Nigerians love Trump!
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Toyin Falola
Feb 8, 2020, 5:52:07 PM2/8/20
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Trump trashes Nigeria and bans its immigrants. Nigerians love him for it.
Tough talk, candor and resilience are admired in my country. The president is perceived to have these traits.
A
busy street in Lagos, Nigeria, recently. President Trump has called for a ban on immigrants from Nigeria. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/Afp Via Getty Images)
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian writer and journalist based in Abuja. Her debut novel, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," was named a best book of 2009 by The Washington Post. Her latest novel is "Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree."
Feb. 7, 2020 at 11:28 a.m. CST
ABUJA, NIGERIA
President Trump doesn’t want Africans flooding into his country. But let’s be honest. Who really does? Certainly not any other world leader of this era. Trump just happens to be the one bold or uncaring enough to say the quiet part out loud. He’s the rare white politician sparing us the trouble of deciphering what he might think. And Nigerians love him for it.
Nigerians are generally dismayed by his latest travel ban, which severely restricts immigration to the United States from our country and five others. The reason given for this collective punishment is our government’s failure to share certain relevant security information with the United States and international security agencies. But the ban is not likely to dent the prevailing attitude toward Trump here. The data has been consistent for the past three years, and the most recent survey, published by the Pew Research Center in January, shows that almost 6 in 10 Nigerians believe that Trump will “do the right thing regarding world affairs.”
My hairdresser, Yimi Kolo, a 37-year-old mother of four who speaks little English but listens almost all day to a radio station that transmits in pidgin English, told me last week that she just loves Trump for his toughness. He says what he is going to do, and he goes ahead and does it. Her opinion was unsolicited, inspired merely by the mention of Trump’s name on the radio while she was plaiting my hair. The perception of Trump as tough, no-nonsense, blunt, pro-religion and entertaining could be in part why a majority of people in this deeply religious and most populous country in Africa like him. Like a fire eater, he swallows every challenge that comes his way: Stormy Daniels, Russia, Ukraine, impeachment. Each time it appears as if he’s down, he rises, seemingly stronger. It’s like watching an action movie, or the best reality show Nigerians have ever seen — expressions of wonderment and wild laughter can be heard when people gather to discuss him.
Utterances that make Americans cringe don’t seem to faze. When he says or does something that Americans consider racist, I receive emails from American friends, most of whom proudly hate their president. They apologize on his behalf or express their embarrassment. And they expect that this will surely be the turning point, when Nigerians finally begin to join them in detesting Trump. “Hopefully his approval rating will go down over there,” wrote my novelist friend James Hannaham. “This guy, we gotta get rid of him. So toxic! So unbearable!” But the 45th president of the United States has so far not done or said anything that Nigerians have not been able to rationalize. Not yet. Not even the travel ban.
Trump has spread more hatred of immigrants than any American in history
Trump once described African nations as “shithole” countries. Many Africans agree. Ask the multitudes risking death by drowning to escape to Europe. In 2017, the bodies of 26 Nigerian young women and girls were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, following their attempt to reach Europe in a rubber boat. Out of 181,000 migrants who arrived by sea in Italy from Libya in 2016, about 11,000 women and 3,000 children traveling alone were from Nigeria, according to the United Nations. In 2015, the European Union agreed to a nearly 2 billion-euro trust fund for African countries to help stop migrants from reaching Europe. “EU development aid is increasingly being spent to close borders, stifle migration and push for returns of migrants to Africa,” according to a report published by Oxfam in January. “European governments seem determined to prevent migration at any cost,” said Raphael Shilhav, who wrote the report. Trump is giving voice to a sentiment apparently shared silently by others.
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Nigerians have never been under any illusion about the world wanting to welcome random Africans with wide-open arms, but that has not stopped us from dreaming and trying anyway. In a 2018 Pew survey, 45 percent of Nigerian adults said they planned to move to another country in the next five years — the highest percentage of any nation surveyed. On reporting trips between 2016 and 2018 to Edo state in the south, the origin of most Nigerians crossing the Mediterranean, I came across villages where the majority of the youth had left for Europe, and the people who remained were mostly elderly. I saw advertisements for church services proclaiming themes like “Abroad Must Favour My Family This Year!!!” Across Nigeria, religious meetings offer special prayers to influence the hearts of consular officials. Those seeking divine intervention in their migration plans or visa applications are invited to attend.
In the past year, Nigerians I know have had cause to pray for God’s intervention, after acquiring a U.S. visa suddenly became a task more herculean than ever. People who have traveled freely to the United States for decades were suddenly being denied visas without explanation. Newspaper columns registered their shock and anger, and local media covered the alarming situation widely. Even securing an appointment at the U.S. Embassy has become difficult, with applicants sometimes waiting up to five months for a chance to be interviewed. I confess to having needed emergency prayers myself as I waited at the American Embassy in Abuja some months ago and watched as dozens ahead of me were denied visas by the consular officers sitting behind glass screens. After I stood for three hours in a queue that snaked all the way out of the building, my tourist visa was successfully renewed.
International media reports on the travel ban have described Nigeria with glittering phrases: It’s “Africa’s largest economy” with a “booming tech ecosystem,” whose migrants are “among the most educated and successfulimmigrants in the United States.” But it is also a greatly diverse country that has produced the Boko Haram terrorist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and now parades as its West Africa arm; the “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight headed to Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009; and the crowds that poured into the streets of northern Nigeria (a mostly Muslim region) to celebrate the attacks on the twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. I was chatting with a group of people in Abuja recently, and every one of us agreed that it would be unwise for Trump to pretend that threats from northern Nigeria don’t exist. He needs to protect Americans from Nigerians whom even we Nigerians need to be protected from.
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But Trump would surely have been accused of amplifying the fissures in our country if he had banned travelers from only a particular region, we conceded. And so we all must suffer for the transgressions of some.
Most local frustrations about the travel ban are directed at the government of Muhammadu Buhari, rather than at Trump. Multiple local media reports have said that the Trump administration tried for more than a year to work with the Nigerian government to upgrade our country’s information-sharing procedures and avoid the ban. But Nigeria failed to meet the minimum security requirements for verifying travelers’ identities and singling out those who may pose a national security threat. “The current Nigerian administration may have its deficiencies and deep faults,” said Atiku Abubakar, an opposition leader and former presidential candidate, in an open appeal to the United States on Twitter, “but the Nigeria people ought not to be punished for their inefficiencies.”
As soon as the ban was announced, quick action replaced lethargy. Buhari immediately set up a committee to “study and address” the security requirements that will get Nigeria off the list. In a meeting with the U.S. State Department this past week, Nigeria’s foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, promised that the government would soon complete the process of making information on criminal history, links to terrorism, stolen passports and the like available to Interpol and other relevant international agencies. It’s frightening to think that none of this was being done before now. Nigerians’ romance with Trump may end someday, but not over this travel ban, not when it is so difficult to prove beyond any doubt that Trump’s motive was simply bigotry and malice.
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During the 2016 presidential election, a prominent Nigerian politician tweeted that it would be good if Trump won because America would become too busy dealing with him and his drama to poke its nose into other countries’ affairs. That joke went viral in Nigeria. Perhaps that is another reason Nigerians love Trump: With all the outlandishness his presidency has unleashed, he has shown that America isn’t some ideal place where leaders and the media and the opposition always conduct themselves with decorum. He has exposed the “African” in all of you.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian writer and journalist based in Abuja. Her debut novel, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," was named a best book of 2009 by The Washington Post. Her latest novel is "Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree."
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA
Kissi, Edward
Feb 9, 2020, 9:08:57 AM2/9/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
My people, What have we become?
Have we become so hateful of ourselves, one another, and our governments, that we now find favor in the bosom of those who deride us?
After many years of leaving Ghana, studying abroad, and finding a suitable job for myself in America, after my studies, my tastes and preferences have undoubtedly changed. What I once defended as an acceptable life in Ghana in the 1980s is no longer appealing
to me in 2020, with the benefit of exposure to life in North America and Europe. I visit Ghana regularly, a place I still call “Home.” It is not everything I see there, and have to live with in my frequent visits, that I prefer or admire. But I am also mindful
that those I left in Ghana have done so much to live their lives without me. And as much as they hate their government,, they have forged their lives within and without the political environment in which they live. In fact, they are so proud of what they have
managed for themselves within that context that they would not countenance any outsider’s contempt for them and their living condition. Not even one of their own returning for a visit, let alone an American president who has been so fortunate in his life that
he has no idea how people in Africa, who have to deal with the consequences of America’s global policies, live.
So I continue to be perplexed by how some Nigerians have held up Trump’s contempt for them and their country as an acceptable, even encouraging indictment, of them and their government. Do these Nigerians lack the basic sense of pride, or hate themselves so
much that they find comfort in derision? Or they hate their leaders so much that they fall in love with those who find Nigerians contemptible. That is sinking to the depths of despair.
Trump has not disguised his contempt for Nigerians and Africans. That any African will find this Trump view of them praiseworthy is unfathomable to me. And the fact that some Nigerians see Trump’s assessment of them and their nation as an appropriate spur is
as shocking as it is startling.
My people, the antelope might not have much meat on its hind legs, but it does not live in the forest eternally hateful of what it has to run with. The tortoise would like to trade its fatty limbs for the antelope’s in the brisk and risky life of the jungle.
After all, pride lies not in what others have that we would prefer, but what we are struggling, even sluggishly, to achieve that we can call our own.
If there is anything that is comforting about Trump and Trumpism to Nigerians--- and indeed all Africans---it should be that Trump exhibits the stupidity, absurdity, and incompetence of many of our leaders in Africa. He has brought the once vaunted American
presidency to a level of leadership in Africa once occupied by Idi Amin and Jean Bedel Bokassa. Folks, Does this in Caesar seem worthy of love?
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:51 PM
To: dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerians love Trump!
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Gloria Emeagwali
Feb 9, 2020, 1:34:59 PM2/9/20
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Trump is now competing with Anansi, the spider man. Who is going to win? One has humor and is neither hateful nor vindictive. One is a trickster and the other a fraudster.
Sent from my iPhone
My people, What have we become?
Have we become so hateful of ourselves, one another, and our governments, that we now find favor in the bosom of those who deride us?
After many years of leaving Ghana, studying abroad, and finding a suitable job for myself in America, after my studies, my tastes and preferences have undoubtedly changed. What I once defended as an acceptable life in Ghana in the 1980s is no longer appealing to me in 2020, with the benefit of exposure to life in North America and Europe. I visit Ghana regularly, a place I still call “Home.” It is not everything I see there, and have to live with in my frequent visits, that I prefer or admire. But I am also mindful that those I left in Ghana have done so much to live their lives without me. And as much as they hate their government,, they have forged their lives within and without the political environment in which they live. In fact, they are so proud of what they have managed for themselves within that context that they would not countenance any outsider’s contempt for them and their living condition. Not even one of their own returning for a visit, let alone an American president who has been so fortunate in his life that he has no idea how people in Africa, who have to deal with the consequences of America’s global policies, live.
So I continue to be perplexed by how some Nigerians have held up Trump’s contempt for them and their country as an acceptable, even encouraging indictment, of them and their government. Do these Nigerians lack the basic sense of pride, or hate themselves so much that they find comfort in derision? Or they hate their leaders so much that they fall in love with those who find Nigerians contemptible. That is sinking to the depths of despair.
Trump has not disguised his contempt for Nigerians and Africans. That any African will find this Trump view of them praiseworthy is unfathomable to me. And the fact that some Nigerians see Trump’s assessment of them and their nation as an appropriate spur is as shocking as it is startling.
My people, the antelope might not have much meat on its hind legs, but it does not live in the forest eternally hateful of what it has to run with. The tortoise would like to trade its fatty limbs for the antelope’s in the brisk and risky life of the jungle. After all, pride lies not in what others have that we would prefer, but what we are struggling, even sluggishly, to achieve that we can call our own.
If there is anything that is comforting about Trump and Trumpism to Nigerians--- and indeed all Africans---it should be that Trump exhibits the stupidity, absurdity, and incompetence of many of our leaders in Africa. He has brought the once vaunted American presidency to a level of leadership in Africa once occupied by Idi Amin and Jean Bedel Bokassa. Folks, Does this in Caesar seem worthy of love?
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:51 PM
To: dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerians love Trump!
This email originated from outside of USF. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender or understand the content is safe.
Trump trashes Nigeria and bans its immigrants. Nigerians love him for it.
Tough talk, candor and resilience are admired in my country. The president is perceived to have these traits.
<image003.jpg>A busy street in Lagos, Nigeria, recently. President Trump has called for a ban on immigrants from Nigeria. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/Afp Via Getty Images)
<image004.png>
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN8PR08MB5779FFDB53B9E55E8712AFDDCE1E0%40BN8PR08MB5779.namprd08.prod.outlook.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 9, 2020, 1:35:00 PM2/9/20
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The article is an unbalanced report.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN8PR08MB5779FFDB53B9E55E8712AFDDCE1E0%40BN8PR08MB5779.namprd08.prod.outlook.com.
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 9, 2020, 4:22:27 PM2/9/20
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The real reason people voted for Buhari in 2015 is that they they wanted him to behave like Trump behaves now and I cautioned democracy will necessarily dent that behaviour si I am not surprised at there attitude to Trump. Were Buhari to behave like Trump
he would probably end up being impeached like him. Yes, Nigerians have not fully overcome the hangover of military dictatorship in their psyche.
They love benevolent dictators which Obasanjo was in his first coming. That was why he and Buhari were recalled into a civilian dispensation and Obasanjo was even encouraged to violate the Constitution and go for a third term. Nigerians know how they
would use power if they have it and expect other leaders to do the same. Its mainly the rivals of power holders who have problems with this. They just want leaders to get things done as quickly as possible by any means necessary.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
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From: Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Date: 09/02/2020 18:38 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Nigerians love Trump!
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Trump is now competing with Anansi, the spider man. Who is going to win? One has humor and is neither hateful nor vindictive. One is a trickster and the other a fraudster.
My people, What have we become?
Have we become so hateful of ourselves, one another, and our governments, that we now find favor in the bosom of those who deride us?
After many years of leaving Ghana, studying abroad, and finding a suitable job for myself in America, after my studies, my tastes and preferences have undoubtedly changed. What I once defended as an acceptable life in Ghana in the 1980s is no longer appealing to me in 2020, with the benefit of exposure to life in North America and Europe. I visit Ghana regularly, a place I still call “Home.” It is not everything I see there, and have to live with in my frequent visits, that I prefer or admire. But I am also mindful that those I left in Ghana have done so much to live their lives without me. And as much as they hate their government,, they have forged their lives within and without the political environment in which they live. In fact, they are so proud of what they have managed for themselves within that context that they would not countenance any outsider’s contempt for them and their living condition. Not even one of their own returning for a visit, let alone an American president who has been so fortunate in his life that he has no idea how people in Africa, who have to deal with the consequences of America’s global policies, live.
So I continue to be perplexed by how some Nigerians have held up Trump’s contempt for them and their country as an acceptable, even encouraging indictment, of them and their government. Do these Nigerians lack the basic sense of pride, or hate themselves so much that they find comfort in derision? Or they hate their leaders so much that they fall in love with those who find Nigerians contemptible. That is sinking to the depths of despair.
Trump has not disguised his contempt for Nigerians and Africans. That any African will find this Trump view of them praiseworthy is unfathomable to me. And the fact that some Nigerians see Trump’s assessment of them and their nation as an appropriate spur is as shocking as it is startling.
My people, the antelope might not have much meat on its hind legs, but it does not live in the forest eternally hateful of what it has to run with. The tortoise would like to trade its fatty limbs for the antelope’s in the brisk and risky life of the jungle. After all, pride lies not in what others have that we would prefer, but what we are struggling, even sluggishly, to achieve that we can call our own.
If there is anything that is comforting about Trump and Trumpism to Nigerians--- and indeed all Africans---it should be that Trump exhibits the stupidity, absurdity, and incompetence of many of our leaders in Africa. He has brought the once vaunted American presidency to a level of leadership in Africa once occupied by Idi Amin and Jean Bedel Bokassa. Folks, Does this in Caesar seem worthy of love?
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:51 PM
To: dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerians love Trump!
This email originated from outside of USF. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender or understand the content is safe.
Trump trashes Nigeria and bans its immigrants. Nigerians love him for it.
Tough talk, candor and resilience are admired in my country. The president is perceived to have these traits.
<image003.jpg>A busy street in Lagos, Nigeria, recently. President Trump has called for a ban on immigrants from Nigeria. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/Afp Via Getty Images)
<image004.png>
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN8PR08MB5779FFDB53B9E55E8712AFDDCE1E0%40BN8PR08MB5779.namprd08.prod.outlook.com.
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O O
Feb 10, 2020, 6:30:42 AM2/10/20
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But impeachment without conviction or immediate consequence is practically meaningless.
On Feb 9, 2020, at 3:22 PM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982AF0DE3F2700E7CA4C2BCA61E0%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Kissi, Edward
Feb 10, 2020, 6:31:12 AM2/10/20
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Interestingly, Gloria, Ananse was often outwitted by his son Ntikuma, who proved to be wiser and more adept in the game of trickery than his proverbial wise father. It turns out that Ananse did not embody all the proverbial wisdom and fraudulence Akan folklore associated with him.
The story of how wisdom spread beyond a few heads is illustrative of Ananse’s limited intellectual ‘abilities. The master trickster had collected all the wisdom of the world
in a pot one day and planned to take it to the summit of the silk-cotton tree in town to deprive every human of discernment. But in his deviousness and empty-headedness, Ananse felt that if he carried the pot at his back, while he climbed the tree, someone
might sneak behind him, reach into the pot and grab the best of the collected wisdom.
So he put the pot in front of him, to prevent possible theft of its contents, as he climbed the tree. As he struggled to climb a tree with a pot of front of him, his son Ntikuma stood at the base of the tree laughing at him, and wondering what limited wisdom
his father actually has. The wise son advised the arrogant father that no one succeeded in climbing a tree with a pot in front of him, and the task will be easier if Ananse switched the position of the pot---behind him rather than in front. Realizing that
he has not succeeded in collecting all the wisdom of the world in his pot, and that the best of it remained in his son’s head (someone he despised and frequently derided), Ananse threw the pot down in disgust. It broke and wisdom diffused to every head that
wanted one.
Folks, interpret this in whatever way you like.
Edward Kissi
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/49433E05-C22F-41F8-8B0D-0094967564FA%40gmail.com.
