Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau

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Tunji Olaopa

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Dec 24, 2019, 6:56:52 AM12/24/19
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Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 24, 2019, 2:46:19 PM12/24/19
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Awo was no saint. Coker Commission report is there for all to see.

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Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 24, 2019, 5:19:44 PM12/24/19
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​Agreed, Awo was not a saint, but did Coker Commission report prove that he was not a saint? If yes, please share with us how Coker Commission proved it.
​S. Kadiri



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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 24, 2019, 5:19:44 PM12/24/19
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Ibrahim Abdullah:

What do you know about the Coker Commission report?  If that was what makes you declare Awo a non-saint, then he was indeed a saint.  The Coker Commision was a cooked-up concordance..no pun intended.

No - Awo was not a saint simply because he was human.  But he stands almost paradigmatically alone in the pantheon of Nigeria's original leaders.

Season's greetings!


Bolaji Aluko


Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 24, 2019, 6:14:47 PM12/24/19
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O ko owo je like all the others and used Sonibare to play the game. Awo chopped cocoa profit well well. You cannot cover your beloved Papa. Only blind AGroupers will want to whitewash Coker Commission and deify the proclaimed Sage! 

So funny---covering up for Awo.  

Sent from my iPhone

On 24 Dec 2019, at 10:19 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Ogedi Ohajekwe

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Dec 25, 2019, 5:30:42 AM12/25/19
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“unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better.”
 
February 28, 1986 minus some twenty years. 
Jan 1966?🤭🤭🤭
Yikes.



On Dec 24, 2019, at 6:56 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:

Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?


RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

Jimoh Oriyomi

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Dec 25, 2019, 5:30:42 AM12/25/19
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Ibrahim, Awo never claimed to be a saint. "O ko owo je like all others and used sonibare to play the game" that is your conclusion not from the court of law.

On 25 Dec 2019 12:14 a.m., "Ibrahim Abdullah" <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
O ko owo je like all the others and used Sonibare to play the game. Awo chopped cocoa profit well well. You cannot cover your beloved Papa. Only blind AGroupers will want to whitewash Coker Commission and deify the proclaimed Sage! 

So funny---covering up for Awo.  

Sent from my iPhone

On 24 Dec 2019, at 10:19 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Ibrahim Abdullah:

What do you know about the Coker Commission report?  If that was what makes you declare Awo a non-saint, then he was indeed a saint.  The Coker Commision was a cooked-up concordance..no pun intended.

No - Awo was not a saint simply because he was human.  But he stands almost paradigmatically alone in the pantheon of Nigeria's original leaders.

Season's greetings!


Bolaji Aluko


On Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 14:46 Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
Awo was no saint. Coker Commission report is there for all to see.

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 24, 2019, at 10:35 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?
>
> RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO
>
> In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:
>
> “Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”
>
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segun ogungbemi

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Dec 25, 2019, 5:30:42 AM12/25/19
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You don't know what you are talking about. You just decided to provoke members of this forum for no just cause.  If you don't have anything to write, just keep quiet.
Segun Ogungbemi.

Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 25, 2019, 9:42:53 AM12/25/19
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Whenever you guys defend the "Sage"--always the Yorubas on this forum--I laugh and recall what Awokoya and Segun Osoba had to say about your infallible "Papa". Awo, Zik and Ahmadu Bello did what they did because of who they were: unabashed ethnic champions! Let us situate them in their proper context and interprete their actions. It's a waste of time defending this against that---they did what they did in different ways in the protect and promote their kith and kin. Their collective project did not imagine the Nigeria we want!

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On 25 Dec 2019, at 10:30 AM, Jimoh Oriyomi <oriyom...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 25, 2019, 1:12:57 PM12/25/19
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Ibrahim:

Please let us return to the Coker Commission report, and leave Zik, Ahmadu Bello, Balewa, Akintola, Opara and the rest of them out for the moment..  I once excerpted tons of info from it.

I thank you.


Bolaji Aluko


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Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 25, 2019, 2:36:10 PM12/25/19
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​Mallam Ibrahim Abdullah,
​ÈGÀN KÒ PÉ K'OYIN MÁ DÙN, derision cannot cause honey not to be sweet. Every sane Nigerian knows that the Coker Commission of enquiry was inaugurated by the Federal coalition government of NPC and NCNC after overthrowing the Action Group controlled Western Government. The sole purpose of the Coker Commission of enquiry in June 1962, was to rubbish the image of Awolowo who had left the Premiership of Western Region to contest the 1959 Federal Election. If Coker had discovered stealing and misappropriation of Western Region by Awolowo, there would not have been treasonable felony trial against Awolowo who would have been prosecuted, instead, for embezzlement, fraud, corruption etc. Coker Commission discovered that Awolowo spent cocoa money on free primary education for all. Initially, it was intended to be compulsory but when his any campaigned that he wanted to deprive parents helping hands of their children in the farm, he changed it to voluntary. The first Television Station in Africa, WNTV, was established by Awolowo's government, the flood-light Liberty Stadium was built with Cocoa money, major towns in Western Region had access to pipe-borne water, farm settlements producing dairy products were established throughout Western Region, Cocoa House (a Skyscraper) was built in Ibadan and a large area of Land was turned into industrial estate in Ikeja which belonged to Western Region then. I challenge you to quote directly from the report of Coker Commission of enquiry into the finances of Western Region Government up to 1959 where it was stated that Awolowo corruptly enriched himself by stealing public funds and what amount of money was it.

​As all human beings, Awolowo had his shortcomings but among his political peers he was the best. Saying that has nothing to do with my ethnic origin, since in some aspects I also admire the political ideologies of Samuel Gomsu Ikoku, Anthony Enahoro, Aminu Kano, Mokwugo Okoye, to mention few.
S. Kadiri



Skickat: den 25 december 2019 00:06

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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 25, 2019, 2:53:07 PM12/25/19
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For me, it’s not clear  whether His Holiness Pope Francis’ kind words of consolation on Christmas Day was meant exclusively for the Roman Catholic Faithful or if his words of encouragement and assurance are also addressed to the other wanton sinners in the family of mankind,  when he said, “God still loves us all, even the worst of us”.

God still loves, “even the worst of us”, like Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, Pol Pot, Saddam, Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's military, all the rich people, all the unrepentant looters whose entry into paradise will be less easy than a camel passing through the eye of a needle?

Well, even before Pope Francis Christmas Day homilies, Boko Haram had already celebrated their Christmas eve with another trademark attack , apparently without remorse, they struck at dawn.

This is my preamble to the horrible on-going discussion about our late great, most venerable & beloved AWOLOWO,  Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo.

May the Almighty be pleased with him.

This is really the crux of the matter: According to the King James version, we have Jesus of Nazareth speaking here: “ Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country” – and there is a ring of truth to this, depending on what we mean by “prophet” and what is meant by his “own country”.

If you are an honourable Yoruba man, then assuredly it’s probably much easier to be a prophet in your own country, if by your “own country” you mean Yorubaland.

There is a statistical probability that it should be easier for you to be a prophet in Yorubaland than for you to be welcome as a prophet in e.g., Igboland, unless of course, and this is a paradox  - unless of course, your name is Jesus, and you happen to have been born  of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a cowshed in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago and happen to have been baptised by John the Baptiser in the holy Jordan River, which is in Israel.

Which also explains why Chinua Achebe the author of “A Man of the People” (1966) and “The trouble with Nigeria” (1983) denied AWO a national funeral, Achebe’s words, on the grounds that AWO “was not an Igbo God!”

 Fy fan!

As for the Jews not accepting either Jesus or Muhammad (s.a.w.) as one of their prophets, there’s the Blessing before the Haftarah and the  Siddur note on “good prophets” reads:

The theme of the Haftarah blessings is the integrity of the prophets and their teachings. Even when it is their mission to criticize and threaten, they are good to the Jewish people. Also, they are chosen because they are good people: learned, righteous, impressive, etc. Our tradition does not accept prophets who are lacking in any of the attributes of Jewish greatness.

There are other types of prophets too, such as Karl Marx ( for some) Mao Tse Tung ( China) Kwame Nkrumah ( Ghana) Fidel Castro ( Cuba) Sherwin Wine (USA)

The Christian message (New International Version translation) is “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Sometimes, it’s the bitter truth.  

 In the letter to Babangida, we hear ( read) Chief AWO in the tradition of his namesake the prophet Jeremiah , speaking truth to power and without fear.  We recognise the truthfulness at the heart of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s words at that juncture of the life of the political entity that’s still welded together as Nigeria under one constitutional umbrella. Before we commit any biographical heresies, we ought to further situate that letter in its proper context considering all that had transpired in Nigeria from a few years before Independence in 1960, through the Biafra Civil War, through the coup that deposed Shagari – and imprisoned Chief Obafemi Awolowo ( for no just cause whatsoever)  - I was in Nigeria and that time  -  and the  Babangida coup that deposed Buhari and that it was the military man Babangida that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was addressing in that terse letter written about fourteen months before his own departure from the  shuffering and shmiling vale of tears that was then Nigeria…

 


On Wednesday, 25 December 2019 11:30:42 UTC+1, Ogedi Ohajekwe wrote:

“unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better.”
 
February 28, 1986 minus some twenty years. 
Jan 1966?🤭🤭🤭
Yikes.



On Dec 24, 2019, at 6:56 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:

Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

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Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 26, 2019, 12:29:01 AM12/26/19
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Salimonu Kadiri:

This is why I have stayed on Ibrahim Abdullahi, to see whether he is a pepper-soup rumor-monger, or a serious commentator on this Coker Commission caper.

Awo - in his book "Adventures in Power Book Ii:  The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law" spent a whole Chapter on this Coker Commission Report, and excerpted detailed analysis of the report by three intellectuals of that day: Prof.. S.A. Aluko (my father), Prof.. Hezekiah Oluwasanmi and Prof.. Akin Mabogunje.

1.  What Disgusts Me Most in the Coker Report - by Aluko
2.  A Most Infamous Rationalization - by Oluwasanmi
3.  It is a Travesty of Justice - by Mabogunje

Bolaji Aluko

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 26, 2019, 5:48:29 AM12/26/19
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I think we have lost the import of this thread and instead went on commenting on the saintliness of Awolowo.  Why did he choose to write in this manner to milootocrat Ibrahim Babangida's request?

That seems to be Awo's way of saying ' I wont be fooled twice.'  The clues are in the words 'dialectics' and 'twenty years'.

Awo invited Babangida on a short historical trajectory of how he got to power in questionable circumstances by short changing the dialectics that would have resulted in he, Awolowo being in power because the NPN had failed to deliver, in which case Babangida would be a soldier serving under him at his pleasure it the contrived situation in which Awo will be serving under his dictatorship all because the Northern Oligarchy did not want to let ho of power and would rather send in its military wing ensconced in the Nigerian army led by Ibrahim Babangida.  This was what Awo referred to euphemistically as the evil in men heart ( the situation was to be re- played again with Aare Abiola who was supposed to be closer to the Oligarchy.  Only then did it dawn on the Aare that the only thing close to the Oligarchy's heart is the perpetual monopoly of power, at which point he made his apologies to the then widow of Awo - HID)

Babangida and his cronies after first using Buharis credibility and sanitusation drive to seize power sought to contrive the situation 20 years earlier when Awo served under Gowon to prevent the country from disintegration in a civil war, when in fact there was no similarity because all the Northern Oligarchy was fighting in the 80s  after a massively rigged election was loss of power to an opposition led by Awo and the UPN and Awo's letter was to let Babangida know he could see through the smokescreen.

OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>
Date: 26/12/2019 05:37 (GMT+00:00)
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Salimonu Kadiri:

This is why I have stayed on Ibrahim Abdullahi, to see whether he is a pepper-soup rumor-monger, or a serious commentator on this Coker Commission caper.

Awo - in his book "Adventures in Power Book Ii:  The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law" spent a whole Chapter on this Coker Commission Report, and excerpted detailed analysis of the report by three intellectuals of that day: Prof.. S.A. Aluko (my father), Prof.. Hezekiah Oluwasanmi and Prof.. Akin Mabogunje.

1.  What Disgusts Me Most in the Coker Report - by Aluko
2.  A Most Infamous Rationalization - by Oluwasanmi
3.  It is a Travesty of Justice - by Mabogunje

Bolaji Aluko

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 8:36 PM Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 26, 2019, 5:49:08 AM12/26/19
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Bolaji:
Ibrahim Abdullah---don't do as usual: Abdullahi is not Abdullah. I do have a xerox copy of Coker---dated 1970. Am no rumor monger nor a fanatic like you. Awo did what the Commission alleged: misappropriation! 

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On 26 Dec 2019, at 5:29 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 26, 2019, 7:35:47 AM12/26/19
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Ibrahim Abdullah:

Despite your pedantry, I apologize for adding an "i" to your name.

Fanatic?  This is a clear case of projection.  From nowhere, you brought up the Coker Report and Awo's non-saintliness, and you presumed that you won't be tackled?  Mba nu...

Let us move on. Season's greetings.


Bolaji Aluko

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 26, 2019, 7:35:47 AM12/26/19
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Ibrahim Abdullah:

Can you share the appropriate pages with the forum?

OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Date: 26/12/2019 10:56 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Bolaji:
Ibrahim Abdullah---don't do as usual: Abdullahi is not Abdullah. I do have a xerox copy of Coker---dated 1970. Am no rumor monger nor a fanatic like you. Awo did what the Commission alleged: misappropriation! 

Sent from my iPhone

On 26 Dec 2019, at 5:29 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:




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Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 27, 2019, 5:52:43 AM12/27/19
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​Complement of the season to you, Mobolaji Aluko. It is useless to ask the toothless to use his tongue to count his teeth. The forwarder of Awolowo's reply to General Ibrahim Babangida in 1986 declining membership in his Political Bureau had wanted to remind readers not only about the reasons adduced by Awolowo for rejecting participation in the charade but that the reasons are still with us today. The forwarder of Awolowo's 33-year old letter never declared him a saint on account of the letter. He only reminded us that Awo's observations are still with us today.

​Then, Ibrahim came with his derisive comment, though totally unrelated to the contents of Awolowo's letter in question, that Awolowo was not a saint. He referenced Coker Commission of enquiry to support his assertion on Awolowo not being a saint. Although I agreed with him that Awolowo as a human being could never have been a saint, I requested him to share with us how Coker Commission of enquiry proved him not to be a saint. Ibrahim Abdullah is an intellectual and not a rascal SABARUMO which was why I hoped he would just excerpt the relevant part of Coker Commission that proved Awolowo was not a saint. Similarly to my request, you, Bolaji told Ibrahim that if his conviction on Awolowo's non-sainthood was based on Coker Commission of enquiry, then he must be seeing a horn on the head of a dog. An intellectual debater must at that point understand that he ought to come forward with a concrete evidence from Coker Commission's report. Instead, Ibrahim Abdullah ranted that Awo chopped cocoa money and used Sonibare to play the game. If Coker Commission had discovered that Awolowo stole or misappropriated Western Region funds when he was premier there up till 1959 when he handed over to Akintola, he would have been tried in court and sentenced to imprisonment. When theft crime could not be fixed on Awolowo, that was why the Federal Government resorted to treasonable felony against him.

​You asked Ibrahim Abdullah what he knows about Coker Commission? Instead of telling readers what he knows about it, Ibrahim Abdullah said, "I do have a Xerox copy of Coker - dated 1970." A Xerox copy of Coker Commission of enquiry dated 1970 may contain distorted version of the original dated 1962. However, the question is not which version of the Coker Commission of enquiry report Mallam Ibrahim Abdullah has but what part of the report stated specifically that Awolowo stole cocoa profit with the aid of Sonibare. Viewed along the above, it is very mild to call Ibrahim Abdullah a pepper-soup, rumour-monger since his response to interrogations are non-intellectual but that of a rascal aboki or sabarumo.
​S. Kadiri



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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 27, 2019, 5:53:22 AM12/27/19
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Get the report and help yourself. I read it when I was in UI---80/81. My xerox copy is somewhere in my Nigerian documents. If what you find contradicts my claim---Awo's alleged misappropriation--we can talk.

Yes, Awo, the "sage", appears to stand tall among his peers; the invention of the infallible "sage" have got a section of Yoruba intellectual in a series of conferences to cement that infallibility by deifying Papa. 

But alas, Papa is no deity: he was the original Action Grouper: an ethnic conclave confraternity that invented Yorubadom as a political indentity. 

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On 26 Dec 2019, at 12:35 PM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:



Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 27, 2019, 5:53:25 AM12/27/19
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Happy Holidays! I never runaway from a fight/a good fight. 

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 27, 2019, 6:39:04 AM12/27/19
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Oga Ibrahim.

Unless you havent seen my earlier post to that effect my own pedigree is not specifically Awoist but we must give honour to whom honour is due ( and not indiscriminately malign their memory when they are no longer alive to defend themselves.)

The reply that I should go and find the document is not good enough for a forum of this nature.  I did not make the allegation.  Even if you cannot find the document handy, you could paraphrase the sections and I am sure those who have read the document will produce the sections you refer to make your claims and the forum will be enlightened.

OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Date: 27/12/2019 10:57 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membershipofthe   1986 Political Bureau

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Get the report and help yourself. I read it when I was in UI---80/81. My xerox copy is somewhere in my Nigerian documents. If what you find contradicts my claim---Awo's alleged misappropriation--we can talk.

Yes, Awo, the "sage", appears to stand tall among his peers; the invention of the infallible "sage" have got a section of Yoruba intellectual in a series of conferences to cement that infallibility by deifying Papa. 

But alas, Papa is no deity: he was the original Action Grouper: an ethnic conclave confraternity that invented Yorubadom as a political indentity. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 26 Dec 2019, at 12:35 PM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:



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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 27, 2019, 7:18:34 AM12/27/19
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Really? I last read it thirty-some years ago at UI. You want me to paraphrase that? E kin se o omode---so gbo? I last discussed it with Comrade Osoba when I visited him last year at Ijebu Ode. Learn to check sources---don't wait for those making claims to substantiate their claims---they may not have the tools or the wherewithal. 
I hold nothing against Papa---I read him in context with his peers/contemporaries. 

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On 27 Dec 2019, at 11:39 AM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:



OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 27, 2019, 7:44:01 AM12/27/19
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Well, there is no longer any basis for prolonging the debate then.

Lets just agree to let sleeping dogs lie.

Shiikena.

OAASent from Samsung tablet.

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 27, 2019, 10:07:16 PM12/27/19
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Sheikh Ibrahim Abdullah,

You could repent and apologise.

This is not about hagiography or sacred dust or claims about other mortal/immortal words, including The Coker Commission or indeed The Beoku-Betts Commission as “the word of God”.

