Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

[Biko Agozino]

The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

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[Toyin Falola]

Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

“In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic.”

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the “native doctor”.  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can “fragment” one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga TF,

As a person of faith myself I have absolutely no problem with people believing in whatever they choose. That is their right. However, there are two issues here. One is that this was an inaugural lecture delivered to an academic community and later self-published as an academic book. An inaugural lecture is supposed to be the capstone of a professor's research enterprise and academic contributions, which if not publishable, should at least be worthy of submission for peer review. Can this mishmash of Pentecostal and African traditional religious beliefs be submitted for academic review in any serious academic culture?

Secondly, here is what Nwolise wrote: "The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual." The Professor of political science is passing off his witchcraft claims as factual. He is both professing and affirming witchcraft remote controls and the instrumental and causative agency of malevolent spirits as factual, but what is the basis for this? Where's the proof, the demonstration, the logic. I would not have a problem if he had stated that he was outlining the prevalent beliefs in Nigeria. No, he advanced these unproven and unprovable beliefs and spiritual opinions as factual. This is what I expect to hear and hear all the time from the pulpit in my church. I've never heard it in an academic lecture unless the academic is quoting or paraphrasing someone in order to analyze the claims or beliefs. Professor Nwolise would have delivered his spiritual thesis to an audience of Pentecostal Christians. Conjectures, faith, opinions, and beliefs cannot substitute for academic rigor, scholarly skepticism, and analytical tentativeness and distance in matters that are beyond empirical proof and rest on faith, piety, and belief.

Some of my Facebook friends posited that I should at least give the man credit for putting his imagination to good use and for giving us something in the magical realism genre. But the man is not a novelist. He is not even a Professor of literature. My favorite fictional niche is actually magical realism, two of my favorite novels being Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ben Okri's The Famished Road. I also love Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard and Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Demons. But these are works of fiction and folklore, not academic lectures/books purporting to explicate and solve a problem in society as Nwolise claims to be doing in regard to human (in)security.

The full title of Nwolise's inaugural lecture is: Is Physical Security Alone Enough For the Survival, Progress and Happiness of Man?"~O.B.C Nwolise- (Inaugural Lecture 2012/13, University of Ibadan). 

By the way, what does Nwolise proffer as a solution to his claimed ubiquity and multivalent instrumentality of evil spirits? He says Nigeria needs to take "spiritual security" and "Strategic Spiritual Intelligence" seriously and that Nigerians should counter this ubiquity of spiritual threats with what he calls "Divine Security Insurance."

At any rate, several of my Facebook interlocutors raised the questions you're raising here and I will save myself some effort by reproducing my responses to them below.

 Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa, Believe whatever you want. I am a Christian and believe similarly as you. It is your right and prerogative. Other people, including atheists, have their own opinions and beliefs. Find a church or the appropriate venue to peddle and profess those beliefs. Beliefs and mere opinions are not admissible as factual in academic discourse, period. I can believe if I want that lizards are capable of giving birth to humans. I will probably find an audience somewhere that is receptive to it, and I have the right to that opinion. But I would be laughed off the stage in a serious academic culture were I to try to pass it off in a lecture as factual. Piety and belief have their place. Academic rigor and analysis have their place as well.

 

 

 Eric Terfa Ula-Lisa but how can we proceed when there is no verifiable, empirical basis to do so? If I come to your church, the Christian that I am will take your word for your "empirical experience with witches." But in my terrain of academics, how can you convince me except by merely inviting me to accept your word for it. Academia has its rules and that is not how it works. The gentleman in question is a professor and was giving an academic lecture to an academic audience. And yes, as an academic theory or argument, the quote deserves nothing but ridicule. He should have been laughed off that stage, but I'm sure they clapped for him and praised him. However, if he had expressed those sentiments in a church, I would not have ridiculed him at all.

To the Facebook follower who posted a link to an academic study of witchcraft, I had this to say.

 

 

This is a study of witchcraft. Academics have been studying witchcraft and associated beliefs for centuries. But they don't advance them as factual. They maintain a critical distance from the belief system and practice. They don't pass off these unproven and unprovable phenomena, beliefs and practices as "factual." They don't lionize or legitimize the beliefs.

 

 

 I don't have the energy to even engage this type of academic, but you mentioned opinions, which we all have. He wasn't just expressing an opinion on Facebook or to his friends in a conversation. This is his inaugural professorial lecture, which should be publishable or at least worthy of submission to a journal in his field. Tell me, can this paper be submitted to any journal let alone be considered for publication in a journal in his field? Is it even worthy of an academic debate? Can it provoke academic debate? I am a practicing Christian. I have my beliefs in that regard. But I will not deliver an ACADEMIC lecture at a university, let alone a professorial inaugural, that is basically a rehash of my Christian or theological beliefs. If I desire a forum and platform to propagate a theological theory of spiritual causation, I will look for a religious audience, preferably in my church. I have no problem with people believing what they believe, but religious beliefs or opinions or convictions do not constitute academic theories. He actually says in the excerpt that his witchcraft scenarios are "factual," as actual as the science behind TV transmission and remote control technology. Where is the proof for this? Where is a demonstration of this? In scholarship, you do not make claims or assertions without demonstrating them. I am a little disappointed that you're dignifying a mishmash of traditional African religious and Pentecostal spiritualist explanations as a social scientific theory. The man is a political scientist for crying out loud. I can say a tree can learn a language. I have a right to that opinion but would I not be laughed off the stage and humiliated if I were to go before an audience of academics and express that opinion and posit it as fact?

 

All peoples have their beliefs, superstitions, metaphysical claims, and cosmologies. The difference is that you don't find their professors of political science delivering academic lectures claiming, without proof, that they are factual.

 

 

Scholars study all phenomena, including religious and superstitious beliefs but they maintain a scholarly distance and/or engage critically with them. They don't advance such unproven and unprovable phenomena as "factual" without proof or verifiable methodological demonstration. And stop with excusing poor, inept, and uncritical scholarship with claims of a decolonizing agenda. That’s how some Nigerian academics who cannot write simple English sentences will claim that their poor writing skills are a form of rebellion against the white man's colonizing language and that they are trying to Africanize and decolonize African scholarship.

Anyway, perhaps I should not waste energy and time on nonsense and heed the advice of my brother, Professor Adeeko, below.

 

 

Adeleke Adeeko Moses Ochonu My friend, please leave witch hunters alone! Why bother to debate people who choose to equate the being of electronic remote devices and the being of beliefs. How can you begin to understand the structure of a moral framework that cedes complete control to forces beyond understanding, an allegedly moral (?) system that accepts as justified the killing of children as witch, a system that fails to question the sexism that restricts witch convictions to women, a system that equalizes belief and proof. Moses, please leave these people alone. How can you talk to them?

[Adeshina Afolayan]

I also need to add that Prof. Nwolise must have taken the Comaroff's advice on anthropological research. In "Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction," they advised that the encounters between the global (i.e. the cultural manifestations of neoliberalism) and the local (i.e. the enchantments of witchcraft and pentecostalism) should challenge us "to do ethnography on an 'awkward' scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there." 

This is good advice that will not scream doom.

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

[Adeshina Afolayan]

I am glad about the response to Oga Moses' engagement with Prof. Nwolise's thought. I agree: the entire lecture ought to be read before such criticism is leveled. I am also surprised that as a social scientist, he fails to see how religion has not only resurged contrary to the argument of the rationalists and the modernization theorists, but also how the religious now plays a significant role in our calculations of what is or is not possible. I will recommend Prof. Nimi Wariboko as a counterpoint to the attempt to dismiss the pentecostal, for example, as a mere manifestation of our religious prejudices or our pre-rational development. I have read, and indeed engaged, two of Wariboko's brilliant works: Nigerian Pentecostalism and the Pentecostal Principle. These are genuine attempts to interrogate the epistemological basis of the spiritual self in the pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal Principle attempts to fashion an emergentist philosophy out of pentecostalism and its playful theology. One of my favorite passages in Nigerian Pentecostalism is this: "Pentecostalism, whether considered as care of the soul...or care for external things...is a process, formation practice, for the production of truths and ethics of hope that converts noumenal knowledges into phenomenal technologies of existence" (2014:3). This epistemological and existential calclulation cannot just be dismissed as being puerile from the rationalist's perspective which is also blinded to the mysteries of the universe. 

And the same explanation goes for what has been called the "logic of witchcraft" and the other "spirituals" and "metaphysicals" as the enchantments of modernity.   

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

On Monday, May 6, 2019, 1:04:39 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

[Okey Iheduru]

Oh, Brother Agozino Biko!

You just went off on a wild chase in your vain attempt to refute Prof. Ochonu's post, thereby exposing your total ignorance of both Prof. Obadare's highly acclaimed book and Prof. Osisioma Basil Chinedu Nwolise's very strange "theory of strategic spiritual intelligence." I've copied from Prof. Nwolise's CV and pasted below the exact text of the abstract of a book manuscript he says he's writing on this subject to give you some idea of what he means.

“Introduction To Strategic Spiritual Intelligence”:  This book presents spiritual intelligence as a compliment to emperical (sic) intelligence.  It challenges Sun Tzu’s thesis that foreknowledge can not be got from ghosts and spirits.  The work is aimed at terminating inelligence (sic) garthering (sic) through torture, quicken investigation, and promote human security." 

I first heard about Prof. Osisioma's bizarre thesis in October 2011 when he spoke on "Intelligence and National Security" to Course 20 Participants (students) at the National Defense College, Abuja where I had just arrived two weeks earlier on sabbatical leave. The hot exchanges between me and the guest lecturer during Q & A were so brutal that it became my first full introduction to the students (who were mostly Army Colonels or equivalent ranks in the other Services) and the other Directing Staff (faculty members--mostly Brigadier-Generals and Major-Generals--or equivalent ranks, and two other university professors) many of whom were clearly impressed with the "erudite scholar." 

I later learnt that Prof. Nwolise had been giving the same lecture and promoting his "strategic spiritual intelligence" to rapturous applause three years in a row (Each cohort numbers about 135 students, including those from 10-15 other African countries). It's worth noting that many in the audience were/are notorious for burying live rams and white cocks in "aladura" churches and Alfas' shrines/mosques as part of their arsenal to ward off evil forces (witches being top on the list) during their board promotion interviews! 

The Professor is also propagating this same "theory" among the dozens of PhD students he's supervising all over the country. In addition to the nine PhDs he has supervised (by 2016), this is what he wrote in his CV: 

"Currently, I am supervising five Ph.D. students in the Department of Political Science, and four Ph.D. students in the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), University of Ibadan. I am also supervising five Phd students on part-time basis in Igbinedion University, Okada.  Between 2007 and 2015, I successfully supervised five Phd Students in the Department of Political Science of Igbinedion University. I also co-supervised a Phd student at Covenant University."

Regrettably, Prof. Nwolise isn't on this forum to defend himself, but in one of my post-sabbatical posts in 2013, I wrote about concerns in some quarters in Nigeria about some professors awarding "Pure Water PhDs" as part of the factors responsible for the deteriorating standards of scholarship in Nigeria's higher ed institutions. I make no such accusation against Professor Nwolise, but I'm not sure what to make of an academic who proudly claims to be supervising fourteen (14) PhD candidates at the same time! Worse still is the institutional setting that allows such joke to be perpetrated.

So, Prof. Agozino, if you still want to learn more about Professor Nwolise's "science of witchcraft", you may wish to consult the bibliographic references (including the Professor's "Inaugural Lecture") listed below.

Regards,

Okey

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++=====  

1. Nwolise OBC, (2015), “Motion for Serious Focus of Research On The Spiritual Dimension of Human And National Security”, Studies In Politics and Society, Vol.3, No. 1, December, pp. 1-14

 

2. Nwolise OBC (2014),”Oracles On Excessive Use of Force”, Ibadan Journal of Peace and Development, Vols 3 and 4, May, pp 35-42.

3. Is physical security alone enough for the survival, progress and happiness of man? : an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Ibadan on Thursday, 20 February, 2014

Author:	O B C Nwolise
Publisher:	Ibadan, Nigeria : Ibadan University Press Publishing House, 2013. ©2013
Series:	Inaugural lectures (University of Ibadan), 2014.

4. Spiritual dimension of human and national security

Author:	O B C Nwolise
Publisher:	[Ibadan] : Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, [2012]
Series:	Faculty lecture series (University of Ibadan. Faculty of the Social Sciences), no. 18

5. Battle for security must first be won in the spirit realm —Prof. Nwolise

By Mayowa Okekale, Ibadan on 28/02/2014

https://www.newsexpressngr.com/news/detail.php?news=4789  

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A university don, Prof. Osisioma Nwolise, has stressed the need for the country’s quest for security to be extended to the spiritual realm, saying the battle cannot be won if limited to the physical realm.

Nwolise, of the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences of University of Ibadan, made the submission in his inaugural lecture entitled ‘Is physical security alone for the survival, progress and happiness of man?’ delivered recently at the Trenchard Hall of the university.

He enjoined the leadership of the country to, as a matter of urgency, embrace the indigenous knowledge of spiritual instrument to enhance security in the country. In his words, “There is so much anarchy and havoc going on in the spiritual realm of human and national security today that there is every urgent need for governmental and societal attention to be focused on that realm, with a view to saving lives, protect human rights and national values, and to enhance human and national security.

“There is nothing happening in the physical world today that is not happening in the spiritual world – rape, bombing, robbery, kidnapping, hostage taking, food poisoning, ambushing, imprisonment, murder, torture, politics and accidents.”

Nwolise argued that there is an urgent need to establish an academic structure for the teaching, research and study of the spiritual dimension of human and national security. His words: “There is a need to open up studies in mysticism, Nigerian n and African divinities, magic, spiritual healings, death and Strategic Spiritual Intelligence (SSI). We should as well open a new Department of Metaphysical Studies or Department of Spiritual Studies, which will serve as the nucleus for a future Faculty of Spiritual Sciences, because our little efforts so far convinced me that juju can be dissected, studied and understood just as the rabbit.”

He described security as the primary concern of all humans and nations at all times, as it is a pre-requisite for their survival, progress and happiness of humanity.

In his comparison on physical and spiritual security, Nwolise opined that the welfare of human beings is not only in the physical realm as perceived by many leaders but also in the spiritual realm. Quoting the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, he said: “The aim of a leader should be the welfare of the people whom he leads. I have used ‘welfare’ to denote physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people.”

Nwolise faulted the stance of scientific posture on nature, arguing that science is being too cowardly, pompous, despotic and arrogant in insisting that whatever it cannot understand, capture, measure, control or predict, does not exist. The don said it is important to understand the spiritual not only because it is superior to the physical but also because it positively reinforces the physical, and can equally endanger it under some certain circumstances.

Prof. Nwolise condemned what he called the miseducation of today’s children and youths as well as the poor funding of the education sector, stressing a need for this to be urgently reversed so as to rescue the country’s future.

•Photo shows Prof. Osisioma Nwolise.

Source News Express

Posted 28/02/2014 11:12:11 PM

--

Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com

Just published “The African Corporation, ‘Africapitalism’ and Regional Integration in Africa” (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.

[O O]

Don’t you think that theism and atheism or theism and non-theism or atheism and non-atheism are not inconsistent with “faith” (as long as one does not assume faith as synonymous with morality)?

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

can we please have the complete lecture so as to understand the context in which these  assertions about witchcraft were made?

prof falola- is it not vital to distinguish between analytical presentation of subjects, which may be understood as the core of academic work and uncritical declarations of belief, which is the opposite of the academic ideal?

agozino- beautiful and insightful summation, but without access to the rest of the lecture, can we conclude the writer was analyzing rather than declaring a belief?

thanks

toyin

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

if this is the lecture

Is physical security alone enough for the survival, progress and happiness of man? : an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Ibadan on Thursday, 20 February, 2014  by  O B C Nwolise 

Sunshine Publishers might have it

[Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM]

My wife attends the "Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim" church. In one of their Church services, one of the prophets told her that her husband has "matched poison" and recommended spiritual cleansing to remove the poison. The prophet further warned that my right leg would swell and after sometime, that the left leg would also swell.

When my wife told me this, I waved it off and went about my normal business, as I do not have any problems whatsoever with my legs.

When my right leg started swelling, I had to follow my wife to her church, the spiritual cleansing was done and I am getting better!

CAO.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Biko.

As Moses maintains OBC (Nwolise) overstepped the boundaries this time.  I have been familiar with OBCs work for about four decades now from when I taught Adult Education courses at the University of Ibadan under (prof) Okedara.

It's one thing for an academic to infer there might be some truth to the suppositions of animistic.    propositions, it is altogether a different kettle of fish for the same academic to write with unproven certitude that those suppositions are in fact correct giving unsubstantiated  examples that spirits roam between noon and 2pm.  How did he come by that knowledge and how can it be demonstrated?

Religious knowledge faith is different from religious scholarship.  When Hiram tried to substantiate the fact that the house of David may have existed as narrated in the Bible he produced an archaeological artefact that referred to the house of David dated to around the period King David.  The same evidence was used to verify that the wall of Jericho indeed existed and wasn't simply the figment of imagination of biblical writers.

What OBC did was nothing of that order.

OAA. 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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The Professor was analyzing a core belief of most Nigerians and that is what social scientists do. He is not alone in identifying that Nigerians believe that juju is factual. Awolowo stated the same thesis of Juju as Science for killing enemies (1939) in opposition to Azikiwe who called for the scientific method to be applied to healthcare in Renascent Africa (1937). In his series of essays on 'How I survived Ebola', Biodun Jeyifo observed that medical doctors and Physics professors still believe in divine intervention even when they follow the scientific method. Professor Nwolise may have been arguing the same thesis as Obadare but from a different perspective, from the perspective of the believers.

Without reading the entire lecture, we should not judge his entire scholarship or those of all Nigerian professors based on one paragraph taken out of context. He may have been hypothesizing, like Obadare, that in a country where rulers call for prayers as the solution to every problem, how is a political scientists to be taken seriously if he fails to address this mindset? His argument may be that psychological health is indeed part of national security and so if the average Nigerian goes about with the belief that there are witches and wizards out to cause every kind of mischief, it will be a mistake for social scientists to call them imbeciles without risking irrelevance. That was why religion was called the opium of the people, the soul of a soulless world, and the heart of heartless conditions.

Even after the society guarantees the security of electricity supply, pipe-borne water, hospitals and schools for all, motor-worthy roads, fast railways, safer airlines, food and housing, jobs with living wages, the people will continue to reserve the right to believe in spiritual curses as realities sui generis. The trick is to be tolerant of all spiritual beliefs that are not oppressive of others and focus public policy on things that can be solved without mysticism while researchers should not be ridiculed for trying to understand the magical thinking of most human beings.

The Japanese and Chinese still pray at the shrines of their ancestors for blessings, Israelis still pray at the Wailing Walls, a religious party dominates India today, Arabs still fast, pray and believe that there are evil forces of Shetan, Americans still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and many think that elected officials are the representatives of the Divine, while the British still have a state church. No one is weeping for them because they also have huge funding for research and development by their STEM specialists who send people to the moon, build enough weapons to wipe out life on earth, tackle incurable diseases, and make millions speculating on market trends. 