O O
Feb 10, 2020, 6:31:42 AM2/10/20
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A. Politics has its own MULTIPLE logic, and RIGHT NOW, amid the 2020 wannabes, one of them (the winning one) is playing CHESS and one of them (the losing one) is playing CHECKERS.
B. Welcome to the GAME of politics, which, at least, at its HIGHEST-STAKE levels (locally, nationally, and internationally) essentially and (un)fortunately involves PROPAGANDA. Here comes a BRUTAL REALITY: power belongs NOT to the PEOPLE but to those who know how to MANIPULATE the people. The most effective practitioners of politics (aka activist advocates or activist politicians). This brutal reality is, of course, NOT confined to professional politics. There is (more or less) some politics in and outside political institutions.
C. Because we DON’T have UNLIMITED or INFINITE RESOURCES (LIFE/wellness, space, time), we have ECONOMICS— the SCIENCE (and ART) of distributing resources MORE efficiently/effectively but NOT necessarily MOST efficiently/effectively. There will always be classes (of all varying types and values) at all levels of any human organization or society. Are all in your family (present or past family) EQUAL?— I just throw out this question to all of us as individuals.
D. Welcome again to the world as lived or experienced. The modern slogan “X“ sounds good or motivational, BUT what does it mean to be “X”? The devil is in the details? Now the trinity of Reality/Reason/“Rationality” ...
On Feb 9, 2020, at 12:35 PM, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
Trump is now competing with Anansi, the spider man. Who is going to win? One has humor and is neither hateful nor vindictive. One is a trickster and the other a fraudster.
DR SIKIRU ENIOLA
Feb 10, 2020, 6:31:49 AM2/10/20
to USAAfrica Dialogue
This is outright patriotism. My salutations sir.The indices by which the literacy level of a nation or a continent is gauged include the ability of the citizens to engage in interpretative and or reflective analysis of political issues. In Africa, we have been backward in this hence, the lowest wrung of the ladder of low literacy is occupied by African and other third world countries.
Earlier today, a group of misguided Nigerians in the diaspora called on the UK and the US to declare the ruling Nigerian All People's Congress, APC as a terrorist organisation. Earlier on, both the allegedly learned and non learned have celebrated the ban on the US immigration policy, interpreting as a total ban on Nigerians visiting the US. The same situation has occurred in various degrees and shapes in other African Countries but Nigeria has been the worst.
That we are still existing as a nation against the predictions of book makers that Nigeria would disintegrate by 2015, is a Divine miracle and a credit of some sort to the Buhari Administration for remaining focused despite the tragic proportions of distractions.
At the climax of the presidential campaigns in 2019, all forms of insurgency, especially from the Fulani herdsmen went down very drastically. Insurgency actually disappeared, leaving the Boko Haram, attacking soft targets having been decimated by the Nigerian military. The reason was the emergence of another Fulani politician as the presidential candidate of the opposition PDP despite all the propaganda against the Fulani ethnic group and Buhari as a person. Of course, the anti Fulani campaigns would have hurt the Atiku crowd as it happened eventually.
Today, there is a massive resurgence of the various acts of insurgency. The Fulani herdsmen suddenly resurfaced, kidnapping assumed tragic proportions while banditry were imported to the North West. Let us assume that the Libyan disintegration and the civil wars across the North of Africa are fuelling resources for banditry and re engineered Boko haram offensives, what are the factors responsible for kidnapping across the country?
It is sad indeed that even religious organizations are fuelling religious crisis while the political gladiators are fuelling ethnocentrism. The Christian Association of Nigeria CAN has been the worst offender in weaponizing religion. In any case, the noise makers on restructuring never considered the fact that, throughout the 7 years, of the minority rule under Dr Jonathan, restructuring which should be a major concern, occupied the back seat of the policy drivers. The gladiators who stole Nigeria with their loot are everywhere fuelling the agitations for the disintegration of Nigeria.
Rather than an intellectual approach, most scholars and opinion analysts are fixated on the media led propaganda against the government of their own nation hence the political and the emotional misrepresentations of events. No outsider can actually discern our national problems through the distorted logic of our writers on national affairs.
Let's assume that restructuring is the solution to the Nigerian problem; can a nation restructure in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, economic instability and national insecurity? The south East and the south south that have laid claims to our jointly owned oil resources have enjoyed massive concessions from the federation account in terms of derivation funds, ecological funds and other forms of concessions in addition to their monthly allocations. After several years of these concessions and the allocations of trillions of naira and in dollars,what have the regions put together to show for this massive financial concessions?
Rather, again, than for their elites and youths, to take on their leaders for accountability, they are all over the media space abusing and stigmatising other ethnic groups as the sources of their problems. The lack of a definite shape and the indiscriminate variations in the agitations of opposition groups or individuals show that people are only interested in waging campaigns nationally and internationally, to discredit the Administration and destroy their own nation. This was exactly the road to Kigali. In the Nigerian case, the campaigns are being funded with the proceeds of massive corruption and the scholars are the pun on the chess boards of mercenary media houses and writers.
Patriotism does not forbid the constructive criticism of and or opposition to the policies of a nation. Patriotism allows for robust discussions and constructive engagements. All that we have seen in Nigeria is the magisterial judgementality of the political elite and their academic accomplices. Our scholars should review their scope and strategy. It is not part of scholarship for a discussion to assume a mono directional perspective. The Nigerian situation now commands attention so that real intellectuals can be separated from internet rats.
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Michael Afolayan
Feb 10, 2020, 8:48:21 PM2/10/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sacrosanct!
Thanks a bunch, Edward Kissi. Kindly change Anansi, the spider to Ijapa, the tortoise - the folk hero in Yoruba folk tradition, and you would be telling the same folktale with the same didactic end-product. In fact, that particular folktale opens the preface to my age-long doctoral dissertation and I thank you for invoking it again.
Really, Ijapa, the tortoise would laugh the submission of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani to scorn and yell out, "Ohun t'o koju s'enikan, ehin l'o ko s'elomii" (literally, Whatever faces one direction turns its back at another). Hers is a matter of one story, and there is always the danger in a single story, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has warned us.
Nigeria, you see, is too complex for the univisionary perspective of Nwaubani. Apparently, her story is a non-scientific reflection of wherever she hangs out at, and whoever she hangs out with, in Nigeria. Of course, there are Nigerians who benefit from Trump's anti-Nigerian (call it anti-African/Black) stances. It's not difficult to run into such population in Abuja (actually, one of them just hauled a warping 11 million dollar pile (yep, American dollars) from Nigeria to the United States, and was intercepted on entry into the United States, where he abandoned the loot, and the money now belongs to America! There is also a segment of the Christian wrong which believes god sent Trump to castigate the liberal America and some think he is the antithesis of the "anti-Christ" Obama. In fact, it was among those Christian wrongs of Nigeria that I learned that Obama's wife is, guess what, a man! There are many more of such disillusionments from that school and I think Adaobi must have told their side of the story. The fact of the matter is. this: the vast majority DO NOT share that sentiment - pure and simple! Nigerians - many in number, could be poor, jobless, poorly led, badly following, but they are no fools. Trust me, they are NOT! It's one side of the story that does not travel too far! Regardless of who posits it, to say or think that Nigerians love Trump for degrading and disparaging them is downright patronizing and far from the truth.
Michael O. Afoláyan
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 11, 2020, 8:51:06 AM2/11/20
to usaafricadialogue
Great thanks for this Michael O. Afoláyan.
i feel better.
toyn
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Salimonu Kadiri
Feb 13, 2020, 3:32:06 PM2/13/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
All Black Africans, and regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments, have always been treated with contempt and disrespect
in the US and Europe, not only because of the colour of their skin but, because of their past history as enslaved and colonized people. When shall we, Black Africans, stop pretending to be liberal and face our historical and current racial realities so that
we can really be free and independent?
Racial freedom and pride are never individual but collective. If prejudice were to be personalised and individualized, there would be nothing
like racism either in America, Europe, or anywhere else in the world, since every mankind would be responsible for the consequence of his or her action regardless of the skin colour. Historically and hitherto, adhering to white American middle-class norms
has never shielded Black people, African American or African immigrants, from humiliation, insults and persecution in the US. Why then is it so attractive and enticing for Africans to emigrate to the US where Black Americans are known to be regularly treated
as sub-citizens, sub-Americans and sub-humans on the ground of their ancestral African skin colour? No one is praising Donald Trump from banning Nigerians from immigrating to the US, rather he is being back-patted for not being hypocritical for awakening Nigerian
(African) intellectuals from there slumbers, by reminding them that as long as their home continent remains economically and industrially backward as it is today, in spite of education and availability of raw materials, they can never be respected as human
beings in the US, Europe or anywhere else in the globe.
In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali was prosecuted for refusing to be drafted into the US Army to fight in Vietnam. During the trial, the Judge asked him
if he hated white people. Replying, Muhammed Ali told the Judge that if a lion were to suddenly enter the court room, everybody would run away from the court room, not because of hatred for lions but because of the known characters and behaviours of lions.
Africans do not need Trump or any European fascist to tell them not to emigrate to America or Europe when from experience Africans know who came to capture them as slaves and where they were taken to work as slaves; who declared them, the natural resources
of African land and forests as their colonial possession; who are African's oppressors and exploiters; and who are the discriminators who declared Africans as inferior human beings. The agitation for independent Africa from our enslavers and colonialists was
premised on the inhuman treatments being perpetrated on us, the Africans. Yet, and since independence, we Africans have been crawling back to the same oppressors, exploiters and persecutors for economic salvation even when Europeans and Americans have been
telling us not to come to them while at the same time their ships anchor daily at Africa's Sea Ports to load crude oil, copper, coltan, iron ore, agricultural products, etc., to Europe and America. At moment, thousands of Africans (mostly Nigerians) are said
to be perishing daily in the Mediterranean sea while trying to sail to Europe by sea. Already in September 2014, the then President of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh , speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, called on the UN to investigate the crime of genocide
on African refugee boats which he suspected were being intentionally sunk at the coast of Italy by the Italian coast guards. The major problem confronting Nigeria (Black Africa in general) today as I see it, and to borrow the expression of Malcom X, is the
attitude of the African intellectual house negroes that have become accustomed to the comfort of living near their Euro-American masters and imitating their livestyle and as such have come to regard racism as an individual, and not a collective problem. The
African intellectual house negroes pretend as if racism began with Donald Trump's presidency even when Klux Ku klan and Black Lives Matter, preceded his ascendant to office. Mimicing Euro-American intellectuals, the African intellectual house negroes believe
that being educated in fluent spoken and written English, or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese, language and wearing European clothes have transformed them into white men. Whenever African intellectual house negroes visit Africa, they give false impression
to the people at home that everywhere in Europe and the US is full of gold and diamonds. Seeing the modern day African intellectual house negroes, one is sadly reminded about the observations of the first colonial Governor General of Nigeria, Frederick John
Dealtry Lugard, as stated in his 1922 book, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa thus :
In character and temperament the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline and foresight, …//… His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little
from apprehension for the future, or grief for the past. …//… He (the African Negro) lacks power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power, but fails to realise its
responsibility. …//… He is very prone to imitate anything new in dress or custom, whether it be, …. the straw hat and trousers of the European, however unsuited to his environment and conditions of life. Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those
most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and inability to visualise the future and the steadfastness of his loyalty and affection. …//… The Europeanised African is indeed separated from the rest of the people which no racial affinity
can bridge. He must be treated - and seems to desire to be treated - as though he were of a different race (p.69-81). No normal African should like what late Lugard said and nowadays Trump say, about us, the Africans, but why are the African intellectuals
within and outside the government acting to confirm Lugard's and Trump's prejudice against the Black race?
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Kissi, Edward <eki...@usf.edu>
Skickat: den 9 februari 2020 02:15
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Nigerians love Trump!
Skickat: den 9 februari 2020 02:15
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Nigerians love Trump!
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 13, 2020, 5:31:21 PM2/13/20
to usaafricadialogue
On account of the mismanagement of their homelands, many, if not most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere.
This listserv is run by a scholar called Toyin Falola who has lived a good part of his life in the US, publishing a small library of books every year.
What are the chances he would have been so successful if he had remained behind at the then University of Ife, in a country that has only an embryonic book industry, a country challenged by epileptic power supply?
Another scholar on this group is Nimi Wariboko.
How likely is Wariboko to have achieved what he has if he had been operating from Nigeria?
Where would he find all those books to read with which he mines his texts?
How would he be able to afford them?
Through what libraries would he be able to access them?
We need to admit it, the West is another universe.
The opportunities are so great, the contrast to the dysfunctionality in such spaces as Nigeria so huge, the choice of whether or not to emigrate is almost no choice for many.
I make these assertions while acknowledging the need to be sensitive to Nigeria based academics.
We need to be aware of the depth of our problems if we are to be sufficiently determined to change our circumstances.
thanks
toyin
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Michael Afolayan
Feb 15, 2020, 9:19:18 AM2/15/20
to usaafricadialogue, Yoruba Affairs
"On account of the mismanagement of their homelands, many, if not most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere...The opportunities are so great, the contrast to the dysfunctionality in such spaces as Nigeria so huge, the choice of whether or not to emigrate is almost no choice for many." (OVA)
There is a sense in which I can't agree more with you on this. But in spite of all that, Oluwatoyin, a good number of scholars in Nigeria are working their butts off burning midnight oil to be productive, and many are successful at it; and, believe me, not all would venture for the greener pasture looking westward. Indeed, I know some who chose to shun all opportunities offered by the West, swearing they were there in Naija for real. I am not familiar with the background and works of Mimi Waribo but thanks in no small part to you and Falola, I've heard of great things he is doing; but I am a bit familiar with Falola and the package of his background. Clearly, I think it would be totally unfair to compare him to other scholars anywhere, not just in Nigeria, in terms of his huge success. The man is just unique - pure and simple. And by the way, Falola was not manufactured by the West. Of course, America offered him the opportunity to stretch his tentacles, which were cultivated in Nigeria. Falola came to the West with a stellar record of intellectual prowess and uniqueness (probably among the youngest full professors ever minted in Nigeria). My point is this, and please excuse my Yoruba traditionist mode of borrowing from its rich truisms, "Its the shade of the plantain plant that gave life to the cocoa tree in infancy," as the Yoruba would always say at such a time as this. Let's not chop down (or talk down) the same plantain so the now adult cocoa could blossom. After all, as our elders say, "it's from inside the black pot that the white pudding is brewed," àbí?
MOA
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 15, 2020, 12:09:45 PM2/15/20
to usaafricadialogue, Yoruba Affairs
Thanks, Michael Afolayan.
Its true Falola was productive right from after his PhD , publishing a minimum of two books a year.
It will be helpful to understand the role of environment in sustaining but increasingly surpassing that trajectory.
As for Wariboko, there is is little point in my trying to flog the issues. The kinds of books he references are hardly visible, if at all, in the Nigerian space.
Falola at least is writing about issues requiring reference to a lot of local spaces, so you will easily see relatively familiar names in his work.
Wariboko is a Pentecostal theologian, the same Pentecostalism that dominates Southern Nigerian social space and the books representative of which we see everywhere.
But the kind of Pentecostal theology he is doing is different from that of Pentecostal pastors, of which he used to be one.
Even when writing about Kalabari philosophy, the way he handles it makes clear a sophistication fed by and feeding various broad cognitive streams.
The whole subject is deeply burdensome emotionally.
Falola, Wariboko, Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal in the visual arts, are all Nigerians drinking from African streams, but to what degree can these streams nourish them without the input from other sources?
Go through Falola's bibliographies. Most of the books he references are not published in Africa. In Wariboko's case., most are not even written by Africans.
If a scholar in Nigeria wants to depend largely on books published in Africa, since the currencies make those books more readily available, how far can they go, even in the humanities, since the situation would be more dire in the sciences?
As for the books about Africa, talk less other areas of knowledge, published in the West, how affordable are they for libraries and scholars in Africa?
How affordable are most of Falola or Wariboko's books for scholars in Africa?
One of Falola's most important books is In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation, celebrating great Africans and Africanists, mainly scholars.
The cheapest $ prize for a used copy of that book, including postage to Nigeria, at the superb book search site BookFinder is $76.79. The cheapest prize for a new copy is $80.99.
At $1 to 363.50 naira $76.79
comes to 27, 913.17 naira.
The same search for Falola and Adeshina Afolayan's [ Afolayan is at the University of Ibadan] Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, comes to $85.79 for the cheapest used copy and $186.90 for the cheapest new copy.
$85.79 comes to 31, 184.67 naira.
I also wanted to reference the monumental Falola edited text Victor Ekpuk: Connecting Lines Across Space and Time, but it seems the book is unavailable. Falola has mentioned the huge cost of the book, making it an example of what he describes as 'ko she ta', an unsellable book.
All these books are landmarks in their various fields.
One of the most important books in African aesthetics in general and Yoruba aesthetics in particular is Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.
The Amazon prize-its not available through BookFinder or though the publishers, is $230.85. That comes to 83, 913.97 naira. An Amazon reviewer suggests its cheaper as an ebook.
Those who are better informed about academics' incomes in Nigeria as well as about university library budgets are well positioned to to examine the implications of such prizes, relating to books strategic to studies about Nigeria, written by Nigerian scholars in the West and published in the West.
Does scholarship published in Nigeria reduce the need to acquire such books, if such acquisition proves too challenging?
Let us multiply these prices by the ocean of books on various subjects, about Nigeria, Africa, the world and various region neutral disciplines coming out of the West on a daily basis.
Let us examine where we stand in Nigeria in relation to the ongoing rebellion among Western academics and universities agst the high cost of academic journals, leading even the extremely rich Harvard urging its scholars to empower and move to open access publishing.
Moses Ochonu once referenced the need to go beyond 'bean counting' in assessment procedures for academic publications in Nigeria, noting the relative value of publishing in higher impact journals, if I recall his argument clearly enough.
We know where most of these globally dominant journals, even about Africa, are based.
Is it Africa?
If even rich Western institutions have become wary of these journal publishers, what hope do African universities have of being able to afford their products?
Thus, a Nigerian academic would proudly publish in a journal which perhaps most of his colleagues do not have access to.
Those in Nigerian academia are better positioned to examine my description of this paradox.
When one has a problem, its important to admit one has a problem, so one can move towards solving one's problem.
To what degree are we in Nigeria, in the global context, superior to people working in a village environment?
Great achievers come out of villages. Great achievements are possible in villages. But to what degree do these developments transform the village?
What are we going to do?