You are a historian and a professor of history, you have probably written a few biographies and political post-mortems worth reading, but whether or not you have published them to make them accessible to those who could be interested is not the main matter here. The main matter here is that you have made a public error in judgment (which you are entitled to do since you are not  masoom or one of the infallible) and as a historian, you know that judgment is based on some value system/s, facts ( variously defined) and that interpretation too is based on context, circumstances, motivation/ niyat…

In the Book of Job// Judaism’s The Book of Job   - “how bad things happen to good people”) and elsewhere, making false accusations, testifying against the righteous is one of the functions of Satan, the accuser and his agents. Likewise, in your case, it’s not good enough (it’s repugnant) that you publish or publicize some poisonous, malicious, malignant, hideous rumour/ last judgement, such as that “Awo chopped cocoa profit well well “, aimed at desecrating the sacred memory of Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo

You cannot make such heinous accusations - without proof.  You cannot bear false witness against thy neighbour and hope that you will get away with it  (adding insult to injury) on the grounds that it’s all in some controversial Coker Commission Report – which it isn’t  and so in the final analysis, the onus of proof should be on you, the Satanic accuser. You must furnish us with the evidence in black and white and you must do so by taking your own medicine:

“Learn to check sources---don't wait for those making claims to substantiate their claims---they may not have the tools or the wherewithal.”

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Your very first remark was that “Awo was no saint. Coker Commission report is there for all to see.” Baba Kadiri was quick to challenge you: “Agreed, Awo was not a saint, but did Coker Commission report prove that he was not a saint? If yes, please share with us how Coker Commission proved it.”  

Yet, up to now, you (Ibrahim Abdullah) have been reluctant to support any of your vilifications by quoting the aforementioned document which itself, as explained earlier was calculated (in the then prevailing circumstances, politically motivated) to tarnish AWO’s good name.  All you do is that you go on and on beating the same drum, ad nauseum, unnecessarily dragging the Chief’s good name in the mud, attributing evil to him and relegating his good name and good works to the category of the corrupt as if he is like other men of your ilk.

 De mortuis nil nisi bonum – and to that end even for those resting in the eternal perfect peace, you are aware of the law about defamation and the law about libel and slander.

May history continue to judge AWO favourably. The letter under our purview, is bitter, pessimistic, not cynical and in the end hopefully hoping in GOD, he says it all so eloquently, about that polity and he was very far from being non-committal when he said so unequivocally that he did not want to be a part of it. It was not a last will and testament - such as Moses’ farewell address or the Prophet of Islam’s last sermon.

The trouble with Nigeria and the trouble with a lot of places elsewhere is succinctly expressed in that letter and the message is clear, we could take it to heart and up till today it is up to us to do the right thing about the sorry mess for which we are responsible:

as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos”

 


On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:46:19 UTC+1, Ibrahim Abdullah wrote:
Awo was no saint. Coker Commission report is there for all to see.

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 24, 2019, at 10:35 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?
>
> RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO
>
> In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:
>
> “Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”
>
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 27, 2019, 10:09:30 PM12/27/19
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i decided to investigate this subject out of curiosity.

whatever awo's strengths and weakness, a valuable perspective by him on the national qs should not be vitiated by any views on these strengths and limitations he might have demonstrated.

i get the impression there are two views here opposed to abdullah's position

1. Aluko- Coker commission was a farce

2. Kadiri-demonstrate where the Coker commission indicts Awo of misusing funds for personal use

3. Abdullah- Awo misappropriated monies and was primarily an ethnic champion 

vols 2 and 3 of what Tignor below describes as the 4 vol report of the Report of Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, 1962   are provided by the university of florida digital collection. 

 i hope the nigerian govt and nigerian institutions  shall have a freely available complete copy of such a historically strategic document.

the search  shows the scholarly consensus as being that awo was indicted by the report for diverting monies meant for regional development to empowerment of his political party. his achievements in regional development are also acknowledged by scholars.

there is controversy as to the motives and justice of the coker report. 

1. Wikipedia on 'G.BA.Coker', vital as a beginning- 

'...., in the final report of the enquiry, it found Awolowo culpable in the diversion of regional funds to finance the Action Group but exonerated Akintola, which made it easier for the latter to be reinstated as Premier of the region' referencing Falola, T., & Genova, A. (2009). Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. P.8

  An Amazon book page  search of     Toyin Falola and Ann Genova's Historical Dictionary of Nigeria, 2018, 2nd ed, using the search term 'Coker' brings up the following- 

On page 82 of the  book, under 'Coker Commission' it states, 'Set up...in 1962, the commission's purpose was to investigate the financial dealings of the Western region to expose corruption. 

The Coker Report found Chief Obafemi Awolowo guilty of using the Western Region's money to finance the promotion and activities of the Action Group political party through an investment corporation. The Coker Commission created an opportunity for Samuel Akintola to be reinstalled as the region's premier.'


"The Coker Commission found Awolowo guilty of gross financial misappropriation and of diverting funds totaling N4.4 million in cash and N1.3 million in overdraft from government-owned corporations to finance political activities. This report, published on 31 December 1962, also absolved Akintola, the premier of the region and former lieutenant of Awolowo who had now become an ideological opponent. The Coker Commission is widely believed to be motivated by an enduring desire to discredit the Action Group administration in the West, which stood opposed to the federal government."


a google scholar search for the report brings up the following papers, among others, making the same conclusions.


'In 1962 Chief Obafemi Awolowo was dragged to the court of accountability. This led to a call or an investigation of the relationship between the erstwhile Awolowo government and the National investment and property Company, a private enterprise said to be indebted to the western regional government to the tune of £7,200.00. 

On June 20 1962, the Federal government appointed a commission headed by Justice G.B.
Coker to investigate the allegations and later the commission indicted Awolowo in its report. Consequently, the western regional government acquired all the property owned by the National Investment and property company..'


'In the year 1962, Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was investigated and found guilty of corruption by the Coker Commission of Inquiry. 


In 1954, the Western Region Marketing Board could boast of 6.2 million pounds sterling, however by May, 1962, the corporation had to exist on overdrafts amounting to over 2.5 million pounds sterling. 


The Commission found Chief Awolowo culpable to the ills of the regional marketing board for failure to adhere to standards of conduct required of persons holding public office, (Coker Commission, 1962).'


5. AN ANALYSIS OF THE MARKETING BOARDS OF NIGERIA 1939-1966 by Celestine Osuala 


'A major innovation in the post-1954 period was the increasing use of Marketing Board funds for the purposes of loans to and purchases of equities in Nigerian private companies. It is this area in which the greatest possibilities for misuse of funds was located. 


Of the three Boards, the Western Regional Marketing Board channeled the largest absolute amounts into private enterprise, exclusive of those grants to the Development and Finance Corporations(Federation of Nigeria, Report of Coker Commission of Inguiry  into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporation in Western Nigeria, Vol. 1 ,1962, P. 65.)


The bulk of these funds went to a bank and a real estate concern, the affairs of which were closely bound up with those of the political party then in power in the Western Region and its leading members. '



'Like the report by Foster-Sutton, that by Nicholson left deep N.C.N.C. resentment against the Action Group. But the N.C.N.C. had to wait for retaliatory action until after independence - when it was finally in a position of power in the Federation- to sanction an inquiry into the A.G. administration in the West.

...

...the investigation into corruption in the Western Region during 1962 by the Coker Commission, whose comprehensive, four-volume expose of administrative excesses proved to be one of the most frequently cited documents on African maladministration.

It highlighted the misuse of public funds for private and political gain, and asserted that investments made in the Region were 'important and but for political considerations which were certainly uppermost constituted a most flagrant breach of trust... by which the peoples of the Western Region have been robbed of the financial benefits to which they are entitled from the Western Regional Marketing Board'. ( Referencing 'Nigeria, Report of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, Lagos, 1962, p.36.)

Like previous inquiries, the report of the Coker Commission was deeply rooted in Nigerian political infighting, and the conclusions bore a striking and eerie similarity to those in the Foster-Sutton report.


 The Commissioners took the view that the National Investment and Properties Company 'was formed for the main purpose of providing funds for the Action Group', and held Obafemi Awolowo responsible for much of what had been illicitly distributed. They claimed that 'his scheme was to build around him with money an empire financially formidable both in Nigeria and abroad - an empire in dominance would be maintained by him by the power of the money which he had given out' ( Ibid. pp. 27 and 39).


8. 'PRODUCE BUYING AND MARKETING BOARDS IN NIGERIA: INTERROGATING THE FISCAL ROLE OFWESTERN NIGERIA MARKETING BOARD 1942-1962' by  Adeyinka Theresa Ajayi, ,Ajibade Idowu Samuel and Oladiti Abiodun Akeem



'In the Western Region, the Western Nigeria Marketing Board (WNMB) became the fiscal arm of the regional governments. It became the major financier of development projects in the region through the region’s development corporations. The paper concludes that the process of development was circumscribed due to misappropriation and diversion of funds derived from the Western Region Marketing Board.
...

WRMB (  Western Region Marketing Board ) soon became insolvent due to excesses from the leadership. Most of the funds were diverted to finance the regional party, Action Group and personal use. In 1954, the Western Region Marketing Board could boast of £6.2 million. However, by May 1962, the Development Corporation had to exist on overdrafts amounting to over £2.5 million. A loan of £6.7 million was made to the Western Region government-owned National Investment and Properties Co., Ltd. for building projects out of which only £500,000 was repaid. The Western Region Finance Corporation and the Western Nigeria Development Corporation also received loans of millions of pounds. None of these loans were ever repaid. The Western Nigeria Development Corporation was too weakened financially to repay the millions it owed the Board. The Coker Commission of Inquiry found Chief Awolowo, the regional and party leader culpable for the ills of the Western Region Marketing Board, due to his failure to adhere to the standards of conduct, which were required of persons holding public office.'


Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 28, 2019, 7:01:47 AM12/28/19
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Thanks Toyin. 

My two claims still stand: Awo's militant ethnicity and his misappropriation of funds with Shonibare as the cover!

I was pushed to read the report in 1981/82 when Concorde--Abiola's paper--Press went after Awo. He was alive then with his UPN but he did not go to court. I got curious and went to the library to read the report. 

So Cornelius: go help yourself if you truly set out to defend Awo--another supporter of Zionism. 

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On 28 Dec 2019, at 3:09 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:



Ogedi Ohajekwe

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Dec 28, 2019, 7:02:14 AM12/28/19
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Only Christ Himself went to the synagogue and decided to teach (or reinterpret to) the Rabbi and the Pharisees the laws of Moses. And they were not too happy about that.
So, ordinary mortals do not go to a  crowded synagogue, church or mosque intentionally trying to tamper with the biography or tenets of the “founders”. That is not going to be looked upon kindly, at the very best.
However, in as much as the tenets of these great MEN/prophets are relevant and are still being propagated, it may just be appropriate to continue to seek explanations to better understand what they are telling us.
We are lucky that these great MEN/prophets(especially the modern) leave us with lots of original tapes, videos  and written materials containing some of their teachings and thoughts, to ponder and possibly learn from.
This becomes more pertinent in forums like this one, where minds knowledgeable in the subject of discussion can enlighten, clarify and some even sometimes attempt to confuse us.
Human nature.
It is quite agreeable that the writings/tenets should be looked at and evaluated in context especially regarding to time, and circumstances, however, we should also realize that these MEN/prophets sometimes spoke in parables, at times  to wiggle out of trouble, point to a certain direction  (eg. giving to Caesar  what belongs to Caesar) and at other times to challenge the status quo.
Thank you very much for the advice though. 
There was never any intention to add to or subtract from anyone’s biography. I believe that this can impartially be done only by those who undertake to carefully study the subject or by those who observed the subject closely or interacted with all or particularly stages/segments of their lives.


On Dec 25, 2019, at 3:22 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


Corrected :

For me, it’s not clear  whether His Holiness Pope Francis’ kind words of consolation on Christmas Day was meant exclusively for the Roman Catholic Faithful or if his words of encouragement and assurance are also addressed to the other wanton sinners in the family of mankind,  when he said, “God still loves us all, even the worst of us”.

God still loves, “even the worst of us”, like Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, Pol Pot, Saddam, Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's military, all the rich people, all the unrepentant looters whose entry into paradise will be less easy than a camel passing through the eye of a needle?

Well, even before Pope Francis Christmas Day homilies, Boko Haram had already celebrated their Christmas eve with another trademark attack , apparently without remorse, they struck at dawn.

This is my preamble to the horrible on-going discussion about our late great, most venerable & beloved AWOLOWO,  Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo.

May the Almighty be pleased with him.

This is really the crux of the matter: According to the King James version, we have Jesus of Nazareth speaking here: “ Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country” – and there is a ring of truth to this, depending on what we mean by “prophet” and what is meant by his “own country”.

If you are an honourable Yoruba man, then assuredly it’s probably much easier to be a prophet in your own country, if by your “own country” you mean Yorubaland.

There is a statistical probability that it should be easier for you to be a prophet in Yorubaland than for you to be welcome as a prophet in e.g., Igboland, unless of course, and this is a paradox  - unless of course, your name is Jesus, and you happen to have been born  of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a cowshed in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago and happen to have been baptised by John the Baptiser in the holy Jordan River, which is in Israel.

Which also explains why Chinua Achebe the author of “A Man of the People” (1966) and “The trouble with Nigeria” (1983) denied AWO a national funeral, Achebe’s words, on the grounds that AWO “was not an Igbo God!”

 Fy fan!

As for the Jews not accepting either Jesus or Muhammad (s.a.w.) as one of their prophets, there’s the Blessing before the Haftarah and the  Siddur note on “good prophets” reads:

The theme of the Haftarah blessings is the integrity of the prophets and their teachings. Even when it is their mission to criticize and threaten, they are good to the Jewish people. Also, they are chosen because they are good people: learned, righteous, impressive, etc. Our tradition does not accept prophets who are lacking in any of the attributes of Jewish greatness.

There are other types of prophets too, such as Karl Marx ( for some) Mao Tse Tung ( China) Kwame Nkrumah ( Ghana) Fidel Castro ( Cuba) Sherwin Wine (USA)

The Christian message (New International Version translation) is “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Sometimes, it’s the bitter truth.  

 In the letter to Babangida, we hear ( read) Chief AWO in the tradition of his namesake the prophet Jeremiah , speaking truth to power and without fear.  We recognise the truthfulness at the heart of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s words at that juncture of the life of the political entity that’s still welded together as Nigeria under one constitutional umbrella. Before we commit any biographical heresies, we ought to further situate that letter in its proper context considering all that had transpired in Nigeria from a few years before Independence in 1960, through the Biafra Civil War, through the coup that deposed Shagari – and imprisoned Chief Obafemi Awolowo ( for no just cause whatsoever)  - I was in Nigeria and that time  -  and the  Babangida coup that deposed Buhari and that it was the military man Babangida that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was addressing in that terse letter written about fourteen months before his own departure from the  shuffering and shmiling vale of tears that was then Nigeria…

 


On Wednesday, 25 December 2019 11:30:42 UTC+1, Ogedi Ohajekwe wrote:

“unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better.”
 
February 28, 1986 minus some twenty years. 
Jan 1966?🤭🤭🤭
Yikes.



On Dec 24, 2019, at 6:56 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:

Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Cornelius:
Go get the report and read it. This is no classroom. I made a comment and I stand by it. Am not a Sheikh---don't cloth me in borrowed robes---I mean something when I say it. And I won't be the first go make such a claim; and am not here to score cheap points. If you think I have the time to rummage through documents I acquired forty years ago while in graduate school you should have another think coming. This forum is not a court of law--and I don't spend my time unnecessarily trying to prove this or that. 

Find the report and disprove my claim--this dogon turanchi won't take you anywhere. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 3:07 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Concerning Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Political Moses  and the forces that were allied against him, I enquired from Professor Google if he had any data on what Chief Obafemi Awolowo had to say on The Coker Commission and got 62 200 results . You can take your pick. I say  you can take your pick because there is and was a lot of stuff and nonsense out there; for instance in reading through the data that Hon. Toyin Adepoju provided just now when I came across the name Samson Nzeribe (“Baze University Abuja”) – the  name seemed to ring a bell ( Arthur Nzeribe) and so I came to the hasty but profound conclusion that this is not and cannot be it – it must be nothing less than some enemy “testimony”.  The lyrics of Bob Marley’s “Them got so much things to say right now”, ringing in my ear:

“Eh! But I'll never forget no way

They crucified Jesus Christ

I'll never forget no way

They sold Marcus Garvey for rice

I'll never forget no way

They turned their back on Paul Bogle

So, don't you forget (no way) your youth

Who you are and where you stand in the struggle”

As he knows, I do not bear any personal animosity towards him. On the contrary. My ire with Ibrahim Abdullah is based on what, once upon a time, he himself understood about the reprehensible,  in a very personal capacity, and probably remembers the pain he suffered being the victim of his political enemies’ malicious calumnies against him, at his workplace in Sierra Leone, and, of course, thank God, the triumph and satisfaction he  and I also felt when he was finally vindicated, exonerated.

The lesson is clear  - it’s known as the Golden Rule as explained by Hillel the Elder to someone who demanded that Hillel teach him the entire Torah  whilst he was standing on one leg : “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it.”

In equal measure, the Quran exhorts the Muslim Faithful, “Produce your proof if you are truthful

Bolaji:

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 28, 2019, 9:52:22 AM12/28/19
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This is what we expected from Ibrahim Abdullah in lieu of which we were replied with insults.

Now the debates can recommence with the value of the report. e.g. what role did  Awo play in the disbursement of the loans?  How much did he personally benefit from misappropriation?

To what extent was the  Marketing Board not expected to give loans to other regional development bodies?

Who takes personal responsibility for the inability of such bodies to repay loans?

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Date: 28/12/2019 12:15 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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

My two claims still stand: Awo's militant ethnicity and his misappropriation of funds with Shonibare as the cover!

I was pushed to read the report in 1981/82 when Concorde--Abiola's paper--Press went after Awo. He was alive then with his UPN but he did not go to court. I got curious and went to the library to read the report. 

So Cornelius: go help yourself if you truly set out to defend Awo--another supporter of Zionism. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 3:09 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:



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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 28, 2019, 10:48:14 AM12/28/19
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Dear Ogedi Ohajekwe,

You sound like my pastor at Umuahia, the fanatic and his crew who nearly drowned me in the Umuahia River ( “full immersion”) they carried me bodily to the river, nothing as dignified as this, of course not.

You begin by begging the question: “Only Christ Himself” – and capitalizing his himself too. Thank God there are no capital letters, at least in Biblical Hebrew. The question is, who made him “Christ”?

But you are right, as you say, “Human nature”.  This portrait of Pope Francis and his redeemer made me smile on Jesus birthday.

As a rabbi or a Torah scholar, Jesus had the right to teach Torah and to do his healing, not only in Galilee ( If you are really interested in the issue you could read at least the first chapter of Jacob Neusner ‘s  seminal and immensely readable “ a Rabbi talks with Jesus

I agree with the rest of what you say.

After my experiences in Umuahia in particular and in the rest of  what was then Imo State and Rivers State, as a result of all the effusive praise by Alagba Falola, I’m curious about Niml Wariboko’s book on “Nigerian Pentecostalism” , to see how the “ Assemblies of God” folks are developing.