Instead of weeping for our colleagues at home, we should be humble and acknowledge that some of them, like OBC Nwolise himself, are busy advocating for the Nigerian Diaspora to be given a role in Nigerian foreign policy, addressing the insecurity in the country, peacemaking in West Africa, analyzing the implications of the Arab Spring, and advocating gender sensitivity in public policy. 

Did Obadare have recommendations on how to solve some these problems that Nwolise has been addressing? Pentecostal Republic is a narrow title anyway because adherents of traditional spirituality, Catholics, Rasta, and Islamists all buy into the idea of spiritual warfare around the world and not only in Nigeria.

Biko

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

TF.

I will be quite convinced if Moses can come to share with forum the occurrence of inexplicable broken legs for which INC can claim responsibility but I know no such thing will happen.

The Vatican was once Christiandoms leading intellectual powerhouse rationalizing the truth of its observations to conform with religious teachings then came I in Galileo and Copernicus to upset the apple cart and nothing was quite the same again.

For Awolowo to say juju is science is the same thing as saying there is scientifically verifiable composition of the concoction which can be put at the arrow points fired at enemies to kill them because of the poison in the concoction.  This can be compared to a nuclear tipped missile system today. Awolowo was referring to historically verifiable biological warfare in Yorubaland in which attacking enemies with lleprosy featured

That is totally different from saying if you take a slice of air( whatever that means) at noon you will find arrows in them!

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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Question:

 

Is the professor expressing a belief system or affirming a belief system? If expressing a belief system, there is nothing new in what he has said. If he is affirming it, can you and I deny him of his faith? Pentecostalists tend to believe in magic and witchcraft. There is a clue in one sentence:

“In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic.”

 

Suppose the professor is a practicing Muslim who is observing the Ramadan and he talks about Allah and the rewards of heaven, is this not similar to his ideas on Nigerian religion?

 

And what about he a Christian, do we accept his faith-derived statement? A fundamentalist Christian can win the Nobel Prize in medicine.

 

I am not sure that one can win the argument in many parts of Africa that it is possible to disconnect this kind of belief from the work they do. In many Nollywood movies, the medical doctors tell their patients to forget about modern medicine and see the “native doctor”.  The campuses are littered with sacrifices, and when I was at Ife, one was put in my office.

 

There must be an examination of his essays and books to conclude on the degree to which his faith as affected his findings. Human beings can “fragment” one part of the brain to write the most brilliant essay today and another part can see witches the next day.

 

The assumption that human beings are rational all the time is actually not correct. Indeed, they are not, in the secularist understanding of faith.

 

In any case, I hope the professor is reading this so that he can teach Moses a lesson by breaking his two legs!!!

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

 

I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

With all due respect, Adeshina, the Comaroffs' advice has to do with Africanist scholars being attuned to non-rational (to the Western eye), non-tangible, and supernatural realms in which Africans make meaning, in which they articulate causality, and to which they attribute mundane and not so-mundane events. In other words, their advice is that to effectively research African phenomena, cultures, environments, modes of thought, ways of seeing, meaning-making, etc, one has to methodologically follow Africans into realms that are spiritual and "awkward" but that offer illuminating clues about why, how, and when Africans do what they do or say what they say. It is a call for Africanists to rethink the constraints of conventional anthropological methods as defined by Eurocentric methodological foundations of the field--and to be open to alternative methodologies. It is not a call for Africanist anthropologists to uncritically endorse, advocate, and pass off  as factual African beliefs, claims, and spiritual articulations of causality, agency, and ubiquitous malevolence. I am a historian and I have published an article in which I call on Africanist historians to use what I call the techniques of sensing beyond the obvious archival and oral corpus, among other unconventional, "awkward," and innovative methodological techniques, in order to access the subtleties of postcolonial African history. I wasn't asking scholars to uncritically publish the truth claims embedded in unconventional and "invisible" realms of inquiry.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

"Prof falola- is it not vital to distinguish between analytical presentation of subjects, which may be understood as the core of academic work and uncritical declarations of belief, which is the opposite of the academic ideal?"

---Toyin Adepoju.

And Toyin Adepoju puts it much better than I did.

[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

This is a wonderful thread, providing ideas that we can all benefit from.

 

For a moment, let us set aside the beliefs that create horrors and address the most serious issues that drive me to this conversation:

 

1. Can Biko, our man in Virginia, do away with his “Leftist” and anti-genocide make up in the lectures he gives? No, he cannot. Leftism is an ideology, although we accept it as academic.
2. Can “tribalists” do away with “tribalism” in writing about Nigeria? No, they cannot. I cannot ask a Yoruba scholar not to see the Yoruba as the center of the world. His intellectual apparatus and political agenda may combine to produce that kind of knowledge, which is legitimate even if I disagree with it.
3. Can strong beliefs be disconnected from the academy?  I went to give a lecture somewhere, look at a teacher’s syllabus on Nigerian literature and asked “Why is there No Things Fall Apart here?” I barely survived the anger that almost led to a police arrest. And at another place, I said why is it that Things Fall Apart hs not been translated into Fulani and Hausa, and the answer reveals the stereotypical ideas that one group has for another. Yes, they are school teachers.

Before I left Ife, Pentecostalism had penetrated the campus that we woke up one morning to see a banner in the main gate “Jesus Campus”. The teachers had worked Jesus into their lectures; students were asked to attend churches and vigils.

 

I don’t agree with Adeleke Adeeko that we should not engage those we disagree with. To do this is to live in a bubble, in which your own idea is reinforced by those who subscribe to it.  We must understand them, and they must understand us, and we have to see whether there is a center. To return to the modernization argument that these beliefs will disappear is a waste of time. The beliefs have taught us a lesson, a big one, and Nwolise---I have probably met him as I know virtually all those who teach political science at UI—is not unique in this regard. And I don’t think people are going to divorce their beliefs from their lectures—this is not going to happen even if we enact regulations.

 

People stay in my house a lot, and they ask me to cut some trees as they abhor evil spirits. These are not road-side small traders but respected professors. I have been told to my face that I am a juju man!

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

And, by the way, yes, a "fundamentalist Christian" can win the Nobel Prize in Medicine but certainly not by advancing his religious beliefs as his oeuvre. Yes, we need an epistemology that engages with prevalent beliefs in supernatural causation in Africa because these beliefs are pervasive, inform devotional practices, and animate and constrain attitudes towards politics in African countries. That epistemology is already underway, with many scholars such as Nimi Wariboko, Obadare, Peter Gaschere, Elias Bombgba, Olupona, Asonze Uka, yourself, Are Adogame, and others already engaging critically with that world. However, it would be academically suicidal if these scholars where to attempt to pass off an uncritical endorsement of Nigerian religious beliefs as "factual" in the most important academic lecture of their career or in a book.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

From the excerpts below you demonstrated that OBC does not know where he is going, is confused and has no clear agenda.

His observations about science are in part correct but he has not demonstrated what the alternative he canvasses for will have as it's welthanchauung. Governments don't allocate funds for agendas that are not clearly stated.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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From: Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com>

Date: 06/05/2019 12:30 (GMT+00:00)

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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com

Just published “The African Corporation, ‘Africapitalism’ and Regional Integration in Africa” (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.

--

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

beautiful debate.

i see Nimi Wariboko's name has been invoked.

are Wariboko's theology and philosophies not very different from the quote from Nwolise?

are theology and social science-Nwolise's field- not quite different?

as for the revered Awo saying 'juju is science' if he did not qualify it is he not on the same page on uncritical assertions as Nwolise?

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

It is actually an insult to mention Wariboko in the same sentence as Nwolise--an insult to Wariboko, of course. In Wariboko you have a sophisticated analytical and theoretical mind posing probing questions of Pentecostalism and carving out an expansive analytical space in which to make sense of and critically engage with the sociological, political, and economic underpinnings of Africa's growing Pentecostal universe. How is that the same as Nwolise's uncritical advancement of Pentecostal spirituality as factual and the rational equivalent of modern scientific and technological objects such as a TV's remote control? 

[Toyin Falola]

I am beginning to enjoy this debate.

What is “factual”? At Ibadan, my city, and yours, witchcraft is “factual”!!  The mission of Christ is “factual”. It is the fact of faith, not the fact of science.

Years ago, in the company of others, when I told my mom that I did not believe in witchcraft, I sent her into panic and she began to look for remedies for me to stay alive. I don’t believe that there are witches, but have the witches now left Ibadan because I don’t believe in them?

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>

Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:13 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

I really can't DISAGREE more with your defence of OBC here!

He is simply playing to the gallery of the priests coining it in on the insecurities of Nigerians and trying to fashion how the academia can profit from the gravy train.

He is taking too seriously banter from the likes of TF that academics are in the wrong profession because they are not turning into millionaires(unlike the priesthood) for all the efforts they put into their lives and work.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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Date: 06/05/2019 12:30 (GMT+00:00)

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I also need to add that Prof. Nwolise must have taken the Comaroff's advice on anthropological research. In "Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction," they advised that the encounters between the global (i.e. the cultural manifestations of neoliberalism) and the local (i.e. the enchantments of witchcraft and pentecostalism) should challenge us "to do ethnography on an 'awkward' scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there." 

This is good advice that will not scream doom.

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

On Monday, May 6, 2019, 1:04:39 AM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

TF,

We get all that. Some of my own family members get scandalized when I tell them that they're too quick to blame the devil/witchcraft and to resort to prayers for problems that are physical and require taking concrete action. That's not the point. In our work, we reckon with the existence and influence of that worldview, which cuts across all of Africa's religious traditions. The point is that an academic should not uncritical substitute a religious dogma founded on faith and unverifiable supernatural truth claims for a rigorous, analytical engagement with such claims. An academic who is a Pentecostal Christian, devout Muslim, or Ifa practitioner should compartmentalize his religious beliefs when doing academic work. Yes, all writings are autobiographical, but when we say that, we are talking about subconscious bias and the ways in which our socializations seep into our approaches subconsciously. It does not refer to the conscious certitude of passing off unverifiable spiritual and other truth claims as "factual." There're  probably Western academics who believe in alien abductions but will they try to publish that belief in a journal or present it as fact in an academic lecture? They know better than to try to do that. Even if they want to write on alien abductions, they know that the academic protocol is to maintain a critical, scholarly distance from the subject/object of inquiry and analysis.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

My concern is not so much about Prof Nwolise but with the logic of my good friend Prof. Ochonu.How can the utterance of one professsor spell doom for the entire academic arena?

I think Nwolise made the mistake of not substituting the word “angel “ for witches and spirits.I don’t think he would have escaped the scrutiny of Moses but there are a lot of folks in this forum who would have given him a free pass. In any case, I am disappointed that Nwolise’s witches did not turn water into wine.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 8:17:30 AM

[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

 

The most productive argument will be to assume that many won’t disconnect! Society and people do not just shift. Something must first shift before they respond. Thus, we have to work out a new way of thinking that will accommodate that, which may be unfortunate.

I have been to Jos and Kaduna where making the disconnect argument to our colleagues may not even have any appeal. If you wake up in the city, driving to work to see which road is taken by the Christians and another by the Muslims, the first thing they do when they get to the office and return back home is to pray. Even as an External Examiner in such places, I joined them in that prayer. And in the classrooms, they pray, and they prayed for me, and they work faith into their presentations. I listen and process to understand where they are coming from. Not that I agree with them, but that I understand why they do what they do.

 

I know how to make the theoretical arguments about the disconnect, but at the same time, I know that in practice it won’t happen.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Witchcraft is a recognized religion in the West, one of the fastest growing perhaps.

There is a lot of overlap between modern Western witchcraft and Yoruba Iyami aje beliefs.

Occultism is big in the West.

A significant no of the claims made for witches in Africa are also made for occultists in the West.

Do Western scholars, including those who are openly witches and occultists, even when writing about about their belief systems in academic contexts, uncritically present those belief systems as factual and as equivalent to scientific technology, as Nwolise seems to be doing?

Relevant examples are Neville Drury, who crowned a lifetime as magical practitioner and writer on magic with his published PhD thesis   Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic ( Oxford UP, 2011).

In African Studies, a superb example of critical presentation of religious subjectivity in scholarship is John McCall's "Making Peace with Agwu",  his account of his initiation into Igbo dibia,   in which he is careful to delineate the fact that he is describing a subjective experience, not objective fact, as he carefully negotiates relationships between the mode of knowing offered by the initiation and the epistemic methods he has been trained in as an anthropologist.

A classic effort to develop an understanding of religion in terms of various accounts of religious experience is Rudolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy, demonstrating a rigorous balance between description and analysis.

At no point in these texts is bald statement of belief without critical contextualization ever presented.

Subjectivity has a place in critical scholarship, even the description of the subjectivity of the scholar, but it needs to be a critical,  reflexive subjectivity, not an uncritical one. 

That is an ideal, but the closer the scholar is to that ideal, the closer they are to the essence of scholarship in the Western tradition as an effort to understand reality rather than be mastered by reality, including the reality of one's  own subjectivity, an approach that empowers the human being in terms of balance between aspects of consciousness, the subjective and the critical, the intellectual and the emotional.

Nwolise needs to explain why he thinks the claims he makes are facts. Are they realities that are part of existence outside one's belief in them? To what degree are these claims about the nature of reality valid beyond their effects, if any beyond the psychological, on those who believe in them? 

What makes him convinced that witches can see across distances without conventional technology, can harm people at a distance and that spirits rove about in space"?

The quality of analysis or critical contextualization of one's beliefs represents the quality of one's scholarship. 

toyin. 

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

EDITED

Witchcraft is a recognized religion in the West, one of the fastest growing perhaps.

There is a lot of overlap between modern Western witchcraft and Yoruba Iyami aje beliefs.

Occultism is big in the West.

A significant no of the claims made for witches in Africa are also made for occultists in the West.

Do Western scholars, including those who are openly witches and occultists, even when writing about about their belief systems in academic contexts, uncritically present those belief systems as objectively factual and as equivalent to scientific technology, as Nwolise seems to be doing?

Relevant examples are Neville Drury, who crowned a lifetime as magical practitioner and writer on magic with his published PhD thesis   Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic ( Oxford UP, 2011).

In African Studies, a superb example of critical presentation of religious subjectivity in scholarship is John McCall's "Making Peace with Agwu",  his account of his initiation into Igbo dibia,   in which he is careful to delineate the fact that he is describing a subjective experience, not objective fact, as he carefully negotiates relationships between the mode of knowing offered by the initiation and the epistemic methods he has been trained in as an anthropologist.

A classic effort to develop an understanding of religion in terms of various accounts of religious experience is Rudolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy, demonstrating a rigorous balance between description and analysis.

At no point in these texts is bald statement of belief without critical contextualization ever presented.

Subjectivity has a place in critical scholarship, even the description of the subjectivity of the scholar, but it needs to be a critical,  reflexive subjectivity, not an uncritical one. 

That is an ideal, but the closer the scholar is to that ideal, the closer they are to the essence of scholarship in the Western tradition as an effort to understand reality rather than be mastered by reality, including the reality of one's  own subjectivity, an approach that empowers the human being in terms of balance between aspects of consciousness, the subjective and the critical, the intellectual and the emotional.

Nwolise needs to explain why he thinks the claims he makes are facts. Are they realities that are part of existence outside one's belief in them? To what degree are these claims about the nature of reality valid beyond their effects, if any beyond the psychological, on those who believe in them? 

What makes him convinced that witches can see across distances without conventional technology, can harm people at a distance and that spirits rove about in space"?

The quality of analysis or critical contextualization of one's beliefs represents the quality of one's scholarship. 

toyin

[Harrow, Kenneth]

i am mildly interested in this topic, and feel the framing is everything. toyin does a good job below in making an effort to enable those who wish to engage the occult seriously find a way to do so.

the speech that was cited and is being debated demonstrated a terrible way to do so.

i think the question has to be one of framing. if we ask for a discussion that represents "facts," it already presupposes a frame in which the logics/horizon of scientific thought predetermines the discussion. it is always perhaps advisable to set the scientific discourse in relation to the occult, rather than to try to re-present the occult as functioning within a scientific discourse. when the latter happens, i automatically turn off.

just as i do when it is presented as western vs african, or any other dumb binary of that sort.

there are zillions of brilliant thinkers who avoid that trap, the "objective" truth or whatever; or who misrepresent quantum or relativity so as to stretch their actual meanings; or who are desperate to validate african beliefs, and wind up all all all too often by replicating a european paradigm, or a western paradigm, or a scientific paradigm, so as to validate the african horizons of knowledge.

the framing is everything. mbiti's classic text on african religions repeatedly told us african notions of god were just like western ones, just like christianity, and thus had to be equally valid!!!!

come on. how often have we suffered from such approaches.

ok, i would add to the praise for mccall's account of his entry into dibia-ness the incomparable accounts of mouridism, and of bamba, by allen roberton in Sufi in the City, where he also attempts to give account to sufi mysticism, or, more mundanely put, the power of the image of bamba, which you will find, with his robes and face covered, on half of senegal's surfaces. a magnificent account. without any humbug or apologetics.

there is so much to be said on the topic: nuff said for now

ken
  well, another word. the framing by birago diop was magical, poetic, incomparable: les morts qui ne sont pas morts, cited over the years repeatedly, demonstrates the way we can resonate, like the spirit in the wind, or all the other images in the poem, inhaling and exhaling a power through the words. this is what we should expect and long for, the master of the word, le maitre de la parole.

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 10:46:09 AM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Chielozona Eze]

It is interesting that the champions of “African science” would rely on metaphors from Western science to demonstrate the validity of African witchcraft. Dutch anthropologist Peter Geschiere writes about a Cameroonian witch who told him about her skill in piloting planes for up to thirty years, and that white people have been attempting to take the plane from them (Africans). Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise relies on the obvious example of the function of an electronic “remote control” system to prove his conjectures about a witch in the United Kingdom breaking the leg of a person in South Africa.

Why you would rely on the evidence of what everyone can understand to prove what only you (or your imaginary people) believe to know is beyond me. It is, indeed, easy to locate the failure (doom) of Nigeria’s academia and the complicity of her academics in this contradiction, in the inability to ask simple questions and to follow the lead. Our thinking seems to operate on a simplistic combination of a premise and a conclusion.

And while we are at it, we should note that witchcraft and occultism are not exclusive to Africa. In 1597, King James VI King of Scotland (later King James I of England) published a book on witchcraft called Daemonologie. When he became the king of England in 1603 he initiated a systematic sweeping campaign to rid England of witches, thus creating one of the many instances of massive human rights abuses in European history. The Catholic Church had been knee-deep in that belief (if not practice). In 1487 Heinrich Kramer published a book Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches). That book created a background for the Inquisition.

But then, through a deft combination of critical thinking and scientific proofs, Europeans were able to make a sharp distinction between knowledge and belief, between things that should inform public policies and things that ought to be restricted to the private domain. I think the same could be said of the Japanese and the Chinese who supposedly worship their ancestors.

Perhaps, Africa will have to experience its own bloodbath comparable to the European Inquisition and witch-hunt before we, African intellectuals, begin to ask questions aimed at lifting our collective life and enhancing human flourishing.

Chielozona

Chielozona Eze

Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze

www.Chielozona.com

My latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.