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 17, 2020, 6:58:53 PM2/17/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
MOA
I totally agree with you. Toyin Adepoju chose to ignore the fact that before Falola, both Achebe and Soyinka came fully formed and accomplished from Nigeria.
So Tioyin Adepoju's analysis seems to be in part self serving.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 15/02/2020 14:23 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
"On account of the mismanagement of their homelands, many, if not most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere...The opportunities are
so great, the contrast to the dysfunctionality in such spaces as Nigeria so huge, the choice of whether or not to emigrate is almost no choice for many." (OVA)
There is a sense in which I can't agree more with you on this. But in spite of all that, Oluwatoyin, a good number of scholars in Nigeria are working their butts off burning midnight oil to be productive, and many are successful
at it; and, believe me, not all would venture for the greener pasture looking westward. Indeed, I know some who chose to shun all opportunities offered by the West, swearing they were there in Naija for real. I am not familiar with the background and works
of Mimi Waribo but thanks in no small part to you and Falola, I've heard of great things he is doing; but I am a bit familiar with Falola and the package of his background. Clearly, I think it would be totally unfair to compare him to other scholars anywhere,
not just in Nigeria, in terms of his huge success. The man is just unique - pure and simple. And by the way, Falola was not manufactured by the West. Of course, America offered him the opportunity to stretch his tentacles, which were cultivated in Nigeria.
Falola came to the West with a stellar record of intellectual prowess and uniqueness (probably among the youngest full professors ever minted in Nigeria). My point is this, and please excuse my Yoruba traditionist mode of borrowing from its rich truisms, "Its
the shade of the plantain plant that gave life to the cocoa tree in infancy," as the Yoruba would always say at such a time as this. Let's not chop down (or talk down) the same plantain so the now adult cocoa could blossom. After all, as our elders say, "it's
from inside the black pot that the white pudding is brewed," àbí?
MOA
On Thursday, February 13, 2020, 11:31:32 PM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 17, 2020, 11:06:43 PM2/17/20
to usaafricadialogue
The Nigeria of Achebe and Soyinka's time, the 60s, is not the Nigeria of today.
That was the Nigeria of Falola's predecessor historians Kenneth Dike and Ade Ajayi.
In that Nigeria, Falola might not have migrated.
It was a Nigeria to which Nigerian students abroad eagerly returned to Nigeria to build the nation.
It was a growing country demonstrating potential of achieving its own socio-economic place in the world.
Today's Nigeria is one of growing migration.
As for Soyinka, the West has contributed greatly to making Soyinka.
His BA was at Leeds, where he was deeply influenced by his teachers Bornamy Dorbree and Wilson Knight.
After Leeds, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in England.
He then came to Nigeria on a fellowship from the UK in order to study African festivals.
From time to time he lived in the West, accomplishing strategic projects there-eg the genesis of Myth, Literature and the African World in relation to his fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, the writing of Death and the Kings Horseman in a similar fellowship, the writing of The Man Died in a friend's farm in France to which he withdrew after his imprisonment in the Nigerian Civil War, and later fleeing to the West for safety during the Abacha era.
One could continue on but that's the general point.
As for Achebe the last 10 years possibly of his life were spent in the US.
Bottom line-the West has proven invaluable as a means of self actualization and protection for African scholars and other creatives and is proving increasingly so as Nigeria, for one, shows signs of not moving forward in a substantial sense, instead, generally retrogressing, in spite of spots of positive developments
As for this
So Tioyin Adepoju's analysis seems to be in part self serving.
OAAShould one ask exactly what is meant by that?
Is that another personalistic critique masquerading as critical analysis from a person who seems to have difficulty rising above the unnecessarily personal in relating online with Adepoju with whom he has no personal interaction?
Thanks
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 18, 2020, 8:41:10 AM2/18/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Yoruba Affairs
Toyin Adepoju.
By your argument here should ALL Nigerian academics relocate abroad so they can afford all the publications located in the West and we might as well shut down ALL Nigerian universities or what are you getting at?
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 15/02/2020 17:10 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 18, 2020, 8:41:18 AM2/18/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Toyin Adepoju.
Lets start from your last comment. Ever since you returned to Nigeria every forum member can bear me witness that if you had your way you would rather not return. So I made nothing up as personality attacks. You referred to Nigeria as a zoo but people
have been living in this zoo ever since. You portrayed your self as too good for Nigeria because you spent a couple of years in the UK and that the country is beneath you.
As for Soyinka more than 90% of his working post graduation life was spent in Nigeria till retirement. Yes he went abroad for scholarly reasons in between like every academic and returned home to Nigeria till retirement.
What of other Nigerians who studied abroad but stayed in Nigeria through all the period you cite like Femi Osofisan, what of my own colleagues like Dele Layiwola and Sola Akinrinade and our own Segun Ogungbemi here who studied in the US but worked till
retirement in Nigeria through all the evil who perpetually cite?
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 18/02/2020 04:21 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
The Nigeria of Achebe and Soyinka's time, the 60s, is not the Nigeria of today.
That was the Nigeria of Falola's predecessor historians Kenneth Dike and Ade Ajayi.
In that Nigeria, Falola might not have migrated.
It was a Nigeria to which Nigerian students abroad eagerly returned to Nigeria to build the nation.
It was a growing country demonstrating potential of achieving its own socio-economic place in the world.
Today's Nigeria is one of growing migration.
As for Soyinka, the West has contributed greatly to making Soyinka.
His BA was at Leeds, where he was deeply influenced by his teachers Bornamy Dorbree and Wilson Knight.
After Leeds, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in England.
He then came to Nigeria on a fellowship from the UK in order to study African festivals.
From time to time he lived in the West, accomplishing strategic projects there-eg the genesis of
Myth, Literature and the African World in relation to his fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, the writing of
Death and the Kings Horseman in a similar fellowship, the writing of The Man Died in a friend's farm in France to which he withdrew after his imprisonment in the Nigerian Civil War, and later fleeing to the West for safety during the Abacha era.
One could continue on but that's the general point.
As for Achebe the last 10 years possibly of his life were spent in the US.
Bottom line-the West has proven invaluable as a means of self actualization and protection for African scholars and other creatives and is proving increasingly so as Nigeria, for one, shows signs of not moving
forward in a substantial sense, instead, generally retrogressing, in spite of spots of positive developments
As for this
So Tioyin Adepoju's analysis seems to be in part self serving.
OAAShould one ask exactly what is meant by that?
Is that another personalistic critique masquerading as critical analysis from a person who seems to have difficulty rising above the unnecessarily personal in relating online with Adepoju with whom he has
no personal interaction?
Thanks
toyin
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Salimonu Kadiri
Feb 20, 2020, 8:49:26 PM2/20/20
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I quivered on reading Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's assertion that most Africans are determined to try their luck elsewhere on account of the
mismanagement of their homelands. It is a well-known fact that all public officials in Nigeria, whether appointed or employed, selected or elected, always regard and behave themselves as lucky lottery winners. Public servants, I mean all categories in Nigeria,
have never considered their official positions in government, and for which they are extremely overpaid, as opportunity to serve the people and develop the country economically but to steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares. Nigerian
dollar millionaires/billionaires do not have factories or manufacturing industries but are very close to the centre of government power. The nearer Nigerians are to the centre of government power the richer they become in terms of raw cash. While Nigerian
millionaires attribute the source of their sudden wealth without work to God's or Allah's blessings, if Christians or Muslims, the impoverished masses of Nigeria attribute their wealth to ritual offerings or sacrifices. However, the enlightened world attributes
sudden wealth of public servants in Nigeria to corruption, an euphemism for treasury looting.
From the colonial days, Nigerians have been indoctrinated to believe that education is the antidote for national poverty since it would make
us have full control over our environment and natural resources. As a multi-ethnic country, English is imposed on us, not only as official language but, as a means of acquiring knowledge in arts, science and technology. Yet the impostors of English language
on Nigerians never accepted responsibility to make the language accessible to all Nigerians through schools. At independence few Nigerians that had been privileged to attend schools and acquired fluency in spoken and written English inherited official positions
formerly held by the colonialists. The Nigerian inheritors of colonial positions in Nigeria established caco-democracy and the rule of the worst against the masses of Nigeria because they consider themselves, first and foremost, as lucky lottery winners who
are free to steal the national patrimony set aside for socio-economic development of Nigeria with impunity. During almost 60 years of independence, Nigerian academics with high sounding qualifications have been employed to work in their acclaimed areas of
expertise and competence in all the country's ministries, departments and agencies at federal, states and local governments. Despite the fact that our employed academics are over-remunerated to encourage maximum production and large material and financial
resources are placed at their disposals, their overall performances in office have been negative. A rising tide lifts all boats. A true Nigerian expert in electrical engineering, for instance, with almost 50 billion dollars expended on power between 1999 and
2015 would have been able to teach Nigerians under him how to generate and distribute electricity. Let's leave darkness producers alone and look instead at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Nigeria is the only crude oil producing country in the world that depends on imported fuel for her domestic consumption. The 2011/2012 fuel
subsidy enquiries exposed enormous fraud in trillions of naira. Those who participated in that fraud are still walking free today in Nigeria. Normally, Nigeria should be exporting fuel if its four oil refineries manned by Nigerian experts in petro-chemical
engineering are functioning as they should. Two oil refineries are located at Port Harcourt, while Kaduna and Warri have one each. A total of 445,000 barrel of crude oil is allocated per day to the four oil refineries that were established to produce and supply
Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), Premium Motor Spirit (petrol, PMS), Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO), High Power Fuel Oil (HPFO) and Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK), for both local consumption and export. After
the oil subsidy scam in 2013, the sum of three-hundred and ninety-six million dollars ($396 million) was spent on what was called Turned Around Maintenance (TAM) so that the four oil refineries could work at their various installed capacities. Despite TAM,
the NNPC claimed that the refineries have been functioning between 15% and 25% per annum of their installed capacity, which implies that out of the daily allocations of 450,000 barrel crude oil/day to the four refineries, between 66,750 and 111,250 barrel
of crude oil is only refined per day. What has been happening to the rest of the unrefined crude oil per day has never been accounted for. Yet, the NNPC announced that between January and October 2019 the refineries incurred a cumulative loss of N123.28 billion
because the total revenue of the refineries was N68.82 billion as against N192.1 billion expenditure. No one has been held responsible for the negative performances at Nigeria's crude oil refineries supervised by academically educated Nigerians. I dare not
go into details of how oil block lisenses were handed over, by every government in Nigeria since 1985, to some Nigerians who lacked technical capacity to exploit oil both on and offshore. These Nigerian oil block owners consisting of federal character of mixed
ethnic, Islamic and Christian religious groups are dollar millionaires just by selling oil blocks allocated to them to foreign companies at give away prices.
Talking about security in Nigeria, the Police and the Army are very important factors in maintaining peace and order in the country. By virtue
of their training, police and army personnel are supposed to be the most disciplined and law abiding in the country. Yet the insecurity that ordinary Nigerians are experiencing today is rooted in the indiscipline and lawlessness of the police and the army
leaderships which have spread to the lower ranks of the two forces. Globally defined, ghosts are creepy objects that frighten people. Nevertheless, Nigerian ghosts have no faces but they are seen on payrolls, they have no legs but they walk to banks, they
have no hands but they draw salaries and sign checks, and they have no certificates and appraisals, but they are promoted. If there are ghost officers in all the MDAs in Nigeria, the only place one should not expect to find
ghost officers is the armed forces. Disappointedly and already in September 2010, the staff audit of the Nigerian Police Force revealed that out of the overall 337,000 members of the Nigerian Police Force, 107, 000 were ghost officers. The authentic and verifiable
officers were 230,000. The salary section of the Nigerian Police, their pay officers and accountants, in all the States of the Federation as well as bank officials were involved in the ghost police officers' fraud. No one was ever prosecuted for the fraud
as investigations on who perpetrated the fraud were never carried out. Almost eight years later, the former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, disclosed to the press after the Federal Executive Council meeting of 21 March 2018, that 80,115 ghost police
officers had been uncovered in the Nigerian Police Force. Till date, those who were collecting salaries on behalf none existing 80,115 Police Officers, are yet to be disclosed. Beside that, there were ghost pensioners too.
https://www.tori.ng/news/123243/how-4000-ghosts-were-discovered-among-20000-police-pensiners.html
Concerning the Nigerian Army, the Minister of Defence in year 2000, General Theophilus Danjuma, announced at a press conference the discovery
of about 5, 000 military ghost personnel. His successor in 2003, Alhaji Kwakwanso, announced that pension audit in the ministry exposed 24, 000 ghost military pensioners. The beneficiaries of ghost military pension payments were never identified much less
being prosecuted. By the time Yar'Adua and Jonathan came to power the Service Chiefs, who were supposed to be on 24 hours duty in defence of the country had become full blown business men with private companies registered either in their names or names of
their spouses or children. To the Service Chiefs' companies, funds meant for procurement of weapons, for recruitment and training of soldiers, naval and air-force personal were transferred on monthly basis either for fictitious contracts or no contracts at
all. At the same time Boko Haram which began as a ragtag rebels in 2009 became stronger, leading to declaration of Emergency rule in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States in 2013. Despite emergency rule, Boko Haram attacked Composite Group Air Force base on 2 December
2013 and the docile President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to change Service Chiefs. Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh replaced Admiral Ola Sa'ad Ibrahim as Chief of Defence Staff(CDS), Major-General Tobiah Jacob Minimah replaced Lieutenant-General Azubuike Onyeabor
Ihejirica as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Real Admiral Usman O. Jibrin replaced Vice Admiral Dele Joseph Ezeoba as Chief of Naval Staff (CONS), while Air Vice Marshal Nunayon Amosu took over from Air Marshal Badeh as Chief of Air Staff with effect from January
16, 2014. In the daylight of 14 March 2014, Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri was attacked by 200 Boko Haram fighters transported in 12 Hilux pickup trucks. A month later, 14 April 2014 Boko Haram struck again at Chibok in Borno State to abduct over 300 hundred school
girls and transported their captives in a convoy to Sambisa forest situated 60 kilometres from Chibok. Boko Haram did not meet any challenge from the police, army and the air force in a state under emergency rule and where dusk to dawn curfew existed. After
2015, the EFCC has arraigned all former Service Chiefs in courts for stealing together three-hundred and eighty-one billion naira (N381 billion) from the Ministry of Defence. They have all been granted bail after which they requested for plea bargaining negotiations.
After the murder of the former Chief of Defence Staff, the EFCC filed forfeiture case totalling more than four billion naira beside other properties against him in the court of law and obtained it. Other Service Chiefs have returned some funds which according
to the EFCC are too small in relation to the actual amount stolen. In other clime, all the military officers should have been court martialed for treason because of the negative consequences of their thefts. On 25 February 2016 Lt. General Tukur Buratai announced
at a public conference that Boko Haram had been defeated and the rescue of Chibok girls was under way. The Chief of Army Staff said that the military has entered mop up phase in the fight against Boko Haram. However, it was not until Friday, 23 December 2016,
that Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai announced at 13 : 35 : 00 hours that Boko Haram's Camp Zero in the heart of Zambisa Forests had been captured. President Buhari congratulated the Army on the following day even though the rest of Chibok girls were no where
to be found. It is very much likely that the current Service Chiefs have turned Boko Haram's war and banditry into business, especially when their predecessors are enjoying their loots from office without any consequence.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/08/taraba-police-killings-latest-army-captain-had-191-phone-chats-with-wanted-kidnapper/
The academic titles of Nigerians employed at Nigeria's MDAs conjure up a powerful vision and ideals of a country we all want Nigeria to be.
When funds set aside for socio economic welfare of Nigerians are stolen by officials who are employed and paid to execute projects, Nigerian intellectuals keep mute because they hope it will be their turn and luck one day to steal. The leaders and officials
of the white world, whose system of government Nigeria has copied, will never do to their citizens what Nigerian leaders and officials have been, and are still, doing to Nigerians since independence. Speaking at the launch of Fix Nigeria Initiative in Abuja,
2006, the Chairman of the EFCC then, Malam Nuhu Ribadu said among other things,
"Without seeking to befog you with statistics, corruption has cost us 220 billion pounds sterling ($500 billion) of development funds
that have been stolen from this country (Nigeria) since independence by our past leaders. That is to say that the money that past
Nigerian leaders have stolen in a 40-year time could have recreated the beauty and glory of Western Europe six times all over in this country (Nigeria)." {Reported in the online Nigerian Daily Champion of Wednesday, 18 October 2006}.
Huge sums of money stolen from Nigeria have been traced to the US, a country that her President described Nigeria, not only as a shit-hole country but its inhabitants, as people living in huts who would never like to return to their huts whenever they visit
the US. In an article in the online premium times, Nigeria, of May 22, 2014, written by Nicholas Ibekwe, it was stated that Jonathan's government was demanding the return of $500 million stolen from Nigeria by Abacha and lodged into Banks in the US. Abacha
died 8 June 1998, but now in 2020 the US is reported to be returning $308 million to Nigeria with attached conditions. That the five-hundred million dollars have been reduced to three-hundred and eight million dollars must have been due to the demand of the
US lawyers for 40% of the looted fund as fees to represent Nigeria in the negotiations to repatriate the loot back to Nigeria. In the normal world, when a thief is arrested, recovered stolen property is returned wholly to the lawful owner unconditionally without
any need for negotiation. In the US, Abacha's discovered loot of $550 million in 1998 was reduced to $308 million in 2020, after almost 22 years as if to say the US bank has not been trading with the looted fund since it was kept there prior to Abacha's death
in 1998!! Nigerian intellectuals, both at home and abroad, are silent over the lootings perpetrated in office by their colleagues in Nigeria because they hope it will one day be their turn to loot. As it is Nigeria, so it is in every black country of Africa.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju says homelands in Africa are mismanaged, but he does not want to admit that it is his intellectual colleagues that are committing the lootings he is referring to as mismanagements. His tacit solution to the problem is for Africans
to try their luck elsewhere, especially, where they are regarded as subhuman and hated. Not understanding the racial antagonism involved in the matter, he drew inference to Toyin Falola and Nimi Wariboko's scholarly achievements which he assumed would
not have been possible if they were to remain in Nigeria. Despite the tinsel, glitter and gaiety of being a professor med many published books in the USA, professor Falola cannot feel comfortable when people are being maltreated and persecuted on the ground
of racial identity worn by Falola himself. He knows quite well that even if he should carry with him all the books he has authored while walking the streets of the USA, he remains an academic refugee to white Americans and he will be addressed with the same
demeaning epithets as they do to all black people. What we can learn from Trump's diatribe against Nigerians is that our government should consist of the wisest and the best of us. As the Yoruba aphorism put it, NITÓRI EGBÉRÚN TÁLÍKÀ NI OLÓRUN SÉ DÁ OLÓWÓ
KAN SÓSÓ. Roughly translated to : It is because of one thousand poor people that God creates a single rich person. Nigerian geniuses should be given the opportunity to display their talents which means the rhetoric of religion and ethnicity should give way
to rhetoric of competence and results of stewardship. For ages now, Nigeria has put spiders in charge of her textile industries and despite the fact that the type of spinning and weaving done by the spiders have not produced a single cloth, we keep the spiders
in office on ethno-religious quota basis but continue to complain of no cloths to make clothes. When the nation is enveloped in darkness, when crude oil refineries are dysfunctional, when potholes on roads are swallowing vehicles and humans etc., it is not
the ethnic origin and religious affiliation of persons employed in the respective office that are responsible for the failures but their incompetence.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Oluwatoyin Vincent
Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 13 februari 2020 23:17
Till: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
Skickat: den 13 februari 2020 23:17
Till: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 20, 2020, 11:00:13 PM2/20/20
to usaafricadialogue
interesting, Salimonu, but at this point are you not getting carried away?