Just the other day, right here in Stockholm, a Brother from Mozambique whipped out a little bottle of “holy water” from T.B. Joshua. When I raised my eyebrows, he said it was “working” for him. As you know, Wonders never cease. 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 28, 2019, 11:22:08 AM12/28/19
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Dear Ogedi Ohajekwe,

As a medical man and not a wonder healer or pastor from Nigeria, peddling " holy oil", I wonder how you feel about this : 

Image may contain: one or more people and text

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 28, 2019, 11:22:09 AM12/28/19
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Professor Ibrahim Abdullah,

OK, so, you’re not a” Sheikh”. Please forgive me. I thought that in this discussion the title Sheikh Ibrahim Abdullah, would sound pleasing to both your ears, would boost your ego and bolster your certainties over your uncertainties. When you’re invited to deliver a lecture in Riyadh, about corruption in the ummah – or indeed corruption in Nigeria and you are introduced as Sheikh Ibrahim Abdullah I’m sure that even before you begin to speak you’ll already get a standing ovation, because it is to be expected that truth  and only truth would be spouting out of your mouth, whereas a mere Western-educated Professor Ibrahim Abdullah that’s disconnected from the Jami'ah Islamiyya might not quote the Quran that says to the faithful, "Produce your proof if you are truthful

As you know, we Saro people and some of the Naija people too like awarding titles, even to some of the undeserving. What about “Mallam”? Baba Kadiri addressed you as” Mallam”. Any objection to that? What’s in a name?

I heard some Pakistani-looking fellows in the supermarket, speaking some kind of Punjabi so I approached them and after a short conversation I asked their leader, “Are you a Muslim?” He answered, emphatically, “No. I’m a human being. Thank God!” Turns out they were a bunch of Hindus. Like Modi & the BJP. Universal Hindu principle:  No beef. No “Halal”. Cow holy. Holy cow. Leaves room for the  conjecture that  there must have been a bunch of Hindu mushrikun in the mixed multitude that followed Moses out of Egypt, and that it must have been those guys that were later on responsible for the sin of the golden calf.

My dear friend Adl Hamza (an Egyptian from Mansura) defines a Muslim as one who does not lie. He says, and I quote him, “A Muslim does not lie!” – and so far in this thread, you have not lied - you have merely shifted all the blame on that contaminated Coker Report. And that is the apotheosis of this discussion. We are not going to get any further with you, without completely disembowelling the accursed Coker Report. That it has already been vastly discredited is not going to get anywhere with you, you are adamant and as far as you are concerned, never mind the circumstances in which it was conducted, you believe that The Coker Report was written in indelible, uncorrupted ink, maybe, second only to the Holy Quran, for veracity.

No doubt, Jesus, son of Mary was also a supporter of Zionism, he was human after all, just like Ibrahim Abdullah, Moses ( Ochonu)  you can even say that “he was no saint”  even if in Peter’s dream he ( Jesus ) was seen walking on water and till today there are people who misunderstand  -as Dr Ben Carson put it – and this applies to perceptions of AWO too :

 “Haters will see you walking on water and say it’s because you can't swim. Even if you dance on water, your enemies will accuse you of raising dust.”

My last word to you on this matter: an explanation (e.g. of the trinity) is not a proof, nor is an accusation, suspicion,  falsification, a prejudiced report, a trial in a kangaroo court , the trial of Jesus, Socrates, Mandela, Kenyatta, Biko  - and you know the flaws in the Beoku-Betts, the Percy Davies Inquiry and the host of other inquiries in our various countries , since Coker’s politically motivated and the questions that Baba Kadiri asked and which neither Professor, Sheikh or Mallam is able to answer adequately :

“If Coker Commission had discovered that Awolowo stole or misappropriated Western Region funds when he was premier there up till 1959 when he handed over to Akintola, he would have been tried in court and sentenced to imprisonment. When theft crime could not be fixed on Awolowo, that was why the Federal Government resorted to treasonable felony against him.”

 Bottom line: You are deliberately being both unreasonable and unfair:

I/ we should “Get the report and read it” because it’s too much trouble for you to dig up the relevant sections and post them – not that we have to believe a single letter in the confounded Report. Here it is:  Report of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, 1962

 It’s the same as my last word to my Tanzanian friend ( a Jesus fan/fanatic ) who wants me to waste my time reading some useless hocus-pocus science fiction material known as The Book of Urantia . I guess he’s been reading all his life  and still hasn’t come across what  I would recommend that he read The Tanya ! That would be reading something worthwhile

Cornelius:

Chikwendu Ukaegbu

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Even if Awo appropriated govt. funds, it is refreshing to see or read about a Nigerian political leader who accomplished so much during his time in office. Compare him to the rogues, and developmentally illiterate leaders,  who have occupied political offices since the end of the civil war and in custody of billions of public money. They build roads that crumble in 6 months, school physical environments make one nauseous and produce pupils and students unable read and write. The once dependable electricity and water systems built by their predecessors are now things of the past.  In many places, it is now  personal boreholes of which their long term geological consequences are unknown. Unemployment has gone through the roof. Nigeria de-industrializes without industrializing. There is an unconscionable amount external debt, plus watching Nigeria turn into a slum society. The list of failures goes on including supervising a society in which corruption is taken for granted yet Nigerian government and state governments have been in custody of more money since the end of the civil war than in the time of Awo.
  I do  not know whether Awo appropriated public funds for his personal benefit. Even if he did, he still achieved something that benefited and continue to benefit his people. Is it any wonder that Ojukwu dubbed him, "The Best President Nigeria Never Had."  Nigeria's social and economic indicators, and so quality of life, have plummeted because the likes of Awo have not been replicated on national and regional landscapes since the end of the civil war. All those who have criticized Awo in the current thread because he rejected Babangida's invitation to the political debate are in grave error. Awo's response was no prophecy. It was a response driven by a profound store of imagination and political sagacity. He knew and understood that the foundation on which the Nigerian geoethnopolity was built is a false one. He was vindicated by the fact that the same Babangida who invited him to contribute to the debate was the same person who annulled the 1993 presidential election without any discernible reason or logic, but in my opinion to benefit his own people. Was Awo's skepticism of the Nigerian project plausible? You  be the judge.

Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu
 

Bolaji:


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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 28, 2019, 1:54:20 PM12/28/19
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You call that insult? E pele sah! Never knew you have thin skin. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 2:52 PM, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:



Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 28, 2019, 1:54:20 PM12/28/19
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Cornelius:
This is sheer dogon turanchi--hot air! Am not an Islamic scholar; I will never be invited to SA to give a lecture. You really don't know me so please don't stretch your imagination to invent a personae that is alien to my person. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 4:22 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 28, 2019, 2:43:57 PM12/28/19
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Chikwendu:

Its like you read my mind!  I was about to say while his political rivals were busy laughing at him wondering where he was going to get the funds to execute his programmes of free this and free that, build cocoa house, modern health care e.tc , Awo knew precisely how he was going to have the last laugh and prove them wrong:  development of human capital versus growing capital in bank vaults.

People keep referring to how the South West economy out performed the North.  Answer: the return of interests on human capital grows exponentially in geometric proportions while the interest rate of money put in the bank grows in arithmetic proportions.

The results of the ,£6.2 millions depleted in the Regional Marketing Boards Account is the exponential business growth in the South West by the human capital development afforded by the re- allocation of the funds in quadripulates with these enlightened business elite building businesses worth 20 times more than the worth of the parent fund generating Marketing Board.  Its the biblical parable of the 10 talents all over again.

Therefore what the Coker Commission reported as a loss to the people of the South West is in fact exponential gains of transformation of value, when analysed in this manner.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: 'Chikwendu Ukaegbu' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 28/12/2019 19:05 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Even if Awo appropriated govt. funds, it is refreshing to see or read about a Nigerian political leader who accomplished so much during his time in office. Compare him to the rogues, and developmentally illiterate leaders,  who have occupied political offices since the end of the civil war and in custody of billions of public money. They build roads that crumble in 6 months, school physical environments make one nauseous and produce pupils and students unable read and write. The once dependable electricity and water systems built by their predecessors are now things of the past.  In many places, it is now  personal boreholes of which their long term geological consequences are unknown. Unemployment has gone through the roof. Nigeria de-industrializes without industrializing. There is an unconscionable amount external debt, plus watching Nigeria turn into a slum society. The list of failures goes on including supervising a society in which corruption is taken for granted yet Nigerian government and state governments have been in custody of more money since the end of the civil war than in the time of Awo.
  I do  not know whether Awo appropriated public funds for his personal benefit. Even if he did, he still achieved something that benefited and continue to benefit his people. Is it any wonder that Ojukwu dubbed him, "The Best President Nigeria Never Had."  Nigeria's social and economic indicators, and so quality of life, have plummeted because the likes of Awo have not been replicated on national and regional landscapes since the end of the civil war. All those who have criticized Awo in the current thread because he rejected Babangida's invitation to the political debate are in grave error. Awo's response was no prophecy. It was a response driven by a profound store of imagination and political sagacity. He knew and understood that the foundation on which the Nigerian geoethnopolity was built is a false one. He was vindicated by the fact that the same Babangida who invited him to contribute to the debate was the same person who annulled the 1993 presidential election without any discernible reason or logic, but in my opinion to benefit his own people. Was Awo's skepticism of the Nigerian project plausible? You  be the judge.

Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu
 

On Saturday, December 28, 2019, 6:02:49 AM CST, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


Bolaji:

Skickat: den 25 december 2019 00:06
Till: usaafric...@ googlegroups.com <usaafric...@ googlegroups.com>
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
O ko owo je like all the others and used Sonibare to play the game. Awo chopped cocoa profit well well. You cannot cover your beloved Papa. Only blind AGroupers will want to whitewash Coker Commission and deify the proclaimed Sage! 

So funny---covering up for Awo.  

Sent from my iPhone

On 24 Dec 2019, at 10:19 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Ibrahim Abdullah:

What do you know about the Coker Commission report?  If that was what makes you declare Awo a non-saint, then he was indeed a saint.  The Coker Commision was a cooked-up concordance..no pun intended.

No - Awo was not a saint simply because he was human.  But he stands almost paradigmatically alone in the pantheon of Nigeria's original leaders.

Season's greetings!


Bolaji Aluko


On Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 14:46 Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
Awo was no saint. Coker Commission report is there for all to see.

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 24, 2019, at 10:35 AM, Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?
>
> RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO
>
> In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:
>
> “Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”
>
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 28, 2019, 4:03:08 PM12/28/19
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no one is denying awos great achievements.

thus is this not taking awo veneration too far-

Therefore what the Coker Commission reported as a loss to the people of the South West is in fact exponential gains of transformation of value, when analysed in this manner.'

  the conclusion of the commission according to the scholarship is that money meant for more of this development was used in funding a political party.

toyin 


OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 28, 2019, 4:20:38 PM12/28/19
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This is perhaps where the political mission of the commission is betrayed.  Is this corporation a federal corporation subject to the oversight of the federal government?  If not of what value is this conclusion to the federal government?  

Could it prosecute for recovery of funds?  I hinted at the reply in my earlier post.  The federal authorities were envious of the well run political machinery and wanted to know the source for it.  I know AG had regular larger funders like the Ogbeni Oja of Ijebu land.  So how much specifically  did the Commission allege was used to fund party activities and what was it used for?

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 28/12/2019 21:07 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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no one is denying awos great achievements.

thus is this not taking awo veneration too far-

Therefore what the Coker Commission reported as a loss to the people of the South West is in fact exponential gains of transformation of value, when analysed in this manner.'

  the conclusion of the commission according to the scholarship is that money meant for more of this development was used in funding a political party.

toyin 


On Sat, 28 Dec 2019 at 20:43, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 28, 2019, 4:20:45 PM12/28/19
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This conclusion is based on excerpts from the report---not the whole report.  

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 9:03 PM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:



Rex Marinus

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Dec 28, 2019, 5:03:34 PM12/28/19
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Dear Tunji Olaopa:
Awolowo did not see any further than the political realities and conditions in Nigeria of which he was a key architect from 1947. He was no visionary, and did not possess a god-like capacity to see a future. He was no futurologist, nor did he possess any more than at best, an above average intelligence! At this stage in our intellectual history, it is important to stop all the pointless, really mediocre, low-level kinds of myth-making we call 'history.' Nigerian history is properly documented in the places where archives are properly preserved and not manipulated. We do not have "three founding fathers" for instance in Nigeria. If there were any founders and movers for modern Nigeria, they were those who with Azikiwe belonged to the Nationalist party and the nationalist movement. Neither Awolowo nor Bello supported the Nationalist movement or the very basis of a Nigerian nationalist anti-colonialism.   We can tell who did what from 1937-1947. From 1947-1957. From 1957-1967. From 1967-1977. From 1977-1987, and so on. We can already harvest from the End of Empire documents already publicly available to us the work, state, and place of each of these historical figures in the formation and deformation of Nigeria. The constant attempts to apotheosize Awolowo beyond his weight is a very laughable, repetitive, but by now exhausted ploy. And to ascribe some kind of immanent insight in this terrifyingly mediocre letter he wrote to Babangida is the height of intellectual infamy. Any elementary rhetorical analysis of this letter will basically show exactly what Awo was saying to Babangida: "Sorry, sir, but Fuck Nigeria and Nigerians! I'm not interested." That's basically the sum of Awo's letter.  Now, you want to ascribe some high intelligence to it? Get real sir!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:35 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 28, 2019, 6:26:20 PM12/28/19
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Thanks for butting in!

Best wishes, 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Dec 2019, at 10:03 PM, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:



OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 28, 2019, 6:26:35 PM12/28/19
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Why would Awolowo want to refer to Babangida (a mere lieutenant when he served his boss Gowon during the Civil war) as ' sir?  Isnt that what the rejection of the request is all about?

Its like Abacha forming the Interim Government after the annulment of the June 12 elections and asking Abiola to serve in it after he (Abiola) dealt with Abacha's boss ( Murtala) whose shoe lace Abacha was unfit to unlace.  Isnt the insult too obvious?

Thankfully Awo refused to serve while others agreed.  Otherwise all kinds of reasons would have been ascribed.

OAA





Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 28, 2019, 6:28:48 PM12/28/19
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Thank you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, for your attempt to resuscitate the 1962 Coker Commission of enquiry into the financial dealings of the Western Region in 1962. A Yoruba adage says that he who sights an elephant and draws a machete is only making a futile attempt because elephant is not an animal to be hunted with a machete. What are being presented as the Coker Commission Report cannot be logically true. Citing p. 82, 2nd edition, 2018, Historical Dictionary of Nigeria, By Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, readers are informed thus, "Set up …. in 1962, the commission's purpose was to investigate the financial dealings of the Western Region to expose corruption. The Coker Report found Chief Obafemi Awolowo guilty of using the Western Region's money to finance the promotion and activities of the Action Group political party through an investment corporation. The Coker Commission created an opportunity for Samuel Akintola to be installed as the region's premier." Awolowo handed over the premiership of Western Region to Samuel Ladoke Akintola in 1959 to become the leader of opposition in the Federal Parliament instead of the Prime Minister he had hoped for. Although Abubakar Tafawa Balewa invited Awolowo to join him in a national government, Awolowo declined to be part of a government led by a feudalist. In 1961, the federal coalition government of the NPC/NCNC decided to conduct enquiry into the National Bank of Nigeria in which the Western Region Marketing Board had substantial investment. The Bank had provided loans to business men who supported Action Group and to the Party itself. Western Region's government led by S. L. Akintola challenged the legitimacy of the federal government's action in Court and it was declared unconstitutional by Justice Charles Daddy Onyeama in 1961.

​National Bank was the main target of the Coker Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Federal government in 1962 and which sat between July  and November 1962. Coker reported that National Bank had granted unsecured loans to the Action Group. The National Investment and Properties Limited (NIPC), owned entirely by four Action Group members and who were also its Directors, was created in 1958 to develop the properties then owned by the National Bank. The Commission found out that in the company's articles of association one of its assignments was to subscribe or guarantee money for charitable political objects. Therefore money donated by the NIPC to the Action Group was termed by Coker Commission as questionable legality. The Coker Commission's Report said that the Deputy leader of the Action Group since 1954 and Premier of Western Region from 1959 to May 29, 1962, S.L. Akintola, knew nothing about the National Bank, NIPC, Western Nigeria Marketing Board in the internal questionable legality between them vis- à-vis the Action Group and the Western Region Government. Certainly, the transactions were legal but not corrupt and that was why the Commission could not recommend anyone to be prosecuted for corruption. However, those afflicted with Nigeria's type of AIDS, Acquired Intelligence Deficient Syndrome, would say Awolowo chopped Cocoa money well, well, even though nothing like that was reported in Coker report.

​The Coker Commission's report had nothing to do with the re-instatement of Samuel Akintola as Premier of Western Region at the end of a six-month emergency rule by the Federal government, 31 December 1962. The Action Group had, on May 21, 1962, recommended his removal as Premier to the Governor of Western Region through a paper signed by 66 members of the Region's House of Assembly, and on which the Governor, Sir Adesoji Aderemi, acted. However, the Supreme Court of Nigeria declared the Governor's action unconstitutional, causing the Action Group claimant to the premiership, Dauda Adegbenro, to appeal to the Privy Council in Britain. By the time the Privy Council decision arrived, Nigeria had become a Republic and the Federal government declared that the Privy Council decision had been overtaken by events. So it was the decision of the Supreme Court of Nigeria that declared the removal of Akintola as premier without formal vote of no confidence in the Regional House of Assembly that paved way for the re-instatement of Akintola as Premier after he had formed a new political party, UPP, which formed a coalition government with the NCNC members of the House. According to the Privy Council, the clause that empowered the Governor to remove the Premier from office in the constitution only said, "if the governor was satisfied that the Premier no longer commanded the majority in the House," and the sixty-six signatures received by the governor fulfilled that condition. Thus, the interpretation of the word 'if' by the Supreme Court of Nigeria was a stranger to the intention of the framers of the constitution.

When Coker Commission of Enquiry took place in 1962, Nigerian Currency was pound sterling. Naira currency came after the civil war. Therefore, Lit Calf Encyclopedia assertion that ''the Coker Commission found Awolowo guilty of gross financial misappropriation and of diverting funds totalling N4.4 million in cash and N1.3 million overdraft from government-owned corporations to finance political activities,'' must be false. Coker could not have been quoting misappropriated and diverted funds in naira value when pound sterling was the national currency. 
S. Kadiri


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Skickat: den 27 december 2019 18:46
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Ogedi Ohajekwe

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:25 AM12/29/19
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Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.


On Dec 28, 2019, at 11:22 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:33 AM12/29/19
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 BTW, in my experience so far, although all of them are fundamentalists, Nigerian Christians - even lay Christians are the most impressive explicators of the Christian scriptures. Apart from the obvious problem about the divinity of Jesus (as an incarnation of God, his virgin birth, resurrection and ascension etc)  for those of “ little faith”, I (a fellow ordinary mortal) agree with the rest of what you say. At this stage I’m still a beginner student, humbly carrying on from where I began in Umuahia. I still haven’t read Mark and Luke, or the “Acts of the Apostles” or most of the Letters of Paul etc. For background enlightenment, there’s the  Jerusalem Perspective and for guidance in understanding there’s The Jewish Annotated New Testament 2nd edition ( available in a pdf format) and the spiritually interesting texts  in the Philakolia .