[Biko Agozino]

Okey Bros,

You wrote: "The Professor is also propagating this same "theory" among the dozens of PhD students he's supervising all over the country. In addition to the nine PhDs he has supervised (by 2016), this is what he wrote in his CV: 

"Currently, I am supervising five Ph.D. students in the Department of Political Science, and four Ph.D. students in the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), University of Ibadan. I am also supervising five Phd students on part-time basis in Igbinedion University, Okada.  Between 2007 and 2015, I successfully supervised five Phd Students in the Department of Political Science of Igbinedion University. I also co-supervised a Phd student at Covenant University."

You appear to see doctoral supervision as a medieval guild system through which the guild master 'propagates' his theory to the journeymen or apprentices. The natural sciences may work that way because the supervisor owns the lab where the graduate student works on a portion of the supervisor's project until the supervisor is satisfied.

In the social sciences, the most common model is the collegial model where the graduate student and the supervisor work as colleagues. Sometimes, the student is more knowledgeable about the topic than the supervisor who is there to guide the student with methodology. In many cases, the supervisor may never have done any research on the particular topic chosen by the student. It is strange for you to claim that Professor Nwolise must be imposing his theory on his doctoral students without telling us what topics those students were researching and what theoretical frameworks they are following or whether you interviewed them and they told you that the supervisor is indoctrinating them into witchcraft or something. 

Doctoral students are examined mainly on two points - originality and independence. I would be surprised if any supervisor tries to impose his theory on any student given that it is the nature of the problem and the state of existing knowledge that prompts the choice of theoretical frameworks that would lead to original contributions to knowledge. But when I see a Professor like Nwolise bursting his butts to supervise doctoral students in multiple institutions, I see a colleague committed to supporting the scholarly growth of the next generation of scholars who must work independently of their supervisor, even if he does not agree with their preferred theoretical frameworks. 

Let us give some credits to our colleagues who are there helping to educate future scholars while we are busy providing technical foreign aid to industrialized countries.

Biko

[Toyin Falola]

My Eze:

 

Please no blood birth, as you mentioned to close this elegant piece of yours. The continent has seen enough wars, and arguments about older beliefs in relation to the modern academy should not bring about the specter of violence. Both the professor and Moses, in the outcome, are looking for progress!

 

There is nothing that you and I can do to prevent people from holding their beliefs—what we can do is to let them conform to academic practices. And I think we should also understand that African spaces will create semi-autonomous understanding of what this academy is about.

 

Years ago at the ASA, I prostrated to Prof. Bolanle Awe and some people said I should not do this in an academic forum. No, I said, if I see her anywhere in the world, I won’t bow my head, I will prostrate fully. Peculiarities like this cannot just be eliminated because they don’t fall into our understanding of the academy.

 

To repeat, those beliefs do not impact my own work, so that my contributions are not misread.

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

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I also need to add that Prof. Nwolise must have taken the Comaroff's advice on anthropological research. In "Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction," they advised that the encounters between the global (i.e. the cultural manifestations of neoliberalism) and the local (i.e. the enchantments of witchcraft and pentecostalism) should challenge us "to do ethnography on an 'awkward' scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there." 

 

This is good advice that will not scream doom.

 

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

 

 

[Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM]

Is it allowed to offer prayers of thanks to God after successful academic outings and to attribute the success to the mercy of God?

CAO.

[Ashafa Abdullahi]

Oga Toyin, 

It's my deliberate judgement to agree with you entirely. My concern about majority of posts here here is inconclusive lamentation. Let's not portray ourselves as if the politicians & leadership across we complain about daily are better than us. They complain & pretend they are the solutions. But we lament and don't proved solutions, which means we need to shift ground. There's nothing that has not been said regarding Nigeria's ills. Let's put our analysis on the solutions.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Colleagues and friends,

Setting aside for the moment the bizarre atmospherics of Professor Nwolise's oeuvre, have we pause to consider the implications of what Okey Iheduru posted from eye-witness knowledge? He told us that in this age of heightened insecurity and multiple threats to the sovereignty of Nigeria, Professor Nwolise makes regular lecturing appearances at the only postgraduate institution of the Nigerian armed forces, the National Defense College, urging army colonels and generals and their equivalents in other branches of the armed forces to gather military intelligence through ghosts and spirits and, more disturbingly, that he receives a "rapturous" applause and positive reception each time he presents this dangerous nonsense to the students. Wow, just wow. And we wonder why the Nigerian armed forces cannot understand the security threats facing the country, let alone tackling them. And some say I'm exaggerating when I say the country is doomed.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGzQHao2WLVyYvCAv52OXW%2Bg8wSqQmsOm1iYQ%3DhxZMunBh69%2Bg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Abolaji Adekeye]

Prof. Nwolise is correct. Like the G. O. of my church said:

"Anything that is accomplished in the physical was first perfected in the spiritual"

I have just taken delivery of my bullet proof amulet, made from the skin of an agilinti that was flayed alive. It is guaranteed to Ward off bullets from guns ranging from the musket to the mundane Dane gun to the Gatling gun. I'm not entirely sure about Kalash but I'm dead certain my ancestors are looking out for me in the spiritual. You know, no weapon fashioned against my amulet shall prosper. 

Why do I need a bullet proof amulet? The spate of kidnappings for one. The failure of our security agencies to stem the tide is another. And of course, the cost of a kevlar suit is prohibitive and the security guys may take an hostile stance against a kevlar wearing bagga like me. I have therefore taken a cue from the erudite professor to seek a kinda Bendel insurance from the spiritual realm. 

Surprisingly, when I went to witness the live demonstration of the efficacy of spiritual anti projectile (SAP) I met already sat in rapt attention 2 medical doctors and 4 professors, including a professor of nuclear physics. It is what it is. The professor of literature amongst these erudities, while helping me pick my jaw from the ground justified the dissonance by quoting Shakespeare:

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I woke up, picked the te ki ina loji remote to switch on the TV. Breaking news: A Professor of nuclear physics, Saka Simfont has been kidnapped.

On Mon, May 6, 2019, 12:19 Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh, Brother Agozino Biko!

You just went off on a wild chase in your vain attempt to refute Prof. Ochonu's post, thereby exposing your total ignorance of both Prof. Obadare's highly acclaimed book and Prof. Osisioma Basil Chinedu Nwolise's very strange "theory of strategic spiritual intelligence." I've copied from Prof. Nwolise's CV and pasted below the exact text of the abstract of a book manuscript he says he's writing on this subject to give you some idea of what he means.

“Introduction To Strategic Spiritual Intelligence”:  This book presents spiritual intelligence as a compliment to emperical (sic) intelligence.  It challenges Sun Tzu’s thesis that foreknowledge can not be got from ghosts and spirits.  The work is aimed at terminating inelligence (sic) garthering (sic) through torture, quicken investigation, and promote human security." 

I first heard about Prof. Osisioma's bizarre thesis in October 2011 when he spoke on "Intelligence and National Security" to Course 20 Participants (students) at the National Defense College, Abuja where I had just arrived two weeks earlier on sabbatical leave. The hot exchanges between me and the guest lecturer during Q & A were so brutal that it became my first full introduction to the students (who were mostly Army Colonels or equivalent ranks in the other Services) and the other Directing Staff (faculty members--mostly Brigadier-Generals and Major-Generals--or equivalent ranks, and two other university professors) many of whom were clearly impressed with the "erudite scholar." 

I later learnt that Prof. Nwolise had been giving the same lecture and promoting his "strategic spiritual intelligence" to rapturous applause three years in a row (Each cohort numbers about 135 students, including those from 10-15 other African countries). It's worth noting that many in the audience were/are notorious for burying live rams and white cocks in "aladura" churches and Alfas' shrines/mosques as part of their arsenal to ward off evil forces (witches being top on the list) during their board promotion interviews! 

The Professor is also propagating this same "theory" among the dozens of PhD students he's supervising all over the country. In addition to the nine PhDs he has supervised (by 2016), this is what he wrote in his CV: 

"Currently, I am supervising five Ph.D. students in the Department of Political Science, and four Ph.D. students in the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), University of Ibadan. I am also supervising five Phd students on part-time basis in Igbinedion University, Okada.  Between 2007 and 2015, I successfully supervised five Phd Students in the Department of Political Science of Igbinedion University. I also co-supervised a Phd student at Covenant University."

--

Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com

Just published “The African Corporation, ‘Africapitalism’ and Regional Integration in Africa” (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.

--

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

EDITED

'To repeat, those beliefs do not impact my own work, so that my contributions are not misread.

TF'

I wonder what beliefs exactly Falola is referring to in the context of this discussion of relationships between belief, critical analysis and the academy, and  how factual is his claim of his beliefs, perhaps in certain Yoruba religious values, not impacting his work.

Are those beliefs, in whatever way they are understood to be held by him, not central to his philosophical work?

One approach to that qs could be to ook at Falola's very fine essay- 'Ritual Archives' in The Toyin Falola Reader and The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy edited by Falola and Afolayan.

A core strength of this essay is his effort to negotiate a relationship between the concept of the archive as a belief system and the archive as analytical resource.

At one or two points in the essay, he slips from the conventional scholarly stance of investigative distancing into one of empatheticidentification.

What is he identifying with?

The idea of the existence of a universe partly composed of unconventional forms of sentience, also known as spirits.

He does not analyse the logic of this belief but proceeds to mine it for ideas, hence generating a tantalizing sense of suspense- does hebelieve, does he not believe, why is he placing this in an essay brimming with careful analysis- are some of the qs this strategy may open up.

Great scholarship is necessarily infused with passion. How that passion is expressed may differ in various cases. 

Henry Oldmeadow's "C.G. Jung and Mircea Eliade: " Priests Without Surplices"? Reflections on the Place of Myth, Religion and Science in their Work" provokes a rethinking of these great scholars as believers of a kind, believers outside conventional creeds but identifying with something beyond the reduction of the world of knowledge to the dissective capacities of the intellect.

Did Abiola Irele believe in the truth of the metaphysics of Negritude, presented with such power in texts like "What is Negritude"? in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology?

He presents Negritude as an account of the views of Senghor, particularly, and others, but if he did not share some, perhaps even a depth of identification with the vision, even if not with all the details of Negritude, could his exposition be so powerful?

Falola describes himself in an interview as undergoing a contemplative process under the direction of a guide in Asiancontemplative practices that helped him overcome the trauma of losing the manuscript of a book he was working on, if I recall that account clearly enough.

Does that experience contribute to his rich depiction of a contemplative process centred in the Yoruba deity Eshu in 'Ritual Archives', in which the contemplative is described as reaching identification of self with the deity, assimilating the divine personage's qualities?

Is Falola writing as a believer in the existence of Eshu rather than a describer of a purely imaginative encounter?

Should that essay not be seen as a blend of Yoruba Orisa theology-discourse from the perspective of belief in a spiritual system- and scholarly analysis contextualizing such identification in relation to other bodies of knowledge?

A related kind of navigation is also beautifully developed in Falola's  In Praise of Greatness, in terms of an imaginative rendition of death as transition, not cessation of being, with the author picturing himself as a journeyer between terrestrial and post-terrestrial existence, bringing messages to those on earth in the form of the theatrical messengers from the beyond inadequately characterized as 'masquerades'.

                                                                                  

                                                                                   

                                                                                                   Isola, Ologbojo Baba Egun, oil on canvas, Moses Ogunleye

                                                       Falola as Inter-Dimensional Traveler, as Spirit Messenger

Having reached a point where he can affirm his mortality, using it as an imaginative device, the writer declares 

"In an unusual manner, the poet can self-transmogrify to perform adulation of himself as an extraterrestrial object, an animal, an ìrókò or baobab tree, or as an ará ọ̀run (the dead). I want to close this book by writing from “Heaven.” This is not a play, but a poetic reality in which one can assume that the author is in the afterlife and speaking from heaven.

...

In speaking from my grave... I am now the masquerade myself, changing my being,ready to give you closing lessons, in poetic admonitions, in prayers, in warnings, and in advice" ( 954 and 956).

May the wise one live very long.

A central part of the concept of the humanities professorship in the German model, according to one view, was the idea of the professor as a person professing some unique organisation and interpretation of knowledge, a world view, more or less, with the profs discipline as the central organising principle. 

Philosophers, specifically in Western philosophy, with its pride in logic, from Plato's Socrates to Hegel, have created great systems, not all of which guiding beliefs are thoroughly analysed. But those beliefs are core to the passion that fires their work. 

Socrates' arguments on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Apology are far from exhaustive, looking to me inadequate to sustain his readiness to face death, suggesting a conviction not anchored on the logic he presented, a belief in immortality perhaps arising more from the intuitive and revelatory encounters credited to him, and the logical analysis perhaps an effort to describe intuition in terms of logic, an unsuccessful  effort in my view in this case, with the power of the story emerging from this tension.

To what degree is this a counsel of perfection or a basic fact -"The quality of analysis or critical contextualization of one's beliefs represents the quality of one's scholarship"?

"There is nothing that you and I can do to prevent people from holding their beliefs—what we can do is to let them conform to academic practices. And I think we should also understand that African spaces will create semi-autonomous understanding of what this academy is about."- Toyin Falola

Can M.H. Abrams' Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, on Romanticism as the baptizing of religious ideas  into Western philosophy, help assess Falola's statement on  culturally contingent formations of the academy?

At what point does such autonomy become empowering of the ability to create critical knowledge and at what point does it become disempowering of that ability?

On Tue, 7 May 2019 at 14:59, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

'To repeat, those beliefs do not impact my own work, so that my contributions are not misread.

TF'

I wonder what beliefs exactly Falola is referring to in the context of this discussion of relationships between belief, critical analysis and the academy, and  how factual is his claim of his beliefs, perhaps in certain Yoruba religious values, not impacting his work.

Are those beliefs, in whatever way they are understood to be held by him, not central to his philosophical work?

One approach to that qs could be to ook at Falola's very fine essay- 'Ritual Archives' in The Toyin Falola Reader and The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy edited by Falola and Afolayan.

A core strength of this essay is his effort to negotiate a relationship between the concept of the archive as a belief system and the archive as analytical resource.

At one or two points in the essay, he slips from the conventional scholarly stance of investigative distancing into one of empathetic identification.

What is he identifying with?

The idea of the existence of a universe partly composed of unconventional forms of sentience, also known as spirits.

He does not analyse the logic of this belief but proceeds to mine it for ideas, hence generating a tantalizing sense of suspense- does he believe, does he not believe, why is he placing this in an essay brimming with careful analysis- are some of the qs this strategy may open up.

Great scholarship is necessarily infused with passion. How that passion is expressed may differ in various cases. 

Henry Oldmeadow's "C.G. Jung and Mircea Eliade: " Priests Without Surplices"? Reflections on the Place of Myth, Religion and Science in their Work" provokes a rethinking of these great scholars as believers of a kind, believers outside conventional creeds but identifying with something beyond the reduction of the world of knowledge to the dissective capacities of the intellect.

Did Abiola Irele believe in the truth of the metaphysics of Negritude, presented with such power in texts like "What is Negritude"? in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology?

He presents Negritude as an account of the views of Senghor, particularly, and others, but if he did not share some, perhaps even a depth of identification with the vision, even if not with all the details of Negritude, could his exposition be so powerful?

Falola describes himself in an interview as undergoing a contemplative process under the direction of a guide in Asian contemplative practices that helped him overcome the trauma of losing the manuscript of a book he was working on, if I recall that account clearly enough.

Does that experience contribute to his rich depiction of a contemplative process centred in the Yoruba deity Eshu in 'Ritual Archives', in which the contemplative is described as reaching identification of self with the deity, assimilating the divine personage's qualities?

Is Falola writing as a believer in the existence of Eshu rather than a describer of a purely imaginative encounter?

Should that essay not be seen as a blend of Yoruba Orisa theology-discourse from the perspective of belief in a spiritual system- and scholarly analysis contextualizing such identification in relation to other bodies of knowledge?

A related kind of navigation is also beautifully developed in Falola's  In Praise of Greatness, in terms of an imaginative rendition of death as transition, not cessation of being, with the author picturing himself as a journeyer between terrestrial and post-terrestrial existence, bringing messages to those on earth in the form of the theatrical messengers from the beyond inadequately characterized as 'masquerades'.

                                                                                  

                                                                                   

                                                                                                   Isola, Ologbojo Baba Egun, oil on canvas, Moses Ogunleye

                                                       Falola as Inter-Dimensional Traveler, as Spirit Messenger

Having reached a point where he can affirm his mortality, using it as an imaginative device, the writer declares 

"In an unusual manner, the poet can self-transmogrify to perform adulation of himself as an extraterrestrial object, an animal, an ìrókò or baobab tree, or as an ará ọ̀run (the dead). I want to close this book by writing from “Heaven.” This is not a play, but a poetic reality in which one can assume that the author is in the afterlife and speaking from heaven.

...

In speaking from my grave... I am now the masquerade myself, changing my being,ready to give you closing lessons, in poetic admonitions, in prayers, in warnings, and in advice" ( 954 and 956).

May the wise one live very long.

A central part of the concept of the humanities professorship in the German model, according to one view, was the idea of the professor as a person professing some unique organisation and interpretation of knowledge, a world view, more or less, with the profs discipline as the central organising principle. 

Philosophers, specifically in Western philosophy, with its pride in logic, from Plato's Socrates to Hegel, have created great systems, not all of which guiding beliefs are thoroughly analysed. But those beliefs are core to the passion that fires their work. 

Socrates' arguments on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Apology are far from exhaustive, looking to me inadequate to sustain his readiness to face death, suggesting a conviction not anchored on the logic he presented, a belief in immortality perhaps arising more from the intuitive and revelatory encounters credited to him, and the logical analysis perhaps an effort to describe intuition in terms of logic, an unsuccessful  effort in my view in this case, with the power of the story emerging from this tension.

To what degree is this a counsel of perfection or a basic fact -"The quality of analysis or critical contextualization of one's beliefs represents the quality of one's scholarship"?

"There is nothing that you and I can do to prevent people from holding their beliefs—what we can do is to let them conform to academic practices. And I think we should also understand that African spaces will create semi-autonomous understanding of what this academy is about."- Toyin Falola

Can M.H. Abrams' Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, on Romanticism as the baptizing of religious ideas  into Western philosophy, help assess Falola's statement on  culturally contingent formations of the academy?

At what point does such autonomy become empowering of the ability to create critical knowledge and at what point does it become disempowering of that ability?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CABCvZkt9eDTLqeFu164S%3Dc_ZfZbn-o1a7kWkX%3D8ZdBCkaw1sKw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CABCvZkt9eDTLqeFu164S%3Dc_ZfZbn-o1a7kWkX%3D8ZdBCkaw1sKw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Okechukwu Ukaga]

Moses, my broda:

Perhaps you are not aware, but the military and intelligence services of some other countries (including the USA, USSR/Russia, and even Nazi Germany) have at one time or the other also practiced some of what Nwolise is asking the Nigerian Military to try here. So I would not say Nigeria is doomed just because of his suggestions and/or the following applause. The problem with Nigeria (as Chinua Achebe famously wrote many years ago and Wole Soyinka recently reiterated a a BBC interview) is poor/bad/ineffective leadership, not second or third order issues. 