'[ Falola] knows quite well that even if he should carry with him all the books he has authored while walking the streets of the USA, he remains an academic refugee to white Americans and he will be addressed with the same demeaning epithets as they do to all black people. '
How do you know this?
I thought Falola is one of the most honoured professors in his university and in Black Studies globally. Earning more than most people in the US.
What indices is one to use in measuring the respect accorded to an academic in a society?
Secondly, I got the impression even you live in Europe.
Is that true?
toyin
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Feb 21, 2020, 7:08:36 AM2/21/20
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Baba Kadiri avers that he “ quivered “ when he read Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's “assertion”.
BTW, I believe that the Baba himself trembled as he read and it was the arrow that quivered in his bow as he released it and he did not hesitate to release the message in the arrow, that’s what we are reading here, and what a very long message it is; but we are used to his manner of taking the bull-s that he releases by the horn, that’s why only the faint-hearted will quiver as they read it.
Why does Baba Kadiri go out of his way to court controversy? Why? Baba, why? Does he not think that it’s a national insult to write about his country in this manner:
“It is a well-known fact that all public officials in Nigeria, whether appointed or employed, selected or elected, always regard and behave themselves as lucky lottery winners. Public servants, I mean all categories in Nigeria, have never considered their official positions in government, and for which they are extremely overpaid, as opportunity to serve the people and develop the country economically but to steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their care.”
“It is a well -known fact”?
What kind of impression is the reader supposed to derive from this kind of supposed critical self-examination? Is it not this kind of description of a motherland that gives rise to unsavoury epithets such as “shithole countries”?
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 02:49, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
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segun ogungbemi
Feb 21, 2020, 7:08:37 AM2/21/20
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Kadiri,
With due respect, you are very wrong.
Your research is not thorough and please don't make a general statement on this matter.
Prof. Segun Ogungbemi.
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Chimalum Nwankwo
Feb 21, 2020, 7:50:17 AM2/21/20
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If a country so massively talented and endowed can elect leaders like Buhari to rule or lead , are we not begging for insults from all and sundry from around the planet...? See...We could not even show some good sense after four terrible years to pinch our selves, and assertively try another leader. Apologists carry gongs and cudgels all over the place celebrating our disgrace and looking for the heads of dissenters to clobber to death. Whatever they call us, I believe we deserve it. We should just shut up, and quietly try to figure out honestly what is wrong with us.The Igbo ancestors are in order with their pithy those who bring in dry firewood into the homestead should never complain of termites !!! Thank God for the carefully thought out thing called Amotekun by the Yoruba. That arrangement is bound to initiate the erosion of the power of the demonic thing powering the savage irrational muscles of the status quo....
chimalum nwankwo
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 21, 2020, 1:40:05 PM2/21/20
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thanks Segun but could you disclose which aspect/s of Kadiri's summation you see as flawed?
toyin
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segun ogungbemi
Feb 22, 2020, 7:23:34 AM2/22/20
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"All Black Africans, and regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments, have always been treated with contempt and disrespect in the US and Europe, not only because of the colour of their skin but, because of their past history as enslaved and colonized people." Kadiri
This is a general statement by Kadiri cannot be proven to be true in all cases. The reasons of his proposition are because of their skin, past history of slavery and colonization.
Segun Ogungbemi.
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 22, 2020, 7:24:51 AM2/22/20
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Well, the African American academic ,Henry Louis Gates Junior was arrested for attempting to break into his own house.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 21/02/2020 04:06 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
interesting, Salimonu, but at this point are you not getting carried away?
'[ Falola] knows quite well that even if he should carry with him all the books he has authored while walking the
streets of the USA, he remains an academic refugee to white Americans and he will be addressed with the same demeaning epithets as they do to all black people. '
How do you know this?
I thought Falola is one of the most honoured professors in his university and in Black Studies globally. Earning more than most people in the US.
What indices is one to use in measuring the respect accorded to an academic in a society?
Secondly, I got the impression even you live in Europe.
Is that true?
toyin
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 02:49, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN6PR07MB5022BC823482D6C64DF8F248AE150%40SN6PR07MB5022.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.
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Ibrahim Abdullah
Feb 22, 2020, 10:12:48 AM2/22/20
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He is essentially right. White folks see black bodies irrespective of your accomplish or whatever. Ask Mazrui; Skip; Kongi et al. You're a nigger irrespective of your towering claims to humanity.
Sent from my iPhone
On 22 Feb 2020, at 12:23 PM, segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Feb 23, 2020, 7:33:58 AM2/23/20
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All Nigerians are poets and maybe, that’s why the hyperbole is a Nigerian forte. Not a great majority, not “on the whole”, not a vast majority, not essentially and not generally speaking. That would be wasting time and words, splitting hairs unnecessarily when you know damn well that all means all, as when she screeches, “Let me have all of it – all, all all of it! “
Those of us still alive are still living in a world of cause and effect. Nothing controversial about that or the fact that Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju caused Baba Kadiri to quiver. Even the Generals had better be aware and better be careful, because such is the mystical power in Adepoju’s words that even brave men can lose their balance/ equanimity/ tranquillity and be caused to tremble.
As I told Baba Kadiri this evening, my only beef with him about all this is his totalitarian tendency and the broad sweep to his accusations, especially with regard to his frustration about corruption in the land. Bad as that is, we read and are not amused that it is “All Nigerians “– he doesn’t spare a soul - and thus creates many enemies. Who can be exempted or exempt themselves from this universal condemnation, and what a shocker:
“all public officials in Nigeria, whether appointed or employed, selected or elected, always regard and behave themselves as lucky lottery winners. Public servants, I mean all categories in Nigeria, have never considered their official positions in government, and for which they are extremely overpaid, as opportunity to serve the people and develop the country economically but to steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their care.”
Now, if an Oyibo said that the nationalists and those who say “keep Nigeria one”, would not defend him in the name of patriotism or regionalism since according to Baba Kadiri, all have sinned. Without exception. Quite some time ago, circa 1985, at the height of the HIV-Aids epidemic as I was going up the escalator somewhere in downtown Stockholm, an Oyibo that was going down pointed his plastic finger at me and shouted, “All Africans have AIDS!”. It was indeed a very bad time. They scrawled the same thing in the men’s toilets and of course in the women’s toilets too, in the nightclubs and discos in a vain attempt to create a social and sexual apartheid.
My purpose in writing this is to cause Baba Kadiri (an expert on the HICVAIDs pandemic) to at least feel some remorse about accusing ALL somebodies…
In 1964, a peace corps volunteer by the name of Sue Spencer was deported from Sierra Leone because her correspondence – letters and postcards back home which was published as “ African Creeks I have been up” contained this one the unfortunate sentence “ Every Sierra Leonean is a potential thief!” What the cheek! This was three years after Sierra Leone (Britain’s first colony in Africa – and for the longest period – 150 years) attained independence and it was at a time when the feeling of nationalism was at its highest peak.
Back to Baba Kadiri: Africa’s academic achievers are not spared either: “All Black Africans, and regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments, have always been treated with contempt and disrespect in the US and Europe, not only because of the colour of their skin but, because of their past history as enslaved and colonized people”
Baba Kadiri’s problem is not that he speaks in generalities, as Professor Ogungbemi so kindly wants to suggest; in fact, Baba Kadiri goes beyond making sweeping over-generalizations; he is wantonly specific and for him there is no exception. This kind of syllogism poses no dilemma for him: All men are mortal. TJ is a man; therefore, TJ is mortal. But what about “All public officials in Nigeria are corrupt. TJ is a public official in Nigeria; therefore, TJ is corrupt.”
I confronted Baba Kadiri with that syllogism and he tried to wriggle out of it, saying that the minuscule number of public officials that are not corrupt is like a drop in the ocean and is therefore unlikely to have any impact on the morale of the nation. I reminded him of these two great examples: Bashir Abubakar and Josephine Ugwu
I hope that you like this:
Chief Hubert Ogunde -
Obafemi Awolowo
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 02:49, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 23, 2020, 7:37:35 AM2/23/20
to usaafricadialogue
Even with that sad experience, Gates' huge achievement as a scholar and in building Black Studies at Harvard remains undiminished.
Gates is exactly where he should be in the world, fighting the battle fr human equality where he can be most effective.
If Kadiri were essentially right, as Ibrahim claims, Falola, Wariboko, Adebanwi at Oxford etc would not be professors in the US and UK, not to talk of being particularly honoured professors.
So, the Kadiri declaration is not factual.
The truth is more nuanced.
Race issues in the West is a work in progress.
Even then, the situation there is far better for most than in a country like Nigeria, where the question of progress may be described as being in limbo.
Kadiri has called for the return of diasporans to build the nation.
Bolaji Aluko, on this group, once heeded such a call in the GEJ era, in which he was lifted from his comfortable existence as a professor in the US to build a university from scratch, from bare earth, in Otueke, the town of the President himself.
He did so.
What eventually happened to him?
When the next President came to power in 2015, he appointed as Minister of Education Adamu Adamu, a brilliant though deeply Northern Muslim centric writer as demonstrated by his essay on Soyinka's suggestion of Northern Muslim warlords as being behind the 2011 Boko Haram resurgence, a writer whose highest educational qualification has been described as a masters in journalism and no background in educational administration, but depicted as being loyal to Buhari.
Adamu Adamu immediately removed the new VCs installed by GEJ in the former President's initiative in founding a number of new universities. In removing these and perhaps other VCs, he replaced them with fellow Muslim Northerners, largely from a particular state- dont recall which state now.
So, Aluko, a man whose grand dreams for building a centre of science and technology were obvious since he shared them on Nigerian centred listerves, a vision fed by his professional background as a professor of engineering who had spent a good part of his career in the world's most technologically advanced nation, and who had at least one patent to his name, as I observed from researching his name at the US patents office, was so removed after four years.
Aluko put a brave face to it, insisting that the VCs tenures had expired but we know that plucking such professionals from such a different environment and planting them here, only to disengage them, and in that way, after four years, particularly with a figure who had built an institution from nothing, is not a confidence inspiring endeavour.
I keep quiet for now bcs the situation is so painful I might not be able to sufficiently coherent if I continue now.
I had drafted an elaborate response to Agbetuyi's limited understanding of my insistence on recognising the systemic disenablement of human potential that too often characterizes Nigeria but will have to post that later.
We need to recognise our inadequacies, celebrate those who are making the most of the situation while working towards moving from this situation.
It is suicidal to relate to the situation as adequately enabling or as not something representing deep cause for alarm.
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/F96987B2-2473-46EB-90D6-4958DB5AEED6%40gmail.com.
Dr. Oohay
Feb 23, 2020, 3:47:16 PM2/23/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Why are so many of us so monomaniacal about HOW "White folks see black bodies"? What would happen if a significant number of us redirect even half of such misdirected energies and resources toward developing wherever we live in or outside Africa? -- would such a move (by default) not yield a much healthier ROI (NOT just in an economic sense but more in psychological and philosophical senses) and thus be in better positions to contribute to the development of wherever we live (in or outside Africa)? Don't you think that any pathological focus by individuals or groups on the images that others have of who one is or who others are would be better fought at more fundamental levels?
Gloria Emeagwali
Feb 23, 2020, 3:47:16 PM2/23/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
There is cause for alarm, that
even the blind can see, but there
is no bed of roses in the West. If so,
you would surely ha
Sent from my iPhone
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Ibrahim Abdullah
Feb 23, 2020, 4:21:59 PM2/23/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Not sure you really dig what is at stake here! Simply put, it's about a history, a past and a continuous present, that has refused to be written.
Sent from my iPhone
On 23 Feb 2020, at 8:47 PM, 'Dr. Oohay' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Feb 23, 2020, 4:59:33 PM2/23/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
This is the current sorry situation: Mr. President has a mere ear-ache and he has to fly all the way to London for specialist medical attention. The same for every other part of the body, neck, back, knees, hands, feet, throat, lungs, not to mention heart and other equally precious body parts (like some old, used cars) that may be in urgent need of some repairs and maintenance.
Since the medical profession is the most highly venerated profession, Nigerian doctors must be enjoying some status wherever they go, so I doubt that Nigerian doctors suffer any discrimination on account of the colour of their skin - unlike the kind of discrimination described in Telephone Conversation - West African Sepia in search of accommodation somewhere ina England. I have heard the odd case of some White women who are a little apprehensive about being tended to by any “Black” gynecologist, maybe some natural shyness about their most precious private parts being treated by perfect strangers, but on the whole aren’t doctors venerated as miracle men and miracle wonder women?
When talking about the brain-drain, here are some realities to consider.
Nigeria has more than 4000 doctors in the US & 5000 in the UK alone
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Salimonu Kadiri
Feb 24, 2020, 9:16:18 AM2/24/20
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Had Professor Segun Ogungbemi followed the discussion from the beginning, he would not have concluded that I generalized in asserting that
academic and economic achievements of any Blackman are ignorable to the Whiteman either in Europe or America. Let me refresh the memory of Professor Ogungbemi with the origin of the discussion leading to my conclusion which he termed a 'general statement'.
On Tuesday, 28 January 2020, Professor Toyin Falola partly stated in his post on this forum, "To add to the urgency of the situation, we
all watch as the White House devastates Nigeria, INSULTING US, ABUSING US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE. Trump has threatened to reduce the number of Nigerians who visit the US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE." Reacting to Professor Falola's post, Oluwatoyin
Vincent Adepoju, wrote on Wednesday, 29 January 2020 thus, "I'm so pleased to read the response from Falola on the ANTI-AFRICAN/ANTI-NIGERIAN NEGATIVITIES emanating from Trump, particularly this -'Trump has threatened to reduce the number of Nigerians
who visit the US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE." As if he was defending the action of Trump, Adepoju stated, "I understand the argument is that Nigerians represent a high no of overstayers in the US." In his post of Friday
31 January 2020, titled : Travel Ban and A Sad Day, Professor Falola partly stated, "To those in Diaspora, it shows their powerlessness, how the exaggeration of what they do comes into clear focus. …//… All the numbers in the big cities
cannot influence policy, HOW NO ONE IS AFRAID OF THE PhDs THEY PARADE AND THE LONG CVs THEY BUILD. WE CANNOT EVEN COMPLAIN. WE CANNOT EVEN MOBILIZE PROTESTS." Despite his academic achievements Professor Falola could still understand the racial aspect
of Trump's recriminatory policy against Nigerians as a people. And he is lamenting that no one (in the Whiteman's controlled US) is afraid of the PhDs Nigerians parade and the long CVs they build. It is not a generalization when professor Falola said that
the PhDs and the long CVs being paraded by Nigerians meant nothing to the White Americans but a recognition of the avalanche of Blackman's negative realities in the US. Let's consider some realities as they affect the Blackman in America.
During the first year of Barrack Hussein Obama in office as the President of the United States of America, Sergeant
Michael James Crowley arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African American, at the front door to his home. The Professor was having problem with the lock to the front door of his home and was trying to force it opened. Some passers-by saw him and
phoned the police to report a suspected burglar. On arrival, Sergeant Crowley was in no doubt that Professor Gates Jr. owned the house he was trying to force himself into. Yet professor Henry Louis Gates was sassed, arrested and charged to court for disorderly
conduct and subsequently convicted. When the case became known to the public, Obama commented that anyone in Gate's situation would be pretty angry if they were arrested in their own home. He added that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting Gates
and cited the long history of arbitrary arrests of African Americans and Latinos in the US. The white America exploded in anger against Obama who they claimed attacked the police on lawful duty. Following the furry that arose, Obama retreated by inviting sergeant
Crowley and professor Gates Jr., for a beer chat in the White House. The dignity of the white Sergeant Crowley is far more greater than that of the Black Professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. A proven racial humiliation of an African American President and an African
American Professor.
On Obama's fifth year in office a vigilante Whiteman, George Zimmerman, murdered a black teenager, Trayvon Martin,
in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, armed with a 9-mm handgun was trailing Trayvon in an area where no black person should be found and thereby suspected him to be a criminal intruder. The boy dressed in a hoodie bore nothing but candy and iced tea. The local
authorities at first declined to make arrest citing the claim of Zimmerman to self-defence. A nationwide protests against the murder of an unarmed black teenager by a white vigilante erupted. Obama, the President was forced to make a statement. He said,
"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together - federal, state, and local
- to figure exactly how this tragedy happened…. But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves,
and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened." The moment Obama spoke, White America turned it into a Black President wanting to persecute a Whiteman for the murder of an unarmed Black teenager. Zimmerman set up a website to collect
donations for his defence and dollar gushed in like flood. He was eventually absolved of the murder charge and the hashtag #Blacklives Matter became a trend in the US as Blacks are still being killed till date with impunity.