 There’s hope yet since Nigeria is reputed to be one of the most religious countries on God’s planet. What’s mostly missing is the essential unity

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:34 AM12/29/19
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Ibrahim Abdullah,

That's what the imagination does, even about the great men and women that we never met in the flesh. I hope that I have a little of what a famous English poet that I never met proposed as " negative capability
I like, love and respect you and only have positive thoughts about you, even when you are being mischievous.
I, I, I. 
I have just downloaded a text-to-speech app in order to listen to some of the Speeches of Chief  Obafemi Awolowo that I read a very long time ago at this website ( Great Speeches): https://www.dawodu.com/
I can listen to other people reading even the scriptures but not poetry, not even the great modern poets reading their own stuff.
I. I, I. 
Cornelius:

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:34 AM12/29/19
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Is it possible that the same could be said of AWO, as you say, a fellow Zionist,  - that he would never have been invited to deliver a lecture in SA. And that likewise you could be charged with being guilty of stretching your imagination to invent a persona that is alien to AWO's august person. 
As for me ( no exaggeration) I have a fertile imagination that can visualise (like a Tibetan Buddhist) and can easily blow things out of proportion - dream and converse with prophets etc.  
Cornelius:

Ogedi Ohajekwe

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:34 AM12/29/19
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Thank you for the book references.
We are reminded to be mindful  of the single story. 
Human nature makes it easy for “the single story” to effortlessly creep in, so we should be vigilant. 
In the early to mid 70s, I traveled by train from Aba to Enugu. There was a 5 to 10 minutes stop at Umuahia-my only claim to have visited.
I have however interacted with lots of people who have better claim to Umuahia and they are very diverse people, from all works of life, different religions, and religious denominations.


On Dec 28, 2019, at 10:48 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 29, 2019, 2:44:34 AM12/29/19
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Long time. Here comes the Biafran Chauvinist Nwakanma ! The glorious Igbophiliac rides into town ( the USA – Africa Dialogue Series) once again, waving his flag, bristling with his usual disdain and arrogance, talking about “at best, an above average intelligence” – as if he  has just designed a new intelligence quotient test for his super-Biafrans and his intellectually malnourished fellow Nigerians, with he himself sitting at the apex of Mt. Olympus as the Naira’s new gold standard, himself ( with a modest small h) just freshly minted from some citadel of learning or other and about to start awarding/ handing out IQ certificates to the like-minded starting with his demi-god Azikiwe, destined in Nwakanma’s mind, to sit atop of the Great Pyramid as the one and only  Zik of Africa, forever.

 Within his single paragraph response to Dear Tunji Olaopa he has managed to sprinkle his key words, “intellectual history”: he would like to confine  the “ terrifyingly mediocre” and relegate all those that he so humbly disdains, to “the height of intellectual infamy” and then consign them to the dustbin/garbage heap of history, leaving the rest of us himself gasping for some fresh air and wondering, when did the best of us become the worst of us?

He would like us to believe and have faith in his wayward conceit that unlike him the great AWO was “ no visionary” although the foresight in Chief Obafemi Awolowo's free primary education programme in Western Nigeria 1952-1966 is  still reaping its dividends, for all to see and this continues to be an inspiration  - so that in the oil-boom years, Bendel’s Governor Ambrose Ali invested as much as 50% of his state budget in education.

Nwakanma’s latest little tittle-tattle culminates in the expected anti-climax to this long thread that there is no “high intelligence” in the tone and texture of AWO’s tersely written letter to Babangida.

Let’s hope that Nwakanma will spare Babangida and not downgrade or degrade his intellectual capacity to some imaginary lower level, because in my opinion, Ibrahim Babangida too is still very intelligent and  very much, still an astute politician.


But not to worry; I leave  Nwakanma to the tender mercies of Baba Kadiri  


On Saturday, 28 December 2019 23:03:34 UTC+1, Rex Marinus wrote:
Dear Tunji Olaopa:
Awolowo did not see any further than the political realities and conditions in Nigeria of which he was a key architect from 1947. He was no visionary, and did not possess a god-like capacity to see a future. He was no futurologist, nor did he possess any more than at best, an above average intelligence! At this stage in our intellectual history, it is important to stop all the pointless, really mediocre, low-level kinds of myth-making we call 'history.' Nigerian history is properly documented in the places where archives are properly preserved and not manipulated. We do not have "three founding fathers" for instance in Nigeria. If there were any founders and movers for modern Nigeria, they were those who with Azikiwe belonged to the Nationalist party and the nationalist movement. Neither Awolowo nor Bello supported the Nationalist movement or the very basis of a Nigerian nationalist anti-colonialism.   We can tell who did what from 1937-1947. From 1947-1957. From 1957-1967. From 1967-1977. From 1977-1987, and so on. We can already harvest from the End of Empire documents already publicly available to us the work, state, and place of each of these historical figures in the formation and deformation of Nigeria. The constant attempts to apotheosize Awolowo beyond his weight is a very laughable, repetitive, but by now exhausted ploy. And to ascribe some kind of immanent insight in this terrifyingly mediocre letter he wrote to Babangida is the height of intellectual infamy. Any elementary rhetorical analysis of this letter will basically show exactly what Awo was saying to Babangida: "Sorry, sir, but Fuck Nigeria and Nigerians! I'm not interested." That's basically the sum of Awo's letter.  Now, you want to ascribe some high intelligence to it? Get real sir!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:35 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

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Rex Marinus

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Dec 29, 2019, 7:14:00 AM12/29/19
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And there goes Cunnilingus Ham-bag, masquerading again as Baba Kadiri, and handing down second rate philosophy about Africa and Nigeria and Biafra from Sweden. Let's hope you have your loin clothes worn tight this time.
Obi Nwakanma


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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 29, 2019, 7:14:10 AM12/29/19
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Thanks Kadiri, for these efforts at telling and interpreting a history we are trying to understand.

Who Was Obafemi Awolowo?

Obafemi Awolowo was a great leader, a fine economic and development thinker and effective though controversial executor of economic and development ideas, a remarkable and controversial war strategist, as demonstrated by the role of his economic maneuvers  in the Nigerian side in the Nigerian Civil  War, a rich  writer and political thinker, a study in the oscillation between ethnic  empowerment and nationalistic vision and leadership, a mirror within the complexities of whose career is refracted the ongoing journey of SW intelligentsia in relation to the Nigerian project.

He will always inspire debate.

How sustainable is this argument of yours?

On Accuracy of Information Presented so Far

I understand you as dismissing the scholarly accounts of the content and effects of the Coker Report on the basis of your conviction that the report could not have contributed to Akintola taking over the premiership of Western region from Awo and because an encyclopedia account of the sums described as misappropriated rendered them in a currency that Nigeria was not using at the time.

You also argue that the report rendered a verdict of 'questionable legality' and not illegality in relation to the financial transactions it unearthed, this being different from a verdict of outright corruption, leading to the Commission being unable to recommend anyone for a corruption prosecution.

An online encyclopedia may be forgiven for converting the sums referenced by the Commission to current currency but you can see that the scholarly articles quoted, from academic journals and academic fora, were careful to indicate the pound sterling sums described as stated by the report. 

As for your account of why Akintola was reinstalled as premier, could you provide your sources for this information, in the context of an examination of the views on the various factors that contributed to this outcome?

You might have documents you can scan and upload or you could do some  research to find such documents  in order to substantiate your account as well as analyzing them in relation to the conclusions you are drawing from them.

That is vital bcs this debate is about moving beyond statements of opinion to the reasoned justification of opinion based on verifiable facts.

Accounts  of the Commission's Enquiries and its  Conclusions

How true is this-

'National Bank was the main target of the Coker Commission of Inquiry...Certainly, the transactions were legal but not corrupt and that was why the Commission could not recommend anyone to be prosecuted for corruption. However, those afflicted with Nigeria's type of AIDS, Acquired Intelligence Deficient Syndrome, would say Awolowo chopped Cocoa money well, well, even though nothing like that was reported in Coker report. ' 

 The available evidence indicates that the indictments of the Commission emerged significantly, among other sources, from investigations of the state owned Western Region Marketing Board " the major financier of development projects in the region through the region’s development corporations" as stated by Adeyinka Theresa Ajayi, ,Ajibade Idowu Samuel and Oladiti Abiodun Akeem in  'Produce Buying and Marketing Boards in Nigeria: Interrogating the Fiscal Role of Western Nigeria Marketing Board 1942-1962', concluding "that the process of development was circumscribed due to misappropriation and diversion of funds derived from the Western Region Marketing Board" .  

 Robert L. Tignor's "Political Corruption in Nigeria before Independence"  quotes at least three pages of the Coker Report reinforcing this summation, depicting the Report as describing the mode of acquisition as well as the  use of those monies in question as enrichment of a group, Awo's party, thereby developing his personal power base,  against the interests of the larger community, the Western Region, and therefore a serous breach of public trust, leading to the reports' indictment of Awo and his party as featuring in several accounts of corruption in Nigerian history:

"..a most flagrant breach of trust... by which the peoples of the Western Region have been robbed of the financial benefits to which they are entitled from the Western Regional Marketing Board'. ( 'Nigeria, Report of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, Lagos, 1962, p.36.)  


Celestine Osuala's  "An Analysis of the Marketing Boards of Nigeria 1939-1966" is more specific on the methods through which these monies were channeled:
    

"Of the three Boards, the Western Regional Marketing Board channeled the largest absolute amounts into private enterprise, exclusive of those grants to the Development and Finance Corporations(Federation of Nigeria, Report of Coker Commission of Inguiry  into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporation in Western Nigeria, Vol. 1 ,1962, P. 65.)


The bulk of these funds went to a bank and a real estate concern, the affairs of which were closely bound up with those of the political party then in power in the Western Region and its leading members. "


 An Indictment of Obafemi Awolowo  by the Commission in its Own Words

On the specific character of the indictments by the Commission,  in their own words, a basic search for references to "Obafemi Awolowo"  in  volume 2 of the  Report of Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, 1962   provides the following information on page 33, para 3::

"It seems clear to us on the evidence that the sale of Moba [ real estate] to the Western Nigeria  government at the price of 850, 000 pounds is a most elaborate and criminal conspiracy to obtain that amount of money from the Government for the benefit of the Action Group.

To start with we observe that Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was and is at at all material times the Federal President and Leader of the party knew all about the scheme and in fact, in our view, actually engineered it."

The report then describes how  the Commission  came to this conclusion by reconstructing the chain of decision from and to Awolowo on the subject and how they were able to reconstruct this decision chain.

They sum up in paras 7 and 8-

" We are satisfied that the value placed on Moba by Messrs Gleave and Fox [ Chartered Surveyors ]  is entirely  unrealistic and cannot be sustained by any logical arguments whatsoever.

...we have no doubt that they themselves were involved in this vicious conspiracy of getting money by such sinister means off the Western Region government.

We refer in particular to the monstrous document placed in the  hands of the Government of Western Nigeria by Messrs Gleave and Fox, exhibit MOO.26." 

Searches in vol. 3 linked at the University of Florida source of the report and vols 1 and 4 not available  at that source should provide more information.

Need to Clarify One's Position and Provide Substantiating Evidence 

In relation to this evidence  demonstrating that  the report indicted Awo of diverting public funds to his political party, and one of the sources, Tignor, quoting  the report as declaring that Awo did that in the name of building a political empire in which he played a central role, solidifying his power base, are you trying to suggest that the Coker Report did not indict Awolowo for misappropriation of funds meant for the Western region?

A writer who wishes to overturn such an established scholarly consensus as well as evidence from the copy of the report linked here will need to not only cite the relevant sections of the report that support their view, but also make those sections available in order to prove their case beyond doubt.

This is particularly vital because this debate hinges on the demand to provide evidence that anyone can verify, namely, the text of the 1962 Coker Commission report.

As we have observed repeatedly on this forum, and is obvious from observing historical accounts, claims of what happened, and how and why they happened, cant be taken for granted but need to be substantiated in a verifiable manner bcs two people may give different accounts of the same history.

Having established beyond doubt what the Coker Report actually states, one may then proceed to examining the justice of the report's position.


thanks

toyin


Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 29, 2019, 10:59:49 AM12/29/19
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​Dear Obi Nwakanma,
​Contrary to your opinion that Awolowo was not a visionary, he stated already in his 1947 book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, why he objected, along with other reasons, to self-government as at that time thus, "The existence of a microscopic literary class would lead to exploitation of the great majority of illiterates by the intelligentsia.'' Every institution of governance in Nigeria today are manned by few educated class like you, but the results of their administration hitherto are as Awolowo foresaw it 72 years ago. 

​Already in 1941, Awolowo warned, "Nigeria under a unitary constitution might be dominated by those, whatever their number, who owed greater allegiance to ethnic affinity than  to PRINCIPLES and IDEALS." "As for between the various ethnic groups," Awolowo argued, "there were differing standards of civilisation as well as uneven stages in the adoption of Western education and the emulation of western civilisation. A unitary constitution with only one central government would only result in frustration to the much pushful and more dynamic ethnic groups, whereas a division of the country into regions along ethnic lines would enable each linguistic group not only to develop its own peculiar culture and institutions but to move forward at its own pace without being unnecessarily pushed or annoyingly slowed down by the others." The NCNC led by Nnamdi Azikiwe pushed for Unitary form of government in Nigeria but did not succeed until a coup within a coup of 15 January 1966 catapulted Major General Johnson Thompson Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi into power. Awolowo was still in prison in Calabar on May 24, 1966, when Ironsi in Decree No.34 abolished the Regions and proclaimed Unitary government. The West African Pilot of the following day published a large cartoon of a cock crowing one Nigeria. Remarkably, cock was the symbol of the NCNC and West African Pilot was owned by Nnamdi Azikiwe former leader of the NCNC that had advocated Unitary form of government for Nigeria. Awolowo's vision about the ill-effects of a Unitary constitution for Nigeria already in 1941 which was forced on the country through a one-man constitutional review commission, Francis Nwokedi, in 1966 is what Nigerians, mostly from the South, are battling to expunge from the constitution till date.

​Knowing fully well that the Ohaneze Ndigbo conferred the traditional title of Ogugua Ndigbo on General Ibrahim Babangida for buttering Igbo bread, it is not surprising that Obi Nwakanma is emotionally offended by Awolowo's letter to Babangida. A proper understanding of Awolowo's letter to Babangida can be derived from the letter written to General Aguiyi Ironsi on 28 March 1966, in which he asked for pardon and release from prison for himself and his colleagues who had been incarcerated since 29 May 1962. In that letter to Ironsi Awolowo disclosed that the then Chief Justice of the Federation, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, in October 1963, approached him that if he could form an all-embracing new Yoruba party with Akintola that would go into alliance with NPC, he would be released from prison before the end of that year. Awolowo wrote that if he had prized his personal freedom above the unity of Nigeria, he would have been set free in 1963. Further on 20 December 1965, the same Adetokunbo led a delegation of peace maker, said to have the blessing of the Prime Minister, Balewa, to meet him in Calabar Prison, that he would be released from jail if he accepted to join the federal government but he rejected it.  In item 3b of the letter, Awolowo revealed, "On two different occasions I was offered, first the post of Deputy Prime Minister (before May 1962), and second that of Deputy Governor-General (in August 1962), if I would agree to fold up the opposition and join in a National Government. I declined the two offers because they were designed exclusively to gratify my self-interest, with no thought of fostering any political moral principle which could benefit the people of Nigeria." Alluding to his conscience, Awolowo wrote, "I felt and still feel that a truly public-spirited person should accept public office not for what he can get for himself - such as the profit and glamour of office - but for the opportunity which it offers him of serving his people to the best of his ability, by promoting their welfare and happiness. To me, the two afore-mentioned posts were sinecures, and were intended to immobilise my talents and stultify the role of watch-dog which the people of Nigeria looked upon me to play on their behalf, at that juncture in our political evolution." The invitation of Babangida to Awolowo to join his political bureau was intended as beckoning to him to come and chop and close his mouth but Awolowo declined, saying he was not in need of stomach infrastructure. Since 1959 Federal elections, there are set of people in Nigeria who would rather join or serve any government in power for selfish reasons. Awolowo was not a person like that but this may be difficult for crayfish heads or Professor Isi-Ewu to figure out.
S.Kadiri     

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Skickat: den 28 december 2019 22:39
Till: Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com>; USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 10:59:58 AM12/29/19
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If Awo was not a national leader, for what purpose did he leave the affairs of the region in the hands of SLA Akintola?

If Awo was not a national leader, in what capacity did he assist Gen Gowon to prosecute the Civil War?  As head of state of Oduduwa Republic fighting Biafra?

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Date: 29/12/2019 07:59 (GMT+00:00)
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Long time. Here comes the Biafran Chauvinist Nwakanma ! The glorious Igbophiliac rides into town ( the USA – Africa Dialogue Series) once again, waving his flag, bristling with his usual disdain and arrogance, talking about “at best, an above average intelligence” – as if he  has just designed a new intelligence quotient test for his super-Biafrans and his intellectually malnourished fellow Nigerians, with he himself sitting at the apex of Mt. Olympus as the Naira’s new gold standard, himself ( with a modest small h) just freshly minted from some citadel of learning or other and about to start awarding/ handing out IQ certificates to the like-minded starting with his demi-god Azikiwe, destined in Nwakanma’s mind, to sit atop of the Great Pyramid as the one and only  Zik of Africa, forever.

 Within his single paragraph response to Dear Tunji Olaopa he has managed to sprinkle his key words, “intellectual history”: he would like to confine  the “ terrifyingly mediocre” and relegate all those that he so humbly disdains, to “the height of intellectual infamy” and then consign them to the dustbin/garbage heap of history, leaving the rest of us himself gasping for some fresh air and wondering, when did the best of us become the worst of us?

He would like us to believe and have faith in his wayward conceit that unlike him the great AWO was “ no visionary” although the foresight in Chief Obafemi Awolowo's free primary education programme in Western Nigeria 1952-1966 is  still reaping its dividends, for all to see and this continues to be an inspiration  - so that in the oil-boom years, Bendel’s Governor Ambrose Ali invested as much as 50% of his state budget in education.

Nwakanma’s latest little tittle-tattle culminates in the expected anti-climax to this long thread that there is no “high intelligence” in the tone and texture of AWO’s tersely written letter to Babangida.

Let’s hope that Nwakanma will spare Babangida and not downgrade or degrade his intellectual capacity to some imaginary lower level, because in my opinion, Ibrahim Babangida too is still very intelligent and  very much, still an astute politician.


