishment of the United Republic of Britain and Northern Ireland.
Essentially, because of the history of British law, we are still technically a reigning theocracy where the mandate for power derives from God through their one true representative on earth (i.e. the Queen). The democratically elected government is "appointed" by the Queen to help her run everything in a fair and judicial fashion. However, in reality, the Queen is a figurehead of British government and has very little say in how things actually get done. She does hold a final veto power on all laws that will be passed but it is very unlikely that she will exercise this."
British luck seemed to have held out so far, in the last 60 years of the reign of Elizabeth, who by all accounts is a good woman, and a stable influence, who has navigated the monarchy so far with little conflict with parliament. And she is all that we know in the lifetime of many of us. If a mad monarch were to rise - and there have been many of such insane monarchs - he or she might activate the hidden powers of the monarchy. The balance between representation in the commons, and the "ownership" of the parliamentary building is a very interesting relationship. Clearly, the compact between the British and the monarchy has held on since the Carolognian restoration and the death of Cromwell with his dream of a republic. But it might not always be so. And Walter Bagehot's The British Constitution, does situate the actual pyramid of the "hidden" and inactive powers of the monarchy, one which a mad king could appropriate with devastating effect.
Obi Nwakanma
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 6:08 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
Dear obi,
You write below: “These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.”
Isn’t that actually the case in the u.k.?
The queen has no power, is only a monumental relic for the enormous tourist trade; the church has no role in the govt. and in fact, the citizens of England elect their members of parliament; it is entirely a representational republican form of democracy, with effectively all the same features as all other western liberal democracies.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 10 May 2017 at 12:51
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.
Kenneth Harrow
On top of which, since 1832 we’ve had the house of commons as dominant branch, matching the rise in the u.s. and Europe, more or less, in the same period, of democratic parliaments, congresses, alongside presidents or prime ministers, all elected.
k
Kenneth Harrow
Yeah, but obi, you are dodging the reality. The queen is not only just a figurehead, if she actually tried to be more she’d be thrown out on her butt. Isn’t that the real bottom line here? It’s not at all been thus since the present queen, it’s been the rule of parliament since… let me google it. Since the glorious revolution, 1689.
Parliament holds the power, and could strip the monarch of all her remaining symbolic powers if she stepped out of line.
Isn’t that really the case; it isn’t her will, but the power of parliament that is the real sovereign?
Wiki: the glorious revolution of 1689 created parliamentary sovereignty.
k
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Dear obi,
You write below: “These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.”
Isn’t that actually the case in the u.k.?
The queen has no power, is only a monumental relic for the enormous tourist trade; the church has no role in the govt. and in fact, the citizens of England elect their members of parliament; it is entirely a representational republican form of democracy, with effectively all the same features as all other western liberal democracies.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From:
usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 10 May 2017 at 12:51
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom.
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Cornelius Hamelberg
Where is Toyin Adepoju when I need him?
This is for Muslims past, present and the future continuus
https://youtu.be/a18py61_F_w://youtu.be/a18py61_F_w Thursday, 11 May 2017 11:32:45 UTC+2, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:
> Nigeria is still currently in the British Commonwealth.
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> -------- Original message --------
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> From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
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> Date: 10/05/2017 18:39 (GMT+00:00)
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> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
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> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
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> Agbetuyi:
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> .The British are not citizens, but subjects of the Queen, and have no rights of citizenship.
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> . The United Kingdom, by its very term is not a "republic" but a Constitutional monarchy. That is why Nigeria exited the Commonwealth in 1963, and enacted its charter of the Republic to be governed, not as subjects of the Queen, but as citizens of Nigeria
> under a constitutional, parliamentary democracy.
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> . Yes, the Monarchy is incompatible with modernity. The entire movement of modernity was against the values embodied by the institutional monarchy and the church of medieval Europe. These relics of a narrow aristocracy exercising power over a vast mass of
> the untamed and powerless poor should be preserved only in the museum for tourists to remind us of how far man has come in his quest for freedom. By the way the only system that can grant you the power of a referendum through a sovereign national conference
> to relocate some of the power wrested from "traditional rulers" to them is the democratic system. You would not convene by any other means. But it would be a foolish race of inferior people who would seek to hand their sovereign will - the divine in them -
> to a single monarchical authority to rule them having attained the right of self-determination in the first place. For the rest of your questions, I think this editorial in the
> Guardian in the UK answers them better than I could.
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> -Obi Nwakanma
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> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/27/future-of-the-royal-family
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> Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 10:53 PM
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> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
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> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
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> Are British nationals now seen as citizens or subjects given the fact the sovereign is a monarch?
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> Is the monarchical system incompatible with modernity? (The UK led the world into the Industrial Revolution via the monarchical system)
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> Is the President of the United States equal de jure to the citizens who voted into office while exercising the power of the presidency? Can any citizen effect on the world stage what the president can put into effect? ( Considerations which made yours
> truly to categorize the American presidential system as neo- monarchical plutocracy.)