In the
New York Times of Saturday, 23 December 2017, President Donald Trump was reported to have described Nigerians as people living in huts which they would not want to return to whenever they visit America. Thereafter in 2018, he
said that Africa consists of shit-hole countries. Then in 2019, four African American women criticized the socio-economic policy of Trump's government. Trump twitted in response,
"Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they come. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help, you can't leave fast enough." Three of the Black women are Americans by virtue
of being descendants of Black slaves in America while the fourth became American after following her Somali refugee parents to America. All of them belong to the American democratic party of which three are members of the Congress. If Trump could ask the three
democratic party women to go back to Africa to fix its socio-economic disorder, the same should apply to the African intellectuals. And as long as the socio-economic disorder in Africa persists, Nigerian (African) intellectuals in Europe and America will be
held in contempt and ridicule. That this is not a generalisation is testified to by professor Toyin Falola's reaction, despite his academic achievements, to non-collective response, complaints and protests from all Nigerians to Trump's abuse and insult. Segun
Ogungbemi thinks it is an unproven generalization to state that fowls do perspire and I urge him to remove their feathers to confirm that they do in fact perspire.
S. Kadiri
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 25, 2020, 6:40:12 AM2/25/20
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Toyin Adepoju:
While I await your response I ask: are professors not being made in Nigeria? I know for a fact that in the 70s and 80s ( at least in the Humanities the US recognised that many Nigerian professors out classed the US counterparts hence poached them; the
tenor of learning and degree outcomes outshines comparative US class comparisons.
The Aluko example you cite ( and Falola) were largely made in Nigeria. You are only looking at the finished product. Are the Echeruos still not the intellectual literary power house they were in the past even if they are still in Nigeria and not diasporans?
The Adamu politicisation can be offset within the system by upscaling and absorption into the Nigerian private university system.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 23/02/2020 12:43 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Even with that sad experience, Gates' huge achievement as a scholar and in building Black Studies at Harvard remains undiminished.
Gates is exactly where he should be in the world, fighting the battle fr human equality where he can be most effective.
If Kadiri were essentially right, as Ibrahim claims, Falola, Wariboko, Adebanwi at Oxford etc would not be professors in the US and UK, not to talk of being particularly honoured professors.
So, the Kadiri declaration is not factual.
The truth is more nuanced.
Race issues in the West is a work in progress.
Even then, the situation there is far better for most than in a country like Nigeria, where the question of progress may be described as being in limbo.
Kadiri has called for the return of diasporans to build the nation.
Bolaji Aluko, on this group, once heeded such a call in the GEJ era, in which he was lifted from his comfortable existence as a professor in the US to build a university from scratch, from bare earth, in Otueke,
the town of the President himself.
He did so.
What eventually happened to him?
When the next President came to power in 2015, he appointed as Minister of Education Adamu Adamu, a brilliant though deeply Northern Muslim centric writer as demonstrated by his essay on Soyinka's suggestion
of Northern Muslim warlords as being behind the 2011 Boko Haram resurgence, a writer whose highest educational qualification has been described as a masters in journalism and no background in educational administration, but depicted as being loyal to Buhari.
Adamu Adamu immediately removed the new VCs installed by GEJ in the former President's initiative in founding a number of new universities. In removing these and perhaps other VCs, he replaced them with fellow
Muslim Northerners, largely from a particular state- dont recall which state now.
So, Aluko, a man whose grand dreams for building a centre of science and technology were obvious since he shared them on Nigerian centred listerves, a vision fed by his professional background as a professor
of engineering who had spent a good part of his career in the world's most technologically advanced nation, and who had at least one patent to his name, as I observed from researching his name at the US patents office, was so removed after four years.
Aluko put a brave face to it, insisting that the VCs tenures had expired but we know that plucking such professionals from such a different environment and planting them here, only to disengage them, and in
that way, after four years, particularly with a figure who had built an institution from nothing, is not a confidence inspiring endeavour.
I keep quiet for now bcs the situation is so painful I might not be able to sufficiently coherent if I continue now.
I had drafted an elaborate response to Agbetuyi's limited understanding of my insistence on recognising the systemic disenablement of human potential that too often characterizes Nigeria but will have to post
that later.
We need to recognise our inadequacies, celebrate those who are making the most of the situation while working towards moving from this situation.
It is suicidal to relate to the situation as adequately enabling or as not something representing deep cause for alarm.
toyin
On Sat, 22 Feb 2020 at 16:12, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 25, 2020, 8:48:41 AM2/25/20
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I think what Prof Ogungbemi objects to from a philosophical standpoint (philosophers are meticulous about word use) and as demonstrated by Alagba Cornelius with syllogism is your use of the word "all"
Perhaps " generally" would have been less objectionable that if just one case is found that refutes your claim you can argue that the number is negligible as you did with Alagba Cornelius.
When Professor Falola stated no collective response we can refute his claim if we found a collective response prior to his claim.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Date: 24/02/2020 14:30 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Had Professor Segun Ogungbemi followed the discussion from the beginning, he would not have concluded that I generalized in asserting that
academic and economic achievements of any Blackman are ignorable to the Whiteman either in Europe or America. Let me refresh the memory of Professor Ogungbemi with the origin of the discussion leading to my conclusion which he termed a 'general statement'.
On Tuesday, 28 January 2020, Professor Toyin Falola partly stated in his post on this forum, "To add to the urgency of the situation, we
all watch as the White House devastates Nigeria, INSULTING US, ABUSING US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE. Trump has threatened to reduce the number of Nigerians who visit the US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE." Reacting to Professor Falola's post, Oluwatoyin
Vincent Adepoju, wrote on Wednesday, 29 January 2020 thus, "I'm so pleased to read the response from Falola on the ANTI-AFRICAN/ANTI-NIGERIAN NEGATIVITIES emanating from Trump, particularly this -'Trump has threatened to reduce the number of Nigerians
who visit the US. NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSE." As if he was defending the action of Trump, Adepoju stated, "I understand the argument is that Nigerians represent a high no of overstayers in the US." In his post of Friday
31 January 2020, titled : Travel Ban and A Sad Day, Professor Falola partly stated, "To those in Diaspora, it shows their powerlessness, how the exaggeration of what they do comes into clear focus. …//… All the numbers in the big cities
cannot influence policy, HOW NO ONE IS AFRAID OF THE PhDs THEY PARADE AND THE LONG CVs THEY BUILD. WE CANNOT EVEN COMPLAIN. WE CANNOT EVEN MOBILIZE PROTESTS." Despite his academic achievements Professor Falola could still understand the racial aspect
of Trump's recriminatory policy against Nigerians as a people. And he is lamenting that no one (in the Whiteman's controlled US) is afraid of the PhDs Nigerians parade and the long CVs they build. It is not a generalization when professor Falola said that
the PhDs and the long CVs being paraded by Nigerians meant nothing to the White Americans but a recognition of the avalanche of Blackman's negative realities in the US. Let's consider some realities as they affect the Blackman in America.
During the first year of Barrack Hussein Obama in office as the President of the United States of America, Sergeant
Michael James Crowley arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African American, at the front door to his home. The Professor was having problem with the lock to the front door of his home and was trying to force it opened. Some passers-by saw him and
phoned the police to report a suspected burglar. On arrival, Sergeant Crowley was in no doubt that Professor Gates Jr. owned the house he was trying to force himself into. Yet professor Henry Louis Gates was sassed, arrested and charged to court for disorderly
conduct and subsequently convicted. When the case became known to the public, Obama commented that anyone in Gate's situation would be pretty angry if they were arrested in their own home. He added that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting Gates
and cited the long history of arbitrary arrests of African Americans and Latinos in the US. The white America exploded in anger against Obama who they claimed attacked the police on lawful duty. Following the furry that arose, Obama retreated by inviting sergeant
Crowley and professor Gates Jr., for a beer chat in the White House. The dignity of the white Sergeant Crowley is far more greater than that of the Black Professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. A proven racial humiliation of an African American President and an African
American Professor.
On Obama's fifth year in office a vigilante Whiteman, George Zimmerman, murdered a black teenager, Trayvon Martin,
in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, armed with a 9-mm handgun was trailing Trayvon in an area where no black person should be found and thereby suspected him to be a criminal intruder. The boy dressed in a hoodie bore nothing but candy and iced tea. The local
authorities at first declined to make arrest citing the claim of Zimmerman to self-defence. A nationwide protests against the murder of an unarmed black teenager by a white vigilante erupted. Obama, the President was forced to make a statement. He said,
"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together - federal, state, and local
- to figure exactly how this tragedy happened…. But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves,
and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened." The moment Obama spoke, White America turned it into a Black President wanting to persecute a Whiteman for the murder of an unarmed Black teenager. Zimmerman set up a website to collect
donations for his defence and dollar gushed in like flood. He was eventually absolved of the murder charge and the hashtag #Blacklives Matter became a trend in the US as Blacks are still being killed till date with impunity.
In the
New York Times of Saturday, 23 December 2017, President Donald Trump was reported to have described Nigerians as people living in huts which they would not want to return to whenever they visit America. Thereafter in 2018, he said
that Africa consists of shit-hole countries. Then in 2019, four African American women criticized the socio-economic policy of Trump's government. Trump twitted in response,
"Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they come. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help, you can't leave fast enough." Three of the Black women are Americans by virtue
of being descendants of Black slaves in America while the fourth became American after following her Somali refugee parents to America. All of them belong to the American democratic party of which three are members of the Congress. If Trump could ask the three
democratic party women to go back to Africa to fix its socio-economic disorder, the same should apply to the African intellectuals. And as long as the socio-economic disorder in Africa persists, Nigerian (African) intellectuals in Europe and America will be
held in contempt and ridicule. That this is not a generalisation is testified to by professor Toyin Falola's reaction, despite his academic achievements, to non-collective response, complaints and protests from all Nigerians to Trump's abuse and insult. Segun
Ogungbemi thinks it is an unproven generalization to state that fowls do perspire and I urge him to remove their feathers to confirm that they do in fact perspire.
S. Kadiri
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segun ogungbemi
Feb 26, 2020, 6:29:02 AM2/26/20
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Olayinka, you are absolutely correct. His word 'all' is what l objected to. He might have overlooked it.
Thanks.
Segun Ogungbemi.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Feb 28, 2020, 8:23:54 AM2/28/20
to usaafricadialogue
let me try and respond to this little by little bcs there is so much to discuss on the subject.
first, this discussion is about 2020, not the relatively ancient times of the genesis of Aluko and Falola and Echeruo, not the 70s when Nigeria was a different country. ancient bcs its only a few decades into the past but the negative changes since then are enormous.
later generations of remarkable scholars exist in nigeria but i see them as swimming agst a prevailing tide.
i was a student in Nigeria in the 80s so i am in a position to respond to that first hand. my teachers were very good.
but i later discovered that one at least of our course syllabi , taught by an exceptionally good teacher, was at least ten years behind the global trends in the field, trends set by Western scholarship, and which we were not able to follow bcs SAP had devalued our currency.
The devaluation at that time was benign compared to the current situation.It shows in the contents of bookshops I have visited in Lagos and Ibadan. This dent has affected scholarly texts particularly forcefully.
books from the West, the centre of global knowledge development, perhaps even about knowledge on africa and even perhaps in such sub-fields as Yoruba Studies, are not readily affordable.
the environment naija scholars are working in is at least 100 years behind that of the West.
the gap has widened with each decade since the 60s.
with the way the political culture is developing, scholars would be unwise to hope for this gap to be closed. only a developmental revolution can close it. the human and material resources required are enormous. there is no evidence closing this gap, talk less overtaking, is on the agenda of the political class.
so, scholars are largely on their own.
the environment in which knowledge is developed in Nigeria is inimical to achieving the best possibilities of those working in Nigeria.
In spite of challenges in the West, responding here to Kadiri and Gloria, the conditions there for the development of knowledge are a million times better than in Nigeria.
these are highly developed economies gong strong for centuries. the nigerian economy is described as big but what really, is its scope of production?
Thus, asking scholars in the US to come back to Nigeria is not an option. It makes no sense. I like to be polite but I am using that preceding expression to describe the sheer sentimentality replacing painful realities such a demand suggests.
We need to assess the facts.
sensitive qs are being asked.
delicate qs.
one must not downplay the achievements of naija based academics.
are professors not being created in nigeria, OAA asks.
professors are being created in nigeria.
my argument is that naija based scholars are badly served by a poorly developed environment, of which a low level of development of the publishing culture is one expression.
is there any point arguing the fact that nigeria's book and possibly journal publishing culture is weak and therefore is inadequately empowering to scholars?
would the scholars here not do better in a culture rich in publishing in general and in academic publishing in particular?
Qs raised by OAA- should we all relocate to the West or close all naija unis?
Such a response may be seen as defeatist bcs its unrealistic.
we need to build our own knowledge eco-system.
dialoguing with each other and the world in a manner affordable to us.
cultivate robust book and journal writing and publishing cultures.
buy or otherwise access the books and journals from the West and around the world and summarize their contents in cheap textbooks.
while writing books and articles that develop new knowledge, making sure these are within the range of the average income in nigeria.
the goal is diffusion of knowledge as broadly as possible so as to create a populace that can better dialogue with itself and with the world.
print is expensive, meaning a focus might be in digital publication.
i visualize libraries that acquire the latest texts from around the world, which scholars in nigeria will use in writing textbooks.
another approach is to purchase the rights to print these books for cheap purchase in nigeria. Indian publishers do that with SUNY Press books on India which the Indian partners then sell globally online. Oxford UP seems to have done something similar in India using its own name. The books, in these two cases, however, are printed on lower quality paper than the Western published counterparts, but in terms of content they are the same book.
those are my thoughts for now.
it seems my invocation of the names of falola and wariboko as evidence of enableenys not readiy acessib;e in nigeria
i have mentioned adeshina afolayan at UI, and now mention olajumoke yacob-haliso at babcock, whose work i am being exposed to on account of their role in the Toyin Falola scholarly network.
i am also aware of peju lawiyola at unilag.
all people i know about by chance.
they are powerful scholars.
afolayan and yacob-haliso, however, have the advantage of falola's relationship, a US based scholar who, by dint of sheer personal effort and geographical positioning, commands enormous resources through which he is able to position any interested person within scholarly projects that advance their careers at a level of global competitiveness.
otherwise,
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Feb 28, 2020, 12:59:27 PM2/28/20
to OLAYINKA AGBETUYI, usaafricadialogue
Sent from Samsung tablet.
-------- Original message --------
From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Date: 28/02/2020 16:03 (GMT+00:00)
To: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
Toyin Adepoju.
The fact you are able to contribute to debates the way you do means all hopes are not lost as you suggest. I make bold to assert that Nigeria is at the cusp of the technological revolution that can bridge the gap as you suggest midwived by the inexorable
digital revolution. You said the human resources needed for such revolution is enormous, but that is because Nigerian intellectuals needed kept leaving for overseas destinations worsening the problem.
Most of those who first left did not like going but were FORCED by the policies of the military wing of the Northern hegemonists led by Ibrahim Babangida ( I know there are other waves some of whom are on this forum who behave as if they are a race apart
simply because they are in the diaspora and talk down AT their Nigerian colleagues. Nothing is to be gained by following them) The situation today is different. Nigeria is a democracy
Im sure you saw Kperogi's impending examination ( with allied scholars) of the digital revolution in Africa. It leapfrogs scholarship back to the future in the 70s and then into the 21st century.
Nobody in the 70s Nigeria thought they had to go and sit in western capitals to produce first class scholarship. The impending revolution is an all- encompassing REVOLUTION prefigured by the digitizing God Elegbara. Books produced anywhere in the world
especially in the West will conveniently be delivered into the devices of the financially able as well as onto the university servers for collective use of students for reference purposes. Not everyone will be affluent enough to be able to access materials
at first but in my time not everyone was able to attend university even as comparatively cheap as it was ( even as at today just over 30% of Britons had College education)
By and large with apposite government policies interested middle class members will be able to take advantage of modern educational facilities.
There is no need to continue to think pessimistically that things will continue in a downward spiral. The downward spiral began with the irresponsible clan of Shagari politicians. Irresponsible political soldiers continued led by Ibrahim Babangida having
sabotaged Buhari's naive hope all were with him in the higher echelons of the military. Unknown to him northern hegemonists merely changed guards and not intent, using him as the first smokescreen.
The Nigerian populace through BLOOD and sweat stuck to their guns and in a historic first virtually chased their military from power. They will eventually chase away the tribe of self serving politicians from this lot.
Before Margaret Thatcher came on the scene not many Nigerian would want to emigrate to the UK in view of the comparative "feel good factor" of both countries which weighed heavily to the Nigerian side. The British decided to sit up and tidy up. In those
days as I related on this forum my late cousin could not suffer himself to complete the second leg of his post graduate diploma to earn his Masters because he felt he would be missing too much the feel good factor of Nigeria wasting another year overseas.
The converse is the same for many Nigerian intellectuals today. Going about with him as an undergraduate when he returned I could vouch for the feel good factor he would have missed had he stayed put overseas.
I said the British decided to sit up and tidy up. Nigerians can do that. The move is already underway. It will not happen overnight.
Contribute your own quota.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 28/02/2020 13:32 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
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Gloria Emeagwali
Feb 29, 2020, 10:44:31 AM2/29/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Toyin Adepoju has great suggestions
to rejuvenate, rebuild, and strengthen
the Nigerian Academy. Ochonu, Falola
and others have also contributed to
this challenge in cash and kind,
funding and institution building.So
we can appreciate these proposals.
The issue of Western dominance,
and how the
West got there in the first place;
the enormous challenges
faced by Black scholars within
its Academy; and the myth of
a bountiful unimpeded, stress -free
intellectual architecture, therein -
are issues that must not be
ignored and swept
under the carpet, however.
☹️
It may be fruitful to separate
and delink these two areas of
critical discourse. “The West
is best” and “I❤️the West”🌹🌹
tropes, at the worst, are infantile
and diversionary, and simply
consolidate Western & Eurocentric
triumphalism.
So we anticipate and look forward
to more meaningful proposals
on the first issue from TA.
GE
Sent from my iPhone
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Salimonu Kadiri
Feb 29, 2020, 5:11:21 PM2/29/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
It cannot be a generalisation to state the fact that the Germans slaughtered six million unarmed civilian Jews during the World War II even
though in our mind we know that a negligible number of Germans never participated in the holocaust. While considering the hydrogen bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, one cannot reflect on the few survivors of the bombs while evaluating
the total destruction of lives and property in the two Japanese cities. In determining the effects of Hydrogen bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one must be a totalitarian. Similarly, in determining the effect(s) of a political and economic action in a country,
exceptions that have no ameliorating impact on the suffering of the absolute majority of the people as the result of applied policy should not be countenanced. Thus, when I say that all public officials in Nigeria steal developmental funds entrusted in their
cares I ignore the few who are honest but whose honesties have had no impact at all on the suffering Nigerian masses because of the robberies being perpetrated by the absolute majority of public officials. In the liberal world of Rabbi Hamelberg not all in
the Nigerian public officials are thieves even when funds set aside for socio- economic and national defence purposes disappear into the personal accounts of public officials and senior army officers. Let's peep into how the Nigerian Armed Forces Service Chiefs
empowered Boko Haram through stealing of defence funds.