Now, on a different but related issue, what do you make of the reported negotiation between the federal government and Miyetti Allah? Any historical context? Any insights regarding potential alternative(s) to the current approach? 

Regards,

Okey 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPo%3Dr6BunDry%2BPQ00t4bwFDt%2Bxk6Od8TNV6HoYOPzPrxzQ%40mail.gmail.com.

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Okechukwu Ukaga, MBA, PhD
Executive Director and Extension Professor

University of Minnesota Extension Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnership

Website: www.rsdp.umn.edu  Office: 507-536-6313; Cell: 218-341-6029  

Book Review Editor, Environment, Development and Sustainability (www.springer.com/10668),

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach" -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[Chielozona Eze]

"Perhaps you are not aware, but the military and intelligence services of some other countries (including the USA, USSR/Russia, and even Nazi Germany) have at one time or the other also practiced some of what Nwolise is asking the Nigerian Military to try here"- Okechucku Ukaga.

Interesting. Could you, please, provide evidence? Or are you seeking to sneak in ideas plucked from the air?

Chielozona

Chielozona Eze

Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze

www.Chielozona.com

My latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAJg%3Dv9HZdaZhkOHq02XN%2BOh6opCLZh%3DJOLh08Gq1KCbduARhag%40mail.gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

I thought I aline noticed this anomaly.  Why a modern army can invite a lecturer to lecture on how ghosts can gather intelligence beats me hollow.  Who is behind such invitations and is still holding on to his commission?

How do ghosts submit their intelligence to the living?  If the events had been presented on stage as drama I would have broken into rib tickling laughter for its cathartic effect. But the reality is too serious not be shocking.

And we are wondering why it took so long for the armed forces to dispose of the rag tag Boko Haram!

OAA.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Date: 07/05/2019 12:12 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Colleagues and friends,

Setting aside for the moment the bizarre atmospherics of Professor Nwolise's oeuvre, have we pause to consider the implications of what Okey Iheduru posted from eye-witness knowledge? He told us that in this age of heightened insecurity and multiple threats to the sovereignty of Nigeria, Professor Nwolise makes regular lecturing appearances at the only postgraduate institution of the Nigerian armed forces, the National Defense College, urging army colonels and generals and their equivalents in other branches of the armed forces to gather military intelligence through ghosts and spirits and, more disturbingly, that he receives a "rapturous" applause and positive reception each time he presents this dangerous nonsense to the students. Wow, just wow. And we wonder why the Nigerian armed forces cannot understand the security threats facing the country, let alone tackling them. And some say I'm exaggerating when I say the country is doomed.

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 9:03 PM Ashafa Abdullahi <abas...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGzQHao2WLVyYvCAv52OXW%2Bg8wSqQmsOm1iYQ%3DhxZMunBh69%2Bg%40mail.gmail.com.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

I second Brother Chielozona. Okey Ugaga, please give us an example of a modern army that gathers/gathered intelligence from ghosts and spirits. I watch a lot of crime detective stories and I know that some police investigators consulted psychics in the course of murder or missing person investigations. It's not something they do as part of official practice and in all my years of watching detective shows, I've seen no single instance in which the crime was solved through psychic consultation. But more relevant to our discussion, I've never heard of any modern army emplying the services of ghosts and spirits for intelligence gathering. I want to be educated, so I, like Chielo, await your response.

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[Okechukwu Ukaga]

Chielozona Eze, this is not my area of interest, study or practice. And I am in fact averse to such thinking and practice especially as they relate to occultism, and other things that are inconsistent with my personal compass. Nevertheless, I am aware of and only wanted to mention the fact that it is not unusual for military to explore the paranormal. See for instance:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2017/05/08/americas-military-paranormal-science-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it/#593c94855206

" 

 "

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 1:01 PM Chielozona Eze <chi...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

On using psychic powers in intelligence sourcing, during a small gathering on the sidelines of a conference in Oxford university where I was present, a Caucasian [ apologies to Kenneth harrow]  police officer informed us that the police in England has used psychics in intelligence gathering with good results.

A psychic is a person who can gain information without using  conventional channels.

The range of means of access to knowledge available to people significantly exceeds the conventional.

It is possible to project consciousness from one's physical location to another in a different dimension and meet others there in conclave. One could use the energy field of a tree or forest or grove to achieve that goal, a procedure similar to the African belief that witches meet in trees. On completing one's interactions in that dimension, one could return in consciousness to where one's body is located.

It is possible to gain knowledge by communicating with the intelligence of a tree.

It is possible to accurately predict the future without using any logical tools apart from intuition.

These are experiences I have had.

The first two of these occurrences were enabled for me by the simple act of meditating on the beauty of trees, trying to penetrate to their essence. 

My progress was facilitated by the fact that I was conducting my exploration in Benin-City, where there is a culture of keeping sacred trees inviolate across the city, such trees often demonstrating a powerful, consciousnesses enhancing energy field around them. 

The traditional African approach of relating with those non-human, non-animal intelligence is through ritual.

Mine was through meditation and telepathy.

It is possible to gain knowledge with the help of personages who are not visible but whose presence is  felt with the keenness of sensing that a person is standing by your side. It was such experiences that led me back to my studies in the Yoruba Ifa system of knowledge after i had become a Born Again Christian and burnt all my extensive library of non-Christian religious texts.

On going to the University of Kent in England, where my studies in Ifa commenced in full force under the inspiration of lecturers there, whenever I would be working on Ifa, even in the computer room, I would sense a presence  by my side, indicting to me that the invisible intelligences associated with the system were with me.

Spiritual systems often work if you are ready to apply yourself. I have had to go on break for years from heavy spiritual work bcs of the challenges of coping with the partnerships that ensue and the enhancement of perception they enable.

How critically one manages these forms of exposure makes all the difference.

My scepticism about much of the supernturalistic orientations I  come across in Nigeria derives from my personal experience of  occult techniques and spiritual realities, experiences  which motivate me to appreciate the relative value of such aspects of existence, appreciating the spiritual as needing complementation by conventional forms of knowing and certainly not superseding the conventional, both working best in harmony. 

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DBBPR08MB4824024BF184906AEB8F46BAA6310%40DBBPR08MB4824.eurprd08.prod.outlook.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/12/DOJ-police-psychics/

Read the Justice Department's guide to using psychics in police investigations • MuckRock Police psychics have so saturated popular culture that the concept borders on the cliche. There was a time, however, when the Department of Justice took the matter very seriously - not only were instances reported of the police using psychics, there were studies on the matter, and even guidance issued by the DOJ. www.muckrock.com

I have heard of  the   FBI using psychics but not the military.

The first time I heard of psychics and the FBI was in terms of the death of a Washington

intern  named Chandra Levy. CNN alluded to this matter  in a Dec. 2007 article

 entitled "Visions of death. Can psychics see what detectives cannot."

In that article they point to  Kathlyn Rhea a psychic investigator in California

with some successes. One critic points to numerous dead end cases.

But this is not to endorse the professor. He can't even spell.

What about the CIA and psychics?  I did a quick check and found out about  the Stargate project that built on a secret US army unit established   a 20 million dollar project in the 1970s to investigate potential psychic phenomena including extrasensory perception.

GE

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"But this is not to endorse the professor. He can't even spell.

What about the CIA and psychics?  I did a quick check and found out about

  the Stargate project that built on a secret US army unit established  

 a 20 million dollar project in the 1970s to investigate potential

psychic phenomena including extrasensory perception."

Well I accused the professor of not knowing how to spell,  and his spiritual

army  merged two of my sentences into one unintelligible run-on sentence.

Revenge.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

---

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Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 2:57 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

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[Chielozona Eze]

Brother Okechukwu,

Thanks for providing proofs of the United States’ “investigation into extrasensory perception.” Of course, every scientific community has carried out numerous investigations into nearly everything. Investigations or experiments are the basis for any scientific claim. But then, moving from investigations to assertions is a whole new ball game. Professor Nwolise does not just urge the “military to explore the paranormal” as you generously interpreted; he is making assertions, dubious assertions. If he had encouraged his listeners to question every official truth, it would be fine with me. His listeners would someday also question his own truth.

And that takes me to brother Oluwatoyin, who gave us a definition of a psychic: “a person who can gain information without using conventional channels.” True enough, he provides evidence from his experience, his effort to penetrate the essence of trees: “by a simple act of meditating on the beauty of trees.” Honestly, I admire Oluwatoyin’s sincere effort to explain his understanding of “psychic powers” that is, the powers of the mind. He’s at least transparent enough to reveal his secret: meditation. Easy enough. We can debate about the true nature of what he encountered in his mediation. The truth is that the mind (psyche) is a universe of its own. It’s capable of inventing many things. Can we really qualify whatever it has invented as knowledge? Well, not until it has been compared with what other minds have invented. Until then it remains an individual’s conjecture/journey, pretty much like that of Nancy Reagan’s dalliance with seance and astrology.

My experience with meditation has led me to believe that if you concentrate hard enough on anything (a worm, a carcass, a tree, darkness, etc.) you’ll start seeing double. “If you stare into the abyss,” Nietzsche says, “the abyss stares back at you.”

Chielozona

Chielozona Eze

Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze

www.Chielozona.com

My latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Gloria,

The CIA investigated ESP and other mind control technics and claims and even experimented with using psychedelic drugs to induce that effect. They were acting on claims that those techniques work to extract information from prisoners of war, make people do things they would not normally do, and that the Soviets were using them. The CIA poured millions of dollars into the investigation over several years, found the claims to be bogus, and abandoned the entire research/investigation. They never actually used it since they couldn't prove its veracity. ESP and claims about mind control and mind altering with or without drugs are not the same as using "ghosts and spirits" but even if they were, why are we dignifying something that was investigated with millions of dollars and found to be useless and bogus? Why is the Nigerian military inviting someone who peddles that kind of discredited crap to lecture our generals, to urge them to use the discredited nonsense of using ghosts and spirits for military intelligence gathering?

As I stated, I know of no police case in the US that has ever been solved with psychic consultation. Your own story that you posted says as much.

Let's not dignify tragic academic nonsense. I see a case of pandering here. I abhor pandering. I don't even want people to pander to me. If you catch me peddling BS, call me out directly on it. Especially if the BS is a dangerous one that may harm the vital work of the military in a country beset by several threats to her sovereignty.

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[Okechukwu Ukaga]

Moses, I think you will agree that the US Army is as modern as it gets. I also think you will agree that Forbes is a credible source of information. So here is a story about the US military excerpted from the link I provided earlier:

“ Specifically, massive and somewhat successful research was done into the area known as remote viewing. That's where trained and talented personnel try to see what is happening in a location elsewhere in the world using only their mind to do so.

This work sometimes edged into precognition or receiving visions of events before they actually occur. Notably, via extrasensory perception, one person gained knowledge that a senior military officer would be kidnapped by European terrorists. The actual group was the anti-NATO organization known as The Red Brigades. When the abduction happened, remote viewers were brought in to try to locate the kidnappers and the officer. Of course, that resulted in derision from seasoned commanders. "Nobody believes in this crap," said one colonel. Eventually, curiosity helped persuade the brass, according to remote viewer Dale Graff who was brought in to help. He described one officer in the following way:

Here was a commander who knew his stuff [...] Great men don't become great leaders by being narrow-minded. He wanted knowledge, and I had the information. He was genuinely interested in what I had to say.

In the end, with the help of the psyops personnel, the hostage was found alive. That's just one successful episode in the story. There are many others.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2017/05/08/americas-military-paranormal-science-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it/#53518fe65206

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[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

You are just as bad as the professor. He cannot stand back and  engage in  a cool headed analysis-  but  neither can you, apparently.. How about engaging in some serious research into the U.S Stargate project and letting us know the outcome of such an  investigation? Are scholars not supposed to

have an open investigative mind in their research? 

The issue here is this: 

Have the US  FBI and CIA etc ever used psychics? Yes or no?

Whether the outcomes  were successful or not is not the issue.

I have no vested interest in this discussion but I remember shaking my head years ago

when the Chanda Levy case surfaced. The issue about the FBI use of psychics was

openly discussed then. 

 Now as for your man at the NDA, well that is another story for another day.

He does not have much credibility,  given the way he approached the subject.

 I never said that he did - so don't put words in my mouth, so to speak.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 5:29 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPq9UqprQfiB%2B5KSG7dEK%2B%3Dxq6%2Bz00zKXs6rcobwHSoE3g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Toyin Falola]

I hope that many of you have also heard, in some Christian circles, that Obama practiced occultism in the White House!

The occult is a reality in many societies, most especially in Africa.

As Toyin Adepoju does, there is the academic side, but there is also the practical side.

The Marabout, the Pastor and the Babalawo are using different media.

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

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Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

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http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

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Read the Justice Department's guide to using psychics in police investigations • MuckRock Police psychics have so saturated popular culture that the concept borders on the cliche. There was a time, however, when the Department of Justice took the matter very seriously - not only were instances reported of the police using psychics, there were studies on the matter, and even guidance issued by the DOJ.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Clarification on Mysticism

What is Mysticism?

Mysticism may be understood as the theory and practice  of the quest for perception of or unity with the essence of existence.

It is centred in the idea of  the awareness of the essence of phenomena beyond the limitations of  conventional means of knowing, such as the intellect or the senses, even though such means may contribute to the overarching encounter.

At its most distinctive, it involves the sense of the unity of  the perceiving subject and what they perceive. This unity may be demonstrated in relation to discrete phenomena or to existence as a whole. 

Such perceptions  may also involve what is understood as a grasp of the essence of phenomena without unity of self with the  object of perception.

On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 09:31, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Chielozona,   but the scholarly discourse  on meditation, including scientific studies, has gone well beyond this level-

My experience with meditation has led me to believe that if you concentrate hard enough on anything (a worm, a carcass, a tree, darkness, etc.[ i love the disparateness of this list]) you’ll start seeing double. “If you stare into the abyss,” Nietzsche says, “the abyss stares back at you.”

Scholarship in religion, psychology and science has demonstrated conclusively  that meditation does lead to expansive sensitivities to reality. 

These outcomes range from peace of mind to insights into life issues to creative inspiration in any kind of cognitive or artistic endeavor to 

mystical experience, the sense of perception of or unity with the essence of existence, or more tangentially, between the perceiving subject and what they perceive.

The scholarly, empirical and comparative analysis and systematization of mystical experience reached a pioneering landmark with William James's philosophical/psychological Varieties of Mystical Experience and continues today in various branches of knowledge, from neuroscientific studies of the behavior of the brain during meditation to studies of relationships between various mystical ideational cultures.

Wikipedia, which often contains rich scholarly references undergirding its presentations, is likely to be a good place to begin entry into scholarly study of meditation and mysticism.

This assertion by Chielozona, however, is fundamental in critical exploration of any kind of subjectivity and is central to studies of meditation and mysticism-  

"We can debate about the true nature of what he encountered in his meditation. The truth is that the mind (psyche) is a universe of its own. It’s capable of inventing many things. Can we really qualify whatever it has invented as knowledge? Well, not until it has been compared with what other minds have invented. Until then it remains an individual’s conjecture/journey"

The question remains, however, what is the relationship between mental invention and mental perception? Is this interface not the core of creativity?  

thanks

toyin 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/C9D43896-9D26-4CB3-9B30-FA8FB60DF2E7%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Thanks, Chielozona,   but the scholarly discourse  on meditation, including scientific studies, has gone well beyond this level-

My experience with meditation has led me to believe that if you concentrate hard enough on anything (a worm, a carcass, a tree, darkness, etc.[ i love the disparateness of this list]) you’ll start seeing double. “If you stare into the abyss,” Nietzsche says, “the abyss stares back at you.”

Scholarship in religion, psychology and science has demonstrated conclusively  that meditation does lead to expansive sensitivities to reality. 

These outcomes range from peace of mind to insights into life issues to creative inspiration in any kind of cognitive or artistic endeavor to 

mystical experience, the sense of perception of or unity with the essence of existence, or more tangentially, between the perceiving subject and what they perceive.

The scholarly, empirical and comparative analysis and systematization of mystical experience reached a pioneering landmark with William James's philosophical/psychological Varieties of Mystical Experience and continues today in various branches of knowledge, from neuroscientific studies of the behavior of the brain during meditation to studies of relationships between various mystical ideational cultures.

Wikipedia, which often contains rich scholarly references undergirding its presentations, is likely to be a good place to begin entry into scholarly study of meditation and mysticism.

This assertion by Chielozona, however, is fundamental in critical exploration of any kind of subjectivity and is central to studies of meditation and mysticism-  

"We can debate about the true nature of what he encountered in his meditation. The truth is that the mind (psyche) is a universe of its own. It’s capable of inventing many things. Can we really qualify whatever it has invented as knowledge? Well, not until it has been compared with what other minds have invented. Until then it remains an individual’s conjecture/journey"

The question remains, however, what is the relationship between mental invention and mental perception? Is this interface not the core of creativity?  

thanks

toyin 

On Wed, 8 May 2019 at 00:43, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/C9D43896-9D26-4CB3-9B30-FA8FB60DF2E7%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga TF,

Yes, but the difference, a big one, is that Toyin Adepoju has never and will never state with any degree of certitude let alone a hint of finality that, 1) these paranormal, transcendental, astral, and spiritual pursuits are factual beyond simply claiming them to be his own personal truths; and 2) he has never and would never equate them to the science-based technology of the TV remote control or other PROVEN, tangible, verifiable techniques and operations of the physical world.

Even the academic field of psychoanalysis, which deals in large part with the realm of the mind, has its own methods and rules that allow for scrutiny, academy skepticism, verifiability, and peer review and does not simply make wild claims of certitude and facticity without evidence or rigorous logical and analytical demonstration. 

That is Nwolise's offense which, crucially, differentiates him from Toyin Adepoju, who takes an academic, detached, and analytical approach and even when he gets personal is honest enough not to extrapolate that experience beyond his personal spiritual journey, and not to posit the experience as a "factual" proven universal phenomenon on par with the demonstrated and demonstrable logics and technics of science and technology.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/C9D43896-9D26-4CB3-9B30-FA8FB60DF2E7%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Okey Ukaga,

Let us examine the story you posted. You have one psychic's word/claim as the basis of the story. One, you're inviting me and others to uncritically accept the words of that psychic about what he claimed he did for the army. We don't even have corroborating accounts from a single member of the army. Two, so if I went to the NYT and claimed that I helped solve a case and got them to publish my claim without any other corroborating account, you would just take my word for it? And even if I'm a psychic, a member of a tribe of people known as BS artists? Sorry, we historians don't work that way. Three, even the psychic in your story says that his claims were met with derision and ridicule from the military and that only one commander listened to him. I have read too many false claims, false testimonies, and false confessions, and I have read too many egomaniacal claims of extraordinary, supernatural feats to take the word of a lone psychic seriously. Even if for the sake of argument, we take his word and believe the story, how does that constitute the US military adopting or using psychics for intelligence gathering? By the particulars of the story, a psychic approaches the military claiming he can help. He is met with derision. One commander listens to him and he helps the commander locate what they were looking for. Even if true, would that not be an isolated, individual story of an army commander and his psychic sidekick? Was the said psychic invited to West Point and the US War College to lecture generals on the use of spirits and ghosts and other paranormal acts in intelligence gathering? 