But not to worry; I leave  Nwakanma to the tender mercies of Baba Kadiri  


On Saturday, 28 December 2019 23:03:34 UTC+1, Rex Marinus wrote:
Dear Tunji Olaopa:
Awolowo did not see any further than the political realities and conditions in Nigeria of which he was a key architect from 1947. He was no visionary, and did not possess a god-like capacity to see a future. He was no futurologist, nor did he possess any more than at best, an above average intelligence! At this stage in our intellectual history, it is important to stop all the pointless, really mediocre, low-level kinds of myth-making we call 'history.' Nigerian history is properly documented in the places where archives are properly preserved and not manipulated. We do not have "three founding fathers" for instance in Nigeria. If there were any founders and movers for modern Nigeria, they were those who with Azikiwe belonged to the Nationalist party and the nationalist movement. Neither Awolowo nor Bello supported the Nationalist movement or the very basis of a Nigerian nationalist anti-colonialism.   We can tell who did what from 1937-1947. From 1947-1957. From 1957-1967. From 1967-1977. From 1977-1987, and so on. We can already harvest from the End of Empire documents already publicly available to us the work, state, and place of each of these historical figures in the formation and deformation of Nigeria. The constant attempts to apotheosize Awolowo beyond his weight is a very laughable, repetitive, but by now exhausted ploy. And to ascribe some kind of immanent insight in this terrifyingly mediocre letter he wrote to Babangida is the height of intellectual infamy. Any elementary rhetorical analysis of this letter will basically show exactly what Awo was saying to Babangida: "Sorry, sir, but Fuck Nigeria and Nigerians! I'm not interested." That's basically the sum of Awo's letter.  Now, you want to ascribe some high intelligence to it? Get real sir!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tunji Olaopa <tolao...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:35 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
Reading Papa Awo's letter declining to serve on IBB's Political Bureau in 1986 again, and with the clear declining fortune of the Nigeria Project, I woke up this morning wondering, did the sage saw something about the future that we are in that we were perhaps too blinded to see?

RESTORING GOVERNMENTAL AND SOCIAL ORDER - CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO

In 1986, former President Ibrahim Babangida had asked Pa Awolowo to provide input into charting a New Social Order for Nigeria via a National Debate. A couple of my bosom friends have over the last few days reminded me of the force and depth of Pa Awolowo reply:

“Dear Sir, I received your letter of February 28, 1986, and sincerely thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to contribute to the National Political Debate. The purpose of the debate is to clarify our thoughts in our search for a new social order. It is, therefore, meet and proper that all those who have something to contribute should do so. I do fervently and will continue fervently to pray that I may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed. In other words, at the threshold of our New Social Order, we would see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are, nothing clean, principled, ethical, and idealistic can work with them. And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our political, business and governmental activities are exorcised. But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and politics or, unless the dialectic processes which have been at work for some twenty years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic changes for the better. There is, of course, an alternative option open to us. To succumb to permanent social instability and chaos. On the premises, I beg to decline your invitation. I am yours truly, Obafemi Awolowo.”

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 11:00:05 AM12/29/19
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Toyin:

I like your summation that two people may give different accounts of the same history.  It follows that two people may come to different JUDGMENTS following the different accounts.  You have just buttressed our position.

Cokers account is flawed because it is biased.

Words such as misappropriation which he used in the course of investigation are not value free.  The conclusion that misappropriated funds were diverted into party funds has not been demonstrated.  We need to see the money and follow its disbursement into the coffers of the party's bank account.  This did not happen in the evidence provided. 

 The commission tried to separate the interests of the ruling party from that of the ruling government in a silly non- pragmatic way.  The ruling government represented interests of the generality of the people of the region ( which may not be ALL the people in the region.)  This is consistent with democratic practice all over the world.

CokerCommission's verdict is flawed because it is biased.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


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From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 29/12/2019 12:18 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Thanks Kadiri, for these efforts at telling and interpreting a history we are trying to understand.

Who Was Obafemi Awolowo?

Obafemi Awolowo was a great leader, a fine economic and development thinker and effective though controversial executor of economic and development ideas, a remarkable and controversial war strategist, as demonstrated by the role of his economic maneuvers  in the Nigerian side in the Nigerian Civil  War, a rich  writer and political thinker, a study in the oscillation between ethnic  empowerment and nationalistic vision and leadership, a mirror within the complexities of whose career is refracted the ongoing journey of SW intelligentsia in relation to the Nigerian project.

He will always inspire debate.

How sustainable is this argument of yours?

On Accuracy of Information Presented so Far

I understand you as dismissing the scholarly accounts of the content and effects of the Coker Report on the basis of your conviction that the report could not have contributed to Akintola taking over the premiership of Western region from Awo and because an encyclopedia account of the sums described as misappropriated rendered them in a currency that Nigeria was not using at the time.

You also argue that the report rendered a verdict of 'questionable legality' and not illegality in relation to the financial transactions it unearthed, this being different from a verdict of outright corruption, leading to the Commission being unable to recommend anyone for a corruption prosecution.

An online encyclopedia may be forgiven for converting the sums referenced by the Commission to current currency but you can see that the scholarly articles quoted, from academic journals and academic fora, were careful to indicate the pound sterling sums described as stated by the report. 

As for your account of why Akintola was reinstalled as premier, could you provide your sources for this information, in the context of an examination of the views on the various factors that contributed to this outcome?

You might have documents you can scan and upload or you could do some  research to find such documents  in order to substantiate your account as well as analyzing them in relation to the conclusions you are drawing from them.

That is vital bcs this debate is about moving beyond statements of opinion to the reasoned justification of opinion based on verifiable facts.

Accounts  of the Commission's Enquiries and its  Conclusions

How true is this-

'National Bank was the main target of the Coker Commission of Inquiry...Certainly, the transactions were legal but not corrupt and that was why the Commission could not recommend anyone to be prosecuted for corruption. However, those afflicted with Nigeria's type of AIDS, Acquired Intelligence Deficient Syndrome, would say Awolowo chopped Cocoa money well, well, even though nothing like that was reported in Coker report. ' 

 The available evidence indicates that the indictments of the Commission emerged significantly, among other sources, from investigations of the state owned Western Region Marketing Board " the major financier of development projects in the region through the region’s development corporations" as stated by Adeyinka Theresa Ajayi, ,Ajibade Idowu Samuel and Oladiti Abiodun Akeem in  'Produce Buying and Marketing Boards in Nigeria: Interrogating the Fiscal Role of Western Nigeria Marketing Board 1942-1962', concluding "that the process of development was circumscribed due to misappropriation and diversion of funds derived from the Western Region Marketing Board" .  

 Robert L. Tignor's "Political Corruption in Nigeria before Independence"  quotes at least three pages of the Coker Report reinforcing this summation, depicting the Report as describing the mode of acquisition as well as the  use of those monies in question as enrichment of a group, Awo's party, thereby developing his personal power base,  against the interests of the larger community, the Western Region, and therefore a serous breach of public trust, leading to the reports' indictment of Awo and his party as featuring in several accounts of corruption in Nigerian history:

"..a most flagrant breach of trust... by which the peoples of the Western Region have been robbed of the financial benefits to which they are entitled from the Western Regional Marketing Board'. ( 'Nigeria, Report of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, Lagos, 1962, p.36.)  


Celestine Osuala's  "An Analysis of the Marketing Boards of Nigeria 1939-1966" is more specific on the methods through which these monies were channeled:
    

"Of the three Boards, the Western Regional Marketing Board channeled the largest absolute amounts into private enterprise, exclusive of those grants to the Development and Finance Corporations(Federation of Nigeria, Report of Coker Commission of Inguiry  into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporation in Western Nigeria, Vol. 1 ,1962, P. 65.)


The bulk of these funds went to a bank and a real estate concern, the affairs of which were closely bound up with those of the political party then in power in the Western Region and its leading members. "


 An Indictment of Obafemi Awolowo  by the Commission in its Own Words

On the specific character of the indictments by the Commission,  in their own words, a basic search for references to "Obafemi Awolowo"  in  volume 2 of the  Report of Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, 1962   provides the following information on page 33, para 3::

"It seems clear to us on the evidence that the sale of Moba [ real estate] to the Western Nigeria  government at the price of 850, 000 pounds is a most elaborate and criminal conspiracy to obtain that amount of money from the Government for the benefit of the Action Group.

To start with we observe that Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was and is at at all material times the Federal President and Leader of the party knew all about the scheme and in fact, in our view, actually engineered it."

The report then describes how  the Commission  came to this conclusion by reconstructing the chain of decision from and to Awolowo on the subject and how they were able to reconstruct this decision chain.

They sum up in paras 7 and 8-

" We are satisfied that the value placed on Moba by Messrs Gleave and Fox [ Chartered Surveyors ]  is entirely  unrealistic and cannot be sustained by any logical arguments whatsoever.

...we have no doubt that they themselves were involved in this vicious conspiracy of getting money by such sinister means off the Western Region government.

We refer in particular to the monstrous document placed in the  hands of the Government of Western Nigeria by Messrs Gleave and Fox, exhibit MOO.26." 

Searches in vol. 3 linked at the University of Florida source of the report and vols 1 and 4 not available  at that source should provide more information.

Need to Clarify One's Position and Provide Substantiating Evidence 

In relation to this evidence  demonstrating that  the report indicted Awo of diverting public funds to his political party, and one of the sources, Tignor, quoting  the report as declaring that Awo did that in the name of building a political empire in which he played a central role, solidifying his power base, are you trying to suggest that the Coker Report did not indict Awolowo for misappropriation of funds meant for the Western region?

A writer who wishes to overturn such an established scholarly consensus as well as evidence from the copy of the report linked here will need to not only cite the relevant sections of the report that support their view, but also make those sections available in order to prove their case beyond doubt.

This is particularly vital because this debate hinges on the demand to provide evidence that anyone can verify, namely, the text of the 1962 Coker Commission report.

As we have observed repeatedly on this forum, and is obvious from observing historical accounts, claims of what happened, and how and why they happened, cant be taken for granted but need to be substantiated in a verifiable manner bcs two people may give different accounts of the same history.

Having established beyond doubt what the Coker Report actually states, one may then proceed to examining the justice of the report's position.


thanks

toyin

On Sun, 29 Dec 2019 at 00:28, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:00:48 PM12/29/19
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Salimonu Kadiri:

Obi Nwakanma is an incorrigible Zikist whose green literary and even alimentary bile rises to the top when he sees the name "Awo" written in any positive light, because every such word reminds him of a diminished Zik, in his warped imagination.  It must be a miserable way to live.

Zik, Awo and Ahmadu Bello - and to a lesser extent Balewa and Okpara - were the Founding Fathers of Nigeria.  They were Nationalists in their own different ways, based on their family upbringing, education, world awareness and understanding of the subgroups of Nigerians that looked to them for guidance.  They were all visionaries with different blurred lenses in their crystal balls.

Obi Nwakanma should be read and moved on upon.

And there you have it.  Season's greetings ojare!


Bolaji Aluko


Rex Marinus

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:01:05 PM12/29/19
to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, usaafricadialogue
Toyin Adepoju, thank you for a thoroughly disinterested, and incisive use of archival documents. Tignor especially puts both the Forster Sutton Commission and the Coker commission in very unambiguous relief. Let mythmakers have their day. But, well, "history will vindicate the just..." ultimately.
Obi Nwakanma


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Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 9:11 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:01:13 PM12/29/19
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OAA,

Thanks, but, really?

I stated that accounts of WHAT happened, HOW it happened, WHY it happened and the SIGNIFICANCE of its happening may differ from person to person.

Techniques of adjudicating between these possibilities is core to the study of history.

First, no one here has provided access to the full 4 vols of the Coker Report to buttress whatever claims they are making, so its premature to make a sweeping description of the report as biased  on what you call the evidence provided, which is vols 2 and 3 of the Coker report, which, even in its inadequacy, you are not quoting substantive sections of to support your position.

Secondly, the single example I gave of the report's indictment of Awo, single bcs I am not motivated to search further, states that a piece of real estate was accorded an inflated and  unjustifiable value by a team of chartered surveyors   and sold to the benefit of the Action Group, a transaction described by the commission as a criminal effort to divert govt funds to party coffers, a transaction they describe as overseen by Awolowo.

Have you investigated the Commission's description of the status of that piece of land and why they describe its sale and the channeling of the proceeds as a criminal act, linking these developments to Awolowo as the central figure in this transaction?

One might not have the time or the desire for such forensics but is it fair to justice to make assertions based on non-investigation of the claims at stake?

Bros, how can you, as a scholar,  at this point in our history, make this claim-

 'The commission tried to separate the interests of the ruling party from that of the ruling government in a silly non- pragmatic way.  The ruling government represented interests of the generality of the people of the region ( which may not be ALL the people in the region.)  This is consistent with democratic practice all over the world.'

 So, all the institutionalized as well as hidden  theft of our commonwealth and the various assassinations by  ruling  parties in Nigeria can be sanitized and whitewashed as 'representing the interests of the generality of the people' as you are trying to do now all bcs you want to exonerate Awo and his Action Group?

So, you are not aware that the underdevelopment of most countries is bcs the ruling parties do not represent the interests of the generality of the people? 

Where did you get such a non-factual and imaginary postulate of history and govt  which you are presenting as a given fact?

Bos, i fear you ooo. Such brazen imaginary history and clique serving philosophizing is frightening in its boldness.

We should be afraid of using our intellect as props for thieves, particularly political thieves. Is that not how dictatorships thrive with the help of the intelligentsia?

I dont know if Awo and the Action Group are  guilty as the Commission claims and I dont see myself taking the trouble to examine the issue in detail. I am simply supplying my services here as a person willing to do some research into what the Commission said.

Your veering from examining the facts of the case into asserting an ideological position meant to exonerate Awo looks to me like an extremist effort that plays into the hands of dangerous govts by automatically assuming that their actions  represent the interests of the generality of the people just bcs they were democratically  elected. 

Is it not more realistic to examine these actions to see if they really represent the interests of the generality of the people they were elected to serve?

The Coker Commission states the Action Group, the party in govt at the time and the govt itself conspired to divert funds meant for the region's development to the running of the party.

Anyone who is sufficiently motivated should examine how the Commission cames to this conclusion, its description of its investigative methods, which even vols 2 and 3 contrbute significantly to making clear in painstaking detail.

In these days of humongous sums for party nomination forms, leading to cultures of poisonous  god-fatherism and of politics of appropriation of the commonwealth, do these political economics serve the interests of the people who elect these party members?


thanks

toyin  


Ibrahim Abdullah

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:30:50 PM12/29/19
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It takes an Awoist to know a Zikist! The former is post-colonial; the latter a colonial invention to the core! 

Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Dec 2019, at 5:00 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:30:57 PM12/29/19
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Edited

OAA,

Thanks, but, really?

I stated that accounts of WHAT happened, HOW it happened, WHY it happened and the SIGNIFICANCE of its happening may differ from person to person.

Techniques of adjudicating between these possibilities is core to the study of history.

First, no one here has provided access to the full 4 vols of the Coker Report to buttress whatever claims they are making, so its premature to make a sweeping description of the report as biased  on what you call the evidence provided, which is vols 2 and 3 of the Coker report, which, even in its inadequacy, you are not quoting substantive sections of to support your position.

Secondly, the single example I gave of the report's indictment of Awo, single bcs I am not motivated to search further, states that a piece of real estate was accorded an inflated and  unjustifiable value by a team of chartered surveyors   and sold to the benefit of the Action Group, a transaction described by the commission as a criminal effort to divert govt funds to party coffers, a transaction they describe as overseen by Awolowo.

Have you investigated the Commission's description of the status of that piece of land and why they describe its sale and the channeling of the proceeds as a criminal act, linking these developments to Awolowo as the central figure in this transaction?

One might not have the time or the desire for such forensics but is it fair to justice to make assertions based on non-investigation of the claims at stake?

Bros, how can you, as a scholar,  at this point in our history, make this claim-

 'The commission tried to separate the interests of the ruling party from that of the ruling government in a silly non- pragmatic way.  The ruling government represented interests of the generality of the people of the region ( which may not be ALL the people in the region.)  This is consistent with democratic practice all over the world.'

 So, all the institutionalized as well as hidden  theft of our commonwealth and the various assassinations by  ruling  govts  in Nigeria can be sanitized and whitewashed as 'representing the interests of the generality of the people' as you are trying to do now all bcs you want to exonerate Awo and his Action Group?

So, you are not aware that the underdevelopment of most countries is bcs the ruling govts do not represent the interests of the generality of the people? 

From where did you get such a non-factual and imaginary postulate of history and govt  which you are presenting as a given fact?

Bos, i fear you ooo. Such brazen imaginary history and clique serving philosophizing is frightening in its boldness.

We should be afraid of using our intellect as props for thieves, particularly political thieves. Is that not how dictatorships thrive with the help of the intelligentsia?

I dont know if Awo, the Action Group and the govt they led are  guilty as the Commission claims and I dont see myself taking the trouble to examine the issue in detail. I am simply supplying my services here as a person willing to do some research into what the Commission said.

Your veering from examining the facts of the case into asserting an ideological position meant to exonerate Awo looks to me like an extremist effort that plays into the hands of dangerous govts by automatically assuming that their actions  represent the interests of the generality of the people just bcs they were democratically  elected. 

Is it not more realistic to examine these actions to see if they really represent the interests of the generality of the people they were elected to serve?

The Coker Commission states the Action Group, the party in govt at the time and the govt itself conspired to divert funds meant for the region's development to the running of the party.

Anyone who is sufficiently motivated should examine how the Commission came to this conclusion, its description of its investigative methods, which even vols 2 and 3 contribute significantly to making clear in painstaking detail.

In these days of humongous sums for party nomination forms, leading to cultures of poisonous  god-fatherism and of politics of misappropriation of the commonwealth, do these political economics serve the interests of the people who eventually elect these party members into govt?


thanks

toyin  

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 12:31:03 PM12/29/19
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Your own bias in word such as t'hieves' is clear.  If you think the Action Group and Govt were guilty as indicted why were they not charged whether or not the case against them would have been won? 

You Toyin Adepoju tell me that.  Why is EFCC today able to charge those accused of official crimes but Awo, AG and Western Regional government could not be charged?

I could only judge by what is available to me. I can not pronounce

 a person guilty without evidence of guilt.  Anyone who has any clear evidence of that guilt among those who have fully read the report on this forum has been challenged to bring them forward.  Nine did.

All you seem to be concerned about is let us unravel that undeserved Awo image.

I say upon what evidence?

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 29/12/2019 17:07 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe1986  Political Bureau

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OAA,

Thanks, but, really?

I stated that accounts of WHAT happened, HOW it happened, WHY it happened and the SIGNIFICANCE of its happening may differ from person to person.

Techniques of adjudicating between these possibilities is core to the study of history.

First, no one here has provided access to the full 4 vols of the Coker Report to buttress whatever claims they are making, so its premature to make a sweeping description of the report as biased  on what you call the evidence provided, which is vols 2 and 3 of the Coker report, which, even in its inadequacy, you are not quoting substantive sections of to support your position.

Secondly, the single example I gave of the report's indictment of Awo, single bcs I am not motivated to search further, states that a piece of real estate was accorded an inflated and  unjustifiable value by a team of chartered surveyors   and sold to the benefit of the Action Group, a transaction described by the commission as a criminal effort to divert govt funds to party coffers, a transaction they describe as overseen by Awolowo.