Lieutenant General Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirika was the Chief of Army Staff from September 2010 to January 2014 before he was retired. Remarkably,
it was during this period that Boko Haram grew to become a dreadful threat to Nigeria. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Ihejirika began his tenure in 2010 by awarding contracts valued at 5 billion, 940 million naira (N5,940,000,000.00) to DYI Global Services
Ltd and Doiyatee Comms Nigeria Ltd for the procurement of military hardwares. The two companies, owned by the same individuals, got an advance payment of 5 billion, 103 million and 500 thousand naira (N5,103,500,000.00) but performed exactly only to the tune
of 2 billion, 992 million, 183 thousand,705 naira and 31 kobo (N2,992,183,705.31) according to the EFCC. Between March 2011 and December 2013, General Ihejirika awarded contract to Chok Ventures Ltd and Integrated Equipment Services Ltd for the procurement
of various types of Toyota and Mitsubishi vehicles worth 3 billion naira for the Nigerian Army without any competitive bidding. Although the companies were fully paid because of the job completion certificate authenticated by the then Army Chief of Logistics,
Major General D. D. Kitchener, the EFCC found no credible evidence of delivery of the vehicles to the Nigerian Army. The EFCC later found in the various accounts of the two companies involved in the arms purchase contracts, transfers of money to individuals
related to General Ihejirika. Specifically, the sums N115 million, $132 thousand, €16 thousand and £44 thousand were transferred to the benefits of Raymond Ihejirika, Nkechi Ihejirika, Ndubuisi Ihejirika, Orji Ihejirika and Kingsley Ihejirika, who had no records
of service or employment with the companies. General Ihejirika also awarded 3 billion, 658 million, 293 thousand, 846 naira and 94 kobo (N3,658,293,846.94) contracts to his brother-in-law Chinedu Onyekwere. This explains why Boko Haram could easily ride into
Chibok to abduct and transport over 300 school girls in convoys into Sambisa forest, situated 60 kilometres from Chibok without being challenged by the Nigerian military. Out of the 4 billion and 500 million naira which the EFCC alleged that Lieutenant General
Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirika stole from the Nigerian Army, N29 million has been recovered. He has been charged to court, not for treason as he empowered Boko Haram to kill and maim civilians and ill-equipped soldiers, but for theft. He was granted bail and
his case at present is snail-speeding into oblivion.
On 16 January 2014 Lieutenant General Kenneth Tobiah Jacob Minimah took over as Chief of Army Staff from General Ihejirika. On 17 November
2014, Lieutenant General Minimah registered a company named Conella Services Limited and, on the same day, he awarded a contract worth 125 million, 179 thousand, and 299 dollars and 10 cents ($125,179,299.10) to Conella Services Limited for procurement of
72 various arms and ammunition that included MRAP vehicles and Mi-17 helicopter. In November 2014, Conella Services Limited was paid 36 million, 996 thousand and 530 dollars ($36,996,530.00) and by 15 April 2015, the company was paid 2 billion, 209 million,
582 thousand and 296 naira (N2,209,582,296.00) but according to the EFCC, the Nigerian Army never received any procurement from Conella Services Limited. Of the N13.9 billion which the EFCC found to have been stolen from the Nigerian Army by General Minimah
between 16 January 2014 and 13 July 2015 when he was retired, the EFCC claimed it had recovered N4.8 billion. He has been charged to court for theft and has been granted bail after which the case is in coma.
Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh was elevated from Chief of Air Staff to Chief of Defence Staff on 16 January 2014 and in a public statement on
20 January 2014, according to News Agency Nigeria (NAN), Badeh assured the nation that by April 2014, Boko Haram and its murderous insurrection would be history. NAN quoted him thus, ''I can say confidently that this war is already won. The security situation
in the North East must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014. We must bring it to a stop before April so that we will not have constitutional problems in our hands." The constitutional problem envisaged by Badeh was the likelihood of the National
Assembly not to extend the six month Emergency rule proclaimed by Jonathan's government in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States. On 14 April 2014 over 300 Chibok's school girls were abducted and transported in convoys to the Sambisa forest situated 60 kilometres
away. There was not a single Nigerian Air Force surveillance plane to monitor the movements of Boko Haram and the school girls into the Sambisa forest not to talk of dropping soldiers by air to engage Boko Haram. Air Marshal Badeh was retired in July 2015
and at his disengagement ceremony he said that he presided over ill-equipped army and ill-motivated troops, but he did not say whose fault it was. Subsequent EFCC investigations revealed that when Badeh was Chief of Air Staff, he deposited 900 thousand dollars
into his personal account between November 2012 and November 2013. Between January and December 2013 he was withdrawing 558.2 million naira every month from the Nigerian Air Force account after salary payments to Air Force Personnel. He laundered the money
through his private company, Iyalikam Nigeria Ltd. Through another company owned by him, Prince and Princess Multiservices Ltd, Badeh was building a Shopping Mall at a cost of N1.4 billion. In a search at his residence in Abuja on 24 February 2016 a cash of
one million dollar ($1million) was recovered by the EFCC. Of the 8 billion naira the EFCC alleged that Air Marshal Badeh stole, 4 billion naira in cash and property had been recovered. He was granted bail and his case was still in court when he was murdered
on his way to Zamfara by armed robbers who were allegedly got advance information that he was ferrying a huge cash with which to buy a farmland in Zamfara.
When Alex Badeh became the CDS in January 2014, the then Air Vice Marshal Adesola Nunayon Amosu became Chief of
Air Staff. Amosu was retired in July 2016. In a raid to one of Amosu's residence, the EFCC recovered 115,000 dollars and according to the EFCC he had returned via bank drafts a total of N2.4 billion to the EFCC offices in Lagos and Abuja. Standing trial
with former Air Marshal Amosu, for the theft of N21.4 billion are former NAF Chief of Accounts and Budgeting, Air Vice Marshal Jacob Adigun, and a former Director of Finance and Budget, Air Commodore Olugbenga Gbadebo. EFCC has recovered N100 million from
the latter, while recovering N2.8 billion cash, 28 properties and three vehicles from former Air Marshal Amosu. He has been granted bail and the latest I heard of his case was his request for plea bargaining.
The names of other Nigerian Armed Forces personnel, apart from former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who stole funds set aside for
procurement of weapons, recruitment and payment of soldiers are in the public domain. That part of the Nigerian society which is supposed to be the most disciplined, morally and economically, is responsible for empowering Boko Haram in Nigeria. A special
report by online Premium times of 15 May 2018 states, "My guest was a member of a criminal industry that has robbed Nigeria of trillions of
Naira and an estimated 20, 000 deaths of both soldiers and civilians .."
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/inestigationspecial-reports/268123-when-generals-turn-bandits-inside-corruption-nigeria-security-contracting.html
As it is in the Nigerian Armed Forces, so it is in all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies
(MDAs) where Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors even Judges divert state and illicit funds into their own private registered companies. Every Nigerian complains about darkness but no question is asked about what happened to the billion of dollars
spent on generating and distributing electricity and who are responsible for failure to deliver light. Who are responsible for the failure to produce iron and steel at Ajaokuta and why? Who are responsible for the near 100% dysfunctional Nigeria's oil refineries?
Who are the awardees of the same road contracts repeatedly and who are the contract winners? Why then are the Nigerian roads in such bad shapes despite billions of naira paid out to contractors since 1999, by both States and Federal Government for the maintenance
of existing roads and building new ones? Why are millions of Nigerian children still out of school in spite of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act, 2004 which stipulated Free Universal and Compulsory Basic Education for every Nigerian child of primary
and junior secondary school age? The 2004 UBE Act stipulates that every parent and guardian must ensure that their children or wards attend and complete both primary and junior secondary school education. A parent or guardian who fails to do this, according
to UBE Act 2004, will on first conviction, be reprimanded, on second conviction, liable to a fine of N2, 000 or imprisonment for a term of one month or both; on subsequent conviction, pay a fine of N5, 000 or be jailed for a term of two months or both.
Compulsory education scheme is funded by the Federal Government that provides billions of naira sourced from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) to state governments every year. 2% of the CRF is allocated to the Universal Basic Education Commission for
the implementation of UBE in all the States of the Federation. In view of the UBE Act 2004, no Nigerian child of primary school age should be out of School. Unfortunately the Act stipulates punishments for parents and guardians who fail to register their children
for UBE but not officials who fail to provide schools. The Act does not say what would happen to child whose parent or guardian is convicted and fined for failing to put the child in school. Recently, the Acting Chairperson of Adamawa State Universal Basic
Education Board (ADSUBEB), Fadimatu Alfa, was reported to have exploited her position as the Chairperson to award a 16 million, 138 thousand and 500 naira (N16,138,500) contract to her company named, F. A. Catering Services. The N16,138,500 is part of Federal
Government's counterpart funds for Teachers' Professional Development. What happened in Adamawa is the main reason why most Nigerian children, especially in the North, are out of school.
http://saharareporters.com/2020/02/15/exclusive-adamawa-subeb-chairperson-fadimatu-alfa-n16m-corruption-scandal
When Nigeria was split into 36 states, the aim was to bring governance close
to the people. With the revenue allocations accruing to the states, in the so called feeding-bottle federalism, there should be no poverty in Nigeria, if the allocations are spent for developments in each state. However, each state in Nigeria is run in the
same way as Bauchi state where governor Bala Mohammed awarded a N3.6 billion contract to Adda Nigeria Ltd, a company in which he has 20% share, to procure vehicles for government officials in the State.
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/378794-in-awarding-n3-6-billion-contract-to-own-firm-bauchi-governor-duplicates-purchsses.html
When I wrote that all public officials in Nigeria regard themselves, and behave, as lucky lottery winners who steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares with impunity, sentimental semanticists accuse me of generalizing. I beg to disagree!!!!
When I wrote that all public officials in Nigeria regard themselves, and behave, as lucky lottery winners who steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares with impunity, sentimental semanticists accuse me of generalizing. I beg to disagree!!!!
On his part, Rabbi Hamelberg recalled his experience of the evil of generalization in Stockholm when a white person pointed at him sometime in 1985
and shouted that *All Africans have AIDS.* Well, my dear Rabbi Hamelberg, I am not an expert in HIV/AIDS as you seemed to suggest. I became interested in HIV/AIDS when the USA placed the origin of LAV, so named by the French in 1983 and its 1984 American
version HTLV-III, the virus that was said to be the cause of AIDS, in Africa. Disease is always named after where it was first found but not AIDS. I can still recall that Dr. Michael Gottlieb of the University of California, Los Angeles Medical center, encountered
a homosexual patient that was not responding to treatment in the Autumn of 1980. Another Los Angeles private practitioner, Dr. Joel Weisman, with sizable homosexual clientele was observing similar cases among his patients from late 1979. Collaboration between
Weisman and Gottlieb led to the admission of five patients at UCLA medical center for treatment by Dr Gottlieb in 1981. The strange illness affecting the five homosexuals was first reported and published in the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
No. 30 of June 5, 1981. The report highlighted the striking similarities among the patients as follows : all five men were Caucasians, gay, aged between twenty-nine and thirty-six years at the time they were diagnosed for Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia
(PCP), suffered PCP along with Candida and Cytomegalovirus infections, had abnormal immune responses, reported multiple sex partners and used amyl nitrite *propers* as sexual stimulants (with amyl nitrite, receptive anal intercourse become less painful as
it relaxes the anal sphincter and for the inserting partner amyl nitrite helps to maintain erection and intensify orgasm). The disease was named GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease ) but its street name in the US was Gay plague. Neither the homosexuals
lobby nor the American medical scientists liked the name GRID. While the homosexuals did not like a disease to be associated with their life-style, medical scientists, especially virologists, were worried that as long as GRID was attributed to homosexual practice
it would never attract research funds from Regan's government as well as sympathy from the general public in the USA. Randy Shilts stated the ongoing opinion among virologists at that time in the book, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, ''Don't offend the gays and
don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic (p.69)." If GRID induced opportunistic infections on Sodomites, it also induced opportunistic research funds
on American medical scientists. GRID had to be replaced with a name that implied a threat to all human lives. On the change of the name GRID, Laurie Garrett revealed, "In August (1982) the CDC had quietly dropped the term GRID, changing the name of the
disease to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to reflect the recognition that it wasn't just a disease of gay men (p.309, The Coming Plague)." In the book, Inventing the AIDS Virus, Dr. Peter Duesberg wrote,
"Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing the most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support would be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; by July of
1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the syndrome and the risk groups, a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like
emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field (p. 150 - 151)." On the new name for GRID, Randy Shilts wrote,
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word 'acquired' separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was
acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p.171, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)."
In August 1982, Dr. Robert Gallo was appointed the Director of AIDS research at National Cancer Institute who in turn invited his long term friend, professor Myron Max Essex, whose speciality at Harvard was feline leukaemia virus, to join him in AIDS research.
After being appointed to find the cause of AIDS, Dr. Gallo wrote later, "Intellectually, I began to play out one scenario. What if AIDS were due to mutation of an HTLV, probably occurring in Africa, which has spread to Haiti, then to the United States (p.136,
VIRUS HUNTING by DR. Robert Gallo)?" HTLV-I was the virus that Gallo claimed he discovered as being the cause of Leukaemia. He said that the virus came into Japan through 16th century Portuguese adventurers that brought animals and Africans to the Japanese
islands of Kyushu and Shikoku. Gallo's discovery was a subject of dispute between him and Japanese researchers who accused him of culturing his HTLV-I from their Adult T-cell Leukaemia Virus (ATLV). According to Gallo himself, a compromise was subsequently
reached whereby it was agreed that the virus would be known as HTLV and the disease caused by it will be known as ATL (P.108, Virus Hunting).
Fast forward, on Monday, 23 April 1984, Robert Gallo appeared together with Regan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, at
a press conference to announce the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. Excerpts from Heckler's statements read, "... the probable cause of AIDS has been found …. a new process has been developed to mass-produce this virus …. we now have a blood
test for AIDS which we hope can be widely available within about six months. We have applied for the patent on this process today … we can now identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty…. the new process will enable us to develop a
vaccine to prevent AIDS. We hope to have such a vaccine ready for testing in about two years …. (p.193, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)." Gallo's new AIDS virus was named, Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus-III (HTLV-III). Where did the new virus come
from? The Time magazine of 30 April 1984, quoted Gallo as claiming that the new HTLV-III strain of AIDS virus evolved in Africa. According to Gallo, "The virus
may have been around in the bush for some time, but with mass migration into cities, crowding and prostitution, what was contained at a low level became a problem." NEWSWEEK magazine of 7 May 1984, pictured a world map by Gallo showing arrows pointing
to probable routes of the AIDS virus on the move out of central Africa. The accompanying description to the map read : 1. AIDS probably appeared first in Africa, as the result of a minor genetic change in a less lethal virus, or when
rural people who harboured the virus moved to urban areas. 2. French and Belgians who lived in central Africa presumably carried the disease back to Western Europe. AIDS also traveled to the Caribbean, possibly brought there by Haitians. 3. From
Haiti, vacating homosexuals from the United States may have brought AIDS home. Gallo had no scientific evidence that he found the cause of AIDS which was why Secretary of Health, Margaret Heckler described the discovery as probable cause of
AIDS virus. From that platform, Gallo continued to speculate : The virus may have been around in the bush for some time; probable routes of the AIDS virus; AIDS probably appeared first in Africa; French and Belgians presumably carried the disease
back to Western Europe from Africa; Haitians possibly brought AIDS to the Caribbean; and vacating homosexuals from United States in Haiti may have brought AIDS home. From 1984 onwards, Robert Gallo and his friend, Myron Max Essex, made a lot of speculations
about AIDS originating in Africa, which most of the media in Western Europe published them without restraints or questions. Records of speculations by Gallo and Essex on AIDS in Africa are still available today in school books and national Encyclopedia throughout
Western Europe.
Dr. Robert Gallo is an American with parents of Italian aborigin. By coincident, Italy is the original home of Mafia. When Robert Gallo introduced Mafia ideas into AIDS science we, the
Africans, became helpless victims. Although many European and American scientists opposed him, most Africans remained passive onlookers to the humiliations, abuse and insults he heaped on us, Africans, with his fraudulent AIDS science. As God is the only defender
of the weak, Gallo overstretched his luck in AIDS research and Pasteur Institute in Paris sued him to court for Virus theft in 1985 when it became clear that his so named HTLV-III was appropriated and cultivated from the French's LAV, (Lymphadenopathy Associated
Virus) discovered in 1983. For the first time in history, scientific dispute was resolved by politicians and not by scientists. President Ronald Regan and President Jacques Chirac met and agreed that Luc Montagnier of France and Robert Gallo would both be
recognized as discoverers of the AIDS virus and income from blood testing kits would be shared evenly among them. Thus, AIDS became a political and commercial enterprise. Thereafter, the American scientists singlehandedly replaced the acronyms, LAV and HTLV-III,
with HIV meaning Human Immunodeficiency Virus. However, when the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded in 2008, Luc Montagnier and his French collaborator were given the prize for their LAV discovery in 1983.
I have been compelled to narrate the history of AIDS because of Rabbi Hamelberg's claim that a White person in Stockholm pointed at him in 1985 and shouted that, *All Africans have
AIDS.* The white person in question, to borrow and embellish the title of one of Michael Moore's book, must be a stupid white person. This is because any AIDS afflicted person must be on death-bed and can never walk on the street. His statement would have
implied that *All Africans are on death-beds* which was not true. Rabbi Hamelberg imaginary White person could not have shouted at him either that *All Africans have HIV* because the term HIV came into existence after 1985. Even the inventors
of LAV and HTLV-III, which were replaced with HIV, claimed that it would take between five and twenty-five years for an infected person to develop AIDS that would lead to ultimate death. With these facts, Rabbi Hamelberg analogy that my assertion that all
Nigerian public officials are thieves stealing developmental funds entrusted in their cares is tantamount to generalization by the imaginary white person who shouted at him in Stockholm, in 1985, that *All Africans have AIDS* is misplaced. I have presented
facts to support my claim that all public officials in Nigeria are treasury looters but his presumed White person has not been able to produce any fact that *All Africans have AIDS.* Once more, I repeat it without apology whatsoever that for the educated
Nigerians of any academic title, what is constant for them is not idealism, principle, honour or patriotic exertions as one will find in Toyin Falola, Bolaji Aluko, Edwin Madunagu and few others. What is constant for the educated Nigerians in the Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MDAs) is the achievement of personal achievements. As for Oluwatoyin Adepoju, I implore him to take a lesson from Biodun Jeyifo's admonition contained on page 12 of A journal of Anti-poverty movement of Nigeria No.6, 1976, "When
Professor God-done-butter-my-bread had spoken, the people said *Kai!, de man dey knack grammar!* When Comrade No-Condition-is-permanent had spoken, the people said : *Haba!, this suffer-head done do, we go march today!*
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelberg...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 01:14
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 01:14
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Mar 1, 2020, 5:45:01 AM3/1/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Alagba Kadiri.