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Gloria,

Gloria, you can raise a straw man and proceed to knock it down if it tickles your fancy. I stated in my response to Okey Ukaga that I know of many instances where investigators (both local police and FBI) consulted psychics in their investigations of crimes. They are not a military organization engaged in military intelligence gathering, are they? In most of these cases consulting is not even the right word since it was the psychics that approached the investigators claiming to be able to help. If I'm an investigator desperate to crack a case--especially a cold case-- will I turn down the offer of help from anyone? No. I will explore it and cover all leads. So the issue comes down to whether crimes have been solved by psychics or not. Anybody can claim anything. A historian of all people should know better than to valorize the claims of people who purport to see into the realm of the unknown, predict the future, see into past events, etc. The question I posed earlier is simple and you're evading it: has any modern military, including the US military ever put ESP and other psychic techniques into operational use? Now you say it does not matter if they actually used it successfully. And of course you're silent on whether any modern military has or still uses such techniques beyond simply researching and abandoning it for lack of merit. 

Even the Nigerian police to the best of my knowledge would not look favorably on consulting "ghosts and spirits" in their investigations but here we have a Professor being applauded by generals for urging them to rely on ghosts and spirits in their military intelligence work and we are defending that crap.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN7PR01MB37300BFABC2517A538D2797CDE310%40BN7PR01MB3730.prod.exchangelabs.com.

[Femi Kolapo]

The following publications include details of some of the most rigorous tests, including by sceptical establishment scientists, applied to issues of the paranormal or supernatural that you will find anywhere. I have not read each page of all of them, though. From the little I have read, I feel confident to conclude that you will encounter similar phenomenon as Nwolise was said to have described in his inaugrual adress and more. Watson and Rhine were top scientists. Some of the reported experiments in the Secret Life of Plants are simply mind-boggling, but they won't be to my relatives in the village who do not subscribe to the idea that all there is is NATURE and matter.

those who are interested should first read about Robert Pavlita's experiments and demonstrations  - about 5 minutes reading here: https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psychotronicweapons05.htm

A First-Hand Look at Psychotronic Generators In 1973, during the First International Conference on Psychotronic Research, I met Robert Pavlita a most enigmatic man. This controversial Czech inventor is the designer of the so-called "psychotronic generator," a device for storing and applying "biological energy."I don't speak Czech, but with the help of a translator we had a long conversation, after which he demonstrated one of his ... www.bibliotecapleyades.net

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, PSI Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain-Abacus (1977).

Lyall Watson - Supernature . A Natural History of the supernatural (1973)

J.B. Rhine,  Extra-sensory perception-Boston Society for Psychic Research (1934)

Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird,  The Secret Life of Plants a Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man (1989)

The more important point for Nigeria, I believe though, is to hold these two worldviews and knowledge systems apart.

They must be held separate while we first master and exploit the tremendous benefits that the naturalistic, rational world of modern science affords.  Since it deals with the natural material world of regular, measurable, predictable forces subject to the replicable law of science.

natural science works and has been very productive in terms of enhancing material life and material comfort etc etc. its principles and methods applied to politics, economics, and to social organization, have led in some areas to significant socio-cultural, advancement - e.g. in advocacy for and attempt to realise human equality and human rights. 

Witchcraft and all the other things Nwolise was talking about, i.e., what otherwise we should call ESP and paranormal science, because they deal with oddities and unpredictable realities (odd occurrences)  that humans and scientific reasoning cannot control and which the law of science cannot handle, should not be dismissed. Hold it separate, encourage those who are interested in it to continue to investigate it and exploit it as safely as possible for the good of society, if they are able to fathom it. The USSR, US and some European countries during the Cold War, for purposes of control and power, supported research into this sphere of knowledge and in all probability, the rival world powers continue to investigate it.  Prof. Nwolise and others like him should first reduce their esoteric knowledge to something more tangible and usable and observable and testable, even if they are the only one that can replicate the oddities, as it seems to be the case in many instances in the Tompkin book above. The context in which he is reported to be teaching it when all he has are assertions subverts rationalistic science and could compromise the military.

/Femi Kolapo

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 2:16 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPqhctLZger5YEiqvY9unYZMKVjUcE9oEF7Yy%2BhEMiHaJw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

"Prof. Nwolise and others like him should first reduce their esoteric knowledge to something more tangible and usable and observable and testable, even if they are the only one that can replicate the oddities, as it seems to be the case in many instances in the Tompkin book above. The context in which he is reported to be teaching it when all he has are assertions subverts rationalistic science and could compromise the military."

----Femi Kolapo

That is all we're saying. You cannot propagate untested, unverified, unproven, and unreplicable claims as assertions of fact and certitude and as the equivalent of verified and replicable scientific principles through academic mediums and forums, and recommending these dubious claims for operational use to senior military officers.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/YQXPR01MB32700FB2BB4321D5DA53A06CBF310%40YQXPR01MB3270.CANPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

 

With respect to the Nigerian army, are we not giving this Professor too much credit than he deserves? If I were Nwolise, I would now be so happy that people are taking me so seriously that I have even attained a global stature! We have now giving him a stature that he previously does not have!! I spent have a day trying to know him and his work!!!

 

All what we have are his statements, not the outcome of his statements. That he gives lectures and people clap for him does not translate into a project by the Nigerian army to convert witches into drones to fly in the middle of the night to the Sambisa forest. In any case, those soldiers already have charms and amulets in their pockets. The Marabouts are already there, and they don’t need Nwolise to tell them that you need charms to support ammunition.

 

I am interested in what the Professor said as an epistemology…a way of thinking. We cannot be dismissive of the mode and ways of knowing—to do so it to undercut knowledge itself.  If the professor has been saying that many people believe that witches can land in Austin to break my legs, I won’t have any issue with it as this is “faith”, not science. People have described God to me, but I won’t ask them for evidence.

 

Here is why we need to move in a different direction. When I sought to understand the Professor further, someone told me that he believes in occultism. This is none of my business. It is his right to join any association of his choice, as people join secret confraternities. Thus, I cannot ask him not to propagate his occultism and recruit additional members which might be what he is doing.  Or he could set up an Occult School, just as Adeboye has a Bible College different from the University.

 

I very much doubt that we can stop his occult beliefs, if he truly has them, not to be part of his life and conversation, just as we cannot stop a Pentecostalist from his faith. The deeper he is into the practice, the more he comes into the open. And that he makes it part of his Inaugural Lecture means that he is not as dumb as we think. It may sound silly but this may be his own mission, to enhance the credibility of occultism.

 

I wish I could be forwarding all our stuff to him but I don’t have his contact so that he can respond.

 

This is a very good debate to have, and we must come to a full understanding of what the Professor represents. In the early years of my introduction to Toyin Adepoju, the person who sent his Internet stuff to me told me that he is eccentric and full of maniac ideas. I was later to discover that Toyin Adepoju has the mind of a Nobel Laurette!

 

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>

Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 5:49 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

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[Moses Ochonu]

“If the professor has been saying that many people believe that witches can land in Austin to break my legs, I won’t have any issue with it as this is “faith”, not science.”

Oga TF,

I would not have a problem with the professor either if that was what he said. Nothing controversial there. But that is not what he is saying. He is saying that such beliefs are factual and analogous to the tested and verified principles of science and technology. For this claim, he has nothing but a mere assertion probably derived from his occult belief system (thanks for that information).

I don’t care for Adepoju’s esoteric indulgences and pursuits. Not my cup of tea. But I find his rigorous analysis of it and it’s possible relationship with established scientific and social scientific phenomena quite interesting and intriguing. I actually love unconventional and controversial ideas and arguments. But if they are coming from a self-identified academic and /or are propagated through academic mediums they have to obey the rules and protocols of academic practice.

You cannot be an academic and insist on being taken seriously when you pass off personal belief or faith as a factual equivalent of scientific principles and technologies.

Finally, you are right that the tragedy of his dalliance with the Nigerian military is that he was preaching to the proverbial choir, to people who are already steeped in paranormal agency and are thus primed to lap up Nwolise’s affirmation of their beliefs in the guise of an academic lecture. I made this exact point to a friend two days ago. In that sense, yes, Nwolise is a clever academic entrepreneur.

Sent from my iPhone

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/9429D841-F8C6-41BE-A4ED-733C43EF1123%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

 

You need to broaden the net wider than Nwolise’s. As you read more Inaugurals coming out of Nigeria, you will see that faith is embedded in many of them. Pages upon pages in those lectures are about how God has brought them where they are. Jesus is mentioned hundred times more than Nwolise’s witches. And you cannot deny that Jesus cannot break your legs in Nashville!

 

Where you and I can never agree is to define the academy as “global” with rules, protocols and conventions that should apply to China, Brazil, Uganda, US, etc. I think the notion of a “global academy” is problematic.  

 

What I want you and I to do is to define the African academy within its evolution and peculiarities, and see the protocols that can work. For instance, what they call leave and sabbatical in Nigeria is not how they are defined in the UK. And there is no sabbatical concept in the majority of American universities—here at UT-Austin, we don’t have a sabbatical. I have never had one. If you want to go on leave, remove yourself from the pay roll!

 

Academic seniority means something different in Nigeria than here where a student processes the idea of respect differently. I won’t ask a Nigerian student to go to Ibadan and call his professor by first name.

 

In Nigeria, Professor Emeritus is now a prestige title, appointed by Senate. At Yale, all Emeriti have just one office. Here in Austin, an Emeritus has no office, not even a place to park his car. It simply means “you once worked here and you can keep your title!” In Nigeria, it means prestige, living on campus, having an office, supervising students, etc.

 

Moses, we have to join our colleagues in Africa to discuss what the African Academy means as it evolves. In its modern variant and in the context of this discussion, that academy does not have its roots in Africa. It is evolving in the context, first of colonialism, and second, of the disorderly postcolonial. The witches have not vacated those campuses, as well as patriarchy and other things that those in the West complain about.

 

May be as we discuss and evaluate the emergence of an African academy, it may then mean that faith can be accepted as one of its conventions.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/59A0A279-5FC3-4BFB-8578-245AFA101F3F%40gmail.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

 Although I  entered this discussion, initially, on the issue of the   FBI ,  the CIA,

 and the U.S. Stargate program, let me now quote one of the 20th century's great  philosophers of science,

 Paul Feyerabend, who says this about Voodoo in Against Method (2010):

"Nobody knows it, everybody uses it as a paradigm of backwardness and confusion. And yet Voodoo has a firm though still not

sufficiently understood material basis, and a study of its manifestations can be used to enrich, and perhaps

even to revise our knowledge of physiology" (Feyerabend  p.30). He precedes  this comment by stating

 that in many cases  theories "are abandoned before they had an opportunity to show their virtues." Some of these "may

 appear strange and  nonsensical only because the information they contain is either not known or is distorted by

 philologists or anthropologists unfamiliar with the simplest physical, medical or astronomical knowledge"

 (Feyerabend p.29).

The problem with Nwolise  is that he jumped the gun and came to his conclusion before the research was actually done.

He then proceeded to be both judge and jury all at once. He just couldn't step back,  and approached  the subject as a believer -

and not as an  investigator into the phenomenon. In fairness to him I have to say that to study Voodoo, effectively, one

may need a multidisciplinary teams of  botanists, biochemists, hypnotherapists, psychologists, theologians and physicists.

In the end the result may prove negative -  or otherwise.  Hostile researchers who may directly or indirectly contaminate or

 falsify research outcomes to prove the theory wrong, will have to be excluded, and so, too, stakeholders,  

unbridled supporters and "believers" who may try to  prove the opposite.

GE

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 3:20 AM

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPpba%3DcZkz%2BmSrnS_H3R0XHkcX61ypehdiKKg0KYTadAxA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Harrow, Kenneth]

hi moses, toyin,

i think there are at least two or three things at stake in this. the academy is one, and it differs not only between countries but also regions. our midwest universities are radically different from ivies, in the u.s., for instance. secondly, there are disciplines, with their protocols. a claim about magical powers should not be viewed as a regional point of view when the claim abuts the laws of physics. physics does not claim it knows everything, or even human limits. but it has protocols that are reasonable, and universal.

do you want to take an airplane that works on a prayer? not a prayer.

lastly there are discourses, where for instance a theological discourse from within the perspective of a faith community will differ radically from that in other communities, like a political community, for instance.

this flap over nwolise mixes up the three. i don't mind people within a faith community making their claims, and respectful discussions over witchcraft or magical powers or spiritualism etc, can be held, even within the scholarly community.

but when a discourse appropriate, say, to the historical disciplines become larded with those of a faith community, naively lending the one to the other, we don't have appropriate means for discussion.

a small example. i do film criticism, not movie reviews. you would not want to publish a movie review under the heading of film criticism. that is true for probably all disciplines.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 8:21:58 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/AADFBED6-B809-4F36-80C5-A36220403C19%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Enyimba Himself]

This is another comic review for lazy people who cannot differ fiction from reality.

Did we not almost lose a battalion in Biafra simply because of some greedy native

doctors who sold charms to Biafran Soldiers that made it impossible for bullets to

penetrate a Soldier.  The game changed when Nigeria brought a Maxman from America

called "Barbwire who knew how to aim and shoot.

What Biafran Generals discovered later was that the Nigerian Soldiers did not know

how to shoot guns.  They will be firing thousand shots and you can walk straight to them

and kill with hands.  That was the reason Biafra created the Buff Battalion.

Toyin, listen to me; there is nothing like witches and wizards, they only exist in the

minds of men and women suffering from untreated jaundice.

Enyimba Himself

You are not successful until your successor succeeds.

-----Original Message-----
From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, May 8, 2019 6:30 am
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

Moses:

 

[Enyimba Himself]

This is another comic review for lazy people who cannot differ fiction from reality.

Did we not almost lose a battalion in Biafra simply because of some greedy native

doctors who sold charms to Biafran Soldiers that made it impossible for bullets to

penetrate a Soldier.  The game changed when Nigeria brought a Maxman from America

called "Barbwire who knew how to aim and shoot.

What Biafran Generals discovered later was that the Nigerian Soldiers did not know

how to shoot guns.  They will be firing a thousand shots and you can walk straight to them

and kill with hands.  That was the reason Biafra created the Buff Battalion.

Toyin, listen to me; there is nothing like Charms, ghost, witches, and wizards, they only exist in the

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1157504567.3174751.1557320974993%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Harrow, Kenneth]

a footnote to my last comment on this.

sure, i don't believe in witchcraft. however, i do believe in scholarship, i.e., that all sets of beliefs that people hold are of interest for a range of reasons. from evans-pritchard's writings on the nuer till nowadays, anthropoligists have spilled tons of ink, and often written brilliantly about such beliefs. luise white's essay on kenyan beliefs on vampires etc in post war kenya, on the anxieties generated by colonialism, is classical, for good reason. and nowadays my favorite author, who writes on the occult in cameroon, is peter geschiere. we would lose enormously if we did not read these authors.

and for african film, you cannot understand nollywood without examining why the occult provided a major genre at the outset, beginning with Living in Bondage. just as you would not really understand american film without studying the genre of horror films.

and some people might believe that these images have a basis in reality. it isn't interesting to ask whether that is correct; it is interesting to ask, why do people hold these views.

and people do. a recent study in ghana showed that a large percentage not only believe in witches, but pay on a monthly basis for protection.

the beliefs are very firmly grounded in people's minds. there is no simple easy explanation for why. but if we want to discuss it seriously, i suggest we have to consult folks like geschiere who have devoted time to the question. (for instance, his recent book Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust. really a wonderful study)

or we can just chat.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: 'Enyimba Himself' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 9:09:34 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

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[Moses Ochonu]

“a claim about magical powers should not be viewed as a regional point of view when the claim abuts the laws of physics. physics does not claim it knows everything, or even human limits. but it has protocols that are reasonable, and universal.

do you want to take an airplane that works on a prayer? not a prayer.”

Ken,

Exactly, exactly. Toyin Falola lost me with his insistence that Nwolise and his ilk should be situated within a paradigm of regional academic orientations and differences. That’s relativism taken too far. That’s pandering to bad scholarship. Even more seriously, that’s the soft bigotry of low expectation on display. You cannot claim to be part of a global academy and it’s disciplinary protocols or aspire to membership in it and then produce something informed entirely by your belief and faith, insist on consecrating it with the legitimizing halo of academia, but then refuse to subject such claims to the rules of that very academia. That’s not a regional academic flavor or peculiarity. That’s bad scholarship, and if many Nigerian academics are guilty of it as Falola says then we owe it to them to first call the error by its proper name and, second, proceed to correct the guilty colleagues.

What I am seeing here is similar to the case of a Nigerian academic who writes poorly  but claims, when challenged, that what he is doing is implementing a pan-African Afrocentric, decolonizing, and epistemological agenda of rejecting the white man’s linguistic conventions and impositions.

How convenient. 

I believe in regional intellectual flavors and I am always fascinated when I attend academic events in Nigeria because what I see is sometimes a refreshing departure from what I experience in North America. However, I have never seen a situation in which academics at these events seek to circumvent disciplinary and general or universal principles of knowledge production.

Sent from my iPhone

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN8PR12MB36024F86ADFFB1D7E701C56ADA320%40BN8PR12MB3602.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"Hostile researchers who may directly or indirectly contaminate or

 falsify research outcomes to prove the theory wrong, will have to be excluded, and so, too, stakeholders,  

unbridled supporters and "believers" who may try to  prove the opposite."

Correction/ Modification

Hostile researchers who may directly or indirectly contaminate or  falsify research outcomes to prove

 the theory wrong, will have to be excluded, and so, too, stakeholders,  

unbridled supporters and "believers" who may try to  prove the opposite by unfairly  manipulating the evidence.

There is no such thing as total objectivity in science. Facts themselves are theory laden (Hanson) but

one has to be prepared to give as impartial a view as humanly possible, and not  jump to conclusions in haste.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 8:39 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

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[Chielozona Eze]

"Yes, but the difference, a big one, is that Toyin Adepoju has never and will never state with any degree of certitude let alone a hint of finality that, 1) these paranormal, transcendental, astral, and spiritual pursuits are factual beyond simply claiming them to be his own personal truths; and 2) he has never and would never equate them to the science-based technology of the TV remote control or other PROVEN, tangible, verifiable techniques and operations of the physical world."- Moses Ochonu.

Nuff said!!

Chielozona

Chielozona Eze

Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze

www.Chielozona.com

My latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPpMtaG7oRo3KWOQHPHmZc574D-NJ-Xeu6UK7RQKZwK_yQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"Toyin Adepoju has never and will never state with any degree of certitude let alone a hint of finality that....."

Really? So you guys are now dabbling in futuristic psychic adventurism! Have you  seen Toyin's future pronouncements

writings and assertions through a crystal ball?

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chielozona Eze <chi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2019 9:39 AM
To: 'Ayotunde Bewaji' via USA Africa Dialogue Series

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[Toyin Falola]

Actually, millions believe that God Himself is in charge of those planes! This is not my evidence.

 

Where we have to keep this disagreement going is the evaluation of faith and where to place it. And this is a difficult exercise.

I think there are so many people out there who actually believe that it is God Himself who is in charge of the plane.

I don’t agree with it, but I have to deal with it. It is a mode of thinking, a form of knowledge. Our secularist thinking tends to diminish its relevance and location.