Have you investigated the Commission's description of the status of that piece of land and why they describe its sale and the channeling of the proceeds as a criminal act, linking these developments to Awolowo as the central figure in this transaction?

One might not have the time or the desire for such forensics but is it fair to justice to make assertions based on non-investigation of the claims at stake?

Bros, how can you, as a scholar,  at this point in our history, make this claim-

 'The commission tried to separate the interests of the ruling party from that of the ruling government in a silly non- pragmatic way.  The ruling government represented interests of the generality of the people of the region ( which may not be ALL the people in the region.)  This is consistent with democratic practice all over the world.'

 So, all the institutionalized as well as hidden  theft of our commonwealth and the various assassinations by  ruling  parties in Nigeria can be sanitized and whitewashed as 'representing the interests of the generality of the people' as you are trying to do now all bcs you want to exonerate Awo and his Action Group?

So, you are not aware that the underdevelopment of most countries is bcs the ruling parties do not represent the interests of the generality of the people? 

Where did you get such a non-factual and imaginary postulate of history and govt  which you are presenting as a given fact?

Bos, i fear you ooo. Such brazen imaginary history and clique serving philosophizing is frightening in its boldness.

We should be afraid of using our intellect as props for thieves, particularly political thieves. Is that not how dictatorships thrive with the help of the intelligentsia?

I dont know if Awo and the Action Group are  guilty as the Commission claims and I dont see myself taking the trouble to examine the issue in detail. I am simply supplying my services here as a person willing to do some research into what the Commission said.

Your veering from examining the facts of the case into asserting an ideological position meant to exonerate Awo looks to me like an extremist effort that plays into the hands of dangerous govts by automatically assuming that their actions  represent the interests of the generality of the people just bcs they were democratically  elected. 

Is it not more realistic to examine these actions to see if they really represent the interests of the generality of the people they were elected to serve?

The Coker Commission states the Action Group, the party in govt at the time and the govt itself conspired to divert funds meant for the region's development to the running of the party.

Anyone who is sufficiently motivated should examine how the Commission cames to this conclusion, its description of its investigative methods, which even vols 2 and 3 contrbute significantly to making clear in painstaking detail.

In these days of humongous sums for party nomination forms, leading to cultures of poisonous  god-fatherism and of politics of appropriation of the commonwealth, do these political economics serve the interests of the people who elect these party members?


thanks

toyin  


On Sun, 29 Dec 2019 at 17:00, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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tunde jaiyeoba

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Dec 29, 2019, 1:33:05 PM12/29/19
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The fact that Awolowo was better than his peers in being visionary should not even be debated. 

What was and is on ground speaks for itself. Everything that was first in Africa occurred in the defunct Western Region, we don't have to start naming them here. 

Also, check out the programmes of their parties in the different regions.

In the present, check out the level of all development indices in the different regions of Nigeria. I think intellectuals should rise above primordial tendencies occasionally, analyse the past critically to avoid repeating the mistakes in the future. 

If that is the only thing we bequeath to coming generations we would have done something worthwhile.













Prof. E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD
Head, Department of Architecture
Faculty of Environmental Design and Management
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 29, 2019, 1:33:11 PM12/29/19
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OAA,

I made it clear that your pronouncement gives cover to thieves of all kinds, anywhere in the world, in your claim that democratically elected govts represent the interests of the generality of the people in terms of the actions  taken by those govts.

All bcs you want to exonerate Awo and his Action group of the charges by the Coker Commission.

I also stated that I am not interested in the case agst Awo, his govt and the Action Group in and of itself.

I am simply offering my services in moving from speculative debating to factual examination.

If you argue that my motive is to unravel Awo, what will you say about Toyin Falola and his co writer in the Dictionary of Nigerian History, of Adeyinka Theresa Ajayi, ,Ajibade Idowu Samuel and Oladiti Abiodun Akeem in  'Produce Buying and Marketing Boards in Nigeria: Interrogating the Fiscal Role of Western Nigeria Marketing Board 1942-1962', all, with Falola, being Yoruba scholars, in the light of the reverence for Awo in Yorubaland or of Tignor, who does not even seem to be an African, all of whom are unequivocal in reporting Awo's party/govt's indictment by the Commission, with Ajayi, ,Ajibade  and  Akeem agreeing with the justice of the Commission's judgement?

Kadiri challenged anyone to prove the report indicts Awo. That has been proven.

Aluko argues the report is biased and claims to have studied it but has not provided his evidence represented by his analysis and the full 4 vol report and perhaps other documents that could help prove his case.

So, all we can affirm for now is that the indictment was made.

Whether it was a fair indictment or not is what no one has tried to demonstrate.

All we have got on that are unsubstantiated claims.

Why Awo was not prosecuted for corruption is a separate, speculative subject, which may be seen as  relating to the politics of the time.

It is different from the simple qs of an issue of fact- did the Coker Commission indict Awo, his govt and his party, the Action Group?

It is also different from the evaluative qs of whether or not the Commission's indictment was just.

thanks

toyin


OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 1:33:16 PM12/29/19
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Forster Sutton stated the Azikiwe interests in ACB, Coker did not establish Awolowo family interests in the companies mentioned.

So the cases are not similar.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 29/12/2019 17:07 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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Toyin Adepoju, thank you for a thoroughly disinterested, and incisive use of archival documents. Tignor especially puts both the Forster Sutton Commission and the Coker commission in very unambiguous relief. Let mythmakers have their day. But, well, "history will vindicate the just..." ultimately.
Obi Nwakanma


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Rex Marinus

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Dec 29, 2019, 4:31:48 PM12/29/19
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Yinka, let me paraphrase what the Forster Sutton reports said of Azikiwe: "although authorizing the investment of the Eastern Nigerian Produce board's fund in a bank in which his family had interest fell below conduct expected of public officer, but there is no evidence to suggest that Azikiwe benefited or intended to benefit directly from this transaction. It was basically a move to reflate and strengthen an African bank and make it capable of providing credit to indigenous African businessmen which British banks like Barclays or BBWA were not doing." This is a summary and a paraphrase.
        The Forster Sutton report is in the public domain. Tignor makes clear the British colonial administration's use of the "corruption" bogey to undermine and trap Azikiwe leading on to the Federal elections of 1959, and particularly after the NCNC's winning of the Southern votes in the 1954 elections. In that drama of 1956 staged with Sir Clement Pleass also was the proposal to invade the East with the British army, remove Zik, and postpone independence in the East permanently until the English GOC warned against the consequence of martyring Zik. The NCNC was undermined, leading first to  the "Zik Must go" movement led by Mbadiwe and Kola Balogun in 1957/58, and the NCNC National party crisis of 1958 which Zik forcefully resolved after the Aba national convention. Zik's perspicacious management of these events made it possible for the party to go into the 1959 elections which the NCNC clearly won with a massive plurality of votes cast nationally. Following that pattern of votes, Azikiwe was called in by the Governor-General, given the full picture, and the rest is a story that shall be fully written. But very important: leading on to the 1957 constitutional conference after the Forster Sutton commission had published its report was the private communication by Awolowo to the Colonial secretary, assuring him not to worry about Zik any longer because, "we have damaged him permanently with the Forster Sutton report. He is no longer a credible threat." words to that effect. Which suggest a very vast plot to undermine the Nationalist party leading on to the final rounds of decolonization. Again, the Forster Sutton reports are public documents, Yinka. You  should consult them, and not presume or retail half-digested info!
Obi Nwakanma


OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 4:31:55 PM12/29/19
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Everyone you mentioned, were simply reporting what Coker submitted without critiquing the report; my own goal is to critique what I have read so far.

Everyone you mentioned was willing to buy the impossibility that Awo and other party stalwarts knew about and had hands soiled in the dirty dealings but deputy leader SL Akintola who had conveniently  crossed to the federal side by the time of the commission's enquiry knew nothing and was exonerated.

Well, I am not buying that;  that is one of the most important evidence of bias.

What you have done is called the logical fallacy of appeal to authority.  It does not necessarily lead to the establishment of the truth.

The indictment  has no justifiable merit.

Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 29, 2019, 4:32:14 PM12/29/19
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IA:

I sm not an Awoist, and Obi Nwakanma proudly describes himself as a Zikist.  So, no Awoist identified a Zikist here...

As to the descriptions "post colonial" and "colonial invention", I have no idea what you mean, and don't intend to ask and then engage on another wild goose chase.


Bolaji Aluko


OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 29, 2019, 4:32:25 PM12/29/19
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Ok.  Obi.  Also online is the information Zik ysed his position in the bank to rant loans to his groups of companies.  Is that true or false?

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 29, 2019, 4:33:13 PM12/29/19
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” Ångest” which translates as angst and which I still understand as anguish, is the very  first word that I learned in the Swedish Language, back there in Ghana in 1970, from Nobel Laureate Pär Lagerkvist’s poem  Ångest är min arvedel . Here it is, in approximate English translations: Anguish.

At this exact point ( 20.45 Stockholm time) I  just got a phone call with the solemn news that Dr. Noor Ali Tabandeh, the Beloved Pir of the Nematollahi Gonabadi Sufi Order has passed away. May the Almighty be pleased with him…

I have been a member of the Javad Nurbakhsh branch since 1987 and of the Gonadbadi Branch since 1989 when I made bay’ah, when Hazrat Hajj Sultan Hussein Tabandeh Reza Ali Shah took me by the hand …

 Anguish? Not at all. Breath after breath, life goes on.

It’s some forms of ethnic chauvinism that gives me the creeps. Celebrating ethnic cultures, boasting about the great African music is alright –  during the circa four decades during which I met our late friend Idries Ibrahim ( Hausa guy, Baba Kadiri’s friend and my friend too ) without fail ( the first ten years, from the library to the cafeteria at Stockholm University – he was a lifelong student ) he would always tell me that when it comes to culture, the performing arts, language, music, poetry, drama, theatre, proverbs, etc. the Yoruba of Nigeria were head and shoulders above every other, in Nigeria.   He said it so many times that I began to suspect that he was trying to reinforce his own beliefs by telling me this. The only thing that I didn’t know was that he was a Christian – I had taken it as for granted that he was a Muslim of the Malik Tradition because almost every time we met; we would discuss Islam in Nigeria. Unfortunately, I missed attending his funeral because I was supposed to attend the funeral of a South African Brother Rafique, on the same day and at the same time – at a different venue. Unfortunately, again, due to the wrong directions I had been given, I missed attending both funerals. Idries Ibrahim was a most perfect gentleman, and generous too, invited me to uncountable number of cups of tea -very English in that respect and perhaps, simultaneously the most Swedish African that I have ever met. Rafique too, a perfect Muslim gentleman, kind, gentle, helpful, patient equipped with the quality of forbearance. May the Almighty be kind to both of them…

After all that has been said in situating the politically motivated Inquiry and its purpose, in cutting AWO and the Action Group  down to size, merely quoting this snippet of a several hundred-page report just doesn’t cut the ice, not even when the £ sterling currency of the time  is translated into the quotes in yesterday’s’ Naira.

The snippet: “a most flagrant breach of trust” ... by which the peoples of the Western Region have been robbed of the financial benefits to which they are entitled from the Western Regional Marketing Board”.

Here is how the charge that “the peoples of the Western Region have been robbed of the financial benefits to which they are entitled from the Western Regional Marketing Board” is met headlong:
 

As previously submitted by Baba Kadiri : Coker Commission discovered that Awolowo spent cocoa money on free primary education for all. Initially, it was intended to be compulsory but when his any campaigned that he wanted to deprive parents helping hands of their children in the farm, he changed it to voluntary. The first Television Station in Africa, WNTV, was established by Awolowo's government, the flood-light Liberty Stadium was built with Cocoa money, major towns in Western Region had access to pipe-borne water, farm settlements producing dairy products were established throughout Western Region, Cocoa House (a Skyscraper) was built in Ibadan and a large area of Land was turned into industrial estate in Ikeja which belonged to Western Region then. “

Reading and re-reading the contents of AWO’s letter to Babangida, and keeping an eye on how things have turned out since then, one cannot help but agree that to all intents and purposes AWO’s letter was prophetic.  It reminds me of Moses last address to the children of Israel in which – on instructions from the Almighty, he presented them with a clear choice:  the blessings and the curses  as presented in Devarim 28 / / Deuteronomy Chapter 28

In should be in place to qualify the aura around General Babangida , just a little the investigators / investigative journalists, their kith and kin are well advised to take a closer look at the Pius Okigbo Report and the missing  $ 12.4 Billion  - so help me God,  and enquire from Brer Babangida himself whilst he is still alive and kicking  - and then report back  to base (the USA-Africa Dialogue Series)about the unanswered questions still swirling around it ( the missing $ 12.4 Billion) and him ( General Ibrahim Babangida )

Rex Marinus

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:40:21 AM12/30/19
to OLAYINKA AGBETUYI, usaafric...@googlegroups.com, toyin....@gmail.com
Yinka, actually, you cannot just choose to "decide" who is right or wrong based on your whims and caprice! It does not work that way. And since you have not read any of these reports, commenting on them amounts to presumption. Ignorance is not a virtue. It is just a condition. So, do not celebrate the fact that you are making fierce claims based on documents you have never read. That is so typical of a certain category of Nigerians: to swear by fiction and "hear-say." Don't do that!!
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 3:29 AM
To: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; toyin....@gmail.com <toyin....@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe 1986 Political Bureau
 
I have made mo such claims.  You have given your views.  The online view is there.  When I get hold of the report I decide who is right

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 02:15 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

So, now, 'on-line" allegations are to be the sum of our knowledge of the events of history? On-line, you say? Good luck to you sir! I have no truck with those who say whatever they wish on-line.
But facts are sacred. Unless you say the Forster Sutton commission report no longer is a historical document. Or that GBA Coker's commission report is an invention which exists only as fiction. Records of our historical transactions exist. On-line comments are free.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 2:03 AM
To: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; toyin....@gmail.com <toyin....@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe 1986 Political Bureau
 
Well, the allegation is still hanging there online.  I know for sure the inquiries are in part politically motivated and that is why I am always circumspect with them.

I have no problems with Zik personally but politics is what it is.  I agree with Bolaji's characterisation of Nigeria's founding fathers.

OAA.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 01:47 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Yinka, that is false because the report of the investigations did not at any point say that Azikiwe loaned money to his group of companies. The report in fact stated that Azikiwe resigned from his position as chairman of Zik Enterprises on becoming premier, distanced himself from its operations, and that his business did not benefit in any direct way from the ACB transactions. In fact, Azikiwe was exonerated from any charges of fraud, but reprimanded by the report for what may be described as poor decision by his government that at worse were unethical. Even here, the British parliament in its debate of the basis of Forster Sutton's commission, disagreed with the thrust of that report, in effect discharging Azikiwe of any accusation of unethical conduct, thus tying the hands of the colonial office. Again, the report is in the public domain.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:40 PM
To: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; toyin....@gmail.com <toyin....@gmail.com>

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:40:37 AM12/30/19
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Sir,

I'm sure  that my pastor in Umuahia would not agree with John Muir :

I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains. - John Muir

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:40:50 AM12/30/19
to Rex Marinus, usaafric...@googlegroups.com, toyin....@gmail.com
I have made mo such claims.  You have given your views.  The online view is there.  When I get hold of the report I decide who is right

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 02:15 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

So, now, 'on-line" allegations are to be the sum of our knowledge of the events of history? On-line, you say? Good luck to you sir! I have no truck with those who say whatever they wish on-line.
But facts are sacred. Unless you say the Forster Sutton commission report no longer is a historical document. Or that GBA Coker's commission report is an invention which exists only as fiction. Records of our historical transactions exist. On-line comments are free.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 2:03 AM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe 1986 Political Bureau
Well, the allegation is still hanging there online.  I know for sure the inquiries are in part politically motivated and that is why I am always circumspect with them.

I have no problems with Zik personally but politics is what it is.  I agree with Bolaji's characterisation of Nigeria's founding fathers.

OAA.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 01:47 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Yinka, that is false because the report of the investigations did not at any point say that Azikiwe loaned money to his group of companies. The report in fact stated that Azikiwe resigned from his position as chairman of Zik Enterprises on becoming premier, distanced himself from its operations, and that his business did not benefit in any direct way from the ACB transactions. In fact, Azikiwe was exonerated from any charges of fraud, but reprimanded by the report for what may be described as poor decision by his government that at worse were unethical. Even here, the British parliament in its debate of the basis of Forster Sutton's commission, disagreed with the thrust of that report, in effect discharging Azikiwe of any accusation of unethical conduct, thus tying the hands of the colonial office. Again, the report is in the public domain.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:40 PM

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:40:56 AM12/30/19
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Obi Nwakanma,

“Cunnilingus Ham-bag”?

How crude!

Is that the extent of your wit?

Language savvy?

Culture?

Civilisation?

How dare you! You wanna make an impression that would make your momma proud?

May the Lord have mercy on your soul!

I double dare you to continue in this vein and I assure you that even standing as a prodigal, naked in your mother Idoto’s watery presence will not accomplish anything without your repentance.

Rex Marinus

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:41:17 AM12/30/19
to OLAYINKA AGBETUYI, usaafric...@googlegroups.com, toyin....@gmail.com
So, now, 'on-line" allegations are to be the sum of our knowledge of the events of history? On-line, you say? Good luck to you sir! I have no truck with those who say whatever they wish on-line.
But facts are sacred. Unless you say the Forster Sutton commission report no longer is a historical document. Or that GBA Coker's commission report is an invention which exists only as fiction. Records of our historical transactions exist. On-line comments are free.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 2:03 AM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe 1986 Political Bureau
Well, the allegation is still hanging there online.  I know for sure the inquiries are in part politically motivated and that is why I am always circumspect with them.

I have no problems with Zik personally but politics is what it is.  I agree with Bolaji's characterisation of Nigeria's founding fathers.

OAA.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 01:47 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Yinka, that is false because the report of the investigations did not at any point say that Azikiwe loaned money to his group of companies. The report in fact stated that Azikiwe resigned from his position as chairman of Zik Enterprises on becoming premier, distanced himself from its operations, and that his business did not benefit in any direct way from the ACB transactions. In fact, Azikiwe was exonerated from any charges of fraud, but reprimanded by the report for what may be described as poor decision by his government that at worse were unethical. Even here, the British parliament in its debate of the basis of Forster Sutton's commission, disagreed with the thrust of that report, in effect discharging Azikiwe of any accusation of unethical conduct, thus tying the hands of the colonial office. Again, the report is in the public domain.
Obi Nwakanma


From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:40 PM

Rex Marinus

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:42:22 AM12/30/19
to Mobolaji Aluko, USAAfrica Dialogue
Bolaji Aluko,
Awolowo and Bello were not naionalists, nor were they Nigerian nationalist leaders. They spoke and wrote about Nigeria, and ultimately acted out theior chosen parts. These are essentially the grounds on which we shall measure them. Noit by your revisionist proclmations. In fact, it will not be up to you and me. Their times will come when thgeir vis sufficient historicval distance on their lkiofe and work. So, iot does nlot matter to me what or how you choose to recreate an "undiminished" Awolowo. Balewa and Okpara were more of nationalist leaders  than Awolowo and Bello. Balewa because, in spite of his politics, he ultimately slowly began to grow into his own. Okpara because he was in the trenches of the anti-colonial nationalist agitation. The facts will detail the story. And this will not be based on revisions and myth-making. As for a "diminished Zik", only one ignorant of the very long view of history could call Azikiwe "diminished." Go through the archives of the 20th century, in all the most important theatres of that history as it relates to the black man, Azikiwe is present and properly preserved. Lilliputians only try, but they cannot pull the pull down the fostered images of such giants of immoderate proportions. Zik diminished? You wish!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:12 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:43:09 AM12/30/19
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Obi,

For the sake of Umuahia, the brethren at Aba, Brother Titus Akanabu, the good folks at the White House  at Owerri, such as the late great Dr Sir Warrior  and more lately dear Chidi Anthony Opara,  I’ll let you off the hook this time, little worm.