Your statistics are accurate its the use of 'all' that is defective. When you say " generally' you have accounted for the negligible honest exceptions; when you use ' all' it means there are no exceptions and that does injustice to the exceptional honest
few who have been rubbed out of history.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Date: 29/02/2020 22:23 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
It cannot be a generalisation to state the fact that the Germans slaughtered six million unarmed civilian Jews during the World War II even
though in our mind we know that a negligible number of Germans never participated in the holocaust. While considering the hydrogen bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, one cannot reflect on the few survivors of the bombs while evaluating
the total destruction of lives and property in the two Japanese cities. In determining the effects of Hydrogen bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one must be a totalitarian. Similarly, in determining the effect(s) of a political and economic action in a country,
exceptions that have no ameliorating impact on the suffering of the absolute majority of the people as the result of applied policy should not be countenanced. Thus, when I say that all public officials in Nigeria steal developmental funds entrusted in their
cares I ignore the few who are honest but whose honesties have had no impact at all on the suffering Nigerian masses because of the robberies being perpetrated by the absolute majority of public officials. In the liberal world of Rabbi Hamelberg not all in
the Nigerian public officials are thieves even when funds set aside for socio- economic and national defence purposes disappear into the personal accounts of public officials and senior army officers. Let's peep into how the Nigerian Armed Forces Service Chiefs
empowered Boko Haram through stealing of defence funds.
Lieutenant General Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirika was the Chief of Army Staff from September 2010 to January 2014 before he was retired. Remarkably,
it was during this period that Boko Haram grew to become a dreadful threat to Nigeria. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Ihejirika began his tenure in 2010 by awarding contracts valued at 5 billion, 940 million naira (N5,940,000,000.00) to DYI Global Services
Ltd and Doiyatee Comms Nigeria Ltd for the procurement of military hardwares. The two companies, owned by the same individuals, got an advance payment of 5 billion, 103 million and 500 thousand naira (N5,103,500,000.00) but performed exactly only to the tune
of 2 billion, 992 million, 183 thousand,705 naira and 31 kobo (N2,992,183,705.31) according to the EFCC. Between March 2011 and December 2013, General Ihejirika awarded contract to Chok Ventures Ltd and Integrated Equipment Services Ltd for the procurement
of various types of Toyota and Mitsubishi vehicles worth 3 billion naira for the Nigerian Army without any competitive bidding. Although the companies were fully paid because of the job completion certificate authenticated by the then Army Chief of Logistics,
Major General D. D. Kitchener, the EFCC found no credible evidence of delivery of the vehicles to the Nigerian Army. The EFCC later found in the various accounts of the two companies involved in the arms purchase contracts, transfers of money to individuals
related to General Ihejirika. Specifically, the sums N115 million, $132 thousand, €16 thousand and £44 thousand were transferred to the benefits of Raymond Ihejirika, Nkechi Ihejirika, Ndubuisi Ihejirika, Orji Ihejirika and Kingsley Ihejirika, who had no records
of service or employment with the companies. General Ihejirika also awarded 3 billion, 658 million, 293 thousand, 846 naira and 94 kobo (N3,658,293,846.94) contracts to his brother-in-law Chinedu Onyekwere. This explains why Boko Haram could easily ride into
Chibok to abduct and transport over 300 school girls in convoys into Sambisa forest, situated 60 kilometres from Chibok without being challenged by the Nigerian military. Out of the 4 billion and 500 million naira which the EFCC alleged that Lieutenant General
Azubuike Onyeabor Ihejirika stole from the Nigerian Army, N29 million has been recovered. He has been charged to court, not for treason as he empowered Boko Haram to kill and maim civilians and ill-equipped soldiers, but for theft. He was granted bail and
his case at present is snail-speeding into oblivion.
On 16 January 2014 Lieutenant General Kenneth Tobiah Jacob Minimah took over as Chief of Army Staff from General Ihejirika. On 17 November
2014, Lieutenant General Minimah registered a company named Conella Services Limited and, on the same day, he awarded a contract worth 125 million, 179 thousand, and 299 dollars and 10 cents ($125,179,299.10) to Conella Services Limited for procurement of
72 various arms and ammunition that included MRAP vehicles and Mi-17 helicopter. In November 2014, Conella Services Limited was paid 36 million, 996 thousand and 530 dollars ($36,996,530.00) and by 15 April 2015, the company was paid 2 billion, 209 million,
582 thousand and 296 naira (N2,209,582,296.00) but according to the EFCC, the Nigerian Army never received any procurement from Conella Services Limited. Of the N13.9 billion which the EFCC found to have been stolen from the Nigerian Army by General Minimah
between 16 January 2014 and 13 July 2015 when he was retired, the EFCC claimed it had recovered N4.8 billion. He has been charged to court for theft and has been granted bail after which the case is in coma.
Air Marshal Alex Subundu Badeh was elevated from Chief of Air Staff to Chief of Defence Staff on 16 January 2014 and in a public statement on
20 January 2014, according to News Agency Nigeria (NAN), Badeh assured the nation that by April 2014, Boko Haram and its murderous insurrection would be history. NAN quoted him thus, ''I can say confidently that this war is already won. The security situation
in the North East must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014. We must bring it to a stop before April so that we will not have constitutional problems in our hands." The constitutional problem envisaged by Badeh was the likelihood of the National
Assembly not to extend the six month Emergency rule proclaimed by Jonathan's government in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States. On 14 April 2014 over 300 Chibok's school girls were abducted and transported in convoys to the Sambisa forest situated 60 kilometres
away. There was not a single Nigerian Air Force surveillance plane to monitor the movements of Boko Haram and the school girls into the Sambisa forest not to talk of dropping soldiers by air to engage Boko Haram. Air Marshal Badeh was retired in July 2015
and at his disengagement ceremony he said that he presided over ill-equipped army and ill-motivated troops, but he did not say whose fault it was. Subsequent EFCC investigations revealed that when Badeh was Chief of Air Staff, he deposited 900 thousand dollars
into his personal account between November 2012 and November 2013. Between January and December 2013 he was withdrawing 558.2 million naira every month from the Nigerian Air Force account after salary payments to Air Force Personnel. He laundered the money
through his private company, Iyalikam Nigeria Ltd. Through another company owned by him, Prince and Princess Multiservices Ltd, Badeh was building a Shopping Mall at a cost of N1.4 billion. In a search at his residence in Abuja on 24 February 2016 a cash of
one million dollar ($1million) was recovered by the EFCC. Of the 8 billion naira the EFCC alleged that Air Marshal Badeh stole, 4 billion naira in cash and property had been recovered. He was granted bail and his case was still in court when he was murdered
on his way to Zamfara by armed robbers who were allegedly got advance information that he was ferrying a huge cash with which to buy a farmland in Zamfara.
When Alex Badeh became the CDS in January 2014, the then Air Vice Marshal Adesola Nunayon Amosu became Chief of
Air Staff. Amosu was retired in July 2016. In a raid to one of Amosu's residence, the EFCC recovered 115,000 dollars and according to the EFCC he had returned via bank drafts a total of N2.4 billion to the EFCC offices in Lagos and Abuja. Standing trial
with former Air Marshal Amosu, for the theft of N21.4 billion are former NAF Chief of Accounts and Budgeting, Air Vice Marshal Jacob Adigun, and a former Director of Finance and Budget, Air Commodore Olugbenga Gbadebo. EFCC has recovered N100 million from
the latter, while recovering N2.8 billion cash, 28 properties and three vehicles from former Air Marshal Amosu. He has been granted bail and the latest I heard of his case was his request for plea bargaining.
The names of other Nigerian Armed Forces personnel, apart from former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who stole funds set aside for
procurement of weapons, recruitment and payment of soldiers are in the public domain. That part of the Nigerian society which is supposed to be the most disciplined, morally and economically, is responsible for empowering Boko Haram in Nigeria. A special
report by online Premium times of 15 May 2018 states, "My guest was a member of a criminal industry that has robbed Nigeria of trillions of
Naira and an estimated 20, 000 deaths of both soldiers and civilians .."
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/inestigationspecial-reports/268123-when-generals-turn-bandits-inside-corruption-nigeria-security-contracting.html
As it is in the Nigerian Armed Forces, so it is in all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies
(MDAs) where Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors even Judges divert state and illicit funds into their own private registered companies. Every Nigerian complains about darkness but no question is asked about what happened to the billion of dollars
spent on generating and distributing electricity and who are responsible for failure to deliver light. Who are responsible for the failure to produce iron and steel at Ajaokuta and why? Who are responsible for the near 100% dysfunctional Nigeria's oil refineries?
Who are the awardees of the same road contracts repeatedly and who are the contract winners? Why then are the Nigerian roads in such bad shapes despite billions of naira paid out to contractors since 1999, by both States and Federal Government for the maintenance
of existing roads and building new ones? Why are millions of Nigerian children still out of school in spite of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act, 2004 which stipulated Free Universal and Compulsory Basic Education for every Nigerian child of primary
and junior secondary school age? The 2004 UBE Act stipulates that every parent and guardian must ensure that their children or wards attend and complete both primary and junior secondary school education. A parent or guardian who fails to do this, according
to UBE Act 2004, will on first conviction, be reprimanded, on second conviction, liable to a fine of N2, 000 or imprisonment for a term of one month or both; on subsequent conviction, pay a fine of N5, 000 or be jailed for a term of two months or both.
Compulsory education scheme is funded by the Federal Government that provides billions of naira sourced from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) to state governments every year. 2% of the CRF is allocated to the Universal Basic Education Commission for
the implementation of UBE in all the States of the Federation. In view of the UBE Act 2004, no Nigerian child of primary school age should be out of School. Unfortunately the Act stipulates punishments for parents and guardians who fail to register their children
for UBE but not officials who fail to provide schools. The Act does not say what would happen to child whose parent or guardian is convicted and fined for failing to put the child in school. Recently, the Acting Chairperson of Adamawa State Universal Basic
Education Board (ADSUBEB), Fadimatu Alfa, was reported to have exploited her position as the Chairperson to award a 16 million, 138 thousand and 500 naira (N16,138,500) contract to her company named, F. A. Catering Services. The N16,138,500 is part of Federal
Government's counterpart funds for Teachers' Professional Development. What happened in Adamawa is the main reason why most Nigerian children, especially in the North, are out of school.
http://saharareporters.com/2020/02/15/exclusive-adamawa-subeb-chairperson-fadimatu-alfa-n16m-corruption-scandal
When Nigeria was split into 36 states, the aim was to bring governance close
to the people. With the revenue allocations accruing to the states, in the so called feeding-bottle federalism, there should be no poverty in Nigeria, if the allocations are spent for developments in each state. However, each state in Nigeria is run in the
same way as Bauchi state where governor Bala Mohammed awarded a N3.6 billion contract to Adda Nigeria Ltd, a company in which he has 20% share, to procure vehicles for government officials in the State.
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/378794-in-awarding-n3-6-billion-contract-to-own-firm-bauchi-governor-duplicates-purchsses.html
When I wrote that all public officials in Nigeria regard themselves, and behave, as lucky lottery winners who steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares with impunity, sentimental semanticists accuse me of generalizing. I beg to disagree!!!!
When I wrote that all public officials in Nigeria regard themselves, and behave, as lucky lottery winners who steal developmental funds for projects entrusted in their cares with impunity, sentimental semanticists accuse me of generalizing. I beg to disagree!!!!
On his part, Rabbi Hamelberg recalled his experience of the evil of generalization in Stockholm when a white person pointed at him sometime in 1985
and shouted that *All Africans have AIDS.* Well, my dear Rabbi Hamelberg, I am not an expert in HIV/AIDS as you seemed to suggest. I became interested in HIV/AIDS when the USA placed the origin of LAV, so named by the French in 1983 and its 1984 American
version HTLV-III, the virus that was said to be the cause of AIDS, in Africa. Disease is always named after where it was first found but not AIDS. I can still recall that Dr. Michael Gottlieb of the University of California, Los Angeles Medical center, encountered
a homosexual patient that was not responding to treatment in the Autumn of 1980. Another Los Angeles private practitioner, Dr. Joel Weisman, with sizable homosexual clientele was observing similar cases among his patients from late 1979. Collaboration between
Weisman and Gottlieb led to the admission of five patients at UCLA medical center for treatment by Dr Gottlieb in 1981. The strange illness affecting the five homosexuals was first reported and published in the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
No. 30 of June 5, 1981. The report highlighted the striking similarities among the patients as follows : all five men were Caucasians, gay, aged between twenty-nine and thirty-six years at the time they were diagnosed for Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia
(PCP), suffered PCP along with Candida and Cytomegalovirus infections, had abnormal immune responses, reported multiple sex partners and used amyl nitrite *propers* as sexual stimulants (with amyl nitrite, receptive anal intercourse become less painful as
it relaxes the anal sphincter and for the inserting partner amyl nitrite helps to maintain erection and intensify orgasm). The disease was named GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease ) but its street name in the US was Gay plague. Neither the homosexuals
lobby nor the American medical scientists liked the name GRID. While the homosexuals did not like a disease to be associated with their life-style, medical scientists, especially virologists, were worried that as long as GRID was attributed to homosexual practice
it would never attract research funds from Regan's government as well as sympathy from the general public in the USA. Randy Shilts stated the ongoing opinion among virologists at that time in the book, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, ''Don't offend the gays and
don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic (p.69)." If GRID induced opportunistic infections on Sodomites, it also induced opportunistic research funds
on American medical scientists. GRID had to be replaced with a name that implied a threat to all human lives. On the change of the name GRID, Laurie Garrett revealed, "In August (1982) the CDC had quietly dropped the term GRID, changing the name of the
disease to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to reflect the recognition that it wasn't just a disease of gay men (p.309, The Coming Plague)." In the book, Inventing the AIDS Virus, Dr. Peter Duesberg wrote,
"Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing the most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support would be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; by July of
1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the syndrome and the risk groups, a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like
emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field (p. 150 - 151)." On the new name for GRID, Randy Shilts wrote,
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word 'acquired' separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was
acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p.171, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)."
In August 1982, Dr. Robert Gallo was appointed the Director of AIDS research at National Cancer Institute who in turn invited his long term friend, professor Myron Max Essex, whose speciality at Harvard was feline leukaemia virus, to join him in AIDS research.
After being appointed to find the cause of AIDS, Dr. Gallo wrote later, "Intellectually, I began to play out one scenario. What if AIDS were due to mutation of an HTLV, probably occurring in Africa, which has spread to Haiti, then to the United States (p.136,
VIRUS HUNTING by DR. Robert Gallo)?" HTLV-I was the virus that Gallo claimed he discovered as being the cause of Leukaemia. He said that the virus came into Japan through 16th century Portuguese adventurers that brought animals and Africans to the Japanese
islands of Kyushu and Shikoku. Gallo's discovery was a subject of dispute between him and Japanese researchers who accused him of culturing his HTLV-I from their Adult T-cell Leukaemia Virus (ATLV). According to Gallo himself, a compromise was subsequently
reached whereby it was agreed that the virus would be known as HTLV and the disease caused by it will be known as ATL (P.108, Virus Hunting).
Fast forward, on Monday, 23 April 1984, Robert Gallo appeared together with Regan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, at
a press conference to announce the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. Excerpts from Heckler's statements read, "... the probable cause of AIDS has been found …. a new process has been developed to mass-produce this virus …. we now have a blood
test for AIDS which we hope can be widely available within about six months. We have applied for the patent on this process today … we can now identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty…. the new process will enable us to develop a
vaccine to prevent AIDS. We hope to have such a vaccine ready for testing in about two years …. (p.193, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)." Gallo's new AIDS virus was named, Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus-III (HTLV-III). Where did the new virus come
from? The Time magazine of 30 April 1984, quoted Gallo as claiming that the new HTLV-III strain of AIDS virus evolved in Africa. According to Gallo, "The virus
may have been around in the bush for some time, but with mass migration into cities, crowding and prostitution, what was contained at a low level became a problem." NEWSWEEK magazine of 7 May 1984, pictured a world map by Gallo showing arrows pointing
to probable routes of the AIDS virus on the move out of central Africa. The accompanying description to the map read : 1. AIDS probably appeared first in Africa, as the result of a minor genetic change in a less lethal virus, or when
rural people who harboured the virus moved to urban areas. 2. French and Belgians who lived in central Africa presumably carried the disease back to Western Europe. AIDS also traveled to the Caribbean, possibly brought there by Haitians. 3. From
Haiti, vacating homosexuals from the United States may have brought AIDS home. Gallo had no scientific evidence that he found the cause of AIDS which was why Secretary of Health, Margaret Heckler described the discovery as probable cause of
AIDS virus. From that platform, Gallo continued to speculate : The virus may have been around in the bush for some time; probable routes of the AIDS virus; AIDS probably appeared first in Africa; French and Belgians presumably carried the disease
back to Western Europe from Africa; Haitians possibly brought AIDS to the Caribbean; and vacating homosexuals from United States in Haiti may have brought AIDS home. From 1984 onwards, Robert Gallo and his friend, Myron Max Essex, made a lot of speculations
about AIDS originating in Africa, which most of the media in Western Europe published them without restraints or questions. Records of speculations by Gallo and Essex on AIDS in Africa are still available today in school books and national Encyclopedia throughout
Western Europe.