 

Here is my trouble:

I have trouble with Nwolise--- a belief expressed as faith cannot be projected as scientific fact—but I want to know why, as I cannot say that he is not intelligent, as this will be arrogance on my part.

I have trouble with Moses—no form of knowledge, as a way of knowing, must be dismissed. In dismissing Nwolise, he is dismissing a form of knowledge, no matter how gullible. Gullibility drives human being, even at the highest level of government where political leaders cook human beings for charm.

 

When I went to Ambrose Ali University to give a lecture, the dominant talk was about ritual murder—the use of human beings for money. I don’t believe it, but I have to work with it as a) a knowledge system; and b) a practical reality that drives what human beings do, as in their hard work to protect me.

 

And I don’t see how the university teacher can avoid this in his conversations in and outside of the classroom. The knowledge derived from Physics is not this Ekpoma-based knowledge. I can win the Nobel in Physics and still believe, as those in Ekpoma do, that a human being can be converted into money.

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[Moses Ochonu]

“no form of knowledge, as a way of knowing, must be dismissed. In dismissing Nwolise, he is dismissing a form of knowledge, no matter how gullible.”

Oga TF,

But what Nwolise advances is not academic knowledge, which he purports it to be. It is rather a profession of a set of personal beliefs being advanced as academic knowledge. The moment he leaves his occult or church audience or community and begins to project this  before an academic audience as an academic project, he is inviting us to judge and scrutinize his claim on academic terms. That’s the reason I find your submission troubling. I think it was Kolapo who said the two systems are better kept apart instead of compared and equated as Nwolise does. Why not say I am merely expressing what people believe? We academics say that all the time, and then we go on to analyze and ask why people hold these beliefs.

The people who believe that God is in charge of the plane, are they also writing that belief in their academic papers and lectures? And are they claiming such belief to be the factual analogue of tested and verified scientific principles?

Sent from my iPhone

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[Nimi Wariboko]

Professor Falola’s recent post on this matter reminds me of Slavoj Žižek’s anecdote about Neils Bohr, the famous quantum physicist:

Surprised at seeing a horse-shoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, a fellow scientist exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief that horse-shoes kept evil spirits away, to which Bohr snapped back, ‘I don’t believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn’t believe in it.’ This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them.” (Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy Then as Farce (New York: Verso, 2009, p. 51)

 

 

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University

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[Toyin Falola]

I am enjoying this debate so much as the distinction between an academic and non-academic knowledge and their uses must lead us to a seminar that we all gather and do serious thinking. That distinction may not always hold.

 

Leading university professors are members of the Redeem Church of Christ, and they have converted their spaces to fellowship, on and off campus, and they propagate both faith and scholarship in the both spaces. Yes, I have seen them.

 

I am seeking knowledge and wisdom on this issue, and I actually don’t have an answer. If I do, I will just announce my answer.

 

Yes, people write their beliefs into their papers; they write advocacy into their papers; they start and end classes with prayers; they put sacrifices on campus, they wear amulets to the class to do exams, they pray before they answer a question; they accuse me of using witchcraft to write my books, etc. Years ago, I used to be part of the team that draw questions for WAEC, and we audit some of the papers after they are graded. I saw strange objects in some scripts, like cowries, feathers, etc. Some prayed for the graders; some put juju powder in them. In my capacity as a Supervisor, I warned grader never to penalize any student for that, as it is unethical to do. Some scared ones passed the papers to me to grade. We must seek understanding on these matters. One of these students may now be the Nwolise we are talking about!!!

 

It is the why question that we must answer.  Do you know why? I don’t.

 

And when we understand the why, we must proceed to the logistics of balancing these views with how we structure the African academy. This is a difficult work we must do.

 

Two of the governors about to begin are refusing to go to the governor’s mansion. One has a degree. He said he cannot occupy the place for a year until it is cleansed. His first degree is not at work, it is another knowledge system that he is now using.

 

A former VC of mine at Ife, on following Wande Abimbola, the Ifa man, removed many things in the VC’s lodge, including the door, saying that the place was invested by the Orisa. He gathered Pentecostalists to cleanse the place. He is even at the moment the Chair of the Council of a University. He is published widely, in the area of science. His views and that of Nwolise are not far apart. He sent me a private note that “Moses does not the world of the esoteric.” I replied him, “I think he knows!”

 

Moses, let us do the why question and answer it.

 

If you are all reading me well, I am struggling to understand because this issue has tested the limitations of my own knowledge.

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[Chielozona Eze]

Well, you're right on the "futuristic" part of the pronouncement. That doesn't detract from the truth, anyway; and the truth is that Toyin Adepoju talks authoritatively about private experiences. I have no problems with private experiences and beliefs. 

I agreed with Moses because he carefully qualified his assessment of Toyin's probable future pronouncement: "With any degree of certitude." Sure enough, Toyin can never, never with any degree of certitude ...

Chielozona

Chielozona Eze

Professor, African Literature and Cultural Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze

www.Chielozona.com

My latest book: Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB373773FC78E10CB29BE58F37DE320%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

My Dear Oga Moses:

You wrote "Anybody can claim anything. A historian of all people should know better than to valorize the claims of people who purport to see into the realm of the unknown, predict the future, see into past events, etc."

Does it mean that you can also claim or make up things? I know cultural relativism has had its critics, but it should guide what we say to colleagues and our perspectives on what may appear "abnormal" to us. And here, I am on the slopes of moral relativism, I guess!

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sent: May 8, 2019 7:20 AM

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[Moses Ochonu]

Nimi,

Hehehehe. So funny. The anecdotal analogy is apt, although I also think Falola is having fun playing the devil’s advocate.

Sent from my iPhone

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[O O]

When atheism and theism become dogmatism, they tend to become inconsistent with any non-positivistic variety of the scientific method.

Sent from my iPhone

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

TF 

You have a point there prof. I have always argued for decades in tandem with circumspect others that as subatomic level of science, to the generality of the pooulace there is not much difference between religion and science:  belief in the unverifiable work of the priesthood couched in metaphors. One metaphors of science and the other metaphors of mundane religion.

  The high priesthood demonstrate new knowledge to fellow high priesthood and the rest (you and me) must follow their agreement.  I'm talking of knowledge involved in the splitting of the atom in miles-long super collider.  You cant say they are lying because you dint have the apparatus to determine what the truth might be.  Yet we call it verifiable science.

A  consultant medical doctor student of mine once told me people thought they were God when all they did was try their best.  He was referring to situation where treatment is given to someone in critical danger.  In one situation the patient survives, in the other the patient gives up the ghost and relatives can't deal with it and think the doctor did not do enough. So I understand there are always Gray areas in many situation

I agree with you as liberal artist who is also a social scientist that uncritical cross application of the modes and methodology of one discipline for another is the main issue with Nwolise^s position.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 08/05/2019 15:10 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais  Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

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Actually, millions believe that God Himself is in charge of those planes! This is not my evidence.

 

Where we have to keep this disagreement going is the evaluation of faith and where to place it. And this is a difficult exercise.

I think there are so many people out there who actually believe that it is God Himself who is in charge of the plane.

I don’t agree with it, but I have to deal with it. It is a mode of thinking, a form of knowledge. Our secularist thinking tends to diminish its relevance and location.

 

Here is my trouble:

I have trouble with Nwolise--- a belief expressed as faith cannot be projected as scientific fact—but I want to know why, as I cannot say that he is not intelligent, as this will be arrogance on my part.

I have trouble with Moses—no form of knowledge, as a way of knowing, must be dismissed. In dismissing Nwolise, he is dismissing a form of knowledge, no matter how gullible. Gullibility drives human being, even at the highest level of government where political leaders cook human beings for charm.

 

When I went to Ambrose Ali University to give a lecture, the dominant talk was about ritual murder—the use of human beings for money. I don’t believe it, but I have to work with it as a) a knowledge system; and b) a practical reality that drives what human beings do, as in their hard work to protect me.

 

And I don’t see how the university teacher can avoid this in his conversations in and outside of the classroom. The knowledge derived from Physics is not this Ekpoma-based knowledge. I can win the Nobel in Physics and still believe, as those in Ekpoma do, that a human being can be converted into money.

 

Toyin Falola

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

dear olayinka

i completely disagree that the knowledges of science and religion are comparable. there is really no knowledge in religion, but faith. the turn to faith is in the quest of truth, the term you used. you can believe whatever you want, and no one can contradict it, no matter how preposterous it is.

science doesn't seek knowledge of truth, but of verifiable claims that can be proven by anyone. the methods are experimental, depend on observation of actions that are subject to method. it is always trying to understand how things work, how the material substance of the world works, and subjects it to experiments whose reliability can be measured. it isn't metaphorical, but empirical.

for instance, when einstein conceived of relativity he used the example of trains in motion, not metaphorically but actually. if the train was conceived as a vehicle that could speed up to the speed of light, it was literally the speed of light that was being considered. his "thought experiments" were grounded in actual materiality. if it was necessary to posit the material existence of ether to account for the motion of light, it would be possible to run experiments, make observations,  to determine the nature of ether. that was done, and the postulation that ether exists was ditched.

if you say, the lamb of god, that is a metaphor.

lastly, no one's basic understanding of themselves would be threatened by learning that photons don't need ether to account for their motion.

but religious believers would be shaken to their core if someone were to assert that there is no meaningful proof of god's existence.

why is that?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 7:26:41 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

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[Toyin Falola]

Prince:

Just to be clear I have never said “there is not much difference between religion and science”. I apologize if I come across as saying that.

I have said that alternative ways of knowing must be understood, even if it makes no sense to us as scholars. Any knowledge that makes sense to a certain community means something to its members unless we are calling them lunatics. And those members, I argued, will carry their ideas to all spaces where they find themselves, including the classroom.

 

One African head of state was accused of cannibalism

Another of eating the testicles of his enemies.

 

What I want to know is the knowledge behind that extreme practice, and my argument is that this knowledge—no matter how silly, misleading, gullible, and unscientific—should not be dismissed.

 

I don’t agree with Nwolise, but I want to understand the formation of his knowledge system—the source, most especially, how it is applied. I don’t agree with him, but I gain more in understanding if I can track the lineage of his ideas, as he may not just be speaking for himself but a community. Who wakes up at Ibadan in the morning and say that witches in Nigeria can break up my legs in Austin?  Call it magic, but what does this tell me?

 

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 7:27 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

TF 

 

You have a point there prof. I have always argued for decades in tandem with circumspect others that as subatomic level of science, to the generality of the pooulace there is not much difference between religion and science:  belief in the unverifiable work of the priesthood couched in metaphors. One metaphors of science and the other metaphors of mundane religion.

 

  The high priesthood demonstrate new knowledge to fellow high priesthood and the rest (you and me) must follow their agreement.  I'm talking of knowledge involved in the splitting of the atom in miles-long super collider.  You cant say they are lying because you dint have the apparatus to determine what the truth might be.  Yet we call it verifiable science.

 

A  consultant medical doctor student of mine once told me people thought they were God when all they did was try their best.  He was referring to situation where treatment is given to someone in critical danger.  In one situation the patient survives, in the other the patient gives up the ghost and relatives can't deal with it and think the doctor did not do enough. So I understand there are always Gray areas in many situation

 

I agree with you as liberal artist who is also a social scientist that uncritical cross application of the modes and methodology of one discipline for another is the main issue with Nwolise^s position.

 

 

OAA

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 08/05/2019 15:10 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [UTEXAS: SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais  Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

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[Nimi Wariboko]

Dear Friends:

 

This debate over Prof. Nwolise has generated some comments that are surprising to me. I cannot understand why a scholar will state that “there is really no knowledge in religion.” This statement is so easy to refute that I did not expect it to be made here. For instance if a religion like Islam states that its founder fought wars, is there no real knowledge in this statement? Have historians denied that Prophet Mohammed existed and fought wars to establish Islam in the Arabia?

 

I take the Falola’s position that all knowledge systems and worldviews need to studied, and this endeavor does not mean that we cannot differentiate science from religion. Falola’s point is that if a knowledge system works for a people we should not regard them as lunatics, but as scholars study their epistemology and bring it into a comparative analysis with those from other peoples, regions, or periods. We need to study a system of thought even if we do not believe in it.

 

Yesterday, I wrote that some of TF’s position reminds me of the anecdote about the world famous physicist Neils Bohr. The joke about Bohr is that he was doing something he did not believe in because people said it works. My point is that even the great physicist was not so dismissive about alternate forms of knowledge as some on this forum do. I see the same ethos in Falola’s scholarship and his interventions on the matter we are debating. This does not mean that Bohr or Falola confuse science with mere faith or religious mumbo jumbo.

 

Besides, there are epistemological issues in the quote about Bohr: Can we separate belief from efficaciousness of a phenomenon? Can a person not believe in something, but put it into practical use? Can a person not believe in religion, but recognize its benefits? A soldier may not believe in religion or the ideas of Nwolise, but can still find usefulness for them if he knows that it can play a function in defeating the enemy. Didn’t some colonial officials manipulate religious fears in Africa and Asia to dominate their subjects? Is this not the way democracy works in many countries as Zizek argues? Zizek’s point is that people often do things (including participating in democracy) that they do not really believe in. (Is there no separation between belief in democracy and its effectivity in Africa—in this case non-positive effectiveness?)

 

As a reminder this is the yesterday’s quote about Bohr from Zizek.

 

“Surprised at seeing a horse-shoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, a fellow scientist exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief that horse-shoes kept evil spirits away, to which Bohr snapped back, ‘I don’t believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn’t believe in it.’ This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them.” (Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy Then as Farce (New York: Verso, 2009, 51)

 

So let me add by quoting what Albert Einstein said about Nobel-Prize winning quantum physicist Niels Bohr: “He utters his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one who believes himself to be in possession of definite truth.”

     

TF’s point is that he is groping for knowledge, not gunning for definite truth either in science or religion. The larger point of TF’s intervention is that there is often epistemic partiality in the academy or personal relationships, and this is an issue analytical philosophers are debating? Why do certain scholars extend more credibility to ideas from their friends or regions? Why do some scientists tend to believe theories of their friends or schools of thought that are non-truth tracking? All this is not to say that knowledge gained from rigorous science is not superior to knowledge derived from mere “faith.”

 

Finally, as an aside let us go back to the Zizek’s quote. He said ideology works in this way: “This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them, because we assume that they work even if we do not believe in them.” Now the question is: does scientific rationality work as ideology for some Nigerians and their leaders? Don’t they participate in science without believing in it? This fact alone warrants a study of their worldview or the imbrication of Nwolise’s type ideas/theories in their science.

 

 

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University

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[Toyin Falola]

Great one:

 

I am presenting the Convocation Lecture at Babcock on June 2^nd, titled “Faith, Fact and Fiction”. It has been a very tough essay for me to write. I have written 75 pages, and I will stop at 100, and I just still cannot conclude—one element of the essay undercuts the other. Why is it difficult for me to conclude? Because my knowledge is inadequate, and in some ways grossly deficient.

 

Scholarship is a difficult enterprise, and I often wonder why I am not a tailor like my dad, just making attire for people and drinking beer in the evening.

Sometimes, I think that scholarship is not my line.

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

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[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"Witchcraft and all the other things Nwolise was talking about, i.e., what otherwise we should call ESP and paranormal science, because they deal with

 oddities and unpredictable realities (odd occurrences)  that humans and scientific reasoning cannot control and which the law of science cannot handle,

 should not be dismissed.  Hold it separate, encourage those who are interested in it to continue to investigate it and exploit it as safely as possible for

 the good of society, if they are able to fathom it. The USSR, US and some European countries during the Cold War, for purposes of control and power,

supported research into this sphere of knowledge and in all probability, the rival world powers continue to investigate it.  Prof. Nwolise and others like

 him should first reduce their esoteric knowledge to something more tangible and usable and observable and testable, even if they are the only one that

 can replicate the oddities, as it seems to be the case in many instances in the Tompkin book above." Kolapo

Words of wisdom.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Femi Kolapo <kol...@uoguelph.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 7:59 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Nimi,

I do not think that folks are dismissing belief and faith as unworthy of study. That would be unscholarly. Why do we have theology and religious studies as fields in academia? 

What folks are pushing against is the consecration of certain claims as as "factual" before such claims have been researched and tested and rendered verifiable. What folks object to is the conflation of claims founded on faith and belief with demonstrated scientific principles--in Nwolise's example, witchcraft and the TV remote control. I think it was Gloria who said Nwolise's offense is that he jumped the gun and declared a conclusion that has not been demonstrated by any replicable research, experiments, principles, and rigorous logic. I concur.

I hope we don't end up talking past one another. Let's take your Bohr anecdote and Falola's position as a point of departure.

Bohr says "I don't believe in it. But I have it there because people say it works whether one believes it or not."

Falola says: "I don't believe in it but many Nigerians do and I want to know why, I want to understand why"

I don't know anyone in this discussion who has or would disagree with these two positions, since as we earlier stated, there are many scientists, academics, and purveyors of scientific knowledge who also subscribe to various faiths, beliefs, and systems that contradict the principles of science and logic. There is no debate there. We're all complex beings and can subscribe to mutually exclusive ideas and ideologies and find ways to compartmentalize them. 

Returning to the two positions, neither Bohr nor Falola says "witchcraft and belief in using doorpost objects to ward off evil spirits are factual and are the equivalent of the tested and verifiable principle of the workings of a TV remote." If they said that then they would have crossed into Nwolise's territory.

For me it is even unnecessary for scholars and scientists to apologize for their beliefs or non-beliefs or to preface their remarks with disclaimers of non-belief in something. In fact, I would not even have a problem if Falola and Bohr said they believe in witchcraft and practices deemed capable of combatting evil spirits--they are entitled to their personal beliefs as I'm entitled to mine--as long as they do not leap to the conclusion, as Nwolise does, that their belief is factual and that it is the equivalent of scientific principles that emerged through rigorous experimentation, peer review, replication, verification, etc.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/784FEFD8-74BE-49F5-BB6D-DEBEB65913DA%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

Alas! Phenomenology, a respected branch of knowledge, actually tells us to treat what Nwolise says as “fact”. The Obatala created the Yoruba people with a chain from heaven that took him to earth is treated by you and I as mythology. It is a fact to whoever originally invented it. He is not a crook, to be sure.

 

If you experience consciousness, you and only you, as you dreamt that a tiger pounced on you and before it kills you, you woke up. It is a fact; it has to be treated as a fact, and we proceed to its analysis. I think only fools will dismiss you—the wise ones will reflect upon what you say.

 

If Nwolise tells me that last year, he flew in the middle of the night to Nashville, I can proceed to treat it as a fact, unless we had ten bottles of Gulder together the night before!  I cannot ask him for evidence, which he does not have, and I cannot produce an evidence, as it outside the realm of his cultural cognitions. Facts operate in a context as they do not always have autonomous legs to stand. Sometimes they do, in raw forms, uninterpreted, unprocessed.

 

Cultural cognitions are so powerful, and they produce so many facts. Drugs have been invented to alter those “facts”.