Cunnilingus   Ham-bag ? I should have my "loin clothes worn tight this time" - that's a little funny.

Not bad, coming from the s-hole of a professed Zikologist; it could have been worse, just slightly over the pale and I already know that Algaba Falola would take just one look and not be kind enough to allow my reply to be posted in this forum.

First of all, I’m not and have never been a “cunnilingus “man. God forbid!  Ziki-ziki and jiggy-jiggy, yes,  but that? No. I know that your lurid imagination is always running riot, this time you probably believe that that’s what all the Igbo brothers in Sweden are up to. Well, please count me out.

Secondly, ham is treif – and 100% I follow a kosher diet, so when it comes to your traditional English breakfast of “ bacon and eggs” you can also count me out. (And by the way, I don’t know how Miyetti Allah and the Fulani Herdsmen relate to this, that “The Prophet Muhammad never ate beef

For your information, the name is Hamelberg , not “ Ham-bag”.

Ziky-Ziky, I could play around with those letters and make a really funny acrostic out of Obi Nwakanma, but out of respect for ZIk, I refuse to stoop any lower.

 ( I say “out of respect” because after three months of research in the Colonial Archives lodged at the British Museum, my wife was a little authority on ZIk, Kwame Nkrumah and I.T.A. Wallace Johnson ‘s roles in The West African Youth League )

 Here’s some food for thought for you and the other unrepentant revisionists:

Robert Frost:

 “They say the truth will set you free,

 My truth will bind you slave to me.”

 

 


On Sunday, 29 December 2019 13:14:00 UTC+1, Rex Marinus wrote:

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 30, 2019, 5:18:21 AM12/30/19
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Well, according to your magisterial verdict this debate ought not to have been had at all except between the likes of Obi Nwakanma and Ibrahim Abdullah. 

Well carry on and the rest of us will listen.  Except the initiator does not remember enough to answer our queries. Would you be kind enough to jog his memory on the collusion between Shonibare and Awolowo?  You should know.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 09:49 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (rexma...@hotmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Bolaji Aluko,
Awolowo and Bello were not naionalists, nor were they Nigerian nationalist leaders. They spoke and wrote about Nigeria, and ultimately acted out theior chosen parts. These are essentially the grounds on which we shall measure them. Noit by your revisionist proclmations. In fact, it will not be up to you and me. Their times will come when thgeir vis sufficient historicval distance on their lkiofe and work. So, iot does nlot matter to me what or how you choose to recreate an "undiminished" Awolowo. Balewa and Okpara were more of nationalist leaders  than Awolowo and Bello. Balewa because, in spite of his politics, he ultimately slowly began to grow into his own. Okpara because he was in the trenches of the anti-colonial nationalist agitation. The facts will detail the story. And this will not be based on revisions and myth-making. As for a "diminished Zik", only one ignorant of the very long view of history could call Azikiwe "diminished." Go through the archives of the 20th century, in all the most important theatres of that history as it relates to the black man, Azikiwe is present and properly preserved. Lilliputians only try, but they cannot pull the pull down the fostered images of such giants of immoderate proportions. Zik diminished? You wish!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:12 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 30, 2019, 5:36:48 AM12/30/19
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Obi.

But that is your own view.  Others are entitled to theirs.  So what of all the pre-independent Egbe Omo Oduduwa meetings attended by Awo?

What of the more respectable view of Barrister Kennedy Emetulu who detailed Awo's role in the debate for independence of inserting a secessionist clause in the independence document if things did not work well for all after independence (as UK did for Maaschtrict treaty which made Brexit possible without a war) so there would not have been a Civil War, except the other founding fathers rejected his caution.

Everyone on the forum cant just be wrong on this except you.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/12/2019 09:49 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (rexma...@hotmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Bolaji Aluko,
Awolowo and Bello were not naionalists, nor were they Nigerian nationalist leaders. They spoke and wrote about Nigeria, and ultimately acted out theior chosen parts. These are essentially the grounds on which we shall measure them. Noit by your revisionist proclmations. In fact, it will not be up to you and me. Their times will come when thgeir vis sufficient historicval distance on their lkiofe and work. So, iot does nlot matter to me what or how you choose to recreate an "undiminished" Awolowo. Balewa and Okpara were more of nationalist leaders  than Awolowo and Bello. Balewa because, in spite of his politics, he ultimately slowly began to grow into his own. Okpara because he was in the trenches of the anti-colonial nationalist agitation. The facts will detail the story. And this will not be based on revisions and myth-making. As for a "diminished Zik", only one ignorant of the very long view of history could call Azikiwe "diminished." Go through the archives of the 20th century, in all the most important theatres of that history as it relates to the black man, Azikiwe is present and properly preserved. Lilliputians only try, but they cannot pull the pull down the fostered images of such giants of immoderate proportions. Zik diminished? You wish!
Obi Nwakanma


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2019 8:12 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

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Rex Marinus

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Dec 30, 2019, 7:39:25 AM12/30/19
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EASTERN REGION, NIGERIA (COMMISSION OF INQUIRY)

HC Deb 24 July 1956 vol 557 cc215-21 215
§ The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd)

With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to make a statement, which is rather long.

A dispute has arisen in the Eastern Region of Nigeria about the relationship between the Premier, Dr. Azikiwe, and the African Continental Bank Limited.

This Bank was founded by Dr. Azikiwe. On assuming office the Premier informed the Governor that he had resigned his directorship of the bank. He had enterprises with which he has been associated are still shown as large shareholders in it. I have been informed that during 1955 £877,000 of public money was invested in the Bank—and other large sums deposited with it—out of funds made available from Marketing Board reserves to the Finance Corporation, which the Eastern Region Government had established.

I have also been informed that, following this investment, the bank was a party to certain documents contemplating that the Premier should be life Chairman of the bank and purporting to give him the right to nominate certain other directors.

As long ago as last November I took the matter up with the Premier in London and we have been in correspondence since. In April of this year Mr. Eyo, a member of the Regional House of Assembly, who had until then been the Government's Chief Whip in that House and Deputy-Speaker and Chairman of the Regional Development Corporation, tabled a Motion in the House relating to the association of the Premier with the Bank. He subsequently called for the appointment of an independent commission of inquiry. Dr. Azikiwe has now instituted libel actions against Mr. Eyo and certain newspapers.

On 14th July, after receiving a report from the Governor, I sent a personal message through him inviting the Premier to agree to my appointing a commission of inquiry. I considered it essential that these matters should be fully cleared up before the next Nigerian Constitutional Conference. This Conference will consider further constitutional advance for 216 Nigeria, and, in particular, the grant of regional self-government to those regions that desire it, in accordance with the undertaking given by Her Majesty's Government in 1953 as recorded in the London Conference Report.

I pointed out that such a commission was appointed in the United Kingdom when last the conduct of a Minister was called in question. I suggested that I should appoint the commission as at least one of the matters to be inquired into is reserved to the Federal Government and the Governor of the Region is not competent to appoint a commission to inquire into federal matters.

On 16th July I received from the Premier a message couched in terms which, I must confess, disappointed me. His message, which has been quoted extensively in the Press, implied a rejection of my invitation. Shortly afterwards, I was informed that the Premier and his colleagues, after considering my message, advised the Governor of the Region to appoint a commission with a sole commissioner of their own choosing. Such a commissioner could not inquire into matters reserved to the Federal Government, of which banking is one.

On 18th July I made a further approach to the Premier, explaining this again. I also said that, although it would not be proper for the Premier to suggest the full membership of the commission since he would be personally involved in its proceedings, I would nevertheless be prepared to invite the person whom he had proposed as sole commissioner to be a member of it. I said this as I was satisfied that the person proposed was suitable for appointment.

I regret to say that the Premier rejected this second approach, also. Instead, he and his colleagues now advised the Governor to appoint a committee of inquiry and nominated three persons to serve on it. Such a committee could not compel the attendance of witnesses or heat evidence on oath, and its investigations of matters reserved to the Federal Government would be of doubtful propriety. The Governor did not consider that to proceed in this way was, in the words of his Royal Instructions "in the interests of public faith" and informed the Ministers that he felt unable to act on their advice. This decision of the Governor, who has a most difficult and 217 invidious task, has my unqualified support.

In these circumstances, I have decided that in order to secure a speedy, impartial and full investigation as to the investments made in the bank, and the grave allegations that have been made—matters closely affecting the conduct of Government—it is necessary that I should now appoint a Commission of Inquiry. I have invited Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, the Chief Justice of the Federation of Nigeria, to be Chairman, and he has accepted my invitation. The names of the other members and the terms of reference will be announced as soon as possible.

I earnestly hope that the Premier and his colleagues will accept the decision I have reached as in their own best interests and in the best interests of public life in Nigeria as a whole. I need hardly say that there is no question of any attempt on Her Majesty's Government's part to impose a British banking monopoly in Nigeria, or to dictate financial policy.

The Commission will, I am sure, complete its work and report with all possible speed, but I am afraid that its appointment must almost inevitably mean some delay in convening the Constitutional Conference, which was to have met on 19th September. I hope that this will not be long, and I have asked the other Nigerian Governments to accept this delay, regrettable though it is to all of us, because in the interests of the Territory as a whole these serious allegations must first be fully investigated.

At the same time, I have made it clear to them that Her Majesty's Government stand by the undertaking given in 1953 about the grant of regional self-government to those regions that desire it. I trust that after the Commission has reported we shall be able to resume our work together.

§ Mr. Bevan

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that this is a very serious statement and may have serious consequences in Nigeria. First, I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has any idea how long the September Conference will be postponed, because I am certain that that will have a bearing on the response to his statement in Nigeria?

Secondly, may I ask whether it was not possible for him to have set up this 218 Commission a little earlier, so as not to interfere with the September Conference?

Thirdly, is it not a fact—as has not been made in the statement—that the Speaker in the Eastern Nigerian Parliament stated that an inquiry could not be held, because proceedings were taking place in court and that such a committee, or rather, the Resolution of the Assembly, would be sub judice; and that the Commission which the right hon. Gentleman has set up is the only sort of judicial tribunal which can, in fact, withdraw proceedings from the court in the meantime? If the right hon. Gentleman made that statement, it would be clear to people in Nigeria.

Fourthly, would the right hon. Gentleman also recognise, with some degree of humility on behalf of himself and his hon. Friends, that the association of politicians with banks is quite notorious in Great Britain as well as Nigeria?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

Save for the ending thrust of the right hon. Gentleman, I am grateful for the helpful questions he has asked. I do realise that this is a serious matter, but I could not reconcile it with my responsibility to take any action other than that which I have taken. I very much hope that the restrained way in which he and other hon. Members have taken the statement will also be echoed in the Eastern Region and in Nigeria as a whole.

About the postponement which this will almost certainly mean for the September Conference, I should not like to bind myself to any particular period, save to say that I hope it will be a short postponement. I very much hope that the facts will justify this expectation.

I have taken action in this matter as soon as it was possible for me to do so and I shall do all I can to see that the necessary preparatory work is carried out as quickly as possible. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Speaker in the Eastern Region Assembly did say that, in a sense, the matter was sub judice, because of the forthcoming libel action, and that was the reason why this was not ventilated in the Eastern Region Assembly, where, indeed, the Premier had asked that it should be so ventilated. I share with him the view that the action I have taken is the best possible way in which this matter can be brought to a speedy decision.

219
§ Sir R. Robinson

Can my right hon. Friend say why he was not content with the suggestion that Dr. Azikiwe's libel action might well settle this matter?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

This is a public matter, requiring public inquiry, and cannot, I think, be left to private litigation. Apart from that, private litigation might well prove very protracted, and even longer delay the convening of the Conference. The issues in the libel action might not cover the full field which should be investigated by the Commission.

§ Mr. Fenner Brockway

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that all of us are concerned that Nigeria and the rest of West Africa shall progress in an orderly way towards self-government, and that it is in that spirit that we are asking our questions?

Is it not the case that Dr. Azikiwe and the other Ministers of Eastern Nigeria have to go even beyond the point of Ministers in this country? Have they not only to resign their directorships in any limited liability companies but actually to reveal to the Governor all their financial interests? Was that not done by Dr. Azikiwe? Is it not the case that Dr. Azikiwe was appointed as permanent chairman of this bank without his own knowledge and that he repudiated that appointment and resigned it when he became Prime Minister?

Did not the Governor himself recommend that the Eastern Nigerian Government should invest these large sums in this bank? Will the terms of reference to the Commission not only refer to Dr. Azikiwe and his colleagues, but to those who are responsible for British administration in Eastern Nigeria?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

The. first three questions which the hon. Gentleman asked are matters to which, clearly, the Commission will pay attention. It would be wrong for me to make any comment on them in advance of the sitting of the Commission. As for the action that the Governor took, undoubtedly he is anxious—as I am—to encourage indigenous banks in Nigeria and elsewhere, and the advice the Governor gave and the action taken as part of his advice will also be a matter which the Commission will inquire into.

220
§ Mr. Tilney

Would my right hon. Friend consider the appointment as members of the Commission of those from other Commonwealth Territories?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

I certainly would not rule that out.

§ Mr. J. Johnson

Is it not a fact that alleged corruption like this has been talked about as long ago as 1953, when there was a crisis in the Legislative Council in Enugu associated with the Natal Council of Nigeria and Cameroons Party?

Is it not a fact that there is nothing new in all this? Why is it that the Governor, Sir Clement Pleass, is so insistent on pressing this matter with the support of the Colonial Secretary, on the eve of the September Conference? Is it not the case that a similar charge of alleged corruption was made on the Gold Coast? Why cannot we have the whole thing settled by an inquiry inside Nigeria, by their own people on the spot, as the Governor, Sir Charles Arden Clarke, did in regard to Kwame on the Gold Coast? Is that not much better than having a Commission sent out from the United Kingdom to look into their affairs?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

As the hon. Member knows well, the Gold Coast is not a Federation. It is precisely because banking is outside the sphere of the Regional Government that a regional inquiry would not be appropriate. As to the length of time certain stories have been floating around, I had a prolonged discussion with the Premier last December, and it was only in April of this year that certain charges, going far beyond anything that had been suggested, were made. In the name of good faith in Nigeria, those charges should be ventilated.

§ Mr. Bevan

So that there may be no confusion left about this matter, may I ask whether it is not only that these are Federal matters in Nigeria and that, therefore, a Federal inquiry must be held, but, as I understand the constitutional position, that it would not be proper for a committee of inquiry, which alone the East Nigerian Parliament could create, to remove the matter from the court at the moment? Only the action and the authority of this House could establish a commission of inquiry of sufficient status.

221
§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that and, to put it beyond doubt, he has said it again.

§ Mr. J. Griffiths

Do we understand that the setting up of the Commission will prevent the libel case going on? Otherwise, we shall have two inquiries going on at the same time?

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd

That is not a matter for me, but I understand that it would not prevent it continuing.

§ Mr. Brockway

In view of the unsatisfactory statement made by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and the unsatisfactory position in which the matter has been left by the curtailing of Question Time—I am not referring to you, Mr. Speaker—I wish to give notice that I will raise this matter at the earliest opportunity



OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 30, 2019, 8:22:28 AM12/30/19
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Now we know the circumstances surrounding the convening of the  Commission.  It would be better if you included the passages involving the exculpation of Zik by the Commission.

Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 30, 2019, 4:40:57 PM12/30/19
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​Obi Nwakanma,
​You are inventing your own version of history of the Commission of Inquiry into the African Continental Bank Chaired by Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton in 1956. The genesis to the Foster-Sutton Commission of Inquiry into African Continental Bank evolved from the Eastern Regional Government appointed Commission of Inquiry, in August 1955, to investigate the extent of bribery and corruption in all branches of public life within the region and to propose measures to remedy such, if discovered. Sequel to the government's inquiry were the three reports of inquiries it had conducted into the local government council in Port Harcourt, Onitsha  and Aba which disclosed massive misconduct on the part of the elected councillors. Speaking at a meeting of the NCNC Eastern Working Committee in Aba in July 1955, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe deplored the prevalence of corruption in local government. He emphasized, "It does no credit to fill local government bodies and legislatures of the land with crooks who have stained hands." The early 1955 inquiries into allocation of Market stalls at Aba, where Azikiwe was speaking had shown massive corruption. However, at the August 1955 Commission of inquiry which began sitting in November 1955, it was alleged that the Eastern Region Minister of Finance, Mazi Mbonu Ojike, had been corrupt during his tenure as Minister of Works in 1954. At the time of the allegation, Ojike was acting  as the Premier for Azikiwe who was abroad. When the Commission reached deadlock on Ojike's guilt the Chairman of the Commission, Barrister Chuba Ikpeazu, cast his vote to declare Ojike guilty of corruption on 19 January 1956. On January 21, 1956, the Premier, Nnamdi Azikiwe, requested the Minister of Land, M.C. Awgwu and Ojike to resign. Ojike had been the arrowhead that helped to overthrow the government of Eyo Ita in the East to pave way for Azikiwe's take over in 1953.