Dr. Robert Gallo is an American with parents of Italian aborigin. By coincident, Italy is the original home of Mafia. When Robert Gallo introduced Mafia ideas into AIDS science we, the
Africans, became helpless victims. Although many European and American scientists opposed him, most Africans remained passive onlookers to the humiliations, abuse and insults he heaped on us, Africans, with his fraudulent AIDS science. As God is the only defender
of the weak, Gallo overstretched his luck in AIDS research and Pasteur Institute in Paris sued him to court for Virus theft in 1985 when it became clear that his so named HTLV-III was appropriated and cultivated from the French's LAV, (Lymphadenopathy Associated
Virus) discovered in 1983. For the first time in history, scientific dispute was resolved by politicians and not by scientists. President Ronald Regan and President Jacques Chirac met and agreed that Luc Montagnier of France and Robert Gallo would both be
recognized as discoverers of the AIDS virus and income from blood testing kits would be shared evenly among them. Thus, AIDS became a political and commercial enterprise. Thereafter, the American scientists singlehandedly replaced the acronyms, LAV and HTLV-III,
with HIV meaning Human Immunodeficiency Virus. However, when the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded in 2008, Luc Montagnier and his French collaborator were given the prize for their LAV discovery in 1983.
I have been compelled to narrate the history of AIDS because of Rabbi Hamelberg's claim that a White person in Stockholm pointed at him in 1985 and shouted that, *All Africans have
AIDS.* The white person in question, to borrow and embellish the title of one of Michael Moore's book, must be a stupid white person. This is because any AIDS afflicted person must be on death-bed and can never walk on the street. His statement would have
implied that *All Africans are on death-beds* which was not true. Rabbi Hamelberg imaginary White person could not have shouted at him either that *All Africans have HIV* because the term HIV came into existence after 1985. Even the inventors
of LAV and HTLV-III, which were replaced with HIV, claimed that it would take between five and twenty-five years for an infected person to develop AIDS that would lead to ultimate death. With these facts, Rabbi Hamelberg analogy that my assertion that all
Nigerian public officials are thieves stealing developmental funds entrusted in their cares is tantamount to generalization by the imaginary white person who shouted at him in Stockholm, in 1985, that *All Africans have AIDS* is misplaced. I have presented
facts to support my claim that all public officials in Nigeria are treasury looters but his presumed White person has not been able to produce any fact that *All Africans have AIDS.* Once more, I repeat it without apology whatsoever that for the educated
Nigerians of any academic title, what is constant for them is not idealism, principle, honour or patriotic exertions as one will find in Toyin Falola, Bolaji Aluko, Edwin Madunagu and few others. What is constant for the educated Nigerians in the Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MDAs) is the achievement of personal achievements. As for Oluwatoyin Adepoju, I implore him to take a lesson from Biodun Jeyifo's admonition contained on page 12 of A journal of Anti-poverty movement of Nigeria No.6, 1976, "When
Professor God-done-butter-my-bread had spoken, the people said *Kai!, de man dey knack grammar!* When Comrade No-Condition-is-permanent had spoken, the people said : *Haba!, this suffer-head done do, we go march today!*
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelberg...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 01:14
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 01:14
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Salimonu Kadiri
Mar 1, 2020, 7:42:55 AM3/1/20
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Thank you DR. OOHAY. Please remember that the four African American Congress women were directing their energies towards improving America where they live, as you are suggesting here, when President Donald Trump, the White man,
asked them to go back to Africa as fast as possible to fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. In other words, Trump does not consider them as Americans because they are Black. You wondered why so many of us are so monomaniacal
about how ''white folks see black bodies"? How White folks see black bodies would not matter if the Blacks are not acting or behaving in conformity with the prejudice of the White folks on Black folks. For instance, if the white folks say that African Blacks
are mentally inferior and Black Africans steal funds appropriated for socio-economic welfare of their countries to deposit in the US banks, would it be monomaniacal to think about what the White folks say on Black folk's mental inferiority? How do you feel
when the US Justice Department, through its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative files suits in the US courts to seek forfeitures of, what it terms, proceeds of foreign corruption and after obtaining it refuses to repatriate the funds to the African countries
from where the funds were stolen? How do you feel when a White folk named Donald Trump says that Africa consists of shithole countries and Africans are still defecating openly in the 21st century?
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/283933-five-notorious-spots-where-people-defecate-openly-in-abuja.html
The problem of the Black intellectuals is that they want to forget their African past and in the process they create for themselves a world of make-believe in which they feel they are colleagues of the *White folks.* Despite
the middle-class life in which the African intellectuals take refuge, they are still disrespected by the *White folks* who regard them as their appointed slave overseers over the entire Black folks. While the African intellectuals in their positions, as slave
overseers, see to it that the natural resources of Africa are exported to the natural resources poor countries of White folks, in exchange for a pot of porridge, African people become impoverished. Desperate and impoverished Africans are therefore emigrating
to the White folks' countries from whom the African intellectuals have proclaimed that Africa has been liberated from. What President Trump has challenged Nigerians (Africans) to do, in a plain language, is that our overeducated intellectuals should stay in
their respective country to fix the totally broken down industries and infrastructures through applications of their acclaimed knowledge. We should thank Trump and accept his challenge.
S. Kadiri
Från: 'Dr. Oohay' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 15:08
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
Skickat: den 23 februari 2020 15:08
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump!
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Julius Eto
Mar 2, 2020, 5:28:38 PM3/2/20
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SK
I agree with you that "We should thank Trump and accept his challenge."
But do you agree that, at this juncture, Africa (especially Nigeria) needs truly progressive (not hypocritical) centrist and even left-of-centre politics and politicians?
What this means is that your beloved PDP and APC that have looted and are still looting Africa's most populous country at all levels (federal, state and local governments) should be replaced by truly patriotic and tested third option political parties and politicians.
Nigerians have realised that APC and PDP are twin political vehicles for attaining power for self-aggrandisement, if leaves the resources-rich country impoverished and bleeding. It's also why a corrupt PDP chieftain can easily defect to APC and be warmly received in/by the equally hypocritical APC and vice versa since they are two sides of a coin.
I agree with you that "We should thank Trump and accept his challenge."
But do you agree that, at this juncture, Africa (especially Nigeria) needs truly progressive (not hypocritical) centrist and even left-of-centre politics and politicians?
What this means is that your beloved PDP and APC that have looted and are still looting Africa's most populous country at all levels (federal, state and local governments) should be replaced by truly patriotic and tested third option political parties and politicians.
Nigerians have realised that APC and PDP are twin political vehicles for attaining power for self-aggrandisement, if leaves the resources-rich country impoverished and bleeding. It's also why a corrupt PDP chieftain can easily defect to APC and be warmly received in/by the equally hypocritical APC and vice versa since they are two sides of a coin.
On Sunday, March 1, 2020, 01:42:56 PM GMT+1, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Thank you DR. OOHAY. Please remember that the four African American Congress women were directing their energies towards improving America where they live, as you are suggesting here, when President Donald Trump, the White man, asked them to go back to Africa as fast as possible to fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. In other words, Trump does not consider them as Americans because they are Black. You wondered why so many of us are so monomaniacal about how ''white folks see black bodies"? How White folks see black bodies would not matter if the Blacks are not acting or behaving in conformity with the prejudice of the White folks on Black folks. For instance, if the white folks say that African Blacks are mentally inferior and Black Africans steal funds appropriated for socio-economic welfare of their countries to deposit in the US banks, would it be monomaniacal to think about what the White folks say on Black folk's mental inferiority? How do you feel when the US Justice Department, through its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative files suits in the US courts to seek forfeitures of, what it terms, proceeds of foreign corruption and after obtaining it refuses to repatriate the funds to the African countries from where the funds were stolen? How do you feel when a White folk named Donald Trump says that Africa consists of shithole countries and Africans are still defecating openly in the 21st century?https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/283933-five-notorious-spots-where-people-defecate-openly-in-abuja.html
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Mar 2, 2020, 6:26:10 PM3/2/20
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May we truly grow decisively as Olayinka hopes.
I wish Gloria Emeagwali would take the time to critically examine issues instead of taking refuge in throwaway lines like 'infantile'.
The bottom section of my last post, mentioning specific individuals, was meant to be better refined before being posted, if at all, bcs it does not include variables and qualifications that need to be pointed out.
I had meant to leave it out bcs I am not aware of the precise relationship between mentorship and solo effort in the achievements of the figures mentioned even though the general point made about the value of mentorhip and opportunity enabling remains valid..
thanks
toyin
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O O
Mar 3, 2020, 2:47:38 PM3/3/20
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A. have a sympathetic disagreement with your defense of the monomania in question, but all I am here ALSO saying is that an individual without a primary self-vision at all is fundamentally NOT better at all than an individual with a bad primary vision — ua bad primary vision being another person’s primary vision — because whoever controls the mind of a person more or less controls the person’s body or primary self-esteem. Similarly, a people without a primary vision will fall for anything. Why do you think advertising (subliminal or non-subliminal), stereotypes (negative or apparently positive), and propaganda rightly or wrongly succeed In general? Similarly, a people whose culture lacks a primary self-vision shall sooner or later be subjugated or even possibly terminated. Hence I suggest that whoever controls one’s primary or dominant self-image control one’s destiny or destination or trajectory in life. One’s self-validation or a group’s self-validation or a CULTURE’S SELF-VALIDATION requires cultivating the grounds (through, for instance, blood or non-blood) families and associated cultural networks that would enable its members to produce primarily what the members PRIMARILY consume and at the same time also produce primarily what members themselves don’t primarily consume but others (the nonmembers primarily consume or need or want. Progress or non-progress with socioeconomic and non-socioeconomic relations among different peoples or nations seem more a matter of meetings about the compatibilities or collisions of the respective primary self-visions in question. The productivity of the general economy of a culture appears to rely mostly on to what extent its products or “real” “objects” (physical or mental) are derived from its ideals. The subjects of a culture whose “real” “objects“ physical or mental) are not derived from its foundational ideals will forever or often be hunted and haunted by inferiority complex (IC). mostlobjects ideals productivity here is not primarily limited to physical goods but in fact mostly INTENTIONAL “OBJECTS” (which tend to be more discussed in everyday life and which have more enduring impact on our everyday life); we constitute these “objects” rightly or wrongly through HOW we produce our judgments in axiology (aesthetics, the fancy name for the study of ethics and aesthetics — aesthetics meaning the area of quasi beauty and quasi ugliness and ethics —ethics being a question of quasi rightness and quasi wrongness in moral senses). How we wrongly or rightly constitute intentional “objects” ALSO matters and perhaps more so in ontology (primarily the study of the question of “manifold” being) or epistemology (the study of the question of the grounds of knowledge). In general, humans “constitute“ intentional “objects’ in metaphysics.
B. Intentional “objects” live with us everyday and we live with them everyday but they are not physical or “mental” objects nor do they “exist” outside or inside our physical world. But without intentional “objects” — no! NOT merely Kant’s synthetic a priori or the merely analytic (aka a priori). Intentional objects are IDEALS (aka “possibilities”). Possibilities can and do sooner or later produce “actualities” (so-called extended phenomena). A person or family or group or culture or subculture WITHOUT “ITS” OWN PRIMARY IDEALS (sooner or later) generally ceases to “exist” or often ends in chronic mendicancy. What any good or “legit“ government owes ALL its citizens: continually and tirelessly making possible the exercise of THEIR freedom through workable rules (NOT just “theoretical” or purely legalistic rules) but rules that resonate with the citizens’ everyday lives or lived experiences, rules that speak to HOW they live their lives. “Intellectuals ” or theorists should derive the bases of their theories or concepts from the the lived everyday practices of the citizens in question. in other words, formulate policies primarily based on HOW its citizens basically live their lives. The basic ways of doing things in everyday life vary between and within cultures and subcultures. There is always a manifold/malleable way of being in the world. In a subtle and not so subtle and nontrivial sense, ALL HUMANS ARE DIFFERENTLY EQUAL. And no one is absolutely below or above the law. Primary self-validation comes first and how this develops depends certain simple and complex factors (that significantly include how we are raised, especially from pre-birth through the early or formative years of our being in the world).
Salimonu Kadiri
Mar 4, 2020, 6:29:14 PM3/4/20
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I must tell you, double zero (O O) as you name yourself, that I am not defending monomania, I only objected to the wrong application
of the expression by Dr OOHAY. Hear him, "Why are so many of us so monomaniacal about How *White folks see black bodies?'' According to the psychiatrists and the psychologists, a monomaniacal or monomaniac is a person who is characterised by,
or affected with, monomania. They explain that monomania is a mental derangement that restricts a person to one idea or group of ideas, as in paranoia. It can also be recognised, they assert, in a person as an excessive mental preoccupation with one object
or idea that suggests mental derangement. Thus, the reaction of Black Folks to How White Folks see Black bodies (skin), as expressed by President Donald Trump in the 21st century can never, under any reasonable circumstance, be diagnosed as
being afflicted with monomania or being paranoid. As long as nobody is being monomaniacal for still talking about holocaust in the 21st century, so can no Black man be monomaniacal for talking about Black lives matter now in the world of reality ruled by Ku
Klux Klan folks.
S.Kadiri
Från: 'O O' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 3 mars 2020 18:51
Skickat: den 3 mars 2020 18:51
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Gloria Emeagwali
Mar 5, 2020, 5:23:14 AM3/5/20
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Just got a copy in the mail of a
Text relevant to this discussion:
George Sefa Dei, E. Odozor and A. Jiménez. 2020. Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities. Myers Education Press. Gorham, Maine.
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segun ogungbemi
Mar 5, 2020, 5:23:24 AM3/5/20
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President Trump is not morally qualified to tell any fellow Americans to go back to their historical home countries. He should as well go back to Germany the home of violence and persecution of innocent Jews. Was Germany not a shithole during Hitler terror regime? His parents ran away from there and came to the US.
President Trump is known for his diarrhoea mouth which is indecent and undiplomatic.
The language of color like, a white man, black man, people of color etc should be rejected because it is a language of racism, discrimination, superiority and stigmatization. People should be identified by their geographical locations, for instance, an African from Africa, a European from Europe, an American from America etc. We should reject discriminatory language of racism.
Segun Ogubgbemi.
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Gloria Emeagwali
Mar 5, 2020, 9:02:12 AM3/5/20
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https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xqbNDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT11&dq=info:R_B7U-80zEIJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=li2QtRA9q1&sig=MJu9GTDmYwXK-ya94E2creO7-uU#v=onepage&q&f=false
Follow up to previous book announcement on Cartographies
of Blackness.
GE
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Mar 5, 2020, 11:40:03 AM3/5/20
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Parallels
As second world war and Holocaust scholar I know there are undeniable parallels between Herr Fuhrer Hiitler and Herr Fuhrer Trump yet most people thought what happened was due to German exceptionalism.
For one by 2003 a US survey showed Germans topped European ethnicity of US populace at 53%. (Should be higher now)
Fuhrer Hitler and Fuhrer Trump went in with a narrow contentious majority in their first term.
Both Fuhrers Hitler and Trump were demagogues appealing to notions of volks. Trump America first and anyone that opposes him opposes the American people and their choice.
Both used the legislature to rubber stamp their narrow minded policy. Hitler Reichstag; Trump the American Senate.
Both Fuhrers made hatred of minorities the cornerstone of their policies. Fuhrer Hitler the Jews and Blacks; Fuhrer Trump Blacks, Muslim nations and Latinos. Both use such hatred of others to Biden their initial narrow base.
Both Fuhrer Hitler and Trump resorted ho dangerous a volatile war games. Hitler invasion of Poland and Russia; Trump the war games with North Korea and there assassination of Iranian General Suleimano.
The UK appeased the excesses of both Fuhrers: Chamberlain and Johnson/ Trump in the name of trade.
With the Nazis losing the second world war mainly because of America they seemed to have retooled by capturing the leadership of America first as a long term strategy by drafting in descendants of the Nazis who know when to deply using the demographic
game and keeping their others out.
Thus in the name of America neo- Nazism seems primed at last to conquer the world in Trumps second term. Will Fuhrer Trump scrap his American Reichstag once in for the second term?
Will the world stand idly by?
May God help us all!
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com>
Date: 05/03/2020 10:23 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (President Trump is not morally qualified to tell any fellow Americans to go back to their historical home countries. He should as well go back to Germany the home of violence and persecution of innocent Jews. Was Germany not a shithole during
Hitler terror regime? His parents ran away from there and came to the US.
President Trump is known for his diarrhoea mouth which is indecent and undiplomatic.
The language of color like, a white man, black man, people of color etc should be rejected because it is a language of racism, discrimination, superiority and stigmatization. People should be identified by their geographical locations, for
instance, an African from Africa, a European from Europe, an American from America etc. We should reject discriminatory language of racism.
Segun Ogubgbemi.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR07MB502030BB9ADCD71972DA215EAEE50%40DM6PR07MB5020.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.
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Harrow, Kenneth
Mar 5, 2020, 1:10:37 PM3/5/20
to Gloria Emeagwali, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
you need to change the header for this email. gloria has a new publication, and it is not about trump or nigerians.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 8:25 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 8:25 AM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sv: Nigerians love Trump
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Mar 5, 2020, 5:52:49 PM3/5/20
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When the Black man’s in pain and protests Black Lives Matter, what’s all this gobbledegook from
“O O” about “monomania”?
“O O” should STFU!
Baba Kadiri on the other hand slips into his favourite mis-take - the hyperbolic - and he almost gets away with it when he talks about “the world of reality ruled by Ku Klux Klan folks.” We’ve already discussed the matter on the phone a few hours ago, but for this forum and to his Dr O O he has to clarify where the or not, by “the world of reality” he really means, “the real world”
Real: The richest pastors in the world in 2020 .
You may label them “monomaniacs” if you so please, but that doesn’t change the reality.
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Gloria Emeagwali
Mar 6, 2020, 9:36:38 AM3/6/20
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Thank you, Ken.
To be honest, my chapter is not as relevant to the Cartographies -of -Blackness discourse as the chapters of the other contributors. Readers should go for the other chapters, especially the introduction, for the
history, psychology and even curriculum implications of the phenomenon.
My chapter focused on AfroFuturism and really pointed to one of the ways forward. This is one of two papers that I have done on this subject. I compared Fela Kuti and Sun Ra, the father of Afro Futurism, to some scholars, in another work.
GE
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Mar 6, 2020, 11:07:38 AM3/6/20
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which work is this-
'I compared Fela Kuti and Sun Ra, the father of Afro Futurism, to some scholars, in another work.'
Gloria
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Gloria Emeagwali
Mar 6, 2020, 12:02:58 PM3/6/20
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I gave the keynote address at the Annual Conference on Fela Kuti,
July 5, 2019 at the University of Lagos.That keynote is now a chapter in a forthcoming book.
I can send you a copy.
GE
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Mar 6, 2020, 5:04:16 PM3/6/20
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thanks, Gloria.
please do.
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