 

When I went to greet AB Assensoh, one of my best friends in the world, we stopped at a gas station to play lottery—one of those that you will win millions and millions, and we spent a long time spending the money. Here, we took a decision that produced a fiction, based on facts, which in turn produced other facts. You cannot deny the reality that I was a multi-millionaire for a certain moment in that trance! I was one, and I established hundreds of scholarships, eliminating poverty in Kumasi, built a house next to AB, etc.

 

Fact itself is plastic, unfortunately.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga TF,

Not sure that phenomenology treats what anyone says or experiences as a fact to be canonized rather than as a claim worthy of study and scholarly examination. My understanding is that phenomenology studies experience and matters of consciousness and treats them as subjects of inquiry. It does not, ab initio, treat them as fact.

By your logic, we should treat individual hallucinations, fabrications, and all inventions of the fecund human mind and subconscious as fact. I strongly disagree as that relativizes facticity and knowledge out of existence. It also means that as scholars we're wasting our time using logic, rigorous analysis, experiments, evidential practice, and other methods to demonstrate claims and to make sound arguments.

You insinuate that if Nwolise or anyone says something it is factual by virtue of them stating it. I don't agree, and that is why we study these claims. The disagreement is magnified when the person making the claim is a self-identified academic. They can regard what they say as factual--that is their prerogative, but if they disseminate the claim as a final academic commodity, as fact, they're inviting the kind of outrage and scrutiny you see on display here.

By your logic, if we cannot provide evidence that something someone says is false (in logic you don't prove a negative), then we have to recognize it as fact. No sir. The person who asserts or claims is the one who has to provide the evidence and demonstrate the claim. Hence the academic cliche, "who who asserts must demonstrate." It's strange that instead of insisting that Nwolise demonstrate his claim, you're inviting us to accept as fact what he claims because according to you we have no evidence that it is false.

Again, if Nwolise had uttered his statement in a church or in an occult gathering, I would not even be in this discussion as I would see no issue with it. When you bring up what people believe, it skirts the central question. People can believe and claim whatever they want. But they invite scrutiny when they make the belief the fulcrum of their academic practice and pronounce it fact without demonstrating so.

I have no issues with people who claim they've been abducted by aliens, taken to another planet, surgically modified by their abductors, and returned to earth other than to see their claim as an intriguing fabrication. But I would not even waste a single word on such people. I would however have an issue if such people are professors asserting in an academic forum and medium that such claims of alien abduction are factual without any attempt to show us how.

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[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

To be honest to our heritage and inheritances that we have failed to develop into part of the modern academy, they developed elaborate ideas and interventions around all these points.

 

This is what the Babalawo does. He treats as “fact” what you told him about your dreams and hallucinations and proceed from there.

A psychiatrist does the same. It is a “fact” if I say that I am seeing witches in my dreams. I saw them—you were not there with me!!! The Babalawo and the Psychiatrist will proceed from that elementary information. What else do they have to go by?

 

If we had created degrees around all these issues, we would have moved the academy forward.

 

Now, the real challenge is for you and I, as scholars, to create the methodologies to understand them and use the evidence. My argument is that we should not dismiss them.

 

If we change Nwolise’s and all my examples to fiction, instead of fact, this debate would have ended. We tend to accept fiction, and we analyze them because there is a protocol. But we tend to dismiss experiences, as if someone were to come to you and say she is not pregnant because of her mother in law as a piece of nonsense. To the barren woman, it is a fact—it is not a piece of her unscientific imagination. She may actually be a Chemistry Professor. This is real to her, and that which is real to her is a form of knowledge.

 

I don’t have an answer, just enjoying myself.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPoj_U61d-iNaZuEt7vAb%3DF%3DhTLeCwByTceVsGV1t01rxg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Segun Ogungbemi]

Tf,

Congratulations that you were not a tailor like your father who after working in the day time, would spend the evening to drink his Palm wine. 

May his soul continue to Rest In Peace with his Ancestors. 

But if you had chosen that profession, you would have denied yourself the ability to disseminate knowledge production nature has given you as service to humanity. You would have denied yourself what Ayo just wrote about you: “We are glad to say that the conferment of this honorary degree is a mark of distinction for an Academic Connoisseur. It is indeed a deserving recognition of his fervent commitment to humanistic studies.”

We are happy you have been a source of blessing to all of us. 

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi. 

Sent from my iPhone 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/3B8AD9E4-ECE5-4660-8EC9-14B75382D125%40austin.utexas.edu.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Great thanks for this vote of confidence, gentlemen. 

"Yes, but the difference, a big one, is that Toyin Adepoju has never and will never state with any degree of certitude let alone a hint of finality that, 1) these paranormal, transcendental, astral, and spiritual pursuits are factual beyond simply claiming them to be his own personal truths; and 2) he has never and would never equate them to the science-based technology of the TV remote control or other PROVEN, tangible, verifiable techniques and operations of the physical world."- Moses Ochonu.

I aspire to the critical rigour Moses rightly describes as central to scholarship, which I describe as the critical quest for knowledge.

At the same time, however, I am making assertions, which I have not yet proven, about the universally valid factuality of particular phenomena  but which I hope to prove.

I have stated that the trees, groves and forests  that enabled the transformative mental experiences I went through emit a powerful, consciousness enhancing field of energy.

The concept of energy is being deliberately used in this context. 

I am referencing the scientific concept of energy as the capacity to do work, and I am claiming that this kind of energy is one that enhances human consciousness.

This energy can be so strong that anyone, regardless of their beliefs, can experience it. They would then be free to interpret it as they see fit.

I aspire to demonstrate the unmistakable intersubjectivity of these experiences, almost, if not as definitive as the experience of cold everyone feels at a particular temperature, all other factors being equal.

My aspiration is to create a foundation of understanding for establishing the possible effects of such trees on the human mind with the same certainty that it has been demonstrated that ingesting certain plants can have startling effects on the mind, leading to visions.

I want to develop these ideas into a discipline- a combination of theory and practice-and with an ethical core that will help the explorer navigate the opportunities that could open up to them through such investigations, opportunities for good or evil.

 I suspect, as related literature asserts, that this energy may reflect the presence of an entity, possibly a self conscious entity with  whom one may enter into a relationship. Those are the entities animists try to relate with through veneration of natural forms.

 I expect the woman I encountered in the experience of projection of consciousness I described earlier, in relation to the Ogba forest in Benin, could be either one such entity, known as  the goddess of the river that breaks ground in the forest or a fellow human traveler between dimensions, like myself. 

I hope, though these efforts, to contribute to an expanded understanding of the human mind and of nature and of their interrelationship.

Adapting Moses, my aspiration is to achieve proof and verifiability, even if these proofs are intersubjective rather than objective, verifibality being gained through people being able to share the same awareness of these phenomena, awareness that is verified through mental  experience rather than through direct materiel results.

Can such forms of intersubjectivity lead to tangible, verifiable techniques and operations of the physical world, as Moses sums up the operations of science? Can such concrete outcomes be reached through training in intellectual disciplines that facilitate building on the knowledge gained in the subjective or intersubjective explorations? Could useful herbal knowledge be developed through claims that plants communicate their efficacies to the herbalist?

I also want to contribute, through these efforts, to developing a form of witchcraft based on Southern Nigerian, particularly Yoruba, Igbo and Benin metaphysics- conceptions on the nature of reality- and epistemologies-ideas about methods for arriving at and evaluating knowledge.

I understand the phenomena I am referring to as relevant to   witchcraft ideas in Southern Nigeria, particularly the Yoruba Iyami aje and Benin azen conceptions, bodies of lore containing some very valuable ideas which need to be carefully sifted and reframed, moving them from the superstitious contexts in which witchcraft in these cultural configurations is often depicted,  to carefully constructed theory, as modern Western witchcraft was initiated in England  by Gerald Gardner within the context of neo-Paganism.

I aspire, within the context of such initiatives, to contribute to the elimination of the demonisation of people as witches, having removed ideas of witchcraft from the shadows of superstition into the daylight of informed study and critical engagement, with the understanding that, even if its possible to be a witch, that does not necessarily make the person evil. 

thanks

toyin

 

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

The late Oyin Ogunba was Ijebu.  A Yoruba group with a reputation for dabbling into juju and occultism.  He shocked me in a tutorial by alleging juju does not work and that at potential demonatratio s  to which he was invited something happened at the last moment that made the demo stration to be aborted.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 08/05/2019 00:48 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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I hope that many of you have also heard, in some Christian circles, that Obama practiced occultism in the White House!

The occult is a reality in many societies, most especially in Africa.

As Toyin Adepoju does, there is the academic side, but there is also the practical side.

The Marabout, the Pastor and the Babalawo are using different media.

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>

Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 6:38 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

You are just as bad as the professor. He cannot stand back and  engage in  a cool headed analysis-  but  neither can you, apparently.. How about engaging in some serious research into the U.S Stargate project and letting us know the outcome of such an  investigation? Are scholars not supposed to

have an open investigative mind in their research? 

 

The issue here is this: 

 

Have the US  FBI and CIA etc ever used psychics? Yes or no?

Whether the outcomes  were successful or not is not the issue.

 

I have no vested interest in this discussion but I remember shaking my head years ago

when the Chanda Levy case surfaced. The issue about the FBI use of psychics was

openly discussed then. 

 

 Now as for your man at the NDA, well that is another story for another day.

He does not have much credibility,  given the way he approached the subject.

 I never said that he did - so don't put words in my mouth, so to speak.

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

History Department, Central Connecticut State University

www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 5:29 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

Gloria,

 

The CIA investigated ESP and other mind control technics and claims and even experimented with using psychedelic drugs to induce that effect. They were acting on claims that those techniques work to extract information from prisoners of war, make people do things they would not normally do, and that the Soviets were using them. The CIA poured millions of dollars into the investigation over several years, found the claims to be bogus, and abandoned the entire research/investigation. They never actually used it since they couldn't prove its veracity. ESP and claims about mind control and mind altering with or without drugs are not the same as using "ghosts and spirits" but even if they were, why are we dignifying something that was investigated with millions of dollars and found to be useless and bogus? Why is the Nigerian military inviting someone who peddles that kind of discredited crap to lecture our generals, to urge them to use the discredited nonsense of using ghosts and spirits for military intelligence gathering?

 

As I stated, I know of no police case in the US that has ever been solved with psychic consultation. Your own story that you posted says as much.

 

Let's not dignify tragic academic nonsense. I see a case of pandering here. I abhor pandering. I don't even want people to pander to me. If you catch me peddling BS, call me out directly on it. Especially if the BS is a dangerous one that may harm the vital work of the military in a country beset by several threats to her sovereignty.

 

 

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 2:13 PM Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:

https://secure-web.cisco.com/1mmKeUlxoNJciYD6mXAuQ_zMVEFr0ezmur3B_xAaSsv75zqWjM0UTSd09gDgNoW1sytXOHxXpdzEdIijiWPl-tlEJWDeuvQwMqsvenmuhZqDCXA4Z5LogSyi1_UTd1K0rHSHIrd1a46dIpMZEETm52VuEvG_ZcAyfXhfIaX0lpIU1YwYiPDReHnbNtcLC7lTZ9SfQ3qtMkQH20MSVrETSV613eKn5nNRgltSiYefgd2xjZ7BdX46frJSms2s4oV_oPF8cbJFrSF4Cfx_IlTApWd4KrMJp61-xOnY_bT-2o2ku2UJbwfLH8MY0oDVkAsKrH-IZcCvBFBj9ZUzP8UGMrQ8mYLzTaLnXZ_0LpEkGJ5pDCY7g3wWBtAoNLpDbjoHiiW0bm8o9qg2R_q8AfEorHug83t_F7kwiIEloGD-0MQSaf-8rg4vEY0aOx89P7bjH7hCRpFSADlYAOt6pMHLvvWDDXkvz5IHp7xLZlguImueLmySz5YRGEc3eeBvxVxjhxbS2SU4j5782N5_Y4PAQZLJRS_dwh2rBKIO6ia4AbwM2aKJqftPj_48zZgEUL2casEu5TBGWTKyUDPOZ0Eky1olqX_z8Q4N9MhUUbhAqBckuABvaZ8glj0hc_q6o7LOY/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.muckrock.com%2Fnews%2Farchives%2F2017%2Fmay%2F12%2FDOJ-police-psychics%2F

Read the Justice Department's guide to using psychics in police investigations • MuckRock Police psychics have so saturated popular culture that the concept borders on the cliche. There was a time, however, when the Department of Justice took the matter very seriously - not only were instances reported of the police using psychics, there were studies on the matter, and even guidance issued by the DOJ.

http://secure-web.cisco.com/1ZJyt7Pl466-9I266BHuKMi4-6sW6II2lHidRl72yS_Ft7rGyVLM53P1mf1H8U-uuuBRiQR_s3TaQsdvY8jxEEAZ5x6iu95ijJPNy8_h9uBW9YI7uaivrrtmsObQLxq9rhVPk2yuQRPMJ5b23-EzRQIMvJjocz5XmfIuE3H5_Wl2TY2arg_5pAtFVWFF_kgtdaTRhRWkeFmUDwfsQtjqSCwqkBHZUvwy2xw4z1R1tD3LmC7iWN9aSNuMWoh4k_AK0x2AvPFGn5XKz0k8FEavWRW4HSFzZyJ7msJ1U1zymQgo1Du-c3I4x8NW5TO6l52qyUY5pPPmulxluxLqoVE7OiWTrDbNSyfoSNbASdZWuhSO2nXtejUc5WMM1RMom2O1lqpfXIg6_RX52pWFcuMaDPzKosnWeqEPgNX_ETKMxXnf7dkzV3RbUQS9aP2HfjNBNSXwpiavxUXDJJaaBq6LkLqJ7J2FAQsb799xOEWzfmern_mB98eD1ag5IhlJA43u_nyuPiVQKgakVjfRfqfjTQkBhvJmLPGA_gflG9BhCeTLstys38wCbygzdbH-KS-SQ2RgKnJjxQIo4oxMxRs615dS8CavUvOKTkK7gekDFL8XS4gxTcZ4GLyqdNnVOXvb_/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.muckrock.com

I have heard of  the   FBI using psychics but not the military.

 

The first time I heard of psychics and the FBI was in terms of the death of a Washington

intern  named Chandra Levy. CNN alluded to this matter  in a Dec. 2007 article

 entitled "Visions of death. Can psychics see what detectives cannot."

In that article they point to  Kathlyn Rhea a psychic investigator in California

with some successes. One critic points to numerous dead end cases.

 

But this is not to endorse the professor. He can't even spell.

 

What about the CIA and psychics?  I did a quick check and found out about  the Stargate project that built on a secret US army unit established   a 20 million dollar project in the 1970s to investigate potential psychic phenomena including extrasensory perception.

 

 

 

GE

 

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[Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM]

"But if you had chosen that profession, you would have denied yourself the ability to disseminate knowledge production nature has given you as service to humanity"(Segun).

Segun,
Toyin Falola as a tailor, should have been sewing clothes for people to cover their nakedness and to look good.

He could also have been sewing clothes free for those who cannot afford it to also cover their nakedness and to also look good. Is that not another "service to humanity"?

Is one "service to humanity" superior to another?

CAO.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

So what was the rest?  We must contextualize America's obsession with aliens in the 70s with the moon landings.

Of course Americans have been gulllible about psychics for a lo g time But offiicially?

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>

Date: 07/05/2019 20:15 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (emea...@ccsu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/12/DOJ-police-psychics/

Read the Justice Department's guide to using psychics in police investigations • MuckRock Police psychics have so saturated popular culture that the concept borders on the cliche. There was a time, however, when the Department of Justice took the matter very seriously - not only were instances reported of the police using psychics, there were studies on the matter, and even guidance issued by the DOJ.

www.muckrock.com

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Did you ask the police man to elaborate?  Anyone can talk of anything in general terms and therein lies  the danger.

I dabbled for some time in my younger years nI to reading about projection of consciousess and stuff.  Into which dimenation did you project your consciousness specifically and what did you find?

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 07/05/2019 20:15 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and HerAcademicsare  Culpable

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin....@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

On using psychic powers in intelligence sourcing, during a small gathering on the sidelines of a conference in Oxford university where I was present, a Caucasian [ apologies to Kenneth harrow]  police officer informed us that the police in England has used psychics in intelligence gathering with good results.

A psychic is a person who can gain information without using  conventional channels.

The range of means of access to knowledge available to people significantly exceeds the conventional.

It is possible to project consciousness from one's physical location to another in a different dimension and meet others there in conclave. One could use the energy field of a tree or forest or grove to achieve that goal, a procedure similar to the African belief that witches meet in trees. On completing one's interactions in that dimension, one could return in consciousness to where one's body is located.

It is possible to gain knowledge by communicating with the intelligence of a tree.

It is possible to accurately predict the future without using any logical tools apart from intuition.

These are experiences I have had.

The first two of these occurrences were enabled for me by the simple act of meditating on the beauty of trees, trying to penetrate to their essence. 

My progress was facilitated by the fact that I was conducting my exploration in Benin-City, where there is a culture of keeping sacred trees inviolate across the city, such trees often demonstrating a powerful, consciousnesses enhancing energy field around them. 

The traditional African approach of relating with those non-human, non-animal intelligence is through ritual.

Mine was through meditation and telepathy.

It is possible to gain knowledge with the help of personages who are not visible but whose presence is  felt with the keenness of sensing that a person is standing by your side. It was such experiences that led me back to my studies in the Yoruba Ifa system of knowledge after i had become a Born Again Christian and burnt all my extensive library of non-Christian religious texts.

On going to the University of Kent in England, where my studies in Ifa commenced in full force under the inspiration of lecturers there, whenever I would be working on Ifa, even in the computer room, I would sense a presence  by my side, indicting to me that the invisible intelligences associated with the system were with me.

Spiritual systems often work if you are ready to apply yourself. I have had to go on break for years from heavy spiritual work bcs of the challenges of coping with the partnerships that ensue and the enhancement of perception they enable.

How critically one manages these forms of exposure makes all the difference.

My scepticism about much of the supernturalistic orientations I  come across in Nigeria derives from my personal experience of  occult techniques and spiritual realities, experiences  which motivate me to appreciate the relative value of such aspects of existence, appreciating the spiritual as needing complementation by conventional forms of knowing and certainly not superseding the conventional, both working best in harmony. 

thanks

toyin

On Tue, 7 May 2019 at 19:01, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I thought I aline noticed this anomaly.  Why a modern army can invite a lecturer to lecture on how ghosts can gather intelligence beats me hollow.  Who is behind such invitations and is still holding on to his commission?

How do ghosts submit their intelligence to the living?  If the events had been presented on stage as drama I would have broken into rib tickling laughter for its cathartic effect. But the reality is too serious not be shocking.

And we are wondering why it took so long for the armed forces to dispose of the rag tag Boko Haram!

OAA.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Date: 07/05/2019 12:12 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Colleagues and friends,

Setting aside for the moment the bizarre atmospherics of Professor Nwolise's oeuvre, have we pause to consider the implications of what Okey Iheduru posted from eye-witness knowledge? He told us that in this age of heightened insecurity and multiple threats to the sovereignty of Nigeria, Professor Nwolise makes regular lecturing appearances at the only postgraduate institution of the Nigerian armed forces, the National Defense College, urging army colonels and generals and their equivalents in other branches of the armed forces to gather military intelligence through ghosts and spirits and, more disturbingly, that he receives a "rapturous" applause and positive reception each time he presents this dangerous nonsense to the students. Wow, just wow. And we wonder why the Nigerian armed forces cannot understand the security threats facing the country, let alone tackling them. And some say I'm exaggerating when I say the country is doomed.