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> If Nigeria holds a sovereign conference where some of the powers wrested from traditional rulers via colonialism are returned to them in exchange for real responsibilities would that be tantamount to a sacrilege?
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> -------- Original message --------
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> From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
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> Date: 09/05/2017 22:14 (GMT+00:00)
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> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
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> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
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> Brilliant, as always, but other questions:
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> Is the modern state free of identity politics? Citizenship does not mean the elimination of cleavages, as in say race and racial politics or federalism and Igbo politics? Those cleavages have to be created, organized and maintained, sometimes at the peril
> on behalf of Okechukwu Ukaga <ukag...@umn.edu>
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> Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 12:25 PM
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> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
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> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obi of Onitsha, Ooni Ogunwusi and HRH Sanusi as Growing National Brands
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> And why must we copy India? Nigeria and Nigerians should be free to adopt/adapt/develop any system they like/want/need, and to keep or change that as they find necessary and appropriate. Obi does not like monarchy and for that reason wants everyone
> to also not like it. Well, that is not going to happen. Some will continue to like it while others will not. Best to make peace with such reality and move on. Regards!
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> OU
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> On May 9, 2017 6:08 AM, "Chika Okeke-Agulu" <okeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
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> Obi, the Indians may have abolished their monarchies, but not the nationalisms of its constituent ethnic and religious groups, or its uniquely entrenched class system. India is a nation funded by Hindu nationalism. It is no more secular than Nigeria, despite
> having a better working democratic system.
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> Chika
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> --
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> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
>
> To post to this group, send an email to
Kenneth Harrow
What happened in the 70s and 80s? we all know: the flight to south Africa, Europe, America, and a few failed attempts to places in east Europe or asia.
Now it is the children of those who left then, from adichie’s parents to the first omotoso, kole, and all the others who are in the lead. In some cases there were inbetween generations, like mudimbe. Getting old now; time for his children; gikandi, another rescapé from kenya; brilliant still, like Soyinka, but it is the time for the children, and where are they? at Harvard? At oxford?
Those children will write great novels; be brilliant thinkers; go into physics and math; look at African universities, look at the history of what had been accomplished by the history dept in Dakar, the other notable centers, like codesria, and say, let’s work with them too. And that day will see mamdani going back to east Africa, and rebuilding what amin had destroyed, brick by brick.
Forget qaddafi’s advice; he was a dictator. I was born to hate dictators and to love thinkers. Let’s follow cabral, not macias; let’s dump nguema, and reread our fanon and Soyinka again, there’s more there than we can read in a lifetime, and they will ground us for the future. Mbembe is going strong. Let’s give him honor, read him, debate him.
We are in a struggle that people like trump and putin have made visible. And now you have to choose, which direction to take. I’m betting that the new moses will be leading at a young age, and we will be happy to support him in his struggles. Starting right here.
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-803-8839
har...@msu.edu
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
Toyin Falola
Two small questions, while bearing in mind that what is predictable about
the future is unpredictability:
A) If there is no shared narrative, how do you create a consistent way of
thinking about any future, not to talk of the present? Why Obi received
all the comments he did was that he was framing things in absolutes.
Society disappoints all such framing.Were I to know for a fact, as Obi
suggested, that if we were to abolish monarchies, Nigeria would develop, I
would even suggest violence as a way of attaining this.
B) Your formulation is that nations have to follow some kind of
developments outside of their control. Let us accept teleology, for the
sake of it, but this disempowers the weak, as it did in the 16th century,
the 19th, the 20thŠand this great future.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/
http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Kenneth Harrow" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of
Kenneth Harrow
I took a plane shortly after my arrival in Senegal in 2005, full of loud opinions about how neo-colonial, now we’d say neoliberal, western countries were exploiting African states—that was the time when our great fear was endebtedness. My fellow passenger, I think Guinean, sitting next to me, patiently explained that some countries did pretty well (he had his examples) and others did pretty poorly, under roughly the same circumstances.
That shut me up. And I remember that conversation till this day.
I have no answer to that, which is why I began say, of course I agree with you. It is super important that we all recognize that despite the great flows of global capital and information, some manage the situation better than others, meaning we all have a degree of agency. And that means not planning just for a hypothetical longterm future, but especially for now and the immediate future.
According to mouffe we ought not expect or want a shared narrative. She believes a properly balanced movement of conflicting interest and views is better than a single narrative. I think that is the ideal that derives from a Marxist dialectic, and who am I to say no. how do we work together under those conditions? That is the subject of her and laclau’s great work on Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. But I do not know if that work is still relevant uunder today’s circumstances, and I’d love to have others’ opinions on that. (like moses and Gloria since this is closer to their fields).
Last point. When I say nations, I mean the nation state. not the 18th century monarchy but the 19-20th century nation state, the ones that were formed since the time of the French revolution, and the end of the great empires. It took me a while to see how those formulations require exclusions, and assumptions of powers, that do not serve humanity. For that I mostly read Judith butler, but also agamben.
I don’t look for strong nations to succeed in resisting globalization, but rather for strong local movements, and regional ones.
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-803-8839
har...@msu.edu
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/