​A close associate of Ojike, Effiong O. Eyo, from Uyo, in the then Calabar Province, was also accused of corruption before the Commission. In April 1956, Uyo asked to be relieved of his position as Chief Whip in the Eastern House of Assembly as well as the Chairman of Eastern Region Development Corporation.  Immediately after his request was granted, Effiong O. Eyo accused the Premier, Nnamdi Azikiwe, of grossly abusing his office in connection with the investment and the deposit of public funds in a private bank of which Nnamdi Azikiwe was the principal owner. On August 4, 1956, the Secretary of State for the colonies appointed a Tribunal of Inquiry under the chairmanship of Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, the Chief Justice of the Federation of Nigeria, to inquire into "allegations of improper conduct on the part of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Premier of Eastern Region of Nigeria, in connection with the affairs of the African Continental Bank Limited; the circumstances in which securities, belonging to Eastern Region Marketing Board were transferred to the Eastern Region Finance Corporation and the circumstances in which such proceeds were invested in or deposited with the African Continental Bank Limited by the Eastern Region Finance Corporation."
In 1944, Nnamdi Azikiwe acquired a small property bank, named Tinubu Properties Limited. By 1948, he renamed it the African Continental Bank Limited, of which he made himself Founder, Governing Director and Chairman. In 1949, the nominal capital of the bank was £250,000 with the shares held by himself and members of his family. Zik Group of Companies as submitted by Nnamdi Azikiwe were : The African Continental Bank; The African Book Company; the Comet Press Limited; The Associated Newspaper of Nigeria; the Nigerian Paper Co.; the Nigerian Printing Supply Co.; the Nigerian Real State Corporation; the West African Pilot Ltd.; Suburban Transport Ltd.; Nigerian Commodities Ltd.; the African News Agency Ltd; and Zik Enterprises Ltd., a holding company owning lands and buildings of the newspapers. At the Tribunal, Maxi Mbonu Ojike, accepted responsibility for the Financial transactions between African Continental Bank and the Eastern Region Marketing Board as well as Eastern Region Finance Corporation. Foster-Sutton Tribunal of Inquiry sat for fifty days and its report was made known in December 1956. Shortly before the report was released Maxi Mbonu Ojike died on 28 November 1956, under  mysterious circumstance, attributed to hypertension. The Tribunal established that Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe owned the African Continental Bank with his family and Zik Group of Company. The Tribunal discovered that Azikiwe had used his position to get the Eastern Region Government to sustain the obviously distressed bank while loans at unusually low interest rates, WITH PAYMENTS UNCONVENTIONALLY DEFFERED TO 1971, were in turn given to Zik Group of Companies. The Colonial Governor of Eastern Region then, Sir Clement Pleass  commented, "The exercise of public power and private profit is established in the East." Consequent to the report, some members of the NCNC demanded Azikiwe's resignation in order to uphold the party's reputation. Azikiwe had asked Ojike and Adelabu to resign when commissions of enquiries had impugned on their honesty. However, on 18 January 1957, a joint meeting of the National Executive Committee and the Eastern Parliamentary Party adopted recommendations submitted by the joint (Federal and Eastern) Ministerial Council to the effect that the Eastern House of Assembly should be dissolved for new elections to test public confidence in Azikiwe's government. 

​Contrary to the invented history by Obi Nwakanma that it was the British colonial power who wanted to use 'corruption bogey' to trap Azikiwe prior to 1959 election, it was Zik himself, who despite having glass jaws threw punches on Aba local government councillors in 1955 when he accused them of being crooks and corrupt. A retaliatory punch at his glass jaws by his people, and not the colonialist, caused his jaws to crack. Which other Nigerian companies did African Continental Bank give credit loans beside his Zik Group of Companies if his Bank was set up to counterbalance British Banks discrimination of Nigerian businessmen? 
S. Kadiri  



Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 30, 2019, 5:00:19 PM12/30/19
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In the Western Region, the Egbe Omo Oduduwa has been very active in seeing to it that ONLY NATIONALISTS AND PATRIOTS who are PRO-NATIONALISTS should enter the Western House of Assambly -- Excerpts from a Presidential address to the third Ibo State Assembly at Enugu on December 15, 1950; See, ZIK : Selected Speeches of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, p. 113. I hope that you, Obi Nwakanma, is aware that Awolowo was a member of Egbe Omo Oduduwa whose members Azikiwe, latently and indirectly described as Nationalists and Patriots. 
S. Kadiri



Skickat: den 30 december 2019 03:06
Till: Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>; USAAfrica Dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>

Rex Marinus

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Dec 30, 2019, 6:20:22 PM12/30/19
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Salimonu Kadiri mixes up two different events in the political life of Eastern Nigeria. One, Azikiwe government's investigation of widespread corruption in municipal governments in Eastern Nigeria under the colonial government, which preceded the Forster Sutton Commission instituted clearly without cause by Lennox-Boyd, the colonial secretary, in a ploy with Clement Pleass, the Governor, whom Azikiwe had very strategically isolated and made irrelevant on assuming government in Eastern Nigeria.

He says I "invented history." So, I will step aside and refer him, and the like, and whoever else needs a bit more education on that aspect of Nigerian history. The problem is that the likes of Kadiri have been fed hokum by their masters, and they have in turn fed hokum to those whom they can influence. I want to refer them to just two sources relevant to this discussion, who have done enormous work on that period. The first will be James S. Coleman, whose Nigeria: A Background to Nationalism, is now a classic of that history. The second will be Martin Lynn who scoured through End of Empire document sources in his essay, "The Eastern Nigeria Crisis, 1955-1957," published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. The facts they deploy agree specifically with mine. But you do not have to believe me. Just read, and then, we should know who mythologizes and invents Nigerian history.
Obi Nwakanma



From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 9:23 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply decliningmembershipofthe 1986 Political Bureau
 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:58:29 AM12/31/19
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Is it possible for the sources of these thick histories to be presented so people can crosscheck the facts?

Mobolaji Aluko

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:58:47 AM12/31/19
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SK:

ON only has to tell you that EOO did not succeed with Awo - then what?

ON is beyond redemption on this score, Salimonu.  It has to do with the day he was born.

And there you have it.


Bolaji Aluko



Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:59:03 AM12/31/19
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Just a thought on the "nationalist" angle: Re-  " have been fed hokum by their masters, and they have in turn fed hokum to those whom they can influence. I want to refer them to just two sources relevant to this discussion, who have done enormous work on that period. The first will be James S. Coleman, whose Nigeria: A Background to Nationalism, is now a classic of that history. The second will be Martin Lynn who scoured through End of Empire document sources in his essay, "The Eastern Nigeria Crisis, 1955-1957," published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History."

Why should these two oyibos be your authorities? 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:59:12 AM12/31/19
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Baba Kadiri,


We’ve been here before, haven’t we? We all remember ( it’s all in the archives ) his earlier, steady, & oh so heady determination and failure to prove that at the end of the Biafra Civil War , Ojukwu / Biafra “did not surrender “ –  as if the terms of the surrender  - Ojukwu’s flight to voluntary/ involuntary  exile to the Ivory Coast and the very documented articles of surrender was not worth the ink that it was written with.

Loincloth? The urchin (little worm) was still in his nappies (if indeed the pickaninny had any) - he was barely twenty-eight (28) days old and crying either in joy  or most  probably still starving when the Biafra war came to an end.

My second week at Legon (January 1970) that was all we were talking about, everywhere on that campus…

The maniacal Igbophile is not fighting for truth, equality and justice, all he still wants is victory even at this very late date, the victory that was denied him and that’s the reason for these endless, unsuccessful post-mortems in which he tries to resurrect the usual falsehoods.

You are waiting in vain for the toto-sucker caught on camera there, digging himself dancing kaka-debul and masquerading as a petty edition reincarnation of  Ziki his demi-god….

As Malcolm Little once put it to such miscreants: “They taught you little”

BTW, I have set Cassandra’s Answer to song (Amponsah guitar)

 I’m in a bad mood and jiveass, I’m ready  

don’t run away to Abidjan

and don’t be sorry ….


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Rex Marinus

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:59:24 AM12/31/19
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At the time Azikiwe made that assertion he was working strenuously to create a National Front, and had in mind people like H.O. Davies who were staunch members of the Egbe. Context matters here.
Obi Nwakanma


Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 9:58 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 

Rex Marinus

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Dec 31, 2019, 7:38:57 AM12/31/19
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Because, Oyibo or not, they did their work. They went to real, verifiable sources. That's why.
Obi Nwakanma


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Rex Marinus

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Dec 31, 2019, 7:55:07 AM12/31/19
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That's all you got Rabbi Cunnilingus of Swedenborg? 
Common, sir! You want to bring Biafra into this? I have asked you to supply proof that Biafra surrendered. You should (a) publish the surrender document, (b) Show in the publicly available video now luckily on youtube where either Effiong, or Gowon, or Obasanjo used the word, "surrender." My proof is that they very cautiously avoided the use of that word because the Biafrans did not come to Lagos to surrender. 

You keep talking about age, and making statements about starving me as a child. Be wary, sir, those kids you wanted to starve to death still have gunpowder in their souls and ingots in their eyes, and they may come hunting you, now that your old arthritic legs can no longer lift or run from where you hide in Sweden.  

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 11:38 PM

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 31, 2019, 10:48:00 AM12/31/19
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Obi:

You know better than this cat and mouse game.  You know Gowon and Obasanjo deliberately chose not to humiliate the PEOPLES of the East by their careful choice of words, people, unlike you, who recognised the realities of the situation on the ground, the flight of Ojukwu, not to secure more reinforcements and armaments to continue the fight at a future date, but to signal an end to hostilities on the Biafran side because he recognized it was fruitless

Be mature, dont rub salt on the wound for easterners; except for people like you majority of the people have moved on.

Let the healing be complete.  There are uses and abuses of history.

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


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From: Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Date: 31/12/2019 13:09 (GMT+00:00)
To: cornelius...@gmail.com, USA Africa DialogueSeries <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership ofthe  1986 Political Bureau

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That's all you got Rabbi Cunnilingus of Swedenborg? 
Common, sir! You want to bring Biafra into this? I have asked you to supply proof that Biafra surrendered. You should (a) publish the surrender document, (b) Show in the publicly available video now luckily on youtube where either Effiong, or Gowon, or Obasanjo used the word, "surrender." My proof is that they very cautiously avoided the use of that word because the Biafrans did not come to Lagos to surrender. 

You keep talking about age, and making statements about starving me as a child. Be wary, sir, those kids you wanted to starve to death still have gunpowder in their souls and ingots in their eyes, and they may come hunting you, now that your old arthritic legs can no longer lift or run from where you hide in Sweden.  
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2019 11:38 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awo's reply declining membership of the 1986 Political Bureau
 
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 31, 2019, 3:37:55 PM12/31/19
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Obi Nwakanma,

I have a clean bill of health ( touch wood) - my heart beats like that of a horse, I have no debts, I don't owe you or anybody else any money, have enough in my bank account but wouldn't mind having more, don't like what's happening in Somalia, Irak, Yemen,  and I pray for peace and brotherhood among all men.  You,  your friends, the company that you keep, Nigeria, the music you like, play,  the theatre you like, what you read, say, think, believe, dream, want, do not want, is not my greatest concern. Really. I wish you a Happy New Year and as the bard said, "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."
...

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Jan 3, 2020, 6:43:25 AM1/3/20
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 Forty Texts on Watchfulness by Philotheos of Sinai  ( sixteen pages) starts with “There is within us, on the noetic plane, a warfare tougher than that on the plane of the senses.” The residual reader  was left feeling both remorseful and humbled as you would probably be too, if you took his advice seriously, after all,  the Desert Fathers are said to have influenced some of the Sufis, tremendously.

 I next took some pains to edit what I had written previously  so that our dear moderator of this forum, Professor Falola doesn’t think that Mr Somebody has the right to continue addressing me in this forum in this insulting manner as “Rabbi Cunnilingus”, ostensibly on presumptions that the word is “ free”, or  to deny me the right of reply to the obscene titles that Mr Somebody has been awarding me. Not that I’m about to sink so low as to address Mr Somebody in a like manner. Rudeness is not my religion.

So, the most important thing that I want to tell Mr. Somebody is that this Happy New Year he could desist (forthwith) from addressing his Brother Cornelius as “Rabbi Cunnilingus” – I don’t want to have to do something about that kind of anti-Semitism. And believe you me, these are not idle words, I can do something about it beyond what Jazzman Don Cherry said, “There’s nothing I can’t do, I’ll talk to God for you”

About the subject matter under discussion, I should like to refer some of those concerned to pages 188 – 278  and the “Postscript 1970 – 1976” on pages 278- 283 of Michael Crowder’s  “The Story of Nigeria”  - a book that I have read, closely.

For peace of mind, happiness and future well-being, we are well advised to take Professor Toyin Falola’s Happy New Year Message and other words of encouragement, to heart.

However, just for the record and to disabuse Somebody of further illusions I’m compelled to reply to what was said to me. I was at a very peaceful and harmonious New Year’s Eve Party, beautiful, wonderful people, good food, good wine, some dazzling fireworks displays to usher in 2020, talked for some time with a Swedish writer and  war historian ( he has written a couple of books) and in keeping with my New Year Resolution, I’m taking my time to edit this beyond any reproach by Oga Falola.

To begin with - respect begets respect. I respect everybody. But, (of course) I don’t respect anyone who does not respect me.  I was taught to respect my elders, and over the years, religious scholars etc. I felt honoured when tying the shoelaces of the Great Master, the Most Gracious Hazrat Agha  when he visited me at home in Stockholm, in the summer of 1989...

It must be cultural and that’s why there’s the saying, “you can take the monkey out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the monkey.” All that I said from the very beginning, was that Mr Somebody  is  an unrepentant, great Igbo nationalist, which title I assumed he would proudly wear as a badge of honour  - but no  - I guess his background coupled with the motor park/ jungle/ Say Tokio Kid  mentality is far too strong and always gets the better of him, binds him and blinds him, and in true monkey-spirit, so to speak, the reaction is always about his own passionate obsession “cunnilingus” this and “cunnilingus” that, the street vocabulary of cock-sucking poetry and some cock and bull stories. I guess that’s how some people talk to their fathers and maybe to their brothers and their sister’s husbands. But what’s the point of talking like that? I think that when we talk like that, we are judged adversely by people who follow these threads. I know one such person.

There is no Rabbi so and so of “Swedenborg” although I understand the mindset and pattern of thinking of the Somebody who thinks that he is addressing the rabbi that is the figment of his lurid imagination.

 Emanuel Swedenborg is more famous and more popular outside of Sweden than in his native Sweden. I checked him out a long time ago.  In my opinion, he was a spiritualist. In his spiritual autobiography  “Heaven and Hell” he describes some typical psychic phenomena, meetings with disembodied spirits, “angels”  etc.,  that e.g. kundalini yogis experience/ have experienced in the so-called “ lower spheres”. I was at NK two years ago to listen to Ernst Brunner present his newly written book  “Darra” // Tremble) a very demythologised factual biography (not hagiography) of the ultimately tragic figure that was  Swedenborg. At the end of his life and in hospital he was convinced that he was “the Messiah” - as many deluded others have believed about themselves before him and after him and known as false messiahs.  They all have their delusions of grandeur, don’t they? Thanks to Baba Kadiri I learned this new term: the Dunning–Kruger effect, which can be applied appropriately, as and when the cap fits. Olga Tokarczuk´s 850-page The Books of Jacob is about one such false messiah by the name of Jacob Frank

I must say (and this is also the truth) that I enjoyed Obi’s last paragraph and to see him waxing visionary, for a change:

You keep talking about age, and making statements about starving me as a child. Be wary, sir, those kids you wanted to starve to death still have gunpowder in their souls and ingots in their eyes, and they may come hunting you, now that your old arthritic legs can no longer lift or run from where you hide in Sweden.

 Surely, just because I say that somebody was still in nappies on January 15, 1970 does not mean that I’m “always talking about age”?

I’m still laughing. My “old arthritic legs can no longer lift or run from where (I am) hide in Sweden. “?

Who told him that I have “old arthritic legs”?

“can no longer lift or run”? Really?  You are no Usain Bolt yourself, are you Ogbeni Obi?

 I’m glad that at least it’s only the feet and not also the head that’s being accused of being “arthritic” …

And who told him that I am “hiding” in Sweden? (As soon as Nigeria starts offering citizenship to Diaspora Africans, I’ll apply. The person I wanted to visit in Kinshasa is currently in Nairobi)

 Age? I keep talking about it?

Where?

Makes me think of Sammy Davis Jr asking the same question (He was having dinner with his gang, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, etc the so-called Rat Pack when some Ku Klux Klan folks came into the restaurant, and said loudly,  “There’s a nigger in here”, causing Sammy Davis Jr to jump up ( as only he can) throw his hands up in the air and enquire,

“Where?”

I “keep talking about age, and making statements about starving (you) as a child”?

Where?

Where have I kept on talking about age and about starving you as a child?

Age? For some it’s a fixation (Early on news Years Day on the way from the fireworks, the Swedish historian asked me, “How old are you?” I told him, “I’m 100 years old,” He said, “No you’re not.” I told him, “Africans don’t lie”. He replied that he was 76 years old. I told him, “So, you’re my little brother”

 There’s the biological, the mental, the emotional, some say the psychological and far above the intellectual, there’s the spiritual. They say that some souls are older than others. I may be biologically a few years older than Mr A and professor Y; I may have even known Jesus when he was a little boy, and still be in a physically normal condition, look younger than Mr A and Professor Y perhaps due to a mostly stress-free life,  Bitachon , a lot of confidence in the future, a singular lack of “ambition“, a wonderful wife, children and grandchildren, a feeling of contentment with all that I have, and (due to many other factors such as genetic ancestry  - not so much inbreeding in my past, etc) plus because - and this is the big secret, I learned how to breathe, a long time ago, breathe right,  like an elephant and you slow down “ageing”  - you don’t want to  go around huffing and puffing and breathing like a marathon runner! Just the other day there was this bad news: Man dies during sex competition after finishing the seventh round . (Poor guy. May his soul rest in peace.  It’s better to conserve than to emit (Baba Muktananda used to say, “the seminal fluid is more precious than dollars”, become an avadhut – the fluid should - by capillary attraction flow up along the spinal column and nourish the brain

 For those who fear death most, there’s Joseph Campbell’s reflections on death, mourning, and meaning

 If some children have “gunpowder” in their souls” what do you think others have? Saliva?

That use of the word “gunpowder” reminds me of this line of Kabir as translated by Robert Bly:

but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun,

how can you have God?”

 I was born sometime after the Second World War was over and yet I know a great deal about WW2, about the Holocaust, other disasters, tragedies, histories, mostly acquired by study and meeting people who know. During the Biafra War (while some people were still in Heaven or wherever it is that you came from) there were many nights when I listened to Ojukwu’s live broadcasts, huddled together with Igbos of my generation  - and Oh what colonialism has done to us:  some of them were marvelling at Ojukwu’s so-called ” Oxford accent”, to my ears, if anything it was a Nigerian Oxford accent  - it was at a time when  I was dating the best friend of Kenneth Ofodile’s girlfriend, later to be his wife Mrs Ofodile. Further along the road, she passed away in Sokoto…

In this thread, so far, the funniest sentence has been, “The facts they deploy agree specifically with mine.”  Another way of looking at it is that Obi agrees with them, with Messrs James S. Coleman and Martin Lynn.  I don’t suppose that we generally agree with all the lieutenants of the Western Intelligence Agencies, and their agendas. I know and have known quite a few of them ( In Ghana where I auditioned some of his political science seminars ( with Canadian friend Tony Asrilen)  Victor Le Vine for example used to boast openly about the kind of work that he had done in the Far East. About half an hour ago I had dinner with my wife another friend, and the wife of a former CIA agent (Kenyan) here at home.  I just saw her through the door.

 I’m sorry to say that sometimes, the stance of some African scholars and intellectuals who speak good English is not radically  different from that of Man Friday, as quoted by John M. Coetzee in his Nobel Lecture:

He and His Man

“But to return to my new companion. I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and understand me when I spoke; and he was the aptest scholar there ever was.”

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

2020 is finally here!

Wishing all of us A Happy New Year

(Gregorian calendar)

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