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 9:03 PM Ashafa Abdullahi <abas...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oga Toyin, 

It's my deliberate judgement to agree with you entirely. My concern about majority of posts here here is inconclusive lamentation. Let's not portray ourselves as if the politicians & leadership across we complain about daily are better than us. They complain & pretend they are the solutions. But we lament and don't proved solutions, which means we need to shift ground. There's nothing that has not been said regarding Nigeria's ills. Let's put our analysis on the solutions.

On Mon, May 6, 2019, 14:40 Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu wrote:

Moses:

 

The most productive argument will be to assume that many won’t disconnect! Society and people do not just shift. Something must first shift before they respond. Thus, we have to work out a new way of thinking that will accommodate that, which may be unfortunate.

I have been to Jos and Kaduna where making the disconnect argument to our colleagues may not even have any appeal. If you wake up in the city, driving to work to see which road is taken by the Christians and another by the Muslims, the first thing they do when they get to the office and return back home is to pray. Even as an External Examiner in such places, I joined them in that prayer. And in the classrooms, they pray, and they prayed for me, and they work faith into their presentations. I listen and process to understand where they are coming from. Not that I agree with them, but that I understand why they do what they do.

 

I know how to make the theoretical arguments about the disconnect, but at the same time, I know that in practice it won’t happen.

 

 

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>

Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:40 AM

To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

TF,

 

We get all that. Some of my own family members get scandalized when I tell them that they're too quick to blame the devil/witchcraft and to resort to prayers for problems that are physical and require taking concrete action. That's not the point. In our work, we reckon with the existence and influence of that worldview, which cuts across all of Africa's religious traditions. The point is that an academic should not uncritical substitute a religious dogma founded on faith and unverifiable supernatural truth claims for a rigorous, analytical engagement with such claims. An academic who is a Pentecostal Christian, devout Muslim, or Ifa practitioner should compartmentalize his religious beliefs when doing academic work. Yes, all writings are autobiographical, but when we say that, we are talking about subconscious bias and the ways in which our socializations seep into our approaches subconsciously. It does not refer to the conscious certitude of passing off unverifiable spiritual and other truth claims as "factual." There're  probably Western academics who believe in alien abductions but will they try to publish that belief in a journal or present it as fact in an academic lecture? They know better than to try to do that. Even if they want to write on alien abductions, they know that the academic protocol is to maintain a critical, scholarly distance from the subject/object of inquiry and analysis.

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 7:25 AM Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

I am beginning to enjoy this debate.

What is “factual”? At Ibadan, my city, and yours, witchcraft is “factual”!!  The mission of Christ is “factual”. It is the fact of faith, not the fact of science.

Years ago, in the company of others, when I told my mom that I did not believe in witchcraft, I sent her into panic and she began to look for remedies for me to stay alive. I don’t believe that there are witches, but have the witches now left Ibadan because I don’t believe in them?

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>

Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, May 6, 2019 at 7:13 AM

To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

This message is from an external sender. Learn more about why this matters.

 

And, by the way, yes, a "fundamentalist Christian" can win the Nobel Prize in Medicine but certainly not by advancing his religious beliefs as his oeuvre. Yes, we need an epistemology that engages with prevalent beliefs in supernatural causation in Africa because these beliefs are pervasive, inform devotional practices, and animate and constrain attitudes towards politics in African countries. That epistemology is already underway, with many scholars such as Nimi Wariboko, Obadare, Peter Gaschere, Elias Bombgba, Olupona, Asonze Uka, yourself, Are Adogame, and others already engaging critically with that world. However, it would be academically suicidal if these scholars where to attempt to pass off an uncritical endorsement of Nigerian religious beliefs as "factual" in the most important academic lecture of their career or in a book.

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academics are Culpable

 

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I am reading Professor Ebenezer Obadare's brilliant new book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (Zed Books, 2018), and I came across the quote below, one of those he advances as touchstones for his central argument.

 

It is not lifted from a sermon or a facebook post. It is not extracted from a theological or hermeneutical document. 

On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook Nigeriana, it is an excerpt from the inaugural professorial lecture of a certain Professor Osisioma B.C Nwolise, a Professor of Political Science (a social science that teaches logic, empirical proof, rigor, verifiability, and rational analysis) at the University of Ibadan. 

 

This is the most important lecture of his academic career, delivered in a university to an academic audience. And yet if I did not know its context I would have surmised that this was a sermon delivered in one of the parishes of my home church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

 

Here is an academic lending his professorial weight to the Nigerian pastime of spiritualizing sociopolitical, security, and economic problems--our culture of conflating piety and politics, or neglecting political action for pietistic escapism. 

 

We try to pray away our problems when we should be acting against them. Now, our professors who should know better are uncritically legitimizing and trying to intellectualize this culture of fatalistic spiritualization of secular, practical problems.

 

Farooq Kperogi is right; our problem is not just leadership but also a national scourge of illiteracy (literal and figurative) and irrationality. How can a country whose professors profess such nonsense make progress or solve its problems?

 

And how can a people challenge their oppressors and tormentors in power when even their professors subscribe to such drivel, such spiritual causality for everything, including election rigging, bad governance and incompetent leadership?

Read and weep for what remains of the diminishing country called Nigeria.

 

"When we want to watch our television, we switch it on with our remote control by pressing a button. Then we can stay in Ibadan and watch a football match being played in Athens, Sydney or Paris. In the same way, a witch stays in her house in Lokoja or any other town, stirs water in a pot, or conjurs(sic) a mirror, and can monitor any targeted person or object in London, Athens, or Sydney. In these two instances, one is seen as science, and the other is seen as magic. A witch can also stay in South Africa or the United Kingdom and break the leg of an effigy spiritually programmed to represent a person domiciled in the United States, and the person's leg will break mysteriously there. The scientist or intellectualist may not see or accept these as real based on his training, but they happen daily and are factual. There are spirits attached to walls, plants, leaves, found in bushes, on people's clothes, etc.; and there are roving spirits that move about especially between 12 noon and 2.00 pm, and at night. Some of these spirits are benevolent, while others are malevolent. It is the malevolent spirits that constitute threats to humans. They can project sickness into people's bodies, change people's star or destiny, or change the sex of a baby in the womb, remove the baby completely or turn it into a stone, or tortoise, snail, horse, snake, or a disabled [person]. If it were possible to carve out a block of the air for spiritual analysis, we can find several arrows, and many other dangerous pollutants, spiritual weapons of mass destruction flying in various directions 24 hours of the day."

 

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Prof. 

 I think I will intervene philosophically and psychoanalytically again on the import of your position vis a vis Nwolise.

In philosophy  there is a clear cut distinction between beliefs and knowledge ( at least in western philosophy.)  Christians believe Jesus is coming again.  Through training in homiletics a parish priest may deliver a sermon that the coming is imminent and such sermons have been oreached for two thousand years yet Jesus did not surface.  The priest by word of mouth has bridged the gap between belief and knowledge.

How did he know Jesus is coming back?  Because the Bible said so.  Yet the priest preached with such certitude without any direct exchange between himself and Jesus.  That is the nature of belief. That is the status of Nwolise s claims.  

For the priest to be sure Jesus is coming back he must have direct communication with Jesus showing date of his coming and the exact manner and the exact location of his coming.  No priest knows that.  So no priest has certain knowledge of Jesus coming.  They only believe he will come.

You mentioned Ifa priest.  I have argued in several forums that the Ifa priest uses the method of indigenous Yoruba psychonalysis. He is the analyst confronted by analysands perennially. Like the western psychoanalyst the Ifa priest knows the hallucinations are real to the analysand and that he had before him a disturbed cognitive process which must be restored through medication and investigatuve talking cure. He serks to restore his abnormal patient to the same receptive cognitive wave length of the rest of the community.

Psychiatrists and psychoanalysis do not dispute that the patient sees what is claimed as fact but they know when a person is not sick and claims to see as fact what in fact is made up.  That is why the Yoruba will say ' eni sun laa ji a koi no So i rotor. (We only wake a fellow who is genuinely asleep and don't bother waking up one who is feigning sleep.

Yoruba has belief systems like other people which they separate from definite knowledge. To announce belief they may say ' mo ni reti pe yo se se'  (I believe it can be done)  With certitude they may say ' o da mi loju pe yo se se"  I( know it can be done)

That does not mean utterer of sentence 2 cannot be wrong but he is expressing knowledge and will give reasons why he has such knowledge.  Because of fallibility depending on context they say 'Ogbon odun to were emii " 

In the case of Nwolise given his social science academic  background he is functioning as 'apiroro'  He is saying what even he does not believe I.e. getting an arrow out of thin air. ( that is the stuff of sleight of hand magicians.)

Nwolise cannot spread this kind of dubious knowledge amongst his graduate students without the academia being doomed!  The society will be careering between reality and illusion chaotically!

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 10/05/2019 02:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Moses:

To be honest to our heritage and inheritances that we have failed to develop into part of the modern academy, they developed elaborate ideas and interventions around all these points.

 

This is what the Babalawo does. He treats as “fact” what you told him about your dreams and hallucinations and proceed from there.

A psychiatrist does the same. It is a “fact” if I say that I am seeing witches in my dreams. I saw them—you were not there with me!!! The Babalawo and the Psychiatrist will proceed from that elementary information. What else do they have to go by?

 

If we had created degrees around all these issues, we would have moved the academy forward.

 

Now, the real challenge is for you and I, as scholars, to create the methodologies to understand them and use the evidence. My argument is that we should not dismiss them.

 

If we change Nwolise’s and all my examples to fiction, instead of fact, this debate would have ended. We tend to accept fiction, and we analyze them because there is a protocol. But we tend to dismiss experiences, as if someone were to come to you and say she is not pregnant because of her mother in law as a piece of nonsense. To the barren woman, it is a fact—it is not a piece of her unscientific imagination. She may actually be a Chemistry Professor. This is real to her, and that which is real to her is a form of knowledge.

 

I don’t have an answer, just enjoying myself.

TF

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Prof. 

 I think I will intervene philosophically and psychoanalytically again on the import of your position vis a vis Nwolise.

In philosophy  there is a clear cut distinction between beliefs and knowledge ( at least in western philosophy.)  Christians believe Jesus is coming again.  Through training in homiletics a parish priest may deliver a sermon that the coming is imminent and such sermons have been oreached for two thousand years yet Jesus did not surface.  The priest by word of mouth has bridged the gap between belief and knowledge.

How did he know Jesus is coming back?  Because the Bible said so.  Yet the priest preached with such certitude without any direct exchange between himself and Jesus.  That is the nature of belief. That is the status of Nwolise s claims.  

For the priest to be sure Jesus is coming back he must have direct communication with Jesus showing date of his coming and the exact manner and the exact location of his coming.  No priest knows that.  So no priest has certain knowledge of Jesus coming.  They only believe he will come.

You mentioned Ifa priest.  I have argued in several forums that the Ifa priest uses the method of indigenous Yoruba psychonalysis. He is the analyst confronted by analysands perennially. Like the western psychoanalyst the Ifa priest knows the hallucinations are real to the analysand and that he had before him a disturbed cognitive process which must be restored through medication and investigatuve talking cure. He serks to restore his abnormal patient to the same receptive cognitive wave length of the rest of the community.

Psychiatrists and psychoanalysis do not dispute that the patient sees what is claimed as fact but they know when a person is not sick and claims to see as fact what in fact is made up.  That is why the Yoruba will say ' eni sun laa ji a koi no So i rotor. (We only wake a fellow who is genuinely asleep and don't bother waking up one who is feigning sleep.

Yoruba has belief systems like other people which they separate from definite knowledge. To announce belief they may say ' mo ni reti pe yo se se'  (I believe it can be done)  With certitude they may say ' o da mi loju pe yo se se"  I( know it can be done)

That does not mean utterer of sentence 2 cannot be wrong but he is expressing knowledge and will give reasons why he has such knowledge.  Because of fallibility depending on context they say 'Ogbon odun to were emii " 

In the case of Nwolise given his social science academic  background he is functioning as 'apiroro'  He is saying what even he does not believe I.e. getting an arrow out of thin air. ( that is the stuff of sleight of hand magicians.)

Nwolise cannot spread this kind of dubious knowledge amongst his graduate students without the academia being doomed!  The society will be careering between reality and illusion chaotically!

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 10/05/2019 02:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin...@austin.utexas.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info

Moses:

To be honest to our heritage and inheritances that we have failed to develop into part of the modern academy, they developed elaborate ideas and interventions around all these points.

 

This is what the Babalawo does. He treats as “fact” what you told him about your dreams and hallucinations and proceed from there.

A psychiatrist does the same. It is a “fact” if I say that I am seeing witches in my dreams. I saw them—you were not there with me!!! The Babalawo and the Psychiatrist will proceed from that elementary information. What else do they have to go by?

 

If we had created degrees around all these issues, we would have moved the academy forward.

 

Now, the real challenge is for you and I, as scholars, to create the methodologies to understand them and use the evidence. My argument is that we should not dismiss them.

 

If we change Nwolise’s and all my examples to fiction, instead of fact, this debate would have ended. We tend to accept fiction, and we analyze them because there is a protocol. But we tend to dismiss experiences, as if someone were to come to you and say she is not pregnant because of her mother in law as a piece of nonsense. To the barren woman, it is a fact—it is not a piece of her unscientific imagination. She may actually be a Chemistry Professor. This is real to her, and that which is real to her is a form of knowledge.

 

I don’t have an answer, just enjoying myself.

TF

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPoj_U61d-iNaZuEt7vAb%3DF%3DhTLeCwByTceVsGV1t01rxg%40mail.gmail.com.

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

I don't believe as a historian  that anyo e can see events before they happen.  They are not events until they happen.  There are several possibilities out of which one happens dependi g on the circumstances.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Okechukwu Ukaga <ukag...@umn.edu>

Date: 08/05/2019 00:02 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Moses, I think you will agree that the US Army is as modern as it gets. I also think you will agree that Forbes is a credible source of information. So here is a story about the US military excerpted from the link I provided earlier:

“ Specifically, massive and somewhat successful research was done into the area known as remote viewing. That's where trained and talented personnel try to see what is happening in a location elsewhere in the world using only their mind to do so.

This work sometimes edged into precognition or receiving visions of events before they actually occur. Notably, via extrasensory perception, one person gained knowledge that a senior military officer would be kidnapped by European terrorists. The actual group was the anti-NATO organization known as The Red Brigades. When the abduction happened, remote viewers were brought in to try to locate the kidnappers and the officer. Of course, that resulted in derision from seasoned commanders. "Nobody believes in this crap," said one colonel. Eventually, curiosity helped persuade the brass, according to remote viewer Dale Graff who was brought in to help. He described one officer in the following way:

Here was a commander who knew his stuff [...] Great men don't become great leaders by being narrow-minded. He wanted knowledge, and I had the information. He was genuinely interested in what I had to say.

In the end, with the help of the psyops personnel, the hostage was found alive. That's just one successful episode in the story. There are many others.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2017/05/08/americas-military-paranormal-science-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it/#53518fe65206

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[Toyin Falola]

Prince:

To clarify, I have not said that juju works either.

Is there juju, yes.

Does it work? Yes and no.

If you see poison as juju, better believes it works as a drop of poisonous herbal plants in your drinks will actually kill you.

Does juju affect emotions, yes it does.

Sent from my iPhone

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

You are indeed right!  We are back to Awolowo and  his description of juju as science.  I think what Ogunba meant was juju as the defiance of physics.  I agree with him that his informants may have have used superlatives to be economical with the truth.  Seeing that they could not produce the vaunted evidence they gave excuses of lagbaja not being present and so the demonstration could not take place.  You know a lot if supernatural lore surround the Agemo festival on which he was an expert

His explanation came when I covered incantation poetry at his tutorial.

He was a rational modern man yet an expert on traditional festivals.

OAA.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>

Date: 10/05/2019 11:21 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria is Doomed and HerAcademicsare   Culpable

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Prince:

To clarify, I have not said that juju works either.

Is there juju, yes.

Does it work? Yes and no.

If you see poison as juju, better believes it works as a drop of poisonous herbal plants in your drinks will actually kill you.

Does juju affect emotions, yes it does.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 10, 2019, at 4:35 AM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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[O O]

You seem to see the logical as necessarily synonymous with the rational.

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Prof.

And I am not attribute to you the statement that there is no difference between religion and science.  This is my own summation having carefully reflected on the atomic theory in contemporary western discourse and traced it to its roots in the theory of monads when the common name for all the sciences as we know them today was philosophy before the differentiation into undisciplined down the ages just like Ida seems like an undifferentiated whole to an outsider. Yet the priests specialized as they progressed through the ranks.

I was only trying to say that at certain levels of complexity both in religion and science knowledge is produced and can only be falsified by these producers of knowledge to whom I refer with the name 'high priesthood (both science& religion). In science say quantum physics the layman does not have the capacity to acquire necessary equipment to apply the rule of falsification on findings.  

OAA

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-------- Original message --------

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Date: 09/05/2019 22:41 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeriais Doomed and Her Academicsare  Culpable

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Nimi,

I do not think that folks are dismissing belief and faith as unworthy of study. That would be unscholarly. Why do we have theology and religious studies as fields in academia? 

What folks are pushing against is the consecration of certain claims as as "factual" before such claims have been researched and tested and rendered verifiable. What folks object to is the conflation of claims founded on faith and belief with demonstrated scientific principles--in Nwolise's example, witchcraft and the TV remote control. I think it was Gloria who said Nwolise's offense is that he jumped the gun and declared a conclusion that has not been demonstrated by any replicable research, experiments, principles, and rigorous logic. I concur.

I hope we don't end up talking past one another. Let's take your Bohr anecdote and Falola's position as a point of departure.

Bohr says "I don't believe in it. But I have it there because people say it works whether one believes it or not."

Falola says: "I don't believe in it but many Nigerians do and I want to know why, I want to understand why"

I don't know anyone in this discussion who has or would disagree with these two positions, since as we earlier stated, there are many scientists, academics, and purveyors of scientific knowledge who also subscribe to various faiths, beliefs, and systems that contradict the principles of science and logic. There is no debate there. We're all complex beings and can subscribe to mutually exclusive ideas and ideologies and find ways to compartmentalize them. 

Returning to the two positions, neither Bohr nor Falola says "witchcraft and belief in using doorpost objects to ward off evil spirits are factual and are the equivalent of the tested and verifiable principle of the workings of a TV remote." If they said that then they would have crossed into Nwolise's territory.

For me it is even unnecessary for scholars and scientists to apologize for their beliefs or non-beliefs or to preface their remarks with disclaimers of non-belief in something. In fact, I would not even have a problem if Falola and Bohr said they believe in witchcraft and practices deemed capable of combatting evil spirits--they are entitled to their personal beliefs as I'm entitled to mine--as long as they do not leap to the conclusion, as Nwolise does, that their belief is factual and that it is the equivalent of scientific principles that emerged through rigorous experimentation, peer review, replication, verification, etc.

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